High Council Access to Send Email

I have just served terms as a bishop and two years as a Stake Executive Secretary. I am now on the High Counsel assigned to Temple & Family History. I am tasked by my Stake President to work in close contact with the wards through visits, email, and conference calls. I am puzzled and very slowed down in my calling because I no longer have access to quickly email groups based on calling. The email app is no longer accessible to me. Are there any plans to let Stake Leaders other than Stake Presidency access the email app in Leader & Clerk Resources. Without it I have to go to each ward individually to pull in the High Priest Group Leaders, then the Temple & Family History Consultants. The only other option is to make email groups in my Gmail account but it would be difficult to keep such lists updated.

If this not in the works, do you have any idea why not

Thanks for your responses.

Barry Hill

We haven't had any indication of whether any change is in the works or not. That's typical. The church generally doesn't announce changes to LCR beforehand or even whether they are considering them. Very occasionally a developer or product manager will give some hint on the forums but that doesn't happen much.

You can use the Feedback link at the bottom of LCR to put forward your case for why HC need access to the email app. You probably won't get more than an acknowledgement of your submission but it will be seen by the product manager.

Thanks eblood66, I will do that.

barryhill wrote:Are there any plans to let Stake Leaders other than Stake Presidency access the email app in Leader & Clerk Resources.

There are not currently any plans to expand this beyond stake presidencies and bishoprics.

Are you able to access the Ward Leaders report on Leader and Clerk Resources? If I remember correctly, that will allow you to filter and see family history leaders from each ward, all on one page.

Concerning the email functionality in Leader & Clerk Resources:

There are not currently any plans to expand this beyond stake presidencies and bishoprics.

High Counselors routinely carry a wide range of functional assignments for the stake and are tasked by the Stake Presidency to maintain two-way communication. None of this information is private. The only question is whether someone has to cut and paste 30 email address every time they send an email or whether they are given permission to use the technology that is sitting there already developed.

This certainly makes me less productive in my calling and makes no sense to me, but maybe others have insight that I lack.

You need to direct that to the priesthood department, not the developers. This forum isn't a good way to do that. I'd suggest escalating the request though the stake president to his "upline", or to use the Feedback link in LCR.

Thank You for that advice. I have submitted it through feedback on LCR and I had a conversation with my Stake President. I posted here in case I could get any further insight.

Based on my past experience - The level of frustration experienced at the Ward Level with items like this (High Counselors who started with good intentions, but ended up duplicating entire processes of reporting and communicating...), I became a ward clerk and saw our leadership sending out tons of info responding to Stake Leaders, etc... It was extremely inefficient. - When I talked to a Stake Presidency Counselor/Stake Clerk they had no idea just how much information was going out FROM the stake that they had no idea existed, nor had they approved it on many occasions.

After becoming the Stake Clerk we worked to centralize all this communication. We setup a SINGLE WEEKLY note from the Stake to Ward Bishoprics, who were, in turn, to distribute it to all their leaders. We also created centralized reporting to Stake Leaders so they had the information they often 'wanted' to see and information that was 'helpful' in their callings. It followed the pattern of allowing the Stake President to authorize information distribution that isn't designed into the system.

I would advise, seriously, that you work withing the system created - utilize those that are allowed to send messages by design, That design has existed for more than a decade at this point, the likelihood of it going outside the Stake Presidency/Bishopric is VERY LOW - and in my observation is a very responsible design.

I remember when the monthly report became the quarterly report we now have. Many stake leaders insisted on continuing to receive monthly reports from the local units, even though the software had been changed to make monthly statistics impossible to gather. I think about 5 or 6 years ago, the North American Central Area implemented the North American Central Initiative (NACI), which was downward directed to my stake as the monthly Hastening the Work report. Most of the numbers requested were fairly simple, except of course for the number of part-member families, which nobody could ever figure out, due to the lack of marriage information for less-active members. After a couple years of the units reporting these numbers to the stake, and the stake reporting numbers to the area authority seventy, we just gave up. In the end, nobody knew why we were collecting and reporting that information, and measuring the number of contacts each month did not increase the number of contacts, nor improve activity levels.

The handbook does say that the quarterly report is submitted quarterly, but that the stake may ask for these numbers more frequently - I don't see the value of seeing them monthly to see trends, etc... however, at he local level, a couple months with a family not attending or a youth not attending is TOO LONG not to notice so for me it's the quality and what it's being used for.

I appreciate the input but I am not interested discussing individual views of how the stakes should communicate with wards. I have been both a bishop and an executive secretary to two stake presidents and I am on my second call as a high councilor. I have a pretty good handle on the pitfalls of over, under, and conflicting communications. My question has nothing to do with any of that or with "new systems". I am discussing access to existing systems to speed the authorized communication that is going to take place. The only question is whether it will take place by tedious cutting and pasting addresses, setting up personal mailing groups, or through the more efficient Clerk and Leader Resources email functionality that already exists.

The current functionality of the Directory seems to answer your question:

Email High Priests Group Leaders
Copy/Paste recipients into your email client of choice from the recipient list below:

As stated, any changes to the LCR "Send a Message" application need to be submitted and approved through priesthood channels.

barryhill wrote::)The only question is whether it will take place by tedious cutting and pasting addresses, setting up personal mailing groups, or through the more efficient Clerk and Leader Resources email functionality that already exists.

It seems the system was designed to limit, and nearly eliminate this kind of communication. You never set your best hiker at the front of the line eh? There's lots of things in the church that would be more efficient if we could just do it differently, but for some reason we're purposely limited and it's probably for good reasons.

Frankly I don't see that there is any real hindrance to what you're trying to accomplish than to just send to the Clerk/ExecSec to use the official system.

Thanks Dana, for now that is my approach although my Stake President is considering a calling as assist exec sec to grant the functionality to easily contact all temple and family history consultants and high priest group leadership to carry our his objectives with temple work and family history.

Also thanks to others that addressed my question.

Assistant executive secretaries don't have access to the Send a Message tool either – only stake presidency, stake clerks (with assistants) and the stake executive secretary.

Thanks Samuel, that is very useful information.