Teaching Young Men and Women to Honor and Uphold the Priesthood

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John Hilton III has earned a reputation for being an amazing teacher, speaker and author! If you are a regular at Deseret Book, Time Out For Women, EFY or BYU Education Week, you probably already know him. We are SO lucky to have him sharing what he knows with us.

He was born in San Francisco and grew up in Seattle. He served a mission in Denver, and got a Bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University. Along the way he met his wife Lani and they have five children. They have lived in Boise, Boston, Mexico and Miami. Currently, they live in Utah. John has a Masters degree from Harvard and a Ph.D from BYU, both in Education, and currently is an Assistant Professor of Ancient Scripture at BYU. He has also written several books with Deseret Book. Besides being with his family, his favorite hobbies are learning Chinese and doing humanitarian work. For more information visit www.johnhiltoniii.com

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How do I honor and uphold the priesthood?

By John Hilton III

Here are a two ideas that may be useful as supplements as you teach this class.

Teaching Idea #1

Bring about 10 hymnbooks (or scriptures) to the class. Tell the class that you have called a particular student to be the official hymn book (or scripture) holder of the class, and ask all the students in the class to raise their hands if they sustain this student in their new responsibility. When all have raised their hands, have the entire class pass their hymn books up front. Put them in two stacks and tell the student to hold out his or her arms. Place both stacks on their arms. They will immediately drop due to the weight as they struggle to stay on. Say to the class, “I thought you said you sustained this person?” They will begin to catch your drift and come up and help them by holding up their arms.

Application: Have the students go to Exodus 17:8-12 and make the connection between this activity and these verses. Ask – “How does this relate to supporting and sustaining priesthood authority?”

 

Teaching Idea #2

Come Follow Me suggests that young women could “Express gratitude to a priesthood holder who they feel honors his priesthood.” This is a great idea! One young man said, “I was doing some stuff that wasn’t very good. Then I met a girl who was so good, that just being around her made me want to be a better person. She never told me that I needed to make changes, but I made tons of changes just because of who she was.”

In a seminary class once, I asked young men, “When was the last time that a young woman thanked you for being worthy to pass the sacrament?” Every young man agreed that the answer was “never!” A couple of them said that older women in the ward had thanked them, but never a younger woman. You could have a great influence on guys just by saying, “Thanks for being worthy.” Perhaps in some cases a written note to each of the Aaronic priesthood quorums could be a useful idea.

Help the young women know they have a powerful influence on others. Elder Richard G. Scott said that he wouldn’t have served a mission if it hadn’t have been for the encouragement of a young woman (Ensign, May 2006).

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Check out some of our Priesthood packages !

This package has pictures that teach important principles in the scriptures about THE PRIESTHOOD.  You have to check it out.

You can find it HERE.

And another great package about the Keys of the Priesthood.

You can check this out HERE.

 

Or you can find a COMBO package with all of our Priesthood packages HERE.