The importance of teaching service in our stake through assignments

The following was in response to member of the JustServe committee asking why we were making assignments for volunteer opportunities when the JustServe handbook says we're not to be making assignments.

It’s natural, because there is a program and a committee in place, for us to assume every service project is a JustServe project. But that is not always the case. Our JS efforts are starting to bring to us opportunities for our members to serve in the community. The JS projects that the handbook references are those that get posted and we hope members and others will seek out and volunteer for.

However, there are community projects that are coming to us from outside organizations. We want to support these projects because of the relationships it will build between the Church and the community. These are “Community Service Projects,” in my mind, not JS (I realize there’s a lot of overlap here so it can be confusing.) It’s like a non-member friend in the TC Ward, some time ago, desperately needed a new roof. The bishop got word of the need and turned to the priesthood leaders, who reached out personally to their quorum members and asked them to help out. It was a huge success.

Sometimes we confuse “assignments” with “callings.” An assignment for a service opportunity is simply a way of communicating more effectively with quorum (or organization) members. The leader calls the member and says, “The Sandy Mountain Festival is in need of volunteers to help set up booths. Our stake has chosen to support this service opportunity. Are you available to help out either Thursday morning or afternoon? If so, would you be willing to take a 2-hour shift at 1 or 3 pm or is there a better time for you?”

Something like that.

It’s not meant to be an obligatory assignment, but simply communicating with members one-on-one of a service opportunity that we have chosen to support and inviting them to participate. We ask priesthood and RS leaders to find volunteers using one-on-one contacts, instead of passing lists, because: (1) it helps them reach out beyond the circle of the same-members who do everything (hopefully reaching less-actives) and (2) it’s more efficient and more effective for a presidency of 3 organizations to find 3 people each than it is for a JS rep to find 9 people.

I hope this helps. Feel free to forward this to reps so they’ll understand their additional role and why the stake is occasionally making assignments to find volunteers in each ward.

Let me add, we do not want members to feel obligated…as they do with a church calling. We are simply using the JS committee as a vehicle, in addition to their regular duties of finding and posting service projects, to help expand our reach in finding volunteers for what might be better described as “Public Affairs Service Projects”—service that will begin to endear the community to the Church and strengthen our reputation as a Church that cares for everyone, not just its own. Hopefully, it will also begin to expand our members’ acquaintances to circles beyond their ward family.

Objectives for a scaled-down Emergency Preparedness Expo in our stake in the spring of 2016

Email sent to Trent and Cheryl Westover, who will head up our stake's Emergency Preparedness Expo in 2016:

Thanks so much for this email. I agree, the buzz won’t last into next year unless there is some shaking. 

A few days after our meeting, I asked Pres Hansen to get with you and Bro Yates to draft a one-page overview or plan for a one-day, scaled down Expo next spring. I’m sure they were planning to meet with you soon.

I think I expressed to everyone the night we met that there’s no purpose in an expo unless our objective is to draw the community to us. An expo, in my opinion, is not the best way to prepare the members. Working through priesthood channels is the most effective and efficient way to prepare members. This is something we should discuss another day, but it’s important.

In the meantime, I would like to ask us to move forward with a one-day event next spring, scaled down but still sizable enough to draw the community to our stake center…providing an event for members to invite their neighbors and friends.

Objectives

Thanks so much for your willingness to head this up and provide an opportunity for us to: (1) sustain our “reputation” in the community as a church that serves as a resource for the community on emergency preparedness; (2) create an image that we care deeply about our neighbors and friends, not just “our own”; and (3) provide members a non-religious event in our stake center to which they can invite their neighbors and friends.

I would appreciate you focusing around the above 3 objectives as you prepare this one-page overview or plan (I’m open to others, if anyone has any ideas). Please be careful that we not burden wards. True, we will use members from all wards, but we want to be careful that we don’t just dump a part of the expo on the ward leadership. Rather please consider creating an ad hoc committee made up of members from throughout the stake and ultimately tasking them with drawing others from throughout the stake onto their respective committees.

So that’s what we’re looking for in a one-page overview or plan: (1) objectives, (2) organization ad leadership, (3) overview of what will happen on that day and (4) how to draw the community to this event. Feel free to modify your plan in any direction you want, but those 4 elements seem, to me, the most obvious key elements of a plan for this type of event.

Is there a chance we can have a one-page plan in place by early or mid August?