The Final Word on General Conference

Hello and welcome to another episode of Inside Out. My name is Jim Bennett and I am here as always with the quite snod Ian Wilkes. Ian, how are you, sir?

I'm doing really well, Jim.

How are you? I'm fine. So I was looking for a funny, obscure, but positive adjective to describe you, and ChatGPT came up with snod.

Oh, okay.

Have you, you ever heard snod before?

No, I've heard of Snodgrass, which is a character, a children's character in a book. Uh, and the character lives in a dump and eats landfill. So not, Not the same, not the same character then. Not snodgrass.

Well, according to this, snod is an old Scots word. Oh, meaning smooth, sleek, or tidy in appearance. Well, calling someone a snod fellow is actually a compliment, like saying they're well put together in a charmingly old-fashioned way.

Well, I'll take that over snodgrass any day.

Yes. Yes. I was not trying to imply that you live in a dump. Yes, I was, I was trying to, but it's interesting when we talk about things that are charmingly old-fashioned.

Yes.

Yes. I think that's a pretty good segue into what we're going to talk about today, which is we're going to recap General Conference, which is in many ways charmingly old-fashioned, in some ways maybe not so charming, but I, I want to give sort of a brief overview here at the outset. I attended two of the sessions in person. The Tabernacle Choir sang at 3 of them, but we had a family wedding on Friday and all of my kids were in town and we had all kinds of other relatives in town. So I ducked out of the Sunday session, which was not hard to do. The conference is, I think, the most popular thing that choir members enjoy doing. And so it's You know, every week when we do a broadcast, there are people that are missing. You have to keep 80% attendance to stay in the choir. So people will come and go and they'll have family vacations or they'll be ill or whatever else it is, and they'll miss a broadcast here or there. And sometimes when you're in the middle of spring break or whatever, the choir can get really quite small and there are a bunch of empty rows. They cover up the empty rows in the back of the Tabernacle with this black fabric so it looks like the choir is full, but the choir fluctuates in size given the experience. But the exceptions to that are the Christmas concerts that everybody wants to do and General Conference that everybody wants to do. And we sing in 3 sessions, and they've started adding international participants to General Conference. So that's an additional maybe a dozen people And so the seats are really, really full. And at one point there was one conference where they actually rotated me out of a Saturday morning session and they just said, your number came up randomly and we need your seat for Saturday morning. So when I went to them and said, would anybody, could you fill my seat if I were to leave Sunday afternoon? And the choir guy, just his face lit up and goes, oh, really? Yeah, that'd be great. So they were happy to see me go. And I did not attend live the Sunday afternoon session, but it didn't matter because you didn't see me in the Saturday morning or the Sunday morning sessions because the camera never gets up to the back row.

Right.

And I had somebody say to me, hey, do you think that the choir has been told? Not to highlight you because you're a controversial figure. And I said, well, if that's the case, then I've been a controversial figure my entire time in the choir because the camera never ever gets up to the back row. So anyway, for all of that, I, so I've, I've watched, I have not watched all the sessions. I've not watched the Saturday evening session, but I've watched the Saturday afternoon session and I watched the Sunday afternoon session after the fact. And I've read the conference talks. And my overall impression— and we'll get into specific talks, I think, and I'm assuming you've got some specific talks that— and I'm also assuming you haven't watched any of conference.

No, I haven't watched conference, but I have reviewed the summaries and I've drilled down into 2 or 3 talks and I've made some specific comments and thoughts and notes on some, some of the talks. But Yeah, I've got a reasonable understanding overview of a summary of the talks.

Okay. Well, so from my perspective, as I sit in General Conference, one of the things that has happened, I think, post-COVID is that church members, maybe not all church members, but me and a lot of people I know have suddenly realized COVID gave us an opportunity to sort of see how much of the church we really missed and how much of the church was kind of unnecessary, how much of the church was just kind of busywork and didn't matter. And the answer to that really is quite a lot of it. And as you go back to conference, conference, the idea of sitting for 10 hours to listen to essays— these are not orations. In the early days of the church, pre-teleprompter, pre-technology, Brigham Young would stand up and he would orate. And that's kind of what got him into trouble on some of his more controversial statements, because he would just He would give these fiery sermons, and sometimes he would go overboard because he was, he was exaggerating for effect. But that whole style of oration has kind of been lost and pasteurized to some degree and sterilized and brought down to the point where, as my uncle used to say, what they're doing is they are reading essays that are written to be read. And it's a different medium from what conference originally was or was intended to be. And now, as I sit through conference, uh, one of the thoughts that keeps coming up, it's, it's a meme, it's a cliché at this point, but it's one of these things where you think, couldn't this just have been an email? You know, can't you get just as much out of conference from reading it, reading it on your own time and reading it at your own pace, than sitting there and having somebody read it to you? And the, the message is, because there are very few times when I can remember that being in conference listening to a speaker has given me sort of more insight and more uplift as to what the speaker is saying than reading the talk after the fact. There are some very notable exceptions. I keep thinking back to, for instance, Bruce R. McConkie's final sermon, where he talked about, in the coming days, I will bathe, I will stand before my Lord, and I will bathe his feet with my tears, but I will not know any more then than I know now that he is God's Almighty Son. And he broke down in tears while he said that, which was so out of character for him, but also just so endearing and so powerful that that's a moment where the actual delivery of the talk enhanced the presentation. And there were very, very few. I can think of one, and we'll get into it when we get into specific talks, but I can think of one where the actual presentation, I think, was necessary, that it wasn't just an email, not something that I could have read later. So I also think back, are you a Shakespeare fan?

A little bit. Yeah.

Do you know the opening to Henry V, the prologue?

I guess I'm not as big a fan as I thought I was. Go ahead.

Well, when I was a freshman at USC, we had to all memorize this, and it's, it's essentially a narrator that comes out and he says, oh, for a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention, a kingdom for a stage, princes to act. And monarchs to behold the swelling scene. How was that? Was that good?

Very good. And pretty good on the accent there, kind of, or almost.

That's a standard stage accent. That's not a British accent per se, but we'll get in. That doesn't matter. But the point is that whole monologue is all about how, wouldn't it be nice if I could show all this stuff to you rather than just talk about it? And later in the monologue, he says, when I speak of horses, imagine that you see them, you know, and, and the whole thing is a lament that, gosh, we, we are confined to this wooden O to just have words to tell you about all these things that we can't show you. And that was true in the 16th, 17th century when Shakespeare was writing. But it's not true now. Now we have all kinds of different media, all kinds of different technology, all kinds of different ways of communicating, and conference is still rooted in this 19th century. I think it was probably better in the 19th century because it, you know, you can still go and see great preachers who are spellbinding to watch. I mean, you go back and watch Billy Graham revivals. Billy Graham knew how to— knew the medium that he was communicating in, and he knew how to hold an audience, and he knew how to keep them engaged with what he was saying, and the presentation was designed for that. And so as I sit in conference, I sit there and I go, there, I— we have to recognize that this format just doesn't work anymore. I'm not sure if it ever worked, but there was a time when I think we tolerated it more because the technology and communication maybe wasn't up to where it is now. But, you know, if you, if you compare conference, for instance, to Music in the Spoken Word, which is done every Sunday, a broadcast by the Tabernacle Choir, first of all, Music in the Spoken Word is a half hour long. It's not 2 hours long. Second of all, there are all kinds of video images overlaid over the music. So you're not just staring at a static shot. There's more things to watch. It enhances the entire presentation. And music also, you, you're seeing the choir. The camera is panning through the choir, not of course showing Jim Bennett, but showing everybody else. And it's a visual presentation. And then when there's a spoken word, when Derek Porter, the new guy who does the spoken word, speaks, there's music behind him to enhance the spirit of it. There are other video images. There are— it is a video presentation making use of the medium for which it is designed. And conference is not that. And I, so as I, as I watched, so, so this is an overall, I haven't gotten into any of the messages. I haven't gotten to any of the good things, the bad things. There were wonderful messages. There were, I think, very few. I mean, one of the things that there weren't, there wasn't a single LGBTQ bashing talk, which is always lovely. There, you know, there was one talk that attracted a great deal of attention, negative attention, and that was Elder Andersen's talk about abortion. I think the negativity surrounding that talk is somewhat overblown because I think it's actually a step forward from Elder Andersen's previous talk about abortion. And we'll get into that when we get into the details. But just, just overall, I just think I don't believe it's faithless to say that we should be using the medium that God has provided, using the tools God has given us to communicate, to make conference a more engaging experience, because anybody that tells you That they're not bored sitting, watching a static image of a guy reading off a teleprompter for 10 hours. Anybody who tells you they're never bored in doing that is not telling you the truth. They just aren't. Am I wrong on that? Is that a faithless thing to say?

No, it is not. I'm listening to you and I find it fascinating. And interesting to see, understand conference and how it's evolved or not evolved over the years. I first started attending conference back in '82. You've been in the church your entire life, and for as long as I can remember, there's been a certain pattern, certain structure over the years, uh, tradition, if you like, of, of how the church, um, organizes, structures these, um, 2 major events that happen in the, uh, every year. I think you, I think they should whittle it down to one. I think 2 a year seems a heck of a lot unnecessary. You can, to your point, you can communicate across different mediums anytime you want. Uh, you know, you could write something, people can read it. I think you raised some really fascinating points in terms of the structure, the tradition, the style. I, question I would ask is, you know, for ourselves and our listeners, how many conference talks do you really remember over the last 10, 20 years? And I bet you it's probably, you can count them on one hand. I think the style is important as well. I find conference, or did find conference for many years, for a long time, quite stale, lacked innovation, and how refreshing it was, Jim, when people like President Hinckley and maybe a few others, I can't remember them. President Hinckley in particular would speak and at times seem to go off cue and would share a joke or make a comment or a flipping comment, uh, uh, you know, um, and, and those are the times you remember. I remember those times because they went off cue. They were speaking naturally, normally. And for me, and I think I'm like most people, where when you go, I actually want you to go off cue. I want you just to just, you know, don't read it to me verbatim in monotone sometimes, even if you've got an up and down tone like President Monson, you're still reading off the cue, you know, the teleprompter. I don't want that. I'm okay with some of that, but just come off cue, just speak to us like a normal human being, a natural conversation. And if you don't get it perfect, I'm all right with that. I actually find more meaning and more depth and more spirituality in just a natural, at least communicating naturally, like we're doing right now on the podcast with all of its qualities and faults, et cetera. I've never said for one second I'm a professional podcaster and I don't want to read off a cue or a teleprompter and get every word perfect. I'm not bothered about that. I'm more interested in the natural and raw reaction of the points we discuss on the podcast. And I would love to see more of that at conference. I'd love to see more humor. I'd love to see people go off and go on a bit of a tangent and just be natural and normal. And I would get a lot from that. And if you've made a mistake on a word, I'm okay with that. You know, none of us are perfect, and you can address that in the written material. So, you know, the structure is quite stale for me. I think twice twice a year seems unnecessary. They're reading it verbatim, word for word. You know, you might as well just, you could listen to it online on a podcast. Let's bring some natural and bring some humor into it as well. Let's have a little bit of fun. You know, if you can't laugh on a Sunday, and I get the strictness on a Sunday, I, you know, the Sabbath day, just bring some more humor in on the Saturday if you're so serious about the Sunday. And so the structure style, the content, the strictness, you know, the talks are written for these individuals and every word's checked. There's a correlating committee involved in making sure that all the talks are, you know, prepared. And it just seems very artificial, stale, and lacks just that natural, um, human side of it. The other observation I, I, I wanna make as well, and as you know, uh, our listeners will know that before conference I made reference to the significance and the importance of this particular conference. I think I probably say that for every conference actually, but certainly this one in consideration of the significant events that are happening in the world. You know, I've, I've said that, you know, the church claims to be the only true church upon the face of the earth. The mouthpiece of the Lord represents not just the members of the church, but the entire population of the world. That's its claim. Uh, knows and speaks the will and mind of the Lord. And I look to the church even now for hope and some inspiration in regards to the church's influence, if it has any, on the world in America? And what is the role of the church in the affairs of the United States and in particular in the affairs of the world, being the only true church rep, you know, representing the entire world according to the teachings of the church? And especially right now with what's happening with, uh, the geopolitics, the economics, the tariffs, its relationship with the Constitution, which is, uh, supposed to be inspired, uh, its, uh, knowledge, understanding, and position on certain politics, government politics. I'm okay about the church getting involved in politics. I'm all right with that. When the church says it's apolitical, I, I, I don't think you can live in a world where you live in a bubble. I think if you see the world as not influencing or affecting your life, everything that happens out there, has some impact or effect.

Uh, did you watch, have you ever watched Lord of the Rings movies? Oh, sure. Yeah.

These are very popular movies and I, I like you. I love those movies. I'm sure you do as well. And there's that scene, uh, where you've got the two hobbits, is it Pippin and the other guy, Merry and Pippin, Merry and Pippin, and they're in the Fangorn Forest. And do you remember that scene? And the trees are there, you know, whispering in the background. And one of the trees, there's a, a tree, Treebeard, I think his name is, he's carrying the two hobbits.

Yeah. And Ent, they're Ents.

And they're Ents, right? They're very old, right? And so there's a conversation ensues about what's happening in the world with the tree and the treebeard, I can't remember the exact words, seems to say, well, if it's not happening here or if it's not happening in the world, there's nothing we can, or what can we do about it? And then Pippin or the other hobbit says, well, you know, let's go back to the Shire and let's let, you know, let others deal with these things that are happening in the world. You know, what can we do about it? And the other Hobbit says, uh, you know, Pippin, there won't be a Shire. There won't be a Shire. So what happens in the world affects everyone, whether they like it or not, or know it or not. And we're facing an absolute unprecedented period in geopolitics. Where you've got 3 major powers, China, Russia, and the United States now flexing its muscles, uh, rightly or wrongly on different things. Perhaps you could argue, you know, we've got politics, we've got the economics, we've got job, we've got finance, we've got, um, uh, you know, security. Uh, there are— the world is repositioning itself in the, uh, you know, in the world of Trump here, which is We won't get into that right now, but it's extraordinary. And so what does the church have to say on this? What's the church's position on this? I can understand the safety and security in focusing on the fundamental principles of the gospel, and I get it, and you should spend a lot of time on that, like Jesus Christ and love and service and forgiveness and helping each other through tribulations. The Prophet talked about the Christ, you know, the second coming of Christ, presumably that's some connection with what's going on in the world. That's probably the closest we're going to get in terms of what the Prophet, you know, thinks about what's happening or where we're at on that timeline. But I would love the church to be bold and be brave and to stand up and to say something on what's going on in the world. And I'm not expecting everyone, and they shouldn't expect everyone to agree with them. That's okay. But what is the position morally on these things? As the moral compass for the world, as the church claims to be, and having the fullness of the gospel and access to far more knowledge than anyone else has in terms of spirituality and the future, you know, the role of the prophet, et cetera. What is the role of the church and why did it seem to be afraid to stand up and speak something? The other thing I want to say before I hand some time back to you, to what you were saying earlier in terms of style, cultural aspects of the church, the communication styles, etc., of the church, is you reference, as you go back further in time in the church, we know that the speakers at conference historically will have been much more flair, much more boldness. Again, rightly or wrongly in terms of what they say. You can agree with them, not agree with them, but seemingly less afraid to speak up on certain things. You know, Brigham Young, I remember on the Truman-Manson tapes that he said that when Joseph Smith, when the spirit took hold of Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith would roar like a lion. I think it was, uh, Joseph's eloquence, um, when the spirit was, uh, in him was an incredible orator. Brigham Young was a great orator. We can argue about that, but there's certain leaders in the church who've been great orators, great speakers. You've talked about Billy Graham. There are certain individuals out there, politics, inspirational speakers. Paul H. Dunn, by the way, was a fantastic speaker, albeit some of the content was questionable, but What a great speaker. When he spoke, and I've got his tapes, I was enthralled. It just connected me with the stories. And when he shared his stories, including the ones that were false or partly false, I felt the Spirit of God confirming they were true. That's another conversation. But I think there's an opportunity for the church to be a little bit more human, a bit more natural. And the thing I was gonna say is that if Jesus Christ was here right now, notwithstanding the mediums and the platforms and, you know, being able to communicate or go to different meetings, et cetera. And yes, for people to actually read what you've said and, and the, the, uh, knowledge that we have that when we say something like on this podcast or we write something down, people will paw over it, paw over it. And, and may or may not, may or may not find fault with that. But I think if Christ was here, he wouldn't be afraid of that. I don't even know if Christ's words would be perfect. He would speak and, and be very, uh, eloquent and, and incredibly credible communicator and might even make some errors or maybe not as be as eloquent and maybe as others. I don't know how Christ spoke, but I think he would want us to be natural and not to be rigid or as structured or as prescriptive or as stale. He's, you know, when you read the scriptures, the New Testament, he met people in the fields, on the hills, in their homes, in the streets where the people were, and those will have been natural conversations. And when he spoke with the crowd, they'll have been natural. You know, he spoke in using examples and illustrations and, you know, his imagination was extraordinary. And I think that's what captures people. And I think Christ would've been a very natural, somewhat eloquent orator and would've engaged people on a very personal level. I don't think the church has got that. I think it's lost that. I think that tradition now is outdated. I think you should have it once a year, like I said, but bring back some, you know, some human, natural style to the conference. So they're my, some initial observations and just one, one other thing and I said that last comment was the last one, but I do see a lot of many of the talks being very positive actually. In, in the, uh, conference. Very safe, very general, you know, the principles there, they are positive, but the church lacks that. It just lacks courage to go out and, and really think and speak what it, you know, address the issues like it, like it should. So just a regular old-fashioned conference, um, and nothing that special. That I can see in it, but it's, it's a safe one for the church. Back to you.

Well, uh, no, I think that's, that's an accurate description. I think the phrase that I kept coming up with is that this felt like a holding pattern conference, that everybody is, you know, when, when President Nelson came in and had all of these things that he wanted to do and all these changes he wanted to make,. And we kept having every conference, there would be predictions. Ooh, what's going to happen this time? And ooh, we got 2-hour church. And ooh, there go the Boy Scouts and there goes home teaching. And we had all these different seismic changes essentially in the church. And Nelson, I think, had been sort of sitting on those for a very long time. Certainly he'd been sitting on the idea of getting rid of the nickname Mormon since 1990, when he gave a talk about that. And he was corrected rather embarrassingly by President Hinckley in the subsequent conference. But President Nelson had all of these reforms, and he kept saying, take your vitamins, and you know, you ain't seen nothing yet. The restoration is just beginning, the ongoing restoration. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That's all gone now, or that's all done now. We don't seem to have— I haven't seen any big predictions. And if there were any predictions, none of them came true because there really wasn't anything in this conference that changed much of anything. So the one thing that people predict is essentially how many temples will be announced. That's the big exciting thing. And from my perspective, I, I, we've announced so many temples and we haven't built anywhere near as many temples as we've announced. And you have to wonder how many of these temples are really going to be built. You know, I felt that sort of electric jolt when they announced the Scotland Edinburgh Temple that I You know, I'm seeing absolutely no movement to actually make that a reality. So it's just an announcement. It's just a name on a list. So I don't necessarily find the temple announcements wildly exciting. So I, so this conference, it really was, it felt like we're just kind of in a holding pattern because President Nelson is 100 years old. He is not immortal, and everybody seems to recognize that we're not going to have him with us for a whole lot longer. Although, again, who knows? You know, he spoke Sunday afternoon. It was a prerecorded speech, which is now something that we're getting used to. I think President Eyring's talk was also prerecorded. President Oaks is the only member of the First Presidency that is delivering his talks in person and standing at the pulpit. Both President Eyring and President Nelson were seated when they spoke. But President Oaks is 94. I mean, this is not a young man.

No.

Who's to say that President Nelson won't outlive President Oaks? I mean, we are in this essentially holding pattern, is we don't really know what the next big seismic shift in the church is going to be. And so I got the sense from a lot of these talks that nobody really wants to push the envelope. Nobody really wants to stick their neck out and, and do anything but retreat to sort of safe subjects, safe ideas. And there is a positive to that, which means that we're not hearing the explosively controversial talks that we hear occasionally at conference, often from President Oaks, frankly, about LGBTQ issues. But there was only one talk essentially that really referenced anything controversial, and that was Elder Anderson's talk on abortion, which people— there was an example at the end of it. That people are still talking about it, that was really quite strange in that he talked about a man in the church who'd had an affair and fathered a child with his mistress. And the child— the mistress wanted to get an abortion, and the man's wife went to the mistress and said, "Please don't get an abortion. I will raise this child as my own." which is exactly what happened. And that story left me and a lot of other people just sort of scratching their heads saying, so the moral of the story is that we're supposed to raise the children of, of our husbands when they stray? Really? I mean, it just seemed really an awkward difficult story. But, and it was also, I thought, are Mormon women, or Latter-day Saint women, again, I should, I mean, to sustain the prophet, I slip and say Mormon more often than I should. But are Latter-day Saint women really, are we really seeing a surge in abortions among Latter-day Saint women? Is this a message that is particularly necessary at this time? Now, the reason why I say I think this is a better talk than the one he gave previously— I think it was about 2 years ago that he gave a talk on abortion. Elder Andersen seems to be very concerned about abortion. And he gave that talk 2 years ago, and that was very much a fire and brimstone and essentially borderline political talk. It was essentially vote for Republicans because Republicans are pro-life and the church's exceptions on abortion are minuscule and don't really matter. And the most important thing we need to do is make abortion illegal, essentially. And this talk, he fleshed out the church's whole position on abortion. And went through the exceptions as to which abortions can be acceptable. I mean, he pointed out that it doesn't mean that you should have an abortion if you are the victim of rape or incest, but you won't face church discipline if you do have an abortion in those cases. And so, I mean, so, but he went through all of those exceptions And the thing that strikes me every time I hear those exceptions is that those who would use Elder Anderson's talk as a political weapon really don't have a leg to stand on because all of the Republican— and again, you're, you're in Canada, so I'm American-centric, and that's, that may be a problem, but I hear American political overtones in a lot of these conference messages. And Americans look at that and Republicans particularly look at that and say, oh gee, well, this is great. This is an endorsement of Republican politics. And it really isn't, because Republican positions on abortion do not allow for the same exceptions that the church allows for. The most notable being the exception for the health of the mother. Most of the abortion restrictions in the United States have exceptions for the life of the mother, but what that has done is scared medical professionals away from providing abortions until women are at death's door. It's not enough that this is jeopardizing your health. You need to be at risk of dying before we are legally allowed to intervene. And that is not the church's position, and thankfully not the church's position. And Elder Andersen made that very clear. So, and the other thing, and we've had a big long episode on abortion, so I'm reiterating some of what we talked about there. But what people don't seem to realize is that abortion restriction do not necessarily reduce abortion. And in fact, there's a great deal of empirical evidence that shows they increase abortions. Uh, the one example that's the most compelling, I think, is what's called the Mexico City Policy. It's the global gag rule. Every Republican who comes into the White House institutes this ever since Ronald Reagan. Every Democrat has reversed it. And what it is, is any organization overseas that receives federal funding is not allowed to even mention abortion as an option. It's not even that they can't provide abortions, which they can't. They're not even allowed to mention it. And so it's called the Global Gag Rule. And there have been long-term studies on this because we've seen what happens. We have over 40 years of data as to what happens when this is instituted. And what happens is the abortion rate in every place where this is instituted goes up by 40%. It's a massive spike. And that's because when you cut off any access to this, you also cut off other services that prevent abortion, like birth control, like education, and And as a result, you don't necessarily reduce unwanted pregnancies. In fact, unwanted pregnancies go up, and therefore abortions end up going up. And what's happened since Roe v. Wade was overturned in the United States is that you see all these abortion bans all throughout the United States, but they're selective abortion bans. And so you see the abortion rates in individual states where the bans are in place go down. But the overall national abortion rate has gone up by 11% since Roe v. Wade was overturned, because all that does is drive people away from the states where they can't get abortions to states where they can get abortions. And those states have seen huge spikes in the abortion rate. And the abortion rate has been plummeting ever since Roe v. Wade was passed. That's the other thing that people don't realize, is that abortions have been decreasing for decades as contraception becomes more available, as people are better educated. Uh, abortion— everybody recognizes that abortion is a tragedy. Every time an abortion happens, there is some tragedy that's taken place. There's a health tragedy, there's a social tragedy, there's something awful that has happened that has necessitated an abortion. So the way you prevent abortion is not to make it illegal. It is to make it unnecessary. And I don't think that was the message of Elder Anderson's previous abortion talk, but I think you can garner that message from this current one. So I saw that as a positive, right? So I focused on that one talk. That's the only talk that I think was in any way remotely controversial. And I mentioned at the outset that there was one talk where the actual presentation mattered, that it was, it was, you got something more from actually watching the talk, from actually being there with the talk than you did from hearing the talk. And that was, I'm looking up her name. It was a woman. There it is. She was the first counselor in the Young Women's General Presidency. Her name was Tamara W. Runia. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. But she stood at the pulpit. One of the things that I was struck by was she was very animated in her delivery and she used her hands quite a bit. I use my hands when I talk. Anybody that sees me on video They should be grateful this is an audio podcast because I talk with my hands and it gets a little too— I gesture a little too much. But she had very specific, chosen gestures that highlighted what she was saying. And at one point she raised her left hand and she said, this hand represents your worth in the eyes of God. And then she raised her right hand and this represents your righteousness or your faithfulness in keeping God's commandments. And he says, and some of you may be here, and she gestures with her right hand near the top of the left hand. Some of you may be all the way down here, and she gestures near the bottom of where her left hand is. And she says, but no matter where this hand goes, notice that the left hand never moves. Your worth in the eyes of God never goes down, is never less. And I think she even said, and this is one of the messages in the podcast we've said the last few weeks, I think she even used the phrase, you are enough. It was very much a positive affirming. You are always worthy of God's love. Your worth in the eyes of God never diminishes. And that, I think, was such a welcome message and so well delivered. That it was far and away the highlight of the conference for me. I mean, going through the rest of the talks, I've got a list of them here, and I've read them, and I've seen them. Elder Uchtdorf was wonderful. He gave again, he even talked about the fact that leaders can make mistakes again, which is something that he, I think, was controversial when he said it the first time. But the divide that I saw in the last conference between between what I called the universalists and the exclusivists was sort of on display here again, with Elder Uchtdorf representing more of a universalist camp. Elder Kieran again gave a magnificent talk. He talked about unconditional love, God's unconditional love, which, you know, there was at one point a time when President Nelson referred to God's love as conditional.. And I think that that is a debate among the highest leaders in the Church. A few other things that were interesting: Elder Bednar gave a talk where he just sort of went through all of the truth claims of the Restoration and reiterated that we are not backing away from them. It was interesting because he talked about the First Vision, but he began this talk about the First Vision by talking about how Joseph went into the woods to pray to get his sins forgiven, which is something that comes from Joseph Smith's 1832 earliest handwritten account, and it's not something that's in the canonized 1838 account. So that was kind of, I think, an interesting— it was very subtle. I mean, he just mentioned it. He did not mentioned the differing accounts or any differences in the accounts, but I think was sort of an attempt to just quietly reconcile them. But he went through the visit of Moroni in the Book of Mormon, the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I listened to Elder Bednar and I thought, okay, there are certain truth claims in the Church that to some degree are irreducible, that the Church couldn't get away from even if they tried. I mean, I see a lot of people thinking, okay, well, let's figure out some way to reconcile the Book of Mormon as some kind of inspired fiction. And Elder Bednar seemed to be placing a marker saying, you can't do that. Because if the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction, then Moroni didn't exist, and the plates didn't exist, and Joseph Smith made it all up, and Joseph Smith was lying when he presented that to the world. And now, and I tend to agree with Elder Bednar there in that I don't see how the Church could survive saying, by the way, Joseph Smith did lie about all this. None of this is really historical, but This is still God's church. Joseph Smith was still God's prophet. And there's value in the Book of Mormon, even though it's, it's fiction. There seem to be some people in the church that can make that leap. I'm not one of them. But I just thought it was very interesting that Elder Bednar just sort of laid the groundwork for that. Other talks that stood out— again, not a lot stood out. Elder Cook gave a talk about William and Martin Handcart companies, and I call them William, and sort of tied into the pioneer ancestry again. We haven't heard a lot about that in recent conferences. There was just sort of this reasserting of just kind of foundational doctrines and policies in a way that was just, we're still here, we're in a holding pattern, but we're still here. For some reason, the parable of the virgins with the oil in their lamps was mentioned 3 times. I don't know why that's significant. Elder Oaks's talk was in— President Oaks's talk was interesting in that he called out some very specific situations that seemed odd to me because most of the talks were really quite generic, as was President Oaks's talk until he listed like all these specific problems like men that get married before they get the Aaronic Priesthood. Or, I mean, I could go through the list, but I thought, really, are these huge sweeping problems in the church right now? Why is it that you're highlighting these specific cases. So that seemed weird to me. The phrase covenant path, which was just ad nauseam in previous conferences, was said in this conference, but it was said— it didn't seem intrusive. It didn't seem— it was said in ways where I thought, okay, this is the appropriate appropriate level of usage for this phrase. And, you know, a lot of the other buzzwords that we've heard in conference— I didn't hear a single mention of home-centered, church-supported, which was a buzz phrase for a while. President Nelson was quoted in conference, but I saw a statistical report that showed that he was quoted about half as often as he's been quoted in previous conferences. It's become sort of de rigueur for apostles and Seventies to quote our beloved prophet and refer to him as our beloved prophet with these big flowery quotes that talk about how brilliant he is. And that was downplayed this conference. So again, all of this just sort of— it was fine. I garnered a lot of stuff from Sister Runya's talk. I got a great deal of spiritual uplift. But, but overall, there is really not a whole lot about this conference that stands out to me. Was there, was there a talk or was there any moment that, that stood out for you?

A couple.

You've—

there's a few. You've addressed some of them, including Elder Andersen's talk really well. I'm glad you spent some time on that. And you kind of drill down onto, uh, well, kind of reference some of the other talks. The, uh, similar to almost every other conference, the church played it really safe. I mean, the, the main themes are, you know, with the prophet talking about Lord Jesus Christ will come again. Um, you know, the parable of the virgins, some relationship with that, I think, in terms of the, you know, maybe perhaps where we are right now, that we can expect Christ to come at some point. I think that's the closest I got from looking at the conference talks to reference to, you know, what's happening right now and we can expect Christ to come and, and save us. Um, uh, uh, all the other major themes were welcome to the church of joy, following Christ, seeking spiritual answers to, um, you know, to the difficult questions. And again, if you look at the overall topics, going through them quite quickly here, you know, Elder Holland talked about a little child, as a little child, that's quite safe. There were 3 female speakers, if I just count them correctly, 3 speakers. Camille Johnson spoke about spiritually all in Spiritually Whole in Him, which again is pretty safe. Elder Rasband talks about Right Before I Rise. I want to come back to that in a second. There's one talk I thought was interesting. Quentin Cook talked about Christ being the ultimate rescue. There's talks here about the love of my Savior, or my love for my Savior is my why. Draw Near to Me, Cherishing Life, Divine Authority, Return to Me, Faith, Personal Interpretation, which is David, all wonderful but very safe and secure topics. So same old messages, not that they're not important, uh, they are important. Um, but the church again is, seems to be, um, unwilling and probably a little bit fearful and lacks any courage in terms of going out and being bold and brave on certain things. I thought there was some interesting comments made in some of the talks. Jim Bennett, Elder Ronald Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, talked about a fruit roll, a fruit roll seat to the hastening of his work. And I remember when Elder Oaks set us apart and gave us some training, he did spend a bit of time talking about hastening the work. He basically, Elder Oaks said to his estate, as a stake presidency, look, you know what to do and how to do it. The fundamental principles and, and practices and policies and programs are already established. The focus now of our stake presidency in the stake is to hasten the work. You've got the foundations, now move forward faster, baptize more, get more to the temple. And it's interesting that the church, you know, 10 years on from when I was released from that stake presidency or so, that the there's some reference to that, which is good. So the church is, um, still trying to move forward. Uh, he talks about, uh, hastening, hastening the work through unprecedented temple building, missionary work, and church education. He says, I recognize that in the midst of the good news of the gospel, there are those who struggle, who have faith challenges, doubts, and questions that seem to have no answers. He said, brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is the answer. Start with him. Look for his hand in your life. Listen to him. So again, a very safe comment. But what was interesting And I wanna highlight this is the, is called their unprecedented temple building. And we've just heard another 15 temples announced. When they'll get built, who knows? But that, as we've said repeatedly on earlier podcasts, is something that the church can control. It can announce these temples and anyone listening to that can see that the church is growing, progressing, right? And we talked earlier on podcast about what can the church control and what can it measure and what can it report growth on? Well, if it's not getting as many baptisms, many convert baptisms, if it's not growing in, in most parts of the world— and we had a, a former mission president, Darrell Watson, attend a podcast with this wonderful conversation, a wonderful individual talked about, uh, in, I think he was the mission president of, was it Denmark or the Netherlands or Belgium? Was it Belgium?

Yeah, Belgium.

Belgium was, yeah. And so he was saying that as, as new, um, immigrants come into Europe, including in Belgium and Brussels, et cetera, those individuals are joining the church. So he's seeing growth in, in those areas in Europe. And I believe him. He's somebody I know really well, somebody I trust, and I don't doubt him for one second. So there are certain elements of growth, but where and how can the church show growth? Well, it can show growth with temple building. And, and we've said that we believe, or I believe, that the church will be, or has begun measuring temple activity. You know, we measure, as they used to call it, home teaching, visiting teaching. It's ministry visits now. We can measure that. There's certain, uh, a certain metric in the church that you can measure. Well, you can certainly measure, and the church does measure, how many people have a temple recommend. It measures who pays tithing. It measures who pays what amount in tithing. I know this from you know, working on the stake presidency and being a bishop. You can also know how many endowments you've done, how many washings and anointings, and how many sealings, and how many names that you've taken to the temple. It can measure that. And if it's, if those numbers are increasing, then it's showing growth. And Elder Rasband is, is smart to highlight or kind of make reference to that, you know, unprecedented temple building. Well, hey, the church is saying to the world, we are growing, we are expanding. Look at the temple growth. I mean, it's an explosion. I think that was initiated with President Hinckley, I think, and then President Monson supported it, and now it's gone to a whole new level with President Nelson. He is taking over that mantle. He's picked up the baton and he's sprinting, 101-year-old sprinting to build as many temples, or at least announce many temples as he can. So that is something to watch for, you know, for our listeners and others listening to this, etc., is to watch how the church is communicating growth through temple planning, temple building, and temple activity. And it wouldn't surprise me if we're getting more specifics at the unit and the stake level to measure people's temple activity. They've also, uh, pushed the youth going to the church, sorry, going to the temple, as you know, uh, programs, initiatives to get the youth involved in temple activity over the last, I think, 5 or 7 years. So they're building these temples, a major initiative, and I think all the programs, all the policies and all the strategies are going to line up and point in, you know, a big arrow pointing towards going to the temple, an even bigger arrow and more measurement on that. Uh, going to your, just, uh, in response to your question earlier, uh, about any specifics, there was one talk I did do a bit of a deep dive on that did concern me. And that was, uh, the one by Elder Mark Palmer, Return to Me That I May Heal You. Uh, did you, have you read that talk? Did you listen to that?

When was it? I, I, I, I, I obvious, I think I have, but it obviously hasn't made an impression.

I, I, I'm not sure where it was positioned on the, in the conference here, but basically he, he talks about, he gives some examples about a tree and a tree falls down and, and then they try to revive the tree and they replant the tree and the tree grows back, if I understand it correctly. But he says here that, um, he says here, and the result, after some time we saw signs of life as the tree began to take root again. There's a tree that had fallen over. Uh, 12 years later, the tree is vibrant and full of life, with strong roots and once again contributing to the beauty of the landscape. He says here, while I meet saints around the world, I'm reminded of this willow tree and how there is hope even when all seems lost. Some once had testimonies of the gospel that were strong and vibrant like the willow. Then, for uniquely personal reasons, those testimonies became weakened, leading to a loss of faith. Others hang on with the slimmest of roots, tapping into the gospel soil. As the talk goes on, he says, yet again and again, I'm inspired by the sorrows of so many who have chosen to renew their discipleship and come back to the church, to their church home. Rather, quote, than discarding their faith and belief like worthless firewood. Instead, they responded to spiritual promptings and loving invitations to return. And he goes on to say that, to give some examples of people who've returned, but he's pointing his, using examples to suggest that it's the people's fault that they've left. It's because of a lack of faith, a lack of repentance. If you look at the talk, he goes in a little bit of makes references to that. Doesn't make any reference to genuine legitimate concerns that people have got and certainly stays well away from the idea that the church could do something wrong or indeed if there is any good reason to leave the church. It's all down to if there's a gap between, and this is what I want to try to articulate, if there is a gap between an individual and the church or the gospel, it's not the church's issue, or the gospel, or the church has made a mistake. It's the person that has decided to distance themselves, the person that's moved. The church hasn't moved. The church hasn't changed. It's the person that's changed, and the person has moved away from, uh, the, you know, the person has moved away from the church. In my experience, that's my experience is completely opposite with the church has changed in some ways for the worst. Uh, his behavior, his actions, his comments, his positions, or lack thereof, uh, has, uh, brought into question, in my opinion, its integrity. And it has changed or lacks integrity in certain things where in those areas I believe I haven't changed, that my position is fixed. It's the church that has moved away from me. Or its teachings and its discrimination and its issues have caused me to, um, uh, not want to be a part of it, but my position on certain things hasn't changed. You know, integrity and honesty and, and, you know, focused on those, um, really important things and the church as lack of integrity as compromise its relationship with me, not the other way around. Uh, and so it, it seems to, um, uh, you know, oversimplify the reasons why people, uh, you know, people leave. And so, uh, you know, oversimplification of reasons for leaving, you know, while notes I've made here, while the text acknowledges uniquely personal reasons for weak attachments, it doesn't delve into the complexity of validity of reasons why people leave. It doesn't even talk about that. So I think it's very one-sided and very narrow. And again, a missed opportunity to say, look, you know, we're not perfect. We make mistakes. Yes, there are questions. We can answer some of the questions. We can't answer other questions because we just don't know. But it's don't give up on us, work with us, help us improve, help us get better. And accept that we're not perfect and we don't get everything right, but at least stay with us and help us get better and improve. There's no room, Jim Bennett, for people, uh, there's no room in the church for people, uh, who want to stay, who question, who want to help the church improve. The church think it's got all the answers and if you don't conform and you don't toe the line, then, you know, you are the one with the problem. So I was very disappointed in that talk. I think it's a missed opportunity. Others I've spoken to got a similar thought, similar thoughts and feelings on that talk. But overall, I think the conference was boring, boringly safe. I'd use those two words, boringly safe. So same old, same old. In some ways, that's a good thing. You know, the church, you know, the members, a lot of members are getting what they expect. And in other ways, it's a missed, uh, massive missed opportunity to be bold, be brave, uh, be courageous, talk about key things that are happening in the world. And the position of the church. And so overall, looking at the talks, I think for me personally, it's— I'm just glad I— I'm just glad I'm not part of it. I'm a lot happier where I am. I couldn't sit through all of that. The whole thing would bore me. I could read it afterwards. If there's something quite extraordinary that's life-changing and is really thought through, and I think I could learn a lot from that, it could really help me personally, then absolutely, you know, that talk would, um, would catch my interest and I would follow the advice. But it's, um, it's, it's stale, it's boring, and you haven't seen nothing yet prophecy. Well, I think we have. I, I, I, I think we've seen it all. I don't think we're going to get any more. If, if that, uh, comment by President Nelson was to get us excited. Well, it's kind of been a bit, um, it's kind of fallen flat. It's like a fizzy drink that's lost its fizz. And so I think we've seen everything really. And the next conference, I have hopes, and I will talk about it again. I'm like, I'll be saying, another opportunity for the church to kind of step up and do some extraordinary. Uh, but part of me also says, well, it's going to be exactly like April 2025. So I don't miss it. I couldn't sit through it again. Uh, I think if I need to get to sleep, I'll probably put on a couple of talks and listen to them and, and that'll help me get to sleep. But it's boringly safe. They're my two words to summarize April 2025 conference.

Uh, I wish I could push back a little more on that. But the reality is it certainly was safe. And I think there were exceptions to the boringness. Uh, if I may be so arrogant as to say, one of the things that I've always found to be a highlight of conference is the music. And that's even more so now that I'm actually participating in creating the music. But even in the sessions where it's not the Tabernacle Choir singing, music, as I've said many times on this podcast, but music is sort of my shortcut to connect to the divine, to connect to God, to feel the spirit. And, and the music at conference, always is uplifting and always manages to do that for me. So I just would love to see— it doesn't need to be boring. We have the technology, to quote the Six Million Dollar Man. We have the ability to make this presentation something far more far more powerful and far more impactful. And I, I think eventually we will get there. We've certainly made some strides in how we communicate throughout the church. The church's media capacity and ability to communicate and to use all kinds of different media to do that is really quite impressive. And I would very much like to see that filter into conference. And it doesn't seem to have done that. But I think we kind of had fairly similar reactions to this conference and, and, and I think we're both equally hopeful that the next one will be better. Is that a safe thing to say if I'm being boringly safe myself?

No, no, no. I think it's a very fair statement. You know, we talk about the church. We, we, we You know, we recognize the great things that it does.

Absolutely.

I think it's really important to recognize that. And I say there's a lot of value in those safe messages for people. You know, the music's a really important part of the conference for a lot of people. I get that. You know, I connect to music. It's very personal to me. I understand that. Those safe messages are important to probably most of the rank and file. I get that. I really do. But I think the church, the members are looking for some kind of leadership here, right? Some kind of I'm not saying go completely out on a limb and do, say, and do crazy things or things that are too, too much for people, but at least push the boundary, right? At least just, you know, as a prophet, let's look at, let's talk about what you see ahead, right? You know, your prophet according to Book of Mormon has got all these qualities and abilities that a prophet can do and, and see things to come and, and know and understand things the way people can't understand. Let's get a little bit of that. Let's get into some of that, you know, part of the conversation and see where that goes. And then I think, you know, it'll be much more engaging. In terms of the next conference, I will be hopeful and I remain open-minded. I still have faith and confidence that the church will grow. I just think it's not happening quick enough. And I think it's partly down to old-fashioned leadership, you know, a bunch of old guys who are just afraid to, um, you know, step out of the, uh, the safety zone. But yeah, we'll see what happens 6 months from now.

All right, sounds good. Well, we will be here a week from now, but we will also be here 6 months from now to talk about the next conference. But very much appreciate you sharing this with us and, and all of you listening. Very much appreciate all of you listening. And we hope you will continue to listen and we hope that you will join us for our next episode of Inside Out. Thank you very much, Jim.