So the missionaries go online and met potential converts. Then they expect these people to put away their electronic gadgets and sit for 3 boring hours at a mormon church? No videos, no jumbo tron. How dull is that? Plus, people who have information at their finger tips will be told they should only visit church approved sites? They will be told when and where they have to attend meetings, how much tithing to pay, WOW, worthiness interviews and if they stay long enough, they get to wear ugly church approved underwear. I don't see that working for the hip crowd that's onto the next big thing.

How do you really know who you're dealing with online?

The missionaries could contact people via email or text messages. But these can be blocked or ignore. If people tell them they are not interested in the church and want to be left alone, then all those unwanted messages look like harassment and stalking.

The only way I see missionaries getting butts in pews is to go after members of the opposite sex with promises of marriage. How many people join or go active again because of raging hormones?

The trick is getting the pew out of the butt.

Someone had to do it.

At this point, all I can do is speculate, but my guess is that the church is going to buy information (names, e-mail addresses, etc) and distribute them out to missionaries based on area (a horrible way to recruit - worked for a school that did this to recruit students and the results were almost always negative), who will then try to contact the individual through e-mail. The problem with this is that this method is historically EXTREMELY unreliable. The information is gathered based on info people enter into online forms, so it could be outdated (you would be surprised at how often people change e-mail addresses) and/or the e-mail given is an address dedicated to spam-only. The next problem with this is that people are extremely worried about online safety - imagine getting an e-mail from a complete stranger, asking to meet up with you to share a message about Jesus...I don't know about you, but I would probably start to think either "predator" or "Nigerian scammer" (of course, this is a 2 way street - think of the danger this poses to missionaries, arranging for faceless strangers to come meet them in an empty chapel for a tour).

Based on something said during the broadcast, I also think there will be a good bit of Facebook creeping done. Nelson encouraged members to "friend the missionaries" in their ward - to me, this suggests that members are going to be encouraged to give missionaries "facebook referrals" so that missionaries are going to message perspective victims directly.

I imagine the church is also going to be paying for strategic ads through facebook, Google, etc. Go ahead and visit your favorite sports team's online ticket site - before you know it, you will be seeing banner ads for season tickets on several websites that you visit. "Like" something random on facebook - before you know it, you will be seeing banner ads for related products.

I don't think that the online missionary crap is going to completely replace their traditional methods (equally ineffective), but I think we are going to slowly start to see a shift. Once they roll out the iPads, I'm guessing there will be some sort of tracking software so that they can easily track and contact perspective "online converts."

My understanding is that they will still meet investigators in person, but that the initial legwork will be done online - through members, ask-a-mormon chatrooms, Facebook ads, etc. - instead of through tracting. They'll still set up appointments to teach the lessons, but invite people to come to the wardhouse instead of having them in their homes.

The decision to try and move lessons to the wardhouses rather than someone's living room will give them a more legit, less-salesman-esque feel. I don't think that they are going to have a whole lot of luck in the long run finding serious members online, though.

Netflix might work! I have my popcorn out. Watching with amazement. LOL

Frankly, I don't think that The Brethren have thought this really through and consulted all the right people. But it is a wealthy church and they will buy the necessary information from vendors who sell your personal identification to others, and it will make people mad as hell. Still, it will be (I'm sure of my prophecy here) a resounding success which they will discontinue in the not-so-distant future.

The LDS church is approaching this like a TV exec...

TV exec see a show that he likes, he then reasons Dinosaurs are really popular so he puts dinosaurs into the show and it fails.

TV exec is confused because everyone like dinosaurs.


Mormon church know people like the internet. Mormon church puts missionaries on the internet....Mormon church fails

Mormon church is confused because everyone likes the internet.

Calvin Grondahl's works have always made my day. There are some at Signature Books online library: "Marketing Precedes the Miracle" from 1987
http://signaturebookslibrary.org/?p=11658
The first picture shows a tracting pair of mishies wearing pc screens showing a presentation of TSCC...

But seriously, they've pretty much tried EVERYTHING. And NOTHING works. Offline, online, what next? Whatever, won't help. Because it's a bad product.

I agree, it's a crappy product. And people will look at the product reviews, good and bad. Plus, hiding information won't go down very well with the internet crowd either.