The “Why We Stay” panel is typically the most popular panel at the annual summer Sunstone Symposium—though it’s a bit of a misnomer, since what the panel is implicitly asking isn’t so much why but rather how we stay.
The answer to that question must naturally vary from person to person, with as many different answers as there are people who still attend church. For whatever it may be worth, here’s my own answer to that question, which I will frame around that most idiosyncratic of Mormon literary genres: the Mission Story.
Towards the end of my mission, we received a new mission president—a retired dentist from Fresno, California, a very humble, faithful, and obedient man. Within a month of his arrival, and with the apparent intended purpose of helping the new guy adjust and acclimate to his new field of labor, we were visited by not one but two members of the First Quorum of the Seventy. (This would’ve been around 2004.)
The first was Elder H. Aldridge Gillespie, who informed us breathlessly about a companionship up in Indiana who were absolutely shattering baptismal records. How? He was repeatedly tracting only the same 3 streets around the chapel. This, we were told, allowed the Elders serving there to develop relationships of trust and deep friendships with the locals over time, and even have neighbors fellowship and encourage each other towards baptism.
“So why do you keep tracting out to the far flung reaches of your areas when there are people perishing in unbelief right where you live?” he remonstrated to us, “Don’t waste time biking out to the middle of nowhere! Quit being so lazy (cause that’s what you’re actually doing on your bikes, avoiding work!), and take the time to actually befriend the people whom you have been called to serve. You can’t just cold call people, you have to prepare them! Would you let you in? Of course not! Then go forth and do likewise.”
For my mission president, it was enough: the Lord’s Servant had spoken. He decreed that forthwith we were to no longer to use our bikes and cars, but to tract only the streets within immediate walking distance around our apartments.
As you can imagine, this news was received with mixed enthusiasm at best by the missionaries. Most everyone I think at least gave it a shot, but even the most slavishly obedient missionaries had abandoned the program by the end of the first week—it turned out that most people who lived near our apartments were no more interested in talking to us the hundredth time we knocked their doors than they were the first, and so all of our numbers went down. With a slight twinge of guilt (though only slightly), we all started quietly biking away from our apartments again.
Literally two weeks later, we were then visited by Elder Lynn A. Mickelson of the Seventy. Addressing the mission leadership (I was a zone leader at the time), he started by glossing Joseph Smith’s interpretation of the ninety and nine sheep, wherein the Prophet taught that when Christ left behind the 99 sheep to seek after the 1, it was because the 99 “are too righteous to repent; they will be damned anyhow; you cannot save them.”[1]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1976, pp. 277-278. Elder Mickelson went on to argue that the ratio here cited was a true one: that 1 out of every 100 people is ready to repent and hear the gospel now.
“So why do you keep tracting the same old streets, over and over again?” he exclaimed, “Quit wasting your time on people who are clearly not ready now! Maybe they will be one day, but right now they are obviously not, so cut your losses and move on. Think about it: if someone kept knocking your door and bugging you day after week after month after year, wouldn’t you get sick and tired of seeing them too? Give them a break! Give yourself a break. Stop doing the same lazy, rote thing (because that’s what you’re doing when you keep on grinding out the same doors over and over–you’re not working, you’re avoiding work!), and get out to those distant parts of your areas where no one has even heard of the missionaries yet!”
He shared as an example a missionary up in Alaska who approached him after this self-same lesson. “My entire area only has, like, 5,000 people in it,” he complained, “how am I supposed to find new people to teach?” “Well, how many people have you talked to in your area so far?” Elder Mickelson asked. “Oh, probably 500,” he hazarded. “And how many baptisms have you had?” “Five,” he said–and suddenly his eyes widened and he just wanted to rush back to his area right there and talk to those 4,500 other people.
After the meeting, I went out to lunch with a couple of the other zone leaders and the APs. As we drove, I was the one who finally blurted out, “OK, so are we supposed to be tracting close to home or far from home now?”
The whole car burst out laughing. “I know, right?” said the APs (they alone of all missionaries, under the ever-watchful gaze of the mission president, hadn’t been able to get away with tracting far from their apartments those past couple weeks–it was pretty much the only time on my mission I ever felt bad for the APs).
As young missionaries do, we began speculating out loud as to why our new mission president had received such polar opposite, contradictory commandments from the Lord’s Anointed within such a short space of time. Before we even arrived at the restaurant, we had concluded that it was obviously a message from the Lord directly, gently and lovingly admonishing our mission president that, though it was good of him to wish to humbly obey all his priesthood leaders, nevertheless if he wished to thrive in this mission, he was going to have to figure out the best approach for himself.
We young missionaries then discussed how that same message applied to us individually: although it was good to take counsel from our leaders, at the end of the day we had sole stewardship over our areas, and we alone would have to figure out what would be the best approach for ourselves.
Naturally, we even made a life-lesson out of it: we alone had stewardship over our own lives–and though it was good to take counsel from others, even from the General Authorities of the Church, nevertheless we alone would still have to figure out for ourselves what would be the best path for us individually to take. There could be no outsourcing our own inspiration, nor our own decisions; as we’d often been told, we cannot live on borrowed light.
Here I need to emphasize that the missionaries I was hanging with that day were no disaffected outliers or murmuring rabble-rousers or closet Sunstone liberals or what have you–no, these were the APs and zone leaders! These were the rank-and-file, faithful, conservative, orthodox, true-believing, prophet-sustaining, mission-serving, truth-testifying, covenant-keeping, seminary-graduating, BYU-attending Youth of Zion! These were the future Elders Quorum & Relief Society presidents, Bishops, Stake Presidents, and aspiring General Authorities! Most of us didn’t even know what a Sunstone was, and wouldn’t have cared if we had. Yet at the tender age of 21, we had here matter-of-factly come to the conclusion that sometimes our leaders are sent by God to try us as much as to counsel us, that we can disregard them if we don’t feel a similar confirmation of the Spirit, that there is no substitute for our own inspiration and conscience, that ultimately we must think and feel for ourselves.
Such ideas, I don’t think I need to belabor, are not common assumptions at all in this Church–and in fact are hotly contested in our Sunday schools, Church colleges, symposia, bloggernacles, and even General Conferences (of which we have another one coming up this weekend). “When the prophet has spoken the thinking is done” verses “The prophet is only a prophet when he is speaking as a prophet” and so forth.
But here’s the thing: in my childlike and naive faith I still sincerely believe it, that the Lord sent two contradictory GAs to teach my mission president—and us—not to listen exclusively to GAs. This I still matter-of-factly consider to be an orthodox position–because it is an orthodox position. Joseph Smith told the Camp of Zion “that they were depending on the Prophet, hence were darkened in their minds, in consequence of neglecting the duties devolving upon themselves”[2]Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Ed. Joseph Fielding Smith, 1976, pg. 238.. Brigham Young, per usual, was even more explicit:
“I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not”[3]Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. John A. Widstoe, 1954, pg. 135; Journal of Discourses 9:150..
So for me, it has also been enough: the Lord’s Servants have spoken. Henceforth, if I am to follow the Prophet, I must not follow them either exclusively or blindly. To this day, whenever I hear a General Authority say something contradictory, or tone-deaf, or cringey, or cruel, or just flat out wrong, I don’t build my faith on it. They are not the Rock of my faith. Absent the confirmation of the Holy Spirit, I feel free to ignore them entirely; so both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young taught us. For that matter, Joseph Smith in the King Follet discourse also said he had the truest Bible of all, in his own heart–and his point was that we all do. I still believe that too.
And that, at least, is how I stay.