Communicating in a Sound-bite Society

People are conditioned to get information in sounds-bites. Gone are the days of the Lincoln-Douglas debates where hours were given to each side to make their points.

We live in a culture where the attention span is short. If someone asks you a question like "What is this Book of Mormon your church has?" you may need to answer in 60 seconds or less in a clear, simple, and understandable way.

Moroni said he saw our day and I believe it. He wrote an inspired 'sound-bite' introduction to the Book of Mormon that is very precise, to the point, and effective for the modern day culture. Joseph Smith did a direct translation of what Moroni wrote.

Are you prepared to give a 'sound-bite' explanation to a friend that inquires about the Book of Mormon? Moroni's description is an excellent foundation for you to create your own.

- Book of Mormon Title Page

Don't Sugarcoat the Gospel

These youth are amazing! They were asked to take 5 minutes to search the Book of Mormon and propose a class theme for studying the Book of Mormon this year. You will be impressed with how spiritually mature and gospel focused they are.

They don't want or need gospel principles to be superficially attractive or palatable. They don't need sugarcoating.

Look at what they came up with in so short a time:

Helaman 5:12 - God is our foundation
Alma 27:27 - Perfectly honest and upright
Alma 24:15 - Merciful is our God
Moroni 10:5 - Know the truth
1 Nephi 10:21 - No uncleanliness
Alma 56:56 - Strength of God
1 Nephi 2:15 - Dwelt in a tent
Helaman 11:37 - Pride leads to destruction

Andrew recommended 'dwelt in a tent' and explained this would be his first seminary blog post where he would expand on the concept.

Julia expressed that she would like to use 'dwelt in a tent' because it was different and interesting. We all agreed that choosing this theme would require associating it to something conceptual.

Any votes on which one will become our class theme? We'll discuss these more in depth next week and make a decision. It will be very interesting to hear what they have to say about each one as we discuss them.

There is no doubt but that the youth in this church are spiritually mature and ready for the gospel as it is without sugarcoating.

The Good Life

Most of us want a good life and we spend a lot of time and energy in pursuit of it.

A good life for most people would include having money to buy things, living comfortably, choosing what we do with our time rather than having it dictated by financial constraints, being surrounded by people we love and that love us, feeling peace in our hearts, and having a sense of purpose and fulfillment in our life.

If we all want a good life then it's worth asking this question: how do we get it?

There is a pattern for having a good life and it's really quite simple -- focus on helping and serving other people.

Nehor was focused on getting people to pay him money in exchange for preaching. He wanted the good life. His method though was to be selfish and prideful about how great he was. He got the money and immediately started wearing expensive clothes to show everyone he had the good life. He had followers. And when he got in a dispute about points of doctrine, he killed the person he was debating with. So rather than the good life, he ended up being put to death. This is not the definition of a good life. He wanted it but his methods were flawed.

Now the members of the church, the people that did not follow Nehor, were focused on helping and serving other people. That was their focus. They worked hard, they shared their food, clothes, time, and possessions with people in need. As a natural consequence of this they became wealthy. They got the good life.

"And thus they did prosper and become far more wealthy than those who did not belong to their church."

Setting our hearts on helping and serving other people has the natural consequence of leading us to the good life as we are blessed spiritually and temporally by God.

- Alma 1: 3,5-6,14,16,26-27,29-31

New Ideas Are Usually Met with Resistence

Introduce a new idea and people naturally tend to resist it.

Elder Ballard said in December 2007 that we can and should use the Internet to join the conversations and share the Gospel.

We discussed the article in class this morning. Everyone agreed with the concept that it is a good thing to do. But actually doing it? That met with some resistence.

Nephi's brother Jacob said, "Wherefore we labored diligently among our people, that we might persuade them to come unto Christ, and partake of the goodness of God, that they might enter into his rest."

Successful leadership requires diligence and continual laboring. It's easy to throw an idea out there and walk away from it at the first sign of resistence. However if it's worth doing, it's worth laboring for.

- Jacob 1:7

Meet The 2009-2010 Class

It's amazing how a snapshot can show personalities. This is a great class, each youth has unique traits that combined together make it a fun place to be.

These pictures were taken at 6:15a today, look how alive, alert, and ponderous they already are!

On the left side of the room we have Gavin, Sean, Julia, Andrew, Anne, and Logan.

And on the right it's Sarah, Brittney, Sara, Maddie, and Mauricio.

Most of today was spent distributing learning material and organizing our cabinet.

We discussed devotionals and the students like having it fairly open on what subject they discuss and what resources they use. I also asked them to consider sharing scriptures from their personal study that had meaning to them and also share stories from their personal experiences that are spiritually uplifting, which they agreed to do.

What's Important to High School Juniors?

What they said
These are the things that are important to the high school juniors in my seminary class (in no particular order):

• Fun
• Grades
• Friends
• Family
• Sports

What they meant
That's what they said, but that isn't what is really important to them. When we dug deeper to understand why fun is important, they came to the conclusion that what was really important was feeling happy and having a counterbalance for more serious things in life.

The path to understanding why grades were important went like this: grades are important because I want to go to a good college. I want to go to a good college so I can have a good career. I want a good career so I can have a good life. So what's really important to them is having a good life, the career, college, and grades are just a means to get what they want.

Friends were important because they wanted to be close to people who would help and understand them. Interestingly they also wanted to be helpful to others. And helping others was important so they felt important.

The Book of Mormon Has the Patterns
What they found exciting is that everything that is important to them (a good life, feeling important, feeling happy, having a counterbalance to more serious things) is patterned in the Book of Mormon.

Today we discussed the story of Alma and Amulek as a pattern for friendship. Tomorrow we'll cover additional areas of importance and discuss specific examples of patterns in the Book of Mormon that will help them with the things that are important to them.

They Don't Care How Much You Know, Until...

A little talking, a lot of listening

Have you heard the saying, "They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care?"

Seminary for 2009-2010 starts tomorrow morning and I'm teaching the high school juniors. We are studying the Book of Mormon this year.

I'm going to dedicate the first half of the time tomorrow doing very little talking and a lot of listening so they know I care about them and what's important to them.

What they look forward to in school, what fears they have, how their summer went, what are their likes and dislikes, what they care about. Relating and empathizing with them. It's about them, not me.

Caring about what matters

Human nature is that we care about things that matter to us. So the next objective tomorrow is taking them from what matters to them, what they care about, what's important in their lives, to where they clearly understand and believe that the Book of Mormon helps them with those things that matter to them.

This will be the second half of the class -- listening to what they care about and bridging that to the Book of Mormon.

For example, they probably care about having friends that understand and help them. If that comes up then I will show them how the Book of Mormon has patterns for finding friends and being a friend. Alma caring for Amulek in his tribulation comes to mind.

Preempting objections

The learning process is usually linear. If a student has an objection that their mind is stuck on, additional learning is stunted because they can't accept what they are hearing until their objection is resolved.

Our youth exist in an environment of skepticism about the Book of Mormon. The world generally passes it off as false.

Spending a few minutes quickly going through a bullet list of irrefutable reasons that the Book of Mormon is true will clear this barrier if it exists. Youth respond positively to these kinds of proofs because it solidifies and inspires confidence to what they already hope, and in many cases, believe, to be true.

Having accomplished these things tomorrow should lay the foundation for a spiritual and in depth study of the Book of Mormon for the next 10 months.

- Alma 15:18

Keep Your Financial Promises and Live

When we take on financial obligations like borrowing a dollar from a friend, borrowing $1,000 from a credit card company, or borrowing $100,000 from a bank for our mortgage, is that a serious obligation?

If we aren't willing to do everything in our power to keep the promise of payment we shouldn't enter into the agreement in the first place. But once entered we must do everything in our power to stay true to the obligation -- it could be the difference between life and death.

Limhi and his people made an agreement with the Lamanite king to pay 50% each year of everything they had in exchange for keeping their land and a few other terms.

"...the Lamanites had granted unto them that they might possess the land by paying a tribute to the Lamanites of one half of all they possessed".

This worked for two years until the Lamanites came and attacked Limhi's people. In the battle, the Lamanite king was wounded and brough to Limhi.

Limhi asked, "What cause have ye to come up to war against my people? Behold, my people have not broken the oath that I made unto you; therefore, why should ye break the oath which ye made unto my people?"

Since Limhi and his people had kept their financial obligation, the Lamanite king trusted them and his heart was softened. He went to his people, who were preparing to come attack and destroy Limhi's people, and convinced them not to do it.

Limhi's people were literally saved from death because they had kept their financial promise.

- Mosiah 19:15, 22; Mosiah 20:14

Laden with Taxes

Congress is currently drafting and considering a bill that will give the government control of health care delivery and will also cost a lot of money to execute. In reference to the bill, I was asked this question by one of my nephews:

I wonder what freedom of any real significance do you stand to lose from this bill?

After giving thoughtful consideration to the question, this was my answer:

I suppose it's a matter of perspective. In my world (my perspective) there are 7 people I provide for. So there is quite a bit of significant freedom I lose. Each time I am forced to give up (at the threat of going to prison) a dollar which I've earned by the 'sweat of my brow' I lose some freedom.

To illustrate, imagine that tomorrow you suddenly became the owner of 5 apartment complexes that generate monthly cash flow of $10,000 each. For the rest of your life you will be earning $50,000 a month without having to lift a finger since other people run the business. You would suddenly be able to choose to do whatever you wanted. You might still choose to go to law school and then go work for a law firm or whatever you currently are planning on doing. But here is the point, you would have the freedom to make other choices like serving missions or writing books. Whatever your passion is, you would be free to choose.

I'm trying to illustrate that there is a direct correlation between your ability to do what you choose with your money and the freedom that you have. Each time someone takes away a dollar from you by force you lose a little freedom. So the more money taken from you, the more freedom you lose. I hope this makes sense.

King Benjamin said that he labored with his own hands so the people wouldn't be laden with taxes. To be laden is to have a load or burden put on. He wanted his people to not have that burden so he ran his government in a way to keep the people free from that burden.

Your length of time as a provider for your family has been short but hopefully enough that you feel the weight of the responsibility to a degree that these principles make sense to you.

Consider all the work you have put in to teaching swimming lessons this summer. Instead of sitting around, you've busted your bum to provide a value to the children you teach. In exchange for that value, they have paid you money. The money is just a symbol of the value you provided to them, it reflects how they feel about what you've done, and it's paid well.

Now, you are free to choose what to do with that money. You will use it however you want, whatever makes the most sense to you and Kaity. But if I forced you to give 50% of that money to me so now I control the money, would you lose some freedom? Clearly you would.

Please seriously consider this. What are you planning to do with the money? Now someone forces you to give up half of it, what changes will you need to make from your original plan? Do you see how for every dollar you are forced to give up you lose some of your freedom?

So that's the principle -- the more you are taxed the more freedom you lose. How you apply that principle to your beliefs defines who you are and what you stand for or against.

As I mentioned in my earlier email, I value freedom and liberty over security and that defines what I stand for and against.

- Mosiah 2:14