To make the long story short, about 10 years later I got a christmas card. Enclosed was a photo of this man and his wife dressed in white in front of the temple where they were called as workers. In the nice note he wrote, he mentioned specifically the faithful performance of my grandfather as their home teacher as a factor in their reactivation.

You just never can tell. Keep trying, sometimes people do surprising things.

We are so concerned at not offending them so that they won’t come back and I said for what? They aren’t coming to church in the first place!!! Instead of going to HT or VT them as a friend and just chew the fat why are we not going as specific leaders and representatites of the Lord’s church?

And that was what the email was about this morning. As leaders we need to take a more direct approach with the inactives in our areas, visiting each in their homes, delegating to our councilors to spread the load.

For 5 years I had a dedicated VT who never missed a visit even though she knew I wasn’t active for several reasons. Faithfully she came out to see me, some months a couple of times. Every Sunday she would call me with the RS announcements and anything pertinent to the ward. When I walked back into our ward she was the one that was waiting by the front door for me with open arms.

She didn’t do her stewarship with hopes of reward one day. She did it because she loved me enough to do it. That is the same process I am going to be using today as I work out a visiting schedule with my councilors to go and see the parents of our inactive children.

Kim you can only continue the dedicated and committed work that you do. You may never see the fruits of your labors just like when you were on a mission. But the Lord sees your efforts and you will be greatly rewarded.

I understand that you believe that ‘getting tough’ with the inactives is what you have been mandated to do.

I understand that you believe it is in their own best interest, and an act of love.

What you don’t seem to understand ( and I believe this applies to many members) is that there are things called boundaries.

Non-members families would look at what you’re doing and call it harassment. At the very least, they would call it being nosey and annoying.

Semi-active members often share in this feeling as well. For every faith promoting story of,” I stuck with it for so long and then they came back to church” there is a,”…and they wouldn’t leave me alone, so I finally had to resign my membership” story.

Give these people some time to exercise some free will and if they’re meant to come back, they will.

Hey, I absolutely know that you have the best intentions, but sometimes being over-zealous is just a bit socially unacceptable.

The church wants to give everyone a chance to enjoy the blessings of the gospel. These semi or non active members have been given their chance. I think getting tough with these ‘lost sheep’ as you call them is akin to binding investigators and throwing them into the font. You’d never consider the latter act acceptable, perhaps you should re-think the former.