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I posted this at Faces East, so if you see it twice… My stake president and his counselor spoke to us at ward conference yesterday. At first, I was irritated, because I expected the usual — invite the missionaries over for dinner with a non-member friends once a month, etc.
Then he actually said, which rocked my world….
1. They used a PowerPoint graph to show the flat rate of conversion in the US and Canada, while the population is growing, which means there are fewer conversions than in the past.
2. They said they did a survey of religions in the community, non-LDS have an unfavorable view of Mormons — he actually said because of Prop 8. Probably the view of Mormons as polygamists. The survey also said, the more LDS people a person knows, the more favorable the view of Mormons.
3. The stake presidency said this — We do not want you to invite anyone to church, we do not want you to pass out any copies of the Book of Mormon, I do not care if you actually convert anybody (which he was sure would stress the missionaries out). We are not going to have activities 3 weekends per month, so you can go out and make genuine friends with non-LDS people in the community — not to bait and switch and try to convert them. Just to make good friends. And set a positive example of the church, which might affect their families in the future.
Now this is a stake presidencey I can support! Even DH was pleased, he said he thought this ward and stake was good for me. I seriously think Heavenly Father put me in the ward for a reason. I think he knows I need it. It made me tear up I was so happy.
Wow … that is pretty cool. Along those lines, I had the wonderful opportunity this past weekend to hang out with an old mission companion. We stayed in touch off and on over the past 20 years. I found out recently he was working for a company based in my area. He was travelling here on business, so we took some time to hang out together.
Anyway, the point of my story is this. His family joined the Church when he was 13, so he has a good memory of joining. His family took time to make the decision. We were both in a really hardcore mission together that was focused on numbers and results. He had a hard time dealing with the mission philosophy because he always thought his family would never have joined the Church the way he was being pressured to do missionary work. We talked about this for a while.
We came to this conclusion about missionary work today, looking back on our time as missionaries: if we spent more time loving people and less time trying to convince them we are right, a lot of people would be attracted to what is going on in our Church.
That is very cool, thanks for sharing! This is evidence to me that the church is changing, and I think moving in a positive direction. It is very gradual and will take a long time but I like to see evidence of good things happening.
P.S. Good to see you here Buffy!
Very cool! That is so good to hear. I believe strongly that if we divorced “sharing the Gospel” from “missionary work” we would see a marked change in our willingness to share the Gospel, in our eventual convert growth and in the quality of the conversions we would see. As usual, I’ve written about this on my own blog, if you are interested:
http://thingsofmysoul.blogspot.com/2008/12/my-dream-collective-mighty-change-of.html That is very cool, BVS. I hope Orson is right. A big ship takes a long time to turn around. I can support this, thanks for sharing such a positive experience. I would love to hear more people share the good stuff, the hopeful moments. Thanks for the encouraging news. I look at the Church like I looked at my family sometimes – I love them but some parts are really embarrassing and I never wanted people to see it. My wife hates the missionaries. I think our mission program needs to get real and maybe take a page from the past. The way it runs now it is more for the missionaries than the people they minister to. I have had to do some things at a Methodist church recently and the atmosphere was a lot more hospitable and warm than in our Ward. WE are the ones who have the most truth, we should be even happier and warm, no? I don’t see anything like this happening where i am, though. GA came here for stake conference and seemed to want to put the hammer down even more, particularly on the sisters.
Best – Z
I loved reading this too. This is the true spirit of the law, verse the letter of the law. Serving a mission in Europe was very difficult for me and there was so much pressure to baptize and get in the discussion numbers for reports. Once, when I was a greenie and did not know better, I remember shoving a discussion down someones throat just so I could mark it down for the report. I felt like crap afterwards and vowed to never do that again. I hated it when missionaries got together and compared who had taught the most discussions. District and Zone meetings often felt like Amway pep rallies. I began thinking about what is the Christlike thing to do. This is when my companion and I started doing chartible acts of service. I was a hairdresser and would do peoples hair for free or weed their yard. Then we would ask people about their lives and what brings happiness or what they thought the purpose of life was. One of our best baptizing missionaries in the field did something very unorthodox (not immoral or illegal) but brought people to the church that ended up being branch presidents in small Austrian areas. He and his companion lived next door to some hippies and so they grew their own beards, wore causal clothes, and helped the hippies with their gardens. They became their friends and then taught them the gospel. So kudo’s to your stake president. Bridget
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