Introduction and Episode Overview

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 862

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. All right, everyone. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. Today it's going to be a live interview. It's January 30, 2018. We're so excited to be at the South Mountain Community Church in Draper, Utah, one of five South Mountain churches that I'm aware of. Lehigh, South Jordan, West Jordan, St. George and Draper. Did I get them all?

Pastor Rick [00:01:11] We also have an international campus in Columbia. No, that's a partner church.

John Dehlin [00:01:16] Okay.

Pastor Rick [00:01:16] Buco Romana, Colombia. But we have. They're primarily Spanish speaking community and they share this facility with us.

John Dehlin [00:01:24] Excellent. We're so thrilled to have you with us. We want to thank everyone who's made this possible. Let me just set up the interview, if that's okay. You know, Mormon Stories and the Oba Stories Foundation. Our mission is to provide support for people experiencing or impacted by a religious transition or faith crisis. And you know, we love to study the church, explore the church, to celebrate and sometimes even criticize the church, its doctrine, its culture, its history. But what we also like to do is to provide support for Mormons who are transitioning either within Mormonism or outside. And something that we feel is really important is to allow people to explore what a life after Mormonism might mean. We know that many, many thousands and thousands of people, tens of thousands of people, are leaving the LDS Church each year. While we provide support for people who stay in the church, we also want to celebrate and provide support for people who leave. And over half of those that we've surveyed who leave the LDS Church end up identifying as atheist or agnostic. But there are a good chunk of those who look for a spiritual home elsewhere. Recently, we conducted a few interviews with a few families who have joined the Denver Snuffer movement as an example of a way to, to continue following Christ and their spiritual promptings through a different religious tradition. But we have heard so many good things about South Mountain Community Church that we, we felt like we really wanted to take some time to understand kind of what this church is about, what they believe, why they're Here, how they got started here in. In the belly of the beast, so to speak. And. And then really understand what the church has meant to several people who have left the LDS Church and have found a spiritual home here. So we're going to be interviewing Pastor Paul and Pastor Rick about the founding of this church and what they're about. Then we're going to bring on some former LDS Church members to talk about their journeys out of Mormonism and into Christianity. And along the way, I'm going to play the role of an investigator and I'm going to ask questions of Paul and Rick and those on the stage, you know, as if I were a sincere inquirer about their beliefs, about what they teach, about how they behave, and about religion and Christianity in general. And just to be really clear, all in the spirit of exploring and celebrating the good work that they're doing here and the way that they're trying to make a positive difference. So it won't be debates, it won't be contention, but it will be sincere, honest dialogue, stories and questions. Because this is important stuff. I will say that I had the great fortune of attending a service at 11am on Sunday where Pastor Rick spoke.

Pastor Paul [00:04:41] And.

John Dehlin [00:04:41] And I just have to say that it was delightful. The energy was really, really buzzing. This whole, you know, this whole chapel, I don't know what you call it, meeting hall was filled to capacity both services. The music was outstanding and the number of volunteers and people participating and supporting was really energizing. And I was. I was inspired. I had no idea the level of energy and commitment and support. So I'm just really honored to be here and really grateful that you host all of us to learn more about what you do.

Pastor Rick [00:05:19] John, thanks, man. I appreciate you saying such kind things about what you experienced on Sunday. That's fantastic.

Pastor Paul's Background and Path to Utah

John Dehlin [00:05:26] All right, well, let's start with Pastor Paul. Pastor Paul, tell us just a tiny bit about yourself. Did you grow up Christian? And where did you grow up and how did you get into the ministry?

Pastor Paul [00:05:38] Well, I grew up quasi Christian. My parents certainly were Christians, but they chose a very poor church to raise my brothers and sisters and myself in. It's a church that would be termed a liberal Protestant church that didn't really think that the Bible was true or miracles were possible. And so that made Easter really interesting when you don't really believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. It was just springtime. And so I grew up in that kind of atmosphere, but actually found Christ in a real way, through the Scriptures, through the Bible, and through a Group of people in high school immediately started to teach Bible studies, went to college, continued to enjoy helping other people learn about God and teaching the Bible. And so I just continued on a pathway toward being a pastor. Went to seminary, that's a three year master's degree, and then became a college pastor, an associate pastor in Bakersfield, California, and then moved here 20 years ago with my wife and two boys. So that's quickly my story.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] So how many years did you spend leading or being involved in managing churches prior to coming to.

Pastor Paul [00:06:52] 17 years.

John Dehlin [00:06:53] 17 years. Okay. And you may have just said this, but it went fast for me a bit. So were you a head pastor at other churches?

Pastor Paul [00:07:02] I was an associate pastor. A guy that doesn't preach all the time and helps with helping people in terms of discipleship, helping people in their spiritual journey. And then this was the first time I preached every single Sunday and that sort of thing. And we started from scratch. We moved here.

John Dehlin [00:07:23] And so you and your. You and your wife?

Pastor Paul [00:07:25] My wife and I, my two boys. That was our church.

John Dehlin [00:07:29] How'd you pick Utah? Salt Lake, specifically?

Pastor Paul [00:07:32] I have a friend that is a pastor in Orem, and he went to seminary with me and kept inviting us out and kept prompting us to consider this. And on one trip, my wife finally succumbed to the. My prompting as well and said, okay, I see this now. I get it. This. This is a land that has very little opportunity for people to even see what a good church is like in terms of Protestant Christianity, Evangelical Christianity. So we were the first church to really be established in Draper, Utah. It was 20,000 people at the time, and we had scraped together about 14 adults, and we opened our church and there was 50 people. And from that 50 people, you see what you have today.

John Dehlin [00:08:29] So that was what year?

Pastor Paul [00:08:30] Approximately 1998.

John Dehlin [00:08:33] 1998. Okay. And your wife's name is Ginny, right?

Pastor Paul [00:08:37] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:08:38] And so you guys came here. Did you have to save up a bunch of money?

Pastor Paul [00:08:41] You know, raise a lot of money at the beginning?

John Dehlin [00:08:44] Like when you got here, did you bring a wad of cash or.

Pastor Paul [00:08:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:49] Was it without purse or script sort of thing?

Pastor Paul [00:08:50] A lot of supporters in California, and actually, that's a really good question, because the pressure of any church planter in Utah is to try to gather Christians together. But we felt like that's not what we wanted to do. We wanted to come here to give LDS people an opportunity to connect with the gospel. And so we intentionally were outsider focused from day one. And quickly LDS people started to come be baptized. They brought their friends, and so We've been able to maintain an outsider focus for all 20 years. And that's why you see that many LDS people here is because we don't beat up on Mormonism. We don't talk about Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, ever. We simply teach the truth as we understand it from the Bible. And we don't believe that making somebody else look bad actually proves that we're right. And so we've always focused on the truth of the Bible instead of trying to criticize somebody else.

Theology and Christian Traditions Explained

John Dehlin [00:09:59] So, so break down your view of Christianity. You, you talked about Protestants a little bit and your view of.

Pastor Paul [00:10:11] I know that some of these terms aren't familiar, but if you.

John Dehlin [00:10:14] No, no, no, no.

Pastor Paul [00:10:14] Roman Catholicism and then Protestants, you have the Protestant Reformation. And then we're part of a group called Anabaptists. And that simply means that's the group that separated from the first groups of Protestant believers. And that just, that's a fancy word for being re. Baptized. So every single person in Europe was baptized as an infant if they're Roman Catholic. And those Protestant churches continued to baptize infants. Well, Anabaptist believers, that group of people said, you know what, we believe in believers, baptism. In other words, we're not baptizing babies. And so that's what you see in terms of evangelical Christianity today. By far, most evangelicals would be called Anabaptists or from those roots.

John Dehlin [00:11:08] And the age, the average age of baptism for you guys would be what,

Pastor Paul [00:11:13] at our church?

John Dehlin [00:11:14] Probably 25, because of all the converts coming in.

Pastor Paul [00:11:18] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:11:18] And what about if a child, if a child is born in the church, at what age would they end up?

Pastor Paul [00:11:24] We allow the parents to determine that, but we discourage any baptism before 12.

John Dehlin [00:11:29] Before 12.

Guest [00:11:31] Wow.

Pastor Paul [00:11:31] We would like people to wait.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] Okay. And specifically, when I asked you about your, you know, your survey of the, of sort of the field of Christianity, you, You mentioned that you weren't raised in a, in a church. Well, you didn't, you know, you didn't necessarily. Yeah, so, so, so without, without. Not, not in the spirit of criticizing others, I'm getting a sense that you maybe don't see all Christian sects as equal. And if you can delicately say kind of which branches of Christianity you're not maybe a huge fan of and why, whether you consider them legitimate or not, and then which parts you kind of see as more legitimate. Not. Not to criticize, to understand the frame with which you, you believe without naming

Pastor Paul [00:12:16] names, it kind of breaks down this way. Gospel and religion and any. The LDS Church does not have the Corner on the market for religion, so to speak, in any religion, I believe, is characterized by the fact that we earn what we get from God. It's like a wage that God is obligated to pay us. And so we're always working hard. We have many religious obligations that we have to fulfill in order for God to bless us. And on the flip side of that, if we don't do those things, there's discipline from God. There could be even eternal punishment. And so the Gospel is good news because it doesn't depend on us. It depends on Jesus Christ and his righteousness. And so within Christianity, you have the school of thought that there's a lot for you to do. And among Gospel Christianity, we understand that God has already done the work. We simply place our faith in him. So it doesn't matter if it's Roman Catholicism, mainline Christianity, different groups within, even evangelicalism, if they're religious in their orientation toward God, we would frown on that, and we would offer people freedom in Christ through the gospel.

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Okay, and the words you had for sort of Protestant Christianity, your concerns about Protestant Christianity aligns with this concern about whether you earn or don't earn God's grace. Are there other things as well that sounded like more liberal or progressive forms of Christianity that may or may not require a literal belief?

Pastor Paul [00:14:03] We believe the Bible's true, There's sex within Christianity and don't believe the Bible's true.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] When you say true, you mean inerrant, right?

Pastor Paul [00:14:11] Inerrant, yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:12] Okay. And so for you guys, the Bible's inerrant. Yes. There's a little resurrection of Christ.

Pastor Paul [00:14:18] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] And saved by grace, not by works.

Pastor Paul [00:14:22] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] Works are irrelevant other than the work of.

Pastor Paul [00:14:25] Actually, our works glorify God and they help other people.

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Okay.

Pastor Paul [00:14:31] It's a way to love other people is by serve, you know, serve one another, forgive one another, accept one another, show kindness to one another. This is the works that we do.

John Dehlin [00:14:43] And. And the one work I guess you do need to perform is to accept Christ into your heart. I'm guessing.

Pastor Paul [00:14:48] I wouldn't consider that a work some people do. And I'm equivalent with that. But that's the one thing that we must do is replace what happened in the garden, which was rebellion. And that's basically Adam and Eve saying, God, I don't trust you. I'm actually trusting this tempter. And now we reverse that. We actually overcome that by saying, now I do trust you, God. So what was once rebellion is replaced by trust.

John Dehlin [00:15:20] Okay. And is baptism by water, but is it immersion? Do you guys do immersion? And is baptism by immersion required to enter heaven in your. It's not.

Pastor Paul [00:15:29] It's just a sign of loyalty and it's, it's, it's a, it's a sign of what has already happened in a person's heart.

John Dehlin [00:15:39] Okay.

Pastor Paul [00:15:39] But it's an outside. It's an outward testimony. And one of the things we do here is we record people's stories and we allow them to tell their story. And it's really encouraging to the church family, and it's also instructive to people that are thinking about taking that step. So it's a really important deal for us.

John Dehlin [00:15:58] Beautiful. Okay, so let's go back to 1998. You and your lovely wife Jenny come to Salt Lake City and you meet with 50 people in your first church service. Is that right? Where'd you meet?

Pastor Paul [00:16:10] We meet on. We met on Ninth east in an office, little office building. 2,000 square feet.

John Dehlin [00:16:15] Ninth east and what South?

Pastor Paul [00:16:17] That's right. If you, if you lose your brakes going through the Zion's bank parking drive thru, you'd run right into it here in Draper. 23rd and 19th.

Guest [00:16:26] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:26] That's where you started.

Pastor Paul [00:16:27] Yep.

John Dehlin [00:16:28] Okay. What were the hard parts about starting a church in Utah in 1998? What were the hard. Were the hard things? Did it just. Was it easy? Was it, was there adversity?

Founding and Early Days of South Mountain Church

Pastor Paul [00:16:39] Everything was hard.

John Dehlin [00:16:44] Did people, like literally put up roadblocks and obstacles?

Pastor Paul [00:16:47] No, no, no. People were pretty kind to us. Except when I moved here, I thought, we're gonna do it the old fashioned way, like everybody does in California, Arizona, Colorado, all these places. Even the Northwest where you live. We're gonna go meet in a school to get off the ground. You know, that would be appropriate to try to gather a group of people. But the Jordan school district had a problem with that, and so they banned all churches from their schools. And we found out that that was a big old problem for us. So we had to pay money to rent a space. A lot more money than a school would have cost. So that's how we started.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] Okay. So it was hard to find a venue.

Pastor Paul [00:17:29] It's hard to find a venue, but it's just really hard to find people. I mean, the percentage of evangelical Christians in Utah, by my best estimate as I researched it, was about 1/2 of 1%. Still no. When, when you started. When you started, I think it's all the way up to one and a half.

John Dehlin [00:17:50] That's good growth.

Pastor Paul [00:17:51] Killing it.

John Dehlin [00:17:51] That's actually good growth.

Guest 2 [00:17:52] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:53] Okay, so take us through a Bit of the history of going from 50 to how many total members today across all your.

Pastor Paul [00:18:01] We grew by 150 people every year. And it's almost 20 years now. We have over 3,000 people.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] 3,000 people in our church.

Pastor Rick [00:18:12] That's across all six campuses.

John Dehlin [00:18:15] Okay, so about 3,000 people growing 100,

Pastor Paul [00:18:19] 150 people a year.

John Dehlin [00:18:20] That's really interesting. Okay, and, and so where did you progress in terms of where you met? So you started?

Pastor Paul [00:18:27] So we started in that little 2,000 square foot building and then we rented some more space downstairs from that building. So that's another thousand square feet. And then we realized we're going to grow out of this place. So in a year and a half we moved into a warehouse near the Coca Cola bottling over here and distribution center in draper. That was 5,000, I'm sorry, about 7,000 square feet. We outgrew that. We took over another unit that was another 7,000 square feet. And then we grew out of that. We took over another 7,000 square feet. And so we were in that building for, I don't know, approximately 13, 14 years. And five years ago we moved into this building.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Yeah, so talk just about this building, how many square feet and kind of what your campus is like with our

Pastor Paul [00:19:15] Fusion clubhouse, it's about 42,000 square feet. Yeah, that's a thousand people.

John Dehlin [00:19:24] And you have two services, right? Two services, yeah. Plus all the. And then talk about the other campuses.

Pastor Paul [00:19:29] So we started a West Jordan Church five, six years in. Then we started a South Jordan campus two years after that. Then St. George about three years after that. And then our Lehigh campus just three years ago. Two and a half years ago. And so our international campus about two years ago. So that's just. Every couple years we've been adding a campus.

John Dehlin [00:19:58] And you're actually building buildings or have

Pastor Paul [00:20:01] built buildings in Riverton right now for our South Jordan campus doesn't make sense, but that's where we could find land. So yeah, that's an 11,000 square foot building. Our St. George Church is 22,000 square feet and there's 700 people down there. And so it's, you know, it's, it's interesting because places like California, you can meet in a warehouse and do fantastic. But what we've discovered in Utah, people like to see that you're in a building, that you're not going anywhere. If I'm going to invest myself into this church, I want to know that they're still going to be here five years from now. That's how that's what we've learned just by doing what we've done all these years. So it's pretty interesting to watch. It's just nothing like any place else in the country. It's a unique situation for Christianity.

Guest 3 [00:20:51] How.

John Dehlin [00:20:52] How has your growth rate compared to other Christian churches that maybe started at the same time in other places in the US has this been phenomenal success and growth by sort of Christian church standards? Without asking you to brag, it is.

Pastor Paul [00:21:08] And it's just hard to sustain growth. I don't care where you are in the country. I think, though, that what we've done is we've basically said we exist. Well, we have a value that says our members serve the guest. That's one of our values. And that's really unusual. In fact, we decided never to vote. We voted one time and in that vote we decided never to vote again as a church. And the reason for that is if you vote as a church, you're going to have a church that's perfectly designed for the voter that's the member, and they get everything they want. But we know, we knew that we wanted to protect the interest of the person that wasn't here yet. We call that person maybe the outsider who's never been in an evangelical church before. And so we wanted to not just protect their interests, but we wanted to tailor, make an experience so that they would say three things. Number one, I really enjoyed myself. Number two, I understood everything that was said today. And number three, I think I might want to come back. This looks doable to me. And so we built this church on wanting to hear people say those three things. Some of the things you said, except I could do this. You didn't say that. You said you enjoyed it at least. That's good.

John Dehlin [00:22:34] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:22:36] And you understood everything.

John Dehlin [00:22:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:22:39] You didn't have to have a history.

Guest [00:22:41] No.

Pastor Paul [00:22:41] You had Christianity to get it.

John Dehlin [00:22:44] No. Pastor rick had his PowerPoints up here and he was, you know, going through the curves for the sermon on Sunday was on being financially responsible and not getting into too much debt, on figuring out what percentage of your income you want to keep trying to build some breathing room between your expenses and your revenue so that you could.

Pastor Rick [00:23:08] That is all right. That is the gold standard. If you could talk about something and

John Dehlin [00:23:13] somebody remembers it, that's amazing.

Pastor Rick [00:23:17] You're the one.

John Dehlin [00:23:20] And I also, I noticed that your other campuses have the same presentation. Is that right? So you guys have some sort of content distribution where you were having the same sermon by different pastors at the different Satellites.

Pastor Rick [00:23:32] That's right. We collaborate together. We'll go away for a week in the summer, we'll talk about, we'll plan out the different things that we want to teach about throughout the year and we work together on it and it's a real team effort.

Pastor Rick's Story and Church Philosophy

John Dehlin [00:23:45] So Pastor Rick, let's bring you in. Talk just a tiny bit about your upbringing, what brought you into the ministry and then what brought you here.

Pastor Rick [00:23:51] Yeah, I grew up in the deep south with super grumpy racist Southern Baptists. And they're, they're a lot of them are great people. I just didn't know any other great people when I, when I grew up. And I, I grew up just in a, just in a kind of a harsh, really rules oriented religious environment. Our favorite pastime was judging other people. And I had a lot of stuff, I had a lot of baggage, I had a lot of church baggage I had to get over growing up. But even though the culture, there were great people. But even though the culture wasn't great, great, there was something about the truth of, I was convinced of the truth of the Bible and that really, that really captured me. And when I, when I went away to college and wrestled through is this, do I believe this? I'm not just taking my parents faith, do I, do I believe this? And I fell in love with not just the truth of the Bible, how well it explains life and how well it explains me. And I felt, I just got intoxicated with the joy and the life change, the positive life change that people experience by trusting in Christ and by trusting and what's revealed in the New Testament. And so I wanted to be a part of that. And so I just kind of dove in head first, this is what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. Probably the first 12 to 15 years of my life I was a youth pastor. And if you're not familiar with what that is, I spent a lot of time with middle school and high school students and sometimes college students, students and probably ate 10,000 pieces of pizza and did a lot of lock ins and games. And in my early 30s I just decided I cannot eat another slice of pizza.

Pastor Paul [00:25:27] I'm done.

Pastor Rick [00:25:28] And I want to, I want to hang out with adults. So. And so in my search, someone asked me, would you ever consider going to Salt Lake City? And Paul and I started talking on the phone. My wife and I visited here a little over five years ago, fell in love with the state and fell in love with this church.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] And you've been preaching here for Five years.

Pastor Rick [00:25:48] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:25:48] Is that right? Okay. And you're the, you're the lead pastor

Pastor Rick [00:25:52] here of this campus at the Draper campus? I'm the campus pastor for. Yeah.

Guest [00:25:55] For.

Pastor Rick [00:25:56] For this particular location.

John Dehlin [00:25:57] Okay, really quick. In what ways would you say that the experience at South Mountain is similar to other evangelical Christian churches? And then in what ways are you different? And either one of you can take your stabs at that.

Pastor Rick [00:26:13] Okay, you know what? I, I think that if you went to, I think if you went to a lot of other churches that you would find, hey, they seem. Sing some of the, some of the same songs.

John Dehlin [00:26:23] It's got the rock, rock kind of a rock gospel trying to sing the.

Pastor Rick [00:26:28] Sing meaningful songs and music that people like. You know, not, not music that people like 200 years ago.

Guest 3 [00:26:35] But really.

Pastor Rick [00:26:36] But that would just kind of be icing on the cake. I mean, some of the big things that you.

John Dehlin [00:26:39] I just have to say the band was really outstanding. I really enjoyed the music. They had all the words up on the jumbotron. The people were singing. It really brought a nice fun spirit. And I've never actually really been to a church where kind of rock pop music was played. And I know you didn't have your normal singer there, but is that your son who is the main performer? Paul? Okay. But it was still really high quality. The drum is encased in plexiglass. That's how important the musical quality is here. Just very professional. Well done.

Pastor Paul [00:27:13] We wanted to be a great experience

Pastor Rick [00:27:15] for when people come. But here's what you're going to find if you go to. You're going to go. You're going to find tons of churches all over America, around the world. And even if culturally things are different, if the music is different culturally, dress is different culturally, what you're going to find is these are people who think what I read in the New Testament is incredibly helpful. I trust it. It's true. And you guys sang a song tonight as we got started, and it was singing about the importance of loving each other. And you're going to find that a lot of churches are united by that. We trust Jesus, we trust what's revealed in the New Testament. We want to love other people. We don't think there's anything more important than that. And I think that's what you're going to find. A common thread through just about any event. Evangelical church across America, Europe, Africa, wherever you go. Paul, what would you say?

Pastor Paul [00:27:58] Yeah, we run on the two rails of grace and truth. And we've tried to not balance those Two things, but just express those two things all the time. And so we're peculiar as a church in the sense that we're very careful theologically. I mean, we spend a ton of time trying to get it right. And we have an educated pastoral staff. These guys have dedicated their life to the study of God's word. They've gone to school a lot. I mean, a lot.

John Dehlin [00:28:29] And what type of training have you had?

Pastor Rick [00:28:32] So I undergrad in theology and then graduate work in with a concentration in philosophy and ethics.

Pastor Paul [00:28:42] And you have a Master's of divinity. It's a three year master's degree in New Testament, then a doctorate degree in leadership. Christian leadership.

John Dehlin [00:28:52] Excellent. Okay.

Pastor Paul [00:28:53] Yeah. And so the Bible is really important to us, but expressing that in such a way that it's a graceful presentation of that. In other words, we don't expect non Christians to act like Christians and we expect people to be on a journey. And so we're just inviting people to take their next step. And I said invite. Instead of expecting people to take their next step, we're inviting them to take their next step up. And that allows us to tell the truth in a graceful way. And so we're trying to be helpful and hopeful in everything that we communicate. It's pretty important to us.

John Dehlin [00:29:26] I noticed something in your literature about atheists being welcome. It's belong. Belong before you believe, right? What do you mean by belong before you believe?

Pastor Paul [00:29:36] We expect people to have a long ramp up to a place to get to the place where they say, yes, I now trust not just the Bible, but I'm trusting my life to God. I'm giving my life to Him. I'm asking him to save me from my sins. That takes a long time for a lot of people, especially if they have to deconstruct their former religious life, which I think you participate in helping people do is deconstruct that. But now they have to construct a whole new spiritual journey. And so we just want to be patient as they do that.

Pastor Rick [00:30:09] You don't have to change your behavior. You don't have to change the way you dress. You don't have to change your attitude.

John Dehlin [00:30:13] How do you dress when. How do people dress when they come here?

Pastor Rick [00:30:15] Like I'm dressed now.

John Dehlin [00:30:16] Okay. Jeans and leather jackets.

Pastor Rick [00:30:20] I'm turning 40 in a few months and I'm going through a little bit of angst. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:25] It's not leather, actually. It's not leather. No. Pastor Rick's having a midlife crisis, everybody. Just kidding. Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:30:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:34] So casual T shirts during football, tennis, Shoes, a lot of jerseys in the summer. Do people wear shorts?

Pastor Rick [00:30:41] Oh, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:42] T shirts.

Pastor Rick [00:30:43] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:43] It doesn't matter. There's coffee. You guys serve coffee?

Pastor Rick [00:30:46] We serve coffee. It's a big.

John Dehlin [00:30:48] That's a bold step, people.

Guest 3 [00:30:51] It helps some of us to not

Pastor Rick [00:30:52] be so grumpy in the morning when

Pastor Paul [00:30:53] we're trying to do this.

John Dehlin [00:30:55] Yeah, yeah. All right. This is great. Okay, so I want to invite up our panel, and I want to. What I want to do is have them each tell kind of their story, sort of out of Mormonism and into this church. And then we're going to talk kind of doctrine, theology, history, policy, et cetera. Is that okay? All right, panel, come on up, wherever you are. Who are we? Who's joining us today? Rick, can you tell us and I'll write down the names?

Pastor Rick [00:31:22] Yeah, we've got. I'll introduce them as they come up. This is a friend of mine. This is Dave Conklin. And Dave is a part of our St. George campus. So he and his wife drove up four hours just for this? Just for this. Dave, you feel like a big deal?

John Dehlin [00:31:36] Nice to meet you. No, I don't, but, Dave, nice. Nice to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Pastor Rick [00:31:40] And as a pastor, you're not allowed to have favorites, but I cheat sometimes. Emily's one of my favorites because she's. She invests so much in my daughter's life. This is Emily Rushton.

John Dehlin [00:31:49] Emily, so nice to meet you. Thanks. Thanks for joining us.

Pastor Rick [00:31:52] This is a fantastic guy. This is Jim Eckenstam, and he is a leader of one of our just outstanding support groups. It's called Divorce Care. And when my parents divorced, my mom went through that a couple of times. She found a lot of great. Just help and support through that. I'm so grateful to Jim for. For leading that. And then we have Carrie Evans. I love Carrie. She's a blast. And you're gonna. You're gonna get a kick out of talking.

John Dehlin [00:32:17] Hi, Kerry. We met on Sunday. So nice to see you. Come on over here.

Pastor Rick [00:32:20] You made me for lunch, but it was delicious.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] All right, all right. So this is great. So it's Dave, Emily, Jim, and Carrie. Is that right? Dave, Emily, Jim, and Carrie. Okay, well, we're gonna do something that's maybe never been done on Mormon stories. We're gonna have, I guess between all six of you, like, six people tell your. Tell your stories really quick. But let's start with you, Carrie. Tell us just a tiny bit about, you know, your Mormon credentials, and then we'll go into how you De mormified yourself. I just made that up.

Congregation Members Share Their Mormon Backgrounds

Guest 2 [00:33:03] Okay. My credentials, I actually, I don't come from the regular Mormon background. I raised myself a Mormon. I had parents who. I had one. My mom was a Jack Mormon. Sorry, Mom. And my dad was a Jack. Catholic. I don't know. So they sent me to the Mormon Church and I. Basically, everybody was Mormon. I wanted to be like all the other kids.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Where was this?

Guest 2 [00:33:35] Over in Murray.

John Dehlin [00:33:36] Okay.

Guest 2 [00:33:38] Went on to become pretty Molly Mormon. I was right down the line. Married my husband in the temple and had five kids and proceeded to do my best to do it all. And I was. It was. It destroyed me.

John Dehlin [00:34:07] Oh, that doesn't sound good. How many years were you married and active in the church?

Guest 2 [00:34:12] Well, we've been married how many years? Like, 33 years. 34. 34 years. And I.

John Dehlin [00:34:22] How many of those were you active in the church?

Guest 2 [00:34:25] I was active in the church 32 years.

John Dehlin [00:34:29] So you've been out a couple years?

Guest 2 [00:34:31] Two years.

John Dehlin [00:34:32] What. When you say the church almost destroyed you, can you tell us a little bit about that?

Guest 2 [00:34:37] Well, I wouldn't say it was the church. It was trying to keep up with the church, the church expectations. I'm very hard on myself. I'm type eight all the way. Never was enough, ever. I suffered from depression for about 28 years. And I also began at a very young age to question. Because of my family dynamics. I never believed there could be one way, only one way. I didn't understand why my family couldn't be together forever because they were great people. So it was very. My journey went over a period of a long, long time. And about the last 10 years of my life in Mormonism, I just began to. I don't believe that. But that's okay. I'll just. It's good people, you know, you've heard it a thousand times or more. So I did that. And then I came to a point in my life where my children were grown up, and I decided that, well, I had a couple of breaking points. And when I finally had the last.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] Can you share a little bit about those?

Guest 2 [00:36:03] My breaking points in Mormonism were the second anointing.

John Dehlin [00:36:10] What about it? Learning about it.

Guest 2 [00:36:13] I learned about it and through, like, the biggest tantrum of my life.

John Dehlin [00:36:16] Where in the world would you learn about the second anointing?

Guest 2 [00:36:23] At a retreat for women, A pilgrimage. Women.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] Like, okay, so it's not my fault.

Guest 2 [00:36:28] Well, it probably was, yeah. But I. That to me was. I, I. It still makes me, like, crazy. It's like being God to tell someone that they've reached their potential and they're going to the celestial kingdom and the secrecy of it. I. I threw a big tantrum over that. And then the November policy, that was hard for our family. We have a lot of people we love who are, you know, affected by that. So that's when I finally decided, yeah, this is going to be hard, but I would rather my children know that I have integrity and followed my heart. I could feel God tugging on my heart. He was wooing me for many years. I could just never explain to people that were important to me the hard questions they asked me. I just didn't have answers, and it was disturbing for me. So, anything else?

John Dehlin [00:37:33] So you left the church two years ago?

Guest 2 [00:37:35] I did.

John Dehlin [00:37:36] All right, we'll come back to what the church here has meant to you. Is that okay?

Guest 4 [00:37:40] Absolutely.

John Dehlin [00:37:41] All right, let's go to Jim.

Guest [00:37:45] Hi.

John Dehlin [00:37:45] Welcome, Jim.

Guest [00:37:46] Thanks.

John Dehlin [00:37:48] It's good to have you.

Guest [00:37:49] Welcome to you.

John Dehlin [00:37:49] Thank you. It's good to be here. Tell us your story. Tell us your Mormon story.

Guest [00:37:53] My Mormon story. I was born into a very eight boys, Mormon family, very much Mormon family. My parents were married in the temple. They divorced when I was about 12, which started my training for divorce care, by the way. And anyway, I kind of struggled a little bit with going to church and stuff as I got a little older and got a little bit rebellious. But about halfway through my teen years, I rededicated my life to Mormonism. Really got very involved with it. Was ordained an elder at age 18 without a mission call, was put into the Elders Quorum presidency as the secretary there. And I was preparing to go on a mission right out of high school. I was going to what they called the mission preparation classes for Sunday school. And I began to just. I just couldn't wrap my brain around some of the beliefs, some of the theology in it, and I mean, just a couple of the simple ones. I just couldn't come to terms with the idea that a physical man could ever become powerful enough to create a universe. To me, still is amazing thought. But the biggest question, the question that really kind of drove the nail into the coffin, so to speak, was I basically said, you know, I could look at the Bible and I could see that it had all changed. The way the Mormon Church was functioning was not what you find in the Bible. And I could see that plainly. And so I went to a youth leader and I basically said, God's supposed to be the same yesterday, today and forever. Why did everything change? And his response to me was, you know, he said, I have the same doubts, I have the same questions. I just rely on my testimony. And that was it. I mean, I was done. I thought you're placing your belief, your testimony into something that you look at and it doesn't make sense. I couldn't deal with that, so I just left church. So spent 20 years doing nothing, basically following self help, maybe what you would call new age thinking. You know, there's an energy out there and I can tap into it, so to speak. And that's where I was found by some friends who brought me here when I was nearly 40.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] How many years ago?

Guest [00:40:17] 17. Been a believer for 17 years and

John Dehlin [00:40:20] part of South Mountain for 17 years. Oh, wow, okay, that's cool. So you'll be able to talk to a bit about the history as you've experienced it.

Guest 4 [00:40:28] Okay.

Guest [00:40:29] Paul might be better at that than me.

John Dehlin [00:40:30] Oh, sure, yeah, Paul's doing a good job. Hey Paul. All right, Emily, why don't you go next?

Guest 4 [00:40:38] Right. I was raised LDs, off and on between my parents until my dad was. Well, until I was seven. My dad decided he wanted to be a rock star and travel around the world. So my mom took over watching us. But it was really hard for her being a divorced woman in the Mormon church. They didn't want her to go to the family church, so they asked her to go to single ward while me and my brothers would go to church with my grandparents. So every Sunday was really awkward. My mom would drop us off with my grandparents and we would go to church with them because they were a family and she wasn't yet. And they wanted her to find someone who she could remarry so she could be a family again. So that put made our family dynamic more awkward than it already was. She then remarried someone who wasn't LDS and she wanted us to continue to go to church. So every weekend we would go and spend time with my grandparents so we could continue going to church. You know, we didn't really read the Book of Mormon. We didn't get into the Bible. But my grandparents would teach us the word of wisdom and to follow God's commands. It was more fear based. I feared God. I didn't love him. I was so fearful. I was told if alcohol ever touched my lips that I would be struck down by lightning if I had sex outside marriage. I did not like God at all. My mom gave up custody of us when I was 14 and so we moved in with my grandparents fully. It was fine. Like I was a good little Mormon girl. I loved to do what people Told me I would go to church all the time. I would go to young women's until I was 15 years old. And they started talking about how important it was to date the right man who was a Mormon and who could hold the priesthood so that I could one day make it into a social kingdom. I had a real problem with this. I hated marriage, I thought it was ugly. I didn't want to have anything to do with it. And on top of that I didn't understand why a man had to help me get into the highest kingdom. That started my thoughts going in a different path. I started questioning everything about the Mormon church, like why can't you drink coffee? No one could ever give me a good why to anything about marriage, about drinking coffee. I started going away from the church, spending less and less time. I'm like, I have softball practice, I have a softball tournament. When I was 17 I was camping with a group of my friends and my best friend's oldest sister kissed me. I was super excited and really confused at the time. I also was really nervous about what my grandparents response was going to be. I didn't say anything to them. We continued this love affair, this fleeing at nights. She was actually engaged to a man at the time, which I didn't know. I was young. 17 year old was. My first experience with sex was with someone who was older. Taught me things. I didn't tell my grandparents. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I continued to get lost more and more. As soon as I was 18 I moved out. My grandparents never caught me leaving. I was a good student. I was still playing softball. I had a full ride scholarship so I left as soon as I could. I didn't want to have anything to do with religion. I ran from it. I didn't want to know who God was. My grandpa found out a few years later that I was dating women and he didn't want to have a relationship with me. And that really, that broke me. He was my best friend, he was my rock, he was my everything

Guest [00:44:19] and

Guest 4 [00:44:20] I was okay with it. I just walked away and didn't have any conversations with him. So I will say though five years later my grandparents, it was amazing. They decided they want a relationship more with me than they cared about what the church had to say. And it's amazing seeing where they are now that they learned to love me unconditionally because they cared more about that. But off and on I had a longing to know who God was but I never did anything about that. That was when so 18. I left Mormonism and didn't look back.

John Dehlin [00:44:51] And at what point did you become Christian?

Guest 4 [00:44:56] Eight years this April.

John Dehlin [00:44:58] Eight years ago. And was that through South Mountain?

Guest 4 [00:45:01] It was South Mountain.

Guest [00:45:02] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:45:06] Did you ever identify as lesbian during that time?

Guest 4 [00:45:08] I did. I was actually, for 19 years, that was my identity. I was lesbian. I was all about women's rights.

John Dehlin [00:45:16] Feminists, huh?

Guest 4 [00:45:17] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:45:18] And has that changed?

Guest 4 [00:45:20] Yes, it has changed.

John Dehlin [00:45:22] How do you identify now?

Guest 4 [00:45:24] I identify as a daughter of God. I am Christian.

John Dehlin [00:45:31] All right. So nice to meet you. We'll talk more in a second. Okay. Let's have. It's Dave, right? Dave.

Guest 3 [00:45:43] That's it.

Guest [00:45:43] Yep.

Why Former Mormons Found a Home Here

Guest 3 [00:45:44] I just want to start out by saying five years ago, if someone had told me that I would be sitting in a Christian church being interviewed by the Mormon stories guy, I don't know what I would have done. I probably would have tried to cast out something. And I don't know. I'm not quite sure, but I have a very. You know, my family growing up, we were as diligent as you could possibly be. I mean, we really were. We went every Sunday. We didn't miss. I remember going camping and my dad getting permission to be able to do a sacrament, you know, administer the sacrament. While we were camping, we would. We just. We really observed the commandments. We were the second oldest of six children. And, yeah, we were just completely diligent. And in fact, I remember when I was. When I started reading the Bible, I read in. I think it's Philippians 2. I'm not quite sure where Paul is basically giving his resume. And it really, you know, it really hit me. It was like, you know, he's saying, you know, he's just saying, I've done all these things and kind of talking about. And I put myself in his shoes, and I said, that really is me. I mean, I was the, you know, the deacon's quorum president. I was the teacher's quorum president. I was the first assistant. I went on a mission. You know, I attended. I didn't. I wasn't a Boy Scout, so I guess I wasn't that diligent. But I went to seminary, you know, married in the temple, went on a mission, you know, married in the temple, raising my family up, serving as elders quorum president, and lots of other, you know, teaching the youth. And we were. I mean, we were just. We were in it. We were totally in it. And my family still is today. My parents, both sides. My wife was the same way.

Guest 2 [00:47:50] She.

Guest 3 [00:47:50] You know, both of us were raised that way. And Both of our families on both sides are still completely, totally faithful, good, faithful LDS members. And so for me, you know, I remember I kind of got into this place where I just was kind of feeling just kind of a little bit dead, you know, just. I mean, we have eight children, which sacrament meeting with eight children is. I mean, sacrament meeting with two children is bad, but, you know, eight. I mean, it was. It was tough, you know. And I remember sitting there just thinking, what am I. I mean, what am I getting out of this? I really was. I mean, I was. And looking back now, I can see I was starved. And I really was starved for God. I was starved for Jesus and for understanding God's love. I was brought up, I think, with a lot of pressures on me to perform. And I don't think that my parents put it on me. I think I really. My understanding of my relationship with God was I kind of put it on myself. I always felt like I was trying to earn his love and could never quite do it. Sinful heart, lustful heart. And I would always get to the point. I mean, I really did envision God up there looking down at me when I was just about to sin, saying, don't do it. Don't, David, don't. Don't do it. Don't do it. And I do it. And I could just. I mean, I would envision God going, ah. And turning his back on me, you know, and just, you know, ignoring me for a period of time until I finally got back in his graces, where he'd start hearing my prayers and he'd start slowly turning back to me. And this is. This is how I kind of understood God. And I always thought Jesus was loving, but I felt like God was. Was just like the Father that you could not please. And it really weighed on me. There were things that. I think there are pressures on me as well. My patriarchal blessing said some things that I think pretty unequivocally suggested high leadership. And I always felt like that was always hanging over me, like I could never quite, you know, live up to that. So as part of my career, I met this man, this man and this woman who are still really good friends of mine today that were. They just really loved Jesus. They were just all about Jesus, about loving other people. And really the gospel of Jesus Christ was at their core. And I had that moment when I was meeting with them where I really just had this cognitive dissonance where I just thought, here I am, this piece of work, yet I'm going to get all the Way up to the celestial kingdom. Because I've gone through these steps and these people who clearly love God have given their whole life to him. You know, I'm going to be visiting them on the weekends in a lower kingdom or something. I mean, it really. I didn't, I. I couldn't understand. It didn't make sense to me. That was the crack that God used start really working on me. And after that, you know, I read the New Testament. I had seen some testimonies of Christians on, in various videos and finally read the New Testament and asked God. I really wanted the blinders off when I read a scripture. I didn't want to think, well, what did Bruce R. McConkey say about that? Or how, you know, what did. I didn't want any context to it other than God's context and what he wanted. And my, I mean, it exploded my world. It really did. It just, it just blew it up and. But it actually emboldened me in Mormonism. I thought once I understood grace, it's incredible. I felt free. I mean, I'd like every Mormon needs this. And this is a restored gospel of Jesus Christ. It's God got to be in here. And I was on a mission to find it, and that's what I did. And I studied and I studied and I was. And then I started seeing some contradictions. And then I said, well, okay, well, let's get the quotes out of here. Not going to listen to those. Those are all over the place. Let's look at the gospel. And then in finding contradictions there, then I had to get into the history. And then, and then it just unraveled. And I really just felt like I was careening on this uncontrollably down this, you know, incline that. I mean, I was just trying to grab onto anything, anything, anything I could, and praise God. When I hit the bottom, the only thing that was there was Jesus Christ and that was it and that's it. And fortunately, my wife came along in her own journey. I mean, I completely recognize that that is, that's kind of an anomaly

John Dehlin [00:52:43] to

Guest 3 [00:52:43] have both of us and our children and everything. It's just I'm continually amazed when I look back and look at how it's been written. I just don't see how that's possible. But I'm really grateful it is.

John Dehlin [00:52:56] So did you say it was five years ago you left Mormonism?

Guest 3 [00:52:58] Five years ago? A little bit less than five. About four years ago is when the process started. And then about two years ago, almost exactly two years ago is when we went to our last LDS meeting. That's not totally true. I went back a year later and I gave my testimony to my ward.

John Dehlin [00:53:14] Your untestimony.

Guest 3 [00:53:16] Well, it was a testimony actually, but it was, it was, it was an amazing experience. I went back and I told them how much, you know, I love the Savior. I love Jesus Christ. I told him that he was enough. He's enough. And I told him that I love them. And anyways, it was, it was a beautiful experience. Experience. But prior to that we've been going on up and on and that's when we started coming to SMCC and. And then it was, yeah, February of two years ago that we just, we started coming to SMC regularly.

John Dehlin [00:53:49] Is your wife in the audience?

Guest 3 [00:53:50] She is.

John Dehlin [00:53:51] Hi, what's your name? Sarah.

Guest [00:53:53] Sarah.

John Dehlin [00:53:54] All right, Outstanding. All right. Well. What a. What, four touching stories. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. So I mentioned earlier that over half of those I've surveyed who leave Mormonism become atheist or agnostic. I'm curious, for those of you who left Mormonism, how many of you, at least at one point or another, identified maybe as atheist or agnostic? Raise your hand. Okay, now put your hands down. If you no longer identify as atheist or agnostic. So if you still identify as atheist or agnostic, raise your hand. Okay. Thanks for being honest. How about of you four, how many of you at one point or another did identify as either atheist or agnostic? Any of you? So none of you lost your faith in God at any point? Microphone. Sorry.

Guest 3 [00:54:48] I mean, I had like two minutes of atheism.

John Dehlin [00:54:51] Okay.

Guest 3 [00:54:51] I mean, where it might have been a little longer than that. But you know, when you, when you, when your whole understanding of the nature of God is based on somebody going into a, you know, a grove and having an experience and then you find out that that's not accurate. It did. It rattled me for a minute. I mean, I contemplated what if, you know, if that's not true, then what about this and what about this and what about that? But it was, it was short lived.

John Dehlin [00:55:22] Okay. Did you want to add something?

Guest [00:55:25] I was just going to say I don't think that I ever identified as atheist, but I for sure lost any knowledge of who God was or what he was or whether he's just a force out there or, you know.

John Dehlin [00:55:38] So for how long?

Guest [00:55:40] Most of my adult life. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:55:42] Yeah.

Guest [00:55:43] Probably about 10, 15 years of, or maybe even pretty close to all the 20 years that I was waived. Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:55:49] But yeah, and that's, and that's kind of my question for anyone and if. Pastor Rick, I know you've counseled with a lot of people. People. What is it about Mormonism that creates so many atheists and agnostics once they leave? Anyone have a theory or experience in that? You said once you've given a certain point of view, it's hard to reconstruct the new one. What would you say?

Guest [00:56:12] I think it has a lot to do with just being angry. You just feel like you've been duped. A lot of people that I've talked to, just like, you know, I was raised in a lie, basically, is what I've heard people say. I don't, because I didn't go that route necessarily. I can't speak for them, but that's what I hear people say.

John Dehlin [00:56:33] Okay, did you want to add something?

Guest 3 [00:56:35] Yeah, that's. I really do believe, especially as I serve with the youth, I serve with the young men, you know, 16, 17, getting ready to go on missions. And I found out that, I mean, a lot of those young men, when they decided they didn't want to go on a mission and all the focus had been put there, and no focus really on Jesus, once they decided they weren't going to go on a mission, they were kind of shamed or they felt embarrassed or whatever it was. They had nothing to land on. And in talking with them, what I have seen in several instances is that same thing when you're understanding of, you know, God, the ontological God, you know, from Joseph's experience. And once that goes out the door, what do you have left? And I do remember going through a period saying, well, what is he? Am I still. Does he have eyes? I mean, does he have. What is he? Where is he? And there was a minute where I didn't know who I was really praying to anymore. So,

Helping Those Who Are Leaving Mormonism

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Pastor Rick, I was talking to someone just yesterday who just totally random. They didn't even know I was coming here. They told me that a dear friend of theirs just had a real struggle and things were starting to fall apart. And they just randomly called you and that you took an hour of your own time to counsel with them, you know, without any expectation about joining the church or anything like that. So I sense that you've probably counseled with a lot of struggling Mormons. Sure. Have you gotten a sense for what. What sort of. Does God and Jesus end for so many of them?

Pastor Rick [00:58:15] Well, you know, I think about it like a relationship. You know, you're getting out. Like, imagine you get out of a bad relationship. It's not what you thought it was going to be. You thought this person was one thing. They end up being something else. And so now you're, you're out. You're not ready to jump into another relationship. You're trying to figure out, who am I? You know, what, what is it that I. What is it that I'm looking for? What do I really think?

Guest [00:58:35] What do I.

Pastor Rick [00:58:36] What do I really believe? Might be a weird thing to hear a pastor say, but I think it's kind of a healthy step because I believe this, this organization helped define what I think about God and what I think about reality. I don't trust him anymore. I don't know where I'm going to put my loyalty yet. So I just gotta find a neutral place and try and figure out what are the answers to some of the big questions that I have. And so I don't. It doesn't bother me. I think it's probably a healthy step. You're not defining what God is for me anymore. I got to figure it out. I don't know what it is. So I guess that makes me an atheist or agnostic. But I still have big questions and I'm looking for the answers. Does that make sense?

Guest 3 [00:59:14] Do you think that's helpful?

John Dehlin [00:59:16] Sure, sure. So you're saying it's a positive road to self discovery?

Pastor Rick [00:59:21] Yeah. No one tweet me saying pastor Rick says it's good to be an atheist here. But I totally understand. I, I was committed to this. I'm not committed to that. I don't know where I'm committed. I got to figure it out. And so right now I'm neutral.

John Dehlin [00:59:37] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 863

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. Okay, so for each of you, really quick, just tell your story of how you went from leaving the church and kind of what it was about South Mountain that kind of really pulled you in. Let's go in the same order.

Guest [00:00:59] Okay. When I was a Mormon, I studied in Jerusalem for six weeks. And I just remember being in love with the New Testament. I couldn't get enough of it. So I think that is the reason that I always believed in God. I guess I was lucky that way. I just wasn't sure where he was. And so what I did, I had a very good friend back east who would talk to me a lot about God and Jesus, and I didn't really have that experience in Mormonism. We didn't talk about God and Jesus like they were present in our life all the time, and she did. So it was. It. It was very impressive. It impressed on me a lot. So I. My daughter's boyfriend, who I really admired, was attending South Mountain. And when I made the decision that I wasn't going back to the Mormon Church, I said, could I come with you and just see? You know, I want to learn more about the Bible. I knew that the Book of Mormon did not make sense to me. It never sunk in for me, ever, ever. But the Bible did. So I was determined to figure out what was in the Bible, what was really in it. So I came. And quite honestly, I never stopped coming. The joy was immediate.

John Dehlin [00:02:39] What did you love about it?

Guest [00:02:41] Well, what I loved about it was that they talked about Jesus all the time. 24 7. It was a Jesus show. That's all. Every song is about Jesus. There was no talk about Joseph Smith, downtown, the leaders. It was all Jesus, all the time. And I think I'm a Jesus Christ for sure. And I love the music. I wasn't good in the Mormon Church with the music because I could never keep that tone. And so I just kind of whisper and I'd always make my kids sing, though. But here I found myself just belting it out and raising my hand because the joy. I just. I can't tell you the joy I feel worshiping God through music. And then to hear Pastor Paul and Pastor Rick. Every single sermon, we have an aha moment that we talk about in our family. It just. I just felt new. And then now I get it.

John Dehlin [00:04:05] But wait, there's more.

Guest [00:04:06] There's more.

John Dehlin [00:04:07] Don't act now.

Guest [00:04:08] I remember about a year before I left Mormonism, I threw my hands up to God and I said, God, you know what? I just hate the scriptures. I'm never gonna read them. I hope I can still get in. I did. I was like, I can't handle it because it was checking off that box. That's the only reason I was reading them. And I got here and I immersed myself in every class they had, every Bible study. I love the Bible. It is freedom. It is the gospel. And I don't mean the gospel. As Mormons say, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is so simple and joyful.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] What is it to you? What is it to you? Sum it up. The gospel of Jesus.

Guest [00:04:58] The gospel of Jesus is that he got what I deserved. He loves me. There's nothing I can do to make him love me less. There's nothing I can do to make him love me more. The price he paid when he did it, when he said, it is finished, he didn't mean like, okay, I'm done hanging here. He meant, it is done. I paid the price. It off with grace. And you're like, done. Grace is amazing. I.

Faith, Rules, and What Motivates Moral Living

John Dehlin [00:05:36] So what makes you want to be good if you don't have all those rules?

Guest [00:05:39] Because.

John Dehlin [00:05:39] And the guilt.

Guest [00:05:41] Because I love God and I'll do anything for him because he did it all for me. I serve God because I can't stand not to. He's amazing.

John Dehlin [00:06:00] It's going to sound like a trying to make a joke, but I'm really not. It is more. Love is more motivating than guilt and shame and fear. It is love and joy is more motivating than guilt and shame and fear and control.

Guest [00:06:15] May I add one more thing?

John Dehlin [00:06:16] Please?

Guest [00:06:17] I probably one more, too.

John Dehlin [00:06:20] She's a firecracker.

Guest [00:06:21] I am a sinner and I love it. I can say it. I don't have to hide it like, I am a sinner and it's okay. I have a sinful nature. I don't have to walk around pretending to be the perfect Mormon mom anymore. And I don't have to get my kids to God. That's their job. That's God's job. I don't have to be God anymore. John. I thought I Had to be God. I controlled everything, Everyone. I'm at peace. God is God and I'm his child.

John Dehlin [00:07:03] Has this improved your relationship with your children or not?

Guest [00:07:07] Yes. How my children? Well, number one, I'm a lot nicer. My gosh. I, like, had to apologize to them. Like, I'm so sorry. I didn't want you to wear that tube top or that two piece swimsuit. I really didn't care, but I cared what people thought. I just. I don't have to control their lives anymore. I don't have to look good for other people. I don't have to prove to my children that I'm an amazing person. I can be who I am. And so our relationship is more valuable. We get along great. In fact, just months after I left the church, they gave me this Tiffany Cross. Just two, three months after I threw the bombshell on the family. They've been amazing. They have been amazing.

John Dehlin [00:08:03] And are they still in mostly or.

Guest [00:08:06] I have one believing daughter and believing in Mormonism.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] Okay.

Guest [00:08:12] And we support her fully and she has a heart for God and she's on her journey.

John Dehlin [00:08:18] And then the others. Family members.

Guest [00:08:20] The others have. Are not Mormon. Are not going to the Mormon Church. I'm the only one that's had my name removed.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] Any other Christians in there in the mix? Any other Christians in your family? You know, of your, of your.

Guest [00:08:36] My immediate. Yeah, I think you're all Christians, aren't you? Yes.

John Dehlin [00:08:42] Are they here? Raise your hands. Do you guys. Are you guys on better terms with your mom now? Are you guys happier? More or less.

Guest [00:08:51] They think I'm a little crazy. Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Is this the husband?

Guest [00:08:55] That's the husband.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] That's good. The family's here supporting you. I love that. Hey, guys. Thanks for coming. Welcome. All right. So she telling the truth? Raise your hand if she's telling the truth. Everything she said so far. All right. She's not lying. Kids will tell you if you're lying. They'll say she's lying. Yes. One more thing.

Guest [00:09:14] For the first time, I'm not depressed in 28 years. Two years without depression. Right. Kids.

John Dehlin [00:09:26] Your husband's going. That's true. All right, thank you. That's lovely. All right. What brought you to the church?

Guest 2 [00:09:33] I can't match that.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] You can't match that. We should just go home. Should we just go home? No. Do your best. I'll help you out.

Guest 2 [00:09:41] 20 years between leaving the Mormon Church and coming here, I. Two failed marriages, one with kids, one without kids. I was actually in a pretty dark place in my life. Just kind of done with relationship. I'd done, you know, basically done my best. I thought I was doing everything I thought I could do. I was trying to just do life the best I could, be kind, loving. And it was not working and I knew that. So I just kind of crawled into. I just kind of living life at that point. And then I ran across a gentleman. I used to compete shooting shotguns, shooting trap at the gun club. I ran across a guy that I immediately became friends with. He wasn't a believer. We just were just good buddies. We hung out, we traveled together, shot trapped different places around the state and down, just around the area. And over the period of. I don't even know how long it was, a couple years, I guess two, two and a half years, some things happened in his life and he had become a believer. I had no idea. I had no idea. But through his friendship and the friend, I trusted him. He was, sorry, great friend, give me a second. Anyway, through that friendship because I trusted him a lot. At some point I got invited to come to church at the warehouse, when it was just the first unit there. I think they'd been around for a couple years at that point, 250 people, real small little church. And for the first time in my life, I was listening to teaching that was just plain out of the Bible, without any, this is what this means, this is what that means. They just taught the Bible. And my friends also gave me, you know, began to give me some literature and books to read. And for the first time in my life, I began to read books that were well referenced, that actually the church wasn't paying them to write them, let me put it that way. And I just began. It just made sense. Christianity made sense to me. The teaching of the Bible made sense to me. And so I became a believer. And, you know, after that, it's just been a boy. What a ride. Just gained a huge passion to learn, to understand, to unpack some of the things that I was taught growing up. Mormonism that, you know, you can't understand. You have to have somebody smarter than you tell you what's going on and you'll be deceived. You know, if you try to search and search things out, you'll be, you know, Satan's really sly, 99% truth and 1% lie. He'll just get you. And so you'll be deceived. Well, I learned real quickly that I actually was intelligent enough to read and understand what I was reading. I was able to read the Bible and actually believe what it said in it, and I didn't have to unpack it or try to interpret it or all these words people use. I just read it and it made sense. And it's just been an amazing journey. I mean, I'm a completely different person than I was 17 years ago. Oh, gosh. I'm far more compassionate. I believe I'm. I'm definitely kinder. I love to help other people. Where before, I was just kind of about myself, just trying to survive. And, you know, I was asked one time, what's the difference between, you know, how you were in Mormonism versus Christianity? And I said, you know, as a Mormon, I was very devoted, and I did things like home teaching and stuff like that that I hated, But I did it because it was my assignment, and I just. I did it because I had to do it. And in Christianity, I do what I do because I love to do it without consciously thinking about it. I love helping other people. I love serving. And it's a joy now where before it was a duty. I don't know another way to put it. And I didn't. These were things that I didn't consciously try to do. They just. I changed. I literally changed.

John Dehlin [00:14:09] What. What aspects of your membership here have meant the most to you? What do you love most about the people?

Guest 2 [00:14:15] I mean, no doubt. I mean, that's what really attracted me. Walking. These people are sitting.

John Dehlin [00:14:19] You know, what about them?

Guest 2 [00:14:21] Oh, my gosh, they're just kind and loving. You walk in, they greeted you when you come to church here. And I suspect you probably noticed this Sunday, people actually love to be here.

John Dehlin [00:14:33] I totally noticed that.

Guest 2 [00:14:34] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] It was like a beehive of joy. Everybody buzzing around, being happy. I was like, what is this? I don't trust this. This is. This is too much happiness and joy for a church setting. I don't know. I don't know about this. They must have known I was coming. No, I'm just kidding.

Guest 2 [00:14:52] No, totally understand. I've come to understand that all these years that I struggled, you know, the divorce and things like that. All these years, God is really actually training me to do what I do now.

John Dehlin [00:15:08] Oh, talk about that for a second. So you lead a divorce group?

Guest 2 [00:15:11] Yeah, some point somewhere along the way. I started out by helping adult singles. I was leading the Bible studies and stuff like that. And it didn't take us long to realize that we had a lot of divorced people in there, and quite a few of them were struggling. And somewhere along the way, somebody said, hey, you know, you think you could leave This I said, sure, might as well. I don't know. It's been like 12 years I've done it and I still love it. In fact, we took a little break and it's been driving me bonkers to not be in there doing it. I've seen lives transformed.

John Dehlin [00:15:46] What does a group do for divorced people?

Guest 2 [00:15:49] Well, we support them, actually. We help them walk through the emotion that they're going through. Divorce is. If you haven't been through a divorce, it's brutal. It's just simply brutal. It's one of the toughest things you'll ever do if you ever go through it. And people that come in there are very broken. They're hitting the bottom, you know. And so we, this is a biblically based, Christ centered ministry that we, we help people heal from what they're going through, unpack what happened, learn from it, forgive and put Christ in the center of their life. Instead of their family or their husband or wife or whoever it was that was driving their life, we put Christ in the center of it. And I've seen just some amazing life transformations coming out of that ministry. Yeah, it's a joy. I get the front row seat to it. It's cool.

Support Groups and Special Ministries at the Church

John Dehlin [00:16:42] What are some of the other special interest groups that the church has sort of support for? Just to give or is that it? I don't want to put you on

Pastor Rick [00:16:50] the spot if there aren't others, but man, we've got. You heard me talk about Financial Peace University, which if you're familiar with Dave Ramsey. We have a class that helps people go through that. We have a great community that meets on Wednesday night. These are some of my favorite people. It's called Celebrate Recovery. And people hear that and they're like, oh, is it like drug addiction? There'd probably be people in there who would relate to that. But it's about dealing with hurts, habits and hangups in life. And we're a big fan of helping people navigate that. I haven't met one person, myself included, who doesn't have a hurt, a habit or hang up that they have to deal with. We've got.

John Dehlin [00:17:27] So it's addiction recovery.

Pastor Rick [00:17:29] No, note that people who are addiction recovery, they're probably in the minority. The people who participate. It's hurts, habits and hang ups. And so a habit could be an addiction, but there are all kinds of other things. It could be codependency, it could be pornography, it could be struggling with anger. You know, unfortunately, our church, excuse me, unfortunately, our state leads the way in suicide. And we have a Support. We have a support group for people who are struggling with the aftermath of that in their life. We have a great community called Turning Point, for people who are trying to figure out the differences between, okay, I grew up lds. What is Bible Only? Christianity. We have another great community called what is Christianity? And it's a lot of people who are skeptics are like, I don't know if I believe this, but what are your. What are the answers to these questions? So, I mean, it just goes on and on and on. We have 811 adults involved in these groups and communities that meet throughout the week. And we love providing a place for people to get their questions answered. We think every question deserves an answer. And we love providing a place where friendships can be cultivated.

John Dehlin [00:18:32] All right, that sounds good. I like that. Okay. Emily, what brought you to the church?

Personal Stories on Faith and Sexual Identity

Guest 3 [00:18:41] Well, before I came to the church, I lived as a lesbian for 19 years. I had a handful of girlfriends, a couple boyfriends in the mix, but soon a girl would come along and catch my attention, and I would choose them over these young men. My final girlfriend before I started coming to South Mountain was not the best relationship. It was not physically abusive, but it was very emotionally abusive. It didn't start out that way. I fell in love with her two boys, more so than I did with her. I should have known from the very beginning that I should have ran away, because my brothers typically loved everybody that I dated, and they didn't like her from the start. She started off by simple thing. Girls night I used to do with my friends. And she's like, well, why can't I go to girls night with you? Like, because they're my friends and we're doing girls night. She's like, well, I'm a girl. I'm like, yeah, but you're my partner. And so that was really hard, and I didn't like to fight about it afterwards. So I stopped doing girls night, which meant I stopped hanging out with my friends. She didn't like me hanging out with any of my guy friends either, because that was too uncomfortable for her. So pretty soon it was me and her and her boys, her friends, and her family.

John Dehlin [00:19:55] So your life kind of disappeared.

Guest 3 [00:19:57] It did. And even my brothers, like, I fell into her lies of seeing my brothers as being hateful, and they didn't approve of our relationship. So I stopped seeing them, which meant I actually missed out on three years of my niece's life. My nephew was born, and I was there the day he was born, but I didn't know him for the first two years. And I, you know, looking back, I totally understand. My brothers wanted my niece and nephew to have a healthy life and I wasn't living in a healthy relationship. So on top of that, I lost my job. So not only did I identify as a lesbian, but I also found my identity in my work. I was a workaholic. I loved to work. There was nothing like it which fed into my people pleasing. I put in long hours. I loved what I did. But I got to a point where I couldn't find a job. I could find a job out of state, but nothing in state. And got to the point where I was opening a beer at 7am I was so dark. I didn't know what I wanted. I didn't know what purpose was in life. During this time, I recall the conversation that I had with one of my really good friends, dad, as I was coaching with her at Salt Lake Community College. It's about eight years prior to that, he in passing asked me if I knew what the good news was. I had no idea what he's talking about. Like, no. I'm like, I don't know what the good news is. And he proceeded to tell me how Jesus died on the cross so that I could be saved. I was a little bit blown away and intrigued because really at that point I thought I was going to hell or maybe making the bottom kingdom of heaven depending upon God's thoughts on where I was. Like that was where I was. And he also gave me a Bible. I didn't surrender my life that day. I didn't really think much of it, but it planted a seed. So Fast forward to 2010. In my dark deep moment, I recalled that conversation. I'm like, you know what? I want to know what God thinks about homosexuality. So I actually started googling. I'm like, I want to see what he thinks. And I found articles and blogs. I wanted to make God fit what I wanted him to believe so he could love me better. I started to get mad because I was reading all these people's opinions and they were opinions and those same opinion. Like nobody had the same opinion. So I'm like, this can't be accurate because everyone is so different and not every single person saying the same thing. So I remember that Bible and I pulled it out and I started reading the New Testament and I fell in love with Jesus. Not the Jesus who was preexisting with us, raising his hand, saying he was going to come and be sacrificed so that we all could be saved. But Jesus, who was God who came down and he gave his life for me. I was blown away at his kindness and how he hung out with all of these sinners. And I'm like, oh my gosh, if he can hang out with all these sinners with like prostitutes and tax collectors and the woman at the well. That story just, it broke me as I was reading it. I'm like, he's talking to this woman during this time when men didn't talk to women, women were seen as second class citizens. And he was like having a conversation and he loved on her and he didn't judge her and he could have condemned her and told her to like, get out of here, get out of my face, you're a sinner. But instead he's like, wanted her to know him and he in exchange wanted to know her. And in parting, my favorite thing, just like, hey, sin no more. You know, no condemning, no throwing guilt. I continued to read the New Testament And I got 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verse 9. And it brought me to my knees. Do you not know that evildoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? I continue to read neither the sexually immoral. And that's who I was. I was living for my flesh. I was such a sinner. I gave in to every single instant gratification. I gave into my flesh. I became an alcoholic. I was smoking weed all the time, giving into every single thing. And I was tired of it. Then I continued to read that I could be washed and I could be sanctified and justified through Jesus Christ. That night my partner came home from work and I'm like, I can't do this anymore. Like, I'm going to move into the basement until I figure out what's going on. I didn't tell her I was reading the Bible. I didn't want any influence from her. I decided I was going to go to South Mountain that following Sunday. And I didn't tell the Timmels because I didn't want them to have any influence and I didn't want to give them hope that I was going to start coming to church. So I'm walking up and there's this guy that walks in front of me and he's wearing this white bandana and he looked like a gangster and he was covered in tattoos and he was wearing a wife beater. And I'm like, I can totally do this church. So that was awesome. So I go and sit down. The music was awesome. But what really got me that day was Pastor Paul and man, his message, it just Got me. There was this guy. I assumed he was the leader of this church, and he told the congregation that he was a sinner in need of a savior. That is the first time that I'd ever heard a religious leader or my grandfather, who was leader of our family, like, say that they were a sinner. Like, all these men were so perfect, but this guy, like, he was a sinner. I'm like, I can do this church. So I continued to go and took my first class, which was Boundaries, which is where I met this guy. I was definitely in need of boundaries, which the thing that I love about that. It's kind of a silly story, but when I told Jim, not this Jim, but my friend Jim, what first class I was taking, he was so proud of me that I made that decision on my own. He's like, that's a great class for you. You need it. And I did. I needed boundaries. I needed boundaries for myself, for my brain. The funny thing is, as I got to know Jesus and I got to. Well, let me rewind. So from Boundaries, I met this really great small group, and Jim was my small group leader. And they were so amazing. They gave me the space that I needed to figure out what I wanted and who God was. I asked a lot of hard questions, and they didn't give me the answers. They directed me so I could find those answers on my own. They didn't tell me what to think. They loved me through, like, my brokenness, my temptations, when I thought it was okay to smoke weed all the time. They just walked alongside me through all of that. I was able to, like, talk about my, like, all. Every part of me, the grossest parts, and they were just there with me, which is really cool that he is sitting here with me right now. But through it all, the funny thing is, is my entire life before I became a Christian was driven by my feelings. I felt like I wanted to be with women, so I was with them. I felt like I always wanted to be drunk, so I did that for the first time in my life. Once I became a Christian, I actually started to use my brain. Before I became a lesbian, I let my family dictate what I did. I didn't think for myself, but I love who I am in Jesus, and I love that he wants me and I to have my own mind and to think my way. For the first time in my life, I have actually found joy. And I know what it is to be known, which is something I had sought my entire life, to be known and loved by Jesus and my church family.

John Dehlin [00:27:22] So I've spent a ton of time studying LGBT Mormons. And so I just, I have to ask a couple follow up questions. Some of this may be a little bit personal, but so, so do you, in religious parlance, do you still experience same sex attraction?

Guest 3 [00:27:37] I am tempted. So, yes, I do have temptations. Where I do have attractions, I will say that they have, they're getting lessened. This last year has been my least amount of times. But yeah, I definitely still find women attractive.

John Dehlin [00:27:53] Okay. Do you, do you have plan or intention of trying to find a partner? I'm assuming it would be a male. Are your beliefs that to act on your same sex sexuality is sinful?

Guest 3 [00:28:10] Yes, I believe it's sinful. I believe the marriage is between a man and a woman. And if you can't do that, then you should choose celibacy, which I choose celibacy. I'm not opposed to getting married, but I love Paul. I, you know, as growing up, especially in Utah, especially being single, there's a stigmatism that you can't be single. It doesn't matter whether you're Christian, whether you're lds, and I don't know if it's because it's Utah, but singleness is not appreciated very much. But when you read the New Testament, another thing that I love about the New Testament is Paul's like, hey, you guys don't get married unless you can't control the lust in your groin. Right? Like, I love that. And I'm like, yeah, I love that. Because I really, I still am not a big fan of marriage. I love God's plan for marriage. Like, I love what it means. I think it is so beautiful. But I love how much I can do being single. I wouldn't be able to do like, I love ministry. I would do ministry 247 if I could. But I also like to work. So I'm a little bit torn on that.

John Dehlin [00:29:08] Do you pray for God to take away your same sex attraction?

Guest 3 [00:29:12] I don't.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] Why not? Why not?

Guest 3 [00:29:16] I don't know.

Guest 2 [00:29:16] It's.

Guest 3 [00:29:17] That's a really good question. I pray for him to, I guess, take away my temptations. I do believe that we are all predisposed to different types of temptations and we have the moral choice to choose whether we're going to give into those temptations or whether we're going to choose life with God. Right. You can't live in both camps. You have to choose one or the other. You have to know when you're grounded in Jesus. So I don't know. I've never, never prayed for them to go away. I guess I should, but I have faith in God that He's going to help me overcome my temptations.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] So the survey that we did, surveying 1,612 Mormons, LGBT Mormons, a thousand of them attempted to change their sexual orientation, and 0% reported that it was changed. The most common method of trying to change was through prayer and, and righteousness. And that was also the most damaging of all the reported attempts made. So that's a pretty low success number. So I'm actually happy to hear that you haven't tried to pray that to go away. Based on the data that I've studied.

Guest 3 [00:30:22] Yeah. You know the sad thing? People do believe that it's that easy, right? That there's nothing you have to do. The one thing, like, if you truly want to live a life for Jesus, there's so many other things you have to do not work. So that's where it gets really hard. You still have to put stuff in. Like, for me, I had to change one community for another, right? I lived in the gay community. I had to replace it with another community. I had to join a Bible study so I could know God's Word. Because if you're not grounded in God's word, how can you know who he is and who we are in Him? So joined a Bible study, got with a group. I have awesome pastors that I'm able to ask really hard questions to. I have a great group of friends who hold me accountable that I can go to whenever I'm having struggles. You can't do it on your own. And that's what makes me really sad for people who say they try to pray it away. It doesn't work that way. You have to do life in community. That's why God built us, is to have relationships, to live in community so we can love one another. But the biggest thing is being grounded in His Word. I'm actually going to seminary school right now, and that has been the thing that has lessen my temptations even more. Because if I'm not working, I am grounded in God's Word studying. And that's where I have found the biggest change in my life is the more I'm grounded in him, the less the temptations are.

John Dehlin [00:31:41] A couple more questions. Our study also found that the single worst choice someone could make in terms of quality of life, depression, sexual identity, distress, internalized homophobia, was the choice of being celibate. So this isn't me condemning the path You've chosen or even trying to opine about it. It's just referencing data that basically said men, women are made to, that we're sexual creatures and that that's an important part of health and well being. So the prospects weren't good for people who chose celibacy in my study, our study. Do you have a thought about that? Can you relate to that? It sounds like you're doing great. So I do have.

Guest 3 [00:32:26] So we're all sexual sinners. Definitely. We're sexual beings. God made us to have sex and it's so beautiful. His purpose for sex and like what that is to represent, which I won't get into that right now. But how can people not be depressed? Have you seen our world? Like you watch TV and that's the message that we're receiving all the time is that you have to have sex, you have to be in a relationship. All of our TV shows are just showing people having sex constantly. Music is talking about sex. All of our friends are like, what? You're not with anybody? How can you not be depressed? Right? And how can you not live a life of celibacy? I mean, how can you choose to live a life of celibacy when you receive counter message from every single person? Like, honestly, I think that you can find true joy when you surround yourself with good people who know what your intentions are rather than the world. Like, I personally watch a lot of tv. I'm very particular about what I listen to. I don't want the world telling me how to live my life. I want to make my own choices. I think kids, I'm actually, I'm so fearful for the kids these days. Like even more so than like I've now been part of our high school ministry because I think this sexual message is so damaging to kids, people who are gay, people who are straight. Like we are so focused on sex and sex outside marriage is not healthy. One of my favorite authors, he wrote this book called Loveology and he talks about every time you have sex with somebody, you give a piece of yourself away. And the more people you have sex with, you become. You continually become this empty shell until there's nothing left of you. You're like this ravaging beast who goes out there and you're just trying to seek that next person that you're going to have sex with with. And to me, like, that is such a sad and broken life. And how can people not be depressed?

John Dehlin [00:34:16] Are you open to or interested in a mixed orientation marriage where you would marry a man?

Guest 3 [00:34:23] Absolutely. I Actually love. I'm attracted to men. I think they are very nice to look at. I love guys like, I've always loved. Like, I've always had great guy friends. I have two brothers who I think are so wonderful. I have mainly uncles. I like guys. They're really cool.

John Dehlin [00:34:41] So you're open to that? Are you hoping for that? Are you praying for that?

Guest 3 [00:34:45] No.

John Dehlin [00:34:45] Because you're happy.

Guest 3 [00:34:46] I am. So I've actually never been happier in my entire life. I've never known this joy and this contentment of where I am right now. I, you know, I'm not opposed to it. But this person, I have super high standards. So they have to love Jesus more than I love Jesus, and that's a really tough thing.

John Dehlin [00:35:01] How about the same? How about love Jesus the same as you love Jesus.

Guest 3 [00:35:04] Okay. And dogs have to sleep in the bed, so.

John Dehlin [00:35:07] Okay. Between you or anywhere. Okay. Have you considered, I mean, there. There are plenty of Christians that just maybe interpret the Bible in ways that allow for them to be Christian and gay or lesbian. Have you. Have you studied how. How other Christians have found a way to kind of keep those two things together, or are you even aware of. Of that line of thought?

Guest 3 [00:35:35] I have a ministry called that I co lead called Homosexuality Christian. So we do book studies and we actually have people who come in our study who have partners, they're married. They actually attend our church.

John Dehlin [00:35:47] So they're same sex married. Okay. As a part of your ministry, they

Guest 3 [00:35:52] come and participate in it here in South Mountain. Here in South Mountain.

John Dehlin [00:35:55] So there are LGBT members?

Guest 3 [00:35:57] Actually, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:35:58] And same sex married members. They're welcome to participate, which is why

Guest 3 [00:36:02] I chose South Mountain. Because they love you. Doesn't matter where you are. One of my favorite things that Rick has said is that, you know, we're not here to change people's sexual orientation. We're here to change people's orientation to Jesus. And it truly is.

John Dehlin [00:36:18] So do they feel like they. Do they feel like second class citizens here when they talk about coming here? Do they. Do you. Can you speak for them as to what their experience is here? Knowing that the church sort of has a theology that maybe frowns upon their sexuality, how can they still feel welcome here?

Guest 3 [00:36:38] The one thing that the church does really well, they don't preach it from the pulpit. Right. We have conversations outside. I.

John Dehlin [00:36:46] So there's not a lot of LGBT talk during the sermons?

Guest 3 [00:36:49] No, because we're focusing on helping people to know who Jesus is. We're not here to make people feel guilty. We're here to love on Them and let them know who they. We all need to know who Jesus is on our own account, on our own accord. We can't have people telling us who Jesus is.

John Dehlin [00:37:05] So they feel welcome with the servants.

Pastor Rick [00:37:09] Yeah, you know, it's just the other day, this is going to. I hate telling stories. You're like the hero of your own story, but will you give me permission to do that? So there's like four or five gay guys that came up to me after the service a couple of weeks ago

Guest 3 [00:37:24] and

Pastor Rick [00:37:26] they asked me this question that you're asking, and I share with them the same thing. Emily just said, hey, our goal isn't to change your sexual orientation. We want to orient everybody to Jesus. And that everybody would get to the point where they say, jesus, I trust you more than I trust me. I trust you with my identity, I trust you with my relationships, my sexuality, my money, my schedule, all that kind of stuff. Just, I trust you. And this one guy, I said, you want to ask any follow up questions, we'll chat about it. And they're like, no. And the other guy goes, man, you guys are a big deal. We love it here. We drive. I can't remember where they're coming from. From the south. We're like, we just love it here. And that's been, that's been stored. We've heard story after story after story of that. And it's. I don't think it's because we're a big deal. Although it was kind of for him to say is, we love Jesus. Every single single person is a sexual sinner. I am a sexual sinner. We all need the love and the grace and the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. And so we try to make a big deal out of Jesus. And so I think that's why people love it here, because Jesus is incredible.

John Dehlin [00:38:23] What do you mean? Everyone's a sexual sinner if you're either not having premarital sex or you're faithful to your spouse.

Pastor Rick [00:38:30] Yeah, yeah. You know, there's this, there's this idea. It's not. I heard a pastor say this one time, he's like, he says it's not like gay sex sends you to hell and heterosexual sex that doesn't get you to heaven. He said, I happen to know this by experience. And I just thought, well, that's kind of a funny way to hear a pastor describe it. Jesus talked about this. We have a tendency, right, we have a tendency to want to look at our behavior. I know sometimes when I want to skate by, I want to justify myself. With my behavior. But Jesus always took things to the heart. One time, Jesus was talking to a group, maybe a group this size, and he said, listen, you've heard it said that basically, don't have sex outside of marriage. But I'm telling you, if you look on somebody with lust, it's the same. He's talking about the root cause in our heart, that it's not just what we do, that there's a broken desire inside of me. My moral compass is broken. The needle points to me as. As me being the ultimate authority and me being the guy instead of trusting. Instead of trusting Christ and what he designed and what he wants from me. And maybe, I don't know, I'm just speculating here. Maybe one of the reasons that the people who I'm sure were incredibly honest and vulnerable in the study that you shared and what Emily shared is Emily's not talking about repressing something that's there and pretending like it's not there. It's okay. This is a reality about me. But I choose to think about what's true, and I choose to delight in what's true. And I trust the process in which God changes me from the inside out. It's not me working my way improving it. He's changing me from the inside out. And, you know, I don't know if I'm as courageous as Emily is, but, you know, I'm pretty selfish. The word for lust in the New Testament is the same word for greed. And if you think about it that way, I think it makes a lot of sense. I'm sexually greedy. I'm a luster. I need Jesus, love, grace to change me from the inside out. It doesn't matter how I behave. I'm broken on the inside, and I need him to change me from the inside. Is that helpful?

John Dehlin [00:40:37] It's helpful. Thank you. One last thing, Emily. And this is just because I've spent so much time thinking and talking about this. It is super common in the world of Christianity for gay and lesbian Christians to sort of hold themselves up as role models, sort of to tell people you, you're not doing this, but to tell people you can change, to promise change, and to even sort of hold themselves up as exemplary role models for living a righteous or straight life after being gay and lesbian. And then fast forward three years or five years or ten years later, you find out that either they weren't being honest about who they were or they had a big crash. And just this week in Mormonism, we learned about a couple. They're named Josh and Lollie Weed, where five years ago, you know, Josh and Lolli come out as being in a mixed orientation marriage where Josh says, hey, I'm Mormon and I'm gay, but I love my wife and sexually attracted to her, and we have the best sex ever and we love each other and everything's awesome. Fast forward five years, they're getting divorced. He's apologizing to the LGBT community, and he's saying, I'm really sorry that I gave all these people hope or influenced them or my stories were used as hammers against other LGBT people to make. To make, you know, family members push them into religious belief, when in reality, I couldn't even keep it up myself. And so are you aware that there's this long, decades long history of Christians leading ministries like yours that ended up sort of being rotten to the core? And, you know, are you mindful of that as you are a role model and as you lead others down a path that for many just proves to be unsustainable? I. I'm not picking on you. I'm just sharing my experience and wondering if how much you've thought about this and how much you're aware.

Guest 3 [00:42:39] I definitely know. I like to study all things LGBTQ as well. Right. It's good to be aware of what's going on there. Also, I know there's a lot of. There are people who have left being Christians, and I don't know why. I don't know their story. I don't know where they are. But there are also other people just like me who have led ministries and have done it for a really long time, and they've been great role models. And I look up to. They're the ones that I look up to, you know, like Rosario Butterfield. She is one amazing woman. She's one of my favorite authors who I love to read always. It's easy for any human to slip up. We're all sinners, right? And we all might have that time when we're going to fall in our lives. It's hard when you, the gay community, when you are making that choice, because I think there is a spotlight on you. There are definitely people who find out my story and they want to be that person who breaks me, who makes me cross that line. So I'm very discerning in who I spend my time with. I really am. I'm discerning in the alone time I spend with them when I meet with people I always meet in public. But I just think we all, as human beings, it doesn't matter whether you're gay or straight. If you're on a path, you need to stick it. And I'm very intentional with my life. I think so many people are so unintentional with the way that they live their lives. And if you truly love Jesus and you truly want to live your life for Jesus, you have to be so intentional with your choices. Especially as a leader. I hold myself higher. And that's actually one reason I do love being a leader in our church, because it holds me accountable. I've had moments where I've talked to Rick where I. Even a few years ago, where I had a really strong temptation and I brought it to. I'm like, hey, Rick, there's this person I've been. She was someone that I was not saying. She was like a doctor that I was seeing, and I had attractions towards her. And I brought that to light with Rick, and it was really cool, like, his response to me. But I do believe that when you are in a leadership position that you have to hold yourself to even higher standards.

John Dehlin [00:44:37] Okay, last question.

Guest 2 [00:44:39] So what.

John Dehlin [00:44:40] What about this idea of instead of looking at your sexuality as a curse or as a sinful or as brokenness, just saying, this is how God made me, and God made me this way. I love me. I love who I am. And seeing it as something to celebrate instead of something to sort of view with disdain. That's something that Josh Weed wrote about, about how he still considered himself Christian. He still considers himself a believer, but instead he just refuses, number one, to view his core nature as evil or sinful in that way. And then two, he refuses to deny himself love and companionship that's oriented with who he is, you know, and it's not me trying to persuade you. It's just trying to say, is that an option for you or not?

Guest 3 [00:45:37] No. And you're fine with persuading. I like when people try to push

John Dehlin [00:45:40] me because it's no, I don't believe

Guest 3 [00:45:42] in doing to grow stronger roots into Jesus. I love God, and I love him so much that I want to obey him. And I know that the plan that he has for me, and I want to stay the course because of my love for him. And to be honest, I can't imagine loving life any other way. It makes me cry. Like, I have sobbed when I have had my temptation moments like cried. That's when I did have cried. And I'm like, please, please, God, help me not sin against you, because I love him so much. And I don't ever want to go back to a lifestyle. To be honest, it wasn't a great lifestyle. I had a partner every three to five years, right? It's like I met someone new. Two months later, we're living together. Three to five years later, I'm breaking up. And just this pattern and. I don't know. A lot of gay relationships that have long marriages, they're there.

John Dehlin [00:46:32] But for you, that wasn't your experience.

Sexual Ethics, Human Nature, and Honest Questions

Pastor Rick [00:46:35] John, could I ask you a question? Oh, would that be all right?

John Dehlin [00:46:39] I don't know. Okay. Yeah, you can.

Pastor Rick [00:46:42] You know, I appreciate you asking these questions because these represent the spirit of the times. I mean, this is. These are things that people really want to know about. This is something that we're wrestling through and buried down deep somewhere, somewhere deep in these questions is, is this. What does it mean to be human? Where do sexual ethics come from? Are we designed or are we an accident? Is there a purpose for my life that I should discover, or do I get to determine it? Do I get to make up what my purpose in life is? And we can have fantastic conversations like we're having now. It'll be hard to really understand where we're coming from and really understand what someone means unless we know the answer to those questions first. You know, right now it's interesting. I'm sure we're all watching the MeToo campaign, and we've seen. We've been bombarded with stories of men who've used power and influence and notoriety or whatever to get what they wanted sexually. We say, that's wrong. You don't get to make up your own rules. So there's something inside of us that we just intuitively know. You don't just get to make it up. There's something that we should all bend to. Even if our heart doesn't naturally line up to it, there's something we should bend to. What is that? Where does that come from? And what Emily's talking about, and what a lot of everyone else here would say is, we believe that God designed us for a purpose. And the most joy, the most thriving in life is found when we trust him and we let him bring us into alignment with the purpose for which he made us.

John Dehlin [00:48:29] I sense that was a hypothetical question, not intended for a direct answer. And that's. That's.

Pastor Rick [00:48:34] So I'll ask you this question. What does it mean to be human? Where do sexual ethics come from?

John Dehlin [00:48:43] I respect those who. Who find their grounding for sexual ethics in God or in the divine. And I think as long as the outcome of that is Respect for self and others and health, emotional health, as well as physical health. I'm celebrating. I do know men and women who are in same sex marriages who have physical health and mental health and respect for self and others and who have genuine long term committed love. I know several, but I also know that marriage is fraught, period. Heterosexual or same sex marriage, and life gets complicated. So when, you know, I know we're almost kind of running out of time. I'm hoping we can go a little bit over. I do want to have a kind of a theological and doctrinal conversation with you, but maybe I'll pause on that. Is that okay? We'll come back to it.

Guest 2 [00:49:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:40] But can we give Emily a round of applause for taking the heat on those questions? Thank you. Thank you. Wasn't she a good sport? All right, so, Dave, we only have just a couple minutes, so I'm going to ask you to kind of tell your story briefly, if it's okay. I don't want to cut you short, but there's, there are some final questions I want to ask. Is it okay if we go a little over? Is that okay? And you guys don't feel like obligated to stick around? There are some burning questions that I have. I want to have a dialogue, but I know that we're going to go a little bit over. But that's what we do on Mormon stories, we go over.

Guest 2 [00:50:22] So.

Church History, Music, and Sunday Sermon Topics

John Dehlin [00:50:23] But let's conclude this part too, Dave, with what brought you South Mountain.

Guest 4 [00:50:29] Yeah. So, you know, when we got to the point where we were starting to visit other churches, we actually thought about maybe just staying, you know, knowing what we believed and that we could teach our kids. And for us, we just, it became too much of a challenge, I think, trying to constantly correct things that our kids are being taught. And we really wanted them to be immersed in the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. And so as we started visiting different churches and we really had a hunger for that. I remember my wife, we went to one church and she said, feels like gospel doctrine in here. I mean, that was her comment. It was so, you know, it was just the thing we love about smcc, I think that finally made us come here is that the way that the gospel is presented is, it's, it's presented in a way that is, that is doable. It is doable. It doesn't, you know, you're, you're given a message. You know, they get into the scriptures to support kind of the, you know, to draw us to draw the Bible into the Theme and to, you know, you do, you leave having these con. These concepts and understand when we have great discussions afterwards, it just seemed very doable. We loved, especially for having our kids come out. There was a great youth program here that we felt was very inviting, and our kids loved it. And so I think for us, it was just really great fit for what we were looking for in that transition.

John Dehlin [00:52:20] And the things you love most about

Guest 4 [00:52:21] it now, I really did love the. Well, I do love that no one's made to do anything, you know, you're not called to do, you know, youth ministry or whatever. I mean, it really is volunteer. And as a result of that, you get people in those positions that love to serve. They really do. They love it. No one's holding any guilt over your head for it. I loved the men's group, the small men's group. That was the first time. And I remember that somebody else mentioned it up here. But hearing a pastor from the stage say that they were a sinner, you know, that they had sins, they, you know, whatever it was, I mean, that was. That was pretty cool revelation there to hear that. And then to be able to go into a men's group where you sit around with these guys who are. Who are at all different stages of life and they're just completely open. I mean, I really did find my identity in what other people thought about me. As long as what they thought about me is what I wanted them to think about me. I mean, I wanted them to know that I was a worthy priesthood holder. It's very important, very important. And for me to show a crack of my sinful nature or anything was just, you know, and so I lived in this kind of prison and to come here and to just be able to just say, yeah, I'm a sinner. Yeah, I struggle with that too. And hear five other guys say, oh, yeah, absolutely, we all do. But the answer is the same, which is, Christ took the punishment of all that and gives us his worthiness freely. And so you're not working to get up to some level where all of a sudden now, you know, it activates God's love or God's grace or, you know, it's just. It was freeing.

Guest 2 [00:54:02] It was.

Guest 4 [00:54:03] It was great. I love it, love it here.

John Dehlin [00:54:06] A lot of post Mormons love their Sundays now and they. They call it Second Saturday, where they can just do whatever they want and have fun, spend time with the family, go hiking, snow skiing, connect with others. What makes it so wonderful that you want to give up that, that second Saturday we want to give up the second Sabbath, or at least part of it. That's how someone might and choose to go to church.

Guest 4 [00:54:31] Oh, man.

John Dehlin [00:54:32] After you've been quote, I was going

Guest 4 [00:54:33] to remember this when we were. And even now we're actually excited to go to church. We're excited for it. And it's like, you know, you go through the week and it's really something I look forward to as before, where it was, you know, dreading really is something that we look forward to. And when we miss, we really do miss it. It's a completely different dynamic than what we're used to.

John Dehlin [00:54:58] Do any of you else enjoy going to church here? Wow. Look forward to it. All right, well, let's give our panelists a round of applause for their beautiful stories. We want to make sure you feel welcome. Welcome to stay for the theological doctrinal talk. Do you want to bring Paul back up or. Pretty smart dude. Is he smart dude? Can someone grab a chair for maybe have Paul and maybe if it's okay, let's see, Carrie, if you can sit on that chair on the end, maybe we'll have Paul come sit by Rick. We want everyone to still feel comfortable participating. Don't fall off the edge of that stage. Maybe turn your. Turn your couch just a little bit this way. And what I'd like to do for part three. And again, those of you need to go. I'm so sorry for going long, but this is really important to me and I think it'll be important to my listeners. So I want to thank those of you who need to leave. Thank you so much for coming. It's been great having you. And for those who want to stay, I'm glad you're sticking around. So, you know, Mormons believe in that missionary work needs to be done in twos. So you guys are going to play the role of the missionaries, if that's okay. Is that all right? And this is not a bash. This is not me being critical or cynical or negative. This is not me trying to enter into any type of argument. This is me sort of saying, wow, I loved my experience here. I love the energy. I loved the community when I was lds, I. I loved so much of my participation in the church. I didn't leave the church. The church kicked me out. Having said that, I've attended many churches and have never really felt either doctrinally or just spiritually kind of like it fit, like it made sense, like it belonged. So I'm going to sort of put my. Put my. Myself in investigator mode. And I'm going to ask you a bunch of questions that come sincerely from my heart and mind about questions that I would have if I were to ever kind of consider joining. Is that okay?

Pastor Rick [00:57:20] Yeah.

Guest 2 [00:57:20] All right.

John Dehlin [00:57:22] So starting. And by the way, I took so many notes when I was here. There's so many cool things that I experienced. Let me go through the list of all the things that I. That I loved as I was coming here. I thought it was awesome that you had coffee. I thought it was awesome. How many volunteers were here, unpaid, willing to support your kids? Programs were phenomenal. Like I would have thought the Mormons had the market on sort of childhood religious education. And I looked into each of those little windows and the kids were just having a great time. And the volunteers were all. There was a lot. I know you guys do background checks on the people who are spending any time with the children or youth, that the youth are protected. I thought that was really cool. I love the rock band. It was inspiring. You do small groups. Can you talk about what those are really quick?

Pastor Rick [00:58:27] Small groups are essentially friends who get together. They're. They're groups of.

John Dehlin [00:58:31] It's like Bible study groups.

Pastor Rick [00:58:32] Yeah. 8, 10, 12 people, whatever. They meet in homes a lot of times they'll eat together and they will do a Bible study. Many of them will do a Bible study that's based on the message that they heard on Sunday. And we write questions to go along with that. And the goal is to encourage, encourage each other and hold each other accountable and to help each other as they take their next step in applying things that they're. Things that they're learning. But these are people who go on vacations together. These are people who become best friends. These are people who do birthday parties together. These are people who become family.

Pastor Paul [00:59:03] One of the other things about our small group is that's the support system that we encourage. So there's a death in the family, a birthday. You mentioned birth. If there's any kind of critical need, that's the first line of care for everybody.

John Dehlin [00:59:23] And what if you don't like someone in your group? Can you vote them out? How does that work? Does that happen? It's self organized.

Pastor Paul [00:59:34] It's people that. It's a fellowship of sinners. And to just recognize that and be open about it. You know, not all groups stay together for a long time, but it's where most of the people find their true Christian friends.

John Dehlin [00:59:51] And you have some means of connecting people up to join groups. Do groups have their own, like little constitutions and charters about what the rules will be. No. Okay. All right. I thought it was super high tech. This place is super high tech. Multi cameras. Like, again, the jumbotrons, the PowerPoint presentation. Really sophisticated music production. How long is. How long did it take to get those sort of level of production standards?

Pastor Paul [01:00:25] Well, it took. It. You know, it started small. Mike Bell is over here with his wife Joni. He helped start the church, too. And Joni was our singer, and Mike played piano, and that's how we started. And about three months into it, I put my hands around his neck and said, go find a guitar player. We need to get this thing going here. So he. He found somebody and. And the rest is history. But what's kind of cool is what you saw up here was Mike's son, so second generation, and he was great.

John Dehlin [01:01:00] You did a great job. And then my son, I heard you were the backup.

Pastor Paul [01:01:03] You were.

John Dehlin [01:01:03] You were fabulous.

Pastor Paul [01:01:04] So you just raise your worship leaders, right, Mike? That's how you do it.

John Dehlin [01:01:08] And it's like.

Guest 2 [01:01:09] Is.

John Dehlin [01:01:09] I hear your youth group has a band sort of as part of the youth group. So, like, you go to church in a youth group and you're, like, playing in a rock band. How cool is that, right? It's super cool. All right. Okay. So there's a. There's another church that I've heard of, like this one called Alpine Church. And so I was thinking there might be a rivalry. And one thing I was really impressed with is that Pastor Rick spoke about this other rival church in a really friendly manner. Talk about that for a second. Like, I. I would. I'm used to churches being a little bit competitive.

Pastor Rick [01:01:43] When did I do that? I think I'm getting credit for something I don't deserve. I know.

John Dehlin [01:01:47] Was it Paul?

Pastor Rick [01:01:47] Paul might have done it.

Guest 2 [01:01:49] We love.

Pastor Paul [01:01:49] Yeah, I know Brian. He's the pastor.

John Dehlin [01:01:51] Okay. It was. Must have been Paul. Yeah, yeah.

Pastor Paul [01:01:53] When they were getting off the ground, we. We connected and they. He brought his leadership team to South Mountain, and we love to talk shop and philosophy of ministry and how to do church, and they do a great job.

John Dehlin [01:02:07] So it's very cool. It's very collaborative. It's.

Pastor Paul [01:02:09] We've sent many people who. Who are moving from this area up to northern Utah. We said, yeah, connect with Alpine.

Pastor Rick [01:02:17] They're a great church.

John Dehlin [01:02:18] I like that. That. I mean that. I like that sort of spirit of cooperation, not competition. So I noticed there are a lot of people of color in the audience. Not, you know, half, but it seems as though people of color feel welcome here.

Pastor Rick [01:02:35] I Hope so.

John Dehlin [01:02:37] Seems.

Pastor Rick [01:02:38] Yeah, I agree with you.

John Dehlin [01:02:39] Yeah, I noticed that very low pressure. I noticed people in the audience taking notes as you were doing your sermon. And that's very different because in my tradition there's a lot of zoning out sort of on the phone not to criticize. That's just what I've observed. A lot of people in the audience sort of had their notepads out and they were like taking notes. I think that's a credit to the quality and the content of your. Of your service. What version of the Bible do you use and why?

Pastor Paul [01:03:09] Most of the time we use the new international version and it's not the newest edition of the new international version, but that's the most widely read translation of the Bible in modern English language. So it's most accessible to the most amount of people.

John Dehlin [01:03:27] And it's pretty accurate or pretty well translated or well researched. Okay, let's see. I loved how practical the sermons were. You really wouldn't get a sermon in the LDS Church on sort of going a level deeper on sort of financial responsibility. You might get sort of a stat of debt as like a admonition. But actually digging in depth to a practical issue, you probably just would never get. To what extent are your sermons just trying to be practical?

Pastor Rick [01:04:02] Well, one of the things that is a huge value to us is this is something I adopted when I came here. This is South Mountain started this way from the beginning is the truth of the Bible should be explained in ways that are helpful and hopeful. We believe the truth is hopeful. We believe that it is helpful. And you know, I mentioned that when I in graduate school, I studied philosophy. And a lot of times philosophers are criticized as telling you something you already know in a way you don't understand. We don't want to do that here. We want people to go, ha, I get it.

Pastor Paul [01:04:31] That makes sense.

Pastor Rick [01:04:32] I want that because we really do want good things for people and we think that. We think that God's word is understandable and should be helpful and is incredibly practical.

Pastor Paul [01:04:43] One of the things we like to do is do different types of sermons, but we definitely have three or four series during the year that we internally call wisdom series. And just showing that the Bible is so, so wise in how to live life. And for a lot of people, they're just motivational talks because they don't believe the Bible. But we're hoping that if they see that the Bible is wise on how to live life, that they'll someday trust the Bible for their spiritual needs as well. So that's kind of the method behind the madness.

John Dehlin [01:05:19] So what are some, what are some of the other types of topics that you might cover in a year's worth of sermons? Just rattle off 10.

Pastor Paul [01:05:27] So typically a calendar year would have something in the summer that are standalone messages because people go on vacations a lot. But anything from the five catalysts for growth in your life. What kind of things help people connect with God on a daily basis and that sort of thing, or what things improve your spiritual life? We always have a kind of a connecting type of sermon series in the fall when people are coming back to church on a regular basis after a vacation season. And that's usually something that is provocative and very something that somebody would want to invite somebody to because it's going to connect you to God and in a way that maybe is unexpected.

John Dehlin [01:06:18] Give me an example.

Pastor Rick [01:06:20] We just did a series called Control Freak that's always started in the fall, and it's all about faith. Faith is not a feeling, is one. Faith is not a force. These are just different topics throughout the series. And so we did a big series on faith. We did a series on the life of David in the Old Testament, of course, then we did Christmas. Right now we're doing a wisdom series. We're about to do a book study in a couple of weeks, starting on 2nd Corinthians, the first one, it's called Paradox. And we're looking at a series of things that it seems like it's contradictory, but upon further review, do you discover that it's complementary, it's actually true, it's

Pastor Paul [01:06:56] straight, you know, right out of the Second Corinthians.

Pastor Rick [01:06:59] Second Corinthians, New Testament. New Testament, yeah.

Pastor Paul [01:07:01] And we'll do marriage series. We'll do parenting series, things like that as well.

John Dehlin [01:07:07] Thank you for joining us today on More Mormon stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org thank you very much.

Finances, Tithing, and Church Transparency

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 864

John Dehlin [00:00:02] Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners to help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community. Please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the donate button on the top right side of the page. All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you. Thanks for your support. One thing that kind of blew me away is that after your sermon, Pastor Rick, you gave sort of the financial report for the year.

Pastor Rick [00:00:55] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:00:56] So you had up there, like, exactly how much money the church brought in over the calendar year on your PowerPoint in front of the whole audience.

Pastor Rick [00:01:06] That's not a. That report. That's a once a year thing. But we publish that in the bulletin every week where. How much money we've taken in in the last week, up to the month, year to date, that sort of stuff. We think transparency is a big deal.

John Dehlin [00:01:23] So you are open with your finances? Are you open with what. What everyone's paid? Does everyone know what everyone's paid?

Pastor Rick [00:01:30] No, we don't. We don't talk about that openly, but we.

Pastor Paul [00:01:32] I mean, that's, you know, if somebody really wanted to know, yeah, we would say this range, but they know where we live. Nobody's getting rich here, okay?

John Dehlin [00:01:45] Not even you, the. Not even you guys. The owners or the leaders or whatever.

Pastor Rick [00:01:50] You might be interested to know this, Paul doesn't get, like a percentage of whatever the takes are on a Sunday. They're a team. They're a. Of volunteers, and they're called elders. And their job is to. They have the power to fireball. And who owns the church?

Pastor Paul [00:02:07] This group of leaders, we call them elders.

Pastor Rick [00:02:10] It's like a board of directors set my salary.

John Dehlin [00:02:12] Is this a 501C3 nonprofit then? Okay, so the board of directors controls compensation.

Pastor Paul [00:02:17] I don't control my salary.

John Dehlin [00:02:19] So you have an independent board of directors that sets your salary. Sets your salary.

Pastor Rick [00:02:23] Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:02:23] Right.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Is that right?

Pastor Rick [00:02:24] Yeah, that's right. I don't get to say what it is.

John Dehlin [00:02:27] Wow. So you could literally. You're the founder and you could be fired.

Pastor Paul [00:02:29] I could be fired? Yes. I'm accountable for my lifestyle and for maintaining the mission of this church. And so if any of those two things go wrong,

John Dehlin [00:02:44] I'm clapping for that one. That was super cool. You guys have an app. So I downloaded your app and it had a calendar on it. Yeah, I thought that was super cool. I Want to learn about more how you did that anyway? Yeah. You had 1,331 members, 2% growth. 811 people participating in groups, 420 people participating in teams, 39 baptisms, $1.6 million brought in to the Sandy campus. Sorry. To the Draper. To the Draper campus. I think that's super cool. All right, it's now time for the. Your. Your missionary work. Are you ready?

Pastor Rick [00:03:24] I'll do my best.

John Dehlin [00:03:26] Okay, so I'm just gonna rifle off a bunch of questions. Is that all right?

Pastor Rick [00:03:30] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:31] Okay. So God, if somebody. What I would say to you about God is, how do you really know there's a God? Because that there are all sorts of different people that say they believe in God. You can't really know if there's a God. All you can do is have feelings that oftentimes the church will condition you to interpret as that, meaning that there's a God. And then you have so many people relying on those feelings to then testify that God's saying 50,000 different things. So the best any of us can say, if we're being honest, is that we're agnostic. We don't really know, but that we've had these feelings that we've interpreted as being from God. But really what happens is you die. And either there is something or there isn't, but we don't know. That's what I would. You know. Well, what would you guys say to that?

Evidence for God and Hard Biblical Questions

Pastor Paul [00:04:25] Both Rick and I want to talk about this, but go ahead.

Pastor Rick [00:04:29] I would say it's a fascinating starting point to say we know that we don't know. There's a bit of an internal tension there. But all worldviews, whether you're atheist, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, whatever, all worldviews are united by the same questions. We're divided over the answers, but we share the same questions. And there are really four fundamental questions we're all trying to answer. Origin.

Pastor Paul [00:04:57] Where did it all come from?

Pastor Rick [00:04:58] Why is there something instead of nothing? Meaning. Does my life have value, yes or no? And is it something that I make up? Or is it? Or does it have value whether I know it or not? Morality. Is there a way that I should live? Are there things that I should do, even if I really don't want to? Are there things that I should not do, even if I really do want to? And then the final question is destiny. Where is all of this headed? Every worldview tries to answer those questions. And if you adopt a worldview, whether it's Hindu, Muslim, atheist, or Christian, it's because you think that worldview provides the best explanation to those questions. And it could take a long time, it could take years to really, to really dig into those questions. But if you look into the question of origin, you have the smartest scientists today. I think about guys like Bord, Guthin and Vilenkin who said, guys, the universe, it didn't exist and then all of a sudden it existed. There's something outside of space, matter and time that brought this into existence. So whatever that cause is, is by definition immaterial, spaceless and timeless. If you flip over to the first page of The Bible, Genesis 1:1, that's the kind of cause that's described. And so what we're looking for is what's the best explanation for reality? And as you tick through those questions, origin, meaning, morality and destiny, I think that you'll discover that even if you don't land at the Christian God yet, you'll say, really, God, existing is a better explanation than all the alternatives put together.

John Dehlin [00:06:41] Okay, so how would you explain something

Pastor Rick [00:06:47] coming into existence from nothing?

John Dehlin [00:06:50] So the where I've landed is I'm comfortable saying I don't know. Like I don't know. I don't think. I wonder who knows. I associate with a lot of people who said they knew and it turns out they didn't. They didn't even know what they really believed or were following to a large extent. So I share some of that trauma of feeling very much distrusting of anyone who tells me they know.

Pastor Paul [00:07:17] Well, on a regular basis we'll talk about the moral argument for God, for instance. I mean, why do we care if somebody is, you know, the director of a movie is using the casting couch for his own pleasure and taking advantage of these women that are so desperate to have a role in their movie. Why does that matter? I mean, who makes up the rules? And that seems to, there seems to be a moral compass in every single person. Where did that come from? It's just not acceptable explainable in a materialistic universe. And yeah, and on and on. I mean, the cosmological argument, the fine tuning of the universe, all these things would at least indicate that if I'm at Vegas, I'm betting for a creator, not against a creator.

John Dehlin [00:08:10] I think there are a lot of non religious people who would say, you know, that over time mankind has evolved to learn lessons. What works, what doesn't, what leads to happiness and fulfillment, what leads to sadness and misery and pain and suffering. And I think you can make a pretty decent case that human morality has evolved over time. As we've sort of trial and error learned what behaviors lead to happiness versus not. That's not an argument. That's just sort of. That's another way to look at it.

Pastor Paul [00:08:46] As far as we know, something has always been right and something has always been wrong. So there's never been a time where there's just no moral compass in people that we know of.

Pastor Rick [00:08:55] You're exactly right. People's perception of morality has. Has evolved and changed over time. Just read a history book. I mean, we get it. Read newspapers. We get it. But the question is, are these moral viewpoints, are they true or are they not true? Are they made up or are they discovered? Are they a matter of opinion or do they transcend opinion? Like, was there ever a time that it was just that It's. There might have been times that it's normal to hold the majority of one race as slave, but was there ever a time that that was okay? That's a really important question. Has there ever been a time when it was okay to discriminate and subjugate a race simply because of their skin color? Now, it might have been normal. It might have been accepted, but was it okay? And if we say no, that was never okay. That was never right. We're appealing to a moral standard that is above human opinion, that's above human preference. Where does that come from?

John Dehlin [00:09:55] But you would agree that in many cases it was religious institutions that were supporting and bolstering slavery. That were supporting and bolstering.

Pastor Rick [00:10:05] Oh,

John Dehlin [00:10:07] no.

Pastor Rick [00:10:08] But it was also. But at the same. At the same time, throughout history, it was Christians who led the way in the abolition of slavery.

John Dehlin [00:10:15] No, no, no. That. Yeah, but.

Pastor Rick [00:10:17] But it's not. It's not a question of. And I get why you're asking this, and it's a good question, but it's not a question of who was on the right side. It's, is there a right side?

John Dehlin [00:10:27] No, I get that.

Pastor Rick [00:10:27] Right or wrong. And where does that come from?

John Dehlin [00:10:29] For sure. And this isn't to say I'm a believer that the religion has been a net positive contribution to humanity. I do not want to see all religion abolished. I do not think the world is better off if religion disappears. And I'm grateful for what religion's done for me and for what it's done for humanity overall. So that's my position. Having said that, you can read in the Bible where slavery is condoned, where, you know, sexism is sort of condoned, where certain types of murder or certain types of genocide are condoned. And we can find ways to sort of justify that or interpret that in different ways. But I would even say religions views on right and wrong have evolved over time. And so in some sense religion's moral evolution is evolving along with mankind's. And I get your point that your belief is that there's a God who has the ultimate standard and even when we get it wrong, there's still an absolute moral truth. I'm just saying that religion has been learning right along with the rest of us as to what is and isn't good.

Pastor Paul [00:11:40] Yeah, that may or may not be true, but it remains true that everybody believes there's some things that are right and some things are wrong. And, and we're saying that that is a proof that God exists. Because morality, there's no explanation for morality other than a moral law giver that has created us with that.

Pastor Rick [00:12:05] Some of the things you brought up, we tackle. We do something during the summer called smccu and we did a whole seminar on is God a moral monster? There's a great book by the same title by a guy named Paul Copan. A guy like yourself may really enjoy reading it. If you don't like reading, you can listen to lectures by Paul Copan. Talk about is God a moral monster? On. On YouTube. So it's 9:23. We don't have time to get into all of that, but it's okay. But let me say this. What we're talking about is there's been different perceptions. The question is this has what is right and what has wrong? Has that ever changed now? Have perceptions changed by massive groups of people? Of course. But has there ever been a time that it was good to subjugate somebody because of their race? Has there ever been a time that it was good to kill children for fun? Has there ever been a time that it was good to discriminate against someone because of their gender? Not did different groups of people see it differently? But has there ever been a time that it was okay? And we would say no, that there is objective moral truth? That no matter where you go in history, no matter where you go in the world, there are certain things that are wrong and there are certain things that are right. Even if everyone agrees, even if no one agrees, these things are right. And the question is not how have people's viewpoints changed. The question is where does that standard come from? How could you make sense of that in a universe in which there is no God, in which there is no lawgiver? That's the question.

John Dehlin [00:13:33] And just to have A slight response.

Pastor Rick [00:13:35] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:13:36] One of my most profound moments as a parent was when my, when we read the story of Noah to my children and my daughter says, so God loved all the people on the earth that, you know, were around the time of Noah. And I'm like, yeah, of course he did. And then she's like, and then God killed them all, men, women and children. And then there are other parts of the Old Testament where people were commanded to kill the entire village, men, women and children and the animals. And if they didn't do that, they were punished for not killing the animals. Right. Slavery. I think you can find places in the, in the Bible where slavery is condoned. And I think you probably could make arguments for racism from the Bible, not, not to keep pursuing this.

Pastor Rick [00:14:25] I just want to, I totally get why you're asking. The problem is, is the difficulty for me is you raise fear. Fantastic questions. And we don't have the time to gauge all of that.

John Dehlin [00:14:36] Yeah.

Pastor Rick [00:14:36] Is there slavery in the Bible? Of course. Did you know, I mean, did you know that you weren't allowed that There were times that you had to, you had to release the slaves and when you released them, you had to basically give them wealth, set them up to where they could thrive economically, that you were not allowed to mistreat a slave. They were not a second class citizen. And we hear the word slave and we cringe. We're like, that's horrible. Because we think of American history and we think of the horrible things that were done. We think of the ships coming from Africa and all that kind of stuff. But if you think about a culture in which there is no centralized government and there is no welfare system, and what happens when all of a sudden a family finds themselves in debt that they can't pay and they can't take for them, they can't take care of themselves. And there's an institution that's set up that says, okay, I have to take care of you, I have to pay off all your debts. I'm not allowed to mistreat you, I'm not allowed to abuse you, I can't take advantage of you sexually, I can't demean you in any way. And if I violate any of those, then I'm going to be punished by the people in my community. And God says that that's not okay. And at the end of a certain time, not only do you leave after you fulfilled your obligation, but I have to give you wealth. That is humane, that is loving. This is a way to protect people. What in the world would you do in the Third World and the ancient Near East? Would you prefer that people starve to death? Would you prefer that people just writhe in the ditch of extreme poverty or provide a way to, in a dignified way, care for people and their needs and their families? And that's what's talked about as slavery in the Old Testament. But we read it understandably through the filter of our experiences and the filter of our history, and it's something completely different than what we initially think that it is.

John Dehlin [00:16:23] So you're saying that slavery from the

Pastor Paul [00:16:25] Bible is different from the Bible? Never condone slavery. It describes slavery and it. It actually puts limits on it. Oh, yeah. And it was a reality in every society across the the world.

John Dehlin [00:16:41] What do you guys say about the genocide stuff that was in there?

Pastor Rick [00:16:43] That it's hyperbole. It's hard to say that the Bible condones genocide when the next page you see those people are still there. I mean, so clearly genocide didn't happen. It is common in the ancient near east to grossly exaggerate what's talked about in battle. And you could say that seems deceptive. It's only deceptive if your audience thinks that you intended to communicate that literally. But we use hyperbole and colloquialisms all the time. We can't relate to those sets of hyperbole and colloquialisms because that's not what we use. But it's incredibly normal in the ancient so few.

John Dehlin [00:17:18] There wasn't genocide in the Old Testament.

Pastor Rick [00:17:20] There is not genocide in the Old Testament. Certainly not genocide as sanctioned. Sanctioned by God. Some of the interesting things about the Yahweh wars, if you read in the Old Testament, Israel was not allowed to have a standing army. They weren't allowed to take plunder. They weren't allowed to do all of those things. There was really nothing in it for them. And a lot of the places that you were like, man, it seems like genocide. These are military outposts that are being engaged. But these people who are supposedly wiped out are the victims of genocide. They keep popping up again and again and again later. There is no genocide. The Old Testament.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] Do you guys believe in literal Adam and Eve?

Pastor Rick [00:17:57] Yes, I think so.

Pastor Paul [00:17:58] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:17:58] As the first humans.

Pastor Rick [00:17:59] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] Around hell, do you have a sense for when that might have happened?

Pastor Rick [00:18:03] I'm not a Young Earth. I'm not a Young Earth creationist.

John Dehlin [00:18:07] So evolution's okay.

Pastor Rick [00:18:12] I don't know what you mean by evolution.

John Dehlin [00:18:16] Humans being around for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, it changes from

Pastor Rick [00:18:20] one species To a completely different species. But I do believe in changes within, within species.

John Dehlin [00:18:27] So. So you don't believe in evolution?

Pastor Paul [00:18:30] Not Darwinian. Not Darwinian evolution.

John Dehlin [00:18:33] Okay, so the first humans would have been around how. I don't know how long ago is it? 6,000 ish here. It's.

Pastor Paul [00:18:41] What is more, let's go with 6 to 8,000 years. So.

John Dehlin [00:18:44] So kind of Adam and Eve are the first.

Pastor Paul [00:18:47] Might have been, but some people call humanoids or people that had human features. But Adam and Eve were the first people with a soul.

John Dehlin [00:18:59] Was the, was the globe. Was the flood a global flood that covered the whole earth with water?

Pastor Rick [00:19:04] I don't know. I have my doubts, although, that there are some really smart, really smart people who disagree with me on that.

John Dehlin [00:19:14] Did the, did the ark have all the animal, all the animal life on the planet in the ark?

Pastor Rick [00:19:20] Well, certainly if it's not the bird worldwide global flood. Then Noah would see the interesting thing about Hebrew. Paul and I both had to learn Hebrew and Greek and we had to translate parts of the Old Testament, New Testament from Hebrew into English, Greek into English. Interesting thing about that word is you read it in the Bible and it says earth. It's really the word for land. And sometimes it means the promised land. It's specifically talking about an area.

John Dehlin [00:19:46] So maybe a regional, A regional flood

Pastor Rick [00:19:49] around Israel or sometimes it can be used to describe the whole world. I tend to fall in the camp. Paul might be different. I tend to fall in the camp that it's more regional, a regional thing.

John Dehlin [00:19:57] Paul.

Pastor Paul [00:19:58] It's difficult because there's cultures all over the world that have a flood epic that they've told the story of a flood for as long as they can remember. And where did that come from if it wasn't worldwide? But to tell you the truth, because of the difficulty in interpreting the Hebrew text, I'm kind of an agnostic on it.

John Dehlin [00:20:19] Oh, no. Okay. When it comes to Christianity, I think there are a few challenges that I have and I'm just being honest. The first is this idea that we're all made as sinners and flawed and that God's the only way that God could. I mean, God's all powerful in theory. The only way that God can make that right is to punish someone to make it right. And I just think, ah, there's. If God's all powerful, there's gotta be another way to not have to like stick it to somebody else for what I did. And I'm not trying to be blasphemous, but also if he made me A sinner, then why even, why not? Why not, why not just say it's okay to learn instead? Why even have sin at all? Why call it just, why not just call it learning, where you just come to this earth and you learn and you learn and you learn and you make mistakes, but you do things right. And then over time you get better and you call it learning instead of calling it sin and then needing to punish someone for the sin. That's kind of my first little dilemma, and I'm again, thoughts on that, is

Pastor Paul [00:21:29] he did not make us sinner. Adam and Eve came into the world without sin. They chose to rebel against God.

John Dehlin [00:21:39] So it's their fault.

Pastor Paul [00:21:40] Yeah. They have moral responsibility for their choices. And they were, here's a fancy word, the federal headship of Adam and Eve. They represented us in a sense that now because of their sin, sin continued to be passed down.

John Dehlin [00:21:57] So if they hadn't goofed, we would have had a very different mortal existence. What would that have been like until I came along? What?

Pastor Rick [00:22:02] I said until I came along.

John Dehlin [00:22:04] And then you would have.

Pastor Rick [00:22:05] That I would have messed it up. Rick would have.

Pastor Paul [00:22:07] I'm not saying if I was in their place, I wouldn't have done the same thing they did. I, I, I don't know. All we do.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] So sin wasn't God's part of the plan. It just happened.

Pastor Paul [00:22:19] God did pre, did not preordain that they sin. No.

John Dehlin [00:22:25] This sounds very much like the types of things Joseph Smith was thinking about in the early 1800s you're reminding me of. Much of Mormon theology comes out of these debates, including the teaching that men will not be punished for Adam's transgressions. That's a literal. And it's kind of weird to think about the fact that your religious tradition predates Mormonism. And so some of the things you're going to be teaching me, you're like, well, that's not how God works. And. Yeah, right, Yeah, I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:22:56] We teach a class on what is Christianity? And oftentimes in the class, people are surprised to find out that the fall was not a good thing.

Pastor Rick [00:23:03] Yeah, right.

Pastor Paul [00:23:05] It's a terrible thing.

John Dehlin [00:23:06] Right, right.

Pastor Rick [00:23:07] You're tapping into something. We think the gospel is incredibly good news. It starts with bad news.

John Dehlin [00:23:13] Right.

Pastor Rick [00:23:13] I'm a sinner. And the question is, is there such thing as justice? Is there a way that things ought to be, have I broken God's law? Have I violated his character? He's the source of love. He's the source of life. And if I'VE If I violated that, if I've rejected his authority and instead said I could be my own authority, that's kind of a big deal. I was asking. I was talking to a friend about this the other day, and he was asking kind of a similar question that you're asking. I said, he's a business owner. I said, imagine a dude just robbed from you. He didn't pay your. He didn't pay. I mean, he just put you in a bad way. And. And you go to the court and you make your case, and everybody's. It's pretty clear that you're in the right. And the judge turns to this guy and says, what do you say? He goes, you know, it's pretty much true. I did those things, but you're a Good Guy and Mr. Judge, and why don't you just forgive me? I said, what would you do if the judge said, yeah, this is a great learning experience and I am a good guy, so I just forgive you? Would you be okay with that? There's a real cost. There's a law that's broken. Trust and justice has been violated. And that's really what's part of what's at the heart of this question.

Pastor Paul [00:24:30] I do want to also take a little bit of issue with the characterization of God the Father saying to the Son, all right, son, you're going to fry for these people.

John Dehlin [00:24:41] Because for you guys, God and Jesus are the same.

Pastor Paul [00:24:43] No, no, not the same.

Pastor Rick [00:24:44] I'm not sure what you. There's. It's the Trinity. So God is one being three persons and one being God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. It's so. I'm sorry.

Pastor Paul [00:24:57] Jesus came to earth as God. He's always existed as God. And he said that no one takes his life from. From him. He lays down his life on his own accord. In other words, the Father didn't do this to him. He offered his life as a payment for our sin. And that's a real.

John Dehlin [00:25:21] So that.

Pastor Paul [00:25:22] That's a real different scene than the Father saying, get down there and go to. Go to the cross. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] Side note, something that didn't make sense to me is how terrible we're supposed to feel that Jesus suffered. You know, how sad or guilty we're supposed to feel that we caused Jesus to suffer. This is Mormon theology, right? It's like, oh, my gosh, I sinned and I contributed to the pain and suffering that Jesus experienced. And then I thought about it, I thought, well, if Jesus is like a superhuman, like, he's God and so, like, he can take it and then he dies and he's fine. Like, why should I. Why is it such this tragic, sad thing that this demigod is sort of like, why am I supposed to feel so sad and guilty when he probably did just fine? You know what I mean?

Pastor Rick [00:26:21] Yeah. It's like Jesus is Hercules. Yeah, I appreciate the question, but that. That's coming with a viewpoint on Jesus that's different from what we understand through the New Testament. Jesus isn't a demigod. He's fully God who took on 100% what it means to be human. And so what that means is whatever's true of being God, that's true of Jesus. But whatever's true of being human, that's also true of what's essential to being human is true of Jesus. And so he felt pain. He felt all the full sensation, sensation of the cross. But the cross wasn't simply about the physical sensation that Jesus had of the spear and the nails and the whips and all of that. It was taking on all the weight of the guilt and the shame that I had earned and that you have earned and that all of humanity had earned. He experienced that and he took that on and took the feeling of that along with the. So it's not like he's pretending to feel. It's not like me wrestling with my son where I pretend 10 that I've knocked out. He truly, in a very, very real way, experienced all of that. And it was painful. And yet it's just. He's described as. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising his shame.

John Dehlin [00:27:39] And I think it's hard for any of us to know how bad or not bad that was for him. We really don't know.

Pastor Rick [00:27:44] I think it was pretty bad.

John Dehlin [00:27:46] Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:27:46] But that all sin separates when we sin. And David, I thought you did a good job about this. It feels like, you know, God turns his back on us when really we separate ourselves from God. Just like Adam in the garden hid from God because of sin. And so if all sin separates and all the sin of mankind was on Christ, he felt that kind of separation from God through times a billion.

John Dehlin [00:28:16] Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:28:17] And that's why he would cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And it also drew people's attention to the prophecy, Psalm 22, that would help those around watching this crucifixion connect with, kind of connect the dots, like, this is the promised Messiah and this is the one suffering servant that came on my behalf. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Comparing Mormon and Evangelical Doctrine

John Dehlin [00:28:47] In Mormonism, there's a real focus on prophets. And because, well, there's two problems with that from my perspective. One was that, you know, many of us feel like prophets led us astray. The other problem is I got to this point where I didn't know who to trust. And I just thought, man, if God. I begged, I pleaded for God to talk to me. And I waited and I waited for years and decades. Never really got any answer other than my feelings. And so I kind of reached this point where I'm like, God, if you're there, come talk to me. I'm waiting. If you got something to say, I'm here. I'm certainly as worthy as Joseph Smith was, and I'm still waiting. So why, why should we trust Moses or Abraham or Paul or you guys versus just kind of hear it from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

Pastor Paul [00:29:48] I think a real important passage for us in the New Testament is in Hebrews chapter one. It talks about God spoke to us in various ways at various times, prophets, that sort of thing. But in these last days, he's spoken, spoken to us through His Son. So Jesus Christ has come to talk to you and his words are recorded in the Bible. And so that might not satisfy you. I understand that you might want something else, but that's what God has provided His Son as the messenger of God's Word. And to reveal who God is by the way he lived his life, that communicates a lot about God and how we can know Him. And if you choose to refuse that message, that communication, that's up to you. But he has communicated according to him.

John Dehlin [00:30:38] But how do we know Bhavagita Quran, you know, Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, like there's over half the world that is not resonating with Jesus in the Bible.

Pastor Rick [00:30:53] Sure, you know, how do we know stuff, right? We were looking. We're on a quest for truth. We want to know what's true. You want to know what's true. There are two tests for truth, correspondence and coherence. For something to be true, it has to correspond to reality. It has to accommodate all the relevant facts, data and evidence. And it also has to cohere. It cannot contradict itself or contradict other things that we know are true. So any claim of truth, we're always running through the filter of coherence and correspondence. And I realize I'm kind of going in nerd mode and it's almost 10 o' clock at night. It's just too late to do that. But we evaluate these things through logical consistency. We're looking for obvious or subtle contradictions. We evaluate these things through empirical adequacy. Every discipline, math, archaeology, sciences, all of these things. We're evaluating these tests, correspondence and coherence and experiential relevance. That doesn't mean, does it match my experience? It means, can you live it meaningfully and consistently? And that's really the key word. Can you, can you consistently live it? And I can't get into answer all those questions tonight. And I'll be honest with you, I am running out of gas. But when people ask me those sorts of questions, one of the things that I'll quickly say, it's kind of like buying a house. My wife and I are looking for a house right now. One of the things I want to know is, is it structurally safe, sound? What's the foundation like? If the foundation is cracked, I don't care how great the kitchen is. If the foundation is cracked, I don't care how wonderful the master bedroom and the bathroom is and all that kind of stuff. Don't care if the foundation is cracked. So one of the things that we can do is we can look at the fundamental, the foundational claims of these different worldviews and do they pass the test of coherence and correspondence? And so we would, we would go through that. And if we had time to go through that, I would be able to explain in a fuller way, in a way that could satisfy emotionally and intellectually why I'm convinced that Christianity is true and the New Testament is reliable. But the interesting thing about the reliability of Christianity is the New Testament has a, has this kind of like this ejection handle, right? That the Apostle Paul wrote about this. Everything that we believe and everything that we teach hinges not on what someone says, not on a feeling, not on what you think, but a historical event. Did Jesus rise from the dead? And the Apostle Paul went so far to say, hey, if he didn't rise from the dead, all of this is in vain. We are the most pitiful people on the planet. And so one of the most important things, one of the most quickly helpful things we can do is did Jesus rise from the dead? People are not in the New Testament. In Christianity, historic, orthodox Christianity, you're not asked to kind of just hope that it's true. It's, look at it. Is there good reason to believe that Jesus actually rose from the dead? And we think the case is strong

John Dehlin [00:33:56] about the inerrancy of The Bible. And I'll just make a couple quick questions. So I remember studying the Bible, I noticed that in the four Gospels the sign that was nailed to Jesus's cross is different in all four versions. So it's something slightly different.

Pastor Rick [00:34:12] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:34:12] And then I read in two different places where Judas dies in two different ways. And one he's falls in a field and his bowels burst out. And then another one, I think he's. He kills himself. Belong himself. Right. And so there's a lot of people that are like, there's all sorts of inconsistencies in the Bible. How do you respond to them?

Pastor Paul [00:34:33] Well, just quickly, we would say there's not necessarily inconsistencies. We call these things contra distinctions and that is that stories told from different viewpoints. If we were to say there was 5,000 people there and then another story, another gospel says there was say 2,000 men, well, those are not contradictory. They just tell it from a different perspective. And one of the proofs, I think, of the New Testament as far as reliability is that obviously they didn't sit in a room together and write the thing together and make sure that their stories lined up. They were independent witnesses of what took place. And it has enough of these contradistinctions to realize, hey, these guys did have their own view of this life of Jesus Christ and they heard things a little bit differently, but basically the same.

Pastor Rick [00:35:30] If you were to talk to an investigator, one of the most well known currently in popular cold case investigators is a guy named J. Warner Wallace. And he and many others would say that this adds credibility. It doesn't take away from the credibility, actually adds credibility to what they.

Pastor Paul [00:35:48] Bro.

John Dehlin [00:35:49] Premarital sex.

Pastor Rick [00:35:50] What's the position like when you're having premarital sex?

John Dehlin [00:35:55] What's the church's position?

Pastor Rick [00:35:56] I'm sorry. Told you. It's late.

Pastor Paul [00:35:59] I'm running out of.

John Dehlin [00:36:01] I want to hit. I want to hit. I want to hit. The things Mormon care about. Mormons care about most. Premarital sex.

Pastor Rick [00:36:08] That, that, that is a, that that's a sin. That's outside of God's design. It's outside of the best life that he intended for us. He wants that the sex is sacred. That it's a part of a celebration of a covenant of two people coming together and pledging their lives and all of who they are to one another. The Bible isn't down on sex. I don't think Christians are down on sex. We think sex is amazing. We think it's. We have a high view of sex. We Reserve it to that covenant relationship.

Pastor Paul [00:36:39] You know, sometimes I like to think that if, if any of us who have lived enough years could kind of like just back up the train and say, okay, I see all that. What sexual sin, what the Bible calls sexual sin has done to mankind. We're talking about rape, incest, adultery, broken homes, sexual molestation, anything that is outside the will of God and just say, wow, if I was now to have an opportunity to design a world, an ethic, a sexual ethic for the world, it'd probably pretty be pretty much what the Bible describes, because this is the best way to live.

John Dehlin [00:37:21] What happens if a teenager or an adult engages in premarital sex in this church and it's known? Would they confess it?

Pastor Rick [00:37:29] They don't have to.

John Dehlin [00:37:30] Would they be shamed? Is there a consequence?

Pastor Paul [00:37:33] We hope their parents are involved, we hope the parents care. And if they confess it to a youth pastor or something like that, we would coach them, so to speak, on the benefits of waiting.

Pastor Rick [00:37:47] And there's no punishment.

Pastor Paul [00:37:49] Definitely offer forgiveness.

Pastor Rick [00:37:50] John, we don't have to manufacture consequences for choices that aren't good for you. There's a fantastic book called Hooked that talks about what happens in brain chemistry for men, for women, through engaging in sexual activity really outside of the confines of these relationships. It was said earlier, our obedience isn't good for God. He doesn't get anything out of it. It's good for us and it's good for others. So no, we're not gonna, we're not gonna punish people. We're not gonna shame people. They don't have to do anything about them. We want something good for, for them.

John Dehlin [00:38:27] Can you imagine a scenario where a 12 or 14 year old kid was ever alone with a leader in the church, being asked about private matters of sexuality? Would that ever happen here?

Pastor Rick [00:38:38] No, it should not happen.

John Dehlin [00:38:40] Why, why would it, why would it not happen here?

Pastor Paul [00:38:43] It's inappropriate.

John Dehlin [00:38:44] Yeah. What's inappropriate about it?

Pastor Paul [00:38:47] It's none of their business.

John Dehlin [00:38:48] And it's none of your business.

Pastor Paul [00:38:50] That's the world of a parent.

Pastor Rick [00:38:52] Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:38:53] Yeah, that's, that's too private. And I wouldn't appreciate it if I was a parent and some, some adult was doing that.

Pastor Rick [00:38:59] Now that's not to say that a teenager may not go to someone they trust and say, hey, I've got some things to talk about. But that leader, that adult would not keep that in isolation. We want to, we want to drive these kids to healthy relationships with their, with their moms and dads, and we want to get them the Most help possible. But no, we're not digging in and prying and all that kind of of stuff.

John Dehlin [00:39:20] What if there's an adultery between members of the church? How is that handled?

Pastor Paul [00:39:26] We do believe in church discipline. If first of all, it's important to bring everything into the light and just be honest about it and if somebody was like saying, well, I don't care what you think, I'll do whatever I want, and they were in any kind of leadership position or something like that, they would be removed from leadership. That's not acceptable. If they represent South Mountain in any way to the watching world, they would be asked not to come here or do that.

Pastor Rick [00:40:00] This isn't a hypothetical. This is a, these are things that happen. And I could tell you from, from our experiences when that's, that's not something where people are like, woohoo, this was awesome. They're broken because there are consequences on the other, other side of that. And so you'll have small group leaders. You'll have people. My wife and I have done this. I'm going out to hang out with him and we're talking and man, I'm with you shoulder to shoulder and how you walk forward with this and my wife is with her walking shoulder to shoulder, moving forward. How can we support you? How can we love? We are for you, we want good for you. We're here to support you. There's no guilt, there's no shame. There's no punishment.

John Dehlin [00:40:38] There's no punishment for members.

Pastor Paul [00:40:41] No.

John Dehlin [00:40:41] It just could affect your leadership status.

Pastor Paul [00:40:44] Yeah, there's no part really, even a leader. If they're willing to be okay, stored and reconciled, then there's no need to.

John Dehlin [00:40:52] It's just if they're like, now we're

Pastor Paul [00:40:53] just going to work through this with.

John Dehlin [00:40:55] Yeah, got it. Can women be pastors? And if not, why?

Women in Ministry and Church Leadership Roles

Pastor Paul [00:41:02] Oh, I'll answer that. We believe in. The Bible teaches that males should be the leaders of the home. And we try to model that in the church. We do actually believe that the Bible says that men should be elders. It doesn't talk about women elders ever. It only talks about men. And you could make a case that that's cultural in the ancient Middle east, first century. We actually think that there's actually design behind that. I think that if you're talking about pastoral role, yes, women can be pastors in the sense that they do pastoral things. Sometimes women speak here, but not on a regular basis.

John Dehlin [00:41:48] So that women should stay silent in the church is interpreted as the leader of the. Like the pastor basically what's weird is

Pastor Rick [00:41:58] that same word, women should be silent in this church is the same word used a few sentences above to describe men as well. So that's, That's. Yeah, that would be. We would have some hermeneutical conversations about that. It's not church being just order and

Pastor Paul [00:42:14] allowing people to be. To be heard and done well. You know, just church should not be chaos.

John Dehlin [00:42:21] How did, how does tithing or donations work?

Pastor Rick [00:42:24] So you were here on Sunday and did you hear us ask for anything?

John Dehlin [00:42:28] No. Very.

Pastor Rick [00:42:30] If you give, you have to really want to. There are boxes in the back where people can grab an envelope and drop a check or cash if they want to. You can give through the app if you want to. You can give through online. We believe that followers of Christ should be faithful, growing givers. I mean, we don't hide that.

Pastor Paul [00:42:48] I mean,

Pastor Rick [00:42:50] we'll talk about that, but we're never pressuring people to do that. We'll invite people. People to do that, but it's not. It's never a pressure. What you're going to find is if you were to talk to a lot of people who say about South Mountain, this is my church. These are my people. They are excited to trust God with their finances and they're excited to invest in what's happening here because they want more people to experience what they've experienced.

Pastor Paul [00:43:15] And so we look at as. We're inviting people to become a growing giver, and we want them to move past the have to concept and then move into want to. And then ultimately, I think the generous giver is the one who says, I actually get to do this. And they're happy about it. And, boy, that's the goal for everybody. You will never get there if it's guilted.

John Dehlin [00:43:43] I swear, I'm almost done. There's a. I grew up in the era of like, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Jim and Tammy Baker, Oral Roberts. And I don't know if those are people. I don't know if those are people held with respect here or not, but. And I'm not even judging them per se, but I associated a lot of sort of evangelical Christianity with corruption. How. How do you know if a church is corrupt? And then how do you guard against that corruption here?

Pastor Paul [00:44:11] Usually it's accountability. Those. All the people you mentioned have very little accountability. They're running their own show. They put their own family on the board, things like that.

John Dehlin [00:44:23] Your board's independent?

Pastor Paul [00:44:24] Oh, yeah, yeah. No family members on our board. But you see that all the time. If it's on tv. It's. I would be wary.

John Dehlin [00:44:33] Really?

Pastor Paul [00:44:33] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:44:35] Okay.

Pastor Rick [00:44:35] Oh, yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:44:36] For some reason I don't know what TV does to people, but.

John Dehlin [00:44:38] So you guys intentionally kind of stay off TV because it's a corrupting influence or.

Pastor Paul [00:44:43] We don't.

John Dehlin [00:44:43] No, I'm not.

Pastor Paul [00:44:45] You know what?

Pastor Rick [00:44:45] I would say that we intentionally, we intentionally don't do things that would seek attention, but we'll encourage people. You should question what I say. You should question how I live. And if ever you have a question, email me, go to Paul, say, I saw Rick doing this. I heard Rick say that I should be held to the level of accountability as described in the New Testament. We're doing our best to be, to be, to be transformed. Let's be clear.

Pastor Paul [00:45:15] The New Testament says you're not supposed to get rich preaching the gospel. You know, you're not supposed to use the gospel to enrich yourself. You can live a comfortable, nice life. And we do, I think that we are middle class people. And as far as pastors, we are paid well and fairly. And so we're not complaining. We're not pretending that we live in poverty. We don't. But at the same time, we're not trying to enrich ourselves themselves like getting people to buy our book or, you know, all that kind of stuff that's just not happening.

John Dehlin [00:45:50] Real quickly. There's a female pastor that's kind of prominent on, on the Internet podcast. What's her name?

Pastor Rick [00:45:56] Which one? Joyce Meyer.

John Dehlin [00:45:57] Yeah, Joyce. How do you, what do you guys think about that? Like, is it, is she like her

Pastor Paul [00:46:01] family is her board and it's another one of the.

John Dehlin [00:46:04] Okay, but are, are there, are there evangelical Christian churches that do have female pastors that. Yes.

Pastor Rick [00:46:10] Yeah.

Pastor Paul [00:46:10] Yes. So there's genuine disagreement in evangelicalism.

John Dehlin [00:46:15] So that's just a choice.

Pastor Rick [00:46:16] We would say this. If you take what she says seriously, it will not be good for your long term choice. Yes. It will not be good for your long term development as a follower of Jesus.

John Dehlin [00:46:28] But, but in terms of the genuine disagreement, do you have respect for, Are there female pastors you have respect for?

Pastor Rick [00:46:35] And listen, she's, she teaches things.

John Dehlin [00:46:37] Not her, I'm talking about others.

Pastor Rick [00:46:39] Let me say this. She teach me things. She teaches things that makes me want to throw up in my mouth. And yet if you listen to her story, how she overcame abuse, how can you not respect her? And so I have tremendous respect for many things that she's overcome. I disagree with how she represents the New Testament in Jesus Christ and her

Pastor Paul [00:46:59] model, the way her Church is set up is something that would make us very nervous.

John Dehlin [00:47:05] But other evangelical churches with female pastors that you would respect, you respect them.

Pastor Rick [00:47:10] Willow Creek Community disagree. Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, just outside of Chicago, has a,

John Dehlin [00:47:17] has a female pastors that you respect. That's just a decision.

Pastor Rick [00:47:20] That'd be a church that we respect. This is a great church, but it's

Pastor Paul [00:47:23] just everybody doesn't have to agree with us and especially in non essential things like that. And, and we're still in the family of God loving Jesus together, so we're not, you know, gonna die on every single hill. We, we do embrace fellowship with other believers that don't agree on everything with us.

John Dehlin [00:47:43] And last question, who goes to hell? Like if someone is born and dies in India, never hears about Jesus, do they go to hell? If, if, if I die and I don't go to an evangelical Christian church and profess belief, do I go to hell? Like who goes to hell?

Pastor Paul [00:48:02] People that reject God go to hell.

John Dehlin [00:48:05] I mean, what does it mean to reject God?

Pastor Paul [00:48:07] People who don't want to spend, you know, who don't want to bow the knee to God, they don't respect God for him being God. And they basically remain in rebellion against God saying, I will be my own authority. I resist the offer of love from God and I reject his accountability. I just simply don't want to bow to that.

John Dehlin [00:48:38] What if you just kind of die not knowing, kind of unsure?

Pastor Paul [00:48:41] Well, we trust that God is just. I mean, if he's the author of morality, he's the author of justice. And one of the things I'm really, really sure about is he won't do something that's not right. Not just.

John Dehlin [00:48:57] So maybe there's some accommodation for people that just don't have the chance or the time.

Pastor Paul [00:49:01] Perhaps. I don't know what that is. The Bible doesn't cover that topic.

Closing Reflections and Farewell

John Dehlin [00:49:07] All right, well, you guys have been really good sports, so thank you so much.

Pastor Rick [00:49:13] Hey, John, we just want to say thank you for letting us host you tonight and thank you for inviting people from your community and your audience. And I've got Kelly is going to bring you something. We just want to say, hey, thanks for spending this night with us a little longer than we anticipated.

John Dehlin [00:49:29] I'm so sorry.

Pastor Rick [00:49:30] As a gift for your office, you might enjoy using that as a backdrop.

John Dehlin [00:49:35] Oh, you want me to open it? Open it here. Thank you. While I'm doing this, will you offer my listening audience a final testimony? If somebody's open to what you've been saying, Tonight, if somebody wants to consider what was some final words you give to our listening audience about. Oh, my gosh, what is this? It's a microphone. Oh, look at that, everybody. That's so beautiful. Look at that, everybody. Thank you so much. That's so sweet. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Give a final testimony to my listeners. An invitation for those who want to learn more.

Pastor Paul [00:50:17] Yeah. I would encourage you to come visit any of our South Mountain community church campuses. And the reason why is because we care about you and we care about the truth. And you'll have plenty of room to take the time you need to discover God from the Bible. And if you choose not to do that, you're still welcome here. You can kick the tires as long as you want to, and we're happy to have you.

John Dehlin [00:50:45] All right, everyone, thank you so much for your patience. Thanks to all our listening audience and our viewing audience for joining us today on Mormon Stories. I want to thank everyone who made this possible, and specifically Cody Layton and Emily Robbins. Who else am I forgetting? Who else was an important part of making this happen? Anyone else I'm forgetting? Cody? Is that good? All right, everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you guys for being such good sports. I really wish you the best. I think this is a place I would heartily recommend to people who are seeking a spiritual life and a life to follow Jesus. So bless you all the success in the world. Thanks for being good sports, and I hope we can stay in touch. Is that all right? Thank you so much, everybody. You guys have a good night. Drive safely. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. If you enjoyed this episode, please help us make more like it by becoming a monthly subscriber@mormonstories.org. thank you very much.

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