President Russell Nelson, the longest-living leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who died Saturday at age 101, has been such an institution in the church that it’s hard for many members of the faith to imagine the church without him.

Most anyone below late middle age has never known the church without him. By the time I joined the faith in 1993, he had already been an apostle for nearly a decade.

Nelson’s longevity as a leader in the church was such that when he became the church’s president in 2018, it didn’t seem likely a change was in store. I was not alone in thinking he would be a status-quo kind of leader. He hadn’t stood out as a trailblazer in his more than three decades as an apostle. His General Conference talks stressed classic themes, such as liste

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