General Conference - History and Perspective

My earliest memory of General Conference was when I was a young boy living in Long Beach, California. My family lived in an old spanish-style stucco house adjacent to a motel that my father owned and operated. I remember laying on the living room floor watching on our black and white TV, white-haired President David O McKay speak. To me David O McKay was a prophet, because he looked like one. Even though I lived in California, we were still able to receive General Conference there on TV.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to meet or stand in the presence of each prophet of our Church. And they all look and feel like prophet's of God.

General Conference has always been an exciting time for me, as well as I know for you. Mom somehow made Conference fun for the family. I don't think you kids, in your earlier years, looked forward to Conference as much as the real neat prizes Mom had for the winners of conference bingo. I have to admit that I sometimes was more excited for some of the prizes. She always seemed to fill the conference bingo basket with some cool stuff.

When you think about, General Conference is our modern day sermon's on the mount, or our King Benjamin address's to his people. It is a time to listen to what the Lord would have us hear through his living oracles. Although many of the talks are prepared and given to the whole Church, some talks seem they were prepared for just me. I love Conference.

I thought it would be interesting to review the history of General Conference.

Joseph Smith called the original conference of the newly organized Church on 9 June 1830, shortly after the 6 April 1830 organization of the faith. Only 27 members were present.

Conferences continued as early members moved from New York to Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. One 1833 meeting was held on the Big Blue River ferry boat in Missouri, for example, and the geographically scattered members continued to meet in various locations until most settled in Nauvoo, Illinois. Then in 1840, conferences began the semiannual schedule. The first conference meeting outside the United States was also held in Great Britain that year.

The western exodus of the Church, which began in February 1846, meant no general conference. The meetings resumed along the trail in Iowa and Nebraska and then began in Salt Lake City in 1848.

Meeting facilities were limited in the newly settled Salt Lake Valley; the first conference was convened in a bowery. The industrious settlers built an adobe tabernacle as a meeting place and then began construction of the world-famed Tabernacle that sits on Temple Square today. The first general conference meeting there was conducted in 1867. Conferences continued in the Tabernacle until 2000, with occasional 19th-century exceptions when gatherings were held in other Utah cities: Provo, St. George, Logan and Coalville.

A nationwide 1919 flu epidemic postponed conference from April to June of that year; another flu scare forced the cancellation of the October 1957 meetings. During World War II, general conference was confined to Church leaders only as wartime travel restrictions impacted members. The Tabernacle was actually closed during this time frame; the leadership meetings were held in the Assembly Hall, also on Temple Square.

Wider access to general conference commenced with a radio broadcast in 1923 and a television transmission in 1949. Conference sessions were viewed beyond the Intermountain region beginning in 1953, while satellite broadcasts began in 1975 and Internet availability started in 1999. Conference messages were first translated into different languages in 1962.

Members across the earth gather in conference sessions to hear doctrinal messages from Church leaders, to demonstrate support of those leaders, and to hear pronouncements of change in Church programs and policies or news of the Church, such as locations for newly constructed temples. The music of the famed Mormon Tabernacle Choir punctuates the sessions.

Some of the significant pronouncements that occurred during conference meetings include the 1973 creation of the Welfare Services Department, the unit of the Church that oversees all the worldwide humanitarian efforts of the faith. In 1975 the First Quorum of the Seventy was organized, the Second Quorum in 1989 and the Third, Fourth and Fifth Quorums in 1997, all providing greater localized leadership for the growing worldwide Church population. Also in response to the geographic expansion of the Church, then President Gordon B. Hinckley announced in 1997 the construction of smaller temples in more remote areas of the Church. A program to provide educational loans for worthy members in developing countries, the Perpetual Education Fund, was introduced in the April 2001 conference.

As you listen, or have listened, to General Conference this weekend, let it sink in of the sacred opportunity we each have to hear the Lord's voice to each of us through his servants. There are special messages that are there for each of us, as the spirit prompts us to pay attention to this or to that. And yes, even the sisters of the general boards give us needed information.

Mom and I would love to hear your memories of Conference by leaving a comment below.

Love, Dad