My mission had earned a reputation as a party mission long before I or my mission president got there. In fact, my mission president's predecessor, a retired Air Force colonel, had been sent to the California San Jose mission specifically to clean it up. President Homer sent so many elders home that they called him “Send'emhomer.” Things were better when my mission president arrived, but there was still a lot of work to do. This was complicated somewhat by moving Monterey and Santa Cruz Counties from the Fresno mission to the San Jose mission. A lot of missionaries woke up one morning to find themselves in a different mission with a different president and some new, stricter rules.
My mission president set a mission goal for 100 baptisms a month when the average was closer to 60, and after setting the goal the best the mission did was 80. President Douglas worked long and hard to push the mission to reach 100, but nothing seemed to be working. Then one night, while sleeping, he suddenly awoke with a start. The impression which awoke him was to set a minimum standard of 25 hours of teaching and tracting a week.
Twenty-five hours was a standard that most missionaries should have been able to meet. I knew some elders who would say that you could be a bucket (lazy) and still get 25 hours of teaching and tracting a week. Some missionaries did that rather easily week in and week out, but for other missionaries it took everything they had to get those hours, and there were still others who, giving it their all, could not quite get to 25 hours. The point, though, was that they were giving it their all, not whether they actually got those 25 hours; and for those who were getting them easily, it was time to stretch themselves to do even more.
Even with the new standard, introduced in the spring of 1988, not long after my arrival, it still took until September to reach the mission goal of 100 baptisms for the month. That month we had a mission-wide 24 hour fast to help us reach that goal. For my mission 100 baptisms a month was our “brick wall in the sky” and getting there was actually more difficult for us than it was for Chuck Yeager to break the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. I actually used that analogy in a testimony I bore at a zone conference, calling 100 baptisms our “brick wall in the font.”
Well, that was California San Jose in the late 1980s. Every mission is unique and the 21st Century may present different challenges. Since I came home from my mission, the church has raised the bar on qualifying to serve a mission, so as a group the missionaries in 21st century will probably be of a better caliber than those I served with in California. I knew and served with some fantastic missionaries, but I also served with a lot of not-so-fantastic elders, as well. By raising the bar, maybe more missionaries now are serving for the right reasons and are thus better disposed to give it their all.
In another post I quoted Elder Jeffry R. Holland who said that a mission is not Burger King where you can have it your way. Missionaries are there to serve the Lord “every hour, every day, every minute, all the way.” I agreed with Elder Holland, whole heartedly, but added this:
"I feel that I should point out that missionaries are not machines, and they are not all the same. In my mission, there were missionaries for whom it took everything they had to get 25 hours of teaching and tracting each week, there were others for whom 25 hours wasn’t really a challenge, and still others who easily did more. It is that middle group that I would focus on; if 25 hours was not a challenge, they probably should have asked themselves if they could have done more, and then they should have stretched themselves to do more. . . .
"In the end, the numbers may not matter as much as the effort that is behind them. You are on a mission to serve the Lord 'all the way.' What matters is that you are giving it your all, not how many hours you tracted, how many doors you knocked on, or how many people you approached on the street. You will not be standing before the judgment bar of God auditing your numbers from the mission field. Instead, In my humble opinion, I think you will be asked a simple question like 'could you have done more?' and you will have a perfect knowledge of whether you really could have done more."
Missionaries should follow the counsel given by their leaders, they should have faith that their leaders are inspired by the Lord in the counsel that they give. My leaders set a minimum standard for 25 hours of teaching and tracting in a week. Leaders in other missions will set their own standards; if they set a standard of 30 hours teaching and tracting, or encourage a goal of 30 teaching appointments in a week, then the missionaries should indeed set those goals and then give everything they have to achieving them.
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