Chartered Oraganizations/Chartered Organization Reps

[jhankins]

The local Diocese may also have some ideas to help with COR training and expectations. Our Diocese committee on scouting is getting stronger every year.

[ScoutNut]

SP - Is your CO the church itself, or one of the church's parish organizations? How/why is the church chartering a Cub Scout Pack that is not servicing the members of the parish?

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

You have some excellent strategies there Beavah!

 

The basic problem I have is that it's hard to be part of the parish when you aren't a member.

 

Last year our TC Den Leader was a coach for the church's Kindergarten sports team as well. He tried, as COACH, to interest boys on his team to join his Den, but they didn't bite.

 

This year our TC Den Leader is a church member and part of the church's youth program. He organized an excellent service project for the church. I also encountered a former Cubmaster after the Scout Sunday service. She may be interested in helping the pack out in some way.

 

I did attend a meeting of the Dioces Scouting Committee a year or so ago, and the charismatic Deacon attended our District Roundtable to talk about Catholic Scouting. I'd invited unit leaders from our several parishes to attend, and several did.

 

Unfortunately, that hasn't led to cooperation between Catholic Scout units I'd hoped to see. There is no communication between Catholic Scout units except when I've taken that initiative. Sad, too ---- I can't beleieve there aren't things weak Catholic Scout units can't learn from the strong ones.

 

Anyway, you've probably noticed I'm spread pretty widely. I look for ideas that seem worth a try and see if they work. Some do, some don't.

 

And Scout Nut,

 

 

The Pack is chartered directly by the Parish. We ARE welcoming and recruiting from among the parish and parish school, but with marginal results.

 

Having more church members as part of the pack would strengthen it a good deal, so I'm very interested in doing that.

[ScoutNut]

Actually, I was wondering why the church let itself be convinced to keep it's charter when it was down to 1 Cub. If the pastor was/is not interested in Scouting, and not interested in utilizing it for the boys in the school, and parish, why did he agree to charter the Pack? Someone had to talk him into it. Someone had to come up with some pretty strong reasons, that the pastor agreed with.

 

You need to work on those reasons, and get the pastor to actively promote the Pack he is chartering, as another parish youth organization. If you can't get that to happen, the Pack will always be simply an outside group that he allows to meet on church grounds.

[SeattlePioneer]

Hello Scout Nut,

 

 

I had been organizing recruiting for this Cub Pack for several years. Usually the Cubmaster, a very nice guy was there alone in a huge church parish hall.

 

We'd sign up a few boys, but without a real program they'd drift off again each year.

 

I imagine the pack rechartered with several boys in December of the prvious years, but there was only on lone 1st year Webelos when I got there for a recuiting night in late October or early November.

 

If we lost the pack, the neighboring Scout troop was probably going to fail eventually as well. So I took things in hand to see if I could make them work.

 

2 1/2 years later, I'm making progress. My aim is to leave the program in new hands at the end of the year, which looks practical.

 

The Scoutmaster had been conserving money, so there was money to recharter and function OK. We've done the pop corn sale which is doing a good job of financing the program.

 

I imagine the IH was happy to sign in the places indicated when the charter was due.

 

I have made significant efforts to promote the pack in the parish, was some modest positive results. The sports program of the parish really has the hearts and minds of the young families. That's been difficult to compete with.

 

>"The church athletic group leaders get credit for hours served on athletics in the church and parish school">

 

 

The parish school expects a quota of volunteer hours from the parents of students, and time spent leading the sports program as a coach or whatever counts on making the quota.

 

That can probably be an issue for some families. Perhaps it marks Cub Scouts as a second class program to parish families ---hard to say.(This message has been edited by seattlepioneer)

[SR540Beaver]

Here in Oklahoma which is largely Protestant, you just don't see that many closed units. By closed units, I mean open only to the youth of the church. In my district, we do have two Catholic units that are extremely small and there were three LDS units that have combined into one unit due to small numbers. Unless a closed unit comes from a large church with heavy support, I just don't see them growing much. I'm Southern Baptist and for whatever reason there may be, you can't get a Baptist Church in Oklahoma to charter a scout unit. It just ain't happening. The Methodist Churches on the other hand all have units and they are open membership. The scout unit should be viewed as an outreach arm of the charter to bring in new people, not just a service to charter members. We recruit from every pack in the district and have kids from all walks of life in our troop of 60. We have a South American transplant, two black kids, one Jewish kid, we had a Muslim kid who hasn't been around for a while, Catholics, every variety of Protestant, wealthy kids and not so wealthy, etc. We have two families from the church who each have a scout and an adult registered and active with the troop. Until they joined, it was zero from the charter.