Do Not Contact List/Visibility

Discussions about the Ward Directory and Map tool on churchofjesuschrist.org.
chriswoodut
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Posts: 417
Joined: Mon Jul 25, 2011 9:42 am
Location: Utah

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#11

Post by chriswoodut »

I think it would also be nice for member's to have some control over what emails they receive. We send out a weekly bulletin/program/announcements. There's no opt out option for people so I have to keep a list of those that don't want it and remove them from the email before I send it out (I use the 'send a message' function in LCR).
rrketcheson
New Member
Posts: 17
Joined: Tue Jun 23, 2009 9:04 pm
Location: Genesee, Idaho, United States

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#12

Post by rrketcheson »

I am in the same boat, brother. Ward members should be able to opt out LCR communication and the ward clerk should have the ability to take care of this for those who are not in contact with the church that don't want contact.
wbodine
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Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jan 14, 2017 7:05 am

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#13

Post by wbodine »

I know that church leaders in Salt Lake city read some of these posts and I would hope they would bring it to the attention of Pres. Nelson. It's time to eliminate the unrealistic process of getting records out of a Ward/branch .
Serving a full-time mission as a senior missionary couple outside the United States has brought home to me the larger number of people who are less active. In our area of the church activity hovers around 20%. Being in the mission field compounds the numbers of less active versus many areas of the United States were activity is generally higher. We have 300 members of record but only 35 that come regularly. I have seen 4 predominant requests from less active members of the church concerning their activity and exposure to the church.

1. DNC-They want no contact from the church. No visits, ministers, phone calls, emails, texts, postcards. They want to be left alone but do not want to remove their names from the church. I personally feel that this is a lack of understanding what do not contact means. If we truly explain that there will be continued contact in the future (new missionaries, leadership changes, boundary changes will always cause someone to reach out to them) until they remove their names from the records of the church most people would want to remove their names from the record of the church. We must honor that request or we will find ourselves in litigation. Please discourage eager elders quorum president or relief Society president, missionaries trying to reach out to them. Respect their request and leave them alone.
2. REMOVE NAME FROM CHURCH RECORDS – clearly and distinctly they have asked for no further contact with the church, may have joined a different church and don't want any of their information listed on our church roles. We need to honor those requests quickly. In some parts the world if we ignore this request there are grounds for litigation against the church.
3.DNC LIMITED-this individual may only want sister ministers, may only be open to newsletters or postcards. We need a way in Leader's Clerk's Resources to identify those people and the limited contact they desire.
4. LOST- it is unrealistic to expect clerk and branch/ward members to go through the nine steps that are required to remove an unknown person from their ward list. We have 30 active members which includes children and 300 members on our ward list. Many of these people have specifically not provided contact information to the church and want to be lost and left alone. If they don't have an address, email, phone number then send them to the lost members list in Salt Lake City and clean up our roles. It is a tremendous burden and undue levels of guilt on wards and branches that continuously try to track down people that have specifically tried to get lost from the church,

Church leaders, please take note and help us focus on the members that want to be at church so we can keep them active and attending. When the time is right people who have lost their way will have a change in their lives and just like the prodigal son they will reach out to us and we will be ready to embrace them.
russellhltn
Community Administrator
Posts: 34421
Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#14

Post by russellhltn »

There is a new Handbook coming out this month. If I am reading the news article correctly, it will be just one Handbook - and public. This would suggest that the instructions on how to remove one's name from the church will no longer be in portion only available to Bishoprics and Stake Presidencies.

If true, we may see a change in the dynamic described above.
wbodine wrote:it is unrealistic to expect clerk and branch/ward members to go through the nine steps that are required to remove an unknown person from their ward list.
Correct. And there's nothing in the instructions that say it's the clerk's job. The clerk will compile the information and act on it. The ward council, ministers and maybe even the missionaries should be helping out.
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chrissb
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Joined: Fri Sep 21, 2012 9:13 am
Location: Fort Worth, TX USA
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Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#15

Post by chrissb »

I'm a ward clerk and I've just received a request from a ward member (older daughter of a ward family) who does not want to receive any communication through email. I have sent a few email messages to the entire ward over the past couple weeks. I guess she is not interested in the announcements. Anyway, I think it would be useful if members could determine or apply settings to determine what communication and status their membership allows: i.e. email communication, accept or not accept callings, ministering and more. Perhaps it would also be good to have these settings as filters to show a report or list of who is on these lists, or use while setting ministering and calling assignments. I hope this helps with the discussion and that this will progress somewhere.
mevans
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Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#16

Post by mevans »

chrissb wrote:I'm a ward clerk and I've just received a request from a ward member (older daughter of a ward family) who does not want to receive any communication through email. I have sent a few email messages to the entire ward over the past couple weeks. I guess she is not interested in the announcements. Anyway, I think it would be useful if members could determine or apply settings to determine what communication and status their membership allows: i.e. email communication, accept or not accept callings, ministering and more. Perhaps it would also be good to have these settings as filters to show a report or list of who is on these lists, or use while setting ministering and calling assignments. I hope this helps with the discussion and that this will progress somewhere.
If she doesn't want to remove any communication through email then you could suggest that she removes her email address.
BrianEdwards
Senior Member
Posts: 1077
Joined: Sun Oct 30, 2016 10:42 pm
Location: Michigan

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#17

Post by BrianEdwards »

mevans wrote:If she doesn't want to remove any communication through email then you could suggest that she removes her email address.
Many members making this request, likely won't welcome a leader telling them to do this, as they may not even want to access anything related to the church, even a direct link to their user account. I'd hope a member requesting the removal of the email address from their account, should be enough for a clerk to do it for them.

And since many leaders keep their own list of email addresses, removing an email address from a user account often will not stop the member from receiving "any communication". And the member may get frustrated since they did what we told them to, and they still are getting contacted. So realistically, we also need to contact any church leaders/members who might be sending group emails, and individually ask them to remove the member's email from their lists (how many move-outs are still receiving emails from their previous EQ or RS President?).
russellhltn
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Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#18

Post by russellhltn »

BrianEdwards wrote:
mevans wrote:If she doesn't want to remove any communication through email then you could suggest that she removes her email address.
Many members making this request, likely won't welcome a leader telling them to do this, as they may not even want to access anything related to the church, even a direct link to their user account. I'd hope a member requesting the removal of the email address from their account, should be enough for a clerk to do it for them.
If a member asks/is ok with having their email removed from their record, I don't see an issue with the clerk doing that. (Assuming you're confident you're talking to the member and not someone impersonating them.)

However, I think most of the requests are for not getting leadership emails - which is not the same thing.

The idea of adding some text to the email that can be manually removed for individual emails seems to me to be the best suggestion made so far.
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wmchristensen
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Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Jan 15, 2017 4:37 pm

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#19

Post by wmchristensen »

I would love more insight on this. We had a pretty heated discussion today about it. Is there anything official? After an hour of searching all I've found is this.

https://tech.churchofjesuschrist.org/wiki/No_contact
russellhltn
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Joined: Sat Jan 20, 2007 2:53 pm
Location: U.S.

Re: Do Not Contact List/Visibility

#20

Post by russellhltn »

wmchristensen wrote:I would love more insight on this. We had a pretty heated discussion today about it. Is there anything official?
I assume you're talking about marking the record as a "Do not contact".

Some years back, there was a message sent via MLS that indicated "Do not contact" should not be put on any membership records. I'm not finding anything in the General Handbook, nor the Help Center. It's hard to call a MLS message send to a prior clerk "authoritative".

A few thoughts:

General Handbook 33.6 says:
Membership records are to be kept in the ward where the member lives. Exceptions, which should be few, require the consent of the bishops and stake president(s) involved and the approval of the Office of the First Presidency.
How is that going to be verified unless there's some level of contact to confirm the member is still at that address?

Section 33.6.23:
Special Situations
For special situations that are not addressed in this section, such as records for common-law marriages, leaders should see membership records instructions or contact Church headquarters or the area office.
Personally, I have yet to see any organization where someone is allowed to be a member where they forbid the organization from making any contact. Opting out of some of the social or promotions, sure. But they would have to expect some contact when it comes to matters of their membership.

If you're talking about opting out of the bulk emails sent from LCR, that's a little different.
Have you searched the Help Center? Try doing a Google search and adding "site:churchofjesuschrist.org/help" to the search criteria.

So we can better help you, please edit your Profile to include your general location.
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