Some people say missionary work is manipulative, and we believe that is because they have been taught incorrectly. Building a friendship is not a prerequisite to inviting people to learn about the gospel. The only way all people can have the opportunity to choose or reject the gospel of Jesus Christ is for us, without judgment, to invite them to follow the Savior. We need not and should not alter ...

We succeed as member missionaries when we invite people to learn and accept truth. We give them the opportunity to exercise their agency.We have observed this general pattern—one in four people we invite to learn more say “yes.” A friend of ours, Ben, applied this in a very interesting way. He didn’t feel he wanted to be told “no” three times so he set a goal that he would be told “n ...

Using Mormon words in our daily conversations opens a door for people to have a conversation about the Church. The vast majority don’t walk through the door, and that’s fine. But sometimes they do by asking, “Oh—so you’re a Mormon?” We have found it very helpful to follow up by asking, “Why do you ask?” This better prepares us to follow the spirit in answering the questions they ar ...

When someone says, “Tell me about the Mormon Church,” as a general rule, we ought not to tell them what we like about our own church. We often give a doctrinal response—eternal families, modern prophets or scriptures. This makes sense to us because doctrine is the reason why we are in our church instead of in another. Doctrine over time becomes very important to converts, too. But it often i ...

When we invite others to learn about the gospel, we do so because we love them. It is important for people, especially those we know well, to understand we love them and value their friendship unconditionally. When extending an invitation to friends, promise them that their response to your invitations won’t affect your relationship. Such a promise decouples—as we’ll call it—your invitatio ...

When we meet people, we often find excuses to categorize them as “not interested” in religion and therefore not worth our effort to invite them to learn about the gospel. However, we’ve found many of these people are interested in religion and in fact have deep questions about it. Rather than trying to convince these people that they need our church or any church, we suggest asking them ques ...

On occasion, those who are in comfortable circumstances feel the need for a church affiliation. Most of the time, however, we will do better with people living comfortable lives if we can convey how desperately those of us in the Church need their help. Though this idea seems paradoxical at first, it reflects a mechanism of conversion the Savior taught: “Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake ...

Because work is a place where we can most readily meet people and engage in conversations about the gospel, Satan is very committed to stop this from happening. This might be the biggest battle we have with Satan.Over the years, we have found the following to be true:There are many people at work who believe in God and are anxious to talk about Him. In many cases after we talked about God, people ...

The Internet can be a powerful tool for missionary work.Write your testimony and publish it online. When co-workers and others you meet have questions about your faith, you can point them to a website if the situation doesn’t allow for you to tell your conversion story or bear your testimony in full. Thousands of people interested in Clayton Christensen’s professional work have been introduced ...

Almost everything in life has deadlines: gas bills, phone bills, taxes, college applications, food expirations and so on. We create deadlines because without them most of us would never get around to finishing what we start.Member missionary efforts have never imposed deadlines. As a result, most of us are not engaged in finding people for full-time missionaries to teach. Most of us want to be goo ...