[This is the second post where I discuss the new Sunday schedule.]
Whether shortening the Sunday School time to 25 minutes will be positive or not largely depends on what one thinks the goal of Sunday School is. According to the General Handbook the purpose of Sunday School is to “[help] God’s children learn and live the gospel of Jesus Christ…Strengthen faith in Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ by teaching ‘the doctrine of the kingdom’ (Doctrine and Covenants 88:77) [and] Support home-centered and Church-supported gospel learning and teaching” (13.1).
But what does that actually mean?
One Option: One way to read this language from the General Handbook is something like “to learn the scriptures and come to understand what they say so that those principles can be implemented in our lives and our communities.” If one assumes that approach, then this change is just another nail in the coffin of scripture study
Yes, we are supposed to study at home. But nothingreplaces engaging the scriptures with a Church community; that’s one of the reasons we havea church community. To make a clumsy metaphor, we are all warmed by the friction of our collective scriptural study: we are given new ideas, new insights, and benefit from the experiences of others. Without our broader community, our own scriptural learning is inherently limited and constrained. We lose something important when we lose that community of learners. And that’s exactly what happens with this change.
Cutting back Sunday School to every other week (and then you lose two weeks each for Stake and General Conferences) was a pretty clear signal that scriptural discussions were low on the priority list for church leaders. But at least, in 50 minutes, one had time to develop complex ideas, explore topics deeply, and really dig into (some of) the scriptures. Going down to weekly 25-minute lessons (even if the cumulative-time-in-class-per-month is about the same) turns Sunday School into little more than a beefed up devotional thought, and signals the further deprioritization of communal scripture study.
Another Option: Another way to read that language from the General Handbook is something like “to reinforce church doctrines and polices and provide space for faithful affirmation.” And if that’s how one reads the General Handbook language, then this change works really well. The flipside to what I note above is that in 25-minutes it is possible to have a really engaging devotional thought. Sure, there won’t reallybe time to dig into the details of, for instance, the differences between the Ten Commandments as articulated in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5… but that’s fine because the goal isn’tto dig into the details.
To continue my example, the goal is really to read one or two of the commandments, discuss how they are reflected in existing church doctrines, policies, or programs (including specifically the temple), and then to provide time for people to share the ways in which they’ve been blessed by observing those commandments and “staying on the covenant path.” Thereby affirming the Church and our faith in it
Will this be appreciated by many people? Sure! My sense is that many people might even prefer this approach. Partly because it demands much less of them, but also because they are primarily coming to church to feel the spirit. And a good devotional thought can certainly be emotionally moving, even if the content of the devotional is thin
So Where Does This Leave Us?: As a people, I really believe we should be studying the scriptures at home and at church. We need to do it on our own or with our families (if we have them), but we also need to do it with the larger community. For LDS folks, that community is found in Sunday School. In all of our various meetings and gatherings, Sunday School is the onlytime dedicated specificallyto scripture study. And yet…
There is an apocryphal saying that goes something like, “don’t tell me your priorities; show me your budget and I’ll tell you what your priorities are.” I think that applies here. When it comes to time, as a church we are continuing to divest in scripture study, and the only reasonable conclusion is that it simply isn’t a priority for leaders. I think it’s reasonable to ask, “why not?”, but that, alas, is for another post
In a comment to my post from yesterday, the commenter observed, “Scriptural literacy is disappearing among us as a people, and I regret this.” Personally, I couldn’t agree more. And if Sunday School is supposed to be about learning the scriptures (which I think it is), then this change is a death knell for scriptural literacy
