Introduction and Jesse's Motivation for Speaking Out

Part 1 of 2 · Ep. 673

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Hello, and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin. It is November 16, 2016. My name is John Dehlin, and I'm super excited to have you with us today for a very interesting and fascinating and special interview. I say that every time, and I mean it every single time. Today I have with me Jesse Stay. Hey, Jesse. Welcome.

Jesse Stay [00:00:26] Good. Well, glad to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:30] Jesse's super cool for a number of reasons, but the main reason we're interviewing him is because Jesse worked with and for the LDS Church and its affiliates for a number of years, sort of leading up their social media initiatives, including Facebook and Twitter and those sorts of things.

John Dehlin [00:00:50] He's got a really fascinating insider's view on how the LDS Church sort of entered into the modern age in terms of social media, working with PR and various departments within the church on how to figure out how to deal with things like the Joseph Smith Papers project with general authorities and their own personal social media accounts with the I'm a Mormon campaign. Lots of different projects Jesse worked directly on.

John Dehlin [00:01:21] And so we're really excited to talk to Jesse about that. We're also going to talk to Jesse about his own faith journey, about, you know, how his testimony has evolved over time and his relationship to the church and sort of what contributed to that.

John Dehlin [00:01:38] And we'll just sort of have a great story and learn from a dear person. So I'm really excited. Jesse. I thought it would make sense to begin by just sort of explicitly stating your intention. There's going to be a lot of people that want the dirt here. There's going to be a lot of people that want the church to be thrashed and battered about.

John Dehlin [00:02:03] And my sense is that's not what your intention is. So why don't you just spend a second to talk about why you wanted to come on Mormon stories and talk what you are trying to do and maybe what you're not trying to do.

Jesse Stay [00:02:15] Yeah. So, I mean, for one, I've gotten a lot of pressure from various people wanting me to do something, and I kind of did feel a little bit of a need to address that and to respond. But I really have two main intentions. The first is I get a lot of people asking me my story. I get people that want to know why I left. Both members, family members, ex Mormons, current Mormons, and they want me to tell my story. And I even posted this on Facebook that I was going to be doing a major podcast and asking people to share what they wanted. And there was a lot of curiosity on Things that people wanted to know about why I would leave the church.

Jesse Stay [00:03:01] After working for the church for three years, being a lifelong member, my grandpa was practically a general authority. And I've got a lot of background behind me that involved mostly the church. So I want to tell my story of kind of why I chose to leave, why I chose to go. But my second intention is I do think there's two sides to this amongst the Mormon community. There's a lot of misattributed and wrong perceptions of those in the ex Mormon community and I want to kind of show some of some of that and why in how someone that was once many of these people's friends why I would leave and that I hope they can see that I had good intentions and good reasons in doing that.

Jesse Stay [00:04:02] And this is just one story of many, many other ex Mormons. And there's a process we go through. Sometimes we are angry, sometimes we are bitter, but it's because it's part of that process that we're going through. I'm hoping I could show some of that. At the same time, I think amongst ex Mormons there is some misperception of Mormons as well and how the church works and how the church office building works.

Jesse Stay [00:04:29] I'm not going to deny there are things that the church has done and is doing that I disagree with and I think is wrong. But at the same time there are, I saw a lot of good intentions while working there and a lot of people that are truly trying to make the world a better place. So I think there's a little bit on both sides and I kind of want us all to meet in the middle and have a group hug and get to know each other a little better.

John Dehlin [00:04:55] Beautiful. As you work in the high tech industry and with various clients around social media and as you're an employee of the church, I imagine there are even legal sensitivities, but also professional sensitivities. When you do an interview like this, talk a little bit about what those sensitivities are and how you're going to try and navigate those waters.

Jesse Stay [00:05:18] Certainly so, I mean, I certainly don't want to reveal any or divulge any secrets or confidential information that I worked for a company, I worked for a business, I worked for a company, and like any company that anyone has worked for, you have a legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality of the things that you work there. So my intention, and I'm going to try my hardest to keep that confidentiality throughout this.

Jesse Stay [00:05:53] And at the same time, I have respect for people that still work there. I don't want to betray anyone that is currently working there. So I'm going to try and do my best to stay a little broad on some things while working for the church. I'm going to approach it in many ways. I have a little bit of a different perspective now and a little bit of a different bias now than I used to. But I'm going to try and approach it in many ways to how I would have done it if I were interviewed by you when I was working for the church. And we'll see how far we can go with that and see what we can do.

Jesse Stay [00:06:24] But I really want to respect my employment at the church and respect. I want, just like any job I've ever had, if it was confidential, I'm not going to reveal it, but mostly out of principle. But there are legalities around that too.

John Dehlin [00:06:43] Beautiful. Okay, so let's. What I'll just say to listeners is that this will probably be a two part interview. The first part of the interview will be Jesse talking about his background in the church, his ancestry, his experiences in the church prior to working for the church. And then the second half of the first part will be him talking about what led to changes of belief and then participation in the church. And that'll end part one, Part two. We'll actually dedicate to discussing his time at the church as an employee and what his experiences were. How does that sound?

Jesse Stay [00:07:24] That sounds great to me.

Pioneer Heritage and Family Background

John Dehlin [00:07:25] All right, so let's start talk a little bit about. You have a really interesting heritage in terms of some of your ancestors and their role in the church. So let's start there and then move into your life in the church.

Jesse Stay [00:07:37] Sure. Sounds good. So I am a descendant of Orson Pratt as well as Heber C. Kimball as well as one of Joseph Smith's wives. It was. What was her name? Lucinda. I got it written down, but Lucinda. Oh, what was her name? Lucinda Kimball.

Jesse Stay [00:07:59] She remarried. She was polyandrous with Joseph Smith originally. Her original husband didn't know about the marriage. And as far as we know, and, and we don't know much about the time with Joseph Smith other than she was married to Joseph Smith. After Joseph Smith died, Heber C. Kimball married her and took her out west and her husband wouldn't.

Jesse Stay [00:08:32] I think it happened where her husband originally was unwilling to go out west with the saints and as a result Heber C. Kimball betrothed her and. Is that the right word? Anyway, they married and were sealed and she went out west with Heber C. Kimball. And her husband actually went out chasing them at winter quarters at the time.

Jesse Stay [00:09:00] And I think that's when he actually found out about her getting married to another man. But lots of crazy stories around that. But my family history is church history. Orson Pratt's entire story, whether true or not, around Sarah Pratt.

Jesse Stay [00:09:23] Supposedly the first time Orson Pratt left the church was because supposedly Joseph Smith had made a pass at Sarah, his wife, and Orson found out and ended up leaving. That's long story short, and there are debated versions of the story around that.

John Dehlin [00:09:47] Now, is this family lore that you learned growing up in the church?

Jesse Stay [00:09:50] It's family lore that I learned growing up in the church. And there's a lot more details out there if you search for it. I am not the biggest expert on history. I can't tell you every detail of history.

Jesse Stay [00:10:01] You talk to my wife, who is a history major, she'll do it. And she's going to kill me for saying that, but she's smart on that end. And I am not a history expert by any means, but that's the folklore. Heber C. Kimball, of course, settled majority of Salt Lake City. He owned majority of the land downtown for quite some time. His grave site is still out there.

Jesse Stay [00:10:30] And then orson Pratt settled St. George when they got out here. But Orson Pratt ended up becoming champion for polygamy after he came back. And both of them multiple, multiple wives. And the extended family reunions usually have some polygamous family that attends the family reunions.

Jesse Stay [00:10:54] So a long family history, church history background with that. And then my other side goes to other pioneers that aren't quite as famous, but also had various parts in Doctrine and Covenants and other things.

John Dehlin [00:11:10] So significant Mormon credibility. You score well on the Mormon Credit.

Jesse Stay [00:11:16] The first 12 apostles, I think, gets up there. If there were royalty, I guess I'd be a descendant of royalty.

John Dehlin [00:11:26] So talk a bit about your grandpa.

Jesse Stay [00:11:28] Sure. Yeah. So a lot of people know my name from my grandpa. It was named after my grandfather.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] What was his name?

Jesse Stay [00:11:34] His name was Jesse Stay. And he was. He was the. He led BYU Motion Picture Studios from the late 70s, early 80s. He succeeded Judge Whitaker, Wetzel Whitaker, who started BYU Motion Picture Studios. My grandpa was over the films like the Mailbox, the Telephone Call. He was over Mr. Krueger's Christmas. Mr. Krueger's Christmas.

Jesse Stay [00:12:05] And it was a big time in church media publication at the time when the church was really starting to get out there in terms of media. And he made a lot of progress with that. And there were varying politics that caused him to leave.

Jesse Stay [00:12:22] A lot of it was very similar to what I saw when I worked for the church in that multiple departments ended up doing the same things he was doing. And he didn't see the need to stick around after that, from my understanding.

Jesse Stay [00:12:36] But great man. I still look up to him so much. I'm honored to have his name. He was a colonel in the Air Force. He's featured in the book Unbroken by Laura Hillebrandt, whatever her name is. And he was in Louis Zamperini's squadron during World War II. They flew B24s across the Pacific.

Jesse Stay [00:13:12] He participated partially in the rescue squadron for Louis. And of the like 12 or so people that were in their squadron at the beginning of the war, only four people survived. Two of those were Louis Zamperidi and Philip. I always forget his last name, who was with Louis in the book.

Jesse Stay [00:13:33] And then my grandfather was the third and the fourth went home with, I think, tuberculosis. So he was lucky to be alive. An excellent, amazing pilot in the war. And he came back, did some stuff with the military. After that, he led public affairs.

Jesse Stay [00:13:55] He was one of the leaders of public affairs over the Dugway sheep incident for the Air Force. He was the one that convinced the Air Force to at least admit. They never really admitted, but at least research into what the cause of the sheep dying out at Dugway randomly were. And as a result, I think a lot of those farmers got reimbursed from that. I believe, if I remember the story right, he was in charge of the.

Jesse Stay [00:14:32] While doing the same role. They did a lot of investigation. This was at the Pentagon. They did a lot of investigation into. There was a whole Air Force UFO task force at the time. And they would go and investigate every single UFO incident. And he was. He made the announcement that the. Or he was part of the announcement that they ended that task force. They were going to end that task force. And he said to his dying breath that every single incident that they investigated had some sort of credible explanation to it, that there were no evidence of UFOs and everything they did.

Jesse Stay [00:15:13] He ended up. My timeline's a little off, but he ended up with being asked to lead and start BYU's ROTC program. He was the first colonel. I think that's when he became a colonel. I believe he was the first colonel over at BYU's ROTC program.

Jesse Stay [00:15:39] Multiple callings in the church. He was. He was a bishop, stake president, mission president. He was a regional representative over the Los Angeles area. He was in the Los Angeles Temple presidency. He was a Sealer in the temple. He had his second anointing.

Jesse Stay [00:16:02] I don't know much about that, but he was on the general Sunday School board with Elder Nelson when Elder Nelson was the Sunday School president before he became an apostle. He had nothing but fond feelings for Elder Nelson. And I talked to Elder Nelson briefly once, and Elder Nelson said the same thing about my grandfather, which was kind of fun. I love my grandfather.

Jesse Stay [00:16:28] He was. I think I covered the majority of it, but just, I mean, both in and out of the church, he was seen as a great man. And I still see him as a great man to this day. He's one of my life heroes.

John Dehlin [00:16:46] So is it fair to say that maybe when you eventually went to work for the church, you were inspired by him as sort of a model for that?

Jesse Stay [00:16:53] Yeah. I often wish, when I worked for the church, I often wished that I had him to rely on. He had died a couple years before I started working for the church, and I would have loved to share and swap stories with him because I did some research when I worked for the church, and there were people that had worked with him that were still working for the church when I was there. And I'd asked a few people about him. I talked to family members about his experiences, and it sounds like he came across a lot of the same politics that I came across while working for the church.

Jesse Stay [00:17:28] He came across a lot of the same bureaucracy that I came across. He still thoroughly enjoyed his time there, but he. He definitely had his challenges at the same time. I think that we had similar missions in many ways. He was in charge of much of the church's growth and media at the time. And when I worked for the church, I kind of saw myself with a very similar mission. That getting that word out to the masses was. Was an important task for me at the time.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Just two quick things. Just a coincidence. My stepfather, he's been married to my mom for over 30 years. Donald McCulloch was an Air Force colonel and he was over the BYU rotc.

Jesse Stay [00:18:23] Oh, okay. I bet they knew each other after

John Dehlin [00:18:25] your grandpa, so I'm betting they knew each other.

Jesse Stay [00:18:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:28] And then also you mentioned in your notes that he was the voice of Elohim in the temple.

Jesse Stay [00:18:35] Oh, yes. Yeah. So he was the voice of Elohim. That used to be. When I was working on my own personal name, SEO, because I do my own stuff as well here and there that was a thorn in my side when I was Mormon was the ex Mormon sites that would point out the people behind the different characters in the temple and my grandfather was listed there. He's in IMDb as well. Is the voice of Elohim in there?

John Dehlin [00:19:07] I did not know that voices in the temple ceremony were in IMDb.

Jesse Stay [00:19:13] Yeah. If anyone has a copy of that film, I want it for my personal collection.

John Dehlin [00:19:17] Just because I know a guy. I think I know a guy.

Jesse Stay [00:19:22] I couldn't even get that while working for the church.

John Dehlin [00:19:28] Cool.

Jesse Stay [00:19:28] So.

John Dehlin [00:19:30] And you write in your notes that you also had some other grandparents or people who worked in various church callings. So it sounds like a really deep.

Jesse Stay [00:19:42] I've got a very good family, very deep Mormon family. I have a lot of family that aren't Mormon too. So I've got a really good mix in my family. But at the same time it's deep, deep Mormon roots within my family, like

John Dehlin [00:19:56] a lot of us. So talk before we jump into kind of how things started to shift for you. Maybe talk about just briefly, you know, did you have a good experience growing up in the church? Did you ever have a traditional testimony? Were you ever a true believer? And if you want to set the stage for the positive aspects of your church affiliation, just so people, you know, don't want to assume that you never had a testimony or you were just offended or took the church lightly. Talk about whatever you want to about your experiences with the church before.

Growing Up Devoted in the LDS Church

Jesse Stay [00:20:38] So I mean I was born into a devout Mormon family, as you're aware. I My entire life I was deacons, quorum president, teacher's quorum president, priests, quorum, first assistant. Very involved in Boy Scouts within the church. Growing up I was clerks and bishoprics. Tom Eagle. I'm an Eagle and at age I actually had everything about the project up until almost 18. Right before 18 I got my project.

John Dehlin [00:21:15] Then you just went down a tiny.

Jesse Stay [00:21:16] I know, I know in the credibility but I've been a scoutmaster since I'll tell that in a second. But I the But I've been clerks in wards. I served a mission in Thailand. My mission president was Michael Goodman, who's over the Some of the he does talks on doubt and such for BYU at the moment and he's known for a recent BYU devotional he did on that Very smart man. I actually really look up to him. I think he's a smart guy, genuine decent guy that I think is really.

Jesse Stay [00:21:58] I still look up to him. I think he's a good man. Smart too. I said that on my mission. I was in branch presidencies. I've had just about any calling except maybe bishop or anything about that. I was Terrell Givens was my bishop for a while.

Jesse Stay [00:22:31] I was his Sunday school president. Fiona was my. Was my gospel doctrine teacher. It was an amazing word. Talk about leadership roulette. That was a good one. I wasn't really doubting at that point though. In fact, I had no clue the caliber of what the Givens knew when I worked there.

Jesse Stay [00:22:57] When I was in their ward, I, I was actually in Gee. Is it John Gee, John Gee's ward. When he became bishop in Provo, I was in his ward. For those that don't know, he's over the papyrus and Abrahamic Egyptian studies at the time of his farms. I've Noel Reynolds, who was over farms, was my stake president before my mission.

John Dehlin [00:23:35] Overall, how would you describe kind of before working for the church, kind of what the church meant to you and how you felt about it and what your testimony was rooted in.

Jesse Stay [00:23:45] So to me, I really was a strong believer up until probably a year or two into my marriage. In fact, I was even still, I consider myself a strong believer after that. But I was a strong believer. Long story short, I was a really strong believer before I worked for the church. I had one period of doubt before I worked for the church where I started to question a little bit about the transition from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young and whether Brigham Young. I started to realize not only do I have to have a testimony of Joseph Smith, but because of all the different transitions within Mormonism after Joseph Smith died, I've got to figure out, is Brigham Young a prophet at that time?

Jesse Stay [00:24:28] And I went through a really a little bit of a tough struggle around that for a brief time before I worked for the church. But beyond that, and I got over that, came up with my own reasoning that mostly based on spiritual experiences and such that that were the reason I stayed. I had many spiritual experiences in the church. We can talk about those more if you want. But yeah, before working for the church, I was very much a believer.

John Dehlin [00:25:01] And just the church meant what to you?

Jesse Stay [00:25:03] It meant. It was. I believed it was God's true church on earth. I believe that it was a. That it was that I had to believe in order to get into heaven. In order to live with God, I had to be righteous and live the commandments. I believe that. I believe that I had to be a firm temple recommend holder, attend the temple regularly. That fulfilled my calling. I was diligent up until the end. I was very diligent in every single calling I had. And it really, I mean it was the world to me. I didn't Know much else. That was everything. That was everything I ever knew.

John Dehlin [00:26:06] Would you say you loved it?

Jesse Stay [00:26:07] I absolutely loved it. Yep.

Early Doubts and Faith Crisis

John Dehlin [00:26:11] Okay, well, so what changed? And when. When did things start to change for you?

Jesse Stay [00:26:17] So I'd say the little incident of Brigham Young and figuring out the transition from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young really started some of the questioning process for me that actually centered around. I was Some of my career. I started out as a software developer and ended up in digital marketing.

Jesse Stay [00:26:40] Back in my software development days, I built a few Facebook apps. And one of those was a religious Facebook app that I built. It was called. I think I called it the I'm a Mormon app or We're Mormon or something like that. This was before the I'm a Mormon campaign.

Jesse Stay [00:26:59] And. And it was just a little app you could put on your Facebook profile and share that you're Mormon and who you are and pick your favorite scripture and display that. And I actually sold that. I don't think I'm allowed to disclose who I sold it to, but I sold that and ended up making. But I retained the rights to the code so I could make it for other religions. I actually made a bunch for Protestants. I made one for Baptists. I did one for Catholics. And as I was studying about the beliefs of these individual religions, I started to come across all sorts of negative.

Jesse Stay [00:27:44] Not necessarily negative, but just historical information. I hate saying negative when it comes to history, because it's history. It was historical information about the church, things about Joseph Smith. Things in particular about the transition from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young and to Strang to Joseph Smith's son.

Jesse Stay [00:28:10] And starting to realize that I had to come up with my own testimony. And that kind of started some of the questioning. And it kind of always retained in my mind. I came up with a conclusion on that in the end. And when I.

Jesse Stay [00:28:22] And what ended up happening is that stuck around. I took a job with the church. Long story short, your brother actually convinced me to work for the church.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] What's his name?

Jesse Stay [00:28:33] I don't know if I'll let. No, Joel's his name. Joel Delin. And Joel convinced me.

John Dehlin [00:28:41] Was he persuasive? Was he charming and charismatic? He was highly intelligent and handsome.

Jesse Stay [00:28:46] He was highly intelligent.

John Dehlin [00:28:47] Was he tall?

Jesse Stay [00:28:49] He was a little tall.

John Dehlin [00:28:51] A little tall.

Jesse Stay [00:28:51] Looked a little bit like me.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] Not a lot tall.

Jesse Stay [00:28:54] I think you're taller.

John Dehlin [00:28:56] Okay, I like that. Keep going.

Jesse Stay [00:29:00] But ended up being convinced to take a job. I actually was on my own working. I was both consulting for other companies, and I had a website I ran called social2.com that we built tools for companies to manage their Twitter presence basically. And I basically gave all that up to what I thought was originally going to be a six month stint at the church. Took the job at the church and told myself I was going to be there until the momentum was gone or until the momentum was going for social media in the church. Ended up there for a total of three years.

Jesse Stay [00:29:45] And as I was there, I came across multiple experiences that really started to tear away my testimony of the current modern day church again bringing me back to is Brigham Young's church the right church or not? And long story short, that's what really started some of the questioning after I worked for the church.

John Dehlin [00:30:07] Just one sec. Some people may not know. So my older brother Joel worked for Microsoft for many years and after he did super well there, the church recruited him to be their, eventually their Chief Information officer. So my brother Joel, during a lot, most of the time Mormon stories was around he was the head of IT for the church, general manager and over the church's software, computers, satellites, communications, all that stuff, that was Joel's role. And he loved working there. And from everything I've heard, people really loved the job he did.

Jesse Stay [00:30:43] He was basically the CIO for the church.

John Dehlin [00:30:46] Chief Information Officer.

Jesse Stay [00:30:47] Chief Information Officer, yeah. And he did a great job. He was good. I loved having Joel as a boss there. I'll save some of the details while I work for the church for later. But long story short, by the time I ended working for the church, I had a different testimony than I started working for the church. I actually still believed when I stopped working for the church, but it was more based on at that point, okay, I've had all these spiritual experiences that I've got to reconcile. So as a result, and I felt the spirit.

Jesse Stay [00:31:31] So the church has to still be true in some way. The priesthood's still there, the church is still God's church. It's just led by very imperfect leaders even currently. And I kind of maintained that for a little while and just within the last maybe two years, multiple experiences ended up happening that really pushed me over the edge and made me really have to even challenge that.

Jesse Stay [00:32:02] Number one was my dad. My dad ended up divorcing my mom. And. I still don't know to this day as to why and probably doesn't matter. And that really hit really hard to me. It was just tough to go through even as an adult that they were, they went through the divorce.

Jesse Stay [00:32:36] And what really started to affect my testimony was, was that number one, he was able to leave my mom, and again, I don't know his side of the story, so I'm not going to talk too badly about him here, but he was able to leave my mom and they never. And he was never forced to. His church membership was never challenged. His.

Jesse Stay [00:33:08] He was never disciplined for any of that. And there are people that get divorced all over, so I was willing to kind of forgive that. Divorce is extremely common in the church, and people have varying reasons. I still don't know my dad's exact reason for why he left, so I was willing to get up. But then this year, he got remarried in the temple to his new wife. And he never revoked the ceiling with my mom, in essence.

Jesse Stay [00:33:38] And I don't even have a huge problem with that anymore at this point, other than in essence, he's practicing polygamy, and the church is unwilling to admit the fact that they practice polygamy. You push them on it, they'll say, oh, we never denied that we practice polygamy. But they're not open preaching it. It's this thing that they embrace as members, but they're unwilling to embrace it as an organization if that's what they believe in.

The November 2015 Policy and Its Personal Impact

Jesse Stay [00:34:08] So that really hit me hard earlier this year, and it really started to shake my foundation as to, is this really the church I want to be in? And I started to really start to question at that point, because you felt

John Dehlin [00:34:23] like the church wasn't being honest because

Jesse Stay [00:34:24] they weren't being honest, because. And then other things started to come out to me that I realized that if the church isn't being honest, I need to be honest with myself in every place I can. So I started to again go back into my roots of the things that I didn't know about the church and realize there's so many examples of this beyond just polygamy that are reiterated over and over and over again in the church. And then November 8th or 8th, November 8th, that happened with the policy on gays that didn't 100% shake my testimony, but it heard it. And that. Adding that. Adding, adding.

John Dehlin [00:35:21] What didn't you like about that?

Jesse Stay [00:35:24] The November 8th policy? It's. I have friends, good friends, who are gay. Some of them were married before they were willing to admit they were gay and have since divorced. And these friends can't. Their kids will never be able to be baptized. And I think they would like to see that at the same time. And this isn't the case for everyone, but I have other friends that want to remain Mormon. They want to be active in the church, but they want to remain gay. They don't want to deny the fact that they're gay, and they're willing to forego some of their own membership for that.

Jesse Stay [00:36:11] In order to be themselves and be who they are, and their kids can't get baptized, they will never have the full privileges. And it just reiterated to me that gays will never, at least in the foreseeable future, have the full privileges that heterosexual individuals in the church will have until something changes significantly. And that hit pretty hard as well.

Jesse Stay [00:36:41] It was really my parents, my dad's resealing that really got me thinking about these things. It took me to a deep point where I really started to be a little bit more honest with myself on these things. And I started to realize that I was moving faster than the church was on a lot of things. And by being a member of the church, I was being held back for my own progression in these. I wanted to support my gay brothers and sisters.

Jesse Stay [00:37:13] I wanted to love them. I wanted to talk about my feelings about that on social media. I wanted to talk about how to treat my fellow man more as Jesus Christ wants me to treat them and talk about that freely. I have an audience of lots of people, and I like showing love to these people.

Jesse Stay [00:37:36] And I couldn't do that as a member of the church. And when I realized that, I started to realize I need to start making some decisions here and get to a point where I can increase my progression. And this entire time, I feel like whatever the Spirit is, it guided me to this point. I felt the same feelings as I was making these decisions, as I did when I was working for the church, when I had intense spiritual experiences. And I've come up with some explanations for that that we can talk about. But basically, whatever the Spirit is ended up leading me to the point I feel more enlightened, I feel stronger.

John Dehlin [00:38:20] Before you jump to that, you've written about how this November policy kind of struck your family even more directly and personally. Do you want to talk about that really quick?

Jesse Stay [00:38:33] So a close family member ended up attempting suicide twice this year and for. Twice for.

John Dehlin [00:38:45] Why did they attempt.

Jesse Stay [00:38:49] There were some. There was. There was some homosexuality related. Related to some of it. I won't get into too much detail on it, but I just wanted to

John Dehlin [00:39:00] tie it to the November thing.

Jesse Stay [00:39:02] Yeah. And. But. But. So. So there's a personal level to some of it.

John Dehlin [00:39:09] Okay. Okay.

Jesse Stay [00:39:13] All right.

Response from Local Church Leadership

John Dehlin [00:39:13] So maybe talk about what happened once the November policy and the suicide attempts started making you feel more passionately like you wanted to open up. How was that received?

Jesse Stay [00:39:30] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:39:31] With your local leadership.

Jesse Stay [00:39:33] So I started to. I started to become a little more liberal online. Started sharing a little bit more of my real feelings online. I was. I didn't feel I was really posting anything apostate per se. In fact, I still had a little bit of belief left at that point.

Jesse Stay [00:39:51] But I ended up. I shared a post on Facebook about. It was the Rolling Stone article with Tyler Glenn's video trash in it. And the only thing I commented was something to the effect of I see a man who's hurting or something to that effect in the post. And that was all I said on it with a share to the Rolling Stone article. And I mean, there were all sorts of comments in there on different levels, but the post itself was, to me, very innocent and both supportive. I thought of Tyler, but at the same time, not apostate, in my opinion.

Jesse Stay [00:40:35] I get a call from within. A few weeks after that, I get a call from our executive secretary asking me to come meet with the bishop. And I pushed. I asked why, and he wouldn't tell me. The bishop ends up calling me and saying that the stake president has asked to meet with him and me. And I'm thinking, okay, well, is this a calling? Is it.

Jesse Stay [00:41:01] Am I going to be bishop, or what's going on here? And he wouldn't tell me what it was. And I said, well, is it worthiness related? He's like, no. I said, is it calling? He's like, no. And I'm like, okay, something's going on here.

Jesse Stay [00:41:17] And so I agreed and ended up going in and meeting with them. And they beat around the bush a little bit. They. He started this whole process of asking me how my mission was, what do I think about the 12 and the leaders of the church?

Jesse Stay [00:41:41] And I gave him some very generic answers to each of those because I wasn't 100% sure on those. In fact, I was going into the meeting thinking I was actually going to start talking to the bishop about my beliefs in the church.

Jesse Stay [00:41:53] And they. And they jumped to. He starts saying, a couple members, a couple people have been sharing, sharing your posts on Facebook with us or even started broader with us, saying there's some issues we're really worried about. I've. He starts blaming on the spirit. He starts saying, the spirit has prompted me to think that something's going on with you and that there's something wrong going on in your life or something like that.

Jesse Stay [00:42:32] And I said, okay, well, what? And he's like, is everything okay? I'm like, yeah, everything's fine. And I say, so there's something that specifically that you're. I pushed him and I said, there's something specifically that you're going to. That you're trying to get to on this. What is it? And he ends up coming down saying, there are some members of our. Some members have been sharing your posts on Facebook with me and the bishop and we're a little bit concerned about that. And I actually knew that the bishop had told my wife this earlier, but so I kind of knew some of this was happening, but I didn't know they were also sending to stake president.

Jesse Stay [00:43:16] And the stake president starts blaming me and I push him and I say, what post? And he says, well, it doesn't matter. There's some posts. I'm like, what posts? He says, well, in particular, there's this one about Tyler Glenn that you posted. And I was like, okay, okay, well, let's pull that up and look at.

Jesse Stay [00:43:38] And I showed him the post, and he actually hadn't even seen the post. It was just people talking about it. But he had arranged this entire meeting because people were gossiping about me and my family to probably not just the bishop and stake president, probably the rest of the ward and stake as well.

Jesse Stay [00:44:02] He wouldn't say who it was. He wasn't condemning any of the gossiping or such. It was just the condemn me. Long story short, I ended up walking out of that meeting. He insisted that I admit that the post was. That the post was apostle and that it was apostate for me to share something like that. And I refused to do it.

Jesse Stay [00:44:34] And he told me that I couldn't go to the temple if I was unwilling to do that. And I walked out after that. And I actually never stepped foot in church again after that. And that was the nail in the coffin for me. I had already been doubting. I was actually intending to go to that meeting, talking to the bishop about my belief changes.

Jesse Stay [00:45:01] I had just been released as scoutmaster, and in the young men's presidency, I found it was perfect time to start talking about those things with the bishop.

John Dehlin [00:45:12] People can assume, but now that you've had time to reflect on that experience, what exactly was that you either think or feel was wrong or inappropriate about how your bishop and stake president dealt with this matter with you?

Jesse Stay [00:45:31] For number one, they went at it. They were judgmental. They were going at it. They were abusing. What's the scripture in Doctrine and Covenants about unrighteous dominion? Yeah, they were exercising unrighteous dominion. They were Coming into it, ignoring what Jesus would have done in telling those who are without sin to cast the first stone and instead coming at me, accusatory, judgmental, wanting to condemn me.

John Dehlin [00:46:05] Was it false pretenses? Wouldn't they say? It wasn't worthiness.

Jesse Stay [00:46:09] There was false pretenses. In fact, I caught the stake President lies multiple times. And the bishop still to this day insists that he didn't say it was a worthiness interview because it was his apostasy. Is a matter of fact when he brings up the temple at the end, that I can't go to the temple at the end, that's worthiness.

Jesse Stay [00:46:32] And they came to condemn, which is not how Doctrine Covenant says you're supposed to use your priesthood did. And I felt like Jesus Christ did. I don't mean to come up with a Christ complex in this in any way, but I felt in many ways like Jesus Christ did when he was condemned by his people.

Jesse Stay [00:46:51] I felt accused, condemned. I felt like a bunch of Pharisees had just sacrificed me to and hung me up on a cross, which was exactly what we were taught in church not to do. And that hurt. That hurt a lot.

Jesse Stay [00:47:18] And I don't want to say I was offended. And that wasn't the entire reason I left. That was the nail in the coffin for me. But I like to share I offended others. And when it became too difficult for me to stay in the church, when it became more difficult for me to stay in the church, then to leave, that's when it became really easy to just leave.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] Sounds like you're saying you're telling your story and speaking your truth offended them.

Jesse Stay [00:47:48] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:47:48] So they removed you?

Jesse Stay [00:47:49] Yep. And the members who were sharing those posts with them.

John Dehlin [00:47:54] So you never set foot in the church again. And how did that. How's that played out to now?

Jesse Stay [00:48:02] Yeah, so I actually, shortly before that, I actually baptized my child. And I was very questioning the church at that point. I was on my way out at that point, but it was kind of my last thing. A big thing in the church.

Jesse Stay [00:48:24] But after that meeting, I never set foot back in the church. I actually started. I never really. Like I said, I'm not the best at church history. I'm good at church present. And I started to study more of the church history. I knew a lot of the transition from Joseph Smith to Brigham Young and to Strang and Joseph Smith Jr. And such.

Jesse Stay [00:48:52] But I mean, Joseph Smith III, is that who it was? Yeah. But I didn't know a lot about Joseph Smith himself and the multiple stories around that other than maybe the church essays and such. And I started reading no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody.

Jesse Stay [00:49:13] I had already read Rushstone Rolling before that. Everyone who reads Rust Stolen Rolling Rowling has to read no Man Knows My History to get the entire picture. She wasn't the absolute best historian in terms of historians going that she does leave her opinions in, in certain places. But she has case after case of citation in there that you can go and you can look these things up and I go in and I look up the citations and find the original sources. And that's, that's been a really eye opening thing for me in terms of understanding who Joseph Smith was.

Jesse Stay [00:49:49] I have my own theories around that. In the end, I don't think anyone can actually prove one way or the other whether Joseph Smith actually did these things or not. I think personally I've come up with more evidences against Joseph Smith than for him. I used to have a lot of evidences for him. I've come up with even more evidences against him. And faith is based on. On evidence.

John Dehlin [00:50:12] Some would say it's based on the spirit or feeling.

Jesse Stay [00:50:14] Yeah. And that's not what the scriptures say. The scriptures say faith is evidence of things not seen which are true. And the spirit maybe confirms truth. But you have to go off of evidences to pull up the things to figure out what's true and what's not. And frankly the spirit is confirmed. Whatever this I'm getting, it's whatever that spirit is, has confirmed to me that those evidences are. I just.

Jesse Stay [00:50:44] Without a doubt, I can't say Joseph Smith is a prophet anymore. I can't say that he was that. In fact, I'd say he was. My own theories and these I don't know for sure, my own theories are that he was a fraud. That he was.

Jesse Stay [00:51:04] At least at the beginning he was. I think he really got into it towards the end and perhaps even convinced himself that he was a prophet towards the end. But he's amazing. He basically invented the matrix. He invented this whole system where people are in this cave where they don't realize reality from what's actually real.

Jesse Stay [00:51:31] And you see that when you leave the church that you really see the entire picture. And that's what I've gotten most out of this. You hear about Plato's cave and that people are seeing shadows on the wall. I feel like when I was Mormon I was seeing shadows on the wall. And now I can see the cave and I can really see from the outside looking in where things stand and where they were. And in many ways it's like the Matrix. You're living in the Matrix when you're in the church, you don't realize it.

John Dehlin [00:52:05] So you took the red pill.

Jesse Stay [00:52:06] I took the red pill and I've been happier since.

Leaving the Church and Reflecting on Spiritual Experiences

John Dehlin [00:52:11] So do you want to talk about kind of your membership in the church today or how that story has ended?

Jesse Stay [00:52:17] Yeah, sure. I don't share this too far and wide, but I guess I'll share it here. On Independence Day, I submitted my resignation papers. And it's really easy nowadays. In fact, I learned this when I worked for the church. You go to QuitMormon.com, fill out your information, give them minimum your birth date, and if you have your membership id, you can give that too. And a nice friendly lawyer makes some nice legal looking papers and sends it to the church and takes your name off the records. And within the month my records were removed. And I felt I needed to do that in order to be absolute.

Jesse Stay [00:53:07] I wanted people to know for sure that this isn't just. I've had people ask, well, is this a phase? Is this something, Are you going to come back? I've made my decision. This is where I'm at. And I'm not changing. I'm happier where I'm at. There's absolutely. Unless the church were willing to at this point. Unless the church were willing to allow me to practice a faith where I don't believe in God. I don't believe in Jesus Christ.

Jesse Stay [00:53:35] Actually, God's a whole different story. I have my own perception on God. I'll share that in a second. But if I'm able to not believe in Jesus Christ, not believe in Joseph Smith, not believe in. The historicity of Book of Mormon or the Bible, then maybe I'll join again.

Jesse Stay [00:53:58] But I'm happy where I'm at. I've seen my testimony is now based on, on real evidence, real science, real truth. I've seen real truth versus faith based truth now. And I can't change that. Whether I wanted to or not, I couldn't change it.

John Dehlin [00:54:17] You talk about feeling the spirit before and having your testimony based on the spirit. Then you talk about whatever that spirit was leading you out. How do you make sense of, of what the spirit was and is now?

Jesse Stay [00:54:32] So there's a lot of things I still can't explain 100%. What really ended up making me okay with all of this was studying the fact that you start with just the other sects of Mormonism. Just go into anywhere from the fundamentalist Mormons to Community of Christ to any of the other sects that are out there. They also believe that their church is the only true church, that their church is led by a prophet, with maybe exception of the community of Christ to an extent even them.

Jesse Stay [00:55:14] And they believe in praying and getting an answer to prayer through the Spirit. And they do that and they get these answers through the Spirit saying that their church is the true church. You can take that outside of Mormonism though. Christian faiths do this, Muslims do this, Catholics do it.

Jesse Stay [00:55:36] Where you can talk to Christian after Christian, there's story after story even outside of Christianity, outside of where people have these spiritual experiences confirming what they're doing, confirming the things that they're doing is the right things. So whatever that is, I can't 100% explain. But it's not limited to the LDS Church. And if it leads you out of the LDS Church, you need to follow it because it's a constant across everything.

Jesse Stay [00:56:09] And I can't really, I mean I tend to lean a little scientific on things and I mean it could be anywhere from some sort of quantum experience that some other universe is inspiring what we're doing here, that's far out there to the far out matrix theories of something beyond our reality and our existence guiding us in different things to even.

Jesse Stay [00:56:40] But just, I mean if there is a God, which I have a definition of God again, I'll tell you in a second, push me on that. But if there is a God, it could just be that God doesn't care what religion you're in. He cares that you're affecting the world in a positive way and God will guide you in that direction in some way. So, so that it could be that as well.

Jesse Stay [00:57:08] But I don't know exactly what it is. I know it's never failed me. And if it leads you out of the church, you need to follow it.

The Difficulty of Leaving and Advice for Others

John Dehlin [00:57:18] Has it been hard to leave the church for those who think it's just a choice, that it's a trivial matter, that it's just like a desire to sin or to be offended or, or the easy way out. What have you learned from going through it that you would want to share to an open minded believer about what it's like to go through what you've been through?

Jesse Stay [00:57:43] Yeah. So yeah, this, it's been one of the toughest. I mean I mentioned I'm happier, I'm in a better place than I ever was. But the process of getting there and the side effects, it all have been one of the toughest experiences I've ever gone through the church is all I've ever known.

Jesse Stay [00:58:05] I've mentioned my history. It's all my ancestors have known. You don't go as many generations as I go. My history goes back as far as the Church goes in terms of generations of Mormon. Mormonism is what I'm saying.

Jesse Stay [00:58:29] I knew nothing else other than Mormonism. I was married into the church. I was married and sealed in the temple. My entire life around me, my experience, extended family, are all Mormon. So to realize that all of that isn't true, come to a realization yourself. And not everyone will believe this. I mean, if you're Mormon and you're hearing this, it doesn't make sense to you entirely.

Jesse Stay [00:59:05] Some people may kind of get it. But if. But you come to a point where I have to admit what I believe and all the evidences I've seen. I have no other way of believing other than it's not true. And I want to deny it.

Jesse Stay [00:59:29] Sometimes I do want to deny it. I want to go back to that old life where I'm okay just being pretty and being able to deny what I know and having that culture back, but you can't. I mean, that entire culture is stripped from you, and that is hard.

Jesse Stay [00:59:48] That's really hard to do. And I've had at least one person say they won't send me business because I left the church. I've actually had. My family has been wonderful to me. My extended family, my immediate family, my mom and dad were.

Jesse Stay [01:00:14] My dad hasn't spoken to me about it, so I don't know about my dad, but my mom has been very, very accepting. She has several brothers and sisters that have left the church as well. So she's been through this. But my other extended family have been fairly accepting. But that's not the case for everyone.

Jesse Stay [01:00:35] For a lot of others, they're completely outcasts from the church. I have a friend, a really good friend, that left the church when he was a teenager and he was forced to leave his home. In fact, there are lots of homeless youth out there, especially in the LGBT community at the moment, forced to leave their homes because they choose not to believe.

Jesse Stay [01:01:02] And the culture pushes that. So you have the potential of losing everything, and it's a scary experience to go through as a result. I think I answered your question.

John Dehlin [01:01:15] So to conclude this episode, you've been through some wonderful experiences with the church, and then it kind of all unraveled, and it sounds like it was excruciating. So for people who are listening, believers, non believers, how would you want to kind of summarize this part of the podcast.

Jesse Stay [01:01:37] So, I mean, I kind of want to relate it in some ways to the US Election at the moment. You got to listen. No matter what side you're on, you've got to listen to the other side side, because there's always a story on the other side that hasn't been told and that isn't being told and that you're not fully understanding. And frankly, you're never going to fully understand that other person's story unless you've walked in their shoes.

Jesse Stay [01:02:08] What really pushed me out there and really started making me able to accept more people in their beliefs was being able to step up outside of myself and look at it from the outside, throw all my beliefs, everything else aside. At some point times, it means being able to pretend like you don't believe in God, even at times, and then think about it from that perspective.

Jesse Stay [01:02:32] What is this person like and what are they going through? Why are they acting the way they are? I'm going through a stage of grief. Right. I'm going through the stages of grief right now. At the moment. I'm somewhat in the anger phase. I'm trying not to, but I'm somewhat in the anger phase. If you see me angry online, there's a reason for that. And I'm going through my own stages of grief at the moment. Other people do the same thing. Try to understand.

Jesse Stay [01:02:57] That's the main thing I would offer to anyone who sees an ex Mormon going through this or someone having left the church. And for the ex Mormons, same thing for. For Mormon friends, Try to remember when you were in their shoes.

John Dehlin [01:03:12] And if there's someone out there for whom the church isn't working, if they're suffering, if there's an LGBT youth or adult that's suffering or potentially even suicidal, but they're really terrified to find a safe place. Any perspective you'd want to even share?

Jesse Stay [01:03:38] Yeah, you're not alone. Know there are people out there that love you and support you, frankly, both in the church and out of the church. There are people that support you and love you. You've got to find those people. There are groups on Facebook, there are groups online.

Jesse Stay [01:04:02] Find someone out there. Find a confidant. Reach out to friends you trust most. Reach out to. Contact me. I'll introduce you to some people. Contact John. We're all trustworthy people. I'm sure in the comments of this and such, there will be a that are willing to also reach out, that are trustworthy.

Jesse Stay [01:04:29] Reach out to one of us. We've been there. We know. We know what you're going through, and we want to help you. It doesn't mean you have to leave the church if you don't want to. It doesn't mean.

Jesse Stay [01:04:40] It could mean that if you want to leave the church, we can help you through that process. But please, you're not alone. Reach out, please.

John Dehlin [01:04:49] All right, Jesse, stay. Jesse, stay the third.

Jesse Stay [01:04:53] Second.

John Dehlin [01:04:53] Jesse, stay the second.

Jesse Stay [01:04:54] My son is the third.

John Dehlin [01:04:55] Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for joining us for part one of your story. I found it. I've heard a lot of these stories, and I found this to be very insightful and moving, and I'm really grateful. So thank you for this.

Jesse Stay [01:05:09] My pleasure.

John Dehlin [01:05:10] Feel free to go up to MormonStories.org and share your constructive thoughts or feedback with Jesse. I'm sure he'd love to participate. Feel free to tweet or Facebook your thoughts or perspectives as well. Keep them constructive. And don't forget to join us for part two, because in the very next episode, in about three minutes, we're going to be talking about Jesse's experience working for the LDS Church for three years, leading up much of their social media initiatives, including Facebook, Twitter, the I'm Mormon campaign, and all that stuff. So stay tuned. See you on the flip side.

Jesse Stay [01:05:52] Thank you. I appreciate it, John.

John Dehlin [01:05:53] All right.

Part Two Introduction and Getting Hired at the Church

Part 2 of 2 · Ep. 674

John Dehlin [00:00:00] Hello, everyone, and welcome back to part two of my interview with Jesse. Stay for those of you who tuned into part one, and I highly recommend you tune into part one. Jesse talked about his ancestry in the church, being raised in the church, being a devout member, a devout believer, orthodox, and being recruited by my brother, Joel Delin, who was CIO of the LDS Church, to become sort of a leader or even the head of their social media initiatives, including Facebook and Twitter.

John Dehlin [00:00:34] The general authority accounts for Facebook and Twitter, the I'm a Mormon campaign. He was involved in that, just general social media efforts for the church for about three years. And Jesse told the story about how his employment with the church led to a change in faith and a change in relationship to the church. We covered all that in part one. It was, for me, really a brilliant, powerful, moving, and very informative episode.

John Dehlin [00:01:07] And now what we're going to do in part two is we are going to talk about, you know, in detail, Jesse's involvement working for the church. Please go to episode one, where Jesse began the episode talking about his intent, where he stated very clearly he doesn't feel like he has an axe to grind. He's not trying to harm the church. He wants to respect professional confidentiality.

John Dehlin [00:01:34] He wants to be professional in every way. But at the same time, he expressed how he feels like it's important to tell one story, that he wants to be authentic and that he feels like there's many good things that are worth celebrating, but also things that maybe could stand for scrutiny or improvement. And I think, Jesse, you'd agree that you're trying to engage in this interview with the constructive spirit.

Jesse Stay [00:01:59] Absolutely, yeah. I have no negative intentions with this on both sides, whether you're a believer or not or someone I worked with or not. I genuinely, I'm doing this for the reasons we mentioned in the last episode.

John Dehlin [00:02:20] Great. Let's begin. And take us back to when you were first hired on to the church and talk about what that was like.

Jesse Stay [00:02:32] I started out as a software developer, ended up building multiple Facebook apps. Back in the days when you could build a Facebook app and have millions of users, when you built your Facebook app and started consulting for varying businesses on how to grow their apps and build apps that could do this.

Jesse Stay [00:02:57] And so I started doing this for various companies. Before I knew it, people were starting to come to me asking me how I could help with growing their social media presence, their Facebook page, their Twitter account and such.

Jesse Stay [00:03:08] One of those entities that approached me was the church. I honestly can't name exactly which entities approached Me at initially, I talked to the former CIO of the church, Eric Dana. Eric Denna. Yep. And talked to him a little bit.

Jesse Stay [00:03:29] We actually talked about hiring me as a programmer for a short time at that point. And actually at that point I was doing that wasn't even social media related. I built a kind of an organization, wasn't an official entity of any sort, but we had a group of programmers that were willing to donate open source software to the church. And I was working with Eric Dana to. I remember that lesoss is what we call Joel.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] Loved that.

Jesse Stay [00:03:56] Yeah, Joel.

John Dehlin [00:03:57] Joel was a big champion.

Jesse Stay [00:03:58] That's actually how I initially met Joel, was through that. And Eric Dena introduced me to Joel afterwards with that. And we were donating software. I believe that time that the stuff that we were doing was better than hiring employees to do it if there were developers out there willing to produce something as open source. So we worked a lot with varying levels on that, just trying to build relationships with the church so that we could work with the church on that.

Jesse Stay [00:04:35] That kind of fizzled out on its own. I'll get to that in a second though. Ended up. I had already met Joel through this and several different organizations. I think Joel's the one that made the introductions it might have been. I know Larry Richman was another one that I dealt a lot with back in the day.

Jesse Stay [00:05:00] I'm trying to remember who else I talked to, but I talked to multiple people. I did several presentations for the church. This was before even working for the church went in. I had this entire presentation. Evidently this is commonplace at the church, that the 12 bring up the same parallel that I used to bring up in my early presentations in that I bring up King Benjamin and King Benjamin's sermon and I talk about how in King Benjamin's time, the people would share from person to person. They'd hear King Benjamin speak and then they'd share from village to village. And then I'd compare that to social media.

Jesse Stay [00:05:40] That's how social media would work. I don't know if the Brethren's stories or the 12 stories that they're sharing that I have shared internally came from that or not, but I used to tell stories like that. I had all sorts of scriptural stories that I would relate and equate in different ways. And at that time, I truly felt at that point that social media was a tool that the church could be using in order to increase the their voice and to get the conversation out there and to deflect a lot of the criticisms that were going on at the time.

Jesse Stay [00:06:19] And I actually, I think Joel was. In fact, I still got the original email. Now that I remember I approached Joel. I think it was around a general conference saying that you guys need to be taking advantage of this more.

Jesse Stay [00:06:38] And I shared several examples of ways that the church could be doing it. And Joel and I went to lunch and we actually had several meetings, multiple meetings afterwards where we talked about me working there in different capacities. And turned him down a few times actually.

John Dehlin [00:06:58] Is he hard to turn down?

Jesse Stay [00:06:59] He actually is kind of hard to turn down. But he's a good man. I really enjoyed those early days and those conversations and we talk about it. And I ended up. I still did some consulting. I helped LDS newsroom at the time the Public affairs department set up the very first social media account for the church. This was before I was even working there. We set up the LDS newsroom, which is now Mormon Newsroom Twitter account that was the very first official social media account.

Jesse Stay [00:07:35] Shortly after that, I consulted with with a few on launching the Mormon channel on YouTube and gave various consulting advice around that. I met with him a few times around a few other things that we actually talked friendfeed back in the day that was an old social network that was fairly popular among a select few. And I brought that up as a possibility for the church to use at one point. And good times just talking.

Jesse Stay [00:08:08] I share all sorts of different ideas and they take it. And of course, Joel was getting more and more anxious to get me to work there. I think I was brought into another meeting where they were discussing the SEO efforts of the Church.

John Dehlin [00:08:22] What is SEO?

Jesse Stay [00:08:23] Search Engine Optimization.

John Dehlin [00:08:24] So what does that mean?

Jesse Stay [00:08:25] And that is positioning yourself as a brand or an organization so that you appear high in search results on Google and and other search engines. And I was brought into it. This was again before I worked for the Church.

Jesse Stay [00:08:42] I was brought into a meeting around this and gave my own advice at this. But again I mentioned the Spirit in the past. I still felt the Spirit at these things. I still feel it today. I want to be clear about that too.

Jesse Stay [00:08:58] It never left. But the Spirit or whatever that is, I felt hit like a brick that I needed to take Joel up on his offer to take the position. So I think I emailed or called Joel afterwards very shortly after and said, hey, I want to take you up on that. Let's move forward with it. Discussed it with my wife and we're good with that. I had to put everything else I was doing, I was working on my own at the time. I had to put all that on the side and decided to take the position with the. With the church. I ended up.

John Dehlin [00:09:36] What year was it?

Jesse Stay [00:09:37] This was. It was 2010.

John Dehlin [00:09:40] Okay. And I have a. Okay, March 2010. I have a question that someone wrote in, and I don't necessarily think it's a super legitimate question, but I think it's interesting to get a response. If someone were to ask, you know, why would God's true church need social media? Why would his prophets need social media? What would you have. Would you have thought about that back when you joined the church, joined the employment of the church? And how would you have sort of answered that question?

Early Social Media Work and Church Branding

Jesse Stay [00:10:13] Yeah, so.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] Or would you have even thought about it?

Jesse Stay [00:10:15] So, no, this was exactly what I was. What I was thinking when I first brought it up with Joel was that this is. Social media provided a means to go as far as taking the church back to the days when Joseph Smith was alive and the leaders of the church actually talked face to face to the members of the church and on a global scale, that was now possible again. And I saw that, I had that vision in mind that this was something that could actually happen.

John Dehlin [00:10:51] So to help the church communicate with members.

Jesse Stay [00:10:53] Yes, to help the church communicate with members and then non members as well, by having friend to friend connections and having members share with their friends and such, that would allow the church to then expand as well. But more than anything, I wanted a more transparent church. I wanted a church that we. That was back to those days of Joseph Smith, that we. I kind of. I felt my. For the majority of my adult life, I've kind of felt like we've lost that. I'd say we, the church has lost that. And they haven't had it since they went. Since probably Brigham Young's time. And I think that's a shame. I think it's a real shame. And social media should open up covers and should open things up more rather than force it to be closed more. And I felt that there was a real opportunity for that.

John Dehlin [00:11:52] Okay, great. All right, so you joined. Then what happened?

Jesse Stay [00:11:55] Yeah, so I was hired in my first position. I was the very first person with social media in my title at the church. I'm hesitant to say that I was in charge of social media, although I was tasked with that. Joel tasked me with leading social media and working with the varying departments of the church. But there was so much politics at the time. And even at the time and even after, I'm hesitant to say I was in charge because that would take away from all the others. That are also doing similar things. I'll talk about that in a minute. But I was hired as.

Jesse Stay [00:12:29] My first position was called Social Media Architect because that was the best. The architect was the best position they could fit me in that they could explain and rationalize. And it was within the ICS department, which was the IT tech department of the church. So that was the best place to fit me at the time.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Who'd you report to? Or.

Jesse Stay [00:12:55] I don't want to bring his name in just because I don't want to, but he reported to Joel and I met regularly with Joel. Okay, I'll say Joel was. But there was one other between us that we met and I just. For his response.

John Dehlin [00:13:10] No, no, I meant. Yeah, position wise, not name.

Jesse Stay [00:13:13] Yeah. So position wise. He was position wise. He was a director.

John Dehlin [00:13:17] Okay.

Jesse Stay [00:13:17] And that was actually one of my frustrations was I needed a director level position to really have an effect with social media. And I never. In fact, there's still no director level social media position at the church that you're aware of. That I'm aware of. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:30] Okay. Okay. So you. So what happened next?

Jesse Stay [00:13:35] So let's see. Wow. So my responsibilities, I was tasked with. Well, one of my first tasks at the church was helping to organize the conversation around General Conference. And Joel asked. I had just barely been hired. And I think it was.

John Dehlin [00:14:00] Just a second. I have to jump in. In your notes, you mentioned that you're the first employee that you know of to have the word social in your title along with the word architect. Like, I think that. I mean, without calling you the general manager, Manager of social media, I mean.

Jesse Stay [00:14:17] Yeah. And I ended up switching titles towards the end. I was a senior advisor of social media at the end, which similar type of title. I was in charge of advising on social media. Sorry to interrupt.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Keep going.

Jesse Stay [00:14:31] Anyway, the. But shortly after I was hired, General Conference happened. And Joel comes to me saying, I want to know how many people are talking about General Conference online and we want to share that with the 12. So this was after the fact. I hadn't done any tracking at the time. So I didn't really.

Jesse Stay [00:14:53] I went in and kind of hacked through some of it to try and track as much information as I could get post after the fact and was able to get a whole bunch of stats and information. We were able to show all sorts of information on the effect of people talking about General Conference on Twitter.

Jesse Stay [00:15:14] Elder Perry loved it. In fact, I can share this because he shares it. He shared it widely at General Conference. I think he's mentioned at general conference, I think. But he shared it at state conferences and others. He'll.

Jesse Stay [00:15:28] He'll pull out his big. Or he would pull out his big stack of papers that we'd provide him that would show all the tweets and he'd show it to. These are all you people talking about it? And he loved it. The brethren loved seeing what people were talking about them as far as I know. And that was kind of my first task. But that brought in, were they shown

John Dehlin [00:15:56] the good and the bad or just the good?

Jesse Stay [00:15:59] Initially it was filtered a little bit. They removed some of the bad. I think towards the end they started to show some of the bad as well. It was a process. When I worked there, that was one specific example that I think I can talk about.

Jesse Stay [00:16:15] But it was a process there. When I started there, social media was still somewhat evil in the 12s eyes and the First Presidency. And when I started there, I came to realize very quickly, especially after compiling these things and such, that there was a lot of hesitance amongst the 12 in using social media. They didn't want the church tweeting during general conference. They didn't want the church, in fact, they didn't want to encourage members to. To tweet during general Conference. In fact, they were debating whether to completely discourage them and set a policy against it in some ways I believe.

Jesse Stay [00:17:03] And we got to the point. So I realized I had a task ahead of me of basically training the 12 indirectly on social media. I actually while I was there, I never had a one on one conversation with the 12. It was always training others to go and present. And you've seen that in some of the leaked videos recently on how some of that works. I've never seen one of those meetings before. So I guess I can talk about that because I've never seen one of them before. I just know that we would prepare these presentations and then they would take them and present them to the 12.

Jesse Stay [00:17:40] So I prepare these presentations on social media and I. And it was a process where we gradually train. I'd use things like these stories of King Benjamin, these stories of. And we'd start with just little baby steps of teaching them what social media is, what it can accomplish.

Jesse Stay [00:18:08] And before we knew it said maybe after the first year or so we started seeing. We saw Ballard talk about social media or Facebook BYU Hawaii. I'd have to pull up the exact quote. I haven't seen it in a while so I can't remember. But other Bednar started talking about did his talk. I think it was a BYU devotional or, or something like that where he talked about the warnings around social media, but also saying it's not inherently a bad thing.

Jesse Stay [00:18:44] And I was able, once those were out, I was able to start including those in presentations and start sharing those and such. And that opened up new doors and started opening up the hearts of those working around me to starting to use social media as a tool and something that the church can use to reach more people and such.

Jesse Stay [00:19:11] The other side of it is missionary department. Missionary department I think, has always been a little bit further ahead than some of the other departments in terms of digital media and social media. And they're very careful in what they talk about, what they share and stuff. So. So you don't see as much.

Jesse Stay [00:19:31] I'll only share what I can on this. But they came to me early on and they were getting ready to launch the I'm a Mormon campaign. And they wanted me to approach them, they wanted me to talk with them about engaging a social media strategy on how they could utilize Facebook and other tools. And I think I helped them set up their Facebook page so that facebook.commormon would redirect to the mormon.org Facebook page.

Jesse Stay [00:20:14] It was at the same time I secured facebook.com LDS targeting members and we got the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints as, as an actual Facebook page so that people could tag the church if they wanted and such. And they started using that as a member focused Facebook page.

Jesse Stay [00:20:33] But we retained an account rep at Facebook as well as Google to help us out with some of the efforts there and start some ad strategy and such. I think that's no secret, but. And then I started working with them on things like integrating share buttons into Mormon.org and allowing Mormon.org to be a little more social. And I had this whole thing that I would bring up over and over again at the church, I called it thinking socially. And I wanted every product the church release to have some sort of integration so that a person's close friends and family were within the experience. And this is something I teach all my clients, even today when I work with them, is as you're building products that people stay on the site longer, they participate longer, they share more when they're seeing recognizable faces within those experiences. So we started talking about some of that and figuring out how to integrate that into Mormon network.

The Mormon Moment and Romney Campaign Involvement

John Dehlin [00:21:39] Quick question. There was a time in the past 1112 years where the church sort of condemned the use of the word Mormon, told people not to call us Mormons, and then all Of a sudden, out of nowhere, seemed to do an about face and all of a sudden embraced the term. Do you have any insight into that or did that just all happen before your time?

Jesse Stay [00:22:02] Yeah, no, I'll give a one word answer on that research. They saw better results using the term Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:22:12] Okay. Okay, cool. So you helped the missionary department. What's next?

Jesse Stay [00:22:19] So missionary department, so. Oh, now it's just stories. I worked with public affairs quite a bit while we were there. It was during the Mitt Romney campaign that I was there. During the Mormon moment that I was there.

John Dehlin [00:22:42] How did people feel? What was your sense for what church leaders thought about the church as represented by Mitt Romney in the Mormon moment?

Jesse Stay [00:22:53] Yeah. So

John Dehlin [00:22:56] how were they experiencing the Mormon moment?

Jesse Stay [00:22:58] How were church leaders. Church leaders? So one of the biggest things.

John Dehlin [00:23:04] Were they nervous? Were they.

Jesse Stay [00:23:05] Yeah. So one of the biggest frustrations that we had in general at the church, and I'll get back to the Romney campaign, was there was a gap in learning between the church and its lay leaders. And public affairs was one of the tools in helping to reach that.

Jesse Stay [00:23:28] And you're seeing things like Mormons and gays and now the Mormon and gay site and such. Those are all tools that they're using to try and reach these. There was some. In terms of leaders at the church office building and the.

Jesse Stay [00:23:48] The Mitt Romney campaign, there was some nervousness. I mean, there was no, as far as I could tell, I mean, it was clearly a conservative organization, a lot of heavy conservatives working for the organization. But as far as I could tell, we had no desire within the organization to support Romney or give support or see Romney win in any way. We.

Jesse Stay [00:24:14] They actually were trying to distance themselves from that as much as possible. So there was some nervousness that that would get intertangled with the Romney campaign. And it was in some ways. So they had to. They were working towards that. And that was the majority of the efforts within the Romney campaign was making sure that there was distance there. Making sure that.

John Dehlin [00:24:33] Because you can lose your tax exempt status if you're perceived as explicitly supporting a candidate, right?

Jesse Stay [00:24:38] Yeah, yeah, as far as I know. I'm not an expert at that, but yeah, as far as I know. I believe so. And the other worry? Well, I guess it wasn't a worry. There was also an opportunity as well at the time in that because Romney was running and because he was Mormon, there were new opportunities to put the church in the limelight and take advantage of some of that media the church was getting. And that was both good and bad. If something negative came out around Romney. Say a temple video with Romney in it appeared to come out.

John Dehlin [00:25:14] Theoretically.

Jesse Stay [00:25:15] Theoretically, that could hurt the church quite a bit. But no, I did that happens.

John Dehlin [00:25:26] Or is that a public. Did a temple video come out with Romney in it?

Jesse Stay [00:25:31] I will let you Google that.

John Dehlin [00:25:32] Okay. Okay, that's fine. That's fine.

Jesse Stay [00:25:36] As far as I know, there wasn't a temple video that actually came out with Romney in it.

John Dehlin [00:25:39] Okay. Okay, cool. So, all right, so the Mormon moment. Mitt Romney. Tell us any other. We've got a ton of questions, but let's not rush to that. Tell us any other stories or experiences.

Jesse Stay [00:25:55] I'll finish my path in working for the church a little bit. I think I helped out BYU launch its Facebook page. I'm trying to figure out if I can share this or not. It happened around the Mark Zuckerberg keynote, and they didn't have a Facebook page at the time.

John Dehlin [00:26:16] He keynoted at byu?

Jesse Stay [00:26:17] Yeah, he keynoted at byu and they didn't have a Facebook page at the time. And I was able to help them with getting that set up. And it's actually kind of fun. I got front row seats next to Elder Gong.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] Garrett Gong.

Jesse Stay [00:26:31] Yep, Garrett Gong. Garrett Gong was on one side and Mark Zuckerberg's bodyguard was on the other side of me. And I had this big telephoto lens that I was taking pictures with. It was pretty fun. You can check my Facebook profile and see the pictures on there with Orin Hatch and Mark Zuckerberg.

Jesse Stay [00:26:54] I spent a lot of my latter time, so probably the majority of my time there ended up being spent helping to organize the place for social media within the organization. This was a time where organizations, I mean, the church operates in many ways. It's a religion that operates in many ways like a business. It had elements of both within. And we can talk about that more later if you want.

Jesse Stay [00:27:18] But the business side, at the time, businesses worldwide were trying to figure out where does social media fit within the organization. And I was following all sorts of blogs. My friend Jeremiah was a very strong speaker and consultant on these methods of organization of social media within these organizations.

Jesse Stay [00:27:41] In fact, I even had him out to the church at one point and gave him a tour. That's mostly for my marketing friends that follow him. But I started to take some of his strategy in building a Center of Excellence, as it's called, where you basically have a centralized group of people from multiple departments that all meet together and discuss the strategy for social media. And then you have usually an advisor to that work with that group to kind of guide it and help it move along. And then those advisors work with individuals within the individual departments.

Jesse Stay [00:28:18] Long story short, we worked with multiple departments. We ended up forming the publishing services department. After that, dissolving the AV department. We put social media and most of the digital marketing efforts into that organization. We ended up at that point there was actually shortly after I was hired, the AV department at the time hired someone in the exact same position I was in with the same task. This is why I hesitate saying I was in charge of social media because there was someone hired the exact same position, the same task to run social media for the organization within the AV department. And we were constantly butting heads.

Jesse Stay [00:28:59] I kind of did my own thing at the time, but we ended up, me and this guy, we ended up in the same department in the publishing services department. And we had to figure out, well, how do we separate our roles now? And I ended up, at that point, I ended up deciding I was going to focus more on the international efforts for social media. Started working a lot with Asia. I served my mission in Thailand, started working with a few other areas and.

Jesse Stay [00:29:30] And then I realized at that point that I had accomplished my purpose. It was time for one person to be running that level of social media for the organization. I knew the other guy wasn't going to leave, so I ended up deciding to quit. I went on to desert digital Media at that time, took over a role as their director of social media. And we during that time worked with multiple groups, desertnews.com, ksl.com, ok.com, which was a movie rating site they owned. And we worked to launch familyshare.com, which we built out a network.

Jesse Stay [00:30:11] When we were there, there was a couple hundred thousand fans across all their pages. And then we used an advertising strategy along with another strategy to to grow out a network of multiple Facebook pages. There's I love my family, I love my mom, they all have I love in them and built out a fan base of over 20 million people within the six months I was there.

Jesse Stay [00:30:36] And then launched Family Share and saw around a million page views within the first month of launching. And I actually ended up getting fired from that position because I was pushing where social should be within the organization. And it's a long story, but at the church I would push things and I would push boundaries and you don't get fired at the church. You either quit or there's some layoffs here and there. But desert digital media, they fire easily. And I push boundaries and didn't survive.

Religious Freedom Efforts and LGBTQ Policy Involvement

John Dehlin [00:31:14] So you mentioned in your notes about also being involved in the freedom of religion sort of efforts early on.

Jesse Stay [00:31:23] Yeah. So, yeah, we. During. I was not there during the Prop 8 stuff. That was before my time. But I did have a large question the entire time I was there, and I couldn't see what the church's position on gays was. I was not clear in here. I was supposed to be managing social media, and I didn't know what strategy should I be employing in terms of gays with social media. And I was willing to go any direction at that time, and I just needed direction on what the church's official position was. And I'll be honest, I never officially got an answer on that. In fact, I talked to someone recently, and I still don't think there's a full answer. I think that the Brethren, the twelve, are still in disagreement on that, I believe. And I'll get freedom of religion in just a second.

John Dehlin [00:32:27] So there have been people, people providing their anecdotal evidence that the quorum of the 12 are not unanimous on the Church's policy towards LGBT people. And what I hear you saying is that's what you perceived as.

Jesse Stay [00:32:44] Well, yeah, I perceive the same anecdotal evidence. Like I said, I never directly dealt with the 12 myself, as much as I would have loved to. We can talk about that, too, in a second. But. From my understanding is there was a public affairs position, but I still don't think they're fully. I mean, they may be, and I'd love to see a full statement by them in some way or another. Just so it's clear, maybe the policy. November 8th policy is that statement, if you believe Elder Nelson. But I heard as soon as last month that the 12 are still not in agreement. And I don't even work for the Church anymore. So my understanding is there's still not a full decision on this yet.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Okay. So religious freedom any.

Jesse Stay [00:33:40] I don't speak for the Church in that. That's just my understanding.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] Sure, of course. So, you know, many of us perceive the religious freedom effort as sort of a response to the backlash of Proposition 8 of. Of losing the Supreme Court battle and the Church taking maybe a bit more of a victim posture, defensive posture, after many would say they were the aggressor. Did any of that, you know, was that your perception when you were working for the church? And did you. Did you have thoughts around that effort?

Jesse Stay [00:34:12] So. If you follow any of Oakes talks, you can go on LDS Newsroom or MormonNewsroom.org and search for his talks on gays. They used to be linked from the front page. I don't know if they're still there or not. But he talks about this in that the main position of the church on gays at the moment is surrounding the threat to freedom of religion and that he feels that. There is an agenda out there against religion. And that there in particular by some of the. The gay community and such. Some of the more liberal groups amongst that. I don't believe it.

John Dehlin [00:35:10] And the liberal media, I think he said.

Jesse Stay [00:35:11] And the liberal media in his leaked video. Yeah, so you've seen some of that, too. And I think they're unfound. I mean, I was told that First Amendment lawyers were telling them this, too. And I don't even know if the church actually has First Amendment lawyers. So I'm not quite sure sure where this is coming from. I don't know for sure. Maybe they do.

Jesse Stay [00:35:38] But I'm still trying to come to terms as to exactly why the focus on freedom of religion. That's kind of what prompted some of my own questions was we're focusing on freedom of religion. Why are we focusing on freedom of religion? Why is this something that we need to be focused on?

Jesse Stay [00:35:57] But, yeah, I helped out with some of the. The promotion of that and such. At one point, we even had a Facebook page set up. I don't think that ever went through. But there's definitely. I mean, that's the main. Supposedly the main position of the church is the threat to freedom of religion on there. It still doesn't answer a lot of questions about the church's doctrine on gays. But that's the big fear. From what I can tell at the moment. I don't understand it. But.

John Dehlin [00:36:29] So as you're. As you think about your time there, are there any other major themes that you want to. That you want to kind of discuss or explore? Any major stories you want to tell before we jump into questions?

Jesse Stay [00:36:41] So I do want to tell one story real quick. So one of the. One of the things that really hit me hard, there are a few stories, some that I can't share here that. But I want to be clear. There are actually some really good stories I can't share here just due to confidentiality. I can't share them, but I wish I could because they shook my testimony quite a bit.

Jesse Stay [00:37:06] But there is one story that really shook my testimony. I mentioned that Terrell Givens was my bishop in Virginia when we lived there. And, and so I know Terrell Fiona very well. His son Nathaniel was in the Elders Quorum presidency with me. His daughters babysat my kids.

Jesse Stay [00:37:28] So I was very. I mean, he was kind of my saving grace in terms of faith at that point. And probably through the entire time I worked for the church and maybe a year or two afterwards, and. And I saw that.

Jesse Stay [00:37:46] And one of my responsibilities working for the church was studying the conversations of people talking about the church. And part of that was I saw both the positive and negative with that. And so I had my own questions I was trying to work out as well. Terrell Givens, I call him Bishop Givens.

Jesse Stay [00:38:04] I still kind of call him Bishop Givens, even though I've left. But Terrell Givens, I had written his letter to a doubter at that point, which was the closest thing. Now he's got Crucible of Doubt. And what's his other book that he wrote with Fiona?

John Dehlin [00:38:26] God who Weeps.

Jesse Stay [00:38:26] God who Weeps. Yeah, both of those are excellent. But I shared the letter to a doubter with a managing director at the church who was probably the closest managing director to at least the members of the 12 who'd be interested in the digital efforts of the church that I could come up with. I shared with him that this letter, and I said, I am seeing online people who are truly questioning the church, and they don't know what to do about it. Terrell Givens offers the best answer that I can come up with to this. Why aren't we teaching this in our curriculum? And I shared this letter to Dower with him, left it with him, let him read it.

Jesse Stay [00:39:09] When we met again, he comes back to me. He says, jesse, I thought that was anti Mormon material when I read it. And he says, I can't share that with the 12. He said that I can't share that with hardly anyone at church. And it was at that point I realized, and I came to realize even more so later, that the Givens doctrine is not the doctrine that the 12 believe at the moment. And that was a huge tipping point for me, at least in the structure of my testimony. At that point is my last hanging point of following this beautiful gospel that Givens presented.

Jesse Stay [00:39:51] And the weight of to appreciate it despite having imperfect leaders and such, and seeing Moses as an imperfect leader and seeing the other Old Testament leaders as imperfect leaders, and that God's church is comprised of imperfect leaders, that the 12 don't see that. That kind of shatters everything for me.

John Dehlin [00:40:12] But okay, I mean, I'll just follow up a little bit and ask if the Brethren are imperfect. And if that was what you were thinking, then it would make sense that they had blind spots and weren't even aware of their own imperfection.

Jesse Stay [00:40:26] Absolutely. And that's probably what I held onto for the next couple years. I mean, it's hard for me to explain what I was holding onto, but that's probably some of what I was holding on to.

Faith Challenges of Being a Church Employee

John Dehlin [00:40:38] Any other. One of the main questions people asked is it. Is it difficult to be a church employee and to maintain your faith? What was your experience in the departments you worked for?

Jesse Stay [00:40:52] Yeah, so I mentioned that my testimony at the end of working there was different than my testimony at the beginning of working there, but I still had a testimony at the end. And that was kind of the experience that I heard over and over again from other employees.

Jesse Stay [00:41:08] And I mean, Joel would tell people that you better have a strong testimony to survive this. And it's very true. Everyone, especially the more groups and more things you deal with in the church, you're going to see stuff that shakes you to your core in some way or another. It's just a fact of the matter. But what I think the majority of people that work for the church, myself was included hang on to is that imperfections of leaders, that the church is perfect, but the leaders aren't. And I'd argue even the church isn't perfect. But God's priesthood is still there. It's still God's church. And it's okay that it has imperfection because it's run by men. And I'd say the vast majority.

John Dehlin [00:42:01] That's what you thought then, right? Not now.

Jesse Stay [00:42:03] I don't now, but that's come to my own conclusions since. But, but back then, that's. That's what I was hanging on to. And especially those that were had access to the same information I did. That's what they held on to as well. And there's some people that had access to even more information than I did. And that was their. That was what they still hold on to.

John Dehlin [00:42:24] Okay.

Jesse Stay [00:42:25] But I've come to my own conclusions since.

John Dehlin [00:42:27] Okay. One of the big questions that people want to know is, is generally when you were there, was the church eager to share and be transparent, open? Were they excited about the perspective of more information out there, of people being more sharing? Were they hesitant? Did you get a sense that they wanted to censor? Did you get a sense that they wanted to shine their light to the world, that they were confident? What was the church's approach to being open and transparent about information?

Jesse Stay [00:43:04] So when I got There it was a much more closed organization. One of my big and I don't want to take all the credit for this, there are many people involved. But one of my big initiatives that I was trying to push, I worked a lot with public affairs and I worked a lot with the history department, the church history department.

Jesse Stay [00:43:21] And with this particular purpose in that public affairs would come to me say, hey, how should we respond to this? Just trying to get my opinion. And I always say, you need to be more honest, you need to be more open, more transparent about what you're doing. My argument was always, if this is truly God's church and we have nothing to be ashamed of, then we should have nothing to be ashamed of. Let's share it all.

Jesse Stay [00:43:48] And the more open we are, the more transparent, the more the 12 are using social media, actively using social media, the more we can correct the issues and do it collectively as a group versus this facade. I relied a lot on my friend Robert Scoble and Shel Israel wrote a book called Naked Conversations. Highly recommend it if you haven't read it and you want to understand the value of social media and new media and everything.

Jesse Stay [00:44:18] And it talks all about opening up the covers and how these tools allow organizations to open up the covers and be more open, be more transparent. And I pushed that a lot within the organization. I met quite a few times at church history department talking about.

Jesse Stay [00:44:35] They'd ask me for advice on how to get their documents out there and I'd reiterate over and over again, just get them out there, just get them out as quick as you can, as fast as you can. Let's use social media to share them. And I think you saw some of that. Like I said, I wasn't the only one pushing this, but that's what social media does. Social media allows an organization to be more open, to be more transparent, the good and the bad.

Jesse Stay [00:45:06] And they're still out there. Though I think I so wanted. Probably majority of my purpose of working at the church was trying to get the 12 using social media. And when I quit, they weren't yet on Twitter or Google or Facebook like you see now. But right before I quit, we started an initiative where we were. We did a few things. I'm not going to say exactly. We did a few things to get the right stats to show the value of why the 12 being online would be valuable to the church. And those panned out the way I expected. And within a few months, my friend at the church emailed me and said, we did your experiment we came up with the results.

Jesse Stay [00:45:58] It was amazing. Incredible. We saw beyond what we were expected with the results. And within a couple of weeks after that, you saw the 12 started out with Google profiles. There was a reason for that. I'm not going to say what, but there's a reason for that. And they ended up with Facebook profiles, Twitter profiles, and now they all have profiles, but they're not really using them. It's all still a facade for each of the 12 when we get to the level.

John Dehlin [00:46:22] Meaning what? Facade meaning what?

Jesse Stay [00:46:23] Meaning that people are tweeting for them, as far as I know. I don't know. And Facebook, I think there are occasions when they direct people to tweet for them, but as far as I know, there are people managing that. Like I said, I wasn't there when that officially launched, but that's how I would have run it if I did it.

John Dehlin [00:46:40] And is that your perception of what they're doing?

Jesse Stay [00:46:42] Yeah, that's my perception, and I'm pretty sure that's what's happening. There are likely occasions when they direct the people who are posting on their behalf to say something for them. So there are probably a few cases here and there where you do hear directly from them. Maybe more cases than others for some of them. But I still have a frustration that I'm getting more and more where I just don't care anymore. But I still have a frustration where. I think you're not going to see full transparency until each one of them is directly using their accounts and posting. Frankly, they should all have personal Facebook profiles and set up a public account on there and use those personal profiles without worry of correlation, without worry of public affairs, without worry of anything. Get out there. You make a mistake, correct it. That's what the rest of us do.

John Dehlin [00:47:41] Between 2004 and 2000 2013, which I guess is around when you may have left.

Jesse Stay [00:47:49] Yeah, 2013 is when I left.

John Dehlin [00:47:51] There was this huge upswing in Mormon themed blogs at first. Then they kind of faded. Then podcasts kind of really emerged. And then there were certain websites like MormonThink and CES Letter and of course for podcasts, Mormon stories, Mormon expression, you

Jesse Stay [00:48:13] know, every single one of them. I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:48:15] Housewives. And then. Yeah. And then social media started really taking off. Do you have a sense for how these blogs and podcasts and websites were perceived within the church and how the church dealt with those amazing assets?

Jesse Stay [00:48:38] So that's a good question. I followed those for a little while. I didn't follow every single one of them. And I was a tech blogger at the time. I ran my own tech blog. I competed with TechCrunch and the likes through my own blog. I was breaking news that would make tech meme on a regular basis. When I first started my blog, in fact, I followed your blog. In fact, when I first started, I. Because you already had an audience at the time, and I think there was a time I even reached out to you and tried to get you to link to me, because I was trying to get more links on my blog and you were one of the few that I thought I could get that.

John Dehlin [00:49:18] Did I let you down?

Jesse Stay [00:49:19] I can't remember. I know I reached out. I can't remember what the results were. It was so long. It was like 2004 probably. It was early on, even when you were just starting, probably. But when I started working there, I don't think the blogs were really on their radar very much. It wasn't until probably halfway through working there, maybe towards the end, that they started paying more attention. What we started. So you have more negative blogs and you have more positive. You have. And being on this side, I see a little differently than I used to. But the way we saw it in the church, where there were more negative blogs and there were more positive blogs and.

Tracking Influencers and Monitoring Online Conversations

John Dehlin [00:50:05] Do you mean just blogs or do you mean websites and podcasts?

Jesse Stay [00:50:07] Websites, podcasts, blogs, influencers of sorts. And you were on the more negative side.

John Dehlin [00:50:16] What?

Jesse Stay [00:50:17] No offense. What? I learned a lot from your stuff myself. I listened to every word of that second anointing podcast when I worked for the church.

John Dehlin [00:50:34] That's the Tom Phillips episode, by the way. A great episode. I highly recommend it. Okay, back to you.

Jesse Stay [00:50:39] Well, just side note, my grandparents had their second anointing and I grew up. We didn't talk about it. No one. No one knew about it. So that taught me all sorts of information about what they went through, which I had no clue.

Jesse Stay [00:50:54] And that was huge for me anyway. I started focusing on building relationships with the positive influencers. I was on some lists that had fair contributors. I got in several groups of different people. I started a few groups, too, of influence influencers and such to try and build up the momentum and voice of mostly public affairs at the time. I didn't quite see it as that at the time, but it was really benefiting public affairs more than anyone and trying to get these people all working together so that the church could unify its voice towards the public, towards members and others. And it was kind of my best way around correlation to get a voice out there.

Jesse Stay [00:51:49] When departments of the church would approach me with things that they needed and I work with these groups and we'd do it. I started a couple unofficial Facebook pages. I started the current Book of Mormon Facebook page, which I think has over a million plus fans at the moment. And a lot of these we acquired from other members.

Jesse Stay [00:52:12] And I got volunteers to run these because I didn't have any budget to run it at the time. And all these were just to kind of work around correlation, figure out ways we could unofficially get the voice of the Church out in ways that. And we didn't have to go through too many hoops to get done.

Jesse Stay [00:52:35] But yeah, I think that answers your question. We were aware of them and towards the end, the negative blogs we were definitely paying attention to and there were definitely conversations around the negative blogs while we worked there.

John Dehlin [00:52:53] Are you able to talk about which entities, which influencers were perceived as the most popular positive and which ones were perceived as the most negative, or are you not able to talk about them?

Jesse Stay [00:53:04] Well, I think it's obvious you and Joanna Brooks were probably on the list because they responded directly to you a couple times. I think that's public. So. The good list. I worked a lot. I really don't want to betray some of the French.

John Dehlin [00:53:30] No, don't do it. Don't betray anything.

Jesse Stay [00:53:31] But there are some good. You can probably guess some of the good lists out there. There's some of the ones that they annoy me more than anything nowadays.

John Dehlin [00:53:44] I know, for example, that there was a time where by common consent bloggers were allowed to sort of blog or tweet General Conference. It seemed like they had access to the press box. So I mean, it's pretty safe to say they were the good guys.

Jesse Stay [00:53:58] Yeah. So I can comment a little bit. Yeah, we met a lot with my common consent there. And when I worked for Desert Digital Media, we actually no one wanted the LDS Conf Twitter account when I worked for the church. So when I worked for Deseret Digital Media, I acquired the LDS Conf Twitter account and. And for the one general conference that happened while I was there, we live tweeted for the very first time a church entity live tweeted conference. And I actually ran ads during the time and it was pretty successful. I don't have access to stats now, but I think after they were able to show that the church started to get a little more active during conference as well, because they were able to show the stats on that and what

John Dehlin [00:54:49] it did and that related to by

Jesse Stay [00:54:51] common consent how we were in the press box by common consent for that and a few other bloggers. Katherine Skaggs was in the press box for a few of those too. And I think that's no secret as well.

Temple Secrecy, Kate Kelly, and Correlation Culture

John Dehlin [00:55:10] Okay, so. Is there anything you can either discuss or confirm about the extent to which church sort of identifies or tracks what it perceives to be security threats? And I don't want you to say anything that you can't say.

Jesse Stay [00:55:32] Yeah, I do have to be really careful on that one. It operates like a business, like any other business. Every business has an information security department. And every business, every large company, will respond to threats. I will say this. I never saw myself, at least from a security standpoint, anything that went on that was not a legitimate emit security threat to the church in terms of tracking per se or anything like that.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] Okay. Anything you can talk about how the church approached the discussion of the temple and temple ordinances or is there anything there to talk about?

Jesse Stay [00:56:22] Yeah, it improved during the time we were there. I'd argue some of that is likely to a result of. And I don't want to encourage them because I actually still don't like the fact that Mike Norton, AKA New Name Noah, was breaking into temples and such. I think it's illegal, borderline unethical, if not illegal. And I know it's some people of the church as a result of some of that. And that's. I mean, if it gives some of that, there's some benefit to that. And I do see that. But I'd argue that some of that, and I'm not going to get into details, but some of that likely led to a little bit more open conversation about temples and garments by the church and garments. And you saw that firsthand. That's no secret.

John Dehlin [00:57:20] Sometimes, sometimes we would get tipped off on leaks or information about things that were coming or things that were about to happen or do you have anything to share about how leaks were perceived and handled? Whatever you could talk about or. Was that a thing? Was that a thing?

Jesse Stay [00:57:39] Well, yeah, I can't say too much about that, but the. As I said, the church is an organization like any organization, if it is deemed that employees are leaking information, they're going to investigate the employees that are leaking the information and they'd be dumb not to.

John Dehlin [00:58:07] Yeah. So about ordained women in. Kate Kelly, you were there during the ordained women thing, right?

Jesse Stay [00:58:15] Yeah, okay. Yeah, I was there.

John Dehlin [00:58:17] I'll just say this is the second time I've said this in a podcast, but recently I interviewed Greg Prince who said something to the effect of he felt like ordained women and Kay Kelly set Mormon feminists back 20 years. I don't have the exact quote, but it's something like that.

John Dehlin [00:58:34] And at the time, I didn't respond to that because I was running out of time in the interview. And I tried not to be adversarial to my listeners, but I did want to get him on the record as saying that publicly, just because he's a thoughtful, important guy. I want to go on the record as saying I completely disagree. I think that women are praying in General Conference now. The status of the auxiliary female leaders have been elevated. We have, you know, lady missionaries now in a bit leadership roles, at least quasi leadership roles. We have, you know, the missionary age has been lowered for women.

John Dehlin [00:59:15] I just think there's a million ways that the church sort of has advanced. Maybe a million small ways, but small ways in which ordained women will ordain women. And Kate Kelly and everyone else really helped move the needle. So that's my little shout out to Kate for and all her friends and supporters. But having said all that, again, thank you for your patience. Talk about what you experienced, whatever you're comfortable as it related to ordained women in Kate Kelly.

Jesse Stay [00:59:45] Yeah. So Kate has a very good point. I'd say the church used to operate in a way similar to what Greg Prince talks about, that the church is still very strong, strategic, it is not reactionary. It operates on data, on analytics, stats, even more so now than even before. I pushed a few research studies when I was there to try and get more information.

Jesse Stay [01:00:20] But the problem is if the 12 are set on any particular opinion on any particular subject, and you've seen this from some of the leaks, those leaks were new news to me as much as they were to anyone else.

Jesse Stay [01:00:39] I knew how the process worked, but I had never seen that side of it before. But my perception is that when someone gets the amount of attention that Kate Kelly got, when someone is pushing boundaries as much as Kate Kelly did, it's going to force people to approach the 12 and say, we've got to do something about this and the 12 are going to have to make a decision in one way or another. And she definitely pushed that. She got my attention. When I was there.

Jesse Stay [01:01:16] I didn't realize myself that women weren't praying in General conference. A lot of people, I think, weren't completely aware of that. I sent a few emails myself to people. I don't know if it was me that did it or it was probably several people that sent emails at that point asking about this and why they weren't. Before we knew it, the next General Conference, there were women praying in General Conference.

Jesse Stay [01:01:43] She was the reason for that. So without a doubt, these movements do have an effect. They'll resist them and they may not always pan out. There are times it could set things back. It could make the church more resistant to things than less. But in this case, I saw actual results from what Kate Kelly was doing. And we've all seen that, I think.

John Dehlin [01:02:09] And do you mean positive results? Positive or negative?

Jesse Stay [01:02:12] I think positive results. I mean, we've seen it. We've seen anywhere from women praying in General Conference, as you've mentioned, to the new structure of even the women general authorities interacting, how they interact with the 12 and the other general authorities and the men general authorities, to even the way the war council is structured and the Priesthood Executive Committee has been renamed. It's been a while. I'm trying to remember everything, but that was all a result of. I mean, as far as I'm aware, the church was studying some of this already and they were aware of some of the issues. But I think my opinion is that Kate push those buttons enough to force them to do something faster than they typically would have. I think they would have done something eventually, but Kate, I think, pushed them to do it now.

John Dehlin [01:03:11] And not just Kate, but all the people that supported all the people.

Jesse Stay [01:03:14] It wasn't just Kate. Absolutely. And there were. I mean, Kate was a little more liberal voice than some of the others. All respect to Kate, and I think she appreciates that personally. But. But the fact that so many women were following what Kate was doing from liberal to conservative, I think meant a lot to the church that they felt they had to do something or have some sort of answer to it.

John Dehlin [01:03:41] The church started around 2014 to really go after and start to excommunicate certain vocal people in the Mormon Internet. Did you, you know, were you aware of that? Did it. Did you see anything, Anything you can talk about? Do you think that was positive, negative? Were there any repercussions that rippled through?

Jesse Stay [01:04:09] Sure. So, I mean, I mentioned they know. They knew who you were. They knew who Kate Kelly was at the. I always mention church office building, but church headquarters, there's multiple buildings. But. I never heard rumors of anyone wanting to excommunicate you guys from church headquarters.

Jesse Stay [01:04:40] I think a lot of that really does happen down at the local level. I don't know for sure. I mean, I'm still trying to connect dots on things that I didn't know and things that I do know. But as Far as I know, there was no discussion of that at church headquarters. Doesn't mean it didn't happen. But in terms of discussing with your church leaders or Kate Kelly's church leaders or other church leaders, I think I was just barely finished finishing my time working for the church when all that was going on. I remember some of it very clearly, but I was never. If there were any conversations, I was never involved.

Jesse Stay [01:05:19] But, yeah, they were definitely aware of that. And like I said, as a smart organization, they're going to be aware of the conversation happening out there. I think they have a little bit of an ethical responsibility as a church to be responsible with the conversations that they're tracking. And I think to some extent they do. But, yeah, there's definitely conversations about that. Just I've never heard anything about excommunication at that level.

John Dehlin [01:05:50] Okay. Any sense that there was negative blowback for Proposition 8 if you don't know anything?

Jesse Stay [01:06:00] Yeah, I honestly, on that. On that front, I didn't deal a whole lot with that.

John Dehlin [01:06:06] Okay. Also, as it relates to. Oh, my gosh, I'm blanking. So I had a thought that I was going to ask and now it's escaped me. Okay, I'll come back to it. So I've got a ton of questions. Were you going to say something?

Jesse Stay [01:06:23] No. You're sure?

John Dehlin [01:06:24] Okay. Okay. So do you get a sense. So this was a. Oh, I remember now. Thank you for your patience. Any involvement with correlation, the correlation department that you're aware of, and anything you learned about the church's strengthening the members committee that you can talk about?

Jesse Stay [01:06:54] My personal opinion on that. If there was, I never dealt with it, but my personal opinion on that is that's a fictional term that's strengthening the members committee. I never once heard of an actual committee that meets together and tracks these people. Now, individual departments with different purposes, such as public affairs and such, I think they had their own purposes in staying on top of certain things, perhaps, but my perception was there wasn't. I did deal a lot with IP correlation and such. Like any organization.

John Dehlin [01:07:30] Intellectual property.

Jesse Stay [01:07:31] Intellectual property, yeah. And that's where a lot of the correlation efforts and such happen. And my understanding on a lot of that, just like any organization is, if there are trademark infringements and stuff like that, they'll approach that. They also help set some of the policy and such for the church. But as far as I'm aware, it doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Jesse Stay [01:07:54] I was never involved with it if it was there. I dealt a lot with this type of stuff when I was there. So I'd be really surprised why I wouldn't be aware of such a committee. But as far as I'm aware, at least as a name and an entity, it didn't exist. Maybe it was a council that multiple departments all met together and discussed these things that I wasn't aware of because I know that some of my stuff went up to the 70 and such, but I don't know where that'll happen. And maybe there was a committee that I'm not aware of.

John Dehlin [01:08:27] My understanding is that the existence historically of a Strengthened Awareness committee is pretty much a fact.

Jesse Stay [01:08:36] How active it is, I don't think currently it exists. Exists as far as you know? As far as I know.

John Dehlin [01:08:41] Okay.

Jesse Stay [01:08:41] Yeah, I think. I think you're right that I've read that too. And I think historically it likely did exist. In fact, I think even in some of McKay's journals, I think you can. Was it McKay?

John Dehlin [01:08:52] But even as Legene England.

Jesse Stay [01:08:55] Yeah, I was thinking about that with Mike. So recollection of through the 80s and

John Dehlin [01:09:00] 90s, it was going very strong and my understanding is it's still exist. But. So here's an interesting question. Now I'm going to just jump into the questions I got on social media, on Facebook. So this is a witty question. Do members believe in the church or do they believe in the church's brand and sort of face and is that an interesting question to you?

Jesse Stay [01:09:31] Yeah. So I think it depends what members you ask or investigators and converts. Yeah, I think the brand helps get the word out about the church, but I think most people that convert are converted to the church itself. I think at least I was.

Jesse Stay [01:09:53] I didn't see it as just a brand. To me, I. If I'm going to commit to something, I want to deeply understand it and deeply have a real belief around the doctrine of that entity. So I'd hope most people are the same.

Jesse Stay [01:10:08] And as far as I can tell, that's the case. The brand is used to sell it though. I think that's an excellent marketing technique in terms of ensuring consistency of message, ensuring consistency of brand and image and such so that there's no question about what that entity believes. And I think they're two different things. And I don't know how one can really. I mean there are.

Jesse Stay [01:10:42] Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but you do see cheerleaders out there for the brand. I'd hope those cheerleaders out there have an underlying belief that goes with that though.

John Dehlin [01:10:54] Sure. So a lot of people would probably want to sort of say there's good guys or bad guys or reduce the church to this sort of corporation that is like a McDonald's that's trying to manage its brand and manipulate. There was always this talk about like hard sell and the church's use of emotion to kind of manipulate people. And that's actually not. I'm not interested in that question. I'm interested in the flip, which is did you ever get a sense that it was more than just manipulation, that there was actually real sincere beliefs and intent behind the church's social media efforts?

Jesse Stay [01:11:43] So a lot of people aren't going to like this, at least in the ex Mormon community when I say it. But my perception, and again my perception isn't everyone's perception, but my perception. While working there were the majority of people I worked with had a genuine belief and genuine desire to see the mission of the church succeed, which was perfecting the saints, redeeming the dead and proclaiming the gospel and now the serving one, whatever that is.

Jesse Stay [01:12:13] And in my understanding and my perception with everyone I worked was everything we were doing was to do that. I've heard it brought up multiple times that the church is just trying to make more money. And I want to be clear on my end. Like I said, I really have no huge beef to grind here. I just want to share what I saw, what was there. I'm not here to proclaim the gospel in any way. I'm not here to preach ex Mormonism in any way. I'm just here to share my experience. And my experience was I never heard any of our KPIs.

John Dehlin [01:12:57] What is that? What is the KPI?

Jesse Stay [01:12:58] Key performance indicators. Indicators brought up where the entire metric we were trying to base things on was based on money or tithing dollars. In fact it was just the opposite. It was usually on how little tithing we could spend to accomplish things.

Jesse Stay [01:13:18] The other thing that we would focus on that I did see us focusing on where we were looking at. There was a time I was was trying and I was shut down. It never happened just to be clear.

Jesse Stay [01:13:31] But I tried to create a way of analyzing conversations that were happening along the line using artificial intelligence to identify who members versus non members versus less actives and such were. And we had the technology available that we could have done that if we wanted to. And I wanted to to be able to truly identify from the point a member has a conversation with a non member to the point that non member gets baptized, gets an account on lds.org and we can track it as a Baptism and be able to track through how many baptisms we're getting. And that's really. I mean, again, that never happened.

Jesse Stay [01:14:14] Just to be clear, they're not doing that right now. It was shut down, down on its face. And I'm telling the absolute truth on that. But the majority meetings I was in were talking about metrics like that. How can we grow membership? How can we improve? I mean, there's stuff like increasing perception of the church, defending the church's existence, for instance, that we're.

Jesse Stay [01:14:44] And I argue that defense of the church's existence is a major flaw of the church at the moment. That's hindering a lot of things, but I never saw any negative ill intentions. There were individual employees that were there for just a job, and that was an issue. I had people leaving early, getting paid by tithing dollars and then leaving early on Mondays because it was family home evening and you'd see the parking lot empty at like 3 or 4pm that was a big issue for me that I didn't like. But for the most part, most people had fairly good intentions. Some blind intentions, but good intentions.

SEO, Comment Moderation, and Gospel Topics Essays

John Dehlin [01:15:37] Is there anything you could talk about, about explicit attempts to like, hide or communicate things that aren't true or to hide the truth or to distort the truth in what you saw?

Jesse Stay [01:15:49] That's a good question. I think we do see cases where the Church doesn't tell the entire story story. The Church is still going to try and protect its existence. I'm very concerned with the Church's most recent announcement about the number of people leaving and how that's been constant throughout time. I think they're not telling the full story. I don't think they're including the right metrics with that.

Jesse Stay [01:16:27] I think they're telling the truth with the things that they're saying, but I think they're leaving out something with that, whether it be the number of people that are going inactive, the age ranges of activity, and I'd love to see whether certain age ranges are seeing an increase or not. We know for a fact from some of those leaked videos that single adult, at least are seeing major issues.

Jesse Stay [01:16:56] And that's where I have concerns. There are some things that I'm somewhat aware of that I can't talk about that also bring more concerns around that. But I can't say 100% for sure, but I think that's where I don't think they'll ever lie. But I think they'll withdraw certain parts of truth to be able to get their identity and to be able to make their point and continue showing forward progression.

John Dehlin [01:17:31] So you mentioned SEO or search engine optimization. One specific tactic that can be used, and maybe you already talked about this, was too many people are looking at CES letters or too many people are looking at MormonThink or Mormon stories or Tyler Glenn's video. And so an organization might use search engine optimization to make it so. Links to those too many people, I think assets would be farther down the chain so that people wouldn't find them and more positive influences or links to the church would increase and the church could actually buy advertising to sort of try and counter any negative messages that they see. Is that explicitly what the church did?

Jesse Stay [01:18:20] Yeah. First of all, too many people. I want more people to see that stuff now. But Mormon think was huge for me after reading through that.

John Dehlin [01:18:33] Positive.

Jesse Stay [01:18:35] For me in a positive way. It's. I mean, when I first saw it, I avoided it, but when I really started reading into it, it really helped confirm some of the doubts that I had. I had doubts already, but helped confirm and solidify with real facts and real history cited history of things in terms of SEO. And does the church do that? I think that's no secret.

Jesse Stay [01:19:01] I think everyone's aware that the Church was works on improving its image online, improving its search results online. I think there have even been a few articles out about that and such. I wrote one on some of the use of social media a while back that Public affairs had approved.

Jesse Stay [01:19:23] And yeah, I mean, the church, like any organization, is going to try and find the best ways to get itself to appear higher in the limelights than its competitors, which would likely be those that leave the church.

John Dehlin [01:19:40] Yeah. Anything interesting about whether the church leaves comments or deletes comments or anything censoring anything interesting there?

Jesse Stay [01:19:53] So I think it's no secret that the Church does delete comments. I think everyone's seen that I didn't deal a lot firsthand with the actual posting. I usually strategize with the people in charge of the people that were doing the posting. So I helped set the policies and set some of the structure and strategy around the individual departments and what they're posting.

Jesse Stay [01:20:20] But my understanding is that the majority of what goes on in terms of deleting posts is if you're going to be a troll, then they'll delete it in general. And this isn't always the case. And it may have changed since I was there too. I think it's changed multiple times over time in terms of what the overall policy and different departments will have different rules than others is that as long as it's not completely. As long as it's true and not completely hurting another individual or a threat or causing a negative overall atmosphere, they'll leave it. Otherwise they'll delete it.

Jesse Stay [01:21:06] I used to tell people when I advise the departments on this, I'd tell them if the overall conversation is positive, leave the negative comments. If the overall conversation is negative, then delete the negative. And I guess that that's likely the rule for most of that at this point. I don't know for sure, but that's my guess.

John Dehlin [01:21:31] I imagine that amongst the first presidency and apostles, there were. There were leaders who maybe engaged more constructively versus not constructively were obstacles versus supporters, champions, just pleasant, unpleasant. Is there anything that you can say about that and still be respectful and honoring to the position?

Jesse Stay [01:21:54] When you say leaders, are you talking about Bednar?

John Dehlin [01:21:57] You know, Bednar or Packer or, you know.

Jesse Stay [01:22:00] Yeah. So like I said, I didn't have any one on one direct contact with them. They all probably know my name. In fact, I met Elder Anderson afterwards and he knew exactly who I was. I know his son too though, so that might be part of it. I got the feeling that the older of the 12 as well as President Monson were a little less educated on modern things.

John Dehlin [01:22:29] Makes sense.

Jesse Stay [01:22:30] And it makes sense. And I did get a little bit of a negative vibe from that. And I doubt it was intentional. There was one time where I used to take the tunnels places in the church office building and I followed Elder Nelson one time and I called out to him because I wanted to mention my grandfather to him because he knew my grandfather and.

Jesse Stay [01:22:57] And I kind of felt he ignored me. But that was probably my perception that he probably never heard me. I don't know. I kind of get the sense that the older 12 though are kind of set in their ways.

Jesse Stay [01:23:12] I had a little bit of a more negative experience in terms of getting things done through the older 12 than the younger. The younger actually are fairly progressive. My understanding, even Elder Bednar, which I keep hearing negative things about. Elder Bednar used to. I saw him probably more than anyone else there because he'd come out and he'd do meetings, I'd see him walking around.

Jesse Stay [01:23:36] I met with a few people that were approached by him for little skunk works projects that they do kind of just to try out an idea that he wanted to. To try out. And he was much more interactive with a lot of those that worked there.

Jesse Stay [01:23:52] I was actually, while I worked there, I was somewhat impressed with him. He was the first person that actually said something about social media in a talk. Well, one of the first people between him and Ballard and I used to use his talk all the time, which helped me in my strategy. So I had never had any issue with him for the most part. I think the younger are actually fairly progressive. We'll see what happens once the older die and where they end up. Because I've heard some fairly radical things that have been discussed in private environments with some of those younger.

Jesse Stay [01:24:27] When people have been able to get opinions out of them. They won't share their opinions very often, though, as long as the older are in place.

John Dehlin [01:24:39] This is always a sensitive thing to talk about. But Doug Ferrizio and Greg Prince talked about it recently. I've talked about it for years. You know, we keep hearing reports about President Monson having dementia and kind of being not super able to really lead any. Did that issue ever. Is there anything you could talk about regarding that issue?

Jesse Stay [01:25:03] I'm going to. I'm going to leave it as rumor at the moment, but just say it's a frustration of mine.

John Dehlin [01:25:10] Okay.

Jesse Stay [01:25:11] And it's a frustration of mine that. Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna leave it at that.

John Dehlin [01:25:16] Okay. That's no problem. Good. Anything you can tell us about the More Good foundation, what it did, what its role is, etc.

Jesse Stay [01:25:23] I wasn't expecting that, but that's a good question.

John Dehlin [01:25:28] What is it?

Jesse Stay [01:25:29] Wow. I'm trying to figure out what I want to say on that Moregood Foundation. I'm good friends with their founder or not their founder. Their president, Jonathan Johnson. Not the Jonathan Johnson overstock. He's different than Jonathan Johnson.

John Dehlin [01:25:43] Wasn't the brother of the guy who started JetBlue or something involved?

Jesse Stay [01:25:47] Yeah, yeah. David Neeleman, I believe so. I think he started it.

John Dehlin [01:25:54] Was it the brother or the actual guy?

Jesse Stay [01:25:56] I think it was David Neeleman that. The actual JetBlue guy. I think I also knew Nathan Gwilliam, who was my boss at Desert Digital Media. He was the former president of Morgan Foundation. So I've got a long history with them. They're a great tool for the church. The church uses them fairly significantly in their digital efforts and. And allows the church to accomplish things that they couldn't accomplish otherwise with correlation and such. So I'll probably leave it at that. But I worked a lot with them.

John Dehlin [01:26:36] My understanding is that they would create. It's sort of like arm's length creation of assets and influencers to help to help make the church look good sometimes. I've heard about like cyber squatting or like purchasing domains that the Church doesn't want to specifically purchase.

Jesse Stay [01:27:00] So yeah, they kind of the more ruthless.

John Dehlin [01:27:04] I don't know. Ruthless.

Jesse Stay [01:27:05] I'm not going to disagree with you on that.

John Dehlin [01:27:08] So they would. What could harm the church? Let's prevent or purchase.

Jesse Stay [01:27:14] Yeah. I will say this. Jonathan Johnson had a pass to the church office building that he regularly used that he could get in and out easily.

John Dehlin [01:27:32] Okay.

Jesse Stay [01:27:33] He was not an employee, though.

John Dehlin [01:27:36] I mean, I get a sense that one of the things the church does is there's sort of things that the Church doesn't want to be directly involved in, but they want to happen. So they want. They support these organizations like Evergreen

Jesse Stay [01:27:50] in the LGBT world.

John Dehlin [01:27:52] It's Evergreen and now it's Northstar with Internet stuff. It would be more Good foundation and it's a way to get things done, but to not do it yourself.

Jesse Stay [01:28:02] Yeah. And that's no secret. Absolutely. The church would work with or organizations like this on a regular basis. They still do. It's an easier way to get things done without being completely in the limelight. In fact, I think Jonathan's a little mad at me right now because I called out More Good foundation for something they released that looked like a church property. But the.

John Dehlin [01:28:29] Like this Mormon Hub, right?

Jesse Stay [01:28:32] Yeah. Which one's the Mormon Hub?

John Dehlin [01:28:34] I don't know. It's just a newsletter news aggregator.

Jesse Stay [01:28:39] Yeah. There's stuff like that. I don't know who's More Good foundation, who's not. If you do whois search on a lot of it, you can tie a lot of it back to them. I'm pretty sure there's Meridian Magazine. Yeah. And some of those are. I don't think those are More Good Foundation. Some of those are their own. But the Church does work with them. You saw they worked with by Common Consent and others

John Dehlin [01:29:09] or even Fair Mormon. Right.

Jesse Stay [01:29:11] Yeah. And it's usually kind of indirect relationships like Fair Mormon. I was in several. On a couple email lists with a few of their guys. One of them who's left the church since. I'm not allowed to say his name, but he hasn't come out yet. But yeah, we definitely. It was a great strategic opportunity for us to get things done without worry of correlation, without worrying of tarring the Church's name if word ever got out or it went wrong.

John Dehlin [01:29:48] There was this moment several years ago where the Church announced that missionaries would have iPads and missionaries, that the church discovered that proselyte in the US and developed world wasn't effective and that they Were going to now have missionaries on Facebook and stuff. Do you have any insight into that?

Jesse Stay [01:30:08] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:09] And whether it was effective?

Jesse Stay [01:30:11] It was extremely effective. I'm trying to figure out what I'm allowed to share. Share on that. I'm not 100% sure what's public and what's not. It was one of my greatest tools in preaching social media throughout the church office building and getting people on board because they were showing such great results. But yeah, there were meaning more baptisms. Yeah. They were one of the most effective missions in the church at the mtc. The digital Facebook missionaries on.

John Dehlin [01:30:45] That's where the missionaries are answering questions.

Jesse Stay [01:30:47] Yeah. Where they're actually teaching people online and answering questions online and such.

John Dehlin [01:30:54] Okay.

Jesse Stay [01:30:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:30:59] Anything you can say about the gospel topic essays that were released?

Jesse Stay [01:31:08] I was somewhat involved in that, but that's about all I can say.

John Dehlin [01:31:12] Okay.

Jesse Stay [01:31:15] Somewhat involved. I don't know all the details.

John Dehlin [01:31:18] So some people. My analysis actually is that that was

Jesse Stay [01:31:22] after I worked for the church, but I was a little involved in it

John Dehlin [01:31:25] in the lead up to it. My analysis, and I'm just curious if you would agree that. That the church explicitly, and they've said this, they took an inoculation approach where if you expose the members and especially the young members to the historical blemishes, that instead of, you know, learning about the stuff when they're 40 and feeling lied to, instead they would learn the stuff when they were teens and then when that happened, they would have remembered that they had already learned that and then they would be inoculated. Are you getting a sense that that inoculation effort is going to actually pay positive dividends?

Jesse Stay [01:32:07] So just a little background story on that before I answer your question. So after I worked for the church, I met with a few people that worked for the church and had a few conversations around this. And one of the topics that came up was that I wanted to figure out.

Jesse Stay [01:32:27] I just couldn't believe that they weren't putting these essays in more prominent places on the website. And this guy told me that the main reason for that is that the church is worried that it's going to drive the older population out of the church if they.

Jesse Stay [01:32:48] That they have the newer generation, the younger generation that is craving this information that isn't being taught this information and the older generation that was never taught this information and their worry. It's kind of a catch 22. You release it, you lose some of your population or you don't release it and you keep some of it.

Jesse Stay [01:33:17] And I think their decision was kind of an in between, kind of a gradual release and gradual exposure. And I think you'll see more of that in the future. I hope you see more of it in the future.

Jesse Stay [01:33:29] To be honest though, the more I've learned, and I mean, maybe I'm wrong, there are people in the church that will believe no matter what. And I think that includes, includes the younger generations. But the younger generations are smart, They're demanding of transparency and of information. And my, I'm not going to say concern.

Jesse Stay [01:34:01] My guess is that the, the younger generation, the more that they learn history, the more that they learn, the more of this that does get exposed, the more of them are going to want to make their own choices and more of them are going to start to realize that the church that they originally believed in wasn't true. And the church is going to have to either adapt its programs to support that earlier history and I think at some point perhaps they'll have to deal with potential fraud allegations of Joseph Smith potentially, if they ever get that level of history available.

Jesse Stay [01:34:44] But the church is going to have to address those things and respond with programs to support that more and more. I think things like gays, the attitude towards gays within the church and, and such, that's going to have to change significantly to keep that younger generation there. And the more the church does to fight it, the more the younger generation is going to leave. Frankly, I think the doctrines and policies more than anything are going to hurt that younger generation than even the history does.

Church Leadership Dynamics, Politics, and Waste

John Dehlin [01:35:18] Anything about the Joseph Smith Papers project

Jesse Stay [01:35:20] that's worth mentioning, I didn't deal a lot with, I mean, other than trying to get it online, trying to get more exposure, more people seeing it. That was, I mean, everything I dealt with within the history department was they wanted to get their information out as quick as possible and they're still doing it as far as I'm aware.

John Dehlin [01:35:42] Anything you can say about how the public relations department works, like when the November policy came out, everything I've heard was the. That they were unaware and that they were totally left out of the loop and they had to now spend their time scrambling to respond because they weren't really brought into the loop.

Jesse Stay [01:35:59] I got that sense, I don't know, I don't have any, that they were

John Dehlin [01:36:02] frustrated that they were not in the loop.

Jesse Stay [01:36:04] So I don't have any inside information on that other than from my own perception of those that were involved. The way Mike Otterson responded, the length of time it took to respond, I got the sense that they weren't anticipating the leak to come out. They weren't anticipating people to realize that this had been added to the handbook when it did. And my guess is and I'm pretty sure on this based on a few people I talked to. But my guess is that either PRECIO or Curriculum or both departments were not talking to the Public affairs department as they released this and they weren't strategizing close enough on that. And that would be. My guess is it was bureaucracy people not talking together where they should have and left people scrambling.

John Dehlin [01:37:03] Someone asked if there. If you perceive to be any heroes or villains is. I like the idea that there are no heroes or villains. But what do you.

Jesse Stay [01:37:11] Did you perceive any. I really didn't. I'm not a type that relates to judge to that level.

John Dehlin [01:37:20] That's good.

Jesse Stay [01:37:21] And I really saw good in everyone in different ways.

John Dehlin [01:37:25] Were you ever concerned about sort of the king has no clothes mentality where the top leaders surround themselves with. With yes men or just people that will filter and not give them the full scoop or not feel comfortable being candid and so the top leaders of the church aren't getting the best information.

Jesse Stay [01:37:46] Yeah. That was a huge frustration for me working there is I mentioned that I didn't deal a lot with a 12 and that was because I now call it the wizard of Oz. That there's this Oz behind the scene curtain at the top that no one below the curtain has access to.

Jesse Stay [01:38:06] And I have to filter everything I shared through managing directors or members of the 70. And you see this in the leaks. When this leak came out it kind of blew me away too. And that I was now seeing the other side of the stuff that I had proposed. And none of the leaks that I saw, I don't think any of that was stuff that I had been involved in. But I wouldn't be surprised if whoever leaked it has access to some of the presentations that I put together on that.

Jesse Stay [01:38:44] And that was. I mean it confirmed every suspicion I had. Everyone was telling me when I worked for the church that that when you present something it gets presented to the 12. They can ask questions but you don't argue it. And that was a huge frustration for me. I wanted to go and argue this with the 12. I wanted to go and argue why are the 12 not on social media? Why do they not have accounts and why are they not participating in social media and work it out with them. To understand and argues may be a bad way to put it. But I wanted to help them understand why they should be using these tools.

Jesse Stay [01:39:26] And I couldn't do that with just a presentation. And I came up with my own strategies and political moves to kind of help that happen regardless. Very slowly. But the reason the church moves so slowly is because the 12 it is that emperors new clothes mentality that they're yes men, that they surround themselves with yes men. It's people that I'd argue they're not necessarily yes men.

Jesse Stay [01:39:51] They're people that won't argue with them though. And it's all a matter of strategy to say no to something with them without actually saying no, if that makes sense.

John Dehlin [01:40:05] To say no to the brother.

Jesse Stay [01:40:07] Yeah. So if, if I want to say your current strategy around social media or the current policies around social media are wrong, I'm not going to go in saying that the current policies around social media are wrong. I'm going to go in with data showing why we should be using social media, point out that this policy is flawed and then we'll. And then from there hopefully they either accept it or they start asking questions that whoever's presenting can answer.

John Dehlin [01:40:41] How is the latter thing that you said different from the former thing that you said?

Jesse Stay [01:40:46] The latter thing is that those that are presenting to them are actually willing to challenge it. They're just doing it very slowly and in a very strategic manner. That's. Yeah, they're in that room they're yes men, but outside the room they're strategizing and coming up with ways to get the information in the right format that achieves the purposes and the data that they're using. But yeah, in reality, I mean they are surrounding themselves with yes men. That's what they seem to want. At least Amongst the older 12 it's even more so the case I think the younger kind of venture out here and there and try and get stuff done and discuss. I never saw that from the older. Maybe Elder Perry was a little more flexible on some of that stuff. Trying to think who else that I heard of people going around and stuff. But okay.

John Dehlin [01:41:48] Did you get a sense that there were fierce politics going on amongst the bureaucrats of the church?

Jesse Stay [01:41:55] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [01:41:56] Like what?

Jesse Stay [01:41:56] Talk about anyone who has worked for a very large company has seen this level of politics. If not maybe not quite as bad. It was constant. I was told after I worked for the church that I had a target on my back because I was challenging things and I was pushing the the envelope when I was there and I was doing it genuinely. I had no ill intentions when I was there.

Jesse Stay [01:42:27] It was a constant matter of for instance, the AV department hired someone to manage social After I was already hired and they knew that I was hired to manage social media. That was because Joel, you're brother, was very much in competition with the managing director of the AV department at the time. He'll deny that, but that was my perception.

Jesse Stay [01:42:57] But you'd have things like that where kind of turf battles on who's in charge of what, and it wasn't completely clear who's in charge of what. So someone trying to try to take charge and then someone would realize, hey, I want more control so I can get things done better. So they try to take charge. And I mean with social media, with this other guy, I was constantly having to work around things to try and keep him from messing things up at times.

Jesse Stay [01:43:22] There was actually a couple of these people, I'm not mentioning anyone in particular. There was actually a couple people in this competing position while I was there. And they're all so smart people. One of them's still there and he's doing a good job already.

Jesse Stay [01:43:41] Anyway, I'm trying to think of other examples in order to. So a lot of what I was doing was, like I said, social media was seen as evil when I was there. Evil is maybe a bad word, but it was, it was not seen as much of a tool as the church sees it now. And I had to figure out ways to both convince the individual departments I was working with. The department leads all the way from the bottom to the top to the 70 and the 12, and had to come up with varying strategies and political moves to be able to make that happen.

Jesse Stay [01:44:21] I had friends that I knew would always support me and help get this to the right people. And I'd ally up with some of those individuals. There were times like I always had the attitude of a lot of people there would say it can't be done. And I always had the attitude, it's not a matter of it can't be done, it's how can it be done? And so I'd go and if we had legal issues, I'd go work with the legal group and privacy issues, I'd go work with the privacy group and try and help them come up with strategies that would fit their needs, yet still accomplish my needs and such at the same time.

Jesse Stay [01:45:05] There were certain people there whose jobs were threatened as a result of some of the things I was doing. And I wasn't doing on purpose to lose anyone's jobs. But frankly, the jobs were needed in many cases. I'm trying to think of an exact example. I don't have it on me, but that caused certain people to worry and get frustrated and come up with their own politics and trying to usurp me.

John Dehlin [01:45:33] It sounds like normal corporate.

Jesse Stay [01:45:35] Normal corporate politics.

John Dehlin [01:45:36] Bureaucracy.

Jesse Stay [01:45:36] Yeah, bureaucracy.

John Dehlin [01:45:37] So average, Worse than average? Better than average.

Jesse Stay [01:45:40] I'd say it's on, on the average. The worst scale. You get into byu, it's way worse.

John Dehlin [01:45:48] Okay. I was able to have two lunches with Elder Holland while.

Jesse Stay [01:45:56] That's more lunches than I got.

John Dehlin [01:45:57] Yeah, yeah. Well, I had it in. And one of the things he expressed to me candidly was how difficult it is. He basically said to me, maybe people think that the Brethren just sort of say this is what we want to happen and it happens. But he basically said there's a huge mountain of effort between even the apostles wanting something to happen and being able to affect that change through upper, middle and low level management. And you wouldn't think that. You'd think we're authoritative. If the Brethren wants something, it just happens.

Jesse Stay [01:46:34] Yes. I mentioned Bednar going and starting his little skunk works projects here and there. That was because the Brethren have to go through their own processes to get the church office building to do things that they want to do. And then there's a whole other level of when they want the members to hear something or get a message from them, they have to go through. It's like a game of telephone even to get to the members.

Jesse Stay [01:46:59] So it goes the opposite way as well with them from my perception in that they have their level of bureaucracy they have to go through. They're still subject to correlation. They're still subject to if they want something done, they have to go through the managing directors. Well, usually that's 70. That's over the managing directors and then the managing director himself.

Jesse Stay [01:47:21] And then that managing director has to go and organize a team to do it. And then they occasionally can work with those teams to do it. Sometimes one on one, sometimes indirectly. And that's a lot of steps. My biggest frustration, as I said working there was I didn't have that one on one access to the 12. And I could have gotten things done so much faster if I just had that one on one access.

John Dehlin [01:47:47] Regarding the issue of waste in the church, I worked there for a year prior to my time at Microsoft. I remember honestly a lot of sincere concern about the widow's mite, that we want to always save money, that we always want to be frugal and that you just, you pinch every penny to make sure you're never misusing the sacred tithing that the members give. That's One hand. And then I've heard stories of just egregious waste and even abuse. What did you see?

Jesse Stay [01:48:18] I saw both. I mean the employee orientation you go through, they share with you Hinckley's talk on the widow's mite. And that's stressed over and over again that they don't want you to waste. And that was one of my biggest frustrations. There was after all this talk on the widow's mite, I was seeing people that were misusing hours.

Jesse Stay [01:48:42] I had four hours of vacation time, which is awesome for a job. Frankly, any job I work for, I'm going to be seeking that out at this point. But wait, four hours of vacation time. Not four hours. I'm sorry, four weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks. Four weeks of vacation time. No, I don't want four hours of vacation time.

Jesse Stay [01:49:05] But for tithing, I mean where I was using tithing dollars, I was all paid by tithing dollars. I mentioned people going home 3, 4pm, seeing the parking lot empty on Mondays for family home evening. That's all tithing money being spent. You get into some of the trips people take overseas and such. And I never saw anything unethical per se from a business standpoint, but a lot of waste in terms of how they really could have been using that money. The types of.

Jesse Stay [01:49:42] They were still careful on some of this, but there are things all over the place. I'm trying to think of exact examples other than what I shared, but there was definitely issues on both ends. I mean, like I said, if there was any mention of tithing in any meetings as a performance indicator, it was saving.

Jesse Stay [01:50:03] I worked on the LDS tech team. In fact, I helped launch LDS tech from my LDS OSS open source software days. I was on the team that helped launch LDS tech. And the whole purpose of LDS tech was to fulfill some of Hinckley's vision of having fewer employees working at the church and having more people volunteer and using less tithing money. So that's a big. In that case, it was a key performance indicator in terms of that.

John Dehlin [01:50:32] But in terms of like big projects that weren't very useful or poor management money or things getting scrapped, where big money was spent, you know. And you saw it in the leaks. There's so many when we saw leaks like the thousand dollar carpets and just exorbitant. And also what about patronage or family members or relatives getting special treatment?

Jesse Stay [01:50:57] I've never heard that until after working for the church. I don't doubt it in terms of inheritance cronyism or whatever. I never Saw anything unethical or illegal around that. And I didn't you tell have much access to the finances, financial data or such. But my guess, I mean, I've only seen what people have shared after the fact in that I don't doubt that the family members of the 12 get big inheritances. The 12 are all on boards for the for profit. And these are the church. So I'm sure they get residuals.

John Dehlin [01:51:44] I thought they changed that. I thought they were pulled off.

Jesse Stay [01:51:45] I don't know, and I don't even know if that's. I don't know the details of whether that. How into it or whether they were getting residuals on that or not. I don't know any of the details on that. But it would make sense to me on some of that, that their families would get some of that benefit.

John Dehlin [01:52:08] I remember some statement that Gordon Mehinkly made at some point that names from the genealogical databases had been used multiple times. So let's say Sam smith, born in 1592, his work would have been done for him multiple times. That there was like this fixed set of names and people.

John Dehlin [01:52:35] And that because there wasn't enough names to go around, a lot of the temple work being done was just people's names and their work being done over and over and over again for the same people. I not only heard that President Hinckley acknowledged that in General Conference once, but I've also had internal reports of the church, like, being really freaked out that there weren't enough names to support all the temple work that they wanted to be done and all the activity that they wanted to motivate. And so, you know, I even heard something as extreme as, like, Hitler and Eva Braun having their work being done 10 times and then being sealed together 10 times. So is that. Is there anything you're able to say about that?

Jesse Stay [01:53:17] I will say if President Hinckley said it's true, then it's probably true. If President Hinckley said it's true, it's true.

John Dehlin [01:53:26] Okay. All right. I think I'll glean from that what makes sense to do that.

Jesse Stay [01:53:33] Just glean from that what you want. And I don't know if it's still the case or not. That's something that I'm not 100% sure on. But I will glean from President Hinckley that if it's true, it's true.

John Dehlin [01:53:46] Okay. Okay. So is the seniority system a really big deal in terms of the senior apostles sort of like running the show and the junior apostles sort of staying Quiet.

Jesse Stay [01:54:00] And really, my interpretation is, yes, like I said, I never had firsthand interaction with that, but from secondhand knowledge and people that I talked to and dealt with in strategizing, what I was trying to get through to the them was that it is seniority based. The first presidency won't act if the president isn't on board, the 12 won't act if the president isn't on board. And it goes based on seniority from there. So that's my understanding, and I've heard that from a few people.

John Dehlin [01:54:45] So we're kind of nearing the end couple. Just final questions. So overall, if you were to kind of say whether social media has sort of been an influence for good or for ill in terms of the church's strength and vitality, do you think the church is better off for what it's done with social media, or do you think it's created cracks that are going to really ripple through the church or

Social Media's Impact on the Church

Jesse Stay [01:55:11] something in between, or both? Yeah. So I think it depends who you ask. I think it's both. I think we're losing the camera here.

John Dehlin [01:55:21] Sorry about that. All right, keep going.

Jesse Stay [01:55:23] Okay. So I think personally that it's somewhere in between that. I think. I think the church has definitely seen success. And I've seen metrics to prove that in terms of growth, in terms of new membership, in terms of baptisms, perception, and other things that are a result of social media.

Jesse Stay [01:55:56] I also. I also think that it has had a negative effect and that the transparency itself is allowing people to learn a lot more about the church and its origins and its policies and the people behind it and such. I think the only way the church is going to be able to respond is actually for it to become more transparent and start being willing to admit its mistakes, start being able to admit publicly on individual basis the issues that exist and have real conversations about those with those that are leading the organization.

Jesse Stay [01:56:41] Personally, I think they've got to strip off the covers and get those that are the leaders of the organization out in front of the public versus behind the scenes, this wizard of Oz curtain,

John Dehlin [01:56:57] Do you feel like in the developed world, I mean, who knows what's happening in the developing world? We know that that's where the bulk of baptisms come from. Now, we know that retention rates are awful. But let's just say in the primarily, let's say in the areas where most of the tithing comes from, from the United States, the Wasatch Front, Western Europe, Canada, do you get a sense that the church is struggling there? And in the Missionary efforts in those areas. Do you get a sense for whether social media has helped or hurt in the developing world? In the developed world?

Jesse Stay [01:57:37] In a developed world, I think it's struggling more in the developed world where they speak English, I think part of that and I don't know, I don't have access to the stats, so I don't know for sure, this is my opinion, but my perception based on what I've seen and such is that the developed world is struggling, I think partly as a result of the histories there. There's so many, because so many people speak English, they have access to the history, they have access to the nuances and the way that people say things and such and they're able to interpret that better. The developing world I think is actually thriving at the moment, especially places like Asia and such.

Jesse Stay [01:58:23] Thailand, where I serve my mission is starting to really pick up and my concern there is that especially in these Asian languages, they don't speak English in these countries and very few people understand English and they don't have access to these histories.

Jesse Stay [01:58:43] They have access to the church's version of these histories, but they don't have access to the raw documents, original histories and such that the developed world has. And that's a big concern for me. I wish that, like I said, I served my mission in Thailand. I wish that, that these ties had access to the same information I have. It's just not out there.

John Dehlin [01:59:06] So Jeremy Runnels, if you haven't released the multi language versions of CES Letter, get on it. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, how about overall, do you have a sense for your contribution if you were to sort of sum up your legacy, your contributions, Are you even comfortable doing that?

Jesse Stay [01:59:31] Well after today or what you tried to do? No, I hope they don't hate me today. I tried to keep it positive. I think I'm happy with my time working for the church. I'm happy with the performance I made, I treated at the moment. Moment I treat it as a job. I mean it's no longer just religion for me, it's a job for me.

Jesse Stay [01:59:59] That to me was a major part of my career. I was able to see an organization the size of Google, a business the size of Google, and figure out how to structure social media within that organization and then work with different departments within the organization to.

Jesse Stay [02:00:23] Build out an unprecedented presence amongst, in this case religions, that other religions are trying to figure out how they did it. And that's huge. And I mean the same principles could be applied to any business or Organization. I do have some, some regrets just in that because it was a religion and most people perceive it as a religion, I've had to go out and start my own business because finding jobs out there that will see the church as a business, very few out there see it as a business and treat it like a business. It's another religion. So the experience caliber isn't seen the same as what I had access to and what I was doing.

Jesse Stay [02:01:12] So that's been a little difficult and I have few regrets around that. But I figured it out and I mean, I'm just going to go lead social media for the Church of England now. But beyond that, I feel I did my job. I pushed boundaries, took it to a level that I think both members and non members can be proud of and I have no regrets. I did the best I could and I was honorable and ethical and accomplished what I was set there to do.

Regrets, Reflections, and Final Message to Listeners

John Dehlin [02:01:54] In terms of regrets, knowing now that your beliefs about the church and maybe even your opinions about how much harm versus good the church does has probably changed since when you started. Any regrets around the fact that you helped the church with its marketing, with its influence, with its power, that you were a sort of accomplice or support to the wizard?

Jesse Stay [02:02:18] Yeah, that's. I mean, I mean, I have conflicting feelings around that at the moment. I'm still trying to figure some of that out. I'm still in a transition, transition process for the most part, still going through the stages of grief. So I'm trying to figure out where I actually stand on that.

Jesse Stay [02:02:38] I mean, at the moment I do have some grief over a couple things here and there that I helped out with and that I was involved in that I don't now agree with. But I'm not to the point where I'm going to go out and leak it all to the world and such. I was not one of the leakers of anything. That's not me. I'm not the type that really does that.

Jesse Stay [02:03:09] At least that I can think. I can't think of a reason why I would do that at the moment, but I can't see myself doing that in the future even either. But yeah, I'd be lying if I didn't say I had some regrets around that. But like I said, I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't know if I really should regret it or not. And I'm trying to figure it out. I was doing a job. I was working there and it was a job.

Jesse Stay [02:03:35] Yeah, I believed in what I was doing back Then, but it was still a job and I was doing what I was hired to do.

John Dehlin [02:03:44] So it'd probably be hard for you to say whether you wish the church success or ill. You probably would have a hard time.

Jesse Stay [02:03:49] You know, I actually do wish the church success. I want them to be more transparent. I want them to fix their bigoted policies towards gays. I want them to be more progressive. And women, Women's a big thing for me. Yeah, it's completely.

Jesse Stay [02:04:14] I was a huge Boy Scout proponent and at the moment I'm very torn on that now because of some of the attitudes towards women and things I've heard from church leaders around that, which if you want, we can talk about that too.

Jesse Stay [02:04:32] But anyway, I think that. Where were we? I'd like to see in general, I wish a success, but the success I see is one where women are equal, where gays are welcome in the organization, where all men are welcome in the organization with equal opportunity, people of color.

Jesse Stay [02:05:01] And right now, the way I see it is if it's not blacks, if it's not gays, if it's not women, it's going to be some other issue always within the church. And I can't see that ever changing. It moves so slow. So I wish it success in that. I'd like to see it move fast enough to be able to handle these types of issues, that I'd like to see it move fast enough to be progressive enough to match up with history and where history is going. But at the moment, I can't see that. And it saddens me. I'm heartbroken in many ways that they're not doing that.

John Dehlin [02:05:39] At the last of last, at the end of last episode, you shared sort of a parting message to people struggling in their faith or to believers who have to deal with members who are struggling with their faith and to LGBT people. It was a beautiful final plea. Thank you. At the end of this episode, you know, normally we ask people what they believe in now or, you know, kind of to bear whatever testimony of truths that they hold to. Now, you've talked about your experiences with the corporate church. If you have any final words you want to share for this episode, what do you want to share?

Jesse Stay [02:06:17] So I guess I'd like to leave a message for. I'm hoping that some active Mormons are watching this because I've tried to leave it pretty non negative to kind of give some insight into everything. And I hope I haven't shared anything that I shouldn't have shared that wasn't my intention. If that was the case.

Jesse Stay [02:06:42] I just want to, to share. I want people to see what I did and kind of have a view of my story. But for any of those at the church that are watching this, that are still working at church headquarters and such, I mean, as the person who used to lead social media for the church, if there's anything I can just ask, more than anything is that keep being, working towards transparency, work towards trying to open up more, work towards bringing the 12 into social media.

Jesse Stay [02:07:19] It would be a dream come true to have any member of the 12 see this and be able to see some of my perspective from that level. And I'd love to see any of the 12 get on social media, start conversing on social media, bring it back to, to the days of Joseph Smith when Joseph Smith himself was able to talk directly with the members, have conversation with the members, play with the members, hang out with the members. I want to see those days come back and with social media we can do that. We can accomplish things that we were never able to do as a global church.

Jesse Stay [02:07:55] Now we can actually bring it down to the days where a leader of the church can now talk one on one with members and bring it to that level. I want to see. I may have left the church, I may not believe anymore, but I wish the church success. I want to see the church have success and I want to see the church get back to the days of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [02:08:18] One last question that sort of came to my mind. I met a guy the other day who worked deep in the bureaucracy of the church and he just told me a funny little story. He said there were moments when he was working for church headquarters, that listening to Mormon stories was the only way that he got through his job. And I don't say that to be self congratulatory. I actually have a point that really doesn't have anything to do with about me, believe it or not.

John Dehlin [02:08:46] In addition, I remember when I went to church headquarters once and I was, it was to meet with Utter Holland and I pushed the elevator button or someone else came to push it and they asked me what floor I wanted to go to and I told them, they recognized my voice and they said, oh, you're John Dehlin. So. And that's just one podcast. Like do you get the sense that there are people in the church working for the church that actually have sympathies for progressive ideologies that are, that don't believe, that are plugged into all this stuff and that are. I don't want to say on our side, but on the side of truth or openness or progression or whatever. Are there people on the inside?

Jesse Stay [02:09:30] Oh, absolutely. There are people inside of all varying levels, from the very conservative to the very progressive to even the non believing that are there. If they're not believing, they won't admit it, at least to people that work there. So I never personally came across anyone other than knowing about people leaking information and stuff.

Jesse Stay [02:09:53] But beyond that there are people. I mean, I was actually one of those towards the end of my time. I was still a believer, but I became more progressive towards the end. And some of your stuff I mentioned, the second anointing podcast, podcasts and stuff were comforts to me. And I think there are definitely people out there that gain value from this. And if they're this stuff to me, members are going to come across as having doubts at some point in their life. And there are no resources by the church for members who are having doubts except the essays and the apostle. But there's no one to hold their hand when they come across the essays.

Jesse Stay [02:10:37] There's no one other than a bishop who doesn't really know how to respond. There's no one really to hold their hand. And when they work for the church, you're coming across even gnarlier information than that. And there's no one at church headquarters there to hold your hand. I went through some of the gnarliest data that any employee has ever been through. I'm not going to give details, but I.

Jesse Stay [02:11:01] And I kept wishing the entire time, I wish that a member of 12 would reach out to me or maybe even not a member of 12. Just someone who can give me source based data to me on how to respond and how to feel about this stuff. And it's not there. And your stuff is the only stuff. Your stuff and the similar resources out there is the only stuff that's out there there for people to get. And your stuff is pretty fact based. Go to MormonThink. It's all sourced.

Jesse Stay [02:11:35] Better than fair is you go to other resources out there and you can find the sources out there. The church wouldn't smile on it, but members need this. They need this information if they go into these periods of doubting, especially employees of the church.

John Dehlin [02:11:55] All right, well, Jesse, stay. It's been a real pleasure. This has been a fascinating interview. I think occasionally I'll tag an interview as like a best of Mormon stories. I think this has risen to that status. So thank you for your honesty.

Jesse Stay [02:12:12] I'm sorry ahead of time.

John Dehlin [02:12:14] Thanks for your courage. Thanks for your candor and listeners. Thanks for your support. You guys make this possible. For those of you who donate to Mormon stories, we're a 501c3 nonprofit. Your donations literally keep this alive. If the donations drive up, we stop because we can't afford to do this. So thank you for those of you who support us. For those of you who don't, we do rely on your donations. So please consider going to one of our podcasts and making a donation.

John Dehlin [02:12:51] Monthly donations allow us to sort of have enough revenue to sort of hire staff or predict kind of how we want to spend money in the future. So if you want to see this stuff continue, please support us. We have Dan Witherspoon does a great job with Mormon Matters. We also have other podcasts like Thoughtful Faith with Gina Colvin and Mormon Transitions with Kristi Money. And for some reason, and I've mentioned this several times before, female podcasters don't get donations like male podcasters do. So if you want to support Gina Colvin or Kristi Money or Natasha Alver Parker with Mormon Mental Health Podcast, please donate to them.

Jesse Stay [02:13:32] Let's fix that.

John Dehlin [02:13:33] Yeah, let's fix that. But if you want to comment on this episode, please, Please go to mormonstories.org Leave your comments there. Hopefully Jesse will have time to respond, but mostly just know that it's a real honor and a privilege to be able to work with the Open Stories foundation, to be able to run this podcast, and to be able to provide you with this content. So, Jesse, thanks again for making that possible.

Jesse Stay [02:13:57] Absolutely, my pleasure. Go donate.

John Dehlin [02:14:00] Okay. And more good stuff coming up. So thanks for tuning in and. And please join us again soon. You guys take care.

Jesse Stay [02:14:14] Thank you.

John Dehlin [02:14:15] Feel good?

Jesse Stay [02:14:16] I think so. I'm a little nervous about one or two things.

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