Teachings of the Presidents of the Church

What Teachings of the Presidents of the Church is

Teachings of the Presidents of the Church is an official study-manual series published by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with the first volumes appearing in the late 1990s. Each volume is devoted to a single past President of the Church — Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and others across the series — and gathers that leader’s sermons, talks, and writings into themed chapters. It is not a biography or a complete-works collection; it is a teaching manual, with material arranged by topic and shaped for study rather than for continuous reading.

A typical chapter introduces a theme, presents the President’s own words on it in arranged excerpts, and closes with questions and scripture references for reflection or class discussion. As neutral buyer information: it is a study resource written from within the Latter-day Saint tradition and for members of it, assuming that tradition’s canon and vocabulary throughout. It is free to read in the Gospel Library app and on the Church website, often available as free audio, and sold in low-cost print volumes for readers who want physical copies.

Why Latter-day Saints study from these volumes

The single biggest practical difference between this series and a leader’s collected works is that it is engineered for study, not for completeness. A President of the Church may have preached and written across decades, far more than any member could absorb directly. These manuals do the work of selecting and arranging: editors gather the teaching, sort it by theme, and shape each chapter into a portion a person can actually sit with — read on a weekday morning, or discuss in a Sunday class — without first having to find their own way through a vast corpus.

That changes how the books function in a member’s life. Rather than treating a leader’s teaching as an archive to be researched, a reader treats it as a set of study sessions to be lived through. The built-in introductions orient you; the President’s own words carry the substance; the questions and scripture references turn reading into reflection or conversation. Because each volume stays with one leader and organizes by topic, a member can spend a whole study period inside a single voice, going to the theme they need. For the reader inside the tradition, the series turns the immense into the usable.

One President per volume, taught in their own words

The organizing principle of the series is one leader to a book. Each volume is devoted to a single past President of the Church — the series includes volumes on Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and others across its run — and the substance of every chapter is that leader’s own language: excerpts drawn from their sermons, addresses, and writings, arranged so the President speaks directly to the reader. The editors’ role is to gather and frame; the teaching itself comes through in the leader’s own words rather than being paraphrased.

The value of the single-leader focus is depth of acquaintance. Spending a study period in one President’s volume, a reader comes to know that leader’s emphases and turns of phrase in a way that a mixed anthology could not provide. And because the same approach is applied across the series, the set as a whole becomes a shelf of single-voice study books — a reader can move from one President to the next over time, each volume a sustained encounter with one leader’s teaching on the themes the tradition returns to most.

Chapters engineered for personal and class study

Each chapter is built to the same study-ready template, and that structure is the second defining feature. A chapter typically opens with a short introduction that sets the theme, moves into the President’s own words arranged under that theme, and closes with questions for reflection and scripture references for further study. The design serves two settings at once: an individual reading alone during the week, and a teacher leading a class who needs material already organized into a discussable lesson with prompts built in.

That dual-purpose engineering is why the series has anchored study in the tradition for so long. A member does not need to invent discussion questions or hunt for supporting scriptures — the manual supplies them, keyed to the theme of the chapter. The questions invite the reader to apply the teaching rather than merely absorb it, and the scripture references tie the President’s words back to the canon the tradition already holds. For a class leader especially, the format turns a chapter into a ready lesson; for a personal reader, it turns reading into reflection.

Topical organization across the canon’s themes

Rather than following a leader’s life or teaching in chronological order, each volume is organized by topic — faith, prayer, repentance, service, the Atonement, family, and the other themes the tradition emphasizes. A reader can open the table of contents, find the subject they want, and go straight to a chapter on it in that President’s words. This dip-in-anywhere structure is well suited to how the books are actually used: a class works through selected chapters, and a personal reader often seeks the theme that fits their season.

The topical approach has a clear tradeoff, and it is worth naming. Sorting teaching by theme sets aside the historical sequence in which a leader taught, so a reader looking for how a President’s thought developed over time will not find that arc here. But for the series’ purpose — study and teaching on enduring themes — topical organization is the more useful choice, because it puts everything a leader said about a given subject in one place. It optimizes for the question a studying member usually brings: what did this President teach about this?

Pricing

Where Teachings of the Presidents of the Church falls behind

Manual, not biography. These are teaching manuals, and a reader who comes wanting the narrative of a President’s life — where they were born, what they did, how their leadership unfolded — will not find that story here. The focus is teachings organized by theme, not a life told in sequence. For biography, a reader needs a different book; this series is doing something else, on purpose.

Excerpted by design. Because each chapter arranges selected passages around a theme, the series offers study-sized portions rather than a leader’s complete works. That is the right call for study, but a scholar or a reader who wants everything a President said on a subject — in full, in context, unabridged — will need to go to fuller collections. The manuals are a curated entry point, not an archive.

Topical over chronological. Organizing by theme means the historical sequence of a leader’s teaching is set aside. A reader interested in how a President’s thought developed over the years will find the manual’s structure works against that question, since it gathers teaching by subject rather than by date. It optimizes for “what did they teach about this,” not “how did this change over time.”

Repetition across the set. The consistent chapter template — introduction, the President’s words, questions, references — is what makes the series easy to use, but a reader sampling several volumes back to back can find the format starts to feel formulaic. The sameness is a feature for a class that values predictability and a mild drawback for a reader who wants each volume to surprise them.

Teachings of the Presidents vs. Come Follow Me vs. Preach My Gospel

It helps to see where this series sits among the study resources a Latter-day Saint uses, because each is built for a different study task. Teachings of the Presidents of the Church gathers one past leader’s teachings, by theme, for personal and class study. Come Follow Me, by contrast, is the scripture-study curriculum — a week-by-week schedule that moves the whole Church through the standard works on a rotation, with prompts for home and class. One is organized around a leader’s teaching; the other is organized around the scriptures themselves.

Different jobs. Preach My Gospel is the missionary manual — a guide for teaching the basics of the tradition’s message, organized around lessons and principles for that purpose. Where Teachings of the Presidents is for studying a leader’s words and Come Follow Me is for studying scripture on a schedule, Preach My Gospel is for learning and teaching the tradition’s core message. A member might use all three in different settings: scripture study from Come Follow Me, a leader’s teachings from this series, and missionary preparation from Preach My Gospel.

If you are deciding where to read rather than what, the companion is the app. Gospel Library is the official, free home that hosts Teachings of the Presidents, Come Follow Me, Preach My Gospel, the scriptures, and far more in one place. The manuals are the same wherever you read them — the question is which study environment fits how you work, and for most readers Gospel Library is simply where the whole series already lives, free and synced, beside everything else.

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