MP lesson on working with inactives

[Anonymous]

Old-Timer wrote:

It’s the only reason some people can understand. They understand being offended; they don’t understand other reasons.

Seriously, it’s not more complicated than that.

I agree with this. Likewise, it is easier for someone to say they have been offended than to broach subjects with people who are afraid or don’t want to try to understand. I plan to offer both points of view on Sunday.

[Anonymous]

I’d suggest really listening to what they say and respecting it.

Someone in my extended family is a single parent of a mentally disabled child. She lives in Utah, but hasn’t been traditionally “active” in her adult years so far, but she grew up attending and has adult siblings who do. She would like to have some kind of relationship with her ward/LDS neighbors. She has told her visiting teacher several times that since she works full time and because of her child’s problems, unscheduled evening visits derail their routine and are not appreciated. But they just. keep. dropping. by. It’s worse than not coming at all because she made the effort to tell them what kind of contact would be helpful and they don’t seem to care.

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

SquarePeg1971 wrote:

Great thoughts so far from everyone. #4 from SilentDawning is the one that really sends my uninterested son over the edge. Having been in many a BYC where the “hit lists” were made, he knows that he is just a box to be checked off. Whenever the missionaries or members of the Ward drop by, he says, “Well, they must have gotten down to the “P’s” in the alphabet. He is sincerely not interested in participating in church. However, he loves people (yes, even Mormon people) and would gladly go hiking, surfing, etc with anyone who asked. Unfortunately, there aren’t any Mormons who hang around as “friends” once they realize he’s not interested in church right now–pretty sad.

That is sad, and it is the main point I intend to make. True friendship and true agape love are what will work if anything does – and even those may not meet the member’s goal of getting the individual or family back to church. The goal has to be love, not reactivation. If reactivation is going to happen it will happen, but cookies and one visit in a blue moon by priesthood leaders won’t make it happen.

[Anonymous]

Dark Jedi – Please feel free to use this story if you need. My grandfather and grandmother were the recipients of a true home teacher. Both of my grandparents were completely and fully inactive all of my life. Their inactivity began years before their only child joined the church. My grandmother had some LDS heritage, how much I don’t recall, but her childhood was spent in an orphanage in Salt Lake City. I believe she was baptized there. It was in the font on one of the buildings on Temple Square. I want to say Tabernacle but don’t can’t confirm. My grandmother spent very little time in the church. She did teach Sunday School, her biggest complaint though was the how little Jesus Christ was mentioned. Everything was always Joseph Smith, pioneers, Golden Plates. She had a deep love and faith in Jesus Christ, she kept the bible they had given her at the orphanage and the Lord’s Prayer was her prayer of choice. All of her adult life she lived disconnected from the church. She was born long before the WoW was a commandment, and loved her coffee and cigarettes. I gained a love of the aroma of both from her. She was a talented hard working women. She shared those gifts and talents with neighbors, friends, civic organizations and the church (through my mom) all her life.

Her husband, my grandfather, was more active in the church when my mom was younger. He was a blue collar type guy. He could fix anything with his hands, but he had left school just after Jr. High and joined the Merchant Marines. As a church member he gave his tithes, he built church buildings, organized welfare farm work days, etc. What he wasn’t good at or comfortable with was public speaking. One time he was asked to bless a baby, so my grandmother wrote down a blessing for him to memorize so he could do it. Well one fine Sunday an eager Bishopric member asked Grandpa to say the opening or closing prayer in Sacrament Meeting. My Grandfather politely said, no. He even offered to help out somewhere else, but not pray. The Bishopric member told him “It was time to grow”. My Grandfather again said, No. The Bishopric member didn’t listen. As the meeting opened he announced that Brother John would be giving the prayer. During the hymn my Grandfather slipped out and never returned again.

Years later his only daughter would join the church, meet an RM, get married in the temple. Her parents weren’t even there. They did come to the reception but they never looked happy. Now before the idea comes that they hated the church and it’s members the record needs to be set straight. They didn’t. They loved the Bishop who was over my Mom’s ward. They loved my parents friends. They just didn’t like personal disrepect. (You don’t have to use this, just insight if you want to use it.).

Because my grandparents were on the church records, they let Ward Teachers come to the house. Wisely the ward assigned first my dad’s mom – or my mom’s mother in law. Having the kids to chat about helped. Later a couple was assigned to my grandparents. For the record I didn’t even know my grandparents had a church affiliation until I was 16 years old and the home teacher showed up. He didn’t show up in a shirt and tie. No, he came by in dungaree’s mid day to help Grandpa, help the neighbor with his brick fence. See my Grandpa was loved by his neighbors, he was even nicknamed the mayor of the street. My Grandparents were deeply connected with their neighbors. Grandpa most of all. When anyone in the neighborhood had a project Grandpa was there. So was the home teacher. No lessons were given, no pressures or prayers. Just friendship. Years and years of friendship. They picked fruit together, built sheds, poured concrete, swapped homemade jams. Every year when my grandparents arrived for Christmas, the Ward Teacher’s wife always sent along a loaf of her persimmon bread and apricot jam to us, plus what she gave Grandpa and Grandma.

The years rolled by, the two couples were dear friends. My grandparents were no closer to coming back to church than they ever had been. My grandfather would do home teaching with my dad because my dads list is always the marginalized. My grandfather understood them. My grandparents never attended a single meeting or church event with us in all our years. Soon my grandparents were in their 80’s and time was moving fast. Grandma passed away first. Grandpa was lost with out her. Then the Ward teacher’s wife passed away 6 months later. Then one by one neighbors died. Pretty soon Grandpa asked mom how to pay tithing. Then he and the long term home teacher went to Sacrament meeting together. Then the home teacher died. But grandpa kept going. A young Mom volunteered to drive him. My Grandpa could barely hear, he walked slow with a cane, and he could tell you Joe DiMaggio’s baseball record. Every Sunday for the final months of his life he was in a pew. Someone had been his friend for over 40 years.

I believe that even if Grandpa had never gone back to church, the friend home teacher would still have visited when he could. Today I like to picture them rambling around heaven fixing broken fences, sipping a cold drink and being real and true friends.

My final thoughts – we really need to stop calling people inactives, dissaffected, lost sheep, etc. I’ve said so for years and I stand by it. All those names are synonymous with worthless/dismissive/rejection. Friend – Christ said, “I call you friends, because you are my friends.” We put people in colonies like the lepers of old. We dismiss them like the Samaritans of old and judge their forms of worship just like Jews did in the New Testament.

All right, climbing off soap box now. Thanks for letting me share/vent. You will do great DJ.

[Anonymous]

Rant time.

I don’t know how to get around this but I feel some of the failures in working with people comes from the fact that everything is an assignment. It’s no secret, everyone knows that most visits are the result of an assignment being made.

I know not everyone is like this but the very fact that an assignment has to be made taints the deal for me. I.e. This visit wouldn’t be taking place if not out of obligation. If people aren’t over because they truly want to be over then the visit feels forced, unnatural, etc. I don’t particularly want a person that drops by every month, I want a friend. There’s a big difference. First and foremost… I can choose my friends. I don’t have any say in who is assigned to me.

I think that’s one of the reasons we see the “[vis]it it and quit it” :angel: approach to reactivation, because it’s an “assignment” not a friendship. Nothing ground breaking here, I hear this every time we get the “do your HT” lecture in PH. Be a friend. Be a friend. Be a friend. The issue is how to make this come off as natural when the very nature of it being an assignment makes the whole process feel insincere? IMO the process of getting people together has to be natural and “assignments” aren’t natural. Most of my friends aren’t the result of someone being assigned to be my friend and me sticking it out until something wonderful developed/things clicked. In fact knowing that the initial social connection is an assignment probably throws up a barrier for me. We didn’t making a connection, we met an obligation.

What to do when there aren’t enough organic friendships occurring in church… change the HT routes and see if we can get some gmo friendships facilitated by lots of pesticides going. :angel:

The issue is that the program calls for everyone to be visited and you can’t leave that sort of thing up to chance. You can’t have everyone in a ward pick the charismatic young couple to HT/VT and you’ve also got to make sure us antisocial introverts don’t end up feeling unloved because we were the last people to be picked when team assignments were being made. It would probably be in everyone’s best interest if cliques didn’t form. That’s why it’s a tough problem to get around. Make sure everyone is ministered to but to do that you need a dreaded “assignment” that sucks the sincerity out of the room.

mom3 wrote:

He didn’t show up in a shirt and tie. No, he came by in dungaree’s mid day to help Grandpa, help the neighbor with his brick fence.

+1

I find that the “uniform of the priesthood” screams “this isn’t a friend showing up, this is an ecclesiastical obligation that is being met.” Everyone is different, some people might enjoy the suits showing up at the door, I think it makes the process too formal. Since everyone is different, perhaps there’s a way to find out people’s preferences.

Good luck, it’s a tough nut to crack.

[Anonymous]

SilentDawning wrote:

6. Make your programs good. People spontaneously come back to church — focus on doing the work of the Ward well so when people come to church, they feel they are part of something fabulous.

This; I also see the same with other organizations, when some long-distracted member decides to drop in on a meeting or other activity and finds it a mess or quietly canceled for lack of attendance, odds are they won’t be back again for a long time if ever. That one time you just can’t be bothered to go unlock the building for a singles home evening or whatever could be the one time some forgotten inactive was looking for a bit of acceptance.

[Anonymous]

Thanks mom! You made me start to tear up and my TBM wife saw me and asked what I was reading. I had to close down staylds and just say it was a good blog about home teaching.

[Anonymous]

Nibbler – I am so with you.

It really needs to be overhauled on a large level. Yes, I know people who do make friends and connections. I’ve been yelled at by the sisters who had their friendships broken up by the VT changes. I get it.

I also get that some people do feel like some one cares.

http://bycommonconsent.com/2015/02/16/a-home-teaching-visit/

At the same time we haven’t had a “caring” home teacher in an age.Just last week we ran into our home teacher in the grocery store, his wife said hi to me, then he noticed my husband and I smiled. As we walked down the aisle my husband said, “I bet we got visited and didn’t even know it. He’s going to count us as good.” The companionship prior to that was made up of a two new guys in the ward. They showed up, unannounced and unscheduled, for a visit. Full suits and ties. Knocked on the door. We were eating dinner and watching a movie, I opened the door with a loaded plate of food in my hand. Not even noticing they started their, “Hi, we’re your new home teacher spiel.” I stopped them right there and held the plate in front of them, and told them it was family dinner time. Then asked them to make an appointment the next time. Two weeks later one of them was put in the Bishopric, he’s no longer our home teacher, cause he moved up to HP.

My husband doesn’t attend at all any more, he is older than the EQ age, but still on their rolls. No one knows what to do with our family, so they leave us alone. In some aspects this is great. We really shouldn’t be traditionally home taught. Instead someone should go golf with my husband or come watch an NFL game with us. No lessons, no ties, no “get it done”.

As a church we really do know it’s on an assignment basis. For HT especially everyone sits in a room staring at each other, making inane conversation, pretending we are all close. Then it’s done.

An non-attending member can find his way back to church whenever he likes. Yes friends do make it better but an assignment, unless it become miraculous like my grandfathers, isn’t going to do the trick.

I don’t have a solution, but I’d love to create one.

Dark Jedi – one last thought, if we really do want to connect with non-attending members you may want to suggest that people stop talking so much about church. If someone hasn’t darkened the churches door in a long time, it’s likely they aren’t interested. So if you want them to think you care, find out about them.

[Anonymous]

Your welcome Looking Hard – I try to tell it whenever I can.

Just to tug your heart a little more. We hadn’t realized his turn in life until he was visiting one Christmas. Because he was hard of hearing, he tended to shout when he took his hearing aids out. One night my dad and brother were in our kitchen and could hear him speaking loudly from his room, they thought he had fallen, and so were heading into the room when they realized he was praying. The man who had not verbalized a prayer in over 40 years was speaking to his God.

Six months later he developed a growth on his lungs, he needed surgery. It was supposed to be an easy surgery. My mom went to stay with him, that’s when we learned he had been attending church. The night before his surgery, she was brushing her teeth in the bathroom next to his bedroom, again he was loudly praying, but this time she knew what it was and listened. The man who still had only a Jr. High education said a simple devout prayer. He named each family member by name, asking God to take care of them, then asked, “And make me a better man.” He would die 72 hours later.

I don’t know of a better man in life. He gave fully and completely his whole life. His love went beyond his family and his neighborhood. He taught neighbor kids how to ride a bike, he clipped roses from his bush for the nurse who walked around their block every day, he knew the names and life stories of all the clerks at his grocery store – and when they had a crisis, or death in their family he was there. Alcoholism destroyed his family, but he never gave up on them, he licked the disease himself (without a program) and every holiday we kids were dragged from relative to relative to keep those strained connections from breaking. I don’t know how God could have made him a better man. If I can be half that good, I won’t have wasted my life.

Inactive he was not. Christlike to core he was.

[Anonymous]

Thanks, Mom. (I love saying that!) Really, I appreciate it. I, too, shed some tears in reading this wonderful, real story and if you don’t mind I will share it on Sunday. I had in mind to share this story given by Elder Osguthorpe in a BYU devotional:

Quote:

My wife’s brother Steve became less active in the Church at the age of 15. He married outside the Church and for many years asked that home teachers not visit him. This is how Steve tells his own story:

I was assigned a home teacher. When he called me, I said something like, “I don’t want to be contacted, and my wife is not interested.” He asked if he could at least make contact once in a while and made sure I understood he was there for us if a need arose.

For 22 years, every month, I faithfully received a postcard from that home teacher with a kind thought or just a “hello, hope things are going well for you.” I had never met him for the first 18 years, yet every month he made his home teaching contact the only way he could.

That contact became very important to me when we found out my wife had brain cancer in 1996. We never had children, and so I was the primary caregiver for her during her 23-month illness. I was helped by 12 wonderful women who were friends, neighbors, or co-workers.

One day the ward Relief Society president came by our home to offer help. My wife was asleep at the time, and I didn’t want to wake her, so that visit never happened. But that contact by the Relief Society president was more important to me, I think, as it softened my heart. My wife of 31 years passed away 10 days later.

Following his wife’s death, Steve needed help in planning the funeral. Who do you think he turned to for that help? To his home teacher of 22 years—the one who had faithfully written all of those cards! How easy would it have been for that home teacher not to complete his calling? Some of us have a difficult time home teaching people who do welcome us. But he stayed with it.

Five years later, Steve remarried. His second wife was a faithful member of the Church. His pathway back to full activity in the Church began. Last year Steve was ordained a priest, and then he received the Melchizedek Priesthood—all after 50 years of inactivity in the Church.

When we care for someone, we want to do something for them. Steve’s home teacher cared enough to do something—to write literally hundreds of cards to the one he’d been assigned to visit. The Relief Society president cared enough to visit at exactly the right moment for Steve. I’m convinced that there are people all around us who need that kind of caring, that kind of love. All we need to do is open our eyes and our ears and our hearts so that we can know what we need to do for others.

The whole talk is pretty good, although long. http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1943” class=”bbcode_url”>http://speeches.byu.edu/?act=viewitem&id=1943

I could probably share these two stories along with perhaps the parable of the good Samaritan and Christ’s admonition to love one another as He loved us and have an entire lesson, although I feel strongly I should share Pres. Uchtdorf’s “stop it.”

Thanks to all of you. My philosophy in giving lessons and talks is even if it reaches just one, I have been successful.

[Anonymous]

My dad is the only person I know who was asked to keep a HT assignment even after the wards split and the other person was in a different ward.

Why? My dad was the only HT the other man would accept.

Why? The man drank too much and was totally inactive. Everyone else tried to do standard HT visits: enter the house, say a prayer, give a lesson, etc. My dad would sit on the porch, in his regular work clothes, while the man drank his beer, and talk about family and work and whatever else was on the man’s mind. Once, my dad went into the bar and sat next to the man to talk, since they hadn’t been able to connect at any other time during the month.

The man would talk about life with a friend who happened to be his HT. My dad was his HT for years.

His wife, who was fully active, loved my dad almost as much as she loved her husband. His service to the man also was a tremendous support to her, even though they rarely got to talk during the HT visits. They talked at church, and that was enough for her.

[Anonymous]

Ray, your Dad is my definition of what a good HT is meant to be. He is a great example IMO.

My FIL was the same type of person. (made from the same mold.)

[Anonymous]

You are right Dark Jedi, about active members assuming inactive ones leave mainly because they were offended. It made my husband upset that his friends in the bishopric and high council would think he was that shallow. Active true believing members do not know what to do or say to those who have become inactive or left the church because of serious issues that bother them about the doctrine, lds scriptures and church history. One of the main things they do not do is really listen to understand. They could not comprehend that my husband never got the witness of Moroni’s promise of the Book of Mormon. They think that all the disturbing questions we have about church history, book of Abraham, etc. etc. can be easily answered; that you are being to intellectual.

This last new bishop did come to our home to try and understand. He did try to listen, but he really cannot comprehend all we have gone through. He made comments that show that all our little doubts can be explained by the church and hear is how he misinterpreted in the last email he sent me:

Sister Night,

I am grateful we are able to communicate with each other through email. I believe you do understand the doctrine, and are waiting for personal revelation. I also believe you have felt personal revelation in the past which testified of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. I encourage you to read the Book of Mormon again, you will not receive personal revelation of it’s truthfulness unless you are reading it.

Bishop…..

Here is part of my reply back to him:

Bishop…..

I do appreciate that you took the time to correspond with me. I do know that God answers prayers and have felt the Holy spirit many times in my life. Unfortunately, your assumptions are incorrect in regards to ever getting a testimony or witness that the Book of Mormon is from God or that Joseph Smith was a prophet. When I left on my mission at 21, there were many things I liked about the lds church and I just assumed the rest was true. When I was in the LTM,(language training center) which was very difficult for me, I decided to really pray whether JS was a prophet because I did not want to be doing this, if it wasn’t really true. To me, JS was the key to whether the church was true. I never got any good feelings or answers but was too embarrassed to go home, so stuck out my mission and continued studying the gospel. I have read and taught out of the Book of Mormon many times and prayed about it many times. There are some great teachings in the Book of Mormon, but there is much that I did not like at all…especially all the wars. The main thing though was that I always got a stupor of thought and negative dark feeling about this book…similar to my negative temple experiences.

….Sister Night

Never heard back from him and he also did not respond to the email I sent him about how I would like gays treated in the church since we have a gay son. I guess our family is just to difficult to deal with.

[Anonymous]

DarkJedi wrote:

Old-Timer wrote:

It’s the only reason some people can understand. They understand being offended; they don’t understand other reasons.

Seriously, it’s not more complicated than that.

I agree with this. Likewise, it is easier for someone to say they have been offended than to broach subjects with people who are afraid or don’t want to try to understand. I plan to offer both points of view on Sunday.

I agree partly, but not completely here.

I think there are people who leave because of historical issues, but also that a greater or equal number leave simply because they get bored. Boredom isn’t quite the same as offense, but it does lay the onus on the congregation and correlators for producing boring material.

While I have met offensive people in the church, I find far fewer in it, than out of it! I have to decide each time whether I can sit around for three hours, or if when Sister/Brother X gives their talk it’s worth my time.

Likewise, I think that while certain doctrinal issues do factor large (e.g. the role of women in the church), I doubt many people leave because they read about the “Adam is God” doctrine or even the whole matter of the Trinity. Word of Wisdom and sex are understood by both sides to be a major factor – I think they agree on that much, and rightly so.

[Author]

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