I have heard from multiple Stake and Ward leadership contacts in Utah and California that mission length for boys will be dropped to 18 months for boy and girls will be able to leave at age 18. To be announced at conference. Also heard that some mission calls are being issued without an end date saying it will be determined at a future date. Anyone else hearing this?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2019 12:06AM by camjom.

My mission (84-85) was only 18 months. Rumor was that the shortened service time was due to the bad economy.

Deja vu, that was me 81-83.

Girls have long been 18 months, now boys? Better watch it, this equality business might bet out of control!

Seems like they tried that once and it didn't work out very well.

At this point it looks like the "Brethren" are just making changes for the sake of making changes so that it will look like they're working hard and deserving their stipends, expense accounts and subsidized housing, along with all the adulation, praise and worship.

What's next? Another change in the meeting schedules? A First Presidency pronouncement concerning appropriate colors for men's socks? A restoration of the Five Points of Fellowship? A new "every member a missionary" campaign?

If they go to 18-month missions for the foreign language missions, it's going to be a disaster. (Well, it already is. But it will be a worse disaster.) For the harder languages, you'll just have clueless kids fresh out of high school spending a year and a half not understanding what people are saying to them, while simultaneously being unable to say anything comprehensible to anyone but their English-speaking companions. That'll be fantastic!

I think it would be better to just scrap the whole preaching, evangelizing and proselyting mission template and replace it with a real service-oriented mission. Do good works that make a real difference and people who see that will think that the Church is a fantastic organization (even if it really isn't in many ways).

If they did that, they could reduce the mission time to 1 year easily.

Project ideas:

Creating, staffing and supplying homeless shelters

Cleaning up polluted bodies of water, picking up trash, learn how to filter out pollutants...and then filter out pollutants.

Preserving and maintaining historical sites.

Refurbishing old bicycles and supplying them to people who can use them.

Forest fire prevention work (making fire breaks, removing built up tinder in strategic locations, helping with controlled burns, etc.)

Building, maintaining, repairing water-supply systems (learn how to check water purity levels, troubleshoot pollutant sources, etc., teach filtration technology to villages, towns, etc.)

Big Brother type activities. Devote resources to helping young kids have opportunities to be mentored in school studies and fun activities (camping, sports, hiking, photography, etc.) under good supervision.

Just imagine if the term "Mormon missionary" became automatically associated in people's minds with all kinds of real-world beneficial services similar to the examples listed above. The PR benefit for the Church would be enormous. As it is now, the term "Mormon missionary" (or "Church of Jesus Christ Missionary" (Yeah, right, Nelson)) is associated with weird sets of companions with matching white shirts and name tags who go around trying to persuade people that if they look at the pages of the weird Book of Mormon and pray about it, the Holy Ghost will tell them it's true. That hasn't been working for a long, long, long time.

That's like getting a perfect 10 in gymnastics.

What a marvelous idea! Turning out missionaries who actually DO something, learn skills that will be useful in real life, possibly orienting the young people towards socio-economic issues.

Well done, Wally!!

Catnip, imagine a world where no one associated mormons with annoying white-shirted boys endlessly knocking on doors!!!

Could it happen?

tremendously too.

For each program that requires advanced technological/scientific proficiency or high skill levels, the Church would need to hire at least a few members to manage each of the programs in every region or district where the program is implemented (in order to teach the necessary skills and knowledge to the young service missionaries and provide proper supervision).

This in turn would motivate many young LDS kids to go into the relevant fields of study. ("Wait! What? I can learn important skills/knowledge in biochemistry (for example) AND get a full-time job with the church applying that knowledge AND do something that is intrinsically important like improving access to clean water, cleaning up pollutants, etc.? Sign me up!")

I wouldn't particularly agree that working for the church is a great thing. But as long as there are going to be TBMs who love the church, it would be great to channel that motivation into as many constructive/productive pursuits as possible.

Then, in the long term, the creation of a pool in the church of highly experienced, knowledgeable and skilled managers responsible for highly practical and beneficial programs (whether in medicine, environmental clean-up, agriculture, shelter construction, etc.) would elevate the overall social/human capital resources available within the church by several orders of magnitude. It would be the foundation of a Mormon renaissance of sorts.

.....But all that would require a certain amount of enlightened self-interest on the part of the top leaders. Currently I don't see that in many (if any) of the top leader guys. Bednar would probably never go for anything like that (probably wouldn't even comprehend it). Someone like Uchtdorf? Maybe...

Enlightenment doesn’t include the light shining from their bung holes?

Back in the 1960s, foreign missions were THIRTY months, believe it or not. The Church isn't dumb enough to return to those days.

I'm sorry, I can't believe it!

I served (hahahahahaha!) for four months at the LTM and then spent 23 months in-country. It was supposed to have been three months at the LTM and 24 months in-country. So the plan was 27 months total.

Which is better than the 36 months prior to the LTM, when "Hard Language" foreign missions expected you to use the first 12 months become fluent.

One thing they can do to improve quickened fluency is to give a greenie to a non-English speaking trainer.

As an aside, I've heard tales of missionaries not from the US making life hard for US elders.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm sorry, I can't believe it!
>
> I served (hahahahahaha!) for four months at the
> LTM and then spent 23 months in-country. It was
> supposed to have been three months at the LTM and
> 24 months in-country. So the plan was 27 months
> total.
>
> Which is better than the 36 months prior to the
> LTM, when "Hard Language" foreign missions
> expected you to use the first 12 months become
> fluent.
>
> One thing they can do to improve quickened fluency
> is to give a greenie to a non-English speaking
> trainer.
>
> As an aside, I've heard tales of missionaries not
> from the US making life hard for US elders.

The church doesn't care. They figure shortening the mission length will encourage more young people to go on missions. They want to convert the missionary more than they want the missionary to convert others. It's all about keeping the 18-20 year olds in the church. They don't care if you learn a foreign language proficiently.

If the church was smart they would use their young missionaries as service ambassadors. Put them to work helping in all sorts of charity projects. It would be better public relations than cold calling on door steps or shaking down the members for contacts.

they should stop sending the youngsters out on proselyting missions altogether (and instead have them do service missions along the lines outlined above).

For the evangelical side of things they should only call maybe a dozen or so, full-time, paid missionaries (including couples) in callings that are virtually junior or quasi-general authority positions.

They should be adults in their late twenties (at the youngest) and the mission terms can be indefinite (since it is a paid position and full-time occupation).

With those incentives (living wages, expenses, etc) in place, the Church can vet, screen and be fussy about qualification. For foreign missions, full fluency and competency in the relevant language is just one of many requirements. They can screen candidates based on education, theological studies and the whole nine yards. One couple called to such a position with excellent skills, motivation, etc. would probably be more effective as missionaries for any given region than 50 young kids just transiting through as immature, ignorant kids fresh out of high school. The "professional" missionaries would know who to focus on. They wouldn't waste their time baptizing dozens of high-school kids who obviously have no commitment to the Church. But this kind of thing would only be helpful to the Church if it is really serious about evangelical work. If it's just about institutionalizing a rite of passage for young LDS men, then all bets are off. (But I think the rite of passage no longer works in any case. Many of the young missionaries are having their minds blown WHILE ON THEIR MISSIONS with regard to the bogusness of the Church.)

Wally Prince Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> For the evangelical side of things they should
> only call maybe a dozen or so, full-time, paid
> missionaries (including couples) in callings that
> are virtually junior or quasi-general authority
> positions.
>
In this, I'm referring to a dozen or so of such full-time, mature, well-trained, well-educated and paid (with a living wage) missionaries per each of the current missions. Just a dozen of such missionaries would probably be much more productive than the hundreds of young, immature, untrained, non-fluent (in language) missionaries that currently serve in each such mission.

We learned from living in Kinshasa, DR Congo (where we worked for US government) that the white senior so-called "missionaries" had no viable qualifications--couldn't speak either French or Lingala, knew nothing of the political or economical situation, had no sense of self-protection (illustrated by when they would go outside and take videos of military conflicts that included soldiers firing rocket propelled grenades, AJ-47's, and such), and brought nothing to the table in terms of skills that were helpful to the people-- were pretty worthless. They were only checking a box, and even worse, were not being good grand parents.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2019 05:51PM by cludgie.

an effective program, they have to give up on the idea that they can get any significant results from dropping clueless, unpaid, unqualified volunteers in various places around the world for a couple of years at a time, while also shuffling them around from place to place during that short mission period.

They generally need to be older than the 18-year olds that they're sending out now. But that alone is not sufficient. The missionaries should be well-trained, experts at what they're doing...and that most likely will require an approach in which the "missionary position" becomes a full-time, paid occupation and hiring can be quite discriminatory (i.e. filtering out unqualified, uneducated people). The whole template that they're currently using needs to be scrapped.

Nelson is licking his lighted pen as we speak. And rustling his yellow notepad. Wendy is snoring. Another revelation from the lips of God. Yawwwwwn

Not just any god, the mormon god: YaMo ....

Mormon missionaries doing Humanism ? Bah Humbug ! It would cost LD$ Inc money. Won't happen.

Stop giving them GOOD ideas.

notmo

I was in the first group that entered the MTC when missions went back to two years. Haha! Got to love the church man. Especially the current prophet. They just change things to change things.

Missions are a complete waste of time. They don't bring in any new converts with the exception of Africa. The only reason the church sends those kids out is their statistics show returned missionaries tend to stay in the church while those who don't serve missions leave the church.

18-20 are the years where people make the decision whether they are going to continue in the church or leave. The church basically keeps you captive to brainwash you and get you married off to another church member. It's pretty sick when you realize how they toy with people's lives.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The only reason the church sends those
> kids out is their statistics show returned
> missionaries tend to stay in the church while
> those who don't serve missions leave the church.
>
I have no doubt that their statistics show something like that. But the nature of such statistics would render them inherently unreliable for the simple reason that there is manifest selection bias at work. No control group is possible. Young people who volunteer to go on missions will inevitably be more committed and more loyal to the church institution and will in almost all cases have a more favorable opinion of the church than those young people who don't serve missions for whatever reason. (There may be a few exceptions due to odd/anomalous circumstances, but they would be statistically insignificant.)

In my experience, missions are often where hard-core TBM youngsters go to have their minds blown by facts and opposition that they never encountered when they were living relatively sheltered lives in the bosom of Zion or the bubble of church friends and family. Many return from their missions much more jaded, cynical and full of doubts than they were at the start of their mission. (I am a prime example of that myself.)

It could easily be the case that they would have better retention rates from service missions, and possibly would even get more interest from the cohort that would not have been interested in serving on a proselyting mission. But they haven't tried anything like that in any serious way yet, so impossible to know for certain at present.

I did a full time service mission due to medical concerns, and yeah it just strengthened my indoctrination. It wasn't until after another two years at BYU where I met a professor and students who encouraged me to question things and seek knowledge that I really took that step to leave the church and transfer to a state school (P.S. I bet that awesome professor will leave once they find a better gig).

It's crazy to think... I actually was inspired by the rejection I faced from BYU social life and the truth that seeped between the indoctrination to become an ex-mo and see that there is an underground culture of Mormons-in-name-only at BYU. They are only there to keep academic eligibility in a corrupt system, and cannot be their true selves - whether its their LGBT identity, or just plain differences in religious thought.

My experience at BYU was there were kids who's parents forced them to go there and they didn't want to be there. Mostly rich kids addicted to daddy's money. So yeah there is that element at BYU.

Then there is another element in the Salt Lake/Provo area. Married couples living off daddy. They are just as bad. Daddy owns some properties in Utah and he has their kids manage them. Daddy likes to see the kids in the temple and active. The kids have no real testimony and don't really like church but they like daddy's money. So they party it up and are jack Mormons. Some are especially bad and get into swinging groups and such. This was going on in Lehi and Draper when we lived down there. Crazy stuff

Where you have the greatest religious oppression you will have the greatest rebellion. Heck it's why people from Saudi Arabia act horrible when they are in other countries. They have some freedom and they inhale the forbidden fruit as hard as they can.

Wally Prince Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> In my experience, missions are often where
> hard-core TBM youngsters go to have their minds
> blown by facts and opposition that they never
> encountered when they were living relatively
> sheltered lives in the bosom of Zion or the bubble
> of church friends and family. Many return from
> their missions much more jaded, cynical and full
> of doubts than they were at the start of their
> mission. (I am a prime example of that myself.)
>

I couldn't agree more. I saw many examples of normal people going off into the deep end. I watched an elder go berserk over a discussion about the prophet's auto-pen signature in our proselytizing permit (white-bible). This elder insisted that ETB had personally signed everyone's permit and a bunch of us argued that it was a machine that signed them. The elder punched an elder in the jaw and then threatened the rest of us to disagree with him.

I saw more rage and anger (with some physical violence) in the mission field than four years of high school football. I had no idea that so many were becoming ill and it was a church driven mission that was causing many of them to suffer a breakdown.

not my companion, but one of 4 other missionaries living in a 6-missionary apartment I was in for a while.

One evening, he literally started talking to himself and had a breakdown of some sort.

It was along the lines of: "The Ten Commandments say thou shalt not kill. But how many times have I killed? How many times have all of you killed. We kill cows, fish, insects, plants. If we don't kill we die. What does God want from me?? Why won't he tell me?? I'm not worthy because I sin, but how can I stop sinning if God won't give me understanding??"

And on and on until he was curled up on the floor crying.

We asked his companion what brought the whole thing on and he said that some investigator had started asking some hard questions about the Bible and the Ten Commandments and this poor elder couldn't think of any good answers and, on the way back to the apartment, started beating himself up for not being worthy to have inspiration when it was needed.

I moved out of that apartment shortly after and don't know what happened to the poor guy subsequently. I hope he regained his sanity and left the Morg.

I had already been out 21 months in 1982 when word came down that missions were being shortened from 24 to 18 months. Everyone who had 18+ months under their belt could opt to leave at the next transfer or any subsequent transfer. Quite a few (surprise surprise) decided to leave ASAP. I decided instead to leave after 23 months and treat my last two months as a vacation. I did no missionary work and didn't even pretend to care. I figured that I was already on overtime and guaranteed an "honorable" release, and what could they do to me, send me home?

Spent those two months sightseeing, tossing footballs in the park with my companion, etc. during the day, and composing my homecoming talk in the evenings. (That was when the new RM had the entire sac meeting to report. No other speakers, so it was just me up there for 45-50 minutes or so. Missionary homecomings were a big deal then, so the place was packed that Sunday.)

My understanding was that it was changed back to 24 months when the TBM-RMs complained that the last six months were when they were most effective, finally having gained some command of their language and comfortable enough talking to random people about the church.

If they cut back again, missionary effectiveness will tank to even more abysmal levels than now, not only because of the reason given above, but also because missionaries will be leaving the field at 19 as opposed to 21 back in the day. Those 2 years, from 19 to 21, can see decent growth in a person's maturity levels, even among dumb elders, and the missions won't get even that modest benefit.

logged out today, nli Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> My understanding was that it was changed back to
> 24 months when the TBM-RMs complained that the
> last six months were when they were most
> effective, finally having gained some command of
> their language and comfortable enough talking to
> random people about the church.
>
For the difficult foreign languages, this is even more critical than most people think. Often the only way things are even remotely functional is because senior companions have enough language skill (often barely) to keep things on track. And most often, with a few exceptions, it's only in the last 8 to 6 months that they're good enough to be functional. Much of the practical real-world language skills that the junior missionaries get comes from their senior companions.

For most, the general pattern for missions that have relatively difficult languages is something like this, starting from the date of arrival in the mission:

1 ~ 6 months: Virtually useless for any significant communication. Pronunciation is atrocious. Occasionally gets through a memorized discussion with some shreds of dignity for not having completely mangled everything. At around 6 months, capable of occasionally surprising people with complete sentences that are actually understandable.

7 ~ 12 months: Occasionally able to keep up with a conversation for more than 5 minutes and actually, on a few occasions, make coherent responses based on understanding the questions.

13 ~ 18 months: Getting to the point where real conversations on moderately complex subjects are possible, as long as native speakers are consciously simplifying things and carefully enunciating...and have patience to repeat things and explain idioms or vocabulary words that obviously went over the head of the missionary the first time.

19 ~ 24 months: This is the time period when once in a while the missionary actually feels fluent. Finally, there's a decent command of vocabulary, idiomatic expressions, local slang and dialect. Joking and humor is possible. Still a lot of gaps and complete misses. But communication generally is not a frustrating ordeal. This is when the experienced senior missionary has the most to teach the junior missionaries. Lots of shortcuts. Many have kept a notebook of interesting phrases and expressions that impress the local native speakers.

Cutting that last 6 months off would be ridiculously counterproductive as far as language proficiency goes. It would be like a medical university deciding to eliminate from teaching positions all instructors and professors who have more than 3 years of real-world/practical experience in their area of specialty.

You can still go through the motions, but at a much diminished level of competency.

The first part of my mission was absolute hell. Horrible companion. Crappy area. The mission president was such a jerk.

The last part of my mission was great. Laid back, cool mission president (the first one would make anyone look good). We worked in the office and lived in a very nice neighborhood. My last three months were cake.

A lot easier than being home where I would have to go to a real job or be in school. Missions can be pure hell or they can be the biggest goof off time you will ever experience.

I heard about this from a contact (who still thinks I'm active lol). It will be interesting to see, but like most changes in Mormon, Inc., it comes short of the actual changes needed to end decades of abuses and homophobia.

always Always ALWAYS around the edges of 'the gospel'!

They've diluted / buried most of the heavy-duty stuff, instead they placate the masses with trivia.

Sheesh, Mormons!

If the church is shortening the length of missions, it must be due to the increasing number of early return missionaries. If I were in church leadership (ha!) this is what I would consider: Give young people a choice of serving a domestic mission of one year, or a foreign mission of two years. Make it clear that both will be regarded honorably. For missionaries in third world countries who are paid by the church, keep the mission at two years or even longer.

That way kids who really don't want to serve a mission know that it would be time limited. Kids who really want to go overseas would be assured of doing so. You could even let those kids rank which regions of the world most appeal to them.

If it can be shortened to 18 months, why not to one month? Why not to 3 months (summer vacation) and not disrupt anybody's school or life?

Reading your quick observation resulted in ghawd revealing to me that ALL mormons between 18 and 20 must go online one hour a day,two hours on Sunday to preach the gospel. What an amazing feat that would be!

Facebook, reddit, pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, grindr, etc.! It's what's sorely lacking on the internet, a call to mormon Jesus, constant and relentless.

elderolddog Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Reading your quick observation resulted in ghawd
> revealing to me that ALL mormons between 18 and 20
> must go online one hour a day....

Would those hours count towards Mission time, in that, by the time they graduated high school, they wouldn't have to go on a mission at all, because their work would already be done (online)?

No uniforms, no uncomfortable foreign postings, no door-knocking...it's a good thing!

I genuinely believe that a pure service-oriented mission would lead to an increase in coverts.

Most of the converts (not to say there are many) in my local ward are recent immigrants who took the free English lessons provided by members and missionaries.

levantlurker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> recent immigrants who took the free English lessons provided by members and missionaries.

Funny! With now 25% of all housing in the US owned by the foreign-born, their door-knocking success rate will keep climbing! At least till they master the language.

32.74% of all statistics are completely made up. My stat qualifies, as does yours. :)

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 32.74% of all statistics are completely made up.
> My stat qualifies, as does yours. :)

Brother, it came from the New York Times in an article which I am sure you can google if you have an interest. I don’t claim it as mine!

I do think it’s charming that the missionaries are helping immigrants learn English even if inadvertently.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2019 12:54AM by mel.

While meeting today with my son, he also mentioned this rumor...

By the way, how comes when someone asks a question here (like in this post) maybe 1 out 20 people really answer the question? the rest usually share opinions and stories :)

someone like you arrives with an answer. ;o)

Godzilla Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> opinions and stories :)

And comments... are the best part!!!!! :)

I heard the same rumor last week. I wonder if LDS Inc. purposely leaks information to get people interested. Maybe they figure that more people will tune in to conference to see if the rumors are true.

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

It is widely felt that the male age was dropped to 18 because too many were dropping the church when they left HS.

I wonder if the women's age is being dropped for the exact same reason.

As for cutting to 18 months, I think it is attempt to get more youth to go and more to stick it out until the end, mostly the latter.

>>I wonder if the women's age is being dropped for the exact same reason.

The church is having a significant number of early return missionaries. My best guess is that church leaders hope that increased numbers of female missionaries will make up for the loss.

I was always told that the reason for the higher age requirement for females was because the idea was that they should get married as soon as possible. They didn't want a mission to get in the way of that prime directive. But for those who turned out not to be "first round draft picks" figuratively speaking, the mission was a kind of consolation prize. They could marry Jesus and the Church for a year and a half and then, after sufficiently humbling themselves, get back into the marriage pool with more realistic expectations and a willingness to "settle" rather than holding out for some unattainable ideal.

Various people told me that in so many words. But I don't recall it being announced as an official explanation.

Wally Prince Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But for those who turned out not to be "first round draft picks" figuratively speaking,

This is simultaneously diabolical and hilarious.

Plus they get increased status of being an RM when they return so that increases their chance of marriage? Or does that only hold true for the male RMs?

I'm thinking that the current effectiveness of missionaries would be a huge factor (if this is up for consideration)` If they're making lots of convert baptisms, that would be experiences well worth bragging about, but if not, that would amount to 2 yrs of drudgery & disappointment, a sense of failure.

How about just scrapping the missions altogether and just tell the kids to go get a job. If every teenager would do that for 2 years and save all the money made, invested. We could eliminate poverty on this planet within 30 years. Everyone would be a millionaire.

Seems like a better idea than endless school or missions. But of course our culture looks down on the extended adolescence that have been customary since the Victorian times.

I meant our culture looks down on cutting short the extended adolescence teenagers have enjoyed since the victorian times.

18 months are long enough to mess up the minds of young people so they will have a hard time fitting back into college.

Moreover, an open-ended mission is like a prison sentence without a release date.
This much stress will not work out well for most kids.

The perrfect mission length, which couldn't be revealed fast enough, is "0" months.

LET THE TEENS BE TEENS!!!

Let older members WHO WANT TO SERVE MISSIONS be the MormonCult mishies and let the cult pay for them to serve.

Amen and amen.

presleynfactsrock Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The perrfect mission length, which couldn't be
> revealed fast enough, is "0" months.
>
Amen. :)

18 months ? Where have I heard this before ? Must be a new revelation from god or something.