Why do missionaries tract?

[SeattleUte]

wrong thread

[wuapinmon]

I'm warming to the service idea. Think about an organized force of 50,000 volunteers; a service force that never leaves. I'm envisioning several 60 Minutes pieces and Larry King interviews coming out of it.

The other day on facebook, I posted this:

Mac wonders if LDS missionary work in the US could be better accomplished if our missionaries were organized into cohorts of public service volunteers and disaster-response teams instead of door-knocking. I think people might be more likely to come to our Church after seeing our selfless service vs us knocking on their do...or without an appointment. It'll never happen, but it's interesting to think about.

A friend of mine then said this to me:

They tried that in Virginia in the mid-90s. 40 hours a week community service, 20 hours proselyting. It was a nice experiment, but it wasn't workable in the end and lasted about a year.

I asked him if there was an article about it anywhere, and he responded:

I don't think so, I wouldn't have known about it except that I was living there then. I think it was discontinued because it turned out to be less effective and it was difficult to come up with long term/flexible service to fill all the hours, but I never heard exactly why.

A different friend responded with this:

The best "original" material I've seen in a long time on missionary work:
http://www.cumorah.com/index.php?target=law_harvest

I haven't had time to read the link, but it looks interesting, if nothing else.

[The Fourth Nephite]

I always liked tracting.