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

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. Links There
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the Core Leader Library 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
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