Elder Gerrit W. Gong (Oct. '19): "Covenant Belonging"

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The Activity:

  1. Prior to the lesson, go through Elder Gong's talk and highlight/words/phrases that could finish the sentence, "Covenant belonging means . . ."  Some examples include:
    1. Par. 4 "we find and most important relationship"
    2. Par. 8 "to belong with . . . His covenant path."
    3. Par. 10 "we may sometimes . . . we will be."
    4. Par. 14 "we can come . . . of Christ-- now."
  2. During class, explain thatt you will read a series of statements about covenant belonging, which they will discuss according to the following pattern:
    1. Class members pair up with someone near them.
    2. You read the statement
    3. The class members will have 1 minute to discuss the statement.
    4. At the end of the minute, class members will find a new partner (someone that they have not partnered with yet).  
  3. Complete the activity with the quotes you identified.
  4. Come back together as a class and discuss any particular insights that the class had during the discussion.
Using the Activity:

This activity is based on a discussion strategy referred to as speed dating.  The most common way to do this activity is to line up two rows of chairs facing each other.  Then, following the one minute discussion periods, everyone in one row of chairs moves one seat to the left.  This seating arrangement, though, may not be feasible in many church classes.  So, I altered it to be completed in partners sitting relatively near each other.  In this setup, however, transitions from one pairing to another might be a bit more chaotic.  

This activity is nice because it limits the number of people in the discussion to the speaker and just one other.  It also limits the time any one person will speak to another.  For many people who are not comfortable speaking in front of groups, these two helps can be huge benefits for their participation, and participation is key in feeling the Spirit.  

Also, this activity could be done with a different sentence stem (or even a variety of different sentence stems).  Another option would be to phrase the statements as questions that are based off of the ideas in Elder Gong's talk.  

Thank you for visiting my blog.  I hope that you find these ideas useful.  

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