Enlisting missionaries earlier & younger (yes there is a distinction)
As I'm sure every active LDS member knows, and most ex-mormons know, the church lowered the missionary age for men and women. Now young men will be encouraged to go on missions before they enter college and, depending on birthday, might even be eligible before they even graduate from high school. For women, the age is now 19, not sure on the reasoning for the extra year in there but I guess they didn't want to erase decades of tradition in one motion.Why do I say "earlier and younger"? Well, the church is losing youth (and adult) members at an alarming rate right now. The numbers are kept close in the general administration of the church but it's a vast number right now. Check the reddit exmormon group and there are regular posts of statistics gathered by lots of independent sources ranging from real estate and new chapel construction to a breakdown of baby blessings decreases by area and population growth.
The "younger" designation is obvious, the age has dropped. "Earlier" simply means, before college, before they leave the home.
Earlier is critical to the strategy of getting youth before they fall away. Missionary enrollment has been at a standstill for a decade now, meanwhile the baptisms per missionary have steadily dropped in all regions, including South America. The straight answer is that the church needs more missionaries and for the past ten years, the focus on youth hasn't yielded results.
Once kids leave high school to college, unless they go to BYU, they gain easy access to church criticism and historical fact. In addition, they are no longer among family members that will keep up the constant vigilence and encouragement to remain engrossed in the church.
How this looks from an outside perspective
Presumably if the church is true, the percentage of youth that are lost will remain steady, it won't vary more or less from year to year. As the church grows, the pool of youth grows and while many fall away, the pool continues to grow at the same pace as the church.So the slowdown in missionary count means one of two things: either membership growth is stalling or the percentage of youth leaving the church is increasing.
No fully invested believer will admit that membership is slowing, it goes against the whole message of the church. So let's take the second argument that more youth are being lost. Why would this be? The world is more enticing, luring, wicked than it used to be? That wouldn't explain why the 80's and 90's youth generation, fully exposed to a popular culture that glorifies "worldly" pursuit wasn't similarly falling away. I was part of that crop and it was a strong period for the church. So what is new since the high point of the early 90's?
The internet and easy access to information for one. A vastly shifted political landscape for another.
The truth is though that for non-members and ex-members, this move looks like desperation. A healthy growing church doesn't need to make a move to quickly shore up the numbers of missionaries, it's obvious that the benefit of doing that yields only a one time bumper crop before it is back to the same rate only younger.
So they are putting their eggs in a single basket: this move must drastically decrease the number of youth leaving the church, and they only get one shot at it.
Likely Fallout
The potential unintended consequences are many.Blow to College Education
Right now, most colleges don't honor missions by holding scholarships, academic or otherwise, while youth go on missions. Young men will now no longer have that first year of college they used to have before they go on missions. This is by design of course. How many colleges do you think will allow youth to be accepted and then will "hold" their acceptance for two years while they are on a mission?Youth will naturally not bother applying for schools that they can't attend.
And scholarships are going to disappear completely.
The church must have plans to drastically grow the size of the church colleges...
Younger marriages
Yikes, we all know where this is going. Young men will be married a year younger, that's obvious. But what scares me is the impact on women. In a church where emphasis on marriage being the greatest divine destiny for a woman, isn't it obvious where this is going? Think of the new pressure that will be on women to serve a mission. They will be eligible almost right out of high school. Presumably the reason for having the extra year in there is so they can, what? Back down? Get more wisdom? No, the reason YW had an older age requirement in the past was because 19-21 was the prime age for women to meet returning elders and get married.Now the pressure marriage age is down to the years before 19 when they are eligible to go on missions themselves.
Shit, I can't even decribe how terrible this feels. I predict disaster from this issue alone.
Backfire outside of the United States
This one requires a former missionary to understand. As a 20 yo young man, I was called by my mission president to serve in a special capacity... I was asked to be the branch president of the local church in my area. This is a very common practice. Why? Well, when there aren't enough strong male members (very often the case) who else can fill the role? From a native point of view, this looked bad naturally. I had married couples that needed to discuss with their bishop/branch president personal issues and I had one point blank say "What do you know about marriage?" Fair enough. Now take a look at a couple 18 and 19 yo boys fresh out of high school and tell me what you think? 20 is bad enough and it will make a bad situation worse. Ugh.Conclusion
This can't go anywhere good. Will the church have more converts? With the baptisms per missionary dropping, unless they believe that younger missionaries will be more effective than the current ones (I can't see any stretch of logic here) the best this can do is give a short bump in converts to meet the initial bumper crop of new missionaries followed by a flatline.And even this success presumes that the number of youth leaving the church decreases as a result of this? Otherwise the increase becomes immediately unsustainable.
Ugh, it's not looking good for anyone. Who wins from this?
