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My wife & I have lived in the same ward & stake for the past 50+ years. We are known. We have a history. During that time period, we were inactive for approximately 8 years. We came back & have been active for
the past 8 yrs. We are now planning to move & live close to our youngest son. (He is not active.)
It will be about 300+ miles away. We have attended the ward in that town. It seems very friendly & welcoming.
We plan to continue to be active.
My question may sound strange or naive.
Here it is: will the fact that we were inactive for a time, follow us to a new ward?
It probably depends on whether we voluntarily talk about it or not.
For background, we never violated any “regulations”, etc. We just didn’t show up.
We are 80 yrs old. The other question is: how active can we be at 80? (that’s a joke.)
Are there any suggestions to make the transition go smoothly?
If you’ve been active for the last eight years it’s very doubtful that your period of inactivity would follow you. When I was a ward clerk over a decade ago our ward had the practice where our bishop would get in touch with the previous bishop of people whose records were transferred into our ward. I think he did it for everyone. Maybe it was church policy at the time? That or our bishop was seriously overzealous. It never sat right with me.
That was years ago, I’m not familiar with what the policies are now. The only current policy that I’m familiar with has to do with contacting the old bishop if the new bishop wants to extend a calling before a person’s membership record has arrived in their ward. Presumably because the membership record would list any annotations and if you don’t have the record you’d have to communicate with a prior bishop to find out whether their records have annotations.
Membership record annotations are only for more extreme situations, like when a person could potentially threaten the safety of other members. They don’t annotate records for periods of inactivity.
Even if the bishop of the new ward did go off script and contact your current bishop, I’d say that it’s highly unlikely that your current bishop would bring up a period of inactivity that occurred eight years ago.
I agree that it’s unlikely to follow you and probably won’t be brought up unless you bring it up. I think Nibbler’s former bishop was probably a bit overzealous, but I know there is some policy about contacting former bishops if they intend to extend certain callings in the near future upon your arrival. I believe that policy is to protect against those who truly are nefarious and attempt to move from place to place to avoid being caught or prosecuted (specifically those who might be abusers).
There is no formal record kept of attendance, including no notation on one’s record.
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