Setting Goals

[Anonymous]

My HPGL wants me to lead a discussion tomorrow in 3rd hour council meetings on the topic of how we can achieve our goal to have 150 people attend sacrament meeting by increasing temple attendance.

Any ideas for me?

How do you feel about goals and how would you suggest it be approached?

We can’t pressure others to get temple recommends…we can invite…but is it going to be just a pressure-packed initiative? I have my concerns on the goal, and so don’t even know how to lead a discussion.

[Anonymous]

Topics like this sometimes come up in high council. My usual response is that one of the most important things I learned on my mission was that we can’t set goals for other people. Even if it’s a “group goal,” everyone in the group (or at least enough to meet your goal) have to buy in. If it’s not their goal it’s just that plain – it’s not their goal. You have alluded to that idea with your comment about inviting. That’s not very helpful for you in your task, though. And just for what it’s worth, if they’re not attending SM, why the heck does anyone think they’re going to go to the temple? Isn’t attending meetings a TR question? Or is it some kind of reverse psychology. Heck, I do attend SM most of the time and I don’t go to the temple.

[Anonymous]

The vocabulary of the LDS Church perplexes me. And nothing perplexes me more than the constant, incessant, and persistent use of the word “goal.” My current bishop is really into goals and has set goals for the ward, has asked each auxiliary presidency to set organizational goals, and has pushed each ward family to set “family goals.” I know, I know “if you don’t know where you’re going, how will you get there?” (is that Lewis Carroll?) However, something about the language we use to discuss “getting there” just sets my teeth on edge. Maybe the problem I have is the tendency for the goal to “dehumanize” an activity that is, at its basics, very human. If your goal states “150 people attending sacrament meeting”, it automatically reduces each one of those flawed, complicated, mysterious individuals to a simple number. That is okay in business and government settings (and often necessary) but if there’s any place we SHOULDN’T be reduced to a number, it should be in our places of worship.

Sorry to not be more helpful but it’s a button-pushing topic for me.

[Anonymous]

What if you started with an analogy of going to the doctor and being told you needed to lose weight. The doctor may even be right in his assessment but that alone won’t magic the weight loss. You have to buy into it.

Then move into “should we make people buy into something?” See where the discussion heads.

If it moves to setting a goal for other people you could possibly drop back and mention that a friend (and I am a friend) said that Elder Kearon admonished active members to just befriend less connected members. Not making it a project, but just being a friend, hanging out, etc. That maybe when that person feels loved they may return. (I mean he is in the President of the 70. He outranks the HPGL.)

Maybe grab some Hinckley quotes for the discussion. https://www.lds.org/manual/teachings-of-presidents-of-the-church-gordon-b-hinckley/chapter-20-fellowship-with-those-who-are-not-of-our-faith?lang=eng

I think you can gently steer the ship toward loving our fellowmen where ever they are. You have great communication skills.

[Anonymous]

Great comments.

Funny you bring up weight loss as the analogy…I was talking to my wife about that this morning…and frankly…I’m not bought into it right now. I know I need to lose 20lbs, but it isn’t like it is urgent. I SHOULD lose weight…but I’m also ok where I’m at and the level of effort to lose it is not for me right now. Maybe soon, but that’s just where I’m at. I play basketball twice a week, I run twice a week and track my steps at about 10k per day. So…there is no urgency.

I could see that fitting in with many people in our Ward. They know they SHOULD go to the temple, but don’t feel they will be doing that now with their lifestyle.

I need to ask those questions.

So…maybe the goals are how to friend people. How to communicate when temple trips are being scheduled, and talk openly about temple visits in talks lessons and testimonies, but steer clear of the challenges that get offensive? We shouldn’t assume everyone wants to go or can go. And that is ok.

[Anonymous]

I hate to be that guy (ha, no I don’t ) but… mon dieu what a terrible discussion topic.

I’m also going to feel bad later for derailing the thread but some time after that I’ll forget what I did and go back to feeling normal again, so I’m skipping way ahead to that time and I’ll go through my plan to derail the thread.

I’m sorry you got tapped to lead that discussion.

This is a part of my issue with these discussions… they aren’t the quorum’s discussions, they’re topics that the leaders feel should be discussed in the quorums. Big difference. This could all be corrected by simply asking the quorum for topics they’d like to discuss… and I’m rushing to judgement, maybe your quorum all got together and decided that the thing that’s really weighing heavily on their hearts is that sacrament meeting attendance is sitting at 135 and they’d really like to dust off the word sesquicentum in their next quarterly report.

I’m being facetious but at the same time that’s a church centered goal. If the church (organization) ministered to people as opposed to the people ministering to the church (organization), you’d get your numbers.

One approach I like to take as I sit in meetings with those types of topics is to try to imagine what it would be like if someone walked in off the street, knew nothing Mormon, and their impression of that meeting was going to make or break their decision to join the church, be saved, the whole 9 yards. Would they feel a connection with their spiritual side if the meeting felt like an attempt to motivate a demoralized sales force… because that’s how those sorts of meetings often turn out.

DarkJedi wrote:

And just for what it’s worth, if they’re not attending SM, why the heck does anyone think they’re going to go to the temple? Isn’t attending meetings a TR question? Or is it some kind of reverse psychology. Heck, I do attend SM most of the time and I don’t go to the temple.

I think the goal is to use the temple like a carrot to get people to attend SM. But it is weird, like they did a mashup of two oft-discussed topics at church, two birds, one meeting, and didn’t realize how goofy it sounded. “We know we need to go to the temple more.” “We know people need to attend SM more.” Look at it cross-eyed long enough, and there’s your goal.

Our topic is about prioritizing the church in your life. They made the mistake of telling people what it would be beforehand. I already know where I prioritize the church in my life, so I won’t be attending.

Best of luck kid, best of luck.

[Anonymous]

And you’re leading a discussion, not giving a lesson. Start out with the question they gave you and hope there are a few talkative people in your group. Hopefully you can fall into a pattern of pointing to the next guy that wants to make a comment the whole time.

[Anonymous]

Goals are usually a bad approach. When you make a goal, you’ve failed to reach it. When you’ve reached it, it’s no longer a goal.

Let’s say you are 30lbs overweight. If you make it to a goal to lose 30 lbs. You diet, you exercise, you calorie count… you check the scale every day. And every time you check the scale, you are reminded, you are overweight. There will be times you feel you’re trying all you can, and getting nowhere. But if you keep at it, you just might meet your goal. Then the goal is finished. The effort stops. You gain back the weight you lost. It’s a bad approach. Missionaries take on similar goals all the time. What happens is, people join the Church and go inactive within a month or two. The goals might be met, but there’s not much to show for it.

It’s much better to build a system of behavior. If people aren’t attending, it’s because their reasons for staying away are greater than their reasons for coming. It’s as simple as that. You want to BE the sort of ward people want to attend. Back to the weightloss example, if you forget about the weight, and focus on biking to work, or lose the chocolate stash in your desk drawer, you’ll lose weight without even trying. Better yet, you’ll be successful every step of the way. Systems are all about “playing the odds” and “bettering your position”. Start by asking, why would people want to come to our sacrament meeting? And focus on those things that’ll improve the situation.

As for using temple attendance to increase sacrament meeting… I don’t have the slightest clue what one has to do with the other. Too often in the Church, we make poor connections between behaviors and desired outcomes. I think this is one of them.

[Anonymous]

If we like the weight loss analogy.

High school nibbler needed to gain 20 pounds, over the hill nibbler needs to lose about 20 pounds, and church is that place where both nibblers go to have someone challenge them to accept the goal of losing 100 pounds.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

My HPGL wants me to lead a discussion tomorrow in 3rd hour council meetings on the topic of how we can achieve our goal to have 150 people attend sacrament meeting by increasing temple attendance.

This is really weird. I do not have a TR. No way, being encouraged to attend the temple is going to increase my SM attendance.

Are they saying that people that do not attend SM all the time should feel guilty about going to the temple and that the guilt should increase SM attendance. I believe the two may be correlated but not causational.

[Anonymous]

Not that I agree, but they probably believe a “higher goal” like the temple might motivate people to take a “lower step” like attending church on Sunday. I think it simply reflects their own view that the temple is the ultimate motivation – and I respect that, even though I think they are wrong when it comes to reactivation efforts.

[Anonymous]

Mormon activity can be measured in fractions. A fraction of those who join stay active, and a fraction of those get endowed & spend a period tithing, and a fraction of the endowed keep going to the temple & paying tithing… a kind of trickle down effect – maybe not a good expression as it always reminds me of pee!

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I believe the two may be correlated but not causational.

I believe this is somewhat common among church leaders, especially at the mid level. For example in my area there is this push to get new converts to the temple within the first 3 months because someone measured some data that those who did so stayed active long term. What there wasn’t (at least from the data that was shared) was any indication of how many who didn’t go to the temple stayed or how many who did left (although the latter might be inferred). It could be that there actually is a correlation with causation – and it could be not because there is no indication of other factors (or for those of us who like this kind of stuff no control group).

Another example of this is our mission president’s rule that missionary dinner appointments have to be at 5:00 and missionaries have to be back out “proselyting” at 6. I get home at 5:30 on a good day, and that seems to be par for the course for many in our stake because people still complain about it over 2 years later. His reasoning is that in another mission the baptism rate increased when the other MP instituted the same rule. Two years down the road we can’t say the same thing happened here while at the same time the missionaries get fed less (in our ward it’s down to about twice a week on weekdays with weekends being hit or miss). FWIW, our baptism rate was down last year from the year prior. I put “proselyting” in quotes above because I know what the missionaries do in the evenings because I have asked and/or observed – if they don’t have appointments (which is often) they goof off. Even if the theory did pan out and there were actually more baptisms, that’s still not an indication of causation.

My college son who does some of this businessy kind of stuff says all leaders of consequence (like MPs and AAs) should be required to take a basic course in stats.

Related, our stake has a goal that everybody read from the BoM daily. No set amount like a chapter or anything, just “set a goal to read the BoM daily.” As stated earlier, we can’t set goals for other people even if we try to disguise it as “inviting or encouraging them to set goals.” And how do we measure this goal? Nobody asks me and I don’t (and won’t) ask anybody. We have a similar one about increasing family history (“invite families to set a goal to increase names submitted for temple work”). The latter is also meant to increase temple attendance because presumably if you found names to submit you’ll go do them. I and my family have not set either goal.

[Anonymous]

dande48 wrote:

Too often in the Church, we make poor connections between behaviors and desired outcomes. I think this is one of them.

Roy wrote:

Are they saying that people that do not attend SM all the time should feel guilty about going to the temple and that the guilt should increase SM attendance. I believe the two may be correlated but not causational.

Old Timer wrote:

Not that I agree, but they probably believe a “higher goal” like the temple might motivate people to take a “lower step” like attending church on Sunday.

along these lines…first I should probably state that it likely sounds worse than it really is in our ward…meaning the goal was set…it was thrown to us to discuss in our 3rd hour meeting…and that all sounds cold and actually confusing what they are trying to accomplish and what the causation/correlation is going on with this behind a goal like that.

So…in the class yesterday, I did lead the discussion and find most of the group have a brain in their head and know you can’t make silly goals nor can you pressure others to do things, or guilt them.

For example, we had a great discussion around one member who doesn’t come to church, but calls his home teacher for a blessing when he needs it. So…that shows that even though people aren’t always coming to to church…they still have faith…and they still have some wants from the church where they call on us when they need something.

My HPG are a bunch of good guys that know that everyone is in a different place in life, and we can’t pressure them to conform. But…there might be some ways we try to reach out and serve when we can, and inspire others, that if they do want to come back to church or go to temple, maybe it is helpful to have support to do that But we spent most of our time talking about how not to offend…and that comes by understanding them on individual levels and getting to know them and being OK with others wherever they are.

It was a good discussion.

Getting back to the thinking with the goals…I think where it came from was that we have many members who have TRs who are not coming to church, and many that come for sacrament meeting and leave. Normally I would think the goal would be to increase sacrament meeting attendance in order to invite more to prepare to go to the temple…which may be the goal for our EQ right now…but for HP…our group has many families who are seasoned in the church, and are just not as interested in church attendance.

Even still..it may miss the mark…because being lackadaisical to attend church is still curious why they would want to drive 3 hrs to the closest temple.

However…that is the reason the group needs to discuss it, and refine and rework the goal to something we can actually do. Something realistic and meaningful. 3rd hour meeting is about doing that…which is an improvement from just being handed a goal from the ward council. We got to discuss it.

I was in deep thought about it all day yesterday. I liked the comments from our group adn the members were way more loving about it than I gave them credit. But…there is still something that keeps me wondering why goals need to be set…how you motivate people…what is the role of church…because maybe the church should be teaching and supporting people.

To keep going back to the weight loss analogy…they find exercise programs and diets work better when others support you, when there is some accountability to do things. It still takes the individual to do things…but programs and goals help motivate action.

Isn’t that what the church should be? Motivation to live gospel principles in order to find more happiness in life?

The risk is it is done poorly and people get offended. The reward could be someone gets motivated by being prompted to do things they knwo they should do but just need so support to help them.

Not sure which way is best, but it seems the church is trying to help people…and yet…will probably offend many. Not sure. Perhaps it is all in how it is carried out, and how much love is involved.

[Anonymous]

Heber13 wrote:

The risk is it is done poorly and people get offended. The reward could be someone gets motivated by being prompted to do things they knwo they should do but just need so support to help them.

Not sure which way is best, but it seems the church is trying to help people…and yet…will probably offend many. Not sure. Perhaps it is all in how it is carried out, and how much love is involved.

You mentioned offense twice.

Is the greater problem offended people or people that feel like the church isn’t relevant to their lives? Are people offended by our meetings or uninterested in our meetings?

We like the weight loss analogy…

The church has a program to lose weight. It’s jogging.

I hate jogging. In fact I can’t jog due to health issues. I’ve learned to lose weight by getting on a stationary bike. The church doesn’t like that. It’s jogging. That’s the only way to lose weight. Do it. Here, here’s a goal for you to start jogging. We’ll send people to your house every month to ask how your jogging is coming along.

There are also others at church that don’t like jogging and if I try to offer alternatives to jogging to them I’d get censured.

Now…

1) Do I get offended that they don’t look at my personal circumstances, acknowledge that I can’t jog, and that stationary cycling is working for me? Is it offensive to me that they simply won’t leave me alone about how important jogging is and how wrong stationary cycling is? That they impose the one solution fits all program on everyone?

or

2) All the endless talk about jogging at church bores me because I can’t jog, even if I could I would hate every second, and I’ve found something else that works for me. The message at church isn’t going to change, so I move on because the only thing the church offers is not relevant to me and the only experience I have is not valid to them. Impasse.

Maybe it’s a spectrum and people are all up and down it.

And this doesn’t have to be FC related. Believing members that don’t fit the cultural mold, or people that are simply bored with church fall into this category as well. Are they offended by their boredom or just bored?

I’m not sure how to work this in but the church is always on people to do something. Attend church. Do home teaching. Attend BYC. Go to seminary. Jog. Attend the temple. Submit a name to the temple. Go on exchanges. Feed the missionaries. The list never ends. We’re always telling people what they should be doing. What’s the ratio for telling members what to do vs. listening to what they would like to do?

Maybe that’s where your offense comes in? Like members constantly trying to get someone that’s just not interested in the temple to meet the goal of the leaders for that person to go to the temple. They never shut up about it, mostly because there are only three or four things we’re always harping on at church so the subject always comes up, and it either gets annoying or makes church irrelevant because the only thing that will happen at church is more invitations to go to the temple.

But what if that leader asked the inactive what they’d like to do with respect to the church instead of always pushing a plan. Reverse the direction of where the plan comes from.

“I’d like to attend twice a month. I’m not interested in the temple. I’m not interested in home teaching. I’d be willing to do [these] callings.” and then that’s the plan for the leader to do something about.

Just putting out feelers.

Personally I don’t know why everyone has got to attend church every Sunday… or at all for that matter. Yet it can be the culture’s measure of someone’s worth.

[Author]

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