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OK. I have no problems with sharing the gospel with others and hoping and praying they join the church, but I do have a problem with how our ward is starting to do missionary work. In elders quorum now a Book of Mormon will be passed around to members of our quorum inviting us to give it to someone. Again, I have no problems giving a Book of Mormon to someone when I feel impressed and I have a few times before (not including on my mission), but I feel the quorum inviting people of the quorum to give the Book of Mormon this way a bit pushy. Maybe it’s just pride, like some in the ward might tell me. What do all of you here think? I don’t like it, but I also am self-confident enough to return it if I didn’t find a good opportunity to share it – and to report exactly that. I don’t see this as unrighteous dominion, in theory, but it can become that if the leadership starts trying to coerce members into sharing it – and it’s already on the borderline in that regard for many members.
Ugh. This kind of shenanigan really, really gets my back up and is a surefire way to make me want to share the gospel even less. I like Curtis’s idea—go ahead and take the challenge, try to fulfill it in a way you can feel good about, and if you can’t find a way, report back respectfully that you didn’t find a meaningful opportunity. I’ve never really liked the way members are asked to do missionary work… and they made the mistake of making me the WML. :shh: also👿 The church often presents missionary work as a one size fits all program. E.g. everyone in the quorum hand out a BoM. Here’s the deal… we are all different. Maybe an extrovert with absolutely no inhibitions can hand out BoMs with ease but what about an ultra-orthodox shy person? They’re going to agonize, struggle, and eventually feel guilt the 10th time they are asked about whether they’ve handed out a BoM. So now you have someone that’s down in the dumps because they were obligated to do missionary work in a way that didn’t meet
theirneeds. Perhaps for me handing out a BoM is running faster than I am able and doesn’t give adequate time for me to grow line upon line. Perhaps my goal should be something different.
I’m the broken record, every time I’ve had to talk about mission goals I always mention that we should prayerfully evaluate where we are and what our next step should be in doing the work. It’s completely personal and it’s different for everyone. Under such as system perhaps my missionary goal would end up being “make an attempt to talk to someone I don’t know” because I have all kinds of social anxiety. Perhaps for others it could be “see 5 of my friends baptized.” It would be next to impossible to administrate and measure the results of an individual goals program so universal goals become the order of the day. It’s the nature of the beast.
I guess there are benefits to universal goals – if my friend’s personal goal is “5 baptisms” and mine is “talk to a stranger” I could come away feeling pretty small… on the other hand I still would feel small if a universal goal was out of my reach and I saw my friend having all kinds of success.
I’m also semi-aware that most goals have metrics behind them. One convert baptism for every 100 BoMs handed out, if we want to see 20 convert baptisms in the stake we need to hand out 2,000 BoMs (numbers made up). I feel the love for people flee the room when I start hearing things like that and leaders tend to get more pushy when they have some sort of quota hanging over their heads.
There’s another thing that I feel is pushy, here’s an example. Missionaries visit ward members and ask them all to do the same thing… make a list and pray about who is prepared to hear the gospel… then:
Quote:We’ll come by next week to see who you have for us to teach.
Not cool, it feels pushy. It’s one thing to invite people to be a part of a great work. It’s another thing entirely to
expectpeople to be a part of the work. After all, even if people do participate in the work they won’t find the joy in it if they are only there to get someone off of their backs. I often feel like that’s one of the main reasons members engage in missionary work… to finally report that they’ve handed out a book to their quorum leader after being hounded about it for months and months. It makes our attempts at missionary work less than genuine. Lately I’ve both heard and echoed “Lift Where you Stand” with respect to missionary work. The body is not one member, but many. I think pushy tactics aimed at getting people to do missionary work attempt to make us all the feet of the body of Christ. The goals often don’t take into consideration that some of us are eyes, hands, ears. Some can do missionary work in certain ways, others will find success via entirely different methods, and yes some won’t do missionary work at all… AND THAT’S OK. I don’t want my feet to feel discouraged and stop working altogether because I tried to convince them that they should be doing the work of the hands.
I didn’t like this even before my FC. When I was WML, I changed it to the spiritual experience moment.
We preferred it to be a spiritual experience related to sharing the gospel – but it was also ok if you had a non-missionary like experience to share.
After I was released, someone changed it back to the “return and report on handing out your BOM” moment.
Oh well.
This is how the ward mission leader did it with the young men. Now the elders quorum president is being asked to do it the same way with the elders quorum, since we’ve got a new mission plan for this new year. I’ll do the best I can, but I won’t sweat it even nobody wants the Book of Mormon. I’m not a fan of missionary work in the church in general. I figure if someone wants to know what I/we believe they’ll ask and if they want to know more they’ll ask – or research on their own. FWIW, a major part of my conversion was reading A Marvelous Work and a Wonder (found at the library) before I ever talked to a member or missionary about my questions. I already knew I wanted to join the church before I ever talked to a missionary. That said, our ward has done this pass the book thing before, and a scaled down version of give out a pass-along card. While I do find the card much less intimidating, like Curtis, I was always comfortable enough to return the book and just say (even in the presence of the quorum) that I didn’t find an opportunity. It’s the same tact I use when the missionaries come to dinner and ask if there is anybody I know. I’m comfortable saying no, there isn’t, and even though my wife squirms at it a bit, she’s able to get it out, too. In my TBM days I’d just say everyone I knew and associated with was Mormon, and that really wasn’t far from the truth. I think missionary work is down– years ago we heard the rate of growth was declining. It’s like sales declining in a corporation. Therefore, the church opened up missions to the females at a young age, and now they are leaning on the members to increase their efforts to increase membership. Just ignore it and work in your personal strengths. If you are not a missionary, then focus on those areas of the church in which you are strong such as perfecting saints, temple work if you have a tr (or do other things to support the temple if you do not have a TR), or help the poor and needy.
Indifference and apathy can be a wonderful tool for staying lds.
I really appreciate your comments, SD. Thank you. I will just concentrate on my strengths. I normally do better with sharing the gospel than through words. I will just be honest to my elders quorum president about it if I am successful. He’ll understand. I’ve actually shared some similar issues with him before. * I have left dozens of BoMs on bookshelves in cafes, bars, and youth hostels – then people can choose for themselves. * I offered one friend a BoM, he refused – he’s into shamanism and is schizophrenic. Not interested, it’s more fruitful for me to discuss values and ideas with him.
* I GAVE another friend a BoM. He’s put it in the trash. He’s the one I gave the BoM challenge to. He’s into politics, so Mitt Romney was my excuse. (I also got him something African American to represent Obama)
Oddly enough, I have evidence that the BoM I left in a certain BAR has resulted in a local baptism. The one I handed out is now landfill, not even recycled.
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