Member Missionaries
In the Massachusetts Boston Mission we are working to help members learn four important principles that should guide their efforts to share the gospel:
We must not judge who will and will not be interested in the gospel, because it is impossible to predict in advance who might accept it. Rather, we need to share the gospel with everyone we can, without pre-judging who would be “a good Mormon.”
We need not deepen our relationship with anyone as a pre-requisite for inviting them to accept the gospel – creating a friendship does not, in fact, change the probability that they will accept an invitation to learn about the gospel. Rather, we should be friends with those with whom we naturally will be friends; and we should share the gospel with everyone – store clerks, neighbors, work associates, classmates and friends.
The interest of most people who join the church is not initially piqued because they are looking for a church with more coherent and complete doctrine. Most members of other churches, in fact, have little interest in doctrine. Instead, they become interested in our church because they want to feel close to God, and want a deeper purpose and meaning in their lives.
Most of the people with whom LDS members live, work and study have greater needs in their lives to give service than receive service. When we describe all that the church can do for them, therefore, it doesn’t address a key, known need in their lives. On the other hand, if we give non-member acquaintances the chance to serve in church auxiliary and other church-sponsored activities – to help us do the work of the church – it helps them feel the Spirit of the Lord and sense a deeper purpose in life.
The purpose of this teaching note is to help ward mission leaders and others who want to use the “Elliott and Jennifer Quinn” case study as the vehicle for teaching these principles to members and missionaries.
Teaching and Learning by the Case Method: Some Background
Case-method instruction was first developed at the Harvard Business School as a mechanism for helping students learn how to think about business problems – as opposed to most traditional teaching methods, which are designed to teach students what to think. In leading a case study class, the instructor employs the Socratic method. He or she does not teach, lecture or present information, but instead asks questions that are designed to help the students learn or discover the critical insights for themselves. The underlying belief behind case method instruction is that ideas and ways of thinking have far greater power if the students discover them for themselves, than they would if a teacher simply imparts the information. In addition, students tend to enjoy this method of learning more than traditional methods. Case method instruction is now used widely in graduate schools of business, education, law and medicine.
Class Objectives
There are two objectives of this case discussion class. The first is to help those attending the class discover that many of the assumptions they have consciously or sub-consciously employed as they have gone about their member missionary activities are false – and that much of the fear and frustration they have experienced in their member missionary efforts are the results of these false beliefs. The second objective is to challenge those in the class to make a covenant with the Lord, as Elder M. Russell Ballard urged us to do in his 1984 conference address. Elder Ballard promised that if we will covenant to share the gospel in an honest and open way with as many people as possible, we can expect the Lord to help us intersect with someone, by a date we set as a goal, who will accept our invitation to take the missionary discussions. We can’t predict who we’ll find who will accept our invitation, but we can predict that we’ll be able to find someone.
Preparation Prior to Class
The instructor needs to study thoroughly the set of three Sunday School lessons provided in the Ward Mission Leader manual, because these describe the logic and doctrine behind the four principles of member missionary work described above. The case itself describes a faithful couple that unwittingly violated each of these principles. To help those in the class discover the important counter-intuitive lessons from the case, the instructor absolutely must understand the principles as they are described in the lessons. In addition, instructors need to read the case study several times to become very, very familiar with each of the details in the case. Some of the most interesting learning experiences come when instructors can pull details from the case into the class discussion, to support or contradict a class member’s comment.
Instructors will need a large blackboard on which to summarize key comments. Though it is not necessary, case discussions work best in a room in which students are seated in concentric semi-circles so that they can speak directly to each other, rather than in a traditional row-by-row classroom in which those in the back have a difficult time hearing those in the front.
Most importantly, copies of the case need to be given to each class member in advance, and class members absolutely must read the case before the discussion. This represents a major challenge in many units. One solution would be to take two sessions on a fifth-Sunday – using part of the Sunday School hour for members to read the case and discuss it in small groups, and then to hold the whole-group case study discussion during the Priesthood-Relief Society hour.
Teaching Plan
This teaching plan is divided into six blocks, shown in the table below, comprised of introductory and summary segments, as well as a block corresponding to each of the four principles noted above. The plan is designed to consume about 40 minutes of class time. When I’ve taught this case to missionaries we have typically taken an hour. Instructors will need to exercise substantial discipline to complete the discussion in the allotted time, particularly if the class is large. The case generates substantial interest, and far more people will want to offer comments than possibly can be called upon to participate.
|
Class Segment |
Approximate Time Required |
|
Expose the typical, “Do more of the same, just try harder” logic |
8 minutes |
|
You can’t pick who will be interested |
8 minutes |
|
There’s no need to create unnatural friendships |
8 minutes |
|
What are non-members interested in, really? |
6 minutes |
|
Most people have a deeper need to give than to receive |
6 minutes |
|
Summary and testimony |
4 minutes |
Starting Question
Experienced case method teachers almost always warn their students beforehand that they are going to start class by “cold calling” a class member, without warning, to give his or her recommendations about what should be done. This prompts them to prepare. I have cold-called every time I’ve taught this case, and it works beautifully. I recommend asking the student a question such as, “Imagine that you were Elder Aaron in the Quinns’ home on December 30. They’ve asked you for advice. Give me an action plan for Elliott and Jennifer. What should they do differently (or do the same) in the coming year, in order to be less frustrated and more successful in their member missionary efforts?” I recommend picking a member who is likely to give a relatively conventional response, to create a “set-up” for surprise insights later in the class.
The instructor should write the student’s name in the upper-left corner of the chalkboard, and then create a numbered list beneath it of the recommendations he or she offers. The student will most likely respond with recommendations like
“Be more patient” (don’t write off the Browns’ friendship so quickly; maybe it just takes time for them to become interested).
“Fast and pray more, to know which people they should focus on” (they seemed to have given up on the last three on their list of twelve, as having the lowest probability of being interested).
“Seek to understand before you seek to be understood” (rather than assuming the Browns would be interested in the Book of Mormon, try first to understand the aspects of their religious lives with which they are satisfied and dissatisfied).
“Focus on what we have in common, rather than how we are different” (In contrast to Jennifer’s attempt to highlight the incongruity of Josie Adcock’s beliefs versus those of her church).
Don’t be limited to just the people on this list; try to be friends with more people.
Rather than work with people they haven’t known well, they should work with their closer friends first and then move further afield.
I’ve found that the starter often offers only a single recommendation. The instructor should push him or her for three or four recommendations, however, to create a climate of deeper thinking in the class.
After the starter’s ideas have been exhausted, the instructor should ask a volunteer who wants to offer the Quinns a very different action plan. This student’s name should be noted in the top-right corner of the chalkboard, and a numbered list of his or her ideas should be created below it. Although I hope that this volunteer’s ideas will be different, most often I have found that the second student’s action plan has been similar in tone to the first – it essentially recommends doing the same things that the Quinns did, only better, smarter and harder.
Once these “conventional ideas” are up on the board, the instructor should help the class shift directions by asking another student a question like, “Suppose you were Elliott (or Jennifer) Quinn, and Elder Aaron just gave you these recommendations. How does this make you feel?” The student will likely respond that it gives little comfort. The Quinns have a family, a profession, and demanding church callings. They recently moved into the area, so most of their friends are church members. They just don’t have more time and energy to do more than they have already done.
You Can’t Pick Who Will Be Interested
Once the Quinns’ apparent dilemma has been made clear, I recommend that the instructor ask the class to shift mental gears, and focus more deeply on a few key member-missionary events of the prior year. The first is the Quinns’ thoughtful, prayerful creation of the list of twelve people, and the prioritization of those from more to less likely, that occurred at the beginning of their process. “Was making this list a good thing to do, or a wrong thing to do?”
I have found that the students who initially respond to this question believe it was an essential first step for the Quinns – after all, they needed to start somewhere. Almost always, however, if the instructor pushes for students who believe it was the wrong thing to do, students can be found who will note that some of the best converts to the church in their ward’s recent history were people who probably wouldn’t have been on any member’s list – because they didn’t look like “ideal Mormons” at the outset. Once this idea has been put into discussion, the instructor should draw upon the logic presented in the Sunday School lesson plan to help the students see that making the list was really a wrong way to approach the challenge. By calling on a sequence of volunteers from the class, the instructor should help students discover that we simply cannot know in advance who will accept our invitation. In fact, if history is any guide, those who look like “ideal Mormons” are probably less likely to be seeking deeper meaning in their lives than are people whose lives are in some way troubled. If there are current or former full-time missionaries in the class, some of them are likely to recall that some of their best converts “came out of the woodwork” in ways and from directions that they simply could not have predicted.
I have found it particularly provocative and helpful to raise the following point: Every day, 60,000 full-time missionaries plead with God to lead them to people who are prepared to receive the truth. These are the best-living 60,000 people on the earth – surely the most worthy to receive an answer to righteous prayers. And yet how often does the Lord explicitly answer these prayers, in the sense that He reveals to the missionary the name of a prepared person or a place he or she should go, to find the person? For most missionaries, it might happen once or twice on their mission. All of the rest of the time, the Lord forces the missionaries to sift, and hunt through trial and error, to find the people who are prepared.
Why does the Lord force them to endure such an inefficient process? Because in order for the principle of free agency to work, everyone needs to have the chance to accept the gospel. If God directed us to go to certain people who were prepared and revealed to us those with whom we should not waste our time, then the unprepared would not have the chance to choose. In a sense, God already answered our prayer about who we should approach: He has told us to share the gospel with everyone.
Why would the mission president have suggested the list?
Once members of the class have recognized the futility of trying to predict who will be interested in the gospel, I recommend provoking the class a bit further by asking, “So if this is the wrong way to approach this challenge, why did the mission president cook up this plan?” It might take a bit of pushing, but typically a class member will observe that President Cox was probably just desperate to get the members to commit to do something – they needed to have something tangible around which to structure their efforts. When this idea comes out in the discussion, I recommend that the instructor pause and recount for the class members a remarkable promise that Elder M. Russell Ballard made to us in a 1984 General Conference address about “setting a date.” A copy of that address is attached to this teaching note.
Like President Cox, Elder Ballard saw the wisdom of having us set a tangible, structured goal towards which we could work in our missionary efforts. Essentially, however, he said that we should not pick a person that we would introduce to the missionaries. We should instead set a date, as a goal. That date constitutes a covenant between God and us. If we will share the gospel in and honest, open and straightforward way with as many people as possible (our part of the covenant), God’s part of the covenant is that He will help us intersect with someone by that date who will accept our invitation to study the gospel with the missionaries. We can’t predict in advance who that person will be, but Elder Ballard promised that we can predict with certainty that we will find someone.
I strongly recommend that the instructor challenge those in the class to believe Elder Ballard, and to enter into such a covenant with God. If they will do it, a marvelous and productive flowering of member missionary activity in the ward will result. I have recorded my personal testimony about this covenant, based on my experience, in the Sunday School lesson on this topic that is in the Ward Mission Leader’s manual. An additional data point: I was Ward Mission Leader in the Belmont Ward at the time Elder Ballard gave his talk. We urged our ward members to accept his challenge, and held two special fasts as a ward for the purpose of calling the blessings of God down upon our efforts. Some members, of course, did not make this covenant – but many did. Over that next year the members of the Belmont Ward introduced 67 people to the missionaries who were taught one or more discussions in their homes. This was an extraordinary result in a ward that historically had been one of the lower baptizing units in New England.
Transforming Acquaintances into Friends
The second key missionary event during the Quinns’ year that the class should examine was their effort to transform their relationship with those on the list into a deeper friendship, as a prerequisite to inviting them to learn about the gospel. Their efforts were prompted by the mission’s plan that involved six relationship-building steps before the subject of the gospel discussions would be broached – the infamous chart on the wall at the Quinns’ home. Again the instructor can ask, “Were their efforts to transform relationships with these people into deeper friendships the right thing to do, or the wrong thing to do?” A discussion to the one above is likely to result. In fact, students are very likely to be critical of the Quinns for crossing Ken and Janet off the list after their initial expression of disinterest. They are likely to say that the Quinns should have been more patient; continued to build their friendship; and extended another invitation later.
In my experience, it is harder to “unfreeze” class members on this point than the other learning objectives in this case. The words that we should share the gospel with our friends have been used so frequently in LDS discourse that we have come to believe that we must somehow transform people into our friends before we invite them. I’ve found that one or two of these questions can help students see this issue in a different light, however.
“Okay. So they should be more patient, and continue to cultivate the Browns’ friendship. But we just concluded that the Quinns really can’t know in advance if the Browns are going to accept invitation or not. So what do you want them to do – do all of these things with all of these people? Where will they ever get the time?”
“Think about your experience. Does deepening your friendship really alter the probability that someone will accept your invitation? Does it make them more or less likely to want to learn about the gospel?” To this question, some students are likely to respond that it lowers the probability, because friends are more comfortable in saying “no.” Others will say that friends will have a closer view of the positive effect of the gospel in our lives and are more likely to be interested. Others will say that because friends have a closer view of how busy church membership makes us, they are less likely to want a part of it!
“What would happen if the full-time missionaries followed this advice themselves, and worked everyone they met through the first six steps of friendship-deepening on the Quinns’ chart before they invited people to learn about the gospel. Would it improve the acceptance rate?”
This can be a fun discussion. In the end, most students will see that the depth of our relationship with someone – whether we have just met them, or they are work associates, neighbors, or deep friends – actually has little affect on the probability that any of them will accept the gospel. People certainly are affected by the example set by members, but we can’t predict who, of all of these people, will in fact be touched by the example we try to live.
I recommend concluding this part of the discussion by asking the class what recommendation Elder Aaron should make to the Quinns. A good summary is that the Quinns should become friends with people with whom they feel a natural affinity, and that they shouldn’t be deceptive about their intentions with anyone. And regardless of the depth of their relationship with those that they become acquainted with, they should simply invite them, in an honest, open and straightforward way, to learn more about the gospel of Jesus Christ. I’ve found it helpful in summary to remind students that if they have ever used the words, “We are working with so-and-so,” in response to someone’s query about their member missionary activity, that they were violating both of the principles that we’ve discovered to this point.
What Should We Tell People Who Ask about the Church?
The third missionary event during the Quinns’ year that I’d recommend examining is Don Lucier’s request to Elliott to “Tell me about the Mormon Church as the paused on Sister Crandall’s basement stairs.” Use a question like, “So imagine that you were Elliott in that hot basement, and you finally got that smelly fridge up on one of those right-angle steps, and Don asks you that question. Would you have answered the way Elliott did?” Students will readily see that Don was quite interested in the organizational, service and financial aspects of the church, but was disinterested in doctrine. A simple recommendation is that Elliott should have asked Don what he wanted to know, without assuming that his interests were doctrinal in character.
You can get more insight, however, by asking the students to reflect on Jennifer’s conversation with Josie Adcock, who essentially didn’t care what her church officially taught. “How did Josie go about deciding what church was for her?” “How typical is Josie?” Once prompted, students will readily see that her attitudes are very common outside the LDS faith. For us inside of the church, doctrine is extremely important. But many members of other faiths have little understanding of the detailed body of doctrine that those institutions espouse.
I recommend recounting to students the evidence on this topic that is presented in the lesson manual, which our church drew from a survey of our own converts. It is that few of the people who join our church are initially attracted to us because they are searching for true and coherent doctrine. Rather, they are searching for closeness with God, and a sense of meaning and purpose in life. You should then repeat your original question. “So suppose you were there sweating on that step with Don, and he asked you that question. How should you have responded?” In a discussion I led on this case, one student said, “I’d say, ‘You know, Don, this will sound really weird. But what I like about this church is that all of the time I get opportunities to sweat like this for other people. It’s hard work, but it makes me happy. And I feel like it brings me closer to God, because I’m doing what He would like to do personally, if He lived here. It’s a great feeling.’” In my opinion, that would have been a perfect answer to Don Lucier’s question.
If there is time, it will help to hold a brief discussion about the implications of this insight for the sort of example that we need to set for others. By far the most powerful impact will come if we worthily live so that our love for God and His love for us is apparent to those that we meet. If people readily can feel God’s love for them through their interactions with us, we will be setting the sort of example that truly will attract others to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
What Does Don Lucier Really Need in His Life?
The final missionary moment in the Quinns’ year that you should focus upon is Don Lucier’s expression of interest. “Okay. So it turns out that Don Lucier has some interest. He wasn’t on their list (which I guess we should have predicted). Here’s Don’s situation. He’s wealthy, and has so much time on his hands that the Quinns want to run for cover whenever he comes by to chat. He’s handy with tools. If you were Elliott Quinn, what would you do next?
The students will quite readily see that Don Lucier might be reached by offering him additional opportunities to serve in the church. I recommend getting the class to brainstorm about the kinds of activities or projects that need to get done in a ward like the Quinns’ over the course of a year, in which Don Lucier might be asked to play a role.1 When the class has come up with a list – which is likely to be quite long – I recommend asking class members if they know of any people who are now members of the church, whose decision to join was in some way accelerated by an opportunity they were given to serve in the church, in a formal or informal calling, before they were baptized. You’ll find that there are a lot of people whose decisions to join came through the chance to serve.
When we are looking for ways to strengthen less active members of the church, we almost instinctively look for ways in which the less-active members can serve in the church – because our experience is that when we serve in the Kingdom of God, we feel His spirit. When we do missionary work, however, we forget this principle, and our approach almost always relates in some way to explaining what the church can do for the person we are talking with. For people who are quite happy with their lives, telling them that our church can make them even happier just doesn’t connect with a need that they’re feeling. But when we give them opportunities to serve within the scope of the church’s activities, it helps them feel close to God and feel deeper meaning and purpose in their lives. Many of those with whom we might share the gospel have a deeper need to give service than to receive service.
If you have time, I recommend asking class members to describe their own experiences in inviting non-member acquaintances to help them with church service assignments of one sort or another.
Summary
When this discussion is complete, I recommend that you summarize the four principles of member missionary work that the class members will have discovered during this discussion. It helps if you have noted these four principles on the board at the conclusion of each of the blocks of discussion outlined above, so that you can quickly point to them at this point.
We cannot predict in advance who will and will not be interested in the gospel – so we simply need to share it with everybody.
We need not change the depth of our relationship with anyone as a pre-requisite to asking them to learn more about the gospel. Deeper friendships do not change the probability that our invitations will be accepted. We should be friends with our friends. And we should share the gospel in an honest and open way with everyone.
Many people outside of our church have little interest in doctrine – they belong to churches for different reasons. The predominant reasons converts are attracted to our church are that they are hoping to feel closer to God and want to feel deeper purpose in life. These are the dimensions of our church that we should discuss when we have opportunities. And we should live our lives so that God’s love for others radiates to them through us, whenever we are with them.
Most people have deeper needs to give service than to receive service. Members and non-members alike can feel the spirit of the Lord that comes when we serve in His kingdom. This is one of the most straightforward ways to introduce the church to someone.
When this summary is completed, the instructor should bear his or her testimony about these principles, and challenge those in the class to begin using them – especially the covenant that Elder Ballard recommended – in their missionary activities.
1 In the Sunday School lesson plan in the Ward Mission Leader manual, there are additional ideas about how members might involve non-members in the work of the church, that you might bring into the class discussion at this point.