What is family home evening?

Family home evening (FHE) is ideally a meeting held once a week by a family in their own home. It's a time when the family can study the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have fun together. The details of FHE planning, such as when to hold the meeting, what activities to do, and who is responsible for what, are left up to the family to decide. The parents or guardians in the home are encouraged to seek heavenly inspiration to know what their family needs out of FHE each week.

Here's an example of what FHE might look like: After dinner Andrea loads the dishes into the dishwasher while her brother Mike puts away the leftover food. Mom is changing Joey's diaper, and Dad has just emerged from the bathroom. He sees that it's 5 minutes to 7:00pm, the time when family home evening is to begin. He checks to see if Mom needs help with Joey and lets her know that FHE is about to start in the family room. He then checks on Mike and Andrea and reminds them as well. They all gather in the family room, although Andrea arrives a little late after checking her email first. Dad makes sure that they all have prepared for their part of the meeting, and then they begin. They sing a favorite song, then they pray, and then Dad, whose role this week is to conduct the meeting, turns the time over to Mike for the lesson. He gives a short lesson about how God made the earth for us, and then Dad turns the time over to Mom for the activity. Mom has chosen three possible winter activities for the family to do, Christmas caroling, driving around looking at Christmas lights, or sledding, and she puts it to a vote. The family picks the sledding activity, so the family goes out sledding for a while. Then they come back inside and Dad turns the time over to Andrea for the treat. Mom had previously suggested to her that hot chocolate or apple cider might go along well with the activity, and Andrea had decided to pick hot chocolate. Andrea now announces that hot chocolate is the treat, and the family ends the meeting with prayer and enjoys the treat together.

Family home evening doesn't have to be as formal or structured as the one in this example was, and it doesn't have to have so many parts to it or be so long. Some families might like to invite friends to participate, and some might want to keep it family only. It all depends on what the family wants to do and what their needs are.

With all kinds of work, school, and community obligations to fulfill, it can be hard to get the whole family together each week at the same time. Some families can maintain regularly planned FHEs from month to month while others need to pick a different day or time each week. But scheduling is not the only challenge. Sometimes families struggle with participation apathy, discord between members, poor planning, or lack of resources and ideas. As a result, holding weekly FHEs is a hard goal to achieve for many families.

When families put forth their best efforts to make family home evenings a success, they can feel richly blessed. Over time, family members learn more about each other, can become more comfortable sharing their testimonies or teaching gospel principles to each other, and will probably have some fond memories of playing games, decorating cookies, or doing other fun activities with their family. The children might also have some ideas of what they would like to change or keep doing for FHE when they have their own families. Holding family home evening on a regular basis can really help a family grow spiritually and grow together.

Mormons believe that families are meant to be forever, so we believe it's important for families to have some time to spend together each week. To help families find time for family home evening, the Church doesn't schedule any activities on Monday evenings.