If you are having a meeting this weekend stop and ask yourself WHY? Are you going to walk in there and download a list of information that could easily be put in an email? Do they really need to wake up early, put socks on in the dark, eat breakfast alone, scrap ice off their car windows, drive on ice, sit in a hard chair for an hour simply to find out that the scout camp will now be NEXT Saturday rather than THIS Saturday?
Meetings don’t take an hour…they take an hour from each individual (Remember this little video?). On average 10 people attend Ward Council and therefore the meeting takes 10 hours from the highly efficient group.
My fondest wish is that we could remove the word “meeting” from our vocabulary – as in, “We are going to a meeting.” I wish we could view them as “revelatory experiences” – and that won’t happen unless we strive to make them such experiences and quit viewing them just as meetings.
-Elder David A. Bednar, 2010 World Wide Leadership Training
Go grab your meeting agenda (if you don’t have one that’s probably another sign to cancel the meeting) and ask yourself this question: “Can I just as effectively relay that information in an email?” Then go write the email. Your meeting will still take 10 hours but it will be spent on the issues that need the complete focus of 10 highly efficient people. And if there are no issues….then cancel it. They will love you for it!
I love how they changed "enrichment" to be called a Relief society meeting. Yet they don't want to consider them as "meetings". Yep next time I announce the next RS meeting I will just call it a RS experience.
I think this will be a big change as the youth of old comes into leadership positions. It takes nearly a generation to make shifts. Sometimes the more "mature members" (nice way of saying old) want to spend most of the meeting talking about the calender, despite we are asked not to do this in the handbook.
Maybe it will happen sooner since this was clearly mentioned in the world wide leadership training.
Ward Council isn't a meeting, it's a Council – if only Bishops could take that to heart, the Bishop is the one that will impact whether a council performs its purpose, or if the council is derailed by scheduling and non-essentials.
WWLT has emphasized this now since Oct 2010 with the release of the new handbooks, though E. Ballard has been teaching about councils for years.
We need Bishops who Want and Encourage leaders in his Ward to have 'Revelatory Experiences' if only lip-service is given to it, leaders will shut down and let things happen. If a Bishop must maintain control, and only and all Revelation flows through him, or coordinates all information through PEC without female input, the process will never work.
While I agree that a lot of times people think meetings are "no fun", and even a "waste of time". I disagree about them not being important. I think that since members of the church are imperfect, me included, we have imperfect meetings. We need better meetings with meaning and that fulfill the purpose of all in attendance. If the church wanted to be run like a dictatorship, then sending a email with demands would work. But as a lot of emails are mistyped and misunderstood, we better stick to the meetings and search for the right spirit of the meeting to accomplish the work of the Lord, and be patient with the other imperfect souls around us, and appreciate those who are and have been patient with us.
Allyson — Thanks for your comment! I agree completely that meetings are as imperfect as the people running them. The last thing that should happen in a ward is a form of dictatorship. Ward Council should be full of discussion and debate so that the best solutions can be discovered by the group as a whole. Many times the meeting time gets filled with simple transfer of information that doesn't require discussion. This type of information should be transferred through other means rather than gathering everyone together.
Thanks for giving me a chance to clarify.
Great points! However, let me take this to the next level. Discussions, debates and brainstorming in meetings can only be as efficient as the individual preparation and thought that precedes them. In other words, leaders must come spiritually and intellectually prepared for the issues that will be discussed. They should have been thinking and praying about them before they are brought up for discussion. This is where the executive secretaries play an important role: compiling the agenda and emailing it prior to each meeting, to each participant.
This also highlights a crucial element of motivation: feeling that our contributions are valued and needed. Nothing motivates people more than to know this. If we just wait for the meeting to "throw issues up in the air", waiting for anyone to come up with ideas, we are valuing the group, not the individuals that compose it.