A remarkable conference-based sacrament meeting

Our ward is similar to many: speakers are typically given a general conference talk to frame their topic for their talks. And the results are similar to other wards’, too. We have some speakers who say, “I was asked to talk about President Monson’s talk from….” And other speakers who did what ours did on Sunday.

This sacrament meeting was particularly delightful in several ways. First, all the speakers (including the youth speaker) were women. That happens once in a while in our ward, just as it happens once in a while that all the speakers are men. Our bishopric doesn’t seem to worry too much about making sure each meeting is gender-balanced, and that’s great from my point of view. (I should point out our youth speaker was awesome, but I’m going to write today about our adult speakers.)

Second, the two adult speakers were former Relief Society presidents from our ward. And I was bishop when they both were called. So you can imagine I was pretty excited to hear from them both in sacrament meeting.

Third, both the adult speakers had been given the same talk as a starting point for their remarks, Elder Holland’s “Laborers in the Vineyard” from last April’s conference. I love Elder Holland, and I particularly loved that talk. If you can’t instantly remember it, go back and have a look; you’ll be glad you did.

Fourth, although they were both assigned the same talk, each of their talks was strikingly different from the other. Both messages were remarkably complementary without overlap. (I know sometimes things don’t work that way. Sometimes the talks overlap quite a bit. But this was not one of those times.) Each of their talks referenced Elder Holland’s address and the parable that formed the core of his talk, but each one also included personal experiences and testimony to reinforce the message of the day.

And that’s why it was so delightful. Each of these sisters prepared remarks that spoke to her experience in life and in the gospel. Those personal experiences were as important as the words of the apostle they each quoted, because those experiences served as additional witnesses of the truth. For me, that’s a way that sacrament meeting talks can be relevant and revelatory: as I hear the thoughts and life experience of the speaker, I can also find parallels in my own life with which I can connect myself to the message. As I do that, the Spirit helps me connect even more deeply, and I come away edified.

I’m no longer in a position to plan sacrament meetings, but if I were, I think I would rely less on general conference talks. (I did it because a bishop I served with did it, and at the time it was a valuable practice for me, and for the ward where we served.) Of course there’s nothing wrong with focusing on the conference talks; we do it in lots of settings, and it’s good to be reminded of what we’ve been taught in conference. But I think I’d encourage speakers to search the conference talks along with scriptures and other appropriate sources around a specific theme or topic, rather than assigning a talk. (Of course I don’t know what I’d actually do: hopefully I’d listen to the Spirit and do what I was prompted to do.)

But in this week’s meeting, even with just one talk between them, our adult speakers both hit home runs. I was fortunate to be there and to learn from them.

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By the way:

1. Don't forget to check out the last finalists in the Four Centuries of Mormon Stories contest here.

2. And my latest post at Real Intent, "Venus & Mars and the Empty Bucket " is here.

Preparing to speak -- a post script

I blogged last week about how I prepare to speak.

This past Sunday I attended a youth fireside in our stake (the organizer is my home teacher and he invited my wife and me to attend with our kids). One of the speakers is one of my favorite sisters in our stake. She’s a former stake YW president, a former seminary teacher and an all-around great teacher.

She began her talk by telling us that she was a compulsive planner and how she prepared her talk (pretty much as I described my preparation). What she said next surprised me, but I got it completely.

She said that morning as she was praying, the very strong impression she had was that she should throw out her prepared remarks and bear her testimony and listen for inspiration as she spoke. She then said she even tried to print out a copy of her talk, “just as a back-up plan,” but the printer wouldn’t connect to her computer.

And then she spoke beautifully and from the heart.

The point: we can prepare all we want. And we should prepare. A lot.

But in the end, if we listen, the Lord will tell us what to say when it’s time to say it.

(And, by the way, I still believe that’s more likely to happen if we are very well prepared than if we are not prepared.)

How I prepare to speak

Recently I posted on how I teach lessons in church. I thought I'd write about talk preparation, too, since the two are quite different for me. I tend to teach a lesson from an outline, but I'm much more formal in my talk preparations. I'm reminded of two stories I've heard:

One (from his biography) is that Elder Maxwell used to write draft after draft of his conference talks, working to get them right. The other is that I heard (I can't remember where) is that Elder Nelson memorizes his conference talks. I can't tell if that is true (I don't know enough about the placement of the telepromters in the conference center to be sure), but it wouldn't surprise me. Both these examples stress for me the care which these brethren give their conference speaking assignments, and they encourage me to give care to my speaking assignments, too.

I have to say that we get some really good talks in our ward’s sacrament meeting. I don’t think our bishopric gives any specific instruction beyond the assignment of a conference talk for reference. And to be sure we get a few of the “I’m assigned to talk about Elder So-and-so’s talk from last conference” talks. But generally, the talks we hear are a great blend of scripture, doctrine, gospel principle and gospel practice, including elements of the referenced conference talks and personal anecdotes from the speaker.

Our youth speakers are also really great. I remember years ago one of my older sons used to congratulate himself if he spoke for two minutes. Most of our youth talks are 5 – 7 minutes with pretty fair development of their topics. Youth topics tend to lean toward For The Strength Of Youth, Duty To God, Young Women’s Personal Progress Values and True To The Faith topics. But most of the youth seem to have mastered the ability to combine scriptures, quotations of general authorities and their own experience. They draw heavily on their seminary scripture mastery verses as appropriate, as well.

I know there are some who do not like to speak in sacrament meeting. I know this because I’m married to one of them. When I was in a position to assign speakers for sacrament meeting, I purposely shielded my lovely wife mostly to save us both from her pre-talk nervousness. (That said, my wife is also a great speaker; she prepares carefully and prayerfully, and, although nervous, she does a great job. Most recently she spoke in our Stake Conference general session a couple of months ago and was awesome. But that doesn’t mean she liked it.)

I enjoy speaking just as I enjoy teaching. So I’m happy when an assignment comes my way. I prefer to have two weeks (at least) to prepare, though our present ward’s pattern seems to be a week or less. Personally I think longer is better.

If I have a topic or a conference talk, I start there. I’ll read the talk a few times. I have a file of my father’s old high council talks (he was a high councilor for over 20 years and many of his talks and supporting material are organized by subject matter in a file he gave me late in his life). I often consult those. (I would rarely directly use one of my father’s talks because he and I have very different speaking styles, but reading his talks can give me some great ideas.)

I like to give myself a number of days to “cook” on the ideas for my talk. I’ll make a few notes, keep reading the conference talk, look for related scriptures and think of my own life experience as it relates to the talk.

In my view, an idea talk has a number of key elements:

1. Doctrinal foundation
2. Scriptural anchors
3. Teachings of the living prophets
4. Personal experience
5. Personal testimony

As I think about my subject, I’ll try and group my thoughts and material into those five categories. The doctrinal foundations hopefully reveal themselves in the scriptures and the teachings of the living prophets. My personal experience and testimony hopefully help bring relevance to the talk and hopefully make it interesting to listen to.

I like to write my talks word-for-word. (I type them; if I wrote them by hand, no one, including me, would be able to read them.) I write my talks out because I like to play with the language as I write. I like to make use of alliteration, parallel-language lists,simile & methaphor, and sometimes even rhyme to highlight a thought. By writing it out, I can do my best in the creation of the message and crafting of the words. (Not all of those devices make it past the drafting stages; the point of the talk, after all, is not to demonstrate my verbal skills but to bear witness of gospel truth.)

Ideally, I’ll have written a draft or two (or three) a week before I’m to give the talk. I then spend the next week memorizing the talk. Yep, memorizing. I do not memorize scriptures or quotations – those I will always read for two reasons: First, I don’t want to goof up a quotation or a scripture. Second, demonstrating that I am reading those portions sets them apart from the rest of my talk, the part that’s mine. I want everyone to be completely clear when I’m speaking for myself.

When I memorize, it gives me a chance to check the timing and to continue to play with the language of the talk. I try first to commit the flow of the talk to memory, and then the actual words. I practice my talk three or four times a day (often on my long commute to work) the week before I speak.

When I actually deliver the talk, I take only my printed talk to the podium. No scriptures, no other computer printouts or books or magazines. Just my printed talk. My goal is to speak to the audience maintaining eye contact except when I’m reading a scripture or quoting someone. I will often deviate from my memorized text. When I do it’s because I have more or less time than I expected, or because I feel prompted to leave a story out or to put a new one in. (I usually over prepare to minimize what is brand new when I speak, but sometimes there’s new stuff.)

I’m a firm believer that inspiration can strike any time, but that’s just as likely (even more likely) to come during my preparation as during my delivery. If the brethren can prepare their talks in advance for General Conference, I can certainly do the same for sacrament meeting.

Update: Just in case you're looking for more on this topic, I blogged about 18 months ago on things I've learned about giving talks from the Seventy in General Conference, here.

Why was it such a great sacrament meeting?

Two Sundays ago we had an awesome sacrament meeting, and I've been trying to figure out what made it so good. I recall I did stay awake for the whole meeting – not sure of the cause and effect there (did I stay awake because it was a great meeting or was it a great meeting because I stayed awake?). All I know is 1 pm sacrament meeting is really tough on me; I never ever took 1 pm classes in college for the same reason.

In any case, going into the meeting I don't remember anything significantly different from other normal weeks. My wife was away doing stake visits associated with her calling, which is not unusual these days. Reverence in the chapel was about normal – a low moan before the meeting, except at the deacons' bench where the chatter is near constant. The hymns were ok; I enjoy singing the hymns and our chorister has a great sense of tempo. My wife is my favorite of our ward's organists, though her new stake calling keeps her away from playing more than we'd both like. But the organist who played is also excellent.

The sacrament itself was not especially different. Our young men generally do a nice job with the sacrament: prayers are understandable when spoken by the priests, and the young men who pass do so with care. They're about as neat and orderly as 12-15 year boys can be.

Our youth speaker was particularly good. Our ward's priests and Laurels, as a rule, do a great job with talks in sacrament meeting. They are typically closer to ten minutes than five, and are carefully prepared and presented. This one, by one of our priests, was on the blessings of the atonement aside from repentance, and it was really quite a nice talk. It displayed a maturing view of the atonement and careful reading of appropriate scriptures and background material. I remember thinking what a great job the young man had done (and I told him so later).

But the talk that really got to me was our second speaker, who happens to be the wife of our bishop's second counselor. She is a young mom, and I don't know her well. Her talk was on the resurrection, and she spoke from the heart using many personal examples of loved ones she has lost and how her testimony of the Savior's resurrection has informed her view of those events at various times in her life.

I think it was the personal nature of her talk that was compelling to me. It caused me to reflect on my own loss of my grandparents in my youth, and my loss of my parents as an adult, and to think about what comfort the Savior's resurrection offered me (more as an adult than as a youth).

But I think the thing that must have made the greatest impact on me was her repeatedly and convincingly bearing testimony of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that means in our lives – that we will be resurrected, that we have hope of seeing our deceased loved ones again, that we can become free from the physical pains of this world. As she bore testimony (and she did it throughout her talk in a number of different ways), the spirit washed like waves over me. About two thirds of the way through her talk she quoted Joseph Smith on the truth that mothers would again see their babies that had died. (This topic was a tender one for Joseph and Emma as so many of their children died so young.) I could not stop the tears from flowing, nor did I want to.

(Although my tears were unstoppable, they were not emotional tears. I know myself well enough now to know the difference in me between emotion-driven tears (I cry at Hallmark commercials, for goodness' sake) and what, for me, are spiritual tears.)

She was followed by a soloist who sang "I Know That My Redeemer Lives." The soloist is a friend of mine, and I know that he does know that, as well as any of us can, anyway. After the wonderful talk, I could not look directly at the soloist as he sang, or those emotional tears would have gotten to me.

The final talk was not so special to me; one of our full time missionaries was assigned to speak on family history work (it seemed an odd choice of assignments to me), but that was ok. I was still in the glow of the second talk; I felt like I'd had my spiritual main course already and the young elder's talk was just the dessert. When the ward choir finished with one of my favorite hymns, "Thy Spirit Lord Hath Stirred Our Souls," I agreed that indeed it had.

Talk tips from the Seventy

As I've been listening to conference again during my daily commute, I've been impressed by the talks of many of the Seventy. I really enjoy General Conference as a rule, and like many, I have some speakers I typically like more than others.

Through the years I've had more than one opportunity to be the person who selected themes for Sacrament Meetings, and for years I followed the common model to invite people to start with a conference talk in preparing their own. (In fairness, I assigned a topic with a conference talk as a reference, not a talk as topic.)

There are great apostolic talks that I still remember through the years. In October 2000, Elder Hales gave what I still consider to be The Talk on Baptism. Elder Oaks gave a talk on the sacrament in April 1985 that teaches clear truths about taking the name of Christ upon ourselves . Elder Holland's "None Were With Him" provided eloquent comfort for all who stand alone at one time or another in their lives.

Those apostolic sermons are impressive and teach us a great deal. But I think the talks of the Seventy are great models for us as we prepare our own talks. Typically they are shorter – about 10 minutes in length. (Even the apostles speak only for about 15 minutes these days, with members of the First Presidency only taking a little longer.) Often they are focused on one theme, idea or concept. They often include scriptural foundation, teaching of the modern prophets and personal experience to illustrate the point.

For instance, from this conference:

Elder Gong's talk about temple mirrors, family history and temple covenants drew on his own Chinese ancestry, his mother's convert experience, and his own reflections on his family.

Elder Kearon's talk to young men in the priesthood session (and its message easily adapted to all members) spoke of his own boyhood error of disobeying his parents out of laziness and rebellion and the positive scriptural example of the Anti Nephi-Lehis who had buried their weapons of war and rebellion.

Elder Oceda told a story of a father who learned a lesson of humilty after behaving badly with his family regarding family scripture reading.

Elder Jensen's personal story of seeking his testimony as a missionary led to a discussion of the role of the Holy Ghost and his personal story of the loss of a grandson while Elder and Sister Jenser were serving out of the country reinforced his quoted teaching of President Monson regarding the Holy Ghost's role as comforter.

Elder Lawrence used his own experience – as well as Alma's -- to teach about parenting teenagers.

Elder Malm used the object lesson of a hollow tree in Gothenburg, Sweden as a contrast to the healthy path of accepting the blessings of the atonement in our lives through obedience to commandments and the sustaining influence of the spirit.

Elder Mazzagardi's account of his interview with his granddaughter while walking around a lake prior to her baptism allowed him to teach us the dangers of the influence of the adversary.

Elder Arnold's story of his wife's "stupid cow" will help us to remember the value of fences to protect us in our lives.

As I think about future assignments to speak, I'll remember these examples of teaching from personal experience, from the scriptures and from the words of the living prophets.