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Hey. If you're a newbie to Leading Saints, it's important that you know what is this Leading Saints thing. Well, Leading Saints is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Latter day Saints be better prepared to lead. And the way we do that is through content creation. So we have this phenomenal podcast. We have a newsletter. We have virtual conferences, so much more. And articles on our website. I mean, I could go on and on.
Right? And we encourage you to, jump in, check out Leading Saints, go to the search bar at leading saints.org, and type in some topics and see what pops up. We're just glad you're here to join us. Hey there. I got another book for you to read. It's called Igniting the Holy Flame, Building Communities of Love from the Ashes of Negative Religious Culture. And it's by my good friend, Steve Hitz, who has been on the
podcast a few times. And this book came from, as he as he'll talk about in this interview, and you're about to hear with Steve Hitz, just from tragedy from his life, a beautiful, lovely son that he had in his life, died by suicide. And that led Steve on this path of really contemplating his son's journey in religion and faith and, how we can maybe create a space, a community as his as his subtitle says, building communities of love from
the ashes of negative religious culture. And you know me, anytime somebody is talking about religious culture, I'm in trade and would love to hear perspectives of around that because it's super important as we lead organizations to contemplate the culture we're building. You know, the doctrine's important. Like I often say, culture eats doctrine for breakfast. If we don't have positive culture, we can't get people to the doctrine, unfortunately, no matter how powerful that doctrine is,
which we all know is extremely powerful. So fun discussion. I just love learning from Steve, his perspective, And so you're about to do that with me. And, I think you'll enjoy this as we explore his thoughts on his recent book, Igniting the Holy Flame. So here we go. Alright. I'd love to welcome back Steve Hitz to the podcast. It's nice to be here. Thanks for For sure. I always appreciate your insight. I think we've done a handful of
other interviews. 1 about an organization you started with it, which isn't the topic of this of this conversation, if at least generally, but and that is, you started the organization launching leaders that has worked closely with BYU and the church and things like that. Is there any update you wanna give us on how that's going? Or Yes. And to be humble about it, I'm one of 4 founders. Nice. And it has,
been a great blessing to many. Right now, it's, an update would be it's in over a 100 countries now in 6 languages, all online. We're about to launch a new entrepreneurial segment here in a couple weeks for those who have the itch after going through launching leaders. And it continues to be a great blessing for those who want to, create a future that's aligned with faith. Nice.
Well, thanks thanks for your support there. And And for those who may not be familiar with the general vision of the organization, how how do you describe that to people? So I I believe it's best said that Launching Leaders provides a platform that combines values with faith and progress in a way that that the participant decides it to go. In other words, it's not a hierarchical class with gray haired, folks giving lectures to
the youth. It's the young adults gathering all over the world in their own groups facilitating the course themselves and getting the answers themselves from the materials and truly creating their future that way. I mean, it's it was kind of like a, a prequel of teaching in the savior's way, you know, where we followed those patterns and expanded them in a way that really fits the topics that we that we address. So right now there's about, I don't know, 5,000 participants in those 100 countries.
It's also used in a lot of, institutes in the world. We kinda go hand in hand in some areas with the self reliance program. And those are LDS institutes, right? Not just general institutes. Right? Yeah. Yeah. And we also partner with folks, quite a few folks in the interfaith world as well, which is a That's awesome. A beautiful thing. Yep. Well, awesome. And, is it just launchingleaders.org if people wanna learn more about it or get the book and all that? Llworldwide Okay. That's right. Dotorg.
Llworldwide.org can learn all about it. Awesome. I love the organization. And and recently this you're always, you're a man, like, I I guess after my own heart that's always, processing perspectives and leadership principles and things related to culture. And that led to a recent book that you wrote. I have here igniting the holy flame, building communities of love from the ashes of negative religious culture. So what is the what's the story behind
this book? That's a good question. Let me start with just a couple of, stats that I know you're familiar with. And in fact, these statistics continue to get worse. But, you know, there are only about 20% of Americans that attend church every week. Over 26% seldom attend church, or 35% never attend at all. And in our own faith, about 75% of young adults step away by the age of 30. Not saying they don't come back.
They just they park their faith. Yeah. And about 90% of converts worldwide stop attending after 3 years. And what I wanted to try to figure out and if why this is and are there answers to these, you know, kinds of challenges? And I know that a lot of people are writing books and have written books concerning these things. I know you've written an excellent book yourself, is God disappointed in me, which I really enjoyed. Thank you. And I think there are answers.
And so as I pondered this, and this has been a three and a half year project, I really felt called, called by God to share some things and write some things regarding this. And I say that because as you know, sometimes after you've written a book, you go back through it yourself and you tell, well, where did that come from? Yeah, for sure. And I think If you wanna learn about a subject, try writing about it and, you learn all sorts of things that did not come from your own brain.
Exactly. So what you find is that yes, the Holy Spirit does guide us. And so I felt called upon to write this book. And I also had an experience where, as you know, several years ago, our family lost, our second oldest son to suicide. And so of course that caused a lot of contemplation in our family and a lot of things changed, a lot of things actually spiritually for the better in the the way we look at religion and spiritual things.
But Skyner and I had a very open conversation, and he he was a very fine, bright, brilliant man, had a beautiful wife. But he was perplexed by some things he had questions about regarding, you know, truth claims and things like this. So he and I had a very open conversation about these questions in a very positive way. And so he would want me to do some research on a topic and I would, and we went back and forth.
He found, however, within the faith outside of his dad, that there's a lot of pushback to his questions. You know, maybe questions like, well, maybe he wasn't worthy. What's going on in his life that he would, you know, question some of these things. I mean, he served a very faithful mission, and he was a very good boy. But he didn't get the opportunity to express without judgment some of these things. And so I
got to pondering that a lot. And I thought, you know, I think that this is probably the case with many of the folks who are parking their faith, becoming spiritual, but not religious, you know, not affiliating themselves anymore with a particular church yes, they're not feeling the openness, the authenticity, and the love that should accompany these kinds of questions. And so I began
this process of writing the book. Yeah. And, you know, in the subtitle you mentioned the the ashes of negative religious culture. And for the listener, you didn't write this. This isn't like a Latter day Saint focused book. It's a general, just would you say Christianity book, right? Yeah. It's not Latter day Saint focused. And in fact, to make a clear point that, you know, these are not the, this isn't endorsed or or blessed by the hierarchy of the church. Oh, we know that we know that Well,
I hope the concepts are. Yeah. What I'm saying is is that, you know, this is my own this is my own version. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And you mentioned this, you know, the religious culture. I'm just curious, like how you would frame that because we sort of throw that word around a lot, culture, and maybe people, they don't know how to how to frame it personally for themselves. So how do you come at it as far as defining what culture is in a religious context?
Yeah. And I did want to mention this, you know, having lost the son, I really felt like he was really looking over my shoulder as I wrote this book and they were having these conversations just as if he were alive sitting here. Yeah. And so the dedication I did put in the book was to we called him Bear, was to Bear.
And I I said, Bear, may your work as a culture buster beyond the veil, heal many souls and may this feeble effort by your father also a faithful heretic, inspire the same healing on the side of the veil. So that's our intent. Nice. Now you ask about religious culture because, you know, you do you you're right. It's thrown around a lot. And what does that mean? And what can we you know, what's the good? What's the bad?
So in this book, I isolate 2 things, fabricated fellowship and another term harmful religiosity. And what I say about fabricated fellowship is it occurs when people connect with each other solely out of sense of duty, obligation, a desire to complete an assignment rather than love, care, and genuine friendship. Generally lacks depth. Sometimes it's just a part of organizational
structures and culture. When I talk about harmful religiosity, I'm talking about a negative religious cultures that are fixated on rules and policies, conformity, obedience, and merely for the sake of being obedient. And I think harmful religiosity, it often creates feelings of shame, which you've written a lot about, guilt, fear, not belonging when members or anyone fail to live up to all the rules as part of their religion or religious organization.
So I've separated those two things throughout the book. And at the end of each chapter, I have a summary where we can talk about how did this speak to fabricated fellowship? How did this speak to harmful religiosity? All of that, of course, part of culture and what is actually authentic fellowship, which I think is the cure, the antidote to all of most all of this. Yeah. And this is sometimes just tricky,
right? Because, obviously we have huge respect for our ordinances and our traditions and the way we do things. And of course, that's part of running a healthy organization or church, but it's sometimes we get trapped in the sort of we're serving the organization rather than the organization serving us. You know, we're not trying to get the organization's salvation established, but we're trying to hopefully gain and receive salvation through Jesus Christ from the organization.
Right? That's absolutely right. And I believe that. And so, you know, so I should I guess I should mention that, yes, I'm a faithful card carrying member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Yeah. And I believe in the gospel and everything that the Lord taught us. So my book is not written as an apologetic
type of member. It's strictly written out of a love that I think we can improve our worshipful experience and overcome some of these things that are sometimes tragedies in people's lives that they never bounce back from. Yeah. Anything else as far as just the concept of culture or introducing the intent of the book that you wanna
make sure we hit on? Yeah. And I've heard it said even, you know, even on some of the things that you've mentioned in your podcast or website that culture and, you know, and love it in judgment. You know? It's not as simple as just judging less and loving more. And there's some truth to that, but there's also some truth that that's a big part of what we want to focus on is less judgment and more love. And I think some of those things are centered in some of the
scriptures that we have. Like, I don't know, are you familiar with Moroni chapter 6 verse 9? Probably. I left it off my head. So so in this scripture, Kurt, it says, this is Moroni speaking, And their meetings were conducted by the church after the manner of the workings of the spirit. And by the power of the holy spirit, whereas the power of the holy ghost led them whether to preach or to exhort or to pray or to supplicate or to
sing even so it was done. Well, I think that's a and, the doctrine and covenants has a similar scripture in it, but I think that's a beautiful way to think about how meetings, you know, could be less customized or maybe less, you know, agenda driven. Makes sense? Yeah. That's the concept of the the component of the Holy Ghost. Right? That you would assume that if Holy Ghost was involved in the meeting, there's maybe some spontaneity in
it. You know, not dramatic or anything, but, you know, we're kinda going with the flow here to figure out what does this meeting need for us, you know? Exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's my hope is that in a lot of the things that we do within the framework of the church, I think we can have a more generous, merciful, and gentle, and graceful approach, right Yeah. To, all the participants in this worshipful experience.
Yeah. It's really good. Now take us to this concept of orthodoxy, because you talk about the tight fisted orthodoxy versus open hand orthodoxy, because then, our human nature is that we crave that structure or especially in a lay ministry where we're put in charge. Sometimes we don't wanna mess up. We don't wanna do it wrong. So what the last guy do or what's the handbook say or, you know, just give me the 5 step plan. I'll do
it. I'm not, you know, trying to go off the, you know, off the path here. So maybe expound on that orthodoxy because sometimes that orthodoxy would be a warm blanket to the lay leaders because it's like, okay, we gotta fit everything in this box and that's what we're gonna do. Exactly right. Well, and I learned this concept actually in what I will call a generous orthodoxy, which would be a open fist orthodoxy, and then a strict orthodoxy, which is a
closed fist kind of an orthodoxy. And And, of course, the closed fist is that's just the way it is. That's the way it's always been done. Whether it makes sense or not, we're doing it. That is the orthodoxy. An example I give in a book that I learned from my I have a rabbi friend. We actually gather every couple of weeks. He's my I don't know how many LDS folks have a rabbi, but I have a rabbi. We share Well, he has a great respect for the LDS faith. We share a lot
of things. And he said in a synagogue, you know, they take the Torah and they, they parade, you know, around the outside of the it's inside, but they parade around the outside. And this old synagogue had been damaged in the past. And the roof line, at one certain point, came down at several feet
and then came back up. And so as they paraded, you know, the Torah around it, when they got to that spot, they kinda knelt down and low crouched it and kept carrying the Torah and then back up, they would come to finish their circle. He said that that became the, the, culture that couldn't be broken. After they fixed the roof, they continued to bow down and crouch in that same spot as separated Torah around the synagogue. It never changed.
That was closed fisted, I guess. But the open part, I think is what I think is the beautiful part of generous orthodoxy. An example of this that I put in the book is actually from my friend. So Bob, Robert Millett, when he was a stake president in Florida, and he puts this in his book, Are We There Yet? He has an experience where, you know, in our faith, there are certain parameters that we have to live by to enter the temple and to be married in the temple, right?
And this couple apparently had crossed the line a little bit. And, and so they wondered if they needed to, you know, to cancel or postpone their temple ceiling. They were very contrite and the Bishop talked with them. And so I, I don't think there's any reason to wait, but he talked to his stake president. And it's like, well, you you know what the handbook says, you know, I have to wait. And so the story goes is that Robert was the stake president, and so he agreed to meet with this
couple. And he was so and they prayed together, and they were so overcome with the spirit and, you know, and their obedience and their contrition. And the spirit clearly said, don't delay, go to the temple. And in the words that he puts in his book, and he said, though there were no words spoken to me, it was as though God said, you listen to me. This is my church and these are my children. I alone know the hearts of men and
women. If you are to represent me, you had better humble yourselves, open yourself to my guidance, and avoid trying to lead the people from some preconceived notion you have. The last word he put in his book from the spirit to him was repent. Yep. Yeah. Well, sometimes that happens, you know, there's a policy and, of course, we have them for a reason and and they're they're supposed to be guidelines.
Sometimes I think the Holy Spirit, who is a member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, can and ought to trump some of those hard, you know, closed fisted orthodox rules. Yeah. Yeah. And and again, we're still recognizing the the framework, the orthodoxy that's there, but
there's a lot of wiggle room there. And to, to me, our, our theology is so profound with this concept of priesthood keys, you know, as some leaders have, or, you know, the inspiration to follow the Holy Ghost and make those customized decisions. And you oftentimes have the authority to do so. And even if you don't, you know, maybe some of these decisions require a letter to the to the office of the first presidency or things like you will you can
write that letter. You can see, you know, the worst thing to say is no or or go a different direction. And and, but I think it's it's an option. Right? Yeah. And so I use some examples in the book, and I'm not and I'm very clear to say that, you know, all situations could be different, you know, in in these kinds of, evaluations. And I think in all cases, of course, we need to follow the the keys and honor our prophets have have instructed us to do.
Right? That goes without saying. But still, what I hear from president Nelson when he asks us to hear him and, you know, all the different things that he's taught us over the last few years, and this is personal, I think he leans heavy towards mercy and grace and unless of a closed fisted type of orthodoxy. That's just that's just my feeling. And I think that's what the Lord's trying to teach
us. You'll find throughout the book parables and things that the savior actually said that we can use as guides in all of these cases. I think that's where we really wanna focus is on exactly what the savior said. So without going into great detail, you can read them in the book. But for example, we're all prodigal sons or daughters. Right? We all make mistakes. We'll make our path to return home.
In the prodigal son case, I think it's very interesting that, you know, when he came back, his father didn't say, you know what, son? I'm so glad you're back home. In about 6 months, I think you're gonna be worthy to come inside and have a feast with us. Yeah. There's none of that. No waiting. Just love. You know, just embrace. And and I think that's the concept that I love. The same with the, you know, the parable of the wheat and the tares. I mean, we grow up with with those darnel weeds.
We might be a darnel weed from time to time, trying to grow up with the the wheat and the kernels, but we look the same. But in that parable, the lord was very clear that he's the only one that can separate the harvest. He's the only one that can make the judgment. He and the angels as the parable says. My thought is is that as long as there's a a lure and a wheat field, even if it's polluted with darnel weeds, there can be a change at any moment at any time.
We're not to judge as humans. You know? And there's a lot of that that goes on in every faith. You know? And this book was endorsed by, you know, Evangelicus. I I spent a lot of time in the interfaith world and have evangelical friends and Catholic priests and the Jewish rabbis and so forth. And they all chimed in to endorse the book because it speaks also to their language and the things that they're trying to do in in creating a positive worshipful experience. Yeah.
Anything else around the concept of orthodoxy? I think there's a lot of leaders out there who, you know, we just wanna be good soldiers. Right? We wanna, we wanna follow the rules and do all those things. And sometimes the application of these principles you're talking about is, is trickier, you know, because oftentimes we can make decisions that from authorities above us, looks like the wrong decision or what are you doing? Like, just follow the program and then you kind of
get in trouble. Right? And it leads to conversations that need to be had as far as describing why you've gone this way or that way. But anything else around this concept of open or closed hand orthodoxy or do we cover pretty well? No. I think the book will cover it well. I mean, you talked about something even today in, some of your writings, you know, in the newsletter that okay. You know, you had the example of a bishop who had some exciting things
to do in his word. They were probably not orthodox, but they would move his word forward. And so then he took it to the stake and the stake president or stake presidency. So, oh, no, that's breaking the mold. We can't do that. And yet you talk about, what a great leader would do is to have a honest, authentic conversation with that leader, you know, so that the hearts could be known and the holy spirit could direct them both together. And maybe what the bishop proposed needs to be toned back a
bit. You know, maybe the state president goes, well, I get it now. Let's do it. And I thought about the time that I was actually a YSA Bishop, and and I think back upon those times. And we did some very crazy out of the box things in our little ward that I mean, really unorthodox, but moved the ward forward. And my stake president, bless his heart, never even questioned that. He just figured you have the keys. You're not leading them astray. Yep. Where do you wanna go next? Should we talk about,
this concept of fabricated fellowship? You've mentioned a little bit already, but anything else we missed there? Well, maybe just briefly. My wife, Ginger, and I were were contemplating the other day when the last time we actually had a ministering visit. And, of course, that's a beautiful program that was established to create a holier experience that would be better than what home teaching used to be. Right? And maybe it's just us, but we haven't had a visit for
15 years or more. And yet we know we've been assigned, and we love the, you know, the brothers that have been assigned, but they've never, you know, come in they've never graced our home at all. Is it a duty? You know? Where does that duty and love begin in that experience? Yeah. And I don't I don't have all the answers. I I just I just feel like that's something that we can programs are only there for us to invoke the love of the Lord to each other. Right?
Yeah. That's what the hope is in this book is to find ways to do that. Yeah. And I think that, you know, these programs and we have a lot of them in the church. Right? Whether it's, you know, come follow me or the self reliance or the the ministering where these are vehicles to hopefully get to that place of of love, of community,
of a place that's stimulating naturally. Like, the the the system is working to shepherd people towards Christ, shepherd people towards the temple, to make higher covenants with him, and, you know, to hopefully find deeper meaning, deeper relationship with God. And, you know, that's sort of the the game plan. Right? But sometimes these vehicles, we, maybe there's a season where we don't need them. There's season where we do. And it's sometimes hard to, it's easier just to generally say, this is
what we're doing. This is the program. Just go visit your family. And I think that'll work. And sometimes it can be fabric it feels more fabricated than not. Right? And this is where the leadership can really step in and say, okay. Like, I see what's going on. Maybe we can adjust this here and there. And actually, we can ignore that part for a while because we don't need that part, just the nature of our ward or how we're set up or, you know, whatever it is, and move move forward.
Yeah. That's the idea. And that's the love that should be in invoked in those processes. Yeah. Yeah. I hope if my ministers are watching this podcast, I you know, forgive me. I love you anyway. That's right. Awesome. So, Steve, let's move into maybe some now what's or, you know, some solutions. Obviously, people should check out the book. A lot of these concepts are hard to, you know, cram into just an hour discussion or so, and and walk away with like, oh, I get it, and I know exactly what to
do. But hopefully these are things that, whether they read their book or not, people can sit with these concepts, explore them, be prayerful about their approach, and how they see orthodoxy, and how it functions, and culture in their ward. But move us toward this concept as far as authentic fellowship. What does that look like? Or what are some concepts that we can think about to actually move forward with the principles of your book? So and I think
that is the solution. I, I think that's the antidote to all of this, is the authentic fellowship. Do you know what the number one epidemic in the world is? The last, well, two and a half years at least. Is it, loneliness? Right? It's loneliness. Yeah. Yeah. And everybody experiences some of that, particularly the young adult and along those with that anxiety and depression and so many of the maladies that even suicide ideation. And so how do you overcome that kind of a thing?
You know, it's almost always that they need a friend who they believe is an authentic friend who really cares about them, and they're not just assigned to be their friend. And I think that that's I think we can learn some things about how to be, more authentic in our relationships. Of course, it begins by being authentic yourself.
So we spend an entire chapter on developing your true identity and knowing really who you are and whose you are so that you can reach out, you know, and so you can because as president Nelson says, and hear him and listen to the holy spirit and then reach out. I have a a neighbor who his prayer every morning is, lord, you know, guide my feet in a way that will walk the path that you would put someone in it that I can know and bless. Has nothing to do with word boundaries.
He lives here in Cedar and works as an attorney in Saint George, but there's probably not a week goes by that he doesn't have an experience that he shares with me about picking up a homeless man, putting him to work, not just for one time, but staying in touch with that person for months months months and just loving them. And he doesn't do it with an agenda. He just does it because of love. I learned a great lesson.
This isn't in the book, but I learned a great lesson about that kind of authenticity from a older gentleman in New Zealand. And we'd given a presentation there, and he came up after, and he said, you know, I used to I used to feel guilty that I wasn't sharing specifically the gospel with all of my clients. He was a mechanic, but he didn't talk specifically about the gospel. He just lived it. And he felt kind
of guilty at some point. Maybe some lesson was given where they asked, you know, how many book of Mormons did you pass out this week or something. He said, and I prayed about it, and I had a vision. And I don't know how well you know the Maori people. When they say they've had a vision, you lean in. Yeah. Yes. They had a vision. Right. And he said an angel appeared to
him. I don't know who it was. He said, look, because you're living the gospel, all these people, all these clients, you know, so many of them that don't have Christ in their lives, there'll be a point in time in this life or the next where they will come to you and you can worship together because they will have known your love and know that that's the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's what I'm talking about in authentic fellowship. Yeah. Don't just know the gospel.
Live it. You know, just just live it. Just live it out of love. You know, if someone shows up in church, you know, in, Utah wearing sandals, don't pull them aside and talk to them about maybe what proper, clothing is to wear at church. Just celebrate that they're there. Yeah. There's so many stories that you and I could both share regarding those types of things where there's a little bit of judgment because that's how we were taught. And all of a sudden, those folks aren't coming,
You know? Yeah. Part of it is celebrating celebrating people where they're at. In this area, there was a young woman who was baptized, and she was kind of clairvoyant. She had her own visions and things. And so she she felt like she should join the church. And so after she joined, she was trying to share some of these things, you know, but she was like, well, you can't have a revelation like that. That's like out of your sphere of what you're you know, supposed to be
getting revelation on. And she kind of kept bumping up against some of those things instead of people just celebrating and leaning in and say, well, tell me about that. You know? I don't wanna know more. I wanna know what that felt like. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to pronounce her a prophet or say that, you know, these, you know, just say, wow. You know, tell me more. Right? That's
a powerful phrase. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And so without judgment, you know, there's a there's a story I do include in the book about I've studied quite a bit of in the gnostic gospels. You know, they haven't been through they haven't been through a dozen or a 100 translations, the Gnostic gospels. And yet, you know, the things that are written there are quite sacred. And the story goes that that Mary, you know, she had a very close relationship with Jesus. And so she goes to Peter and say,
hey. I've had these experiences, but it was sort of like the hierarchy is like, well but they didn't come to to me or John, you know, so I'm not sure that that they're really valid until she convinced them that she actually knew Christ as well or better than they did, and they say, okay. Fine. We'll let that be in in our canon of scripture. I mean, those those are things that we we can do better. We can have a whole more holistic religious experience.
I wanted to kind of end by why it's titled the way it is, you know, igniting the holy flame. In Leviticus, there's a scripture that says the fire on the altar must be kept burning, must not go out. The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously. It must not go out. And so in this time, they kept the fire alive on the altar for sanctification and and to keep that religious experience alive, and they never let it go out. And so the fight is is that let's focus on
the gospel. Let's focus on what Jesus taught us. Let's focus on the love that he shared and that we feel from him. Let's focus on mercy and grace. Yes. We have to be obedient. We need to do the things that are part of our, you know, our corporate structure or our church as revealed by, you know, prophet, serious, and revelators. But we can do all of that in a more holistic way that will fill the spirit. And the whole intent of this book is to allow people to feel that it's okay to question.
It's okay, you know, to find better ways to worship within our even our own faith that are more filled with love and stay in the boat. I want that to be clear. My intent is for everyone to stay in the boat. You know? Even if we don't feel like rowing at the time. Maybe if there's only 1 person rowing and we're going in circles, let's stay in the boat. Together, we're gonna get to the shore and experience what we ought to. Let's stay in the boat.
Love it. Yeah. The the the book's been out there and you've had various people reading and engaging with some of these principles, like, what are you seeing? What feedback are you getting from people as they contemplate the different chapters and try and apply them? Not selfishly. I have to say that they've been touched by the spirit, and has really affected their lives in a positive way.
I've heard feedback from, well, for example, a lady in her late seventies, you know, said it was one of the best books she's ever read and allowed her to realize that there could be a higher form of worship without going against or questioning any of her leadership. But she could live a she could live a life that way. Some of the young people that have read the book, it's literally kept them from jumping out of the boat. It's allowed them to say, hey. You know
what? The church itself isn't perfect nor are the people in it. But the gospel is true, and what Jesus taught is true. And I can make a difference for good without judgment. And I'm gonna stay here and live that life. Well, Steve, is there any obviously, is Amazon's the place to go? Is that, it's available on on various formats via Amazon? Is that Yes. Amazon is, where the book is available, and it's also available, of course, in the audio. It's on lots of platforms of the audio
version. Oh, cool. And will be on the, Amazon platform within a week. So you can get the the book itself, which, you know, I'm one of the old school people that like to actually read the the paper book. Yep. Yeah. A lot of people like to listen to them, and and there's also an electronic version. So it's it's available in all those platforms.
Awesome. Yeah. One one gentleman in his, late forties who's going through some challenges in his life, you know, some marital challenges and work challenges, challenges of life. And he was just really contemplating on what his next steps were. I would even say that he's been, suffering from some suicide ideation.
And he read the book, and he read into it one night, read the whole thing in a night, and said, Steve, this has changed my life, the way I think, the way I'm looking at things, and these words have literally saved my life. And he's a dear friend of mine and I didn't know he was suffering to that extent.
And so he kind of read it, I think at first out of a, you know, friendship was I asked him to read it, But those are the types of folks that we need to reach out to, and they can they can be embraced by this book and feel the love of God and the Lord through it in a very fine way. That's my belief. Now that we've reached the end of the episode, I quickly wanna thank you for supporting the Leading Saints podcast. There's so much content out there to consider
and you picked this one. If Leading Saints has made an impact in your life, we would sure like to hear about it at leading saints.org/contact. And if you could quickly text or email this episode to a leader, you know, I bet it will bless their life. You can mark off your good turn daily and let's even call it ministering. Okay. Maybe not that far. But seriously, thank you and help us share this content.
Remember, the Jodie Moore presentation about youth and mental health is waiting for you at leading saints.org/ 14. It came as a result of the position of leadership which was imposed upon us by the God of heaven who brought forth a restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When the declaration was made concerning the own and only true and living church upon the face of the earth, we were immediately put in a position of loneliness, the loneliness of leadership from which we cannot shrink nor run away, and to which we must face up with boldness and courage and ability.