1135: Jared, Gwen, & Madison Lusk: A Former Mormon Bishop and His Family from New Mexico Face Excommunication for Apostasy Pt. 5
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2019
⏱️ 73 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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| 0:35.1 | This is my life you're making. There is love for the taking. It's so important. Okay, so how did it |
| 0:50.0 | proceed from the Arizona trip? Was there anything else about the Arizona trip that was important? |
| 0:56.4 | Like, okay, so did we have the conversation that night in the living room with you guys before or |
| 1:04.3 | after we went to the state presidency? Before. That's what I thought. So talk about that. |
| 1:10.0 | Did you guys want to hear me? Both. Both. Go ahead. Madison. I was just like completely shot because they |
| 1:17.6 | said it sounded... What happened? Yeah. We were having family home evening. So you're still doing |
| 1:23.3 | family meetings? Yes! All this time. I hate people having family meetings. Everything. I love it. Okay. |
| 1:30.4 | And they sit us down and they just like spring this question on us like, what would you guys think if |
| 1:35.6 | we quit going to church? And it was just like casually that they said it and I was like, oh my gosh, |
| 1:42.3 | like that's a super big deal. And my mom's like, yeah, it is a big deal. And then we just started |
| 1:48.0 | talking about it. And my dad said like, yeah, I don't believe Joseph Smith is a prophet and like, |
| 1:55.9 | it was like relieving almost to finally just hear him say it. But it also hurt. But then my mom said, |
| 2:03.6 | I don't believe Joseph Smith is a prophet. And I was just like completely shocked because I did not |
| 2:09.6 | see that coming. Like, my dad had always been faithful. But in these last two years, like he |
| 2:14.0 | definitely, we could see that he was becoming less faithful. But my mom was like the strong one. |
| 2:19.6 | She was the one that still had her testimony. And when I heard that she didn't believe that Joseph |
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