1131: Jared, Gwen, & Madison Lusk: A Former Mormon Bishop and His Family from New Mexico Face Excommunication for Apostasy Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2019
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Join us now on Mormon Stories Podcast as we interview Jared, Gwen, and Madison Lusk. This episode is a continuation in our series highlight former Mormon bishops and their families who have experienced a faith crisis. Jared is set to be excommunicated on June 30th, 2019 for apostasy (details below).
The Lusks live in Farmington, New Mexico. Jared and Gwen were raised as devout Mormons, married in the Jordan River temple, had 6 children, and established a successful dental practice in Farmington, NM. Jared and Gwen devoted their lives to the Mormon church for 45+ years, including Jared serving as bishop from 2008-2013, and Gwen serving in multiple callings.
Jared’s faith crisis was triggered in 2015 when he began reading the LDS Gospel Topics Essays. Jared and Gwen experienced a mixed faith marriage for a few years. In April of 2018, while being released from a stake calling, Jared shared with his stake president and one of the counselors details regarding his faith crisis. The stake president immediately took Jared’s temple recommend away, and then released Gwen from her calling and took her temple recommend away a few weeks later. Madison (18) resigned from the church in April, 2019.
After Jared began expressing public support for Sam Young and the Protect LDS Children movement, along with expressing public feelings about the church’s truth claims, Jared was summoned to a disciplinary council. Jared faces excommunication on June 30th, 2019 at 6pm at the Farmington, NM stake center.
This is their story.
Transcript
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| 0:35.0 | Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. I am your host, John |
| 0:55.5 | Delin. It is June 21st, 2019. We're broadcasting, recording and broadcasting live to you today |
| 1:03.9 | from the Mormon Stories podcast studios in Salt Lake City, Utah. We are very, very excited, |
| 1:10.9 | really honored and moved for today's interview. Today we are going to be continuing our series |
| 1:20.8 | on former Mormon bishops and their families. We just interviewed Scott and Joanna Purvis and |
| 1:27.7 | their family for a wonderful interview. We've interviewed several other Mormon bishops and we're |
| 1:33.4 | going to continue that series today. We are also going to be continuing our new tradition, |
| 1:40.0 | semi new tradition of having children in a family, be a part of the interview. |
| 1:47.1 | And we are continuing our series on covering Mormon Excommunications. So we're covering a lot |
| 1:53.6 | today just to give you a little bit of background. So Jared and Gwen Lusk were raised Orthodox |
| 2:03.5 | Mormons and we're married in the temple, had six children served in lots of callings in the |
| 2:11.6 | church, basically gave their lives to the church. Jared ended up becoming bishop in their |
| 2:18.3 | Farmington, New Mexico ward, Jared and his wife Gwen set up a successful dental practice there, |
| 2:27.4 | and again just gave 45, 50 years of their lives to the Mormon church. In 2015, Jared discovered |
| 2:39.0 | the LDS Church's gospel topics essays and started to question or learn more about Mormonism and |
| 2:50.6 | became a supporter of the Sam Young Protect LDS Children's Movement. And long story short, |
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