As part of Keepa’s ongoing campaign – did you know it had become a campaign? – to improve Sacrament Meeting talks, I thought it might be useful to print short, successful talks from time to time, for us to consider how and why they work. If you don’t like to read long embedded quotations, consider skipping to the discussion of why the talk works, and then perhaps returning to that part of the talk if some point interests you.
This one was given at the October conference, 1909. Remember that at that date, men were called on to speak without notice. Some may have prepared some rough ideas for speaking “just in case,” but the ideal was for them to speak as the spirit directed them.
Continue reading Talks That Work: Charles H. Hart, 1909 →
The interest in – or at least recognition of – our church-wide need for training in public speaking, together with Kevin Barney’s post today on Reading at Church prompts me to offer this additional lesson from the 1966 “Lessons and Activities” book for small MIAs (MIAs with so few members that it made little sense to offer the full program of Beehives, Scouts, etc.). This activity was intended as a presentation to youth and adults of all ages, meeting together, and could easily be adapted to a youth or adult activity today – a bishop could use it as a 5th Sunday lesson in the joint Priesthood/Relief Society meeting, or it could be a combined YM/YW evening. It is illustrated with examples from general public speaking, but would work just as well for typical Sacrament meeting subjects as long as you substituted topical stories that were as unusual, uncertain, familiar, antagonistic, animate, and concrete as those in the original lesson.
Continue reading Speech Training: “How to Interest Our Audience” →
Steve’s recent Big List of things we used to do differently has had me thinking about why some of us are nostalgic for the way things used to be. Some of it is just because we’re old and doddering; some of it is simply because things worked better the way we used to do them. Hence the inauguration of an occasional series of posts about the way we used to do things – not from rosy memory, but from the actual handbooks and lesson manuals we used to use.
In those paradisiacal days – No, wait, that’s rosy memory. Let’s try again –
Continue reading Things We Ought to Bring Back: Speech Training →
For seventy years, “sacrament gems” were a familiar part of the Sabbath routine for Mormon children and adults. These (usually) short pieces of scripture, or sometimes verses from hymns, were part of Sunday School opening exercises, and often marked a child’s first address to the congregation. Sometimes parents drilled children at home through the preceding week so that the child could stand and recite the gem from memory and with clear diction; other times, a frightened or giggling child would stand at the microphone and stammer or bellow each phrase as it was whispered in his ear by a Sunday School worker. Continue reading Sacrament Gems →
Where our past is never very long ago