The Evolving Ecclesiastical Organization of an International Lay Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been in continual organizational evolution since its founding in 1830. Initially drawing on scriptural terminology and precedents, its founder, Joseph Smith, appropriated organizational elements from other contemporaneous Christian traditions, and then he and his successors largely charted their own course as the church grew numerically and geographically and responded to a changing cultural milieu.