The Prophet Joseph Smith declared: "After all that has been said, the greatest and most important duty is to preach the Gospel." (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 113.) The history of missionary work in this dispensation reflects the Church's commitment to that duty, and it shows how inspired leaders have directed the Church's missionary efforts to adapt to the world's shifting needs and conditions.
The expansion of missionary work
Formal missionary work began modestly in April 1830, soon after the Church was organized. The Prophet Joseph's brother Samuel filled a knapsack with copies of the Book of Mormon and journeyed to nearby towns in upstate New York, testifying of the newly published volume of scripture. He placed only one copy of the book on his journey — with Rhoda Young Greene, who loaned it to Phineas H. Young, who later joined the Church.
That same book fell into the hands of Brigham Young and led to his conversion.
In the fall of 1830 four men were sent to preach the gospel on the western frontier. Along the way they preached to people in New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. The year 1830 also saw the first missionary efforts in Canada. While missionary work spread over the next few years, it remained centered in the eastern portion of North America. The gospel was first preached outside of North America in 1837, when the Prophet Joseph Smith called Heber C. Kimball and other members of the Quorum of the Twelve to go to the British Isles. Within a year they had baptized hundreds of converts.
By the 1850s missionaries had been sent to several countries in Europe, as well as to South America, South Africa, China, Australia, Hawaii, New Zealand and other Pacific islands. Many of these missions were discontinued after just a few years, but in the last decades of the 19th century new missions were created in Mexico, Samoa, Tahiti and Turkey.
In the 1950s, President David O. McKay preached the message "every member a missionary," and he encouraged new converts to stay in their homelands to strengthen the Church there, providing a greater support network for missionaries in many countries. The Church had also created the General Missionary Fund, which enabled members from outside the U.S. and Canada to serve missions. In addition, air travel replaced the much lengthier travel by ship, making it easier to deploy missionaries overseas
In the 1970s, President Spencer W. Kimball called on Church members to "lengthen your stride" in working and praying so that the gospel might be brought to all nations of the earth. This challenge, along with the 1978 revelation extending the priesthood to all worthy males, led to the creation of missions in many lands where missionary work had been thought impossible.
Today, a missionary may be called to one of 334 missions in about 120 countries worldwide.
The missionary force
For more than 100 years the number of missionaries never exceeded 3,000. By the 1960s, however, this number had begun to rise sharply due to President McKay's emphasis on worldwide missionary work. In 1974, President Kimball charged every worthy young man to serve a mission. This emphasis has continued so that there are now about 60,000 missionaries serving worldwide.
The earliest missionaries called by the Prophet Joseph Smith were men of various ages in his immediate circle of family, friends and colleagues. As the Church grew, so did this circle. Many of these men were married and had to leave behind their wives and children in order to serve missions.
Young, unmarried men were increasingly chosen to serve missions after the saints migrated west, but until the mid-twentieth century married men were sometimes called to serve full-time missions in order to fill the great need for missionaries.
Although many elders called to Hawaii in the 19th century were accompanied by their wives, who often had official callings, no sisters were listed on the official missionary records of the Church until April 1, 1898, when Sisters Inez Knight and Lucy Brimhall were set apart to be missionaries in England, becoming the first single, official, proselyting sister missionaries.
In her mission journal, Sister Knight recorded that, while at a street meeting, she had "a sickly feeling when [her mission president] announced that 'real live Mormon women' would speak [the] next day" at a special meeting. (See Diane L. Magnum, "The First Sister Missionaries," Ensign, June 1980, p. 62.) The novelty of sister missionaries has since faded, and today they make up about 16 percent of the total missionary force.
In recent decades the Church has also called more and more full-time missionary couples, who make up about 9 percent of today's missionary force. And as the Church extends into many different nations throughout the world, the missionary force changes accordingly. Missionaries are now called from almost every country in which the Church has been established.
Missionary preparation
Samuel Smith and other early missionaries of the Church were sent out "without purse or scrip," meaning that they were to rely on the Lord and the goodness of others for their support. They were also given little formal instruction about their callings beyond what was contained in revelations to the Prophet Joseph Smith, one of which stated:
"And thou shalt declare glad tidings . . . with all humility, trusting in me, reviling not against revilers. And of tenets thou shalt not talk, but thou shalt declare repentance and faith on the Savior, and remission of sins by baptism, and by fire, yea, even the Holy Ghost. . . . And speak freely to all; yea, preach, exhort, declare the truth, even with a loud voice. . . . Pray always, and I will pour out my Spirit upon you." (Doctrine and Covenants 19:29—31, 37—38.)
In Kirtland, Joseph Smith founded the School of the Prophets, in which the elders of the Church, among other things, "gave the most studious attention to the all-important object of qualifying themselves as messengers of Jesus Christ, to be ready to do His will in carrying glad tidings to all that would open their eyes, ears and hearts." (History of the Church, 2:175—76.)
Apart from this, early missionaries received little other preparation. John E. Page was called by the Prophet Joseph Smith on a mission to Canada, but "he objected for the reason that he was destitute of clothing. The Prophet Joseph took off his coat and gave it to him, telling him to go, and the Lord would bless him." ("History of John E. Page," Millennial Star, Feb. 18, 1865, p. 103.)
Although mission preparation courses were held at Church schools in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the first organized training for missionaries began in 1925 at a mission home in Salt Lake City. Here missionaries were instructed in gospel topics, Church procedures, personal health and proper manners.
In 1961, the Language Training Institute at Brigham Young University started teaching Spanish, later adding other languages and changing its name to the Language Training Mission (LTM). Previously, non—English-speaking missions had been three to six months longer than English-speaking missions to allow missionaries time to learn the language. In addition to languages, LTMs (which also included facilities in Idaho and Hawaii) taught self-discipline and missionary spirit.
In 1978 the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah, was established to provide modern facilities and teaching programs, focusing on scriptures, languages and missionary methodology. Since then, smaller missionary training centers have also been built in 14 other countries.
Missionary proselyting
Early missionaries carried the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and perhaps copies of some of Joseph Smith's revelations. In 1837 Parley P. Pratt published "A Voice of Warning," the first tract printed for use by missionaries. Later, other tracts were published, and missionaries used these to spur people's interest in their message and to dispel myths about the Latter-day Saints.
By the early 20th century, various missions had developed teaching systems in which a series of tracts were used to help investigators learn and progress step by step. This approach evolved into missionary discussions, which were first used Churchwide in 1952, when the Church published "A Systematic Program for Teaching the Gospel." Since then, missionaries have used three other sets of discussions, including the "Uniform System for Teaching the Gospel" (1986), the set of six discussions used by missionaries today.
For over 150 years missionaries found people through street meetings, debates, exhibits, firesides, door-to-door contacting and cottage meetings. Today, missionaries still do many of these things, but they rely more heavily upon referrals from Church members to find people to teach. They also obtain referrals through the Church's vigorous media program. Through advertisements in print, radio and television, people can request a visit from missionaries, who share a message with them and give them a free copy of the Book of Mormon or a Church-produced videocassette.
Constancy amid change
Despite the many changes that have taken place, missionary work in this dispensation has always been firmly anchored in proclaiming the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, just as then, missionaries teach the principles of the gospel contained in the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. They bear testimony of the things they teach, and they teach by the Spirit because they know that conversion comes only through a personal witness of the truth.
This article was contributed by members of the Church's Missionary Department.
