LDS Missionary Farewell Talk: How to Prepare One

Before leaving, departing missionaries are invited by the bishopric to speak in sacrament meeting. Knowing what that meeting is — and is not — solves most of the difficulty in writing the talk, because the usual problem is that people prepare for the wrong occasion.

This covers what the meeting actually is, how to choose one idea and build a talk around it, and a structure you can use directly.

What the meeting actually is

It is a regular sacrament meeting. The handbook is direct about this: the focus should be on the sacrament and the Savior, and the missionary is invited to speak about Jesus Christ, His restored gospel, and the joy of sharing the gospel and serving others.

Three consequences follow, and they surprise people every time:

• Family members are not normally invited to speak. The bishopric decides the programme.
• The meeting runs its normal length. It is not extended for a departing missionary.
• It is not a send-off. Members and leaders are asked to avoid special printed programmes, reception lines afterwards, and open houses other than a family gathering — which is best kept off Sunday.

Read that as a relief rather than a restriction. You are not expected to summarise your life or account for yourself. You are being asked to give a talk about Christ, which is a much smaller and much clearer job.

Choose one idea

The most common failure in a farewell talk is not nerves. It is four talks in a trench coat: a bit about the Restoration, a bit about family, a story about a friend, and a testimony, none of which are connected.

Pick one idea and stay with it. Not a topic — an idea, the kind of thing you could say in a sentence:

• The Atonement of Jesus Christ makes real change possible.
• The Book of Mormon answered a question I actually had.
• Faith is something you act on before you feel it.
• The gospel is worth sharing because of what it has done in my own house.

Then measure everything you are tempted to include against it. If a story does not serve the sentence, it goes — however good the story is. This one discipline improves a talk more than anything else on this page.

A structure that works

Talks are easier to write and easier to listen to when they follow a shape. This one holds up under nerves, which is its real advantage.

1. Say the idea, plainly, in the first thirty seconds. No throat-clearing. The congregation should know what this talk is about before you have finished your opening.
2. Anchor it in scripture. One passage you have actually studied, read aloud, with a sentence or two on why it matters.
3. Show it with one experience. Something ordinary and true — yours or, with permission, someone else’s.
4. Connect it to what you are about to do. One paragraph: this is why I am willing to spend two years doing this.
5. Bear testimony and stop. Short, specific, and without a second wind.

Notice that the mission itself gets one paragraph out of five. That ratio is deliberate, and it is the opposite of what most people instinctively write.

Using a personal experience well

One experience, told properly, does more than five told quickly. The test is whether the congregation learns something about the gospel or something about you — the first is a talk, the second is a retrospective.

Three things make an experience work in this setting:

• Keep it small. A single afternoon beats a summary of a year. Detail is what makes it land.
• Land it on the idea. Finish the story and then say, in one sentence, what it taught you. Do not leave the congregation to work out why they heard it.
• Be careful with other people. Ask before telling someone else’s story, and leave out anything you would not say if they were sitting in the third row. Sometimes they are.

Avoid the temptation to be dramatic. Sincere and ordinary is far more persuasive from a pulpit than remarkable and polished.

Choosing scripture

Use passages you have genuinely studied rather than the ones that come up first in a search. A verse you have sat with, you can talk about. A verse you found on Tuesday, you can only read.

One or two is plenty for a talk of this length. Reading five passages in a row is a common way of filling time and a reliable way of losing a congregation. Read the passage aloud, slowly, and then say what you think it means and why you believe it.

If you are short of a starting point, working through the doctrine in Preach My Gospel is a better source than a list of talk topics, and it is what you will be teaching from in a few weeks anyway.

Bearing testimony

Short and specific beats long and general. “I know the Book of Mormon is true because of what happened when I finally read it properly” carries more than three minutes of items you believe in listed one after another.

Testify to what you actually know, in your own words. Nobody in the congregation needs you to sound certain about more than you are, and a missionary who says “I am still working some of this out, and here is what I do know” is usually the most believable person to speak that month.

Then finish. The end of a talk is the easiest part to overrun.

How long, and how to know

Ask the bishopric how long you have, and treat it as a limit rather than a target. The meeting does not run over for a departing missionary, and a talk that overruns squeezes whoever is speaking after you.

The reliable way to judge it is to read the talk aloud, at speaking pace, with a timer. Reading in your head runs roughly twice as fast as speaking, which is why so many talks come in long. Then take out ten per cent — nerves make most people slower, not faster.

Preparing to deliver it

• Write it out in full, then reduce it to notes. Writing it out clarifies the thinking; reading it out sounds like reading.
• Practise aloud at least three times. Ideally once to someone else. It is a completely different experience from reading it silently.
• Know your first and last sentences by heart. Nerves hit hardest at the start and the finish; having those two fixed steadies everything in between.
• Print it in a size you can actually read from a standing position, with the scripture references marked.
• Slow down. Everyone speaks faster than they think they do. Pauses that feel long from the pulpit are barely noticeable from the pews.

What to leave out

• Your biography. Where you went to school, your sports teams, and a run through your childhood are what the talk is not for.
• A list of thank-yous. Thank people directly and personally rather than from a pulpit. One brief acknowledgement is fine; five minutes is a different meeting.
• Predictions about your mission. You do not know yet what it will be like, and the congregation knows you do not.
• Anything you would not say if the person were there.
• An apology for being nervous. Nobody minds, and mentioning it makes everyone else notice.

A worked outline

As an example, using the idea “faith is something you act on before you feel it”:

• Opening (30 seconds). State the idea. “I used to think faith was a feeling that arrived first. I have come to think it is a thing you do first.”
• Scripture (2 minutes). Alma 32 on the experiment on the word. Read the passage, then explain what “experiment” means in practice.
• Experience (3 minutes). One specific occasion where you acted before you were sure, and what came of it. Small is better.
• The mission (1 minute). Why this is the reason you are willing to leave for two years, briefly.
• Testimony (1 minute). What you know, in plain words. Then sit down.

Change the idea and the shape still holds. That is the point of having one.

Where the talk sits in the wider run-up to departure — the setting apart, travel, the last week at home — is covered in the mission preparation checklist.