Sunday, June 29, 2008
Summer of Sharing - week 1
In church today, I taught my first Sunday School class. As part of my calling as a ward missionary, I am teaching a three-week Sunday School class about sharing simple, accurate, and easy-to-understand information about the LDS Church and the gospel with others. This is an outgrowth of some of the handouts I created awhile ago (see prior post). There were about ten people there today and I thought we had a good conversation. Here is the flow/content for this week's class (see PDF). There was a companion handout (see PDF) and a homework assignment for next week (see PDF). In terms of the discussion, for question #3 (how do people know you're a member), some of the responses were: (1) happy disposition, (2) intentionally work it into conversation, (3) how we look and behave, (4) inviting others to Church activities, (5) not swearing, (6) no drinking alcohol or coffee, (7) talking about a mission or speaking a language from a mission, (8) mentioning BYU, Salt Lake City, Provo, or Utah in general, and (9) interest in family history. For question #4 (what holds you back from talking to people about the Church), people said: (1) worried people might not understand or will react poorly, (2) might lead to uncomfortable situation or relationship, (3) afraid of giving the wrong answer or giving out false information by accident, and (4) people forming their impressions of the entire Church based on their interaction with us. The next two weeks, we'll go through the homework questions and incorporate the one-page handouts as appropriate. Should be interesting. I hope people get something out of it.
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An excerpt from comments received via email:
One thing I have found to be particularly important – and I don’t profess to be a model citizen on this point, though I know it’s important – it’s a something that Elder Ballard addresses in the “what did you do this weekend” quotation from his talk. Although people rarely ask me directly about the church, I would say that there are between three and five opportunities every week for me to bring up the church in a conversation. The challenge is to actually do so instead of letting that opportunity pass by for whatever reason. The example Elder Ballard raises is great: what did you do this weekend? It’s really easy to not mention what you did on Sunday, and when we are around someone who is not a church goer we may feel uncomfortable bringing that up perhaps for fear of disdain or eye-rolling on their part.
Another example of this is when someone offers me coffee or a drink of alcohol. I would say that there are three different ways to respond to this question, with three different likelihoods of a gospel/church conversation resulting. The first and least likely is simply to say “no thanks.” For all they know, I already had 10 cups of coffee this morning and I just don’t want another; there’s little chance for a missionary opportunity to develop that response. The second is to say something like “no thanks, I don’t drink coffee/alcohol.” This response opens the door for a follow up question on their part – “why not?” But in my experience that follow question rarely comes as there are a number of people who have sworn off caffeine or alcohol. A third response, and the one that I think is most likely to lead to a missionary opportunity, it is “no thanks, in our church we don’t drink coffee” or something to that effect. When you respond that way, it’s hard for the other person not to say it least something. [At my last company] I almost always used the first or second response – or a variant, "it’s not a real all-nighter if you had caffeine" – but I am trying to use the third response more often these days.
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