LDS missions map

The LDS Church has got you covered! Look how it's covering the whole earth with its missionaries. They're especially going to be all over you if you're poor and uneducated because gullibility - OOPS! I MEAN HUMILITY!

Anti-Nephi-Lehies and war

Once upon a time there were some wicked Lamanites who had killed a hell of a lot of Nephites. One day they realized their evil ways, converted to the One True Church, and buried their weapons of death and destruction, promising to never ever touch them again. Isn't that amazing? They were so afraid that killing just one more person would assuredly and irreversibly condemn their souls to hell, that they knew it would be better for them to die than to fight ever again, even in their own defense.

Fortunately for the Nephites, this now entirely pacifistic clan of converts, the Anti-Nephi-Lehies, wasn't entirely against killing other people. Instead of taking up arms again, these folks sent out 2000 of their boys to slaughter their unconverted and overly-agressive cousins.

They totally kicked ass. And not a single one was killed in battle. So righteous sexy!

"Don't mind the swords, we got lot of Jesus love to share, neighbor."

The Bible - Joseph's translation

One of the absolute worst Bible translations out there today is the Joseph Smith Translation (JST), also known as the Inspired Version (IV).

Without any rigorous recourse to ancient texts in ancient languages, Joseph took to correcting the Bible and replacing the truths that had unfortunately (or by the cunning wiles of the Devil) been lost over the centuries. He remixed and deleted based on whatever (spiritual?) whim had taken him, but the real miracle of the project was how much Joseph added. He threw in entire chapters at times.

Some people have asked why we don't use this version of the Bible - myself among them. One would think that a scriptural project commanded by God to his prophet would qualify as canonical, right? God says "Hey, fix the Bible!," Joseph does it, and yet the LDS Church doesn't use it. Very weird.

Some say it's a copyright issue. The Community of Christ owns the copyright, so we can print it. Sucks, right? But just because the Community of Christ owns the copyright doesn't mean LDS Mormons can't buy it, does it? Why does the LDS Church have to own the copyright at all? This is about learning the true content of the Bible, not about which church is making money from scripture sales. Or at least it should be.

FAIR offers up another very interesting reason why we LDS saints can't adopt the JST: it "would be a stumbling block to converts." Too much newness for the new recruits. We wouldn't want to scare them off with the truth! I mean, we can believe Joseph's version is the most badass of the them all, but don't you dare tell any investigators or new converts about it until they're thoroughly convinced they're in The One True Church! It's not dishonest, it's practical.

"Holy shit, this book is awful!"

But isn't it silly that anyone should worry about this at all? The LDS version of the KJV has all sorts of JST footnotes and we even have some made up chapters published in their entirety in The Pearl of Great Price. That should be enough for any good saint. Why would anyone want the complete, unabridged version? People can be so greedy.

Anyway, what we really need is a modern translation of the JST! Something that fixes all the errors Joseph left in... But I doubt we'll get it.

Our big break

When you're a believing Mormon you're always looking for the big break, that event that catches the world's attention and gets people flocking en masse to the One True Church. Gordon Hinckley's interviews on 60 Minutes and the Larry King Show had everyone sure that finally the citizens of the United States would wake up to the Marvelous Work and Wonder of the Church! Hinckley's temple building blitz had us all wringing our hands in anticipation as well. Temples mean publicity, it's true, but they also mean God's conquered more land from which his holy powers of the Priesthood would be felt. The Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City provided an opportunity for numerous articles and reports throughout the world on Mormonism. Surely the Olympics would spread the True Gospel like never before! Then there was Mitt Romney running for president of the United States. A Mormon! A faithful member of the Church leading the most powerful nation on earth! Our time had finally come. Let's not forget the "I am a Mormon" publicity campaign! The nations of the world were obviously ready to learn at our feet. We should build a mall for our throngs of visitors and interested parties...

The reality is that none of these events have created a miraculous surge of conversions to the Church. The only surge in numbers we've seen recently came after the Church lowered the minimum age required to serve a mission and the number that surged was simply the number of missionaries in the field, but not the number of converts.

Most Mormons get over the disappointment of nothing exciting ever happening with the Church. We're very good at recovering our faith and adjusting our gaze back up to the horizon when current events fail to produce significant results. We don't let doubts hold us down. Our day will come.

Missionaries and "the elect"

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints love to pray for the missionaries and "those who are ready to receive the Gospel", the idea being that you can essentially pray people into the Church. Missionaries are the hope and dream of all members' Church growth fantasies so they tend to be the object of many o' prayer. It's not just families and friends who pray for the missionaries [to find people ready to convert], or the missionaries' ward members (the fact is most wards won't even mention their missionaries by name in prayers once they're out of sight), but all members are essentially "praying the missionaries" all the damn time. That's a lot of praying. If that weren't enough, the temple prayer circles always mention the missionaries because heaven knows how powerful those prayers are!

Mormons do better than praying only for people they know serving missions or "the missionaries" in general, they pray for the potential members as well. The missionaries and maybe the missionaries' parents pray for their current contacts as well as the un-contacted "elect", meaning those individuals who have been "prepared" for the message and "ready to receive" it. "Please bless them that their hearts might be softened!" Yes, please do. Behind this type of praying is the idea that God and his angels are out and about setting up people's lives so that when they run into the missionaries the Gospel message will make sense to them and they'll want to sign a life contract with the Church pretty much right away. You know, like that family who lost a child in a car accident will totally jump on the whole eternal family thing right away, whereas a couple that hasn't even had kids is going to take more time to come around.

So why does all this praying for successful missionaries and read-made Mormon converts make my list of doubts? Well because you would think with all those faithful prayers coming from so many directions for one united purpose (the glory of God's Kingdom on Earth) you might actually see missionaries who miraculously run into elect child of God after elect child of God all the time, but it just doesn't work like that. Missionaries convert the vulnerable and desperate, who more often than not disappear into inactivity. There was no line up of souls hungry and eager to feast upon the Word.

It makes one doubts the efficacy of prayer, the competency of God, the truthfulness of the work, and the future of the Church. However I knew that doubts had no place in the heart and mind of a true servant of God, so I just kept on praying for investigators and praying for the elect. My actions had to speak louder than my words. What else was there to do?

Converts

 Missionaries teaching the ideal family.

Throughout my mission I found myself reflecting on the kinds of people who were typically more open and receptive to the Church. I, like most missionaries, contacted and taught a fairly wide range of people personally, consulted other missionaries (both in and out of my mission) about their experiences, and heard of past conversions from a wide range of sources such as Church publications, older members, and people with relatives who were Mormon. I thought a lot about these people and their stories. I wanted to understand how the Spirit works in peoples' lives.

It was clear that the vast majority of people joining the Church were either poor, uneducated, immigrants, refugees, mentally unstable, lonely middle-aged women, unconfident young men, or people seeking a stronger political connection to the United States. Most were probably a combination of two or more (but hopefully not too many were middle-aged women/young men). Why? Why did the Gospel of Jesus Christ appeal almost exclusively to these disenfranchised types of people? Why wasn't the power of the Spirit and the beauty of the message able to reach people who were in more stable situations or who maybe even held some respectable level of influence in their community? 

I kept reminding myself that the Book of Mormon says rather explicitly that the rich, who are puffed up in the pride of their hearts, pretty much just plain suck, and that the poor are more open to God because they're humble. (To be honest, the main reasons we missionaries wanted to convert rich people was usually so they could help the Church out tithing-wise and take us on awesome trips when we came back after the mission to visit.)

Lehi having a hard time converting wealthy men.

Could Heavenly Father help us find and convert some healthy, financially stable, maybe even prominent individuals (if they're humble!) who would help build the Kingdom and send the Work forward? We sure hoped so.

Wrong neighborhood, elders! Go find people with $$$!

The folks at the top really hoped so, too. My mission president insisted, under direction of the area authorities, that we missionaries spend more time seeking out native, adult males who could help build up the body of Priesthood holders in the country. We called it "Priesthood contacting" and it took precedence over speaking to anyone who was female, foreign, unemployed, or single. Our goal was now quality, not quantity. So basically the only people in our teaching pool that we could hang on to were the uneducated men. Our days out proselytizing involved us annoying the hell out of grown men on their way to work, at lunch, on their way home, and while they were out trying to enjoy some family time.

No, no more single mothers! We have too many already!

The thing is IT FELT WRONG. All of it felt wrong. It felt wrong that we were bringing such unstable people into the Church when deep down we knew how many problems they had. The last thing those people needed was the Church with all its nonsensical rules and dogma to complicate their lives further. It also felt wrong that we were required to suddenly limit our contact with many people because they weren't family men with the right ethnicity. I had always thought that all were alike unto God. Maybe they are. Maybe it's just that not all are alike unto the Mormon Church.

Church growth

While on my mission I had access to at least a couple of decades worth of Ensigns in each of my apartments which was great because I couldn't have been more interested in catching up on the words of the prophets. General Conference editions (May and November issues) were by far the best for kids like me who wanted to feast on the words of the Lord's anointed. The GC issues were also of deep interest to my missionary self for the fact that they contained statistics on total Church membership and convert baptisms.

There was nothing I wanted more than to revel in the growth of the Church and the power of God to bring people to it through His missionaries (like me!), so one day I started going through and comparing the stats. Unfortunately they were less than impressive. Sure the general Church membership numbers had consistently gone up, but the conversion baptism numbers were fairly sporadic and generally in decline since the early 1990s.

(from the blog linked above)

What was going on? The rock carved from the mountain had some serious rolling forth to do! There were more missionaries than ever, but conversions were always hanging around 300 thousand per year. At this rate the Church wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Could it be possible that there's no real divine impetus behind the Church?

Now wait a second there, young missionary! Don't you doubt the Work! It's rolling forth at the Lord's pace. Your mission needs a more Utah-like presence of Mormons and you are there to make it happen!