In 1979, after attending a fireside featuring members of the Osman family, Brian Reedy told his mother he wanted to be a Mormon.

The answer was a firm no.

As a student at Missouri Baptist College, Brian Reedy wrote his first paper on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The paper was titled Mormonism, Christian Church, or Colt.

The paper consisted of many criticisms of the Church, and from then on, if there was ever an opportunity to study the Church, Reedy took it.

Reedy says in retrospect that deep down he felt there was something more. He writes,

I could walk away from my studies of the restored Church, but the Church was always lurking there deep down. I remember there were times when I would be reading a book about some bit of Church history, and my spirit would just soar.

This was just amazing, I would say to myself, and then shake my head. There is no way it could be true.

But then a funny thing happened. Reedy joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is his story.

Brian Reedy was a Southern Baptist minister for 25 years and a pastor for 15 of those years. He received a bachelor's degree in religion from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

He has a master of divinity and a master of theology from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

This is All-In, an LDS living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be All-In the Gospel of Jesus Christ?

I'm Morgan Jones, and I am so excited to have Brian Reedy on the line with me today. Brian, welcome.

It's good to be with you. I'm excited to have this conversation.

So, first of all, Brian, my first question for you is, you were not initially raised religious. Could you tell me a little bit about your childhood religious background?

We were a, I would say, a Christmas and Easter family. We would go to church on Christmas two days and a few other days.

I had a fundamental understanding of who Jesus was, and of course my mother taught me to pray when I was a child, but we really weren't active or involved in any kind of church growing up until I turned about 14 years old.

Did we start getting active at that time as a Baptist church?

Okay. And then you, once you became active in church, you eventually went on to study religion in school. So obviously something shifted between you becoming more active in church to then deciding to study religion. What led to that?

When I was 14 years old, a music director, I used to love saying when I was a kid, a music director at school invited me to join his church as youth choir.

And so I did. And the youth choir began with like a fireside or a devotion with the pastor there.

And he challenged us. He said, if you had never placed your faith in trust in Jesus Christ, if you've never repented of your sins, you need to do that.

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