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This is a pattern I notice. It saps my enthusiasm at church. You have been away from a while, or not fully active. You come back to church and everyone is really nice to you. They ask you to get involved, and you do, and for a while, they bend over backwards for you. Then when they see you active and involved, they get casual in the relationship, or even ignore you – or leave you crying in the wilderness….working alone..
Case in point.
1. Bishopric won’t announce our Teacher’s council over the pulpit anymore on the day it occurs. Put it in the bulletin they said. They don’t even mention it in Ward council like I asked. And they never remember the dates we are doing it either. And the Ward council leaders, who supported it at first, and who have repeated little flyers each month we hold one announcing it, don’t get themselves or their presidency there. Indifferent…the only leader who comes is the HPGL because I bribed him by saying I would do 100% HT if he came.
2. Last year I donated a professional jazz band to a couple events, including the Ward Christmas party. At one event, the drummer (a Mormon) paid a non-member keyboardist, and at the next one, the Bishop paid her. They got a $350 band for $75 or free (depending how you look at the drummer’s direct payment to the keyboard player).
They were looking for musicians for our Christmas party, and I offered the keyboard player again, and the Bishop never bothers to even write me back yes or no. Says he wants to talk about the Bpric about it, but never gets back. I write to tell him she got a booking anyway at that time and is unavailable and he writes back “we’re relying on Ward talent”. Ignoring the fact that me and the drummer are Ward talent. But we can’t perform without a keyboard player.
I don’t fault him for not wanting to pay someone outside, but the lack of responsiveness bugs me after a very kind offer, simply because money is involved. He’s retired and does the Bishopric thing full time, so I don’t see him like the man with eight children who is juggling a career and a family. All his kids are grown. Why show such indifference to such a kind offer like this by not responding, even if to say no, they don’t want it?
3. After I got the Teachers Council going, the SS President tells me it’s not of value and is not effective, tries to get me to go the Ward council for him and do all his responsibilities.
New guy takes over and I explain a number of things I’m willing to do that requires his support on the Ward council, and he says “I just want to do the basics first, like get the teachers showing up for class”. Leaving a strong part of his organization (me) to languish in lack of support. And I happen to know that teachers not showing up is not a big problem in our adult and youth classes — only in primary, and that’s not his responsibility.
4. I offer to promote one council where he introduces himself to the teachers and helps them see the new direction. The guy is a capable lawyer, and very well-spoken. I also mentioned the new curriculum might be a good topic at it, and that I would promote it with flyers and email distribution. He doesn’t appear to want to be involved, never followed up with me, etcetera. Even seemed unenthusiastic that he was even in the calling in the first place.
It seems to me that getting the cooperation, or even communication from leaders for projects that are good of the Ward is more effective when you appear to be on the edge of coming back to church. This makes you a kind of spiritual conquest for the Ward that energizes people. They tend to be cooperative and willing to do work to involve you — at first. But when they think you are committed, they are indifferent – to the detriment of your motivation. Or, if they see someone is functioning in a calling, they think fine, that’s done, so let’s just leave that and move on to the next thing we’re working on. Meanwhile, you languish, feeling unsupported. I think a lot of our inactivity or volunteer mediocrity problems at church are our own doing!!!
Now, I realize I won’t always get my way. But I have noticed this over and over again. We are so busy that when we think we’ve gotten someone back on the horse, we take them for granted.
Makes me want to just kick back and do nothing. I have a thriving organization that I lead and support outside the church. Why do I need to devote all this time if the leaders won’t “move”???
Those are my feelings today. Wish I felt more positive but sometimes being a volunteer in this organization leaves much to be desired.
Yep. That feeling of “if you are IN the group, you can be asked for almost anything and you should never take offense.” There is always going to be some of that and probably your bishop doesn’t even realize things like the keyboard player is needed for you and the drummer. But it is the extent that gets under my skin.
I would reply back to the bishop saying, “Great. I look forward to listening to some of the musical talent in the ward. As much as I like playing, I love listening also.” It gets your point across, even if it is a bit passive aggressive (but that is the language of Mormons).
Wow. #2 Is especially depressing considering that bringing in a nonmember keyboardist is an obvious missionary opportunity. Sounds like your ward is far too beholden to tradition.
Beefster wrote:
Wow. #2 Is especially depressing considering that bringing in a nonmember keyboardist is an obvious missionary opportunity.Sounds like your ward is far too beholden to tradition.
As I said, if they didn’t want to pay the $75, no problem, I get it. But not answering ticks me off. Again, if you appear to need or want something they become incredibly indifferent (even when you are trying to actually help them).
My ward generally sucks. It was there that the Bishop’s wife did something atrocious years ago, my daughter was bullied, we had an abusive Bishop and other things. I was starting to fire on all cylinders there for a while. So, here is the fall-out.
I didn’t remind the HPGL that I agreed to take on more families since I had found 3 of the 5 on my list were either Do Not Contact, wrote a name removal letter, or not present at the address on the Ward records. A few months ago, I said I was happy to take on 3 more families the find out about them, particularly if unknown. And that I would be whole-hearted about welcoming the new ones that pop up on the Ward records that we know nothing about. I was going to remind my HPGL at the end of priesthood today that if he gave me the names in the next week or so, I’d see them in December. they have known this for some time and have done nothing.
Something came up on Teacher’s Council day (a musical gig) so I cancelled Teachers Council this month rather than saying “no ” to the opportunity or making other arrangements.
I tried to call our Sunday School president today since he was home with a sick child, about some SS issues. Phoned and texted since his wife said he wasn’t doing anything but sitting at home. And when he didn’t call back, I decided just to go back to running the Teacher’s Council with the few people who show up every month.
Everyone will have to figure out what the new SS curriculum means on their own. And the new SS president will have to just introduce himself to all the teachers individually or some other way. it’s his business not mine.
Left again wondering — why pay thousands in tithing to this organization when their leaders care so little about leading? I went home feeling extremely in the out-group again. So glad I have eaten from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. I feel this organization deserves the incredibly scaled back commitment I have been showing…
Still bugging me this Sunday. I was getting involved positively, and now I feel like just cutting loose entirely. This idea of the church being there on its own terms, with the members as the lackeys to serve the church bugs the H-E double hockey sticks out of me. So, I think the final nail is in the coffin for the time being. I have no interest in doing any more than the basics of holding the council as a placeholder so at least I look involved to my family and they can’t ask me to do something else.
Also going to tell the HPGL to hold at the two families I have and leave the 1 DNC there in case there is a need. Done, full stop.
I’ll also tell him he also doesn’t have to come to teacher’s council if he doesn’t feel it’s of value. Implicitly, this is saying I also don’t have to get 100% home teaching any longer. I notice the guy hasn’t changed a single thing about the way he teaches based on the three councils he has attended, so I don’t see it as worth the effort.
I need to be in a ward of achievers to be happy — people who take this seriously and want to actually accomplish something, not just plug a hole or do a calling out of duty. So fed up. So fed up.
Feeling a little better now…took some steps to stop Ward leaders behavior from impacting my enthusiasm and progress. 1. Decided just to promote the teacher’s council to the teachers directly through my mailing list and hand to hand flyers. That’s it.
2. Concurrent with #1, decided not to rely on Ward leaders for anything — not attending the councils, not promoting it to their teachers, nothing — including the Bishopric in an announcement to the Ward on the day it happens.
3. I stopped the bribe to our HPGL. He comes to the councils (the only Ward leader who does) but he has implemented nothing he has learned about healthy teacher/student participation ratios (he talks constantly and everyone sits there bored). He never gets his assistants there, and his heart is clearly not in it. It’s as if he hasn’t attended at all in terms of his lesson delivery.
I wrote to the HPGL and told him that I have adjusted my expectations about what I can expect from the Ward Council in terms of teacher’s council involvement, and that if he has something better to do during that period, go do it. I wasn’t negative, but the implied message is that the deal is off. I didn’t say the next sentence, but this is implied…
In return, I won’t be going nuts on Home Teaching like I have been since September. I’ll do what’s convenient. He wrote back thanking me for my home teaching report (100% again in November) but nothing on the teacher’s council email, which I had sent separately.
4. Decided not to share my frustrations with my wife anymore. She just defends the Ward leaders and it annoys me.
5. No more communication on the Teachers Council to the new Sunday School President. In spite of being avaialable, he didn’t communicate with me on the next council. He really doesn’t like his new calling anyway. If he contacts me about it in the future, fine, but otherwise, I’m just going to do my job solo.
Better just to be an island and do what is in my own power. I learned that when leaders are not supportive, it’s best to just stop expecting anything from them — for the sake of my own commitment.
I honestly feel that the status quo is generally mediocre standards and fire fighting. When you are an inactive member that is coming back to church then you are the fire that needs to be put out. There may be extra attention given to accommodate you until the sense of urgency subsides then it goes back to the status quo with you and attention is directed towards the next fire. Roy wrote:
I honestly feel that the status quo is generally mediocre standards and fire fighting. When you are an inactive member that is coming back to church then you are the fire that needs to be put out. There may be extra attention given to accommodate you until the sense of urgency subsides then it goes back to the status quo with you and attention is directed towards the next fire.
I wondered if it was just me and my high expectations again, or if they really are mediocre. I think they are just mediocre — that’s it. Not a place I can put thousands and thousands a year and feel its being put to good use either. We are normally thrown into callings with understaffed positions (filled with warm bodies in many cases who are too dutiful to say “no”). Or in Wards stretched thin so they can get the most out of the building (multiple staggered small wards than 1 big ward that is too big for the building). No budget, not real resources, except the stake, which tends to be breathing fire more than helping in my experience.
See what happens when I start caring about my calling? About the Ward? I start to think organizationally, try to get people to collaborate with me and they respond with mediocrity.
I am considering cutting the teacher’s council back to once a quarter or once every two months as well. This way I still have the calling and am not necessarily considered fresh meat for other callings. That is what my primary teacher’s council counterpart is doing.
I don’t know how it works out calling-wise. I don’t have an official calling except mom, and executive secretary support in my branch. In the branch I was called to be an R.S. teacher (my dream calling) for 1 month once we first moved there. I had taught several lessons in the same month, thought it was a good fit, and everyone else loved my lessons. The 1st counselor in the presidency still raves about them periodically. Then I was called into Primary for 7 months (I was told that is where the best teachers go by my Branch President – I only half believed him then and I don’t believe him now).
I stopped teaching Primary July 2016 (being 8 months pregnant teaching Sunbeams will do that to you sometimes). We attended periodically throughout the fall and winter 2016. We missed 6 Sundays due to contractions, and my husband insisting that that baby be 1 month old before going to church. He made periodic offers to take care of the baby for me so I could to church, but I looked at him like he was nuts so he stopped offering. After that, most of the time it was just me and my girls at church with my husband at home sick. Everyone asked about him and made sympathetic noises. They issued him a calling as the executive secretary spring 2017 – just in time for him to get sick repeatedly and not able to accept the calling until summer 2017. At the time I was a child food support system, so made it clear that most callings were not a good fit for me at the time. In the Spring 2017, they issued a call as a Compassionate Service Leader for me – but the calling was fulfilled by the time I was able to accept it officially. Our attendance petered to him doing his stuff every week and being sick 1 Sunday every 4-6 weeks I think. I subbed in Nursery 1 week for 1 additional child (mostly 2nd hour – the Sunbeam Primary teacher comes in with her class and teaches there – I stayed as a teaching assistant). I would do that more often – but my husband hates me not being in Gospel Doctrine with him – it is a weird family connection thing. They asked me to substitute teach R.S. one Sunday (I had done that before and loved it), but I didn’t get the memo so didn’t actually teach.
Right now I am waiting to see what comes down the pipe as it were.
Due to this site, I have given thought to callings that I would both grow and excel in, and have protocols built in for respectfully providing my input in sheepese.
I am glad you have Sheepese protocols. I have found them very useful to the point local leaders have wanted me back in leadership again, in spite of my contrarian ideals. They don’t know the half of them. Flying under the radar is the best thing on earth to do. It keeps your options open. It seems that saying no to callings isn’t as bad as many people think either. They want people to serve, so they keep going back to the drawing board to find something else you can do. I see it as education of the priesthood leader by repeatedly saying “no” until they get it right. SilentDawning wrote:
I am glad you have Sheepese protocols. I have found them very useful to the point local leaders have wanted me back in leadership again, in spite of my contrarian ideals. They don’t know the half of them.
Actually, my unorthodox views are the least of the non-conforming surprises people get working with my family.
SilentDawning wrote:
Flying under the radar is the best thing on earth to do. It keeps your options open.
I do my best to fly under the radar. Because I am always the odd duck around, it can get complicated at times. I do less than your traditional LDS mom, but am passionate about what I do – and I do more things assigned to the male roles in our family because I have the resources to do so and they need to be done. My husband stays at home with our children, and is open about some of his mental and physical health challenges. But the magnitude of physical health stuff he deals with is more like what men 20 years or so older then him deal with – not so great in elders quorum. We also get a few weird looks about our daughter – why are we worried about giving her medication and open about some of her needs when she is such an angel? Why aren’t we jumping all over creation to get her additional help when she may have – but not necessarily clearly has (to the less familiar) something else going on that is not ADHD – such as being on the ASD spectrum (but she isn’t running all over creation being hyper, so she can’t have ADHD)…
[It is possible that some of it is that I feel I should be getting weird looks. Last month I sat up on the stand during the Primary Program trying to discretely get my daughter to stand when she was supposed to for singing and not crawl into my lap. I was up there because that is the only way my 8 year old daughter was going to participate. I felt like an idiot – and I felt that her behavior widely announced that she is not developmentally like most 8 year old girls. But I figured that her minimal participation was more socially/culturally acceptable then her non-participation – and that the best choice was to support her and the Primary by sitting up there with her. Of course when it was her turn to speak, she waltzed up there and read her part clearly and carefully – and her part was the one you could hear the most throughout the program.]
SilentDawning wrote:
It seems that saying no to callings isn’t as bad as many people think either. They want people to serve, so they keep going back to the drawing board to find something else you can do. I see it as education of the priesthood leader by repeatedly saying “no” until they get it right.
I try to give greater input in callings and VT assignments now – more proactive I think to tell the leadership politely (phrased as ideas, brainstorming) my ideas/limitations/suggestions and have a dialog with them then wait and play 20 questions. This scandalizes my husband – you aren’t “supposed” to do things like that. It probably scandalizes the leadership too. The branch president takes it in stride. The R.S. president encourages input and does not seem phased by it at all. I remind my husband that if someone in those positions gets inspiration for a calling/VT assignment that did not make my “list” – they are perfectly right to get revelation, and I am perfectly right to double-check it before accepting it.
I remember your advice from the hand-washing post and ask myself regularly, “By saying this or doing this, am I accidently “contaminating” someone else’s belief system?”
I also try to view ALL gospel principles through the Great 2 Commandments now while I figure out what is important to me to believe/do etc. I know I have plenty of work in this area, but it is socially/culturally acceptable in church to talk about this principle and apply it individually – it’s big enough to encompass most of the doctrines taught, and vague enough not to threaten people’s belief systems usually.
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