I totally agree with you and at some level I have to punt.

I have done some calculations and I believe that at least 99.999% of people in the Celestial Kingdom will not have been Mormons in this life. I think of it as sort of like one of those long lunch lines at school. The lunch food is the celestial glories and we are the hungry students. We Mormons just happen to be in the front of the line and get to eat before the bells of death ring and we get to wait on some of the tables sooner than others.

I wonder if God doesn’t somehow know what is best for each of us and that he has created churches and various religions that are best for the people who are in them. That solves one paradox, but introduces another one. Is it morally justified to convert a person from a really good country club church into a lame dysfunctional LDS ward? If you are not saving them from the fires of hell, where is the motivation to save them? What if a close member of your family wants to leave the “true but crummy” church and join a “better” church? I guess if the Lord wants them in the club, he can easily keep them there.

The Book of Mormon view is very much a heaven and hell perspective that is not far from some Protestant views. The DC 76, also known as The Vision introduces the Three Kingdoms and the idea that almost all go to a Kingdom of Glory. One quote I have heard is that if we were to realize the glory of the lowest Kingdom we might be inclined to kill ourselves to get there. This is viewed by Calvinists as too close to universalism, which was not uncommon in the time of Joseph Smith. The Book of Mormon discusses it and rejects the most extreme form of it, for example with Alma teaching his son Coriantion, in Alma 41. But I wonder if we have moved back away a little ways from an original modified universalism towards the traditional Protestant view.

At another level, I strongly believe that we can learn much from other churches. Our exclusiveness leads to isolation and to a form of pride and a moral superiority complex that actually hinders our missionary efforts and stagnates our church.

For example, If I was the Bishop, I would call together the few musicians in the ward and charge them with attending the best Protestant services in the area for a short period of time as sort of like spies. They would approach this with an open mind and with humility and prayer. Then in some form of ongoing counsel meetings I would look seriously at pushing the limits in my ward as far as I could in the direction recommended by the music committee. Music is so important, it is so visible, and it is so crappy in my ward. But it would not be the only item on my agenda. I acknowledge that there would be risks and we might lose some people to these churches. I suppose those of you who have been Bishops can judge how long I would last, probably not very long.

One of the toughest paradoxes is accepting the “one and only true Church” mantra and reconciling the ultra tiny statistical minority LDS members represent compared to the world at large. Nephi saw our times and lamented that the saints would be throughout the world, but that their numbers would be small.

Mentally, I punt on this issue and believe a vast majority of noble and god fearing people will join the Church in the after life. Likewise, many luke warm, or non-commital Mormons, will receive a lesser glory. I have to believe that there must be a staggering amount of people who will accept the gospel on the other side of the veil. I suppose many are kept from the truth because they don’t know where to find it; and because we are such ineffective tools in the hands of the Almighty.

My family has probably brought more than half of the non-LDS visitors who have ever visited our ward in the last 12 years. I would say that in our hay day at least 2 or 3 times a month we brought non-LDS friends to church. Often they were children and /or their parents of people our children knew. (This all stopped about 3 years ago.) Most are polite and don’t come back. Or parents politely ask that we not take their children to church anymore. Once in a while we have a friend who is close enough that they actually tell us why they are not impressed. No secret; they say our music is lousy, our speakers trite and boring, and we don’t have very good programs (“ministeries”) for youth, all the usual reasons listed above. Seldom do people even care about the kinds of information that ties anti-Mormons shorts into knots.

Aside from every other consideration, the biggest barrier to missionary work in my ward is what goes on Sunday morning at 9:00 am. Don’t lay this on the shoulders of the rank and file members, it is the leaders who determine what we do, especially in this top-down Priesthood authority based church. Our people are anything if not blindly obedient to their leaders to the best of their abilities.

On a side note, my secret to getting people to attend church with me almost every second week is to offer to attend their church with them first out of general interest. When you show genuine interest in them, they will respond in a similar manner, out of politeness if nothing else. And you will learn from your own experience just how bad things are at what some of my non-LDS friends refer to as “the true but crummy church.” (Be careful Julie, you are 1/4 the way out right now and don’t even know it.)

None of these people we brought to church ever joined and few even wanted to talk to the young guys in white shirts and Mr. Mac suits. One lady, recently divorced and looking for a new path in life was going back to school and happened to be talking a class in rhetoric. We suggested that as her final class project, she take a couple of missionary lessons and analyse them. She took several lessons but never had her heart lit on fire and did not convert. One other family had one missionary lesson with the same results. Not one intact family with children has joined our ward in 20 years and retention is under 10% at one year. Our best converts, God bless them, are mostly immigrants with poor social networks and economic hardships.

(I believe I have described the following before on this blog, I’m not sure.) During these same 12 years another church, which draws 98% of its members from within the cavernous boundaries of our ward, exhibited remarkable growth. Their congregation went from about 1700 members to 6000-7000 members. Almost all of this growth was young families with middle to upper middle incomes who moved into this area because of the apparent good schools. Some were from other churches, many were not recently churched since leaving home to go to college and a few were never churched. More than one of these new families of converts was looking for a church and we had brought them to our ward before they joined this other church. Whether we want to pretend it is or not, we are in direct competition for converts with other churches. In this part of the vineyard we are loosing horrendously.

My wife teaches at the pre-school of this other church that has grown so much and is close friends with some of the key people in this church. They have carefully studied this growth to determine its source. Here are their results:

1. Preschool 60%
2. Sports programs 30%
3. Boy Scout troop 5%

The preschool is excellent with a long waiting list and has about 100 children. The sports programs include 500-800 kids in about 6 sports, and the scout troop is about 80 strong with a log scout hut worth about $200,000 donated by a wealthy church member. I would imagine less than 10% of these participants in these programs are members when they start. (In fact, I coached soccer three times for them and I was supposed to call on a child to offer a prayer and deliver a cute little moralistic Biblical message prepared by the minister).

We have a nice building sitting empty almost all day almost every day and our LDS daughters have a great reputation for being the best nannies. We have the largest patch of grass in the area without little kids running around on it attempting some sport every Sat morning. We are supposed to be the best when it comes to scouting.

Another key function of this rapidly growing church, harder to measure, is their Wed family night at the church. I have attended these and they are very nice and include a spagetti dinner for $3 (or $10 for the entire family) and various Bible classes, adult exercise/sports programs, music lessons, support groups of every variety, etc. It is like having a ward party for MIA every week and something else to do that interests every member of the family. I think this church has about 60-80 ministeries, and although difficult to equate, a typical small LDS ward here probably has the equivocal of about 6 ministeries.

People don’t care about theology any more, at least not at first. The story about angels and gold plates is meaningless and sounds dubious. They don’t think they want or need a Prophet to guide their decisions. They are looking for a country club church with nice programs for their kids. But it is more insidious than that; many of them start with the preschool or the sports and then Wed night becomes a regular event for them. Soon they check out a Sunday sermon or two. They feel good and it is sort of like wholesome entertainment with lots of nice people as friends. At some point, perhaps during a crisis, I really believe most experience a sincere spiritual conversion and this is followed by their baptism. They usually remain loyal to the church long after their children go off to college. Their best friends in the golden years are their fellow church members.

My Mormonness, especially our esoteric theology (which I tend to believe), is an enormous barrier for me or I would feel strong tides tugging me to join their community. We have so much in common and I don’t have that many close friends in my ward. They are close to what I imagined as a fully functional top-of-the-line ward when I was young and naive. I really have to not think very hard to, with all seriousness, continue to believe in LDS exclusiveness. To think that this is “the one and only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” seems terribly laughable in light of my experiences with other churches.

That sounds a lot like how my ward runs its annual Independence Day celebration.

The observations about tracting don’t seem terribly original or timely. When I was a full-time missionary, twenty-five years ago, it was widely and openly acknowledged that tracting was what we did to kill time between member referrals and teaching appointments. We all knew that networking was what brought in new members, or at least new members who stayed active.

Other observations are based on a view of missionary work as it operates in North American and Europe. I’m not sure the average missionary in Guatemala is less well-educated than the people he is visiting. I seem to recall something about the Lord using the weak and simple things of the earth to do His work. Not to mention inviting the poor, the lame, the blind, and the deaf to the marriage supper of the Lamb. Young urban professionals aren’t mentioned, though I’m guessing they’d be welcome too.

I suppose we could wait until our young men have graduated from college. After all, everyone but Mormons seem to understand that a man cannot preach unless he has been trained for the ministry. But that would only reinforce the lamentable trend towards later marriage and childbearing among our young adults.

I know! Let’s start sending out retired couples as missionaries! The Brethren could give several talks in Conference to encourage every couple in the Church to prepare for a full-time mission when they retire! … Wait … we already did that … So what’s this nonsense about

“The issue is: given the vast cultural changes that have happened over the last two generations, could we be doing more (or: doing it differently) to bring people into the kingdom?”

Already been answered. For some time now.

Out of the three hundred plus hymns in the hymnbook, it would be interesting to play “Name That Hymn” and find out what the success rate would be when picking hymns completely at random out of the entire book. I’m guessing it would be a small number.

They used to have a “hymn practice” time during Sunday School opening exercises, but I guess that went away about the same time the Church Patriarch position went bye-bye, so there isn’t much effort devoted to learning unknown hymns these days. I guess it’s kind of frowned upon to pick unknown hymns for Sacrament Meeting, so we avoid having the chorister doing a solo with a few mumbles from the congregation for accompaniment.

God sent a rainbow as a sign of his promise. I think we can do the same with shirt color. Along with jettisoning the hymnal, I’m all for jettisoning the white shirt thing. And while we’re at it, add some sequins.