Following Up

No matter how good your message is you may not be able to deliver it without consistent, persistent, follow-up.

We should avoid calling the church the Mormon Church or the LDS Church.

This is like the connection between Islam and Muslim. Islam is the religion; Muslim is the individual follower.

Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Missionary work requires more from members than simply making invitations to listen to the missionaries. The members must also follow-up and support those who accept the invitation as well as continuing to be friendly with those who decline it.

He felt that the message about the use of the full name of the church was important enough to warrant follow-up.

The term Mormon can be appropriately used in some contexts to refer to members of the Church, such as Mormon pioneers, or to institutions, such as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Church members are widely known as Mormons, and in interactions with those not of our faith, we may fittingly refer to ourselves as Mormons, provided we couple this with the full name of the Church.

If members learn to use the correct name of the Church in connection with the word Mormon, it will underscore that we are Christians, members of the Savior’s Church.

 As it says in the missionary guide Preach My Gospel, “extending an invitation without following up is like beginning a journey without finishing it or buying a ticket to a concert without going into the theater. Without the completed action, the commitment is hollow.”

Inviting is certainly part of the process. But notice that there is much more to missionary work for members than simply extending invitations to people to listen to the missionaries. It also includes follow-up with the missionaries in the cultivation of faith, the motivation to repentance, the preparation for making covenants, and enduring to the end.

I invite all members, regardless of your current calling or level of activity in the Church, to obtain a copy of Preach My Gospel. It is available through our distribution centers and also online. The online version can be read or downloaded at no cost. It is a guidebook for missionary work—which means it is a guidebook for all of us. Read it, study it, and then apply what you learn to help you understand how to bring souls to Christ through invitation and follow-up.

That is as clear a directive as we ever receive in conference.

There are practical ways for members to help and support our remarkable missionaries. For example, you can tell the missionaries that you are studying Preach My Gospel and ask them to show you what they are learning in their studies. As you share with each other, increased confidence between members and full-time missionaries will surely develop.

Brothers and sisters, can you imagine the impact if family and friends included things they are learning from their personal study of Preach My Gospel in their letters and emails to their full-time missionaries? Can you picture the blessings that will come to families when they know and understand better what their sons and daughters will be studying and teaching on their missions? Can you even begin to fathom the extraordinary outpouring of atoning grace that will be ours, individually and collectively, according to the Savior’s promise to all who bear testimony in the process of inviting souls to come unto Him—and then following up on those invitations?

We can obtain and use those blessings in our family. We can have them by sharing together even outside topics and efforts of missionary work although they may be greater in that context because of this invitation.