The latest updates to General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints range from instructions for presidents and secretaries of elders quorums and Relief Societies to mission preparation courses and from Primary activities to a suggested schedule for nurseries.
The General Handbook is an online book of policies, instructions and information for leaders and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The handbook’s contents are prepared, updated and overseen by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
The updates were published Friday, March 21, on ChurchofJesusChrist.org. At the same time, the Church announced a new AI-powered search assistant now available to help handbook users to find answers to their questions (click here for more information on the AI search assistant).
Significant content updates can be found listed in the Summary of Recent Updates at the beginning of the handbook. These are the handbook’s first published updates since August 2024.
The latest handbook updates include:
Updated instructions for elders quorum and Relief Society secretaries (see 8.3.4 and 9.3.3).
Additional examples of assignments for Relief Society sisters (see 9.3.4).
A name change for the Primary’s CTR 7 class to Valiant 7 (see 12.1.4).
A suggested schedule for Nursery (see 12.2.1.2).
Additional information about Primary activities for all children — including a yearly service activity — and Valiant activities for children in the Valiant 7-10 classes (see 12.2.1.3).
Clarification about attendance at institute classes (see 15.2).
References to the new resource “In the Lord’s Way: Caring for Members Who Have Temporal or Emotional Needs” (see chapter 22).
Additional language allowing Relief Society and elders quorum presidents to initiate Family Services referrals (see 22.3.4 and 22.13).
Additional information about organizing a missionary preparation course (see 24.3.5).
Additional section about members who have misused personal data added to the “Repentance and Church Membership Councils” chapter (see 32.6.3.4).
Clarification of policies on validating or ratifying ordinances (see 38.2.6).
The latest revisions have been published in 32 languages — Bislama, Cambodian, Cebuano, Chinese, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Fijian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kiribati, Korean, Malagasy, Marshallese, Mongolian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Tongan and Ukrainian on ChurchofJesusChrist.org.
The updates will be translated into additional languages in coming months.
