In this episode I make an announcement and make a request for help, which is described in the below text. I also discuss a spiritual experience and briefly discuss the recent news about John Dehlin and Kate Kelly being called in for a disciplinary meeting, and that they may be facing excommunication.

Exploring Sainthood is a project that is centralized around community. We are interested in exploring and pursuing the powerful aspects of our shared Mormon heritage, and in promoting respectful and productive conversations around the important and complex issues of contemporary Mormonism. I love Exploring Sainthood, and strongly believe in it as a project worth pursuing.  One of the powerful aspects of this project is this concept of community. I love that Exploring Sainthood has always been made up of individuals who are all very different from each other, with sometimes nothing but our shared heritage of Mormonism and a desire to engage in respectful and caring ways as we engage the beautiful and sometimes difficult issues that are found in religious experience, along with the deconstruction that can be involved in that, and yet we can get along so well.

Since I was provided the opportunity to begin trying to figure out how to manage and produce content for the podcast, my goal has been for it to be a project focused not around me, but instead around the incredible experiences, and the amazing people who share with us our heritage and culture of Mormonism.  I have done my best to create materials that are valuable, and although I have made many mistakes, I feel that we are on the right path as we seek to improve the project and podcast to become even more meaningful to those who need it.

With this said I am very excited to share a few announcements regarding the podcast. Continuing the goal of allowing the podcast to demonstrate the beauty and diversity of those in our community, I am happy to announce that we will be expanding our podcast team. We are bringing on two new co-hosts, both of whom have participated on the podcast before. Their names are Jon Grimes and Heidi Currie. We will be doing interviews with both of them in the future, and I am so excited for you to get to know them a little bit better. Both of them bring something that I am not able to bring, and thus I am so excited for you to see the content that they are creating.

As we are seeking to grow and make the podcast the very best it can be, I wanted to share with you that we need your help. Creating a podcast takes a lot of time. I have so many goals and ideas for the ES podcast, and yet I simply do not have the time to achieve those goals on my own, at least at the moment while my life is extremely busy.  Let’s face it, we are all busy, but if we come together as a community, we have the opportunity not only to create meaningful relationships, but to create content that can be extremely helpful for those who are seeking support. I am willing to put in as much effort as I can, and thus my goal is for as many of us who can, to come together and do the little that we can to help this project reach its potential.

There is an endless list of possible positions or ways in which individuals can help with the podcast, but instead of listing off every possible project that we could pursue, I wanted to reach out to those who are willing to help, to make the most valuable aspects of the podcast sustainable, and to help it reach as many individuals as we can. Thus I wanted to share three volunteer positions that we could use help with.

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• Audio Editors (I would like to have 3.)
  

o   For this position, all you would need is a computer that you can use to edit, and a desire to learn. If you do not have any experience with editing, that is totally fine. I am willing to train you and point you to resources that will help you gain these skills.

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• Show Notes Writers (I would like to start with 2)
  

o   Within our ES community we have many individuals who are not really interested in listening to podcasts, but they are very interested in the blog. They want to consume our content, but audio is not extremely accessible for them. Thus I would like to begin creating blog posts to go with each podcast episode. These blog posts could include a good summary of the episode, transcripted quotes from the audio, as well as additional thoughts and content relating to the episode. I think that this would be extremely valuable in making our content available to a larger audience, but I cannot do that on my own.

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• Team for Audio Version for the Blog (I would like to have 3 individuals in this team)
  

o   In the same way that there are many who want to consume our content from the podcast, but do not have time to listen, there are also many who would love to consume the content from the blog, but are unlikely to read it because of the format. Thus we have created a separate podcast in which we would like to publish an audio version of the blog.  We have experimented with the audio posts on our regular feed, but we need additional help to keep it going. We have taken a break until we gather a team of people who are able to record a reading of the posts.  I know that there are so many who would love the opportunity to hear the incredible posts from the blog, and yet never will because they simply do not read blogs. I believe that this would be a wonderful project to continue, but we need your help in doing it.

As I said before, there are so many potential ways that you could share your talents in helping the exploring sainthood project grow. I know that we have something valuable and I am so grateful for your help. Thank you so much for your help, and lets continue to work together to help the podcast to improve.