Prodigals fallen off the bandship

Two bishops are discussing the problem that they each had with a rat infestation in their respective meetinghouses. One said, "We called an exterminator to handle the problem, and since then we've never seen the rats." The other replied, "We baptized the rats, and we haven't seen them since."

I wish that the joke weren't reflective of a sobering truth. Sometimes, people stay. But too often- once would be too many, as Gordon B. Hinckley once said- they fall away. And sometimes- once would be too many- we don't pay them as much attention as we do non-member investigators.

On July 1st, 2012, I was transferred with many other missionaries from the Utah Salt Lake City Mission to help found the Utah Salt Lake City West Mission. Its purpose was to pilot several new programs for the missionary work, and the most important of these was one that gave a new focus on the reactivation of members who had fallen away from the Church in one form or another. While I am hardly about to speak a new doctrine in this post, it is nonetheless a point that some have not yet grasped.

In some of his discourses Brigham Young used the image of the Good Ship Zion, headed surely toward the Port of the Celestial Kingdom. Those that have not boarded the ship are in a sorry state, to be sure: The heavenly city of Jehovah-shammah lies across a great ocean, and they will never reach it on foot or even by another, less-sturdy ship. But at the very least they are still on the ground. 

In more dire circumstances are those who boarded the Good Ship Zion but then jumped overboard at some later time. The ocean across which Zion sails is treacherous, hardly something that a man could swim through under his own power. The ship could surely reach the Port with neither crew nor passengers, but where God does not need us we certainly are in need of Him. Those that have jumped from the ship and its protections are caught in the raging waters of the tempest, and they perish if they are not saved. 

The reason for this is that they have made sacred covenants. Whether they have "only" made the covenants of baptism or have gone all the way through the temple and been sealed to another person for time and all eternity, they have made certain promises to God and God cannot turn Himself away from the obligations that they have entered into. If it is a sin to do something, how much greater the condemnation for one that has expressly covenanted with God, as did Abraham, to not do that thing?

What this means is that the rescue of less-active members is actually of greater importance than baptizing new members. "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply tracting," said Gordon B. Hinckley. As well could he have said, "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply the responsibility of the full-time missionaries." This is changing, if slowly (it takes time to change an entire culture), but if we are less able to say what President Hinckley did we can just as easily say "So many of us look upon missionary work as simply baptizing new members."

It is all the same great redemptive work, because when all is said and the artificial boundaries of terminology are broken down, what "baptizing new members" and "reactivating old members" both mean is: Inviting others to come unto Christ.