Ministering: How to Be a Better Ministering Brother or Sister

For years I treated ministering like a monthly chore I was slightly behind on. What changed wasn’t a new program — it was a slow shift from completing visits to actually knowing people. Here’s what that shift looks like in practice, including the awkward parts nobody talks about in quorum meeting.

Updated August 2026 · 13 min read

The text came on a Tuesday night, the way these things always do: “Brother, you’ve been reassigned. You’re now ministering to the Larsens and Brother Whitfield, with Brother Jensen as your companion.” I stared at the names. I knew the Larsens’ faces from the third row of the chapel but couldn’t have told you their first names, and “Brother Whitfield” rang no bell at all. My honest first thought was not a spiritual one. It was: great, more people I’m supposed to somehow care about by the end of the month.

I’ve been on both sides of this. I came up through the old home teaching era — the last-Sunday-of-the-month scramble, the message read off a folded page, the visit that lasted exactly long enough to report. And I’ve spent the years since the 2018 change slowly, imperfectly learning what ministering is actually supposed to feel like. I’m still learning. But somewhere along the way, two of the families on my assignment list became two of the families I’d call first in an emergency, and I want to tell you how that happened — because it wasn’t talent. It was a handful of small, repeatable habits that anyone can steal.

This is the article I wish someone had handed me along with that Tuesday-night text. It’s personal experience, not policy — take what fits, leave what doesn’t, and bring the rest to the Lord in prayer, which is where the best ministering ideas come from anyway.

What Ministering Replaced — and Why the Shift Matters

If you were around before April 2018, you remember the old model. Home teachers and visiting teachers had a monthly assignment: visit the home, share a message from the magazine, ask if the family needed anything, report that it got done. The whole system quietly bent itself around the report. Ward leaders tracked percentages. A visit on the 31st counted the same as a friendship built over months, and we all knew it. I once “completed” my home teaching by catching a brother at his car in the church parking lot and reading him a paragraph through the driver’s window. Reported: 100%.

In the April 2018 general conference, President Russell M. Nelson announced the retirement of home teaching and visiting teaching as we’d known them, calling the new approach “a newer, holier approach” to caring for one another. Sister Jean B. Bingham taught what ministering looks like through the Savior’s eyes in her talk from the same conference, and Elder Jeffrey R. Holland gave what I still think is the most tender description of the whole idea in “Be With and Strengthen Them.” I went back and studied all three a few months later — I have a whole system for how I study conference talks after the sessions end — and one thing jumped out: nobody in those talks asked for more visits. They asked for more love.

That’s the shift, and it’s bigger than it looks. The old question was “Did you see your families this month?” The new question is “Do you know your people — and would they call you if life fell apart?” Those are completely different assignments. The first one can be finished. The second one can only be built, slowly, the way trust is always built. Everything else in this article is just the mechanics of building it.

Nobody in the April 2018 talks asked for more visits. They asked for more love. The first can be completed; the second can only be built.

Starting When You Get an Assignment You Don’t Know

The hardest part of ministering is the beginning — that gap between receiving a name and knowing an actual person. Here’s how I close that gap now, including the exact words, because the exact words are where most of us get stuck.

Send the awkward first text anyway

I used to wait for the perfect low-key opening. There isn’t one. So now I send a text within a few days of the assignment, and I’ve stopped trying to make it smooth. Smooth isn’t the goal; human is the goal. Mine usually reads something like: “Hi Sister Larsen, this is Dan from the ward — I sit a few rows behind you on the left side. I just got assigned as one of your ministering brothers. No agenda at all, I’d just love to get to know you and your family sometime, whatever’s comfortable. And if texts are easier than visits, that honestly works great for me too.”

Notice what that text does: it says who I am, where they’ve seen me, why I’m reaching out, and — this matters — it gives them permission to set the terms. Some people want visits. Some people want a text now and then. Offering the low-pressure option up front is not a failure of ministering; it’s respect, and it gets answered far more often than “When can we come by?”

Make the first contact low-key and short

If they do invite you over, keep the first visit to twenty or thirty minutes and leave while it’s still pleasant. Bring your companion, skip the prepared lesson, and just be curious about them. I ask about how they ended up in this ward, what they do all week, what their kids are into. I take zero notes in front of them — I’m a guest, not a caseworker. And when it’s time to go, I actually go. The single best thing you can do for visit number two is to end visit number one before anyone checks their watch.

Learn one true thing about each person

My private goal for a new assignment is simple: within a month, I want to know one true thing about each person in the household that isn’t on any ward list. Not “they have three kids” — everyone knows that. I mean that their middle daughter is trying out for the school musical in October, or that Brother Whitfield restores old radios in his garage and lights up when you ask about vacuum tubes. One true thing is the seed of a real relationship, because the next time you talk, you have something genuine to ask about — and being asked about your actual life is what being ministered to feels like.

Small, Consistent Gestures Beat Grand Ones

There’s a version of ministering that waits for a chance to be heroic — the move, the flooded basement, the funeral potatoes. Those moments matter, and we’ll get to them. But friendship isn’t made of heroic moments. It’s made of small touches repeated over a long time, and the research of my own life says that a brother who texts me every few weeks beats a brother who re-shingled my roof once and vanished.

The habit underneath all of this is embarrassingly simple: after any contact with someone I minister to, I take twenty seconds and jot down what I learned. “Audition is Oct. 12.” “New job starts in January, nervous about it.” “Mom lives with them now.” I keep it in the notes app; some people I know use their journal for this, and if you’re the journaling type, the practice I described in keeping a personal journal doubles as a ministering memory. However you keep it, the point is the same — remembering is a form of love, and most of us can’t remember without writing it down.

The second habit is about how you offer help. “Let me know if you need anything” is the kindest sentence that almost never produces anything, because it hands the other person a job: they have to identify a need, decide you’re the right helper, and risk imposing. Specific offers skip all three steps. Compare:

None of these are grand. That’s the point. A specific, small offer can be accepted without ceremony, and every easy yes builds the muscle of trusting you. Six months of Costco runs and leaf mornings will do more than one dramatic rescue — and here’s the quiet miracle: when the dramatic moment eventually comes, they’ll call you, because you’re the person who’s already been showing up.

Ministering to People Who Don’t Respond — or Don’t Want Visits

Let’s talk about the assignment nobody wants to admit they have: the brother who never answers a text, the sister who politely said, years ago, that she’d rather not have visitors, the family on your list you’ve never actually met. I have one of each right now, and I’ve stopped treating them as failures in progress.

First, a hard-won reframe: silence is information, not rejection. People go quiet for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with you — depression, overwhelm, a ward hurt you know nothing about, a season where they just can’t. When I stopped reading unanswered texts as a verdict on me, I could keep sending them without resentment, and that changed everything about the tone. A monthly “No need to reply — just wanted you to know the ward chili cook-off is Saturday and we’d love to see you” is ministering, even if the reply never comes. Especially then.

Second, honor the boundary like it matters, because it does. The sister who doesn’t want visits still gets a Christmas card with a handwritten line and a wave in the hallway and her name in my prayers. I asked her once, gently, what contact (if any) would feel good to her, and she said the card was perfect. That conversation took ninety seconds and removed years of guessing. The General Handbook’s counsel on ministering is clear that this is about the person’s needs, not our comfort — and sometimes the most Christlike contact is the one they actually asked for.

Third, drop the scorekeeping entirely. There is no column in heaven for unanswered texts. I minister to a brother who has responded to me perhaps four times in two years — and one of those four was 2 a.m., the night his marriage was cracking, because I was the name attached to two years of unbothered, expectation-free contact. You cannot schedule which touch will be the one that matters. You can only make sure the door stays open and the welcome is real.

Be Honest in Your Ministering Interviews

Every quarter or so, someone from the elders quorum or Relief Society presidency sits down with you to talk about the people you minister to. I used to treat these like performance reviews — say “we’re doing great,” mention a visit, get out in four minutes. Then one quarter I tried something different: I told the truth.

The truth was that I hadn’t made contact with one family in two months, that I had no idea what to say to another, and that I was worried about a third for reasons I couldn’t quite name. I braced for disappointment. What I got instead was help — context I didn’t have, an offer to check in from the presidency’s side, and a reassignment suggestion for the family I was genuinely mismatched with. That interview did more for those families in fifteen minutes than six months of my polite reports had.

Ministering interviews only work if both sides treat them as a council about people rather than an audit of you. So I go in with three things: what I actually did (not what I wish I’d done), what I’m genuinely unsure about, and what I think the person needs that I can’t provide. And one caution from experience: honesty with leaders is not permission to gossip. Share what’s needed to get someone help; keep the rest in your heart and your prayers. The line is roughly this — would the person be okay knowing you said it? If not, it probably stays with you.

When Assignments Change and Feelings Get Complicated

Here’s the part nobody warns you about. Do this long enough and one day the text comes — “you’ve been reassigned” — and it lands in your chest like a small loss, because the Larsens aren’t a name on a list anymore. They’re the family whose musical you sat through, whose dog you fed during their trip, whose daughter waved at you across the chapel last Sunday. Being reassigned away from people you finally love feels less like an organizational update and more like a breakup.

Two things have helped me. First, reassignment ends the assignment, not the friendship — and saying so out loud matters. When I got moved off a family I’d grown close to, I told them directly: “You got a new ministering brother and he’s great, but you’re stuck with me as a friend either way.” We still trade texts. The program rotates; the love doesn’t have to. Second, give the new assignment a fair start. It’s easy to grieve the old family so hard that the new one gets your leftovers. The same God who nudged you toward the Larsens has someone in mind for you now — possibly someone who needs exactly your particular brand of awkward first text.

And a word for the other side of the equation, because we’re all someone else’s assignment too: receive your own ministering brothers and sisters with grace, including the clumsy ones. When my ministering brother shows up with an offer that’s a little off-target, I try to remember that showing up off-target is infinitely better than never showing up. Somebody is practicing on me, and I’d rather be practiced on than managed perfectly from a distance.

When Someone You Minister to Faces a Real Crisis

Eventually, the casserole moments come — the diagnosis, the job loss, the death in the family, the new baby arriving into a house that’s already underwater. This is what all the small gestures were rehearsal for. At the waters of Mormon, Alma described a people willing “to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:8–9). In a crisis, that covenant stops being poetry and starts being a logistics problem with a heart attached.

What actually helps, from having been on both ends:

• Show up in person once, briefly. At the hospital, on the porch, at the funeral viewing. Don’t wait to be invited — in a crisis, nobody sends invitations. Keep it short, say very little, and let your physical presence carry the message: you are not alone in this.
• Take a task, don’t ask for one. “What can I do?” is one more decision for a drowning person. Instead: “I’m bringing dinner Thursday — 5:30, nothing spicy.” “I’m picking up your kids for school this week.” “Give me your grocery list, I’m already going.”
• Coordinate, don’t collide. Check with the Relief Society or elders quorum president before organizing anything big, so the family gets one meal calendar instead of nine lasagnas in one night and silence for a month.
• Handle the invisible stuff. The lawn still grows during chemo. The trash cans still need dragging out during grief. The most mourned-with people I know mention these things years later.
• Mark week six on your calendar. Everyone shows up in week one. The casseroles stop right when the exhaustion peaks. A text at week six — “Still thinking about you. Still bringing dinner Tuesday.” — is worth ten in week one.
• Keep their business theirs. A crisis makes you a witness to tender things. Whatever you see in that house stays in that house, full stop. The fastest way to destroy ministering trust is to turn someone’s worst week into ward conversation.

One more thing: in a true crisis, ministering brothers and sisters are first responders, not the whole fire department. Part of loving people well is knowing when to say, “I think the bishop would want to know about this — can I help you reach out to him?” Connecting someone to their bishop or to professional help isn’t passing the buck. It’s making sure they get every kind of help they need.

A Simple Ministering Rhythm That Isn’t About Boxes

If you want something concrete to start this month, here’s the rhythm I’ve settled into. It’s not a checklist to complete — it’s a heartbeat to keep.

• First week of the month — touch base with everyone. A text, a call, a hallway conversation, a visit if that’s what they like. Contact is the floor; everything else is built on it.
• Write down one thing you learned. Twenty seconds in the notes app after each contact. Future-you, the one trying to remember the audition date, says thanks.
• Make one specific offer. Not “let me know” — a real offer with a day and a time attached. One per household, per month, is plenty.
• Pray for them by name. This sounds obvious and is routinely skipped. Praying for specific people by name changes what you notice about them during the week — it’s how the one true thing often gets revealed to you.
• Once a quarter — prepare honestly for your interview. Write down what you did, what you’re unsure of, and what they need that you can’t give. Then actually say it.
• Once a quarter — look at the assignment itself. Is it working? Is there a mismatch worth mentioning to the presidency? You’re allowed to say so; that’s not quitting, it’s counseling together.
• When the reassignment text comes — bless the change. Tell the old family you’re still their friend, and give the new one a genuine first text within the week.

What It’s Actually Done to Me

I started this article with a Tuesday-night text and a bad attitude, so let me end with where it led. The Larsens — the third-row strangers — became the family whose kids’ musicals I attend, whose news I hear before the ward does, whose number is in my phone under a first name. Brother Whitfield, the name that rang no bell, taught me everything I know about vacuum tubes and, more importantly, what it looks like to keep faith quietly through a very hard year.

That’s the thing about ministering that the checklist version never told me: the assignment was never really for them. Or rather, it was for all of us at once. I went out to care for people and came home with friends, which seems to be roughly how the Lord has always run this — love your neighbor, and discover your neighbor was the blessing all along. So send the awkward text. Write down the audition date. Bring the dinner at 5:30. The friendship will take care of itself.

This article reflects personal experience and study, not an official statement of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Sources cited in the text: President Russell M. Nelson, “Ministering with the Power and Authority of God” (April 2018); Sister Jean B. Bingham, “Ministering as the Savior Does” (April 2018); Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, “Be With and Strengthen Them” (April 2018); Mosiah 18 (verses 8–9); and General Handbook, chapter 21.