A message from President Worthen about the recent update.
In 1975, President Spencer W. Kimball described his vision that BYU would become an “educational Everest,” a place where things would be done in a way and at a level unlike anywhere else in the world. He described it as a place that would provide an “education for eternity” and a place where faculty and students would help roll “back the frontiers of knowledge” while still being grounded in “the vital and revealed truths that have been sent to us from heaven.” President Kimball emphasized that “[w]e cannot do these things except we continue, in the second century, to be concerned about the spiritual qualities and abilities” of all those who work here.
Today the Church Educational System is announcing that all new hires at CES institutions who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must hold and be worthy to hold a temple recommend effective immediately. This standard encompasses faith, testimony, sustaining the leaders of the restored Church of Jesus Christ and conduct consistent with qualifying for temple privileges. More information about this adjustment can be found in this news release and at this Q&A for BYU faculty, staff and administrative employees.
I invite all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who currently teach and work at BYU to commit voluntarily to this same standard of “hold and be worthy to hold a temple recommend” that will apply to all new hires. While some may consider this a minor adjustment from our current standard, we believe it will further align us with our mission. Current employees who are members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ who voluntarily choose to accept this standard will be embracing an opportunity that President Russell M. Nelson referred to in the October 2021 General Conference, “Everything we believe and every promise God has made to His covenant people come together in the temple. . . . [The Lord] is providing opportunities for each of us to bolster our spiritual foundations more effectively by centering our lives on Him and on the ordinances and covenants of His temple.”
I am grateful every day to be a part of the prophetic development of this university and am confident that as we follow that prophetic path, we will, as President Kimball promised, “become the fully anointed university of the Lord about which so much has been spoken in the past.”
—President Kevin J Worthen
