Are We Preparing
for Church Membership to Triple?
Shalissa
Lindsay | October 30, 2019
Maybe
you will recognize the feelings I had on the airplane as a brand-new
missionary.
I
hoped I might engage someone in a meaningful missionary conversation. I knew
that an hour chat would scarcely touch on the expansive doctrines of salvation,
and that my planted seed would grow slowly. And I was okay with that.
Until
I looked out the window.
There
below, I saw urban humanity bustling around in gigantic anthills as far as the
eye could see. In 1996, Sao Paulo was the third largest city in the world. We
flew over dense metropolis for more than an hour before even reaching the
airport. Today, the surrounding population of that single city totals 21
million, which is 5 million more people than all the Church members throughout
the entire world. Other massive cities can make similar claims: Tokyo, Delhi,
Shanghai, Mexico City, Cairo, Dhaka, Mumbai, Beijing, and Osaka.
I
wondered: How can our missionary efforts even make a dent?
And
how can we possibly help prepare the whole world for the Second Coming—when the
entire Church membership (16.3 million) totals about two-tenths of one percent
of the world’s 7.2+ BILLION people?
First,
this disclaimer: The Lord says, “I am
able to do mine own work.”[i] He
lets us “help prepare” in the same way we let our little children “help” in the
kitchen for their own joy and growth. As
President Monson once told Elder Neil L. Anderson: “We do everything we can
to move this work forward. But this is the Lord’s work, and He directs it. He
is at the helm. We marvel as we watch Him open doors we cannot open and perform
miracles we can scarcely imagine.”[ii]
Okay,
so all modern prophets have taught us that the Church’s purpose is to prepare
the world for the Second Coming of the Savior.[iii] Elder D. Todd Christofferson declared: “The
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is uniquely empowered and
commissioned to accomplish the necessary preparations for the Lord’s Second
Coming; indeed, it was restored for that purpose.”[iv]
What
exactly does that mean—to have the world prepared?
Up
until last month, almost all of my thoughts about “preparing the world” focused
around what I’ll call “Arrival Readiness.” Now, for the first time, I’ve
discovered that there’s another exciting lens through which we can view our
preparations, which I’ll call “After-Plan Readiness.” These two lenses working together now help me
see recent organizational and policy changes with fresh eyes. Readying the
world feels much more manageable, and I feel more excited for the Second Coming
than ever before.
Arrival
Readiness vs. After-Plan Readiness
Consider
this hypothetical example.
Let’s
say a well-respected dignitary is coming to speak in your town, and you want
her to be well received. You create a
promotional team to raise awareness about her coming visit. You secure a venue
and recruit as many friends as possible to come attend. You work hard to gather
a crowd and you distribute materials in advance that will help the group
interact gracefully with the dignitary—asking good questions and so on. You have just completed what I will call Arrival
Readiness. It’s a type of anticipatory preparation for the arrival of a single
climactic event.
Now
let’s go further. Let’s say that this
renowned dignitary comes promoting a specific change—perhaps she would like to
build a hospital for your town. She gives a stirring speech and presents a
well-considered plan for the financing, construction, and staffing of the
hospital. Everyone cheers and agrees. Are you now prepared to build the
hospital?
Not
yet.
You
are only prepared to benefit from this scenario if you have After-Plan
Readiness. With your experienced change management team, you will have already
spent weeks considering questions such as these:
How
will you transfer crowd enthusiasm into tangible action, such as actual
fundraising dollars or votes? Who will
bring the sign-up sheets? Where should you place a donation collection box?
When should the follow-up calls begin? There must be an organized
infrastructure: websites, databases, etc., in place ahead of time to
immediately bring on new volunteers and accept their ready contributions. If these don’t happen, all of your
well-meaning anticipatory preparations are largely wasted.
In
other words, what follow-up is necessary so that the vision presented by your
visitor can truly be realized? That’s After-Plan Readiness.
A
typical Second Coming mindset: Arrival Readiness
Consider
the following 5 ideas below which we frequently associate with preparing the
world for the Lord’s arrival. All of
these are indispensable. Note that, as listed here, each is primarily a form of
arrival readiness.
1.
We prepare ourselves and our loved ones to
joyfully greet the Lord when He arrives.
(This requires repentance, covenants, and lots of practice living the
gospel.)
2.
Through temple ordinances, we prepare millions
of the dead to resurrect and join Christ at his coming.
3.
We invite all nations, kindreds, tongues, and
people to prepare for Christ’s arrival. Those of dispersed Israelite heritage
are especially likely to gather first (in fulfillment of ancient promises).
4.
Eventually we will prepare a city, the New
Jerusalem, where Christ will appear to a welcoming crowd.
5.
We even prepare the collective consciousness
of those outside the Church, because our true doctrine acts like leaven that
spreads imperceptibly to raise the whole loaf. For example, many Christian
churches now expect families to be together after death and teach that we are
children of God—even though their official creeds don’t fully embrace the
implications of these teachings.
All
of these things help people across the world (and spirit world) to happily
anticipate the glorious moment of Christ’s arrival. We look forward to his coming. We gather in readiness to hear him. We prepare people with the ideas that enhance
receptivity. We build the venue. We are working on our Arrival Readiness!
An
additional Second Coming mindset: After-Plan Readiness
Now,
consider how additional perspective is added when we reframe items from the
same list within the mindset of After-Plan Readiness:
1.
We prepare ourselves and our loved ones to
live in millennial unity and peace under Christ’s reign.
2.
Through temple ordinances, we prepare millions
of the dead to join our consecrated society as resurrected beings who will work
among us under Christ’s direction.
Do
you see how the emphasis shifts? How the priorities take on new color?
Other
items on the list could be switched too, but before going any further, let me
share how I stumbled upon the implications of After-Plan Readiness. As these
ideas unfolded, I realized that perhaps our God is readying His Church for an
exciting After-Plan in ways far beyond what we imagine.
For
this idea, I am indebted to beloved speaker and author, Brad Wilcox. During a
summer road trip, my kids and I listed to the audiobook version of Brad’s new
book, “Born to Change the World: Your part in gathering Israel.” The
whole book is fabulous. It explains clearly the history of Israel, and what we
know about the different tribes—which is a great topic outside the scope of
this article.
The
huge lightbulb moment for me came for me near the end of Chapter 4[v], packaged
in this glorious summary (the bolded emphasis is mine):
And what
role do the tribes have in the government of the kingdom of God? We know that
those of Ephraim and Manasseh have the assignment to gather Israel and prepare
the Church and world for the second coming.
But we do not yet know what responsibilities the other tribes will be
given. It seems reasonable that people
named from other tribes should together work with Ephraim and Manasseh for now,
preparing themselves to take their places as leaders in their own tribes when
future assignments come.
Whatever
those roles may be, knowing our tribe now is important because it gives
Latter-day Saints an additional level of worldwide organization that can be
called into action at a moment’s notice.
This is the kind of organization that will be needed when Christ comes
again in his glory and billions—yes, billions—of people will immediately want
to learn about Him and His Church.
Little
wonder the scriptures say it will be in the millennium that the gathering of
Israel will commence in earnest. However,
if we wait until that moment to get organized, it will be too late. We need to
have strong and experienced leaders already in place worldwide to not only
handle the dramatic growth of the Church, but also the additional temporal
responsibilities that will be ours when, as we read in Isaiah, “the
government shall be upon [Christ’s] shoulder.”
You
clicked on this article because the title asked, “Are we preparing for Church
membership to triple?”
The
answer is no…and yes.
The
Church isn’t preparing to grow by 300%.
The Church is preparing for a sudden growth spike of something closer to
thirty-thousand percent!
Let’s
be clear. Before Christ’s arrival, we may grow in many ways—possibly even by
300% with the opening of new countries, etc.
We will need big growth to continue to spread the message worldwide. But
the kind of extraordinary growth we are ultimately preparing for will NOT occur
through our everyday member missionary work. It will NOT occur just because we
have some great new technological teaching tools.
It
won’t really start until after Jesus appears.
“Then
shall all the tribes of the earth…see the Son of man coming in the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory.”[vi] According to Elder Neil L. Andersen:
“It will be breathtaking! The scope and grandeur, the vastness and
magnificence, will exceed anything mortal eyes have ever seen or experienced.”[vii]
Then,
as Elder Neal A. Maxwell put it: “Soon…all flesh shall see Him together. All
knees shall bow in His presence, and all tongues confess His name.[viii] Knees
which never before have assumed that posture for that purpose will do so
then—and promptly. Tongues which have never before spoken His name except in
gross profanity will do so then—and worshipfully.”
Once
Jesus Christ appears, what will he say?
Undoubtedly, many beautiful things we cannot now even imagine. But we do have a few clues about what part of
his message will be.
When
Jesus Christ first appeared to the Nephites (as recorded in 3 Nephi 11), one of
the first things he did was teach the people about baptism in the proper way,
by the proper authority. Isn’t it likely that at the Second Coming, our Lord
will immediately invite all people to accept a covenant relationship with Him
through baptism?
We
don’t know how many people will be present and willing, but it’s extremely
likely that—given the miraculous invitation—at least a few billions of our
brothers and sisters will likely respond wholeheartedly. This is where
After-Plan Readiness comes in. It appears that the Lord wants us to have
priesthood authority and some leadership experience already dispersed among the
nations and cities, equipped for this immediate influx to baptismal fonts. And
as these mass-multitudes join the covenant path and are taught by the living
Jesus Christ, will they not also desire a fullness of temple covenants? A few
hundred temples could scarcely handle the immediate influx. But it would be a start, allowing the first
wave of converts to receive their endowments and then turn around to help endow
the next wave, and so on. Our resurrected dead will surely play a part in the
After-Plan too.
Our
Arrival Readiness is really, really important.
But also, today’s gathering of first-wave Israel is preparing a ground infrastructure
that will be already be arranged and in place after the Lord’s coming to help
everyone throughout the world who will desire to receive Jesus by covenant. The
After-Plan will necessarily be unimaginably far-reaching.
In
what ways are we as a Church currently being prepared by the Lord—not only for
the immediate days before He comes, but also for that ultimate transition to
millennial worship, with its continuing missionary and temple work?
I
don’t know what other implications attend Christ’s After-Plan. We can only
speculate how other Church components might be preparing to contribute then. As
Brother Wilcox pointed out, our assignment to various tribes of Israel now may
provide a starting point for our callings then. Perhaps the Lord also has big
millennial plans for our global education initiatives, now in their infancy.
Perhaps our self-reliance trainings go far beyond today’s budgeting strategies,
and set the stage for millennial work to recover the globe from disasters and
rebuild the cities.[ix] I don’t know how Christ’s government will be structured
when he reigns as King of Kings, but we know His Church will play a part.
Somehow, He will have organization without bureaucracy, and order without
regimentation.
Jesus
has told us, “Ye shall have no laws but my laws when I come, for I am your
lawgiver, and what can stay my hand?”[x] His laws will end evil,
oppression, injustice, poverty, suffering, and death. They will also bring
lasting unity, harmony, love, health, and purpose. What an honor to be allowed
to contribute to that after-plan!
And
in the meantime?
Well,
if my missionary children only find a few converts among today’s massive
cities, that’s okay. If we have to streamline some of our cultural baggage and
youth development customs, that’s okay. If persecution temporarily shrinks our
membership or makes it look like we are losing ground, that’s okay. If the whole world doesn’t seem to be
anticipating the beautiful day ahead, that’s okay.
We’ll
prepare everyone who wants to listen. But we’ll also prepare the leadership
scaffolding and organizational structure to receive everyone else as soon as
they meet our Savior. In that coming
day, they will suddenly, fully understand why we worship Him. And in those
millennial after-moments, when our friends finally feel unequivocally
committed, we will be all set to assist them in making those sacred covenants
that tie us to Him.
As
Elder Neil L. Andersen said: “May we prepare for His coming by rehearsing
these glorious events over and over in our own minds and with those we love,
and may His prayer be our prayer: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth,
as it is in heaven.”[xi]
________________________________________
[i]
2 Nephi 27:20
[ii]
“Thy Kingdom Come” (April 2015) Neil L. Anderson
[iii]
This includes President Russell M. Nelson, as in the “Hope of Israel”
address to the youth (June 2018).
[iv] “Preparing for the Lord’s Return”
(April 2019) Elder D. Todd Christofferson
[v]
From minute 7:10 to 8:52
[vi]
Matthew 24:30
[vii]
“Thy Kingdom Come” (April 2015) Neil L. Anderson
[viii]
See D&C 76:110–11; Philip. 2:10–11.
[ix]
Isaiah 54:3
[x]
Doctrine and Covenants 38:22
[xi]
“Thy Kingdom Come” (April 2015) Neil L. Anderson
