This biographical sketch is adapted from "News of
the Church: Glenn L. Pace, Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric"
in the May 1985 Ensign on the occasion of his call as Second Counselor
in the Presiding Bishopric.
Some twelve years ago, Glenn Pace began to evaluate
his life's goals—and he found them wanting. In his mid-thirties, he had
completed a master's degree, worked for two “Big Eight” accounting firms,
and acted as chief financial officer for a land development company.
But he also felt deeply unfulfilled and uncertain.
“I had been trying to hold to both the iron rod and the ‘golden rod’ at
the same time,” reflects Bishop Pace. “When I decided to surrender my will
to the Lord, almost overnight the clouds dispersed and I saw a new direction.”
His shift in orientation moved him to apply for a
position as manager of accounting in the Church Welfare Department. He
wasn't hired for four months. But he felt so strongly that he would be
working for the Church that in the interim he traded his
luxury car for a Volkswagen to accommodate a change in life-style.
He emerged from this time of transition determined to give whatever the
Lord required. On April 6, the Lord required his full-time service when
he was sustained as Second Counselor in the Presiding Bishopric.
As a teenager, Glenn Pace had already learned much
about the intangibles of serving the Lord from watching the service of
his own father. Kenneth Pace was the kind of bishop whose radiating goodness
won him the love and loyalty of people both within and outside the faith.
When Glenn began dating a girl in his neighborhood, Jolene Clayson, her
grandfather advised her, “You be sure to wait for Glenn while he's on his
mission because you'll never find anyone as good as Bishop Pace's son.”
Jolene did wait, and the Paces were married in the
Salt Lake Temple after Glenn returned from the New England States Mission—where
he came to appreciate diversity as he taught people from all kinds of backgrounds
and educational levels.
Bishop and Sister Pace now have four sons and two daughters—the oldest
serving a mission in the Cook Islands.
In his work in the Welfare Department, Brother Pace
found the mix that perfectly satisfied both his business aptitude and his
humanitarian instincts. After working in the financial section for five
years, he became a zone director and then director of field
administration. In July 1981, he became managing director.
His vision of welfare principles was refined in weekly
Friday afternoon meetings with President Marion G. Romney,
who would often read to him from the scriptures and from President J.
Reuben Clark’s welfare talks. “He would reminisce and talk about very
basic principles. Always he tried to get me to see beyond the welfare farm,
beyond the storehouse, to why they were set up—to help people help themselves.”
On a bookshelf in Bishop Pace's office sit seven looseleaf notebooks containing
all the talks on welfare principles he has researched. These have guided
him in “the great challenge to separate principles from traditions, objectives
from programs.”
Just a year ago, Brother Pace toured underdeveloped
countries, specifically to see Church members on the lower half of the
economic scale. “When the gospel enters people’s lives, they become susceptible
to temporal teachings, as well as spiritual
teachings. This experience made me feel that we can do more to save
our people temporally.” His sensitivity to need in the world deepened again
with his recent visit to Ethiopia, where he and Elder M.
Russell Ballard of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy
directed the disbursement of Church contributions to famine relief.
These experiences have given Bishop Pace a vision
precisely suited to helping direct the temporal affairs of the Church.
Seven years later, on October 3, 1992, Elder Pace was
released from the Presiding Bishopric and called to the First Quorum of
the Seventy. He continues to serve in the First Quorum at this writing.
