Home teaching: 'Sacred calling' is an opportunity to nurture and inspire others
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For faithful Mormon priesthood holders, the New Year's resolution to become a more effective, caring home teacher likely fits somewhere on their list between dropping a few pounds, spending more time at the temple and daily scripture study.
Indeed, as President Ezra Taft Benson taught, home teaching is not just another program. "It is the priesthood way of watching over the Saints and accomplishing the mission of the Church. Home teaching is not just an assignment. It is a sacred calling" (April 1987 general conference).
No such sacred calling is held by more men — and young men — across the globe. Almost all observant Melchizedek Priesthood holders, along with teachers and priests in the Aaronic Priesthood, are serving as home teachers in their wards and branches. Perhaps because of the pervasiveness of the call throughout the Church, it's tempting to undertake home teaching casually. It seems a small matter to, say, skip the occasional monthly visit or to make such visits without much thought or preparation.
But a home teaching call, added President Benson, "is to be accepted as if extended to you personally by the Lord Jesus Christ. The Savior Himself was a teacher. The only perfect man to walk the face of the earth was a humble, dedicated, inspired teacher who brought to His followers salvation and exaltation.
"Oh, that all the brethren of the Church would catch the vision of home teaching!"
One of President Benson's prophetic predecessors, President David O. McKay, spoke more of this "vital endeavor."
"Home teaching is one of our most urgent and most rewarding opportunities to nurture and inspire, to counsel and direct our Father's children. ... It is a divine service, a divine call. It is our duty as home teachers to carry the divine spirit into every home and heart. To love the work and do our best will bring unbounded peace, joy and satisfaction to a noble, dedicated teacher of God's children."
The living prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, also champions the essential role of home teaching. In his address to the priesthood brethren during the October 1997 general conference, he said: "The home teaching program is a response to modern revelation commissioning those ordained to the priesthood to 'teach, expound, exhort, baptize, and watch over the church ... and visit the house of each member, and exhort them to pray vocally and in secret and attend to all family duties; ... to watch over the church always, and be with and strengthen them; and see that there is no iniquity in the church, neither hardness with each other, neither lying, backbiting, nor evil speaking' " (Doctrine and Covenants 20:42, 47, 53-54).
President Monson also emphasized the pivotal role home teachers play in shepherding those who have slipped away from Church activity.
"As years come and then go and life's challenges become more difficult, the visits of home teachers to those who have absented themselves from Church activity can be the key which will eventually open the doors to their return."
