I absolutely do think that there is a correlation between seminary and missionary service. Attendance at YM/YW weeknight activities, not so much. There may be some weak causality as well (but I think it’s more of a case that seminary leads to testimonies and testimonies lead to missionary service.)

I really don’t think that Scouting has as much impact.

(I’m also a fan of early morning seminary. There’s no reason why a youth can’t be in early morning seminary, take AP classes, and play on a team and do other activities. It’s a function of organization.)

Not necessarily.

I went to seminary all four years and completed it, but never served a mission and never had a want to.

I wasn’t aware that people didn’t realize there was a correlation… If you had asked me before I read this post, I would have said, “yea. of course there’s a correlation between seminary graduation and serving a mission. That’s one of the biggest reasons the church emphasizes Seminary so darn much!”

Yeah, I think that there is a correlation, but I would attribute that mainly to the fact that both programs attract the same kind of person, not that Seminary is an adequate or necessary preparation for the mission. I think that the Church’s Seminary program will need to change significantly if it is to serve as something other than a hurdle, which––if it is cleared––is a good indicator of whether someone will be willing to jump the hurdles attendant to missionary service. At the same time, I have attended BYU religion courses that were of no higher quality; some were in fact less useful than Seminary. Like so many things in the Church, it’s an important social marker, and in that way it likely links one more deeply to Mormon culture.

Nah. Its a concomitant thing. As noted above, it’s a matter of the ‘same type of people’ stuff. A kid likely to go to seminary is the same one likely to serve a mission.

And then there are rural areas that didn’t have seminary … I didn’t attend seminary, and didn’t serve a mission. But I have been active all my life, yada yada yada.

The people that think these numbers mean something are the check-box mormon types: if you hit the checkboxes, you’ll go to heaven kind of thinking. It’s not the check box that matters. It’s the heart. I’ve seen too many youth leaders worry more about the check boxes than the heart. This has got to stop.

I went to early-morning seminary as long as my parents forced me to, and I would sleep through it. Once I was no longer forced to go, I did not go. Having received my mission call from Ezra Benson, I served a little over 2 weeks in the MTC before the mission president there thought better of it. I was the only missionary in my class at the MTC who did not graduate from seminary. Perhaps I’d have fared better if I’d have stayed awake. I can’t help but think that some part of seminary attendance makes a person less likely to object to the heavy-handed crowd-control measures than dominate one’s experiences there.

(It is, perhaps, worth noting that I knew demonstrably more about the scriptures than anyone of the seminary graduates in my MTC class.)

While I agree that we have to focus more on the heart and less on checked boxes (I don’t think anyone would disagree, by the way), I don’t think seminary is just a box to check. As opposed to the YM/YW program which relies on volunteers with usually no experience in the area, seminary is taught by individuals who have been trained and are, for the most part in my experience, skilled at teaching gospel and helping the kids feel the Spirit. There are countless stories that I know of where a non-Mormon kid has gone to seminary with Mormon friends only to be baptized because of the experience. That same action works on Mormon gets to get them prepared and motivated to serve a mission. Its not a causation thing, as noted before, but I really thing there is a strong correlation beyond just the fact that that kid is predisposed to doing both.

Jacob S. – “…seminary is taught by individuals who have been trained and are, for the most part in my experience, skilled at teaching gospel and helping the kids feel the Spirit.”

Not so in all parts of the US. In the Northeast, seminary teachers are “called” via CES to teach seminary in their areas. So the teachers can change from year to year and the quality of the teaching is just as good or bad as any other church class because the teachers are still “lay” ministry.

I grew up in an area where there were many more LDS youth and we had both release-time seminary and early morning seminary (though you had to drive across the river for one or the other depending on where you attended high school). Our seminary and institute classes were taught by a certified CES instructor who had also studied to be a Baptist minister before joining the church (the kids love him, the parents? not so much!). So we did get quality teaching from him. However, I don’t think the number of seminary graduates came even close to having a 95% “retention rate” of active young adults (as Bookslinger mentioned).

My guess to the answer on this question would probably be to lean more to the side of social expectations rather than the actual quality of spiritual and intellectual preparation seminary provides. We could probably look at the correlation of youth who date members exclusively (as opposed to those who choose dating partners of good moral values but not necessarily LDS) and their likelihood of marrying in the temple with the same results. A certain mindset comes into play when you make these early decisions in life (or when your parents force them upon you) as to what you will do with future choices.

“There’s no reason why a youth can’t be in early morning seminary, take AP classes, and play on a team and do other activities. It’s a function of organization.”

That’s just plain false.

I went to the first two years of seminary in HS and enjoyed it very much, but because I was in swimming and water polo (both practiced in the AM) and had at least two honors or AP classes at all times, I had no room in my schedule for seminary during my junior and senior years. There was just no physical way to do it, unless I did home study (which I tried to do for a while but got bored with). Thus I didn’t graduate from seminary.

I did serve a mission, and I have heard lately that graduation from seminary is now a requirement for being accepted as a missionary. Is that true?

MCQ–I believe that seminary is asked about on the application and that a few stickler kind of countries will only grant visas to “trained ministers” or some such, so they get only Seminary grads assigned from out of their country. But generally speaking, I am certain that upstanding youth and, especially, converts would not have their lack of seminary held against them.

And let’s be quite forthright: even the most arduous scheduling difficulties can be overcome by those motivated to do so. Homestudy is generally an option, and I have known several families who got parents OKed by the local CES guy to teach their kids a satellite Seminary. I am sure on-line Seminary is right around the corner, but then maybe no one would attend IRL.

I know parents have to pick their battles, but if I knew the correlation between Seminary participation and future activity and missionary service, I think I would pick Seminary as a battle to fight. Or try to be real creative to make it not a fight.

True Story: the reason I had 100% attendance at early morning Seminary all four years was because I overheard my dad and a home teacher talking about me and how I was sure to be one of those kids who calculated how many days I could miss and still pass. It made me mad and I wanted to prove them wrong. If that was strategy on my dad’s part, it was smart.

Our stake CES coordinator said last year that Brazil requires seminary graduation in order to issue visas to foreign missionaries.

I might also note that I’ve taught Seminary twice (so much for “trained/certified CES instructor” — heh). The first time I taught, there was a student in my class who was a smart pain-in-the-butt and who worked hard to disrupt my lessons. He ended up getting called as a bishop at age 25 or so (and as a stake president a few years later), which brings new meaning to, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” (I charitably pointed that out to him when I ran into him [by then a bishop] in the San Diego Temple, after he apologized to me for having been such a pill during Seminary.)

The second time I taught, our chapel was too far away for Seminary to be there, so I taught it in our living room. We had a gas fireplace, which I’d light on cool mornings, and the students would bring pillows and sleeping bags and sprawl all over the floor and furniture. I have very fond memories of that year, probably because those who were interested joined in the discussions while the rest dozed or slept outright without fear of falling out of their seats. ..bruce..

MCQ–I am pretty sure my dad just got lucky. They didn’t realize I could hear, otherwise I am sure they would not have been talking about me. And of course, I could have gone the opposite direction and not attended at all.

Wait: does this mean that since I taught early morning seminary that I will one day be a mission president?! No no no no oh nooooooo!