Why Don't The Guys Do Their Home Teaching?

I used be the perfect home teacher. I'd do the rounds every month and take good care of my families, but then like so many of my colleagues, it seems that I've fallen by the wayside (well ... mostly).

For those of you uninitiated to Mormon living, home teaching is a program instituted by the Church. The idea is that each active Mormon male is paired with another male, and they are given a few families to watch over. The suggested modus operandi is to visit each family once a month, deliver a spiritual message, and make sure each family's needs are met.

It's a great idea and a sound program. The bishop and other ward leadership can only do so much to watch over the flock. Home teachers can provide much needed assistance to families, and also help to build up comradery among the church members.

Active Mormon females do something similar called visiting teaching. On the most part, the women seem to do a better job at consistently doing their visiting teaching, while men tend to forget, be busy, and all around fail to meet their families periodically.

In fact, it's almost a given in Mormon social life that men basically suck as this calling. This is parodied in Mormon movies like The RM, which features home teachers showing up at 11:50PM on the last day of the month, shoving cookies through the mail slot. They even go so far as to show the men sleeping in Elder's Quorum while the women are having this great spiritual outpouring in their Relief Society meeting ... complete with awesome centerpiece.

Yeah ... we all laugh. Girls are on the ball, and boys just suck. So why even try? Right?

As such, there are always calls for men to do their home teaching ... it's a sacred calling ... and all that. There are at least one or two talks on home teaching in each of our semiannual General Conferences. We even had a lesson this past Sunday in Elder's Quorum on home teaching. Every time it's the same message ... go out there and do your home teaching. It'll be good for your families, and good for you.

But there are some aspects that I rarely hear about concerning home teaching. Rarely, I'll hear some much needed advice about the families calling the home teachers to be home taught instead of the other way around. There are several times I've heard people complain, "My home teachers never come to see me," and sometimes I want to answer, "Well, did you call them to come visit?"

I've found that outside of college life, it becomes very difficult to set up appointments to visit. It seems a lot of the time I suggest a time or two to meet, and none of the times work.

This happened with one of my families over a decade ago. It was almost as if they didn't want us to come visit. When we did happen to get inside their homes, they would look at their watches and act like they didn't want us around. My home teaching companion and I finally gave up trying to go see them and instead decided to watch them from a distance. A year later, I heard second hand that the family resented us because we weren't coming to visit.

I was all like ... #1) Those guys pushed us away, and now they're angry with us? #2) Knowing that they hated our guts made it even harder for us to even want to home teach them.

Another funny horror story happened at BYU. I had prepared a heart-felt lesson featuring reading one of my favorite stories from the scriptures. The response at the end of the lesson? The two roommate girls turned to me and my companion and said that next time they wanted a lesson with more pizzazz ... more pictures and stuff so that they could better feel the spirit.

Yeah, right.

And then there were some wards where it seemed to be more about the numbers than taking care of people. We needed to keep the stats up. 100% home teaching. It's so difficult to want to do home teaching when the guilt trips fly every week.

I think in the past few years, the Church has moved away from this numbers push, and is now emphasizing the "human being" aspect of home teaching. You need to care for your families, and help meet their needs. There are far less guilt trips in Elder's Quorum, and more inspirational success stories that emphasize what happens if you do a good job at home teaching.

They still collect stats, though. :)

Yet all these horror stories I've listed are nothing more than excuses. I'm sure that any "tired" home teacher can relate with the stories I've told, and I bet they have their own horror stories.

Why don't the guys do their home teaching? What's the real reason? It really comes down to one thing: attitude. If you want to do your home teaching, it'll get done. I've had really gung-ho home teaching companions who shoot for 100%, and it's fun being their companion. They find ways to get to even the hard-to-get-to families.

On the other hand, if you simply don't want to do home teaching, for whatever reason, then it's not going to get done.

So, the best way to get the guys to do their home teaching ... get them to WANT to do it. If you want to start yourself, then simply WANT to do it. Get over all those excuses and horror stories. Get over those guilt trips. Sure, you can tell your stories and get them off your chest, but then ... Go do that home teaching. Care for your families.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some appointments to set up ...