On the Naming of This Blog

It's been a year now since the announcement on misusing the term "Mormon," and as you may notice, this blog is still called "The Mormon Mel." I've received a few questions and have decided this is a perfect opportunity for a fun discussion.

First, a little catch up.

In August 2018, our new leader, the 94-year-old President Russell M. Nelson, launched an effort to correct the branding of our church. The official name of our church is, and has always been: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The concern is that perhaps we have relied too much on the nickname "Mormon," such that it has corrupted the Church's image, and has led to confusion. For example, several times people have asked me if I believe in a God named Mormon. Or they don't realize that we rely on the Bible as much as we do the Book of Mormon. And many don't know we believe in Jesus Christ at all.

But just imagine ... if everyone called us "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," it could help clear things up. Do we believe in Jesus? "It's in the name of our church." Do we believe in the Bible? "What Jesus-believing religion doesn't?"

It all makes sense. While the Church tones down on the use of the term "Mormon," it helps clarify our doctrine, and help others understand what we believe.

So then, why have I not changed the name of my blog to comply? Wouldn't it be better to call it "The Latter-day Saint Mel," which would be in harmony with the new Style Guide?

Short answer: Because, for me, nothing has changed. The name of the Church hasn't changed, and for decades we've received the same counsel urging against the use of the nickname "Mormon." I had all this in mind a few years ago when I chose the name of my blog, and the reasons behind the blog name haven't changed. Of course, this will need more explaining.

I'll start with describing how soap works. (wait for it...)

The typical soap molecule has two sides to it. One is an oily fatty acid side, and the other side is a harsh alkaline. The oily side likes to stick to oil, while the alkaline (lye) likes to stick to water.

If you try to wash your oily hands with only water, it doesn't work very well because oil and water don't mix. The water just slides off, and you still got oily dirt on your hands. If you try to pour lye on your hands, hoping it'll help the water clean your hands, it might work, but it'll burn your hands. Likewise, if you try to pour on oily fatty acids, it'll just smear and get oilier.

It takes both the fatty acid and the lye in combination to make it all work. Kind of like a mullet ... you know, business in the front (the lye), and party in the back (the fatty acid)? This video gives a little bit more detail on how soap works, if you want to know more.

What I'd like to point out here is that the fatty acid is a type of "hook" that is needed to attract the oil and dirt in order for the "business" to work. Ultimately it's the lye that attaches to the water to pull away the dirt, but it's useless without the dirty fatty acid side.

This "hook" concept appears everywhere in book writing and advertising. You want to attract customers to buy your products or read the meat ("business") of what you want people to read.

Think about this: if you have something to say, why should anyone listen to you? More often than not, people don't care what you have to say, because they're preoccupied by whatever they enjoy or whatever they're worrying about. You could talk and talk and talk, but they'll most likely tune you out.

Unless, you catch their attention. Perhaps you've seen the Looney Tunes short where a man tries to get people to see his dancing frog? Nobody comes until he paints a "FREE BEER" sign.

This is ultimately why I chose to include the word "Mormon" in my blog title. It is my hook, and my main targets are people who aren't members of my church, but are looking to learn more about it. Plus, I love the clever alliteration. So many "M"s! The Mormon Mel!

It also fits nicely with the names of my other blogs: The Word of Mel, The Music of Mel, and The Econo-Mel. Each blog title has just two accented syllables and follows a simple pattern.

Once I get people to my blog, I then hit them with the "business," and I think I do a pretty good job at this. People who visit learn things about my church, and they're usually grateful and very appreciative of how I present things.

Practically everyone has heard of the "Mormons." They may not understand what it is, but they do know that it's something, and that it's peculiar, and interesting. These same people are much less likely to have heard of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" or the shortened "Latter-day Saints" and probably don't know they're the same as "Mormons."

Check out these search results as presented by Google Trends. The following graph shows a popularity index of different keywords among actual Google searches. I've set blue = "mormon"; red = "latter day saint"; yellow = "lds"; and green = "church of jesus christ of latter day saints."

"LDS" has been consistently popular over the past 15 years. "Mormon" appears to track slightly under "LDS" until 2011 when the "Book of Mormon" musical came out. And recently it has gone back down to its previous level. But look at the green and red lines -- you can hardly see them at all.

And check this out ...

The geography of "Mormon" searches cover the entire United States, with peaks in heavily LDS-populated states.

Compare with ...

The geography of "Latter Day Saint" is much more confined to more heavily LDS-populated states, with almost nothing coming from the other states. It's almost as if the other states didn't get the memo!

This all tells me that if I were to change the name of my blog to "The Latter-day Saint Mel", it would drastically decrease its visibility. It would be harder to reach those outside of my church ... a big chunk of my intended audience.

I'll come back to this, but first some quick history.

In 1990, First Counselor Hinckley talked about people calling us "Mormon," and said, "They could do worse." Mormon was an honorable man -- a prophet from around 400 AD. While everyone else was busy killing people and living riotously, Mormon compiled the majority of what we now call the Book of Mormon. He also raised a son in righteousness -- Moroni, who would later finish the work of his father.

When Elder Hinckley became our church President, he ran a successful PR campaign, appearing on 60 Minutes, and submitting to other interviews. He always used the full name of our church, but when people called us "Mormons," he would just smile and say, "Would you like to learn more?" He encouraged us to stand taller and to be a great example to the world.

In 2011, the "I'm a Mormon" campaign launched under President Monson (the one who succeeded President Hinckley). Also, that year the Church put out a light-hearted official response to the Book of Mormon musical: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ." And in 2014 came the release of the "Meet the Mormons" movie, which was meant for mainly non-Mormon audiences.

Thus, the idea of using "Mormon" as a hook has been around a long time. Though, recently, President Nelson has indicated that perhaps we had made mistakes forsaking our church's name while trying to bring in more followers. And this is the main impetus for the recent rebranding. A lot of our church's websites have been renamed to move away from "Mormon" and "LDS," and to move more toward the full name and sometimes "Latter-day Saint."

The URL lds.org now redirects to churchofjesuschrist.org. And mormon.org now goes to comeuntochrist.org. Also, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has been renamed to be the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square -- undoubtedly the most visual manifestation of this rebranding to the outside world. It will most likely raise questions, and help others learn from this new emphasis by President Nelson.

Just one more thing to show you before I wrap up. Many owners of blogs and Facebook pages that previously used "LDS" or "Mormon" have shown compliance by changing to the lengthier "Latter-day Saint" or the full name of the Church. (But not all have changed.)

For example, the group formally known as "LDS Pianists" is now "Pianists of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And look at what these name changes did to some of these Facebook Groups:

I can immediately make out what each group is except for three of them: "Latter-day Saint Or...", "The Church of Jes...", and "Latter-day Saint S...", which in turn makes them harder to find. I'm forced to hover my mouse over the title to figure out what each one is.

Now imagine the name of my blog in some feed. Right now, "The Mormon Mel" is short and would fit perfectly. But if I change the name, it would appear as "The Latter-day Sain..." I know that would translate into fewer visitors.

Finally, to conclude, I fully understand the inspiration that President Nelson has delivered, and the name changes that the Church underwent for their websites and organizations. It makes sense that the world should know the true name of our Church.

However, I've given this much consideration over the past year, and I feel that I can serve a much higher purpose and reach more people by keeping the name of my blog the same: "The Mormon Mel." I love the alliteration, and I believe the title is catchy and has high visibility.

Once people come to my blog, I'll set things straight. I do plan to take some other actions to comply with the instructions we've received, such as stopping the use of the word "Mormonism" (of which I agree 100%) and to change the subheading of my blog to reflect the full name of the Church ... stay tuned for more details as I roll those changes out.

The "Eclipse" Testimony

Two years ago (the first week of September), I gave this testimony immediately after having seen the 2017 solar eclipse. Since I failed to record it earlier, this is just an estimate of what I had said. It'll be important for other posts I have coming down the pike (the "How to Keep People in the Church" series).

I had gone down to Greenville, SC to view the event on August 21, 2017. You can read all the gory details here. During my testimony I gave the ultra-condensed version. I had been planning the trip for years. I could have stayed in my home city of Winston Salem, NC, which was in the 95% eclipse zone, but that wasn't good enough for me.

In order to catch 100%, I took the day off from work, spent almost 4 hours driving down with my family, and then we saw it. Pictures and video don't do it justice. It was magical -- like a 3-D paper origami moon covering the prettiest corona you could ever imagine with its strange red/purple light. It was like nothing I had seen before, or will rarely see again.

The trip back was slightly worse. I-85 was a parking lot, so we used the back roads. It added more than a hour to a regular trip, but it was fun.

I had several Winston Salem friends who had made similar plans. A few took the trip to catch that last 5%, and some stayed behind. That last contingent went outside shortly after lunch and caught as much as they could. They put on their solar glasses and had a fun time. Most of the sun's face was covered except for a small sliver. It was an experience for them, ... however ... they never saw the corona. They missed out on the full magic.

I know this, because, as soon as the first tiniest speck of the sun's surface appeared (the Bailey's Beads as captured by my friend in the picture above), there was instant heat, and we could no longer see the corona, and we had to put our filtered glasses back on.

Now, take a moment to see it from the stay-at-home point of view. I got to hear it from one of my work friends as we all went out to eat lunch at Mama Zoe's. About half of us had gone down to SC, and the other half had stayed.

My one stay-at-home friend said, "I had a blast. Yeah, I know I was planning to go down, but I ultimately decided not to go, because I would have to drag my family through hours of traffic just for a 2-minute show. We had 95% totality, and it got down to a sliver, and it was cool. In hindsight, I'm glad I made the right decision. I got to see it, AND I didn't get stuck in traffic."

Then as you may expect, I and my went-down friends tried to explain what he had missed out on, but he would have none of it. Even though I had seen one of the most spectacular events of my life, I found it very difficult to put into words -- to explain it to someone who really only experienced a small portion of the event.

As we gained up on my stay-at-home friend, he got more defensive and started implying that we were stupid for going down in the first place and that triggered me. I said, "I saw the corona with my own eyes, and nothing will ever take that away from me. It was worth the trip." And that pretty much ended the discussion forever.

I know we could have handled the whole situation better, but I couldn't help seeing some important analogies.

The solar eclipse at 100% totality represents the "true" Gospel. Being able to see the corona is like seeing the full Truth.

All churches have a portion of Truth. Among all the Christian denominations, roughly 95% of the doctrine is the same. (If we include non-Christian religions, there are still some similarities. But I stuck with Christianity in this testimony to keep it simple.) We all believe that Christ can save us from sin, which is by far the most important piece of doctrine.

People tend to stay with the church with which they were raised, because to them, that 95% is good enough. There isn't much incentive to search for other churches, because there is a sense that they all believe the same things with minor differences between the denominations.

But in our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), that extra 5% makes a big difference. We can see what other people are missing. It's difficult to explain to them exactly what it is, but we know this extra knowledge. I'm grateful for what I've learned, and no one can ever take it away from me.

I said those last words to a room of other members of our church, but I'd like to slightly modify it for my non-LDS readers. There is always room to learn more knowledge. Even in my church, it's believed that more truths will be revealed later (Article of Faith #9). Even though I'm satisfied with the doctrine of my church, I am also searching for further truth, including frequent studying of other religions.

Because ... well ... it's worth the trip. Having Truth is good and helps to put things in proper perspectives. It helps us to see beautiful things that we would otherwise miss.

I would like to end by comparing the above eclipse analogy with at least two talks given at General Conference in October 2017 -- the very quick version. In those two talks, the eclipse was given as an example of the moon being a small thing, yet covering up a large sun. The moon represented distractions in our life that are small, yet big enough to keep us from seeing the light. You can similarly cover up the entire moon by holding your little thumb in front of it.

Though, this is a cool analogy that was used twice independently, I like mine better. Theirs make the eclipse sound like a bad thing. But to me, the corona was the beautiful part to see. It's there all the time, but we can never see it. The surface of the sun is the "distraction," and the moon was the small means that could cover up the distraction long enough for us to see the sun's true nature.

But sure ... two different ways to look at it. Either way, cool eclipses make for cool analogies.

Goals for 2019

Last year I returned to writing in this blog. During 2018, I published more posts than I previously had in any other individual year. This is because I feel impressed to share all the thoughts that have been collecting recently. I anticipate even more posts this year as I push forward -- around 20-30 posts total.

My 2019 goals include the following:

• Continue working on the "Why I'm A Mormon" book (including a retitling).
• Explore how to strengthen the membership of the Church.
• Present a few works of LDS fiction.
• Continue to discuss random religious topics.

I wish you all a great 2019!