A New Idea for Online Missionary Work

Everyone needs their own space and their own identity.  When we use our spaces to represent our identities, it can help us to feel like members of a group.  During the first days of school each year, elementary school children like to organize and decorate their desks to reflect what makes them them, merging their old identities with new identities as  students in a new grade.  Desk workers do the same thing when they start a new job to cement their identities as members of the office team.  People of all ages arrange and decorate their bedrooms and rooms in their houses to represent their personalities and interests, symbolically claiming those spaces, saying “I live here.”   We all use our bodies as a space to wear clothes and accessories that reflect who we are and sometimes to reflect our status as members of a group—BYU t-shirts for instance. 

So what does this have to do with online missionary work?  Every person who joins the Church must make an identity transition and begin to see themselves as a Mormon.  But that transition is hard.  People who successfully learn to see themselves as Mormons have to create new symbolic or physical spaces in their lives where they can build their Mormon identity.  In the Digital Age, more and more often we create our own spaces and paint our own identities Online.  What if we could give investigators their own online spaces to explore and forge their new Mormon identities?

What if investigators could create Mormon.org accounts, not to advertise their identities, but as private spaces to let each person organize what they are learning and reflect on what it might mean for them to become Mormon?  Here are some features I would like to see in the accounts:

• A way for the investigator to keep track of pages on Mormon.org and other church websites that she has read.  Basically a feature that would let her curate the information she learning.  It would be great if an investigator could send an article on lds.org or Mormon.org to their account and be able to insert her own personal notes and then save those annotations with the article on the account.
• I’d also like to see a tab where the investigator could save links to videos on Mormon.org and Mormon Messages so he could watch them again at will.  Again, a function allowing him to write notes beneath each video about what he liked or how he felt would be great.
• Another tab could let the investigator organize the “I’m a Mormon” profiles she likes.
• The account should have a journal built in for the investigator to record his thoughts and feelings about what he is learning and any spiritual experiences he has had.
• Of course, the account dashboard should also have a sidebar to chat with the missionaries, if and when the user feels comfortable.  Then the missionaries could even issue challenges to the investigator that would appear on their account profile.  “You’ve been challenged to say a prayer.  Do you accept?”  Once the investigator accepted the challenge, the account could keep track of it.  “3 days left in your challenge.  Do you need help?”
• There could even be a feature to let the investigator send and receive messages or posts with members who have Mormon.org profiles that interest them.  “I was really inspired by your story about the first time you read the Book of Mormon.  Can you tell me more about what it was like to be baptized?”

I propose that if we give investigators an online space to organize their learning and shape their identity, more people will make a successful transition to being able to say, “I’m a Mormon.”  What do you think?