Source: NEW DATA reveals how LDS culture is HURTING faith Channel: Keystone Published: April 17, 2026 | Archived: May 29, 2026

Video: NEW DATA reveals how LDS culture is HURTING faith
Channel: Keystone
Published: April 17, 2026
Duration: 46:19
Views: 156,499
Category: Education
Video ID: kQ3jNw7K8xQ

Description

In this episode, David sits down with author and researcher Jeff Strong to talk about the data on why some people leave the Latter-day Saint faith. Jeff points out four cultural tensions that can sometimes be out of balance, but that we can improve!

Jeff’s book, “Torn,” will be available on Amazon on April 22nd in print, e-book, and audiobook formats. The introduction to the book, in addition to chapters one and two, will be available for free on Jeff’s website, “tornbyjeffstrong.com”, which will also be launching on April 22nd.

Edited by: Rustin Van Katwyk rustinv@gmail.com

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0:00 Why are people leaving? 8:52 Standards vs Acceptance 14:56 Growth vs Sanctuary 20:14 Agency vs Fealty 25:50 Harmony vs Conformity 29:26 When loved ones leave 34:43 What about my eternal family? 41:01 Advice for those who stay

Tags

faith and beliefs lds mormon latter day saints jesus christ church saints unscripted david snell faith crisis CES letter mormonism keystone

Transcript — YouTube panel (human-authored)

0:00 So based on your research, what are some of the things that we’re getting wrong about people who decide to step away? Why they’re leaving, what the experience is like for them, and ultimately where they end up. Jeff Strong is a former global president of Johnson and Johnson, and he’s the author of the new book Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn from Them. Why are people leaving? There are four primary reasons, but I actually think that fourth bucket is a little bigger than the data might suggest.

0:32 So from 50,000 ft, what are the points of tension in our culture that you have been able to identify? I see four tensions in our cultural soil and people are hurting. In this conversation, we’re going to be talking a lot about faith crisis and cultural issues and people who have stepped away from the church. So, let’s talk about that. Why why are people leaving? There are four primary reasons. The first one is lifestyle. The second one is church history. The third one is disagreement with past or present church social issues or positions or doctrines.

1:12 And the final one is negative church experience. So, let me just bring those to life a little bit. lifestyle is only about 6% of members, but it’s just not working for them, right? And it might be they want they don’t want the expectations or responsibilities. That’s kind of the narrative that we hear. But sometimes it’s just depleting to them, right? It’s it it tires them out. They feel guilt and shame. They sort of feel hollowed out. And so it just isn’t working. And and so they step away.

1:40 Church history is pretty clear to everybody. It’s 42% of people in our survey suggested that was the primary reason they stepped away. And so it’s the stuff that we’re familiar with. It’s concerns about inconsistencies in our church history narrative or translation of the Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham or the behavior of prophets like Joseph Smith or Big Brigham Young or polygamy.

2:03 The social issues are the ones we’re all familiar with, right? Sexual identity, gender equality, financial transparency, 33%. And then to me the most interesting one church experience about 18%. And what that’s primarily about is really faithful devout people that feel like gosh this church doesn’t feel Christc centered right it feels institutional. We talk a lot about prophets and temples and obedience but less about the carpenter of Bethlehem Jesus right the good Samaritan service compassion kindness. And so they feel tension because they feel like our our church is not it doesn’t embody the living water and bread of life that they’ve come to love in the gospel. David, I actually think that that fourth bucket is a little bigger than the data might suggest. And that’s because it it speaks to cultural challenges, right? Because we we all know that we are the church of Jesus Christ, that we want to be focused in Christ. But for some people, they’re

3:04 not experiencing that in their church experience. And I actually think that factor the I refer to these as waves in the book, but I think that wave sort of crashes over the top of the other three, making them worse. So, let me give you an example. Do you know people that have really significant concerns about church history issues, but they’re still active and faithful members of the church?

3:27 Yeah, I do too. Many. Do you know people that have that have maybe different personal views on social issues than the church does, but they’re still active and faithful members of the church? Sure. Yeah, I do too. And so what that suggests is that doctrine matters, history matters for sure. Those are reasons why people leave, but there’s something else, right? And so if your church experience is great, you can probably deal with some of those other issues without too much trouble, right? But if if you’ve got those issues and you’re having a spiritually unnourishing church experience, you’re probably not going to stay.

4:05 And the \[snorts\] one of the inaccurate narratives is that people deal with this rapidly and just move on. You know, they don’t really invest in it too much. Maybe they’re lazy. Our data suggested, and we we had 15,000 people take this survey. So, it’s a massive survey. Wow. 85% of those that stepped away spent more than a hundred hours over several years and 49% spent limitless hours over at least 5 years trying to work through the issues. And so the mindset isn’t, hey, I I’ve always wanted to leave the church and now I’ve got an excuse. Yeah.

4:42 Right. I I learned X about church history and so I’ll hang my coat on that nail and I’m out. Right. The mindset is really I love this church. This church has meant everything to me. It’s formed my, you know, who I am, my character. It’s given me a sense of purpose in life. And I’ve encountered these things that are really concerning to me. And my my journey now is to do everything I can to try to resolve those perspectives and stay, right? And that’s the mindset. And and people stay at it for a really, really long time.

5:14 I think that’s important as kind of a baseline like that. We’re not just assuming these people are all out because they didn’t want to live the standards. For some people that was true. Like you said, that lifestyle category was fairly small, but like these are sincere people that are struggling with things and they’re they are by and large doing their best to live their life as they feel uh is is best.

5:39 Yeah. No, that’s right. And and there are things that um impact the culture that come from the top, right? That come from church leaders that are putting in place policies and programs and things like that that kind of trickle down. We don’t have as much control over that. And so we’re not going to really talk about those things in this interview. Knowing some of the general church leaders, um their their mindset isn’t, well, the culture is perfect, right? So just run the playbook. It’s like look, we have authority, we have doctrines, we have policies, but all of those things still require every single member to understand, interpret, and apply those.

6:18 And in that application, there’s wide variability about how we do that. So, the central thesis of my book is, okay, they’re leaving for these four reasons, but there’s an undercurrent of of a cultural component that that’s huge, and we got to deal with it, right? I had no idea what the etmology of the word culture is. So, I looked it up. Guess what it means? What does it mean? Dirt.

6:41 Soil. Soil for the purpose of growing things. Now, how does that work? Well, you cultivate the soil, right? So, that was the original meaning. It’s Latin, a Latin word collair that goes back into like the 13th century. And it provides the perfect context for your question. So, what does what does soil do for the plants? Well, the first thing it does is it provides protection and stability, right? It holds the plants in place. So when the winds come and they howl and blow and storms hit, the plant can stay firm. But what’s the other thing soil does for the plant, David? It it nourishes it.

7:19 It nourishes it. It nourishes it. And so when we talk about the cultural tensions in the Latter-day Saint community, we’re not talking about good or evil. We’re not talking about right or wrong. We’re talking about an imbalance in our cultural soil where there might be too much protection and stability and not enough nourishment. The right idea here is balance. Now, I won’t go into the research a ton, but the research strongly suggests that our soil, our cultural soil is very much out of balance.

7:47 We have a strong bias for soil that’s protective and stabilizing, but not particularly good at nourishing some people. So from from 50,000 ft what are kind of some of the the points of tension in our culture uh that you have been able to identify? The first one is soil that is hard and unyielding and that’s this tension between our standards and how we accept people. The second one is shallow soil full of stones. That’s the tension between having a mindset of is the church a sanctuary or is the church a place of growth. The third one is thorn choked soil. How do we balance agency which is fundamental to the plan of salvation with obedience which is an expectation in the church and church culture. And then the final one is single crop soil.

8:43 How do we achieve the oneness that Christ invited us to without going so far as to get into the space of conformity? Make sense? Yeah. So, we’ve got a tension between acceptance and standards. And what I understand that you meant by that in the book was somebody uh moves into your ward, they’re in a homosexual relationship, right? And on the one hand, the church has this standard of the law of chastity.

9:10 Yes. And so you have this pull that’s like, well, these people need to know that they’re not living the law of chastity. But then on the other hand, you have acceptance and you want people to feel comfortable and welcome and like they belong in your community. You bet. And so this is kind of finding that balance between what do we do with that? Where’s the line between like hardline like you got to live the standard versus like I’m gonna accept you how you are? Yeah, I think you framed it perfectly well. And there there are lots of people that would put themselves in that category.

9:44 Hey, I’m I’m a believer, but I believe in a different way. I’m moved and led to God by different things. And I and sometimes I get the sense that the way I experience the church and gospel isn’t seen as acceptable enough. Like if I can’t get up there and say, “I know. I know. I know.” Yes. Then there’s not space for me. there’s not space for me. If people stay in that state perpetually, they generally won’t stay in the church, right? Because every every time they’re in the church community, they’re getting signals that they’re not their way is not acceptable and it’s it’s it’s depleting and a bit suffocating and so that is one of the tensions that we are trying to resolve. Right. And so what’s the solution?

10:31 Yeah. I So it’s not to lower the standards, right? I do not believe that’s the solution, but it’s to nurture our soil with more love and acceptance, right? It’s to restore the balance. And so Christ talked about standards a lot and he talked about sorting a lot, the wheat from the tears. Yeah. But there’s an important distinction in his teaching. Our role as members of the church is to gather. God is the sorter.

10:56 We are the gatherers. And the sorting doesn’t happen now. It happens later. Right? I love that. It’s the gathering of Israel. sorting of Israel. That’s it. There’s a really important word or idea in the gathering of Israel. It’s that word that starts with the G, gather. Right now, what does that look like in practical terms? It looks like when somebody is different, love them, embrace them, bring them in. You don’t prune a plant before it’s even sprouted, right? Yeah.

11:28 And and don’t worry so much about whether people fit the mold, right? There really truthfully there isn’t a mold. So embrace them. Pull them into your soil. Let them sink roots. Let them grow. And and God and the and the Holy Ghost will shape and lead them over time. I like that you said uh not to not to lower your standards. No. At the same time, I think that we sometimes create standards culturally that aren’t actually real. like this standard that you’re talking about where like if you believe instead of no, there’s not room for you. Like that’s a standard that’s not real.

12:08 It’s not real. Like it’s not real in our theology or our doctrine, but it’s very real in the culture. Ah, very well spoken. Yeah. For some people it is very real. There was a line that you wrote in the book, standards exist to elevate people. Yes. Not sort them. Yes. That hit home with me because so often we approach the standards as a sorting machine. Yeah. Yeah. And I and I think that’s when we do that, we move the needle over to the protect and stabilize side and and the plants start to die, the ones that that haven’t been accepted or feel a sense of belonging. I hope that everybody watches this episode because like these are things like we need to take notes on like okay there’s this tension between standards and acceptance and we’re really heavy on reinforcing the standards. We are.

13:01 And we’re not when we talk about balancing it, we’re not talking about lowering the standards. We’re talking about more love, re-emphasizing. Yeah. More nourishment, acceptance. Yeah. And look, just to drive the point home, I know I know a group of men who were called to serve in a bishop rick who all had beards. Hallelujah. The stake president once they accepted said, “You need to shave.” The new bishop said, “I’m not comfortable doing that because I’m an academic.” He was a professor and he’s really young. And he said, “The beard gives me a a more of a sense of seniority and credibility and I kind of need it because I have a baby face.” his state president said, “If you’re unwilling to shave, I’m going to rescend the calling.” Wow. And he did.

13:46 Wow. Okay. So, that’s really interesting because I’m in a bishop Rick right now. And you have a beard. And I have a beard. But when I I had an interview with a counselor in my stake and I brought that up. I was like, “How do we feel about the facial hair?” Yeah. And he was like, “Well, um, would it be a problem if we asked you to shave?” Yeah. And I said, “Would it be a problem if I didn’t?” Yeah.

14:14 And he was like, “Well, I’ll talk to the stake president about it or whatever.” And and it was fine. And it was especially because this is I look like I’m 12 if I shave. And it’s kind of how professionally how my audience knows me the facial. But anyways, I just interesting how you can get different approaches to that question. You can I I’m not suggesting something nefarious happened. I’m just saying there’s a principle that I think is tied to the core of the gospel about stability and protection and acceptance both being really critical for the life of the plant. And so let’s make sure we’re focused on the life of the plant and not just on what might be our traditions.

14:56 Yeah. All right. What’s the next tension? The second one is shallow soil full of stones. And it’s this idea of growth versus sanctuary. So the imbalance is in the culture of the church, we tend to position the church and the gospel as a refuge. And that’s true, right? We we know that we can take refuge in the church. We can take refuge in the gospel. There’s security and safety there. But if you stop at that, you don’t get to what God really intends, which is transformation or transcendence or growth. Right? The gospel is a gospel of transcendence. right? Become a new creature in Christ. Pick up your cross and follow me. Receive his image in your countenance. Experience a mighty change in your heart. And so the tension happens if you buy into this version of the gospel which is all about sanctuary.

15:48 You start to realize, you know what, I can’t grow in a sanctuary. I’m not growing. Right? And because I’m not growing, I don’t feel good. I’m not being nourished by this experience because it’s teaching me to hide in the sanctuary, flee into the arms of the church, so to speak. Right now, you’d be right to say, well, give me a give me a practical example. I I want to be very sensitive here because this is this is nuanced and it’s delicate, but we are terrified of making mistakes like sinning especially, but really any mistakes, right? And so, it’s interesting to me. And I think that comes primarily from Matthew 5:48. Be therefore perfect. Right? So we have a mindset in our culture, you need to be perfect. Um we translate that culturally into that means being unblenmished, right? No blemishes.

16:42 Without spot, no mistake, without spot. In fact, we use that term and that’s a scriptural term. And so we grab that and say, well, we want to be without blemish, without spot. But if you go back and look at the original word that was translated into perfect, it doesn’t mean unblenmished. It means whole or complete. And the idea is you have to have blemishes, scars, bumps, bruises, and the learning that goes with that in order to be whole and complete. Right? So, it’s not the idea of, you know, the old saying, the atonement isn’t plan B.

17:14 It’s not plan B. It’s plan A. You go live life. You make mistakes. Sometimes that might even involve sin. But the repentance process is real and it’s through repentance that you can learn and grow. And that’s okay. So this is this tension is kind of uh sanctuary versus transcendence or transformation. It’s kind of uh like avoiding pain versus harnessing it. Yeah, that’s a big part of it. It’s avoiding things where you might make a mistake. avoiding. I’m not saying we should seek sin. I’m not saying that.

17:49 But but sometimes sin is a judgment call, right? It’s not black, you know, kill or don’t kill. That’s easy. But sometimes it’s judgments, right? Should I or shouldn’t I? Or to what degree? And um and the the problem is if you live in a sanctuary and you’re not tested, you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn, you don’t grow. David, everything in my life that has been transformative for me for the most part has been some blunder of mine, right?

18:15 Where I made a big mistake, experienced the pain of that, stepped back and said, “Wow, I’m I’m not going to do that again, and what what do I need to learn from that so that I can grow?” Right? And so, I think that’s the mindset the gospel truly teaches. It it’s kind of like that old adage, uh, a ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for. That is exact. In fact, you know what? You’re going to be you’re going to laugh at this. That book was that quote was in my book. Oh, was it?

18:44 I ended up pulling it out, but yeah, ships were not meant for the harbor. The challenge with a sanctuaryonly culture is it doesn’t prepare you for real life. And so, you know, in the book I use the metaphor of sanctuary or stones in the soil, right? And they prevent your re roots from growing deep into the soil of the gospel, right? So what happens is when the heat comes or when a storm comes, you don’t have deep roots and what you think is the gospel, which is really more tradition, fails you and then you go, “Oh my gosh, the gospel is not true.” Right? The traditions weren’t true. The gospel is still true, but you might have based your faith more on the traditions, the traditions. Why did you do that? Because they’re constantly reinforced in the culture. So the solution for this one it would be more like making more space for myself and others to to transform to grow to transcend to make mistakes and come back from those

19:46 mistakes and um is that kind of the the solution that we’re getting at? All the Latter-day Saint traditions that we have I love. um they’ve been unbelievable uh formative things in my life and so we should love them and we should rever them. Just never mistake them for the gospel of Jesus Christ, right? And make sure that we’re not talking about them so much that we don’t allow people or encourage people to sink their roots. Love it. Number three.

20:15 Yeah. Thorn choked soil, right? Remember the parable of the sewer? The plants grow, but then the thorns choke them out. is the balance between agency and obedience or if there is no balance it becomes what I call feelalty which is unconditional obedience where there is no agency. What happens with with feelalty is that being always expected to defer to church traditions and leaders even on things that you should actually be responsible for yourself creates this tension of a collision between authority and conscience. Right?

20:47 So the authorities are telling me I should think and do X, but my heart is telling me I I should think and do Y. Now a lot of dissonance in that. Have you felt that from time to time? Yeah. Yeah. And so I I do as well. I asked Elder Holland when I was a brand new mission president. I said, “President Holland, I said sometimes I I’m reading the mission president’s handbook, but I feel inspired to do something that’s a little bit different.” Now, not crazy stuff, but like sometimes I feel like I should give my missionaries a copy of Man’s Search for Meaning to read, but that’s not approved.

21:21 It’s not approved. Or Lay Miz, which was hugely formative for me when I was 18 and I read it the first time. And here’s here’s what he said to me. He said he said, “Jeff,” he said, “Your keys only work if you turn them.” I knew what he meant. He said, “We didn’t we didn’t call you to be a robot. You need to use your judgment. You need to seek the Holy Ghost. You need to think about the needs and well-being of the missionaries. And you need to try to do what’s right. Right. And so that’s the principle here. The tension, it’s thinking for yourself is kind of one of the principles here.

21:55 Yeah. For sure. For sure. And this is through an obedient, faithful lens. Yes. Listen to church leaders. Follow them. Let them teach you. Let them point you in the right direction. Keep the commandments. Learn the gospel. But at the end of the day, there’s one person accountable for your life, and that’s you. It It’s an informed obedience, not a blind obedience. Yeah. Now, here’s the problem with this tension.

22:18 If you if you fall into this mindset of I automatically and always defer. In other words, I abdicate my agency to others, you don’t learn how to make decisions. You don’t experience consequences where you have to say, “Man, you know, the buck stops with me. I had a choice between A and B and I chose A and it didn’t work out very well. That’s on me. Right? And so you you start to become spiritually dependent on church traditions, church leaders or church culture as opposed to really being an agent, right? It’s the idea is be an agent, not an object.

22:57 So So here’s a question for you. Yeah. That that might exemplify this tension a little bit. Callings in the church. Yeah. taught they they come from God that our leaders are inspired, right? They extend to you a call from the Lord. How do you balance uh obedience and agency in a scenario where maybe you have accepted a calling but it’s overwhelming and you’re burnt out and you’re not you don’t feel like you are uh magnifying that calling or fulfilling that calling in in the capacity that you would hope to be and you’re thinking about asking to be released from that calling which a reality for a lot of people.

23:45 But what do you do in that? How do you balance these ideals when on the one hand it’s like, well, God called me to do this and he wouldn’t call me if I wasn’t capable of doing it. Yeah. Versus I need to exercise my agency and do what I feel is best. I don’t want to defer. I don’t want to relinquish my agency. It’s a tough situation to be in. That’s such a great question. Let me first acknowledge that that’s a tough issue. I’m not suggesting that I speak for the church or that what I say is doctrine. Right? The first thing I would tell you is that President Nelson said good information is necessary for good revelation. And so dialogue between a church leader and a church member about callings is really important. Now whenever as a bishop or a mission president I extended callings, I never extended them until I talked to the person first about their situation.

24:41 their well-being and their capacity and mindset in serving and as a church leader I generally found that if I had those kind of conversations I felt I got good inspiration about whether the call should be extended or not right now but situation changes right so it was good but then things change I think the principle doesn’t change though so what I would encourage anyone to do is if your circumstances change or it or the calling is not working, it would be not a good idea to not let your bishop know because your bishop needs that information. Recognize that revelation is not perfect. Dialogue is really helpful. And then your your feelings matter in the process, right? I I don’t know if I’ve ever turned down a church calling, but a few times I’ve said, “Let me just tell you what the implications of this might be on me and my family, and if you still feel like you want me to serve, I will, but I just want you to know that this is this is what’s going on.” Right.

25:48 I love that. Yeah. Well, I Let’s go to number four. Okay. Number four. I think this is one that a lot of folks understand intuitively, but it’s it’s single crop soil. Soil that only grows one kind of plant. And so the the imbalance is when the culture puts too much pressure on people to conform. And the tension that causes is pretense, which is pretending to be something you’re not so that you can fit in. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a situation, most most of us have, where pretense is what you’re having to do. Mhm.

26:21 It’s really, really hard to pretend to be something you’re not. It creates incredible internal dissonance, right? You have to be honest about who you are if you want to stay in this community and feel at home. So on the one hand we’ve got conformity and on the other hand we have what was the other half of that equation? Yeah it’s it the the the ideal way to do it would be harmony which is harmony unity through difference. Right. If you think about an orchestra how many how many instruments are in an orchestra? Many. Yeah.

26:54 Right. Conformity is everybody in the instrument is playing a kazoo. Everybody in the orchestra is playing a kazoo. Yeah. And and you got you got to all play the same instrument. Yeah. And so God created us. We’re different. We’re different. You know, even even though we share so much as Latter-day Saints, we’re different. We come to belief differently. The things that move us spiritually that draw us towards God are unique and different. that one of my favorite scriptures is where Nephi talks about God speaks unto men in their own language according to their understanding. Yeah. Right. How else would he speak to us?

27:29 Yeah. Can he talk to you with concepts and ideas and feelings you don’t have? No. He speaks to you as you. I once asked my missionaries. I read that scripture. I said, “Okay, tell me how God speaks to you.” It was one of the best stone conferences I ever had. And the the variety of answers was astounding. It was everything from, you know, he speaks to me when I pray. He speaks to me when I read the scriptures.

27:54 One girl said, “He speaks to me when I listen to Led Zeppelin.” Really? Yes. She And then she cited the specific song, you know, this the Led Zeppelin lyric that says to be a rock and not to roll. Uh I’m not too familiar with it. Anyway, classic 60s rock. See, I was alive in the 60s. She cited that lyric and then she said, ’The spirit told me this when I listened to that lyric and it was about moving her life forward.

28:20 It’s time for you to move forward, to be a rock and not to roll. And she and and she said, “I just felt this prompting. Okay, it’s time to get up and go.” Interesting, right? Um I’ve had missionaries say, “Yeah, I I got an impression looking at a stop sign, right? Stop \[laughter\] doing that. \[gasps\] We’re so unique and yet we we sometimes perpetuate the idea there’s only one way to be a Latter-day Saint. And and if that gets too powerful in a in a family or in a relationship or in a ward, then the people that don’t fit are going to really suffer. And at some point, they will start to pull back because they can’t be who they really are.

29:02 Sometimes when it comes to the body of Christ, we want everybody to be a hand. Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. So, isn’t it fascinating that they have the same challenge 2,000 years ago and Paul was talking to the Corinthians about, “Hey guys, yeah, the body of Christ needs all the members.” Yeah. Right. And that’s that’s the doctrine. And yet the culture sometimes says, “Yeah, but that makes us uncomfortable.” I just I want to know why this is such an important topic to you personally.

29:33 So, probably the best way to talk about that would be to just tell you about a deeply personal experience for me. So, I have five children, uh, two daughters and then three boys. And my oldest son’s name is Kale. And I talk about Kale in the book. But I was, you know, busy in my corporate business career at the time and got up, you know, on a weekday morning like I always do and started to go through email and there was an email from Kale. Now, Kale had just gone into the MTC and it wasn’t Pday.

30:03 So, I knew immediately something’s up. Something’s up. Okay. And I opened this email and I still have the email. And uh after a a a short preamble, he said, “I’m not going to do this. I’m coming home.” And I I literally felt the blood, you know, draining from my head. And I just slowly went numb. And I David, I don’t know why, but I I just had a sense, well, this isn’t just about coming home from his mission. He’s going to lead the church.

30:35 And uh it was it was so unanticipated. We just didn’t see it coming. And so literally two weeks earlier I had presided over his farewell as his bishop. Okay. So I’m you know and and and we all know that the the moment that your son goes on a mission is very proud moment. And so I’m sitting there watching him give his farewell talk. He did a phenomenal job by the way and imagining how great it was going to be in two years at that same pulpit when he came home to report.

31:04 Right. And uh and that all that all was gone in a flash flood of real life. But in addition to that, I was a fairly new bishop up in Midway and um there were probably five or six families in our ward that had stepped away. And I’m looking at my son and who he was and these families and none of them fit the profile that was in my head at the time. You know, the profile in my head is yeah, people leave the church. They’re they’re sort of people that don’t have the faith and character to be Latter-day Saints, right? And so, you know, they move on because that’s that’s what they really want. They couldn’t cut it.

31:40 Yeah. That that sounds harsh, but I think that’s what was probably what was in my head, right? You know, they they just don’t they just don’t have what it takes. And that didn’t really apply to my son, and it didn’t apply to these families in the ward that that I was the bishop of. And so, I of course, I spent time talking with them. I spent a lot of time talking to Kale, but the words and the pictures in my head didn’t match.

32:03 And I’m I’m just a little stubborn by nature, David, and I couldn’t I couldn’t set it aside. I just couldn’t say, well, you know, oh well, you know, so I I had to reconcile the conflict I was feeling. And so I started really trying to understand well why why are people leaving and how come that doesn’t quite fit with the narrative that I frequently hear in the LDS community. And so it became very very personal for me. And then it was you know it was a long it’s been a long journey. So I I I I started on a personal basis. I was later asked to come in and help the church for a period of time in in this same area when I was teaching at BYU and uh served as a mission president. We had over 700 missionaries over three years. And gosh, that was that was a chance to get your PhD in church culture and young people and what young people are dealing with.

32:56 Where did you serve? Uh Arkansas Bentonville Mission from 2018 to 2021. So I came out of that experience with a perspective and then I came home and I was kind of thinking, well, you know, we served, we’re going to move on. And and people in my community and friends of mine were stepping away. My first counselor when I was a bishop in Midway is no longer a member of the church or doesn’t participate. He made a hard decision, he and his wife and their children to step away. So again, it just didn’t make sense to me. I had a unique perspective, right? My my family, bishop, BYU mission president, church work, and I had a perspective on what I thought was happening. And I started to outline a book because I thought, you know, I’m going to write a book because this will help people deal with what my family has had to deal with. And then I realized nobody’s going to listen to you pontificate without some data, right? Yeah. And so I

33:47 I recruited several of the best LDS researchers in the world and about three years ago we started what we think is the largest disaffiliation study ever been done that’s ever been done and we wrapped it up last year and that’s that’s part of what’s in the book and we’ll be publishing the research but it confirmed a lot of what we thought and I learned a lot in the process and my ultimately my goal is uh is to help people. This is a it’s a complex and difficult issue. There is a lot of misinformation which doesn’t help people engage the right way and people are hurting. You know, parents feel estranged from children, children from parents, relationships change. I’ve interviewed people whose marriages ended over this, right? And there’s a lot of pain. And I think there’s an opportunity for us as a community, whether you whether you stay in the church and you’re really devout or whether you decide to step away, there’s an opportunity for us to do a better job of working through this together. So that’s that’s why I did it. This might be a

34:44 personal question. It’s okay. Do you worry about what your eternal family looks like? Oh, such a good question, David. Um, I I I used to worry about that a tremendous amount. And I would tell you in the case of Kale, that worry and fear and anxiety almost ruined him and ruined my family. Right. So we we know the gospel doesn’t teach that. The gospel says fear not. The gospel says a perfect love casteth out all fear. But I was so afraid of what I thought was going on with Kale.

35:26 Now in hindsight, I realized that I was wrong. Right? But what I thought was going on with Kale was so terrifying to me that it altered completely how I approached the situation and my wife as well. And so we went through a number of years of very very difficult times, right? I felt discouraged and full of despair and deeply fearful. And he felt that from us, right? And it was very debilitating to him, right? He he told me once, “Man, I I just thought, well, if my dad, who knows me and loves me more than anyone, thinks I’m beyond reclamation, maybe I am.” Right? super discouraging to him and and but I’ve learned so much and so can I just tell you give you a little contrast of what we did and in a better way.

36:19 Sure. Yeah. And and maybe this coincides with my last question which is just like what advice do you have for people whose friends or loved ones are are leaving? Model this for us. I will two kind of a parallel anecdote briefly and then the lessons. But so with Kale, um, we immediately drew the wrong conclusions. Okay, we said, “Okay, he’s done something bad and the spirit left him and he’s being selfish and impulsive and this is going to ruin the rest of his life.” Okay.

36:54 Now, now, if that’s your if that’s the story you’re telling yourself, there’s no way that you’re going to be able to have a decent conversation or a constructive relationship, right? And so he he and and by the way this was also the way the community around us interacted with him. And so nobody did anything worse than what we ourselves did. And it was because we were full of fear, right? And so fear screws your brain up and then you do the wrong things. And so he only stayed at when he came home from the MTC, took off his garments, put his scriptures in a drawer, he only stayed long enough because of the vibe to save enough money for a plane ticket and he left for six months. Wow.

37:32 And we didn’t really hear from him. Like when I got really nervous, I would text his roommate and I’d say, “Can you please have him call me, right? I just need to know if he’s okay.” And it was a really tough time. Now, let me contrast that. And by the way, we’re doing fine, you know? So, Ka Kale and we have a great relationship with Kale. The last 13 years has been a time of extraordinary growth for our family. But let me give you a different a different scenario. So, I have a a really really good friend that I served in a bishop brick with and he had the same thing happen, but his son had stayed out longer and decided to come home from a mission and he told me his initial reaction was he was just furious, right?

38:13 And he literally wanted to just strangle him and he did he did something really important. So his son was in the field and it was going to be like a week before his son got back to to Utah. And so he just took a huge breath and he just said, “Okay, what’s really going on here?” And he said, “I cannot interact with him cuz that that moment at the airport’s going to be big and the car ride home is going to be big.” Yeah. Right. High stakes.

38:43 Yeah. And he just said,“I just got on my knees and I got very humble and I I did a lot of soulsearching.” And what he told me was really powerful. He said, “The prayer that I uttered was, “How can I turn my son to repentance?” Okay? And the spirit said, “What are you talking about? This isn’t about you and this isn’t about repentance. this is him and his life and he’s doing what he thinks he needs to do and you need to not get in the way. And so he felt he the word he used with me is I felt the spirit rebuke me and then and then he got really humble and it’s like well help me and the spirit what he felt the spirit teaching him is you’ve made this about you.

39:37 You’ve made this about your desire to be validated as a good father and a good Latter-day Saint and it’s not about any of that. Okay? It is about your son and his relationship with me. And he said, “So you’re the one that has to repent.” Right? And when he explained this to me, he said, Jeff, he said, ‘I realized that for 40 years, the culture had conditioned me to believe that the only success was that all my children serve missions, all my children marry in the temple, and the the celestial dining table is full. And he said, and I realized that I really really wanted that selfishly. I wanted the validation that comes in our community when that’s who you are as a father and that is who you are as a family. And God extracted that from my heart and taught me something better. Taught me the gospel instead of tradition. Right? And I’m listening to him and I’m blown away by the beauty and humility of what he’s telling me. And it’s been a while. And I said, “How’s it going?” And he said, “So

40:47 good.“ So they’re doing great. So you’ve got this contrast, right? The way that we handled it and the way that this other family handled it and the outcomes were very very different. So does that make sense? Yeah. Now can I give you you asked for some advice? Yeah. So do you know who Joseph Joseph Granny is? No. Joseph is one of the more remarkable people I know. And so he’s uh he’s the founder of the Other Side Academy and the Other Side Village in Salt Lake. And uh he also happens to be a best-selling author. He wrote a book called Crucial Conversations that sold like 10 million copies or something. But The Other Sight Academy is a is a place that takes early release prison felons and then helps them learn how to live healthy, good lives in a in an academy or a school setting. So it’s not an early release program like a transition house. They bring them in and instead of serving your last three years in prison,

41:47 you can serve them in the academy. And so, Joseph and I, part of the research was we decided to help try to help families deal with these highstakes conversations, right? The kind that I messed up and that my friend handled really well and we did a ton of research and we learned a few things. So, let me just take them off and then I’ll give you the principles. Number one is these conversations are absolutely critical.

42:12 Much more critical than you might imagine. Now, in hindsight, I can see that 83% of people going through faith transition reach out to others to talk. 40% of the time the conversations go badly. Okay. Now, here’s here’s something that’s really key. If they talk to a devout parent, it’s twice as likely to go badly. Wow. Okay. And if they talk to a devout church leader, it’s four times as likely to go badly.

42:40 Now, here’s the maybe the most pivotal thing we learn. If the conversation goes poorly, relationships suffer, questions and concerns get stronger, and the individual is much more likely to withdraw. In fact, we learned that the conversation itself is more important than what the person actually believes in whether they stay or go. H wow. What that means is if that conversation goes well and people feel safe and supported in their wrestling, there’s a good chance they’ll stay and wrestle and if they do not feel safe and supported, they will continue to wrestle but somewhere else. Yeah.

43:23 So the principles that came out of the research is um and I’ll just contrast effective versus ineffective. So \[sighs\] the first one, my friend did so well. He took a breather, okay? He just went, “Okay, I’m I’m not in a good place. I got to figure this out.” So he stepped back, right? He he calmed himself down and he got in terms with where he was really at. The ineffective thing is to do what Joseph calls talking under the influence. You know, we drive you, you know, you might at Latter Day Saints don’t, but you might drive under the influence or operate heavy equipment under the influence. Do not have one of these conversations under the influence.

44:02 And guess what the influence is it? It’s fear, anxiety, anger, empty anger, empty chairs at the dining table. You got to get that out of the way. I love that idea. Talking on the flip floor. And then the the thing you got to do next is you got to work on you first. Now remember my friend, what he did is he got in touch with his feelings. Why am I so angry? And then he he he got in touch with the story he was telling himself that I’m not a good father if my son comes home from a mission that my family has failed if my son comes home from a mission. And that my motives aren’t good. This is really about me.

44:42 And just naming those things, literally saying, “Okay, I actually want to be that father. I want the validation. I want people to admire my family. And I want what I want.” allows you to step back and say, “Man, that isn’t really the story I want to live, right? I want to be the father that’s wise and patient and supportive. I’m not going to compromise what I believe and what I want, but I’m going to respect my son so that he can go through this journey the way that he needs to.” Right? The opposite of that, the bad thing would be focus on fixing them. Okay? And then finally, this these conversations need to be about connection, not about correction. I think we need to trust God more. We need to have more faith. God’s got this. The spirit will work on people to lead them down the path that God wants them to go. And not everybody has the same path.

45:34 Love that. So, the book is called Torn, and it’s available uh midappril is when it’s coming out, right? Yeah. So, the book will be available for sale on Amazon on April 17th, and anybody that orders during the first 30 days, which is kind of a pre-sale window, gets five bucks off. I hope people will dive in and read it and I hope it will bless their lives. Jeff, thank you so much for being here.

45:57 David, it’s such a pleasure. I’m I feel grateful for the chance to come and talk to you. Fantastic conversation. And to everyone watching, we talked a lot about statistics and research in this episode. We also talked a lot about statistics and research in this episode over here with Justin Dyer. You should go check that one out if you haven’t yet. And I’ll see you there.