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Hi all- I am sure this topic has been discussed in the past numerous times, but I have just found this site in the past few days. I teach sunday school to 15-16 year old youth and have been really struggling with how or what I should do about the next 3 months of lessons. The topics are: – The Apostasy and Restoration
– Prophets and Revelation
– Ordinances and Covenants
Like many on this forum I do not subscribe to many of the basic tenets that are taught in these lessons. I considered asking to be released, or asking for a team teacher (who could teach the “doctrine” while I teach the fluffy stuff. I have a problem teaching these while I believe them to be un-truths.
On a positive note, I will say that my lessons on the atonement, Christ, etc.. early in the year meant so much to me and I taught them with much more passion than I ever did before my “crisis of faith.”
Thoughts?
Welcome Kaysville23. There was a similar question asked on a thread called first vision discrepancies. Here is my or from that thread: On Own Now wrote:Ann wrote:So, in a couple of weeks how would I teach Lesson 6 in Primary 3, Choose the Right B, Ages 4- 7 (c. 1994) to trusting 4 year-olds?
In general, a couple of things have helped me when I’ve taught kids of all ages, as well as adults.– This is what their parents expect you to teach them. It is their family faith. I expect my kids’ teachers in school to teach them evolution. I don’t care if the teachers believe it or not and I don’t want their christian caveats about it, either.
– I use phrases like “Our doctrine teaches that…” or “In our church, we believe…” or “We read in Alma that… ” or in this case, pretty simple, “Joseph Smith said that…” After all, the canonical (literally) version that we teach in church is straight from JS’s own account. Sure there are other versions that are also from him, but none of them are in the LDS scriptures.
-If certain elements are too uncomfortable, then either work your way around it in a way that makes you feel better about it or get a sub. When I was a gospel doctrine teacher, I got a sub for the week we covered I and II Timothy, because I don’t view those to be authentic letters of Paul. When we rolled into the BofM year, I asked to be released. I’ve subbed in Gospel Doctrine during BofM year, however, and for those one-off lessons, I just focus less on the story and more on what we learn from the story and how we make it a part of ourselves.
I teach the oldest youth Sunday School class. (See the post “My New Calling” for summaries of each lesson this year, if you want to see how I have approached the lessons so far.) This month, I am planning on taking the lesson outline topics and focusing on the concepts of apostasy and restoration. I will spend a week talking about the flow of history and the apostasy cycle in our scriptures (including the idea that apostasy and restoration are processes, not events, and occur even now within the Church), another week talking about the root meanings of apostasy (deviation) and restoration (healing/unification), another week talking about how these concepts apply to us individually and one week talking about unique concepts within Mormonism that are Biblical and can be seen as having been restored. I might or might not mention that we tend to “restoration-ize” things incorrectly (like believing baptism goes all the way back to Adam). That will depend on the moment and if it can flow naturally in the conversation somewhere.
The outlines are broad enough, and the emphsis on scriptures is clear enough, that, you can teach in a non-traditional way without crossing any lines. For example, you might do nothing more oin some weeks than go through the Topical Guide section(s) that deal with your subject(s) – reading verses and passages and talking about what they mean.
In regards to restoration and apostasy, I’d suggest some concepts from the God who weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens. In it they go through the fundamental bug picture beliefs of our church, where we come from, why we’re here and where we’re going. He references several non-Mormon texts to show how these were ideas that have existed but were diluted and even heresies at certain points. Joseph’s greatest achievement was in delivering scripture that pulled all of these threads together. As for more functional things like priesthood restoration I’d go with On Osn Now’s suggestion of ‘Joseph taught/said/wrote that…’
Your calling or job, if you will, is to teach the manual, not your own opinion of it. Brown wrote:Your calling or job, if you will, is to teach the manual, not your own opinion of it.
I agree. I know that Ray puts a lot of work into making the lesson interesting and rich and I get the impression he strikes a good balance, but it should still teach the doctrine as the church sets it out. It’s one thing to use “Joseph said…” techniques, but it still needs to be taught.
In this case, the “manual” is flexible enough to allow for everything I do to be considered “teaching the manual”. Period. The instructions also state explicitly that the ideal is discussion and answering the students’ questions, not lecture style dissemination of information.
This situation is NOT “your father’s church”. It’s a new curriculum, and it’s much more flexible than it used to be.
I don’t think that you have to believe in all the tenants to teach a Sunday school class. Maybe you should just give yourself a huge pat on the back for helping to teach these kids what their parents probably want them to know. Best of luck!
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