News of the Church
A Look at President Russell M. Nelson’s Five-Year Ministry as President of the Church
In his first public address as the 17th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, delivered five years ago, President Russell M. Nelson directed attention away from himself to Jesus Christ and then looked forward.
“The Lord always has and always will instruct and inspire His prophets,” he declared. “The Lord is at the helm. We who have been ordained to bear witness of His holy name throughout the world will continue to seek to know His will and follow it” (“As We Go Forward Together,” Liahona, Apr. 2018, 6).
Receiving Revelation to Guide the Church
President Nelson has acted on the Lord’s direction as he has traveled to 35 nations, adjusted Church organization, used technology to share the gospel, led the Church through a pandemic, issued historic invitations, and built bridges of understanding.
During his tenure as President of the Church, President Nelson has addressed hundreds of thousands of Latter-day Saints and called upon kings, presidents, and prime ministers. He has comforted victims of crime and others who grieve and deepened relationships with top leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), receiving an invitation to speak at the 2019 NAACP convention in Detroit, Michigan, USA.
By revelation and with the full support of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he has also enacted multiple policy changes within the Church.
Under his inspired leadership, Latter-day Saint leaders replaced home and visiting teaching with ministering; adjusted the Sunday meetings schedule to accommodate home-centered, Church-supported gospel study; and asked members to use the full and correct name of the Church. The Church put in place a policy that allowed for couples who are civilly married to be sealed in the temple as soon as they are prepared; renamed tithing settlement as tithing declaration; and established a policy allowing women to serve as witnesses of temple sealings and women, youth, and children who are worthy members of the Church to serve as witnesses for baptisms.
“One of the things the Spirit has repeatedly impressed upon my mind since my new calling as President of the Church is how willing the Lord is to reveal His mind and will,” said President Nelson during the Church’s April 2018 general conference (“Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives,” Liahona, May 2018, 94).
In 2020 the Church celebrated the bicentennial of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, not with a grand celebration but with Church leaders inviting Latter-day Saints across the globe to learn to hear the voice of the Lord better and more often. In an April 2020 general conference talk, President Nelson presented a historic proclamation, “The Restoration of the Fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ: A Bicentennial Proclamation to the World” (see “Hear Him,” Liahona, May 2020, 91–92).
Leading the Church through COVID-19
With the experience of a pioneering heart surgeon but more especially as the Lord’s prophet and leader of a worldwide religion, President Nelson led the Church through the COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020.
The response of Latter-day Saint Charities to the pandemic became the largest-to-date response in Church history, with aid being provided in more than 150 countries.
In a May 2020 interview with the Church News, President Nelson said, “Even through clouds of sorrow, there can be silver linings found” (in Sarah Jane Weaver, “Video: President Nelson Talks about the ‘Painful’ Decision to Close Temples amid COVID-19,” Church News, July 27, 2020, thechurchnews.com). The silver lining of the pandemic, he said, was finding ways to engage with Latter-day Saints without getting on an airplane. Via technology, President Nelson addressed Latter-day Saints in Venezuela and Europe as well as in California, Canada, and Oklahoma. He also spoke to young adults worldwide.
In August 2022, President Nelson traveled outside of Utah for the first time since the pandemic intensified in March 2020 for the rededication of the renovated Washington D.C. Temple.
Receiving the Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize
Morehouse College, a historically Black college in Georgia, USA, announced that it would give its inaugural Gandhi-King-Mandela Peace Prize to President Nelson. The school bestowed this new honor on the 98-year-old prophet on April 13, 2023, at the Worldhouse Interfaith and Interdenominational Assembly at the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel in Atlanta.
This prize is named after Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and Nelson Mandela. It is intended, the school said, for someone who promotes peace and positive social transformation through nonviolent means and uses their global leadership to affirm peace, justice, diversity, and pluralism.
President Nelson accepted the award via video, and the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square also performed virtually.
The prophet’s five-year ministry has been filled with urgings to love and respect everyone. At an event in 2018 celebrating the 40th anniversary of the 1978 revelation on the blessings of the priesthood being extended to worthy members of all races, he taught Latter-day Saints to “build bridges of cooperation instead of walls of segregation” (“Building Bridges,” New Era, Aug. 2018, 6).