Doing our part to share the gospel

Teaching this tomorrow, here is my lesson plan:

Teachings of the President George Albert Smith, Lesson 13, Doing Our Part to Share the Gospel

Goals:

·         Every member of the class will set a goal and work towards being able to serve as a senior missionary when they are older

·         Every member of the class will feel the desire to, as President Smith recommends, “Do something every day to bring the light to our fellow beings.”

·         Every member of the class will understand that being a good member-missionary requires branching out to neighbors and friends. Our neighbors cannot see our good example if we don’t associate with them and instead live like hermits.

·         We won’t be too timid when sharing the gospel.

Preparing for senior missionary service

Ask a member of the class what they see themselves having accomplished and doing in 30 years.

One of the lessons that you’re supposed to learn early on in life is to have a plan.  Consider the following truism that you’ve probably heard: If you fail to plan you plan to fail. If you had the chance to serve a mission, this was something you were forced to learn with daily and weekly planning sessions. We’ve all heard that it is a good idea to have short, medium, and long term goals.

For me, it’s easy to set short-term goals and it’s easy to set medium-term goals. In college, I had a medium-term goal to get into medical school. To accomplish this goal, I had many short-term goals to accomplish such as getting involved in research, getting good grades and test scores, finding opportunities to shadow physicians, and getting a job. During one of my interviews during the medical school application process, I was asked what I saw myself doing in 10 years. I hadn’t really thought of that question before, and I was left stammering something out about being a doctor and practicing medicine in a hospital. It’s all a bit blurry, but I don’t think I got into that school. Today, one of the biggest things I need to figure out is the answer to that very question. Once I figure it out and set that long term goal, I can make the appropriate preparations to accomplish it.

President George Albert Smith (GAS) had something very interesting to say about preparing to serve as a senior missionary, and I think it relates to the discussion of setting long-term goals:

“Now that the time is near at hand when the bars will be let down and the barriers overthrown that have been raised to the spread of the gospel, when the sound of the voice of the Lord shall come to you, through his servants, “Prepare to go into the world and preach the gospel,” do not do as Jonah did, do not try to hide or run away from your duty; do not make excuses that you do not have the necessary means to go; do not set up foolish things in the way of your vision that will prevent your seeing eternal life in the presence of our Heavenly Father, which can come only by reason of faith and devotion in his cause. Let every man set his house in order; let every man who bears the priesthood, set himself in order, and when the call comes from the servants of the Lord, telling him to go into the world to teach the truth, to warn the children of men, as our Father requires they shall be warned, let no man hide behind some foolish thing, to be swallowed up, if not by a great fish, by the foolish things of the world.”

Discussion: about this quote, planning to serve a senior mission, and the obstacles to doing so. Point out some information from the senior missionaries opportunity bulletin that says the average cost for a senior couple mission in the U.S. is over $2000 and that the payment you make on rent/utilities will not exceed $1400.

Do something every day to bring the light to our fellow beings

Mention that President GAS not only emphasized the need for spiritual and temporal preparation for full-time official church missionary service, but that he also emphasized being a missionary in daily-life.

Quote:

“Every member of the Church should delight in teaching the truth. We should each do something every day to bring the light to our fellow beings. All are precious in our Heavenly Father’s sight, and he will adequately reward us for enlightening them. Our responsibility cannot be shifted to other shoulders.”

Discussion: How is this done?

Don’t be a hermit, get to know your neighbors and share the gospel with them!

Along similar lines to the previous discussion, we can’t do something every day to help our fellow beings get to know God without actually associating with our fellow beings.

Quote:

“I think this great organization we belong to ought to be able to set such an example that people in our neighborhoods, not members of the Church, seeing our good works, would be constrained to glorify the name of our Heavenly Father. That is the way I feel with regard to that. All that we need to do is to set an example, be good men and good women, and they will observe it. Then perhaps they will afford us the opportunity to teach them the things that they do not know.

If we, as members of the Church, were keeping the commandments of God, if we put upon the truth the value that we ought, if our lives conformed to the beauties of its teachings, so that our neighbors, observing our conduct, would be constrained to seek after the truth, we would be doing splendid missionary work.”

Discussion: I don’t have any neighbors that are similar to me. Nobody has young children, most people are older. It can really easy to just come home from a long day of school and have a righteous, happy little family that reads our scriptures together, prays together, eats together, goes to church, and lots of other righteous things that my neighbors would never even see. President GAS mentioned setting an example and allowing our neighbors to observe our conduct as an excellent mode of missionary work. What kind of example and what kind of conduct is he talking about that would lead to successful missionary work? Maybe it relates to the following quote where President GAS talks about being friends with people from other churches.

“I am grateful to have a host of friends in the various churches of the world, scattered in different places. I am grateful for those friendships, but I will not be satisfied until I can share with them some of the things which they have not yet received.”

Quote:

“There is great opportunity for every one of us. I would like to emphasize individual missionary work by each of us among our neighbors. We will be surprised, if we do our best, how many will be interested, and not only will they be grateful to us because of our bringing to them the truth, and opening their eyes to the glories and the blessings that our Heavenly Father has prepared, but they will love us and be grateful to us throughout the ages of eternity.

There are so many things that the Lord has bestowed upon us that other people have not yet received. Surely we are not going to be selfish. There should be in our hearts a desire to share with every other soul as far as possible the joyous truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So, as we go forward, each of us, each having an influence with our neighbors and our friends, let us not be too timid. We do not need to annoy people, but let us make them feel and understand that we are interested, not in making them members of the Church for membership, but in bringing them into the Church that they may enjoy the same blessings that we enjoy.”

Discussion: Ask if anyone has experiences to share about being surprised.

Discussion: Discuss what it means to not be too timid. I worry all the time about being an overbearing neighbor and being annoying. I think the truth is, however, that I’m too timid way more often than I am annoying. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing. I’m not very spiritually mature to be able to recognize if it’s the spirit telling me to back off a bit or if it’s me just being shy or wussy.

Time permitting, point out the following quote and encourage everyone to not raise a doofus who goes out to the mission field and waste’s everyone time. It’s OK if you were that kind of missionary, but with a lot of prayer and diligence there’s a good chance your son doesn’t have to be.

“A dozen men qualified for the work are worth more in the mission field than a hundred who are ignorant of the truth and who themselves have to be taught before they are capable of explaining it to others.”