To start with, I have not the slightest idea of how mission presidents are trained or oriented now. This is really about how I wish some of them had been given the chance to think thirty years ago.
Day one, for orientation, have them read the essay Pillars of My Faith and then write down three comments they would make to the author. Follow that by reading some comments with approval and explaining that some comments if they were made after training were completed would be cause to send a mission president home.
Then present some case studies of toxic cultures that arose and ask how those reflect on the mission presidents and what do those present think the training needs to include or teach to avoid each of the toxic mission cultures.
Then start normal training after a discussion of fiduciary duty and how it is owed to the elders and sisters a mission president is called to lead and care for.
(All of that said, from other discussions about things people wish were taught in training, I rather expect that this sort of thing is covered — the things that people have complained about vis a vis other settings and issues actually were taught, people just did not learn. So, this is just a thought exercise, combining ignorance with wishful thinking.).
What would you add to the list for what you would like a mission president called to care for your son or daughter to have been taught? Better, of the things they are taught, what would you like for them to have learned and remember?
Wheat & Tares 
In this context, I have to say the story about the elders in Brazil, where there is a focus in training on health and cleanliness, the budgets for missionaries includes paying for maids (who are very clean at home) and the elders still manage to completely miss the point …
illustrates the point that sometimes you can lead and train and hope and still …
And, for comparison to this post: http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2004/07/when-im-a-mission-president/
Another excellent thread is at:
http://zelophehadsdaughters.com/2009/05/29/missions-numbers-and-lying/
Have to give my daughter back her computer. Mine is still down.
It’s weird that you should use that particular random picture of a mission president, because I know him. He was my bishop when I was in primary. It happens he died in a car crash a few years ago while he was serving as mission president, actually.
Hawk found that, guess it is an interesting echo.
Common Sense, for starters.
We were close friends with a mission president in one area of the world in which we’ve lived, and we were close in proximity (though not particularly social) with another in another area.
Both presidents seemed to be well respected by their missionaries who spoke freely and positively about them. (I don’t imagine missionaries who had negative things to say would have said them to me, though in the city where we were friends with the MP, we had 10-12 missionaries in our home each week — with the president’s approval, of course.)
It seemed most of their training that they talked about was on finding and teaching, less on management of a flock of near-boys doing men’s work.
My own mission president (33 years ago — I did not know him well at all, except what I saw in zone conferences and a very occassional interview) told us in a training meeting that he didn’t like sister missionaries. He offered no reason for it, just stated that. The mission presidents I have known since then did not seem to hold that view. They both spoke highly of the sisters in a variety of settings both public and private.
One question I have wondered about: do non-US mission presidents get the same training? We had a native MP in one city where we lived overseas who just didn’t have the same broad church experience as the MP he replaced. He twice sought my counsel on how to deal with a particular missionary. (I saw this as his strength, by the way, to seek a North American perspective on his North American missionary. I doubt I was the only one he asked, and I encouraged him also to speak to whoever his contact was in the area presidency or at church headquarters.)
I wish Mission Presidents would learn more about other religions and be trained on how to respect other religions, while still having the goal to differentiate Mormonism from others (so they aren’t left to believe it is the Mormon church or the church of the devil as the only two options).
Mission presidents’ wives would likely be a good place to start some positive changes relative to the Church’s very outdated practices that exclude women from most of the actual “priesthood” leadership work. Such a change would not require any doctrinal or ordination changes, just simply let the wives handle more of the very challenging, very time-consuming responsibilities. Even though a mission president has two counselors to fulfill the letter of the law regarding “presidencies”, they often don’t function as helps in overseeing missionaries directly. There is no direct doctrine related to having a female step in even more than many of them do already in mission president realms. It might be a good way to ease into more female leadership in the Church, which is badly needed. I know my mission president’s wife (oh, so many years ago) started interviewing the missionaries, male and female, at each mission conference, and I, as a male, welcomed the time to converse and get her perspective and receive “blessings” from her.
My first mission president (in the 70s) co-presidented with his wife, fyi.
Thanks for the comments. I was hoping to generate some discussion without bashing people or the Church. As many have noted, most mission presidents are idealistic and serving without expectation of having done anything but served.
Like the rest of us, they are trying their best. Like the rest of us, they are human. Like the rest of us, they deserve love and respect.
I was a Stake Mission President and then a counselor to two full time mission presidents and had a chance to spend considerable time with the MPs and the full time missionaries. Two immediate suggestions come to mind. First, I think that faith is undermined by linking it to obedience (this would take too long to explain here) but this leads me to another belief that I arrived at from being in the trenches and that is
Second, do not make goals that involve the free agency of others. Goals as to what you can control sure but not, for example, goals as to how many of your investigators or contacts will be baptized.
I will add one more and this is a major pet peeve I have and there is a funny back story to it and that is LET THE MISSIONARIES SLEEP MORE. They are nearly all sleep deprived if they are “obedient” or super obedient.
Ron, if you visit again, I think that everyone here would like a guest post on the topic that think that faith is undermined by linking it to obedience (this would take too long to explain here)
BTW, it was fun to see a grouping of liberal LDS thinkers.
http://themormonworker.wordpress.com/author/joshuamadson/
Your side links were nicely grouped:
A Liberal Mormon
Abu Aardvark
Affirmation
Approaching Justice
CPT
Feminist Mormon Housewives
Forgotten Verses
Green Mormon Architect
ISM Palestine
Jesus Radicals
Juan Cole
LDS Anarchy Blog
LiberalMormon.net
MESJ
Missing Links
MormonGandhi
Sojourners
Sunstone
The Faithful Dissident
The Mormon Worker
The Radical Mormon
Truthout
Utah Legislature Watch
“Second, do not make goals that involve the free agency of others. Goals as to what you can control sure but not, for example, goals as to how many of your investigators or contacts will be baptized.”
Guess what, the AP’s have prayed about it, and God has told them that if every companionship is “really working” they should be able to have two baptisms by next zone conference (six weeks later).
At least, that was the experience from my Mission. I don’t say this to be insensitive, but I got to serve in an area where one of these hyperbaptizing AP’s had some success, but who’s converts had a whopping 0% retention rate – two of his baptized members were mentally challenged, and the other had been rushed through the whole process to the point he really didn’t understand what had happened. He felt manipulated. Of course, the retention issues was not a fault of the Elder, but of the local Ward that was “unsupportive” of the converts.
Setting baptismal goals really is a bad way to handle things, and leads to these types of outcomes. Tracting goals, follow ups, and other missionary activities, are definately better ways of setting goals.
I had four different mission presidents whom I would rate (in chronological order) as: excellent, poor, fair, and good. What distinguished each of them was their love and passion for the missionaries and the gospel–something that can’t be learned in a month-long training session. It took a life-time for those men to become what they were and acquire the skills they used.
Tracting goals, follow ups, and other missionary activities, are definately better ways of setting goals.
I found that goals of working hard were great goals to have, and that is the kind I had.
#11, thanks for the invitation Stephen. I will consider putting something together. I am not suggesting that mission rules and commandments do not have value. They do. To use Isaiah’s metaphor, one can be a sharp or dull axe. A sharp axe is more efficient. However, God can cut down a tree with even a dull axe. But if the missionary believes he can not be used to perform miracles if he gets up late that morning or has in impure thought then his faith is paralyzed to that extent–as we all sin/fall short.
this topic of faith and works we have all wrestled with and, of course, the significance goes well beyond missionary work.
I agree that it’s damaging to drum it into missionaries’ heads that the more obedient they are the more baptisms they will have. A does not lead directly to B. The white Bible doesn’t result in “the chosen” beating a path to your door.
I had a very good friend who was an AP in his northern European mission while I was serving in my very southern European mission. We were a high-baptizing mission for lots of reasons: people were just more open and religious where we were, we lowered the bar on things like church attendance (you could literally bring someone to church the first time and baptize them same day), and our missionaries were much more relaxed. In his mission, they were beating themselves up over their low numbers. When he saw our numbers he said “Wow, you guys must be really righteous.” I assured him that was absolutely NOT the case. I could have named about a dozen missionaries that his president would have sent home for behavior that went unchecked in our mission (various violations like music, renting cars, swimming, drinking, drugs, not wearing garments, fighting, having local girlfriends). My friend in northern Europe was very depressed for a lot of his mission due to this harmful teaching. I’m glad he was obedient (as I was for the most part), but it had honestly NO bearing on our success as missionaries.
“behavior that went unchecked in our mission (various violations like music, renting cars, swimming, drinking, drugs, not wearing garments, fighting, having local girlfriends).”
How about dating a married woman, getting her to leave her oppressive husband (but not divorce him), illegally marrying her, presumeably consumating the marriage, helping get her kids away from their grandparents and moved to Utah, then getting stabbed and shot to death by her enraged husband.
Who, pray tell, engaged in all of this unchecked behavior? One of my wild companions? Why, it was none other than the greatest missionary in the latter days, Parley P. Pratt.
Even the most superficial but honest look at the actual history of missionary work debunks the principle of strict obedience to arbitrary rules resulting in more conversions.
Jose above has hit it on the nail. You just can’t cure stupidity. I say don’t call mission presidents who need “training.”
I have mixed feelings about baptism goals. Baptism is something that the convert chooses, not the missionary, so that makes it questionable as a goal of the missionary’s. On the other hand, baptism of converts is what the missionary’s work is supposed to lead to, and ignoring that fact would make for an odd work planning. If I’m looking for a job, my goal is to be hired even though hiring is not my decision.