There is something wrong with mission stories. At least, that is what you might be led to believe by the way we avoid them and the way we apologize for sharing them. For instance, look at how Ben Huff introduced a mission story that he was posting. He started off with “Can y’all stomach a mission story right now?”
I’ve known Ben for a long time and I always enjoy his posts and comments. I hope he doesn’t mind my using his post as an example. Why did Ben feel obligated to preface his mission experience in this way? Is there some kind of unwritten law of Mormondom that says that, for the most part, mission experiences are undesirable?
This is an interesting phenomenon. One possibility is that as a culture we suffer from some kind of mission story fatigue. There are a whole lot of returned missionaries and all of them have stories. In conversation, one mission story tends to beget another and after a few they can get to be tedious and uninteresting, especially when the stories move from uplifting to bizarre tales of deviance and general weirdness. Perhaps we are suffering from this same type of effect on a macroscopic level.
Some people seem to look upon mission stories as evidence that the teller has not progressed beyond his or her mission. This attitude can take one of two forms. For some people, mission stories seem to represent a naive, simplistic, black and white world view that should have been grown out of and those that tell them are therefore viewed as simplistic and intellectually weak. In its other manifestation, telling mission stories might be looked down upon because we expect people to continue to have spiritual experiences after their missions are over and if they continue to tell mission stories we wonder why they don’t have any spiritual experiences to share from after their mission.
Of course there is also the tainting influence of missionary folklore. Once we’ve heard the same story about the missionary who flicked an investigator’s cat between the eyes and accidentally killed it from missionaries who served simultaneously on four different continents, we may start to doubt the veracity of mission stories in general. This of course dilutes the spiritual value of mission stories.
Even though I enjoyed God’s Army, I wonder, too, if seeing missionary stories formalized into film form by Richard Dutcher might have influenced this trend too.
Another consideration might be that people feel that those who share mission stories are being insensitive toward others who may not have served missions and that sharing a missionary experience communicates a kind of spiritual elitism.
Of course, I am speculating. I don’t really know why mission stories are becoming increasingly taboo. Whatever the cause, I do think that it is a shame.
Mission stories can be powerful and while I have had many powerful experiences with the spirit, the priesthood, and the power of the atonement since my mission, these experiences are often too close to home to share without embarrassing members of my family or myself. I wonder if this is true for others as well? After a mission, spiritual experiences tend to center around family. I would think that propriety would discourage telling experiences involving the prescription pill addiction of one’s spouse or child, the apostasy of a family member, or the specifics of your own struggle to overcome sin, even though they may be spiritual and illustrative.
If post-mission stories are often too close to home to comfortably share, and mission stories become culturally unacceptable, we face the danger of filling in a well of spiritual inspiration and cultural intertextuality. Despite this trend I think that mission stories are relevant to our lives. They are an important source of inspiration that we do not want to stifle.
How can we find a balance and unapologetically share uplifting and instructional narratives from our missionary lives while avoiding the pitfalls of mission story fatigue, apparent spiritual elitism, and the effects of tall-missionary-tales?
Jonathan, I think you are grasping at straws here; I see no recent trend towards rejection of mission stories. Mission stories have been seen as the last anecdotal refuge of the desparate for many, many years. Perhaps the problem isn’t one with contemporary society so much as a general difficulty with how to interpret spiritual experiences under conditions as contrived as a mission. Think about it — a mission is a totally artificial environment, utterly cloistered from the world and without reference points. It’s only natural that a few outstanding spiritual experiences occur in that environment, but their usefulness for future anecdotal purposes is limited because they are not produced in a raw real-world surrounding. If you could relate a gift of tongues experience had with a co-worker one day, I believe it would be much more relevant and useful.
…er, “desperate.”
I think a big one is that after getting home from our missions we all saw people who tried to talk up their missions to appear spiritual. I think most of us knew someone who did this who wasn’t exactly a good missionary. Because of that I think for many of us (myself included) there was a kind of distrust of mission stories.
Among certain intellectuals who tend to disparage all anecdotal evidence (unless it happens to be from some obscure journal entry and contradicts the mainstream view) you are probably right.
I can see how you might consider a mission to be a completely artificial environment, but I disagree. I don’t have time to make an extensive argument at the moment, but I don’t feel that my missionary service was any less real or raw than my life now, and I have found that many of my missionary experiences have been very relevant later on.
I don’t see why we should compartmentalize our “missionary life” from the rest of our life.
I tell mission stories all the time.
I don’t think Jonathan that many peoples concerns with anecdotes is the inappropriateness of telling them, just that anecdotes are very limited in what they can establish. Further anecdotes are wrapped up in ones perceptions. (Consider the discussion between Chris and me about what was worse – 80’s TV or current network TV) The problem is that many people tell an anecdote as if what happened to them is representative of what is happening with everyone else. That’s a dangerous way of thinking at times.
In response to Steve, I agree with Jonathan. While the lifestyle of missionaries is unique, most lessons learned can be applied in every day life. I would also add that many mission stories are actually about the people missionaries interact with. Stories of regular people overcoming addictions, fear, or any number of hardships as they repent and change their lives to become a member of the Church. I think those stories can be very useful and inspiring.
I’m not saying that mission stories are irrelevant and useless (though many are). They do not, however, carry the same import (to me, anyhow) as stories from the ‘real world’.
Do you think this is because we’ve de-emphasized the missionary farewell, (which I miss dreadfully)?
I think it’s kind of sad that we can’t celebrate the missionary.
Also, Steve, I love the mission stories. I just do. I write to six young men from our ward and I love to hear from them and hear about their missions. I enjoy it.
Steve Evans said:
Are you saying that I could have saved two years of my life just by watching more MTV?
And more seriously, I find that I rarely tell stories from my mission these days. It’s not a conscious decision, necessarily. It’s more a function of my own growth and development. The stories and experiences from my mission that I treasure are still an important part of my personal history, but they have lost much of their immediacy. Besides, most of my friends and acquaintances have heard my best ones already.
The stories I tell now are mostly about my wife and kids, as the bulk of my spiritual development occurs as a result of my interactions with them. I’m sure as I grow older I will find that I tell these stories less and less as well.
To be fair, in my last lesson I gave several examples on meditation and revelation from my mission. Several other in the class gave mission examples.
Probably anyone who has had a unique personal experience for a period of years finds themselves referring to that period of time over and over again in conversations. And over time a person then starts to feel self-conscious and ask himself/herself whether he/she is dwelling too much in conversation OR someone flat out says “not another one of those same old stories.”
I have felt this with my mission in Guatemala and I have felt it with descriptions of experiences I had while living in Israel for a period of years.
I wonder if soldiers who have spent time in Iraq or Kuwait (or elsewhere) experience the same sort of feeling. “Oh no … don’t share another one of those ‘when I was in Baghdad’ stories.”
They can come talk to me.
This is quite interesting to me. I got home from my mission six months ago. Since then I have had spiritual experiences, but none that one the outward appearance could help people understand the principals I want them to. I’ve found I’ve had to change my vocabulary, for instance, it is particularly uncool to say “Yeah, one time my comp. and I…” so I started to find myself saying “Yeah, one time a friend and I…”
For some reason I have become frustrated with this cultural/intellectual way of looking at what we can and can’t say. I side with Paul, I am not ashamed of the gospel, and certainly not of telling my mission stories. People who don’t want to hear it can shut their ears, they probably would anyhow. I’m ashamed in the church when we have these attitudes, this is a major part of our social problem, we’ve got to get over the idea that the gospel/missions/scripture stories aren’t cool.
The problem with mission stories is that most people tell the wrong kind of stories. Forget the pious and spiritual, and focus on the wacky and bizarre. Give your audience what they really want. 🙂
I would link to some online examples written by someone that shares my name, but that would be shamelessly self-promoting. (And besides, I don’t know how to link in a comment).
Aaron B