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Some of you know that I believe HT is a flawed system. A major flaw is its lack of respect for agency of families being home taught. The fact that leaders have consistently defined home teaching as the gold standard of a visit in the home, preferably with a prayer and a message is evidence of this. What if the family doesnt’ WANT that, even if the home teacher is willing to provide a visit, prayer and lesson? This lack of respect for the agency of the families penalizes the home teacher and the Ward on the reports when the family refuses to see them, let them in, or even acknowledge them. Well, the gold standard of a visit in the home and a prayer for each family in the ward is unlikely to happen. So, you end up with dedicated home teachers feeling unsuccessful even after they made a best efforts attempt to see all of their families. I shared this with my Bishop recently, before he was released, when I initiated a meeting about the 18 home teaching families I was assigned without my permission.
In the meeting, I mentioned that I thought a better way of motivating the home teachers is to measure home teaching as “successful” when the home teacher has met the home teaching family at the highest level of contact the home taught family WANTS. So, if the family says they don’t want contact, and I don’t contact them, I was a successful home teacher with that family. If the family says they want a letter, but no phone call or visit, and I sent a letter, I have been a successful home teacher with that family. If the family wants a letter and I DON’T send the letter, then I haven’t completely discharged my responsibilities as a home teacher that month with that family.
Well, fast forward three months. A new HPGL is in the leadership chair, and he is a former Bishop. Black and White to the point I don’t feel like going to Priesthood meeting anymore. But I went last week anyway since my son is in priesthood opening exercises now.
This former bishop,now HPGL indicates. “I spoke to a priesthood leader recently, and he changed my philosophy of what constitutes a home teaching visit for reporting purpose. I am going to measure home teaching as completed when the home teacher meets the family at the highest level of contact the home teaching family wants”. He then went into the list of examples I gave above to my Bishop previously, adding a couple.
Did I do that? My wording of “meeting the family at the highest level of contact they want” is exactly how I said it to my Bishop.
If so, it goes to show there is room for conscientious objectors in the church when your objections are centered on powerfully logical gaps in our policies, and church effectiveness, rather than core doctrines. Comments?
That’s pretty cool! Wow. Did you say to the rest of the group, “You are welcome”? 
That is pretty amazing:) :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: Well done!This is a perfect example of why it is important, and even critical, that heterodox believers stay. :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: Yay! Very nice! That’s the kind of HT I can get behind. Now I have to actually go and do some home teaching. I can’t cry about HT program ineffectiveness, see my suggestions implemented, and then not do anything. In addition to helping the families, doing the HT also acts as positive reinforcement to the priesthood leadership who were open minded enough to take the suggestion. Yep. Ain’t two-edged swords wonderful? 
Old Timer wrote:
Yep. Ain’t two-edged swords wonderful?
There’s a third edge on this sword — doing home teaching as a way of helping the priesthood body be open-minded. So, in a way, I am still rocking the boat without sinking the ship. That is a source of motivation for me
🙂 I am understand how this percolated from our Bishop to the HPGL. My Bishop is a serial entrepreneur (or was, until he left the Bishop position). When I explained the problem with home teaching motivation, I compared it to motivating a sales force — something he completely understands. I indicated that counting home teaching as completed only when you get into the home and have a visit is like trying to retain salespeople who work on commission and rarely make a sale. For many of us, part of the motivation of home teaching is feeling you have been successful, effective at it, or its been a good use of time. To show up and find you are rejected, and never get internal, intrinsic credit for the effort due to the definition of success as implied by the measuring system, makes it hard to sustain the effort — particularly over your lifetime.
Some are motivated by kudos from the HPGL, and I guess that’s OK too, although for those of us with achievement motivation, the internal reward of simply knowing you achieved your goal is motivating — counting home teaching as done when you meet the family at the highest level of contact they want furthers that source of motivation.
I did the home teaching. Took 2 hours. I had this feeling of incredible fruitlessness as I was doing it. Years ago I visited well over 200 families and saw nothing come of it. One person did get baptized, but it was the missionaries that contacted him as he wasn’t home when I went to his place. After baptism he told everyone it would be a year before he would be able to attend church regularly, and nothing has happened since, and its five years later. Maybe he moved. The thing that kept me going was maybe the HP leadership will support the teachers council since I sort of made it part of the deal of me going home teaching.
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