The Mormon Challenge

During the turn of the millennium the LDS Church had approximately 60,000 missionaries on the field engaged in full-time proselytizing, with an additional 6,000 more engaged in various service assignments (e.g. healthcare workers, craftsmen, and educators). These numbers make the LDS Church the single largest missionary-sending organization in the world. These missionaries convert well over 310,000 people annually. If the size of the LDS missionary force continues to increase proportionate to the growth of the LDS Chruch, in fifteen years there will be 110,000 full time LDS missionaries on the field. (The New Mormon Challenge: Responding to the Latest Defenses of a Fast-Growing Movement. [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002] 68.) These missionaries will be converting more than 672,000 persons annually.

Approximately 85,000 full-time Protestant missionaries serve worldwide (and many are not evangelical). Of these an estimated 20 percent are on furlough at any given time. Many others are not involved in evangelizing but function as staff in enabling humanitarian agencies. In contrast, all of the regular 60,000 LDS missionaries proselytize eight to ten hours a day, six to seven days a week, fifty-two weeks per year. The average LDS missionary baptizes between six and seven converts per year. (Ibid 2002: 414). For more on LDS missions, see Gary and Gordon Shepherd, “Mormon Growth and Mormon Missions in the Modern World,” in Shepherd and Shepherd, Mormon Passage: A Missionary Chronicle (Urbaba and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 1-18.

Paul Carden Observes that “few Christians in the field of missions seem to recognize the multi-faceted threat of the cults around the globe, consistently underestimating their resources, their determination, and the long-term impact they make on evangelism and church-planting.”(Paul Carden, “The Threat of the Cults on the Mission Fields of the World,” International Journal of Fontier Missions 15/3 (1998): 147.) With respect to Mormonism specifically, it must be pointed out that neither the Book of Mormon nor the message of LDS missionaries can make much sense to someone who lacks at least some basic knowledge of the Bible or Christian belief. Mormonism’s spread into new cultures is literally dependent on the success of Bible translation organizations like SIL/Wycliffe Bible Translators. Neither does Mormonism’s primary message of the restoration of the “fullness of the gospel” make much sense unless there are Christian churches already established that lack this “fullness.”