keith.steurer wrote: Mon Sep 15, 2025 8:37 am
Is there a church guideline or policy either allowing or prohibiting the publishing of a birthday list, either in a ward bulletin, auxilary newsletter, etc? We have been listing members birthdays in our ward by date and name (no age), but it was brought up in ward council that some individuals have an "Orange Lock" on their member profile indicating that their contact information and membership information has been set to private. So perhaps we should not be publishing any birthdays since some may have set their profile as private.
Has anyone come across this before?
Thanks
This has been discussed here in the Forum over the years, and there's definitely grey area. But since you asked, I'll share my thoughts
For information that is only available to leaders via LCR and isn't commonly available elsewhere, I'd recommend using caution with sharing that info in a general setting. Birthdays fall into this category since regardless of privacy settings, regular members cannot see birthday information of other ward members (at one time printed lists for home/visiting teachers had that info, but I haven't had a printed list in forever and my current ministering assignments in Tools or online don't show b-day info). Perhaps it's best to just list everyone having a birthday that month, without any dates. Most of us are really happy to have others know when our birthday is, but not everyone feels that way (for the record, mine is two days from now, but I'm not sharing my age
). Sometimes we pay attention to those who vocalize their displeasure with sharing of their personal info, but perhaps even more important are those who internalize their frustration and never share it publicly.