{"id":3751,"date":"2007-03-04T18:21:57","date_gmt":"2007-03-04T22:21:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=3751"},"modified":"2007-03-04T18:25:13","modified_gmt":"2007-03-04T22:25:13","slug":"random-thoughts-on-the-leadership-training-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2007\/03\/random-thoughts-on-the-leadership-training-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thoughts on the Leadership Training Meeting"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month’s Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting is now available online here.<\/a>
\n
\n(1) President Packer said, “So you have to be determined to read them, and not just glean from them, but read them from beginning to end\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe Book of Mormon, the New Testament, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price.”<\/p>\n

Note that he didn’t mention the Old Testament. As I am sure most of you know, you can make it through all of seminary, Institute, and years of Gospel Doctrine without ever reading the entire Old Testament. Have we partially decanonized the Old Testament?<\/p>\n

(2) I noticed that during the teaching segment, Elder Holland asked several fact questions. For example: <\/p>\n

Elder Holland: When President Packer was talking with Elder Perry, he said, “I always relied on [blank],” whether at the pulpit or standing in the front of the class. He said he never wanted to go anywhere without them. To what was he referring?<\/p>\n

Sister Julie B. Beck: The scriptures.<\/p>\n

Elder Holland: The scriptures, absolutely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I never ask fact questions when I teach–my sense is that people either don’t know the answer and have no way to find it (in which case they feel alienated from the lesson) or they know it already (in which case the lesson becomes a catechism). If I were teaching that class, I would have said something like, “President Packer said he always had his scriptures handy when he taught . . .” and then gone on with the next point. However, Elder Holland’s repeated use of this technique (combined with President Packer’s reminder for teachers to be teachable and willing to learn!) gives me pause . . . is there something about fact questions that I am missing? Why and how should I use them? On the other hand, would I be reading President Packer right if I were to conclude from the statement below that he doesn’t think fact questions are a good idea:<\/p>\n

Suppose you were teaching the Martyrdom of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Here you are a Church history teacher, and you’ve studied it all, and you know it was on June 27, 1844, at 5:00 p.m. in the Carthage Jail when the Prophet was shot. If you ask them what time of day and where and so on the Prophet was shot, none of them will know. You didn’t know before you read the manual. But you can say, “What brought him to that? What do you think brought him to that?” The minute you say, “What do you think?” they have something to say. They can contribute; even the students that are the most backward will have something to say.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So in the end I’m a little conflicted on the issue of asking fact-based questions.<\/p>\n

(3) Elder Holland quoted Alma 31:5, which includes the word ‘virtue,’ and then said, “Another word for virtue is power. When the woman came to touch the hem of Christ’s garment, in the scene in the New Testament, He said, “Virtue [has] gone out of me” (Luke 8:46). The original Greek New Testament language for that is power. So Alma is saying we should try the power of the word of God, since it has such a powerful effect.” I don’t want to make too much of an unrehearsed, possibly off-the-cuff remark, but I am intrigued by the hermeneutic here: he’s using alternate translations from Greek to flesh out the meaning of a word in the Book of Mormon. Perhaps this would seem unjustified to some LDS exegetes, but it could also be read as recognizing that Joseph Smith’s act of translation was embedded in the language of the KJV and that in the language of the KJV, “virute” translates a word that could be “power.” What say ye: to what extent–and why–is it useful to use the underlying Greek text to make sense of the Book of Mormon?<\/p>\n

(4) I also found this exchange interesting in the ‘what is the canon?’ issue:<\/p>\n

Elder Jensen: So far our discussion has concentrated on the four standard works. We do have other scripture.<\/p>\n

Elder Holland: Yes. Do you want to say a word about the living prophets?<\/p>\n

Elder Jensen: We do have good manuals, and we do have magazines and stories. Aren’t they powerful?<\/p>\n

Elder Holland: We do have great material, to say nothing of the whole world of the living prophets and semiannual general conference broad-casts and publications that go to the Church. We have a wealth of the word of God available to us, and we ought to use it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(5) Consider this exchange:<\/p>\n

Brother Howell: “Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question\u00e2\u20ac\u201dunto what were ye ordained?”<\/p>\n

Elder Holland: To shift the emphasis a little for broader purposes here, let’s substitute the word called for ordained. Ordained would be priesthood language, and we are going to talk about the general call to teach. So, “Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question\u00e2\u20ac\u201dunto what were ye [called]?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ll resist the urge to get sidetracked on the issue of ‘ordain,’ but what I want to know here is this: under what circumstances–and how do we know which circumstances–is it OK to substitute words, change things around, etc., with the scriptures? We had a sacrament meeting speaker recently who said something like this: “I am now going to read five verses but every time I come to the word Z I will replace it with A and I’ll replace Q with W and F with X and G with J.” And I’m thinking: Why bother reading it in the first place? And why is it OK for you to do that to the scriptures? Now, Elder Holland being a member of the Quorum of the Twelve can obviously do what he sees fit, but when would it be OK or not OK for lil’ old me to do what he did here? <\/p>\n

(6) I wasn’t at the broadcast but read it online. If I understand correctly, Elder Perry and President Packer had a little interview, Elder Holland taught a mock class, and President Monson gave a talk. Not to get all meta on you, but it seems that they were modeling the idea that people learn best through different approaches–some would related best to the back-and-forth of the interview, others to Elder Holland’s example, and others to Pres. Monson’s storytelling. I worry sometimes that we get stuck in one mode in the church–the ‘teary testimony’ as opposed to the ‘powerful testimony’, the q-and-a lesson as opposed to the storyteller lesson, the ‘sit still’ Primary as opposed to the ‘act it out’ Primary. I’m sure I’m guilty of this myself. How can we do a better job of reaching students who learn in different ways?<\/p>\n

(7) Any random thoughts on the training that you would like to share? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month’s Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting is now available online here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}