Why I don't go to Family Home Evening

*note for future reference all mentions of Family Home Evening will be shortened to FHE.*

Throughout my many, many, many years of being young and single in the church I have attended many an FHE.  Every single Monday I would venture out to whatever activity was planned for the night and I would generally have a good time. Then a funny thing happened. I lost all interest in attending FHE.  It wasn't a particular activity, or person in charge or anything overly dramatic like that.  I just realized that there just wasn't a reason to go anymore and it all just seemed trivial.  A few weeks ago I was thinking about going to FHE for the first time in a long time and I turned to the last bastion for advice - Facebook. I asked all of my friends to convince me one way or the other about going to FHE that night.  This is the result -

The results were simple, the only reason anyone could give me to go to FHE was that girls would be there.  Not that the activity would be fun.  Not that I would feel the spirit there.  No, it was simply because women would be there and if I ever wanted to get married I needed to go there to meet them.  Now I did wind up going to FHE that night (because my roommate Jon made me) but in all honesty this opinion on what FHE is for bothers me to no end.  For me FHE shouldn't be about meeting your soulmate.  It can very much be about meeting new people that is fine.  However if you go into it expecting to find girls to flirt with then you are doing it wrong. 

For me FHE should be about two things. 1. a short and simple spiritual message. As with any church activity it is important to involve the spirit in the beginning.  It's the key to all this after all. However, this does not have to be another Sunday School lesson, in fact it should definitely not become that.  2. A short and simple activity.  Much like dating we tend to overly complicate our activities, or we do the exact opposite and the activity is poorly planned and lacks direction.  If we keep them simple it will make it easier to actually get into the activity and then be done in an hour.  There is no reason for FHE to not be done in an hour.  We all have better things to do with our time and we can use a break, but that break can't take forever.  Short and sweet will lead to an enjoyable time and it will give me less of an excuse to not go.

I'm gonna go to FHE this week, it's Karaoke and sounds fun and fits all of my criteria.


and there will be girls there.