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- [00:01]
A
Hey, how about a random short episode here? I mean, we're just sharing ideas. I wanted to jump on here and share some man just gold content that's happening over at Zion Lab. This is like the perfect example is, is this, this live stream with Todd Hilliard. This is the perfect example of why you've got to be in the Zion Lab app. And I get it. You're like, listen to the podcast, you're busy, you're, you know, your commutes. But once you get the it all dialed in and it's not hard to do your commutes, you're mowing the lawn, you're doing the dishes, you're on the go. Learning and listening through Zion Lab is just going to make life so much better and you'll get a ton more content. So one thing we do are these live streams. And so Todd Hilliard, who is actually the husband of Julie Hilliard, who does the Teaching Restored podcast, I can't recommend that enough. And anyways, Todd is the bishop of their ward in Vancouver, Washington, and I got got word that he's doing some interesting things with involving the youth as far as allowing the youth to influence how their sacrament meetings go. And I'm just going to string together this isn't the whole interview. You'll have to come design lab to benefit from the entire interview for now. But this is just a, I've just, you know, stream together a bunch of different ideas that we went over. So there's going to be a bunch of cuts here, but you'll get the sense of just how impactful, how dynamic they're they're taking with their, their sacrament meetings. And I just love the principle that they're focused or no, they're, they're like involved. They've involved the youth in their planning and the sculpting sacrament meeting experience, but it doesn't mean it's like always focused on the youth. But by keeping the youth in mind, it really does a remarkable job make sacramenting just better for everybody. So you're gonna love just so many concepts in this. Why am I continuing to talk and waste your time here? Let's jump into it. Here's some clips from the Todd Hilliard live stream that we did a few days ago. Jump on over to Zion Lab. You can go to leadingsaints.org Zion to jump in, but the easiest way is download the app and get moving. So we'll see you over in the lab
- [02:23]
B
Sunday. Sacrament, especially sacrament meeting, is really boring for most as a youth. I mean, I know for me, you know, there's a lot of times where they just go on and on and on. And the speakers, I mean, we're there for the sacrament, which by far is the most important reason we're there. But the youth were really clear what they didn't like and how they felt about sacrament meeting, which was pretty eye opening. They were interested. So music became one of the big focuses, right? The. Everyone said, we love music. We, we don't like congregational boring hymns. We love music. So that's where we started. So from day one, one of the things I kind of made as a personal, personal goal was to never get over the pulpit and say, well, everyone please sit down and be quiet and will everyone please be on time? Because no one's ever on time. So we, we started doing prelude music right at the very beginning. So we start with a prelude music. And we've actually called now I think we have seven prelude specialists from the youth. They're all youth and they are responsible. Every week we have a different youth that's responsible either to play an instrument that they're working on. I mean, obviously within the guidelines of what the church has, you know, the piano or string instrument or sing or they're responsible to get one. And so every week, one of the youth is. They rotate between them all and they're basically every other month they do a prelude.
- [03:42]
A
And just a point of clarification, Todd references that they didn't. In this next clip, he references that they didn't want to have any congregational hymns, but he's referring to the intermediate hymn. So just a point of clarification, second
- [03:56]
B
of all, with back to still stay with music, but we never wanted to have a congregational hymn if we could help it. I know there's beauty in everyone singing, but I'll tell you, most people don't sing, no matter how great the organist is. Most people just hum, hum. And. And so we really have worked really hard. And the youth, that's one of the things they said to us. They said, we don't want congregational hymns. We want special music. We want musical numbers. We want. We. We feel like when we have music in our sacrament meetings, especially for that, the second part of the program, it just. The meetings are just so much better. So we do a lot of that. I'll never forget actually when the young, young woman said, you know, I. I don't really feel the spirit when people are talking, but when the music goes, that's how I feel the spirit. So for me, I need. Please, please, we need way More music. And we went from never having musical number like once or twice to having tons, including we have a, you know, a choir that just impromptu choir, even just. They do all sorts of musical numbers. So first thing they said, we do not like long talks, right? When someone gets going, like, we lose it. Everybody. I mean, the studies show, like, your attention span with everything already happening, which we talk about with phones and dopamine and how we. How short. But they just said we can't stand these long talks. So we do so many meetings with four, five talks, six talks. We do short talks. So came up with this, right? Working with them. But we wanted everybody to bear all the youth to bear their testimony over the pulpit that year, this year. And I'll tell you, like, it absolutely changed our testimony meetings this year. Having all the youth, like, when it got closer to the end, like one, one Sunday, like, it was awesome. One of the Stake Presidency members was there and they. We invited everyone to come up and it was like this rush of like all of these young men and came rushing up to the. And he's like, what is happening here? But it's pretty awesome. And the youth actually even acknowledge it. They're like, when we bear the testimony, it's a much, much better meaning. And so we encourage them. I remind them all the time, you guys, this is not the adult testimony meeting. This is for you. This is for all of us. So that's been really awesome. The other thing I was going to say is, I don't know if know if I mentioned. But with the High Council, like the state, the stake leaders, they. I think they dread coming to our ward a little, but not dread. But I make it a point. As soon as the assignment's made, as I call them and I call their office, I mean, I call their office, I call their. Their cell phone and I talk to them and I just say, I want you to let you know we're excited to have you come. And what I need, what we need from our ward is I need you to speak to the youth. Speak to the youth. This is to. That you need to make this interesting. They don't know you. No one knows you. Everyone connect turns off when you start talking because they don't know you. So connect with youth. I mean, and it has been so such a game changer for our dry Council because it's not dry anymore. The last time they were talking about K Pop demon hunters and they're like throwing all sorts of stuff out.
- [06:45]
A
Okay, so that's. I love that for many reasons because you're not saying we want this to only be relevant to the youth. You're saying keeping the youth in mind makes it easier for the whole room to digest and consume.
- [06:57]
B
Yeah, yeah, that's really good. That's really good. And I think that's been, you know, I said, let me tell you, if you go off rogue, I'm going to sit you down. I tell them that, I'll sit you down. I, I don't want, yeah, I don't know if you've been in those meetings and they're just going on and on and they're reading from a piece of paper and like no one is listening and everyone's, I mean, you might as well throw Piper Airplane across the room. I'm like, this is, we're here to worship. Like we're here to fill the spirit, so bring it.
- [07:23]
A
All right, wasn't that great? Again you go over to the Zyne Lab app to enjoy the Full. I, I think we went about 50 minutes with that one. He really gets into details and shares more of his great ideas that how they're transforming, sacramenting and making it a richer worship experience. Now before you buzz off here, I wanted to reference this partnership we have with a company called Full Pond. Now Full Pond does a remarkable job with reaching out to BYU Pathway graduates and students and helping them find work. You know, BYU Pathway is having huge success with educating Latter Day Saints and non Latter Day Saints around the world. However, this has created another problem which is finding work. How do we get them employed? And so they have gathered a group of Latter Day Saint. These are return missionaries looking for work that can work remotely and we got one working for us as well. Shout out to Emily Munoz is in the Dominican Republic who does a phenomenal job helping us out. So if you're a business owner and you could use some additional help, these are part time, full time individuals that do everything from, you know, video editing to administrative assistant to just, I mean if, if there's a, a need that can be done remotely, they can find someone to do it. So go to leading saints.org full pond and when we refer a, you know, help one of their students get a, a job, they actually help Leading Saints with some fundraising. So it's a win, win all around. Go check out leadingsaints.org fullpond Enter your information and they'll take it from there.