Clint Goodman wears the title “nerd” with honor, particularly when he is talking about his most recent hobby.

Goodman, of Saratoga Springs, is a senior software engineer with Adobe, but for fun he has developed some tools that offer a statistical analysis of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints general conference talks since 1971. That’s 51 years of words, topics, trends and vocabulary use.

With the new tools, this coming conference’s speeches will be added within a few days and the charts will continue to grow.

Have you ever wondered what words are used most in general conference? Which apostle has the biggest vocabulary? Is the church still growing? What terms are trending up or down in conference?

Through his new algorithms, Goodman can answer those questions and more. For instance, did you know President Thomas S. Monson has the most distinct words spoken of all the speakers in general conference over the past 50 years?

Did you know that church leaders have gradually changed the terms used for deity over time? “Lord” and “God” are trending down, while “Jesus,” “Savior” and “Heavenly Father” are trending up.

The word “prophet” is trending down, but the words “faith,” “covenants,” “temple” and “atonement” are trending up?

What about trends regarding phrases like “Second Coming,” “pornography,” “addiction,” “drugs,” “gambling,” “LGBTQ,” etc.? You can find links to all of these trends on the online summary at https://bit.ly/42JpjLc.

If you put in the term “covenant path,” you’ll see that it wasn’t until Monson was president that the term was used in conference, and much more so with President Russell M. Nelson.

Goodman downloaded all of the talks and built the tools that allowed him to see the full picture. Goodman says he is seeing interesting trends.

“I feel like (discussion of) pornography or addiction is going down. It’s not a lesser problem,” Goodman said. “But the church is going more away from specifics and teaching principles more.”

What he means is that instead of specifically calling out “porn,” conference speakers more frequently preach “repentance,” and instead of “addiction” it’s “faith.”

The No. 1 word used is “not,” then “will,” and third is “God.” After all the “ands,” “ifs” or “buts,” there is “Lord,” “Christ,” “Church,” “Jesus,” and “Heavenly Father.” According to Goodman, “Joseph” is 52nd most commonly used word and “Smith” is ranked 73rd.

When it comes to word count,  his analysis is broken into vocabulary and words spoken. President Gordon B. Hinckley is at the top of the list, followed by Monson. “That’s just because how much they spoke,” Goodman said.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell spoke one-quarter of the amount of words, but his vocabulary was at 56% of all speakers.

Goodman did find some surprises: “Jeffrey R. Holland was lower than I thought because he is an educator,” he said.

And the rumor the church losing more members than gaining is just that, Goodman says — a rumor. “Growth statistics are holding constant and haven’t slowed down. They just aren’t getting faster,” he said.

Another things Goodman would like to do is put his algorithms to work with ward directories. This would allow a visitor to his site to put in a ward and quickly have data related to the callings, the number of returned missionaries and other information. “The church has a ton of data,” he said.

Recently, Goodman’s ward split and he realized he could statistically compare the shift in membership, such as how many classes were needed. His ward went from three nurseries to one.

“I am using this in a positive light, not negative. Analytics only helps the church,” Goodman said. “This is mostly for fun and it’s kind of interesting.”

What Goodman said he would really like to have is more church programmers, analysts, statisticians and computer geeks to help build on what he has started.

He could see the same thing being done with the scriptures, the Joseph Smith Papers or just about anything that could be put in the analytics tools.

For parents needing to keep children entertained during conference sessions with games like word bingo you can find some of the more used words like temples, covenant and faith for bingo cards.

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