Everything You Need for Studying the Doctrine and Covenants in 2021 with Come, Follow Me

Book of Mormon Central has been a go-to place for many Latter-day Saints this year in their Come, Follow Me study. In 2020, BMC launched the popular YouTube series, Come Follow Me Insights, featuring Professors Tyler Griffin and Taylor Halverson. We published reading plans, resource guides, videos with John Hilton III, videos with Taylor Halverson and two, new Book of Mormon commentaries.

For those wondering what Book of Mormon Central is planning for next year, we have great news. We will not only be continuing many of our projects for the 2021 Doctrine and Covenants year, but we will be doubling our efforts and providing a LOT of new content, specifically designed to supplement the Come, Follow Me curriculum in 2021. Book of Mormon Central will likely have the most robust offering of Come, Follow Me content outside the official Church. Here’s everything we have planned so far:

ScripturePlus

First off, you would be missing out if you didn’t utilize the free ScripturePlus app in your Come, Follow Me study next year. ScripturePlus is the best Latter-day Saint scripture app for diving deep into your study. In addition to videos, images, commentaries, quotes from General Authorities and more, you’ll be able to find almost everything Book of Mormon Central is publishing this year embedded right into your scripture app.

Download the ScripturePlus App

Resource Guide

Our 2021 Doctrine and Covenants Resource Guides will be your most important tool for finding all the content Book of Mormon Central produces each week for Come, Follow Me. We have published weekly resource guides for several years now, and we plan to continue. Each Resource Guide is a visual index where you can find the newest videos and posts from Book of Mormon Central, links to the official Church manuals, a Reading Plan with assignments for each day, and a bibliography of additional resources. Resource Guides are your central hub for finding the best content on the Doctrine and Covenants and the Come Follow Me curriculum.

Videos

Book of Mormon Central’s most ambitious project this next year will be our video production. Many this year have enjoyed Come Follow Me Insights with Tyler Griffin and Taylor Halverson. Both Tyler and Taylor are excited to continue their series next year as they explore doctrines, history, and principles of the Doctrine and Covenants.

John Hilton III will also continue his series Come Follow Me Insights with John Hilton III. In addition, users can expect more content from Taylor Halveson in his weekly videos.

BMC is excited to introduce some new talent into our collection of offerings. BYU Church History Professor Casey Griffiths will be doing a new series of short videos on Church History. Marianna Richardson and her guests will produce a series of roundtable discussions called Act in Doctrine.

BYU Church History Professor Anthony Sweat will be giving full-length classes on Church History. 

Lynne Wilson will also be giving classes on Church History from her years of teaching at the LDS Institute at  Stanford University.

With all these videos, users can expect something new almost every day next year. Each project strives to serve different needs and audiences. We hope that users of all ages and interests can find something they enjoy as they study the Doctrine and Covenants next year.

Commentaries & Research

Book of Mormon Central not only creates videos for a general audience, but we love to encourage rigorous scholarship and research that supports the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

Next year, users can look forward to 2 new commentaries by BYU Church History Professors. Casey Griffiths has authored Doctrine and Covenants Minute, a verse-by-verse commentary to give you bite-sized insight into the scriptures as you use the ScripturePlus app. Steven C. Harper, editor-in-chief of BYU Studies, has authored Doctrine and Covenants Contexts, a section-by-section commentary that gives historical background information to each section in this sacred work.

Susan Easton Black has written short biographies for all major figures in early Church History. This content will be featured in the ScripturePlus app, as a way to get to know the speakers and audience of the Doctrine and Covenants in new ways.

Book of Mormon Central is also excited to launch a new initiative in development, Doctrine and Covenants Central! While it’s scope will begin small, we anticipate a wonderful future for D&C Central. Casey Griffiths and Scott Woodward lead this initiative in creating accessible and meaningful content to help users contextualize and understand the Doctrine and Covenants.

And of course, Book of Mormon Central's flagship publication, KnoWhys, will continue to publish excellent research on the Book of Mormon and will frequently relate to Church History topics.

Reading Plans

Is all this content too much or overwhelming? That’s what the 2021 Come Follow Me Daily Reading Plan is for. We plan to aggregate all the best content for each week into structured, easy, daily assignments that shouldn’t take you more than 15 minutes a day. In addition to the Daily Reading Plan, you’ll be able to find other Reading Plans that may interest you, such as:

• Read the D&C in Chronological Order
• Read the D&C by Themes

New ScripturePlus Features

In addition to all the features you’ve come to love and expect from the Book of Mormon in ScripturePlus, we are planning to create new content and features designed for the Doctrine and Covenants. The most impressive feature we have coming your way is Historical Settings.

You may already be familiar with the Speaker Identification tab in the Study Panel. For the Doctrine and Covenants year, we are expanding this tab to include not just the Speaker of a given verse, but also the Audience, Date, and Location. We feel this will be especially important as we study the Doctrine and Covenants, where there are so many dates and places to keep track of. As we iterate this new feature, we hope to shortly introduce Virtual Tours in your study of Church History locations. These Virtual Tours will allow users to explore Church History sites with 360 images and more.

Users may be familiar with the BMC edition of the Book of Mormon, where we reformatted the text of The Book of Mormon into paragraphs, headings, subheadings, and red-lettering. We have now completed the new reformatting of the Doctrine and Covenants so that users can enjoy flowing reading experience, while highlighting the names of deity in the text.

As with the Book of Mormon, we plan to publish new images and videos that are relevant to the Doctrine and Covenants. We have also gone through General Conference talks to curate some of the best quotes that expound and comment on specific passages in the Doctrine and Covenants

International Efforts

Book of Mormon Central has teams in both Spanish and Portuguese. Each individual team, in addition to translating much of the content being produced in English, will be producing original video series to serve members of the Church in various parts of the world. These projects include

• Come, Follow Me with Pepe Valle
• Te lo cuento en diez
• Por fé y estudio
• Ven, sígueme for kids
• Q&A with Lucas Guerreiro

Conclusion

The Doctrine and Covenants year of Come, Follow Me is going to be full of deep, engaged learning. Book of Mormon Central is excited to build enduring faith in Jesus Christ by making the Doctrine and Covenants accessible. comprehensible, and defensible to people everywhere.