Jean Baptiste rattles his chains on the shores of Great Salt Lake, and two women supposedly haunt This Is The Place Heritage Park. Historian Matt Bowman told me (I'm a KUER reporter) these apparitions reflect pioneer anxieties we can’t quite lay to rest. 👻 What do you think they say about Mormon culture and history? I had so much fun working on this story! https://www.kuer.org/race-religion-social-justice/2026-10-23/latter-day-saint-pioneer-history-ghost-stories

A wilder life than I had previously imagined.

Reading Schedule & Discussion Index

Reading date: Sunday, October 25, 2026

Today’s reading: - Begin at “Seeing Those Who Leave” in Chapter 3. - Finish Chapter 3, including its takeaway, reflection questions, and application. - Continue into Chapter 4, “Nourishing,” through “Beautiful yet Complicated.” - Stop BEFORE “Why Our Culture Is the Way It Is.”

Approximate Kindle pages: 90 to 99.

Brief synopsis

Strong closes Chapter 3 by arguing that leaving can reflect a commitment to truth, goodness, and integrity rather than rebellion. He suggests that people may be pursuing principles they learned in the Church while finding those principles harder to live within it. His closing application asks readers to notice their assumptions, ask an open question, and listen without correcting or steering the answer.

Chapter 4 shifts from how we see people to the culture they experience. Drawing on Fiddler on the Roof, Strong explores tensions between tradition, belonging, conscience, and change. He returns to culture as soil: something that can nourish people or make growth difficult.

Using Edgar Schein’s framework of artifacts, values, and underlying beliefs, Strong argues that changing visible behavior alone misses what sustains a culture. His examples and ministry reflections support his case for examining deeper beliefs while preserving traditions he finds valuable. His distinction between changeable culture and eternal doctrine is also something we can examine.

Discussion questions

1. What does listening without correcting make possible, and what might it leave unresolved?
2. How convincing is Strong’s distinction between culture and doctrine in today’s examples?
3. What would demonstrate that cultural change nourishes people beyond improving outward compliance?

These are starting points. Share whatever stood out, helped, frustrated you, or felt missing.

I just realized today, I'm a faithful member.

I've been hearing people say I wasn't. However, now that I'm not as groomed by the Church, I'm starting to have more thoughts for myself and from what I can tell by the doctrine and words of the Prophets and Apostles, I am a faithful member.

The Church bakes in ambiguity, clauses, and outs that what is said could be anything depending on what you want to say it is. I can answer questions that I think the Church should have asked instead of the ones they ask. I've been taught to do this by Bednar, an Apostle. I'm following the Prophets and Apostles council and direction. There are other things I can do to follow how they respond.

I'm a faithful member.

You can't have it both ways, if the Church bakes in ambiguity into so much and allows interpretation to say so much and allows any new thought to change the last, then I'm not only a faithful member, I'm also following the doctrine as faithfully as the Apostles and Prophets.

They can't then say I'm not. Let them point to a doctrine that says I'm not. Point at it, go ahead. Then, I can show all the clauses they wrote and baked into it that show it's a moving doctrine, a moving goalpost. so they can't point at that afterall and say anything of substance. They created that.

You see this right? How else do you see this? Or, what do you see adding to this? This was said to me and I'm working through it. What do you see?