Today we sit down with David Ostler, a former bishop, stake president, and mission president, and author of Bridges: Ministering to Those Who Question. Raised in a prominent Mormon family in Salt Lake City, Dave grew up surrounded by church leadership and expectations. He served a mission in Japan, married in the temple, and eventually became a bishop at just 33 years old.

Dave reflects on how his upbringing shaped his understanding of faith, authority, and what it meant to be a Mormon man. He shares the challenges of church leadership, including administering discipline and balancing the demands of his calling with family life. At this point, Dave is aware of the humanness of the church’s leaders and its institutional limitations and many challenges of church history, church teachings on race, gender, and polygamy. In nuance he continued along the path he had always understood to be right.

After retiring from a career in business, Dave and his wife Rachelle moved to India to do humanitarian work before being called to preside over the Sierra Leone Freetown mission. There, Dave presided over missionaries and members in mission districts and experienced the church in an entirely different culture with unique and surprising challenges. Sierra Leone is one of the poorest countries in the world and they were confronted with its poverty and illiteracy and were confronted with many questions about how the church operates in such a different world. When the Ebola outbreak forced them to leave their mission early, Dave and Rachelle returned home carrying an experience that would take years to process.

Then, be sure to turn into the next episode to hear where Dave’s story is today.

If you have questions about the episode, you can contact Dave directly at dbostler@gmail.com

n Part Two of our conversation with David Ostler (former bishop, stake president, and mission president), Dave continues his story after returning from Sierra Leone. He is called as Director of Historical Sites and with his wife Rachelle oversees the church’s historic sites in Palmyra New York. By this point, Dave is aware of many of the areas of church history that are troubling. While nuanced, Dave still considers able to live a consecrated life, as a faithful and devoted member.

Dave reflects on his evolving understanding of Mormonism, including his work researching why people leave the church and writing Bridges: Ministering to Those Who Question. What began as an effort to help church leaders better understand those who doubt eventually led Dave to question whether these issues can ever be adequately addressed by the church. He considers some of the great questions about what it means to be human and through that study, begins to reconsider the framework through which he has understood the world.

Dave and John also discuss religious certainty and Mormon truth claims. Dave sees church patriarchy as harmful and reflects on the negative way it has impacted him. In a similar way, Dave and John discuss the church’s treatment LGBTQ+ people, and the difficulty of building meaningful relationships across differences in belief. Dave describes how he has found purpose and meaning outside of religion and a belief in God.