Assuming minimum 3 hour block attendance / up to 10 hours+ a week for callings /extra meetings/cleaning/HT&VT/temple etc... minus a couple of weeks vacation a year, then this equates to approx 150 hours min / 500+ hours a year, or over 18 x 8 hour days periods / 62.5 x 8 hour days.

Apart from social interactions (which could happen outside of church meetings anyway), don't you think this represents a really significant amount of time that could be better spent with family members, leisure pursuits or charitable work.

Imagine if the circa 3m active members of youth age and older got together weekly and donated their time to really good causes instead of the 3 hour block - this could equate to 450m hours / or 56.25m x 8 hour days of volunteering over a year. Imagine what good that could achieve.

Almost anything would be better than sitting in that lesson on tithing / listening to the High Councillor read a recent conference talk / or enduring the gossip fest that is ward council. What a waste of time.

the repetitive nature of the so-called spiritual counseling is boring because it consists of reading what you've already read, and repeating lessons that you have most likely also taught while going HT/VT. In manufacturing processes, this step would most likely be the first step to go.

Amen to that.

I look back at my cult upbringing & think what a waste of time all those meetings were.

Let's be honest, if you were on the Bishopric or even the ward PEC, then Sunday was pretty much taken up the Morg. Up at 7am to get ready for pre church meeting, then the three hour block, then either you or one of your family were being interviewed, or interviewing someone, so church becomes a standard 4 hours. If church was 10-1.00 then you weren't getting home before 2pm. By the time dinner has been eaten and washed up, it's late afternoon before you have time to think about doing anything non church related.

And heaven forbid you have a stake calling which requires travelling throughout the stake. Maybe no big deal in Utah, with a buildings every third street but over here I've had 2 hour round trips when visiting other units in the stake.

What an absolute waste of many years of my life.

This is exactly why I never had any interest, as a female latter-day saint, in holding the priesthood. The amount of extra work would have crushed me.

My mom was an RS counselor for 9 years straight, starting in the last few years of split schedule, with additional callings occasionally when there was still split schedule. She was insanely busy like crazy. & the worst was when my dad was called to be EQP while my mom was still a counselor. (This is what you get when you have a stupid idiot old man pharmacist for a bishop. Stupid, stupid, stupid.) He said screw that. My mom was released, he left his calling (which he was in for say a year I think), & then my mom was almost immediately called to be the Primary president, while my dad would take no callings, except to teach Blazers, which he did for about 4 years before he went permanently inactive.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that even women with higher up callings were screwed with time wise.

Yes, TSCC screws everyone, both money and time-wise. And they do it without love.

A side effect, which I think is quite important to leaders of TSCC, is that the sheeple are hobbled intellectually.