Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E208: Tradition, Scripture, and Church Unity w/Keith Nester | Lila Rose Show

Transcript

E208: Tradition, Scripture, and Church Unity w/Keith Nester | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  My heroes were the big mega church pastors, you know, the
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  Rick Warrens and the Bill Hybels.
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  My whole identity was wrapped up and being the rock star youth
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  pastor that could snap his fingers and hundreds of kids
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  would give their life to Jesus. I'm saying to them, but the
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  Bible says this, the Bible says that.
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  And they're like, well, that's just your interpretation of the
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  Bible. We've got our scholars and they
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  say this is OK, He got to the part and he goes, Jesus took
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  bread. He gave it to his disciples and
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  he said, take this, this represents my body.
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  And I felt like the Lord speaking to me going, you know,
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  that's not what I said. It led to a very, very dark time
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  because I I felt like I wanted to be Catholic.
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  I felt like it was the truth, but I didn't feel like I could
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  do it like the rich young ruler who went away sad.
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  So I said no. Hey everybody, welcome back to
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  the Lila Rose Show. Today I'm sitting down with
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  Keith Nester, who is the founder and the head of Down to Earth
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  Ministry. He is a podcaster, he's an
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  author, and he has a really amazing faith story.
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  His whole world is how to share the faith with people that
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  aren't already in the faith and be a witness for the love of
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  Christ. As always, don't forget to
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  subscribe to the show wherever you listen to your podcast.
• 1:03
  And if you're here on YouTube, make sure you are subscribed and
• 1:05
  hit that notification bell. And you guys, we just launched
• 1:08
  Supercast where I have something called the Rose Report, which is
• 1:11
  this growing community of people who are passionate about our
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  mission to bring goodness, truth, beauty into the media
• 1:16
  marketplace. And you can check that out at
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  rosereport.supercast.com. So thank you so much, Keith, for
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  sitting down with me. It's my pleasure.
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  Thank you for having me. It's funny because I had on
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  Alex, who we both know, yes, and a bunch of people were saying
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  like Keith, you know, we were taught he was talking about you
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  and a bunch of people like you got to have on Keith, you've got
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  to talk to Keith. You know, you've impacted so
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  many people with your work. So I'm excited that you're here
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  and excited to dive in with you. Well, that was funny because
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  that that interview with Alex came out and I started getting
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  my phone blown up by people that had seen the clip where he was
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  talking about me. And they're like, you gotta
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  watch this. And I looked at it and I'm like,
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  oh, that was nice of him to say that.
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  And literally within 10 minutes, I was getting a call from your
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  producer about coming out here and doing this.
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  Amazing. That was amazing.
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  We move fast around here and you do, too.
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  So great. And you came out from Iowa,
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  right? Yeah, I live in, I live in
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  northeast Iowa. Nice.
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  So yeah, it's a nice little flight out here to to where you
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  are and, and I'm just thankful for the opportunity to be here.
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  Awesome. Well, welcome.
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  And your story caught my eye because honestly, I related to
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  it a lot. Not me personally because I'm
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  not you and I was not a pastor and doing the things you do.
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  But my dad actually was an elder in our church and he was on this
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  huge faith journey. And I think your faith journey
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  makes you uniquely, I think, capable of sharing about the
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  faith with people from whole different backgrounds.
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  We're passionate about faith on the podcast.
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  People know I talk about it all the time.
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  Everyone knows, you know, faith is the most important thing to
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  me. But I'd love to just start with,
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  yeah. Who is Keith Nester, where you
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  came from? Was faith always important to
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  you? And we're going to get into all
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  the all the things. Sure.
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  Well, I grew up going to church. My dad is a retired pastor, so
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  church was always a part of my life ever since I was a little
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  boy. But I gave my heart to Jesus at
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  church camp, you know, like a lot of Protestant kids do.
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  Going to church camp was a big part of my life.
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  And I remember it, 10 years old, going down front of the altar
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  call and praying, accepting the Lord.
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  And so I in Iowa, Yeah. So I grew up with that
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  understanding of I, I'm all about Jesus, you know, and of
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  course, like a lot of people, you have your zigs and zags, but
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  that was the driving force of my life really.
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  That and music, you know, music was something I was really
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  interested in. I played drums and bands since I
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  was a kid. And that was something that was
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  my goal in my life was to, to do music.
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  So that took me out to Philadelphia, PA when I was 19.
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  I dropped out of college to go out and play drums in this band
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  out there. But while I was out there, I
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  started going to a Calvary Chapel church, which is, you
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  know, really big on verse by verse Bible study, which I grew
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  up Methodist, so more mainline Protestant denomination.
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  So when I, when I started going to Calvary, it really felt like,
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  oh, this was my jam, you know, contemporary music, hard hitting
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  verse by verse Bible teaching. And I just loved it to the point
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  where I started to spend more time and energy thinking about
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  the church that I was even the music that I was doing.
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  And eventually I, I had a situation where I wanted to
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  rededicate my life to the Lord, not just give my heart to Jesus,
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  but my life. And I had this, this feeling
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  that God was going to do something different with me.
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  And I remember I prayed this prayer.
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  I said, God, if you want me to do something different in my
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  life, I will do it. Just show me what it is.
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  Dangerous prayer, Lila. Dangerous prayer.
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  And you know, just. Do what you want with me, God,
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  and yeah, bam. I think, I think for a lot of
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  people, and I think people can relate to this, you have your
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  dreams and your goals and your ideas for your life and you ask
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  God to bless that. And we live in this place where
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  we think if I do the stuff that I'm supposed to do, then God
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  will do the stuff that I want him to do for me.
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  And that was certainly part of my life is.
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  When you say music, we were like, I want to be, you know, a
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  rock star like that. Was it like?
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  I'm going to be That was the dream.
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  Like what kind of rock star was it?
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  Like a Red Hot Chili Peppers rock star.
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  Well. I could see that.
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  I don't know. I don't know, you know, I, I, I
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  played in lots of different kinds of bands, you know, more
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  like not, not country, not probably a shock to people, but
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  I played in some like heavier bands.
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  But the band I was in Philadelphia was, it was like a
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  modern rock kind of a band. This is back in the 90s.
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  So, you know, this is more like modern rock kind of kind of
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  bands, but it's. A modern rock band that's.
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  Well, like, OK, so if you're thinking back in the 90s, you
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  know, this is way before your time.
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  But bands like, you know, the Gin Blossoms or Jeff Buckley or
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  stuff like that. So it was more like that sort of
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  modish rock. So not super heavy, although
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  that's what I cut my teeth on, was really heavy music.
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  But the band that I got it in Philly wasn't really that.
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  They were more like kind of little edgier pop kind of stuff.
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  And they were amazing. And a friend of mine got
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  connected with them because he worked for this record company
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  that had signed this band. And I remember he said, Hey,
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  this is your chance, you need to go do this.
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  And so I went out to Philly and I just, I threw everything in
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  the back of this truck, my drums, my clothes, and I just
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  went and it was a blast. I had a great time.
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  But you know, the Lord got a hold of me while I was out
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  there. And it was kind of unexpected.
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  And I got to that point, though, where I was like, OK, am I going
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  to do my thing or am I going to do God's thing because I could.
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  I, I kind of had this sense that there was something different
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  for me, which was hard because I loved what I was doing in the
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  band, But I, so I prayed this prayer church one night.
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  God, if you want me to do something different with my
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  life, I'll do it. But you got to show me what it
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  is. And within a day or two, I had a
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  message on my answering machine from a guy who was a pastor back
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  in Iowa who was looking for a youth pastor.
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  And he called me, said, Hey, I tracked you down.
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  Have you ever thought about being a youth pastor?
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  I'm like. How did he get?
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  How did he find your name? A friend of a friend you know,
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  he ran into him. Somewhere he's a musician.
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  He plays in a rock band. Well, I remember Love Jesus.
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  Like what? Like, were you interested in
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  being a youth pastor at that point?
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  That was the furthest thing from my mind.
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  So, so it's not like you told some friend like, hey, I might
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  want to be a youth pastor, put my name in.
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  Absolutely not. That was the last thing I ever
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  would have thought about doing. I didn't even go to youth group
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  when I was a kid and my dad was the pastor, right?
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  I was like, that's for, that's for Doris.
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  I'm not doing that. You know, I was, I was like, I,
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  I, I wasn't going to do any of that stuff.
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  That was just not who I was. So for me to be faced with this
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  decision, if you might follow my dream or I'd do what I think
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  God's called me to do. And I, I, I was really wrestling
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  with that. But I remember praying that
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  prayer and I didn't want to be 1/2 hearted disciple.
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  So I, I just was like, OK, God, what do I do here?
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  And I just felt like the Lord was saying, you're going to go
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  and you're going to interview for this job and if they offer
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  it to you, you're going to take it.
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  So I had a plan. I felt like God told you that.
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  Yes, I felt like God told me that.
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  Go and try it out, you know, interview if they give it to
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  you. This is from me, this is for
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  you. That was my fleece.
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  Be a youth pastor. Yeah, that was my fleece before
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  the Lord, you know, and but I but I had a little plan.
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  My plan was I was going to sabotage this interview.
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  So. So I go into the church and I
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  walked in. I was probably dressed kind of
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  like this, you know, And normally you'd wear like a, a
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  tie for a big job interview or whatever.
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  I was a college dropout. I loved you the more for it.
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  They're like this guy. The youth are going to love this
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  guy. I don't know what happened, but
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  they asked me all these questions.
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  They started with the question. Well, Keith, tell us why you
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  want to be our youth pastor Now, this is a little neighborhood
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  Church of about 250 people, OK, in a, in a medium sized city in
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  Iowa. So there's really, it's not like
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  this big mega church thing, right?
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  And why do you want to be our youth pastor?
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  And I remember saying to them, I don't.
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  And they were like, you don't. I'm like, Nope, I, I really
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  don't. And they were like, OK, next
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  question. You know, what qualifies you to
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  work with our students? I mean, I was basically a
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  student myself and I said I have 0 qualifications.
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  I'm a college dropout. I have, I have no experience, I
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  have no education, I don't know anything about this.
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  I have 0 qualifications. And they were like, well, what
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  are you doing here? And I remember telling him, I
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  said I'm here because I think God called me to be here.
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  And this is me telling you that. I said I will, I'm going to love
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  with you. I don't know why I would do
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  this, but I think God and I told him about that night in the
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  church and I said, I just want to do what Jesus wants me to do.
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  And if this is what he wants, then is what I want.
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  But he's got to tell you guys too.
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  And I walked out of there thinking, OK, this was a test,
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  right? Abraham, Isaac kind of thing.
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  You. Know what did they, how did they
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  respond to that when you said that?
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  They, they didn't really say much.
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  They were just like, I think they were shocked because, you
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  know, they had other candidates that had the nice, prim and
• 9:39
  proper answers and it was sort of scripted.
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  You know, this person's going to ask this, this person's going to
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  ask that. And they probably thought
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  they're going to get relatively the same answers, you know, And
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  I, I don't think that they knew what to do with that, but there
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  was something there. And they called me the next day
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  and said, we want you to come be our youth pastor.
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  And I was horrified because I was like, I don't know what I'm
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  doing, but I thought, I have to do this.
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  So I went back to Philly. Were you sad?
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  I was wow, I was, I was, I was sad, but I was also like, really
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  at that young age trying to follow the Lord.
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  You know that Bible verse about the rich man who went away sad?
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  Yeah, but he went away like Jesus said, give up everything
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  and follow me. And he didn't want to do it,
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  even though he was being really good and trying to follow Jesus.
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  In one sense, he didn't want to give up everything to follow
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  Jesus. And it was a sad thing, you
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  know, that, that obviously, but you were, you felt the sadness,
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  but then you still obeyed. Still you said yes, Lord, I'm
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  going to leave my my rock band. That's exactly what happened.
• 10:38
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  checkout to get up to 25% off your first purchase as well as
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  your free gift. But leaving the rock band wasn't
• 11:27
  the hardest thing because I met this girl when I was in Philly,
• 11:30
  OK. And it was it was legit like
• 11:32
  love at first sight, at least from my part I was.
• 11:35
  I was waiting tables because even though I was in this
• 11:37
  awesome band, we weren't making any money.
• 11:39
  So I'm wait. I'm working at the Olive Garden.
• 11:40
  I mean, you didn't know this. The Olive Garden, No way.
• 11:43
  I used to love the Olive Garden back in the day.
• 11:45
  You are sitting across from the May 1993 Employee of the Month.
• 11:50
  What an honor. I even have the plaque.
• 11:52
  That is thank you. That is a first for this
• 11:55
  podcast. You know, it's it's, I don't
• 11:57
  tell a lot of people that on on podcasts, but you know, you're
• 12:00
  special so. Thank you.
• 12:01
  Well, as an Italian, I am very, you know, honored by your
• 12:04
  presence. Thank you for your service to
• 12:06
  Olive Garden and the Breadsticks.
• 12:09
  So I'm I'm making the Raspberry lemonade on the side stand and I
• 12:12
  look through the fake plants and I see this this beautiful girl
• 12:15
  sitting at the at the table filling out a job application.
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  I remember I said to my buddy, I said I'm going to marry that
• 12:20
  girl. Wow, no idea who she is, but I
• 12:23
  just looked at her and it was just like, boom, all the, all
• 12:25
  the things happened, right? And I'm like, I'm going to marry
• 12:27
  that girl. Well, I got to know her a little
• 12:28
  bit and I, I remember feeling like this, this girl's amazing,
• 12:34
  but I don't know if she, you know, I want to only date
• 12:36
  Christians, right? I, I was trying to do the best I
• 12:38
  could to, to follow God's plan in every area.
• 12:42
  So that meant I'm not going to get, you know, hung up with,
• 12:44
  with, with crazy women out there, right?
• 12:46
  So I'm only going to date a girl who's a Christian.
• 12:49
  So I asked her one day, are you a Christian?
• 12:52
  And she says, well, I'm Catholic, does that count?
• 12:56
  And I said no, because we're in in the world I came from.
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  I didn't know anything about the Catholic Church.
• 13:01
  The only thing I knew was that the biggest partiers in my
• 13:04
  school were the Catholics and the stuff I'd heard like from my
• 13:08
  pastor and everything about Catholicism.
• 13:11
  It made it seem like it was a completely different thing than
• 13:13
  what I was doing. Like what are all these icons?
• 13:16
  What is this like incent? Like it just seemed weird to
• 13:18
  you. It totally seemed weird to me.
• 13:20
  And, and they, you know, it seemed like these weren't people
• 13:23
  who really follow the Bible. Now, I didn't know that from
• 13:27
  experience. I'm just going off of what other
• 13:29
  people are telling me. I'd never been to a Catholic
• 13:31
  Church. I'd never talked to somebody who
• 13:33
  was Catholic. I'd never looked into what the
• 13:35
  Catholic Church taught officially.
• 13:37
  I just had all of the caricatures in my mind of what
• 13:40
  Catholicism is. And I think a lot of Protestants
• 13:43
  understand that they, they hear that.
• 13:44
  They go, yeah, you know, I mean, I talk to people all the time
• 13:46
  now that, well, you guys worship Mary and, you know, you believe
• 13:50
  the Pope is perfect. All of the, the things.
• 13:52
  That's, that's where I was. So.
• 13:53
  And the other thing that I've been told was that that
• 13:56
  Catholics don't really understand the Gospel.
• 13:57
  They have a different Gospel. So I, I said to her, I said,
• 14:01
  what would you be willing to come to church with me?
• 14:03
  And she said, sure. So I brought her to my church
• 14:07
  and the first night she was there, Yeah.
• 14:08
  It was a Calvary Chapel, and it's a big one.
• 14:11
  The one in Philly is huge. And she loved it.
• 14:15
  And like the first night she went down and gave her life to
• 14:19
  Jesus and was like, what do I do?
• 14:22
  And I said just she's like, what do I do about my Catholic stuff?
• 14:24
  Am I supposed to start going to Mass?
• 14:25
  I said no, that's done. You've been set free from
• 14:28
  religion. Now you've got a relationship
• 14:30
  with Jesus. So that's all tradition stuff.
• 14:33
  I mean, her parents didn't take her to Mass anyway, so it wasn't
• 14:35
  like that was so she hadn't. Been like going to mass on
• 14:39
  Sundays or anything, but she was like raised Catholic, kind of
• 14:42
  culturally Catholic, but she really felt like the first time
• 14:44
  she gave her life to Jesus was at this Calvary Chapel altar
• 14:47
  call. And then she's like, I'm on fire
• 14:49
  now what do I? Do you got it?
• 14:50
  You got it. So we, we like, we kind of got
• 14:54
  really close really fast because I was all she had in that world.
• 14:59
  And you know, I, I was like, what do I do about this?
• 15:02
  And I didn't tell her, well, I'm leaving.
• 15:04
  I'm going back to, to Iowa to be youth pastor and I convinced her
• 15:07
  to come with me. So as.
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  As a girlfriend or what was she at that point?
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  Well, she was a girlfriend, OK, But I remember talking to our
• 15:13
  pastor out there and I told him, I said I feel like I'm supposed
• 15:16
  to marry this girl. You know, I but we just, we just
• 15:19
  really started connecting. I mean, it hadn't been very
• 15:21
  long. And I said I want to bring her
• 15:23
  to Iowa with me. And he, he told me, he said
• 15:25
  don't bring her there unless you plan to marry her.
• 15:29
  And I said, I really believe that's supposed to happen.
• 15:31
  But it was, you know, not much time had passed.
• 15:34
  How long was it? It was probably maybe a couple
• 15:38
  of months, OK. You know, my, my parents got
• 15:41
  engaged after I think like 2 weeks.
• 15:42
  Yeah, literally. So yeah.
• 15:44
  OK, so we're we're good. We're good.
• 15:46
  We're good, you know, so. Moves to Idaho, no problem.
• 15:49
  She moved to Iowa. She didn't move right when I
• 15:50
  moved. She moved out later and she
• 15:52
  moved in with like, like, like we never lived together or
• 15:53
  anything like that. She moved in with a, with a
• 15:55
  family in our church, our pastor's family.
• 15:57
  And then she got her own apartment.
• 15:59
  And, you know, then we got married.
• 16:00
  That was like August of 95 and we got married the next year.
• 16:06
  So the next August, a year later, we were married.
• 16:09
  And this little youth group that we started with like 12 kids in
• 16:12
  this little Methodist Church, I had no clue what I was doing.
• 16:16
  Within about two years, it had blown up to about 200 and 5300
• 16:20
  kids. Everyone's in Wow.
• 16:21
  Yeah, wow. It was every week.
• 16:23
  Every single. It was awesome.
• 16:24
  Well, and you said originally the whole church was only like
• 16:26
  200. People, yeah, it was like 250
• 16:28
  people. And this youth group just.
• 16:30
  What were you doing? What was it?
• 16:31
  What did you do that engaged them so much?
• 16:33
  You. Know what 200?
• 16:34
  And 50 young people every week in this little town in Iowa.
• 16:37
  Well, I started off doing everything the way that I
• 16:40
  thought I was supposed to do it, which was, you know, trying to
• 16:43
  just have fun with the kids and be around.
• 16:45
  And that wasn't really doing anything.
• 16:47
  It wasn't until I came up with this, with this plan to involve
• 16:54
  the kids in youth ministry, not just youth group.
• 16:58
  OK. And so there's a youth group
• 17:00
  mentality, which is like, hey, we're a bunch of kids getting
• 17:02
  together here and we're just like hanging out.
• 17:05
  We're we're, we're all about each other's lives or whatever.
• 17:07
  And I said to them, I said, I don't, I'm not ready to give my
• 17:10
  life for this. I want to reach the city, I want
• 17:13
  to reach your schools, I want to reach your friends.
• 17:15
  I want to let's. So what we need to do is get a
• 17:17
  vision from God to have a ministry because a ministry is
• 17:20
  about others, a group is about us.
• 17:22
  And I said, that's the thing we have to realize is if we're just
• 17:25
  busy looking at ourselves, we got a little holy huddle going
• 17:28
  on here. That's fine for us, but I think
• 17:30
  God wants to do something bigger than that.
• 17:33
  So we sort of turned our focus outward to the kids that weren't
• 17:38
  coming. And but it's interesting, you
• 17:42
  would think that in order to attract non church kids, you'd
• 17:45
  have to make it even more fun and do crazy stuff, which we
• 17:48
  did. But we also made it more deep.
• 17:52
  So we had like a rock band because I took the musical stuff
• 17:54
  that I was doing and we we had our own rock band there.
• 17:57
  And this was back when that wasn't like everywhere, but we
• 18:00
  like wrote our own music. We produced our own CD of
• 18:02
  original worship music that we did.
• 18:05
  And but I would preach for like an hour every Wednesday night
• 18:08
  and it was like hardcore preaching it.
• 18:10
  This wasn't the, hey, everybody, let's learn how to be nice to
• 18:13
  each other and don't do drugs and alcohol and don't have sex
• 18:16
  before you get married. I didn't even go there because I
• 18:19
  would tell the kids I'm like, look, if you think that just
• 18:22
  that's what this is all about. We're not doing that because the
• 18:26
  last thing I want to do is have a bunch of well behaved kids
• 18:28
  headed for hell. I want you guys to be on fire
• 18:31
  for Jesus. I want you guys to have your
• 18:33
  life radically transformed by God.
• 18:35
  And then those things will come into play.
• 18:38
  But we're not going to start with the fruit.
• 18:40
  We're going to start with the seed.
• 18:42
  And that's what we did. And it just took off.
• 18:44
  And kids got a, a vision for inviting their friends and
• 18:47
  inviting this. And then pretty soon, guess what
• 18:49
  happened? Their parents started coming.
• 18:52
  And most of these kids were Catholics.
• 18:54
  OK, So they were coming over after CCD class on Wednesday
• 18:58
  night from the Catholic Church. And they were like, and then
• 18:59
  they pretty much stopped going to CCD because they wanted to be
• 19:02
  with us. And then their parents were
• 19:04
  like, what's going on down there?
• 19:06
  So they would come over. Well, then we started a worship
• 19:08
  service on Sunday morning just for their parents.
• 19:10
  And that was the biggest worship service that we had.
• 19:13
  Meaning then the Catholic parents would go to mass
• 19:15
  afterwards or what? Would that?
• 19:16
  No, no, they just were defecting.
• 19:18
  They were defect. Yeah.
• 19:19
  I like the way you put that. But that's exactly what
• 19:22
  happened. And we would sit in our office,
• 19:23
  me and my, our senior pastor, Pastor Craig and I would sit
• 19:27
  there and we would meet with all these families that are new to
• 19:29
  the church just pouring in every week.
• 19:31
  And they would tell us, this is amazing.
• 19:33
  We've never, I heard this. It was like the same story I
• 19:35
  heard from my wife, but never heard this before.
• 19:38
  You know what, how do we sign up?
• 19:39
  What do we do? And we made it really easy for
• 19:41
  people just to come and be a part of our church.
• 19:44
  And that's what they did. So my experience was it was
• 19:47
  really easy to get to get nominal Catholics to just drop
• 19:51
  all that and come over to our church because it was like the
• 19:53
  fun church, but it was also the serious church at the same time.
• 19:57
  So that's what we were doing. So, you know, obviously I'm
• 20:00
  skipping ahead here because you would end up, I mean, you're
• 20:04
  pastoring, you're doing ministry, it's growing, it's
• 20:06
  being fruitful. Then you're on this journey and
• 20:09
  then you ended up becoming Catholic down the line, which I
• 20:12
  want to hear you share about that.
• 20:14
  But I got to ask, like looking back now, what do you think
• 20:18
  about what the Holy Spirit was doing then?
• 20:20
  Because it sounds like there was some real fruit that was coming
• 20:23
  from your ministry. But if they're leaving.
• 20:26
  You know, the church, the Catholic Church right now, it
• 20:29
  sounds like maybe they were going to the Catholic Church and
• 20:31
  didn't even understand what they were doing.
• 20:33
  Maybe they're just raised that way.
• 20:34
  But how do you see that chapter in your life and like God's
• 20:37
  story, you know, working in your life at that time?
• 20:40
  It kind of depends on the day. Some, Some days I look back on
• 20:43
  that and I think, wow, that was amazing.
• 20:46
  Other days I look back on it and I think, what was I doing?
• 20:49
  You know, I know there was some good that came from it, but I
• 20:53
  remember like years later, there was some some fall out there and
• 20:58
  it wasn't always awesome. What do you mean?
• 21:01
  Well, I mean, like there were kids that would get excited for
• 21:04
  their faith and then they would just drop off the face of the
• 21:06
  earth. There were people that would
• 21:08
  join our church all excited. And then because we trained them
• 21:12
  that this is what church is like, right?
• 21:15
  Well, eventually no matter what you do, if you're coming to
• 21:17
  church because it's exciting and fun and all those things,
• 21:20
  eventually it wears off and then there's another church that
• 21:24
  starts down the street or across the river that does it bigger
• 21:27
  and better. So then when we started seeing
• 21:29
  was there was like this revolving door of people that
• 21:32
  would come into our church, get really excited, fired up for,
• 21:35
  you know, a period of time and then they would just skip out
• 21:38
  the back. Like they're, they're, it's sort
• 21:39
  of like the, the, the Holy Spirit high.
• 21:41
  Yeah, exactly. And I, and I was at the time, I
• 21:46
  thought that's just what I'm here for.
• 21:48
  Give them the high like help be, you know, let I'll bring the
• 21:51
  Holy Spirit, make his presence felt known to people here and
• 21:55
  now. They can have a radical change,
• 21:57
  fall in love with Jesus. And then, but then the next
• 21:59
  question is like sustaining that change over time, over years and
• 22:02
  years and years, was the next step.
• 22:04
  Exactly. And and I and I felt like as I
• 22:06
  was, I was there for 13 years, OK, long enough to see like a
• 22:10
  generation of kids cycle out of my ministry.
• 22:13
  And I saw so many kids that were like pillars in that ministry
• 22:18
  completely lose their faith altogether and.
• 22:21
  Why? What did you notice?
• 22:23
  A theme of why they've been losing their faith?
• 22:24
  Yeah, it was. Well, we got away from this and
• 22:27
  once we didn't have this anymore, there wasn't really
• 22:30
  anything that was exciting or whatever got out of the world.
• 22:33
  I mean, it was, it was a variety of reasons, but.
• 22:37
  Do you think so it's almost like once we're away from Keith, like
• 22:40
  Keith was like our, you know, cheerleader.
• 22:42
  He's like galvanizing this and it's like exciting movement we
• 22:45
  were part of. Once we were like moved away,
• 22:47
  went to college, got married, sort of our own family.
• 22:49
  It's like we couldn't find that same experience.
• 22:52
  And so like that that must not be real anymore.
• 22:54
  So that would lead them to to am I you think I'm getting?
• 22:57
  I guarantee you there are kids that that have that exact thing
• 22:59
  happen and there are other kids that went on to do different
• 23:02
  things. But I just remember for me, we
• 23:05
  got to a point where, you know, the number started to dip, they
• 23:08
  started to go down. And I remember I didn't know how
• 23:11
  to process that. I was like, what's going on?
• 23:13
  Because my whole identity was wrapped up and being that guy,
• 23:17
  my whole identity was wrapped up and being the Rockstar youth
• 23:20
  pastor that could that could snap his fingers and, you know,
• 23:24
  hundreds of kids would do whatever I told him to do or
• 23:27
  would give their life to Jesus because I could preach some, you
• 23:29
  know, message we had every week we have people coming in going,
• 23:31
  what's the secret sauce here? What are you doing?
• 23:33
  You know how, but it was never enough.
• 23:35
  And this was the thing that was going on in my heart was that no
• 23:39
  matter what I was able to do in that world, it was never enough
• 23:43
  for me because I was always it was like a drug.
• 23:46
  It was like I got to just keep getting the next thing and the
• 23:48
  next thing and the next thing. And I remember I used to think,
• 23:51
  well, when we have 100 kids coming here, that'll, that'll
• 23:53
  feel really good. And then we quickly passed that.
• 23:55
  And then it was well, 150. And what I realized was that in
• 23:59
  and of itself had become this weird idol in my life of, OK, I
• 24:04
  have to be the guy and I have to be this, this figure, this cult
• 24:09
  of personality that is drawing all these people to the Lord.
• 24:13
  And when that, when that started to fade away, I just completely
• 24:19
  had a meltdown, you know, and, and I didn't know how to process
• 24:22
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• 25:21
  How long into the ministry did that meltdown like?
• 25:25
  How long have you been ministering at that point?
• 25:27
  You know, I, I, I don't feel like it was a switch that
• 25:29
  flipped. I would say with, I would say
• 25:31
  almost as fast as it got really successful, that started to
• 25:34
  happen because that was the thing that was going on in my
• 25:36
  heart. I, I was, and maybe you can
• 25:39
  relate to this when you were growing up, you know, my heroes
• 25:43
  were the big pastors and the big mega church pastors, you know,
• 25:46
  the Rick Warrens and the Bill Hybels and the, all these guys.
• 25:49
  We used to come out to Saddleback Church and, and see
• 25:52
  all these big things. And we'd go to these big
• 25:54
  conferences and we'd go to these youth things and I would see
• 25:56
  these guys that had thousands of kids coming.
• 25:59
  They were my heroes and I wanted to be like them.
• 26:02
  I, I put my faith in them and I was like, I got to be like these
• 26:04
  guys. And I think as soon as I got to
• 26:06
  that point where people started to look up to me a little bit,
• 26:09
  you know, I think that that's when that started to happen to
• 26:14
  me. But it really, it really came to
• 26:17
  a head when I would say, you know, maybe eight or nine years
• 26:23
  into it, it would start. Because the other thing that
• 26:25
  happened in the middle of that was I had a family, you know, we
• 26:28
  had three kids and my wife and I, we have a daughter and two
• 26:31
  sons. And I really struggled.
• 26:36
  And that's being kind to myself to say it that way with being a
• 26:40
  good dad and good husband, because I was so committed to
• 26:47
  this ministry, to all of these things, that it was almost as if
• 26:51
  my family was sort of in the way sometimes.
• 26:53
  And I know they felt that way at times.
• 26:55
  You know, my kids were little. They probably wouldn't think of
• 26:57
  it that way, but I know my wife did.
• 26:59
  And it was really, really hard, you know, And there was a lot of
• 27:04
  a lot of struggles in life and in marriage in that time.
• 27:08
  And it got to a point where I had to step away from all of
• 27:12
  that because I had just a major just identity crisis going on
• 27:17
  and I had to just be like, I can't do this anymore.
• 27:20
  Now, the other thing that's parallel to this in a, in a way
• 27:23
  was I had this friend that I met while I was doing this ministry
• 27:29
  stuff that was Catholic. He was a graphic designer and I
• 27:32
  needed to hire a graphic designer to make a logo for our
• 27:35
  youth group because we couldn't just be, hey, youth group, we
• 27:38
  had to be something cool. So we had a branding, we had all
• 27:40
  the, and this is back like when that was like really not the
• 27:43
  normal thing. You couldn't just go onto the
• 27:44
  Internet and make a logo. We, we had that and it was super
• 27:49
  cool. But the guy that did that, when
• 27:52
  I met him, I went over to his house to look at some of his
• 27:54
  work. He was about my age.
• 27:57
  And as soon as I met him, I'm like, oh, this, we, we just
• 28:00
  connected. And when I went into his house,
• 28:02
  he had all this Catholic stuff everywhere, statues he had, he
• 28:05
  had icons and everything, everything.
• 28:08
  The little bowl of water, you know.
• 28:10
  And I remember thinking to myself, what is going on here?
• 28:12
  Am I supposed to drink this? And no, no, that's holy water.
• 28:15
  There no clue what to do. Bless yourself, that is so
• 28:18
  funny. And so we start talking and I
• 28:20
  remember, I think, well, I need to get this guy in my church.
• 28:24
  So I start, I start evangelizing this guy and I'm like, do you
• 28:27
  know Jesus? You know?
• 28:28
  But instead of being like every other Catholic I talked to, that
• 28:30
  was like, what are you talking about?
• 28:32
  He was like, absolutely, I know Jesus and I'm like, all right,
• 28:36
  are you born again Christian? Absolutely.
• 28:38
  I'm a born again Christian, you know, and, and he shared his own
• 28:40
  personal testimony with me, which was big for us.
• 28:43
  That's what we did. That's how we connected with
• 28:45
  people was telling me about how you came to know the Lord and he
• 28:48
  had an answer. And then I thought, well, wait a
• 28:51
  minute, but you're Catholic. I didn't think Catholics did
• 28:53
  that. And he was just like, oh man,
• 28:56
  you know, let me share some stuff with you.
• 28:58
  And that relationship opened the door to all of the Catholic
• 29:02
  things. And I remember he started
• 29:05
  putting the screws to me a little bit about things, you
• 29:07
  know, OK, Mr. Bible Guy, let's talk about John 6 or let's talk
• 29:10
  about that. And I had never had a Catholic
• 29:13
  ever challenged me before with stuff from the Bible, anything
• 29:17
  like that. And I didn't know how to answer
• 29:19
  any of that. I didn't know what to do.
• 29:20
  So I was going to seminary at this time.
• 29:22
  So I did go back to school. I did, you know, I did all, I
• 29:24
  did go back to college. But I would go up like we would
• 29:26
  have these discussions about the faith.
• 29:28
  And I would take what he's telling me to my seminary
• 29:31
  professors and say, all right, how do I beat this guy?
• 29:34
  How do I convince this Catholic to become Protestant?
• 29:37
  And they had 0 answers. Zero.
• 29:39
  Well, in terms of effective, I remember, I'll give you one
• 29:42
  example. I I asked one of my Bible
• 29:45
  professors about Matthew 16, you know, Matthew 1618, where Jesus
• 29:50
  gives Peter the keys and says, upon this rock I will build my
• 29:53
  church. You know the foundation of the
• 29:54
  papacy. What does it mean?
• 29:55
  And that's what I asked her. I said, hey, my Catholic friend
• 29:57
  is telling me this is about the papacy.
• 30:00
  But we believe that this is about Peter's faith, right?
• 30:03
  The faith in the declaration is the rock, not Peter himself,
• 30:06
  right? But I don't the stuff that he's
• 30:08
  showing me from the Church fathers and all this Catholic
• 30:10
  apologetic stuff, it's making me question what I think because it
• 30:13
  looks pretty obvious what what, what they're saying.
• 30:16
  So how do I answer this? And and I remember this woman
• 30:20
  who is our professor, brilliant woman.
• 30:23
  She said, well, we believe that it's Peter's faith.
• 30:25
  I said, I know, but why? And her answer was, well,
• 30:28
  because we're Protestants, if we didn't believe that, we'd have
• 30:30
  to be Catholic. And I was like, what?
• 30:33
  So anyway, I had all of these types of experiences.
• 30:36
  And it kind of came to a head one night where we were at a
• 30:40
  church camp and we were running our own church camp with all
• 30:44
  these kids there. And, and my friend who was a
• 30:47
  pastor was doing the Eucharistic liturgy.
• 30:49
  But it was. We didn't call it that, of
• 30:50
  course. And he what did you call it?
• 30:52
  We just called it Communion. Communion, of course.
• 30:53
  Yeah, And he got to the part and he goes, Jesus took bread, he
• 30:57
  gave it to his disciples. And he said, take this, this
• 31:00
  represents my body given for you.
• 31:02
  Now, the truth is our official liturgy, which we never stuck to
• 31:06
  you, doesn't say this represents.
• 31:08
  But that's what people just sort of riffed on that and did
• 31:10
  whatever. And when he said that, it was
• 31:12
  like all the oxygen just left the room and I felt like the
• 31:16
  Lord speaking to me going, you know, that's not what I said.
• 31:19
  And I was just like, so convicted by that.
• 31:22
  Now what? Did he say?
• 31:24
  He said, this is my body, not this represents my body.
• 31:28
  And that was the key, right, Was understanding what is really
• 31:33
  going on here. And in our view, it was just
• 31:35
  symbolic. It wasn't really the real
• 31:38
  presence of Jesus. And that was something that when
• 31:41
  I heard the Catholics talk about, seemed really strange to
• 31:44
  me at first, Like, you didn't really believe that, do you?
• 31:45
  But my buddy would say, oh, I thought you were like, believe
• 31:48
  the Bible, Keith. I thought you were Mr. Bible,
• 31:50
  literal man. Let's look at what it says here.
• 31:53
  This is my body, my flesh is food indeed, My, my, my blood is
• 31:57
  drink indeed. And and I, I just came face to
• 32:01
  face with this conviction. But what was I going to do with
• 32:05
  that? I remember I left that room.
• 32:07
  I went outside where at this lodge, I went down front.
• 32:10
  I just broke down and I called my buddy.
• 32:13
  I said, I think I'm supposed to become Catholic.
• 32:15
  And I thought he was going to like, freak out at me and be
• 32:17
  like, ha ha, you know, as we've been arguing for years.
• 32:20
  Got you. Exactly.
• 32:22
  And he said, well, I'm here to help you if I can, you know.
• 32:24
  But here's what happened. By the time I left, from talking
• 32:27
  to him to getting back up, I completely was faced with the
• 32:33
  reality of what would that actually cost me.
• 32:35
  Well. What, Yeah, what, what, what did
• 32:37
  that analysis look like in your mind?
• 32:39
  What it would cost you because you're a you're a pastor.
• 32:42
  It was a still a Methodist. Church.
• 32:43
  Yeah, I was still in my original church, so still running this
• 32:45
  youth ministry, right. But there was other things in my
• 32:49
  future with ministry besides just being the youth pastor, you
• 32:52
  know, but I loved it. But you see, my wife had been
• 32:56
  asking me, what are you doing with all this Catholic stuff?
• 32:59
  Why are you talking to, to this guy's name is Devin.
• 33:01
  Why are you talking to Devin about the Catholic?
• 33:02
  Like, you're not going to become Catholic, are you?
• 33:04
  And I remember saying to her, Hey, there is no way in the
• 33:07
  world I could ever become Catholic.
• 33:10
  That I'm, that I'm the last guy that would ever be able to be in
• 33:13
  a Catholic Church. I no way he's going to become a
• 33:16
  Protestant because she kind of had this look in her eye like
• 33:19
  because that was what? She was kind of raised with
• 33:21
  right, and you were the one who flipped her and was like, hey,
• 33:24
  you know, come to know Jesus. And, and it sounds like she did
• 33:27
  have that first sort of very personal experience with Jesus
• 33:30
  through the Calvary chapter. 100% yeah.
• 33:33
  So I was, so I, I had, you know, I'm, I'm the, I'm the, you know,
• 33:36
  the guy who's in control of everything.
• 33:37
  I'm the guy who's like, no, don't worry, don't worry.
• 33:40
  It's fine. Because I I, you know, I didn't
• 33:42
  want her to be a freak about anything or freak out at me.
• 33:46
  So when I walk in this room, all these kids are worshiping God.
• 33:48
  My kids are in there. You know, my other kids were
• 33:50
  little. My wife is.
• 33:51
  And that is this voice in my head.
• 33:53
  You're going to blow up all of this.
• 33:56
  Are you going to tell her that you're done?
• 33:58
  Because you can't, you know, you can't do that.
• 34:00
  You're going to quit. What about all these kids?
• 34:03
  You're their spiritual leader. What about your family?
• 34:04
  What are you going to do for a job?
• 34:07
  You don't know how to do anything else.
• 34:09
  Like this is what you're here for.
• 34:11
  And, and I remember just being like, you know, you asked me
• 34:14
  earlier what did like the rich young ruler who went away sad.
• 34:19
  That's the moment that I went away sad because I was like, I
• 34:23
  can't do this. And I shut everything down.
• 34:26
  Like with Catholicism, I said, I can't be thinking about this
• 34:30
  anymore. I can't be reading this stuff
• 34:31
  anymore. I can't be talking to my
• 34:33
  Catholic friends anymore. I can't do any of this.
• 34:36
  I have to just forget about it. And I ran the other way as far
• 34:40
  as I possibly could. And I would, I thought, that's
• 34:45
  just a distraction. I've got to get back to what I'm
• 34:47
  supposed to be doing here. But it, it, it led to a very,
• 34:51
  very dark time. And because I, I went away sad
• 34:56
  that day because I felt like I wanted to be Catholic.
• 34:59
  I felt like it was the truth, but I didn't feel like I could
• 35:02
  do it. So I said no.
• 35:06
  And that just made everything worse.
• 35:12
  And then eventually I stepped away from ministry.
• 35:15
  I had to get things right with my family.
• 35:17
  I had to get things right in my marriage.
• 35:18
  I had to get things right in my heart.
• 35:21
  And I just, I just needed to be done with that.
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  it. That's everylife.com/join.
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  Use the code. Lila, did that look like, if I
• 36:25
  can ask, like you were doubling down on the ministry because
• 36:28
  this felt like the original calling from God, like the
• 36:31
  original plan, like God, whatever.
• 36:32
  What do you want to do with me? And then you end up connecting
• 36:35
  with this youth ministry. You're seeing this fruit.
• 36:37
  Things are kind of rough. You're figuring it out.
• 36:39
  This Catholic thing starts looming.
• 36:41
  And did you, you know, when you, when you said that things were
• 36:44
  really tough, was that because you had trouble properly
• 36:49
  prioritizing everything you were doing?
• 36:51
  Because in some ways God's grace, not that he didn't have
• 36:55
  grace for you, but like you weren't living in your calling.
• 36:58
  So it's like things were not aligning the way that they
• 37:02
  should. Do you think that's part of it?
• 37:03
  100% I, I, I was see, here's, here's the thing that that can
• 37:07
  happen sometimes to people in ministry when they're good at
• 37:10
  it. And I think this is true whether
• 37:12
  you're Catholic, Protestant, whatever.
• 37:14
  If you're good at something, that sort of becomes your
• 37:17
  identity and you start to have this weird idea that the reason
• 37:22
  why God loves me is because of the things I can do, because of
• 37:25
  the things I can do for him. And you can get this weird
• 37:28
  identity crisis where you feel like I as Keith, don't really
• 37:34
  matter to God, just as a, just as a, a man.
• 37:39
  The only thing that makes me valuable to God is, is the stuff
• 37:42
  I can do in this ministry world. Because all these people are
• 37:44
  telling you how great you are all the time, But yet in your
• 37:47
  own heart, you feel far from God.
• 37:48
  You feel like, no, I'm an imposter.
• 37:50
  You know, you feel like I'm, I'm not really living for him.
• 37:53
  So like, I just, I had this, this, this crisis where I was
• 37:58
  like, no, I, I, I'm done with this.
• 38:00
  And I had realized that I was destroying my family, I was
• 38:05
  destroying my own faith. I was destroying all of these
• 38:08
  things. And and it really took the Lord,
• 38:11
  I believe in his grace, taking away the thing that had become
• 38:16
  my idol, which was my Rockstar youth ministry status.
• 38:21
  And I had, I had no answers. I didn't, you know, I was like,
• 38:23
  I don't know what to do here. So I mean, it was a couple of
• 38:27
  years of that and we left the church world.
• 38:31
  We, we did some other stuff. We we actually moved out to a a
• 38:35
  boys ranch where we worked with in ministry with like a family
• 38:38
  that took care of troubled kids. Did you resign, by the way?
• 38:41
  I did your church and then. You're just trying other things.
• 38:44
  I mean, you got to support your family.
• 38:46
  I think that is a catch 22 for a lot of people in ministry.
• 38:49
  Is it if they're supporting their family this way, but then
• 38:52
  they feel God calling them a different place right then It
• 38:55
  can be really tough when this is your livelihood and you know,
• 38:59
  ministries, there's certain things that are similar, but
• 39:01
  they're also very unique. You know, I'm sure what you're
• 39:03
  doing is very unique. It sounds like it was incredibly
• 39:04
  unique at that youth chapter in the, you know, group in the
• 39:08
  Methodist Church. So when, when you were trying
• 39:12
  all these new things, what we're thinking about the Catholicism
• 39:14
  stuff, were you thinking about that or you're just like, let's,
• 39:16
  let's deal with that? Later it was still, it was still
• 39:19
  gone. I, I was still like running from
• 39:22
  that, but I had, I had adequately shut that off and
• 39:27
  that wouldn't creep back in for a for a couple of more years.
• 39:29
  So we were at this boys ranch for a while and getting things
• 39:33
  figured out, getting things worked out, you know, basically
• 39:36
  stripped me down to nothing. And, and then, you know, slowly
• 39:39
  but surely people start inviting me to come back and speak and do
• 39:42
  different things in churches. I'm like, I don't know if I want
• 39:44
  to do this anymore. And I, I took a couple of of
• 39:47
  part time ministry jobs in, in various churches.
• 39:50
  We left that we left the boys ranch after a little over a year
• 39:53
  being out there. And I was working as a part time
• 39:58
  preacher at this one church and a part time preacher at a
• 40:01
  different church. So there was a period of time
• 40:03
  when I was serving two different churches in two different towns
• 40:05
  and two different denominations at the same time.
• 40:08
  But it was, they were small and there wasn't all this pressure
• 40:12
  to like grow and be this huge thing, which is exactly what I
• 40:15
  needed. And we, we lived in that world
• 40:19
  for a couple of years. And even though it wasn't
• 40:21
  glamorous and it wasn't lucrative and it wasn't, there
• 40:25
  was no, this wasn't going to be anything major.
• 40:28
  And I remember going into one of the churches that had 30 people
• 40:30
  in it and I, I came in and they were like, we can only afford to
• 40:34
  pay you, you know, a couple 100 bucks a week to just come down
• 40:38
  here and preach. And I said, look, here's what I
• 40:41
  can do. I can come down here, I can
• 40:43
  preach. I'll sleep on the sofa in the
• 40:44
  office. I can give you one day a week
• 40:47
  and I'll preach on Sundays. We're not going to have some big
• 40:50
  program. We're not going to do all this
• 40:52
  crazy stuff. I'm going to teach you the Bible
• 40:54
  and we're going to be nice to each other.
• 40:55
  That was our philosophy of ministry.
• 40:58
  And that little church blew up. It was awesome.
• 41:00
  Like it It grew from like 30 people to like 120 people.
• 41:05
  Well, I mean, it makes sense You're.
• 41:06
  Like less than a year I. Mean you're clearly incredibly
• 41:08
  gifted at communication and you know, you've got this passion,
• 41:11
  you've got this gift. So you're giving them that gift,
• 41:14
  right. You're using that gift.
• 41:15
  You're you're talking about, you know, the faith, how to get
• 41:18
  closer to God. You know, our Lord.
• 41:20
  All of this during that time where you kind of felt feeling a
• 41:24
  sense of revival, like a separate from the Catholic stuff
• 41:26
  over there. Like, oh, I'm back at it.
• 41:28
  Like, you know, the youth group scene maybe wasn't my scene.
• 41:30
  Maybe I'm supposed to be like the lead pastor of a church
• 41:32
  first? Like where was your head at at
• 41:33
  that time? I was, I was kind of cautiously
• 41:37
  doing that, but I had, I had, I, I the most important thing to me
• 41:41
  was that I didn't repeat that same mistake of trying to make
• 41:44
  myself into some big thing. So I just said, look, we're not
• 41:49
  going to have big dreams and goals here.
• 41:50
  We're going to be about what we're supposed to be about.
• 41:52
  And for me, the number one thing was my family.
• 41:56
  And so I was very protective of my family and I was like, I'm
• 41:58
  not doing anything that's going to get in the way of my family.
• 42:01
  That was the most important thing to me because I felt like
• 42:04
  that, that I didn't take it for granted.
• 42:08
  So that was what I was trying to do.
• 42:11
  But at the same time, we weren't, we were, we were barely
• 42:15
  making it financially. We were, we were, but we were
• 42:18
  OK. We were just scraping by.
• 42:20
  And then one of my other friends who pastors a pretty large
• 42:24
  church in the Methodist Church, he basically was like, hey, man,
• 42:28
  I ran into him at a funeral and he was like, what are you doing?
• 42:32
  You fell off the face of the earth for, you know, a few
• 42:34
  years. What are you up to?
• 42:35
  And I kind of told him, he said, would you come here?
• 42:37
  We need somebody like you to be here.
• 42:40
  And I said, well, what is the job?
• 42:42
  And he's like, you're basically going to be my right hand man.
• 42:44
  You're going to be in charge of youth mission works, all this
• 42:46
  stuff. And immediately I was like,
• 42:47
  Nope, not doing that. They're getting ready to build a
• 42:50
  big, you know, $10 million building.
• 42:52
  This was a big happening church. And my thing was, Nope, I'm not
• 42:56
  doing that because I don't want to get sucked back in.
• 42:58
  I didn't trust myself. You know, I'm like, no, if I,
• 43:01
  what happens if I get back into that world and I just start
• 43:05
  repeating that those same mistakes.
• 43:07
  So we, we, we did an interview for the job and I told them no,
• 43:11
  they offered it to me. Like the next day I said, no,
• 43:13
  I'm not going to do that. And then it was like the, the
• 43:15
  Holy Spirit was just like, no, Keith, you need to go do this.
• 43:19
  And so we took this job, which moved us, moved our family into
• 43:22
  this new city. So I started working at this big
• 43:25
  Methodist Church and I loved it. It was a much more healthy
• 43:28
  situation for me. There wasn't the same type of
• 43:33
  focus on trying to grow some giant thing, you know, And in
• 43:37
  some ways that probably hamstrung a few things at the
• 43:39
  church because I was just like, Nope, not doing that.
• 43:42
  Nope, not doing I I before, I never said no to anything.
• 43:44
  Now I'm saying no to everything. I'm like, Nope, not doing that.
• 43:46
  You know, my wife at the time had started her own photography
• 43:49
  studio. She's an incredible portrait
• 43:51
  photographer, and she'd started her own photography business.
• 43:54
  I was helping her with that. So I told the church, look, I'm
• 43:57
  helping my wife with the business too, so you have to let
• 44:00
  me have time. And they're like, yeah, that's
• 44:01
  fine. So we were working on that
• 44:03
  together and things were going pretty good.
• 44:06
  And our, our church was, was doing OK, but our denomination
• 44:11
  was starting to really crumble. And I don't know if you've seen
• 44:16
  all the stuff that happened with the Methodist Church, but a lot
• 44:18
  of the liberal mainline churches have kind of fallen apart, you
• 44:22
  know, in, in the recent past. And the Methodist Church was
• 44:25
  going through this really nasty infighting, and I was still the
• 44:30
  Bible guy, You know, I still wanted to be all about Jesus.
• 44:34
  So when I'm seeing all these things happening in our
• 44:36
  denomination, all these alarm bells are going off.
• 44:39
  And I'm like, I can't. No, we're not doing that.
• 44:41
  We're not doing this. So I'm, I'm preaching these
• 44:43
  fiery sermons on Sunday to the adults.
• 44:46
  I'm speaking to these kids and. Was this stuff about like
• 44:49
  marriage, sex, I mean these moral issues having to do with.
• 44:55
  Well, you name it, I mean it was it was are we going to do same
• 44:59
  sex marriages in the church? Are we going to ordain
• 45:02
  practicing homosexuals? You know, the the pro-life thing
• 45:05
  was was kind of mixed into that. It wasn't really ever like at
• 45:09
  the center of it, but you could tell it was it was weird.
• 45:12
  It was like the people that were for all those things were also
• 45:14
  pro-choice. And I remember, like for me,
• 45:17
  that was always a non negotiable, you know, like, no,
• 45:20
  I'm not going to hear any of your reasons.
• 45:22
  I'm not going to, you know, we are 100% pro-life no matter
• 45:25
  what. And there's no scenario where in
• 45:27
  my mind we make exception for that.
• 45:29
  But some of the other people were like, well, what about
• 45:32
  this? What about that?
• 45:33
  And it's so I'm, I'm kind of struggling with what's happening
• 45:36
  in my denominational world. And at the same time, like, it
• 45:41
  was really weird how this all happened, but the Catholic stuff
• 45:45
  started to rear its head in my mind because of the
• 45:47
  conversations I was having with some of the other pastors that
• 45:51
  were arguing that the church should go in a more liberal
• 45:54
  direction. Because I'm saying to them, but
• 45:57
  the Bible says this, the Bible says that.
• 45:59
  And they're like, well, that's just your interpretation of the
• 46:01
  Bible. We've got our scholars and they
• 46:04
  say, this is OK and this. And I'm like, well, OK, I can't
• 46:07
  argue from the Bible alone. So now I got to argue from
• 46:10
  church tradition. Well, the Church has always
• 46:13
  taught this. Meaning for how to think about
• 46:15
  what the Bible is saying, because I think, yeah, a lot of
• 46:17
  people say, well, just do what the Bible says.
• 46:19
  And it's like, you know, I've also talked with some very, you
• 46:22
  know, left-leaning Christians who think abortion in some
• 46:26
  circumstances is OK. Who thinks, you know, like you
• 46:28
  said, homosexuality in practice, not just a temptation, but like
• 46:32
  a lifestyle is acceptable if you're, you know,
• 46:35
  transgenderism, whatever. And there's a way to now another
• 46:38
  person might be like, well, but it's clearly objectively, you
• 46:42
  know, they're they're clearly objectively using Scripture the
• 46:46
  wrong way. So like using just reason
• 46:49
  separate from Catholic Church tradition, whatever, like just
• 46:52
  using your pure reason, you can tell what's scriptural and not.
• 46:56
  I mean, I don't know if you think about that, Yeah.
• 46:58
  I mean, we, and we had like some of our leading Methodist pastors
• 47:02
  with some of the largest churches had publicly changed
• 47:06
  their stance from being on the more conservative side to being
• 47:08
  more liberal. So that was sort of the thing.
• 47:11
  Now it's like, Oh my goodness, this movement's going to, even
• 47:13
  though it kept getting defeated at all the, the denominational
• 47:16
  meetings, the margin was growing smaller and smaller.
• 47:19
  And I was like getting really uncomfortable, you know, But
• 47:21
  these conversations, OK, church tradition, right?
• 47:24
  This is the way the church is always done.
• 47:25
  To which they would say to me, well, which church are you
• 47:29
  talking about? Our church is only 40 years old,
• 47:32
  you know, and we're not bound to any church tradition.
• 47:38
  So then I had to go, OK, well, what else is there?
• 47:40
  Well, then there's the authority.
• 47:41
  Well, who gets to say what's OK and what's not OK, what's
• 47:44
  biblical, what's not biblical? And that led someone to say to
• 47:48
  me, well, if you believe in all this church authority stuff, why
• 47:50
  aren't you Catholic? And that just sort of, you know,
• 47:55
  made me realize, whoa, I've been arguing like a Catholic with
• 48:00
  these people. And right around that time, one
• 48:03
  of my Catholic friends I had, I had two Catholic friends at the
• 48:07
  time that I sort of hung with me.
• 48:08
  You know, we weren't always super in touch, but had come to
• 48:12
  see me and we had some conversations.
• 48:14
  And I, I told him I was struggling with where I was.
• 48:18
  And he just said, maybe you should go talk to a priest.
• 48:20
  And I thought, you know what, I'm going to do that.
• 48:23
  And he gave me the name of a priest.
• 48:26
  And I remember when I went to go meet with him, we're going to
• 48:28
  have lunch after daily Mass. So I went to the daily Mass.
• 48:31
  Hadn't been to a Catholic Church in years, had been to a Mass in
• 48:33
  years. And when the Deacon came walking
• 48:35
  in with the, with the Gospel during the processional, you
• 48:38
  know, they hold the book up like that, that just hit me because
• 48:43
  it was as if they were saying, this is our book.
• 48:46
  This is important here because the thing that I was so
• 48:49
  struggling with was we got to be about what's got to be the
• 48:51
  Bible. It's got to be the Bible.
• 48:53
  And it was like the Catholics were saying, this is this is our
• 48:56
  book. All about the Bible.
• 48:57
  And I and it just hit me and then.
• 48:59
  Liturgy of the Word. Exactly.
• 49:01
  And it, it was like, I could see that.
• 49:03
  And then by this time this is like 2015 Catholic YouTube is
• 49:07
  now a thing. So I'm diving into all of these
• 49:10
  things. I met with this priest, he was
• 49:11
  amazing. And I'm starting to just feel
• 49:15
  more and more drawn to all of this, this Catholic stuff.
• 49:19
  And this time, though, I'm very open with my wife about it and
• 49:24
  I'm sharing with her kind of how I'm feeling about it.
• 49:26
  And she's right there with me on the problems with the Methodist
• 49:28
  Church, but she's not right there with me on the Catholic
• 49:30
  stuff. She's she's like, I don't know
• 49:32
  what to do with this. But it was, it was clear that I
• 49:36
  was being drawn more in that direction.
• 49:37
  And the more I started to go down that direction, the more I
• 49:40
  felt LED there. And all of the objections that I
• 49:43
  had always had about Mary or the Saints or all of the things,
• 49:47
  most of those had been resolved, but they were now just boom,
• 49:51
  boom, boom. And I got to a point where I
• 49:52
  really wanted to be Catholic, but I didn't know, once again,
• 49:56
  same issue, whether or not I could actually do it.
• 49:59
  It all came to a head one particular day.
• 50:00
  I woke up and I mean, I had a bunch of stuff happened that if
• 50:03
  people want to see, they can see it on my YouTube channel.
• 50:05
  There's, there's a lot more about this on there.
• 50:07
  But I woke up in the morning, I was praying and I had the day
• 50:12
  off, which was very rare. I was going to have dinner that
• 50:15
  night with all my Catholic friends and I woke up and I was
• 50:18
  praying. I was like, Lord, you know
• 50:20
  what's going on here? And the name Steve Ray just
• 50:23
  keeps popping into my head. And Steve is like this Baptist
• 50:26
  guy that became Catholic. He's got a bunch of videos on
• 50:28
  YouTube. I had seen one of his videos,
• 50:31
  but I didn't know anything about him.
• 50:33
  I didn't know him, but I just kept hearing Steve Ray.
• 50:36
  Steve Ray, Steve Ray was just like in my brain all day long.
• 50:40
  So I go to meet my my Catholic buddy, his name's Greg.
• 50:42
  Go to meet Greg at this restaurant and before he even it
• 50:47
  was burgers, we go to have this burger place in Iowa City, which
• 50:50
  is like halfway between where he lives and where I live.
• 50:53
  Before he sits down, his phone goes off and it's his wife and
• 50:58
  he's like, this is a text for you.
• 51:01
  I said well, OK, what does it say?
• 51:03
  Tell Keith Steve Ray is in town tonight and you guys need to go.
• 51:07
  Wow. And I, I just flipped out.
• 51:10
  I'm like, we have to do that. He's like, who's Steve Ray?
• 51:12
  And I'm like, Oh yeah, you know, I told him.
• 51:15
  And we ate real fast and we drove to Silvis, Illinois, Our
• 51:19
  Lady of Guadalupe Parish, which is about a 45 minute ride from
• 51:22
  where we were. And I'm just like, what is going
• 51:25
  on? We go into the church, they're
• 51:26
  having mass and the church is packed.
• 51:30
  And I'm just like a total wreck. I called my other Catholic buddy
• 51:32
  Dennis, and meet us over here. He's like, why?
• 51:34
  Just just get over there? I go up to get my blessing and I
• 51:38
  I take a step to the right. And this is one of those
• 51:41
  churches where the crucifix is like literally hanging right
• 51:43
  above the altar. So I just knelt down right
• 51:46
  there. I just fell on my knees.
• 51:47
  People are taking the taking the Eucharist, stepping over me, and
• 51:51
  I'm looking up at the crucifix and I'm just crying out to
• 51:54
  Jesus. And I remember saying to him, if
• 51:58
  you want me to become Catholic, I will do it.
• 52:02
  But you've got to make a way. I don't know what to do.
• 52:06
  I don't know what's supposed to happen.
• 52:07
  You know, I told my dad that I was thinking about doing this.
• 52:09
  And I remember him saying to me, there has to be a way, Keith,
• 52:11
  you can't just quit your job and become Catholic.
• 52:13
  Like, what's the way? Like, what's the plan here?
• 52:16
  Because I was very much like, OK, everything's got to be, you
• 52:19
  know, the way I want it or whatever.
• 52:21
  At least have to know the plan. What's the way?
• 52:25
  And like from the crucifix, he spoke to me and he said I am the
• 52:32
  way, the truth and the life. You don't need me to make a way,
• 52:36
  you just need me. And I just, I just lost it
• 52:40
  because I realized that all of the things I was hanging on to
• 52:44
  that kept me sad. Like the guy, the rich young
• 52:47
  ruler, he was sad because he didn't, he knew that what Jesus
• 52:50
  was offering him was valuable, but the stuff that he was
• 52:53
  holding on to in his mind was more valuable.
• 52:56
  And I realized I was doing the same thing.
• 52:59
  I want all this Catholic stuff. I believe it's the truth.
• 53:01
  I think it's amazing, but my job, my security, my ministry,
• 53:06
  you name it, and I just let it go.
• 53:10
  And I realized that if I lost everything but I got Jesus, I
• 53:16
  win. I lost it all.
• 53:18
  But I got him in the Eucharist. And it was specifically related
• 53:20
  to the Eucharist because that's what was happening right in
• 53:23
  front of me. And I recognized that that was
• 53:25
  worth everything. Steve gave a talk that night
• 53:28
  about how the early Christians were willing to go to their
• 53:31
  death before they would pinch incense to the Roman gods or the
• 53:34
  Pagan gods and they would they would be killed.
• 53:36
  And I was just like, that's it. I got to do this.
• 53:39
  So on the way home, I told my friends, I'm, I'm doing this.
• 53:42
  I got home. I told Stell, I said, look, I
• 53:44
  have to become Catholic. I don't know any of the answers
• 53:47
  to the questions that you have. What are we going to do for a
• 53:49
  job? What about this?
• 53:50
  What about that? How's this going to go down?
• 53:51
  What about our kids? What about all of those things?
• 53:53
  I don't know. But this, I know I have to do
• 53:57
  this. I should have done it a dozen
• 54:00
  years ago, would have saved us all a lot of heartache if I had
• 54:03
  done that. But I've been given another
• 54:06
  chance. And I remember Steve said to me
• 54:08
  that night because my friend Greg took me up.
• 54:10
  He's like, you got to talk to Steve.
• 54:11
  And so Steve grabs him and he says, or Greg grabs Steve.
• 54:13
  He says, this is my friend Keith.
• 54:14
  He's a, he's a Protestant pastor.
• 54:16
  Think about becoming Catholic. And Steve looks at me and he
• 54:19
  goes, I'm just going to give you one piece of advice.
• 54:22
  You either need to become Catholic right now or turn
• 54:24
  around and run away and never look back.
• 54:27
  And I remember thinking to myself, well, I already did that
• 54:29
  once. And when I got home, I told my
• 54:34
  wife, I said, I have to do this. And then I sort of braced for
• 54:37
  whatever was going to happen. And she said to me, Keith, I'm
• 54:41
  so proud of you. I have seen you struggle with
• 54:45
  this for years. I know that you want to do
• 54:49
  whatever God wants you to do. I know how much your ministry
• 54:52
  means to you. I know how much your, your
• 54:55
  career means to you. And if this is something that
• 54:58
  you believe that strongly that God's calling you to do it, then
• 55:01
  I'm with you. I'm with you.
• 55:04
  And I just at that moment, I was like, OK, we're going to be OK,
• 55:09
  because I didn't want to mess up my family, you know, and, and I
• 55:13
  feel like the Lord just gave me that grace.
• 55:15
  And that doesn't mean that she was like, yay Catholic because
• 55:18
  she wasn't, but she was with me. So I went in the next day and I,
• 55:22
  I began that process of extracting myself from my, my
• 55:27
  career in my job, you know, and, and becoming Catholic.
• 55:31
  And my last Sunday there at the church that I loved was the
• 55:36
  Sunday that we put shovels in the ground to break ground on
• 55:38
  the new $10 million building that I had helped raise the
• 55:41
  money for. And, you know, I was supposed to
• 55:43
  take over the whole thing, you know, and I literally went from
• 55:47
  the newest church in town, which is literally a hole in the
• 55:49
  ground, to the next week. I was at the oldest church in
• 55:50
  town, which was the Catholic Church.
• 55:53
  And, and when, when I finally came into the church, you know,
• 55:58
  this was in the spring, we didn't do our CIA.
• 56:00
  My priest was like, no, we're not going to do that with you.
• 56:02
  We'll just meet and talk and remember saying to him, hey,
• 56:05
  when do I get to become Catholic?
• 56:07
  And he goes, well, you tell me, I think you're ready.
• 56:10
  So we just picked this random date on the calendar, October
• 56:12
  8th. So that day arrives.
• 56:15
  I go up to get my sacraments and and you know, we got our
• 56:18
  marriage done to the church and we did all the things you needed
• 56:20
  to do. I received the Eucharist made my
• 56:23
  confirmation, went back to my my spot in the front row and then
• 56:26
  it was time to do the passing of the piece right, the sharing of
• 56:29
  the piece. I feel a a a tap on my shoulder.
• 56:33
  I turn around Steve Ray he he he was in town.
• 56:39
  Wow giving a talk at at another church and just happened to be
• 56:42
  at that church. We have tons of mass he.
• 56:43
  Didn't even know you were getting confirmed that no.
• 56:45
  He had no idea who I was. He had no idea who I was.
• 56:49
  He just saw, oh, some guy's becoming Catholic.
• 56:51
  He runs up, taps his me on the shoulder and I turn around and I
• 56:54
  see him there. And I looked at him and I'm
• 56:56
  like, and he says, welcome home, brother, You'll never look back.
• 57:00
  And I had remembered what he had said to me before.
• 57:03
  He had no memory of that. I've talked to Steve plenty of
• 57:05
  time since then and he still is like, oh, yeah, sure, you know.
• 57:08
  But I don't think he put two and two together.
• 57:10
  But the Lord made that happen. So that was October 8th, 2017.
• 57:15
  And that's how I became Catholic.
• 57:18
  And now you're doing Catholic ministry.
• 57:22
  I mean, you're like, it's like, you know, Protestant pastor,
• 57:25
  they're obviously shepherding a church is a core part of that.
• 57:28
  They're preaching, they're teaching.
• 57:30
  And then there's a lot of people who are just, you know, out
• 57:32
  there kind of Catholic influencers or Protestant
• 57:35
  influencers. But how?
• 57:37
  How has ministry changed for you since, you know, leaving the
• 57:43
  Methodist Church in the Protestant Church and now
• 57:45
  becoming Catholic? Well, the first thing that I
• 57:47
  want everybody to understand is this wasn't something I decided
• 57:51
  to do. My priest told me, he said,
• 57:54
  Keith, people are going to want you to do stuff because you were
• 57:57
  a pastor and now you're becoming Catholic.
• 57:59
  He says don't do anything for a year.
• 58:01
  Just be Catholic, come to church, keep your head down.
• 58:04
  How? Did you pay your bills?
• 58:06
  I went into a photography with my wife.
• 58:08
  So we had this photography business and I just kind of
• 58:11
  rolled into that. So we did, we did weddings,
• 58:13
  senior photos, families, headshots, sports stuff like I
• 58:16
  love that. That was like kind of my other
• 58:18
  passion. But I had to get another job on
• 58:22
  top of that as like a travelling consultant to other
• 58:25
  photographers that was working for another company.
• 58:28
  So I was working a full time job on the road.
• 58:32
  I was running our business with my wife and just going to Mass
• 58:37
  and I was the happiest I've ever been in my life.
• 58:40
  Lila, I didn't care about being in ministry.
• 58:44
  I didn't care about anybody knowing who I was.
• 58:47
  I didn't care about any people would say, oh, do you miss being
• 58:50
  a pastor? I'd run into people from my old
• 58:52
  church. They still call me Pastor Keith,
• 58:54
  you know, and I'd be like, Nope, I, I, I just love being
• 58:58
  Catholic. It's the greatest adventure of a
• 59:00
  lifetime. And, and to me, like at the end
• 59:02
  of that long journey to get to be in the church, to get to be a
• 59:05
  Catholic, that's where I realized that this is what it
• 59:09
  meant for me to follow him, to give all you have away to, to,
• 59:16
  to take the analogy I like to use is the, the, the parable
• 59:19
  where he says the guy sold everything he had to buy the
• 59:22
  field with the treasure in it. You have to do that.
• 59:26
  And I got the feel with the treasure in it.
• 59:29
  And then I started digging and I got a little dirty, but now I
• 59:34
  get to like, look at this treasure.
• 59:35
  And every day it was like I was sorting through it going, oh,
• 59:37
  the rosary, that's pretty cool. Oh, this St. that St.
• 59:41
  Every time I turned around, there was some new treasure.
• 59:43
  I was exploring and discovering being a Catholic.
• 59:46
  And I was, that was the happiest I've ever been in my life up to
• 59:49
  that point. I, I felt more fulfilled in that
• 59:52
  space doing absolutely nothing with ministry than I ever did
• 59:56
  back in the day. Because what I was learning and
• 59:59
  what I was realizing was that my relationship with God had
• 1:00:02
  nothing to do with all the stuff I thought I was doing for God.
• 1:00:05
  Because God doesn't need us to do anything for him.
• 1:00:08
  He's God. What he wants are people that he
• 1:00:11
  can do things through. And that's about your identity
• 1:00:15
  and your relationship with him. And if we get that wrong, it
• 1:00:17
  doesn't matter how great we are in the eyes of the world.
• 1:00:20
  We, we, you know, Jesus says you can gain the whole world and
• 1:00:23
  lose your soul. You can do that in ministry.
• 1:00:25
  You can do that in the church. It happens all the time.
• 1:00:29
  And I felt so thankful to have, like, this second chance just
• 1:00:32
  with God. I didn't care about ministry
• 1:00:35
  stuff or any of that. But meanwhile, my wife is just
• 1:00:39
  like, she would say things to me.
• 1:00:40
  She would be like, what are you going to do?
• 1:00:43
  You know, I don't feel like God's done with you yet, you
• 1:00:45
  know, I feel like you're supposed to do something.
• 1:00:47
  And I'm just like, I don't Nope. You know, la, la, la, la.
• 1:00:49
  I don't want to hear that. I'm just Catholic.
• 1:00:51
  That's, that's what I that's what I'm doing.
• 1:00:53
  And she's like, yeah. But I just think there's more,
• 1:00:55
  you know, there's just more. And a year after, after we came
• 1:00:59
  into the church, we went on a pilgrimage and we went over to
• 1:01:03
  Magicoria, which I had been there as a Protestant, you know,
• 1:01:06
  years earlier. Yeah.
• 1:01:07
  So that was part of the story I didn't really get into because I
• 1:01:09
  didn't want to take too much time.
• 1:01:10
  But my Catholic buddies drugged me over to on a pilgrimage to
• 1:01:13
  Rome and metagoria when I was still very anti Catholic.
• 1:01:16
  You know did. You think it was weird when you
• 1:01:18
  went as a Protestant? I thought it was weird, but I
• 1:01:20
  thought it was beautiful at the same time.
• 1:01:21
  Beautiful, weird, weird, beautiful.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah, I'd never seen anything like that.
• 1:01:24
  Before very mysterious and you're like, what's going on
• 1:01:26
  here? Yeah, It really had a big impact
• 1:01:28
  on me. But we would go when we went
• 1:01:30
  back as a Catholic now it's like, whoa, it was amazing.
• 1:01:34
  And the first day that we were there was my one year
• 1:01:36
  anniversary of being a Catholic. And the last night we were
• 1:01:40
  there, my wife, who had struggled for that entire year
• 1:01:45
  because our kids didn't really know what to do with this.
• 1:01:47
  They didn't really, they were teenagers.
• 1:01:48
  They were like 1517 and 18 and they were just lost.
• 1:01:53
  They they didn't, you know, I talked to my wife about it, but
• 1:01:56
  I didn't really do a very good job talking to my kids about it.
• 1:01:58
  And they were like, what are we doing?
• 1:02:00
  We don't like this. We don't.
• 1:02:01
  Can we go back to our old church, you know?
• 1:02:03
  Yeah, it was their entire community, right?
• 1:02:05
  It was. It was their whole world.
• 1:02:06
  And we said, yes, you can. You don't have to do this.
• 1:02:08
  But now our family's divided and we go to Mass on Sunday morning.
• 1:02:13
  Me and my wife and my kids are going to the back to the
• 1:02:15
  Methodist Church. And my wife would just bawl.
• 1:02:18
  She would just sit in church and cry.
• 1:02:19
  And she's like, I don't understand why this is how this
• 1:02:21
  doesn't feel right. And she had her own issues with
• 1:02:25
  that. And over the year, though, the
• 1:02:27
  Lord started to soften her heart toward it.
• 1:02:29
  But the last night that we were Magicoria, she had an experience
• 1:02:32
  where she felt like God was calling her to go to confession,
• 1:02:35
  which she did not want to do, but she did.
• 1:02:39
  And in that confessional, like the priest read her soul.
• 1:02:42
  And when she walked out of that confessional, she was a new
• 1:02:44
  person. It was, I've never seen anything
• 1:02:45
  like it before. She, she, all of her walls were
• 1:02:48
  gone. All of her apprehension about
• 1:02:50
  being Catholic was done and she was on fire.
• 1:02:53
  And one of the things the priest told her was you're here because
• 1:02:57
  you're waiting to, to, to see what's next in your life and you
• 1:03:01
  don't know what to do. God is about to reveal that to
• 1:03:05
  you. You know, just keep doing what
• 1:03:06
  you're doing, trust. And that was enough for her to
• 1:03:10
  feel like it was going to be OK. The very next day, we're on the
• 1:03:13
  bus headed out of, headed towards split to get ready to
• 1:03:16
  catch the, the flight. And like out of nowhere, we're
• 1:03:21
  praying the rosary on the bus. And I get this just smack upside
• 1:03:25
  my head from God. I pull out my phone.
• 1:03:27
  I start typing on the notes and she's looking at me like, what
• 1:03:30
  are you doing? We're praying.
• 1:03:31
  And I showed her the note on my phone.
• 1:03:32
  I still have it on my phone to this day.
• 1:03:34
  And it said, I said, this is the book I have to write.
• 1:03:36
  And it said the Converts Guide to Catholicism, you know,
• 1:03:39
  because it had been one year for me.
• 1:03:40
  And I thought to myself, there's not a book like this out there.
• 1:03:45
  There's a lot of books about why you should be Catholic or things
• 1:03:49
  about Catholicism, but I've never seen a book that tells you
• 1:03:52
  what it feels like to be a new Catholic.
• 1:03:54
  That answers some of the questions that as a Protestant
• 1:03:57
  you're going to walk into. Things like, how do you tell
• 1:03:59
  your friends that you're becoming Catholic?
• 1:04:01
  You know, how do you church shop as a Catholic?
• 1:04:04
  It's a completely different experience.
• 1:04:06
  Some of the cultural things. What are the things that the
• 1:04:08
  Catholics say that mean different things in the
• 1:04:10
  Protestant land? You probably went through the
• 1:04:12
  same exact thing when you came into the church.
• 1:04:14
  And so I just went back and started working on this book in
• 1:04:18
  my little spare time I had. And in the middle of that, the
• 1:04:23
  year had been up. My priest came to me and said,
• 1:04:26
  hey, Keith, the year's up. I think it's time for you to
• 1:04:28
  Share your story with our church.
• 1:04:30
  And I thought, OK, that's fine. I mean, I'll do whatever that
• 1:04:33
  man tells me to do. Like, like to this day.
• 1:04:36
  So I, I showed up one night to my parish and the place was
• 1:04:39
  packed. I couldn't believe it.
• 1:04:41
  And I just gave my kind of my journey and they recorded it on
• 1:04:46
  video and sent me the file like a few weeks later.
• 1:04:48
  And I didn't know what to do with it.
• 1:04:49
  So I just made a YouTube channel and I just literally parked it
• 1:04:51
  on YouTube. And then I by that time I had
• 1:04:54
  another one that I had done for some friends, just a small
• 1:04:56
  little event. So I had these two videos.
• 1:04:59
  And I mean, it's so interesting now where things are, but I
• 1:05:02
  didn't make a thumbnail and the description, literally just the
• 1:05:05
  title literally just said Protestant becomes Catholic.
• 1:05:08
  That was it. There wasn't even a description.
• 1:05:10
  I didn't do anything. And it seemed like out of
• 1:05:14
  nowhere people start contacting me.
• 1:05:17
  The algo loved it. The algorithm loved it.
• 1:05:19
  It was the, it was the high time of that.
• 1:05:21
  It was like 2019. And people like would come to my
• 1:05:25
  photography studio to talk to me that had seen the video.
• 1:05:28
  And they were. And I'm like, what?
• 1:05:29
  And so by then people start asking me to come and give
• 1:05:32
  little missions and different talks.
• 1:05:34
  And so then my wife says, hey, maybe we should make other
• 1:05:36
  videos. So we'd come home from Mass
• 1:05:40
  after after church and then and we'd just go, OK, she'd just
• 1:05:44
  point the camera at me and say, what do you want to talk about?
• 1:05:47
  Like, I don't know, let's just talk about, you know, maybe
• 1:05:49
  something that I had to struggle with about the Virgin Mary.
• 1:05:52
  Three things that tripped me up about the Virgin Mary and how I
• 1:05:55
  got over them. And I'd make a video.
• 1:05:56
  And then that's what really began everything.
• 1:05:58
  And then, you know, here we are six years later, you know, 5 1/2
• 1:06:02
  years later. People have watched your videos
• 1:06:04
  now. That's it.
• 1:06:05
  I'm I'm the most surprised person of that that that's,
• 1:06:08
  that's happening right now, I believe.
• 1:06:10
  It I'm not surprised that God is.
• 1:06:11
  Easy, I appreciate that. Welcome to the church,
• 1:06:15
  obviously. And, and I, I say this carefully
• 1:06:17
  because like, we know our Protestant brothers and sisters
• 1:06:19
  like they are, you know, it's the same God that they serve.
• 1:06:23
  We all serve the same God. And so I want to ask you because
• 1:06:26
  I, I think I see this theme often, like so many people who
• 1:06:30
  are not Catholic, but they're Christian and we talk about
• 1:06:33
  faith. And when sort of the
• 1:06:35
  misconceptions maybe about like praying to the Saints or Mary or
• 1:06:38
  purgatory start to kind of dissolve a little bit like the,
• 1:06:41
  they kind of start to see, Oh, maybe this does make sense here.
• 1:06:44
  And Oh, I didn't, I realized that this was scriptural,
• 1:06:46
  whatever it is, right? But then I see like there's a
• 1:06:48
  community that they're usually plugged into it, their church
• 1:06:51
  community. There is for pastors, this is
• 1:06:54
  their career, this is their how they pay their bills.
• 1:06:57
  This is how they felt God was calling them what God was
• 1:06:59
  calling them to, to begin with. And so I'm curious your thoughts
• 1:07:02
  and just kind of like this moment that we're in as
• 1:07:04
  Christians today, because. And I want to ask you about,
• 1:07:06
  like, some of the cultural, you know, battles that are happening
• 1:07:09
  where Catholics and Protestants work together, of course.
• 1:07:12
  But this cultural moment where I think there is a lot of
• 1:07:16
  opportunity for people to really know what the Catholic Church
• 1:07:19
  teaches when before there were maybe a lot of misconceptions.
• 1:07:22
  And that's because of your work and the work of others who are
• 1:07:25
  able to share it and be apologized.
• 1:07:28
  But then when people again are raised with the church or they
• 1:07:31
  are pastoring the church or their whole community and world
• 1:07:34
  and spiritual experiences, that church, even if intellectually
• 1:07:37
  they're like, yeah, you're right, this all makes sense.
• 1:07:40
  Taking that step of like, OK, how do I even become Catholic
• 1:07:43
  now when literally I'm getting to my spiritual nourishment from
• 1:07:46
  this beautiful Protestant church that I'm, you know, from?
• 1:07:51
  What do you say to folks? Yeah, that's a great question.
• 1:07:54
  And for me, it was really about the trajectory I was on, because
• 1:07:57
  the question I was wrestling with was, how do I know the,
• 1:08:03
  the, the way that God has intended to communicate the
• 1:08:05
  gospel to the world? And I was just, and I was like,
• 1:08:08
  show me the truth. Show me the truth.
• 1:08:09
  I wanted to find that. But I also recognize that I was
• 1:08:12
  on a journey and there were plenty of years of my life when
• 1:08:17
  I wasn't at that place in terms of Catholicism.
• 1:08:20
  So people will ask me, they're like, well, do you think that
• 1:08:22
  everything that you did in the past was wrong?
• 1:08:24
  You know, do you feel like, you know, when my kids would wrestle
• 1:08:26
  with that, sometimes I said, we feel like you, everything you've
• 1:08:28
  taught us in the past was wrong. And I would say, no, that's not
• 1:08:31
  what I think about it at all. I, I think that that what I've
• 1:08:35
  experienced in Catholicism is like the fullness of that.
• 1:08:38
  But that doesn't take away from the things that were true
• 1:08:41
  before. And I think that if we just come
• 1:08:44
  out telling everybody that, well, if you're not Catholic,
• 1:08:47
  then you're not a real Christian or you're a second class girl.
• 1:08:49
  Like I don't think that's helpful to anybody.
• 1:08:51
  But in the same way, you know, we get that often times too
• 1:08:54
  well. You're idolaters, you're all
• 1:08:55
  this. So for me, like the thing I want
• 1:08:57
  to like help people to be unified and what in, in, in
• 1:09:00
  their relationship with God. And the best way to do that is
• 1:09:04
  for people to know what they're talking about, for people,
• 1:09:07
  whether they're Protestant or whether they're Catholic, to
• 1:09:09
  know what the church actually teaches.
• 1:09:11
  Because what I find to be the case is most the people that are
• 1:09:14
  so super against the Catholic Church, it's because they have a
• 1:09:19
  false view of it. You know, I mean, Archbishop
• 1:09:22
  Fulton Sheen talked about that, you know, years ago.
• 1:09:24
  It's still true to this day that people have a lot of
• 1:09:27
  misconceptions. And so I think if what we can do
• 1:09:29
  is not go to someone and be like, hey, let me tell you why
• 1:09:32
  you need to be Catholic. What I've, what I've learned in
• 1:09:35
  my work today, I don't ever have to do that.
• 1:09:38
  What I, what I do is explain to people what the Catholic Church
• 1:09:42
  is and leave it to God in their life.
• 1:09:45
  And, and that has been extremely powerful because the other thing
• 1:09:49
  that it's done is it's taken the pressure off me to try to be
• 1:09:52
  like compelling or clever or some sort of like, oh, well,
• 1:09:57
  I've got the secret sauce to make somebody Catholic.
• 1:09:59
  I don't, people ask me all the time, what do I have to do to
• 1:10:02
  make my so and so Catholic or make this person cat?
• 1:10:04
  And I'm like, you can't do that. That's got to be the work of the
• 1:10:07
  Holy Spirit. What you can do.
• 1:10:09
  And what I can do is as Catholics, we can model the
• 1:10:12
  faith to people with two things that I think are the most
• 1:10:16
  critical. They are joy and devotion
• 1:10:21
  because if we have one without the other, we're not going to do
• 1:10:23
  a great job. And we've all seen what devotion
• 1:10:25
  without joy looks like. It's, you know, the grouchy
• 1:10:27
  Catholic that knows all the prayers but is just, you know,
• 1:10:30
  not nice to people. And we all know what joy, but no
• 1:10:34
  devotion looks like. Oh, yeah, everything's great.
• 1:10:36
  Whatever. But they don't.
• 1:10:37
  They don't practice the faith, so we have to model those two
• 1:10:41
  things together. And I find that if we just do
• 1:10:44
  that and leave the rest of God and make ourselves available in
• 1:10:47
  relationship with people, He's going to work on that.
• 1:10:51
  Do you see that with your ministry, that there's a lot of
• 1:10:54
  people who are not Catholic but who are like, yeah, like I'm
• 1:10:58
  being fed by what Keith is sharing here.
• 1:11:00
  This is bringing me closer to Jesus.
• 1:11:02
  Even if they're not fully in on Catholic like that, they haven't
• 1:11:05
  connected all these dots yet. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:11:08
  We have people. So we have this online rosary
• 1:11:10
  community that we do. We've been doing it every day
• 1:11:12
  for five years. And we pray the rosary every
• 1:11:15
  day. It started in 2020 because of
• 1:11:17
  the pandemic. I'd never thought I would ever
• 1:11:19
  do that. And it's become this huge thing.
• 1:11:22
  And there are people who aren't Catholic that pray the rosary
• 1:11:24
  with us. And you know what we say is we
• 1:11:27
  tell them you're welcome. You're part of this family just
• 1:11:31
  like everybody is. And there are plenty of people
• 1:11:33
  that comment on my videos regularly that are not Catholic.
• 1:11:37
  Some of them push back and they push back in love.
• 1:11:40
  Some push back not in love. But I, I welcome that whenever I
• 1:11:44
  run into someone who's like, hey, just want to, you know, I'm
• 1:11:46
  not Catholic, but they're nice. I, I try to always respond to
• 1:11:49
  those comments like, oh, thank you so much for being here.
• 1:11:51
  We did a pilgrimage to Rome recently and one of the people
• 1:11:55
  on our trip was, was very, very not Catholic.
• 1:11:59
  And he said to me, well, I just want you to know, you know, I'm
• 1:12:03
  kind of the outcast here because I'm not Catholic on this
• 1:12:06
  pilgrimage. And I looked at him.
• 1:12:07
  I said, you are not an outcast, brother.
• 1:12:09
  You are our treasured guest, beautiful.
• 1:12:12
  You are. This is, you are, this is we're
• 1:12:14
  here for you, man. We're so thankful that you are
• 1:12:18
  here because I remember what it was like to be that guy.
• 1:12:20
  And I remember some things that were unhelpful that people said
• 1:12:23
  to me. Catholics, you know, they would
• 1:12:25
  make comments to me or talk down to me and made me feel like,
• 1:12:28
  well, because I wasn't Catholic, I didn't belong or I was missing
• 1:12:31
  something. And the truth is, looking back
• 1:12:33
  on it now, I can go, yeah, OK, I was missing some things.
• 1:12:36
  But what I needed and what what what a few people gave me that
• 1:12:40
  really hung with me was they gave me the space to just
• 1:12:44
  process what I was processing. Even when I was telling them to
• 1:12:48
  their faces that they didn't have the truth, they weren't
• 1:12:52
  doing it right, they hung in there with me.
• 1:12:54
  And to me, I feel like that's what we're all supposed to do
• 1:12:57
  with each other. Incredible.
• 1:12:59
  There's this thought experiment I'd love to get your thoughts on
• 1:13:03
  when I think about church. You know the church and Jesus
• 1:13:06
  was saying, you know they will know you're Christians by your
• 1:13:09
  love. Like he wants us to be 1.
• 1:13:12
  You know, we are one body and you see divisions within the
• 1:13:17
  Christian people of denominations or also there's
• 1:13:22
  just infighting over any number of things that might happen,
• 1:13:25
  wars or turf wars or just stuff, right?
• 1:13:28
  It's humanity. But I think about all of these
• 1:13:31
  amazing, you know, Protestant pastors, I think about our
• 1:13:35
  Orthodox bishops, right? Their Eucharist is valid, but
• 1:13:39
  not licit, right? So it's actually Jesus body
• 1:13:42
  about soul and divinity. It's the line of Apostolic
• 1:13:43
  succession for the Orthodox Church as those Catholics see
• 1:13:46
  it. But you know, they are not,
• 1:13:48
  they're out of line with Rome, right.
• 1:13:50
  So there's all of these, you know, fractures and, you know,
• 1:13:53
  I, I think about particularly our Protestant brothers and
• 1:13:56
  sisters, though, what would it look like if, what kind of space
• 1:13:59
  can we make kind of, you know, with, with our Catholic
• 1:14:03
  infrastructure for the incredible giftedness that so
• 1:14:06
  many of these Protestant pastors have?
• 1:14:09
  Right. And one thing that just has come
• 1:14:11
  to mind is we had Deacon Charlie Achevri on the show recently and
• 1:14:15
  his wife and he was in Rome just a few weeks ago.
• 1:14:17
  He was telling me about this. He's a Deacon.
• 1:14:20
  And apparently, if I remember this correctly, there's only
• 1:14:23
  40,000 deacons in the entire church globally.
• 1:14:27
  Really. I didn't know that.
• 1:14:28
  Wow. And, and 4000 of them showed up
• 1:14:30
  in Rome for this special, you know, bringing in more deacons
• 1:14:34
  that you know, I don't know what the technical word is.
• 1:14:36
  This is my ignorance. But he was saying about 40,000
• 1:14:39
  globally. And I think of the priesthood,
• 1:14:42
  it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of in
• 1:14:44
  the priesthood. I don't know that number.
• 1:14:46
  That's an interesting number, but I'm bringing this up.
• 1:14:48
  Sorry. This is a long winded way to get
• 1:14:49
  here because I think about all of these amazing pastors.
• 1:14:53
  You were a pastor who had this calling, who have these gifts,
• 1:14:57
  who have these abilities and what, how do we make space for
• 1:15:01
  them in the Catholic Church? I mean, that's honestly
• 1:15:04
  something I've I've thought about.
• 1:15:05
  Like, what does that look like? Can they become?
• 1:15:07
  Because deacons can baptize, deacons can marry, deacons can
• 1:15:11
  preach, you know, they, they can be married themselves.
• 1:15:14
  Yeah. I mean, certainly, certainly
• 1:15:16
  deaconate is a space for people who convert.
• 1:15:19
  You know, there are converts that become Catholic priests
• 1:15:23
  with families. So there is provision for that.
• 1:15:26
  I think it's important that everybody follows their calling,
• 1:15:28
  though. You know, people ask me all the
• 1:15:29
  time, are you going to become a Deacon?
• 1:15:30
  Why aren't you a Deacon? And honestly, I'm like, I can't
• 1:15:33
  imagine having the time to go like go to Deacon school with
• 1:15:35
  all the stuff that's going on right now.
• 1:15:37
  But I think, I think there's where I thought you were going
• 1:15:40
  with that, which I thought was really interesting too, was is
• 1:15:43
  there a way for us, even with Protestants to find spaces where
• 1:15:46
  we can be together, You know, and, and the answer to that, I
• 1:15:50
  think it's kind of like what you do like with your pro-life work.
• 1:15:53
  We can find the things that we both believe in strongly and
• 1:15:57
  link arms together and say, hey, we're we're coming together in
• 1:16:01
  these spaces against a world that we both agree needs to be
• 1:16:05
  reached with the gospel. And I think the more we do that,
• 1:16:09
  the better off we all are. Because the reality is we can be
• 1:16:13
  sharpened by our non Catholic brothers and sisters in a lot of
• 1:16:16
  ways. And I like to think that they
• 1:16:18
  can be sharpened by us too. But what we have to do is have
• 1:16:22
  openness and acceptance of who we each are.
• 1:16:24
  So and, and a lot of that means we have to be, we have to have
• 1:16:27
  grace for one another. And as a convert, it, it, it
• 1:16:31
  might be easier for me than it is for some people because I I
• 1:16:34
  can so clearly identify with where with where that that
• 1:16:38
  person's heart is who loves the Lord and wants to follow Jesus,
• 1:16:43
  but grew up with a misunderstanding of Catholicism
• 1:16:46
  and doesn't get that. And I just go, if they only
• 1:16:48
  knew, maybe that would change. And I've seen it happen many
• 1:16:52
  times, but it won't happen if we just wall ourselves off from
• 1:16:56
  everybody and look down our nose at the rest of the world and
• 1:16:59
  say, sorry, you're not, you're not, you know, you're not real
• 1:17:01
  like us or whatever. So I think we have to have that
• 1:17:04
  openness and we have to have that Invitational spirit and
• 1:17:08
  that incarnational spirit where we're willing to go and be with
• 1:17:10
  people in those spaces without acting like we've, you know, I
• 1:17:17
  don't know, in some way compromised ourselves.
• 1:17:20
  It's so beautiful. 100% Keith, What is ministry looking like
• 1:17:24
  for you these days? How can How can people find your
• 1:17:27
  work? Well, ministry for me is looking
• 1:17:30
  like a lot of, you know, I do a lot of stuff on YouTube.
• 1:17:33
  So I do a daily live stream on on a channel.
• 1:17:37
  I have two YouTube channels, one's just called Keith Nester
• 1:17:39
  and one's called Rosary Crew with Keith Nester.
• 1:17:41
  That's the one where there's the prayer every day on my regular
• 1:17:44
  YouTube channel, I make a weekly podcast video called unpacking
• 1:17:47
  the Mass where I do like a, a weekly walkthrough of the
• 1:17:50
  readings. And I, it's sort of like it kind
• 1:17:52
  of scratches my preacher's itch where I take the scriptures and
• 1:17:55
  I walk through them and I tell people like this is not to take
• 1:17:58
  the place of your priest homily. This is to give you ears to hear
• 1:18:01
  it. So we're going to walk through
• 1:18:03
  the reading so that when you go to mass, you're ready to hear
• 1:18:05
  what the Spirit wants to say to you.
• 1:18:07
  I. Love that.
• 1:18:07
  So, so that's my favorite thing I get to do is unpacking the
• 1:18:10
  mass and then I do long form interviews on my channel too.
• 1:18:13
  I travel around and give parish missions.
• 1:18:15
  I've got two books out the, the, the conference guidebook and
• 1:18:17
  then a book about the mysteries of the rosary as well.
• 1:18:20
  And then the other thing I love to do more than anything is just
• 1:18:23
  be on the journey with people. So I have a lot of people that
• 1:18:27
  that contact me that are like, Hey, I'm, I'm in that place
• 1:18:30
  where you were. What do I do?
• 1:18:32
  So I do a lot of of meetings with people that are just trying
• 1:18:36
  to help them in that space as well.
• 1:18:38
  I have to ask you one more thing before I let you go because
• 1:18:42
  looking back on your whole story, there's so many points
• 1:18:45
  where obviously you're sharing God speaking to you, God working
• 1:18:48
  with you. I'm curious when you look back
• 1:18:50
  and you see really God calling you to that youth group and then
• 1:18:54
  God calling you to that Methodist Church and then God
• 1:18:57
  calling you to fully enter the Catholic Church, right.
• 1:19:03
  Going to that youth group and being a pastor wasn't being a
• 1:19:06
  Catholic yet, obviously, but it was the same God who called you.
• 1:19:08
  I'm just. Curious.
• 1:19:10
  Especially for people listening wherever they are on their faith
• 1:19:13
  journey, if you've any thoughts or just about the mysterious way
• 1:19:16
  that God calls us to things that aren't maybe the the ultimate
• 1:19:19
  thing that he's leading us towards yet.
• 1:19:20
  I mean, the ultimate thing is eternity with Him, right?
• 1:19:23
  But yeah, they're just the mysterious workings of God.
• 1:19:26
  That's the adventure of faith, Lila.
• 1:19:28
  It's, it's, there's no, this is the way it is for every single
• 1:19:32
  person. ABCD.
• 1:19:33
  You know, we are God works with our humanity and he guides us on
• 1:19:38
  that journey of life and faith. And that's going to look
• 1:19:42
  different for different people. And, you know, I, I spend time
• 1:19:45
  sometimes looking back on, oh, I wish I would have done this,
• 1:19:47
  wish I would have done that. But I'm always take, you know,
• 1:19:50
  take the advice of people who say that you shouldn't do that
• 1:19:53
  because that's what God used to get you where you are.
• 1:19:57
  And you know, my wife and I were talking about this the other
• 1:19:59
  day. About all the different little
• 1:20:01
  paths life can take, you know, and different things that could
• 1:20:03
  have happened in our lives and in our ministry and in our
• 1:20:06
  career. And what if we wouldn't have
• 1:20:07
  gone there? And what if we wouldn't have
• 1:20:08
  gone there? And I just, I just said to her,
• 1:20:12
  I said, you know, what's, what's amazing to me is that nobody has
• 1:20:16
  a crystal ball to see any of that stuff, right?
• 1:20:17
  We don't know. But I can't imagine doing
• 1:20:21
  anything better, a better scenario than where I am today.
• 1:20:27
  And I know that that doesn't happen without all those things
• 1:20:29
  in the past. So God uses all of those things.
• 1:20:33
  I mean, I think about the last verse in the book of Genesis,
• 1:20:36
  what God, what you meant for evil, God meant for good.
• 1:20:39
  And that that just basically is a testimony to the fact that
• 1:20:42
  wherever we are in our brokenness or in what we think
• 1:20:45
  we're doing is right. The answer is the same.
• 1:20:49
  Offer it to Jesus. Give him everything.
• 1:20:51
  He's inviting you on this journey of radical discipleship.
• 1:20:55
  And that's not just for the advanced Christians.
• 1:20:57
  That's Christianity. Christianity is not what I used
• 1:21:01
  to think it was. Hey God, I'll do the things I
• 1:21:02
  want to do, and hopefully you'll bless it if I'm a good boy.
• 1:21:05
  No Christianity is this covenant where He gives us Himself and we
• 1:21:10
  give Him ourselves and then He calls us on this journey to
• 1:21:14
  follow Him. That's discipleship.
• 1:21:16
  There's no plan A Plan B, Plan C when it comes to God, the plan
• 1:21:20
  is the road of discipleship. The question is, will we pick up
• 1:21:23
  our cross and follow Him? It's not an easy Rd.
• 1:21:26
  Jesus never said it would be. But if we stick with Him and we
• 1:21:29
  follow Him, then He's promised that He'll never leave us and
• 1:21:32
  He'll get us to where we need to be.
• 1:21:34
  Amen. Thank you, Keith.
• 1:21:35
  This has been awesome. Very inspiring for me and I'm
• 1:21:38
  sure folks listening. Well, thanks for having me, I
• 1:21:40
  really appreciate it. And a huge thank you to EWTN
• 1:21:43
  Eternal Word Television Network, which is the largest religious
• 1:21:46
  broadcaster in the world. You can get access to Lila Rose
• 1:21:49
  Show episodes 24 hours in advance at ewtn.com.
• 1:21:54
  Slash on demand. And a big thank you to EWTN and
• 1:21:57
  their incredible mission to bring souls to Jesus.