Episode 161: A Better Way to Mentor LDS Young Adults with Patrick Mason

Welcome to a beautiful two-part conversation between Valerie and Patrick Mason, who talk about the often-unaddressed issue of conflict in religious congregations and how tough conversations can be turned around to propel spiritual growth.

Patrick has a unique perspective in this issue as a university professor who has recently begun holding gatherings in his home, helping young adults in and around the LDS church feel safe in their honest enquiries around spirituality in general and the LDS faith in specific.

Valerie and Patrick traverse complex terrain, discussing the fear of constructive conflict within the Latter-day Saint community that often stifles genuine spiritual ministering and growth. Patrick examines this cultural practice, arguing that conflict can and should be seen as an opportunity for growth rather than a threat to unity and peace.

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Transcript

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Latter day Struggles. This is your host, Valerie. I am so excited to be here with all of you today. And I am really excited to welcome my guest. Hi, Patrick Mason. How are you? Hey, 

I'm good, Valerie. Thanks for having me. 

It is so good to have you here today. We were set up, Patrick and I. 

A common friend of ours, Carolyn Pearson.  told me, she says, Oh, I want you to, you know, you need to meet Patrick Mason. And I thought, well, I've read some of his books, so I would love to meet him. And so here we are getting ready to have a good conversation today on this podcast. So thanks for being here.

Absolutely. When Carolyn says to do something that the right answer is to say, yes, isn't that 

the truth? I know she asked me a favor the other day and I said, anything for you, Carolyn.  

Yeah.  

She's a joy such a gift to our church tradition. 

So absolutely. 

So anyways, I would love before we get going on.

So we have some plans on what we want to talk about today. But before we do that, Patrick, would you give us a little bit of maybe a bit of a bio of you specifically how a little bit just in general, but then also I'd love to hear. And I think my audience would love to hear how did you come sort of stumbling into the space of faith crisis and expansion, because that's kind of how you described yourself in our last conversation.

So I think that's fair to say. 

Yeah, stumbling is absolutely the right word. I mean, I'm born and raised in the church. I grew up in, in Utah and Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake, a pretty standard Mormon upbringing I think, and professionally I'm a historian. So I went to Notre Dame, got a PhD in American Religious History.

I've always been interested in religion, interested in history, interested in these kinds of things. So, so my plan all along was to pursue a career teaching and writing academic books that nobody would read or care about other than a very small handful of other academics. And I was well on my way doing that.

I was very successful fulfilling that dream. But in the. Let's see, it would have been around  2013 or so, a friend of mine named Tom Griffith he approached me and he said, Hey, you know, this is when like, you know, everything was just raging with the internet and faith crisis was kind of like a new thing, but exploding everywhere.

And there were almost no resources. I mean, like 2013 was the first gospel topics essay that the church put out. I think that was the year that Terrell and Fiona  Maybe that was even next year, 2014, which was like the first book to ever take this on in a Latter day Saint context. So like literally there was nothing out there.

People were floundering, like the internet was a flame with all this stuff but there were not podcasts like this. I mean, it was really tough. So. So, so Tom reached out to me and he said, Hey, look, the, you know, the Bushman's and the Givens's are going around, giving firesides to people, you know, just trying to talk with people.

Do you want to join them? And I did. And I started getting on the fireside circuit. I like, what did I know? I mean, but what did any of us know? Right. We were literally just making this up as we went along because nobody had trained me, nobody had taught me, you know, this was all new language. This was new space for us.

But just the more and more I did this. The more and more I talk to people, mostly just listening to people's stories, offering whatever I could based on my training as a historian. And that's really how it happened. It really was just like stumbling into it. I'll never forget one woman. I always did Q and a, at the end of firesides and one woman just like had this look of pain in her eyes.

She just like needed something. She's like, when is somebody going to write a book about this? I say again, I think, you know, crucible of doubt wasn't even out yet. And my answer all along had been like, oh, well, somebody else is going to do that. I have very important academic books to write that nobody will read but it was the pain in this woman's eyes that was like, that convinced me, I was like, okay, I guess I'm doing that.

So I wrote planted and then, you know, kind of snowballed from there. But so for me, yeah, it was an accident, but it's been a happy accident in the sense that I feel really privileged and blessed to have been entrusted with people's stories, to be invited into people's lives, and then to do whatever I can to maybe help along the way. 

I'm very touched already by what you've said, and I'm resonating really strongly with so much that you're talking about, especially when you talk about the pain. 

Absolutely. 

This might be the earliest on a podcast I've ever gotten emotional, Patrick.  

It's usually more 

toward the end. 

Yeah, right. Oh, 

okay. But, okay, let me just gather myself to just say that because of the work that I also feel like I stumbled into,  and the support groups that I run each, almost every day, these are some of the finest human beings.

Absolutely. 

that are earnest lovers of God  who have such a desire to  not only be true to themselves, but to reconcile a lot of the struggles that they're feeling in the context of how do I  both make sense of some of the things that I  don't understand and that don't agree with, but I also want to, this seems to be very this is pertinent Specifically, in the work that I'm recently doing with some of the people that I'm working with, which is a lot of who we have become and our identities are molded in beautiful ways around  our upbringing in and around the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

And it is incredibly complex and incredibly painful for people. And so like you,  I think there is such a beautiful, sacred space for us to continue to be carving out to help people  help themselves into whatever feels the best for them. Amen.  Without an agenda because I don't know that we've done a very good job of that earlier on.

It was really more agenda oriented, like how can we keep you in a certain place where we want to keep you, rather than how can we help you feel seen and known and close to God on your own terms. And I think that's what you are, you know, Working towards and that's what I am working towards and I hope that's what this podcast does in each and every episode and we're going to try to actually specifically work talk about a specific population today So, let me just give everybody a little bit of an overview of not only what we're going to talk about today But also of things to come in our next episode.

So patrick and I in our conversation preparing for this He shared with me something that was really pretty fun for me to hear. And I'll let you kind of expand on this in a minute, but I want to give everybody a little bit of a sense of where we're headed today. He mentioned to me that he sort of has started to put together a venue for college students to come.

Is this in your home, Patrick? 

Yep. 

Okay. So, essentially he runs, I don't even know if you want to call it a group, mine are very formal groups, but yours are sort of a, I don't know, like a soiree fireside sort of thing.  

Soiree. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. 

That's what Eugene Englund used to call his gatherings that he put together in the olden days back in Provo.

And so anyways, Patrick does this and it's a venue for him to listen.  and to talk to and to work with college students. And so when we were just getting to know one another, I thought, Oh my goodness, what a beautiful touch point, because I actually do the very same thing in a slightly different venue. I am an actual, you know, I'm a therapist.

And so I do a little bit more facilitating and talking. It's a little more formal, but the essence of what we both do  is actually very similar, which is we offer a safe space for individuals who are somehow connected to this faith tradition. We offer them a safe space to speak. And to feel and to process and to not feel alone  in their struggles.

And so today we're going to focus exclusively on the population that Patrick is  most acquainted with, which is college students. And then in our next episode, we're going to talk about the relationship that I have with, interestingly, I do have a few Gen Zers in my groups. But most of them are a little bit older, all the way up to, I think I have somebody, I think I have a couple of people that are in their 70s, so it spans really from the late 20s to the 70s, and it's male and female in my groups.

But we're going to just talk about what it's like to be in each of these spaces. And I'm really excited for this episode specifically Patrick because I have a little bit of professional career envy. I spent a couple of years, many years ago looking into the possibility of going to get a PhD to become a.

counselor educator. And so the idea of your being in the classroom with college students is something that I think it sounds like really beautiful. And. Exciting. I know that sounds maybe kind of weird for those who don't, you know, find education all that beautiful and exciting, but to me it is it's 

pretty great.

I have to say, yeah. 

So, okay, go ahead and start us off if you would, Patrick on what do you notice about university students in the context of what we're doing and how sort of this particular time and space in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. And I'd love for you to address, you know, both the bright sides and the dark sides.

Let's cover the whole spectrum here. 

Yeah, well, maybe I'll get into it by kind of, telling a little bit about how about, about how this group started the, my wife and I are this soiree the, that we're having in our home. So, so I had it was about a year ago, you know, like, like we talked about, I've been in this kind of faith transition, faith crisis space for now a decade or so, given lots of firesides Podcasts and talks and various kinds of things.

And a lot of that has been like, you know, you go visit a place, you give a fireside and then you leave, right. It's kind of like parachute in. And it's kind of one time where you're on a podcast. You're just kind of like broadcasting out to, to, to the void. I mean, you hope that it helps somebody but you don't have that direct interaction and it's been great, it's been terrific.

And I and I've enjoyed it but I really, it started settling on my heart about it. Year ago, really a kind of deep impression of what are you doing for the people right in front of you?  It's great that you're doing all this other stuff, right? It's all good. It's all, they're all good things, but what are you doing for the people right in front of you?

And what that translated into for me and in my mind and heart were these students. Right, right in front of me. I'm on a campus here with 25, 000 students. A majority of them are LDS or at least LDS background. So what am I doing for them? And so I actually got in touch with the institute director here.

Who's a terrific guy, like absolutely gets it. Totally on top of it. Just an amazing guy, great minister and teacher of the gospel. And then another professor who also was having similar kinds of concerns. And we said, what can we do? And we decided, well, maybe the first thing we can do is we can listen rather than us deciding we know everything and we're going to solve all these problems, right?

Maybe we should just listen to people. So, so we gathered together. Just through our own contacts and students who had been in our offices and things like this we just invited them to a listening session and about two dozen of them showed up. We just did it in a classroom on campus one afternoon, and we just started with the question,  we said, what are your needs spiritually, religiously, emotionally, that you feel like the church and the Institute are not filling?

That's really amazing. And, 

And then we just sat in the back and then we just listen and they took over and it was, you know, they talked for, we were there for an hour and a half and  they were amazing. And some of the things that came out were really quite striking. Some you could have anticipated but others not so much to a person.

They all talked about this deep desire, this craving for human connection,  for real connection. I mean, several of them like held up their phones and said, we are addicted to these things and we hate them. 

Right? 

It's like addiction oftentimes happens, right? And they say we know that these aren't real connections.

We know the virtual world is not the real world. Like we crave real human connections and we like it when the church can help provide that, but too often it's not in the way that we want. They said, we want more spaces where we can talk to each other and not be talked  

Oh, wow. 

They said, we want places where we can be treated as adults, where we can, where we're not juvenilized if that's a word, you know, we're not treated still as teenagers. 

We want spaces where we can really connect with Christ. One of the striking things that just came up over and over again was just how Christ centered they are. Like this is a generation, at least that we've raised within the church that is deeply like it. It's worked. All the preaching, all the teaching that we've done for the past several years has worked, at least in the students I've talked to, they are converted to Christ. 

And they are converted to Christ first and foremost, above the church, above anything else, like they are converted to Christ and they want to be disciples of Christ. And that, that came out loud and clear. And so, so, you know, there's these kinds of messages and it was amazing. And so I walked away from that and talked with just, you know, the handful of students that I knew personally, and they said, well, what are we going to do?

How do we continue this? And I kind of said, well, just like start a group, like start talking to each other. But I think they didn't quite. Have the wherewithal or the space, or maybe feeling a permission or something like that, they still felt a little bit of drift. And so, so my wife and I, you know, Melissa and I just said, all right we'll just open up our home.

And so we did. So, and it started just word of mouth. We just told these students, we said, invite your friends. And so they started coming over every other Sunday night. And it was as you mentioned with no agenda, so it wasn't a lesson. It wasn't me. Talking to them. It wasn't me telling them everything they should know or do.

It was literally like they showed up the first day we had dessert and then it was like, all right, what do you all want to talk about? And more often than not that's what we do. Sometimes they have a group chat. So sometimes they decide on a topic they want to talk about, but sometimes they don't.

Sometimes we all just show up and it's just kind of whatever emerges out of the conversation. And so. Every week we have at least 25 or 30, sometimes up to 50. That's a little tough to, to bid in our house, a little tough for a conversation dynamic, but it's just been beautiful to hear them, to talk with them, to learn from them and just let them.

You know, they have plenty of wisdom. They have plenty of experience. They have things to share and to teach each other. So, so I'm not there as the guru. I'm not there as the professor. Melissa and I are learning just as much as they are.  

I am absolutely struck by several of the things that you talked about and I want to actually, if we may, let's just stay there and I want to circle us back to a couple of things.

So that you can either say a little bit more about those a couple of these things or so that we can just go deeper into those things that the part where you said such goodness. and seekers of truth amongst these young people college age people. I want to be specific here. When we talk about what we're referring to, who these are not student, they don't have to be college students.

They happen to be college students in your particular venue, Patrick, right? But all of us out there who are listening to the show, whether it's, we are a college age Gen Z or have, or love someone in our, on our lives. This is a beautiful, incredibly powerful spiritual generation.  And I'm thinking actually, I'm a little partial because I have a couple of daughters that are this very age, two, two college age daughters who are in different places in their relationship with the church. 

And  two of the most spiritual women I've ever had the privilege 

of knowing.  And some of the reasons why they struggle with the church is because  of their valiance.  

That's the thing, right? And I think once we figure this out, those of us who were older, this might help us write that, that they learned everything we taught them in primary. 

Like they actually believe that stuff. When we say love everyone, they do right. When we say love, like Jesus loves, they do. When we teach them to sing, I'll walk with you. Those are the values they internalize. And so it's kind of cute when they sing it as eight year olds and nine year olds, right.

But then they grow up to be 18 and 19 or 28 and 29. And those are the values they're carrying with them into the world. Right. And they're applying them not just to everybody else, but they're applying them within the church too. Right. And they expect the community that they're a part of to live up to the values that it taught them in the first place.

Isn't that beautiful. Isn't that beautiful that they have so deeply integrated what they were taught in I'll walk with you. That's a beautiful example of sort of circling us back to Carolyn, right. Is that,  We, as disciples of Jesus Christ, don't have a conditional morality, like, we believe that, and we're going to stand up for that, and I think that is the spiritual gift of that generation, and I think that's what puts such tension upon them, because I think they also experience a desire for the loyalty of, you know, what their parents taught them, and what the church teaches them, and how do I, like, Navigate this thing.

And that's speaks to one of the other things that you said you learned from your students as you were sort of deciding to put before you put the group together. I love that. Like almost like a little think tank or something like that with these university students. Something that I was really struck by as you talked about their craving for authentic connection.

And I actually thought about this in a slightly more nuanced way. Thank you. Then I have thought about it before you told me they held up their phones and said, we know this is not authentic connection. We want  something that feels  like we are in a space where we can be seen.  I believe, or I guess maybe let me just throw this at you as a question or maybe a conversation topic, Patrick.

I feel like the phone is part of the problem of the inability to connect. But I also think sometimes. adolescents, young adults, older adults don't necessarily feel like they even find that in the same room with other people in church.  And so it's not just the phone, we can be in the same room and also feel very silenced, or as if we can't have an authentic conversation even embodied.

in a church building. Can you speak to that a little bit? Because I think that's what they're craving. I think that's what we're all craving actually. What are your thoughts on that? 

Absolutely. And that's what a lot of them talk about is they, you know, when they go to these, that to their student wards that, yeah they're face to face, you know, that they go to sacrament meeting there, they're in Sunday school or relief society or whatever, but they don't feel a kind of connection partly because again, the church is doing what it's supposed to do in the sense of bringing together lots of people with different backgrounds, different ideas, different perspectives, right?

It's not like social media that just groups like minded people together. So the church at its best is in some ways the exact opposite. Of what we get on social media. But what that means, though, is that when you are wrestling when you're struggling when you've got questions when you're when you feel like and of course, I think this happens, especially with young people, but it can happen with anybody when you feel like nobody understands you, right?

That your experience is different than other people's.  Then it going to church, even though you're surrounded by 100, 200 people can actually be very isolating and very alienating. It can actually reinforce the very things that you're feeling because at least you feel like, Oh, they're all getting it.

And I'm not. Right. They are all a certain way. And I'm not now. Now, the fact is there's probably other people in the room feeling the exact same way that you are, but they're silently struggling as well. And we just don't have very good structures within our two hour block to accommodate those kinds of conversations.

That kind of difference. Those we're just not good at that. Right now we're good at other things at accomplishing other things in that two hour block, but we're not good at acknowledging all of the difference and real experiences and really facilitating authenticity in, in those two hours.

It's just not what we do very well. And so, so yeah, so, so it's easy for people to walk away. From church, feeling more lonely, more isolated than before they went. And so, so I think there has to be a kind of both and thing. I mean, I'm a huge believer in what we do on Sundays together as church, again, precisely because we're gathering people together who are different. 

Going to church on Sunday is the main place where I encounter people on a weekly basis who are different than me, who have different politics than me, who have different life experiences than me. Otherwise my, I'm able to organize my life Basically. So I'm surrounded by people who are pretty much just like me if I want to, right at work, I'm around other academics on social media.

I, you know, I can choose who I follow and so forth. I can curate my life, but not at church. So, so, so church is really good but it's important for people to find groups to find connection where they can then share those kinds of things, right. Where they can open up. And so, yeah, well, my students have talked about it.

They understand and they value what happens at church, but they need something else too. All right. They don't want to replace church, but they need to supplement church with a different kind of community, different kind of conversation where they can open up and have the kind of conversations they need to have. 

Why do you suppose it's so challenging for us to be able to make. In general, I don't want to overgeneralize because I do think there are little pockets where this can happen But  it feels like in what you're describing with your generation the those Gen Z the student population and also in my  cohort of people that I work so frequently with that  to find these places of gathering where people can actually talk about their wrestles And their doubts and their reservations and even things that they're very angry about or frustrated about why must we outsource that to your living room and to my zoom room? 

And why can't we as a community  allow for people to come together who are in different places  and find that the relationship is more important than the belief system?  We can't, we seem to struggle mightily with that in the church. Will you speak into that if you would. 

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Why do you suppose it's so challenging for us to be able to make  in general? I don't want to over generalize because I do think there are little pockets where this can happen, but  it feels like In what you're describing with your generation,  the Gen Z, the student population, and also in my  cohort of people that I work so frequently with that  to find these places of gathering where people can actually talk about their wrestles. 

And their doubts and their reservations and even things that they're very angry about or frustrated about why must we outsource that to your living room and to my zoom room?  Why can't we as a community  allow for people to come together who are in different places  and find that the relationship is more important than the belief system? 

We can't, we seem to struggle mightily with that in the church. Will you speak into that if you would?  

Yeah I think we could get there, it's just certainly not where we're at right now. And I think it's precisely because of what you said there at the very end, that we have, the way that we've thought about what church is That we think of it as a place to participate in ordinances.

So, so to take the sacrament, but then in terms of all the content whether it be in sacrament meeting or in the classes that we're in, we, we have over the past many decades decided that, that is the place where we teach doctrine. We put such an emphasis on unity we put such an emphasis on sort of being together and fortifying people to then go out into the world that's what we've designed those meetings to be there to teach doctrine, to fortify people to get everybody on the same page that, that, that's just the primary value that, that we've assigned to that time together.

There are other values that we could bring in. Right. There are other things that we could do with that time, but that's just the way we've, we both as a culture. And then also, I mean, this is the direction from church leaders as well, is that's what this time is here for.

Here's a lesson. That's been, you know, that curriculum is prepared. Here it is. Your job is to deliver it. People in the class basically know the answers to the questions they're supposed to give, you know, before the questions are even asked. And so. That's just what we've created it.

And like you, I've seen sort of moments or bursts where it looks. Otherwise, a really skilled teacher can absolutely transform a classroom not in a subversive way, but to do a both and thing. But we're also. We're a lay church, right? It's, you know, when I go to, when I go to elders quorum, it's Joe, the plumber teaching the lesson, right?

It's, you know, and so, so people are just like getting through their lives and it's sort of easy to settle in, within our regular patterns rather than try to think creatively about actually. How do we, what do we want to do in this time and how could we do it? And of course, some people are just very comfortable in the rut.

You know, some people are very happy doing that. There's a kind of inertia and I think they kind of dominate some of those spaces. So it is harder for people who want more to to kind of change things up a little bit. So it's tough. I think our church meetings could be better. But at least right now, I think you're right.

A lot of this just has to be outsourced for a lot of people. 

It's Sort of, I see this as sad and tragic in some ways because what you're describing, I agree with in that  some of the more hungry, interested in.  Deeper spiritual growth and questioning. And I mean, this, I think there's a really interesting paradox involved here in that  those folks that come to church longing for this face to face authenticity and a communion with like community that is open to their struggles and strivings, that in and of itself is a deep form of worship.

And sometimes that's experienced As something terrible, something wrong, something inappropriate, and that if you don't stay in this space of inertia, you're the problem. You're making the rest of us all uncomfortable. And so some of those that are the most hungry  to commune with others and commune with God in the process.

feel as if they don't have a space to do that. Yeah. 

I was in I was in an elders quorum meeting, I don't know, a couple months ago. And it was actually kind of the rare elders quorum class where some differences of opinion were being expressed, right. It kind of hesitantly kind of, you know, kind of tiptoeing but it was like edging towards a productive conversation.

Wow.  And then. This kid who was like right off of his mission you know, full of zeal. He raised his hand and he said, brother. And he says, I, I just, I'm not feeling the spirit because of all the contention in this room right now. Right. So, so, so for him, this is where just said the people, I actually think fundamentally, one of our flaws is as a people we don't know how to engage conflict constructively.

Amen. We 

don't know how to engage differences of opinion. We don't know how to do this because we think difference of opinion is contention, therefore of the devil, et cetera, et cetera. So this young man is like, so I'm not feeling the spirit. And like, you know, and so then of course, as a group we defer to him.

Right. I mean, it's hard in that moment to teach him about how to engage conflict constructively. So, so then we just settle back into, to all agreeing with each other,  you know, there's a lot of work, you know, I mean, your training, you know, gives you the tools to engage conflict constructively, right.

And that's what you help other people do. I think that's one of the things that we have to learn as a people, because that's even more foundational. Right. It's like, it does take a set of skills within a group, right? 25, 30, 40 people in a classroom, all of whom are different, right? It actually takes a lot of skill to be able to manage a group like that and manage difference without it becoming heat.

We don't want people yelling at each other in church. We don't want people, right. Offending each other. So we do want to manage that space. And again, most teachers just don't have the skills or training to do that. And so it's, it, Yeah. We're a little bit stuck. 

Yeah. I see this almost in some ways as a self perpetuating problem, meaning that if we consistently  defer to the person who has the lowest comfort zone and then can even back it with scripture, you know, conflict is of the devil and therefore let's all conform back into this area of, in my opinion, low level thinking, low level psychological maturity.

Where we're back in the Sunday school or the primary answers or whatever, then it just perpetuates this culture where we can't not only have hard conversations, because we don't know how to have them and every time one starts to have when they're labeled as the problem.  And I guess to me, I'm just wondering if you could talk to me about what are your thoughts on how do we, this feels like one of those situations where  change can happen, but it needs to happen at the bottom, of course. 

And  you mentioned also  that some people in these settings, maybe this is where our Gen Z  

youth 

or young adults can help us teach us to know how to do this in the setting.  I'm wondering, but my thoughts are someone has to be able to have the ability and the skill set to shift the culture in these small settings.

in the classroom for those of us who are trying to engage in church and trying to not go crazy in so doing because at some point in time some people do start saying this is not worth my time and energy. I don't feel better  after I have attended a Sunday school or a elders quorum or a relief society.

I feel worse because I can't actually engage in a way that is bringing me closer to Jesus. I do better at home  than at church. So talk me through your thoughts on like, this is a problem that's only getting worse because I think we are, I think we're going through a spiritual awakening. As a church. And I think there's a lot of that is coming again from our youth.

They're teaching us things. I think culturally the world is changing in some really good, beautiful ways around marginalized populations. And if we don't figure out a way to engage authentically at church, we're going to lose some of our best and brightest.  

Yeah, we already are. We already have.  No, and I couldn't agree more.

I mean, I absolutely feel like the spirit is moving upon the church. I really believe that. I believe the Holy Spirit is real and I believe the Holy Spirit is doing its work on, on, on the church right now. What now, where, and will we listen? Will we follow? I don't know what that looks like. I'm a historian.

I do better looking backward than forward, but but I feel it and I see it and I sense it. And I hear it, that the spirit is trying to wrestle with. with the church right now. And so, yeah, what you're really asking about is and what we're talking about here is about theory of change, right?

How does change happen? And you know, there are grassroots theories of change, there's top down leadership theories of change, there's in addition to getting my PhD in history, I got a master's degree in peace study. So I actually spent a lot of time and energy right now in the kind of peace building world.

And we've just started a peace institute here at Utah State University. I'm teaching an intro to peace building course in the fall. So I spent a lot of. of time and headspace there. And one of the theories of change that I was taught was a kind of middle out, you know, it's people like you and me with connections and training people and getting people together.

So, so there's all these different kinds of theories of change and that they all have things to recommend themselves to each other. Now, Myself, like I can't do anything about the top down, right? I can pray, I can hope, you know, I again you know, but there's nothing I can do directly about the kind of top down.

I do think we could listen. If you listen, for instance to president Nelson's talk on peace building on, on, on peacemaking last general conference, it was amazing. It is, I think it's one of those, you know, those talks that was prophetic with a capital P and that we're going to be reading 100 years from now.

And one of the things he talked about in there, this gets to, you know, our being able to deal with conflict that I think a lot of people missed is he talked about within the first presidency, his two counselors will disagree with each other over all kinds of things. I mean, he specifically said like, we argue with each other, right?

We come in with differences of opinions. We will do this. Sometimes we get to a resolution. Sometimes we don't, right? We do it in a spirit of love. We do it in a spirit of generosity. We give each other the benefit of the doubt. I'm, you know, I'm putting words in his mouth but it was this kind of beautiful example where he talked about his own first presidency and the way they deal this.

And that's a great model. If we could think about how to do that. So I think we, this is just where we need professionals and where we need people who have been in this space to help teach us. So this is where social workers, psychologists are so significant because this is exactly what they do from the world of peace building.

This is exactly what we do. How do you deal with conflict constructively? My kind of theory is called conflict transformation theory. And it's not how do we get rid of conflict. It's how do we acknowledge the reality, the pervasiveness of conflict. Conflict is just baked into life. It's baked into human existence.

So how do we deal with it transformatively and constructively and productively rather because it can go either way. And so So we just need, and there are people working on this. I'm so encouraged by the cohort of social workers and therapists and psychologists who are doing all kinds of work like you are. 

Increasingly Peace Builders has a program at BYU Hawaii, Intercultural Peace Building. And it's training hundreds, thousands of students who are going out into the world with real skills like mediation skills and these kinds of things, and they're going to take that into not only into the world, but into the church.

So, so I think this is part of the work of what the spirit is doing right now is in teaching us these things, it's kind of slow. It's kind of uneven. It's kind of unsteady. You know, I think as Latter day Saints, we all want a correlated program, right? We want the church to open a department of peace building, you know, department of conflict transformation.

I'm not sure that's the way it's going to happen. I think it's going to be about people getting these skills, however they can get them and then bringing them into our own church community. 

Let me ask you one final question as we close this episode and we will continue this conversation next time. 

What I'm, first of all, I love that you have formal training in peace studies. That's one of my daughter's majors actually. Oh really? Fantastic. 

And this is what I'm seeing. I mean, this is like what Gen Z, this is what they want to do, right? They want to go out and change the world. So they're majoring in these kinds of things, getting these kinds of skills.

It's so awesome. 

It is so awesome and so incredibly helpful in the world that we live in right now.  It actually opens up for me, like, I think, Oh, wow, now that I know that he has this kind of training, I have like 10 other questions.  But one thing I do want to ask you on the heels of what you were just sharing, as far as how it pertains to our church community when we're thinking about, I think, and I think it sounds like you think also the vital importance of learning how to engage in complex ideas, complex conversations, complex backgrounds, feelings, thoughts, ideologies. 

That right there, when people have that skill set to do that that becomes  in some ways an environment where people feel safe because the reason for gathering is not to conform, it's to grow. Okay.  Now I'm thinking about our church community and my fear, my worry is that we are not trained on how to grow, we're trained on how to conform. 

And then when people have their crisis,  and they recognize that.  They are not being encouraged to grow, but they're being encouraged to conform to ideas, some of which they agree with and really resonate with them, some of which they really don't agree with, and they don't even feel like it helps them come closer to God. 

And then furthermore, they're desire to engage  in this community that they have grown up in  sometimes rejects them.  It does really in some ways make a path out very viable, if not desirable. People do leave.  I guess I'm not asking you a question as much as I'm noticing as I'm learning from you that this is a very real problem because spiritually growing people that want to engage in this conversation they aren't finding a safe space to do it.

And so then they feel as if they have to leave, even if they don't want to leave  because they can't go back. People that are growing can't ungrow.  

Right. Yeah. Once you're out of Eden, you can't go back. Right. Actually Jared Halverson, he's professor at BYU. He talks about this and kind of his paradigm of faith transition.

It's like, you got to leave the garden. All right. And the fall is a scary place, but we believe in a fortunate fall, a positive fall. Right. And so like, how do you get out of that? How do you grow from that? How do you learn from that? Rather than just getting stuck there. I think our church is pretty phenomenal on growth until somebody is about 18 or goes on a mission.

We were, we're not  really our primary and youth programs are terrific. They're the envy of other churches. We do a terrific job with our youth and the amount of resources that we pour in there to help them grow and develop and give them structure and to get them on missions into the temple.

Right. That's like our whole focus. And I it's, is it perfect? No, but is it phenomenal? Yes. But we have so little for adults.  Right? Like once somebody's been on a mission, once somebody's gone to the temple, it's good luck with the next 60 years of your life, right? Kind of figure it out, keep coming, keep serving.

And I do think service, and the service opportunities that the church provides do provide a lot of growth, but it's, we're just not very good. On adult growth and all that means recognizing that because we have with children and youth I think we do have a vision of like kind of what that looks like what a growth path looks like what a healthy childhood and healthy adolescence looks like Healthy adulthood may the tree might start growing some different branches At that point and we just haven't figured out how to do that So So much of it does rely on individuals to take charge of their own growth.

Again, I wish our community could and hopefully we'll do more to support that. But it does.  Individuals are responsible for a lot of this. And this is where I'm just I've been so proud of these students who are coming into our home because This is exactly the mindset and the mentality that they have one of the few messages.

Again, I'm trying hard not to play guru in this group, but one of the, my consistent messages to them is religion cannot be the least sophisticated part of your life, right? Here you are. You're in college. You're on the, you know, you're adults. You're learning like whatever, you know, you're in biology or business or history, whatever, like you're encountering the world in really sophisticated ways, right?

All these new ideas and all these, you know, you're dealing with complexity. You're dealing with all the social complexity of becoming adults, all the marriage and all these kinds of things. You can't take the same religion that you had as a 14 year old going to youth conference. That's not going to get you through.

All the challenges and complexities of adulthood, right? There, there are some bedrock less lessons there that you can translate. There's a foundation there, but your religion has to grow up with you.  And and you've got to let it, you've got to let it breathe. You've got to let it grow. You've got to let it stretch and develop, and you've got to it's got to be at least as complex as your life is, if it's going to serve your life.

Well, and that's what I see these students doing. That's what they're hungry for. They very much have a growth mindset and they're wrestling with these paradoxes, right? They are wrestling with  how do I live true to my values? Many of which, most of which I learned at church. Right. While also participating in this institution in this community among people who don't always share my values and where my values aren't always reflected.

Like, how do I live in that paradox? How do I lean into that paradox? And what I love, what's beautiful about this group and these students is like, they don't have to be there. I think for their generation, The cost of non participation in the church is very low, right? For our generation, it was still like to leave the church was like a big deal.

And like the sense of social cost, especially if you lived like in, in the Western United States or came from a Mormon family. Right. And this is why people end up in therapy. Right. I mean, it's like the cost was high. And that cost is real for my students generation, other than maybe some familial costs, like with grandparents or something like that, maybe parents the social cost of leaving the church is very low.

In fact, the incentives are probably otherwise. And so for them to be in a space for them to be in my living room on a Sunday evening saying, we want to work through this. We want to talk about this. We want to work this out. That is like. the most tremendous act of faith I could possibly see, right? They want to be there.

They want to lean into the struggle. They want to lean into the paradox. They want to encounter Christ and become better people. And what they say, like, I've heard them say this week after week. It's amazing. Again, so much wisdom. They say, I don't want to create God in my own image.  Right. I have my own values.

I have things but I don't want to worship myself. I don't, I, you know, so I, like they are seekers. They want to know the truth. They want to know what is good. They want to live their lives in the fullest way possible. They recognize complexity and they want to wrestle with that and they want to do it in community.

And to me, I just see, I see that as such a healthy I don't know where they're all going to be in, in five years, 10 years, one year. Right. In terms of their relationships with the church, but I hope that as they do this together as they realize they can do it, they can have these conversations to feel empowered.

This is one of the things we do talk about a lot. It's like we want you to leave our house feeling empowered to go do this with your roommates. Right. To go do this in your relief societies, to go do this in your elders quorum.  You now can model this for other people, you know, the kinds of conversations we've had here. 

So if they can do that,  again, I just have so much hope based on what I'm seeing with these students and the kind of faith that they're exhibiting. 

I couldn't love that more. And I just am so grateful for, I want to send, you know, As many of these truth seeking spiritual giants your way, and I would love to see more homes being opened up for university students to be having these kinds of beautiful, rich conversations.

Because not only, I mean, this is the way I see this, Patrick. It's like,  Whether you're in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints or and I'm in the Midwest And so I'm surrounded by beautiful Protestants and Evangelicals There's so much that's very similar about the growth and development of a human being in the context of faith and they're in the A really beautiful growth spurt kind of place in these young adult years and if we as their parents and mentors could open a space for them, literally in your case or in other ways for them to just to say we trust you,  you're wise, you're strong, you're competent.

You're capable and we want you to feel like if you can take all of these spiritual gifts that you have and integrate them into  some sort of a faith system, a faith tradition, because maybe you don't need the church, but the churches sure need you.  And you're capable. That circles me back to something else that you said, which is that the way I think we hold on to this generation  in terms of helping them feel as if they have a community of worship, if they want that, is to give a little bit more liberality about what worship can be for them.

It's not about, you have to believe a strict set of beliefs or else, because based on what's going on socially, if we put that ultimatum out there, what we're asking for is for many of them to leave. They simply are going to follow the direction of their primary teachers  and they're going to walk away.

Because if they need to walk with people that Jesus walked with, sometimes they're being invited out. And so if we want to help them see that, no, there's a place for you and for all of us. It can't be about this is right and this is wrong. And you have to believe like the black and white in or out, you know, all in all of that rhetoric I think has to go away.

Because what we're inviting is some sort of a spiritual and psychological rigidity that maybe our generation manages, you know, better and not a complimentary way. Those 

internalize it, right?  

Internalize it. And then I have a busy private practice as a therapist. 

Right.  

But these kids don't do that.

They're going to say, okay, that's fine. If I have to be all in, I guess I have to be all out. But what you're talking about is encouraging. Psychological agency. You're encouraging them to open up and to talk and to be a part of a bigger, larger conversation. And in so doing, changing the culture of an institution so that we can derive all that is good and slowly root out that which does not serve us and does not bring us closer to God.

That's kind of what I'm hearing in much of what you're saying. Absolutely. 

Yeah. So, yeah. And it's, as we wrap up, I mean, I just want to, a couple of things bouncing off what you were saying. And I, one of the things I'm. We hear from these students is they recognize that they do need the church, 

right?

So sometimes we do use that line, right? Like whether or not you need the church needs you like they recognize they do need the church They need all the things that the church does offer uniquely in terms of Community in terms of doctrine, in terms of spiritual experiences, spiritual power, opportunities to serve growth being in a space where you hear about Jesus, where you hear lessons about love and forgiveness and all these kinds of things.

So, so one of the really encouraging things to me is when they say that we need the church, not in that kind of black and white. Way, right? The kind of duty bound way, but they recognize that actually the church at its best. And when they're participating at it in an authentic ways, it actually becomes a vehicle for the growth the, that they're seeking.

And that's a beautiful thing. And the other thing is like,  Having a group like this in your home, this isn't rocket science, right? I just encourage anybody to do this, right? Just open your home to other people. Maybe it's college students, maybe it's just the people in your ward, right?  You know, other people that you know, right?

And Just because right now the two hour block is not ideally suited for these kinds of conversations. It means they have to happen elsewhere. And I really believe that living room couches and dining room tables are the best place to do it. Open, open your homes, open your hearts.  The only thing it requires, I think, is the humility to be silent.

If my wife and I are bringing a virtue to this, is that we are trying really hard. It is their space. Now, sometimes they'll ask our opinions or we'll share a perspective. One time they asked me to lead them through a kind of close reading of the parable of the prodigal son. So we did that together.

So, you know, it's not like I'm silent or that I leave the room but it's, I'm a professor. I profess for a living. I talk for a living. And so, so the one thing it's required of me is the humility to sit back and keep my mouth closed. Just let the conversation happen, let it flow.

And it's okay. The last thing I'll say about this is I was talking about this with some other people and they said, well, how do you make sure that it doesn't go off the rails? Right. Again that's like such a Latter day Saint thing to say, like, you know, there's like a right answer and a wrong answer, right?

How do you make sure it doesn't go off the rails? I'd say, first of all, I don't care if it goes off. I don't even know what the rails are exactly, but first of all, I'm okay with that because again, this is human beings having human conversations. But also, at least in our experience, what we've seen, again, because these are seekers, because these are faithful people, these are people who want to make it work, because the Spirit is present among us, because these are Christ seekers, right?

If it's, quote unquote, off the rails, it always comes back on, right? They bring it back. I can, because again, their desire, their heart, their faith, their wisdom brings it back. So, so that there's room for the questions. There's room for the anger and there's anger expressed. There's frustration expressed.

There's, you know, I hated that conference talk, right? You know, all those kinds of things, but it's, there, there's also a kind of centeredness about it because fundamentally, these are people who want to see you can follow Christ. 

Do you find in your last question, we keep saying that, but  just quick, last question.

Is it okay in your venue? If these adolescents and young adults  don't want to be a part of the church anymore before their own good reasons, how do you.  Manage that idea in your setting. 

Yeah. A hundred percent. Just from what they shared, they're all over the map. We've got every week attenders.

We've got once a month attenders. We've got people that haven't been to church for quite a while and are wondering whether they'll go back. And so it's all over the map and we want them to be healthy. We want them to be happy. I do have an agenda in the sense that I want them to feel loved. I want them to live a life full of love.

I want them to live a life full of purpose,  you know, kind of my deepest core. I'm a Christian. I want them to see you can follow Christ. And so, so I won't say it's a completely blank slate, right? I want them to expose them and I want them to feel all those things. I want them to be in a place to engage where they can feel the spirit, where they can feel God's love, where they can feel God's hear God's voice.

In, in their life. But I also recognize that the God's plan is bigger than my plan. And so I have trust and confidence that the God will lead them in the ways that they need to go. And maybe sometimes they need to follow their own path as part of that. So, so yeah, so I'm not trying to.

You know, we're not trying to get them to conform to a particular set of things right now. And, you know, that makes some church members uncomfortable. The fact that like the takeaway every week isn't, okay, now go to church next Sunday. So I, I get that, but I guess I just have the confidence. 

For me, all of this is based  in  a really lively sense.  That our heavenly parents really do love us eternally, completely, and infinitely,  I believe in an infinite and eternal atonement. I really do.  And so because of that allows me a kind of grace, a kind of humility  that think our mother and father are going to take care of their children.

So it kind of, kind of lowers some of the stress and stakes for me, like what's going to happen in the next five minutes, because I think our heavenly parents are playing the long game.  

Thank you so much for that, Patrick. I, what you just shared in a nutshell is why, what you're doing. is healing. I think about in my own formal training, some beautiful  psychology, good psychology is actually good theology.

And 

when I realized, and I then I learned it, and then I started seeing it and I've seen it over and over again, that when people are loved,  they are drawn to light.  And you could say in a different way, they are drawn to love, they are drawn to God.  And so all we need to do.  In our own respective ways is provide them the environment where they feel loved and they will heal.

They will be drawn toward light  and whatever that looks like  on a Sunday morning is really none of your business and none of my business, especially because what we can do is actually just trust  in our heavenly parents. that they have it covered. They, that they're taking care of these beautiful children that we get the privilege of being in connection with and just providing them the fertile environment for their own healing and growth in this life.

And so I love what you're talking about. Let's go ahead and close this episode up and we will start we'll have our continue our conversation. I have a few extra questions about the youth and then we'll kind of maybe move beyond that and we will see you all next time. Bye bye.