ClobberBlog | Mormonism, Evangelical Christianity

Or, what to do when you have Mormon missionaries at your door

It’s a question that a lot of evangelical Christians consider: how do you react when you answer a call at your door to find two smiling young men (or young women) in black name tags standing there? You know that they’ve come to share their religion with you, but you yourself are passionately convicted of the truthfulness of the biblical Gospel¹ and believe that Mormons are in serious error. How do you make the most of this situation? Should you try to share your faith with them, or simply send them on their way?

Understand Your Audience

There’s two important things every evangelical Christian ought to understand about LDS missionaries:

With that in mind, I believe there are three paths an evangelical Christian can take when she has Mormon missionaries on her doorstep.

Option 1: Get rid of them

This is by far the easiest path to take. All you have to say is, “Elders/Sisters, I’m not interested.” You won’t have the opportunity to share your faith, but we’ve already established that it’s their job to find people who are interested in joining Mormonism, and that isn’t you. There’s no shame in this option either. Engaging members of the LDS church typically requires some knowledge and understanding of LDS doctrine and history, and while I believe we should all be prepared at all times to give a reason for the hope we have in Christ (1 Peter 3:15), I don’t think it’s every believer’s duty to be ready for an in-depth engagement with Mormonism on a moment’s notice. We can’t all fight poverty, we can’t all be missionaries to Japan, and we can’t all be ministers and ambassadors to Mormons. The Body of Christ has different parts for different reasons (1 Corinthians 12:12-31), so if engaging Mormonism is not on your heart, leave it to the people for whom it is.³

Option #2: Interfaith Dialogue

By far my favorite option, and the one that I usually engage in when the missionaries come to my home. Explain that while you are not interested in joining the church, you would not mind learning more about what they believe if they are willing to learn more about what you believe. There’s a good chance they’ll accept that proposal; remember, most missionaries hate tracting and would rather be doing anything but.

Interfaith dialogue is easy, and at the same time it is very, very hard. Talking about what you believe with other people who say they want to listen to you is the easy part. Being willing to listen to the other party and let them correct your misconceptions of their beliefs is the hard part. Being open to learning new things about a religion you don’t agree with is a lot harder than it sounds. Being able to admire things in a religion you disagree with is also harder than it sounds.

As to what to talk about, you’re probably going to want to talk about your faith in Christ and your Christian testimony, and there’s nothing wrong with that. However, when Mormons hear basic evangelical testimonies of Jesus, they may find them inspiring and touching, but a lot of them won’t see what the “big deal” is. They reason that you can still have that testimony of Christ and be Mormon, so your testimony of Christ may explain why you’re a Christian, but it probably won’t go very far in explaining why you’re an evangelical Christian and not a Mormon.

So when I talk about my faith, I spend some time discussing the things I love about my religion that Mormonism can’t give me. I talk about how great it is to attend a church where the Bible is read from in modern languages. I talk about how much I love the music at my church. I cover how grateful I am that my religion does not dictate to me what standards of grooming, jewelry and clothing are appropriate and trusts me to determine those things for myself. Since I’m an egalitarian evangelical, I can also point out how great it is to participate in a religion which does not restrict women from holding certain offices or performing ordinances. (Obviously, if you’re a complementarian, that angle is not open to you.) I talk about how I love that I’m considered a priest in my religion and do not require another human mediator between myself and Christ for the forgiveness of certain sins; I can bring all my needs to God directly. I focus on the freedom I have in Christ through evangelical Christianity and contrast it to the rather austere nature of Mormonism.

The reactions I get to this approach are varied. Some people raise apologetics for how those things are trivial or try to explain how Mormonism really can give me those things. Some people honestly acknowledge that these are things the church ought to work on. Every now and then, I meet someone who hears the things I love about evangelical Christianity and has a similar yearning awakened inside of him, and while I think dialogue is valuable in itself, those are the people I’m really looking for.

Option #3: Being your own missionary

So you would like to do everything you can to convince the missionaries at your door that Mormonism is not true while helping them arrive at or maintain their faith in Christ. I’ll freely confess that I have little experience with this approach, but I do know a few things about it.

For starters, I need to explain one thing about being a Christian missionary. Jesus taught His disciples, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” (Mark 2:17b) In the context of engaging Mormons, the meaning of Jesus’ words is this: people who are satisfied with their current religion will have no interest in converting to a new one. They are, in that sense, “the healthy” or “the righteous.” People have to reach a point where they realize they have some other need in their life—where they realize that they are sick—before they will call the doctor by accepting Jesus or embracing a new religious system. It is almost impossible to convert people who are satisfied with their current religion, and I have never known a Mormon who switched to evangelical Christianity without becoming intensely dissatisfied with the LDS church first.

The Mormon missionaries, on the other hand, are probably not going to be dissatisfied with Mormonism. If you’re interested in witnessing to them, you have to convince them that Mormonism is in error while reaffirming the positive things about the biblical Gospel. In my experience, three things are more effective in getting Latter-day Saints to have doubts about Mormonism than anything else:

Learn the details of those three things and be ready to explain them extensively. Be sure to maintain your focus on the positive, uplifting things about evangelical Christianity.

Dos and Don’ts

In closing, let me share some Do’s and Don’ts which especially apply to Option #2 & Option #3:

When all else fails, a healthy dose of humor can always save the day. Good luck.

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ABOUT THIS POST:

This post is part of a conspiracy between myself, Tim of LDS & Evangelical Conversations, and Aaron Shafovaloff of Mormon Coffee. All of us are evangelical Christians, though we vary in our approaches to Mormons. We all agreed to write on the subject of how to handle Mormon missionaries at the door and post at the same time, and none of us saw the other posts before publishing.

Tim’s post: Witnessing to Mormon Missionaries

Aaron’s post: Making the Most of Mormon Missionary Visits

Regardless of how you feel about Tim and Aaron, I hope you will stop by their blogs and read what they have to say on the subject. If you’re visiting from Tim’s or Aaron’s blogs, welcome to ClobberBlog and thank you for hearing me out.

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NOTES:

Photo & Caption: In The Simpsons, “Treehouse of Horror IX: Starship Poopers,” Homer hears the doorbell ring and answers the door. Upon finding the aliens Kodos and Kang on his doorstep, he exclaims, “Oh, great. Mormons.” Kodos and Kang quickly explain that they are actually Quantum-Presbyterians.

[1] It is not my intention in to imply that Mormons do not believe in the Bible. I think that Mormons do believe in the Bible, they simply understand it through the teachings of modern-day Mormonism and so arrive at very different conclusions on its teachings than traditional Christians. However, this post is intended for evangelical Christians and I am describing the scenario in terms they can relate to.

[2] As described on the pro-LDS site LightPlanet.

[3] If you think the “not interested” answer is boring, you might try asking them if they have a spare name tag you can borrow so that you can play a round of “Gadianton missionary” with your spouse. They won’t come back after that.