Engaging Gospel Doctrine (Episode 224.1)

D&C Lesson 1 (Update)

Introduction to the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History

The priority for this lesson is to 1) get the class excited about studying the D&C and Church history and 2) prepare them to engage with the new resources and perspectives.

Why be excited about D&C and Church history
Plan for this year’s EGD
Tour of this year’s resources
Preparing the class to appreciate new resources
Feedback from the Facebook group

Why be excited about the Doctrine & Covenants and Church history
Plan for this year’s EGD (updated shorter lessons whenever there are new resources, then reissuing original episodes. I also still plan on getting Humanist Home Evening running, which will share the FHE model with a wider audience, focusing on belonging within a family group)
Tour of this year’s resources (all of these official Church resources designed to update the curriculum); visit the site for more helpful resources lining these up.
Updated Teacher’s Manual (John Shaw) THIS seems quite important and looks quite helpful!
Gospel Topics Essays(More illumination and depth about theological and historical topics)
Revelations in Context (added historical information, kind of a “behind the scenes” of the D&C sections)

Preparing the class to appreciate new resources and approaches
Set up a safe space to share and communicate (honoring personal experiences, remaining open to questions and challenge, remaining engaged kindly and respectfully together while in class, following up until people feel better, seeing the process through)
Prepare the class to have their expectations and familiar ideas challenged
Provide the class with resources to handle those challenges (As I have pointed out before
“William McLellin’s Five Questions”

Organization is a bit tricky since it is based on a figure or topic rather than the sections. That makes it useful to read through but more challenging to use in Sunday School. Were I organizing it I would expand these entries into a sort of commentary that goes along by section. In the meantime, I would recommend focusing on the sections in the lesson but being prepared for questions. The Section 1 commentary doesn’t provide much information other than the point that men criticized the preface to the Book of Commandments until it was “received by revelation”.

This brought up questions and comments in the Facebook group. Seems an odd situation to highlight.

Jim: When something feels out of place, I try to figure out what question is being answered. In this case, you are asking how this is helpful in a devotional sense. There is not much value. My assertion is this answering a different question. The questionbeing answered is why you should ignore William McLlellan's critique of the Church. By name, William is found in a number of the sections. In Kirtland, as an Apostle, William fell away and became a very animate and aggressive critic of the Church. He also became a polygamist outside the church. Once he left the Church he still believed in the divinity of the Book of Mormon. The best I can tell, the Church is trying to emphasize that he was on the Lord's side once and then Satan got the best of him. By emphasizing him falling away, it answers an insider critique of the Church. His story matters because you may google his name for a lesson and then run into his journals and narrative of the church. I am perfectly fine with someone providing a better answer but this how it came across to me.

Melissa: I'm going to bring up why the DC was first organized. It said the elders, including william, heard dc 65 and realized God wanted them to spread this modern revelation. But God didn't tell them how to do it. So they did their best to come up with an introduction for the new book they were collating on their own, but it doesn't work. They then go to God and he delivers DC 1. Kind of a strange mix between nephi and the brass plates and the brother of jared. Why does God love to give mandates without directions?

Benjamin: I thought I'd share an update from the first day of teaching D&C/Church History:

After telling the class about the new "Revelations in Context" supplementary manual, I explained that some of what we'd be learning this year tells a *slightly* different story about some events in church history than how it has been presented in the past, and that this is due to new findings from the Joseph Smith Papers research and others.

I read to them a quote about crushing china to put in the Kirtland temple mortar to make the walls sparkle, and asked what lessons we can learn (sacrifice, importance of temples, etc.). Then I read them a quote from the 2013 Friend that says that it didn't really happen (

), and asked what we should do when we encounter conflicting information about church history. I also asked if the truthfulness of sacrifice or temples depends on the historical accuracy of the crushed china story. I said that the new material that the Church is providing will be like that - tweaking the details just a little bit.

My ward is mostly working class older folks. Most of them were 100% on board and responded positively and were excited to see what was in the new material. There were a handful, though, who were *not* having it. They pushed back hard, saying that stuff like that is interesting but should not be in the class because we should be focusing only the simple basics of the gospel. They also were not happy about the suggestion that church narratives could be contradictory.

I figured that would be the response, so I shared with them that Elder Ballard has told us as teachers to be learning the new material and be teaching it in class. (

)

Again, most of the class was on board. Some (even those with very traditional, literal, orthodox perspectives) said that if the church was publishing the new material, then we should not be afraid to dig into it. They also said that this shows that further light and knowledge is coming and we should be ready for it.

And I had a lot of empathy for those who were resisting and not excited about taking a "different" approach to learning about church history. Most of us knows what it feels like to have your paradigms shifted...

Anyways, this is all to say that the lessons I learned today that will be helpful this year are:

1. Have the class see it for themselves: have them read the text from the Gospel Topics essays from their own mobile apps or have them read Revelations in Context information so that they can see that I'm not just making it up.

2. Make sure to emphasize that it all carries the church "stamp of approval" on it - make sure that anything I share comes from the church website.

3. Be empathetic when teaching: "Yeah, that was sure hard for me too when I saw that the information was different from how I learned it! But this is how I responded..."

Hook
Manual Goal / To introduce class members to this year’s study of theDoctrine and Covenantsand Church history and to help them understand their place in the dispensation of the fulness of times.
EGD Goals /

To prepare class members to enthusiastically engage with doctrine and church history this coming year
To create a safe and supportive environment to constructively discuss complicated and sometimes challenging issues

Overview
Main Points /

Why D&C and Church history is exciting
Keeping the past in the past (letting it stay weird and foreign, address our situatedness and social conditioning)
How to approach this material in a constructive, responsible way (talk about past vs. history vs. theology vs. legitimization)
Letting the past stay foreign
The readings
Additional material
Gospel Topics Essays
Revelations in Context
Bringing it all together (Focus on the main principles, supplement with other material, welcome discussion on the intersections and questions that come up)
Revelations in Context for Lesson 1: William McLellin’s Five Questions

Other Comments/ Discussion Starters
Concluding Points

Resources:

Doctrine & Covenants Made Harder available free: