Comments about ‘Are your children more reverent than you?’

When I went to my very first sacrament meeting, I was surprised by the amount of noise throughout the service. I grew up in the Lutheran and Episcopal churches (our parents always attended the congregation with the best choir--they loved to sing), and children were sent to the nursery for communion service until they were around 9-10 and past the wiggly-noisy stage. Thankfully, most of the wards I have attended have had attentive and reverent adults who tried not to interrupt meetings, and if things started to get out of hand, the bishop would gently whip everybody back into line. But I made it a point to model the behavior I wanted from my children: I didn't talk or doodle during the service, and they knew the penalty for misbehaving was to be put in a small classroom on a hard folding chair, doing nothing while I sat with them. Attending service was a much better alternative in their eyes, especially considering I brought quiet books and toys for the littler ones. Reverence in church is nothing more than consideration for others. We used to call it manners.

Yes, I think reverence at all of church meetings (probably across most faiths) has taken a downward turn. Every Sunday I see people fiddling with their phones or other gadgets, inattentive to the speaker or teacher sharing their message. I used to not even bring my phone to church, and only do so now so that I can put in reminders about assignments and meetings so I don't forget them. I never answer text messages during the meetings, and even go so far as to go outside the building to respond. I'm not trying to brag, or sound like I'm some "super-righteous" person, but I just feel like when I'm at church, that's where my focus needs to be. I don't expect anyone else to go to the extremes that I do, but I think in general we all can do a little more to preserve the reverence that should exist in places of worship. No matter how quiet you are trying to be, you're still going to distract someone (and that goes for when you're at the movies too!)