I’m happy to say that I live in an enlightened ward. Though some wards are stuck with bishoprics who misunderstand something and thus only let men say the opening prayer, my ward happily asks women, men, and teenagers of either sex to give the opening prayer. And closing prayer.
I was uncertain about speaking order, though. It seemed women always spoke first, and men always spoke last.
I know some bishoprics (a very small minority, I hope) feel this is correct so that “the priesthood” can correct any errors a woman might introduce. Or perhaps they just feel this is the unwritten order of things. In any case, my ward seemed to follow that order, but I wasn’t sure if it was deliberate or just happened to go that way.
A few months ago I got another calling: putting together the sacrament meeting bulletin. It’s kind of fun, except when it’s the month for the first counselor to conduct because he never calls me to tell me the speakers, and he’s often very difficult to track down, and sometimes he doesn’t even know who’s speaking, even though he’s in charge. But aside from that, it’s fun. (What can I say? I love playing with fonts and formatting and clip art.) So, wielding this newfound power, I decided an experiment was in order.
Sometimes I’m given a specific order for speakers, but sometimes I’m just told, “The Smiths are speaking.” So one week I made “Brother Smith” the first speaker and “Sister Smith” the second speaker and waited to see if the bishopric would announce the speakers in that order or switch them around. The person conducting went with what I’d put in the program. And I’ve mixed it up since and no one has objected. So apparently they don’t really care about the order, and when the woman went first and the man went second, it really just happened to go that way without some deep reason.
I did feel kind of bad for “Brother and Sister Smith”, though. Apparently they’d prepared their talks so that “Sister Smith” would do more of the introductory part of the topic, and “Brother Smith” would do the conclusion part, so by switching what they expected I kind of flustered them. Thus, let this be a lesson: if the speaking order isn’t to your liking, ask the person conducting if perhaps you could speak in a different order. After all, the order might be the result of a curious troublemaker or, more likely, it’s just randomly in that order and no one would mind it different.