Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeWaters
I would ask him something along the lines of whether he thinks that convert baptisms in the USA have slowed, or been disappointing, and whether that is more a reflection of the church and its changing relationship with the public, or whether it is general reflection on American society and the growing irreligious of it.
Along the same lines I might ask what he feels the impact of the Godmakers et al. has been on church growth, esp. in the internet age.
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He said that growth is dying in Europe as well, and we are becoming a Southern hemispheric church. I followed up by pointing out that the US is more religious in Europe, and it's secularizing, but we've lost the #1 growth spot to JWs and SDAs.
He said the internet has had a HUGE negative impact on Church growth. The Church recognizes this and is taking action.
He said we need to reconstruct our CES system. We are creating fragile testimonies. If you tell a 14-year old that Joseph Smith used a peepstone, he'd say, "Whoa! That's cool!" Instead, they are not finding out until later, and they leave the Church. Not because they found some other truth, but they feel they've been betrayed.
I talked to him about five years ago and he said that in order to get non-LDS people to subject the BoM to critical analysis, we should start by treating it as a literary piece.
http://cougarguard.com/forum/showthread.php?t=20024
Last weekend I asked him how much has Grant Hardy's book done in that regard. He said that's a critical step, but he hasn't heard any non-LDS people cite the book yet.
It was a very interesting symposium, with even heated debate. Maybe I'll post notes when I get the chance.
His wife Fiona was also present. She taught seminary, and junked the CES materials.