Receive the Holy Ghost: four words said over every new member

The wording is set. The officiator names the person, confirms them a member of the Church "by the authority of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood", and tells them to "receive the Holy Ghost". Only men who hold that priesthood may perform it. It is usually done at the baptismal service or during the next fast and testimony meeting, and baptism and confirmation are given to people "at least eight years old", which the Church calls the age of accountability. Converts who join after meeting missionaries go through the same two steps in the same order.

The first confirmations took place on April 6, 1830, the day the church was organised. Joseph Smith later ranked the two ordinances together: "The baptism of water, without the baptism of fire and the Holy Ghost attending it, is of no use." Members quote that sentence to explain why nobody in the Church treats baptism as the finish line. The finish line, if there is one, is the sentence said over the chair.

Start with what members believe the Holy Ghost is. The Church teaches that he is the third member of the Godhead and "a personage of spirit, without a body of flesh and bones", distinct from the Father and the Son, who members believe have physical bodies. His influence, the Church says, is open to anyone: "all honest seekers" can feel it, and the Gospel Topics page uses that phrase to explain how a person who has never met a missionary can still be moved by scripture or a prayer. The gift is something else. After baptism and confirmation a person is said to have "the right to the constant companionship of that member of the Godhead if he or she keeps the commandments". The table sets the two side by side as the Church describes them.

The condition in the last row is the part that shapes behaviour, and members are taught it early. The gift is described as a standing right that can be forfeited. The Church's page on honesty puts it in plain terms: a person who lies, steals, cheats or withholds fair work will "lose the guidance of the Holy Ghost". For a member, then, a small dishonesty carries a cost that has nothing to do with being caught.

The Church lists the roles in its teaching material, and the labels are worth knowing because members use them in conversation without explaining them.

• Testifier: the Holy Ghost "witnesses of the Father and the Son" and reveals truth; the Church says a testimony comes "only by the power of the Holy Ghost".
• Guide: he "can guide us in our decisions and protect us from physical and spiritual danger".
• Comforter: the page compares him to "a loving parent" who can "calm our fears" and give comfort in grief.
• Sanctifier and confirmer: through him members believe they are cleansed as they repent, and that the ordinances they have received are "acceptable to God".

Sheri Dew, who ran Deseret Book from March 2002 and is now executive vice president and chief content officer of Deseret Management Corporation, spent part of her April 30, 2026 address at the BYU Women's Conference on the second role. "Never underestimate the gift of the Holy Ghost," she said, and quoted President Dallin H. Oaks: "If we don't have the Holy Ghost, we will be deceived." Her argument was about information, not comfort: that in what she called a season of disguised truth, members should treat the gift as the filter.

The best-documented case is Clayton Christensen, the Harvard Business School professor who wrote The Innovator's Dilemma (1997) and died in January 2020. Wikipedia's account of his life notes that he made his choice of university "a matter of prayer". The Deseret News reported the later story in 2010 and 2011: as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and the starting centre on an undefeated basketball team, he learned the final was on a Sunday, went to his hotel room, knelt, and asked whether he could play just this once. His account of the answer is that it came before he finished the question: "Clayton, what are you even asking me for? You know the answer." He did not play. Notice the shape of the story, because it is the shape members use for their own smaller versions. There is a prior rule, a pressure to bend it, a prayer, and a response that is felt rather than heard. Christensen also described the earlier process by which he decided the Book of Mormon was true, an hour a night at Oxford over several weeks, and said the answer arrived as "a beautiful, warm, loving spirit". David Neeleman, founder of JetBlue, described the outcome rather than the process to the Deseret News in December 2006: "I try to live my life the same whether I'm at work or at home or wherever." Members would say that consistency is what the gift is for.

A standing right that can be forfeited: that is how members describe the gift.

You will not see the ordinance from the office, so what does the belief look like from the next desk? Two things, mostly. The first is a decision habit. Members are taught that guidance comes to a person who asks, and the pattern Christensen described, decide the principle in advance, pray about the specific case, act on the feeling, is one members say they apply to job offers and deals as readily as to Sunday basketball. They will rarely announce it. A colleague may only notice that a Latter-day Saint asks for a night before answering, or declines something that looked fine on paper. The second is the honesty link. Because the Church ties dishonesty to losing the Spirit's guidance, members describe honesty as self-interest as much as duty. Neeleman told the Deseret News that being known as a member made him work harder at being fair and trustworthy, and added: "I think we should be honored to be held to a higher standard."

Two cautions from the editor's chair. A feeling is not auditable, and no source on this site claims that prayer produced a better balance sheet. Pew's survey published in January 2012 found 69 percent of members combine daily prayer, weekly attendance and a statement that religion is very important to them; that is a measure of practice, not of the outcomes of decisions. Read the belief for what it is: a reason members give, mostly in private, for choices that look conservative from the outside.