1historian wrote:So let's recap: The problem is that the unassigned list is not being worked, and the families aren't being ministered to because they MLS doesn't designate a responsible quorum. Thus, neither quorum will claim the souls, and the families never receive attention.
The way MLS works has nothing to do with the families being ministered to. Home teaching was happening long before computers were even invented. The unassigned list can be worked if the leaders desire to do so.
1historian wrote:Can a feature be added to MLS so that when new families move into the ward, they can be assigned to a quorum who will have responsibility over them?
I suppose such a feature could be requested, but really, it would make little difference. If a ward cares about the unassigned families, it will take care of assigning them home teachers promptly. Once they are assigned to home teachers, the quorum assignment is set.
1historian wrote:Is there any official statements from the Brethren on how to track these families, i.e. a presidential home teaching route?
The general policy states that Elders are responsible for Elders, and High Priests are responsible for High Priests and Prospective Elders, but that the bishop reviews and approves all home teaching assignments, and makes exceptions to the general rule as he is inspired to do so.
The concept of a "presidential home teaching route" is not official policy -- it is just a way some wards choose to handle challenging families. The policy is that every family is assigned home teachers, but there's a lot of flexibility in how this is actually done. In our ward, challenging families are assigned out to individual home teachers -- home teachers who can have any sort of contact, not worrying about an official visit in the home, but just some sort of contact.
Remember the story President Monson told in
April 2003 General Conference:
The work of reactivation is no task for the idler or dreamer. Children grow, parents age, and time waits for no man. Don’t postpone a prompting; rather, act on it, and the Lord will open the way.
Frequently the heavenly virtue of patience is required. As a bishop I felt prompted one day to call on a man whose wife was somewhat active, as were the children. This man, however, had never responded. It was a hot summer’s day when I knocked on the screen door of Harold G. Gallacher. I could see Brother Gallacher sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. “Who is it?” he queried, without looking up.
“Your bishop,” I replied. “I’ve come to get acquainted and to urge your attendance with your family at our meetings.”
“No, I’m too busy,” came the disdainful response. He never looked up. I thanked him for listening and departed the doorstep.
If you don't remember how the story turned out, follow the link above to review the whole story.
1historian wrote:Now let's put some real numbers into this:
In our ward, we have 170 unassigned families. Our "statistics" read like this:
70% HP visits, 24% Elders, 1% unassigned, 12% ward.
With 7 families being no contacts, 12 families being New Families, and the rest consisting of Active and Less Active families. For example, all the High priests who are active do not have home teachers.
That's sad.
1historian wrote:2 months ago, Bishop divided up families, and we created the 2 routes under the presidents so that there were 0 unassigned families, and then HPGL said, "no" because it brought his numbers down, and that it made his statics inaccurate. Because of the HPGL's disapproval, the two routes were deleted, creating, once again, one huge unassigned list.
With your proposed software change, what you did manually and was rejected would become the automatic practice. I'm not sure what the HPGL leader would do then. From what you describe, he would have the bulk of the new automatic unassigned list (since he would get all those HP families, plus all the prospective elder families, which must be a pretty big chunk of the less active families). You'd just be right back where you were using MLS the way it is currently designed. So I don't see how it makes any difference in your ward to change MLS.
