Ward Mission Leaders Unite!

Members are more likely to love, share, and invite effectively when there is a personal event pending such as an assignment to give a talk or an upcoming baby blessing.

Currently, many missionaries show up at members' homes and invite them to talk to their friends and neighbors about the Church. This is one of missionaries' most effective finding methods. But these member visits are so much more effective if the missionaries are in weekly contact with their ward mission leader or ward executive secretary to find out the schedule of sacrament meeting speakers at least ten days in advance. Those who are assigned to give talks, both the adult members and the youth members, are experiencing unique feelings and emotions. Giving a talk is an important and stressful part of membership. For most it only happens every few years. The result is that these members are typically in a heightened state of humility and spirituality the two weeks before their scheduled talk. Full time missionaries and ward mission leaders can take advantage of this!

Either the full time missionaries or the ward mission leader can visit these members’ homes about ten days before their talk. Tell them you know they have been assigned to speak in church and ask them what their topic is. Ask them what they are planning to share and express confidence in them and in their preparation. Then, look them in the eye and say, “we are here today to humbly invite you by the spirit to invite as your friends, neighbors, and co-workers to come to church to hear you give your talk in two weeks.” Their jaws might just hit the floor, but don’t lose heart! Keep going, “we understand that giving a talk is stressful enough just in front of our fellow members, but we believe that many of your friends, neighbors, co-workers, and even acquaintances, will be moved and flattered by your invitation to come hear your talk. We believe that inviting someone to come hear a talk is a much easier and natural invitation than a sudden invitation to meet with the missionaries or just come to church out of the blue. You are a wonderful person, and we are confident many people would be very happy to come and show their support for you on this special day.”

Now, their jaw will slowly return to its place, and you will see the wheels turning in the member's head. They will immediately see the logic behind such an invite, and may even be shocked it never occurred to them before.

One of the awesome and unique aspects to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the sheer quantity of service and teaching opportunities it gives to its members. We do not have a paid pastor or reverend who preaches weekly sermons to a silent crowd of people. We do it all ourselves! We give the sermons, we teach the lessons, it's all us. This Church provides the best opportunity to truly progress and grow because it gives us the most opportunities to serve as Jesus Christ would. Pastors and reverends and priests in other churches have wonderful experiences teaching and counseling their congregations, and they grow and improve and learn tremendously as a result of this service. But all these opportunities should not be consolidated into one person or even a handful of people. Here, in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we all share the burdens, the blessings, and the opportunities of service.

While you are sitting in that member’s home, remind them of this. Remind them of this very unique difference between our church and other churches. An invitation to come hear your talk is the perfect chance to highlight these blessings of membership to a friend or co-worker. That friend, neighbor or co-worker will find it very interesting, and learning about these differences will be in context because they will be curious to know why the member is preaching on an upcoming Sunday instead of a pastor. What an absolutely, phenomenally-natural gospel conversation! And all these members could be having this conversation with all their friends and neighbors if only we went to their homes and encouraged them to make these invitations!

So why meet with the member at least ten days before their scheduled talk? So you can follow up the next week! During the first meeting you will ask them to make a list of people to invite, and then together brainstorm ways they could invite them. At the end of the visit you make an appointment to come back the next week to FOLLOW UP!

FOLLOW UP! FOLLOW UP! FOLLOW UP! FOLLOW UP! FOLLOW UP!

We must go back the next week and check on their progress and continue to brainstorm. Look, this two-week process can get as elaborate and detailed as your member feels comfortable with. They can make personal invitations in person or over the phone, and then they can follow it up with mailed invitations, or emailed invitations, or texts, or social media messages, or all of it combined! Make sure the member provides the time and address, what the friend can expect as far as how people will be dressed, and how the Sacrament works at our church, that it is for baptized members to take the Sacrament. All of these things will lead to more questions and more gospel sharing and conversation! It will be incredible.

Once again, I remind you of the peculiar spiritual and emotional state your member will be in as a result of his or her impending talk. They will be more humble because of their desire to do well and be a blessing to others.  That humility will shine through their conversations with their friends during the invitation process, showing a vulnerability that probably hasn’t been present in their prior interactions. This vulnerability and openness on the part of the members will disarm their friends and neighbors, causing them also to become more vulnerable and open to THE SPIRIT!

Now, some members will be very freaked out about all of this, especially some youth speakers. Do not give up on them! Do not let them take the easy way out! Youth speakers have the opportunity to invite friends from school, sports teams, theater groups, and even tutors, coaches, and teachers. You can make yourself available to both youth and adult members alike to be a practice audience for their talk, if they wish, or to otherwise assist with their preparation. Do not be pushy about this, but some will jump at the chance to receive some feedback beforehand, especially some youth. This can be an amazing missionary preparation experience for these youths.

Giving a talk in church is an important and powerful experience for all members, but if that talk is given with several friends and neighbors sitting in the congregation, it becomes something so much bigger. It becomes a testimony-defining experience. Watch and see how the quality of talks improves in your ward when every week there are a handful of investigators sitting there who know the speakers personally. These meetings will become nothing short of incredible. The lingering that often takes place after sacrament meeting also becomes more powerful, as the whole ward reaches out to introduce themselves to these new friends.

You may be wondering, “well, what about Fast Sundays? No one is assigned to speak then, so I guess we can’t encourage members to invite friends on Fast Sundays?”  My friends, sacrament talks are paltry, meaningless affairs compared to baby blessings!  It is no accident that baby blessings are always done on Fast Sundays. If you think friends and neighbors are flattered to be invited to hear a member speak, you can’t imagine how wonderful it feels for them to be invited to the baby blessing of a family they know! This is the easiest invitation ever!

So, how do you do it? The key is the Relief Society presidency. The full-time missionaries or the ward mission leader needs to reach out to someone in the Relief Society presidency and ask for a list of all the expectant mothers in your ward who are due in approximately two to three months. I highly recommend you not first approach these mothers and fathers just two weeks before their baby is due! Expectant mothers are often so uncomfortable the last few weeks of their pregnancy that that they may not be very open to adding something to their already very-full plates. And, the invitation process for baby blessings can be quite a bit more elaborate than for talks. I don’t mean “expensive” I mean “expansive." They should start much earlier than 10-14 days. Families who are about to bless their baby should invite every friend, neighbor, and co-worker who lives within 100 miles, and can also be used to invite family members who may have distanced themselves from the Church, and others who may live further away.

Baby blessing attendance is especially effective because they happen on fast Sundays. Immediately following the baby blessing, the invited guests then sit though thirty minutes of powerful testimonies about Jesus Christ and his restored gospel.

Coming to a baby blessing is the easiest commitment for anyone to make. Babies are what we call an "open category," meaning that people are more willing and open to talk to and about babies than almost anything else. It can be difficult to help people to attend church the first time because doing so means admitting to themselves and the whole world that they are interested in the Church. But baby blessing guests do not carry that same concern. No, they waltz into church like a warm summer breeze, with a big smile on their face that says, “all y’all are crazy, I’m just here for my friend’s baby blessing!” They walk in without a care in the world, with no idea they are about to witness not only a beautiful baby blessing, but thirty minutes of pure testimony of Jesus Christ. Their minds are about to be blown!

Now, let's ratchet it up a level and talk about working with the entire ward council to combine these two invitations to create maximum missionary impact. First, work with the bishopric to extend speaking invitations to parents who are due to have a baby in approximately two to three months. Think of it as a 1-2 punch. You could schedule the mother to speak two or three months before her due date and the father to speak two or three months after the baby blessing, or vice versa. This would create three invitation opportunities within a six-month period for that family’s friends, family, co-workers, and acquaintances. If that family has youth, even better, they can also be thrown into that mix.

Importantly, this is not a new program and does not require any additional time on the missionaries' or ward mission leader's part. Missionaries and ward mission leaders are already meeting with members, but now they would merely be organizing their member visits around the ward speaking calendar and forthcoming baby blessings. This makes the time you are already spending with members more meaningful, more purposeful, more powerful, and more productive. Eight-year-old baptisms and confirmations are also great opportunities for invitations, and can be utilized in a fashion similar to baby blessings. Even Aaronic priesthood ordinations in January could be used this way. Imagine all the young men in your ward inviting friends, coaches, teachers, and mentors to their ordinations, to be held just before sacrament meeting on fast Sunday.

Missionaries and ward mission leaders who work within the regularly scheduled activities of their wards can fill the chapel with investigators every week for talks, baby blessings, baptisms, and even youth activities. Christmas programs and Primary programs are other great opportunities for invitations. Firesides are chances for youth to invite friends, and even youth conferences. Youth presidencies, male and female, can discuss designing activities that they think their non-member friends would want to attend. This question is not brought up often enough in these activity scheduling meetings with the youth. These invitations can culminate in invitations not just to meet with the missionaries, but to attend Trek, FSY, or Youth Conference. If the nonmember friend’s parents sign the permission slip, the youth’s friend can come along on Trek, FSY, etc.

I know these ideas work. I was in law school when our second son was due. My wife and I worked together, made a list, and in the month before the baby blessing we invited over 200 people. Twenty of these people came to our son's baby blessing.  Eric Bednar, the son of Elder Bednar, was a member of the bishopric of our North Carolina ward at that time. I'll never forget walking into the building and seeing him smiling and laughing and talking with all those investigators waiting to see us, our new baby, and the blessing. Eric conducted that day as well, and he adroitly used his time on the stand to not just bear powerful testimony, but to share a mini discussion that briefly covered the Plan of Salvation, the Atonement of Jesus Christ, and the restoration of the Church through Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. It was so awesome!

We invited 200 people to the baby blessing and 20 came. My wife and I learned that this "10% rule" was fairly consistent. We had two more sons in Houston, Texas, and our continued efforts to invite people to those baby blessings, as well as whenever we were assigned to give talks, consistently yielded about 10% attendance. This means, about 10% of the people we invited, came. The number of investigators, or new friends, that attend Church each Sunday in our wards will rise astronomically if we take advantage of the spiritual feast that is happening on a weekly basis in our sacrament meetings, during our baby blessings, and at our children's baptisms, and invite our members to love, share, and invite around these personal events.

Now, it's time for us to go and do!

Charlemagne, King Josiah, and Lehi?

Charlemagne was buried with an open copy of the bible placed upon his lap.  Unfortunately, few remember his role in preserving religious writings and also paving the way for the Renaissance.  Although Charlemagne died in 814 A.D., he was perhaps the greatest “signal repeater” between ancient greco-roman thought and the Renaissance.  A signal repeater is a box on the ocean floor that receives the fading ones and zeros through fiber optic cables, strengthens them, and resends them along.  Just as data could not make the trans-oceanic journey without signal repeaters, the Renaissance would have been set back centuries without Charlemagne. 

Charlemagne

What Charlemagne did was copy and preserve almost every written document he could find throughout his realm.  “​​Most of the surviving works of classical Latin were copied and preserved by Carolingian scholars. Indeed, the earliest manuscripts available for many ancient texts are Carolingian. It is almost certain that a text which survived to the Carolingian age survives still.”  (Wikipedia: Charlemagne).  Without Charlemagne’s education reforms during what we call the “Carolingian Renaissance,” there would have been very little greco-roman thought for the great thinkers of the European Renaissance to build upon.  For the religious, it is not inaccurate to consider Charlemagne as having been wrought upon by God to preserve as many secular and religious writings as he could.  This is especially true because it was not the first time a restoration like this had happened.

Approximately 1400 years before Charlemagne, Josiah became King of Judah at the age of eight years old.  Although Josiah’s great-grandfather Hezekiah had been a notable reformer who ruled during the time of the prophet Isaiah, neither Josiah’s grandfather nor his father sought to follow the law or the prophets.  A key difference maker in Josiah’s life was the presence of the high priest Hilkiah.  The record is unclear how Josiah and Hilkiah connected, or who was more of an influence on whom, but the record is very clear on the results.  Josiah and Hilkiah were a tremendous force for good.  Josiah ordered the temple to be cleaned both physically and spiritually (his grandfather had altered it for idol worship), and in that process Hilkiah found the book of the law.  Most commentators believe they found Deuteronomy, one of the Pentateuch.  2 Kings 22:11 says, “[a]nd it came to pass, when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes.”  Apparently, a lot that needed doing that wasn’t getting done, and an awful lot was getting done that never needed doing.  In verse 13 Josiah turned to Hilkiah and the other priests and said, “Go ye, inquire of the Lord for me, and for the people, and for all Judah, concerning the words of this book that is found: for great is the wrath of the Lord that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not hearkened to the words of this book, to do according unto all that which is written concerning us.”  One of those consulted was the prophetess Huldah, who confirmed the truthfulness of the words of scripture.   

Josiah and Hilkiah began making changes to bring the kingdom in line with the law.  A lot of changes.  They tore down idols, restored temple worship, and even held the first passover celebrated in a long time.  2 Chronicles 35:18 says, “[a]nd there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.” 2 Kings 23:25 reads, “[a]nd like unto [Josiah] was there no king before him, that turned to the Lord with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him.”  

Josiah attempted to lead his people in righteousness and encourage the people to repent.  Josiah and Hilkiah’s efforts are uniquely relevant to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who accept the Book of Mormon as an additional witness of Jesus Christ, equal to the Old and New Testaments.  The Book of Mormon begins with a man named Lehi living in Jerusalem during the first year of the reign of King Zedekiah.  Since Zedekiah was the third son of Josiah, this means Josiah was the king of Lehi’s youth.  Lehi grew up watching Josiah’s reforms and also seeing the effects the discovery of the book of the law of God had on all of Israel.  This context is very important to understanding the inception of the Book of Mormon.  

In chapter one, Lehi hears prophesying of the imminent destruction of Jerusalem unless the people repent.  He likely heard it from the prophet Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah.  Lehi takes these prophecies seriously, prays about them, and receives an answer from God that the prophets' words are true.  As a result, Lehi begins to prophesy as well.  Soon, his life is in danger much like Jeremiah’s.  God warns Lehi in a dream to flee Jerusalem with his family, telling him he will be led to a land of promise.  Soon after they leave, Lehi is commanded to send his sons back to Jerusalem to obtain a copy of the scriptures.  Lehi’s two oldest sons dragged their feet, but Nephi, Lehi’s third son, received his own witness from God that the scriptures were necessary.  1 Nephi 4:14-15 reads, “. . . I remembered the words of the Lord which he spake unto me in the wilderness, saying that: Inasmuch as thy seed shall keep my commandments, they shall prosper in the land of promise.  Yea, and I also thought that they could not keep the commandments of the Lord according to the law of Moses save they should have the law.”  

Lehi and Nephi’s understanding of the importance of the scriptures in preserving and promoting righteousness was a direct result of Josiah and Hilkiah.  But it goes beyond that.  Without Josiah and Hilkiah, there would have been no righteousness as Lehi understood it, and no set of scriptures for Nephi and Lehi to bring along.  It is unlikely Nephi and Lehi would have ever left Jerusalem or even understood the ways of the Lord at all if not for the efforts of Josiah and Hilkiah.

Leaving Jerusalem

But Lehi and his family did leave Jerusalem, and they did bring a copy of the scriptures.  After Nephi returned to Lehi with the scriptures,  Lehi “beheld that they did contain the five books of Moses, which gave an account of the creation of the world, and also of Adam and Eve, who were our first parents; [a]nd also a record of the Jews from the beginning, even down to the commencement of the reign of Zedekiah, king of Judah; [a]nd also the prophecies of the holy prophets, from the beginning . . . and also many prophecies which have been spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah.”  1 Nephi 5:11-13.  

After obtaining the scriptures, Lehi was commanded to invite another family to join them, and the two families left on an eight year journey to the ocean, where they were commanded to build a boat.  This boat landed somewhere in the Americas in approximately 592 years BC.  The Book of Mormon is simply the record of God’s dealings with Lehi and his descendants from 600 BC to approximately 530 AD.  The last prophet, named  Moroni, was the son of Mormon.  Mormon was a warrior/prophet who was commanded to write a summary of the history of the descendants of Lehi taken from the writings of their prophets.  That’s why it is called “The Book of Mormon.”  

Just as Charlemagne preserved religious and secular writings during the Carolingian Renaissance, 1400 years earlier Josiah preserved jewish law, life, and scripture.  Charlemagne’s efforts made the Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries possible.  Josiah didn’t just protect and preserve Jerusalem and their righteousness, he also laid the groundwork for a tribe of Israel to live in righteousness for over 1000 years in ancient America, and paved the way for what members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints call the Restoration of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Consistent with the litmus test for all prophets found in Matthew 7, the Book of Mormon is the chief fruit of Joseph Smith.  The Book of Mormon supports the divinity of Jesus Christ, his miraculous birth, his atoning sacrifice, and his resurrection.  The apex of the Book of Mormon is a record of the visit of Jesus Christ to the Americas following his resurrection in Jerusalem, consistent with John 10:16 in the New Testament, which reads, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd.” 

Christ in the Americas

The story of Josiah in relation to the timing of Lehi’s life and works is one of the reasons I know the Book of Mormon is true, just as I know the Bible is true.  Sadly, most members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints do not know how Josiah’s story relates to the commencement of the Book of Mormon, or understand how Nephi’s actions to recover the scriptures were informed by the events of his era.  I love King Josiah, I love Hilkiah, I love Lehi and Nephi, and I love the prophet Joseph Smith, because they are all signal repeaters who all point us to Christ.  Joseph Smith said “[t]he fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.”  The Book of Mormon states:

“Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men.  Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.  And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end, Amen.”  2 Nephi 31:20-21.  

I believe that at times we can see the hand of God moving across the sweep of history.  I believe Charlemagne was inspired to create the reforms he did to both preserve and protect religion as well as future scientific progress.  I believe Josiah was sent, in part, to pave the way for the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ.  I believe Lehi and Nephi were real people whose lives and actions were actually influenced and blessed by Josiah’s reforms.  I believe Josiah doesn’t get as much credit as he deserves for the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and the Restoration of the The Church of Jesus Christ.  The Book of Mormon shows that God wants to give His word to all who are willing to

receive it.  I highly recommend reading it.