76: SLICK MARKETING CAMPAIGN

I tried to log onto lds.org today. Unfortunately, the website is temporartily down. The page that came up was this. http://outofservice.lds.org/ 

So, instead I went to mormon.org. Below is the webpage that came up. I was a little surprised to see the huge departure from the typical "look and feel" of the Especially for Youth pamphets. The title of Limitless Options sounds like a Marketing Slogan. Anyway.. I thought I would share the screenshot from the main page.

LIMITLESS OPTIONS

As a professional skateboarder, Kevin feels God in every crazy color, emotion, and rush of adrenaline.

From his testimonial,
"I was raised into the church but didn't have a testimony of my own. It wasn't until I ventured away from the church in my early teens and found myself gaining an extremely strong testimony through skateboarding and my mom and sisters's example."

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The church invests millions in the infrastructure to test, market, gather focus-group insights, and then opinion poll to improve the marketing of Mormonism. The success of the church is not dependent upon, nor guaranteed by, a multi-billion-dollar downtown complex of religious and commercial buildings. If that is what motivates someone to join, they do not have the right reasons or focus, and will not contribute anything to the faith. We do not need to gather into the net those who  find a slick marketing approach convincing enough to become Mormon.  

We only need to gather those who are pricked in their hearts, humble and who prayed to know if this is God's work or not. Those who get an answer are going to join because they got an answer. Such people will have an inner strength that flows from having spoken with God. They will remain and grow in their knowledge of godliness-- as long as we feed them. They will perish, however, if we feed them nothing but myth and superficial portions of the Gospel. The truth is exciting, and we risk killing their faith when we make it dull, incomplete, and mingled with misrepresentations. They will die, even if they are active in the church. (Snuffer).