Greater than as soon as when addressing questions from members in 2025, Elder Kyle S. McKay, a Normal Authority Seventy who serves as Church historian and recorder, was requested concerning the huge variety of particular person, household and unit histories collected yearly by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
What occurs to these data, and are they accessible to Latter-day Saints?
Responding to a member at a Sept. 19, 2025, devotional in Palmyra, New York, Elder McKay defined that for a few years, members have been requested to compile and submit unit histories. The Church has obtained these histories and preserved them, however they don’t seem to be accessible attributable to privateness legal guidelines and different obstacles. It’s a priority that typically has saved the Church historian up at evening, he mentioned.
“I really feel just like the prophet Mormon in a cave. I’m surrounded by data. We have now a lot historic knowledge, and we want to get it right into a doc, ebook or document that’s accessible for the aim of persuading folks to come back unto Jesus Christ,” he mentioned. “Our imaginative and prescient is that sooner or later we will share our tales across the globe so our kids and grandchildren will probably be fortified and strengthened. … We’re engaged on it.”
Elder McKay then inspired using the Unit History Tool, a function designed to enhance and simplify the expertise of capturing and preserving tales of religion and historic significance that was launched in January 2024, changing the previous strategy of submitting unit histories.
“Now we will seize historical past because it occurs, and it’s accessible to members within the ward or stake for a interval of two years,” Elder McKay mentioned.
‘A document saved amongst you’
On April 6, 1830, the day the Church was organized, Latter-day Saints obtained the Lord’s command to maintain a document: “Behold, there shall be a document saved amongst you” (Doctrine and Covenants 21:1).
Since then, preserving data, comparable to assembly minutes and historic accounts, has develop into a prime precedence for the Church, as famous in a BYU Studies article by Wayne Crosby and W. Tyson Thorpe. Crosby serves because the director of the Archives and Space Assist Division for the Church Historical past Division.
“These minutes, histories and stories are an indispensable supply for understanding the historical past of the Church. They supply perception into the experiences of on a regular basis Latter-day Saints as they dwell their faith,” Crosby and Thorpe wrote.
The Church’s General Handbook states: “Maintaining a historical past is a religious work that may strengthen the religion of those that write and browse it. Documenting tales all year long will enhance the standard of the historical past” (33.7.1).
Here’s a timeline of how the Church has saved data:
- 1830 to 1924: Church models saved minutes of conferences and submitted them to Church headquarters, whereas Church Historian’s Workplace workers traveled globally to compile scrapbook-style native unit histories.
- 1925 to 1983: Church standardized reporting, together with historic stories, which have been collected quarterly after which yearly, added to native unit histories. In 1978, the observe of submitting assembly minutes was discontinued, and a brand new strategy was carried out.
- 1984: Wards and branches have been not required to submit stories.
- 2000: Wards and branches started sending stories to their stakes. Stakes and districts forwarded all unit stories to Church headquarters as a single annual historical past.
- January 2024: Church changed annual histories with the Unit Historical past Instrument.
Unit Historical past Instrument
In response to Crosby and Thorpe, regardless of their worth, there have been points with the annual unit histories. Leaders and unit historians typically didn’t know what to write down, who their viewers was or if the histories would ever be learn. As soon as submitted, the histories have been hardly ever accessed by native members. Moreover, leaders discovered the submission course of cumbersome and desired an digital methodology.
The Church responded by creating the Unit Historical past Instrument.
A letter despatched to native leaders on Jan. 11, 2024, outlined the important thing modifications:
- Unit histories will now primarily include tales submitted electronically.
- Tales could be written by leaders serving in ward and stake callings and will probably be accredited on a neighborhood stage.
- Accredited tales will probably be revealed individually by stakes and wards all year long as a substitute of the stake compiling and sending paper or digital copies of an annual historical past to Church headquarters.
- Members can view the tales at UnitHistory.ChurchofJesusChrist.org (Church login required) instantly after they’re revealed.
“The advantages of the software embody having members entry their historical past, making it straightforward to do in actual time and permitting extra folks to contribute,” Crosby mentioned.
The software is out there in additional than 30 languages. Members are inspired to submit their tales of their native language.
As soon as revealed, the tales stay accessible on the Church web site for 2 years. Afterward, they’re accessible by the Church History Catalog, the place they’re safeguarded for privateness.
Because the launch
Because the launch of the Unit Historical past Instrument in 2024, greater than 260,000 tales have been revealed, with 74% of all stakes and districts having no less than one unit that has contributed a narrative.
“The Unit Historical past Instrument was designed to make life simpler for leaders, transfer away from the clerical once-a-year submission course of and permit folks to write down and entry their tales in actual time,” mentioned Crosby.
In 2025, roughly 150,000 tales — a mean of 12,000 per thirty days — have been revealed utilizing the Unit Historical past Instrument, written by greater than 77,000 distinctive contributors.
“Momentum is rising. That is an incredible scope of views being captured,” Crosby mentioned. “In comparison with the previous strategy, extra content material is being created, and the kind of content material is extra prone to have a gospel focus.”
The Church plans to make the software accessible to missions so missionaries can write tales that will probably be seen to present missionaries in that mission.
Tales that strengthen religion
Members are inspired to create tales that replicate on, acknowledge or seize necessary experiences or occasions that strengthen and encourage religion in Jesus Christ.
Within the BYU Studies article, Crosby and Thorpe supplied examples of tales the Church hopes members will submit.
In a single story, Marc Haws described how members of the Ontario Oregon Stake demonstrated religion as they confirmed up for a service exercise regardless of wet climate. When members arrived, the rain stopped, permitting them to finish a three-hour mission. As they departed, the rainstorm returned.
“Lesson discovered,” Haws wrote. “We have to cease second-guessing outcomes, have religion and let the Lord work little miracles in our lives.”
Verônica Moretti, Younger Ladies president within the Itapuã Ward, Salvador Brazil Imbuí Stake, shared a religious expertise that impressed her and her household to save lots of and put together for a 16-hour bus journey to the Recife Brazil Temple to be sealed collectively.
“The complete time I felt the hand of Heavenly Father guiding us,” she wrote. “It was an unimaginable expertise. I might really feel Heavenly Father’s love for our household and gratitude for giving us the chance to be an everlasting household.”
The way to create a narrative
To create a narrative and see your personal unit historical past, go to UnitHistory.ChurchofJesusChrist.org, and log in utilizing Church account credentials.
Click on on the “Create Story” button, and observe the on-screen prompts to submit a narrative. The steps to create a narrative are additionally accessible in a YouTube video.
