Reaching Most Unreached People Group in US

As Bradley Campbell ’17 describes Utah County in the state of Utah, it sounds like he’s depicting a nation in the Middle East.

“Utah would be considered an unreached people group if it were overseas,” Bradley says.

“Utah is the only state in the entire country that has never been predominantly Christian. The only one. Utah has the lowest percentage of Christians in the country by far, yet it is the most religious state in the country by far.”

With a population of just under 700,000, Utah County is 15 minutes south of The Mission Church in Jordan, Utah, where Bradley serves on the pastoral team. “I think Utah County is just 0.4-percent evangelical,” Bradley says. “That’s less than one half of one percent. That's how few Christians there are.”

When Bradley came to Moody in 2013 as an Intercultural Ministries major, he had no clue about statistics like that. Mormons and Mormonism weren’t on his radar for a field of study.

In high school, Bradley attended a Bible study led by a friend who later left to serve as a missionary in China for a year. His friend’s decision made an impression on Bradley. He took over leading the Bible study, and when the friend returned to begin studies at Moody, so did Bradley.

“I started off with the hope of heading overseas to do missions,” Bradley says. “I remember a conversation with my roommate freshman year and saying, ‘I'd love to do missions, but the one thing that I don’t want to do is pastoral ministry.’ So, it’s kind of funny how that worked out.”

Go west, young man

While at Moody, Bradley often attended The Compass Church, his home church in Naperville, Illinois. One Sunday during his sophomore year, his former youth leader, Ritch Sandford, was the featured speaker. He had moved to Utah to plant a church.

“I was going to my car,” Bradley recalls, “and Ritch stopped me and said, ‘I was watching you interact with people, and I think you should consider church planting. There are a lot of areas in the country where there are shockingly few churches. I'm living in one right now.’”

Ritch’s idea took Bradley by surprise. “That kind of rattled around in my brain. When I got back to Moody, I thought to myself—okay—the goal of missions overseas is church planting. Ultimately, we want to see healthy local churches established overseas.”

Bradley investigated Moody’s church-planting degree and discovered it included courses on preaching and pastoral studies. It also covered missions and church-based elements, and that appealed to him. He switched his major.

“What I didn’t realize at the time,” Bradley says, “was that the church-planting major required a residency internship in my senior year where I would take online classes and then be a part of the church. As I got close to my senior year, I just couldn't find anything in the Chicagoland area that really fit the requirements of the degree.

“I called up Pastor Ritch, who had originally encouraged me to do church planting, and asked if he knew any pastors who might be willing to take on an intern for a couple semesters. He said, ‘That's a dumb question! Why don't you come out to Utah?’ So in January of 2017, I came out to Utah.”

Introduction to Mormonism

Bradley quickly learned that Mormonism is the dominant religion in Utah, and he knew nothing about Mormons or Mormonism. “All I knew is that missionaries with name tags come to your door sometimes, and I think they have multiple wives, and I think everyone gets a planet. That was the extent of it,” he laughs.

Bradley’s lack of experience with Mormons was about to change dramatically. One of the elders from The Mission Church had spent decades interacting with Mormons and studying their beliefs.

“One day he took me down to Temple Square in Salt Lake City,” Bradley says. “Almost immediately this couple walks up, and he starts talking with them. And—I’m not exaggerating—it was a five-hour conversation!”

Ritch, pastor of The Mission Church, knows why conversations like that can last so long. “Most Mormons struggle with the concepts of the Trinity, spiritual priesthood authority, the trustworthiness of Scripture, and justification by faith alone,” Ritch says. “In all my dealings with active Latter-day Saints, I have found few meaningful objections to the Christian faith that can't be traced back to one of these categories.”

That five-hour conversation awakened something in Bradley. “I realized just how much I didn't know about Mormonism,” he says. “So later on, I started meeting with Mormon missionaries. Meeting with their missionaries to ask questions and then talking with random Mormons off the street taught me about the Mormon church.”

Preparing for an unexpected mission field

Bradley believes his time at Moody laid the groundwork for those discussions.

“Moody really helped teach me to think,” he says. “So much of my prior schooling had been a practice in parroting information. But at Moody, one of the most valuable things I learned was how to hear, understand, analyze, and critique. That is absolutely essential to interacting with Mormons. I can’t just parrot information. They won’t care. But grasping their thinking and their arguments and then being able to form a thoughtful and theologically informed response is invaluable.

“Prior to coming to Moody, I had a fairly anemic understanding of theology. The classes and professors at Moody helped train me to better understand the Bible and the Christian theology that stems from a proper reading of Scripture. A proper understanding of the Bible and theology are absolutely integral to any interactions with Mormons. I’m indebted to Moody for giving me that foundation.”

By the end of his winter 2017 semester, Bradley knew that Utah was where the Lord wanted him to serve. He finished his degree in May and returned to Illinois for four months to raise financial support. In 2018, he married his girlfriend, Marisa, and together they returned to Utah as fully supported missionaries. The couple now has two young children.

Deep dive into a false religion

On the surface, Bradley says many Mormon beliefs and terms like “God the Father,” “Heaven,” and “Jesus” seem compatible with biblical truth. But they’re not.

“For instance,” he explains, “in Mormonism God is a man, an exalted man, who by obedience to certain laws and ordinances became a god. God and his wife—or many wives in older forms of Mormonism—gave birth to spiritual children, and that's all of us.

“Every human that's ever lived is a spirit child, in some sense, directly begotten by the heavenly father and heavenly mother. This is actually really critical because it means that we are essentially the same species as God. So the distinction between God and man is collapsed down to almost nothing.”

For Mormons, the identity and essence of Jesus is also not biblically based. Jesus is not a divine member of the triune Godhead. He is a changeable, exalted man with a definite beginning point. Mormonism says Jesus is one of the spirit siblings of mankind.

“They believe he was just the firstborn of all the spirit children that were born to the heavenly father and one of his wives,” Bradley says. “They believe there was a council where all of us got together and devised a plan for how we could provide all of the spirit children with exaltation. Two plans were put forth: Jesus’ plan and Lucifer’s plan. Lucifer was also our spirit sibling. Ultimately, the council decided to go with Jesus' plan.”

Spin on salvation contrary to Scripture

In Mormonism’s view on the redemption of mankind, a kind of god-hood called “exaltation” is the ultimate goal rather than salvation. “For Mormons, everyone is going to Heaven, and there are three different levels of Heaven,” Bradley says. “Heaven is much more about being with your family than it is about being with God, and that's a huge point for Mormons, that they can be with their families forever.”

The Joseph Smith Translation (JST) of the Bible is a revision begun by Joseph Smith in 1830. In his version, Smith added to and altered Scripture. “Like in Genesis,” Bradley says, “[there are] chapters worth of material that he adds.”

In Romans 4:5, Paul proclaims, “But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Joseph Smith changed only one word in this pivotal passage, but as Bradley explains, “It’s just terrible.”

“Joseph Smith adds a ‘not’ and says, ‘God will NOT justify ungodly people.’ He believed in a God who will not justify a single ungodly person. He absolutely flips what Paul is saying on its head 180 degrees, turns it upside down.”

Stunning revelation to Mormons

In 2013, the Latter-day Saints (Mormon church) released a series of essays called The Gospel Topics. Bradley says, “Basically they were an admission of several embarrassing historical facts that had previously been denied by the LDS church—things like founder Joseph Smith had many wives. A lot of Mormons prior to that would have denied that he practiced polygamy. They thought that was a slanderous charge.”

With more and more sources available online, Mormons began discovering historical information that had previously been denied or never released.

“People were being exposed to early journals from (Joseph Smith’s) era and documents that really supported what some people had been saying for years,” Bradley says. “The essays revealed things like Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon by looking into a top hat with a seer stone in the bottom. Before that, it was always said that he translated it like a language that he read and made a translation of. It had always been labeled an anti-Mormon, slanderous charge that he looked into a hat,”

For many recanting Mormons, the essays not only deconstructed Mormonism, they eliminated any kind of Christian faith. “Mormons tie Christianity to the mast of their sinking ship. So when their Mormon faith goes down, they don't even realize that Christianity is distinct,” Bradley says.

“Mormons are taught from childhood that if the (LDS) church isn’t true, then nothing is true,” Bradley says.

Reaching Mormons via YouTube

One of the gifts that Bradley brings to the pastoral staff of The Mission Church is his skill in video production. “Bradley is a gifted communicator and is excellent with tech and video,” Ritch Sandford says. “He has a strong mind for understanding doctrinal categories and is well practiced in apologetics, especially in a Mormon context.”

After release of The Gospel Topics, confused and disillusioned Mormons were seeking information online. Bradley began creating new content for The Mission Church’s evangelistic website and YouTube channel, “God Loves Mormons.” While the channel does feature longer, discourse-like features, most videos are four to eight minutes in length. They cover topics like the definition of the gospel, the uncreated Creator, the Book of Mormon vs. the Bible, and marriage in Heaven.

“Some of the videos were birthed out of conversations we were having with former Mormons,” Bradley says. “For example, we talk about why Christians don't have a modern prophet or a group of apostles like the Mormon church does or why Christians don't believe in the Book of Mormon or things like that. We take a particular topic, and we investigate what Bible verses address that issue.”

For leaders of The Mission Church, the YouTube channel opens a pathway that could persuade Mormons to reconsider the teachings of their church and to investigate the teachings of Christ. But that’s neither an easy nor a short journey.

“Many Christians assume that if only Mormons could see how illogical LDS truth claims are, they would leave their faith for one that can bear the weight of skepticism,” Pastor Ritch says. “Often, Christians are surprised by just how deeply loyal the LDS people are to their religion, even when it is proven wrong.”

Heart for Mormons

Bradley, who once had no interest in Mormons, Mormonism, or even the state of Utah, has become a man with a heart for Latter-day Saints.

“One thing that really turned my heart was realizing they’re genuine, sincere people. They really believe. They think their prophets are really prophets,” he says. “They’ll talk to you about (their faith), and they will well up with tears. It's hard to feel hard-hearted with that kind of person. Your heart breaks because they're just deceived. They’ve been caught up in this cosmic war. They’re casualties of lies and false prophets.

“The Lord just gave me a love for the people I’m surrounded by. They should know the truth. I keep thinking of Jesus when He says, ‘Pray for more laborers.’ And you know, I'm here to labor. I’m here to sow seed.”