Ideas to Help you Teach Elder Patrick Kearon’s talk “Welcome to the Church of Joy”

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What a joy it is to have Elder Patrick Kearon as our newest apostle of Jesus Christ. It’s so fitting that he gave the talk “Welcome to the Church of Joy” this October 2024. It’s full of reasons to rejoice and a reminder of what it is we are actually doing as we come to church each week. Read on for questions to ponder and ideas to share this message with others.

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Discussion Questions

A few ideas of questions you can use to get the conversation going.

• What is it about the gospel of Jesus Christ and His church that makes you want to rejoice?

• How can we each contribute to making our sacrament meetings more joy-filled and Christ-focused? How can the youngest, newest, oldest member, and everyone in between contribute to a spirit of joyful reverence? What’s one thing you will try to do next week?

• What are some things we might do to help a newcomer or infrequent attender feel that your ward, your sacrament meeting, is a place of joy, a place they can feel Christ’s love?

• What experiences have you had of feeling profound joy and peace because of Jesus Christ? How can you share this joy?

• What do you feel it means to have “joyful reverence”? How can we practice this ourselves and with our families?

• What are some things we can do to help our children and youth understand that reverence is more than silence and folded arms?

• What are some ways we might actively worship instead of simply attending church? How do these intentional acts change the way we feel and experience our church services and interact with each other?

• How have you been able to use the sacrament as a time to draw closer to Christ? How can we focus on our gratitude during the sacrament instead of all our flaws?

• How can we better revel in the joy of our church and in Jesus Christ?

• How can we help one another have a joyful experience at church? What does that look like to us? What about to those we minister to?

• How might you imagine expressing joy in the presence of the Savior? How can we bring that into our weekly worship?

The notebook shown above is our Rays of Light General Conference Notebook.

Teaching Ideas

These are my ideas. My hope is reading my thoughts will be a springboard to finding the right plans for your class.

• Invite a few people before you teach to come prepared to share their baptism story. Encourage them to bring a picture of the day if they can find one. Keep it short- under 3 minutes each- just a few details with an emphasis on how they felt after they were baptized. Invite them to share at the beginning of your lesson then write the name of Elder Kearon’s talk on the board- “Welcome to the Church of Joy” and follow it up with some questions to the entire class such as, “How has the Church of Jesus Christ brought joy into your life?”. You could even mix it up a little and have one person share an experience when they remember feeling joy as they partook of the sacrament.

• President Russell M. Nelson has encouraged us to study the Atonement of Jesus Christ weekly. How has your studies increased your understanding helped you feel joy and peace during the sacrament? How has it increased your understanding and participation in terms of the joyful reverence Elder Kearon talks about? Expand upon this by reading and discussing a few scriptures about Christ’s Atonement and how Christ is the reason for our joy. For example, 2 Nephi 2:7-9; 2 Nephi 9:8-13; D&C 19:16.

• Discuss the role of music in our worship. Elder Kearon encouraged us to sing and praise our Savior no matter the quality of our voices. Practice one of the new Hymns for Home and Church together or sing an old favorite. Then discuss the words of that hymn. What do they mean to you? Why do you want to sing them? Our favorite thing to do at ward Christmas parties is to sing a few Christmas hymns because we want to praise Jesus- that’s what Christmas is for! How can we help each other feel more joyful as they sing and less self-conscious? What hymns bring you the most joy and why? Make a list of songs to add to your playlists (the Sacred Music app is great for this).

• Get ready for some facial expression fun with this object lesson. Hold a piece of paper over your face then pull it down and share an exaggerated facial expression- like really happy or a frowny face. Do this a few times with a few different expressions. Then ask your class what each one portrays. How can our facial expressions and body language during church communicate joy to others? What are some other small things we can do to make sacrament meeting more welcoming and joyful for everyone?

• Print a Joy poster- Jesus Opens You to more- and get more teaching ideas about joy from a previous lesson help.

• You can dive into the topic of worship more with our past lesson helps as well. Or try this Young Women’s lesson helps instead.

Teaching Kids?

We’ve made a lot of resources through the years, here are a few. Many of these old lesson helps also include links to Church resources.

The Birth of Jesus Christ Brought Joy to the Earth (two coloring pages)

Good Tidings of Great Joy (shadow puppets, guessing game, and more)

Rejoice with Joy Unspeakable and Full of Glory (hidden word coloring page)

Worshipping at Church (puzzle)

The Sabbath is a Day of Worship (coloring page and charades)

Emma Smith Selects Sacred Hymns (singing cards for fun)

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