Does a youth leader ever feel like they have it figured out? This hasn't been my experience. However, I couldn't be an effective youth leader today without Dan Duckworth's presentation about going from youth worker to youth mentor. Mentorship is a key concept to understand when leading youth. In his presentation, Dan talks about ways to really turn the traditional approach to leading youth on its head. How can you better know your purpose? How can you find out their life goals?
How can you build a relationship that is transformational rather than simply filling time during the weekly youth activity? You can watch Dan's presentation in the Young Saints virtual library by going to leading saints.org/14. You'll get free access for 14 days, and that will give you plenty of time to watch Dan's presentation a few times. Let's give youth the leadership they deserve. I would be rude if I didn't take the time to explain to the newer listeners
what Leading Saints is. Here it goes. Leading Saints is an organization that started as a hobby blog in 2010 and then really caught some traction in 2014 when the podcast started. We talk about all things leadership in the context of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. We aren't owned by the church, but we have a great relationship with them and always aim to be faith promoting even though we talk about the tough topics. My name is Curt
Frankem. I'm generally the voice you hear as the host of the podcast. I've tried to get other hosts, but people demand my smooth tone, and I really enjoy it. Check out leading saints.org to really get into the weeds of what Leading Saints is and learn all about our mission to help Latter day Saints be better prepared to lead. Alright. This is part 2 of my interview
with Dan Duckworth. If you haven't listened to part 1, it would be definitely necessary for you to go back and listen to part 1 of this conversation so you have everything in context, but a fascinating conversation. So let's keep it going. Alright. We're back in the studio. This is a part 2 of the interview that Dan Duckworth and I just did. It wasn't it was several weeks ago for us. That's why we're in a row we did a wardrobe change. The seasons have changed since then.
We're so much more, you know, inspired and intellectually smart and so see what we we learned. But in that first interview, that first segment, we talked about we had a great discussion beginning, just culture in general, where it comes from, and then we transition that into culture in Sunday school. What does good Sunday school look like? You gave us some some principles. I mean, how would you describe there's the membership, the leadership, or
the like, the different components? So there's 3 things, 3 attributes of the Sunday school that help us to discern its purpose. That's the membership, the teacher, the nature of those two things, and then the gathering, the nature of the gathering. Perfect. And now we want to talk about and and I'll reference we'll link to you wrote an article sort of, you know, unpacking these things as
well, the true purpose of Sunday school. But now the because you ended that discussion on this point of like and this this is goes for all leadership. Like if you want to be a better leader, it's not about getting the tactics right. It's about having your nature change completely. And that's easier said than done. But so what does that look like as a Sunday school teacher? Like, if you wanna be a Sunday school leader or teacher, you have to transform. And a lot of people are like, that
sounds really cool on a billboard, Dan. But what how does that look like? And and you've done some things with your Sunday school presidency and and teachers to guide them down that path. Yeah. Well, transformation, what we're really talking about when we say transform is your belief system needs to transform because all of us show up having a belief system through which we interpret our real life experiences or our our real life situations, and that's based off of our life experiences.
That's based off of the narratives that we've created about those life experiences. So that creates a kind of lens or a paradigm through which we interpret everything that we see. And so when we talk about the word transformation, what we're really saying is we need to have new disruptive experiences. And by disruptive, we mean they disrupt that paradigm. They start to throw shade on it, start to make us question, Hey, maybe the way I'm viewing the world isn't the right way or the best way
or the most efficient way. Maybe there's other angles or other ways to perceive the situation. And so, things that we couldn't even conceive of in the past or even think of as being possibilities suddenly become possibilities. And so, what transformation looks like in real life is it's called a praxis, but it's a cycle of experimentation and reflection, experimentation and reflection. And the one is leading to the other,
and they build and compound over time. But what that's doing is it's challenging our belief system about what does it mean to be a teacher? What does it mean we talked about the purpose of Sunday School as the handbook defines it, is to help them to learn and live the gospel. What does it mean to learn? Well, there's actually a lot of different perspectives on that, but when we're in the church setting, the paradigm that we have says this is what learning looks like.
And so we're trying to challenge that paradigm. And then what does it mean to live? We're trying to challenge that paradigm. And we start to imagine ourselves doing something different because we start to imagine a different possible outcome. So it's all very mental, so to speak, but it's all very practical because you can't do this sitting in a room studying teaching in The Savior's Way or the Handbook. You do this by acting differently in your situation and seeing what you learn. Yeah. Yeah.
And this goes back to, you know, going back to that broader discussion we had about culture because a lot of people wrestle with, yeah, I don't I can see where the culture is broken or in you know, we talked about Sunday School sort of feels broken at times. And what do we do about that? Or how do we change culture? And I often frame it that you have to walk up to the walls of culture and push it and see if it pushes back. And if it pushes back, that's that's data. Right? Like,
okay. Interesting. Because if we don't, when you talk about disruption, the nature of culture wants to minimize disruption and hold it all together because disruption is uncomfortable because it causes growth, but it's uncomfortable because it leads to uncertainty at times. Like, oh, oh, oh, I don't. Now I feel kinda lost. I'm I'm not I'm outside my comfort zone. Right? Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So you got to poke it, you got to prod it, you got to see what you learn
about it, and you have to adapt. And this is gonna be something that's iterative. Mhmm. It's not gonna happen overnight. I'll give you an example. I actually don't know the details of it, but I was leading a high council meeting, and another high counselor said, Hey, sounds like your teaching initiative is going great. I said, Well, what do you mean? And he said, Well, all I know is that our Sunday school teacher came to Sunday school and did something completely differently than she's ever
done before. And it was really effective and created a lot of energy in the room, right? So that's an example. I don't actually know what she did, but she had an idea. She started to imagine herself showing up differently. She had the courage to walk into that room and do something differently. In fact, I do actually know a little bit about it, but and frankly, it was probably perceived by a lot of people as cheesy.
Okay? But she did it anyway because And the other question I often get asked a lot when people are approaching change or thinking about how to help people change is, how do they get the confidence, right? People are afraid to do things differently. Where does the confidence come from? Well, the confidence comes in your new vision of what
the situation really is. If I think the situation is like scenario A, and then I'm going to act in behavior B, that's misaligned with scenario A. And so, my fear of failure and judgment and ridicule and all those things is through the roof. I'm not confident. But if I start to perceive the situation might actually be like scenario B, well, now, behavior B aligns and matches. And so I now go into that much
more confidently. Even if the other people still think it's scenario A, I see scenario b. And so now, I can walk into that more confidently, and that also creates more of a sense of authenticity, which increases my power to get those people to step into scenario b with me. So you're going back to the example of the the teacher in your stake. They they proposed a scenario b and said, come step in here. Wow. That was the disruptive
nature of it. Is that Exactly. And you mentioned as far as doing it differently, I think sometimes we get stuck in this mindset of like, oh, what we gotta do is just do it differently. Yeah. And sometimes I call it the ex girlfriend syndrome where it's like, all we gotta do is do it not like how we used to do it. And and I saw this a lot like when ministering was proposed where not only did we do we have excitement about the new approach, but we we were critical of the older old approach.
Like, oh, wasn't that weren't we silly living this lower law of just monthly visits or whatever it is. Right? And so and I guess my point being is we get stuck in the let's just do it differently. Whatever it is, do it differently. When in reality, that's not necessarily what you're saying doing it differently. What we're doing is pushing on that wall of culture saying, I'm gonna try this differently and then take the data, comes back.
And I've done things where I've done it differently and I'm like, that that did not work, or it didn't go with how I expect. I'll probably try something else next time. Right? Yeah. I mean, I I did a thing where I was guest teaching in elders quorum this a year or 2 ago, and I staged an exercise that I knew would be provocative, but I didn't understand how provocative it would
be until I did it. And I saw the resistance flare up amongst the people, and it actually didn't work that well because they didn't participate in it. They didn't join me in scenario B. And despite all of my real time adjustments and my efforts to invite them into Scenario B, there was a core group of people in the room that were adamantly resisting Scenario B. And so I walked out
of that. And now, if I was a continual teacher in there, I would have additional opportunities to experiment, but I walked out of there having learned a lot about the nature of the group and about the individuals who are locked in certain belief systems, right? And so, that data would have enabled me to do another experiment and to do another one. And to your point, the experiments aren't necessarily like, you know, wholesale changes or revolutions or something like that.
They're inspired by my growing awareness of the purpose of why we're there. Mhmm. And so it's very cliche in the leadership industry. It's purpose, purpose, why, and get down to your why, start with the why, all that stuff right? Mhmm. The way that we talk about it in the industry sometimes isn't very helpful. But if we just think about the purpose as being what is the greatest good that we can accomplish in this situation, that is the purpose for why we are
here. So as I'm in that room experimenting, I'm also discerning what is the greatest good? What is the real need? Justice. Right? Adam Miller. What's the real need? If I'm discerning that and I'm attempting to fulfill that, well, I'm not gonna get it right the first time. It's gonna happen through adaptation.
Yeah. And this is the something you emphasized in our in part 1 is this discernment where even Christ himself among the Nephites, like, in the moment, he's like, we gotta go a different direction and to to give yourself permission to assess that and think, okay, like, I thought I thought this option b would take us in a different plan, and it's not going that way, but maybe we'll try this way. Right? And that's the and we have such a strong tradition of following the spirit
in those things. That's what that looks like. Yeah. You know, when I when I say things like that, like, Jesus showed up and he had a script and he went off script, And doesn't that mean that the script was wrong? Mhmm. Doesn't that mean that god didn't actually know. Right? And then Jesus, says, I'm gonna leave, and he says, actually, no. What you need me to do is to stay just to do something different. Doesn't that mean
that he got it wrong? And are we comfortable with that idea that god might get it wrong? How can an omniscient, omnipowerful god get anything wrong? Well, I like the way that I think it's Terrell and Fiona Gibbons, how they talk about, you know, God's omniscience doesn't necessarily have to imply that he knows exactly everything that is unfolding or will unfold. The way they talk about it is that there's no mystery in that. There's no creativity
in that. And that God is fundamentally, if you look at the scriptures, he is fundamentally a God of mystery and creativity. And so, there is an emergence that he is comfortable with, right? There is an emergence, and that concept and that principle is such a true principle of leadership that you're not actually creating something that is from a blueprint that you're going to get it exactly to look like it was designed on paper. But as you're interacting with the situation, the situation changes.
You, your action changes the situation. Therefore, you have to take that information in, and you have to come up with new action. So it isn't that Jesus got it wrong per se. It's that when he announced, I'm leaving, he learned something new in the way the situation reacted to him. Yeah. And then he took that in and said, oh, now with this new information, and I've actually materially changed the situation, I'm gonna do something different. Yeah.
So what this principle take me to talk to me like I'm a 5th grader here. So the is the general I haven't been? Well, you know, Dan, you're, maybe a 6th grader. You've been but so is it just the fact that I'll just do something different? If you're trying to be transformational teacher, just do different. Yeah. So let's back this up for a second. So when I started teaching Sunday school, you know, and I I maybe five and a half years ago,
it was a new experience for me. In fact, I actually asked for I was the word mission leader when that position got axed, and then they moved me into the young men's, and then I was the young men's president when that position got axed. And the bishop was kind of like, Man, I feel like you're cursed. What do you want? I'll just give you whatever you want. It was the first time anyone ever asked me that. I said, Bishop, I know what I want. I want to teach Sunday school to the
16 to 18 year olds Deal. Right? So he moved me in there. But when I got in there and I started to do I spent years experimenting and learning and growing and all these things and create this amazing transformational experience for the kids. They loved it. We had lives changing all over the place. And then an episode on this, by the way, which we'll link to because it's worth listening to. If you remember I don't. It
was great. Yeah. I'm glad we did. So then I get called to be the Styx Sunday school president, and my job is now to help other people become transformational teachers, at least as I define it. Because why else would God put me in this role? What's my purpose? Well, I'm you know, what's the intrinsic nature? I've just had this experience. Mhmm. So but in thinking and reflecting, how do I help other people?
And in talking to them over the year, it's become clear they can't even conceive of what I'm talking about. Right. It's so outside of our lived experience, both from a k through 12 education, from a higher education, and from a church education. It's so far outside our lived experience. We don't have visual imagery or language or anything to really comprehend what we're talking about. And so, I started to ask myself, Well, how come I was able to do that? I mean, I'm not trained as a teacher.
How come I was able to step in and start doing that? And I realized it's because when I was in the Ann Arbor Stake, I sat at the feet of transformational teachers. I watched this happening, maybe not on a weekly basis, but fairly frequently over the 10 years that I was there. And there were times where I would have these moments where I'd say, wow, I'm actually being able to see how their teaching is different than the normal way of teaching. I'm kind of rambling, but I'll give you an example.
I'm sitting in a in a Sunday school class. It's actually a it's a steak training with our steak Sunday school president who is Bob Quinn, Robert Quinn, who's a world renowned leadership professor. Mhmm. And he's engaging us in his activities and facilitation techniques and so forth. And I'm marveling at the idea that he's doing so little talking when he is such a world renowned expert Mhmm. On this subject. And suddenly, the scripture
comes to my mind. Let there be one appointed among you to be a spokesperson spokesperson that all may be edified of all. And that's a scripture that I had wrestled with before. What does that mean? You know, that's one of our closest descriptions of revelation on how teaching should work in the church is that scripture. And what does it mean that all may be edified of all? Well, suddenly, I realized we're all in small groups. We're all roaming around the room. We're all talking.
All to be edified of all requires that all are talking and that all are listening and not just listening but open, right? So here we are in this environment, and I'm experiencing the electricity of all being edified of all. Well, if you've never experienced that in a church setting, and now it's your turn to teach, and you go, I want to do it differently, you don't have any way to even conceive
of how to do it differently. So this is what I've been grappling with as a Stake Sunday School president is, how do you do this at scale? How do you give people the opportunity to experience and see transformational teaching? Well, in our current structures, it's impossible. We all meet at church at different times. And the cultural expectations, like, if I could just say, Hey, we're all going to come and have a meeting at 10 AM. I don't care if you have a sacrament meeting at 10
AM. I don't care if you have an interview with your bishop. This is when we're doing it. We're all going to come, and you're going to experience transformational teaching. Then we might be able to do this, but we can't do that. We can't break those barriers of the sanctity of our Sunday schedules. So now, you hold it at 4 pm or at 7 pm, and you've lost 75 to 95 percent of the people that you could have reached because they're not gonna come at 4 PM or 7 PM. Mhmm.
Yeah. So I'm kind of rambling. But to get over that, my approach has been to try to create a set of principles that we can talk to that are actionable principles. What does this look like in the classroom? And this is what we did, that one teacher who went and then did something. We didn't talk about what she did. Mhmm. We didn't talk about application. Right? So just to set this up Yeah. You're gonna have to cut me off here. No. That was great. But these are principles like the and you
we've got them written down here. We've got them written down here. May or may not share this document with the world, but I mean, we'll we'll go through it. So Yeah. Then there's nothing, like, super special here, but Yeah. You have to go to Elder Bednar, doctrines, principles, applications. Yeah. She did an application. Right? Principles, it's also so teaching in the Savior's Way and a little bit of come, follow me, they have principles in them, a few applications
in them. Like, when it says pray for everyone by name, that's an application. That's telling you to go do something. But for the most part, they are principles, but they are not actionable principles. And so, I wrestled with this because people said, Why don't you just teach them teaching in the Savior's Way? Like, it's all there. We should just use what the church has given us. Well, when I look at those, these aren't actionable. Love everybody. Okay. I mean, that's doctrine.
You know, it gets it breaks down a little bit more from that, but it's like, what do we do with that? Like, what does that actually look like in a classroom? And so, I started thinking about, okay, there is a difference between what I am going to call aspirational principles, which is what teaching in The Savior's Way has all these great aspirational principles in, versus practical principles.
Okay? There's a little within that principles bound there before we get to the lower bound, there is some translation. And if you don't have past experience, if you haven't seen it, you can't make that translation. And that's what we're finding with the teachers is as earnest as they are, as much as they believe in those principles, they cannot translate them down to the action application level because they haven't made the transition
from aspirational principles to practical principles. Yeah. And that's exactly what we are attempting to do with our How I Lead segment on leading saints of, like, just because I brought in this bishop, this Relief Society president. It's not like you should do it that way, but I want people's mind to see that transition from the aspirational to the practical. Because in as we gather meetings and counsel, I noticed this recently in a church meeting I was a part of where we were talking about
ministering. I was excited to learn from other leaders, like, what are you doing? Or what does ministering look like in your ward or ministering interviews, whatever it is? And we were saying that some of these we are defaulting to these aspirational principles of like, oh, you should be empathetic when you do a ministering interview. You should listen. And I'm like, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. But like, so like, what does that mean? You know, like, how do I do that? Or like, what do you do
to do that? Right? Not because their way is the perfect way, but it takes it to that next level. So this is really good. And as we have councils and things for that leader to say, great. I I get what you're saying, but take me a level deeper. Yeah. So this is the level deeper that I came up with. Cool. This is not something that I've published or really have intended to publish simply because this list just came from me
looking at the way I teach Yeah. And the way I've learned to teach both in the church setting and in the professional setting. And I said, what do I do? Yeah. What are the principles that I can extract from that? Well, let's buzz through it. Should we start at number 1? Well Or do you wanna go by by by I might yeah. I I switched the order and then the printout here. Okay. I must have printed They're not in any order. Order. Is that
what you're saying? No. Well, I tried to put them in order, and then I didn't print that version out. Okay. These were this was stream of consciousness Gotcha. Initially. Well, where do you wanna start? So where I wanna start is this idea with number 5 here where it says empower people to cocreate the experience. And there's a metaphor that we used in our stake or have used in our stake
that I think has been pretty powerful. And it's this idea that normally in the church, we show up as teachers thinking that we're the master chef. Mhmm. And it's our job to prepare a gourmet meal that we're going to serve to our students. And it's their job to consume the meal that we have labored over. Mhmm. Right? That's one approach. But when we shift to a transformational teaching lens, our job isn't to
be the master chef. Our job is simply to prepare the ingredients and the utensils and bring them raw to the class, and then to enable the class to prepare the meal together. Mhmm. And the premise here is that the class isn't gonna eat what we prepared. They're going to eat what they prepared together. And that's a totally different paradigm. And so that's again, it's just a principle. But when you walk into the room and you say, I no longer see my role as being here to feed you.
I see my role as being here to enable you to work together to create this experience. And I'm one of you, so I can be part of that experience. I don't have to think of myself as an abstract outsider. But we together are gonna create an experience. And so that's and you know, going back to the example with Bob Quinn, he was doing that masterfully. He could be the master chef. People want to just sit and listen
to the guy speak. Yeah. But seeing what his purpose was and what the room's purpose was, he came as the facilitative teacher who was creating an experience or enabling them to create the experience together. Yeah. And is there any like, take me to even more practical level of, like, well, then we're in a relief society room, you know, sitting in there like sardines and how do I cocreate? I mean, do I and so we default to I think what Dan is saying is I should ask really
good questions to get a discussion going. But is there more to that? I mean, how would you what does co creation look like? Or because it's risky at times too because you're like, I just brought ingredients. I don't know what we're making today. And I mentioned this briefly last time, so I'm gonna hit this again. You're creating what you can do is create engagement. Mhmm. And engagement against another cliche word. What we don't mean is, like, people are just, like, dogs wagging their tongue.
Like, I'm here. I'm excited to be here. What we mean is they're engaging with each other. They're engaging with ideas, and that usually takes one of 2 forms. 1 is introspection, so it can be quiet, and the other one is interpersonal dialogue. Mhmm. So it's inner dialogue or interpersonal dialogue that's happening. I'm talking with myself, and I'm exploring my life experiences. I'm exploring my beliefs relative to the gospel, or I'm talking with others, and I'm still exploring myself.
And I'm still exploring my life experiences through the lens of the gospel, but I'm doing that through conversation with others. Now, you can't just I mean, the natural order of things that we talked about is that's what we would do. If we had significant life experiences with Jesus and we showed up in the church together, we wouldn't need a pastor or a handbook to tell us how to do this. Mhmm. We would just do it. I mean, if you watch that really lame Mike Tyson fight,
I Well, we take a left turn. Here we go. Which I did. But the next Saturday morning, we're at a service project with the elders quorum, cutting trees down in in a lady's yard in our neighborhood and Yeah. But what's everybody talking about? The fight. Did you see the fight? What did you think of it? Right? Well, have you had an experience with Jesus?
What do you think about it? Like, I'm dying to talk about what what's been going on in my life right now or the lack of Jesus that I'm seeing in my life, and I need help to think about why. Uh-huh. Right? So we do this naturally. So engagement, inner dialogue, internal interpersonal dialogue. Cool. But now to get it a little more practical k. Let's go to, what's on here is number 4. I call this the Pareto principle, k, which is a term used in economics and other fields of
study. Right? The idea with the Pareto principle is that 20% of the inputs create 80% of the outputs. So the output that we want is engagement, inner dialogue, interpersonal dialogue. That's the 80%. Now, again, I'm gonna ramble a little bit here, but let me take it back one step and just introduce this idea. The natural order doesn't need structure, but because we exist in a culture with 100 of years of prior experiences that determine how we show up and behave, we can't just show up anymore.
If we were to show it's like saying ministering has no rules, then people don't know what to do because all they know is the culture tells them it's done this way. Right? So you can't just take the handcuffs off and then say go. It's like we now need to be trained on how to do this because we've lost the natural order. So, how do you do that? You need structure. Not the dominant structure, not the restrictive structure, but you need enabling
structure. Mhmm. Yep. So that what we're kind of talking about here is a little bit of that. So coming in with the Pareto principle and saying 80% should be on engagement. Well, we can't just turn them loose to get that. We need 20% where we're actually speaking and content and providing ideas and providing framing and things like that so that we can get authentic engagement in the 80%.
Yes. Yes. And a lot of that in my mind goes to even the you can't have them walk in, sit down, and expect to just go with the 80%. There's almost the part of that 20% is the warm up of the getting them comfortable in the the atmosphere and the in the way the room is set up or whatever it is and saying, alright. Now we're to the 80% part. Right? And that could be this could be questions you ask. So, I mean, again, there's a place for
good questions. This could be this, that, more superficial discussion you get going and so on and so what else? Yeah. So I'm just I'm bringing up another sheet here. This is a template that I created that allows us to go with the Pareto principle, 20%, 80%, because it's hard. When you only have 45 minutes of class time, it's hard. And I've got the minutes marked out here. But the way that I do this and this incorporates a couple of these other principles here. I actually created this before I
got called into the Stakes Sunday School. I created this because I was starting to turn over teaching to the youth. Mhmm. And I didn't want them to default to what they're used to in teaching. And so I literally said, you're gonna follow this pattern. And it only happened a couple of times before I got released, but it was unreal. Wow. We actually there's a girl coming to our class, amazing girl who's not a
member of the church. She's a foreign exchange student, but she came, you know, fairly regularly for the 2 years that she lived here. She's the first one that I had teach. Oh, wow. And she followed this but within this, the things that were happening were I mean, I wish I could have recorded the session so that everybody could watch it happen. You don't have to be a master teacher. Mhmm. If you follow some of these principles, electricity flies.
So just to give you a sense of the timing, we've got 6 minutes for opening, which includes an icebreaker and a prayer. We wanna get them talking. The first thing the first thing I wanna do when I'm teaching is I always wanna get them talking right away. So that's right off the bat. I actually learned that from my dad when he was my Sunday school teacher back in the day.
Then we have 30 minutes for what we call what I call discovery, but that's broken down into 5 minutes to present an idea or frame a question. 5 minutes. And then 20 minutes for the engagement, which is either reflection or discussion, and then 5 minutes to bring it back together and regroup. That leaves us 5 minutes to close. So, folks, when I talk about you have 20% of the time for the content, for the input, we're talking about, like, 5 minutes in a
class setting. Yeah. That requires a level of what's the word I'm thinking of? It requires a level of letting go, but it also requires a level of willingness to not prepare. I'm not gonna say over prepare. I'm gonna say don't prepare. It's a complete misnomer that you need to go and study and study and study. Most of my Sunday school lessons emerge from this process. I open up the scriptures. I start reading. I have some tension. I stop, I create a question or a framework around that tension,
and I'm now prepared for my lesson. Mhmm. I'm gonna walk into that classroom, and this gets to the other principle where I say hold positive tensions. I'm gonna walk into that classroom, and my goal I'm going back to my framework document here. My goal, I'm gonna read this, introduce the theme or question using a story, anecdote, scripture reading, video clip, whatever, to create curiosity and a sense of tension that participants will want to resolve.
K. So this is the other thing. As a transformational teacher, you're less of a content deliverer and more of an experienced designer. Mhmm. And experience design isn't a field that many people have a lot of exposure to. But whenever you're designing a gathering, experienced designers always talk about the arc. So if you're familiar with the story arc, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. There's an inciting incident. There's a rising tension.
There's a climax where a choice or a revelation is received, and then there's a falling action. Well, that's what we're doing with this approach. We have the beginning, here's the content, here's the inciting incident, something to get you thinking, cognitive dissonance, spiritual dissonance. We actually don't want to be afraid of that like most Sunday school teachers are. We actually want to
bring that in. Now, we gotta be careful because I don't want to impute something that I have tension with onto you. So I'm trying to abstract that to the human level. Mhmm. Right? What's a very shared phenomenon that all of us have? Right? Why do good things happen to bad people? Now that's very abstract, but I might set that up by saying something like this. Hey. I was just fulfilling my elders quorum assignment to stay with a brother in our ward who has cerebral palsy.
He's 38 years old, and his mother just committed suicide. This is the first time in his life he's ever been on his own. And I just can't help but think as I was reading the scriptures in the come follow me this week, and this is hypothetical so I don't actually have a scripture associated with it, but I just couldn't help but think why is it like this. Mhmm. And I also couldn't help but think rethink my challenges and the things that I've been complaining about.
Pause. Boom. I have just peaked the tension and the cognitive dissonance and the questions and the yearnings and the curiosity of everybody in the room. Yeah. I don't need to say anything else. Yeah. So my mind goes to I mean, because there's sort of this lingering but but, Dan, there's I mean, we're given a a block of scripture that's supposed to be the foundation or the push of the lesson. Right? So, you know, I I gotta make sure I, at least, am familiar with it. Right? I
mean, what comes to mind? Well, frankly, I rarely well, it depends on how big the block is, but there are weeks where I don't get through the whole block Yeah. Because I'm stuck on a verse a day. And so the idea that we're gonna come and we're gonna bounce around this entire block as if the block has a single theme to it. I mean, some of these blocks were all over the place. Especially with Sunday's whoever other week, and there's 2 lessons worth of Yeah. That's a
lot of scripture. Right now, just go back to the front matter of come follow me. It specifically says in there, do not try to teach all of this Right. In a given week. You just can't. You can't even try to hit I mean, these are some of these things are amazing, amazing scriptures. And we say, like, oh, you just can't do justice to all these things. Women don't try to. Your goal isn't to teach them content. Your goal isn't to ensure that they blah blah blah blah blah.
Your goal is to help them create an experience at that level of their spiritual journey so that they can open themselves up to the Holy Ghost and have those kind of experiences. Period. Boom. They're open up. They're having inner dialogue. They're having interpersonal and the holy ghost is part of that dialogue, mission accomplished. Yep. So, I mean but you're still referencing scripture and principles from the lesson or what? Yeah. You mean you're gonna frame
it up. Alright? You gotta you got the content, The scriptures are there for us to create that inner dialogue. That's the whole value of the scriptures. I mean, this may be a contrary, belief to what most people believe about the scriptures, but their primary value is that they cause us to wrestle. As Sherry Du pointed out. Mhmm. They cause us to wrestle. And what are we wrestling
with? We're wrestling with our belief systems. It isn't about the esoteric belief or the doctrine, right, trying to, like, understand exactly what's being said here because that's honestly what a lot of come follow me has become Right. Is trying to really get minute on the details of what does this word mean and what did it mean in 18/20 or what did it mean in the year of 3,000 BC. What we're really trying to do is wrestle with our beliefs about ourself, about the world,
and about God. Those are individual to me. They don't translate to anybody else. However, I put words on them and describe them, I might use words that are related, but I might use the same word to describe a belief that you would use to describe a belief. But if we look at our behavior and how we base our lives, we actually believe something different. Mhmm. So it doesn't really matter what's out here in the public space. All that matters is what I'm seeing and believing in my own
belief system. Yeah. And as you walk into that class, you're sort of surrendering all that to saying, what are the beliefs in here? I is that a fair way to say, like, I'm trying to gauge where is everybody at in conjunction with some of these general principles I want to lay out here. Is that Well, I don't need to know where everybody's at. Okay. So when I say stage 5 minutes of content, you know, the next what does it look like going forward? It's some kind of facilitation exercise.
So they're either writing in their journals. They're talking in pairs. We have various forms, right? We call it the walk and talk, we call it the junior high dance, we call it the small group, we call it the 1, 2, 4, all, which is for Parent share. Parent share. There's all these things, right? And I don't even need to I don't need to tell you what these are because if you come in with the right mindset, you'll just create them. Like that teacher I talked about earlier, she created her own.
So we're talking about the principles, you'll figure out the applications. And then all these names, I mean, some of them might be real names. Most of them, I just call them that. So my class gets used to it. Right? When I say, hey, we're gonna do the junior high dance, what that means is we're all gonna stand up. It's gonna be super awkward. You're gonna get a partner. You're gonna have 60 seconds. Then I'm gonna call
switch. You're gonna go find another partner. It's gonna be super awkward just like a junior high dance, and we're gonna have the same conversation 4 or 5 times with 4 or 5 different partners. What's the value in that? Well, I perceive value in having you say out loud something relative to whatever the frame is that we created from the scripture, saying it out loud 4 or 5 times and modulating what you're saying based off of what you're hearing other people
say. Yeah. And so you're now in that practice of experiment, reflect, experiment, reflect. You're doing that 4 or 5 times in a 5 minute span or a 10 minute span. Mhmm. So that's just an example. Right?
Yeah. And I'm glad you mentioned that, like, that awkwardness because I just noticed in in leadership in general, but even in the context of teaching in class, it's you'll feel this level of, like, awkward as like and and then it it can communicate to you like, oh, this isn't working because I don't feel comfortable right now. They're resisting this. I shouldn't do it. I should retreat. But the more I just push through that and say, no.
No. Just push through it. And then as you get get going, suddenly people are like, oh, this is different. This is good. Like, I didn't like this at the beginning, but now I like this. Right? Yeah. One of the principles on here that helps with that is to build authentic community. If these people don't like each other, if they don't know each other, if they don't trust each other, their ability to open up with each other is not only hindered but also their ability
to just be with themselves Yeah. And to go into that belief system space. And so it's gotta be, you know, the cliche term is create a safe space. But what we're really talking about is creating a community of authenticity. Yeah. It's really interesting because we in Sunday school, when we're only meeting every 2 weeks and we don't have that weekly session, when is Wednesday night session or whatever, there's not a lot of glue between sessions. Mhmm. Now Now I spoke to this last
time. Inherently, Sunday school is a you come in as individuals, you exit as individuals. But while we're there, we're not individuals. We're part of a community. And so the teacher does need to be very deliberate in fostering authentic community as you're going through this. Some little ideas, ways to do that, the icebreaker. Mhmm. Right? We do, often the one we use the most is roses and thorns. What's something that's gone well this week? What's something that hasn't gone well this
week? And that just gives us a chance to speak about some things and open up a little bit, learn about each other. And so now, you know, if I come into a room and I've had a really terrible week and nobody knows that, I'm plastic because I'm just faking it. Mhmm. But if I can come into the room and even just say something like, oh, man. I had a terrible test on Friday, and I'm still reeling from it. Just saying that one little thing makes me more authentic.
And other people connect with that, so there's that relational aspect. What if they come in and they say, you know, I'm supposed to go to my dad's house starting this afternoon, and I just really don't wanna go to my dad's house. I hate it there. Wow. Now you're getting real with us in this room, and the authenticity increases, and it makes it so that the work we're gonna do together is gonna be real work. Yeah. Alright. Should we should we get another one? Or Yeah. What we got here?
Okay. I I got one on here that says, be led by a single driving question or a single central theme. This is a critical one, and this kinda comes back to the idea of the scriptures being this big, but we've only got time for this. Yeah. You've really got to be willing to let go of everything else and let all of your planning and all of your real time emergence be around this single driving question. Okay. So I'll bring you an example, one that I used on January 21, 2024.
Nice. The central theme that I outlined was how does the love of God manifest in your everyday experiences? So the scriptures, first Nephi chapter 8 and 11, tree of life, love of God. But the question was, how does the love of God manifest in your everyday lives? And then everything was built around that. So even the icebreaker was around that idea of reflecting on that just in a kind of a fun way Yeah. That opened people up.
Would you say, you know, going back to preparation because there is that feeling of, like, I wanna prepare an outline that I'm gonna go through as the teacher. But instead I mean, you're not saying that you shouldn't read any of the scriptures or go in there just completely unprepared, but you're reading the scriptures and searching primarily for this question, for this thing Yeah. That you can then springboard. Yeah. So this came from my own reflections as I was reading the scriptures.
And you just have to be willing to say I'm human, and it's highly likely that if I'm having this tension or this question or if this deeply resonates with me, it's highly likely that it does with everybody else because it's hitting me at the human level. Mhmm. So So for example, I wrote this down in the outline, when I was in the content setup section.
When you consider the imagery of Jesus standing at the end of a path holding out his love to you, it might make it seem like his love is a distant goal to be worked toward, something that comes at the end of a long struggle. Now right there, that imagery that I've just framed up is gonna cause people to go, oh, I don't feel that way, and they're gonna
wanna debate it. Right? I don't want debate because there's a lot of people in that room that are gonna go, yeah, actually, I've been walking this path, doing all the things, the covenant path, keeping all the things, and I just don't feel like I've arrived at that tree of life and that that love. So the next part of this was the critical part. How does that imagery confirm or conflict with your personal experiences with Jesus?
Do you see his love as being at the end of the path or with you along the path? K. So that's the way I framed it up. And then we went into personal reflection where I had them spend some time thinking on their own about their personal experiences, and then they had a chance to talk about those in the facilitation. So my mind goes to concepts you talked about is the the tension and the humanity of it. Because let me kinda contrast it. Maybe a bad example where
we often fall into is like, okay. Yeah. I'll find a theme and it's like, the theme is how living prophets have been a blessing in our lives. Now I believe that and that's generally doctrinal and we're but it's it's safe. Right? Because there's no there's no wrestle. There's no tension. But when you take them to, like, the the human aspect of, like, actually, for me, it's been harder to see the blessing of living prophets or follow
their guidance. Right? And by going there, it's a little risky because maybe you don't know where it's gonna go. You don't know is this gonna be an uplifting positive conversation? And I actually had lunch with a friend who's, served recently as a Sunday school teacher. And he kinda went to this place of tension and humanity. And the leaders in the room did not
like it because it felt uncomfortable. Right? And so and not that there's, like, an easy fix for that, but just knowing, like, this is the risk, but the payoff of this type of teaching is so rewarding and transformational rather than the information exchange. Like, oh, okay. I've heard that the last 30 years I've come to church and here we are again talking about it and nothing changed. Right? Yeah. And I think you have to remind remember that whether the people trust you or not matters.
Yeah. Because you're gonna lead them into uncertainty. And if they trust you that you're the kind of person that will bring them to a better place, then they'll follow you into uncertainty. Just like a doctor might cause you pain, but you trust that this pain is going to ultimately lead to a better outcome. Yeah. So you let him cause pain.
Similarly, right, with the teacher, My example with the elders quorum where I was guest teaching, there was a fair amount of people in the room who didn't have experience with me as a teacher, and they did not trust me. Mhmm. And that was the message they were sending me as you're leading us into something uncomfortable, and I don't trust you. Borderline, I don't like you. You're not gonna catch me at the end of this. Exactly. Right? So there is, I think, a give and take over time as you
walk into this. You're gonna start simple and small because you're gonna only wanna go to the point where you feel stretched but still contained. Yeah. Right? And that's gonna cause that's gonna mean that that's gonna just stretch the room a little bit but feel contained. Yeah. So you don't have to worry too much about blowing it all up. I wasn't being intentionally I was going in there trying to learn about some things, but you're gonna follow you're gonna follow the Holy Ghost. Yeah. And the
Holy Ghost is not cool with comfort. He is the comforter who brings you comfort as you walk through uncertainty. So you're gonna walk into uncertainty where it's uncomfortable, and he's gonna say, hey. It's okay. I got you. Mhmm. I'm gonna give you the things. I mean, when I think of the scriptures that we have that teach us how to be transformational teachers that we completely ignore in our everyday lived experience.
For example, how many times does a doctrine covenant say, just open your mouth. I will fill it. Yeah. You don't need to have everything written down and know everything and be the expert. Just go in to do the thing that you need to do and open your mouth. And you can trust that principle, that doctrine, as you walk in as a teacher and you're creating uncertainty. What are you gonna do when someone says,
I disagree with this? Yeah. You're gonna open your mouth, or you're gonna invite somebody else to open their mouth. And this does get to another principle. We've talked about this quite a bit, but it's the idea of being responsive to real needs. That requires a level of willingness to go into discomfort because it's emergent. So I'm I'm teaching Sunday school, and one of the girls in the room, I set up this exercise, and we're we're talking. And and I look over, and she's not engaging
in the exercise. Now, there's a time and a place to just say, like, hey. Come on up. Join a group. But, like, the holy ghost, my perception is saying, no. Something's not right here. And so I just I let her sit there, and I was kind of observing her out of the corner of my eye. And the more I observed, the more I realized, I think something's really wrong. And if I go talk to her about it, it's gonna draw everyone's attention to the fact that, you know, they already know she's not participating.
And now I'm over there talking to her about it. This is gonna make things worse. So my perception was I needed to find a trusted member senior member of the class to help her. And so I walked over to another girl, and I said, hey. Will you go over and sit by her and just put your arm around her? And, of course, she looked up at me like, what are you asking me to do? This is out of out of character. Like, I don't I just looked at her and said, it's gonna be okay. Just go put
your arm around her. And so she got up, she walked across the room, probably a 3 or 4 year age gap. She walked across the room, she sat down next to her, and she just put her arm around her. I intentionally stopped watching. I'm not exactly sure what happened at that point other than the 2 of them stood up and they walked out. And, of course, I'm I'm going, oh, no. Like, what's going on? Like, did I say something? Did I hit a
trigger point? Like, I have no idea. So I'm thinking all those thoughts, all that discomfort that comes with emergence. Well, come to find out, she was in a lot of physical pain from a condition that she has, and she had been texting her mom but couldn't get a hold of her. She didn't feel like she could get up and walk out on her own. And so when this girl came and sat next to her and learned that, she was able to help her out of the room and to help
her go find her mom. Not as big of a deal I mean, it's a big deal for her, but not as big of a deal as I had worried about it being that I had somehow done something bad or wrong. But in the nature of the facilitation, it just became more obvious that she was in this condition, and it revealed that. And so then I was able to enable something that I couldn't have done otherwise. Yeah. So you're just always monitoring the needs in the room or trying to get a feel for what people where
they're at and what they need. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, back to the whole cell phone thing, I don't take cell phones away. There are always 1 or 2 kids who are on their phone because they are addicted. But more than addicted, they are socially anxious. Mhmm. And so they just being in a room with other people, they they're struggling with that concept. So I don't take their phones away. I don't talk about their phones until it becomes a disruption, and they start to pull other people in.
Mhmm. So now what does the class need? It needs me to do something. Mhmm. If I don't step in and intervene, this is gonna spin out of control and everyone's gonna be playing video games all class. So those are just small times where I just say something very light like, hey, what are you guys talking about on your phone? Or who are you texting? Or, you know because I don't want them to feel judged, but I'm just gonna raise awareness
that you become trapped on the phone. The ones who aren't addicted or who don't need the phone for the social anxiety, they immediately come back and participate. Yeah. And this I think there's a higher leadership principle here, especially in our faith tradition of this concept of presiding in a meeting.
Right? Presiding in a meeting, we have to think of, oh, what that means is that if somebody spouts off some false doctrine, I have to get up and correct it, which is a very I mean, such a minute
portion of that. But to me, you're to preside a meeting, you're constantly perceiving the needs in the room where whether it's a sacrament meeting, Sunday school, you know, a a class or whatever it is, when you're presiding there, you're it's your on your under your authority to make sure that needs are being addressed and that that it's moving along. Right? That no. That doesn't we can get trapped in there talking about, like, discomfort or awkwardness of thinking, oh, there's awkwardness. I
need to clear this up. I don't know. Like, you need to make sure people feel held in that space as we kinda lean into this experience. Yeah. I mean, everybody is familiar with the concept of growth zone, comfort zone. Mhmm. Maybe not with what we add to that called the panic zone. Mhmm. And And we had a missionary once who said, hey, there's no growth in the comfort zone. There's no comfort in the growth growth zone. I really like that. That's actually a thing.
That's a psychological construct, and I prefer the way that a professor at Harvard, a leadership professor, calls it the zone of productive disequilibrium. Mhmm. That equilibrium is unproductive in terms of change. That disequilibrium has the potential to be productive, and it also has the potential to be destructive, which is what we call the panic zone. But we wanna get people in that zone of productive disequilibrium, and it's the leader's job
to hold people in that space. So if I'm leading change or I'm teaching Sunday school, I'm in a leadership role. My job is to create that kind of discomfort and disequilibrium and flux and uncertainty if it doesn't already exist, and then it's to hold them in that space long enough for the internal work of transformation to happen. The hubris of the traditional teacher or the traditional leader is I think I can make you change.
I think I can make you believe something, and so I take all of the control and responsibility on myself, when in fact, it cannot happen that way. My opportunity as a leader or as a teacher is to create the conditions that make it more likely for the internal processes of change to kick in and to do their thing, and that requires that discomfort. So that's why I call it the positive tension. It's attention, but it has a positive purpose. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. One more
before we wrap up here. What do you think? Well, let's bring that back. So I've got one on here that says resolve all tensions in Christ. So this is an important one because if you're gonna bring them into that space, remember the narrative arc, you're gonna rise the tensions, you also have to bring them back. You don't wanna send them out into the world just totally undone and uncertain and all of
those things. You want to give them an experience with the Holy Ghost and with their own beliefs in the setting, and then you want to help them package it in a way that they can go act on it and go do something. Yeah. So this is where the power of Jesus Christ is amazing. Doesn't matter. If you're at the level of authenticity and beliefs, it doesn't matter what you've been talking about. Everything comes back to Jesus. It all is resolved in him. Now this doesn't mean that you need to do a
little, like, testimony at the end. Right? I just want everyone to know here to know that I know the church is true and and that Jesus is the Christ and, you know, it can be if that's what you're moved upon by the Holy Ghost to do. But what it really means is just saying I mean, this is usually the best way to do it is to just be real and to say something like this. Hey. Here's one thing that I know for sure as I've been listening to you guys. I feel Jesus' love for you.
And you may feel like it's a distant thing and you haven't reached it yet, but what I can tell you is when I walk the path and when I take the time to pause and to consider what's really going on in my life, suddenly, I realized Jesus is there. And it's like that old poem of the footsteps. I don't see his footsteps, but I must be in his arms or something because I can feel that. And if you're not feeling that right now, my promise is to you is that he is there and that he wants you to
know him. I don't know why. I don't know why. So I'll leave a little bit of that tension there. I don't know why you don't feel it right now, but I promise you one thing. It's not because you don't deserve it. Mhmm. It's not because you've done something wrong or because you haven't arrived yet. So hang in there because he does love you. Mhmm. And then we move to
the close. Yep. And I love this framing of it because we hear so often it's supposed to become a rote of, like, oh, we need to make sure Jesus Christ is the focus of all our meetings and all our lessons. And so sometimes, again, that's more of the, what'd you call it, the aspirational level. Mhmm. Like, I can't, like so we just talk about Jesus the whole time. Right? But this is I like it more of, like, regardless of what we talk about, at the end of this, we are going to end at his feet because
he is the answer. Right? And so as a teacher, you don't you just need to make sure that as you wrap up, like, you're not like, oh, alright. Thanks for participating in my crazy little activities here. We'll see you next week. Right? But it's like, no. Let's go to the Christ's feet and resolve all this tension there or invite you to orient yourself towards him as you attempt to resolve it. I love that imagery of
let's let's end at his feet. And then I do wanna bring up one last principle before we end and that's guide them from desire to intention. So they're gonna naturally the holy ghost is always forward moving. He's always giving ideas for how we could do things different. That's a desire. And we get so busy, we get so distracted that a teacher can do a lot by just helping them formalize that desire into an intention. Can't force them to do it.
I don't like the old way of saying, like, oh, we're gonna come next week and you're gonna report on what you did. Yeah. It's not what I'm talking about. But giving them a chance to pause, this is something in my framework that we do at the end of every lesson. Everybody take one minute of silence, and I want you to just wrap your mind around your key takeaway.
It might be an action item, something you're gonna go do, or it might just be a principle that really resonates with you today, or it might be a lingering question that you're gonna hold on to and continue to explore. Everybody gets 60 seconds of silence. I literally count out 60 seconds in my mind. And then we're gonna go around the room, and this is unlike any other setting. This is what I tell them. This is unlike any other setting. This isn't for discussion. This
isn't for debate. This isn't for explanation. You get less than 10 seconds to tell us what your one thing is, and we're just gonna go boom boom boom boom boom no matter how many people are in the room. Mhmm. And what I can tell you, first of all, is the things they say will surprise you, and this is a testament to the idea that we're not in control.
We're not trying to drive a single principle or thought into their brain and say, we were successful if they were able to regurgitate this principle. When you're at this level of their beliefs and their experiences, the things they say are so unexpected and so personal and so deep and so meaningful as they go around the room. And it's a testament to the idea that, hey, I'm not the master chef. God is actually the one in charge.
He knows how people grow. He's working with them in ways that I can't even imagine he's working with them, and it becomes a sacred honor. As you hear the people go around the room and they say the things they're saying, all of a sudden, you are filled with a sense of humility and gratitude that you gotta be here. You gotta be here at this moment where they were having an experience with the divine. And they learned something you could have never
taught them. Right? Exactly. Now that we've reached the end of the episode, I quickly wanna thank you for supporting the leading saints podcast. There's so much content out there to consider and you picked this one. If leading saints has made an impact in your life, we would sure like to hear about it at leading saints.org/contact. And if you could quickly text or email this episode to a leader you know, I
bet it will bless their life. You can mark off your good turn daily and let's even call it ministering. Okay. Maybe not that far, but seriously, thank you and help us share this content. Remember, go listen to Dan Duckworth's presentation about youth mentorship by visiting leading saints.org/14. It came as a result of the position of leadership which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven, who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When the declaration was made concerning the only true and living Church upon the face of the earth, We were immediately put in a position of loneliness, the loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away, and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.