Monday, June 15, 2009

Unoriginality in speaking

Can somebody tell me when it became completely acceptable for people to simply read General Conference addresses instead of coming up with their own original work when they speak in sacrament meeting? I mean, i assume there was a letter from the First Presidency or something, since it’s occurring so often—so when was it? Was i home sick, or maybe traveling for business on that particular Sunday?

3 comments:

Heather the Mama Duk said...

Wow... that's horrible.

But certainly easy to prepare ;p

Urban Koda said...

Of course on the plus side, if the bishop calls you out for saying anything wrong, you can claim without a doubt that it comes from a higher power than he!!

Keeley said...

Depends on what you mean "Read". I mean, did the person stand up there, quote the entire talk, then sit down?

Or did the person use as the basis of his/her talk one Gen. Conf. Talk and quote from it?

If it's the first scenario, I see the problem....perhaps.

If it's the second, they probably did that because the Bishopric said "This is the Gen. Conf. Talk you need to talk on. Stick closely to the text."

As education counselor in the RS I was specifically instructed to make sure I let the RS teachers know they should teach from the JS manual or the Conf. talk. They should include no (or very limited) other sources unless they were scriptures. The material written is what the teachers are meant to present.

This means that there is extensive quotage from the manual/talk...and this is a GOOD THING. We're MEANT to learn from Conf. talks etc.

For all you know, this is what happened in your sacrament meeting.

And if someone is quoting from conference talks, why the heck are you complaining? Perhaps the Lord inspired them to do so because he was looking at you and was like "OI! You! You didn't pay close enough attention last time I had someone give this talk. So listen up and learn something will ya?"

You don't know. Could be the case. =)