August 5: First Sunday Council Meeting

What is the first-Sunday meeting?

• Elder Hallstrom: Its a council meeting for the quorum, group, or Relief Society, led by their individual leadership. It addresses the needs of the quorum or organization and how we can better prepare ourselves, then organize to meet those individual needs.
• It is not a lesson. We have lessons or discussions on the other Sundays in the month, but the first Sunday is meant to be a true council, led by leadership, but involving everyone. 

• Brother Heaton: Prior to any given first-Sunday council meeting, the presidency may in preparation prayerfully identify a need. Then, at the council meeting, they will present that and ask, "What are your thoughts on this subject? How will we address this need?
• We do not know how this will happen in anyone group, but as the presidency comes to understand the needs of their group through ministering, they'll begin to have a sense of what the general needs may be. 
• Under the the gift of revelation, they'll select one of those needs and seek more information nohow to meet that need generally.

• Sister Bingham: The idea is that it's truly a council in which everyone has a chance to contribute, and its much more rich when many people participate.
• One of the beautiful things about this council meeting is that you actually come up at the end of the meeting with an action plan. You choose an action individually, and possibly as a group. Then in the next week, they have an opportunity to briefly report: What as the effect of what you chose last week? Did it really make a difference.

Is it fair to say that this council meeting, being more generally focused, does not supplant the ward council meeting?

• Brother Magleby: Yes. You're Talking more about the principles to help many people than the the specific needs of one individual person, although the individual needs of a person could trigger a general discussion about principles.

• Elder Hallstrom: In the setting of a first-Sunday council meeting, were certainly not going to talk about very sensitive, confidential matters as a quorum or Relief Society. So its really more a matter of "This is a general need that we have; how can we better accomplish it?" or "We need to provide more service in this way; lets organize ourselves to do better at that." So were not changing the function of the ward council, if anything it's totally supportive to what the ward council would be doing and helping in a more general way than person by person or family by family.

Depending on the circumstances in the ward, these council meetings could be rather sizable. How does one encourage involvement by everyone?

• Sister Bingham: Facilitate a spiritual discussion! Respond positively to comments and keep the focus on doctrines.
• It is recommended that, if the group size allows, we make a circle with our chairs so that each person feels like they have an equal voice. Those who are facilitating the council should watch for those who have not made comments or who look like they would like to make a comment but are too shy to have done so, include everyone. 
• The leader of the discussion could come prepared with a few scriptures, a couple of quotes from Church leaders, or a brief example of illustration of doctrine concepts being discussed as prompts to be shared if needed. 
• For example the topic might be "How can we increase unity in our Relief Society?" Some questions might be: Why is unity important? What are some of your favorite scriptures on unity? What tends to decrease unity among us? What are some specific things we can do to increase our unity? Is there one of these actions we'd like to do as a group? Which one would you like to do as an individual? Next week please come prepared to share what you did and how it has increased the unity in our Relief Society.