Hello and welcome to my first Mormon themed screencast entitled Why People Leave the LDS Church and what family, friends and community can do about it.

My name is John Delin just to tell you a little bit about me. I'm a fifth or sixth generation Mormon. I'm a descendant or relative of Ezra T. Benson, which also means I'm a distant cousin of Ezra T. Benson.

I'm also Samuel Rose Parkinson, the Pean My Middle Initial, stands for Parkinson. I'm a lifelong member of the church, 36 years old. I'm still quite active in the church.

I served a mission in Guatemala and also four months in Arizona, full mission, was a zone leader there in both missions.

I was married in the Washington DC Temple. I'm married with four children. I'm currently serving as Elderscorm instructor in my ward here in North Logan in Utah.

I'm also a former early morning seminary instructor. I just felt like it was important to begin this presentation by letting you know that this presentation doesn't come from an anti-mormon and an ex-mormon, someone who's got it out against the church.

Some of you might even accuse me of being a wolf in sheep's clothing, but I just want to state on the record that I'm a devoted active member of the church committed to making the church a better place and to doing my part within it, and I wanted to sort of get that out in front.

Now, every year thousands of devout members of the LDS church leave it or go in active.

And you might want to think that these are just, you know, maybe converts that quickly fall in active, but the truth is many of the people I know are like me, fifth or sixth generation Mormons.

They descend from prominent church leaders, including Bremenoing and Joseph Smith. Many of them are return missionaries who've been married to Temple, who have large families.

That's sort of the profile of many of the people that are leaving the church each year, especially when they leave due to historical or doctrinal issues.

A recent Salt Lake Tribune article highlighted very publicly what's been known in sort of the circles I've been running in for quite some time, which is that, you know, basically two-thirds of the church is inactive.

So, you know, there are four to five million active members of the church, but there are seven to eight million inactive. In fact, they say that the third of the church, they don't even know where the people are.

These people don't call themselves Mormons. They were baptized and immediately fell away. And so, we're really looking at it only sort of a third to maybe, you know, two-fifths of the church membership actually being active in the church.

So, you know, this is something very important to keep in mind. Inactivity, there are more inactive Mormons and active Mormons, both in and outside of Utah.

It's very easy to throw labels on these people who will fall in a way to say that they're sinners, that they must have some sin they want to, you know, they just want to drink alcohol or have illicit sex or dig drugs or whatever.

It's very easy to say that these people are just weak, you know. You know, maybe they weren't as dying in the pre-existence. It's easy to say that they've, you know, they stop going to the temple or they stop reading the scriptures and that's why they fell away.

Or you can just blame it on the internet and say, oh, that dang internet or anti-Mormon literature, they're litterature, they stumbled upon that and now they've left.

But the truth is those are cop-outs in many instances. Sometimes they may be true, but in many, many instances that I've come across, these are not what's at the core of why many people are leaving the church.

And in fact, to those who have serious issues with the church, these assumptions are highly, highly insulting. If they're the ones that often seem to be offered most often as reasons or justifications or attempts to explain why people leave.

So now I'd like to sort of take a moment to answer the question, why would anyone leave the elious church?

If you really want to help them or love them or be their friend or treat them in a Christ-like way, you must know what they're thinking and feeling.

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