Setting Apart - Callings in the Church

 Setting Apart 

This is a quote found in ScripturePlus, Sunday, May 10, 2026

The setting apart is an established practice in the Church and men and women are "set apart" to special responsibility, in ecclesiastical, quorum, and auxiliary positions. All missionaries are set apart and it is remarkable how many of them speak often of the authority who officiate and of the blessings promised and their fulfillment.

To some folk the setting apart seems a perfunctory act while others anticipate it eagerly, absorb every word of it, and let their lives be lifted thereby.

The setting apart may be taken literally; it is a setting apart from sin, apart from the carnal; apart from everything which is crude, low, vicious, cheap, or vulgar; set apart from the world to a higher plane of thought and activity. The blessing is conditional upon faithful performance.

In a hotel in the Pocono mountains of Pennsylvania long years ago, I learned an important lesson when the president of the Rotary International said to the district governors in the assembly:

"Gentlemen: This has been a great year for you. The people have honored you, praised you, banqueted you, applauded you, and given you lavish gifts. If you ever get the mistaken idea that they were doing this for you personally, just try going back to the clubs next year when the mantle is on other shoulders."

This has kept me on my knees in my holy calling. Whenever I have been inclined to think the honors were coming to me as I go about the Church, then I remember that it is not to me, but to the position I hold that honors come. I am but a symbol.

Source

Spencer W. Kimball, “Search the Scriptures,” October 1958 General Conference