For many, the Book of Mormon is a Broadway musical—not another testament of Jesus Christ. That’s a problem, says BYU AdLab faculty advisor Jeffrey A. Sheets (BA ’98), if you want people to take missionaries seriously and actually read the Book of Mormon. Noodling over ways to change the associations people have with the scripture, Sheets found that a simple interaction had a greater impact than billboards and commercial spots.

“If we use creative problem-solving to solve other things, like business problems,” says Sheets, “maybe we need the same type of thinking for hastening the work.” With the help of a student team, Sheets decided to use the book itself to change people’s perceptions, one page at a time.

Piggybacking on a round-the-globe field study experience already in the works, the group set up displays in Sydney, London, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Cape Town, South Africa, and asked passersby to participate in an experiment: read a single page from a Christian book and highlight mentions of deity. The students then asked participants for their impressions.

People of various belief systems—Christians, atheists, Muslims, and others—collectively read all 531 pages of the Book of Mormon. Their collective impression? This is a book about Jesus Christ. Some described it matter-of-factly, like Will, an atheist from Illinois, who read page 440 (3 Ne. 16:17–20; 17:1–9) and reported, “The page that I read seemed to reference the Old Testament, and I could see that it was talking about Jesus. If anything talks about God, this book does.”

Others connected the experience to their own beliefs, like Rafi, a Muslim from the United Kingdom who read page 430 (3 Ne. 11:31–41; 12:1). “This is the first time that I have ever read a page of Christian scripture. I think the page was good,” he said. “It shows that God is a God of miracles, not a God of punishment. . . . I believe that God is that way. He wants to help us. Reading this book has helped me.”

“The book speaks for itself,” says Sheets. “This is another testament of Jesus Christ, not because it says so here on the cover, but because if you read it, you’ll come to know for yourself.”

Now Sheets and his team are working with the Church’s Missionary and Priesthood Departments, prototyping and refining the experiment. In one test, the BYU team worked with missionaries and local young single adults to run a display in Georgia over three days. Elder Kirk, who had been serving for 23 months, calls it a highlight of his mission: “My whole mission I have been trying to get people to read the Book of Mormon, and in just three days I have gotten as many or more people to read from it than the whole rest of my mission.”

In a 2017 seminar for new mission presidents, Elder D. Todd Christofferson (BA ’69) shared a video about the BYU experiment and asked, “Given, then, that the power of the Book of Mormon comes as we allow the book to speak for itself, the question for you is, how will your missionaries get people to read the Book of Mormon and also to pray with real intent about its truthfulness?”

Advertising student Janessa J. Kincaid (BA ’18) says the project allowed her to see a meaningful purpose in advertising. “The reason why I majored in advertising was to influence people for good in a broad sense,” she says. “[The project has] been a good example to me of how even something as simple as reading a page has influenced thousands of people across the world. . . . It’s been motivating to me to keep thinking outside the box and continue on this career path of sharing goodness.”

Below, participants share their personal experiences with the experiment. Their responses are taken from their interactions with the BYU AdLab team.