OPERATING YOUR HOMETEACHING PROGRAM AS A SYTEM As a twenty-one year old bishopric counselor in the Makati 2nd ward of the Makati Philippines stake between the years of 1981 to 1982, I had sometimes heard that our Elders Quorum had achieved one hundred percent (100%) monthly home teaching visits. I still vividly recall the glow in their faces and the glitter in their eyes as they proudly announce their accomplishment. It did not occur to me at the time how difficult an accomplishment it was until many years later. I thought it was a natural course of all home teaching organizations wherever a Church unit existed. I now know how naïve my assumptions were especially when I had moved into various callings. “If we keep on doing what we have always been doing, we will keep on getting what we’ve always gotten.” This quote is simple and yet very practical in terms of the challenges we face in Church. I have since then tried to apply its insight whenever I was no longer achieving the results I desired in my Church callings. It means to me that if we add one with one (1 + 1 = 2), we will always get two as our answer. If we keep on repeating the same equation, we will keep on getting the same results no matter how committed, hardworking, and diligent we might be. If there is no change in the formula, then there is no change in the result. This implication is obvious but one that most of us will fail to recognize as we get engrossed by the pressures of Church work and the multiple demands of our everyday lives. I suggest this is one of the reasons that our implementation of Church programs has sometimes lost its life and vigor through the years. Sometimes the methods we employ are no longer responsive to our current challenges. We keep on using the same equation despite the fact that our problems have changed. So we keep on getting the same dismal results because our formula is old, worn-out, and obsolete. And yet, week after week, month after month, and year after year, we keep on doing the same things over and over again. Never mind that it no longer works! Since that’s how we have been programmed to do, we are not about to make any changes. I believe ‘home teaching’ is one such area. However, before we rush to devise a more responsive formula, let’s first evaluate if we are already doing all we can to make the Church Handbook of Instructions (CHI) model work. Let’s compare what you are doing now with what it has prescribed. As we do so, let us be clear that home teaching will remain a part of the larger system of nourishing individuals and families with the word of God. It is the ideal method for face-to-face, soul-to-soul, deep and meaningful interaction essential to watching over the Church. “Home teaching is the vehicle that activates (nourishes) people. No new program or organization will be invented to replace it.” [Elder A. Theodore Tuttle]
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