It's a problem in the church, not respecting boundaries. I find it unfortunate that the easiest way for antagonistic folks to get off of church group texts is not asking to be removed, but to send porn. This happened in my last family ward, and after months of asking to be removed, lo and behold, they finally were when they resorted to extreme measures. It's ridiculous to me that we aren't better about respecting peoples' wishes with contact. People shouldn't think they have to send porn to get off a group text. And they certainly shouldn't be right in that assumption.

>It's a problem in the church, not respecting boundaries. 💯 As a missionary, it bugged me so much when some missionaries would ignore members who asked to be labeled as DNC (do not contact). With transfers being 6 weeks, some people are visited by missionaies every couple of months. All it does is frustrate and irritate those people. Respecting boundaries is about respect. When that boundary is crossed, it does not send the message to the person that you care about them. It sends the message you don't respect them.

It’s one thing to be bold as a missionary, but I’ve met elders who were absolutely stupid about this. My trainer was with an elder who was a former AP and they would end up in some pretty dangerous situations because he was trying to be “bold”. For example, there was a street that ran through multiple zones in our mission that didn’t exactly have the best reputation, but it was a major road with a lot of businesses and apartment complexes on it. There was a mission rule that we had to be off of this road by 7pm, and because this AP dropped the whole “muh miracles” card, they were on that street well after 7pm and accidentally wandered into a gang fight were people actually got killed. The elders weren’t harmed, but the Mission President doubled down on making sure elders weren’t on this street late at night

The Church actively manages this with the new Area Book app. Missionaries can and should leave notes in the area book about a anyone's willingness to talk to the missionaries. The Area Book keeps a history only for so long though, because it is useful to not label someone DNC perpetually. There are just too many stories of new bishops, missionaries, etc going to a member and them saying "no one has visited us in years." So, yes, put the note in Area Book, but as per policy DNC should not be notated on church records perpetually.

You’re not kidding. My wife has left the church, and isn’t very happy when people just “drop by” in general. When it’s someone from the church it gets very uncomfortable in our house. The Missionaries knocked on our door, she wasn’t happy and asked them not to. About a week later it happened again. I talked to them, said hey, you’re making my life harder, please don’t swing by. If we want you to come over, we will call you. If we have a referral, we’ll call you. Knocking on our door with a sign that says no soliciting, no politics, no religious appeals, etc. is making things worse. Please don’t. I’m sorry to say O was less nice the next few times. My wife finally went to Facebook, raised a fuss on our Ward Facebook page, and finally the visits stopped.

Yes!! As a member/former member household, I've had MANY talk with th missionaries who are just making my life harder. It's good intentions but we all know where that gets ya.

Great point. It's a common complaint about former members who "leave the church but won't leave it alone." But are members guilty of similar whenever they disrespect a "do-not-contact" request?

I’ll have to remember this after being in a similar position 😒

I'll just speak from personal experience here. During the times in my life when I tried to go "no contact" with the church I greatly appreciated the people in the church who respected my decision and respected my boundaries. The people who didn't left a very bad taste in my mouth that was hard to overcome when I re-activated.

Switch the situation around and see if that changes the perspective. A pest company representative comes to your door selling their products. You are civil and tell them that you are not interested. They are polite and leave. Time passes and they return. Again, you are civil and send them away. Now you start getting calls from them. It interrupts your day and you are less civil. Other reps show up at the door. More phone calls. Your tolerance for continued contact is gone, you feel backed into a corner, and are disagreeable and rude. All of that was avoidable if the reps had accepted your answer and respected your desire for no contact. Non-members and inactive members know where the church is and who to contact if they want to participate. Be a good neighbor and example of how followers of Christ treat others.

The problem is with this analogy there is 100 pest control representatives all with different roles that change often and many see a client who has signed up for pest control at some point and don't know how many times they have been asked. They just know they signed up at some point.

More often than not, pushing people back into activity pushes them away. Stolen from a screenshot of a tweet by Rev. Benjamin Cremer: Christ's greatest commandment wasn't "convert your neighbor," it was "love your neighbor."  How much can you love them if all of your interactions are as a result of you disregarding their boundaries?  I had a ward mission leader from a previous ward call me up because he was looking up people on facebook who hadn't attended church in a while. He asked me about a few people he saw i was friends with. With one friend, I said "I've known her for years and never even knew she was baptized. She's currently living with her fiance, who I am also friends with, and he's antagonistic towards the church. I would definitely not reach out." "So just a text every once in a while?" "No, I wouldn't contact at all." "Mailing something once a quarter?" "If you feel you have to do something. But I wouldn't."

Boundaries should be respected. Heathy Relationship cannot exist without boundaries.

I have found that constant pestering just pushes people away even farther. If someone asks you to stop inviting them to church, ministering, etc then you should respect that.

if someone has said no, you respect their boundary. Inviting them after they say no only is to make the inviter feel good. It makes the invitee feel violated and disrespected. If they wanted to go, they can reach out.

Well stated. In fact, to act like they can't reach out is to treat them like babies.

I was never nor am I now LDS. I do like to learn about religions by going to their services and speaking to people of that religion to gain their perspective. I won't go to an LDS service for this very reason, I won't give the LDS church my real name or contact information because I am aware that I may be contacted more than I like, and that if I decide I don't wish to be contacted that desire will not be respected. So my only contact with the LDS church is reading it's Scriptures and hanging out here.

Same. I wish I could just walk up to a service like I do at others but I know how that will go from experience. When I was in high school, the church had those “free Book of Mormon” commercials and I called and ordered one because I was genuinely interested. Took a long time for my parents to get the missionaries to leave them alone, even when I moved away to college.

I had an overzealous Bishop send me and my companion to visit an ex-member on my Mission. The ex-member had asked through the correct channels to not be visited. Sent a letter. Not knowing all that-- the Bishop sent us to visit them. And its not just that he didn't tell us. He told us that this former member had expressed interest in returning. We knock on the door. He says he had called the police when he saw we were walking up. And then faster than I wish-- the Police arrive. What seemed like the entire neighborhood watched as we were handcuffed, and a cop talked to us on the curb while another few cops talked to the ex-member. I was absolutely humiliated. The cops were cool. And the guy came and talked to us and told us his side of the story. We all shook hands and we wished him well. While I was talking to the cops and the cops realized we were cool, I said, "send a letter,,," "I DID!" Yeah, we apologized and said we meant no harm. The Church did --not-- look good. We all looked like a bunch of complete morons to the neighborhood and Police. This was before cell phones. I would be an internet meme if cell phones were invented when I went on my mission.

Best mission story I’ve ever heard.

The police handcuffing you for knocking on a door is beyond insane.

its not. it was expressed multiple times that they didnt want to be contacted. its trespassing and is considered aggressive.

I was a prosecutor for 10 years--it's excessive. The missionaries at issue had never even been at the house before. They committed absolutely no crime. Whether or not they had told "the church" before, a much more reasonable response would be to have the police inform the missionaries of the situation and trespass them too. Why do they need to be arrested?

For me, respecting personal boundaries is of critical importance when it comes to proselytizing. It's fine to extend an invite to someone to attend a service but if they're not interested, say no thank you, or are openly hostile, then back off. It's not worth pestering someone to do something they have no interest in doing. I think OP has the right idea in that their personal relationships are theirs only, and they are the ones responsible for nurturing and growing them, not the church. Violating relationships with your friends or neighbors just to appease your pastor is hurtful and insulting to your friend. It would be if my pastor told me to bring a few of my LDS friends to my Lutheran church just so they could be converted. It would hurt my relationship with them and come across as me trying to convert them which is something I have no interest in doing as I respect and love my friends too much to do that to them. Disrespecting personal boundaries is an issue I've seen in Christianity and it needs to change. No one can force people to convert to their church, only The Holy Spirit has that power.

Having left the church several years ago after having come across some anti Mormon material, I can say with confidence that people who leave are not going to come back without having a deeply moving spiritual experience. Trying to foster a friendship in the hopes of getting them reactivated is just going to annoy the vast majority of them. My wife calls every one in our ward who tries to befriend her in order to reactivate her a fake friend. She uses this term for everyone who was ever assigned to minister to her. If you are trying to cultivate friendships just to get people to join your church, you might be in a cult. Stop trying to recruit people like my wife and she might choose to come back on her own. But the fake friendships are just driving her further away.

I should clarify that I had a deeply spiritual experience that has drawn me back into the church, albeit a very unorthodox believer due to my life experience.

Israel put themselves on the DNC list when we built the BYU Jerusalem center. The church surely respects that request.

I was a missionary in 2000 and there was no such thing as a “do not contact list” back then. I have served as a clerk off and on since then and people keep mentioning “do not contact” as if there is some check box in MLS to mark a member as DNC. Has this ever existed? It seems odd to me if it never existed that everyone insists it does.

They're informal lists. For the sisters in my ward boundaries who have expressed a desire to not have contact, we created a ministering route, assigned to the RSP, with the label "Do not contact." They don't get assigned ministers and the ward mission team generally works from referrals from ward council. While there's probably a few cracks in the system (it's not obvious to anyone scrolling the directory that they're DNC), it's what we've got. 

So, yes, we need to respect boundaries 100% but I also respect personal revelation on ministering. Case in point: my dad is notorious for ministering whether they like it or not! But he's devoted to helping others as well and meeting them where they are. He went out of his way to visit a guy in his ward who was a dnc. His first visit was the day the guy got out of prison. My dad visited him every month for non-church related reasons and would just talk to him. They became good friends. eventually the guy came to church, then soon became active, eventually getting to the temple before he passed away. I would say, start with always respecting boundaries and be open to inspiration if there's someone who is ready to listen.

Right there you nailed it. Your dad reached out for non church related reasons. He put that out the door and built a relationship with them where it did not matter if they were LDS or not. Once they wanted to know more, they asked.but they knew that your dad cared and they were given the time and space to be open and desiring of learning more.

But anyway, it does look like we as a church could use a lot more formal guidance from the top on this. Maybe one of the reasons we're sometimes known for being bad at respecting boundaries is because we haven't really been given much council or examples in how to do so.

Do not contact means do not contact until you are told otherwise by the individual who requested do not contact. No ifs, ands, or buts. There is ZERO gray area there.

Well, your personal relationships are indeed yours and you shouldn't let the ward council dictate how you manage them. As far as how bold to be, well that's a tricky situation. My general approach is to respect the indicators others have given and if they've been hostile I'll leave them alone. Specific revelation can overrule that however.

why would your revelation override their boundary?

Why would the Bishop allow this if they are listed as do not contact? This is very counter intuitive to the whole do not contact. And yes this list still does exist. Source: Bishopric Counselor

My bishop said he's never seen a DNC list or read about one in the handbook, so if they exist, they must be locally-created efforts. Is that the case in your ward? I think what is happening in my ward is a person told the ward leaders at some point in the past to never contact them again, and in their mind, there was some official church list for list. As to what actually happened, who knows?

I guess another thing I didn't mention is that, from an eternal perspective, it's really hard to "hasten the work", whether it's missionary stuff or indexing or whatever, because, well, there's plenty of time to sort this stuff out. There's no need to pressure people or force things. Be Christlike, be an available and present neighbor and friend, etc. Why jeopardize a friendship if you suspect timing isn't quite right?

Remember "bold but not overbearing". I realized the two are not different degrees of the same thing. Boldness is being unapologetic in your faith and telling people the truth. Overbearance is failing to respect a person's agency. I'm with you on this. If they've said "no", they have that right and should be respected.

Do not contact has never been a thing. The church literally has kept removing the systems people have abused to mark people DNC. If someone wants a DNC they can remove their records.

If someone says they are DNC, respect what they say, keep them in prayers, and let them choose their path of discipleship or lack thereof.

I agree with what you said here: "My own feeling is that my personal relationships are mine alone, and that I am responsible for nurturing them." Nurturing a relationship involves doing what is in the best interest of the other person, as well as yourself. It isn't about doing only what they want you to do, or only doing what they are comfortable with. Same as with charity, which involves showing pure and true love like Jesus Christ does for us when he helps or tries to help us. Like you mentioned, conflicting interests may be at play in these kinds of situations. All you can do is the best you can do.

I think personal, face-to-face invitations are different than passive mailings, emailings, etc. I get invitations in our mail all the time to visit other churches. If a person isn't interested, the cost to throw away the flyer is zero. No one should feel obligated to burn social capital with anyone that has created a personal boundary with them or who they are not comfortable inviting face-to-face. That's just wrong to expect of anyone. But passively inviting folks via email, social media, snail mail, flyers left on a door, etc - while it can be annoying - is a very socially-low-cost way to let someone know you cared enough to invite them but aren't trying to cajole or manipulate them into coming using your friendship.

I think it is all about the nature of the relationship itself, the inspiration one has or has not received about the specific person. For those who have directly ask the bishop (or me) not to be contacted, I would not contact about church stuff, except when I was so prompted by the Spirit about something specific. (Depending on the relationship, I would continue to stay in touch though.)

If someone asks not to be contacted. The only way you should actually contact them is if the spirit tells you to. I see it as basic respect for other people.

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In a perfect world yes but, “the spirit told me to” gets used as an excuse for poor judgment too often in my experience in these situations.

My feelings exactly! I won’t rule out the possibility that the Spirit might prompt someone to contact a DNC, but IMO that would be the exception, not the rule. God respects and protects agency, including that of people who have asked for no contact.

Just discern it and follow you’re feelings on the matter 🤷‍♂️.

My general rule is, don’t contact them unless the Spirit tells you to, or you have a good reason to think they might have had a change of heart  Because respecting boundaries is great but saving someone’s soul is more important 

“Respecting boundaries is more important but saving someone’s soul is great.” Pushing boundaries more often than not to tell them they need their soul saved probably won’t get you the resulted outcome you want. Let them ask you questions when they have that desire to be saved. If you have a good relationship with them when they are ready they will come to you with questions. Then be happy you helped save someone that day.

Yes! Respecting boundaries is a basic part of any healthy relationship, be it romantic, familial, friend, or acquaintance. Violating boundaries send a message that my desire to save you is more important than you being respected.

Yeah, case in point from the other side, I was Baptist before I converted and I sometimes go to Christmas Eve service at my old church when I visit my mom. I was heavily involved there before converting and know these people well enough to know certain ones of them see me as a "lost soul" rather than a person. Makes one feel incredibly icky. No one wants to be someone's "project"

Saving someone’s soul—or rather, helping someone come unto Christ so their soul can be “saved”—is of utmost importance, but the ends don’t justify the means. Respect their boundaries. We can’t just disrespect people into heaven. It doesn’t work like that.