The Ward Mission Leader Responsibilities

The Ward Mission Leader Responsibilities

Stake Priesthood Leadership Meeting

February 16, 2013

 The Stake Presidency has asked me to speak about the Ward Mission leader’s role in the Ward Council.  The Church Handbook states that the Ward Mission Leader is responsible for coordinating the missionary work in the Ward and with the full-time missionaries.  This includes finding, teaching and baptizing investigators.

Of course, it’s not just the Ward Mission Leader’s responsibility.  The Handbook outlines the Ward Council responsibilities.

Ward Council

Member missionary work is most effective when ward council members are fully engaged in the missionary effort. In quorums and auxiliaries, they encourage members to participate in missionary work in the following ways:

      1.  Find and prepare people to be taught.

      2.  Assist the missionaries when they teach (in members’ homes, if possible).
      3.  Fellowship investigators.
      4.  Prepare themselves and their children to serve as full-time missionaries

Finding people to Teach is a Challenge.

Speaking of the gathering work in the last days the prophet  Jeremiah described it in these terms:
Jeremiah 16:16 ¶Behold, I will send for many ^afishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them; and after will I send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain, and from every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks.

I would like to use a mining analogy of finding.  I work in the mining industry.  In mining we are looking for deposits of ore.  This is a sample of ore from one of our mines in North America.  It weighs about 3 pounds.  This ore is about .3 percent copper…one-third of one percent copper.  The average home has about 450 pounds of copper in it.  In order to mine enough copper to provide the copper needed for your house about 100 tons of ore would need to be mined. 

So miners are constantly exploring and seeking out ore deposits around the world that are richer in copper so they can extract is more cheaply and easily.  Putting in great efforts in exploration, we have found rich deposits around the world.  In South America we have found deposits of about 1% copper.  In Indonesia we have found an enormous deposit that contains about 2% copper and a rich gold by-product.  In Africa we have found a deposit that contains about 4% copper.  The more we explore, the more deposits we can identify.

In the same way that mining companies are exploring for copper, we are called to explore our ward boundaries to fish and hunt for those of the Lord’s children that are prepared to receive the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  We need to work together.

Our Church leaders have presented to us the Ward Council Process.  This begins by the ward council gathering a Master List of potential investigators.  The list would include the friends and neighbors of all the members of the ward that the members have identified that they are getting to know.  Our Stake Presidency has encouraged each of us to identify friends or neighbors that we can work with and have a “Next Step” in inviting them to learn and know more.  Merely getting to know your neighbors is the beginning of the finding process.  I hope that you are all working on establishing a next step in your missionary work.  And that a Master List has been established of all those potential investigators in the Ward.  It is important that all of the auxiliaries of the ward participate and that the list of potential investigators be gathered so the Ward Council can consider them.

In the Ward Council Process, the Ward Council then is to meet together and then prayerfully select those from the master list that are ready to be invited to listen to the missionary discussions.  When these are identified, the Ward Council then decides who would be the best person to invite these people to hear the discussions and to have them in their home.  The invitations are made and the missionaries then would teach those people with a member present at all the lessons.

In the last General Priesthood Meeting of the Church President Monson encouraged us to see others as they may become.  He told about a missionary that had experienced a lot of success in his mission.  When asked what led to his success, he states that he envisioned everyone that he met as a candidate for baptism.  He pictured them in white clothes and ready to make those sacred covenants with the Lord.

“We have the responsibility to look at our friends, our associates, our neighbors this way. Again, we have the responsibility to see individuals not as they are but rather as they can become. I would plead with you to think of them in this way.”

 I would suggest that we can even take this vision a little further.  Many of those that we work with are part member families or those that have been less-active for some time.  I would hope that we can envision them dressed in white and being sealed in the temple as a forever family. 

I have had those feelings.  I remember not too long ago teaching a family the missionary lessons and explaining to them that the Lord desires that they would be sealed together as a family.  That vision will be a reality for that family in the next couple of months.

We are called to be those fishers and hunters in the last days.

Doctrine and Covenants 18:10-16

Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God;
For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.
And he hath arisen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance.
And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!
Wherefore, you are called to cry repentance unto this people.
And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!
And now, if your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father, how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!