1132: Jared, Gwen, & Madison Lusk: A Former Mormon Bishop and His Family from New Mexico Face Excommunication for Apostasy Pt. 2
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2019
⏱️ 66 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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| 0:35.2 | All right. Welcome back everyone to part two of our interview with Jared Gwyn and Madison Lusk. |
| 0:57.2 | We are going to be talking about what it's like to be a Mormon Bishop and the family of a Mormon |
| 1:03.4 | Bishop. We've already covered their upbringing and their dream years in dental school and then |
| 1:08.6 | living in Farmington, New Mexico and building a successful dental practice having six kids |
| 1:14.0 | and raising them faithfully in the church and living the Mormon dream. All right. And now we're |
| 1:20.0 | going to talk about what it was like to be Bishop and then what happened after that. And we're so |
| 1:25.1 | thrilled that Madison, you're here to join us. All right. So what was it like being called? What year |
| 1:30.6 | were you called as Bishop? 2008. 2008. And you held were you at the time? |
| 1:42.2 | What year were you born? 68. So you've been 30? So you're 40. 40. Yeah. Right? Okay. |
| 1:48.0 | Call as Bishop at 40. And you didn't want to be Bishop. Absolutely not. Okay. So tell us |
| 1:56.0 | there's actually a story behind that as well too because we knew that it was time for a new |
| 2:02.5 | Bishop in our ward and so he did not want that calling and he could see that it was coming and so |
| 2:08.7 | he kind of like did a little bit of rebelling maybe a little bit and did everything in his power to |
| 2:14.1 | like blue shirts. Yeah. So you were like literally trying to avoid the call. Yeah. You know, |
| 2:21.3 | you know how it is in the church and everybody knows who's going to be the next Bishop and the rumors |
| 2:26.8 | start going you know about two years before the next Bishop is supposed to be there and so everybody |
... |
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