Culture of
Higher Expectations
In 1829 the Lord reveled to Oliver Cowdery through
the Prophet Joseph Smith the solemn statement:
“Remember that without faith you can do nothing; therefore ask in
faith…” (DC 8:10) I have struggled to
understand the relationship between belief, faith and expectations and how they
affect your missionary work.
In the mid 60’s, I was a freshman at Millard High
School in Fillmore, Utah. About that
time the American Basketball Association (ABA) was being formed to compete with
the well-established NBA. The ABA had a more wide open flashy style of
offensive play. It introduced the 3
point shot, used a colorful red, white and blue ball and pioneered the now
popular slam dunk contest at its all-star games. My future basketball coach at Millard High
School took advantage of this opportunity provided by the ABA.
He bought the team full length warm-up suits which
were unusual in that day. Before each
game he waited until the opposing team was doing warm up drills on the
floor. He would signal the student band
to start up a fast fight song and then the Millard team would run single file,
full speed onto the floor with Bruce Beckstrand leading the procession
dribbling an ABA ball. He would stuff
the ball to his elbows in the basket on the empty end of the floor and the Millard
team would energetically do lay-up drills.
Guess what the other team did?
They stopped warming up and stood and watched Millard with the red,
white and blue ball, sharp warm-up outfits and a guy that athletically dunks
the ball. The coach for the opposing
team would invariably tell his team to get back to warming up and reassure them
that they could beat that Millard team.
But, you could see it in the players’ worried looks, they knew they
could not win; they had seen the Millard swagger. They could see and feel Millard’s expectation of winning.
Belief is mentally maintaining a premise or
concept in your mind to be true. In the
church and on a mission, your belief should be confidence and trust in Jesus
Christ.
When
you do something about your belief or you act on your belief, we call that
work. When that happens, belief,
by definition, becomes faith. Simply
stated, you may believe in many things but when you start doing something,
motivated by that belief, it becomes faith.
You can believe in: the moving of
a mountain, the Book of Mormon, tithing, the church, missionary work, achieving
your goal for baptizing, etc. When you
start digging at the mountain it is faith.
When you read the Book of Mormon and live by its precepts you have
faith. When you pay tithing you have
faith. If your belief motivates you to
attend church you have faith. If you go
on a mission you have faith. If you
perform missionary work to baptize, you have faith to baptize.
Based
on this, we have 152 missionaries in the Belgium Netherlands Mission who have
faith. You are all faithful by virtue of
the fact that, motivated by your belief, you are here and you are doing the
work. So why does baptisms and
missionary success not apply equally to all missionaries? There are probably many reasons for individual
lack of success, but I believe in general, faithful missionaries with higher
expectations will realize more desired blessings than faithful missionaries
with lower expectations. Expectation is
the swagger, the confidence, the sureness or coolness that the Apostil Paul had
(or Colby Bryant). I believe miracles
will follow if you capture that attitude in a humble way.
For
example, the member Facebook project just started functioning earlier this
year. The Easter Campaign was the first Facebook
project and was run even before 3 of the 4 stakes were organized or had called
social media specialists in the Wards and Branches. The campaign consisted of an offer on the
Country Communication Facebook page for a free DVD, Finding Faith in Christ, for those who filled out and returned an
order. The mission office immediately
mailed the DVD and sent missionaries to call on those who ordered. After 30 days the results were:
- Total Referrals, Easter Campaign 545
- Contacted as of 12 May 2014 259 (Will equal the Total)
- Positive at Contact 98 (38%
of Contacted)
- New Investigators 48 (49% Positive at Contact or 19% of Total Contacted)
- Baptismal Dates 5
- “Share” on member Facebook page 81
- Referrals from Member “Share” 78
We are training right now to improve our door
approaches to achieve better penetration, than 49% Positive at Contact, so we should
be able to leave a short message in most of the homes where a DVD was ordered.
But, since the campaign started, I have noticed an
amazing improvement in our results:
- Baptisms are up.
- Finding interested people is up. Frequently when you look up a referral you
find a potential who was not a referral.
- Teaching pools and lessons taught are up
- Enthusiasm is up.
There is something to look forward to instead of just “door to
door” or street contacting. You
travel to a referral, you do contacting while going there and you are
confident you will teach the referral while you are there. You have more HOPE.
The only thing that has changed is your attitude; your
expectations – the moment to moment optimism, enthusiasm, fun and love
for the work of missionaries. Your
swagger; it is UP!
Here is the way I see it. You set baptism goals and teaching goals and
finding goals, etc. You believe that
Jesus Christ has the power to help you realize these goals. You work hard to achieve your goals, so by
definition you have faith in Jesus Christ and faith you will attain success. But when you add to that, higher expectations,
things start happening, achievement increases and the journey becomes more
rewarding.
In the phrase, “Faith in Every Footstep,” too
often we focus on the ‘faith’ to achieve goals instead of focusing on the ‘footsteps’
which are living each moment with high expectations. Consider the following quote from one of the
all-time great women professional tennis players Martina Navratilova, “The
moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.” The goal is nice to win but the day to day higher
expectations are where it is at.
And, why not have a culture of higher
expectations? We are promised as was Joshua
who filled the shoes of, the prophet of all prophets, Moses:
7-9 Only
be thou strong and very courageous...that thou mayest prosper whithersoever
thou goest… for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt
have good success… Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be
thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever
thou goest.
(Joshua
1:7-9)
President Robinson
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