Imagine for a moment that you’re married and came across an exchange on social media where a friend of your spouse was boasting about a major intervention they spearheaded that—unbeknownst to you—had helped your partner of many years “stay with that difficult person.”
Would finding that out—that your partner has needed ongoing assistance to be able to “stay with you”—be gratifying to you? Would you come away from the discovery feeling reassured and excited?
Of course, you wouldn’t. Because ‘til that point, you probably assumed your spouse had actually wanted to stay with you—and maybe even enjoyed it—independent from any active assistance.
But now you know the truth: that companion of so many years has not only been relying upon extra support but also requiring it … just to be able to endure life-with-you.
Well, shoot! How did you miss that? And when exactly did your relationship start to hurt so badly?
If this imagined marital relationship had been all you had ever hoped and imagined it to be, it’s fair to say there would have been no need for additional outside intervention to nurse along your spouse’s desire to stay. Right?
This is what I think about every time I hear someone else declare on social media that they are working to “keep people in the Church” and “help them stay.”
Hmmmm, okay. That’s good … I guess? I can see why anyone could be encouraged by that. On the face, it seems clearly positive—at least compared with dishearteningly obvious efforts to undermine faith or simply watching someone’s faith fall apart.
Yet, like the marriage analogy, I still find myself wondering what’s missing in those strained relationships with the Church of Jesus Christ that require so much outside help. Because again, the idea that someone needs this or that Influencer’s singular guidance in order to save their relationship with the Body of Christ, well … it begs some bigger questions about what’s actually going on with that faith connection in the first place.
Hope, healing, and humility
There’s a lot to talk about here. I’ve written in the past about seeing faith ruptures through a lens of “attachment injury” (which takes for granted the likelihood of healing) rather than the more common language of a “faith crisis” (which implies a kind of inescapable emergency that justifies any number of ways to allay personal discomfort, including straight up “faith transition”).
Over the last couple of months, I’ve also had a chance to report on patterns across a growing number of people healing some kind of rupture with the Church—be that over questions about sexuality, church history, or an addiction consuming their lives. In each case, these individuals experienced something new in their life from God and took small steps, moment by moment, back into sweet (not angsty) communion with fellow believers.
Given all the many ways our precious faith can be affected by a darkening world around us, it’s clear there will always be a crucial need for this kind of fellowship and ministry among believers—what Paul called “lifting up the hands that hang down.” Since 2018, President Russell Nelson has underscored how central this kind of ministering is within the Church of Christ.
None of what I’m raising here is to deny that. But when someone is flailing in their faith, how can any of us really be sure that we—our voice, our arguments, our “brand”—are the inspired remedy for what’s truly ailing people?
“The things of God are of deep import, and time and experience and careful and ponderous and solemn thoughts can only find them out,” Joseph Smith wrote after five cold months in the dungeon of Liberty Jail.
“Thy mind,” he continued, “if thou wilt lead a soul unto salvation, must stretch as high as the utmost Heavens, and search into and contemplate the lowest considerations of the darkest abyss, and expand upon the broad considerations of eternal expanse.” Resist audience appreciation as a marker of truth
A profound level of humility is a prerequisite for anyone seeking to draw (and keep) people close to Christ and the Church that bears His name. All the marketing budget, charisma, and cultural cache in the world won’t be enough without that.
A few honest questions for faith influencers
In my view, insisting that people need some major, intensive help from external sources in order to “stay in the Church” can come across as a veiled criticism that there is something fundamentally wrong, not just in someone’s relationship-to-the-Church, but with the Church itself.
For me, at least, this is what hangs unspoken in the air with another online insistence on how well someone is doing with “keeping people in the Church.”
As John Dehlin used to do. And many Latter-day Saint influencers are wont to say today.
To any who might find themselves declaring the same thing—“Hey, I’m doing critical work helping people stay in the Church”—I would pose a few sincere questions, starting with:
(1) What does that actually mean—that you’re helping people “stay in the Church”?
(2) Also, why is it that people need to hear from you personally in order to be reassured about the Church of Christ?
(3) If you are clearly helping people stay in the Church, wouldn’t that be obvious? Would there really be any reason for onlookers to wonder and be concerned if the positive fruits of your work were that evident?
(4) If, in fact, continuing concerns exist about the content you’re creating, should any of that give you momentary pause and make you wonder what you are actually accomplishing?
One reason many influencers insist they’re doing so much great good—even in the face of sincere questions and concerns from other members—is because they are deluged by hearts, rainbows, and emotive thank-you notes from their many “followers” online.
This phenomenon of being mentally and emotionally captivated by one’s audience is so pervasive it even has an official name: “audience capture.”
“It can become all too easy for creatives of all kinds to become ensnared in a feedback loop with their audiences,” writes Dr. Matt Johnson—hinting at a kind of blindness that can set in when content creators take validation from their True Fans as the most reliable marker of truth, while dismissing honest questions and concerns raised by others as less valid.
All of which leads to three more questions:
(5) What if those raising concerns are actually right about your work, at least in part? If so, what could be gained from taking these questions more seriously?
(6) How focused are you on the long-term impact of your work, compared with short-term expressions from people reading, listening to, or watching your content? Given the history of people who once claimed to do great good for people ultimately undermining faith in the long term, how can you be sure you’re not doing the same?
(7) In your work trying to support people who may be grappling with their faith in the Church and prophets, how much are you helping them return to that faith, compared with inadvertently providing an alternative to the covenant path?
If you are, in any way, creating an alternative way of thinking and living—one that is distinct from the path prophets are encouraging—please, please think again and resist audience appreciation as a marker of truth.
Even if—get this—people are thanking you effusively for “helping you stay.” Like your spouse barely-convinced to stay a few more weeks, this may or may not be a great sign.
Some historical caution
My friend Dan Ellsworth has been writing and speaking about some of the overlooked blind spots in what’s been called the “seeker-sensitive church”—a protestant movement in the 1970s that provided coffee and doughnuts, pyrotechnics, and hipster Christian rock services in hopes of keeping young people involved in the faith. Good intentions notwithstanding, the effort famously failed to promote deeper religious conversion among its audience. To understand why, Dan cites the following fascinating observation from one pastor’s deeper dive on the topic:
I honestly don’t recall a single true success story from the entire 5 years that I spent inside the seeker church movement. I don’t remember encountering anyone who had been previously unchurched, who came to one of our accessible and relevant Sunday services, who became a true follower of Jesus Christ, who transitioned into a supportive Small Group, and who then became a multiplying and ministering disciple. I do, however, remember meeting lots of previously churched people who had left their more traditional church fellowships because we had better music, lower expectations, and shorter services. In my experience, the seeker movement was less of a front door and more of a backdoor. It was a soft landing for nominal Christians on their way out of the evangelical church.
The uncomfortable possibility being raised here is whether the “helping people stay in the Church” project could—at times, almost always unintentionally—be a way of obscuring something unfortunate, even tragic, taking place.
Even with all the best intentions, could pleasant-sounding rhetoric around “keeping people in the Church” sometimes distract from an inadvertent validation taking place for faith relationships that have become cynical, jaded, and more or less empty and hollow … perhaps simply running on fumes (and needing a great deal more than mere validation)?
A deeper diagnosis
In the modern vernacular, these kinds of challenging faith experiences are most often characterized using therapeutic language like “your needs aren’t being met.” But scriptural vernacular points to a deeper solution in the way it portrays these same important personal struggles.
Instead of drawing so much attention to a presumed failure of the Church itself to fulfill needs and passions, a more ancient framing would inquire a bit more into the other side of the equation. The prophet-poet Isaiah channeled the Lord’s concerns about a people who “draw nigh unto me with their mouth and lips, but their heart is far from me.”
Why? Because these believers had embraced popular “precepts” or “commandments of men” as “doctrine”—teaching people they were one and the same.
This was the same verse Moroni referenced and elaborated on for the young Joseph Smith, cautioning him against organizations’ tendency to have “a form of godliness, but they deny the power thereof.”
Is your favorite Latter-day Saint influencer hesitant to say anything definitive about porn or extra-marital sex? Are they squeamish about the clear prophetic emphasis on marriage and family? Are references to covenants, ordinances, and temples secondary in their content, more of an aside or afterthought?
Then, pay attention.
Drawn away from repentance
Maybe you’re starting to see the real danger I’m highlighting here—that in repeating to ourselves, “My, how wonderful that we’re helping people stay in the Church,” we may be inadvertently distracting from something else taking place. Jesus Christ is the One anointed and authorized to succor us all in salvatory ways.
All of which leave people soothed, assured, and validated … in the very moment they are starving inside spiritually. And primarily needing one thing and one thing alone: a whole lot more of the light, truth, and love of the Savior Himself.
Jesus Christ is the One anointed and authorized to succor us all in salvatory ways. And who stands ready to lead us to the learning (revelation) and adjustments of heart and life (repentance) that are prerequisites for real healing to come.
“And I say unto you again that he cannot save them in their sins,” Amulek said, pushing back on a major influencer of his day. “For I cannot deny his word, and he hath said that no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of heaven.”
He’s enough
As long as we’re open to all the Great Physician prescribes, He is enough. He really is.
And there really is a “special kind of rest” and a “special kind of love” available in fully embracing our covenants with Him—something President Nelson has been all but pleading for us on his hands and knees to seek after.
These are blessings available to everyone—no matter how you look, no matter how you feel inside, and no matter how many loud voices insist otherwise.
“Behold, doth he cry unto any, saying: Depart from me? Behold, I say unto you, Nay,” Nephi taught. “But he saith: “Come unto me all ye ends of the earth, buy milk and honey, without money and without price.”
No better podcast or fireside has ever been given to Americans grappling over whether they belong anymore in the true faith of Christ than the questions this mighty prophet asked:
- “Hath [God] commanded any that they should not partake of his salvation? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but he hath given it free for all men; and he hath commanded his people that they should persuade all men to repentance.”
- “Behold, hath the Lord commanded any that they should not partake of his goodness? Behold I say unto you, Nay; but all men are privileged the one like unto the other, and none are forbidden.”
- “He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”
Has he been clear enough yet? Nephi just can’t stop talking about this! “Wherefore, he commandeth none that they shall not partake of his salvation.”
Bottom line: The feast is open to everyone. And if you don’t understand that—really know it for yourself—then keep seeking until you do. In the meanwhile, be careful not to allow your own personal dissatisfaction to become multiplied many times over in the lives you’re trying to reach.
Led into the ditch
You see, many a dissatisfied person—across many charged and contested issues—has decided the solution to their own personal angst is to launch a podcast or Instagram page to “be the change they wish to see” and work towards “systemic” shifts they are convinced need to happen in order to be more comfortable as a member themselves. Be careful not to allow your own personal dissatisfaction to become multiplied.
“Disregard them … ignore them … Let them alone,” Jesus would surely warn us again today—calling these well-intentioned people “blind guides” (“blind leaders of the blind”) and stating clearly, “And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch” or “pit.”
Whatever it takes
Whatever it takes, no matter how long it takes, we all need to find a living, embodied, special, covenantal relationship with the living, embodied Rescuer of men and women everywhere. There is an urgency to doing so (including for those “not feeling it” in the fellowship of His faith for various reasons—including potentially due to past trauma in their families).
As Dan Ellsworth has been saying for years now, “Our goal should not simply be to keep people in the Church. It should be to help them find conversion.”
Yes, let’s keep doing all we can to minister, soothe, and fellowship. But in doing so, let’s do something more than merely helping struggling friends, neighbors, and family stay in an otherwise difficult relationship.
Let’s do what we can to help those around us come to love and relish that relationship—to the point that it would be inconceivable for them to ever want to leave.
And to the point where they’d never really need any extra supplement to stay around for a very long time.
If we do not—and if we instead present another kind of path, similar but distinct from the one outlined plainly by the Lord and His prophets—then let’s be upfront with people about what we’re offering: an alternative spiritual path.
The biggest question
To some, all this might seem a subtle, even subjective distinction I’m making here—but it’s not really small at all: Are you bringing people into a deepening covenantal relationship with God and His people? Or are you doing something else—perhaps bringing them into a deeper relationship with you?
Could you inadvertently be presenting yourself as “the place” or “the community” where people can find their spiritual needs met … finally! (“So nice to find somewhere that gets it.”) Don’t become an alternative to the covenant path.
A place to go if “you’re not finding the connection, support, and answers” that you might have with your plain, ole’ membership—that is, in your covenantal relationship with the body of Christ.
My friends Ty and Jeff, who set up North Star (a gathering of covenant-loving brothers and sisters who experience same-sex attraction), were extremely careful about this—so as to avoid becoming an alternative to church fellowship.
My friends Bill and Zach, Patrick, and Terryl at Faith Matters share the same genuine desire. As Bill told me, “We don’t want to become a movement!”
I believe him. And I know that their team is also working hard to build faith. Yet there’s always a risk of drifting from that wonderful aspiration for any of us trying to influence people online (myself included). And it’s this caution and care—especially when accompanied by the Spirit of discernment—that can help any organization and effort trying to build the Kingdom actually do that.
Instead of building something else. Another option if the Church of Jesus Christ “just isn’t working for you,” let’s not be a soft landing place for people leaving their “first love.”
And let’s not forget that the rebirth Jesus invites us to experience is open to every one of us—if we keep waiting and watching. Praying and trusting. Loving and yielding.
That’s my own witness. Let’s do our best to help our dear brothers and sisters regain their own rich communion and sweet fellowship among us—to happily stay and “go no more out.”
