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I have been called as the official R.S. teacher for my branch. This is something I am pretty sure I can do. I have been teaching 1x a month in R.S. for the last 6 months or so and it seemed to work. I have also been lobbying for this calling (in as much as a person can), and my executive secretary husband has been shielding me from callings he knew would not benefit me. I was touched that several sisters in our branch came up to me last week after Sacrament and expressed their happiness that I was called to teach them in Relief Society. What I did not expect was the anxiety about screwing up their testimonies, outing myself or this weight of responsibility to find common ground between what I understand of their beliefs and my beliefs. I also did not expect to feel like an impostor
😆 I have a strong hope that I will not corrupt or contaminate them by accident (not that it matters – most of my sisters are 30 years my senior and have at least bachelor degrees from the school of hard knocks). I have a strong hope that I won’t oust myself or burn bridges (if my hope is mis-placed, I will find my sense of humor and move on either figuratively or literally).
I guess I am looking for validation that sometimes the faith transition kicks you in the butt in this area, but that all y’all have been-there-done-that-designed-the-t-shirt, so it can be done.
NOTE: I consider the R.S. teacher to be one of the power/full of influence teaching positions in the organization.
Excellent. I really believe that it is important to tell someone when they are doing a good job at church and other places too. It is too easy to criticize.
Awesome! I am happy to read about this calling. You have a voice that needs to be heard.
I do believe more people like us need to be in positions of influence, and RS teacher is one of those. It’s not so hard to do the nuanced thing and not do damage or out yourself once you get the hang of it. If it was me, I would: 1) Come up with a plan for how to respectfully decline to teach lessons that I could not testify to.
2) Build on common beliefs. For me that would mean that I do not believe that every jot and tittle of the scriptures to be 100% accurate (which I believe is defensible albeit non-traditional using orthodox talking points). Therefore with any scripture story I would try to distill it down to the heart or moral or spirit of the story. If the words of scripture are the letter of the law then I would try to distill it down to the spirit of the law (which, I might point out, can inspire us to go much further than the letter of the law strictly requires us to go).
IOW, if someone wanted a lesson about how the JST restored lost passages to the scriptures then I am not the teacher you want. If someone wanted a lesson on how the JST provided a new insight, perspective, and twist to old text to help bring out important spiritual truths then I can do that.
Every lesson can have those nuggets of great wisdom and teaching to build on. Find those and spread those with your own style. You cannot be responsible for messing up anyone else’s tesimony, just as you can not force anyone to have a testimony. That is their journey.
Just give them some things to think about…so they can work on their own testimony in their own way…whether that is agreeing with your experiences, disagreeing with them, or not yet being able to understand them.
They called you to teach. You as you are. Give them what they asked for. Do your best and look for ways you will also learn from it as you go.
Heber13 wrote:
You cannot be responsible for messing up anyone else’s tesimony, just as you can not force anyone to have a testimony. That is their journey.Just give them some things to think about…so they can work on their own testimony in their own way…whether that is agreeing with your experiences, disagreeing with them, or not yet being able to understand them.
I agree with Heber. Our SS teacher is a former SP and recently returned mission president. When he came back from his mission president experience he seemed very keen on inoculation. He would insert concepts like the seer stone and different first vision accounts into the lesson. Clearly he wasn’t trying to destroy anyone’s testimony. Rather, he had received some training or experience on how fragile and brittle Pollyanna testimonies can be.
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