Excerpt from ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTION by Elder Clayton Christensen

Given 20 May 2010 at a BYU Idaho Devotional 

Let me just tell you one last story that illustrates the value of asking the right question as we serve in the Kingdom of God.  

Some years ago, a very baptism-oriented mission president in one of the major cities on the east coast, found a rich vein in which to mine for converts amongst immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean.  He taught the missionaries how to solicit additional referrals from the investigators that they were teaching.  And they baptized about 700 people within two years in an area that was bounded by two weak inner city wards in this metropolitan area. 

The leaders of the stake and of those wards quite understandably asked the question, “How in the world do you expect us to home teach all these people?  We can’t even teach home teach our own active members, let alone deal with this flood of new converts who have such a limited ability to speak English and a limited understanding of the gospel?” 

Many of them urged the mission president to back off because there was just no way to keep all those converts active.  And their concerns proved to be well grounded, in fact.  As a result, very few of those who were baptized during that deluge are active today.  Sacrament meeting attendance in that city has been largely unchanged.  And the limited number of active members in that ward, had all that they could do to keep the programs running, let alone do all that needed to be done to keep these new converts active as well. 

But let me tell you about another situation where a comparable number of people were baptized within a two year period of the church into a much smaller, weaker branch.  Nearly all of these remained strong in the faith and resulted in another stake in Zion just because the leaders asked the right question. 

A number of years ago, I was assigned when I was an Area Seventy, with Elder Glen L. Pace of the North America Northeast Presidency, to reorganize the presidency of the Augusta, Maine Stake.  In the process of trying to learn who the Lord would have us call as the new stake president, we asked the outgoing stake presidency to identify 25 or so of the men the stake who they thought we ought to consider.  We began early on Saturday morning to interview them. 

We developed a habit of asking each of these men how they come to belong to the Church.  I would say that out of 25 that we asked, that 10-12 of them said, “I was baptized into the church when I was a little boy in 1963 in the Farmingdale Branch.”  And about the fourth guy that said that, I said, “What in the world happened in the Farmingdale Branch in 1963?”  And they said that was the year they baptized 451 people in the Farmingdale Branch, and the next year they baptized 290.  But we were so busy trying to find the next stake president that we couldn’t put them to learn more.  But at the end of the day, I asked the outgoing stake president if indeed this happened, and he confirmed that it did. 

The next day, before the general session of stake conference, the stake president took me out into the audience and introduced me to a frail, elderly man and his wife, George and Karline McLaughlin.  And he told me that George had been the president of the Farmingdale Branch in 1963.  So I gave my card to George and asked him if he would be willing to let me come up and interview him just so I could learn this story, and of course, he said he would. 

We then got busy.  I drove back to Boston and just got sucked up in other things and kept putting off calling George to interview him.  And one day the new stake president called me and said, “If you want to interview George McLaughlin, you’d better get up here because he is dying of congestive heart failure.” 

So I quickly put things down and drove up and found George and Karline in a tiny two-room home in Gardner, Maine, which is a suburb of Augusta.  Their room was in the loft in the attic and they had raised eight faithful children in that little 2-room home. 

This is the story that I heard from them: 

Brother and Sister McLaughlin joined the church in 1951.  They attended the branch with about ten active members in Litchfield near Augusta.  And through the 50s the branch grew to have about twenty active members by the early 1960s when George was called as the branch president.  And they moved into a new building in Farmingdale, which was another suburb of Augusta. 

Shortly after the move, George, who drove a milk delivery truck by profession, decided to fast and pray for two days in order to find out from the Lord how he should go about building the church in the vast area of central Maine that comprised the Farmingdale Branch. 

On the second day, George pulled his milk truck to the side of a country road, found a secluded spot on a hill where he poured out his heart to the Lord about his desires to build the Kingdom.  As he walked down the hill back to his truck, he came to understand through the spirit, what he and the members of the branch needed to do. 

So the next Sunday in sacrament meeting, George called off the people who he had assigned to speak and gave the sacrament meeting talk himself, a talk that Sister McLaughlin recalled as one of the most inspiring and spirit-filled she had ever heard.  Following the meeting, President McLaughlin called three of the six families in the branch to serve as prostelyting families.  Their assignment was for each to bring another family to the church on the next Wednesday night. 

At that meeting, George had a movie about the church that he planned to show them, then he was going to bear his testimony and invite them to learn about the church by meeting with the missionaries.  He said, “I want to call this Wednesday night U-night.  Now, assuming that the families that you bring accept the invitation, over the weekend I want you to meet with them and the missionaries in your home or their home to go through the first missionary lesson.  Then the next Wednesday, I want you to bring them to the church, and we will have the second discussion together, and over the weekend, I want you to do the third at home, and the next Wednesday, we will do the fourth one together at the church.  If the people you invite get baptized, then the next Wednesday, you’ve got to bring another family to the church to start this process.  And if the people you invite don’t get baptized or they drop out, then the next Wednesday, you’ve got to bring another family to the church. 

Well, when the time for the first U-night arrived, each of the prostelying families arrived with a family.  In my interview with George and Karlene, I expressed incredulity that the families had so faithfully accepted and delivered on this intimidating assignment from their branch president.  But Karline said it was because of the talk George gave in sacrament meeting. 

Each of the families they brought to the U-Night accepted George’s invitation to take the missionary discussions. 

So they went through this process.  George then called the New England mission president, whose name was Truman Madsen, who had just arrived to serve there.  He told them that they had a baptismal service planned for that next Saturday and asked President Madsen to come up.  President Madsen had met George once before, and in a kind of throw-away comment, said, “You know, if you ever baptize anybody up there in Maine, let me know.  I’d like to come to the baptism.” 

But when George actually invited him, President Madsen said, “Oh, I’m too busy.”  And George said, “But you promised you’d come!”  President Madsen asked how many were getting baptized to see if it was worth it.  And George said, “I’m not going to tell you, but you promised you’d come.”  So President Madsen agreed. 

It was a long four-hour drive at that time, from Boston, so he arrived at the Farmingdale chapel on that Saturday a bit after the baptismal service.  When he walked into the back of the chapel, he counted 18 people sitting in white clothes waiting to be baptized.  Tears came to his eyes, and he said, “George, I’ll never see anything like this again in my life.”  And George replied, “Yes, you will, President.  Yes you will!” 

The next day George called each of these three new families to serve as prostelyting families.  And their assignment was on the next Wednesday evening, they had to bring another family to whom George would show his movie, bear his testimony and invite to take the missionary lessons.  Each of these three new families accepted the assignment, brought families, and accepted George’s invitation.  When these were baptized, George called the new families to serve as prostelyting families as well. 

The branch members soon had to alter their U-Night format.  While the introductory film was being shown in the chapel, each of the missionary discussions was taught in a different room in that building.  S that year, 451 people were baptized into the Farmingdale Branch.  The next year, 190 people joined.  At which point I expressed incredulity.  With so many people coming into what had been such a tiny branch, how in the world did you keep them active in the church?  “We had to tech them how to become Mormons” was Karline’s reply.  “You had to understand who these people were.  They were poor people.  They had no schooling,” she said.  And here George and Karline were calling them poor, when they themselves lived in a two-room home. 

They reminisced about one family that literally had lived in a log cabin with rags stuffed in cracks to keep the wind out.  But they stayed faithful, eventually sending all four of their children to BYU. 

There were poignant statements given that Karline and George were so poor themselves. 

Karline noted that President Hinckley subsequently had given them a language for what they did to keep these hundred of new members active.  They were brought to church by friends, and then they brought friends.  They had responsibility.  The Sunday after they were baptized, they were called as prostelyting families – a clear and simple call, to bring another family, then another and then another to the next U-Night.  And they were nourished in the good word of God as they continued to learn and to help teach these concepts again and again while helping their friends study the gospel with the missionaries. 

The contributions of many of the great missionaries in the early days of the restored church have been broadly documented, but I was struck in contrast as I finished this interview that I was in the presence of one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the restoration; that he was dying of congestive heart failure in an attic in Gardner, Maine.  As we finished the conversation, I just really could feel the deep spirit of peace in that room and decided that they were from angels that were there, patiently waiting, so that whenever the time came, they could escort Brother McLaughlin, the milk truck driver, to a hero’s welcome in heaven.  I’m sorry. (Crying) 

So why were George and Karline able to keep that flood of new converts active, whereas the leaders in the other city plead with the mission president to staunch the flow of new members?  I think it was because George and Karline asked a better question.  The savior helped us frame the right question when he said, “For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it, but whoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it.”  

George and Karline asked the right question.  “How can we help all these people continue to lose their lives for the sake of the Savior.  And when they couldn’t fit more people into the Farmingdale chapel, they just set up branches in Bath, and Ellsworth, and all around that portion of Maine so that people could just continue to lose their lives for the sake of the Savior.  

We could stay here for a very long time considering other examples to further illustrate the value of asking the right question before we dash off in pursuit of the answer.  May God bless each of us as we participate as citizens in the United States, as we pursue our professional lives, as well as we work to build the kingdom of God, to be able to ask the right questions well, in a way that enables us to get the right answer that God would want. 

I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.