Genealogy is a commandment.

Why do people feel like genealogy work is not as important as other commandments, like reading scriptures? I would be ashamed to say, "I'm just not interested in reading scriptures," or, "I just never have time to read scriptures, so I don't do that." But, doing family history work is also a commandment.

I guess I don't know why we feel so differently about the commandment to do family history as the commandment to read scriptures. Certainly, family history is not quite as high priority as reading scriptures, but it still very important. People think that family history is a huge project, that takes a lot of time, and energy, and sometimes money. It often is. And I think that people are right to sometimes say, in early parenthood or teenage years, "I don't have time for big family history projects." We have to be careful not to "run faster than we have strength." Building a family pedigree that goes back 10 generations from scratch may easily be something that it is okay to wait to do until you are older, an empty nester, or retired. But, I think that there are also huge misconceptions about family history work. Everyone, no matter how busy, can do small things to preserve their family history, like keeping a journal, taking and labeling photos of family events and people, and recording what they and their immediate families remember about their family history. The big, time-consuming projects are something that not everyone can do, and the Lord understands that. Though He expects us to commit ourselves to His work, He does not expect us to have resources to do everything at once. For everything there is a season. But, He does expect us to make time for the little things, like doing temple work or keeping a journal. The Church needs to overcome the misconception of what genealogy really is to successfully engage people in the smaller, but important things.

Each person can help overcome the daunting idea of "genealogy" as an enormous time commitment. First, of course, we need to follow the commandment ourselves. When we hear people who have this misconception, it is easy to explain, "Genealogy is for everyone. It's not as big as it seems. All you have to start out with is little things that you can do easily every day." Almost every Latter-Day Saint will have the opportunity to teach classes or lessons, and every person has the chance to raise their hand in Sunday School and point out the truth about what family history work means. With the perspective of the smaller task, it is much easier for people to be willing and excited to family history work. Of course, there are also those who are simply content to let someone else do their family's work. In that case, they need reminded, as we all do with commandments sometimes, that genealogy is indeed a commandment, and of how important having our family's work done will be if we want to see them beside us in the Celestial Kingdom.