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House by house, soul by soul
GMU prof: 'Cold calls' can help religions grow
By Andrea Useem
Special to The Examiner
Published: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 11:43 PM EDT
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| Above: Jaqualine Lewis, left, a publisher at Kingdom Hall Church, shares her faith as a Jehovah's Witness with Sylvia in Oxon Hill on Friday. Witnesses carry several ministry awareness tools to distribute door to door. Arianne Starnes/For The Examiner |
Carrie Yates and Audrey Caison, walking carefully in high heels and skirts, made their way down a quiet Oxon Hill street, ringing doorbells.
At the first five houses, nobody was home. At the sixth, a man holding a mop opened the door a crack, long enough to say that he was too busy to talk. Unfazed, Yates and Caison made their way to the next house.
These two women are Jehovah's Witnesses, who, along with Mormons, are famous for their door-to-door proselytizing.
It might seem a tedious and inefficient way of gaining converts, but according to new research from a George Mason University economist, Jehovah's Witnesses' tireless door-knocking actually represents a winning strategy for long-term growth.
"Massive ongoing proselytization" is essential for religious groups that want to increase membership over the decades, argues Laurence Iannaccone, Koch professor of economics at GMU, in a forthcoming academic paper co-authored with Rodney Stark of Baylor University.
Iannaccone specializes in applying economic concepts to the study of religion. He uses the language of marketing to explain why religious people need to reach beyond their own social circles to gain new converts.
"Imagine you are a real estate agent who wants clients. First you might look among family and friends, who already trust you. But that pool is pretty small, and at any one time, only one or two may want to buy or sell their home," said Iannaccone, who this year received a $500,000 grant from the Metanexus Institute and the Templeton Foundation to promote the study of economics and religion at GMU.
The next step is to send direct-mail advertisements and make telephone calls to strangers in the neighborhood, said Iannaccone.
"The rate of return on those cold calls is minuscule. But if you don't do it, then you're out of the running," said Iannaccore.
As with business, so with religion, he argues.
Most religious denominations grow through marriages, births and occasional conversions. The groups that succeed in achieving major growth, said Iannaccone, are those that transform their congregations into a part-time "sales" force.
Missionary work
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known as the Mormon church, creates a temporary work force by requiring young men - and encouraging young women - to spend two years "on mission," sharing their faith with strangers 12 hours a day.
Jehovah's Witnesses, however, take the concept of proselytization to its extreme and make door-to-door witnessing an ongoing requirement for all members. To qualify as a "publisher" - the Jehovah's Witnesses' term for "member in good standing" - believers in the U.S. spend an average of 9.6 hours a month going door to door.
In 2004, Jehovah's Witnesses claimed 6.5 million publishers, or actively proselytizing members, worldwide, and 1 million in the U.S., according to official church statistics, which are meticulously kept and generally considered reliable by experts in the field.
But how do you turn the average believer into a door-to-door preacher?
Jehovah's Witnesses do it by turning each worship meeting into a training session for missionary work.
Last Thursday night, the Oxon Hill congregation gathered at the Wheeler Road Kingdom Hall, which it shares with five other Jehovah's Witnesses congregations, for a meeting known as "Theocratic Ministry School." Men in suits and women in skirts sat in an immaculate, well-lit room that looked more like a lecture hall than a church.
Building confidence
James Fowlkes, an elder of the congregation, said that the "school," which publishers are required to attend each week, helps the Witnesses prepare to talk with strangers about their faith.
Congregants perform role plays and discuss everything from how to enunciate clearly to how to overcome "conversation-stoppers," such as when a person says, "I already have my own religion."
Ushers circulate with a microphone during the meeting, so that congregants can ask and answer questions. Such involvement, said Fowlkes, helps even shy people build up their confidence at public speaking.
The next morning, Paul Parker, another Oxon Hill elder, waited patiently as 15 Witnesses, all women, gathered for a day of door-to-door work. After the group assembled, Parker directed one of the women to read from the New Testament book of Acts, in which the apostle Paul describes how he went "house to house," asking both Jews and Greeks to repent of their sins and have faith in Jesus.
Congregation's territory
"We are trying to pattern ourselves on those first-century Christians," Parker said.
After a short prayer, Parker and the women divided up into cars and headed out to the streets assigned to them for the day. Each congregation has its own "territory," said Parker, "so that we don't pester the neighbors."
Among the group were Yates and Caison, the women who encountered the man with the mop. Both are "pioneers," a title that belongs to Witnesses who take a two-week training course and give a large number of hours each month to proselytizing.
Yates spends 70 hours each month going door to door, in addition to working full time for the Prince George's County school system and caring for her husband and elderly mother. When asked how she finds time for such "volunteer" work, she replied: "The Bible commands us to do it, so I just make it a priority."
Few people were home on the street where Yates and Caison worked that morning.
The first sign of life after the man with the mop was a group of small children in matching T-shirts piling into a white van. But Yates and Caison walked past, explaining that they don't approach children. (Indeed, Caison says she gently chides children who answer the doorbell when they are home alone. "You shouldn't open the door for strangers," she tells them.)
But when a young woman with braided hair emerged from the front door, Yates called out a greeting, and the woman approached the pair uncertainly.
"Do you run a home day care? You must be busy. I know, I used to run one myself," Yates said.
Seemingly reassured by that personal connection, the woman appeared more at ease. Yates handed her a paperback book containing religious lessons for children, and asked if she could come back another time to talk. The woman agreed and set a time.
6,000 hours per convert
Last year, Witnesses in the United States spent 190 million hours preaching and gained 31,000 converts - which means that an average of 6,000 preaching hours went into each baptism.
That's the kind of low return rate that makes such evangelism seem "irrational," Iannaccone says. "But that's how sales works: The small numbers multiply over time. You just need a faith that keeps you going and going."
And faith is what Yates and Caison seemed to have in abundance as they continued down the hot, quiet street.
After ringing a doorbell at another empty home, Yates said reflectively: "Sometimes it appears we are not accomplishing anything. But I know that if we don't get a listening ear this time, we will get one down the line, one way or another."
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