The Unique Opportunity Local Leaders Have to Encourage Faith Among Latter-day Saint Millennials | An Interview with Jana Riess
Summary: Jana Riess is a historian and editor in the publishing industry, primarily working in the areas of religion, history, popular culture, ethics, and biblical studies. From 1999 to 2008, she was the Religion Book Review Editor for Publishers Weekly, and continues to freelance reviews for Publishers Weekly as well as other publications. She holds degrees in religion from Wellesley College and Princeton Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in American religious history from Columbia University. She grew up with no religious affiliation and became a Protestant in high school. While going to college to become a pastor, she converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Her book, "The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church", came about after starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund a survey to learn about Millennials in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.<br> <br> Highlights<br> <br> * 6:45 Millennials are leaving religion<br> * 7:30 Retention rate of 46%-62% and is trending downward<br> * 8:30 What is a Millennial?<br> * 10:00 What to say to those who say the Millennials will grow out of this phase?<br> * 12:30 What can the church do to retain these Millennials and solve the problem?<br> * 15:40 What part does conformity & obedience have in Millennials leaving the church?<br> * 16:40 The two main reasons Millennials leave the church<br> * 18:35 How do Millennials view the temple?<br> * 23:20 Millennials have a higher rate of ministering<br> * 25:00 Why church?<br> * 26:00 How church meetings could be better & different for Millennials<br> * 27:00 How do Millennials see church callings differently<br> * 28:30 Millennials & religious authority<br> * 32:55 Millennials & the word of wisdom<br> * 33:55 Millennials & temple recommends<br> * 37:15 Millennials & pornography<br> * 40:10 Millennials & the traditional family<br> * 44:00 Millennials and the Prophet and General Authorities<br> * 48:30 Millennials and American exceptionalism<br> * 50:10 What can Millennials bring to our church?<br> * 53:00 What's the biggest sticking point for Millennials going forward?<br> * 56:00 What can leaders do?<br> * 58:00 How has writing this book impacted Jana's discipleship of Jesus Christ?<br> <br> Links<br> <a href="https://amzn.to/2UvZevF" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">The Next Mormons: How Millennials are Changing the LDS Church</a><br> <a href="https://leadingsaints.org/an-lds-leaders-guide-to-millennial-mormons/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">An LDS Leader’s Guide to Millennial Mormons</a><br> Transcript<br> Kurt Francom (LS): Today I have the opportunity to sit down with Jana Riess. Jana, you are the author of "The Next Mormons: How Millennials Are Changing the LDS Church". So tell us as far as your personal background and how this project and book came to be?<br> <br> Jana: Sure. This project basically started in 2016. I was very interested in getting solid data on what's going on generationally with Latter-Day Saints and former Latter-Day Saints. And not just anecdotally "here's what I'm seeing in my social media feed." Anecdotally, it felt like more younger people were leaving the LDS faith and for possibly different reasons than older people had left, and I wanted to know if that was really valid, and if so, more about it - everything we could.<br> <br> So along with the help of Benjamin Knoll, who's a political scientist, we crafted this survey, raised money on Kickstarter in order to fund the survey because it's very expensive to try to get valid information that's nationally representative about such a small minority population. Mormons are only about one and a half percent of the United States population. That's how it began.<br> <br> LS: Nice.
