The church is getting desperate: extending missions as callings to 18 year olds
Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 4:45 am
“ExMormon Reddit” wrote:
Are Bishops extending mission calls like regular callings now?
My 18yo daughter got a mission call from her Bishop during tithing settlement. He said the spirit whispered this to him and told him it was true. She’s a non-believing, coffee drinking, bad ass atheist so she said no.
Over the last year or so my daughter has had her own awakening and no longer believes in TSCC or its teachings. It’s been amazing seeing her explore her beliefs and shed so much of the damaging teachings she grew up with (and to be honest that I promoted early on).
She and her very TBM mom recently moved to another state so Bad Ass Daughter took this as an opportunity to make a clean break since she didn’t have any connections to this new ward. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. They’ve been pressing her pretty hard to attend. Visits from Relief Society pres, sister missionaries who just happened to be in the area, etc, etc. You all know the drill. So when she got a call to meet with the Bishop for tithing settlement she decided to go so she could make it clear once and for all that she’s done and doesn’t want anymore contact. What was supposed to be a 15 minute thing turned into nearly an hour of him trying to manipulate her into coming back. He asked her to become a full tithe payer, read the Book of Mormon (again), accept multiple callings, fast and pray, stay away from non-church approved materials, blah, blah, blah. She patiently declined and just kept saying no. At one point he even handed her a Book of Mormon. She just slid it back across the desk and said, “I’ve already read this and have like three of them back at the house. You can keep it.”
Finally he said he had received a revelation from God that he needed to start extending mission callings to people in the ward. He said that when he saw her walk into church that first time several months ago (she was helping her mom teach a lesson or something) the spirit whispered to him that my little Bad Ass Daughter was the one he was supposed to call on a mission!
After the absurdity of the entire meeting this was too much for her and she started laughing. She composed herself and said, “No. That’s not going to happen.”
THEN he pulled a lesson from the Joseph Smith Manipulation 101 Handbook of Instructions (D&C 132). He told her that he takes his calling very seriously and he knows that this calling is directly from the Lord. If she didn’t accept then it would be detrimental to HIS salvation since he wouldn’t be able to fully magnify his calling by sending her on a mission. Un-damned-believable.
She still said no and in the end he thanked her for agreeing to prayerfully consider the mission. She didn’t agree to that and AGAIN said it wasn’t going to happen. It’s like he was on a different planet (Kolob?) having a conversation with another person.
I got a little carried away bragging about my daughter but the point of this post was to point out the calling random people on missions thing. Is this becoming the new norm? I seem to remember someone else posting a similar story. I can’t imagine this is something random bishops are coming up with all on their own. It just seems like an act of desperation. Does anyone know where this is coming from?
A couple side notes. -I asked for my daughter’s permission to post this here and she consented. She says hello. -I was sure to tell her how incredibly proud I am of her for sticking up for herself. As a young woman who was fully indoctrinated into the patriarchy it’s not an easy thing to stand up to an authority figure like a Bishop. Especially when he pulls the ‘God told me so’ card. -I made sure to point out the manipulation techniques the bishop used and how similar they were to the ones used by Joseph Smith when he was trying to “F”/marry underage girls. He’s using them to get someone to pay their tithing and go on a mission but insert a flaming sword and a horny bishop and you could have a really REALLY dangerous situation here.
- I’m sending her a care package with some Miso Peanut Butter cookies, some winter quash, beans and corn from our garden that she helped with over the summer, and a cool feather I found. I’m so damned proud of her right now.
I hear the missionary shortage is so dire that next year bishops will be sending men in the ward on foreign missions so that they can marry those men’s wives.
