Member's Responsibilities

Church Handbook of Instructions
1 - [Members] Receive their own Temple ordinances and help immediate family members receive them.
2 - Hold a current Temple Recommend and go to the Temple regularly.
3 - Participate in Family History work.
"Members should identify their own kindred dead, request temple ordinances if needed, and provide these ordinances by proxy if possible. As a beginning, members should try to identify three to five generations of their ancestors...
"In addition to the three basic responsibilities outlined above, members may participate in many other aspects of temple and family history work. The additional work a member does depends on guidance from the Spirit, personal circumstances and abilities, and direction from Church leaders. All members should be engaged in some aspects of temple and family history work throughout their lives."
(Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 2: Priesthood and Auxiliary Leaders [1998], 262-63

We need not be Specialists

"Our chief responsibility at that time was to convince the membership of the Church that they need not be specialists, they need not be in their eighties, they need not be exclusively genealogists in order to understand the responsibility which rest upon each member of the Church to seek out his or her kindred dead and to perform the work which must necessarily be accomplished in their behalf." President Thomas S. Monson, Ensign Feb 1994

We are Called to This Mission

As we ponder the importance of our ancestral responsibilities, we also need to be reminded of the Lord’s vast ministry. I quote from President Joseph F. Smith: “Jesus had not finished his work when his body was slain, neither did he finish it after his resurrection from the dead; although he had accomplished the purpose for which he then came to the earth, he had not fulfilled all his work. And when will he? Not until he has redeemed and saved every son and daughter of our father Adam that have been or ever will be born upon this earth to the end of time. … That is his mission. We will not finish our work until we have saved ourselves, and then not until we shall have saved all depending upon us; for we are to become saviors upon Mount Zion, as well as Christ. We are called to this mission. The dead are not perfect without us, neither are we without them.” Elder Russell M. Nelson, Ensign May 1998

It Matters Not What Else We Have Been Called To Do

"It matters not what else we have been called to do, or what position we may occupy, or how faithfully in other ways we have labored in the Church, none is exempt from this great obligation. It is required of the apostle as well as the humblest elder…The greatest and grandest duty of all is to labor for the dead."
Doctrines of Salvation 2:148-49 Joseph Fielding Smith

These things cannot by lightly passed over ...

“And now, my dearly beloved brethren and sisters, let me assure you that these are principles in relation to the dead and the living that cannot be lightly passed over, as pertaining to our salvation. For their salvation is necessary and essential to our salvation, as Paul says concerning the fathers – that they without us cannot be made perfect – neither can we without our dead be made perfect.” D&C 128:15

Eternal Blessing of All

“We are responsible for the blessing, the eternal blessing, of all who have lived upon the earth, the uncounted, unnumbered generations of men and women who have lived upon the earth, all who today live upon the earth, and all who will yet live upon the earth. How great is our responsibility. We must stand a little taller and work a little harder to accomplish it.”
Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, 640.

The Greatest Responsibility

“The greatest responsibility in this world that God has laid upon us is to seek our dead.”
Joseph Smith Teachings, 356.