Should We Just Do It Ourselves?

Kent Larsen

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Assuming you are regularly in an LDS ward and stake buildings in the U.S., and likely other places as well, signs like this one are probably familiar. The Church uses uniform and consistent materials in buildings, and most, if not all, rooms have a label like this on them. The size, font and orientation of these signs are all consistent, which makes it easy for most of us to figure out where we should go in the building. Of course, you may have noticed something added to this particular sign.

This picture is from the ward building where I attend church. Two wards share the building, one an English-speaking ward and the other a Spanish-speaking ward. A few years ago the bishop of the Spanish-speaking ward noticed that the signs were only in English, and asked the church building professionals about labels in Spanish. He was told that the Church doesn’t add labels for other languages. So, he added labels himself.

Looking at the labels it’s clear that this isn’t ideal—over the years cleaning has discolored and frayed the paste-on labels. But they serve their purpose. I’m reminded of an old Brazilian saying, Se não tem cão, caça com gato (If you don’t have a dog, hunt with a cat) — or make do with what you have.

Is this rebellious? Did the bishop break some rule? I don’t think so. It’s my understanding that the professional, support areas of the Church bureaucracy are told to follow the local priesthood as much as possible. If the local bishop or stake wants something within reason, they should be accommodated. In the long run, telling the bishop no needs to come from the stake or area, not from the building bureaucracy — although the building people don’t always have the resources to do what is wanted and often will talk to higher levels of priesthood leadership if there’s a problem. And they are more likely to do so if the issue is one of safety, significant expense or legal liability. I don’t think language labels are likely to be a problem.

While I get the need for consistency across the church — its more efficient, avoids many problems with things like liability and building codes, and gives members and others an idea of what they can expect — I worry sometimes that we assume that this consistency is always based on clearly thought out rules or that exceptions can’t or shouldn’t be made.

The art on the building walls is another area where there is more flexibility than the average member thinks. I don’t think I’ve seen many buildings with artwork beyond the standard set provided when the building was constructed. In fact, the Church has a catalog of artwork, and buildings can have more than they are initially given. But few local leaders or members think about it or know to ask for anything more. [See Meetinghouse Facilities Handbook.]

There are and should be limits to what we should do ourselves. The era of member-constructed buildings is gone (and that’s probably good for many reasons). But there are many things we can “do many things of [our] own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness.” I wish we were more willing to explore other possibilities — especially with things like signs in other languages, where there is clearly a need.

Comments

6 responses to “Should We Just Do It Ourselves?”

  1. Hoosier

    I’m impressed that he found the font somewhere. Thought that would have been proprietary or something.

  2. Jonathan Green

    We should definitely do good things ourselves, but check first before doing bad things. (The hard part is knowing the difference.)

    Hoosier, now I need an expert to come along and ID the font.

  3. DaveW

    It is a sad commentary on the church in general that we even have to pose the question: “is it ok for a local leader to label a room in the language that people speak who use the building?”

    The Church has conditioned members to never think about anything church related. Instead, always ask someone above you before ever doing anything. Can the nursery switch from Goldfish crackers to animal crackers? Better run that up the ladder. What does this scripture mean? Better just look up a conference talk to explain it to me. Can the choir sing this song? Better produce an approved list we can check. Can the book club read this book? Better ask the bishop.

    For a church that believes that God was willing to banish a third part of His children in order to maintain agency, we don’t believe in using that agency very much.

    Would loosening the reigns in the church result in inconsistently labeled buildings? Yes. Would some ward choir start singing really weird songs? Probably. Would some book club have half the RS reading 50 Shades of Gray? There’s a chance. But because we want to avoid anyone ever doing anything “wrong”, we have sacrificed vibrancy and reduced church to a meal of dry toast (white bread only, obviously) and plain oatmeal.

  4. RLD

    Our building has a variety of hand-made signs in Spanish, created by members of the Spanish branch we share the building with–most of them made before they were a separate branch. It’s an old, non-standard building (with a non-standard pipe organ!) and doesn’t have the usual allotment of standard signs, which probably contributes to it being less “where there’s a sign in English there must be a Spanish translation” than “let’s put up some signs that will be useful to us.”

    So to answer the question in the title: yes. But do check the handbook first, looking for both the rules and the objectives the rules are trying to achieve.

  5. ST

    Jonathan Green: “Hoosier, now I need an expert to come along and ID the font.”

    Optima

    /escapes back into the night

  6. ReTx

    I’m a huge ‘solve the problem myself’ creative person, especially in my career. Being this person has worked out very well for me and opened up a number of opportunities. (I’m a huge Freakonmics fan, for those that have read the books.)

    In some areas at church, me creatively solving problem has been fine. I got sick of the library being over-run with paper trash and unwanted donations and so solved the problem ten or so years back – and it has more or less stayed solved ever since.

    In other areas, I’ve flat-out been told to keep my solutions to myself because I didn’t have the authority to change things. Seating problems in the overflow was one of these. There have been several other minor things like that.

    I received enough of the second that I no longer try to help at church. It gets old having my hand-slapped for doing something I’m really quite good at.

    My gut says that those in my ward’s leadership circle/families get less push-back.

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