I don’t think I’d make the concern about “sheep stealing” simply a matter of money or property. I know of no basis whereby other churches care less about their members than we do, or that their concerns are any more financial than ours are. We don’t feel happy when someone leaves the Church to join another, so why should they feel happy when someone leaves to join us?

Also, Blain — I\’m as quick as anybody to reconcile differences and try to work toward common understanding, but the simple solution is to continue what we\’re doing. Whatever mainline protestants want to call it, there is no such thing as \”sheep stealing\” because people are not sheep. If the gospel were a commercial enterprise or a means of making a living, then that argument might be worthwhile. But the gospel is about our worship of Jesus Christ and reaching the celestial kingdom. To that end, we think and act and work out our salvation for ourselves, like the scriptures say to. It doesn\’t matter all that much if that hurts the bottomline for other churches at the end of the fiscal year, especially if they really are interested in the spiritual salvation of their people and not their own temporal well-being.

Any successful teacher knows you need some kind of order in which to present large amounts of information, or even a small amount of complex information. You get nowhere with a scatter-shot, disorganized approach. And anyone who complains about that “milk before meat” approach as a smarmy excuse for “hiding” something needs to realize that effective teachers of all kinds use that approach — schools have prerequisites for advanced classes, the military requires progression through ranks to gain relevant experience, coaches drill their athletes gradually toward record-breaking feats rather than starting at Olympian levels.

As a missionary I discussed polygamy candidly with an investigator from Madagascar, because she brought it up as an issue from her family background. I would have discussed any other “secret” as candidly as I could have, had it arisen. As it was, most people were so bowled over by the realization that the heavens are open, or with coming to grips with their feelings while reading the Book of Mormon, or struggling to adjust to the Word of Wisdom, that an advanced course in the King Follet Discourse, even had I been equipped to deliver it, would have been meaningless.