Why do missionaries tract?

[CardiacCoug]

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.

Right.

Who can argue that sending kids around to knock on doors (which generally just annoys people and wastes time) is better for the Church than having the missionaries participate in a more organized and robust service effort?

The vast majority of the meaningful teaching and baptizing opportunities would still be there without ever asking missionaries to go door-to-door.

[The Fourth Nephite]

I think you're joking but I'm afraid you may be serious. If the Spirit told you to tract then the Spirit gave you bad advice.

Where did you have these "tremendous results tracting"? Even if you personally baptized dozens of currently active members through your tracting efforts (which I doubt) that would be a statistical aberration.

The type of service that I think missionaries should do instead of tracting wouldn't be something each companionship would find on their own (which on my mission was usually sort of lame). It would ideally be organized at the Churchwide level and would be substantial and meaningful service.

No, I'm absolutely not joking and the Spirit doesn't give bad advice. Sometimes people mis-interpret the Spirit or don't do their part.

I served in Pennsylvania. I didn't baptize dozens of people tracting, I baptized 11 by tracting and several by other methods. That's not dozens, but for Pennsylvania it was a lot. Of the eleven:

1 is currently a Branch president.
2 (a couple) have served 2 missions and would serve a third if it wasn't for health problems.
2 (another couple) have passed away firm in the faith
2 more are very active
3 are inactive
1 I'm pretty sure is inactive, but not positive

I'm not saying it isn't a statistical abberation. It probably was, but I was successful in tracting because I had faith in it, I listened to the Spirit and when the Spirit told me to do something, I did it.

If I only had worked with the members (which there's nothing wrong with), I would have had a lot of free time during the daytime. Also, most of my areas were small branches and there weren't a ton of members anyways.

I believed 1 Nephi 3:7. The Lord didn't send me to Pennsylvania on a service mission, he sent me to proselyte. I believed him and he prepared a way for me to do it.

As for meaningful church service (both to church members and non-members), I have found no shortage of such opportunities since I returned from my mission.

[Shaka]

My MTC teachers hammered it into our heads that tracting was a lousy way to find people. I arrived in the field to find I had companions that loved to tract. ne thought that the more we suffered the more God would bless us When I was made a senior comp a bagged the tracting and experienced a dramatic increase in success. Sure I would tract once in a while just for the experience but I found it was usually a big waste of time.

I spent a lot of time doing service. I did everything from helping out in orphanages to coaching a high school basketball team (it was South Africa and they sucked) for a time. I found that the service opportunities increased our profile and led to a better reputation in the community. In one community our service caught the attention of the local newspaper and they did a profile on my companion and I that including pictures. After the article people would stop us and want to talk.

[SoonerCoug]

No, I'm absolutely not joking and the Spirit doesn't give bad advice. Sometimes people mis-interpret the Spirit or don't do their part.

I served in Pennsylvania. I didn't baptize dozens of people tracting, I baptized 11 by tracting and several by other methods. That's not dozens, but for Pennsylvania it was a lot.

Maybe you knocked on 10x more doors than the average missionary, thereby baptizing 10x more people by tracting. And at the same time, maybe you pissed off 10x more people than the average missionary. Perhaps your door approach was more appealing to fanatical types who were more likely to be baptized and remain active. And maybe that same door approach offended many more people than the average missionary managed to offend.

It's like talking about a medication that saved 10 lives but killed 500 people. No such medication would ever be approved by the FDA. Tracting has the worst possible ratio of converting people to pissing people off.

It would be much better for the Church to convert half as many people but make the world love us for doing good service. (Besides, it's already established that tracting is the least efficent thing to do in terms of conversion--according to a sharing the gospel teacher that I had at BYU.)

Elder Didier was converted thanks to missionaries that knocked on his mom's door. He told me the whole story on a van ride in Russia. He told me that he mostly just wanted to learn English at first, and this was the reason he became interested in talking to the missionaries. Plus the Church apparently had a really good slide show about Indians at the time. It's great that Elder Didier became a Mormon, but I would never say that an anecdote is enough to justify a stupid missionary approach.

[Color Me Badd Fan]

Triplet Daddy's 3rd and 4th points are totally true. There are a lot of idiot missionaries that would figure out screwy ways to "serve." Also, tracting provides some humilty and testimony-building opportunities. At the same time, to wuap's point, I think it's a mistake when certain missions put missionaries through the emotional wringer with some guilt trip if they're not constantly out tracting. When my dad was a bishop, there was one particular missionary that reactivated numerous families and thereby baptized numerous additional people. Last time I was back home, I saw a number of the people this missionary brought back to church and/or baptized. That missionary was in my home ward 18-19 years ago. He was one of those older missionaries (a guy who left at 21 or so) and was just an outstanding individual and we got to know all the missionaries in our ward pretty well.

My companion and I found a family through tracting when I was in Germany. The father worked at a bank in Frankfurt and the family was actually pretty well off. Their son was our same age and he actually got baptized first and the parents followed a few months later. The son ended up serving a mission in England after I got off my mission. Tracting shouldn't be avoided at all costs when you have time on your hands, but just do it for the right reasons.

If some guy pushing 50 decided to hit my companion over the head with a beer bottle, I would have beat his ass and I don't think I would have had a problem with him at all when I was 20 years old.

[SeattleUte]

might[/I] think he's cool.

The fact you spend time here means you have a streak of immaturity somewhere if nothing else.

[The Fourth Nephite]

Maybe you knocked on 10x more doors than the average missionary, thereby baptizing 10x more people by tracting. And at the same time, maybe you pissed off 10x more people than the average missionary. Perhaps your door approach was more appealing to fanatical types who were more likely to be baptized and remain active. And maybe that same door approach offended many more people than the average missionary managed to offend.

It's like talking about a medication that saved 10 lives but killed 500 people. No such medication would ever be approved by the FDA. Tracting has the worst possible ratio of converting people to pissing people off.

It would be much better for the Church to convert half as many people but make the world love us for doing good service. (Besides, it's already established that tracting is the least efficent thing to do in terms of conversion--according to a sharing the gospel teacher that I had at BYU.)

Elder Didier was converted thanks to missionaries that knocked on his mom's door. He told me the whole story on a van ride in Russia. He told me that he mostly just wanted to learn English at first, and this was the reason he became interested in talking to the missionaries. Plus the Church apparently had a really good slide show about Indians at the time. It's great that Elder Didier became a Mormon, but I would never say that an anecdote is enough to justify a stupid missionary approach.

I probably did knock on a lot more doors than the average missionary. If people chose to take offense at me, that's their problem. I was always polite.

In recent months I have had Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists knock on my door. They seemed to be nice people. I usually chat with them for 5 minutes on my porch and then excuse myself. What's to be offended by? If I didn't want to talk to them, I could have told them so and then closed the door.

If somebody gets offended by a missionary knocking on their door, more than likely they're not going to join the church anyways.

Also, I wouldn't call any of the people I tracted into and baptized fanatical. They were just normal people. I think they'd get a good chuckle if I told them you thought they were fanatical.

[BlueHair]

The missionaries in our ward are not allowed to use the bathroom in a member's or an investigator's house. They cannot do service for Church members. They cannot participate in EQ service project unless they benefit investigators. They cannot come over for any meal or snack unless there is an investigator present or we are in the actual process of developing a family mission plan. They cannot have a cellphone that can call long distance (our ward has two area codes) because, from the MP's mouth "They might be weak and call home." They are not allowed to listen to any music with words. They must knock doors all day, unless they have set appointments. They cannot help clean the chapel. If they have no investigators at Church they are expected to take the Sacrament and leave to go knock doors. They've knocked my street once every other month since I've lived here (2 years).

After Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana, the Baton Rouge mission sent home all missionaries with less than four months remaining.

If I were a missionary in Costa Rica today, knowing what I know, I think I would keep the law of chastity, the WOW; I wouldn't go swimming, and the rest of the time, I would be working doing something other than knocking doors. Not a single person I baptized that I met while knocking doors is still active. I'm not a door-knock convert. I know precious few who are.

I feel like I don't know our elders.....I feel like they move them through too quickly, that we can't BRT with them, so I'm reluctant to refer any of my friends or colleagues to them because I don't know if they're going to be some arrogant little "bold" bastard who thinks the Spirit's telling him to dust his feet off of my friends, or if he's going to be a humble righteous elder, capable of helping other people gain faith in the Gospel. My colleagues, most of the faculty, regularly tell me that the missionaries tracted them out. The standard line I've told them all to say, if the elders persist, is, "If I want to know more about your church, I'll ask Mac Williams about it."

I don't understand the mistrust the church has for it's missionaries. They volunteer two years of their time and go on their own dime, yet can't be trusted to pee in a member's bathroom? I don't see how the church can tell missionaries they are representatives of Jesus Christ, then tells them they are too weak to be trusted with a cell phone. Where do they come up with this stuff?

[Jeff Lebowski]

I don't understand the mistrust the church has for it's missionaries. They volunteer two years of their time and go on their own dime, yet can't be trusted to pee in a member's bathroom? I don't see how the church can tell missionaries they are representatives of Jesus Christ, then tells them they are too weak to be trusted with a cell phone. Where do they come up with this stuff?

What he described is not universal. I can vouch for that.

[wuapinmon]

The fact you spend time here means you have a streak of immaturity somewhere if nothing else.

Be that as it may, my immaturity centers around inappropriate swearing and too frequent and too graphic talk of sex and my wife's enormous breasts. I don't go around talking about throwing beer bottles at young men who happen to knock on my door, colonel. Mine don't include threats.

[wuapinmon]

What he described is not universal. I can vouch for that.

It's a new rule here. When asked, I was told by the elders, who probably are speaking more from supposition than fact, that some elder had had sexual contact with a sister while his companion was pooping.....therefore, they can't go to the bathroom in anyone's house but their own. I asked them if they could go if their companion stood in the shower with the curtain drawn for privacy, but they didn't think that was funny.

As per the cellphones, both MPs in Baton Rouge and Columbia told me the same thing.

[All-American]

"white field." yeah, I don't thinknit means what we think it means.

I had an idaho farmer for a comp once, and he got this look in his eyes whenever we mentioned a white field. He explained it once. A white field means it's harvest time. It doesn't mean that there will be a good harvest-- there might have been a storm that knocked the crop loose, or the bunnies might have gotten to it-- it meant that there was work to do.

I think that verse implies that there is work to be done, and it needs to get done fast, but there's no guarentee of success.

Tracting, it seems to me, is what you do when you're trying to get the word out as fast as you can. The target audience is those who are looking already for the truth and know not where to find it. The world we live in, however, has largely rejected religion. It seems now that ours is no longer to gather the willing, but to show that we have something that the world desperately needs. An approach deemphasizing tracting (though not entirely abandoning it) is entirely consistent with this shift.

[SeattleUte]

It's a new rule here. When asked, I was told by the elders, who probably are speaking more from supposition than fact, that some elder had had sexual contact with a sister while his companion was pooping.....therefore, they can't go to the bathroom in anyone's house but their own. I asked them if they could go if their companion stood in the shower with the curtain drawn for privacy, but they didn't think that was funny.

As per the cellphones, both MPs in Baton Rouge and Columbia told me the same thing.

I think you're missing a chip.

[wuapinmon]

I think you're missing a chip.

I give you the last word.....take it.

[BlueHair]

Be that as it may, my immaturity centers around inappropriate swearing and too frequent and too graphic talk of sex and my wife's enormous breasts. I don't go around talking about throwing beer bottles at young men who happen to knock on my door, colonel. Mine don't include threats.

How enormous? What are we talking here - DD? HH?