SR Ward Clerk wrote:Someone last year asked a question spurred by a change in his ward of the titles of the Relief Society counselors. Instead of first and second, they were changed to education and homemaking, or something similar. It discussed in the thread why it was a bad idea to alter the standard 1st and 2nd counselor titles, especially when it comes to printing up the officers sustained form, and various other reasons.
I don't know if it was in MLS 3.0 or a subsequent update (if I was at my office I could check the release notes), but as standardized callings, it contains "Education Counselor" and whatever the other one is, and the titles of 1st and 2nd counselor have to be created as custom positions.
MLS 3.0 introduced a whole set of standard callings, and for RS the standardized counselor callings are called "Relief Society Education Counselor" and "Relief Society Home, Family, Personal Enrichment Counselor".
Be very careful about drawing conclusions from thread discussions that predate MLS 3.0 in this regard. The whole point of that previous thread was to use the standard calling names. Prior to MLS 3.0 there was a much more limited use of standard calling names, and for RS they were "First Counselor" and "Second Counselor". Using standard calling names has always been necessary for populating the Officers Sustained Form and for communicating callings to the stake for the Stake MLS "Ward Leadership" report. Using standardized callings is even more important with MLS 3.x, since it affects synchronization with CDOL, in addition to the previous issues (all of which are still valid).
In any case, it is just as wrong to create custom positions of "
1st and 2nd counselor" in MLS 3.x as it was to create a custom position of "Education Counselor" in MLS 2.x. The standard calling names have changed, but the principle is the same:
Use the standard callings. Period.SR Ward Clerk wrote:I am assuming therefore, that this is a permanent, official administrative change being made Church-wide, and that the officers sustained form will reflect the new official titles. Am I correct in this assumption? If I am, shouldn't there have been a memo or other notification to the wards?
I would be wary of ever using the word "permanent" when it comes to the names for callings. Or do you still have "Ward Teachers" or know anyone who is an "Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve"?
As for the Officers Sustained Form, that is interesting. The form which is printed from MLS has the RS counselors listed as "First Counselor" and "Second Counselor". But to get those fields to populate automatically, you have to enter the correct sisters in the RS Organization as "Relief Society Education Counselor" and "Relief Society Home, Family, Personal Enrichment Counselor", respectively. I have no idea whether the Officers Sustained Form will be changed. I'm sure it goes through a different change approval process than does MLS. I also don't know if the recent change eliminating the term "Enrichment" from the title of any RS Meetings will have any effect on the title of the counselor. All I know is how it works now, which is as I have described above.
There was indeed a notification to the wards of the titles of the counselors -- with MLS 3.0 came plenty of notice that wards were to use standard calling names.
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