2: Receive Revelation
December 20, 2006 | By Joel Dehlin | 30 Comments
I call down the Lord’s help in doing my work to aid in exalting the human family.
This is the second of the attributes we use to describe the culture we want to embrace at the Church’s I.T. department.
We work for the Church which means we work for the Lord. We believe we have the right to call on him to help guide us in our work. And we do it. We start many meetings with prayer. Each Monday morning our I.T. leadership staff meeting begins with a “spirited” hymn, a prayer and a spiritual thought. We often have general authority devotionals in our all-hands meetings where we have opportunities to be instructed and to receive inspiration.
There is ample opportunity to receive revelation in an environment rich with spiritual nutrients. It’s one of the great blessings of working at the Church, though it has taken some getting use to on my part.
NOTE: I originally referred to the Church’s environment as being “rich in spiritual fertilizer” but some of my staff thought that was probably inappropriate. 
Lincoln Cannon said...
I like that — calling down the Lord’s help to aid in our work of exalting the human family.
December 20, 2006 4:22 pm #
jrj said...
I’m glad to see this blog. Thanks for taking the time to do this!
How dependent is the church IT infrastructure on Microsoft products? I see that you came from MS yourself, so how does that back-ground influence your decisions on what technologies and platforms to use?
December 20, 2006 5:03 pm #
Ron Howell said...
One way to accelerate the gospel by the use of Information within the Church is to enable Wards to be connected to a World Wide Church Network. Today, I believe many Church buildings have no IP connectivity at all. The acceleration of spreading the gospel could be enhanced by providing true IP connectivity to our buildings, especially those buildings where the Digital Divide keeps local members from receiving the benefits of easy access to Church Information, Geneaology, Video Broadcasts and other information designed to teach and inform members. The rich areas have access, the poorer ones are currently left out and do not enjoy this technical blessing. I think we can do better.
Do we have any plans to IP enable our buildings around the world in the near future ? I believe this would open new doors of opportunity for us as missionaries for the Church to spread the gospel more effectively and to allow a wider base of members to enjoy the blessings of geneaology research and education.
Meeting houses world wide can now become centers of education and training in a way that is not enabled for many today. Gospel Knowledge is for everyone.
What do you think ?
December 20, 2006 5:24 pm #
Wayne Rogers said...
I’m glad to find this too.
I have a Computer Service company in a small town, and I tend to take the apporach of calling on the Lord’s help in serving my customers. It does really work in solving problems in a great way, and hopefully leave a good impression of the Church for my customers.
December 20, 2006 5:33 pm #
Jeffrey Skott said...
Joel, thanks for doing this. As a branch clerk, I use MLS and of course, I use LDS.org (and its sister sites) often. The blog is wonderful and I’ve bookmarked this so that I can keep apprised of the technology that the Church uses to further the work of the Lord.
Regards and with much respect and admiration,
Jeffrey Skott
Sales Engineer, Web Designer and former software Product Manager
December 20, 2006 8:00 pm #
Tom Johnson said...
I am really glad to see that the church CIO has a blog! I’m a technical writer and have both a blog and a podcast, and I think it’s an excellent way not only to communicate, but to add face and personality to a remote department. It also provides a venue to collect feedback. Thanks for enabling your comment feature!
I’m really impressed by the work and pace at which the church IT department is growing. As a technical writer, I was checking out the MLS help file the other day, wondering if there is a printable version.
It would be nice to have printable guides for each of the different organizations that need to use MLS (e.g., elders quorum, relief society, membership clerk, etc.). Right now the user has to sort through a long list of help topics to find what he or she is looking for. When a financial clerk sits down to learn his calling, he just needs the financial help section, not the entire guide.
The help is clearly written and accurate, but I’m also surprised at the lack of screenshots. I mean, there aren’t any at all.
The F1 feature is truly awesome, but it’s not advertised anywhere except in the introduction to the help. What about adding some embedded help text on your screens that says “Press F1 for help with this screen”? Or some help buttons?
Last but not least, what about video tutorials made with products like Captivate or Camtasia? They would be so helpful to integrate. Most people are visual learners.
Maybe you could pass on my feedback to your technical writing team, or point me to their blog! Thanks. You guys are doing an amazing job. Keep it up.
Tom
December 20, 2006 8:03 pm #
Peter Walton said...
This Blog is proof that you are praying
Sometimes the Lord’s plans can be delayed due to our unwillingness or inability to work together. When technology is used to bring people together, in order to learn and and apply true principles, the Lord is pleased.
In our busy often segregated lives technology could be better used to bring people and more importantly families closer together. The church has done very little with technology to bring families together.
I have a few ideas on how the church could help the spirit of Elijah more quickly touch the hearts of members and non members alike.
Interested?
December 20, 2006 8:25 pm #
Oscar Schultz said...
I’d like to thank the folks there for MIS, MFS and MLS. Please pass on my appreciation and thanks.
Both apps have been a great blessing in helping the local leadership to keep the work organized. Home teaching and Visiting teaching would be far more difficult to organize without these tools let alone keeping the finances correct.
As the Church writes it’s many applications I hope you will consider releasing the code under the GPL, BSD, Mozilla, or Apache licenses so the entie human family will be blessed in having software that increases their knowledge, freedoms and abilities. A such an education would be a priceless blessing. Without the source code any application is an incomplete blessing.
Even if the applications never use any outside code, someone, somewhere, will be blessed to see the source and learn how someone who has the inspiration of the Lord approaches problems and develops His applications. Other applications and people will be blessed through such an gift, Just as a bit of yeast blesses a loaf of bread.
thanks
Oscar
(happily using MIS/MLS since MIS 1.1.2)
December 20, 2006 9:35 pm #
Brenden McEwan said...
Wow, how would it be to have such a spiritual environment in a work setting! I head up global infrastructure at my current employer. I do my best to access the Lord’s help in my day to day. I am always amazed (and humbled) at the assistance I get as I battle against some of the toughest or even the simplest computer geeky problems…when I ask
. When I don’t ask, I sure pull what hair I have left out!
December 20, 2006 9:47 pm #
Bluedolphin Crow said...
Aanii Joel
Great to have you join the blogosphere. I have enjoyed reading your blog and will continue to follow it closely.
I always call down the Lord for all the work I do and I am so glad to see you writing about it and adding the tech stuff.
December 20, 2006 10:37 pm #
jrj said...
To Ron Howell:
I don’t think it’s an issue of the “haves” and “have nots”. In many of the economically poorer areas, you’ll be hard pressed to find the infractructure in place to support high-speed connections (i.e. no service provider has spent the money putting fiber in the ground or copper-wire for proper DSL connections, etc.) Until that happens, even if the Church wanted to install such access, it wouldn’t be able to.
These areas will probably see, over time, an improvement. But, it will require time and yes, $$$ too.
December 20, 2006 11:30 pm #
Michelle said...
I love the idea of praying before meetings. I did this with my grad school study group (could get away with it because it was at BYU) and I just think it can help us remember. Al. 34 says we should pray over our flocks and fields. Nowadays, that translates into praying over projects and meetings.
And even if we can’t do so with our coworkers, we can do privately. God says all things unto Him are spiritual. Praying over temporal concerns helps me keep perspective.
p.s. It was fun to see the news piece about your blog on lds.org, Brother Dehlin.
December 20, 2006 11:44 pm #
J. Lee said...
Joel:
Maybe you could share in a future post some insight in regards to the direction the new LDS.org will be taking with handheld devices. Over the past few years we have seen more and more in our meetings across the world. I also look forward to more of the curriculum and scriptures released in other languages. LDS.org is so unique and full of information. I find nothing comparable to it on the web.
A few questions:
Are there plans to better organize content conversion and speed in the future as well as utilize the many volunteers willing to help with projects? How do we become more involved?
J. Lee
December 21, 2006 3:10 am #
Chris Turner said...
It is great that you would do this. I have a comment about IP connectivity in Ward buildings – can this be extended so that General Conference and other satteliite broadcasts can be available on a Ward basis – is streaming video the right technology?
Thanks
December 21, 2006 3:39 am #
Greg Drew said...
Wow, this is a really great site. I work in IT for a large Wall Street firm and I couldn’t imagine starting our meetings with prayer. How would it be? And how would it be to work in a place–Church headquarters–in which you feel the spirit so strong all day? About the only thing that could top that would be working in the temple. What a great job!
December 21, 2006 5:16 am #
Robert H. Kjar said...
A very good move forward and badly needed in today’s world of misinformation.
December 21, 2006 5:35 am #
Rolf Tollerud said...
To jrj and Ron Howell:
Before anybody even jumps on the band wagon to technological debates in regards to connectivity, ICS has tried and is rolling out satellite to a lot of disconnected areas, the problem is of course latency. Satellite connections struggle believe it or not and the bandwidth isn’t what you would expect. Can connectivity be achieved? Yes. Is it the best or even comparable to low end DSL? No.
Let us not forget that some people watch and prey (not pray) upon the Church. There have been problems in areas where equipment is stolen, vandalized, and just plain abused. IT and connectivity isn’t always the answer.
There is some good to be had in NOT being connected. Think about when/if you were on a mission. If you could just pick up the phone and call whoever you wanted, what would your mission have been like? Obviously this wasn’t allowed for a reason. If you could IM, text, or simply email whenever you wanted to on your mission, what would that be like?
December 21, 2006 7:36 am #
Rolf Tollerud said...
To jrj:
So I had to comment on the M$ background. One of the things that I think Brother Denna did very well was to decide that we needed to focus on one technology and do that well. ICS has started opening the doors to other technology and I personally think this was a very poor decision. I would have LOVED to post these comments under the technology blog, but the comments section was turned off.
An common misconception is that M$ mean a more complete integrated package. At least that is what the salesman tells the people that sign the checks. An article in baseline magazine last month details out how Bill Gates personally met with Tony Blair and Patrica Hewitt and sold them the same promise for revamping Europe’s health care IT system. Surprisingly (not really) they are 12 billion dollars over budget and 2 years behind.
In Joel’s blog on Open Source Software he talks about the integration of various libraries being expensive, http://www.ldscio.org/2006/12/09/open-source/ What is comical to me is that most .Net projects now use SpringFramework for .Net, NHibernate, Acegi for .Net and Log4Net. Hmm, sounds just like their Java counterparts. If all you are getting from Open Source Software is vendor neutrality then I think you are missing the mark.
Unfortunately instead of solving the root cause problem (poor practices, under skilled engineers, IT immaturity…) organizations look for a silver bullet to solve their problems. Brother Denna didn’t choose Java to solve these problems, at least I don’t think so (I can’t say I have really talked to him about it), but I wonder if opening the door to M$ tools isn’t that false hope that it will solve some of those problems when it might not really be the problem at all.
It will be interesting to see how this pans out with ICS and the Church in general. It is good that they are looking to the Lord for guidance on problems like this.
Rolf-
December 21, 2006 7:54 am #
Naiah Earhart said...
I can understand your culture shock. (coming from MS)
I’m loving watching these defining/guiding principles unfold. It seriously makes me wish *I* worked for church IT (though my husband is the actual dev/sde/programmer).
Every aspect of our lives has to be governed to some degree by revelation. Sure we puzzle things out as best we can, but when the Spirit leads elsewhere, we must follow. One would almost think that in a church organization it would go without saying, but I’m still glad you said it.
December 21, 2006 8:36 am #
John Taber said...
Many times when I’ve been working, or watching a presentation about a new product or feature, I’ve felt impressed to consider how to apply that to my calling. That has not only led to doing more for my calling (stake membership clerk, after having been ward membership clerk three times) but has also helped me get to know the software I’m using (right now mainly ArcGIS 9.1, but I have ArcView 3.2 at home) better.
I’m reminded of a talk Elder Nelson gave, where he told of a time when he was operating, and the Holy Ghost guided him – using the techinical language he was familiar with – through the surgery. I’ve had similar experiences along the way, not that there still hasn’t been some trial and error.
December 21, 2006 8:36 am #
Don Simpson said...
I too am interested to know if the Church is run primarily on Microsoft products or if they are using open source products such as Linux in their environment. I work in a primarily Microsoft shop, but I have seen the benefits of Linux as well.
I wouldn’t mind this question being addressed.
Thanks
December 21, 2006 11:16 am #
jrj said...
To Rolf Tollerud:
“If you could IM, text, or simply email whenever you wanted to on your mission, what would that be like?”
I am glad that I served in an area where I did not have such luxuries. However, this appears to be changing. In the mission where I live, all missionaries are given an email address and are allowed to write emails. I believe the mission president told me that this is allowed 1x a week and it’s supposed to be to their families. ?? An interesting change.
December 21, 2006 11:22 am #
Michael Gentry said...
I’m interested in how we can utilize Google Earth and our ward/stake membership lists to create the aerial view of members locations. This would assist me in my calling in emergency preparedness planning. What is the MIS policy for doing this? I notice that there is a place for an address reference tied to GPS locations in the MIS system.
December 21, 2006 11:32 am #
Ron Howell said...
To Rolf,
Many times we build fully protected paths for IP connectivity world wide, forming an Intranet that is allowed to get to authorized internal church materials, but restricted from general open Internet access unless that specific access has been authorized in advance. This may prove to be an excellent protection for Church buildings and Church members.
In networks like this, we protect all traffic on the path against tampering of any kind, giving the church network a level of confidence that would be required to allow connectivity to more of our buildings. I’d be glad to discuss how we do this for other global organizations, it’s very effective and would give us the protection you clearly described here. It’s very safe, I can share the details with you anytime if you would value that. cheers, Ron
December 21, 2006 1:06 pm #
Joel Dehlin said...
jrj – We try to be “dependent” on as few products as possible. We use MS Office and Windows on the desktop. Though we have some pockets who use macs (like our interaction designers and also some of the folks over in the curriculum department). We do AIX (massively virtualized), Linux and Windows servers. We use Novell Groupwise. We have both eDirectory and ActiveDirectory. We use both Oracle and SQLServer. We’re a Peoplesoft shop. And we use both Java and .net. We do content management for our web properties using Vignette.
Ron – We have already put networks into most of the family history centers (and thus the stake centers). We’re looking into the possibility of opening those networks up for use by MLS, and also at the possibility of putting more networks into more buildings. When you look at the big number it can feel cost prohibitive. But we’re doing the analysis.
J. Lee – We plan to do a lot more with mobile devices. We’re trying to get this first big rev out and then we’ll start to do more there. Also we’re working on the content flow tools to make it much easier for us to publish content.
Chris – yes, we are looking into the possitibilities of streaming video via the Internet. First step is Internet connectivity.
Rolf – we’re treating the dev tools question very seriously. We’ve become very productive in Java (after spending much time integrating our own stack). But for quick, simple, internal applications we think that .net will make our developers more productive. We’ll see if that ends up being the case. We’re dipping our toes in the water.
Naiah – I love working here. I never thought I’d stay as long as I have (2 years). But it’s wonderful. It has its challenges. But for me the rewards far outweigh the challenges. And some day I’m sure I’ll be fired. And I’m ok with that, too.
Greg – we’re always looking for great people!!
Michael – we’re currently studying whether and how much to allow developers to extend what we deliver. The mapping stuff would certainly be something we’d consider.
Many of you have asked about involvement. More coming on that in the coming months. We want to figure out how to harness the community! There is so much great passion and energy behind this work!! We LOVE it!
Hopefully I didn’t miss any questions. Thanks for your feedback!
December 21, 2006 5:35 pm #
Dominique Andriamanantoa said...
Thank you for the blog idea. I rejoice in being able to interface with the church’s CIO from possibly the furthest church location away from headquarters: Madagascar.
I find all the comments interestings and truly believe that IT has a big part to play in the work of the Lord. In theory, distance should no longer be a concern. The administrative work of church leaders should be much lighter, which in turn enables them to concentrate on ministering to the people.
Christmas wishes from a stake president:
I just wish sometimes that in remote locations like Madagascar we did not have to go through the industrial revolution before we can benefit from the IT revolution (we still do reports with pen and paper). You mention somewhere else the you want to be the best: church IT in Madagascar is archaic compared to the local businesses who are utilizing the newest of technologies.
I also wish IT would really help us bridge the grand canyon gap between headquarters and our members. We need to relate more to our prophet, to general conference, to the “Mormon culture”, to all the teachings and writings from the church. Writing this comment, I feel like I am writing from the next door office. Why can’t it be like that with all the resources the church has to offer?
This one is probably only wishful thinking: what if you made the remote areas of the church first on the list of beneficiaries of the IT technologies to be used? I asked once when we may get MLS, MIS, MFS: sometimes before the millenium… Yet those would really help our bishops who are new members still in making their load of work lighter.
Somehow, even though this is a blog, it feels a bit like I am sending a message in a bottle, which may or may not be read once day.
Thank you for the opportunity.
December 21, 2006 11:47 pm #
Peter Walton said...
Utilize Google Earth .. great idea !
Google maps or something alike could play a very real role when extending home teaching and visiting teaching callings, in areas of the church where travel plays a large factor.
As fuel prices raise and household budgets tighten having a clear understanding of the resources needed to complete visiting and home teaching before praying about extending these callings would be helpful.
Of course one could say that these types of issues ought to already be considered, but with the large work loads already had on members in leadership and at time the large numbers of people that need support, considerations like the distance between families or individuals to be visited gets lost to the process and frequently unnecessary hardship may result.
As in all things a good balance of accurate information and working with the spirit moves the work forward.
Thank you for the opportunity.
December 22, 2006 8:32 am #
W. David Lewis said...
Joel,
Thank you for the blog arena. It is nice to have information about the information systems used by the church available to us.
I am currently the clerk in a small branch in up-state NY and a student working on my BS in computer engineering technology.
So of course my curiosity was peaked when we migrated from FIS to MLS as to the nature of the workings behind the new beast.
Since I consider myself to be a little bit of a techy I was wondering if there are any plans to create a secure knowledge base that as a clerk I would be able to query for FAQ’s?
I have many other questions about church computer connectivity and usage, but I feel this is not the place to ask them.
Thank you,
David
December 22, 2006 8:41 am #
Carl W. Filiaga said...
Talofa from American Samoa. Thank you for this blog, I appreciate having information & being able to comment on how the Church uses IT to fulfill its’ missions. I’m not sure if this is the right forum to ask my question. Is there a possibility of including American Samoa in the approved Church hosted websites?
Happy New Year,
Carl
December 28, 2006 1:16 am #
Joel Dehlin said...
David. Yes, we are looking for a venue for clerks to share information with each other. Stay tuned.
Dominique. Thank you for your feedback! We’re trying hard to improve communication throughout the Church.
December 29, 2006 10:25 pm #