Socially ackward conversations.

[Anonymous]

I recently saw an article about socially awkward topics that people should avoid.

The one topic that got my attention was the one that said:

“Avoid talking about religion and making it sound like a sales pitch.”

This is the reason I don’t talk very much about what I believe. It is also one of the

reasons I cringe when missionary work comes up during church or when the missionaries

come over.

I do enjoy talking with friends, family & neighbors about what their beliefs are. Not to

convert them but to better understand who they are. I’m surprised that the church doesn’t

talk more about how to do that.

Is the purpose of missionary work only to convert the “unbeliever”? I’m surprised that the

church doesn’t do more to teach members to understand 1st. There was a talk given

many years ago by a GA or other leader who talked about going on a plane trip after

doing church business. In the talk he said he sat down next to a stranger on the plane

and said “what do you know about the Mormon church and when are you going to join?”

Everyone laughed. I didn’t & couldn’t.

I’m not ashamed about the church & will gladly talk to anyone about it, if they are curious.

I will not sell it like a used car.

[Anonymous]

When I was a missionary, we had a mission president who had been in the insurance industry of some sort and he taught us about “closing the deal” as a tactic of sorts. It was when I was looking into sales jobs many years post-mission that I realized that he was a mission president because he was really good at sales and he taught a lot of sales basics to us. I may have shuddered quite a bit while processing putting together these random pieces together at the time.

Missionary work’s purpose is in “perfecting the Saints” and “proclaiming the gospel”. There is an unstated understanding that the “perfection” happening is that the missionary’s life is what is being perfected for the most part in the process of serving a mission to proclaim the gospel.

The church has sold the concept of “most correct church (and by extension teachings, policies, dogma, traditions, reasoning)” to members with varying degrees of success. This concept is the main reason why other church organizations feel antagonized, and why our organization is so interested in “selling” the gospel to varying degrees. Our church also grew by word-of-mouth and with a fair amount of “persecuted underdog” generational trauma that still percolates around a bit in the culture (depending on local composition).

I will use “raised Mormon” if the church comes up outside close friends and family and I feel that my disclosure is helpful in the conversation. I stay here at “StayLDS” because I have friends here and it helps me to stay connected to friends and family that are “staying” with LDS values, culture, etc.

[Anonymous]

Yes, my experience as a missionary was that it was very sales oriented. The “best” (“most successful”) missionaries were the best salespeople. It is not my forte (I used to say I couldn’t sell a prostitute in Boys Town )

Like you MM, I will talk about the church if asked, but I will not sell it. I will also not gloss over the truth, and I shy away from the dogma.

[Anonymous]

I wonder sometimes if this is the reason that some people choose to not go on a FT mission.

I remember too when I was called to serve at the Family History Library at our Stake Center, I

wondered if this was being used a reason to support the Missionary program instead of helping

people with FH. I was happy to find out that we were not to bring up missionary topics.

I don’t think I would of accepted if they did.

[Anonymous]

I remember having an awkward conversation with my non-member best friend.

Another friend had gifted him a BoM with their testimony in the front. My friend showed it to me and laughed about it as a really weird “gift.”

I disclosed that there is some pressure within the church to share the gospel with friends with the imagined scenario of being up in heaven without your non-member friends and they feel betrayed that you kept this saving knowledge to yourself all that time despite having multiple opportunities.

I then told my friend that I did not want him to ever feel betrayed that I didn’t share with him. He reassured me that he was good and that if he ever had any questions or curiosity, he knew where to go to ask.

This settled the matter between us.

[Anonymous]

Roy wrote:

I disclosed that there is some pressure within the church to share the gospel with friends with the imagined scenario of being up in heaven without your non-member friends and they feel betrayed that you kept this saving knowledge to yourself all that time despite having multiple opportunities.

You dredged up a cringey memory.

It was a session of stake conference, I can’t remember if it was an adult session or just the regular Sunday session. Conference was very missionary themed. One longtime convert, meaning they were a convert but had been a member for several decades, got up to tell their conversion story. A big part of their story was recounting an experience where they actually chastised kids that they went to high school with that they later discovered were members of the church. The kids apparently never shared what they knew about the church with them so they were angry and lamenting the wasted years between high school and when they found the church via someone else (just a few years later).

Now I don’t know what happened during those few short years, maybe missing out on serving a mission, they didn’t say, but the anger felt unwarranted. It was probably just the speaker’s way of communicating the importance of doing missionary work but it didn’t come across the way I think they intended it to come across. At least not with me.

That particular teaching has never sat right with me. Maybe because I’m a convert myself and have been on both sides but I have the attitude that people join the church when they’re ready. If I’m up in heaven with my non-member friends that feel betrayed, the obvious comeback is, “If I did ask you to join church back then what would you have said? Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

It’s an imagined scenario meant to preemptively rub, “see, we were right all along” in people’s faces and serves the double purpose of serving as a motivational tool. Even then hindsight bias is a thing. We can all safely say we would have joined our friend’s weird church when we find out it’s true later in life but until the point where we find out it’s true it’s just our friend’s weird church that we have no interest in.

Sharing the gospel shouldn’t be about creating opportunities to judge and feel judged. It should be about creating opportunities to expand the church’s ability to love more people.

[Anonymous]

I agree – but what sounds like pure sincerity to one person sounds like a sales pitch to someone else.

Sincerity is what matters to me – and charity.

[Author]

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