How Every Missionary Can Baptize Almost Every Month

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CONTACTING

How can every missionary baptize almost every month?

On my mission I found that we had to contact at least a thousand people to get a baptism.  But in my mind contacting was very effective.  Why?  Because one could contact two hundred people a day, and have a baptism every week. Perhaps in other areas the critical number of contacts may be substantially higher.  Perhaps in some areas one must contact five or ten thousand people for one to be converted.  Even so, a companionship that works hard consistently can contact this many people on a month (5000)  so, a missionary who works hard can do this in a month (5000) or two months (10000).  In areas with a  baptism a year per companionship, even if one had to contact the unbelievably high number of twenty thousand people to average one convert baptism, the baptismal rate would more than quadruple if companionships only contacted two hundred people a day.  If only one contact in 2,500 was baptized, if 50 companionships contacted only 100 people a day, that would still be over five hundred baptisms a year.  Not effective?  It is very effective when done consistently over long periods.  Can't contact  that many people?  It has been done by some and can be done by all.  One must to look for ways to do it with a can-do attitude.

Missionaries who contact the critical number of individuals each month will have, on average, a baptism every month.  Why are there some areas where many missionaries go for many months without baptisms?  The most common reason is that in most areas, missionaries do not even come close to making the required number of contacts to achieve consistent proselyting success.  If a missionary contacts five or ten people a day and one needs to contact an  average of 5000 people for one to be baptized, one might have a single baptism in two years, or perhaps none. Certainly contacting is not very effective when it consists of speaking to only a handful of people each day, or  contacting significant numbers of individuals only once or twice a week.  Many  missionaries, who may not be contacting much at all to begin with, quickly come to the conclusion that contacting is not effective.  In areas with modest or low growth rates, no missionary who has not consistently contacted at least a hundred people a day for many months is in a position to make such a conclusion.
 

THE NEED FOR CONSISTENT HARD WORK IN CONTACTING

As President Benson stated, the secret of missionary work is work.  Work, work, work.  It's hard work.  Contacting does not provide for quick or easy success, but it brings results when done consistently over time.  Contacting requires consistent hard work to be effective.  The problem is not that contacting is not effective, but that relatively few are willing to put forth the effort in contacting that is required for it to be effective.  Often, we want great success with little work.  Some want to sit back and enjoy the ride while the Lord steers the ship of Zion.  It's easier  to carry the banner of "someone else's job" than to put the shoulder to the wheel ourselves.

Our responsibility, as the scriptures tell us, is to warn every man his neighbor, and all are our neighbors.  That means that we need to try to reach as many people as possible.  I am confident that if we did this in full earnest, the problem of baptisms would take care of itself.
 

CONTACTING IS CONSISTENTLY REPRODUCIBLE AND AVAILABLE

Contacting is where the real work of missionary work is done. Any missionary can baptize the golden investigator, but it takes a good missionary to find one.  Avoidance of contacting (and its rationalization) destroys the very foundation of missionary work and offends the Spirit.

When missionaries rely primarily on member referrals, they become almost entirely dependent on others for proselyting success.  Such mssionaries may have an occasional baptism but also tend to have long periods of drought. If the missionaries serve in an area with helpful members, they may have some success.  Then when they are transferred to another area with less favorable circumstances, their prior successes may not be duplicated.

In contrast, contacting offers every missionary the opportunity to be effective almost anywhere.  Missionaries who contact extensively of course should take advantage of referral opportunities, but for the reasons I've pointed out, referral opportunities are generally the last thing to be neglected.  Contacting is vastly more reproducible in its results than working off referrals, and therefore is key for missionaries who deeply desire to build the church.  Additionally, the availability of contacting on demand provides a crucial advantage for the dedicated missionary.
 

CONTACTING PENETRANCE: THE FIELD IS WHITE

I think anyone who seriously looks into it will find that the number of people in Eastern Europe who have actually ever been approached by a missionary is surprisingly low. I've spoken with many hundreds of people in many large Eastern European cities, very few of whom appear ever to have met LDS missionaries.  The only ones I met on my last trip who had met "Mormons" were proprietors of a souvenir shop in one Eastern European capital city where missionaries had served for over a decade.  "Why yes, we know the Mormon missionaries well, they come here all the time!"  That's a story that will never be printed in the Ensign.  No, contacting may not bring quick or easy success, but I promise -- it is vastly more effective at bringing people into the church than grocery shopping, taking trips to the post office, and so forth.

When my mission president first asked missionaries in my mission to record the number of contacts we made each day, I was surprised to learn that the mission average was only 5-10 contacts a day.  I think everyone had imagined that our actual contacting exposure was much more than it really was. For each companionship that was contacting 100 people a day (which in my opinion is a very modest and consistently realistic number, even during weeks with 15-20 discussions), there were a dozen other companionships that were doing virtually no contacting at all.  Recording the number of contacts made each day was a wonderful and inspired idea.  It provided missionaries with accurate information about their own contacting work and helped them set goals to do much better.

I served the last two months of my mission in Vyborg (Russia), near the Finnish border.  Vyborg is a small town with 87000 people; it was the first city opened in Russia and has always been a site of strong anti-LDS activity.  When I served there it had been open for over 4 years with a significant missionary complement (at times as many as 4 companions had served there).  One would think that every person in the city would have had an opportunity to accept or reject the church, but this was far from the case.  I was actually quite surprised to find that the considerable majority of people we contacted, while they may have seen the missionaries from afar or heard of the “Mormons” from second hand, had never actually been approached by an LDS missionary!  So while it may seem like everyone in small cities should have had an opportunity to hear the gospel, when one examines actual contacting rates, they are often surprisingly low.  I have found that the common perception of our missionary contacting efforts is often greatly inflated.

Occasionally there are towns like Velenje in Slovenia, where the town was finally closed after the "last chance missionaries" tracted out "every house in the town" twice with still no baptisms.  I think these cases are relatively rare.  The important thing is that in every situation we have done our all to give every man and woman a chance to hear the gospel so that the world will be left without excuse.  When we have not made the effort to contact vigorously, the sins of the world are answered upon our heads.

In many Eastern European nations, missionaries have contacted only a tiny fragment of the population, often a total of 5% or less over a period of a decade.  How it validly be concluded that contacting is not effective, when our efforts have generally been on a very small scale?  Given the fact that only a tiny fragment of society in almost any Eastern European nation has had firsthand interaction with a missionary, how then can one be surprised when baptism rates are low?
 

EFFECTIVE EXAMPLE OF OTHER DENOMINATIONS

Last year the Jehovah's Witnesses baptized approximately twelve thousand each in Russia and Ukraine and over six thousand in Poland.  LDS missionaries in Ukraine baptized less than ten percent of that number, and in Poland, less than one percent of that number.  [I would point out that Poland is a special case, since JWs had a firm foothold there from illegal proselyting dating back to the post-WWII era.  In Ukraine and Russia, however, the story is different.] What is the primary finding method of JWs ? Contacting.  The ten hours a month they  spend sharing the gospel (this is the standard in many areas) is inevitably spent primarily with people who they don't know, since family members and close contacts are relatively quickly approached about their religion. Approaching people who we don't know about religion is contacting, whether it happens to be done by members or missionaries.

Ineffective?  Hardly.  Many are quick to point out that there are many factors involved which may not be directly comparable.  I agree.  But is there something worthwhile to be learned from their example of consistent large-scale contacting, high baptismal rates, and excellent retention? Certainly there are many people ripe for the gospel who can be found by contacting.  Many LDS missionaries who have served in a variety of countries have told me that if LDS missionaries and members would work at sharing the gospel message with the tenacity and work ethic of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, convert baptisms would soar.  Why are the JWs so much more successful at achieving dynamic and reliable growth?  Because their message is vastly more appealing than the message of the restored gospel?  I don't think this is the case.  Their member requirements are comparable.  All too often they simply work much harder than we do.  Spreading the gospel requires understanding and application of natural laws.  When ten times as many people are contacted, it stands to reason that the potential for contacting baptisms is ten times greater.   Preaching the gospel effectively requires obedience to natural laws as well as spiritual ones, since the gospel circumscribes them all.  It only stands to reason that, when the Spirit and all other factors are the same, that if we give ten times as many people an opportunity to hear the gospel, the Church can grow ten times as fast.

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