Gospel Teaching – Our Most Important Calling

Gospel Teaching
Anyone can teach once they have been taught some fundamental principles and have been shown how to do it.

Three principles of Gospel teaching:

1. Love students and call them by name.
2. Teach from the scriptures.
3. Encourage the pondering of gospel truths.
• pondering requires our hearts as well as our heads.

President Boyd K. Packer often reminds us that “all of us – leaders, teachers, missionaries, and parents – have a lifelong challenge from the Lord to both teach and learn the doctrines of the gospel as they have been revealed to us.” (Boyd K. Packer and L. Tom Perry, “Principles of Teaching and Learning,” Worldwide Leadership Training Meeting, Feb. 2007, in Ensign, June 2007, 82.)

Jesus differed from other teachers of His day in that He taught “as one having authority.” This authority to teach and minister came from His Heavenly Father, for “God anointed Jesus . . . with the Holy Ghost and with power . . . ; for God was with him.”

Three principles of Gospel teaching:

1. Love students and call them by name.
• Teachers who love their students and call them by name are following a heavenly pattern.
2. Teach from the scriptures.
3. Encourage the pondering of gospel truths.
• pondering requires our hearts as well as our heads.

I testify that teaching the gospel is a sacred and holy calling. When you love your students and call them by name, when you open the scriptures and teach from them, and when you encourage your students to ponder the truths of the restored gospel and apply them, then your influence for good will be magnified and the lives of your students will be blessed more abundantly. In that glorious day, they will say to you as it was said of Jesus of Nazareth, “We know that thou art a teacher come from God.”

Instruction:

• We need to understand the basic principles of teaching and learning
• We need to be shown how they are used by successful teachers. This can be done by carefully watching able teachers in our wards and branches
• We need to review the worldwide leadership training meeting on teaching and learning
• Love students and call them by name
• Teach from the scriptures.
• Encourage the pondering of gospel truths.