Meetings, Agendas, and Duct Tape

So, I've got a new calling in the ward out here. I'm Sunday School president again, which is really one of my favorite callings to have (next to plain old Sunday School teacher, which I like a bit better). This morning we had stake training for all ward leaders. In my stake these are usually dreadfully boring meetings, but I went out of good faith and hope that I would be able to say something that would be useful.

Not the case.

After a brief "Hurray for us!" meeting, we split into groups (all the Sunday School presidents to one room, all the Missionary Council chairs to another room, etc). I hoped that this would be my chance to give some good input to other people in this calling, since I think I have some pretty good ideas. The meeting ended up having basically nothing to do with teaching, or helping other people teach, but instead focused on how to lead a meeting with our council (in my stake, somebody read Ballard's talk/book about councils, so they renamed all callings "council"- so instead of being a Gospel Doctrine teacher, they are members of the Gospel Teaching Council).

When Brother Johnson asked for input about how meetings should be run, I raised my hand to comment that they should be as short and efficient as possible, to allow the teachers more time to prepare better lessons. A couple words into my response, I could see Brother Johnson (and several other people in the room) scowling at my blasphemy that meetings should be short. It felt like in the movies where somebody is kidnapped, and the kidnappers take the duct tape off their mouth so they can talk to their loved ones on the phone- I tried to shout out as much information as I could for anybody who was listening before the duct tape went back on.

Giving a training on how to lead these meetings wasn't a horrible idea, but it was just so poorly done. The most memorable part was where Brother Johnson was talking about agendas. He asked if "preparing" meant we should go into a meeting with a set agenda and stick strictly to it. The obvious answer (according to him) is no. We should go into a meeting with a rough idea of what should be done, but just sort of let the meeting lead itself. "The best leaders are the ones who let the people they lead do the actual leading."

So frustrating. You can lead a Mormon to an agenda, but you can't make him drink...or have a short meeting...or something like that.