- It provides a way to reach out to people on social media, e-mail and other communications and provide a way for them to communicate back without giving out personal e-mail address.
- Along the same line, some families have a joint e-mail account and when they have a calling where they receive sensitive information, they should get their own e-mail account. This would prevent them from having to get a new account because one would already be set up for that position.
- It provides a stable point of reference for e-mail dealing with calling responsibilities that can be passed from person to person (with the calling) without worrying about people having differing e-mail addresses over time.
- It provides a non-changing, relevant e-mail address to use when creating other accounts online. For example, when creating accounts for purchasing items on non-church (store.lds.org, Staples, etc) websites. Or to use when creating a facebook page. Again, it prevents having to use a member's e-mail address. When member's change positions, leave the unit, or leave the church, new online accounts would have to be created due to the existing ones being associated with that person's e-mail address.
In an ideal world, they would partner with an e-mail provider and have accounts already set up for specific callings, like branch president, bishop, their counselors, EQ president, RS president, clerk, executive secretary, etc. That way they are automatically created when a unit is formed. In this case they would be hard coded into MLS calling records.
They would have to provide the clerk or technology specialist some means of resetting the password in the event it is ever lost.
I would love to get people's opinions on this practice and see examples of where others have implemented it and have people chime in on the pros and cons. I'd also like to hear suggestions about how to successfully manage these types of accounts. For example, any time there is a calling change, the password should be changed. Also recommendations for naming conventions like UNIT.CALLING@wherever.com