In the Lord’s vineyard, there are a lot of jobs to do. Somebody has to plant seeds in the greenhouse, somebody transfers the plants into the garden, somebody fertilizes, someone prunes. Some people stick around one plant long enough to do all these things for it, others specialize and just plant. Most of us rotate through most of the jobs in the Lord’s vineyard.

In a well- tended garden there are good practices for planting, and foolish gardeners don’t follow them. Don’t plant tender plants before danger of frost is over. Bulbs need a good freeze. Some plants need a long time in the greenhouse. Maybe the great Book of Mormon missionaries were assigned to plant sunflowers that just seem to take off on their own. Maybe you are currently laboring among the roses that need a lot of care. Maybe ‘Investigator’ or a friend like him is a century plant. It sounds like you’ve heard stories about missionaries who were trying to sow without looking at the seed packet to consider the plant‘s needs. We learn wisdom as we learn to care for each plant properly.

I’m not very concerned with closing the garden gate to protect the plants already there. They will do fine, if we make sure that the plants in the greenhouse are planted at the time, and in the circumstances, that are right for them.

Maybe I‘m missing the point. My husband is a ward missionary in a ward that has plenty of time to consider each investigator individually. Nevertheless, our mission leader seems to be constantly looking for a program that will reap a big crop of petunias soon, instead of realizing that our ward garden has a number of unique plants in various stages of growth, that we just need to learn to care for.

Thanks for your comments above as well. I was very impressed with your mission president the few times I saw him speak, and I’m glad to hear that you had more or less the same reaction to how he ran things.

One reason I believe this worked is responsive to Kevin Barney’s post #3, which describes a polarization between members and missionaries, two different teams with apparently different goals. I have felt this conflict in the units I have lived in since returning. It is an extremely unfortunate one. Rather than spend time focused on accomplishing the mission of the church, members and missionaries spend significant time fighting over what is the most effective way to work, or whether Brother X is truly ready for baptism, or who has authority/jurisdiction over a given mission-related function or question. It is the height of arrogance as a missionary to be unconcerned about the unit in which one serves.

My mission president met regularly with the Bishops and Branch Presidents, and listened to them. They helped in the setting of goals, plans, and policies. We were challenged to do the same. We were intimately involved in PEC, Ward Council, etc., and not just in terms of giving superficial reports, but in really planning and coordinating the efforts of the ward or branch with respect to missionary work. This involved give and take and exchange of ideas, not one side imposing their will on the other. There was a true sense of teamwork and belonging between the members and missionaries, a Zusammengehörigkeitsgefühl that was infused into the work. I miss this in my current interactions with missionaries. For example, we were not allowed to teach a discussion beyond the first discussion without a member present. Period. The members knew this and had committed to the mission president to make themselves available. It did wonderful things for retention to have converts exposed to normal members like themselves and develop friendships early in the process.

One key that I felt was very important was the Convert Baptism Checklist (is that the right name?) which spelled out for potential members and the ward all that should be done for the year following baptism. Potential converts received this from the missionaries before baptism (I believe at baptismal interview if memory serves) in order to understand what was expected for the next year. Converts knew that they were expected to go to the temple one year later before they ever entered the waters of baptism. They understood that our mission was not to save, but to exalt, and that only the temple could help with that. The checklist was a major substantive portion of every New Member Discussion, of every ward council/PEC/Ward Mission Correlation. Too often I find that noone knows what this list is, especially the convert. They apparently never get a copy, and thus have no idea what is expected of them, or what it even means to be a good member during that crucial formative time.

I remember a quiet Sunday afternoon in the Missionary Training Center reading that month’s Ensign. There was a talk by Elder Benson on President Kimball’s vision of missionary work. We were supposed to have faith and work so that we could be used to convert hundreds or thousands. A missionary teaching hundreds of converts can’t nurture them personally. He can only share the gospel and leave it in the hands of the recipient to carry on.

This is pretty much the only model the scriptures provide. Stephen and the eunuch have a talk during a chariot ride; the eunuch points out water which they use; the two part ways. The centurion invites Peter to his house; the Spirit falls on everyone; everyone is baptized. Alma at the waters of Mormon presents a more nurturing picture of the mass baptism of hundreds. Ammon spends time developing a relationship with Lamoni, but that results in thousands of converts, apparently in short order.

In Jesus’ parable of the sower casting seed in various soils, some seed lies on the surface until the birds eat it. Other seed sprouts but is scorched or choked. He didn’t say so explicitly with this parable, but with many he started by saying “The kingdom of God is like this.” So are the scorched and choked baptized converts or are they enthusiastic investigators who lose the way before baptism? I tend to think the former, but that may not be so.

I asked my father-in-law why this parable never comes up when we discuss the work of conversion. He thought it is better not to provide the saints excuses for ignoring retention work.

Russell, three years after the end of my mission, I went back and spent a year in one of the cities I had been as a missionary and discovered that the new mission president had implemented a number of your suggested measures. The missionaries stayed for six or ten months at a time, investigators were required to read substantial chunks of the Book of Mormon and to attend church for something like 3 weeks straight, and the missionaries in the ward even nixed one would-be convert because her testimony had more to do with UFO’s than with Christ. I was impressed. The changes made a lot of sense to me.

At least, that was my perspective as a former missionary looking in from the outside at his one-time field of labor. My year there overlapped MDS’s time as a missionary in the same mission, if not in the same town. So, MDS, if you’re reading this: how much of the Fox Manifesto was enacted? How did it work out in practice from your perspective?