Evangelicals urge softer approach to converting Mormons

Excerpts of Evangelicals urge gentler approach to Mormons by Peggy Fletcher Stack, The Salt Lake Tribune
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Saving Mormon souls from the perceived falsehoods of their faith typically has included dubbing the church a "cult" and providing a point-by-point comparison with traditional Christianity, while caricaturing Latter-day Saint believers and practices.

Such tactics may fill the pews and energize the Evangelicals, but to John Morehead and Ken Mulholland, they are not the best tools for ministering to Mormons.

"We need to provide something constructive and Christ-centered that takes into account a true understanding of the journey they've have been on," Morehead says.

To that end, Morehead and Mulholland have produced a 14-minute trailer for a full-length multimedia effort called "Transitions: The Mormon Migration from Religion to Relationship."

It mirrors the personal approach seen in "Mormon Messages," made by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and circulated on YouTube, featuring individual converts, telling the story of their faith and how they came to join the church.

The "Transitions" trailer is the first major project of a new think tank, the Western Institute for Intercultural Studies, Mulholland and Morehead created in Utah to "equip individuals, congregations and Christian academics to communicate the Christian faith to adherents of new religious movements with understanding and sensitivity."

"God has been so gracious in pouring out a new kind of grace into our hearts into really love these people," Mary Golding says in the trailer. "Not just love them so they get converted, but to love them enough to walk with them to get them through the process, to say you are not an accomplishment, a project to us. You are an individual that Jesus loves."

For more information about the Western Institute for Intercultural Studies, go to www.wiics.org.