When I was a missionary in 1989, there weren’t many sisters serving, usually only about 8-10% of missionaries. We were often an afterthought, if that. We were barred from leadership roles (aside from training other sisters), and our mission president’s wife had no formal calling or role. We were mostly independent, but occasionally treated with derision by sexist elders who resented policies like having to check up on us at night (which we resented too!) or who thought women had no business invading their male space or who considered women so different from men that we were unfathomable to them. Clearly those elders were in the minority, but they made mission service unpleasant at times, and their mission experiences often solidified their sexist views because they had such limited contact with sister missionaries.
I was very excited when the new mission age change was announced in 2012 because it seemed like an ingenious way to create more parity between men and women in the church by encouraging women to serve missions in equal numbers. I envisioned the final death of that old trope in which a young, naive but attractive LDS woman looks up to her RM husband with fawning adoration while he lovingly but condescendingly mansplains the gospel to her. Instead, I anticipated that men who served missions would quickly learn how to respect and work with women as equals, being surrounded by so many talented, smart, independent women serving side by side with them. I had a real excitement when the change was announced thinking here was something truly prophetic: a change nobody was actively clamoring for at the time but that would advance equality in the church and create more respect for women. After all, 19 is currently too young for most people, even Mormons, to consider marriage. I reasoned that this change would create huge downstream impacts:
- More egalitarian marriages
- Better communication between the sexes
- A greater understanding that women and men aren’t so different
- Awareness by men when women’s voices are absent; no more councils that don’t include women
- Less disproportionate pressure on men to serve when circumstances make it difficult
- More women “leaning in” at church
- Respect for women as leaders and teachers in the church with spiritual gifts and capabilities
- More women as role models
- More rock, less talk
Apparently I was born for disappointment. I was very discouraged to see that there are still over twice as many men serving as there are women. Only 28% of missionaries serving are sisters! That’s a big increase, but it’s still not the 50/50 split I envisioned. Why is that? Why aren’t more women serving missions now that the age is lower?
- Women may still feel missions aren’t encouraged or that going means they aren’t desirable marriage partners.
- Women are taught to be passive. Missionary work requires being active and outgoing. Many may feel it’s intimidating.
- Women may feel they have other priorities at age 19, such as pursuing their education and dating.
- Maybe there’s just a lag and as time goes, more women will serve in parity. This could be a tipping point issue or one in which early adopters are going, but they don’t have a lot of role models or going isn’t the norm or they don’t know what the downstream impacts will be from going.
- Online connectivity is hard for people to give up, whether men or women.
- Issues like depression and anxiety are prevalent and may prevent people from self-selecting to serve a mission if there isn’t substantial pressure.
- Maybe they don’t feel “called” to serve.
- Young Women’s program doesn’t focus on serving missions, just on marriage and having babies.
As I thought about it, all those reasons could apply equally to the men as to the women, but in the case of the men, there is intense social pressure to serve. Not serving may carry a social stigma for men, so more of them may cave to pressure to go even if they prefer not to go.
- Are you surprised that men & women don’t serve in equal numbers?
- Why do you think more women don’t serve?
- What upcoming shifts in missionary service do you foresee?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
One RM nephew just married a RM in December. I have a niece just come back from serving a mission, and two nephews currently out. My son and another nephew are not serving. Both have AS disorders.
I tend to lean towards social pressure and expectation being the big thing on the male side, whilst I think women have a freer choice, do they feel called to go or not. Perhaps social pressure will increase for women, but I’m hoping the pressure will ease up for the men.
I was in an RS class recently where one woman was describing the pressure her father put on her brothers to serve missions. One chose not to, the other chose to please his father, but finished up coming home very early because of massive anxiety issues. She was worried for her brother, who is a good guy, that LDS culture will now make it difficult for him to find women willing to date him because he finished up not serving a mission even though the intention was there, and said that we need a cultural shift of attitudes.
It’s still not the expectation for women to serve. Until there’s been a significant number serving successfully and being seen as role models while teaching or in leadership, I think the numbers will stay low. As to the future I think they’ll return the age for men back to nineteen. I don’t know if it’s been looked at but I suspect that the increase in early returns in men can be attributed in part to the younger age. I don’t see the age changing for women. The sisters I’ve seen coming out are young but seem capable and committed.
Imagine a situation in which the men actually were able to choose whether or not they served missions without any social repercussions. How many would go? I think the numbers would drop. I believe societal pressure keeps those numbers up.
Most women don’t have that pressure. Many have pressure not to serve.
Imagine a world in which men and women were equally allowed to choose. I would expect their numbers to be fairly equal in that situation.
As I was reading I had the thought you captured right toward the end, “in the case of the men, there is intense social pressure to serve” and the above comments seem to agree.
If a young woman does not serve a mission, it is not only not talked about – I don’t even think most people in the church think much about it. If they go, it is just “gravy.”
If a young man does not serve a mission, oh the shame on him and his parents. If he goes, it is nice, but just assumed that is what he is going to do because is required.
Her chances of getting a temple marriage don’t ride on her serving a mission. His chances of getting a temple marriage to a large part ride on if he serves a mission or not. And given how this is stressed as much as missions for the men, no young man with a testimony would forfeit that!
The situations in general for each sex have moved a bit closer, but still quite different.
I think a lot of the decision of women not to serve comes down to money. That’s quite a sum for families to spend on what’s seen as optional. A sister can be just a righteous and put that money towards a degree, or even earning money at a job. In my Arkansas ward the wealthier families sent their daughters in droves at 19, but less so the struggling families.
Not sure if you are taking this into account but the % women called to serve with be higher than the % of women in the missionary force because women serve only 18 months and men serve 24 months.
In other words, if men and women had the same term of service then a higher percentage of missionaries servicing would be women, maybe closer to 40%.
At the risk of sounding like I’m spreading the “women are more righteous” claptrap, I wonder if a general trend will see the percentage of men serving drop over time, and how the percentage of women will change over that same time. I suspect most of the young men in my current ward will not serve missions–maybe 1 or 2 in the group? I expect about the same number of young women to serve, so at least my little corner of the world may see gender parity. Can’t speak for Utah, of course.
My wife and I both served missions and she regards that time as one of the best, most memorable times of her life. Even though she often promotes the values of a mission to our two teenage daughters, neither one wants to serve a mission. The reasons seem to be 1) not nearly as much emphasis or pressure on young women to serve missions 2) missions just plain suck most of the time. Dear Wife loved her mission in England but little details slip out and reveal it wasn’t much fun. She got hit by a car on her bike, she was sometimes treated poorly by members or elders, weather was bad all year, and she baptized one or two people. I make no bones about how much my mission in Guatemala sucked.
I’d sum it up with “sisters simply aren’t expected to serve missions and there’s not much upside.”
E – fantastic point, and no, I wasn’t taking it into account. I always forget that difference! Personally, I think 18 months is a better length of service (having served it) and my husband thinks 24 months is better. Go figure!
Personally, I think one of the greatest tragedies within the LDS Church (over the past few decades) has been the shift within many missions away from “Service” to “Salesmanship”. When I served in Korea (77-79) we spent a significant amount of our time in active service within the communities where we lived; and among the neighbors with whom we lived. Consequently, we had many opportunities to feel good about ourselves; even when we were not baptizing dozens. The “Salesmanship” missions, which are totally devoted to the “numbers” – are crushing the spirits of our young people and sending many home with emotional (and spiritual) damage which may last a lifetime. I had tremendous respect for the Sister Missionaries in South Korea; many of which were healthcare focused on both the missionaries and the people.
It was a tough, tough mission – but these marvelous Sisters plowed ahead just like everyone else; and generally with greater kindness and poise.
I am with you in spirit superficially, for the most part. But not completely.
The bigger question for me is why don’t fewer men serve missions?
As everyone is probably aware, the surge almost doubled the size of the missionary force with little to no significant increase in the conversions. The entire focus of the mission is on conversions, it is not a side issue. The next experiment might be to cut the missionary force in half and see that the number of conversions does not drop. The further downstream metric might be retention of tithing paying converts at 10 years. Correlate that with mission effort. Watch meaninglessness emerge.
Looking at it in the other direction, our ward has 4 to 6 missionaries assigned to it and frankly they are wasting their time. This is a car crazy city, they are on bikes which are dangerous. Or worse on foot.near busy 4 lane boulevards. They can tract out all the residents within a 2 hour walk from their apartment in less than week. The ward was divided about 7 years ago and both wards are dwindling . Mostly they are fumbling along on the backs of new and transient transplants who are more engaged with their phones than with church. The retention of youth is less than a third.
For me the problem with missionary work isn’t the missionaries, their gender or age or preparation, or worthiness or effort.. It is the message. We are trying to bring people into an out-of-touch church that most people are leaving. In my experience about the most effective thing you can do to make the LDS church look unappealing is bring people to the meetings and see it in action.
***
I have a niece and a nephew only a couple of years apart and of close to missionary age. The niece always wanted to serve a mission. But she got distracted with dating, boyfriend and temple marriage and now a child. She earned a college degree in a STEM field.I don’t fault her for not working although it seems those 4 hard years of education are becoming a waste..But at least she has the choice to do what she wishes and she takes more from earning her degree than information.
Her brother had similar abilities and aspirations. While in high school they lowered the missionary age. He simultaneously had a bad math teacher and became discouraged. He knew that his scores on the ACT did not matter because he was going into the mission field before college. He slacked off at a school but not at church. He got distracted and dithered around in college semester by semester accomplishing very little. He is finally on a mission and his family emails reveal his surprisingly poor writing skills. He needs to take rudimentary courses in writing and likewise high school level math courses he barely passed and did not internalize. The door to earning a STEM degree has all but closed for him. His 4 little brothers are on the brink and watching closely and do not take school as serious as they should.
I am sure there are other worthy careers in their future. But let us not kid ourselves; without large numbers of the best STEM professionals, we as a nation will not be able to continue to hog the world’s resources and keep our economic lifestyle at the top. In that family we are 0 for 2 in doing it so far and the mission looms as a huge distraction.
I can think of about 10 or 20 things a young person could do that would better accomplish any or all the items listed by Hawkgrrrl that might create huge downstream impacts, than serving a traditional full-time mission. If anything the mission experience is a tool of retrenchment where sister missionaries are to learn their proper role in the LDS church as second class citizens and junior companions for life. They will become the reliable local women leaders of the future who will keep the noses of the daughters of the readers of websites like this one to the correlated grindstone. That only about half as many as might be otherwise undergoing this indoctrination could be cause for celebration.
If the young men only served when they felt “called”, rather than out of duty, their numbers would probably drop precipitously. I also think the focus of the mission has become more and more on converting the missionary rather than bringing in converts (evidenced by elders being called straight out of high school).
I was listening to my RM daughter talk with some other RM women about “missionary quality”, and they were saying that it seemed the elders fit a normal gaussian distribution and the women were practically the inverse, with big distributions at both the high and low ends and not so many in the middle. I kind of got that impression on my mission too, back in the late 80s, but then the sisters had to be 21. I would have thought 19 would have given a different cross section of women.
I agree social pressure is likely a role. Of my closer group of friends, very few girls served missions. I never had a particular desire. But of my brother’s group of friends a few years older than me, almost all the women served missions. It’s not that one group was more academically driven than the other (the women in both groups completed at least bachelor’s degrees), but I think just being around friends who had that desire and worked to make it happen made it more likely for other female friends to make it work. Overall, though, the outcomes for both groups of women have been pretty similar (those who married became stay-at-home primary caretakers of the kids). While I agree that mission service might make a woman more confident, I don’t believe men would automatically see them as more equal because of it. Most people assume I served a mission because I’m more outspoken, but I wouldn’t say men treat me different (if anything, a few get irritated with it).
My wife is one of those who felt called to serve a mission. She had made other plans for her life, but she couldn’t resist the call. Even though she didn’t go where she wanted to (English-speaking with a lot of members; instead she went foreign with few members), she worked hard and loved it. Our youngest girl wants to go as soon as she is 19. Neither of the boys is interested, and they would both be lousy missionaries anyway.
Lefthandloafer55, I was in Korea the same time as you (78-80), but your mission sounds much different from mine. At least the APs were all about salesmanship. I would have preferred yours.
While a teen I was in an area conference where President Kimball stated that every worthy young man should serve a mission. A couple decades later I remember listening to President Hinckley state in conference that it was not required for young women to go on missions. I think this explains the key difference for why more men then women serve missions.
During my growing up years, girls were taught to only marry return missionaries. I don’t think leaders who taught this really thought it through. Most of my nephews who’ve not gone on missions have eventually stopped going to church. One who did go on a mission, but came back early due to anxiety, has also stopped attending. I also wonder how many single sisters forwent the opportunity to marry a good man, but one who did not serve a mission. Thank goodness this wasn’t emphasized in the 50s or my Mom probably would not have married my Dad.
Hawkgirl, I didn’t realize you were so old. Good post. I hope more girls go on missions. And I also have hope the impact will be some of the things you theorize here. I have two daughters that have served recently, probably largely due to the lowering of mission age. They had great experiences. I would love to see a shift in our mentality so that there is equal focus on serving missions for boys and girls. We need something to rally around and energize the church, and I think that could be it. Lower the mission age for girls to be same as boys. Change the mission length to be same for both. Tell all girls it’s a commandment, just like for the boys. Center the youth programs around it, the same on both sides.
Martin – I was also on a mission in the mid 80’s and I reached the same conclusions on the distribution of elders and sisters.
For the elders there were mostly good guys with a few outstanding guys and a few rattan apples.
For the sisters, I never meet any that seemed to be in the middle. They either were some of the best people I have ever meet or they were sisters with issues.
So I guess it wasn’t just me that sensed that same phenomenon. From what I can see of the sisters in my ward the last few years, that has changed.
I went on a mission to Ireland 68 to 70, while there was a civil war between the Catholics and the protestants. Don’t know if the 2 people we taught are still active or not. My wife and I always expected we would serve a senior mission, but could not represent a church that discriminates against gays and women, when we believe the Lord doesn’t discriminate in this way.
We have only one grandson go on a mission so far, and no indication the granddaughters are going, though the one who went married a woman who had been, and is still suffering the health effects of her mission.(physical not mental)
churchistrue: “Hawkgirl, I didn’t realize you were so old.” Dude.
The observation about the women who serve being at one end of the spectrum or the other is interesting. I’m not sure if that fit my experience, but there were definitely two types of sisters: people like me who were outspoken, driven and independent and sisters who were very “sweet” and meek and mild, emotional and Molly. Obviously the latter drove me nuts whenever we were paired together. I wouldn’t say that the latter group were ineffective, though. Not my jam, but as far as I could see they mostly did OK unless they were judgmental or hyper-focused on guilt feelings that prevented them from working.
Now the elders, on the other hand, mostly fit into two categories: egomaniacal used-car-salesman frat boys and those who were not in leadership positions.
hawkgirl, I wonder if some of things you hope for will come, but just on a longer timeline. I’ve been serving in YW for two years and have noticed a gradual, but substantial change in how we talk about missions vis a vis the girls. While the official curriculum might not make as many explicit references to missionary work for the YW, locally the activities are far more focused on YW serving than they were when I served a mission (mid-1990s). The stake has asked for more priest/laurel and miamaid/teacher activities to help with their social skills and to provide activities that prepare for missionary service. Currently, in my ward, there are more YW on missions, or with mission calls, than there are YM – and this pattern has been true over the past several years. The stake’s youth conference this year is an MTC experience. Of the young couples who’ve moved into my ward in the last year, the majority of the women served missions and speak more confidently in mixed-gender councils than I’ve ever seen from that age group.
Of course, this is a subset of YW who have all remained fully engaged with the church; I don’t discount the other side of the story Mike related above. But for those who do remain, I think some of the egalitarian, shared leadership model you envision is slowly developing.
When I first came to byu, I had some doubts about the church, and really didn’t know whether I was going to serve my mission. At byu, I had so much mormonism forced upon me that I had 2 options, accept it and work through my problems or just reject it and transfer. As a guy, the mission was a large part of that, I felt like my options +were 1)serve a mission, 2) be a second class member with few dating prospects or 3) transfer schools.
If I was going to a different school, (like I wanted to in high school) I would have gone to institute, avoided the issues and not served a mission. If I had not had the social pressure for a mission, I would have chosen to stay a member, but pass on the mission. I feel many women may fall in this category.
Ironically, I am glad for the social pressure forcing me to truly decide what I believed, rather than staying in spiritual limbo. But I fear many are lost when they are forced to decide at such a young age.
I am now truly excited for my call, not just doing a necessary duty.
-During the sister missionary boom after the age decrease, there wasn’t a place to put all the sisters who signed up. Many ended up serving in threesomes stateside, living in memebers homes. Not hard to see that there wasn’t room and they weren’t needed, especially since that’s the official message. I’m not at all surprised Sisters have stopped rushing to enlist.
-I have two female family members who could be serving right now, but aren’t. During their YW years, they experienced an emphasis on retrenchment and old-fashioned values. Both think it would be more feminine, desirable and more in line with their “divine nature” to seek marriage rather than serve.
They are also less independent than their mother was at that age- having been brought up with helicopter parents rather than as latchkey kids. They have never taken a trip without parents, never spent the night at a grandparent’s home or friend’s house, never held a job, never owned a car, never traveled outside a three-state radius, never spent time with non-members, and never considered going to college away from home. They aren’t emotionally ready or willing to cut daily communication with their tight-knit family and travel far away. It’s hard to describe, but the parents and children live in an extremely symbiotic way- parents participating in everything from each homework assignment to every music lesson, every soccer practice, every walk to school, and the parents finding meaning in contributing, especially the SAHM. Together they accomplish a great deal, but hardly function as individuals. This family would much rather have all been called as a unit to serve a mission- all at once and all together than break apart.
Different areas have different cultures around this. My daughter and several of her friends have decided to not go on missions. Not the right thing for them. None of them are focusing on marriage either (in fact there is a bit of running from it even). They are very focused on schooling. In talking with another of the moms it has blown us away how much grief they have gotten about not going. From adults, from their peers, from RM’s who refuse to date girls who are not RM’s. In our area it is becoming an expectation for the girls to go. We are seeing pretty equal numbers of guys and girls going. A friend remarked that in the current micro culture our girls are in it almost takes more courage to stay than to go. I wish we would let go of the pressure for both genders to go. If they don’t want to be there I think a mission does far more than than good. I am glad some areas are not seeing increase social pressure for girls to go. Wish we had that here.
I’ve personally observed a lingering stigma against sister missionaries in the minds of a lot of RMs that I interacted with at BYU. The church culture holds a ton of patriarchal baggage from the past , and I feel that this plays a big role in the psyche of far too many of these male RMs who were intimidated by women who served missions, and would shy away from dating them. Several of them made comments to suggest that a mission provided that spiritual leg up for the man whose priesthood role is to “preside” in the family and a women who served a mission would be a direct challenge to that and not a desirable trait. Maybe I only had the crazy exceptions in those particular YSA wards, but I have a sneaky suspicion this is likely a view held by far too many men still in the church. I can see this being a considerable factor in the minds of women trying to decide to serve a mission or not. I can only hope that as more women serve missions this stigma can be rooted out completely, but a strict view of the notion that the father is presider, provider, protector and mother is nurturer creates an inherent disincentive for sisters to serve IMO.
Not on the question why not more women, but on the “grief [some] have gotten about not going”: One of the GA Seventy told us in a stake presidency/stake RS presidency meeting that the brethren were significantly disappointed at the development of a culture of expectation of service at the reduced eligibility ages, that the reduced eligibility ages were intended to make it possible for those who are ready to go at those ages, but definitely not to create an expectation of service at that time by those choosing not to go at those ages. I’m not sure how much influence the brethren actually have on the development of Mormon cultural expectations.
There is a bit less pressure on young men to serve missions than a generation or two ago and somewhat more of an expectation that young women will serve. To put it in negative terms, there is less of a stigma for a young man who doesn’t serve or who comes home early, and more or less no stigma for young women either to go or to not go. It is less and less about converting Gentiles and more and more about converting the missionaries.
I suspect that if the age of first eligibility were the same for men and women, and if both served two year missions, and if the cultural expectations could be equalized — say if GAs started talking about missionary service in gender neutral terms, such as “we hope all LDS youth prepare and are worthy to serve missions” — the numbers of young men and young women serving would more or less equalize. Plainly this is not what LDS leaders want. The difference in age eligibility and in time of service is intended to keep the numbers unbalanced. Maybe their patriarchal thinking guides them to the belief that women don’t really need missions to stay active in the Church but young men do.
I am having a hard time relating to the assumptions in this post and thread because they don’t match my experiences at all. I was raised in a family where both my mother and grandmother were returned missionaries (single/youth), and my father always talked about “when” I go on a mission, rather than “If”. I had absolutely no desire to serve a mission. However, through my years at BYU I noticed that the women I most admired in my student ward were all RMs. Because I saw something in them that I didn’t see in myself, after I graduated from college and came of age (21), I put in my papers and was called to serve in South Korea (94-95). It was a great experience for me, but I also had 4 years of independent living and a travel abroad experience to buffer me from culture shock and homesickness. I also found that the Korean elders that I served with had a depth of maturity and focus that was mostly missing in their (much) younger American counterparts. And for the most part we did our work and didn’t worry about what the elders did or thought. It never bothered me at all that the leadership positions were all male, and it bothered them considerably when I would go over their head if they didn’t take our concerns (safety)seriously. They also learned not to tell us how to do our work, since in general we were not hanging around the church waiting for people to come play ping pong with us.
Because of my own experiences (my husband agrees he would have been more effective if he had been more mature too) I have told my sons that they are NOT allowed to go on a mission until they have 1) lived away from home successfully, and 2) feel strongly called by the Spirit. They all want to go, and I will support them in any way I can. This includes not allowing them to follow the herd. I have no problems at all with my sons choosing to postpone their missions indefinitely if they wanted. My daughters are also feeling the pressure at church, and I have had to reassure them repeatedly that they do not HAVE to serve a mission. If they are living right, their lives should provide plenty of opportunities to lead people to Christ. . .
“… strongly called by the Spirit.” Strange how just about every missionary serving in other denominations necessarily feels “called” to mission — but in the LDS Church it largely institutionalized. Ministers and missionaries elsewhere have to feel it, or they don’t volunteer. Neither LDS bishops nor young men who serve missions *feel* called, they *get* called.
LDS sisters who decide to serve are about the only scenario in the Church where someone actually *feels* called and then goes and does it.
Dave B., I agree- those who go on missions should go b/c they receive a personal calling- male or female. I wish there were options for service besides proseylying missions. I also wish the members wouldn’t consider missions (for men) and ordinance of salvation. Missions are not. Of course it would help if the church would stop using missions as a worrhinesss badge and vetting tool. If you look at the WWII generation of Q15, many did not serve (President Monson, Oaks, Ballard, etc.) Missions are not for everyone and gender isn’t a factor.
My thoughts on the three questions posted.
• Are you surprised that men & women don’t serve in equal numbers?
A little surprised. But if we take E’s numbers into account (18 month mission vs 24 month missions) then the numbers serving are really not all that different.
• Why do you think more women don’t serve?
Because they don’t want too. A mission is hard and they know that, and people don’t like to do hard things when they don’t have too. Men have been given the “commandment” to serve a mission if at all possible; they also know that if they would like to marry a good LDS woman their odds are greater if they have served. And they want to be obedient, they want to do what is right and they know they will be blessed if they go (that is what they believe).
Women have not been given that as a “commandment” so they have not the same pressure to go, the same pressure to stretch themselves. They don’t have to do hard things if they don’t want to. So they take the easy way and go to college. They also know if they would like to marry a good LDS man their odds don’t really change if they go on a mission. If that changes you will see more women start to go. They have no obedience issue, as there is not “commandment”, anything they choose is right (get married, go to school, get a job, whatever, there is no wrong choose, all chooses are the right choose.) At the end of the day getting married and having a family is the primary goal, this goes for men and women.
• What upcoming shifts in missionary service do you foresee?
Pushing back the age of men serving missions to 19 year old, the quality of missionaries now is dropped greatly, they just lack experience before missions, and even that one year of work or college gave them so much better understanding of the real world and the ones that were much older 21 to 25 were even better. I think the quality of the sister missionaries has dropped even more with the age change. Yes more will serve but they are now not the great missionaries that I experienced on my mission. They are just “elders” with skirts but with a lot more emotional drama. They will keep the age for women at 19 because they could never put that genie back in the bottle.
This is just a specific instance of the general trend that has already been mentioned of women not being told that it’s a requirement that they serve like men are, but I wonder if there isn’t a lingering effect of President Hinckley’s (in)famous talk in priesthood session of conference where he talked about what he saw as the problem of women feeling they needed to serve. Here’s a snippet:
“Young women should not feel that they have a duty comparable to that of young men. Some of them will very much wish to go. If so, they should counsel with their bishop as well as their parents. If the idea persists, the bishop will know what to do.
“I say what has been said before, that missionary work is essentially a priesthood responsibility. As such, our young men must carry the major burden. This is their responsibility and their obligation.”
If the idea persists, the bishop will know what to do. He doesn’t even spell anything out here, leaving open the possibility that some bishops might read this as “if the idea persists, marry her off ASAP and don’t let her dilute our priesthood missionary force any further!” And that’s not even touching the whole phrasing here. If the idea persists? It sounds like he’s patting women on the head and saying, “If you get this crazy idea in your pretty little head, then okay, you can go, but only if the idea *persists*, only if you can show that it’s not another passing fancy like you women are so prone to!”
I know the talk was 21 years ago, but shifts in attitudes can be incredibly slow in Mormonism, and I have no doubt that there are many bishops out there who remember well the day that the prophet told them to discourage women from serving missions.
(Here’s the talk: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/1997/10/some-thoughts-on-temples-retention-of-converts-and-missionary-service?lang=eng)
“all chooses are the right choose”
I agree with everything else except this.
Not right chooses might also include shooting up heroin, banging 20guys at the Friday night frat party, racing a car and getting your best friend killed or yourself, any incident that gets you sent to jail from shop lifting to murder, convincing the bishop’s wife you are having an affair with the bishop, intentionally setting the church on fire during Saturday cleanings, etc., etc..
More common less outrageous not right chooses might include marrying too young to an immature guy and making children with him before you have any hope of supporting a new family, lacking any ambition demonstrated by hanging out in your parent’s basement indefinitely to watch netflix all day and maybe sort of working/loafing part time at the big box store, wasting your parents tuition money by cheating and flunking out of community college so you will have trouble ever getting any further education, running up tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt and losing your license to drive so you can’t work, etc., etc.
In a way Scott J is in a Mormon bubble, but it is a good bubble; that he doesn’t automatically think of all the poor choices young people are making. Notice that as the LDS mission experience erodes into something more and more like a 2 year long expensive and lame EFY, that it also begins to resemble the more common less severe not right chooses.
If only I was as knowledgeable and as world wise as you Mike I would have known all those things existed. Now that my bubble is broken, I see the world as it really is, something I had never known until this minute. I will have to cower in my basement in fear of this world I cannot understand or believe exists.
I’m sorry you got confused with what I stated. I was referring to the list of possible chooses I made; limiting my list to the reasonable option of the topic at hand. I had not realized that the average LDS woman spent their Friday nights deciding between going on a mission and gang banging the football team. My bad, the “whatever” threw you.
Scott J.
Sorry that wasn’t funny. Don’t take me too serious. I was half joking about the first list. Livening things up a bit. It kinda fell flat.
I am a bit more serious about the second list, But you are right that I did generalize it to everyone which speaks more to the company I keep than your wisdom and experience.
For example, in response I could suggest that maybe you sneak out of the cowering corner of your basement and exercise your newly discovered freedom and maybe try heroin. This is always an option. Or at least set a little fire in the church next time it is your turn to clean it. I read of a 70 year old heroin overdose recently. One is never too old to do something stupid as I demonstrate frequently, and not just on this blog.
Or you could ignore idiot internet trolls like me and stay in your “bubble” and enjoy the blessings of being a good person who only considers reasonable and decent moral options. I don’t actually do anything beyond blabbing that outrageous myself, I just wonder about it and watch others do them.
No harm and only a little church ball fouling under the basket by both players. Or just another day on the field of opinion and discussion.
Scott J – You mentioned (I will try not to misquote you :-), ” the quality of missionaries now is dropped greatly, they just lack experience before missions, and even that one year of work or college gave them so much better understanding of the real world and the ones that were much older 21 to 25 were even better. ” I absolutely agree. I recall on my mission decades ago the guys that had waited for various reasons and started their mission a year or two later were quickly looked upon as “the wise ones.” I have heard two bishops in the last while say in meetings that the missionaries certainly were making more “rookie” mistakes than in years past.
I think on top of that many missions are getting harder than when I was on my mission. We have twice the missionary force and less baptisms. The per-missionary baptisms is dramatically smaller than when I served. I still can remember the “dry” months we had and those are where you have the most thoughts about, “why am I here knocking on this door for the 3rd time even after they have told me twice they are not interested.” So missionaries are getting more of those months. And baptisms are not spread evenly among missions. I have had my kids all go to places that were baptizing quite a few – as in most months. I feel sorry for the missionaries in my ward (mainly sisters) that in the last 5 years generally have a baptism per year and only 2 of those are active a few months after they join. On top of that, I live in an area that they are rather stern about “no soliciting” and the police have been called on the missionaries. Of course the police suggest they go elsewhere. But I don’t even know what they do with most of the time on their hands.
Ziff, that Hinckley talk was a kick in the gut. We really haven’t moved past that mentality, have we? Women’s service and talents (outside the home) are not crucial, always auxiliary.
“I confess that I have two granddaughters on missions….I had nothing to do with their decision to go.” As if that was something to be ashamed of. Nice.
And this…”Over a period of many years, we have held the age level higher for them in an effort to keep the number going relatively small.” They intentionally discouraged women from going. When the church is losing young members at an alarming rate, they lower the age. It’s never been about what individual members need, but always what the church needs.
Ziff: That talk was 1997? 21 years is like the blink of an eye in this church. Wow. I don’t know how I missed that except that it was long after my own service and before my own kids were old enough to be considering such things. That’s a really crazy message to our young women, IMO. Not only do women have no duty, but really no choice either (in this model) because the bishop is the ultimate arbiter of her feelings. How is that right??
Here is what I Observed and what I interpret of the results of those observations. During the Surge, the time just after the lowering of the ages for missionaries, the Church had the opportunity to experiment with large number of missionaries but without the ability to really open up new missions. At least new missions were they were not already set up (like the States, or Mexico? etc) So the Church got to answer some questions about how many missionaries can an area hold? Call it maximum missionary density, MMD. And what criteria goes into that MMD number (population of the area, number of members in that area, activity level of members in that area, economic prosperity of that area, and I am sure there are many other variables) But in order to find that value and understand those variables the Church needs data. I believe the Surge gave the Church that opportunity to understand this question of how many missionaries an area can hold.
I live in an area that during this time we were buried in missionaries, something like one set per ward or two wards, I forget. They were stepping on each other, there was so many of them. I don’t know the numbers but my observation was that the number of total converts during that time was about the same as before, and now after. So that for areas of high Church membership, the number of missionaries in an area, the MMD, could now be calculated. and I am sure the same data could be found for other “environments”. Now with that data the Church can now structuring missions to function at those MMD. And we are seeing that were I am, as I see mission boundaries changed multiple times in the last 5 years.
I see this also in the way the Church has changed the standards of people who want to go on missions. They can be choosey on who they call to be missionaries, if your health is bad, you don’t have to go, mental issues, you don’t go, not much of a testimony, you don’t go. We had a meeting with the stake president not long ago and he went over the questions he gives to people wanting to go on missions, and they are a lot harder to “pass”. When I went; if you had a pulse, had not knocked up your girlfriend and you wanted to go, you could go. Now if you have ever been treated for depression or things like that you really have to want to go and can prove to your stake president and to the Church that you can make it before they will sign off. Our president gave an example of one youth who was very shy, could not look the president in the eye or really talk about their testimony. He would not sign off on that person at that time, he told them to go get a job, something in retail were they had to interact with people all day long. And told them to come back in 6 or 9 months. They came back and could now communicate their thoughts and feelings, could give testimony and look people in the eye. They were now ready to be sent out the president said.
The Church may be at a point that they are at that MMD for most missions and it takes a lot of time and money to open up brand new areas and counties. They can now be more picky about who they send out and this may also play into the main question of this post. Why are not women going on missions in greater numbers? We may not be able to handle every person going on a mission.
Also I have noted that some people with special needs are being sent to different kinds of missions. So are “on line” missionaries, they work with people in chat rooms etc. some are doing family history and extraction work, some are more service missions. Etc. I see the Church expanding the types of missionary experiences that they are having young people do.
Scott J, In my view the Church didn’t need the surge to figure out that there was a maximum [productive] missionary density. It needed to pay attention. In the mid/late 60s in one European mission we had so many missionaries that, where they kept track in one town, e.g., every door was knocked on 19 times in 24 months. This is a good way to make enemies and influence people to never want to see or hear of Mormons again. Most of the missionaries in that mission never baptized; most never taught a lesson beyond the first of the then 6 standard “discussions.” That particular mission was not unique. Perhaps, however, something has been learned from the surge that wasn’t learned earlier when it might have been.
There are pros and cons to both the old and the current approaches to qualification for missionary service. I for example, was not ready to go, but finished very glad I had gone where and when I did. There were valuable lessons learned and several lives blessed. Some others I knew who were not ready to go had bad experiences (and made bad experiences for others) and, at least with hindsight, should not have gone. I’m very glad I don’t make decisions about who can or is ready to go. Your stake president seems to have handled the matter you reported wisely and kindly. My bishop in the 60s did not have the same options. At the height of the Viet Nam war, with the then Church policy limiting the number of missionaries sent per ward, and faced with a large ward including many baby boomers of age to go, there was no such flexibility . It was “now or never” for me. I would expect continuing changes in Church practice, with many blessed, and some not, along the way.
In response to the “brethren” anecdotally being disappointed in church culture… I sure wish they would say something themselves,then! I just had a long talk with a stake president who said, “yeah, the culture of the church is bad,it’s really bad, but the brethren have nothing to do with that!” I found so many things wrong with his statement. Given the way members almost idolize the brethren, if they want to impact the culture, they need only speak up.
For the excellent question regarding sisters serving missions, I think that the idea is a huge change in mindset that may take a full generation to see the impact. In my Salt Lake County ward, we also have more sisters serving than brothers. My newly returned missionary niece went when she was 20.5, before which shegot LOTS of grief at BYU about why she hadn’t served.
EJ, I think you’re right about the brethren speaking up. There were other reasons why I could not then make that suggestion directly to the seventy telling us about the brethren being disappointed in that particular aspect of church culture. And outside the context of that conversation, I know of no way to make such a suggestion without it simply being referred to one’s stake president for “appropriate action.” Good luck dealing with church culture.
I find this concept of MMD fascinating.
I liken it to a corral and how many cows can be in the corral. Variables might include the kind of cow, are they grazing or being fed, is there a stream running through it, trees for shade, shelter in the winter, are they mellow or aggressive cows, with naughty little Mormon boys like I was throwing rocks at them, etc.
I would think the next step after measuring all these variables is to move missionaries into areas were they have not yet reached their MMD and thereby increase the conversion rates. Are we seeing this happening? I don’t see them being pulled out of my area where they seem to be way over their MMD and wasting their time.
What if we make the corrals larger or smaller? Is the size of the corral a ward? A stake? A mission? Or a country? What if we made one huge worldwide corral and looked at that MMD? We have already sent out as many missionaries as we could before the surge. Now with double the missionaries the results are no better. We have proven that for the summation of all the corrals or the biggest corral we are already far beyond the MMD for baptisms by at least a factor of 2. If we consider long-term retention as our goal, then in corrals or places where that kind of retention is less than 5%, then the MMD might be close to zero.
This takes me back to: it is not the missionaries, it is the message. Cleanse the inner vessel.Pitch out the manure in the corral. Change into a church that naturally draws converts in without needing 80,000 energetic young people spending night and day working and praying hard for the best 2 years of their life to get a few people to join for a while.
A number of the friends and relatives of my children are on missions. Using the wonders of the internet a number of weekly missionary letters appear on our computer. It is the same old song: The leaders are so inspiring. We are working so hard. We are so excited about our new investigators. We are overcoming the problems with some of our not-as-new investigators. We have a baptism coming up. We are finding all these less active people and getting them to church. It is so spiritual. I presume the missionaries laboring/loafing in my ward are writing the same kinds of letters. If one were to take this all at face value and multiply it by the 60,000 missionaries, we should be seeing explosive growth almost everywhere. We see stagnation or dwindling with a few exceptions. The missionaries live in a delusional world of short term events misinterpreted as significant that have no lasting consequences.
The leaders have enormous control over the missionaries who pretty much do as told, at least on the surface. It is easy to tinker with missionary variables and play lets pretend mind games. But to make fundamental changes in the core of the church would require more courage and vision than they have demonstrated to possess to date.
You might be on to something Mike… Cleans the inner vessel… what would case large number of people to flock to the church? What teaching should we throw out… what should we added to make it more appealing?
First let’s throw out any hard and fast commandments, move to a more accommodation idea of “what ever any person thinks is true is true”. All believes are equal. But to keep the fighting to a minimum we wont talk about any of them. We will stick strictly to God/Goddess/Great Unknowable Spirit loves you just the way you are and keep doing just what you think you should do, what ever that may be, because it is all good because all paths lead to “The Good Place”.
We can promise them complete acceptance and approval from the God/Goddess/Great Unknowable Spirit for the low low price of $50 per month, a great deal by any standard. Plus a one time confessional of believe in God/Goddess/Great Unknowable Spirit in the local shrine. The money is just for up keep of the shire and the priest/priestess who will record your name in the “book of good people” and preach to any who would like to hear, the good news of Salvation. And as a member you will need to do nothing of course because we have someone who will do everything that is needed. You can just go about your life doing all that you think is good. The Good Place awaits you!!!
I think people will flock to the church with these minor modifications. What do you think Mike.
Getting back to the original questions – my daughter left for her mission last fall at the age of almost 20. She didn’t want to talk about it beforehand with anyone but us, her parents, because she felt it was no-one’s business, she didn’t want pressure and she didn’t want to constantly answer questions then or later about why she made the decision she did. To explain – she was always leaning toward a mission, sometimes more convinced than not, but didn’t want people asking why she didn’t go if she eventually decided not to.
She was concerned because a lot of her male friends were uncomfortable about the amount of pressure they were getting to go.
Both her bishop and stake president questioned if she really wanted to go, and why, and asked her about the marriage possibility (she has a boyfriend). I found that to be disappointing, and it reinforces the tone of a lot of comments here and in the OP about the church’s sexist attitude toward missionaries
She is having a great experience by the way.
Scott J:
Many factors have torn religious denominations apart. The mellow, democratic Presbyterians have split into 5 different conferences. So many Baptist have become independent it is bewildering. The United Methodists make a big deal about still being united but the number of independent Methodists is growing. Some of these branches thrive, others do not. And it is almost predictable which ones will dwindle.
A good example is a church my wife attended for a number of years, (This history is off the top of my head so is approximate). I think in the 1980’s an Episcopalian congregation with membership concentrated in the wealthy suburbs decided to chart a course similar but not as radical as Scott J. (ironically?) suggests, A smaller portion split off. They selected a young Sunday school teacher originally from Egypt with a degree as a minister and with a charismatic personality and a nice accent to lead them. They set up an independent church of a few families with a structure similar to Anglicans but preaching evangelical doctrine centered on Christ and the Bible.
This simple formula resulted in steady growth to where now they have built one of the largest cathedral-like buildings in the area and have membership of I think about 6000 attending meetings weekly. They broadcast the weekly sermons into the middle east, India, China and elsewhere to over 10,000 stations. They pay for the best professional gospel music. ( My daughter has played her violin there earning $400 for one rehearsal and about 6 or 8 hymns during their service of about 1 hour.) He is an excellent preacher although I disagree with him on some points. They have excellent youth programs, small Bible study groups and community outreach. Nothing they do is unique but they do all of it well .The church they left has dwindled to where they can’t afford to even pay the maintenance costs of their beautiful old, but mostly empty church building and as a token of Christian friendship the successful church helps them keep their doors open.
Here is a link to their website, I hope it works. http://apostles.org/
Scott J. Cleanse the inner vessel in the LDS church for me would be #1 and #2 and #3 -make the worship and focus boldly, unmistakably and authentically centered on Christ; the basic message of faith, repentance, and forgiveness and devotion. I attend a church service with my wife every week and she attends a LDS sacrament meeting every week with me. Half the time you can’t even tell the LDS meeting is a Christian service. All of the time the various aspects of the LDS service are crappy with rare exceptions. Rooting for Mormonism in this weekly comparison that has gone on now for over 7 years is like rooting for BYU football when they played LSU or Wisconsin. My testimony based on experience is that my church sucks in this most crucial characteristic; more than my BYU football team was pretty crappy last year. At least they won 4 games.
I would see the following as icing on the cake. Better music, better prayers and better preaching. Also better youth programs and community out reach. Others have suggested longer lists and I agree with most of the items But I think all that would flow out of genuine centeredness on Christ Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
I do not see this as a matter of minor neglect as I once thought, easily corrected by increments. I see a competing idol or idols in the center of Mormonism that distracts us from Christ. That idol needs to be knocked down. That idol is hard to comprehend and perhaps I don’t understand it. But my guess is that the institution of the church has become the idol with celebrity apostles and prophets at the head. Notice children who often monkey adults closely always say in testimony meeting, ” I know the church is true;”but they seldom say “Jesus loves me” or anything about Christ at all.
I question, is the preparation for and service as an LDS missionary centered more on Christ? Or more on the institutional demands of the church acting as a vehicle to Christ and yet does many things that often scarcely resemble what the Biblical Christ taught and did.
All of these comments are based on my limited experience across a few decades and your mileage may vary.
Eugene, I would have told your daughter to memorize the first part of the scripture that begins with : For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ…. (Romans 1:16 -I think -citation needs checking) What you describe is a farce as preparation to be a Christian missionary, They should be fired up to where they are willing to be fed to lions. Well,maybe not quite that fired up. Christian missionaries in China and in the middle east have died for Christ in the last year, not just in accidents either. Hopefully she has caught the Spirit and is doing well. Otherwise, she is wasting her time if she remains that timid about it.
As a male child in an active LDS family, I grew up being told that it was my duty and responsibility to go on a mission. I was told by parents, teachers, EFY speakers, and church leaders alike that no self-respecting LDS young woman would ever marry a man who had not served an honorable, full-time mission. In a nutshell, I grew up being told that my entire self worth depended on my serving a mission. I have two older sisters. I never once heard anyone suggest that they should serve missions.
When my sons were born I made it very clear to my wife that I was not going to push missions on them. But that hasn’t stopped bishop’s and young men’s leaders from doing exactly that. I have had bishops ask me what i am doing to help my sons prepare for missions (“I’m staying out of it and lettimg them make their own decisions on that matter). No one had ever suggested that I need to prepare my daughter’s for missions.
Young men have until age 26 to serve missions, and they only get one as single men. There is no age limit for women, and they can go on as many missions as single women as they want.
See the difference?
My experience on our mission as Senior Missionaries is not the balance between male and female that is the important issue as the sister missionaries generally functioned far better than the elders…far better. They ‘read’ people more and were much more sensitive to people’s understanding and needs. So less sisters seemed to me had greater impact on the missionary program than the Elders. Maybe the 28% or so really is double that in influence?
The real problem with the missionary problem is chapters long?
But for me the main issues are:
We tell people what we want to tell them and not necessarily what they want to know…. Cultural issues are fundamentally ignored…..language is a very real issue in non English areas as language is about ideas …we use ‘Mormon speak’ especially to people where English is not their first language….they are often confused.
The 1950 insurance sales techniques have been outdated for many many decades
The American business culture is a large and huge inhibitor to what is a revolutionary religious message
The selection of Mission presidents as cultural Mormon Utah clones ( a bit harsh but I know only one or two in my long life in the church who Don’t fit the ‘image’)
Finally the whole idea of the church as a corporate business…..which often produces the ‘Apostle Envy Group’…at both Mission Presidents Area Presidents who make the poor elders and sisters work their butts off so they will look good in the ‘corporation’…..
As an Australian I never felt pressure to go on a mission neither did I put pressure on my children 3 boys and my daughter……it for us was a non issue….not so obviously for many in the US.