Bryan Gentry is a writer whose work has appeared in university publications, magazines and newspapers for more than 20 years. Originally from North Carolina, he served a mission in Nevada and California before earning an English degree at Southern Virginia University. He is a member of Heterodox Academy, an organization that promotes viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement in higher education, and he contributes to Discourse Magazine on topics of political polarization. He now lives in South Carolina with his wife and their three children. He works as a college communications director and serves as a counselor in his elders quorum presidency.
Enter Bryan…
Most of us have a story about one of “those” talks.
For example, there’s the high councilman who spent most of his time talking about his wife’s pregnancies overlapping inconveniently with his race training. Or an Easter talk that went on for 30 minutes without quoting a scripture. Or one speaker who painstakingly recounted the entire plot of the movie “Groundhog Day,” went overtime, awkwardly side-stepped the movie’s inferred unchastity, and offered just a brief word about repentance meaning every day is new.
I hold nothing against the people who gave these talks, in fact, two of them I count among beloved friends who ministered to me with love. These talks are far from the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of them.
But because so many of us have these stories about talks we’ve heard or talks we’ve given, it’s worth exploring how to not give a talk that people remember for the wrong reasons a decade later. Here are a few ideas gleaned from my own mistakes, talks that made me cringe, and talks that I loved.
Center the Talk on Christ
The easiest way to make sure you give the right kind of talk is to center the talk on Jesus Christ. I’ve never heard anyone gossip about how a talk had mentioned Jesus so much. This advice is consistent with the Church handbook, which teaches,
“Speakers bear testimony of Jesus Christ and teach His gospel using the scriptures. Messages should build faith and be consistent with the sacred nature of the sacrament.”
Nephi provided a good outline for a sacrament meeting talk when he wrote,
“We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ.” (3 Nephi 25)
As you plan a talk, ask if someone who listens to it would see Nephi’s charge in action. If not, make sure you “talk of Christ” more.
For me, a good rule of thumb is to mention Jesus or one of his teachings every two to three minutes in a talk. This should not become a Pharisaical rule, but a reminder that He is the reason we are speaking.
Quote Scripture Early, Quote Scripture Often
Because the scriptures testify of Christ and contain his words, they can help us keep a talk Christ-centered.
Consider this advice from President Ezra Taft Benson:
“There is no satisfactory substitute for the scriptures and the words of the living prophets. These should be your original sources. Read and ponder more what the Lord has said, and less about what others have written concerning what the Lord has said.”
Sometimes we are tempted to lay the scriptures aside and use modern scientific discoveries, popular fiction stories, or the news of the day to teach gospel principles. Those have their place, but they should not replace the scriptures.
If you’re looking for a good example, read a few general conference talks and look at their footnotes, you’ll find that these speakers quote scripture frequently, even when they are using stories from other domains to make their point. If you include scriptures early in your talk and make sure to return to them throughout, your talk will more likely be remembered for its doctrine than distractions.
Keep Stories Short
One way Jesus sometimes goes missing from sacrament meeting talks is that he gets displaced by long, drawn-out stories.
There is nothing wrong with telling a story. Humans crave them. Jesus taught in parables, and some of the most memorable general conference talks use stories to help us visualize doctrine in action. But when a story stretches on with minute details, it might divert the message from Christ-centered to story-centered.
Stories do not have to be long and detailed to make an impact. Consider this: Jesus’s longest parable, the Prodigal Son, is 528 words, taking about three minutes or less for a person to repeat aloud. Other parables were as short as two paragraphs. Many of the memorable stories from general conference talks take about two minutes.
When deciding on a story to put in your talk, see if you can summarize it that quickly. What details can you leave out and still catch interest and teach the principle?
For example, if I wanted to reference my favorite Lord of the Rings quote (when Gandalf tells Frodo, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us”), I would not need to explain what hobbits are, how the ring was made, how it came to Frodo, or the geography of Middle Earth. As Gandalf also tells Frodo, “If I were to tell you all that tale, we should still be sitting here when Spring had passed into Winter.”
Ground Stories in the Gospel
Another tip for making sure your story doesn’t steal the spotlight from Jesus is to ground the story in the gospel topic. You may be tempted to start your talk with an out-of-left-field story that leaves people scratching their heads, wondering, “How will this connect back to the gospel?” And it’s not necessarily wrong.
But it might be easier to keep the story short enough and on-topic if we start out sharing the gospel truth it will illustrate. It’s true that many general conference talks open by going immediately into a story, but many of them start with a testimony or summary of doctrine that tells us what to watch for in the story.
Elder Bruce R. McConkie suggested this makes teaching effective.
“Perhaps the perfect pattern in presenting faith-promoting stories is to teach what is found in the scriptures and then to put a seal of living reality upon it by telling a similar and equivalent thing that has happened in our dispensation and to our people and—most ideally—to us as individuals.”
End on Time
Ending a talk on time is an important yet oddly challenging part of public speaking. I often have found myself with two minutes left in my allotted time and at least 10 minutes of material left. I’ve seen a lot of concluding speakers have to shorten their talks by more than half, but I’ve also seen concluding speakers blow through the end of sacrament meeting like it’s a stop sign in the middle of nowhere.
My current ward encourages speakers to practice their talks beforehand and track how much time it takes, adjusting accordingly. That is a valuable practice. If you’re practicing your talk and finding it too long, there are several handy guides for shortening talks.
But often we have to change the talk in real time because a previous speaker took longer, or it takes longer to get one of our stories across. In this case, it almost never works well to speak frantically and try to summarize every remaining point.
Instead, as you prepare a talk, imagine which parts you could cut entirely if needed. Consider a few different places where you could end abruptly if needed. This will help you close with confidence rather than stumble along and go overtime.
What to Do About Infamous Talks
If you find that your ward features numerous longwinded, non-Christ-centered talks, it’s worth having the ward council brainstorm how to make sacrament meetings more uplifting. We want each person who attends to have their faith in Christ strengthened. If you are not on the ward council, share any concerns with someone who is, because it can help them if they know what members of the ward need.
But there’s also something you can do even in the middle of such a talk, and no, I’m not talking about texting a link to this article to the speaker when it’s time to wrap up.
President Henry B. Eyring once told a story about attending a sacrament meeting with a “terrible talk,” but he noticed his father seemed to enjoy the talk. “His face was beaming as the speaker droned on … through the whole thing he had this beatific smile.”
On the way home, his father said the meeting was wonderful, and then he taught this lesson:
“Since I was a very young man, I have taught myself to do something in a church meeting. When the speaker begins, I listen carefully and ask myself what it is he is trying to say. Then once I think I know what he is trying to accomplish, I give myself a sermon on that subject. … Since then, I have never been to a bad meeting.”
President Eyring’s father showed that an “infamous talk” isn’t the end of the world. If we find ourselves hearing such a talk, we can personally commune with the Lord. But when we give a talk, we can prepare in such a way that those who listen don’t have to tune us out but can have their faith in Christ strengthened by our message.
