membership audit - unfixable issue

Every year the membership audit reports a certain record as, "A person should not be sealed to a spouse before being a member of the Church for a year. "

The member's record shows:
Baptism 24 Aug 1969
Sealed to Spouse 6 Aug 1970

There is a note on a piece of paper stating "special permission given." Is there a way to flag this record as such so that it does not come up every year during the audit, with the message to fix this within 30 days? It obviously can never be "fixed," unless one of the two dates are altered to an incorrect date to make the duration over 1 year.

My understanding is that the exception has to be ratified by the First Presidency. I'd look into who gave the special permission and then call CHQ to see if that's sufficient. There's a flag on the record that CHQ can set that should prevent it from coming up in future audits.

marcfromm wrote:Is there a way to flag this record

Check the date of the endowment. It should also have thrown a flag. If it was a year from baptism, then the date of sealing to spouse is probably wrong. If the endowment was also early, and you do not have a copy of the letter authorizing the early ordinances, I would suggest contacting Local Unit Support for instructions.

There is a way to flag the record, but it must be done by headquarters.

The solution to this is to request ratification by the First Presidency. Review the information in Handbook 1, 16.1.10. This is similar to the case when an ordinance is performed before the member has reached the appropriate age.

Follow-up thought: When the stake president sends the request to the Office of the First Presidency to have this reviewed, he should include as much detail as possible. Since approval was previously given, the ordinance does not need to be ratified, but that won't be clear unless that information is in the request sent to the First Presidency.

I have just finished my first audit and seeking answers for the same question above. The family says they received permission from the office of the First Presidency to get sealed one day prior to the one year mark. Is there a way to unflag them so they do not have to address the point every time they move or when someone new is called to be the clerk?

sjr570 wrote:Is there a way to unflag them

The current process is to request ratification by the First Presidency according to the procedure in Handbook 1, 16.1.10. In the letter, include as much information as possible. If the information can be verified, the record will be unflagged. If the information cannot be verified, the ordinance will be ratified, which will also result in the record being unflagged.

See the two posts before yours by scgallafent.

this all happened 47 years ago. there are no records, no paperwork of any kind.

marcfromm wrote:this all happened 47 years ago. there are no records, no paperwork of any kind.

Have the stake president send the letter to the First Presidency. It will get fixed. The temple has records.

marcfromm wrote:Is there a way to flag this record as such so that it does not come up every year during the audit, with the message to fix this within 30 days?

sjr570 wrote:Is there a way to unflag them so they do not have to address the point every time they move or when someone new is called to be the clerk?

Reviewing this thread this afternoon, there is one thought I would like to add.

There is no concept of "flagging something so that it goes away on an audit." The instructions in Handbook 1 16.1.10 describe how to handle these situations and talk about when an ordinance is not valid. I do not fully understand how the Lord plans to reconcile our record-keeping errors, but Church leaders with a responsibility for membership records have a scriptural mandate to ensure, to the best of our ability, that an accurate record is kept.

Part of the purpose of the membership audit is to help those with record-keeping responsibilities to identify situations where information has not or may not have been properly recorded and reconcile those issues. Rather than looking for a way to remove the "pain" we are experiencing by having to deal with these issues on an audit, I believe it is our responsibility to do the work necessary to investigate the situation and then ensure that the record is as correct as we can make it.

scgallafent wrote:There is no concept of "flagging something so that it goes away on an audit."

I agree with all you have said. The objective is to have correct records that show properly completed ordinances. And so I have a question. And I ask it because for many leaders, "audit finding", whether financial, membership, or otherwise, equals "fix it and make it go away". I agree that it should not be that way, but in reality it is that way in the life of many clerks.

So if a sealing to spouse is performed one day short of the one year mark because the temple president was authorized by the First Presidency to make that exception, or if another ordinance is performed outside of the standard timing but with appropriate priesthood approval, then the ordinance was properly performed and is valid, but the membership audit program will flag it because it was not performed in accordance with current standard time constraints.

Can those ordinances be identified in such a way that they will not appear on the annual membership audit? Should they be? Or should we just keep local records and note after each audit that the ordinances were performed with proper approval and are valid?

This is different from an ordinance performed out of sequence, or a baptism before age 8, or many other situations that cause an ordinance not to be valid. Those ordinances need to be ratified by the First Presidency or accomplished again. And normally that request to the First Presidency originates with the stake president.

But if there is not a way to identify these other minor, but approved, exceptions, I can see where it would not be productive to send a request to Church headquarters annually simply so that they can be taken off of a list of potential membership problems.

So that's my question. Should the letter be sent for an ordinance that is valid simply to make that a matter of official Church record. Or will the membership audit program still keep calling it up each time?

I don't disagree with the mentality of "fix it and make it go away." That is part of the purpose of an audit. It's when it becomes "make it go away" without "fix it" that it becomes a concern. Another problem to try to avoid is "ignore it because we don't know what to do with it."

lajackson wrote:So if a sealing to spouse is performed one day short of the one year mark because the temple president was authorized by the First Presidency to make that exception, or if another ordinance is performed outside of the standard timing but with appropriate priesthood approval, then the ordinance was properly performed and is valid, but the membership audit program will flag it because it was not performed in accordance with current standard time constraints.

Even though an ordinance like this was properly performed and authorized by the First Presidency, the record appears to indicate that it is not valid. If an ordinance has been authorized or ratified by the First Presidency and that is not recorded with the ordinance, there is no way to distinguish that in the record from an ordinance that is invalid.

lajackson wrote:So that's my question. Should the letter be sent for an ordinance that is valid simply to make that a matter of official Church record. Or will the membership audit program still keep calling it up each time?

The letter should be sent for an ordinance that was validly performed so that the record can be corrected. Once the record is corrected to indicate that the First Presidency approved or ratified the ordinance, First Presidency approval is indicated on the membership record and it no longer appears as an issue on a membership audit.

scgallafent wrote:I don't disagree with the mentality of "fix it and make it go away." That is part of the purpose of an audit. It's when it becomes "make it go away" without "fix it" that it becomes a concern.

Which is likely if they have no idea how to "fix it". Doing a quick search, I'm not finding any instructions in the Help Center.

russellhltn wrote:I agree that's undesirable, but the instructions on what to do with it can be found .......??? <grin>

I'm not picking on you, but finding the instructions seems to be an area of the church that has had a long-standing need of improvement. This forum would be a lot quieter if everyone could find the instructions.

We talked about that yesterday. (Yes, jonesrk and I sit close to each other and occasionally talk about forum posts.) This is definitely a situation where it isn't easy to find out what to do once you've got the exception in the audit and there is probably an opportunity for improvement there.

scgallafent wrote:Yes, jonesrk and I sit close to each other and occasionally talk about forum posts.

Oh, is that why my ears burn?

russellhltn wrote:

scgallafent wrote:Yes, jonesrk and I sit close to each other and occasionally talk about forum posts.

Oh, is that why my ears burn?

Some of the rest of us talk about you, too. [grin]

So I knew about the First Presidency ratification process. What is new to me is that a First Presidency approval can also be documented so that there is no longer an audit exception. And that is a good thing.

lajackson wrote:So I knew about the First Presidency ratification process. What is new to me is that a First Presidency approval can also be documented so that there is no longer an audit exception. And that is a good thing.

We had this happen a few years ago - a member of the bishopric was baptized a few days before he turned 8 in a stake-wide baptism many years ago. It finally triggered an audit exception which was a bit confusing at first. The Stake auditor had no idea how to fix it and neither did anyone else in our Stake. The bishopric member finally contacted someone he knew and they suggested sending a letter to the First Presidency to explain the exception. Very soon, the exception "went away" on it's own - I can only assume that the First Presidency approval drove a change to the membership record that cleared the flag on the next send/receive in MLS (this was before Leader and Clerk Resources had membership information).

At the very least, I would suggest the Stake Auditors receive training on what to do to clear audit exceptions so they can provide advise. I'm sure someone will suggest that this is a role of the Stake Clerk and I agree, but in actual practice, Stake Clerks "normally" provide little or no training or assistance to the ward. I speak from many, many years of ward clerk experience in multiple areas (several in the US, including Utah, and overseas as well) - but hopefully my experience has been atypical. On the plus side, it has helped me become more skilled as I have had to rely on my own resourcefulness to figure out problems (even though it has taken me away from my family more than I would have liked).

When I was a stake clerk, I traveled to each unit, and asked the ward clerk and membership clerk to run the membership audit while I watched. I was only there as a trainer and observer. It was up to them to decide if anything should be flagged as an exception. I helped them fix the obvious errors on the spot. Other problems, such as "which of these single members are actually married" I left for them to work on as time permits.
I also encouraged them to run the membership audit several times each year, just to validate their membership data and help them magnify their callings.

drepouille wrote:When I was a stake clerk, I traveled to each unit, and asked the ward clerk and membership clerk to run the membership audit while I watched. I was only there as a trainer and observer. It was up to them to decide if anything should be flagged as an exception. I helped them fix the obvious errors on the spot. Other problems, such as "which of these single members are actually married" I left for them to work on as time permits.
I also encouraged them to run the membership audit several times each year, just to validate their membership data and help them magnify their callings.

Your ward clerks were very lucky to have you as a stake clerk.

I thought it would be helpful to report that in the LCR 4.2 release (preparing for beta), we changed the message for this issue so that it is more descriptive: "This member was sealed to their spouse before being a member of the Church for a year. Please have the bishop work with the stake president to send a letter to the First Presidency requesting ratification of the sealing." The new message should let you know that something can and needs to be done. Once the ordinance is ratified, the audit exception will go away and the issue won't show up in future audits. I should also report that we got rid of a few other errors that couldn't be resolved by the ward. We want to keep you focused on things you can actually resolve!

bfromm wrote:I thought it would be helpful to report that in the LCR 4.2 release (preparing for beta), we changed the message for this issue so that it is more descriptive: "This member was sealed to their spouse before being a member of the Church for a year. Please have the bishop work with the stake president to send a letter to the First Presidency requesting ratification of the sealing."

Contrarian mode: Since the sealing is handled by the temple, the date of the sealing shouldn't be an issue, but shouldn't the ward check with the member first to see if there's a possibility that the baptismal date is wrong?

Depending on the details, the ward may not have much in the way to tools to validate or verify information, but it seems like they should give it a shot before going though the ratification.

russellhltn wrote:Contrarian mode: Since the sealing is handled by the temple, the date of the sealing shouldn't be an issue, but shouldn't the ward check with the member first to see if there's a possibility that the baptismal date is wrong?
Depending on the details, the ward may not have much in the way to tools to validate or verify information, but it seems like they should give it a shot before going though the ratification.

That is certainly something the ward could/should do before submitting the ratification request.

bfromm wrote:That is certainly something the ward could/should do before submitting the ratification request.

But the reported message is "Please have the bishop work with the stake president to send a letter to the First Presidency requesting ratification of the sealing."

It seems like it should say something like, "After verifying that the baptismal date is correct ... "

russellhltn wrote:It seems like it should say something like, "After verifying that the baptismal date is correct ... "

While that may be a helpful task to complete, we are not going to mix that into this message. The Handbook instructs clerks to give each member a copy of their individual ordinance summary each year so they can verify their ordinances and other information. This information was also added to LDS Tools so members could review it at any time. We are hopeful that an incorrect baptismal date will be caught by either the yearly review of records or individual review in LDS Tools.

bfromm wrote:We are hopeful that an incorrect baptismal date will be caught by either the yearly review of records or individual review in LDS Tools.

It might be interesting to randomly ask adult converts (since they are the only ones that might be in this particular situation) if they remember their baptismal date. I have a feeling your faith may be stronger than can be supported by research. <grin>

OTOH, if the IOS was to print the day of the week along with the date, it might uncover some errors.

davesudweeks wrote:
At the very least, I would suggest the Stake Auditors receive training on what to do to clear audit exceptions so they can provide advise. I'm sure someone will suggest that this is a role of the Stake Clerk and I agree, but in actual practice, Stake Clerks "normally" provide little or no training or assistance to the ward. I speak from many, many years of ward clerk experience in multiple areas (several in the US, including Utah, and overseas as well) - but hopefully my experience has been atypical. On the plus side, it has helped me become more skilled as I have had to rely on my own resourcefulness to figure out problems (even though it has taken me away from my family more than I would have liked).

YES YES YES

With as little training as there is, it almost seems... and I think that clerks get this unconsciously a good deal of the time - that Record keeping isn't really all that important, or that clerk work isn't all that important. I've met so many clerks that feel like the big thing is move-in and move-out of records (recording callings of course) and the donations batches, outside that... they couldn't be bothered.