Home Teaching Changes are they more then just our Stake?


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Stats are not what is important it is what they represent that is.

The Ward started this program prior to the hand book of instruction.

It was tried in my previous Ward and ruined home teaching for 2 years after they went back to teaching everyone.

Simply put for many people when they are not being home taught their motivation to go home teaching is reduced. And when you remove every easy to see family we loose the buffer against those who are hard to see or deal with.

My biggest issue was we were organizing home teaching without reference to the guidelines laid out in the old and new handbooks.

The EQ Pres and HPGL would sit and between the two of them decide who was teaching who, create companionships with no concern to which group each belonged to, they didn't know the needs or abilities of all the families or companions so there was constant adjusting because of such conflicts and every time a minor change happens, ie one companion moved etc it forced a major revamp of the list.

EQ for example has 3 normal companionships, 1 full time missionary and 1 husband-wife teams. The other 12 EQ Home Teachers are paired up with HP members and report to them.

It makes it hard to talk about being accountable in EQ when most of our members are not under the EQ direction.

The handbook allows for exceptions and they should exist where needed but the entire program should not be an exception to the guidelines.

As I had warned our numbers have continued to drop even though we have less families for each companionship to visit, we have worked with the concept of geography and ease being the main determining factors. Last month it was the main topic in PEC and they asked for ideas.

I checked to see if they actually wanted to hear from me about it again, I pointed out exactly what the handbook states on how it should be organized and pointed out that we keep changing things and they are getting worse not better so lets do it the way the Lord says, my opinion is from experience no matter what sense it seems to make when things are done the Lord's way they work.

They are reorganizing based on the handbook, the only thing I am not positive on is if they are dropping the two tier home teaching or not, I believe they are which will give each companionship 5 families.

Note I did all this when I only had 3 families with the current method and I have to drive 30 minutes just to be in the area of my families that I teach which makes it hard to get 3 done in a night let alone 5.

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Another comment to margin of error

I agree completely with your comments in your last paragraph. That is one issue we find with the current organization because we are not responsible in EQ for most of the EQ home teachers, HP are. We wanted to hold a Home Teaching conference for EQ members to discuss and have them help create a plan to deal with those issues so they have ownership of it. But until we can have a united EQ in effort it is hard. And most of the answers to the questions mentioned in that paragraph have been negative.

But until we can build a sense of stability, purpose and accountability re home teaching we can not get the members to take on the responsibility to those questions.

I don't care about numbers themselves. When I was mission leader I never cared about the numbers baptized it was the number retained that mattered because that represented salvation.

I can have the Ward get 90 percent Home Teaching, have an after church monthly meal and use it to home teach each other. But that gets the numbers but not the purpose.

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I strongly disagree with the attitude that Bishops and Stake Presidents don’t need home teachers. We recently had a very active brother in our EQ tell us how he has never really felt the desire to home teach even though he knows he should. For him this lack of desire goes back to when he was 14 or so. He had been HT companions with his dad for a couple of months and went every month, but then his dad was called as the Bishop so he was assigned a new companion. The new companion hardly ever took him HT and because his dad was the Bishop the family never had HT. This Brother never learned the importance of HT at an early age and therefore has struggled with HT ever since. We need to remember it’s about the entire family and not just the parents and what calling they have or if they are on the active or inactive list.

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I agree, I pointed out to our Bishop when this started last fall that his family is one who needed it most because his calling was keeping him away from his family due to the pressures of his calling. That created a void which should be watched over by Home Teachers to help out the family.

Personally I find when I don't have home teachers coming my motivation to go out goes way down. My previous Ward found that trend was with most members when they tried this years ago and now my current Ward has found the same thing.

In Theory this plan makes sense, focusing Home Teaching on those most in need, reduce numbers of families to make it easier. These should enhance home teaching both in percentage and in real impact on those who seem to most need it.

Reality is different however, it ends up making it harder to get done not easier. And less of those who need it receive it because the Home Teachers actually doing the work goes way down.

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  • 1 month later...

Update as of March 2011

I have been covering PEC and WC meetings for our EQ President for several weeks, the first one focused on the declining Home Teaching results each month. After listening to several ideas to 'fix" the program including creating an award system to earn a meal. I finally asked if they really wanted to hear my comments on the topic yet again.

This time I used the Hand Book of Instruction to support my comments as I was making them. I left it with everything we have tried is not working, I can't say why doing it the Lord's way is better but I know if we do things the Lord's way he will do the rest. What do we have to lose!

Starting April 1st we have set the Home Teaching up as the Lord has outlined it. I am surprised at how hard it has been to keep everyone on track with how it says we should do it and not have them create a "better way". To me it is clearly laid out. Now we have EQ teaching EQ and HP teaching HP in proper companionship's. Of course there are some exceptions which is allowed for.

And I did warn that this major shakeup is being done without the time for the EQ or HP to get a firm knowledge of those now responsible to those groups so it will most likely need a revision in June to deal with bugs created from that lack of knowledge. But after that the lists should be much more stable.

The hardest part was getting people to understand that the Bishop assigns families to one group or the other and then the individual Priesthood groups put companionship's and teaching families together with final approval from the Bishopric. The HP kept trying to trade teachers and families!

Everyone is being Home Taught again, in my old Ward it took months to recover HT after they had tried that method of only Teaching those who need it. I can only Hope this reformatting of the list in line with the Lord speeds up the recovery!

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Hey their LDSValley

I like your post on HT and EQ being a former EQ Counselor for 12yrs HT was always interesting especially peoples interpretations of the manual and ways of making it work lol Always used to laugh when HP would always (try)assign EQ with HT rosters and so forth and alot of people I think it was the clerks who always tried too explain percentages too me every month and every quater and people doing quick HT in the coridors but I always had a amazing experiances with HT

my experiance of HT and all the programs that I came across has shown me that "People matter" if their strong or weak (Gospel)their was no such thing active inactive does not exist in my vocab> where all members and that my EQ try their best at whatever was set both personally and as a Quorum it was really cool that 8members when I started out in EQ Presidency all eventually become temple members for the first time(all due to God) and we where(are) still tight knit unit even though I am not apart of EQ(don't go to church much) but the lessons I have learned are immeasurable:):):)

cheers

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In my old ward, we had so many less actives, it was decided that our teachees would have physical visits every 3 months - otherwise it was maybe a note in the mail and phone calls. Another ward I was in, I didn't even have a companion and about 5 women to teach. More focus was placed on those less active, but it was decided that "strong" members need to be visited too. We can't just assume that everyone is OK or maybe they won't remain strong through their trials.

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  • 5 months later...

UPDATE

From April 1 until the end of July we had an increase in the number of people being Home Taught each month. April was a big increase from under 25% to over 50% but could be accounted for by everyone being taught each month instead of Quarterly.

However May, June, and July gave us a steady increase. Along with the revamping of the list we did informal PPI each month instead of simply asking who was or was not taught.

We asked questions like why someone was not taught.

How was the companionship working out.

What issues or problems did they find with the family.

Each month at our first Sunday EQ Meeting we held a business meeting where we discussed the HT results and praised up the rising visits. It also allowed the Brethren to voice any issues or comments.

We kept records of the PPI's and evaluated them after three months. We found that the majority of those who still would not go out home teaching were those who still had no home teachers coming in.

In mid July at opening exercises the HPGL decided to chastise everyone because the HP Home Teaching was not progressing upward. The same meeting the Bishop decided to threaten everyone with a Bishop PPI if they did not do their Home Teaching.

The EQ President and I were upset because we had been using positive reinforcement and were getting good results. the first week of August the EQ President was released. The EQ Home Teaching went down for the first time.

I ended up getting called back as 1st C last week and after I said yes I got to listen to the new President chastise the EQ about Home Teaching. The ironic bit was he was upset about finding out a HT family needed help through the HP. After listening to him tear a strip off us I stuck my hand up, informed him it was my family and the reason it was not reported was they had not let us in to teach for several months in the face of many efforts to do so. I also found out that the EQ President was sitting down with the HPGL to resort the HT list instead of doing it as two separate lists as we had arranged.

So after lots of effort and proof what works it looks like we are back to where we started! Wish I had known this before I agreed to the second round as 1st C. ( I had even told the Stake I thought I was a bad choice and the President needed two fresh councilors, that I didn't want it but would take it if the Stake wanted me to.)

Edited by LDSVALLEY
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Guest mormonmusic

LDS Valley -- I feel REALLY TIRED when I read that. You had things chugging along and then new people took over and BINGO -- right back to the old guilt trip. It's not wonder people don't like home teaching.

I have my own story where the HC ripped on us all, the Stake President ripped on the HP quorum after they'd been out the week previously (7 companionships made 35 visits to homes), and a member fo the Stake Presidency put us into two groups -- the people who do home teaching, and the slackers, as he called them, and set up the meeting as a courtroom drama, where the slackers had to defend themselves.

As someone who had done my hometeaching, and who had grown very weary of administering the program previously, it was a huge withdrawal. No wonder people don't want to do it -- and often don't even come to Church anymore over it.

Your positive reinforcement methods sounded very positive and the right way to go. Congratulations on being part of that.

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