Shriner U – A Family Affair Fireside Chat: Providing Grace

[Title Card] SIEF Noble Academy logo, Shriners International Education Foundation presents: Shriner U – A Family Fireside Chat: Providing Grace

[Title Card] Jordan Settle, PP, Jaffa Shriners:

Parents raising children nowadays, we're really challenged with scheduling conflicts. And I often tell people, "If you want our family to be at an event, we have to know six months in advance."

I mean, you're competing against church events, school events, activities, so the further out you push those, you can let your nobility know about these family-friendly events, the more likely you are to have people show up with their families.

A lot of times, my wife's running in one direction, I'm running another with a child. And it's not that I don't want to be at the event, but that was what was first on our calendar. And so, proper planning, I think, is a really big thing.

And also understanding how many hours a family can traditionally volunteer each year. 20 to 30 hours is really what families are able to give, on top of the... What have cell phones done to our lives? We live in a very instant society now, and getting out and doing things with the family, every organization's doing it now. So if you can get 20 to 30 hours out of a family, that's a lot. That's a lot for a family to give up in their time.

And one of the things that scares, I see it all the time, is one of the things that scares, you finally get a young family in, and they're very much enjoying the Shrine. And their second time they show up, someone asks them if they want to be in charge of the event next year, and a lot of people, that scares them away.

I understand the Noble side of it. That gentleman and his lady have probably been helping plan this for 10, 15 years and they're just trying to keep it alive and keep it going for someone to take it over. But a lot of times we're finding out that we're scaring our younger members away by instantly asking them to take charge of things.

The families are going to give you what they can. Like I said, you're competing against a lot. A lot. We're a more connected society than ever and we will be every day in the future. And there's a lot of things that distract our families from things, cell phones.

What have cell phones done to our lives? It's not just the instant communication. You don't have to go to a concert. You can watch a concert on YouTube. You can have a Shrine webinar format talking to people all over the world. So there's good things and there's bad things about being well-connected. But the big thing for us is knowing that you have sports out there, you have church activities, you have school activities. It's a lot to ask a family.

And then we talked about this at the earlier session, like the time and when the families can help varies. We joined the Divan... I have a 15-year-old and a 13- year-old right now, and I'm an Uber that doesn't get paid. That's what I am as a father of two teenage daughters. And understanding that, it was easier five, six years ago to get on the Divan and to bring my family to things because my daughters wanted to be with the family and my extended family in Jaffa.

But now, my kids are trying to hang out with their friends and they're trying to go to social activities. It's just the dynamic has very much changed. And again, it's nothing that's wrong and it's nothing that I think we can force, but we just have to know that families will give what they can.

And just because, I brought up the last session as well that my father waited to become a Shriner until he was retired so he could drive our children to the hospitals and that's what he wanted to do because he wanted to wait until he retired.

But everyone's in different parts of their lives. Families are in different times of their lives. And you might find someone very active when their children are little and then when their children are teenagers, they might have to step away for a little bit.

But if you've created a fun, family-friendly organization, they'll be back when their kids are off to college and moving on doing greater things. But the big thing behind this is just understanding that families will give you what they can and asking too much sometimes pushes them away.

[Title Card] Mandii Sturlaugson, Spouse, El Zagal :

Two things on that point, absolutely. And for anybody on the call that doesn't have teenage kids, the sporting world in what we have participated and our kids has changed so much. I can tell you between my kiddo number one and kiddo number three, it's changed.

And sports, if you get your kids in sports, I happen to be in cold country, so we put our kids on the ice rink at two, and then if they continue with any sort of sport, it does not care what sport it is. It is no longer the joke that hockey is a 12-month career. It is every sport is a full year-round event. And when that happens, you're dealing with parents who have to go out and donate their time to these events. They're ones who have to run their kids to all these events. So all of that ends up having its own challenges for that.

But I think the other thing we want to remember to do is always show grace. So whether that be that they can only participate in X amount of hours or if that grace means that they can do things a little bit differently.

You talked about volunteering and people are willing to volunteer. They're just maybe not willing to lead. It's a great distinction that's in there, especially when we start talking about from involvement.

What we also find is that sometimes we're very, as Shriners, ingrained in our existing. So whatever I'm doing today, if it's done this way, we're always going to have to do it this way.

For any of you who have ever visited El Zagal in Fargo, we have a slogan, which is, "We've always done it that way." And there's a big circle and a hashtag like we used to do the Mr. Uck stickers, right? That is a huge beacon of light, literally a sign, that's held into our Shrine because we want to make sure that we understand we're morphing, the societies are morphing, our cultures are morphing. We have to morph with that.

And that's why I say the word grace is such a underused word, but such a relevant one, whether it comes to accepting the grace of what families can give us, or if it is accepting what volunteers give us.

One of the things I would say, like I said, when we talk about our ingrained processes, a prime example that always comes to my mind is we like to do certain things, certain ways. I'm going to use the simplest version of grilling a hot dog. You have everyone. You grill them on the left burner and you have a new family comes in and they don't know and they put them on the right side of the burner. You would not be surprised how many people correct them and say, "You have to do it on the left."

In today's society, you ask what phones have done. Phones are all about immediate gratification, right? Immediate action. So if there's a button, I got to push it. That's why it's there. You didn't put a button there for me not to use it. So we want to accept that our new members, our new families, they're going to look for new ways to do it because that's how they have been raised.

But you know what? We want to accept that and get that feedback from them because it's going to give us better education on what our family's looking for. What can we do that's going to keep them interested? We don't need to work them the minute they come in and they just get worked out. So that's all they're supposed to do is now work or be volunteers.

We want that experience to be just as well as yours. So you had a wonderful experience going through your Shrine life and journey, we want that to be theirs, but every one of our journeys is going to be a little bit different.

So I completely agree. I love the fact that we're bringing new families. We just got to make sure we're showing them the grace, whether that's from time or cooking buns on the right side of the burner.