Fr. Thomas Soroka: Welcome to Ancient Faith Today Live. This is Fr. Tom Soroka, and I’m so glad that you’re with us this evening. We’ll be taking your calls in a bit, at 1-855-AF-RADIO; that’s 1-855-237-2346. As always, Matushka Trudi will be answering your calls, so please make sure to turn the show volume off before you come on air. Now, if you don’t want to call, hey, that’s cool. Give us a text message. Send it right from your phone to 412-206-5012; send us a text to 412-206-5012. You can also participate online. It’s streaming right now on Tuesday, July 11, at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, on the AFM Facebook and YouTube pages. Of course, you can make your comments there. We’d love to hear from you. And of course you can send us an email at aft at ancientfaith dot com.

So let’s get started. While Ancient Faith Ministries has an unparalleled reach throughout the English-speaking world, we often speak from our Orthodox Christian experience in the United States. While the United States is currently in a moral and spiritual tailspin, we have to admit that, throughout our young history, the US has produced many of the more peculiar heterodox religions, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which many people know as the Mormons. Tonight we’ll refer to them as the LDS Church.

The LDS Church is, as you know, very aggressively missionary. While Orthodox Christianity would not consider them Christians, simply because of their denial of the doctrine of the Trinity and other very, very basic Christian doctrines, the LDS community considers themselves to be the restoration of the original Church which Christ established, but which according to them was lost in the confusion of denominational confessions. Orthodoxy, of course, historically has an unbroken and proven connection with the early Church. We believe that we are the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. But that isn’t a popular message in a place like LDS-heavy Utah in the United States.

Get this: almost 70% of the people in Utah identify themselves as members of the LDS Church! What that means for us is it’s ripe for the truth and the beauty of the Orthodox Christian faith, but here’s the reality: it makes it exceedingly difficult to bring the truth of the Gospel to the people of that state. Almost three years ago now, we first welcomed tonight’s guest to our program, and he told us about the amazing growth that was taking place at his parish at the time, Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. But, unwilling to rest on his laurels, he fearlessly started a mission near the area of the educational center of the LDS Church, Brigham Young University. And it, too, now has achieved explosive growth.

Fr. Justin Havens is back with us tonight to update us on the amazing things God is doing in his parish and in the area. Fr. Justin is the pastor of St. Xenia Orthodox Church in Payson, Utah. He’s a seasoned missionary and an amazing man. Fr. Justin, welcome back to Ancient Faith Today Live.

Fr. Justin Havens: Thanks so much. It’s great to hear your voice, Fr. Tom.

Fr. Tom: Oh, I’m so glad that you’re here. I cannot wait to hear everything that’s happening. Of course, I think that thousands of us have been watching all the videos and seeing the incredible pictures that are coming out of Payson, Utah. This church, this magnificent building, with the golden onion domes and the incredible iconography, just rose up out of the ground as if by a miracle! In a few years, what it would take most churches 20 or 30 years to achieve, you achieved it in just a few.

So sort of let’s start back three years ago. You were at Sts. Peter and Paul, and of course you were telling us about all the mission work there. Pick it up from three years ago, and update us on what happened and the starting of this church in Payson and what has happened since then.

Fr. Justin: Thanks so much, Fr. Tom. I really appreciate the opportunity to update everybody. It’s humbling as a priest to see what’s happening, in spite of our weakness. Last time we spoke, the past couple times we spoke, the growth was explosive, as you mentioned, in downtown Salt Lake City, which is a cosmopolitan city: a number of Orthodox churches, by the way; I should mention them. We have always had great relationships with all the Orthodox churches.

Fr. Tom: Good.

Fr. Justin: We helped grow many of them: the Serbian Orthodox church, the Russian Orthodox church. They’re all growing without stealing from each other.

Fr. Tom: Amazing.

Fr. Justin: So all the churches were growing, and we grew to the point where hundreds and hundreds were on Sunday morning, and many, many catechumens. And then we saw that many people were living in Utah County. If you live in Utah, you know that there’s a Utah Valley, which is a big valley, Utah County and then Salt Lake County. Utah County. And then, Salt Lake City, I would say, downtown Salt Lake City… I don’t know, there’s 50% Gentiles, so to speak, that is, non-Mormon. [Laughter]

Fr. Tom: Interestingly.

Fr. Justin: But as soon as you leave, blocks away, it becomes, like you said, 70% [LDS Church members]. And then in Utah County, where I am, it’s 90% Mormon for sure.

Fr. Tom: Wow!

Fr. Justin: At least. And so it’s always been in our heart to expand the Gospel. We were getting 200-300 people on a Sunday, me and my assistant priest, Fr. Paul. We decided we had to strike out and do this. We bought the property, and, like you said, it’s a miracle. I had a visiting priest—at my home tonight, actually. His name is Fr. Justin Frederick. He’s a wonderful priest.

Fr. Tom: Oh, yeah! Absolutely.

Fr. Justin: From Denton, Texas. He’s at my house right now. I’m at the church.

Fr. Tom: He’s amazing!

Fr. Justin: He’s amazing, and he came to me tonight, looking at the [Inaudible] in vespers for St. Paisios, and he said, “Father, this would take 25 years. What are you doing? How did this happen?”

Fr. Tom: Right!

Fr. Justin: And it’s not me. I really believe that this is the richest mission field in America. That might be a funny thing to say, but last time we talked, I think I told you that as well. I think that it showed itself. So we took a risk, a brave risk to come down here and build a church. We first bought property. Properties are expensive. We bought five acres in the middle of farmland. Father, we died for it. Life savings, everybody coughed it up. We had a unique deal which was one community with two campuses for a short time. So we would take turns, my assistant and I would go back and forth and such. Then it became clear that it just had to become its own parish. That would make sense.

I built my house down here. My wife, my children—my ten children—we built a house down here, and me walking around in my black robe. [Laughter] But you know what? Nothing but love from these people. Nothing but love from these people. Amazing.

Fr. Tom: I actually had parishioners that visited your parish, I think about a year ago. And you were out of town at that time, but your wife was very gracious and opened the church and showed them and so forth. They were just amazed of everything that is happening there.

I want to go back and talk about two things that you mentioned here. The first is that you said, “We took a risk.” Now, obviously, I know you. I know that you are doing this entirely resting on the promises of God’s faithfulness. However, that doesn’t sometimes change the real risk here. You are really reaching out! It’s like you are going to, like you said— 90% of the people are identifying as LDS. So my first question is: What made you choose Utah County when maybe you could’ve gone to an area where it was actually just the opposite, that maybe it was wide open and there were more, I don’t know, Evangelical Christians—and I do want to ask you about that, too—where maybe they would be a little bit riper for Orthodoxy? Why go to sort of the heart, the heartbeat, of Mormon Utah, where you have Brigham Young University and there are so many people? What made you choose that area?

Fr. Justin: I think it was a process. Initial thing was that the church was just so full downtown. We realized that there’s this idea that once you reach 80% capacity, unless you’re used to the old country with sardine cans, you don’t grow. So there has to be some place to grow. We looked all over the valley. We looked at some property about 30 minutes south of the valley. $2-10 million for property: just impossible. So we essentially just, by God’s grace, looked at the map and went south and said, “Where can we get any property whatsoever?” And this property in Payson popped up.

I’ll be honest with you, Fr. Tom. People said, “Payson? Are you nuts? Are you nuts?” There’s a dear friend of mine and Orthodox Christian—Kevin Flanagan is his name—who was a former LDS, who became an Orthodox Christian, who’s still a faithful Orthodox Christian, who had a vision. A number of my friends who said, “It’s not crazy. It’s not crazy.” It seemed like it was going to be kind of nuts; it seemed like it was going to be impossible. Like you said, it’s 90% Mormon. I mean, traffic stops when I walk around here. It’s kind of a good old boy town, but I will tell you that it proved to be an incredible—I don’t think it’s a coincidence in the spiritual life. We found this property; it was $400,000.

We had nothing; we had zero. So I begged and borrowed. We all gave our life savings, everybody, and we did it. We bought this property. You know how it is, Father. You bought the property: well, it’s nice; it’s ground. [Laughter] I would come down here, and I would just walk around and do a prayer rope. It’s 5.5 acres and beautiful. There are mountains all around. I’m staring at the mountain right now to talk to you. It’s spectacular. I just walk around with my prayer rope and pray and pray. Like you said, how did this go from idea to reality, and I’ll tell you it’s just simply a miracle, because we prayed—we were tapped out, tapped out completely.

Without a vision, the people perish, the Scriptures say. I made a vision, a church and a vision for it. I begged, borrowed… All my priest friends tell me, “Fr. Justin, he knows everybody. He’s the great connector. Even though he’s an idiot, he’s a great connector.” [Laughter] That was the joke. I’ll tell you what, the whole world— And I’ll tell you, Father, we built this church, and it was $3.2 million. I’m a poor man, and I’ll tell you, from the whole would—out of the country, out of the state, everywhere, and our faithful people—we built this. It’s not a very big church. I hope people will come see it. It’s a gem. But we have no mortgage. We built it without any debt whatsoever.

Fr. Tom: What!? Wait, wait! Stop.

Fr. Justin: Zero. Zero, Father.

Fr. Tom: What! Wait. You purchased property for $400,000. You built a church for $3.2 million. And what year was this? When did you build?

Fr. Justin: Two years ago, a year and a half, two years ago.

Fr. Tom: And you have no mortgage.

Fr. Justin: No mortgage.

Fr. Tom: And you didn’t have some wealthy person with deep pockets that funded the whole thing.

Fr. Justin: We had one person who inspired it. In other words, we had one person who approached me. It’s actually a beautiful story. He approached me. He wasn’t Orthodox Christian, actually; he was actually a Mormon. [Laughter] And he was interested in Orthodoxy. He reached out to me, and he saw that our people were bleeding for it. I really believe that if somebody sees the community is dying and bleeding for it… So it was $3.2 million, I think, and he gave a million dollars, a non-Orthodox Christian.

Fr. Tom: God bless him. But still, you had to raise the other $2.2 million.

Fr. Justin: But we did it. And I’ll just say now, anonymously, he is a very faithful Orthodox Christian, and he is helping Orthodox churches across America right now. It just shows you that if you have a vision… From there, Father, and the iconography was in Belgrade about 12 years ago in St. Sava Church, one of the biggest churches in the world. I think it holds, like, 15,000 people. I was seeing the iconographer, and I speak Russian okay, and Serbian, too. “Don’t worry, Father.” And he said, “Thank God. And I should come to Utah.” Whatever. And then, by God’s grace, about five years later, I was in St. Gabriel, LA, California. I went into a little church, tiny little chapel. I walked in: “Hi, Fr. Justin!” The same iconographer.

Fr. Tom: What!?

Fr. Justin: Yes, unbelievable. So he came for years, and his name is Aleksandar Živadinović, and he’s an amazing man from Belgrade. He painted our church. He’s the fastest iconographer I’ve seen. So our whole church is frescoed except for the altar. He finished the majority of it in two and a half months. Two and a half months, the entire church painted on the wall.

Fr. Tom: It’s incredible. So, Father, I want to ask you, in terms of— And the other word that you used here was “sacrifice.” So people— You raised $2.5 million over those couple of years. What motivated people to do that? Why did they feel that that sacrifice was worth it? The reason I’m asking you is some of us priests, we’re begging, borrowing, to raise a hundred grand to fix a roof or whatever, and you are somehow able to inspire this vision. So what is it about these people? What do they see? And what are you saying that is inspiring them to be so sacrificial and so motivated in their love for the Church?

Fr. Justin: That’s a great question. I would say two things. One, I would say I don’t really know because I’m an idiot, and I’m not just saying that to sound humble. I don’t know, because I feel like I was raised by poor, and my beginnings as a priest were simple in downtown Salt Lake, begging for a new boiler for $20,000. So I don’t know how this happened exactly, but if I really think about it—and I think about it a lot, actually: What does it mean to grow the Church? What does it mean to bring the Gospel to America, especially to what I think is 90% LDS people? Again, I think that the Lord desires every human heart. I really believe that deeply. I think people to go Africa, for instance, and see what is… It’s easy missionary work. They have soft hearts, and we’re also generous Americans. But I’ll tell you, there’s something unique about Utah as well. They’re— They’re good people. They’re great people. I mean, Mormons are just great people. Now, I think that was the raw material. There’s a white canvas there, a skeleton, if you will, around love for family—

Fr. Tom: Rugged.

Fr. Justin: Yeah, and the challenge. I think that— Forgive me, when I go to [Inaudible], and I go to California; they’ll just ignore me. But it doesn’t matter where I go in Utah, especially in Utah County. People stop me everywhere. “Father, what are you? Are you an Orthodox priest? What are you? Are you this?” They are so interested! I mean, I live by the church, which is a blessing, I mean, but—

Fr. Tom: Glory to God.

Fr. Justin: Every day? Every day, five, ten, 20 people that come and want a tour and are there physically. I mean, we have a hundred on a Sunday now. Over 20 of those are catechumens, and there are new inquirers every day. I think it’s also just— The whole thing has to do with love. The place and the time… The short answer— A long answer to your short question would be I think that we’re in a very ripe place, and I would say—I have a strong belief of this— I’m very close to Fr. John Finley. I don’t know if you know him from Missions and Evangelism for the Antiochian Church. I believe in mission, and I really think we need good websites. I think we just need faithfulness. My spiritual father just told me, years ago, “Let everybody mock you, Fr. Justin. You do services every morning and every night. Just do it.” I said, “Well, there’s no one there!” “Just do it. Just do it.” Now I have three kids, four kids… And to this day, that’s how we built. I really believe prayerfulness—that might sound, I don’t know, someone might laugh at it—

Fr. Tom: No. No, I think it’s true.

Fr. Justin: The daily services. And so, since the day I became a priest I’ve done daily services, not because I’m pious—I’m not pious—I need to be there. But I tell you what, I continue that here, and we have Divine Liturgy and vespers almost every day. It almost always has people.

Fr. Tom: Glory to God.

Fr. Justin: St. Sophrony today, St. Paisios tomorrow, they’ll be full. So I guess my ultimate answer would be is I think we have really faithful people, and I think that the church is full of people that are serious about the faith, and they see that the unadulterated version of the Gospel in the sense that there’s no limit. I mean, you have a hundred people, but we shouldn’t be happy with that. We should have a thousand people; we should have five thousand people. I think people sense that sometimes.

Fr. Tom: Well, let me follow up to that, but first let’s remind our listeners: 1-855-AF-RADIO. You have an opportunity here to speak with one of the great missionary minds of our time, Fr. Justin Havens. He is really accomplishing amazing things by God’s grace and through the help of amazing people. You can also send us a text message to 412-206-5012.

Father, we have a question from Rick. Basically, he’s asking what kind of response— Now, you said when you walk down the street and you’re in your cassock, people are recognizing you; they’re not shunning you. But I would think that there must be some element of the LDS leadership or church that is starting to think, “Hey, wait a second. This guy’s getting some traction here,” because we know—you know this yourself—that, for instance, Protestant Evangelicals and certain Roman Catholics are creating videos sort of like anti-apologetic against Orthodox Christians, which means we’re actually being seen. That’s actually a good thing. We’re not worried about those particular things. So are you getting any kind of push-back, or is there any kind of response to those who are committed to the LDS faith, to say, like, “Well, here’s why we don’t agree with Orthodoxy”?

Fr. Justin: Short answer, not at all. I’ll be honest, it’s been shocking to me. I expected this, Father; I expected it. And I’ve been to the nerve center. You know, Fr. Josiah Trenham is a good friend of mine. We’ve been together to give lectures at BYU a couple years ago. Meaning the nerve center, like the professors at BYU, and speaking about it, and they have nothing but respect, Father. A few years ago they had a full-scale model of the biblical tabernacle at BYU campus, the whole thing. And they invited a rabbit, they invited a Protestant pastor, they invited me, they invited a Catholic priest, and a Muslim imam. They’re very open, for better or worse. Each person— Between you and I and the whole world, [Inaudible], I was struck by how very strange. [Laughter] It was surface; it was very surface. I got up and I said, “This is passé. This is kind of neat archaeology, but we have the new tabernacle, not made by hands.” This surprised them. I said, “There’s a bunch of pornography and stuff out here and a bunch of people, and you’re going to hear a bunch— And are you going to leave and say, ‘Oh, that’s so quaint,’ or are you going to see which one of these shows you the truth?” I didn’t think much of it, and the poor Catholic priest got up and said, “Why do I always have to go after the Orthodox guy?” [Laughter] The poor guy.

But I’ll tell you, that night I was talking to a hundred students at BYU afterwards, and when I left they said, “That was amazing.” I said, “What?” They said, “There was nobody else in line to talk to the Protestant pastor or talk to the LDS… There was a hundred kids in line to talk to you.” I always tell the BYU students, “Listen, I love you, but I don’t agree with you. There was never an apostasy. It’s an unbroken line. The Church has never— I disagree with you, and if I agreed with you I’d be clean-shaven and sitting next to you, but I love you. Let’s talk about it.” I think, Father, people are sick of this “we all believe the same thing,” this kind of blah-blah. They want— They just respect somebody that believes something, that lives it with all their heart. I have to say: nothing but positivity; nothing but support.

I have secretly— I have Mormon bishops and state presidents who secretly come and talk to me who are thinking of becoming Orthodox.

Fr. Tom: What!?

Fr. Justin: Absolutely, Father. They’re counting the cost. I always tell them, “But this is important. “What? But it belongs to the saints!” And it is a big cost, Father. For some people, it’s becoming less hard to become Orthodox.

Fr. Tom: Of course.

Fr. Justin: But I think for some people, it’s your job, it’s your life, it’s your family. You might be separated in eternity from your family—which of course is not true, but this is the kind of thing— But I tell you, I think the veil has been lifted, and they’ve become far more ecumenical, for better and worse. But for Orthodox Christian missionaries, the field is so ripe, Father. There’s no negativity; there’s only positivity and support.

Fr. Tom: Some people have said that part of this movement away from Mormonism, from the Christian Science, from this Scientology and some of these other groups that are pretty far out there—the internet has actually not been helpful to them, because you have people that have— they are giving their testimonies about why they are getting out of these groups and so forth. So do you think that part of it, their openness, is maybe just the blinders are being lifted, and the truth is coming out, and they just don’t really have a sufficient answer, and they have kind of run out of ammunition, if you will, to keep the fold coming, when in fact you have the veracity and the depth and the truth of Orthodoxy staring you in the face?

Fr. Justin: I think there’s some truth to that. I certainly think that the decline we see in the LDS Church in numbers has a lot to do with the ability to look online, to ask the hard questions, the unacceptable question. Maybe Joseph Smith is not a prophet and these kind of things. Absolutely, I think people are leaving in droves. The attrition there is huge. But then, as you know as a parish priest, just because you’re running away from something doesn’t mean you’re running toward something. I think that that is true, but what I’ve found is this— This is actually the biggest reason why I wanted the church to be here in Utah County of all places, because I think they are wonderful people, and I think when you read about great missionaries, like Elder Cosmas in Zaire and all these different modern type of saints, of missionary work—I think of St. Innocent of Alaska and also Herman—incarnating among the people is that you take all the good things among them and then you show them the truth of Orthodoxy: the positivity without the negativity.

I’ll be honest, Father, modern Mormons don’t believe in polygamy; they don’t. They think it’s disgusting like we do. If you tell them, “But you used to believe that. It’s not consistent,” they don’t care about that. They’re just beyond that. They’re just very simple, family-loving people, very much. And they’re as shocked, to be honest with you, as we are to realize that some of their claims are as they are. So my goal in putting this church here was to catch people at the certain stage where they’re at the stage of “oh my gosh, I’ve given my whole life—” And, Fr. Tom, I should tell you, LDS people, next to every elementary and middle school in Utah, public school, there’s a seminary building. These kids are in church in seminary building before school every day. We’re trying to get our Orthodox kids to vespers and Liturgy on Sunday morning. It puts us to shame.

Fr. Tom: Wow.

Fr. Justin: So if you take the skeleton, and you baptize it— What happens is that then they read and they realize— Some of them are married, and they go: “Oh my gosh, this is not true. This is crazy. This is not Christian.” So my goal is to catch them right there and to say— As soon as they say, “Oh my gosh, I thought this was the true Church,” my hope, Father, is to catch them right there and to say, “No, there actually is a true Church, and it’s here,” because if you don’t catch them then, Father, what happens is—I’ll take them any way they come—but what often happens is despair, depression. This is when they start drinking and doing drugs in their 30s and 40s, because if all things are permitted— And then they become Evangelicals and they come dragging into the Orthodox Church later. I’ll take them then, too. My hope in building the church here is to catch them right as the scales fall from their eyes and say, “No. Take all the beauty you have in God and baptize it in the Orthodox Church.”

Fr. Tom: So, Father, let me ask you a couple of follow-ups with what you just said. Number one, do you have an approach where you’re seeing a pattern from at least the LDS inquirers. I want to talk about if you have some others in your parish at this time, but with your LDS inquirers, are you customizing your catechesis to say, “Look, here is the Gospel. Here is the Orthodox teaching. Here is our understanding of Jesus Christ,” and then are you comparing that to what they believed as Mormons, or are you simply just saying, “Leave it alone. This is what we believe”?

Fr. Justin: That’s a great question. I would say, because we have a diversity of people in my catechism class—maybe down here it would be 70% from LDS, but we have people from all backgrounds—we’ve got to preach in the general word. But certainly I’m going to approach it in a general way, knowing their mentality, how they think about things, certainly. Just opening questions: Is the vocabulary the same? Are they using the word “theosis”? Are they using the word “bishop”? Are they using the word “sacraments”? So they’re having to re-identify all of that stuff. It’s very important.

And I think there’s a few questions, Father, that are huge for LDS people. For LDS people, the issues aren’t polygamy—the issues are authority. They’re big about apostolic succession. They’re shocked—they’re shocked by the authority of the Orthodox Church, the apostolic succession. I can trace my ordination from Metropolitan Joseph to Patriarch Ignatius back to the first patriarch of Antioch, who was Peter. To them, this destroys the narrative of the Great Apostasy for them. So I would say, I think the catechism is the catechism that appeals to anybody, I would hope, but certainly the Q&A and the follow-up is certainly heavy in answering the things you’re talking about, for sure.

Fr. Tom: And what are the most crucial issues that they are asking? What are the couple of key points? Now, you’ve talked about apostolic succession, which I find fascinating. I don’t even know how they approach that subject. It seems bewildering to me that they would even bring that up as Mormons. They have to admit that, okay, the whole point of their religion is they say that it all fell apart after the apostles, and then they started up in whatever, the 1830s or something. So how could they claim any apostolic succession? But, be that as it may, what about the Person of Jesus Christ? Do you have to kind of untangle their understanding and their understanding that the Father is a man, I think they say, that became a god?

Fr. Justin: Yes, absolutely you’re right. You know how the ancient, the apostolic pattern of catechism is: “Who is God?” It always begins with who is God, the creation, who are we, the fall, the restoration. And so I think I can see the beauty of that. Absolutely, Father, because to them Jesus is not God, and it’s very, very warped. God the Father has a body: it’s the opposite of Christianity, actually. But, to be honest, they’re not taught that. So they call themselves Christians, and I’m careful to—

Fr. Tom: Really?

Fr. Justin: Absolutely. They think they’re Christians. But, I mean, God the Father had a body, had a certain relationship with the Virgin Mary—I mean, it’s blasphemous for us, but it’s— Absolutely. The prayer to the heavenly Father might be prayed to; it’s always in Jesus’ name. But to them— God the Father to us— I remember at BYU, Fr. Josiah, him asking a question: “Does matter, like stuff, does matter pre-date God the Father?” And, mind you, this is the nerve center of all of Mormonism, and they answered, the professors: “Yes. No. No. Yes.” Fr. Josiah about lost his mind and threw his papers and said, “If he’s not— If stuff pre-dates him, then by definition he’s not God the Father by our definition.”

Fr. Tom: Yeah, it’s impossible.

Fr. Justin: And then one of the main professors, he said, “One of the translations can be the great Arranger.” And I said, “What, is he an interior decorator? No. So if there’s stuff, it has to come from somewhere.” And I think, Father, this resonates with them when they start thinking about it, the Person of Christ.

Fr. Tom: It’s funny. We had our Vacation Church School this week, or we’re in the middle of it right now. These kids are between kindergarten and eighth grade, so we have about 30-35 kids gathered for this. I sat them down yesterday, the first day, and I said, “What came before the world? Who was before the world? Who was before creation?” And they said, “God.” And I said, “Who created the world?” And they said, “God.” And I said, “Who created God?” And they said, “Nobody.”

Fr. Justin: Amen.

Fr. Tom: And so these little kids knew intuitively, just from being brought up in the Church, what the truth of that matter is, and it seems like there’s a lot of confusion among the LDS members about what that actually meant.

Fr. Justin: But they’re open, and I would say that they want it. It’s odd to me, I must be honest, because they talk about the love of their Savior and this kind of things. Theologically, it doesn’t make a lot of sense, based on their belief. “God the Father; we love God the Father,” but there’s been lots of “God the Fathers”: how far does it go back? It goes really far back. Theologically, it’s not very astute for us Orthodox Christians, but there is just this childlike, simple love for God, for morality. But absolutely, Father, we have to start at the beginning: the Holy Trinity, who God the Father is in the beginning. Even the kids know it, and we have to humbly teach it to them: that Christ is the Savior of the world; he’s fully God; he’s fully man. I’ll tell you, I haven’t seen any arguments. I’ve seen sponge—like a sponge. They want the truth. They see the iconography: they weep. They love the music, everything. They’re not— That’s why I think it’s the greatest mission field. I don’t see any people who are pushing against. All I see are people who are soft-hearted and dying to know more.

Fr. Tom: Father, what about the issue in the experience of when Mormons come to faith, they speak about this idea of “knowing in your bosom,” I believe they call it? You know that you know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. What do your LDS inquirers—what kind of, I don’t know, problem does that pose for you in terms of “I know that I know” and “I feel it in my bosom”? It’s a little bit of a strange manifestation. I almost worry about when they use that terminology sometime. How do you approach that idea of “the bosom” and “knowing in your bosom”?

Fr. Justin: Right. They call it this burning in the bosom.

Fr. Tom: “Burning in the bosom,” yes.

Fr. Justin: I think Protestants have it in a certain sense, but it’s very unique among the LDS. LDS believe that the prophet, the main prophet, has a sense of prophecy, but they also believe in what is a very charismatic, Pentecostal idea of personal revelation, which essentially can override what the Church believes, which gives a very dangerous rein to the ego, to the emotions, the passions. When a missionary knocks on my door, I’ll talk to them about objective things, about history. And they’ll go: “Just read this thing and you’ll know that Joe Smith’s a prophet. How do you feel about it?” And I always tell them, “You’re going into froo-froo land. You’re going into a land of emotions where it’s not— It’s subjective. It doesn’t matter if you feel it in your heart.” Actually, Father, what I tell them, it’s a great question: “What does Jesus Christ say comes out of the heart of a man?” Of course, they don’t know. What does the Lord say? Lies, deception—the heart. So your heart is not an unerring barometer of truth. Your heart could be broken.

Fr. Tom: It has to be purified.

Fr. Justin: Exactly: “Bless the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” So I say, “We’re not seeing things clearly, so in the meantime we have to trust those who do.” The idea that just “I feel it”— I always tell them I have a pretty strong analogy, Father. I go: “Don’t you think in some sick, twisted, demented way that these guys who put these planes into the Twin Towers in 9/11 in some disgusting, twisted way, they thought that they felt right in their heart?” And they’re boggled by that. And I say, “No, don’t you realize that the brokenness of a human person, our fallenness, is that we can convince ourselves of lots of things—it doesn’t mean that it’s true.” So what Orthodoxy does is it says let’s get objective. Let’s talk about history.

Look, I have a buddy who’s an atheist, and he says, “I’m an atheist, but if I was a Christian, I would only be an Orthodox Christian,” because it’s an objective fact. You can trace it back to the beginning, even the liturgy, and look at everything. I always start there. I say, “You know, this is an objective fact that the Orthodox Church is the original Church.” You can choose to engage that with the right heart and the mystery of faith, and I think that you’ve asked a great question. They’re craving authenticity.

I want to tell you this story. I was giving a talk at BYU to future chaplains a few years ago, and they invited me to give a talk and I gave a talk. It was fine. At the end, they were coming and talking to me, and they were coming up and just saying— One guy was just saying, “Oh, Father, it was a great topic. You can really feel the spirit in that!” And I was just kind of: [Retching sounds] In other words, I wasn’t happy about that, because: What do you mean? You could be deluded.

At the end of this talk, there was a photographer who was hired by the school, BYU, and he pulled me into a closet, and he said, “Father, I have to talk to you.” I said, “What?” He said, “My family and I came from South America. We’re devout Catholics. They promised us this thing, and they said, ‘Do you pray about this? How about you pray about Joseph Smith? Do you believe he’s a prophet? Do you have a warm feeling?’ Yeah, we do.” Okay, well, they up and moved their whole lives; they were baptized. They’re go and are living in Utah and are living a better life. And then he said basically, “Father, a few weeks ago I was watching The Lion King,” the Disney movie. And he said, “That gave me the same burning in my bosom.” And then he started to pray and say, “Lord, is there truth outside the Mormon Church?” And he got the same burning in his bosom.

Fr. Tom: Lord!

Fr. Justin: And he realized: This is fickle. This is not grounded; this is fickle. And he said, “Father, I don’t know what to do.” So I can’t tell you his name or more about him, but he’s praying more about Orthodoxy. But he realizes that the beauty of Orthodoxy amongst the 20,000 denominations in all this Restorationist kind of stuff among Mormons and some Protestants—Orthodoxy is rooted on objectivity and truth and history and fact. And for them, that’s a breath of fresh air, because, Father, many who are LDS or who are LDS and they leave, they’re so afraid of being taken in again. When they realize it’s not true, they’re so afraid to believe in a fairy tale.

Fr. Tom: Right! I follow on YouTube a woman who left the LDS Church with her husband, and it’s very sad to watch, because she became super-secular, super-woke, and sometimes I want to say, “Hey, go see Fr. Justin Havens! And go check out this church,” because it seems like they want to go in the complete opposite direction, because they identify morality and they identify this kind of clean living—which is, in the respect of just objectivity— It’s a wonderful thing that Mormons tend to exalt this: large families… And even if there’s a little bit of darkness there— But it seems like to reject that, unfortunately, you reject the good also. Yes?

Fr. Justin: Yes. Oh, and the train wrecks are huge. And I feel for them, because, again, LDS people don’t go half-in. Like I said, you’re in seminary school and you end up singles ward, and you get married in the temple, and it’s your family and everything you do. When the scales fall from their eyes with that, it’s a great disappointment. I think people need some— Again, I think they need to wake up there. There’s some good searching that has to happen.

I think it’s different [from] Orthodoxy. I was telling two girls in confession this morning, who are surrounded by Mormons—they’re Orthodox Christians around here, two of these girls, and I said, “You’re trying to be pure and virginal because of the love of Christ, not because of any social pressure or anything.” And it’s ironic, because LDS people are, like, everyone’s a knockout around here—every blonde person. They’re very worldly. They’re not a peculiar people at all.

Fr. Tom: Really?

Fr. Justin: They’re very worldly, very flirtatious, very beautiful. But then: “Oh! Hold the line and be pure.” So it’s difficult, so a lot of them just follow the rule. It’s very legalistic. Whereas I’m very thankful that our gals see it as: “I’m not doing this for anybody else but my own soul.” I think they crave that. I think there is a whole lot of LDS people, Father, who are just staying in it because of social pressure and inertia and all these things, but inside—they’re dying inside. They’re dying inside.

Fr. Tom: Father, can I go back to something that you said before? You just gave it a little bit of a passing comment, but let’s talk about parish life itself, because, clearly, this was not a matter—and you can hear it in the way that you passionately describe parish life—you simply did not build a building. You simply did not hang out a shingle; you are offering a very vibrant liturgical and educational life for your people. Could you go into a little bit of detail about the life of your parish? What is it like, day to day? Where is the focus? What kind of things do you do? What kind of response do you get from the people in terms of—you said you’re having daily services and so forth? Because I know to you this is kind of second nature, but to—and I’m very sad to say this—to 95% of Orthodox churches, they’re missing the boat on this. They really are. I have been very careful to notice that the parishes that are successful—and I don’t mean just a lot of people, but I mean parishes that are vibrant and growing and healthy—are parishes that, first and foremost and primarily, focus their life on the liturgical services and have a rich liturgical cycle. So tell me about your parish life. What’s it like when somebody visits your church, and what can they expect to be as a member of your parish?

Fr. Justin: I would say I hope it’s for everyone, but it’s not for everyone. In other words, we don’t have a— I mean, it’s a mission parish. It’s a beautiful church. We have a tiny— I’m sitting in the fellowship hall right now. It says, “Max occupancy 26,” but there’s a hundred people here on Sunday. [Laughter] You know, when the church is full. So we don’t have classrooms. I don’t have things like this. So if someone were to come here looking for “programs,” which can be very helpful—we don’t have those. That being the case, I just decided that the program was going to be repentance. The program is— I don’t want to sound cliché, but the program is going to be “A Life in Christ.” And I’ll say that it worked for the downtown church. Our assistant priest, Fr. Paul, took over. He’s attempting the same thing down there [Inaudible] at Sts. Peter and Paul. It’s, Father, unbelievable.

I figure— Think what you said: People, do they want this, or not? I don’t know what else to do, really. I’m not a talented individual, but I know I can serve liturgy. I love to sing and get people to sing. I’ll tell you what, Father, from day one, the main program here— It’s kind of like a band-aid for thoughts, I think, to be honest with you. I think some people won’t like being faced with it, because if you’re not here because you love the Lord and to pray, and you’re looking for some kind of stuff to be a distraction, this is just not there. We don’t have the facilities and stuff. But I think that’s actually a beautiful thing—we can and we will—but I just think that’s the backbone, Father.

Like today, let me give you an example with St. Sophrony of Essex, this modern saint. It’s a weekday. We have 40 people at Liturgy. And we have breakfast afterwards; I heard confessions for five hours afterwards.

Fr. Tom: Wow!

Fr. Justin: Then I ran off. I probably hear 20 hours of confessions a week, probably.

Fr. Tom: [Gasp]

Fr. Justin: People from all over the different churches. So tonight we had great vespers and paraklesis. I would say at great vespers we’ll have 30, 35, and tomorrow we have Orthros and Divine Liturgy, and I bet you we’ll have 50 or 70 people.

Fr. Tom: My goodness.

Fr. Justin: I just tell people, this is my take on it, Father: this rich liturgical life and community. I feel like people are so broken and they don’t have friends and they’re isolated. So I’m really big about coffee, spending time, pushing past social anxiety. My feeling is: Liturgy and community. That’s my big thing: just liturgy and community. We have a tight-knit community. We go into people’s houses and have a beer together. I’m a very open person. My poor wife. I love her, but she’s the same as me: our house is always full of people. There’s always somebody spending the night; there’s always somebody coming to visit.

Fr. Tom: Love it.

Fr. Justin: And as a priest, I don’t know what else I would do with my time. I once had a priest visiting, Father, and he said, “Where do you work?” And I said, “I don’t understand the question.” I showed him the chapel. “Where do you work?” So I showed him the big church, and he said, “Where do you work?” I said, “I don’t understand the question!” He said, “Where’s your computer?” I’m never at that computer! He was just shocked. [Laughter] I don’t work at a computer! I want to be at liturgy, and I want to be with people.

Father, I’ll tell you what. Every Sunday, there’s a basketball game outside. There’s people doing Greco-Roman wrestling. There’s folk dancing happening. It’s crazy, but—Liturgy and community, and I don’t have much of a bigger bandwidth than that, but what I’m finding is that you don’t really need it.

Fr. Tom: Wow. Wow. So the other issue here is when somebody comes to your parish and they are an inquirer— Now, you’ve made it very clear that you don’t have programs and so forth; it’s all about repentance—

Fr. Justin: Well, I shouldn’t say that. We have a catechism and we have a formal catechism. We have a Bible study. We have a men’s group. We do have that stuff.

Fr. Tom: Okay. Okay, all right. So when somebody visits, take me through that process. Do you have greeters or do they just kind of show up? Do they fill out a card? Do they kind of look lost and somebody says, “Hey, come to coffee hour and meet Father”? How does this usually happen when you have these inquirers?

Fr. Justin: That’s a great question, because LDS people are skittish.

Fr. Tom: I’ll bet!

Fr. Justin: I’ve had one guy say, “I’ve been going to church for a year.” I said, “Oh, where?” “Online.” This is before COVID. So I was like: “Yeah, that’s not the real deal, buddy.” So I would say we do have good liturgy books. We have benches on the side; we don’t have pews. I think the liturgy books are a good crutch until somebody gets into it. Yeah, I do have a wonderful greeter to welcome them: “Is this your first time? Here’s a place to sit. Please stay for the coffee afterwards,” and just hook them up. I try to as well. During the orthros—I have a break during the orthros—I’ll be back with the guys, doing candles or something, and I’ll try to go back and greet people that are new and say hello to them and say, “Hey, hang out afterwards.” If they’re overwhelmed, like deer in the headlights, that’s okay. I remember my first time, 25 years ago. So, again, we do have that. And we have a very vibrant fellowship hour every Sunday, almost every day. People are always hanging out, playing basketball. And there’s people that are from convert backgrounds, such open, lovely people, who are just willing to grab them and give them a hug, give them a coffee, give them a beer, just make them feel welcome. Just this week, Father, ten new inquirers; we have 20-something catechumens.

Fr. Tom: [Laughter] Oh my Lord!

Fr. Justin: It’s a lot of people.

Fr. Tom: My Lord. What about— Obviously, you said that area’s 90% LDS. I would assume that the Evangelicals have jumped on this. Are there large Evangelical megachurches around there? And are you getting any traction from— Of course, we’ve had a tremendous number of Evangelicals come into the Orthodox faith in the last 20 or 30 years. So are you getting inquirers from them also?

Fr. Justin: We do have a couple, but I would say something interesting. This is kind of a scandalous statement I’m going to make, but I think former LDS people are much easier to become Orthodox Christians than Evangelicals, which is ironic, because Evangelicals actually are Christians. But I think Evangelicals are radically into Christian individualism, radically into their own deal. LDS people are like: “There’s a church. I need to be obedient to it. I don’t know everything. Just where do I plug in? Where do I tithe? Where do I give?” When they humble their hearts, I think they’re the hardest workers that are there, kind of at everything. Of course, there was a huge mission to the Mormons in Utah County a number of years ago. There are some— There’s one called—there’s a couple different big ones—CenterPoint, and some other Evangelical— Actually, I can see almost through the fields, there’s a little Evangelical church not too far away, but I think they’re even smaller than us. I think that among the LDS, they don’t command much respect. Orthodoxy, with the beauty and the iconography and the crosses, for some reason, it commands a respect among Mormons that is not commanded by Protestants. I will just say that Protestants approach it in a very— almost the way that they approached missionary work to Africa or something like this, a very not-incarnate kind of way.

I’ll tell you a funny story. There was, a few years ago— At the beginning of being down here, we had a little mission, years ago, called Holy Apostles Mission, in Orem, Utah, years ago. It was a little— I think the ultimate fruit of that is our church now. I used to drive down there and do the Liturgy there in a little storefront. I was invited to a pastors’ meeting, and there was a coffee shop called The Way, and it was a little Evangelical coffee shop. There was this pastors’ meeting: “Okay, I’ll go.” So, Father, I show up, and I was never— I was Presbyterian growing up, and I didn’t understand the Evangelical world. It’s in some back old room, and there’s some guy in shorts and a tank top, stretching, and he’s like: “Hey, I’m Micah, and I’m from The Journey Church.” The other guys: “Hey, I’m Pastor Bob, and I’m from The Journey.” Everybody starts coming in their super trendy flip-flops and tank tops, and here I am in my cassocks. “I’m Pastor Ron from The Rock Church.” And: “I’m Fr. Justin from Sts. Peter and Paul Orthodox Church.” [Laughter]

Needless to say— I’ll tell you what: “Let’s have prayer requests. “I’m hooking up this new venue. We’re putting up some new lighting system that’s going to rock out.” And they get to me, and like: “Prayer requests. Karen, she has cancer. So-and-so is getting ready to die and meet the Lord,” and so on. They were like: “Yeah! Yeah, pray for people! Yeah!” It was, kind of between you and [me], there was a depth of Orthodoxy that was just boggling to them. So they know we’re around. They know we’re around, but I don’t think they’re having much traction, to be honest with you. I think we’re still a blip on the radar screen, but I think the LDS people have enough discernment to go: “Yeah. Not interested in that.” They want something deeper and more beautiful and rooted.

Fr. Tom: That’s really amazing. Fr. Justin, you are just a gem. I know that you give all glory to God for all the things that are happening. We want to keep in touch with you. We want to know about more great things that are going on. I want to put this out there: What’s next? Obviously, I don’t think you’re— You don’t let much moss grow under your feet. So what happens next? How is Orthodoxy going to expand, if so, in the future in Utah?

Fr. Justin: I think again we need a vision, and I was happy to meet our new Metropolitan Saba, who I think is an amazing man who has a missionary heart, by the way. I just met with him a couple weeks ago in person, privately, and to get all the blessings for our mission and Utah. It’s awesome to see, Father, here. At my former parish, Fr. Paul is doing a great job with the fold, catechumens. We have a mission that I started a couple years ago. We started Liturgy in a mission to St. George, Utah. And I was going there, Fr. John Finley; now they have a building, property, and a full-time priest now, down there in St. George, Utah.

Fr. Tom: Wow.

Fr. Justin: It’s really growing. Here in Utah County, which I believe has almost a million people, Father, one Orthodox church, we had the first Orthodox Christian cemetery, which was just blessed.

Fr. Tom: Nice!

Fr. Justin: And I’ll tell you, Father, we’re just full. We’re full. The plan is to build a hall, and then we’re actually going to— God willing, we’re going to build a bigger church on this campus and make this church now the daily church and do natural burial at this church. Then our goal is to look all of Utah and say, “Okay, from here to St. George, it’s three hours and fifteen minutes. That’s too far.” So we have some catechumens from Richfield, which is halfway, and we’re looking at some places there to build a mission station. You know, my model is really St. Nicholas of Japan, who really looked at the world [as] so many chapels in many places. I think, like Fr. Josiah, he had a hundred catechumens, but, he’ll tell you: big whoop. There’s millions of people; there’s thousands of people. And I think we set our sights too low sometimes. So my goal is to bring the light of Christ to Utah County. If anybody wants to come, send me a— Just come visit us. See the iconography, spend time, and come help us pray and bring the light of the Gospel here.

Fr. Tom: Thank God. Thank God. Obviously, you want everybody to go visit Utah, but if you can’t, at least check out their website. You can just Google St. Xenia in Payson, Utah, and you’ll see the amazing, amazing beautiful church there. Fr. Justin Havens, thanks for all you do. We appreciate you. Keep up the good work. God continue to bless you. Please give all of our best regards to all of your parishioners, and may God prosper your parish even more than he’s doing now.

Fr. Justin: Thank you, Father. I’m waiting for you in Utah.

Fr. Tom: I’m coming, I promise. [Laughter]

Fr. Justin: Great. Thanks, Father, so much. Your prayers. Thank you.

Fr. Tom: Thank you. Before I share a few final thoughts, I want to offer my sincere thanks to Fr. Justin Havens for joining us tonight. Thanks to Matushka Trudi for engineering the program; to our show production assistant, Melissa Graff, for her work behind the scenes; for everybody that’s listening; and for those who will be listening.

You know, there’s really not much to say about this. It just makes me want to pray and thank God for everything that he’s doing and for everything that he’s doing through Fr. Justin and priests that are like-minded. So I thought that we could pray for all our missions and missionary priests and all these parishes, to grow in these areas; and for parishes to be revitalized that maybe are feeling hopeless. So let’s pray on behalf of all of them.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Christ our God, the Source of wisdom and Bridegroom of the Church, you called the apostles to follow you and to become fishers of men, giving them the authority to cast out demons and to heal every disease and infirmity. You commissioned them to make disciples of all nations, to feed your sheep. On the day of Pentecost, you sent your Holy Spirit to fortify them, enabling them to fill the people’s lives with your saving love. Continue to act today for the good of your holy Church. Send your Holy Spirit upon dedicated men and women; inspire them to respond to your Great Commission and to serve you as missionaries for the building up of your Church. Through the prayers of all of our missionary saints, may Christ our God have mercy on us and save us. Amen.

And that’s our show for tonight. Make sure to like us on Facebook at facebook.com/ancientfaithtoday. Share out our program after that’s posted. Give us your feedback, and contact us with any ideas or topics that you might want to hear about. Join us next Tuesday evening for another edition of Ancient Faith Today Live. Good night, everybody!