Scouting Values in the Scriptures – Series

We’re starting something new here on Saints In Scouting.

It’s called “Scouting Values in the Scriptures”

At the recent Sunday worship service for Latter-day Saints at the National Scout Jamboree, a few examples were shared with the audience. The feedback was so positive that we’re going to publish an entire series.

Every week we’ll look at one scripture story – one person, one moment, one passage – and show how the values Scouting has been teaching for over a century were already there. In the ancient record. In the lives of real people who faced hard things and either lived those values or learned what it cost them not to.

Here’s why this matters.

Many Latter-day Saint families see Scouting as a program. Merit badges. Campouts. Rank advancements. And those things are real. They’re good, and they work.

But Scouting was never just a program. It was always a character formation system. Baden-Powell built it around a specific vision of who a young person could become -> trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Twelve qualities. One person.

And when you open the scriptures – any of them – you find those same twelve qualities being lived, commanded, demonstrated, and demanded on almost every page.

The Scout Law didn’t originate with Scouting. It’s been the Lord’s standard for His people since the beginning. Scouting just gave Latter-day Saints (and the world) a new way to view them.

Over the coming weeks, we’re going to walk through each of the standard works, starting with the Book of Mormon, and show you exactly where they meet. One story at a time. One Scout Law value at a time.

We’ll look at people who got it right and what it cost them to do so. We’ll look at moments where a choice was made under pressure, and everything changed. We’ll look at passages where the Lord commands the same qualities Scouting has been teaching in troops for 116 years.

By the end, you may read your scriptures a little differently. And we hope you’ll see your Scout program differently too.

Because they’ve been pointing at the same person all along – the person the Lord is trying to build in each of us, and the person Scouting gives youth a campfire to practice becoming.

We start next week with the Book of Mormon.

If you know a Latter-day Saint family who loves both the scriptures and Scouting – or who aren’t sure Scouting still belongs in their life of faith – share these posts with them.

This series is for them. And you.