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Transcript

[00:00:03] Mark: We didn't.

[00:00:04] Remy: Great.

[00:00:04] Mark: This was perfect. This was just. Let's. Let's visit and catch up.

[00:00:10] Remy: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Pastor Mark, thank you so much for willing to. Being willing to come back on to the show, huh?

[00:00:21] Mark: Absolutely. Thanks for the opportunity.

[00:00:24] Remy: Yeah, you're. Your episodes were some of my favorite last season.

Some of my favorite that, that I, that I've ever.

[00:00:40] Mark: Thank you.

[00:00:40] Remy: Yeah, I actually, I started watching a.

An ex Mormon and so many Mormons deconstruct into atheism, which is sad because they're just as lost. Right. And that's, that's so depressing. And I got to watching this girl on YouTube named Alyssa Grinfell.

[00:01:11] Mark: I think, yes, she is the up and coming ex Mormon influencer, if you want to call her that.

[00:01:17] Remy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She. I mean, I have watched probably most of her videos start to finish and there's long man. They're like, she puts out really long form content, but it's so captivating. And I'm trying to get her on the show honestly, just to chat, but she doesn't respond to my emails.

[00:01:37] Mark: Mine either, so we're the same boat.

[00:01:41] Remy: But I was watching one of her videos and it was something she said and I don't know if she worded it exactly like this or kind of like this, but it made me realize her videos that if you're a woman in the LDS faith, the best you can hope for. The best you can hope for is.

And it's, it's. I'm sorry, this is harsh and it's like a hard way to put it, but the best thing that there is for you in eternity is to be.

[00:02:15] Mark: A sex slave and perpetually pregnant. Propagating your worlds. Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:22] Remy: And that's it. And like that's for LDS women. That's like, that is LDS men are the ones that get all of the, all of the blessing. You get to be a God of your own planet and do all this.

LDS women, you get exalted, but your only purpose is to provide spirit children to populate the world. And you talk to LDS people about this and they. I've tried it a few times and they get really defensive because it's a very offensive thing to say. But then you ask them questions. You say, well, what does Heavenly Mother do in our daily lives?

Are we allowed to pray to Heavenly Mother? No. And then here's the real big one. Is there only one Heavenly Mother?

LDS doctrine doesn't actually clarify that.

[00:03:17] Mark: It doesn't. It is one of the most under expounded upon doctrines but overly embraced doctrines of Mormonism. And when it comes to specifically women that are leaving the church today, I would say Alyssa is really resonating with them because she's helping them unpack some of the trauma that they've experienced while in the church. And one that most would not have realized was just this trauma of like, you're on this path that you really felt was all about your physical family and bringing them together in this forever family. But the plan of salvation doesn't really work that way. You don't actually get to live with your physical family forever because they need to be doing the same thing as. As their own unique husband, wife, divine being entities propagating their own lives. And so, yeah, the whole facade of Mormonism and its forever families doesn't actually work even in their plan.

[00:04:20] Remy: It's heartbreaking. It's. It's really heartbreaking.

So you guys launched when. When we last spoke, we timed it to sort of coincide with the launch of a new thing y'all were doing called Jesus is Enough.

How's that going? Tell me about that.

[00:04:43] Mark: Yeah, so the crazy idea came about three years ago to film a number of ex Mormon now Christians sharing the stories of how they left Mormonism for biblical Christianity. And our crazy plan was we're going to film a bunch of content, produce it, and distribute it all within a year. We are two years in and we're still working on getting that content distributed. So last January, in the January of 2024, we did launch our first episode. And after that, it was about once a month until the summer and took a break. And we just released our seventh of nine episodes. Two more will come out in December to wrap up the story of Eric Briggs and his wife Emily. Three kind of episodes for their story, but overall, the reception has been very positive, both from Christians who are using it as a tool to better understand how to witness to and engage with Latter Day Saints. But we have also really hit our target audience of those that have one foot in and one foot out and really just need to almost see a different path that they could take, rather than going the path of so many before them into atheism or agnosticism. Recently we had a comment on one of the YouTube videos where a woman, frankly, it this way. She said, thank you for showing me a better way to go astray. And at first I thought that was a really intriguing comment. And then I thought about it more. I'm like, you know what? She's right. That's really what this is. And that's how we designed it is there is so much ex Mormon atheist angry content out there that does not lead people into a relationship with Jesus. And so we designed it to be the alternative for Mormons that are struggling in their faith to watch these. And we're finding them both. Those that were already headed out, those that are on their way out, those that didn't know they were on their way out, are reaching out to us in many different ways, directly through YouTube, over social media, by email, phone calls. We really try and leave our door open in as many ways as possible.

[00:07:03] Remy: That's awesome.

Really having the impact that you all were hoping for here.

[00:07:11] Mark: Yeah. In some surprising ways. We weren't sure with putting it onto YouTube as our distribution platform, what kind of viewership it would receive. And it has not necessarily received a viral viewership. The most views on any single episode right now are about 20,000, but maybe the average is 5. And what we would have to say is they are quality views in the sense that we are hearing from people that are saying, like, I have watched this whole thing with my family or with my extended family, with my congregation as a witnessing tool, or for families that are unpacking their faith, they pulled it up on their living room TV and watched the whole thing together multiple times. So we would say they're very quality views. And with the number of people that have watched, even the number that are reaching out for a time, we could not keep up with. And I went to our board of directors saying like, hey, we put this stuff out there and people are responding and I can't keep up with all of the people that need guidance as they're leaving Mormonism. And one of our board of directors said, mark, that's not a good problem. That's like having a suicide helpline that we've been advertising for. And people are calling and we're saying, no, nope, we're too busy working on more content and more advertisement to actually deal with you. And so we actually slowed down our distribution, slowed down any, any paid ads behind it. We're just coming back to doing that now because the blessing of saying this, this is being blessed by God. People are resonating with the content is. We were able to bring on three part time interns. They are all still in training to be Lutheran pastors. And now they are each serving 15 hours a week from their location in Mequon, Wisconsin. And it is just a cool blessing because we brought kind of a full time pastor on 40 a week really just to do evangelism. And they Oversee our social media channels. They respond to emails, they do phone calls, they meet with local missionaries. It has been a huge blessing this year.

[00:09:17] Remy: That's really awesome. That's so great to hear.

How are, how are the, how are the other arms of the ministry still doing, still doing well, I suppose y'all. Y'all still get out and do door.

[00:09:32] Mark: To door stuff and they really are. So we are gearing up for our annual mission trip to Gilbert, Arizona. We take a group of Lutheran high school students or college students on this one. Yeah, Gilbert, it is a very heavily Mormon populated area. So that'll take place in January. And then we're already gearing up for a new location, Idaho Falls, Idaho. We'll be going to this summer. We're expec...