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sustain!
PBS posts a stirring, six-minute+ trailer for its upcoming documentary by Helen Whitney called "The Mormons".
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That got a chuckle out of me.
I also would like to reiterate (and I know many here will disagree) that the Church is not only adapting to overseas cultures when proselyting, but it is also making significant efforts to embrace as many cultures here in the US as possible.
I guess I am looking at the other side of the coin though and perhaps it's not any deliberate attempt to "Americanize" the Gospel so much as it is the simple historical reality that yes the church began and mostly matured in the US and in a very American cultural context. And as such many of our ways of doing things and thinking about principles becomes inherently American. There does after all need to be some uniformity to the church, it helps create and sustain the sense of global community that is an important part of the glue that makes us a single people - and by default it is easiest for the forms of that uniformity to be ones sourced from the church's original American cultural cradle.
But...but, I guess what I'm saying is that the church I believe is poised to go global in a much bigger way than it has to date. 50 years from now I think the demographics and culture of the church globally are going to be vastly different from what we see now. What are we doing to prepare the way from that and to remove cultural assumptions (as opposed to core Gospel truths) that may make that growth more painful and rocky than it necessarily needs to be? We talk now about how there are more church members outside the US than in, but how do we need to adapt to a church where American members make up a solid minority of oh let's randomly say only 10% of worldwide church members? Will we still be getting talks in conference focused on American teenagers' dating habits, on whether it is important to sustain government leaders when 75% of church members are living in failed states or dictatorships, on the importance of sharing huge gift-wrapped Christmas presents with poor neighbors when perhaps a plurality of church members themselves live in shantytowns on the edge of existence? Or will more of the talks at General Conference and more of the examples in Sunday School lesson manuals and more of the way we just think about ourselves as a people (especially the relatively wealthy Americans among us) be more aware of the very, very different circumstances that most church members in the year 2057 live versus those (then hopefully small minority) members in the inter-mountain American west? How do we best take the steps to make that adjustment, both for ourselves as a people, and so that we truly can be seen as a light (hopefully a bonfire) on a hill to other people who will hopefully not view us as some small sect, or white-American-led church, or insular group but as a genuinely positive strong force in their societies?
Some of these are challenges we already have or are facing, but I think the degree is going to expand exponentially and tactics we have viewed as successes to date may not hold up as the size of the challenge grows. I'm long-winded yet again, but ultimately I'm just saying we have a big challenge ahead of us, what can we do to better prepare for it? I for one am glad that at the least road shows have died as I have no desire to subject Teachers and Mia Maids in Damascus or Fes to the torture I barely survived in them as they breathed their last gasps in my teenage years :)
I think the Church is taking care of this issue in a fair manner given its current expansion. I don't think any specific significant populations are being starved in regards to personalized focus.
I have to object to some of your specific observations though. The Church does not do a bad job at focusing on the differences in teenager dating habits, at least for the largest populations of the Church (such as the US and also Latinoamerica). I don't know how fair it is to say that sustaining democratically elected leaders goes against opposing dictatorships (I hardly think the message of sustaining leaders was geared towards people in dictatorships). I must have fallen asleep during the huge gift-wrapped Christmas present message (and nevertheless, I think the importance of sharing in shantytowns is even more crucial than in other communities).