Update on the churchistrue podcast and blog. This is hopefully not a dramatic YAGE (yet another grand exit). I finished the last podcast episode Aug 18. My original plan was once I was finished recording the episodes, that I would push on the side of promoting the podcast and making it visible to reach the audience intended. Among those plans: –appear on other podcasts to promote the podcast series. John Dehlin was gracious enough to invite me to come on his podcast Mormon Stories to promote the podcast series and discuss my approach to faith crisis issues. We met together and roughed ..read more

  Today’s blog post is an excerpt from the churchistrue Faith Crisis and Reconstruction podcast episode 10 on the subject of “Trickle Up Revelation”. Next topic: trickle up revelation. One of my favorite topics. I learned this from Greg Prince. He talked about how sometimes policies are enacted in the church and prophet receives revelation on something where it’s prompted by just regular members doing something. And then it trickles up to the prophet who gets visibility on the issue and seeks revelation from the Lord. And then a revelation is made. He gives an example of single adult war ..read more

The following is an excerpt from Episode 12 of the churchistrue Faith Crisis and Reconstruction series: Lived Experience. To emphasize some of the lived experience aspects, I’m going to highlight David Ostler’s great book Bridges that came out last year. Bridges, Ministering to Those Who Question. David Ostler was a former mission president who came home from his mission. And he was assigned as a service missionary in his stake. In the stake, there were a thousand single adults and 80% of them were not active. He went out ministering to them and he started getting a similar kind of view from ..read more

https://www.churchistrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/FCR-012-Lived-Experience.mp3 Download mp3 link Faith Crisis and Reconstruction Podcast Series, Episode 12: Lived Experience This is the final episode of the 12 part churchistrue Faith Crisis and Reconstruction podcast series. We’re done with the historical issues. Everyone has their own list of what they love about the church and what it means for them to say the “church is true”. I finish giving my view on that in this episode. The rest of the episode focuses on the challenges of the lived experience, engaging in the LDS Church in a rec ..read more

  Happy Thanksgiving. It’s a time to be grateful. When I was in a tough time of life, with a lot of difficult tasks going on and not many things that felt happy or joyful, I spent some time looking for something that could help me out of the rut and help me feel happy. Before I go there, since then I learned something I like from Jordan Peterson. He says we waste too much energy seeking happiness. He believes happiness is fleeting. We either have it or we don’t, and there’s not much we can do to control that. If we have it, be grateful for it, because it’s not always prevalent. But a bet ..read more

Bill Reel published on his website a letter from his stake president informing him of a disciplinary court scheduled later this month. He is accused of acting in clear, open and deliberate opposition to the LDS Church. Bill stated in his web article that he expected this to happen eventually. Based on my observations the last year, I also expected this to happen eventually. But I’m very sad about this. I first became aware of Bill when he was posting on Mormon Dialogue in about 2012. At that point, I was pretty fully faith-deconstructed, and in an anxious and unsettled time period, engaging on ..read more

I’ve enjoyed the Middle Way Mormonism posts the last week. Kristine with a very nice post outlining some key issues related to Middle Way. Happy Hubby with his faith crisis and reconstruction journey. Andrew S weighing in with salient observations. I resonated with his observation of two attributes that long term Middle Wayers have: 1. strong personal authority 2. a feeling of being pulled or attracted to stay with Mormonism, even feeling that is coming from outside you. Cody Hatch with the community aspect of it and some of his personal thoughts. Sam Brunson from BCC with his personal though ..read more

    Wendy Watson Nelson, in a recent interview, shed light on the revelations her husband President Russell M. Nelson is receiving. Since Russell M. Nelson became the prophet earlier this year, the revelations have been coming fast and furious. Changed a long standing tradition of always retaining a First Presidency counselor in good health Modified home and visiting teaching programs to home ministering and changed so young women can be home ministers, similar to young men had done home teaching in past Eliminated ward level High Priest groups and combined High Priest and Elders i ..read more

  This post is spawned by an interesting post from Mette Harrison on her suggestions for improvements for the Mormon church. https://religionnews.com/2018/10/15/10-ways-to-imagine-a-new-mormonism/   These posts come around from time to time, and it’s interesting to theorize what kind of changes we’d like to see. When I see lists like this, sometimes I come away with greater appreciation for my church. The list of what I like about my church is much longer than what I’d like to see change. Here’s my shot at the list. I’m taking this more at a theoretical and conceptional level than a ..read more

Greg Prince spoke at Sunstone in a talk titled “Own Your Religion”. I highly recommend paying $5 to get access to the audio at the Sunstone website. And hopefully Dr. Prince will release the transcript of the talk, but for those that weren’t in attendance, here is a summary of the talk with selected quotes. Dr. Prince is very important to me. I went through a painful faith crisis and deconstruction phase 8-12 years ago, followed by a faith reconstruction phase that is based on a new paradigm that appreciates the beauty and truth of the LDS Church outside of historical and factual accuracy of s ..read more