I’ve been working on discovery lately, and in reviewing of documents (board minutes, internal e-mails) I often come across the term “quorum.” Of course, for a board meeting, a quorum has a particular meaning: It is the minimum number of board members who must be present for the board to make decisions. <\/p>\n
We use the word a little differently in the church (or do we?) — we typically refer to the word’s second definition<\/a> of “a select group.” But beyond that difference, what exactly do we mean when we talk about quorums? This creates the interesting question of whether the first twelve apostles were a quorum of twelve, or merely twelve called apostles. (And does this make a difference? I’m not sure.) <\/p>\n If the first apostles were a quorum, then why is this not mentioned in scripture? (It doesn’t even appear in the Book of Mormon, in reference to either the Old or New World groups — is there a reason for that?)<\/p>\n If the first group was not<\/u> a quorum, then why is the present group a quorum? What is gained from having a quorum of twelve, rather than just twelve apostles? And why have we made that change now?<\/p>\n And (to tie it back to the first definition of quorum) might the advent of quorums have to do with granting authority to a body of people, to run the affairs of the church? (But if so, why was this not necessary prior to Joseph Smith first setting up the Quorum?)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve been working on discovery lately, and in reviewing of documents (board minutes, internal e-mails) I often come across the term “quorum.” Of course, for a board meeting, a quorum has a particular meaning: It is the minimum number of board members who must be present for the board to make decisions. We use the word a little differently in the church (or do we?) — we typically refer to the word’s second definition of “a select group.” But beyond that difference, what exactly do we mean when we talk about quorums?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[16],"class_list":["post-819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mormon-life","tag-church-organization-and-structure"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6571,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819\/revisions\/6571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nI recently noticed that the New Testament does not refer to a Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. (Check for yourself<\/a>: The first time the term appears in the Standard Works is in D & C 107).<\/p>\n