The Huffington Post is out today with an in-depth analysis of the Church’s online missionary program. It highlights the story of one young man who went onto the online chats to harass missionaries with nonsense questions, but who began to feel the spirit, and slowly became converted to the gospel. The article offers this odd observation, “In an age of Internet-enabled instant gratification, the church is betting the demand for instant salvation can’t be far behind.” Most members of the Church would not consider Mormonism a brand of “instant salvation” at least compared to other less demanding theologies, but as people become more accustomed to asking Google their hardest questions, seeking out a church in person before knowing what it’s about seems odd. And the results are hard to ignore. Online missionaries bring 10 times as many people into the Church as other missionaries, and the retention rate is 95%. With this background no wonder the Church has allowed all missionaries to use their Facebook accounts. The entire Huffington Post article is worth a read.
