Sacrament meetings in a variety of wards feature unpaid speakers from the membership of the church. Frequently, assignments include teenage youth and adults.
Careful analysis by the Weekly Standard shows that typically, youth talks are about five minutes long, whereas adult talks last between ten and fifteen minutes on average.
What surprised our analysts was that, frequently, the same amount of doctrine was taught in the youth talk as in the adult talk.
The following breakdown shows the details:
Youth talk -
- Introduction - 30 sec
- Doctrinal material - 4 min
- Testimony/conclusion - 30 sec
Adult talk -
- Introduction - 30 sec
- Extended introduction about how a couple met - 2 min
- Anecdote about spouse's personality - 2 min
- Log of events involving member of the bishopric extending speaking invitation - 2 min
- Analysis of feelings about having to speak publicly - 1 min 30 sec
- Doctrinal material - 4 min
- Testimony/conclusion - 2 min
Of course, the Weekly Standard acknowledges that these are average values, and statistical outliers exist. Additionally, groups that significantly impact the averages, such as High Council talks (that are almost entirely doctrine-free), were not considered in the calculation.
The analysts concluded, based on this data, that adults in the church might benefit from being instructed by youth on "how to just get to the point already."
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