Full time Missionaries and facebook


friedmann
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Good morning,

I was quite surprised to find out recently that Missionaries serving in the Billings Montana Mission (and possibly other Missions as well) have been allowed to spend a limited time working on facebook to find and initially teach investigators. They have been approved to do so by their Mission Presidency. It's considered a trial, but results look rather promising.

For example, in a well-known LDS facebook group, a teenage girl interested in learning about the Church but prohibited to do so by their parents, asked whether she could still meet with the Missionaries. One of the Elders serving in Billings came back to her and, as it seems, provided to her a good overlook over the Church's teachings. We don't know how things are evolving around her right now, but here we see an investigator found through a social network online, and potentially many more could follow.

This example shows that online Mission outreach could profit large portions of the world population who are either unreached by traditional Missionaries (a number as high as 3 billion people worldwide) or not allowed to be taught the regular lessons due to social pressure, or due to not being legal yet.

The development went hand in hand with a recent statement made by Elder Erich Kopischke, member of the Europe West Area Presidency, stating that online outreach will turn out to be more effective than traditional outreach strategies in the future. An overlook over his words can be found here: Cookies must be enabled. | The Australian

Until now, the use of social media was prohibited for full-time Missionaries.

What are your opinions?

I think that taking Missionary work online, as conducted by full-time Missionaries, is an overdue step. I think that it would be important not to go to sleep on these developments. This being said, I never understood why the "spiritual" use of facebook was prohibited to Missionaries in the first place...

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I think that it could be a big boon to missionary work -- especially younger crowds (teens and twenty-somethings), but it needs to be treated carefully. A couple years ago, there was a poster in this forum who was a full-time missionary (at least, that's what he claimed, and we had no reason to doubt him), and it was kind-of disastrous. He ended up getting into theological debates, and acting as the be-all, end-all authority on all matters. He took it upon himself to suddenly attempt to moderate all threads in which he participated. He also had atrocious spelling/grammar/punctuation. I understand that some people have learning disabilities...he still could have used spell/grammar check. He claimed to be part of a pilot program that, based on what I observed of his participation, could only have fallen flat.

Missionaries who are in the field now have never not had computers in their homes (if they are from developed countries) or other easy access to them (school, library, etc.). They have always used a computer. The Internet is practically hard-wired into their brains. And yet, they often don't understand basic Internet etiquette. If missionaries are to share the Gospel and make contacts online, they need to have Internet etiquette training first. Those videos they show at zone conferences about car crashes and eating all your food at members' homes? There needs to be an Internet-use video produced and worked into the rotation. They can't just be opened up to it and let loose on the Internet (or on specific websites).

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