The evolution of missionaries in the 20th-century

At the dawn of the the 20th-century the missionary force was still largely composed of married men who left behind their families, normally containing young children, and traveled far from their homes to serve as missionaries.

This was the case with Joseph Fielding Smith, or as he was then often known Joseph F. Smith, Jr., who left behind his wife who had just had a miscarriage to go serve as a missionary in the United Kingdom. This was the case with Goege D. Benson, Jr, when he left behind his wife and children in about 1909 to go serve a mission in the United Kingdom. Brother Benson's oldest son was a boy they called T, who would later be known as Ezra Taft Benson.

The modern model of young, single missionaries serving before their marriage had began. On the first day of the 20th century the first marriage ceremony performed in the Salt Lake Temple was the marriage of David O. McKay and Emma Ray Riggs. Brother McKay was a graduate of the University of Utah, who had a few years before served a mission in the United Kingdom (mainly in Scotland).

Joseph F. Smith, Jr's cousin George Albert Smith represented all these trends in his missionary experience in the 1890s. First he had been called as a mutual improvement association missionary. He was sent from his home in Salt Lake City (where he went after completing high school at Brigham Young Academy, although as a child in school he had often put Lucy Woodruff's pig tails in the ink well in their Salt Lake City school.) to southern Utah where he served as a mutual improvement association missionary. At the dawn of the 20th-century Francis M. Lyman was serving as president of the British Mission. None of his wives had accompanied him on this assignment. Before the 20th-centuries first year (1901) was out, Heber J. Grant would open the Japanese mission. He was accompanied on this assignment by one of his two living wives (he had had three at once at one point, but his first wife, Lucy Stringham Grant, whose father was the man for whom Bryan S. Hinckley was named, had died a few years before, not long after the birth of their only son, they had a few daughters, who also died. Elder Grant traveled with his daughters throughout the US to get their minds off their mother dying, and one of his daughters fell ill and nearly died, but was saved by a blessing from George Q. Cannon in which he revoked the power of Satan and his having claimed the life of this child.

Geogre Albert Smith receieved the call to be a Mutual Improvement Association missionary on Sep. 7, 1891. In this capacity he traveled with a friend of his who was a grandson of Brigham Young, thus repeating their grandfather's being co-members of the first presidency. The were called by the first presidency and sent to Juab, Millard, Beaver and Iron counties to build up the mutual programs in those counties. Elder Smith was 21 at the time.

Elder Smith would after a few months return to Salt Lake City, where he married Lucy Woodruff, a daughter of Wilford Woodruff Jr and thus a granddaughter of Wilford Woodruff and his wife Phoebe. Wilford and Phoebe had a daughter Phoebe who was one of the wives of Lorenzo Snow. So Phoebe Woodruff is probably the only woman to have been both mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law of presidents of the Church, sort of a slight difference from Mary Fielding Smith who was the only woman to be both a mother and a grandmother of president of the Church.

George Albert and Lucy were married in the Salt Lake Temple on May 25, 1892. On June 23, 1892 George Albert left on a mission to the southern states, which he would mainly spend as the secretary to President J. Golden Kimball. The position of secretary was not like is found in most modern missions. President Kimball did not have counselors. Elder Smith was thus a cross between a one man pair of assistants to the president, a one man set of counelors to the president, and did many of the things missions secretaries, in modern missions often multiple men and women, do. Do make things more interesting, there were no stakes in the south (actually I think none outside of Arizona, Utah and Idaho, southern Alberta might have just gotten a stake, but even much of the inter-mountain west lacked stakes, Boise would not see a stake until about 1912. That is also the year Nevada got its first stake, although some areas had been part of the St. George Stake before then.)

So with no stakes, the Southern States Mission oversaw all the operations of the Church in the area it covered, which was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and maybe Kentcky and Ohio. I am not sure how much of Virginia was in the mission.

After being in the mission from June to Novemeber, Lucy W. Smith came and joined her husband, and stayed with him for the remaining year and a half of his mission.

As the 20th-century progressed thins were beginning to change. When LeGrand Richards went out as a missionary in 1905 at age 19, he was ot yet married. Yet David M. Kennedy in the 1920s left on a mission the day after his married, leaving his wife behind. Hugh Nibley's father served as a mission pesident in the Netherlands as a young, unmarried missionary. Yet he was succeeded by 27-year-old LeGrand Richards, who was now a married man.

With the disruption caused by the World Wars, the Church started to move away a little from the model of relying on American missionaries.

Especially during and right after World War II, Germany saw many local missionaries, and due to migration controls, they became a key part of missionary efforts in places like Tonga by mid-century. In the 1930s LeGrand Richards was one of a large number of married men, mostly former missionaries, sent on short term missions. He had also been called to go to California to serve as a stake president, although this was a slightly different case because he remained gainfully employed.

By 1952 and the close of the Korean War the Church pretty much ceased to send out married men as missionaries unaccompanied by their wives. I am much less sure about the rise of the senior couple missionarires.

I know such missionaries existed by the late 1970s. I have little if any evidence clearly placing their emergence in earlier times.

During the 1950s while David O. McKay was president of the Church, it became standard to call counselors to mission presidents. While Mission presidents served full time and came from elsewhere, their counselors were most often local men called from the area. Local in the sense that they lived there, some were from that area, and some had moved there for work, but they were resident there as opposed to called from elsewhere.

More so than in other cases, these counselors were like Aaron and Hur, able to hold up arms about to drop. They tended to know the area much better than the mission president.

During the first decade of the 20th-century the standard term was "lady missionaries". I think this was still the common term when my grandmother served in the 1940s. I have not found a definitive time of the switch to "sister missionary" as the term, but guess it was never intentional and always gradual.

Ezra Taft Benson is to date the only president of the term whose wife served as a missionary prior to marriage. On the other hand for about half of his mission Sister Flora Amussen had her mother as her companion. Ezra Taft Benson was the first president of the church to hold a master's degree, and the first to have done work on a Ph.D. He is also the one who was most clearly notable for work done outside of being a general authority. He like President Smith was a young unmarried missionary (in Britian with David O. McKay as his mission president), a married missionary leaving behind his wife (in Europe as President of the European Mission just after World War II), and a married mission president with his wife along with him (in this case in the Germany based European Mission, with a house in Frankfurt, that they shared one Christmas at with the Hinckley family.)

To be fair, in both his assignments as mission president, Elder Benson was closer to an area president than a mission president. He was both times a member of the Quorum of the 12, both times he presided over all missions in Europe, not any specific mission. The first was in the days just after World War II. The second was in the mid-1960s when the long standing US military agreements with countries such as Italy and placment of US servicemen there were bearing fruit in the dedication of the land for the preaching of the gospel. On August 2, 1966 Elder Benson oversaw the reestablishment of the Italian Mission.

Starting in the 1970s two other trends emerge. The Church begins to centralize missionary calls and training. More and more missionaries are called through the formal channels of Salt Lake City, and the local missionary begins to become a thing of the past. Mini-missions, stake missionaries and some other such assignments fill in the force, but formal mission calls come from Salt Lake City.

While missionary training had been centralized in Salt Lake City at the mission home beginning in 1925, this was a one week course, and only applied to centrally called and not mission called missionaries. In the 1960s visa problems lead to a formal language training curriculum. The Language Traning Mission begins at BYU, and later spreads to Ricks (now BYU-Idaho) and the Church College of Hawaii (now BYU-Hawaii).

In 1976 the whole operation is recentralized, both mission home and LTMs, as the MTC in Provo, Utah. In 1977 however a missionary training center was opened in Brazil. Over the years more MTCs outside the US opened, they trained missionaries from those areas of the World, and generally had no language training, just missionary gospel teaching training.

Things begin to change again in the 1990s. It was determined that new missionaries could often be better trained for their new assignments on sight. It also made the logistics of arrivial to the mission more simple.

So beginning with the Brazil MTC, missionaries foriegn to Brazil joined native Brazilians in being trained. By 2000 the Madrid Spain MTC joined with an initial plan where missionaries from the US would spend the first half of traning at the Provo MTC, and second half at the Madrid MTC.

At some point, and I don't know when this happened, the process became even more focused on evening out use of facilities. Thus at some point missionaries heading to Russia, no matter where they came from, begin training in Spain.

The first decade of the 21st-century saw "raise the bar" and Preach My Gospel. Missionary work was moved from being an expected rite of passage to being a work emphasized on teaching. A higher expectation of worthiness and contrite repentence was imposed, as well as more stringent health requirements. Programs were developed for service missions for those unable to be regular full time missionaries.

The 2010s saw lots of new developments. The most seminal was the 2012 age change for missionaries. This facilitated a one year creaton of over 50 new missions. It was connected with many more sister missionaries, the mission council replacing the zone leaders council, the mission president's companion (wife, but we are trying to find a clearer title) was made a formal member of the mission council. The position of coordinating sister was created.

Along with this, missionaries called Spanish-speaking from the US were normally sent to train at the Mexico City MTC. No new MTCs were created, but several existing ones were greatly expanded.

More on mission evolution

I decided to use some figures to study matters.

To start with one needs to know interpretation of figures is sometimes hard. I am not sure what the "missionaries called" figures represent. I am not sure anyone quite does. Is this an aggregate of formally issues mission calls. Is it influenced by "many are called, but few are chosen."

In the case of missionary calls, most people who receive mission calls, serve at least part of their mission. However I have known enough women who recieved a call, and ended up getting married or engaged before going to serve a mission, that I hope that this figure starts somewhere later than the formal call.

I have to wonder if the stats given would actually be better labeled "missionaries set apart." That has its own draw backs. Either way it probably does not count some irregular missionary assignments.

However does it include the art missionaries of the 1890s, sent to Paris to learn art, and then returning to Utah to decorate the Salt Lake Temple. There is little evidence that these people shared the gospel while abroad. John A. Widstoe and some other students who went to either Eastern US universities or German universities (Brother Widstoe went to both) were set apart as missionaries before departure. How much Elder Widstoe actually did as a missionary is unclear. My guess is he begin the faithful and wonderful man he was, took every oppourtunity to share the gospel within reason, but it is not clear when he was in Germany if there was a local branch of the Church.

On the other hand I wonder if Phoebe Woodruff being set apart to serve along side her husband Wilford Woodruff as he presided over the Eastern States Mission in the 1848-1850 shows up in these statistics. As it was, mission presidents wives accompanying their husbands was only semi-regular in the 19th-century, and which ever way the case of Sister Woodruff falls, there are almost certainly some wives of mission presidents in the 19th century who accompanied their husbands and provided much support at multiple levels of the mission, in many ways, both logistical and proselytizing ways, who were not set apart and so do not show up in the statistics at all.

I then consulted the 1972 Church Annaul Statistical Report. It includes this highly informative paragraph "The following statistics of missionaries set apart (accumulative by decade) do not include local missionaries who often serve in the same mission field where they were baptized and who begin their labors in their own native tongues." see https://www.lds.org/ensign/1972/07/the-annual-report-of-the-church?lang=eng for the fuller discussion.

This tells us that the 65,215 missionaries set apart from 1960-70, does not include everyone serving as a missionary. I am still trying to figure out how the fact the chart also has 1950-1960 works out. Are the 1960 set aparts double counted, or is the cut off either the start of 1960 or the end of 1960, or is it some date during the year? This seems to indicate to me that almost none of the missionaries serving under John H. Groberg (I believe he served 1965-1968, I know it was years in the 1960s) show up, since almost all of his missionaries were local Tongan missionaries, usually married couples (I am not sure if both husband and wife or just husband were set apart, I think the former, but am not sure) and farming during off hours, so they would not show up in the centralized figures, and also would be differently scrutinized for approval than missionaries scrutinized through Church headquarters in Salt Lake City. I say differently, because various factors mean that it is only a different process, how it is different is hard to say.

Using the easier comparison of 1830s stats I can now say. 1-"missionaries called" is the same as "missionaries set apart", and I think the later is a better description. This still ignores that some missionaries get set apart, and then do not move all the way to serving in the field, some because of issues revealed in the MTC. Others then serve very short times, I had to go home at 21 months due to health issues, but I knew one missionary who had health issues that made it so he was unable to serve even a full month past the MTC.

On the other hand, with the "raising the bar" both for worthiness and health, the Church now sends some missionaries on trial missions, and actually did it some back in the 1990s, I know because there was a 1990s trial missionary in my mission. However my impression is that the program has become more regularized and widespread since raising the bar. Raising the Bar was not a one time change, there was clearly structural development of alternatives for those whose health did not allow to serve as a regular full time missionary before the bar was raised, and on the other hand the Church is still working to better develop and organize the church serivice missionary opportunities for those who are not able due to various health issues to serve full time missions. My mission president and his companion, Wareen G. and  Suzanne J. Tate, later presided over the Salt Lake City Headquarters (at first Salt Lake City Family and Church History) mission. The rename came about because of three factors. One was that it no longer just oversaw missionaries assigned to work in the Family and Church History Departments, but also oversaw missionaries in media relations, military relations and many other headquarters departments. 

On the other hand, President and Sister Tate did not in any way oversee the actual operations of the Family History Libary, the Church History Department or other such facilities. They oversaw the work of the missionaries as missionaries. The rename was also connected with reinvisioning the mission as one where the missionaries, like many other missionaries, have dual assignments, at least in the case of the 700+ senior missionaires (mostly couples, but some single sisters) in the mission. They were redeployed from having self advancing, preaching to the choir type branches in the central city of Salt Lake, to assignments as leadership and membership development missionaries in various units throughout Salt Lake City. 

Unlike some other cases, this is one where Salt Lake City is following a model pioneered elsewhere. Here in Metro-Detroit our Personal Storehouse Project might be in some ways pioneered from the Inner City Mission of Salt Lake City, but our taking it to every ward and branch and in the stake, instead of just the 4 with the highest rates of poverty and unemployment (being the 4 that take in Detroit) makes sense. Virtually every ward and branch in the Bloomfield Hills Stake has areas that have a population large enough and poverty and unemployment high enough to translate into inner-city units with the concentration of members you see in Salt Lake City.

Bloomfield Hills Ward for example has the south-end of Pontiac, the part of the city with the highest rates of unemployment and poverty. With Salt Lake City membership levels percentages, this area would probably be at least two wards/branches.

North Shores Ward has Mount Clements and South-east Clinton Township, with the same struggles. Sterling Heights Ward has a few apartment complexes in various parts of the ward with concentrations of these negative issues.

Add to this that many of the people who most benefit from the Personal Storehouse Project and the related but seperate Development Specialist based in the employment center and funded under the auspices of Deseret Industries (I have benefitied from formal association with the later, only informal aid from the former) are people who live in at neighborhoods with low reates of poverty but individually struggle a lot. In my case I pulled this off by living with my parents as a 35+ year old adult. In other cases people pull it off by both husband and wife working long hours, one missing church, and still incuring debts to keep things a float that will leave then never having many options. It may also mean sub-functional cars, all the more problematic with Metro Detroit's sub-functional public transit. 

The place of residence may be in a neighborhood not currently pegged as high poverty, but that does not mean it will be an ideal home, and with the husband working long hours at low wages, he will have little time to fix the house and no money to pay others to do it. It does not matter if your neighbors have pristine houses, a leaky roof will be sub-optimal in any situation.

OK, back to my point. Here in the Detroit Mission we had been having full-time missionaries assigned to the Employment Center and the Food distribution facilities within the Bishop's storehouse also assigned as full-time missionaries to work with specific wards and branches in need of various aids to development. Mainly reactiviation and leadership development assignments, but also generalized assistance with teaching and travel as aids to the full-time missionaries.

These full time missionaries normally live close to the Bishop's storehouse in Farmington Hills, but are assigned to wards and branches much further south-east.

The situation makes me wonder if the Bishop's sotehouse should be moved. However I know that will not happen in any close decade.

I am not sure if the Corporation of the Presiding Bishopric owns or leases the Bishop's storehouse. I am guessing the former. 

My general experience is that while the Church leases some mission offices, virtually all missionary residents (the ones it does not lease, it holds on rents, but that is rare, and there are some who live in Church owned mission homes, but that is also not common, I am not even sure the Church owns all homes for mission presidents, some may be leased.), and does rent/lease some spaces where Church meetings are held, the Church generally works on the goal of eventually owning as much of its operational space as reasonably possible, with the exception of missionary living quarters.

I do not have enough points of information to say for sure, but I think the Church is trending towards trying to move mission offices from leased/rented spaces to Church owned spaces where possible.

In some cases the Church acts as a land-lord for other organizations. However this is technically through its various Property Reserve and a few other for-profit corporations, to make it clear which properties it does and does not pay property tax on. 

There may be some churches that do iffy things and skirt the line of non-profit status with money making operations in their non-profit operations, but The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is extra scrupulous about this, making Kargil's attempts to get incrimadating information on this matter even more bizarre. 

Back to the situation at hand. The Church buys properties, to build churches, temples, etc. They do this with the long duration in mind, and try not to abandon specific properties. On occasion the Church does close and sell old chapels, but not on the model of building a replacement just across the street or such as so many fast food, grocery and clothing stores do. 

The LDS Church builds its buildings to last. The Troy Chapel is so well built that it gets estimated at 15 years old instead of the real 24 years old. Temples are built to a higher standard. Both go through various remodels. Temples a lot more than chapels.

On occasion LDS Chapels are demolished with a new one rebuilt on the same sight. Although this does on occasion happen for fast food locations and other restaurants, keeping open during remodel is more common in the later cases.

Many LDS chapels were built in phases. Both the Bloomfield Hills Stake Center and the Roseville Chapel were not built as unified units. The Bloomfield Hills Stake Center because it was first built as just a ward chapel, and when designated a stake center needed to have expansion.

The Roseville Chapel as part of the general phase in large buildings as the congregation grows. It was built in three phases. However there have been at least two revisions since enclosing some of the heating/cooling and such space, adding an addtional more acecssible bathroom ajacent to the chapel, and reformating the areas of the original chapel which no longer needed to have a foyer, thus creating more classrooms. 

While the Church owns many institute buildings, I have also attended institue class in space on a public university campus that the Church accesses through having an LDSSA chapter at the university, I am not sure if fees are involved.

I have known of seminary being held in rented space, either inside a public school or in other locations. I would guess most seminary classes are held in space owned by the LDS Church, and probably most institute classes. The later because most institute classes are held in chapels and not specific to any college/university enrollment. 

A large percentage of Church picnics during summer months are held at locations other than church property, the exact percentage hard to place. Also, outside of certain parts of the intermountain west and the western US, most summer camps are held off church property. 

The majority of EFY sessions are probalby held off church property. All the ones immediately family members of mine have gone to have been, but I have never even tried to calculate what percentage of sessions are held at BYU. I do not know if any sessions outside of BYU are held at least in part at Institute Buildings, but would be surprised. Most institute buildings other than at a few places in Utah are not big enough, and I am not sure Salt Lake City is far enough from BYU to justify holding a regional EFY at the University of Utah institue. Also, Institute Buildings generally operate at least some over the summer, so they are not actually open spaces. EFY thrives on universities with much lower summer enrollment. 

Virtually all stake youth conferences involve some use of non-Church owned space, although I have attended some where most of the time was spent at the stake center. 

Church sports programs and stake conferences I know of cases where both were held at non-Church owned locations, involving some level of rent. Stake conference is in the long term the one that makes most sense to rent space for. Although with the advent of the internet interconnecting multiple buildings in the stake seems to probably be headed to what will be done all the time.

A few locations, such as Salt Lake City, Bountiful and Provo in Utah, and Oakland, California with the inter-stake center adjacent to the Temple, have a situation where building a facility large enough to house a stake conference for the current sized stakes with at times 5,000 members, and attendance hopefully going over 3,000 makes sense. 

In other places a facility of that size clearly is not a reasonably investment, since it will not be used very much, so either you chose multi-site, multi-session, have more people than available seating, or rent a facility. While the last has many pluses, from what I know and have been told there are drawbacks. Generally when you do the whole process in house and with known systems, the technology failure level is lower, although I once was at a conference in a stake center where the sound system to the cultural hall was not working, and people there could not hear the speaker.

Why the Church grows more among those in Africa than among African Americans

It generally seems the LDS Church is making much better growth among people in Africa than among African-Americans.

However the stats on the latter are hard to know. 2009 surveys seem to say that 3% of US Latter-day Saints were African-American, but without knowing what the overall US African-American percentage in the same survey was, it is a little hard to compare. Plus this was of adults. In Sterling Heights Ward there are 4 sidblings, all 15 or younger, who are African-American converts.

In Southfield Ward our last 10 or so baptisms have all either been African-Americans or immigrants from Ghana.

Most interesting to me was this article http://richmondfreepress.com/news/2017/apr/28/operation-streets-founder-calls-recreation-program/ from the Richmond Free Press about Charles A. West, a former Chuch of God minster who recently was bpatized in the LDS Church. This is a true sign of inroads among African-Americans.

I could also cite people of prominence, like Congresswoman Mia Love, NBA player Jabari Parker, NCAA players Frank Jackson, DeMarcus Harrison and Jordan Chatman, and Jordan's dad Jeff Chatman who joined the Church while an NCAA player at BYU. This is not even close to a comprehensive list.

Some of the people above may not show up in surveys as African-American because they are of mixed race origins, and so depending on various factors may be identified in other ways. By some I mean Parker and Jackson and maybe Jordan Chapman, although I have no evidence on Chapman's mother's race.

On my mission we had African-Americans tell us flat out they would not come out to our Church anymore because they did not like going to a Church where there were no African-Americans. This is a situation that presents an insurmountable barrier. This is one reason why in some areas the Church has at times created specific urban congregations.

Another big hurdle is a widespread belief that the LDS Church is racist. A true knowledge of the past racial restiction policy with regard to priesthood is generally showing the Church in a more positive light than what some think the policy was.

In African outside of South Africa and Zimbabwe they Church has always been black members, and usually black missionaries. In Zimbabwe there were hard times of growth to the black majority in the early 1980s, but especially with the role of Edward Dube the Church thrived and overcame these draw backs.

In South Africa the conversion of Julie Mavimbela in 1981 helped. It also helps that the end of the priesthood restriction in 1978 predates the end of apartheid of white minority rule by 16 years. This makes a big difference from the US, where having the policy as late as 1978 is used as an attack point, when so many other things seen as racist were officially removed by 1968 with the fair housing act, or going back to Brown v Board in 1953. Or even the desegregation of the US military by Truman no latter than 1951.

There are some barriers to overcome in South Africa, but with a population that is 8% white and 80% black, the Church has to overcome them to thrive.

In the US, not so much, although we do have to overcome them to take the gospel to ever nation, kindred, tongue and people.

One problem is the unspoken nature of some objections. Even Gladys Knight's Saints United Voices does not overcome all the linger worry. Marvin Perkins and his "Black and the Scriptures" work is making progress.

Maybe though the issues are more complex. Maybe the question is why is the Church growing so much in countries like Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast. In a lot of ways this is because of a long process of local leadership development.

In the US we are not yet seeing strong leadership development for local congregations of African-Americans. There is possibly an issue of less religious commitment by African-American males, high incareration rates, and lots of related facts.

The fact that even in a city like Detroit, where 85% of the population is African-American and 98% or more in many neighborhoods, the vast majority of missionaries are white and black missionaries are fairly rare, makes things difficult.

On my mission I saw that phenotypically black Brazilian missionaries could at least get people dialoguing on these issues.

Another issue is white Latter-day Saints need to work to speak of the issues of the past priesthood restriction in ways that are not offensive. Make sure to not attribute it as a direct design of God, and state that we do not know why God allowed it.

I have no disrespect towards Keither Hamilton and his last laborer views, but have to say I can not accept them.

More talking on this is good. Even if it causes uncomfortableness.

Another issue is some people objecting to the Church's position on those on probation or parole getting baptized. I have seen people mishandle sharing this with investigators. Lastly it should be emphasized that this is not based on the Church holding that such a punishment is in any case just, but that they Church embraces the order of law.

This does make it hard for the Church to reach people who feel that the order of law is against them. However I think if being subject to kings, etc is properly explained it creates less offense. Also, always remember the route to conversion is through sharing the Book of Mormon and tesitfying.