OB Year 1 Retrospective

You're entering outer brightness.

Hey, Fireflies. We're coming to you to direct with this video to do a quick outer brightness retrospective and share with you what's coming next. We're coming up on the one year anniversary of outer brightness being in publication. And before we jump in any further, I'd like to welcome Brianna Flournoy to outer brightness. She'll be joining us going forward as a regular contributor. Listeners have already heard her on a couple of episodes. Let's see, Brianna, you were on our episode titled New Life and you were also on our episode titled Advice for the Post-Mormon New Christian. So listeners have probably heard your voice there. In addition to hearing her on those episodes, listeners have also heard her music. From the very beginning, Brianna has provided our theme music and recently she contributed an original song In Your Eyes, which will be our theme music going forward.

And yes, that is her beautiful voice singing in that song. So Brianna, welcome. Glad to be here.

We're excited to add your female perspective to our discussions. As a result, from now on, we'll no longer be known as the sons of light, but rather as, drum roll, the scions of light. And a scion is a young shoot or twig of a plant, especially one cut for grafting or rooting. And that fits well with Jesus's teaching about the vine and the branches in John chapter 15. And Michael, I want you to note that the definition of scion is a young shoot or a twig, so no more ageism from you. Got it, Paul.

I'll watch that from now on. Since we launched on April 5th of 2020, we published 60 episodes, which have been downloaded more than 10,000 times. That's an average of 166 downloads per episode. We've reached listeners in every state across the nation, except for Arkansas, Connecticut, Vermont, and New Hampshire. Apparently they don't listen to podcasts in those states or there's been some kind of natural disaster.

So if you have friends in those states, please check on them, make sure that they're okay. We've also had listeners connect with us in more than 23 countries around the world, including Canada, the UK, Italy, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, El Salvador, Mexico, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Chile, Argentina, Austria, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, India, Nigeria, Romania, and other regions unknown. In addition to the audio podcast, we began recording video and launched our YouTube channel. We have some exciting news to share with you about what's next, but first let's look back a little more. So when we started this journey, our goal was to do a series of episodes on the Articles of Faith and then sprinkle in some interviews and other topical episodes as we went along. When we finish recording tonight, we'll have reached the end of our Article of Faith series. And in the past year, we have interviewed podcaster Radio Free Mormon, Young Mormon scholar Jackson Washburn, who is headed to Harvard University, podcaster and missionary Jordan Rittmeyer from the Perspective Underground podcast, Christian apologist vocab Malone, pastor and podcaster Jeremy Howard from Orchard Hills Bible Church in Payson, Utah, and from the Do Theology podcast, Dove award-winning pianist and composer Paul Cardall, pastors Darren Colwell and Ben Hyink from Covenant Grace Church in Syracuse, Utah. So let's each talk a little bit about our favorite moments from this past year.

So Brandon, Michael, would you like to go first? So some of my favorite moments were unfortunately edited out by Paul Nurnberg during the editing of it. But one thing that stands out in particular is us talking about God's omnipresence. And Matthew got a little excited and stopped thinking about what he was saying and said that God is present and watches us while we shower, and then realized what he was saying.

And I don't think that made it into the episode, but that was a funny moment. I enjoyed talking with some Latter-day Saints on the podcast as well, one being my brother and one being Jackson. I thought we had a really good conversation with him that went really deep, a lot deeper than we usually get in these conversations between evangelicals and Latter-day Saints. And then I also enjoyed responding to the Becoming Perfect video from Come Follow Me, especially because it was just kind of funny because it was supposed to be a video that these two men put out together, and I don't think they collaborated at all, because it was more like a debate between them from the get-go where they were just talking about completely different things. So those are some of my favorite moments.

What about you, Brianna? Well, for me, I really liked being able to talk to Paul Cardall. That was totally unexpected. I was just kind of brought on, and he was one of my inspirations to learn piano from a very young age, so it was really cool. I enjoyed being part of that other episode with Paul's brother. That was pretty cool, being able to just talk a little bit about our experiences. I think my favorite moment was being able to rat out my husband for being a wretched sinner publicly. That was fun. It may need counseling in the future, but we enjoyed it.

How about you, Paul? What were some of your favorite moments? Yeah, Michael stole my thunder on a lot of those. I definitely enjoyed having my brother on the podcast.

We don't live in the same state. We do talk on the phone quite a bit and visit back and forth quite a bit. But hearing him kind of walk through his whole story, I heard some things that I hadn't heard him tell me before. And that was kind of fun to hear more of his story and his transition from Mormon to Jesus.

Another one of my favorites was Jordan Rittmeyer. I really enjoyed what he had to say. I think his perspective on how to do evangelism to Latter-day Saints in the heart of Utah with his coffee ministry and his ministry of providing housing. I think those things that he's doing as a missionary there are really important. And I enjoyed hearing what he's involved in, what he's doing. And I really appreciated his heart for the Latter-day Saint people. The episode with Radio Free Mormon was an interesting one.

He kind of kept control of that episode since we were kind of going on his show. But it was interesting to have a conversation with someone who has been an apologist for the LDS Church at kind of the amateur level and also had some things published in some apologetic publications and kind of get his perspective now as someone who is a non-believer in the LDS Church and perhaps an unbeliever in God as well. So interesting conversation there. And the Jackson conversation, of course, was really good. Like Michael said, we got deeper than we normally do in some of these evangelical Christian and Mormon conversations.

So I thought that was really good. What about you, Matthew? What's memorable to you from the last year?

I have a lot of great memories. I really enjoyed our conversations on the sacraments, on baptism and the Lord's Supper, because we just went so in-depth in those. I think we did three or four episodes for each topic. But then we also did kind of an overbroad overview of each of the sacraments in general. So really diving deep into those passages and approaching them and kind of trying to approach them from how we would understand it versus how we understood it as LDS. I enjoyed that.

I tried to put my shoes back into when I was a Latter-day Saint to see how I would approach them when I was writing a lot of those questions. But I agree with both of you, with all of you, in terms of the interviews we've had. We just had so many great guests on our show. So hopefully we'll keep that going and have lots more people who have different backgrounds and different interests that we would like to come on to interview them. I really enjoyed having pastors Darren and Ben from Covenant Grace Church. I haven't been trying to push the Reformed Theology and Covenant Theology and stuff on you guys, but I kind of just mentioned how much I enjoy it. It was kind of cool to share that with them and share that with you as well to share why I was so interested in it. And I think it was really enriching and a really edifying episode that we had.

And probably the one that sticks out in my mind most that I think about quite often is the... I don't think she gave us her name. I think she just left it as anonymous, but it was one listener who said that she felt like she feels like she's a firefly and she listens to us regularly. She really connects to what we're saying. And that really meant a lot to me because those are the people that we want to reach with the program. And so to have somebody reach out and say that it means a lot to her and she feels like she identifies with what we're talking about and despite the fact that she feels like she's kind of unable to do so openly, but the fact that she reached out to us really meant a lot to me.

So those are some of my favorite moments. So our goal from the beginning for Outer Brightness has been to reach Latter-day Saints and former Latter-day Saints who are considering or already have stepped away from that religion, but who want to explore what it would look like for them to maintain belief in Jesus Christ as Savior. What new beliefs would come out with that transition? What challenges? What joys? A subsidiary goal is to help equip Christians to have better conversations with questioning Mormons or former Mormons who are seekers. Yeah, so Matthew, you mentioned our listeners. Some of my favorite moments as well over the past year have been when listeners have reached out and there have been a number of them. Some I've been able to keep up an ongoing dialogue with. There's a listener named David that I've appreciated ongoing conversations with. And like you said, those listeners who reach out, it helps us know that what we're doing is meaningful to people and helps give us encouragement. So what I want to do now is share some of the things that listeners have had to say about Outer Brightness.

A listener named at MKPRR posted a review on Podbean. Michael, he was commenting on the episode we did on your article, the three LDS conversions of primer for the befuddled, and he wrote, great podcast. I was a doctrinal Mormon and honestly worried I would offend God if I left the church until I was certain that it wasn't his. For me, the way Joseph Smith approached women for polygamy and treated Emma was a huge doctrinal problem for more than a social and more than a social one because it was so manipulative and looks like the fruit of a false prophet instead of the fruit of the spirit as laid out in the Book of Mormon and New Testament. Other issues became apparent once I saw that for what it was.

So Michael, Brianna, or Matthew, do you have any thoughts on this listener review? Matthew Gentry Yeah, I mean, I could definitely see how that would, you know, it's kind of funny because the same thing sort of happened to me, too, as I talked about in my story episode that, you know, they'd come up with the policy in the church saying that children of gay parents couldn't be baptized. And I'm like, well, that's just a policy.

That's just a social problem. But then when they claimed that it was a revelation from God, it changed to being a doctrinal problem. And being a doctrinal Latter-day Saint, that's when it really became an issue for me, was at that point. And I agree with him, you know, it's not the fruit of a true prophet to manipulate people into burying you.

So he's right on with that. And I totally feel what he's talking about, too, where I didn't want to leave the church either. Even after I left for a couple of weeks, I'm like, what have I done?

I'm going to go to outer darkness. There is no excuse for this. That fear holds on for a long time. But, you know, as the scriptures say, God has not given us the spirit of fear. That doesn't come from God. And if that is what is keeping you in the church, then you really need to take a step back and think, is this really God's church? Yeah, good point. Matthew, any thoughts there before we go on?

Yeah, I'll echo those thoughts. Yeah, it wasn't really until all the strings have been cut in my mind between the Latter-day Saint church and the Bible that I finally was willing to do the same. Because I had the fear of God in me, too, thinking I was going to outer darkness if I made the wrong choice. So, yeah, it wasn't until God just helped me understand and revealed to me through his word the doctrines of justification by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone, and just who God is, that there's only one God in all eternity, that he's eternally been God, there's no other God greater than him before or after him, as these doctrines that were key to kind of breaking the shackles off from having that fear of wanting to leave the church. Yeah, the three of us were on a call the other night, and I was kind of talking about my story, and I talked about how my initial faith crisis was around 2001. And I got to a point where I didn't think I believed in God anymore at all.

I confessed that to Angela, my wife, in tears in our kitchen. And, you know, it took me a good decade after that to do, as you were talking about, Matthew, to kind of snip all those ties between LDS church doctrine and what the Bible teaches, to the point where I was ready to say, okay, I can go now and not be afraid anymore. So, for all of our listeners who are in that transition, we feel you, and we hope that our show is a resource for you. Another listener named Paul also wrote, I liked this comment quite a lot. He said, it would be good for you guys to have another person there in your group to be called the nuclear Armenian, like Matthew is called the nuclear Calvinist. I believe that would make for a balanced discussion on several topics, especially dealing with eternal security, since all of you believe in unconditional security, like the perseverance of the saints or once saved, always saved. I just believe that an Armenian or at least a non-Calvinist who believes in conditional security can balance it out. So, I love comments like this because it demonstrates that in our discussions with each other, we're hitting on the theological topics that tend to be a bit challenging for Mormons and former Mormons to grapple with. And for this listener, you know, I was supposed to be that Armenian foil to Matthew. I attended an Armenian seminary. But, you know, as I've studied more and more, the reformed position has seemed to be, to me, the more biblical and the stronger position. And so, my journey continues. And I think that's OK. You know, one of the first things I said in one of our first episodes is that it's OK not to not have everything filled in on your doctrinal questionnaire quite yet. There's going to be some transition. There's going to be some need to dig into the scripture and see what the Bible says, see what God's word says. So, Michael or Brianna, as the other not-yet-reformed scions of light, do either of you have anything to say about this comment from Paul?

Yeah. One of the things that jumps out to me, it just kind of sounds a little bit funny that we would have somebody that's called the nuclear Armenian. And that's going to be good to put with the nuclear Calvinist because that just sounds like a fight.

A giant fight every single episode. And I do think it's really important that we don't all agree on everything. And I think it's really important to show that we don't agree on everything, but we all respect each other because the people that we're trying to reach, the Latter-day Saints, do believe that Protestants are completely fractured and that it is a fight to the death like any time two Protestants come across each other. And that is simply not true. So, I just want to throw that out there first. But then the other thing is that I don't fall under the Reformed camp, but kind of like Paul, I have a lot of respect for it. And there are times where it is very compelling. And I don't know where I'm going to land, but I do think it might be good for us to make sure we are maybe pointing out the Armenian position more often and giving it a fair shake for our listeners.

And not just sweeping it under the rug. I kind of fall under the same camp where I'm not full-on Reformed, but I do agree with a lot of what the Reformed has to say. I don't know if I can consider myself full-on. But yeah, I tend to believe that when I was a Mormon, that our salvation was more conditional than it is as being a Christian. Being that we could lose our ordinances and the works that were done there by our sins, what we do. And being, I don't know, like I feel like our salvation is more secure because we didn't do anything for it. Jesus did. So, yeah.

Yeah. And for Paul, the listener, I do try to bring the Armenian perspective. I read quite often from my theology professor, Dr. Jack Cottrell's book.

He's definitely classically Armenian. And I still appreciate the clarity with which he explicates doctrinal positions and biblical data. So, I do read from him quite often during our episodes.

I haven't done so, I don't think, in an episode related to specifically election or security of the believer. But yeah, I can continue to bring that perspective from my studies. So, yeah. Thanks, Paul, for the comment. And also, I'll just say this. Matthew and I, we have a podcast discussion thread, Facebook Messenger thread. And we've discussed the various five points of Calvinism and Armenian positions back and forth quite vigorously over the past year and a half that we've been engaged in producing this podcast. And I appreciate those conversations very much and they're respectful.

And so, to Michael's point, having a nuclear Armenian, it does make it sound a little bit like Cold War, US versus Russia. And that's certainly not what we're going for here. But glad that we can have these respectful conversations among friends and brothers and sisters in Christ. So, another Apple podcast listener named iam4ireland wrote a review and stated, scholarly yet loving and sensitive presentation by former Mormons thoughtfully addressing the Mormon beliefs juxtaposed with evangelical Christian beliefs very helpful to Christians who are seeking to understand the Mormon doctrines as well as to former Mormons seeking a deeper truth.

Do either of you have thoughts on this review? I'm not sure about the scholarly part. That sounds like you, Paul. You're the one that brings the scholarly part to it. But yeah. Yeah, I appreciate their comment. Yeah, that's kind of what the goal of what we're trying to do. We're trying to be loving and sensitive. We're not trying to just make another, just make a program where we just bash the LDS church or, you know, just make an outlet for our frustrations.

We want it to be something where we can actually connect with Latter-day Saints, the people and also with the doctrines and kind of make a bridge between Protestant Christianity and the LDS beliefs. So, thank you for the comment. Another Apple podcast listener named Diwim, D-I-W-I-M, wrote, as a former Mormon, I want to say that this podcast is much needed.

Many who leave the church end up abandoning faith altogether. Thanks for putting in the time and work on this, and I will watch this podcast closely. Thank you for listening, Diwim, and I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. And thank you for the encouragement. And thank you to all of our Fireflies for sticking with us, providing feedback, subscribing, and for giving us the motivation for doing what we do. We hope to continue to bring you really helpful content.

Yeah, and I hope that I can help in contributing in that way, like continuing with that and being loving and respectful. So, anyways, we have some exciting things coming up. There are going to be some, hold on, before we share the big news, here's a preview of some of the content we have coming your way. We have upcoming interviews with Micah and Matthew Wilder of the band Adams Road. We'll be chatting with them about some important projects they have been working on.

Adams Road graciously gave us permission to use their music as our outro for the podcast, and we look forward to having them on the show. We also have an interview scheduled with Fred Anson. He is the driving force behind the Beggars Bread blog, where Michael, Matthew, and Paul have published articles. Fred was also a member of a Christian cult decades ago, so he understands the difficulties and shame that comes with the transition away from a legalistic high-demand group, and he will be on outer brightness soon to share his story and how it helps him empathize with former Mormons. Finally, we will be interviewing Christian pastor and apologist Rich Heuer. He and Paul attended the same Christian seminary several years apart, and Paul got to know Rich through his professors. For several years now, Rich has organized an apologetics conference, the Reveal Conference, in the Louisville, Kentucky area, where he is the senior minister at Linden Christian Church. Rich will be joining us to talk about the importance of Christian apologetics. Our second debate is coming up, too.

Michael the Elder will be debating Michael the Younger. Look out for that fun episode. All that, plus a full schedule of topical episodes on heremeneutics, theology, the person of Christ, the five solas, and many, many more. Okay, fireflies, that brings us to the exciting announcement. Beginning on Resurrection Day, April 4, 2021, outer brightness will be broadcast in 25-minute segments on the radio in Utah. We'll be on The Truth, Utah, in Salt Lake City, Provo, and Ogden. Please tell your Utah friends and family to tune in to KUTRAM820 on Sundays at 2 p.m. Mountain Time. We're thankful to God for this opportunity to reach a broader audience of Mormons in Utah, and this chance was brought to us and made possible through a gracious launch grant from Utah Partnerships for Christ. So we want to acknowledge our appreciation to them.

Thank you very much. Additionally, over the next month, outer brightness will be transitioning to The Truth network of podcasts. Don't worry, you'll still be able to find us on all of your favorite podcast apps, and we will hopefully reach many more people with helpful content. Making this jump to radio means that there will be ongoing costs for radio airtime, and over the next several weeks, we'll be rolling out opportunities for you as fireflies to come alongside us and help support our efforts and our ministry to reach Mormons in Utah with the gospel.

So look forward to those opportunities. And we close this out with a big thank you to our listeners. You've made all this possible. We appreciate you. We're thankful for you.

We pray for you, and we wish you well in Christ. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the outer brightness podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the outer brightness podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking send a message at the top of the page, and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an outer brightness group on Facebook where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes and suggestions for future episodes, etc. You can also send us an email at outer brightness at gmail.com.

We hope to hear from you soon. You can subscribe to the outer brightness podcast on Apple podcasts, cast box, Google podcasts, pocket casts, pod beam, Spotify, and stitcher. Also, you can check out our new YouTube channel. And if you like it, be sure to lay hands on that subscribe button and confirm it. If you like what you hear, please give us a rating and review wherever you listen and help spread the word. You can also connect with Michael the X Mormon apologist at from water to wine.org where he blogs and sometimes Paul and Matthew do as well. Music for the outer brightness podcast is graciously provided by the talented Brianna Flournoy and by Adams road. Learn more about Adams road by visiting their ministry page at adamsroadministry.com. Stay bright flyer flies. Okay Lord, you promised that we, as your church, would remain Upon this rock and the gates of hell Will not prevail against us Cause you have power to keep Your word unspoiled in purity Heaven and earth will pass away But the word of the Lord endures forever All of this world is in decay But the word of our God through ages remains As the rain falls down from heaven And waters the earth, bringing it life So the word that goes out from your mouth Will not return empty, but does what you desire Lord, we hear Your word and believe in You Heaven and earth will pass away But the word of the Lord endures forever But the word of our God through ages remains The word of God remains