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link.
Hey. If you're a newbie to Leading Saints,
it's important that you know what is this
Leading Saints thing. Well, Leading Saints is a
nonprofit organization dedicated to helping Latter day Saints
be better prepared to lead. And the way
we do that is through content creation. So
we have this phenomenal podcast. We have a
newsletter. We have virtual conferences,
so much more. And articles on our website.
I mean, I could go on and on.
Right? And we encourage you to, jump in,
check out Leading Saints, go to the search
bar at leading saints.org, and type in some
topics and see what pops up. We're just
glad you're here to join us.
Hey there. I got another book for you
to read. It's called Igniting the Holy Flame,
Building Communities of Love from the Ashes of
Negative Religious Culture. And it's by my good
friend, Steve Hitz, who has been on the
podcast a few times. And this book came
from, as he as he'll talk about in
this interview, and you're about to hear with
Steve Hitz, just from tragedy from his life,
a beautiful,
lovely son that he had in his life,
died by suicide. And that led Steve on
this path of really contemplating
his son's journey in religion and faith and,
how we can maybe
create a space, a community as his as
his subtitle says, building communities of love from
the ashes of negative religious culture. And you
know me, anytime somebody is talking about religious
culture, I'm in trade and would love to
hear perspectives of around that because it's super
important as we lead organizations to
contemplate the culture we're building. You know, the
doctrine's important. Like I often say, culture eats
doctrine for breakfast. If we don't have positive
culture, we can't get people to the doctrine,
unfortunately, no matter how powerful that doctrine is,
which we all know is extremely powerful. So
fun discussion. I just love learning from Steve,
his perspective,
And so you're about to do that with
me. And, I think you'll enjoy this as
we explore his thoughts on his recent book,
Igniting the Holy Flame. So here we go.
Alright. I'd love to welcome back Steve Hitz
to the podcast. It's nice to be here.
Thanks for For sure. I always appreciate your
insight. I think we've done a handful of
other interviews. 1 about an organization you started
with it, which isn't the topic of this
of this conversation, if at least generally, but
and that is, you started the organization
launching leaders that has worked closely with BYU
and the church and things like that. Is
there any update you wanna give us on
how that's going? Or Yes. And to be
humble about it, I'm one of 4 founders.
Nice. And it has,
been a great blessing to many. Right now,
it's,
an update would be it's in over a
100 countries now in 6 languages,
all online.
We're about to launch a new entrepreneurial
segment here in a couple weeks for those
who have the itch after going through launching
leaders.
And
it continues to be a great blessing for
those who want to,
create a future that's aligned with faith. Nice.
Well, thanks thanks for your support there. And
And for those who may not be familiar
with the general vision of the organization, how
how do you describe that to people? So
I I believe it's best said that Launching
Leaders provides
a platform that combines
values
with faith
and progress
in a way that that the participant decides
it to go. In other words, it's not
a hierarchical
class with gray haired, folks giving lectures to
the youth. It's the young adults gathering all
over the world in their own groups
facilitating
the course themselves
and
getting the answers themselves from the materials
and truly creating their future that way. I
mean, it's it was kind of like a,
a
prequel of
teaching in the savior's way, you know, where
we followed those patterns and expanded them in
a way that really fits the topics that
we that we address.
So right now there's about, I don't know,
5,000 participants
in those 100 countries.
It's also used in a lot of, institutes
in the world.
We kinda go hand in hand in some
areas with the self reliance program.
And those are LDS institutes, right? Not just
general institutes. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
And we also partner with folks, quite a
few folks in the interfaith world as well,
which is a That's awesome. A beautiful thing.
Yep. Well, awesome. And, is it just launchingleaders.org
if people wanna learn more about it or
get the book and all that? Llworldwide
Okay. That's right. Dotorg.
Llworldwide.org
can learn all about it. Awesome. I love
the organization. And and recently this you're always,
you're a man, like, I I guess after
my own heart that's always,
processing
perspectives and leadership principles and things related to
culture. And that led to a recent book
that you wrote. I have here igniting the
holy flame,
building communities of love from the ashes of
negative religious culture.
So what is the what's the story behind
this book? That's a good question. Let me
start with just a couple of, stats that
I know you're familiar with.
And in fact,
these
statistics continue to get worse. But,
you know, there
are only about 20% of Americans that attend
church every week. Over 26%
seldom attend church, or 35%
never attend at all.
And in our own faith,
about 75%
of young adults step away by the age
of 30. Not saying they don't come back.
They just they park their faith. Yeah. And
about 90% of converts
worldwide
stop attending
after 3 years.
And what I wanted to try to figure
out and
if why this is and are there answers
to these, you know, kinds of challenges?
And I know that a lot of people
are writing books and have written books concerning
these things. I know you've written an excellent
book yourself,
is God disappointed in me, which I really
enjoyed.
Thank you. And I think there are answers.
And so as I pondered this, and this
has been a three and a half year
project, I really felt called,
called by God to share some things and
write some things regarding this. And I say
that because as you know, sometimes after you've
written a book,
you go back through it yourself and you
tell, well, where did that come from?
Yeah, for sure. And I think If you
wanna learn about a subject, try writing about
it and, you learn all sorts of things
that did not come from your own brain.
Exactly. So what you find is that yes,
the Holy Spirit does guide us. And so
I felt called upon to write this book.
And I also had an experience
where, as you know,
several years ago,
our family lost,
our second oldest son to suicide.
And so of course that caused a lot
of contemplation in our family and a lot
of things changed, a lot of things actually
spiritually for the better in the the way
we look at
religion and spiritual things.
But Skyner and I had a very open
conversation,
and he he was a very fine,
bright, brilliant man, had a beautiful
wife.
But he was
perplexed by some things he had questions about
regarding,
you know, truth claims and things like this.
So he and I had a very open
conversation about these questions
in a very positive way. And so he
would want me to do some research on
a topic and I would,
and we went back and forth.
He found, however,
within the faith
outside of his dad, that there's a lot
of pushback to his questions.
You know, maybe
questions like, well, maybe he wasn't worthy. What's
going on in his life that he would,
you know, question some of these things. I
mean, he served a very faithful mission,
and he was a very good boy. But
he didn't get the opportunity to express without
judgment some of these things. And so I
got to pondering that a lot. And I
thought, you know, I think that this is
probably
the case with many of the folks who
are parking their faith, becoming spiritual, but not
religious,
you know, not affiliating themselves anymore with a
particular church
yes, they're not feeling the
openness, the authenticity,
and the love that should accompany
these kinds of questions. And so I began
this process of writing the book. Yeah. And,
you know, in the subtitle you mentioned the
the ashes of negative religious culture.
And for the listener, you didn't write this.
This isn't like a Latter day Saint focused
book. It's a general, just would you say
Christianity book, right? Yeah. It's not Latter day
Saint focused. And in fact, to make a
clear point that, you know, these are not
the,
this isn't endorsed or or blessed by the
hierarchy of the church.
Oh, we know that we know that Well,
I hope the concepts are. Yeah. What I'm
saying is is that, you know, this is
my own this is my own version. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And you mentioned this,
you know, the religious culture. I'm just curious,
like how you would frame that because we
sort of throw that word around a lot,
culture, and maybe people, they don't know how
to how to frame it personally for themselves.
So how do you come at it as
far as defining what culture is in a
religious context?
Yeah. And I did want to mention this,
you know, having lost the son, I really
felt like he was really looking over my
shoulder as I wrote this book and they
were having these conversations just as if he
were alive sitting here. Yeah. And so the
dedication I did put in the book was
to we called him Bear, was to Bear.
And I I said, Bear, may your work
as a culture buster
beyond the
veil, heal many souls and may this feeble
effort by your father also a faithful heretic,
inspire the same healing on the side of
the veil.
So that's our intent.
Nice. Now you ask about
religious
culture because, you know, you do you you're
right. It's thrown around a lot. And what
does that mean? And what can we you
know, what's the good? What's the bad?
So in this book, I isolate 2 things,
fabricated fellowship
and another term harmful religiosity.
And what I say about fabricated fellowship is
it occurs when people connect
with each other solely out of sense of
duty,
obligation,
a desire to complete an assignment
rather than love, care, and genuine friendship.
Generally lacks depth.
Sometimes it's just a part of organizational
structures and culture. When I talk about harmful
religiosity, I'm talking about
a negative religious cultures
that are fixated on rules and policies,
conformity,
obedience,
and merely for the sake of being obedient.
And I think harmful
religiosity,
it often creates feelings of shame, which you've
written a lot about, guilt, fear,
not belonging
when members
or anyone fail to live up to all
the rules as part of their religion
or religious organization.
So I've separated those two things throughout the
book. And at the end of each chapter,
I have a summary where we can talk
about how did this speak to fabricated fellowship?
How did this speak to harmful religiosity?
All of that, of course, part of culture
and what is actually
authentic fellowship, which I think is the cure,
the antidote to all of most all of
this. Yeah. And this is sometimes just tricky,
right? Because, obviously we have huge respect for
our ordinances and our traditions and the way
we do things. And of course, that's part
of running a healthy organization or church, but
it's sometimes we get trapped in the sort
of we're serving the organization rather than the
organization serving us. You know, we're not trying
to get the organization's
salvation
established, but we're trying to hopefully gain and
receive salvation through Jesus Christ from the organization.
Right? That's absolutely right. And I believe that.
And so, you know, so I should I
guess I should mention that, yes, I'm a
faithful card carrying member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. Yeah.
And I believe in the gospel and everything
that the Lord taught us. So my book
is not written as an apologetic
type of member. It's strictly written out of
a love that I think we can improve
our worshipful experience and overcome some of these
things that are sometimes tragedies in people's lives
that they never bounce back from. Yeah. Anything
else as far as just the concept of
culture or introducing
the intent of the book that you wanna
make sure we hit on? Yeah. And I've
heard it said even, you know, even on
some of the things that you've mentioned in
your podcast or website
that culture
and, you know, and love it in judgment.
You know? It's not as simple as just
judging less and loving more.
And there's some truth to that, but there's
also some truth that that's a big part
of what we want to focus on is
less judgment
and more love. And I think some of
those things are centered in some of the
scriptures that we have. Like, I don't know,
are you familiar with Moroni chapter 6 verse
9?
Probably.
I left it off my head.
So so in this scripture,
Kurt, it says, this is Moroni speaking,
And their meetings were conducted by the church
after the manner of the workings of the
spirit.
And by the power of the holy spirit,
whereas the power of the holy ghost led
them whether to preach or to exhort
or to pray or to supplicate or to
sing even so it was done. Well, I
think that's a and, the doctrine and covenants
has a similar scripture in it, but I
think that's a beautiful way to think about
how meetings, you know, could be
less customized
or maybe less, you know, agenda driven. Makes
sense? Yeah. That's the concept of the the
component of the Holy Ghost. Right? That you
would assume that if Holy Ghost was involved
in the meeting, there's maybe some spontaneity in
it. You know, not dramatic or anything, but,
you know, we're kinda going with the flow
here to figure out what does this meeting
need for us, you know? Exactly right. Yeah.
Yeah. And so that's my hope is that
in a lot of the things that we
do
within the framework of the church,
I think we can have a more
generous,
merciful,
and gentle,
and graceful approach, right
Yeah. To, all the participants in this worshipful
experience.
Yeah. It's really good. Now take us to
this concept of orthodoxy, because you talk about
the tight fisted orthodoxy
versus open hand orthodoxy, because
then, our human nature is that we crave
that structure or especially in a lay ministry
where we're put in charge. Sometimes we don't
wanna mess up. We don't wanna do it
wrong. So what the last guy do or
what's the handbook say or, you know, just
give me the 5 step plan. I'll do
it. I'm not, you know, trying to go
off the, you know, off the path here.
So
maybe expound on that orthodoxy because sometimes that
orthodoxy would be a warm blanket to the
lay leaders because it's like, okay, we gotta
fit everything in this box and that's what
we're gonna do. Exactly right. Well, and I
learned this concept actually in what I will
call a generous
orthodoxy,
which would be a open fist orthodoxy,
and then a strict orthodoxy, which is a
closed fist kind of an orthodoxy. And And,
of course, the closed fist is that's just
the way it is. That's the way it's
always been done. Whether it makes sense or
not, we're doing it. That is the orthodoxy.
An example I give in a book that
I learned from my I have
a rabbi friend. We actually gather every couple
of weeks. He's my I don't know how
many LDS folks have a rabbi, but I
have a rabbi.
We share Well, he has a great respect
for the LDS faith. We share a lot
of things. And he said in a synagogue,
you know, they take the Torah and they,
they parade, you know, around the outside of
the it's inside, but they parade around the
outside. And this old
synagogue
had been damaged
in the past. And the roof line, at
one certain point, came down at several feet
and then came back up. And so as
they paraded, you know, the Torah around it,
when they got to that spot, they kinda
knelt down and low crouched it and kept
carrying
the Torah and then back up, they would
come to finish their circle.
He said that that became
the, the, culture that couldn't be broken. After
they fixed the roof, they continued to bow
down and crouch in that same spot as
separated Torah around the synagogue. It never changed.
That was closed fisted, I guess. But the
open part, I think is what
I think
is the beautiful part
of
generous orthodoxy.
An example of this that I put in
the book is actually
from my friend.
So Bob,
Robert Millett, when he was a stake president
in
Florida,
and he puts this in his book, Are
We There Yet?
He has an experience where, you know, in
our faith, there are certain parameters that we
have to live by to enter the temple
and to be married in the temple, right?
And this
couple
apparently had crossed the line a little bit.
And, and so they wondered if they needed
to, you know, to cancel
or postpone
their temple ceiling. They were very contrite
and the Bishop talked with them. And so
I, I don't think there's any reason to
wait, but he talked to his stake president.
And it's like, well, you you know what
the handbook says, you know, I have to
wait. And so the story goes is that
Robert was the stake president,
and so he agreed to meet with this
couple. And he was so and they prayed
together, and they were so overcome with the
spirit
and, you know, and their obedience and their
contrition.
And the spirit clearly said,
don't delay,
go to the temple.
And in the words that he puts in
his book, and he said, though there were
no words spoken to me, it was as
though God said, you listen to me. This
is my church and these are my children.
I alone know the hearts of men and
women. If you are to represent me, you
had better humble yourselves,
open yourself to my guidance, and avoid trying
to lead the people from some preconceived
notion
you have.
The last word he put in his book
from the spirit to him was repent.
Yep. Yeah. Well, sometimes that happens, you know,
there's a policy and, of course, we have
them for a reason and and they're they're
supposed to be guidelines.
Sometimes
I think the Holy Spirit, who is a
member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost,
can and ought to trump some of those
hard,
you know, closed fisted
orthodox
rules.
Yeah. Yeah. And and again, we're still recognizing
the the framework, the orthodoxy that's there, but
there's a lot of wiggle room there. And
to, to me, our, our theology is so
profound with this concept of priesthood keys, you
know, as some leaders have, or, you know,
the inspiration to follow the Holy Ghost and
make those customized decisions.
And you oftentimes have the authority to do
so. And even if you don't, you know,
maybe some of these decisions require a letter
to the to the office of the first
presidency or things like you will you can
write that letter. You can see, you know,
the worst thing to say is no or
or go a different direction. And and, but
I think it's it's an option. Right? Yeah.
And so I use some examples in the
book, and I'm not and I'm very clear
to say that, you know,
all situations could be different, you know, in
in these kinds of, evaluations.
And I think in all cases, of course,
we need to follow the the keys
and honor
our prophets have have instructed us to do.
Right? That goes without saying. But still, what
I hear from president Nelson
when he asks us to hear him
and, you know, all the different things that
he's taught us over the last few years,
and this is personal, I think he leans
heavy towards mercy and grace
and unless of a closed fisted type of
orthodoxy.
That's just that's just my feeling. And I
think that's what the Lord's trying to teach
us. You'll find throughout the book
parables and things that the savior actually said
that we can use as guides in all
of these cases.
I think that's where we really wanna focus
is on exactly what the savior said.
So without going into great detail, you can
read them in the book. But for example,
we're all prodigal sons or daughters. Right? We
all make mistakes.
We'll
make our path to return home.
In the prodigal son case, I think it's
very interesting that, you know, when he came
back, his father didn't say, you know what,
son? I'm so glad you're back home.
In about 6 months, I think you're gonna
be worthy to come inside and have a
feast with us.
Yeah.
There's none of that. No waiting. Just love.
You know, just embrace. And and I think
that's the concept that I love. The same
with the, you know, the parable of the
wheat and the tares.
I mean, we grow up with with those
darnel weeds.
We might be a darnel weed from time
to time, trying to grow up with the
the wheat and the kernels, but we look
the same.
But in that parable,
the lord was very clear
that he's the only one that can separate
the harvest. He's the only one that can
make the judgment.
He and the angels as the parable says.
My thought is is that
as long as there's
a a lure
and a wheat field, even if it's polluted
with darnel weeds,
there can be a change
at any moment at any time.
We're not to judge as humans. You know?
And there's a lot of that that goes
on in every faith. You know?
And
this book was endorsed by, you know, Evangelicus.
I I spent a lot of time in
the interfaith world and have evangelical
friends and Catholic
priests and the Jewish rabbis and so forth.
And they all chimed in to endorse the
book because it speaks also to their language
and the things that they're trying to
do in
in creating a positive
worshipful experience.
Yeah.
Anything else around the concept of orthodoxy? I
think there's a lot of leaders out there
who, you know, we just wanna be good
soldiers. Right? We wanna, we wanna follow the
rules and do all those things. And sometimes
the application of these principles you're talking about
is, is trickier, you know, because
oftentimes we can make decisions that
from authorities above us, looks like the wrong
decision or what are you doing? Like, just
follow the program and then you kind of
get in trouble. Right? And it leads to
conversations that need to be had as far
as describing why you've gone this way or
that way. But anything else around this concept
of open or closed hand orthodoxy or do
we cover pretty well? No. I think the
book will cover it well. I mean, you
talked about something even today in, some of
your writings,
you know, in the newsletter
that okay. You know, you had the example
of a bishop who had some exciting things
to do in his word. They were probably
not
orthodox,
but they would move his word forward.
And so then he took it to the
stake and the stake president
or stake presidency. So, oh, no, that's breaking
the mold. We can't do that.
And yet
you talk about,
what a great leader would do
is to have a honest, authentic conversation with
that leader, you know, so that the hearts
could be known and the holy spirit could
direct them both together. And maybe what the
bishop proposed needs to be toned back a
bit. You know, maybe the state president goes,
well, I get it now. Let's do it.
And I thought about the time that I
was actually a YSA Bishop,
and and I think back upon those times.
And
we did some very
crazy
out of the box things
in our little ward that I mean, really
unorthodox, but moved the ward forward.
And my stake president, bless his heart, never
even
questioned that. He just figured you have the
keys.
You're not leading them astray.
Yep. Where do you wanna go next? Should
we talk about,
this concept of fabricated fellowship? You've mentioned a
little bit already, but anything else we missed
there? Well, maybe just briefly.
My wife, Ginger, and I were were contemplating
the other day when the last time we
actually had a ministering visit.
And, of course, that's a beautiful program that
was established
to create a holier
experience
that would be better than what home teaching
used to be. Right? And maybe it's just
us, but we haven't had a visit for
15 years or more. And yet we know
we've been assigned, and we love the, you
know, the brothers that have been assigned, but
they've never, you know,
come in they've never graced our home at
all.
Is it a duty? You know? Where does
that duty
and love begin in that experience?
Yeah. And I don't I don't have all
the answers. I I just I just feel
like that's something that we can programs
are only there for us to invoke the
love of the Lord to each other.
Right?
Yeah. That's what the hope is in this
book is to find ways to do that.
Yeah. And I think that, you know, these
programs and we have a lot of them
in the church. Right? Whether it's, you know,
come follow me or the self reliance or
the the ministering
where these are vehicles to hopefully get to
that place of of love, of community,
of a place that's stimulating naturally. Like, the
the the system is working to shepherd people
towards Christ, shepherd people towards the temple, to
make higher covenants
with him, and, you know, to hopefully find
deeper meaning, deeper relationship with God. And, you
know, that's sort of the the game plan.
Right? But sometimes these vehicles,
we,
maybe there's a season where we don't need
them. There's season where we do. And it's
sometimes hard to,
it's easier just to generally say, this is
what we're doing. This is the program. Just
go visit your family. And I think that'll
work. And sometimes
it can be fabric it feels more fabricated
than not. Right? And this is where the
leadership
can really step in and say,
okay. Like, I see what's going on. Maybe
we can adjust this here and there. And
actually, we can ignore that part for a
while because we don't need that part, just
the nature of our ward or how we're
set up or, you know, whatever it is,
and move move forward.
Yeah. That's the idea. And that's the love
that should be in invoked in those processes.
Yeah. Yeah. I hope if my ministers are
watching this podcast, I you know, forgive me.
I love you anyway.
That's right.
Awesome. So, Steve, let's move into maybe some
now what's or, you know, some solutions. Obviously,
people should check out the book. A lot
of these concepts are hard to, you know,
cram into just an hour discussion or so,
and and walk away with like, oh, I
get it, and I know exactly what to
do. But hopefully these are things that, whether
they read their book or not, people can
sit with these concepts, explore them, be prayerful
about
their approach, and how they see orthodoxy, and
how it functions, and culture in their ward.
But move us toward this concept as far
as authentic fellowship. What does that look like?
Or what are some concepts that we can
think about to actually move forward with the
principles of your book? So and I think
that is the solution. I, I think that's
the antidote to all of this, is the
authentic fellowship.
Do you know what the number one epidemic
in the world is? The last, well,
two and a half years at least. Is
it, loneliness? Right? It's loneliness. Yeah. Yeah. And
everybody experiences some of that, particularly the young
adult
and along those with that anxiety
and depression
and so many of the maladies that even
suicide ideation.
And so
how do you overcome that kind of a
thing?
You know, it's almost always that they need
a friend who they believe is an authentic
friend who really cares about them, and they're
not just assigned
to be their friend.
And I think that that's I think we
can learn some things about how to be,
more authentic in our relationships.
Of course, it begins by being authentic yourself.
So we spend an entire chapter on developing
your true identity
and knowing really who you are and whose
you are so that you can reach out,
you know,
and so you can because
as president Nelson says, and hear him and
listen to the holy spirit and then reach
out. I have a a neighbor
who
his prayer every morning is,
lord, you know, guide my feet in a
way
that will walk
the path that you would put someone in
it that I can
know and bless.
Has nothing to do with word boundaries.
He lives here in Cedar and works as
an attorney in Saint George,
but there's probably not a week goes by
that he doesn't have an experience that he
shares with me about picking up a homeless
man, putting him to work,
not just for one time, but staying in
touch with that person for months
months months and
just loving them. And he doesn't do it
with an agenda. He just does it because
of love.
I learned a great lesson.
This isn't in the book, but I learned
a great lesson about that kind of authenticity
from a older gentleman in New Zealand.
And we'd given a presentation there,
and he came up after, and he said,
you know,
I used to I used to feel guilty
that I wasn't sharing
specifically the gospel with all of my clients.
He was a mechanic,
but he didn't talk specifically about the gospel.
He just lived it. And he felt kind
of guilty at some point. Maybe some lesson
was given where they asked, you know, how
many book of Mormons did you pass out
this week or something.
He said, and I prayed about it, and
I had a vision. And I don't know
how well you know the Maori people.
When they say they've had a vision, you
lean in. Yeah. Yes. They had a vision.
Right. And he said an angel appeared to
him. I don't know who it was. He
said, look,
because you're living the gospel,
all these people, all these clients, you know,
so many of them that don't have Christ
in their lives,
there'll be a point in time
in this life or the next
where they will come to you
and you can worship together
because they will have known your love and
know that that's the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That's what I'm talking about in
authentic fellowship.
Yeah.
Don't just know the gospel.
Live it. You know, just just live it.
Just live it out of love.
You know, if someone
shows up in church, you know, in, Utah
wearing sandals,
don't pull them aside and talk to them
about maybe what proper,
clothing is to wear at church.
Just celebrate that they're there.
Yeah. There's so many
stories that you and I could both share
regarding those types of things where there's a
little bit of judgment because that's how we
were taught. And all of a sudden, those
folks aren't coming,
You know? Yeah. Part of it is celebrating
celebrating people
where they're at. In this area, there was
a
young woman who was baptized,
and
she was kind of clairvoyant. She had
her own visions and things. And so she
she felt like she should join the church.
And so after she joined,
she was trying to share some of these
things, you know,
but she was like, well, you can't have
a revelation
like that. That's like out of your sphere
of what you're you know, supposed to be
getting revelation on. And she kind of kept
bumping up against some of those things instead
of people just celebrating and leaning in and
say, well, tell me about that. You know?
I don't wanna know more. I wanna know
what that felt like. Yeah. Yeah. We don't
need to pronounce her a prophet or say
that, you know, these, you know, just say,
wow. You know, tell me more. Right? That's
a powerful phrase. Yeah. Exactly. Right. And so
without judgment, you know, there's a there's a
story I do include in the book about
I've studied quite a bit of in the
gnostic gospels.
You know, they haven't been through they haven't
been through a dozen or a 100 translations,
the Gnostic gospels. And yet, you know, the
things that are written there are quite sacred.
And the story goes that that Mary, you
know, she had a very close relationship with
Jesus.
And so she goes to Peter
and say,
hey. I've had these experiences,
but it was sort of like the hierarchy
is like, well but they didn't come to
to me or John, you know, so I'm
not sure that that they're really valid
until she convinced them that she actually knew
Christ
as well or better
than they did, and they say, okay. Fine.
We'll let that be in in our canon
of scripture.
I mean, those those are things that we
we can do better. We can have a
whole more holistic religious experience.
I wanted to kind of end by
why it's titled the way it is, you
know, igniting the holy flame. In Leviticus,
there's a scripture that says the fire on
the altar must be kept burning,
must not go out. The fire must be
kept burning on the altar continuously.
It must not go out.
And so in this time,
they kept the fire alive on the altar
for sanctification
and and to keep that religious experience
alive, and they never let it go out.
And so the fight is is that
let's focus on
the gospel. Let's focus on what Jesus taught
us. Let's focus on the love that he
shared and that we feel from him. Let's
focus on mercy and grace.
Yes. We have to be obedient. We need
to do the things that are part of
our, you know, our corporate structure
or our church
as revealed by, you know, prophet, serious, and
revelators. But we can do all of that
in a more holistic
way that will fill the spirit. And the
whole intent of this book is to allow
people to feel that it's okay to question.
It's okay,
you know, to find better ways to worship
within our even our own faith that are
more filled with love
and stay in the boat.
I want that to be clear.
My intent is for everyone to stay in
the boat. You know? Even if we don't
feel like rowing at the time. Maybe if
there's only 1 person rowing and we're going
in circles, let's stay in the boat. Together,
we're gonna get to the shore and experience
what we ought to. Let's stay in the
boat.
Love it. Yeah. The the the book's been
out there and you've had various people reading
and engaging with some of these principles, like,
what are you seeing? What feedback are you
getting from people as they contemplate
the different chapters and try and apply them?
Not selfishly. I have to say that they've
been touched by the spirit, and has really
affected their lives in a positive way.
I've heard feedback from,
well, for example, a lady in her late
seventies,
you know, said it was one of the
best books she's ever read and allowed her
to realize that there could be a higher
form of worship
without
going against or questioning any of her
leadership. But she could live a she could
live a life that way. Some of the
young people that have read the book, it's
literally
kept them from jumping out of the boat.
It's allowed them to say, hey. You know
what? The church itself isn't perfect nor are
the people in it. But the gospel is
true,
and what Jesus taught is true.
And I can make a difference for good
without judgment.
And I'm gonna stay here and live that
life.
Well, Steve, is there any obviously, is Amazon's
the place to go? Is that, it's available
on on various formats via Amazon? Is that
Yes. Amazon
is, where the book is available, and it's
also available,
of course, in the
audio.
It's on lots of platforms of the audio
version. Oh, cool. And will be on the,
Amazon platform
within a week. So you can get the
the book itself, which, you know, I'm one
of the old school people that like to
actually read the the paper book.
Yep. Yeah. A lot of people like to
listen to them, and and there's also an
electronic version. So it's it's available in all
those platforms.
Awesome.
Yeah. One one gentleman in his,
late forties
who's going through some challenges in his life,
you know,
some marital challenges and
work challenges,
challenges of life.
And he was just really contemplating on what
his next steps were. I would even say
that
he's been,
suffering from some suicide ideation.
And he read the book, and
he read into it one night, read the
whole thing in a night,
and said, Steve, this has changed my life,
the way I think,
the way I'm looking at things,
and these words have literally saved my life.
And he's a dear friend of mine and
I didn't know he was suffering to that
extent.
And so he kind of read it, I
think at first out of
a, you know,
friendship
was
I asked him to read it, But those
are the types of folks that
we need to
reach out to, and they can they can
be embraced by this book
and feel the love of God and the
Lord through it in a very fine way.
That's my belief.
Now that we've reached the end of the
episode, I quickly wanna thank you for supporting
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Remember, the Jodie Moore presentation about youth and
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14.
It came as a result of the position
of leadership which was imposed upon
us by the God of heaven who brought
forth a restoration
of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
When the declaration
was made concerning the own and only true
and living church upon the face of the
earth,
we were immediately
put in a position of loneliness,
the loneliness of leadership
from which we cannot shrink nor run away,
and to which we must face up with
boldness
and courage
and ability.