Posted by:
Erick
(
)
Date: March 11, 2013 12:36PM
Jeeze Louise, sometimes the paranoia we create for ourselves get's over the top. First off, unless you have "good reason" to believe otherwise or there is some inherent risk associated with an encounter, when a person introduces themselves to you, it's good policy to just accept what they are telling you. He apparently put up little pretenses about his identity.
Is it possible that there is a coincidence between this visit and the timing of your resignation? Absolutely! Is it Gestapo tactics? Most likely not!! First off, who are you, that the Church would go to the expense and effort of doing secret police work on you in this fashion? What would the Church have to gain by doing such a thing? Even more important, eve if we assume that there were possible gains, what would be the risk to the Church to start behaving in this way(Gestapo policing)?? It would be a huge risk to the Church to start doing this.
So....if you're going to try and read into it like this, what other possibile explanations can we concieve of? I have a pretty good business background, and I tend to see a lot of the Church's behavior through that lense. Everybody knows that Church's in general are struggling to maintain membership growth, and Mormonism is no exception. If I were in the Church's position, I would start doing some research on this problem to see what I could learn. In this case I would spend the money to send COB employees into the field to meet with people who have left recently, simply to find out all I could about these people. Demographics, issues, attitudes (could they ever come back), etc. I would identify at least a dozen data points that could be analyzed, in order to see how the problem could be resolved on an aggregate scale. In other words, the Church isn't interested in YOU personally, rather they are interested in large numbers, and you were simply included in the sample that is being collected to measure the larger population of dissaffected Mormons!
Here is what this would mean. Mormonism will be making some drastic changes to it's product over the next several years. If they following any kind of common methodology for product/market improvement, then they currently have adopted some kind of formal problem statement, accepted the need to change (even more things), and are currently in the measure and analyze stage. Guessing out loud, we will probably see more experimental behavior like this, and other things (the I'm a Mormon campaign) over the next five to ten years, as they gather information and test new ideas. The Mormon identity will appear more confused during that time. After that, ie, after they have gathered data and tested ideas, you will see Mormonism start to focus into a narrower and better defined identity. That identity will be different in many way's from the Mormonism we are all familiar with. My personal guess is that the theology will become less important, and Joseph Smith, The Book of Mormon, etc, will all become idealized artifacts of Mormon heritage with little importance in Mormon lifestyle and practice.