PROVO, Utah — Teaching repentance and baptizing converts is the fundamental duty of those involved in missionary work, and other endeavors must not divert attention from it, Elder Dallin H. Oaks admonished Jan. 11.
Speaking at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in Salt Lake City, Elder Oaks spoke to a group of new missionary training center and visitors’ center directors and their companions, capping a four-day seminar in Provo and Salt Lake City. Earlier addresses from other General Authorities were reported in last week’s Church News edition and on the Church News website.
Elder Oaks, then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, spoke three days before being set apart as first counselor in the First Presidency.
“We have now completed the extraordinary expenditures of time required to accommodate the large variations in the numbers of missionaries that occurred after the age for missionary service was reduced,” Elder Oaks noted. “We are now able to increase our focus on teaching repentance and baptizing converts. That is the doctrinal purpose of missionary work: teaching repentance and baptizing converts to the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Helping every missionary become more fully converted to the Lord and assisting priesthood leaders in rescuing the less active are important, Elder Oaks said, but must not detract from the fundamental missionary responsibility as outlined in Matthew 28:19.
Now that’s a significant shift in policy. For the previous five years, Mission Presidents have been exhorted that the conversion of the missionary is the primary role of a mission, and that convert baptisms are a bi-product of that.
“We want to help missionaries focus on their purpose and on more effective use of Preach My Gospel and the Book of Mormon so that more investigators repent and are baptized, more wards are strengthened, and more missionaries return home from their missions deeply converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he said.
So the age reduction didn’t work then, in fact this is an admission that investigator baptisms and missionary self-conversions are a bit of a problem.
The best way to have better qualified missionaries is to not send those with difficulties...no sh1t Sherlock....Elder Oaks focused on ways to teach repentance and baptize converts such as the invitation to be baptized and working for better-qualified missionaries.
He posed the question of when in the teaching process the invitation to be baptized should be given to an investigator.
“Not too soon, but not too late!” was his response. Further instruction on that subject will be forthcoming, he said.
Regarding having better qualified missionaries, he said there are several ways to seek that objective, some long-term and some short-term.
“The most promising short-term effort is to reduce the significant number of missionaries who are released early,” he said. “By delaying calls for some missionary candidates who might have unusual difficulties serving in their current circumstances, we avoid taxing the effectiveness of their companions and the time of their mission presidents.”
How come those difficulties are not spotted during the personal inspiration of the Apostle who assigns each individual missionary? How do they slip through that Apostolic net?If an insufficiently ready missionary does come to a missionary training center, the above problems can be avoided “by detecting his or her problem as soon as possible and, if he or she is to be released, helping them to return home as early as possible in their service” Elder Oaks added. “It is very important for missionary training center presidents and their companions to understand what we are trying to do in this new effort.”
So the Church has been sending missionaries out to serve who aren’t properly qualified.Some early releases, such as for injuries or transgressions in the mission field, cannot be reduced significantly by actions taken beforehand, he acknowledged. “But those kinds of early releases are a small proportion of the total.
“Most of the causes for early releases, such as medical and emotional, belated confessions, and the insistence of the missionary, can be avoided if they are identified and worked through before the missionary papers are submitted.”
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/865 ... dents.html
From a lack of facilities, to nonsensical projections and a total lack of preparedness, the reduction in age of missionaries has got to be one of the biggest self-inflicted gaffs Church Leadership has ever presided over.
Wait, what? Apostles are assigning Missionaries who need saving at the MTC?“Your responsibility is not only to teach, but also to save the missionaries who come to your MTCs,” he said.
You didn’t see that coming and prepare for it? Seriously?He admonished the new MTC couples to help the missionaries make the difficult transition from home to the mission field, noting that the difference in age eligibility has caused some transition pains.
Way to drive a wedge between the missionaries and the members.“Don’t let members use you or your missionaries as conduits or authorities to answer doctrinal questions,” he said. “This is not your assignment.”
With Oaks sending out clear, strong messages like these about taking away those prospective missionaries that are less than 100% in some way, is going to reduce the numbers of serving missionaries even further.
