Gail Homer Berry has served in ward and stake music roles since the age of 12. She recently moved to Indiana along with her husband, five sons, and conclave of contumacious stuffed animals.
When I was 14, I was walking out of church to go home and break my fast – when the missionaries pounced and asked me to play piano for a baptism starting in fifteen minutes. My mom pushed back, but the missionaries guilted me into agreeing. Mom sighed and promised to come back for me, then wrangled my siblings home. Halfway through the baptism, I began to feel terrible. The room spun, my vision went pixelated with black spots, and I started shaking. A good accompanist blends into the background, and a “good” Molly Mormon is modest and selfless, so I pushed through –barely– without interrupting the service. (Fortunately this medical panic was just low blood sugar from the extended fast plus puberty.) After that, I told the missionaries they needed to ask me a week in advance. Instead, they tried the same stunt three weeks later. I refused and walked away as they panicked.
I have an unusual perspective on church music callings: I was first sustained as a ward organist at 13 even though I couldn’t play the organ. I learned a lot, and I was essential to the ward’s worship, but I was also minimized, dismissed, and even exploited. I logged many Sundays in which I put in an aggregate of 7 hours: playing for choir practice, Sacrament Meeting, Primary, a baptism, and a youth fireside, plus all the prelude and postlude.
I have one thing to say about two-hour church, and it’s this: I approve.
A topic that often comes up in online discussion groups among Mormons is the teaching manuals. As most of us know, these are written by a committee called the Curriculum Committee (under the oversight of the Correlation Committee). [3] “Correlation” was a byproduct of decades-long efforts to standardize materials, culminating in the 1960s, a huge effort to amass all leadership, budgets, publications, and teaching materials under one hierarchical, priesthood-overseen umbrella rather than separate auxilliary heads as it had been in the past. (See footnote 3 for a much more thorough explanation of the history.) This was to quash rogue teaching that might occur when these things were being done under separate oversight. As with anything where uniformity is the goal, blandness and groupthink is often the result (whereas rogue teaching, inequity, and folklore is often the result of the other approach). Because teachers in the church are average church members using these manuals to the best of their ability, lesson quality varies greatly. Additionally, everyone who has held a teaching calling (and that’s most active members) has an opinion on the materials they are provided and how effective they are.
Brothers and sisters, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted at BCC, and I won’t lie to you: the neglect has been due to a lack of will and a lack of inspiration. But something’s been bothering me for a long time, and I’m finally going to write about it here because I’ve hit the breaking point. I can no longer pretend that I support the status quo. There’s something wrong in Mormondom, and it must change.
They released me from Primary, and people keep congratulating me on “graduating” and “coming back to adult church.” I don’t feel like being congratulated. I’m sad.
By Common Consent, a Mormon Blog 
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