If you thought that the change to two-hour church was a blessing from the heavens, wait until you hear about the “School Snow Make-up Days” of Church announcements.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Days announced this morning that following the April 2021 session of general conference, all Sunday meetings will be changed to a four hour meeting block. After sacrament meeting, church meetings will return to their previous format of weekly Sunday School meetings followed by individual quorum and class meetings.
The new “Fourth Hour” will provide much more flexibility in how members can honor the Sabbath. All final decisions will be made by local Bishoprics on how to spend their final hour but the Church provided a fairly comprehensive list of approved activities. Here are a few examples from the announcement:
- Family History Class
- Mission Preparation Class
- Sunbeam Choir Practice
- Beehive-Deacon Speed Dating
- Casserole Cook-Offs
- Youth Church Basketball Practice
- Zoom 101 Classes (taught by the High Priests)
- Bible Bashing Seminar
- Introduction to Calculus
Members are able to attend any of these classes during the fourth hour unless personal callings dictate otherwise.
Adam Ondi Ahman, a Church Spokesperson, gave us some insight behind the reasoning for this unexpected change.
“We wanted to make up for in-person church time our members lost while in quarantine. We don’t want to be the bad guy here but we had to make up for lost time somehow.”
“Our second best idea was having a few hours of church on Saturday but we couldn’t take the day away from BYU Football. That’s their Sabbath.”