One fascinating tidbit that came out of between-sessions chatting at General Conference this weekend is that in Brazil there has been a marked improvement in convert retention since the chapels have added air conditioning and heating.

While feasting upon the word has always had a physical as well as metaphysical component, I can’t help but wonder what other moves might help retention. My vote would be to make the chapels more beautiful: almost no one is so struck by the magnificence of our meetinghouses that they want to learn more; that’s hardly news. But if climate control has a substantive impact, I would bet that a more inspiring physical presence would as well. Definitely worth the marginal extra cost.

Other suggestions for retention?

PS: This same Brazilian-centric source suggested that the repeated references to Pres Benson’s “14 points of following the prophet” was spot-on for the needs of the LDS community there.

New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson’s Among the Gentiles was published last year. It examines the relationship between Greco-Roman religion and early Christianity, focusing on the religious milieu into which Christianity emerged and eventually dominated. In this, Johnson takes an interesting approach, which he summarizes as follows:

My concentration, however, is not specifically on social organization, myths, doctrines, or even rituals, but on the ways in which actual human beings show themselves to be religious. … I use several interchangeable terms for the “ways of being religious,” speaking of religious sensibility, religiousness, religious perspective, and even religious temperament. I distinguish these ways of being religious in terms of their distinctive ways of perceiving divine power and its function.

He describes four types of religious activity, which he labels A through D, all of which have clear parallels in our own Mormon world: [Read more...]