Provo, Utah
10 Dec 1985
Dear Wendy,
Thanks for your letter describing the family get-together. I’m sorry we could not be there; we will try next Thanksgiving.
You asked me to explain what is happening in the Church Education System. Since why it happened is as instructive as what has come to pass, let me give you both in brief compass.
Looking back, it is difficult to imagine the rapidity with which change has transformed the Church. The beginning was inauspicious. It was the quiet announcement in the Welfare Session of April Conference 1978 that the time had come to implement the law of consecration. It is safe to say that the Church Education System would be impoverished and threadbare were it not for that step. True, it took several years to see any noticeable difference; but that difference is so plain now that it is our principal missionary opening. For as the more faithful members of the Church came forward and deeded over all of their property to the Church and then assumed roles as the Lord’s stewards, it was as though a new race of people came into being—thousands of families began to be like President Kimball had been. They were so full of spiritual power that it showed in every act, in every word. They radiated the love the prophets have always idealized, because they had made the Savior truly the center of their lives. The healings, the prophecies, the miracles, controlling fire and the weather are well known. Less well known but amply manifest is the kindness, the willingness to share, the complete unselfishness of these superhuman souls.
But it was in their work that the biggest harvest was realized. Whether missionary labors, auto repair, school teaching, farming or what have you, everything they touched turned to spiritual gold. They invented new and better ways of doing things (some seemed so simple after they had shown the way) because they did what they did only to transmit the Savior’s love to their fellowmen, seeking no reward for themselves, even wincing under thanks.
So that was the engine that made the power possible for all the other changes to take place. It took some time for it to dawn on me that this—the law of consecration—was the little stone which Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel saw cut out of the mountain without hands. It was cut out with hearts and is this very day rolling forth, breaking in pieces and consuming with love the kingdoms of this world. Indeed there is mighty opposition, the hate and persecution you describe was inevitable. But the work of the Savior will not be deterred.
The second great change followed naturally from the first. It was a change little talked about but truly revolutionary in import. The faithful members stopped talking about the Gospel as a thing, a what. In fact, they almost stopped talking about the Gospel, period. Not that the Gospel message was less important. It was that the message was less important: too sacred to say much about, but urgent in its need to be employed. So the Gospel became a “how.” It became the way one taught a child or tamed a horse or grew a garden. It was the way one solved an engineering problem or perfected a welfare distribution system or negotiated with those bent on destroying the kingdom.
The crowning evidence of this change is reflected in our missionary work. We now speak little of theology or precepts. We concentrate on teaching the people other things, on helping them with their problems. They are so astounded by the solutions and the obvious power of the missionaries that they ask to know the Gospel. The story of Ammon of old has become the norm rather than the exception.
The key to this is the power the missionaries have to discern the hearts of the people. As they address their fears and wounds, a wonderful solvent of faith releases their hearers from the chains of their fathers, and the Holy Spirit becomes delicious to them.
Some see only the power involved. They are awed, and like Simon wish to buy the gift. The missionaries tell them that the price is a pure heart, which cuts some to the quick; they actually and readily repent, because they did not know that purity of heart was anything but a myth until they saw it in action. Then the idea was so powerful that they were overcome just as King Lamoni was. But the hard-core simonists just became angry. Like the silversmiths of Ephesus, they try to incite mobs against us.
The third change was the demise of the concept of teaching. True, “teaching” is not completely dead, but in the Church it is feebly gasping out its days. The emphasis now is upon learning. Each person is honored as a learner. Instead of modeling great teachers, we model great students, and those who achieve great learning and ability are rewarded not by others, but by the good they can then do for others. Teaching itself is not longer an ego-trip, the erstwhile teacher is now a facilitator who works unobtrusively to help each learner maximize effort. People learn what they are ready for now, not what the teacher feels like dispensing. They learn at their own rate, and according to their own ability. The aural learners have aural exposure, the motor learners move, etc.
The secret of this revolution is that we finally took section 50 to heart, and realized that it is the pattern for all learning, not just learning the Gospel. When both learner and facilitator are moved by the Holy Spirit and consumed by the love of the Savior, can you imagine the result? Seeing through algebra in an afternoon, learning a language in a week, comprehending the principles of communication in one apt demonstration! It boggles the mind. Even those who are not “speedy” don’t feel badly. They rejoice so in the attention and love manifested towards them and they so appreciate the Spirit that they progress with delight. There are no “dumbbells” anymore and, interestingly, almost every soul is an above average learner in some facet of development.
So good riddance to the days of put-down teaching, “spread-them-out” grading on the curve, and limited quotas for programs. Facilitators are brothers and sisters, not lords and masters, and a good spiritual time is had by all.
You can probably guess the nature of the next great change. It is that everyone in the Church who is faithful becomes a facilitator. To be such is such a superb way to bless and honor those whom they love, that one could not stand to be without it. How do you learn to be a facilitator if there are no “teachers” anymore? Very simply if not easily. One simply finds or selects a good facilitator and starts to imitate them. That works because the essence of facilitation is showing forth love for the learners, thus releasing them from their fears, hurts, doubts and anxieties, which releases their spiritual learning potential. Facilitation turns out to be mainly the teaching of a soul with the pure love of Christ. It is communicating in a Gospel way, not about the Gospel, but using it. It is faith, hope, charity, justice, mercy, sacrifice and consecration all wrapped up in handshakes, carefully chosen words, abstemious example, gentle cheerfulness, boundless courage and sure direction.
The other part of the facilitation is the skills and information which the learner desires to acquire. If the facilitator is learned, the desire is simply met. If the facilitator does not have what is desired, that “what” becomes to facilitators desire also, and the two of them search eagerly, gladly, confidently, for the result. For they know that “when two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be also.” And there is nothing that the Savior or his servants don’t know.
The fifth change follows as the night the day. If every adult member of the Church has learned to be a facilitator, what do they spend their time doing? Facilitating, of course. Every time two Latter-day Saints get together their actions are two-fold: they get busy on some project to improve something, and one is facilitating the learning of the other (sometimes they reverse roles on different skills.) My how the work gets done. My how able everyone becomes. With one heart and one mind they pursue the words of righteousness and the poor become rich in every way. (Sounds heavenly, aye? That of course is because it is. This is the day for which Isaiah longed.)
Well now, with that background, the Church Education System should make more sense. Let’s begin with the missionaries.
A few years ago the Church started calling “educational” missionaries, just as they had called building and health missionaries previously. But a marvelous thing happened. The “educational” missionaries who had learned to be facilitators very quickly were baptizing as many or more than the proselyting missionaries. As the authorities of the Church examined what the best proselyting missionaries were doing and what the facilitators were doing, they found that the methodology of both was identical: they “showed the Gospel in their actions rather than trying to teach it at first. They simply addressed themselves to the needs of whoever is was they were talking to, striving to bless them in their spiritual, emotional, intellectual or physical problems, whatever the need. They had spiritual power to deliver help because they had consecrated all, especially their hearts, to the Savior. They did not try to distinguish “golden” from other contacts. They simply tried to help each person they met. But there were a couple of basic rules: they would not give money, and they would not do for someone what that person could be taught to do for himself.
The upshot was that all missionaries became facilitators and all facilitators became missionaries. That is why we have the interesting double pattern of missionary effort in the Church. Young people fill missions early (late teens) then return home, marry, finish their education, spend thirty years working and raising their families, then they retire and take up residence somewhere in the world as facilitators. Some are young enough that their families go with them. The norm now at BYU is to retire at age 55 and become unpaid facilitators. Military retirees also go on “remainder-of-days” missions instead of seeking a second career.
The backup for these facilitators is the mission or stake library. In the early part of this decade the Church began to put resources into curriculum development, many millions of dollars. That effort was matched by technical advances which made economical delivery feasible. So the result is that any facilitator can go to a stake or mission center and either check out or send for a carefully constructed and sequenced learning package whereby one can learn to do every honorable thing or to understand any subject known to man and to be able to have it conveyed in a choice of media. When you couple that human and technical triumph with the spiritual resources the missionaries have, you can see what an overwhelming educational force that is. Ignorance and inability flee as the hoarfrost before the sun.
The result of this missionary-facilitator-educational push is that areas of the world are tending to even out enormously. The poor people in the world are no longer the despised peons. They are the stable middle class which sustains the commerce and culture of much of the continent. In a few years millions of people in the world have jumped from the stone age to the twenty-first century. The hapless in every nation now have hope, for there plainly is a way.
All of this has brought about interesting changes in the institutions of the church. Because of the melding of the missionary-facilitator roles and skills the mission training center were merged with the nearby CES institutions. In one of two years of college every young person, converts included, learns to be a facilitator, and thus is ready for missionary service. When they return, they are helpful as student instructors. In fact, they faculty of BYU has been reduced by half (they were sent on missions) and the difference is made up by student returned missionary facilitators.
As all of this was happening, the church schools lost their accreditation. To rise to the occasion, the church schools simply abandoned the whole idea of credit (which derives from credo—I believe) and replaced it with ability, I can do. Transcripts now state simply what the graduate can do. This plays havoc with transfer of credit, but that backfired on the enemies of the Church also. Because of the high quality of CES education almost no one transfers out. And because CES graduates are so able, they have no trouble getting into graduate schools or into jobs. But most of them go neither into graduate schools or “jobs,” the majority become independent professionals who contract out their services.
So that is why the Mission Training Center at BYU was merged with BYU. BYU became an MTC, and when the campuses in Mexico City, London, Sao Paulo, Hamilton and Orlando were built, they were constructed with a dual purpose in mind: a missionary learning center for the young people of the church and having the temple and temple marriage as the center of all learning.
Which brings me full circle. All of this power was unleashed by the glad entering into formal consecration by the more faithful members of the Church. Because of that faithfulness, the Savior provided the spiritual and temporal resources to make all of this a glowing reality rather than the vapid dream it would have remained otherwise.
By their fruits shall ye know them. Does all this convince you that that leap of faith, to consecrate all, is worth it? I give you my witness in the Savior that this not only leads to Life: It is Living.
Love,
Chuck