On our missions a lot of us gave lessons to some professor or such and were excited at the prospect of a well-thought out, high powered intellectual convert. And we’re not the only ones, I suspect Catholics love to talk about John Henry Newman for this reason. The idea, especially for them, is that you can logically demonstrate the truthfulness of one’s faith from first principles, so an intellectual convert provides evidence for that, or at least scores extra “plausibility structure” points. We see a version of this with other virtues as well. We like it when cool or accomplished people convert because we’re cool and accomplished, even though any missionary can tell you that it’s typically not the cool or smart people who listen to us. For every Elder Kearon who went straight from high school to working for parliament there are probably many more under the poverty line who join the Church. 

But, in a sense, this is the way it was meant to be, as much as we would love it if it were otherwise sometimes. One of my favorite missionary scriptures is the parable of wedding feast, and I actually think the D&C 58 version of it is more powerful than the one in Matthew. Note that the “cometh the day of my power” only happens with the poor, the lame, and the blind. 

“And also that a feast of fat things might be prepared for the poor; yea, a feast of fat things, of wine on the lees well refined, that the earth may know that the mouths of the prophets shall not fail;

Yea, a supper of the house of the Lord, well prepared, unto which all nations shall be invited.

First, the rich and the learned, the wise and the noble;

And after that cometh the day of my power; then shall the poor, the lame, and the blind, and the deaf, come in unto the marriage of the Lamb, and partake of the supper of the Lord, prepared for the great day to come.

Behold, I, the Lord, have spoken it.”

So no, we’re not going to convert the great ones of the earth en masse. God doesn’t need our fancy credentials or social cachet and will rely on the those “who are unlearned and despised, to thresh the nations by the power of [his] Spirit.” God almighty, the creator of innumerable heavens and innumerable earths, probably cares less about being cool in our 21st century, developed-world context than we sometimes realize or admit to ourselves.