I Hoped They Didn't Call Me on a Mission

The Austrian historian Robert Musil had a theory that the most important events of history are ones that might have happened but never quite did.  The central event of my life was I hoped they did not call me on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.    On this the 35th anniversary of my not coming home from my mission, I finally record why I did not serve the Lord for two years. 


RECENT EVENTS THAT BRING MY PAST TO MIND

My neighbors will return in about a month from their three year mission leading a mission headquartered in a major city in the southeast United States.  Meanwhile,, the first under -21 years of age female missionary from my local Ward has been called to serve in one of the English-speaking missions in Virginia USA

Rumors abound that half if not most of the missionaries in the Missionary Training Center this year will be sisters – and this brings up all sorts of leadership fairness issues.   I am on the record that missions will have to call both male and female district and zone leaders.

I saw a couple of missionary elders working the crowd at Orem Summerfest on Friday, and one appeared all of 17.   Ironic to call him an elder when he seems so kid-like.  I bet he shaves with a washcloth.   

Youth has its appeal and its problems.   I am not yet entirely won over to the idea of 18-year-old-guy-missionaries.  I understand the practical necessities of it:  our culture makes 18 the transition age, American and European Kulchural realities, organizations recruit our guys without shame.   I will state for the record that we should not allow militaries to conscript youngsters or enroll teenagers, either.   20 should be the minimum age all around. 


TRUE CONFESSIONS

I admire my neighbors’s willingness to serve in this tough sort of assignment.  If the Church had to depend on me for its missionary work, it would be in the proverbial World of Hurt. 

When I was 19, anxiety and situational depression issues would have made my mission a terrible mistake.  The1970s Missionary Department dealt indecisively with mental health issues.   [Some stake members had memorable disasters in the 1970s, including a mysterious death by drowning.  But that is another story. ]  I had asthma and allergies as well, but so far as I remember,  no one in authority told me the department would assign me somewhere with advanced medical resources.  Maybe it did not at that time – I cannot recall. 

I was not really sold on Mormon Kulchur in the early 1970s, either.  I would not defend the Priesthood Racial Policy.  I did not know any black people then and did not know if I liked them, but even I could see the ban posed problems from the view of fairness and from missionary public relations angle.

Furthermore, I was the star of the family and did not relish the prospect of serving two years as another cog in a mission’s elder inventory.   As an only child, as a guy uninterested in sport, as a kid bullied in school, I disliked typical guys and did not intend to live with any of them if I could help it.  I could. 

Mine was a family of underpaid working stiffs.  A 1970s mission was either expensive or really expensive.   We had to keep cost-benefit-ratio analysis in mind.   Despite the two year investment of time and the expense, a mission has/had no guarantees of success.   I view missionary work the way my mother viewed fishing.  She wanted something on the hook every 5 minutes to keep her attention.  So, she gave up on fishing.   If I were a missionary, I would want to baptize every two weeks, for baptizing is the point of a mission and measures “success.”   I did not want long hard work with lengthy dry spells and the possibility of rejection on a regular basis. 

I should have been more openly honest about my reasons.  On the other hand, the truth is never applauded for its own sake. [I stole that from Oscar Wilde.  Don’t tell anyone.]   So, I threw the sand of worthiness issues  into the eyes of my bishop and state president.   Worthiness issues in the LDS Church sometimes mean something else. 


SPECULATING ON THE PAST THAT LEAD TO THE FUTURE

I often wonder what the 21st century LDS Church would have looked like if –

1 it had not spent so much time and energy promoting and then rationalizing, denying, rejecting, and suppressing polygamy

2  most of the people baptized in the 19th and 20th Centuries had remained active members

3 most of them had paid at least 5 percent tithing if not ten.  

4 it had not followed a deliberate course it make itself unattractive to potential converts and user unfriendly.

It would certainly be different.  


AN ASIDE

I have a theory – and like most of my theories, it comes at you in spades.   Because The Church requires a lot of unpaid service, and because it does not pay its professional staff at competitive rates, I suspect some 19th and 20th Century church members resented it subconsciously and undercut it with  cultural traditions and attitudes and with administrative edicts.  The mission system reflects, I suspect, some of that.  For one thing, it would be better if people who turned the mission into a rite of passage had not hijacked it.  I simply refused to be a part of a rite of passage since I believed then I did not have to prove anything to anybody. 

The two-year mission made sense in the days when the Church had few missionaries and a very large world to cover.   Nowadays, more people doing more work for a year would do more than a few people working for two. 

Today, I cannot imagine why any young man would join this Church.   It is expensive; it is time consuming in its volunteer laity leadership demands; it provides for his daughter no possibilities at all for leadership or professional advancement on a ward-wide, stake-wide or church-wide basis.


IN CONCLUSION

In the early 1990s the Church developed the concept of the Service Mission.   I have done some service missions already in my lifetime and hope to do some more in the future.     Because I am single, I won’t get called to a long term full time missionary arrangement, and that is OK because I still don’t entirely buy into all of Mormon Kulchur in the 21st Century.  


THE CALL TO ACTION

  I hope the 21st Century LDS Church proclaims the gospel by local members on their ward, stake and district levels.