LDS Church plans to decrease missions; utilize tech savviness to locate religious-minded people

[rongo]

3 minutes ago, ERMD said:

CFR

Can't. All I can tell you is anecdotal, from the two stake presidents I have served under. From what they told me. 

But think about it. If a stake that has been producing 100+ missionaries a year drops down to 30, and there isn't a big enough demographic dip to account for it, do you think a stake president is going to be asked what is going on?

[ERMD]

6 minutes ago, rongo said:

Can't. All I can tell you is anecdotal, from the two stake presidents I have served under. From what they told me. 

But think about it. If a stake that has been producing 100+ missionaries a year drops down to 30, and there isn't a big enough demographic dip to account for it, do you think a stake president is going to be asked what is going on?

So being asked what is going on is "tremendous pressure?"  I have served closely with several stake presidents and have a good friend who is an area seventy.  No one has ever mentioned "tremendous pressure" when discussions are held about the number of missionaries from a given stake.

[rongo]

10 minutes ago, ERMD said:

So being asked what is going on is "tremendous pressure?"  I have served closely with several stake presidents and have a good friend who is an area seventy.  No one has ever mentioned "tremendous pressure" when discussions are held about the number of missionaries from a given stake.

That's how they characterized it. It's what they felt. 

Given how appearance-conscious the Church is, they don't want there to be a precipitous drop in missionaries. I fully expect for the pendulum to swing the other way if rigor in screening missionaries results in a big drop. We've turned the missionary program into a "keep youth active" program rather than doing missionary work, in a lot of cases.

Edited October 25, 2017 by rongo

[ERMD]

2 hours ago, rongo said:

That's how they characterized it. It's what they felt. 

Given how appearance-conscious the Church is, they don't want there to be a precipitous drop in missionaries. I fully expect for the pendulum to swing the other way if rigor in screening missionaries results in a big drop. We've turned the missionary program into a "keep youth active" program rather than doing missionary work, in a lot of cases.

It's quite a generalization to make.  My anecdotal experience is that no such "tremendous pressure" exists.

[carbon dioxide]

On 10/21/2017 at 4:10 PM, Atheist Mormon said:

Sadly it was inevitable & long overdue. The growth in 60's, 70's. 80's virtually stopped...I was in the Mission Field (not as missionary) in Europe, even then things weren't great but still there was a steady stream of new members, now with the age of technology there's no chance of capturing those glory days back.....This is not the case only for LDS obviously. The civilized part of the Planet is waking up to the reality, if they want to be saved it will be only by their own doing.

I am not a big believer that the field is white and ready to harvest.  That may have been true in the1830s but I see the field is brown and dried out and ready to be burned.  The civilized world as you see is not waking up to anything.  They are becoming smartphone zombies and their lives are stuck in a small screen.  Reality however will find them soon enough. 

[carbon dioxide]

On 10/22/2017 at 4:45 PM, Atheist Mormon said:

What I am saying is Christians (sizable sum of them) are getting tired of waiting for second coming.

Perhaps that is so.  However if one believes in a second coming, one has to believe and look forward to all the stuff that comes before it.  If what people claim about climate change is correct, this could play a big role in events leading up to the second coming.  So I am not worried about climate change.  I am looking forward to it.  I see this rather exciting even though many are trying to avoid it.  

[Avatar4321]

On 10/26/2017 at 10:42 PM, carbon dioxide said:

I am not a big believer that the field is white and ready to harvest.  That may have been true in the1830s but I see the field is brown and dried out and ready to be burned.  The civilized world as you see is not waking up to anything.  They are becoming smartphone zombies and their lives are stuck in a small screen.  Reality however will find them soon enough. 

I think me field is whiter and readier than we realize

Edited October 28, 2017 by Avatar4321

[Scott Lloyd]

On 10/25/2017 at 8:22 AM, rongo said:

No. Not in my experience, anyway.

The paradox is that most people who are "found" would not have been found via social media or digitally. They were "found" through friends, door-to-door, or talking to the missionaries (street contacting). That holds true even in 2017.

Our mission went through a phase where the missionaries were forbidden to proselyte in order to put the onus on members to provide all of their teaching appointments. In a year, the three baptisms were a family of four, an elderly man, and a woman between middle age and elderly. The mission also piloted the program where they spend every minute not doing service and not teaching at the church, "finding" people on their tablets (what a joke that is). All were found by "illegally" knocking on doors or talking to people in front of their house. The two single people have now been through the temple, and in the family of four, the older two children are now entering adulthood (army and school/working). 

"We don't need to work harder, we need to work smarter by using digital technology to find people" frustrates me to no end, even when it comes from the Brethren. A large part of the value of missionary WORK is experiencing the heritage of our forefathers in finding people by talking to them (interpersonal, face to face). Electronic communication is alienating and not as effective, even if on paper we can "reach more people than ever." 

I am convinced that a major reason for the anxiety and depression among millennials on missions is that we have gotten away from our "ineffective" traditional finding methods and embraced "digital" finding. It is unrewarding, and doesn't bear fruit (look at the baptisms trend), and leaves people feeling in the back of their mind like they should have been talking to people.

You don’t think “our forefathers” would have used digital technology had it been available to them? When the Church was organized in 1830, the printing press was cutting-edge, and the Church made extensive use of it, even before the Church was organized, with the publication of the Book of Mormon. The Church was never without one or more newspapers or journals in each of the communities where it established headquarters.

The Church earnestly supported the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad, which was completed with the ceremonial driving of the Golden Spike at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. This impacted not only immigration of Church members to Zion but the travel of missionaries to far-flung locales.

The Church owned and operated one of the earliest radio stations in history, and in due time, that gave rise to a television station. Cable, satellite and Internet facilities followed.

Just home from his mission, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley was appointed secretary to a committee of apostles called the Radio, Publicity and Mission Literature Committee. From experience on his mission, he pioneered cutting-edge proselyting tools, such as filmstrips (hand-tinted to colorize them in those days before color photography), sound recordings, radio plays, and exhibits at world's fairs and expositions.

My memory of my mission in the ‘70s and how horrendously inefficient door-to-door and street contacting were is fresh enough for me to know that what you call “the heritage of our forefathers” is not all that great in terms of finding methods. 

I agree with Rain that a combination of the best use of all methods and means available to us is the way to go. 

Edited October 29, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[rongo]

20 hours ago, Scott Lloyd said:

My memory of my mission in the ‘70s and how horrendously inefficient door-to-door and street contacting were is fresh enough for me to know that what you call “the heritage of our forefathers” is not all that great in terms of finding methods. 

The technology push has been "tremendously efficient," judging by the trend in annual baptisms over the last several years, huh?

How "horrendously inefficient" was tracting in Sweden in the 1970s, really? And compared to what alternatives?

We hear that it is/was "horrendously inefficient" all the time, but it's because people don't/didn't like doing it, not because it is inefficient.

7 of my 8 baptisms in northern Germany in the mid 1990s were from tracting (the 8th was a 9 year old from an inactive family). This was the rule rather than the exception. I even polled the mission anonymously and presented the findings in a zone conference near the end of my mission. Unbeknownst to me, Elder Holland had told my mission president that we needed to do more tracting, and this dovetailed with that. The 150 missionaries reported that their favorite finding methods (referrals, members, etc.) yielded almost no teaching and baptisms, while nearly 100% of their teaching and baptisms came from tracting. 

The same is my experience in the western United States. Most of our baptisms over the last several years have been people whom the missionaries talked to at the door or in front of their houses, even though they weren't supposed to tract, per mission rules (some missionaries naturally talk to people, anyway, and others sit at the church on their devices as instructed. You can tell which are which pretty quickly). 

Missionaries who try to talk to people when they don't have appointments find people. Missionaries who "find people with technology" --- don't find people. And, missionaries who "find people with technology" are depressed because they are playing on devices and feel like they should be talking to people. 

So, no, I don't buy the myth of the "horrendous inefficiency" of tracting. It is a whole lot more effective than doing essentially nothing if you don't have appointments, even if you only have a handful of conversations out of several hundred attempts. It is much more efficient than having four missionary cars with bike racks on the back in the church parking lot all day, every day. And, it is mentally and spiritually healthier for the missionaries. They will have stories to tell and adventures to talk about when they get home.

Edited October 30, 2017 by rongo

[HappyJackWagon]

It seems very wise of the church to utilize technology for missionary efforts.

I would make one suggestion though. I think the church should use tech to let those who are seeking find the church instead of the church finding those who are seeking. Maybe it's a small difference but I think it could matter.

The church is very good about providing online resources. Websites, blogs, videos etc where people can learn more about the church. That is all great. But what happens when an individual is honestly church shopping? Many are likely to go online to seek out information about the local congregation. When does it meet. Where? How long are meetings? What are services like? What's the dress attire? What's the format of the meeting and what's the music like? Who are the leaders? In other words, a person seeking to visit a church often wants to have an idea about what they are getting into.

Unless a person digs deep into LDS.org to find the meetinghouse locator etc, they are going to come up empty on finding any local info, and it won't be very specific anyhow. If the church allowed local stakes and wards to have their own websites or facebook pages (criteria could be established to maintain uniformity and professionalism) then local people could gather quite a bit of information about the church when deciding whether or not to visit. If I do an internet search in my non-Utah city I get a long list of local churches. Guess which church isn't even listed. Ours. When I search websites for local churches I can find tons of information about them. Guess what I find about ours? Nothing.

Obviously, not everyone is going to seek out churches in the way I described but it's not unusual either. Let those who are seeking find something locally. Keep all of the general church info which is good, but make it easier for them to find the church where they can actually attend

[rongo]

No bones at all about that. I have no problem whatsoever with having a good online presence.

It is the insistence that we abandon old-fashioned face-to-face finding in favor of electronic "finding" that I disagree with. 

[HappyJackWagon]

21 minutes ago, rongo said:

No bones at all about that. I have no problem whatsoever with having a good online presence.

It is the insistence that we abandon old-fashioned face-to-face finding in favor of electronic "finding" that I disagree with. 

I understand the sentiment and it seems obviously to me that different people will appreciate different approaches. Some will want personal contact while others will be turned off by it, so a good balance is needed. There are definitely people out there seeking, but IMO they are rarely the ones the missionaries will contact at 10 am Monday morning at their homes.

As a fun experiment you should put yourself into the shoes of a seeker. Imagine you moved into a new town and are looking for a church. What would you do to explore the options available? Have you ever actually done it? I mean, like going to other churches for the experience. I've done it a bit and I always get such great ideas; everything from information to put in Sunday programs, how to welcome and bid farewell at the ends of meetings, music, dress, etc. It's interesting to see what others are accustomed to and then note the contrast (sometimes very extreme) at our church. It definitely made me more sympathetic to cultural differences that I would have never thought of.

[rongo]

I have been to many different churches (more in the past rather than lately). As a missionary, I attended Seventh-day Adventist, Lutheran, Catholic, New Apostolic, Pentacostal meetings (although current Church policy discourages missionaries from attending any other churches. This was actually a good way for us to find people to teach, as we were often invited to eat and asked about our beliefs). 

You are correct that the cultural divide between our church and others can be jarring. I don't advocate changing to be more like them, but it is good to keep these differences in mind with respect to visitors and investigators. 

You are also correct (and this is the main point brought up by anti-tracting advocates) that many people in 2017 won't open their doors to strangers. Yet, the fact remains that some people do, and these people have been the bulk of those who have been baptized in my wards over the last several years. There is a cumulative effect of seeing the missionaries out and about, too, even if people don't talk to them. They see them talking to other people (people always stare hard when I'm talking to the missionaries in front of my house as they are out and about). Students ask me all the time if I rode around on bikes in a suit on my mission, and they always tell me when the missionaries have talked to them or stopped by their houses. I hope we never lose this phenomenon of everyone knowing that the missionaries are around and that they try to talk to people. 

[stemelbow]

54 minutes ago, rongo said:

No bones at all about that. I have no problem whatsoever with having a good online presence.

It is the insistence that we abandon old-fashioned face-to-face finding in favor of electronic "finding" that I disagree with. 

Well you get why they want to revamp and change right?  The old efforts are becoming less and less effective--particularly in the developing world.  20 years ago we had tons more conversions than we have now--particularly in the developing world.  The comparison is not even close.  Sadly, we have about the same amount of missionaries now, but we have greater reach in terms of members and areas of the world. 

It seems like we have less members that are engaged then we used to have, and we are less effective in being a positive presence. 

I'm glad their trying rather than just sitting back and blaming everyone else, as often is the case (the world is so evil, we simply cant' get a great message into their hard hearts). 

[HappyJackWagon]

12 minutes ago, rongo said:

I have been to many different churches (more in the past rather than lately). As a missionary, I attended Seventh-day Adventist, Lutheran, Catholic, New Apostolic, Pentacostal meetings (although current Church policy discourages missionaries from attending any other churches. This was actually a good way for us to find people to teach, as we were often invited to eat and asked about our beliefs). 

You are correct that the cultural divide between our church and others can be jarring. I don't advocate changing to be more like them, but it is good to keep these differences in mind with respect to visitors and investigators. 

You are also correct (and this is the main point brought up by anti-tracting advocates) that many people in 2017 won't open their doors to strangers. Yet, the fact remains that some people do, and these people have been the bulk of those who have been baptized in my wards over the last several years. There is a cumulative effect of seeing the missionaries out and about, too, even if people don't talk to them. They see them talking to other people (people always stare hard when I'm talking to the missionaries in front of my house as they are out and about). Students ask me all the time if I rode around on bikes in a suit on my mission, and they always tell me when the missionaries have talked to them or stopped by their houses. I hope we never lose this phenomenon of everyone knowing that the missionaries are around and that they try to talk to people. 

Fun aside: In the recent Stranger Things 2 release on Netflix, there is a scene where a girl answers the door and quickly goes outside to talk because she knows her brother hates the person who came to visit. When she comes back in she is asked who she was talking to. Answer: The Mormons.

There is definitely something to be said about simply being out there and seen. Nowadays it's often used as a punchline about the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but the fact remains that people know those two groups are active with proselyting. I just don't know that it's seen as a virtue like it once was.

[clarkgoble]

53 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

Fun aside: In the recent Stranger Things 2 release on Netflix, there is a scene where a girl answers the door and quickly goes outside to talk because she knows her brother hates the person who came to visit. When she comes back in she is asked who she was talking to. Answer: The Mormons.

There is definitely something to be said about simply being out there and seen. Nowadays it's often used as a punchline about the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but the fact remains that people know those two groups are active with proselyting. I just don't know that it's seen as a virtue like it once was.

I'm not sure door to door knocking was ever liked. However I remain convinced it should be part of our work. You will discover people you otherwise never would. Ideally it never should have been our main process. However the reality is that most of my good baptisms I found in that way. I doubt any of them would have been found any other way. Something to keep in mind as we shift to things like social media. 

[rongo]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

There is definitely something to be said about simply being out there and seen. Nowadays it's often used as a punchline about the Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses, but the fact remains that people know those two groups are active with proselyting. I just don't know that it's seen as a virtue like it once was.

It doesn't have to be seen as a virtue. It intrigues people, even if the're mortified of being seen talking to the missionaries. That's why they stare at people who are talking to them, and try to overhear what they're saying. As we worked our way down a large apartment from the top floor down, I can't tell you how many times people would say "not interested" and then come down the stairs to eavesdrop on us talking to other people. 

The "mystique" of missionaries is huge, even when it isn't necessarily seen as a virtue. People being interested and intrigued means that at some point, they will talk to the missionaries (often when it isn't as publicly obvious that they are).

[Avatar4321]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure door to door knocking was ever liked. However I remain convinced it should be part of our work. You will discover people you otherwise never would. Ideally it never should have been our main process. However the reality is that most of my good baptisms I found in that way. I doubt any of them would have been found any other way. Something to keep in mind as we shift to things like social media. 

about twelve years ago the stake I lived in had an explosion of baptisms. They came by tracting.

[rongo]

2 hours ago, stemelbow said:

The old efforts are becoming less and less effective--particularly in the developing world.  20 years ago we had tons more conversions than we have now--particularly in the developing world.  The comparison is not even close.  Sadly, we have about the same amount of missionaries now, but we have greater reach in terms of members and areas of the world. 

The ironic thing is it's not a controlled experiment for comparison. WE DON'T DO THE "OLD EFFORTS" MUCH ANY MORE, so blaming the drop in conversion on the "old efforts" is off-base. I think it supports my contention that the drop is BECAUSE we aren't doing the "old efforts" any more. 

It's a no-brainer, to me. If we have missionaries not trying to find people by talking to them and sitting in churches playing on devices, it shouldn't be a surprise that we have a drop of 100,000 or so in conversions year in and year out. I think this trend will continue with closing missions and going whole hog for electronic finding.

[rongo]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I'm not sure door to door knocking was ever liked. However I remain convinced it should be part of our work. You will discover people you otherwise never would. Ideally it never should have been our main process. However the reality is that most of my good baptisms I found in that way. I doubt any of them would have been found any other way. Something to keep in mind as we shift to things like social media. 

This, in spades. It's what I've been pointing out in my stake, and when you start going through the names of these individuals (who we're talking about), it dawns on people that most of our best converts (and shear numbers) over time come through missionaries physically initiating contact and talking to people. Not messaging people or commenting on blogs or forums. 

ETA:

Well you get why they want to revamp and change right? 

I think it has to do with preserving snowflake millennials from rejection and not "cold-turkeying" device addicts. The areas they are closing are hard areas with little church presence; hence, a greater need for tracting and greater chance of difficult rejection situations. 

Edited October 30, 2017 by rongo

[HappyJackWagon]

41 minutes ago, rongo said:

The ironic thing is it's not a controlled experiment for comparison. WE DON'T DO THE "OLD EFFORTS" MUCH ANY MORE, so blaming the drop in conversion on the "old efforts" is off-base. I think it supports my contention that the drop is BECAUSE we aren't doing the "old efforts" any more. 

It's a no-brainer, to me. If we have missionaries not trying to find people by talking to them and sitting in churches playing on devices, it shouldn't be a surprise that we have a drop of 100,000 or so in conversions year in and year out. I think this trend will continue with closing missions and going whole hog for electronic finding.

Is the missionary work being directed by prophets, seers, and revelators who receive inspiration from God & Jesus via the spirit? Or are they just experimenting to see what works in today's day and age? Is it inspiration or trial and error?

[stemelbow]

1 hour ago, rongo said:

The ironic thing is it's not a controlled experiment for comparison. WE DON'T DO THE "OLD EFFORTS" MUCH ANY MORE, so blaming the drop in conversion on the "old efforts" is off-base. I think it supports my contention that the drop is BECAUSE we aren't doing the "old efforts" any more. 

 

One would have to wonder then, why are the leaders letting the missionaries go a different route.  The problem of course is not just that we are at a historic low (at least for the past century) in terms of growth rate, but that rate has been sinking for years before now.  It could be for years before that the missionaries were not doing the same thing, or it could be a whole other factor (some say for instance, the growth of the internet has been the big factor). 

1 hour ago, rongo said:

It's a no-brainer, to me. If we have missionaries not trying to find people by talking to them and sitting in churches playing on devices, it shouldn't be a surprise that we have a drop of 100,000 or so in conversions year in and year out. I think this trend will continue with closing missions and going whole hog for electronic finding.

Is there too much hand holding, then, in terms of missionaries these days?  Meaning, missionaries are allowed to do it differently, to accommodate missionaries and not to accommodate the production of the work? 

[nuclearfuels]

Its prophesied that in the Last Days, the missionaries will be called home since God will preach via natural disasters, plagues, famine, war, etc.  (Not sure if "called home" means no more missions, or simply missionaries are called to their homelands.) 

[Scott Lloyd]

6 hours ago, rongo said:

The technology push has been "tremendously efficient," judging by the trend in annual baptisms over the last several years, huh?

How "horrendously inefficient" was tracting in Sweden in the 1970s, really? And compared to what alternatives?

We hear that it is/was "horrendously inefficient" all the time, but it's because people don't/didn't like doing it, not because it is inefficient.

7 of my 8 baptisms in northern Germany in the mid 1990s were from tracting (the 8th was a 9 year old from an inactive family). This was the rule rather than the exception. I even polled the mission anonymously and presented the findings in a zone conference near the end of my mission. Unbeknownst to me, Elder Holland had told my mission president that we needed to do more tracting, and this dovetailed with that. The 150 missionaries reported that their favorite finding methods (referrals, members, etc.) yielded almost no teaching and baptisms, while nearly 100% of their teaching and baptisms came from tracting. 

The same is my experience in the western United States. Most of our baptisms over the last several years have been people whom the missionaries talked to at the door or in front of their houses, even though they weren't supposed to tract, per mission rules (some missionaries naturally talk to people, anyway, and others sit at the church on their devices as instructed. You can tell which are which pretty quickly). 

Missionaries who try to talk to people when they don't have appointments find people. Missionaries who "find people with technology" --- don't find people. And, missionaries who "find people with technology" are depressed because they are playing on devices and feel like they should be talking to people. 

So, no, I don't buy the myth of the "horrendous inefficiency" of tracting. It is a whole lot more effective than doing essentially nothing if you don't have appointments, even if you only have a handful of conversations out of several hundred attempts. It is much more efficient than having four missionary cars with bike racks on the back in the church parking lot all day, every day. And, it is mentally and spiritually healthier for the missionaries. They will have stories to tell and adventures to talk about when they get home.

If you'll look closely, you'll notice that I never advocated other methods in lieu of but in combination with tracting. And I never said do essentially nothing.

Finally, I think it is overly simplistic to blame today's missionary force and missionary methods for the consequences of a growing secularism in the world and general antipathy among rising generations toward religion and things of the Spirit.

We we forewarned. Look at Nephi's vision in Second Nephi pertaining to the  church of the devil and its influence throughout the world which would hinder the growth of the church of the Lamb of God.

Edited October 30, 2017 by Scott Lloyd

[Steve-o]

2 hours ago, rongo said:

This, in spades. It's what I've been pointing out in my stake, and when you start going through the names of these individuals (who we're talking about), it dawns on people that most of our best converts (and shear numbers) over time come through missionaries physically initiating contact and talking to people. Not messaging people or commenting on blogs or forums. 

ETA:

 

I think it has to do with preserving snowflake millennials from rejection and not "cold-turkeying" device addicts. The areas they are closing are hard areas with little church presence; hence, a greater need for tracting and greater chance of difficult rejection situations. 

I liked your comment because you are not afraid to share your honest opinion, not because I agree with it. You're pretty harsh and dismissive of the younger generation. I think the obvious bias weakens your argument. It sounds like you're ready to wash your hands of the entire generation. I'm sure they have their faults and weaknesses but why berate the snowflake millenials for doing work the way they're being assigned to do it by their leaders?