The Balance of the Church Mission

I am a categorizer. I love to see the order of things. As such, I hate the word ‘miscellaneous.’ To me if it is truly miscellaneous then it doesn't belong and should be thrown out. A few years ago in a singles ward I served as the membership clerk. Among my duties, I was in charge of recording and keeping track of member’s callings. It was very hard for me at that time to see the order to many of the callings and where they fit into the mission of the church.

As I was writing my blog Sets of Three I was reminded about what I came up with regarding the order of callings and mission of the church and what I have pondered about it since. Here are some patterns that I found in talks and manuals of the church:

Proclaim	Redeem	Perfect
Preaching	Ordinances	Government
Instruct	Serve	Unify
Nurturing	Responsibility	Friend

If you are a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I want you to see if you know where all four of these sets come from. Also, I want you to look at the columns and see if you can see a connection between each of the patterns. All four of these pattern are reordered from their original source, but I believe that the order is significant. The need to be reordered is only as important as the pattern after which they are built.
This is the pattern of three that I have seen in the scriptures:

1) The first item is the most fundamental of the three and is a precursor to the second.
2) The second is central to the set, the focal point of the set, is a precursor to the third and connects the first and third usually through action.
3) The third is the culmination and completion of the set.

The mission of the Church is threefold: To proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people; To perfect the Saints by preparing them to receive the ordinances of the gospel and by instruction and discipline to gain exaltation; To redeem the dead by performing vicarious ordinances of the gospel for those who have lived on the earth.

I agree that this was revelation and inspiration to the prophet. I don’t know if the order was important to him or not. But this is how I see it:

The mission of proclaiming the gospel is not limited to non-members. As seen by the other three patterns, it applies to the Melchizedek Priesthood, the quorum and the new member, respectively. This is what the majority of church on Sunday consists of. The announcements, callings and the sacrament are usually the only exception for those who do not have Sunday callings. Even home teaching and visiting teaching are often focused on this. Proclaiming the gospel is required before anyone can be redeemed from personal sin. In short, the purpose is to prepare the minds of the individuals to make commitments.

To me, the mission of redemption is not limited to the dead. Redemption is for the living and the dead. This consists of all three (four for men) saving and exalting ordinances or, to be more general, covenant making. In my mind, any time there is a direct focus on both preparing a committed individual to receiving these ordinances and performing the actual ordinance, they are no longer under the focus of proclaiming but rather redeeming.

As for the mission of perfecting the saints, I see this simply as covenant keeping. The reason I put this last is because perfecting the saints cannot be done until and unless the other two are done first. "They without us cannot be made perfect—neither can we without our dead be made perfect."
More practically, I would use the words of Daniel Pink to describe this mission: autonomy, mastery and purpose. Autonomy of the saints, in the words of the church, could be self-reliance (welfare) and learning the gospel on our own. Mastery of the saints could be perfecting life skills (including relationship and job skills, among others) and magnifying callings (teacher and leader training meetings, among others). And, the purpose of the saints is none other than keeping a focus on Christ and His purpose to bring about our immortality and eternal life. And as Elder Neil L. Anderson so eloquently stated, “Before immortality, there must be mortality.” A focus on the temporal and spiritual (health, etc.).

When I use this criteria, most callings appear to be focused on preaching the gospel, a few on redeeming and some rather miscellaneous ones on perfecting. Whenever a redemption committee exists, it is usually small and only focused on the dead.


This is the vision that I see:

The proclaiming focus (or committee’s focus) would be to help clarify the gospel and prepare people to make covenants and commitments, as well as to inspire faith. They should assist the missionaries in their efforts in preparing people to commit to baptism (including helping find people and incite interest in people). But also preparing people to commit to receive the Melchizedek priesthood, the endowment and the temple sealing. A focus on rescuing people who have broken covenants and commitments would also be included (not attending church, etc.).

The redeeming focus (or committee’s focus) would include helping those people who are committed and preparing to receive baptism, the Melchizedek priesthood, the endowment or the temple sealing (This is the central focus of the work of salvation). They would be the ones organizing classes when needed for preparing people to enter the temple and any other classes needed to the end stated above. I see this with a very active and practical approach to inspiring repentance. This also includes researching and preparing the names of the deceased for those same ordinances. It includes organizing trips to the temple and even working at the temple. It would include classes for those committed. And assisting the missionaries with those people who are not yet baptized but are committed to be baptized. It might include a focus on helping parents know how to teach their seven year old children and 17 year old young men (or maybe even 11 year old young men) in preparation for receiving ordinances to ensure that they are not making covenants that they are not prepared to make, if needed.

The perfecting focus (or committee’s focus) would attend to the health of the physical body of the individuals (in preparation for immortality) and the communal body of the ward (in preparation for eternal life):

Physical health in my mind is quite a large topic including all of the following:

1) Understanding how the spirit and body work and how they work together.
2) Understanding the proper quantity and quality of air and water in the body.
3) Understanding the proper quantity and quality of food in the body.
4) Understanding the proper quantity and quality of light for the body, including how the body communicates within and regulates itself.
5) Understanding the proper quantity and quality of relationships with others (friend, sibling, spouse, parent-child, etc.), including how to acquire and retain them.
6) Understanding how to acquire and perform labor, including its symbol, money and finances.
7) Understanding the proper quantity and quality of rest and entertainment. This includes actively seeking for the presence of the Holy Ghost (Baptism of fire).

Communal health is not as developed or understood in my mind as physical health but it might include the following:

1) Understanding how the members (and families) in the community work and how they work together.
2) Understanding how to teach the community to live the word of God.
3) Understanding the direction or path that the community needs to focus on.
4) Understanding how to lead, govern and regulate the community.
5) Understanding how the community interacts with those not in the community.
6) Understanding how to get the community to accomplish its purposes.
7) Understanding how the community is to rely on God to enable and empower it.

The pattern of physical health that I used here is patterned after the account of the creation in the scriptures and I have been studying it for many years. The pattern of communal health I just made up right now as an attempt to map to the same pattern.


In conclusion, I think that the focus of the ward with regard to the three missions needs to be balanced and not leave one focus undervalued or overvalued while escalating or diminishing the others. The proclaiming needs to shift its focus more towards committing and less towards knowing. The redeeming is where our church stands completely apart from all other churches; it needs to be the central focus and have a substantial amount of people who see the vision of redemption for the living and the dead. The perfecting needs to be focused around preparing for immortality and eternal life and be one in purpose, not just staggered offshoots that see no link to the whole (like the ward employment specialist, the ward music director, the ward membership clerk, the ward physical facilities representative, etc.). Every calling in the church fits, or should fit, into the mission of the church and each individual should see that they have a united purpose.

If each member was asked which mission their calling fits under I’m not sure that everyone would know or be correct in their guess. I suggest that this needs to change by understanding more in depth what the three missions of the church are, how the three missions are to be carried out and why they are so important.