Hello again, everyone! I wanted to provide an overview of resources which the Church has released, particularly those relating to announced leadership changes. The Church has released this summary of the Solemn Assembly (including biographical information for Elders Gong and Soares, our new apostles), along with this one (introducing the new members of the Presidency of the Seventy and new General Authority Seventies).
As anticipated, President Nelson had more than enough time to make all the necessary changes in Church leadership. Let's take a quick look at what has changed (and is going to change) in terms of the Presidency of the Seventy and the new General Authority Seventies that have been called. It is worth noting that, while we sustained two changes in the Presidency of the Seventy that are effective immediately (in view of the calling of the new apostles), in leading the second half of the sustaining of Church officers, President Oaks additionally mentioned that three other members of the current presidency (Elders Craig C. Christensen, Lynn G. Robbins, and Juan A. Uceda) will be released in August, and that Elders Terence M. Vinson, Jose A. Teixeira, and Carlos A. Godoy will begin serving in the Presidency as of August 1, 2018. As we know, this is when the area leadership changes take effect.
The interesting thing about those upcoming changes is that Elder Uceda will have only been in the presidency for a year once his release is effective. I cannot be sure, but I would imagine that Elder Uceda has been asked to fill a special assignment, either at headquarters or in an area presidency, that would prevent him from continuing to serve in the Presidency of the Seventy at that time. It will be interesting to see what happens there.
So let's talk about the General Authority Seventies that were sustained today. Among them are y that had been serving as area seventies at the time of their calls (Elders Steven R. Bangerter, Matthew L. Carpenter, Mathias Held, David P. Homer, Kyle S. McKay, and Juan Pablo Villar), 1 (Elder Jack N. Gerard) who was released as an area seventy two years ago, and 1 other (Elder Takashi Wada) who has served as a director of temportal affairs for three areas of the Church (North America Northwest and West and Asia).
We also saw the calling of a new Young Women's General presidency. As relayed in this article, the former First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency (Bonnie H. Cordon) has been called to serve as the Young Women General President. She has selected as her counselors Michelle D. Craig (who had been serving as a member of the Primary General Board) and Becky Craven, who is, as far as I know, a new face to the general Church membership.
Sister Cordon's call to serve as the Young Women General President has resulted in the call of Lisa Harkness, a member of the Primary General Board, to serve as the new First Counselor. Interestingly enough, Sister Harkness is the third First Counselor for Primary General President Joy D. Jones.
In April 2016, Sister Jones selected Jean B. Bingham and Bonnie H. Cordon as her counselors. In April 2017, Sister Bingham was called as the new Relief Society President, so as a result, Sister Cordon became the new First Counselor, with Cristina B. Franco called as the new Second Counselor. Now that her second First Counselor has been called as the new Young Women General President, for whatever reason, the only change to the Primary General Presidency this go-round is that Sister Harkness has replaced Sister Cordon, while Sister Franco remains the Second Counselor.
There were also a number of area seventies released and sustained as well, and I will have more later this week on how those changes impacted the total number of area seventies. That does it for this overview of the changes to the general leadership of the Church, and therefore, that does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.
Saturday, March 31, 2018
Overview of Changes in General Church Leadership
I have had a lifelong love for Church history, which has extended to ongoing reports of the ministry of our apostles and prophets, General Conference, and all temple developments. This blog enables me to share that love with all who read my thoughts on these developments, which are sometimes reported multiple times per day as needed.
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Any comments made by individuals who opt to not give a name by which they can ber identified may, depending on the substance and tone of such comments, be subject to deletion as well. I would respectfully ask that all of us do all we can to keep the dialogue positive, polite, and without malice or ill-will. May the Lord bless us all in our discussion of these important matters.
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Hey James, I'm working on a database of GA's, and I couldn't find where you gave Elder Parrella's birthdate. I also did not find one for Elder Brian K. Taylor. Just wondering if you have found that. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteHello, and thanks for your question. In response to an earlier post, a regular comment from scotts alerted me to Elder Parrella's birthdate. You can find the relevant comments at the link below:
ReplyDeletehttp://stokessoundsoff.blogspot.com/2018/01/elder-d-todd-christofferson-celebrates.html?showComment=1516860451979#c5929724408997390149
As for Brian K. Taylor's birthdate, the article published by the Church (in both the Church News and the main Church website), you can find that information at the link below:
https://www.lds.org/church/news/from-boyhood-new-general-authority-elder-taylor-learned-to-follow-the-prophets?lang=eng
Hope this information is helpful to you. Btw, I am listening to the Sunday Morning Session right now, and they have asked Elder De Feo to speak after Sister Aburto concludes her remarks. Good to finally be hearing from him. Good luck with the database. Let me know if you need any additional help, and also if that will be in the public domain. I would be very interested in looking over your work. Thanks.
Thanks for both links- I had searched for the one on Elder Parrella, but probably because the pertinent info was in comments, it did not come up under his name. As for Elder Taylor, the official biography on the Church's page has dropped the complete birth date, so I appreciated having the original article from when he was called.
DeleteI still have some work to do on the database but I am willing to make it available when I am done. (It's been a bit slow-going as I am gathering quite a bit of data on each one, and I sometimes start doing other things and have a hard time getting back to it.) I actually started the database in 2015 so it includes those who have been released, died or received other callings in that time, and I recently started a sheet about the emeritus GA's as well. I will try to speed this process up- I have found that listening to conference sessions is about my best time to do that, and I will definitely want to go back and re-watch this conference. I will also be watching for biographical info on the eight new 70's as well.
My file is an OpenOffice spreadsheet but I believe it will open in Excel. I don't have a webpage but I can use my Public folder in Dropbox to create a web link- I have done the same with family history documents I have scanned so I could attach them as sources on my ancestors' pages on familysearch.org.
President Oaks said 116 general authorities, but I only have 115 on my list. 15 apostles, 7 Presidents of 70, presiding bishopric and 90 seventies. What do you have?
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteScottS, I've got the same number of 70's as you. I will check to make sure I haven't missed someone. Perhaps he figured out the number before Elder Keetch died, and then forgot to remove him from his number when he added the 8 new seventies? I'm a bit uncomfortable suggesting that.
DeleteThe GA chart on lds.org still lists Stanley G. Ellis, Larry R. Lawrence, and W. Craig Zwick as GA's, though they were given emeritus status in October. Removing them and adding in the 8 new seventies gives that same number, 115. (If I haven't made an error in the math.)
ReplyDeleteI just reviewed the records I keep. There are 25 men (15 in First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, 7 others in the Presidency of the Seventy, and the 3 members of the Presiding Bishopric) whom I do not count among the General Authority Seventies. But of the Brethren that the Church "counts", unless I too have missed something, I count 19 who are left from those called during President Hinckley's administration, 63 others from those appointed by President Monson, and, of course, the 8 appointed yesterday by President Nelson. 8+63+19=90, if my math is correct. I cannot be sure, but it may be that President Oaks forgot to take the death of Elder Keetch into account. That would make more sense than if he had forgotten to take into account the excommunication last year of then-Elder James J. Hamula. The number that we have now confirmed repeatedly from numerous sources would seem to indicate that there are indeed 90 General Authority Seventies. And since President Oaks did have a slight hiccup (he inadvertently left out a few names in announcing the changes in the membership of the area seventies yesterday afternoon, although he later corrected that error), and since we have seen that President Eyring and then-President Uchtdorf both had similar experiences of making such errors, it is possible that President Oaks was in error on that number which, if true, will be confirmed by a corrected figure in the Ensign. Church leaders have been forthright in noting their imperfections and mistakes, so if he was off by one (unless we all are missing something) that is understandable. Hope this comment helps. Thanks to you all for the exchange of dialogue on this matter.
ReplyDeleteJames, your breaking down the current GA 70's by which prophet called them was intriguing to me, so I looked at my data. I could have made an error somewhere- I originally had separate pages for the First and Second Quorum and had to go back and adjust the dates of those who served in both after the Church stopped separating them- but this is what I found.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I prefer to include the 7 in the Presidency of the 70 in my lists since they are called from that group and sometimes return to it when released, and keeping them together makes it easier for me to keep track of the various data.
Anyway, I have 1 GA 70 (Elder Claudio Costa) called by Pres. Benson (wikipedia.com says that he was called in April 1994, the last conference before Pres. Benson's death), 0 called by Pres. Hunter, 23 called by Pres. Hinckley (including 2 of the 3 being released in August from the Presidency, Elders Robbins and Christensen), and 65 that were called by Pres. Monson, including the other 5 current members of the Presidency, plus the 8 called yesterday by Pres. Nelson, for a total of 97. (1, 0, 23, 65, 8)
If I leave out the 7 currently serving in the Presidency I get 1, 0, 21, 60, 8. So apart from Elder Costa I guess the explanation is that I am showing 3 under Pres. Hinckley that you are showing under Pres. Monson.
Sorry, Elder Clayton was also called by Pres. Hinckley so the total should be 1, 0, 20, 61, 8.
ReplyDeleteSo the difference between our lists is actually 2, not 3.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason for that. In addition to grouping them by Church president, the determining factor for how that grouping worked in my own calculations was the latest Quorum to which such individuals were assigned before those designations stopped being made public. By that metric, I count 5 GA Seventies (namely Mervyn B. Arnold, Craig A. Cardon, Claudio R. M. Costa, Richard J. Maynes, and Francisco J. Vinas) that were originally called as General Authorities by one Church president, but had a shift in their Quorum affiliation officially noted before the time when those designations were no longer made public. So while you are correct that on a technical level, they were called by another Church president, for my purposes, the Church presidents in the breakdown I made above assigned those 5 to the most recent Quorum to which we know they were assigned. Does that make sense? Thanks.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, there is a reason why my count keeps the members of the Presidency of the Seventy separate from the General Authority Seventies. While many sources (Wikipedia included) lists the members of the Presidency among the General Authority Seventies, for the Presidency, I keep track of how recently each current member has spoken in General Conference, and in what session that occurred. For the General Authority Seventies, the main things I track are how close each man is to turning 70, when they gave their first talk, and how long it has been since their last one. The length of time between the rotation in which General Authority Seventies speak (varying between 4-7 years or so) is vastly shorter than the length of time between the rotation of the members of the Presidency of the Seventy (where we typically see two members speak each General Conference, which means that within a period of roughly 2.5-3 years when the Presidency is unchanged, we hear from each of those seven. By extension, that rotation means that if a Presidency member speaks in any given General Conference, their next opportunity to do so will be 3 or 4 General Conferences after that. Hope that clarifies my reasoning further. Thanks again.
ReplyDeleteSomething just occurred to me, so I checked it out. I may or may not have mentioned this before, but one of the documents I have, which I update as needed, has information about the current leadership of the Church. Part of that information includes listing the General Authority Seventies by the dates of their original calls as General Authorities, and the way I set up the list is so that I have those General Authority Seventies in a three-column list, which I updated this weekend while watching General Conference. That list shows 3 columns of names with 30 full rows, which gives us 90, and a lone GA Seventy on the final row, which gives us the total of 91. So, when we add that number to the 25, which include all 15 apostles in the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve, the 7 in the Presidency of the Seventy, and the 3 in the Presiding Bishopric, we arrive at the figure of 91+25, the sum of which verifies that President Oaks was correct in saying there are 116 General Authorities. If anyone wants verification of this, tomorrow, I would be happy to put an updated copy of that list up on my blog. I should have looked at that list sooner, which would have settled the question. Sorry about that, and thanks again.
ReplyDeleteYour explanation makes perfect sense. You're tracking different things than me, so your priorities for the data are also different. I suppose also that your calculations for the Presidency of the 70 will be a little unpredictable for the next little while, given the turnover we will see this year. I believe we only had 1 speaker from the Presidency of the 70 this time- perhaps Elder Gong was the other designated speaker since it had been two years since his last conference talk.
ReplyDeleteActually, in terms of my calculations for the Presidency of the Seventy, that won't be an issue. I know the current members (Clayton, Christensen, Robbins, Uceda, Kearon, Cook, and Gay), and with the release of three (Christensen, Robbins, Uceda) and the calling of three others, that means that the newly reorganized Presidency of the Seventy will be comprised of Clayton, Kearon, Cook, Gay, Vinson, Teixeira, and Godoy. So whichever two of those seven have not spoken recently will be the ones to whom I give priority for the next conference. You are correct about the Church only having one representative from the Presidency speak this time (Robbins). Gong was one of the two on my predictions for this go-round, which did not occur. But, as I noted before, Rasband and Stevenson had been on my list of speakers for the October 2015 Priesthood Session, which we know did not occur either.
ReplyDeleteDid you have any follow-up questions about President Oaks being right regarding the number of current GA Seventies? If you want or need it, I would be happy to show you my current list of those that verifies that, with 91 of those that are not serving in the Presidency, President Oaks was right about the number of General Authorities he mentioned yesterday. Thanks, as always.
I probably should see your list. I just noticed that the GA chart on lds.org has been updated. So I counted them and saw that they had 83 GA 70's and do not yet show the 8 new ones. I thought, okay, that's 91, and went back to my file. Nope, still 90. I compared the two charts twice, saw that I was not missing anyone but my count was still off from the chart by one, and then noticed that the lds.org chart shows Elder Cook both in the Presidency and as a General Authority 70. So, to make a long story short, I still think 90 is the right number. But I will happily look at your list.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your response to my question. I would love to share my list with you for comparison. I will do a new post in a few minutes here, and then, based on what the post template in Blogger allows, I will either post an attachment of the entire document on which I track the current General Authorities and general officers of the Church, or I will simply cut and paste into that post the section of that document that lists the 91 men. You will find that post on this blog in just a few minutes. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteJust posted that list. You will find that post at the link below. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteSorry, forgot the link. Here it is:
ReplyDeletehttp://stokessoundsoff.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-current-number-of-general-authority.html