Come, Follow Me

This year marks a major change for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. For my whole life our Sunday worship has consisted of three hours of church, with additional leadership meetings and choir practices and firesides as needed. I remember my friends at school commenting that that sounded like a lot of church. It was what I knew and was accustomed to, so it didn't seem like a lot to me.

This past October, during our worldwide General Conference, an adjustment was announced. We will now meet together as a congregation for two hours each Sunday (plus those additional meetings mentioned above) and as a family at home for the third hour.

To give you an idea of how things work at our house, we already have Family Home Evening (FHE) on Monday nights which consist of a song or two, opening and closing prayers, a lesson or testimonies, and sometimes (though not usually in our family) an activity. We also read the scriptures together everyday and pray together morning and evening. And we have lots of additional Gospel discussions throughout the week as inspiration dictates.

When I heard that I was now responsible for an additional hour of church in my home I freaked out. A lot. For several months. I felt the weight of responsibility. I felt that I was just barely hanging on to sanity and productivity. I felt that I was already doing so much, how could I possibly add this as well? Guys, I have three callings (roles, jobs, responsibilities) at church right now. I'm a cub scout den leader, a Sunday School teacher of teenagers, and the choir director. None of those scared me like this did. An hour of church at home every week. How much of that hour would consist of telling the kids to stop poking at each other/making weird noises/dancing/interrupting/arguing? Our Family Home Evenings last fifteen minutes tops because of these very concerns.

Please know that my testimony is strong and didn't waver. But I felt incredibly overwhelmed.

And so I prayed. A lot. For several months. I read and reread the announcement and the promises made to those that followed this new way of doing church. I talked with only a small handful of people about my concerns because I felt so on the periphery of how everyone else felt about the changes. Mostly I talked with Bryan about how we were going to make this work in our home.

The new course of study started yesterday. Since it was Monday, I planned our FHE lesson around this new plan. We held a family council. I told the kids that we're not going to have the parents teaching for an hour each Sunday, but instead that we would all take an active role in the discussions we'll have as a family. And I told them that this new change was scary for me and that I needed their help.

Then I asked what they each wanted to see happen in our hour of church at home. I pulled my brand new 2019 calendar off the wall and wrote the list on the back so we would know where to find it for future reference. I'm going to write it here as well. All six of us that can speak contributed to the list.

Come, Follow Me 2019 Family Goals

• sing songs
• snack time (a real suggestion from the always hungry oldest)
• pray together
• play games with/about the lesson
• have individual assignments to help with the lesson
• have a notebook for each person for notes/thoughts/impressions
• watch church movies
• meet in a clean room
• bear testimonies
• take turns leading family discussion
• role play
• color
• be reverent
• pay attention

We're two days in now. We were all home today and in the afternoon I realized we'd had a fairly calm, peaceful day, which is kind of an anomaly. Peace in our homes is one of the promises of this new way of doing church. I expect we'll have plenty of bumps to smooth out as we progress, but this small glimpse of the feeling we can have in our home is a tender mercy. 

It's going to be okay.