Stake Bishops Welfare Council - ideas?

Any Bishops or Stake Clerks here who are / have been involved in these meetings?

I was recently assigned to chair this council, and have had our first meeting - which I thought was pretty productive.

The problem is that the handbook states this should be a quarterly meeting - and I'm struggling to see how we won't end up discussing pretty much the same things as before? The suggested discussion items in HB1 are not all applicable to us in the UK, and so it feels like there's not much else that needs to be covered that we didn't already in January.

Anyone have any previous agendas or suggested discussion / training points they'd like to share?

I'm almost to the point of just suggesting we go for twice yearly!

In our stake, the bishops usually have so much to talk about that they can't even come close to covering everything mentioned in Handbook 1, Section 5.3 in their quarterly meeting.

But I would note that although it is not strictly within the list of purposes for the Stake Bishops' Welfare Council, it is not uncommon that the bishops will use this opportunity where they meet in council to discuss other non-welfare matters, such as interviewing procedures, disciplinary council processes, etc.

At the last meeting I attended we reviewed training from World wide leadership meetings, what acts of service those receiving assistance can provide, training the Auxiliaries in their duties regarding welfare and suggestions as to how the Bishops can manage their time better.

I haven't been to a meeting yet where it was held just because it was scheduled, as aebrown mentioned it is normally an issue of what will be covered next time.

At the last meeting the subject of tithing settlement was discussed because we had a few Bishops who hadn't done it before and wanted some counsel. The Stake President may ask the Chairman to raise or discuss some issues.

It would be appropriate for you, as council chairman, to ask the stake president if there is anything he would like you to discuss with the other bishops. But as others have mentioned, once you have discussed the more mundane things, there will be plenty that a group of bishops meeting together will have on their minds.

You mentioned that the agenda items in the Handbook are not all applicable where you live. I would suggest that, if you consider that welfare is more than just a temporal matter, you will find plenty to discuss in your meetings.

And finally, it is my personal belief that if you prayerfully consider the needs in your stake and seek inspiration as you prepare the agenda, you will have more than enough and the quarterly meetings will not come soon enough.

Thanks for your input folks.

I do appreciate that we can 'broaden' the agenda to encompass other slightly less related topics - but to me that just feels like meeting for the sake of meeting. When 7 bishops have to take another night away from their family, and travel over an hour each way in some cases, there had better be a good reason why.

I do recognise that welfare certainly does encompass more than just the temporal aspects - and so I will probably run with that, and seek to address some of the spiritual and emotional welfare needs of the wards.

Thanks again all.

I have served as a Bishop in both the UK and in North America, and from my experience the vast majority of the suggested items are applicable in Both.

We do not discuss every item at every meeting, but instead usually have meetings which focus on specifc areas. For example we had a project to compile a list of all the welfare resources in our area and we received the final report on this. We have had guest speakers come to talk about addiction recovery, employement, fostering and adoption and also made plans for a welfare training workshop.

The major part of the meeting has mainly been with newer bishops and branch presidents bringing problems and issues and with the more experienced bishops sharing what they have done.

The Bishops who live further away usually either use video or telephone conferencing to take part (but our stake is quite large with some units over 3 hours drive away).

At no time have I felt that we were having meetings for meetings sake and I feel that it has helped me to be a better bishop and make changes where necessary.

In my opinion, a meeting every three months is not much of a burden but of course the chairs role is very important in determining how successful these meetings are.

I have had a similar experience as a Bishop and found the following talk by Elder Perry helpful:

https://www.lds.org/general-conference/ ... s?lang=eng

Leader and Clerk Resources 3.0 has a new "Adult Member Self-Reliance" report that might be a good topic to discuss and/or train on.