My Thoughts on Jeff Strong’s Recent Work

Three and a half years ago Gérald Caussé, at that time Presiding Bishop of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spoke in General Conference on “Our Earthly Stewardship.” He started with a family visit to a garden in Giverny, a little town in France. “This amazing place is the result of the creative passion of one man: the great painter Claude Monet, who, for 40 years, tenderly shaped and cultivated his garden to make it his painting workspace. Monet immersed himself in nature’s splendor; then, with his paintbrush, he conveyed the impressions he felt with strokes of color and light. Over the years, he created an extraordinary collection of hundreds of paintings, directly inspired by his garden.” Later in that talk Bishop Caussé quoted Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, best known as author of The Little Prince: “When by mutation a new rose is born in a garden, all the gardeners rejoice. They isolate the rose, tend it, foster it. But there is no gardener for men.”

Listening to that talk, my mind thought: “To some are given tales of rednecks getting themselves into trouble in the desert, and to others French culture, that all may be edified and find something to draw them into lending closer attention.”

Seven years before Bishop Caussé’s Conference talk, there was another in 2015. Brother Devin Durrant, first counselor in the General Sunday School presidency, shared one way he relishes scriptures: “I invite you to ‘ponderize’ one verse of scripture each week.”

I commented at the time, “As Brother Durrant got into his talk, athletes’ concept of visualizing performance came to mind (I can’t remember if he specifically invoked it or not) and also the charge to deliver the gospel to people in their own language, and I was glad for the former athletes and salesmen I know who were receiving it in theirs.”

Those talks and my response back then came to mind this week as someone with his own particular mode of communicating was brought to my attention. A relative recommended the book Torn by Jeff Strong. Two months ago I and most of the Mormon world had never heard of Jeff Strong, but after sitting for a dozen podcast interviews, he has made many aware of him and his book. I had not yet listened to any of those interviews, just encountered numerous mentions of them. So my main impression of Brother Strong was not his message but his mode of messaging, and that impression was that the man is a diligent marketer. He planned a campaign and executed.

A look at his website, www.tornbyjeffstrong.com, kept ratifying that impression. The cover of the book, by which I began my judgment of its contents, lets us know it has a foreword by Steve Young. What is Steve Young’s main qualification to introduce Brother Strong’s book to readers? Probably that he is a well-liked Mormon celebrity. I next went to the webpage “Praise for Torn.” I wanted to know whose praise Brother Strong wanted readers to know his book had received. All was in order there, yet as the number of endorsers identifying themselves as former bishops and stake presidents piled up, I started feeling like maybe I was being invited into a special investment opportunity by some affinity fraudsters. The book’s website makes the first two chapters, a research appendix, and that Steve Young foreword available. All you have to do is submit your e-mail and join Brother Strong’s contact list.

Before I went to the webpage “About the Author,” the marketing-by-a-professional style had already caused me to wonder, “What? Did this guy work for Proctor and Gamble?” Unsurprisingly he did, and yet surprising that my stereotyping actually predicted that particular employer since there is a huge world of places a marketer may work his trade. “Jeff spent nearly three decades in the global consumer products industry, serving in senior executive roles at Procter & Gamble and Johnson & Johnson”.

So, as one who is rather un-business-oriented and un-executive, I started with a turn-off to whatever Jeff Strong is selling. But, I reminded myself, Dana Gioia was vice president of marketing at General Foods, and I love his poetry. But again as written twenty years ago, “After 10 years in the business world, Gioia returned to the life of a full-time writer in 1992, publishing poetry and freelance pieces, but he walked away with something he says other managers did not have, creative thinking and qualitative thinking. ‘Most people in business have a quantitative background, usually driven by mad power needs. Business is filled with would-be kings and a few statesmen. I realized most businesspeople don’t understand how creativity works. They think it’s wild and crazy.’”

Which begins to take me into concerns of how style can affect substance. Marketers use statistics, but they don’t really care about them intellectually. The stats are just tools bent to the purpose of selling what the marketer is already there to sell. Forecasting what buyers want to hear and in what color. Receiving the implied endorsement of 9 out of 10 dentists surveyed.

I listened to a couple of Brother Strong’s interviews, Leading Saints and Salt Lake Tribune’s Mormon Land. For the Leading Saints interview Brother Strong had a host who matched his view of the world and the church as a marketing and management puzzle. In spite of that, the hour of listening was mostly worthwhile. The first half of the Trib’s interview by David Noyce and Peggy Fletcher Stack was repetition of material in the Leading Saints podcast. The second half went deeper into what Jeff Strong wants out of his enterprise.

There are two matters at hand, the statistics and what they mean. The two have less to do with one another than is implied. The statistics are a hook to draw attention, and a prop of authority. Every media piece covering Torn leads off with the “amazing” claim that 40% of people have left the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then there is the claim that Jeff Strong knows the real reasons people disaffiliate because he asked thousands of them and tallied their responses.

On the 40% claim, my question not really clarified in the podcasts is: 40% of who did what? If the claim is that 40% of people who were at one time on the records of the Church no longer participate much with their wards, that is an unsurprising finding that does not merit breathless headlines. Anyone who spent a couple decades following the former members of a deacons’ quorum or ministering to converts is qualitatively familiar with this. Anyone who has worked with a Relief Society presidency or elders’ quorum presidency planning ministering assignments is familiar with this. Brother Strong finds some significance in claiming that faithful members don’t know this, and that especially devoted saints are most ignorant according to his research.

I think there are likely two factors that allow him to claim that latter-day saints are ignorant of the magnitude of disaffiliation. The first is that many people don’t think about things quantitatively. The second is how well what they were being asked was communicated. 40% of who? Did what? 40% of people who were attending sacrament service most Sundays 25 years ago (and are not among the quarter or so of such people who have since died)? 40% of people who were baptized when they were eight or after the missionaries taught them? 40% of people who frequent latter-day saint social media? Stopped going to church? Stopped thinking of themselves as latter-day saints? Removed their names from the records of the Church? I get the idea a larger group is being used to magnify interest in the concerns of a smaller group. That is not necessary. The issues with that smaller group matter and touch nearly all of us, but the marketer knows a good attention-getter is to say 40% have left the church as if it were a new or strange thing that most church-going latter-day saints are blinded to, a hidden secret that he with his research is revealing to us.

Numbers to the side, there is the matter of what Brother Strong wants from members of the church. Mostly it seems he wants them to think well of those who cease to live as latter-day saints, to love his three former-Mormon children as much as he does and in the way he does. Apparently personal family stories make up part of the book. In the Leading Saints interview he said he is not proscribing any solutions, but believes that if members of the church understand the disaffiliation situation as he does then they will figure out the right things to do.

Early in the Mormon Land interview, Brother Strong said, “There are people in the post-Mormon community that are really angry at the church over the issues that we are going to talk about, and they feel like my framing is too protective of the Church. So their mindset is ‘Wow, you’ve gone out of your way to shield the Church from any criticism here,’ because I’ve framed this as a culture problem. I think that is fair criticism. That was an editorial choice on my part, and anybody that thinks about it for a minute will understand why I’ve chosen to do that.” A bit of dog whistling there, I guess, to those who agree with the criticisms by those who depart the Church, but if that were openly stated in his book, then ordinary members and leaders would be less inclined to buy what he is selling. Or was there some other pointedly unstated purpose that a minute of contemplation should have revealed?

Unlike in the Leading Saints interview, for Mormon Land Brother Strong was proscribing extensively through the second half. Expression of doubt should be welcome in church classes. Less certitude. Less control and orthodoxy, particularly at BYU. The church from top to bottom should focus on Christ, and in a nod to his executive days, there should be mechanisms of feedback to make sure that’s happening, but somehow that promulgation of correct teaching would be without control and orthodoxy. He was brainstorming at that point, so the inconsistency was understandable.

Summing up my impresssions: Jeff Strong is a marketer, and marketers are going to market. His research is hype designed to sell. He thinks those who depart the Church are mostly right in their criticisms. I think he is a believing latter-day saint. For him there are truths bigger than the criticisms calling him to discipleship. In accepting the call to be a bishop and a mission president, he gave much of himself to the service of the Lord and His church. The matters that he is talking about are very worth thinking about. I don’t buy all he is selling.