General Conference - Fall 2023

[Minyan Man]

Earlier in this post I made this remark:

It would be interesting to know how many times "Covenant Path" was used in the talks.

Now the new phrase will be "Think Celestial".

I know I'm old but canned phrases annoy me.

So, now that the talks are posted online, I did some investigating.
I counted the number of times "Covenant" or "Covenant Path" was used in the talks both Saturday & Sunday.

I don't claim that this is accurate or scientific. Just interesting. If I were a drinker, this would of made a good drinking game.
According to my calculations, Covenant or Covenant Path was used 363 times. One speaker used it 26 times.

I then decided to count how many times "Jesus" was used. Even the official title of the Church during the business presentations.
The count was: 288 times. One speaker used His name 28 times.
To be fair, the Saturday sessions had more speakers.

What will "Think Celestial" bring?
"What would Jesus do?" Canned phrases REALLY annoy me.

[Friedrich]

I have just started reading the talks. Elder Bednar is first, as most of you know. I have a hard time believing what comes out of his mouth. I will leave it at that.

Aside from that, from what I watched, as you all have typed: some were good, some were bad. I just know if I had a world wide audience, I would be bad.

I have noticed more recently, after decades of conference talks, they sound the same. The last of the pioneer prophets and apostles would each have a distinct conference talk personality. Now the tone feels the same. The sentence structure sounds the same. (Whether it is or not, I guess I should check the typed versions...) I think non apostle speakers have to have talks pre-read. A hunch, nothing based on fact.

I always enjoy Elder Uchtdorf. President Holland has also delivered some memorable Book of Mormon talks, you do not hear those a lot anymore. Elder Ballard's talk, to me, was similar to Elder Haight's final talk. Elder Haight talked about life, love and Ruby. Maybe more talks about life and loved ones would be more meaningful.

[PazamaManX]

I have noticed more recently, after decades of conference talks, they sound the same. The last of the pioneer prophets and apostles would each have a distinct conference talk personality. Now the tone feels the same. The sentence structure sounds the same. (Whether it is or not, I guess I should check the typed versions...) I think non apostle speakers have to have talks pre-read. A hunch, nothing based on fact.

I would not be surprised if conference talks are planned and coordinated, at least to some extent, even though they claim otherwise. I have also heard rumors that some talks are ghostwritten by BYU professors. I don't know how true that is, but considering how formulaic a lot of the talks seem, I'd believe it.

[Minyan Man]

I would not be surprised if conference talks are planned and coordinated, at least to some extent, even though they claim otherwise. I have also heard rumors that some talks are ghostwritten by BYU professors. I don't know how true that is, but considering how formulaic a lot of the talks seem, I'd believe it.

I've wondered about this as well. Do the GA's have a staff that can write talks for them? Are topics assigned?
Do the talks have to be approved ahead of General Conference?