lessons-hpThe Lesson Schedules function on LDS.org will be discontinued effective December 31, 2016.

Lesson Schedules (lds.org/lesson) is a function on LDS.org that wards and branches can use to post the schedule of priesthood and auxiliary lessons. It is an online place where members can see which lesson will be taught each Sunday. It is a good idea in theory, but here’s the problem—only 750 of the Church’s 30,000 wards and branches use it.

Here’s the next problem—it has several technical problems that frustrate users, which aren’t easy to fix because the system runs on old technology that would need to be updated. A cost-benefit analysis showed it was too expensive to update, given that so few wards and branches actually use it.

Furthermore, in today’s world, there are a wide variety of alternatives, such as the following:

Old Fashioned Printed Lists

Our ward prints a small bookmark at the beginning of the year and gives a copy to each member. One side lists the schedule of Gospel Doctrine lessons and the other side lists the lessons for Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society.

Some wards list in the weekly announcements (often distributed with the sacrament meeting program) the lesson schedules for the current and upcoming weeks.

Digital Solutions

Some wards prefer a digital solution posted online.

You could post the information in the ward calendar, which is accessible on LDS.org and in the LDS Tools mobile app. The calendar appointment could list the lesson number (with a link to the teacher manual) and the lesson reading assignment (with a link to the reading assignment at scriptures.lds.org). If different teachers teach the class from week to week, the appointment could also list the name of the teacher.

Some wards may find it more convenient to list all the lessons in a Word document and post it in a shared location, such as on Facebook, Google Docs, or Dropbox. (These are all free services.) To make it easy for your ward members to find, you could use a free service such as bit.ly to create a short URL that is easy to type. You could then publish that URL in your weekly announcements.

If you use online resources, please refer to the Church guidelines at internet.lds.org.


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