Temple Callings

I have been asked by two members of my ward if I would please add all temple workers to our list of ward callings, so they would appear in the leadership directory for all to see. I have refused to do so, giving the following as justification:
- Temple callings are only visible to the bishop, stake president, and temple presidency. The clerks are completely out of the loop on this one.
- Temple workers are not sustained or released from the pulpit, so no members (or even clerks) are aware of changes to temple callings.
- The granting or loss of temple recommends are also not advertised to the members.
- The Brethren must have made a decision at some point that temple callings need not become public knowledge.
Any other comments?

The recorder of our temple emails stake clerks in our temple district a monthly update of the roster of temple workers. Our temple presidency recommends that we put these on our stake roster of callings.

Our stake audit committee is also not sustained (as such) over the pulpit, but if we don't list the committee on our stake roster then we get complaints from the area auditor.

I don't think the point about temple recommends is relevant. There are other callings besides temple workers that are indicative of holding a temple recommend, but we don't hesitate to list these others on the stake and ward roster.

drepouille wrote:The Brethren must have made a decision at some point that temple callings need not become public knowledge.

Allow me to rephrase: The Brethren must have made a decision at some point that temple callings need not be visible to ward and stake members, since temple callings are only visible to the leaders who have access to the temple worker app.

I don't know of any prohibition on showing temple callings publicly. There is not a standard calling for temple workers that is visible in LCR, so these would need to be entered as a custom calling.

I know that there are a handful of stakes that have added all temple workers with a custom stake calling to help facilitate the process of finding a substitute when a temple worker is unable to worker during their regularly assigned shift. We had someone complain a while ago that their temple worker list in LDS Tools wasn't working. We finally discovered that a friend in an adjacent stake had showed them their stake's list of temple workers and they assumed that was a standard feature in LDS Tools.

drepouille wrote:The clerks are completely out of the loop on this one.

Since ward and stake clerks do not have access to the temple worker app, it would be extremely difficult for the clerks to maintain temple callings as custom callings. Sure, it would be great if the temple worker app fed data into the LCR Organizations database, but so far, that has not risen to the level of a funded requirement. If it's not a priority to the Brethren, it is not a priority to me as a clerk.

More to the point, I don't know as there's much communication/integration in LCR about callings outside of the ward/stake level. Perhaps a deferred feature.

russellhltn wrote:More to the point, I don't know as there's much communication/integration in LCR about callings outside of the ward/stake level. Perhaps a deferred feature.

Volunteer temple workers aren't recorded in CDOL or it would be easy for LCR to access them. For this to work they would have to get a service from the temple group be able to see those people. I'm not sure what it would take.

jonesrk wrote:Volunteer temple workers aren't recorded in CDOL or it would be easy for LCR to access them. For this to work they would have to get a service from the temple group be able to see those people. I'm not sure what it would take.

So, what I'm hearing is that the temple group, which seems to be on it's own system, would have to be moved into the mainstream or somehow interface with CDOL. It would probably like a bigger driver than just integrating the callings to make that happen. Perhaps something about the cost of maintaining the temple system.

For what it's worth, Section 3.10.1 of Handbook 1 doesn't use the word "volunteer" to refer to temple workers, and the calling process it outlines doesn't seem to mention any volunteering.

russellhltn wrote:So, what I'm hearing is that the temple group, which seems to be on it's own system, would have to be moved into the mainstream or somehow interface with CDOL. It would probably like a bigger driver than just integrating the callings to make that happen. Perhaps something about the cost of maintaining the temple system.

Temple has its own systems that are designed to help meet the temples' needs in fulfilling the mission of the Church. There isn't really a "mainstream" to move them into and moving temple worker assignments into CDOL would require adding all of the temple-specific functionality into CDOL.

If it were determined that a project was to be implemented to show temple worker assignments in LCR or LDS Tools, an interface would be developed to allow those systems to request a list of temple workers from the temple software systems. This is similar to what happens when you view a list of full-time missionaries in LCR or LDS Tools. LCR is requesting that data from the Missionary Department software systems and formatting it for display in LCR.

chrisgrant wrote:For what it's worth, Section 3.10.1 of Handbook 1 doesn't use the word "volunteer" to refer to temple workers, and the calling process it outlines doesn't seem to mention any volunteering.

jonesrk is making a distinction between temple workers called from wards and branches (ordinance and veil workers, for example) and the Church employees and others involved in operating the temples that are listed in CDOL, such as temple presidencies, temple recorders, etc.

There are many types of workers in a temple. I can think of temple ordinance workers, veil workers, office staff, and volunteers. Volunteers are typically those who hold stake and ward leadership callings, which prevent them from serving as temple ordinance workers. Volunteers are limited as to how they may serve.

But I agree with scgallafent that jonesrk was using the term volunteer to distinguish them from presidencies and such.