#hearLDSwomen: Getting My Bishop to Staff Primary Callings Is a Nightmare
I was Primary president in a ward that wasn’t huge, but we did definitely have plenty of adults who could’ve helped out in Primary. I suggested name after name and nothing. ever. happened. So one week, I dismissed all the classes that didn’t have teachers. I said, “Tell your parents that you don’t have class today because we don’t have a teacher for you.” Guess what? The next week, five new teachers were called.
– Amy Giauque Chamberlain
Every single time our Primary presidency warned that someone was not a good fit for Primary, that we didn’t want them working with children–and they got called to be Primary workers over our objections.
– L
Being in a Primary presidency, and the names we turned in were ignored, and random people were called to Primary without telling us until we heard it over the pulpit.
– Jennifer
Once in the Primary presidency, I submitted a list of 15 names to staff four vacant Cub Scout callings–like, just take your pick, any of these will do–and was told no for every single one. So, I handed them a list of the four callings and said, you fill these. You find someone because I’m tired of trying.
Oddly enough, I ended up with four people who had been on the list of 15.
– Leah Marie Silverman
Pro Tip: Respect the stewardships of the women in your ward, and keep them in the loop on callings that fall under their authority.
Click here to read all of the stories in our #hearLDSwomen series. Has anything like this happened to you? Please share in the comments or submit your experience(s) to participate in the series.
“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)
So much this! I was in a presidency in a ward where the bishop liked to call people to primary “help them keep coming to church.” Guess how well that went. We had my husband (who worked a weird scheduled and couldn’t have a Sunday calling) as our permanent emergency sub.
Amy – that was brilliant!
Still giggling about the five new teachers
Sometimes filling Primary callings is hard even with a motivated bishop. My biggest surprise the first time I was involved in the process of calling people was how many people turned down callings. The worst was in my last ward, where we had a couple of former bishops and RS presidents who declared that they had done their part, and considered themselves to be retired now.
I hope that making primary so much shorter with the new schedule and no more cub scouts will help people say “yes” to working in primary. When I was PP, I handed a crying toddler from the understaffed nursery to the bishop so he could hold said toddler while I handled another crisis. It wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t done in anger, but he was standing there and I needed another adult to help. He got serious about making callings after that. Staffing primary is always hard because it is the largest organization in most wards.