Rallying the Ward Around Sacrament Meeting | A How I Lead Interview with Ryan Webb

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Ryan Webb grew up in Tremonton, Utah, and has been married to his wife, KaDawn, for 22 years. They have six children. He has taught within Seminaries and Institutes in Orem, Utah, Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Raleigh, North Carolina. He also spent 10 months as the Raleigh Temple Recorder. Ryan has served as a Young Men president, elders quorum president, stake high councilor, bishopric counselor, and currently serves as bishop of his ward.

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Highlights

Ryan discusses his approach to enhancing sacrament meetings by involving the ward council and focusing on creating a worshipful and edifying experience. He shares various creative ideas implemented in sacrament meetings, such as having musical numbers every week, incorporating different languages, and allowing members to share their testimonies on specific topics such as “Why I Believe”—all with the purpose of to strengthening the ward members’ connections to Jesus Christ.

03:10 Ryan Webb’s path in church education. He started with teaching Seminary and is now an Institute director.

06:00 Ryan is currently serving as a bishop. He describes his ward and demographics.

07:10 Ryan’s initial approach as a bishop

08:35 Focus on improving sacrament meetings.

10:20 Implementing changes in sacrament meetings to make people feel more welcome and create a new culture.

12:50 Involving the young women’s president to help make changes in the sacrament meeting and give the young women more chances to serve.

15:50 More ways they have improved sacrament meeting. They threw out the old, cookie cutter ways of doing this meeting and met together to come up with lots of new ideas to worship.

18:20 Music is powerful and brings the spirit. They have tried to have a musical number every meeting.

19:10 Washing away prior tradition because sometimes we feel bound by that tradition. There is power in starting over and just trying new things to see what works. The spirit speaks and can help us create a unique, edifying meeting.

20:30 Involving all the organizations in the ward to do musical numbers. They also involve other churches by inviting their choirs to come and sing in church.

22:00 How they organize sacrament meetings. They don’t do the traditional 10-minute speakers. They normally do shorter talks.

19:11 Involving ward council in sacrament meeting planning.

23:10 Speaking in different languages in sacrament meeting. The whole meeting was short testimonies in different languages.

25:00 Different ideas to create unique sacrament meeting experiences.

All-music meetings
Living Christ meeting with multiple musical numbers
Young Men-only meeting
Young Women-only meeting
Because of Him meeting
4 Christmas programs in the month of December.

27:30 “Why I Believe” testimony meeting. Members had 90 seconds to share why they believe. Members were prepared 3 weeks before and anyone could go up and share.

31:30 Christ-centered sacrament services. Letting people sign up to speak on something that they want to speak on and then connect it to Christ.

35:25 Mother’s Day sacrament meeting

36:30 Establishing a cadence for sacrament meetings

38:20 Ward counsel and involving elders quorum and Relief Society in sacrament meeting planning. Helping the whole ward feel involved in planning sacrament meeting.

40:10 Challenges and lessons learned while trying new ideas

41:20 Improving fast and testimony meeting

42:10 Impact of leadership on personal discipleship

44:00 Ryan’s final thoughts on his leadership experience

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