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Last week at the Utah Open Source Conference, Tom Welch, Technology Community Manager for the Church, spoke about his work as CTO of Linspire. While at Linspire, they created a tool called IRMA, by which volunteers could participate in the translation of their software. For example, a volunteer with a few minutes on her hands might visit IRMA to translate text like “Your file was not found” into Spanish, Arabic, or Swahili. The IRMA project resulted in the full or partial translation of their software into 59 languages. Instead of paying for the work, the company was able to harness the collective intelligence of the community to get the work done:

• 59 languages
• 3,246 translators
• 2.6 million translations
• top translator completed over 13,800 message translations

This is precisely the type of project that would be interesting for sharing the Gospel. The Church member might visit a website and be presented with a few options:

• Will you please translate the phrase “Joseph Smith is a prophet of God” into Portuguese?
• Will you please write a paragraph about what it’s like to visit a Mormon temple?
• Someone at Yahoo Answers has a question about the Book of Mormon. Please follow this link to answer his question.
• Will you please hit record and look into your web cam as you explain how you gained a testimony of the principle of tithing?

The work produced by volunteers would be published where persons of other faiths could find it. The site would have to be as accessible and easy to use as FamilySearchIndexing.org. There would be plenty of work, and this would make sharing the Gospel easier for Church members.

Two years ago, I started a niche website with my BYU roommate, which became very popular, drawing thousands of people every day. When we sold the website this May and said our goodbyes to the readers, Brian posted a link to his personal blog.

On his personal blog, Brian posts photos of his family and newborn son, writes on a variety of topics from being a father to owning an iPhone, and, importantly, shares elements of his beliefs. After writing about tithing recently, Brian discovered that one of the visitors to our website had begun reading his personal blog.

Brian, you don’t know me in person but I’ve been reading [your] blog for a while. (I found it thru freemacware.com when you owned that.)

Anyway, I’m not Mormon but I appreciate [the] things you write about. There’s just one thing I have a question about with the mormons. every other religion (including mine) sees commandments as burdonsome and limiting. But in your posts and other mormons I know seem like they appreciate commandments. Why is that? maybe you or some of your mormon readers care to respond.

Several of us responded to Michael’s question, and eventually he asked to be visited by the full-time missionaries. I spoke with Brian today and he confirmed that the elders have now visited Michael and his family several times.

Brian didn’t intend to preach a sermon, but by simply sharing his faith online, he was able to reach someone who wanted to hear it. I think this is an exemplary model of online member missionary work.

Do you want to start a blog? We’ll help!

Mormon Testimonies is growing but we need more written and video testimonies, especially conversion stories.

These are a few new ones that you may like:

Susan Easton Black (link to the site)

Valerie Finnegan, a convert from Scotland (link to the site)

Ott Dameron, a convert from the US (link to the site)

Giuseppe.. I know this guy very well. (link to the site)

Francesco Lepore (another convert from Italy) (link to the site)

In his Utah Policy newsletter, Deseret News columnist points out that the Mitt Romney presidential campaign has brought the Church into the national spotlight and asks whether the Church should respond to the increased attacks. “Romney obviously will have to deal with these matters forthrightly and aggressively…but what about the LDS Church?” He answers his own question by giving two suggestions to be implemented by Church members:

1. Create an anti-defamation organization.

[P]erhaps some Mormon version of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League could be established. This organization could be more aggressive than the church itself in pointing out error and bigotry. Such an entity could also conduct a grassroots education effort outside the formal church organization.

2. Church members could run ads in their local newspapers.

Local Mormon groups could purchase full-page ads in their local newspapers with a message something like:

“We’re the Mormons. Because so much is being written and discussed about our church, some of it not fully factual, we want to tell you a little about ourselves and who we are. We’re your neighbors. We’re your friends. We’re doctors and plumbers and lawyers and carpenters and business people and housewives and school teachers. We’re part of the community fabric here in Omaha.”

The ads would include names and photos of local Mormons who are leaders in the community and also names and photos of prominent national Mormons, such as major business leaders, sports figures, politicians, entertainers, etc.

Along these lines, the More Good Foundation helped create LDS News Watch to point out inaccuracies in media reporting, and I’ve blogged previously about similarities between anti-Semitism and anti-Mormonism. But the Mormon Anti-Defamation industry is a tough industry to be in, since anti-Mormonism hasn’t been entirely pushed outside the realm of political correctness and we’d have to be careful not to embitter ourselves in a victim mentality. Maybe it could be pulled off, but it would be tough.

On the other hand, I very much like the idea of reaching out as Church members to explain our beliefs. (Sounds like a neighborly thing to do.) Many prominent Church members have already done so — Clayton Christensen, Donny Osmond, Glenn Beck — as well as many “locals” from across the globe.

The Internet is the next frontier of member missionary work.

UPDATE: I should point out, however, that any group effort by Church members may be construed as an official act of the institutional Church, which we may not want. It’s probably best that Church members focus on being good neighbors and on personally sharing the Gospel, including on personal blogs.

The Church’s recently posted article on the Mountain Meadows Massacre will be published in The Ensign later this year. While controversial topics like this are not central to the saving principles of the Gospel, the Internet has brought them more fully into the light and the Church has responded. By the end of the year more Church members will be educated (and even know for the first time) about this topic than ever before in Church history.

A few days after the article was published, I received one of those forwarded emails from a friend. It had been forwarded to dozens of people:

hey everyone…So i was checking out lds.org this morning and saw this article. I don’t know how many of you have heard about a movie coming out called, i think, “September Dawn.” This movie is supposed to portray a massacre which occured over 150 years ago in the utah territory and I assume that it will not portray the LDS church in the best light. Please read this article, that was put out by the church, so that when you are approached with questions you may be informed with the true story and can hopefully be a strength at a time when the church is once again being attacked. Pass this along so that all that don’t understand can gain strength through this knowledge! Hope all is well! The work will go forth no matter what, hopefully we can be on the side that helps it!

Is this the beginning of every member an apologist?

The Internet makes it easy for uninformed, anonymous voices to perpetuate misconceptions about the Church (not that all of the Church’s critic are uninformed or anonymous), but it’s also an opportunity for Church members to be more educated on church history, church doctrines, and the Church’s place in society than ever before. It’s an opportunity for every Church member to express our faith.

A recent Times and Seasons blog post suggested that the Mormon Church’s recently published article on the Mountain Meadows Massacre represented “new openness” on the part of the Church. The Church replied that it’s simply a response to the Internet and and “social media” formats that have brought “new communication opportunities to the Church through its Web sites.”

The Internet and social media allow fast, authentic, many-to-many communication, quite different from the few-to-many, broadcast media formats from just a few years ago. By posting the Mountain Meadows Massacre article on its website, the Church allows the “most thorough scholarship on the topic” to reach a wide audience in a way that sound bites cannot.

What’s more, Church members like us can participate!

While Church websites provide the official voice, we members can participate online to share our beliefs, opinions, and faith and dispel misinformation:

Many Church members on their own initiative take part in sharing their beliefs and opinions on the Internet. Thoughtful expressions of their personal faith and experiences with the Church help dispel stereotypes and misinformation.

If you would like to share your faith online, here are 12 ways. There are dozens more.

Source: The Church and New Media: Clarity, Context, and Official Voice

GetReligion.org recently linked to a fantastic interview with Richard Bushman. Mr. Bushman fielded questions from some of the nation’s top media outlets, discussing Mormon church history, the implications of Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy on the Church, and the public’s perception of Mormons. I thought it was an awesome read. GetReligion.org has highlights.

Near the end of the interview, Sally Quinn of the Washington Post said it has been difficult to find Mormon bloggers for the On Faith blog. So far, all the weight has fallen on Michael Otterson’s shoulders. Quinn commented to Bushman, “[M]aybe you have an answer to why people have been so reluctant to speak out and to talk about it.” Bushman replied:

I don’t know; Mormons are very talky about their faith. I think it may be a kind of defensiveness; they don’t know whether they can trust you, whether it is a trap. I think I could easily find well-spoken Mormons who would be very pleased to take part in an operation of that sort.

If, as Mr. Bushman says, Mormons are “very talky about their faith,” is there a hesitancy to participate online? How can we make participation on the Internet more appealing and “safer” for a greater number of Church members?

Jesus was not afraid of mixing with sinners and publicans to do His work on the earth. In fact, He was often criticized by the Pharisees for not being like them (self-righteous and focused on their own interests, I would say).

We read in Matthews 9: 10-13:

“And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

Where are the sinners and publicans of our generation? First of all, we are all, at least in part, sinners and publicans, but where are those who are lost in the world and don’t really know where to go or what to do to improve their lives? Probably at least some of them spend some of their time on YouTube watching videos, even those that may not be appropriate. Also, many very good people who are not members of the Mormon Church are constantly on the Internet looking for something.

I had an interesting experience with a very, very good man. I talked with him recently about our site MormonTestimonies and he was impressed and said that he would take a look and perhaps help with something.

However, the next day I received a call from him. He was very alarmed, “You have a major problem with your site” – he said. I got really concerned. He continued, “When a video testimony ends, there are links to several inappropriate videos, even against the Church.”

“This is not good, for sure”, I thought. I knew a little bit about this problem and we were already thinking of fixing it someway, but I didn’t think someone could be so concerned about it. I never watched those bad videos, but apparently my friend watched at least part of them. So, similarly to my friend, other people may think that we sponsor those bad videos. We don’t want to give that impression.

To fix it, we decided to “embed” videos from Google Videos instead than from YouTube, since we don’t have yet our own system for videos. When someone watches a video testimony from our site that is embedded from Google videos, there aren’t links at the bottom, so that there is no way to find negative content from our site, only the good testimony.

I am grateful to my friend for his suggestion.

However, I thought, what about YouTube in general, should we remove all of our videos from there because they can be listed close to a bad video?

Are we afraid of being seen with sinners and publicans?

So, should we avoid posting good content on YouTube or Google videos because we don’t want our name or face to be “seen” close to less positive material? Even more, are we afraid of doing anything on the Internet because – obviously – in some Google search our site can come up close to a bad site? If we go this route we are in serious troubles, since even Church websites show up in Google close to bad ones.

I believe that in order to do missionary work we need to lose some concern with ourselves and we need to be willing to be seen “eating with publicans and sinners” sometimes, because we want to help them find the truth. And the Internet is a very safe place to do it, after all, since we don’t even have to sit close to them physically, we are only sending a short video of ourselves and I don’t think we have anything to be afraid of.

Jacob Durrant of AllAboutMormons.com is on a streak. He’s recently created eight videos explaining Gospel teachings in his own words:

A Crash Course in Mormonism

He’s also begun translating the videos into Portuguese, and all his videos are available on YouTube.

Here’s what Jacob is doing right:

1. He has created excellent videos using “consumer” level tools.
2. He shares his videos on YouTube, in addition to his own website, so more people will find them.
3. He uses his ability to speak Portuguese to translate the videos and reach even more people.
4. His explanations use terminology that persons of other faith will understand.
5. He explains Gospel principles in his own words, not claiming to be an official representative of The Church. His disclaimer makes it clear that his words are his own.

I believe these videos are amateur work in the best sense of that word, a word that derives from the Latin word for love.

Did you know you don’t need any video editing software or equipment to create a video on YouTube? Any Church member with a web cam can use YouTube’s Quick Capture option to record video testimonies.

Giuseppe worked a little magic and connected with Ed J. Pinegar, who kindly agreed to bear his testimony for the camera so we could publish it on YouTube and Google Video. We hope this will be the beginning of hundreds of video testimonies from prominent and not-so-prominent Church members. Find more text and video testimonies at Mormon Testimonies.

Ed J. Pinegar’s testimony