Overcoming SHAME With Fred Anson Part 2

This is Chris Hughes with the Christian Perspective Podcast with Chris Hughes, where we encourage our listeners to engage the culture with Jesus Christ. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds, so enjoy it, share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. Hey fireflies, Paul here.

Welcome back to Outer Brightness. We're going to bring you an interview that we conducted with Fred Anson. Fred is the driving force behind Beggar's Bread, a Christian blog where beggars share the bread that they've so freely and graciously received. Before Fred converted to Christianity in the 1970s, he was an atheist. Early in his life as a Christian, he became enmeshed in a high-demand Christian cult called the Shepherding Movement. Fred visited Outer Brightness to share his story and what he learned about mind control from his time in the Shepherding Movement and what he learned from leaving that group. At times, during the interview, Fred has animated about his advice and the ways that high-demand religions control their adherents, oftentimes without their even being aware of the fact that they're giving away their autonomy to the organization.

This is all part of my journey as well. I've shared in season one, episodes 15 and 16, how when I returned from my LDS mission, I went online to try to find answers to some of the questions I had about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Within a year, I was involved in a private discussion board made up of around 10-12 people who were all active Latter-day Saints or former Latter-day Saints. I remember one particularly heated exchange on that board between a woman who was an active Latter-day Saint and a man who had left the LDS Church and become an atheist. The thread was about the ways in which the LDS Church in its culture controls and restrains women from reaching their full potential. In this way, the man argued, the LDS Church exhibits cult-like behavior. The woman I mentioned pushed back against that idea. She argued that since she freely participates in the LDS Church and culture and does not feel constrained by it, that he could not tell her that she was being controlled.

Reading that thread was a watershed moment for me. A part of my mind opened up, and I could see that the man was correct about the LDS Church and its culture of mind control. But I remained in the LDS Church for the next eight years.

Why? Because I also took to heart what the woman had said. I thought that if I participated with eyes wide open and by my own free choice, I could be alert to and avoid any aspects of mind control. I believed the LDS Church was true, so I thought I could stay.

I was wrong. Towards the end of my time in the LDS Church, as I had conversations with my wife Angela about possibly leaving, being a Mormon was so wrapped up in my identity that I told her I couldn't imagine ever being anything else. Even with eyes wide open, through participation, my mind was conditioned to be closed. Please listen to Fred's advice and consider what he says. I think you'll find that he has a heart for anyone entrapped in a high-demand organization, whether it's in a religious, commercial, political, or self-help context.

As always, thank you for listening, and check the show notes for how you can read Bigger's Bread or get in contact with Fred Anson. Well, okay, let's talk about what's really happening when anybody leaves a high-demand group, whether it's the shepherding movement or Mormonism or something else. And what we're talking about is you're going through the grieving process. And because I kind of anticipated this question, I printed out an article, because I can never remember what the stages of grief are, so I'm just going to read them off.

The stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, okay? Denial was, this can't possibly be right. I'm Fred Anson. I'm smart, and I'm a pretty smart guy. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I can't be in a cult. I was, you know, anger.

You know, you get past that when it's like, oh my gosh, I am Fred Anson, and I may be, you know, a sharp guy, but guess what? I ended up in a mind control. And that makes me angry. It makes me angry. Those people betrayed me. Those people that said they were looking out for my best interest. My gosh, all that tithing money that I paid, all those longs that I mowed, all that time that I spent, I am angry, and I'm going to go after them. Well, suffice to say, I was angrier than a junkyard dog.

Bargaining? Well, you know, maybe it wasn't all that bad. Maybe there's some things that, maybe I can kind of like take the good parts of shepherding and just kind of merge it into something else and, you know, kind of make this thing work.

And then depression. Oh my goodness. Wow. When all this stuff begins to hit and you begin to accept it, it's painful. It is really, really hard.

Whenever I hear a Christian say to an ex Mormon or say to me, wow, you must have been so happy to be out of your group. It's like, no, not even. I felt like I had wasted 11 years of my life. I felt like I had invested in something where I got no return at all. I'm devastated. I'm destroyed. You know, I've got nothing. And you're telling me that I should be happy?

No, that's not how it works. It's painful. So, you know, you get past that and all of a sudden, and this takes a while.

Okay, guys, this can take years. This can take a long, long time where you begin to accept it and go, yeah, this really did happen. There were some good things. There were some bad things. There were some things that I would never do again. There are some things that, frankly, I would do again. There's some lessons I can learn. And guess what? On the other side of this, I can see that God used it and I'm a wiser, more rounded, you know, a better person as a result of it.

I mean, if nothing else, guys, they got hippie Fred to cut his hair, right? So, you know, I mean, there must have been some value in it. I learned how I glossed on it earlier. I learned how to have relationships. I learned how to get relationships and maintain those relationships.

I learned what it meant to live in covenant, which basically means you make a commitment to the other person and you do what you say you're going to do. So, you know, does that answer your question, Mike? I mean, I would also add, let me just throw this in because I always throw this in. For me, I'm not saying for everybody, but the experts do say, yeah, this is kind of for everybody. Most ex-cultists need to go get some type of therapy. Now, that therapy might be a single session.

In my case, it was several years because I had a lot, I mean, a lot of anger to work through. Also, you have to deprogram, which means you've got to figure out, you've got to unravel. You know, we were talking about that snapping, the thought limiting.

All cults indoctrinate their members with certain ways of thinking. Some of my thinking was just so messed up. I mean, you know, I'm embarrassed to even talk about some of the ways that I used to think. So, for me, I had to have a, you know, speaking of getting out of the tank, I had to go to a third party and say, hey, in the group, I was taught this and, you know, kind of, is this how like normal people do things?

And he'd go, no, it's not. Let's kind of unpack that and take a look at it. And that took a long time. And, you know, a lot of it, in recovery, we have a saying, you need to hug the cactus. And a lot of that process is very, very painful. For example, just today, I had an ex-Mormon in my ex-Mormon recovery group accused me of being like a Mormon, being like a Mormon bishop, okay?

Why? Because the group has standards. The group has rules.

You cannot, you know, just like you can't go to church, take off all your clothes and run naked through the congregation. If you're in a Facebook recovery group, there are rules that you need to abide by. And as an admin, it's my job to make sure that you abide by it. Well, a lot of ex-Mormons, they equate standards and boundaries as, quote unquote, Mormon. And can you see what I'm talking about here?

The software is buggy. There's nothing wrong with standards. There's nothing wrong with boundaries. But the question is, are they healthy standards? Are they reasonable standards? Are they healthy boundaries? Are they healthy boundaries? In mind control groups, they're not.

You know, the requirement that a guy forsake his family, forsake his wife and kids so that he can go mow his shepherd's lawn and neglect his own family so that the shepherd can take care of his family is not a healthy standard, okay? I know it's a little nuanced, but can you see the difference between the two? Yeah, yeah, I can see it.

You have to unpack it. Yeah, I can see it. Let's test if you've actually reached that healthy place, Fred. When we got on the video tonight, did you look at me and say, who is this hippie? Is my hair long enough that it's reaching hippie status yet? Did it cross your mind? Get it, get it.

By the way, what political party do you belong to? I'm not saying. Smart man, Paul.

Don't ask, don't tell, right? So, Fred, a lot of the stuff that you're saying really, I guess, just really meshes with my experience as well. I mean, talking about how it's probably a good idea to get therapy. I mean, a lot of those ideas and those feelings just hold on for so long. And I remember going to California as a pretty new ex-Mormon and actually sitting down and getting to talk to you and just thinking like, man, this is amazing. This guy really understands what I'm going through. And when you are leaving a cult, it just feels like you're, you feel so alone, like nobody understands what I'm going through.

And I'm sitting there talking to you. And I remember we had this part of this conversation where I'm like, I just keep having these crazy dreams, you know, these like, almost like these nightmare situations. And you're like, yeah, I had those too. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, that's, that is crazy.

Yeah. So with that, what was it like transitioning into like a more healthy Christian environment? Did you feel like you didn't fit in or? It was, Brianna, it was really hard because I had to, I was so entrenched in, in order to get to the church that I'm now in, I went through four churches and none of them were good enough.

And the reason why none of them were good enough is because the measure that I was comparing them to was the shepherding movement, okay? It was, and people, I know this will shock you, they thought I was weird. And they thought I was weird because I was acting like a shepherding movement guy in a four-square church. I was acting like a shepherding guy in Assemblies of God church. I was acting like a shepherding guy in this non-denominational church that had never even heard of the shepherding movement. And, you know, I mean, we were talking about the incredibly high standard, just like, well, these people, I can't believe that they groom the way that they do, and that they dress the way that they do. And by golly, these guys, they don't wear ties to church.

You can't do that. You can't go to church without a tie. Don't you realize that you need to dress up for the Lord? You need to show the proper respect. You know, I mean, heck, you're part of the royal priesthood, you need to act like it, you know? I mean, come on, people, get with the program here. And now, I'll tell you right now, people, you wouldn't catch me dead in a tie at church.

It's just simply not going to happen. They didn't need to change. I did. I needed, if I'm going to be in a four-square church, I need to figure out what four-square culture is like. If I'm going to be in a, what was the other one? Oh, the Assemblies of God. Oh, by the way, those Assemblies of God people are pretty weird, just so you know.

But anyhow, that's just kind of a footnote. But if I'm going to be in an Assemblies of God church, I need to figure out what Assemblies of God culture is, which in my case meant I need to loosen up. I need to be a little bit more easygoing. I needed to be more go with the flow and lower the standards like quite a bit. And kind of rather, you know, Mike, you brought up the golden rule.

How about this? How about loving my neighbor in my church by accepting them the way they are? Rather than expecting them to come up to my, let's say the word, my cult standards, which even I couldn't perform at. Nobody can.

Nobody could perform at those high standards, all right? So maybe I need to just relax and just give people a break and let people be people. And how about this one?

How about this one, Christians? How about letting them be wrong? How about letting them have opinions that I don't agree with? How about letting them be maybe like in a political party that I don't agree with, or holding to political views that I don't agree with?

It got really quiet in here, didn't it? Because we're talking about stuff where Christians just love to get out. Okay, I'm talking to ex Mormons here. They just love to get out that iron rod and say, this is the way it's got to be. And, you know, that's how I was coming from my cult was this is the way it's got to be. Well, guess what, Fred? No, it doesn't have to be that way. If it's not sin, if the Bible doesn't define it as sin, if it's not immoral, the Bible doesn't say that it's immoral, maybe you should cut these people a break. Maybe, you know, maybe it's okay not to wear a tie at church.

I don't really even see him wearing ties at church. Do you, Fred? Okay, does that answer your question, Brianna? Yes, it does.

Thank you. Yeah, I mean, every ex cultist is going to feel like a fish out of water until they kind of get the ropes. Every church, here's the thing.

Here's the hard reality, whether we like it or not. Every single church and every congregation has its own flavor, has its own culture. So when we come into a new church body, we need to figure out what that is. And we need to mesh into it. That doesn't mean that we have to lower our standards or be anything other than what we are. But we need to appreciate what the culture is. And we need to accommodate that and be understanding of that.

And key word, be empathetic of what it is. We don't even have to agree with it. I mean, you know, even today, today was my first day back, because I'm fully vaccinated, people. It was my first day back in church today. And I got to tell you, I heard a lot of weird stuff. I heard a lot of things in my own church, which I have been attending now since 1992, in this particular congregation. I heard a lot of stuff that I don't agree with.

I heard a lot of opinions expressed that I don't agree with. But you know something? I love these people. And I love them exactly right where they're at. And I think that some of these people are pretty weird. And I love them in their weirdness.

If I'm going to, this is something that tends to blow everybody's mind, but I'm going to say it. If you're going to love the whole person, you have to love both their good parts and their bad parts. And that's that latter part that Christians tend to not like. It's like, well, I don't need to love their bad parts. I mean, they need to change. It's like, do they?

Do they? Hmm. So, yeah, we all need to change. I agree. I need to change.

Nobody knows that more than me. But if I'm going to love them the way that Jesus loves them right now, this moment, this second, this millisecond, I have to love them as a whole person, not as a half a person. If I'm only loving the good parts in somebody, I'm not loving the whole person. I'm only loving the parts that I like. So, you know, there it is.

I went a little bit long, but I hope that answers the question. So, when you're an ex-cultist, go into a church, love the good parts and love the bad parts. You don't have to agree with it. But at least, you know, expect to be uncomfortable, expect to feel like a fish out of water, expect to, excuse me, you know, feel a little odd at first. But you know something? And Michael, you wrote an excellent article on this. This too will pass. It may not be easy, but it's worth it. So, there it is. Yeah. Thank you, Fred.

That's great. I was reminded while you were talking, answering the last question about the parable of the Good Samaritan, where the Good Samaritan comes by and brings the life, you know, practically lifeless person and brings them and takes them to the end so that they can take care of him. And that's kind of our job is like, you know, if he takes someone in and then we say, well, you know, if we judge them for the injuries they had, like, well, couldn't you have done this? Or, you know, why did you get hit?

You know, why didn't you protect yourself better or something? You know, that's not our job. Our job is supposed to, you know, as a church is to help them to, you know, recuperate and to be healed. So we need to, we need to love them as the Savior does. So that's beautiful.

Thank you for that. You're listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post-Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer Brightness, Outer Brightness, Outer Brightness.

There's no weeping and wailing and mashing of teeth here, except when Michael's hangry that is, hangry that is, hangry that is. We were all born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1-9, which calls Jesus the true light, which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be, and the light we have is not our own. It comes to us from without.

Thus, Outer Brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to His Son. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between.

We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around. I wanted to ask, too, about the shepherding movement. So could you explain a little bit more about the changes they've made, probably since you've left? Have they actually gone through reform or repentance of some of the things that they've done in the past? And do you think this is possible with the Latter-day Saint Church?

Do you think they could go through some kind of reform to make them more in line with Christian teachings? Matthew, that is a wonderful, wonderful question. And I'm going to recommend a book to everybody who's listening to this. In fact, it's just a good book, given the topic that we're talking about. There's a book by a guy named Ron Enroth.

And if you join our—Mr. Enroth, unfortunately, is now deceased. But before he died, he bequeathed his two works called Churches of Abuse and Recovering from Churches of Abuse. He bequeathed them to the public domain so you can get PDF copies, free PDF copies of the book.

Or if you like paper, you can still get the paper version up on Amazon. But if you join our group called Ex-Mormon Christians on the Facebook group, that's it, just search on Ex-Mormon Christians, or for short, the slang for it, our short handle is Ex-M Christians. We have both of those books in PDF format in our file library. In the second book in that series called Recovering from Churches of Abuse, Mr. Enroth goes into great detail about how the shepherding movement reformed. There's another book. This is kind of like the scholarly watershed book, very hard to find now, very expensive, called The Shepherding Movement by a guy named by the name of David S. Moore. You know, good luck finding that.

Last time I hit Amazon, they didn't even have any copies. But he wrote what's considered to be the definitive movement on our movement. And of the two books, the Moore book is more interesting, because he goes into more detail. But here's the bottom line. And this is what people don't appreciate. I don't think that most Mormons appreciate. Leaders in churches fight all the time. Leaders in churches disagree all the time. I mean, yes, in terms of the unifying principles, like, you know, say the essential doctrines of faith, they're in agreement. But in terms of policy, and how things that should be done, maybe how things should be taught, they bicker and fight and spat. And, you know, they rub each other the wrong way, just like the rest of us. And I have no doubt that that's going on in the Mormon church.

Well, guess what? It was happening in the shepherding movement. Did, you know, a dumb Fred, the guy that's mowing the lawns, not having his lawn mowed because he was so low on the hierarchy notice? No, I didn't know it until I read the David S. Moore book.

But what happened was in, what was it? I think 88, 89, one of the leaders, Derek Prince, who, you know, I already talked about Francis Schaeffer, the other guy who was a huge influence on me was Derek Prince. Of the five guys, he was the guy who had the greatest impact, the five guys in the shepherding movement.

Even today, if you talk to Fred Hansen, you're going to get some Derek Prince, just because the guy was so brilliant and so biblically sound. But he left the movement, he was done. And the reason why he was done is because he was seeing that the abuse, the controlling nature of what we were doing, he was beginning to see that some of the stuff that we were doing was quite candidly not biblical. It was actually contra-biblical.

And of all the people that would recognize that, it would be Derek because of the five guys, he was the most biblically literate of them all. And so he left. And at the time, I got to tell you, I was shocked. I was, you know, we were talking about your world crumbling in front of you.

That was the big one. Now, back to Paul's question about snapping and the thought stopping. Okay, when this happened, does anybody want to guess what my thought process was? Well, obviously, he's fallen into error. Derek Prince, of all people, I thought that he was deception-proof, but this just goes to show that the devil can get anybody.

Why? Because the thought that Derek Prince might be seeing something that Fred Anson didn't see was something that I simply could not possibly comprehend. So Derek left the movement. He saw the bad stuff, and he called the emperor has no clothes.

This thing is wrong. It was a big deal. Christianity Today wrote about it. Charisma Magazine wrote about it.

Everybody wrote about it. He was up the street and gone. He even went so far as to purge certain books and certain tapes from his catalog because he felt that he had been teaching, guess what, false doctrine. Even today, you just simply cannot get that stuff.

It's impossible. Well, guess what? As soon as one guy, and this is the funny thing, as soon as one guy unsnaps and one guy starts to start thinking clearly, other people do too. And the other four guys kind of had, no pun or joke intended, they kind of had a come to Jesus moment and went, huh, huh, wait a second. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, those parameters, that limiting thinking, guess what?

They were under two. You know, ex-Mormons always want to know, well, what about the leaders? Do they really believe this stuff?

Just my opinion. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they do. They may have their own set of issues and doubts. But in general, when they say, yes, we really do believe that the gospel and the principles of the gospel, they mean it. I have no reason to believe that they're being insincere.

Why? Because I believe that they're in that snap psychological state that Paul and I were talking about. And they simply will not allow their thinking to fall outside of this process. Okay, so what happened was one by one, and it was like watching dominoes fall, guys. I was out of the movement by 89 and by 90, by 90, the movement was dead. Okay, but one by one, the churches began to leave the movement, the leaders began to leave the movement, and the thing was over.

And guess what? Each guy was saying as he was leaving, he was saying the same stuff that Derek Prince was. He was saying, we're doing some stuff that's not good. We're doing some stuff that's not right. We're teaching some doctrine that is just simply not biblical. We have hurt people, we have harmed people, we have damaged marriages, families, lives.

This is not a good thing that we have done. And they had the keyword integrity to come forward and say, we're not doing this anymore. And what happened was the guys that were still in it, they were still in that snap psychological state that we were still in.

They were still holding on to it with both hands as hard as they could. No, no, this has been my life. I've invested thousands of dollars and thousands of hours and everything that I add into this thing, and going through that anger and denial process that Mike and I were talking about earlier. And long story short, so the guys that were in that movement, when one guy would leave, the other guy that was left, he would assume control of that guy's churches. I was out of it.

But if you stop and think about it, this is like a really good comedy. This is like a movie of watching these guys stumble and bumble and fall over each other until it was finally down to the last guy, Charles Simpson. And finally, in 1990, Charles Simpson just threw up his hands and he said, guys, it's over. He had a meeting, and I think it was Minneapolis or something like that, where they all got together. One of my friends was there. He told me about it. He said it was wild, absolutely wild, because the guys that were in denial just simply couldn't let it go.

But Charles Simpson literally got up on stage and said, it is over. I'm not your pastor. Your pastor doesn't report to me. You don't report to me.

Guess what, guys? We only have one shepherd now, and his name is Jesus Christ. And the movement was done. It was done and over.

So what Enroth did in his book and what David S. Moore did in their book is they kind of did the post-mortem. And Charles Simpson now talks about it, and Charles has always had a very good sense of humor. And he said that he just spent the next couple of decades apologizing to everybody, until finally his wife said, okay, enough is enough. You've got to stop apologizing, Charles. I mean, you know, you've apologized to the same guy three times now.

You know, this has to end. So yes, our movement reformed. Now, the question is, can the Mormon church reform like we did? The other one that always comes up is the Worldwide Church of God, Herbert J. Armstrong, I can't remember, but they also reformed. So you have two examples of former cultic groups that have now reformed. So now, of course, anybody who's in Mormon studies is going, well, could it happen here? And candidly, I don't think it can.

Let me tell you why. For a start, we were never as, you know, you can say a lot of things about the LDS church, but the thing that you can't say is that it doesn't run like a well-oiled machine. It runs like a well-oiled machine. I mean, my goodness, we thought that we set the bar high in terms of organization and that type of thing. Well, the LDS church makes us look like fools in terms of structure, organization, getting stuff done. I mean, come on, guys, if you want to get something done, if you want to get the job done, give it to a Mormon, they're going to get it done and they're going to get it done well.

Let's just say it the way it is, okay? So there's that part of it. Also, when you've got it, we did not have a $124 billion portfolio that could be sued, counter-sued, challenged, re-challenged, and then sued, re-challenged, and re-sued again. There just weren't assets to spat over because each congregation maintained its own portfolio of its own books, its own standards. The only thing we were responsible for in our movement is, you know, kicking the tithe, paying the tithe. So what would happen is our church, for example, would pay a tithe to our pastor's church to help them with their ministry and they would pay a tithe to the church above them. Well, the Mormon church, if you look at the way that they're structured financially, it's all one big pot.

Everybody pays to Salt Lake City and then Salt Lake City decides who's going to get what. And so, in terms of financial stuff, this thing's just too entangled. On top of that, these guys, wow! I mean, you know, the level of mind control that we were under in the shepherding movement is, you know, I'm not trying to be, what's the word, overly critical or anything, but the stuff that I see, like up in the debate groups on Facebook and stuff, it was just not that extreme. You wouldn't have people in our movement that were willing to fall on their own swords to save the movement. It just didn't happen.

So I just don't see it happening. On top of that, the LDS church knows the history of the RLDS church in the community of Christ. And they know what happened when the RLDS church began to reform.

And frankly, by all accounts, they did it way too fast and way too radically. And the RLDS church just absolutely imploded and splintered and turned, you know, fractured in a million ways. Do I think that there is some reform coming to the LDS church?

Yes, I do. I wouldn't be part of a group called Mormon Reformation if I didn't believe that reform was possible. But it's going to be like all things in the LDS church.

It's going to be very, very slow. And at the end of the day, I think, theologically, because the LDS church is both a sociological cult and a theological cult, I don't see the LDS church ever becoming fully biblically orthodox. And the reason I can say that is I'll point to the community of Christ. They're not completely biblically orthodox.

They've done a better job of posturing themselves so that they look like they are. But for example, their doctrine of the Trinity is not really the doctrine of the Trinity. It's more like the type of Trinity that you see in the Book of Mormon where it's kind of a little bit Trinitarian and kind of a little bit modalistic.

So yeah, kind of a long-winded answer, but the short answer is no. I just don't see the LDS church reforming the way that the discipleship church did. There are still remnants of the shepherding movement left. There are churches known as remnant churches. In fact, the church that I'm in now is one of those remnant churches, okay?

But it is nothing, absolutely nothing like things were back in the shepherding movement. I mean, I can, the senior pastor of our church, I've told them to his face I disagree with them. I've told them that, you know, words that you would never say in the shepherding movement, I've told them, you know, I'm not going to do that.

You know, I'm sorry, but that's just not on my radar. And it's really, really a different church. I would say that a church that learns from its mistakes, for example, Matthew, I know that you're in a Reformed Baptist church, and I would, you know, I would pat you guys on the back and give you kudos. I mean, you guys have really, when you look at the history of your movement, you've really learned from your past mistakes, and you guys are a great, great Christian denomination as a result of it.

You know, I could pick other denominations and say the same thing. But there just wasn't, the key thing was the control, that control, that mind control just had to go. Now, I should also, we're, you know, pretty deep into this thing, but I'll tell you right now, that there are people, you know, my old friends that they get very upset with me when I say that the shepherding movement was the mind control cult. They don't like me using language like that.

And the reason for that is, I suspect that this is going to sound really familiar, guys. The people that are in the lower echelons of the organization and the shepherding movement had a very different experience of the shepherding movement than the people that were in the upper echelons because one of the privileges, you know, the reason why I wouldn't be surprised to walk into the church office building and walk into a boardroom where the brethren are having a meeting and seeing them arguing with each other is because as you move in a high control organization, when you move up the hierarchy, the higher you get, the more you're able to say and the freer you're able to think. Now, this guy down here who just got baptized last week, you better toe the line, buddy.

This is what the gospel principle says and, you know, boom, boom, boom, you'd better believe the words in this book. But who are the guys that are changing the words in the next revision of gospel principles? They're the guys sitting in the church office building. So, again, the experience that I'm going to pick on my favorite Mormon apostle who I think the entire world knows that I'm a total fan boy for Dieter F. Uchtdorf, okay? Dieter F. Uchtdorf, trust me, the way that he talks and the way that he thinks in the church office building is going to be very different than if that new initiate that just got baptized last week could talk. His experience of the Mormon church is very, very different than that guy. For a start, you don't have millions of people adoring you just because you have the title apostle, okay? So, and that's another thing fighting against the reform in the Mormon church because guys who are sitting in that boardroom at Cobb who are, you know, eating their chocolate cherries that Steve Benson tells us that they do at their meetings and doing them in, you know, the proper hierarchical order based on tenure, okay? The guys that are talking about these things and talking about the next set of revisions of gospel principles are having a very different experience with the Mormon church than the guy who's in the gospel doctrine class who's in chapter one, page one, chapter one of the book. So, there you go. Again, long-winded answer, but I hope it's helpful. And I would recommend, I would strongly recommend that everybody who's listening to this interview, even if you don't finish the interview, pick up Recovering from Churches that Abuse by Ron Enrock and read it.

You'll not only get an education about our movement, you'll probably get an education about your own church as well. So, there it is. All right. Thank you, Fred. Appreciate you having you on here and sharing your wealth of knowledge. But I want to ask you, what kind of things do you have going on?

What could we plug in for you? Anything going on? Well, thank you for that, Breanne. It's a funny question because the honest answer is I have too much going on. And I'm actually trying to find ways to throttle things back. And, you know, some of you guys are in my Facebook group where I put up these silly tips of the day.

And one of the principles was, do few things, but do them well. And I came to my own realization that I was doing too much. I had too much going on. I had too many plates spinning.

At one point, you ready for this? I was doing Beggar's Bread, which is my website. I was doing Mormon Reformation Day, or, you know, part of the whole Mormon Reformation thing, which has now been going for nearly a decade. I was doing We Agree with Moroni 818 Day. And I'm in IT, and I've got a reputation for being a pretty good Facebook administrator.

I was administrating like five or six groups, and it's just too much. So at the end of the day, my focus is going to be one that you guys are very familiar with, because you're all published authors on it, which is going to be Beggar's Bread. That's my website. The URL is very simple, beggarsbreadallruntogether.org.

Every person on here except for Brianna, hint, hint, hint, Brianna, has an article on the website. Okay. I think, Paul, you've done what for now? Matthew, you've done too, and Mike, I've lost count of how many I've published from you.

So that's going to be the big thrust going forward. The thing that keeps me busy is Facebook. Let's see, I'm administrating the—if I forget anybody, any of them, just jump in, guys. I've got X Mormon Christians. I've got the X Mormon Christians Manhood Forum. I've got the Mormon Underground, which is a new one for just kind of putting things out in the public domain, finding ways to loop around the information control that the LDS Church has the Mormon missionaries under.

I know I'm forgetting some. Oh, preaching from an asbestos tube. Yeah, yeah, which is—that was an adjunct from a chapter that I wrote in a book called Sharing the Good News with Mormons, chapter 12, I think it was, where a bunch of guys that are a heck of a lot smarter than I am wrote chapters about how to reach Mormons with the gospel, and I wrote the chapter on internet evangelism. So we have a coaching website that seems pretty popular that people seem to like, where we talk about how to do that. Initially, the idea was to limit it to the internet, but it's kind of spread out a little bit, and now people talk about face-to-face evangelism and everything else under the sun. And that's one of my favorite groups, to be honest with you, because I can kind of take the leash off and let my weird sense of humor romp a little bit. We do funny memes and caption contests and stuff like that. So, basically, Beggars Bread and Facebook are going to be my focus going forward.

And yeah, that's pretty much it. I hope to get invited back to the Faith After Mormonism conference. After COVID, we weren't able to do that live last year. And I got to tell you guys, doing that, actually meeting people face-to-face, there's nothing like just meeting people in the flesh and realizing, I have found that when you meet people in person, they're way better.

I mean, just by a magnitude of 10, 12, 20, they're way better in person than you ever thought they would ever be on Facebook or on the internet. So, I'm hoping to get up to that again this year. And other than that, just doing my job, I do have a full-time job in IT. And I've also got this thing called a marriage, and I hope to keep that going. And there you go. And of course, my second religion is Major League Baseball and National League Football. So, there it is.

The plates just keep spinning. And no, Michael, I don't want to talk about yesterday's Angels in Houston Astros game. So, there you go. He's grinning. He's grinning.

We got bombed 16 to 2 by the Astros yesterday. So, he's loving it. It was a good day. Well, thank you, Fred. We really appreciate having you on. And we're so blessed to have your experience, your wealth of knowledge, your help in helping us to witness to Latter-day Saints. So, we really do thank you for all the time you spend outside of work and family to help us to share the gospel with Latter-day Saints. So, just thank you again for coming on. And we really recommend check out beggarsbread.com for all of our listeners.

If I can just bookend this real quick. I mean, I talked a lot about reading different things and making a point of reading things that disagree with you. But I can't emphasize this enough. I mean, the bottom line here, people, is we are Christian.

And our absolute standard because we have made that decision. Because every single one of us. Trust me, guys, the last thing I wanted to be was a Christian. I was an atheist for a reason. I was raised in Nazarene and I walked away from it. And I walked away angry and mad. But God had other plans. You know, like Matthew, I'm a good Calvinist boy. And God wasn't going to let me go. Why?

I have no clue. To this day, it is a mystery. I would have let me go, to be honest with you. I was not a very nice atheist. And the guy, the teenage hippie Fred shaking his fist at the sky. I wouldn't want that guy. But for some reason, God wanted me.

And I'm getting misty just even thinking about it. And here's the bottom line. I owe that man. I owe God a debt.

I can never repay. No matter what I do from now until the day I die, I will die in the debt of Jesus Christ. And that anchors me to his absolute standard, his absolute objective standard, which is the Word of God.

And as I'm going out there, and I'm looking at these contrary views, and I'm looking at these opposing views and things that, frankly, make me uncomfortable and make me uneasy from time to time. And when I'm getting outside of my Christian tank and looking at it, the bottom line is this. I still have to plumb what I'm seeing against what I know is true. And what I know is true is that God exists, that for reasons that are beyond me, he came down and he took on human form, and he died for me.

I didn't deserve it, but he did it. And that is, I hear Mormons say all the time, well, you don't have a testimony. Well, there it is right there. My testimony isn't of me. My testimony isn't of me. It's not of what I believe. It's a testimony of what he has done. And if I am going to be true to that man, I am beholden to adhering to God's Word, the Bible. So there it is.

Yeah, go out, think critically, but you still have to come home and you have to look at it through that lens of the biblical worldview. So there it is. All right, Fireflies, that's a wrap on this episode. We appreciate Fred coming on. And if you'd like to get in touch with Fred, check out the show notes. There's links there to his blog as well as to his Facebook profile so you can connect with him.

You may also wish to join the Outer Brightness Facebook group where Fred is a member and you can interact with him there as well. Next week, we're going to be bringing you a conversation that Michael and I had with Rich Hoyer. Rich is a Christian pastor at Linden Christian Church in Linden, Kentucky. That's near Louisville.

For those of you who are not from Kentucky, that's near Louisville, but here we say at Louisville. So Rich came on the program to discuss the importance of Christian apologetics. We were grateful to have him come on. He has, for the last several years, been involved in organizing, planning, and carrying off an apologetics conference in the Louisville, Kentucky area, and they also do some things in the Indianapolis, Indiana area. So really interesting conversation that we had with him.

He's got a wealth of knowledge about apologetics and also has a heart for sharing the gospel with those who are questioning whether they're Mormons or seekers in general. So look forward to that episode, Fireflies. Shine bright, Fireflies. Looking forward to sharing that episode with you.

Shine bright, Fireflies. 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 back 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 outerbrightness at gmail dot com.

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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! The word made fresh, the risen Son. 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.

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 calls 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. All of this world is in decay, but the word of our God through ages remains. The word of God remains. This is the Truth Network.