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Mormon Stories Podcast

592: Stephen M. Veazey, Community of Christ (RLDS) Prophet-President Part 3

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.65.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2015

⏱️ 60 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this three-part podcast I interview Stephen M. Veazey, prophet-president of Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints).

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:15.0

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0:19.0

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0:29.0

Thanks for your support.

0:31.0

A quick micro question about Revelation.

0:55.0

I can imagine you authoring some draft based on conversations with members and your own reflections and feedback from leadership and your own sense of history.

1:09.0

I can imagine finding that role having a close group of trusted friends where I could say, well, here's the draft. What do you think? Let's fix some grammatical syntax stuff and maybe you've given you some things to think about or some feedback, maybe some of the apostles, maybe some members of the first presidency, and having that be a bit of a collaborative process before it's ever formalized and presented to the church body.

1:38.0

Does that in any way reflect what happens or not or are you comfortable even talking about that? I'm just curious. That's what I would imagine happening.

1:48.0

Again, speak from my experience. I think it may have happened in various ways with previous presidents of the church.

1:58.0

I have two counselors in the first presidency and I involve both of those counselors in reviewing what I have written as what I understand to be words of counsel to share with the church.

2:16.0

They very prayerfully reflect on that and share comments, typically affirmation or sometimes they encourage me to go to say more.

2:35.0

They feel like maybe I haven't expressed everything that needs to be expressed. So often the encouragement is continuing in the process and reflect more on that.

2:51.0

There are a few other trusted colleagues that I may share a portion with or the whole text and I listen to their counsel.

3:05.0

The reason I do that is that I feel, again, very strongly that what is shared in that mode is not being driven by my emotion or my particular priorities.

3:26.0

I think the best way to be accountable in the revelatory process is to involve others with you in the journey to the point at which you have to decide as prophet, president, whether to present it as revelation or continuing revelation to the church or not.

3:49.0

And then the interesting part is this has become a part of who you are but then you have to let go of it and give it to the church and you can feel particularly vulnerable at that point on the human side.

4:10.0

What is going to happen from this point on?

4:17.0

Yes, I ask others to do that to help me be assured that what I am presenting is of the quality and of the nature and worth that kind of consideration by the church.

4:38.0

What I am hearing is that when you seek for feedback either from trusted colleagues or the church membership that either the feedback comes in the form of affirmation or please expand.

4:59.0

And that you may even get feedback that expresses disagreement or concern but there is never a process of the words coming from others into the document.

5:12.0

It sounds like it is pretty important from what I am hearing that the actual words come from you.

...

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