Part I. The First Three Months: Building a Mission Vision

Overview

 My mission actually began with a five-day new mission presidents' training seminar held in Provo, Utah, a week before we departed for Japan. Some of my feelings can be captured from my journal entry at the time:      

            The seminar began at 9:00. I certainly felt small and overshadowed among all the great men here--certainly the "least among them." We had a talk with Elder [Thomas] Fyans and sat by him at lunch. He made the comment that Elder Kikuchi was sure looking forward to my coming over. He said I was handpicked to help 'break the average' in Japan and get things going. I just hope I can live up to the expectations and confidence put in me. (Groberg, 1978-1981). 

Immediately following the training seminar; I left with my wife and six children for Japan. On the way to Japan, we stopped in Honolulu to visit my brother, Elder John H. Groberg, who had been a mission president several years earlier and was living in Honolulu as the area supervisor over Hawaii and parts of the South Pacific. I visited with him about the upcoming mission and summarized his advice in my journal (Groberg, 1978­-1981):   

            His main advice was to do what needs to be done-­-what is best--with the blessing of the area supervisor. I basically agree with everything he said. It gives me more confidence to talk with him.  

Two days after arriving in Japan I met with Elder Kikuchi again to discuss the current status of mission­ary work and church membership in Japan. He reviewed some of the statistics of the Church in Japan, and I took notes. He explained that at this time, July 1978, there were approximately 33,400 members of the Church in Japan. The activity rate of these members was approxi­mately 27% overall and 24% in the older areas, such as Tokyo, where I would be serving.

He then discussed the status of the missions and missionary work in the area. He explained that with the creation of the Tokyo South Mission there were now eight missions in Japan. (The two Korean missions were also included in the Japan/Korea area over which Elder Kikuchi presided.) The average number of convert bap­tisms in Japan at this time was between 25 and 30 per month for each mission. The average number of mission­aries in each mission was between 150 and 200, making the average number of converts per missionary per year just under 2. In other words, on the average, missionaries experienced a total of 3 to 4 convert baptisms during their two-year missions.

During this meeting, Elder Kikuchi focused on the future and reconfirmed the vision he had begun to plant in me a few weeks earlier in Salt Lake and the hope and expectations he had of me and the new Tokyo South Mission. I recorded the essence of this meeting in my journal (Groberg, 1978-1981):  

            Elder Kikuchi came out to our home and we talked from 3:30 p.m. until 7:00 p.m. He really has high expectations of me. I had thought that 10 times as many baptisms as they are getting now would be a good goal to shoot for (about 10,000). Before telling him, I asked him what he felt I should do. He mapped out the progress as he expected and it turned out to be 25 times as much as what is currently happening, minimum! (And he stressed minimum!) That seems like a lot, but I believe we can make it. 

Thus, with this challenge and vision, I began my mission. I centered my activities of the first three months around the building of a new vision for the mission. Building a new vision was more than just goal setting and motivational talks, although both of these were important. Building a new vision encompassed a whole array of fundamental changes. It included col­lecting information, studying the conversion process, changing mission leadership assignments, correlating with local members, and redirecting our whole missionary effort. In addition to building a new mission vision, it meant planting and nurturing new personal visions within the hearts of the individual missionaries.  

1. Changing the Vision: Results vs. Activity Goals

Problem or situation. It seemed to me that most of my missionaries were putting considerable time and effort in their proselyting activities: 50 to 60 hours per week. I wondered how they could be directing their full time and effort toward teaching and converting people and have so little success. Then it occurred to me that one of the problems was that they did not expect success. They were putting in the time and effort without real intent to' convert and baptize people. They seldom had specific, results-oriented goals in mind.

The goals they did have were more often activity goals directed toward sheer motion rather than toward results. For example, the types of things that were important to them were the number of proselyting hours, the number of door-to-door contacts, the time spent cleaning the apartment, etc. Their focus was on enabling goals--always preparing in ways that would eventually enable them to accomplish their primary goal of bringing new converts into the Church. But in the process it seemed they had largely lost track of the primary goal. In a talk to mission presidents, Presi­dent Kimball (Kikuchi, 1981) said: 

            Missionaries ARE HAPPIEST WHEN THEY ARE SUCCEEDING, just as is the case with all of the rest of us. When missionaries are not succeeding in baptizing, they will tend to search for substitutes for suc­cess. Please don't force them into measuring their success by hours of tracting, gospel conversations, Books of Mormon distributed, etc. (p. 255).

            Ezra Taft Benson, then President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who were directly responsible for missionary work, also counseled mission presidents about the goal of missionary work:

            The new missionaries need to know exactly the purpose for being in the mission field--which is to save souls, to baptize converts (Benson, 1976).

            Convert baptisms were not a common topic of conver­sation among my missionaries at this time. When they were discussed, it seemed more like rhetoric than reality. It seemed they had little belief, faith, or vision that they would or could really baptize. And, indeed, they were not baptizing with much frequency.

In one of President Kimball's addresses, quoting a letter he had received from a Church leader concerning this very problem (Kikuchi, 1981), he stated: 

            One of our strong Regional Representatives wrote this to me just last week: "THE MISSIONARY OBJEC­TIVES TODAY FOCUS TOO MUCH ON METHODS AND NOT ENOUGH ON RESULTS. . . . I think it would be immensely helpful. . . if a clear "signal were given by you. . . that WE WANT MANY MORE CONVERT BAPTISMS AND THAT WE NEED TO ENCOURAGE THE MIS­SIONARIES TO SET GOALS FOR THEMSELVES WHICH FOCUS ON THE ULTIMATE RESULTS AND NOT JUST ON THE METHODS TO GET THOSE RESULTS" (p. 50). 

It appeared to me that most of my missionaries saw their roles as that of loyal sufferers and sowers of seeds. They were willing to endure the demanding hours and difficult activities of missionary work amidst very little evidence that their efforts were making a differ­ence. But even though they expressed little hope that they would see many results during their time, they expressed much hope that the seeds they were planting through their many contacts, even though they ended in rejection to them, would someday be harvested by future missionaries.

The norm, in terms of convert productivity, was between one and two converts per year for each mission­ary, or two or three for their entire two-year mission. This relatively low productivity was accepted by most missionaries. I think they looked at it this way: if they could do a little better than this norm, they considered that they were blessed; if they didn't do as well, they were still planting seeds. And if they did too much better than the norm, they were often suspect and thought to probably be doing something wrong.

Action taken. (7-78) PUT EMPHASIS ON CONVERT BAPTISMS RATHER THAN PROSELYTING ACTIVITIES: TALK ABOUT THEM, WORK TOWARDS THEM. CHANGE THE VISION OF THE ROLE OF THE MISSIONARIES FROM SOWERS TO HARVESTERS, THE NORM FROM TWO OR THREE DURING THEIR MISSION TO HUNDREDS, THE TIME FROM SOMEDAY TO NOW. (Productivity label: Motivational.) 

The central focus of this new vision was to increase the number of convert baptisms. My goal was to use the words of President Kimball to transmit his and Elder Kikuchi's vision to my missionaries--the vision that they could and should teach, convert, and baptize many people during their missions:

            We must convert more people. We must find the ways and means. . . thousands of conversions, not dozens, not tens or fives, or ones, thousands of conversions (p. 92).

that people were prepared and ready now:

            Millions of people are anxious and willing to learn, if only they can hear the 'sound' in their own tongue and in a manner that they can grasp and understand (p. 233) 

that these missionaries could make it happen: 

            IF WE REALLY WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, WE CAN! BUT SOMETIMES TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE, WE MUST DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY AND BETTER! (p. 43). 

that the timing was important and we needed to do it now:  

            WE ARE GREATLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE TIMING OF THIS CAMPAIGN. SOME FEW MISSIONARIES MOVE TOWARD THEIR WORK AS THOUGH THEY HAD ALL TIME. AND ETERNITY TO CONVERT A FEW PEOPLE IN THEIR PART OF THE WORLD. THE WORD IS URGENCY--IT IS NOW (P. 120). 

I felt the key to changing the vision was in acquiring a new vision myself so I could transmit it to the missionaries. Elder Kikuchi had begun to transmit the vision of the Prophet to me, and I began to transmit it to the missionaries. I did this through talks at monthly zone conferences with the missionaries, through writings in the mission newsletter, through changes in the weekly report forms, and through discussions and personal interviews with missionaries, always empha­sizing the words of the Prophet, President Spencer W. Kimball. 

Results of the action. Changing the vision was a long-term activity, and the results need to be viewed that way. Most of the missionaries reacted with enthu­siastic support for the new vision. The following letter from a missionary is typical of their response:

            Every morning after planning meeting we take 5-10 minutes to individually create a mental image of what we're going to accomplish for the day. Then we pray about it and go out and do it! I can't believe it, but our dreams are coming true and every day we're seeing miracles! The Lord wants to bless us, but can't do it without the power of our faith (Missionary Letters, 1978-1981).

Not all the missionaries were enthusiastic. A few were skeptical. I experienced a brief period during which the missionaries were divided in their attitudes. I learned that they had various feelings about the purpose of their missions. Some felt they should be teaching people with the purpose of baptizing them and reacted to the new emphasis as though they were now authorized and encouraged to do what they felt they should be doing: 

I can see those many visions and dreams start to come about. I have dreams of my own that I had before I came to Japan and for a little while they were lost. They are starting to come into focus again. There is going to be a great harvest and I'm going to be a part of it (Missionary Letters, 1978-1981). 

Others felt that their purpose was only to warn people and that converting and baptizing them was only a remote possibility. I sensed that some of them were concerned about the risks to themselves if they did bap­tize someone who then went inactive. Too risky. Initially, both enthusiasm and skepticism grew, but numbers of convert baptisms did not. The vision alone made little difference. To cause things to happen I had to do more than just set goals and give talks and encouragement. These were a start, but they had to be reinforced by more specific actions in order to cause things to happen.

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