Losing someone is never easy but at 101 I’d say he had a very good run.
I am not sure what a president of LDS does but it seems amazing he was doing it at 101.
I am not a member of the LDS so I have no idea. Just curious.
Wikipedia has a good page on the establishment of the First Presidency in the Latter Day Saint movement.
For The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints itself, this Wikpedia page has the following:
That page has this to say about the duties:
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As mentioned above, with President Nelson’s passing, the First Presidency was dissolved. You can’t fault his timing for this. General Conference is the first weekend of October and this will thus be a Solemn Assembly.
In further tragic news for the LDS community, there was a shooting today at a church in Michigan:
The president and all of the other apostles serve until they die, and there have been a number of cases of presidents who became imcompassited continuing to serve with someone else doing the actual running of the organization.
When a friend visited me in Salt Lake City many years ago we toured the Visitor’s centers at Temple Square. After viewing the plaques with the brief bios of previous preidents of the LDS Church he turned to me and said
“All of them were born in the 19th century”.
It was true, at the time. I hadn’t noticed it before. This mean that the first couple of Presidents – Joseph Smith and Brigham Young – were pretty young when they started. But Young had a long tenure, and the ones after him were older men when they assumed the office.
It’s not that unusual, I suppose – the Catholic Church has a similar history, with Peter being relatively young, but most popes being pretty aged. But Nelson followed the tradition of older Church Presidents – he was born less than a quarter of a century away from the 19th.
Unlike popes, presidents of the Mormon church are based on seniority among the apostle, so it’s impossible to get young presidents anymore.
The person slated to be the next president is already 93.
It’s true that many of the Presidents of the Church have been pretty incapacitated near the end, but President Nelson was an exception. That guy had more energy at age 100 than I do in my late 40’s.
He became President of the Church in 2018 so served for only 7 years in that capacity, but it sure feels like a lot more, as he instituted a lot of changes. Some of them I liked, some of them I was suspicious of but grew to like, and some of them I didn’t like, but I gotta say he definitely brought a lot of energy to it.
Community of Christ, the next largest outfit in the Restoration, has had a woman, Stassi D. Cramm, as their Prophet-President since June this year. She was sustained on June 1, 2025 and ordained to her current office on June 2, 2025. She’s 63 years old. Honestly, I think she’s a great choice for the role.
I grew up Mormon and know about the seniority thing. But, have there ever been exceptions? What if the 93 year old had severe dementia or something that would make him not able to perform his duties? I seem to remember something along these lines and the answer was that God would take him before it’s his time and this wouldn’t happen. But, has it?
There have been a number of claims about several presidents that they suffered dementia or were otherwise completely unable to perform their duties. Among them are Spensor Kimball and Ezra Talf Benson.
Howard Hunter had significent health issues and only served nine months.
So do you think you’ll go back to the three hours of meetings on Sundays now? 
That was definitely one I liked!!
It actually was worse when I was growing up.
On Sundays, there was priesthood meeting (all males 12 and older) first in the morning. Then go home, then everyone would go again for Sunday school. It would include a sacrament service, talks singing , then going to classes by age.
Back home again and then sacrament meeting for 90 minutes, including another sacrament service singing and talks. This would be in the afternoon or evening. It was all day, but at least since we were in Salt Lake City then we were close to the ward house.
Primary (like Sunday school for kids) was on a weekend afternoon after school and Mutual (for kids 12 and older) was in the evening. At Mutual, we’d have a combined opening meeting, with prayers and a talk, then break up into boys and girls and separated by age. Boys did scouting and girls had more classes.
Relief Society (for women) was either weekday morning (because real women didn’t work, although I seem to recall that they also held a meeting during the evening for women who worked).
Monday evenings were designated Family Home Evenings, where families were to have a structured lesson, and there were manuals for the lessons and activities.
Additionally, there was seminary, a lesson for kids 9th grade through 12 grade, each school day. In Utah, we had release time, where we could get out of school for the hour, but other places usually had early morning, before school.
It was all so quite time consuming. I presume you’ll still have family home evenings and seminary, in addition to the two hours on Sundays.
How about youth meetings? After the Church dropped Boy Scouting, it replaced it with something. When are those meetings? What do the young women (girls from 12 through high school) do and when? In my generation, we would do some joint activities with boys and girls. Is that more or less now?
Church News posted 150+ announcements and changes in the Church since President Nelson became Prophet.
They also posted Leaders around the world honor President Nelson with tributes of faith and friendship.
LDS Living posted 101 facts about President Nelson.
If you’re interested, you can watch Tribute to President Russell M. Nelson on the church’s YouTube channel.
Church News is owned by the church and published jointly with Deseret News, also owned by the church.
LDS Living is now a division of Deseret Book, also owned by the church.
The Gospel Living program replaced those. The idea is to have the children and youth with parental guidance to develop and reach goals in four areas: spiritual, social, physical, and intellectual.
I just looked at the app on my tablet. the home pae is called Discover and has tabs for My Favortites, Music, Goal Ideas, Activity Ideas, FSY Conference, Temple Readiness, Articles, Videos, Images.
Also available from any tab (and listed at the bottom) are Discover, Goals, Thoughts, Circles, Activities.
There are still Young Women camps being held and, for the boys, Aaronic Priesthood Quorum camp. Manuals for both are found online here.
The combined meeting schedule replaced the weekly time annihilator of your youth. The schedule of Sacrament Service, Priesthood Quorums/Relief Society, and Sunday School began in March of 1980. I joined the church in 1982 so I missed out on that thankfully. The current schedule is two hours with Sacrament Service every Sunday (except for General Conference Sundays) but Priesthood/Relief Society and Sunday School alternate Sundays, except for the fifth Sunday of the month which has all the adults meeting together.
Seminary is still a thing as is Family Home Evening. How these are conducted depends on the circumstances of the members concerned, IME. Also, I’ve never seen anyone checking if FHE is being held.
As someone who’s not LDS, please tell me, cuz I’m curious. What changes did he bring that you liked and disliked?
I didn’t go through it, but is the emphasis now on parents work the program together with the kids rather?
We did scouting activities a lot, with a lot of Mutual time devoted to scouting for the boys and many activities year round.
I guess that has mostly gone away?
Yeah, that change to the three-hour block turned church from all day on Sundays (like 8:00 am to 4:00 pm) to just one major block.
I actually liked the all day schedule because it got my father out of the house from morning to night. He was always the ward clerk or in the bishopric.
From what I understand, the emphasis is on the parents encourage and guide their children through it. The younger children will need more parental involvement.
My time in Scouting as a youth was not with any church, it was usually with troops on the bases where my father was stationed. When we lived off-base, it was with a local troop. As I wasn’t LDS at the time, it was just a local troop. The more rural the area, the more I liked Scouting. When my brothers and I were all well into our teens and we lived across the river from Washington, DC, we found urban Scouting was not to our taste. So we got involved in DeMolay since Dad was a Freemason.
As an adult, when I was working in South Korea, I was called to serve in my ward’s bishopric as a counselor. I was also called to be one of the adult leaders for the church-sponsored troop. Although it was located in a seriously urban area (Busan is the second biggest city in the country), it didn’t take long to get to rural areas. It was quite an interesting experience serving as an adult leader for a Korean Scout troop.
I heard a lot about the old schedule because it changed shortly before I joined. Even so, I like the two hour schedule even better.
Here’s my answer referring to the list I posted upthread.
Ministering replaces Home/Visiting Teaching. I really felt as though the old program was more of a tick the box thing. I tried to do it correctly and every HT companion I’ve had for my entire time in the churh has also done that. On the other hand, only a few of the HT assigned to me did so. And it got rather boring in the Quorum meetings on the last Sunday of the month to be urged to get out and get it done. The recordkeeping for the ministering isn’t there. If one of our assigned families needs something, we take it up the chain and let the Bishopric/Branch presidency or Relief Society presidency take it from there.
New Hymnbook churchwide. Being American, I used the US edition of the church’s hymnbook in English. While overseas and attending an English service, it was always the US hymnbook. The local language hymnbooks had fewer hymns and some of them didn’t have the musical score printed for some hymns. This is due to copyright restrictions. The new hymnbook will combine the regular hymnbook and children’s hymnbook into one hymnal. It’s slated to be completed in 2030. If you’re interested in checking out some of the new hymnbook’s hymns, you can check them out [here]. (Hymns—For Home and Church). The title of the new hymnal is Hymns—For Home and Church.
Sister missionaries permitted to wear pants. I think that was a good move to get the “Little House on the Prairie” vibe away from the sisters.
One year waiting period after civil marriage for sealings discontinued. One of the reasons my wife and I married in Hawai’i is because of the delay that would have ensued had we gotten married here in China. Hong Kong was an option but that also was fraught with logistical nightmares. Hawai’i was the best option by far as, unlike many other countries including Korea, the US has this odd system where the church officiant can act as an agent of the government to marry the couple.
Women, youth, and children may now serve as witnesses of sealing and baptismal ordinances. I think that’s a great idea. Being a witness is just that, a witness. It does not detract from the priesthood authority of the person peforming the ordinance.
Beehive, Mia Maid, and Laurel class names dropped. I’ve been a member for decades and still can’t remember who’s who for those groups. On top of that, the old names, especially Mia Maid, sound silly. The classes are now referred to as Young Women’s classes and are organized based on the ward’s or branch’s young women’s needs.
Young men presidencies discontinued. This is a companion change to the one just above. Again, the idea is to have the Young Men’s classes organized based on the young men’s needs.
New Handbook for the church. This is online and replaces the old Handbook 1 for stake presidents and ward bishops (and was considered confidential) and Handbook 2 was for other leaders. The new handbook is for everyone, not just leaders.
Ensign magazine discontinued. That might come as a shocker for many people, but it’s part of having the worldwide church on the same page, so to speak. The Liahona magazine is now the one for adults worldwide, not just oustide of North America.
Female military chaplain sponsored by the church. I think this is great. She’s not going to be performing any ordinances as she’s not ordained, but she will perform other functions of the military chaplaincy. And there are more women in the pipeline for this.
New unified standards for making ward and stake boundaries. This is a logical way to go about it and the metric used are applied churchwide, not just in North America. The metrics include number of participating adults, number of full or partial tithe payers, number of temple recommend holders, and a few other categories.
New Missionary Trainin Center in Bangkok. That’s helpful for those missionaries who no longer need to travel to the US to begin their mission.
Sacrament service only on Easter Sunday and a Sunday near Christmas. Why not?
New Missionary Training Center in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. See above about the one in Thailand.
BYU to have a medical school. Brigham Young University is already a good school. This is a good expansion for its degree offerings.
Temples announced for Busan, South Korea, and Honolulu, Hawai’i. Busan is my wife’s hometown and we both like Honolulu. The current temple on Oahu is up by BYU-Hawai’i which is on the North Shore. It’ll be great if the new one is quicker to get to from Hale Koa on Waikiki.
One problem with Mormon scouting was the hit and miss factor of the adult leadership.
My kids were involved in an environmental awareness program in Taiwan, with campouts and monthly activities. It relied heavily on parental participation, and was surprisingly high quality.
As a scout, I had a number of really good leaders and others that had no interest and were just putting in the motions.
My best friend from high school was a long-term scout leader in his ward, and had the opposite problem of disinterested scouts.
Nelson was responsible for the divorce of Scouting and the Church, and although I think it was done for the wrong reasons, I think the separation was for the better.
The way scouting was done in Mormon troops, in general, wasn’t optimal. Enrollment was essentially mandatory and that shouldn’t be. Leaders should be people who are interested and not those who are volunteered by the Bishop. I’m sure you did a great job, but there were just too many mediocre ones.
And then the scandals that happened the BSA, the LDS Church and others.
That last bit is one of the reasons why I was glad I was involved with Scouting in another country.