Well done, good and faithful youth leaders

All the discussion about Brad Wilcox’s awful talk recently led me to thinking, because he was addressing teens, about some of the teachers and leaders I had when I was that age. Unlike my sisters Lynnette and Kislilili, who attended Education Week religiously, and who as a result had the good fortune to hear all kinds of space doctrine from CES people like Brother Wilcox, I didn’t participate in any church activities outside our ward. In fact, I didn’t participate in many activities in our ward, for that matter. I did attend church every week, along with the rest of my family, and as a boy, I participated in passing and preparing and blessing the sacrament. But I skipped nearly all weekday activities, as they were too wrapped up in Boy Scouts, which I didn’t enjoy. All that being said, though, I’m remembering quite a few good experiences I had with leaders and teachers.

I was a difficult teenager. I was fairly bright, but I was constantly hyper-aware of my many shortcomings, and I figured that everyone else was too. As a result, I was very prickly and defensive and I’m sure not easy for my teachers and leaders to relate to. In spite of my general crabbiness at the time, I have several leaders who I remember fondly who said or did helpful things. Not all of my leaders and teachers were good, but really the majority of them were. I appreciate, especially in retrospect, thinking about what a hard kid I was, the effort they put in to making my church experience better.

• A seminary teacher once speculated in class that half of the Church would make it to the celestial kingdom. This completely blew my mind. From a young age, I had absorbed the idea that the celestial kingdom was only for people who were perfect, who kept 100% track of all their sins and repented of all of them perfectly. It was quite clear to me that the celestial kingdom was an unobtainable goal for me, probably only open to GAs and their families, so I was just hoping for the terrestrial rather than the telestial kingdom. In other ways, this teacher wasn’t particularly focused on grace or hope or anything, but this one offhand line made me think maybe I could hope for something good in the afterlife.

• I recall one Sunday School teacher who one day, unrelated to the lesson, told my class that when we got married, we should be sure that sex was wanted by both parties. He didn’t use the word consent (this was the 80s, and the concept wasn’t discussed much, at least that I heard), but raising that issue was pretty much his point. As a hormone-addled teen, who had imagined marriage as nothing so much as a gateway to endless sex, this was a revelation to me. Like I said, it wasn’t part of a lesson, and he brought it up kind of inelegantly, but I think it was so good, for me anyway, to have the issue raised.
• This wasn’t even in my class, but a male youth Sunday School teacher wore a fake earring one day while teaching. Again, this was the 80s in Utah Valley, when all my friends were always trying to work out whether an earring in the left ear or the right ear meant a man was signaling that he was gay. The teacher’s whole point was to push us to not judge people based on their appearance, and it was clearly a good lesson, as it became the talk of the teens in the ward, at least that day.
• In another Sunday School class, a new teacher asked me to say a prayer in class at the beginning of the year. I was too shy, and I refused. Seeing I wasn’t comfortable, she didn’t ask me again for a long time. But she got to know me better. She used to host parties for our class at her house, where we would eat treats and watch movies. While I avoided most activities, I went to these parties, and perhaps got a little more comfortable with her and the other kids in the class. Near the end of the year, having worked to make me feel included, she asked me again to say a prayer in class, and I agreed.
• I recall a teacher in I think teacher’s quorum telling us that we didn’t only need to marry someone who would roll over and bear their testimony to us in the morning. He said that we should also look for someone we were attracted to. I know this sounds like an obvious thing, but I had totally learned the hairshirt version of Mormonism, where I figured that of course I would want to marry someone I was attracted to, but that was a wicked desire, and what I really needed was a wife who would prod me to be holier. So I really appreciated that he said this.
• A young men’s leader used to host unofficial “firesides” at his house on Sundays, where the young men would join him in watching “Brother [Steve] Young” play football. We would even watch on Sundays when the 49ers and Brother Young weren’t on. At the time, at least, it felt edgy to not only watch football on the Sabbath, but to have a leader joining us for it. I think there’s definitely an argument to be made about whether watching sports, or even supporting football in general, is a good thing. But for me as a teen, it was so valuable, because it made me feel more included and also that maybe God didn’t hate fun quite as much as I had learned by reading Bruce R. McConkie.

I’d love to hear about experiences you had with youth leaders too.