John Dehlin on GA’s attitude towards doubting Mormons

From Brad Kramer in the comments:

I do not think this is an accurate representation of anything remotely like a GA consensus, or even a common view of Church leaders.

When asked for a source he replied:

Just multiple conversations with GAs and with smart people who work closely with them. This is the kind of claim one needs data to substantiate, rather than to refute.

He also says:

The allegation strikes me as utterly implausible on its face, totally out of step with virtually every encounter I’ve had with a church leader, including church leaders who believe that intellectual critics of the Church are way out of line. I find the notion that most church leaders actually believe that the Church would be better off without that third group frankly preposterous.

Brad is a blogger on BCC:

http://bycommonconsent.com/author/bradkramer/

I don’t do Facebook (too addictive for me). Was this a recent post?

I can only speak to my experience and my experience is that the leaders care a great deal. They may not understand how to interface with a doubter, but they do care. For me it’s not so much that they don’t want to leave the 99 to rescue the one, it’s more a matter of them not knowing how to reach out to the one. If a leader spends enough time with no fruit from their labors they may decide that the effort is best spent elsewhere but the reality may be that they just need to change what they are doing.

I think a lot of it actually does go back to Uchtdorf’s comments, some leaders still view a doubter as someone that’s spiritually lazy or someone that’s caught up in sin. Just like in the SS lessons about heavenly father, it’s difficult to know and love someone if you do not understand their nature. The lost sheep already feels like the black sheep and many rescue efforts do little more than to reinforce that sentiment.

I feel like doubters have to hide in the church lest they be treated as second class citizens in the kingdom… and that can be something very real or that can be pure perception, either way the result is the same.

I’ve mentioned this before, I feel strongly about it, I’d love to see a special program at the stake level. Classes for doubters taught by doubters that have found a reason to stay LDS. The problem is that no one would want to come forward, not to teach it, not to attend; there’s simply too much stigma attached to being a doubter in the church. Still I think it would be nice to reach out to the doubter with people that can truly empathize with them, a fellow doubter.

I agree with everything you said Nibbler. I would add that in dealing with doubters/questioners and just less actives in general, some of us resist contact making it even more difficult to reach out. So, even if a leader knew what to do sometimes it’s just not feasable – and it’s also hard to know which ones might be receptive and which ones aren’t. All of us have some fear of rejection and most of us try to avoid conflict with others – the leadership at all levels are really between a rock and a hard place most of the time in this respect.

I like your idea of a class, but agree that many doubters would not show out of fear of being discovered and/or being persecuted. The technology exists to be able to do this online as stakes or even have a meeting with online attenders who could remain anonymous. I believe the church’s addicition recovery program operates that way in some areas. Meanwhile, there’s always us!

There’s a plethora of attitude out there. There’s practically a hundred GAs, a lot of scope.

The church has a lot to lose from disaffection.

Lots of baptisms doesn’t cut it, if they leave soon. A single member can drag an entire family out.

You can see it in terms of tithing or membership or whatever.

The church IS doing stuff about history, it IS trying new approaches (Mormon.org is a good example) etc…

What they don’t want are troublemakers, I think. If someone is disruptive, then there’s an issue.

I felt slightly depressed when I read what John wrote. Is it true? That they see us kind of like the 3rd that was cast out? I don’t think so, programmatically, as when I was HPGL they always were after me to chase after the inactive people. I eventually developed an attitude they were irretreivable since after visiting over 100 homes, they only people who came back were the ones who decided to on their own, and independent of any reactivation efforts we made.

I believed that we need to have good programs in place so when people to return to church, they have a positive experience.

However, I do believe the church in general (its members in general) are after short term results. They want to report at a meeting they talked to someone and “challenged” them to be active, addressed a concern, got someone out, or just plain did something to help someone less active. They are so busy they don’t have time to invest in long-term relationships unless they truly click with someone.

So, while I think the GA’s do in fact care about us, the culture puts us on the back burner since rarely does anyone see activity or improvement in their metrics when they go after people who have testimony or other commitment issues.

I am quite certain he is wrong, and I am certain about few things.

John is mercurial, for whatever reason. I love him, but he isn’t . . . stable doesn’t say what I mean, but there is something that is volatile.

Silent Dawning, I had a similiar experience in my ward. I went out and visited with several hundred less active single adults in my ward last summer and fall. Out of the hundreds i visited in person and tried to reactivate, only 3 came back. One has since become inactive again. And to also refer to what Dark Jedi wrote i believe…many of the interactions were very abrupt and full of conflict. I was able to get the Single Adult Rep to go out with me a few times and the Elder and Sister Missionaries on several different occasions. It always amazed me how impressed the members of the Ward were with my efforts. Like they couldnt understand what my reasoning was almost. I kept getting asked “did someone assign you this job?” Which of course, the answer was no. What really frustrated me though was that every 2 weeks i would type up a report of my efforts and relay that information to the Bishopric. They were happy that i was doing their work as they jokingly said, and i was told it would be discussed in the High Priests meeting i believe…but would you believe they did NOTHING with my work. No one went back out and talked to the people that told me they wanted their records removed, no one followed up with the members that wanted to talk to their Home or Visiting Teacher, nothing was done. I got so fed up that i quit. What was the point in gathering all this information if no one cared to followup? But if a FAMILY was possibly interested in coming back the Bishop bent over backwards to try to activate them again. It just reinforced my belief that families are valued more than single adults. And many single adults in my ward share that opinion.

Wow, solid effort. Good job on your part. A few thoughts:

1) Even if only one out of 100 comes back I think that makes all that effort worth it, even if it doesn’t seem that way.

2) It requires a small miracle to convince local leaders to start the process to get someone’s name removed from the records of the church. A leader will want to give the person more time to make what to them represents a decision that carries eternal consequences. A leader believes that allowing someone to remove their name from the records is giving up on them and that we simply need to love them more. Loving them more usually translates into something other than leaving them alone so attempts at loving them more often has the opposite effect, it drives people even further away. Leaders are released; the new leader coming in doesn’t know that Brother Jones requested his name be removed 2 years ago and that it didn’t happen. The new leader makes Brother Jones a project and the cycle reboots. Leaders eventually get burnt out in the ministry which results in local leaders not following up on reports that a well meaning member provides.

At the heart of the matter the leaders do love the people but the application of that love is a bit misguided. From the perspective of the leader they know god’s truth and the leader knows that a person that wants to remove their name from the records of the church is wrong. That means their name must stay on the records… if we truly love them. The church would do well in being quicker at honoring people’s wishes, honoring their agency. Refusing to remove people from the records of the church or being slow in doing so is just burning bridges.

Combining this thread with some ideas in the accountability thread… maybe removing your name from the records should be as simple as logging on to lds.org and making an official request, complete with an optional survey. Maybe that’s not the best of ideas because of accidents, hacking, etc., but the process has to be easier. There’s too many people out there that have made an unhonored request that turn beet red (and for good reason) when someone from the church comes knocking again. It’s bad for the person being visited and it’s bad for the person making the visit. Time to fix it.