How to Teach a Come, Follow Me Lesson in 25 Minutes Without Rushing the Class

The first Sunday you stand up with 25 minutes instead of 50, the clock is going to feel like it is against you. You have the same block of scripture you always had, a class that still needs a minute to settle, and half the time you are used to. The temptation is to talk faster. Almost everything that goes wrong in a short lesson starts there.

What actually changed is the rhythm, not just the clock

Beginning September 6, 2026, Sunday School and quorum and class meetings are each 25 minutes, and they are held every week. That second part matters more than the first. Until now, adults have been discussing Come, Follow Me in Sunday School only every other week. Now the class meets weekly. You are not losing half your teaching time across the month. You are teaching twice as often, in half the length, and following the reading week by week instead of skipping every other block.

Once you see it that way, the job changes. A 50 minute lesson every other week had to cover two weeks of reading and could afford some warm-up. A 25 minute lesson every week covers one block and cannot afford any.

Plan one question, not four

The instinct is to keep the same lesson and compress it. Do not compress. Choose less. Pick the one passage in the block you most want the class to sit inside, and build the whole 25 minutes around a single real question about it. A class that genuinely discusses one thing will remember it. A class that is marched through four things at speed will remember being marched.

If you finish early, and sometimes you will, that is not a failure. Ask what else people noticed in their reading and let the class fill the room. That is the lesson working, not the lesson running out.

Get to the verses in the first three minutes

A long lesson can open with a story, a question about the week, a bit of context. Twenty five minutes cannot carry all three. Open the scriptures early and let the text do the setup work. Reading a few verses out loud together in the first minutes puts everyone in the same place at the same time, including the members who did not read at home, and it buys you the rest of the lesson for actual discussion.

Cut the framing before you cut the discussion

When something has to go, teachers usually shorten the discussion because it is the part they control least. Reverse that. Cut your own introduction, cut the recap of last week, cut the summary you were going to give at the end. Protect the minutes where members are talking. The class is where the Spirit teaches people through each other, and it is the one part of the lesson nobody can do at home.

End on time, on purpose

With a 25 minute class there is no room to drift past the end and no grace period afterward. Decide before Sunday what your last two minutes are, and treat them as fixed. A short, quiet ending you planned lands better than a strong thought cut off mid sentence by the closing prayer. If the discussion is still alive when you get there, say so out loud and let people carry it into the hall.

Give it a few weeks before you judge it

The first two or three of these will feel abrupt, and that is worth expecting rather than worrying about. The schedule is built so that Church meetings connect to home study rather than replace it, which means the 25 minutes was never meant to hold everything. Your class is one part of the week. Teach one thing well, every week, and let the reading at home do the rest.