Coloring Outside the Lines

As many people know, there is currently a small but quite vocal movement that is trying to override the revelations received by prophets and Apostles, to change the doctrines and/or practices of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I won’t mention this group by name—their unique brand of apostasy certainly doesn’t need any more publicity—but in response to some of their recent actions, an online acquaintance of mine, Michael Davidson, recently posted the following on Facebook:

“[T]he discussion point is whether there is a faithful example of an individual acting outside of the scope of their legitimate stewardship positively impacting Mormonism.”

Long-time readers should know that I often post long responses to my blog, but in this case there’s another reason for responding here: it’s a really neat story, and I figured I’d like to share it with all my friends instead of just the members of the group in question. In short, I am an individual who once “act[ed] outside of the scope of [my] legitimate stewardship positively impacting Mormonism,” and the results have been nothing less than amazing.

Without any further ado, here’s what happened:

In the summer of 2001, I was getting increasingly frustrated by the lack of updates to the Mac OS version of Personal Ancestral File. The Mac version was (amazingly) still superior to the Ms Windows version in several ways, but since it had been written for Macintosh System 7, it was getting harder and harder to install on modern computers. Furthermore, PAF 5.x for Windows really did have a lot of great features that PAF 2.3.1 for Mac just didn’t have, mostly because the latter hadn’t seen a major upgrade since 1987. After talking with my local leaders for years and getting nowhere, I finally decided to take matters into my own hands.

I’m a professional database developer, so my first attempt was to try building my own replacement for PAF. It was a truly valiant effort, but it quickly became apparent that it was going to take a lot more work than I could do alone. So, I called up the Church Office Building and let them know what I was doing. I expressed my concerns with the state of software development and offered my services, but no one seemed to know what to do with that information. I kept getting transferred around and around, from department to department, each person hoping the next would know what to do with my suggestions and requests. Finally, after perhaps the sixth or seventh transfer, a woman’s voice answered:

“President Hinckley’s office.”

For those who know that name, I’ll let it sink in for a moment.

I was flabbergasted, probably more so than any of you reading this. I stammered something about not wanting to bother the Prophet with this, but the receptionist was extremely nice and assured me that it was no bother at all. She asked what I was calling about, and since I finally had a listening ear, I shared all the info I could. When I was done, she told me she would pass the information along to President Hinckley and that someone would get back to me soon. Needless to say, I was elated.

A few months later, I received an email from then–Church CIO Joel Dehlin. He informed me that my concerns were quite legitimate and that the Church was working on a new, platform-independent replacement for PAF. He said that it would take a while to develop, but to hold tight because it would definitely be coming. As most of you can probably guess, the replacement was FamilySearch, and it was (and is) much, much better than anything I could have dreamed.

Now, do I believe FamilySearch exists solely because of me? Of course not. I’m sure plenty of other Church members expressed similar concerns, that my request was one among many. But the fact remains that I saw a problem in the Church and I opened my mouth, and the results have definitely been positive. So bottom line: yes, Michael, there’s at least one of us out there. :-)