The Expanded World Church Leadership Council met at the Temple in Independence, Missouri, September 22–25. The council continued working on assignments from the 2007 World Conference.

Meeting days began with a brief worship and paused at 1:00 for the Prayer for Peace. Morning and afternoon sessions focused on discussion. Members of the council opened up during the meetings, sharing testimony, understanding of scripture, thoughts about cultural background, and interpretation of polity.

Translators and interpreters made conversation possible through translating background documents and interpreting across English, French, and Spanish. As the council has met together several times now, participants felt increasingly free to offer their perspectives to the conversation. One session was facilitated in French. Working alone, in small groups, and all together, council members asked difficult questions and offered perspectives from their background.

Many groups in the church have already responded to the identity document, offering perspectives and suggestions. The identity document begins with an introduction explaining its purpose, then shares the seal, the church name, the mission statement and focus, sacraments, enduring principles, Temple reflections, basic beliefs, and other supporting statements.

The Expanded World Church Leadership Council reviewed the document a final time before offering it for the church’s use. As President Steve Veazey reported in the July Herald, the identity document will provide “an agreed-on foundation describing the church’s center of belief.”

This document will be helpful as context. Church leaders are working on lifelong discipleship formation, priesthood faithfulness, conditions of membership, culturally sensitive standards of conduct, and many other controversial or complex areas. With an agreed-on foundation, work in all of these areas can point in the same direction and be consistent so theology and policy fit across many seemingly different subjects.

Instead of creating a document to distribute directly to the church, this identity document will be given to church leaders and translators, who will interpret, translate, and adapt the concepts for the cultures they serve.

We are united by our common dedication to Jesus Christ and this church’s understanding of the peace of Jesus Christ. Because that unites us, we can express that dedication in ways appropriate to our language and culture, but still centered in the identity document. This freedom gives the church a way to be consistent in message, and varied in how that message is shared.

As the meetings came to a close, President Veazey offered some thoughts. “We are growing in our capacity to talk about significant issues in the life of the church,” Veazey said. “I see this group as a nucleus of the church as it is becoming. We are beginning a process of transforming the church through our meetings. What if we could have this spirit, tone, and content in our discussion all through the World Church?”

—Andrew Shields,
World Church secretary, reporting
November 2008 Herald

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