The talks are new.

Which is why the bulk of the meeting focuses on the talks.

It’s only the hymns that have to be flexible.

Are you sure about that? Common wisdom (which I’ve never confirmed through official sources) is that there are warning lights for speakers approaching the end of their allotted time. If that’s the case, I believe they’re being asked to be flexible by cutting short their remarks.

I’m fine with flexibility, but why does it always come at the expense of the hymns? It’s only the hymns that have to be flexible.

Maybe none of us are righteous enough for God to consider the songs we sing in conference to be prayers, so it may be a moot point anyhow.

I am sorry Kim.

But I just don’t see why you can’t cut the General Authorities of the church some slack for what seems to be a simple matter of allowing some flexibility in the broadcasting of General Conference.

If it is wrong to shorten hymns how would you handle the matter?

Many who have spoken in church have gone on too long winded, and I don’t like that, but life is full of little annoyances.

I believe they are wrong all the time. They try things out to see if they work. They have the best intentions, and make the best efforts, but sometimes they don’t have “it” quite right and it takes several tries.

To relate to your hymn example, there is nothing stoping them from booking an extra half hour of air time to deal with overs in talk time and still sing all the verses. If they do happen to end on time and have an extra half hour of broadcast time to go through, they could always show mo-tab videos or something.

Clearly it’s not a priority for them to sing all the verses.

Have you ever tried to practice a talk and time it.

Yep. Dozens of talks actually, and dozens of times for each talk. Every talk I’ve done in fact.

We can’t micromanage everything.

Yet we micromanage the number of verses sung.

Perhaps we are looking a bit beyond the mark here.

And beyond the point of the post.