There has been a lot of talk recently about Elder Ballard teaching new Mission Presidents that missionaries should not be committing investigators to baptism in the first discussion.
I had that requirement as a missionary in Chile in 1977. We were to commit them to baptism the first discussion. I had several senior companions try this, but I don’t remember anybody committing in the first visit.
When I became senior companion, I changed it up a bit. I did not asked them to commit to baptism, but asked the following: ” if after we teach you several more lessons, and you become convinced that what we are teaching you is true, would you get baptized?”
This may seem like an easy question, but Chile, like all of South America, is/was very Catholic, so many people, when asked that question would say no, even if what we said was true, they would not get baptized because:
- They were already baptized
- Their family would disown them
- They would lose their livelihood
This gave use a quick way to drop people that had no intention of getting baptized, and keep teaching those with an open mind.
Was this right? Should we have stopped teaching people just because they had no intention of getting baptized? To a twenty year old that was looking to get my name on the monthly mission flyer as the top baptizing missionary , it made a lot of senses.
With 40 years of hindsight, and a whole life of experiences, it may have been better to continue teaching them if they were willing, and inviting them to church. Maybe they would have “felt the spirit” and changed there mind?
What do you think? What is the best way to invite somebody to baptism? Should missionaries just wait until the person asks? How long should they wait, six weeks? three months?
Wheat & Tares 
On my mission, we didn’t commit people on first lesson, but we did bring the baptism up. That way the investigators knew, that meeting with us wasn’t just an interesting social activity. After teaching about the Holy Ghost and committing them to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, we asked that if they received an answer would they then ger baptized.
One of my brothers is in the midst of converting to Judaism. He has been in that process for a couple years. Rather than trying to convert him, the local rabbi has told him that it is a difficult faith to live and my brother should take lots of time in this process. They both want to make sure it is the right thing to do and that it is not done lightly.
Mormonism could learn so much by looking at how some of the older religion handle converts.
What is the goal of the LDS church? Is the goal about sheer numbers of baptisms or is it about helping people? Is it about real growth or is it a sales chart that reflects numbers that have become meaningless.
In Mormonism, baptism numbers could be done through redeeming the dead. So, maybe it’s time to move away from baptism being the missionary goal.
Few individuals are willing to commit to a new religion and change how they live their everyday lives after meeting with two missionaries for an hour. As an adult, I find it appalling that any organization would expect people to change their lives that fast.
As an adult, I am appalled that my religious and spiritual decisions are simply a 18 year olds sales goals for the month. I think the organization can do better. There is so much potential to take this missionary tradition and do something truly amazing with it. But the organization needs to move away from sales goals and quick baptismal commitment culture.
I think it should be about helping people feel the love of Christ. The way the culture is right now in our church, if people dont feel the love of the Savior they will not stay active. If they can feel that love and have Christ in their lives then they can follow the path that Christ wants them to follow.
When I saw the title of your post, I thought it was going to be about whether or not we, as participators in the blog, would get baptized today if we weren’t already members. Would be an interesting discussion but obviously not the point of this post.
As to this post, I was very encouraged to hear Ballard suggest that perhaps invitations to baptism shouldn’t come so quickly or without thought or delivered in a way as to make investigators feel that the baptism itself is the goal.
I was less encouraged to hear Ballard suggest he doesn’t know where the culture of early invitations came from, since he has been heavily involved with the development of the missionary program for as long as I can remember.
I absolutely think the missionary program itself should shift its focus from baptisms to conversions and also service. What I mean by conversion is focusing on helping prospective members develop a relationship with the Savior, a process that can take months or years and should not be rushed.
When I served I had to weekly report so many different numbers and the goal was always baptism numbers. This culture of number accountability I hope goes away for future generations of missionaries and they are allowed to feel successful through meaningful service or meaningful spiritual interactions independent of baptisms.
The first time the practice appears seems to be in the New Testament when Paul meets people who have been baptized, but who don’t even know who or what the Holy Ghost is. Our mission had a general authority visit and point out passages in the Book of Mormon that seem to be pushing back against baptizing people without teaching them sufficiently first — and indicated that it was a problem then as well.
The truth is that trends, and interpretations of those trends, arise over and over again.
But, I enjoyed the post and the thoughts.
As a missionary in Australia in 2002, we were told to invite people to be baptised literally on the doorstep. Sometimes that was part of a right-there first lesson (less lesson and more speech really). Frankly, it was pretty raw, and no one ever got baptised as a result of that. It was a dumb instruction, and the people who gave it should feel bad about themselves.
Is it a way of finding who was ready? No, it’s not. I do not believe that anyone is ready right then like that to get baptised. Even the investigators who are ready take a little time.
I feel like the rush to baptism and the rush to marriage both come from similar places. Baptism and marriage are both major commitments that should last through this life and into eternity. As such, they shouldn’t be entered into lightly. But in LDS culture, we seem to want to rush people into them, out of fear that if people stop to think, they won’t do it. It shows a lack of faith in baptism and in marriage.
If the church is true, the church will still be true if someone takes a few months or longer to decide on baptism. And if someone is a suitable marriage partner, they’ll still be a suitable marriage partner after a year or two of dating.
“This is the most important decision of your life, so don’t stop to think too hard about it.” isn’t really a good way to go about things. If we believe in the power of the gospel, we don’t need to steamroll over people to get them into the font.
As a 21 year old, that would make sense and be logical. You’re there for 2 years on your own dime, you’re supposed to maximize your time and so why are you wasting your time on someone that at the onset lets you know that they won’t commit?
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Now that we’re older, we understand things differently but that’s no reason to kick yourself for the way you acted on your mission since you’re acting in good faith and using logic and reasoning.
Had your mission president told you, “hey, you teach everyone and keep going back if they seem interested even if they won’t commit”, and you say “forget this, this is a waste of my time and I know better” then you should kick yourself for doing so.
My mission in 1997 was of course wanting baptisms but my mission president was more concerned with making sure the missionaries didn’t get sent home early as he knew what this would cause damage to the individual and the action that got the missionary sent home would damage the mission.
It’s crazy to hear everyone else’s stories that makes it sound like they were a salesperson in Corporate America because my mission had a completely different angle.
My wife and I have a friend who is meeting with the missionaries; she is presently Catholic. The sister companionship is not pushing baptism but pounding the same question/comment repeatedly regarding whether the Book of Mormon is true/just pray to see if it”s true/you can pray before finishing it. This friend is at the end of 1st Nephi and has 3 pages of questions. The answer to the questions: “Have you prayed about it being true?” We live too far away to be at the meetings, but we want to make a special trip to smack some sisters back into reality. This person would be a wonderful member of the church but wants to not jump in blindly. Giving her some breathing space and not worrying about the numbers would be the smartest choice but apparently not in the list of options.
I think a lot of this originates with Alvin Dyer who wrote the Challenging and Testifying missionary. A lot of his ideas were solid, some were a little out there, and he was also a straight up racist (!). But his missionary program has been used and sometimes abused (a la baseball baptisms) for half a century or more. It would be wrong to assume that nobody can “feel the spirit” on a first contact and commit to be baptized. Isn’t that basically how John the Baptist rolled? Regardless, these ideas when taken too far have created some serious problems around the globe. Retention is hard enough when people are actually converted or feel the spirit. There’s a reason we quote “Can you feel so now?” The answer is often, no, we can’t feel so now, even if we felt it at one point. It’s just the nature of spiritual experience. It can be ephemeral.
But if you want to read more about Dyer’s program, I did a post on it here: https://wheatandtares.org/2017/04/25/the-challenging-testifying-missionary/
Or better yet, read my book The Legend of Hermana Plunge. We were on the Dyer program, and it wasn’t all good or all bad. Some of the retention issues run a lot deeper, like when you are trying to help people living on the fringes, what are the odds they are going to fit in to your firmly middle class fledgling branch? And when we have such strict behavior codes, how do your new converts feel when they have a relapse? I’m not saying that there aren’t missionaries who use deceptive tactics to win converts, but so it always was and ever thus shall be, particularly when prestige, rewards, and leadership roles (with more freedoms) hang in the balance.
The whole model of missionary conversion the Church uses, largely implied rather than expressed, seems based on a variety of speculative assumptions and little or no data. Just like the Church doesn’t do exit interviews and is quite content not knowing why people actually leave, the Church doesn’t do entrance interviews either and is quite happy to talk about why people join without much (or any) real data about why people actually do join. Leadership talks about “feeling the Spirit,” but I’ll bet “I liked the missionaries” would be on the top of the list for why people listened to them then attended church. In prior years, “I liked baseball” and “I wanted to learn English” would have been on the list, too.
Dave B said:: “but I’ll bet “I liked the missionaries” would be on the top of the list for why people listened to them then attended church.”
That’s why my dad’s parents joined. They really liked the missionaries and how well mannered they were. They had two boys and a daughter so they wanted a church that where the boys would group up to resemble the missionaries that taught them.
It worked too!
In Latin America the drop out rate was appalling. I could go on for hours with the problems. I saw them as a 19-21 year old. How could not older, mature, more experienced church leaders not know. My answer, they knew it. They buried it. They want the numbers to impress their superiors and climb the LDS leadership ranks. Please see Dr. Ted Lyon tell the truth of his Mission President experience.
https://www.mormonstories.org/podcast/mormon-stories-101-103-dr-ted-lyon-on-change-mission-in-latin-america-and-thoughtful-faith/
The Q15 are still in public denial.
I want to tell my story…… it would cover 10+ hours of Mormon Stories.
I was threatened to be sent home from my mission for not baptizing a “mentally disabled person” for the quota of the month. My mission president was a tyrant!!!. Before the internet, I thought I was alone. I now know that many, many mission presidents, and area authorities are pushing the number agenda. They should be ashamed, and frankly have outright lied to the general membership.
We pushed people to be baptized and were ashamed when we did not meet the quota and their goals.
The Mormon church and its leaders need to repent and ask for forgiveness to the thousands of missionaries and Millions of converts they have harmed with their missionary number game.
FWIW, I returned from a full time senior mission a year ago. Our mission president set no time frame for baptismal invitations. He ecouraged us to try to find people who were interested in engaging, and taught us to teach them well, and carefully, and with the Spirit, and to invite those we taught to act on the things we taught as guided by the Spirit as well.
So I have no idea at which point each person taught in that mission was invited to receive baptism. I do know that the time from first encounter to baptism was widely varied and all over the map and that there was no sense of pushing people into time frames.
The number of people who received baptism in that mission each year was neither miniscule nor amazing for that part of the world, but, during my mission presiden’t’s time serving, the church activity rate of converts who received baptism was 80% after one year of church membership.. And in that part of the world, that was really remarkable.