If you're new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.

Aaron Curtis has created a Google Custom Search Engine for searching official LDS Church web sites. It includes lds.org, mormon.org, josephsmith.net, familysearch.org, providentliving.org, and international Church websites (like the site for the Mormon church in Australia, for example).

Also, the More Good Foundation operates a search engine called LDSsearch.com, which indexes pages that are faithful to the Church. It should be a “safe” place to search when looking for information about the Church.

It would be great to get Firefox search plugins for both of these search engines.

Link: Aaron’s LDS search

While the Church will publish its own videos on LDS.org, individuals can contribute much to online video about the Church:

• Taylorsville Seminary created a video on Google Video about all the things they’re thankful for.
• YouTube user “Lovethyneighbor”, who is “open minded” and has attended several churches, recorded herself explaining how she feels about Mormons.
• A BYU project called Fit for the Kingdom takes a glimpse at the life of ordinary Mormons. (These videos ought to be on YouTube and Google Video where they’d draw more viewers.)

While online videos range from good to bad, Tyler D has some ideas for videos Mormons could create.

In the last General Conference, Elder Eyring spoke about a deacon’s quorum that recorded their Sunday meeting for a deacon that couldn’t be there.

How can we better share the Gospel through online video and audio?

One distinctive feature of a Grateful Dead concert is that everyone is allowed to record it. Tapers, as they are called, bring their own recording equipment to concerts, then share their recordings with other Deadheads. Instead of hurting record sales, the sharing of concert recordings promotes the band and grows the fans.

What would it be like to record every sacrament meeting and testimony meeting, every seminary and institute class, and share?

We could share recorded meetings with the sick, home-bound, and less active. It would allow non-members to get a feel for the meetings in their own neighboorhood before they attend. While what a bishop is moved by the Spirit to say to his ward doesn’t necessarily apply to the whole Church, many talks, stories, and lessons would be of general interest too.

Web 2.0 is commonly used to refer to Web sites that allow heavy participation and content from users. We’ve previously blogged about Scripture Tag, which allows users to “tag” scriptures with keywords, and Sustain’d, a Mormon version of Digg.

Stewart Foss has a post about the Top 10 Mormon Web 2.0 Sites, with room for 3 more. Another Christian Web 2.0 site of which I know is eBible.com, which allows users to tag and share verses from the Bible.

Here is a list of Five Ideas for Christian Web 2.0 Sites and a few more which could also inspire Mormon developers.

I recently received an email from Chip that includes some great ideas for sharing the Gospel online:

Blogging on Gospel topics could be a missionary tool… especially for those in areas where there is a high density of [Latter-day Saints]. The “Every Member a Missionary” slogan could be applied through a blog.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to have an “approved” Church calling within each ward for “Ward Blogger”? The blog could be a source for Ward News but also point to [other content]. I wonder if the churches online websites for Wards could be integrated with a blogging server. We could have one blog per Ward.

Maybe we [could] have the Missionary Department jump on board here and embrace an “Online” Missionary Stake Calling for online editing of content and managing contact with people who visit their blog.

Especially in Utah and other locations with high concentrations of Church members, the Internet can be a great way to do missionary work. If faithful saints are the salt of the earth, and I’ve heard Utah referred to as the salt shaker, why not reach more people by blogging or publishing testimonies online?

Chip’s idea for a ward blogger is a great idea. The ward blogger could be charged with publishing the testimony of a family in the ward each week. The blog would be no more authoritative than a ward newsletter (i.e., it wouldn’t be construed to speak for the Church as a whole) but it would allow the stories of faithful saints everywhere to be read by thousands of people.

If you’d like to share your testimony online, please login into our Member Portal and click on Submit your Conversion Story. You can write about when you or your ancestors joined the Church, or tell us about how you gained your testimony. With your permission, we’ll publish your story online where the most people can benefit from it.

What’s new at More Good Foundation? We are launching several international new sites about the Foundation. They are not yet completely developed but we are getting there. It makes sense to move forward to other languages because the blessings of the Gospel are for all people in all nations of the worlds.

I was reading the book “The Bruce R. McConkie story” written by Elder McConkie’s son Joseph Fielding McConkie and he quoted from a letter written by his father while he was on a mission: “Throughout the revelations the Lord takes frequent occasion to mention great blessings that will attend missionary work -almost always the blessings are promised to the missionary, not the convert. It is assumed that the convert will gain blessings, because the reception of the gospel always brings such. But the one especially and particularly blessed will always be the one sent to carry the message.” (p. 259).

Do we want these blessings now or do we wait another 20-40 years until we become old enough to go on a mission with our spouse (if health will allow us)? The internet provides us with the opportunity of using just a little time once in a while to make a big difference in the life of someone forever.

While we are not officially enlisted by the Church to do missionary work, we help to carry the gospel message through the internet and fulfill the call of President McKay for every member to be a missionary. All members should be members-missionaries and since we should not rely only on the “official” missionaries to do the usual missionary work, why should we rely only on the “official” Church sites to do the work on the internet? Why it is so hard to understand this point for many members? Why many are so reluctant to use the internet to do more?

I quote from another email I received from a webmaster that likes what we do, but at the same time is not interested in being more involved:

“Frankly, I feel that Anti-Mormons are pathetic enough–since they have nothing better to do with their lives… (we) won’t deter them from spreading their poison. People who want to know the truth about Mormons will look at the official church websites, as they should. Those who want an excuse to dislike Mormons won’t. People find what they look for.”

If this is true, why do missionaries tract? Why don’t they stay home and wait for those interested in the truth to find them? Simply because it does not work, it is not appropriate to be passive and wait, we need to be proactive. So why should it be different on the internet? Why it is so hard to get this point?

I have quoted this Mormon friend because I know that many share the same belief, not because it is unique, unfortunately. I also know that this friend as many others are probably very good members of the Mormon Church but I still think they are holding a wrong and dangerous belief. The problem with this belief is that it is not always true that people find what they are looking for.

In fact, the Lord tells us that many “are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it” (D&C 123:12).

I believe that the Lord devised the Internet as one of the most powerful ways of helping people find the truth because He knew how hard it would be for elders and sisters missionaries to find and meet all the possible truth seekers.

It looks like the anti-Mormons are not discounting the power of the Internet. Why? Is it just because they don’t have anything better to do or is it because it is an effective tool to spread trash?

Again I am referring to Joseph Fielding McConkie’s book. On pages 261-262 he discusses certain doctrines and their fruits. I know that we are not really talking of doctrines here, but more simply of a common held belief, however I think that the principle explained in the book applies to this case.

Joseph McConkie tells that occasionally his dad would take him as his companion for the Saturday leadership meeting on a stake conference. Often during those meetings he would respond to gospel questions. A commonly asked question was whether the Father, like Christ, had been a savior on the world in which he experienced his mortal probation and if there was a special strain of savior Gods.

To this question Elder McConkie would always answer: “What earthly good could possibly come from teaching such a thing?” For Elder McConkie the question constituted a sure standard by which supposed doctrines could be discerned. If a doctrine (or a commonly held belief in our case) is good, its fruits would be good; if a doctrine (or our beliefs that “people who want to know the truth about Mormons will look at the official church websites”) is bad, its fruits would be bad.

Now, I am not too interested here to comment why that doctrine is bad - but basically it is bad because it negates Savior’s life as an example to emulate, since it reasons that He and the Father are from a “superior breed” and live by a different set of laws than we do.

I am interested in asking: what kind of good can come from believing that “people who want to know the truth about Mormons will look at the official church websites”? I think that it will bring forth no good, but only complacency about our role in the spreading of the gospel and passivity and inactivity in missionary work.

If this belief is true, why did Alma leave his judgment-seat and go to preach the gospel? (Alma 4:20) If my Mormon friend is right, why did not Alma simply send a letter throughout the land asking for those who were seriously interested in knowing the truth to go to meet him in Zarahemla?

Rather than following the easier path of waiting for God to do the work, Alma did what was necessary to do. He was not complacent and he didn’t keep the judgment-seat until he was old enough to go on a mission with his wife! He did something; he didn’t simply assume that people would come to the right place to know the truth. He decided to bring the truth to those who were searching for the truth and even or especially to those who were not, since more than once anti-Nephites, or anti-Jesus or anti-Mormons have been converted by the efforts and sincerity of good missionaries and members.

Even more importantly, if my Mormon friend is true, why didn’t Jesus simply come to the earth to suffer in Gethsemane? Why was He performing active missionary work and why would He even spend time refuting the anti-Jesus of His time? Clearly, He who set the example for all of us thought that an effort needed to be made to gain converts to His cause. Are we more than He was?

Christopher Phillips has been advocating an LDS content repository like commoncontent.org. If the Church were to license some or all of its content with a Creative Commons, GFDL, or other license, it would make it much easier for institute and seminary instructors, Sunday School teachers, and other members to share notes and collaborate on materials.

Imagine, for example, licensing the Teaching of the Presidents manuals with a Creative Commons ShareAlike license. Derivative works would be allowed. Church members could volunteer to read the manuals aloud and make audio recordings, just as the LibriVox project is doing with public domain works. These audio recordings could be shared with hearing-impaired Church members around the world. They’d also be useful for members learning a second language since Gospel teachings give so much context and common ground when learning a foreign language. Recordings could be made of all Church publications and in all languages. The Church could call Church Service Missionaries to manage or participate in this movement.

Last year J. Max Wilson blogged about how many universities including MIT, Harvard, and Utah State have begun OpenCourseWare initiatives to share their course content online and how a similar initiative might affect and help the Church. Brother David Wiley is the professor in charge of the OpenCourseWare initiative at Utah State.

I expect that, in the not so distant future, the Church will begin to extend a university level education, through BYU, to its members in all nations through the use of missionaries and Internet based classes. Someday we may very well see stake centers throughout the world become hubs in a vast, interconnected education system. Just as they can now do genealogical research, faithful latter-day saints of all means will be able to attend classes and attend lectures and lessons by professors and experts in all kinds of fields through web-enabled learning centers in stake centers everywhere, directed and helped locally by “education” missionaries. (OpenCourseWare, Education, and the Church, by J. Max Wilson)

I was reading yesterday from the biography of Elder John A. Widtsoe of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles about his time as President of the European Mission (1927-1933).
Elder Widtsoe was a pioneer in publicity work for the Church in Europe where he obtained good results (at least compared to previous periods).

He was also one of the first to address the need for the Church to use modern technology to present the message of the restored gospel. At general conference in October 1924, he said,

“Today, man is able to do things that in days gone by were conceivable done only by God. Yet…the airship, the steamship, the telephone, the radio and all the other marvels of this age, are but a clothing of the body, but an instrument to be used by man. By means of these great inventions and discoveries, great gifts of God to the people of these latter days, it is possible for the righteous man to accomplish righteousness more widely and more speedily.”

Soon after his return from Europe, Elder Widtsoe addressed the April 1934 annual general conference and he spoke of “new feeling” for the Church in the public’s eye, a wonderful change. But, he warned, “the eternal battle is still on between truth and error, between the Lord and the evil one…we have merely shifted our battle ground, we have merely changed our weapons. Three hundred years ago humanity fought with spears and shields. Today out of the sky poison gas and boms are dropped on the unprotected cities below. Just so, in the mission field today, under the new conditions we must change our battle ground and the weapons that we use, but the battle goes forward.”

The battle goes forward, but the weapons have changed. Elder Widtsoe couldn’t think of something like the Internet in his time, but the same principle still applies: these inventions need to be used to accomplish righteousness more widely and more speedily.

The enemy is clearly using the Internet. Are we using it enough to accomplish righteousness?