5 Things the Missionaries Are Too Nice to Tell Members to STOP Doing

Too often we as members tend to treat missionaries like children. Because we assume many missionaries are immature goof-offs, many members do and say things that denigrate the missionaries, their work, and their devotion to building the Kingdom of God. We aren’t always willing to do our part to help the missionary work go forward. The missionaries are often too nice to tell us what we are doing wrong, but there are at least 5 things the members do which many missionaries wish they would stop. Changing these attitudes and habits would do much make their lives easier, and help the work to progress unhindered.

One: STOP Treating the Missionaries Like Children

Members generally love the missionaries, but even the ones who love them the most can occasionally be kind of patronizing. They often forget that the missionaries they love so much are legally (and also in terms of emotional, and intellectual maturity) adults. They often just want to joke or play around with the missionaries, and they can’t understand why a missionary may not always want to goof around with them. Many who have children who go on missions often forget that their child is in fact no longer a child. They send them care packages filled with candy (which they love) and toys, which they cannot use and they don’t have the space to store or transport. Moreover, certain toys are often banned in the mission because they tend to distract missionaries from the work. However, my main objection has to do with the fact that sending toys to a missionary just shows that many people do not truly consider their missionary to be a responsible adult, and in their minds he or she is still a kid.

On the other end of the spectrum, I encountered many members on my mission who did not seem to have much love for the missionaries at all. These members often assumed (without even knowing us) that my companion and I were dumb kids who lacked the responsibility and maturity to be trusted to teach their friends. In every area I served, at least one person (usually a person in a ward leadership position) would make the same joke in our presence: “How do you know the Church is true? If it wasn’t, the missionaries would have destroyed it years ago!” Laugh…guffaw. For some reason, this joke didn’t really bother me when I was a missionary. I would just roll my eyes, give them a pity laugh, and then go back to work. However, now that I am older, this stupid, thoughtless “joke” irritates (and even offends) me deeply, and more so because these members felt free to say this joke to our faces.

My companions and I worked incredibly hard in every area I served. In every area I served, the state of the work, and the relationship between the missionaries and the members was better than it had been when I first arrived. Any missionary can tell you that their whole day is spent trying to find people to teach, and most missionaries recognize that a high level of spiritual worthiness, hard work, and study is required to succeed as a missionary. My point is that most missionaries labor with their whole souls to build up the kingdom, and jokes like the one mentioned above (and the attitude of disrespect which they represent) are a pretty rotten way to treat someone who has devoted their lives to building up your particular corner of the Kingdom.

While not all members are so blatantly insulting to the missionaries, many members are reluctant to entrust the missionaries with the responsibility of teaching their friends and relatives. It is certainly natural to feel some anxiety when a friend or family member begins the missionary lessons, and it can be a bitter disappointment if said individual subsequently elects to discontinue the missionary lessons, or refuses the invitation to be baptized. When that happens, it can be tempting to blame the missionaries, and to assume that incompetence on their part is what led your friend or relative to stop progressing in the gospel.

However, what the missionaries know, and what they wish you would remember, is that there are many factors that can affect a person as they investigate the gospel. I can tell you from my own experience that the devil works overtime to interfere with or disrupt missionary efforts to teach a person. Helicopters flying over the house, or sirens going off right when the missionaries begin to relate the account of the first vision were such common occurrences that this phenomenon became something of a proverb in my mission. In a less direct sense, Satan is doing everything he can to bring up and accentuate doubts and fears in the investigator’s mind. It is common for other friends and relatives to actively discourage the investigator from studying with the missionaries.

It is also important to remind members that every person has their own agency, and the missionaries don’t have the power (or the inclination) to force anyone to accept the gospel against their will.

Finally, members tend to forget that missionaries do not bear the full responsibility for teaching and fellowshipping an investigator. While the missionary work in a given area is always coordinated with the leadership of the local stake/district, ward, or branch, it is also a fact that the regular members in that ward or branch are supposed to be deeply involved in helping to teach, befriend, and love that investigator.

Ideally, missionaries should be teaching your friend or relative lessons held in your home and, at the very least, with your participation. As someone whom the investigator loves and trusts, you can do much to answer questions and settle doubts that the missionaries can never accomplish. While the investigator might respect the missionaries, he or she is usually smart enough to assume that the missionaries have an agenda, and this can make them reluctant to bring up doubts, or even to trust what the missionaries say to answer those doubts when they do bring them up. In my experience, an investigator who is able to spend time talking with a member who they already know and trust about doubts and questions can go a long way to helping them to successfully progress toward baptism and genuine conversion.

In short, the missionaries only bear partial responsibility for the progress of an investigator. Ultimately, each individual missionary will be transferred, and they will eventually reach the end of their service, and return home. When that happens, the responsibility to love and care for new converts (former investigators) rests squarely on YOUR shoulders (and not just the Bishop, or the Relief Society President, or anyone else in the ward council). In other words, stop pinning the blame for investigator progress (or lack thereof) and member retention on the missionaries. They don’t live in your ward. You do. The missionaries are just visitors.

Two: STOP asking them if they have “baptized anyone lately.”

            This one bugged me even when I was a missionary. Why would you ask the missionaries if they have baptized anyone since you saw them last? It’s your ward, don’t you think you would (or should) know if somebody had been baptized into it?!! I generally found that the members who tended to ask this obviously flippant question tended to be the least involved, interested, or invested in the missionary work out of all the members of the ward. On several occasions we had indeed recently baptized someone, and I would remind them gently that the baptism had been announced over the pulpit in sacrament meeting, and on more than one occasion the thoughtless member had been personally invited to the baptism by us. I often encouraged them to attend our next baptism, and to come out on missionary exchanges with us. To this day, I hope they were embarrassed. Missionary work is not the sole province of the missionaries, and it is not something that happens behind the scenes. The missionary work and the work of building up the kingdom in an area is primarily the responsibility of the members who reside in that particular area, and the missionaries are mainly there to coordinate with the ward in order to help ensure that investigators are prepared to enter the waters of baptism. My point is that you should be worried if baptisms are happening without your knowledge. If that is the case, either the missionaries are doing something wrong, or you are.

Three: STOP getting offended when the missionaries (or mission leaders) ask you share the gospel with your friends and family, and/or refer them to the missionaries.

This is a phenomenon I never even imagined or conceived of before I became a missionary. Yet I encountered it in some form in practically every area in which I served. In one extreme instance, I saw members come out in open rebellion against local Church leaders over being asked to participate in missionary work. My companion and I had worked hard for months to encourage and assist the Stake President and the Stake High Council to create a comprehensive mission plan for the whole stake, in harmony with precepts taught in the Preach My Gospel manual. After the plan had been drafted to their satisfaction, these faithful leaders decided to hold a special fireside at which the stake president and the mission president spoke about the importance of member missionary work, and detailed the implementation of the new stake mission plan. To my shock, a number of members walked out before the meeting was even over, and many who did stay until the end refused to even accept a copy of the new mission plan. This was incredibly shocking to me (in my naïve youth), and indeed it was somewhat disheartening. However, I found out the next day that many of these angry members turned up at a house party held by one of the members after the meeting, and it was reported to me by the missionaries serving in this particular area that there was much murmuring and complaining about the mission plan in general, and the stake leadership in particular at this party. Given what I saw at the fireside, I am inclined to believe these elders’ report. Now that I am no longer a missionary in this area, I feel I can freely declare that these members ought to have been ashamed of themselves, and they ought to have repented of their rotten attitudes.

On a smaller, less dramatic scale, I served in an area in which there had been no new baptisms in almost two years before I arrived. There were a number of reasons for this, but prominent among these was the fact that another elder had served in that area for the bulk of that time, and during that time he had (apparently) been quite forceful (and perhaps even somewhat tactless) in exhorting the members to participate in finding and referral activities created by the mission leaders. By the time I arrived in the area, the whole thing had become a sore subject, and the members in this area were accordingly hard to talk to and generally pretty prickly and resentful about any efforts by the missionaries to encourage them to share the gospel.

            However, while the members in this particular area may have had some reason and justification for being sensitive about this subject, I encountered resistance (and even resentment) from some members over invitations to become more involved in missionary work in every area I served. I heard stories of similar member reactions from missionaries across the mission. In my own experience, I found that I had to approach the subject with a certain amount of sensitivity and appreciation for the member’s points of view, even if I was fairly mystified by the less than welcoming responses our invitations tended to receive among certain members.

As my mission progressed, I generally found that our efforts with the members generally bore more fruit when they saw how hard my companion and I worked to find people to teach and to build the kingdom in their area. This led me to believe that the resentment which these mission-sanctioned efforts to enlist members in recruiting friends and family members engendered stemmed from a number of misconceptions about the nature of missionary work.

First, I suppose some members thought we were trying to pawn off our responsibility to find people to teach onto the members, because we were lazy and we wanted the members to do our work for us (which is why they were more enthusiastic once they saw we were not lazy). Missionaries are instructed to ask for referrals from everyone they meet, every and any time the talk to someone. However, it was pretty common for some members to rather flippantly respond by telling us that we ought to “tract more,” or even giving us long-winded tips about how to tract more effectively (like it had never occurred to us to tract) whenever we asked for referrals. This rather annoying tendency likely grew out of a fundamental misunderstanding of the respective roles of missionaries and members in finding and teaching.

“Ultimately it is my responsibility and your responsibility to find people for the missionaries to teach. Missionaries are full-time teachers; you and I are full-time finders. And you and I as lifelong missionaries should not be praying for the full-time missionaries to do our work!” (David A. Bednar, “Ask in Faith,” Ensign, May 2008).

“The Church has over 50,000 full-time missionaries serving around the world. Preach My Gospel has helped make them the best teachers of the gospel of Jesus Christ we have ever had in the history of the Church. Unfortunately most of our full-time missionaries spend more of their time trying to find people rather than teaching them. I view our full-time missionaries as an underutilized teaching resource. If you and I did more of the finding for the full-time missionaries and freed them up to spend more time teaching the people we find, great things would begin to happen. We’re missing a golden opportunity to grow the Church when we wait for our full-time missionaries to warn our neighbors instead of doing it ourselves” (L. Tom Perry, “Bring Souls Unto Me,” Ensign, May 2009).

The idea that, in the work of preaching the gospel, members ought to be finders and missionaries ought to be teachers, is not a new one in Church teaching. After all, “Every member a missionary” has long been an axiom among the members. This makes me suspect that another reason why pushing the members to take a more active role in sharing the gospel with their own friends and family occasionally provoked resentment may be because some members have a guilty conscience. They know they are supposed to be doing more, and they don’t like to be reminded of their own failings and inadequacies.

            However, I cannot stress enough how illogical and irrational it is for members to get angry at the missionaries (or at their local Church leaders) for asking them to become more involved in missionary work. Missionaries love the people in the areas in which they serve. They especially love the members. Most missionaries would never do anything to hurt or offend the members. They certainly aren’t there to judge or condemn you for the extent of your missionary efforts. The next time the missionaries come to you and ask you to do more, please keep that love in mind, and set aside your pride. You don’t have to do anything superhuman. Most missionaries will hold you in high esteem and remember you for years to come if you do even a little bit to help them to find more people to teach.

Four: STOP Treating Missionaries Like Pushy Salespeople

I have found that a common and understandable feeling among members is that missionaries are too focused on numbers and meeting quotas. They worry that the missionaries, in their zeal to meet mission goals, tend to put undue pressure on investigators to accept baptism “before they are ready.” In my opinion, this is one of the main reasons why members are slow to trust the missionaries with their friends and relatives.

“Some Latter-day Saints are hesitant to share the names of families and friends with missionaries because the members worry the missionaries will extend invitations for baptism before the person being introduced is prepared and ready to be baptized” (M. Russell Ballard, “President Ballard said missionaries shouldn't invite people to be baptized without feeling the Spirit. Here's why,” Deseret News, thechurchnews.com).

This is an understandable concern, because in the past there has been an attitude among some missionaries, and even among some mission leaders that emphasized numbers over people, and put pressure on missionaries to meet some kind of quota for lessons taught, investigators found, and for individuals baptized. Accordingly, “missionaries sometimes feel like salespeople who have to achieve baptismal goals; therefore, the missionaries use high-pressure tactics to rush people into the baptismal font” (M. Russell Ballard, “President Ballard said missionaries shouldn't invite people to be baptized without feeling the Spirit. Here's why,” Deseret News, thechurchnews.com).

            This is certainly a problem when it does occur, but I think it is important to emphasize that the Church does not encourage missionaries to act like salespeople, nor do they want them to use high-pressure tactics when it comes to sharing the gospel, or inviting them to be baptized. Missionaries have been explicitly encouraged to follow the spirit at least as far back as the institution of Preach My Gospel in 2003.

            However, I feel that this natural concern has led to some fairly irritating misconceptions about who and what missionaries are and what they do. Moreover, and this still bugs me, I have seen members actively discourage an investigator from being baptized, and then tell them “don’t let these guys pressure you.”

            I cannot say this strongly enough. Most missionaries do indeed follow the spirit when extending an invitation to an investigator to be baptized. If you happen to accompany the missionaries to a lesson, and you actively interfere with their efforts to encourage an investigator to make a commitment to be baptized, you are directly interfering with the Lord’s work. While your intentions might be good, you are not working for the Lord.

The missionaries have been called and set apart to teach the gospel. Under the direction of Church and mission leaders, and the guidance of the Holy Ghost, they generally know when and how to extend the invitation to be baptized. Furthermore, these missionaries have likely been working with an investigator for some time by the time you become involved, and they have carefully considered the needs of that individual, and they have sought the direct guidance of the Lord many times in planning lessons and crafting the experience of an investigator. With that in mind, let me say this again: Who are you to say that you have a better handle on who is ready to be baptized and who isn’t? By what authority do you feel qualified to contradict the assessment of the missionaries on the progress of an investigator?

            All baptisms must be performed under the auspices and approval of mission leaders and local priesthood leaders. While there may have been some irregularities in this administration in the past, this is the absolute and irreversible procedure by which things are done now. All missionaries must follow this procedure, and most missionaries are wholeheartedly committed to this process.

            More importantly, most missionaries have just one desire, and that is to fulfill their purpose, as set forth in the Preach My Gospel Manual. A missionary’s whole purpose is to “invite others to come into Christ by helping them to receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end” (Preach My Gospel, 1).

            The vast majority of missionaries (and this is certainly true of the ones I served with) love and care deeply for the people they teach. They carefully seek the guidance of the Lord in determining the needs and progress of their investigators. They sincerely want what is best for each individual who has been place in their care. It is their whole purpose as missionaries to prepare people to accept and live the gospel, and helping them progress towards baptism is n essential part of the process.

            Many members, who have never been a missionary, or who have not been one for a long time, suppose that they know what is best about the proper timetable by which a person ought to be baptized. I have heard many members declare that if it was up to them it would take years for someone to become a member. Fortunately, it is not up to them. It is up to the Lord, and the individual choice of the person who is investigating. The missionaries are mainly there to help that process along, under the direction of the spirit, and church leaders.

            In many missions, there are certain conditions which have been attached to the requirements for baptism which have been established by the Church at large. It is commonly required that an investigator establish a pattern of regular church attendance before they can be considered for baptism, as a way to ensure that they will stay active after they are baptized. While this may still allow investigators to be baptized more quickly than members would like, I have found that this and similar requirements are fairly effective at weeding out those who are not serious about joining the church and becoming active participants in the gospel. Obviously, no approach is foolproof, but I have found that there is no reason to unnecessarily delay baptism for a person who is worthy and has shown a pattern of making and keeping commitments.

            My point in all of this is that most missionaries have no interest whatsoever in racking up baptisms solely for some kind of “glory,” or for the praise of their mission leaders. Most missionaries do not, and do not want to, act like salespeople to pressure people to be baptized. My feeling is that such improper practices decreased dramatically when the Lord raised the bar for who can and can’t become a missionary. Even if such practices do persist in some corners of the Church, they are an aberration, and do not represent the views or activities of the vast bulk of the mission force. Moreover, when missionaries are following the spirit, and the direction of Church and mission leaders, they are entitled to make a determination concerning when an investigator is ready to be invited to be baptized. You and I do not have that right, because we have not been (or no longer are) set apart to preach the gospel. Treating the missionaries like uncaring salespeople does them a disservice. Moreover, interfering with an invitation to be baptized, and even actively discouraging an investigator from being baptized is highly improper, and should NEVER happen.

FIVE: STOP “Millennial” Shaming the Missionaries

I wasn’t sure what to call this phenomenon, not least because most of those who are currently entering the mission field no longer fall into this demographic. Basically, there is a fairly common attitude in the United States that Millennials (usually defined as those who were born between 1980 and 1996) are ruining the country because they are soft little “snowflakes” who never learned how to grow up and be tough. I imagine some version of “the kids are ruining the country” has been popular among older generations since time immemorial, but this attitude is particularly noxious when it is applied to missionaries.

            I tend to see this idea crop up whenever some missionary rule or practice is changed. The most recent example which comes to mind is the policy change which allowed missionaries to call home once a week instead of just twice a year (usually on Mother’s Day and Christmas Day). I saw countless comments on social media, as well as hot take think pieces in the blogosphere about how this change was a sign of how weak and dependent modern missionaries (often mistakenly labelled as millennials) have become. There is usually some implication that these kids can’t handle the rigors of mission life, and that they somehow do not measure up to the sacrifices which mission life requires. Supposedly, this change means that the missionaries are too soft to go for most of a year without calling home, and they depend too much on mommy and daddy for everything, so the church had to make this change to keep these kids from washing out and going home early.

            This attitude irritates me profoundly. Accordingly, I have a number of objections to this particular interpretation of the situation. First and foremost, I want to emphasize that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has no monastic tradition. Self-denial and asceticism are not among the main purposes of a mission, although there is an attitude among some members that the mission represents some kind of rite of passage by which youths prove they are ready for adulthood and active church membership. This attitude represents a misunderstanding of the point and purpose of missionary work. While the mission life does require sacrifices of time and focus, there is no reason why missionaries need to be needlessly cut off from communication with their families. Missionaries already communicate with home on a weekly basis via letters and email, and doing so does not inherently distract or detract from the quality of mission work, nor does it make the missionaries weak because they participate in it. The new phone call policy is no different.

            Another idea is that this generation of missionaries is somehow less suited for mission life than previous generations. That is absolutely a myth, with no basis in fact whatsoever. The requirements for service as a missionary are more stringent than ever. Missionaries who struggle with mental, physical, or emotional health are often excused from any obligation to serve a full-time proselytizing mission, although they may be encouraged to serve a part-time service mission. Moreover, worthiness requirements continue to be stringently upheld since the Lord raised the bar. In addition, prospective missionaries today are expected to develop and maintain a profound inner spiritual life before their mission to a degree never before (expressly) required of their predecessors. A prospective missionary is expected to already have developed a relationship with The Lord through the spirit by cultivating habits of careful and heartfelt obedience, and regular and deep prayer, meditation, and scripture study. If anything, this generation of missionaries is more prepared than any of their predecessors.

            One of the main criticisms I have seen is that this change in the phone call policy is somehow a sign that these missionaries are less suited for the rigors of a mission. However, I see this change (and other similar changes) as a sign of the complete opposite. To me, this change shows that these missionaries are capable of handling increased contact with home without becoming homesick or otherwise distracted from the work. This change speaks to the greater spiritual capacity of this generation, rather than marking them as soft or weak.

Conclusion: STOP IT!

            The emerging generation of missionaries (today’s youth and young adults) in this Church represent the best and the brightest, and they are generally the pick and flower of the Church. They face temptations and distractions which you and I could never have imagined while preparing for and embarking on a mission. If anything, this added adversity has proved and refined them, and made them into the future leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ. They generally have a deep and abiding love of the Savior and an incredibly deep understanding of His atonement. Most missionaries know their scriptures inside and out, and they have their teachings printed on their hearts. As such, they deserve our respect and admiration, and we ought to work hard to help them and to collaborate with them in working to bring souls to Christ. To dismiss our missionaries, or refuse to help them, because we buy into outdated and unfair stereotypes about them is counterproductive, and (frankly) foolish. Accordingly, it is well past time to shed these attitudes and biases which only serve to divide us from these bright young missionaries, and which ultimately interfere with the work.