President Richard Barker’s System for High Quality Home Teaching

    We moved to a new home in Taylorsville, Utah in 1969, and three weeks later I was called as Elders President in our new ward.  I discovered that the Stake President, Richard Barker, had a very serious and elaborate strategy for generating high quality home teaching in his stake.  We had over 100 families assigned to our quorum. Under this program, we achieved nearly 100% of families visited each month and I believe a relatively high level of ministering relationships.  Here are details:
    1) Home teachers averaged about four families each.  In the quorum presidency, we divided the supervision of about 30 home teaching pairs into three districts of about 10 each.
    2) The stake took most of the responsibility for overseeing that all home visits were made.
        a) Every weekend of the month, at about 9 pm on Saturday, I received a call from the High Councilor assigned to our ward, in which I was expected to report on which families assigned to my quorum had already been visited.  He had a current copy of a list of all our families and checked off the ones I reported.  In order to make that report, I and my counselors needed to have made contact, probably earlier in the day or week, with all the senior home teachers we supervised to get information about the status of their visits to their families.
        b) Early on Sunday morning there was a meeting in which these High Counselors reported the month’s home visit progress to President Barker.
        c) This process continued weekly until the full month’s visit report was made.
        d) The goal was 100% of families visited.  Occasionally, our Quorum Presidency made these visits as a back up.
    3) Members of our Quorum Presidency were expected to conduct an accountability interview with each Home Teaching pair monthly.
        a) We generally did these on about the second Sunday, before or after Church, at the churchhouse.
        b) Our quorum secretary arranged the appointments.
        c) We allocated about 15 minutes time for each interview.
        d) Contents of the interview included prayer, discussion of needs of the families, and  identifying goals for work with each family and actions the home teachers planned to take to reach these goals.
        e) We had a small pre-carboned form that the member of the presidency used to take notes on needs, goals and action plans, and shared a copy with the home teachers.
        f) Follow-up meetings, of course, included discussion of progress on goals and plans.
        g) The stake required a report at the end of each month on accountability interviews conducted and expected 100% compliance.
    4) Our Quorum Presidency met monthly with the Bishopric to discuss the needs of our families and strategies for filling these needs, with an emphasis on the quality of the visiting and ministering to our families.
        a) This meeting was usually held mid-month.
        b) It would typically last at least an hour.
        c) It was separate from administrative meetings such as ward council
    5) We were instructed and tried to minimize failure by home teachers.  We recognized that some home teachers had capabilities and limits different than others, and would not be as successful with so many families.  “It looks like in your situation right now having only two assigned families will work best.”  We also recognized that almost every family knew the expectation of at least a monthly visit by their home teachers, and possibly would interpret the lack of visits as not caring, making a ministering relationship more difficult to achieve.   Therefore we did not allow the lack of visiting of a family to continue more than a couple of months, but would reassign these families and give different home teachers a fresh start for building the desired rapport with their assigned families.
    6) I found the atmosphere for working with home teachers under this arrangement comfortable and satisfying.  We were able to counsel home teachers and see them grow.  It seemed to help create a climate in the ward that was positive and supportive.
       I wonder if we might learn something about how to successfully implement the new ministering effort from President Barker's program?