Seating Assignments

Have you found yourself identifying people by where they sat during Sacrament Meeting? If someone asks, “Who is so-and-so.” The answer is “She is the one who sits on the left side, near the front,” or “He is the one who sits in the back corner.” In other churches, parishioners have the chance to buy a pew, and then it is theirs. They can count on it being empty when they come to church. In our church, squatter’s rights usually prevail. Members choose their pew, but then make it a habit to sit there. It makes me wonder, “Can one tell something about a person by where he or she sits during Sacrament Meeting?

There are the usual reasons, like Family A who gets to church early and blocks out an entire row right in the middle to accommodate all of their kids, or Brother B who sits up front so he can hear. Less obvious but just as common is Sister C who sits next to the door so she can leave quickly and not talk to anyone, but wishes that someone would stop her. Family D sits right in the middle in the front so that their kids will be quiet, and Family E sits right in the back for the same reason. Missionaries sit in the back so they can see if investigators come in, and then end up sitting by no one.

When I was Ward Mission Leader, one of my soapbox speeches was to try to get each member to sit by someone – anyone – and not by themselves. I got the impression that the members would mentally roll their eyes and think, “Not that again!” I had a little more success with the missionaries, but not much.

This essay is wandering off in a direction that I didn’t expect. I intended to examine what could be told about personality types by where the person sits – eager learners in front, shy people on the side, non-participators in the back, Republicans on the right, Democrats on the left, the “in group” in the middle, the “outsiders” by the doors, and rabble rousers like Joyce and me sitting in a different place each Sunday and displacing the occupants. Instead, it seems to be headed toward the reasons why it is more natural to keep to ourselves.

In my parents’ day, people would spend evenings visiting. They would sit on the porch and wait for neighbors or go and visit themselves. We don’t have porches, but found out as missionaries that people still like to visit. Young people now are being conditioned against it. Everything encourages avoiding contact. Earphones isolate them from sound; video games, from interacting; and even so-called “social networking” is an excuse for not having to meet face to face. In church, we don’t want to encroach on someone’s space, don’t want to put someone out, don’t want to crowd them, don’t want our children to bother them. But is it that we don’t want to bother them, or that we don’t want them to bother us?