Please read this before you use it
Two things about Ministering Tools matter more than any feature on it. Neither is buried in a paragraph of legal text, because both are things you actually need to know.
This is not an official Church app
Ministering Tools is not a product of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is not endorsed by, affiliated with, reviewed by, or connected to the Church in any way. No one in any Church office has approved it.
It was written by a serving bishop for his own bishopric, to keep track of the administrative side of the calling — who is due for an interview, which callings are in progress, who is speaking on Sunday, whose birthday is this week. It is shared with other bishoprics because it turned out to be useful, and for no other reason.
The official Church systems remain the system of record. Membership records, tithing declarations, temple recommends, annual histories, and anything that must be reported to the stake or to Church headquarters belong in Leader and Clerk Resources and the Member Tools app, not here. Nothing entered in Ministering Tools is reported to anyone, submitted anywhere, or recognised by the Church as a record of anything.
If Ministering Tools and an official Church system ever disagree, the Church system is right and this one is wrong.
This is not a place to record confidential conversations
This is an organisational tool. It is for the everyday administration of a ward — the scheduling, the lists, the follow-ups, the things that otherwise live on scraps of paper and in the back of your mind.
It is not a place to write down what a member confessed, disclosed, or confided in you. Sins, transgressions, disciplinary matters, abuse disclosures, mental-health crises, details of someone’s worthiness, or anything said in confidence in your office — none of that belongs in this app, in any field, ever.
What the notes are for
- “Annual interview — done”
- “Recommend expires in March”
- “Wants to talk about his mission papers”
- “Follow up about the Primary calling”
- “Reschedule — he works Sundays now”
Enough to remember what to do next. Nothing more.
What must never go in
- What someone confessed
- Anything about worthiness or discipline
- Disclosures of abuse — call the help line
- Mental-health or medical detail
- Anything you would not want read aloud
If you are unsure, it does not go in.
Why the line is drawn here
Sacred confidences are yours to carry, not a computer’s to store. A note typed in a hurry outlives the reason it was typed: it can be read over your shoulder, left open on a screen, restored from a backup years later, or inherited by someone who was never part of that conversation. The protection a member is entitled to is that the conversation was never written down at all.
Ministering Tools takes real care with what it does hold. Confidential sections are never sent to youth leaders or to anyone with a technical-support role, and your personal journal is readable by no one but you. But no software can undo having written something down, and no amount of care with permissions is a substitute for not recording it in the first place.
Where abuse is disclosed or suspected, stop and call the Church’s abuse help line immediately. Do not type it anywhere, here or elsewhere.
The practical part
Your ward’s information is stored on ordinary commercial hosting, protected by your password and kept separate from every other ward. It is treated carefully, and it is not sold, shared, or looked at for any purpose other than keeping the app running.
It is still a small independent tool run by one person, offered with no warranty and no guarantee of availability. Use it for what it is good at — keeping a busy calling organised — and keep anything that genuinely matters in the official systems that are built to hold it.