"Perhaps the most important thing we can do in the face of our current challenges is to make the church a more welcoming place for those who struggle, creating the conditions in which they can feel comfortable while they work through questions and doubts in the midst of the body of Christ rather than feeling excluded from it. A more embracing Mormonism may thus be the most important factor in helping people more fully embrace Mormonism."After reading (and loving!) Patrick Mason's latest book (Restoration), I wanted to seek out this book he wrote a few years ago. This seems like a particularly helpful book for those questioning their belief in the Church ... or for those who know someone who is questioning their belief in the Church, or someone who may potentially be in a congregation with someone who is questioning their belief in the Church. This is a book that will help us create a culture of belonging in our congregations.I really loved the discussion on how doubt is not a character flaw. After she died, Mother Teresa's writings revealed her insecurities and doubts; if one of the greatest examples of Christian charity felt silence from heaven, perhaps we can be patient with others and with ourselves when we struggle with faith.I also liked how he described learning about problematic pieces of church history. It might be like explorers searching for a unicorn but instead finding a rhinoceros: while the rhino isn't as majestic as a unicorn, it has the benefit of being real. Our history may not be as palatable, but wouldn't we rather know what really happened? (As someone who is extremely practical and also a lover of the complexity of history, I really resonated with that analogy!)I also appreciated the reminder that, in spite of all the wonderful appendages of the gospel, we should be nourished from the Vine. Christ is at the center of our testimonies and it is through Him that we are saved. Problems with church history or culture need not destroy our relationship with Jesus.Ultimately I preferred Patrick Mason's book Restoration over this one, but only barely. This was still such a good book.A few more quotes I highlighted:"Right now a number of church members are either questioning their place in the church or leaving it altogether because they feel, in the words of Latter-day Saint historian Richard Bushman, either “switched off” or “squeezed out.”""Most people don’t really want to be solved. They want to be heard, valued, and as much as possible understood.""For most people, faith is work, and oftentimes it is hard work.""There are ways we can talk faithfully, constructively, and honestly about difficult things, even when our knowledge is imperfect. We can live with loose ends. We can have hard conversations.""Substantial spiritual doubt will not and need not be experienced by everyone; it is not a necessary stop on the personal path to God. But its presence among us actually does important things for us, both as individuals and as a church community. Doubt dislocates us from our comfortable places. It asks hard questions of us and forces us to deal with hard issues. It refuses to let us get spiritually sluggish with the lazy assumption that “All is well in Zion” (2 Nephi 28:21).""We sometimes treat doubt as a character flaw rather than simply a part of many people’s struggle to live with belief in a secular age.""For many, the struggle with doubt is the very definition of their journey of belief.""We rightfully rejoice when the voice of God comes to us, recognizing that every parcel of divine revelation is an utterly precious grace. At the same time we appreciate that his hiddenness does not constitute abandonment or even necessarily a rebuke.""Perhaps the first step toward developing empathy for others is learning to resist using our own personal experiences as the ultimate measuring stick to judge other people.""Discipleship also calls upon us to go beyond our own experience to recognize the legitimacy and value of others’ lives, however different they are from our own.""After reading the Old Testament, we should not be particularly surprised that our modern-day Zion has snares, stumbling blocks, and offenses. I am, and should be, troubled anytime I see scandals in Zion, just as many of the events recorded in the Old Testament are deeply troubling to me. But scripture reminds me not to be surprised by Zion’s failings and to believe that God can redeem his people in spite of their many missteps.""Indeed, if we know anything in this church, it’s that God has more to teach us, so long as we don’t plug our ears and think we already know it all.""One of the primary reasons why some members of the church have become disenchanted, disappointed, or even angry in recent years is because they were never taught to expect skeletons in the closet of church history and so are shocked when they find them. If their surprise (or yours) reveals a certain naïveté, we must charitably remember that it is a learned naïveté.""Grown-up questions require grown-up answers. The Primary answers—read, pray, go to church, be good—never cease being important, even foundational. But life becomes more complicated and morally complex as we grow up, so it is essential for our religion to mature with us.""Given that so many people are struggling with their membership in the church because of some of these issues, finding better ways to think and talk about the issues is an act of compassion in the original sense of the word—“to suffer with.” It is an act of Christian love to go to places, whether geographic or intellectual, that we might otherwise prefer not to visit so that we can “mourn with those that mourn” and “comfort those that stand in need of comfort” (Mosiah 18:9).""Become comfortable with complexity and nuance. We know that in our present lives things are rarely black-and-white, and so we expect the same of the past.""How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?""God’s prophets never set themselves up as the light but rather stand on the mountain pointing people to the true Light.""The Lord is not casual about sin, but he seems far more ready to pardon us than we sometimes are.""It seems that God’s position on prophetic fallibility is stunningly, perhaps scandalously, uncomplicated: it exists. It can and should be forgiven, and he, not we, will decide whether sufficient confession and repentance has occurred.""To forgive is not to be willfully ignorant in the face of human fallenness; it is rather to stare sin in the eye and declare that it will not triumph, no matter the suffering it has caused. The greater the sin, the more difficult the forgiveness. It does not come easily, and it rarely comes immediately. The scars may never heal; as far as we know, Jesus’s still haven’t.""We do not place our ultimate hope in prophets and priesthood leaders. We do not place our ultimate hope in the church. We place our ultimate hope in Christ and his atonement.""Christ is not only the Redeemer of Israel and redeemer of our souls but also the redeemer of history. The resurrection of Jesus Christ changes everything. It extends the timeline for the achievement of justice, righteousness, and peace, allowing for the arc to stretch well beyond any person’s mortal sojourn.""We must constantly remember, in England’s wise words, that “the Church is not a place to go for comfort, to get our own prejudices validated, but a place to comfort others, even to be afflicted by them.” The path of ease, recognition, and casual sameness is not the way of the cross Christ calls us to bear.""The standard of the church’s divinity is not its perfection but its ability to serve as a schoolmaster for gods in embryo. The things that may be most frustrating and perplexing may be the very means by which God is teaching us what it’s like to be him.""It might help to refrain from thinking of church life as a massive to-do list that one can never exhaust. Rather, it might be that the church’s many meetings, programs, and classes form a rich inventory of possibilities. It falls to every individual, every family, to wisely choose the “better part” (Luke 10:42 NRSV)—that combination of the most pressing priorities for their particular time, place, and situation.""Spiritual survival ... depends on seeing each day as a set of possibilities for doing good, not an endless set of ways to fall short."Make a place for yourself. In Micah’s vision of the millennial era of peace, he saw that people “shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid” (Micah 4:4 NRSV). We don’t have to go off and start our own churches, but we do have to find our own vine and fig tree to rest under within the church.""Those of us who are American don’t always like what our elected leaders do in Washington, but not many of us choose to leave the country. We don’t always like how our family members act, but we are not going to disown them. We don’t always like our coworkers, but we don’t usually quit our jobs over that. We don’t always like all our teachers or what they teach us, but we typically stay in school until we earn our diploma. In short, we regularly recognize the limitations and flaws in the many institutions of which we are a part, but except in the case of egregious abuses we normally stay and try to make things better rather than washing our hands and walking away. While acknowledging that our church community is far from perfect, I for one have my doubts about whether there is anything much better, not only in terms of doctrinal truth and priesthood authority but also in terms of providing personal purpose, meaning, and opportunities to develop Christlike character.""Can we as individuals and a church community deal constructively with the inevitable questions and problems we encounter, or will we see them only as existential threats? Will we reduce those who doubt to the status of lost souls who must correct their views in order for us to maintain association with them, or will we treat them as family members whom we love and care for—and maybe even learn from?""My plea to those who are struggling in the church and feel adrift is simple: Find some kind of tether that works for you. Find something or someone in the church to connect to, even while everything else seems tenuous. Find a way to stay in the orbit of the church as it orbits around the Son. For those who already feel their feet are planted on solid ground, my plea is also simple: Be the type of friend, family member, or fellow church member who provides the safe connection that we all so desperately need.""A full-time toothy smile is not requisite for discipleship; Jesus was surely not grinning in the garden or on the cross."

"In order to fulfill its mission to invite all to come unto Christ, our meetings must be a place where all people feel welcome: smokers and nonsmokers, baptized and unbaptized, women and men, the elderly and babes in arms, blacks and whites and Hispanics and Asians and Pacific Islanders and Native Americans and Arabs (and everyone else), welfare recipients and billionaires, single and married and divorced and widowed, childless and child-blessed, soldiers and peace activists, capitalists and socialists, believers and doubters, straight and gay, every-weekers and once-a-yearers, feminists and nonfeminists, intellectuals and the illiterate, groomed and unkempt, those in suits or jeans and those in dresses or pants, conservatives and liberals, publicans and Pharisees. This inclusiveness is not by way of contemporary political correctness; it is by way of commandment."