In a shocking announcement during the Priesthood Session of the 2018 March/April General Conference, President Nelson announced that there would no longer be High Priest Groups and Elder’s Quorums in wards.  The two groups would be combined into one, and be called the Elder’s Quorum.  I am both surprised and delighted about this, and I would like to share what I feel will be the benefits to this change.

My first thought is that this will be a nice help to small and medium-sized wards throughout the church.  Many smaller wards struggle to staff all the organizations, and with this move, such wards will have three or so active Melchizedek Priesthood holders available to serve in other callings.

My second thought, is that this really will bring more unity into wards.  There is often a significant separation between the two groups, with negative effects.  Often these groups rarely, if ever, interacted.  And there are likely a handful of men who feel in-between, with some older Elders opting to attend the High Priest Group in spite of being only an Elder, and others in the same situation sticking with the Elder’s Quorum.  Often these good men will wonder what is wrong with them, and why the stake does not care enough about them to just make them a High Priest.  Others may not wish to be ordained a High Priest just because they happen to be getting older.  My hope is that such unnecessary disunity will instantly go away when all men in the ward are part of the same quorum.

With this change, comes the discontinuing of a Priesthood Executive Committee meeting.  This change brings more importance I believe to the Ward Council meetings.  So another thought I have is that this brings something of a ‘leveling’ in the ward.  It is hard for me to articulate now, but with just one MP quorum, and no PEC, it seems that there is less of a hierarchy at the ward level.

I feel that all of the above are in the direction of goodness.  Please feel free to share any impressions that you have on this historic change.  For those interested, I have written similarly on the Elder/High Priest transition, and on the Elder/High Priest distinction.  In both cases I feel that I was ahead of the curve.