I’ll admit right at the start, I didn’t serve a mission. And I’m a woman. So I was at the receiving end of neither the expectation nor the condemnation. Still, I have a husband and brothers who served missions, and a nephew currently serving, and the eldest of those brothers has always disliked what he’s described as ‘the cult of the RM’. See, it’s not even my phrase!
So, what did my brother mean by it?
He’s referring to the expectation so many have that because a guy served a mission it must mean he’s a wonderful person, he’s going to be a great leader, will make a wonderful husband. And the opposite, the feeling many hold that those who don’t serve are somehow less worthy, shouldn’t be considered as leadership or husband material. You know the kind of thing.
Now, there is no doubt a mission can be tough. Craig Harline’s book highlights some of those discouraging things. Hopefully, RMs will have benefited from that in some ways. That doesn’t mean that those who don’t serve don’t have good reasons for it, and haven’t grown in other ways, by virtue of their different experiences.
Last year there were a number of posts about the difficulties missionaries who return early can face. And there’s no doubt that the cultural expectations of their communities can cause them problems. But I don’t think they always do those who return after serving a full two years too many favours either.
This week a couple of guys from our ward will return from their missions, having served two years. Adjusting to normal life can take a while I know. And I’m pretty sure they can rightly feel proud of their achievement. I don’t want to minimise that. But still, I’m reminded of a talk given in our ward not so long ago by a recently returned RM from elsewhere in the stake. I’m not sure it isn’t contributing to the cult of the RM to have returning missionaries be sent to speak at wards other than their own within a stake. Anyhow, there was an awful lot that made me cringe and wince.
What was it I really didn’t like?
- He appeared to exude an attitude of entitlement, with an accompanying swagger.
- His constant references to obedience, as a virtue in and of itself, were like nails on a chalkboard.
- I definitely didn’t like the way he was eyeing up the Young Women in the ward. My visceral reaction was: Stay away from my daughter! Leave our YW alone!
As the most recent specimen of a new RM to cross my path, he was not encouraging, and I didn’t regard him as a great advertisement for the benefits of a full-time mission. He was only 20. He has time to improve. But I hope I won’t find my nephew, and the lads returning to our ward this week nearly so off-putting.
My questions for you are:
- How common is this attitude of entitlement amongst RMs?
- Is it ‘the cult of the RM’ in action, dependent on the personality of the RM, or an attitude picked up from their Mission President?
- Is it more prevalent than it used to be?
- What have you observed in returning missionaries that you either liked or disliked?
- How did you deal with things you didn’t like?
- If you are an RM, what helped you get back into the swing of normal life?
- Did you feel entitled?
- How could your family and ward members have best helped you?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
My personal experience is so atypical that it’s not a good indicator – I was baptized at 20, got engaged to the woman who introduced me to the Church, and I was in the MTC 13 months after my baptism. My ward and stake paid for my mission. My mother, a devout Catholic, told me to see a psychiatrist when I told her I was going. (In retrospect, maybe not a bad idea.) When I returned, my fiancée (who had also served a mission at the same time) and I were married. It’s been 25 years+ now. So unlike most missionary elders, I didn’t even get Dear Johnned. 🙂 I had a very hard mission; I hated it. It was almost the worst two years of my life. It took me years to come to grips with the feeling of failure. I certainly didn’t feel entitled when I returned. I very nearly got down on my knees and kissed the carpet at JFK, and my real family and ward family helped by just being normal about it. My non-member parents had no idea how to lionize me anyway, so it was easy for them.
In my observation, however, with the young men in my non-Utah, Midwestern US ward (including my two eldest sons), if a YM is a jerk as a teenager, he usually returns a jerk. Possibly a little less of one. If a YM is a good kid, he generally comes back as a decent young man. Possibly a little less of one. 🙂 Mostly, any arrogance or swagger seems to be related to relief at having returned without screwing up anything major, and doesn’t last long.
That said, I am not fond of the “traveling RM show,” and I think it does tend to foster the impression that the young elder has just done something truly monumental. For him, he probably has, but let’s face it – RMs are a dime a dozen, and most of us served average, run of the mill, everyday-honorable missions. We weren’t freaking Wilford Woodruff.
The fact that most of our YM quickly depart from Minnesota to BYU, where they are in no way unique except for having funny accents, probably does more to cut them down to size than anything we as ward members could do. However, I think being politely interested without fawning is my usual response.
To the eternal credit of my stake leadership and our wonderful ward, when my second son returned three months early with anxiety problems (after being forced home by the Missionary Department and his MP, basically) he was welcomed with open arms and was never, to the best of my knowledge, ever made to feel as if he hadn’t completed his mission. In the Lord’s eyes, he had.
I went to work in ‘OilPatch’ right away after getting home from my mission, so I avoided the ‘tour’ for the most part. By the time I restarted college some time later, my hair had lengthened and I had a full mustache and beard (not uncommon for a ‘rig pig’), so many might have considered me as having “gone to seed”. Never mind that I’d saved up enough to pay for the remainder of my schooling in that short a time.
IMO, “RM” should NEVER be interpreted as “Ready for Marriage”, even though the kid has been kept from “Close Encounters of the Best Kind” for two years and is understandably “anxious”. Since his schooling and/or training has been put off while he’s served the Lord, it begs the obvious question of how he’d support his family. And sorry, folks, but living in the structured routine that is typical of a Mormon mission does NOT, IMO, prepare anyone for marriage. That’s mostly about making choices, and not always between ‘bad’ and ‘good’, but which of the ‘good’ is best. Takes not having everything but the manner in which one goes ‘potty’ spelled out for you. Better to let the young fellow, who would be only 20 anyway under the new rules, gain greater experiences AND earning ability. IMO, no young fellow really has any business getting hitched PRIOR to age 25 (the age that has been picked for induction into the dubious “Menace to Society” Society), and Thirty is about ideal.
How common is this attitude of entitlement amongst RMs?
Returned missionaries come by this entitlement honestly. They get it as missionaries from being put in a system that values proclaiming the gospel over all other things. Missionaries are, quite literally, placed in the center of their own universe by the institution that sends them into the field. I’m not really sure how to scale back that effect.
Is it ‘the cult of the RM’ in action, dependent on the personality of the RM, or an attitude picked up from their Mission President?
I’m really not sure what you’re asking.
Is it more prevalent than it used to be?
No. I think the rise of the cult[ure] came in the 80’s (would be my guess), but it was definitely established by the time I was old enough to be aware of it in my teens (in the mid 90’s). I don’t think it has increased in magnitude since then–though my patience for it has worn thinner.
What have you observed in returning missionaries that you either liked or disliked?
I like how committed they are to the idea of maintaining that same level of spiritual connection. But I really dislike how clueless they are about how real life actually works. Some of that, of course, is distaste for the fact that I recognize myself having played that same role when I returned.
How did you deal with things you didn’t like?
I ignore them (the missionaries, not the things I don’t like)
If you are an RM, what helped you get back into the swing of normal life?
Honestly, the event that snapped me out of post-mission fantasyland was trying to marry the first girl I fell in love with and having it fall apart. It forced me to do a lot of soul searching, and that led me to realize I was an idiot. I’ve been an opinionated idiot ever since.
Did you feel entitled?
Yep. Still do. But that might be more of a personality issue than a mission related issue.
How could your family and ward members have best helped you?
I don’t think there’s anything you can do. I remember some things that really bugged me. I remember coming back and my dad was excited to tell me all about the surround sound system. I couldn’t care less. There were more important things in the world, like families starving. I remember him looking disappointed when I didn’t share his excitement. To his credit, he let it go. I think he understood that I wasn’t ready to leave so much poverty behind and jump right back into first world luxury. But I could tell he didn’t really understand me.
There was one family that laughed at me because I hated the Shrek when someone talked me into watching it within a week of my return. I avoided them after that. On one level, I knew it was a movie I would have loved had I seen it pre-mission. But I wasn’t the same kind of person at the time, and no one seemed to appreciate that. (Ironic now that I’m so dismissive of post-missionary syndrome now)
But if we’re going to help these kids transition, we need to give them a positively constructed dose of reality.
My wife and I continued to attend Institute after we were married, and one kid came back from a mission and would talk about how those would be the best two years of his life. I would usually add after the comment “at least to that point. For me, the next two years got better. And the two after that were even better.”
We also need to let them be weird and come to terms with non-mission life on their own. It’s a world they need to explore. They have to find their own comfort limits. And we have to understand that it’s going to take them a few years to figure it out.
I think the only line we should draw is when they get overly assertive that how they view things in the post-mission haze is the true and living way to view things.
If we really want to reduce post-mission syndrome, we need to change the way they serve. They need to do more interfaith work, more community service, and less time indoctrinating themselves against other faith systems. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.
woah. That was longer than I intended it to be.
I live in utah, and the entitlement doesn’t start with the RMs. it starts with the missionaries in the field. Im sure this is different in africa or where ever, but the missionaries in utah are spoiled rotten. They are treated like rock stars by 65% of the inhabitants of the state. and the other 35% don’t care one way or another. no hardships, nothing new to learn. They have treated me with such condescension.
These missionaries came over and told me a story about how they saw a homeless man die. they were laughing and said they thought it was hilarious. I saw nothing christlike about them.
Are they 18 year old kids? yes. literally. the senior companion is still 18 in this particular pair. will they grow up to be better? no doubt. but the culture isn’t doing them any favors or helping them grow up.
We are really being hard on returning missionaries (and generalizing a lot of different persons and experiences). Generally, they are 20-21 year old young men and young women. They come from a vast array of backgrounds. They all carry different baggage (whether they are aware of it or not). I am certain most have learned a few things while on their missions (no matter how long they served), and I know that all of them have a lot yet to learn in their journeys. What they need is our love, our support, our gentle guidance, good mentors, and a chance to overcome their own weaknesses– not criticism and judgment and stereotypes.
They’re too young. I didn’t appreciate one RM who came back to the ward, loud and insensitive, to tell the congregation that only Mormons know how to have families and how sad and pathetic the people in X country were because to often the parents were not married and they did not have real families. I had been divorced less than a year; of course one of my teenagers left the chapel crying at these ‘real family’ pronouncements. I’m quite amazed someone could serve two years in a developing country and come out so self-satisfied and superior, so callous, and so insensitive. He stayed in his bubble and pickled in it.
I have been generally pretty impressed / pleased with the missionaries in our area, even the 18 year olds. They are very young, but they mostly have been decent kids, not arrogant, etc. What I noticed was when I attended BYU, the male RMs often were very arrogant as if they were in high demand as eligible marriage material, and it appears they were right because at least back then, nobody would marry someone who hadn’t served. I do think that’s softening now, though.
My 19 year old son has not gone on a mission. We live in the Mormon belt and his choice has cost him a community. He belongs nowhere. Girls won’t date him, his friends are serving, those who come home early or don’t serve find they are judged and alone. Many of them stop attending church after they are asked for the 100th time when they are leaving. Although our bishop and stake president have rightly pointed out that a mission is not a saving ordinance and that many of the twelve did not serve missions, my son still feels like an outsider. I’m not sure what the answer is, but my experience with a non missionary son is that the church views them as unavoidable casualties of the culture.
New Iconoclast, That’s wonderful. I’m so glad your son was so well received. I was hoping there would be some good experiences forthcoming.
“if a YM is a jerk as a teenager, he usually returns a jerk”
That may of course be the explanation for my experience with the newly returned RM who spoke in our ward. Since he wasn’t a ward member, I didn’t have a teenage before with which to compare the after. Which seems to me another reason not to have them tour the stake.
“being politely interested without fawning is my usual response.”
Sounds good to me.
Douglas, sounds like getting stuck right into working served you well.
Benjamin, “Returned missionaries come by this entitlement honestly. They get it as missionaries from being put in a system that values proclaiming the gospel over all other things. Missionaries are, quite literally, placed in the center of their own universe by the institution that sends them into the field.”
I think this answers my question to which you responded – “I’m really not sure what you’re asking.” By the cult of the RM I’m really talking about the culture that does just that, makes serving a mission the ‘be all and end all’ of a YMs life right up until they’ve finished serving. But I was also wondering whether what they hear from a mission president whilst serving, or their own particular personality traits might play in to that.
“I think the rise of the cult[ure] came in the 80’s (would be my guess), but it was definitely established by the time I was old enough to be aware of it in my teens (in the mid 90’s). I don’t think it has increased in magnitude since then–though my patience for it has worn thinner.”
My brother who coined the phrase served in Idaho in the early 90s. I think the lionising of missionaries he saw totally over the top compared to the then attitudes in our home ward and stake in Britain.
I’ve never liked Shrek ;-).
“we have to understand that it’s going to take them a few years to figure it out.
“I think the only line we should draw is when they get overly assertive that how they view things in the post-mission haze is the true and living way to view things.
“If we really want to reduce post-mission syndrome, we need to change the way they serve. They need to do more interfaith work, more community service, and less time indoctrinating themselves against other faith systems.”
Years! I like where you draw the line though, and your final suggestions.
PangWitch,
I’m sorry missionaries have treated you badly, and behaved so horribly.
“I live in utah, and the entitlement doesn’t start with the RMs. it starts with the missionaries in the field. Im sure this is different in africa or where ever, but the missionaries in utah are spoiled rotten.”
I think my brother, who coined the phrase in the title, experienced some of this this serving in Idaho too, and found it very odd.
Rational Sam, “generalizing a lot of different persons and experiences …
“What they need is our love, our support, our gentle guidance, good mentors, and a chance to overcome their own weaknesses– not criticism and judgment and stereotypes.”
A lot? You are at comment 6. This post is exploring how our culture may be contributing to post-mission problems, pondering how common it might or might not be, asking for personal experiences that would either confirm or refute, and asking how returning missionaries might best be helped. I also linked some helpful posts on adjusting to post-mission life in the OP. Did you notice my question “If you are an RM, what helped you get back into the swing of normal life?”
“Generally, they are 20-21 year old young men and young women. They come from a vast array of backgrounds. They all carry different baggage (whether they are aware of it or not). I am certain most have learned a few things while on their missions (no matter how long they served), and I know that all of them have a lot yet to learn in their journeys.”
I mentioned both the young age, as an extenuating factor, and learning from mission experiences in the OP. Do you have anything more specific than generalised hand-waving to contribute?
Johanna, Ouch! I am sorry.
Hawkgrrrl “I have been generally pretty impressed / pleased with the missionaries in our area, even the 18 year olds.”
Excellent. I can live in hope.
“What I noticed was when I attended BYU, the male RMs often were very arrogant as if they were in high demand as eligible marriage material, and it appears they were right because at least back then, nobody would marry someone who hadn’t served. I do think that’s softening now, though.”
And it didn’t put folk off? Is this a BYU thing I wonder? I wasn’t aware my brother’s suffered this, though that was some time ago. It seemed to be fairly dripping off the guy in the post though. I thought it singularly unattractive.
barely there, “My 19 year old son has not gone on a mission. We live in the Mormon belt and his choice has cost him a community. He belongs nowhere. Girls won’t date him, his friends are serving, those who come home early or don’t serve find they are judged and alone.”
That’s so sad. I think there is evidence that the church is trying to address the issue at least for those who return early. And I think it’s easy to forget 18 is a minimum age. Not everybody will be ready then. If they’re ostracised for that, the likelihood of them ever being ready is going to drop, and ought surely to be seen as counterproductive.
#9 My 19 year old son has not gone on a mission. We live in the Mormon belt and his choice has cost him a community.
This statement almost brought tears to my eyes. What a terrible, pithy indictment of the worst effects of the “cult of the RM.” I hope he’ll find his place.
One of my former bishops, a great and faithful man, grew up in heavily-Mormon Lander, WY, dated a non-member, baptized her, and didn’t serve a mission. He doesn’t talk much about what it cost him, but he has emerged from it well. There is hope – I often have to remind myself, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
barely there: My 19 YO son also has chosen not to serve, although he has also not been attending church. It is very ostracizing, yet in his case, he is rejecting the community rather than the other way around. He chose to leave BYU, partly for this reason. He knew that attending without serving a mission would put him at risk for being outed as a non-believer and not getting his ecclesiastical endorsement, thereby losing his credits when he had to transfer.
I don’t feel like I was entitled, but I did have a particularly hard time post-mission of reintegrating. During my mission, I experienced what to me was a miraculous transformation, which I linked to both to grace but also my efforts to be obedient. I came away feeling like I owed God for this miracle and also feared a withdrawal of its effects if I was not as close to my conception of perfection as possible.
It was for this reason that post-mission I was absolutely petrified about going back to “normal people” standards. I could have used more pressure from church leadership to stop trying to act like I was on a mission. Instead, I got praise and encouragement. This resulted in some unhealthy thinking.
In retrospect, I have realized that the miracle I underwent on my mission was duty-free and simply a sign of God’s love and concern for me individually.
Given my life experiences on my mission and since then, I have had to stop trying to predict under what conditions God will bless me. I no longer believe that blessings are based on an objective standard of obedience, but on criteria known only to God and for a given individual. He is our Father and being omniscient knows our needs better than we do.
I am no longer active in the Church, but believe very forcefully in God’s concern for all of his children.
#10 – THX. Nowadays, with the Internet, being on an oil rig 70 miles offshore in the Gulf of Mexico wouldn’t be the isolating experience it was back in ’82. Of course, at the time, there was a wee bit of an economic recession going on, so landing any job, let alone one that paid five times minimum wage (AND room and board, and a generous transportation allowance to and from home during times of leave) was a blessing, save my social life was crap. That’s why “twelve-on, twelve-off, seven days a week” seemed like nothing.
TI, I can understand that feeling of God only blessed me because… and that fear and unhealthy mindset. I agree with you that God is concerned for all his children.
barely there, New Iconoclast, Hawkgrrrl, talking of those not serving missions, my son is highly unlikely to go at 18 or 19 (he’s currently 17). We’ve been told he wouldn’t be accepted, under current criteria on account of his Asperger’s diagnosis, and he’s had serious anxiety and OCD issues in the past. He may serve when older or not. There may at some point be a suitable service mission (computer tech support for instance), but that doesn’t seem to be the case at the moment.
Of my brothers, one didn’t serve, one served at 18 (then allowed for the UK), one at 19 (age rules changed and he needed to leave as soon as allowed because he just couldn’t think past a mission to plan for the future) and the other at 20 (a better fit for taking a break in his education). My husband was 24 when he served (we married 9 weeks after he finished – but had been best of friends for 7 years). I do think folk can make far too much fuss about age, and expectations at a particular age.
Oh, and I really enjoyed the brief talks given by both our returning missionaries today. They spoke about faith, prayer, work and endurance. Were very open about how hard a mission is. They were really lovely, and not in the least bit entitled. I have hopes that the prior experience was perhaps an aberration.
I agree with PangWitch regarding Utah. Here they’re treated like War Hero’s after returning and it definitely goes to their heads. RM’s in Utah are generally very hard to deal with.
I don’t even think most “war heroes” should necessarily be treated as war heroes; but that’s a different post.