General Conference hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s still a marathon of four or five two-hour sessions in two days. It’s still a parade of old and older senior leaders walking up to a pulpit and delivering a talk. There are very few graphics, videos, or other visual aids. We see a few women and a bit of diversity in the speakers now. I’ve read more than a few posts offering suggestions and proposals to spice up the presentation or tailor it to a 21st-century audience. Let’s just go all the way and talk about reasons to end it entirely (as has been done with LDS pageants and the Scouting program) and do something else. Let’s just abolish General Conference.
Some Reasons to End It
First, it’s too long. By Sunday afternoon, most listeners (for those still listening) are thinking, “Let’s just get this over with.” Oddly, recent moves made Conference longer, not shorter. The Saturday evening session, previously Priesthood then something else, is now just another general session, making five of them in two days. Things need to move in the other direction.
Second, it has displaced traditional sacrament meeting topics at the local level. Only in the last ten years or so has it become routine to assign a Conference talk as the topic for an adult sacrament meeting speaker and often also for a non-Sunday School second-hour lesson. We really need to get back to a topic-focused Sunday — teach the gospel, one topic at a time, rather than a series of regurgitated Conference talks. Another problem with this system is that the inclusive, progressive talks that do make it into Conference are often overlooked by ever-more-conservative local leadership, who select primarily the most conservative talks for local assignments. I imagine most Utah local leaders are just drooling over Kevin W. Pearson’s talk but are likely to simply ignore Elder Christofferson’s talk.
Third, the Church really needs to keep the attention of the younger cohorts, those coming of age and eligible to serve missions as well as the 20-to-40 demographic. The 19th-century format of General Conference is just Way. Too. Slow. for that group. At times, Conference seems more performative than substantive. The choir doing their thing with a jazzed up Mormon hymn. Sonorous prayers. Predictable talks on predictable topics. The sustaining of LDS leaders. The announcement of new temples. The closing address of the President proclaiming some variation on “this has been a wonderful Conference.” Two speakers could drop dead with heart attacks and it would still be pronounced a wonderful Conference.
Let’s shake things up and just get rid of Conference.
Alternatives
Instead, have a weekly fireside-like presentation streamed every Sunday at 6 pm Mountain Time. Sometimes an apostle, sometimes a couple of Seventies, sometimes an auxiliary presidency. Throw in a non-leadership speaker from time to time, even a non-LDS speaker. I think we the listeners would be more awake and focused. Instead of speaker 17 of 30, the featured speaker would be just that, the one featured speaker, and would get more attention from listeners. And it would give active LDS something to do on Sunday evening that was churchy and sabbath-compliant.
Once a month, maybe make it focused toward youth or young adults. Once in a while you could make it a first showing of this or that 30-minute video put out by the Church. Mix it up a bit. Over the course of a year, you can still give every one of the Big 15 two talks per year and half the Seventies and auxiliary leaders a talk each. And the attention of those listening would have to be higher than we’re getting with the current set up.
Another advantage: the presentations would be more topic-focused and productive. Something I’ve noticed in General Conference over the last few years is that too many senior leaders end up telling stories about the grandkids and stories about their ancestors and stories about this or that random encounter, then trying to somehow tie the story to the gospel through a stretched analogy. I think that correlates with the aging of our senior leadership, now in their 80s and 90s as opposed to (two generations ago) their 60s and 70s. Really old people think and talk a lot more about the grandkids and great-grandkids (who are young and energetic and fun) and their dear departed ancestors (who they will shortly be joining). Is that really what we need to hear twice a year in Conference? Maybe a focused fireside system would cut out some of the personal reminiscing and focus more on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Less Is More
There have been some “less is more” moves in the last few years. Two-hour church. Getting rid of Scouting. No more pageants. Obviously, I doubt the leadership could or would totally jettison General Conference as I suggest above. Alternatively, how about making one of the two annual Conferences a leadership training weekend, inviting bishops and stake presidents only, for one day of talks and one day of training seminars or breakout sessions? Local leadership really needs some serious training. Everybody else, you and me, we get a church holiday to go visit family or just take a hike in the hills. Use some of that Hundred Billion Dollar Fund to buy those local leaders a plane ticket or two plus meals and lodging for some serious training once a year, and sort of a paid vacation at the same time. Cut the other semi-annual Conference down to one day, two sessions. Less is more.
I think General Conference has lost a lot of its effectiveness and even relevance. Some members listen (out of a sense of duty) and other just blow it off entirely. We need to shake things up a bit. Change is good. Maybe you can come up with some other alternatives.
Wheat & Tares 
With streaming, people have way more opportunities to hear from leadership than before (ie regional conferences, face-to-face, etc). I agree the purpose it serves is just not relevant anymore.
In addition to your point about the speakers being in their 80’s and 90’s – the senior apostles been giving talks in GC every six months for nearly 40 years! Not to mention everything in between. And, in those forty years, they no longer lead ordinary lives because they are full-time church leaders. No wonder they are full-on out of material.
But, but, what would they do with that ginormous conference center?
I agree with the idea of seriously reforming General Conference. You’ve stated the obvious reasons. But like a lot of things from the Church there is the awesome power of tradition to deal with. And the power of sentimentality.
Whether you are a TBM or a PIMO or an X, you recognize that the Church’s better days seem to be behind us. Think about the activities we used to all do that we no longer engage in (dances, road shows, Scouts, etc.). It simply isn’t what it used to be. But the one constant holdover is GC. I have a feeling that if we lose GC we might discover we actually miss it because it represents the Church we grew up in more than anything else we do.
General Conference as a concept is great. There is tremendous value in all of the church “gathering” and learning together regularly. The advent of streaming technology and accessibility of GC is a big plus in the ability to do this. Definitely don’t just cancel GC.
However, there is a lot of validity to the assertion that the way we do GC is outdated and stale. I don’t have a lot of interest in binge-watching GC for the whole weekend, but I like taking in the Sunday Session with cinnamon rolls. The question then is, “what can be done to make GC great again?” I have a few ideas and would love to hear other folks’ ideas.
1. Could you run GC with the same structure as a music festival or academic conference where there are multiple stages or conference rooms for the various talks? You could theme the topics or speakers to encourage people to tune in to things that inspire them. We have plenty of GA’s and other highly interesting members to fill multiple parallel streams.
2. I get tired of the music. The hymns are beautiful, but the MoTabification of all the musical numbers makes them all sound the same. I’d love some non-traditional choirs and ensembles to provide music. How about Gladys Knight’s choir for one of the sessions? How about a strings ensemble from BYU? How about inviting traditional Polynesian a-capella groups for another session?
3. How about letting international speakers speak in their native language? The English-speaking world can do with occasional translation or subtitles.
4. Are there opportunities to change the format for some of the conference items away from the lecture format? We have been moving toward more interactive teaching and council formats in other teaching atmospheres (Gospel Doctrine and Ward Council e.g.), can this be done in a large conference format? Perhaps using visual aids would help–as much as we bemoan powerpoint, it is powerful. How about seeing graphs and charts to accompany discussions?
I’m sure there are lots of ideas, but GC has a lot of potential for improvement.
A conference is usually a meeting where discussion happens. At least that’s what it is in the real world of business, science, or education. People get together and exchange ideas. General Conference is a sit and get with NO discussion of anything. Then to add insult to injury, it’s now become the topics for sacrament meeting for the next six month. There is a remote possibility that someone will give their own interpretation of a topic during their sacrament talk but it’s been my experience that they usually just read the GC talk or quote from it as they explain what it means. The bottom line is nothing new in Conference or sacrament meeting. With all the problems in the world that could be addressed, we just get well worn platitudes, stories, and general admonitions about things with no tie to real life. It makes it very comfortable to “be religious” on Sunday and forget about it all on Monday.
So the biggest problem with General Conference is the fact that there is no discussion at the conference. With all the problems in the world that saints could use guidance on, the “revelations” have to do with the name of the church or some procedure about meetings or a wishy washy statement about gays, racism, or a political issue that gives no answers and fires up everyone on both sides of an issue.Getting rid of GC will not solve any of those kind of problems but you can bet there won’t be any kind of general discussion within the church confronting issues the membership and church face today.
Dave, you win Best Post Title Ever.
My suggestion would be to cut General Conference down to one Sunday morning session twice a year. Then we could use Dave’s idea of fireside. Weekly might be a bit much, but if we made them representational to the membership, we might be able to get people interested. For example, since 50% of the membership is single, half the speakers should be single. Since more than half of the church is outside of the United states, more than half of the speakers should be from outside of the United states. Since more than half the church is female, more than half the speakers should be women. A single Hispanic woman could check 3 boxes at once to free up some extra weeks for GAs.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Elisa said, “With streaming …” I was going to note in the OP that the advent of streaming was a significant change in how the members experience General Conference. Before the Internet, it was largely only those in Utah or Idaho who either attended in person or saw it on a local television broadcast experienced Conference in real time. Most other members just read the talks in the Ensign. Conference was not a real “coming together” experience until more or less the turn of the century.
Doubting Tom, I’m sure the renamed Salt Lake Business Center would be a great place for MLM gabfests. We could allow other denominations to host their own conferences there. Movie night for families?
squid, “I get tired of the music.” I can feel your pain.
I think that General Conference can be a helpful tool, but like all tools, it needs to be sharpened every once in a while to maintain its usefulness. Some suggestions:
1) Hold General Conference in other locations beyond the Conference Center. I would LOVE for some sessions to be held in the old Tabernacle again. The acoustics are definitely better. They could also use the Assembly Halls of some of the older temples since they’re not used much nowadays.
2) The Saturday Evening Session should alternate between different audiences. It used to alternate between a women’s session and a priesthood session, but I think that the session should be extended beyond just gender. Maybe there should be a session for YSA’s, the elderly, different ethnicities (Polynesian, Hispanic, etc…), or even for countries/regions. The epistles in the New Testament were written for Saints in different ancient locations with counsel that was fine-tuned for specific audiences, so GC sessions should do the same.
3) Provide subtitles instead of dub for foreign speakers. I don’t want to sound like the stereotypical anime fan (“subs not dubs”), but there’s something about hearing a foreign language that dubbing cannot replicate. When they experimented with native languages in 2015, I was SOOO disappointed that the speakers were dubbed over with bland intermountain English.
4) Use more diverse groups and repertoire for the music. I fully agree with squidloverfat that alternating between the Tabernacle Choir, MTC Choir, BYU Choirs, and some choir from a random Utah Stake can get really tiring.
While my first thought does not apply to General conference, the trouble with “less is more” is that with the church, I have noticed that it really is just less. I have seen the church make cutbacks in activities, in meetings, in time spent together over 70 years. The cutbacks of time spent in the church building have destroyed any feeling of community. So, in case of wards, less is just less. We no longer know ward members or can make friends at church.
So, maybe conference should have been the first cut.( : Because staying home in pajamas doesn’t build community.
I do totally agree with you that we need to do conference differently. But, maybe it it was just not a borefest that would solve things. Limit to one geriatric speaker per session. I am sorry, but at 70 I need a speaker with more energy than your average 90 year old. My attention span just doesn’t get me through anyone over 80 whom I have already heard from twice a year for 40 years, and then been forced to hear regurgitations of their talks for the next year. Call it age discrimination, if you want but I need more variation in topics and speakers and a faster speaking pace than is currently offered. That change gives us lots more speakers from the seventy, lots more speakers from the auxiliary presidency. So much more diversity and more women.
While they are at it, they could balance the number of male and female speakers. And I don’t care if there are more men to chose from in church leadership. The answer to that is put more women in church leadership.
And, I know the 15 would feel slighted that only 5 of them get to speak per conference, but that is still more than we hear from women currently.
So, that is another change that would help.
Or maybe while talks are edited by correlation, they could just be sent back with instructions to make it interesting and not so deadly boring.
I like the GC tradition, and that tradition, coupled with the “special occasion” feel make it a time that many people actually take the time to watch GC. The church has been doing face-to-face events for a while now, so I’m sure they have numbers as to how many people watch GC and how many watch these other similar events. I suspect there is a large difference. Going to a weekly (or even monthly) fireside will result in the same 5% of the members watching all of them while the rest (me) watch Dr. Who with our families.
All that said, I absolutely believe less is more. I think this last conference will be the last time I ever watch 5 sessions. Because I’m steeling myself to sit through 10 hours of conference, I start the very first session distracted and disinterested, and it only goes downhill from there. I could get on board with as many as 3 total sessions, provided they can find a few ways to liven things up a bit. (Dear COB, have you ever watched a TED talk?) If we’re going to stick with the established format, then 2 sessions on Sunday should be sufficient. I want conference talks from people that are so passionate about what they have to say that their message is bursting out of them, not a nonagenarian who prefaces their talk by mentioning how many GC talks they’ve given and how they’re out of things to say. (Yes, both GBH and TSM have said that in conference.)
How about we abolish your petty blog instead. Pathetic. Unsubscribed. God bless.
Scott Cox
I love the idea of eliminating General Conference. In the 1800s, the internet didn’t exist and travel was slow and expensive, so having a conference twice a year made sense. However, with streaming, there is no longer a need to continue the practice.
My feeling is that the Church already has 2 hours per week. That’s 104 hours per year. That should be more than enough time for them to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and whatever other messages they want to present to membership (unfortunately, many of these “other messages” will inevitably end up being problematic inasmuch as they divert from the gospel of Christ). In my mind, having evening firesides every Sunday in lieu of GC is kind of like going back to 3 hour Church (does anyone really want to go back to 3 hour church?). Yes, the presentations would come from Church HQ, so hopefully they would (sometimes) be better quality than what is often produced at the local level, but again, I’m really thinking 2 hours a week is more than enough church for most people. I have serious doubts about how many members are going to tune into weekly 6 p.m. firesides anyway (and, yes, I’m including the members who will stream/read the broadcast at some other time in my estimate).
One idea I have is to devote one sacrament meeting per month to replace GC. An obvious way to do this is to eliminate the monthly high council Sundays, which have generally just been terribly useless meetings in my opinion. Instead of high council Sunday, we’d still pass the sacrament in the chapel, but the body of the sacrament meeting could be whatever the Q15 wants to stream to membership in lieu of a biannual GC. Yes, this would only give the Q15 12 hours instead of I guess the current 20 hours they have with the 2 GCs per year, but that’s honestly probably enough. Church leadership needs to learn to prioritize and focus the messages they present to membership. As has been mentioned, many of the GC messages are quite boring as it is, so it seems like there is plenty of time that can be cut from the GC talks anyway. Again, I really like the idea of fitting the replacement for GC into sacrament meeting time since I really do think 2 hours of church per week is *plenty* for most people. I am hesitant to reduce the time given to local speakers (that is, if we can actually free up local speakers to speak on topics of their choice instead of rehashed GC talks). That’s why I’m using high council week each month for this–the high councilor that speaks each month isn’t normally a member of the local congregation anyway.
One other benefit of using sacrament meeting time for the GC replacement is that it could remove one of the reasons church leadership has for assigning rehashed GC talks in sacrament meeting. I assume that one of the main reasons that sacrament meeting speakers are assigned to speak on GC talks is because leadership assumes so many members don’t watch/read them the first time around, which is actually probably true for a very large percentage of members, even for those member who regularly attend sacrament meeting. If the GC replacement were to be actually streamed into sacrament meeting, a meeting that most active members attend anyway, then perhaps we can eliminate the rehashed GC sacrament meeting talks since Church leadership knows that most of the members that they will ever reach heard the talk the first time. There simply would no longer be a need for assigned sacrament meeting talks on GC talks–well, leadership may have other reasons to do this still, but it would at least be one less reason to continue this awful practice.
Thanks for the additional comments, everyone.
Southern Saint, “Hold General Conference in other locations …” Yes, why not take a half dozen GAs to Mexico or Brazil or Japan and broadcast a session or two from there? The local members would just be thrilled.
Anna, yes sometimes less is just less.
Scott Cox, let me think about that. … Okay, done thinking. No, I won’t abolish the blog. Please come back sometime with a more constructive comment.
mountain climber, I hadn’t thought of streaming a short session into a sacrament meeting from time to time. That would work fine. And I, too, shudder when High Council Sunday rolls around.
When I pull back and look at the church from a 30,000 foot level, it isn’t scaling well and hasn’t been for quite a while. This is the challenge of any growth organization. What were it’s strengths, what drove growth at the previous inflection point eventually turns into a liability, the organization lapses into risk aversion, all dynamic elements fade and the organization falls into decline. This is well researched in management and organizational behavior literature. It seems to me the problem is compounded if the organization is conservative by nature; meaning, when the organization mistakes its core values as being incontrovertible when really many of the values become staid, lack usefulness and utility and lose meaning. What was good for grandpa is not always good for grandchild.
Conference used to be much longer if we go back to the 1970’s, starting with general sessions on Thursday and stretching through Sunday, two or three sessions a day I think. I almost want to say there was a time when every general authority was afforded the opportunity to speak, but I may be incorrect. I think the speakers may have been a little looser then as well. I am guessing maybe there was more humor and more unscripted sermonizing. Ask anyone who was of age and listened to LeGrand Richards speak in conference for evidence of that. There was a reason for this. With no internet and more barriers to publication and distribution of information, it seems to me general conference was a twice yearly clearing house of information. (The annual statistical report took nearly as much time to give as a talk did and provided much more detail.) There are half the number of sessions now compared to then, but today general conference is still too long, and its utility is unclear.
It’s not just that conference is too long and too boring (it’s always been that), it’s that the church has saturated everything with conference talks. At best nearly all conference talks contain okay messages, for the most part, but none offer much in terms of theology or unique thought or original insight (cough, cough, Elder Bednar, cough, cough). Most talks are terribly generic and forgettable. Yet, for the last several years, at least, conference talks have become the teaching manual for elders quorum meetings and for all church talks. “I was asked to speak on Elder Oaks’ conference talk….” Yawn, every, yawning some more, single week at sacrament meeting. So you go from a conference talk rereads in sacrament meeting to a lesson in priesthood that is more rereading of a conference talk. It’s completely mind numbing and it is killing our ability to be religiously creative when teaching lessons and killing useful and enlightening debates on differing points of the gospel. There was a time in my life when high priests lessons (depending on the instructor) were actually interesting and quite lively. Today church talks and EQ lessons are as exciting as if we were to go to the cemetery every Sunday.
As others have noted, we need a change in format. The Q15 should find ways to more directly engage members, particularly younger members and women. The Q15 need to be brave enough to subject themselves to the difficult questions younger members and women have today, and our senior leaders need to find better answers. The Q15 need to put themselves on the firing line, mono-y-mono, with more members, and invite the really hard questions in more authentic settings. The scripted Face Book live sessions don’t count. As one of my children said to me a while back about that format, they never talk about the things I want to talk about. They speak to softball questions and there are never any rebuttals. She found those events far too staged to be useful.
Dave B: So you start out with “Abolish GC,” then end up at “Defund GC.” Maybe that’s always how these radical propositions go. Well played.
Scott Cox: Oh brother. Protip: actually read the post before dusting off your feet next time, although based on your email, I suspect you have really dusty feet.
BigSky: Don’t kill me, but the phrase is “mano a mano” which is Spanish for “hand to hand.” (You used it correctly in context). Just a quick public service announcement about what the words are.
As to how to improve General Conference, I think these are all great suggestions. I agree with those who say you have to retain it as a tradition, and traditions mean something to organizations and communities, but you absolutely have to make some changes that make sense, too. I’m 54, and I do not have the patience for 10 hours of increasingly-conservative yet nearly indistinguishable vanilla church talks in one weekend. I don’t have the patience for 10 hours of binge watching of a fantastic TV series in one weekend either. At some point, life is just too short. If we want people to come to Christ, we can’t violate the Geneva convention in the process.
Every medium has its natural lifespan, and this one is dying. I’m not saying the Church should start putting out TikToks (although the Black Menaces are doing the Lord’s work on that medium), but it’s important to understand the limits of the medium. If I were in charge (which is rich because GC lost me years ago–I’d rather watch paint dry–paint that then turns out to be a Trump 2024 sign when it dries–but here goes). I would use Saturday as a rotating training day. I would limit GC to one Sunday morning session for all, keeping up the cinnamon roll tradition. If they really can’t help themselves, make it every 3 months, IDK. The firesides are a neat idea because they also have a long tradition in the Church (weren’t they copied from FDR’s WW2 fireside chats on the radio?), or create some streaming content for families to use for FHE. Or create streaming content for quarterly or semi-annual training by group (Primary, Youth, Adults, lather, rinse, repeat). I would also make damn sure that there was equal male/female representation in the one GC we had, or as close as possible, because it’s ridiculous at this point the baby steps that make it completely clear where the priorities are. If they have to have a second session of some sort, maybe do “report out” session from various church programs (Mission, Universities, Curriculum, Welfare, Temples) so that these areas can inform members about changes and plans for the future which would increase interest and alignment.
I love the Sunday Morning Broadcasts of the Tabernacle at Temple Square; with thoughts by Lloyd Newell. Long before Lloyd, I was listening then. The reason I bring this to mind is that (for me personally) I internalize more – and am touched more – by this concise 30 minute program; than I ever have been in any LDS General Conference. I can no longer imagine why someone would think that 10 hours of the “same old, same old” – delivered in the well practiced monotone and funeral like cadence is really necessary. But, to each their own. As Steve Martin says to John Candy (Del Griffith) in Planes, Trains and Automobiles – “I could tolerate any insurance seminar for days…..I sit could sit there for hours as they drone on and on…with a big smile on my face…..and people would ask How do you do it??…….and I would answer…Because I’ve been with Del Griffith…..” Or, because I’ve been exposed to an entire weekend of General Conference….for decades. Do we honestly believe that young people are tapping in for 10 hours? I don’t think so….
It feels like GC has become an industry in and of itself. Deseret Book promotes conference journals and activity books. Conference talks are written and refined for months in advance, leaving little or no room for immediacy. I assume speakers are trained to deliver their talks in the dreaded “conference style”, that deadly monotone guaranteed to put you to sleep after a lunch break. Conference is hyped for weeks in advance. Then, as noted up-thread, these highly scripted and generic-feeling addresses are used for sacrament meeting talks, EQ and RS lessons. It definitely feels like we’ve run out of material.
Here’s an idea, since we have that huge conference center: twice a year on conference Saturday, have a cultural extravaganza – concerts, dance, celebrations, whatever. Not as a “missionary opportunity”, but as a real event to look forward to. Sunday, a two-hour session of talks that are current and “alive” and reflective of member demographics. Sacrament meeting talks go back to doctrinal topics, EQ and RS spend more time on local issues, needs, and planning in their meetings.
I would love a poll of how many hours people (and their families) actually watch/listen of conference. (That weekend or later vs reading the talks or or hearing them beat to death in rs/eq/sacrament.)
I used to make my kids watch Sunday morning sessions with 3-5 special chosen words that they got candy when they noticed them said. Now as teenagers there is no way they would watch even that so it is simply a “free weekend” for them.
I realize this is an apples-and-oranges response, but here goes. About 25 years or so ago RLDS leaders realized the familiar evening format to our week-long World Conference (held every 2 years) had grown stale. Daytime was still needed for legislative sessions, but evenings featured one sermon after another: Sunday for FP, Monday for president of the 12, Tuesday for presiding bishop, Wednesday for presiding patriarch-evangelist, and Thursday for the 70s. Friday featured a hymn sing and, to be honest, I don’t remember what Saturday was–probably some kind of wrap-up to the week.
Now Community of Christ World Conference (held every 3 years) features evening worship services celebrating and utilizing diverse cultures and people from around the world. The president of the church still speaks on Sunday night and there’s a joyful music festival on the last night (usually Friday).
Today it’s hard to believe we used to have one older, white guy after another preach a 45-minute sermon. Oh, and thanks to the pandemic, next April’s conference will mark 4 years since the last conference. Nothing should last forever or be set in stone.
I thought this past General Conference was one of the best in years.
To rally for abolishing General Conference seems both unrealistic and excessive. Seems like something to post for the sake of igniting predictable comments from a predictable audience.
I’d like to see the institution relocate General Conference to different parts of the world like a traveling circus or an annual Olympics. It would diversify and remedy the LDS Establishment’s culture problem.
@Angela C, “don’t kill me?” I would never ponder the thought. But I will thank you! [big smile] My first (that I know of) Spanish malapropism. Thank you for caring enough to help me learn.
How about a hybrid of some of other folks’ comments:
Stream it – watching it on tv on a Sunday morning wearing pajamas in your living room while eating cinnamon rolls really MUST be retained.
Once a month – third Sunday each month sounds good. (High Councilors and recently returned missionaries are off the hook.)
Limit it to one hour.
Diverse speakers – with talks run past a focus group.
Diverse music.
Talks not to be regurgitated in Sunday School and Sacrament Meeting.
It feels like GC has become an industry in and of itself. Deseret Book promotes conference journals and activity books. Conference talks are written and refined for months in advance, leaving little or no room for immediacy. I assume speakers are trained to deliver their talks in the dreaded “conference style”, that deadly monotone guaranteed to put you to sleep after a lunch break. Conference is hyped for weeks in advance. Then, as noted up-thread, these highly scripted and generic-feeling addresses are used for sacrament meeting talks, EQ and RS lessons. It definitely feels like we’ve run out of material.
Here’s an idea, since we have that huge conference center: twice a year on conference Saturday, have a cultural extravaganza – concerts, dance, celebrations, whatever. Not as a “missionary opportunity”, but as a real event to look forward to. Sunday, a two-hour session of talks that are current and “alive” and reflective of member demographics. Sacrament meeting talks go back to doctrinal topics, EQ and RS spend more time on local issues, needs, and planning in their meetings.
I was starting to think along the lines of combining a few of the ideas, then Sasso beat me to it. And I think he picked really good ones.
Excellent post, Dave. Conference really needs to be tinkered with. What’s interesting to me is to think that surely the Church is tracking real-time engagement with it. I would be shocked if the numbers show improvement. I wonder how they’re framing it, internally. Or I guess that’s probably a dumb question. No numbers are likely to be shared that show a bad trend, so there are probably calls from the Q15 for some data that shows a good thing, and the people who keep the numbers dutifully produce a report showing the hopeful trends that they carefully extracted from the overall bad trend.
Anna said this: “Or maybe while talks are edited by correlation, they could just be sent back with instructions to make it interesting and not so deadly boring.”
Just taking off on this idea, what if speakers’ talks had to be submitted to a review committee/person/group/whatever who would check stuff like the following:
* Have you already told this story in the past five years? Multiple times?
* Does your story just make you look like an unreliable narrator? Does it seem unlikely to be true?
* Is your story going to make the people suffering from OCD and scrupulosity more miserable?
* Is your talk half quotes from one chapter of scripture? (Looking at you, Henry B. Eyring.)
* Is your talk maybe plagiarized?
Speakers whose talks had these or a host of other problems that could be checked for would lose their time (i.e., bad parts of a talk would be cut out, leaving time for other speakers) and that time would be taken up by non-octogenarian non-white non-males.
Really, though, I like the more radical proposals.
It sounds like what a lot of you need to be pushing for is abolishing High Council week. Maybe my stake is the weird one, but we only have 5 “High Council weeks” this year. The speakers include all the of the HC, as well as the stake RS, YW and Primary presidencies.
I’d be in favor of one Saturday session for leadership training (stake and ward councils). The evening session should rotate… one for youth, then one for primary, one for adult sisters, one for adult brethren, etc. Keep it fresh and interesting by changing it up. Sunday, one two hour session.
As far as finding more women speakers, I don’t accept what I’ve heard in the past that there “are only 9 sisters” in general leadership. Each organization has a board, invite those leaders to speak, as well. Heck, invite a stake RS or stake YW president from some far flung land to speak, that would be interesting to hear.
I’m in favor of keeping conference semi-annually because it gives people a break at the local level (planning sacrament meetings, preparing lessons, performing music, etc.). not everyone wants a break, I guess, but I sure love the break in routine.
Maybe if the format of conference was changed, our leaders wouldn’t feel the need to plagiarize/give a platform to fringe theologians.
The easiest thing to do is to skip all sessions and not carry an ounce of guilt about it.
Listening to conference the weekend of doesn’t matter anyway. We’re just going to be slowly digesting the most authoritative and orthodox parts in the form of sacrament meeting talks and RS/EQ lessons anyway. Why be bored with it twice?
And yet, all of my TBM family and friends gush, just gush, over every conference about how it is the best one yet. They just keep getting better and better in their minds. A couple of Saturdays ago, I bumped into a member from our ward up in Park City who wished me and my family a “wonderful conference weekend.” Sorry, there is nothing wonderful about sitting for six hours on Saturday watching a bunch of uninspiring old guys ramble on with the same old talks and the same old format. There is nothing to celebrate about conference weekend.
And that is why my family and I were up in Park City. Almost every family gathering on my wife’s side, my wife’s mom asks what conference talk was our favorite. It is taboo to have an unfavorite. Taboo to react to the conference talks with any modicum of criticism or negative speech. It is all just so good and true.
I guess, when you spend your whole life mentally hunkered down thinking that you know the truth and the so-called world around you is misled and prone to persecute you for “knowing” the truth, you come to love the feeling of conference confirming your deep-seated biases and providing you a refuge from perceived, but non-existent, persecution. That world!! So wicked!! That church. So holy! As I heard my mom once express one conference weekend with near tears in her eyes, “oh, these men, they’re just so righteous.” She just loves to hero-worship. But the emperor has no clothes. They’re only righteous because they’ve long crafted an image of being these righteous guys. They wear the suits, work long on their facial expression and speech delivery, are old (big-time culture of elder worship in the church), claim they represent what’s in the scriptures by generous proof-texting in their talks, and give sermon after sermon. All words, no actions. And that repeated image generated by conference makes them the most righteous men (not women) on earth. Time to end the facade.
@Travis – Your comment that this blog contains “predictable comments from a predictable audience” sparked my interest. A wonderful author, Timothy Egan, wrote about his pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome along the Via Francigena. It is a route that pilgrims have taken for centuries, some to show devotion, others to find faith. Egan describes himself as “a skeptic by profession, an Irish Catholic by baptism, culture and upbringing – lapsed but listening.” He is, in other words, one of the thousands of pilgrims along the trail, and he describes the wide diversity of seekers he encounters. We here at Wheat & Tares are walking a similar pilgrimage – some are true believers, others have lost trust or faith, and some are seeking to regain what they’ve lost. I love the diversity of opinions I find here. Wheat & Tares is part of my personal Via Franciegena.
I’m finding a general trend which I find a tad disturbing. Although I can understand that GC has gotten repetitious to many, and they don’t relate to our rather aged senior GA’s, especially some of the Apostles, there seems to be an expectation to be entertained more than instructed and/or uplifted. Or to reject the ones picked to speak, never mind that the program is by no means arbitrary.
Technology, however, has provided quite a few solutions to attention spans, including simply being able to download sessions to watch later and/or even individual talks. It’s simply not necessary to set aside the sessions times allotted, nor even, as when I first joined the Church, to have to get dressed up like for regular Sunday services and park it at the Stake Center. Or simply read the transcripts if the speaker isn’t all that exciting. Sometimes the one speaking is a great writer but simply isn’t all that good at the delivery; learning to speak in public is very much a developed art, some master it, others endure it. I can well imagine that even such well-known “great” GAs like LeGrand Richards or Spencer Kimball, and when called to full-time Church service, they already had experience in speaking before large congregations such a being a Stake President, were nonetheless nervous, at least at first, at the “Big Room” (the Tabernacle”) and realizing they were on KSL’s “hot mic”.
Besides, it’s not necessary the most glib or entertaining that necessary leaves fond memories or touches the Spirit. I can remember when Nathan Eldon Tanner, in his last conference appearance that I recall, about 40 years ago, could barely get out a brief testimony, so enfeebled was he. Yet I could just FEEL the Spirit as I realized that President Tanner seemed to know he’d soon “put in his retirement papers”.
I do miss the PH sessions which were mandated to be attended, not broadcast, especially over that “dang ol’ Internet”, and going with my boys. 90 to 120 minutes of the boys being uplifted, me being “chewed out”, and hitting the Sizzler afterwards. But that came to an end once my youngest son went away to the “Y”. It was nice to pick up an elderly brother for PH session at one point; simply b/c he had done similar with his sons, but they didn’t live all that convenient to him, and, myself being a convert, I didn’t have that growing up, so he became, for a few years, “Dad” with respect to GC PH session.
This much I can say: some speakers are better than others, some sessions are better than others, but never did a talk or a session conclude and I said to myself, “Gee, THAT was a WASTE of time!”.
Get the muskets loaded – I enjoy reading your thoughts and suggestions but can’t help wondering if we lack confidence in our leaderships’ ability to make these decisions? I personally enjoy conference weekend, I look forward to every talk and to the whole experience whether attending live or at home alone or with my family at their homes. And yes, sometimes I fall asleep during a talk, and thank goodness I can read about it later and look forward to discussing our leaders’ comments in our regular church meetings.