...will now be humanitarian service missions?

1. The reputation and image of the Church would improve exponentially
2. Missionary applications would increase
3. Mission experiences would be far more beneficial to the individuals
4. Member engagement with missionaries would increase
5. Non members would engage far more easily with Mormons and with less suspicion
6. Convert numbers would not be harmed, arguably, over time, conversion and retention rates would improve

So why not?

I'll tell you why not. Because then members would want tithing to go to supporting all these humanitarian mission activities. Can't have that now, can we...

Proselytising missions are relatively cheap in comparison to the return. Per missionary it may cost £12,000 for each two year mission - most of which comes from additional member donations or the missionary's family, rather than out of Church coffers.
Young men who serve missions are far more likely to remain in the Church and pay an honest tithe. So a great financial return for very little outlay.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2013 08:50AM by Stumbling.

I speculated that guilty members (who have not turned in their work associates and tennis partners) may be more likely to offer a spare bedroom to house a missionary instead.

This means the church can collect the money from the missionary family while getting free rent for the missionary.

I theorize this whole historic event may be a brilliant method to use guilt to convert a negative cash flow into a positive one.


Anagrammy

So if a member houses a missionary...

Like a good mormon, the husband goes to work during the week.

Are the missionaries alone with his wife?

No, the Spirit is also there

They don't usually live in the family's space. They live in a sepearate apartment attached to the family home or something like that.

The TBM family I know that is housing two elders have them right in their home in a spare room. They use the member's kitchen too. They eat right out of the same fridge.

In my experience that's abnormal.

Yeah, I think that's extremely rare. I served in Utah and almost all of the missionaries' apartments were in a separate unit connected to a member's house. There were only a couple that I recall where you had to exit up the stairs through the member's private space but they still had their own kitchen, bathroom etc.

I think it's a great idea! Much more useful for the recipients of the missionaries' attention.

I was shocked when I discovered that LDS missionaries aren't there to do service projects, but to convert people. I had assumed it was a sort of Peace Corps for Mormons.

It definitely changed how I viewed the LDS church.

When Ann Romney bragged (on The View) that all 5 of her sons had served missions, I was chapped. Especially since it was in response to the question: has anyone in your family done military service? Apparently she thought a mission for the church was comparable to risking your life for your country in a war zone.

The service in an LDS mission is to the church.

The church is about to unleash an army of 70k motivated young men and women on the world - they had the opportunity to really make a positive difference with that kind of work force and truly follow Christ's teachings, but instead they decided to keep churning out door-to-door salesmen. I have no doubt that with a motivated young work force, not only would the church have gotten AMAZING press (think Peace Corps, but bigger and more fanatical about following their leaders' instructions to make the quality of life better...almost scary to think of how much good they could do), but they would have improved their reputation around the world.

They should have announced a new strategy to shave their heads and hand out BOMs at the airport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4CizzE-zZo

Fucking Cult.

diablo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They should have announced a new strategy to shave
> their heads and hand out BOMs at the airport.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4CizzE-zZo
>
> Fucking Cult.

Was that dieter the "pilot" trying to get through all those RM's

that it wasn't something like that. Before the fireside, I started wondering if maybe they had been reading here, and gotten some good ideas from us.

Nope. It was just more of the same stuff they've rolled out many times before.

I was hoping it would be like:

"We've decided to adhere to our own 11th article of faith after all. Everyone relax, all you missionaries can go home and get back in school and do something productive with the next 2 years. No more full time missions, and we effectively release all ward mission leaders and missionaries. We're sorry for being such douche bags in the past, god has told us we need to lighten up and move away from door to door sales of his word. Now evertyone go spend the next 2 hours with your family instead of sitting here listening to us drone on."

Does the Morg still have the push to have missionaries live with members? I remember they were trying to roll this out a couple years ago, but haven't heard much of it since.

The way that 95% of returned missionaries portray their two years to potential non-LDS employers, you'd think it already was 24 months of solid humanitarian service.

proselyting work on the other hand results in more tithe payers. At least that's what my cynical side thinks.

Personally I think there's not enough proselyting work for all these new missionaries to do w/o them quickly becoming a huge annoyance to the rest of the world. More humanitarian work would actually give never-mos a reason to like Mormons. Opportunity missed.

With all of the complicated things you need to do to get to the CK they need to make an app to make it simpler for noobs. The missionaries could then give people a link to the app.

Just sat through a boring 3 hour church meeting? Congratulations, your spirit meter has gone up 5%! Finished reading the book of mormon? You have unlocked Doctrine and Covenants! Paid a ridiculous amount of tithing? You have unlocked special protective underwear! The church has plenty of "sacred" (secret) material that they can use as rewards for mundane activities.

The same reason the German youth of 1939 didn't go into Poland, in order to man homeless shelters. They were there to conquer, not to help out. Of course, in the long run, both plans will fail.

If the LDS Church wants the missionary effort to be successful, they will change the emphasis to Humanitarian Service and get busy doing what is needed!

I love the idea of humanitarian service.

It would have to be phased in for some countries.

Where I served, we spent our 4 hr week service lookin for opportunities. We were even willingness
To take off our name tags.

We were chased out of catholic hospitals and children after school programs who didn't want us.

I think we ended up picking up trash in a local park for our hours and feeling like it was the best we could do to give back to a community that did not want us.

It sounds AS IF you do not consider harassment of the public over trying to peddle the LDS INC Gold plates/ book of MORmON / Unmentionable secret handshake SCAM to be a genuine service. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hNLVK-DWSw



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2013 05:10PM by lucky.

Perhaps the honest truth is that providing humanitarian service wouldn't bind the missionary to the church in the same way that proselyting does.