High priest and Elder assignments

We have several perspective Elders who are being fellowshipped and attend the Elders Quorum. Under LCR3.0 they are assigned to the High Priests how can I move them Elders Section so that they can be assigned a Elders Quorum Home Teacher? I was able to change his class assignment of one of them to the elders quorum and it put a *out of default class assignment warning but he is still listed in the HP and we cant assign him to a Elders companionship.

Remove them from the High Priests Group. You will be be prompted as to what organization they should be moved to. Select Elders Quorum.

I too have the same problem. I have moved the individuals to the EQ, but am still not able to see them show up to be assigned or visited for Home Teaching.

I can't remove him from the HP Group because he is assigned to the EQ since I changed the class assignment. However I can only assign him a HP home teacher because shows up on the HP list in LCR because he is a perspective Elder. The question is how do we convert him in LCR so it will allow the change?

I think the answer is that LCR may not be able to change class assignments. That may have to be done in MLS.

But once the class/quorum is assigned, then the HT assignments can follow.

russellhltn wrote:I think the answer is that LCR may not be able to change class assignments. That may have to be done in MLS.

If you are on LCR 3.0 class assignments are done in LCR and not allowed in MLS.

jonesrk wrote:If you are on LCR 3.0 class assignments are done in LCR and not allowed in MLS.

Thanks for that clarification. I couldn't find anything in the release notes nor the Access Table that indicated that.

Who does have the ability to assign classes? Does the HP Leader or EQ President have those rights, or will they have to ask a clerk to fix up the assignments before they can straighten out the HT assignments?

russellhltn wrote:Who does have the ability to assign classes? Does the HP Leader or EQ President have those rights, or will they have to ask a clerk to fix up the assignments before they can straighten out the HT assignments?

Our assistant ward clerk had to make the HP or EQ assignment changes today. I suspect that will be the case, since it is a bishopric determination to which quorum a family is assigned.

lajackson wrote:Our assistant ward clerk had to make the HP or EQ assignment changes today. I suspect that will be the case, since it is a bishopric determination to which quorum a family is assigned.

Actually, I was referring to the assignment of a Prospective Elder to a quorum, but I suspect the answer is the same.

russellhltn wrote:
Who does have the ability to assign classes? Does the HP Leader or EQ President have those rights

Yes the HP Leader can make class assignments

I am an Elders Quorum President and made the class assignments for some individuals who were assigned to the High Priest group, but should have been assigned to the Elders Quorum. It seems as though all the new records for PE are automatically assigned to the HPG. Even after I made the change which shows that they are in the EQ, the individuals do not show up for me to assign them Home Teachers or Home Teaching assignments.

jonesrk wrote:Yes the HP Leader can make class assignments

If I am reading this topic correctly, it seems that in LCR 3.0 the ability to assign a family home teachers is not linked to the ability to move a person from the high priests group to elders quorum and vice versa. Are these two different functions? What are we missing here to get the home teaching straightened out?

Logout, login? I hope the change doesn't have to flow through MLS.

I logged out and logged back in with no change. I had our High Priest Group leader log into the HT application and he can see the individuals, but they are not assigned to the HPG. I think I will provide some feedback as this doesn't seem right.

You should be able to assign anyone to teach or be taught in either quorum regardless of class assignments. On the companionships tab when you edit a companionship you should be able to add anyone who is eligible to teach or be taught. You can either type their name and select them from the autocomplete, or click on the dropdown arrow and then use the filters to select a specific quorum (or view all) and assigned or unassigned.

Ok that is what we were doing wrong then. I was clicking the edit button on the line with their name from the household tab, which was only pulling up HP companionships. When I went to the companionship tab I was able to add them to an existing companionship in the Elders Quorum.

Thanks mstauff. I can now assign them this way. It still seems odd that they didn't show up under the Households not assigned to be Home Taught section from the overview tab. Is that normal behavior?

For right now it is. The overview and households tabs are not currently based on class assignments. They will generally show Elders in the EQ, and all others in the HP. The one exception to this is if you assign a family (within home teaching) to be taught by a specific quorum they will then show up on the overview tab and households for that quorum. So if you have a prospective elder that is unassigned he will show up on the HP lists. If you assign him to be taught by a companionship in the EQ he then should show up under the EQ households. He would also show up on the EQ Overview tab if he weren't visited. He wouldn't ever show up on the EQ unassigned HT section, however. If he were removed from the EQ companionship he would revert to HP.

Hopefully the following will clear up some of the questions in this thread.

Prospective elders are assigned to the high priests group by default. The bishop should determine whether a prospective elder is best served by being assigned to the elders quorum or high priests group. For more details on this, refer to Handbook 2 section 7.6.1 and the First Presidency letter dated 3 November 2004 regarding responsibility for prospective elders.

Class assignments for wards (and branches) using Leader and Clerk R 3.0 are handled in LCR. Once a unit is upgraded to LCR 3.0, configuration information is sent to MLS that turns off the ability to modify callings, classes, class assignments, and home and visiting teaching in MLS. At that point, the ward must use LCR 3.0 for these functions.

The class assignment changes can be made by users with LCR access. Class assignments do not require any kind of round trip through MLS. Class assignment data is sent to MLS but there are some known issues where MLS may not have all of the data it needs when classes are split in LCR. MLS tries to detect these situations and requests a refresh when necessary.

If a prospective elder is assigned to attend the elders quorum, the class assignment can be changed in Leader and Clerk Resources. The record will indicate that the elders quorum class assignment is not the default class assignment, which is expected since the default class assignment would be to the high priests group. This does not cause any problems -- it is simply an indication that the member has been assigned to something other than the default class.

As mstauff said, the overview and household tabs for home teaching are not based on class assignments. If a family is not assigned the home teacher, that family will be displayed in home teaching lists based on the default class assignment, which means that prospective elders and single sisters will be listed by default on the lists for the high priests group. That does not prevent these families from being assigned to an elders quorum home teaching companionship.

I think I covered it all.

A couple of comments if I may,

scgallafent wrote:The record will indicate that the elders quorum class assignment is not the default class assignment, which is expected since the default class assignment would be to the high priests group.

In the words of Andy Rooney, "That bothers me." The Handbook show no such default or preference for assigning a prospective elder. I realize that from a software standpoint you have to do something, but I don't understand the purpose of flagging the record after a choice has been made.

I do see the value of a flag when dealing with youth transitioning into the adult classes. In the case of a over-aged youth, that will require manual intervention in the future. Either way, under most situations, that flag should disappear in a year's time. But I'm clearly missing the point when it comes to a prospective elder assigned to elders. Especially if we're talking about a less-active PE who may stay there for some time with no change in situation.

Is there in fact a preference/default that has come down that just hasn't been expressed in the current version of the Handbook?

scgallafent wrote:If a family is not assigned the home teacher, that family will be displayed in home teaching lists based on the default class assignment, which means that prospective elders and single sisters will be listed by default on the lists for the high priests group.

I predict a fair amount of grumbling from HP Groups who find the unassigned keep showing up on their lists when the family in question is assigned to the Elders. Is there a reason it's not following actual class assignments for prospective elders?

russellhltn wrote:

scgallafent wrote:The record will indicate that the elders quorum class assignment is not the default class assignment, which is expected since the default class assignment would be to the high priests group.

In the words of Andy Rooney, "That bothers me." The Handbook show no such default or preference for assigning a prospective elder. I realize that from a software standpoint you have to do something, but I don't understand the purpose of flagging the record after a choice has been made.

...

Is there in fact a preference/default that has come down that just hasn't been expressed in the current version of the Handbook?

Our instructions are to assign prospective elders to high priests groups by default. That is consistent with the First Presidency letter I referenced. Flagging the assignment simply serves to indicate the assignment is not the default assignment. They may very well have that non-default assignment for years.

russellhltn wrote:

scgallafent wrote:If a family is not assigned the home teacher, that family will be displayed in home teaching lists based on the default class assignment, which means that prospective elders and single sisters will be listed by default on the lists for the high priests group.

I predict a fair amount of grumbling from HP Groups who find the unassigned keep showing up on their lists when the family in question is assigned to the Elders. Is there a reason it's not following actual class assignments for prospective elders?

MLS did not do any separation of unassigned families based on class assignments. That has been discussed as a possible future enhancement for LCR.

scgallafent wrote:Our instructions are to assign prospective elders to high priests groups by default. That is consistent with the First Presidency letter I referenced.

Interesting. That letter isn't in the Official Communication Library. And since it pre-dates the 2010 handbook, I'd think it would be superseded. So I guess I'll chalk this up to "preference from above, but not in Handbook".

scgallafent wrote:MLS did not do any separation of unassigned families based on class assignments.

True, but I thought there was something that assigned responsibility to a quorum. Maybe not.

russellhltn wrote:

scgallafent wrote:Our instructions are to assign prospective elders to high priests groups by default. That is consistent with the First Presidency letter I referenced.

Interesting. That letter isn't in the Official Communication Library. And since it pre-dates the 2010 handbook, I'd think it would be superseded. So I guess I'll chalk this up to "preference from above, but not in Handbook".

A new Handbook does not supersede all previous letters. Just before the 2006 Handbook was released, there as an official letter with an extensive list of official letters that would be superseded by the new Handbook 1 (and the Handbook 2 that was still to come in the future at that point). Since there was an explicit list of letters to be superseded, it makes no sense to assume that other letters would be superseded.

russellhltn wrote:

scgallafent wrote:MLS did not do any separation of unassigned families based on class assignments.

True, but I thought there was something that assigned responsibility to a quorum. Maybe not.

No, that was never a capability of MLS. There were discussions on this forum about how that might be a helpful feature, but that was never implemented (or even mentioned as a possibility by those in charge of MLS).

aebrown wrote:A new Handbook does not supersede all previous letters. Just before the 2006 Handbook was released, there as an official letter with an extensive list of official letters that would be superseded by the new Handbook 1 (and the Handbook 2 that was still to come in the future at that point). Since there was an explicit list of letters to be superseded, it makes no sense to assume that other letters would be superseded.

How would you interpret the absence from the Official Communication Library? (Or am I just missing it?)

1historian wrote:Ok that is what we were doing wrong then. I was clicking the edit button on the line with their name from the household tab, which was only pulling up HP companionships. When I went to the companionship tab I was able to add them to an existing companionship in the Elders Quorum.

Programmers, I think this is going to be a big confusion going forward...

russellhltn wrote:How would you interpret the absence from the Official Communication Library? (Or am I just missing it?)

I would interpret it as that they did not go back and add earlier letters to the OCL that were published before the OCL was born. And there are a few other items that never made it into the OCL.

scgallafent wrote: Prospective elders are assigned to the high priests group by default. The bishop should determine whether a prospective elder is best served by being assigned to the elders quorum or high priests group. For more details on this, refer to Handbook 2 section 7.6.1 and the First Presidency letter dated 3 November 2004 regarding responsibility for prospective elders.

I have read Handbook 2, section 7.6.1, but do not see any reference that indicates PE are assigned by default to the HPG. That section of the handbook states "Responsibility for Prospective Elders. Quorum and group leaders have the responsibility to help prospective elders prepare to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. The bishop counsels with quorum and group leaders and each prospective elder to determine whether the prospective elder should meet with the elders quorum or the high priests group for instruction and activities. The bishop considers the relationships the prospective elder may have with the elders or high priests in the ward and the age and needs of the prospective elder". (emphasis added).

I see no reason why prospective elders are assigned to the HPG on a default basis unless the letter that you reference supersedes the handbook. On that note, it appears as though I do not have access to the First Presidency letter dated 3 November 2004 thru https://letters.lds.org/letters as the earliest letter I can see is dated 19 April 2005.

dfchamplain wrote:I have read Handbook 2, section 7.6.1, but do not see any reference that indicates PE are assigned by default to the HPG.

I agree with you, but want to point back to the response already given:

scgallafent wrote:Our instructions are to assign prospective elders to high priests groups by default. That is consistent with the First Presidency letter I referenced.

While not explicitly stated, "our instructions" tends to come from the Priesthood Department. It would be nice to see that information spelled out in the Handbook. Maybe next edition.

scgallafent wrote:If a family is not assigned the home teacher, that family will be displayed in home teaching lists based on the default class assignment, which means that prospective elders and single sisters will be listed by default on the lists for the high priests group.

One of the numbers that my Stake President has me report on a monthly basis is the number of families that are assigned to the EQ, but not assigned to be home taught. With single sisters and prospective elders being defaulted to the HPG, I now have to work with the HPG leader to make the assignment changes as:

1. The families that are un-assigned show up by default under the HPG and not the EQ. This makes it difficult to assign. I now understand how to do this from LCR, but the method may not be as efficient as I think it could be.
2. That information did not make it from MLS to LCR.

It just will take some extra time to "clean up" this transition. I hope that in the future I can see all the un-assigned families regardless of where they may actually be assigned too. That is how it worked in MLS.

dfchamplain wrote:I see no reason why prospective elders are assigned to the HPG on a default basis unless the letter that you reference supersedes the handbook.

The letter does not supersede the Handbook. It provides additional detail, along with a default assignment until the bishop and his priesthood leaders make their decision. This is very similar to an adult being assigned to the Gospel Doctrine class by default, and then ward leaders determining that the person is a new member who should attend Gospel Essentials for a while.

The Handbook did not replace the letter, so the letter continues to provide guidance in an area where the Handbook does not provide more specifics. I agree it would be nice if the letter were more readily available.

Brethren,

Having now gone through the list of Prospective Elders with the Bishop, we wish to transfer several from HPG to EQ. We also have some that will move from EQ to HPG. We have actually gone into the system and moved them. Did that last weekend. In looking at Home Teaching assignments, the PE that were moved to the EQ still show up as individuals that are to be home taught by the HPG. I have checked through the system several times. Also checked MLS today. Everything says the PE are assigned to the EQ. Yet, they still show on the list of unassigned home teaching families for the HPG. I sat with the EQ president and reviewed the HPG and EQ list of unassigned families. They are different lists. So what am I missing? What do I need to do to in addition to assigning someone to the EQ or HPG to get that organization to also be responsible for their home teaching?

rhwolf wrote:What do I need to do to in addition to assigning someone to the EQ or HPG to get that organization to also be responsible for their home teaching?

Assign them a home teacher from the organization. You can assign any household to any companionship, and once a household is assigned to be home taught by a companionship assigned to EQ or HPG, they will show up in that organization's list.

Hopefully the list of unassigned households is always trending to 0, so it doesn't seem like it should be a big issue where unassigned households show up in that very temporary holding place until an assignment is made.

Yes, I just looked at the companionship list. By asking for all unassigned, the prospective elder does show up, and should be assignable by the EQ to an EQ companionship. That is great. Just spoke to the EQ and he will do that. However, that does not solve the fundamental issue. When an individual is assigned to either the HPG or the EQ, then if that individual is unassigned, they should show up on the unassigned list for the class to which they are assigned. Instead, they show up on another list. The way the unassigned are reported does not reflect their class assignment.

Sorry, just realized that was not quite clear. We assigned a Prospective Elder to the EQ. However, he has not yet been assigned home teachers, and so shows up on the unassigned list for home teaching. Unfortunately, he still shows up on the HPG list of members unassigned home teachers. Why is that? He should now show up on the Elder's quorum list, since he is assigned to the Elder's Quorum based on the judgement of the Bishop, High Priest Group Leader and Elder's Quorum President. From a management point of view, once that determination is made, the system should reflect the intent of the Priesthood Leadership. We have 20 individuals we just moved between HPG and EQ. Now the membership are correct. But the reporting is still a mess because the system does not appear to recognize the impact of those moves on the unassigned home teaching lists.

mstauff wrote:For right now it is. The overview and households tabs are not currently based on class assignments. They will generally show Elders in the EQ, and all others in the HP. The one exception to this is if you assign a family (within home teaching) to be taught by a specific quorum they will then show up on the overview tab and households for that quorum. So if you have a prospective elder that is unassigned he will show up on the HP lists. If you assign him to be taught by a companionship in the EQ he then should show up under the EQ households. He would also show up on the EQ Overview tab if he weren't visited. He wouldn't ever show up on the EQ unassigned HT section, however. If he were removed from the EQ companionship he would revert to HP.

While this may not be the answer you wanted to hear this seems to be the current position answer that we have been given. So class assignment and HT assignment do not correlate.

First, thank-you for the answer and a better understanding of the design logic. You are correct, I disagree with the design logic. It does not make sense that when someone has been assigned to a group or quorum by Priesthood Leadership, that assignment is not reflected in the software in a consistent manner. We can make it work for now. Rethinking that design decision would be greatly appreciated, given all the comments made so far in this forum on the topic. Thanks again for the quick answer and help. At least now we can move forward and actually take care of our members, and have the decisions show up in the membership role. Trying to get us back to a house of order!

The software makes a lot of sense. An individual is assigned to a quorum. A household is assigned for home teaching. Even if it's one person, it's a household.

Unfortunately, the only way you can change the household assignment is by assigning a home teacher. What LCR really needs is an extra field on the Household tab of the member record where you can choose "Household Home Taught By" and then you can choose High Priests or Elders (or more then one Elders Quorum if the ward has more than one). This would fix a growing problem. I've explained how this works a couple of time to people and they're confused. Adding a field would eliminate the confusion.

I think I'm going to go submit that feedback while I'm writing this. All I see is confusion coming from how this works. Other aspects of the new features seem fairly intuitive.

rhwolf wrote:Rethinking that design decision would be greatly appreciated, given all the comments made so far in this forum on the topic.

We are aware of this issue. This was also an issue with MLS. The instructions for developers were to migrate the MLS functionality to LCR and not add any additional significant features. This is an item that has already been identified for future review.

The default assignment to EQ or HP for home teaching is creating a problem.

Our EQ has 22 home teaching companionships, or appx. 71% of total companionships.
Our HP has 9 home teaching companionships, or appx. 29% of total companionships.
Because of the default assignments, 109 households are assigned to the EQ for home teaching,
Because of the default assignments, 155 households are assigned to the HP for home teaching. The assignments are out of balance because of the default.
The result is that 16 households asssigned to the EQ for home teaching have not been assigned home teachers, while
The result is that 111 households assigned to the HP for home teaching have not been assigned home teachers.
There are at leas three negative results:
1. Our HP companionships (29% of total) cannot ever assign all 111 households to our 9 companionships, in addition to those we already teach (47).
2. The EQ doesn't "see" these 111 unassigned households, they see only the 16 unassigned households assigned to the EQ for home teaching.
3. Reporting will forever be poor for the HP group, as we will always have many more families unassigned, due to our few numbers of HP.

Please add a functionality to allow changing households to be assigned to either quorum for home teaching. NOTE: While the functionality exists to assign home teachers to any household, the default assignment of families to the two quorums and NOT allowing the assignment to be altered creates the problems noted above.
Thanks

scgallafent wrote:

rhwolf wrote:Rethinking that design decision would be greatly appreciated, given all the comments made so far in this forum on the topic.

We are aware of this issue. This was also an issue with MLS. The instructions for developers were to migrate the MLS functionality to LCR and not add any additional significant features. This is an item that has already been identified for future review.

.....hopefully the future is now

aebrown wrote:

rhwolf wrote:What do I need to do to in addition to assigning someone to the EQ or HPG to get that organization to also be responsible for their home teaching?

Assign them a home teacher from the organization. You can assign any household to any companionship, and once a household is assigned to be home taught by a companionship assigned to EQ or HPG, they will show up in that organization's list.

Hopefully the list of unassigned households is always trending to 0, so it doesn't seem like it should be a big issue where unassigned households show up in that very temporary holding place until an assignment is made.

Sadly, it's a big issue in areas where wards straddle large geographic areas and the number of HP is few, see my post 12/12.

scgallafent wrote:This was also an issue with MLS.

To nit-pick, IIRC, as far as HT assignments in MLS, there was only "unassigned". There wasn't "unassigned - HP' and "unassigned - EQ" like we have now. So that is actually a change in functionality from what we had in MLS. Now, if there was a way to change the default assignment, that would actually be a nice feature. But as a incompletely implemented feature, it's created a problem.

Now, MLS did have a default assignment for prospective Elders as far as what quorum they attended. That generated a few messages, but nothing like the number of messages caused by default HT assignments.

russellhltn wrote:

myronl wrote:This was also an issue with MLS.

To nit-pick, IIRC, as far as HT assignments in MLS, there was only "unassigned". There wasn't "unassigned - HP' and "unassigned - EQ" like we have now. So that is actually a change in functionality from what we had in MLS. Now, if there was a way to change the default assignment, that would actually be a nice feature. But as a incompletely implemented feature, it's created a problem.

Now, MLS did have a default assignment for prospective Elders as far as what quorum they attended. That generated a few messages, but nothing like the number of messages caused by default HT assignments.

russellhltn, your attribution here is wrong. myronl just quoted the previous statement by scgallafent. He just didn't get his tags placed correctly so it looks like it's his statement.

Your point is valid but I think myronl would agree.

eblood66 wrote:russellhltn, your attribution here is wrong. myronl just quoted the previous statement by scgallafent. He just didn't get his tags placed correctly so it looks like it's his statement.

Fixed.

I too find it confusing that the system doesn't fully accept the assignment of anyone to HP or Elders. Besides prospective Elders, we also assign some Elders to the HP because we can best help them given their age and position in life.

These are more than a class assignment as for teaching or instruction. They are assignments to priesthood leaders for stewardship to care for the people in the group. I also have not seen anything in the handbook that says otherwise, so it is messy to have the system not allow this and take care of showing people in the various lists correctly.

I realize I'm coming to this 2 year past the last time someone commented, but as a new clerk the issue of prospective Elders in HP came up for me. After several months of looking I found the letter

http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/art ... lders.html

For those like me looking at past questions for answers, I thought it would be good to go ahead and add the page.