There is no shortage of posts about Home Teaching. Its origins, history, changes, good and bad attributes of home teachers, 100% home teaching….it’s a real hot topic.
Like most others, I have my own opinions about home teaching. As a young boy I had wonderful experiences visiting families, as an older teenager I felt too cool for home teaching. As an adult, sometimes finding the time is difficult. Indeed, many people don’t want monthly visits and the mould of home teaching doesn’t fit many people.
As a newly called (and for the first time) Branch President in a small country town only a handful of members, I inherited a Branch with a non-existent home teaching program. I tried with the standard focus on companionships and accountability. I tried everything in the Handbook. It didn’t work.
What should I do? How could we, as a Branch, care for one another?
As an emergency service worker, my office was just across the road from the local KFC. It was not uncommon for a few of us to get a bucket of chicken to share on a night shift. It was a chance to relax and enjoy one another’s company and forget about work for half an hour. Then the thought came to me…..let’s combine home teaching and KFC!!
And that is exactly what we did!!!
On the second Tuesday of the month I had all the youth and male adults get together at the apartment of the Senior Missionary couple. We started with a prayer and then assigned companionships, based on how many we had. The members were previously contacted and it quickly became well known that that Tuesday night was home teaching night. We would drive around and visit with most families in the Branch, focusing on those who needed the visits. When we were all done, I got some KFC on the way back and we all finished the night with a big feed of chicken. The youth loved it (no surprises there) and the older guys seemed to enjoy the fellowship and the genuine visits with good people.
The youth would tell their friends in other wards what we did. They were jealous. I told many people I knew. Reactions ranged from “Great idea” to “That’s not what the Handbook says”.
***Stats alert*** We visited most people most months for about 4 years. More importantly, the Branch grew from about 20 to nearly 50. We went from meeting in a high school to our own space in an office type set up. We had 98 people at the new chapel opening. ***End stats alert***
***Pride alert*** Our youth were strong, our adults likewise. People came back. Some long term less active made monumental changes in their lives. The spirit was very strong – and we had lots of fun!! ***End pride alert***
So, what have you or your Ward or Branch done to do Home Teaching a bit different?
Was there resistance?
Did it involve food?
Discuss….
Wheat & Tares 
When I was single, I was a lot more creative. Sometimes I would invite all my home teaching brothers and sisters to my house to watch General Conference and then we’d eat–it was almost like a nice Sunday party! Also, when I was Sunday School president, I would invite all the teachers in my ward over when we would have an inservice on better teaching. I even invited my old seminary (and later LDS Institute teacher) to come give us some ideas. And we always included a breakfast with these meetings. They were a lot of fun.
But now that I have little children, I wouldn’t dare think of doing these things. The house is already a wreck by them.
Love it! Great idea. For some reason, though, your title made me think of Wet Hot American Summer. Maybe due to Kentucky Fried Movie.
what you’re talking about is how personal connection is more important than church programs.
guess which we have more of right now? guess which ways the numbers are going?
The handbook says very little in terms of specifics about how hometeaching is “supposed to” go down. And even if it did [in my opinion], we could toss the handbook out the window because the scriptures describe the functions of what we’ve organized as “hometeaching” to be:
I’ve found the current system for hometeaching to be broken in that it asks the EQ president to report numbers, whereas it asks to the hometeachers to assess needs.
There needs to be some sort of translation between the elders doing what they can to visit the members and assess their needs — and then them reporting all of that to the EQ presidency — and then the EQ president reporting all of that information to the Stake in terms of some number.
Instead we tend to get the EQ president getting a request for numbers from the Stake for their reports, so he e-mails/calls all the elders and asks for their hometeaching numbers, [which is something the elders are not supposed to assess/report on] and not the needs of the members. And so hometeaching ends-up being something done more as an assigned-friendship that’s done out of “duty” or “obligation, which kinda makes it the very opposite of joy [which is what it should be].
i’m generally not a fan of home teachers. two guys shooting the breeze with my husband about football for an hour is how it often turned out. I resented the drain on my time and demands on my fake politeness just to get these guys checkmarked for home teaching. since I’ve had poor experiences I generally try to invite families (VT & HT) over for barbecues or dessert and games or FHE. I get to know someone 100x better that way. Now we’re all friends and the formalities are just in the way. We ask those people for help and are there for them because we’re friends and genuinely care for them now. KFC sounds good, too.
PW74, Justine, Kristine A – Thanks for your comments. What you are each saying – in your own experience – is that the focus on numbers (business/corporate culture) IS NOT effective. Personal relationships and genuine caring about people (the culture that Christ instilled) IS effective.
This is certainly how our little Branch felt when the KFC HT was in full swing.
I think Justin well describes how the culture of “numbers” falsely replaces the pastoral model we perhaps should be operating under.
I like your solution, LDS_Aussie. I have an experience that’s probably not really generalizable, but that I still thought was cool. When I was growing up, my family had a home teacher for years who was a librarian. Rather than read us any messages out of the Ensign, he would bring the latest picture books that he had come across, and he would always find a way to tie them to some gospel message. He was really a great guy, and he definitely got my sisters and me to pay attention. 🙂
We haven’t seen home teachers for ages. My husband and son are very diligent though. At the moment HTers appear to be assigned to those who are new members, part member families or struggling, which might explain why I’ve no idea who ours are. We probably don’t have any assigned. I do think it can be a shame that children from active families don’t get to see HTers visiting their families, especially if we are expecting them to grow up to be good HTers, but that may just be me.
I have seen it done various ways. At one point home teaching assignments concentrated on looking after the active members, and monthly or fortnightly ‘reach out’ nights were held with the missionaries and HP/EQ pairing up and given a list of less active members to visit. This got a lot of people covered, and I guess helped numbers. I don’t know about consistency though, as I don’t think they’d see the same people every month, and I’m not sure it got people back out. What it did do was quickly identify those who definitely did not want HTers bothering them.
In a previous ward and stake we had one annoying home teacher who insisted it was as much our responsibility to allow home teachers to visit every month as it was for him to visit. At the time I was commuting to work, getting up at 4.30am, and not getting home until after 6pm most week days. In order to get up early I’d have to be in bed by 8.30pm. It was very difficult to mesh schedules then. And I recall being dragged out of bed one evening to accommodate home teachers.
So, I guess I’ve experienced both finding conscientious home teachers annoying, as well as being slightly irritated at not being assigned any now. Ah well.