PLEASE READ FIRST: Answers to Most Church Account Problems

[rmrichesjr]

This forum is for user-to-user help. The official support pages for Church Account issues can be found here:

https://account.churchofjesuschrist.org/help

If you have a question or problem not answered in the help page, please reach out to your Ward Clerk or click on the "Contact Support" link at the top of the page. This is a form that goes to official Church Account support personnel who can assist you.

[Moderator edit 4/19/2021: Updated wording per guidance from Church employees.]

[scgallafent]

If you are trying to create a new Church Account or adding a membership record number to an existing Church Account, you may get a message that says "Either the MRN and/or birthdate is not valid or the account already exists." If you have verified that your MRN and birth date are correct, the problem is almost always that there is an existing Church Account associated with your membership record number. Only one Church Account can be associated with a membership record number.

To resolve this, you will need to recover the account information for the existing account with your membership record attached to it. Follow the instructions below for "I have forgotten my username or password" to recover the account with attached to your membership record. Then read the "I have more than one account. How do I combine them or delete one of them?" post for instructions on how to take care of the duplicate account.

[scgallafent]

You will need access to both accounts. If you have forgotten the username or password for the account attached to your Church membership record, see the post below. Once complete, you should be able to sign in to the account that has your membership information attached to it.

Once you have access to both accounts, you will need to decide which of the two accounts to use/keep. For either account, you can change the username of the account or delete it on the Personal Information page. When you delete an account, you will lose things such as annotations in Gospel Library and other account-specific things. If you delete the account that has your membership information on it, it may take a day or so for the delete to cycle through the systems before you can try to apply your membership information to your other account.

[scgallafent]

To recover your account, navigate to https://account.churchofjesuschrist.org/recovery and select the third option: "Church Membership Information". It will then prompt you for your membership record number and birth date. After entering that information, it will look up your account and display an obfuscated phone number and/or email address that is listed on your account. It will also let you know if either of those need to be verified first and will give you that option as well. You should then be able to select one of those and continue Account Recovery.

Note: This recovery option will not work if you are in a leadership position with access to sensitive information or a church employee.

[russellhltn]

In December of 2020, the church introduced a feature to allow parents to control a child's account. New Feature Lets Parents Manage Children’s Online Church Accounts

More information can be found in the Church Account Help file, including the definition of a "child".

[russellhltn]

If you are not able to recover your account using the above methods, you'll have to call the Global Services Department.

Please note that GSD will only talk with the member, not with any helper.