830: Mel and Stu Brown's Mormon Transition Pt. 3

Mormon Stories Podcast

Dr. John Dehlin

Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 5.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2017

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this special edition of Mormon Stories, we interview Mel and Stu Brown from Cache Valley, Utah. Many of our listeners will find Mel and Stu’s experience as a mixed-faith couple inspiring and full of wisdom as they share how they navigated differing beliefs—eventually leading to the decision to both leave the LDS Church.

We cover:

Mel’s upbringing in the LDS Church and how she never wavered in keeping the standards expected of her
Stu’s efforts to be clean and worthy to go on a mission and how his experience as a missionary in Oklahoma solidified his testimony
How Mel and Stu met and formed a life as a pair of successful entrepreneurs
How Stu’s testimony began to waver the deeper he studied the scriptures, and how he made the decision to share his growing doubts with Mel from the beginning
Why Stu made the decision to resign from the LDS Church
How Mel reacted to Stu’s doubts by listening and not judging—utilizing Impact training she had previously received
Mel’s growing realization that the gospel was not brining her the happiness she had been promised
How Mel and Stu have molded a new life and share advice for couples who are experiencing a mixed-faith marriage and faith transition

Transcript

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0:00.0	Mormon Stories is a production of the Open Stories Foundation and relies solely upon the support of people like you, its listeners.
0:09.0	To help keep the podcast alive or to become a member of the community, please become a monthly subscriber by visiting MormonStories.org and clicking the Donate button on the top right side of the page.
0:21.0	All contributions to Mormon Stories are completely tax deductible and go towards producing the podcast and building communities and programs of support for Mormons like you.
0:30.0	Thanks for your support.
0:33.0	Welcome back to Part 3 of this Epic interview with Melinda and Sterling or Stu Brown.
0:48.0	We have covered in the first two parts.
0:52.0	The first part of the story is that they love the Church, how Orthodox they were, how much the Church meant to them.
0:59.0	And then we went into depth about what caused Sterling first to kind of start losing interest in questioning his faith and how they navigated that and the mixed faith marriage.
1:13.0	And then ultimately what caused Melinda to second guess her decision to kind of stay in and be that kind of Mormon single mom, so to speak.
1:23.0	And what ended up leading to both of them, both Stuart resigning and then Melinda deciding to no longer continue attending and raising her kids in the Church.
1:33.0	So I feel like it was just a really beautiful classic epic faith journey that I know is going to help a lot of people.
1:42.0	But we're not going to end there.
1:45.0	What I think is one of the most important things we can do is kind of model life after the faith crisis.
1:53.0	And so often this, you know, some people don't like using the term faith crisis because it's sort of negative framing.
2:01.0	Many people say, hey, it's not a crisis. It's like a faith in lightning. It's actually this moment of awakening.
2:09.0	And a lot of people don't even like that framing at all.
2:12.0	But at the time you experience it, it certainly does feel like a crisis for most people.
2:17.0	And so for me, as I started thinking about and as I've traveled around the world, trying to support Mormons and Liberal Mormons and post-Wormons navigating a faith crisis, I've come up with this idea of new framing.
2:32.0	And the new framing that I've come up with is this idea of the gift of the faith crisis.
2:37.0	In other words, yes, it's hard. Yes, it's different. Yes, it's going to be painful at times.
2:43.0	Yes, sometimes it'll even be terrifying and excruciating.
2:47.0	But this is a gift for many, if not most, if not all, of the tens of thousands of people that I've interacted with over the past 15 plus years.
	...

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