Mormon Church Doctrine

In 1839, Joseph Smith was inspired to write these words:

For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations…who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it (D and C 123:12)

The inspired meaning of those words, written more than one hundred and fifty years before the invention of the modern Internet, has become remarkably clear considering how the modern world educates itself on matters ranging from trivial facts to the deepest of spiritual questions.  Whereas a person’s ability to find the truth of the restored gospel in the 1830’s depended upon the improbable occurrence of meeting an LDS missionary or gaining access to a copy of the Book of Mormon, our current technological environment facilitates the ability to efficiently spread the gospel throughout the world via the Internet.  The framework has been put into place so that sincere seekers of truth can now find and study the principles revealed to modern prophets using search engines such as Google or web content hosts that allow members of the Church to post personal experiences, videos and other web content related to the Church.  Our responsibility to share the gospel has been transformed by the Internet into an opportunity to reach a wider audience than we could ever reach without it.

There are several ways members of the Church can share the gospel online.  I will discuss some ideas that you can use to share your experience and testimony with non-members throughout the world.  So many venues exist (from using “microblogging” web sites like Twitter.com and Identi.ca to publishing images, videos, and gospel explanations on web sites like HubPages.com and Squidoo.com to creating your own WordPress blog using your own domain name) for describing your beliefs publicly for the benefit of others.

Getting Started: Social Sharing

The easiest way to begin sharing the gospel online is to simply bookmark Church content using a social sharing web site like Facebook.com.  Facebook allows you to “Like” pages on the Church’s web sites.  Recently, the Church has built in easy ways to share information on LDS.org and Mormon.org.

Share the Book of Mormon directly from Mormon.org

You can also set up free social bookmarking accounts on web sites such as Delicious.com or StumbleUpon.com.  Setting up an account with one of these social bookmarking web sites takes just a few minutes, and most of them are free to use.

After you’ve set up your account, you can begin bookmarking your favorite pages from one of the Church-related web sites.  When you bookmark a web page, you are telling others, including search engines, “I think the information on this page is worth sharing.”  When many people share the same page, the page can become much more popular, making it visible to a wider audience than it would reach otherwise.

Interacting with Church content on web sites like YouTube.com is helpful too.  For instance, if you create a YouTube account, you can “Like” videos from the Church’s YouTube channels (such as http://youtube.com/mormonmessages) and leave comments.  Having more views, likes, and comments on a video increases its popularity.

Microblogging and Creating Topic Pages

The next step up from social bookmarking is publishing information about gospel topics.  One of the main obstacles members of the Church face in sharing their religious beliefs online involves not knowing where to get started.  Here are some simple steps that can help you successfully publish your explanation of the Church’s teachings.

1.     Make a list of five gospel related subjects that you’d like to share with the world.  You might want to write about your mission experiences, lessons you’ve learned as a mother or father, benefits of living a chaste life, the gospel perspective on debt and family finances, or topics from the scriptures such as the gathering of Israel.

2.     Create a free account on http://www.squidoo.com.   Squidoo.com is one of many web sites that allow users to create free accounts and publish their favorite subjects to an audience already ready to read what you have to say.  Squidoo.com allows you to create “lenses” that describe your view of various subjects.

3.     Choose one of the topics from your list.  Write a few paragraphs describing the topic.  If it feels like you’re preparing a talk or a Sunday School lesson, in a way you are.  Only in this case you’ll be sharing with an audience largely comprised of people who are not very familiar with the Church.

4.     Find one or two videos from one of the Church’s many YouTube channels to embed with your Squidoo– http://youtube.com/mormon, http://youtube.com/MormonMessages, http://www.youtube.com/LDSPublicAffairs, http://www.youtube.com/MormonMessagesYouth, http://youtube.com/preservingmarriage, http://www.youtube.com/familysearch.

5.     Put together your first lens by inserting your description of the subject and the videos you’ve chosen to include.  Where appropriate, place a link from your lens to a related page on one of the Church’s web sites:  LDS.org, Mormon.org, FamilySearch.org, ProvidentLiving.org, ItsAboutLove.org,

The Next Level: Your Own Gospel Themed Blog

For those with the interest and available time, a gospel oriented blog can help speak to an ever-growing audience.  If you don’t feel like registering your own domain name and paying monthly web hosting fees, you can adopt a blog for free from the More Good Foundation, a non-profit organization with the mission of promoting opportunities to share positive information about the Church.  If you don’t already have a blog, but would like to set one up, you can register a domain for around $10 per year and set up a web hosting account for as little as $5 per month.  You can also set up a blog for free on TypePad.com, Blogspot.com, WordPress.com, LiveJournal.com, OpenDiary.com, or any one of the other free blog hosts available.

Getting Search Traffic to Your Web Site

I’ve seen many well designed web sites perform under their potential simply because they haven’t been optimized for search engines.  Here are some guidelines for making sure that your gospel centered web site or blog gets traffic.

1.     Get links to your web site.  When another web site links to yours, it has two benefits:  1) It brings people to your web page from the web site that links to yours; and 2) A link from another web site, especially a web site that is relevant to yours, tells the search engines that your site should rank higher.  The link text used to create the link to your web page also tells search engines that the page should rank highly for that term.  For instance, if a web page that discusses Christian beliefs about baptism linked the word baptism to your blog post that discusses the teachings of the Church regarding the importance of baptism, your web page will rank higher in search engines for searches related to baptism.

2.     Make sure that your web page content is optimized for search engines.  If you want your web page to rank highly for a specific topic, then you should make sure that the page gives all the right signals to the search engines for that topic.  That includes the <title> tag and the meta description tag.  The content of the page should use the phrase you want to target as a natural part of discussing the subject.  Any images you use on the page should be named consistently with the topic of the page.  The URL of the web page should also help search engines understand what the page is about. For example, a good URL about faith in Jesus Christ would be http://www.mygospelblog.org/faith-in-jesus-christ.  (If you’re using WordPress, you can easily configure your blog to accomplish that.)  Giving consistent signals about your page to the search engines, in addition to having links coming to your page from other web pages make it so that your web page ranks highly in searches related to the page’s topic.  If you follow these guidelines, your web page will be rewarded with visits from people interested in reading what you have to say.

Example:  Teaching About Life After Death

Consider this example.  Many people are interested in knowing what happens to a person after death.  Google’s Keyword Tool estimates that there are about 165,000 searches done each month for phrases similar to “life after death”.  Here’s how I would approach the goal of using search engines to share the Church’s teachings about life after death with as many people as possible.  I would create a post (or a page) on my blog entitled “Life After Death – What Do the Prophets Teach?”  In my post, I would refer to life after death in such a way that it is clear to the search engines that that is what my page explains.  I would include scriptures that describe what happens when we die (Alma 40:11).  I would reference the LDS.org study topic page about death.  Using the Church’s YouTube channels, conference talks published on LDS.org and other resources, I would put together a coherent and heart felt explanation of what the Lord has revealed about life after death, and I would publish it on my blog.

After I published the article, I would bookmark it using my Facebook account and my StumbleUpon.com and Delicious.com accounts.  I would send out a message using my Twitter.com and Identi.ca accounts referencing the new post.  I would ask friends to link to the post from their own gospel-themed blog posts.  Using the strategies recommended by the search engines (not spamming forums or using other unethical tactics), I would build some good links from relevant web sites to my web site, more specifically to the article I published on life after death.  In time, my article would begin to gather traffic to it, and I would see visitors coming to my page to learn about life after death.

Other Ideas

LDS.org has a section dedicated to sharing the gospel online.  You can find more ideas about ways you can share the gospel through the Internet by checking that page regularly.

Conclusion

Sharing the gospel online using some of the methods described above can be very fulfilling.  Using the Internet, there are more opportunities to do missionary work than you can imagine.  Finding a strategy that suits your preferences shouldn’t be difficult, and it is a good way to strengthen your testimony.  I’ve even found that my scripture study is enhanced as I put what I learn into an organized presentation and post it online.  I’ve appreciated the feedback I’ve received from people who read my web pages.  Making a record of my thoughts and impressions and publishing it to be read by an audience of Church members and non-LDS alike helps me feel like I’m contributing to the fulfillment of God’s intended use of the Internet:  to preach the gospel to the earth.

Most people in our contemporary society have heard the word Mormon in one context or another.  Many think of an American religion.  Many non-Mormons even know that the church was founded by Joseph Smith and that Brigham Young led a large movement of pioneers across the continent to settle in Utah.  However, too many people still don’t even know where the name Mormon comes from.  Let me introduce you to the man whose name has become the popular namesake for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Mormon's last days

Mormon was a prophet-historian who lived on the American continent around 400 AD.  He is responsible for abridging the history of his people, called the Nephites.  He was a righteous leader who also served as a military commander, a position for which he was prepared while a young man, and which he fufilled beginning at the age of 15.

Mormon was responsible for abridging a record of his people, who came from Jerusalem and settled in the Americas as early as 600 BC.  His record was passed from Mormon to his son Moroni, who buried the record in a hill in upper New York State.  That record, written upon plates of gold, was later shown to Joseph Smith by Moroni in the early 1800′s.  The book was published as the Book of Mormon.  Soon after, members of the church, which was officially named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, were called Mormons because of their use of the Book of Mormon as scripture.  Although members of the Mormon Church are officially be referred to as Latter-day Saints, we are grateful to be also called after the man who did so much to bring us an important book of scripture, the prophet Mormon.

Book of Mormon