Reverend, your comments as always inspire reflection. And I fully accept your ambivalence to the model. It certainly isn’t a model for religious validity, if that’s your point. My model is more about what drives success or failure on the margin.Kishkumen wrote: ↑Tue Apr 19, 2022 7:55 pmI have to say that I am ambivalent regarding this whole model. I have no doubt that people expect responsiveness from their "service providers," but this does represent a sea change in the way people think about their religions and churches. Is it necessarily a good change? I am not sure.
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I am all for saying that the LDS Church has made a series of bad judgment calls, and maybe it simply is the reality that customer satisfaction rules the day, but then I will continue to think that the point of being Mormon or Christian or Pythagorean, if it is to mean something substantive in the way it transforms individuals, families, and communities, can't just be a series of curated experiences to suit the tastes of the public. It has to deliver on what it promises in terms of personal transformation.
But if product is personal transformation, there are plenty of those to go around. How about Tony Robbins, or a few hours of Oprah Super Soul? I think that for churches today, one way to think about success is what happens with the marginal questioning individual. Member or non member. For that individual, competition for personally transformative ideas and practices is fierce. And at the core of Mormonism is the claim to superior truth and authority. That is the unique product, not personal transformation. So in my mind, the Church is in the customer trust business, when it comes down the bare metal.