I'm a closet nonbeliever (although I don't know how much longer I can keep this up). To keep the peace in my house, I still have a temple recommend although I haven't been to the temple in over five years. About the time that the temple recommends became barcoded, I was given a primary calling and have never been offered any other calling since. I also have not been asked to speak in church since then.

Obviously, the church uses the barcoded TR to determine temple attendance. I'm curious if bishops get regular temple attendance reports and use those reports to determine callings and sacrament meeting speakers etc.? If that's the case, they still see me worthy enough to interact with their kids which is fine by me because I actually like the kids. I'd rather not try and fake a testimony at the pulpit so I'm not offended that I haven't been asked to speak, but I am curious how much a well used temple recommend plays in their "inspiration?"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2013 03:46PM by want2bx.

It has shown itself to be a church of numbers, to be sure, so I wouldn't put it past them, but, at the same time, I haven't heard specific mention of checking on those particular numbers, so I would doubt it.

I have a friend who is the ExecSec in his ward, and the bishopric has pawned off the duty of finding the sacrament talks onto him. He loathes the assignment. He has not mentioned looking into how often someone has been to the temple.

I hope you have knocked on some wood recently. :)

I know for a fact that at least the stake prez gets a statistical report of how many people from each ward "use" their temple recommends. i have never seen a report that lists how many times a month or year by individual in the ward. I am currently in a bishopric so have some insight into how things are done, but i have never actually seen a report like that myself. I have seen the one that the steak prez gets, though.

In our ward, filling sac meeting speaking assignments is delegated to the bishopric counselors. We dont take into account TR status when asking people to speak, at least i dont. we talk about who the lucky candidates are 2 weeks out and then myself or the other counselor has to do the painful duty of asking them to speak. Bish has never asked us to consider TR status, other than not to ask someone who is on discipline.

Do you all remember when they first changed them to the bar codes and they were quick to continually emphasize that they will _not_ be used to track attendance? They had to do lots of reassuring; I wouldn't be surprised if they've been tracking the entire time.