Q-L-T (NOT CHANGE EVERYTHING AGAIN)

I'm picking up on what I feel is an important statement from our new National Director
QLT Question Learn Tweak (NOT CHANGE EVERYTHING AGAIN) but tweak it. Work out the bugs and get it to run the best it can.

This sounds reasonable to me. Open to change and improvement, but not reinventing the wheel... again...

So if this is the platform we have, what tweaks would you recommend.

I'll even post my first suggestion. I would like to see Orange / Brown / Spirit Lessons be interchangeable. I would like a bible lesson count as a bible lesson as far as the National Guidelines are and I would like the Commanders teaching determine the appropriateness of their lesson to their Ranger's Ages.

This single change would allow a single commander to run a 1 room outpost for most the DR/AR/ER. Now of course there are some subject you cover with the elders that you don't cover with the youngers, but the VAST majority of scripture lessons I feel are good for boys from 5 to 95.

With a similar subject approach, it is not too difficult to have different ages, on different skill badges, in the same space.
DR on rope craft, AR on Pioneering, ER on Shelters
DR on Archery, AR on Advanced Archery, ER on Frontier Archery

But with current rulings on the bible lesson division they have to split up for a bible lesson that counts for them.

I thought all scripture was God inspired?

strods wrote:I would like to see Orange / Brown / Spirit Lessons be interchangeable.  I would like a bible lesson count as a bible lesson as far as the National Guidelines are and I would like the Commanders teaching determine the appropriateness of their lesson to their Ranger's Ages. This single change would allow a single commander to run a 1 room outpost for most the DR/AR/ER.

As a Commander currently running a 1 room outpost.... THAT is a great idea!

Our National Commander talked about needing to make the smaller outpost more managable. He didn't get into specifics but they know it needs something there.

Mark Jones

That why I'm suggesting just a rule change. No lessons to reprint or anything complicated. If they wanted to be fancy, add 1 sheet to the Nat'l site similar to their discussion regarding the change from Named to Numbered.

And I agree that we need to make it easy for 1 brave man to step out to found those new outposts and resurrect our former ones.

In that tweak you would need to assign SC's to a merit color like the rest of the lessons. Never made sense that ER's lessons were not assigned a merit color.

Personally, I'd keep ER name but ditch the whole advancement system of E1-E3. Keep trail of saber and HGMA. Just award Honor medal of achievement at the GMA ceremony if boy has gotten GTA and GEA as well. Basically, make the Honor or H like a buffalo is for merits Honor for having all 3 top medals. Return the GMA back to a 6 year time frame with 1 year to spare for make-up time. Let the AR-ER flow together again like it was in my day when we had Trailblazers and AST rangers. Recognize the air and sea trails again and allow a commander to tailor their elective skill merits to those areas if desired. Focus the older group into events and planning events. It doesn't make to think boys if they even do GMA to want E3. Let them have fun and do what draws them to Royal Rangers events. Keep silvers merits. Trim the dead wood in the merit system while permitting those who want to count discontinued merits to do so toward advancement.

I do that already. You get the group name based on grade. But Everyone starts on the AR trail and advances on it

Do you disregard the E1-E3 stuff?

RRCmdrBennett wrote:Return the GMA back to a 6 year time frame with 1 year to spare for make-up time. Let the AR-ER flow together again like it was in my day when we had Trailblazers and AST rangers. Recognize the air and sea trails again and allow a commander to tailor their elective skill merits to those areas if desired.

So little has been done with the ER group, I like the idea of returning to a 6 year trail for AR-ER

I'm so old school I still want service projects for GMA, so I use the E1-E3 as advancement trails for Master Rangers, and focus on Command training for Jr or Lt Cmdrs.

Much like how a GMA picked 1/3 trails air, sea, or trail ranger for his GMA. I too would like the self led service project instead or capstone.

Well. Anyone seen anything change for the good?

Still very quiet around here. We are still just doing what we know that works and wondering if anything is going to be tweaked...grin!

Our District Pow Wow was down in numbers. Still around 500 to 600 but I would like to see it up in the 800 range. All the rain we took for the first 2 days of pow wow I am sure had many staying home watching the weather on tv. Grin!

Mark Jones

Maybe "quiet" is a good sign.

The Military Leadership Manual, FM 22-100, stated that a new leader should observe and learn the reasons for shortcomings before making sweeping changes. Example: if the troops are running around in dirty uniforms, and you chew them out for being a bunch of slobs, but then learn that the Laundry Service is running 4 days late, you jumped to a wrong conclusion, and didn't stop to find the true reason for the problem.

Thing is were still broken. It will take some changes to get things back to working. Your example is a valid one. I see it on a daily basis at work. Yet It wouldn't take me day to figure that one out and get it fixed. Rangers isn't like at&t or the military. It's a small organization of 10 or less folks.

The old days they blamed Gospel Publishing House for the delay in printing....today with TracClub..it's just a matter of publishing to a website.

They need to start moving. 1s thing is to throw out all the Rick Warren gunk.

Mark Jones

My best friend was on Staff at an A/G Church in Milwaukee. He lost his position there, when it was announced that the majority of the Staff Positions were being converted to "Volunteer" jobs.

This is an "easy sell" to Pastors, State Directors, and National Staff. It gives you a bottomless well of free workers.

No salaries or insurance to pay.

The only thing is................................... I have never seen the Pastors or members of State/National Staff suggest that THEIR Jobs be converted to "Servant Leader" positions.

They don't want to go back to doing manual labor and running a church like many pastors used to do. Its funny we preach faith God will provide for your finances but seek ways to kill people's jobs.

I was asking around this weekend if anyone had heard anything.  I think one more of the staff will go back to the missions field.  

In the pre 2000 years they had just a few on staff in that office.  Richard Marriot had the most staff at one time.  Its been dewindling and swinging back to fewer staff.  
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The problem is they have so many of the awards that require National Office to process them for a 25.00 fee.  It can get delayed quickly with those type of awards.

I like less paid for staff.  Cuts out a lot of the nonsense in church.   Let them get a 40 hour a week job and see what it means to try and work and do ministry all at the same time.   All I want is the simple gospel and I don't need a country club to get that.

Mark Jones

They put a lot of administrative work on themselves by processing and tracking every yearly medal for all groups.

Used to be the GMA was the only thing they tracked. One person could track that easily.

Mark Jones