Whenever I stumble across something in an online space that I think might be interesting for our readers, I always like to share it and craft a post around it. I recently found a Twitter poll with 562 votes (!) that was written by an active church member but asking input from those who no longer attend but are still on the records. The question asked was how they feel about being contacted by their local ward.
It’s a tough question because when I have read people’s stories about why they left, there are always people chiming in that they are kind of angry / unhappy that nobody reached out after their decades of faithful participation and service. Even more people, though, seem to be bothered when people DO reach out. So basically, if you’re the hapless fool in the ward who got assigned to “minister” to this person, you might be stepping into a minefield, or you might be the friend a person needed. Before I dig in further, here are the results.
https://x.com/nathanjpaz/status/1709643518602260771?s=20
Since 217 respondents were just checking the results, I’ve redone the results he published based on those who actually answered:
- 68% No contact
- 29% Depends on the person (minister)
- 3% Likes church visits
That’s a pretty decisive majority who do not want any contact. Some of the comments included:
- Dislike of “assigned friendships” and a feeling that the visits are forced or superficial.
- Don’t want people coming by whose goal is to reactivate them in any way.
- Some want only people who are willing to listen to them, and this is often not the case (perhaps even less so in the wake of talks about not listening to non-believers).
- “The problem you have [pollster] is you seem to be a rarity in the Church. Open, intelligent, and well versed in the history and doctrine, but not dogmatic, strident or insecure. Honestly, if you came to visit me we would probably get along fine. Many members can’t thread this line.”
- They only remain on the rolls as a courtesy to elderly relatives who would be upset by them resigning. (Thanks to genealogy, resignation is obvious to relatives involved in family history work).
- “If they didn’t bother to minister before someone left the church they shouldn’t bother to minister after someone left the church. For that reason, I chose no contact”
- “Be genuine, don’t treat me as an assignment. I’m a human.”
- “Please do not try to proselyte or invite to church. Please do not send missionaries. Just be a good neighbor and friends without a hidden agenda/motive or trying to slide in religion on me or my kids. If it’s an obligation, I’d rather you not ‘visit’.”
- “I wish all interactions were based on the following premise: You couldn’t prevent me from leaving so you shouldn’t expect to bring me back. I know where to find the church if I change my mind and I know you will be thrilled if I make that choice.”
- “Please don’t come visit me. My husband has been told off by members for not removing his name and wasting their time coming over. If we want something, we’ll track down the missionaries”
- “I told the RS president that we love the people but we are struggling with the institution and we don’t want to be anyone’s project or assignment. That would make us uncomfortable.”
- “Ministering makes me feel like i’m just a checkmark on someone’s “good person to-do list” they get to check off if they call monthly or drop a birthday gift on my porch. Makes me uncomfortable.”
- “What does bother me is when adults from the church, especially ones that I don’t know, try to talk to or send notes to my kids. Mormons have a hard time seeing how inappropriate that is.”
- “If you’re just there to preach to me or invite me back, just do us both a favor and don’t even bother.”
- “Exmos are your neighbors, not your project.”
Anyway, you get the gist. This question is particulary salient to me because the only reason I know my best friend (whose mom is exMo) is because my mom was her mom’s visiting teacher. Her mom, who was like a second mom to me growing up, said she was OK with being friends with my mom, but that she wasn’t going back to Church [1] and her daughters were not allowed to be baptized unless they chose it at as adults. My friend and I spent countless hours together as kids at both her house and mine. We still catch up every few years when I get back to my home state. And no, she didn’t join the Church.
The other aspect of this question that is salient to me is that I am pretty lukewarm about visits, at least when they have historically involved a message or lesson. I just basically hate those structured, forced “friendships.” That could be an introvert thing, or maybe it’s just the superficial nature, or perhaps it’s the faceless stream of relative strangers who really never became my friends, but were just briefly assigned to come to my house to feel like they were doing their duty. I’m not sure I could even remember most of their names over the decades. I likewise hate doing the visits, particularly if I just don’t click with the person. I once visited someone and found to my dismay that both she and my assigned partner were huge homophobic bigots. Yes, I spoke up, and that did change the conversation, but this interaction definitely eroded my interest in that ward and the church in general.
So, let’s find out what you, our dear readers, feel about visits.
- Do you like them, love them, hate them? Does it depend on the person or the content?
- Have you ever had a visit that was a disaster? Deets, please.
- Do you have a visit success story to share?
- What advice would you give someone who is assigned to visit someone they don’t know? What about someone who is contacted for a church visit but who doesn’t attend anymore?
- Does assigned “ministering” do more harm or more good?
Discuss.
[1] She dealt with cruel, judgmental treatment by busybodies and patriarchal leaders when she got divorced and was completely turned off as a result despite some deep Mormon roots.
Wheat & Tares 
When I was devotedly LDS, my visiting teachers were often women who were struggling in some way. I was told a number of times that I was getting sisters assigned to me with the expectation was that I could be helpful to them when they visited me. The comment was supposed to be a compliment about my capabilities and lack of underlying needs.
As a visiting teacher, I focused on the individual more than doctrine. Had a couple women reactivate into the church, I made lots of new friends and did a lot of helping.
At church, my callings were usually those that required a lot of work and effort. I was known for my diligence.
When I took a step back from church attendance, there were people who had been my friends for over 20 years who acted like I no longer existed. If I ran into them in the community, they would complain about just never seeing me anymore. My address, my email and my phone number had not changed. Only my church attendance was different. FWIW, I never talked about why I left and went to great efforts to never say anything about the church that would make devout members uncomfortable.
I felt disappointed, disillusioned and shunned.
A few months after I quit attending, I was asked to do a food demonstration for a relief society quarterly event. The results of that demonstration would then be served as the meal. I cooked, did the demonstration, everyone ate and then I cleaned up. I did all of that alone. No one talked to me. I set up and cleaned up that entire event without anyone acknowledging my presence or offering to help. It was insulting. They did that to me a second time about 6 months later. Same dynamic happened during that second event.
Next time I got a request, I told them no and they were shocked. They had assumed that I would say yes and had not arranged a second option.
I was asked about receiving visiting teachers. I told them that I would be okay with that. My assigned visiting teachers were ladies in the ward who were known to be fun, social and devout. They never showed up. I was treated like a No Contact assignment. Interestingly, they reported quarterly to the RS coordinator that they had seen everyone.
I made a list of my theological concerns. Then, I add all of those social details up. The sum was significant. When I multiple that sum by my hurt feelings, the result was high enough to religiously bankrupt me. I was done.
I received a text yesterday from the missionaries point blank asking about my experience with the church. Having served a mission myself, I get what they’re probably doing: get me to reminisce on the good times. What I like about church and the people there, how it’s helped me, so I feel the spirit and come back. I’m willing to explain why I don’t currently attend, but I want to tell them because they genuinely want to listen and learn, not so I can be a checklist project or a mission story for them. So I’m definitely one who doesn’t want to be a project, but wants genuine care and friendship because I’m me, not because I’m on a list. Some ward members do this beautifully, and I appreciate them.
We stopped attending church in 2021. At the time I was choir director, youth leader, and instructor in elders quorum. My wife was teaching young women. We asked for two things when we left – no ministering visits to try and reactivate us and no plates of cookies or treats for the kids. But we wanted to maintain friendships and told bishop that any one that wanted to reach out to us on that level shouldn’t feel like they can’t.
One person from the ward that was my friend asked to meet me for breakfast and we talked about why we left. My wife got a number of calls or visits from women in the ward that wanted to talk to her about their own concerns or doubts about the truth claims about the lds church. That dried up pretty fast and basically no visits since or questions about why we don’t attend. Even when I was asked to officiate a friends wedding at the bishops house and the whole ward was there. That felt a lot awkward but people were nice but no comment on us leaving.
Once in a while we see members around the neighborhood or at school events and they almost always say the same thing. They miss us and they wish they see us more. We haven’t moved. Our contact info is still available.
The reason it surprised me how studiously people avoided asking us why we left is that these were people that we thought were our friends after years in the same small ward. And their complete and lack of interest in why we left made me realize that we weren’t friends after all. And I mourned the loss of that community for a second time.
I don’t want to be reactivated especially because why we left no one cares to hear about. So please don’t send some poor missionary when people who we’re my friends weren’t willing to ask any real question about us.
As an introvert, I am generally uncomfortable with people expecting to be invited into my home. This is further complicated by my chronic illness, our many dogs, and my non-member partner. Added to that was my previous decade or so of non-attendance so that when we moved to our new home in a new state I did think I would be establishing a relationship with a visiting teacher. But the sister who reached out was apparently happy to conduct phone visits, which came to feel like genuine check ins from a friend. For nearly two decades we just talked–almost never about what was happening at the ward (no, “There’s a dinner on Friday…”) and I never felt pushed or awkward or like an assignment. She really was a gift to me.
On the other hand, here we are in the Covid era. I literally cannot count the times I have had to turn away the missionaries who have arrived at my gate, no call ahead of time (in which they would have been turned away), no masks, no record of my previous declaration that as an immunocompromised person I cannot have these visits. I have never wanted to be on the Do Not Call list, but it seems impossible to land on the Do Not Visit list; if I have to choose, I will choose maintaining my boundaries for my personal safety.
A timely post for me personally. I’ve been thinking about stopping my church attendance at the end of this year. Nothin really has changed, I’m just tired of the soul-crushing boredom I experience at church as a so-called nuanced believer. It makes me sad to hear of others’ experiences with losing friendships and the painful realizations that perhaps they weren’t real friendships in the first place. The truth is, that’s to be expected, I think. Sure, we occasionally hear things about the importance of loving others, of being friends to all, etc., over the pulpit, but so much of the language of Mormonism is the language of exclusivity, which means it’s also the language of exclusion. If the average Mormon has been told all of their life that this is the Only True Church ™ and that it’s an absolute, eternal tragedy if they don’t serve a mission, get married in the temple, and have lots of children who are born in the covenant, is it any wonder that they’d regard those who were once part of the exclusive club but who are no longer with anything but suspicion and perhaps pity? Add to that all of the language we hear at conference (language that the OP mentions) about making sure to only get our information from “approved” sources and to avoid evil things like, say, the internet, and it’s no wonder that at least most orthodox Mormons would be nervous about maintaining or building friendships with “less active” people. I especially see this in the so-called Mormon Corridor.
I also see a consistent thread in the comments you cite and in the comments referring to the OP about not wanting to be a project or not wanting to be condescended to. In my experience, self-awareness is a major struggle for a lot of Mormons, particularly when it comes to this kind of thing. They think they’re doing the “right thing” by “reaching out” to those who “struggle with their testimonies”, when, in fact, their approach often infantilizes and alienates the very people they seek to nurture/re-activate. It’s funny, but the few good friends I have in my ward know my issues with the church; we’ve had many conversations about said issues and most of my church friends, the people who I feel are true friends, also struggle with stuff. The ability to feel safe enough to admit one’s struggles is an essential part of true friendship, yet it’s absolutely discouraged in church settings. I’m like Allie in that I’d be perfectly willing to explain my issues to folks, but that, too, has occasionally backfired on me, like when I was told by one bishop that I was forbidden to discuss politics at church (even though conservative members weren’t forbidden) because, essentially, my arguments about why lots of Mormon values are present in the Democratic Party’s platform were actually too persuasive. So there’s a lot to navigate socially if anyone is in any way not fully orthodox and who wants to share their sincere perspective. It’s a shame that Mormonism has built a house that fewer and fewer people want to or feel welcome to inhabit. If a club becomes so exclusive that no-one wants to join it, I think that’s a bad thing, not a good thing.
I have always loved ministering/visiting teaching. It’s such a an opportunity to get to know people that are different from yourself. I prefer to visit inactive people. They have such interesting stories to tell and they are always open to being friends with me. For most my life I always included a short lesson which was basically an invitation to religious discussion, which I always really enjoyed hearing divergent points of view.
I have had the honor of visiting several elderly sisters in the years previous to their deaths. They really needed my attention and support.
To people who want to follow a ministering assignment, I recommend you persevere and try to reach someone different ways. If you genuinely want to get to know someone and include them in your life, hang in there, they will feel your love if it is there. For me an assignment is a good thing, as a reminder, to get it in my schedule. It cannot be the motivation. The motivation genuinely must be to mourn with those who mourn and comfort those who need comfort.
To me it’s absolutely reasonable to tell people you miss them when you don’t see them at church. I do miss them. And no, I have found their names and addresses are often removed from LDS tools. Arranging meetings with people is much more difficult than enjoying seeing people you love at church. As you stated right here, many people feel visits are intrusive. So why would you feel offended if they don’t spontaneously come by? Which is it?
I attended Sunday. I hugged 4 different ladies, one of them twice. My love for them is real and deep even though we didn’t have time for a deep conversation on this occasion. I am tender and easily hurt over some doctrinal comments. But I know my relationships with my ward are real and deep.
We no longer do missionary dinners. No one visits us anymore. Our home is a safe place for our inactive adult sons and their friends. That’s our priority these days, and it isn’t always compatible with visitors from the church. It’s hard for people to understand and uncomfortable for me to host a visitor who drops in to find my disabled son with an itching problem walking around without his shirt on.
When I was young and first married we moved into a ward and had no visitors for a year. Then on Sunday the bishop came to RS and praised the sisters for having 100% VT. My mouth dropped open (I was on the front row). Turns out my VT had been saying hello to me at church and counting it.
One more story, once when I was a young mom I moved to a new ward. Two sisters came to visit and talked to each other, ignoring me, the whole time. Turned out they had just met.
Brother sky – I share your sentiment about the “soul-crushing boredom”.
You said, They think they’re doing the “right thing” by “reaching out” to those who “struggle with their testimonies”, when, in fact, their approach often infantilizes and alienates the very people they seek to nurture/re-activate.
Well said. I think this is the core issue causing religious “shrinkage”. People are leaving because religion is so blind to its own flawed attempts to actually “Follow Christ”. The fact that people are reaching out to those “struggling with their testimonies” underscores how religion has given highest value to dogma instead of community. A testimony is no longer a personal mystical encounter with the divine, it’s merely an assent to a set of propositional claims, its consensus of thought, which is nothing better than another ideological power grab. The Church traded the spirit of “Love” for the spirit of “Agreement”, but they believe its love.
There is nothing in this world that will destroy relationships faster than obligation. Ministering is not love. Love is a choice freely made and freely given, ministering is another strategically clever way to gather data and seek control. Ministering is a duty, it’s another do-gooder task to add bricks onto a heavenly mansion, which makes it self-centered instead of other centered. I am still an active member, albeit a struggling active member, that sees a Church that treats the gospel of Jesus Christ as a means to another end, its God’s cosmic evacuation plan. But, if the gospel is in fact “Good News”, then using it as a means to an end erodes the possibility of loving what’s right in front of me, because what’s right in front of me is just an object, or a “project” to contribute to my future reward.
I generally find visits (home teaching/ministering) to be a bit awkward and not very impactful personally. I’m an active member, so I don’t get the “other kind” of visits. My wife, on the other hand, really wants visits, provided the ladies the come over manage to actually pay attention to her. Many years ago she had a set of visiting teachers who would come over, sit on our couch and talk to each other for an hour leaving my wife wondering if she was really a necessary part of the visit. More recently, she’s had a ministering assignment where the three of them have had some really meaningful visits and friendship. I think technically my wife was assigned as the minister, but I think my wife receives at least as much support from the assignment as the “visitee” does.
I totally understand the conflict with visits in the church. I think we all see the value in a program to get people to reach out to others in the ward, get to know them, serve them, etc. In an ideal world we’d all do a lot of that unprompted, and make sure that no one is slipping through the cracks. But we’re just so bad at that. So well-intentioned people came up with a plan to assign things out. We all get reminded to visit people, and everyone is accounted for. Makes perfect sense. But we’re bad at that, too. Now we don’t really trust motives, and sleep-walk through attempts at friendship that end up feeling false. I’m sure in instances it does more harm than good.
Personally, pretty much all of my church interactions are pretty superficial. I see people at church that I genuinely like, say hi for a minute and then move on. We don’t associate outside of church activities much. We don’t really hang out socially with people in our ward. If they quit going to church (or I quit going) we’d lose that one little point of contact. Perhaps we are all too busy, or I am just too introverted (or both).
One thing I’ve tried recently with ministering assignments is to just bluntly ask them what they would like. I even phrase it as “I’m happy to put on a tie and come to your house once a month and read you something from the Liahona if that’s what you want.” No one seems to want that so far. I’m not sure that this blunter method had lead to better relationships, but it does lead to less guilt for me, so that’s at least one positive.
“If they didn’t bother to minister before someone left the church they shouldn’t bother to minister after someone left the church. For that reason, I chose no contact” This made me chuckle =)
The whole I lost my community when I left issue chaps my hide big time. There are literally millions of other commonalities on which to build a friendship, including interest in sports and theater, career, outdoor activities, carpooling for kid stuff, simply enjoying food together, discussing current events, travel, and so on. And yet once somebody loses their faith, that’s all that matters. We simply have nothing in common anymore. It’s so ridiculous. I’ve gone blue in the face trying to convince people that we still have more in common than we don’t. It’s frustrating.
We used to get a lot of texts that we were missed at church. Then on the random week when we would attend, those same people didn’t even notice.
We could really use GC talks on (1) how to be genuine and (2) this survey of how people are feeling by their faith community.
Home teaching has been a source of interactions with people I wouldn’t have otherwise interacted with. In some cases it changed my perceptions of people I would have otherwise been judgmental of. I really value that part of my Mormon experience. It made me better. The question of whether these kinds of assignments are good or not gets to a deeper question of whether it’s OK to use religious guilt to get people to do things they don’t want to do that they later come to see as positive. I’ve had that experience and know others who have as well. A mission might be in that category for many. On the other hand, I’ve heard the mission horror stories. Is a world without any sense of religious duty as a motivator a better or worse one? I don’t know.
As a still attending but not particularly believing member, I find most visits tedious and I’m just fine with the fact that nobody currently assigned to me is making an effort to visit. If I were assigned someone like minded in the ward (as a visitor or to be visited by), that might be cool, but I don’t even know if there’s anyone like minded in my current very orthodox feeling ward.
One of my problems with making visits is that I’m an introvert. Making appointments always felt like a heavy burden, and I don’t like dropping unannounced, and over time I have gotten over feeling guilty about doing nothing, so I don’t really do much now and I’m fine with it. My ideal scenario would be to be assigned to those struggling or questioning. I think I’d be great at offering a listening ear and zero judgment about whether they choose to stay or not. But I’m too introverted to try to find such people, though I’m sure they are out there in every ward.
I think there need to be more activities associated with activity. It’s hard to have a personal friendship when the only time you associate with someone is in the context of sitting in a church meeting together. Ministering is an attempt to foster this, but not very effective. More effective is doing things together outside of the lessons and talks. As much as I am lukewarm about camping and scouts, sitting around a campfire talking with another parent/leader while the boys were out doing their best to cut down every tree in the state lets you build a relationship a lot more than “a tie and the Liahona” could ever do. While the doctrine and ordinances are important, they don’t build a community.
It’s interesting that most (69%) of those polled want “no contact”. I’m not one of those 69%. I have no problem having contact with ward members even though we are no longer attending. In fact (like Brian G above) I’m a little thrown off by the fact that nobody is making contact. Nobody is asking why a guy in his late 50s who is a seminary grad, BYU grad, former full-time missionary, married in the temple, served in every kind of calling including leadership callings, always held a current temple recommend until my mid-50s, suddenly left the Church. Isn’t anyone just a little curious? My former bishop lives two doors down (we live in Utah) and yet NOTHING. Nobody wants to know? So strange.
Not directly on point, but coincidentally, yesterday I happened to look at the Tools app for the first time in over a year. We have not been to church since about February of this year. I’m still assigned as a minister to about 6 households. lol
Amen Brian G (above). Im not part of the 69%. Id welcome contact from ward members even if I don’t go. I’m just a little thrown off that ward members (not to mention leaders) don’t ask why a guy in his late 50s who served a mission, attended BYU, got sealed in the SLC temple, served in every kind of calling including leadership, held a valid temple recommend until very recently, suddenly left the Church in 2021. Isn’t anyone (including my former bishop who lives two doors down) just a little curious? I’d welcome the discussion with anyone any time but nobody asks!
Brian G/josh h:
My speculation about why people don’t ask why I stopped attending is that they think they know already, and they don’t want to talk about those subjects with me. They correctly assume that if I (as their former bishop, released only about 5 years ago) stopped attending, it is not just because I got apathetic and need some encouragement to come back. But they incorrectly assume that they know all the reasons I would point to for why I stopped attending, and they (probably correctly) think there is little they could say to change my mind. If they can’t change my mind, then the only thing talking to me about those issues would do is put them in a position ripe for “contention!” (so scary!) or to hear something that would shake their own faith.
Thing is, although I am also surprised that no one has asked, if someone did actually ask, I’m not sure I’d even want to talk about why I stopped attending, especially if not talking about it would mean we could just be friends again. I genuinely liked many of these people.
There are so many people like you and me, formerly orthodox, who have now stopped attending that I think we are just being thrown into the hopeless “lazy learner”/deceived-by-the-world bucket. They’re just cutting their losses and moving on. RMN’s admonition to “never take counsel from those who do not believe” will likely be applied in a way that will discourage meaningful conversations with formerly orthodox people who no longer attend because they don’t agree with all the church’s positions, which will not do anything to help this situation.
I think I’ve got a comment that got caught in moderation on this one…
josh h,
Don’t y’all realize that inactivity is catchy? More contagious than influenza.
Reminds me of the time my dear ol’ grandmother was asked to volunteer to work on a computer console in the early 1990’s in the Jordan River Temple She said “No way am I touching that thing. I’ve heard they have viruses and I don’t want to catch one.”
Sorry, the comment showed up!
Andrew: Akismet works in mysterious ways! (That’s our spam filter)
I think there’s been a real sea change about visits in our homes due to the pandemic, and it’s due to several factors: 1) introverts of the world, unite! (But separately and privately in our own homes without contact!), I mean, I literally don’t answer the door anymore. We have a Ring camera, so I check that first. I don’t answer or even look at texts or calls from unknown numbers. And we moved during the pandemic and don’t really know people in our new area, 2) if I’m craving social contact (and sometimes I am!) these aren’t my people. This is, for me anyway, a post-Trump problem primarily (Mormons are so clueless about their Republican assumptions), but also a not-interested-in-Mormon stuff problem (don’t like the temple, my kids are all out, 50% of the top leaders have really objectionable views, 33% of my household is LGBTQ, and I’m not wanting a calling). Should I join a local political group? Should I volunteer at the library? Or just spend my time doing my little hobbies and traveling? Create a book club? All of these things are more appealing than hanging around with the local Mormons, and 3) I’ve had the idea that maybe wards should assign the inactives to the inactives. Maybe those connections would be more appealing!
As a nuanced, unorthodox member who only attends sporadically these days (maybe once per month), as well as a life-long introvert, I can totally understand the desire to be left alone, and not be bothered by superficial do-gooders who’s only motivation is to check a box and “return and report”.
However, I’m trying out a different approach now. I welcome the chance to be ministered to in my home. I would love for my ward to feel some obligation to get to know me as a person, to humanize me and my unbelief, rather than see me as some apostate who is to be avoided at all costs. The Church needs to get comfortable with having non-literal believers in their midst, so they need to learn to tolerate folks like me. Opting for “no contact” would conveniently remove that obligation from my ward, and I don’t want to make it that easy for them. This is just as much my church as it is theirs.
So far, it has been years since any assigned HT/minister has made any effort to reach out to me at all, so it’s not working out too well yet. But at least I’m counting against someone’s completion numbers, so there’s that.
RMN’s recent rhetoric suggests that people like me are to be avoided, which members seem to be naturally good at doing, and is encouraging orthodox members to circle their wagons and only care about each other, subsequently turning the LDS experience into even more of an echo chamber of vapid orthodoxy. Seems like totally the opposite of what Christ would do.
Angela C, if you start the book club, sign me up as a virtual participant:)
Jack Hughes: I have long felt that if the Church really grew up as an institution, we would inevitably turn into Catholicism (not Handmaid’s Tale/SCOTUS Dei extremist Catholicism, just like normal Catholics who take the commandments as suggestions and don’t care that some people wear a cross but are C&E Christians (Christmas & Easter)).
“at least I’m counting against someone’s completion numbers” Don’t bet on it! Based on the above comments, whoever is assigned to you is probably counting you anyway. I wonder how much of the fudgy stats is just the flip side: introverts & nuanced believers who say they did the visit just to get people off their back?
I think there are several things I could say. Maybe just a couple, and see if they make sense.
I couldn’t help but notice that your description of the poll question (The Twitter/X link didn’t work for me) said that the poll question asked about “ward” contact. What I consistently notice in these discussions is that people who leave the church are “mourning” the loss of friendships and relationships, but they are not mourning the loss of their relationship to the “ward” (church). It seems to me that there would be a significant difference in response to the questions “Are you open to contact from the ward?” and “Are you open to maintaining/retaining friendships with a few ward members?” As many note, it can be difficult in the church to disentangle “friends because we share a common religion” and “friends because we share something else in common.” For those coming up with these kinds of poll questions, I think it would be interesting to try to disentangle those two ideas. Because it really seems to me (observing those who fully leave from the vantage point of the edge of inside) that many who leave want to retain relationships with a select few members, but mourn the loss of those relationships that are too closely tangled with the church to survive their disaffiliation.
Sometimes when I think about it, I ask myself, “If (and I leave it at “if” for now) I leave the church, are there any relationships I want to keep? What can I do now to prepare those relationships for that possibility?” I am reminded of a podcast I listened to a couple of months ago where the podcaster (I’ve forgotten who) was interviewing Dr. Lisa Diamond. Of course, Dr. Diamond was talking about this in the context of LDS LGBTQ people who leave the church, but she said something that really stuck with me. It’s obvious that it is difficult to be LGBTQ and be active in the church (not impossible, but more difficult than typical), which means that a good size fraction of LDS LGBTQ leave the church. She suggested that maybe the church ought to consider what it could do pastorally to minister to people as they leave the church to make their disaffiliation easier. I have no idea what anyone at church would think of that kind of pastoral program, but it seemed like a very pertinent idea. Of course, it easily extends to other populations (like “frequent readers of the Wheat and Tares blog”). It seems like one aspect of that kind of pastoral program could be “how to maintain relationships Of course, I as the potential disaffiliate, cannot control what the church chooses to do, but I also wonder what I can do to maintain any relationships I want to keep through my hypothetical disaffiliation. I’m not really sure what that kind of discussion thread looks like, but if anyone wants to pick it up with me and see, I think it would be interesting (and maybe even useful).
MrShorty: That’s a great line of questioning because my own perspective is that when someone disaffiliates from a social organization, there are two options:
1) encourage a soft landing, which creates future goodwill, reduces negative press, and leaves the potential for re-affiliation intact OR
2) scorched earth, which creates an us vs. them between insiders & outsiders, but “protects” insiders from the disaffiliated viewpoint. It also makes it extremely unlikely anyone who leaves will ever return, and increases the likelihood that they will attempt to burn it all to the ground.
Guess which one the church seems to favor.
Brother Sky & Squid Lover Fat-
“Soul-Crushing Boredom” and “I think there need to be more activities associated with activity”. I think you are right.
What made the early LDS church attractive and the members committed? It was Different. Lay priesthood gave the men real involvement. The women were more involved. People relied more on the power of religious healing and cooperation with their neighbors to survive. Modern medicine, tools, and Risk Assessment has perhaps replaced and curtailed a lot of that.
I served as a ward and district Scout leader for many years and helped a lot of young men in our area achieve Eagle Scout rank. But as an LDS woman, I was not invited to go on the Scouting trips. As a result, I haven’t seen much of my adopted state. The pioneer trek reenactments are an opportunity to strengthen one’s testimony and form long-lasting friendships. I was never invited on those due to having a disabled son to care for, and no one ever offered to care for him so I could go even once. My disabled son was never invited to go anywhere.
Risk. Risk. Risk. Always worrying about risk. That has ruined the church and is ruining society.
We joined a Jeep club. I’m seeing the state with my son. Forming friendships with people of all persuasions. Having a blast. Moving forward.
Some of the commentary about disappointment no one reached out after disaffiliation is sad to read. I am still “on the inside” but my analog comparison is moving a town away (~8 minutes away) and winding up in a new stake/ward. Close enough that affiliations with the old ward could have continued – but no one has reached out. I haven’t reached out to them either, of course – because I tend to give my free time to letting my spouse go do stuff (I have an endless supply of time-guilt for what I put her through while I was in graduate school). There are just too many people to spend time with, so I wind up choosing to spend time with none of them. Go figure.
On the alleged lack of interest as to why one has disaffiliated – I’m sure some are just scared of hearing something that would affect them. But I’m even more sure that most are just scared to piss off the person who disaffiliated by even asking. The disaffiliated person may, in their head, feel that they are open to discussion. But how is someone else to know that?! If there’s a perceived 50% chance of pissing that person off either way (by asking, or by not asking), the easiest option by far for the ward member is to just not ask. It is the least painful – both in terms of embarrassment and for all those introverts of the world in general.
I try to have the attitude of not shying away from “hard” subjects – e.g., being willing to talk about a loved one that has passed away (since it seems “on average” that they yearn to still talk about them, though some grievers hate to talk about it), so I guess I should extend that to this situation too (a disaffiliated person). But when I try, it is so hard to raise it because I just feel like it will be so easy for them to categorize my effort as the “check the box” variety. Because, let’s be serious, the corollary to not knowing that a disaffiliated person wants to talk about why they left, is that the disaffiliated person doesn’t necessarily know the motive for the person asking. And we all tend to see the world with our particular biases and attitudes, such that even if I have earnest intent it will be perceived as shallow and mindless.
/endrant
Adam F.: I’m also in the camp of asking people why they left, but the thing is, I don’t perceive myself as being the Church’s PR dept or unpaid recruiter (which I certainly did as a TBM). I really am curious about their experience from a human perspective. Plus, I probably have a lot more in common with the ones who left than with the ones who stay (with whom I also have quite a bit in common, obviously). I’m certainly not one to judge anyone who has left.
If you ask someone who is PIMO or nuanced why they stay, the reasons are usually things like: community, provide support to believing family members, hoping to change minds or create inclusion (especially for LGBTQ people) from within. But if you look at reasons those same people leave, they correlate with all three of those same reasons: community sucks, believing family members quit believing, left the church, died or they got divorced, and the prospect of creating an inclusive space inside the church is bleak and futile, especially with the transphobic and homophobic rhetoric being amped up in socially conservative groups right now.
@AngelaC: I can see those two options. Do you think there could be some in the middle? Of those two options, do you think the church actively chooses the “scorched earth” version, or could it be that the church hasn’t really thought about the possibility of a “soft landing” disaffiliation and that it could help with that soft landing? Perhaps I am naive, but I would guess that the church hasn’t actively chosen the scorched earth version, but it has not been able and/or willing to consider a soft landing version (and maybe the scorched earth version is a kind of default for disaffiliation from a high demand religion so that the church would really have to actively choose the soft landing version).
And I wouldn’t want to place this all at the church’s feet, either. I have been through enough relationship help circles long enough to know that I can only do my part to keep my side of the street clean. I can’t control what the church does, but I am interested in what I could do to make my (potential, hypothetical) disaffiliation a softer landing.
I’m fine with people contacting me and swinging by my house. When the missionaries stop by, I let them in and chat with them if it is convenient. I’ve never had a ward member stop by. Face-to-face contact is going away. I miss it. Conversations and connections were better with regular face-to-face contact.
I’ve also never had anyone in the church ask me why I am not fully participant or why I don’t believe the way they do. I feel like those used to be such common questions. Now it seems the church members don’t even want to know.
Adam F.: Your point is a fair one. Fear of pissing me off is probably just as likely a reason as the others I gave for not asking. Like everything, I’m sure it is a mixed bag.
MrShorty: I can’t say “scorched earth” is intentional, but here are some theories (boy, I like lists today!):
1) This is how new religious movements behave (and we all know “cult” is a meaner way to say NRM, but I really think the C word is so inflammatory it often misses the point that the newer a religious movement is, the scarier disaffiliation is, and the more important control is–once an org gets bigger and more mature, you kind of relax a bit).
2) From the earliest days, Mormonism took a “smear the exes” approach, so it’s baked into the religion. I mean, people back in the day were horrible to those who left (milk strippings story, anyone?). They were painted as thin-skinned, dishonest devils. We are literally still smearing some of them in our lessons, when the real history is far more nuanced, or the stories about them are straight up lies.
3) This is a case of leader temperament, and different voices in the Q15 have different levels of “tolerance” for dissent. Some are probably more inclined toward a big tent (Uchtdorf? Gong?), and others would like a small tent without any (ahem) critics in it (the list is pretty big). For an example of this one, just look at what’s happened at BYU over the last 2 years. Right now, after a season of tolerance and opening up, we’re in a time of total crackdown on students, professors, and probably random passing strangers. It’s not a good time to be a free thinker in Provo.
4) The temperament argument also works for local ward members, not just leaders. After all, who is doing the earth-scorching in practical terms? Sometimes it’s a white-knuckling neighbor terrified her kids will catch the gay from yours. Quite a few lay members are zealots who think it’s their personal mandate to take the inactives to task and/or trash them behind their backs in the ward, boosting their own social capital (so they might suppose) in the process.
5) Of course, the temperament question works for the disaffiliated person, too–some people are more prone to feel slights and to care about how others perceive them. It’s entirely possible someone who thinks they are reaching out in an open minded way might still be perceived as not caring or judgmental.
As to the temperament stuff, someone once said that the person in a situation with the most awareness bears the most responsibilty for how the interaction goes. I have always loved that thought because it motivates anyone who hears it to act like the responsible person because if they instead are a jerk, well, they must have been the lower self-awareness person. But let’s be honest, a whole lot of people do in fact have low self-awareness/blind spots, and that includes leaders.
To answer some of your questions, I would probably prefer to never be visited. Luckily, I haven’t seen a home teacher in over a decade. Our best home teacher ever has left the church since our friendship with him. I was quite shocked to hear it. I have become friends with a couple interesting people through VT/ministering that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to know otherwise, both people assigned and partners. I think someone in my ward has warned the missionaries not to bug us, because they haven’t called in a while. We attend most every week and have callings. They are right, though, I don’t want the missionaries over.
As a former RS President in a ward with many people who disaffiliated, I will tell you why I didn’t ask people why they stopped going to church. I didn’t feel it was any of my business. That is a big, personal, and sometimes difficult decision. I assumed they had good reasons for it and they certainly didn’t owe me or anyone else in leadership an explanation. Also, I am by nature not a nosy person, so I tend to assume people will offer information they want to share. I hope I continued to show people I cared about them, though.
It kind of irks me when people complain about no one caring that they left. People do care, and most would love to continue seeing those who have left at church and activities, but I think as a previous commenter said, it’s tricky because you don’t want to come off as pushy or like you don’t respect someone’s decision. Those are fraught conversations I would only be comfortable having with someone I know well.
I think there is a real loss of community both in the church and more broadly in society. COVID really just poured fuel on the fire. I was just listening to a podcast called “How to Talk to People” and one of the episodes is about building community. It talks about the Ring Camera culture and how we tend to look suspiciously out at the world through our little cameras rather than opening ourselves up to our neighbors and creating community. It also mentioned that in the 1970s people in the US averaged 5 picnics a year with neighbors, and that had dropped to 2 in the 1990s…how often to we have picnics with neighbors now? How often do we even answer the door?
I think we are all sort of craving this sense of community, but the whole idea of community is being bastardized by things like political polarization, ring camera culture, and the cheap substitute of social media.
I feel like the church can still provide a sort of framework of a community, but a lot of the efforts to make it more efficient (two hour church, lower-stakes ministering, streamed general relief society and priesthood meetings, etc) have hollowed out the community feeling. This on top of the broader community crisis we’re seeing in society.
Sunday meetings for Zen practice: acceptance, composure, posture, breathing.
The community conversation is very different in LDS dense populations than you’d find in Britain. Being a member of the church already removes you from the community of the neighbourhood in which you live. There’s no chatting with the next door neighbour at the kitchen table over that great social lubricant, a cup of tea, for instance, or participation in a mums’ coffee morning. Drinking neither of those beverages makes you difficult and on the outside. There’s an enormous gulf between your church community spread disparately across a wide geographical area, and where you live, so regular socialising with members is fraught with difficulty as well, particularly now that people are short of time. Travel is time consuming. The church organisation does not lend itself to reaching out into the wider community, it’s too much for a struggling ward with a lay ministry to manage sustainably, and at a stake level, boundaries are simply too large and community projects limited to parts of the stake that have no wider community connection to others parts, being a different town or city.
Growing up a church member, I had little in common with the youth in my ward, and religion isolated me from the wider community. I grew up learning how not to conform, how not to fit in. Temperament and personality likely also played a role.
I don’t kid myself that most people in my ward are friends outside of the interactions we have in a church context. I’ve experienced changing relationships quite enough as callings change. Often membership in church is the only common denominator. And I’m probably as guilty as the next person. I only have so much energy I can put into interpersonal relationships. I did have an interesting conversation with a former member the other day, though. They initiated it, and knew that I was not orthodox, from comments they’d heard me make in church.
I’m in agreement with Andrew, Brian G & josh h and join with what Andrew wrote. If leadership believes they know the reason for inactivity and that reason is irreconcilable with church policy (whether general or local), then leadership will choose to ignore the “errant” member – you become a non-person to them.
A big problem with current LDS culture is the list of irreconcilable policies keeps growing! Covid overreaction and general political and cultural turmoil have taken what was a succinct list of mostly moral taboos and sensitive topics and blown it up much bigger.
There has been a sea change in church culture in both the LDS sphere and all Christianity. In previous generations Christian churches were much more demonstrative of their independence from government and popular culture. Now church leadership openly desires the acceptance of the world. At the same time the church leaders want control over what members believe and practice, with some of those beliefs and practices in conflict with popular culture and political preferences.
The way LDS leadership manages this conflict is to suppress conversation. This suppression serves two purposes. (1) It helps leadership control the church image and how the church is portrayed to outsiders – if the church isn’t taking about X then church leaders don’t need to share an opinion on X. (2) it reduces conflict in wards and branches – if members don’t talk about X then members, at least while at church, won’t argue about X.
There should not be dissension and dispute in a church. But is avoiding controversy by pretending it doesn’t exist the right way to avoid contention? That is the LDS way. The deficiency of this approach is that when members are in the thick of weighty issues, the LDS leadership is absent, other than to issue boilerplate statements.
The absence of leadership engagement at the top creates a leadership vacuum all the way down. This leaves local leadership helpless other than to rubber-stamp the “official position” and avoid conversation on the matter. Thus the observation that to be a good local LDS leader one must not engage one’s brain too much, or else risk having independent thoughts and then being accused of not supporting the hierarchy. A sure way of not having independent thoughts is to avoid meeting with members of the congregation who have independent ideas, especially when those ideas are sound and persuasive.
It’s easy, and perhaps understandable, for those of us still involved in an institutional church to view those who’ve left or even just reduced involvement as being “lost to the church” (and thus open to eternal/celestial consequences). But there’s other ways to look at it.
Not long ago I had a conversation with a friend who had been a Community of Christ priesthood member who is now ordained in another denomination. BTW, he holds no major grudge against the CofC and maintains ongoing, close friendships with many CofC members and leaders.
He shared with me a conversation he’d had with another “former” CofC member, and together they named a lengthy list of others who were no longer actively involved in the church but who have brought their perspectives, beliefs, and approaches formed by CofC over the decades to where they are at today in academia, government, business, professions, community service, and NGOs. These are largely folks who I’d describe as occupying the progressive end of the spectrum. It is remarkable that a small denomination like CofC could have this kind of “subtle influence.”
Now, I realize the presence of “One True Church” is much greater in the LDS Church, and the social/family dynamics are often very different, but how would the conversation change among LDS folks if they looked at the situation in this way?
Bands of brother/sisterhood are forged with a shared vision through trials , sweat, and sacrifice; not crafts and ward basketball. Have you read the story behind the hymn “As Sisters in Zion”? That’s love and sisterhood.
If we want authentic relationships, we need a shared purpose with a sweepingly altruistic vision – as well as specific targets. It can’t be self-serving.
Maybe the church could get some skin in some sort of global problem and engage all of us in solving it…like world hunger or illiteracy, environmental stewardship, or healthcare, refugee relief, etc. Maybe we make a moonshot- not unlike our pioneer ancestors did- to build Zion and bring about millennial peace. We become the miracle. We would all be needed- every problem solver, every talent, every shoulder to the wheel. We’re no longer just sending checks to SLC- we are the solution.
I wouldn’t care if my fellow ward members believed in 0% or 100% of mormonism. If we were engaged in this noble cause- sweating, sacrificing, and hopefully celebrating along the way, we would forge a bong of brother/sisterhood in such a purpose. Such ties would be far greater than those of mere co-workers, cul de sac neighbors, play date parents, sports fans, or craft or hobby buddies. Our tent would be big enough to include not just all of us (for the first time in a long while), but other creeds and faiths too, anyone who helps.
And maybe if someone stepped back or out, I’d first triage them to see if they were injured in the line of duty or by one of us. If so- I would loyally serve my purple hearted serviceman (or woman). If they instead followed another call- (stepped out) we’d always have our bond of service as a foundation for our friendship. If a goodbye were best – it would be poignant rather than an apathetic.
This all sounds so much better to me than being so bored that all we do is fuss over each other’s conformity.
Mortimer
Really lovely ideas. I was just reading in the book of James the past couple days as a begin the ponder my next Gospel Doctrine lesson. Truly eye opening to read his letter. James mentions Jesus by name only 3 times in his entire letter. His focus seems to steer the saints toward the effect Jesus has on them personally and collectively than on the empirical proclamation of Jesus’s existence.
James is concerned and making us aware of the real risk that religion can become largely a gospel ABOUT God as opposed to making God and Christ alive in the world. His famous phrase “Faith without works is dead”, supposes two kinds of faith, one that is dead and another that is alive. Your ideas above are what James goes on to suggest mean that our faith is “alive”. Otherwise, it remains in the doldrums of abstract thought. James is making real attempt at making religion concrete in the world, less about piety and more about enacted transformation.
His very first line in chapter two, as he begin to address the problems he sees is, “My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim to have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people over others?
The very first problem he is addressing is prejudice, bias, and discrimination. Thats number one for James, not sex, or abstaining from certain foods, or tithing, temple attendance, ministering reports, or proclaiming that RMN is the greatest Prophet ever. Nope, he chose to start with prejudice.
It’s a book about how we show up in the world, in an ongoing attempt to actually make it better, not make ourselves better than it.
Toddsmithson,
Thanks for your perspective…I’m inspired to dive into the book of James now.
I have friends both in, out and in the middle of church activity. I’ll speak mostly about those who no longer attend. There are a number of former Mormons at my place of employment. We work together, joke together and get along well. I don’t ask them about why they are no longer in the church because church doesn’t really come up. They don’t ask me why I still attend, I don’t ask them why they left. We just enjoy each others’ company.
I also have friend from the ward who have left. I have asked a number of them why they left and they have shared a myriad of answers, some of which I agree with and others that I don’t. We still get along and are curious about our lives, families, etc… The church isn’t central to their life anymore and it is okay/ They were, and are, a part of my life.
Then there are those that made sure to make huge announcements on social media about leaving the church, how destructive the church has been in their lives and how cultish the members are. They proclaim that they just want to be left alone as they make their next huge pronouncement about the greed, racism, misogyny, hateful policies, etc… I struggle to engage with those friends because they are now attacking something very personal to me. I understand their arguments, but the public bullhorn that social media provides makes it difficult to engage without becoming overly defensive.
At one time I was the person assigned to write those quarterly notes to some of the DNCs and I tied myself in knots trying to be authentic and friendly, but I was only fooling myself, while dutifully meeting the requirements of a VT calling. And, when I was promoted to VT supervisor, I counted all such letters, notes, and cards as contacts, to people about whom I had no firsthand knowledge or was even in on the gossip, when uploading our stats.
I have always known much of the problematic historical and doctrinal stuff, and can offer some terrific apologetic hand-wavy other stuff that makes the cog-dis from that nearly unnoticeable. It’s a measure of my devotion that those things weren’t that bothersome to me during the decades when I was invested in being diligent.
I began to be inactive when my children left post high school, and I refused to shame or shun them. At. All. They were and are worthy of my full encouragement so BIG nope to that. But *I* still kept going, until I faded into sporadic attendance out of necessity, when my life imploded from an overladen shelf of unprocessed personal stuff (accepting all that cog-dis is not healthy) and I couldn’t muster the energy to perform diligence anymore. When I did show up, I was greeted with much love and a few hugs from people to whom I wasn’t all that connected, which I correctly interpreted to mean that I had been an agenda item for discussion, but I was gracious about receiving the attention, even though none of my greeters were close enough friends to whom I could share my troubles. There’s a narrow category of problems that are acceptable for members to share freely, and the vast variety of other things that compel folks to leave are well outside those boundaries. Those obstacles to peacefully active church participation are either taboo for discussion or are wrongfully shamed, or both. And now, with the edict from on high to not discuss this rather large category of thorny matters, lest someone “take counsel” by seeking to understand, the shaming taboo is much stronger.
But I tried somewhat to make folks understand. My filters are not the norm, so when they gave my address to the missionaries assigned to our ward, and those boys came to my home but refused to come in —twice— due to that stupid, insulting churchwide rule about dangerous seductive women home alone, instead we sat on my front porch in AZ heat, and I deconstructed the insult to me and to them, and pointed out a bunch more mofem theory for their edification. Or at the very least, for them to return and report to whatever council meeting was handing out my address.
I moved out of that ward shortly after, and did my old buddy the ward clerk a favor by allowing him to offload my membership record to a ward I have yet to attend. I still entertain a new set of missionaries on my front porch occasionally, still remind them I could be old classmates to their grandmothers. In the new ward there’s no contact between strangers, but last summer I received a birthday card from the Relief Society, expressing their love in a copier note pasted inside. I suppose I can receive that with some grace mixed in with the other feelings.
Gilgamesh: I too feel torn when people make big pronouncements about leaving (YAGE, as we call it, “Yet Another Grand Exit”), but I do acknowledge that there are some who have been very directly hurt by hateful policies or have been traumatized or even abused in the process. Most of the people I know who have left are pretty sanguine about it, e.g. just don’t believe it, and that’s that. But, by the same token, I really dislike performative faith on social media to the same degree. I’ve never been a fan of fast & testimony meetings for the same reason. It just feels like wearing your faith on your sleeve for others to see, when belief feels like it should be private, like children, neither seen nor heard, LOL. For some reason I just find it unsavory. These posts people do about lighting the world or even the challenges about expressing appreciation for your spouse (but every TBM you know all does it at the same time), that just turns me off.
MDearest: I relate a lot to two of the things you say: 1) new ward where you have no ties, and 2) adult kids who are out. So, I’m supposed to prioritize relationships with unknown randos over my own actual kids? Riiiight. Plus, let’s be honest. My kids’ reasons for leaving are valid. The church has really done nothing to win hearts and minds in their generation, and has eroded benefits to older generations as well.
An assigned mormon minister or whatever they are calling them showed up to mow our lawn shortly after my father passed of a terrible illness. We had moved in with him to care for him. Mormon guy decided that permission to now meant permission to start ripping (expensive) plants out of our garden because he felt they were in *his* way. Not that they were sick. Not that they were dying. They were inconvenient to him. He did not discuss this with us. He just assumed he owned our yard. Only my wife is (was) a member in our family. I caught him in the act, told him off and that if he came back he’d be trespassing. He sent a half-hearted apology to my wife and that’s it. Expects to be let back on our property. Even my wife will exercise her rights if she sees him again at our home. So yeah. “Good” experience? You tell me.
I’ve caught this guy peeking in our windows since, so police involvement is forthcoming.
I apologize for not reading all of the comments before adding my reply, but I just cannot hold it.
I am a very private person. I am able to politely decline to answer any question I don’t want to tell, and I certainly don’t look for opportunities to spill everything I feel, or my testimony. Consequently, I’m not inclined to ask someone why they stopped attending, unless they have been a close friend and those types of conversations have been a part of our relationship. Basically, it’s none of my business unless you choose to share.
I apologize to anyone whom I have offended for not asking (what I believe) are very personal questions.
I’ve had a very different interaction with LDS members when I was inactive. I was inactive for over 20 years. Over the last 5 years I have been very active. During that 20 years, I had gone through a divorce, been remarried, had a few more kids, and started my career in the interim. During the last 10 years of being inactive, we moved 5 times. I would get visits from Missionaries and occasionally church members. I always thought it was my Mom telling the local ward we had moved in the area. How else would they know? They were always friendly and never preachy or judgmental. Most of the time we never even spoke about church.
Shortly before our move to Northern California, we were visited by 2 missionaries who said they felt like they needed to knock on our door. Turns out, one of them was a former student at a tiny school in a tiny town in a different State that my brother just happened to teach at. What were the odds? And that really stuck with me.
Turns out, my Mom never told anyone about our moves. Yet the missionaries and members found us all the same. I don’t know. Maybe it was just luck, but I don’t think so. And I’m glad they kept showing up.
I completely agree in the paradox and the truth is that I felt the paradox internally. I desperately miss the community
When I first stopped attending I avoided contact bc 99% felt so insincere. I didn’t need to discuss my reasons per de but it was really painful. Even though I knew I walked away I felt I had been pushed out and the contacts felt like an abusive spouse asking me to come back but not being interested in changing. I deeply love my heritage and it felt that that was being ripped from me because my moral being couldn’t stand with the hurt and pain I saw inflicted on others.
After awhile I started healing more and accepting the change in relationship. Now I don’t care if missionaries or others reach out even insincerely because I am very comfortable setting boundaries. The things that still hurt is the friendships we thought we had that went poof (and we have instigated invitations as well). Sometimes I get notes from people saying how much they miss talking to me and like others I just want to give some awareness to these well intentioned people. I’m still here. You can talk to me. What they mean is that they miss me as the person they thought I was or perhaps who they think I should be. We avoid extending invitations because we are self conscious about making members uncomfortable if I’m drinking coffee or my husband has a cocktail, or if I have on a tank top etc. our lives are not really terribly different but we went just ever slightly off script and if feels like it others focus more on that then the stuff we still share. I appreciate the couple that reached out with an invite and we’re upfront that this was about being friends not church. They didn’t seem to care whether we were in or out and that meant a lot.
We get contact in waves occasionally- missionaries, the well meaning former ss student of mine who as a current missionary wrote fervently to invite us to watch general conference (not realizing that I have had many of those end in tears and not the good kind), and various ward members all in a few weeks time. We know it’s an activation effort. We set boundaries with those we need to, thoroughly enjoy those that interact as friends and we ignore those “come back to the fold” types that we know won’t be interested. Occasionally I yearn for someone that can truly sit with me in the pain but that is a rare person
To Mr. Todd Smithson regarding the first comment you left on this article, can you please explain the phrase “God’s evacuation plan?” I am genuinely baffled as to why one would be needed by God. What does this mean? I apologize for diverting from the initial topic, I just don’t understand the phrase.