New Move-ins Automatically Added to All Sunday School Classes

[SR Ward Clerk-p40]

Whenever an adult is added to the ward database they are automatically entered on the attendance roll of all Sunday School classes simultaneously (Gospel Doctrine, Gospel Essentials, Temple Prep, Family History, and Marriage and Family Relations) regardless of their length of membership, endowment status, marital status, etc.

It's somewhat annoying to my membership assistant and I to try to remember to go into the Sunday School screen and remove new ward members from each class, one by one, every time someone moves into the ward.

Does anyone know how to prevent this?

[aebrown]

Whenever an adult is added to the ward database they are automatically entered on the attendance roll of all Sunday School classes simultaneously (Gospel Doctrine, Gospel Essentials, Temple Prep, Family History, and Marriage and Family Relations) regardless of their length of membership, endowment status, marital status, etc.

It's somewhat annoying to my membership assistant and I to try to remember to go into the Sunday School screen and remove new ward members from each class, one by one, every time someone moves into the ward.

Does anyone know how to prevent this?

This has been discussed on several threads previously, among which are:
members organizations
Multiple organization assignments...

You are not talking about all Sunday School classes, since people aren't getting added to Course 14, for example. You are talking about Gospel Doctrine, which by rule contains everyone 18 and over, and all new classes that you have added, which I'm guessing you set no rules for, or only did the over 18 rule.

If you set up all new classes with no membership rules, then you have essentially asked MLS to add every new person to all the classes, since everyone will fit the criteria for the classes. The solution is to create rules for specialty classes such that no one fits the rules -- the common practice is to set the minimum age to 200. Then you can manually add people to those classes (and manually remove them from Gospel Doctrine, if desired).

[SR Ward Clerk-p40]

Thanks for responding.

I should have specified all of the adult classes. Sorry about that. I meant to write "adult classes" when I said all of the adults are added to all of the classes. Yes, the rules are set for the classes, but there aren't many ways to get too specific with that, and I did not know about the trick of setting the minimum age to 200.

My next question then, is how can I change the requirements for a class once the class has been created?

[aebrown]

My next question then, is how can I change the requirements for a class once the class has been created?

Because you cannot change rules for an existing class, you have to create a new class and move the members from the old to the new. For details on changing class rules, see this LDSClerks wiki article.

[SR Ward Clerk-p40]

Thanks again.

[mdcarney-p40]

I am not sure who should be assigned to the Gospel Doctrine Class. Specifically, should adults teaching primary be assigned to the Gospel Doctrine Class?

[aebrown]

I am not sure who should be assigned to the Gospel Doctrine Class. Specifically, should adults teaching primary be assigned to the Gospel Doctrine Class?

It doesn't matter much -- it's a matter of local preference. Why do we even maintain class lists for adult classes? We're not required to take roll; there are no statistics required to be gathered on Sunday School attendance. But there might be valid reasons to do it.

So I think you can best answer the question within your ward by looking at the purpose for which you maintain the class list. Some ideas might be:

• The class instructor wants to know who to send follow-up information to on last week's topic of discussion;
• The bishop wants to know if clerks or other groups of individuals are actually attending Sunday School;
• The class president wants to find out who hasn't been attending recently in order to help encourage them to come out;
• The Sunday School president wants to take an extra initiative on Book of Mormon study helps, and needs to know the entire list of adults studying the Book of Mormon to prepare these materials for.

None of these would be required, but all are possible in a particular ward. Maintaining a class list might be helpful for some or all, but there are other ways to keep track of the people, too. For that matter, there is no requirement to maintain a Gospel Doctrine class list at all. Once you know why you are even maintaining the class list, the answer to your question will probably be obvious.

[jbh001]

Why do we even maintain class lists for adult classes? We're not required to take roll; there are no statistics required to be gathered on Sunday School attendance. But there might be valid reasons to do it.

We recently started trying to use the Sunday School attendance rolls in Ward Council as a way of trying to focus on who isn't there (at church). This actually gives the Sunday School president something to do in Ward Council by alerting the other organizations of those who may be in need of more support because of a recent trend of not attending Sunday School.