6 Reasons Why Mormons Are Beating Evangelicals In Church Growth

[Grundelwalken]

This blog has some interesting ideas about why the LDS Church continues to grow, despite the struggles evangelical churches seem to have.

My favorite reason is #5 -- Mormon leaders ask a lot of their members

Ours is not a church of relaxation or convenience. Everyone works and does their part to make things happen.

ALSO: Last nights program on NBC about the Church had its positives and negatives.

Positives:

Hard working people

Committed to the cause

Missions help in business

Family is important

Prepared to help anyone

Negatives:

Intolerant to gays/women

Focused on success in business/money

Abbie Huntsman and her whining

inappropriate discussion/viewing of temple garment

And why the heck would someone go to Abbie Huntsman to get answers about the garment and temple ordinances. She is an apostate and will obviously make things look as bleak and ignorant as possible. Her description of the encounter with her bishop is probably what would happen in most cases -- the Bishop explains that there are certain blessings that are lost when one marries outside the temple. SHE took it so be a "cursing" of sorts when I suspect it was more of a delineation of sacred things that would be forfeited. It was her choice to be offended and not continue on with the Church.

DISCLAIMER: I have had dealings with Abbie and her family so I am a bit prejudiced in this regard.

Anyway, two things to consider for our daily musings. MW

[jwhitlock]

We turned it off when it got to the temple garment segment. That was absolutely inappropriate and tarnished the entire program.

I also wondered why they gave an inordinate amount of time to Abbie Huntsman. She seemed to exemplify more of the bias that NBC was trying to subtly project with the program. They seemed to want to hammer some kind of inherent "secrecy" in the Church way out of proportion, and she played right into that.

[Buckeye]

The garments surprised me but didn't really bother me. They showed a picture that is public knowledge. Google "garmets" and that's what comes up. Millions of people have seen it. In my experience, a lot of the "weirdness" non-members sense evaporates as they get actual facts. A bland, non-offensive, picture of the garments does just that.

If anything, I thought the entire piece was bent towards the church (a nice change!). Yes, it was strange they gave Abbie Huntsman so much time. I had no idea who she was at first. But really, any hour-long presentation is going to include interviews with former members. We could not have expected any better than this. A young woman who says she was insulted by her bishop but still has LDS family and fond feelings. A young man who served a mission, could not reconcile his sexual orientation with the church, but still holds fond feelings. Really, it doesn't get better than that. Would you prefer Steve Benson or the Tanners?

[cinepro]

We turned it off when it got to the temple garment segment. That was absolutely inappropriate and tarnished the entire program.

I also wondered why they gave an inordinate amount of time to Abbie Huntsman. She seemed to exemplify more of the bias that NBC was trying to subtly project with the program. They seemed to want to hammer some kind of inherent "secrecy" in the Church way out of proportion, and she played right into that.

After it was over, my wife said she wasn't impressed and hadn't learned anything "new". I pointed out that she has been LDS her entire life, and while we were welcome to watch the show, we weren't who NBC had made the program for.

They explicitly said they were just trying to give an overview of the LDS Church to the Americans who didn't know anything about it. And I can accept that giving an "overview" includes the negative as well as the positive, so I don't begrudge the negative viewpoints presented. But they probably could have found better spokespeople for the negative viewpoint.

I was most surprised at the picture of the garments in an NBC news presentation. I expected more from them, and can't see how they could do that and not know it would be offensive to LDS.

[KevinG]

Everyone loves a peek under the old burkha! Why don't they do that next!

[ANACO]

Everyone loves a peek under the old burkha! Why don't they do that next!

Ever since Cliinton's boxers or briefs...the media is weird.

[Saints Alive]

It was better than what i expected from NBC but the whole garment segment was highly offensive. It is a good thing mormons are better tempered than some other faith traditions...

[KevinG]

It was better than what i expected from NBC but the whole garment segment was highly offensive. It is a good thing mormons are better tempered than some other faith traditions...

A Mormon jihad would involve strong words like "fetch" and boycotting stores on Sunday and sometimes Monday night.