Tech Forum

My bishop and both his counselors are convinced that if a member's temple recommend is expired for longer than 3 months, the bishop must personally interview the member for a new recommend. The counselors cannot do it.

I cannot find any instructions that support this, in the Handbook or the temple recommend books. Has anyone else heard of such a thing?

I'm not finding anything either. This might have been a past instruction. Updated instructions rarely indicate the change - it's up to the reader to note any omission and realize there's been a change.

I did see in Handbook 1 where the bishop authorizes his councilors, but doesn't indicate if this is a blanket authorization or person by person. It seems reasonable that the bishop might be aware of something developing and would want to authorize "by individual". So there may be wiggle room for a local practice of automatically referring those whose recommends have expired for more than 3 months to the bishop.

There is nothing in the Handbook or interview instructions about this. It may be a stake policy.

The bishop authorizes his counselors to conduct interviews anyway, so it is an easy thing to do. Our stake president used to reserve the right to interview anyone whose recommend had been expired more than 90 days, but it really depended on the circumstances.

The counselors can do it, providing the member is not a first-time recommend and has lived in the ward at least a year. That is the policy.

This is the policy in our stake/ward also.

As this thread has been resurrected, just a point of clarification about recommend interviews for members who haven't lived in a ward for at least a year. Currently GHB 26.5.4 states that for this case the Bishop reviews the member's record, but a counselor can be authorized to do the interview according to the instructions in that section. It may be that in 2016 only a Bishop could do the recommend interviews for "newly-arrived members", but that's not the policy now.