How the Mormon Church Organizes

Anyone who has received assistance from Mormon Helping Hands has watched in wonder as aid is organized.  The Mormon Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) is often the first to arrive after a disaster and the last to leave.  Many have wondered at how instantly organized LDS aid is. 

The Church does not have a corner on good people.  Yet, the Church can put 25,000 members in California knocking on doors with but a week’s notice, can organize a search party of hundreds within a matter of minutes.  The Church can organize clean-up crews from eight or ten neighboring states to travel hundreds of miles to the Gulf Coast to help people, both Mormon and those of other faiths, to clear hurricane debris and rebuild their lives.  This article will tell you why and how.

First, the Church is a top-down organization, and the organization is the same worldwide.  At the top is the Prophet/ President and his two counselors (Thomas S. Monson, Henry B. Eyring, and Dieter F. Uchtdorf).  Then is the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, then the first Quorum of the Seventy and other Quorums of Seventy.  The Church also has a presiding Bishopric to oversee the lesser, or Aaronic, Priesthood.  There are regional or area representatives, then stake presidencies comprised of a stake president and his two counselors.  A stake is a group of wards, and one ward is a local congregation defined geographically.  Members attend the ward where they are located.  They do not choose a congregation because they like the pastor.  Wards are run by a bishop and his two counselors.  In each ward there is an Elders’ Quorum and a High Priests’ Quorum with “Home Teachers” assigned to every family.  The women’s organization, the Relief Society is similarly run, with officers on every level and “Visiting Teachers,” who visit each family monthly.  All positions are filled by ordinary members, and most positions are temporary “callings.”   When there is an emergency, word can be gotten to the Stake President, who will then contact the bishops of each ward.  The bishops can then notify the priesthood and Relief Society leaders who will coordinate with the stake.  Home teachers and visiting teachers can assess the needs of families and individuals, relay information from the top, and express needs from the bottom up.

An example of how quickly this can work:  

A ”student in the Stanford Ward became lost in the Santa Cruz Mountains after a ward-sponsored day-trip. As night fell, the sheriff’s department was notified and they told the Church to recruit as many people as possible to begin a search at daybreak.

[One family] ”received the call at 11:00 that night from [the] elders quorum president who, with his counselors and their counterparts in the Relief Society, methodically went down the ward list. At 6:00am the next morning, an unbelievable horde was available for deputy sheriffs to instruct and take into the wooded boonies. Within an hour the young man was found, cold but not bad off for wear.

“The key was that [the Mormons] didn’t have to move laterally. The bishop did not have to spend time calling his counterparts in neighboring wards. All it took was a phone call to the stake president, thence down the line to bishops, priesthood leaders and auxiliary presidents at ward levels. As [they] prepared to return to our homes, the deputies told [them], ‘We’ve lost people from various denominations over the years, but we have never seen a bigger turnout of volunteers in a faster time than from you Mormons.’

Another reason church members are able to respond so quickly is that the Mormon Church is a geographic church.  In other churches, where members may choose which congregation to join, pastors and priests can be in competition for each other, and congregation sizes wax and wane.  Mormons attend the ward according to the geographical boundaries assigned by the Church.  Mormons don’t shop for a congregation.  This means that members are easily located and contacted when there is an emergency.

When a pastor’s paycheck depends on how many people attend, that adds another complication.  Mormon leaders are unpaid.  They continue to work at their normal vocations while they serve in the Church.  Callings are issued according to organizational structure and according to the spirit.  Most callings are temporary, and they are not “awarded.”  There is no jockeying for positions, and members are counseled not to aspire to positions.  Most members don’t, because most postions demand more from the members than they are prepared to give — they are stretched by their callings to rely on the Lord and magnify their talents.

“[The Church's] 180-year tradition of everyone having a calling has fostered a unique Mormon work ethic — a participatory instead of an observational state of mind — that other organizations can only salivate for.

“Thus when volunteers are needed, leaders need only describe the goal and point us in the right direction. Because we are participating members instead of pew potatoes, we do not need to be persuaded that volunteerism is good.”

This article was adapted from “Vertical, Geographic, and Unpaid,” by Gary C. Lawrence.

See also “Moving the Fountain,” a story of simple service.