Planning the Perfect Ward Activity
by Clark L and Kathryn H. Kidd
We've all experienced the feeling of anxiety that comes with being asked to be in charge of a ward activity – whether it will involve the entire ward or just a handful of people. On one hand we are excited about the activity ideas that we wish to explore, but on the other hand we are apprehensive about all the work that will be involved. You are kidding yourselves if you think that a lot of work is not required for any activity. But your work will be more focused and effective if you put an effective plan in place before inflating that first balloon or making that first poster. In the next few articles we will share some ideas about how to do that type of effective planning.
There are many levels of involvement when organizing a ward activity. If you’re a ward activities chairman, the entire question of when to have activities and what activities to have may be dumped in your lap, giving you the freedom – and the responsibility – of making all the decisions and planning all the details. But even if you chair your ward activities committee, this freedom isn’t something you can take for granted. Some bishops and ward auxiliary leaders are micro-managers who plan every detail of each ward function, right down to the menu of a ward dinner and the color of the napkins. It may be hard to work under a bishop or a ward leader who wants only your strong back and not your creativity, but your job is to do what is asked of you with a minimum of kicking and screaming. Remember (and you may have to keep reminding yourself of this) – what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger.
For the purpose of this (and future) columns, however, we’re going to assume you have a certain degree of authority as far as planning a ward activity is concerned. Whether you’re planning the sit-down Christmas dinner or a costume parade for your Sunbeam class, you are the one making the decisions. The next few columns will help you make the right choices – choices that will allow your activity to succeed in ways you may not have realized were possible. You’ll find that success can be measured in more ways than simply by counting the numbers of participants, and we’ll show you what those ways are.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: WHOSE WARD IS IT, ANYWAY?
Before you begin to plan a ward activity, you should understand that you’re planning the activity for your ward or your auxiliary or your tiny group within a ward or auxiliary. That means you’ll need to know your group.
This is not as easy as it looks. Wards are not made with cookie cutters. Even though we’re all members of the same church, and our wards are organized in the same way, each ward has its own character. The variations are so great that you could say each ward has an individual fingerprint. What is true for one ward may not be true in another.
Some wards have a mix of ages, but others are composed almost exclusively of young and old people with no middle ground (the “newly wed and nearly dead” wards). Still other wards are composed solely of single people under age 30, so there aren’t any children or any old people to add to the mix.
Some wards have a wide range of ethnic groups, but others are composed of people from a single race and culture. Some wards are affluent, but others contain members who are counting their pennies between each paycheck. Some wards feature an entire population of university-educated people, and others are composed almost exclusively of people who work in the trades. All these factors change the complexion of your ward. They will also change the needs of your ward, and the interests of your ward members.
Even if your ward has the same age and ethnic mix as the ward that meets in the same building with yours, the two wards could have widely different personalities. Wards tend to reflect the traits of their leaders, so that one ward could be friendly and outgoing even as the neighboring ward is quiet and restrained. And other factors – mystery factors – may determine that your ward is quite different from the ward next door. One ward may be spiritually attuned, while its neighboring ward could suffer from a lack of spiritual commitment. One ward may reach out to the community, while its sister ward tends to focus inwardly and ignore the rest of the world.
In fact, your own ward may be entirely different from the ward it was ten years ago. People move in. They move out. They die. Even people who stay change their focus over the years, so they may be different people now than they were a decade ago. New leaders take the reins from old ones. Neighborhoods change, and this affects the complexion of a ward too. And times change, so that activities that appealed to one generation may seem foreign to the next.
TAILORING AND ADAPTING YOUR ACTIVITIES
All this should tell you that when you’re planning a party, you can’t always import an idea from another ward and expect it to succeed in your ward or auxiliary. The Young Women in your best friend’s ward may traditionally make a spaghetti dinner for the Young Men, but if the Young Women in your own ward aren’t even speaking to the Young Men, a spaghetti dinner may not be the best activity you can plan. Unless you know your ward – or the group within your ward that is the focus of your activity – you may be surprised to see that only three people show up for the salsa dance lessons that were such a huge success when they were held in a neighboring stake.
You shouldn’t even use the same ward idea year after year in your own ward without examining it carefully to make sure it still works. Our own ward used to have a women’s overnight retreat that was an overwhelming success for several years. The last time we gave it, almost nobody showed up. The complexion of the ward had changed, with some of the social butterflies having flitted off to other wards. The people who remained didn’t see a need for a women’s overnight retreat, so they didn’t support it. Thus an idea that had previously had merit became outmoded and had to be jettisoned. Nobody missed it when it was gone.
We may have been able to save that overnight retreat if we had allowed it to evolve the way our traditional Fourth of July pancake breakfast has evolved over the years. This annual event has been held for more years than any of us can count. Originally, a big patriotic program kicked off the event at sunrise. But as time passed, overworked ward members began to value their sleep more than they valued sitting through the patriotic stuff. Several years ago, the program was scuttled in favor of a quick flag-raising ceremony before the food was served, but people didn’t even show up for that. Recently, a flag-raising ceremony hasn’t even been announced. Undoubtedly the flag is still raised for those who are there to see it, but we’re not in that category so we can’t say so for sure.
Yes, it’s pathetic when people prefer sleep to a show of patriotism, but times change. The patriotic breakfast that was so popular in years past may now be just a breakfast, but it’s just as popular today as it was fifteen years ago. And because the organizers have had the vision to change the activity to fit the times, at least the holiday is still being observed.
Next month’s column will tell you what questions you should ask yourself to determine what kind of activity you need. These are questions that will help you decide which activities will benefit the people in your ward, and which activities your ward will support. Sadly, the activities that would benefit ward members are not necessarily the activities your members will attend. A savvy activities planner will know the difference, and will be able to tempt ward members to participate in activities that are actually good for them.
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