So I am thinking, if you were an average 18-19 year old guy/girl and here you were thinking about going on this "marvelous, inspired" mission, maybe to some far off exotic place, meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, and now that "dream" has been turned into sitting in a ward building, giving tours and basically "selling" the church online and on the phone all while having every phone call and keystroke watched. They are spied on tele/online marketers. How many prospective mishies are going to say "No thanks, I'm going to college. College sounds way more fun and exciting and no one is spying on me constantly".

I don't think most Mormon teenagers about to go on a mission have thought about the experience that in depth. Probably most of them will go because they've been told since they were a toddler that it's God's will and that it is a kind of reward to sacrifice two years of your life to spread the Gospel.

Plus you've got the familial pressure, the pressure from friends, and the fact that very few TBM girls will date a guy unless he is an RM. Add to that how cognitive dissonance actually causes people to talk themselves into a cause with more firmness when they have less of a reward for what they do, and the church may actually succeed in cementing more loyalty from many of these young people.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2013 09:07PM by sstone.

If they don't tract, what's the point of travelling across the world to sit at a computer? Local members could do that and then you wouldn't even need missionaries.

Or they will just have the Missionaries stay home and serve in their own local wards. Basically being free manual labor and free marketing. Kind of like the Centennial Park group of polygamists.

They will all go for language and salesmanship training at the
MTC and they they will be shipped off to the Church's multi-
national call center in India.

Well you see Greyfort, if they don't move them away from home they can't isolate them and brainwash them as easily.

If they don't need them for tracting they'll find another use for them. I hear the church is in need of janitors.....

OR, maybe they'll plug them into a big machine and use their bodies to generate electricity (I saw it in a movie once)!!!!

Mr. Condom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> OR, maybe they'll plug them into a big machine and
> use their bodies to generate electricity (I saw it
> in a movie once)!!!!

chortle...

Can you imagine the letters home?

"Hi...I'm in Delaware."

If you look carefully, you will see (in the church magazines) that the church is teaching young people from Day One that the only point to their existence is to be a missionary. These messages will ensure that a very large percentage of 18 year olds will have no reservations whatsoever about doing whatever the church leaders tell them to do.

It is so sad. I think of many of the native american "religions", in which young people are almost required to do things like the sweat lodge experience and walkabout, the sole purpose of which is to let the young person figure out his own personal identity as he or she transitions from child to adult. Mormonism more and more is denying this psychic transformation in its relentless drive to force its members into a state of perpetual infantilism.

slskipper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> If you look carefully, you will see (in the church
> magazines) that the church is teaching young
> people from Day One that the only point to their
> existence is to be a missionary.

Yep, that's the reason for lowering the missionary age. To
eliminate that year between high school graduation and their
mission call when they are away from home and at college
learning the world is a lot different than they were taught.

I was gung ho to go on my mission when I left high school, but
after a year of college (one semester of it spent living in a
Mormon frat with RMs) I decided against it. My ability to
think as a Mormon was based on shuffling stock LDS phrases and
arguments around in my brain. At college I actually got to
try some of these on actual people. I was amazed at how
easily the "unanswerable" questions I had learned growing up
got answered. I felt like a real schmuck for not thinking of
that myself before hand.

It took me another 12-13 years to allow myself to seriously
consider that the Church wasn't true, and then BAM!, it was
excruciatingly obvious.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2013 01:32AM by baura.

People are often very driven by the desire for social status in their family and community, and will often work hard and spend lots of money for status (like getting perfect house/car for show). With this change, missionary work sounds a lot more boring and a lot less heroic, which might decrease the status rewards from going, thereby creating less incentive. Does it really impress a girl to say "I did missionary work on the Internet all day and wore out my fingers" compared to "I went tracting in the harsh heat all day, got mugged once, and wore out two shoes" ?