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- [00:00]
A
Hey everybody. Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know about a really special event we have coming up. On May 9th at 7pm we're going to be hosting a benefit party at the Compass Gallery in Provo. And we would love to see you there. We're doing both live and silent art auctions featuring original pieces from many of our tradition's most gifted artists. So it's a chance to take home something beautiful and soulful while also supporting the work that we do here at Faith Matters. We'll also have complimentary mocktails, hors d', oeuvres, live music, and of course, great conversation. We would really love to gather with you. You can RSVP through the L the show notes and we'll see you there. Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. Today we're really excited to share a special episode with Jeff Strong on his brand new book called why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and what We Can Learn from Them. Research suggests that roughly 40% of formerly active, faithful members have stepped away from the church in the last 25 years and that the pace is accelerating. And Jeff Strong is asking why. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, he's found that again and again, disaffiliation is rooted in unmet spiritual needs, strained trust, and experiences of exclusion or spiritual starvation. Jeff's book is unflinchingly honest and genuinely hopeful because if culture is part of the problem, there's also something all of us can do to help. In this conversation, Jeff really challenges the assumption that people leave casually. His data shows actually that on average, most people wrestle for nearly a decade before stepping away. These are sincere, often private and deeply painful journeys that deserve to be understood with care. Jeff says that what we need are gardeners, not gatekeepers. He suggests that our role isn't to monitor who's in or out or how in or how out anyone is, but to tend to the kind of soil where faith can actually grow. And he helps us recognize signs that our cultural soil may have become compacted or depleted of spiritual nutrients. And he offers practical, grounded ways for everyday members and leaders to cultivate something more, nourishing a more Christ centered culture where people can grow and flourish. We are so excited that this book is finally out and we can't wait for you to hear this conversation. And now, here's Jeff Strong.
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B
All right, Jeff, thank you so much for coming back.
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C
Yeah, it's always good to be here. Yeah, yeah, always.
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B
I mean this. In some ways this feels like maybe the, the culmination when did we meet you? It's been five or six years.
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C
I think it's been five.
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B
Five years.
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C
Yeah. Five years.
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B
We've had several conversations.
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C
Yes, we have.
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B
You've done some very interesting things in the meantime. And this feels like a moment where a lot of those threads are sort of coming together.
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C
Yeah, I think. So.
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B
You're releasing a book?
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C
Yeah, I am.
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B
Maybe an interesting place to start. Would you mind telling us the title of the book and why?
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C
Sure.
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B
How that came to be?
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C
Yeah, sure. The title of the book is called Torn. Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and what We Can Learn for them. Writing a book is a hard thing to do. So by the time I'm done, I'll have revised it 20 times. You know, in fact, the last revisions are happening right now. And doing things like picking a title is really, really challenging. But I just felt like the word torn captures the spirit of the moment. And so I think Torn is a quiet reality. A quiet reality for many latter saints. Torn between their love for the church and somebody they love who stepped away. Torn between deep faith and belief and questions they're wrestling with. You know, torn between traditions that are deeply meaningful, them, for them, that aren't working the way they used to. And so, you know, we did an episode last March where we talked about tension, and tension is just a different way of saying torn. Torn between things we love and we can't figure out somehow.
- [03:43]
D
I think it's also helpful, and we've heard a little bit about your own family story over the years, but I think it's helpful as an entry point to understand where you're coming to this from, like, as a. As a dad first. And it feels like maybe that was your entry point into this whole world, which is normal for so many of us now.
- [04:03]
C
Yeah. You know, I think for anybody to understand what this is about and even remotely trust what I'm sharing and why I'm sharing it, they have to understand my personal story a little bit. And so I have five children. Three of my five children have stepped away from the church in my birth family. In other words, the posterity of my parents, 60% of my parents, posterity, no longer participate in the church. And so this is very personal for me, but it probably really started 13 years ago. And as you guys know, I share this story in the introduction of the book. So I was, you know, I was busily busy doing my thing as a corporate executive and checking email every morning like I always do. And all of a sudden there's an email from my son Cale. And Kale had just entered the mtc. And so I immediately knew, okay, something's wrong because he's sending me an email and it's not P day. And so I opened, I opened the email and I started to read and I couldn't believe what I was reading. And, and what he said is, I'm, I'm not going to do this. I'm coming home. And, you know, it's been 13 years and Kel's doing great and we've been on our family and has been on an extraordinary journey in all of this, and I feel grateful for that journey and I've learned so much and it's changed me, but I'm not. I'd be lying to you if I didn't tell you that that day was. It was a. It was a massive day, right? It was like somebody came into my house and ransacked it. And so I sort of sat there at my keyboard slowly going numb. And I don't, I don't know why, but I just had a sense this was about much. Something much bigger than him coming home from his mission. And I knew, I knew he was going to leave the church. And so that, that was the catalyst. Now I was serving at a bishop, as a bishop in Midway at the same, and it was in the River Road Ward and we had just formed the new ward. So I was meeting lots of people in the ward for the first time, and there were a number of Latter Day Saint families or members of that ward who were leaving the church. And so I'm looking at my son, I'm looking at these good people in the River Road Ward that, that were leaving. And none of them fit the profile that I had in my head at the time. Right. The, the profile back then was, you know, yeah, people have always left the church. The ones that don't have the faith and character to be Latter Day Saints kind of wash out and, you know, it's just a reality of life. None of these people fit that profile. These were, these were people who had been devout and faithful and committed, and they were leaving. And the way, the way my brain works is I just. If there's that much of a gap between the words and the pictures, my brain does not. It can't let that go. I like, yeah, I can't let that go. I need to understand what's going on. And so that started a 13 year journey for me of really trying to understand below the surface what's really going on in our church community with this Affiliation and why are people leaving, really? And I was trying to resolve the conflict between the words and pictures that didn't make sense to me back in 2013.
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B
I've never asked you this before, but okay, so 13 years ago. Yeah, that's when that story begins, about five years later. It sounds like you were called as a mission president.
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C
Yeah.
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B
Do I have the timing?
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C
Yeah, that's exactly the timing.
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B
So what. Where was your mindset at that time
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C
when you're called to be a mission president?
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B
Have. Is it. Are you still struggling with this reality? And it's you. You yourself are torn between these things you love?
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C
Yeah. Wow. Such a good question. I hadn't thought about it framed that way, but it's. So what happened in those five years is I continued to be a bishop. I continued to deal with people on these issues, and I was seeing it expand and kind of seep into my relationships and people in the communities that I lived and worked in during that period of time. I taught at BYU in the business school for two and a half years, and I was dealing with it with my students. You know, they, they had a sense, you know, as a bishop, and they had a sense for me having a perspective on this. And so I can't tell you how many conversations I had with students at byu. And then I'm not going to talk much about this, but the church actually grabbed me and asked me to come and help them for two and a half years on a major project they were working on that's in the, that was in the general vicinity of this issue. And so I, I spent two and a half years learning from Latter Day Saints and research around the world. And that deeply, deeply informed my perspective. How could it not? And then I was called to be a mission president. Right. And so, Tim, when I went on my mission, I don't know that I felt any tension about that. I was super excited to go serve. I had an amazing experience with the missionaries and we've talked about that before. You know, it's a rose gard. Right. Roses and thorns. But what I, what I did go out with is a perspective of I'm going to really understand this. I'm going to be with these young people every day for three years. And when I'm done, I really want to have my hands around what's happening. And so I've mentioned this before, but it's worth re mentioning. Being a mission president is like living in time lapse video. Right. You know, you see a flower that goes in the ground as a seed and grows and blooms and dies in a season. And that's when what it's like. I did four, more than 4,000 interviews. I read 50,000 pages of missionary letters. I did over 300 meetings with missionaries. And every single one of those is a front row seat into the lives of those young people and issues like the ones we're going to talk about today. And so I came out of there with a perspective. Right. About this affiliation, the journeys that people go on in their faith and what's working and what's not working in our church community and our culture. Yeah.
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B
Thank you.
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D
It feels like you could find a, you could find data to support whatever your opinion is. Sometimes, you know, you can find data that, that makes it look like the church is growing really quickly and better than ever and that everything is amazing. And then you find other, you hear other numbers that seem like they must be directly conflicting. But it, but it just feels like there's a lot out there and so it's hard to understand what's really happening. So I'd love for you to just kind of lay the foundation and give us, give us a lay of the land when it comes to disaffiliation.
- [10:38]
C
That sounds great, Aubry. It's a great question. So let me, let me start with kind of putting a, a stake in the ground on what we learned from our research and what we did to try to validate if our estimates are, are accurate. So what we wanted to do is we wanted to understand, we wanted to understand disaffiliation. Now disaffiliation is not just people that have their names removed from the records of the chur do that, but it's a relatively small number. You know, many people. In fact, David Archuleta just made a public statement as he's released his book that he's still a member of record and he's out, but he's still on the records of the church. And that's common. So we weren't trying to just pinpoint that. We were trying to look at people who had once been faithful and active who had disaffiliated. And so that would exclude people who never were active in the first place. To disaffiliate, you have to affiliate. And there are lots of people that never affiliate. So what we're talking about is formally active and faithful people that stepped away. And our, our research suggests that that number is 40% of formerly active and faithful members have stepped away in the last 25 years. Now we, we think that data is reliable. We Think in a degree of magnitude it's accurate. And we validated it in other ways. So, for example, Harvard does a study every year called the Cooperative Election Study. And then the Pew, the Pew center for Religious Research does the landscape studies every seven to 10 years. These are really large base sized studies and they provide data that allows you to estimate disaffiliation. And so our number is 40%. Harvard's number is 43% since about 2012. So a shorter timeframe, 10 years, you know, 12 years shorter, but. And an even bigger number. And then the Pew, the Pew study is 46%. Right. And so we look at those numbers and we say, okay, well, 40% is probably a reasonable estimate and reliable. But you asked about the conflicting narratives, so let me try to touch on those. So one narrative is that the church is losing members in droves and our demise is imminent. Okay, that narrative is false. That's just not true. And, and if I had more time, I could delineate a lot of the positives that are going on in the church and I'll, I'll reference some of those. But we could talk a lot. We could do a whole episode on that. The other narrative is that the church is growing in every conceivable age range and it's nothing but glad tidings. That is clearly false. Okay, and so why is it problematic to have those two narratives? And how do we kind of reconcile those conflicting views? I think it's problematic for two reasons. The first one is, whoever the messenger is on either of those messages, total demise or total prosperity. Generally, people know that they're not providing an accurate perspective, so their personal credibility is going to be hurt. So let's just say it's a church leader that says, hey, we're doing great. Never been better. People just know that's not true. And so they look at that leader as either being misinformed or selling. And either way, it hurts the credibility of the leader. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I really deeply want our church leaders to be credible, particularly the general church leaders. And so it's really vital that when church leaders speak, they speak accurately and completely. Otherwise, it diminishes their personal credibility. There's even maybe a bigger issue, though, and that is if you're a, if you're a member of the church, and I'll use a real example here, and you hear the prosperity only narrative, and that is in no way a reflection of what you're experiencing yourself, it has a very harmful effect on you. So I know a woman that lives in southern Utah that has eight children. She and her husband are completely faithful, have been their whole lives. They've done an amazing job raising their children, and they couldn't be better Latter Day Saints than they are. But seven of her eight children have disaffiliated from the church. And so how do you guys think she feels when she hears a church leader say, we're killing it? You know, there are no problems. We've never been doing better. What do you think she experiences when she hears that?
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B
She feels responsibility and shame.
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C
She does. She, she feels like she's failed. She feels like God has forsaken her. And, and she has no hope. Right. And, and see, I think those are damaging things. And here's the great thing. We can handle this. We can handle this. We are, we are strong enough and good enough to be able to embrace both sides of this truth and, and then go to work on the problem. Now, if you, if you continue to believe the idea there's nothing wrong, you'll never fix it. Right. In fact, you'll reinforce and maybe double down on things that are harmful.
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B
Could you take a second just to steel man both sides of the argument? Like what, what are you hearing from the people that are articulating that we're thriving and from the detractors?
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C
Yeah, there are, there are three. There are three thriving talking points that you'll hear a lot. One is that last year we baptized so many people and we did 309,000. That was the highest number of convert baptisms since 1997, when we baptized about 318,000. So it is, in fact true that last year we baptized a lot of people. And I hope that that's a sign of, you know, future success and, and growth. The second one is that we've never had more Latter Day Saint young people in church universities, seminaries and institutes. Now, I don't have that actual data, but I accept that as a fact. And isn't that a good thing? I mean, I taught at byu and I love byu, and I know the, the, the experience that most students have there is outstanding. In fact, I actually did research to understand how satisfied and happy students there are with the experience they have. And the same is true at BYUI and, and Ensign and BYU Hawaii. And so the more the better, in my mind. The third is that we've never had more missionaries serving than we do right now. And I think that's also factually correct. So that would be, that would be consistently what you would hear as the Positives. Now there's some wonderful people out there. Like I've recently met Justin Dyer, a professor at byu who's an awesome person and he's doing really good work in this area. And he would also cite that evidence from Harvard and Pew and some, some studies that, that other organizations including BYU has done that suggest that Latter Day Saints that are active in the church are experiencing lots of benefits. Right. They have higher indicators of religiosity, greater sense of purpose in life, stronger sense of spirituality. And all those things are true and they deserve being mentioned. Right. And so that would be Tim, that would be the straw man for. Yeah, for the prosperity. Yeah, yeah, sorry, the steel man. And so those, those things are all true. Yeah, they're just not the whole truth. Nothing but the truth.
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B
Yeah. You know, so maybe what are a few of the points? The counter arguments.
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C
Yeah, the counter argument. Well, the first one I start with is that disaffiliation is real and my research says that and so does Harvard and so does Pew. So the same studies we can look at that would show us about the abundance in the church also talk about disaffiliation. But if you look at convert baptisms, last year was the highest year since 97. But between 97 and last year has been a steady sharp decline in convert baptism. It hasn't been every single year because there was a blip when Mitt Romney ran for president.
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B
But other than interesting, a blip upward,
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C
there was, yeah, other, other than that, this, the, the trend has been down and then one of the most eye opening statistics is that converts per missionary, which to me is a better real indicator of missionary effectiveness. Even with the uptick, the last two or three years is half what it was 30 years ago. So you used to be converts per missionary. We're in the 7 or 8 range and now they're in the 3 to 4 range. In regard to students, as I said, I love the fact that more are in church universities, but the number of 18 to 25 year olds that go to church universities is less than 25% of total 18 to 25 year olds in the church. So it's less than 1 in 4. So what we can look at is we can say, well isn't it great that that that group, more of them are going, but, but it doesn't tell us what's happening with the other 75%. And then the reasons people go to church universities are more complex than they love the church and their faith is thriving. In regard to missionaries, I've been told by church employees. The number one driver behind missionaries serving in a given year is birth rates. 20 years ago. Right. So it's just how many, how many young people were born 20 years ago that, that then age into missionary service and then serve. And there are other factors as well. So I'm not suggesting there isn't a bit of a revival of missionary spirit in the church. I think that's probably true. But birth rates are a big factor. So Tim, maybe to. Maybe to put it in a numerical perspective. So if you take convert baptisms per year of like 300,000 ish, and that's a high. That's a high year in the last 30 years. And then child of record baptisms, another hundred thousand or so globally, that's about 4,000 people flowing in each year.
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D
Yeah, 400,000.
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C
400,000. Sorry, 400,000. So let's just take the U.S. chunk of that, because our research was only the U.S. the U.S. is. I'm keeping the numbers round to make the math simple, but if the US is about 40% of global membership, 40% of 400,000 is about 160. Now, my data, if, if it's correct, 40% over 25 years, that's a million people have left the church during that time frame, which works out to be about 40,000 people a year. Ish. So 160 coming in, 40,000 going out. Okay, now let's just move from a world where you hear these competing narratives and you pick one that you want to believe. Okay? I think that's a bad place to be. You know what? I think a better place to be is to embrace the complexity of both narratives and say, you know what, they're simultaneously true and we are growing and we are losing people. Now, can I tell you how it affects me? It makes me hopeful because what it says is, okay, the narrative of demise is false and the church is going to be okay. And it makes me want to get to work because the narrative of disaffiliation is absolutely true. And it makes me want to work on it so that we lose fewer people that we love.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And I just feel great. I just go, okay. You know, I actually felt terrible in the world of a conflicting narrative. Yeah, right. And I feel great now that I have clarity.
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B
Yeah. Okay, let's. I think now is a good time possibly to zoom out and say, what is. Is the goal of this conversation? What is the goal of your work? You just use the term lose people that we love. And I know, knowing you, that there is a thing that you mean by that? That is not necessarily what people might hear.
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C
Yeah, yeah.
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B
Like, you don't consider many of these people leaving to be lost, you know, in a, in an eternal sense, as, as I understand.
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C
Yeah, no, for sure not. And so thank you for hitting the pause on that. You know, I have three children who are out and in, in no way do I see them as lost. I have many, many friends who are out, and in no way do I see them as lost. They're, they're certainly not lost to God. Right. And I, I, I could tell you stories about how I see God's hand in, in all of this and in their lives in incredibly inspiring ways. Right. So that's not the, that's, that's not the sadness for me. Although I would tell you 13 years ago, that is not where I was at.
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B
Yeah, totally.
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C
Okay. That was not where I was at. And that's why I felt like somebody had come in and ransacked my house. But they're lost to us in the church community. Okay. And I believe that if we're doing it well, the church will be large, growing, healthy, a place of abundance, where more people and different kinds of people can come in and experience the incredible blessings of being a member of the church and living the gospel of Jesus Christ in a faith community. That's what I think our charge is as a church and as members of the church. So we talk a lot about the gathering of Israel. Guess what? There's a key concept in the gathering of Israel. Do you know what it is? Gather. And so if we have this mindset of sorting and sifting, and there are people who do. There are people, I mean, I've talked to people who just say, yeah, no, we know disaffiliation is happening, but it's just, you know, the wheat from the tares, the sheep from the goats, it's sifting, it's all good. And so we're going to have a smaller, more homogenous church. And, and look, I, I'm not suggesting that's not a legitimate perspective, but I have a hard time reconciling that with what I see as the teachings of Christ in the Scriptures. Right.
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B
I am curious, when you sort of look at the other side of that perspective, would a thriving church work for everyone? Are there when you are expanding the borders of Zion?
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C
Yeah. Are there, are there any boundaries?
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B
Yeah.
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C
You know, I, I, I think, I think there are. You know, realistically, I think there are. But when I die, I, I hope there's no evidence that could cause Me to be convicted that I was somebody that spent a lot of time trying to define where those boundaries should be, I would much rather be convicted of pushing those boundaries out too far. Right. And so where this, this is not an abstract question. Right. It's a question of real people in real lives. And so if, if we start talking about the people who have stepped away, my heart bleeds because I feel like I've. I haven't lost them as friends or family members, but I've lost something really special that I had with them that I no longer have. And when I think of the nature of their character, their capacity to contribute what they brought to the church community when they were part of it, we are not better because they are gone. So 40% have stepped away over the last 25 years. There are four primary buckets of reasons. And so I'm going to just give those buckets and then we can go from there. So the first reason is, I'll just call it lifestyle. Okay. And so it's about 6% of people who stepped away cite lifestyle as the primary reason. There, There are other reasons and we know that it's, it's complicated and many reasons play a role, but 6%, lifestyle, church history, 42%, church social positions, 33% and then church experience, 18%. Okay, now what we did is.
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B
And did that add up to 100 or is there a long tail?
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C
No, it does. It does add up to 100. So what, what we did is we asked people to give us their primary reason and we'd done a lot of qualitative research to identify the approximate buckets. Right. Or I call them wa. Beliefs in the book.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So we knew these were good categories, but then we supplemented that by just asking them, why did you leave? And we got open ended responses. And I mentioned to you in a previous episode that we got over 10,000 pages of verbatims. Okay. And then we were able to use AI to extract out of those verbatims some nuance and detail and depth on the issues. And so would it be helpful to just take a second and, and just make sure that we define what each of these four waves are? And I don't think we should spend too much time on this, but wave one, lifestyle, It's a feeling of being hollowed out. Okay. And so people talk about the culture feels controlling. I was experiencing mental health issues. I experienced shame and guilt. And there were too many demands on my time. Right.
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D
I thought that was so interesting because when I saw the category lifestyle, I thought it was like, oh, this is the classic narrative that once upon a time, I believe. Yeah, it's not even that. Even that tiny percentage.
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C
That's right.
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D
I love that. Feeling hollowed out.
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C
Now. I want to, I want to be honest and balanced because I don't want people to say, well he's, you know, he's not being balanced here. There are people in that group who left because they didn't want the lifestyle or responsibilities. But it's a, but it's a pretty small group and because that tends to be the trope. Right. Oh yeah, those people. I just wanted to put a number on it. Now a critic of this research would say, well that's not a very self validating reason. So there's probably a response bias there. I agree with that. So double it and ask you if it changes the conversation. It doesn't. Right. Church history. Nothing here that you don't, you don't know about. So it's issues with the way that we've presented the narrative of the restoration, some of the doctrines of the restoration, temple practices, polygamy, and then a really important one is not just the church history issues themselves, but the way the church leaders handled those issues over time. Right. And, and that actually is a really strong factor for a lot of people. They're saying, look, it doesn't matter to me if Joseph Smith did this or that or Brigham Young did this or that. What matters to me is that we didn't deal with, we didn't own that, we didn't talk about it in a more accurate, transparent way.
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B
And this is the biggest group.
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C
This is the biggest group.
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B
Do you remember demographically how that broke down? Like, like I, I'm sort of under the impression that maybe that's a bigger issue for millennials like us who like sort of came of age as the Internet, etc, but maybe Gen Z is a little bit more inoculated. We've been talking about these things.
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C
I think, I think, I don't know for sure, but qualitatively from talking to a lot of people and reading verbatims, this, this bucket is a bigger issue for men and for people who are a little bit older. Okay, okay. Consistent with. Right. The third bucket is social issues. And so again, I think predictable. The complex issues of sexual identity, gender equality, our history of racism, which obviously is also a church history question, financial transparency and then one that I think we have to be really sensitive with, but unrighteous dominion or abuse in the church. And it's not that it happens, it's if there's any perception that we weren't, that it was mishandled. So let's say a leader or a member is guilty of abuse or unrighteous dominion and it's not addressed. Okay. That's more the issue. People are human, they make mistakes. Even church leaders make mistakes. And so that's okay. But it's got to be handled properly or it causes a breakdown in trust. Right. Because they say, wait a minute, that was clearly wrong. But. But nothing happened. And so does that mean we're condoning it or we're sweeping it under the rug? So it's really more of a trust than a human weakness issue. And then to me, the most interesting one is church experience. And there's some complexity here, but people talk about spiritual emptiness, not feeling like they belong, feeling like they are being judged. There's a little thread here as well on singles in the church. The way I would characterize it is belonging is definitely part of this, but a big part of this is people not feeling like the experience they're having in the culture of the church is rooted in Christ. Right. Hey, this doesn't feel like culture that would come from Christ. And the church doesn't feel like the church of Jesus Christ should feel to me. Now, I want to be, again, really balanced here. This is sort of the tale of two cities because for people that the culture works for, they think the culture is very Christ centered and they are having a really good experience in the culture. Right. They love the culture, they see it as their culture. It lifts them, it edifies them, it inspires them. And that is absolutely real. And there's a different group that is not having that experience. And in a private. In a previous episode, we talked about the five Latter Day Saint belief mindsets and largely that's the underpinning of this. Right. People experience faith, belief, religion, churches differently. They need and value different things. So if you're in a church that's more institutional, so hey, we're focused on restoration, priesthood, keys, authority, prophets, temples, miracles. And you're a carpenter of Bethlehem, Latter Day Saint and you're going, where is, where is the Savior in that? Right. You're in the second group and you're struggling in your church experience.
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B
Yeah. So I guess this is kind of similar to my earlier question, but it, it does, does raise the question for me of if we can successfully sort of be all things to all people.
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C
Yeah.
- [32:06]
B
Can you create a culture that works for both groups? Like, we know this is similar to Jonathan Haidt's work in some ways, you Know, he examined. How does he, what does he call them? The five? It's just like essentially moral values, you know.
- [32:17]
C
Yeah, yeah. And I can't remember the label, but I read the book.
- [32:19]
B
Yeah. And like progressive people and conservative people, like just have different things that they, that they value. Is it possible to have a culture that works for everybody?
- [32:31]
C
So, Tim, it's a great question. And for me, based on what I've learned, you know, there is one version of the church that is, that defines acceptability as a Latter Day Saint narrowly and that defines orthodoxy in a very, very strict and rigid way. Okay. And, and there are arguments to be made for that version of the Church. Right. It will just be small and there will be lots of people that won't be part of that. Right. And so there's, there's this other version which is, you know, I'm going to take it to an extreme where there are no standards, everything goes there, there's no uniformity whatsoever. And then the church is just chaos and a mess. I'm, I'm not advocating for either one. I'm advocating for a balanced approach. And we'll come back about that a little bit with the metaphor of cultura soil. But, but many of your listeners would be familiar with this great quote in essentials, unity in non essentials, liberty in all things, charity. That to me gives us a way of thinking about what might be possible in our church. And so I, you know, elder now President Uchtdorf, but elder now President Uchtdorf has numerous times given beautiful talks where he's talked about the core of the gospel versus important things that are not the core and the need to focus on the core. And I think that's the spirit of what we're talking about. So when we take that core and we start to make it really big and we start to include lots of things that might be not primary doctrines or just tradition or social norms and expectations. We make the requirement. In other words, we really expand things that ought to be left to our liberties. Right. And as we do that, we will push people out of the church.
- [34:35]
D
I love that. Yeah.
- [34:36]
C
I'll give you this back to you.
- [34:37]
D
Okay, tell us. Let's talk about the soil metaphor because this is something that carries through the whole book and it, and it feels so useful and it also feels so, feels really flexible for whatever your word situation or family situation is. This seems like something that's a, it's a really useful way to think about your church experience.
- [34:53]
C
Yeah. So I, you know, it's been a couple of years ago, I was drafting preliminary manuscript manuscripts. And. And so I was sure I shared some of them with you and other good friends. And. And of course, I shared them with my family, and I shared them with Kale. And so, as you know from having read the book, I. This. This is not a critical commentary on the church as an institution or on church leaders. I don't talk about a single doctrine or policy. I'm laser focused on the culture. Well, Kel read an early manuscript, and he came back to me, and he said, well, you know, you. You're framing this as a culture problem. And he agrees, by the way. But he said, you've terribly. You've done a terrible job of making your case. He said, you don't even have a chapter on culture. You haven't run culture as a thread through the narrative of the book. And so it's just. Just. It's just kind of a weak book, you know, and said, like only a son can say. And. And he and I. And at that point resonated with me. And then he said, dad, have you ever looked up the etymology of the word culture? I hadn't, and I'll bet you haven't either, and I'll bet none of your audience has, because you asked 10 Latter Day Saints what culture is. You'll get 10 different answers. So I looked it up, and what it means is dirt. Okay? And so it comes from, like, the 13th or 14th century Latin, a word, kolair, that literally means soil or dirt for the purpose of growing things. And just a light went on for me, and I just said, oh, my gosh, that's exactly what this is. Because obviously a healthy church community needs to. The reason we have a church right is to help people come unto Christ and in. In the church thrive and grow and. And have these transformative things that allow us to become like our heavenly parents. Parents, right? That's. That's the end game. And so in as much as the experience we have in the church does that we have healthy cultural soil, the plants are thriving, and in as much as it doesn't, then we have some opportunities, right? And this isn't about right or wrong or good or evil. If you frame it that way, you're gonna. You're gonna miss the point, and you're gonna not be able to address it. So how does soil help us understand that? Well, what is. What does soil do? The first thing soil does is it provides protection and stability for the roots of the plant. Well, that's kind of the institutional side of the church, that's institution, organization, handbooks, leaders, authority, decisions, direction, policy, curriculum. Right. We need all of that. And that holds us in place as members of the church. Otherwise, we just fall over. Right. But what's the other role of the soil? Soil, it's to nourish. It's to feed the plants and make sure they grow. And by the way, it hold soil holds nutrients. It also allows access to oxygen and water. Right. And so if. If we have a culture that's so focused on protection and stability that it becomes compacted and depleted, we hold those roots in place with an iron fist, and the plants die because they can't get any nourishment. Right. Now, on the other hand, if all we have is nourishment and no protection and stability, the plants may have food, but they just fall over and they fail a different way. And so we have this incredible soil in the church, the culture, and it has so many strengths. And we could just do an episode on all the strengths of church culture. In fact, we did. We talked about that last year. I mentioned a bunch of them. But. But it isn't nourishing the way it is for everyone. It is very nourishing for many. And if you like protection and stability, you're feeling pretty dang good right now. And if you like the kind of nutrients that are in the church's cultural soil, right now, you're feeling really good. But if what you need isn't there, you're struggling, you're feeling tension, your church experience isn't good, and you're trying to figure out, wow, how come this isn't working the way it did for me in the past, or the way I need it to, to really feel a connection to the divine things.
- [38:57]
D
Yeah. I think that's such a great metaphor. Yeah. Especially because some of the things that feel like weaknesses are. It's what's always true, that it's a strength overused. And so it feels like it gives you eyes to see what needs to be tempered as opposed to rejected completely.
- [39:12]
C
Yeah. Let me. I. I agree. Let me. Let me just do one thing really briefly that I think would be helpful. I'm. I'm gonna. I'm going to just make two quick points, and we'll flash up a chart to help people kind of wrap their minds around this. So 40%, four waves for people that go through this, it's really, really hard, excruciating. And so there's been another narrative out here that people are a little bit flippant about this and maybe they're lazy and they just, they encounter some issue, maybe a church history fact, or maybe they have some social issue and boom, that's it, the balloon pops, they're out. Nothing could be further, further from the truth. And so in our study, what we learned is 36% of people that have been through a faith transition like this spend a hundred plus hours over several years. Wow. Before they take some definitive step. We even, even more impactful is 49% characterize their experiences having spent limitless hours over five plus years. And we think the average time from kind of first concern to tangible step away is a decade. Wow.
- [40:24]
D
Really?
- [40:25]
C
Okay. And so people wrestle, struggle, work through these issues with incredible energy and intensity, with an overwhelming bias to stay right. That's, that's their quest, that's their mission. And in the end they just can't figure out how to resolve these excruciating tensions that they're experiencing. And, and it's also really interesting where, where they end up. And so I'll just briefly hit that as well.
- [40:52]
D
And can I just say while you're looking that up, that I, I mean that, that just makes it so clear that like the, the worst thing that could happen in a conversation with someone who has wrestled for end. What did they, what was the category? Endless hours. Over a decade.
- [41:05]
C
Over a decade.
- [41:06]
D
To feel, to, to feel like the energy you're getting back from someone you're entrusting with this wrestle is that, that there's suspicion that this is about worthiness or laziness or like, like I cannot imagine something. I can't imagine, like what would be more hurtful after, after such a, such an endlessly painful wrestle, like to, to, to get that back. That this must be because you're lazy or this must be because you're struggling with some kind of worthiness thing. Like, I just feel like that was, would, that would be such a wound in the relationship with the person. But of course with the church too. Like that would do nothing but push you away.
- [41:47]
C
Yes. And obviously we had a great conversation with our good friend Joseph about this and we know that a significant percent of these conversations go badly. And so in that episode we provided some incredible insights and tips on how to make sure we don't do that. But you know, personal confession. Guess what I did when I saw Calzino, right. I was a bishop, you know, and I, you know, I thought I had the world, you know, firmly in my hands at that moment, prior to that moment. And so I fired back an email where I gave him all the answers, you know, And I don't regret that because I was a product of where I was and my understanding at that time, it was all rooted in absolutely the best of intentions. I loved my mission. It changed my life.
- [42:38]
D
Yeah.
- [42:41]
C
I just wanted my son to have the same experience and to get the same benefits I did. So I was. I was Tevia, and I was explaining to my son why he just needed to do it and go with the flow. And I still have both emails, right. And I look at the email I wrote in response, and it's full of love and good intentions, and it was utterly ineffective, and it was hurtful to him.
- [43:14]
D
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up, because you. In. In a lot of ways, you've opened yourself up to be a really helpful example. And I. I think in a. If we step back even more, I think this is. Your story with Kale is so hopeful because it shows. Like, even for both of you, there were. There was not a dead end, like, for Kale. Like, he's growing and flourishing outside of the church. And you're here and writing this book after that experience, just giving Kale all the answers, and it just feels like that's always the moral of the story, that God works with it all. You know, he.
- [43:48]
C
He does. I. I believe he does.
- [43:49]
D
Yeah.
- [43:50]
C
And. And so, you know, 13 years ago, I saw this as a tragedy, like, a huge tragedy. And Sarah and I, we thought Cale was, you know, immature, selfish, blinded, and we were so deeply concerned for him. And now 13 years, I can look back on that, and I say, oh, my gosh. I mean, what an incredible, painful, but ultimately transformative experience we've had together as a family. And I look at Cal's journey through this, and it's been. I don't want to kid you, it's not been easy. And he's had a lot of pain and suffering through this process. Less about spiritual crisis, more about leaving a community that he had been nourished by for 19 years. Right. That's a big deal. And I look at how much I've learned and grown from this and how it's reshaped and transformed my faith in a really positive way. So I don't look back on it now and say, well, it was a traged.
- [44:54]
D
Yeah.
- [44:54]
C
I look back on it and say, well, this is. God knew this was going to happen. And it just took. It took me five years to figure out that God knew that, you know, and to get on board and start to try to learn the lessons that God was Trying to teach me.
- [45:07]
B
Yeah, I think when I, when I think about my own experience, there's definitely the aspect of talking with others and you know, making that or like, like we talked about in the conversation with Joseph, like how can we make those positive experiences, but there's also a simultaneous other experiences happening, which is just the internal struggle, sort of like the self chastisement of. I shouldn't be harboring these doubts, I shouldn't have these questions. And it feels, in my own experience, it began to feel urgent to me. Like I started out with a bias toward wanting to go back into my comfort zone. Wanting to stay.
- [45:38]
C
Yes.
- [45:38]
B
Like wanting to know for sure that everything I thought was true had been true all along. And then I sort of moved into a place where it's like I need relief from this wrestle. Regardless of what.
- [45:50]
C
Yes.
- [45:51]
B
I just need to know.
- [45:52]
C
Yes.
- [45:52]
B
You know, is it true or is it, is it all made up? And those were the, it was, you know, very binary thinker at that point, obviously. Yeah. And so I wonder how's that go, by the way? Yeah, it worked out great. I'm not going to tell you guys the answer, but you know, I got there eventually. But.
- [46:06]
D
He's kidding.
- [46:07]
B
I'm joking. But like, I think maybe there's some virtue. I'd love for you to talk about this, Jeff, in just normalizing that wrestle.
- [46:16]
C
Yeah, yeah, I, I, I'd love to. And, and this, we've said a lot so far in this episode and now, now we're probably talking about the most important thing, right? Because the numbers, the numbers are what they are. And the reason we share the numbers is so that we can be grounded in reality. Right. We can have an accurate map of prosperity and disaffiliation. We can have the hope of prosperity and the wake up call of disaffiliation and we can enjoy one and go to work on the other. And so what, what then do we do? You know, I, I'm deeply moved by Christ's parable of the wine and the bottles. And so the, the most complete version of it is in Luke, chapter 5, verses 37 and 39. So if it's okay, I'd just like to read it and I'm going to kind of read it slow so that, that people can process. Now the context for this is he is bringing change into the established religious community of his time. You know, that's probably an understatement. Right. He's bringing some major change. And so they had institutions, traditions, rules, laws, social norms, and he came in and he was very disruptive to those. And people were struggling with that. That, Right. They were feeling tension, not unlike the tension that Tevye and his family went through. And so here's what he said. He was trying to help him. And he said, and no man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved. And then he adds a little zinger at the end. And no man having drunk old wine straight away desireth new, for he saith, the old is better. Okay, now, Tim, what you're talking about is you've got this situation where it's either this or it's that, and it's got to be this or it's that. And so I've got to figure out, is it this or is it that? And then years go by and you don't have an answer. Right. And so what I've learned is, guess what? It's not this or it's that. There's some new paradigm that allows you to hold that complexity without feeling like it's tearing you apart inside.
- [48:48]
B
Yeah.
- [48:48]
C
Right. And that's what Christ was teaching here. Okay, so you. You were experiencing some heavy doses of new wine. Wine, metaphorically, of course, heavy, do I presume, heavy doses of new wine. And you were trying to jam them into your old bottles, and it didn't work, did it? And what Christ taught is if you do that, you might, only you might, you're going to burst the bottle. So you're going to lose the faith that you had, but you might lose the wine as well. You might lose the new things, the growth, the things that I'm giving you so that you can learn and grow. And so what he was inviting us to do here is come up with the new parad time. Right. And so for me, we're gonna. We're gonna talk about that a little bit in the next phase of this, where we talk about the imbalances in the soil and how do we. How do we deal with that? I just want to be really honest. I don't have answers. You know, I. What I have is I have some really good questions. And this. The first thing you gotta do when you're solving it is you gotta get to the better question.
- [49:49]
D
Yeah.
- [49:49]
C
And then that allows you to start working on, well, what's that new perspective I need? I also think that the culture of soil metaphor puts us in to find those answers. Right. Because I really deeply Believe from my own experience as a member of the church for more than 60 years, my ecclesiastical experience, my. My experience as a husband, father, friend, and my research. The key here is balance. It's not picking a side, right? The soil has to have protection and stability. The soil has to have nourishment. We've got to have both. And so how do we figure out how to do that?
- [50:23]
A
Would you.
- [50:24]
D
I want to shift into the practical side of this whole conversation, but would. I would love to hear a couple of questions. You want to invite people to really consider if they're, if they're recognizing ways that they're on in this situation or that they have family members and they're, they're feeling that torn feeling. What are some things that they may find fruitful to start considering?
- [50:46]
C
The first thing that I would tell them is you are. You are okay. You're 100% okay. And so when you're feeling these tensions and conflicts and maybe it's. Look, maybe the, maybe the lifestyle isn't really working for you, or maybe you have church history concerns or you disagree with church, you know, positions or, or policies on social issues, or you, you don't like the balance of institutional versus, you know, Christ like centeredness. If you're feeling tension, you're perfectly normal. You're okay. So just like, take a deep breath and go, okay. I'm okay. You know, number one. Number two, you have so much company, right? You have so much company, and so you're, you're not alone. Number three, you need a new paradigm, right? And so you've got to figure out what's that new. What's that new bottle that I'm going to put my old, my new wine into a really interesting piece of data that I'm. That I'd like to share now, if it's okay. So of the people that took our survey, 56% are still active in the church, 44% are out. Okay. And I'll talk about both groups because they're really interesting. In the first group, 25%, so that's 25 of 56 are true believers, all in zero conflict.
- [52:05]
D
Okay.
- [52:05]
C
Okay. Now we, we all know people like that. That was me at one point in time, and I'm grateful that that happens. And, and, and I respect the experience they're having, and I think it's awesome, you know, and I just wish that I was still in that group, right? Because my, my, my sense of my identity and experience in the church was much simpler and easier when I was in that group. Right. And then what happened to me is life happened, and all of a sudden I was dealing with complexity that, that, that I didn't have answers for. The second group is 13% of the 56% are people that, that are active and believe most things, not all things, but they're mostly content. Okay. So they're, they're, they're, they're not feeling tremendous tension. Here's, here's the interesting group. The third group is 18% of the 56% no longer believe what the church. The church is what it claims to be. So 18 of 56 no longer believe the church is what it claims to be. Be. But they're still active. Okay? And so in, in a typical ward, almost a third of the people in the pews are in this group. So just let that sink in for a minute, okay? They love the church. They're active in the church, they're participating for whatever their reasons are, and they're good reasons, but they no longer hold some of those foundational beliefs that they did at one time. Time. Right now. We'll come back to that in just a second. But I think that that's so important right now. Let's talk about the 44% that went out now. Some. Sometimes the narrative is, well, you know, when they leave, they just let go of everything. They, they toss aside their LDS values and it's a total train wreck. It's, it's just not accurate. Right. So of the 44%, 7% become active members of another Christian denomination. So there are, it's not a huge group, but there are people that do that. My daughter Samantha most frequently attends a Methodist church in Dallas, for example. 13% of the 44% believe in a higher power, but worship in their own way. So they've kind of stepped back from institutional religion, but they're still very religious, just not institutionally religious. Now, sometimes we trot out this trope of, of, oh, yeah, that, that, that group that's spiritual but not religious. That's a misrepresentation of what's happening. They are deeply spiritual and deeply religious, but they are not institutionally religious because they've lost the belief that institutions are good custodians of belief. So they're not less religious and less spiritual. They just are done with institutional religion. Okay. And then the, the third group, which is the biggest, 23 out of 44. So just than half become atheists or agnostics. So folks in these groups continue to be people that have high character, great values. They find meaning in a variety of different ways, service in the community, relationships, family, volunteerism, nature. And. And they. They would certainly reject the characterization that they've let go of all the good things that they got from their church upbringing. In fact, many of them continue to say, wow, my mission was transformative in my life. I love the experience I had as a Latter Day Saint youth. I had some fabulous bishops and other church leaders that had a huge impact for good in my life. And I hold those values dear. Now, speaking of people that I know well, that are close to me, that's true for all of them. Right. None of them. None of them have gone off the rails. Yeah.
- [55:52]
B
Yeah.
- [55:53]
D
Okay, let's. I. I'd love to get practical with the time that we have left.
- [55:57]
C
Yeah.
- [55:58]
D
So I feel like the practical side of this conversation is really a. It's really a conversation about how to have better discernment about what. What you need in your soil. And so you've got these polarities that I think are really useful because they. They're alive in our families and in our. And in our wards. So maybe let's jump into how to recognize what's needed.
- [56:20]
B
Yeah.
- [56:20]
C
Yeah. So the reality is people are stepping away. This is a common thing, and you're not doing something wrong if that's happening in your family or with people you love or if that's you yourself. Right. I want to just read a quote that I got in an interview, because it's not informational, but it's spiritual and it's a heart thing. And so I interviewed a mother whose son left the church right after his mission. Right. So son comes home, he's out. And it took a while because, again, we're not good at having these conversations. And his mother is very, very devout, incredible person. And here's what she said to me. His hurt, confusion, and even anger came from the feeling he had been lied to. People he loved and trusted were not honest with him. Not so much about doctrine or church history, but exaggeration of blessings, distortion of what really matters in God's eyes, and obfuscating the simple path towards the light of Christ. Okay. I was really profoundly impacted by that quote because I think it captures the essence of what we're talking about here. So there are people that are aware of the church history issues that stay. There are people that disagree with the church's position on certain social issues and stay. And it's because there's something deeper that's keeping them connected to the church as an institution and to the church community. And I think that's what we're trying to, to get to the reason that I think that's so important and it's really a hopeful me message is if you go back to the 4 waves lifestyle, we're a high expectation faith. And so if that just hollows you out and it's not working for you, you're probably not going to be happy here or you're going to have to take breaks, you're going to have to step away and come back. And so I don't know that there's a whole lot we can do there other than more kindness, more compassion. And we certainly are capable of that. Church history, it is what it is. Okay. We can't change our history. We can change how we talk about it. And that's a culture thing. But the history itself isn't going to change. You know, the, the church has changed its position on social issues numerous times. You know, polygamy, for example, the priesthood and temple prohibition and, and you know, two weeks ago announcing that women can be Sunday school presidents. Right. So change comes, but it happens very gradually and very slowly. And usually it's not, not rank and file members of the church that initiate that. Right. So that's not really within our control. But culture is, right? Culture is. And so dealing with the culture challenges we have is something that each and every one of us can work on. Culture starts in your own heart. Right. So if nothing else, you can fix the culture in your heart, then it moves to your relationships, your marriages, your, your friends, your, your children or your family members. It's possible to create extraordinary culture in a home. Home. And one of the things that I think is really powerful is there is some social science research that suggests inside any faith community, ours or others, that culturally healthy homes retain a higher percent of their children long term than culturally unhealthy homes. The more orthodox the home is, the more likely it is the children will disaffiliate.
- [59:56]
D
That is so wild.
- [59:58]
C
And that's not an lds this piece I got from an LDS piece of research, but it's. There's a book called New Copernicans that lays out the research on that. In fact, 80% of evangelicals that are raised in very orthodox homes leave their family church within the first year of leaving their home. They go to college and they're out.
- [60:16]
D
Wow.
- [60:17]
C
Right. And so that's. That, that raises a question about what's going on culturally in that home that is, is causing people to disaffiliate.
- [60:26]
D
Yeah.
- [60:26]
C
And so, you know, back to the soil, Aubrey.
- [60:29]
D
Yeah.
- [60:33]
C
The first, the first tension in the cultural soil is this idea of acceptance versus standards. Right. And one thing I wanted to spell right up front is nothing I've seen in my research or that I believe in my heart or my head suggests that our standards are problematic and we need to lower them or, or eliminate them. Standards are really important. The issue is that when they're used to sort and sift people instead of love and lift people, we deprive people of the sense of belonging and acceptance. They need to grow spiritually. And so I don't know, have you ever been on the receiving end of that? Have you ever been. And it may not be a church thing. It might be on a, maybe you're on a soccer team as a kid or a school group or whatever, where, where for whatever reason, you are not embraced by the group.
- [61:25]
B
Absolutely.
- [61:26]
D
Yeah. I mean that, I think that fear is present, like in our own tribal brains, that fear is always a part of.
- [61:32]
C
Yeah. And so, and so if, if that's what you experience, can you imagine trying to grow in your faith, belief and spirituality in an environment where the community that you're part of is rejecting you? Okay. And guys, the rejection is not obvious. Like, we don't say, okay, if, if this is you, if you have these characteristics, we'd prefer you not calm. So how, how do we, how do we subtly create hard and unyielding soil where they cannot get root? I, I have a missionary and I wrote about this in the book named John. And John was one of the absolute best missionaries we had. So incredibly Christlike, so committed, loved the Book of Mormon, gifted teacher, and just the spirit that he radiated was consistent with the spirit of Christ. And so when you're around John, you're like, man, John is such a good guy. I just feel good when I'm around John. And I got a call from a family member of his a couple years ago that said, hey, he and his wife have kind of stepped away. And so he's married and he's doing his career now. He's doing great. They've got three kids. Kids. And he said, would you reach out to him? I said, sure. So I, I reached out to him. We had like a three hour video call and he shared a story that I want to share with you. He said, I was recently asked to speak in a sacrament meeting. And so what, what I did is I, I, I shared my deep love for the Savior and my testimony of the rest of the doctrines of the restoration. How much I love the Book of Mormon, how My discipleship and my faith has altered my life. What a great experience I had as a missionary. And then I said, as to the rest of it, I just don't know. I hope that the restoration happened the way we said it did. I hope that we have prophets on earth today. I hope that all of that is true. I just don't know. And my faith is rooted in Christ and his gospel. Gospel, which I've received from the church. Right. And I mean, that's a really vulnerable, honest way of expressing one's belief. And then he sat down and his stake president was at the meeting on the stand and decided to interject himself into the meeting. So he stood up and I'm paraphrasing, but he essentially said, brothers and sisters, you just witnessed a young man that's in need of rescue feeling okay now. Jonathan is really bright and very humble and accommodating. And so he was really quick to say to me, I was not offended. And I know that stake presidents have a lot on their plates and I know that he was being motivated by good intentions, but he said, so it wasn't that one moment. It's a pattern that my wife and I have experienced in our time, you know, on the Sunday block, primarily where we just feel that our way of being a Latter Day Saint, the way that we believe, isn't acceptable. Right. And so we're just uncomfortable at church. And so we've. They haven't stopped going completely, but they go a lot less. Right. To me, that's an illustration of the subtle ways that we communicate to people that your way is not good enough.
- [65:01]
D
Yeah.
- [65:02]
C
Yeah.
- [65:03]
D
I think that's so helpful that. So when you sense that that's what's happening, it feels useful to see this on a spectrum, standards and acceptance, and know that probably it's time to lean toward the acceptance end of the spectrum.
- [65:17]
C
Yeah.
- [65:17]
D
If this is where.
- [65:18]
C
Yeah. So that's a case where the soil is too focused on protection and stability. That state president was probably worried. Okay, well, well, you know, if I don't correct this, then, you know, maybe other members will. Maybe it's contagious. So I'm going to correct and contain. And by correcting and containing, he communicated to Jonathan that you're not. Your, your way is not acceptable. Yeah. Right. So what, what do we do with that? And I. And boy, I. There are so many places in the church that are doing this so well. Right. So I don't think it's rocket science. But, but we have to remember that standards exist to inspire Us and lift us to higher ground, not to grade us and sort us into categories. Yeah, right. And it's so easy, actually. You know, it's. It's the cultural tendency pushes us one way and our hearts actually lead us another way. Just follow your heart.
- [66:10]
B
Right.
- [66:10]
C
Latter Day Saints know how to love people. And our missionaries used to do something kind of interesting. So they're teaching people, and they're frustrated because these people aren't complying and being the kind of. Of investigator the missionary wants them to. And so they would start to try to make the person be what they wanted. And I would see that in how they would teach. And I. And so I, I said, you know, they're children of God. God created them, and they. They know how to grow. That's. That's. That was inculcated into them in their DNA by the Creator. And so what you're doing is you're going up to, like a flower and you're trying to pry open the petals to make them bloom and process. You're killing the flower.
- [66:55]
D
Yeah.
- [66:56]
C
And so your, Your job is to make sure that flower is getting sunlight, make sure that flower is getting water and maybe a little fertilizer. Yeah. But you let that flower bloom on its own timeline. Right. And you need to trust that God is in charge and God. God created the capacity for blooming in that flower, and you don't need to get in the way. Right?
- [67:19]
D
Yeah.
- [67:19]
C
And so this is pretty simple. Simple. And so we have to. I know it's overused, perhaps. We have to meet people where they are. We have to love them where they are. We have to recognize that we all have different paths and ways of developing as children of God, and we have to respect those paths. And we have to know that they're good. Right? They're good. Okay, well, look, let's hit the other three imbalances. And if it's okay, I'm going to hit them a little bit with less depth so we can spend more time talking about, well, what can we do? So, growth versus sanctuary. So the question is, are we preparing people for real life or are we protecting them? I want my grandchildren prepared for the world. I do not want them protected from the world. There are challenges in the world. There are things that we should be afraid of and scared of, but the point isn't to run from them and flee to the bomb shelter. Right. It's to stand and face them and be prepared to deal with them. And so that is the essence of the second imbalance. Are we a bomb shelter or are we a school? Right. Is this about sanctuary or is it about growth? The third one is agency to fealty for versus fealty. Fealty just means obedience where agency has been extracted out.
- [68:38]
D
Wow, that's a good way to put it.
- [68:40]
C
Yeah. And so that's all it is. And so what, what really is, how, how do you take the doctrine of agency, moral agency, which is a foundational, maybe the foundational doctrine of our faith, and reconcile it with the culture that expects us to follow? Church leaders. Now, I love church leaders. When I, when I think about the, the leaders that have had a transformative impact on my life, most of them are church leaders and they've had a huge positive impact on me. But how do we balance the idea of retain, retaining the responsibility we have for our own lives, not abdicating that because we're guilty of fealty. Unconditional, unthinking, unsearching, unwrestling conformity to what church traditions and leaders suggest. Now, President Oaks has addressed this very clearly and he, he said, yeah, don't do that. Right. He said my role in a talk at BYU several years ago, he said, my role as an apostle or a general authority of the church is to teach correct principles about the gospel. And I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I'm going to do that without apology. Okay. And it's not my job to deal with all the exceptions. And there are exceptions, but it's your job to deal with those exceptions. That's your wrestle, right? You need to deal with that. So what I loved about what President Oaks did there is he acknowledged the tensions. He clarified his role as an apostle and our role as members. And he said there's room for both. Right? Yeah. The last one is harmony versus conformity. And that is we are, we are all created by God as unique and individual tools. And Christ himself invited us to be one, to come to a unity of the faith. Okay. There's a way to do that that doesn't diminish, harm and destroy our uniqueness as people. And there has to be more than one way to be a Latter Day Saint. Because if they're not, if there isn't, we're going to lose a lot of people over this issue. And so let me just give you a real simple example that I know you can relate to. If you feel overwhelming pressure to conform to something that you're not, then you have a choice. You can pretend that's called pretense or you can leave. Okay? Those are your Options. But new wine and new bottles would suggest. Maybe there's a third alternative which suggests no. We could actually respect value, embrace how people are different, including the way they come to belief and live their beliefs without sacrificing the unity that we have in the church community. Right, but unity around what? Right? Unity around a love for God. Being disciples of Jesus Christ, living the gospel of Jesus Christ with enthusiasm and deep commitment and all of those things. Or unity around dress and grooming standards? Right? Now, look at me. I'm that guy. I wear a white shirt, tie to church. I cut my hair short. I can't grow a beard. So I, I, I get that. But, but when we start to mandate those as conditions of acceptability, we have a problem. And so, Aubry, let's, let's shift gears to just some simple principles that might guide us. Number one, remember, it's a balance issue, right? So for hard and unyielding soil, the acceptance. Balance. Nurture with more acceptance. Lead with belonging. Quiet. The sorting. Okay. It'll be okay. The sorting comes from a fear brain, right? The amygdala starts firing, and that stake president stands up and says, I need to contain what just happened with this, with this young man, right? Natural man. Put it off. Yield to the spirit.
- [72:27]
D
Yeah.
- [72:27]
C
Okay. The second one is if the soil. The soil is shallow. Right? The imbalance of sanctuary versus growth. Focus on Christ more than just tradition. Right? Let your roots grow deep. Normalize struggle. It's good. Growth comes out of struggle. Don't try to protect people from the struggle. Tell them to embrace it. You embrace it. And then look to Christ and the gospel for helping you transcend the struggle. Third, if the soil is crowded, the agency imbalance. This will sound scary to a lot of people. Reclaim your agency. You were never asked to give it away in the first place. The culture convinced you to do it. I don't know of any senior church leader that would say, we expect you to abdicate your agency. So just reclaim your agency and then recognize that it's not in conflict with sustaining and following church leaders. I love them. I follow them. They're my greatest teachers. But I don't expect them to make my decisions for me in my life. And if, if I did, they wouldn't do it. And then the final.
- [73:35]
D
Can I just say I. That one is so. That one feels so important. I don't know if this is just like where it was hardest for me, but it feels like this. That is such a sacred thing that we get, we get real flimsy with
- [73:47]
C
Yeah, I talk about this in the book, so I'm going to talk about it now. But I've known Elder Bednar for a long time, so I first met him in 1994 where we moved to Fayetteville, Arkansas. He was my neighbor and my stake president. We met David and Susan and their wonderful family, and. And from time to time, I have reached out to him when I'm dealing with something hard, okay? And doggone it, he will not tell me what to do. And I. And I've literally gone to him and said, this is the issue. I need to know. I need to make a decision. And I. And he will not bite. Bite. He does not bite. You know what he does do? He's given me really incredible questions to wrestle with. He will reaffirm my good intentions. I'm literally handing him my agency on a silver platter. And he will not take it. He has a deep, profound respect for people's responsibility to lead their own lives. If the soil's too uniform, gosh, we have to find a way to make room for difference, right? You know, we talked before in a previous episode, the five different Latter Day Saint mindsets. Wouldn't it be great if we could follow Paul's counsel and embrace the full body of Christ and recognize that there are different ways to be a Latter Day Saint and see value in that instead of seeing it as a threat, embrace it and use it to make us better instead of trying to homogenize it. And by the way, I really believe across these four imbalances, my experience with Latter Day Saint community is we already know what to do. It's our natural inclination to balance the soil towards nourishment. In fact, I know that is. Our research overwhelmingly supports that. That's how most Latter Day Saints feel. And then the culture pulls us back to protection and stability. So now that people might be more aware of that cultural tension in the soil and the institution, the institutional part of the culture is pulling us this direction and our hearts. And I think the teachings of the gospel are pulling us this direction, trust this direction a little bit more, and rebalance the soil.
- [75:59]
B
I was going to ask you to clarify who your audience is, but I think it's clear, like, you're speaking to all of us, right? It's like Latter Day Saints. We're all part of this culture.
- [76:08]
C
We are.
- [76:09]
B
Maybe in lieu of that question, then could you paint the vision for what is available to us as a people? If we be. If we can do these things, if we can create a nurturing, healthy, Soil
- [76:20]
C
with all of the different what might happen, humbly, I'll just share maybe not a vision, but a hope. So if we can. If we can get acceptance, right, if we can get transcendence, right, if we can get agency, right, if we can get unity, right, far more people will stay. And it. And, and as we've talked, it's not because them leaving means they're lost to us, but they'll stay because the culture will work for them and they will feel nourished here. They will feel more connected to Christ, more connected to their heavenly parents, and more comfortable and at home in the church community. And then we can enjoy the fellowship and association with them. We can benefit from their talents and their contributions, and we can have a greater sense of connectedness with them. Number two. Two. There are a lot of people that have left the church and there's this, I think, unnecessary and unhealthy divide between people who have left and people who have stayed. Now, there are plenty of people navigating that, fine, with love and respect, but couples have divorced, parents have disowned children, children have cut off parents and friendships have fallen apart because of these issues. That, that doesn't need to happen, right? But we need a new bottle to hold this wine. And so we've got to come up with a construct that says, you know what, if somebody I love steps away, I can deal with that with respect and love and appreciation, and I can focus on the things that we hold in common. And there are so many that there doesn't need to be this massive divide between those communities. When I listen to the dialogue in the community about those from those two camps, boy, there's so much divisiveness and there, there are some people in the middle trying to bridge, but most aren't right. People have squared off and they're firing missiles at each other. And I think that's what President Nelson in part was talking about. He was talking about politics as well. Can we please be peacemakers? Right? And so we, we share the same children and grandchildren and neighborhoods and soccer teams. And so, so there has to be a new bottle that we introduce here for us to hold this new wine that we're dealing with.
- [78:38]
D
Thank you so much. It feels it's empowering to have specific ways to go be a cultivator, you know, instead of just receiving the, or noticing, recognizing, defining the problem. It's just, it feels empowering to recognize the ways that we really have a lot of capacity to affect the soil.
- [78:56]
C
So, yeah, thank you you so much. For the time to talk about this. I. I hope people will get a lot of value out of the book. You know, I. I'm not. I didn't write it to move the church. You know, it's not my place to try to move the church. I wrote it to help individuals and families that are dealing with this and with the hope that they can. They can embrace some of the principles and cultivate better soil where they are.
- [79:18]
D
Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Jeff.
- [79:19]
B
Thanks, Jeff.
- [79:21]
A
All right. Thanks so much for listening. We really hope that you enjoyed this, this conversation with Jeff Strong. We have only scratched the surface of Jeff's work in this conversation. There's so much more in the book, and we really can't recommend it enough. Torn is available right now on Amazon, or you can go to tornbyjeff strong.com for bonus content and testimonials. We are so grateful to Jeff for all of the years that he has spent listening and learning and trying to understand something that affects so many of us. We hope that this conversation stays with you. Thanks again for listening.