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Hello and welcome back to Part 3 of my amazing interview with Micah Nicolias.

Episode 1 we talked about his early years and his commitment to the church and kind of what led to his unraveling of his faith.

Episode 2 we talked about his many you know, involvements in various forms of Mormon activism both for and against the church from his participation in a thoughtful faith and exploring St. Hood to his disaffection from the church and his involvement in strangers and social media.

And I think it's way better than people resigning.

Way more effective than people resigning if the goal is to penetrate as many hearts and minds as possible and to make a difference.

So I still like that idea maybe some young up and come or can take that mantle yeah bring it on.

And and of course we talked about the any opposed action that Micah along with Scott Roli and and Don Breger.

Don Breger and others participated in where they vocally descended at the April 2015 general conference and the aftermath from that.

So that's been I've loved the I've loved the history I don't know I'll be curious if the listeners have enjoyed kind of us really going into a lot of the history in some sense a lot of your history is Mormon stories history and the OSF history and my history so I'm enjoying this I hope I hope there's some people out there who are as well.

If you are please go up to Mormon stories or just say yeah John we're glad you did this we're still here we're still listening because I think this is you know a lot of people say they enjoy the deep the deep dives and this is a deep dive and I think Micah has played an important role in the past few years in all this stuff so.

So now we're going to now I don't even know totally where this is going to go this may be like a 10 minute episode I don't know but but now what I want to talk about is is about the future I want to kind of you know I want to hear about Micah I want to hear from you about your future but I also want to talk a little bit about where we go from here because I get the sense that even though you know I'm not going to talk about the future I want to kind of you know I want to hear about Micah I want to hear from you about your future but I also want to talk a little bit about where we go from here because I get the sense that even though you know I want to talk about the future I want to kind of you know I want to hear about Micah I want to hear from you about your future but I also want to talk a little bit about where we go from here because I get the sense that even though you know I want to

and even I and Kate and others you know maybe done with with a certain slant within Mormonism or with engaging the LDS church in certain direct ways I know that I still have this yearning to still be engaged in something and I'm honestly I'm graduating in in three months with my PhD and I'm honestly willing to spend the next 30 to 35 years of my remaining years.

I'm trying to create something of value not just for transitioning opposed Mormons but honestly if we can for humanity because I think that while religion has served us well or at least has served us impactfully for millennia you know it's pretty clear that at least in the developed world in Asia and Western Europe and in

you know North America you know organized religions on the decline and and we're experiencing what's called the rise of the nuns NONE if you read the Pew Foundation report as you mentioned in the break or whatever you know 30% of the millennials no longer affiliate with any religious tradition and most of Protestant Christianity is sort of on the decline the LDS church even is sort of at best having a need for the

having anemic growth and that's fueled mostly by birth rates not by conversion and retention and the and and you know the only thing in addition to you know birth rates that's keeping the LDS church alive is it's the explosive growth in the third world which again the retention rates there probably 10 to 20% year over year and you know most people realize that that's not financially you know

productive for the church because it becomes a bunch of cost centers that the church either has to maintain or they need to find a way to make those cost centers self-sustaining but but certainly the the was edge fronts not going to be able to fund the expansion of the LDS church into the third world so you know we're potentially seeing the the slowing of growth of the LDS church but maybe the beginnings of of a decline in

in in the church's presence over the next five to 20 years in spite of what you know Quentin Cook said at this last general conference but but for me what's what's really interesting I want to start with where you see things going for you but then I want to talk about where things might go for people not just leaving

Mormonism but for people leaving any religious tradition and and what our options are like we talk so much about the excitement and the energy of what Mormon stories and the open stories foundation and the blogger knuckle we're all doing in 2011

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