A Little Success at Church

Had another seed planting experience at Church….(interesting how the Parable of the Sower applies here).

Our Stake is emphasizing sacrament meeting attendance. And of course, the whole thing is a push strategy, where the members are expected to go out and invite people to come to Sacrament meeting. They had a letter from the Stake Presidency telling us to do it. And that’s the program.

In our Ward, the experience of being a member is a problem, from bullying in the youth program, to poorly prepared teachers and speakers, with odd flashes of light, inspiration and occasionally spiritual meetings.

I put up my hand and said “What plans is the Ward making to improve the quality of the experience of the members and non-member who attend our Ward????”. The priesthood leader at the front seemed astounded by the question and asked “What suggestions do you have?”.

I listed about 5 suggestions, ranging from exploiting every bit of musical latitude and variety we are given in the CHI, to having speakers focus all or a portion of their talk toward the primary and youth, to more frequent musical selections, a wider variety of musical instruments, and better coaching and training in how to speak and provide testimony. I suggested the lessons in Preach My Gospel which teach missionaries and members alike how to consciously bring the Spirit into a meeting. I suggested an A-team of people who want to be highly motivating and inspirational speakers who we rely on regularly to puncturate and anchor our meetings.

At the end, a couple people came over and shook my hand saying those were good suggestions, and the startled priesthood leader came over to me, asking me to rattle them off again so he could take it back to the Bishopric.

One thing I said, that I liked, was that although the Church is not a business (which I guess was a bit of a stretch for me personally to say that given some of the beliefs I’ve developed), the principles of engagement, providing some form of personal value for the attendees etcetera is every bit as important at a Church as it is in a business if you want to attract and retain people. And that I think this is an area we could direct our attention.

Anyway, it was the most therapeutic comment I’ve made in a long time, and it seemed to have an impact.