THRIVE 2021 - Events, Community, and More!

THRIVE 2021: When Faith Transition Becomes a Movement

Thousands of former Latter-day Saints are quietly building a parallel world. They have their own conferences, their own support networks, their own community events, and now a growing infrastructure called THRIVE Beyond Religion. Announced publicly in September 2021 through the Mormon Stories Podcast, THRIVE represents something worth examining carefully: the organized, sustained effort to help people not just leave a high-demand religion, but actually rebuild a life after it.

That question, how does someone reconstruct community after Mormonism, is one of the most practically urgent problems in the post-faith space. THRIVE's answer is logistical, local, and deliberately non-ideological.

Background: The Vacuum That Created THRIVE

The origins of THRIVE trace back to a real gap in the post-Mormon community. The Ex-Mormon Foundation, which had historically hosted an annual conference for those leaving the church, dissolved in the years leading up to 2021. That left a noticeable absence of organized, recurring spaces where people navigating a faith crisis could gather in person.

John Dehlin, founder of the Mormon Stories Podcast, had already experimented with faith crisis retreats, including one held on a cruise to the Bahamas after attendees requested a less emotionally intense format. Those experiments pointed toward something bigger. THRIVE grew out of that recognition, shaped largely by volunteer organizers like Clint and Jenny, who began hearing the same request at every event: "How can I help?"