Tech Forum

As a new assistant clerk over membership, I'm trying to review our records for accuracy and thoroughness. I've noticed under membership records' Ordinances tab that the name and record number of those brethren performing Baptism and Confirmation ordinances can be recorded. Many of these, including my own, have only a brother's individual given and last name (no middle) recorded for the Baptism and that individual name is often not linked to their membership record. Confirmation is often only a date. I haven't been a clerk since prior to LCR, so I imagine this is a symptom of varying data requirements over the years as to the level of detail captured for these ordinances.

Could these names and record numbers be included in the IOS/membership record template and Member Tools app, similar to priesthood ordinance officiators, to be reviewed in the Handbook-recommended annual audit between clerks and members? If there is future value to FamilySearch Family Tree linking, line of authority, or other church historical purposes to capture this data for all members possible, I'd like to be able to fill in the gaps and work with our members to audit and complete this data.

Due to privacy reasons I very much doubt the IOS would ever show anything more than the full name of the person (and as clerk you should not show the member any information on the membership record that doesn't show up on the IOS).

You could make the suggestion to have the information included on the membership record printout for the clerk's use by using the Feedback link in LCR. That is the official method of making suggestions to the decision makers.

But to my knowledge, we have not been asked to attempt to fill in missing information about who performed baptisms and confirmations. Until and unless there is an official letter indicating we should do so, I personally don't expect them to make such a change. They have too many other things to do (including keeping up with all the organizational changes that have been happening).

If you can positively identify the officiators for those ordinances, I would go ahead and update the membership records with that information.

We are in the middle of some work to identify and match ordinance performers where the officiator can be identified as the father or grandfather of the person who received the ordinance. The matching algorithm is pretty conservative right now but it will clean up about two million officiators.

Strange how these things go in cycles.