Now that the LDS Church has raised the

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

From my limited perspective, I think the bar has gone back down after the initial "raising" and we aren't that far off from before. I have seen quite a few young men go out that I thought for sure wouldn't make it.

Are you assessing this strictly from an anecdotal perspective, or do you have some evidence the bar has actually been lowered?

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

One thing I do know: way too many people were being sent on missions that had absolutely no business being out there. Hopefully that number has been improved since the "raise the bar" initiative.

How do you know this? And how do you identify the bad missionaries in advance? I compare this to the BYU recruiting issue. What's the difference between a Curtis Brown and a B.J. Mathis? Both are Christian believing good character guys in high school. To really eliminate the bad misionary problem, you'd have to lower the bar in half and then you'd probably cut out 80% of the bad missionary problems. For every level you lower it, you cut out more potential good missionaries than bad missionaries.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by jay santos

How do you know this?

It was the opinion offered by my dad, who served as a mission president just a couple of years ago.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Tex

Are you assessing this strictly from an anecdotal perspective, or do you have some evidence the bar has actually been lowered?

LOL. That's not obvious from my post?

[jay santos]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

It was the opinion offered by my dad, who served as a mission president just a couple of years ago.

It's easy to go out and look at some missions and say there are definitely kids here that shouldn't be here. It's a lot harder to translate that into a pre-screening policy to successfully eliminate those and only those. In fact it's completely impossible. You lower the bar to eliminate even 1,000 missionaries a year and likely more than half of those would have been good missionaries.

[Tex]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

LOL. That's not obvious from my post?

Just asking, bro.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by Tex

Just asking, bro.

He did invoke the "limited perspective" clause.

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

I asked the person who had access to the study, if the drop was PRIMARILY due to "raising the bar", or barring admittance to a large number of missionaries. His response was no, that it was PRIMARILY due to a shift in demographics.

That is encouraging, if true. That would mean that there aren't very many prospective missionaries who have done things that disqualify them from service, or that leaders are still making every effort to allow those who wish to serve the opportunity to do so notwithstanding the higher bar, or both.

[non sequitur]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

From my limited perspective, I think the bar has gone back down after the initial "raising" and we aren't that far off from before. I have seen quite a few young men go out that I thought for sure wouldn't make it.

Maybe the bar is being lowered. It could be that more prospective missionaries are simply choosing to lie about past indiscretions. If you know that admitting to sex will keep you out, and if you don't want to disappoint your parents, then the natural reaction is to simply lie.

[BYUTexan]

Originally Posted by BYUruss

Other end of the spectrum: One of my good friends got a hand job from a member girl on his mission. He felt so bad about it that he called his MP right after, and all the MP did was talk with him and tell him to never do it again. I think it all depends on the MP.

Dammit, why doesn't that eve happen to me:twisted: