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Post Info TOPIC: Using Email to do your calling?


Hot Air Balloon

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Using Email to do your calling?


Do you use it or not? How do you keep from excluding those who don't have email? Or do you bother to try?

--Ray

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Profuse Pontificator

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Yes, I use it.  I have an email list of RS that I send out announcements, etc.  Whenever I see a new woman at church I hunt her down and get her addy.  I ask the sisters to get addys from their VT people.

I make fun of anyone who doesn't have email.  Our Primary president is an older lady who is very vocal about not having email and not ever getting it.  I tell her to join the 21st century.  biggrin  And then I make sure she has the printed newsletter with the same announcements. 

I'm trying to train the RS pres to use email more.  That's a slow process.....



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Hot Air Balloon

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Our stake president has been encouraging the priesthood leadership to use it to make their callings simpler, as well. I like it because you always have a record of what was communicated and can come back to it. Phone messages get forgotten or deleted too easily.

--Ray

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I'm not slow; I'm special.
(Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)


Senior Member

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I do, I'm the sacrament chorister and I email all the songs for the month to the entire bishopric, the organist, the music chairman, and the bulletin guy every month (I have an address book 'group' so I don't have to remember everyone separately). I LOVE it. It makes sure I get everything to everyone who might possibly need it AND they can print it off for themselves easily.

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Wise and Revered Master

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All the members of the Elder's Quorum presidency have it so we can communicate that way. It works pretty good for some things.

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Jason



Profuse Pontificator

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When I was Exec Sec, I maintained email distribution lists for Bishopric, Ward Council, PPC, and Welfare Council. It was the official (and usually only) means of communication, unless something urgent came along, like canceling a meeting 30 min before meeting time.

Our Elder's Quorum Prez had to force himself to use a computer for this sole purpose. We did what we could to work with his routine, which was basically checking his email once a week on Sunday mornings to see if anyone had sent him anything. If an email needed to be read before that, someone would give him a call.

---------------

Years before all this, when I was an EQ seceretary, the EQ presidency was all a bunch of techies. We did stuff like online file sharing and group editing and other cool things that never worked right because we used a free service that wasn't very good.

LM

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Senior Member

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I really liked when I was in the single's ward because everyone there had email, so we'd get all the announcements every week, including the ones like "there are 10 days left until the end of the month, don't forget to do your visiting teaching!". It's just nice because on Sundays I hear so many things and then I forget about them. It was also convenient because maps to locations could be attached so the chance of people not coming because they didn't know how to get there was less.

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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Yes I use it. I keep the parents of my wolf den up to date on our montly schedule and any announcements. I encourage them to email me with awards their scout has earned.

I have one parent who doesn't have a computer in the home. I call her weekly to remind her of the schedule. I tried delivering a paper schedule for the month, but it got wet before she saw it and that was somehow my fault. Phone messages don't get ruined by rain or sprinklers.

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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I wish that more people would.

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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I don't have a problem with people e-mailing people about things, cuz it does save time and you can reach a whole lot of people alot faster, but I don't think it should totally replace phone calls.
For instance, there are people in our ward who don't call people. Ever. They assume everyone checks their e-mails every day, and not everybody does. So if it's something that is urgent I think that phone calls should be made too. Our Young Women's presidency did that here recently, they wanted us to bring something to church or Young Women's or whatever it was the very next day.
Well, I didn't see the e-mail until after the fact.

Oh, and they also e-mailed me about something that they wanted to keep hush hush from the girls.
In other words, they told me not to tell my daughter. Well, our daughter gets e-mails sometimes from my account and often checks my e-mail. I don't think she happened to see it, but I e-mailed them back and said, "By the way, if you want to send me a message and don't want my daughter to see it, I suggest you don't e-mail me about it."

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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FWIW, Cat despises the use of e-mail in fulfilling communication within callings. His experience has been that too often people use it as a cop-out and never follow-up to make sure the recipient received the information. And then they wonder why some people never seem to know what's going on. He understands that it is useful and efficient for those certain ward members in high pressure, high power careers and who are on the road all week but it also starts feeling alot more like administration than ministration.

This is a Cat-approved post. wink.gif

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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But for administration, it's hard to beat.

I agree with you poncho, about time sensitive communications. If you want to be sure someone knows something by tomorrow - get on the phone.

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Hot Air Balloon

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It's also really easy to ignore, especially if there's something that needs to be signed up for... :) But then, so is the clipboard that circulates through the EQ quorum. :D

--Ray

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I'm not slow; I'm special.
(Don't take it personally, everyone finds me offensive. Yet somehow I manage to live with myself.)


Wise and Revered Master

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When I was young men's president I used to get these awful emails from this overbearing scoutmaster criticizing nearly every decison I made, telling me how I was doing my calling wrong, and telling me how he used to do things when he was YM's president. So I blocked his emails. A couple months later he asked me why I never replied to his emails.

The man was poison and eventually got what he wanted, my calling, and he did pretty much the same things I was doing. I still remember the satisfaction of placing his email on the blocked sender list.

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Jason



Senior Member

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For the duration - 8 weeks - of my Sunday School class, I'm emailing everyone who signed up a summary of the lesson, a reminder of the homework, and a note about the upcoming lesson. This was not my idea, but the direction of our High Priests Group leader, who followed up the suggestion by sending me a spreadsheet with all the email addys of those who signed up. Talk about a gentle hint smile.gif

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Senior Member

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ABSOLUTELY!

With a ward that covers an entire county in one state and part of a county in another state, there is NO WAY that a paper trail can get to everyone efficiently.

While we still make paper copies for those who are technology impaired by choice or inclination, we have reduced our copier load by using email as often as possible.

Plus, it helps out to make sure people remember

(1) meetings (for which everyone is at least 10 minutes late except the person who has the spiritual thought),

(2) meetings after the meetings,

(3) meetings while your children whine about how hungry they are,

and then

(4) the follow up meeting to discuss what was not listened to in the first three meetings while your spouse guns the engine in the parking lot.

Plus, we also use email for visiting teaching reminders when the month is trickling perilously close to the end with no reports from the sisters turned in.

We consider it digital nagging, uh, I mean, electronic reminders of service...

All of the nagging with half of the 'in your face' since most people just delete it when they see who it is from and what the subject line says.

Some of it even works!

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Senior Bucketkeeper

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rofl.gif  That pretty much sums it up I think.



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Ros


Senior Member

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Yes, yes, yes!

The RS has a full-out e-mail list. We get reminders for all the random activities, if anyone needs to borrow a crib for the weekend we just send out the request via e-mail to the whole RS. It's great!!!

I always use e-mail for Cubs. For everything!

For YW, however, we use text. All the girls, save 2, get the message. Even phone calls weren't that succesfull. Great for reminders!!

We also get recorded phone reminders for Stake activities.

I have no problem with any of it. I prefer it.

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