Today I spent a portion of my personal study in Demonstrate Teaching and thought that I would share a few thoughts. The main questions I wanted to answer were: what is the difference between helping someone see and showing them something? why is it essential for missionaries to see rather than be shown a full lesson? what is my role as the teacher in that process? what is the missionaries' role? what are some of the principles that facilitate that experience?
A few scriptures that helped me along my way: 1 Sam 16:7, Psalms 69:23, Isaiah 53:10, John 8:56, John 9:39. One of my main thoughts was the importance of helping missionaries see with their spiritual eyes as well as with their natural eyes. This needs to be revelatory, not just a great display of great teaching! Sometimes I feel that we actually hinder the missionaries' ability to have this experience through lack of preparation - both us and them. When we fail to help them prepare we run the risk of putting them in an environment where, "they which see might be made blind," as opposed to "they which see not might see" (John 9:39).
Some principles that came to mind as I studied: the training model, practice guidelines, and the idea of creating something spiritually before it is created physically.
I think a principle very connected with the idea of helping missionaries to "see" rather than just teachers demonstrating is encapsulated in Doctrine and Covenants 68:4-- "And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture..." The missionaries (and us as teachers) can treat the demonstration as a form of scripture.
ReplyDeleteRecognizing that the demonstration (as a moment when an individual is speaking and teaching according to the Spirit) is a form of scripture, I think we can start to immediately see some effective principles of how we can help our missionaries to glean more from them. Those same principles that help us to really "see" and receive revelation through our scripture study are equally applicable to the demonstration.