lowryleslie wrote:I want to know the 'why' behind it.
Because the Church has not said why, I believe the only way you will come to know why will be through your own personal revelation. You might also wish to consider some of my own personal thoughts, or you are free to ignore them. For certain, they are in no way official. They come from my own personal experience.
As members, we are encouraged to take notes at church meetings, including stake conferences and other meetings where general authorities teach and speak. We have been instructed not to record general authorities when they speak, which I interpret to mean verbatim.
President Henry B. Eyring once said in a leadership meeting that those participating should take notes, writing down particularly the promptings received from the Spirit. He instructed that personal notes should not be compared with others, because each set of notes would be different and would contain the important things each individual needed to take away from the meeting.
General authorities who instruct and teach at regional meetings, stake conferences, and in other leadership meeting settings deliver messages that are not intended for the general membership of the Church. They are prepared for the local leaders who will receive them, and they specifically address those regional or local needs, not necessarily general church needs.
Stake conference used to include two sessions on Sunday, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. One of my favorite quotes from Elder Bruce R. McConkie, an apostle, is that he never spoke in a Sunday morning session of a stake conference where he was not misquoted during the afternoon session of the same conference.
As a practical matter, two individuals who take notes and then try to quote a speaker will always have two different versions of the quote. They may both be very good note takers, and their reports may be similar, but there will be differences.
When Elder David A. Bednar spoke at a BYU-Idaho Devotional in September, he gave some very specific instruction to those attending that happens to relate to this very topic. (
This link goes to the Deseret News report of his talk. At some point in the future the link will break, but you then should be able to search for his devotional talk given September 22, 2019. BYU-Idaho will probably have an archived copy. He was recorded with permission.)
These thoughts should be enough to get your revelatory juices flowing. I could give you another dozen thoughts, but they still would be mine and not yours.
I hope you have a wonderful experience as you work through the same question I considered and answered for myself many years ago.
