Member Missionaries
A Case Study
(This case study was written for use in the Boston Massachusetts Mission as a tool for teaching members and missionaries of the Church to be effective member missionaries. It challenges some false assumptions about how to go about doing this work.)
“Maybe we just aren’t cut out to be member missionaries,” Jennifer Quinn muttered as she wiped off her kitchen counter after showing their dinner guests, Elders Murphy and Aaron, out the door on December 30, 1998. “I just can’t imagine how we could have worked harder at it – and we just keep striking out. What’s wrong with us, Elliott? You read these gushy stories in the Ensign about all of these people getting introduced to the missionaries by member friends, getting baptized, being sealed in the temple, and living happily ever after. Why can’t this happen to us?”
Jennifer and Elliott Quinn, both in their late 20s, were members of the Dedham Ward of the Foxboro, Massachusetts Stake. They had purchased their first home in Dedham, an affluent suburb west of Boston, in 1997, after Elliott had completed his doctorate in Biochemistry at the University of Maryland. He worked as a research scientist at BioDerm, a local company that made artificial skin for burn victims using biotechnology. Jennifer, who had supported the family through Elliott’s schooling by working as a reporter for The Washington Post, was enjoying her new occupation as a full-time mother to the couple’s three year-old daughter, Chelsey. The Quinns both had been raised in strong LDS families in the Midwest, and had met while attending Stanford University. Elliott had served a mission to Uruguay.
Because of the hectic pace of their lives in the Washington area, Jennifer and Elliott had looked forward to settling down to a more typical family lifestyle in Dedham. “When we were in the College Park (Maryland) Ward,” Elliott recalled, “We were always active, of course. But I had to spend so much time in my lab to get my degree finished, and Jennifer’s work at The Washington Post was so demanding and unpredictable, that it was hard for us to magnify our callings and membership there like we really wanted to. When we got this job at BioDerm and it looked like Jennifer could stay home with Chelsey, we made a commitment to each other and to the Lord that when we arrived in the Boston area, we would try to make up for all that we weren’t able to do in Washington.”
It hadn’t taken long for the Quinns to become fully involved in the Dedham Ward. Because the price of homes in the towns covered by the ward was relatively high, few young couples had been able to afford to move into the ward – and as a consequence, the Quinns had been tapped almost immediately to serve as presidents of the Young Women & Young Men organizations. “They just love their callings, and the young people in the ward love them,” effused the Dedham Ward bishop, Paul McKinnon. I just don’t know what we’d do without them.”
The Member Missionary Program
In July, 1998, as if they weren’t already doing enough in the church, the Quinns received another assignment from two missionaries they had invited for dinner. The missionaries reported that the mission president, Robert Cox, had put together a new member missionary program whose purpose was to encourage members to engage more actively in finding people for the missionaries to teach. Rather than roll the program out across the whole of Massachusetts at once, President Cox and his assistants had asked eight companionships to do a three-month pilot of the program. The missionaries they selected were those who they felt had a particular intuition for working with and winning the confidence of members.
The Dedham Ward missionaries, Elders Spahn and Burdette, were in fact among the best in the mission. “Elder Burdette, in particular, was a real winner,” Elliott Quinn remarked. “He was so warm and engaging, and he just has a winner’s smile. You’d do anything for him. I bet he could get rich selling used bubble gum.”
Elders Spahn and Burdette had worked in the Dedham Ward for three months, but had not yet baptized anyone. “It wasn’t their fault,” Jennifer Quinn was quick to add. “It’s the ward. People are so prosperous and so busy, that there just isn’t much interest in religion in these communities around here. Indeed, the Dedham Ward had averaged only two or three convert baptisms per year since the early 1990s. In order to be as supportive of the missionaries as possible, the Quinns had made a practice of having missionaries to dinner at least monthly, and Elliott readily volunteered on those occasions when elders needed someone to teach a higher-level discussion with them, or when an investigator needed a ride to church.
The elders introduced the new member missionary program with a set of professional-looking flip-cards that had been prepared in the mission office. The first card contained President David O. McKay’s adage, “Every Member a Missionary,” and the second summarized Elder M. Russell Ballard’s challenge to all of the members of the church that they should set a date by which they would find someone to introduce to the missionaries. Elder Spahn had then asked the Quinns whether they believed Elder Ballard’s promise, which was that if members would set a date as a covenant with God, He would bless them to find someone by that date. After Elliott responded that they did believe Elder Ballard, Elder Burdette piped in, “Well then, we’re here to help you put this promise to the test!”
Elder Burdette then laid a large 11” x 17” chart on the table. He asked the Quinns to list twelve people in the left-most column who they felt might be interested in some aspect of the gospel message. At the headings of the other columns on the chart, were listed steps that the Quinns were to take each person through, culminating in their inviting them to take the missionary discussions. These steps included taking some goodies to them; going out with them socially to an athletic, dramatic, or musical activity; inviting them over to dinner; going out with them again; and so on. An invitation to hear the discussions was the seventh step in the process. It was followed by a typical sequence of events – holding discussions in the member’s home, inviting them to church, and so on. Baptism was the last event – the right-most column on the chart.
When Elder Burdette handed Elliott his pen to fill in the names of his friends, Jennifer protested. “Look, elders. We really want to help you. And we want to do this for us, too. But don’t you think we should think and pray about who we should put on this list?
Elder Burdette agreed. “I’m sorry – I know I can get pushy sometimes. But I want you to know that this is an inspired program. Will you in fact commit to me that you will pray about this, and make a list of twelve people who you will start working with?” When Jennifer nodded affirmatively, Elder Burdette got out his calendar and asked, “We’re back in this neighborhood next Thursday. Mind if we stopped by to see how the list is going?” When Jennifer nodded again, Elder Spahn added, “And be sure that as you are praying to decide who the Lord would like you to work with, that you also set a date as a goal, by which you will have at least one of those people all the way over to the ‘Hold missionary discussions in our home’ column. Remember Elder Ballard’s promise!”
Implementing the Plan
Over the next week, the Quinns diligently filled the chart out, prayerfully and thoughtfully selecting those people they knew who they thought might have an interest in the church. When the elders dropped in the next week to check on the Quinns’ progress, Elliott proudly showed them the chart – with 12 people listed. “We also set a date – December 31,” Elliott remarked. “You got us into this. Now I hope you will do your part and pray for us!”
Ken and Janet Brown: The Ideal Mormons
The top people on the Quinns’ list were Ken and Janet Brown. They even looked Mormon—were very clean living—and had known Mormons while growing up. Ken was a marketing manager at BioDerm. Elliott and Jennifer invited the Browns to see a play with them in Boston’s theater district, and the next week asked them to dinner. The following month they invited the Browns to go canoeing on the Concord River, and two weeks later the Browns invited the Quinns to a concert at Harvard University, where Janet had earned her degree in music.
About 3 months into the program, the Quinns were feeling quite buoyed by their success in getting close to the Browns. “We asked them to come to a sacrament meeting where we had been assigned to speak, and then to come to our home for dinner afterward,” Jennifer recalled. “It was a little scary, but they said yes. We were so excited that we drove over to the elders’ apartment to give them the news.”
The following Sunday the Browns attended sacrament meeting with the Quinns. After dinner Jennifer gave Ken and Janet a copy of the Book of Mormon, and asked if they’d like to know more about the church. Ken awkwardly accepted the book, but declined the invitation to learn more. “We’re Episcopalian, and are really enjoying our minister.” Everyone felt awkward, and after a bit of small talk, the Browns had to leave.
Later that night, feeling tired and like failures, Elliott and Jennifer set their sights on the next people on the list, which Elliott had taped to their bedroom closet door. “Darn!” Elliott muttered as he buttoned his pajamas. “We were getting such good vibes from Ken and Janet. And then all of a sudden, ka-bloom!”
The Quinns had ranked the people on their list according to the probability, as they assessed it, that they’d accept an invitation to learn about the gospel. So they methodically began inviting other people they had targeted to do the sorts of things that would prepare them to receive the gospel – much as they had done with the Browns. “The next four,” recalled Jennifer, “really didn’t go anywhere. We invited them to do a few things, and even had a neighborhood barbequeue over here so we could get to know several of them better at once. But we just couldn’t get close enough to any of them to feel like we could even give them a Book of Mormon – let alone ask if they were interested in meeting the missionaries.”
Josie Adcock
The sixth person on the list was Josephine (Josie) Adcock, a young mother whose daughter was enrolled in the same pre-school as the Quinns’ Chelsey. Jennifer and Josie had visited with each other occasionally while waiting to pick up their daughters. One day in November, 1998, Josie asked Jennifer, “You’re a full-time mom, aren’t you? How do you manage it? I’ve cut back to three days a week on my job, and now we’re thinking that maybe I should stay at home altogether.”
Jennifer saw an opportunity to bring the gospel into the discussion. “Yes, I am a full-time mom. Before we moved here I was a journalist – worked at the suburban desk for The Washington Post. It really was a fun job, but the hours – you just never knew when you would have to go cover a story. I did it for four years, but as I started to see Chelsey growing up before my eyes, I just didn’t want anything to get in the way of my being the best mother I could be.”
When Jennifer paused to figure out how to work the church into the conversation, Josie did the job for her. “You’re Mormon, aren’t you?” Josie questioned. “I thought all Mormon women were supposed to stay at home with their kids.”
Amazed that Josie would even know that she was LDS, Jennifer responded, “Well, we don’t have to do anything, of course. Some Mormon women, for various reasons, pursue careers outside the home, and they can be members in perfectly good standing. But by and large, you’d probably find that a much larger proportion of Mormon mothers do make homemaking and motherhood a full-time profession. What’s behind it is our belief that we can be together as families for all eternity – not just ‘until death-do-us-part,’ like lots of other churches believe. Because we have this eternal perspective, it makes teaching your children to believe in and follow Jesus Christ to be so important. We believe that building strong families is the most important responsibility of both parents – not just mothers.”
“That’s really the sense we’ve gotten from other Mormons we’ve known,” Josie responded. “And we just love your ads on TV. It’s interesting. My husband Joe and I believe exactly the same thing. The most important thing we can do is raise good kids. And we believe we’ll be together in whatever the next life brings – just like you. There’s just no way that a loving God would have us grow so close to each other in this life, and then separate us in the next.”
Jennifer queried, “What church do you attend?”
“We go to the Middlesex Congregational Church on Plymouth Street in Dover – you know, the white one with the classic New England steeple? We looked around for good church for a couple of years until we found one we really liked.”
“I’m not an expert in Congregationalist theology, so I apologize even for asking this,” responded Jennifer. “But I always thought the Congregationalist church – and most Protestant churches, for that matter – teach that marriages don’t continue into the next life. I had kind of thought that eternal families was a unique doctrine to the Mormon church.”
Josie replied, “I don’t really know what the church’s official position is on it. But I bet if you surveyed the parishioners, you’d find that many of them believe the same thing – it just makes sense that if heaven is supposed to be a happy place, we’d be there together.”
Hoping to point out the incongruity of attending a church whose doctrines contradicted her own beliefs, Jennifer asked, “What made you choose the Congregational Church?”
“Well, it’s such a beautiful building, and the minister is really a good preacher. Somehow he just connects with us. And they have a great youth choir. Our Delia is too young to join the choir itself, but they have a bell choir for kids 5-8. We should stay in touch, because if you wanted Chelsey to be in the group, I’m sure they’d be happy to have her.”
Just at that moment their girls came running out the door of the school, and both mothers had to be off to the next thing. As she drove away, Jennifer thought, “Now that’s one for my journal. I’m the one hoping to be a missionary for our church, and she proselytes me to attend a church she doesn’t even believe in!”
Julia Matthews’ Smelly Fridge
As Thanksgiving approached, the Quinns had written off the top nine people on their list of twelve prospects – either because they had explicitly declined an invitation, as was the case with the Browns, or because they had decided that the people, such as Josie Adcock, simply weren’t interested. They worried that with the hectic pace of the Christmas holidays approaching, they might well fail to find someone by their date of December 31. But they resolved to keep trying with the remaining three, though neither Elliott or Jennifer held out much hope that they’d meet with success. The ones they felt were most likely to be interested had all fallen through – and now they were getting to the “long-shots” on the bottom of the list, as Elliott called them.
On the first Thursday in December, Elliott made an early home teaching visit to an elderly sister, Julia Matthews, whose husband Eddie had passed away just after the Quinns had arrived in Dedham. As he came into Julia’s living room Elliott asked Julia if she could smell something strange – Elliott’s polite way of pointing out that there was a powerful stench in the home. “Oh, that,” Julia responded. “It’s an old fridge down in the basement. My son sent us a bag of grapefruit from Florida a couple of years ago, just before Eddie died. I put them in that fridge because there was no room in the one up here. Then with everything that happened, I just plain forgot that they were there. One day the motor on the fridge started making a strange noise, so I just unplugged it. Then a couple of days ago I caught a whiff of something down there, so I opened the door. I almost passed out! Mold was everywhere. I mean everywhere!”
Elliott quickly went down and assessed the damage. “Julia, there’s no way to save that fridge. Once that smell gets embedded in the fridge’s insulation, it will put a smelly, moldy taste into anything you store in that fridge – even if you could get it repaired. Let’s just get it out into the trash. I’ll get someone to help me, and well get it out this Saturday.” Julia gratefully agreed that throwing the fridge out was the right thing to do.
The next night Elliott got on the phone in an effort to find another ward member who could help him move the bulky old fridge out of Julia’s basement, but he could find no one who was free. The holidays were a busy time to round up help on such short notice, and because there were so few younger men in the Dedham Ward’s Melchizedek Priesthood quorums to begin with, Elliott quickly ran out of options.
Finally, it occurred to Elliott that a neighbor, Don Lucier, might be willing to help. Don was about 45, and thanks to having made some wise investments just when the Boston real estate market was taking off, Don had made a fortune – and retired at age 40. Don always seemed to have plenty of time on his hands, as evidenced by his eagerness to chat whenever he passed the Quinns’ home when they were working in the yard. Elliott sensed that Don must be quite handy, judging from the plethora of tools that hung on the walls of his garage. He had offered to loan any of his tools, but Elliott had never needed anything that esoteric. So Elliott called Don, and was relieved when Don said he’d be happy to help.
When the two began sizing up their exit strategies from the Matthews basement, it became clear that they were getting more than they had bargained for. The staircase was steep and narrow, and had two right-angle turns in it. Furthermore, it had a railing on the outside and a handrail on the inside, further restricting their options. To top it off, the basement was hot. Because it was freezing cold outside, and the elderly Sister Matthews kept her thermostat high in order not to be chilled. The uninsulated pipes in the basement consequently radiated constant heat, raising the temperature, Don estimated, to about 90 degrees. They decided they’d need to take the handrails off, to give themselves a few more degrees of freedom.
It took the two men about two hours, step by step, hernia by hernia, to maneuver the bulky fridge up the stairs and around its bends. With each step, Elliott was sure he was snapping any remaining bonds of friendship with Don – and the friendship hadn’t been that close to begin with. They did, however, have a lot of time to talk. In the process, Don asked how Elliott had gotten to know Julia Matthews, and Elliott explained the church’s home teaching program. “That’s just amazing,” was Don’s response. We go to mass at Saint Joseph’s on most Sundays, and the place is full of elderly people. But come to think about it, I only know a couple of them by name.”
At one point, Don asked Elliott to tell him what was different about the Mormon Church from other churches. Elliott decided that because he had a captive audience, he would walk Don through the Articles of Faith. He pointed out the differences between the LDS view of the Godhead versus the Catholic belief in the Trinity; the LDS view of Adam’s transgression versus the Catholic belief in original sin; and so on. But by the time he had finished the third article, it was clear that Don had lost interest, and Elliott changed the subject.
Don also was quite curious about the Church’s financial policies – particularly about how tithing money was spent, and about the Welfare Program. When the fridge was resting on a step while the men caught their breath, Don explained, “My wife and I decided a few years ago that we don’t want to leave a lot of money to our kids – it’s just not good for them. So if you ever run into any good causes that we might be able to contribute to, let me know. We just don’t want to donate to all the organizations that solicit through the mail. We’re looking for something that we can really shape – really influence – and that can make a difference. I know you people do lots of things like that. So let me know if you see something interesting.”
After they had finally dragged the fridge out to the curb and removed its door, they went back to wish Sister Matthews a happy holiday. She had prepared a plate of Christmas cookies for each man, and thanked them warmly. As they walked to the car Elliott apologized profusely to Don for putting him out so much on such short notice. But Don cut him short. “You should apologize only if you never ask me to help again. You people apparently do this all the time, so it’s second nature. But for me – you just don’t know how good my sore back feels. I just never get opportunities like this. I’m glad to help.”
The Aftermath
On December 18 at the Dedham Ward Christmas party, Del Crandall, the ward clerk who also worked at BioDerm as its Chief Financial Officer, cornered Elliott Quinn. “I just need to give you a little unsolicited feedback,” he began. “I know you’ve been on this missionary kick, and I guess that’s all right. But you need to be more careful. I had to fly out to California with Ken Brown last Monday. He said that a few months ago you and Jennifer had made like you really wanted to be good friends with them, and all of a sudden started to invite them to do things. Then I guess they started inviting you to do things with them. Is that right?”
When Elliott nodded his head, Del continued, “Well, from the way Ken told the story, it sounds to me like you dropped them like a lead balloon as soon as they said they didn’t want to learn more about the church. You’ve got to be careful, because it’s clear that the Browns feel a bit misled and betrayed—that the reason for your interest in them was not because you were interested in them as friends, but because you wanted them to become Mormons. The whole experience sure seems to have left them with a bad taste about the church. I don’t know if there’s anything to do about it at this point. But I thought I should just let you know what an earful I got.”
On December 30, the Quinns had the missionaries to dinner again. By this point, Elders Spahn and Burdette had been transferred. As soon as they had finished eating, the new missionaries – Elders Aaron and Murphy – pulled out a flipchart and asked if they could take a few minutes to introduce a new, inspired program from the mission office, designed to help the members become more active, productive member missionaries.
When he saw the first page, with its “Every member a missionary” quote from David O. McKay, Elliott interrupted them. “Hey – before you go to all this trouble, we’ve already seen this, and in fact, we’ve already done it. Let me go peel the chart off of our closet wall.” When Elliott returned with the list a minute later, he told the elders, “We never kept track of the time we spent trying to prepare these people to receive the gospel message over these past six months – but it’s in the hundreds of hours. We need to work, raise our family, sleep and run the youth programs in the ward. I’m telling you, there is absolutely no way we could have tried harder. And do you know what? Tomorrow is the date we set. There just isn’t any way we’re going to make it.
“We are so discouraged. I don’t mean to interrupt you, Elder. But we don’t need another reminder that member missionary work is our responsibility. We need you to tell us what we should do differently this next year, so that we actually find somebody.”
Elder Murphy, the junior companion who was holding the flipcards, almost said that the zone leaders were going to be in Dedham on a tour the next week, and that they could bring them by to give the Quinns some advice – but he decided not to say it. Rather, he put the flipcards down and looked at Elder Aaron, grateful for the first time in the last three months that he was the junior companion.
Clayton M. Christensen of the Massachusetts Boston Mission Presidency prepared this case to serve as the basis for discussion and training. The names of the individuals and organizational units, as well as the dates in the case, have been disguised.