A Conversation with Jordan Broadbent

Hello and welcome to Inside Out, the program in which we talk to extraordinary people with big ideas about the Mormon Church and faith and all the extraordinary things that the, uh, the Church is doing. I'm your co-host, Ian Wilkes, and as always, I'm here with my friend and co-host, Jim Bennett. Jim, how are you today?

I am doing well, Ian. How are you?

Doing really well. Doing well. The temperatures change up here in Canada. We're in British Columbia, and we go quite quickly from summer to kind of wintry. There's a short gap in between. So we have great long summers, which is nice. People don't know that we have these great summers in Canada. I think it's probably covered in snow and polar bears. Not true, but we go very quickly, summer quite quickly into kind of wintry stuff. Is that the same in Utah?

Uh, yeah, pretty much. It's, it's, we get a nice little fall season, but it doesn't last very long. It gets very wintry and very cold very quickly.

Yeah, same up here. Anyway, we are really excited to, uh, bring, uh, our listeners just a wonderful individual, very special guest, and we want to welcome Jordan Broadbent. Head of the church's humanitarian efforts for Europe. Jordan, welcome to Inside Out.

Thank you. Delighted to be here.

Wonderful. We're so excited to have this conversation with you, and you're calling in now. We're on kind of in the morning here in British Columbia, 11 o'clock in the morning. I think it's noon in, or just afternoon in Utah, and you're in the UK. I think you're calling in from London.

That's right, yeah, calling in from London, so just finished at the office and then here in a hotel at the moment.

Right, well, it's great to have you with us, and we discussed earlier about how we'd structure this conversation, so would you share with us your story about the church, you know, your upbringing, your earlier time in the church, you know, did you serve a mission? Give us a bit of background about who you are, maybe a bit about your family, and then kind of bring us up to date in terms of the role that you've got, a very important role for leading the church's humanitarian efforts in Europe, because I know the church is doing some extraordinary things and we'd like to get into that. So get a bit of background as to your story, if you will.

Sure. So a bit of a whistle-stop tour of my life, and that's always a big, big question. But I'm 44 years old, married to my childhood sweetheart Debbie, who we met when we were 17 years old. We have 3 wonderful children and we live up in the northeast of England. I grew up as a member of the church. My parents joined the church in Plymouth, a few years before I was born, with missionaries, you know, knocking on the door, and my dad will talk to anyone. So he invited them in one day, and the kind of— the rest is history. They joined the church. There's 4 of us in the family. I have 2 older sisters and a younger brother who actually now lives out in Canada. So we were out visiting him over summer, which was good to be out there as our first experience of being out in Canada. So we got to enjoy the summer portion of it. I'm not so sure I want to kind of go out there for the winter. It strikes me as being very, very cold very, very quickly, but glorious to be out there in Alberta with him. So yeah, grew up in the church, did seminary when I was 14 years old. It was right on the cusp of when they moved from what they called home study back then to early morning seminary. I'm not a morning person at the best of times. And so that was a bit of a shock to the system for me. My parents, can't call it bribery, but I think they incentivized my attendance early on to try and get me to go and participate. And I had a wonderful seminary teacher who was very patient and loving and kind and kind of said, you know, Jordan, I don't mind if you sleep through my classes, just come, just be here. And And over time, that was just exactly what I needed. I started to build a bit of a friendship group with some of the people that I was attending seminary with, and really, that's kind of where I trace my kind of genesis of my faith and my testimony to. I think up until that point, you know, I'd gone to church because that's just what you do when you kind of grow up in that household, but that's where I started to ask a few questions and study things for myself and start to develop more of a meaningful relationship with the Lord. I decided that I wanted to go on a mission when I was 19. I was called to serve in the Anaheim, California mission. So everybody said that I went to Disneyland, and Disneyland was in my last area, actually my last ward before I came home. And I think somewhere there's a photo of me, my companion, and Mickey Mouse with a Book of Mormon. But most of the time was spent out in inner city areas like Santa Ana and other places and just It's a really good growth opportunity, certainly from a faith perspective, absolutely, but also just a little bit of maturity in there as well. You know, you start to have to rely less on being at home and your mom and dad taking care of you and more of working with and serving with people and figuring out problems together and certainly some companions that you love and some companions that you don't and you figure out how to get along and just kind of part of growing up, I guess. I came back from my mission and went to university, lived in Oxford for 3 years. My degree course was software engineering and theology, so maybe it's kind of my split personality, but I went in 2 different, 2 very different directions there and really enjoyed that experience. And then after getting married to Debbie, so now this is like, what, 5, 6 years on from when we first met. Uh, we decided to start to have a family and we moved around a little bit. And so kind of spent the early part of my career, um, working in the tech sector. Uh, and then I kind of pivoted partway after a couple of years and then went into, into sales. Um, but joined a, um, uh, it was still in the private sector, but for an energy company. Uh, and then after about kind of 7, 8 years of, of doing that, um, I made a very deliberate transition. To pursue the development sector and humanitarian aid. And that's where I've now been for the past 10 years. It started with work at a corporate foundation, and then I joined church employment almost 2 years ago. So I'm still a relative newbie in the church employment space, but, you know, a number of years' experience in international development and humanitarian sector.

That's fantastic. That's quite a shift then. You went from, um, so the IT, I think you even got some experience in CRMs and stuff like that. Um, and you went from that corporate technical into, uh, quite a very different line of work. Uh, what, what was behind that? Uh, what that, cause that's quite a big, an interesting shift. What was the driving behind that?

Yeah, good question. I think at its root, probably to better align my career with my faith. You know, I think I've always enjoyed the jobs that I've done. I've done a number of different jobs. They've always tended to center on people. And I love that, you know, I love being with people, even in sales, in technical pre-sales, it is great to meet with clients and to understand their most pressing business problems and then try to identify solutions that could help them navigate that. As I went into the energy sector, again, similar in sales and marketing, you were looking at things in terms of what drives customer behavior. Why do they make certain purchases? Why do people respond in a certain kind of way? And so I'm just understanding why people do the things that they do. And ultimately with a desire to try and help, you know, whether it's somebody's life improve or make it get a better product or a better decision. Just to try and make things a little bit better. And I kind of realized in my mid-30s that the track that I was on, there was nothing inherently wrong with that. I was enjoying my career. It's on like a pretty good kind of trajectory. But it was that moment of, I didn't want to get to retirement and look back and just kind of say, well, I've spent that time and it's been okay, but what did that What did that stand for? You know, how did that really count? And so I started thinking about and praying about actually kind of what I wanted to do with my life and just felt this strong desire to take that love of people and to try and bring it front and center as a means to alleviate suffering. And you know, because even in the world in which we live today of like 7+ billion people, even in 2025, right, you've still got like more than 600 million people around the world without access to energy. You've still got over a billion people cooking over three-stone fires. You know, you've still got issues with regards to water and sanitation, gender inequality, and all of these different pressing challenges that you would hope or you would think that as a human race that we would have maybe been able to address right now. But yet you still have this massive inequality gap. And so I think that's what really led me to the sector. And then within the sector, I started off working out with social enterprises. So often these are for-profit organizations, but with a means to try and work on the social problems. So whether that is providing solar lighting or mini-grids to off-grid communities or mobility solutions, clean mobility solutions in the cities in developing markets. That's where I kind of started to cut my teeth in the sector. And then I went back to school years on after doing my undergraduate degree in software engineering and theology. I went back to study an MBA. And I enjoyed the experience, but I used the thesis at the end to really look at public-private partnerships and how that could accelerate electrification for displaced communities. So looking at how you supply power to things like refugee camps and why is it when you have people like UNHCR, which are powering their operations in a camp, why only, I think it's about 6% of refugees within the camp have access to power and how do you create a win-win solution, uh, which can provide, um, uh, power to those that need it. Um, and so that's what really started to get me in love with the humanitarian, uh, sector and start to work with some of these actors and interview people from UNHCR and IOM and the World Bank and all of these different, um, uh, players. Uh, and I was just like, this is, this is what I want to do. Um, and you whether you call it by divine design or serendipitous or whatever you want to say, but that there was a role at the church that then came up to be the area humanitarian manager. And I've loved the work that the church has done for many, many years. And back when church offices were in Solihull before it all went to Frankfurt, I would've loved the idea of doing something in church employment, but never thought it was ever going to be a reality. And then about, I think it was in 2022, '23, when they announced the Europe North area. And so you had all of Europe and then it separated into Europe Central, Europe East, and Europe North. There was now an opportunity to join. So I spent my working life traveling back and forth to High Wycombe at the area office and just love work that I get to get involved in to try and build something meaningful.

Okay, that's a fantastic transition, uh, in terms of, you know, that corporate and then what drove you going into, you know, that humanitarian. That was just wonderful, um, experience there. Uh, so you're in this role, it's the, uh, the manager for humanitarian efforts for the church in Europe. It aligns strongly with your personal and professional ambitions, which is great. I think to be able to work to help people and serve people and improve people's lives in the way that you do and then get paid for it as well. And again, doing it for the church, which is an amazing organization and the church does this extremely well. I would argue that depending on where you are and the kind of resources that the church has access to in that area probably determines the scale and the scope of the efforts that the church gets involved in. Just as a kind of a— and I want to bring Jim Bennett in here shortly as well— but kind of a big picture question is, what's the— from your perspective in this new role that you've got as humanitarian manager, what's the church's strategic position in regards to its humanitarian efforts? What's its ambitions? What's its objectives? What's the trying to achieve? What's that vision from your perspective?

Yeah, great question. I think at the top line, I just love the church's simplicity when it comes to the value that it stands for. So unlike a number of other organizations, which could be well-intended, you know, that you have a good social mission that you try to do, but in the for-profit world, as you raise kind of private capital, sometimes that mission can become diluted because you're beholden to shareholders. And if you zoom all the way out, the reason I believe that the church does what it does in this area is simply to keep the two great commandments, right? To love God and love our neighbor. And so everything within the church's efforts in terms of caring for those in need ties back to that second great commandment, to love your neighbor. If you think about the church's four what they call divinely appointed responsibilities, right, which kind of tether back to that as part of God's work of salvation exaltation. One is living the gospel of Jesus Christ, of course, but the second one is to care for those in need. And so all of the work that the church does here, and it is branded kind of the caring for those in need report where they do that kind of global report, it all comes back to how do we care. For those in need. And that includes the church's humanitarian efforts, absolutely, how they respond to emergencies, the work in which we do in the area. But it also includes things like fast offering assistance for members of the church which have fallen on hard times. You know, there's a blend of activities that's going on within those efforts, but again, it tethers back to caring for those in need. This might be a very simplistic way of viewing things, Ian. And again, this is all my personal opinion. I'm not a spokesperson for the church here, but I find it really insightful that when you read the parable of the Good Samaritan, often we focus on the Samaritan, the person that binds up the wounds of that person that's been robbed and fallen on hard times. And when everybody else's brethren kind of pass him by, a Levite and a priest, But sometimes we neglect that there are two actors in there which care. You've got the Samaritan, yes, but you've also got the innkeeper that's there. The Samaritan was able to be there to offer immediate assistance and then kind of puts him on his beast and takes him to an inn and then entrusts him to the innkeeper and kind of says, you know, here's a bit of cash, here's some money, here's 2 pence, and you take care of him. And then if I come back again, or when I come back again, anything else that you spent in excess of that, I'll, you know, I'll make that up. And so this role of collaboration or partnership. And the church does some incredible, you know, their heart is absolutely in the right place to care for those in need. But also let's not kid ourselves, right? You know, the church's approach to that is through members and through collaboration partners with NGOs, with charities around the world that are specializing in a lot of this stuff. So what I really love is the humility I think when you hear Sharon Eubank, who was the Director of the Church's Humanitarian Services, when she speaks, it never comes from a place of, oh yeah, we know exactly what we do and we've got all this figured out. It's very much from a, we're really grateful for the opportunity to support the efforts of these incredible charities. We're really grateful to strive to care for those in need. And we are learning as we go and we don't always have it all figured out, but we just want to try and do good. And I think when you're in that mindset of humility, willingness, and you couple that with some financial resources, so that's a really great combination to have.

Yeah, that's extraordinary. Uh, I wonder how aware members are of the church's extraordinary work it's doing on the humanitarian front. Jim Bennett, your sister and brother-in-law are serving a humanitarian mission in Australia. We recently had them on the podcast in the last couple of months. It was the most amazing conversation, and I learned a great deal of what the church is doing, uh, on fundo, you know, in that part of the world. Jim Bennett, I think you've also appreciated the church's humanitarian efforts from your conversations with his sister. Uh, what's your response to John from your Thoughts?

Well, I don't know if I have a direct response. I'm just, I'm very, very impressed with what the church has been doing, and Jordan, with your commitment to doing that. One of the biggest criticisms that I think critics of the church are currently leveling against the church is, oh, we've got unlimited funds and we're just not spending nearly enough of it. On humanitarian efforts. I'm sure that's a criticism you have heard. I'm wondering how you respond to it when that's raised.

That's a great question, and I think you can look at it from very different perspectives, right? So if you look at maybe total assets of the church and how much is spent for caring for those in need, some people turn around and say, well, that feels that we could be doing so, so much more with all of these assets that the church has. Noting that, you know, Al-Abadnah would often talk about that the church is, it also consumes a lot of resources as well by running universities and missionary programs, which they heavily subsidize and all of the other great work. So it's not that it's income producing, that it's there just to hoard money. It's also very much income consuming as well. All of those things doing good, you know, genealogical work around the world is doing good. School, universities, church universities is doing good. Subsidizing a missionary program is doing good. So the church is kind of caring for those in need and humanitarian efforts is one aspect of the church's work. And let's not forget that yes, the church does amazing charitable work, but it is not at its heart, that's not its primary function as an NGO. At its heart, it is there to do the Lord's work or salvation and exaltation or contribute towards that. And so when we think about how we allocate resources, like with any organization, you allocate resources to where your mission is. And so this is part of the mission. Absolutely great caring for those that need, but it is not the sole focus of the church. And, but if you think about it in absolute terms, So forget relative terms for a second. $1.4 billion or $1.46 billion, whatever it was that was in 2024 spent for caring for those in need, that is still a significant sum of money. If you look at kind of Oxfam's annual budget or the Red Cross's annual budget, that is not pocket change. So even though people may critique, and I hear and respect that critique that may be proportionate, versus the church's total asset. Maybe they could do more, perhaps. But look back at the growth rate that has happened over the past 20-plus years in humanitarian expenditure and also look at it in absolute terms. It's significant. It really is.

Oh, there's no question that it's significant and there's no question that what you're doing is significant. It's just really remarkable, I think, to see where the criticism of the church is sort of coalescing. We've had Terrell Givens on here, and he was talking to a BYU professor who said that young people are more concerned about the church. It's not enough for the church to be true. The church also has to be good. And Terrell Givens made the point that young people say, they would rather spend time in soup kitchens than in temples. Because the temple, I mean, it's saving souls beyond the veil, but the rising generation is more interested in benefiting people on the ground, in reality, in mortality, that are alive now. Do you encounter some of that? I mean, do you get that kind of pushback at all?

Um, I don't think I get that pushback necessarily, but we, we definitely do see, uh, within the UK and other, uh, other, other countries in Europe North, and there definitely is a desire and an encouragement actually of our rising generation, our young people, our youth and, and young adults to, to want to get involved in meaningful service, to, to live their religion, right? You know, there's, um, if we take for a second that the, I guess, the purpose of this life, one of the purposes of this life is to become, you know, the purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is to make bad men good, good men better, uh, and to change human nature. This, this becomes about a, a journey of becoming. And so if your attitude to discipleship is, you know, just sat there on a Sunday or pontificating purely about, about that belief, then Okay, more power to you, good luck. But actually a full change of heart is displayed often, manifest by our actions and our attitude to how we care for those around us. So what I find really encouraging in a world where sometimes religion can be seen as being outdated or too overly structured or different things like that, is that we can see this and cohort, this rising generation coming through, which are probably more inclusive than any generation before, are very focused on alleviating suffering or addressing social injustice, want to be part of a movement which has a sense of meaning and purpose and an incredible skillset to be able to do that. You know, their ability to multitask, their ability to leverage technology, their ability to Empathize, like all of these things, it's just the world is kind of primed for the younger generation that's coming through now to do some incredible social good in a way which perhaps in a historically capitalistic society we might not have been. So I see it as a real opportunity.

You mentioned earlier that the church is, it is an NGO, I think he describes it as a non-government organization, but his primary focus is not to be an NGO. His primary focus is to save souls and to bring about, you know, the salvation of, of, um, humankind. What's that relationship between the church's humanitarian efforts, Jordan, and if any, the proselyting efforts? So you've got this And I want to get into some of the projects. I'm really interested in having conversation about a project that you're involved in. That would be very interesting. Certainly one in the UK would be useful as well to contrast that, to kind of look at the services that the church is delivering to achieve its humanitarian objectives. But what's that relationship between the church's humanitarian efforts, uh, and that big vision thinking? And proselyting and using those humanitarian opportunities to increase awareness of the gospel and the church. And yes, invite interest on the church in that kind of, uh, organization, that structure, and that activity in that, you know, coming through the humanitarian program. Could you speak to that, um, the relationship between the two?

Yeah, again, happy— a great question and happy to offer my personal perspective here, noting that I'm kind of not speaking on behalf of the church, but as an employee, you do get some interesting insights, right, in terms of what that looks like day to day. So first, just a bit of a macro level, obviously at our core, we are the Church of Jesus Christ. So we are a church first and not a charity, but of course, as you look at the entities, the legal entities of the church, we are registered as a charity, individual entities in different countries. So if you were to go to the, in the UK, if you were to go to the UK Charity Commission website, you would be able to look up the church as a legal entity, a registered charity, and if you could look at their strategic reports and their financial information, which they submit to the UK Charity Commission, And obviously the remit of that registered charity is broader than its out-and-out straight humanitarian work. I mean, it would talk about that it is there as a religious institution. It will talk about it is there to help education and relief of poverty and all of these things. And so structurally, the church is a registered charity, but its core, its ambition is to be there as the Church of Jesus Christ. And so you have this lovely interplay between the temporal affairs of the church and the ecclesiastical affairs of the church. And in fact, that's the way in which it's structured. You have an area presidency which leads the church in a given area, and then they will have ecclesiastical departments report directly to them. On the other side of the coin, you have the director of temporal affairs which oversee all of the temporal aspects of the church. And that would include things like finance and legal and humanitarian, welfare, self-reliance, and buildings and meeting houses and all of that kind of stuff. And I think I remember, was it, I think it was Elder Renlund that kind of said, you think about like two sides of the coin and you ask a question to say, if I asked you, Ian, what is the most important side? Of the coin. Is it heads or is it tails? You know, maybe you have a favorite, maybe you say it's heads and you always call heads if you flip a coin, but it's kind of saying for that coin to hold its true value, for it to be worth something, you need both heads and the tails to make it something that you can spend. And he kind of applied that principle to the nature of the work that the Presiding Bishopric does. And then what comes under the direction of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and ultimately all of that goes up to the First Presidency, is the ecclesiastical side of the church, the temple side of the church. And they don't compete with each other or trump each other. They work in harmony with each other. That said, you know, we apply those principles to how we do our humanitarian work. The primary rationale for our humanitarian work, as I come back to what I said at the beginning of the conversation, is because we believe we're all God's children, we have a responsibility for brothers and sisters. We have a genuine desire to care for those in need, that is not contingent on somebody's religious affiliation or their belief. It's not utilized as a tool to somehow, you know, spread the gospel wider and convert people to us. And there is, and what I've seen firsthand from some of the charities that we work with, and I'd like to talk briefly about maybe the Giving Machines and the experience of charities involved in that. What you do see is a natural halo effect, you know. So as we meet with charities and organizations and they see that we come from a place of sincerity and that we can see that we are good stewards of funds and that we're there striving to do good, then naturally you get questions in terms of why do you do this? And oh, it's great that the church is striving to do this. And so I think that opportunities for the visibility of the church definitely happen naturally, but we're not seeking it. And that's what I really, one of the many things I really love about being a church employee right now is that you can see that that's not just talk. That's not like, oh, we say that, but we're secretly trying to do something else. Like you genuinely see that in the way in which we interact with charities, with beneficiaries and other actors is that it's just this overwhelming desire to want to help. But naturally people are drawn as a result of having those firsthand experiences.

So the church at the highest level is organized around committees and various jurisdictions. There is a reporting system, reporting mechanism. The church's humanitarian efforts is a major initiative for the church as an NGO. It's a church first, but it's also a registered in the England and Wales registered charities, etc., and across the world registered as a humanitarian organization. Who from the leadership, the highest levels, the apostleship, who's over the humanitarian, and how does that line of reporting, how does that work?

Um, that's a really good question. Yeah, really something that I didn't know before I, before I started in church employment, right? So, um, I had to kind of peek behind the curtain a little bit, and I don't think there's anything, um, secretive about it. There's definitely policies and procedures in terms of how things are done. But, um, so the church at headquarters will have a humanitarian division, which is within the Welfare Self-Reliance Department. So the Welfare Self-Reliance Department, like any other church department, has a kind of a managing director, and then you have divisions within that. So, um, a guy called Blaine, he's the managing director of Welfare Self-Reliance Services globally. And then one of the divisions is Humanitarian Services Division, which Sharon Eubank, who was formerly on the church's General Relief Society Presidency, she heads up as a director of that. What's been fascinating, I think historically, and this is way before my time, the church's approach to humanitarian work was probably a little bit more headquarter-driven. So global initiatives that were kind of implemented in the area, but the strategy, the main kind of thrust of the work was coming from headquarters down. What we see in other organizations is this recognition of the need for localization to ensure that solutions and approaches are really fit for purpose and resonate in a more impactful way. And so my impression coming into church employment— again, I'm still a relative newbie, haven't been here quite 2 years yet— but it looks like that pendulum, certainly in terms of the church's humanitarian work, has definitely in the process of, if not already, swung significantly towards localization. And what's good about that is it means that, you know, people like me and my boss and my equivalent in the 24 different areas around the world that the church has, is empowered to be able to help design and craft strategy and collaboration opportunities, which are as well as we can be fit for purpose for the area. Now saying that, you know, Ian, saying like the 14, 15 countries within Europe North, that's very diverse even within Europe North. Like we have the UK and Ireland, which will have certain needs. We have the Nordic countries, we have the Baltic States, we have Portugal. But we also have Cabo Verde and now Guinea-Bissau. I mean, we call that Europe North and clearly, guys, like, you know, if you get your map out, neither of those two last two are in Europe. So if you look at the humanitarian need across that variety of countries, you can see a very big spread. And so as we look to design what we thought would be most appropriate for the church's humanitarian work within this area, we've had to zoom out and say, what themes do we feel would be most impactful? And so the kind of 2 or 3 thematic areas that we have landed on in Europe North will not be the same as what Europe Central have landed on, which will not be the same as what Africa West has landed on. And so what I love about that is you have the diversity of the activities best suited for the market But again, the ethos, the reason why we do what we do being common across the globe. And then to answer your kind of first question, Ian, so when we do projects or approvals or bring ideas forward, that is kind of tiered based on financial value. So certain projects we approve directly in our team, other projects would go to the area presidency, other projects would go through those stages first, but ultimately go to the Welfare Self-Reliance Department in Salt Lake. Some larger, really larger projects go to the Presiding Bishopric, and some large, large, large projects go to the First Presidency. And so, yeah, but everything that we do in the area starts within the area, and that's quite a nice thing to be involved in.

That's great.

I mean, it's just amazing to me how well organized the church is. I mean, and I mean, I think it speaks well for your role here that, I mean, you've got your hand, you've got your finger in a whole bunch of different pies. You're dealing with a continental, to a large degree, effort to improve people's lives. Now, in terms of, you talk a little bit about your career path that led you to this. Is this something that you feel like is kind of a destination for your career, or do you see yourself doing this for a while and then moving on to something else?

That is an excellent question. That is a brilliant question, Jim Bennett. So I definitely felt led to this role. Definitely, undeniably. And a very personal experience that kind of gave me a confirming witness that this was the right step to take. So I know I'm where the Lord wants me right now. That said, if you would've asked me this same question 5 years ago, I would've had no idea that I would be doing what I'm doing now. And so when I was interviewed for this role, Firstly, kind of cool having an interview for a church job because they start with a prayer and I've never started an interview with a prayer before and that's a really nice thing. But they asked two questions and I gave two very, very honest answers. They kind of said, you know, when you join this role, like, where do you see yourself 5 years from now? That kind of typical interview question. Let's try to be honest. I've stopped asking myself that question because if you ask me at any point, from when I was a teenager through to now, where I see myself 5 years from now, that would be very different to where the Lord sees me 5 years from now. And so what I'm striving to do is not to control my life in terms of where I want to go, but striving to do what he wants me to do and to walk with him. And whenever I do that, I just feel in this really peaceful state. Um, so, so yeah, to answer your question, Jim, I have no idea whether this will be a 2, 3-year stint or whether I'll be in church employment for the rest of my career, all I want to do is to do what he wants me to do. And so if he wants me here long-term, I'll stay long-term. If he wants me to go somewhere else, I'll go somewhere else. He wants me to move, I'll move, like whatever that looks like. The second question, the last question that they asked me in the interview, but just the second point is, again, like many interviews, you kind of get to the end and they kind of say, well, why you over any other candidate that we're interviewing right now? Why you? And in most interviews, you'd find yourself pitching why you and the differentiation between you and any other candidate. What I found myself saying is, I don't think you should hire me. I think you should hire whoever the best candidate is for this role. I care passionately about this work. If there is somebody else that can do it better, hire them because I just want the work to go forward. And if I get to be part of that, great. But if not, I'd much rather the work go forward. That's not the kind of thing that you typically say in an interview. And I think when I hung up the phone, I was kind of kicking myself in terms of that was a dumb answer. Why did I say that? But what was interesting is when I got feedback from the interview, from my now boss, who's an amazing guy to work for, super cool, But he was just like, that was one thing that really stood out to us is that you were more concerned by the work happening and the best candidate rather than it being about you. And I see that a lot in my day-to-day work and the other colleagues that I work around that do very, very different things. And they've come from very, very different backgrounds, but the thing that seems common amongst a lot of church employees that I've met. One is that they felt somehow led to church employment, and two, I haven't really come across many egos. People are about striving, and yeah, you know, you might have disagreements with colleagues or see things from different perspective, but the ego, the pride, I don't see it. And maybe I'm— maybe it's just because I'm missing it, but you know, but you see that so much in the world of work. I haven't really come across that. At all in church employment, and that's a really nice place to be.

Yeah, I, I, I, I, as I listen to you, I, you and I are very different. If it was me in that interview and I was saying the prayer, I might be tempted to say that, please help the interviewer choose me, who is the best candidate for this, uh, this position. So, um, probably not, but no, that's a very humble, uh, answer that you gave. And I think it's, you're clearly the right man for the job. I mean, you've got listening to you, I get a depth of just extraordinary. And Jim, you feel this as well, I'm sure. I'm sure I feel this way. John, you've got this dimension to you, this side to you that's just very genuine, very sincere. There's a spirit here that I feel in this conversation. You're really driven by helping people. That's your goal. That's your objective. And you're very open to where that takes you, if it's in the corporate world or if it's in and you're working for the church, you want to make a difference in people's lives, no matter what that looks like. And I think that's extraordinary. You're a very high-quality individual. When I was learning about you through Darrell Watson, who we know very well— so, Jim, you may recall that we were introduced to Jordan through Darrell, who came on the podcast. Darrell and I and Jim, we go back a long time to Dunfermline. You know, we have a long history and Darrell spoke just so highly of you and the quality of you as an individual in this conversation is just extraordinary. And I just think you're just a wonderful guy and you clearly, you do, you're the right man for the job and the church made the best decision. There's no, if it was me and you doing that job, the church by picking you would pick the best person. So, so that's great.

Just very kind of you to say.

I'm a little bit more kind of, you know, give me the job kind of thing, right? But, but, but, Valerie, you and I share some technical experience because we've got, listen to you in terms of some of the technical stuff, we kind of got a little bit of overlap there. And if it's okay, I just want to get into some kind of project examples that you, you do and then get Jim Bennett's thoughts on this as well. You mentioned earlier that there's, you know, there's these 15 countries under the church's humanitarian initiative or efforts in Europe, and they differ depending on needs and the geographies and the people and the different needs, et cetera. Could you contrast, if you can, a project in Scotland? And I mentioned Scotland because Jim knows Scotland. I know Scotland. You know Scotland. It's part of your geography. And I mentioned because, because Jim Bennett lived there for 2 years, so he can kind of relate to it. Um, you know, I'm from Yorkshire originally. And so what's the project look like in Scotland? Uh, and again, I've been a bishop in Scotland and I know, or at least I used to know, what the needs are for the members and, um, the organizations in Scotland. I owned and operated a charity in Scotland, by the way, uh, a successful charity.

I think I met you and I talked about that.

So I've got a little bit of professional insight into that. But what does a project in Scotland look like compared to a project in, uh, what was that other country outside of Europe? What was that?

Uh, if you look at Cabo Verde, uh, there's like 10, 10 islands, an island nation off the west coast of Africa, which is not in, in Europe if I'm—

geography is correct. How did that— how do you assess that? And what are those projects and those— were those regional or area needs How do they differ compared to say Scotland versus the other places? Can you speak to that?

Great question. Can I just say one thing up front in a world which is increasingly polarized and where nationalism continues to take hold, I'm keen not to get into the Scotland, England, Ireland divide. I see it very much as a United Kingdom. So if it's okay with you, Yeah. Even though every time I do go north of the border, I do crack open the Irn-Bru almost the first thing that I do. So I'm a big fan of Scotland. I was born in Scotland. My first couple of years of my life was in Alexandria. So I think of it fondly. But yeah, let's just talk about the UK.

Yeah.

I only like Scotland only because Jim served there. But yeah, let's talk about the UK for sure. Yeah.

Good. Cool. So at a thematic level, We have agreed on 3 themes that we believe in Europe North is relevant in all of those countries, even though the implementation of those themes may look very different. So just bear with me a second. If we talk about like the 3 themes that we have, and then I'll give an example of how that might map to the work that we do in the UK and how that could be very different, but still share some synergies with that in Cabo Verde. So the 3 themes that we look at in Europe North, and again, that might be different to Europe Central or Africa West or anywhere else, but we look at one is the health and wellbeing of women and children. And this ties in nicely with the General Relief Society presidency and their initiative around the health and wellbeing of women and children as well. And that's still a broad theme that can include things like child nutrition, education, immunization, maternal newborn care. There's a lot of different activities that sit in that, but a theme level, we're saying the health and wellbeing of women and children. Another theme is what we call vulnerable populations. I'm not a big fan of that title because sometimes that can disempower individuals, but it is a term that we use and that's used in this sector. We within Europe North have focused that effort predominantly within refugees and asylum seekers. Or those that might be homeless or transient in nature. And so some of society's often most vulnerable, most neglected sometimes can be polarized as well. We look and talk about the change in political landscape recently, you know, and for a lot of refugees, they face terrible living conditions, but also now real challenges in terms of integrating in communities, which is becoming again, increasingly more contentious. And so when government support is withdrawn, some of these refugees can find themselves very much at risk. And then the third theme that we look at is what we call food security. And that's where I'd like to start just to kind of contrast perhaps the work that would be in food security within the UK versus what might be in somewhere like Cabo Verde or Guinea-Bissau. So, If any of you watched General Conference or the in-between bits in General Conference, you'll have seen the kind of global report, the world news report that's in there, and they showcase very briefly as part of that a visit that Elder Cook did to the UK. And as part of that visit to the UK, I had the absolute pleasure to be able to take him to see one of the charities that we support, an organization in London called the Felix Project. But equivalent organizations are there throughout the UK. And so we do some work with Trossell Trust, which again, go throughout all of the UK with Fair Share, who again are a national organization. The Felix Project really focus on the redistribution of surplus food. So you look at the amount of food that goes to waste. Or goes to anaerobic digestion to create energy or feedstock for animals, but yet is still fit for human consumption. But often we just throw it away. And then you look at the poverty rates. I think there's stats like something like 1 in 4 children, 1 in 4, 1 in 5 children in London are going to school hungry. Child poverty, child nutrition, even in the UK is still rife and with austerity and increased cost of living and inflation, et cetera, that situation just continues to get worse. There are now more individuals reliant on food banks than ever before. And it's not that there's not enough food, there is food available. It's just often in the wrong hands or not able to get to the right hands. And so charities that work on food redistribution as a means to fulfill two charitable objectives, one is to get food to people that need it. And two is the environmental objective to reduce waste and everything that goes along with that, the CO2 and methane emissions and everything around that. It's just a beautiful charitable activity. And so we've collaborated with the Felix Project. That's one of the reasons I'm here in London today. I have a meeting with them tomorrow. To be able to increase their footprint and throughput at some of their depots. And so we announced, I think it was back end of 2024, a collaboration between us and Muslimeh, where we are co-funding the expansion of their West London depot to move them to a new site, to kick that site out, which will double the footprint of that depot. And hopefully, we hope to deliver an increase of 12 million additional meals annually as a result of some of this work. So it's a large-scale project for us with an incredible partner. Felix Project do some just tremendous work here in London. They recently announced their merger with FairShare. So now you've got a national organization who they'll be working with and, you know, what a force to be reckoned with in terms of food redistribution within the UK. If you were to compare and contrast that with a market like Guinea-Bissau or Cabo Verde, Food security is still absolutely important, but here you may be looking at things linked to supporting smallholder farmers. So how you reduce wastage at harvest time, so reducing post-harvest loss or helping with things like irrigation or what we call post-harvest agri-processing. So how you do value addition to the crops which have been grown. To be able to give farmers better income levels or better access as a result. So both scopes of work within food security, but the implementation may look different dependent on market dynamic. And you'll see that across other thematics, whether it is refugees and asylum seekers, or whether that is the health and wellbeing of women and children. Health and wellbeing of women and children in the UK may look at things like victims of domestic abuse. And women's shelters. Health and wellbeing of women and children within a market like Guinea-Bissau or Cabo Verde may be more relevant to look at things like child nutrition or immunization. So we try to still have some overriding themes, but we are acutely aware of the market nuances that need to exist and how we should tailor that work based on what we think will deliver the most impact.

That's a fantastic answer. It really gets into some of the details of what, you know, where you, how you assess, you know, that criteria for assessing the different needs, the geographic differences. What's the relationship with the members who are in need? So you've got these different regions, different areas. You've got members of the church who are a cross-section of society who've got identical, similar challenges. We all need to work, we need to pay our bills. Uh, the economy affects everyone. It just doesn't affect, uh, one group of people. It, it impacts everybody. What's that relationship between active or less active members, and if any, and humanitarian efforts initiative that the church is involved in, if any?

Yeah, great, great, great question. So, and it's not binary, okay? That's the first thing I'd like to say here. It's not binary. But if you think about how the church's aid is structured, again, going for that, the big $1.4 billion, Caring for Those in Need includes a blend of the church's humanitarian efforts and also fast offering assistance. Now we know that fast offering assistance by design is primarily intended for members of the church, no respecter of person in terms of whether that person goes to church on a Sunday, whether they're, quote, you know, we use the term active, less active, but whether they're regularly attending or not, that is in no way, shape, or form, or should in no way, shape, or form dictate whether they can be a recipient a fast offering or not. And if you look in the Church's General Handbook of Instruction, you look around that, you'll see that that's really clear. It's not dependent on activity, but it is intended for members of the church. Humanitarian funds and projects by their very nature, one of the four core humanitarian principles as defined by the UN is impartiality, as in the aid should be administered based on need alone, right? So you have humanity, impartiality, neutrality, and independence. We don't discriminate when it comes to how aid is administered. And so Ian, you're absolutely right that the members will also represent a cross-section of society. If we support a large national food bank, members and non-members may both benefit, but we're not designing it to help members or to help non-members. It's to help humanity. You know, when you think about the word human, it's in humanitarian. We are there to help human beings first and foremost, everybody in the work in which we do. I think there have been historically, and maybe in some areas, and I can't really speak for this outside of Europe North, that there are some projects which are called, well, I'm getting the wrong name of it here now, but kind of like a member beneficiary intended project, but that is usually very niche to help with specifically a a certain scope of work which might affect a very dense population in a certain geography. But certainly for the work in which we've done in Europe North to date, since I've been in, there's been nothing which would differentiate between the two. But the third component, so you've got kind of people that are members of the church, people that aren't members of the church, and again, fast offering for members of the church, humanitarian for all. One thing that we are keen to encourage is opportunities for members to serve in their local community. Now, not all humanitarian projects are suited for that, especially if you're working with people that are extremely vulnerable or that there are safeguarding issues. It would be inappropriate to have members of the church, you know, volunteering at a women's shelter with victims of domestic abuse, right? Unless you're properly DBS checked, properly trained, properly have these things, you can't just throw anybody in there, even if they have a good idea that they want to help. So there's some projects where it wouldn't be appropriate, but for things like serving at food banks or helping distribute, whether that is food or clothing, or whether that is service cleanup activities. Elder Whiting, the previous Area President for Europe North, who went back to the US fairly recently, Their desire as an area presidency was that we desire all to know Jesus Christ. And one of the things that he believes strongly is that one of the ways that we come to know Jesus is by ministering to others as he would. You know, Jesus taught some fantastic doctrine while he walked the earth. Yes, he did. And he built a following and he, there, and with his apostles performed some wonderful miracles, but most of his life was there ministering to people getting out in the community and ultimately serving and healing and teaching. And so we really want members to look outwards into their community to lift where they stand. And, you know, arguably I have my dream job right now. And occasionally, whether it's members of the church or even some of my friends, like kind of say, Jordan, your job is so cool. I wish that we 'cause you kind of do what you do.' And it's just like that, and that's great, and I love what I do, but at its core is a just desire to care for those in need. And so if you want to get involved in the humanitarian sector, it's not about jumping on a plane and going off to, you know, and do this big project. It's about looking, where are you? What do you look at day to day? Are you, do you have a heart which says, 'I want to go out and minister in my local community'? Do you have a heart which says, 'I don't just want to pass somebody on the street when I see somebody in need, I want to help'? And if your heart's in it, then you can serve wherever you are, whether that's in kind of aid, international aid, or if that is locally with the people on the same street in which you live. And I love seeing that a little bit in COVID, you know, in a world which arguably was increasingly more isolated where you had to isolate and stay in your houses. What you saw was actually an incredible sense of community people felt that they wanted to care for their elderly neighbors or people that couldn't get out to the shop and do things for them. And so even though the world kind of had to temporarily slow down over that time, there was a better sense of humanity or more appreciation, I think, I believe, for people around them. We were more conscious of our neighbors in a way in which, in a very busy world, and when we kind of come out the back end of COVID it's quick to forget and to move on and to be obsessed with ourselves and our work and the things that we do again. So it was fascinating to see.

Yeah. Well, so we're coming up near the end here. I have actually, by the time this is published, this will be old news, but they have just announced the new First Presidency and President Oaks obviously is the president of the church with President Eyring as the first counselor. And the second counselor is Elder, now President D. Todd Christofferson, which was not on my radar. I don't know if that was on anybody else's radar. Uh, do you see this new first presidency, uh, affecting your work going forward? Do you think that there's going to be a sort of a renewed push? For humanitarian efforts, do you think this changes anything?

That's a great, great question. I think, you know, when you already hear after General Conference, when President Oaks spoke at the end and talked about that they're not announcing any new temples, and then people are quick to kind of get in there with their point of view, or does this mean we're slowing down how temples are being built, and what does this mean? And we speculate, right? Like everybody, it's all conjecture. So I try to stay away from that. But what I do firmly believe is that they're called of God. And if you look in the scriptures at when a prophet was called, they were called by the Lord and they were placed in that orbit at that time because the Lord wanted them to serve. You know, so, so, so Noah wasn't called to be Abraham and vice versa, right? You know, and so President Oaks isn't there to be called to be President Nelson or President Monson or Gordon B. Hinckley or everybody, but they were called at the time that the world needed them as a prophet, as the Lord's mouthpiece on the face of the earth today. I believe that calls are done through revelation. I believe that how Elder Nelson approached the selection of his counselors, he sat down with each of them. He prayed sincerely, and it was the Lord's will to call President Eyring and President Oaks. And I believe exactly the same thing has happened this time, that President Oaks will have made that selection based on revelation. And so am I worried in terms of what this means for humanitarian work in the future? No, I believe that the church is led by revelation and that they are going to help steer the Lord's church in the direction that he takes it. Um, I'm just excited to be part of the journey.

Yeah, we appreciate that, John. I, uh, as Jim said, we're coming up to, uh, towards the end here, the next few minutes. But question I really want to ask you, and I'm very keen to get Jim's thoughts on this as well, and I'll try to frame this appropriately, but I want to tie it to some of the points. I've listened intently to what you've said, and I want to tie this to some of the points that you've made earlier. You talked about I think you said an increasingly divided world, a polarization. You made reference early to the politics. The church has got vast resources. It spends $1.4 billion. It's worth $500 billion. There's that proportionality component, which is a very, I think a very healthy conversation to have in terms of the church's spend on humanitarian. I think that's I think that's necessary.

I think that's important.

But what's the relationship between the church's humanitarian initiative and efforts and the major issues of the day and the politics? How do you navigate the politics? How does the church do that? Because a lot of these issues, all of them I would argue, are in some way directly or indirectly politically connected, you know, the economy, macroeconomics, microeconomics, the local regional needs, etc., how governments spend money, how they deal with crime. You talked about immigration, asylum, refugee. There's a huge debate going on in the UK, as you know, and certainly in the United States and elsewhere, and here in Canada around immigration, etc., etc. How, from your perspective in your role, how does the church navigate and what direction do they give you in terms of navigating the complexity and the often divisive and at times ugly side of the politics with all these issues that are happening in the world, including Middle East, Ukraine, which the UK very much is part of. You know, we're all part of that, trying to move forward on the Middle East, et cetera. How does the church navigate the politics from, in the humanitarian ethic?

Great, great question. Great question to finish on. My personal perspective, and for what it's worth, please feel free to disregard it completely, but I think when you look at kind of the landscape of global politics today, It's always about being divisive in nature, right? So if you take the UK Parliament, you have who's serving in Parliament and then the opposition party. By their very nature, they're there to oppose often the policies and procedures in terms of what the people in power are doing. And you see this in a lot of world governments. When you talk about the kind of recent surge in nationalism and people protecting their borders, again, it's about putting people in opposition one with another. And in those scenarios, it's very easy and people are very quick to dehumanize others. And so we talk about statistics in terms of number of immigrants coming into the country or people taking people's jobs or that kind of stuff. And so you're not putting a face or a name or a person to that. It just becomes these broad sweeping statements which can become contentious and divisive. And we know that the adversary is the author of contention. Conversely, one of the titles, one of the many titles of Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. And one of, I think, one of the most profound but needed teachings of President Nelson was the need for us as disciples of Jesus Christ to be peacemakers. And that comes to everything, to how we talk about people to their face and behind their back, how we treat others. We're called upon to be peacemakers. Now that can be incredibly difficult in a fragile political agenda, but what I like is the way in which the church has, from my perspective, the way in which they've navigated that is by bringing it back up to shared humanity. And President Nelson said, of all the labels that we can identify ourselves with, there's three most important. Um, the first being that we are all children of God. You are a son of God. I'm a son of God. Everybody that I see in the street out of there, whether they're coming out of Canary Wharf and they're an investment banker or somebody that I see on the street corner that's fallen on their luck and that is homeless. They are all precious sons and daughters of a loving Heavenly Father. And when I can lift my gaze to that, when I can see humanity, then barriers start to fall away. 'Cause you're no longer in opposition. You, you see what you share in common versus what divides you. And so I'm still sure that there's, there's, there's work and improvements that as an organization that we as a church can make to to help demonstrate that. But I feel in the heart of hearts that prophets and apostles that are leading this church today are trying to point us back to that. We're all children of a loving Heavenly Father, and as members of the church, we are children of a covenant, and we're disciples of Jesus Christ. And when we try to follow him, I think that's how we navigate it. We try to follow him, to do what he would have us do. And then things start to change and animosity starts to fall away and contention starts to reduce when we bring him into the conversation.

Jordan, we want to thank you so much for taking time to come onto our podcast and share these thoughts and feelings. There's a spirit in this conversation. I feel it. I know we all feel it and I just want to thank you for the extraordinary work that you are doing. And of course, the extra part of the, the church's humanitarian efforts. There's no doubt you're making a huge difference in people's lives. If there's ever a time that we need leadership in the world, right? It's now. Good, strong, moral, kind, thoughtful, balanced leadership, and certainly to have that, that mindset of Christ and that emotional and spiritual intelligence to recognize, identify the needs that exist out there to help people, even at the most fundamental level. And you're very much part of that frontline, and the work you're doing is extraordinary. I know you know that. Jim Bennett, do you have any final thoughts or comments before we close?

I'm just grateful, Jordan, that you've taken the time to talk to us. It's inspiring to hear of your efforts. It's inspiring to hear of your personal journey and how I believe the Lord has prepared you for this particular role and the amount of good that you are doing in the world and in the church. And just very, very grateful to have the opportunity to, to meet you and visit with you. And, and, uh, best of, uh, best wishes as you continue this, this great work that you're doing.

Thank you. It's been an absolute delight to be here, and thank you for inviting me on and asking some really, really good questions. I've really enjoyed today's discussion and I'm grateful for vehicles like this to be able to just share a little bit in terms of what we strive to do and how we're learning as we go. So thank you.

Our listeners will really enjoy this conversation. So on behalf of Jim and I, to all of our listeners, we want to thank you for being with us. I hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as we have. We've learned a great deal. And Jordan, again, it's been a real honor. You're the right man for the job, doing the right things. This is exactly where the Lord needs you, and we hope that you will continue to do the great work that you're doing. So until next week, we want to thank again everybody who's been with us. Jim Bennett, thank you for your always valuable insights and contributions. And Jordan, thank you again. Thank you to you both.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you, Jordan, from thank you, Ian.