From the fake scripture file:

1 Among “active” Mormons there are three levels or degrees of Eagerness;
2 And in order to obtain the highest and most time consuming jobs in the church, an active Mormon must enter into this degree of activity [meaning fully “Eager” and not “Less Eager” or “InEager”];
3 And if he does not, he cannot obtain it.
4 He may enter into the other less demanding callings, but that is the end of his institutional progress; he cannot have a promotion.

I feel a new cross-stitched wall hanging coming on…

In the spirit of the 13th Article of Faith, I would like to spend some time looking at retention strategies in the Evangelical church, and especially those of Nelson Searcy as outlined in “Fusion: Turning First-Time Gests into Fully-Engaged Members of Your Church”
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Two years ago, we were told our ward was the top baptizing ward in the top baptizing stake in Texas. “Good Job!” we were told. “It’s because you are such a loving and welcoming ward.” We were told. We had 20+ baptisms. We retained 1 person.

As a very dedicated convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one of my main concerns is seeing those who come into the church, like I did, not make it. We have lived in the ward we are in currently for 6 years, and have seen 60+ baptisms in that time, but only 4 (1 family, 1 lone man) that I know of are still regularly active. My wife and I sometimes refer to this situation as the “catch and release” program of the church.

Now there are, upon reflection, many different reasons for this abysmal statistic, but none of this is because of baseball baptisms or faking records. In other words, missionaries are not breaking the rules.
In order to capture some of the issues I’ve seen, I’m going to break our wards missionary work out into the 4 typical areas of missionary work. All these issues are anecdotal, but that is all that’s available to me at the time.

1. Finding- A lot of the people who are found by the missionaries in our area are either transient people or disabled. A large percent of them don’t have cars. These people are typically not member referrals.

2. Teaching- Many people who are taught do not completely understand the expectations the church has for its members (callings, service, visiting other members, etc.) Few members are available to take time off to meet investigators.

3. Baptizing- In conjunction with #2, Many people who are baptized, have had trouble fulfilling their commitments prior to baptism, especially the commitment to attend church regularly.

4. Retaining- People have complained about not feeling welcome at our church. Converts typically do not last long enough that being endowed ever becomes a concern. Most new members are brought in solely on the missionaries’ efforts, not through member referral. Home Teaching is poor.

Above, I have tried to assemble a quick sketch of the symptoms of the problem we are having.

And so I ask you, are you having the same problems in your area? And if so, what do you think is the root cause? Ie- What are we doing wrong and how do we repent of it?

In part two, I will talk about ways I think missionary/retention efforts are being done in other churches, and ask if we should borrow any of their ideas. First I just wanted to see how typical my anecdotal concerns are.

On the one hand, it seems like Mormons are uniquely primed to accept the Documentary Hypothesis (DH) given that:

1. The Book of Mormon was compiled by a late redactor (Mormon) in a way that is at least superficially similar to what R is proported to have done in the DH.
2. There is a long tradition in Mormonism of suspecting that there were problems in the transmission of the Bible. Not just the problem of translation noted in the eighth article of faith, but the outright tampering alleged in 1 Ne 13.

On the other hand, the JST and the Pearl of Great Price make the DH threatening in ways that are uniquely Mormon, for example:

1. Moses 3:5 seems to support the theory that the two creation accounts of Genesis 1/2 are spiritual/physical respectively. This theory, of course, is contradicted by the DH and raises questions about the nature of the JST.
2. Abraham 4-5 crosses a P-J seem which is an odd thing for it to do if it was written by Abraham.

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The subject of loyalty came up over at a recent Bloggernacle Times thread. Jacob J stirred the pot a little by saying the following:

I think loyalty is vastly overrated. In all the cases when loyalty is cited as the motivation for virtuous behavior that same behavior could/should have been motivated by a less problematic virtue like fairmindedness or kindness. In plenty of cases, loyalty is a name for going against your better judgment to do something wrong, covering something up, or sticking up for a person who is in the wrong.

This comment was met with resistance but Jacob is entirely correct. Loyalty is a useful motivational tool to be sure but is hardly a virtue itself.
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Well, I had a few more things I could have done with the data, but time got the best of me. Rather than leave this undone though, here is the data.

Survey Data

Please feel free to use the data,do some analysis and post a link here to your findings.

Blake has a relatively new paper up on his site called “Atonement in Mormon Thought (a Response to Deidre Green Regarding the Compassion Theory of Atonement)”. As the title indicates, it is largely a response to a paper critiquing his compassion theory of atonement.†

Before making his response to Deidre Green, Blake does a quick survey of uniquely Mormon theories of atonement and offers some critiques of his own. He did me the honor of offering a short critique of my Dialogue paper The Divine-Infusion Theory: Rethinking the Atonement (which is now available online, thanks Kristine and Dialogue!). When I read what Blake had to say it got me thinking about how it came about and I wanted to make a short response here. (more…)

Continued from here.

For the full series click here.

So I was a little surprised by this set, though in hind sight, it makes perfect sense.
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The dominoes have officially begun to fall folks. Colorado just officially announced that it is leaving the Big12 to join the Pac10.

What is next? Nebraska is widely expected to leave the Big12 to join the Big10. If that happens then the Big12 is reportedly dead. The other big dogs (Texas and Oklahoma) don’t want to stay in the Big12 if Nebraska is gone. So there is a decent chance that most if the Big12 South will also defect to the Pac10 creating the Pac16.

If for some reason Nebraska stays in the Big12 that would be good news for both Utah and BYU. Utah is first in line to join CU in the Pac10 and BYU would surely be a top candidate to replace CU in the Big12. If the Big12 implodes things get messier because it would leave schools like Kansas and Kansas State without a conference at all. Maybe the Mountain West would be able to recruit them in that case.

Lots and lots of dominoes yet to fall folks. We’ll try to keep you updated in this thread as news goes comes in.

Alright I know posting on something like this is a cheap way to drive traffic and comments, but a recent conversation Kristen and I had with an LDS friend inspired me to post on the elephant (or two) in the room. What is the deal with so many Mormon women getting plastic surgery which normally includes but is not limited to adding big fake boobs? (Which they of course cover ever so modestly thereafter…)

I wish we had some data on this subject. What I don’t know is if Mormon women are more likely or less likely than their socio-economic counterparts to join in the plastic surgery trend. My guess is that income and region are far greater predictors of plastic surgery participation than religion. If that is true the question is: Should we be surprised about that? (more…)

Continued from here.

For those of you who are new, click here for the entire series.

Seeing as the more free of commentary on my charts I am, the less crazy the comments on the post are, I am going “commentary lite” on this one. (more…)