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| Friday, May 24, 2013 |
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I think one of the biggest factors is the feeling of belonging. |
I endorse everything Tim says, but I want to toss out some thoughts: Every happy ward has unhappy people. This cannot be avoided, as we are all human and we are all in different places in our spiritual development and spiritual health. Some wards consider themselves “close-knit”, but have terrible home and visiting teaching numbers. This is because members have casual/informal contact with other members on a regular basis. The *danger* in this is that people outside the casual/informal social circle are excluded from the casual/informal contacts and if a ward isn’t into doing HT/VT correctly, they get missed. There was a terrible experiment in our ward (as it was previously constituted) over the last few years NOT to visit “active” families each month. I could write a whole series of posts on why this was a terrible idea (to be fair to the priesthood leaders, it was suggested by a GA, and more of the issues were with implementation than the idea itself). Our ward (as was constituted until recently) suffered from excessive size. We felt that one way to combat issues of subsequent neglect (a bishop couldn’t possibly interact everyone on the same level he’d like) was to give as many people as possible some form of meaningful service, even if that meant splitting up primarily classes to ridiculous levels and calling double-secret assistant executive secretaries with only one defined responsibility. My point is – Service is a critical element of a mutually interconnected ward. If someone only shows up for the three-hour block and that’s all they do all week, it’s not difficult to expect that they might feel disconnected from a church that aims to be participatory in nature. Wards who proactively engage in missionary service tend to also proactively reach out to their own fellow members. |
Tim, I think you might have hit on something crucial with the word ‘belonging’. If a member or a member family feels accepted, then all is well. |
Thinking back, I have been happy with my different wards in different ways, and my memories of those ways mainly dwell on interactions within the elders’ quorum. |
My wife was talking to an RS prexy counselor today, and she made the comment that if it weren’t for her testimony, our ward would have caused her to go inactive a long time ago. After over a decade of explosive growth (followed by a split, then more explosive growth, then a split, etc.), we finally may be hitting a time where the growth is going to stop (the high-growth areas have been split out of our ward). Maybe our ward can start to focus on bonding… |
Good points, but every time I hear that Tolstoy quote I think of this one by Robert Fulford:
(link here: http://www.robertfulford.com/2005-08-02-beginning.html) |
Jeff, those are some interesting thoughts – but I still think Tolstoy was on to something. Still, he is talking in very broad generalities. |
quenuo beat me to it but I think smaller wards are happier. big wards become unhappy because * so many people don’t know each other the church should aim for a 110-130 average ward size rather than the 200+ behemoths we currently attend. it would also open up new leadership opportunities for people who we’d otherwise think of as “not quite ready” I think you will see this change dramatically in the next 10-15 years (but it may take that long) |
I think at some point prior to the 2nd Coming, that new converts are going to flood the church. The structure and leadership of wards and branches is likely going to have to be altered somewhat in fast-growing areas. It may be that branches will be specifically organized for new converts, and that these branches will _overlay_ existing wards’ physical boundaries (like how two telephone area codes overlay each other). New converts may be asked to attend the “new convert branch” that corresponds to that ward’s geographic boundaries. Convert youth (ages 12+) might not be sent to youth Sunday School, but to a Gospel Essentials class (the class for investigators and new converts that uses the “Gospel Principles” manual) specifically for youth. Senior Primary in the new convert branch may also be re-worked to cover the basics in one year. I think there may even be more than one “new convert branch” per urban/suburban ward. The ward I’m in now covers both urban and suburban neighborhoods. The total population (including non-members) in the ward boundaries is at least 100,000. Membership (including inactive members) constitutes less than 1/2 of 1 percent of that population. When I think how the church is poised to use mass media to get the message out, I honestly don’t think the current ward/stake structure can handle the potential influx of members. Missionaries could (should) easily switch from teaching one individual or one family at a time to groups or congregations at a time. But how would a ward handle a dozen baptisms per week? You would almost have to spin off a new branch every 2 or 3 months. |
C.S. Lewis took issue with Tolstoy on this one too. He claimed that in reality it is the wicked who are all alike. “The monotony of evil” I think he called it. |
Sarahcuda
In my own experience, this hasn’t been the case. In the last few years I’ve been part of one smaller ward and a larger one. The larger ward, regardless of the potential problems you noted, would be the one of these two that I would classify as “happier.” But I think a lot of that has to do with the general types of people in the larger ward but little to do with the size. In fact, I personally like a larger ward because it provides a larger base of people to socialize with and a larger group to choose from when looking to make new friends. In the smaller ward it seemed like everyone *had* to be friends with everyone else or someone’s feelings would get hurt. Even just going to the temple with another woman from the ward caused shock from a few others we saw there who “didn’t know [we] were friends” and one in particular was hurt that neither of us had called to invite her to the temple, too (yes, I see the hypocrisy here since she didn’t call either of us before driving up to the temple). I’ve seen unhappy branches where a visitor never goes unnoticed and the Branch President and RS President know everyone personally. I’ve seen very happy branches as well. And the same goes for large wards. I do believe a lot of a ward’s happiness or unhappiness can be set by the tone of the leadership in that ward but I also think a lot has to do with how willing the members are to serve one another and pitch in when needed. In the unhappier of my two most recent wards, the visiting and home teaching efforts were abysmal and most of the members spent far too much time worrying about the social elements rather than trying to improve themselves as individuals. No ward is perfect and I think everyone has a different comfort level when it comes to ward/branch size but I don’t think size is the only factor in determining the overall contentment of people in a ward or branch. |
My experiences tend to reinforce the points in #11. I grew up in a smaller ward with relatively few people moving in and out. The result was stagnation andclannishness. There were a few incidents of abuse, inappropriate relationships between married members, and teaching of false doctrine that really poisoned the ward over time. I remember a girl I dated in high school saying that they didn’t agree with everything that was taught at her church, but her family still went there because of the good youth group and people. The opposite was true for me — my family and I went to church in spite the people, not because of them. Not all small wards would be like the one in my experience, butdysfunction can happen in wards of different sizes. |
My experiences tend to reinforce the points in #11. I grew up in a smaller ward with relatively few people moving in and out. The result was stagnation and clannishness. I grew up in a ward such described. But for the last 12 years or so, I’ve lived in a ward (series of wards) with incredible growth. What was our ward when we moved here, is now 7-8. It’s almost like irrigating a wound — when you have such growth, stagnation has a hard time taking root. There’s always someone new at Church, every single week… |
A couple of the comments have mentioned the “belonging” idea, and this is one that I’ve been working on a lot of late in my own ward–apparently no one feels like they belong. One of the problems in addressing this from a Bishopric’s policy standpoint is that some people don’t mind not “belonging” (like, say, me), and others desperately need the inclusion to reinforce their spiritual underpinnings in the gospel. Because in large wards–like mine–it’s too difficult for the Bishopric to meet one-by-one, we end up with blanket policies that end up under-feeding some, and over-feeding others. Pardon the shameless self-promotion, but if you have suggestions on how to overcome this particular “belonging” issue, then please join the (lively) discussion on my post on this topic. |
This is why wards are intended to be small in size (several hundred), so that individual needs can be cared for… |
15. I agree. our ward is currently around 660. Too big, but splitting it is not in my hands. |
Jeff, The Robert Fulford quotation is fantastic and rings true in many respects. Thank you for sharing it. In fairness to Tolstoy though, I don’t the first line of Anna Karenina was meant to lay out a sociological truth, so much as to express how those from disfunctional families perceive families other than their own. Families that seem happy (and probably often aren’t) also seem alike. And if one’s own family is unhappy, again it *seems* that this is so for reasons not shared by other families precisely because they often involve private disfunctions. The lack of transparency concerning what makes families (or groups) unhappy hides the fact that these properties are frequently shared. So, still an insightful observation by Tolstoy. Or so I say. |
I’ve always interpreted Tolstoy’s quote as all happy families follow the same principles in order to be happy. i.e. love, respect, patience, etc.. whereas unhappy families can be unhappy for a myriad of reasons. Kinda like the strange paths that Nephi saw people wandering on in the Tree of Life vision–there’s a bunch of them. But the iron rod leads to a narrow and well-defined path to happiness. |
I think 18 has hit the nail on the head in a way that no “science” can refute regardless of the amount of objective and double-blind research they do! The light is ON! Thank you AH!! :) |
[...] 2: There is a nice discussion of what makes a “Happy Ward” over at Mormon Mentality right now. Also, this post was noted in the Deseret News’ Mormon Times, so thanks for all the [...] |
