104 thoughts on “What happens when atheists knock on Mormons’ doors”

  1. Wait a minute, who brought up the Word of Wisdom on this thread anyway? How typical! Anyway, it’s totally off topic, so going back to the real issue here, I agree that knocking on somebody’s door unexpectedly is rude!

    If the church wants to admit they are being rude for the eternal welfare of the few people out there who will listen to the missionaries, well fine, but they might as well not deny that it really is rude in our society.

    While I choose to be polite to any JWs or sales people who come to my door, I admit that I really do HATE it when they show up. Same goes for telephone solicitors. Sure I have the RIGHT to decline, but lets admit how much it really sucks to get put on the spot like that.

  2. So, we have 60,000 young men with maybe 20% of their time spent doing ‘real’ missionary work. What should we have them do with the remaining 80% of their free time?

    I think tracting is just a way to keep two little hands folded snuggly and tight so they keep out of trouble.

  3. i worked in tv for most of my career, and i thought it was great. it demonstrates what real tv is all about; watching morons being…well…morons.

    saturday mornings? isn’t that jws?

  4. I think tracting is just a way to keep two little hands folded snuggly and tight so they keep out of trouble.

    Since my wife’s parents, my grandparents, and most of the people I taught as a missionary were all found this way, I think it’s much more than that.

  5. No one’s saying no baptism ever comes from tracting. Imagine for a second, however, all those doors which refused the missionaries.

    A friend of mine baptised one person on his mission. Certainly those 6,000 hours could have been put to better use.

  6. “Since my wife’s parents, my grandparents, and most of the people I taught as a missionary were all found this way, I think it’s much more than that.”

    No… it’s less.

  8. “Certainly those 6,000 hours could have been put to better use.”

    Certainly. Imagine what 12,000 man-hours could do to help a community…

  10. Imagine what 12,000 man-hours could do to help a community…

    There are lots of things they could do. They could accomplish all sorts of physical service projects. Another thing they could do is seek out and find people who are ready to take their next important steps towards the saving ordinances of the Gospel. Sounds like a great thing to do for a community.

  11. That’s just it, ltbugaf. In the example I gave, that’s precisely what my friend did. And yet all those hours resulted in 1 person being baptised. The bulk of the hours, of course, were not at all directly related to the person who was baptised.

  12. I don’t agree. If I want to find a a precious gem in a cornfield, and I then spend 10,000 man-hours searching for it, then all of the time is directed to the one gem I was trying to find. (If you prefer, you can substitute the needle-in-a-haystack cliché.) That’s essentially what tracting is. It’s trying to find those who are ready and willing to be taught. All that effort, no matter how inefficient it may seem when compared with other methods, is nonetheless directed toward the people who are taught and baptized.

  13. So why not send those two mishies to Darfur or South America or China where they could endlessly baptize thousands in the same amount of time?

    That’s both efficient and directed toward people who are taught and baptized.

    For that matter, why put missionaries in places where the concentration of LDS members is very high, anyway?

    Presumably with every member a missionary and the abundant availability of members to speak to, the presence of mishies in these areas is redundant if not downright unnecessary.

  14. So why not send those two mishies to Darfur or South America or China…?

    First, because they’re not allowed in Darfur or China, and second, because there are people in other parts of the world who also need to be found.

  15. For that matter, why put missionaries in places where the concentration of LDS members is very high, anyway? Presumably with every member a missionary and the abundant availability of members to speak to, the presence of mishies in these areas is redundant if not downright unnecessary.

    In reality, the missionaries in those areas usually end up doing a lot of teaching and baptizing. There’s still a role for full-time missionaries even in areas with lots of members. Of course, the Prophet could take your advice and do things your way. The fact that he hasn’t indicates to me that the Holy Ghost is leading him in a direction other than the one you recommend.

  16. In reality, the missionaries in those areas usually end up doing a lot of teaching and baptizing.

    It depends on how you define a lot. If you define it by simple raw numbers, then it may appear that way. If you define it as a ratio of baptisms per unit, then the numbers are very low (1 baptism per stake per year in my mission).

  17. “In reality, the missionaries in those areas usually end up doing a lot of teaching and baptizing.”

    Can you point me to the source of this information?
    …or is it simply unfounded speculation on your part?

  18. “The fact that he hasn’t indicates to me that the Holy Ghost is leading him in a direction other than the one you recommend.”

    I doubt you believe this. It’s probably just a convenient way for you to side step the issue.

    I can tell by your conversations here that you are a reasonably intelligent individual who does his/her research. I can tell you are familiar with church doctrine and procedure. You know the scriptures and teaching of the leaders of the church.

    Given that, you must know that the Holy Ghost does not just lead the prophet around on a spiritual leash. You must know that God still requires all of us to do all we can do to study thing out in our own mind, and then based on the conclusions we reach, confirm or deny.

    That being the case, the prophet constantly changes church policy and procedure when he receives new information or when circumstances change. And he does not make these decisions in a vacuume. He has counselors, and quorums and church sponsored polls, and feedback from Larry King, and all sorts of other feedback that he takes into consideration.

    Maybe all it means is that the prophet is unaware of rick’s ideas. Maybe if he sat down and had a conversation with rick about the efficient use of missionary resources, he might have a new perspective. This new perspective might lead to a new spiritual confirmation for a new course of action that the church should take.

    but please… don’t feed us a line saying “the holy ghost isn’t telling him to do that”. You and I both know that isn’t the way it works.

  19. I doubt you believe this.

    I’m sorry you think I’m lying. I’m not.

    …you must know that the Holy Ghost does not just lead the prophet around on a spiritual leash. You must know that God still requires all of us to do all we can do to study thing out in our own mind, and then based on the conclusions we reach, confirm or deny.

    This is all true. If I had ever suggested the contrary, it would also be relevant. However, all I suggested was that the guidance the Prophet is receiving from the Spirit—by the process you describe—is not leading him to abandon every nation where missionaries aren’t already having overwhelming levels of success.

    You may also want to consider that missionaries labored hard with very little success for decades in the Latin American countries that rick now thinks of as automatic successes, before the tide of change turned. Do you know that the same won’t happen somewhere else?

    That being the case, the prophet constantly changes church policy and procedure when he receives new information or when circumstances change.

    Yes, he does. And he does his very best to make those changes with the confirmation of the Spirit. I do believe, contrary to your skepticism, that he usually receives that guidance.

    He has counselors, and quorums and church sponsored polls…and all sorts of other feedback that he takes into consideration.

    Yes, he has. I believe these steps are part of the “studying out” part of the revelatory process described in D&C 9:7-9. The fact that he does have all this information at his fingertips leads me to feel rather safe in concluding that he has a clearer picture of the situation than rick has.

    (As a footnote, let me add that I’m not sure the process described is always the process of revelation. I think some revelations come unsought, unbidden and unexpected—as in the cases of Noah and Lehi, or as in the case of a woman I know who, not wishing to have a child until she finished college, suddenly felt overcome by a strong and deeply felt spiritual feeling that she should have one right away.)

    but please… don’t feed us a line saying “the holy ghost isn’t telling him to do that”.

    I’m sorry you believe I’m “feeding a line.” I’m just telling you what I believe. You’re free to disbelieve me and continue calling me dishonest. It won’t be the first unwarranted and false conclusion you’ve written about me.

  20. Kim, re: comment 66—all I can offer in response to your anecdotal evidence is the anecdotal evidence of and Elder I knew who served a Utah mission and was sending home pictures of baptisms practically every week. I don’t know what the statistical evidence overall is. And I don’t really care, either. There are sheep to be found everywhere—some take more effort than others, and that doesn’t matter.

  21. …and JM, while you’re hurling accusations of dishonesty my way, are you ever going to explain your meaning in comment 56? Is there some reason you’re avoiding it?

  22. Ltbugaf, as far as raw numbers, our mission had between 2,000 and 2,500 baptisms per year when I was there. I didn’t help with enough baptisms to send photos home every week, but if averaged out, I could have done it every other week. That didn’t take away the fact that our mission averaged 1 baptism per stake per year.

  23. In other words, the ratio of missionaries to members in those areas is much lower than in most other areas, giving the missionaries an appropriate level of work.

  24. While that is true, that isn’t another way of saying what I was saying. In fact, it has nothing to do with quantity of baptisms.

  26. Wow. Difficult as it is, I think I’ll somehow manage to suppress the urge to read a story whose title begins “Jackass missionaries.”

  27. Are you saying there aren’t any?

    But hey, I guess it’s in character for you to judge a book by it’s cover.

  28. it has nothing to do with quantity of baptisms.

    But it at least appears to have much to do with how missionaries are being concentrated, and how much the work is depending on members rather than full-time missionaries—right in line with rick’s comments.

  29. Your sample is too small to draw a conclusion from. So, it’s less significant. It’s less effective, it’s… less.

    Since my comment had nothing to do with drawing a conclusion based on statistics, and depended on no such conclusions for its validity, I don’t know why you said this.

    You didn’t say that tracting was statistically inefficient; you said it was “just a way to keep two little hands folded snuggly and tight so they keep out of trouble”—in other words, that tracting is nothing but a way to occupy missionaries’ time with utterly pointless busy work because they can’t be trusted not to do mischief if they aren’t constantly occupied by such busywork. I disagreed, and still do.

    Tracting isn’t just a way to keep people busy. It’s a way to find people who need to be found. It may not be as efficient as some methods, but it still works. People are found. Those people are priceless; they’re worth every one of the hours, days, weeks and months spent finding them.

  30. JM, have you had a close look at what you just said in comment 77? Do you not even see the irony in it?

  31. “Those people are priceless; they’re worth every one of the hours, days, weeks and months spent finding them.”

    They weren’t ‘priceless’ before they were ‘found’?
    Hmmm…
    Interesting.

  32. They weren’t ‘priceless’ before they were ‘found’?

    Who says so? Not I.

  33. JM, you’ve spurred me to action.
    I do believe that if someone were actually to tell the prophet that tracting is a waste of time, he’d change the way things are done.

    Now, where to find Mr. Hinckley’s email address…

  35. I’m pretty sure that’s a splitoff church. You can tell by the .gov domain. .Gov is US-only, and an international church like ours wouldn’t use it.

  38. Kim, are you serious? How do you expect mail to get to the leader of a large organization, if not through a secretary?

  39. That’s just it. He doesn’t get all mail addressed to him. His secretary reads the mail, and decides what to do with it. He may forward it to the author’s stake president. He may answer it himself. He may pass it on to President Hinckley. Addressing a letter to President Hinckley’s postal address as you suggested is not a guaranteed way for rick to contact President Hinckley as he requested.

  41. Addressing a letter to President Hinckley’s postal address as you suggested is not a guaranteed way for rick to contact President Hinckley as he requested.

    I actually don’t see where rick asked for a guaranteed way to contact President Hinckley. E-mail isn’t any more guaranteed than snail mail. In any case, I don’t think there is such a thing as a guaranteed way to reach a public figure.

  42. Nermalcat, I hope you see that the question posed in 67 was answered in comments 66, 70, 72, 73, 74 and 78.

  43. Ltbugaf, yes thanks to Kim. But you said in #70 “I don’t know what the statistical evidence overall is. And I don’t really care either.”

    You personally were not prepared or willing to provide any data to back up your comment on Utah baptisms.

  44. Does anyone know of a guaranteed way to contact President Hinckley?

    I’d like one.

  45. rick said: Does anyone know of a guaranteed way to contact President Hinckley?

    Have your own TV Show (Larry King) or own a luxury jet that he can fly in (Marriott) or donate lots of money to building the kingdom of god and I’m sure you can meet with the GA of your choice.

  46. You could show up at his door and wait until he comes out.

    I met President Hinckley once. But this was while he was a counselor in the First Presidency. 1986 at a performance of the MTC at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver during Expo 86.

  47. You personally were not prepared or willing to provide any data to back up your comment on Utah baptisms.

    And unlike rick, I promptly offered what I had and frankly admitted what I didn’t have. I wasn’t merely speculating, and I wasn’t making up “facts” out of thin air to support my case.

  48. …and Nermalcat, the reason I don’t care is that I don’t think the price would be too high, even if those missionaries weren’t having much success. (They are, by the way—having much success, I mean. When I served in the Canada Montreal Mission, we baptized about 350-500 people per year, in contrast to the much higher figures Kim offered above for his mission.

  49. If, of course, you define success as raw numbers of baptisms. I don’t. Despite he fact that we seemed to have large quantities of baptisms, I didn’t think we were very successful. How can any missionary think s/he is successful if there is only one baptism per stake every year? Those are pitiful stats.
    My current stake has 15 times that at least. My previous stake had nearly 30 times that.

  50. I define success as finding people—in big numbers or small—who are willing to be taught, and to begin making the covenants necessary for eternal life.

    However, Kim, in regard to comment 99, I do think it’s perfectly logical for an area with far fewer non-members to have a lower per-stake baptism rate. Doesn’t that just make sense?

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