From a Facebook note of November 10, 2011, that I shared to The Awesome Mormons' Secret Society of Awesomeness in an attempt to start a renaissance of member missionary work. I don't think it had the desired effect, as only two people liked it and one person commented (urging people to read it - thanks for having my back, Tiffany). Still, I'd like to think that it had some ripple effect through somebody somewhere, and that maybe it can continue to do so by being posted here. The web page I was going to post at the end but never did was probably Cumorah International LDS Resources, which was responsible for getting me into a member missionary fervor in the first place.
Member Missionary Message
By C. Randall Nicholson
Member missionary work is extremely important and I have some thoughts to share about it that will hopefully benefit some of you. This isn't an "official" devotional; I just felt like doing it. I am open to feedback on both content and form and will probably be updating this anyway as more ideas and suggestions come to me.
Member missionary work is not a suggestion, but rather one of the fundamental parts of being a Latter-day Saint; for the church, like a living thing, cannot grow without nourishment. Yet it seems to me that as a whole, and of course I include myself in this statement and do not mean to condemn anyone anyway, Latter-day Saints fall far short of this commission (if you are an exception, then congratulations! But maybe my advice will still help you). Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists, two other missionary-minded minority religions, tend to do much better - in fact, Jehovah's Witnesses have to share their religion for a certain number of hours every month to even be counted on the membership records. Why aren't more of us, at least those of us who are active, performing on par with them? In most cases it isn't because we don't love the gospel and it isn't because of any reluctance to obey the commandments. There is one big thing which has stood in my way and probably many others' as well: fear.
Two main reasons for fear:
1. "People don't like the Church." This is not entirely an irrational thought. By my unofficial and unscientific estimate, ours is the third most mocked and criticized religion in the world (after Islam and Scientology; not necessarily in that order). BUT as of this last Halloween there are over seven billion people in the world. Just because a lot of them are bigots doesn't mean that most of them are. I suspect that most opinions of us range from nothing (for people who have never heard of us, which worldwide is most of them) to apathy (for people who have heard of us but know nothing about us) to admiration (for people who know some of us personally and have seen our Christlike examples). Chances are, whether those you speak to are interested or not, most of them aren't anti-Mormon and won't lose any respect for you if they know what you are. If they have run into anti-Mormon material and sincerely want answers, fairmormon.org will be your new best friend. But for an average person the most typical concerns of that ilk will be about polygamy or believing that we are homophobic or racist (for the latter, show them blacklds.org and the Facebook group Black Latter Day [sic] Saints).
2. "I don't know how to bring it up/what to say" or "What if I can't answer a question?" The first is a more in-depth topic that cannot be addressed in this summary paragraph. As for the second, there's no shame in having to say "I'm not sure, but I'll find out and let you know". In fact it can be advantageous because it provides a window for future conversation. Of course, if the question you couldn't answer was what's the name of our prophet, then there's a problem. But as long as you know the basic story of the Restoration and the gist of the Articles of Faith, you can teach them what's most important. Make sure your gospel knowledge is up to snuff. "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men." D&C 11:21 For that matter, make sure your own testimony is strong. Don't preach things that you don't believe yourself because it's dishonest and the Spirit will not be with you. The Spirit, remember, is what converts people - not the missionaries.
Now, and this is the main reason I felt compelled to write this document, I would like to share some things I have recently learned firsthand about member missionary work. When I realized what a problem we have with it, I also realized that I needed to improve myself before exhorting others, and that's what I've tried to do although I still have a long way to go.
The scriptures command us "to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death..." Mosiah 18:9. Nowhere do they state anything along the lines of "wait for the Spirit to guide you to a specific person". We don't wait for spiritual promptings before we pray, read the scriptures, go to church etcetera, so why is this commandment any different? Certainly there are some who have been specially prepared by the Spirit to receive the gospel now, but I think it's more often the case that they aren't looking for it because they don't know there's something to look for, and they don't know there's something to look for because no one's ever told them. Many converts are approached several times before accepting the gospel, so even if the time isn't now, a seed may be planted. As I write this I'm chatting with a Mexican convert of three months who joined because of a Book of Mormon she received seven years ago. She was feeling sad one day, opened it to a random page and it said exactly what she needed to hear. (I met her in the Spanish AMMSA, La Super Sociedad Secreta SUD. Tell all your Spanish-speaking LDS friends about it.)
On a similar note, don't assume that someone who is curious about the church will necessarily take the initiative to ask you (especially if you haven't been open enough about your LDS-ness). About a month ago I ate dinner with a Taiwanese girl here at Utah State. Upon learning that she is only here for one semester, I decided there was no time to waste in sharing the Gospel. Desperately I racked my brain for ways to broach the subject and finally I settled on "Did you know any Mormons in Taiwan?" (In places where you're not currently surrounded by Mormons, this might be sort of random and need a bit more lead-in.) She said yes, she knew one who was an exchange student from Utah. And then the questions came. "What's a mission?" "What's a temple?" "Is it true that you can't drink tea?" And come to find out that even though she's a "Buddha-hist" (as she insisted on calling it) she has visited many churches to learn about many religions, so inviting her to visit ours with her roommates the next day was a piece of cake. At about that time she left in a hurry saying "Yes, yes" and giving me a look that was a weird cross between pure joy and exasperation. I haven't seen her since then (should've gotten her number) and have no idea how this story continued, but so far it's nice don't you think?
How to broach the subject? It's easy if you're surrounded by Mormons and it can come up naturally in myriad ways. Other than that, though, whatever you say will probably be contrived to some degree or another. But you know what I've learned? That's okay. It may be awkward and fearful but you just need to get past that point, and I doubt anyone will say "That's so random, what's wrong with you?" (Actually, now that I think about it, Mitt Romney or the Book of Mormon musical are great conversation starters.) This can also apply to inviting people to church and stuff. A while ago this girl saw a picture of me with this guy and she was like "Where do you know him from? I haven't seen him in forever." And I said (in summary) "From church. You could come visit and see him sometime." And she was like "Um okay..." and I though "D'oh! That was so stupid and awkward." I forgot about it until a month later when she came up to me in school and said "I'm ready to go to your church now." And then she had a wonderful time and reportedly said in Young Women's, "You might as well tell me about this whole temple thing cause I'm probably going to end up getting baptized." It was amazing, to say the least. Then she up and moved to Vermont. If only I'd brought it up sooner - and let me point out, again, that as far as I'm aware there was no spiritual prompting even hinting that she would be a good person to share the gospel with. Myself, I wouldn't have even put her on the list.
Care about people. One thing full-time missionary work and member missionary work have in common is that they are not about baptisms. When people are rushed to baptism without their needs being considered and met, three out of four will go inactive within months; usually so inactive that they don't even consider themselves LDS and shouldn't be on our membership records. (This is a huge problem in our church. If you don't believe me, check out your ward roster sometime and compare it to your actual ward attendance.)
Whether talking with your life-long best friend or a random person on the street, you need to be at the point where you care about them as a person and will respect whatever (righteous) decisions they make. Your goal is not to baptize them, it is to share the gospel. I've discovered this while talking with my Hindu friends about religion and realizing that I am genuinely interested in their beliefs and am sharing mine for their edification, not to convert them. What people do with what you share is up to them and there's time for them to change their decision later, as I discussed above. If they do decide to join the church, they shouldn't be baptized yet if they haven't even made it to sacrament meeting for a few weeks in a row. Do you seriously think they'll suddenly start showing up once they're official members? Worldwide experience has proven that this is not the case.
Use the internet. Create a mormon.org profile and don't be afraid to show your friends. Also, any shmoe can make a website or blog these days - if you are so inclined, this is a great opportunity to share the gospel. I'm pretty sure that's why God gave us the internet in the first place. Your website or blog doesn't have to be all about church stuff of course but don't shy away from mentioning your membership and anything relevant that comes up. You can link to church websites too but I suspect most of your acquaintances would rather read things in your own words first. That's why this "I'm a Mormon" campaign focuses on the individual members; people are more likely to trust and identify with them than with the church's P.R. department.
There's a lot of false and misleading information about us out there, my friends, that has ruined many an investigator's interest. The only way to combat it is to outnumber it with positive and correct firsthand information. Comment on online articles and stuff and don't be afraid to speak up when people are dissing us, but avoid contention and retaliation and don't get sucked into an argument that will waste all your time. I spent three days recently using every minute of my spare time arguing with critics at the expense of school, social life and everything else. The Spirit was not present and it was hell. Don't fall into that trap.
When talking about the gospel, don't use words that would be confusing to "normal" people unless you explain them first. Things like stake, quorum, dispensation, investigator, consecration, etc. do not come up in normal conversations, at least not in the contexts we use for them (not to mention our hundreds of abbreviations). If talking to someone with a non-Christian background you'll need to go even more basic. My Hindu friends are more familiar with Islam than Christianity and the parallel they draw with Joseph Smith is Mohammed, not a biblical prophet. Remember to only teach doctrine and not speculation. And getting a two-way give and take discussion is better than a lecture (care about the people, remember) unless they're just super curious and full of questions.
I would say use the Spirit to discern if, when and how to bear a testimony. Myself, I haven't felt it's appropriate yet for any of my situations. If someone doesn't yet have a religion or is looking into ours with potential thoughts of joining, saying "I know this church is true" may be okay. But if they have their own religion and just want to learn, that might seem arrogant and insensitive and just saying "I believe very strongly in this church, I love it, it has blessed my life" etc. is probably better.
In conclusion, I would like to post a web page with more missionary resources than you could ever want but their server is down at the moment. Check back for it soon. Anyway, if anything I've written has enlightened or inspired you in the slightest, don't just brush it off and go on with your life. ACT ON IT. Let's go out and do this, for the field is white, all ready to harvest. This spiel has not been endorsed by the church and I absolve them of all responsibility for anything I've said that is wrong. Anything and everything that is right, however, I say in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Read more of my essays here.
Member missionary work is not a suggestion, but rather one of the fundamental parts of being a Latter-day Saint; for the church, like a living thing, cannot grow without nourishment. Yet it seems to me that as a whole, and of course I include myself in this statement and do not mean to condemn anyone anyway, Latter-day Saints fall far short of this commission (if you are an exception, then congratulations! But maybe my advice will still help you). Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists, two other missionary-minded minority religions, tend to do much better - in fact, Jehovah's Witnesses have to share their religion for a certain number of hours every month to even be counted on the membership records. Why aren't more of us, at least those of us who are active, performing on par with them? In most cases it isn't because we don't love the gospel and it isn't because of any reluctance to obey the commandments. There is one big thing which has stood in my way and probably many others' as well: fear.
Two main reasons for fear:
1. "People don't like the Church." This is not entirely an irrational thought. By my unofficial and unscientific estimate, ours is the third most mocked and criticized religion in the world (after Islam and Scientology; not necessarily in that order). BUT as of this last Halloween there are over seven billion people in the world. Just because a lot of them are bigots doesn't mean that most of them are. I suspect that most opinions of us range from nothing (for people who have never heard of us, which worldwide is most of them) to apathy (for people who have heard of us but know nothing about us) to admiration (for people who know some of us personally and have seen our Christlike examples). Chances are, whether those you speak to are interested or not, most of them aren't anti-Mormon and won't lose any respect for you if they know what you are. If they have run into anti-Mormon material and sincerely want answers, fairmormon.org will be your new best friend. But for an average person the most typical concerns of that ilk will be about polygamy or believing that we are homophobic or racist (for the latter, show them blacklds.org and the Facebook group Black Latter Day [sic] Saints).
2. "I don't know how to bring it up/what to say" or "What if I can't answer a question?" The first is a more in-depth topic that cannot be addressed in this summary paragraph. As for the second, there's no shame in having to say "I'm not sure, but I'll find out and let you know". In fact it can be advantageous because it provides a window for future conversation. Of course, if the question you couldn't answer was what's the name of our prophet, then there's a problem. But as long as you know the basic story of the Restoration and the gist of the Articles of Faith, you can teach them what's most important. Make sure your gospel knowledge is up to snuff. "Seek not to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word, yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men." D&C 11:21 For that matter, make sure your own testimony is strong. Don't preach things that you don't believe yourself because it's dishonest and the Spirit will not be with you. The Spirit, remember, is what converts people - not the missionaries.
Now, and this is the main reason I felt compelled to write this document, I would like to share some things I have recently learned firsthand about member missionary work. When I realized what a problem we have with it, I also realized that I needed to improve myself before exhorting others, and that's what I've tried to do although I still have a long way to go.
The scriptures command us "to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death..." Mosiah 18:9. Nowhere do they state anything along the lines of "wait for the Spirit to guide you to a specific person". We don't wait for spiritual promptings before we pray, read the scriptures, go to church etcetera, so why is this commandment any different? Certainly there are some who have been specially prepared by the Spirit to receive the gospel now, but I think it's more often the case that they aren't looking for it because they don't know there's something to look for, and they don't know there's something to look for because no one's ever told them. Many converts are approached several times before accepting the gospel, so even if the time isn't now, a seed may be planted. As I write this I'm chatting with a Mexican convert of three months who joined because of a Book of Mormon she received seven years ago. She was feeling sad one day, opened it to a random page and it said exactly what she needed to hear. (I met her in the Spanish AMMSA, La Super Sociedad Secreta SUD. Tell all your Spanish-speaking LDS friends about it.)
On a similar note, don't assume that someone who is curious about the church will necessarily take the initiative to ask you (especially if you haven't been open enough about your LDS-ness). About a month ago I ate dinner with a Taiwanese girl here at Utah State. Upon learning that she is only here for one semester, I decided there was no time to waste in sharing the Gospel. Desperately I racked my brain for ways to broach the subject and finally I settled on "Did you know any Mormons in Taiwan?" (In places where you're not currently surrounded by Mormons, this might be sort of random and need a bit more lead-in.) She said yes, she knew one who was an exchange student from Utah. And then the questions came. "What's a mission?" "What's a temple?" "Is it true that you can't drink tea?" And come to find out that even though she's a "Buddha-hist" (as she insisted on calling it) she has visited many churches to learn about many religions, so inviting her to visit ours with her roommates the next day was a piece of cake. At about that time she left in a hurry saying "Yes, yes" and giving me a look that was a weird cross between pure joy and exasperation. I haven't seen her since then (should've gotten her number) and have no idea how this story continued, but so far it's nice don't you think?
How to broach the subject? It's easy if you're surrounded by Mormons and it can come up naturally in myriad ways. Other than that, though, whatever you say will probably be contrived to some degree or another. But you know what I've learned? That's okay. It may be awkward and fearful but you just need to get past that point, and I doubt anyone will say "That's so random, what's wrong with you?" (Actually, now that I think about it, Mitt Romney or the Book of Mormon musical are great conversation starters.) This can also apply to inviting people to church and stuff. A while ago this girl saw a picture of me with this guy and she was like "Where do you know him from? I haven't seen him in forever." And I said (in summary) "From church. You could come visit and see him sometime." And she was like "Um okay..." and I though "D'oh! That was so stupid and awkward." I forgot about it until a month later when she came up to me in school and said "I'm ready to go to your church now." And then she had a wonderful time and reportedly said in Young Women's, "You might as well tell me about this whole temple thing cause I'm probably going to end up getting baptized." It was amazing, to say the least. Then she up and moved to Vermont. If only I'd brought it up sooner - and let me point out, again, that as far as I'm aware there was no spiritual prompting even hinting that she would be a good person to share the gospel with. Myself, I wouldn't have even put her on the list.
Care about people. One thing full-time missionary work and member missionary work have in common is that they are not about baptisms. When people are rushed to baptism without their needs being considered and met, three out of four will go inactive within months; usually so inactive that they don't even consider themselves LDS and shouldn't be on our membership records. (This is a huge problem in our church. If you don't believe me, check out your ward roster sometime and compare it to your actual ward attendance.)
Whether talking with your life-long best friend or a random person on the street, you need to be at the point where you care about them as a person and will respect whatever (righteous) decisions they make. Your goal is not to baptize them, it is to share the gospel. I've discovered this while talking with my Hindu friends about religion and realizing that I am genuinely interested in their beliefs and am sharing mine for their edification, not to convert them. What people do with what you share is up to them and there's time for them to change their decision later, as I discussed above. If they do decide to join the church, they shouldn't be baptized yet if they haven't even made it to sacrament meeting for a few weeks in a row. Do you seriously think they'll suddenly start showing up once they're official members? Worldwide experience has proven that this is not the case.
Use the internet. Create a mormon.org profile and don't be afraid to show your friends. Also, any shmoe can make a website or blog these days - if you are so inclined, this is a great opportunity to share the gospel. I'm pretty sure that's why God gave us the internet in the first place. Your website or blog doesn't have to be all about church stuff of course but don't shy away from mentioning your membership and anything relevant that comes up. You can link to church websites too but I suspect most of your acquaintances would rather read things in your own words first. That's why this "I'm a Mormon" campaign focuses on the individual members; people are more likely to trust and identify with them than with the church's P.R. department.
There's a lot of false and misleading information about us out there, my friends, that has ruined many an investigator's interest. The only way to combat it is to outnumber it with positive and correct firsthand information. Comment on online articles and stuff and don't be afraid to speak up when people are dissing us, but avoid contention and retaliation and don't get sucked into an argument that will waste all your time. I spent three days recently using every minute of my spare time arguing with critics at the expense of school, social life and everything else. The Spirit was not present and it was hell. Don't fall into that trap.
When talking about the gospel, don't use words that would be confusing to "normal" people unless you explain them first. Things like stake, quorum, dispensation, investigator, consecration, etc. do not come up in normal conversations, at least not in the contexts we use for them (not to mention our hundreds of abbreviations). If talking to someone with a non-Christian background you'll need to go even more basic. My Hindu friends are more familiar with Islam than Christianity and the parallel they draw with Joseph Smith is Mohammed, not a biblical prophet. Remember to only teach doctrine and not speculation. And getting a two-way give and take discussion is better than a lecture (care about the people, remember) unless they're just super curious and full of questions.
I would say use the Spirit to discern if, when and how to bear a testimony. Myself, I haven't felt it's appropriate yet for any of my situations. If someone doesn't yet have a religion or is looking into ours with potential thoughts of joining, saying "I know this church is true" may be okay. But if they have their own religion and just want to learn, that might seem arrogant and insensitive and just saying "I believe very strongly in this church, I love it, it has blessed my life" etc. is probably better.
In conclusion, I would like to post a web page with more missionary resources than you could ever want but their server is down at the moment. Check back for it soon. Anyway, if anything I've written has enlightened or inspired you in the slightest, don't just brush it off and go on with your life. ACT ON IT. Let's go out and do this, for the field is white, all ready to harvest. This spiel has not been endorsed by the church and I absolve them of all responsibility for anything I've said that is wrong. Anything and everything that is right, however, I say in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Read more of my essays here.
