Dissention is not sedition

Last Thursday night I attended the Stake Bishop's Training meeting for my branch president who had something else he needed to attend to. As his counselor, I went to understand the training being offered, return and report to him about it, and also to act as his representative at the meeting. It was attended by all of the branch presidents and bishops in the Stake, as well as the combined Stake Presidency.

A key focus of the meeting was on retention of converts. Our church has a problem keeping people active in the church after they are baptized and confirmed. There are many reasons why people might fall away from the church after they are baptized. These include:

1. Family pressure. Many times people become pariahs in their families after they join the church. My own grandparents reacted poorly when I told them I had joined the LDS church.

2. Temptation. Many times people are tempted after their conversion, and they fall. Instead of repenting and trying to avoid the temptation, they continue to yield to it, and for whatever reason, they choose to stop coming to church instead of struggling to live a Christlike life. Instead of seeking the Lord's help, they try to avoid the Lord by avoiding church. The number one cause of inactivity in my church is personal sin. Some people have problems with temptation, but still come to church. I know a man that can't quit smoking, but he keeps coming to church. He hasn't given up and decided that if he can't live one part of the law, that he won't live any of it. Far too often, people think that if they can't be perfect that they aren't welcome at church, or they feel guilty about going to church if they aren't perfect. They fail to realize that no one in the church is perfect, otherwise we wouldn't need church. I said church an awful lot in that paragraph.

3. Laziness. Some people do not make attendance a priority. They let themselves get out of the habit and then not going to church becomes the habit. Others say that they worship god on their own and don't need to come weekly to praise god. I believe that church attendance is a crucial and integral part of building one's testimony and strength in the Gospel. Your participation at church also can move someone else and help them. A comment you make in Sunday School might help someone with something they've been pondering or struggling with. Moroni (6:6) said it best, "And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray, and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls."

4. Lack of fellowship. Believe or not, sometimes people come to church and they do not feel welcome. For whatever reason this occurs, we must admit that it does, and make sure that when we introduce ourselves to people at church, that we truly befriend them. Part of being Christian is truly loving "your neighbor as yourself." That's a tall order as I love myself a lot. But, we need to make people feel welcome and like a brother or sister when they come to church. We should be glad they are there, and this attitude has to be felt by them, or they will not feel welcome and might not come back.

5. Not truly converted. Sadly sometimes people get baptized without having a true testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. There are any number of reasons for this:
A. They want the companionship they feel at church.
B. They befriend the missionaries and think that getting baptized will make their friends happy.
C. The missionaries pressure them into getting baptized before they are ready.
D. They join the church to gain access to its considerable welfare resources, not realizing that they will have to render service for the aid they receive.
E. Family pressure, as in when a spouse is a church member and wants the other to join. Same things for parents and offspring.
F. Any other number of reasons for joining that are not based off of a firm belief in and testimony of the truthfulness of the message being taught.

The New Orleans area, and especially my little branch has a particularly difficult time retaining new converts. In the meeting the question was asked why we couldn't retain members, and I voiced my opinion that I thought that we were given an impossible task since the missionaries insist on baptizing people who are obviously not ready. For non-LDS readers, the missionaries have authority over the people they teach until they are actually baptized. Once they are baptized they then become the ecclesiastical responsibility of the local priesthood leaders. Cases in point, the names have been omitted to protect these person's privacy:

1. A brother was intoxicated when he was actually baptized. I don't care what the missionaries said, he was drunk or high.
2. A sister who was married to someone else and living with another man when she was baptized. Her boyfriend moved out for a week, and the missionaries thought this was sufficient time for them to get baptized. People in love and involved in a sexual relationship don't just quit each other cold turkey. Had she gotten divorced and then married then the man, I could support her baptism after the fact. Assuming that someone will remain celibate in that situation is naivete.
3. A young man on probation for grand theft auto, came to church one time and they baptized him. He had no idea who Joseph Smith was, what the Book of Mormon was about. In less than a month he was in prison, not jail, but prison, for grand theft auto. 3rd strike as a juvenile got him 5 years. He was 14. For the record, people on probation are not allowed to get baptized. The missionaries never asked him.
4. A young man, also on probation, a known gang member, was baptized even though I told the elders that I could "smell sex" on him when he came to a youth activity before he was baptized and was already scheduled to get baptized in a few days. He stunk like he just gotten in on in the parking lot. He was 13. The missionaries had no idea what I was talking about. He would later smash his neighbor in the head with a brick over a Matchbox car. He had no idea about anything in the Gospel.
5. A man and woman living together. She refused to get married because she was on disability and her boyfriend has a great job, and if she got married she might lose her disability, which she didn't need anymore, btw. I told the elders (elders=missionaries) that we didn't really want people like that joining the church as she was clearly not "honest in her dealings with her fellow men" since she didn't want to get married because she would've lost money that she really wasn't entitled to in the first place. Katrina hit before they could get baptized.
6. A man was baptized who was a lifelong serious alcoholic. The missionaries thought that if he could go 7 days without drinking that would mean that he had stopped drinking forever.

I could go on and on. It does no one any good, especially the people baptized, to baptize someone who does not understand the gospel of Jesus Christ and the commitment required to live it. Maybe some of these people, at later points in their lives would be better suited to living the Gospel with the maturity that comes with age. Once they are baptized, they then are bound by a covenant to live like Christ. It is far easier to repent without having broken that covenant. Simply baptizing someone and saying that they are saved smacks of Protestant "grace" alone saves doctrines to which we do not subscribe, because as James said "Faith without works is dead."

I made my comments in that meeting, and the other bishops all looked at me incredulously. I got glares and someone passed me an apocryphal note where the prophet had said "No one in this church should ever say 'the missionaries ought not to have baptized that person.'" The quote was false and so is the idea that you cannot disagree with your priesthood leaders and yet still sustain their leadership. I have covenanted with God to dedicate my possessions, time, talents, and energy in his service, and if I were asked tomorrow to give all that I own to the church, I would do so without hesitation. After it was handed over however, I would like to be able to ask why and what it would be used for (which I'm sure would be done without my asking before I ever gave them anything). I should clarify that the church has never yet asked any members to give all they own to the church. We are only covenanted to do so should a need so great ever arise, and that's not every church member either, only those who have chosen to receive the Endowment ordinance and try to live a higher law--no one is ever compelled or even pressured to make the covenant.

I sustain my stake president. Whatever service he asks me to do, I will do. Yet, I need to feel that disagreeing with a policy still allows me to sustain him and not be seditious. The Stake President told me that we needed to focus on the aspects of missionary work over which we have authority, which is ex post facto. He never made me feel like I was being disrespectful or seditious; it was the others in the meeting that looked at me with that look in their eyes like "Who is this kid?" I am not afraid to question our policies, because a leader is only as good as the council he asks for and receives, from his congregation and from the Lord. We were asked our opinions, and I offered mine. We have been given the Gospel and told to preach it to all the world. We have not been given the details of how to best preach it, it is up to us to figure out how to best proceed, and this includes the occasional change in the program and change only comes about after we realize there is a problem, what is causing it, and what we can do to fix it.

The definition of too fast of growth is cancer.

My opinions are my own and are not official statements of doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I take full responsibility for them.