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To read more from Daniel, visit his blog: Sic Et Non. 

For years now and with very few (unavoidable) exceptions, I’ve made it my practice to listen to every speech in every session of General Conference.  I freely admit that I’m seldom if ever just sitting in a chair watching, although I do typically watch Conference on television rather than simply listening to it on the radio.  I almost always use my watching-time to go through the papers and books that mysteriously pile up throughout my house, and most notably by my bedside.  (Trust me; the effort is badly needed.  In fact, it would be even better for my housekeeping if conference were monthly.)

Of course, I’m always interested to hear announcements of new temples and new officers, but I also take seriously what Church leaders have to say at conference.  I expect that they have prayed about their remarks, and that they choose subjects that they feel they should address.  Moreover, beyond the inspiration that I trust them to have received, they are constantly out among the Saints and around the world.  For such reasons and others, I listen pretty carefully.

In a revelation that was given on the occasion of the formal founding of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in April 1830, the Lord instructed those earliest Saints about how they were to respond to the teachings of the leader of the new organization to which they now belonged:

“Wherefore, meaning the church, thou shalt give heed unto all his words and commandments which he shall give unto you as he receiveth them, walking in all holiness before me; For his word ye shall receive, as if from mine own mouth, in all patience and faith.  For by doing these things the gates of hell shall not prevail against you; yea, and the Lord God will disperse the powers of darkness from before you, and cause the heavens to shake for your good, and his name’s glory.”  (Doctrine and Covenants 21:4-6)

Lest some respond, though, that the just-quoted passage applies only to the Prophet Joseph Smith in particular, I point out that the Lord doesn’t seem to recognize such a limit.  The testimony that he gave regarding the first ordained representatives of the newly restored Church covers more than just the Prophet Joseph.  And surely it applies to those that he has chosen to preside over the Church and to lead it today:

“And, behold, and lo, this is an ensample unto all those who were ordained unto this priesthood, whose mission is appointed unto them to go forth—And this is the ensample unto them, that they shall speak as they are moved upon by the Holy Ghost.

And whatsoever they shall speak when moved upon by the Holy Ghost shall be scripture, shall be the will of the Lord, shall be the mind of the Lord, shall be the word of the Lord, shall be the voice of the Lord, and the power of God unto salvation.  Behold, this is the promise of the Lord unto you, O ye my servants.”  (Doctrine and Covenants 68:2-5)

So I’ve made every effort that I could over several decades to hear every word that is spoken at General Conference when it is spoken.  Quite a few years ago, though, I realized that a person for whom I had great respect listened much more carefully and deliberately than I did.

Many readers will recognize the names of Truman and Ann Madsen; their good influence and example and their teaching had a great impact on generations of members of the Church and on many others even beyond the Church.  In my particular case, I can honestly say that being taken by kind members of my southern California ward to a series of “Education Week” lectures by Truman Madsen was a pivotal event in my life.  I was still in high school, and hearing his presentations on such topics as existentialism, Marxism, and logical positivism was, in fact, a crucial factor in my decision to attend Brigham Young University—a decision that has affected virtually every aspect of my subsequent life.  Later, to my surprise and delight, they became not only faculty colleagues but friends.  For instance, during the time that I led an intensive Arabic program for BYU in Jerusalem in 1993, Truman was the director of BYU’s Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies.  And Ann was a colleague of mine for nearly a decade on the Church’s Gospel Doctrine Writing Committee.

One day many years ago, I needed a place to work between a class that I was teaching in the same BYU building where Ann had her campus office and a meeting to be held in that same building just an hour later.  Ann saw me sitting out in the hall and kindly offered to let me wait in her office while she herself was teaching a class.  She told me to sit in her chair, behind her desk, so that I could spend the time most effectively.

From my location in her chair, I could see a couple of sheets of paper that had been affixed to the side of a filing cabinet.  They were clearly for her sight only, since they were concealed by that filing cabinet from the rest of the room.  At a glance, I realized that they featured a list of every single talk that had been given during the immediately preceding General Conference and of every single speaker, accompanied by at least one personal resolution based upon each conference address.

I didn’t read through the document carefully.  (Even I have limits.)  But I remember being stunned and, candidly, a bit shamed by the obvious focus and attention that Ann had given, and apparently was still giving, to what the leaders of the Church had said during the most recent General Conference.  She put me very much in the shadow.  (I suspect that Ann would have been embarrassed by my recounting of that little experience in her office, but she passed away at the age of ninety in 2022 and isn’t in a position to talk me out of it.)

Since then, I’ve tried to up my game a bit—nowhere near perfectly and not very consistently, but perhaps with increasing success.  I try to prayerfully read through the most recent conference talks when they’ve been published in the Church magazine.  I mark passages that strike me and stories that stand out in my mind.  But I also make an effort to extract from each talk some resolution or other, something that I can incorporate into my daily living over the next six months.  I ask for inspiration to help me, and I write those resolutions down.  Most recently, I’ve bought the “journal edition” of the conference talks that Deseret Book publishes.  It features not only the full texts of all of the conference addresses in a neat and manageable spiral-bound paperback form, but lined space for annotations on the margins of each page.  Of course, buying such a special edition isn’t necessary for anybody’s salvation, but I’ve found it helpful.

Some talks lend themselves to this exercise more easily than others.  Some, in fact, inspire me—oblige me?—to formulate more than one resolution.  But I’ve found the effort abundantly worthwhile.  I like to think—though I have a dauntingly long road to travel in this regard—that it has made me at least a slightly better Latter-day Saint.  And it has certainly given me greater appreciation not only for the teachings of Church leaders but for those leaders themselves, as individual persons and distinct personalities.

I close with a story (not the only such story that I could share) to illustrate the measurable effect that really listening to General Conference can have on a member of the Church:

Over the course of two or three years some time ago, I received several score anonymous emails criticizing me for my view of the geography of the Book of Mormon.  I’ve written very little on the subject, but I suppose it’s been fairly obvious that I lean toward a limited-Mesoamerican model for the history of the Jaredites and the Lehites.  (My general attitude is that I care much more about whether a person believes that the narrative of the Book of Mormon actually occurred somewhere than I do about what that person believes regarding specifically where it took place.  Nothing in our salvation hinges on knowing the precise GPS coordinates of the Jaredite city of Lib.)

In any event, this person strongly disapproved of my implicit position, and he sent me scores of elaborate emails containing quite ambitious memes, apparently designed just for me, to criticize my supposed disloyalty to Joseph Smith and to denounce my purportedly heretical geographical opinions.

One day, though, shortly after a general conference weekend, he sent me a fascinating note.  Among the conference speakers, he said, one had spoken against the spirit of contention—and that talk had really hit him hard.  He realized, he told me, that he himself had been operating under the influence of a contentious spirit, and he had resolved to change his ways.  I would, he wrote, never hear from him again.  And, so far as I know, I never have.

So I have a testimony of the power to change a life that really paying heed to General Conference—which is more than merely listening to it—can have.  There are some who dismiss the value of General Conference.  I don’t.  With regard to the anecdote that I’ve just related:  I’m sure that many conference talks have been given during the history of the Church on the subject of contention.  But at least one person needed to hear it at that particular time.  And the fact that he did hear it has made my own life better.

I’m pleased to add that, literally within a minute my finishing the column above, I received notice that a really wonderful essay by Truman Madsen had just been posted online.  I commend it to your notice:  “The Latter-day Saint View of Human Nature: We are of the same species as the gods.”  (https://www.fromthedesk.org/truman-madsen-human-nature/)