The Danger With LDS Influencers and Authors (myself included)

When I first moved into my current ward a man came up to me and welcomed me as “Gogo” and said he loved my blog. This man is now on my stake high council. He recently asked me, “Can you write something about the danger of LDS influencers?” At first, I was taken a bit back, as I am an LDS Influencer, but as he explained his concerns I realized how badly this message is needed.

So as an LDS Influencer, I want to raise a voice of warning regarding a dangerous trend among the Saints that I am seeing in regard to LDS Influencers, and when I say influencers throughout this article I include Life Coaches and Therapists as many of these use social media to influence people. I want to use the framework of Dallin H. Oak’s hallmark address: “Good, Better, Best.” but with the addition of a fourth category: Bad.

Bad Content

Bad LDS Influencers and Authors are those who engage in priestcraft. It is not only getting paid (as institute teachers get paid), it is requiring people to pay to learn ‘the gospel.’ They want people to sign up for classes, courses, or sessions to make money off them. And in seeking to make money they have started to alter the gospel to be more pleasing and therefore gain more clients and followers and therefore be more profitable. This content is designed to lead people away from gospel truth. It is the philosophies of men mingled with scripture.

These influencers feast on Saints who are spiritually malnourished and offer them worldly “solutions” to living the hard part of the gospel. Whether it is a gospel principle or an aspect of church history that someone struggles with. They give them just enough scripture/facts to sound authoritative but then lead them astray with their conclusions.

When the source of what you are reading is faithless it can’t and won’t produce faith. A bad tree cannot bring forth good fruit. Just ask yourself, “Is this influencer or author an active member of the Church?” Followed up with the vital “And are they promoting that I follow them or the Prophet?” If they are not active or are setting themselves up as alternatives to the prophet, aka teaching contrary to the prophets, they are false prophets. Consuming content from bad influencers will fill you up with worldly alternatives that leave you feeling “full” but in reality, you remain malnourished. It is like going to a Chinese Buffet and eating scraps off the floor. You would never do it. So why are you feeding your spirit the scraps off the floor?

NOTE: By nature therapists and life coaches charge for their services, this does not mean they are automatically engaging in priestcraft. Extra caution must be exercised with them as the allure of money corrupts many good influencers over time.

It is also important to realize that almost all bad LDS Influencers don’t come out and say the prophet is fallen, they are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They claim to teach the gospel, but it is not the same gospel taught by the prophets and apostles. They teach cafeteria discipleship where you can selectively obey/ignore the prophet. Influencers like Julie Hanks fall into this category. When I see friends following and sharing her content it is only a matter of weeks before I see a post about how they are leaving the Church. For years I refused to ever call her out by name, but then in a short span I had 4 friends leave the Church after following and posting her false teaches and I realized that my silence was causing spiritual casualties. See the below video “prophets or influencers” juxtaposing Julie’s teachings to the prophets.

Good Content

Good LDS Influencers are those who attempt to produce faithful content. They truly have desires to uplift others. This category includes a lot of LDS Influencers and Authors who write about a variety of subjects that affect Church members. From Polygamy to where the Book of Mormon happened. This content is interesting but ultimately fails to reach the better or best categories because it is trivial in eternal terms. It does not matter how many wives Joseph or Brigham had, or if the Book of Mormon took place in South America, North America, or both. What matters is gaining a testimony of the gospel and acting on it.

This content is often created by gospel hobbyists, they feel like their particular part of the gospel is sooooo important that everyone needs to focus on it more. Good content does not lead you away from the Church like the bad, but often it is used by Satan as a distraction from what matters most. If he can keep the Saints arguing about the heartland model, or being fixated on seer stones then they will never be a threat to his offensive against the Church. Consuming this content is like going to a Chinese Buffet and eating the small section of American food they have. Who goes to a Chinese Buffet and eats the corndogs and pizza? Children. Spiritually speaking, those who are children in the gospel love this content.

Better Content

Better content seeks to keep the gospel in perspective, it seeks to be faith-promoting. It points to the words of the prophets and says “Follow them!” Better content seeks to address real issues and provide gospel-oriented faith-centric ways to deal with them. These influencers truly have the desire to share the gospel. These are the influencers who follow the Spirit and write what they feel they should, even if it costs them readers and page followers.

Many Come, Follow Me podcasts, blogs, websites, and social media influencers, and authors fall into this category. I strive to fall into this category. Why don’t I strive for the best content? well, just wait a minute and you will find out. But these influencers contain many of the best people on social media. These are the influencers that the Church will periodically call together and ask for a united effort on a specific issue (like the Church’s Easter and Christmas campaigns). I have been privileged in the past to go to these meetings and rub shoulders with these influencers.

This content sounds pretty good, right? Well, it is more than good, it is better. But, it is not the best (feel free to groan at my dad joke, you’re welcome). Too many Saints spend all their time reading, listening to, and consuming this content. If you only consume better content it is like going to a Chinese Buffet and seeing someone else’s plate that looks good and asking them if you can have it.

NOTE: Rarely do content creators move up from ‘bad’ to ‘good’ to ‘better’, but sadly I have seen many amazing influencers fall from ‘better’ to ‘good’ to ‘bad’ (with some going straight to ‘bad’). Because of this, I am not listing the many of the influencers I follow and I consider as ‘better’ because they might not be that way next year.

Best Content

Ultimately, the best content is not created by LDS Influencers and Authors. The best content is the scriptures and words of the modern prophets. I hear too many Saints in gospel doctrine and on social media saying things like, “While listening to X podcast, or reading X book I learned this cool insight.” It is very rare that I hear Saints saying, “While studying the scriptures in this week’s Come, Follow Me I learned…”

That is the difference, the best content is when we go into the source material. It is when we read the scriptures, when we read the conference talks, and when we “study it out” for ourselves and thus receive personal revelation on applying the gospel principles to our lives rather than relying on LDS Influencers to do the grunt work and receive the revelation on our behalf.

The best content is like going to the Chinese Buffet, you might see the food on the floor (bad), but you won’t eat it. You will see the American food (gospel hobbyists) and you might try a single slice of pizza, but you quickly move on. You see someone with a plate of stir-fry from the Mongolian Grill and it inspires you (better), but ultimately you get up, and you do the work to get your own food.

Church History

This same model of bad, good, better, and best can be applied to learning about Church History. I see many Saints devoting hours and hours to studying Church history topics like polygamy or blacks and the priesthood who are neglecting to feed their spirit and thus leave the Church. This model prevents that.

• Bad: Studying content from authors who have left the faith.
• Good: Studying from ‘interesting’ faithful sources.
• Better: Studying from sources that seek to promote covenant keeping.
• Best: Realizing that you won’t be quizzed on Church history to get into heaven but that you will be judged by how well you followed the prophets. So instead of being consumed by studying random Church history study the scriptures and conference reports.

This is NOT saying studying Church history is bad, but I see far too many members who are not reading and studying the scriptures yet consume hours and hours of podcasts and books about Church History. Imagine getting to heaven and telling God, “I did not study the Book of Mormon as You told me to, but I did study the history of Polygamy!” You gotta feed your Spirit food before you feed your curiosity Twinkies. I love this quote from the August 1978 Ensign regarding the Journal of Discourses that can be applied to all of Church history:

Having taught seminary and institute classes for more than twenty years, I have tried to follow my own advice. Because I also love to read, I have read the scriptures many times, all of the general conference reports, and finally, all volumes of the Journal of Discourses.

Frankly, one of the main reasons I read the Journal of Discourses was so I could answer students’ questions about them with some knowledge of what they were about. Though I enjoyed reading them, gained some new insights, and was inspired by the spirit of the early brethren, except for the needs of students, there was no practical benefit that I could not have obtained from current conference talks with less effort, much greater clarity and more economy.

For me, the most pertinent discussion of gospel doctrines and answers to life’s problems and source of spiritual inspiration in today’s world comes from the standard works and our living prophets.

Gerald E. Jones, director, LDS Institute of Religion, Berkeley, California (

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