A fine member of the Church was talking with a neighbor who was not of our faith. When the topic of discussion turned to general conference, the neighbor asked, “You say you have prophets and apostles? And twice a year in a worldwide conference they reveal the word of God?”
“Absolutely,” the member replied with confidence.
The neighbor thought about that for a moment. He seemed genuinely interested and then asked, “What did they say in the last general conference?”
At this point the good member of the Church went from feeling excited about sharing the gospel to feeling embarrassed. Try as he might, he couldn’t think of the details of a single talk.
His friend found this troubling and said, “You mean to tell me that God speaks to man in our day and you can’t remember what He said?”
The brother felt humbled by this exchange. He vowed that he would do better to remember the words spoken by the Lord’s servants in general conference.
We all know how hard it is to remember every message of general conference, and I’m confident that we need not be embarrassed if we don’t remember everything. Nevertheless, there are messages in each general conference given as a gift and a blessing from heaven specifically for our personal life situations.
In preparation for general conference, let me suggest three basic concepts that may help us to better receive, remember, and apply the words spoken by the Lord’s servants.
This is an important topic, it must be for it to be a 'First Presidency Topic'. It signals that the top echelons of the Church have a problem in that the members just aren't listening to them.
The theme of Dieter's address is to lay the responsibility of that squarely at the door of the individual member - and he makes suggestions as to how 'we' can better prepare to listen to him and his colleagues.
But is it the members fault?
If it's such a big issue wouldn't that, shouldn't that, ring some bells with the Leaders that perhaps they might need to change something themselves?
If his was a corporation...oh...wait....if this was another secular organisation and it's sales conferences were so boring that it's salesmen just didn't listen or remember the content would they address the salesmen and say 'hey, you lot need to pin back your ears, WE are speaking'?
No, they would change the format, content, style etc to make it more interesting, to make it more listenable, as well as perhaps encouraging the sales team to listen up.
Perhaps Dieter's address would come across (to this poster at least) as less arrogant were he to acknowledge joint responsibility and articulate the things that the Leaders are going to do to make Conference talks more rememberable.