everyday missionaries

This week was awesome! (Besides those two horrible papers I wrote in like two days... 17 pages of quality French, I'll telling you.) But other than that, there were definitely a few highlights. Stake conference, which just got over, was one of them, but this week I also got to go to a fireside with Clayton Christensen. 

For those of you who don't work at BYU Magazine and haven't already heard his life story (watch for a feature on him in the upcoming issue), he's basically like the smartest guy in the world. Like, voted the best business management thinker. in. the. world. nbd. He teaches business at Harvard and also happens to be an awesome member missionary. I've been meaning to read his book (or I've heard this one is also excellent), but luckily he came to talk to us about that very topic: everyday missionaries. 

So I thought I would share his words of wisdom and tips on being an everyday missionary. 

He basically just shared 4 principles, along with stories that illustrated those principles. The principles are so simple, but sometimes it's the simplicity of things that makes us overlook them. And really, member missionary strategies from the best innovative thinker in the world? Might be useful stuff. 

#1
You never know who's going to accept the gospel, so you have to offer it to everyone.

He shared his and his wife's experience of having this list of 12 people with whom they were going to share the gospel, and none of them accepted. One day the missionaries came by and asked if they knew of anyone else, and they mentioned this couple they knew in their neighborhood, but said that it would be a waste of their time because they would never ever be interested. Two baptisms later...

#2
People who have questions are religious people.

Just because someone doesn't go to church doesn't mean they aren't interested in religion. In fact, some people who have rejected religion have simply rejected what wasn't the truth! Which is a good thing! He talked about this pastor guy who said he couldn't believe in God anymore, and when asked to describe God, he gave a definition completely unlike the LDS doctrine of who God is. So really, this guy wasn't rejecting God--he was rejecting the false idea of God, which, sadly, in his case was all he knew.

He also talked about this guy who had had all these questions and finally had given up on religion when none could answer them. Bro. Christensen invited him to talk with the missionaries, and one by one, they answered all his questions. He also gave him a Book of Mormon and an assignment to find the answers to his own questions (the next time Bro. Christensen met with the guy, he told him one of his questions was: "Why is God upset about infant baptisms?" [or something to that effect], and the answer he'd found for himself: "Because it trivializes the Atonement of Jesus Christ." Whaaaa. Yeah. He found that all by himself.). Got baptized...

So Bro. Christensen's tip here was just to use "Mormon words" when talking with people (ward, church, institute, seminary, young women's, etc.). If they are interested, they will pick up on that and start asking questions. 

#3
Here Bro. Christensen explained a principle of marketing (those suckers at Harvard business school who have to pay thousands of dollars to hear this, and we got it for free! haha), that a product won't sell unless it gets a job done.

So sometimes we try to tell people that they need the gospel, but they don't see what need that will fulfill in their own lives. However, people need to feel needed, so by turning the tables and finding out how the Church needs their help, they can find fulfillment. He told the story about this guy that his dad home taught who wanted absolutely nothing to do with the Church. One day, the roof of some building got blown off, and the elder's quorum needed volunteers to help fix it. Well, the dad went to ask this guy, who happened to be a roofer, for his help. He said, "I don't want you to ever come to church, but we need your help with this roof." So the guy came and helped and felt so good afterward that he started coming back to church. 

One time he asked one of his neighbors to help him carry an old fridge out of his home teachee's basement. The guy was like, "so tell me about Mormonism." And as they were lugging this 200-pound cast iron fridge up a flight of stairs, Bro. Christensen replied, "This is basically it." haha!

Another example was that of a sister asking a non-member friend to come teach her primary lesson about the good samaritan. The friend felt the spirit during church and was happy to have been able to help. She told the sister to call her whenever she needed help.

And finally, one sister whose calling was "bread coordinator" claimed that she couldn't possibly need any help with her calling--she bought the bread and brought the bread. Period. But she started asking non-member friends if they had any good bread recipes. After explaining the importance of the bread and water of the sacrament, she'd ask them to come over on Saturdays and help her make the bread.

Bata-bing. When people feel needed, they suddenly feel that connect of "getting the job done."

#4
We succeed when we invite. He said something here that blew my mind. He said that if we don't invite people to learn about the gospel, it's like we are exercising their agency on their behalf. So even if they don't accept, we succeed in offering it to them.


So there you go. Clayton Christensen's secrets to successful member missionary work.
Ready, set, go!