The Book Of Mormon As A Missionary Tool.

[mfbukowski]

What do you mean when you say the investigators "knew the Book of Mormon was true"? Are you saying that they thought the teaching contained therein was true? Or that they thought the book contained historically accurate events and was revealed to Joseph Smith by Moroni? Or something else?

Yes.

You ask, you get the answer, then the rationalizing starts. But the answer is very real.

Edited November 9, 2011 by mfbukowski

[Grundelwalken]

well I can't speak for others' experiences, but on my mission (75-77) I learned that IF I could get an investigator to read any significant portion of the Book of Mormon and then IF that investigator prayed about the truth of it, every single time that investigator told me to my face that he or she knew the Book of Mormon was true. (Of course not all of them would read it, and not all of them would pray.)

Despite this spiritual witness, these people did not all join the church - Word of Wisdom problems, family relations, etc. kept many from baptism. But those who tried the promise agreed that the Book of Mormon was a true book.

At least it boosted my own testimony when I saw Moroni's promise work as advertised 100% of the time. One sad case was a college girl who read the Book of Mormon, prayed about it, received a firm witness of its truth, and then decided to join the Reorganized Church instead. Well, at least the book's promise worked. I wonder what she feels now that the Community of Christ has ditched the BoM?

FWIW, my mission was in the California Los Angeles.

All my missionary success came from people who read, understood, prayed about , and received a witness of the BofM. My dad, who was a long time stake/ward missionary shared an interesting experience with one of his efforts. BTW, he was way more successful as a local missionary than I ever was as a full-timer.

He worked with a man who expressed interest in reading the BofM. Dad took one to work and shared his testimony, fully expecting nothing to come of the gift. A few days later the fellow came back with the book and, in front of all the workers in the lunchroom, slammed the book on a table and stated, "Rex, I can't read this book any more". To which my dad replied, "Why not". The telling response was "Because every time I read this I have these strange tingling feelings and I don't know what they are". Sadly, even when dad explained the promptings of the Holy Ghost, the man refused to continue with his study.

The book is true and the Spirit will testify. Then it's our turn to accept or reject. MW

[ERayR]

The book is true and the Spirit will testify. Then it's our turn to accept or reject. MW

So often we fall into the prove it trap. We are challenged to prove it and then proceed to do so when no amount of proof would be acceptable to the challenger. We present, the receiver accepts or rejects. Simple, I do not have to prove it. I am not requiring you to accept so I am not required to prove.

[Grundelwalken]

So often we fall into the prove it trap. We are challenged to prove it and then proceed to do so when no amount of proof would be acceptable to the challenger. We present, the receiver accepts or rejects. Simple, I do not have to prove it. I am not requiring you to accept so I am not required to prove.

Yep, I've never been inclined to try and change someone's mind by arguing. They can believe or not and I will still be their friend/foe (whichever they choose). MW

[altersteve]

So often we fall into the prove it trap. We are challenged to prove it and then proceed to do so when no amount of proof would be acceptable to the challenger. We present, the receiver accepts or rejects. Simple, I do not have to prove it. I am not requiring you to accept so I am not required to prove.

Exactly. It is God who requires us to accept the Book of Mormon, so it is also His job to prove that it's true. That, I think, would be the best response to someone telling us to "prove it."

[Cobalt-70]

I understand that the Book of Mormon is supposed to be the most valuable tool for missionary work, but it didn't seem to be all that effective when I served a mission. From my my experience, the best missionary tools were our teachings about the family, the plan of salvation, and social conversion.Maybe I just didn't know how to use the Book of Mormon the right way. So I don't feel qualified to tell people how to use the Book of Mormon in doing missionary work.

I think it depends greatly on what kind of investigator you are talking about. For many years, we taught missionaries a one-size-fits-all formula, that often was ill-suited to the needs of the investigator. But the Book of Mormon will work differently, and through a different mechanism, for Evangelicals, Catholics, or mainline Protestants.

For Evangelicals and mainline Protestants, for example, you might have to de-emphasize the canonical status of the Book of Mormon in comparison with the Bible, yet you might also emphasize the Book of Mormon's extremely Protestant teachings. Because it is so Protestant, the Book of Mormon is a far better tool than the less Protestant doctrines that superseded it in the 1840s. Pentecostal or charismatic investigators are very well suited to connect with the charismatic and miraculous elements of the Book of Mormon. Not much of this, however, seems in my experience to resonate that much with Catholics. There are a few isolated Catholic-friendly parts of the Book of Mormon, but for the most part the book is pretty foreign to Catholicism (and in some cases, arguably hostile). With Catholics, it seems like the more typical path is to emphasize things like church, priesthood, angels, and the Restoration. They understand the need for an institutional church and the need for authority. It's just a matter of convincing them that there was a Restoration. For them, I don't think the contents of the Book of Mormon are typically quite so important as the book's existence.

Another factor is the education level of the investigator, and in particular, their literacy level. If the investigator is not very literate, I don't think the book helps them much, because they never "connect" with it. Yet, if the investigator is too well educated, the book might also not help much, because he or she is likely to get hung up on the book's lack of historical authenticity, and will look up things on the internet. If the investigator has either too little or too much literacy, you might have to rely more on the social element of conversion and not make too big a deal about the book. Maybe focus more on the Joseph Smith story than on the book itself.

[Pahoran]

I think it depends greatly on what kind of investigator you are talking about. For many years, we taught missionaries a one-size-fits-all formula, that often was ill-suited to the needs of the investigator. But the Book of Mormon will work differently, and through a different mechanism, for Evangelicals, Catholics, or mainline Protestants.

For Evangelicals and mainline Protestants, for example, you might have to de-emphasize the canonical status of the Book of Mormon in comparison with the Bible, yet you might also emphasize the Book of Mormon's extremely Protestant teachings. Because it is so Protestant, the Book of Mormon is a far better tool than the less Protestant doctrines that superseded it in the 1840s.

You really have thoroughly internalised this utterly discredited anti-Mormon Dreck, haven't you?

Since Protestants are likely to have a hard time accepting the bare possibility of canonical scripture apart from the Bible, that is what the missionary should focus upon. Once they have accepted the Book of Mormon as divinely authentic, then the missionary can move on to demonstrating how accepting the Book of Mormon leads to far greater things than Protestant doctrines.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Hamba Tuhan]

But the Book of Mormon will work differently, and through a different mechanism, for Evangelicals, Catholics, or mainline Protestants.

I think you may be right without realising it, though you should have thrown in non-Christians, agnostics, and atheists, too.

The people whom I taught as a missionary who embraced the restored gospel included the following:

• A lapsed Catholic road worker whose lack of education made it difficult for him to read and understand the Book of Mormon.
  
• A semi-active Catholic who holds two postgraduate degrees in counselling.
  
• A disgruntled Catholic nurse.
  
• A couple who both hold postgraduate degrees in engineering, he in electrical and she in mechanical. He had been raised Methodist, and she had been raised Catholic, but they were both agnostic by the time we met them.
  
• A man who was studying at a Jesuit college in preparation for entering the priesthood.
  
• An investment banker who, though raised Catholic, was agnostic/borderline atheist.
  
• A woman who had been raised Catholic but had left that faith in search of something else. She'd eventually given up on Christianity altogether and had investigated non-Christian faiths. She had great stories about what she'd learnt during her time living in a temple and studying with a Hindu guru, and she still had a beautiful head of dreadlocks from her Rastafarian days. In the end, she'd completely given up on God and religion and had tried to find fulfilment in political and social causes, running a successful feminist bookshop for a while and eventually starting a charity which focussed on improving literacy amongst poor Black children in her home state.
  
• A woman who was completing a masters degree in French literature (she was a French teacher) and who thought that religious people were all a bit freaky, with LDS the freakiest of the lot.
  
• A seventeen-year-old boy whose father was an Evangelical Christian, whose mother was an atheist Buddhist, and who had already been accepted into the air force.
  
• A postal worker who was left physically and mentally disabled from a traffic accident; he also struggled to read the Book of Mormon but spent hours and hours at it.
  
• A former violin player with a local symphony orchestra who was recovering from a drug addiction.
  
• An active Methodist who had just completed a postgraduate degree and who worked as an insurance investigator.
  
• An Anglican uni student who lived in a sorority (the whole house came to her baptism), rowed crew, and also pulled straight A's in her genetic engineering courses.
  
• A waitress who had been raised in a very strict JW home and had as an adult rebelled against God and religion.
  

As you suggested, the Book of Mormon worked for every single one of them, regardless of their personal backgrounds. With the sole exception of the very first bloke, they had all read large parts or even all of it before being baptised, and, in every single case, it completely converted their lives. I still remember the night that TO, the insurance investigator, walked into the mission office after having read the entire book minus, as he would later explain, parts of Ether. We'd already spent a week trying to teach him, but mostly he'd just interrogated us as though he were trying to avoid having to make an insurance pay-out. He hadn't read more than a page of the Book of Mormon despite our repeated requests. The next week he was too busy to meet, but he'd agreed to come back the following week. Somewhere, during the intervening time, he'd had a restless night and couldn't sleep. He was out of reading material, so he'd picked up the Book of Mormon out of mild curiosity and started reading. He'd read all through the night. Already a journal keeper, he'd recorded that morning, as he later read out to us, 'It's [some time] AM, and, though I don't understand how, I know that the Book of Mormon is true.' We didn't know any of this when he walked in that night, but we could feel the change that had come into his life...and see it in his eyes. He asked that night if we could start over with the discussions, so we did. A little more than a year later, I was his escort as he received his endowment.

DM, the mechanical engineer, is currently the early-morning seminary teacher in their ward. In a recent email to me, she wrote, 'Oh, how I love the scriptures!' GM, the French teacher, contacted me via Facebook earlier this year and told me how she'd been called to work with a refugee branch in her stake and was loving seeing the passion the Young Women of the branch have for the Book of Mormon.

Another factor is the education level of the investigator, and in particular, their literacy level. If the investigator is not very literate, I don't think the book helps them much, because they never "connect" with it. Yet, if the investigator is too well educated, the book might also not help much, because he or she is likely to get hung up on the book's lack of historical authenticity, and will look up things on the internet. If the investigator has either too little or too much literacy, you might have to rely more on the social element of conversion and not make too big a deal about the book. Maybe focus more on the Joseph Smith story than on the book itself.

Based on my personal experiences, I think you got the first two sentences here right but the rest exactly wrong. JO, the road worker who struggled with the Book of Mormon and hadn't read much of it when baptised, had more of what I would call a 'social conversion.' He really liked the ward members and assumed that what they had must be good. He also went inactive soon thereafter. (It didn't help that his Evangelical boss at the roads department, having given him grief before his baptism, later rostered him to work Sundays.) I got a phone call from him a few years ago, however, and he was happy to report to me that he was back at church. He'd also earnt a degree from a community college and now owns a number of fast-food franchises. He had come to love the Book of Mormon, he said.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Hamba Tuhan

[Hamba Tuhan]

Oh, and for what it's worth, we've had four new members in our ward so far this year. I don't know much about the experiences of the first three (a mum and her two eldest children) since I don't speak their language, but I've talked to the fourth about his conversion, and the Book of Mormon was absolutely the key. The sisters had given him the book and told him that, if he'd read it and ask God to know if it was true or not, he would know. So, after reading most of it over the course of several days, he prayed one night to know if should accept it or not. He told me that, after praying, a bright light came into his room. Surprised, he opened his eyes and was even more surprised to see a that a person had come to deliver the requested answer.

[jo1952]

This is all great stuff to include in my talk. Thank you.

Exercise sincere seeking and faith in the mantle of your calling. This calling is not only about what you will be teaching others; but also what this calling will be teaching you. Good luck! Let us know how it goes!

Regards,

jo

[Cobalt-70]

Since Protestants are likely to have a hard time accepting the bare possibility of canonical scripture apart from the Bible, that is what the missionary should focus upon. Once they have accepted the Book of Mormon as divinely authentic, then the missionary can move on to demonstrating how accepting the Book of Mormon leads to far greater things than Protestant doctrines.

That rarely worked for me. I think you have it backwards. You start with shared beliefs (like the deeply Protestant doctrines taught in the Book of Mormon), and then you gently nudge them toward something new (like abandoning sola scriptura). I always had better success with Protestant investigators when they felt that what they read in the Book of Mormon was true first, before challenging them to accept the book on par with the Bible. If they think what they read is true, then they begin to think the book is scriptural--not the other way around.

[diglot]

...The sisters had given him the book and told him that, if he'd read it and ask God to know if it was true or not, he would know. So, after reading most of it over the course of several days, he prayed one night to know if should accept it or not. He told me that, after praying, a bright light came into his room. Surprised, he opened his eyes and was even more surprised to see a that a person had come to deliver the requested answer.

wow, thats one heck of a confirmation of the BoM.

[zerinus]

You make a very strange comment about still not knowing the Saviour after reading

the Bible --- considering that one learns much more of Jesus Christ from the Bible than

from the Book of Mormon. If you didn't understand the Atonement after reading the

Bible then you have a spiritual problem.

What the Book of Mormon did for me is that it gave me a testimony of the truthfulness of the Bible, and therefore of the mission of Jesus Christ, because it is a second witness to the same thing. If there are two witnesses testifying to the same event, it makes their testimonies more credible. That is the primary function of the Book of Mormon, to testify to the world that what is in the Bible is true. If it hadn't been for the Book of Mormon, I wouldn't have known or believed that the Bible is true. And of course, while the New Testament is indeed our primary source of information about the Savior, the Book of Mormon tells us much more about Him, and what He did, which we cannot know from the Bible. The effect of all of that is to strengthen our testimony of Him, as well as of the Bible.

Edited November 11, 2011 by zerinus

[zerinus]

What do you mean when you say the investigators "knew the Book of Mormon was true"? Are you saying that they thought the teaching contained therein was true? Or that they thought the book contained historically accurate events and was revealed to Joseph Smith by Moroni? Or something else?

For me, to say that the Book of Mormon is true means that it is historically as well as doctrinally and theologically true.

[altersteve]

For me, to say that the Book of Mormon is true means that it is historically as well as doctrinally and theologically true.

Exactly. It can't be one or the other, it has to be both.

[Pahoran]

That rarely worked for me. I think you have it backwards. You start with shared beliefs (like the deeply Protestant doctrines taught in the Book of Mormon),

An anti-Mormon canard.

So naturally, you are peddling it.

Regards,

Pahoran