Ministry: Secretary assigned to a District

I have a secretary who had a District assignment in Ministry last week. All was fine until his name disappeared as the District leader two days ago. When I went to add him back his name is not in the drop down list. He is currently still shown as the secretary. In the "?" question symbol box when clicked says: "Ministering interviews are conducted by members of the elders quorum presidency. Although the secretary is not a member of the presidency, he can be assigned to help based on local circumstances." So how do I assign my secretaries District back to him?

The LCR team was given direction to remove the secretaries and change the rule to not allow them as a district leader. I'm guessing that the 'assigned to help' is not referring to assigned as a district leader, but to help in other ways.

I just checked our Relief Society ministering and the same thing was done to them with no prior notice or explanation. Hit and run programming is unprofessional, no matter how inspired the original direction given may have been. The final work process obviously was not well thought out. This change, especially with no notice or explanation, will upset a lot of Elders Quorum and Relief Society Presidencies and Secretaries.

garystroble wrote:Hit and run programming is unprofessional, no matter how inspired the original direction given may have been.

I highly doubt the developers are responsible for communicating changes to the units. The failure to do so would fall to the church leaders above them.

You may want to talk to your stake president about taking up the issue with his presiding authority.

Thank you, I have done so by sending the Stake President screen shots of this string along with my comments to him.

Unfortunately, when these type things happen, we don't know if it is another temporary glitch, or an unannounced change.

Whenever questions like that come up (why is LCR like that?), I check the Handbook.

While not explicitly spelled out, the hints are there. The secretary is talked about separately from the presidency, and it's the presidency that does the interviews.

If the Church always communicated clearly and concisely, this forum would barely exist.

Very true, however, one of the things we have to go by is the authority given in LCR in the past. Secretaries have been able to have a ministering group since ministering began.

Job 1:21

garystroble wrote:Job 1:21

Nice verse. [grin]

I guess I am surprised in this particular case that it took two years to fix the error in LCR. Both the old Handbook 2 and the new General Handbook are fairly clear in defining the elders quorum presidency as the president and his counselors, and defining the duties of the secretary separately. Although if I discovered a district could be given to a quorum secretary in LCR, it is unlikely that I would have been the one to recommend a programming change.

garystroble wrote:Very true, however, one of the things we have to go by is the authority given in LCR in the past.

True, but I'm not sure as I'd call LCR an "authority". The way I'd look at it - does the change conform to the Handbook? In this case, the change was toward conforming, not away from it.

I was present at a solemn assembly in 1976 when then President Spencer W. Kimball said, "you, not the handbook, have the authority." Of course, that was before computers changed everything.

Again, my biggest beef about this is how it was changed, not why it was changed. Members with callings who have authority, no, strike that, authorization to do things should not wake up one day and find that their authorization has disappeared with no notice. It's not like we don't have the ability to email everyone with a certain calling in all units or simply post a notice in the ministering section of LCR.

My secretary was upset that his district was taken away from him. He thought I had done it without forewarning. He is a former bishop and more than qualified to give interviews. How can a secretary "help?" All he can do is schedule interviews without a district. It is misleading when the website says. "Ministering interviews are conducted by members of the elders quorum presidency. Although the secretary is not a member of the presidency, he can be assigned to help based on local circumstances."
I read this as saying he can help with Ministering Interviews. That he can be "assigned" a district. I feel I can't use the keys given to me as I see fit.

To look at a similar situation:
Handbook 21.3

With approval from the mission president, leaders may consider asking full-time missionaries to help with ministering on a limited basis.

Yet, missionaries can not be assigned. Presumably, making an assignment exceeds the Handbook writers' vision of "limited".

The same may apply with the secretary and "help". Assignment is no longer "helping", but "doing".

I think we all need to accept the reality that the Church has allocated certain resources for these efforts, and they are overloaded with items that need their attention. We've all been in situations like that where it's all we can do to simply check our task box and move on to the next requirement, without giving the desired time to review and identify consequences of what we're doing. I expect most any change developers make will affect somebody they didn't expect in a way they didn't expect (even though software companies have huge Q&C departments, they don't usually communicate changes effectively)

Meaning, I think you're preaching to the choir here and we all have experienced the same frustrations you have seen, especially when things magically change under our feet without a heads-up and we don't know if it's a glitch or on-purpose. And we'd like better communication methods, but for the foreseeable future I think we're all in the boat along with you.