DCP: “Tracting was an abysmal waste of time.”

[Sophocles]

In my mission in the 1990s, "tracting" meant knocking doors. In fact, I thought the term derived from "tract housing" before I learned that tracts were pamphlets. (We had an aging supply of pamphlets but didn't hand them out much. I remember using pamphlets as bookmarks inserted to 3 Nephi 11 when leaving a Book of Mormon with someone, but otherwise I don't think we used them at all.)

That tracting is a waste of time is not a revealing admission, but the party line. The Missionary Guide and the Missionary Handbook both classified tracting as one of the "less effective" ways of finding people to teach. I remember a list of all the "Finding" methods in order of effectiveness, and it had referrals at the top (referrals from new converts, member referrals, media referrals) and tracting at the bottom. I think the only thing below tracting was street contacting, where the missionaries hang out in a high-traffic public place and try to get passersby to stop and talk.

We had an AP who hated that list, because tracting and street contacting were his favorite things. I think he saw himself as a pitchman, a real Vince Offer type. But I think the reason most missionaries spend their days tracting is because there are simply no referrals to pursue, and it's a mindless way to fill the day that feels like working.

[Dr Moore]

My mission journal describes 7 converts who were the direct result of my companion and me going out tracting, door to door, whenever we had free time. True, 99%+ of doors resulted in rejection. But that doesn't mean it was an "abysmal waste of time." The small number we met, who invited us in -- starving for friendship and hope -- provided more than enough evidence of the value of going out in search of the "one."

In hindsight, the process of learning from repeated rejection, forcing myself to develop extemporaneous "EQ" and ignore rejection made my mission personally transformative. Social pressure within the Mormon system was the incentive to go, but the hard-won relationships kept me there.

When last I checked, all of my tracting converts have all left the church for various reasons as of about 15 years ago. I remain in contact with a few, as they count me among their very few real friends.

Summing up: whether or not an activity amounts to an "abysmal waste of time" is all about defining success. If your only definition is "baptisms" then it's guaranteed you'll conclude the negative in certain world regions. What a sad waste of 2 years, in that case. For me, I came to define mission success as the product of personal transformation and lasting personal friendship. That same model applies to life, by the way.

[Kishkumen]

Summing up: whether or not an activity amounts to an "abysmal waste of time" is all about defining success. If your only definition is "baptisms" then it's guaranteed you'll conclude the negative in certain world regions. What a sad waste of 2 years, in that case. For me, I came to define mission success as the product of personal transformation and lasting personal friendship. That same model applies to life, by the way.

Exactly. Beautifully put.

[Gadianton]

I don't doubt DCP's sincerity. And I don't think his quote about the abysmal waste of time that tracting represents is being interpreted fairly here. These are his reminiscences about his missionary experience, no? And I think he is entitled to share how it honestly felt to him after the fact. In California, I think tracting worked pretty well. I and my companion baptized someone whom we tracted out. It may be that if I had tracted more assiduously I would have enjoyed more success from tracting. I tended to do it less because I found it somewhat frightening.

So, if tracting yields very few baptisms, then it is, according to the values of our culture, "a waste of time." The LDS Church gets very few baptisms from it, and thus it yields very little tithing at the end of the day. Other forms of missionary work do better at bringing in the tithing.

I can't really disagree with anything you’re saying, and I agree with your last statement that we should "interrogate what we're about", but this is the problem. From a capitalistic perspective, tracting is a waste of time. From an eternal perspective, it's not. And Dan seems to have anything but an eternal perspective, even though he's dedicated much of his life to insulting anybody who doesn't agree with him about eternity. It's just a fascinating contradiction. I mean, from a capitalistic perspective, all church stuff is a waste of time except to the degree it empowers you personally in terms of authority or popularity.

Soph is right, that even from a church perspective, tracting is considered the least effective finding method. It's the default position though, because as others have mentioned, small branches and missionaries are tight, and the preferred option is to burn your friendship with members by pushing them to give you names, and making them do the work with missionaries as a support role. Of course, from the eternal perspective, that's not the way you view it, I'm just continuing the conversations in terms of capitalism right now. Even if a future Wall Street missionary with all the member influence skills is doing great member finding and teaching, the week is still only halfway planned. Mind you, when super missionary works with members, he's not hanging out at their house for hours. He's making great use of time, and is probably doing a boatload of tracting in addition to whatever else to fill his 12-hour day.

With the eternal perspective, results aren't everything. Yes, if you can do something more effective than tract, do it, but you've got 12 hours of work to fill enthusiastically with a mind single to the glory of God, and so you'll probably do plenty of tracting in addition to whatever else. Isn't there some Old Testament prophet, Noah or something, who cried repentance tirelessly and the hope is always if "but one" will listen?

Yeah, I also think tracting was a waste of time, but that's because I'm a non-believer now.

[Doctor Scratch]

Summing up: whether or not an activity amounts to an "abysmal waste of time" is all about defining success. If your only definition is "baptisms" then it's guaranteed you'll conclude the negative in certain world regions. What a sad waste of 2 years, in that case. For me, I came to define mission success as the product of personal transformation and lasting personal friendship. That same model applies to life, by the way.

Great post, Dr. Moore, and what a stark contrast between your takeaway here versus that of the Mopologist in question. The “highlight” for this Mopologist—based upon what he has repeatedly said—was the “bashing” with and humiliation of a Protestant pastor. Well, I guess falling in love with the landscape of an avowedly secularist country was the other side-effect. It sure is telling that someone who so aggressively plugs the value of religion would willingly spend so much of his vacation time in secularist Europe.

[Dr. Shades]

But I think the reason most missionaries spend their days tracting is because there are simply no referrals to pursue, and it's a mindless way to fill the day that feels like working.

Tracting only “feels like” working?

[Moksha]

Tracting involves a lot of walking and that is good exercise. I've understood that keeping a stiff upper lip and persevering despite all the rejection makes for much sought-after sales qualities after the mission. Plus some foreign languages coupled with the good old LDS following the chain of command can open up a career in the CIA.

So stick to your books, boys
And never tract the streets and
You may someday be a professor of Arabic!

[Kishkumen]

I can't really disagree with anything you’re saying, and I agree with your last statement that we should "interrogate what we're about", but this is the problem. From a capitalistic perspective, tracting is a waste of time. From an eternal perspective, it's not. And Dan seems to have anything but an eternal perspective, even though he's dedicated much of his life to insulting anybody who doesn't agree with him about eternity. It's just a fascinating contradiction. I mean, from a capitalistic perspective, all church stuff is a waste of time except to the degree it empowers you personally in terms of authority or popularity.

Soph is right, that even from a church perspective, tracting is considered the least effective finding method. It's the default position though, because as others have mentioned, small branches and missionaries are tight, and the preferred option is to burn your friendship with members by pushing them to give you names, and making them do the work with missionaries as a support role. Of course, from the eternal perspective, that's not the way you view it, I'm just continuing the conversations in terms of capitalism right now. Even if a future Wall Street missionary with all the member influence skills is doing great member finding and teaching, the week is still only halfway planned. Mind you, when super missionary works with members, he's not hanging out at their house for hours. He's making great use of time, and is probably doing a boatload of tracting in addition to whatever else to fill his 12-hour day.

With the eternal perspective, results aren't everything. Yes, if you can do something more effective than tract, do it, but you've got 12 hours of work to fill enthusiastically with a mind single to the glory of God, and so you'll probably do plenty of tracting in addition to whatever else. Isn't there some Old Testament prophet, Noah or something, who cried repentance tirelessly and the hope is always if "but one" will listen?

Yeah, I also think tracting was a waste of time, but that's because I'm a non-believer now.

So, I wasn't a great missionary. There were lots of reasons that was the case, but I still managed to have a reasonably successful mission and partway through I was called to be a zone leader. That said, I did a number of things that cut against the grain of the sales-oriented training and practices of the LDS mission. Indeed, this is where my disillusionment with the LDS Church started. Once I realized how numbers-driven and sales-oriented the Church was, and how it tended to put its organizational welfare above every other consideration, my enthusiasm for the Church as an organization took a big hit. I think part of my problem was that I really internalized a lot of what Hugh Nibley was saying, you know, the Marxist-tinged Zion-seeking that our much-missed friend Symmachus liked to tease me and others about. Nibley was all about the eternal perspective.

Yet I have found even beloved LDS friends and family who love Nibley are still so steeped in the GOP, capitalist culture of modern Mormonism that they will tell you they love Nibley but disagree with his politics, criticisms of business and management, etc. This is one of the great tensions in Mormonism, and I don't believe you can just chalk it up to DCP's personal problems (not that I think you really do). This is a problem that is at the core of the institution. When people like DCP seem to us to be speaking out of both sides of their mouth on this, they may have a way of integrating what seems to us to be an irresolvable contradiction.

One of key differences of opinion, in my view, is that those who are comfortable with how the LDS Church runs just look at stuff like this and laud the blessings of the modern world that allow the message of the gospel to go to so many people. I, and others like me, are more skeptical, believing that how things are done, and what their spiritual impact is, is as important as mass marketing of the message. What does the message become when there is so much focus on numbers, money, "temporal concerns," as it were? The core conflict boils down to theology. Supporters of these temporal foci will say that temporal efforts undertaken in the service of a spiritual goal are not simply temporal. I tend to think that the spiritual, or the eternal perspective, gets squeezed out when spiritual goals are constrained by or run through the gate of temporal efficiency models.

[Gadianton]

A fantastic post, Reverend. I also began my mission as a student of Nibley, although that changed at about the halfway point. But I was sold on the same criticisms of capitalism you were. I dreaded going, and for the most part it was a burden to suffer through. I managed an average amount of work and my performance was average. I did meet some incredible people tracting. They didn't join, but we had some good times. Probably one of the hardest things wasn't the rejection, but that some of these people I tracted out were so cool, and seemed to have it so together, that what was the point? There was no "suffering on the left and on the right" as the scriptures say. The "waste of time" wasn't so much that people weren't interested, but they weren't interested for very good reasons. I wouldn't say I've retained much of my Nibley social leanings, but irrespective of whether you believed NIbley or maybe believed something else, his vision gave me a core of meaning, something the gospel was actually for. Unfortunately, Snuffer and Heartlanders offer the same thing from the opposite political persuasion. And believe me, the Nibley cultists I met after my mission were no more sane than Heartlanders; far less sane, in fact. The reality slowly sunk in that core of the gospel of the actual church is high-pressure sales, it literally is Amway. If I were to have converted any of these people, it's not like there's a tremendous path ahead for them. It's, "who do you know, brother?" And after that, "Who else do you know?"

And you really got the feeling that if you didn't enjoy high-pressure sales or weren't enamored by hierarchies, that there was no place in the Church for you. I honestly didn't feel like many of the missionaries loved what they were doing, even the most righteous and the sales-oriented types. They just had better incentives to stick with it. Some of them got the thrill of praise from GAs who came through or had special meetings with the MP and came back feeling important -- that sort of thing. It's not like they were getting results, however. The absolute best missionary I ever met in terms of pure ability was also the most apostate missionary -- broke rules constantly and was a hair's width from getting sent home all the time. Just a born people person. We'd go to a member or investigator after he'd been there, and they'd talk about how great he was and ask things like, "Is he the leader of your group?" He hated missionary work and authority, but he absolutely loved every new person he met. So they paired him with hard-asses to keep him in line -- which is fortunate for humanity as he would have otherwise baptized a couple dozen people.

[Sophocles]

But I think the reason most missionaries spend their days tracting is because there are simply no referrals to pursue, and it's a mindless way to fill the day that feels like working.

Tracting only “feels like” working?

Tracting doesn't feel like working?