Full-time missionaries: working with the ward#
Subject: missionary work with the ward |
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From: “Kevin J. Black” |
Date: 12/30/2013 2:13 AM |
To: Elder William Black |
Dear William,
While talking with you on Christmas, I was excited to think that maybe I could be useful in helping you find people to teach. I’m sure Preach My Gospel and the Church Handbook have more updated (not to mention authoritative) instructions. Still, here are my suggestions based on my experience in relevant callings over the past 30 years. I am copying Mom and your older sisters who’ve been on missions in case they have radically different views, corrections or add-ons.
If I were a full-time missionary and didn’t have many people to teach, I would do the following.
I would remember that visiting member homes with a clear purpose is much more likely in the long run to result in a baptism than knocking on doors. In fact, following up on member referrals is about the only more useful and important thing I can think of. So I would plan to spend a lot more of my time doing it … in an organized way.
I would make sure that I knew what the bishop thinks about missionary work. He is the key, the linchpin. He need not (and can’t) do everything, but if he thinks missionary work is a secondary objective for after “the ward” is working well, your job will be harder. If it helps any, the Church has tracked this, and wards are more successful in all kinds of ways (temple, welfare, not just missionary goals) if they are wards that expect miracles, have a bishop who champions missionary work, see missionary work as a core part of blessing the lives of every member and organization of the ward, and have a ward council whose members truly see themselves as important parts of the ward missionary council (yes, including Primary and the ward music leader and whatnot).
If there are any mismatches in your vision and the bishop’s, I would discuss it with the zone leaders at some length, pray about it a lot, and include a fact-oriented summary (that avoids anything that sounds blaming or petulant) in a weekly report to the mission president. The comments below won’t work well without the bishop’s leadership.
I would make sure my companion agreed with the plan–no, make that “agreed enthusiastically and contributed to fine-tuning the plan”–before going ahead. Especially if he’s the senior companion. :)
You need to know that in most places, the members are tired of hearing Cool New Plans and Programs from the full-time missionaries. They have to take ownership of this plan and see it as not just a plan or new program, which in their experience will blow over usually in a couple of months, or at longest when the current mission president is released, but rather as a natural and long-term sustainable part of their calling that is actually the solution to problems they have already identified. So do NOT go off half-cocked on this. Think and pray about it with your companion first, not only the plan but especially how to approach the WML and bishop about it.
I would discuss something very like the following plan with the ward mission leader. The overall goal is to use the FTMs’ (full-time missionaries’) resources and the usually untapped skills of ward missionaries to HELP the members be more effective in finding people to teach.
FTMs’ resources include primarily lots of time, but also skill in teaching the lessons, books, videos, pass-along cards, displays, singing talents in the zone, etc.
ward missionaries are usually underutilized primarily because they have no idea what to do and because most WMLs (ward mission leaders) have no idea what to do with them either, and secondarily because if they did start the calling with loads of enthusiasm, that dies on the vine when they have no idea what to do
The word “HELP”, above, is emphasized because it will never work to go rail on the members and call them to repentance, for all these reasons:
you have no authority to do so
member failure is usually not the problem, even if it looks like that to the FTMs (who after all have less life experience)
it usually is counterproductive
then they stop feeding you :)
The general plan is an organized approach to address the following problems:
The best way to have success in the ward’s missionary goals is to have the members eagerly and effectively finding people for you to teach. Best evidence: how hard is it to find people by knocking on doors? Q.E.D.
Most members do not know how to find people for the missionaries to teach
Those who do know usually forget to do it and need consistent follow-up over a period of time.
If one companionship of FTMs works with 8 member families a week (possible but ambitious), and if they follow up with each new member family every other week for 4 visits total (I think that’s a minimum), after a whole year they will have worked with only 50 families. Implication: you need other people to help with this plan.
There are generally few people in the ward who without any further training can help you with this plan.
But fortunately there are generally many who can be trained quickly to make a huge difference.
Here’s the plan.
First the ward mission leader and bishop decide that this plan is a great solution to their ward mission goals, and they agree that they personally, and the bishop’s counselors, will be cheerleaders for it.
Then the bishop, with help from the WML and possibly from you, presents the problems that need solving to the ward council, presents this plan as an important part of the solution, asks for their suggestions for improving it, and invites them to sustain it.
Then it goes like this.
The core of the plan is the FTMs* working with a member family in the members’ home, including follow-up. The goal is not to tell them why they need to do missionary work but rather to offer your time and skills to help them reach their own family missionary goals and to make that easier and more fun for them. *The asterisk is explained below.
The experience with a member family will include:
setting the spiritual environment
asking the family about their family missionary goals
helping the family set those goals (since most families don’t have them written down)
provide a handout, ideally front and back of a single sheet
the back will have a small number of inspiring quotes from the bishop and stake president and from general authorities, and 2-4 references for further study, including perhaps the “set a date” talk by Elder Ballard and the Ensign article called something like “6 secrets to being member missionaries” by Elder C. Christensen. It will also have a list of 5-20 goals that cover a wide range of required experience. Some possible examples of family goals are listed at the end of this document.
the front will have something like “______ family missionary goals 2014” and no more than 3 lines below that for them to write in their goals. Make sure that goals that need them (like “invite 3 people to church”) have dates (like “May 1, Aug 1, Nov 1”).
telling them up front that you will help them accomplish these goals and will stick with them
making sure the family will ask God what goals He wants them to choose rather than just picking their own goals or even worse your goals for them
setting an appointment for follow-up, probably in about 2 weeks, and reassuring them that the purpose of that visit is to help them remember, to answer questions that will come up as they set goals as a family, etc.
bearing testimony
CRUCIAL: you go back several more times, at roughly 2-week intervals, until they are feeling success. The first couple of visits will probably be, “oh, we totally forgot. Sorry!” And you tell them that’s just human, and you pull out another copy of the Family Missionary Goals handout if needed, and this time you help them pray and decide what to write down if needed. At subsequent visits you may offer to take a BoM to one of their friends, or you may help them write a mormon.org page, or you may help them plan a FHE, or you may show them which 4 videos you have in the apartment that you’d be glad to show in their home to a friend, or you may role-play with them like you did in the MTC (“ok, Suzy, you be you, and I’ll pretend to be your best friend at school that you are thinking maybe you could invite to a Mutual activity”).
Here’s where the asterisk is explained. Since you can only reach a few member families by yourselves before you are transferred:
At first you will do these visits with 4-8 families selected by the bishop. Generally he will want to select his own family and those of the WML and other members of the ward council including at least one of the sisters on the ward council. The second group of families would likely include other members of the ward council and any ward missionaries aside from the WML.
As you do these visits with the first or first and second groups of families, you ask the WML to help you decide who will be invited to be experts to duplicate your effort. All ward missionaries should probably be assigned to be trained, and perhaps others. You (or others whom you have trained, e.g. the WML) work with these folks as members first, then go with them and back them up as they visit and train some cherry-picked ward families themselves to do what you did with those first families, and you stay with them until they’re ready and confident to carry on without you.
Say after a month or two you have the FTMs, the WML, two other ward missionaries, and a member of the EQ presidency all trained. Now collectively you can reach 50 more ward families (4 visits each) in more like 3 months rather than a year. And voila, all the ward missionaries now have all the assignments they can handle for the next year or more.
The plan has to be coordinated at a ward level or it will fail. The WML and the FTMs will probably want to keep duplicate books, and the list has to stay in the ward, i.e. must be transferred to the next set of FTMs when you are transferred away.
The WML can ask the ward clerk for a list of all member families, one line per family
The ward council can decide whether to have you visit every family on the list (that would be my vote usually) or to identify a few families for you not to visit (e.g. “they said they would call the police on any Mormon who shows up”), or whatever.
The WML can assign another ward missionary to keep track of the list of all ward members and which have had visits #1, 2, 3, 4, and from whom. They have to have it updated and back to the WML before each of your weekly planning meetings. Voila, another ward missionary already has something important to do for the next year.
The WML can assign a ward missionary to help you prepare and copy the handout mentioned above–probably Version 2 of the handout, since you probably will write Version 1 yourselves because you won’t want to wait.
Anyway, you probably get the general idea here. I hope this is helpful rather than annoying or burdensome. The details will have to depend on the ward’s goals and circumstances anyway.
Lots of love,
Dad
Examples of family goals
“pray 5 times a week for people the FTMs are teaching”
“every time someone asks what I did over the weekend I will tell them”
“I will practice helpful answers to questions like ‘wait, you don’t drink ale??’”
“invite a friend to a FHE in the next 2 months”
“invite 3 people to come to church with us at least 1 week before any time someone in my family is giving a talk or singing in the choir or whatever”
“find someone by May 1st whom God has prepared to hear the elders”.