Invitational Call of the Father and the Son

First, let me say how grateful I am to be with you today. You are blessed to have President Clark as your leader at this remarkable university. We have served in the same Quorum of Seventy for the past two years, and I have learned important lessons from the example he has set. If you watch him and listen to him, you will learn as well, because he is an exceptional learner and teacher.

That is what I would like to talk about today: learning and teaching-not just inside the walls of the church, but wherever it occurs; not just in a Sunday School class, a priesthood quorum, or a ward council, but whenever and wherever someone learns from another who teaches. And the one who teaches may not be called "teacher" and may not even think he or she is teaching. So I hope when I close today we will have a broader vision of what it means to teach and what it means to learn.

In a very real sense, every time we teach a truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, we are drawing upon the love of both the Father and the Son. You will notice that I did not say, "every time we talk about a truth of the restored gospel" but "every time we teach" such a truth. The word teach implies that someone actually learned. And the word learn implies that the student changed in some way, that the gospel truth took root in the person and caused a change of heart-that the one who learned now does something differently as a result of the teaching. Only Christ has the power to bring about this kind of change.

While teaching General Authorities and Area Seventies prior to April general conference, Elder Bednar taught that effective gospel teaching is composed of three elements: (1) key doctrine, (2) invitation to action, and (3) promised blessings.

The key doctrine is always tied to the Heavenly Father's Plan, because the Atonement is the central doctrine upon which all other doctrines of our religion are founded.^[1] The invitation to action clearly draws upon the Atonement, because an understanding of the mission of the Savior and His Atonement are invitational in nature. The Lord says, "Come unto me,"^[2] "Follow me,"^[3] "Learn of me."^[4] Finally, when one accepts the invitation to follow the Savior, blessings always come. And all of those blessings flow from Him. So every time we teach a truth of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ--really teach it--we are drawing upon the love of the Father and the Son. The Father loved us enough to send His only Begotten Son. The Son loved us enough to carry out the will of the Father to save His children from sin and unhappiness. The Father called the Son to save us, and the Son calls us to help bring His children home.

The call of the Father to the Son and the Son to us is an invitational call. And this type of invitation is central to teaching and learning. I want to focus today primarily on this element of teaching: an invitation to action. While presiding over the South Dakota Rapid City Mission, we asked our missionaries to memorize a statement from Preach My Gospel which explains that a missionary's purpose is to:

The first word in that statement is invite. And how are missionaries encouraged to invite? Through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement. The more investigators come to understand the Atonement, the more they want to receive the saving ordinances of the gospel. The Lord literally calls to them. He beckons them to change. This is the invitational call of the Father and the Son.

There are many types of invitations that flow from this call. Today I would like to focus on three: (1) invitations that challenge, (2) invitations that befriend, and (3) invitations that rescue.

While President Hinckley was serving as a missionary in England, he received an invitation from his mission president to meet with a publisher who had recently released a book containing false information that could damage the Church.

At first glance, we may not view this scene from President Hinckley's mission as a gospel teaching and learning experience, but that is what it was. The mission president gave a young missionary a challenging invitation. Elder Hinckley wondered why his president would invite him to talk to the publisher. Why wouldn't the mission president, who was more qualified, do it himself? But he accepted the invitation and then immediately went to his apartment to pray.

Then Elder Hinckley invited the reluctant publisher to do something about the book that contained fallacious information. The publisher relented--and not only did he relent, but he was so impressed with this young missionary that every year for the rest of his life he sent President Hinckley a Christmas card. The publisher's heart had been changed.

But so had Elder Hinckley's heart. By inviting him to do something challenging, his mission president had given him an opportunity to learn. It was an invitational call. Elder Hinckley accepted the invitation, went to the Lord, and was strengthened sufficiently to meet the challenge. He learned that he could do more than he thought possible with the help of the Lord.

All Church callings are invitations that flow from the Lord. After President Monson called me to serve as the general Sunday School president, I walked with Elder Nelson to his office, and he said, "You are now in charge of teaching improvement for the entire Church." He explained that the leaders in the Sunday School organization are to do more than watch over Sunday School teachers. They are to help improve gospel teaching and learning wherever it occurs-in the home, in priesthood meetings, in auxiliary classes, or anywhere in the Church. It was certainly an invitation that challenged me, just as the invitation from Elder Hinckley's mission president challenged him. And the invitation drove me to my knees, just as it did young Elder Hinckley.

Invitations need not always challenge us to our limits, however. Sometimes they are much smaller challenges, but they can still cause important changes in our lives. Once, in my former assignment as an Area Seventy, I was training a new presidency of a BYU student stake. At one point in the training, I wanted to show everyone present the importance of extending invitations to others. I looked at the assistant executive secretary, a BYU student. His name was Ian. I asked him:

"Is there anything in your life that you would like to do better?"

"Do you mean Church stuff or my everyday life?"

"Whichever you want."

"Well, every time I go to work, I feel embarrassed that I don't know anyone's name. I've been working at the hospital for a while, and I need to learn everybody's name."

"That's a good goal. Do you think you can do it?"

"Yeah, I can do it."

"Would it help if you reported back to me after you learn the names?"

"Sure, that would help a lot."

"Here's my phone number. Just send me a text when you have achieved your goal."

A week later he texted me as follows:

"Ian (BYU First Stake) returning to report: I learned 11 new names last week working at the hospital (and more on the way)."

Ian knew he needed to learn the names of his co-workers, but he just needed a little nudge to do it.

Some invitations challenge us to do something we know we need to do--or something we didn't know we could do. Other invitations are simply invitations that befriend.

When someone comes up to you and asks, "Do you wanna go to the game tonight?" this is an invitation that befriends, an invitation that helps people become better acquainted. As two BYU students sit together saying nothing, it is impossible to send invitations that befriend.

Who knows what these two students missed by not speaking to each other? At minimum they missed making a new friend. And none of us has too many friends.

We don't usually think of making friends as an invitation inspired by the Savior. But in a very real sense, it is. The Prophet Joseph taught that "friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of ‘Mormonism'."^[6] The Lord Himself said, "I will call you friends, for you are my friends" (D&C 93:45). The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of friendship. The Lord gave Himself for us because He loves us as one friend loves another. The invitational call of the Father and the Son.

While teaching a missionary preparation course at BYU, I asked my students to get acquainted with as many new people each week as they could. They reported on their progress, just as missionaries report on key indicators. During one week, one of my students, Nathan, had conversations with 76 new people. I asked, "Nathan, how did you do that?" He responded, "Well, I was waiting in lots of lines all week, and I would just ask the person next to me to save my place, and then I would go meet everybody else in the line. The amazing thing is that I think I made some friends that I'll have the rest of my life. I'm getting together with them all the time now."

Nathan was not an extremely gregarious young man. He was by nature quiet. But he met 76 new people in a week, and some of those became close friends. He was extending an invitational call-an invitation that befriends. Now, I wish I could tell you that one of those friends became his wife, and maybe someday I will, but he is now serving his mission, so that will have to wait.

Another of my students told me that she was walking to class one afternoon and began talking to the young woman next to her on the sidewalk. Following their conversation, that young woman said, "You're the only person who has talked to me at all this entire day. I don't know why you did it, but you really made me feel good." We could probably all do a little better at extending invitations that befriend.

Some invitations challenge us, some lead to more meaningful friendships, and some invitations literally rescue us from our own wrong choices or resistance to truth. These are invitations that rescue.

While serving as a mission president, I attended a lesson with two missionaries who had been teaching an older man, Brother Risty. Brother's Risty's wife was serving as the ward Relief Society president. Their grown children were all members. But Brother Risty had resisted joining the Church for 30 years. The missionaries had been teaching him every evening for several weeks, and he had attended church the Sunday before we came. But he was still not open to the idea of baptism.

As we entered the Risty home, I could tell immediately that he loved the missionaries, and they loved him. They joked with each other for a few minutes; then we sat down and had an opening prayer. Following the prayer, they had the following conversation:

Missionary: So, Brother Risty, how did you enjoy sacrament meeting?

Brother Risty: I liked it. The people are so good. I like the people in this ward.

Missionary: And they like you too. So what's holding you back, Brother Risty? Why haven't you joined the Church?

Brother Risty: I don't know. I think it's because of faith.

Missionary: What about faith--you mean your faith in the Lord?

Brother Risty: Yeah. I look at those people when I go to church, and I think, I just don't have that kind of faith. They have so much faith!

Missionary: So what do you think you'd need to do to get more faith?

Brother Risty: I think I'd need to pray.

Missionary: But you've prayed before, right?

Brother Risty: Yeah, I've prayed before, but I don't think I've ever expected to get an answer. I need to expect an answer when I pray. I need to have faith it can come.

Missionary: Do you think you could do that? Do you think you could pray and expect an answer?

Brother Risty: I think so. I think I can do that.

Missionary: When do you want to try?

Brother Risty: I can do it tonight after you two go back to your apartment.

Missionary: Brother Risty, I promise you that if you pray and expect an answer from the Lord, He will give it to you. I know that. I've had answers to my prayers, and I know the Lord loves you and that He will give you an answer.

The missionaries returned the next evening at their regular time. Brother Risty had prayed, and he had received his answer. He was baptized a short time after that. The lesson that led to Brother Risty's decision to join the Church focused mostly on an invitation and then finally on a promised blessing. The missionaries did not need to expound on doctrine much in this lesson, because Brother Risty had been taught the doctrine for 30 years. It was the invitation and promised blessing that helped him move forward. His agency was at the center. The missionaries were not pushing him one way or another. They were simply asking him what he thought he needed to do.

When I reflect on that encounter, I see the effects of God's love both on the missionaries and on Brother Risty. Brother Risty needed strengthening. He needed his confidence built so that he could receive an answer to his prayer about whether he should join the Church. And that invitation came through the missionaries. Theirs was an invitation that rescued Brother Risty from his resisting what he knew down deep he needed to do.

As President Kimball once said: "God does notice us, and he watches over us. But it is usually through another person that he meets our needs."^[7] It is through teaching--but not as we typically think of teaching. It is through extending invitations that flow from the Lord, invitations inspired by the Holy Ghost, as those dedicated missionaries did with Brother Risty.

An invitational call is not a subtle invitation. King Benjamin referred to it as "the enticings of the Holy Spirit," and he taught that if we yield to those enticings, we will become "a saint through the atonement of Christ."^[8] We usually think of the word entice in connection with temptation. And that is the way it is usually used in the scriptures. But both King Benjamin and Lehi taught that we can be enticed to do good as well as to do evil:

When we exercise our agency, we are literally yielding ourselves to the invitation from the Lord or to the taunting of the adversary. And the more we understand the Atonement, the more enticing and irresistible the invitation to do good becomes. That is why Lehi knew that if he could only get his family to taste the fruit of the tree of life--if he could have them experience God's love--they would want to keep partaking of it forever and ever (see 1 Nephi 8:10-18).

While teaching a missionary preparation course at BYU, I asked my students to practice inviting others to come unto Christ by inviting their friends to make commitments. During one part of the course we discussed how Ammon and the other sons of Mosiah drew upon the power of the Atonement as they preached the gospel to the Lamanites. We focused particularly on Alma 26:27:

The Latin root of the word comfort is fortis, which means "strong." I explained to the students that to comfort means, essentially, to strengthen. So, in this verse, Ammon testifies that the Lord strengthened him and his brethren. Even though the Lord knew that these great missionaries would be mocked, spat upon, and attacked by the Lamanites, He strengthened them and promised them a blessing: that they would succeed if they could just be patient and endure the afflictions that would surely come.

One of the students in my class described how she had taken the challenge to invite others to come unto Christ in a phone call to one of her non-LDS friends back home. When she asked how her friend was doing, her friend began to cry and said she was contemplating dropping out of college and going back home. She said she had a drinking problem, that she was drunk most of the time, and that she just felt like giving up. My student did not know, prior to calling her friend, that she was having so many problems.

My student shared Alma 26:27 with her friend. She explained that Ammon and his brothers had also become depressed about their situation and had considered giving up and returning home too, but then the Lord strengthened them. The Lord did not remove all of their obstacles, but He made them strong so they could overcome any difficulty they might face. My student invited her friend to pray about her situation and ask for strength so she could go on.

Her friend stopped crying and then said these important words: "I think God sent you to me today. You've made me want to keep going. I want to stop drinking. And I want to stay in school."

My student was teaching her friend a key doctrine of the gospel: that by listening to the promptings of the Holy Ghost, the strengthening power of Christ's Atonement can help us face problems that at first seem insurmountable. She invited her friend to action--to pray, to keep going, to never give up. And she explained the blessings that would come--God's strengthening influence--all in one very powerful telephone conversation.

The examples of the missionaries teaching Brother Risty and my student teaching her friend are both based on the invitational call of the Father and the Son, the invitation to rescue. The Lord's invitation is unique because it is an invitation we naturally want to transfer to someone else. He invites us to come to Him, so that we can invite others. His arms are always open. He is always waiting and ready. But we must do our part. We must extend His arms to those we know. As President Kimball taught, God cares for His children through us; we are the primary inviters. That is our role as members of the Church of Jesus Christ. He invites us, and we invite others. As a result, the Atonement strengthens us and the people we invite. My student, I am convinced, acted on inspiration as she spoke with her friend, and so did the missionaries. They gave what was needed at that moment for that person.

My question to each of us today is this: Is there anyone here who is receiving too many inspired invitations, invitations that help us improve? Is anyone's e-mail in-box overflowing with inspiring invitations? Is anyone's phone overloaded with text messages that invite us to come unto Christ? I don't think so.

A student, while speaking in sacrament meeting recently, said that a friend called him on a Friday afternoon and invited him to go to the temple that evening. The student said, "I had set a personal goal to get to the temple more often, but things always seemed to come up, and so I wasn't going as much as I wanted. Then he called, and we both went and had a great evening."

One of our main purposes in life is to help others do what they really want to do but can't do without our help. Everyone wants to do better. But we need each other's help to accomplish our goals. I have a friend who does this naturally, almost without thinking about it. Imagine that I tell him I want to lose a little weight. The next day we're eating lunch together. I'm going for the brownie with hot fudge, and he says to me, "You don't want that." I keep reaching for it. He says again, "You don't really want that." So with renewed self-control, my hand retreats, and I do what I really wanted to do but couldn't do without his help.

It is so easy to invite. It was easy for my friend to give me a little restraint. It was easy for that student to call his friend and invite him to the temple. We can all invite others to do what they really want to do but can't do without our help. And really, it's not that they can't do it--sometimes they just need to be invited. So we invite them and help them in whatever way they wish. Moral agency always takes center stage in the invitational call of the Father and the Son, because moral agency was at the center of the Plan of Salvation.

President Monson recently spoke to all General Authorities and Area Seventies about the importance of rescuing others. It was a powerful talk about the potential that everyone has to change, to improve--all we need to do is reach out to them. All we need to do is invite them in the right way, and they will come.

Toward the end of his talk President Monson gave us all an invitation. He said, "Ask yourselves, ‘Have I rescued anyone recently?' "

A week later I was in a meeting where we discussed President Monson's talk on rescuing, and one Area Seventy related that he had always tried to visit less-active members when he presided at stake conferences. The next day I flew to Portland to conduct an auxiliary training session. I asked Elder Brinkerhoff, the Area Seventy who hosted me in that city, if we might be able to visit a less-active member following the training session. He immediately thought of a couple he had been home teaching. He said, "Last Sunday they came to sacrament meeting in our ward for the first time."

We visited their home. They were a pure-hearted couple who, for some unknown reason, had become less active. The wife looked at me at one point and said, "Brother Osguthorpe, you probably don't know this, but we went to sacrament meeting for the first time last week." I asked her about her impressions of the meeting. I found it important that she did not mention the messages that had been given from the pulpit; she focused on the members and their friendship. She said, "I was surprised at how many friends we had in this ward even though this was our first time at sacrament meeting. So many people came up to us and were so glad to see us." Then she got tears in her eyes. "I just didn't know we had so many friends."

Elder Brinkerhoff then let them know how much it had meant to him that they had attended, and I asked the wife, "So why do you think Elder Brinkerhoff cares so much?" And again with tears in her eyes, she responded, "Because he loves us."

Elder Brinkerhoff had been meeting with this couple for some time. He had been extending all three types of invitations--invitations that challenge, invitations that befriend, and invitations that rescue. And the couple had finally begun to respond to the invitations. When Elder Brinkerhoff extended these invitations, perhaps it did not always look like teaching. Maybe the couple didn't always feel like he was presenting formal lessons. But in the truest sense, this was gospel teaching at its very best. They were learning key doctrines. They were responding to invitations to action. And they were experiencing the promised blessings.

This is what teaching and learning are all about in the Church of Jesus Christ. My hope is that when you are asked to teach, you will reflect on this conception of teaching and that you will give much more thought to the types of invitations that you should extend to those you teach. No one is likely receiving too many invitations that challenge, that befriend, or that rescue. We all need each of these kinds of invitations often. My prayer is that we will give more of them and respond positively to them when they come to us. I further pray that each time we give or receive such invitations, we will feel the connection of those invitations to the infinite love of our Heavenly Father and His Son, and that we will keep yielding to the enticings, the irresistible enticings of the Holy Spirit that always bring us closer to the Savior, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Notes

[1] Joseph Smith, in History of the Church, 3:30

[2] Matthew 11:28

[3] Matthew 4:19

[4] Matthew 11:29

[5] Preach My Gospel: A Guide to Missionary Service (2004), 1

[6] in History of the Church, 5:517

[7] Spencer W. Kimball, "Small Acts of Service," Ensign, Dec. 1974, 4

[8] Mosiah 3:19

[9] 2 Nephi 2:16; italics added