The Top-Down Training for Temple and Family History Consultants

The newly designated calling of Temple and Family History Consultants raises some of the same issues that exist in many Wards and Stakes around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The biggest change from the standpoint of organization is the return to "Stake Temple and Family History Consultants." Here is a quote from the LDS.org page above about "Understanding Your Calling."

As a temple and family history consultant, your primary responsibility is to proactively help members have personalized, one-on-one experiences in finding their ancestors, performing temple ordinances on behalf of those ancestors, and teaching their families to do the same. No matter what your family history experience is, you can lovingly seek out those whose lives would be blessed by family history and pray for the Lord’s guidance as you help them. As you partner with your priesthood leaders, you will receive direction on how best to fulfill these responsibilities and magnify your calling. 

Start your service by having a personal family history experience of your own, led by an experienced temple and family history consultant, and become familiar with the 6 principles for helping others to love family history. Then learn more about additional family history activities such as indexing and partner apps that enrich and support a successful family history experience. 

You may also be asked to train other temple and family history consultants, serve in a family history center, or lead indexing efforts. The resources below are designed to help you in those assignments.

The basic organization as it has been explained is that Temple and Family History Consultants are called at the Area, Stake and Ward levels. The Area Temple and Family History Consultants are given the specific charge to assist and train the Stake Temple and Family History Consultants and then the Stake level Consultants are charged with training those on the Ward level as well as the Stake Leaders. In the more active and organized parts of the Church having qualified people to serve in these callings is not as great a challenge as in the less active and less populated areas. But if you read the instructions above, helping others with temple and family history is a general calling to help others. In essence, Temple and Family History Consultants are family history missionaries.

Here is a screenshot of the resources mentioned in the quote above.

Some of the links above go to new FamilySearch Training Partner, The Family History Guide.

This post is not necessarily the first in a series, but over the next few weeks, I will be returning to highlighting the organization and training of Temple and Family History Consultants.