1136: Jared, Gwen, & Madison Lusk: A Former Mormon Bishop and His Family from New Mexico Face Excommunication for Apostasy Pt. 6
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 June 2019
⏱️ 75 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 | So you left that meeting? What? Just angry and then I was mostly done. Well I did still want to |
| 0:57.6 | I still wanted to go to church and so the next time we went to church I think maybe we had a vacation |
| 1:03.7 | in between or something but it was ward conference and so we had our stake president and you know |
| 1:10.1 | the whole full stake presidency and all the stake leaders there and the two songs that they chose |
| 1:17.1 | were praise to the man and oh how lovely was the morning. Oh first vision and just a Smith |
| 1:22.9 | worship right. And we we all sat on the back row and we could not sing those songs and then they |
| 1:30.4 | had a sustain you know starting with Russell Nelson all the way down to our ward leaders and we |
| 1:36.4 | couldn't sustain anybody and it was at that point that I felt that I was other and that I that was |
| 1:42.9 | the first time I live life that I never that I didn't feel like I belonged and they were my tribe and |
| 1:49.1 | it was it was all done. I've never been back voluntary I mean I've been back but just to support |
| 1:57.1 | family. So that was May of 2018 like a year ago probably in May maybe part first part of June |
| 2:05.6 | okay so a year ago yeah haven't really attended since other than yeah I've been to baby blessings |
| 2:12.8 | for my my sweet little grand babies but that's about it. It's like 45 to 50 years of devotion just |
| 2:19.7 | ending. That's a thing man whatever that is that's a thing. Yeah it's a thing. |
| 2:29.5 | So about about that time is when I put the first public post on Facebook and |
| 2:35.2 | came out and and why why post to Facebook at all like what are you thinking? Well I wanted |
... |
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