Latter-day Saint AI applications — Church Handbook summarization

One of the top functions Large Language Models (LLMs) do well is to summarize text. There are now many browser extensions that will summarize for you any news article, YouTube movie, PDF, or anything else on the Web.

So why not summarize chapters from The Church General Handbook? One of the problems are the token limits of LLMs. As of right now, Claude.ai has one of the larger context window sizes.

So, I went to the Church Handbook’s chapter on the Aaronic Priesthood. I saved the chapter as a PDF (if you go to print the page, you can then choose “Save as PDF”), uploaded it to Claude.ai, and asked this question for my prompt:

I have attached a PDF. It is a PDF containing instructions on how to run a ward’s aaronic priesthood program. It mentions youth leaders (the Deacon Quorum President), his counselors and secretary. It also mentions adult leaders, such as the bishopric counselor, advisors, and specialists.

I’m having a hard time keeping all of the adult leader positions straight. I would like to see a detailed bullet point list showing all responsibilities of the bishopric counselor, then another list for the responsibilities of an adult advisor, then a list of responsibilities for the deacon quorum president. Can you please provide those detailed lists for me?

The response was:

Here are the key responsibilities for each of those Aaronic Priesthood leaders:

Bishopric Counselor:

• Counsels with the Deacons Quorum president on how to fulfill his duties
• Teaches the deacons about their quorum responsibilities
• Attends deacons quorum presidency meetings
• Attends deacons quorum meetings and activities
• Interviews deacons periodically to discuss their spiritual growth
• Oversees teaching in the deacons quorum
• Helps plan deacons quorum service projects and activities

Adult Advisor:

• Attends deacons quorum meetings and activities to support the bishopric counselor
• Provides mentoring to deacons and teaches them how to lead
• Helps the quorum president conduct meetings and activities
• Participates in quorum lessons as requested
• Ensures at least 2 adults are present at all quorum events

Deacons Quorum President:

• Presides over quorum meetings
• Welcomes new quorum members and helps returning members
• Plans and conducts quorum lessons on Sundays
• Plans service projects and activities for the quorum
• Assigns deacons to pass the sacrament
• Interviews prospective deacon quorum members
• Calls 2 counselors and a secretary to serve with him in a presidency
• Meets regularly with the quorum presidency to plan and coordinate quorum work

Let me know if you would like me to expand or clarify anything in these responsibility lists. I’m happy to provide any other details that would be useful.

Pretty useful, huh?