862: Christianity After Mormonism: South Mountain Community Church Pt. 1
Mormon Stories Podcast
Dr. John Dehlin
4.5 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 7 February 2018
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The South Mountain Community Church has become home for many former Mormons—which make up nearly half of the congregation. As strange as it may sound to some, the church also has a large contingent of atheist/agnostic former Mormons, as well as many who have embraced Biblical Christianity.
In this exciting panel interview, we interview Pastor Rick and Pastor Paul along with panelists Keri, Dave, Emily, and Jim about what drew them to SMCC, and what their lives look like now in terms of belief and spirituality. Some of the important questions we try to answer include:
- Why do the panelists believe the New Testament is reliable?
- Why the panelists believe following Jesus of the New Testament is not a feelings based decision?
- Do the panelists scrutinize the claims of the Bible as thoroughly as they scrutinize the claims of religions they don’t endorse?
Transcript
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| 0:30.0 | Thanks for your support. |
| 0:32.0 | All right, everyone. Well, hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories podcast. Today it's going to be a live interview. |
| 0:53.0 | It's January 30th, 2018. We're so excited to be at the South Mountain Community Church in Draper, Utah, one of five South Mountain churches that I'm aware of. |
| 1:07.0 | Lehigh South Jordan West Jordan State George and Draper. Did I get them all? We also have an international campus in Columbia. |
| 1:14.0 | That's a partner church. We'll go to Columbia. But we have their primarily Spanish speaking community and they share this facility with us. |
| 1:24.0 | Excellent. We're so thrilled to have you with us. We want to thank everyone who's made this possible. Let me just set up the interview if that's okay. |
| 1:33.0 | Mormon Stories and the Obistores Foundation are mission is to provide support for people experiencing or impacted by a religious transition or faith crisis. |
| 1:44.0 | We love to study the church, explore the church, celebrate and sometimes even criticize the church, it's doctrine, it's culture, it's history. |
| 1:57.0 | But what we also like to do is to provide support for Mormons who are transitioning either within Mormonism or outside. |
| 2:04.0 | And something that we feel is really important is to allow people to explore what a life after Mormonism might mean. |
| 2:14.0 | We know that many, many thousands and thousands of people, tens of thousands of people are leaving the LDS church each year. |
| 2:21.0 | While we provide support for people who stay in the church, we also want to celebrate and provide support for people who leave. |
| 2:29.0 | And over half of those that we've surveyed who leave the LDS church end up identifying as atheist or agnostic. |
| 2:37.0 | But there are a good chunk of those who look for a spiritual home elsewhere. |
| 2:43.0 | Recently we conducted a few interviews with a few families who have joined the Denver Snuffer Movement as an example of a way to continue following Christ and their spiritual promptings through a different religious tradition. |
| 2:58.0 | But we have heard so many good things about South Mountain Community Church that we felt like we really wanted to take some time to understand kind of what this church is about, what they believe, why they're here, how they got started here. |
| 3:12.0 | And we started here in the belly of the beast, so to speak. |
| 3:18.0 | And then really understand what the church has meant to several people who have left the LDS church and have found a spiritual home here. |
| 3:27.0 | So we're going to be interviewing Pastor Paul and Pastor Rick about the founding of this church and what they're about. |
... |
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