Editor’s Note: if you have a question regarding Sunday School procedure, send it to: the Question Box, The Instructor Editorial Dept. 50 North Main, Salt Lake City, Utah. Not all answers can be published in the magazine, but each inquiry will receive a written reply.
Q. When the Church General Conference is held, some of our wards do not hold Sunday School, but rather the members stay home to watch the general conference over television. What is the General Board’s feeling about this?
A. Much inspiration and knowledge can come from attending general conference by television. In fact, if there were a room in the meetinghouse that could be equipped with television for people who do not have a set it would be a fine thing. Sunday School should be held, however, for children too young to give attention to conference speakers even if a television set were installed in the meetinghouse.
Q. The bishop insists on making all the announcements in our Sunday School, and there is nothing for the superintendency to do. Can this be corrected?
A. No. The bishopric is in charge of all organizations in the ward; a good superintendent works quietly and need never be heard.
Q. Is it proper for anyone attending Sunday School (young or old) to open Sunday School with prayer when the priesthood is present?
A. The suggestion that only priesthood members be called upon to open or close sacrament meetings with prayer does not include auxiliary meetings such as Sunday School. You may, therefore, continue to call on women and children as well as priesthood members to offer prayers at Sabbath School.
Q. A boy in our ward insists on going into a class with his companions who are older than he, rather than stay in a class of boys of his age level; we have been marking him absent because of his insistence on going into the wrong class; he is, therefore, not eligible for the Aaronic Priesthood award. Is this right?
A. No. Age is less important than the individual’s personal traits and social environments. Keep him with his natural social group and place his name on that roll.
Q. We here in Port Alberni, British Columbia, would like to know who presides when a high councilman or district president visits our Sunday School. is the branch president still the presiding officer?
A. It is the custom in the Church to consider the highest authority present as the presiding authority. Ordinarily the conduct of the meeting is left to the local authorities set apart to handle local meetings. In such event the branch president or whoever conducts the meeting would be the conducting officer.
Q. Is it proper for people from the congregation to make announcements?
A. No. announcements should be made at one time by only one person.
Q. Our chapel is now crowded; why should we do enlistment work?
The Sunday School assignment is to teach the gospel to all the members of the Church. The Sunday School can be divided into two sections – one-half of which meets in classes while the other half meets in the general assembly.
Q. It seems that in the Junior Sunday School the children sing only children’s songs, finger plays, and rhythm fun. Why do we not teach our children hymns? What is the General Board’s recommendation on singing hymns in the Junior Sunday School?
A. In The Children Sing, published primarily for Junior Sunday School use, are many beautiful hymns which teach the gospel to little children. The book is recommended for Junior Sunday School use.
Q. The superintendents of the wards want to know what should be done when the time of the prayer meeting conflicts in time with part of the priesthood meetings. One or two of the wards wait to have prayer meeting until after priesthood meetings are adjourned, but this sometimes makes them a little late getting everything ready for Sunday School. some have requested priesthood members to leave their meetings a little early to attend prayer meeting, and at least one ward expects only the women members of the faculty to attend.
A. All Officers and teachers should attend prayer meeting before Sunday School if it is possible for them to do so. At the present time, however, if priesthood meetings are held immediately preceding Sunday school and no arrangements are made with the consent of the bishopric, then the male members of the Sunday School faculty are excused to attend priesthood meeting with the exception of one member of the superintendency who should meet in prayer meeting with the sisters of the faculty.
Prayer meetings should never be held so late that the members of the Sunday School faculty cannot get into the Sunday School at least five minutes before the Sunday school is expected to begin. Many ward bishops have made arrangements to have their priesthood meetings a little earlier so that they could dismiss in time to permit the Sunday School faculty to attend the prayer meeting.
Q. Our class in genealogy is made up of all adults. They have all been in that class for several years and have repeated Course No. 20, “Proving Your Pedigree.” Would it be all right for them to devote their time to working on their genealogical records each Sunday?
A. The Genealogical Training class is a two-year course. After class members have completed this course, they should go into one of the other adult departments in the Sunday School. If they wish to continue their genealogical study, then they should arrange for continued study with the stake or ward genealogical committee. This advanced study should be at a time other than during Sunday School. The purpose of Sunday School is to teach the restored gospel. An important part of our gospel plan is vicarious temple work for the dead, and Sunday School leaders should encourage as many adults in the ward or branch as possible to take the two-year genealogical course.
Q. Where a Junior Sunday School has available both an organ and a piano, which should be used?
A. The Church Music Committee recommends that wherever possible an organ be used in our Church services. This, of course, is true in Junior Sunday School.
I love the question posts. I was surprised to hear the recommendation that Sunday School still be held during General Conference for young children. I generally think of the children of previous generations being much more disciplined and better behaved than the children of today. I also was surprised to hear the opinion that a boy be allowed to attend a different class; things seem stricter today. Thanks, Ardis!
Best takeaway: “a good superintendent works quietly and need never be heard.”
As long as he rings the dismissal bell on time, Gary, right?
HokieKate, thanks for that. I sometimes worry that you might think I’m cheating, because obviously it’s easier to type up something someone wrote in 1955 than it is to tell a story of my own. But question posts are a great way to convey a lot of information in a brief space, in the flavor of the time — and it looks like you enjoy the same feeling I have when I discover something in a contemporary record instead of having some modern know-it-all tell me the same fact. Anyway, I’m glad to hear that you like this kind of post.
Even though I trust you, Ardis, I was educated to realize that NOTHING substitutes for an original document. It is fascinating to see the particular concerns of each of the writers as they did they best to carry out their responsibilities.
I wasn’t old enough in 1955 to pay attention to anything (a state I’m reverting to these days, by the way!), but it’s interesting how these questions and answers remind me of how the church felt to me just a few years later when I began to pay attention.
As to general conference, in the pre-broadcast days, I suspect that most of the wards of the church held regular services. And the odds that a ward would hold services increased in direct proportion to the distance from Salt Lake City. In addition, I’m not sure that all the conference addresses were published in the Improvement Era. For years lasting maybe until the late 80s at least priesthood leaders received a “Conference Report” containing all the talks. It seemed a bit of overkill then, since the talks had already been published in the Ensign. But the trend to “treat the conference talks as if they were another part of the scriptures” seems relatively recent.
I’m not old enough to remember the time before Conference broadcasts; we children watched them in our pajamas. I do have a vague recollection that there was an abbreviated Sacrament meeting later in the day.
I also recall attending Stake Conference where the younger children were entertained with a movie while their parents attended the general session. The one I remember was a black-and-white film telling the story of Joseph and his brothers. Alas, Conference ended before the film did.
I joined the church in as a teen in the late 70’s in Northern California. General Conference was broadcast over “live wire” (I believe a telephone line) then. In 1981, I was living on the east coast and my ward there held regular meetings on conference Sunday. It wasn’t until Oct 1982 that the stake there started showing conference on TVs. I moved to the Mormon corridor in 1991, and that was the first time I was able to listen/watch conference in my own home. I do love having conference available on the internet now!
Interesting to see the question about whether or not a high councilor or district president is attending. I know from my time on the high council, I was never the presiding authority. In actuality, there is no calling in the church with less authority than someone from the HC. You can only do what you are told to do, and then you do it in the name of the Stake President. Still, I enjoyed my time on the HC a lot.
Also, I do remember slightly the concept of prayer meetings before sacrament meeting, but never before Sunday School. It was a nice idea, but not terribly useful, at least in my experience.
Prayer meeting, if younger readers are not familiar with the idea, was held about 15 minutes before the start of an auxiliary meeting — I remember them mostly from weekday Primary, but they were held for all the auxiliaries, I think — attended by officers, teachers, music people. There would be announcements, a short “thought,” and a prayer, and we’d all be in our places in the chapel a few minutes before the meeting started.
Whether or not it was the chief purpose of a prayer meeting, I thought they were useful for helping meetings to start on time. Some people are always going to be late, but with prayer meetings in place, they were late for that instead of being late for the real meeting.
Also, I think it may have filled a gap that I felt when I was teaching Sunday School in recent years, ending just as the teacher councils started: Teaching Gospel Doctrine was very much a solo act. Only one of the several Sunday School presidents ever attended a single one of my classes, and I had no interaction with any of the other teachers. Prayer meetings were a sort of faculty meeting that brought everybody together and made you a part of something larger than your own class.
Our memories of general conference procedures wrt Sunday School are probably heavily influenced by where in the world we lived, because broadcasts — whatever kind of broadcast we mean — arrived much later in regions without much of a Mormon audience.
Do you remember when we were strongly urged by local Church leaders to write paper thank you letters to radio and TV stations that carried even a single session of conference so they would realize they had an attentive audience and would be more likely to broadcast again six months later?
Yes, I remember the letter writing campaigns.
I also remember the challenges incident to Primary Prayer Meeting. Outside of Utah, there wasn’t a church across the street from the school so that kids could walk to primary. The kids had to be driven there. And those who were driving filled their cars to capacity–or more. By the time the Primary staff arrived at the church, most of the students were there as well. So the Primary had to organize Pre-Primary–some activity that would keep the kids occupied and safe while requiring minimum adult supervision. It was also necessary to have a nursery for young children whose mothers were teaching, as well as infant holders for babies too young even for the nursery. I remember as a high schooler sitting in the church foyer during Primary reading analytic geometry to a baby who listened for a bit and then fell soundly asleep.
I smiled at the question about the boy attending with his older peers. A problem that continues to vex Sunday School and Primary presidents to this day!
Even those of us who walked to Primary (our church was about a block down the street from our house) had to have a pre-Primary activity to keep us occupied. In our ward, it was Pom Pom Pull Away (which we always called “Pomp”), Mother May I, Red Rover, or Red Light Green Light. I don’t know how others played Pomp, but we played the tackle version. That helped us get in the mood to sit reverently in Primary.
And, of course, those games were played without a hint of adult supervision.
Lots of good stuff in this one! Two things that caught my eye that haven’t been commented on yet:
It’s interesting that there used to be a *two-year* genealogy training course. At least in the wards I’ve been in the last decade or so, the pendulum has swung far, far in the opposite direction.
My favorite question was the one that essentially said, “our chapel is full, we can stop with the missionary work now, right?” 🙂
What is enlistment work? Is it the same as missionary work, or something slightly different?
Good question — it’s alien to modern Mormon life.
Until fairly recently (I need to research th3 date — but within my memory), we weren’t automatically considered members of the various auxiliaries unless we formally signed up. Enlistment workers hunted around for ward members who might already have been very active otherwise but who were not, in this case, enrolled in Sunday School, encouraging them to enroll and commit to coming.
In the early part of the 20th century when they took a Church census every five years, one of the facts they usually recorded was which auxiliaries each family member belonged to. That would be an incomprehensible question today!
I think I remember a time–maybe 1970ish–when the church announced that all sisters 18 and over would automatically be enrolled in Relief Society. Does that sound right, or did I make that up?
That’s what I’m remembering, Left Field. I can’t pin the date down solely by memory, but around then.
My mother-in-law told me that at one point Relief Society meetings were moved from afternoon to morning. During the afternoon block, small children were napping and older children were arriving home from school needing to be greeting, fed a snack, and encouraged to start chores and homework. The afternoon time effectively prevented mothers with young children from attending. The move to mornings meant that mothers of school aged children could attend while the kids were in school and toddlers were usually cheerful in a nursery. And according to M-in-L, some older women complained that the influx of younger women ‘ruined’ Relief Society.
My mother-in-law is no longer in a position to comment on this, but I owe a visit to another older sister who might be able to shed some light on her memories.