So at the end of sacrament meeting last Sunday, the bishop says, "Next week,
our ward and the Colfax Ward will be meeting together. Sacrament meeting
will begin at one o'clock p.m. That will be our only meeting, so don't prepare
lessons for quorum and auxiliary meetings."
And at that moment, everyone knows: They're going to carve a new ward out of
Colfax and our own Greensboro Summit.
Everyone knew the division had to come sometime. Colfax has had sacrament
meetings so packed that if you arrived late there was truly nowhere to sit. And
our ward, Summit, has been spilling through the overflow and into the cultural
hall for a couple of years now.
Ward division. It's the cruelest time. Friendships get split up. People are
forced to leave callings and home teaching families, classes and quorums they
love. It can be a time of genuine loss.
Why? It's one of the bizarre facts of life in Mormon villages that without ever
moving away from your home, you can be tossed from one village to another
and have your whole life disrupted. You go to sacrament meeting one day and
come home as a citizen of a different town.
Even if you aren't in the new village created out of two old ones, you're bereft of
friends and associates. There are injuries and, yes, broken hearts.
Which is absurd, isn't it? Your house is no farther from your friends' houses.
Everyone still has the same phone number.
But because Mormon life is so time-consuming, it takes extraordinary effort to
maintain friendships with people who are no longer there every Sunday taking
part in the same meetings with you. If you're doing your calling, if you're truly
a citizen of your current village, there's not much time for any but a precious
few of your friends from previous villages.
You know this -- especially you who live in the Mormon Corridor (Utah,
Arizona, Idaho), where wards are often no larger than a few blocks. Unless you
have kids the same age who play together, you can live across the street from
people and have no idea who they are, because the ward boundary runs right
down your street.
When they draw up new boundaries, the leaders try to find lines that make
geographical sense -- major highways, railroad tracks, rivers. If the line looks
gerrymandered, wandering about to include this house and not that one,
people will begin to think that there was favoritism. They're less likely to
accept the division.
But in choosing the new boundaries, the leaders also have to take notice of
individuals. For one thing, all three wards have to contain enough Melchizedek
priesthood holders with the right talents and testimony -- and enough free
time -- to serve as bishoprics and quorum leaders.
There has to be enough of a talent pool in all three units to sustain plausible
presidencies of the Relief Society, Young Men, Young Women, and Primary.
This is one reason why ward divisions can also be both exhilarating and scary.
Now that everyone lives in a smaller village, people are suddenly being tapped
for responsibilities they have never been asked to carry out before.
Of course, as much as possible, people in the old wards will be left in place --
the goal of the bishops will be to adapt with as little disruption as possible. Inthe new ward, though, there is no automatic carryover.
If you had already been a Primary teacher, and you are called to teach in
Primary again, you might rejoice -- "I must have been doing a good job!" -- or
you can mourn -- "I guess a Primary teacher is all I'll ever be."
This latter attitude of disappointment comes from the mistaken impression
that leadership callings are more important than those of teaching or clerking.
But this is not true.
The principal business of the LDS ward is teaching. Teaching is the food of our
villages; it's what we eat. We come together on Sundays and other days to
break the bread of knowledge, wisdom, and testimony, and share all we have
with each other in a great feast.
That gift of teacher to student is what most of our meetings are mostly about.
Almost everything else is in support of that great work.
Yet it is also true that a ward cannot thrive without a Bishop and Relief Society
president who can keep their fingers on the pulse of the ward; they must have
good counselors if they are to have a hope of doing their jobs well.
There has to be a presidency of the Young Men and the Young Women who
have the time and the love to get to know all their charges and do what they
can to hold on to the youth during that crucial age. And so on, through the
quorums, the Primary, the music and clerical and caretaker work of the
Church.
No calling is higher than another, not in God's eyes. But some are certainly
more demanding of time than "Sunday callings." Preparing a lesson takes time
-- but it's time of your own choosing. The leaders have to be on call at many
other times.
That's why, when they're dividing wards, they have to make sure that the new
villages contain plenty of potential leaders. The list does not consist of the
strongest testimonies or the most personable or best-liked.
It consists of the people whose family and working lives will allow them the
time to do the jobs, and whose past behavior shows that they can be counted
on to do whatever it takes to get the job done as assigned. They also take into
account the needs and talents of the individuals they consider.
When the bishops start creating -- or rebuilding -- the ward organizations,
there are many reasons why you might end up with one calling, and not
another.
If you constantly require a substitute, if you fail to show up without giving any
notice, if you do only a half-hearted or ill-prepared job of the callings you've
had before, how can you be trusted with a calling that requires that you be
there every time, fully prepared?
Even if you've been absolutely dependable, though, that doesn't mean you're
going to be tapped for a leadership calling. Nor is it an insult if you don't get
one.
If you're a wonderful Primary teacher, it's a wise bishop who does all he can to
find somebody else to do the leadership so you can stay in that class where the
children thrive.
Ward leaders are not the "best" people; they are merely the best people for the
callings they have at the time they have them. And you are the best person for
the calling you have -- as long as you strive to make it so.
Here is the great secret that I have learned in my 57 years of life in the villages
of Mormondom -- there is no calling in which you cannot earn the love and
honor of those whom you serve, or serve with.
There is no calling that will get you to heaven faster than another.
There are no members so extraordinary that they can't be replaced with others
who will do their old callings well enough -- or better.
Our villages are re-created every day, every week, by people who selflessly
serve, not to be seen of men, but to make sure that whatever task they've been
assigned gets done well, and to help others succeed in their callings, too.
If you really believe you were passed over, then don't grumble or gripe or go
inactive. That just proves that those who did not choose you for the "lofty"
calling you desired were absolutely correct.
Instead, work harder to be a fellow-citizen of the Saints. Show up for
everything you can. Come early to help set up; stay late to help clean up. Do
your callings faithfully, obediently, and independently.
Keep your attention on the people you serve; love them, rather than loving
yourself as the "noble" person serving them.
The reward of this new pattern of behavior is not that you'll finally get the lofty
callings you were once disappointed not to get.
The reward is that you'll realize that it was a bit idiotic to want them, when you
have plenty of opportunities to serve the ward just as valuably in the calling
that you have.
Meanwhile, what I'm most anxious about is the schedule of the three wards
that are going to share our stake center. I covet the afternoon schedule -- it
will let me sleep late on Sunday morning. But I know that all the young
parents are praying for the earliest possible schedule, when their kids are not
yet hungry or cranky.
There are so many of them, and they have so much faith. I have only my
laziness to recommend me. I'm doomed.
Orson Scott Card is the author of the novels Ender's Game, Ender's
Shadow, and Speaker for the Dead, which are widely read by adults and
younger readers, and are increasingly used in schools.
Besides these and other science fiction novels, Card writes contemporary
fantasy (Magic Street,Enchantment,Lost Boys), biblical novels (Stone Tables,Rachel and Leah), the American frontier fantasy series The Tales of Alvin Maker
(beginning with Seventh Son), poetry (An Open Book), and many plays and
scripts.
Card was born in Washington and grew up in California, Arizona, and
Utah. He served a mission for the LDS Church in Brazil in the early 1970s.
Besides his writing, he teaches occasional classes and workshops and directs
plays. He also teaches writing and literature at Southern Virginia University.
Card currently lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his wife,
Kristine Allen Card, and their youngest child, Zina Margaret.