Anyway — since within another thread the gadfly in me got all pie-in-the-sky about the Community of Christ’s maybe coming up with a spin off for disaffected Mormons — and since the Methodists are utterlly famous for the professionalism* of their paid ministry:

I hereby would nominate for the paid ministry of my proposed, ahem, conservative (viz., “Utah Mormon-ish”) branch of the Reformed Restorationist movement to be trained, if at all possible, at Methodist seminaries.
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*(As an aside, surveys also show Methodist ministers are inclined to be much more liberal on numerous issues than their congregants too.)

The local Methodist church congregation where my wife works has grown from 1700 members to over 4000 in the last 5 years. Across the street the larger Baptist church is also growing but more slowly, not loosing too much ground to them. This is in a moderate to affluent area with 30-40 year old homes that is being repopulated by young families. (What brings in the young families? Good schools and good churches.) Both churches are drawing members from entirely within the wide boundaries of our ward. How do they do it?

It isn’t about doctrine, it isn’t about spiritual experiences; most of their members could care less about the difference between Calvinism and Wesleyanism. It isn’t about saving their souls directly, not their own, rather it is about the moral salvation of their children.

First, the Methodists have an excellent preschool. It took them years to build it and it is not just a place to dump your kids while you go sit in a beauty salon to gossip. They actually try and help young mothers with all the usual issues and provide a supportative network of experienced women for young mothers who may not have their own mothers close by to help them through the rough spots. Second, both have an excellent athletic program with over 1500 kids in half a dozen sports and the Methodists seem to have hit a balance between being too competitive and too lame, in my experience, I’ve coached at both churches. Third, they have excellent scout troops. Fourth, they have excellent music programs for many of the usual instruments kids play. Music is another great way to discipline children and teach them respect, hard work, and other values. And these churches have several other “ministries.”

These programs, offered as genuine service to the community, result in real church growth. This is without missionaries and hard sales tactics. People come to activitites, then they come to Sunday meetings and then the kids experience real conversions and sometimes the parents. Mostly professional young families come, those who may not have been very interested in religion until they had children and are struck with the awesome moral responsibility it is to raise them correctly. Then they seek and come back to church, family oriented churches. This Methodist church I am familar with gets new members as follows: about 70% from the preschool, about 20% from the sports, and a few from the scouting, music, etc.

As long as we only convert the “Scum of the Earth,” which is a rather derogatory but painfully true description of what we see in my ward, it is increasingly difficult to raise children in this church. If you are not growing you will be dying. Fortress Mormon, keeping only our own youth of the noble birthright active and blind to the world does not work here. Especially when that surburban world is not all evil, or even better than the local LDS world in many ways. We have not converted even one family with mon, dad and children in 10 years. (Although we have one such family investigating right now, and we are all praying and keeping ourtfingers crossed). Our ward is dying, with numbers of youth in the single digits now. Sacrament attendance is still over 150 so it may not be so obvious yet.

It becomes increasingly hard to raise children in this church. It is hard on the kids to be poorly treated by these new inept converts. Itis hard to only have one or two kids in ech age group. We constantly have to go to these other churches for decent programs for our children; like their sports, music, scouting, etc. This sends the message to them that their LDS church is lame.
It seems the only people who make it in the Mormon church today are those who are so ram rod strict that they are even harder on the youth than the wacky new members. They produce children who either stay hyper- active in a nutty sort of way, or else have enormous problems adjusting to life outside the fold. OCD and addictive personality disorders abound.

I think the decades of missionary abuses we endured (the baseball baptisms as one but not the only exampl), from excessively zealous missionary tactics have caused an over reaction in our vision of how to convert people, to the point that we now shun most methods of conversion that might actually work (in the communities far from the intermountain strong holds). Those hypocritical pseudo-conversions that inflated our rolls by the millions have damned this church in more ways than you might expect. They damaged many missionaries (see previous threads about bad missionary experiences), and they saddle all future priesthold leaders with impossible home teaching and reactivation responsibilities. They created an enormous hidden reservoir of ex-Mos who may not speak very highly of us. Now they are offered as the basis for excuses of why we don’t have sports programs and schools and such.

Instead of talking about what a great church we have, spending millions in various advertising campaigns; why not start doing something for the communities we live in that will allow people to see that we have something to offer. That coupled with the Field of Dreams approach, if you build a good church they will come will work.

This comes down to a week-by-week choice of what is done at youth activities. Do we focus on things exclusively and hard-core Mormon, like the personal progress goals and reading scriptures outloud to each other for an hour? (Making the walls of Fortress Mormon thicker).Or do we have good fun activities that our Mormon girls feel excited about bringing their numerous non-LDS friends to? Can we strike a balance?

Here’s a question: If you could produce a new ad campaign for the Church, what would it be like? Describe the TV commercial, print ads, etc. What would you emphasize?

A look at some of the missionary films from a few years back shows some rather different strategies. “Together Forever” focused on a pair of families that were a little too upper middle class for comfort, in my opinion. “Labor of Love” and “Our Heavenly Father’s Plan” on the other hand dealt mostly with much more “down to earth” investigator types – a farming couple, a minority basketball player, a much more clearly middle class couple, and an “outdoorsy” male in his early twenties.

DKL, What happened to the old days, when whole congregations would convert? I don’t know how often that happened, but I kept looking for that congregation on my mission. Alas, only Roman Catholics as far as the eye could see.

UPN is mostly cheap sitcoms. It’s cash cow is probably America’s Next Top Model, which is fascinating in an exhibitionist sort of way. So after one watched the aspiring models stabbing each other in the back, you can order your Book of Mormon.

WB has a lot of series reinventing soap operas Gen X style, or whatever generation it is right now. Occassionally, their shows display a streak of cleverness.

Neither UPN nor WB have a news division.

That’s a good point, Mark. I also agree with your characterization about the ethnic targeting by UPN and WB. I would bet though that the bulk of the viewers on those channels are within the fifteenth and fortieth percentile in terms of household income and educational attainment. That would qualify as middle class in many western countries. In the US, however, there is a substantial underclass, essentially living under third world living conditions below the working class (remember Katrina).

We also need to consider that television as a medium has always been skewed towards working and lower class audiences.

Adding these factors up, it is not plausible to assume that LDS TV commercials target the American middle class. The target audience is working class people with a high school diploma and may be some college. Essentially the same crowd that the US military approaches to for enlistment.