GUIDElines 2000, Vol I, No 3 – September 3, 2000
I’m excited! We are three days into launch and some marvelous things have happened. One person referred 35 of her friends immediately to the site! That’s exciting! Another friend asked me if I would like to co-moderate/co-own a list of his with 830 members! That would make them immediately available to Join Us! We had planned and hoped for 41 signups a day, and it appears the Lord has blessed us with the possibility of achieving that goal each day this month, and perhaps even surpassing it.
You will find that the GUIDElines will be quite personal at times. I believe it is important for those who become involved with our goal to know what has happened to get us to where we are. I want you to know also that I have a testimony of HEROIC goals and what it takes to make them come to fruition. We had something in the Youth Guides I entitled “Guidelines to Enhancing Your Faith,” which used as its basis information from Grant Von Harrison’s book, Drawing on the Powers of Heaven, Ó 1979. It is an excellent book and I highly recommend it. In his book, Brother Von Harrison gave us the outline within which we could put our own twist on goal setting. When my Webmaster and I sat down to create ZionsArmy.com, this is the process we went through.
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The following is what I wrote as the guidelines for the creation of ZionsArmy.com. I took examples from some of the things we did in the Youth Guides. You will find them in bold and my comments about them in red.
1. Specify a Plan of Action
Once you have prayerfully selected a righteous desire, in many instances you will find it helpful to reduce your plan of action to writing. Generally, your plan will include the following:
A. Your Desire
State your desire (goal) as specifically as possible. It should include the time period in which you intend to achieve your desire.
By the evening of August 31st, 1993, at 9:00 p.m., the Youth Guide Program will have received 38 non-member referrals to the missionaries.
Let me write about this for a minute and then see if I can
state in a sentence as simple as the one above, what my overarching goal is.
First,
as a convert to the Church, I have had my life, and the lives of my family,
changed so much for the better that I would never go back to having no
religion. In fact, because of my
destructive behavior I might have been dead by now if it weren’t for my
membership in the Church. Deep in my
Church roots is the knowledge that the Gospel as practiced by the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a lifesaver. Feeling so strongly about that, I am compelled to find ways to
share it with others.
Second,
I am crazy enough to do work that others won’t or can’t do. Because of my ease at word processing, I am
not in the least daunted by the task at hand of keeping up with the demands of
ZionsArmy.com.
Third,
due to provident intervention I was lucky to be able to be a big part of the
Arizona Temple Youth Guides. I learned
much I need to share with others who are struggling to find a way to reach out
to not-yet-members of the Church.
Fourth,
I sacrificed time and money to create the GUIDElines, which has given me
a wealth of information about missions from those who were there, and I saved
it ALL. Also, the GUIDElines
provides an interesting journal of the “Guide Years.”
Fifth,
I have a little extra money and the time to do what needs to be done to get
ZionsArmy.com started.
Sixth,
I am so confident in our methods that I believe we can be phenomenally
successful, if we do it right and get some breaks.
Seventh,
I have a tremendous reservoir of “goodwill” built up in the Alumni of the
Program, those I served with all my might, who I believe want to see the ideas
we used, and me personally, succeed.
Eighth,
all of these elements seemed to have come together at the right time for
success. I can feel it in the air!
So,
what would I like to do with all of this?
Let me try to write it in a sentence:
My
desire is that by the evening of August 31st, 2005 (five years from
now), starting with ZionsArmy.com and taking it wherever it needs to go, I will
have helped teach and motivate 40,000 active site members how to be
successful at establishing and maintaining a five-step Standard of Performance. If I can do this one thing, they will:
Be
studying the Gospel 30” a day,
Have a
SETADATE in the next 60 days,
Be
praying morning and night for missionary opportunities,
Be
inviting one not-yet-member each week to a Church function, and
They will
be sharing by “word of mouse” the concepts they are
learning by introducing others to ZionsArmy.com.
This
Standard of Performance will ensure that they:
Have the opportunity to receive inspiration as they study
the Gospel,
Learn how to use faith (SETADATE) to precede miracles,
Learn how to plead with Heavenly Father daily to reach those
He has
prepared,
Follow-up their preparation with the work of inviting, and
Will cherish what they have learned enough to share
ZionsArmy.com
with others.
If
I can do this…2,000,000 more people a year will have been
introduced to the Gospel and 80,000 of them will have been
baptized.
Is
this a righteous desire? My answer is
yes. I firmly believe that the
Lord is waiting for somebody to come along and awaken
members of
the Church to how simple the process can be to increase the
membership of His Church.
He has provided the Internet as a tool in
this process. I also
believe He will help us when we need it.
B. Your Resolves (“Your” in this case is what the group can do)
Everything you will do to accomplish the particular goal. These are things that are in your power to do in order that your righteous desires will be accomplished.
1. Youth Guides will pray morning and night from this time forward until the end of the month that the Lord will bless us with our referral goal.
2.
Each will keep the Standards of Excellence.
3.
We will do all in our power to invite non-members to
the Gardens for a Garden Tour, for an Inside Tour, or invite them to refer
outside of the Gardens.
4.
We will make sure that the meetings we have are well
organized and conducted so that training can be given, members can be inspired
to do better, and the Spirit will attend us.
5.
We will each encourage one another to work harder than
we’ve ever worked before.
6.
All other under the direction of the Spirit.
I have
been so excited and transfixed almost by the arrival at the very time I was
beginning of the Ideavirus book. It is
free, straightforward, and if we follow what he is talking about there is no
reason we cannot grrrrr8!ly increase our chance for success. If we use what we know about the Alumni, the
Program, the Church, and ourselves, together with what we can learn from
Ideavirus and others, we CAN be successful.
So,
what we are talking about in this section is the HIVE and what it can do to
ensure success of the goal. It would be
things like making sure that when an Alumni refers someone to the site they say
the right thing (perhaps our canned phrase that they have nothing to do with),
making sure that on every page there is a spot for them to click and send to a
friend, or join, or something…all the things that we can think of for everyone
else to do so that we succeed in our goal.
C. The Help You Will Need from the Lord
The specific blessings you desire to receive which will require your drawing on the powers of heaven.
All we ask of the Lord is that He will soften the hearts of those he puts in our paths to invite, and that He might bless us with the Spirit as we teach and testify in the Gardens.
I think
it is just that simple. We will plead
with the Lord on a daily
basis that He will soften the hearts of Priesthood leaders,
Alumni,
Surfers, friends, acquaintances, fellow Net workers in the
“cause,”
and all we come in contact with, and bless us with the Spirit
as we
teach and testify, so that when they learn what we are doing,
and we
invite them to help, they will.
D. Your Commitment
A list of the things you are willing to do in order to qualify for the Lord’s help. Your commitments should be established under inspiration and should be commitments, which will demonstrate your worthiness and dedication and the strength of your desire in receiving assistance from the Lord.
These are individual, personal commitments and covenants with the Lord, above and beyond what is required as a member of the Program. We will each search our hearts and souls and determine what our personal sacrifice will be so that we might qualify ourselves for the blessings we desire. As an example, perhaps we will extend twice as many invitations as we have ever done before, or increase our study time, etc.
Here is where we might be different in what our commitment
is. You have said that as long as our
relationship is not a partnership, you will only be able to work so many hours
for so much pay. That is very
reasonable. You protect your time and
your family’s income, because if you don’t, who will? Right? I know that
because of the goodwill you feel towards me, you will do all I pay you for plus
some to make sure that it all works like it is supposed to from your end. I would do the same in a similar
situation. I don’t know what your full
interest is in all of this right now or what it is going to be. If I reach the goal I have outlined above,
and you are running the web site, you better get out your journal right now and
begin to write the story, because unless you do no one will believe you! I use the term “I” because right now that’s
who it is. It has been my dream for
years and the fact that it is all coming together now is like a dream come
true.
How
about we agree on this. As my
Webmaster, I need to know that you are with me, so I will ask you to decide
upon a Standard of Performance that will ensure that you succeed in your task. If you want to set HEROIC goals for
yourself, then it will be something you do on your own. This way you don’t have to tell me, “Bro.
P., I love you, but it’s way too early for me to jump in hook, line and sinker. I’ll do all I can, but I’d like to wait to
see where it’s going before I buy all the way in.”
However,
if the Spirit has whispered to you that we really have something here, there
may be real advantages to your teaming up with me. If I am working on a dream, and you are working on a project, we
are unequally yoked. If we’re both
working on a dream, then let’s work on an arrangement where your web making
business profits as much as possible from what we are doing. The other branches of your business,
especially the music, might find a means of expression in one of the three
sites, ZionsArmy.com, SonsofHelaman.com, or YouthGuides.com. I mean that without being obtrusive, we make
sure that everyone knows that your company is putting this together, and on a
selective basis we include whatever else you are doing when it is
appropriate. I am not opposed to that
at all, as long as it does not detract from anything we are doing and that we
remain essentially a non-commercial site.
Advertising your site to an eventual 40,000 active site members
may be worth a risk. If this is my
goal, I fully expect to reach it, you know.
Although I started this out as a project that would eventually create
income for me, those thoughts have been WAY back in my mind lately and any
income that is generated will be after a huge effort to get it all going. I intend to run the sites non-commercially,
but hopefully someday if we are successful there may be a book or two in all of
this. People may clamor for a hardcopy
of what we have done, and we can provide that.
You know of my goals of creating a mission fund and contributing to my
retirement income. They are not
extravagant, and if I achieve them I will be sincerely happy, and it will have
been worth it as much as getting a part time job at Wal-Mart! If I don’t and I also don’t bankrupt myself
doing all of this, then it will have been worth the effort.
I’ve
helped many men and women and their companies make lots of money in my
lifetime, and I received just what I had contracted for, my hourly wages. If you and I partner and you figure out a
way to increase the income for your businesses and it harmonizes with what we
are doing, I will wholeheartedly support you because I know that by helping to
motivate you to increase site visits, my cause will be furthered also. Further, if you buy in to setting a HEROIC
goal of 40,000 active site members in five years, then I know that
between the two of us we can do it!
Does all of that seem fair to you?
2. Measure Your Faith
Very basic to the process of goal setting is consistent and accurate accounting of your performance in achieving your goals. Three basic steps are necessary in the process to make an accurate accounting of your performance with respect to your goals:
1. Reduce your goals to writing (what and when).
We know what (38 referrals) and when (by 9:00 p.m. on August 31, 1993).
2. Measure your performance against your predetermined goals on a regular basis (how are you going to account?)
Since we know that we receive a referral for every 1.3 non-member appointments in the Gardens, we will keep careful track of this statistic and relate it to the referral total each day and publish it for the Guides to see and be governed by.
3. Revise your goals under inspiration (progress and attainment).
If and when we receive our goal, prior to the determined date, we will revise our goal upwards according to our present performance.
I
think this is taken care of as we develop our HEROIC Goals area of the
site. As I mentioned in another email,
hopefully we can design the site to give us the simple stats we need. There are other stats that you as the
Webmaster must have in mind, and keep me informed of, so that we can maximize
on all fronts. I think we break down
the overall HEROIC Goal to incremental goals, so that we don’t get discouraged
if it is slow at times. If it is going
so well that we just can’t imagine it, and we reach our goal in a few months,
then we’ll have to set higher goals, based on the above.
Ponder and reflect on your many blessings, and discern and recognize the powers of heaven and express gratitude for your blessings and that power which helped you.
As we are blessed during the month, we will allow time in the Sunday Night Training Meeting for those who have been blessed with growth experiences, whether referrals were received or not, so they can bear testimony to the loving kindness of our Lord.
I have already expressed my
gratitude to Heavenly Father for Leslie and Bryant, for you and Kathy, for the
Ideavirus that has helped so much to inspire me this past week, for the fact
that I thought ahead enough to have all this material, for David Stewart and
all the new friends we will meet as we do this, for the Alumni and all they
mean to me. The list goes on and on of
the blessings. I think what this one is
all about is that we will find things happening to us daily that are an
expression of our Savior’s love for us.
We need to make sure that we RECOGNIZE them and think about them and
express gratitude for them.
4. Record Your Experiences
Throughout your life, as you have experiences involving faith as a principle of power, record them and make them a meaningful part of your personal history. When you record faith-promoting experiences, be sure you describe in detail the process you went through in exercising faith as well as the result of your faith.
We’ve established a
Referral Journal, which each person may add to when they have received a
referral. In addition, each member of
the Program can add to his personal journal the things that happen during this
month.
Yes! Yes! Yes! By all means keep a record! I would be nowhere if I had not kept track
of so much. You should be writing in a
journal of some kind daily, Tim. It is
imperative for you and for your family.
Why? Because what we think is
mundane or run of the mill, which is what most of our life is about, will turn
out to be so precious to us later. I
went to the Gardens one night and wrote about it for the GUIDElines. It invokes such memories just to read about
an ordinary night in the Gardens.
Well, this has been long, but extremely worthwhile. Can you see how we could be so
successful? We spent a lot of time
analyzing how it is done and this short exercise is worth all the time I’ve
spent on it. It was while I was working
this out that I remembered that all I have to do is get people to have and keep
a Standard of Performance, and I can reach the goals I have for the site. It means site reorganization so that our
most important assignment is to create a Standard of Performance. Aren’t you glad I decided on this now,
instead of lots later?
Don’t know what else to say.
Out of our goal statement will come everything we do. I think it is a righteous statement. Do you?
What would you change to make it better?
Let me know your thoughts, and have fun with the move. Just keep thinking, it will be worth it to
have more room, more room, more room…
Can you see just a few short years in the future, Spencer is
about five, when he is ten the Church will be baptizing 160,000 new members in
North America each year, and it will be old hat!
Because you have three of your own, you understand when I
say, “I love you, my Helaman Son!”
Bro. P.
This is the thinking process I used, thanks to Bro. Von Harrison’s instruction in his book. It appears the launch is going well, even better than expected. If your heart has been softened as you read this explanation today, then my prayers have been answered. It will work if you use the Standard of Performance and keep track of what you do.
Bro. P.