Making my Proper Contribution

I've become a big believer in running the Church more like a volunteer organization¹. I've talked about this before². There's something to be said for trying to match people to performing responsibilities at church in which they are interested and find fulfilment.

Reality gets in the way sometimes though. For example, based on the reports I've heard from leaders of the children's organization (we call it Primary) at my congregation, it seems that there are really very few people who want to work in Primary, and hardly any more that are willing to work in Primary.  One of our friends was talking about this with Janelle one day and--apparently exasperated by the constant search for people willing to take on the enormous inconvenience--declared "If you don't want to work in Primary, stop having children."

(No really, it wasn't me who came up with that.)

Her reasoning was genius.  Children enter into Primary when they are 18 months old.  They remain in Nursery until the January 1st following their third birthday, and then they progress through different age-based classes until they turn twelve.  All told, they spend about ten and a half years in primary.  For our purposes, we're going to truncate this to ten  years of Primary time for each child.

Now let's assume that the usual class size is about five children (there is undoubtedly a wide variance here, but for most of the young ages, five children seems like a good class size for amateur teachers).  Lastly, we'll assume that we would like to have two teachers per class³.  For a class of five children to go through ten years of Primary with two teachers, you would need to staff 20 teacher-years⁴.  If we are fortunate enough that all five of those hypothetical children have two parents, then you would have a pool of ten parents to staff 20 teacher years.

Now, do the math--if the parents of the children are going to carry the load of staffing Primary (as is customary in most volunteer organizations), then for each child a parent has in Primary, the parent should expect to contribute two years of time teaching.

To put this in personal terms, I have two children.  Thus, I should expect that I will spend four years teaching in Primary, and that Janelle will also spend four years teaching in Primary.

The total time spent will vary, of course.  Perhaps your Primary only uses one teacher per class--cut the number of teacher years in half.  If the class sizes are larger, the total time per parent will decrease.  If the class sizes are smaller, the total number of time will increase.  If you have some parents who are willing, eager, and enjoy working in Primary, they can stay in Primary and other parents will carry a lighter load.

But at some point, somewhere along the way, if you have kids in Primary, you should expect to be staffing Primary for 1-2 years per child⁵.

I'm not really sure how a declaration like this would be received.  After all, the way volunteers are recruited in the Church has a bit of a mystical veil over it.  Making the claim that parents should be expected to carry the weight of the weekly church-based instruction kind of flies in the face of the "called by inspiration" model.  I imagine this has helped create the current culture of dreading and avoiding Primary callings but grudgingly accepting because turning down any responsibility in the Church is a sign of diminished faith⁶.

The reality is simple.  Children need to be taught at church, and adults will be needed to do the teaching.  If you have children, you can't fairly expect to pass off your kids to a volunteer organization each week and never contribute.  So if you have children, don't be surprised or horrified when your number comes up.  You did this to yourself⁷.

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Going back and making this personal now: I have two children in Primary.  And I have yet to spend a day in Primary.  You could make the case that I'm not making my proper contribution to the Church.

Perhaps that will change now that I've just been released from my responsibilities in the Sunday School.  Sure, I can think of a handful of responsibilities I'd rather take on other than teaching children.  But I look back over the responsibilities I've had in the past decade, and let's face it: I've had an incredibly good streak of really enjoyable (for me) responsibilities.  I think it's time I started to pull my own weight around here, don't you?

Oh, and if anyone in my Primary Presidency reads this, I've actually really enjoyed spending time in nursery when I've been there the past few months--especially with the youngest kids.  Just saying.

So please--PLEASE--grab me up before the bishop asks me to do something truly terrible; like working with adults.



¹ Probably because it is a volunteer organization
² See my posts about Informed Inspiration here, here, and here.
³ I suspect this is not standard operating procedure through most of the LDS Church, but it seems to make a difference on the stress level felt by the teachers. If this isn't how your congregation operates, perhaps you should consider it.
⁴ A 'teacher-year' is a unit of time that measures the amount time a teacher is on active duty. If you have two teachers in a class for exactly one year, you have staffed 2 teacher-years.
⁵ I will say, however, that the more children a parent has, the closer this number should get to 1 year. Imagine, for instance, a family with six kids. If each parent worked 12 years in Primary, they may only get about 3-4 years outside of Primary, and I don't think that's necessarily healthy for their own development. It is no doubt a complicated balance to find. Open communication with leaders about balancing the needs of the congregation with the needs of the individuals is always crucial.
⁶ Gag!
⁷ This does not, however, give ward leaders justification to guilt or manipulate people in to service. I'm grateful that the leaders in my ward are sensitive and compassionate toward the needs of individuals, and I hope leaders across the world will show that same compassion.