Sucky Missionary Program and Retiring Apostles
Well, I may have ruffled some feathers over at Nine Moons with a comment I left at a great post by Ned Flanders http://www.ninemoons.typepad.com/home/2005/07/missionary_phil.html. Ned’s post focuses on the need for missionaries to know more about the culture, history, art, literature, etc of the area they’ve been assigned (In many parts of North American, that would be difficult given the diversity here, but I digress). Here’s my controversial comment:
“Great post. Let’s face it; most of our apostles aren’t up to the job of running a worldwide church. Our mission program is a pathetic joke run on autopilot with a few Band-Aids like the new discussions. Most GA’s don’t give a rat’s ass about the efficacy of the program or the missionaries. If they did, it would be on a continuous improvement program like everything else they do care about is. We really need a mechanism for old worn out GA’s to step down like Lehi did to yield to a new generation of visionary leadership that will fix these things.”
A Capt Jack concurred w/ my comment, but Rusty and Steve H somewhat took me to task for being overly critical or at least for using inflammatory language. Because my comment is a general complaint about our missionary program and fossilized GA’s, as opposed to Ned’s more focused topic, rather than threadjack by responding further there, I decided to flesh out my complaints here at Mormon Open Forum, the bleed valve of the Bloggernacle.
The essence of my negative comment above is actually positive. I am truly convinced we can do much better job rather than continue following the same failed path, generation after generation, that just doesn’t work. I have a son on a mission now. It’s appalling to me how little the program has changed for the better since I served. And the missionary program was an anachronism even then. Before my son left, I read a letter his mission pres sent him about the importance of “exact obedience” being critical to success, yada, yada, yada. You know, à la Drawing on the Powers of Heaven crap of do A+B+C = lots of baptisms. Yes, I bit my tongue, because the obedience thing is probably good advice when one is in the training phase of one’s mission. But I did explain to him that once he was into the program, being an effective and happy (as opposed to totally obedient) missionary can get complicated.
As I’ve commented elsewhere in the Bloggernacle, I loved the people I was honored to serve and led my mission in effectiveness. I openly attributed my relative success to largely ignoring mission rules and teaching methods that didn’t fit the people and their culture. I was labeled a complete but lucky pagan by many “arrow” missionaries. As an example, in July and August, when virtually the whole country was on vacation and eating dinner at 10 p.m., my comps and I would often be out teaching people until 1 a.m. as the wine flowed freely (not for us) to facilitate discussion. Obviously we weren’t out the door at 9 a.m. in the summer. My slogan was work hard, play hard, and many a Friday night “pagan” missionaries would gather to play poker and have “molaroff” parties (chocolate frosted shortbread cookie eating contests) just to maintain our sanity. Those parties were much more invigorating towards our true callings than any Zone Conference.
The point of that digression is I did things on my mission for the benefit of the people I served and my fellow missionary volunteers that were at complete odds with church instruction. Many a mission Pres would have sent me home in a heartbeat for my insubordination, regardless of the offsetting effectiveness or good intentions of my innovations. In other words, our church leaders, either through inaction or action often can thwart the very objectives they set. To those of us in the “real world” it’s obvious if we’re assigned an objective, and the plan, tools or training we have don’t fit the tasks needed to complete the objective, it’s time to immediately change the game plan. The GA’s seem perfectly content just to passively accept continued failure.
Some other complaints: I’ve never met an RM who served in India, a country of over 1 billion living souls! If we have any missionaries there it’s far too few. Yes, I know there’s religious violence there, but since when did that stop us before? I’ll tell you what, rather than this “raise the bar” BS, we could just take all the former fornicating youth and send them to the hazardous duty countries like India. I was one of those bad boys, and I made a great missionary baptizing several people and finding several others that joined later and that was in Western Europe, considered a mission hell hole by many LDS. And then there’s the other super populous country, China. Yes, the Chinese government isn’t yet enlightened enough to move toward freedom of religion, but there are many things we could be doing to encourage the process. Then there’s our completely ineffective methods we use in the countries we’re already in like having our bike riding missionaries wear that dorky white dress shirt w/ tie and sometime w/ suit jacket. Honestly, would you want to talk to two cultish looking weirdo geeky dorks about anything? I’m all for some kind of missionary uniform that fits a particular country’s culture, but we’ve locked into really stupid period clothing for our poor missionaries. I remember finding more people to teach on the golf course in Europe on P-day than any other day of the week; I wonder why? In short, the GA’s are just a sleep at the switch and brain dead when it comes to running an effective missionary program.
So there it is, a missionary program frozen in a time wrap when so much else about the church has continuously improved. This is so much better a church overall than it was a generation ago. It’s obvious to me the GA’s care about some stuff and not other stuff. But missionary work is the primary responsibility of the apostles, and they are failing at their core responsibility.
An effective missionary program is a very high mental energy thing, that has to take into account a lot of local/national issues, etc, and old men of understandably diminished capacity just aren’t up to the task. The best missionaries add to the faith of others w/o tearing down what they already have. Saint Patrick, for example, converts an entire nation to Christianity in one generation, but would his methods have worked anywhere but Ireland at that time? I doubt it. So, to cut to the chase, my real beef is we have no retirement tradition for worn out apostles.
To the older apostles: early in the BofM father Lehi sets an example of stepping down to yield leadership to a new generation. So we already have a precedent for what you need to do. If you’re waiting for some word from the Lord, he has already given it to you. In other words, it’s ok to retire when you’re no longer up to the task. Draw a pension; you’ve more than earned it. You can do light duty church service if you care to, but yield the authority to younger people with the energy and vision the Lord needs to get the job done.
Steve, I couldnt disagree with you more. When I served a mission it was before they “raised the bar” and I am very glad they did it. The vast majority of missionaries (both M & F) I served with were there for the wrong reasons (never mind having mixed reasons) and never should have been allowed in the Temple in the first place. It was pretty much impossible to be spiritual because these guys were smuggling smokes and porn, sneaking off on their companions to schmooze sister missionaries, unhooking their odometers and road tripping, going to San Fran to pose in pics with hookers, and doing anything else they could get away with.
I had one comp who fornicated on his mission before he was with me, and I didnt find out until after I got home. I had the worst time with him. Nearly kicked the crap out of him a couple of times, and seriously thought about leaving or asking for a transfer to another mission. He wouldnt check referals unless they were women. He was a slacker and a parasite. He shoplifted. I hated that guy, and odds are he isnt active now.
And I didnt even get to send him home early, although I did send another butthole home early. My mission president wanted to discipline these jerks, but he knew if he sent them home they would be ostracized for life. So, he kept trying to love them and counsel them, which was largely a waste of time for everyone but him. He begged the Area Presidency GAs to not send these guys out, and then the GAs told the Stake Presidents and Bishops to stop sending them out, and it did nothing. Until they instituted the “raise the bar” program.
The Apostles did the right thing by raising the bar, and I wish it had been done a lot earlier than they did. The problem wasnt the apostles, it was all of the parents, Bishops, and Stake Presidents who thought that sending rebellious little Billy on a mission would do him some good and help him be spiritual. Thats bullcrap. Rebellious little billy dragged everyone around him down and wasted a lot of people’s time.
Being old doesnt necessarily make you out of touch, and being hip with the locals doesnt necesarily result in converts.
Perhaps the Church could do more to make the FT Missionary attire more culturally sensitive, but thats just superficial nonsense.
Your son’s mission president is absolutely correct, its all about living in the Spirit. If missionaries are off breaking the rules and doing whatever, then the Spirit will not help them, they will be left to their own means. Whether they baptize or not will be a matter of chance.
As far as the discussions go, the FT missionaries are no longer required to follow them by rote, they are to be taken as guidance and talking points which do not necessarily have to be followed.
The only way a FT missionary can be useful in the Lord’s hands is to be dedicated to the Lord’s work. I have a hard time seeing how binging on cookies while playing poker late into the night is the Lord’s will. The only sanity I saw on my mission was when I had a companion who was interested in doing the work, and we worked, and had genuine spiritual experiences, and saw people change their lives for the better. And some of that was while the companionship we were living with layed around napping and reading sci-fi library books as a “sanity break”. What a waste of time.
You want a better missionary program? Have the Bishops and Stake presidents pull together better YM/YW programs and then screen out the kids who shouldnt or dont want to be there. The problem is at the grass roots level.
Comment by Kurt — July 12, 2005 @ 2:44 pm
My opinion? The GAs should go on missions and the younger men should run the Church.
Comment by Margaret — July 12, 2005 @ 3:05 pm
Steve FSF, we must’ve been in the same mission. France Paris?
Comment by Steve Evans — July 12, 2005 @ 3:14 pm
My problem with “Raising the Bar” is that it mocks Christ’s atonement. Either people who repent of their sins (pre-mission or not) are forgiven, and their sins washed away, or they are not. With “Raising the Bar” repentance is apparently not enough to establish worthiness. Well, it’s enough for Christ, but not enough for the church. And that’s wrong.
Comment by Sue M — July 12, 2005 @ 3:17 pm
Steve (FSF) wrote: To the older apostles: early in the BofM father Lehi sets an example of stepping down to yield leadership to a new generation. So we already have a precedent for what you need to do. If you’re waiting for some word from the Lord, he has already given it to you. In other words, it’s ok to retire when you’re no longer up to the task. Draw a pension; you’ve more than earned it. You can do light duty church service if you care to, but yield the authority to younger people with the energy and vision the Lord needs to get the job done.
Steve, don’t take this the wrong way. But you need a fact-checker on your Book of Mormon ideas. There isn’t any verse that formally says Lehi ever stepped down. You might be thinking of King Benjamin. Also, it must be said that he was at the point where he knew he was going to die. This isn’t really a typical early retirement while he is still healthy.
The second problem really is that it isn’t our place to ask apostles to step down or retire. Speaking to members of the Quorum of the Twelve in the tone you are using simply isn’t appropriate. These men are not elected by the membership. They are appointed by Christ. It simply isn’t appropriate for us to tell them that they are less than qualified. If we look at the New Testament, the apostles certainly had their foibles. Christ chose them for His own reasons and according to His own wisdom. But they are instructed to follow the Master and if they are obedient they follow.
Comment by danithew — July 12, 2005 @ 3:21 pm
Margaret,
The younger men are running the Church, theyre the Bishops and Stake Presidents.
Sue M,
D&C 58:42 Behold, he who has repented of his sins, the same is forgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more. 43 By this ye may know if a man repenteth of his sins–behold, he will confess them and forsake them.
How can you know that someone has repented unless you impose a time limit so that you can determine the person really has forsaken them, as the Lord has said? Thats what “raising the bar” is all about. Its about making sure these people who are going to serve the Lord are actually there to serve. You cant just have someone fornicate the day before, then come in and say “I’m sorry I did it” and then say “OK, go to the Temple next week and then serve a mission valiantly” and everything will be cool. It just doesnt work that way, but thats the way a lot of Bishops and Stake Presidents were doing it.
Comment by Kurt — July 12, 2005 @ 3:39 pm
danithew,
Benjamin stepped down as King, the political leader (cf. Mosiah 2:30), but not as the spiritual leader of the people. He did not hand off the spiritual leadership of the people (note the urim and thummim is absent from the list in Mosiah 1:16) until his death 3 years later.
Comment by Kurt — July 12, 2005 @ 3:50 pm
Steve Evans,
J’ai fait une mission francophone, mais pas Paris. Pensez “l’acceng du Midi”. Je l’ai aimé. Comment as-tu su? The “pagan” vs. “arrow” jargon?
Comment by Steve (FSF) — July 12, 2005 @ 3:54 pm
I don’t know Kurt.
My brother had sex before his mission, made some mistakes, repented of it and was able to go on his mission a few months later - this was before Raising the Bar, obviously. He was repentant. He asked for forgiveness, and it was given.
He was a fantastic missionary, served diligently, converted alot of people, was DL, ZL, AP, etc. In addition to the good he was able to do for others, the mission did a lot of good for HIM. He came home strengthened and truly converted himself. Ten years later he is an extremely strong member of the church, still converting people, raising his family in the church, etc. I believe his mission helped to make him the man he is today, and this continues to bless the lives of others.
Today, this would not be possible, because of an abitrary time limit. Who says that someone who committed a sin seven months ago is any less repentant than someone who committed the sin one year ago? Are they less likely to commit the sin again because 1 year has passed?
I wonder if my brother had committed a sin, truly repented of it, and then died a month later, if he would be accepted in the CK, or if Christ would tell him not enough time had passed to prove that he did not intend to do it again?
Comment by Sue M — July 12, 2005 @ 4:09 pm
Sue M,
So instead of waiting “a few months”, he waits 12 months. Why would that have any impact on his service? What if he died 1 day before “a few months” was up? Sure, its arbitrary, but you have to pick some firm limit, and 1 year is reasonably long to wait, and people can do something constructive in the mean time (e.g., finish a year of school or something). If you dont impose some mandatory time limit, then you get the same abuse that was occurring before they raised the bar, you get loads of unrepentant mixed with the weakly repentant, who outnumber and gang up on the handful of dedicated missionaries. Not good, and thats why the bar was raised.
Comment by Kurt — July 12, 2005 @ 5:10 pm
What does the Lord want when it comes to converts, quality or quantity? Sure, he wants both, but which is the higher priority? The reason I ask is because the Savior taught that good fruit cannnot come from an evil tree. I cannot prove it, but I believe that a disobedient missionary who has great “success” in baptizing new converts will end up baptizing a largely different set of people than he would if he had the Holy Ghost with him. He might have more baptisms, but that doesn’t mean they are the baptisms that the Lord intended. Remember, only a few ever become fully active in the Church in the sense of marrying in the temple and raising a righteous posterity.
I think that doing missionary work the way the Lord directs through his priesthood will end up producing the best results.
Comment by John W. Redelfs — July 12, 2005 @ 9:39 pm
Wow, Kurt, every companion I ever had (1975 - 1977, France, Paris Mission) was a straight arrow in comparison with those on your list; I had one companion who wouldn’t speak to me for a period of probably 3 weeks or so, but I never found out why. I think he was just going through a rough time. He kind of apologized to me one day when we saw each other at a zone conference some months later. But none of the missionaries I ever met on my mission were anything like those. Holy cow.
Comment by Mark N. — July 13, 2005 @ 5:53 am
Mark N., I could go on and on ad nauseum. I’ll sum it up by saying my mission president once told me that if he could send home half of the missionaries of his choice in the mission then it would result in more work being done and more baptisms.
Hey, if Steve’s shennanigans of staying up late and eating cookies while playing poker was the extent of the disobedience, I would say “OK, yeah, whatever. Young guys do dumb things, its harmless.” But thats nothing compared to what I saw.
Since the Church raised the bar, I have seen a marked improvement in the average performance of the missionaries in my observations and experience with them. And I am glad of it.
Comment by kurt — July 13, 2005 @ 12:24 pm
All,
Some clarification is in order because my post is not an endorsement of less-than-diligent missionaries or sexually active single missionaries. The post is about a sucky missionary program that has been left behind while the rest the church continuously improves and my opinion as to the root cause.
For the record, my comps and I may have out worked any “arrow” missionary in my mission. I know we out taught and out baptized all the “arrows”. We just didn’t get a stomach ache doing it and managed to have a lot fun at the same time. To be fair, I went from junior comp to DL to ZL and never had the opportunity to be just Joe Senior Comp and thus probably avoided being saddled w/ one of the slackers.
I’m still wondering how Steve Evans pegged me as a Francophone missionary, albeit not Paris.
Comment by Steve (FSF) — July 13, 2005 @ 1:39 pm
Steve FSF– I would guess it was the molaroff comment. Are those French cookies? Also, you’ve mentioned your “south of France” missionary experience before.
Comment by NFlanders — July 13, 2005 @ 1:51 pm
Ned,
You may be correct, but I’d be surprised if that was it. Steve Evans will have to say.
To explain, a generation ago, I was an active organizer of the missionary frat party type get-togethers in Bordeaux, where the Molaroffs originated. To explain the term, there were a few brands of chocolate frosted shortbread cookies popular in the mission. I seem to recall one of the brands was Granola and I remember well the Canadian Elder who called them “Molars” for short. We never put cookie eating contests on the party agenda; it just sort of started and the term “Molaroff” was born. The phenomenon then slowly spread through the mission. I had heard about 15 years after I came home that the Moloroff phenomenon had become rather ritualized and spread into most, if not all, of the European francophone missions as missions were closed, reorganized, opened, etc, but I’d be amazed if the term were still in use today.
For background, it was a bike riding mission and one could pretty much eat anything and not gain weight. Between members and investigators, we ate very well too.
The “pagan” and “arrow” jargon that I thought night have tipped Steve E. off wasn’t common in our mission, I borrowed that from Paris missionaries I cooerponded with.
Comment by Steve (FSF) — July 13, 2005 @ 6:01 pm
Aside:
I served Marseille 92-94 and the molaroff tradition was alive and well!
Comment by Peter — July 14, 2005 @ 11:05 pm
Missionary work: Why are we ‘wasting’ good missionaries along the Wasatch area (or any other area with well established returned missionaries)? [Exception of temple square - where it is good to have the language capability].
Comment by anon for now — July 15, 2005 @ 3:00 am
Peter,
Marseille n’était pas dans ma mission, mais sans doute tu connais bien “l’acceng du Midi”.
Unbelievable that a spontaneous frat type thing like moloroffs would have spread so far and still going strong 11 years ago. I guess Ned’s probably right then as to what tipped off Steve Evans. As I commented above I had heard later moloroffs were far more ritualized than the originals. Well molaroffs then probably went as far as Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg and may still be going on, hard to believe.
Any Francophone RM’s out there serve in Rodez? It was the hell hole of our mission, cold, damp, in the Massive Central, with only one apostate inactive (less active in today’s jargon) guy. The guy openly advocated polygamy and said he’d come back to church when Pres Benson became Prophet because Benson would restore true authority. I figured him for some Church of the First Born washout that somehow escape excommunication being in such an isolated town. But I later heard that that guy became the first non-missionary Branch Pres there (I guess he was true to his word about the Benson thing) and today there’s supposedly a reasonable branch there.
Comment by Steve EM — July 15, 2005 @ 4:10 pm
Steve
Oui, je connais très bien l’accent, “Je vais acheter du paing demaing…!”
Rodez was closed to missionaries after the Toulouse mission closed (you hinted at the problems the area had with apostasy that led to a wholesale closing of several branches).
The city was re-opened during the early part of my time in France (I believe it was the northern-most city in the mission). I lived in a four-man with one of the missionairies that re-opened it and he mentioned a long-time, hard-core member (no mention of polygamist inclinations though) that came back as soon as the missionaries returned and the branch was opened. I suspect that the member you mentioned is one and the same!
PS: congrats on changing the handle. FSF was ugly
Comment by Peter — July 15, 2005 @ 5:06 pm
Peter,
Thanks. Fascinating. No, I didn’t know Rodez had closed for a time. There was a stable of perpetual investigators (dry Mormons, whatever you want to call them) in Rodez, and I know a few of them joined before I left the mission. Many of the perpetuals had more faith than our sole member, and one of them may have been the first to come out when the church came back. But when I heard in the mid 90’s that the apostate (former, I hope) was branch Pres and they had ~20 active members, I was absolutely floored! Beyond the stuff I mentioned above, he had the typical open French marriage (poligamie à la française) thing going on when I knew him. Hey, miracles still happen.
Rodez is so isolated most French people have never heard of it and many townspeople even spoke Langue D’oc amongst themselves rather than French back then. And how I missed the home cooked French meals you get accustomed to in the nice towns and all the frat stuff of larger cities. But know what sucked most about Rodez? Too f-ing cold to play golf in the winter. You know how hard it is to find people to teach w/o casual laid back warm weather activities like golf? Leaving Rodez was a bigger adrenal rush than being released from missionary service several months later.
Comment by Steve EM — July 15, 2005 @ 8:06 pm
Steve,
By the way, happy belated Bastille Day. Did you hear a Frenchie won yesterday’s stage of the Tour de France? Very fitting for Bastille Day, methinks
I hear what you’re saying about missionary ineffectiveness resulting from ineffective leadership. My personal opinion is that the approach taken is deliberate and doesn’t result from inaction or ineffective leadership. I believe the leaders of the Church are worried about uniformity in Church practice and procedure. I think the technical term for it is correlation, my wife and I call it McChurch. No matter where you go, everything about the way the Church is practiced is the same (relatively), including missionary proselyting methods.
Did you see a recent version of the Ensign that had a Q&A with Elder Nelson? One of the questions was along the lines of, “What is the biggest problem facing the Church today?”. His answer: apostasy. Elder Oaks just completed a full-time assignment in the Philippines. I bet Church practices there are a lot closer to those in Happy Valley than before he got there.
Keeping the missionary program uniform over time (let’s be honest, the “new” teach by the Spirit method is not revolutionary or even new, we pretty much followed this approach on my mission) and geography allows for a huge measure of control. I don’t know if this is the right approach. I personally think that the exporting of US Church culture is a big hindrance to people making a first approach to learn more about the Church. However, after having seen results of large scale apostasy in Southern France, the GA’s may have this one right. It was years before a lot of those towns were reopened.
Missions are really about converting missionaries. Any converts that are picked up in the process are a bonus. The GA’s want missionaries to be good, work hard, study lots and get a good foundation that will allow them to go home and be strong leaders. They want each missionary experience to be similar in order produce like minded members and reduce disputes among middle leadership, ward and stake leaders, and thereby prevent apostasy.
If the primary goal of missionary work was convert baptisms, the GA’s would send out people a little more mature than 19 year-old men and 21 year-old women.
Comment by Peter — July 15, 2005 @ 10:38 pm
The thing is, I think it makes sense to offer a temporary monastery-type experience for young people if that’s what people need. But it is hard for me to see why we should conflate the monastery-type purpose of converting missionaries with the purpose of bringing people into the church.
In particular, the convert-the-missionaries idea runs totally contrary to the raise-the-bar idea. Those who could most use conversion, presumably, are those who are now told that they need not apply.
I’m a lot more concerned with the church’s very weak organizational infrastructure in Latin America (don’t know the church in other non-US regions) than about numbers of converts, though. So something more than a reformed missionary program is needed here.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — July 18, 2005 @ 2:49 pm
Roasted Tomateos is right. The primary goal of missionary work is new converts. If we never had new converts, the church wouldn’t exist, nor would this Bloggernacle, etc. And you could forget about having a worldwide church too. As far as the effectiveness of our young missionaries, the only reason I’m a member is my Dad was stopped on a Manhattan street by “a kid eating an ice cream cone” asking if he knew anything about the Mormon church. My dad said the only reason he listen for even a second was that a kid eating an ice cream cone couldn’t be bad and certainly couldn’t be a religious nut.
I really like Peter’s “McChurch” term which tells how sad the current situation is. Our GA’s are locked in a pathetically dated 1950-60’s business model of global branding and haven’t updated the model w/ the “think global, act local” approach. Go into any McDonalds overseas today and you’ll finding the menu, products, etc are adapted to local tastes. The operating principal for the church should be anything goes that isn’t specifically prohibited by scripture.
Now, if one of the goals is to convert the missionaries, that’s a dismal failure too. Most missionaries I served w/ are sadly no longer LDS, and if that’s part of the apostasy Elder Nelson was referring too, he should look in his own backyard. You can squarly lay the blame for the apostacy of most I served w/ at the foot of Robert Hales (before he was an apostle) w/ his semi-infamous demoralizing “tough love” speeches and that satanic book Drawing on the Powers of Heaven that was pushed by some GA’s (probably Hales) at that time. The “tough love” speeches were too close to the end of my mission to impact me too much (I knew how to successfully proselyte in the South of France and Hales was full of shit) and that evil book wasn’t pushed big time until after I left. I love this site where you can openly write the truth.
Peter,
This is utter speculation on my part because I didn’t hear about mass member apostasy in the South of France and was only exposed to that one apostate (now presubaly repentant) on my mission, but could it be that he and other’s like him were Church of the First Born apostates that somehow missed getting ex’d in the early 60’s (or whenever it was) due to geographical isolation and their apostasy and extent thereof only became apparent decades later? I certainly never reported the Rodez guy’s apostacy. He was inactive; what would have been the point? Most of my mission was in cities like Toulouse and Bordeaux and their suburbs and, the active LDS in those cities seemed pretty conformist to me.
Comment by Steve EM — July 19, 2005 @ 8:48 pm
The church doesn’t care about its missionaries OR its converts. It cares about its IMAGE first and foremost. This is why it will seek out inactives and convene disciplinary courts on them (i.e. Simon Southerton).
The product stinks, no one wants it, and they’re trying desparately to wave the “family” banner in hopes that arch-conservative gay-unfriendlies will jump at the chance to be baptized for a 10 percent pay cut and a lifetime supply of ugly underwear.
The church wants young men and women as proselyting pawns so that when the preach “false doctrine” or say “I dunno” to the hard questions old biddies will have pity on them, young girls will fall in love with them (hormonal converts) and somehow they’lll see past the ignorance.
With the advent of the Internet, not too many are being dup.. er, baptized lately.
Comment by Kelly G. — July 20, 2005 @ 6:33 pm
Kelly G,
Very interesting and well-researched comments. It’s refreshing to hear someone that doesn’t make ridiculous generalizations about groups of well-meaning people. You know, you’ve really opened my eyes, your comments just make so much sense! Thanks for your intelligent insights, I think we’ve all grown a little smarter today.
Comment by Rusty — July 22, 2005 @ 4:40 am
I just discovered you blog, and this thread. Check out my podcast mission story if you get a chance (and haven’t already). It deals in some depth on this issue. You may also find my letter to Elder Oaks interesting (look for the link under my first podcast).
http://www.mormonstories.org
Great topic!
Comment by John Dehlin — September 9, 2005 @ 4:41 pm