that new missionary being my son...challenge the investigator to be baptized when you give the FIRST discussion. Honestly, is this desperation or what? The Boner

I was thinking about the difference between having return customers and a scam. Pressure people to get baptized and then wonder why they show up to church once and are never seen again.

We were told to do this in Norway in 1977.

Same process in L.A. in 1992-93.

If you didn't pop the question by the 1st discussion, you better by the 2nd, otherwise you were slacking off and didn't have the spirit with you. You would get reported.

I dont think it is desperation. I think they are just going to keep asking till the person says yes. They know that repeatedly asking is going to get more people to say yes.

Sales isn't always about having a wonderful pitch or product. Some strategies are just to ask a lot of people and find the ones who will accept. 1% of the world population is still a lot of people.

So spreading mormonism is the same as spamming inboxes!

It was in the script of the old six discussions...

"...if you come to a knowledge that what we're teaching you is true and want to me baptized, would three weeks from Monday be okay, or would Saturday the 11th be better?"

You never asked a yes or no question which ghawd inspired the prophet to learn by inspiring him to send for an Encyclopedia Britannica salesman.

Or so we were told in a curious aside.

25 years ago we were told to give a soft baptismal invite at the end of the first discussion & to schedule a firm baptismal date after the second discission.....hard sell cult anyone?!!

told us the same thing in 1961.

Didn't-work-then-either-ly yrs,

S

We were instructed to ask an extremely firm "Will you follow the example of Christ and be baptized on (date)?"

We had to practice that sales pitch to the tee or you had to do push ups if you got it wrong while practicing at district and zone mtgs. Ugh!

A few years ago when my son was preparing to leave on his mission I counseled with him telling him that if he was truly going to embrace being a missionary, he should be the best that he possibly could. I also told him that it wouldn't do the church any good to quickly baptize folks who would just as quickly leave the church. I mentioned that he should really concentrate on his teaching and the message he was sharing. I told him to strive for "quality" converts as opposed to "quantity" converts.

Being a competitive kid though, once he hit the mission field he got caught up in the numbers race and the goals of producing the most baptisms in the mission. Sad.

Great to see your post boner!

You should check out the latest Mormon stories podcast. It's about exactly this and the person interviewed dr Dave Christian had serious debts and misgivings because of it. Maybe the seeds of apostasy being sewn haha.