When you have a large pool of free labor, you can pretty be as inefficient as you want with them. But some of TSCC's inititatives seem absolute failures.

Has anyone ever seen a single baptism from any of the following frequent events?

- Ward open house

- Church booth at a county or state fair

- Testimony written in a BofM

- One of those contrived "Teacher of the Year" awards given by a ward

- Book of Mormon "placement" reported in Relief Society or Priesthood

Can anyone name one first hand that came about from one of those?

I remember many years ago, the ward Priesthood were challenged to place a BoM during the following week.

As people were asked how they had done the following week, one Brother said "Oh, I left mine with the magazines in the Dentists waiting room, someone's sure to take it home"

Root canal work, or reading the BoM.......it's a tough choice lol.

Do these activities count toward the LDS total of charitable giving? Toward humanitarian aid?

LDS leaders and members often report or claim their church is the givingest people on the planet, and I just wonder how much of their charity is actually just proselytizing with no real benefit to those whom this charity is directed toward.

bookratt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do these activities count toward the LDS total of
> charitable giving? Toward humanitarian aid?
>
> LDS leaders and members often report or claim
> their church is the givingest people on the
> planet, and I just wonder how much of their
> charity is actually just proselytizing with no
> real benefit to those whom this charity is
> directed toward.

You better believe it is counted. They also include in their counting of "volunteer service" the time they take as financial clerks counting the receipts each Sunday and wiring the money to Salt Lake City.

The main reason that these "every member a missionary" programs have never and will never work can be explained by the fact that church meetings are boring. Nobody wishes that kind of sheer boredom on any of their friends. See other thread re: boring meetings

Family History -> Missionary work indicatives were/are the worst. How on earth can anyone buy that people will line up to convert if we just help them make lists of their dead relatives? I mean, if you want to believe that doctrine that's fine (the whole "salvation for the dead" business) but why a non-mormon would be remotely interested in genealogy/family history, and why they would convert to Mormonism as a result makes absolutely no sense. Several years ago I promised to eat my hat if anyone ever converted because of family history. The offer still stands. Hats eaten by BillShat to date: 0

- Testimony written in a BofM

When I was a kid all the primary kids were required to do this. It was a big deal because mine WORKED! It was another kid. He was a complete odd ball, poor family. He was odd enough he was never fully accepted.

I hope he got out.

It also had a Polaroid added in.

The testimonies written in a BoM were so bad that even the missionaries in my mission tore them out of the BoM's before they'd hand them out. I think it was standard procedure in my mission, haha.