In Praise of Boring Sunday School Lessons

January 16, 2020 by 28 Comments

 

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Shawn Tucker is an Associate Professor at Elon University and occasional voice of bloggernacle satire. 

Imagine a ship made with millions of popsicle sticks intricately bound together with dental floss. The many rows of wooden sticks make it waterproof and seaworthy. It is not a flashy boat, but it can move forward in the water toward a destination. That boat is how I imagine the church—each popsicle stick is a member, and the members are all tied together with bonds of testimony, commitment, and love.

I describe the church in this manner to do something perhaps unexpected—to praise boring Sunday School lessons. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Church Programs, Guest Post, Mormon, Sunday School Tagged With:

Lesson 10: Marriage in the Covenant #BCCSundaySchool2018

March 10, 2018 by

Readings:  Genesis 24 – 29.

Introduction:   I volunteered to give this lesson for BCC precisely because I’m a temple-divorced, now-engaged-to-a-Catholic Mormon woman.  The Old Testament manual instructs teachers “As you discuss the importance of eternal marriage, be sensitive to the feelings of class members who have not been married in the temple or whose parents have not been married in the temple.”  But other than that note, it doesn’t provide any practical tips about what that “sensitivity” might look like.  I hope here to provide a model for how we can use this episode in Genesis to spark discussion on how everyone can achieve more Christlike relationships, without assuming that all temple marriages are happy, nor that all non-temple marriages are miserable.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Doctrine & Policy, Family, Marriage, Mormon, Scriptures, Sunday School, Theology, Doctrine & Policy Tagged With: , , , ,

Lesson 4: “Because of My Transgression, My Eyes are Opened” #BCCSundaySchool2018

January 24, 2018 by

Learning Outcomes

To help each class member understand that the Fall was a necessary part of Heavenly Father’s plan for us.

Readings

Introduction

I have always had something of a conflicted relationship with the Adam and Eve narrative. I take it more metaphorically than how it is typically taught in LDS chapels and conferences, and I am not comfortable in how we use scriptures from this section of Genesis and Moses to justify husbands holding “presiding” power over their wives. I know my readers might disagree with me here, and that’s okay—I just want to be up front about the perspective I’m coming from as I study this lesson.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With:

Lesson 14: The Law of Consecration #DandC2017

March 28, 2017 by

Learning Outcomes

At the end of class, students will be able to:

  1. Identify commonalities between the Law of Consecration and other communitarian religious movements.
  2. Explain the roots of consecration in the Mormon church.
  3. Assess how consecration fits in the modern church.

What Is Consecration?

In October of 1830, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, Parley Pratt, and Ziba Peterson went west on a mission to the “Lamanites.” As they travelled, they came to the Morely farm near Kirtland, Ohio. Morely, along with fifty or sixty others, were part of “the Family” or “the Big Family.” Eleven core families moved onto the Morely farm and established a communitarian society, where they held goods and property in common. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Joseph Smith Era, Modern Era, Modernly Revealed, Mormon, Scriptures Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lesson 3: “I Had Seen a Vision” #DandC2017

January 10, 2017 by

Learning Outcomes:

At the end of class, students will be able to:

  1. Describe the religious and cultural context in which Joseph Smith had his First Vision.
  2. Compare the various accounts of the First Vision.
  3. Summarize the relevance of the First Vision to contemporary Mormon belief and practice.

Vermont, New York, and Religious Liberty

Joseph lived in Vermont until he was about 10. In Vermont, there was no state-established church. Rather, each town could select its own minister, effectively establishing a church. Most towns chose a Congregationalist (or “Puritan”) minister.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: D&C 2013, Modernly Revealed, Mormon, Scriptures Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Why I Use Other Bible Translations in Gospel Doctrine

July 8, 2015 by

I routinely give some version of this spiel both when I teach Gospel Doctrine and in the hallway conversations that follow. Several friends have suggested that I blog it, so here goes. I’m aiming for brevity rather than thoroughness, since the point of the spiel is to give people in class who might be wondering why I tend not to use the KJV a short and accessible argument explaining my reasons. Even though we’re currently doing the New Testament, I’ll also include my bit on the Old. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Mormon, Scriptures, Sunday School Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

“The Kingdom of God Is Within You”: Reflections on Gospel Doctrine 18: #BCCSundaySchool

May 30, 2015 by

220px-Ge_Tolstoy“The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us.”–Leo Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You

Jesus spends a fair bit of time in the New Testament trying to define “the kingdom of God” or “the kingdom of Heaven.” And he uses some of his most elaborate metaphors and conceits to try to explain what this kingdom is and why it is so important.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon, Sunday School Tagged With: , , , ,

Guest Post: New Testament Lesson 1

January 18, 2015 by

This guest post is by Brad Masters. He is a judicial law clerk, an Angels baseball aficionado, and a contributor at Normons.com.

It’s been sad to watch friends and family struggle with their testimonies. Lately, we’ve been inundated constantly with tough stuff, from priesthood bans to polygamy to any other number of topics du jour. Far too many have lost faith in Mormonism. (One is too many.)

Interestingly enough, many whose faith is extinguished not only leave the Church, but leave Christianity altogether. Rarely do the exmormon.org boards (which look increasingly like the kinds of caves trolls retreat to after long hours spent pestering unexpecting bridge-crossers) or other “recovering Mormon” blogs showcase testimonies of no-longer-Mormon Christians.  Instead, the posts are mostly from newly-minted atheists. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Sunday School Tagged With: , , , , ,

Book Review: Re-reading Job, by Michael Austin

August 4, 2014 by

Austin_Job_largeRe-reading Job: Understanding the Ancient World’s Greatest Poem
Michael Austin
Greg Kofford Books, 2014
$20.95

Academic approaches to scripture sometimes arouse suspicion in LDS circles, especially when they include the Higher Criticism (“Moses didn’t write the five books of Moses?”) or reading the Bible as literature (“So you think this is a work of fiction?”). People using or advocating these approaches often draw charges of privileging the intellectual ways of the world over the pure spiritual truth of God, of trusting in the arm of flesh, or of kowtowing to secular disbelief in the interest of seeming more acceptable.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Books & Journals, Mormon, Scriptures Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

In Which I Unpack a Finance-Based Atonement Parable (or Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Work on Wall Street)

July 31, 2014 by

Understanding the Atonement is tough.[fn1] To try to understand it, theologians have come up with theories to describe the whys and hows of the Atonement, and stories to illustrate how the Atonement works.

We’ve got a handful of favorite illustrative stories in Mormonism, including bicycles and lickings. I was recently reading chapter 12 of the Gospel Principles manual, and I came across an Atonement story that I haven’t seen in a while: a parable of a debtor and a creditor. What follows are my thoughts as I reread it:[fn2]  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Economics, Mormon Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Beethoven’s Cello Sonatas, or Why I Might Be Okay With the 3-Hour Block

April 30, 2014 by

Last night, my wife and I went to hear the final performance in this season’s Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Chicago residency. Pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel performed all five of Beethoven’s sonatas for piano and cello.  [Read more…]

Filed Under: Anciently Revealed, Modernly Revealed, Music, Sunday School Tagged With: , , , , ,

The Super Bowl of Analogies!

February 5, 2012 by

Today’s game (or tomorrow’s game, if you’re not watching it until the Sabbath is over) provided a plethora of prime examples for speakers to pick from to underscore their points in next Sunday’s talks and lessons. Show your creative elucidation of doctrine prowess in the Super Bowl of Analogies—are you ready for some object lessons?!

The following are memorable moments and images from the Big Game. In the comments, provide your best suggestions for how to use each in a talk or lesson. We’ll also take nominations for most dreaded way each might be brought up by that one guy in your Sunday School class. Game on!
[Read more…]

Filed Under: Mormon Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Church-Hacker #9: For Type-A Teachers

July 13, 2011 by

When I taught Gospel Doctrine, I completely gave up hope that any class members would ever read the material ahead of time. BCC regular Chris Gordon says there’s another way:

I had a teacher once who, you know, actually did something other than beg to try to help his class read ahead and participate in the discussion. Nearly every week around mid-week I’d get an email like this:

Dear Gospel Doctrine Class,

For those of you who missed class on Sunday, we hope to see you soon. We had a great discussion on [insert lesson name with hyperlink to lesson and related scriptures], in which we focused primarily on x and y.

As a reminder, for Sunday we’ll be covering [lesson name with hyperlink]. I’d like to spend some time discussing a and b, but we’ll see where the discussion goes.  Hope to see you there.

Have a great week,
Teacher

It was never particularly long, worked great for when I was in toddler limbo, and was a great way for me to at least glance at the lesson ahead of time via hyperlink. I also understand that the teacher made it a point to include on the mailing list those whose callings keep them from attending Sunday School, to help them feel included.

Occasionally the teacher would also include links to talks or other resources related to the subject matter, probably depending on how much preparation had already been done by email time. The teacher would often also include attachments or links to resources and/or quotes used in lesson prep in lieu of or in addition to handouts.  There are always the folks who don’t use email and I’m not sure what the teacher did to help them.

Love the idea. And if sending the email becomes a part of a teacher’s regular lesson prep, it might not even be that much of an extra burden. The only issue for me would be revealing my sources (I wouldn’t be able to crib quite so liberally from Feast Upon the Word Blog and Wikipedia anymore).

Teachers, would you be up for this level of engagement with your class members? And class members, would you care?

____________

Got your own Church-Hacker idea? Submit it! (the church-hacking guidelines are here.) See all entries in this series here.

Filed Under: Church Hacker, Sunday School Tagged With: ,