Is the Church doing more to retain active converts? And to reactivate the less-active?

[Calm]

8 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

I'm suggesting that true Christian compassion will recognise the complexity of the problem and that the apparent "lack of will", the seeming "breakdown of personal morals" are symptoms of the problem, not the source.

I have seen much evidence of this among LDS in my years.  One individual who had significant health issues used smoking to control pain, if he were to attempt to get off of them his doctors said the stress would kill him.  He was very committed to the Church to the best of his ability, which was limited.  Our bishop arranged his baptism without the requirement of a good faith effort to stop.  He was joyfully accepted as a member by all that I could tell.  We were all grateful there had been no hesitation as the man died three months later.

Another member in my experience tried to quit many times, she had a son who was not a member and who in bad times would come crash withher and his smoking made it hard for her.  None of the leadership were anything but supportive by her report.  I believe she was eventually successful, we moved so I am not sure but in the plus decade we were there she was always coming out to Sunday and RS activities and welcomed at them, whether she smelled of smoke or not.

Miracles do happen as well though.  A couple who were very good friends would tell of how it had been impossible for them to quit smoking. When they committed to be baptized, they got rid of all products that they saw were contrary to living the covenant in their store, including cigarettes and told us they never had one craving once that decision had been made, unlike the many times before.

[salgare]

1 hour ago, stemelbow said:

I think you're on to something.  it feels like, and as the numbers demonstrate, people are leaving (or I guess it could be dying) at a faster rate than ever before.  I do think the Church is going to have to learn to change and adapt from what it is in order to remain relevant to many in the near future, the many of those you describe.  But I also think the Church will change and adapt.  It might so change in such a way we would never expect--which is my hope. 

I believe the Church's answer for this is the Given's and the ideals Mark presents here (big tent in Secular Humanism).

[mnn727]

3 hours ago, stemelbow said:

It'd also go along way in reducing converts, which coincidentally seems to be exactly what the purpose is these days--seeing the steep decline in converts over the course of the past few years. 

I'd rather have fewer converts but ones that will stay active, than many converts that many of them drop away after a few months.

[mnn727]

3 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

If this was intended as sarcasm, you haven't read the whole thread.

 

Where's you get the idea it was sarcasm? I've thought this for years asnd am totally serious about it.

Edited March 18, 2016 by mnn727

[stemelbow]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

And how is that working out for those religions which are "changing and adapting"?  Have you looked at the Pew Research for the retention in Christian religions.  Perhaps we could start adapting Islam, since they seem to doing well.  Their "missionaries" have an interesting technique and it seems to be working.

Its worked well for us in the past.  We'll continue to change and adapt.

[stemelbow]

6 minutes ago, mnn727 said:

I'd rather have fewer converts but ones that will stay active, than many converts that many of them drop away after a few months.

I'd rather have many converts who feel more of a reason to stay, in all honesty.  I think if we changed our approach we could have the best of both worlds.  But sadly as of now, we have fewer converts than we once did yet we still deal with many of them dropping out--the worst of both worlds. 

I get where you're coming from but I'd argue one of the reasons we lack retention is because we aren't very appealing in our modern world.  Our messaging needs to change via missionary work and in Church.  Adding more legal restrictions, like making people attend regularly before we accepting them in the fold, only makes that worse. 

Edited March 18, 2016 by stemelbow

[flameburns623]

29 minutes ago, mnn727 said:

Where's you get the idea it was sarcasm? I've thought this for years asnd am totally serious about it.

Ok.

Cool. 😎

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

People DO NOT "kick addictions all thr time". They OFTEN DO overcome them, and religion or spirituality can be a key element in providing motivation and support to do so. 

But smokers, heroin addicts, and alcoholics in particular are statistically likely to have to make seven to ten attempts to overcome their problem before they are able to be "clean" for five or longer.

This does not factor in other psychosocial factors: pronounced nental illness, traumatc childhood abuse, PTSD due to military or other horrific experiences, and increasingly, we are beginning to see how traumatic brain injury can play a part.

If an addiction occurs in tandem with these other elements, the challenges are almost insurmountable for many people.

I'm thinking of Bill, now clinically diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. Bill is a Jewish acquaintance who has been dried out for ten years now, but who may hold some kind of record for all the religious conversions he underwent trying to get off the sauce. Bunches of 'em, and it often helped him short-term, to clean up. But it never lasted for him and he'd move on to something else. 

I guarantee he's had contact with Mormon missionaries more than once: I know he has commented on the Book of Mormon.

He'd get off the sauce awhile, but he could never stay off. Doing that took years of therapy, institutionalization, and a clear recognition of his underlying mental health issues.

I'm thinking of a woman friend named Beckie,whose story was not too disimilar: she had some Mormon roots (I don't know the details). She also alluded to seeing her Mom beaten,  to childhood sexual assault.  Beckie similarly bounced around among faiths quite a bit: her experiences left her feeling condemned and rejected, and by the time she basically drank herself dead, she had nothing kind to say about religion.

I'm thinking of Chad, a guy I home taught, whose conversion had brought him some temporary release from the bottle: but who I later realised was almost certainly clinically depressed. He talked about killing himself during one visit and was blown off by my cimpanion and by the bishop for trying to draw attention to himself. (The bishop was no Iron Rod Sour Onery Bishop: he brought Chad boxes and boxes of food: first time I had ever heard of the Deseret Food label).

When Chad went back to drinking, he was threatened with disciplinary court, and he basically walked away from the Church. Last I heard, he was homeless, many many years ago. He'd be my age if he's still alive.

I'm not being defeatist here. I'm suggesting that true Christian compassion will recognise the complexity of the problem and that the apparent "lack of will", the seeming "breakdown of personal morals" are symptoms of the problem, not the source.

Calling for people to just decide to "do what God wants instead of what you want" is the sort of myopia, the sort of fundamentalist short sightedness which makes me happy to enbrace a religious tradition which has a gentler and more nuanced apprehension of human frailty.

My hope would be that the LDS Church would mature into a similar understanding. For the sake of the weakest and wounded amongst you.

EDIT: I am not just talking out of  my backside. Just a sampling of the research out there.

http://www.addictionrecoveryguide.org/articles/

http://www.dirkhanson.org/neuroaddiction.html

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html?referer=&_r=0

You are missing the point.

Your sample is people who have failed, and your conclusion is that failure is more likely.

I do not disagree.

My sample was LDS people who have succeeded, and I know of many more.  It happens all the time that people quit smoking etc.

My point is that it DOES happen "all the time".  You seem to be surrounded by people who have failed, and that in itself seems odd to me, as if you are collecting samples of failure.  

I am collecting samples of success.  I am not talking statistics - miracles do happen and that is my point.

I think that if one can point to a consistent record of "miracles" which defy the odds, one is on to something.  I am not interested in research on addictions- I am interested in testimonies of those who have succeeded.  This is not about science- it is about religion.  Religion is about hope, not the obvious fact that the world stinks and we are all going to hell in a hand basket as long as we accept that such things are inevitable.  We can choose our perspective in life- glass half empty, half full etc.

I choose to see the miracles, not dwell on the obvious "facts" that actually define the miracles according to the law of opposition in all things.  If the world as it is was not rotten, we would not see the miracles when they DO happen, and they DO happen "all the time".

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

People DO NOT "kick addictions all thr time". They OFTEN DO overcome them, and religion or spirituality can be a key element in providing motivation and support to do so. 

Sounds self-contradictory to me.  That's kind of my point.

[Scott Lloyd]

On 3/17/2016 at 0:07 AM, sunstoned said:

The missionaries haven't baptized anyone over 9 years old in our ward for over three years.  I am wondering what the missionaries are doing, because their efforts are not producing results in the way of new converts.

Some areas are more receptive than others, but all must be offered the chance to receive it.

And a 9-year-old is just as valid a candidate for conversion and baptism as an adult.

[flameburns623]

MFBukowski: I think it was Chesterton who said that miracles are miraculous because they are rare.

Anyhow I started the thread to ask what the LDS Church might be doing these days to help it's inactives.

And to explore what participants here think could be done more to help.

Motivated in part by something you shared with me in PM that the Church is doing things differently than they were even a few years ago. (Loosely paraphrased).

Because failing, once, thrice, or three hundred times doesn't ultimately make one a failure: but in the real world, failures are likely at least once, often much more than once.

And while sudden miraculous victories are possible--God grants them liberally to Catholics and Pentecostals and Mormons and Nichiren Shoshu Buddhists and the adherents of Falun Gong--most victories are won incrementally and slowly and with much help and support from family, friends, and one's faith community.

I'm not trying to beat members of the LDS community up: but my sense is that there isn't always enough help or support available there, that there can be a dearth of compassion and a rush to blame. I wanted to explore if that really is changing, if there are changes which folks here feel can yet be made.

NOT changes in your values: but changes in how converts and other inactives are helped to abide by those values.

Changes in how much patience and understanding and love are shown while people are struggling to reify needed changes.

Anyhow, I did like a good deal of what you said 

Edited March 19, 2016 by flameburns623

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

 

I'm not trying to be members of the LDS community up: but my sense is that there isn't always enough help or support available there, that there can be a dearth of compassion and a rush to blame.

I have never experienced that.

[Teancum]

5 hours ago, mnn727 said:

I'd rather have fewer converts but ones that will stay active, than many converts that many of them drop away after a few months.

I agree.  But the missionary program does not agree.

[Hamba Tuhan]

For what it may be worth, every single convert in our ward from the past 12 months was in church yesterday (including one who was in an isolation ward in hospital on Friday when the Elders and I went to give her a blessing). In addition, a young man who's been coming to church on his own for the past 5-6 months told our bishop that he's ready to be baptised, so I arranged for the Elders to start teaching him this Friday.

[Scott Lloyd]

9 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

For what it may be worth, every single convert in our ward from the past 12 months was in church yesterday (including one who was in an isolation ward in hospital on Friday when the Elders and I went to give her a blessing). In addition, a young man who's been coming to church on his own for the past 5-6 months told our bishop that he's ready to be baptised, so I arranged for the Elders to start teaching him this Friday.

Bravo!

What's your secret?

[Hamba Tuhan]

3 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

What's your secret?

Apparently it's one of the best-kept secrets in the Church: we read and follow the directions given in relation to missionary work in Handbook 2, we study and follow the training provided on the Hastening the Work section of the Church's website, and we seek to apply the clear guidance we've received from our area presidency.

This means that missionary work in our ward in directed by the bishop, who holds the keys, and it fully belongs to the ward council. Each time the ward council or PEC meets, we review investigators, recent converts (and in our ward, we consider them 'recent' until they are fully grounded in the gospel), and less-active members and make plans to help support and progress each one of them. Members and full-time missionaries work together in complete harmony, with our ward mission plan designed to help train the rest of our members to become those who lead out in the work of salvation, taking missionaries with them as their assistants and not just sitting around waiting for the missionaries to do it all and then whingeing when they can't.

As a consequence, investigators are always taught with members present and usually in members' homes. If the members don't know the investigators in the first instance, we still get them to be the ones to do the inviting, and that continues to be the pattern: the missionaries will ask the members (or ask me to ask some members) to set up an appointment with one of their investigators. This means that, before baptism, investigators have been in many members' homes at their invitation, and they know each other both socially and spiritually.

We maintain this pattern post-baptism for the new-member lessons and for all future fellowshipping: members invite recent converts into their homes and then also invite the missionaries to be present to share a lesson or message. Each recent convert 'belongs' to a member of the ward council who assures that, at minimum, all of the items on the New and Returning Member Form are being met and who gives the progress updates in council meetings (not the full-time missionaries).

We follow this same pattern in ministering to and rescuing less-actives.

Edited March 22, 2016 by Hamba Tuhan

[Hamba Tuhan]

Some examples from the past 24 hours:

• About five months ago, a family in the ward introduced the Elders to one of their neighbours, a young man studying architecture at uni. After meeting with this young man a few times, they asked him if he'd like to have dinner with them in my home. (At that point, I'd never met him.) He said sure, so the Elders gave me his number, and I invited him to dinner the following Monday. He came, we ate, and then we had a lesson. He's now had all of the missionary lessons, and he still hasn't converted yet, but he enjoys meeting with us, and at this point he's become a real friend to me and my housemates, so I still invite him into my home most Monday evenings. Last night he came for dinner (and blessed the food for us), and then the Elders taught a powerful lesson on keeping the Sabbath Day holy. Everyone participated, and we all accepted the challenge to approach God in prayer and ask what we can do differently to better enjoy the blessings of the Sabbath Day.
• The Sisters have been working with a single father who has three children. This morning they were doing some service for him, and so I dropped off my gardening tools for them to use. Whilst I was there, I had a chat with the man and invited him and the kids to come around this Saturday for an early Easter dinner. He said he'd consider his schedule and get back to me. He has already been in our bishop's home for FHE with their family and the Sister missionaries.
• This afternoon, I contacted a family in the ward to host the lesson this Friday of the young man that I mentioned in my earlier post. He already knows the family and has spent much time in their home. They happily agreed.
• Tonight I'll have a less-active member in my home for dinner and a lesson with the Elders. I invite and cook; they teach and invite. This man was in church on Sunday for the first time in several months and seemed very happy to be back.

Edited to add an update:

• This afternoon, I sent a message to a family that I home-teach asking if the Elders and I could visit on Good Friday. The family consists of a non-member husband, an openly apostate wife, and an adult son/step-son who I think would like to come back to the Church at some point but is strongly influenced by his mum. About seven years ago, the wife announced her apostasy to her then visiting teachers and requested no more contact from the Church. About three years ago, when I was still serving in the bishopric, I had a couple of deacons with me one Sunday, collecting fast offerings, and they said they weren't ready to go home yet. Was there anyone else, they asked, that we should visit? Whilst they were in the last home on our list, I prayerfully scrolled through the ward list on LDS Tools and felt impressed to visit this family and invite them to resume payment of fast offerings. I had no idea how that would go, but trusting in what felt like inspiration, off we went. We were welcomed into the home, they accepted the invitation, and they have been faithful contributors of fast offerings since. Eventually my visits with the deacons turned into visits with the Elders, and now we meet with them each month for a lesson. Just a few minutes ago, I received a reply inviting us to visit them this Friday evening for dinner and a lesson. Good stuff!

Edited March 22, 2016 by Hamba Tuhan

[mfbukowski]

This really underlines what a good bishop can do: follow the directions.

It's a shame so few actually do it.

Our SP continually re-iterates these steps, and yet few actually do them.  Ward Councils are too concerned with who is setting up chairs for what activity and not concerned enough about new converts.

[Hamba Tuhan]

36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It's a shame so few actually do it.

Many in modern Israel, like many in ancient Israel, seem to have an aversion to brass serpents ...

[Hamba Tuhan]

Just a bit of follow-up from my second-last post above for those who may care:

Yesterday our ward had its Good Friday breakfast at the lake, and we had about a dozen non-members attend, including the above-mentioned single father of three and his kids. They were still there when I left at noon, so I think they enjoyed themselves.

Dinner and a lesson with the less-active part-member family last night was rich and wonderful in both culinary and spiritual ways.

The young man whom the other Elders met with last night in a member home has accepted the invitation to be baptised on 16 April. The members set up another lesson for him for tomorrow.