Mission Leadership Council

At the beginning of each month we meet with the Mission Leadership Council. The mission is divided into “zones”, or geographical areas of missionaries, and each zone has four leaders: two sisters who are “sister training leaders” and two elders who are “zone leaders”.

These leaders spend time with the missionaries in their zone doing training, most of which is being side-by-side with them while doing missionary work. They set goals for zone and work with all of the missionaries to achieve those goals. They work hard to inspire their fellow missionaries and build their skills.

These leaders make up a council…the Mission Leadership Council…that leads the mission.

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As we meet each month with the Mission Leadership Council…or MLC…they set the goals for the mission, determine the training needed most, and are responsible for the culture of the mission.

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As we are closing in on six months here in the Tennessee Knoxville Mission, we decided to check in on key strengths and opportunities that the MLC sees in our mission culture.

We did this when we first arrived in the mission in July by using the question, “In the Tennessee Knoxville Mission we ___________.” Missionaries were invited to fill in the blank to help identify key attributes of our culture. Here is how the MLC completed that sentence in December 2023.

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We also gathered input on other questions like, “What do you see as the strengths in our culture in the TKM?”

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We counseled together about the biggest opportunities in our mission and decided that the most important opportunity we could focus on was planning. Preach My Gospel has an entire chapter on planning titled “Accomplish the Work Through Goals and Plans” that helps missionaries follow a process in setting goals, making plans, acting on those plans, and following up.

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In this chapter, missionaries learn key principles like:

Goal setting and planning are acts of faith.
Goals reflect the desires of your heart and your vision for helping yourself and others come to the Savior.
Carefully considered goals and plans will give you clear direction.
Make your goal setting and planning an inspired experience.
Pray earnestly, exercise faith, counsel with your companion, and follow the promptings of the Spirit.
As you plan this way, you will feel the Lord working through you to bless others.

After reviewing these principles, we made plans on how we could train missionaries and build greater skills with planning in December. Our goal is for every missionary in the TKM to become a “Master Planner”.

I look back on my experience as a missionary and recognize it was the first place I began to learn important leadership skills that would help me for the rest of my life.

It was on my mission where I learned leadership principles like, “Assume people are doing the best they can, and if they are going to improve, it is up to me to help them to do it.” And “You can’t ask someone to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself.” And how to use principles like repetition and high love, high expectations in leading others.

These are leadership principles I’ve used throughout my life that I first learned as a missionary where I was assigned to lead others. And now these missionaries are learning many of those same lessons, and we hope these lessons will help them for the rest of their lives.