October 2004 General Conference Thoughts: Day Two

A few parting thoughts from both days of LDS General Conference

1. Kudos to whomever had the idea of bringing in the primary choir...

2. Elder Bednar mentioned casually in his talk that he only received his calling last Friday afternoon--less than a day before he was sustained, and less than two days before he was supposed to speak. This isn't a new thing, as most of the current apostles have mentioned being called only a day or two before General Conference also. One assumes part of the reason is to guard against any 'leaks' beforehand, and another might be giving the Church president the maximum amount of time to pray and ponder about the issue before making a decision.
Suppose, however, next time the new elder(s) were called in several months in advance, accepted the calling, and then the Church made an official announcement ahead of time, with the actual sustaining happening at the next General Conference as usual. That would give the general membership a chance to learn more about the new apostles before being asked to sustain them in conference. (Pres. Hinckley remarked, in fact, on Saturday that none of us knew who these guys were...) You know, of course, whatever names Pres. Hinckley read were going to be sustained unanimously anyway (it would take someone really controversial to break the unanimous sustaining vote thing...) but I wonder if announcing the names ahead of time would give the public a little more time to get to know them, to know whom we were sustaining instead of just being a name announced from the pulpit. Then again, this might also lead to public criticism of the selection given too much lead time, with people here and there clamoring that the Church should have chosen Elder X instead and encouraging Pres. Hinckley to 'change his mind' before conference time. Plus, since becoming an apostle creates quite a lifestyle change, it's probably better to wait until the last minute for the sake of the new apostle and his family, since before the sustaining and the calling becoming 'official' there wouldn't be much he could do as an apostle anyway...

3. Given the short preparation time, you can understand how Elders Uchtdorf and Bednar ended up just sharing their testimonies essentially, without having a full prepared talk on a specific topic. Of course, the basic purpose of an apostle is to 'testify of Christ', anyway--which is exactly what they ended up doing.

4. Elder Ballard's talk from Saturday discussed a few things about 'testimony meeting etiquette'. While this talk has elicited some criticism in the blogosphere for seemingly making things even more homogenous than they already are, but seriously...once you hear a number of people ramble about inane matters and things that could only be considered 'tangentially' related to the gospel for extremely liberal definitions of 'tangent', you'll start to see why the Church could really use more 'Church etiquette' talks... I wrote a few months ago about my gaining a testimony of the 'reality' of current sacrament talks and testimonies, even the bad ones, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't 'reign people in' a little by offering guidelines and suggestions. In fact, if and when I become a bishop (don't hold your breath...) the first talk I'm going to give is on sacrament meeting and testimony etiquette...

5. With the passing of Elder Maxwell, that probably leaves Elder Russell M. Nelson as my 'favorite' apostle. (Um...not that we're supposed to have favorites or anything...) Elder Nelson just seems to be the 'happiest' of the apostles--while many give talks exclusively with somber tones and serious expressions, Elder Nelson just seems to be genuinely happy to be alive and living the gospel. (Pres. Monson seems like a happy guy too...)

6. And yes, ten hours (eight for the sisters) is still a little on the long side, but again the problem is: everyone will get their spiritual guidance from a different part of conference so where would you make the cuts even if you wanted to?