For most of our married life my husband and I have held callings that did not conflict, or which, sometimes complimented each-other. Early in our marriage, before children, we both served in the youth programme, and I was pianist, whilst he served as chorister in our sacrament meetings. Once children came along we weren’t called to serve together like that, but since we both served in the ward there was no conflict.
A few months ago my husband was called to serve on the Stake High Council, a calling which involves considerably more travel: to stake meetings, and visiting other wards in the Stake at least one Sunday in a month. Meanwhile, I serve as primary pianist/accompanist. I really enjoy my calling, playing piano for the junior and senior primary, and taking my guitar in to sing with the nursery children. I don’t feel thrilled about taking a week off on a monthly basis. I feel like I’m letting the children down. However, I also want my family to spend Sundays together. I want us to attend church together, and that means I have to pass my responsibilities to someone else every time my husband needs to visit another ward. My children also have responsibilities in the ward, but because my children generally choose not to participate in most stake youth/ysa events, visiting other wards and meeting other members their age is probably good for them. To say we’re not the most outgoing of families would be an understatement. Besides which, we’re a one car family. I don’t drive anyway, and our own ward building is just that little bit too far to walk. I’d have to book a taxi both ways, and that just adds to both the stress and the expense.
Not all families go down the we all attend church together route. Growing up, I recall that when my father served on the Stake High Council, my mother and siblings would continue to attend our local ward, which was within a reasonable walking distance, and I’d go with my father. I don’t know how they really felt about that, but it’s what they did. Currently I see some stake officers choose to do it one way, and some the other. I imagine there are pros and cons either way.
Finally, there’s a part of me that feels aggravated that “priesthood” callings take priority. That at stake level (and beyond) there’s a “boys” club to which I will never be admitted. That this is something I simply cannot share with my husband in any meaningful way. That church is taking him away from me. That it is disproportionately women who will finish up sacrificing the service they find meaningful and fulfilling if they wish to attend church with their spouse. I can’t fault the Stake Presidency, who bent over backwards to emphasize that family comes before calling, and who also spoke to me before issuing the call. It’s a structural problem outside their power to change. There’s a part of me that hankers after the simple, collaborative days, working together when I was pianist and he was chorister.
- How do/would you choose to juggle ward and stake callings and why?
- What do you feel about priesthood leadership callings and their impact, both positive and negative, on families?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
My husband is unlikely to ever have a stake calling, so I can’t comment in that direction. Instead he is a long term scouts leader. Which means all his vacation time from work goes to scouts. Our last family vacation was in 2011.
He tries to make up for it by doing family stuff on weekends (sat only of course because the ym program is endlessly understaffed and thus he has to be at church). But of course scouts gets one weekend a month of that time and sat is the only day for him to work on the house as well.
If I was a better person, I’d be understanding about all this. But I’m not. We have all daughters, who feel very left out of all the adventures their dad takes other people’s kids on. I see that, how tired my husband gets, how much the other families don’t even support scouts themselves, and I just feel resentful.
There was a time when my husband was called to a stake calling resulting in a similar situation to yours.
We had a toddler who needed to aclimatise to nursery with a parent, a seriously sick daughter who needed a parent to be with her at home, and an adolescent daughter who would frequently go missing from church and could not be left alone at home. My husband was told to’take a step into the dark’ by the stake president and my husband chose otherwise.Incidentally,we also had only one car and could not afford to run another.
The consequence was that we lost our temple recommends. At the time there were also serious consequences for our living and the lives that we worked with-without recommends we become ‘personae non gratiae.’ I’ve still not recovered from that time, and there were serious consequences for ourselves and others.
It absolutely astounds (and disgusts) me that this kind of thing goes on. I am so sorry you were abused in this way.
I think the LDS church corrupts the meaning of “calling”. It means a strong urge toward a vocation (or the vocation itself). A person might feel a calling to become a priest or a doctor, for example. There’s no meaning (in a dictionary, at least) where a calling is an “assignment”.
A calling is never mandatory or has negative consequences if refused… it is a thing done out of love and devotion to a noble cause.
The LDS church seems to think it means “God told me to call you to my office and assign you a job, and if you refuse, you are defying God.” Oddly enough, every other church has people who gladly pitch in and take care of business without being asked (or forced). I think the LDS implementation simply enables petty, small minded men to act too big for their britches.
I was a full time student when my husband received a calling in the bishopric. I was concerned he would be called as bishop, which would have been impossible with my studies and clinical requirements and kid responsibilities. I requested less responsibility and got it to balance. It is still very hard when we have a sick kid and he is conducting and I am teaching. May will be an interesting month due to my work requirements now. We have felt like we could express our needs with all our bishops the last 20 years and adjustments were made.
The published guidelines for callings seem very reasonable and family friendly to me. I hope the bad experiences are anomalies caused by inexperienced or overzealous administrators. There needs to be oversight when administrators overstep their authority, bully, or retaliate against members. Members need to be supportive of others who must refuse callings for whatever reason, not join in the bullying. And you know what? In any organization, there will be go-getters and shirkers. Life isn’t fair. Get over it and love everybody the same.
https://www.lds.org/handbook/handbook-2-administering-the-church/callings-in-the-church?lang=eng
When I served on the high council my 5 kids were ages 2-11. I was assigned to a struggling Spanish branch that required my assistance twice a month (I often spoke in sacrament meeting and taught gospel doctrine in the branch). My wife had a youth calling that kept her in our ward. Despite mild discouragement against the practice, I regularly took my older kids with me on my assignments. They loved ‘Spanish church’ and even learned the articles of faith in Spanish.
18 months after I started that calling i was released …. to be the bishop in my normal ward. Now I was in the same sacrament meeting with my family, but ironically I sat with them less often since I was on the stage. Even then I regularly broke taboos and invited a child or two to sit with me on the stage. Family first means family first.
Having a husband on “the leadership track” I feel for you. Although my complaints have lessened considerably since he was EQP in a very transient & newlywed/nearlydead ward. We were foster parents in addition and he was going to night school year round and basically we saw him 2-4 days per month. I was ragged.
Right about that time they came out w the new handbook and a push that if one parent had a big calling to go lighter on the spouse. I was called as Primary Pres, the husband was released, and my pure personal inspiration from God put him in Sunbeams.
Since then he’s been in bishoprics, but since it’s never been as demanding as the nightmare of EQP that one time I can handle it.
Also I came “out” as feminist a few years ago and my callings have since been in primary (chorister/teacher) or the enrichment board. I think we won’t have to worry about juggling big callings any time soon. Not that I mind nursery. I’m apparently the rare kind that prefers it a bit.
The weeknight juggle is what’s hard for me, when both parents need to be there for YM/YW callings or bishopric things and there are kids at home. I think that needs to be taken into consideration so if one spouse has to be out of the home on a weeknight, the other doesn’t.
I have not dealt with it personally, but have previously watched several families struggle through this. one family was a family of 6 boys and one girl (the youngest). It was pretty torturous to watch this woman come to church most Sundays without her husband, with 7 children in tow. I felt terrible for her and you could see that it was a struggle, and honestly, the kids were disruptive to people around them – how can one parent really keep control of 7 kids? I watched another family with 3 kids go through it too, but the youngest was a baby and the mom was still nursing. You could tell that was really stressful too.
It becomes very clear who is on the ‘leadership track’ and who is not and those families who have a husband/father who IS on the leadership track seem to just keep trudging through it year after year.
Rt, that sounds really grim. 5 years is a long time to go without a family holiday while your daughters are growing up. I’m so sorry.
handlewithcare, that should not have happened. Again, I’m so sorry that it did. A terrible way to treat people in your situation. I think sometimes leaders can forget that “ministering to” includes all your members, *including* (especially so, in my view) the active members you are asking to serve others. There’s also the expectation where those leaders have the balance wrong in their own lives to think that because they’re making sacrifices, that everyone else should too.
Elder Anderson, I’m sure there’s an element of that. There’s certainly something of a culture of never saying ‘no’ to a calling because it comes from the Lord. And I agree that the LDS definition is very weird.
One family member served as early morning seminary teacher at a time when for some reason that was an “assignment”, not a “calling” (we seem to get into these weird semantic tangles about things from time to time – it’s a “calling” these days), and because they didn’t have a “calling” the local Bishop tried to give them a “calling” as well. They had the sense to point out that teaching early morning seminary had to be enough for anyone without taking on anything else.
I love this btw:
“Members need to be supportive of others who must refuse callings for whatever reason, not join in the bullying. And you know what? In any organization, there will be go-getters and shirkers. Life isn’t fair. Get over it and love everybody the same.”
Star, I’m so glad that your Bishops have been accommodating. It’s good when that happens. My husband was able to get me released from my callings following the birth of both my children, because the stress of having a calling and not being able to fulfil it at the time was too much for me. It’s great when leaders can see us as people. I hope it all works out in May.
Dave K, that sounds a heavy assignment in the branch. I’m glad you were able to take your kids, and that they enjoyed it. I know I enjoyed going with my Dad. And that you later had your kids on the stand with you as Bishop. It’s important for our kids not to feel sidelined by church responsibilities I think.
Kristine, I don’t know about leadership track as such. I think things might be a bit different outside Utah. I’m never really sure what it means. He’s been EQP three times during our marriage, and then served on the Bishopric, but had other callings in between – ward mission leader, ward clerk, exec sec., so… This is his first time “on stake”, as we say here though.
Edit 1/4/16: apparently I forgot the year (less than?) my husband spent as stake Sunday school president – oh dear! Make this his second time on stake. Sorry!
anon: “when both parents need to be there for YM/YW callings or bishopric things and there are kids at home. I think that needs to be taken into consideration so if one spouse has to be out of the home on a weeknight, the other doesn’t.”
I so agree. Even when those kids are teens it has to be a consideration, given the emphasis church leaders put on safe use of computers in a public family area etc., and the fact that our kids need to go online so much to research for their homework assignments, or even complete homework on online sites specified by the teacher. I do remember both my parents having to be out, and me, as the eldest being left in charge, but that was pre-internet.
KT, that has to be very hard. I guess that was the position my mother was in with my 6 younger siblings while I went with my Dad, though I didn’t get to see that side. We’ve seen some very young families where the father has been serving on the stake presidency over the last decade or more. In some cases they travel together, in others not. We always have a lot of extra kids in primary at ward conference. Service on the stake presidency tends to be lengthy, but they seem to be allowed back in the ward on release for a while at least.
I watched my dad and mom do this all of my life. From the time I was 5 and for the next 28 years my father has done those callings: EQP-Bishop-High Council-Stake Presidency-YSA Bishop. He switched positions this last time with the former YSA Bishop. My mom has been with him the whole time, including a decade as an early morning seminary teacher (as a calling). One of us kids (of 4) would go with him everytime he visited another ward, he liked having us around. He’ll be getting released in June. My mom has openly said she is done with callings anymore demanding than working at the Family History center after 3 decades. It’s time for them to retire, go on a mission, travel and enjoy themselves. My dad has said he’d take her to Europe for 20 years, and hasn’t done it yet.
For myself, I’ve been in EQPs or a clerk/ex secretary for the last 10 years. My current ward’s EQ has about 6 or 7 people active in it. It’s light duty to say the least. Due to the nature of my work we move around the world every 2-3 years and I’m often gone for several months at a time. I admire and love my parents for the sacrifice that they made with callings over the years, but i really wonder if i would have the same fortitude for 3 decades of it. I remember a posting here or on BYCC about the levels of service members in the UK who joined the church in the 60/70s gave, decades and decades of it before it burned them out. Whenever people bring up this topic I think of my parents and that thread of stories. I just don’t know how they did it.
Our Stake Pres. is a young guy, mid 30’s, never been in a stake presidency before and had only been a Bishop for 18 months and had never served in a bishopric prior to that. His family had only lived here for 7 years and were planning on moving when he got called to be Stake Pres. They have 6 or 7 kids and they had to sell a business they ran in order for him to serve. I feel for the family and I hope none of those kids go inactive, the Mom is run ragged and the older kids have to tend the younger ones. Same with our Bishop, never served in a Bishopric before, has 4 kids, wife works FT as does he and they are run ragged as well. Our ward is shrinking and it’s tough to find people to run the ward. She made a comment once that there are only 6 families doing anything in the ward! hahhaha! Our stake is a worn out stake and people just leave stuff for others to do and we are supposed to be getting a Temple and how that will affect us and overwhelm us will be interesting to see.
We have a “business” stake, in which the leaders are all professionally successful and stake HC tend to be also – and the female stake leaders tend to be their wives. In other words, I’m not likely to ever hold a stake calling, and my wife, as a teacher, is permanently labeled for the Primary. Right now I’m the 1st counselor in the EQ presidency, but I can pretty much guarantee that’s as high as I’ll ever go – which is fine by me.
Our conflicts have been pretty easy to manage – and when I hear about not only conflicts but the unjust consequences of trying to prioritize the family, as handlewithcare has outlined, I get the urge to commit some sort of obvious but not too serious transgression every so often – not enough to lose me a recommend, but just one of the kind that causes bishops and stake presidents to say, “No, not Ike; he’s just not quite stable enough.”
I’m sure the Lord would understand
“obvious but not too serious transgression every so often”
Next time you meet with the Bish, bring a thermos and offer him a cup of coffee. 😉
whizz bang,
“Our Stake Pres. is a young guy, mid 30’s, never been in a stake presidency before…”
I was thinking about this wrt handlewithcare’s case. Managing people and resources with efficiency and wisdom takes time to learn. Not everybody is cut out for it, and you can’t learn it in school–no matter how bright nor how good a leader.
If you put somebody in the position without the right experience and emotional maturity, it can lead to problems like handlewithcare’s. It can also lead to burnout like your gentleman experienced, because he hasn’t gained the skills needed to prioritize and work efficiently.
With long practice, much of the work becomes second nature and can be done on autopilot, but starting out, it burns a lot of time and energy.
In summary: the higher the position, the more critical real-world experience and maturity become.
I can’t even begin to thank all of you for your support and experience here. We now have three kids who site the demands of church life as a disincentive to their continuing attendance. And whilst I agree that some experience helps in church leadership, our Bishop and Stake President were very experienced men.
I very much take the view nowadays that being a disciple means forgiving those who haven’t fulfilled their calling from someone elses’ p.o.v., and that miraculous people are trying to fit this stuff into lives that often have no discretionary time. I no longer want to be one of those people, but spend the rest of my life seeking to be a healer of the pain in my family and serving them and my husband, whilst trying to be responsive to community needs.
Thankyou so much brothers and sisters.
never forget: “I admire and love my parents for the sacrifice that they made with callings over the years, but i really wonder if i would have the same fortitude for 3 decades of it. I remember a posting here or on BYCC about the levels of service members in the UK who joined the church in the 60/70s gave, decades and decades of it before it burned them out. Whenever people bring up this topic I think of my parents and that thread of stories. I just don’t know how they did it.”
Me too. Before the consolidated program! And to some extent in some wards here in Britain it’s still the same generation that are being relied upon quite heavily, where their health permits! They are getting really quite old now (my parents’ ward has an aging demographic which makes things quite difficult). Either that or those of their children that are still active. I don’t know if life is simply busier and more complicated now.
whizzbang, that sounds really hard.
New Iconoclast, Lol! I’m not sure what the professions are for stake officers where I am. I don’t think things are quite as straight forward as being able to say it’s a “business” stake. I don’t think there are enough “business” members. Seems more to be a case of constantly shuffling people around between ward and stake leadership callings to keep things going.
Elder Anderson, we could certainly do a lot better in pastoral training I think. Most leadership training, so far as I’ve been able to gather, would appear to be geared to meeting stake and area goals…
handlewithcare, that sounds like a wonderful approach. Thank you.
I married a man who takes his commitment to a consecrated life very seriously. I knew that when I married him and, personally, I love that about him. And one of the things he understands is that his consecration is to the Lord, not to callings.
He’s had major callings throughout our marriage, including years of scouts. Here’s what we learned about the process of navigating times when the time demands were high for one of our callings in our family (and we were not afraid to ask for one of us to be given a lighter calling when we found ourselves with two really big ones).
Take the time with each other to be clear about what your priorities are in life and what your spouse’s are. Fortunately, for us, when we sat down to do this we realized that though we both thought that our children and each other were the highest priority on our lists of stewardship, we were not always living that way. Having articulated our priorities to each other enabled us to support each other when we felt conflicted about how to spend our time. (If your spouse’s priorities are different than yours, you need to know the reality of that. You can save yourself a lot of frustration if you know what’s most important to him and can deal with that reality.)
“I can’t. I have to……… at church” when there was a need for family work was a thought that we recognized as a red flag that we’d gotten sucked into a wrong mindset. We developed ways of resetting priorities and ways of covering for each other on the home front in sudden emergencies. Knowing that both of us were there to cover for the other was helpful. Knowing that both of us had our children and our marriage at the top of our priority list enabled us to support each other when one was feeling stressed by perceived demands that he/she had not figured out how to manage.
There will always be someone who thinks that your choices are wrong because they inconvenience them or make their work harder. This is true no matter what choice you make in every venue, in church life, school, work, etc.etc.. Be cool about that. Just do what you believe the Lord has told you is the highest priority. (Be sure you alert those impacted when you choose not to do something that someone is expecting though, and continue to love them and express your appreciation. Just not showing up is poor form.)
In your callings you will be working with people that you come to love. Share that with your spouse. My husband’s years in scouting reduced our family time, but boy do I love those boys he worked with. And that is because he shared the love he had for them and kept us involved in small ways, allowing us to find delight in those rowdy kids as well. His years as a stake president in a far-flung stake expanded our children’s sense of community beyond our ward boundaries because he took them along and sought their insights on many aspects of the work he was doing.
The long and the short of what I learned, some of it the hard way: Know what your priorities are and live them at peace. You cannot do them all at the same time. Know what your spouse’s are. Hopefully they are the same. If they are not, figure out how to deal with that wisely. In every work you do, know that you will not be able to please everyone but really love them anyway even when they are difficult about it. Being true to your priorities without being resentful of disapprobation or missed opportunities is vital. You are never absolutely indispensable in any church calling. Family comes first, joyfully, not with frustration. There are creative ways to do things. You do not have to do things the way other people have done them. Magnifying a calling means looking at it closely and figuring out what is essential, not making it bigger or more than you can do. Sometimes, even when you are doing all of the above there will still be times when you will feel really, really stretched. Every good life has those times. Make time to talk when you are not exhausted. Seek and take counsel from the Lord.
And the insights in this talk from a Women’s Conference many years ago I found helpful too:
http://forsakingthekingdom.blogspot.com/2009/03/womens-conference-april-2004-i_09.html
Sage advice Miriam, thank you. I am so glad you were able to make things work out.
“Magnifying a calling means looking at it closely and figuring out what is essential, not making it bigger or more than you can do.”
Totally agree with this.
Some good thoughts here. And lot of examples showing once again that things are different in different places.
I have had various callings where I was the one with the “heavier” calling. When I was called as ward RS president, my husband was released from the bishopric. I’ve served in stake public affairs a few different times.
One of those stakes had 16 units; the boundaries were 2.5 hours drive time in any direction, although some units closer in. At that time, everyone on the stake staff went to ward conferences, although more recently there is a team approach where only one representative of each organization goes to a ward conference, so the stake president himself only visits every other or every third year. And of course I traveled for other things, new bishoprics or an event that should be publicized. (In small towns, we got an article in the local paper when new missionaries arrived.)
This was before RS Facebook groups, etc., and my paid work conflicted with RS Homemaking, so people thought I was inactive and expressed sympathy to my husband. We did the one-child-goes-with-mom thing, which was considered a special treat.
When my husband served on the High Council, he was at the assigned ward two Sundays a month and about once every other month for a youth night. Then on the third Sunday of every month, he generally had a speaking assignment somewhere in the stake. He was supposed to attend our home ward once a month, but in reality that is when vacations and business trips were scheduled. So when he was called as bishop, he didn’t really know people in our home ward.
Going with him as a family was not appealing because when he went to the assigned ward, he went early in time for ward council/PEC.
We do agree that you have to place limits and set priorities. Since tithing settlement around the winter holidays is so brutal and he also has a professional conference then, we made it a point to take a family vacation over the 4-day holiday weekend in January (Martin Luther King holiday). One family in the ward was offended that he did not attend a temple sealing then, but we NEEDED that vacation.
It helped that he had a lot of vacation time built up, which was used for funerals, weddings, etc.
I think “leadership track” is bullshit. People are going to be called according to the needs of the local congregation, which vary. A lot of stake presidents will say that being a bishop is harder than being a stake president. Some bishops will say that being a scoutmaster is the third most demanding calling in the ward, after RS president. And the nature of being an EQP depends on the makeup of the ward.
My husband and I have switched out who has the heavier callings over the years. Supporting my husband in a YM calling requiring me to give up one of two nights every week he was actually home was difficult to say the least. We’ve had good, understanding bishops for the most part, though. There were only two bishops that I had trouble with related to accepting callings that impacted our family negatively. The first is easily understandable: he was in his twenties and overzealous. The other was an older guy who appeared more reasonable. It was bad enough that both my husband and I are much more skittish about trusting inspiration behind callings. I’m now convinced that “Always say yes, no matter what” is not a healthy philosophy.
Naismith, thanks for the comment. I agree there are weighty callings for women, where the husband needs to support. And in my stake members of the stake auxilliary presidencies also get regular speaking assignments alongside the high council members. I think that’s a good thing, as it makes them more visible to members throughout the stake. Some bring their families with them, others not, much like the high council members. But still, it can’t be other than more men than women having to do this, and not much the stake can do, since there are 3 male stake presidency members, 12 high council members, 3 men on the stake Sunday school, and then the 9 female auxilliary leaders. But for sure, I think my stake are doing what they can.
My husband’s assigned unit is not too far away, and their PEC/ward councils are on a week night, so one big plus is that after years of having to hang around after church on Sunday, with this calling we get to leave pretty much immediately.
In all my time growing up in the church in Britain I observed only one person who was very obviously on what might (I suppose) be termed the “leadership track” – a relatively young, professionaly successful, stake president in a previous stake – who seemed to get a lot of grooming from higher-ups, and who was later asked to move to the US and became a 70 of some sort. It’s possible there is such a thing, but it’s certainly not the norm here, in my experience.
Mary Ann, ““Always say yes, no matter what” is not a healthy philosophy.”
Agreed. Glad you’ve had understanding Bishops.
Also.. Adding to my response to Naismith… three men on the stake YM presidency…
My children are college graduates now.
I regret almost every minute I spent doing church callings when during that time I could have spend it with them. (I didn’t have that many church callings in comparison to what is described above.) The kids are gone now and we only see them every few weeks or months. That precious and anxious time slipped away so quickly. As they say, you turn around twice and they are grown and gone. A rosy glow of golden memories is all that remains.
I do not regret one of the over 200 nights I spend camping with my son. I do not regret one of the dozens of concerts and auditions when I listened to my musical child play. The list of church callings were mostly a waste of time and I do regret doing all of that so-called service. Maybe not as much when I actually helped a real person in need, but how often does that happen?
If I could say one thing to most of the posters above it would be: QUIT YOUR DEMANDING CHURCH CALLINGS! Maybe do a small calling of a couple of hours a week that doesn’t take you away from family at all. No more.
A strange thing happens in the cycle of Mormon life. The local church seems to place great stock on young parents with big families and demanding careers. These parents are viewed as the most capable leaders and called to most of the demanding positions. But when the last child goes off to college these same people tend to be put out to pasture except for a few who move up the ecclesiastical ladder. We slowly accumulate negative social capital. Some of us more than others.
I know none of us are professionals and all are beggars at the feet of Christ. But the sad fact is that most of these young leaders fly by the seat of their pants where more mature leaders would do a better job. Seriously, without children, 20 or 30 hours a week for a church calling is not a big deal. Years of experience is valuable.
The best way for this culture to change is for most of you young parents stressed by family responsibilities to learn to say to church callings- no thank you. And to also learn when enough is enough and have the courage to quit.
Best post so far! Personally, I’m up for teaching Sunday school or ushering once a week and running a booth at the Fall Festival. Any more than that and I expect to get paid for my time. No way in this world mama and I would *ever* let outside obligations get between us and our kids.
Hedgehog #11, the assignment vs calling for seminary is not a semantic tangle but a real attempt to avoid guilt. Early morning seminary teacher is a brutal job, even for someone who likes it. In my area they are very clear that they are asking someone to do it, ie an assignment with inspiration involved, rather than calling them to do it, ie with the approval of the Lord. In other words, and people here are told this explicitly, they are being asked to teach but they can say no without any guilt that they are turning down a calling
Above should read, “…ie an assignment withOUT inspiration involved”
Mike, I think where I am we have tended to take advantage of experience, though I’ve also met older members who felt they had done their bit and now it was time for the younger members to take over as well. But yes, I think it is easy to get caught up in business that doesn’t seem to be achieving anything looking back.
KLC, I guess it’s location dependent. In this stake it was an assignment 30 years ago, which created problems because local leaders wanted to give those assigned callings as well, and some didn’t feel able to refuse the calling, though my family member did so. So to some extent calling status of seminary teacher would have been a protection. Now it is a calling (stake do the calling) here, and those called are not meant to be given additional callings. That doesn’t stop harrassed ward leaders trying to give seminary teachers additional lengthy “assignments” though, until they can find someone to fill a position as a calling. So for me it does in fact all come down to semantic games in the end.
Mike, courage to quit is one thing. Getting the requested release is another entirely. I once had repeated requests to be released denied over the course of a year. Not that someone else couldn’t be found, they just strongly felt they needed to overrule me. Luckily I’m out of that ward, but both my husband and I are now very cautious about the types of assignments we agree to.
I’m curious about something. A couple of posters have mentioned having difficulty getting released from assignments and callings or simply refusing them outright.
I guess on a job, if you refuse to accept an assignment or fail to show up for the assignment, then you get fired.
What stops you from doing just that with respect to assignments and callings? You don’t get paid, so you can’t be fired. Also, it seems to me that if you keep refusing, especially for a valid reason, people will stop asking you to do things.
Elder Anderson, culture pressure and trust in the inspiration of local leadership are the biggest factors I see. The idea of never saying no to a calling, no matter what, is deeply embedded in our culture (in one Facebook group I’m in, merely the question of refusing a calling gets heated responses quickly). We believe that God will give us the tools we need if he gives us an assignment (1 Nephi 3:7). If God calls you to something, clearly He knows you will grow and learn from the experience, even if it doesn’t seem to fit your talents.
For many people, sustaining local leadership means supporting them in their decisions pertaining to ward management. If you raised your hand to the square, you pledged your support regardless of whether or not you agree with their decisions (think of Levi Savage). And suggesting that your inspiration runs counter to the inspiration of local leaders will give you very different responses depending on who you’re talking to. Having an understanding bishop who values your input makes a huge difference. Some bishops take very seriously the input of wardmembers in extending a call, and may choose to withdraw the call after learning more about their situation. Other bishops take very seriously the idea that God would not inspire them to extend a call unless He knew that they could handle it in spite of personal difficulties.
That’s where Mike gets the “courage to quit” idea. You fight a lot of cultural pressure when you ask for a release after you’ve agreed to a calling. Someone could see themselves as a failure by not “enduring to the end” of a task God gave them. You could face internal pressure by not holding your weight as a “team player.” You also could fear outside stigma. Surprise releases raise questions of what is happening in your personal life to make you unable/unworthy of holding that calling.
Also, anyone who’s been in a leadership calling knows finding worthy members to fill callings can be a headache. Sometimes you feel obligated to take your turn in callings you dislike because everyone has to take their turn at some point. Sometimes you understand you are there merely because they can trust you to be a warm body that shows up weekly. (Team player thing.)
I saw one girl testify that you should never say no to a calling by using her own experience as proof. Taking a nursery calling that caused a nervous breakdown after 2 months was clearly inspired because it led her to psychiatric care. I don’t have nearly the positive outlook that girl had.
For some people there is *never* a valid reason to refuse a calling: “You want me to be Primary pianist? Okay, God clearly wants me to learn how to play piano…”
Mike, ditto. This is what I would be saying to my children, were they still active.
I guess we should re-cycle David O. MCKay’s ‘No success can compensate for failure in the home’
My DH left our daughter’s hospital bed, where she was sick with meningitis, to fulfil a church assignment, running a stall at the local ‘Ideas Fair’. Few people attended. We saw ourselves as mutually consecrated by covenant and I supported him in that. I recently found a letter from a leader thanking him and congratulating him on his diligence. I don’t recall how old the leader was, but I hope he now realises the correct set of priorities in such circumstances. We just wanted to do the right thing, and as first generation members in the UK that meant magnifying our calling.
I wish I’d had access to your counsel then Mike. Things might have been very different. So much of what we do is pointless, and more good would have come of us being involved in community efforts as a family.I also feel great about directly helping those in need. The ‘Ideas Fair’ did nothing but keep a diligent man away from his sick daughter.
“That’s where Mike gets the “courage to quit” idea. You fight a lot of cultural pressure when you ask for a release after you’ve agreed to a calling.”
Thanks for the explanation. I should clarify that I was asking more about repercussions. If a leader presents you with a calling and you look him square in the eye and say “I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t do that.” what can he really do? Same situation if a calling overwhelms you and you call Dave and say “This calling is too much for me. As of two weeks from today, I will not be teaching Sunday school.” Other members may give you the stink eye, but there’s nothing Dave can do about it, right?
You won’t be fired or face disciplinary proceedings for refusing to do a calling, correct. That’s just it – you won’t be fired (or released). Someone else will temporarily cover and do a slapdash version of the job that you are assigned to do… in addition to all their other responsibilities. As someone who has been in a leadership calling, covering for people who don’t bother to show up for their calling is something I regularly did. But those weren’t people dissatisfied or asking for releases – they were just forgetful or assumed it wouldn’t be a big deal.
There’s also a moral obligation. Yes it may be hell, but many of us still feel an obligation to the toddlers, Primary kids, Activity Day girls, scouts, YM/YW, or whatever, to keep working with them and taking care of them until a replacement can be found. You aren’t the only person impacted when you just choose to stop doing your calling. As a parent I depend on a *lot* of people to teach and mentor my kids in this church. Abandoning those in your care is not something to take lightly.
Mary Ann, Elder Anderson, Mike Interesting conversation.
Definitely agree with Mary Ann that a sense of responsibility does mean you feel you should take your turn doing stuff no-one really wants to do, and also not wanting to leave people in the lurch, as it were.
The best time to say no is at the outset. Not to accept a call in the first place. Though I have witnessed, in my youth, a new Bishop issue a call to a member in sacrament meeting, for sustaining vote, without having first interviewed the individual concerned. That was unnerving! Albeit apparently the way the early missionaries were called…
Handlewithcare, “We just wanted to do the right thing, and as first generation members in the UK that meant magnifying our calling.”
Yes. This was the prevalent attitude I remember seeing growing up.
I hope this comment does not make the one I made above illegitimate.
I feel your pain, especially Mary Ann, and all the concerns you voice. I might could answer some of them and not others. But in general you are still thinking in general too much inside the small-minded Mormon box.
Our wards do not have to be organized the way they are. They are too small with way too much busy-work. We make no effort to identify those who might enjoy callings. We are at horse-and-buggy levels of efficiency in what we do. Other churches I am exposed to function better with fewer people. We specialize in working hard in our callings while they specialize in working smart in their callings. (Just my impression, I have no data to back it up.) I am especially familiar with scouting in and out of the LDS faith, which is probably a local extreme example.
Many will recall the inefficiency of the old Soviet union with its central planning and top-down authority structure in comparison to our western market economies and democratic institutions. This illustrates general principles that apply to most organizations. Our church is too much like the Soviet style when it comes to organization. The result is spiritual bleakness not enrichment.
Claim your freedom to follow the path God calls you to with energy and strength. God does not equal LDS ward. God is much bigger than that. See, while you are spiritually withering away with frustration and guilt in you burdensome callings, you are also not blossoming in the ways that God could bless you. God’s plan for you is better than your plan for you. Or anyone else’s for that matter, including the ward bishop.
Magnify you calling- from God!
Mike, my own ward merged with the neighbouring ward last year (http://www.wheatandtares.org/16174/merging-wards-a-change-in-strategy/), it’s not so small, and there are more people doing stuff. It’s great not to be stretched so thin.
I agree efficiency could be seen as a problem, and I do sometimes think things might function better if we had local paid clergy. I’d certainly be happy to see a culture that would better allow members to say where they would be interested in serving.