Yesterday I was also reading something interesting about the young Gordon B. Hinckley and the publicity work in Elder Widtsoe’s biography.
Elder Widtsoe wrote to David O. McKay, newly appointed second counselor in the First Presidency,
“With respect to the Mission Publicity Committee, the requests…require occasional or regular help, for which no doubt the Church must make payment. The Committee felt that if a small sum, say not to exceed one hundred dollars a month, could be allowed by the presidency, help such as that offered by Brother [Gordon B.] Hinckley could be secured from time to time, to get the work under way. Really I have a feeling that in these changing times mission publicity is one of the outstanding needs connected with our proselyting.” (LDS Church Archives, 19 September 1935).
Two years after John Widtsoe was released from the Mission Publicity Committee, he still continued his appeal that the Church move more rapidly in accepting technological devices as gifts of Heavenly Father. He said at General Conference, October 1946:
“Missionary work must grow in foreign fields, as never before; missionary work at home must grow as never before. We shall employ every modern device: the telephone, telegraph, radio, printing press, the short wave system as mentioned by President Smith, and the other devices that are coming. We shall use them all in our attempt to win men and women from wickedness to righteousness, from untruth or near truth to full and complete truth which is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ“.
The internet is clearly one of the “other devices that [were] coming”. Now it is here and it has an incredible power but it needs to be used better. I don’t think we currently consider the telegraph a very useful way of spreading the gospel, but it was at that time.
Times change and weapons change, but it is still the same war. I think that President Gordon B. Hinckley has been aware of the importance of using technology to spread the gospel from his early days of service in the Church. Probably we all need to be a little more aware of the power of technology in moving forward this great cause.
