RussellHltn wrote:I'll take a guess.
Some local leaders, desiring the reports to continue, tasked the RS and EQ Presidencies to gather the information from the members.
There may well have been a directive shortly after that to curtail this extra reporting as the information gathering was quite burdensome.
Good guess. That is exactly what happened, and there followed instructions that priesthood leaders were not to track temple attendance of individual members.
It happened a long time ago, and I do not think I have the letter any more, but I remember it. It was really hard to turn off some of the folks who thought they really needed the information.
RussellHltn wrote:Also, over time, the monthly reports have been simplified. . . . Each time the report was simplified, I'm sure some leaders wanted to continue getting the reports the old way. That would counter the benefits of simplification.
My experience does not count in any official manner, but after the reports went from monthly to quarterly, the next general authority who visited our stake told the stake president to stop asking for monthly reports and concentrate on conducting home teaching stewardship interviews.
That general authority is now an Emeritus Member of the Seventy, but personally, I agreed with him.
RussellHltn wrote:While I'm of the opinion that leaders have the prerogative to ask for various reports, they need to be sensitive to the amount of labor that's required to compile them. I'd have no problems with creating reports from data already in the computer, but would be cautious about any reports that require additional data to be collected.
I agree.
Back when we did monthly reports and were required to include lists of the names of those member who were not attending, not home taught, or not anything else, I actually had a pretty quick and efficient method to produce the lists.
Apparently, many of the wards in our stake did not send lists of names with their reports. My report was usually about 20 pages long and took several dollars in postage to mail each month. At our leadership meetings, the stake president was always asking me, "Did we really ask for all of this information?" And I would say, "Yes you did, president. We will stop sending it any time you wish."
I am glad the long reports have gone away, but I must confess that, during that time, I knew the names of the members of our ward better than at any other time.