I had the idea while I worked with our last bishop to keep a careful track of his teachings, saving my notes from ward conference and fifth Sunday combined lessons, his ward newsletter messages, etc. It’s actually strange to think how relatively rarely we hear our bishops address us directly. Sadly, I never got around to it, so now all I have are a few notes and my understanding of major themes from his ministry (emergency preparedness and priesthood leadership in the home, perhaps paramount).
With a new bishop in place for about a month now, I’ll more diligently keep track of his teachings. After all, we’re familiar with taking notes on General Conference and even stake conference, but how often do we keep and study notes on whatever our bishops–our primary, immediate leaders–counsel us to do? We’re used to books about the teachings of prophets and general authorities, but if everybody is ultimately supposed to be a prophet (Numbers 11:29), and if the words of our priesthood leaders represent the Lord’s will to us (D&C 1:38), couldn’t we think of our local leaders in terms of what their collection of teachings to us would be? (In fact, I used this as a discussion topic in a lesson once–shouldn’t all of us think of what the collection of our teachings would be like, or should be like, and minister accordingly?)
Gently Hew Stone 