Sacrament Meeting Irreverence: Causes and Cures
By Natalie J. Hale

It’s Sunday and sacrament meeting has begun. Voices ring the chapel ceiling as an opening hymn ensues. Through the invocation and announcements, all seems well. Then you look at your two-year-old. You tell him to be quiet, but he just won’t leave the people sitting behind you alone.

No matter what you do, your child just won’t sit still. Any spirit of reverence seems to be lost as your once content baby-now-toddler climbs, demands snacks, runs from one end of the bench to the next, spills his juice, messes his pants, and hits his head on the hymnal shelf. And all this excitement happens within the one-hour period of sacrament meeting. Sound familiar?

You look around and notice that you’re not the only parent dancing to the whims of their children. Obviously there is a problem, and irreverence is at the core. Are you brave enough to learn the solution?

What is Reverence?

One problem regarding reverence — or the lack thereof — in sacrament meeting is that we seem to have a hard time pinning down exactly what reverence is. Perhaps if we land a prophetic, stone-solid definition of reverence and why it’s important, then we can do something to promote reverence in our children.

In his message entitled Reverence, President Marion G. Romney reiterates what all good, loving parents want when he says, “We desire that all children have reverence for the house of the Lord.” According to Merriam Webster, reverence is “a feeling of profound awe and respect and often love; veneration. An act showing respect.”

However, President Romney takes the definition deeper when he reveals that we “Cannot induce them to have such reverence by merely telling them to keep quiet. To be quiet in church is, of course, something that goes along with reverence, but being quiet is not in itself reverence. However, when one recognizes the house in which he is meeting as the dwelling place of the Lord, whom he loves with all his heart, then it is not difficult for him to have reverence for it.[i]

So reverence is two things:  1) it is a quiet respect, and 2) it is attitude and thoughts focused on the Lord and His Son. We can conclude, therefore, that children need to learn not only to be quiet, but their respect needs to be focused on something higher than their own feelings.

So How Do I Get My Kids to Be Reverent?

“Yes. That’s all great and wonderful in theory,” you might say, “but tell me now how I am supposed to instill that real reverence in my kids.”

That process of instilling reverence in your children comes long before sacrament meeting starts and is most effective at home.

Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve gives greater insight into reverence when he states,

He further counsels that, “It is during family home evenings, which are a part of our home life, where children are taught that there are special times, not only in church but also at home, when we learn of our Heavenly Father and when everyone needs to be on his best behavior. Behavior learned at home determines behavior in church meetings. A child who has learned to pray at home understands that he must be quiet and still during prayers in worship services.” [ii]

If children are going to be reverent at church, their training must begin at home.

Solutions to Sacrament Meeting Wiggles

As you apply the counsel giving above, there are some activities you can use to help your kids focus their thoughts on the Savior and other appropriate religious entities. With consistency, they’ll form habits of being quiet and focusing their thoughts and attitudes on things higher than themselves. Three such distractions come in the form of planned activities. These activities are:

Why is Reverence So Important?

Sometimes, after many attempts and failures, we feel that it’s useless to get out kids to be reverent. We wonder what it’s all about and why we should even do it. But your kids deserve better than that. These are the last days, and none of us are going to make it without revelation. Lucifer’s influence and control mounts every day. It seeks us from the media, schools, and courtrooms, encroaching on morals and standards our parents and grandparents took for granted.

According to President Boyd K. Packer, the best and only chance we and our children have is revelation. "Reverence invites revelation,” he begins. “No one of us can survive in the world of today, much less in what it soon will become, without personal inspiration. The spirit of reverence can and should be evident in every organization in the Church and in the lives of every member." [iii]

Though it may be noisy, and your days of sitting back and enjoying an uninterrupted sacrament meeting are over, take hope. Reverence is showing respect to Him who gave us everything, and we must teach that respect to our children. And because they are children, quiet activities to help them think about Jesus are very appropriate and even necessary. Because if they don’t learn what reverence is and why we should have it, personal inspiration is lost and so are we. It is possible. It can be done. I’ve seen it proved many times. Sacrament meeting can turn from a time of struggle and embarrassment to a time of learning and worship.

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