Teaching in the Savior's Way
The model
Every deck on this site is an attempt to actually do one thing: the framework the Church teaches for teaching. This page is the framework, and then how four cards a day are built out of it.
Five principles, not four
The framework is usually drawn as three overlapping circles inside a ring. Three principles describe what you do with the material. Two describe how you hold the room. Where all three circles meet is the point of the whole thing.
The three circles are things you can plan. The ring is not — you cannot schedule loving the class or teaching by the Spirit into a lesson outline. But the ring is what decides whether the circles land, which is why it is drawn around them rather than beside them.
And the gold shape in the middle is the reason for the other four. Not comprehension, not participation, not a well-run fifty minutes. Conversion.
What was taught that morning
The framework above is the Church's. What follows is from the in-service on 9 August 2026, as written down that morning. It is one teacher's notes — a paraphrase of what was said, not a transcript, and the counsel attributed to Elder Holland and Elder Bednar is recorded here as it was summarised in the room.
From Elder Holland
- Unrushed.
- Less is more.
- Discussion — two or three principles.
- Teach people, not topics.
From Elder Bednar
- Teaching is not talking and telling. Teaching is observing and listening, so we can discern what we should say.
- You cannot give it to the students. They have to learn it for themselves.
- Read a verse, then ask a question that invites them in.
Those three invitation questions were written down as a set, and they are the shape of Card 2 on every deck:
What stands out to you?
How does this impact you?
How does this change you?
The thing I took away
You cannot tell the students their testimony. They have to find it for themselves.
That is the whole reason the decks are built the way they are. If a testimony could be handed over, the right lesson would be a good enough explanation — and the cards would be a place to put it. It cannot, so they are not. Every deck spends its middle on the students doing the reading and the talking, and its last card on something they have to go and actually do.
Read alongside the diagram, the counsel is mostly about the ring rather than the circles. Teach people, not topics and observing and listening are descriptions of loving those you teach. Less is more and unrushed are what teaching by the Spirit costs you: coverage.
Where the four cards come from
The four parts are not a local invention. They were given in that same in-service, as the shape of a scripture-study lesson:
Part 0 — context setup
Part 1 — direct text interaction and AI
Part 2 — talk about experience
Part 3 — Christ centered action
One further line from the notes described a tool where students could use AI to ask further questions, with the lesson supplying the prompt. That is exactly what Card 1 became — every deck carries a prompt written for the day's passage, for students to run themselves.
So a deck is four cards because the lesson has four parts, and each part gets a screen. Each card takes one job.
| Card | What is on it | Which principle it serves |
|---|---|---|
| 0 Context Setup |
Who wrote it, when, what kind of writing it is, why it mattered then. | Teach the Doctrine. You cannot teach a text students have no purchase on. |
| 1 Direct Text Interaction & AI |
The specific verses, and a prompt students run themselves. | Invite Diligent Learning. They do the work; the teacher does not do it for them. |
| 2 Talk About Experience |
Two or three real questions, and the norms for answering them. | Invite Diligent Learning, and the ring — this is where loving the class shows. |
| 3 Christ-Centered Action |
Christ first, then one thing to actually do, handing into the journal. | Focus on Jesus Christ, aimed at conversion. |
Card 3 always opens with a column headed Start With Jesus. That is a structural rule, not a preference — it is there so that the Savior is not something the lesson gets to if there is time.
Not every day is four cards
Some days are not scripture-block days, and pretending otherwise produces a bad deck. There are four shapes:
| Deck | Cards | For |
|---|---|---|
| Scripture | 4 | Normal teaching days. The full four-card model above. |
| Doctrinal Mastery | 2 | Practice days: why mastery matters, then three passages as an arc. |
| Life Preparation | 2 | A real activity with numbered steps, then a personal plan. For doing, not reading. |
| Virtual day | 1 | No class. One portrait card read on a phone: read, think, create, send it in. |
Still to be written
The rest of the "why", in the teacher's own words — what changed about the class after the in-service, and what it turned out to cost. Deliberately not drafted here.
Five principles and four parts are two different things
They get run together easily, so worth separating:
- Five principles — Teach the Doctrine, Invite Diligent Learning, Focus on Jesus Christ, ringed by Love Those You Teach and Teach by the Spirit, meeting at conversion. That is the Church's framework, and it is about how you teach anything.
- Four parts — context, text, experience, action. That is the shape of a scripture-study lesson, given in the same in-service, and it is about how one lesson is built.
The four cards are the four parts made into screens. That much is not local invention. What is local is everything else on this site: four cards rather than a handout, the deck types for days that are not scripture-block days, and the pipeline that renders them. If you take the model, none of that has to come with it.