For many years during the early 20th century, the Sunday School included a “Parents’ Class.” I’ve been only mildly curious about it – did it teach parents how to be better parents? was it a theological class merely intended to keep adults busy while they waited for their children who were attending Sunday School? – but never curious enough to hunt up the answer. Without hunting, I have stumbled across the answer.
Thomas N. Taylor, bishop of the Provo 3rd Ward in 1913, answered my question in a letter to the Sunday School board, explaining how he, as bishop, worked with his Parents’ Class. “It is the foundation stone of our work among the young people,” he wrote. “Questions are brought up in the class. At first we may think that the question pertains only to some one or two, but as we get to discussing it we find that what will help our neighbor will help us.”
We talk together. Expressions are made by all and we freely discuss the questions at issue. From the many opinions that are given, we try to come to some understanding as to what is bet for the whole. The entire community, moving in one direction for the uplifting and maintenance of a principle, will have much more force than promiscuous work.
He wrote about how the families in his ward were anxious for some sort of gymnasium and amusement hall as an addition to their meeting house. “We realize that one of the important factors in the proper rearing of our children is that of clean, healthful amusements, where father and mother can join with their sons and daughters in the dance, the social, or whatever entertainment might be given.” Working together, the ward had raised the money and put in the basement of the amusement hall – what we would today call the cultural hall – and were raising more money to continue the project, begun as a discussion in their Parents’ Class.
As I read that letter, it struck me how similar it was to the new council plan for the first week of the month in our Priesthood quorum and Relief Society meetings: Questions are raised, discussions are had, opinions are shared, a plan is made, and the ward moves ahead toward bettering the lives of its members, whether in 1913 or 2018.
So how did your first councils go yesterday? What did you talk about? How do you think the system will work once we get a little experience with it? Without becoming overly negative, should your story not be as enthusiastic as, say, the Ensign might want it, what suggestions do you have for improvement?
I’m really curious to read some more or less detailed responses. Since the plan is so new (or is it very, very old?), it might help all of us to see how different wards approached it.
I thought is went well in my ward; to me the number of women in the circle made it difficult to hear from everyone (not that everyone wanted to contribute).
I was impressed with the whole thing. My first inclination was to run for home. The presidency was called last week, and they circled the chairs so we were all facing each other. I got pretty brave today, not sure if I influenced friends or enemies, but I said that facing each other put a human touch to things.
They asked for our input of what we should discuss in the first Sunday meetings, and what we saw as problems. They asked if we liked sitting in the circle, and they asked the teachers if it would provide them the proper way to facilitate their discussions. Also, they made it a safe environment. So for the first time in 10 years that I lived out here I felt good enough to say stuff. I am very excited about the idea of having actual conversations, rather than being lectured to and they stressed, we would be the teachers.
One woman said, she felt like she was in one of her group therapy sessions. She is a psychologist at BYU…that got a chuckle.
We really do not have a sisterhood bond, and I am praying this will help.
I think we had 12 people, since the YW presidency came. It was a huge RS class for our ward. They sat in a circle and I opted to sit outside the circle with my baby.
I’m nervous that it feels unstructured, and therefore it doesn’t feel like we accomplished anything. The discussion came down to the need to be better visiting teachers, and report visiting teaching. The elderly and infirm feel ignored. The young feel that RS is irrelevant since they’re always in Primary anyway. I’m not sure how the middle-aged feel.
The RS president later sent out an email with conference talks assigned for the next two weeks. I highly doubt that the “councils” about those talks using a “facilitator” will be any different than traditional lessons about those talks with a teacher.
I just don’t want to sit in a circle.
HP Group – multi-rowed semi-circle. “We have to get kids off their electronic devices.” I didn’t respond to that one (good luck, by the way). “We have to strengthen the family.” I sort of lost it there asking if we could address infidelity, domestic violence, child abuse, etc. instead of just same-sex marriage. All in all, it wasn’t too bad. But we need the younger generation.
Our ward council had discussed what the topic of the first Sunday councils would be and decided on “Unity”. Or maybe that was the bishop’s idea. Anyhow, despite trepidation on the part of the quorum/RS presidents that nobody would want to speak up, there was plenty of input.
RS talked about ways we as individuals and as a group could work to build sisterhood and friendships, harking back a bit to the days when members saw each other a lot more during the week in auxiliary meetings. Proposals were made for increased visits to housebound sisters, service projects (including continuing with a recent one), family history & temple activities, and basic one-to-one friendship and care. We sat in a circle too and that seemed to help people feel that this was something different. The idea as a whole appeared successful.
I was shocked at how well the first Sunday council went in our high priests group yesterday. Earlier in the week, the group leader had sent out questions for group members to consider, although I had forgotten the questions by Sunday. The topic was an old favorite — home teaching. We discussed how to reach less active families and spent a few minutes sharing thoughts about one particular family. We — there were almost 20 of us — sat in a circle and about half the brothers participated with comments. As near as I could tell, all or almost all of the group members were paying attention to the discussion.
We had some first week jitters in our HP group, but finally started discussing what we felt were our needs, including how to help someone deal with a faith crisis, how to get more out of scripture study, and how to ascertain truth both in and out of the church. I am not sure that we got the full connection, though, as these were used to spring into which talks from general conference we would study in the 2nd and 3rd week this month. At least, I am not fully clear yet. But we did have a very open discussion that involved most of the members of our group. I am optimistic that it will be productive, and get better as time goes on.
While I’m at least a little skeptical of the new curriculum, I have to admit our HP group discussion went really well. We talked about home teaching, and managed to do it without the cliches and circular, unproductive rhetoric that one would expect in a discussion of home teaching.
I’d attribute our success to a couple things: first, and perhaps most importantly, as a group, we’re used to discussing things, and taking a serious look at them, rather than descending into rote repetition of lessons gone by.
That’s aided by the size: there were roughly 10 people there. That meant we could all sit close, and we could all participate. While nobody was forced to talk, I think everybody did. We didn’t have to do multiple rows of people, and there were few enough that nobody could pretend the discussion was going to happen because of other people.
I don’t know if our experience would be replicable for a larger group, or for a group that wasn’t already comfortable together, and comfortable with applying church concepts to the world we live in, not an imagined world we don’t, but for us, it went really well.
Every one of these comments is helpful and much appreciated — thank you. Acknowledging the initial hesitation, and some unexpected success, as well as some adjustments that still need to be worked out, is both interesting and useful to me and I hope you.
Keep it coming!
Although the RS presidency in my ward attempted to hold a council, what they actually held was a lesson with a large amount of class participation and a different seating arrangement. It’s no surprise, really. The President hasn’t managed to let go of the idea that she must make sure that the meeting has a certain result. One of the unfortunate results of her goal that each person be permitted/required to have a say was that she had to request that people keep their answers shorter–in response to me and my friend (who is the stake RS president.) We discussed the situation afterward. It was a lesson, not a council, and the poor Stake RS president came away feeling really awkward and embarrassed. But she told me that there is an auxilliary training meeting scheduled for April in which she will sit all of the ward RS presidents down in a circle and asked them what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and how they think they could better implement the new church directions. In other words, she will conduct a council. We’ll see what happens.
Ever since the announcement was made, I have been looking forward to see how this new format would play out. Our EQ president prompted the discussion by asking what ways we could improve our temple attendance, which to be honest, I was surprised by. In my mind I envisioned something a little more organic in the start. There were a few off-the-wall comments, like having a Cafe Rio next to the temple would improve temple attendance. But the best part was when we started discussing ways we could help each other attend the temple, such as offering to watch someone’s kids, or inviting someone to go with you. It definitely inspired me to act, so I hope for more of that in future.
I was not able to attend RS this Sunday as we were out of town, however a few months ago, just a week or two before the new curriculum announcement was made, one of the counselors in our branch RS presidency conducted a council of her own in place of her assigned lesson. She had the sisters sit in a circle and had each person write on a slip of paper some question or situation that concerned her in her own life at the moment. It could be a gospel question, a personal life challenge, something large, something small, basically anything the sister wanted input on. Then she gathered them all up and read them one at a time, leaving time for the other sisters in the room to offer input or answers. The slips of paper included everything from “how do I adjust to the physical challenges of getting older?” to “how do I get used to and become comfortable wearing garments?” We have a small RS, most of whom know one another very very well, so this kind of intimacy worked fine (although still, the questions were done anonymously). The only real issue was time management, as the teacher/facilitator ran out of time to read and discuss all the questions.
The discussion went okay-ish in our class of about 25, mostly older folks (largely 60 and up). Like many, our topic was to brainstorm ideas for future councils. Unfortunately, rather than brief suggestions, responses tended to be five minute monologues on why the suggestion was felt to be important. About the third suggestion was on how to improve temple attendance, and all subsequent discussion addressed this topic rather than produce any new topic ideas, so things strayed somewhat from the initial goal.
The discussion was good and civil and included mostly the normal commentors, with the normally quiet members staying quiet. I’m interested in seeing how it goes next month with an actual topic to discuss.