If more than one ward meets in a building, they swap times so that they take turns being the early ward or the later ward. It's kind of a fairness thing.
The Wards take turns changing their meeting times so they don't all have the same schedule year to year. Mornings go to afternoons and visa versa. That gives people a chance to vary their schedule as usually two or more Wards meet in one building.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/20/2011 01:04AM by SusieQ#1.
My wife's building has two wards. One english and one spanish. English meets at 9, spanish at 11. She asked if they will rotate in January, as has been the custom everywhere else we've lived. She was told no, the spanish ward would lose too many members if they started that early!
As a kid, we lived in a fast growing suburb in Utah. The building was hosting 4 wards. We had church starting at 3:00 pm. It was a drag. Maybe that year just accelerated my exmo timer.
Part of the reason they change times is that the church has found that statistically the closer the sacrament meeting is to noon, the higher the attendance. Since each ward gets $2 per person attending in the last month of each quarter they have to rotate the times to give each ward a fair shot and getting more budget from corporate headquarters.