Feeling at Home in Your Ward | An Interview with Melody Warnick

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in January 2020.
Melody Warnick is the author of two books about thriving where you
live: This Is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever You Are and
If You Could Live Anywhere: The Surprising Power of Place in a
Work-from-Anywhere World. Her books have been featured in the New
York Times, Time magazine, Fast Company, Psychology Today, and
others, and her writing has appeared in such publications as the
Washington Post, the New York Times, Slate, Reader’s Digest, The
Guardian, Good Housekeeping, and Woman’s Day. A regular speaker
about creating connection with your community, Melody lives in
Blacksburg, Virginia, where her husband serves as stake president.
Highlights 5:30 Serving in Melody’s stake in Virginia 8:20 How the
book came about 10:50 Experiments in loving where you live:
micro-action steps you can intentionally take to create positive
experiences for yourself 18:45 Applying these principles to wards
and stakes 19:20 Creating a community based on geography creates a
situation where we can practice being more Christlike 21:50
Benefits of “instant community” in the ward, as compared to moving
for people not in the Church tribe: familiarity and similarity
25:45 When you struggle fitting into the community 26:25 Leaders
need to pay attention to these people 27:30 The more engaged you
are, the more you will feel at home 28:30 Everyone can feel left
out or like they don’t fit in 30:10 Being proactive can have a big
impact 34:00 Serving in callings and outside of callings: have a
personal ministry from a desire to be of service 37:35 Taking your
talent to the community 41:30 Do we have to participate in the
Church community? 43:30 It can be easier to socialize with Church
members 46:10 Serving in a Church community within the larger
community 50:55 Being the mayor of your street: building social
cohesion in your neighborhood 54:40 Cliques and community: creating
horseshoes, not circles 59:00 Detaching from your ward and going
forward: moving or changing callings 1:07:00 Choosing to live near
family… or not 1:13:00 Finding joy wherever you live 1:15:00
Two-hour church and missing connections: You don’t have to ask
permission to create community 1:17:45 Asking, “Where are we
needed?” 1:20:00 Building relationships with people and finding
ways to serve them is key to living a Christlike life Links
melodywarnick.com This is Where You Belong: Finding Home Wherever
You Are If You Could Live Anywhere: The Surprising Importance of
Place in a Work-from-Anywhere World TRANSCRIPT coming soon Listen
on YouTube Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library