By Curtis Gasser
The BYU 15th Stake is leading four other stakes in making the switch from traditional ward organization to the council system.
Ward members are discovering that this may mean more Sunday meetings, but also increased effectiveness.
'The whole purpose of the council system is to bring souls to Christ,' said Megan Snyder, 23, from Albuquerque, N.M. and a recent BYU graduate in history teaching.
'A lot of it comes from Elder Ballard''s book ''Counseling With Our Counsels,''' she said.
Snyder, who serves on the spiritual and temporal welfare council for the BYU 101st Ward, said the book describes the council system as being about church members working together to touch the lives of others and bring them closer to the Savior.
The BYU 15th Stake began the program almost five years ago, acting as a prototype by which the effectiveness of the new system could be assessed, said Ben Shippen, BYU 5th Stake President.
By assigning every member of the ward to a specific council, ward leadership ensures that everyone has a responsibility and an added reason for attending church meetings, Shippen said.
The 15th Stake has implemented eleven separate councils in each ward, Snyder said. These councils cover familiar areas such as ward activities, temple and family history, and spiritual and temporal welfare.
In an effort to expand influence and effectiveness of gospel principles in ward members'' lives, new councils have been created, such as Sabbath day observance, friendshipping and others.
'The council system is a way for the students to get experience in callings so that when we go out into conventional wards we can be leaders,' Snyder said.
Having each ward member as a part of a council also leads to more effective problem solving, Snyder said.
'Elder Ballard says in his book that when more people feel ownership of the problem, more people are willing to be part of the solution,' Snyder said.
Since the 15th Stake''s initial implementation of the new system, the transition has gone smoothly as ward members have found new ways to serve.
Lon Nield has been bishop of the BYU 111th Ward for the last year and a half and said his ward has had great success with the program.
'I''m really happy with it,' Nield said. 'It enables everyone to have a meaningful calling.'
Nield said when one of their ward members had a heart attack recently, the council system allowed their ward to quickly get organized and help in a way that they otherwise would not have been able to.
'The council system empowers the kids to take care of themselves and take care of each other,' said David Skinner, bishop of the BYU 69th Ward. 'Some wards in our stake have had as much as 4,000 hours of service per semester.'
Each individual council is organized with a man and a woman acting either as chair or co-chair. Remaining ward members are then assigned to a specific responsibility within the council, he said.
'Some councils are really huge, such as the service and enrichment council,' said Amy Innes, 23, a senior from Cardston, Alberta, Canada, majoring in psychology. 'Others are fairly small. It doesn''t take as many people to run the music council.'
Innes said one of the greatest advantages of the council system is that there is involvement from all who want to contribute.
'A big pro is you get input from everyone and you''re always unified in looking out for the needs of the ward,' she said.
Part of the effectiveness and correlation comes from the increased attendance at ward council meetings. Instead of being limited to the usual presence of the bishopric and select ward leaders, those attending ward council can sometimes be numbered in the forties.
'We rotate through the month which councils are reporting about the activities that are going on and so we get updates on them, but also during that meeting we discuss ward needs,' Innes said.
While it is a good thing to have everyone in the ward involved, sometimes it can present a challenge as well, Snyder said.
'Sometimes I think there are people who feel like they don''t do as much as they could do,' she said.
Some members of wards that have implemented the council system say the personal time they previously had each Sunday has been dramatically reduced.
Bracken Webb, 21, a freshman from Sandy, majoring in microbiology, had his first experience with the council system a month ago.
'The one thing that caught me really off guard was how many meetings there are,' Webb said. 'I sat in one last week for over an hour and it didn''t seem like we got that much done.'
Webb said having increased meetings seemed strange to him in light of recent counsel given to wards and stakes to reduce the number of meetings that members are required to participate in each week.
Elder Ballard spoke on using council meetings effectively in an address given to missionaries in August 1999.
'Are you using the ward and stake councils effectively as they were intended?' he asked. 'Don''t let them become meaningless exercises in organizational bureaucracy. Your council meetings need to be more than an opportunity for calendaring and coordinating, for giving and receiving reports. They should be a setting for discussing how you can bring the blessings of the gospel into the lives of others.'
Skinner said much of the responsibility for training ward members how to conduct meetings lies with the bishopric.
'The idea is to teach people how to be effective in meetings,' he said. 'I don''t look at (the number of meetings) as excessive.'
Nield said although the system is not perfect, the positive aspects of it definitely outweigh the negatives.
'I think the one thing that''s really good about it is that it includes those kids who might feel a little lost,' he said.
For the past several years, participation in the council system program was limited to the 15th Stake. With four more stakes making the transition in the last month, however, Skinner said this is just the beginning.
'It''s going to be adopted on a broader basis in the fall,' he said. 'I can''t imagine anything else that would be as effective.'