Given in the Holladay 10th Ward
A friend posted: “I need some good topics for Sunday speakers. Hit me up with topics you have liked or would like to hear about.” Without any hesitation I banged out this list of ideas for LDS sacrament meeting talks.
A few of the immediate reactions:
“If I ever write a book, you’re picking the title.”
“Holy cow! Where did all these come from? Seriously the titles alone speak a sermon.”
“Nat holy cow. If you just came up with those that is mind blowing.”
Spice up your Sunday meetings with these starting points off the beaten path.
Would borrow from Forgiveness + Tribulation, a talk I gave fall 2019.
The Fifth Commandment enjoins: “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Romans 3:23 says: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.”
How can we, how do we, honor parents … when they have ALL fallen short—at best—and done real harm, at worst?
… for there is a God, and he hath created all things … both things to act and things to be acted upon … Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself.
2 Nephi 2:14-16
[M]en should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will … For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves.
D&C 58:26-27
vs.
And let every man esteem his brother as himself … And again I say unto you, let every man esteem his brother as himself. For what man among you having twelve sons, and is no respecter of them, and they serve him obediently, and he saith unto the one: Be thou clothed in robes and sit thou here; and to the other: Be thou clothed in rags and sit thou there—and looketh upon his sons and saith I am just? Behold, this I have given unto you as a parable, and it is even as I am. I say unto you, be one; and if ye are not one ye are not mine.
D&C 38:24-27
And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.
John 17:22-23
I believe “time isn’t found, it is made” is a Henry B Eyring line. Need to verify.
There’s so much to unpack from these opening 8 lines.
(I don’t have kids. To someone who does, go for it.)
In mid 2016, I read a book by Neal A Maxwell. Shortly after, I embarked on listening to his entire BYU Speeches archive, in chronological order.
I listened to many of these talks while making the long drive from Salt Lake to Heber City. At the time I was seeing someone who lived in Heber, and each time we made plans to get together I looked forward as much to her company as I did to the drive from my home in Millcreek, up Parley’s Canyon, past Park City and back down into the neighboring valley — my quiet, private time with Neal. The drive being an hour each way, I listened to one talk there and another on the way home.
In 2017, I started listening to the entire archive of his General Conference talks.
His perspectives certainly colored this piece I wrote, where I included just one of his golden nuggets.
I thought I’d put together all the speeches and talks of this man who seemed so well to maintain proper perspective for all life’s experience. For as he once said, “This world is not the one we are preparing for.”
The first book I read was We Will Prove Them Herewith. I think it’s out of print, but you can find it on Amazon.
Will update this with all of his Ensign articles, books, etc. I have a book that isn’t on the Wikipedia books list, so I think it will take some work.
I also recommend his biography, A Disciple’s Life: The Biography of Neal A Maxwell, which I finished fall 2017.
b. Jul. 6, 1926
1970 – Appointed Commissioner of Church Education
1970 – Feb. 23 – Spiritual Ecology – BYU/CES
1971 – Oct. 23 – Mormon Milieu – BYU/CES
1972 – A Time to Choose – Deseret Book
1972 – Apr. 27 – Freedom: A “Hard Doctrine” – BYU/CES
1974 – Jan. 15 – Family Perspectives – BYU/CES
1974 – Apr. 6 – Called as Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
1974 – Apr. – Response to a Call – LDS General Conference
1974 – Sep. 1 – But for a Small Moment – BYU/CES
1974 – Oct. – Why Not Now? – LDS General Conference
1975 – Apr. – The Man of Christ – LDS General Conference
1976 – Jan. 4 – Taking up the Cross – BYU/CES
1976 – Apr. – “Jesus of Nazareth, Savior and King” – LDS General Conference
1976 – Oct. 1 – Called to the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy
1976 – Oct. – Notwithstanding My Weakness – LDS General Conference
1976 – Oct. 26 – Insights from My Life – BYU/CES
1977 – Nov. 8 – All Hell Is Moved – BYU/CES
1978 – Feb. – The Gospel Gives Answers to Life’s Problems – Ensign/Liahona
1978 – Apr. – The Women of God – LDS General Conference
1978 – Oct. 10 – Meeting the Challenges of Today – BYU/CES
1979 – Nov. 27 – Patience – BYU/CES
1980 – Apr. 21 – In This Time of Complexity and Challenge – BYU/CES
1980 – Oct. – The Net Gathers of Every Kind – LDS General Conference
1980 – Oct. 7 – True Believers in Christ – BYU/CES
1981 – Jul. 23 – Called to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
1981 – Sep. 15 – Grounded, Rooted, Established, and Settled (Ephesians 3:17, 1 Peter 5:10) – BYU/CES
1981 – Oct. – “O, Divine Redeemer” – LDS General Conference
1982 – Apr. – “A Brother Offended” – LDS General Conference
1982 – Sep. 5 – Meekly Drenched in Destiny – BYU/CES
1982 – Oct. – “Be of Good Cheer” – LDS General Conference
1983 – Feb. 18 – Try the Virtue of the Word of God – BYU/CES
1983 – Apr. – “Shine As Lights in the World” – LDS General Conference
1983 – Oct. – Joseph, the Seer – LDS General Conference
1984 – Apr. – The Great Plan of the Eternal God – LDS General Conference
1984 – Oct. – “Out of Obscurity” – LDS General Conference
1984 – Dec. 4 – If Thou Endure Well – BYU/CES
1985 – Apr. – “Willing to Submit” – LDS General Conference
1985 – Oct. – Premortality, a Glorious Reality – LDS General Conference
1986 – Feb. 7 – Good and Evil Spoken of Among All People – BYU Management Society
1986 – Mar. 30 – Joseph Smith: “A Choice Seer” – BYU/CES
1986 – Apr. – “Called and Prepared from the Foundation of the World” – LDS General Conference
1986 – Oct. – “God Will Yet Reveal” – LDS General Conference
1986 – Oct. 11 – Great Answers to the Great Question – BYU/CES
1986 – Oct. 21 – “Meek and Lowly” – BYU/CES
1987 – Apr. – “Overcome … Even As I Also Overcame” – LDS General Conference
1987 – Oct. – “Yet Thou Art There” – LDS General Conference
1988 – Apr. – “For I Will Lead You Along” – LDS General Conference
1988 – Oct. – “Answer Me” – LDS General Conference
1989 – Mar. 26 – “A Wonderful Flood of Light” – BYU/CES
1989 – Apr. – Irony: The Crust on the Bread of Adversity – LDS General Conference
1989 – Oct. – “Murmur Not” – LDS General Conference
1990 – Feb. 4 – The Children of Christ – BYU/CES
1990 – Apr. – “Endure It Well” – LDS General Conference
1990 – Oct. – Put Off the Natural Man, and Come Off Conqueror – LDS General Conference
1991 – Mar. 31 – “In Him All Things Hold Together” – BYU/CES
1991 – Apr. – “Lest Ye Be Wearied and Faint in Your Minds” – LDS General Conference
1991 – Sep. 27 – On Consecration, Scholarship, and the Defense of the Kingdom (pp 12-21 in the PDF, printed as pages x-xix) – FARMS
1991 – Oct. – Repentance – LDS General Conference
1992 – Apr. – “My Servant Joseph” – LDS General Conference
1992 – Aug. 18 – The Inexhaustible Gospel – BYU/CES
1992 – Oct. – “Settle This in Your Hearts” – LDS General Conference
1993 – Apr. – “Behold, the Enemy Is Combined” (D&C 38:12) – LDS General Conference
1993 – Jul. 4 – Provo 1993 Freedom Festival Fireside – BYU/CES
1993 – Aug. 25 – Wisdom and Order – BYU/CES
1993 – Aug. 26 – Out of the Best Faculty – BYU/CES
1993 – Oct. – “From the Beginning” – LDS General Conference
1994 – Mar. 27 – “Called to Serve” – BYU/CES
1994 – Apr. – “Take Especial Care of Your Family” – LDS General Conference
1994 – Oct. – “Brightness of Hope” – LDS General Conference
1995 – Apr. – “Deny Yourselves of All Ungodliness” – LDS General Conference
1995 – Oct. – “Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father” – LDS General Conference
1996 – Jan. 23 – “Brim with Joy” – BYU/CES
1996 – Apr. – “Becometh As a Child” – LDS General Conference
1996 – Oct. – “According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts” – LDS General Conference
1997 – Apr. – “From Whom All Blessings Flow” – LDS General Conference
1997 – Oct. – “Apply the Atoning Blood of Christ” – LDS General Conference
1998 – Jan. 4 – The Pathway of Discipleship – BYU/CES
1998 – Apr. – “Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel” – LDS General Conference
1998 – Oct. – Hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ – LDS General Conference
1999 – Jan. 12 – Sharing Insights from My Life – BYU/CES
1999 – Apr. – “Repent of [Our] Selfishness” (D&C 56:8) – LDS General Conference
1999 – Oct. – Lessons from Laman and Lemuel – LDS General Conference
2000 – Feb. – Jesus, the Perfect Mentor – BYU/CES
2000 – Apr. – Content with the Things Allotted unto Us – LDS General Conference
2000 – Oct. – The Tugs and Pulls of the World – LDS General Conference
2001 – Apr. – “Plow in Hope” – LDS General Conference
2001 – Oct. – The Seventh Commandment:A Shield – LDS General Conference
2002 – Apr. – Consecrate Thy Performance – LDS General Conference
2002 – Oct. – Encircled in the Arms of His Love – LDS General Conference
2003 – Apr. – Care for the Life of the Soul – LDS General Conference
2003 – Oct. – How Choice a Seer! – LDS General Conference
2004 – Mar. 16 – “Free to Choose” – BYU/CES
2004 – Mar 19 – Blending Research and Revelation – adaptation of remarks made at BYU President’s Leadership Council Meetings
2004 – Apr. – Remember How Merciful the Lord Hath Been – LDS General Conference
d. July 21, 2004
Sources:
BYU Speeches by Neal A Maxwell
LDS General Conference Archive of Neal A Maxwell
Maxwell Bibliography. An on-going project by Tyler Snow. Elder Maxwell’s lifetime cited works, grouped into Books, JD, HC and CHC, and then sorted by frequency of citations.
From “A” to “Z”: A is for Alliteration, Z is for Zion. By Don Duncan. 1997. (Working on converting this to a spreadsheet format.)
My stake and a neighboring YSA stake were asked to staff the choir for the Priesthood Session of April 2017 General Conference.
I sang T1. About 40 guys I go to church with each week spread themselves out across T1/T2/B1/B2.
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#ThisIsWinmill
We sang . . .
(Made the camera on this one, around 0:48)
and
Great times. Hats off to our conductor Brett Taylor, music boss over at Mountain View High School.
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This post is for my fellow Latter-day Saints with regard to one particular way that we organize our congregations for worship: the YSA Ward.
In my current YSA ward I’m serving as co-chair of the fellowship committee.
My co-chair and our committee take on the responsibility of supporting everyone who begins attending our ward for roughly their first three months. We ensure they feel welcome. We ensure they connect with resources they need. We ensure the Relief Society and Elders’ Quorum Presidencies are aware of them and arrange visiting- and/or home-teaching assignments. We ensure the executive secretary invites each member to meets a member of the bishopric and establish a relationship there and perhaps receive a calling to serve in the ward. And so on.
Materially, this means every week on Sunday I co-host a Sunday School class for people who are attending our ward for the first time (about 4-8 people every week), and also the ward clerk gives me a report of all the new records we receive that week from Church headquarters … which is usually another 4-8 people who supposedly now live in our boundaries and who haven’t yet shown up on Sunday for us to meet them.
Recently, we got a batch of 40-something names, and it turns out a nearby family ward sent this huge batch of records to us.
Translated: if you are 18-31 years old and not married, then where you “belong” is in the YSA ward in which you live.
I’m writing this post for two reasons:
I can think of two reasons:
Let’s tackle policy first.
From Handbook 2 (my emphasis added):
16.4 Young Single Adult Wards
Where local circumstances and the number of young single adult members make it desirable, priesthood leaders may recommend the creation of a young single adult ward according to the guidelines in Handbook 1, 9.1.6.
Eligible members may, in consultation with their parents, choose to be members of the young single adult ward or to remain in their conventional ward. The stake president may authorize the young single adult ward to find and fellowship other young single adult members of the stake who are less active. Those who become active may then choose to belong to the young single adult ward or to their conventional ward.
With approval from the stake president, the bishop of a young single adult ward may organize a second Relief Society for young single adult women and a second elders quorum for young single adult men to provide additional opportunities for young single adults to serve and associate with each other.
Membership in a young single adult ward is temporary. Leaders help young single adults prepare to return to a conventional ward when they marry or reach age 31. This transition should provide sufficient time and communication to help the bishop of the conventional ward plan for a calling that helps each transitioning young single adult feel welcome and needed.
That seems like A LOT of optionality and ZERO compulsion.
Need I say more?
All that’s needed on my point about policy is this: “Eligible members may, in consultation with their parents, choose to be members of the young single adult ward or to remain in their conventional ward.”
Boom.
It’s up to each person to choose being in the YSA ward. Home base is the family/conventional ward in which they live. That’s “where they belong.” YSA ward participation is totally voluntary. It’s a temporary option for those who choose it.
Not complicated: wards exist to support and strengthen families. A single member of the Latter-day Saint Church is his/her own 1-person family. As the head of his/her own family, a YSA gets to decide what his/her spiritual needs are and choose how they are going to meet those needs.
Shuttling all YSAs into a YSA ward by default is having an institution choose on behalf of the YSA. That’s not the spiritual design of this faith that we have.
To all my fellow YSAs who are reading this or ever will … the choice is YOURS.
Which means your choice is yours and every other YSA’s choice is THEIRS.
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