1134: Jared, Gwen, & Madison Lusk: A Former Mormon Bishop and His Family from New Mexico Face Excommunication for Apostasy Pt. 4
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2019
⏱️ 52 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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| 0:35.3 | So Gwen, what was this like for you? What's your perspective on how did you first kind of get |
| 0:57.2 | aware of this and then talk to us about what it was like for you to kind of be a part of this |
| 1:01.7 | experience? So he was pretty big like I didn't know he lost all of his faith. Like I just knew he |
| 1:08.8 | had issues and so I talked about when you first started what how did it happen? When you first |
| 1:13.0 | started? Well he said did you know there's multiple counts of the first vision and I said |
| 1:18.9 | I think I heard something about that and he said does that bother you? |
| 1:24.6 | And I couldn't really give him an answer like I didn't I didn't know if it bothered me or not. |
| 1:30.4 | I guess it didn't since I could you know give him an answer so. |
| 1:35.7 | Okay and so then how did it proceed from there as the believing spouse? |
| 1:40.9 | Yeah so he was like he continued to fulfill his calling like we were going to mission prep every |
| 1:47.7 | single week they stand up and they recite their Purpose as a missionary and the first vision and so |
| 1:53.9 | you know we were here on that every week like he he didn't really let on to the depth that he was |
| 2:00.8 | struggling and so I just started praying for him like please God help him get past this help him |
| 2:07.2 | find his faith again you know there's we can fix this this isn't this isn't the big deal. |
| 2:12.9 | So you weren't super worried at first? Not at first because I didn't know to the extent and |
| 2:18.8 | it I just figured oh this is kind of like what happened before he got made a bishop. |
... |
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