I just got a report from the regional conference held in the San Jose area.

Going forward, there will be no more tracting in the San Jose Mission. Any referrals will come through the members, prospective elders/ inactives and community service.

Holland said that continued tracting would be a waste of missionary manpower.

Wow!

If it's CA then woot!! That's my hometown. Wouldn't be surprised if tracting was useless there. Between Prop 8 and the general attitude there I imagine that Mormonism has virtually zero conversion growth.

Sorry, San Jose, CA

Some of my siblings still live there. One TBM sister has complained about how persecuted her family and other Mormons feel after the whole debacle. =(

Love her but I don't feel much sympathy about the whole thing. After Prop 22 and Prop 8 the Mormons have far less good will in the Bay Area then they used to— and they brought it on themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2011 10:28AM by badseed.

Definitely lost a TBM "friend" after pointing out she was not the victim and no one voted to take HER rights away... I agree completely they bring it on themselves

With the internet came a magical word called "INFORMATION."

That's why I LOVE the internet.

With all that free time, spanking the monkey among missionaries will increase.

Just sayin'...

Ron

Hey Ron, how's the bionic hip?

It makes sense. I can see how tracting could only do harm for the church there. It's too bad they're stopping it.

I'll bet this is only the beginning. If the trends of the world continue, the day may come when tracting will cease in all missions. Either that or the church will back off on its political stances and its treatment of gays.

Which do you think will happen first?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/24/2011 11:25AM by kimball.

Probably the tracting.

I must admit I feel sorry for the poor deluded downtrodden members in the area - the pressure will be heaped on them to find people for the missionaries to teach, & will be blamed for lack of such. Guilt, guilt & more guilt.......

Can you just imagine the Prop 8 doorstep discussions?
I wonder how many San Jose missionaries were leaving the Church post mission in order for the Church to make this decision...

Did Holland look very droopy doggish when saying that?

I haven't seen them around here for years anyway--not since they ran into my DH when he was in one of his buzz-saw moods.

I can see the roof of the local stake center from my back yard--along with the empty parking lot on Sundays.

We've met several people in the San Jose area who left the church over Prop 8. Never ever met any new converts.

The church was already shifting heavily to member referrals.

In the general world, door-to-door sales died as a viable business model 30-40 years ago. People don't want to be bothered at home. But the LDS church is always behind the trends. Besides, they saw tracting as a right of passage, sort of like frat hazing. It made you a Mormon Male.

So I think the end of tracting will only be a localized thing for, oh, another generation before the church abandons it globally.

"door-to-door sales died as a viable business model 30-40 years ago"

And like in most other things the Church is slow to progress.

Hold onto the old ways, don't change.

How is it that the only organization with God's revelation is run so piss-poorly?

because members are just dying to let their friends know about the joys of Mormonism. yeah right. back in the 90's it was pulling teeth to get members to "share the gospel". Now that we have the internet, it will be "virtually" impossible. Negative growth rates, here we come...

This only means missionaries may spend even more time loitering inside Fry's on Hamilton.

my mom used to shop there. More food for your tithing stretched dollar.

In my missionary days, the baptism rate for people whom the missionaries met and taught through tracting was 1 in 1000. The baptism rate for people who were introduced by members of the church and taught in a member's home was 1 in 3. Both of these figures were usually quoted in the context of missionaries being urged to get referrals from the members. The flip side of these statistics is that door-to-door tracting is vastly ineffective. These figures were given to me over 25 years ago. Maybe, just maybe, someone has woken up at the COB and realized just how much of a waste of time missionary work really is. Maybe this is the beginning of something new for other areas.

When I was out in the early 70's, it was forbidden for mish'es to spend any more than an hour DA (dinner appt) with a member and not to spend any time 'fellowshipping' inactives etc.

Now all of that has changed, and from what I hear, the mishes spend MOST of their time with members.


I see in the stats that there were about 200K convert baptisms this year. This is about what there was in the mid 70's...with about a 20% retention rate. I've heard that the rate has even gone down from those days.

I'm a poster sign for the church. People ask if I'm LDS, I say formerly. They ask why "formerly," I say: Proposition 8. Funny thing is they grin and say "good for you."