Improving Ward Programs

My question — what went wrong here? Why are we not interested in programs that tick?

IMO, nobody wants to do more work than what is already required. Everyone is busy and is also expected to do HT and temple trips in addition to their regular callings – so there is a hesitancy to ask these volunteers to do more.

Excuse me for playing DA.

On a related note, DW and I attended an open house for another church and we were impressed at the small group activities. There was an MNF group, a board game group, a monthly date-night group, a scrap-booking group, a book club group, bible study group, etc.

Well, (being rather new to the area) DW and I have been looking at opportunities to interact with the ward but there are not many activities for adults or preschoolers.

I suggested to my Bishop that we could do some of these small groups with minimal effort. (Indeed, I am aware of a book club group, several speed walking groups, and a park day group that are already loosely organized with some of the RS sisters. I think the primary next steps would be to establish a point of contact for each group and then advertise with a flyer in the ward bulletin.) My Bishop said things like, “oh” and, “OK” with as much feeling as though I were proposing a vasectomy. I then asked him if he wanted to run it by the ward council and he said, “Yeah.”

So I am wondering if I should write up a preliminary plan of how it would work and submit it to him to get the ball rolling. What do you think?

In my case, myself and my YM presidency took the plan to the Stake Presidency to get their buy-in. They agreed to the plan. Then, after some marginal success in the first three months, the Ward programs didn’t change. So, the original idea might have been trickle up, but it was captured and agreed to by the people with the authority. Why they didn’t follow through on the original agreement, I have no idea.

What I get from both of your responses is that having a thriving social structure is often not important to the local leaders. Staffing the temple, managing programs like home teaching, working the storehouse, calling people to positions etcetera, is more important than simply making the Wards social and supportive. And I don’t see the Stake actively supporting the Ward programs the way they are supposed to in the four stakes I’ve lived in, in my lifetime as a non-missinoary. And I think this is the problem with activation efforts — they fall flat because there isn’t anything for the weaker people to engage with.

I remember one less active person I visited, and he said “when I moved here, I realized the Church is no fun up here, it’s just hard”. Thsi epitomizes Church experience as you get older, definitely. A good friend of mine, a Bishop of 10 years told me that his orientation was this — as long as the Ward finances were in order, key positions were staffed, the Sunday meetings ran well, and the Stake got the reports they needed, the basics were done. The rest of it was less important.

And if we can look at this in a temporal fashion for a minute….(the Church looks at its own affairs in a highly temporal way, I believe, so what is good for the goose is good for the gander). Think about the man and woman who give the equivalent of one or two mortgages to the Church in tithing over their lifetimes — do they not deserve to have a Ward which is proactively, and self-consciously socially vibrant and supportive on an interpersonal level? Or is it just consequences to simply have them working their tail off in rather mundane tasks for their whole life to serve the needs of the organization first and foremost?

I honestly think that if we made Ward programs a focus — even though they often cost money — we would see an increase in engagement with the Ward members, the less actives who try to come back to Church, greater retention of new members etcetera.

I also think the fact that they did away with the social activities chairperson role is yet another indication of misplaced priorities. It’s a no-brainer that when responsibilities are not assigned directly to someone in the organization, those responsibilities tend to fall in the list of priorities.

My question — what went wrong here? Why are we not interested in programs that tick?

IMO, nobody wants to do more work than what is already required. Everyone is busy and is also expected to do HT and temple trips in addition to their regular callings – so there is a hesitancy to ask these volunteers to do more.

Excuse me for playing DA…

Exactly, it seems like being an active Church member is already hard enough without asking people to do even more than they already are. My guess is that some people aren’t excited about making too many improvements because they are basically unpaid volunteers that have often been manipulated into reluctantly accepting these callings when they don’t really want to do them to begin with. So if doing the absolute bare minimum they need to in order to get by didn’t already make sense as a convenient way to conserve time and energy then this unbalanced arrangement can easily provide all the de-motivation they need to really drag their feet and be content to just go through the motions in a half-hearted way.

If people could see any real payoff or beneficial results of work above and beyond the minimum they can get away with then maybe it would be different but as it is sometimes it is hard to see what any extra effort will really accomplish. Any lasting improvements would probably have to come from the top down because these callings are temporary so even if one person does an exceptional job largely on their own as soon as they are released and the next person takes over then things will most likely just return to business as usual.

having a thriving social structure is often not important to the local leaders. Staffing the temple, managing programs like home teaching, working the storehouse, calling people to positions etcetera, is more important than simply making the Wards social and supportive. And I think this is the problem with activation efforts — they fall flat because there isn’t anything for the weaker people to engage with.

I remember one less active person I visited, and he said “when I moved here, I realized the Church is no fun up here, it’s just hard”. This epitomizes Church experience as you get older, definitely. A good friend of mine, a Bishop of 10 years told me that his orientation was this — as long as the Ward finances were in order, key positions were staffed, the Sunday meetings ran well, and the Stake got the reports they needed, the basics were done. The rest of it was less important.

When you remember that the Bishop and SP are volunteers too and are often stretched too thin as it is, I can see where going above and beyond the standard even keel is not something they are jumping for. I remember serving as scout master and having a scout committee leader that seemed to think it was his job to tell me how to better do my job while not offering any help to go with the critique.

The secondary church I am attending now (Assembly of God) has so many outreach programs, it recently held a new attendee luncheon for all those that had started attending in the last quarter and had 58 new (newer) persons in attendance. With this comes many individuals that are “window shopping” and are pretty shallow in their activity levels.

It would seem that this is contrary to our business model, that there is an element of “sacrifice is good for you” and that it is our duty to sacrifice for the building up of the kingdom. We tend to look down our noses at other churches emphasis on the less demanding side of divinity and “benign whateverism.” I’m sure there are some that feel the hardness of the church experience is part of the plan and necessary to separate the chaff from the wheat (just as Zion’s camp, the Mormon trail, and general persecution weeded out all but the most die-hard.)

But I think at the core, leaders just have too much on their plate and are not looking for anything more.

they are basically unpaid volunteers that have often been manipulated into reluctantly accepting these callings when they don’t really want to do them to begin with. If people could see any real payoff or beneficial results of work above and beyond the minimum they can get away with then maybe it would be different, but as it is sometimes it is hard to see what any extra effort will really accomplish. Any lasting improvements would probably have to come from the top down because these callings are temporary so even if one person does an exceptional job largely on their own as soon as they are released and the next person takes over then things will most likely just return to business as usual.

On this point I agree and disagree. I think this applies to some people and I’m sure we all know of people who accept callings and then do practically nothing, but I think there are many others that are doing the best that they can but at the end of the day they need some extra face time with their family – not another or more time consuming program.

I’ve noticed that some other churches seem anxious for you to do what you feel that God is calling you to do. So if you have a good voice or play an instrument and feel so inclined, perhaps God is calling you to be part of the worship band. If you love books and organization perhaps God is calling you to be over the church library. I imagine that such a program would be so liberating to allow persons to do what they are passionate about and still serve in a meaningful way. I’m sure this approach must have its own pitfalls (I understand many churches envy the amount of sacrifice and commitment that we routinely receive from our membership) but from my limited “grass is greener” perspective – I wonder what that would be like.

Do you see this “being stretched too thin” phenomenon as a local thing, or a Church-wide thing?

When my current Bishop was called, his wife relayed how his teenage son had responded, “So basically, instead of almost never seeing Dad – now we just drop the “almost” and graduate to never seeing him.” While I would not feel comfortable saying that all Bishops are stretched too thin, (this would be a function of additional full time employment, family demands, organizational and delegation skills, the overall health and strength of the ward, as well as many other variables) but I do think that many are stretched too thin and a fair number are just in over their head. Of course this is how we do things in The Church. We do not wait for a person’s life schedule to open up to the point that it would be convenient to have a leadership calling, nor do we call people that are necessarily prepared – we expect them to do the best that they can and learn along the way.

First, I agree it’s a business model — and I agree it’s hard. And it’s highly sustainable — provided you have a strong testimony that there will actually be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow….for me, I’m not so sure anymore, so the sacrifices don’t seem worth it.

I think this gets down to the reasons we attend church. For me, it is in large part to access the social support community structure inherent in the church. For DW, it is out of a sense of duty of what we are “supposed” to do. For others, they may have a worshipful experience in the Sacrament that they need. For others, it may be the building of the kingdom or rubbing shoulders with fellow saints. Still others may have additional varied reasons. We can worship, commune with God, and learn in the privacy of our own homes, so why do we meet together?

I think as your motivations for going to church shift you can be more or less happy with the arrangement. In my example, I am wanting more in the sense of fellowship and activities. I think it true that one of the better ways to get close to others in the church is by serving alongside them (probably in a leadership calling that involves regular meetings), but what about those outside of the leadership circle? I seek, with my small groups suggestion, to give sisters that aren’t ready to serve in a presidency (like DW) an opportunity to fellowship and be fellowshipped.