Church Correlation is the process by which members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints become united through the covenants of the gospel to establish the kingdom of God in their hearts, in their homes, in their communities and throughout the world. Official Church publications, including the Church News, work with members of the Church Correlation Department to ensure that all published materials align with the doctrine of Jesus Christ and Church policies.
This episode of the Church News podcast features Clyde J. Williams, who worked in Church Education and as a Brigham Young University religious educator before joining the Church’s Correlation Evaluation team. His decades of study have shaped his testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, built his faith in the Savior and showcased the reality of priesthood authority. He joins the Church News podcast to talk about this journey, the Church Educational System, and the unifying power of Church correlation.
Listen to the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Clyde J. Williams: Well, I’m a believer. I believe this 100% through and through, and I don’t believe ignorantly nor blindly. I can say that I have studied these things; I have studied, I have met these issues, I have, from the days as a young seminary teacher, to the time when I was a professor at Brigham Young University, to the time now working with Correlation and being able to work with the Brethren. Working closely with the Brethren, you would say, “All right, now you’re going to find out if there are flaws.” Well, all I can say is by working closely with the Brethren, I have come to love and appreciate them, and my witness and testimony that they are divinely called servants of the Lord has only increased immensely as I’ve done so; that they are the Lord’s mouthpiece, they are His servants. And when I see the dedication and the commitment and the time that they put in, I just stand in awe of them, and it just makes me want to do more myself to try to help build the kingdom and to lift and bless others.
1:10
Sarah Jane Weaver: This is Sarah Jane Weaver, executive editor of the Church News, welcoming you to the Church News podcast. We are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Church Correlation is the process by which Latter-day Saints become united through the covenants of the gospel to establish the kingdom of God in their hearts, in their homes, in their communities and throughout the world. Because the Church News is an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and because it carries the Church’s logo, it works with members of the Church’s Correlation Department.
This episode of the Church News podcast features one such person. Clyde Williams was an instructor with BYU Religious Education for 24 years before joining Church Correlation Evaluation. He retired on May 31, 2017, and now does this important work as a volunteer. He joins us today to talk about this journey, about Church education and correlation, and shares how that has shaped his testimony of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Clyde, welcome to the Church News podcast.
Clyde J. Williams: Thank you for the opportunity. It’s a privilege to be with you today, Sarah.
2:23
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, we were talking before we started. So much of the podcast is made possible because you’re willing to review it every week. And we’re so grateful that now you can sit on the other side of the microphone and be a guest.
Clyde J. Williams: Be in the hot seat.
2:39
Sarah Jane Weaver: Yeah. I actually kind of want to go throughout your life chronologically, and we’ll get to the Correlation stuff at the end, which a lot of people in the Church are interested in and very few actually understand this need to bring everything under priesthood authority in a global Church.
But you served a mission in the Southwest British Mission from 1968 to 1970. I don’t mean to date you with that date, but I had an opportunity a few years ago to go back to England with other former British missionaries, which were President M. Russell Ballard and President Jeffrey R. Holland and Elder Quentin L. Cook, all of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and all former British missionaries themselves. That’s quite a group to be associated with.
3:28
Clyde Williams: Well, like them, my mission experience was the foundation, really, of my life. I look back, and I think how much impact it had upon my life. And even, I think particularly one experience in my mission that has affected both my teaching and my work in Correlation. As a young missionary, I was like, I’m sure, many others; I had a question. I thought I saw a contradiction. And being naive and not very well informed, and we hadn’t had all the letters we had not writing to Apostles, I was foolish enough to write a letter to then Spencer W. Kimball, who was the Apostle over the British Isles. And of course, I wouldn’t do that now, I’m smarter, but I wasn’t then, and he was kind enough to respond and explain to me the answer to the question I had.
But then, when he came touring the British Isles, and he came where I was stationed at Cardiff, Wales, and spoke to the missionaries in the Cardiff Chapel. And I’ll never forget that experience because part of his address, he talked about missionaries writing to general authorities, and it should be writing to their mission presidents. Well, guess who was all ears. It was like he was talking — he didn’t know I was there, but it was like one on one to me. And I’ll never forget the experience.
He said, “Now elders, when you come across things you don’t understand, or you find it seem to be contradicting,” he said, “you study for a while.” And then he said, “When you don’t have the answer, put it down for a time. Put it on the shelf, leave it there for a while and go on in your living and learning and studying the gospel.” And he said, “Invariably, when you come back to it and take it down off the shelf again, you’ll now have the means with which to answer those questions.”
My, how I wish I had rotated my food storage like I did my question shelf. That has served me my entire life and to this day still serves me so well. I’ve just learned not to become fixated and become obsessed with something I don’t have the answer right now. And I learned that as a very young missionary, and it has continued to bless my life since that time. So yeah, my mission was a great foundation for me, for my teaching and for my work in Correlation.
5:25
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, on the Church News podcast, on a previous episode, we did feature President M. Russell Ballard talking about having a moment on his mission that shaped his life, where he actually knew the gospel of Jesus Christ was true. And we’ve also heard that same sentiment from another Prophet, President Gordon B. Hinckley, who in the British Isles had a moment where he wrote to his father, and his father wrote back and said, “Forget yourself and go to work.” And I actually think a lot happens in the British Isles for shaping people.
Clyde J. Williams: Well, it sure did for me. It was a blessing and continues to bless my life.
6:02
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and you came home from your mission and met your wife. Tell us about her.
Clyde J. Williams: Well, I actually met my wife on the debate squad at BYU of all things. It didn’t take me long to know I didn’t want to continue to debate, but because she was there, I stayed in the class for the rest of that little — I came home on the block plan that they had at that time, and then I went another semester, because I was itching to her. And fortunately, Catherine Hess was her name, she was finally convinced to marry me, and we were married probably about nine months after I got home from my mission.
And we’ve got five wonderful children and 24 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, with one more on the way. So it’s been a great blessing in our life. And she’s been such a stalwart and a support and faithful. And she’s the one the grandkids really love; I just tag along and try to get some of the blessings because of her. So it’s been a great, wonderful life and continues to be so.
6:58
Sarah Jane Weaver: And I want to talk about how you ended up in Church education. Because in 1974, you start down that career path, and that would have been an opportunity to influence generations with their testimonies, and actually lead you to employment in the Church Office Building.
7:15
Clyde J. Williams: Well, my mission president at the end of my mission was Elder John Madsen — he became Elder John Madsen — who was in Seminaries and Institute. And I so admired him and his teaching, and I thought, “This is something that this would be a way for me, in my mind, to continue to do the things I was doing in the mission field, to be able to teach and to teach young people.” And so, fortunately, I went through the program at BYU. And it’s not easy; you go through, and you have to do all the things, I guess, well enough. And I was fortunate to be able to make it through and to get selected to be a seminary teacher. And I was delighted and took that course, and it’s been a blessing in my life.
I taught seminary in the Salt Lake Valley, down in Hillcrest and Union Junior High, in that area, for about seven or so years. And then in 1981, the opportunity came to write curriculum. And that became an option to do a little summertime work for me. And so I guess I did OK, because they then brought me in full time, in the fall of 1981, to write curriculum. And I did that for five years here in the central office in the Church Office Building. That was a great thing in my life, because I got to go through all four of the standard works and also help write some lessons on doctrines of the gospel. So, talk about a foundational preparation for me.
But at the end of that time, I just came home one day and I said to my wife, “I just feel like maybe I’m getting a little stagnated here. I need to do something else.” We went to the temple, and we prayed about it. And literally, a day after we had done that, I got a phone call from Robert J. Matthews, who was the dean of Religious Education at BYU. Now, I knew who he was. I don’t think he knew me from Adam, at least I didn’t think he did. I’d had a couple classes for him, but I wasn’t a friend and a confidant or anything like that. And he asked if he could come to my home in Sandy, where I lived, and I said, “Well, sure.” I didn’t know what it was all about.
9:10
And he came to the home on a Sunday evening, and he said, he just asked me how I’d feel about coming to BYU to be a religion professor. And of course, I was a little bit stunned. But I’d made up my mind. When I left the central office, I wanted to go and teach at the college level somewhere. And so I said, “Well, I’d be interested.” He said, “Now,” he said, “it doesn’t matter to me if you have a doctorate degree, but it does to the university. So you need to commit” — because I didn’t have a doctorate yet; I just had a master’s — “you need to commit to get a doctorate degree.” And I said to him, “OK, I can do that.”
Now, he said, “Just hold on for a couple weeks. It’ll take me a while, and I’m going to propose this up the line, and it would have to go up to the university president,” at the time was Jeffrey R. Holland. And about two weeks later, I got a phone call and told me I was invited to come with Brother Matthews and to meet with the university president and his other associates, and had an interview, and I guess it went OK, because they agreed to let me come on this provisional basis, that I would work on my doctorate degree. And so when people ask me, I was called a visiting assistant professor. And, “Visiting from where?” I said, “Well, I’m visiting from the University of Chevron in Draper. That’s where they pick me up on my carpool,” because I hadn’t done anything else.
But that was where I began, and it was a blessing. And fortunately, I was able to eventually become a full professor and love teaching at BYU. And I was given the opportunity — Brother Matthews said to me, “We want you to be a Restoration man. We want you to teach primarily the Book of Mormon.” So I would teach at least three sections every semester, but then I had options. So I taught every semester. Besides that, I taught New Testament, and I taught Doctrine and Covenants, and a few fall semesters I taught Old Testament. And I did all four of those subjects at the same time.
Now, that would seem ludicrous to most, but I did this because I wanted to become a generalist and not just fixated on one subject. And I also found as I did this, that I saw a lot more associations and connections between these subjects because I was teaching them at the same time, and I’d be teaching this, I’d be remembering this that I taught the hour before or the day before in this other class. And so that was a great blessing in my life. And it helped me to broaden my understanding of the scriptures and to increase my love of the gospel and my understanding of the standard works. So, that’s kind of how I got going at BYU, and some of the things that happened and what I tried to do there as a professor.
11:38
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, I hope you can give all of us who love the gospel of Jesus Christ so much that we want to help other people understand it too. So I’m hoping you can give us some advice.
Are there keys to teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, either to youth as you did through seminary, or on a level where you’re dealing with institute-aged students?
11:59
Clyde J. Williams: Well, first of all, I wanted the students that I taught, I wanted them to come to see what I saw and feel what I felt and know what I knew. But it also meant I wanted to make sure that they understood. Application was key for me. It wasn’t just about listing all the facts, and, “Let’s memorize these things so you can pass a test.” It was, “I want to have you be able to see, ‘How can I apply these principles? And how do they apply to my personal life? What is there about Nephi and Lehi? What is there about what the Savior is teaching that is so relevant for us today?’”
And so my emphasis in my teaching was to try to help them to see and ask this question. The Book of Mormon was written for us. We know that the manuscript was put together by Mormon and then Moroni finishing it, was done and that the people that they lived with never would see that particular manuscript. It was written with us in mind. And it’s Moroni who says that: “I speak unto you as if ye were present, and yet ye are not. But behold, Jesus Christ hath shown you unto me, and I know your doing” (Mormon 8:35).
So I’d ask my students, “You ask yourself this question when you’re studying: ‘Why did the Lord include this? What did He want us to learn? What did He want us to see?’” And if you can answer that, and then you keep asking that question, because the more you do this, the more you’ll see, “Oh, I see how this applies.” And so it’s not just knowing what’s in the text, it’s knowing why it’s there and why the Lord had it included for us. So that’s kind of a bit of a philosophy behind my teaching and hopefully was helpful to the students that I was privileged to teach over those many years.
13:27
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and you also had a chance to write curriculum. When you’re writing curriculum that other teachers will use, what’s the process? What are you thinking about? How do you know what to include and what not to include?
Clyde J. Williams: Well, it’s the same thing. You’re looking for things that will help the students relate to it and see its relevancy for them. You want them to understand the doctrine. You want them to understand the principles of gospel. You want them to want to emulate those that they’re studying and realize that, I mean, Nephi would say that “we lived after the manner of happiness” (2 Nephi 5:27). Well, what’s the manner of happiness? And then you’d go through the scriptures in that chapter of 2 Nephi, where he describes us, and say, “Hey, look, here were the things they were doing. This was what Nephi meant is the manner of happiness. Guess what? That manner of happiness is the same for us today as it was for them.”
And so we try to help them to see those things and to be able to see, and so when you’re writing curriculum, you’re looking for those kinds of things that will help the student to understand, to love the gospel, to want to live it, to see its relevancy, and that their life will be better, that they will be more happy. And we’ve got statements from King Benjamin when he talks about this, that the real happiness comes when we live the gospel. And if we do, it’s a blessing to us. And so I think that’s part of what we would do when we’re writing curriculum, is looking for those things. It’s not just “We’ve got to get through a text here”; we’ve got to find those things that have meaning and importance in their lives and to them personally, and also to understand the gospel so they’ll want to live it.
President [Boyd K.] Packer once said, “If you understand the ... plan of happiness and follow it, what goes on in the world will not determine your happiness.” Well, that’s really true. A lot of people — I can tell you about somebody who understands the gospel, could answer all the questions in my Gospel Doctrine class, but who spent many years in prison. He didn’t follow it. He understood it, he could give the right answers, but it hadn’t entered into his heart and into his head, not both, and so therefore, it was really merely, probably a condemnation for him; it certainly wasn’t a blessing for him, because he didn’t incorporate it. And even though he knew about it, and that’s a danger, that people who know things but don’t put it into practice in their life.
15:42
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and now you’ve also worked on compiling “The Teachings of Lorenzo Snow,” of Harold B. Lee, of Howard W. Hunter and of Boyd K. Packer. And I want to talk to you about what you learned from each of those situations.
Clyde J. Williams: So, my reason for doing those, as a young seminary teacher I had the scriptures, and I wanted to use those first and foremost, but I also valued the teachings of living prophets. And so I had gathered — remember, this is now before we have the “Teachings of Presidents of the Church” volumes. They didn’t exist at the time when I was doing all of these other books. And so I looked at my shelf, and I said, “Here’s some volumes. No one had ever written the teachings of Lorenzo Snow. I didn’t know why, so that motivated me in 1983 to start compiling those and eventually to get Bookcraft to publish it. And then, Harold B. Lee’s teachings had not been, and he was in my life, as a young man coming home from a mission, he was prolific and was just powerful. And I wondered why that hadn’t been done. And so I ended up contacting the Lee family and Brother Goates, who was the husband of President Lee’s oldest daughter, said, “It ought to be done, but I don’t have the energy to do it. We’d love to have you do it.”
And so I started. That was my key to take and do that. And when I finished that one, I heard someone at Deseret Book say they weren’t going to do a teachings book on President Hunter because his teachings didn’t lend themself to that. So I thought, “Well, there’s my cue. I’m going to do that one,” because I wanted those on my personal shelf. That was my motivation: I wanted their teachings available to me and, of course, to others as well.
And so I did that. And then after I had finished doing those three, all my life, I had been influenced by President Boyd K. Packer and his teachings and a lot of stuff that we used in seminary, which is great. And I had written once to him right after I finished these others and got a letter back saying it’s already been done, so I let it go. And about seven years later, nothing had happened. And I woke early one morning, and I just thought, I’d had some impressions and feelings, and I thought, “What’s going on here?” And I thought, “Well, I can ignore this.” And I finally decide after a week, “You know what? I could just write another letter, and he could just say, “No thanks.”
So I wrote a letter and said, “I’ve asked once before, but I would be interested in compiling your teachings, if you would be desirous.” And I got a letter back from his secretary saying, “Yes, he would.” And in fact, I got the letter, and then he asked me to call his office, so I did. And I called and spoke with him, and he arranged to meet with me, this was in mid-November, so he arranged to meet with me right after Christmas, just right around the 1st of the year. And I went, and he asked me to send him a copy of these other teachings books I had done so we could look at those.
And so I did and then came into his office, and he had the “Teachings of Harold B. Lee” on his desk that I had compiled. And he said, “He was my mentor.” And anyway, we just had a wonderful exchange. And he said, “Let me ponder over this for another week.” And he did, and he got back to me, said, “Let’s do it.” And that was in January. And by November of that year, we had put together his teachings. I had some great student assistants down at BYU that I would go through. I rode the bus down and back from BYU every day. And I’d be reading talks and selecting statements and categorizing how I thought they ought to go, and these TAs would help me put it all together. And we put it in a folio program so we could search and make sure we could see the duplication.
19:03
And anyway, that’s the way it went. And the difference this time, as I said to President Packer, I said, “This is the first time I’ve done this with a live person.” The other three, of course — President Lee, President Hunter and President Snow — were dead, but he was alive. And so that was a great thing. When we got it done and we came, I remember, we came into his office, and I was meeting with him and with, actually, Max Molgard and Ed Brandt were there from Correlation. And I knew that President Packer, we’d been told, because he was not a President of the Church, that we wouldn’t call this volume “The Teachings of President Boyd K. Packer”; it would have to be a different title.
So, as I had been reading all these through, I selected four or five different potential titles. I knew he was going to select the title, it wasn’t me, but I thought, “I’ll just come with some suggestions that he can start from.” And one that I had put at the top of the list was “Mine Errand From the Lord.” He’d used that scripture over and over again out of Jacob, but he’d used this many times over. And the phrase that he used here in Jacob, Chapter 1, Verse 17, he said, “Wherefore I, Jacob, gave unto them these words as I taught them in the temple, having first obtained mine errand from the Lord.” Before I went to teach him, I got what the Lord wanted me to do, and I was on His errand. And so he had used that several times. And I thought, I just felt like that might be a great title.
Well, we came into the room there, and we had a little discussion. I said, “President, here’s a list of some potential titles you could consider.” He looked at it, and literally — it was one of the mind-boggling experiences — it wasn’t 30 seconds, he said, “This is the title.” He said to his other, it was Ed Watson, who was his other assistant, he said, “Will you go get Camilla, my secretary?” And he had her come in. He said, “Will you call Deseret Book and reserve this title for me?” Just like that. And so in 30 seconds, he had focused on that title, so it was “Mine Errand From the Lord: Selections From the Sermons and Writings of Boyd K. Packer.” But I was just blown away by how decisive he was. And that was an experience I’ll never forget, how quickly he just focused on that, and it resonated with his heart and what he felt, and that’s what he decided it should be called.
And so anyway, those experiences, but the bottom line is all of these, my life, when we had questions come up at BYU from students or from other faculty members, and we’re discussing things, I want to know what the scriptures say, and I want to know what prophets and apostles have said about it. And so I spent my life studying their words, because I wanted to know, I’m not the one to establish doctrine, I just want to be the hunting dog who’s pointing, “This is the correct doctrine.” I want to just have people be able to see, and when you can get two or three voices combined together that say, “This is the principle, this is the doctrine,” then you can feel safe about it. And you’ve got scripture support, and you’ve got prophets that are confirming it, then you can feel sound and feel good about what you’re teaching.
So anyway, that was the benefit of my doing all of those teachings; it’s blessed my life. And I continued to have the opportunity to be asked, “What have the prophets said about this? What have they said about that?” Well, I’ve spent my life trying to compile and to learn those kinds of things and have resources available to do that. And that’s been a great blessing for me. And I’ve been able to help many because of that.
22:17
Sarah Jane Weaver: Was there one thing that all four of those leaders shared in common?
Clyde J. Williams: Well, they were all great, faithful men, and they all had powerful testimonies of the Savior. And while each of them was unique in their own way, they just, as I mentioned, President Packer was mentored by President Lee, and so he resonated and used a lot of things President Lee did. But I guess the key was they all focused on the Savior, and they all bore witness of Him and focused on people coming to Christ and following His example in order to receive the blessings of exaltation.
22:54
Sarah Jane Weaver: And during this time as a Church employee and later as a BYU professor, you also were doing your own Church service, serving in a stake presidency for more than two decades; 10 of those would have been spent as stake president. What did you learn from Church service?
23:12
Clyde J. Williams: Well, it’s just a great opportunity. It’s a weighty responsibility but a blessing to be able to serve the Lord and to serve people. And the responsibility of a stake president is both to help, but it’s primarily, in my mind, to be a teacher. You’re to hold up the gospel to these people. I gave more talks during that time period probably than any other time in my life, because you’d be speaking at ward conferences, you’d be speaking in stake conferences. And so you’re trying to teach the gospel, you’re trying to convince people to live the gospel, to let it bless their lives, to be faithful, to strengthen their families.
And of course, you have other more difficult things when you have to handle some of the disciplinary matters and things that come about, but it was just a blessing, and the opportunity to serve with those whom you loved. And my counselor in the stake presidency for the 10 years was Elder Paul Johnson of the Seventy. And we were close friends, and I benefited much by my experience with him, and we grew together in those opportunities. So there just was a lot of wonderful friendships, a lot of wonderful opportunities to meet people, to try to help them in their lives and to try to build the kingdom and to build the gospel in their lives.
24:30
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and I now want to talk about Correlation. First of all, can you tell me what that is and why the Church has it?
Clyde J. Williams: Well, you tell people, I say, “I work for Correlation,” and they look at you like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what that means.” It’s like you’ve said mumbo jumbo to them. And probably the best thing, in September of 2023, the First Presidency approved a very short statement — I’m going to just read this — of what the work of Correlation is. And this is what they said: “The Council of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles constitute the Correlation Committee of the Church.” I want to stop at that. The Correlation Committee of the Church is not people I work with. We are their assistants, and we are their staff. But the Correlation Committee of the Church is the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
“They ensure” — now I’m going back to the statement — “They ensure that the Church remains one in Christ, aligned in doctrine, policy and practice, to further God’s work to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” That’s the work of Correlation, that is to try to keep everyone aligned in doctrine, in policy, in practice. Then, the second paragraph of their statement says, “The Correlation Executive Committee and the Correlation Department have been commissioned 1) to assist the Council of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles in this holy work.” That Correlation Executive Committee consists of some of those who are my leaders and then usually two of the Twelve. And the two Apostles who are over the Correlation Executive Committee at present are Elder David A. Bednar and Elder Ulisses Soares.
So, “The Correlation Executive Committee and the Correlation Department,” which I’m a part of, “have been commissioned 1) to assist the Council of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles in this holy work and 2) support Church councils, committees, departments and areas in their correlation of responsibilities.” So everything that we do in Correlation is to try to help — whether it’s the magazines, or whether it’s people that do the Church News, people who do social media, those who do missionary work, whatever — they all need to be correlated, meaning they all need to make sure that their doctrine and their policies and procedures are in line. And so they work through Correlation, and what we do is what’s been approved by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. And our desire is to try to keep people so that they’re safe and so that we’re on target and that we’re not teaching false doctrine or that we’re not stating something that would be incorrect or would be inaccurate. But that’s, in essence, what the Correlation Program is.
27:13
Now, the Correlation Department of the Church actually has four separate divisions or departments: There’s Intellectual Property that helps handle the legal rights. And then there is Process and Planning, which helps people as they’re working on designing projects they’re going to do. And then there’s research that goes out and helps when the Brethren want to know what’s happening with bishops or what’s happening with single members and so on. They do research on that.
And then the Correlation Evaluation Department, which I’m a part of, our responsibility is to make sure that the doctrine that’s being taught and printed and used by the resources of the Church is correct and that it’s all in harmony. And another example of this, we don’t use any images of the Savior or images of Deity that haven’t been approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve. They’re very careful about that. They want to make sure that how we represent the Savior and how we represent God the Father, in any cases where we do that, that it’s in a manner that they approve of. And so, there are guidelines that are in place for that.
Those are just a couple examples of critical things that we do to try to help make sure that when the Church puts forth its message, it’s one voice. Remember, that was what was said here, that we remain one in Christ, that we’re united, and you don’t get one voice over here and another voice over here and we get another voice over there. No, we come together, and we’re united, whatever department or whatever, whether it’s one of the women organizations or whether it’s the Young Men’s organization, we’re all going to be united in what we do. And that’s the desire and that’s the intent of Correlation.
28:50
Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, and you’ve always been such a valuable resource to the Church News. During this time, after joining Correlation Evaluation in 2010, you also had a chance to be involved with “Book of Mormon Videos” as the Correlation scripture consultant. What was that like?
Clyde J. Williams: Well, when they proposed doing the “Book of Mormon Videos,” of course I was thrilled. That had been my primary focus. I had taught the Book of Mormon through over 100 times, with all of the years I taught at BYU and elsewhere. And so I was assigned from Correlation to be the scripture consultant. And so it was my responsibility, different from maybe some other organizations; when they do scripture stories, they take more liberties, and they put a little more — really, if you want to call it — speculation or other things in that are not completely scriptural. Well, we weren’t supposed to do that.
And so we needed to make sure that our producers and others, we sat down together, and we’d go through the Book of Mormon with them. We’d kind of have a Book of Mormon class, if you will, before we began to write the scripts, so that we understood we’re on the same page. And that meant there’d be less editing and less correcting that had to be done with the scripts, because we were going through and doing that. And so I counted that a blessing. And then to be able to be there on site and to witness those things, and just a great opportunity to see the Book of Mormon come to life and to see the hand of the Lord in doing this.
I’ll just mention one experience. The film about Alma and Amulek, and Alma’s conversion as a priest of Noah, was actually filmed over in Hawaii. And after Alma had gone to the Waters of Mormon, the little place where this was filmed was in a backroads place, we had to get in all-terrain vehicles to get back where they filmed this. And people wouldn’t know, but the little pond where they were performing that baptism, about 5 feet beyond where they were standing, dropped off 13 feet, so they had to be very careful. And one of the things I was concerned about was, this isn’t very unusual, but Alma is going to baptize himself along with Amulek. So he’s going to go into the water at the same time. And I thought, “How are we going to do this? And is it going to look good? Is it going to come across right?”
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And so I was there sitting watching that, and very few times did a major scene like that, there was one take. One. And it just happened. I sat there actually with tears in my eyes as I watched it happen. I thought, “Wow, this was beautiful.” And it was a spiritual experience for me to watch this take place, and the actors had caught the vision of this, and it was done in such a profound way they didn’t have to, “OK, now we’ll dry off, change and do this again.” They did it once, and it was done so well. And so, to be there to watch these kinds of things happen was just a thrill.
And I think it helps to bring the Book of Mormon to life, but it’s trying to bring it to life as close to the text as we could be. The Brethren didn’t want us going off and doing a ton of speculating. There’s obviously — here’s another little example. We were out, this was out of the Jerusalem set here in Goshen, and we were filming early in the morning, it’s probably about 1 o’clock, and it’s when Nephi is coming out of the city with the plates with Zoram. And they were talking about Zoram going down and then Nephi was going to take him down because he’s going to flee. And after that happened, the guy who was portraying Zoram said to the director, Blair Treu, he said, “How about if I pick up the plates and hand them to Nephi?”
And Blair came over and said, “What do you think?” I said, “I think it’s inspired. It shows his, ‘I’m with you now, Nephi. I’m going to commit. I’m with you.’” But that was not in the script or not in the scriptures exactly what happened, but that was done. And it was a powerful experience at 1 o’clock in the morning that I still remember, and I thought, “Wow, what a neat thing to see that happen and to feel that even the actor was thinking of how they could do this. So anyway, those were just a couple of little things. And it was just a beautiful experience to be a part of this whole six — well, what, 2016 to 2023, whatever number, seven years before we finally finished all of those.
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Sarah Jane Weaver: I’m going to leave this interview and go search for the Alma and Amulek scene with that baptism now that I know they did it in one take.
I also want to talk to you about your personal life, because all these years that you’ve been working with Church News, we knew you were also dealing with cancer. How did you navigate health challenges and work and family obligations all at the same time?
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Clyde J. Williams: Well, that’s a good question. When I came to Correlation in 2010, of course, everything as far as I knew was hunky-dory, and it was for three years. And then about 2013, I had some problems with my gallbladder, and I went in, and they did gallbladder surgery and took it out, and the doctor that took the gallbladder out said, “We’ve got some suspicious tissue here. We’re sending it away.”
And anyway, it came back positive with cancer cells. And this is gallbladder cancer. It’s very unusual, apparently. It’s pretty rare. They don’t have a lot of studies that have been done on it. And so that began, I had that surgery, like in the end of May. And by the 1st of July, I’d healed enough that they could start me with chemo. And then after a while with radiation, I went through six months of chemo and radiation. And when I got through, they felt things were going well and my numbers had come down; you have a tumor marker number that goes up, it did come down enough that they said that I was in remission at the end of December.
Well, long about February, only two months later, I was starting to have some pains in the abdomen, and I wondered what was going on, and I talked to the doctor, and he said, “I just can’t believe that it’s come back this quick. I think it’s something else.” And so they used some other treatment. But by the 1st of April, it was pretty serious, and so they did a scan and realized that I had cancer cells in my abdomen that started as well. And over a nine-day period, I was taken to the hospital twice, and they drained off nine liters of fluid full of cancer cells. And my tumor marker number had gone — it’s supposed to be below 35, it had gone up into low 200s.
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And so I said to the doctor, “So, you’ve dealt with people with cancer, and what are my odds?” He said, “Well, if I give you my best guess, you maybe have six months to live.” And so my wife and I, we had some pretty sober times. I was back going through chemo again, and it was not pleasant. And we called the mortuary and got things planned because I didn’t want my wife to have to deal with the funeral and all that stuff after I had gone and get that all ready. But she’d had knee replacement surgeries on both her knees, and, in fact, we knew that another one probably had to be redone, and I just dreaded having to leave her.
But Elder Bednar had given his talk some time before that, talking about having both the faith to be healed and the faith not to be healed. And as I pondered about that, I recognized, and when I called all of my kids together and my sons and sons-in-law, who gave me a blessing, I just said, “Now, my hope and I know your hope is that I might be privileged to remain. But I also have the faith that if I’m not healed, that it’s the Lord’s will, and we can deal with that.” And anyway, the blessing was given, and over time, I continued to receive chemo for another year. And by May of 2015, they had declared me again in remission, and I’ve been in remission since that time, and my numbers have remained down below 35 since that time.
I had prayed to the Lord and asked — and this was not totally flippant, but I remember that He gave Hezekiah a 15-year reprieve. And I just said, “Lord, if you give me one, I promise you that I’ll use my time well, and I’ll try to use it wisely.” That’s one of the reasons why when I needed to retire, and we’ll talk about it in a minute, I just decided I wanted to continue to work. I enjoyed this work, and I thought, “What am I going to do that’s better and that could be more of a contribution? And so I did that. And that’s why I stayed and continued to stay, because I just feel like I can contribute, and I wanted to do that.
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Sarah Jane Weaver: So, let’s actually talk about that. On May 31, 2017, you retire and then, come June, you’re right back at work doing what you were doing.
Clyde J. Williams: So, at that time, the things were tight financially in the economy and the Church. There were no FTEs, and Max Molgard and myself are one month apart in age. We’re both past 65, and we know that we’ve got to retire, but we need to give somebody to be brought in to be trained so that we don’t leave — there needs to be institutional memory with people who are there. So in order to hire somebody, the second-in-command had to retire; that was me. So I agreed to retire but come back the next day and still do what I was doing. But that would allow us to hire another person that we could begin to train. And of course, since that time, things have gotten better, and they’ve hired lots of other people that, thank goodness, the work could just continue to increase. But that was what was decided upon and why it was needed.
And I wanted to continue — this was still in the middle of “Book of Mormon Videos” — I wanted to continue that to this conclusion, which I got to do. And other things; I got to still work with the Church News and with you, Sarah, which was a blessing. And so it’s just been a blessing in my life. I could have done other things, but I thought, “This is something that I have prepared my whole life to do, and the background that I’ve had has prepared me to be able to be hopefully a good resource.” And so I thought, “This is something that would be harder for someone else not having that background to be able to do,” and so I just decided to stay, and fortunately, they’ve been happy to have me to do that and to continue to work in Correlation, which has been a blessing in my life.
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Sarah Jane Weaver: Well, we had a similar thing at the Church News. The former Church News editor, Gerry Avant, retired and then just kept coming to work. We put her to use, and she’s edited. And it is a great blessing to the Church when people have expertise that they’re willing first to work in a position that allows and requires a great deal of consecration as well, and then for them to be willing to give that as service.
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Clyde J. Williams: Yeah. Well, it’s been a blessing for me, and I’ve just, when I was teaching at BYU, I used to say to my students, “I’ve never had a day that I dreaded coming to work.” And I can say that I haven’t had a day that I’ve dreaded even working with Correlation, because there’s always — it’s wonderful to work with the Brethren. In Correlation, they often will have research they would like us to do and things to prepare for them, and there are questions that come in that we can help with some of the responses that may be done, and things like this that are part of what I was doing most of my life.
I’ve spent my entire life studying the gospel and working with college students. They had questions, and so my desire was to try to find ways to help them to put those in perspective and recognize when there isn’t a complete and total answer here, like President Kimball taught me, “Be patient, put it on a shelf and come back to it, and you’ll find you’ll have the means to put it in perspective.” And I’ve enjoyed doing that. And I get to continue to do that kind of a thing in the work that I do. And so for me, it is a blessing. It’s not a drudgery, it’s not. I can honestly say, as I told my students, “You wouldn’t have to pay me to do this. They don’t have to pay me to do this.” I love doing it, and I’m grateful to do it as a volunteer, and it’s blessed and continues to bless my life immensely.
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Sarah Jane Weaver: And I think that’s a great place to wind things up today. We have a tradition at the Church News podcast: We like to end with the same question, and we like to give our guests the last word. And so, Clyde, after an entire career teaching and studying and sharing the doctrine and principles and scriptures of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, what do you know now?
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Clyde J. Williams: Well, I’m a believer. I believe this 100% through and through, and I don’t believe ignorantly nor blindly. I can say that I have studied these things; I have studied, I have met these issues, I have, from the days as a young seminary teacher, to the time when I was a professor at Brigham Young University, to the time now working with Correlation and being able to work with the Brethren.
Working closely with the Brethren, you would say, “All right, now you’re going to find out if there are flaws.” Well, all I can say is by working closely with the Brethren, I have come to love and appreciate them, and my witness and testimony that they are divinely called servants of the Lord has only increased immensely as I’ve done so; that they are the Lord’s mouthpiece, they are His servants. And when I see the dedication and the commitment and the time that they put in, I just stand in awe of them, and it just makes me want to do more myself to try to help build the kingdom and to lift and bless others.
I think of the passage that was made by Mormon in the Book of Mormon; I guess I would say I’ve desired with all my heart to be a defender of the faith. That’s been my desire. I want to defend the faith. And I’ve endeavored to learn with both my head and my heart. I think of what Joseph Smith said in Joseph Smith — History 1, Verse 20: I realized I was destined to be “a disturber and an annoyer” of the adversary’s kingdom. I want to be a disturber and annoyer of the adversary’s kingdom. I’m not trying to stir him up, but I want to try to put down the falsehoods and establish the truth.
And then I think I would just finally say, in the words of Moroni in Mormon, Chapter 9, Verse 25, “Whosoever shall believe in my name, doubting nothing, unto him will I confirm all my words, even unto the ends of the earth.” I don’t doubt anything in regard to the gospel, and the Lord has confirmed His words to me. He has confirmed His servants are His servants and that they are chosen men of God. And I sustain President Nelson, President Oaks and President Eyring and all of those who serve with them as prophets, seers and revelators. And my experiences with them — in some cases, personal experiences — have done nothing but reaffirmed that divine witness that has come to me.
And so for that I am grateful, and grateful to be a part of the onward movement of this Church and kingdom here upon the earth. I leave that with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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Sarah Jane Weaver: You have been listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News executive editor Sarah Jane Weaver. I hope you have learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by peering with me through the Church News window. Please remember to subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please make sure you share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates on the Church on TheChurchNews.com.
