The Church Traditions I Miss

The other day I saw a social media post asking “What church traditions do you miss?”

(Pretend there is a picture of a church here. I might come back and add it later, but currently my laptop is unavailable, and for the past year I haven’t been able to add photos to my blog posts on my phone. Something is corrupted, and I haven’t been able to figure out how to fix it).

I was curious what responses people gave, so I scrolled through the comments a bit. The two most popular answers were road shows and gold and green balls. I’ve heard of road shows (though never participated in any - I’m not sure when they fizzled out), but I’d never heard of gold and green balls. 

Other answers included pageants, scout-related activities, and sports programs. As I read through the comments, I didn’t see anything that I miss all that much, but there are three traditions or former practices that I miss that I didn’t see mentioned:

1. Singing hymns in Relief Society (or other organizations)

I have always found this to be a strange elimination since music is such a big part of worship, and some people get far more from singing than from a lesson or discussion. Also, we have all these new hymns, yet we sing less. When I was a teen, music was a huge part of my spiritual development, and I’m sad my teens don’t sing in their youth classes. 

2. Farewells/homecomings 

I understand some of the reasons for this change, but overall, I feel it’s a huge disservice to missionaries and their families (plus, we basically still do them, we’re just sneaky about it).  

3. Personal Progress

After six years of implementation as a parent and a leader, I think the new youth Personal Development Program is extremely lacking. I don’t even bother to encourage my kids to participate. I loved Personal Progress. I don’t mind changes and updates to the program to accommodate the needs of our youth, but I think we took a loss on this one.

Also, up until recently, I would have said that I miss having Relief Society every week. Don’t confuse that with missing three hour church (because I can’t even believe we used to live that way), but I felt a sense of disconnect while we were rotating between Sunday School and Relief Society (or whatever classes we were to attend for our callings). So I’m glad for the new schedule. It suits my technology addicted attention span better, and I get to be with my Sisters more often.