Here’s how we’ve organized our Elders Quorum: We have a Google Sites site, and it links to all the important documents people might need.
After the home page, we have a page for the sacrament. There’s a Google Spreadsheet embedded in the page that can be edited by anyone on the web. So our Elders use that page to easily sign up for preparing, blessing, and passing the sacrament. Our Sacrament Coordinator makes sure the list is always filled out ahead of time, and he does a great job.
The next tab lists the teaching schedule with another embedded Google Spreadsheet. Only the instructors and the presidency have editing privileges for this doc. But the whole quorum can see the schedule and keep up with the reading. If an instructor can’t teach during his week, it’s easy for him to coordinate swapping days with someone else. Our instructors have been doing super well with this too.
Next we have a page that lists District Leaders (in case anyone missed the memo). There’s a link to a private Google Spreadsheet in which home teaching is recorded. The district leaders and the presidency are the only ones who have access to see or edit this doc. I’ll show you a bit of it below.
This is the home teaching spreadsheet. It lists companionships and the elders and sisters they’re assigned to look after. District leaders can report directly whether those individuals were served (according to the goals set by districts—and these actually vary slightly by district). They can also insert comments on each individual for every month so there’s a running record of how people are doing. A spreadsheet like this also makes it a cinch to give a monthly report to the Stake Presidency (you can tally numbers automatically).
Here’s the TEMPLATE for this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkLuDGvEmEgJdC15M0xETkR4R3RTWHpJdmhTNXhPLVE&usp=sharing
Finally, we have a tab for the presidency—which is a list of links to some private Google Docs that the presidency uses to collaborate. Only the presidency can see and edit these docs.
This has been a helpful one-stop hub to keep our quorum communicating and collaborating.
We’d like to hear what you think and whether you’ve implemented anything similar. If so, how’d it go?
And one more thing:
We may be a singles ward, but we’re a serious Elders Quorum. We work hard, and we play hard. It’s rough and tumble—it’s wild and wooly—but IT IS FUN.
