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By Scott Taylor, Church News
Selected stakes, districts and missions are moving to a new process for issuing temple recommends, with local priesthood leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints using the online Leader and Clerk Resources to complete, sign and print most recommends.
The process allows stake, district and mission presidents to determine with their bishops and branch presidents whether the recommends will bear the leaders’ digital or physical signatures, the latter being the current method for signing and authorizing recommends.
The new process is one of several changes that members will begin to see with most of the recommends used to enter the Church’s temples and participate in ordinances, worship or instruction.
The recommend used by unendowed members to participate in proxy baptisms and confirmations has an updated design, and the designation “limited-use recommend” will no longer be used.
The redesigned recommends for proxy baptisms and confirmations show the patron is authorized to participate in those ordinances only. These recommends will continue to be processed and printed through LCR (Leader and Clerk Resources) with the recommend activated once it is printed.
The process for receiving a recommend for living ordinances — one’s own endowment or to be sealed to a spouse — doesn’t change, with the bishop or branch president filling out recommends from a preprinted book and the recommends being physically signed by the priesthood leaders who conduct the interviews.
With the exception of the recommends to perform living ordinances, all temple recommends issued in a unit will be done using LCR.
For the member, the interview process remains the same — meeting with a bishopric member or branch president and then a stake, district or mission presidency leader — and a physical signature from the member is still the norm. Recommends for proxy baptisms and confirmations require interviews only at the ward or branch level.
The use of digital signatures for the interviewing priesthood leaders is encouraged as the most secure method for issuing recommends.
Members who were issued a recommend in the older style may continue using it until it expires.
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