Finding Success in Family History

Family history, like other aspects of gospel service, is best encouraged and accomplished under a priesthood umbrella.

That has been the experience of members of the Syracuse Utah Stake. The northern Utah stake is finding success in family history using the tools of effective delegation, quorum committees and household visits.

The stake's method is really not all that revolutionary. Leaders have simply made effective use of existing priesthood structure outlined in church handbooks and guidelines.

Michael E. McBride, first counselor in the stake presidency with responsibility for family history in the stake, said leaders took their pattern from member missionary work.

"The Utah Ogden Mission used the theme 'personal Mission of Love,' to teach families how to be friendshippers," he explained. "Through visits from missionary committees in Melchizedek priesthood quorums, the families learn how to find and recommend people for the full-time missionaries to teach."

Likewise, the stake uses family history and temple committees in the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums to teach and encourage families to do family history work.

"We coordinate the effort through the high council," Pres. McBride explained. "A high council representative is over family history work, and he directs the stake family history consultant and Family Record Extraction, a program whereby members extract family history information for inclusion in the Church's resource files.

"Then, we have each of our high councilors assigned to a high priests group or elders quorum in the stake. The high councilor's responsibility is to train quorum and group leaders, using the stake and ward family history consultants and the stake family record extraction director as resources."

Quorum leaders in turn train the members of the committees over family history and temple work, using three steps drawn from A Member's Guide to Temple and Family History Work to create three lessons. The committee members then go into the homes of ward members and teach the same three lessons.

"One of the lessons involves taking them to the family history center so they can find what temple work is still needed on the ancestors that they've identified," Pres. McBride noted.

"Once they've gone through the three lessons, they receive an orientation at the family history center. Then, we hope they'll continue using the center and setting up their own individual appointments. Workers at the center pick up the training for detailed research, use of the computer and so forth.

"So we're really trying to use the Melchizedek priesthood quorum committees to instill within individual family members the desire, initial orientation and training to get started."

Has it been successful? Pres. McBride said statistics at the family history center help tell the story. The center serves seven stakes, of which the two stakes in Syracuse are the most frequent users. With 65 staff members, the center is open 43 hours a week and is used by an average of 525 patrons per month. Patrons submit an average of 3,200 names per month to the temples through the TempleReady program at the center.

But an even more dramatic story is told in the lives of some stake members.

"It augments home teaching in that there are additional priesthood visits to the home of members during the time they're receiving these family history lessons," Pres. McBride said. "That has helped several of our less-active families become active. They do research into their own ancestry and then find a desire. They have become active in temple work again because of family history work. Some have renewed their temple recommends after 10 to 20 years."

Cory Schofield, stake family history consultant, shared one tip for success in motivating members: "If you get the youth involved, you often get the parents involved. The wards that have had the most success have been the ones that have involved the youth, whether it be with class visits to the family history center or just lessons in their various classes. But that seems to be a good starting point."

The reason, he agreed, may lie in the fact that youth need to go to their parents to find much of the information they need. "And when you've got a young person pushing you to do that work, and especially when they start finding names and submitting names to the temple, and the parents go to the temple to do the work, then they find the Spirit and get moving as well."