BYU Campus Education Week: Preparing powerful sacrament meeting messages
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Speakers in sacrament meeting should take on the role of the Savior in providing “living water” to those who hear their message, said Celeste Elain Witt, instructor of public speaking at BYU during her Aug. 18 presentation at BYU Campus Education Week.
“As people are coming into sacrament meeting, they’re thirsty,” said Sister Witt, who is also a communications consultant and speech coach. “Everyone comes so thirsty. How are you going to quench it?”
To accomplish this task, Sister Witt guided her audience through a five-step writing process in hopes of helping them create “laser-focused” messages.
“Those in the congregation want the message that you give to be accessible,” she said. “It has to be able to be captured by your audience.”
First, Sister Witt said speakers should refine the topic given to them by priesthood leaders, which is usually generic, to have a greater impact.
“If you don’t narrow your topic, you will be searching for information for way too long,” she said. “If you narrow your topic properly, the other steps will naturally flow.”
Methods she suggested to help narrow a topic included personal experiences and a specific event or challenge facing the ward audience.
Once a topic has been narrowed, Sister Witt said speakers should develop a clear purpose or mission statement for their talk.
“Figure out what your mission is and then actually write it out,” she said. “Put it at the top of your computer page or your yellow tablet.” She added that most mission statements revolve around inspiring, motivating or informing listeners.
Once the speaker determines a specific mission, they can begin to develop the message of the talk itself. Most sacrament meeting attendees, according to Sister Witt will only recall one sentence from the talk. As a result, speakers should harness the power of determining what that sentence is without being too quirky or overly dramatic.
“You need to actually write down the sentence you want them to take home,” she said. “How are they going to know what to take home unless you tell them?”
After the process of specification is over, research for the talk can begin.
“There’s no question that in the one or two weeks you’re given to prepare, you don’t have time to become a gospel scholar,” she said, “but you owe it to your audience to actually do some research.”
Instead of going overboard to find something new on a given topic, Sister Witt encouraged those in attendance to look at scriptures and other sources familiar to Church members in a different way. She illustrated this by showing close-up pictures of wildflowers she had taken, later revealing that they were located on Y Mountain in Provo.
“If you look carefully, you will notice things that no one else has ever noticed,” she said. “If you see what no one else can see, you can say what no one else can say.”
During the process of inserting the research into the talk itself, Sister Witt emphasized the need to use quotes effectively and avoid over-referencing sources, even scripture references, which can detract from the message of the source itself.
In a seemingly paradoxical move write an introduction and conclusion to the talk.
“You can’t write your introduction and your conclusion until you know what it is that’s in the middle of your talk,” she said.
dmortimer@desnews.com
