Have you seen the missionaries on Facebook? What do you think? Genius idea, moronic, or somewhere in between?
[poll id=”363″]
Discuss.
Agency, Anti-Mormon, Apostasy, Church Policy, Faith, Freedom, Mission, Mormon, Mormon Belief, Mormon Culture, weekend poll
Missionaries on Facebook (Weekend Poll)
Wheat & Tares 
All I’m seeing is a home birthing survey. FWIW, I think missionaries on Facebook is a moronic idea.
While the “issue” of home birthing may be worthy of discussion, it is moronic on a blog supposedly for Mormon-tainted “issues.” And, I am bored with nothing better to do right now than write this comment.
“.. it is moronic on a blog supposedly for Mormon-tainted “issues.” ”
I’m sure its placement was a mistake, not necessarily moronic.
I don’t want any missionaries assisting with my home birth, thanks. 😉
wait.. missionary work now includes home birthing?
Haha, everyone, the poll has been corrected. Home birthing is (fortunately) not a new thing for missionaries.
I just don’t want every missionary who comes through town to be constantly contacting me and asking me for things (referrals, rides, food, more referrals, etc.) on my Facebook. I’m happy to help if they want to ask me at church, but I need boundaries at home and in my personal life. I allowed the missionaries to add me at first but after a few months I’d had enough and unfriended all of them. They still have my phone number (and I have call waiting) so I consider that even.
I’m thinking there’s a lot of potential for things going wrong. When a missionary comes to your door, they are easily recognized. You meet them very forthrightly, and either engage or don’t engage. On facebook, you never really know for sure who you are talking to, if you haven’t met them IRL or at least in some other venue and gotten to know them. Elder-so-and-so could be anyone, and anyone can represent themselves as an “LDS missionary.” The church will have a hard time disavowing someone who trolls, or worse, under the guise. It will be difficult for missionaries to establish trust, and difficult, too, for people to be sure the missionaries aren’t just friending them to “spy” on them for a bishop or other church leader.
18-year olds supervised by 19-year olds …. What possibly could go wrong??
@9-who also put their stuff on facebook so all the other adults and their Mission President and friends back home can see dot dot dot
I don’t see it lasting. There’s just simply no way to police it.
Does anyone else thing this is a strategy that will irritate more people than it will attract? I have a non-member friend who feels like he is being stalked by the local missionaries.
Steve, all it takes is one restraining order and your friend will be free of name tags for years to come. (sarcasm)
Since these kids, and their well-meaning friends (all of whom are complete strangers to me) now spam my Facebook page, I always post in reply: “Here we observe the Mormon church’s recently announced ‘Flood the Shit Out of Facebook’ proselyting scheme, wherein Mormon missionaries and members infiltrate the Facebook discussions of complete strangers, in an effort to silence any online criticism of the Mormon church.” They generally slink away quietly after that.
I’m friends with about 6 or 7 Elders (either currently or formerly in my ward). I haven’t had any privacy problems and we have had some pretty good discussions but it just seems ineffective. All of the discussions are among members–no one is really “inviting their friends”. One of our Elders got in a lot of trouble because he accidentally (according to him) “liked” a picture of scantily clad women.
The missionaries I’m friends with post little feel-happy memes and quotes. These little posts remind me of the church’s old TV commercials that reminded us that “family, isn’t it about time” and “being different is being great”. A message from the Mormons. Considering all the spam we get on FB and elsewhere, it’s not bad.
Like the old TV commercials, I don’t think it will last forever.
I do think that posting pics of investigators and giving up-to-the-minute progress reports should be banned under some sort of ecclesiastical counseling or pastoral confidentiality law. In the very least, we ought to show more decorum and respect for their privacy.
Like any other form of advertising, it’s likely to be more annoying than useful.
On a related note, a number of missionaries in my ward have personal journals on WordPress or blogger.com, and they probably should be careful about posting pictures and names of investigators without permission as well. As the expansion of missionary social media presence increases, we’ll probably see some rules come out about this kind of thing.