How to Know the Lesson Is Not Boring

This past Sunday, the local Church leadership asked me to teach the young men ages 12 to 18. I got about one day’s notice but I was a seminary teacher for four years, so whatever, I agreed.

For the Latter-Day Saints out there, the lesson was about King Benjamin’s address. Most teachers focus on his message of service, but people get pretty reductive about the multi-layered sermon, so I followed the arc of the speech where Benjamin tells his son to gather the people together so he could talk to them and give them a new name.

I then had the boys look up the meanings of their own first names and asked each why their parents had given them that name. We talked for some time about how we often grow into our names and they become inextricably linked to who we are. I then asked the boys to tell me who they actually are but with two rules: (1) they could not use their names, and (2) they could not describe themselves through a reference to a relationship (e.g., they could not say, “I am the son of Gordon and Lauren”).

They all sat there with their mouths open in dead silence. Finally, Graham raised his hand because of course.

“I am a homo sapien who lives in Halifax, Massachusetts, and I run the 800 in track.”

“That’s it?” I said.

“Yep,” he said.

“The most essential thing about you is that you run the 800?”

“Yep.”

The end of the sermon has Benjamin bestowing the name of Christ on his people, and we discussed what that meant for identity.

In the car, Graham got settled and then said, “It was a good lesson, Dad.”

“Oh yeah? How so?”

“Well, we have a big group chat with all the kids in the class. And normally the lessons are boring and we send each other a million messages. But we got done and there were no messages in the group chat.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Yeah, so it must not have been that boring.”

I glanced at him in the rear view mirror. “You remember the start of the lesson? How Brother McGill made you put your phones away and use only physical copies of the Book of Mormon?”

“Yeah?”

“Think maybe that had something to do with nothing on the group chat?”

“Oh yeah.”

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