Church discontinues Saturday Evening Conference Sessions

[malkie]

I look forward to GC!

I listen to the sustaining of the leaders, raise my hand in opposition to the FP and Q12, and then email my Branch and Stake Presidents to ask them to be sure that my opposition is noted (or at least counted) on the official record.

What could be more fun and uplifting than that!

Seems like a lot of work for nothing.

If you think it's too much "work", or that it is "for nothing", then I recommend that you should not do it.

[IHAQ]

I assume the separately held Women’s Conference will continue?

[Reflexzero]

Well, maybe after another 20 years of glacial pace towards progress, the TSCC will come to the same conclusion that many of us have made after enduring long and tedious meetings.

“It could have been an email.”



I’ll show myself out.

[Moksha]

What if the real reason for the change has to do with some physiological changes to the Brethren due to old age. Wouldn't you prefer to be fibbed to rather than hear about Elder So-and-So's lapses in continence or Sundowner's Syndrome? Think of it as a white lie for the Lord.

[IHAQ]

The meeting was once for male priesthood holders only, then it seesawed back and forth between women and men, and now will be discontinued altogether. Its elimination raises the question: Will it increase or further diminish the number of women speaking at the four remaining sessions of the male-dominated conferences?


After all, the church’s twice-yearly meeting in April showcased only two female speakers and more than 30 men.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/latte ... ar-AAKNqYy

Great question.

What would be an acceptable proportion of male to female General Conference speakers for a membership that's more than 70%(?) female?

[Rivendale]

I can’t imagine President Nelson giving up another opportunity to address the Saints unless there was a good reason behind it.

Maybe to counter the extra Saturday envy post covid.

[SaturdaysVoyeur]

Oh, God....I couldn't sit through conference when I was still in!

Strangely, conference attendance was not a huge expectation in my ward. (Maybe everyone else felt the same way I did!) That was back when everyone would go to their stake center to watch it.

I actually used to sort of enjoy weekly ward meetings. The music was pretty uniformly terrible, with the tinny piano and dirge-like tempos (especially in a small ward in the mission field---for those of you in Utah, imagine an entire ward so small that nobody has any musical talent).

But, otherwise, we were tight-knit and often had some really good conversations, especially in Young Women's. They may not have been deep theologically (although we had our moments!), but they were deep in terms of mutual support. It was a welcome break from the cattiness and backbiting among the kids at school. We were kids who mostly did not want to be like that and sincerely tried not to be.

But conference offered no such interactivity or opportunities for friendship and conversation, especially not when viewed on a television that was just as crappy as the piano. The few times I went, my ass hurt the whole time, and I was hungry and bored out of my skull.

Even a boring sacrament talk has a kind of esprit de corps when it's delivered by someone you know. You're still kind of rooting for that person, if only because we've all had to give a talk at some point on a subject about which we have very little to say, and there's nothing to be done for it except BS your way through the next 5-10 minutes.

But the GAs never had anything to say. They were just mind-numbing. Always in that sing-song cadence that could be used to anesthetize surgical patients.

I sometimes trace my departure from church to the point....somewhere around 2000-ish?....when it became seemingly mandatory that Every. Single. Goddamn. Meeting. had to revolve around the verbal vomit that dribbled from some authority's mouth during a conference talk. Which turned out to be no more profound with someone else reading it, yet we were supposed to spend hours acting like the finer points couldn't be easily discerned.

So long to a YW's meeting where we might sit around and have a serious conversation about what it means to be Christ-like in the hallways at school. Hello to parsing every possible meaning out of each individual word in just a couple of sentences that simply weren't deep enough to have an interesting conversation about. It was like trying to write a thesis about Hello Kitty.

To this day, I pay almost no attention to conference. So I have to think less of it can only be a good thing. Unless you're really into trying to find depth and meaning by reading your bowl of Lucky Charms.

[Craig Paxton]

What I find interesting is the lack of protests from the faithful for "MORE" church. Where are the protests of men in white shirts and women in their cap sleeves and below the knee dresses out with their picket signs demanding the return to 3 hour church and for some the old 5 hour Sunday meeting schedule? But instead all I see is smiles and "thank god" for less church meetings as the winnowing of their seemingly beloved church meetings continue to take less of their time.

We've seen this trend for a while now, Temple sessions have been pared down (did anyone really miss the lecture at the veil?) and the other session editing that took place with the move from live to movie, Sunday meeting schedule cut from 5 to 2 hours and now that trend continues with the Conference schedule and yet no protests.

The faithful, those who claim to love church, seem to be thrilled that the church is taking less and less of their time.

[drumdude]

If you have ever been Mormon for any length of time, you know the complete overwhelming sense of relief that came with finally ending the 3rd hour of church. I dreaded Sundays and apparently I was not alone.

[Themis]

First church goes from three hours to two.

Now conference goes from ten hours to eight.

I predict much rejoicing among the natives.

Interesting that members have never complained, as Craig Paxton has brought up, about having less church to go to. That believing members want less church tells me the LDS church has never done a good job at addressing the needs of it's members. I never complained about going to scouts as a kid. I had fun and learned news skills. Maybe if church was a little more like scouting was as a kid members would be a little more upset by less church.