“The practice of individual missionizing by members has become one of the hallmarks of the LDS enterprise. The cost of this mission work, conducted worldwide in two-year stints by volunteers, are still [as of 1988] borne by the families of the young missionaries. As of 1982 the costs averaged $300 per month for each of the 32,000 Mormons in the field, or more than $100 million total. However, the strategy is surprisingly ineffective. One estimate of missionary success from canvassing residential areas was as low as ‘only nine doors out of a thousand [opening] to missionaries.’ The remaining 991 doors are not answered, are not opened beyond the length of the chain lock, or are slammed in Mormon faces. In reality, the two-year missionary experience is a sort of rite of passage for pre-college Mormon men (increasingly women are going on missions as well), a tour of duty in the unsympathetic world of the unbelievers that reinforces Mormons’ differences from Gentiles …”

“Moreover, almost half of the young missionaries reportedly become ‘Jack-Mormons’ (inactive or backsliding members) after they return. The Church does not encourage speculation about yet another controversial aspect of mission work: throwing pairs of young men aged nine-teen to twenty-one into virtually monastic, celibate living conditions for long periods of time at the height of naturally strong sexual drives has fostered rumors of homosexual incidents.”

John Heinerman and Anson Shupe, The Mormon Corporate Empire (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1985), 30.