Greg Prince Returns!

Greetings and welcome to the very latest episode of Inside Out, where we try to figure out what God and the Prophet wants us to do, even though half the time we can't find our own car keys. I'm your co-host, Ian Wilkes, and as always, I'm joined by arguably the finest singer the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has ever had, the one and only Mr. Jim Bennett. Welcome, Jim.

I'm glad you added arguably there. That gives me a certain amount of COVID that I think would be very helpful.

I thought I had to put a disclaimer word in there just to, uh, cover you off that.

Although, I mean, you could, you could make that argument. I don't think it would be a very compelling argument, but I suppose you could make it. You can argue for anything.

Although I may have canceled that disclaimer out by using the word Mormon, because I don't think you're supposed to use the word Mormon anymore. But anyway.

Yeah, I was, I was enlisted into the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. That's what the stationery said when they accepted me. But it doesn't seem to be what they're, they're happy with now. So.

Well, Jim, it's always a pleasure to spend time with you. We love doing this podcast. Our goal is to help people. Our goal is to contribute in a meaningful way to help the church improve. We want the church to grow and prosper and to be inclusive. So folks, to our listeners, have we got a wonderful surprise episode for you this week. It really is an honor to welcome back to Inside Out Mr. Greg Prince. Welcome back, Greg.

Well, thank you. It hadn't been very long.

No, it's only been 2 weeks. But we've missed you. And the last podcast, the first podcast that we did with you, as we mentioned earlier, we've had some wonderful feedback and comments. I've had quite a few messages in my personal inbox, just talking privately and personally about how much they were grateful to listen to you and to appreciate your insights and how much that's helped them. And by way of a reminder for our listeners, Greed Prince is a respected, acclaimed, and talented historian and scholar of the Mormon faith and the author of David O. McKay. Do I pronounce that right, Jim, or not?

Oh, well, you would know as well as I would. Depends on where you are.

That's true, that's true. The Scots would say Mackay, we can say David O. McKay. Author of David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism and many other extraordinary works. And so, Greg, we're grateful to have you with us today. And I understand, uh, from our messaging that you had the opportunity to listen to the last podcast that, uh, we did featuring Jim Bennett's sister and brother-in-law, Julie and Marty Newton.

Yes.

When you heard that, was that—

I thought it was an amazing podcast. I had no idea that some of these things were going on. I had hoped things like that were. But that was more aspirational than real.

I share, I concur completely. So my question is, when you heard that, if you can break it down and provide any other specific thoughts or feelings, what did you think about the humanitarian, the relief work, and the service work that you had, the details there, the mechanics of what the church is involved in, in Adelaide, Australia?

I think it's a good start stepping back and taking a broader perspective first, I, I've been thinking about what are the elements that would set you up for an ideal situation for going out in humanitarian, in Christian service, really making a durable difference. And I think there are three. One is real estate. We've got thousands of chapels and other church buildings all over the world that sit vacant about 98% of the time. A second is personnel. Well, we'll be talking about that. Uh, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. And the third is the wealth to fund some initiatives, and that is an embarrassment of riches. We've got 3 for 3 there. And so we have latent resources that other groups could only dream of, and they're sitting there prepackaged, ready to go. We just have to figure out how do you deploy those so that you're really taking full advantage of all 3 of those. Does that make sense so far, Ian?

It absolutely does. I think it frames it really well.

Uh, if you look, let's start with the numbers. The current missionary force, the last time I checked, is something like 14 times larger than the U.S. Peace Corps, which it's a ridiculous ratio.

Wow.

And yet think of what the Peace Corps over the last but nearly 60 years, has been able to do throughout the world with far fewer volunteers than we have missionaries. Uh, I think if you gave the option of a service mission and destigmatized it at the same time, you would see the numbers of full-time missionaries swell perhaps double. When I say destigmatize it, up until at least recently— now I live in Washington, D.C., so I'm 2,000 miles away from the epicenter, and I don't know the goings-on on the ground out there— but for a long time, the younger folks who were allowed to do service missions were basically the ones who couldn't qualify for proselytizing missions. So it was the consolation prize. If we could get past that and put it on an equal footing with the proselytizing missionaries, I think those numbers would jump, and I think they'd jump immediately. That a lot of the kids who just don't want to go on a mission for whatever reason, uh, would suddenly get interested and We have such a high bar that we have set for service as a proselytizing missionary that we're excluding a lot of really good kids who may have screwed up somewhere along the way and disqualified themself for a proselytizing mission. If you're talking about a service mission, lower that bar so that anybody who wants to do it could get that call. That, that's leg one of that tripod. Leg two, and Ian, you were talking about this in that podcast I listened to this morning, of what you had done in Scotland in terms of using church buildings during the many, many hours during the week when they're just sitting there vacant. If you look at other religious traditions and what they do with their buildings, uh, gee, they got things going on every day of the week. Most of them not religious. They may have Montessori school in there. They may have whatever. Uh, I, I don't think that there are legal problems to us using those chapels on a continual basis, 7 days a week. And look what that would do for the people in the community around it. Not just our standing as a church, but how it would be of service to so many of the people who could take advantage of that building. And once you get outside of the United States, very often the LDS chapels are a cut above the other buildings in the area. So why not leverage that? And start doing some real programming so that we can utilize those for the benefit of the whole community. And then the third leg of that tripod is this ridiculous amount of money that the church is sitting on. Bill Gates changed the whole world with $50 billion. We have multiples of that. We're starting to use some of that. I heard in the podcast this morning that I think it was last year, something like a billion and a half dollars, the church had expended. That's a lot more than they did a decade ago. So I think that they're, number one, realizing that with that wealth, there is an obligation to turn that wealth into something that'll change the world. And I think number two is they're finally getting their sea legs on how to go about doing that because it's not that easy. To give away money and get the result that you wanted to get.

Right, right. I, I think you've nailed it. I would add a fourth leg, Greg, if I may, to make it a chair. The church, from my experience, has not only extraordinary resources on the scale that you are articulating very well, but the church, when you committed and devoted to the church, it shapes and informs every aspect of your life, shapes how you feel, what you think, how you dress, you, how you behave, you associate with, your career. I can't think of any part of one's life, a committed, devoted covenant-keeping member where the church doesn't permeate that one's life. And so I would say that The church, uh, the fourth leg would be the church provides a full integrated comprehensive program of life learning, doctrine, policies, teachings for education, for health, for motivation, for leadership, spirituality, of course, uh, self-esteem, self-worth. Community partnerships. There is a whole series of social, I will put them under the social umbrella, which where the church really, when we live it, it really transforms every aspect of one's life. Yes, you've got your members, extraordinary resource in numbers, you've got your buildings, you've got your finance, but you've got that culture, service, commitment. We've said repeatedly on the podcast, Steve, haven't we, that the inherent strength of the church arguably is probably the extraordinary volunteerism, commitment, and devotion of the members. I mean, the power there is extraordinary. And so you got this worldwide church, this extraordinary outward-facing resources, yet to fill its full potential in the way we're talking about, but also internally where you've got— not only can you extend the invitation to, and lower the bar, I agree with you, extend the invitation for young people to serve missions, but you've got an opportunity in the vision that we're talking about right now, in the context of what we're talking about, we have the opportunity to extend callings and invites and missions to people in their own area to serve with community, with other charities, organizations, far beyond what the church should do right now, and to utilize the building and make it more open and more accessible through the day, which is what I was doing, by the way, at those events in Scotland. Those events weren't on a weekend. I had to take time off work. By the way, I was— the barriers to getting through that was ridiculous. I got reported to general authorities. I was unorthodox. I was doing things outside of the rules. I didn't care. I felt, well, you know, I know this is the right thing to do. They could release me or whatever. But the state president was on my side and he supported me. And so I still think we haven't yet, believe it or not, fully achieved the great potential in terms of firing on all cylinders, if you like, across the world. Jim Bennett, what are your thoughts coming into this?

No, I would agree with that. I think there is so much more potential and there is so much more the church can do. But one of the things that's so impressive is that the church has demonstrated so much capacity in what it has done. I've talked many times about, you know, when my daughter suffered a debilitating spinal cord injury that left her paralyzed from the waist down, uh, the church instantly, instantly sprung into action in a way that was mobilized and organized beyond the capacity, I think, of a lot of other sort of community organizations. I don't know that the members of the church are necessarily better people than other people who want to find ways to help and want to find ways to serve. But I do think that the church is singular and unique in its capacities. All of the things that both of you have talked about, not just financial resources, uh, not just in real estate, but boots on the ground. You know, local communities, instantly there is a support network that is available to any member of the Church. And it's remarkable. A lot of people I know, for instance, who have left the Church, uh, still when they move to a new area, uh, they go to sort of check out where their ward is, and they go to sort of check in because they know that there is that support network available to them instantly. And I have, I have always said that I think the church is best at a local level. You see the real goodness of the church one-on-one and on the local level. When you read the scriptures, they talk about the body of Christ and how there are different parts of the body of Christ that have need of each other. They're different, they function differently, but they come together to be able to fulfill Christ's mission and act. We, we talk about the priesthood as being the authority to act in the name of God. I think the church as a whole is really doing God's work one-on-one, individually ministering to the needs of the members and of the community. And one of the things that's so wonderful, that was so, uh, really inspiring about that last podcast is that they are reaching out not just insularly to other church members. They're not just saying, well, who are the church members who are in need? They're looking out at the world and saying, what are the needs of the community? What are the needs of the nation? And they're willing to spend the kinds of resources necessary to have a positive impact there. And so it was interesting because when I was setting up the meeting with Julia Marty, I discussed the fact that the three of us had talked about the idea of service missions and how much more impactful that would be. And they were very— they said, okay, we need to define our terms here because when we talk about a service mission right now, that is a very specific thing. Where a missionary serves locally. They live at home, they don't go anywhere, and they just serve a few hours out of the day. They find service projects, or they're involved in service projects that are close to home. They said, we are not service missionaries, we are hybrid missionaries that are hybrid humanitarian missionaries and welfare missionaries. And the humanitarian aspect is this finding of all these projects and finding ways to fund them. The welfare, which I thought was really interesting, they spend times ministering to other missionaries. They started talking about this idea of giving counseling to missionaries who are 6 months away from going home and talking about what's your educational status when you get there, how can we help you get into a good school. How can we help you get a good education? How can we help you get a good job? So there are all kinds of different moving parts in all of this that all have different titles, and I think when we talk about service missionaries, we're sort of encompassing all of that. We're saying that should be the focus, and I think the whole prom sliding missionary model as it's existed throughout the history of the church At this point, I, I think there have been times when that has been effective. At this point, the way the world is structured, the way information is exchanged, uh, at this point, I just don't think that traditional model works anymore. And I think there are scriptural examples that back me up. You know, if you go, a lot of people would, even when we were on our missions, Ian, they would go back to the Book of Mormon and the story of Ammon, who goes to serve King Lamoni's flocks. And he even says, yes, I'm going to do this until the day I die. And that makes no effort to begin a series of missionary discussions. He just is there to serve. And then when the moment comes, when King Lamoni and the people around him are looking for spiritual answers. They turn to Ammon there and they trust him. And it's the most natural thing in the world for them to be able to say, okay, well, here's, here's what it is that motivates me. Here's my connection to God. And let's see what we can do to strengthen that connection together and strengthen your connection. And so as Julie and Marty were talking about this whole thing of, okay, Yeah, they do these service projects and they end by saying, "Can we leave with a prayer?" And that's it. And then they say, "Do you want to come to church?" And again, it's the most natural thing in the world. Well, sure, I'd love to come to church. You're my friend. You've helped me. You've served me. I know you. You're not weird. You're not intimidating. You're somebody that I know and somebody who has shown genuine love and compassion toward me. And so of course I'm going to want to I want to spend more time with you, and I'm happy to do that at church. And if they go to church and it's, okay, well, this isn't for me, well, that's fine too. But that just seems such a more natural point of entry for someone to start participating in the church than, okay, I'm a missionary at your doorstep, and I'm going to sit here and try to convince you of all of the truth claims of the church and I'm happy to argue with you about whatever it is you believe. And I mean, that model, I just think it's fundamentally broken. And I think that this is such an encouraging and exciting way forward that I get very excited when I think about it. And Greg, it's— go ahead.

Let me go back into your fourth leg for my tripod. That is of the culture. 20 years ago, I got a phone call from a film producer who was doing a 4-hour documentary called The Mormons for PBS. Ellen Whitney. Uh, she had a copy of the galley proofs of my McKay biography, and she said, I've read it, I've got it spread all over my living room, let's talk. So we talked a lot over the next 2 years. But she said a couple of things that really stayed with me about that culture that you're referring to. One is, it was at a time when she had lost a dear friend, uh, rather unexpectedly, and she was in the process of grieving. She said, there are two things that stand out to me as real pluses for your tradition. One is, you deal with death better than I do and better than most traditions do because of your theology. And she said, number two, yours is a 24/7 religion and others are not. And that goes straight into what you were talking about earlier. The other thing she said in a different conversation goes back to the ethos of this culture of our big volunteer army, she said, I was interviewing people in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And I was interviewing one guy and he said, you know, there were only two groups that came and stayed until the job was done. The Latter-day Saints and the Mormons.

That's, that's fantastic. You know, I, the church is sick and tired talking about polygamy and about some of the past historical issues. It would prefer to, uh, deal with them in the way, in a more effective way. And if not, kind of move past them or through them is an, is a question whether, you know, how effective it is at doing that. And I think it would prefer for the world and the members and the communities at large to see the extraordinary qualities and value that Latter-day Saints bring to the community, not only in extraordinary service of projects and charities and dealing with disaster, emergency relief events, et cetera, which the Church does to your point, Greg, in an extraordinary way. The point that you made here as well, Jim, about when you move into an area like we did when we came to, we moved to Calgary, right? We'd never been there before we'd moved there. Uh, we were okay financially, so it wasn't really too scary, but the first thing we did was, the first thing we did, Jim, was connect with the bishop, and the bishop just, just, uh, unrolled all these services. It was extraordinary. We felt, you know, right at home, and the members do an extraordinary job at, um, helping and engaging and befriending, uh, people. And so the church would really like the world to see the great service and love that the members have for the community and for all these amazing events, which it, it does. But the world doesn't really know the church that well and is not really familiar with what the church is doing. I mean, on that last podcast, I got emotional because the description of what was happening there of an organization that was doing that kind of work was just mind-blowing. I would love to be a part of an organization that does that. It connected with every part of my spirituality, with every part of my emotions, you know, helping people in a meaningful way, in a way that shows love and kindness without any, um, conditions and, and where you make real friends, real friends that last forever. And that is the way to help people. You know, we knocked 10 hours a day, Jim, through the rain every day. Most days, I'd say 95% of the days were, for me at least, were absolutely horrendous. It was almost a complete waste of time. And I would have just loved the idea of being able to go out and actually serve and to, and just to help without any preconditions. And I know if the church had done this way back, you know, 40 years ago, I would argue that the church's relationship in Scotland, which hasn't changed, probably got worse if anything, in terms of reputation, strangeness is still there, polygamy is still there. We've not got past that perception that we're a cult. In the UK or a cult in Scotland. In my opinion, we haven't. But if the church had engaged in this vision, which is right there, we can see it right now, this extraordinary vision like what your, your family's doing in, uh, in, in Australia and achieving this full potential. If only it could see it right now and, and, and commit significant resources and change the way missionaries work lower the bar for other young people to go serve, you know, service missions, humanitarian missions, relief missions, get the local members involved in these programs and just become that, you know, firing on the V8 as opposed to firing on maybe 6 cylinders. The vision's there. I don't understand why the brethren can't see it. It's so obvious. They're seeing it in Australia. It's not happening here. It's certainly not happening in the UK. And I think if the church wants to move beyond the narrative of polygamy, which it's fed up of, then commit significant resources, which Greg says they've got and they have, and put a lot of time and effort using all the resources into helping people in need. And that's where, that's where the great work is. I think we spend more money and time on the dead. Than we do on the living, frankly. You know, we're building all these temples. We, we, I can't keep up with it. It's extraordinary. There's millions of dollars, hundreds of million dollars going on temples. And I know that work for the church is very important. I know the church has involved the youth the last few years in the initiative with the temple. But the work also equally on this side of the veil is as important as the other side of the veil. So my advice, recommendation, whatever it's worth, is for the church to commit similar resources to the living, uh, in the way that, uh, we're describing.

Let me, let me get back to Jim Bennett's sister and brother-in-law. The really good news there is that you've got two people who are doing amazing things. Really bad news is you've got 80,000 missionaries who aren't doing that. Now, I had a 50-year career in medical research, and occasionally I would think, gee, if somebody was practicing medicine, state-of-the-art, 1830, they'd be locked up. And yet that's still the way we're practicing proselytizing. We've done some incursions into social media. Most of that was driven by a pandemic, so we really didn't have much choice. Uh, the church is very guarded about a lot of the numbers, even though they're obsessed with numbers. They're not gonna let you see the ones that don't make them look as good as they wanna look. But you can triangulate because there are some numbers that they still report that allow you to do that. Mm-hmm. One of the mathematical calculations you can easily do is to say, okay, by definition, a stake is approximately 2,500 people with enough leadership to staff all the organizations. Doesn't need to be 2,500 active members, it needs to be 2,500 total members. And that means that for every increase of 2,500 in the church records, and that's both convert baptisms and children of record being baptized, you should get a new stake. And it used to be that that was pretty much the standard up until like the early 1990s. I'd have to go back sometime 'cause I, I did this for a period of maybe 30 or 40 years just looking at that ratio. Then it started to spiral in a different direction and it got to the point around the turn of the century where to get a new stake required 10,000 increase in total numbers. Now do the arithmetic on that. What that tells you is 7,500 of those are gone. We don't even know where they are. That's a pretty grim statistic. My point there is that our record in retaining converts is really Um, my calculation is that maybe 80% of them walk away from the church within one year of their baptism. I could be stand— I could stand to be corrected on that if somebody has better data, but I think that's probably a defensible number. That has a malignant ripple effect. Because for years I have been hearing some of this coming directly out of the Presiding Bishop's office, that half our returned missionaries leave the Church within 5 years. And I've got to think that those two things are related. That if you're knocking yourself out for just a few convert baptisms and 4 out of every 5 of those don't last for a year, when you get home, maybe you got second thoughts. And when I went on my mission, which was 1967, they were still having missionary farewells and missionary homecomings. They did away with those later on. But almost every missionary homecoming from as early as I can remember, without any prompting, the missionary would say, these were the best 2 years of my life. I don't hear that much anymore. And I think that's reflected in the fall-off rate of our returned missionaries. And I've got to think that that loops back to, was this an uplifting, fulfilling experience, or was this a 2-year experience of frustration and disappointment to see that all those hours I put in mostly walked back out the door as soon as I was transferred to the next city. I think most of that would go away if you converted the whole thing to service missions. Because if you set it up, and we haven't talked about this yet, but set it up in such a way that it is designed to make a durable difference. Then those missionaries are going to go home with their heads held high knowing they have made a difference that's going to last. That's enough on my part. You guys jump back in.

Well, go ahead. No, you go.

Go ahead. Well, the thing that jumps out at me on that is this idea of you go home and you see a durable effect from from your mission. Because when I was on my mission, I mean, you're not supposed to count converts, but everybody does. And I did. And I was very proud of myself because my convert number— I'm now trying to even remember what it was because it— because I'm going to— spoiler alert— none of the people that I baptized, as far as I know, are still active. Not a single one. I've kept in touch with some of the families, and I think they're wonderful human beings, and my, my love and affection for them is not contingent on their participation in the Church. But I look back on my mission and say, I didn't bring a single person into the Church that stayed. And I remember at one point on my mission, And Ian, correct me if I'm wrong on this, or if this, if you remember this zone conference, because this, this, they gave us some statistics about retention. These are statistics from the church between 1987 and 1989. So they're wildly out of date, but even at the time I was stunned And they talked about it, and they were retention statistics. And they said, what do you think is the highest retention rate in the entire church? And everybody was guessing, oh, I don't know, um, 50%. Uh, and they said in the United States, the retention rate was 28%. And they said in Japan, you had the lowest retention rate. It was 2%. And they said, here in Scotland, we're right in the middle, we're at 12%. And even then I'm going, 12%? I mean, that's roughly 9 out of 10 people we baptized are going to go inactive. And I just thought, that can't be true. That can't be true. Because of course all the people I baptize are never going to go inactive. And all of them have. And it's And now it's, it's so hard to find numbers that reflect those kinds of things. There have been a number of really interesting studies, uh, about this that have used unique metrics to try to measure how many people are going to church. And one of them is cell phone usage. Somebody sat down and tracked how many cell phones are sitting in a ward house at any given time. And that brings up— that study concluded between 15 and 20% of people on the rolls, at least in the United States— this was done in the United States— only 15 to 20% of people are active. And all of the anecdotal data that I see is that You know, the numbers of activity, the activity numbers just, just aren't there. And one of the things that was really depressing for me anyway, and Greg, this might be, this might hit home a little bit for you because my, my second daughter enrolled in, is now a doctoral student in the public policy school at the University of Southern California. Which was my alma mater. And the USC ward was my favorite ward. It still to this day is my favorite ward in the history of my life. I just had such a wonderful time there. It was such a marvelous experience to be there with other students, and we were sort of us against the world. And it's where I met my wife. We team taught gospel doctrine together. And so I had great affection for the USC Ward. So as we're moving my daughter into her new digs down in Southern California, we went in and she— we wanted to enroll her in an institute class, mainly because if you are enrolled in an institute class, you get free parking in the institute building and free parking at the University of Southern California is a very valuable asset. It's something like $1,000 a semester to park there. And so we go in there and the Institute, the building itself, it was a bizarre time warp. I mean, as I walked around the USC campus, I would look around and go, oh my gosh, this place has changed so much. And then I walk into the USC Institute building., and it's like I'm right back in 1991. It's just this huge time warp. It's exactly the same. What is not the same is the fact that there is no longer a full-time Institute director because there aren't enough students to support it. And furthermore, more devastatingly, there is no USC ward. There is also no UCLA ward. Which was part of our stake. There was no LA First Ward, which was the singles ward in the LA stake. There is only one singles ward in all of Los Angeles County. It's in Santa Monica. And all of these wards have closed down, all of them. And so I, and I looked at that and I talked to the Institute director and he said, oh well, he said a few things that I actually don't want to repeat because I thought they were embarrassing for him, and I don't want to embarrass him. But what, what was very clear is that the activity rate, particularly for young people in Los Angeles County, has plummeted. And anecdotally, if you talk to all of the people that I know in Scotland, you know, talk about something that will last, you know, the impact of a missionary service that will last Uh, everybody in Scotland reports the fact that activity rates are about half what they were when Ian and I were missionaries over there. And so you just look at that and go, have I just wasted my time? What have I done? It hasn't had that kind of an impact. And the kind of, of positive impact on a community, on on a country, on— that you have when you engage in that kind of humanitarian service is not something that could be taken away. It's not something that is contingent on whether or not somebody, uh, 5, 10, or even 1 year down the road decides to use their agency and say, I no longer want to be part of this church. You may not have brought lots of people into the church, but you have You know, if you're my sister or brother-in-law, you created a neonatal center in a hospital that is going to save the lives of infants for generations to come as a result. And that's something that you— that can't be taken away. So I— what I'm trying to do, I guess, with this long rant is agree with you wholly, Greg, and, and demonstrate that the problem there is real. And one other statistic here, Greg, because you mentioned, okay, it used to be that you needed 2,500 people to form a stake. And one of the things the church has done, this is again one of the metrics that the church lets slip, you know, they don't want to give you the numbers that don't make them look good. And this is a number that I don't think makes them look that good, but it's a number that they released to, to everyone, which is that, um, it used to be that you needed 2,500 people to form a stake. Now you need 1,900 people to form a stake, and they changed that in 2024, and they issued a public letter to be able to announce that. Uh, so they have lowered the requirements to build a stake, I think, because it was getting harder and harder and harder to, to claim growth. And I, I think that's part of the, the movement behind this temple burst, because we can control how many temples we build. And so when Russell Nelson stands up in general conference and announces 12 temples and the whole place goes wild, uh, that's something that only that's only contingent upon the size of our bank account. And it's getting harder and harder for me to get excited about it because I remember when they announced the Scotland temple. They said Edinburgh, Scotland is getting a temple. And I got a lot of messages from people saying, Jim Bennett, aren't you excited? And I said, you know what? I'm not. I'm not excited because who's going to staff that temple? If there are half as many active people in Scotland as there were when I was there, that's not near enough to justify a temple in Scotland. And there were so many when we were in Scotland. I remember when they, they announced that they were building a temple in, in— is it Preston, Ian, where they built the second temple? And the Scottish Saints were furious. Because they wanted a temple in Scotland. And they were told, well, if you want a temple in Scotland, get your numbers up. There aren't enough people to justify a temple in Scotland. Well, now the numbers don't matter, uh, and they're going to build these temples, and I don't know who's going to staff them. I don't know who's going to go to them. But last story, and then I'll let someone else rant, um, I have a cousin with a son in the military, and they were in Belgium. I think it was Belgium. They built the Belgium temple. It was a temple in some European area. And they said, oh, while we're here, let's go do a temple session. And they were running late, and they said, oh crud, we're going to be 15 minutes late. And so they said, well, let's call the temple, because they've made the appointment. And they called the temple.. And they said, oh, don't worry, we'll wait for you. And they got there. They were the only people in the session. There were only 2 sessions being performed the entire day. And that day was the only day the temple was open that week. So they built this temple and nobody's going to it. And they have two sessions. And if my cousin and his son weren't visiting there, no one would have been to at least one of them. I mean, this is, this is kind of where we are. We're trying to prop up the Potemkin village of Groves. And it just strikes me as a really meaningless exercise when there is so much good we could be doing. That would sort of erase the need to sort of prop up growth. We'd say, look, we, whether we grow or not, look at all the good that we are doing. Look at the impact we are having. And those numbers would speak for themselves. Those would, you know, when Jesus says, by their fruits ye shall know them, those would be the fruits that we would be known for.

Jim Bennett, one thing that you and I share is an experience in Los Angeles Stake. I lived in that stake until I went east at the age of 27. LA Stake and Santa Monica Stake are now one stake.

Yep.

Who thought that would ever happen? But it reflects the difficulty in maintaining church vitality, particularly in a lot of these urban areas. Let me ask you to have a virtual blank sheet of paper and let me give a sketch verbally as to how I would configure this. Jim, you said in the podcast I listened to this morning, when they make you church president, well, maybe they will. I hope they do.

They're not going to make me one, but I'm happy to bring you into the First Presidency though.

Okay, well then if I were a counselor, what I could do—

Ian, you have to get rebaptized because you're going to be in the counselor and Greg will be a counselor.

All right.

So write it out as to who's first or second.

Greg can have it.

On that blank sheet of paper, we say we want all young men, young women who are physically able. To serve service missions. We are going to restructure what the missionary system looks like, meaning mission presidents, men and women, will be selected because of their demonstrated ability to manage major programs on an ongoing basis. Then you partner with NGOs so that you start to identify projects that are gonna make a difference. Now, let me take a step back for a second. Probably, it's over 10 years or so ago, a fellow I had known in the Obama White House left the White House after 5 years and became the national director of AmeriCorps VISTA, which is the domestic version of the Peace Corps. Bill and Sid Price had been the presidents of presidents over the Washington, DC mission a few years before that, and they really did the pioneering of the Just Serve program in the church, which I don't think gets enough publicity and has done some amazing things. But I found out they were going to be in town, so I arranged for them to meet with Paul, the director of AmeriCorps Vista. I had great hopes that it would go someplace, but like so many things, it didn't have enough momentum. But in their meeting, they felt like this was a marriage made in heaven because what AmeriCorps VISTA has done throughout the United States is to identify needs that could be met by volunteers of whatever sort. And what the church has is all of these army ants that could be applied to these, but they don't know what the programs are that they should be engaged in. And so in the past, I remember when missionaries were told, oh, we want you to do X number of service hours per week, but not really any guidance as to how to spend those hours. And so they'd go around looking for a yard to weed or whatever. That's not what we need. What we need is strategic thinking that would do as the Peace Corps does in other countries. What are the major projects that if we have strong leadership, an adequate number of worker bees, and the financial resources to put into it to make it happen, What could we do that could change the world? And I think the answer to that question is, you name it, we could do it. But it would mean that you would have to change the entire philosophy of the missionary department. Now I hear, and you have heard it, both of you, well, we're under a divine injunction to teach, preach, and baptize. Well, to me, the best, most effective way of teaching and preaching is to go out there and do it, walk the walk. Uh, I am convinced that whether or not the actual numbers of convert baptisms rose anywhere near the level they are now, the percentage of those baptisms that would stay engaged, I think, would soar by comparison. Because people who would have contact and see the walk that the Latter-day Saints are walking would be inclined to say, you know, I like the moral authority that you people are projecting. I would like to be part of this. So that you're not doing the traditional proselytizing, what you're doing in my mind is something way better. Because not only are you bringing people into the church who would likely stay in the church, but the church then becomes a major force in the world for healing all of the injury that this world has sustained. One of the things that doesn't cease to impress me about Judaism is this underlying ethos that they are here to heal the world. And they make good on that claim.

Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, uh, those thoughts, Greg. We're living at a time when this great upheaval, geopolitical upheaval. There's a lot of pain and suffering out there, and the church, for the most part, has many of the solutions on a social level, spiritual, physical. You know, if you need a job, the church has got a job reskilling, retraining, back to work program. There's no aspect of anyone's life that the church can't help with. For sure. Um, when you were— before you make any comments about, uh, uh, strategic projects, in my senior technical role in my organization, when we have our strategic planning meetings, planning sessions, we review, uh, where we came from, uh, where we're at right now on our growth plan, and what are our long-term goals in terms of our strategic planning. And a big part of that conversation is if we're clear and defined about what our strategic vision, our objectives are, where we're trying to grow the organization, to generate revenue, make a difference on key projects with the local community. One of the key questions we ask, which is in the agenda, is which other partnerships and organizations will get us to where we need to go? And you've, you've, you've mentioned that, and I think the church is doing some of that, but not enough. Uh, the second thing, point I want to share is an experience.

Please stop, Ian, because this touches on a point that I want to make.

Sure.

I have been on the Board of Governors at Wesley. I think I'm in my 8th year now. And so I sit around regularly, mostly with Protestants, some Roman Catholics. And a universal concern, and it extends beyond Christianity as well, is how do we either retain or recapture our youth? Because every tradition is hemorrhaging its youth. If we were to do this and really walk the walk with no strings attached, I can guarantee you other religious traditions, once they saw it wasn't gimmickry on our part, would say, hmm, can we be part of that? Because I think that they would see that this would be a means not of them losing their flock to us, but of them engaging their own flock by combining efforts what we are doing. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. It makes a lot of sense.

But you got to get over that barrier of discomfort with any denomination that isn't ours. Well, I'm way past that. I usually sit there in envy of what I see these other traditions doing. If we really did this the right way, we might not even need to invite them to be part part of the, they may come knocking on the door because they would realize that that may be the key to their own survival as a religious tradition.

And in response to that, if we still in the context of the business world, the corporate world, uh, when we're talking about employee retention, career development, professional development, and all these very important, uh, measures, activities to retain people in our organization. We talk about strategic projects. So I stand up in front of these large groups of technical people and we talk about, uh, that lunchtime when we get them all together, one incredibly cool project. And I say, this is a project you want on your resume. It's an, it's so exciting. And we get people excited about the project and you can get this on the project, develop all the skills, opportunities, et cetera. And so even if you're thinking of leaving the organization, you're going to get another job somewhere else, you might think twice before you, before you, you go because this project is an amazing project. So, and, and, and it attracts when you win a project, it attracts partners and other organizations because they too want to be part of that experience, that project in order to build their credentials and use that on the next proposal to go win the next cool project in order to retain and its people and to develop.

It's.

It's not rocket science, pretty straightforward. When I left the church, Greg, Jim, I have had a number of people make some, say hurtful things about myself personally. People I've known for a long time say I've betrayed the church. And now that I've left the church, they don't pray for me now because I'm not a member of the church. I resigned our membership and therefore not worthy enough to be on the temple roll, sadly, or pray for, and that hurts me. But they say to me, you've left the church, why can't you leave it alone? And I say, well, the church is still a big part of my life. And I think, well, why is that? It's for the reasons that you both are talking about. It's because I've had some profound experiences. Most of my, um, you know, been in the church 37 years, 35 years, almost all of my personal spiritual experiences, emotional experiences, has been through serving in some capacity in the church. And it's been through helping someone or someone helping me. Either I've been part of helping someone for all the right reasons, because it's, because it's the right thing to do. And you love people and you want to help and support them. You want them to feel better about life and to be get through a problem or get through a situation. And likewise, I've been helped enormously by the church. You know, I was thrown out, evicted from my home for joining the church. I slept on a park bench for 3 nights. I was terrified, actually. I had no idea where I was going to go. And the bishop of the local ward took me in and gave me a roof over my head and gave me a bed and food. And I was deeply grateful., and I will always be grateful for the extraordinary services. So I can't let it go. So here you have somebody who's not in the church, can't let it go because of the connections, the spiritual connections. You can't, they can never be severed. And this is somebody who's not in the church, let alone people who are investigating the church. The other thing is a quick story. Years ago, this is after we'd served a mission, Jim, in Scotland, I was a young bishop. Many, many years ago, it was in the late '90s, early 2000s. I'd been called as a bishop. I explained my conditions, if you like, of being called. I said, look, if you're going to call me, I'm going to do these things. So just a bit of a heads up. And so they still called me, which is surprising, but we had a new mission president arrive. And every month, sorry, every quarter, as you know, as a bishop, you have what is called the bishop's training auxiliary meeting, which is you meet with the stake presidency and the stake presidency trains the bishops and the branch presidents. It still happens today. So every quarter, bishops get trained and updated and all kinds of stuff. And so we went to the Edinburgh stake where you've been to, Jim Bennett, and we met with the new mission president, President Vrinds of Reims. And the straight president handed some time over to him. He'd been in the mission field about 2 or 3 months. And unlike all the other mission president introductions I'd seen before, this one was quite different. The first thing he did is stand up, glare at us, and then threw his books right down on the ground. And certainly woke us all up. He just slammed his books. With the scriptures on the floor in the meeting room and said, brethren, you're not doing enough. We've lost about 80, 85% of the members that have been baptized the last 2, 3 years. Retention is terrible. You're not doing enough. We need to do more. And so this was a very angry outburst. The spirit left the room. There was no positive feeling there. It was quite immature in my opinion. There were some bishops that were quite upset with that. I was quite shocked by that. I think I was the only one to speak up and speak about the issues. But it was, you know, he was focusing on the numbers. He went through the numbers with us, and I get the numbers are important. Retention was terrible. It's as bad now, Jim, as it ever was back when you and I were serving. Certainly back when I was a— because Greg, when I went home to Yorkshire in England, I, you know, a few years later, I returned to Scotland because I missed Scotland and I wanted to go back and I wanted to help the church grow in Scotland. So I persuaded my wife and my young family to move to Scotland where I became a bishop. I was really committed, Jim, to Scotland, right? And so anyway, this was a pretty bad experience, I think, pretty awful, uh, feeling with the mission president. It was a very kind of a strict mission president, um, and retention didn't change. Retention hasn't changed. I can see why the church now is changing the, uh, the narrative around what gets measured. You know, if you want to control the narrative or want to be seen to be successful, talk about the things and measure the things that you can control. And I think you kind of referred to that, Jim Bennett, earlier, like temples. But the last point I want to make is that the answer is so glaringly obvious to the conversation that we're having here, the vision that we're describing here, you know, the missionary program, the young people program, the engaging the members in local projects, getting involved in strategic projects. Teaming and partnering, mobilizing this sleeping tiger that we have in the way that is happening, albeit on a very small scale with your family members there, Jim Bennett. My question for you, Greg, is why does the— well, two questions. Does the church not see this that we're talking about here right now? Surely it does. And secondly, why can't it move beyond, where it is right now, uh, roll out this program that they're doing in Australia, make it global, change, maybe not change course, but kind of reorganize, restructure itself, where you're committing way more resources in the areas that we're talking about. Why is it behind the eight ball? Why is it missing it? Why is it not seeing the vision that we are discussing here on this conversation?

Because, and you should know this given your line of work, the very first and maybe the only concern of a bureaucracy is to perpetuate the bureaucracy.

Right.

Right. Yeah.

How do you change that culture that has been deeply embedded for a century and a half?

You listen to God.

You pray, God gives you the revelation, you listen to God, and God tells you, guys, it's not working. The right now, the current trajectory, if you plot it, we're not achieving what we could achieve going this direction instead. That's what you do.

I had a discussion with one of the gentlemen in Church Public Affairs in Salt Lake. And I said, wouldn't it be great if we had Salt Lake One, which is a play on Vatican One and Vatican Two, where we'd put everything on the table and say, all right, what stays, what goes, and what's not here that should be? And he said, well, actually we did something like that not that long ago. I'd never heard of it. And I said, what was the outcome? He said, well, We looked at everything and they decided we'll do temple recommend interviews every 2 years instead of every year. That was the extent of change. That's what you're dealing with.

I remember that.

Deeply embedded bureaucracy, um, that has focused for so long on a single metric, which is convert baptisms. It's not convert retention. If they were focusing on that, they would have changed. It's not missionary retention because I haven't seen them doing anything that really addresses that head-on. The number they're fixated on is convert baptisms. Until you get past that, I don't think there's a possibility for change.

I remember when they announced the 2-year temple recommend thing, because it was President Hinckley who announced that in a talk where he says, for the past few months, we have taken the whole church apart and then put it back together again. And I went, ooh, that's exciting. And then I was really quite underwhelmed when, and so what we've come up with is Temple recommends every 2 years instead of 1. And I thought, that's it? That's all you got? I, I, I confess I had the same feeling, uh, during COVID because I remember President Nelson, the conference before all the lockdowns, and he was announcing the next conference because it was the 200th anniversary of the First Vision. And at the conclusion of October's— of the October 2019 conference, he said, next, our next conference is going to be unlike any conference that we have ever had before, and just really hyped it up as this is going to be the most amazing thing in the world. And then COVID hits, and my twin sons are on missions and they're coming home. I was actually listening to conference in the parking structure of the Salt Lake City airport as we were waiting for one of my sons to come back from his mission when he was being reassigned. And that conference, I cannot recall a more disappointing General Conference than April 2020. Not just because we weren't, you know, gathering in person and we had all of those sort of COVID restrictions. The choir had shut down, which was, was a bit depressing for me. But this conference that was supposed to be this world-changing different conference, what we got out of it was a new logo that, uh, President Nelson introduced as being a product of revelation. You know, we— the Lord— we have— we have— I can't remember the exact words, but he said something along the lines of, now that we are emphasizing the correct name of the church, the Lord has parted the heavens and given us a symbol. He kept talking about it as a symbol. I thought, oh, What's this symbol? Well, the symbol is the logo. That's the Christus statue that was in the visitor center in Salt Lake for years and years. And now it's our new logo. And it was like, that's it. Well, no, the other thing that's exciting is we have a new proclamation and we are going to adopt this proclamation with a hosanna shout. Wherever you are, get out your white handkerchiefs. Because we are adopting a new proclamation. I would bet that if you were to poll 9 outta 10 members now, they couldn't tell you what that proclamation was. That, that proclamation has been all but forgotten. I mean, we focus on the family proclamation still over and over and over again. The proclamation from 2020 is completely done. It— nobody references it. It's not framed and put in Relief Society rooms and foyers and chapels. Ian, do you even know? I'm not even saying what it is because I want to see if you even know what that proclamation is. I'm betting you don't.

No, I'm sorry, I don't know that.

Greg, do you know? Do you remember that proclamation? Nope. You don't remember? It was the Restoration Proclamation. It was a lot of the General Conference had been pre-filmed as Russell Nelson went back to Palmyra and, uh, walked through the sacred grove as he read from a teleprompter the words of this proclamation that just simply reiterated, we believe in the Restoration, we believe Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ. We believe just all of these foundational truth claims. And the only thing that has survived in church culture since then, as a result of that proclamation, is that there was one moment where he was sitting, uh, in, um, I think it was the David Whitmer home, and he was talking about the translation of the Book of Mormon, and there was a top hat nearby him. And he started describing the translation process and for one brief moment went and looked in the hat to say— and Joseph would put a seer stone in a hat and look in the hat and set it aside. And there have been countless memes of Russell Nelson staring into a hat, issuing all kinds of inane proclamations according to whatever the memester is trying to put words in Russell Nelson's mouth. I mean, that's the only thing that has survived from what's supposed to be the most consequential and amazing conference we've ever had. And in a worldwide pandemic, when we were all thinking, okay, if we ever needed a prophetic voice, we need it now. And we got a birthday party that has been entirely forgotten, a birthday party for the First Vision. And so, I mean, it goes back to what you were saying, Ian, with regard to, okay, well, we ask God. And I think that more and more we have to sort of recognize that the answer is not looking to Salt Lake City for answers. The answer is we all need to act. We all need to be the body of Christ. Greg, I think I cut you off. You were going to say something very profound.

One of the things that impedes progress in the church is a self-imposed rule that all votes have to be 15 to nothing. That if it's 14 to 1, it doesn't pass. However, Jim Bennett, I'll tell you a story about your great-grandfather. Maybe you've heard it. He had a fondness for Polynesia and was instrumental in building what was initially the Church College of Hawaii, now BYU Hawaii, but also the Polynesian Cultural Center. He had Wendell Mendenhall, who was the chairman of the building committee, draw up a presentation and took it to the 12th, proposing that the church build the Polynesian Cultural Center. Mendenhall came back from the meeting and said, President, they voted it down 12-nothing. And your great-grandfather, David O., said, Wendell, build it. See, it can happen.

Yes.

I, uh, I think we need to be, uh, we probably didn't take our vitamin pills because, uh, President Nelson said, eat your vitamin pills, get your rest, it's going to be exciting. And his wife said, uh, uh, in the first 10 months of being in the, being the new prophet, it's as though President Nelson has been unleashed. And so we perhaps of still waiting for, you know, for that to happen. There's two things. We're coming to an end of the podcast. I've got two thoughts and then get your responses and then maybe any of your, you know, your final comments and thoughts before we close. One, I just want to tie back to what Jim Bennett said. It was a really important point that the church has and continues to do great things across the world. It really does. We're talking about this big vision, which is rightly, —right to talk about, but the church is doing extraordinary work across the world, humanitarian, local members serving, etc., and does team and partner with all kinds of organizations. We're talking about taking it to the next level. The second point is a question to you both, and certainly to you, Greg. In the context of all the challenges that we're experiencing in the world, and especially for the members of the church, and people investigating the church who are looking for answers, looking for hope, looking for community, looking for friendship. Um, what's the role of the church, Greg, in today's world in that context, within its mandate?

Um, we've spent a lot of time at Wesley talking about a vacuum in moral authority in this country. It's particularly disappointing that the religious traditions have remained silent on the sidelines when all of these things are happening that are assault on democracy, that are assaults on most of the values we were raised with. Uh, The fact that there is a vacuum also presents an unparalleled opportunity to fill that vacuum. If the church were to step into that and with a loud and confident and prophetic voice begin to speak, uh, I think you would see a different church, and I think you would see see a different world. I don't understand why that voice has not been speaking in the public square. So what's the role? I think that's the role that the church could take, and right now there's no competition. And I think that the service missions that we're talking about might be its first step into the public square in a way that really gets the attention. President Wesley went out to meet with the First Presidency, I think it was in 2009. He called me and he, after meeting with the First Presidency, he said, you know, this fourth mission that you have articulated, And if you may recall, this was one of the first things President Monson said. The three missions that had been in place forever had been, you know, preach the gospel, perfect the saints, redeem the dead. The fourth mission, he says, is to help the poor and the needy throughout the world. And the president of the seminary called me and said, if you're serious about this, this, you could change the world. But within months, it disappeared. Jim Bennett's like what you talked about with that proclamation. Later, I talked to one of the Seventies and said, hey, where'd that thing go? And he kind of hummed and hawed, and he said, well, President Monson has found that it's difficult to get traction on it amongst his colleagues. And I thought, wait a minute, the president of the church who is articulating a fourth mission that is right in the center of the most essential message of Jesus and can't get traction on that? That's where we need to get traction. Does that answer your question, Ian? It does.

Thank you very much. Appreciate that. Jim Bennett, your concluding thoughts?

My concluding thoughts, uh, I think this has been a really wonderful discussion. Uh, I am always grateful for Greg for your insights, uh, because I think you have your finger on the pulse in a way that, uh, makes you, uh, really, in my mind, indispensable to the church, because I think you're willing to ask the hard questions from the perspective of somebody who wants to see the church succeed. And I think— and Ian, I think you also, you know, you have left the church, but it is very clear that you want to see the church succeed. And if all three of us can see that this is what the church needs to do in order to succeed, I, I have to believe that there are more people who can see that as well. And I am encouraged that we seem to be going in that— in the right direction in this regard. I would like to see us get further down the road, but I'm encouraged, uh, with our direction, if not with our current destination, or, you know, where we have landed now. And I think our future destination is very promising. Thank you.

Two thoughts real quick. I would invite, encourage the church, recommend, for what it's worth, to scale and roll out the model that's being deployed in Adelaide, Australia, because what you're your sister and your brother-in-law is doing, I think is extraordinary, and I want to highlight that. Secondly, I would respectfully remind the church, the leaders, to follow the example of Samuel the Laymanite, who went into the city of Zarahemla to preach the word of God and was rejected, was thrown out the city, prayed, and God told him to go back into the city of Zarahemla He went back in, and they were rejecting him, but he climbed on the wall, and he spoke to the multitude, and they fired arrows at him, and not one hit him, but he stood there fearless against all the opposition. I would ask and invite the leaders of the church, respectfully, to follow the same example of fearlessness and to follow the advice of Greg, and to stand up and to do the right thing and be the right thing and to speak boldly no matter what the opposition is politically and to speak with moral authority on principles that helped found this church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is honesty and decency, integrity, love and charity, and service and forgiveness. These are the fundamental bedrock principles that Fred and Hunter talked about, the fundamental principles back in 1994, which the church is founded on for sure. So I really enjoyed this conversation. I've learned so much from it. Jim Bennett, I want to thank you for your contribution, incredibly valuable and insightful. And of course, Greg, a special thank you to you for taking time out of your schedule to come on to Inside Out and to share your thoughts and your feelings, your insights. We're so grateful to have you on and we've learned so much from you. So to you both, thank you so much. And on behalf of our listeners, Greg and Jim Bennett, thank you. And we look forward to being with you again on another exciting episode of Inside Out sometime this time next week. Thank you. Thank you.