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Why is there such a need for growth in the church? More and more when I listen to announcements from church leaders it just sounds like quarterly statistics of a corporation. Do new missions and more missionaries mean the church is successful? Is it supposed to confirm the trufulness of the church? Our local missionaries stopped by and I asked them what was new in the mission. They said the mission boundaries were been made much smaller and they were getting 30 more missionaries than expected. It kind of reminds me of sales organizations that I have been a part of – we are giving you a smaller territory with a bigger quota. But I digress.
The question I want to ask is “why is there always such an emphasis on growth all the time?”
because the leadership believes in the mission of the Church It’s not more complicated than that.
Also, there are no higher “quotas”. I’ve been in sales for years, and this is very different than that.
There is a real commitment by the leadership of the Church to the notion of spreading the gospel. It sometimes comes off like a “sales tactic” perhaps because so many of the leaders are in business and some of that language can’t help but slip in. But I think there is a big difference between the “selling of a product” and “the proclamation of the gospel” even if SOME of the techniques may overlap. For me personally, missionary work is one aspect of the Church I’ve never enjoyed. Even as a missionary, I didn’t respond to the “rah rah” “warriors of light” “get out there and work HARD” kinds of talks and conversations that go on with respect to missionary work. But many people do…good for them. The stone cut from the mountain without hands that fills the earth. It is fulfillment of scripture. First of all I don’t think I made the point very clearly in my first post based on some of the responses. I point all interested to this web link [ deleted by admin] to better understand where I’m coming from. ( You probably aren’t aware of it, El Cid, but the link was to one of the most famous anti-Mormon websites in existence. It is their explicit mission to help destroy the LDS Church, and they are very open about it. Thus, I deleted the url. – Ray] Second there are principals that are beautiful in the LDS church, however some of the practices on growth are negative.
1) Missions – My mission was driven by stats. There was no question about it. My MP wanted the mission to be #1 in baptizing mission in the state. The practices were sales techniques. I didn’t know at the time as a naive 19 year old. In my professional life I know now that that is what they were. How to close. What phrases to use. The percentages of discussions taught, the number of BOM placed were correlated to number of baptisms expected. If 200 baptisms were achieved one month then 225 ought to be expected next month. Growth came from hard work. If you weren’t baptizing you were doing something wrong. If investigators were not interested you moved on. You job was to teach after all right? Go after the low hanging fruit.
I know now that not all missions are as extreme as mine was but you can’t tell me that baptisms are not still the big indicator of a mission success. The goal is to baptize.
Why does the need to baptize and grow numbers of baptisms need even be part of the missionary process? Why can’t missionaries just have goals to do good and have goals to serve. Imagine missionaries going around in their communities and simply looking for people to serve. An elderly lady needs help around the house or to be taken to the store or doctor once a week. Some guy needs to sod his lawn, paint his house or whatever. I know missionaries today do more service but this is not their primary goal. They are sent out to teach and to grow the chuch membership.
In today’s society it would really be something for two young people just showing up and offering to help and ask for nothing in return. People would probably wonder who the heck these guys were? Folks might want to pay them for their trouble and missionaries would say no. Well then what do you want? We want nothing. I think people would be stunned by this approach today. The teaching of the gospel would come through their examples. The teaching of discussions would come as later. Not the other way around. This approach involves risks to baptism goals. Not all people would become curious and ask missionaries questions. The “preaching” of the gospel IMO is being accomplished. Preaching the gospel doesn’t always have to equate to short term goals.
Isn’t this what Ammon did? Serve first with no strings attached and the curiosity of gospel practices in action made the King want to know why?
2). Emphasis on temple attendance – At least in our stake there is this huge push to attend the temple. I mentioned in another post that members are being “asked” to go to the temple once a month. Why do you have to ask people to go to the temple? If people want to go they will go. Do you have to harp on people to attend the temple like home teaching?
I have read posts here about where temples are built tithing increases and that is the motive behind temple building. I don’t know if that is the reason for this push or not. Is growth the reason for this practice? And what is bein grown?
Setting goals and trying to reach them is a good practice and is a good life skill. Motivations for growth in any organization is an interesting topic. There are principles and then there are practices. My original question was about the church’s approach to growth and the motivations behind the practices.
ElCid wrote:In today’s society it would really be something for two young people just showing up and offering to help and ask for nothing in return. People would probably wonder who the heck these guys were? Folks might want to pay them for their trouble and missionaries would say no. Well then what do you want? We want nothing. I think people would be stunned by this approach today. The teaching of the gospel would come through their examples. The teaching of discussions would come as later. Not the other way around. This approach involves risks to baptism goals. Not all people would become curious and ask missionaries questions. The “preaching” of the gospel IMO is being accomplished. Preaching the gospel doesn’t always have to equate to short term goals.
Isn’t this what Ammon did? Serve first with no strings attached and the curiosity of gospel practices in action made the King want to know why?
Careful. If you keep coming up with great ideas like this they’ll call you to be ward mission leader.
Frankly, I would prefer that we as members do lots more service and let the young men and women continue to serve traditional missions, albeit with even a little more service that they currently give. They are doing lots more than when I served. For me, this isn’t about “them” (the missionaries); it’s about me. If we were more of a Zion people, loving and serving everyone without condition, the missionaries would be busy enough, I’m sure – and it would be completely natural.
That’s the message of the City of Enoch, in my opinion. Even though I don’t believe it is literally true, I really like that story.
I agree Ray. We as members need to get out more with our neighbors offering unconditional service and work on breaking down the us and them boundary. Martha wrote:I agree Ray. We as members need to get out more with our neighbors offering unconditional service and work on breaking down the us and them boundary.
But not in a “Children of the Corn” kind of way.
Hi there! I noticed you drive to work quite early, so I was sitting in your car making sure you had a nice warm seat!
ElCid wrote:First of all I don’t think I made the point very clearly in my first post based on some of the responses…Second there are principals that are beautiful in the LDS church, however
some of the practices on growth are negative…My mission was driven by stats. There was no question about it. My MP wanted the mission to be #1 in baptizing mission in the state. The practices were sales techniques. I didn’t know at the time as a naive 19 year old. In my professional life I know now that that is what they were. How to close.What phrases to use. The percentages of discussions taught, the number of BOM placed were correlated to number of baptisms expected… Growth came from hard work. If you weren’t baptizing you were doing something wrong. If investigators were not interested you moved on.You job was to teach after all right? Go after the low hanging fruit…I know now that not all missions are as extreme as mine was but you can’t tell me that baptisms are not still the big indicator of a mission success. The goal is to baptize… Why can’t missionaries just have goals to do good and have goals to serve…Setting goals and trying to reach them is a good practice and is a good life skill. Motivations for growth in any organization is an interesting topic…My original question was about the church’s approach to growth and the motivations behind the practices.On my mission the heavy focus on numbers already bothered me even though I still believed in the Church because I saw most of the new converts fall away within a few weeks or months so I thought most of these numbers were relatively pointless anyway and it was ridiculous for the mission president to make such a big deal about all these statistics. Once I didn’t believe in the Church anymore some of the tactics like the commitment pattern, overbearing peer pressure, constant nagging, guilt-trips, etc. that the Church relies on so much to get people to do what they want started to trouble me even more than my loss of faith in the core doctrines because it seemed cult-like and it just didn’t look like a very nice way to treat people for a church that claims to be Christian.
To be fair, I think most Church leaders make such a strong connection between the Church and the way things are ideally supposed to be in their minds that they really do believe one of the best possible ways to make a positive difference in the world would be to convert or reactivate as many people as possible to living the current LDS gospel of perennial temple worthiness. To them that represents salvation and is supposedly the only approved path to lasting happiness as well, so spending too much time dealing with people that are not interested in the Church mostly subtracts from efforts to find those that could be from this perspective. That’s why I think most Church leaders don’t really know any better than to act the way they do because they don’t necessarily see some of the problems and questions related to this approach that are often easier to notice from the outside looking in (Matthew 15:14).
Another thing to consider is that missions also currently serve the purpose of strengthening the missionary from the Church’s perspective to ideally be loyal, obedient, etc. after the mission as well. So what is more likely to successfully indoctrinate missionaries and make them feel more invested in the Church long-term, studying and actively preaching the Church’s central message or doing random service with no direct expectations? I think the answer is obvious and the same goes for many other doctrines and suggestions we hear about on down the list; they will typically benefit the Church first and foremost and the individual members second (if at all). Even though I think some of these traditions and policies definitely deserve to be criticized, I’m not going to get my hopes up too much about the Church making very many significant changes any time soon so sometimes the best you can do is simply to know when to say no to what they are asking for.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:To be fair, I think most Church leaders make such a strong connection between the Church and the way things are ideally supposed to be in their minds that they really do believe one of the best possible ways to make a positive difference in the world would be to convert or reactivate as many people as possible to living the current LDS gospel of perennial temple worthiness. To them that represents salvation and is supposedly the only approved path to lasting happiness as well, so spending too much time dealing with people that are not interested in the Church mostly subtracts from efforts to find those that could be from this perspective. That’s why I think most Church leaders don’t really know any better than to act the way they do because they don’t necessarily see some of the problems and questions related to this approach that are often easier to notice from the outside looking in (Matthew 15:14).
I agree with this!
I served my mission 20+ years ago and had a great mission president who didn’t harp too much at all on numbers. I realize, of course, that my mission was an exception for that era. Having said that, I’ve been pretty impressed over the last couple of years being in the bishopric at how the MP here is deploying the elders and sisters and how he’s tasking them. The MP came to our stake and told us “put these elders and sisters to work – have them do service, have them visit your less actives, have them go home teaching, have them visit the part member families – have them do whatever you would do (meaning the bishops and counsellors) if you could do your callings full time.” There was no pitch on numbers of baptisms, member missionary referrals, etc. He just told us to put the elders to work doing whatever needs doing in the ward. I found it very refreshing and genuine, and the elders in my ward seem to have taken to it like fish to water. They’re teaching a lot, baptizing part-member family members and previously unbaptized children, and doing lots of service. Of course, they’re doing some more traditional proselytizing – teaching and baptizing those with no previous connection to the church. I’m naturally a bit cynical, but when the MP was speaking, and in how his elders are implementing his instructions, I haven’t had my bulls**t meter go off even once. It’s been all positive. I don’t know if this is a church-wide thing or specific to the mission I’m in, but if this is what they’re having all these new elders and sisters do, I’m all for it.
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