Elder Ballard’s Call to Inform

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On the heels of attending a prayer service for Pope Benedict the 16th, Elder M. Russell Ballard spoke at the BYU Management Society dinner this weekend.  The dinner is an annual gathering in Washington, D.C. that includes area members as well as prominent people and dignitaries. 

Elder Ballard’s speech surveyed the church’s experience in the public eye for the last year and repeated his recent calls to engage in public and online discussions about the Church. His overall conclusion was that the past year has been a good experience, saying “I’d much rather have people talking about us than ignoring us.”  Most of the confusion results from those caught between two extremes of critics: conservative Christians who try to marginalize the Church as a cult and those opposed to the Church’s political stands on moral issues.

As he has done so much recently Elder ballard turned to members to help combat the confusion (emphasis added).

So let me pose a question. What are you prepared to do about it? If you are a member of the Church, what is your responsibility during this period of unusual attention and debate? Interest has continued at a high level and probably will for some time. If a national conversation is going on about the Church, are you going to be an active participant or a silent observer?

Church leaders must not be reluctant to participate in public discussion. Where appropriate, we will engage with the media whether it’s the traditional, mainstream media or the new media of the Internet. But Church leaders can’t do it all, especially at the grass-roots, community level. While we do speak authoritatively for the Church, we look to our responsible and faithful members to engage personally with blogs, to write thoughtful, online letters to news organizations, and to act in other ways to correct the record with their own opinions.

However, I emphasize that it is not always about correcting misinformation. Sometimes it is about getting solid information and ideas out there in the first place. Share your experiences – those from your own life – that show how your values and your faith intersect. It doesn’t matter whether that’s face to face with another person, or whether you do it by participating from your own blog or contributing to someone else’s blog. The most important thing is that you let people know that you are a Latter-day Saint, and that your behavior and attitude always reflect the high standards of the Church and what is expected as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, you will be speaking as an individual member and not as an official representative of the Church.

Elder Ballard called on members to share their beliefs and explain why they make a difference in their lives in a natural and unforced way.  He also asked those who weren’t members to join with the Church as “people of goodwill’ against social ills issues like pornography.

Besides being the Church’s most vocal proponent of blogs, Elder Ballard’s call for members to engage public conversations about the Church strikes me as exciting and new.  Instead of focusing solely on sharing the Gospel with the aim of conversion, members need to feel comfortable in sharing their beliefs in a natural and comfortable way to help others understand the truth about the Church.  

It seems to me that this lessens the pressure that members may feel in sharing the Gospel with others and recognizes that a lot of good still comes to the Church without the immediate baptism in sight.

Has the latest push on helping others understand the Church been a shift away from proselytizing and a new approach to missionary work?