Ronan, your list of options is too short. I believe in visiting teaching. I am not too disorganized. I like it. It’s just extremely difficult for me to feel comfortable calling someone to make an appt. so I procrastinate or avoid it..it pretty much has to be my sole goal for the day. If my companion makes appts I will happily go. I’m sure there are other reasons besides social anxiety.

Sure, in order to do that, you may have to sit through years of agonizing, painful, boring, smelly, and inconvenient visits, but a good VTer when you need her is worth her weight on gold.

Single sisters, or those whose spouses are not Priesthood holders are not looking for handymen or wise counsel; they NEED (and deserve) a relationship with someone who they can call when in need of a PH blessing (even if that is only once every few decades). If they don’t know who their HT is, or know his name and that he doesn’t care enough to form a relationship, how are they to feel comfortable to call in emergencies? They tend to be very wary of being a burden on EQP (and may not even know who that is) or Bishops.

I think some underestimate the segregation of sexes at Church. It is VERY hard for single people to socialize with ward members of the opposite sex in many cases. If they don’t have a spouse to socialize with or through, they just won’t know a lot of people of a different gender. This is especially true for women, whose callings are frequently in all female auxiliaries. So if a woman is single, she could easily not have any friends who hold the Priesthood.

I am all for unconventional visits, and Susan’s HTs sound ideal–they are friends.

I have a dear friend who was inactive for 18 years. She lived less than a mile from the Church building and yet, in all that time, never received any contact whatsoever. One week some sister missionaries sought her out, invited her to church, and she started coming. I can’t imagine how she must feel to look around her ward at a bunch of people who couldn’t make time for her in 18 years of inactivity (yet they have given her 4 callings now and depend on her quite a bit).

I think the concept of VT/HT is very good, but it obviously isn’t working as currently constructed. Some of the options expressed here sound like they could work well. I like both opt-in and allocating resources to single men and women, borderline actives, and the sick and elderly. A team approach, where a team of six adults is assigned to a group of 24 people opt-ins and others, could be useful because the organic relationships JNS refers to could emerge from these.

The statistics are an abomination, from every point of view. My first calling in this area was executive secretary to the EQP over HT. I was going to refuse the calling (I had no interest in haranguing guys to do their visits), but the stake had just come out with a new program to allow virtually any form of contact to “count.” The idea was to encourage more contact, even if some of it was less than “ideal.” But our ward was the only one that attended the special stake training meeting and knew what was being asked of us. So we started reporting 100% HTing (because if anyone didn’t get contacted some other way, I personally would send them a letter, as I had been instructed to do). Some wards thought I was a miracle worker, and others thought I was lying and cooking the books. Both reactions annoyed me; I was just following stake instructions. But from that experience I learned just how meaningless the statistics are. I realize some people wouldn’t do anything without the motivation of the numbers, but their value as a measurement is nil, and I for one resent the whole statistical side of the program.

I agree with the idea of focusing your best HTers on the people who really need them and can most benefit from them, such as single sisters and the marginally active. The fully active and hardcore inactive should be lower priorities. I neither need nor particularly want HTers, but at various points I’ve been assigned some of the best HTers in the ward. These guys should have been assigned to people who needed them more than I do.

I resent the pressure to visit hard core inactives, who were probably notches on some missionaries’ belts for their statistical glory and rushed into baptism only to promptly become inactive. The inordinate focus on baptism statistics in the missionary program leads inexorably to pressure on the HTing program and strains limited active MP resources. I don’t like being pressured to try to fix someone else’s mistakes, especially when in my view such mistakes are endemic to the system.

Everyone reading the 1P message seems very silly to me. That was originally supposed to be an available resource, not the automatic monthly default.

Our brand new stake president talked about HT/VT at our last ward conference and he said, “What if you knew that the people on your list were only going to need you one time that year, but they would really need you, which month would you skip?”

Smileys are made by typing : and ) right next to each other (the eyes and the smile). Somebody else will have to share the secret of the frownies and tongue-sticks and other variations.

But, I pray thee, learn from my folly and do not rouse the Steve Evans Beast!