Wart Removal : The Gospel Doctrine Manual

[Anonymous]

Hi all

I am following Ray’s directions for working on my particular wart which I posted as a reply to his wonderful post on healing warts. Here is what he said:

Quote:

by Old-Timer » 23 Aug 2009, 06:57

So, Bill – your wart is that you can’t look at the manual without rage. How can you treat that?

1) Expose it – which you have done here.

2) Ask for help treating it – which you can do here in a separate post specifically about that wart. (Focusing on your wart, not what you perceive to be the Church’s wart.)

3) Focus on treating what you perceive to be the Church’s wart in your own sphere – your own home and your own ward – by encouraging deeper conversations in the class(es) about the material provided.

I am rushing off to church, ironically, but those are the first treatment methods that came to my mind. They key, imo, is to identify properly your OWN wart and work on it – since it’s too easy to excuse our own warts and rail against the warts of others, when the treatment for those is out of our control.

So just that you don’t have to go off to the other post to see the actual wart here it is again. I hate the Gospel Doctrine manual, really, really hate it. The one I have now (yes I am currently called as a Gospel Doctrine teacher) has seen at least four previous owners/users each one leaving notes and of various utility throughout. I like the notes, it humanizes the book.

The core of the complaint is that it really irks me that the adults in the Church are expected to cycle through the same set of lessons each four years without every changing the manual. So this is now with the D&C and Church History the fourth time through as if we are all brain dead and can’t possibly have any memory of former lessons 4 years ago. I think it is an insult. While I am at it, to add more injury to the insult the Church has ceased giving the Teacher Training classes so that new Gospel Doctrine teachers can come in without any teaching preparation and, following the example of people before the, start reading out of the manual and passing the manual around to have class members read out of it and calling that participation!!! 😳 😳 Sorry heating up a bit again.

That’s the wart. I have exposed it, throbbing and sore and red and if it could it would ooze puss. 😈

I am ending the post here. This is the exposure part of the treatment. Give me some help but please, please do not tell me it is all my own fault, that I have to think more positively, that I need to change my attitude. But as I have noted already, I do teach this class to Youth (which is an entirely separate rage since if the manual is horrible for adults it is even worse for teenagers). To work on that problem and part of Ray’s healing, please look at my blog: http://www.youthgd.blogspot.com/ to see how I have managed to work with the manual in my own ward, I do recognize that responsibility.

Hope some of you can help.

[Anonymous]

Can you chuck the manual and stay in one piece? Is there something about fear in your wart? Is there something about your status and appearance? Is there something about using the church as a source of validation that covers some deep hurt or insecurity? All these are in me, so I know well.

Tom

[Anonymous]

Depending on your ward, you might need to focus on one or two things from the manual and turn them into discussion topics.

From the manual:

Quote:

Each lesson in this manual contains more information than you will probably be able to teach in one class period. Seek the Spirit of the Lord in selecting the scripture accounts, questions, and other lesson material that will best meet the needs of class members. Keep in mind the ages, interests, and backgrounds of class members.

Quote:

Encourage Class Discussion

If the manual itself says you can’t teach everything in the lessons, and if the manual itself encourages you to have class discussions . . . and that the key is following the Spirit . . . it seems to me that you have GREAT latitude in how you prepare and teach. I would suggest quoting and reading from the manual as the foundation for the discussions (and to keep the peace), but after that . . . discussions can go wherever you let them go, as directed by the Spirit. The key is not going places to showcase your knowledge or as a rebellion, but you have permission to go where the Spirit leads.

[Anonymous]

I’m wondering if the issue is really one of unmet expectations. (I could be wrong)

Is it fair to say that you are angry with the church leadership for only offering milk when you are ready for meat? You feel they assume you are unintellegent and spiritually immature. Or (and?) that they don’t care enough to help the members progress spiritually to create a new curriculum.

Could changing your expectiations of the church institution help aleviate your anger?

What if the church is seen more as a platform for us to launch ourselves from. Or our anchor as we swim out into the deeper waters.

I can see that changes could be made to the manual for the positive, but in the mean time what can you do to feel better?

[Anonymous]

Hmm, this putting up a post rather than responding to other people’s posts is a bit more work isn’t it! 😆 Perhaps I should have behaved better, but no, this really irks me deep and just putting it up has helped, now let’s see how things go.

Tom

Very good insight, there is certainly fear involved. I can’t chuck the manual, that is not allowed and I kind of understand that. My compromise right now is two steps: 1. I absolutely, without fail cover in the lesson what the manual says the purpose of the lesson is supposed to be. 2. I always use the key scriptures and often the follow-up scriptures that the manual says to use. But deeply ingrained in my head is a fear that the Bishop or the Stake President is going to haul me into their office and set me straight for not following the topics as set out in the manual. As Ray discusses down below the manual says its OK to follow the Spirit but again I have this deeply ingrained fear and suspicion that the nameless “THEY” think that any Spirit I follow that doesn’t cover the lesson the way the manual outlines is clearly the wrong spirit.

Ray

What you have suggested is what I basically do. I start from the purpose, look for the key scriptures and work out some way to engage my students with that material. I am very consciously NOT planning a teaching “performance” but a “learning event” that all of us in the class share. It does seem to be working, I have been at it for 3 months now.

However that still does relieve the anger over what I see to be the installation of an educational policy that is rendering adult Sunday School a wasteland.

just me

Great insight:

Quote:

Is it fair to say that you are angry with the church leadership for only offering milk when you are ready for meat? You feel they assume you are unintellegent and spiritually immature. Or (and?) that they don’t care enough to help the members progress spiritually to create a new curriculum.

I think this is very close to how I feel. And it isn’t so much that I think the classes need meat I would settle for chocolate milk for one four year cycle, strawberry milk for the next, plain milk for the third and soya milk for the fourth if the overwhelming goal is to make sure the class NEVER possibly upsets a new member. They have the human and the financial resources why can’t they put out a new manual each year?

You are probably correct that changing my expectations would solve the anger but I’m still angry enough that I don’t want to change them. I know intellectually that it is exactly this kind of little pin prick that can lead a person into a spiral of doubt leading to exit from the Church. I don’t want that. I don’t think it will happen. BUT, and that again adds a new fear.

So for example I have been following the chatter on the Bloggernacle over what they think is going to be the new 2 year manual for Priesthood and Relief Society. I have been quite happy and downright impressed with series of manuals on the prophets even if they managed to write Brigham Young’s manual without a slightest wiff of plural marrige ever marring its pages. However the next manual is breaking with that tradition and will apparently be a revised version of the Gospel Essentials manual, the book they use for investigator classes. Now what does that say about how the correlation committee views the intellectual and spiritual state of the adults??? 👿

Thank you all, you are wonderful and I appreciate your feedback.

[Anonymous]

Bill, I share your frustration. I think that it is ok to supplement the lesson, which I did until I was too heretical.

[Anonymous]

mormonheretic could you share here your experience? As I have noted above there is a great deal of fear in all of this. The Bishopric put me into this class of teenagers because they had run through and turned to frazzled wrags two teachers this year. They called me because I am a retired secondary school teacher and they thought I could “make them behave” (as if being a professional teacher means that you REALLY know how to dominate and discipline). Naturally I didn’t do that, essentially they were misbehaving because they were terminally bored. I have solved that. We have a great time in class and everyone participates. Parents come and tell me they are so glad I am teaching their kids but just how many steps am I away from the official axe?

So for example, in your opinion, can I get to the discussion of Noah in like February of next year and at that point tell them that the flood was virtually certainly a local flood the best possible candidate so far being when what we call the Mediterranean broke through catastrophically into the basin of land which is now underneath the Black Sea. That scientifically there is absolutely no evidence of a mass flood of the earth within any of earth’s history. That yes the melting of the glaciers 10,000 years ago could have been a major catastrophe, drowning any civilizations that had built up around sea shores, but that was say over 2,000 years. That there is simply too much diversity in the world species all over the globe to have all possibly radiated out from a single landing spot of Noah’s ship, and that the world population as we know it today could not have been developed from Noah’s family starting say 4000 years ago?

So if you can help me before I step over the edge I would really appreciate it because I honestly feel that we are doing our young people a major disservice amounting almost to religious abuse in not giving them a more honest, balanced and nuanced understanding of the gospel and the scriptures.

[Anonymous]

Bill Atkinson wrote:

I honestly feel that we are doing our young people a major disservice amounting almost to religious abuse in not giving them a more honest, balanced and nuanced understanding of the gospel and the scriptures.

Wow, this is a tough one. (btw, I’ve been saying wow alot lately, is it me?)

I’m not going to comment specifically because this whole discussion is so far over my head, plus I won’t be teaching any time soon.(gross understatement )

But I do think alot about what you said Bill, in the above comment. It’s okay to teach this to kids that still believe in santa and the tooth fairy, but what about that precocious, over-educated 15 year old? Is it really ok to say these stories are metaphors? Life lessons? I know my mom has been the yw president in her ward for the last 3 years and she believes the flood is literal, as in “the earth was baptized literally”.

[Anonymous]

Bill Atkinson wrote:

So if you can help me before I step over the edge I would really appreciate it because I honestly feel that we are doing our young people a major disservice amounting almost to religious abuse in not giving them a more honest, balanced and nuanced understanding of the gospel and the scriptures.

I taught the youth for a number of years and know where you’re coming from. As we grow spiritually, it’s like our eyes are opened, and we want to rush and awaken the world to what we see (Plato’s Cave, anyone?).

I was always honest, balanced and, yes, nuanced when I could be, but I had to be careful that I was not preaching MY gospel to the kids. Even if I felt I was right on a particular point, I deferred to church. The church is a tool for growth, and it works beautifully most of the time. It wasn’t for me to rewrite it based on personal insights or revelation – again, even if I felt I was right. It was up to me to trust in the program, and trust that God is nurturing the spiritual growth of the students in spite of me, in spite of the church’s warts – I was just there to help if I could, bear some testimony, give some candy, offer a hand.

Part of our journey is to accept the church as a whole (like accepting an imperfect spouse/friend/child/movie/dinner/you get it). The manuals aren’t perfect, the classes could be better, etc. Would I rewrite them? Maybe. But they are beautiful in many ways, and useful. And as long as we’re trying to change them, we won’t see that.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like you are doing a wonderful job. I don’t want to get into too much depth here, but it sounds like you might have been raised in a home with terribly unrealistic expectations and the constant perception that approval and love were conditioned on “acceptable performance”. Is there a reason you are afraid of an authority figure “bringing down the hammer” if you don’t do something exactly as you think “they” want you to do it? (Don’t feel pressured to answer that publicly.)

Personally, I was one of those precocious kids who didn’t hear anything new in Sunday School for years. That was OK, since I knew there were other kids in my classes who had NO (or little) instruction at home and desperately needed the milk. I supplemented my own learning at home with Sunday School, not the other way around. (Thank you, Mom and Dad, for helping me look at it that way.)

An analogy that I believe works for all kids: Tall trees get knocked down by strong winds if they are over-watered and their roots branch out instead of down. That’s my fear with shallow teaching in church classes, but I view Seminary as the place for the meat and Sunday School is the place for the milk (relatively speaking). (If all kids who attend Sunday School can handle meat, I say go for it. Just be sure none of them are choking. Otherwise, provide them with greatly enhanced milk.) My primary concern is that so few kids in many places are attending Seminary – and that Seminary often isn’t digging deeply enough.

[Anonymous]

Hmm, my opinion would appear to be the odd-man-out here, but I am going to express it nevertheless.

If this is really bothering you… cutting up your peace… is this harm in asking for a release? I know for me personally, I can’t even handle attending GD, let alone teaching it. There is tremendous joy for me in being able to choose what I choose.

That said, I know there is a desire to share what you know and have learned through this process with others. For myself, I just generally feel that I’m not at that point yet that I can do that without “falling the tree” of others, using Ray’s analogy.

Just my 2 cents, your mileage may vary.

[Anonymous]

😮 Thanks all, this has helped me to consider aspects that would simply not occur to me 🙄

swimordie:

Good comment and this quote is perhaps the core of the ethical issue:

Quote:

It’s okay to teach this to kids that still believe in santa and the tooth fairy, but what about that precocious, over-educated 15 year old? Is it really ok to say these stories are metaphors? Life lessons? I

So who am I to decide that my students need to be exposed to the scientific logic of the flood? Now I do have a fairly flexible faith based acceptance of the Bible though I am very liberal in interpretation. So I am willing to believe and have faith that there actually was the prophet Noah, for example, especially as he is mentioned in the Book of Mormon (3 Ne. 22:9) and in several spots in the D&C (84:14-15) and most troubling for me a fair amount in Moses (Moses 8:27). I have no trouble in seeing all his “tribe” perish in the flood and that is how I actually view both the Book of Mormon and the Bible as essentially a family narrative that turns into a tribal narrative but not much larger.

So back to ethics: no, at this age level I don’t think I have the authority or right to say, these are all sacred myths that contain great spiritual truths that are still just as powerful and transforming as if they were historical, and as I have indicated above I don’t personally go that far anyway in my own beliefs (note I would never say “I know that Noah lived and survived the flood”). So the lesson manual trumps my own personal knowledge base I just have to find a way to bring in a broader view of the scriptures when appropriate, I think.

Jordon

Thanks for the frank advice. I am contemplating this quietly, in my heart:

Quote:

Part of our journey is to accept the church as a whole (like accepting an imperfect spouse/friend/child/movie/dinner/you get it). The manuals aren’t perfect, the classes could be better, etc. Would I rewrite them? Maybe. But they are beautiful in many ways, and useful. And as long as we’re trying to change them, we won’t see that.

I do indeed get the “accept it whole”, even “accept it with unconditional love” I think you may have a key here as to where I must move. Right this instant I still don’t want too but I recognize that as almost a tantrum response. Thanks

Ray

The comments around authority figures has some traction but in a slightly different way. My father died when I was 10 years old and it took until several years of marriage before I properly mourned his passing. But part of the residual is a need to have approval, to have a sense of acceptance by the ward leadership as a kind of substitute father approval. I will need to think on this.

Quote:

Tall trees get knocked down by strong winds if they are over-watered and their roots branch out instead of down. That’s my fear with shallow teaching in church classes, but I view Seminary as the place for the meat and Sunday School is the place for the milk (relatively speaking).

As is often true with your insights Ray, this gets to the core of my concern. I have followed the “innoculation” debate to a certain degree on Mormon Stories and through Sunstone. There is some concensus that the perfect time is in Institute but I think that would really only work in Utah (where I imagine but certainly don’t know, that most kids go on to college of some sort). Out here in the mission field lots of kids still don’t go on to further education so that strategy will be often missing exactly the kids that need some preparations. I would like to agree with you that Seminary would be the ideal place BUT they seem to be even more constrained with their manuals than Sunday School (though I have not yet seen the new Book of Mormon manual, perhaps that will give some idea of the correlation committee’s direction). So I have decided in my own mind that Sunday School is the place but I think I agree with you somewhat, it can’t be gobs of meat, more like really thick butterscotch milkshakes with smarties and bits of brownie in them.

Would it make any sense to start a new post specifically discussing what we think Youth Sunday School should at least gently expose students to in terms of the big historical and doctrinal issues? It could include both the topic (say seer stones in a hat) and how one would approach it. Let me know.

Kedmonson

Falling trees is certainly the fear and it needs to be a constant concern. You noted:

Quote:

If this is really bothering you… cutting up your peace… is this harm in asking for a release? I know for me personally, I can’t even handle attending GD, let alone teaching it.

So this is an interesting and very logical question which gets right to the core. First, I am one of those who has never refused any calling, after retiring from 35 years of teaching I had decided that that was enough, I had done my time in the trenches with the teenagers someone else could take care of it and if they had the nerve to ask me to teach Primary and Sunday School I would say no, too tired, too old, not patient enough, worried that I might corrupt young minds with too much doctrine etc. etc. So there I was in the office, unusually the entire Bishopric was there to offer the call which I had never experienced before (the thought came through as I sat there before knowing what the topic was going to be: they want as much muscle as possible because this is the beginning of a Bishop’s court they know that I have been reading a lot of Church history). Well that turned out to be wrong, instead there was this calling to teach the Youth Gospel Doctrine class which they said was in total chaos . So then it became clear why the whole Bishopric was there: a) the Bishop was giving the call, lending his support and authority, normally the counsellor in charge of Sunday School would have interviewed me; b) one of the counsellors was the father of one of the most problematical kids and very concerned about her; and c) the other counsellor was the husband of the current teacher who was hanging in there but showing signs of wear. So what did I do, well of course I just accepted like I have accepted all the other calls in my life.

So that is the first step. I have been called and until the Bishopric sees fit to extend another calling I am programmed to do the best that I can at this.

Second my annoyance (note that this time I didn’t say hatred Ray, I think that must indicated some progress ) with the Gospel Doctrine manual is actually more abstract. It is the idea of writing it once and then expecting the adults to go through it again and again and again. I actually have more annoyance when I am a student in the adult class than in any other situation because I feel that I can’t bring up historical information for fear of derailing the teacher and I can’t react to the two “oh so intelligent, oh so pioneer stock High Priests” who spout off completely conservative versions of everything and are repeating themselves for the fourth time. So having a “get out of jail” from adult Sunday School is a bonus.

I don’t mind and find after 3 months of teaching them that I am actively enjoying the teenagers and they seem to be enjoying me, staying behind after class to continue discussions and ask more questions, you know the good signs. Parents report happier kids excited about ideas and no one seems to have complained to the Bishop about me exposing the kids to radical ideas. So it has turned out to be a good calling and it in fact helped to propell me here as I realized that I had to work out my doubts and problems if I was going to be a good teacher for them.

So I basically agree with you, if I were in total pain I should ask for a release, I have done that before in situations where I was under enormous job stress and just couldn’t manage another set of demands but that is not the case now.

So thank you for being willing to “comment against the flow”, it is a good question and I do know how you feel and have often myself skipped out of Gospel Doctrine class to insure that I could keep my emotional balance.

[Anonymous]

Fwiw, I appreciate your willingness to teach the class. You seem to be doing good for the kids, and leaving over your own discomfort over how the lessons are written would be nothing but selfish.

Seriously, I applaud you for teaching the class.

[Anonymous]

I agree Ray.

As I think I have indicated my goal with the class is to provide all of us with a learning experience NOT go in and do a teaching performance. As such the students have no need to know that I am struggling with the manual, it is irrelevant to the class experience and would just down grade the atmosphere. In point of fact though the manual is in my Sunday School bag it never comes out during class time (I have it there so I can pull it out and start thinking about the next week’s class when Priesthood lessons get too wrapped up in “please read on page 89 Brother and tell us what you think” 😳 ).

We do meet in the Seminary room, which is a small classroom but it does have a long table so I always sit in the middle of one of the long sides and they all gather round. It means that: 1) I don’t use the blackboard but 2) more important to the learning environment I am not at the “head” of the class, standing up and dominating while they are sitting, it is a subtle thing but it works. At this point, after 3 months, everybody expects to participate and share at least several times each lesson and that questions are fine.

[Anonymous]

Bill Atkinson wrote:

Would it make any sense to start a new post specifically discussing what we think Youth Sunday School should at least gently expose students to in terms of the big historical and doctrinal issues? It could include both the topic (say seer stones in a hat) and how one would approach it. Let me know.

I would love a thread for that! My most pressing concerns now, in stage 4, are how to help my kids past the stage 3 they are being immersed in at church right now.(which I know is an important step in the process)

[Author]

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