(RNS) — Thirteen years ago, Jeff Strong received an email from his son who had just left to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This son had entered the church’s Missionary Training Center only days earlier, but he’d already decided to come home. “As I read the email, it became very evident to me, just from the tone and the words that he used, that it was much bigger than just leaving the MTC,” Strong told RNS. “He was going to leave the church.” Strong “immediately went into fix-it mode,” he said, as he and his wife dealt with their shock and grief about their son’s decision. They saw it as a wrong move that could potentially damage the rest of his life — and their whole family’s eternity. They weren’t sure how to talk to him about it. “In our community, we literally believe that these conversations have eternal consequences. There’s the idea of ‘sad heaven’ or empty chairs at the dinner table in the Celestial Kingdom,” he said.…