Tragedies and dangerous situations do periodically occur among the 52,000 full-time missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as was the case when four Nigerian missionaries were take hostage. While the media understandably give extensive coverage to these types of events, it is important to point out their infrequency.
The Church does everything it can to ensure the safety of its missionaries, a fact that Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles emphasized in an address he gave in May 2000.
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Nothing more substantive?
I like it when the lds.org releases make it on here. I guess it's a matter of how you view/what role you see sustain'd as fulfilling. To me it's a vehicle of dissemination, and releases from the church are certainly 'worthy' of dissemination to a church-centered audience, y'know? SG, what kinds of content do you prefer to see? What kinds of stuff do you see as more "substantive"?
People have sustaind it. As well as another one of my posts.
Of course, that's not a fair critique, because subscribing to any newsfeed is easy... so just because it's somewhere else doesn't necessarily negate its value to our community, here.
I understand that.
But the Church's press release is just that... something crafted to be consumed by news organizations. They're valueless in that they've not been fact-checked or balanced by a bone fide news organization, or fleshed-out by a careful blogger... they're not worth repeating because they're fluff until proven otherwise.
The press release is actually a little interesting... but would have been more valuable had it been combined with some more — preferably corroborative — material.
These guys aren't ecclesiastical leaders, they're PR hacks... treating their pronouncements as anything but PR — and therefore worthy of a healthy dose of skepticism — does everyone a disservice.
As for what I like... I love news stories, I love doctrinal discussions, I love outsider views of the faith, I love interesting approaches to sociological questions as they relate to the Church. What I love best are posts that (and I've failed here, myself) are more than just one-link-wonders.