Teaching Like a Spiritual Rock Star

Jeff Birk

LLDS:​ So Jeff, how are you?

Birk:​ I'm doing great, Kirk. Thanks for having me on. This is just an honor (00:00:30) and I am really excited to share some cool stuff with everybody.

LLDS:​ Nice. Well maybe one thing and I want you to tell us a little about yourself, but just so nobody sits here and is distracted by what you're saying by thinking I've seen that guy somewhere. Where maybe somebody in the Mormon universe recognize you?

Birk:​ So I've done a few Mormon Movies. You know, if anyone wants to think way back to when this whole thing started. When it really started to get (00:01:00) a lot of momentum was when the first "Singles Ward" movie came out. So I had a small role in the "Singles Ward" and the "Singles Ward 2" or the single second ward. I did some voiceover stuff for the "Saints and Soldiers" movies that, uh, that depict members of the church during a certain happenings during World War Two primarily. But I think that the big one that people might recognize me from is the "Home Teachers" where I co-started with Michael Berkland who's done a lot of stuff. So I was kind of the, you know, (00:01:30) the really, we got to get our home teaching done. And my co-star was the we gotta get home and watch the football game. But yeah, other than that, that's pretty much been where people might spot me and Costco and start following me around.

LLDS:​ Have you had any weird interactions like that? Or is that why you shaved your head, so that nobody would recognize you?

Birk:​ You know, it's that movie. We did it back in 2004. And so I've gotten a little lighter up top here since then. (00:02:00) I don't get a lot of recognition anymore. But every now and then I do. I will. For example, I remember I was walking into Costco once and there was a kid that was just kind of following me around, but I think the funniest on, Kurt, was I was flying and I had to connect through Minneapolis and so I'm going from somewhere like New York to Minneapolis, then home to Salt Lake City and on my connecting flight I'm leaving the plane, walking down the jet way or whatever they call it and I get to outside of the gate (00:02:30) and the flight agent says 'Home Teachers!" So that was kind of a goofy one, but it's fun. It's good. And uh, it's, it's been a great experience.

LLDS:​ That's great. So tell us about what we need to know about you, about your background that may put you into context before we launch into your message today?

Birk:​ Yeah. So just so everyone out there knows how you and I got in touch was I on a webcast with a friend of mine, Sean Repeater, (00:03:00)​ ​and, you heard my, interview that I did with him and found out a little bit more of what I do. And just so that everybody has a background of what I'm going to be talking about , when I was at BYU there was a comedy club in Provo, Utah, and all of my friends said, "You've got to go do this, you're just born to do this stuff". And I've been a goofy face maker and noisemaker my whole life. Right? And so I went to open mic night. Once, went onstage. I wrote down five minutes’ worth (00:03:30)​ ​of material and, Johnny Biscuit, the owner of the club at the time, he liked it and he invited me back and I kept going back and then five minutes turned into 10 and then 20. And then one thing led to another to where I've just had some incredible opportunities over the, over the past few years, quite a while ago, I opened for Jay Leno. I got to open for Martin Short, if any of you are familiar with him, he's done a lot of movies. A few big names. It's just been a lot of fun. And so, (00:04:00)​ ​from a comedy background, that's, that's where that comes from.

But to continue the story, Kurt, what I've done primarily as my work is I'm a Corporate Presenter, so I go out and I speak with companies and organizations about a variety of topics. These could be companies such as Honda, Footlocker, a Virgin Trains, Liberty Mutual and New York Presbyterian. My real job I should say is with OC Tanner here in (00:04:30) Salt Lake City. And I go teach managers how to say thank you to their people. It's all about appreciation, recognition. But the one thing that we really, we're going to be talking about today has stemmed from my visit to a trade show one year. Excuse me in Dallas, Texas, it was a trade show about how to train. OK? So there's companies there that have their 10 by 10, 20 by 20 booths set up and we're going to teach you how to do this and train you how to do that. And the thing that

(00:05:00)​ ​really amazed me, Kurt, was I was watching these trainers onstage and they were awful. Okay, now this is a trade show about training. All right? And so you got the one guy up there, he's got his shirt, kind of half un-tucked and he's looking around and he says, "are my slides working?" and it does this, you know, and OK, so, and it’s death by PowerPoint. There's these PowerPoints that are up there that have 500 words on them and they're all in (00:05:30) eight-point font and I'm just, Oh my goodness, you've gotta be kidding. And so it was, it was that experience that inspired me to actually write this book and I'll show it up for everybody and we'll show a screenshot of this as well, "Train Like a Rockstar Speaking Tips from a Stand Up Comedian". And so I've been able to go out and train a few companies on this. They'll have me come in and train their trainers on not just how to be funnier, but how to do a lot of things better in their training. And so I took the, the comedy (00:06:00)​ ​experience in the hundreds of thousands of stages that I've been on, and I said, how can I take that and move it into the corporate world to make sure that people don't get remembered as that was the worst training?. And that was the worst, most awful thing I've ever been through in my life, to make sure that they started to train like a rockstar. But the cool thing about what we're going to be talking about today is that I've gone through the material and I'm, uh, I'm going to apply it to make sure that at the end of this session that today you're going to be a better (00:06:30)​ ​sacrament meeting speaker. You're going to be a better Gospel doctrine instructor or Relief Society or Sunday school. And if you're a primary teacher, if you listen to the stuff that we have for you today and apply it, you're going to be the kind of primary teacher where when you are assigned another calling and you leave, your kids are going to beg you to come back. And here's why I say that for about a year and a half, I was,

(00:07:00)​ ​me and my wife, we were instructors for the 10 to 11 year olds. And, uh, I had a really interesting experience just a couple of weeks ago at our state conference. We recently went through here in Draper, Utah. A ward split, I think in Draper, was split about every 20 minutes. It's just crazy. So we just went through a reorganization and we're going into Stake Conference and in the lobby, one of my former 11 year old, a kid named (00:07:30) Joseph, the hardest, most difficult. Okay, you primary teachers out there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. He was the one that every Sunday I thought, 'how are we going to handle them today?' You know, he comes running up to me and he says, "Brother Birk, you've got to come back! You're the best teacher. We've got new man, we need you back". And for me it was just one of those pause in time moments where (00:08:00) I just said, "Wow, it's all worth it." And the thing that made it worth it are some of the things that I'm going to be sharing with all of you today that I did in that particular class to make sure that these kids weren't wild and crazy and out of control, although they were a little bit sometimes, but how do I engage that group? Or how do I engage a Stake Conference group or my ward when I'm up giving that sacrament meeting talk, or it's my first time teaching Gospel doctrine. So I've got. I've got a lot of stuff (00:08:30) written down here that I'll get it today, but that's kind of where we're headed today.

LLDS:​ Yeah, I love that you're leveraging your background as a stand-up comedian, but you're not saying that you need to be funny to be engaging. You don't need to do things to...

Birk:​ And I'm glad I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of the points that I wanted to make clear with everybody, is that our session right now, the time we're going to be spending together today, it's not about being funnier, Okay? I'm going to (00:09:00) be sharing with you some information and some ideas that I have gleaned from my experience on the stage of not just how to be funnier, but, what, for example, are the four things that you're going to be able to do today that are going to set you apart from everybody else. And humor is only one of them. And we talk about humor and you might be sitting there wondering, well, how much is too much? And what we need to do is first of all, to kind of do a level set here. So I'm going to show you a couple of extremes, Okay? (00:09:30)​ ​Um, now how would you feel if somebody came in and started their Gospel doctrine class like this? Okay, everybody, it's great to be here with you today. I'm sensing a lot of energy in the room here. This is going to be fantastic. In fact, I feel like I'm almost a in front of a group that you've all been to like a monster truck and tractor pull show. How many of you have been to a monster truck show? Yeah, I know they're kind of crazy, right? But I wasn't planning on going to the monster truck and tractor pull show until I saw the (00:10:00)​ ​commercial and uh, those guys are pretty cool. Am I right? I mean they do the commercial. I was ready to go. The guy starts out, "Prepare yourself for nothing but power, power, power, Good Year presents to you guys. Have a bunch of short, really spectacular in the Delta Center April 1st and 2nd. Experience when rap and his incredible mountain of mechanized machinery for Ryan asleep two hundred mile per hour jet drags through that transports itself before your very eyes to a jumping rockets shooting robot. Also see the open for the chevy shell shock and the battle of monster trucks that are sure to send your nasal hair! All right, let's say a prayer and get started (00:10:30) Now that's one extreme. Okay? Right? He would never, ever, and I would never encourage anyone to go to that length to get everybody energized about what you got to be talking about. So that's one extreme, but let's take a look at the other extreme. Okay? Now imagine yourself. You're sitting in sacrament meeting and I'm getting up to talk. So here we go. Ah, (00:11:00) faith as defined by Webster's dictionary, uh, is. Oh heck, that's the second page. Here's the first page.... um... Okay? You know it. OK, now that's the other extreme. And you know, right off the bat that it's going to be a painful two and a half minute talk or five minute talk or maybe even a 10 minute talk and I don't know, have you seen talks like that on the bad extreme?

LLDS:​ Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that was a (00:11:30) much less difficult to imagine because I've seen it. I've never seen the monster truck guy in sacrament meeting or to Gospel doctrine, but I've definitely seen the person who just is there and it's sort of like, all right, let's get this over with.

Birk:​ Yeah, exactly. So I just wanted to make sure that everybody was aware of that I'm going to be sharing with you some things here that we're going to help you to go forward in whatever role you've got. Again, like I said before, if you have an adult teaching call against Sunday School, Gospel Doctrine, Relief Society, Elders Quorum, whatever. If you're (00:12:00)

getting ready for a sacrament meeting talk, we're going to be talking about those as well. And again, if you're teaching our precious youngsters how to keep that class, you know, engaged. And one thing before I even started into this is it's all about making sure that everybody, first of all, feels the Holy Ghost. We want everyone to feel the influence of the spirit because then the spirit is going to testify to each one of us in each one of the participants that the church is true, (00:12:30)

that everything that we're hearing is validated and affirmed by our witness that comes from the Holy Ghost. And that's one thing that I was putting this together is when it comes to using humor, we have to be very careful and we have to use it very sparingly. I mean, you can go on youtube and you can see some fantastic examples of the top 10 funny moments in conferences. You've got wonderful clips there from President Hinckley, and I'll never forget sitting in the priesthood session when President Monson did the ear thing, (00:13:00) right? So it's very well placed. It's very appropriate. However, we don't want it to get out of hand to where our talk or presentation is all about me and it's all about how effective am I, and I do this. Because what happens is we start to run into this, um, this notion of being in the priest craft. As they talked about it in 2 Nephi 26, right now we all know that priest craft defined is setting yourself up as a light (00:13:30). And it's not about us, we're just the instrument. But if we're really good well-tuned instrument, then we can just be the mouthpiece and we can use a little humor. We can use some great storytelling. We can use some memorization techniques that will allow us to make sure that we're delivering the message to the best of our ability. So any, any other thoughts, Kurt? I'm going to just kind of start jumping in here.

LLDS:​ No, I think that's a good sort of a lay of the land of how we can approach this because, I think sometimes, (00:14:00) everybody is sort of the cliché to start that talk with a really good joke. And sometimes we spend more time finding that really good joke or really good opener. And sometimes it works, sometimes it's like just another dad joke that isn't really funny, but, uh, the speaker thinks it is right. And I've found the most captivating and you'll see this in general conference. Elder Holland stands up there and he's right into his talk. Elder Bednar, he's jumping right on it. And sometimes we (00:14:30)​ ​feel like we need a runway of a joke, or to break the ice when in reality we were all there we're ready and listening.

Birk:​ Yeah. And that's a, that's a great thing because sometimes when we're sitting there and we're observing a talk that we are not very impressed with, we need to ask ourselves a question, do I have any distractions going on? Am I really listening to the best of my ability? Because the person sitting right next to us might say, that was the best talk I've ever heard. And you're like, wow, (00:15:00) what did I miss? So in our efforts to do a better job giving sacrament talks or doing better lessons, let's also make sure that we work on being better listeners ourselves as we go forward. And I love what you said about Elder Holland. You know, we don't have time today. I mean we could do another session or we could even do another dedicated podcast if you wanted to and I can talk about the art of storytelling as well as memorization. I was thinking of covering that here, but I just don't have time. But that could be another session on stuff. We can do that later some other time. But the (00:15:30) thing I love that you mentioned about Elder Holland is, and I was looking at this talk again last night, one of my favorite talks is called, Where Justice, Love, and Mercy Meet. I think. It's April of 2016. And if any of you remember that talk, it's the one where he talks about right off the bat, the two brothers that were rock climbing, fantastic talk. And he is a general authority. Everybody knows who he is. He starts (00:16:00) right into the story. He doesn't even start with brothers and sisters it's wonderful to be here with you today. None of that, but he can do that. And that's something that I'll talk about a little bit later on as we, as we get through these points.

One thing I want to make sure that you all know as I get into these concepts, I'm going to give you four ways to make sure that you're giving your audience, wherever they are. You're going to give them the unexpected, OK? You're going to give them maybe something that they've never seen before or never heard before. You want to put yourself just a little bit (00:16:30)

left of center because you don't want to do what everyone else is doing. In my opinion, on this level. So before I give you these four things, I want you to make sure that there's two additional things before we even begin. First of all, we're going to learn some things today, but second, I need you to commit to me that you're going to practice these things. And I'm not talking about just practice. I'm talking about perfect practice.

I think you know the monster truck joke that I just did a few minutes ago. I always open my standup comedy routine with that one (00:17:00). And how I came up with that joke is I was watching TV one night I saw the commercial and it was replaying right because they're promoting it for the next week and I got a tape recorder, and I just lost the millennials, right? A tape recorder, what's that? And I got a tape recorder. I taped it, I typed it out, I memorized it, and I practiced it and practice it and practice it. You know, I remember the first night I ever did that joke. I only made it halfway through, but the audience was with me and they were having a good time. So the reason practice is (00:17:30) so important. I liked this quote by Aristotle who says, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act. It is a habit". So think about that as we go through. There's also a wonderful scripture and Doctrine and Covenants section 84;85, but I know that we're all familiar with this scripture. We've heard it, whether we were missionaries or when we've heard it in talks and it goes like this, "Neither take ye thought beforehand what you shall say, but treasure up in your minds continually the words of life, and it shall be (00:18:00) given you in the very hour, that portion that shall be needed unto every man". Now we can get excited about that last sentence. I know as a missionary was, oh wow, I'm going to be walking around and stuff is just going to come to me. But one thing, I believe it was Truman Madson pointed out, very important point. He says, you need to go up another sentence, and the sentence that he focused on was treasure up in your minds continually the words of life. Okay? Then you will (00:18:30)​ ​start to have these things come into your mind. So as we go forward, I'm going to be challenging you to do things and not just to do things, but to become something. Okay? And so, um, anyway, I'm ready to get going.

Like I said, I'm going to be focusing on three areas, those of you that are giving a talk in church at any level. And then second, those of you that have adult teaching responsibilities, it can be Gospel doctrine, (00:19:00) priesthood, relief society. And then the primary role is going to be my third one. So the first thing I want to talk about is what you can do in your first two minutes. The first two minutes can either make or break your message. However you're going to be delivering it. And another quote here that I really like is from a gentleman named Elliott Abrams, he said, "First impressions matter. Experts to say that we size somebody up in the first 30 seconds to two minutes". And we've already talked about that. I'm giving you some examples of, oh, we (00:19:30) know how this talk is going to go. All right? But when I'm talking about giving somebody the unexpected. I look back on an experience that I had when I was nine years old, back in southern California. And I come from a family of five kids. We're hanging around in our home one time, my, my older brother comes home and he says, we've got to go see this new movie called Jaws. It is just the coolest movie. We've got to go see it, right? So this is back in 1975 I believe is when the movie came out. So (00:20:00) I'm a nine year old, right? Stupidest mistake I ever made was going to see this movie because I saw the sharks swimming through the air that night, coming to get me. But here's the thing, I'm sitting there, I've got my popcorn. And if you've seen this movie, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The picture starts underwater and you hear, boom, boom, boom. And it was the music. It's like, wow, this is something interesting here. And (00:20:30) so right off the bat, they had you. Steven Spielberg had everybody in the palm of his hand within the first two minutes of that movie. And we hadn't even seen the shark yet. So I'm going to share with you these four things. And I'm going to give examples of each role as we move along, these four things that are gonna help you give your audiences the unexpected. Which is what I use and what I continue to use when I'm, whether in a church role or whether I'm doing a standup comedy routine.

The first thing is this, if you got notes, go ahead (00:21:00)​ ​and write this one down. It's, tell a joke. okay, we've talked about this a little bit. Um, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on this because I want to get to the others that are going to be equally as important in my mind. And I want to give you some examples of what you can do. Now this is one that I think is gonna work well. It's obviously we're going to be talking about clean humor. Okay, right? We'll do a, we'll do a PG 13 version later on now. I mean, it's (00:21:30) not like that. These are all obviously clean. That was never my style anyway, to do off-color humor. Which was a great thing for me because I had an agent telling me once from southern California, he says, "wow Jeff you're voices, your this, that, the other, you don't even need to go there", which I never had any intention of doing anyway. But this first little joke is called the 15 minute break joke. This is so easy. You can do this. I think especially for those of you that are getting a first time talk, maybe it's your first time you're teaching that Sunday school lesson or your (00:22:00) teaching that relief society lesson. And here's how it goes. You get up to the front and I'll just kind of play the role here. " Hey everybody. It's really great to be with you today. Um, uh, this is the first time for me teaching. It's going to be, it's going to be fun. I always like to start with a 15 minute break." It'll get a laugh every single time. Not everybody out there can do that. Okay? Let's go ahead and start with a 15 minute break. You know, if you can take it and you know different ways if you want to, but that's one that (00:22:30) I simply called the 15 minute break joke. Okay? Now another one that I've actually used this one in sacrament meeting. So if you've got sacrament meeting, talk coming up, consider this one and it works really, really well. It kind of goes something like this. "Brothers and sisters, great to be with you today. I've got a great group here, a large group. I hope that those of you in the back can hear me okay, I think the microphone is working fine. The reason I asked that question is because just a few weeks ago I was in front of a group of about 300 people and as it is, you (00:23:00)​ ​know, people are coming in late, right? And trying to get started on time. There's the whole front row just like you're in sacrament meeting. No one is sitting on the front row, right? Everyone's sitting in the back. An older gentleman came walking in at the very back and he sits down in the last seat in the very back row. Sir, I don't think you're going to hear me back there. Why don't you go ahead and come up. I think you'll be able to hear me better up here. And he said, Jeff, don't worry about it. I just bought a $5,000 hearing aid. Five thousand bucks, you gotta be kidding me? And I said, well, that's a lot (00:23:30) of money to spend on a hearing aid. What kind is it? And he said, oh, it's about 9:00." So that actually worked pretty well in sacrament meeting. Now for those of our international listeners, that's probably not gonna work, you're going to have to figure out something in a different language because that's a good joke for those of us that are in English speaking countries and English speaking congregations. But it's a fun joke. It's a very easy one to 10 scale, you know, but the important thing on that is the delivery. In (00:24:00) my book I've got the the joke written down, but when I'm in front of, you know, training and a company of executives that are trying to learn how to speak better and I make sure, say, look, you gotta get that joke exactly right.

What kind is it, you're not going to say, "So I asked him to know expense to, you know, what kind of watches it, you see it. That ruins the joke right there. It's what kind is it because he thinks (00:24:30) you're saying what time is it. So that's another one. Now when it comes to primary, and I'm going to get to some of the do's and don'ts of each of these groups later, but along the lines of humor with primary, I always found knock-knock jokes to be really, really good. And here's my favorite knock-knock jokes. Kurt, why don't you go ahead and start.

LLDS:​ Knock, knock

Birk:​ Who's there? All right, let's get started. (00:25:00) You set them up. So as I was looking through this particular part of our time together, I have found a website that I want to share with all of you. I have no ties to this website. I've never met the person that runs it, but I looked at it and it's called Mormonszone.com. I don't know if you've ever heard of this number, but what I did is I went to Google and I typed in something like clean Mormon jokes and MormonZone.com came up and (00:25:30) they've got some great jokes about a lot of different areas. So again, I just given you a little bit of taste of how to deliver a joke, how to use it. Again, don't use it too much, but if you're looking for a little bit of humor, I would try that site. It's pretty funny. I remember I looked through a quick list of the top 10 ways on how to signal to your high priest speaker in church that his time is done. And this 10 most was just funny. (00:26:00) In one of those I remember was say amen after every sentence. So, I thought that was pretty funny again. That's the number one of four. Okay. And we've talked about how those can apply in each one, how you can put some humor into sacrament meeting or relief society or primary situations. Again, I just want to remind you, use it sparingly. Okay. Beware of priest craft like we talked about earlier. Humor does not make a (00:26:30) great talk. It can help it and can add a little bit of nice little flavor to it. But just remember that. Now number two, any questions or comments so far? Kurt?

LLDS:​ No. I think that that's great advice as far as humor goes [inaudible]. Yeah.

Birk:​ All right, so let's get to number two. Now. The second thing that I like to use a lot that again is going to set you apart and give people the unexpected from the regular run of the mill speaker or teacher, is I like to use questions or like to start right off by (00:27:00) asking a question. Now to do this effectively, obviously we have to consider our topic. All right, we've got to consider our topic and then formulate some sort of an opening question. And I wrote down a couple of ideas here. Now here's another key to trying to find out what questions should I start with? I go all the way back to my elementary school days when I was, I don't know, six, seven, eight years old. Who, what, where, when, why, how? Just remember (00:27:30) those words: who, what, where, when, why, how. As I'm thinking about a topic, for example, the second coming and I think about that first word, who, OK, so well who's coming at the second coming and who's going to be spared? Who is going to be taken up along with the city of Enoch. And they could take that same topic. What? Okay, what does the second coming mean? What is significant? So that's a little tactic that I use when I'm trying to come up with topics. Now let's get a little bit more (00:28:00) specific. Let's say that I've got a sacrament meeting coming up and it's going to be on the atonement and I could start off just like Elder Holland does. I could get right to the microphone and I could simply start saying this, "What was the single most important event in the history of our lifetime on this earth? Brothers and sisters? I'm here to tell you that that single event is the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. And I'm going to share with you the three most important things that (00:28:30) you can understand..." you know, so that's a great way to start. Now you can certainly start with saying, "Now brothers and sisters. It's wonderful to be here with you today. I'm excited to share the topic and I'd like to start by asking you a question, what is the single most important event that has ever occurred in our mortal lifetimes here on this earth?". OK, so that again is you consider the topic. You consider the question, what word did it start with? What? OK. Here's another, example. Let's say that you have to speak on Joseph Smith, you're putting together, talk (00:29:00) about Joseph Smith and you want to use a question. Well, what about this one? 'Brothers and sisters, I'd like to ask you this question as I start our talk today. What three practices over the next 21 days would help you to have an unshakable testimony of Joseph Smith?' Now my interest is peaked. Okay, that's a great opening question because what it is, he or she is giving me a list of three things, three things, three (00:29:30) best practices that if applied over the next 21 days are gonna give me an unshakable testimony of Joseph Smith. I might be sitting there thinking, wow, I really need this. I need to strengthen my testimony of Joseph Smith, I've thought about it my whole life, I've read the book of Mormon a variety of times, but I'm getting out some notes because I want to make sure I know what these three things are. So again, that's just another example of using a good question to start your talk in church. Now, how do we ask a question when it's relating to Relief Society or (00:30:00) maybe a gospel doctrine question? We can use the same thing. It's very similar to giving this sacrament talk. However, we're going to want to have more interaction, but, try this one. Let's say that we're going to be talking about in our Sunday School class, the importance of scriptures. Okay. What if you started something like this? 'It's great to be with you all today. I'm looking very much forward to talking about what we have today. And I'm going to start by asking you this question. How many of you would be interested in knowing how I'm memorized every (00:30:30) chapter heading of The Book of Mormon?

LLDS:​ Wow yeah. Intriguing.

Birk:​ Right? Yeah. It'd be very intriguing. Well, I'm going to share with you some ideas on how I did that. Which again, that's why I said earlier, we could spend another session talking about memorization and storytelling. Because that's a goal that I did set for myself this year and I did it. It's just been awesome. And it was a big goal that was a daunting goal, but using the memory techniques that I use in my stand up comedy. I was able to get it done in about four months. And (00:31:00) the thing that I really wanted, you know, I would sit there in sacrament meeting and I would hear these speakers talk about scriptures and they talk about concepts and I just got sick and tired of not knowing where those scriptures, were. Oh, I've heard that scripture, where have I heard that? And so I set a goal for myself, you know, I'm going to memorize every single chapter heading in The Book of Mormon so that I can know. Oh yeah, he's talking about obviously that's when he's talking about getting and (00:31:30) retaining a remission of our sins. Yeah, that's Mosiah 4. I know exactly where that is. And that's been a really, really cool thing. And I was going to say one more thing about that. It's not important, but again, it starts with a question, right? How many of you would be interested in knowing that? Yeah, me too. OK. I would like to learn how that's done and it's not as hard as you think. It just depends. If we have another session, Kurt, on memorization techniques. I can tell them.

LLDS:​ I'm intrigued by it. I think something worth exploring.

Birk:​ Yeah, it's pretty cool. (00:32:00) It's pretty fun. Now along the lines of that particular idea, we've got Old Testament coming up next year, I believe, for those of you Gospel Doctrine teachers out there and I was just talking with a good buddy of mine that some of you might know him. His name is Scott Christopher. Very Popular Mormon actor. He's in a BYUTV series called Granite Flats, he was in movies called "The Best Two Years", he was the pharmacist in that movie, the one that got converted. (00:32:30) He was also in one where he played a bishop and there was a ex-mafia guy who was neighbors with a Mormon.

LLDS:​ Mobsters and Mormon.

Birk:​ He was, he was one of the main actors in that. But I was just talking with Scott the other day, he's the Gospel Doctrine teacher in his ward and he's like, oh, Old Testament next year. I am not looking forward to that. And I've taught Old Testament as a gospel (00:33:00) doctrine teacher. And I'm like, dude, that is the coolest thing in the world to teach. I'm not teaching Gospel Doctrine. So the reason I mentioned that is if you want a really good source of questions to ask as it pertains to Old Testament lessons that you're going to be encountering this next year. There's a wonderful book called "The First 2000 Years" by Cleon Skousen.

LLDS:​ I remember seeing it on my dad's bookshelf. It's not a light (00:33:30)​ ​read.

Birk:​ It's like a textbook. He starts out with about 10 or 15 questions and then he covers the material. So it's taking me a long time to get through because I'm just saying, well, I'm not going to go to the next chapter until I can answer all the questions. So keep that in mind. Cleon Skousen "The First 2000 Years" if you're looking for some great questions to start your Old Testament lessons with. Finally, another great book that is a landmark in our Church of (00:34:00) course is a "Answers to Gospel Questions" by Joseph Fielding Smith. A great resource. If you want to go and find some great questions to add to your question asking talent or skills as it pertains to starting your lessons or starting your talks and things of that nature. All right, so those are a few words on asking questions. Any other comments, Kurt? Uh, any questions?

LLDS:​ No, but it sounds like they're, you know, I think a lot of people default to just the body of their talk or the, the (00:34:30) lesson, right? That I want to get the facts straight. The context, right. To really be intentional about thinking about your opening, thinking about your closing as well. I would, I would assume. Right? And how can I capture this audience right on, because you know, you mentioned as far as speaking. We all should do a little bit better job listening, but it really helps that those in your class or in a sacrement meeting, listen, when you really give them a reason to listen and really draw them in, you know, you talked (00:35:00) about your experience with Jaws. I love analyzing the openings to movies or even, you know, ted talks or these things. They thought this through. How are they capturing my attention right off the bat.

BIRK:​ And those are really good points. And here's why this is so important. What we're talking about today and why it's also kind of scary because part of our Stake Conference, so we went to the early morning priesthood session and as all of you know, the third block is changing (00:35:30) for those of us that are on the three block schedule. And if you need to be reminded, here's how it's going to be. The third block, they were getting rid of Teachings of the Prophets. That manual is going away. And so you're not going to be able to dive right into the manual or dive right into the lesson. From my memory, I think the first Sunday is spent on council,we're going to be in council, we're going to talk about individuals, in the Elders Quorum or in the Relief Society, how we can do service. Now, the second and third Sunday are going to (00:36:00) be lessons, but they're going to go back to the Ensign talks. So the last thing that we want to do is just read an Ensign talk. I mean, one of the participants raised his hand and said, “you know, I'm going to push back a little bit here”, he said, “I don't want to sit there and listen to somebody just read through a talk because it makes me want to go to another room and just put my headphones on and listen to the talk”. Right? And listen to the source. So it's incumbent upon us as instructors, as speakers, as teachers, as leaders, as facilitators, to know how to do this stuff (00:36:30) better. And just like you said, Kurt, it's going to take, it's going to take some of these skills in order to break away from the manual and break away from... ‘So brothers and sisters, let's, let's read this together.’ You know, again, I'm going to get to some other ideas here that are going to help them to kind of step away from the manual and do a better job with that. Number three, use a statistic. I love using a statistic (00:37:00) or a stat, whenever, it's appropriate. Let me give you some ideas. American comedian Jerry Seinfeld said a very interesting thing. He said, “According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death”. Think of that death is number two. That means for most average people, when they go to a funeral, they would rather be in the casket than (00:37:30) giving the eulogy. So this is cool what Seinfeld has done, he's actually combined the two of the things I've talked about. He's combined a joke, but he's also using a statistic to bring that joke for life. So let me give you some ideas and thoughts on that because it's something that can be very good with your approach. Here's just some funny ones that I came up with. Because they're really easy to find. If you need a statistic on a religious topic, they're (00:38:00) out there and I'll give you a source here in just a moment, but they're out there all over the place. Here's some funny ones just to kind of give us some humor along the way. More Monopoly money is printed every year than real money is printed throughout the world. Interestingly, 40 percent of women have hurled footwear at a man sometime in their life. More than 10 people per year are killed by (00:38:30) vending machines. In 2015 a man named Ronald Mcdonald robbed a Wendy's restaurant. And here's my favorite one, Britney Spears, music has been used by the British Navy to scare off Somali pirates. So, you can use a couple of those. They're all out there. But let's again, let's bring this back two, how does using a statistic (00:39:00) fit in a church scenario, in a Gospel Doctrine or presentation scenario? So in a church setting, here's one that you could use, for example, and they're all out there. According to the International Church Growth Almanac, published in 2014, just 30 percent of Mormons worldwide regularly attend church meetings. I think about that statistic, you can use that statistic in a number of ways. Let's say that you're a bishop or you're a High Councilman (00:39:30) or you're in a stake position and you're having trouble with attendance. You could start your talk with that. And again, it's all about the delivery, right? According to statistics Brothers and Sisters, 30 percent of Mormons worldwide are considered actively going to church every single Sunday. Now we're going to talk about some ways on how we can change that number and start to turn the boat a little bit more towards getting to 40 percent, 50 percent, and hopefully even higher. So again, using (00:40:00) these statistics can be very good. Now, that was one source that I found was this, it's called the International Church Growth Almanac, published in 2014. Here's a, here's another example. Brothers and sisters, we're going to be talking about temples today. I know it's a topic that is talked a lot about, but I want to give you an interesting thought or an idea maybe this is a fact that we could talk about when I was born in 1966, there were (00:40:30) 13 temples in the world. Today there are 157. Now, let me talk about that just a different way, think about it this way. When I was born in 1966, 13 temples on the earth, today there are more than 13 temples in the state of Utah alone. What does this tell us? Brothers and sisters, does this tell us the temple work is not important? Of course not. Does it tell us that we just want to build some really beautiful buildings, (00:41:00) no. It tells us that temple work is very important and it's moving forward. So I'm going to share with you some ideas on how we can make sure that we're participating in that from going to the temple, from participating financially, from doing projects and other things like that. So again, that's just an idea of using statistics, that you can come up with on your own or you can go to the Internet and look for ways to use those. Any thoughts on that Kurt, on this idea of using facts or statistics?

LLDS:​ I love it because it's a, it definitely draws people (00:41:30) in to think about the topic differently or like you said on that temple example, sometimes people get in this mode of like, I have to tell what the bishopric told me to talk about or I have to say what the purpose of the lesson is today. And not that you can't do that, but by following that up with a statistic that really draws me in because it's not like, okay, here we go the typical temple lesson. Yeah, I get, I need to go to the temple more. Right? But by doing that, it draws me in in a different way. Sounds like it would take a few minutes of some research and going (00:42:00) through a church Almanac or whatever, and then finding some of these facts.

BIRK:​ Yep. Exactly. And keep in mind that, you know, the people in our congregations, the people in our classes, they're from all walks of life. Some people are visual learners. Some people are audio learners, others are number crunchers. You might have some accountants in there that just loves to tasks and statistics. Give me more statistics. You're going to have other people that love stories. I think storytelling obviously is going to be the one that's going to help most people (00:42:30) remember what you're going to be talking about. Again, I don't have time to really go into the art of storytelling here, but, you're exactly right. Once we couch that statistic, maybe you're on some of the other things that we're using that just helps us to maybe not… okay, I touched on something that brother Jones over there, I saw his eyes light up because, you know, he's a financial planner and that's something that he really gets into.

So, that's a little bit on point number three and I'll just review very briefly, very quickly before we talked about telling a joke, we talked about (00:43:00) asking the question, we've talked about using the statistic. Now the fourth one is one of my absolute favorites and it's using a quote. Memorizing a quote. This obviously is used extensively as we watched general conference. The gentleman and the sisters that do this very well. One of the reasons (00:43:30) they are able to do it very well is because they've got their talks right there in front of them, on the plate of glass prompter readers. So, they're able to look at, and I was thinking about that, I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a go fund me account to where every single chapel has the teleprompter thing. Instead of looking down you’re going to be able to stand up straighter and read.

LLDS:​ I back that. BIRK:​ Yeah, yeah. You'll be the first (00:44:00) donor. That will be good. So, let me give you some thoughts on using a quote. Because in my opinion, this is one of the most powerful things that you can do. First of all, consider your source. And what I mean by that is obviously it's natural to go out and find a great Neal A. Maxwell quote or a great Bruce R. McConkie. They're all out there and they're so easy to find. I remember years ago; my mom had a book put together by Richard L. Evans. It was a quote (00:44:30) book, but it had a lot of other people's quotes in it, had Aristotle, it had Einstein, it had Cicero it had all these other people. So consider the source and make sure that it's appropriate for the setting. Because I mean if you're in sacrament meeting or giving a talk, I don't know, it might not be appropriate to give a Barack Obama quote or a Donald Trump quote around. I'm using both just to cover my bases. Right? (00:45:00) But consider the source and check your sources. That's what I do when I find a really good quote. I'm going to go and try to find a couple of areas that it's repeated. I mean there's so many quotes out there that are attributed to the wrong person or there's a huge chunk of it missing. So just make sure and check those sources and also keep the audience in mind. Like I said earlier on some of my earlier points. Now this next one is very important to me as far as being (00:45:30) a good speaker and a good presenter. And I know it's going to be hard for a lot of you out there. Memorize the quote if you can. In fact not if you can, just memorize the quote. Start small, build up to it and you can all do this. There, there's a lot of ways to do this. Some people are just great at memorizing, others are not very good at memorizing. But I want to give you an example of how this can be used very effectively. Quotes can be very, very small. You could even (00:46:00) start a talk like this or like this. Brothers and sisters, I'm going to share a quote with you from Henry David Thoreau, he said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. That's the quote. Now, where do we go with that quote? Well there's a number of different ways. Let me tell you how I use it in the business setting. I'll actually start with a little bit of a story beginning out. I'll say, how many of you've heard of Henry David Thoreau? Fantastic. Thoreau for those of you that (00:46:30) aren't aware who he is, he's one of these famous American philosophers that lived in the 1840’s and at one point in his life he wanted to do an experiment. So he gets together with his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, who you may have heard of before, and he said, Ralph, I know you've got some land on the shores of Walden Pond just outside of Concord, Massachusetts in the northeast area of the United States. Here's what I want to do. I want to use that land for a couple of years. I'm going to go, I'm going to build (00:47:00) a shack. I'm going to live in for two years and I'm going to observe the human condition. Okay? I'm just going to see how people are. And that's one thing about Thoreau. He was a huge fan of studying people. In fact, what he said personally about this project he was about to embark on, he said, “I went to the woods to live life deliberately to see what had and (00:47:30) not when I came to die discover I have not lived”. And so he goes, builds this cabin. He lives out there. He finds out that he's observing the people in the town. They had jobs, they were working in the sawmills, in the stores, and in the shops that they had inherited from their third and fourth generation grandparents and great grandparents that had come across the Atlantic when we first settled that part of the country. One thing you noticed though is they didn't inherit the passion of their forebears (00:48:00). And that's when he came up with this quote, “The mass of men lives of quiet desperation”. So the question is quietly desperate for what? More stuff? No, it's for more purpose, more connection, more meaning in our lives. Think about the people in your lives, brothers and sisters, do you know, loved ones that are leading their lives quietly, desperate. Maybe you've been there yourself. So I'm here today to talk about what we could do to help those people break out of this rut that they're in because they know they've got the capacity, (00:48:30) they know they've got the potential and I'm here to help us all know how we can help them get out of here. See how I'm kind of using that quote. You know, you start with a quote, but then you can tell the story behind it and I really kind of blew the first part. He said, “I went to the woods to live life deliberately to confront only the essential facts of life and see what it had to teach and not when I came to die discover I have not lived”. Now you might be looking at me on this webinar and say, “I could never do that. How (00:49:00) did he memorize that?” But here's the thing, brothers and sisters, I had to work at it. I had to go over it and over and over it. And like I said at the beginning, we're going to learn some things here today, but we're also asking you to practice some of these things. And I'm telling you, when you can use a good quote and tell a little bit of a story around it, it's going to be fantastic. I've got another one in the church example I'm going to show you, but Kurt, do you have a comment?

LLDS:​ I love that you (00:49:30) do that and sometimes will just use a quote thinking, yeah, this is a really good quote. I like the alliteration of it sounds cool and it really touches my heart. But you went in and ask deeper like why did this person say that quote? And you almost tag that onto a story, which man that story drew me in like, man, yeah, I can see why I said that. Because I love that quote by Thoreau, but I think some people here and they're just like quiet desperation. Like what means, like whatever, moving on, you know, they (00:50:00) don't dive deeper. It may go over their head, but by putting it with that story of why the person said it, that really helps articulate that thought in the minds of those listening.

Birk:​ Yeah. It does, and like I said, the art of storytelling is something that we could save for another time, but when you take that quote and you put a story around it brings it to life. Now in a church setting, I’ve tried to memorize a lot of quotes just so that I can again, like the scripture said, and Doctrine and Covenants 84 if you (00:50:30) study them and treasure them, not all of a sudden you just got this stuff coming into your mind. It's a wonderful experience, but you've got to put the work in. Here's one of my favorite quotes from Joseph Smith and this would be a very easy way. In fact, I think I'm going to write a talk around this quote and here's why I could get up and I could start. Brothers and sisters, the Prophet Joseph Smith said, the following, “The things of God are deep import and time and experience and (00:51:00) careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out”. Today I'd like to cover each of those five items. What we are doing today to make sure that we are understanding the deep import of the things of God. And so then you branch off and start. Let's first of all to talk about time. And then I could construct to talk about how much time are we spending in the Gospel? How much time are we spending in our prayers? When was the last time you said a 15-minute prayer or maybe even longer? When (00:51:30) was the last time you got lost in one scripture for 20 minutes and you looked at everything. So there's time, right? And then the other thing was experience. You know, do we get discouraged because we don't have enough gospel experience? Or what kind of atmosphere or what kind of environment am I putting the in to make sure that I'm having experiences in the Gospel so that I can understand the important things?

And then you get into careful this word. Careful. How careful am I with my blessings of knowing what I know? Am I taking careful thought (00:52:00) of my thoughts and my actions and deeds? As again, King Benjamin talks about. And then you go into penetrance, now this is a huge. I'd love to just write a whole talk on the art of pondering because I think it's a lost art. In this idea and age of the average attention span been what, six or eight seconds. This idea of pondering has, has all but left. So it's careful, ponderous and solemn thoughts. So again, there's one quote that we could construct a whole talk (00:52:30) around and that's actually only half of the quote. Joseph Smith goes on to say, “thy mind, oh man, if thou art to convert a soul to salvation must stretch as high as the heavens, must search into and contemplate the darkest abyss, and the broadest expanse of eternity that must commune with God”. And then he goes on and talks about the thoughts of man, or he says, “oh, how (00:53:00) dignified a noble are the thoughts of God compare to the vain imaginations of the human heart”. And again, that I had to set a goal. I had to learn that I had to practice it. But I'm telling you, doing quotes is that can be hugely important and it's a wonderful way to start talks. If you listen to a lot of Bruce R. McConkie talks, he uses this quite often. What he'll do is he'll quote the scripture and he'll talk about it.(00:53:30) So anyway, that's what we're really getting when we use quotes. It's important to realize when you memorize the quote, when you are at the pulpit or when you're in front of your class and you're free of notes and you look at everybody and you say, Joseph Smith said the following, “The things of God are of deep importance and time and experience and careful and ponderous, thoughts can only find them out”. You've got (00:54:00) credibility at the front of the room. And that's another problem. That's one thing I'm going to talk about here in this last section is don't apologize for your perceived incompetence or your nervousness or anything. And I'll get to that a little bit later just to remember this, brothers and sisters, you are what we call in the business world, the SME, you are the subject matter expert when you're in front of your class. So we want to add credibility to that and memorizing stuff and just using a one liner without having it. Now (00:54:30) there's a quote here somewhere that I wanted to share with you. You want to know that off the top of your head. All right, let's start small. Start small. Use that quote at the beginning and then you can go ahead and refer to notes afterwards.

I mean, look at me, right? I've done this for over 25 years, right? And I've got notes, but I'm able to look at them, look at one word or one sentence and then I can talk about it for a while. Number one, tell a joke. Number two, ask a question. Number three, state of fact or statistic. And number four is (00:55:00) using a quote. So what does this last section that I want to get to Kurt, if we've got time, is what not to do and this is going to go a lot quicker. But are we doing okay on time or do you have any other comments?

LLDS:​ No, I'm fine. I have the hard cut off at 10:30, but I can go until them.

BIRK:​ So it's 10. Ten. OK, beautiful. You know, we have to let me tell you about my whole life history. When I was a lad. No. haha

Let's talk a little bit in those three (00:55:30) roles that I mentioned that those listeners of you might be in, whether you're in an adult teaching position or you're getting ready for a sacrament talk or you're teaching primary, I want to share with you what not to do. Okay? And this part you're going to your going to relate to. I know that you've seen this. I know that folks in the church all around the world has had experience either first-hand witnessing something like this happen or doing these mistakes ourselves. So let's first of all talk about in your talks, your speeches, let's say a sacrament meeting for our purposes, what (00:56:00) not to do. Here's, here's item number one. Don't start with, ‘I looked up the word faith in the dictionary and here's what it said”. Now I might be ruffling some feathers here. But what about, what about my little seven-year-old that's doing their own talk? I'll give you that. Okay, but I'm here to tell you. A couple of weeks ago when I went to a conference, our Stake President assigned a seven-year-old girl to give a talk at Stake Conference. She got up there (00:56:30) with no notes and talked for I believe it had to be three to five minutes about how she knew that God loved her. I know that God loves me because my brother does this. I know God loves me because my sister does this. And she went on, there was about eight. I know that God loves me because. But she didn't start in the typical way. Right? Just be a little more creative. I mean, everybody does this, right? They might say earlier that we want to give people the (00:57:00) unexpected. You just gave them the expected. Let's start talking about spirituality. I looked it up in the Webster’s dictionary, just work on that one because I think I've seen enough of those. Here's another big one. Don't go long. Whatever you do. I've got 1:00 church like a (00:57:30) lot of you do. And when it's, when it's 2:05, and I know it's time for the speaker to get done. And here's where it's really bad, Kurt, when you're a Sunday school teacher and your time starts to go away because someone went long in church, you're like, gosh, I'm only going to have a half an hour from my lesson that when I was planning 40 minutes. Right? So here's how we get around that one. It's really simple. You want to give your talk to yourself or you want to read your talk and time (00:58:00) it. And I do that for sure. If I'm assigned to be the last speaker and sacrament meeting, let's say that my wife's going to take 10 minutes and I'm going to take 15 minutes. I type it out and I read it and I time myself. Now this does a couple of things. First of all, it makes sure that I'm going to be on time. Second of all, I'm practicing where I want to pause, where I want to give some emphasis, where I want to, add some color to the words that I'm going to be saying. So that's another big thing. Don't go long with whatever you do.

LLDS:​ Yeah. And I'll add to that (00:58:30) Jeff, as a former bishop and somebody who's presided in a lot of meanings that given this assignment out. People literally have no idea how to gauge when they look at content they prepared and how much time it's going to take. And even myself, when I was in the Stake Presidency, I spoken to Stake Conferences, those meetings are to the minute that we need to get through these things. We can’t go longer, and we have so many speakers. So I was always shocked. I’d prepare my remarks and then rehearse them and I was always amazed how long it took me (00:59:00) when I thought it was a 20-minute talk and I went 30 minutes and so then I was able to go back and say, okay, let's cut out the fat here, how can I adjust this. But so many people, I feel like they get so overwhelmed by the assignment to speak that they're just studying, you know, facts, context, scriptures. And finally at 8:30 or before 9:00 church, they're like, okay, I think I have everything. And they're out the door and they don't leave them sometime to really rehearse it and go through it. And as (00:59:30) a leader, I'm sweating. They're thinking, okay, I told you 10 minutes, you're pushing 20. Now this other speaker, how am I going to handle this? Right? As somebody who's presiding over this meeting. So I cannot emphasize that enough to just take a moment and rehearse it. And you will always be shocked how long it is.

BIRK:​ Yeah, you got to resist it. Because if you don't, if you don't do what you just said, you're going to look at the clock, you're going to realize that you're running out of time and then you start getting into the thought process of, well, (01:00:00) I have to tell this one last story, but that one last story tastes so long. And again, just remember everybody, you know, it's, you know, we got a lot of different personalities in the church. Some people are really good at speaking and have a lot of experience. Others aren't. Of course we're going to be a tolerant of those that are, that might not be as good. But that's, that's why we're here today is to help those of you that are wanting to improve and not make these mistakes, to listen to what Kurt saying, listen to what I'm saying. Try it. And it'll, it won't (01:00:30) be a problem for you. So thanks for putting that in there. Another one that I wanted to say as far as talks and speeches and I mentioned this before, don't be self-deprecating, What I mean by that is this, how many of you have seen a talk that someone gets up there? “I'm really nervous. I'm not good at this.” Um, you know, you might as well be saying I'm a loser. “When the Bishop called me, you know, I was (01:01:00) just the…”. You know, again, this is not giving people the unexpected. Don't beat yourself up. Everybody out there in the audience, they don't know how bad you are and you're not really that bad to begin with. Just remember that everybody is praying for you to have a good speech. They don't want to see a bad speech. You don't want to give a bad speech. So don't signal it by getting up and saying, you know, I started putting this together, uh, last night at 12:30 in the morning. Don't (01:01:30) do that. Whatever you do. We all want you to be successful. And you did too.

So that's a little bit about what not to do in talks and speeches. Second, in your adult teaching role, whether it's a Gospel Doctrine, Teacher, a Relief Society, Elders Quorum or whatever. Kurt mentioned this earlier, I'm going to mention it again, don't jump right into the manual. In fact, we're not going to be able to do that anymore now in the third block because the manuals are going away. And I've talked about some ideas on how to do that. By using a stat, a question, a story, maybe (01:02:00) a quote, maybe a little bit of humor, just don't. Let's just go use one of these things we've talked about today to have a nice creative opening for that. And I think you're going to be just fine. The second thing I wanted to say about your teaching role is don’t stand behind the podium the whole time. Now we all know what the standard relief society room looks like. Don't we? You got the table and then you've got the podium that sits right in the middle. This is hard for some people. Some people might be comfortable standing behind the podium, (01:02:30) but walk around. What I do is, I'll walk around to the front of the table and sometimes I'll sit on that on the end of the table. And so when, when they're giving that answer, walk around a little bit, sit on the edge of the table if you can, and just think about it and use your space, Okay? Because that's going to keep everybody's attention. Now here's another thing. If, I’m standing here and I'm teaching to all of you and I've got (01:03:00) someone over here that's asking a question, my attention goes over here.

The wrong thing to do is to walk over in the other speaker’s direction because you're losing these people. They're going to check their phones, they're going to be doing something else. So you want to do the opposite. When someone over here asks a question, you kind of want to maybe stay here and maybe even gravitate back and to the other side because if this is my group, then I put all my attention over here to this question. So you have closed everybody off, but you want to (01:03:30) do back up this way, you're including all these people in the question. Does that make sense, Kurt?

LLDS:​ Yeah. I liked it because those settle the cadences of, of how you're working the room. Right? Another reason I love watching Ted talks is to see how individuals are using the stage as they're presenting. They're not just rigid standing, right? And I would say if I was president of the world and a good influence the church, I think it would be so engaging if we (01:04:00) reformatted the approach to General Conference and gave it more of a Ted Talk feel and having a side stage that have speaker could step away from the podium and really use some visuals and things anyways, but I know we have a long tradition of I stand here and stare at the glass and I read.

BIRK:​ Well and you raise an interesting point because, and I can't remember what the format is that the church is doing that, but have you seen those things that Elder Holland is now doing with, with these groups of and they're kind of sitting in a (01:04:30)C shape. Maybe it's the self-reliance program. I can't remember. So it was kind of nice to at least see them doing that a little bit more. Although it's not a conference, but conference is conference. Now you primary teachers. This is a subject that is near and dear to my heart because I've been there. I've done that, and I want to share with you what works for me and hopefully it'll work for (01:05:00) you. This first one's kind of weird. Don't stand and give your lesson, especially when you're with the 10 and 11-year olds or younger. What I do is I sit at their level and I'm not sitting back. What I do is I’m forward with my elbows on my knees and I'm looking at them and I'm engaging them and say, all right, you know, what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about, when, when the Saints were coming across, there was some interesting things that happened. And so I'm again, I'm at their level (01:05:30). Because I found out very early that if I'm standing up, it might be kind of imposing and a little intimidating to them. So that's something to try is a, is to sit and be at their level when you're teaching them. Again, don't use the manual. Use the manual, know the manual, know the lesson, but try not to use it much in your actual lesson. Because here's what I've found out. I'm sitting there, I've got my elbows on my knees and I'm leaning in and engage them a little bit and say, okay, here's what we (01:06:00) want to do. I've got a quote for you. And I turned away and I go to the manual, you know what? I lost them. They're 10 and 11-year olds, right? I've lost them. So it's almost like I've got to be there, and I've got to reach back and say I got something really cool I want to share with the manual. So that's something that you need to be aware of. Now when it comes to telling or asking kids to read scriptures, you want to know what those references are. But here's something that I've found very good. If I've got three scriptures that I want to read and (01:06:30) I get to that point. I sit down and say, “Lexi, I want you to go ahead and look up 3rd Nephi 13. John, would you look up Helaman 5, and then so and so look up ___, that instead of giving them the whole scripture, Lexi look up chapter 13. Because what are they going to do? They're going to start looking. What was the verse again? It's too much information. Just had them look up the chapter and then you'll give them the verse later and that seemed to work really, really well for me honestly on that one. There was a couple of other things. Ah, I love (01:07:00) this little tactic. And this again might be, might be contrarian for some of us. I'm the last thing I want to do is start my lesson with the lesson in Primary. So when I get in, we have the opening prayer and then I've got all the kids there and a little semi circles said, okay, let's start right here,..Shannon, what did you do this week? What was fun? I have everybody give me a report of how their week went. What'd you do? What was cool? Hey, we went to lagoon, or hey, we went to the beach where we were visited the. (01:07:30) So you see, I'm just not in my teaching or facilitating mode. I'm another human being. I'm interested in them and what they've got going on in their lives and once we hear all that stuff and have a little bit of fun, it takes maybe five or six minutes then fantastic, well let's go ahead and start and jump right into the lesson. So that's a great thing. It's just kind of a let's check and see how everybody's week was before we even get started.

LLDS:​ I just found that really helpful. I've really thought a lot about that. I actually wrote an article and Leading LDS, I call it my prime, the (01:08:00) pump principle when teaching because there's even for myself, I'm not a person that's afraid to speak in groups, but nonetheless when I go into a room it's like my psyche changes in it resets where I'm like, I'm not comfortable here yet speaking, even though I'm not too much of an introvert or shy. So by asking very superficial common questions that everybody can answer and they're really kind of fun, it gets people talking and hearing their voice in that room and a man I've really seen (01:08:30) good results with of taking a few minutes to really pulling the class out of and getting them comfortable hearing their voice in there and that leads to further discussion in the lesson.

BIRK:​ Awesome. Awesome. Let's see, one more thing. Make sure in your primary classes that you've called the Class President and also they could call a counselor or at least have a secretary. And the reason why is this, you want to empower these kids. You want to shift the responsibility to them. Let them conduct (01:09:00) the class, give them opportunities to team teach. You know you can give them an opportunity to teach part of the lesson that maybe some of them might be wanting to teach the whole lesson. This is something that is going to be very, very cool for you to do and it's going to help you have more successful lessons. Is another thing that I did. One last thing was the first thing that I would do was, would be to plan a class party and then the kid's like, wow, we're going to have a party to start right off. We're going to go over and have pizza at Jeff's house. We're going to watch the home teachers. All right? Um, so it (01:09:30) was a great way to get in with the kids, right? And, and they watched it whether they wanted to or not.

LLDS:​ Teaching really starts long before the class starts. I mean, by building those relationships, building trust, I mean that, that's what leads to a great experience like you shared with that youth coming up to you saying, “hey, you've got to come back”.

BIRK:​ So looking at my clock, I think we've got five minutes. I want to share one last experience with you that's going to kind of tie this all in. There's a (01:10:00) quote by a gentleman named Herbert Bayer Swope. He said, “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure. Try to please everybody”. Now everything we've talked about today is worth a try, but despite your best efforts, there are still going to be those how are going to be tuned out. There's not a single book or a story or a quote or a joke that (01:10:30 is going to get through to that six-year-old or to that 60-year-old, and I want everybody to be okay with that. Don't beat yourself up and here's why. Here's why this is so important to me and here's what we can do about it. Years ago, I'm headlining at a comedy club. There's about 300 people jammed into this club. I've got to do an hour. I'm headlining. Which I'd done before. I wasn't worried about that, and it was. It was a fantastic night. Everybody laughing, crying, having a great time,

LLDS:​ And headlining means you're the main act, right? (01:11:00)

BIRK:​ One guy. So they'll start with a MC that'll do 5 or 10 minutes. They'll have an opening comic, do maybe 10 or 15. The MC will get back up and do a couple of jokes and then usually bring me on, right? Maybe they'll have two openers anyway, so I've got to do an hour and great. Everyone's loving it except for one guy and he's on the front row. There was nothing I could do that night to make that guy laugh, let alone smile. There was (01:11:30) no joke or noise or face that I could do. Who do you think I'm thinking about Kurt on the way home?

LLDS:​ That one guy,

BIRK:​ That guy and you know what's going through my mind as I'm driving home. Jerk. What was his problem? I was great. Everybody loved me. Was he def? You know, I mean, I've got all this stuff going through my head, right? But what I did is I shifted my thinking. I put myself in his shoes and I thought, what if he had a bad day at work? (01:12:00) What if he got fired from his job? What if his buddies had brought them to the comedy club that night to cheer him up because he had a death in his family? And as I started to think that way, it taught me two very important lessons. Number one, the lesson I learned was as I started thinking that way, it lifted a tremendous burden on my shoulders, thinking that I had to please everybody, but the more important lesson was this, I realized on that stage that night, the only thing that I (01:12:30) could do was to provide everybody with the material, and then who is it up to engage. It's up to them. It's their choice. So where does that leave us? First of all, again, like I said, don't beat yourself up if despite your best efforts, people aren't joining along for the ride and having a great spiritual experience. But here's the thing that we hold ourselves accountable to. We have to create the environment. We have to do everything (01:13:00) we can when we're preparing our talks, preparing our lessons were not going to go in and just kind of improv it and do it off the cuff. You and I are all responsible to create the environment. Hopefully by using some of these things we've talked about today to make sure that people are at least given the chance to connect and to engage to what we have going on because when we wrap this whole thing up, in the end, it's all about helping others. Like I said, the beginning, it's all about helping others feel the spirit (01:13:30) and influence of the Holy Ghost whispering to their souls that what you are saying is true, that Jesus lives, that we all worship the Father in the name of Christ and we're getting that information through the power and the spirit of the Holy Ghost. So that's kind of my sum-up statement along everything that I've talked about. Any other thoughts or comments? I'm pretty much through my notes right now.

LLDS:​ No, I'm man. That's usually. I asked that (01:14:00) they give you a sign that's sort of a final encouragement to those listening, but I think you did that. And so I think we're good cutting off there and this is great. I'm excited to share it. I think people need to hear a lot of this stuff.