Is the Church largely failing in its 3-fold mission?

[Venkman]

Originally Posted by Adam

Perfect the Saints

The truest basest principle of self improvement in both Gospel and worldly settings is sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven/earth. The Church has a few institutional ways it asks members to sacrifice: tithing, missions. The Church desperately needs to provide more opportunities to sacrifice.

Our Stake President in Alpine Utah just told us that the statistics from Northern Utah County--the heart of the Church, where Temple attendance is higher then anywhere else--show that we are losing over 50% of our youth (meaning going inactive from the Church). Less then half of the LDS youth in Alpine/Highland/AF/PG/Lehi/CHills are staying in the Church. Amazing and sad.

I think this is a complete and total massive failure on the part of the Church. To lay the blame for such widespread failure on the parents is wrong IMHO. When failure is so widespread there is almost always something wrong with the system.

I think what is wrong is a lack of asking members to sacrifice. Life is easy and cheap and little character is built, few spiritual experiences are had, and compassion is not gained. Video games, movies and fancy vacations are the staple of the youth today. While parents can overcome this, it is the mission of the Church to help. And today the Church is not helping very much because it asks so little of the members.

Is losing 50% of our youth really that shocking or really that different from times past? In my experience, that's about how it's always been when you look at the % of young men going on missions. 50% seems on the high side to me, even in Utah.

Also, what does losing mean? Losing forever, or just going inactive for a time. Many of the kids I know that when inactive at 17-18 came back when they got married or started having kids. For example, of the 10 YM my age in my home ward, only 3 of 10 went on missions, but 3 of the non-RM's are now active with temple marriages, etc.

I think you make some valid points, and there's definitely room for improvement, I'm just not seeing the crisis.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Goatnapper'96

Isn't Adam the fellow who claimed he could speak Arabic and knew more about Iran than a woman born and raised there?

What we learn from this....1.) Adam overestimates his own capacity a wee bit and 2.) Adam is a perpetual troller.

But his blasting of a cheap ass whiny BYU fan years ago was pure comedy and will earn him repentence for his multitude of sins of basically becoming the BYU Catblue/SeattleUte.

Adam speaks Arabic, and mindful lives in Iran and speaks Farsi, not Arabic. So yes, Adam's knowledge of Arabic is greater than mindful. And although some wordstock crosses over, Arabic is a Semitic language whereas Farsi is of the Indo-European language groups. How people would confuse the two is beyond me. That's like saying somebody who speaks French should understand Hawaiian.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

What would be interesting to see is if the church has altered their missionary allocations to areas that are higher producing (Phillippines, Mexico and Southward, Africa, etc.) and scaled back on the number of missionaries in Scotland, Finland and North Dakota.

This ignores the longer range statistics of the seventies, eighties and nineties. The 21st century has seen paltry success in missionary work.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Adam speaks Arabic, and mindful lives in Iran and speaks Farsi, not Arabic. So yes, Adam's knowledge of Arabic is greater than mindful. And although some wordstock crosses over, Arabic is a Semitic language whereas Farsi is of the Indo-European language groups. How people would confuse the two is beyond me. That's like saying somebody who speaks French should understand Hawaiian.

So Adam's knowledge of Arabic (assuming it actually exists) has enabled him to understand Iran better than mindful?

I'm missing the connection.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Venkman

Is losing 50% of our youth really that shocking or really that different from times past? In my experience, that's about how it's always been when you look at the % of young men going on missions. 50% seems on the high side to me, even in Utah.

Also, what does losing mean? Losing forever, or just going inactive for a time. Many of the kids I know that when inactive at 17-18 came back when they got married or started having kids. For example, of the 10 YM my age in my home ward, only 3 of 10 went on missions, but 3 of the non-RM's are now active with temple marriages, etc.

I think you make some valid points, and there's definitely room for improvement, I'm just not seeing the crisis.

Perhaps we failed in the past as well.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

This ignores the longer range statistics of the seventies, eighties and nineties. The 21st century has seen paltry success in missionary work.

Huh?

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Perhaps we failed in the past as well.

I'm still trying to figure out how the blame rests on the institution rather than the membership.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

Huh?

Remember the eighties, when convert baptisms were at an all time high and the numbers of missionaries were high, then plummetted. I believe they reached a nadir in 2003 or 2004.

But Adam has a better point. Read David Stewart's Law of the Harvest if you truly want to understand our missionary failure in comparison to other religions.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

I'm still trying to figure out how the blame rests on the institution rather than the membership.

The institution establishes the processes. If there is uniform failure, it suggest the systems put in place by the organizing institution are faulty or executed poorly through management.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Remember the eighties, when convert baptisms were at an all time high and the numbers of missionaries were high, then plummetted. I believe they reached a nadir in 2003 or 2004.

But Adam has a better point. Read David Stewart's Law of the Harvest if you truly want to understand our missionary failure in comparison to other religions.

Yes, but you responded to my question about whether or not the church has RECENTLY reallocated the missionary workforce to more productive areas or not.

Additionally, some of the more productive areas in the missionary field are or were limited by conversion quotas. If you moved all of the Northern European missionaries to Africa, you'd jack up your conversion numbers in a heartbeat, but you would also have some serious leadership/infrastructure issues.