GUIDElines 2000, Vol I, No 5 – September 5, 2000

Welcome back after the Labor Day weekend. I hope you had a wonderful time. Our ward is having sweeps month in September, which means that we need all the attendance we can get to help our finances for the year. Dutifully, many families cut their weekend short to return home so that our numbers wouldn’t be so low. They were rewarded by a spiritual feast during Fast and Testimony meeting. As I sat there quietly listening to the testimonies, I noticed that my heart rate was slow. I counted it at about 36 beats/minute, which is a little slower than my normal. I’m on medicine to keep my heart from fibrillating, which slows it down quite a bit. Anyway, as the testimonies went on I felt like I should get up and bear mine. We ran out of time before I could go to the podium, but low and behold, my heart rate increased to a satisfactory rate just thinking about it! As a man thinketh…

While there are still just a few of us who have joined ZionsArmy.com, I want to help each one of you with the steps in our Tool Chest. Today, I’ll write a little about Standard of Performance.

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I received an email today from Jeffery asking where the Weekly Report is. I confessed that even though we mention it, there was not one on the site. Tim and I had a discussion about whether or not to put one up when we were designing the site. Our discussion was about whom you should report to. We decided that you didn’t need to report your weekly stats to us, because when there are hundreds or thousands who have joined the site, we would have too much work to do to keep it up. However, it is extremely important when you are establishing a Standard of Performance to have a way of reporting on that standard. We found in the Youth Guides that if we didn’t require a Weekly Report of some kind then compliance on the SOP was way down. I’ve asked Tim to put up the Weekly Report I designed for you to reference in deciding how you are going to report on your SOP. It can be something very simple or as elaborate as you want. Whatever is the most help for you.

I have never been very good at studying the scriptures. As a convert, I have not had the benefit of seminary or institute classes to help make it interesting and in developing a fund of knowledge about the scriptures. For many years, I rarely read anything. It had something to do with having a word processing center at my home. I would spend untold hours in front of the computer inputting words literally by the millions. When I was not word processing I wanted to do anything but read another word. One of the reasons is that I would constantly be in the “word processor” mode of looking for mistakes and errors. It made reading laborious.

So, when the Youth Guides started thinking about a Standard of Performance I wanted to make sure that we were not limited to just studying the scriptures. That’s why we designed the way we did and said that we would study the Gospel for 30 minutes and day, 210 a week. Another reason we set it up the way we did was because we were working with some of the busiest people on earth, LDS teenagers. Regular teenagers have school, work (to pay for a car), dating, recreation, and sports. If you add the Church activities on top of all of that it becomes a lesson of doing the best good thing that is offered.

What we wanted was for the SOP to reflect this and to make it as easy to comply with it as possible. Many youth would not understand, or not read it carefully, and they would come to me and say, “Bro. P., my study time is the last thing I do at night and I often fall asleep with the scriptures on my chest.” I always asked them to look at the SOP outline with me. I pointed out that it says “Study the Gospel.…” Then we talked about the ways we could get 30 minutes in a day.

First, at that time, all of them had tape players in their cars. We were using Elder Gene R. Cook’s series about Faith in much of our teaching, and everyone had a copy of his tape. I told them to keep his tape and other tapes by General Authorities in their car, or with them if they had a portable tape player, and when they had a minute play a tape.

The New Era is a wonderful magazine, with lots of good stuff in it for teenagers. We talked about keeping the current copy, and maybe some back issues, in their backpack (they all had backpacks, you know) and when they had a minute while waiting for someone, or during their breaks at work, or whatever, to take out a New Era and read in it.

Part of the funds for the Youth Guides was used to purchase the Missionary Guide. It became a constant companion of the Guides and they read from it daily, if they could. When they were in leadership positions they did much of their teaching from the Missionary Guide. Along with it came the three tapes for missionaries, bound right in the Guide. It gave them an added source of Gospel Study time. Tim told me he had listened to the tapes perhaps hundreds of times before and during his mission.

For birthdays and other occasions, I asked them to request as gifts books by General Authorities. Studying the words of the current prophet of the Church is a marvelous way to keep in tune with what is happening right now in the Church.

Most importantly, we encouraged them to study from the Book of Mormon daily. If they were going to read any of the scriptures, we asked them to make sure they read in the Book of Mormon. It wasn’t long until they were supping daily from its pages and using it to illustrate points of the Gospel as they talked to each other and to their friends. Before they went on their missions, they each had an abiding testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. It was amazing to see the growth in their testimonies.

So, no matter what you study each day, we suggest you sup daily from the Book of Mormon. It will change your life on a daily basis.

It has been a long weekend for me with lots of activity at the computer. I encourage you to share ZionsArmy.com with your friends. Let’s all work to grow the Church!

Bro. P.