The 1990s teaching instructions from the England London South Mission make interesting reading, for example how to fake compassion if you haven’t got any, building relationships of trust, keeping up the pressure for an investigator to be baptized, plus many other tricks that are all part of the “Pursuit of Teaching Excellence”. As you may read in my link to some pages from these instructions they teach how to be aggressive, boundary breaking, cunning and predatory. The instructions also have rules about how to conduct what is in fact a fake survey and it is this area I’d like to mainly bring attention to.

Stepping back a bit though – these rules claim to have come by revelation and also contain a missionary grading system. It’s well known that members of any sales force needs to be comparing each other’s performance and to have a fierce spirit of internal competition. This grading system has 4 levels beyond MTC training. They involve memorising the concepts of the ELSM instructions book itself and lots of scripture memorisation, plus the demonstration of certain missionary achievements. Once having reached level 4 (Master Teacher) missionaries are promised that “the lord will bless each of you in its accomplishment” – however it’s interesting to note that no such blessing is promised for those who fail to reach level 4.

Anyway – that fake survey. It has twelve questions which are phrased for yes or no replies though the structure of all the questions clearly promote yes answers, and so getting the responder into the habit of saying yes to the missionaries. But here’s the first sting, and the teaching instructions are quite casual about the dishonesty here and say “The purpose is not to “collect data” but to use the questions to lead a person to a gospel subject” – it then gives details of possible approaches missionaries could use to ensnare the victim (I struggled here with the word victim and wanted to put a more neutral word but all I could come up with was sucker, mark, target etc.). So, this reminder in the ELSM teaching instructions that the survey isn’t anything to do with collecting data is of course evidence that the MP and others knew that the public would assume it was a bona fide survey, this is made worse by the fact that missionaries are not told to correct the public’s obvious misunderstanding. Whether many missionaries realised the implications of being involved in this deception is another matter – but as the teaching instructions say “No other mission has the dialogues the ELSM has. They came by revelation to enable missionaries to find, teach, and BAPTIZE more people than ever before.”.

The survey questions themselves tend to be leading and subjective, however one stands out as being particularly not well chosen. “Do you believe that god cares for you as much as he did the people in Old Testament times?”. My reply to that would be - “What like a god burning me and my family to death or a god just drowning us all?”.

This is the LDS dialogue of how to conduct the fake survey approach door to door rather than the on- the-street version. I’ve included it here in case my link should at some time no longer work.

1. Knock on the door – friendly greeting – shake hands, smile, be enthused and excited: “Hello Miss how are you today?”

2. Introduce yourself and your companion, ask for their name. “My name is Elder ____ and this is my companion Elder ___, it’s nice to meet you”.

3. Explain the questionnaire – “In fact what we’re doing today is taking a short questionnaire. As you can see it is brief and asks ten short questions concerning your opinion on a few things” (this is an error as there are in fact twelve questions) “Like what” they may ask…”Oh just your feelings and how you feel about families and other things. For instance; is a close family important to you?”

4. Ask them to take it, “Would you be so kind to help us”

5 Ask to step in, “May we step in?” Moving forward, “Oh thank you”

6 Don’t take the questionnaire right inside the door – you need to be seated in their house. Say two key words “Straight through?”

7 Find a comfortable place to sit where you can be close to them. It is important that they are seated as well, or once the questionnaire is over they’ll be expecting you to leave. “Do you mind if we sit here? Oh thank you. Is there a place for you?”

8 Reaffirm the questionnaire – take it and then ask if you can share a brief message with them… “Oh thank you very much for answering these questions. In fact what we have that goes hand in hand with this questionnaire is a brief little message which gives the answers to the questions of “where did we come from, why are we here and where are we going after we leave this life” (or whatever question they show an interest in) Could we share that with you? Thanks. We feel that it is of a spiritual nature so we always like to start with a word of prayer, and since this is your home would you like to say it or would you like one of us?” Then proceed to teach the first discussion.

THE KEY IS BELIEVING – IF YOU BELIEVE YOU’LL GET IN, YOU WILL!! IF YOU DON’T YOU WON’T!! PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT! GO GET ‘EM!!

The important idea is to be friendly and warm, and give them the feeling that you need their help to answer the questions. When contacting door to door you should ALWAYS use this eight step door approach.

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Having just typed this out I’m struck by its language, it contains zero love. The intended recipients of the dialogue seem by inference to be just opportunities to make a sale. Yes it’s teaching by the spirit alright, the spirit of dodgy salesmanship and deception.

JStone

Extracts from the dreary ELSM document “Pursuit of Teaching Excellence – I Will Go and Do”

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GocnzfFnUrsquBaqSIUZy7-em5HSP5Em/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Sm2WnEvjedoRp-y18OpmvpZCgmFrgSVi/view

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fPm2JjNvSv3apKPCVkXlB7cXsJBts0lB/view

"Would you be so kind as to help me with this questionnaire?"

Ted: Could you help me load this in my car?

"Don't take the questionnaire inside the door, you need to be seated in their house."

My mission took this stuff to extremes. It was profoundly disturbing.

The dishonesty,the salesmanship, the manipulation was so blatant. The church had replaced "the spirit" with persuasive sales techniques. The Church of Jesus Christ of Dale Carnegie.

Sometimes it left me despondent.

We had to watch a supposedly motivating film by Vince Lombardi once at a mission conference - it waw dire like something from the 1950s. It did't motivate and seemed to be just a self glorifying bit of out of date twaddle. But the ELSM sale techniques were hard and soulless and are suited to only a few missionaries.

Wow, this is interesting. Just 2 days ago I had two young men in mormon missionary uniform knock on my door. Having read a lot about how the missionaries are often mistreated, I invited them in for a drink and a snack and use of the bathroom. They were indeed thirsty and hungry.

And sure enough, although they didn't do the survey-approach, they did, as it turned out, have a pre-set agenda, including the "May we share a brief message?"

I said yes, thinking it would be some little actual message of hope or whatever. Instead, they asked how long it had been since we heard the missionary discussions? Whoa, red flag---who told them about me? (I'm a never mo married to a doubting evermo.)

Then they proceeded to "share" the first discussion. Badly, I might add.

I was angry by the time they left. Felt lied to. Felt really grouchy as they use words like "the gospel" as if the mormons had a patent on it. These kids are so ignorant of any but their own world view. IMO the people "training" them must be pretty ignorant too, not to realize how offensive it is for them to use words common to the main religion of this country in a new way, as if they were the same when they are not at all.

My sister introduced me to a term the other day---"noseblind"--from a fabreeze commercial, I think. That's what these kids, their trainers, and sorry to say, DH are---noseblind. They are so immersed in their own worldview that they don't recognize the deceptions. (For example, after the kids left, DH and I talked---I said they didn't realize the word "gospel" didn't mean the same thing to traditional Christians; he said it did mean the same thing---It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Right. That's why they are going around trying to "convert" other people to the real, true and only true church---because all the rest of us who believe in Jesus have it all wrong. hmph. Noseblind.

When I arrived in the mission field I was deeply disappointed in the church when I discovered that I was required to be deceptive to get my foot into the door.

Two years of cog dis took its toll on me.

Yeah, so now thank goodness, you're out. What a gift!!

My only recollection about 'salesmanship' was being instructed never to ask a yes/no question. The primary example was, during the first discussion, when you asked, "If you come discover that the church is true, would being baptized on Saturday be okay, or would Tuesday or Wednesday be better?"

We were not to present any issue that could be responded to with a 'no'.

See? That's how you know the church is true, because only a true ghawd could be that tricky.