The previous dual home- and visiting-teaching programs had been designed to allow families to be provided spiritual instruction in their own homes, in addition to weekly church services.
[2] The present joint program deemphasizes teaching, replacing it with prayerful consideration given to the needs of one's assigned congregants, finding ways to serve and fellowship them.
Just three days before Lee made his general conference address announcing the home teaching program, Henry D. Moyle objected to the change during a first presidency meeting on the grounds that the correlation committee was overstepping its bounds and taking responsibility away from the presiding bishop who supervised the ward teaching program.
[8] A ward's elders quorum's leadership assigns priesthood-holding companionships to entire household families to be served.
Sometimes the quorum and Relief Society leaders collaborate in order to create a companionship which consists of a Melchizedek priesthood holder and his wife.