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.

Public Relations students, Ashley, Brett, and Kate, assisted More Good Foundation at a service booth at BYU (Brigham Young University) on Friday, October 31, 2008, surveying students about their willingness to share their Mormon beliefs online.

As part of their ongoing research to assist the foundation in facilitating online conversations about Mormons–our faith and our lives–these students shared information about ways other students can use the New Media to engage in the conversation on the Internet.

We appreciate their efforts to help us and help others participate in increasing the dialog about who we are on the Web.

To join the conversation, or for more information, please contact us at email@moregoodfoundation.org or visit our websites (Click on tab, “Our Sites”).

Ashley & Brett at More Good Foundation Booth at BYU

Ashley Chats with BYU Student at More Good Foundation Booth (It's Halloween!)

Kate and Karen at More Good Foundation Booth at BYU

Tags: Add new tag, lds beliefs, More Good Foundation, Mormon beliefs, Online missionary work, sharing faith online

Perceptions of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) are changing as the Internet provides new opportunities for faithful Mormons to share their lives and faith online.

If you’re wondering if you can really make a difference by coming off the bleachers and entering the field, we hope to settle it in your mind and heart that your voice is needed.

Let me share with you comments made in an on-the-street survey of random individuals approached by a Public Relations firm eleven years ago to find out what they knew about us as a Church and people. As you read these remarks, I’d invite you to ask yourself: “Do I have anything to say on these issues?” “Would I not eagerly respond to questions like these if I could?” If the answer is, as I imagine it will be, a resounding “Yes,” then I invite you to begin to participate in the online conversation about us on the Internet. For ways to do that, please contact us at email(at)moregoodfoundation(dot)org or km(at)moregood.com. We’ll show you how you can help.

“You know, on family issues and stuff like that; they have good values, it seems like.”

“As a minority, I don’t know of any minorities or blacks that are Mormons. Maybe because I haven’t been around.”

“I might be wrong, but I believe it was a religion originated in probably the 1800s by someone on the East Coast. I thought they uncovered some written material and developed a religion around that.”

“The first thing that comes to mind is that they are allowed to have multiple wives.”

“They give a certain percentage of what they earn to the Church right off the top. I think it is called, ‘tithy’”

“I don’t know about Latter-day Saints, but I was very much interested in the Mormons, and I liked the fact that they were very close and supportive of each other.”

“Very strict, rather conservative in their outlook, and very patriarchal as far as the church structure is concerned.”

“Up until recently, they practiced bigamy.”

“I know a bit. I mean, joseph Smith was the town drunk. Had a vision…. He wnet out West, took the whole thing with him. They lynched him there because they thought he was nuts… They’re really rich; I mean, they know what they’re doing. They live a nice clean life….”

“Something was found in a cave, I believe, by Mr. Smith.

“Caring, open.”

“I know that they’re based in Utah. I know that they have very strict guidelines, that there are not a lot of female priests. I know that Brigham Young University is sort of breeding ground for Mormons.”

As you can see, these interviews–conducted in New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago–reveal much fiction and misunderstanding in the public mind, mixed with a few accurate observations about our morality and lifestyle.

If you feel stirred by these comments, I’d invite you to follow the nudge to participate in sharing your voice online.

Tags: Member missionary work, misperceptions about mormons, mormon image, Online missionary work

At Have you born your testimony on YouTube yet? Jane shares a concern about sharing the Gospel online:

I am ready to put a link to the church under “what I believe” on my About page, and to swear less (never, I think) online than I do in real life. I talk about our family reunions and about odd things that occur to me in church. I post videos of my seven-year old practicing her primary talks. But I’m not sure I’m the best example.

Sometimes I worry: will people judge the church by my words and actions…? Will they think I’m hypocritical for drinking Mountain Dew and oppressed because sometimes I hate being a mother?

Is this a problem?

I don’t think so. Jane’s authenticity should be considered a strength, not a weakness. Our friends of other faiths aren’t anxious to discover that all Mormons are alike. I think they’d be glad to discover there’s a Mormon out there just like them, with the same background, education, tastes in food, skin color, and hair color. Maybe they’re even from the same area. (Maybe there’s a Mormon out there for everyone!)

In the comments below Jane’s post, several women say that Elder Ballard’s talk inspired them to start blogs.

Sharing the Gospel online doesn’t need to mean posting your testimony on YouTube or necessarily sharing your testimony, in the traditional sense, at all. While speaking in Washington, D.C., Elder Ballard explained it this way:

Clearly, in this context I am not talking about declaring your testimony of faith in the traditional sense. Naturally, you can and should do that where the setting is appropriate and the audience is receptive, such as a church meeting. Rather, I am talking about taking part in everyday conversations in an unforced way, where your values and your religious beliefs will arise naturally. No one likes to have religion thrust down their throats. Instead, allow people to see how your beliefs lift and shape your life for the better.

• How does the gospel help you as a parent engage with your teens?
• How do your values encourage you to participate in civic affairs?
• How has your experience as a home or visiting teacher enlarged your compassion or care for the sick and needy?
• How has your Church life helped you to avoid such things as pornography and immorality?
• How have family councils or home evenings helped you resolve differences of opinion with members of your family?
• How has your experience in speaking in church helped you address large public groups?
• Where did you learn to respect and not to criticize other faiths?
• And so on.

I recently did a Google search and saw the following notice above the search results:

Customized for Salt Lake City metro area, US

Google can determine — by my IP address — that I am searching from a location near Salt Lake City and attempts to make the search results more relevant to my location.

When our friends of other faiths look for information about our faith, Google may present them with local search results. Perhaps this might include a blog post from a member in their city or a picture of the temple in their area.

This is good news!

1. Instead of feeling discouraged, thinking “Why should I blog? It could never make a difference,” online member missionaries should understand that by sharing authentic, local experiences, their blog may be preferred over a more general source.

2. If a searcher discovers the blog of a local Church member and becomes interested in the Church, the member can be involved in the teaching process with the full-time missionaries.

If you have a blog or website, consider writing about the Church in your area. Here are some example titles you might use:

• “What it’s like to grow up as a Mormon in Las Vegas, NV”
• “How I feel when I visit the Las Vegas Mormon Temple”
• “Where can I visit a Mormon chapel in Las Vegas, NV? What will it be like?”
• “Why I was a Mormon missionary in Tulsa, Oklahoma”

The Church Newsroom has a good article about members of the Church who are using YouTube and other websites to share the Gospel.

The article includes references to MormonHunnies, the three Mormon college students who’ve shared their beliefs on YouTube, and youth in Las Vegas who recorded their testimonies at Youth Conference.

“Speak on what you know,” Las Vegas youth leader West Allen says. “Make it personal. They [members] should share how the Church or the gospel has personally benefitted them and their families.”

Source: Mormons Make Their Voices Heard — Digitally

Youth of the Las Vegas Nevada Redrock Stake shared their beliefs on camera at a recent Youth Conference, answering Elder Ballard’s call to share the Gospel online. The production was beautiful, and I see several good things coming of this:

• Youth can tell their friends about the video and link to it from Facebook or MySpace pages.
• Parents can share the video with their co-workers and friends of other faiths. It may be less intimidating, for giver and receiver, to share a video of one’s son or daughter.
• The public at large can see what Mormon youth are like.
• Youth gain experience being missionaries, before serving full-time missions.
• When they grow up, youth can look back and recall the beliefs they formed while young.

Read more: Youth answer Elder Ballard’s challenge with video
Watch video: Youths in Las Vegas record testimonies

As a missionary in England, President Gordon Hinckley was known to have preached from a portable stand in Hyde Park, presumably because there were large gatherings of people there.

YouTube is the 3rd most visited website in the world and another avenue for sharing the Gospel. The Church has published several dozen videos on YouTube, as have many faithful members. Here is an overview:

• Videos from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
• Videos from the More Good Foundation, including testimonies and conversion stories
• Videos from FAIR, including answers to many questions about our beliefs
• YouTube user lds9999 has created many positive videos about our faith, including a video for each of the 125 temples. If you have a blog or a website, why not find the video for your temple and embed it on your site? This will help more people find it when looking for information about the temple.
• YouTube user believingldsmormon has created about a dozen videos, including facts and figures about the Mormon church and an explanation about garments. He is addressing topics for which there is public interest. (He’s “going where the people are.”)
• YouTube user SethAdamSmith has posted many good videos. He also campaigned for other YouTube users to post their testimonies online.
• Jean Kapenda, a convert from the Congo who joined the Church in Switzerland, video taped his conversion story and made it available on YouTube.
• And there are several other YouTube users who address Gospel topics by simply speaking into the camera. No one could accuse mormonhunnies or notAbadLookinMormon of being scripted or unreal.

If you have a video camera, or a laptop computer with a built-in web cam, why not record yourself and share it online? You could share your conversion story, your testimony of a particular Gospel principle, or how the Gospel affects your day-to-day living.

Tags: youtube

We’ve just launched a new version of MormonTestimonies.org and we’ve changed our assumption of what a “testimony” is. Instead of sharing your “one” testimony, MormonTestimonies.org now encourages you to share multiple “testimonies.” You might share your testimony of the Savior, or of tithing, or of the Book of Mormon.

You might also share applications of Gospel teachings. In fact, Elder Ballard recently spoke about “taking part in everyday conversations in an unforced way, where your values and your religious beliefs will arise naturally.” He listed several questions you might answer online:

• How do your beliefs lift and shape your life for the better?
• How does the gospel help you as a parent engage with your teens?
• How do your values encourage you to participate in civic affairs?
• How has your experience as a home or visiting teacher enlarged your compassion or care for the sick and needy?
• How has your Church life helped you to avoid such things as pornography and immorality?
• How have family councils or home evenings helped you resolve differences of opinion with members of your family?
• How has your experience in speaking in church helped you address large public groups?
• Where did you learn to respect and not to criticize other faiths?

Source: Elder Ballard’s speech given at BYU Management Society

We’ve preloaded these and other questions into MormonTestimonies.org. Each time you visit the site (or refresh your browser) a new question will be loaded. Feel free to answer these questions, or write something else entirely. If you think of other questions we might ask, please leave them in the comments below.

(If you had a user account on the old MormonTestimonies.org site, please contact us to get a new username and password.)

Tags: elder ballard, m russell ballard, Mormon, testimony

Saturday Elder Ballard spoke at a meeting of the BYU Management Society in Washington, D.C., and again encouraged members to share their beliefs on the Internet. Counting his previous speeches at BYU-Hawaii and BYU-Idaho, this is the third time he’s spoken on the topic.

Here are excerpts:

Many want answers, and the places they are most likely to seek those answers are either on the Internet or from their Mormon acquaintances.

I probably don’t need to tell you that there is much questionable information and even outright falsehoods about the Church on the Internet and in the media-much bad mixed with the good.

Gradually, accurate and positive information is rising to the top of lists generated by various search engines. Those seeking information are more likely to encounter accurate information today than at any time since the Internet began, even though we still have a long way to go.

So let me pose a question. What are you prepared to do about it? If you are a member of the Church, what is your responsibility during this period of unusual attention and debate? Interest has continued at a high level and probably will for some time. If a national conversation is going on about the Church, are you going to be an active participant or a silent observer?

…Church leaders can’t do it all, especially at the grass-roots, community level. While we do speak authoritatively for the Church, we look to our responsible and faithful members to engage personally with blogs, to write thoughtful, online letters to news organizations, and to act in other ways to correct the record with their own opinions.

However, I emphasize that it is not always about correcting misinformation. Sometimes it is about getting solid information and ideas out there in the first place. Share your experiences - those from your own life - that show how your values and your faith intersect. It doesn’t matter whether that’s face to face with another person, or whether you do it by participating from your own blog or contributing to someone else’s blog. The most important thing is that you let people know that you are a Latter-day Saint, and that your behavior and attitude always reflect the high standards of the Church and what is expected as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, you will be speaking as an individual member and not as an official representative of the Church.

I am talking about taking part in everyday conversations in an unforced way, where your values and your religious beliefs will arise naturally….

Read the full text: Elder M. Russell Ballard’s speech given at Brigham Young University Management Society

Tags: beliefs, m russell ballard, Mormon, online, sharing, testimony

At an advertising conference last year, Robert Stephens said, “Advertising is a tax you pay for unremarkable thinking.” (Source: Business Week)

The implication was that if your product is good enough, people will talk about it and spread the word, and you won’t need traditional advertising. Seth Godin calls this being “remarkable” or “worth remarking about.”

What if the Church didn’t need to spend any money on traditional advertising because Church members were that vocal about the Gospel? What if full-time missionaries didn’t have to do any finding? (Some might argue that advertising is as much about energizing the base as reaching out to new people.)

For Mormons who have felt the joy that comes through the Savior Jesus Christ, the Gospel is remarkable — worth remarking about — and they talk about it. After all, this is Good News.

When Latter-day Saint Brooke White auditioned for American Idol, Simon Cowell said, “Tell me something interesting about you.” Of all the things she could say, she said, “I’ve never seen a rated R movie.” (I love Randy’s interjection — “Why!?”) Brooke went on to explain the standards her parents gave her and that she doesn’t drink or smoke.

I recently watched an interview with Harvard Business Professor Clay Christensen, in which he mentioned his Mormon faith in passing. This is a regular pattern for him:

I have learned to use terms that associate me with Mormonism in my conversations—comments about my mission to Korea, my children’s missions, my assignments in the Church, my having attended Brigham Young University, and so on. These comments open the door for a conversation about the Church. Most who notice that I have opened this door choose not to walk through it. A few do, however, usually saying, “So you’re a Mormon?” I then ask if they’d like to learn more about us. (Clay Christensen)

This missionary spirit seems to be part of their natures.

We are called to open our mouths:

8 Open your mouths and they shall be filled, and you shall become even as Nephi of old, who journeyed from Jerusalem in the wilderness.
9 Yea, open your mouths and spare not, and you shall be laden with sheaves upon your backs, for lo, I am with you.
10 Yea, open your mouths and they shall be filled, saying: Repent, repent, and prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make his paths straight; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;
Source: D&C 33:8-10

There are many ways to “open your mouth,” including on the Internet. You could start a blog. (Click here to learn what a blog is or explain it to someone else.) You could leave comments on a news story about the Church. You could post your testimony or story on YouTube.com.

“Open your mouths and they shall be filled…”