The Church has posted its “Instructions for Curriculum 2018” (.pdf download). There are some changes, and some not-changes, in store for us next year.
Sunday School: Gospel Doctrine
Continuing down the well-trodden path, we will be going through the Old Testament again this year, using the same manual that has been used for many years in the past.
There is no mention of any supplementary materials to be made available online, as was done in 2017 with the Doctrine and Covenants.
Melchizedek Priesthood/Relief Society
Here is where we see the biggest change: We will not be using a Teachings of the Prophets manual this year. Instead:
First Sunday
The description of this week’s activity is that “A presidency member or group leader leads members as they counsel together and make plans to meet local needs.” This appears, at least for Relief Society (I have no direct experience with priesthood classes so can’t be sure) to be a continuation of what we have done on the first Sunday for years – one of the three Quorum/Society presidency teaches a class on a subject they have chosen as having some particular local application. I don’t see any reason for calling class members a “council” when we are not an organization, but merely a group of ward members “counseling” together, but perhaps there will come greater understanding with the November issue of the Ensign.
Evidently, the magazine will print a new section in the Conference issue (May and November each year), to be called Come, Follow Me—For Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society with what the Instructions call “suggestions” (without further elaboration) for this week’s class. According to normal rules for marking titles, a section or article in a magazine would be set up with quotation marks, reserving italics for more significant publications (e.g., whole magazines, or books). That may be a lot to read into the Instructions’ typography, but perhaps there are grander plans for Come, Follow Me than, say, the few lines of suggestions to home teachers on adapting an Ensign article for teaching families. We’ll have to wait and see.
Second and Third Sundays
We get two weeks devoted to recent Conference talks. Depending on the skill of your ward’s teacher, you know what to expect – anything from a moving, motivating lesson on a topic addressed by a Church leader, drawing on his talk but also on other relevant resources … down to the equivalent of a book report on the talk, or even a word-for-word reading of the talk. Good luck.
Fourth Sunday
The Instructions say that “Members [will] study a doctrinal topic related to the work of the Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society, using suggestions in Come, Follow Me—For Melchizedek Priesthood and Relief Society. That’s not much description to be sure, but it sounds to me like it’s the same idea as the First Sunday lesson, but taught by a teacher who is not necessarily a member of the presidency. With no formal lesson outline, this lesson, like the First Sunday lesson, will depend on the teacher (with the presidency undoubtedly assigning or approving topic) to develop a lesson purpose and the points necessary to teach that lesson, with suitable scriptures, quotations, or other discussion starters and questions.
Fifth Sunday
Planned by bishopric, as has been the practice for several years.
Youth and Children
The Instructions contain similar brief descriptions for the youth programs and Primary — it looks as though the only change there is a new Sharing Time outline.
Thanks to Alison, who spotted this and sent the link to me this evening.
Even the Sharing Time outlines are not really new. They recycle the same ones every five years or so.
The Primary program songs for next year have already been announced, and they are the same ones that were assigned in 2013. (I’m the Primary chorister and was Primary president back then.)
Ah. I guess they would be very familiar to you, then, if new to most of the children.
I’m sad about this. RS already makes me yawn…not sure I can endure *two* weeks of somebody rehashing a talk I just heard a few months ago and likely reread myself a few times. I know Conference is poorly attended, but this feels like down-the-throat pushing. How about older talks instead? I’m alone on Sunday afternoons, and I find a jigsaw puzzle with Spence W Kimball on youtube to be very uplifting. All this wisdom…nobody wants it…
Why should we need Old Testament supplementary materials? What more could there be to studying the Hebrew Bible besides complaining about how Isaiah is hard while we neglect to read it?
I should be pleased about the conference talks. The latest word from prophets, seers, and revelators, and all that. Whole, not chopped up and masquerading as a coherent body of prophetic teaching on some topic, like the “teachings” manuals. But still, isn’t there … more?
Seeing this schedule is a bit of a let down. Hearing that little is changing reminds me of you once saying something about there being so many great stories available to us in our archives that new lessons can be written for years. Sorry if I flubbed that up but it was something like that as I recall.
Any word on whether the conference talks to be discussed will still be selected by the Stake Presidency?
You got that just about right, Lance — I was probably talking specifically about Church history in this dispensation, but that inexhaustible pool of lessons and stories and examples is one of our great treasures as a Church.
I don’t know anything more about Come, Follow Me than I was able to find at lds.org, which I’ve shared here. If there is more, I certainly welcome a link and we’ll publicize the heck out of it. I also hope that these teaching councils that have been instituted will have some positive effect on the quality of our teaching. I don’t know how that will come about, but we can hope. And perhaps there will be supplemental material online — I don’t know that there will not, only that the Instructions do not mention such resources.
I loved teaching the Old Testament, even with our lickety-split pace and our well-worn set of topics. For a teacher who is willing to add to our usual and essential core of tenets about prayer and teaching by the Spirit and using plain ol’ good teaching methods, there are so many good resources out there (starting with a good study Bible) to expand our comprehension of the text. Even something as simple as framing the lesson with a brief account of the time and place of events, and a who’s who, can suddenly make the lessons stand out as fresh and exciting. Spend a little more time untangling the language and reading about ancient customs, and the teaching opportunities expand — and a teacher doesn’t even have to mention a fraction of what he or she reads: When the scripture comes alive for the teacher, some of that excitement transfers to the class even when they haven’t put in the same work. If they would put in the work, though, what a great discussion could be had!
As for teaching from Conference talks and teaching other topics that don’t come with a formal lesson outline: Again, I think the teacher is key: He/She doesn’t have to read the talk to you. He/she doesn’t have to search lds.org for data about the topic and report it like a kid giving an oral report in social studies … although I admit that’s generally what we do get now. But a good teacher, with a topic chosen by local leaders who are concerned about this or that issue on a local level, can and should give a teacher a wide open field for constructing a lesson that has a purpose, that is interesting, that provokes the kind of discussion that involves class members. It can be easier for a good teacher to do than when he or she has to “stick to the manual” or risk the wrath of somebody in the room. When there is no manual beyond the gospel itself, anything is possible. If you have a good teacher.
So much depends on these teaching councils.
(clears throat)
Uh, there’s a fair amount of OT supplementary material over at the Interpreter Foundation website, largely in the form of video/audio scripture roundtables for each of the Gospel Doctrine OT lessons (scroll down to #51). I think you’ll find the level of OT scholarship is generally quite high, though I must warn you: occasionally, I show up as well. 🙂 Don’t hold that against them. ..bruce..
There are many, many good sources of supplementary material, online and off — I have, for instance, found especially good material for Bible classes at Ben’s site “Benjamin the Scribe” at Patheos, as well as several good LDS Sunday School sites. There’s devotional material, and scholarly material, and pedagogical material of all kinds and qualities, especially for the Bible years in Sunday School, some of which fits better than other sources in an LDS setting, and a Sunday School setting.
This all goes back to the quality of the teacher, however — he or she must seek out this material during preparation. It may have helped some teachers in the current year to have supplementary material linked directly from the lesson outlines at lds.org, something that has not (yet?) been announced for the upcoming lessons.
Snark aside, I suspect one reason for the Church not producing supplemental materials for the OT is that there are centuries of Jewish and Christian scholarship to rely on. With the D&C, we pretty much have to create the supplemental materials ourselves. With the OT we’re injecting ourselves into a larger conversation. I’m not sure adding correlated material would be a help, especially if it continues the trend of ignoring the documentary hypothesis. Some endorsement of modern scholarship and translation would be helpful though — I know J. Reuben Clark was suspicious of “higher criticism” but it might be time to move on from that.
I think you’re right and I mostly agree, Mike R. — my somewhat wistful desire for easily found and easily incorporated supplementary materials, whether produced by us or anyone else, is the hope that more teachers would draw on something new (“new” to gospel doctrine classes) to inject some new life and new interest into what have become threadbare and shopworn lessons. Of course teachers are free to do that regardless, but many teachers don’t know how, or need official permission/encouragement to do so.
Why would anyone complain or roll their eyes at the topics to be “discussed” for two hours a week on a Sunday? Just like the poor, we will always have some unprepared, uninspired teachers among us. (I kinda smiled and agree with Mike R. though about ruining a perfectly good and coherent discourse by the chopping and processing that occurs in order to produce a teaching resource.) If you want more scholarly and deep instruction on the Gospel – knock yourself out! No one is stopping you. Once more, you don’t need a committee or a council to decide how deep is deep or to tell you what to study. We are extremely fortunate to live in an age where so many resources at our fingertips. And…oh…thank you Ardis for making accessible so many forgotten stories, teachings and perspectives.
The first Sunday looks like a major change to me. It is not a lesson as has been previously done but a council, similar to Ward Council.
Would you elaborate, E? I’m looking for good news, but don’t see how calling it a council makes it a council. If you have 60 women in the room, you couldn’t give a significant portion of them the opportunity to voice an opinion about a given topic, much less arrive at a plan of action, could you? The best I can see happening is a discussion about a topic, which is what a lesson is supposed to be.
(I’m fighting my cynicism. Any frustration you might sense is certainly not aimed at you and your statement.)
Mark A., the problem, if there is one, is not that the curriculum prevents any of us from personal study on our own time!
Yay!
Boooo!
I have the same concerns as you do Ardis. I have a friend whose ward was among those that piloted the Relief Society Council. She described it as a council to discuss needs and not a lesson, similar to Ward Council. Also the wording in the document you link states that it’s a council to discuss needs and the work of the Relief Society. I’m currently serving as a Relief Society President. I await the upcoming training, but I would be surprised if it ended up looking like the current first Sunday presidency instruction.
Okay, E, I’ll hang on.
Last Lemming, The conference talks aren’t always selected by the Stake Presidency In my Stake its the Bishops that select the talks. Since I’m the Bishop in my ward, I’m wondering if that means I need to select 12 talks between conferences. Yikes.
My current method to select Teachings for our Times is to go into General Conference without worrying about TFOT but to just enjoy conference. About a week later when the conference talks show up on my Gospel Library App, I start relistening to all of them from the beginning to end. Once done with that I prayerfully start selecting talks I like or feel are needed and start putting together the schedule. Usually its 3 or 4 weeks after conference before I have a schedule out. This works because I offset the months to create a 1 month overlap.
So, will I need to select current talks, or can I go back to all talks available in the last 50+ years? Lots of questions still…
Nothing on the Come Follow Me website for adults yet.
Since we are talking curriculum, I have a small beef with the Come Follow Me program as it is run. I feel like we are over-saturating our youth on topics throughout the month.Rather than getting engagement from the Youth as intended I’m seeing the opposite. Not only is the same general topic rehashed twice a Sunday 4 times a month, but its repeated annually. These kids don’t forget so easily, and some of the older kids have had these same lessons 4 repeated for 4 years now.
While I would hate to go back to the old manuals that had some dated racist and sexist teachings throughout. While its a worthy attempt, sprinkling a new video or recent talk into Come Follow Me lessons isn’t really keeping the topics fresh either. I’m not saying throw out the lessons, but let’s mix it up and get rid of the monthly topic saturation and continue to add content as it comes available.
I started to read comment 5 and my blood pressure started to rise, but then I glanced at the author of the comment and it came right back down. Very funny, Mike R.
It would be nice if people would draw on supplementary materials about the Bible, but only if they’re reliable, not of the “Thousand Years” variety. Even just a study Bible or an online parallel Bible like BibleHub can be very helpful in preparing lessons and understanding passages of scripture.
Thanks for understanding, Amy T; I’m sorry to have raised your blood pressure. Since you mention BibleHub: Their interlinear bibles are fantastic, where every word of Hebrew or Greek has an English translation under it, with an explanation of the grammar and a Strong’s number linking to a dictionary and concordance.
I don’t expect it’s any substitute for actually knowing the language, but I really appreciate that a schlub like me who hasn’t spent years studying ancient languages can look into questions like “what was the Hebrew word here, and how is it used elsewhere?” I have, on occasion, wished they had an interlinear, Strong’s-numbered Septuagint, so that the concordance would give me occurrences in both the Old and New Testaments, but I almost feel greedy to even wish for it — what they have there already feels almost like having a Urim and Thummim.
While I was teaching Primary, we were asked to attend Teacher’s Council once a month. The class was at least half Primary teachers and we almost always had a lesson (not a council) about how to teach a good Relief Society lesson. So first of all, the needs of members of the council were not being addressed (specifically, many of us Primary teachers were feeling burned out) because we rarely talked about teaching Primary (very different from teaching adults), and second of all, we were treating it as a class, not a council.
If it had been a council, we could have had a meeting where we said, “Many of our Primary teachers are feeling disillusioned and burned out in their current assignment. Today our council is going to discuss what we are going to do to support them and help them find joy and energy to fulfill their callings.”
In our church we are still very used to being lectured and not actively participating. I am open to the idea of having a Relief Society council each month to discuss the needs of our Relief Society, but based on my experience in Teacher’s “council,” my guess is that for a while it’s still going to look like a first Sunday lesson.
I’m the fourth Sunday teacher and I love to teach the conference talks. I use the subject matter and enhance it with stories and experiences and ideas. I put a lot of work in preparing. I hope that I can be one of the teachers for the 2nd or third lessons so I can continue on with the conference talks.
We always get the talks chosen by the bishop. One week I said to the class that I wondered why each talk was chosen and more so, why particular talks were assigned to particular months. Afterwards a new sister in the ward came up to me in the hall and said she knew why I was assigned to give that talk that day. She said she had been struggling with something for several weeks and she got the answers she was looking for during my lesson.
My son is my bishop, but I haven’t asked him how he chooses the talks.
For those of you who are bishops or stake presidents, please involve the ward/stake RS presidents in choosing lesson topics and conference talks. I have been the fourth Sunday teacher and have sat through many fourth Sunday lessons, and it is so discouraging to me that in most cases in my experience, the talks were exclusively selected by men. They have often thrown in a talk by a woman, which I appreciate, but it feels so limiting to be part of a women’s organization whose lessons feature almost exclusively the words of men selected by men.
Oh, amen, ElleK!
Years ago when I was teaching fourth Sunday lessons, the stake president assigned exclusively First Presidency/Quorum of the Twelve talks, no matter how inappropriate they were for the Relief Society. One talk was addressed to deacons, about how they could prepare to become missionaries. It was full of sports stories. Not only was it completely masculine, there were zero children in our ward, with RS members being either University of Utah students, or grandmothers, so it couldn’t even be adapted to helping sons prepare to be missionaries. I adapted it to address doing what we needed to do now in order to function in the future — it worked because I could use principles from the talk on physical, financial, and social preparation, but it was oh-so-hard to make relevant. I would appreciate talks being selected with women *in mind* at least, regardless of who the speaker is!
Our stake devoted most of our recent stake conference to the issues of at-risk youth, member retention, and mental health issues. I suspect that the stake presidency will use its influence to expound on those topics where possible. We are also implementing this new self-reliance program (about to start our second round of classes). Can’t hurt…
An update — https://www.lds.org/manual/come-follow-me/frequently-asked-questions?lang=eng
The answer to two of the questions would suggest the Stake Presidency should have no involvement, and in the Relief society, the Relief Society Presidency should have sway:
What does it mean to counsel together about local needs?
Melchizedek Priesthood quorums and Relief Societies “sit in council” (D&C 107:89) on the first Sunday of each month. Under the direction of priesthood or Relief Society leaders, first-Sunday meetings are used to identify local needs and counsel together about how to meet those needs. Possible topics for first-Sunday councils include how to improve communication with family members, serve in the community, and mentor youth in the ward or branch. In subsequent meetings, the quorum, group, or Relief Society follows up on impressions and actions.
Who chooses which general conference messages we study?
Your local leaders counsel together about which conference messages will best meet the needs of your quorum, group, or Relief Society. A high priests group, elders quorum, and Relief Society in the same ward or branch might study different messages in order to meet different needs.
Also, it seems like the original PDF is down? It’s bringing up a 404 error for me when I click on it. Did anyone download it?
[Yes, it has been moved; I haven’t found its new location and would appreciate readers’ links if they do find it. — Ardis]
Found it — https://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsorg/PDF/PD60003936/PD60003936_eng.pdf?lang=eng
Bravo! When I’m on something better than a tablet, I’ll edit the OP. Thanks.
I’m so late reading this post and commenting, probably no one will notice!
I think the first Sunday Council sounds wonderful! But that is what I thought about the fifth Sunday meetings years ago. A great time to share information, instruction, problems with a large group of adults. Most of the time it doesn’t seem to meet my expectation.
I hope Relief Society will take this monthly opportunity to update us on our ward sisters, children and youth, ward and stake events, visiting teaching, service opportunities, community needs, and more! A time to communicate and counsel!
I notice, Mary Lou!
I share your hopes. I think it’s going to depend very much on ward leadership.
My understanding is that the ward council members are all supposed to discuss & choose together. At least that’s what I have seen in other wards. ??
This is a new program (incorporating elements of previous plans) to begin in 2018, so experiences from earlier years in other wards may not be entirely predictive.
I have thoroughly read and researched the 2018 curriculum and still have a question. It clearly states that the second and third Sundays of each month “Members study, discuss, and apply general conference messages from the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and other Church leaders.”
It also says that the local leaders will choose which conference message. “Local leaders will counsel together about which conference messages will best meet the needs of their members, and Relief Society and Melchizedek Priesthood quorums and groups don’t have to study the same message the same week.
“Focusing our gospel study on the words of living prophets and apostles will give even greater meaning to our study of the ‘ancient’ scriptures,” said Sister Jean B. Bingham, Relief Society General President.
Here is my question. Can we use past conference talks or does it have to be the most current conference issue? If we can use past conference talks how far back can we go? Many of our living apostles and general authorities have a conference talk that goes back decades, can we use those?
William, while I obviously have no authority to make policy — well, anywhere but home and at Keepa, anyway 🙂 — I suppose the talks will be taken from the most recent Conference. That has been the case for years with the Teachers for Our Times lessons in Relief Society (and Priesthood, I assume) — we talk about the most current messages given for current conditions. It would generally defeat the purpose for such lessons to become history lessons … and while it’s a slippery slope argument, we can probably both imagine the worst case scenario of somebody presenting a lesson on blood atonement or polygamy, right?
It’s also not generally a wise idea to make Church arguments in a legalistic frame of mind — suggesting that the word “living” gives license to base a lesson on a talk given in the 1970s on a policy or principle that has come to be understood or implemented differently in recent years solely because the man who gave that talk is still breathing. When we talk about “living oracles” or “living prophets,” we mean “current teachings” and “current leaders.” It’s the immediacy of the teaching that matters, not the fact that someone who once gave a talk as a very young man is still serving as a very elderly man.
The introduction of this program in the November 2017 Ensign explicitly states that these lessons are be drawn from the most recent Conference.