25-08-2005, 11:27 AM
This article is written for the Salt Lake Tribune (a mainstream Utah newspaper) by an LDS (Mormon) columnist. His articles inevitably come with a Christian slant (from a Mormon perspective) as they are written for a largely Mormon audience and are pretty good. I will share a few here and hope that you will enjoy them as much as I do.
Playing numbers game with religion is risky
By Robert Kirby
Thirty years ago, I trudged around South America on an LDS mission. Dogs bit me, I wrecked bikes, caught all sorts of intestinal parasites and baptized 20 people.
I say "baptized" rather than "converted" because that's what my companions and I did. We gave people a brief idea of the doctrine and then made the more agreeable ones members of the church. The converting part was up to them.
Twenty people sounds like a lot considering that some LDS missionaries only manage one or two. Unlike Europe and the Pacific Rim, South America was considered an "easy" mission.
But if the South American baptism rate is higher than other areas, so, too, is the inactivity rate. Today, less than 30 percent of Mormons in South America actually go to church or even still consider themselves members.
So, I'm guessing that only three or four of my baptisms are still active participants in the church. Doesn't surprise me considering that some of them stopped going to church the day after they were baptized.
On the other hand, I also watched the church help make a functional human being out of a guy we found passed out in a ditch, a transformation that stunned the entire village.
Read what you will into either case. My own take is that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Never was it entirely up to me. There was always something about it that couldn't be measured, although not for the lack of trying.
For two years my life centered on statistics - people talked to, hours worked, lessons taught, people baptized. I measured my efforts by the minute and by the word, wrote it all down and sent it in.
In fairness to the church, it's probably not a good idea to turn a bunch of kids loose in a strange land without making them somehow accountable. I'm just not sure stressing the importance of numbers does that. In many cases it had the opposite effect.
Equating correct behavior with statistics is dangerous, mainly because it's possible to make a set of numbers say anything. Worse, you'll start believing it. And some of us did.
We did it because good missionaries got good stats. Good stats meant you were working hard. Hard work equaled building up the kingdom of God on Earth.
Except when it didn't.
I followed some of the real stat-getters in our mission and found that like most things in life, quantity rarely makes up for quality. The big numbers often amounted to a lot of empty pews.
Today, it's pressure to finish 100 percent of home-teaching visits, pay 10 percent tithing and get to all the meetings, as if everything will be fine if the numbers are there. Small wonder that God is so often viewed as a stern accountant.
Personally, I think religion is at its best when it goes where it can't be measured. Make it a business and pretty soon people become mere ciphers. Faith isn't something you can tally in a column or measure on a bar chart.
Statistics probably have a place in the world of religion, but they can also blind us to the entire point: understanding what causes some to wander away and others to finally get out of a ditch.
http://www.sltrib.com/kirby/ci_2939595
Playing numbers game with religion is risky
By Robert Kirby
Thirty years ago, I trudged around South America on an LDS mission. Dogs bit me, I wrecked bikes, caught all sorts of intestinal parasites and baptized 20 people.
I say "baptized" rather than "converted" because that's what my companions and I did. We gave people a brief idea of the doctrine and then made the more agreeable ones members of the church. The converting part was up to them.
Twenty people sounds like a lot considering that some LDS missionaries only manage one or two. Unlike Europe and the Pacific Rim, South America was considered an "easy" mission.
But if the South American baptism rate is higher than other areas, so, too, is the inactivity rate. Today, less than 30 percent of Mormons in South America actually go to church or even still consider themselves members.
So, I'm guessing that only three or four of my baptisms are still active participants in the church. Doesn't surprise me considering that some of them stopped going to church the day after they were baptized.
On the other hand, I also watched the church help make a functional human being out of a guy we found passed out in a ditch, a transformation that stunned the entire village.
Read what you will into either case. My own take is that sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. Never was it entirely up to me. There was always something about it that couldn't be measured, although not for the lack of trying.
For two years my life centered on statistics - people talked to, hours worked, lessons taught, people baptized. I measured my efforts by the minute and by the word, wrote it all down and sent it in.
In fairness to the church, it's probably not a good idea to turn a bunch of kids loose in a strange land without making them somehow accountable. I'm just not sure stressing the importance of numbers does that. In many cases it had the opposite effect.
Equating correct behavior with statistics is dangerous, mainly because it's possible to make a set of numbers say anything. Worse, you'll start believing it. And some of us did.
We did it because good missionaries got good stats. Good stats meant you were working hard. Hard work equaled building up the kingdom of God on Earth.
Except when it didn't.
I followed some of the real stat-getters in our mission and found that like most things in life, quantity rarely makes up for quality. The big numbers often amounted to a lot of empty pews.
Today, it's pressure to finish 100 percent of home-teaching visits, pay 10 percent tithing and get to all the meetings, as if everything will be fine if the numbers are there. Small wonder that God is so often viewed as a stern accountant.
Personally, I think religion is at its best when it goes where it can't be measured. Make it a business and pretty soon people become mere ciphers. Faith isn't something you can tally in a column or measure on a bar chart.
Statistics probably have a place in the world of religion, but they can also blind us to the entire point: understanding what causes some to wander away and others to finally get out of a ditch.
http://www.sltrib.com/kirby/ci_2939595