As Church grows, what is taught remains the same
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Though the number of students in the Church Educational System continually grows, President Henry B. Eyring of the First Presidency told CES instructors that what is to be taught remains the same.
Speaking to CES employees, volunteers, guests and others at "An Evening with President Henry B. Eyring," Friday, Feb. 26, he said, "Our call has been to teach eternal truth in such a way that a child of God can choose to know, and to love, our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son."
Speaking to a large congregation in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, President Eyring's address was also broadcast via satellite to other congregations around the world in what has become a CES annual event: "An Evening With a General Authority." President Eyring was accompanied by his wife, Sister Kathleen Eyring. Among others in attendance were Elder Paul V. Johnson of the Seventy and Church commissioner of education; Elder Cecil O. Samuelson Jr. of the Seventy and president of BYU; as well as Sister Julie B. Beck, Relief Society general president; and Sister Elaine S. Dalton, Young Women general president, both of whom serve on the Church Board of Education.
In his address about teaching, President Eyring said students cannot be fortified with "a sure foundation to stand steady through the temptations and trials of their lives" unless they have a witness of the truths of the gospel through the Holy Ghost.
He listed four requirements for success in the sacred trust to teach:
"First, our students can only receive eternal truth through the Spirit when it is taught by that Spirit. …
"Second, we must receive an understanding of the gospel through the Holy Ghost in order to teach it. …
"Third, to teach the gospel we must live it well enough to receive the Spirit and so exemplify for our students what they must do to be taught by the Spirit. …
"And fourth, we must teach the gospel in its simple purity."
President Eyring shared personal experiences where he "was taught something about how to get inspiration in gospel teaching."
Early in his marriage and after starting a new job, he was called to teach early morning seminary. In the midst of those demands, he said, he prayed, asking the Spirit to show him how to teach the class.
"I recognize now that the only individual I prayed for at first was myself," he said.
The result was a feeling of failure as the Spirit seemed not to come into the class, he added.
But when, in his class that rarely exceeded nine students, two boys each morning sat at the back of the classroom, his prayers changed.
He said, "My prayers grew more intense for the two boys as I taught. … As I look back now I realize that the Spirit answered my prayers by increasing my love for those two boys and my desire to reach them.
"But, more than that, my concern for them ignited a personal concern for their classmates. I began to teach them and pray for each of them as individuals. The Spirit came into the classroom. … So, I learned that for me there is greater power in praying for a child of God than for a group of them."
His second experience came when he taught religion classes while serving as president of Ricks College (now BYU-Idaho). He was teaching hundreds of students instead of just a few.
"It became harder to know and to pray for individuals according to their personal needs for the help of the Spirit," he said.
He had students he felt were praying for the same Spirit to come to the class as he was.
"It was from those wonderful days at Ricks College that I learned something to add to my prayers as a teacher," President Eyring said. "I learned to ask that my students would join in praying in faith that the Spirit would come to teach us all."
Finally, he learned more about teaching when called to be the Church's deputy commissioner of education in 1977. He said he was overwhelmed by the responsibility he had for hundreds of thousands of seminary and institute students. But then a CES administrator handed him a roll book from the first seminary class of the Church, taught adjacent to Salt Lake City's Granite High School in 1912-13. In that roll book he saw the name of 16-year-old Mildred Bennion who years later would become his mother.
He talked about the role her seminary teacher played in helping her through trials as her father died that school year, leaving her mother to raise and support her six children alone on a small farm.
"Somehow, that one seminary teacher cared enough about her and prayed fervently enough over that young girl that the Spirit put the gospel down into her heart," President Eyring said. "That teacher blessed tens of thousands because he taught just one girl in a crowd of 70. What he did is what we will always do, however large the Church Educational System becomes.
"Our task has always been to serve the one among the many. How large the number of students becomes does not matter as long as each has a teacher who uses the prayer of faith to open the door to the Spirit of God and teaches that one student how to do it."
President Eyring told teachers that their students were previously taught in their pre-mortal life by their Heavenly Father. He then reminded the teachers that their students don't remember those teachings, but have the light of Christ and "each can feel the influence of the Holy Ghost, even as surely as they feel the temptations of the same enemy they rejected in the pre-existence."
He then concluded: "Their future in this world and in the world to come depends on what spirit they will follow. Your power to help them depends upon your capacity to teach them so that they discern and want to follow the Spirit of God.
"You will teach with the Spirit of God when you teach the word of God. As you take your students with you into the scriptures and the words of living prophets, the Holy Ghost will testify to them and to you of eternal truth. The Holy Ghost will fill their hearts with a love of God the Father and of the Savior."
