I am blessed to live in a ward which has really amazing Sacrament speakers, consistently, week after week. Seeing how they do things has inspired me to do better. These thoughts represent simply my own personal opinions on some of the rules of preparation that can allow a Sacrament Meeting Talk to do what it is meant to do. Though described as rules, they are not hard and fast. I'm sure some of the best talks I've ever heard have broken one or more of these rules:
So there you are. It's Sunday morning, and you stand in front of a congregation of your fellow Latter-day Saints, freshly rebaptized by the Sacramental ordinance, and ready now to be spiritually fed. By you. Today's Sacrament meeting speaker. They are your neighbors and your friends and your co-workers in the glorious cause of building Zion. According to C.S. Lewis, they are among the holiest sights that will ever be presented to your senses. Daunted? You should be. Your task is important, and you have hopefully taken it very seriously. A talk which uplifts, edifies, engages, and elevates will allow the members of the congregation to feel the spirit. It may even accomplish the most important task of all. It may even inspire us in the congregation to repent, and thereby fully effectuate the promise of the bread and the water which we have just taken. Alma 31:5 teaches that the effective preaching of the word has a more powerful effect upon the minds of the people than the sword. An uplifting Sacrament talk is one of Heavenly Father's most powerful tools. Present it unto him sharpened and clean and ready, and His Spirit will help you to use it true.
A meandering, mediocre, dialed-in performance will, on the other hand, make it just a little bit harder for the members of the congregation to want to come to Church next week. The faithful can persist for week after week of boring Sacrament meetings. But the less faithful? The investigator? The recently baptized member who misses NFL afternoons? The young person struggling with their testimony? Not so much. A boring Sacrament meeting talk is a tool in the hands of Satan. Don't give it to him.
This is not to say that avoiding boredom is your first task. Novelty for the sake of novelty, or entertainment value for the sake of entertaining is not the point. If it were, we could bring in rock music, like some of the other Christian churches are doing. No. Your task is not merely to engage. Engagement for its own sake has no value. You are there to teach. And you need to engage so that we in the congregation might be taught.
So here are some rules you might consider as you prepare your talk.
1. Number one: Organize your talk around a doctrinal premise, not a doctrinal topic. This, more than anything else, will bring focus to your task, as you organize your thoughts, and will ensure that you will sit down from your presentation having actually said at least one thing. And if you actually say one thing, the possibility at least exists that it will be something which was worth saying. A premise is a full sentence. A topic is a word or a phrase. The bishopric member who asks you to speak will likely give you a topic. That is a place for you to start. Now narrow it by choosing a premise. Let's say, for example, that he asks you to speak on faith. There's about a billion things you could say about faith, many of them not even religious. Or, if he is having a particularly good week, he may even ask you to speak on Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's better, but you'll still need to focus. Now, turn that word or phrase into a statement (that is to say: a full --not an incomplete-- sentence) which statement will form the core message of your talk: "Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ invites repentance." Perfect.
You can tell the audience what your premise is right from the beginning, and then discuss it, and then remind them at the end what your talk was about (tell them what you are going to tell them, then tell them, then tell them what you told them), which is a good structure for youth and beginners; or you can build to your premise. Whatever works. The important thing is that, if you choose your premise carefully, you will be teaching doctrine. Boyd K. Packer has repeatedly stated that true doctrine, properly understood, changes behavior, and that the study of doctrine will do more to change behavior than the study of behavior will do to change behavior. If you organize your talk around a doctrinal statement you will be teaching doctrine, which leads to changing behavior, i.e., repentance, which the Doctrine and Covenants tells us, again and again, is the only thing that we should be preaching to this generation.
By way of illustration and example, here are some doctrinal premises, any one of which would make the core of a fine Sacrament Meeting talk: Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ motivates us to repent. Jesus Christ's Atonement allows our repentance to be effective. The Atonement of Jesus Christ allows our will to become more perfectly at one with that of our Heavenly Father. The Atonement of Jesus Christ reconciles, or brings at one, the eternal principles of justice and mercy. The Atonement of Jesus Christ can cause our spirits and our bodies to be brought at one, not only in the resurrection, but during this life. The blessings of the Atonement are available to all who offer up a broken heart and a contrite spirit. The Holy Ghost testifies of Jesus Christ. God is our Father. We are the children of heavenly parents and we have a divine destiny. We believe in being chaste. The Prophet Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ. Because of the restoration, the full blessings of the Atonement are again available on the earth. Joseph Smith was the first Prophet of our dispensation. Gospel ordinances allow us to make and keep covenants with our Heavenly Father, which will bring the blessings of the Atonement into our lives. The Book of Mormon is the word of God. The Book of Mormon testifies of Christ and of His Atonement. We are led by Prophets, Seers, and Revelators. It is only through grace that we are saved. We obey the Commandments to be changed by the Atonement. If you can't think of any premises, look through the Articles of Faith. Or open Preach My Gospel to the missionary discussion chapters, where you will find premise after premise of docrinal truth.
2. Number two: Support Your Premise. No, your talk is not a legal brief, or talking points for a debate tournament. You don't need to pretend the audience contains a skeptic and try to convince her of your premise. But the point of organizing your talk around a premise is to narrow and focus your ideas and thoughts, so that your talk will be about something specific. Having a premise doesn't do you any good if your talk then launches off into several different directions instead of supporting your premise. If you had a High School English teacher who taught you about deductive essays, invoke that format. If you didn't learn about deductive essays in High School, google it. The support for your premise can include scriptures, but if so don't just read the key scriptural passages, give the context and explain the passages. The support for your premise can include quotes from General Authorities or other "famous people", but if so don't give a "talk on a talk" where you simply rehash and summarize an entire text from last Spring's General Conference. Instead, choose quotes that fit your point as precisely as possible, or which say what you want to say more eloquently than you could say it. The support for your premise can take the form of stories, but be careful to use stories from reputable sources, not faith-promoting rumours that can end up tearing down faith when someone hears an altered variation of the same Mormon urban legend a few months later. If you are using stories that are meant to be taken allegorically, and not as factually accurate, make that clear, and choose an analogy that is appropriate. The support for your premise can include lines from a hymn, or poetry. We don't get nearly enough poems in Church anymore. It can include a scene from a well known movie, or a passage from a famous play, but for obvious reasons, choose your movie wisely. Significantly, your premise can find support in questions: "What does it mean to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit?" You aren't in a class setting though, so you'll have to handle such questions carefully, perhaps by discussing your own struggle to find an answer, and what you may have tentatively come to understand.
Unless you are a recently returned missionary giving his homecoming talk, there are no set rules for supporting the premise of your talk. (If you are a recently returned missionary reporting on your mission, then there are set rules: whatever your premise, support it with stories from your mission. That's what your relatives came to hear. And that's what all of us in the congregation are hoping our children will hear. Your talk is a recruitment tool for future missionaries and for member missionary engagement. It took you two years of gruelling labor to come up with 20 minutes worth of faith-promoting stories, and now is your time to tell them, including to a group of Deacons who don't need to know about the gruelling labor, and just need to know that missions are awesome! Tell your stories. Don't blow it.)
But even though there are no set rules, some things do work better than others, and you should be aware of two of them:
First and foremost, know that personal stories, from your own life, or stories from the lives of your own family, or ancestors, will be far more meaningful to you, and therefore far more engagingly told, than will any story you get from any other source. This is so important that it's almost a hard and fast rule. If your entire talk consists of other people's stories, or quotes and scriptures, throw out the middle 1/3 and replace it with something closer to home. There is a brother in my ward who tells a story about an incident which occurred one December evening that he spent at his failed Christmas Tree Lot venture. I have heard that story about three times. It has never failed to make me cry. Brother J is engaged by that story, because it is his story. And so I am engaged as well. I will never forget the first time I heard Brother L, recently released from our Stake's high council, tell his story of growng up in a broken home and being converted to the gospel. His story is so powerful that just hearing it can convert others. Keep it personal. We want to add YOUR TESTIMONY and YOUR WITNESS and YOUR STORY to our hearts, not just be told hearsay from others whose voices we can read at home on our own. Secondly, for scriptural stories, try as much as possible to use stories that come from the life and the teachings and the parables of the Savior. For my money, one of the greatest BYU Devotionals ever given was from Thomas B. Griffiths, The Root of Christian Doctrine, from March 14th, 2006. http://magazine.byu.edu/?ct=view&a=1897.
In that address, Judge Griffiths' spoke about an organized effort by a student Stake over which he presided, to ensure that all of their Sacrament and other Sunday meetings were rooted in the Atonement of Christ. To do so, he encouraged instructors to draw upon Christ's life and teachings in presenting curriculum material, making this point: "When we are talking about [Christ's] life and using the words he said, we are remembering him, and a power comes into our teaching that is otherwise not present."
3. Number Three. Avoid Unforced Errors.
A lot of important points could be made here. I'll stick to some essentials:
- Practice your talk at home, and time it when you practice it. It will almost certainly be longer than you imagined. Giving the last speaker little time to give remarks which he spent just as much time as you to prepare can create spirit-destroying awkwardness in a meeting. Keeping young children squirming in their parents' laps long after the time for the meeting to end has the same effect. Keeping it short will help you to keep it focused and concentrate on the good stuff.
-Do not write your entire talk or you will be tempted to read it, and a talk which is read is lifeless. Write down quotes. Write down scriptural passages. Write down important ideas or your treatment of any potentially delicate issue, that you want to make sure you articulate carefully and correctly. But everything else should be in the form of an outline so we in the congregation can hear you conversing with us, not reading to us. The spirit might direct you to say something you hadn't quite expected to say. This can only happen if you are open to being guided by the spirit, and you won't be open to that if you are controlled by a written text.
- Avoid politics and controversy. Most of us have very strong political viewpoints. Anyone who has read this blog knows I do. And those opinions are very much influenced by my own personal take on the Mormon paradigms which instruct my worldviews. It is certainly appropriate to speak on our Mormon paradigms and the spiritual components of our worldviews in Church, but not in a manner which hints of partisan promotion. When in doubt, don't go there. Not in Sacrament Meeting. Not the time. Not the place. If you are going to quote a famous historical figure who was involved in politics, he or she should be dead. The longer he's been dead, the better. If she died before any one in the congregation was born, she's perfect. On rare occasion, it may be appropriate for the Sacrament Meeting speakers to deal with an issue which has political dimensions, such as freedom of religion, the divine origins of the Constitution, or the importance of civic engagement and awareness. On even more rare occasions, some political topic of current concern which has a clearly moral dimension, on which the Church has taken an explicit stand, might be addressed in Sacrament Meeting. The wise will not volunteer to address these topics or look for opportunities to put their thoughts regarding the same into their talks unless they have been expressly and explicitly asked to do so by the bishopric. If the Bishopric or the Stake leadership feels inspired to have such a topic addressed, let the Bishopric carefully choose the speaker who will address that matter, or let them address it. If you have been tasked as that speaker, find recent Conference Address quotes from the Apostles and the First Presidency on the topic in question to guide your thoughts, and run your remarks by the bishopric ahead of time. Otherwise, choose a gospel premise, not a political premise. Your task is to inspire the congregation; to help them feel the spirit; to strengthen their testimony and understanding of a doctrinal principle of the restored gospel, to motivate them to repent. Not to tell them how to vote.
- No gimmicks. The handbook advises that Sacrament Meeting is not the time or place for visual aids or multi-media presentations. The same is true of other forms of novelty. Some clever method you have found to get your Sunday School class's attention at the beginning of class; or some behavior that might work well in a skit, and might be perfectly approriate and even effective during the second or third hour of church, is not thereby rendered safe for Sacrament meeting. Don't encourage your audience to be like the people of Mars Hill at Athens, who were described in the book of Acts as constantly seeking after "some new thing." Novelty for its own sake has no place in Church. And even novelty for the sake of something important, which might be effectively deployed in Sunday School, still has no place in Sacrament meeting. You are not there simply to engage or entertain. But to engage reverently and for a higher purpose. When a great speaker sits down, her audience will not be thinking about what a great or entertaining speaker she is. They will be thinking about what they learned. (My favorite Roger Ebert movie review is his skewering of the film, The Dead Poet's Society, in which he made the point that, at the end of a truly great teacher's class on English literature, the students would love English literature, not just love the teacher. The same principle applies here. Your talk is about the gospel, not about your skills as an engaging speaker.)
- Know the very first thing you are going to say when you first stand up. Hemming and hawing for the first several seconds will not invite the spirit. Don't start with humour unless you really need to do so to relax yourself, or the audience looks dead tired and you are sure you are good at it, and you are sure you know the bounds of propriety. Most people don't pass all those tests and should just take a pass on the opening joke. Telling us about the phone call from the first counselor and the topic you received is inherently uninteresting. You shouldn't be speaking on a topic anyway, you should have taken the topic you were given and turned it into a premise. Stand up and start saying something that matters.
4. Number Four: Testify of the Atonement and Tie the Atonement into Your Premise. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is the core principle of the Gospel. Boyd K. Packer has called it the very root of our doctrine. The Prophet Joseph taught that all of the other doctrines of the restored gospel are merely appendages to its core truths. Whatever the topic you have been assigned, in order to fully understand that topic, you must understand how it relates to the Atonement. If you are not able to see the connection, then you don't understand the topic you have been asked to speak on as well as you need to. Ponder and pray and make the connection and help the congregation to make it as well. Again, from Brother Griffiths: "If you cannot figure out the link between the topic you are to teach and the Atonement of Christ, you have either not thought about it enough or you shouldn't be talking about it at church. In our limited time in church, we must be talking about the Atonement of Christ." Testify of the Atonement as you conclude your talk. This will make you a prophet, giving revealed truth. Revelation 19:10. Nothing could be more powerful.
5. Number Five. Stay Humble. The members of the congregation who were most influenced by your talk will be those who left the service with an idea in their mind which was put there by the spirit. There is a better than even chance that this concept won't be directly based on anything you actually stated. This doesn't let you off the hook. The spirit won't tell any member of the congregation what the spirit needs us to know if we are trying to puzzle out where you are going or falling asleep during your remarks. All of the foregoing rules still apply, and there may be some members of the congregation who are actually taught what you hoped they would be taught. But remember that that is not necessarily the point. After taking the Sacrament, the members of the congregation didn't stay in our pew to hear you, but to hear the Spirit, through you. Follow these rules, or another set that works better for you, and you may be able to give us that opportunity.
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