Wednesday, January 14, 2009
9:00 church? seriously?
Every member of the church knows how hard it is to get up in the mornings when your mom comes in and says it's time for church. Especially when it's seven thirty in the morning. As if that's not hard enough, now you are on your own and no mother is telling you to go to bed because you have early church in the morning. This is the tragic story of new college students. As responsible as every entering freshman aspires to be, let's be honest the "no bedtime" concept is a big deal. This early church causes students to just sleep in and not get credit for even going to another ward. This jeopardizes their enrollment in BYU. If they do manage to roll out of bed, the majority of students will just sleep through the three hour block. These people receive no extra spiritual benefit than those who just slept in but still receive credit for being there. Lastly if a student does manage to get there, and by some great miracle does manage to stay awake, they generally will feel disappointed with the experience due to the lack of participation from others. I don't think any freshman ward should begin at nine o'clock because of the inevitable obstacles that surely do follow.
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7 comments:
I like your topic, it is creative and will definitely keep people's interest. Just make sure to think about possible counter arguments and address those. One possible counter argument is that BYU has so many Wards and students to accomodate for that a 9:00 block might be necesary.
i have to agree, 9:00 church in college definitely would not be fun. I do have a question though, why is it just "freshmen wards" that shouldn't have the 9:00 time? You might want to make a clarification earlier in the paragraph about freshmen in particular, or just take at the whole "freshmen" argument. Overall though, I think this is a unique and interesting topic.
I think Cara makes a good point that you need to be wary of possible counter arguments to your case. I think a lot of people will argue that some personal responsibility needs to be placed upon the students to get enough sleep so as to not sleep through church. Just be careful of these and know how you would refute them in your editorial.
It's quite the opposite in Provo's family wards. Most of the members work long hours, go to school full-time, and have kids. They find it best to get the meetings done early when the kids would be up anyway, and they have the whole afternoon to see to their home-teaching, other meetings, family time, etc... And in exceptional cases - rest!
Even though I personally don't agree with your arguments, I think its creative and original. I would keep the opening paragraph a little shorter, though, in order to keep the reader's attention a little better.
I don't think any of us like getting out of bed early in the morning but it's just one of those things we have to train ourselves to do. Throughout the rest of your life there will be numerous reasons as to why you will need to get up early; whether it's work, church, with your kids, or for your mission. So although I agree with you that it's not fun to get up early for church, especially when your a student, it's just one of those things you have to do.
I think you should seriously consider everyone's comments, especially those about counterarguments. This is going to be a tough argument to make, and for all of the reasons that everyone has listed.
One thing that might help you is to think specifically about the administrators that would have to make this change--what will it take to convince them of this argument? And why wouldn't they enforce another option--like giving a Saturday night curfew? And why should they move church times just for the minority who sleep through church?
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