The Power of the Personal

This is a stone home built in the 1850s on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake by my ancestor, Fielding Garr. That's my son, Fielding, in the red shirt with my father. Yesterday was Pioneer Day here in Utah, and the occasion for a Garr family reunion on the isolated desert island. We passed antelope and a large herd of bison getting there. The distant Wasatch mountains that ring Salt Lake City made shimmering reflections in the still lake water.

What does this have to do with New Media or with missionary work? Read on.


As my father ages, I find myself asking him more questions about his life and his family. Yesterday I learned that his father (also named Fielding) was part of the Utah Rangers, a search and rescue outfit on horses that assisted law enforcement officers and always rode in parades. As we walked about the Garr farm, my father told me a story about his father's horse, a strawberry roan, that was entrusted to a man named "Slim" when Grandpa and Grandma served their mission to England. Grandpa Fielding died on that mission while doing some labor on the church grounds.

Every Mormon has stories like mine or my father's. We feel especially comfortable talking about our families and ancestors because we value them so highly and because we are immersed in the lives of these people we are connected to through family history work. The pioneer stories we hear become templates for our own lives, even if we have no direct ties to the early Mormon pioneers. That is to say, we think about people in terms of the sacrifices that they make for their families and for their faith. This is a mainstay of our faith: we understand God's presence in our own lives as we trace His presence in the lives of our family and forbears.

Too often with online missionary work it's easy to forget that our beliefs aren't all that real for others unless we are personal about them. It certainly is true if we say something like "through temple covenants we believe we can be together forever with our families." But that isn't as powerful as when those covenants are seen in light of something like a cattle ranch experience on Antelope Island, see what I mean?

If a missionary uses New Media simply to parrot or paraphrase official church websites, it will sound as though he or she is just being preachy or even selling something. These media make it so possible and so interesting to relate to other people personally and specifically, and that's where the power of these new media can really coincide beautifully with the power of the Restored Gospel.

How can you be appropriately personal using the New Media? What are the boundaries for that sort of thing? Well, it is possible to be too personal; but to be impersonal is perhaps the greater problem. So don't write that blog post that's abstract and theological. You could be stating the truth, but not conveying the power of that truth; you could be testifying, but not convincing. If you aren't yourself online, you are no one, no matter how important your message may be. A Mormon life is the strongest message about Mormon doctrine. If we cannot represent to others what our beliefs are all about through our lived values, then those beliefs are nothing but an empty creed.

That is why a picture of yourself or your family means more than that lovely image from the Gospel Art Kit you could download from LDS.org. That's why frequent and informal information about your life and faith will convey more than someone seeing that wonderful church film or Mormon Message on YouTube -- nice as those things truly are. This is why the Church has changed its approach on Mormon.org to get the lives of individuals in the foreground. Missionaries using new media should follow the Church's lead.

There's power in the personal.