Who Would God Choose to Start a Church or Religion?

I think God would establish a church or a religion through anyone who was a good person at heart and had the type of personality to believe God would talk with them and establish a church or religion through them.

I think just about the only people who have any chance of establishing a church (or any organization) that has the potential to change the world in some way walk a balance beam of sorts - and fall off regularly. I think the main difference is whether they get up - and which side of the beam they walk the most.

When it comes to who we accept as inspired religious leaders, I think it is VERY easy to dismiss Jesus, of Nazareth, as a crackpot and a fraud, if one is so inclined. I'm not comparing Joseph Smith to Jesus in any way that involves divinity by saying that, but I am comparing the two of them to Mohammed, Moses, Luther, Calvin, Confucius, Ghandi, King and others in saying it - and I am comparing them to Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Herod and any number of people who got up and walked primarily or exclusively on the other side of the line. Every one of them had something that set them outside the norm in their field of focus, and every one of them was magnetic for those who followed them. Charismatic leaders are extraordinary - for good and/or bad - sometimes clearly one, but sometimes a difficult mix of both.

I think God understands us far better than we understand ourselves and each other - and I think he works with people we assume naturally he wouldn't, including, often outside our own awareness, us.