Early Morning Seminary in Australia
by Brett Stringer

Growing the Church one alarm clock at a time.

I clearly remember the winter of 1985. I was 15, and reaching the grumpy heights of my teenage years. Our ward in Melbourne, Australia was burgeoning with youth, so our bishop, who was also CES Regional Director, decided to split our ward’s seminary program in half. The group I was in decided to meet at my house. This was seemingly a good idea. To me it meant I could roll out of bed at about the time I heard the doorbell chime to let the teacher in.

Great plan, but it didn’t quite go like that. Apparently, my fellow students weren’t appreciative of my seeming lack of effort to join them in studying the New Testament. Not long into the year, I was promised (read: threatened) by one of the parents (my Teacher’s Quorum advisor no less), that if I kept coming to seminary in my pajamas, there would be dire consequences.

He was bluffing, so I continued. I discovered on a clear frosty July (winter in the southern hemisphere) morning that he wasn’t bluffing and had an untimely and quite bracing encounter with the front garden hose. I never wore my pajamas to seminary again.

It was that year, my second out of four years of early-morning seminary, when I began to sink my tender young roots into the glorious gospel sod of my own accord.

Frankly, I struggle to remember many of the scripture mastery scriptures that I committed to memory as a 14-17 year old. But what I clearly remember is how I felt as I attended day after day, and my spiritual literacy grew and matured, clearly preparing me for things to come.

Repeated Across the World
My experience was not an isolated one. All over the world, on most weekday mornings, thousands of teenagers are getting up with the birds to share friendship, companionship, testimonies, and gospel scholarship in an effort to strengthen them for the day ahead and prepare them for the years to come.

This understanding was reinforced when, as a 21-year-old, recently-returned missionary, I put my hand up to teach the same ward seminary I had attended. What an experience that was! My naïve excitement to share my love of the Book of Mormon was jolted by a general lack of interest and apathy for my efforts by the students. My own seminary experience had somehow been romanticised between my graduation and teaching assignment, and the first week speedily brought me back to earth, with a thud I might add.

But as I continued to teach I saw the students get something out of attending each day. It certainly wasn’t as a result of my teaching skills or preparation, but it was more to do with their faithfulness in attending and the sacrifices they made to be there, despite the tumultuous things going on around them.

As one of those students put it, “Through those formative teenage years so many decisions that impact the rest of our life are made; it was great to have a daily reminder of who I was and what I should stand for.”

The ‘something’ they were getting was a gospel grounding. In real terms, they were living Alma 32, where they were inadvertently, sometimes purposely, nourishing their souls, despite their occasional best efforts to avoid learning, simply by attending class.

Therefore I am left to conclude that regardless of what it takes to get the student to their early morning seminary class, the value of attendance makes everything worth it--not only for the sake of the individual, but for the greater benefit of the family, the local church unit, and the broader church as a whole.

The Evidence
If evidence is required, you only have to look at the students themselves as they grow and mature. A former bishop and early morning seminary graduate said, “Four years of early morning seminary served as a daily reminder that I was different from the other kids at school with different responsibilities. It also made teaching the gospel very easy as a missionary. I found I was readily able to teach a principle and the reasons behind it since the gospel was second nature to me.”

Another former student also commented that, “If missionary service provided opportunities for my testimony to be 'cemented,' then seminary was surely the means whereby the 'ground,' my heart and mind, was prepared.”

Meeting the Leadership Requirements
One of the great issues of a rapidly expanding and growing church is meeting the leadership requirements, not just of bodies to fill vacancies, but also of the spiritual maturity that is required to firmly establish correct gospel patterns of leadership, ministration, and administration. In many areas throughout the world, early morning seminary has been a catalyst, a critical tool in developing the fibre of maturity and commitment requisite for the church to grow and progress.

As a young convert, Craig McDonald, currently serving as a counselor in the Melbourne Australia Pakenham Stake Presidency recalled the following: “I was enormously blessed to attend seminary with the stake president's sons, the stake patriarch's daughter, the seminary teacher's daughter and another convert of about 2 years.  I was nurtured daily by peers from very well grounded and established church families attending seminary.”

Early morning seminary instills this culture of discipleship, starting with the individual student, and subsequently flowing beyond to parents and siblings, peers, units and regions. Standards of behavior become entrenched and expected, exerting a positive pressure to work towards making serious eternal-reaching covenants, and serving diligently.

The result is an individual, family, peer group or local unit that begins to move in unity with new tools to search, ponder, and pray.

Brother Michael King, a recently-released bishop put it this way, “In a society so hostile to gospel values and in situations where most youth are the only members in their school, seminary provides: a daily reinforcement to their principles and standards, a chance to start each day with a spiritual encounter, and most importantly with a sure and solid base of gospel knowledge on which they will build on and to which they can turn to resolve many of their own dilemmas.”

The Impact of Seminary on Missionary Work

Prior to 1970, and the introduction of early morning seminary in Australia, young men serving missions were the exceptions rather than the rule. Coinciding with seminary’s general roll out, and President Kimball’s direction that every young man should serve a mission, the percentage of young people going on missions increased dramatically. As the years passed, and these students and returned missionaries became parents, teachers, and leaders, the commitment to seminary grew, and the progression of youth to missions also grew.

The expectation of missionary service began to develop in my own ward, in the Melbourne, Australia, Fairfield Stake. A handful of young men went on missions in the early to mid ‘80’s and became our role models. Then with the call of a stake president who himself had been one of the first seminary graduates in the area, we saw an increased drive toward missionary service. Early morning seminary was a constant reminder of this goal. Even though I had been told from my earliest recollection that I was going on a mission, through seminary my friends and I had a collective commitment and we worked toward a common goal.

In 1988-89, all four of us, the closest childhood friends from the one ward, departed on missions. All served well in various parts of Australia and New Zealand. Thirteen years later, all are still strongly active.

This pattern spread throughout my stake, and throughout Australia. From a gentle trickle of home-grown missionaries in the early stages of the 1980’s, Australia is getting closer to being completely self-supportive in supplying its own missionary needs. There is significant evidence of this pattern repeating itself throughout the world.

Of course, seminary is only a component of this great worldwide growth and increasing depth of maturity. But its value to the church and the individual is inestimable. For me personally, that impromptu frozen July hosing down convinced me of the value of the seminary program. Yes, I was sometimes tired at school; yes I was a bit grumpy at home, but still, at a time when teens often distance themselves from family for questionable activities, I, along with countless others, had a daily re-fuelling of the things that mattered most. Soon enough, these things became what mattered most to me. And as I communed with my friends, a collective bond helped us to move toward growth, covenants, and commitment.

The greatest assessment of the value of the early morning seminary program is comments from those graduates whose children are approaching seminary age. As one brother put it, his willingness to do what it takes to get his four daughters through seminary shows what great blessings can be derived from it.

“It is so valuable that I am prepared to get up early to take my 4 daughters when the time comes. That will be 11 years of early mornings. It must be good!”

As a former graduate, all I can say to that is, amen!

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