Alternatives to the Current Home Teaching Program

I’m mostly all about complaining about HTing rather than coming up with any viable alternatives.

The principle of HTing, IMO, is divinely inspired and could do wonderful things in people lives. The reality though, IMO, is that in many (perhaps most) cases the members of the church have rendered the program completely ineffective. I think the program has de-evolved into a practice of focusing on the home teacher’s salvation, rather than focusing on the salvation of the family that the home teacher is suppose to be helping. Does that make sense?

I’m always looking for ways to make HT more viable in the Branch. Here are my thoughts to make it “work better.” Don’t hate me for saying it either – it’s just my distorted view of things

1. Don’t assign HTers, without talking to the people first to make sure they can/will work with the family being assigned to. I’ve been assigned to families that I pretty well detested. Yeah, it would be nice if I could just change overnight and become loving and charitable, but come on. This is one example of the programing focusing on the HTers salvation rather than the families.

2. End the reporting. Get away from the “numbers” and base it on pure gospel and love, rather than “obedience.”

3. Don’t REMIND everyone in Elder’s corum meeting EVERY week to get their HTing done. Do away with the guilt trips. (this has actually worked well in our branch), I tell the boys that I “personally” don’t care if they do it or not – it’s between them, Lord and the families they are assigned to.

4. I use the internet, texting, phone and mail as means of accomplishing HTing, and I do a lot of my “home teaching” at the post office, school, haybarns and occasionally at the pub. yeah, I count it.

5. Do away with this goofy idea that one must say a prayer and leave the First Presidency message in order to count the “visit” a Home Teaching. i guess maybe we need to redefine what the purpose of HT is.

6. Finallly, do away with the “term” HOME TEACHING altogether, and come up with another name. The principle behind the program is good – call it by another name and it might breath new life into folks.

I like this thought by CNS

When I’ve been assigned to talk about HT, I try to encourage a small paradigm shift to simply think of Home Teaching as a process not an event. It’s not something you get DONE, it’s something you’re involved with. That seems to help.

And this thought by Ray

“I don’t want to turn this into just another boring lesson on HT that is focused on causing everyone to go on a guilt trip that doesn’t change anything in the long run, so I want to ask everyone a very sincere question: What is HT, really – and why do we tend to botch it so badly?”

And especially this quote by George.

I can with 100% assurance, state absolutely, there will be NO home teaching in the Celestial Kingdom. Now as for hell….

My suggestion:

Hold a ward/branch dinner or fun activity every month. (In December, make it a New Year’s Eve party that last past midnight and do away with the one in January.) Invite everyone in the ward to attend. At the very beginning, read one verse of scripture and share one very short (30 second) inspirational experience related to that scripture. Count everyone who attended in the stats that are reported each month (if the stats can’t be eliminated). During other leadership meetings, focus on how to encourage everyone to visit and help each other throughout the month – particularly if they feel a prompting / have a thought about someone in particular. Make it a “recognize and follow the Spirit / your heart” focus, not a “program” focus.

I like the idea of considering get-togethers home teaching. I had the same thought, and like the spiritual dimension you’ve suggested.

I also think we should stop emphasizing home teaching numbers in leadership meeetings and in quorum meetings. Home teaching is NOT an outcomes-based program. Theoretically, you could have 100% home teaching every single month where HT’s go into people’s homes and share a message. However, the Ward could still have low endowed members with current temple recommends, low new member retention rates, few advancements to the Melch Priesthood, weak sacrament meeting attendance, etcetera — in spite of the flurry of home teaching activity.

The latter metrics are the ones that matter — the ones that show the extent to which people are accepting and keeping covenants (baptisms, new endowment, current temple recommend holders etc).

However, if there is an insistence on numbers, I would recommend that leadership also consider a new measure called visits/companionship. Because priesthood leaders in the Stake tend to view home teaching percentages as an indication of effort expended by Ward priesthood holders, I think it’s grossly unfair to chastise priesthood leaders for having only 15% home teaching when they have a bad ratio of “families to willing home teachers”.

For example, Let’s say you have two wards. Ward Number 1 has 10 HT companionships and 200 families. Ward Number 2 has 20 HT companionships and 200 familes. Ward 1 has 20% home teaching while Ward 2 has 30% hometeaching. On the surface it looks like Ward 1 isn’t trying as hard as Ward 2. But really, Ward 1 is showing greater home teaching activity than Ward 2 when you look at visits/companionship. Ward 1 has 40/10 which is 4.0 visits per companionship. Ward 2 has 60/20 or only 3 visits per companionship.

This way, Stake Leaders can see clearly how hard a particular Ward is trying to meet their home teaching obligations GIVEN THE RESOURCES AVAILABLE.

See, I think home teaching needs to be less ego-centric on the the number of famillies visited, and more considerate of the impact of the program on the motivation of the priesthood leaders who must administer it. Taking into account resources available does this.

Now, one thing Cwald said I want to respond to. Cwald, you mentioned that you think we should do away with HT assignments altogether. I’m curious, how would you make sure that the Priesthood leaders in the Ward are not overwhelmed with requests for help when there is no one assigned to help people as a matter of first recourse? Granted, the leaders could ask people to help certain individuals on an ad hoc basis, but I think that’s reactive rather than proactive.

Just curious — it’s not a challenge to your thoughtful comments above, just a search for ways of dealing with that criterion. I’m all ears and appreciate your posts.

Now, one thing Cwald said I want to respond to. Cwald, you mentioned that you think we should do away with HT assignments altogether. I’m curious, how would you make sure that the Priesthood leaders in the Ward are not overwhelmed with requests for help when there is no one assigned to help people as a matter of first recourse? Granted, the leaders could ask people to help certain individuals on an ad hoc basis, but I think that’s reactive rather than proactive.

I’m not sure I said to do away with Ht assignments altogether. If I did, I didn’t mean to, and certainly don’t feel that way. I think the HT program is “divinely inspired” so it wouldn’t make sense to do away with it altogether. I did say this .

6. Finallly, do away with the “term” HOME TEACHING altogether, and come up with another name. The principle behind the program is good – call it by another name and it might breath new life into folks.

I’m focusing on the TERM Home Teacher. I think that term needs to be cleansed from the church – you know, change the “advertising”. Home teaching is a dirty word for many members, so lets get rid of the term and call is something else. Does that make sense?

I see the renaming concept — just like we renamed Geneology to Family History, and I think it has some validity. I think there could be consideration of other names that speak more to the altruism and fellowshipping that should be part of home teaching. For example, instead of calling it the program Home Teaching, what would we call it? Each person’s “Outreach Stewardship” or some other name?

Regarding doing away with home teaching assignments, I thought you mentioned you would do away with home teaching assignments unless people actually wanted a home teacher. I find that these people who don’t want home teachers often come out of the woodwork with needs when life deals them a hard blow, and it tends to fall on priesthood leaders when no home teacher is assigned. I noticed this when they need welfare assistance, have health problems, or other needs for which they draw on the Ward.

I suppose on solution would be to make the assignment to a home teacher, but with the caveat that the family is not to be visited unless the family specifically ask for a visit or request help. That way help is in place as needed, and agreed to beforehand by the priesthood holder.

I like the idea of “Outreach Stewardship.” Start writing your letters to SL!

Hey, out jogging this morning I had a revelation about this. How about we do away with the three hour block, and take the hour that we normally would be at church and ask the elders/HP and RS to use that hour every week to do Outreach Stewardship? Why wouldn’t that work! I love the idea – let’s make the church more service oriented, and free up some time for the members to practice their religion. Now if only I was authorized to receive revelation for the entire church we would be in business!

In all seriousness – I think the church will go this way eventually. It’s all about the home and family, and if we could get members to take their Outreach Stewardship faithfully, we could probably do away with MOST of our church meetings. Just a thought.

yeah, I guess I did a poor job explaining myself. Let me try again.

1. Don’t assign HTers, without talking to the people first to make sure they can/will work with the family being assigned to.

Here is what I mean – I’ve been in wards where I have been ASSIGNED to do home teaching to families I didn’t know, and some to people who i quite frankly didn’t like. Why? So what I do, and what I’m suggesting, is that instead of the EQP or the HPGL just assigning families to companionships, that they talk with the elders and high priest FIRST and make sure that they are on board with the assignment.

Sorry I was so thick on that one.

As a response — I found I had to do this anyway when I was a Priesthood Leader. Half the brethren would object to assignments made out of the blue. After a while I got to know who those brethren are, and then talk to them about it before making the change. Many will outright tell you they don’t want any inactives who don’t want to see them as well, so I had to always respect that. Or they would try a couple times with certain families and the families would never make themeslves available, so they would come back and ask for willing families. Others didn’t care who their families were, but wanted them close by.

Another alternative to home teaching — a monthly mailed -out message to people who will receive it. This prevents the negative faith effects you get from brethren feeling compelled to visit people who don’t want to be visited, or the burden you feel as a Priesthood leader with having so many families for which you’re responsible . Also, each month, a list of 90 people would genereate somewhere between 1 and 4 good forwarding addresses we could then move to the moving family’s new Ward. That way their records are in the right place, and the next Ward can reach out to them with meeting times etcetera. Also, people actually mention and seem to appreciate the letters if you ever meet them again personally at some point. I had several people tell me they read the message each month, and a few came out to social events on the strength of flyers I put in the envelopes containing their monthly letter.

Now, I hope don’t get labelled here. But so often, we were told how critical the home teaching program was. How much a single soul means to God etcetera. But whenever I asked for funds to reach out to these people we didn’t have the resources to see, the answer was “No”. It seemed as if the “program” was important only if it was powered by volunteer labor. In the end, I just funded it myself, but toward the end, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t start getting to me as other financial pressures mounted on my family.

But back to the point — I’ve found ANY program where the priesthood leaders just decided everyone has to do task X, and then expect them to go and do it, rarely has success. The same is true of Stake programs.

In any program, I think you have to find out who is willing, and work with those people. It’s like the parable of the sower. Some will say that you just sow at random and hope certain seeds land on fertile ground. I disagree. I think you have to actively search for the fertile ground, and place your seeds there. Willing brethren are fertile ground, and that’s where you should plant your seeds. You determine who those willing brethren are by asking them what they are willing to do.

Sowing everwhere isn’t a good use of seeds.

I like the idea of “Outreach Stewardship.” Start writing your letters to SL!

Hey, out jogging this morning I had a revelation about this. How about we do away with the three hour block, and take the hour that we normally would be at church and ask the elders/HP and RS to use that hour every week to do Outreach Stewardship? Why wouldn’t that work! I love the idea – let’s make the church more service oriented, and free up some time for the members to practice their religion. Now if only I was authorized to receive revelation for the entire church we would be in business!

In all seriousness – I think the church will go this way eventually. It’s all about the home and family, and if we could get members to take their Outreach Stewardship faithfully, we could probably do away with MOST of our church meetings. Just a thought.

First of all, I like Ray’s comments above, and want to acknowledge them.

Regarding the above — do you think there’s risk that people will just pocket the time and go home?

I would also like to see another embellishment to the program.

Better systems support. As it stands the only way to keep track of the desired level of contact home teaching families want is to assign them to a district, usually the bishop or the HPGL/EQ president.

The specific history, however, is lost. I implemented a system where I could append a code to a person’s local membership record on MLS. This made it easy to run mailing labels and such. I could also run off a list of people who would accept home teachers but to whom we didn’t have home teachers to assign in case a new home teacher became available. I also had a special code for people who’d written name removal letters. None of this followed their membership record if they were moved out, but it allowed me to give an accounting of my efforts with the stewardship. Anyone with membership rights could access reports that contained this information.

Without this background, you run into situations where a priesthood leader visits a family, and they write a name removal letter. Then, two weeks later, the RS President shows up at their house welcoming them to the Ward. This REALLY makes some people angry and they are really rude about it. I think it creates more ill will toward the Church, simply due to bad coordination — coordination that could be fixed by good systems.

Also, when a new HPGL/EQ/RS president takes over, they usually have sketchy notes or a quick verbal on the status of families in their stewardship. Often the new HPGL goes and visits them all over again, irritating half the people who told the las person they don’t want contact……yet another possible improvement to hte administration of HT.