My Public Affairs Calling

What is Public Affairs? What do I do for my stake public affairs committee? I am going to answer these questions and any others you have. 

What is Public Affairs?

Public affairs work in the Church is related to the public relations profession, which helps organizations and individuals to communicate positive and accurate messages and project a positive image. Through your efforts, the Church in your area may be better understood and appreciated, and prominent individuals may feel more inclined to help the Church in various ways to accomplish its important work.

Want to know more about what public affairs is? Check out this website. 

http://publicaffairs.lds.org/eng/getting-started

What do I do? 

My calling is the Stake Social Media Specialist. Essentially I help get information about news stories, activities and service opportunities spread through Facebook, twitter and YouTube. I have worked with Mormon Helping Hands, which is a state wide service project that the whole state of California does some kind of service on the same day. I created a Facebook event to get the word out. Not only is the Facebook event for our members to click join but it is also for their friends to see what they are doing and when. If you respond to a public event on Facebook all of the people you are connected to on Facebook see in their news feed that you are attending that event. They can then click the link and go and see the details of that event. It is a simple way to let people know what we as Mormons do. I promote Blood Drives, Interfaith concerts and a living nativity event that our stake puts on every year called Follow the Star. 

How easy is it, if you are on Facebook, to respond to an event and everyone one of your friends see what you are attending? It's really that easy. You can also easily invite your friends and neighbors on Facebook to events. On a weekly basis at church don't we get asked to invite our friends and neighbors to events? 

Other projects that the Public Affairs committees though out the church have helped with are Neighbors Helping Neighbors. 

http://www.nhnpreparedness.com/

We are also showing this short video to all the ward all around the United States to gear up for the election this year.  Please watch and share on your Facebook page or blog or via email. 

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/political-neutrality-whiteboard-animation-draws-out-church-position

The website http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/ is dedicated to Public Affairs of he church. You can find out what temples are being built or you can read statements from the church regarding subjects in the media, for example the Book of Mormon Musical and many more subjects that the church deems important to talk about. Journalists will go to this website for quotes in articles. You can sign up to receive emails about what's happening in the LDS Newsroom. It's very informative. It is a great tool for us Public Affairs people and for all members. 

We are also promoting a program called The Mormon Next Door where you  invite people to come and listen about Mormonism 101. 

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormonism-101

You might think that the Public Affairs calling is a new one maybe because you haven't heard of it yet. But it has been around for I would guess the better part of 10 years. The Lord know how to prepare his people for it times like these. Just like the proclamation of the family came out years before the fight on marriage even started. Heavenly Father created this calling for this time. Mitt Romney running for President has increased the interest in the Mormons and hence the creation of a committee to help gain awareness of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and to help people better understand who we are and what we believe. 

As you can probably tell I am passionate about this work and i am writing this blog post to help others know more about it. If you have any questions at all please let me know.