In 2026, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will study the Old Testament again for “Come, Follow Me” at home and church.
According to Seminaries and Institutes of Religion teacher Aaron Coombs, focusing on gospel principles like covenants and the Atonement of Jesus Christ can help audiences understand thousands of years of history and cultural context found in these sacred texts.
Coombs joins Church News reporter Mary Richards on this episode of the Church News podcast for a primer on the Old Testament, offering tips for teaching all ages and levels of understanding.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Aaron Coombs: When we read the Old Testament with eyes to see, we see a loving and committed God that so deeply cares about us that He’s unwilling to give up on us and that He will do all that He can to help us. President Russell M. Nelson has been really straightforward about teaching about the idea of “hesed,” the idea of covenantal love translated as “loyal love,” and that loyal love is all throughout the Old Testament. We can see it in Hosea. We can see it in Amos. We can see it in Malachi. We can see it lots of different places as we see a God who is continually committed to following us. And as we come to read the Old Testament with those eyes, you can see a God that is so deeply committed to your eternal salvation. Our God is committed to us, and as I make covenants to Him, it allows Him to fully unleash all of the power and abilities that He has to try and save me and to save all of His children, if we’re willing to make covenants with Him.
1:11
Mary Richards: This is Mary Richards, reporter at the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This coming year, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will study the Old Testament again, for “Come, Follow Me — For Home and Church.” Latter-day Saints worldwide will begin again with thousands of years of history. As we study the dispensations of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Moses, we will read about God’s covenant people and what He taught His prophets as they looked forward to the coming of Jesus Christ.
To talk about how we can get ready for this and what we need to know, I’m joined by Aaron Coombs, a teacher at the Salt Lake Institute of Religion.
Welcome, Aaron, to the Church News podcast.
Aaron Coombs: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
2:09
Mary Richards: So, how long have you been teaching institute, and how did you get into that role?
Aaron Coombs: So, right now, I’ve been teaching institute — this will be my fifth year of teaching institute. It’s like my 16th year of teaching in Seminaries and Institutes. We kind of mix between the two levels. So right now, as you mentioned, I’m at the institute that’s adjacent to the University of Utah. But yeah, five years there and a lot more otherwise.
2:32
Mary Richards: You’ve been teaching teenagers and young adults for this time.
Aaron Coombs: Yup, for both of them, teenagers and young adults. So, when teaching seminary, through a lot of the different curricula of doing the Book of Mormon, of course, anything “Come, Follow Me,” and now they’re aligned. But Book of Mormon, New Testament, Old Testament, Doctrine and Covenants quite a few times. And then at institute, we branch off into some broader topics and things. But yup, teaching both of those age groups and getting to teach about the gospel of Jesus Christ.
2:58
Mary Richards: So, I read in your biography at the institute website that you grew up in Fountain Green, Utah, “where sheep outnumber the people.”
Aaron Coombs: That is absolutely true. So, it was more true in the past even. But yeah, I grew up around sheep. So interestingly enough, the Old Testament made a lot of sense to me, and the New Testament, because I totally had this affinity for sheep and understood when it talked about them.
3:18
Mary Richards: You’ve seen the animals, you’ve worked with them, you know what that’s all about. How did you go, then, from Fountain Green to becoming a teacher in the Seminaries and Institutes?
Aaron Coombs: That’s a great question. I actually wanted — to make a long story short, I grew up, my dad was a microbiologist. I actually wanted to work on Ebola and go wherever that was a problem and so forth. But as I continued on, I just loved the gospel, got totally involved in that. Still planned on going and doing other things, but eventually, the Lord really prompted me to go into seminary teaching. It wasn’t my original plan. I ended up at what was then EFY at the time, and I had friends tell me, “You should take the seminary classes.” And I just thought, “Well, maybe,” and I had an open spot at BYU that I needed to fill, so I took them. And then after that, I ended up eventually being in Seminaries and Institutes.
4:07
Mary Richards: Yeah. And you served a mission in the Czech Republic, and you’re married and have four children?
Aaron Coombs: Yes, four little girls.
Mary Richards: Oh, good. I have four boys. We should have them meet.
Aaron Coombs: We’ve equalized the universe.
Mary Richards: OK. I also have a girl at the end. So, with this experience, I’d love to get kind of a primer from you on the Old Testament.
What can kind of help us prepare for our “Come, Follow Me” study next year, and what are some things to keep in mind?
4:33
Aaron Coombs: That’s a fantastic question, and I think that’s a question we should all have when we’re approaching the Old Testament. Whenever we’re approaching scripture, we’re not just approaching texts; we’re approaching a whole bunch of stuff that’s behind those texts.
I find one of the most helpful things to remember is what you find in Doctrine and Covenants 1:24, where the Lord says He speaks unto man according to their language and their weakness. And I think those two qualifiers are really important because whenever our Heavenly Father is speaking to prophets, these are humans that have cultural understandings, and they have specific ways of viewing the world, they have languages that affect the way that they think about stuff, and they also sometimes are just weak in the way that they understand or don’t fully comprehend things.
And all of those come into play when we’re talking about the Old Testament. There’s very much a cultural element to the Old Testament. There’s a lot going on in the ancient Near East that’s very, very different than ours. Just as today we would say you get culture shock going to a different country, that’s magnified on multiple levels when you’re talking about the Old Testament. Because our world is so fundamentally different than theirs that their culture is completely different.
And so we oftentimes have to make it through these cultural differences to be able to then understand the eternal truths that are the same, that there’s a loving Heavenly Father, that there’s covenants, all of the other things that are in there. So the first thing I would say going in is recognize we’re entering into a very foreign world, and we’re getting a piecemeal version of that foreign world.
6:00
Mary Richards: Yeah, I would think for some — for me, let’s be honest, for me — the Old Testament may seem a little complex. The verbiage is a little intimidating. So, I’m particularly thinking of my children of different ages, but also those who are preparing to teach Sunday School and such.
What are some of the ways, I guess, that they can delve into that world, like you were saying, and understand it better?
6:22
Aaron Coombs: Again, these are wonderful questions. If I were asking someone to get ready for the Old Testament, these are the questions I would say you need to ask. I would say, first of all, there’s a level at which you can, of course, dive into the Old Testament and really get deep into some of these cultural things. And then there’s a level at which the Old Testament is more approachable than other things. And what I mean by that is: When we talk about history, we’re really talking about stories. And stories for all of eternity have been the things that resonate with humans. They’re the things that we tend to really understand. They tend to allow us to get to things easier.
If you go into even the fairy-tale world, C.S. Lewis talks about how he was so influenced by George MacDonald saying that you can learn things through fairy tales and stories that you cannot learn in the normal world. And so one of the beautiful things is that anyone can approach the Old Testament in terms of “These are really powerful stories.” They’re interesting. They can grasp your attention. So you can be a beginner and learn something from these stories.
What I would argue is that if you’ll go a little bit further and learn a little bit about the culture and the history and what’s going on writ large with politics and geography, then you’re going to understand the story even better and be able to get it at a deeper level. Those are those two levels, that, first of all, these are stories, and we can all resonate with that. But second, let’s get into that cultural understanding. So I don’t know how far you want us to start down that cultural route and talking about maybe some of the big things that are different in Old Testament culture compared to what we understand.
7:46
Mary Richards: Well, I think that would be helpful, because I was thinking about that, about teaching the facts, the doctrine, but also that culture, history, symbolism is very key as well to enlarging our understanding.
So, how do we not get lost, maybe, in studying the culture and still focus on the doctrine, but have that as that background to enrich our understanding?
8:07
Aaron Coombs: First of all, I would say, always remember that the goal of scripture study is to get closer to our Heavenly Father; to learn truths that are going to help us to be better disciples; to understand our Heavenly Father in a deeper way; to get closer to the Savior, Jesus Christ; and to live our lives in the way that our Heavenly Father has asked us to. That’s always the goal of scripture study. It reminds me when President Kimball said that at times when he felt distanced, he would just really dive into the scriptures and become immersed in them.
And I think if we remember that’s the goal, anytime we are using these other tools, we can’t let them become the primary purpose. The goal of these tools is to help us learn how we can be better disciples and understand. I think there is a lot of validity to looking at just the history and understanding that. But when we’re talking about “Come, Follow Me” especially, our goal within the confines and constraints of “Come, Follow Me” — and I shouldn’t say confines and constraints; I should maybe say the structure of “Come, Follow Me” — is that we are to, again, get closer to our Heavenly Father.
So I would say, first of all, that’s my goal. That’s always my goal, is that when I’m learning things, it’s with this that these things are going to help me get closer to Heavenly Father. They’ll become tools. It’s what we find in the Book of Mormon: “To be learned is good [as you] hearken unto the counsels of God” (2 Nephi 9:29). So knowledge should always be the disciple of our discipleship. It shouldn’t be the master of it.
So, with that being said, let’s talk a little bit about some of the general cultural principles. So, there’s a great scholar called John Walton; he’s an evangelical scholar, actually, was at Wheaton Institute for years, has written prolifically about the Old Testament and is just fantastic in that realm. But one of the things he talks about — he has a whole book just on ancient Near Eastern culture — but a couple of the things that are different are, to start with, they don’t see the world the same way we do.
They haven’t had Newton, they haven’t had anything else, so their view of the cosmos is completely different. They think that the world is flat and that the firmament above them — firmament was literally this kind of tentlike structure — and there’s cosmic water above them, and it’s about to come down on them, unless you had the firmament, and that you had land, and below you was water.
And this explains to where that’s how they view the world. And if you think about it, I could ask any young child before they know science and say, “If you look up, what do you think is above you?” And they’ll probably say water. Because water comes down, and it’s blue. And so they see the world with that level of context. And so their cosmology is different, is what we would say, their conception of it. To them, their town is the center of the universe because they don’t go anywhere else, and that’s it.
Another thing that’s interesting, they don’t have a word for “religion.” They don’t separate life from religion. It’s life. So anything that happens is a product of, for the people of the ancient Near East, a God has done it. For the Israelites, God has done it. So if lightning strikes, the only thing that explains that is something having to do with the world and the way that God runs it.
And so for them, they’re, again, they don’t have these separations that we’ve created from the enlightenment. So they’re completely embedded in this culture to where they live and breathe in a world that they constantly have to be in interaction with. We separate ourselves from that world. We get in AC, air-conditioned rooms, and we have lights that turn on, and we don’t see darkness all the time. And so it’s a very different world in that sense. So, that’s the first thing, is to understand you’re coming from that.
The second thing would be that they think very much in terms of corporate world. And what I mean by “corporate” is not in terms of — we think in a way about capitalism and so forth. I’m not meaning that. I’m meaning in terms of groups. You lived or died based upon the family relationships you had, and based upon the relationships you had with the groups that you were in. The worst thing to have happen in the ancient Near East would be to be put outside of a society, to be a nomad, which is why Abraham, for example, is considered so unique, is that he’s out on his own and becomes the father of a nation.
11:49
Mary Richards: So, understanding these insights, then, I’m thinking about right now as we’re studying the Doctrine and Covenants, understanding some of the things that were happening in Church history helps me understand the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants as well. So, understanding the people of the Old Testament, then, you can kind of see how the Lord was speaking to them in their own way.
12:08
Aaron Coombs: Exactly. Understanding those types of things helps us to understand at a deeper level. And let me give you an example of how what I just mentioned about the Old Testament culture and the ancient Near Eastern culture can help.
So, when we look at the story of Genesis, oftentimes we get into a fight over whether or not God’s teaching us how He created the earth. And they’re not interested in how. For them, meaning was the real purpose. They knew that God had created the earth. The question was, “Why?” So, it’s talked about that there’s a functional creation, that the story in Genesis is telling us why God created the earth. So if you look at it that way — and again, you can look at it in the other realm, and we can have fights over history and all kinds of things — but to really understand what’s being said in Genesis, put on the lenses of saying, “What is it telling you about why God creates the world?”
And if you look at those steps, He creates everything in line to get to the point where He then creates humans, and they’re the last creation. Not only that, but He creates them in His own image. And so there, again, we can get a little bit of a cultural thing. So when we get Genesis 1:26-27, we find out that God has created us in His image. And it’s beautiful because there’s an anthropomorphic truth there that we know, that we look like our heavenly parents, but there’s a deeper level that in the ancient world, when you took on someone’s image, your job was to act and behave like them, to reflect them.
And so, actually, N.T. Wright, who’s a New Testament scholar, has read this as saying: It’s like a mirror. He was asking Adam and Eve to be mirrors to reflect Him into the world. We actually see this in the Book of Mormon, if you think about Alma 5:14, for example, where it says, “Have ye received his image in your countenances?” So, from the very beginning, humans are set out as being the image bearers of God, to be like God, act like God and to reflect His purposes into the world.
13:56
Mary Richards: Wow. I think about how the Old Testament, sometimes in my brain, I’ve got it separate, like I’m going to be studying that next year. But It’s so interconnected, because the Savior is teaching of the Old Testament when He’s teaching in the New Testament, and Nephi when he got the brass plates, that’s the Old Testament, right? It’s kind of interconnected in all of our scriptures.
14:17
Aaron Coombs: Absolutely; it’s underlying all them, even the Doctrine and Covenants. Remember that Joseph Smith is getting a lot of these revelations because he’s translating. When he’s translating the Bible, what he’s doing is going back and trying to correct some things, restore things that were never there and to help people in a 19th-century context understand some of the gospel that’s being talked about or reflected in that document. So in this King James Bible that he has, that’s what he’s doing. And that becomes the genesis for many of the revelations that Joseph Smith has in the Doctrine and Covenants.
14:50
Mary Richards: Yeah. And we’re recording this at a time when we are still studying the Doctrine and Covenants. We’ve got a lot more to go, and then we’ll kind of officially start the Old Testament. But we don’t need to separate them. I think about how — I read from the Pew Research Center a study that says Latter-day Saints score among the highest of all religion groups in their knowledge of the Bible in particular.
And why do you think that is? Is that because the Bible is one of our foundational volumes of scripture? We have cross references, we have footnotes. Even in a year that we are quote, unquote, “studying another book of scripture,” the Bible is still very much in play.
15:24
Aaron Coombs: Yes, that’s a really interesting statistic when that comes up often, and people look at that and wonder why. I think one is yes, because we talk about it, it’s a resource, we have a year that we spend on it in our normal process of going through the different standard works. I think there’s a deeper level at that. And this comes back to “Come, Follow Me” in an important part. I think it’s also because we allow our youth and young adults and our Primary-age children to engage with it. So they’re not just sitting and listening to someone talk about the Old Testament. They’re actually interacting, doing things, singing songs, talking to one another and having to wrestle with the stories of the Old Testament.
Teaching where someone is just talking and people are listening is what Elder Richard G. Scott used to call “a talking head.” He, in fact, said it’s the least effective form of teaching, compared to actually engaging with and talking with other people or doing activities with. There’s something about diligent learning that we find in teaching in the Savior’s way. So, one of the beautiful things about “Come, Follow Me” is every family’s invited to engage in that type of activity, to where we’re all really talking about and wrestling with the Old Testament, and that’s going to naturally lead to more retention, more understanding and more ability to use it.
16:35
Mary Richards: So, for our Sunday School teachers listening, for our parents who are there with their children, for Primary teachers, what’s an effective way? How do we teach in the Savior’s way effectively?
Aaron Coombs: I think it goes back to this idea — and something we’ve actually seen Primary teachers do for a long time — are, again, the stories. The power of the Old Testament are the stories that you get. And little children resonate with stories. And there’s a reason that that is the way that it’s written. And you also see this in, for example, if we go to the book of Deuteronomy, it’s one of the things, I believe it’s chapter 4, where it says that you are to teach your children.
It’s always been an inherent part that we teach our children these things and that these stories are important to them for that. So, start with just becoming good at storytelling and allowing children to be part of the storytelling, and even a question as easy as, “What’s the moral of the story?” They’re used to looking for things like that. So you can start on that level, and a higher level would be role playing. It would also be asking deeper questions, inviting them to teach part of it or retell the story. But again, if you’re constantly saying, “Let’s talk about this story” and “What’s the moral of this story?”
17:37
Mary Richards: Yeah. And in “Come, Follow Me,” they have those ideas for teaching youth, ideas for teaching children that you can build on too. Do you use that in your seminary classes?
Aaron Coombs: I don’t tend to use it in my seminary classes. Some of them I have, I’ll look at. I think they’re wonderful ideas, and I think they’ve become even more focused over time. One of the things I would recommend is don’t get lost in the story itself. Remember the stories have a purpose to them. And I think sometimes we emphasize the story and forget what the purpose is, when it should be the purpose that we emphasize. The story is the vehicle to help us understand what the meaning is.
18:12
Mary Richards: Like you said, all of it pointing us back to the Savior, Jesus Christ; God, His promises to us, our covenants with Him; learning from His covenant people in the Old Testament and how He kept His promises; and building on that foundation to see, “Yes, that was thousands of years ago, but God is God.”
And I can point out you can find the “Come, Follow Me” resources in the Gospel Library app or on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. There are print resources that wards will be getting for next year. Also, print copies of the illustrated Old Testament stories for children; that can be very powerful in teaching with that.
And we have a “Come, Follow Me” section on TheChurchNews.com, where we have quotes from Church leaders, where they’re talking about these topics and these sections of the “Come, Follow Me” study guide each week. We’ll also have the video series we’ll continue, “Insights From the Apostles,” and that has been really a powerful thing, too, to see what our living Apostles today are saying, some of the insights they’re getting from their scripture study.
19:09
Aaron Coombs: I think those are wonderful videos. Whenever I watch them, one of the things I first love about it is it shows that the apostles and prophets are reading these scriptures along with us, that they’re doing what we’ve been asked to do through them, and that they’re finding insights, and they’re kind of modeling for us how scripture study can be something that allows them to receive revelation and to understand things better. I think there’s nothing better than that. Plus, on top of that, we get to hear them teach us things, which is also wonderful to learn lessons from apostles and prophets.
19:38
Mary Richards: Yeah. Some of the videos from President Jeffrey R. Holland, he’s there at his desk, and he has his Bible open in front of him, and it’s almost like, “Oh, you caught me in my scriptures.” And I absolutely love that. There’s something powerful about the physical scriptures too. And we talked a little bit about this before we started recording, about how your young adults and institute, a lot of it’s digital. It’s super easy to find and flip back and forth in Gospel Library between the “Come, Follow Me” manual and the verses of scripture.
But do you also like having a physical copy?
20:07
Aaron Coombs: Yeah, I am — that’s probably because I’m addicted to books, and so I really do love physical copies of the scriptures. One thing I do remind myself of is that scriptural truths have been taught in multiple different formats throughout history. In fact, what we’re reading in the Old Testament was oral before it was ever written down. So you have to remember that at one point, it was kind of like a podcast. So you had a storyteller, in a way, that would come and tell you these things.
And so I think there are multiple mediums by which we can learn, but the question is: Which one helps us to most deeply connect with the Spirit and to also most deeply understand what our Heavenly Father wants us to know?
20:45
Mary Richards: You know, there are many resources out there and different products, but how can we learn best in the scriptures? Or, I guess, what are some of the ways that you get your students to really delve into the scriptures and interact with them?
Aaron Coombs: So I think, first of all, I go back to Joseph Smith, when he was talking about parables, said, “Find the question that led to the parable, and it becomes a key for understanding.” So when it comes to the Old Testament, I think you absolutely have to figure out, for lack of a better term, “What is the question that propelled this? Why is this story in here? What is the purpose of it?” So, again, there’s a level at which we can understand the stories. But if I know the history of what’s going on, if I know, that the Assyrian Empire is coming in at a certain point with Sennacherib and is going to destroy the Northern Kingdom, and so forth, and when God saves the Southern Kingdom, with King Hezekiah, it really emphasizes what I see happening, because I understand what was really at stake.
So, I think it’s really important to try and understand those things. But there’s just so much information out there that it is hard to kind of know what’s good and what’s helpful. So I guess I would start with this: Look, of course, at any of the resources that the Church has provided. There’s also resources from BYU. There’s some fantastic stuff about the Old Testament from BYU that has come out. That will really help you orient.
I think there’s nothing wrong at all with going other places to find resources, again, as long as you remember that the purpose of all of this is for me to get closer to the Savior, Jesus Christ, and closer to my Heavenly Father. And if I keep that as my goal and use that as my measure, then I can pull from all kinds of places. I can be using material from everywhere, and it will help me to deepen my study. But again, don’t get lost in the historical elements. Don’t get lost in the stories when, remember, the whole purpose of this is to say, “How can I connect with heaven again?”
22:38
Mary Richards: I love that, OK. We might get lost in all these other resources and places we can turn to, but how do we focus on the scriptures?
Aaron Coombs: Let me give you an example. That’s a wonderful way of thinking about teaching. So let me give you an example of one of the things I learned in teaching early on.
I found that if I wasn’t careful, sometimes I would get so excited about a part of my lesson where I said, “Oh, a video would work really well here,” and I would spend an hour looking for the right video, instead of spending an hour figuring out if the structure of my lesson was actually teaching the doctrines of the gospel in a way that powerfully would bring it to the hearts of my students. And I remembered, I’ll just put a placeholder in and say, “That was a good idea, and if I have time, I’ll come back and figure that out,” because that’s the spice. And I think these other things are the spice.
And sometimes you can get lost in the spices and not in the main part of the meal, and that’s a problem. I want the steak. I want my students to like the steak. That’s why I’m interested in spices. But if I gave them just a meal of spices, then the steak gets lost, and they don’t even know what meal they ate. They just remembered that it had cumin on it. And so one of the keys is, again, to go back and remember that the purpose of a gospel lesson — President Thomas S. Monson said it this way. He said the point of a gospel lesson is not to pour knowledge into someone’s mind. He said it is to get them to think about, feel about and then do something about what you’ve just taught, inspiration.
Or if you use, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said stop thinking about students as containers to be filled and more as fires to be ignited. And he even told CES employees to be arsonists, “spiritual arsonists.” And I think if you remember your job is to be somewhat of a spiritual arsonist, my job is to inspire people to feel the power of my Heavenly Father; of the Savior, Jesus Christ; of all that the gospel has; that’s the focus. It’s not to entertain. It’s not to have the fanciest lesson. It’s not to know the most things. Those are spices.
So I think the best thing to do when we’re thinking about “Come, Follow Me” is our first area to go to is to our Heavenly Father, I would actually argue. Let’s ask for help. Then let’s go to the scriptures. And if we don’t understand something in the scriptures, then let’s reach out and maybe try and find something that’ll help us understand the scriptures. But remember that as a teacher, my sacred duty is to ignite the fire of faith in my students, to help them feel the power and the love of my Heavenly Father.
So, don’t get lost in all the designer things or in podcasts, even; podcast is in no way — what I’m saying right now will never replace personal scripture, study and prayer, where someone can actually connect with our Heavenly Father.
25:12
Mary Richards: I love that, because I’ve been a Sunday School teacher. I’ve been, right now, I’m working in the Primary. But as a mom around the kitchen table, sometimes I’m looking at my third son in particular, “Are you getting this? Do you understand this?” I think I’m going to give him a quiz after, and I don’t need to. I can ignite that fire of faith. I love that.
25:30
Aaron Coombs: Yeah. Just one thing I would add to that, because sometimes maybe a student isn’t in a place where we can ignite the fire yet. And I remember Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in 2007 was doing a broadcast on teaching, and he told a story that President Packer was fond of telling about some young men that had a teacher who was, in an earlier period in Utah, where he was from Sweden and had a, I believe it was Swede, but had a really thick accent. And this young man talked about how he said even though there was this distance between them and this teacher, he loved the gospel so much that the phrase was, “We could warm our hands by the fire of his faith.”
And I remember Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in 2007 saying, “If you can’t teach them now, you can love them now. And if you can love them now, you can teach them later.” And become the type of teacher where someone could later on say, “I could warm my hands by the warmth of their faith.” And I think that is what I want to do. Again, we get so lost in our culture because of the sheer amount of material that we have to look to. And we think that exciting things equals the best things, when oftentimes, for our Heavenly Father, the simplest things are the most powerful.
26:44
Mary Richards: You must have some incredible experiences in your institute classes with these. You must just meet the most incredible young adults in your institute classes.
I imagine they’re coming in with different challenges from different generations, but also different strengths as well. Can you talk a little bit about that?
27:01
Aaron Coombs: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about that, because I love the students that I’ve had the chance to teach. I think one of the most sacred experiences is to be able to teach youth and young adults. You’re on sacred ground when you do that. And one of the reasons I love it is because I’m constantly learning from them.
You may have seen this, but my master’s degree is in public policy. I’m finishing a Ph.D. in political theory. So politics is one of the areas that I tend to look at, and one of the things that brings me the most hope in the world are seeing young adults and teenagers. When President Russell M. Nelson says that this is “a chosen generation,” he really does mean it. These youth and young adults are absolutely incredible.
So institute, for example, I watch students give up their time to come to classes when they already have a full class that they’re doing over at a university that’s requiring a lot of work, and they’re taking time to come and learn about our Heavenly Father and the Savior, Jesus, Christ. And that alone is awe-inspiring. But then on top of that, when I get to be in a class with them and hear their testimonies and the struggles that they’ve been through and what they’ve learned and how they’ve seen the Savior help them, it’s really quite unfair that I get to do it as a job.
28:14
Mary Richards: You’re going to make us all want to become institute teachers or go take institute class again. And we’ve reported in the Church News that within the last year, Seminaries and Institutes of Religion have reported record enrollment.
What has that been like in the classroom?
28:28
Aaron Coombs: We have seen that, and we’ve seen that happen at the institute of the University of Utah. We’ve really seen it at seminaries, actually. Our seminary teachers are just knocking it out of the park at really trying to get every teenager that they can, every young person to be able to take seminary. And seminary is a wonderful place. Anything I say about institute, in many ways, applies in seminary. It was my experience there and probably will be someday again as I go back into a classroom with teenagers.
But what we’re seeing at the institute level is we have had an emphasis on something called “Innovate Institute,” which is where — what we do is we try and find out “What are the needs of our young adults? What are they telling us are their needs?” And then “How can we help with that?” So that might come in the form of classes, different types of activities, all kinds of things. What’s interesting is that it’s actually what institute was from the very beginning. I don’t know if you know the history of institute, but institute was started in Moscow, Idaho, because parents were finding that their students were really struggling having secular learning and not the spiritual learning to kind of balance it out. And so they sent a wonderful man named Brother Sessions up there, and he was tasked with figuring out how to kind of fix that.
And that’s where institute came from, was finding a need and fulfilling it, and that’s kind of what we’re doing in our day, too, with that. And that’s been part of what has led to this. But there’s, of course, something wonderful working when we see our Heavenly Father hastening the work, is probably the best way to say it, in what is happening in Seminaries and Institutes.
29:54
Mary Richards: And the young people, teenagers and young adults, are encouraged and invited, but they’re doing it themselves as well to invite a friend, to bring others with them. “Hey, you. You ought to come check this out.” And I see that in my son’s high school there. They go to seminary class with people who are not members of the Church, and they love it. They love being there and having this in their lives.
30:13
Aaron Coombs: Yeah, we’re finding right now in our culture, connection and community are really something that there’s a lack of in all kinds of ways. And there’s a plethora of research we could talk about. If anyone knows the name Robert Putnam, for example, he’s been tracking that for a really long time. “Bowling Alone” was his first book. There’s “American Grace,” there’s others. But the point of this is to say that we’ve really had a hard time with relationships, and one of the things we find is that where we do find connection is within religious communities.
And on a deeper level, we find that even these young adults, that’s where they find connection. It’s the most powerful motivator to get people to things. We were just talking to some incoming freshmen that are going to be coming to the institute, and probably the greatest driving force for them was whether or not they’d have a friend there. Now, one thing we can say is we’ve also asked our students and found out that a whole bunch of them, over 97% of them, have found a friend at institute — the number was somewhere within that range — that they had come away from institute with a friend.
Because when we study together about the Savior, Jesus Christ, and we have the chance to talk to one another, to really share, to have the type of classroom experience we want and that we want in every family, there’s something that happens there, because the Holy Ghost can be present. It’s, as our Heavenly Father said, “Where two or three are gathered there will I be also” (see Matthew 18:20). The Savior has taught that multiple times.
31:31
Mary Richards: I’m so grateful for that promise you mentioned, that promise that the Spirit will be with us as we teach and learn together, because we have so many in the Church who are really called to serve in these roles, they don’t have this professional teaching background or anything, and I’m doing my best at my kitchen table.
What would you tell all of those teachers and parents or individuals studying? What advice do you have for us as we go into the Old Testament?
31:58
Aaron Coombs: Oh, first of all, I would say, take your expectation level down to where our Heavenly Father puts it. And I don’t mean by lowering your expectation. I mean use Heavenly Father’s expectation. Are you loving those that you’re teaching? Are you trying your very hardest? If so, you’ve fulfilled the two requirements.
Second, I would say, try not to give them everything. Don’t unload the whole load on them. It’s oftentimes that I think people find so many cool things that they end up just teaching a lot of cool things instead of teaching the gospel. And so there’s a difference when I really approach it saying, “Heavenly Father, what is the thing that would most help these” whoever you’re teaching then, fill in the blank, “these Primary children, these young adults, these teenagers, these adults, what is it that they need? And as you do when you are a teacher, you’ve been set apart by someone holding priesthood keys. You can act with priesthood authority, according to Elder Dallin H. Oaks. And so seek the revelation that comes with that.
I love — I believe it’s Jacob 1, I think it’s verse 5, where he says, “It has been made known unto me because of the great anxiety I have for you.” And so often we think anxiety is a negative thing. And sometimes in the scriptures, there’s a little bit of a connotation to that. But if you look in the Book of Mormon in that moment, he’s receiving revelation about the people that he cares so deeply about, because he cares so deeply about them. Your worry is not a sign of your weakness. It’s actually an opportunity for revelation.
And so, start turning to Heavenly Father and trying to figure out what He wants you to teach and what is needed. Stop worrying about being cool or any of those other things. And again, the point is not to teach everything. It’s to teach the thing that will most help the people that you have been called to teach.
33:52
Mary Richards: Our last question on the Church News podcast is always: What do you know now? Aaron, through your study of the Old Testament and your experience teaching seminary and institute classes, what do you know now about Heavenly Father?
Aaron Coombs: I love that question because it causes me to reflect on something that has really become close to my heart with the Old Testament. And it’s that when we read the Old Testament with eyes to see, we see a loving and committed God that so deeply cares about us that He’s unwilling to give up on us and that He will do all that He can to help us.
President Russell M. Nelson has been really straightforward about teaching about the idea of “hesed,” the idea of covenantal love translated as “loyal love.” One of the things I love is — let’s take a little bit of that culture for a second. The book of Ruth, to me, is one of the most sacred texts that we find in the Old Testament, and it’s because Ruth is actually an embodiment of hesed. Ruth is meant to show us what loyal love looks like. In an ancient culture, when she turns to Naomi and says, “I will not leave you. Where you go, I will go. Your God will be my God” (see Ruth 1:16), she’s giving up her identity as a Moabite, which is deep.
She also recognizes she doesn’t know there’s a Boaz in her future. And in the ancient world, if you didn’t have children, you don’t have a retirement plan. So in other words, she’s almost saying, in some ways, “Naomi, I will give my life for you.” And it’s her way of treating Naomi that actually keys Boaz in. He actually notices her hesed. “Who is this woman that shows forth this type of loyal love?”
And that loyal love is all throughout the Old Testament. We can see it in Hosea. We can see it in Amos. We can see it in Malachi. We can see it lots of different places as we see a God who is continually committed to following us. And as President Jeffrey R. Holland has said in “The Grandeur of God” — I believe it was about 2003 is when he gave that talk, in the fall of 2003 — he said that one of the beauties of the Book of Mormon is there isn’t a Malachi-to-Matthew gap. Sometimes people misunderstand the Old Testament. They don’t see that type of God. They see the weakness and the cultural misinterpretations of individuals.
Whereas the Book of Mormon doesn’t have that issue. We see a loving God that is there. But that God is the same one. And as we come to read the Old Testament with those eyes, you can see a God that is so deeply committed to your eternal salvation that He will do all that He possibly can to save us, and that that’s why He gives us covenants. And again, that covenant element is there too. So just understanding that our God is committed to us, and as I make covenants to Him, it allows Him to fully unleash all of the power and abilities that He has to try and save me and to save all of His children, if we’re willing to make covenants with Him.
36:47
Mary Richards: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m Church News reporter Mary Richards. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
