I agree that the time investment isn’t a short-coming — maybe, ostensibly, an inconvenience — but not a short coming.

Relying on them doing their homework isn’t a shortcoming either — that’s their choice and the suffer the consequences of not doing the homework and the dialogue relationship will probably die out of that because it will degrade into theological differences as Shawn has pointed out.

The only “gotcha” I can see at this point is the danger of a neophyte tackling such a challenge in this manner. Missionaries such as these are well trained (some may argue indoctrinated) and can easily (as evidenced by their high conversion rates and growth) convince folks to follow.

I think that they came to the right guy.

Have to think on it some more to see if there are any other potential “gotchas” — but this is, in my opinion, a much better approach than attacking their beliefs.

I think this one would be is that I’m relying on these two guys to do their own homework and investigate on their own.

I’m not spoon-feeding it to them.

The other “short-coming” is that since I’m not giving every answer to every question, I’m going to have to stay relationally close.

I don’t think that’s a short-coming but it is time-consuming, slow, and very involved.

But I also think it makes “better” disciples in the long run. Does that make sense?

What do you see?

I’m just choosing to approach the subject from a different angle, hopefully a less combative angle.

I want to be the tour guide, if you will. Let them read and discover that on their own – walk through the NT like I did – it was corrective of any theology that said “Jesus + whatever…” which is exactly what LDS does.

BTW – good to hear from you again…even in your angst!! hahaha..Love you, bro.

Grant, you said everything’s cool as long as its about Jesus. The problem is the LDS understanding of Jesus. We’re basically talking about two different Jesus’s's’s here; the Jesus of the Bible (immaculate conception, one third of the Holy Trinity, atonement on the cross) and the Jesus of the LDS church (God had physical relations with Mary, brother of Lucifer, a god along with the father and the spirit). These are two different people, dude!

Grace is another term that has very different meaning to Christians and Mormons. Grace as revealed in scripture is God’s umerited favor. Grace in LDS teaching is available after you’ve done everything in your own power – kind of like holy bonus points.

Under its squeaky-clean, Christian-esque facade, Mormonism is nothing more than the cult of Joseph Smith. We’re talking super-spooky, Galatians 1:8 stuff here.

Didn’t mean to go off on you. I live in Mo-ville, so its kind of a passionate subject for me. Kudos for engaging the missionaries, but just remember they’re not talking about the Jesus of the Bible.