If you have followed many of my posts (such as here and here), you will know I am a big Jonathan Haidt fan. Reading his book “The Righteous Mind: How Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion” had me nodding my head in agreement and eagerly reading with much interest. I did have to remember that I need to look in the mirror as he was writing not only everyone else, but he was writing about how I act and behave. It is just easier to see in other people. So when I saw he had another book out (with a co-author Greg Lukianoff), “The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure”, I had to read it.
I found this interesting in a different way than Haidt’s previous books. It explained some definitive changes going on at college campuses – especially those on the coasts of the US. In typical Haidt fashion, he isn’t trying to bash liberals or conservatives. He is trying to understand what is changing and trying to figure out why.
The book focuses on 3 main psychological principles and about what happens to children when parents and educators, acting with the best of intentions, implement policies that are inconsistent with those principles. They are grouped as:
- Young people are anti-fragile NOT what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
Thus, prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
- We are all prone to emotional reasoning and confirmation bias, and should NOT always trust your feelings.
Thus, your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as own thoughts unguarded, but once mastered no one can help you as much – not even your father or your mother.
- We are all prone to dichotomous (black and white) thinking and tribalism and life is NOT a simple battle of good people vs bad people.
Thus the heart of good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.
There are certainly some interesting things to ponder on with points 2 and 3 in relation to the Mormon church, but I wanted to focus a bit on the first one. I have heard this also described as the generation where everyone always got a trophy.
The book focuses on changes that occurred as iGen generation started entering colleges. My summation of the author’s point on this was simply that parents and society have focused too much on having an environment with minimized conflict or pain. This isn’t limited to “helicopter” parenting. The book postulates that this parenting style tends to create individuals that are quickly offended and often feel they are being “assaulted” when someone else has a different view or opinion. Whereas people a generation or two ago would assume a remark or word was not made in a malicious way is now taken to be a micro-aggression. If a person FEELS they offended, that is all that matters and intent is of no consequence.
It wasn’t in this book, but I heard about a man who went to visit his father (I apologize that can’t recall were to attribute this to). His father told his son about “an Oriental couple” that lived close. The son verbally jumped all over his father for using such an outdated and offensive term as “Oriental” and told him that “Asian” was the proper term. He told his dad that he needed to get with the times and stop being so offensive. The dad started to leave and said something along the lines of, “Sorry I can’t keep up with all the new words, but I volunteered to take my ‘ORIENTAL’ friend and his wife to her doctors appointment.”
The book is filled with what as a late baby boomer I can’t help but see as quite wacko behavior on some college campuses. I consider myself “woke” enough to realize that I really have a lot of work to do in understanding the lived experiences of others (I loved the post the other day at Exponent II as one example).
The authors use an analogy with nut allergies. Back some time ago it was suggested that it would be safer to keep any nut products away from young kids. This of course was done to protect them from allergic reactions to nuts. But the fallout of this being widely adopted was a significant increase in the number of individuals with nut allergies. It was found that not exposing young kids to nuts didn’t allow their immune system to “figure out” how to appropriately react to nuts and this resulted in an increased percentage of the allergies. This actually reminded me of a study that suggesting that providing “sterile” environments is bad for children’s health. The title of an article in the Washington Post titled: “More evidence that the key to allergy-free kids is giving them plenty of dirt — and cows” It seems that the nice “aroma” on dairy farms may actually be a good thing.
The parallel he draws is that children that are not exposed to others with different views tend to not be as emotionally resilient and they are not able to withstand the real “nutty” world we live in (pun intended). He focuses on college life where he comments how a larger college administrative staff often attempts to fill this need of its customers (students). Administrative staff coming to students aid too quickly for anything anybody finds offensive, the administrators are actually making the students even less able to deal with these issues. This in turn does not prepare students for life after college. They also argue that the increase in anxiety and depression are in the mix also due to some of the same causes.
Just as I was reading this book, a fellow Wheat & Tares blogger made the following comment:
The word on the street is that while Missionaries are better prepared doctrinally, they are not prepared to work. And that is the biggest issue. There is also the issue with the disconnection from social media and video games. Not to mention anxiety and depression. Many parents have had this experience. In some cases, some Missionaries can’t handle the rejection and hostility they encounter. The problem is as much a parental issue as a missionary issue.
I was surprised that this friend had not read this book as he is saying much of the same thing that the book puts forward. Part of this discussion with my friend was focusing on rumors of possibly changing the age for missionaries. The previous changes in missionary age requirements certainly created a surge of missionaries and greatly increased the percentage of sisters serving. I would assume that given the number of baptisms didn’t increase, the average number of baptisms per missionary went down. And on a mission there isn’t a much better reward than baptisms. I know on my mission that was drilled into us with the expression, “The ONLY reason you are here is to baptize.” I know I saw a few issues with the missionaries in our ward after the age change that were not experienced previously. We even had one sister missionary that left a real vibe of, “Hey, I sacrificed and came out on my mission, now it is your job as the members to bring investigators to me. So get busy.”
I also read some of Jana Riess’ latest blog stating that one third of missionaries are coming home early and only a small fraction of those are for “unresolved transgressions”.
It is no surprise that one of the sets of General Conference rumors deals with changing some things up for missionaries. I have not seen anything clear, but some of the rumors are about options for shortening the length. That certainly would help some to be able to know their mission could be shorter. I served during the period where elders were doing 18-month missions. I didn’t have to learn a new language and I found 18 months was plenty enough to build thick callouses on my knuckles while knocking on doors. I have 0% guilt about having “only” served 18 months. I paid for just about all of my mission, so I was really glad it was only as long as it was.
I do feel much progress has been made in helping missionaries that return home early feel welcome and much less shameful. There is still work to do as often the most critical of those coming home early are the missionaries themselves. They often can be hard on themselves while the ward is fully accepting them with love.
What has your experience been with the mission age change and what changes would you suggest as far as changes?
Do you see an issue with missionaries growing up being a bit too “sheltered” and unable to perform the duties of a mission?
Wheat & Tares 
I’ve posted on this topic before and I honestly have not seen any change in the quality of missionaries. Also, the missionaries have always, in my experience, pushed (maybe guilted is the right word) members to provide referrals. I certainly took advantage of referrals in my mission but I don’t recall being heavy-handed with the members about getting those referrals (I served in a country in which the Church was growing quickly at the time so finding people to teach wasn’t nearly so hard as other areas of the world). However, the attitude you felt you caught from that sister, to me, appears to be quite common and the training certainly encourages missionaries to work through the members to the greatest extent possible.
Not a Cougar – I fully agree that missionaries have always at least “leaned” on members for referrals. I remember on my mission decades ago someone coming home from his mission and he told my companion and I how his mission was a pilot program where they were not allowed to tract. All they were allowed to do was meet with members and ask for referrals. He said he wasn’t sold on it as it started getting a bit too common where members would pretend they were not home when the missionaries came over.
The point in my story was it seemed a bit immature for a sister missionary to say, “I have sacrificed 18 months of my life, so can you at least commit to finding someone to teach so that we can do our jobs as missionaries.” Almost every missionary has asked us to look for investigators. Maybe I am a getting old and cranky, but her words seemed to lack respect that a more mature sister would probably not express – even if she had that feeling.
And I am glad you have not seen any change where you are. And I will admit it is not across the board. We still do get mostly great missionaries. My bishop has said that he really has noticed the difference and feels like he has to do more babysitting than he remembered when he was previously a bishop before the age change.
Hubby, thanks. I guess my point was that the “where’s my referrals!?!?!” attitude isn’t a new one. I recall one time when sister missionaries brought my mom to tears over it. She’s simply never been comfortable talking about her faith to other people and that is unlikely to change.
We generally have high quality missionaries. All 4 that we currently have are 18 or 19. None seem coddled. I think they want to work, but the missionaries where I live in the suburban south must rely on member referrals. Nearly everyone has a no soliciting sign on the door, the apartment complexes have no solicitation policies and our Next Door app and community Facebook page send out alerts when Mormon or JW missionaries are out knocking. Moreover, nearly everyone under the age of 65 is at work during the day. Two income professional households are the norm. As a result, our 4 missionaries spend a lot of their time lingering around the church or posting to social media. When they come over for dinner some have been known to complain about how boredom is killing them. One elder said that he had spent 16 months in what seemed like “a waste of time” and that he probably would have had more success as a missionary by going to college and befriending people. He would love to have a door slammed in his face but no one is ever home. We had a set of sister missionaries last year and they would do contacting at our large community park but that caused complaints to be lodged with the city which the local paper spread like wildfire and the sisters stopped because they didn’t want to create ill will and controversy. I think mission changes are coming because the nature of the missions has changed so much. My husband noted that this generation doesn’t suffer silently. They advocate for themselves.
Great post, thanks.
OftenPerplexed – I think the area I live in is about the same as your area, maybe a few more SHM’s. But the missionaries can’t tract – it backfires. And yes the neighborhood “online grapevine” is probably hyper-vigilant and alert the group when even door to door salespeople are in the neighborhood. There was even a time when a car that was just “driving too slowly through the neighborhood” caused a mass panic as more and more people saw it. It turned out to be a volunteer for the neighborhood homeowners association that was just looking for broken fence boards, unkempt lawns, and other gross infraction of the HOA rules. The policeman that was called to track them down thought it was funny.
I had considered branching down the road of some of your comments in the blog. I am actually hoping some of the rumors are true with allowing more service opportunities for missionaries. I think missions are hyped up to be super spiritual, but for many the experience is a boring let-down. I can see where some missionaries do suffer mental/emotional issues coming from boredom.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Socrates
No matter how much things change, they stay the same.
I wonder if part of the problem is the way missions put so much pressure to perform on young kids, much the way a quota driven sales job does? I served in Asia in the early 90’s and had to report our companionship numbers each week and received a mild scolding masked as encouragement from my DL or ZL each time we didn’t hit the mission standard numbers.
That part of the mission was a big surprise to me and caused a lot of stress. It’s one thing to be rejected by non-believers all day, but quite another to be chastised by your leaders for not reaching arbitrary goals, despite your best efforts. Maybe the mental health problems many missionaries deal with is in part caused by adding this unnecessary stress to an already difficult situation?
The older generations always view the younger generation as having been mollycoddled. After thousands of years of this is it really a surprise that our youth have the constitution of a wet paper bag? 😉
It’s completely like me to miss the mark on things like this but I question, what is strength?
If missionaries are not prepared for the mission and we view them as fragile, lazy, weak, etc. we could take the approach of saying that the kids need to toughen up. If missionaries are not prepared for the mission and we view missions as unnecessarily burdensome we could take the approach of lightening the yoke we place on missionaries. I suspect there’s a balance between those approaches.
In recalling my mission days it was easily 14 hour days, 7 days a week, 52.143 weeks a year for two years. Intense pressure to hit the numbers, not one day of vacation, no sick days, just one half day per week that was consumed with the chores you didn’t have time to do during the week and a half day off on Christmas. That can be a lot to ask of the seasoned workaholics of the world, let alone youth that had a relatively carefree life before the switch was turned from “off” to “entirely too much.”
But back to this concept of strength. Which is stronger, silently suffering while enduring the often unproductive workload or facing down intense cultural pressure and five levels of interviews all designed to keep someone on their mission. The strength to stand up and not let others bully or dictate all of your choices for you. Staying will build character, leaving will build character.
“they are not prepared to work. And that is the biggest issue.”
That’s a tough pill to swallow. To paraphrase Richard from Tommy Boy, I’d hate to blame the salesman for not being able to sell ketchup popsicles to women in white gloves. I remember being 18. I remember a common sentiment among the 18 year olds of the church. “Church is boring.” It’s hard to blame a sales force for laying everything on the line, taking on yet another layer of rules and regulations to follow, all to sell a product that has instilled such little enthusiasm in them.
James, I love that quote and have thrown it out once or twice in Gospel Doctrine. The salt-and-pepper crowd didn’t seem to like it much.
Mission age change negatively impacted the quality of Elders and Sisters alike. The Elders are generally just out of high school and have almost no worldly experience to the point that they are useless. I used to enjoy talking to the ones who had been to a year of college and asking about their experiences there, but honestly most of the Elders are just boring. While I’m genuinely thrilled that sisters are able to serve younger, likewise the quality of those missionaries has also decreased.
Frankly they don’t seem more fragile – they just seem more clueless. I do attribute that to video games and social media to some degree but also to younger ages. I believe that the missions in my state are less numbers oriented than when I was on a mission, perhaps decreasing the mental and emotional stress of the missionaries here. They can spend up to 25% of their time doing service and if they go over it’s not a big deal. My mission was 2 hours a week or something like that and those 2 hours were highly valued as a mental break from missionary work. The missionaries here almost never ask me for referrals, they ask for much easier goals like writing a testimony in a Book of Mormon or taking cookies to a neighbor or serving someone new.
Outside of the mission – in some ways the youth of today seem more fragile than my generation (gen X) but in some ways they are stronger. Video games, social media, easy access to porn has made them more fragile but also the youth that I work with are more questioning and have better critical thinking skills than I did at that age. If the bishop or prophet said something, why that was law. I know almost no youth who think that way now; for good or bad they trust their own judgement and desires more.
I’m not sure if we’re overlooking the fact that the general population — at least of the US and Canada — knows a lot more about Mormonism now than they did a generation ago. Things like the Romney presidential candidacy, news stories about high profile excommunications, Sam Young’s Protect the Children campaign, McKenna Denson’s charges against Joseph Bishop (and church’s subsequent failure to discipline him), the church’s active political agenda to marginalize gay Americans (along with the general attitude of homophobia), periodic large public defections of the membership, and now its blatant political engineering in response to Utah Proposition 2 have become common knowledge. Then throw in something controversial like baptisms for the dead or asking people to give up coffee.
Potential prospects are in larger numbers well equipped to voice their opposition to the church and back it up with specifics. How many times is a kid going to listen to those objections without having their training that they’re offering the One True Church challenged?
It’s too easy to find the missionaries at fault because they’re young and not fully matured. Or “soft”. Maybe there’s more about the church that we should be examining. People in the missionary field certainly aren’t reluctant to.
My husband and I had the elders in our area live with us for a year. By and large they were great young men. Their area was constricted to our stake boundaries. We live in a well established affluent stake in the suburbs of Salt Lake City. Many of the residents who live in our stake boundaries have housekeepers, gardeners, and nannies. Quite frankly, the missionaries had nothing to do, and no one to teach. The wards in the stake would send around sign up sheets so the missionaries could teach member families the discussions. I observed these motivated young men become frustrated and bored. When I suggested to the mission president that they could offer meaningful service outside of our stake boundaries, the mission president declined to consider the option. I felt sorry for the missionaries. They spent one or two transfers in frustration. The message from their mission president, ” If you keep the rules, you will find contacts.” Many of the elders became depressed and felt shame about their lack of ability to share the gospel. They were prepared to work, but the old style of missionary rules and procedures offered them little to do.
The knee-jerk reaction to blame the missionaries is misplaced. It’s the system that is failing the missionaries, not the other way around. As noted in comments above, it’s tougher to be a missionary now — partly because people out there know more about the Church (and it’s generally not positive info) and partly because the idea of spreading one’s religion door-to-door is even less welcome today than in the past. The system is badly in need of rethinking from the ground up, but the Church is led by a group that has zero interest in rethinking *anything* about the Church. They will stick with tradition and existing procedures/policies/doctrine until something just absolutely falls apart. With ERMs (early-returning missionaries) well into the double digits now, according to recent statistics, the system really is falling apart. It’s the system that is broken, not the missionaries.
“Maybe there’s more about the church that we should be examining.” Amen, alice. That’s what I’d say. I think there are a couple of issues here:
1. Pressuring all young men to go on missions is a mistake. Many young LDS men, for a number of reasons, aren’t suited for mission work. Those reasons can range from being emotionally or psychologically unfit to being good critical thinkers (something the church DOESN’T want) to not buying into what the church is selling in a whole-hearted enough way. Of course, a great deal of this pressure is social. Our ward has had several male missionaries return early and they’ve struggled to deal with the feeling of failure that they carry. When I was at BYU (a while ago, now), there was more than one sacrament talk addressed to the young men on the importance of being an RM and to the young sisters on the importance of marrying an RM. I really hope that’s not still the case, but I suspect it is. We really need to lighten up on this issue.
2. The cult of perfect obedience is a recipe for disaster. If you tell an impressionable young person bullish*t like “perfect obedience brings perfect blessings,” all you are doing is setting them up for failure, shame and guilt. No-one can win in that scenario because no-one can be perfectly obedient. If we stopped inundating our young people with this kind of harmful advice, we might have fewer missionaries, but we’d have a lot more healthy young people.
The notion of the current crop of missionaries (as well as others of their generation) being lazy, weak, coddled, fragile, lacking work ethic, etc, is a tired stereotype. With the age change, missionaries were pushed into the field younger (thus lower average maturity) and in greater numbers (less oversight/mentorship from leaders), so they were set up for these problems right from the start. But I believe the real problem is not with the messengers, it’s the message. Missionary “work” is artificial and arbitrary. Spending day after day knocking on doors and harassing innocent people on street corners is just busy work, and this generation of missionaries knows it. They grew up with social media, and with advanced critical thinking skills their parents don’t have. They have finely tuned BS meters, and very little tolerance for hypocrisy. They went to high school during the age of school shootings, while they watched their parents and other adults stridently defend the 2nd Amendment. Youth today also seem to be more empathetic to the needs of others. They know that real meaningful service is very effective, while proselytizing is not. They would much rather be digging wells or sweeping floors at a soup kitchen than knocking on doors all day.
If there is anything wrong about them, its only a manifestation of their parents’ failures.
I haven’t been around missionaries much since the age change, but I know I learned and grew a lot in the year I spent at college before I went on a mission. It’s a big jump to go from living at home for 18 years to not being allowed to even call home for six months at a time.
The other issue I’ll bring up is that the missionary program is really a strategy from a different era. I feel like we keep doing it the same way because of cultural inertia.
I think the argument that younger generation being generally less prepared for the rigors of a mission may have some teeth to it. So much focus on building self-esteem, praising (maybe overly so) all achievements, everyone getting participation trophies, etc, does not generally prepare young people for real life where not everything is a success and failure is a real thing. Add to that the difficulty of being rejected over and over and over and over again on a mussion, and I think there is a recipe for increased internal angst and struggle while on a mission. Plus, if missionaries have never lived outside the home and experienced more of the realities of life, this may add to the challenge as well.
My heart breaks for young missionaries struggling. The mission is a great place for character development but rejection is hard and when success is measured by converts, a missionary can really feel like a failure depending on their personality and on where they serve.
I had a young missionary in my ward relate an experience speaking with someone while knocking on doors who was a nevermo, well versed in church history and relayed some heavy stuff on this Elder – true facts but portayed negatively and things this Elder had never heard before. After telling me this, he shakily asked me, “the church is still true right?” The mission is not a safe place to gave a faith crisis and I couldn’t get into the nuance of ambiguity and beyond black/white thinking with him. I just tried to offer some of my own thoughts on the issues from a believing perspective even though I don’t hold those believing perspectives anymore. Missions are hard enough without dealing with faith questions. I just hope he (and all missionaries) can have a good positive experience, regardless of where they end up with their faith someday.
I showed some of these comments to my oldest. She got very angry. She is in high school carrying a huge course load of AP classes, getting in her service hours at the soup kitchen, studying for the SAT and ACT, early morning seminary and extracurricular activities that keep her at school until 9 pm on 3 nights per week and most Saturdays. Last year she had a small part time job too, but this year she is an officer in her clubs and it takes hours of time. She is pushed to think, analyze and question by nearly all of her teachers. She laughs at the idea that her generation is soft because they aren’t out plowing a field. I was tops in my class in high school, at BYU and top 20% at a top 15 law school; I could never have handled the expectations our youth have heaped on them today. When it comes to the Church’s claims, these youth are interacting with peers and teachers who have ready access to information. Our mission field youth don’t accept trite answers and they find no appeal in blind obedience. Our youth Sunday School classes push back hard against appeals to authority and the idea of innate gender roles. My oldest daughter’s seminary teacher keeps emailing all of the parents to share his concerns over the students’ tough questions. They certainly aren’t glazed over video game players.
In our area the missionary program feels and looks like busy work. The missionaries speak up and ask for changes. The young adults serving in our mission aren’t learning a new language. They aren’t exposed to a new culture other than southern. There aren’t very many service opportunities in our boundaries. They don’t get referrals because most of the members don’t even like the church experience enough to invite a friend, or the adults don’t have non-LDS friends, or we think that we have so many on our rolls who have stepped away over the past several years that we are gun shy. Assigning number goals in an area where no one is home and no one wants to be hassled is depressing. You could make the missionaries serve at 20, but they would likely be just as bored and depressed in our area at 20 as they are at 18 or 19 and it isn’t because they are soft or fragile. As a parent it seems like a waste of time, talent and money, but I don’t say so. I continue to feed them and let them teach us so they can keep up their skills.
Maybe a few more of us should see ‘The Book of Mormon’ musical, it articulates many of these issues very well. It’s really quite an eye opener for those who have a one dimensional view of serving a mission.
I’ve seen some incredible growth and development come to pass in our beautiful young men as they serve missions. My husband was ward mission leader for seven plus years and stake mission president for some of those years. We had a lot of missionaries in and out of our home.
I’m a convert, and the change that brought about in my life and family is inconceivable in one generation, and I’ve seen this repeated in many other families. I have cause to kiss the feet of the young men who sacrificed those years of their lives, and their amazing families.
But the system doesn’t fly any more, and is based on assumptions that any educated young person will question nowadays. We need big change, and a shorter mission based on service must be the way ahead. We need to be known for our serviceable young men and our lives well- lived. I suspect that their service will lead them to love the people and find their own reason for seeking a testimony.
The Church needs a complete overhaul of the proselytizing missionary program. It wasn’t productive in Europe when I was there in the 1960’s and I suspect that it isn’t anymore productive in the 2010’s. Tracting in the developed world no longer works. And in the developing world, converts frequent don’t last. I can understand the frustrations that modern young missionaries encounter. Why waste 2 years of your life on an unproductive (waste of time) program? You can argue that missions build character, but there are much better ways to build character that wasting young members’ time.
Service, Service, Service is a more viable option than tracting and contacting people on the street. It is a more productive use of a missionary’s time. And it enhances the image of the Church. The interaction with the local community also helps the missionary better understand the local culture.
It would also be useful if missionaries were encouraged to get more familiar with the local culture. So that they better understand the environment they are living in. Attending orchestras, operas, and bands; hiking and book clubs, visiting historical sites, etc.
Instead of looking at what’s wrong with our youth, let’s examine what is wrong with the missionary program.
Roger – You reminded me of one of my favorite books – “Way below the Angels: the pretty clearly troubled but not even close to tragic confessions of a real live Mormon missionary” by Craig Harline. He served in Belgium in the 1970’s. The book is fairly accurate, and really funny to boot. I highly recommend it.
And on the local culture. I had one of my kids that went outside the US and really got involved a bit in the culture and really came to love it. Another of my kids went outside the US, but the MP worked them hard. He never so much as took a few minutes tour of local historical church and came back loving the people, but not really having even learned much of the culture. I reviewed the wiki page for the country when he came back and he knew almost nothing about the country. I thought that was a shame.
I know this is a meaningless anecdote in response to the weak missionary theory here, but nevertheless, I have to put my .02:
My missionary son (18 mo now) is a 4.0 student with a scholarship to BYU. He ran cross country/track for 4 years, plays several instruments well, Eagle Scout, had a full-time job, and waited until 19 to serve in the states. He’s completely capable, friendly, and spent nearly 45 minutes nightly during HS/college pouring over scriptures and writing in his journal what he learned in the chapters. I’ve honestly never seen anyone like him. He should be a stellar missionary, as he did most of these aforementioned things on his own.
But he struggles on his mission for these reasons:
1.) obedience brings blessings mentality—he has no baptisms in a state side mission and takes this thinking very personally. “I need to be more obedient, humble, repent more, etc.”
2.) no one is interested in the message
3.) no one is home
4.) everyone in public is on their phones
5.)Facebook isn’t allowed on their mission
6.) they’re in abike area, in a hot/humid small town in US
7.)rumors re: the lds church
8.) he is bored, exhausted from trying/failing, and frustrated
9.) his ward is just burned out from missionary work.
He was put on an antidepressant last week. I’m dying over this. It is so situational and this kid is determined to stick it out because of his devotion to the Lord. I’m praying for major changes tomorrow. All he has ever wanted was to serve the Lord, and he is getting a mental illness as a result of missionary work.
H2, I will have to read Harline’s book. It gets great reviews on Amazon. I was in France and Belgium in the mid-60s. After the great apostasy in the French mission and after the “swimming pool/baseball baptism” fiasco in the European missions. Missions to foreign speaking missions were then 2-1/2+ years. This gave me an extra 1/2 year to consider my fate (and illegally travel).
I think the problems here with missionaries are, one, the area they are assigned to is way too small. It has been tracted to death! Another is they are not allowed to do hardly any service. Most of the service opportunities are out of their area and they can’t leave their area. They are bored to death! I have asked them how come they cannot go down to the homeless shelter. They said because the shelter is non-denominational and they said that the missionaries could not proselytize or wear their name tags, so the Church won’t let them go. There is a big food bank in the general area, but they are not allowed to go and volunteer, only the missionaries that are covering that area can go. My daughter served in San Jose, CA and she volunteered at least 3 or 4 times a week. They did no tracting. She felt she did so much more good volunteering and getting to know people than trying to tract. They also set up booths on San Jose State campus every week and proselytized that way. Again, I don’t think the missionaries are lazy here, they are just very bored and frustrated! Plus, the rules are over the top. They are taught perfection. No one can live up to that! I can see exactly why they are going home. I don’t blame them!
@ rogerdhansen
I am female, went on a mission in early 1980s. I was called as a Health Missionary. It was a program that President Kimball put in place. Health Missionaries went through the traditional missionary training plus extra training to focus on health, nutrition, service etc. I was also sent to a Spanish speaking area so I had language lessons. Health missionaries were not to proselytize, ever, even when doing the health work.
When I arrived at my mission, the mission president told me that I would not be utilized as a Health missionary but as a proselytizing missionary. I politely said that President Kimball called me as a Health missionary and therefore I was to do the work I was trained and called to do. He told me he was in charge at this mission, not President Kimball. The mission president forbid all Health missionaries from doing what we were trained and sent out to do.
During my entire mission I was partnered with another Health missionary. We did the Health training work. Another sister missionary found out and told the mission president. We were split up, and the mission president made sure that two Health missionaries were never put together as long as he was mission president. When I went home he was still mission president. I was never impressed with him, to this day.
During the short time that my Health missionary partner and I were together, we did a lot of health missionary work, and a lot of good. We received more referrals from doing service than from anything else. People asked us what we wanted in return for our help and when we said we wanted nothing, they were very surprised. Because of our service we had many people asking about the church. When we worked with people we did have a prayer before we left, every time without fail.
After President Kimball passed away, the Health missionary program was stopped. What a shame.
(Four years ago an elderly neighbor was thinking of moving. This neighbor called me at all hours of the day and night, even though she had four sons living nearby. Two discs in my back ruptured when I was helping her. Anyway, a grand-daughter of hers came by, and the neighbor said that they need to call the Mormon missionaries to help her move because that is what the Mormon church does and that is what the Mormon missionaries are for. So some people get the wrong idea about the service of Mormons and Mormon missionaries. But even though this happens, I would love to see missionaries be service missionaries first.)
Amen Brother Sky.
I’ve had little to do with missionaries for the past few years, so I can’t assess the age changes for missionary service. I’m don’t see myself referring my non-member friends to missionaries because we simply don’t talk about religion. I don’t feel comfortable pushing my religion on friends who have no interest and are happy with their religion/lives.
I viewed my role as a mother was to prepare them to be out in the world on their own, which necessitated requiring them to learn and do things.
I thought they could benefit from the experience of being a missionary but left the decision to them. Only one of my children (all millennials) chose to go on a mission–the child which I feared would struggle the most as he suffered to some degree from social anxiety. He ended up staying out 9 mons. before coming home with significant depression and struggled for another 2 yrs before finding stability. Despite struggling while out on his mission, I could see that he matured and grew despite/from his experience. However, he confided to me that his mission experience caused him to be a little more cynical of the church–and to differentiate it from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (He is my only child that has remained active in the church and is now serving in a leadership position). (My son was lucky in that he left and returned home from his mission in different wards. I think that lessened the stigma he might’ve experienced had he returned to the same war he left from. He was treated by stake and local leaders no different than missionaries who served the whole 2 years).
Clearly, not everybody is suited for “sales” jobs so there should be alternatives. Door-to-door sales is probably not the most effective way to introduce the gospel either. But the most important thing is to make sure the product works for the customer.
Happy Hubby,
I know the peanut analogy isn’t yours but I have to push back a little because I have a child with a peanut allergy. He was diagnosed at age 1 when experiencing a anaphylaxis reaction to eggs (and subsequently to peanuts. He grew out of the egg allergy by age 4, still is severely allergic to peanuts). He was an extremely colicky baby most of his first year. I ate peanuts and peanut butter frequently throughout those months of breastfeeding. I believe he became sensitized to peanuts through my breast milk. (peanut protein does appear in breast milk). The first time he actually ate something with peanuts (cold cereal at a friend’s house) he vomited several times. Subsequent accidental encounters with peanuts resulted in trips to the ER–difficulty breathing, swollen tongue, itchy mouth, dropping blood pressure etc This all happened before societal heightened awareness (and paranoia) of peanuts and allergies. Not all peanut allergies are alike. Some kids will not respond positively to earlier introduction of peanuts.
Lois – You are 100% correct that not all nut allergies are caused by a failure to expose the children early. I tried to be careful with my wording as even with early exposure to nuts, some children will have nut allergies. But attempting to keep nuts away from all youngsters seems to effect a portion of children. People certainly need to be aware and see if their child seems to react.
I am sure it was and isn’t a fun issue to deal with. It almost brings physical pain to hear the words, “colicky baby”. That is just SO hard.
And I hope your sons are doing well and it sounds like you had the right mindset. It wasn’t until my second kid left our home that I really internalized how important it was to prepare them for the world. I stopped answering many questions and instead would start showing them how they might go find out for themselves – or just make up their own mind without bothering mom and dad! 🙂
Thanks for the comments.
Tulan, Was Elder Marion D. Hanks one of the inspirations behind your health mission program?
OftenPerplexed: I agree that in my case at least, I was not nearly the student my daughter is. We didn’t have as much homework, I didn’t have to suffer through multiple years of early morning seminary, I didn’t do the extracurriculars she does. I did hold a job from age 16 onward, but that was it.
HappyHubby: Reading through your examples in the post reminded me of an exchange with my executive assistant in Singapore. She was Singaporean and she used the term “Oriental.” I very nearly corrected her (!), but instead I said, “Well, that’s interesting. In the US we say “Asian” and only old people and manufacturers of Ramen noodles say “Oriental.”” She said, “Asian, Oriental, yeah, yeah, same same.” In a different conversation, I was talking with my manager assistant who is Indian. We were traveling to his home city together on business, and I kept calling it Mumbai. Finally he stopped me and said, “It’s driving me crazy that you keep calling my home town Mumbai. To me, it’s Bombay.” I said I thought we were supposed to say Mumbai now because Bombay is colonialist, and he said that although it’s true, it’s only been Mumbai for 10 years, but he always said he was from Bombay for 30 years before that, and he hadn’t lived there for 10 years anyway, so it was weird to have to call it something else.
My kids think everything is racist, and probably a lot of it is, but they have a harder time seeing the difference between accidental racism and hatred of others based on skin color. I’ve tried to explain that in my lifetime the “proper” words for things have changed multiple times, and double that for my parents’ generation. By today’s standards, my parents are racist, but they simply haven’t been exposed to integrated cultures much. They don’t have malice toward others or think other races are lazy or bad or dishonest people. They are curious and interested in others. They lack awareness, experience, and sensitivity. They use the wrong terms sometimes. They still think people should be treated with dignity, if the wariness of the unfamiliar.
I think the age change was too young for both sexes, and I do see some differences in maturity, but mostly I’m concerned that they don’t have enough to do. It’s an even bigger sacrifice now than when I served due to technology. We didn’t have cell phones to give up, and we got our information the old fashioned way, by talking to other ignoramuses.
Lois,
IM sure the peanut antigens and aluminum adjuvants that were used in the vaccines have nothing to do with the peanut allergy either…
Anne my heart goes out to you. I think a conversation with his mission president is the least that should be happening, but I would seriously be thinking about getting him home. The situation is helping no-one, and may lay a groundwork for a life time of scrupulosity that will hinder him a great deal in life, especially as he is evidently a very conscientious little soul. Anti-depressants may get him through in the short term and may be the least worst part of this.
Anne, my son too is a very bright, top 5% in his class, college scholarship and had a tendency to be hard on himself. He was put on antidepressants in the field as well. But one day I received a very disturbing letter from him and knew he needed to come home. But when I called him, he wanted to have a day to think about coming home. The next day he told us he felt his prayers had been answered that it was time. Luckily he had a kind and compassionate MP.
He was only home for a month before he left the state to go back to BYU. I told him to make sure to get a dr. to follow-up with him. He did, but continued to struggle to some extent, unbeknown to me until one day he told me he “felt nothing—numb” and that the dr. had added another medication. I suggested he discuss with the dr. tapering off all the meds and then re-evaluate. He did, and found at that point he felt better without medication.
My heart goes out to you and your son. I don’t think we should pressure all young people to go on a mission. It should be presented as “if” you want to serve, not “you will” serve. There are many ways to serve God. Leaders underestimate the damage they can do in applying cookie cutter molds to everyone.
No one should begin their futures on antidepressants and demoralized by a sense of failure because they’ve been unable to sell a damaged product.
This is exactly like the final protracted and painful years of the Vietnam War. How many more kids are going to be sacrificed to something that is not working?
If you raised a kid for 18 years and they went off a mentally healthy person they should NOT be coming home on antidepressants 2 years later. What Heavenly Father would exploit young adults like that? Why would caring parents accept that?
I appreciate this post so much, Happy Hubby. We have a great church organization here which has ultimately brought me closer to Christ and able to love and serve my neighbors.
Thanks Alice, Lois, Handlewithcare. I appreciate your perspectives. We’re in close contact with the MP and our elder, and whether he stays or comes home, I know he really has given it his all.
Missionary work is a hot-button item for me right now, I just want to see the missionaries have success and feel happy about their contribution to the cause.
I love how the comments are defending the Millennial generation, while proving they really are what the older generation say they are. I have learned from reading this they have an inquiring mind and stick up for themselves, and that is about all that has improved. Even those things are then undercut by other examples about their youth and inexperience. I admit they can be much busier than the other generation, but they are also according to the above comments addicted to social media, politically arrogant, Owellian in viewpoint, easily bored, emotionally fragile if things don’t go the way they expect, and filled with disrespect and self-importance. Times have changed, but human nature has not. New problems exist, but they are only extensions of old ones. This idea that there is something new about people actually going to work, that the community is connected and aware, that people don’t answer their doors, that people know anti-Mormon information, that people ignore and even don’t like missionaries is really disingenuous. I remember all of those things on my mission a good several decades ago. Nothing said here has changed my mind about a lot (although not all) millennials. They need to learn how to buck up and grow up. Sadly, they learned it form somewhere and I put the blame squarely on the Boomer Generation who never taught mine how to raise children properly.
Fra-gee-lay.
Must be Italian!
I have seen many missionaries come through my ward and their quality and attitudes seem to be as much a product of their mission president and his policies as their presumption of spirituall rock star status. Sometimes the missionaries are more intent on serving ala Ammon and are less inclined to pretend they’re junior general authorities. These missionaries I can readily support and, funnily enough, members seem to be eager to bring them referrals. At other times the missionaries behave as though ward members should be honored and wowed to shake the hand of an 18-19 year old near-child. These missionaries tend to be obnoxious and exude the smelliest sense of entitlement (they have sacrificed soooooo much in giving up teo years of their lives—I so want to explain to them that at the least some of us have sacrificed decades of our lives in military service, some sacrificed their limbs, their mental stability, and some sacrificed their lives). When their mission presidents speak at us in stake conference we can see where some of their attitudes come from. Some mission presidents plead with the members to provide opportunities to serve to the missionaries and express gratitude to the members. Others chastise the members for not filling the missionaries’ calendars with non-stop teaching appointments and declare that we, the members, are supposed to do the finding while the missionaries are to teach. That and eat the all of the members’ food.
his is great: prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.
“We are all prone to emotional reasoning and confirmation bias, and should NOT always trust your feelings.”
Concur, but there’s a very big range over which varying people prefer emotion vs thinking (see Myers-Briggs MBTI for more).
“We are all prone to dichotomous (black and white) thinking and tribalism and life is NOT a simple battle of good people vs bad people.”
The Myers-Briggs “INTP” type is least susceptible to this phenomenon. To this type, everyone on earth is on a continuum with only God and his enemy at the bitter ends. But it does seem that either-or, binary thinking is extremely common.
Closely related is “package deal”; if you subscribe to anything from a package (left wing or right wing) you are expected to subscribe to the whole package or put another way, you will be judged as if you are a representative of the enemy if you happen to agree with just one idea of the other side. (or that there is only one other side!).
that should be “This is great” not “his is great”
The statements ‘Generation i are not as prepared for rigorous unsupervised work’ and ‘Mission culture and process is ineffective in the developed world and should change’ are not mutually exclusive.
As I think HappyHubby did a good job excerpting the point of the book isn’t to say Generation i is terrible or worst than any previous generation, just that they differ in interesting ways. The book attempts to explain why their attitudes, approaches, and mental health outcomes differ so much. It shouldn’t be surprising that the introduction of a device that may consume five or more hours a day of an individual’s time would alter their personality and paradigms. While each generation is unique, no one escapes human nature. Societal level events and changes may change how human nature is shaped for a generation. This is why we are often more similar than different. Still, insights for helping the latest generation come from comparing and contrasting not throwing our hands up and saying there is nothing new under the sun. I would suggest reading David Brooks essay ‘The Organized Kid’. It’s written about Millennials, but much of it carries over.
All that being said, yes the mission should change. Most of our young people’s time is being wasted. I’m fairly young myself (31), and was lucky to serve in the third world where you can make the system work. Even there I realized that this type of service wasn’t for everyone. We shouldn’t expect everyone to serve. I echo the points made above that a more customized experience may not only be good for this generation, but also be more effective in doing good in the world. We had the sisters over for dinner Saturday. They lamented that they teach less than six hours a week, despite their best efforts. They wished they could spend 40 hours a week in service. If we allowed them (and by we I mean their mission president), they would maintain their teaching level and add to their experience and the reputation of the church. These do seem like obvious wins.
But we should also do more to prepare our youth to live in the real world. Hell, we should do more to prepare our adults to live in the real world. Ever bring up an uncomfortable truth in Sunday School? Not much different than the word’s are violence rhetoric you hear from the newest generation. Our own Sunday schools don’t want to hear anything they don’t like or that makes them uncomfortable. That culture permeates the church. Primary and youth pick up on the fact that dissent and disagreement are seen as bad and not valuable. Why should we be surprised when they are so uncomfortable encountering it on their mission? Initially we are all uncomfortable with it, but imagine a church that taught us to be at peace with the diverting opinions of others and to find a place for uncomfortable truths.
TLDR I think we could all do better.
Kids should feel free to choose going on mission or not… I know back in the late 1980’s I felt huge pressure to do the mission and ended up going, reluctantly… I was pretty rebellious, against authority, probably as a result of imposed military service prior to mission… and was able to practice my rebellion ‘muscles’ often!! I always affirmed that my kids would be free to choose, they are and they didn’t go!!!
Anne:
A couple three suggestions for your missionary son.
1. Run, yes- from the mission . Otherwise, he was a runner. Long hard running messes with his brain chemistry in ways similar to anti-depressants. He probably won’t break rules but if he could find a way around them and run real hard about 10 or 15 miles a day it would lift his mood. (Might kill his companion if he is not up to it.)
2. Unconventional missionary tactics. A friend of mine served in Finland in the 1970’s and accomplished nothing the first year. He had his parents send him his guitar, he was very musical, a local rock star. (I will never forget him standing on top of the cab of a pick-up truck singing Mr Bojangles with his guitar while going down a swervy mountain road at a high speed.) He baptized half the converts made the next year in the entire mission, only a handful . Send your son his musical instruments or help him acquire some locally on Craigs list and he can play in ad hoc concerts.No worse than the nothing he is doing now.
3. Baptize his companion and count it. Against his will if needed. Rebaptizm is a nearly forgotten practice but still popular in the South. Seriously, humor helps. Tell jokes and play pranks on each other. The more the stress the worse the pranks. (Don’t get me started on missionary pranks in the 1970’s.)
For the rest of you, herein lies the key to the solution of the problem of our fragile missionaries. It has little to do with the missionaries. Realize the missionaries are on such a tight leash with such narrow expectations that they can’t do missionary work. The conventional tactics are too narrow and boring and really not effective any more. Turn loose the creativity and risk taking of youth, in some moderation of course. Place more faith in the missionary.Not less.