“What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled,  Whether by mine own voice, or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.”  (Doctrine and Covenants 1:38)

Easter is a time of new beginnings, a symbol of renewal.  What better than General Conference to help us shake off the “old self,”  invigorate us with the Spirit, and begin us on a path of spiritual rebirth?

With that, a new round of the General Conference Book Club begins.  Next week, we’ll begin studying one talk from this conference.  For this week, leave in the comments below some of your favorite highlights from this conference.  Favorite talk?  A stand-out quote? Most memorable moments?  Share what you loved and learned.

For those who are new to the General Conference Book Club (GCBC), we’d love to have you join us in our study and discussion.  Here’s how it works:

The goal is to read one General Conference talk a week and discuss it together as an on-line “book club.”

(If you’re not familiar with General Conference or the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, go here and here and here for more information.)

A new talk will be posted each Sunday.

You don’t have to do anything to “join” the club– You can just visit the Sunday post at any time during the week and share thoughts, findings, favorite quotes, applications, even questions from the talk of the week. Personally, I think it would be a good idea to subscribe to comments from the post so that we can read each other’s insights and have a “real book club” conversation.  (There are two ways to do this:  1. Below the actual talk post, click on Comments RSS below the “Actions” list to subscribe to an RSS feed for comments, or 2. click the little box under the “Submit Comment” button so that comments are emailed to you.)   Or of course, you can just check back often to see what folks are saying.

My own plan is to try and use the talk as a guide for my personal scripture study throughout the week.  First I’ll read the talk all the way through, then look up and read all the scripture references he quoted, and then break the talk down into segments to study them carefully and try to find other related scriptures that help me understand it better.  Feel free to share any ideas of how you plan to study or apply the talks we read.  (You’re allowed to do this however you want.  You can simply have a goal to read the talk before the week is over, and that’s good, too.)

Here’s a little button you can put on your own blog if you’d like to.  Feel free to invite friends (the real kind and bloggy kind as well) to participate.  The more the merrier.  You can link it directly to this page or to the host page at https://diapersanddivinity.com/gcbc since it has all the instructions for the Book Club challenge.

And try to comment when you’ve read each article, even something as simple as “I did it.”  Then we have a certain motivation/accountability to each other to meet our goal of reading all the talks from the previous General Conference. The objective is to read the words of the living prophets and learn from them.  Our book club community is for sharing and encouraging, but please don’t feel pressure that you have to come around and make profound insights or write eloquent summaries.  Just show up and be counted!