Why This Ex‑Protestant Pastor Came Home to the Catholic Church...and Brought 17 People With Him!

A shaky ad read and some friendly ribbing give way to a rare, candid conversion story: a Reformed pastor worn thin by 2020, family burdens, and Sunday dread begins asking God for an exit ramp he can’t yet name. An old friend—now Catholic—offers a simple challenge: read the Catechism to learn the Church from the Church. So he does, pencil in hand. Circles for “yes,” rectangles for “I need more,” triangles for “no way.” Then daily Mass. Then Latin Mass. What surprises him first is the familiarity—the lectionary, the reverence, the shape of worship echoing his Lutheran childhood. What changes him next is Scripture: Hebrews 12 reframes worship as a present communion with the saints; Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16 connect the key and the office in a typology he already loves to preach.

Meanwhile, life doesn’t pause. His wife grieves, becomes a guardian overnight, and shoulders state paperwork while he strains to shepherd a congregation on an empty tank. One prayer breaks through the fog: Mary, be a mother to my wife while she’s losing hers. Grace answers. The exit ramp appears on a Florida trip when his wife says, Maybe this is it. He resigns gently, stays through year‑end, and answers one summer’s worth of honest questions—including a sermon on Mary’s perpetual virginity built from the Reformers themselves. In January, they slip out of town to worship quietly. Friends notice and ask. There’s no recruiting, just real answers. The Holy Spirit moves: four couples and their children, plus two reverts, begin OCIA and enter the Church. Seventeen souls. More ripples follow—his oldest starts OCIA in another city.

We also talk about the temptations after conversion: platform, hot takes, “professional Catholic” life. He chooses stillness over speed, daily Mass over instant punditry, Our Lady and the saints over arguments for their own sake. He’s drafting a practical guide to help Catholics “speak Protestant,” especially on typology and authority, but only with spiritual direction and doctrinal checks. If you’ve ever wondered how Scripture, suffering, and friendship might converge to redirect a life—and a community—this story will meet you there.

If this moved you, share it with someone discerning, subscribe for more thoughtful conversations, and leave a review with the one moment that surprised you most.

Chapters

• 0:27 Cold Open And Sponsor Chaos
• 2:48 Introducing Aaron And The Conversion Tease
• 4:55 Keith’s Friend Reads The Catechism
• 8:45 Aaron’s History: Lutheran To Reformed
• 15:45 Call To Ministry And Reformed Pastoring
• 19:30 The Cage Stage And Arguing Catholicism
• 24:05 Lunch, Charity, And Reading The Catechism
• 29:15 First Masses And Latin Mass Impressions
• 33:30 2020 Exhaustion And Seeking An Exit
• 39:20 Marriage, Family Trials, And Discernment
• 44:15 Mary, Hebrews 12, And Typology
• 50:30 Preaching Mary’s Perpetual Virginity
• 55:30 Resignation, Florida Discernment, And Peace
• 1:01:30 Telling Friends Without Causing Division
• 1:07:00 Seventeen Friends Enter The Church
• 1:12:10 Kids, OCIA, And Wider Ripple Effects
• 1:17:00 Media Temptations And Laying Low
• 1:22:30 Saints, Our Lady, And Catholic Culture
• 1:27:00 Next Steps, Substack, And Prayer Intentions
• 1:33:20 Closing Thanks And Future Plans

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:27

I wanted to make it clear that we weren't going to play the taffy intro for this one.

SPEAKER_03: 0:43

So we're going to start off our show just doing our ad read, and then we're going to bring Aaron on.

SPEAKER_02: 0:51

Um, yeah, okay. Not used to uh being professional like this. I don't like it.

SPEAKER_03: 0:56

Yeah, and I'm not used to you starting the show off. It's really completely off kilter.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01

Not a fan of this one bit. Anyways, let's get into the ad read for uh you know, because because of you, Ant, I I hate saying their name now because you always make fun of me for saying requisite.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14

It's perfect. Just keep saying it the way you do, Rob.

SPEAKER_02: 1:16

Just stick with it. Okay, okay. Um, let me uh let me pull up this new little teleprompter feature we got here. Trying to make this professional. Um, anyway, so uh for any of you who don't know, we're we're sponsored by Requisant Sellers. Um, so the moral pillars of our society have rotten away. If we hope to rebuild anything from this barbarism, we need to keep Christ at the center of our efforts at Requisant Sellers. They want to draw more attention to the glorious feast of Christ the King. So they are hosting a sale for the entire month of October. You can get 20% off all their red wines with code based B-A-S-E-D. Go to requisite sellers.com. That's r-e-c-us-ant-t sellers.com. Don't put up stuff on the screen because that distracts me. And use code base for 20% off.

SPEAKER_03: 2:09

Go to R-E-K-W-I-T-Zsellers.com. We are the worst. We are the absolute worst for sponsors. And we just have and but real quick, Black Monk Rosaries is gonna take a sponsorship with us as well. I hope they're prepared for what we do here because uh Reccucin sellers, they are amazing. Um, you guys have two weeks left to get your 20% off. They are an awesome Catholic family. We love supporting them. If you guys like the show, go support Reckus and sellers, they deliver to most states. Uh, go check them out. Reckon sellers use code BASE for 20% off a checkout. Now, Rob, kick it into the intro that you're gonna use, and then we'll get Aaron on.

SPEAKER_02: 2:48

Okay, so we are gonna introduce Aaron by stealing from Fred and Keith Nestor, which only feels right. So perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 2:56

Uh a good friend of mine, very anti-Catholic at one point in time. He told me before when I first became Catholic, he says, we need to talk about this. And it was not gonna be good. I could tell he was very upset with me. Very theologically minded person. He just says, I need to understand you better. I need to understand what you believe better. I don't think that I really truly know why you did what you did. So help me to understand. What a humble question. It was completely humble. He opened that door, and so what I didn't want to do was go, all right, let me give you the you know, nine arguments or whatever, this or whatever that. I just thought you need to understand what the church is from the church. Let's get you a copy of the catechism and just read it. He said, Okay, and then here's what he did. He said, I made a chart. He read every paragraph of the catechism, and for the paragraphs that he agreed with, as a five-point Calvinist reformed guy, he said, every paragraph I gave either basically like a star, an X, or a check mark. And the check mark was I agree with this. The X was I don't agree with this. And the star was I need to find out more information. Okay. So he started going through this process, which led him. He read the whole catechism. We went to dinner at his house maybe a month after I gave him that challenge, and we're sitting around talking about the Lord. He goes, Hold on a minute, and he holds up the catechism and he just goes, This is beautiful. And then he said it down and he goes, Okay, never mind, I just need to tell you that. And I just thought, this is it, he's gonna be Catholic. Over the course of many months, he began with that chart, and then what he would do is he would research those areas where he wanted more information. We met a few months later, maybe it's a year later, and he sat down with me and he said, I need to I need to show you my chart. Pulls the chart out, he throws it down, and he's got it all sorted by the date. And he's like, Here's all the stuff, and he goes, But then I read this book and I had a talk with this priest, so then you know we moved these over to that category and we went through this thing, and then this day, we went through this for like two or three minutes, and then finally he pulled it off the table and he says, And now here's where I am today. And he threw a blank piece of paper down. He says, These are my objections. He's become Catholic. Wow, and I've seen what he's had to go through for this. One other quick story on this, it just happened. It's another one of my friends.

SPEAKER_03: 4:46

All right, well, I guess we don't need Aaron on. Keith just told the whole conversion story.

SPEAKER_00: 4:50

Yeah, I guess we're done.

SPEAKER_03: 4:51

Give it my guys. I'll bring them on. You do it because all right, Aaron Gorn, how are you, brother?

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

Good, good. Thank you for having me. Good night, everyone. Um, that's the story. That's it right there.

SPEAKER_03: 5:05

Right before the show started, I was I'm trying to think, I'm like, when was my first interaction with Keith? And I so I had seen Keith on YouTube, and I think I prayed the rosary on one of his like what like one of his rosary things. I I just sat and prayed the rosary with him in his stream one night, and then we had like a brief interaction on Twitter, and I think he was kind of shocked that I liked him. Like, like I think people have oh no, no, no. We're all shocked that he liked you. That yes, but I think he assumed like I was like a hardcore trad. And that and I'm like, nah, well, I'm not really like that, Keith. So we had a quick interaction on Twitter, and then we got Keith on the show and we've hit it off. And then I talked to Keith weekly, like I at least once a week we're on the phone talking with each other and stuff. But how do you know Keith?

SPEAKER_01: 5:55

Oh boy, um it goes back. So technically, my wife knew Keith long before I did. They went to church camp together, and I don't know, they might have been in well, my wife might have been in junior high, I don't know, maybe elementary. There's this picture there's this picture Keith has of them. There's this big bell on a big frame at this church camp, and Keith's climbed way up to the top, and my wife is down at the bottom. They both look like they're about six years old. And that, but at one point when I had dropped out of college for a time and came home, a mutual friend got a hold of Keith to come and try to put a band together, and uh, so that got going. And because I knew this mutual friend, all of this stuff, you know, Keith was the drummer, I kind of was just the tag-along guy, and so Keith Keith can correct anything if he's in the chat there, but that's as I ran. So that goes back to either '92 or '93.

unknown: 6:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01: 6:50

And so um he he stood up in my he was a groomsman in my wedding, and so I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 6:56

So you guys, all right.

SPEAKER_01: 6:57

So now I'll 33 years or something like that.

SPEAKER_02: 7:00

You're like Jimmy Buffett, and he's like 80s hair metal.

SPEAKER_01: 7:05

How does that no? So that's that's I don't know. It's not. I said, Well, this is interesting, it's probably not, but you know, just yesterday, Ace Fraley passed away, you know, and my first concert was Kiss when I was nine years, eight years old, 1979. So that's my musical pedigree is kind of rock, metal, classic rock, and stuff like that. We were both Metallica fans. Keith liked a lot more hardcore stuff than I did. Um, he introduced me to well, I don't think I've ever introduced Keith to anything. He knows so much more about bands than than I do, but um, I don't like everything he likes, and he certainly doesn't like everything I like. But we do have a uh the Venn diagram has a good crossover.

SPEAKER_03: 7:50

And you both got into ministry as well.

SPEAKER_01: 7:53

Yes, um, it was kind of my plan. I think back back then, going that far back, it really wasn't his plan. If you ever heard his story about how he became a pastor, he wasn't looking for it, it found him.

SPEAKER_03: 8:06

Keith, he even when he came on our show the first time he was on with us, he's just got preaching in his DNA. Like when even when he tells his conversion story, it just amps you up. You just like you you end up on fire for Christ every time you don't tell him I said this.

SPEAKER_01: 8:21

Do not tell him I said this. But he is far better at that than I am. Um I was a manuscript and note preacher, you know. That's how I gave sermons, it's how I was trained, but it's also how I was comfortable. It's like he looks at his, he might, you know, whatever notes he puts together, he looks at him for about 15 minutes and then he can go out and give an hour-long sermon without even looking at him again. That's not me.

SPEAKER_03: 8:43

Yeah, yeah. All right, so enough of the glazing of Keith Nestor. We all like him. Great.

SPEAKER_01: 8:48

That's what we're here for.

SPEAKER_03: 8:49

Yeah, all right. You you got all your you got all your shout-outs tonight, Keith. We're not gonna talk about you anymore. Um, okay, so what don't you why don't you take us back to um uh what what like give us like a generic upbringing you had and what led to your original conversion to Jesus Christ in the beginning, and then when the when the dominoes started to get a little troublesome for you where you where you had to you know figure something out with the church, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 9:14

So my early life as a Christian up to just last year. Um okay. Uh I I grew up in the church. I grew up in the Lutheran church. So um, if you don't know what that is, just brief description. I grew up with what would be in in mainline Protestantism, kind of a high liturgy.

SPEAKER_03: 9:33

So it was like Missouri Synod.

SPEAKER_01: 9:34

I it was not, it was um, it is today the ELCA, which you know, but it wasn't called that then. I just don't remember what it was called. Um, but it was that that denomination. But high liturgy, you know, the readings, the the you know, the uh the the lectionary, you know, so it but it would have been the revised standard lectionary.

SPEAKER_03: 9:57

Uh but they followed the Catholic lectionary, right?

SPEAKER_01: 10:00

Yes, except the revised part of it. So, you know, they wouldn't have Judith in it or Tobit or Wisdom, you know. So it was most, you know, across Protestantism, for those who use the lectionary, they pretty much all use what's called the revised common lectionary. And I think it's revised from the Catholic lectionary. But yes, the the origin the origin of it is the three-year cycle of the Catholic.

SPEAKER_03: 10:24

That's what my my wife was Lutheran, and it looked very much like a novus ordo. Yes, like her liturgy looked very much like a typical novus ordo you would go to on a Sunday.

SPEAKER_01: 10:34

There are a lot of common elements. When I when I first um attended a mass, which was just a daily mass with Keith, when I wasn't, I I was just it was just it was academic to me at that point. I was like, wow, a lot of this stuff is really familiar to me. But anyway, so I grew up in the Lutheran church, but it never nothing really took root, it didn't matter to me. And I probably only went till I was about 15 or 16. And then and then I just didn't, and I was kind of nothing at that point. I had a generic belief in God, a generic belief in the Christian God, but it wasn't until um, so I graduated high school in '89, it was in '92 that I would say I had a pretty dramatic conversion experience and gave my life to Jesus. And I ended up dropping out of college because I had been pretty directionless anyway at that point. And I knew I needed to get my life straightened out, not just in terms of my faith and um and giving my life to Jesus, but what in the world am I even doing? I've wasted, I basically wasted my life up to that point, and I needed to get reoriented, you know, to to the true north of Christ. So I dropped out of college, I moved home and um kind of got involved with this mutual friend I was just talking about. Um and man, things went really fast as I remember it then. He he wanted to do a music project, he he did that and got that going. That's how Keith got into the mix. I met my wife at the church that I started going to with them. She was she was actually a senior about to graduate, and uh we met and uh yeah, we started dating with the permission of her parents and you know, church leadership because it was a little bit odd because she was still in high school and I was I'm four years older than she is. At any rate, a lot of things happened right there in that nexus, you know, of that that nexus of time and space where certain people and certain events just really brought me into the church of my own volition now and very enthusiastically.

SPEAKER_04: 12:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:44

And so, as to what I found was when I when I really kind of gave my life to Christ, I would have said nothing ever stuck from my time as a Lutheran. But as soon as I started reading the scriptures, it was like I was reading, I was going back over old ground that I've covered before, and I couldn't, it was astonishing how much just came flooding in that was there, but I had just it never took root.

SPEAKER_03: 13:07

So you know, that's that's an interesting thing you're saying because for like uh I because I complain about like my lack of catechesis growing up, but it was once I started getting into it, it was like, Oh, yeah, yeah, that's what that oh, like all of the ritual you do in the liturgy does have meaning, and then when you start learning about this stuff, it kind of clicks for you, and you're like, Oh, that's what that was, that's what that was.

SPEAKER_01: 13:29

Yeah, it wasn't at all like I had to start from square one, it was all there, it just needed to be kind of ignited, you know. I suppose ignited by the Holy Spirit, and it was so, of course, all the you know, people see that, and I'm retaining a lot of scripture, I'm I'm you know, digesting, I'm devouring scripture. And of course, the comments of well, you should be a pastor. This feedback starts coming in. Because if you're very much into the scripture, then obviously you need to be a pastor. And I don't say that to denigrate that, you know, that advice, but it seems like that's just the one path. It's like if you're gonna know scripture, then you have to be a pastor. And I've come to the point where I don't think that's necessarily wise, but in my case, it's what I wanted to do, and um, but that was a long haul to get to that point. Um, probably not terribly relevant um for this, but suffice to say, the path from me determining or deciding that that really is what I would like to do to the point where I actually became a pastor was very convoluted. This church, that church, we both Cammy had to go to college, I had to finish college, and it was just kind of roundabout, and it took time before it got to that point.

SPEAKER_03: 14:45

So, about how old are you when you actually get into a place of leadership in a church?

SPEAKER_01: 14:52

Uh well, a place of leadership in the church. The I I first served as a deacon, so that would be an officer, you know, low local officers, elders and deacons. And I was a deacon probably 2005, something like that.

SPEAKER_03: 15:08

And this is in the ELCA? You would no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_01: 15:11

By now, I by now I'm reformed. By by that point, I've encountered uh a few different people who have moved me from where I was to now being reformed.

SPEAKER_03: 15:22

Who are those people? Who did you come across?

SPEAKER_02: 15:24

Well, if you would just let him continue the story, he wouldn't. I gotta pick up things.

SPEAKER_01: 15:28

I can't those things. I want to know exactly who something was. It's it's a okay. It's a okay. This isn't even live, Rob, it's just us talking. Yeah, yeah. But okay, so I had bounced around. I'd been, you know, I'd gone to a Baptist church, I'd gone to a quasi-Mennonite church, um, probably something else, if I remember, you know, I was kind of maybe stereotypical Protestant, but I was finding my way a little bit too because I was learning so much, and you know, different different people were having an influence in my life. But it was when I was in college at um, yeah, yeah, it was when I was back in college, probably about 19, let me think, '93, um, a reformed Baptist pastor and I struck up a relationship, and he's the one who introduced me to reformed theology. And through him, it was R. C. Sproul who who became my guy.

SPEAKER_03: 16:26

The reason I asked that is because my and I know this is your conversion story, and I've told this on air, but like my original conversion or reversion had to do with me listening to Protestant preaching on the radio and listening to them. I bought an RC Sproul book on the Book of Romans, and it like sent my mind for a loop. I was like, like it was just kind of kind of wild. It eventually led to me being Catholic, but uh I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01: 16:54

He'd be pleased to know that. Um, yeah, so I I actually met him once in St. Louis, but that's beside the point. Um, so that started a trajectory theologically for me, where now it's no longer just am I going to be a pastor? It's I know that I want to be a reformed pastor. And eventually through kind of a roundabout, again, my no paths for me were straight, but um, I ended up being asked to serve as an interim pastor in a Dutch Reformed denomination. It's the same denomination that John Bergsma used to be in. And um, so I went there, I was supposed to serve a year as an interim pastor. Theirs had just stepped down. They didn't want to go an extended time with without some sort of stability there. So I had been serving in leadership at another church anyway, and that same mutual friend that I mentioned before was there, and he kind of introduced me to people. They offered me the job for an uh for a year, interim pastor. But three months into that year, the search committee came to the leaders and said, if Aaron's interested, we think he's our guy. And I was interested. And so that started a conversation, which also led to um you know, a more permanent calling or a more official calling. It also led to me um taking seminary classes at the same time. So I was in seminary while I was a pastor, kind of doing both things, and eventually graduated from a reformed seminary with an So this is what 2005? I started in 2009 at the church that and I was at the same church as a pastor the whole time, 15 years at one church, and uh um and that started late in 2009, and it ended at the my last day was the last day of two of 2024.

SPEAKER_03: 18:50

Wow, that's crazy. Okay, so so now you're you're there as a pastor, um, and you do what uh so I did nothing. No, you you did like six 16 years there, right? Like 15, like you just said, yeah. Oh, from oh nine to 24, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 19:08

So 15 years 15 plus a couple of months, yes.

SPEAKER_03: 19:11

When when does the is was Keith's conversion the thing that triggers you looking into the Catholic Church, or were there other things in in the along the way that started doing that?

SPEAKER_01: 19:21

Keith's conversion was the thing that triggered me wanting to wring his neck. Um so well, actually, it goes back before that. Um again, he was looking at the Catholic Church a while before he converted, and so I as I remember it, I hate to tell this knowing that he's in the chat because we remember this differently. But I remember that we were at some event where we were playing, so we we ended up playing like praise band stuff too at different churches and different Christian events around the area. And I as I remember it, we were at a school and they were having some several churches had put something on together, and we were almost ready to go on. Like the band was about ready to go on and do the opening praise songs and stuff, and he mentioned to me that he'd been talking to a friend that he'd met, um, and that he was considering becoming Catholic. And I am I am deep in my cage stage of reformed theology right now. And I should explain that. The cage stage is this when you go from anything else to being reformed, you become rabid, you become and it becomes something that you club people over the head with to try to get them to believe what you believe, you know, and you maybe just figured it out, but you but you can't believe, you know, it took me 10 years, but you can't believe that they're not believing it right now.

SPEAKER_03: 20:42

It's like the set of economicism of the Protestant world.

SPEAKER_01: 20:46

You become really dangerous and really destructive, and you need to be locked in a cage for at least a year. That's the cage stage. So, but I was I was well into that, and and boy, I laid into him about that, and you know, uh justification by faith alone. And I I don't even remember all the stuff I said to him, but I'm sure it was quite a tirade. But um, at any rate, uh, and the the singer in our group kind of had to get us to shut up and you know, and kind of bring us hey, we got we got songs to go, we have worship to go lead, and you guys are sitting here arguing in the you know in the background, having a theological debate when you have to sing.

SPEAKER_03: 21:23

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01: 21:25

So I as I recall, that was my first uh that was his first salvo about telling me that he was looking at the Catholic Church. But you know, our timelines diverged because he went out to Philly and um, you know, eventually came back to Iowa. And you know, so I think I think he's 2017 is when he converted. And uh it was nowhere on my radar at all at that time. But he and I, you know, we both had we both had young families. We lived just far enough away from each other that's really outside of the zone of where it's convenient when you've got a bunch of young kids. And so I think that the I think the hostility that I felt subsided. Um, it really wasn't there anymore, but just circumstances kept us from really being a part of each other's lives for a lot of years. So um, I don't know when that first encounter was at that school that I was talking about, but by the time he converted, I don't remember that he and I were in much contact with each other, other than Facebook and you know, stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03: 22:31

So so what starts the dominoes falling for you then? Like what are the first things that sought to trigger you where you're looking at things a little differently?

SPEAKER_01: 22:40

Well, it started because we did we kind of got back in touch with each other, and uh I I think it probably I'd seen him on Facebook doing his Rosary Crew stuff, which just I was like, what in the world? You know, what has happened to Keith, you know? Um and so, but I also kind of thought I kind of miss him, you know. Again, don't tell him I said that. But so I started, I kind of trolled him a little bit. And uh you troll troll someone, no, never anthony. Let me explain to you what trolling means. Um, so I got I watched a few of his videos, and you know, like one of them, this is think so to me, Anthony. I remember you kind of going on a tire about how Catholic converts can throw out a video on why solar scriptura is a bunch of, you know, and and they get a you know, a billion hits. And Keith, I think, was the one you were talking about.

SPEAKER_03: 23:42

That's how that was our first interaction because Keith put out a video about Sola Scriptura, and I came on the show like the next day, and I was like, I don't get it. These converts come on and they do a video on this, it gets 80,000 views, and me and Rob are over here slogging it out two hours a night, two not two times a week, and we can't get over three thousand views. And keep keep saw it.

SPEAKER_01: 24:01

Yeah, so I saw that, which which was a little bit later, obviously, but um, so this is uh this is 2023. And after uh, you know, I'd commented on some videos of his, and that's when he was on your channel. I found this out later because he's well, actually, it was much later than that. Sorry, I'm getting out of the timeline, but um we connect, okay. We we talk back and forth and thought, well, let's let's meet halfway for lunch and just kind of catch up. And so we did that, and which meant about a 45-minute drive for each of us, and it was great. Uh, it was a good time catching up. I still was like, I don't understand half the stuff you're talking about and why you would even want to do this. But on my way home, I thought to myself, you know, if if if we're gonna reconnect in this way, which is what I wanted to do, I need to at least understand his world from his point. I need to do the work of being a friend and understanding his world from his perspective. And he had in one of his videos had um said something like, you know, if you want to know what the Catholic Church believes, and he held one of these up and said, You should read the Catholic Catechism, because that's what's you know, as opposed to what this person or that person says or whatever, like that. And I know a lot of people in the Protestant world, a lot of them that you probably interact with on X, Anthony, is uh, and and probably you too, Rob. You know, they're coming from modern evangelicalism or non-denominate non-denominationalism. So you talk to them about a catechism, and they're just like, hey, I got the Bible. Yeah, but that's not my world. Almost everywhere I was ever a part of a church, there was a catechism. And as a pastor, I was bound by confessions, you know, by and we had the creeds, it might interest you. Uh, we we had the apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian, the same ones, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 25:58

But we had the Reformed uh one holy Christian apostolic church, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:04

Yeah, yeah, but we had our reformed doctrines as well, you know, the confessions that were specifically reformed, but I've always been bound by other confessions and stuff. So to read a catechism, it's nothing, you know. To me, that wasn't some act of bravery on my part to pick up a catechism, it was just second nature. So I started reading it, and that's what he's talking about in that clip from Pints. And I just started um a few of the details are wrong, but I don't, yeah, there's no way you're gonna see that. I I was circling, you know, for every article, there's an article number. Yeah, and so I just to keep track of where are things going with this and how am I processing this, I just started. If I agreed with a particular article, I would circle it, the number. If I wasn't sure, needed didn't quite understand it, or wasn't sure I would need to understand terms better, then I would put a box around the number, a rectangle. And if I flat out was like, yeah, no way, I put a triangle around the number. So that's how I did it, and it was all academic. It was all right, challenge accepted. I'll read the Catholic Catechism and try to understand your world a little bit better. So that started um probably in May or June of 2023, because we had lunch together on May 4th, 2023. And the only reason I remember that is because that's Star Wars Day, you know, May the 4th.

SPEAKER_03: 27:27

So May the 4th.

SPEAKER_01: 27:29

So that's why I remember that. Because I'm a nerd. If you can't tell from my background, I'm a nerd.

SPEAKER_03: 27:35

So um, so okay, so that's yeah, so let me let me that's 2023. Um, when did you come across us? Because we've been interacting with you like way before you converted, like you were still Protestant when you started watching our show and interacting with us and stuff.

SPEAKER_02: 27:51

Yeah, I feel like he was maybe in the live chat of our first show with Keith. Oh, that's possible.

SPEAKER_01: 27:59

No, I I I can actually this part I do kind of remember well. Whenever that was, um, so by the time Keith was on your show, I had gone to one daily mass with him. I'd come over to Cedar Rapids and I just wanted to see what a mass looked like. I I don't even remember if I'd finished the catechism at that point. I probably hadn't, but still, I'm just kind of this this learning. It's like I was I was giving myself my own college course or whatever on the Catholic Church. And uh so I came over to I came over to his uh to his church and we went to mass, went to a daily mass, and he introduced me to his priest afterwards, and I can't remember if I went back to his house or whatever, but it was good time just connecting. And then down the road, this other friend of mine who was was and is a pastor, he and I started talking about different things, and it got around to talking about mass and talking about some of the debates, Protestant Catholic debates and stuff like that. And he was talking about how he'd never been to a Latin Mass. And I said, Well, I've got a friend who goes to one, and uh, in fact, I thought about I have thought about going just to see one. I saw a daily mass, I'd kind of like to see a Latin Mass. So he and I ended up going to a Latin Mass at the Feast of the Assumption, and that's when Keith was on your show. He was telling you about how we were I was coming over and he was talking to you about how he thought I was trolling him when I first made contact with him. Like I wanted to try to argue with him again or something, which was a reasonable conclusion on his part given some of our previous yeah, he was on our show August 10th of 23. Yeah, so in August 15 was right, as in August 15th.

SPEAKER_02: 29:46

Yeah, yeah, the assumption.

SPEAKER_01: 29:47

So, yeah, it was right before that, but I think I found that because I was looking for another video. Uh, there's so many threads here. I think I was looking for a video for a Trent Horn video that I had seen, and I couldn't find it. And I think you had been talking about Trent Horn, or maybe it was in the title or something like that. That's how I saw your channel.

SPEAKER_03: 30:06

And then I do those videos, by the way, because we're hoping against some of his audience. So we'll do it, we'll do something.

SPEAKER_02: 30:11

Just try to so on August 15th of 2023 on the Feast of the Assumption, we did a show with Trent Horn. Oh, you did? So you probably searched for Trent Horn. That's it.

SPEAKER_01: 30:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_02: 30:24

I saw that.

SPEAKER_01: 30:25

So that video pops up, but over on the side are the suggested videos, and I see Keith there. I was like, what the heck? So then I watched that and I saw him talking, and it was like right early on, and you guys started talking about it, and he was talking about this friend of his who was coming over for a Latin mass with another pastor friend. Well, that was me. That was what was going on there. So yeah, that's so that's August 2023, and I'm still just kind of I'm studying, you know, this and I'm enjoying that kind of a thing. Um, but no interest, absolutely zero interest in the Catholic Church, but but kind of um kind of delighting in the fact that there's so much more in common between what I where I was and where Keith was than I ever thought uh imaginable, honestly. Because of the caricatures, you know, because of you know, you learn about Catholicism from reformed people who don't really like Catholicism, it tends to skew your view a little bit, and you your knowledge is very limited and selective anyway. But um, you know, uh G.K. Chesterton in his book uh The Catholic Church and Conversion, he talks about the three stages of conversion that Catholic that people who convert to the Catholic Church go through. And the first one is deciding to play fair with the Catholic Church. You just decide to, you know, to take the Catholic Church at its own from its own perspective, you know. And uh and the second step is you become uh you you find you're surprised by the amount of truth that you find present in the Catholic Church, and you're actually a little bit happy about it, you know. It it kind of you're no, these people are Christian, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_03: 32:14

So yeah, because because you're you're trained to think that we are a pagan entity masquerading as Christian. So when you start to find out, oh wait, they actually are Christian, it probably softens your heart, and you're like, oh great.

SPEAKER_01: 32:29

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And and just to know those points of contact are so much there because especially for you know, in my case, where I've already grown, I've grown up with the creeds anyway. And just to have all that common ground, I mean, how much of the catechism is an exposition on the creeds? Right. There's so much that's there that's that's the same, you know, or at least it's it's close enough, it's it's very much common ground, and so that's that's you know, looking back on it, that's probably where I was at the time, but I was not aware of that, you know, in terms of Chester stuff, Chesterton's three stages. His third stage is where the convert is desperately trying not to convert to become Catholic. Yeah, and I don't know, I don't know if I really kind of went through that one that way or not. You know, another part of my story that it would go on and on and on, but the my reality is that in spring of 2021, I was already ready to not be a pastor if God wanted to call me out of it. Um, the events of 2020 and the way I experienced it and everything like that, I was spent. It had taken everything out of me. And you know, so I I I kind of had that prayer, kind of had it out with God a little bit in prayer. And you know, it's like I'm on an interstate driving at night, and it's foggy, and visibility is about 50 feet. And if there's an exit ramp up there somewhere that God wants to show me, I'll take it. And that was in 2021, and then things kind of escalated in different ways, some of it family deaths in the family, and a lot of other situations that came on my plate. That a lot of stuff just happened that you know, there's a lot of things, it it takes emotional energy to be able to give yourself to certain things. And I don't know if I I should say especially as a pastor, but there are many things you do as a pastor that if you have an empty tank, it just starts to ruin you if you have to do certain things, you know, certain tasks.

SPEAKER_03: 34:35

You you see the value in a celibate priesthood, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_01: 34:38

I I do actually. I've asked that I've been asked that question a lot, and you know, about you know, with the assumption being, yeah, that's crazy to have a celibate priesthood, but I see it in a whole different light now. I see, I see the wisdom in it because I was torn. And and there there was a period in there after after my wife's probably after uh her dad died in late 2021, that kicked a lot of things into gear, set a lot of things in motion that necessarily involved me getting highly involved in talking to this entity, talking to that entity, and and she became the guardian, legal guardian of an older sister overnight who has a mental disability. And so you're dealing with the state, you're trying to find information for them that you don't even know exists, you know, and so it just took a lot out of me, you know. Not not to make it a big sob story. Everybody has lots of problems in life.

SPEAKER_03: 35:31

It life can be very hard, but it's to be doing that, dealing with all that, and have to shepherd an entire church and and be responsible for the souls of an entire church. That that's a very tall order when you're not when you're when your heart's not in the right place.

SPEAKER_01: 35:49

Yeah, and mine wasn't. I I hadn't I was I was running on empty to quote an old song, and um, and it there were times where I felt like I really had just one parishioner, and it was my wife. And and everything that was going on with you know, with concerning her family and the things going on there, it took everything I had just to do that, just to tend to the things that I needed to tend to there. And you know, in retrospect, maybe I should have um recognized that better than I did, and maybe I should have had a conversation about resigning long before I did. But you know, you're you're near a man, you just want to tough it out. I can do this, you just get through it. And and there are certain aspects of being a pastor that, like any job, can get a little like you could almost do it in your sleep, some of the things, but but it's certainly not everything, it's probably not it's not most things, and um yeah, so it just it got really hard. I got to the point where every Sunday when I'd wake up, you know, you're in that fog and you wake up and you're not quite sure what day it is yet. But when I would realize it was Sunday, I would instantly be sick to my stomach. Oh that all of that, so again, dating that to I mean, it started in 2020. By spring of 2021, I've had that prayer um with God, I've had that little wrestling match with God about, you know, I'm ready if you want to show me the exit ramp. But I didn't act on that for a long time. And so, you know, reconnect with Keith two years later in 2023, start reading the catechism. And yeah, he said in that in that clip, in the uh maybe about a year, I don't, it's hard for me to remember the timeline, but um the thing is there are layers to this because all this time, while I'm more and more wanting to find that exit ramp, wanting God to show me that exit ramp, my wife doesn't want anything to do with that. She doesn't, and understandably, we're my my my church that I was at, that's our hometown. Yeah, we're both from there, and so we know a lot of people there. A lot of the people at that church were our friends before I was the pastor there. Um, so it's tough, you know. There's a lot of connections, there's a lot of dependence in a good way, you know, mutual the people betrayed.

SPEAKER_02: 38:19

It's Midwest small town, I mean, right? So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 38:23

And so there's no easy way to think about doing that, especially when it's your it's your job, you know, this is what I trained to do, it's all I ever wanted to do. You know, I I was either gonna die as the pastor of that church or retire at whatever age, or if at some point they decided they didn't want me anymore, they could tell me it was time to move on. But resigning was never ever part of the plan, except that it kind of became my plan. If I could see a way out, if I could, I was confident that if I tried to resign just because I was tired and couldn't do it anymore, I would screw things up royally. And so I just kept trying to wait on God to show me when and where, you know, that exit ramp was. And yeah, it was a long time. And again, I I don't think I did everything as well as I could have, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 39:14

So, so how is okay? So, now how is your wife handling you looking into the Catholic Church? Is she like she is there a lot of tension in the home during this period?

SPEAKER_01: 39:25

Not at first, not at first, because this is what I do. I, you know, I get I get something that I'm interested in, and then all of a sudden Amazon boxes start showing up at our house, and I just read, you know, and it's what I do, and so in in one sense, it was no different than anything she'd ever seen. She did start to get nervous the more I was hanging around with Keith. Um, but she likes Keith. She likes Keith. So, but you know, she's she's been through this before, she's been through it. The kind of a joke in our family is if if I say we need to talk about something, she's just like, no, not again. Not again. We went from Methodist to Baptist to this to that to reformed and said, not again. This is it, and but that really wasn't what was going on. But as she sees me reading more, she gets she starts to fear the worst. She feared it before it actually became a thing. But here's where the here's kind of where the it's hard for me to get back in my mind of that time because I was my world was just going off the rails because of all this other stuff that I talked about. I wasn't thinking clearly about anything at that point. Um, but she's very nervous about what's going on, and and I probably don't even really know for sure what's going on, other than yeah, one by one, any the objections that I see about the Catholic Church are dropping. But in my mind, I already know that the time is coming when I'm gonna be trying to figure out where we're gonna go to church anyway, because I know my time as a pastor is coming to an end. And so I'm thinking about possibilities, and I know that it's I know that it's got to be something with uh, you know, a liturgy. I'm not gonna go, you know, I'm not gonna go to a lot of churches. There's a lot of churches that weren't possible for us to go to. And I'm I'm looking at this from a view of not just what I want, but what we want. And I can see that the Catholic Church is a non-starter for her. So, regardless of what I was thinking, there's the there's the what I was learning theologically and what I might have been inclined toward, as compared to what's actually gonna, where can we go where we can be at peace, you know? Because I just couldn't envision anything where we're at different churches. That to me, that wasn't a possibility. I suppose if God had said something and it was very clear, but I did not have that indication and it wasn't my plan. So, you know, 2024 at some point is where you know the the the last dominoes probably fell, but it was much it was earlier in 2024 when I really saw, and I think the leaders really for the first time saw just how um just how uh frazzled I was.

SPEAKER_03: 42:21

Um how little I you were you were in our live chat for almost every one of our shows back then, and we were always making jokes about yeah, yeah, sure, sure, Aaron, you're Protestant, all right. We all knew, like we knew as soon as you start looking into it, it's kind of like you're you're kind of just going, you know. It's uh it's anybody who actually does put the time in to study it and look into it, they end up there. So we all kind of knew a year before you had even gone through any of this that you were eventually going to become Catholic. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 42:52

Well, you know, as a credit to your show, you you know, you've said a lot that you want your show to be a place where people like to come and hang out, and I found that to be true.

SPEAKER_04: 43:02

Oh, that's great.

SPEAKER_01: 43:02

It was fun to come and hang out, and yeah, I mean, yeah, I wasn't I wasn't in full agreement with you guys, but again, I was kind of in that phase where it was it was nice to see that there's actually a fellowship that I can have with Catholics because I'd been trained for so long that I can't, you know. It's so weird, you know. Now on X, it's so weird to see the comments that get put out of the out there how Catholics don't know their Bible at all. And I read that as like I see it, and then all of a sudden I realize, oh, wait a minute, that's me. I can work with Hebrew and Greek, and I was a pastor for 15 years, and that but I don't know my Bible, huh?

SPEAKER_03: 43:38

Yeah, well, so at what point do you get introduced to Scott Han? Because every convert has their Scott Han moment where they go and they discover the the Protestant pastor who explains his conversion through scripture, right? So I you had to come across him at some point.

SPEAKER_01: 43:54

Well, I first came across him in a book, you know. That that was my first introduction, and um, you know, it's funny. I think Keith gave me his uh Han's conversion video many, many, many years ago, and it did nothing for me. I I watched it and I was like, you know, I think he gets to a point at the end where he's talking about when he sees the host elevated in mass and just what it did to him. And I'm sitting there watching that going, What is wrong with you? And that, but it was different reading, you know, this the the book that he and Kimberly wrote together. Um really striking to read that, and so yeah, that hit me very differently at that point. It that would have been it for me, um, reading that book. I did at one point, I drove this was late, late, late in 2024. I might, I think I probably maybe had already announced my resignation by this point. I announced my resignation to the leaders in early September.

SPEAKER_03: 44:57

I announced the reason you gave them.

SPEAKER_01: 44:59

Oh, they all knew it was exhaustion. Oh, okay. I was everybody could see it, and and frankly, there were things where I had dropped the ball on some things too. I just, you know, it was I was trying to spin too many plates, and some of them were dropping. And um, and they saw it, you know, but they they didn't ask me to. They, you know, we were we had some talks. I tried to explain what was going on. Um, and nobody again, nobody, it wasn't just me who really didn't have any space for the possibility that I would resign. It just wasn't the plan, you know, yeah, for anyone. But I I don't think anybody realized how just how strung out I was, you know, how you know Bilbo tells Gandalf that he feels like butter scraped over too much bread. I gotta throw in some Tolkien references, guys.

SPEAKER_03: 45:49

People are answering the comments and talking about Lord of the Rings.

SPEAKER_01: 45:51

Yeah, so okay, okay. So now so that that's how I felt, and they saw that and they knew that, but but so I told them. But what happened was it was so Cammy and I were about ready to leave for Florida for a vacation at the end of August. And there was there was something that that we became aware of and talked about it, and it was something that was definitely going to I was going to have to face when we got back from vacation. And it wasn't on the surface anything problematic. If you were looking from the outside, you wouldn't have thought anything about it, but it was something we were aware of, and it was something that struck us in a way where for the very first time, this is this was it, this was the moment, she said to me, Maybe this is the exit ramp. And I was like, You gotta be kidding me. You see that now too, and and so we we decided this vacation, we're gonna spend a lot of time talking and praying and really discerning the will of the Lord. And is he calling us? Is this it? Is he calling me to resign? And we went down to Florida to the Gulf and um spent a nice week down there, but we spent a lot of time talking about this too, and we ended up um we ended up deciding, and when we came back, I resigned. So that was early September, early October. We announced it to the congregation, and and then I on their request, because it was it was amicable. Um, they asked if I would be willing to finish out the year, and I was because I didn't have anything lined up anyway.

SPEAKER_03: 47:28

Throw any throw any Catholicism in your sermons?

SPEAKER_01: 47:31

You know, I I did, but not really intentionally. I mean, no, I didn't. You know what? I'm gonna say I didn't, and here's why because going back to 2023, this is a tangent. You want me to go down this road or not? Yes, okay. In 2023, yeah, Advent of 2023. For Advent, uh I'm doing a sermon series just through Luke One, and um so I'm reading on you know, these passions I've preached these before. You know, I don't have my reading glasses on, so it's probably good that I can't see you definitely preached a sermon about Mary.

SPEAKER_03: 48:09

Okay, who that was Keith? Keith, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 48:12

Okay, so what happened was I'm supposed to just spend my whole time reading the comments, right? Yes, yes. Bull Joshua Charles, please.

SPEAKER_03: 48:19

Take your glasses off, we'd rather you not see them.

SPEAKER_01: 48:21

Yeah. Um, it was it was advent, and of course, I've gone through Luke 1 a thousand times, and I'm just like, I, you know, what can I do that maybe brings this to life in a way that I haven't before? And so, you know, of course, I've read by that time different things about from the Catholic Catechism, but I'm looking at, excuse me, I'm looking at different reformers and what they said, and I'm just dumbfounded about how they can believe that Mary remained a virgin, you know. I said, How can you think that? And it wasn't that long before that that a guy had asked me at church, it was funny, he just out of nowhere, he said, he said, you know, just it literally out of nowhere. It was just this, you know, the Catholics believe that Mary was a virgin the rest of her life after she gave birth to Jesus. I said, Yep. He said, But we don't think that. I said, Nope. Why not? I said, Well, because the New Testament talks about his brothers, you know. I gave the thing, you know, I gave that answer. That was just what I thought. And so when I see that these reformers don't think that way, that that she did remain a virgin, I was like, How in the world can they think that? So I started looking into that and discovered their reasons why, which you know is just the ancient doctrine of why, you know. And I was like, wow, that's really interesting. And but you know, I'm I'm ecumenical enough. I'm not interested in fighting with every denomination. I'm interested, you know, we can all look around the world and understand that Christians on whatever level we can need to stand together with with what's going on, and that's where I'm at right now. And I'm just like, you know, I don't like seeing the baby thrown out with the bathwater when there are differences. You don't have to jettison everything, you know, just because it might smell a little Catholic or something like that. And so I just kind of dropped a phrase into this Advent sermon about how it seems that the best explanation for why Mary was surprised at what Gabriel said to her was that she had taken a vow of celibacy, you know, and and just and it was really it was really not fair, to be honest. Because I said that and then I just kind of moved on because that wasn't my main point. But boy, I got questions about that afterwards. And but honestly, some of them are really good. Uh they were really open, you know. Some of the people in the church they were asking me, you know, what about this? And I said, Yeah, well, here's the thing, and oh, that makes sense. And we just had good conversations. I had a couple that, you know, I don't think really wanted to listen, but that didn't surprise me, and we just moved on. But what I would often do in the summertime as people are coming and going and vacations and stuff like that, I would do a series through part of the summer where I would just take theological questions that people had or whatever, and I would build a sermon based on that. I would just answer those questions through the medium of a sermon. And so, guess you know, guess what the number one question I got was? You know, and I and I had I had been getting that question too. It wasn't just then. So, so I decided to give a sermon um in answer to these questions on the perpetual virginity of Mary. So that would be the one sermon that I gave, I think. I mean, I don't know how much of it was in, you know, how much of it crept into other sermons, I'm not sure. Yeah, again, I'm bound confessionally, you know, it's not like I was trying to be a rebel, but I think I gave that one and and it it kind of that's the one that Keith posted. That's why I think he's saying that because he posted it on X. That one's actually on my YouTube channel. There's not much there, but that that's there.

SPEAKER_03: 51:58

So even Catholics, I think, don't grasp what we're saying when we say she's a perpetual virgin. That means her hymen remained intact after giving birth. Like that it's it's you're saying her her virginity remained intact even through the birth. Like it is very miraculous what Catholics believe. It's not just uh she didn't have sex, you know, it's a it's a very deep doctrine.

SPEAKER_01: 52:22

So it is, and and I came across, I really didn't get that, you know. Even once we're in 2025 and and we know that this is the direction we're going, I was still like, I don't know, that one just doesn't make sense to me. And it seems like people don't necessarily agree fully on that. So I don't know, do we have to? But then I read um Brant Petrie on on that, and I was like, oh, okay, well, that does it make really, really good sense then.

SPEAKER_03: 52:46

So well, you can like for me, some of the things that I've come to even think deeper about, especially if you're doing this show, is like, look at look at the um the versions of Christianity that don't believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary versus the ones that do. So like if you have the Orthodox and the Catholics, look at the monastic life that gets born from the belief in the perpetual virginity. Like you see virginity as something holy and sacred. So people take these vows of celibacy and to emulate our lady, and these monastic communities are born from it. And that's how we have the Bible written down through the ages because these monks then transcribe the scriptures, they also transcribe all of the Greek myths and all of ancient literature is transcribed in these monasteries because they believed in the perpetual virginity of Mary. If it was just Protestantism that got born from, you know, if it was just the Bible, like we wouldn't have a Bible if it was just left to Protestants. The institution of the church itself is so miraculous because it gives birth to an entire civilization and it's based in these monasteries that are that are writing down these books and get passing these things down to the next generation. It's really amazing.

SPEAKER_01: 54:02

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it was uh to your question about the sermons, too. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is just one of those things where I to me, it's like, okay, here's something that we could embrace as Protestants, that the first Protestants did embrace, and yet some it really, you know, along the line, at some point it gets jettisoned and people don't believe that anymore. And you see that on X and everywhere else online. It doesn't matter whether they reformers believe that or not, you know, they're wrong. And yeah, but there's good reasons for it. And so that's you know, that was a sermon. Others, again, there might have been other things in there, but on on the timeline of things, in late August, early September, all we really decided was it's time to resign. After it was announced to the congregation in early October, we really started talking earnestly then about what's next, because that had been a live question for me for a while because I saw a what's next on the horizon. And but it needed to be together, it needed to be an us decision. I didn't want it to become a I didn't want to, I didn't want our marriage to to be strained when really all of this, all of this trauma, all of this stuff that we were going through that I was going through, it really brought the two of us closer. Yeah, um, one of the good things that happened through that is that our marriage really, really grew. Um, it was through the crucible of that we grew much closer.

SPEAKER_03: 55:39

And I didn't want to jeopardize that by you know trying to love is love is for in suffering, right? Like so your wife sees that you're going through this internal torment and she's I mean, man, you you really see the value of the sacrament of marriage. It's it's like you two really do build each other up and you and you lead each other towards heaven. So so now this is October you announced to to the congregation. Do you guys go through OCIA or do you like how how do you go about making the decision to become Catholic?

SPEAKER_01: 56:14

We well, we're both uh voracious readers, and I had already been reading a lot, and she decided to um to kind of she decided to look into some of these things for herself. Um, and I think that one of the things, one of the reasons why I will give two reasons why she was willing to do that. The lesser reason is because she um she saw changes in me, and she couldn't give any other account for it other than the way that what I was reading and studying the spirituality that I was looking into was changing me. And so I think I think my life and how it changed me was the strongest apologetic that could have been offered to her, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 57:05

Same thing for me and my and my wife.

SPEAKER_02: 57:07

I imagine, especially after a difficult time like you were going through.

SPEAKER_01: 57:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, with with the COVID thing, it's like one day in the spring of 2020 I got angry about stuff at church and I stayed angry for a year. It was exhausting. You know, there was always something, there was always a fight, there was always a conflict, and so that that was kind of how that went. And it was just, yeah. So yeah, that's what I the kind of thing I would do. But you know, a lot of the a lot of the sharp edges kind of got chiseled off during during that time and and smoothed out, and just in our relationship, too. And so that was one thing. I think that was one thing that made her willing to look into something that she didn't want to be interested in at all. You know, the other thing was by the time by the time her mother is in hospice care, I'm far enough in my thinking where you know, I'm becoming comfortable with different things. I've become convinced largely by Hebrews 12 and the comparison there of, you know, you've not come to a mountain flaming with fire, you know, Sinai, but you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to the Father, to the angels, to the this, to the that, to the to the spirits of uh the righteous made perfect. And it's like, okay, so he's saying that by virtue of being in Christ and worship, we are in the presence of the Father and the Son, and the angels and the Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints, the spirits of the of the righteous made perfect.

SPEAKER_03: 58:46

Yeah, he he writes that in in the present, but you are now you are now in it. He's not talking about some future event, he's writing it that you're in the present.

SPEAKER_01: 58:55

Yeah, and really all of this stuff, you know, it it really was the case that I was going to have to be convinced by scripture. It's just how I was wired. And I just I began to get convinced of certain things, and I could become convinced of one thing and say, Well, I can be convinced of this. There's no way I'm gonna be Catholic, you know, but I'm convinced of at least this. And those things, you know, those dominoes gradually fell. And by the time her mother was in hospice care, um, and she didn't go into life, uh, end of life care right away. But I'm at this point, I'm seeing what it's doing to her. She's very faithful daughter, visiting her mom all the time, you know. And, you know, with dementia, you lose your your parent twice, kind of a thing. She's going through that. Yeah, you know, it's it's tearing me up to see her going through that. And I just started praying, Mary, please be a mother to my wife while she's losing her earthly mother. And I think she got involved. Beautiful prayer. Yeah. And and I think that um, yeah, and I'm starting to get broken up a little bit, but I think that was a big part of why she became willing to look at what I had been looking at. And it wasn't until, you know, again, after the announcement, because I really didn't understand where she was, she didn't tell me. I found out one time down the road. I said, We're talking, it's like, how are we even having this conversation? And she's like, Well, it's possible that I have my own stash of books that you just don't know about, you know. So she's reading stuff. I don't know what's even going on in real life. Um, but you know, when we really, really, really can finally talk openly about this after we know I have resigned, I've announced it anyway, and we start to have the question of what's next. It was kind of one of my great delights to find out that this was a a live possibility for her. Yeah, so we started talking about it. And I'm not gonna tell you that it was like boom, we're in. There were all kinds of, you know, honestly, even up to the weekend of Easter Vigil, we we had these check-in moments, you know, are we really doing this? Yeah, you know, and it's not not out of doubt, but it's just such a radical thing, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:20

Um did did the um did the church scandals come into play at all for you, or are you just um yes and no?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:31

Um well, scandals. There's a lot I wasn't aware of.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:35

I just mean like all the because it's very contentious in the Catholic Church right now. You have Catholics criticizing the Pope, and you know, there's a lot of confusion coming out. So, like, did that did that have a factor in you like any of the resistance, or did you kind of just say, all right, well, all families are messy?

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:53

Yeah, I mean it kind of like that, but you know, again, because when you study your way into the Catholic Church, some of that culture stuff that's going on, it's like I it's not that it doesn't matter, but it's not part of what's driving you to make a decision or come to a conclusion. So if you come to if you so here's me on the Pope, Isaiah 22, the steward, okay, Shevna, Eliakim, keys of the house of David, and all of that, the typology and the prefigurement of Jesus. Matthew 16. Yes, as soon as I see that and see those connections, because I've been into typology for years, long before I ever even looked at the Catholic. Oh, really? It's my jam, you know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:36

Oh, I didn't know that. So that oh man, you you must have been in your wheelhouse once you started seeing all the connections.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:41

Oh, yeah, yeah, 100%. And it's like it's kind of like, you know, I've said before, because scripture was so central, it almost had to be that way. And it was when it all started going, and looking back on it, to me, it's kind of like, and this would be you know, Bergsma has a book called Stunned by Scripture, How the Bible Made Me Catholic. I totally get what he means by that title and subtitle. Now, I wasn't aware it was doing that to me for a long time, you know. Um, but seeing those things, seeing those connections and the richness of it, I was primed for that because that's the kind of thing I liked to do. My favorite things to do in sermons were to tie in old and new and show patterns and fulfillment. That's what I almost always tried to do. So I was just ready to see that. But but once you see that, and once you say, Okay, this is what Jesus is doing with Peter, that's an office being established. At that point, it doesn't matter whether there's problems with a particular Pope or not, it's just Jesus established the office.

SPEAKER_03: 1:03:45

So many modern evangelicals are missing out on it's like they're missing out on so many prophecies that are fulfilled just by the pattern being fulfilled. Like the pattern is laid out in the old and then fulfilled in the new. They're missing out on the whole point of scripture. It's like it's really it's sad when they when you see I'm I'm definitely like talking very specifically about American evangelicalism, where they take five or six verses out of the epistles and form an entire theology on them and kind of like write off everything else and just kind of you know it's it's like it's like the things that are hard to understand, they'll go, Well, that's just difficult to understand. The things that are easy to understand are the things that you just know, and uh it's just they're missing out on on so much by not seeing the whole way God fills fulfills it throughout the entire story.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:40

So yeah, um, yeah, and and it's viewed as a stretch. If you see those patterns sometimes, it's like that's not a stretch, it's obvious, you know, that that's what's going on there. I had I would kind of half joke, half not joke that my hermeneutic for approaching scriptures and preaching was when Jesus says you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life, but these are the scriptures that speak of me, and though. So to me, if you're in the old if Jesus is calling the Hebrew scriptures the scriptures there. So if you're in the old testament and you're not looking for how they point ahead to Jesus and the church and the new covenant, you're not doing it right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:17

Can you imagine the conversation on the road to Emmaus of Christ talking to the apostles and just showing them all of the fulfillments from the old testament? Like their hearts must have been like ready to explode.

SPEAKER_02: 1:05:30

It's one reason why I love the the Dewey Reams so much is that in the Old Testament, anytime they would use anointed or anointed one, Dewey Reams translates it as Christ, so that you see the word Christ over and over and over in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_01: 1:05:46

That's pretty much yeah, I didn't know that. I've not read that version, so I'm I'm pretty much completely unfamiliar with that with that translation.

SPEAKER_03: 1:05:54

Um, so now we saw the story um the other day that there were 17 Protestants that got got brought into the church just recently. Now, what role did you play in in their conversions? How did that how did that were these people that went to your congregation?

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:10

Yeah, these were these are some of my closest friends. So our closest friends. Um, and they all had been at my previous church, yes. They so when we when I resigned, it was official the announcement anyway, and and we started having these conversations. We knew it didn't matter, it didn't matter where we decided to go. Um, I knew number one, I knew at least to start, we were not going to go anywhere in my hometown because we're both too, it's not like everybody knows us, but people know us here. Yeah, and I don't want to, I don't want to be a distraction, and I want to be able to just walk into a church and worship. And I also, I mean, I love the people at my former church.

SPEAKER_03: 1:06:57

Well, I got news for you. You just came on the biggest Catholic show in the world, so you're gonna be recognized at church now. I got news for you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:03

Oh, I didn't come on Keith's channel yet.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:06

I'll tell you right now. I very rarely get recognized at Mass, except for now the people that like I know because we're in the same parish together. You don't have to worry about that.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:16

You guys have taken off, really. It's it's it's been really fun to watch you guys grow the way you have. I think you had like 5,000 followers when I first found you. Maybe not easy.

SPEAKER_03: 1:07:24

It is interesting to watch kind of how um like we're getting asked to go speak at things now, and I think people are starting to pay attention a little bit. It's like it there's yeah, I don't know. It's like the the it the the burden of that is also kind of weighing on me now. So I've been talking to Rob a little bit about it. It's like, yeah, when you're when you got 5,000 followers, you can kind of shoot off the mouth. You can say whatever you want. Now we're getting a little bit bigger. It's like I have to probably weigh what I'm saying a little bit, and yeah, you're totally restrained now. That's so um, okay.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:58

So now I forget what I was saying. What was I just talking about?

SPEAKER_03: 1:08:01

Well, the 17 people you brought in everyone church. How does that okay? Well, are they do they see your conversion and then start asking you questions? How did how's that interaction?

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:10

Yeah, so we my wife and I knew we one, even if we had determined for sure where are we going to go to church, we knew it would be out of town, and we we knew that it was not gonna be in the denomination that I had been a part of. Because if I show up there, everybody knows me too, and they're gonna want me to preach. And I don't want to. I want to be able to wake up on Sunday and just go to church and have no responsibilities. That's what I needed at that point. So we know we're gonna go out of town somewhere. Where are we gonna go? We're still are we on the same page, and so we just wouldn't talk about it. Excuse me. We got a few questions between October and the end of the year, and we didn't have a solid answer for sure. We had inclinations, but I don't think we had a solid answer, and so we would just say, We know it won't be in town, we don't want to cause a disturbance, and we really want to give our former church a cushion of time before they have to start dealing with hey, they're going to this church down the road or that church down the road because this is our former pastor who looked out for our souls for 10 years and how they're and it wasn't easy for any of us, it wasn't easy for any of us, and it was a really nice send-off. And I wanted to really kind of nurture those relationships and not cause undue strife or sorrow or hardship because it's not easy to look for a new pastor, no one wants to be in that situation. I mean, if you liked your pastor, I guess. But um, so I just wanted to kind of honor them in that way too. And so that that was kind of our mindset. But after the new year, by the time the new year comes around, and now it's we got to make a decision, what are we going to do? Because it's not like we're not going to go to church somewhere, yeah. And so we stuck with the out-of-town plan. We were driving about an hour and 20 minutes to go over to Cedar Rapids, um, the priest that I'd been introduced to years before. And we ended up splitting our time a little bit with another city, Des Moines, which was a little closer to us, um, and going different places there. But we did come to a point where we were really praying and talking and checking in with each other. Do we feel like we are free to even say what we're doing right now with when people ask us? Because and none of it is out of you know embarrassment or anything like that, but it's out of really wanting to continue to honor them and not cause, you know, divisions just not cause division and confusion and strife, and yeah, and just we didn't want to hurt anybody, you know, right? And um, but we felt like okay, you know, here's the thing. I guess our fleece was this. If someone asks us, because now we'd gone through a time where nobody was asking us for a while, and I don't know exactly why, but it was fine, it was actually good for us um to have that that time of not having to answer that question. But after the new year, shortly after the new year, I think we decided, okay, we feel like we feel like God is telling us it's okay now, but we weren't gonna be out all, hey everybody, guess what? Because that's gonna cause trouble. And so uh when you're such a Midwesterner, it's so funny. I know 100%, 100%. I guess you know, it's yeah, it's so weird. Um, I mean, I think it's good. I I know what our intentions were. You know, I've said, is there is are there things that we could have done better? The answer is yes, it has to be yes, but is there anything I would have done differently? I'm not sure there was because I know what my motives were. My motives were to not hurt people that I had been caring for for 15 years. But when questions started coming, we decided we would go ahead and answer.

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:58

And you weren't a gaslight, so so you won't lie if somebody asks you, but you're not gonna go out of your way to cause any garbage by doing it on your own.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:06

Yeah, we didn't want to make a big thing out of it. We wanted to just quietly go the route we wanted to go and not cause a bunch of trouble for people, and certainly not for our the my former church. So when friends would ask, we would tell them, and you know, objections, questions, what about, what about, what about? And some of the conversations were not pleasant. Um, there were some, I'm not sure I had many that were that way. I know she did. Um I don't know, maybe I've blocked that or something, but but you know, there were questions, there were objections, but we gave our reasons, and you know, people would process it in different ways. And in every case, well, as as they started to look through it, with I'm talking about these 17 now. Um, which in the 17, by the way, it's really four couples and a bunch of kids, is who that is. So um they would process our answers, they'd look at different stuff, they might come back with more objections and that, but over time we just kind of said, Look, this is this is the thing. We'll talk to you guys about anything you want to know. We weren't actively trying to, you know, hey, you got to evangelize them and bring them into the church. No, because I didn't Midwestern, I didn't want to hurt the church. That's not what I wanted to do. But the thing is, the Holy Spirit moved, you know, and um and and honestly, lest it seem as though you know it's it's all about how persuasive we were, I think in every case there was already there were already things going on, just as there were in our story, there was already groundwork being laid in different ways for all of these different couples. We only learned that as we talked a little bit more, but in the end, um we kind of saw that there was an interest, at least there was a there was a softening of the view toward, and no one was really an anti-I don't think anybody was super anti-Catholic.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:10

In fact, I know they weren't, and I wasn't that kind of because that's not that's not always the case, right? So they didn't have they didn't have a ton of bias against Catholics to start off then, and I wasn't that kind of a pastor either.

SPEAKER_01: 1:14:21

By the time I became a pastor, I was out of my cage stage, you know, and and I was out of my anti, I wasn't really an anti-Catholic. I I had them, but I wasn't anymore, so that's not what they got from me from the pulpit. So, you know, we we had our conversations, we kind of thought it was possible, but there were things going on in their lives that we didn't even really know about. Uh and individually, this couple had this thing going on, this couple had that thing going on, and it was it was around Easter this year that all of a sudden dominoes just started falling, and um yeah, so they not all at the same time, but they all made the same decision, um, independently of of one another, but all kind of right around the same time, too. Um, with yeah, one one couple maybe a little bit later, but they all started OCIA at the same time. They all ended up uh leaving my old church, coming to the Catholic church in my hometown. And when that happened, when that went down, that's when we decided we would start then.

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:25

You felt comfortable going to one of your hometown.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:28

Cats out of the bag, yeah. What now at this point it doesn't matter?

SPEAKER_03: 1:15:32

Not just that. Have have you guys struck up a spiritual kinship with these with these other families now that you guys have because look, you guys are in the midwest, not that many Catholics everywhere, right? It's a small, small town, it's probably mainly Protestant.

SPEAKER_01: 1:15:45

Oh, yeah, it's it's mainly Protestant. Um, I mean, we were already really, really, really good friends anyway. This has only added you know a layer to that. It it's a great layer, but yeah, we've got we have we just have another thing in common right now, which is it's a phenomenal thing to have in common. But so they went through OCIA together, and so we sponsored um I sponsored two of the men and two children, so four total. She sponsored two of the women and and one child, and then others like so 17 people. That number is there was one child who was a little too young to be confirmed, but he came into the church with his parents. So I'm counting he's number 17. But two of the men who were standing behind, if you've seen that video that got posted on X, two of them that are standing behind as sponsors, they actually reverted in this process.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:44

Oh, they were clear Catholics and they and they reverted.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:47

So the number is actually 19. 19. Um, yeah, so but they reverted and then they sponsored their wives, which is really cool. And you know, and there were a few other sponsors um mixed in their family members and stuff.

SPEAKER_03: 1:16:58

But yeah, it is it is amazing when you when you see how God's grace works, man. Like it's like especially if you're caught up in the tedious politics of like what's happening in the church and stuff. But when it comes down to it, like you fall in love with the Catholic faith, God just captures your heart, and you just need the sacraments, and it he just draws people to him constantly, regardless of what we think is happening all around us. It's like God is God's spirit really is always moving and and pulling people towards his church.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:27

Yeah, yeah, that was our experience. We we we weren't looking for this, but uh troublemakers like you guys probably have um how how old are your children, Aaron? Uh I have six, and my oldest is almost 29, and my youngest is 17.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:44

Okay, so now they're all adults at this point, so they you can't like drag them in. So have you spoken to them about this? Because this is a pretty rapid thing that happened. I mean, yeah, you were a year and a half ago, you were a Protestant pastor, and now you and your wife come into the church. How have the conversations with your kids been going?

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:01

You know, uh, for the most part, good. Um it hasn't been all smooth, but the by the time you know, in in all of this, three three of them aren't even at home anymore, they're off in their own careers. And the three that are home, um different circumstances, but they're all working. My youngest is in school. Still, even though he's technically a minor, we couldn't just say, here's the deal, this is what you're doing. But the youngest two came with us. Oh wow, we gave them the we talked about it. Here's what we're doing, and here's why. And yeah, it's weird when you're a Protestant doing this. It's even weirder when you're a Protestant pastor, or you were anyway, and you're doing this. But we just talked about it, and the youngest two came in with us at Easter at the Easter Vigil. Um, the other of the other four, you know, they're at different places.

SPEAKER_03: 1:18:52

Yeah, they're just adults.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:53

Yeah, they're just different places. Although my oldest, I I I I actually talked to him and I got his, I asked him, I thought something like this might come up. If it does, and he said, Yeah, I don't care, it's fine. You can you can say it. So my oldest is gonna start OCIA at Oh my goodness, that's amazing. Where he is, um, he lives in a different city, and he's he's going to a parish over there, and he's gonna start there. And I also have permission to say that Cammy's brother and his wife have just started OCI and she's reverting. And so there's there's a lot going on, and there's still other conversations I've had too.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:32

So Aaron, you uh you uh you are going to all right. So now the thing I would I do want to talk to you about is the that instinct to like kind of stay out of the spotlight um when you like when you first left that that that church and like kind of like go away. Like because basically you go from being a professional Christian, like a as a pastor, right? You're a professional Christian. So I think like most pastors that become Catholic have to then face the the the question, do I want to be a professional Catholic? That that could mean being an author or preaching or just teaching a Catholic because the the desire is there for every Protestant who converts, like their heart's on fire. You're like, you know, you could do the preaching thing, you know you're pretty good, you might be a good writer. So you do have to wrestle with do you want to become a professional Catholic? I mean, Keith Nestor did it. I I've heard like because I used to watch The Journey Home every week when Marcus Grode was doing it, and it's like you see all these Protestant pastors then come in and just choose to be a professional Catholic at that point. Like, have you wrestled with that idea at all? Like, what are you doing for work now? What you what's your plan?

SPEAKER_01: 1:20:38

Yeah, um, I I did wrestle with it for work, nothing currently. We knew that I wanted to take we both wanted me to take three months and do nothing and just breathe again, you know, and and just kind of be a couple again and try to come out of the turmoil together. And that was good. Um, but three months became six months, and I started getting really antsy in there. And and I looked at different things. I'd done a couple of interviews, I really started getting like, I gotta get something. This is just not right. I need to, I need to do something. And we, you know, we're we're living on savings, there's only money going out right now. But again, Midwest cost of living isn't that high here. We you know, we're okay for a while, you know. This is a decision we made that we didn't plan on depleting savings, but it's a decision we made that we're willing to if waiting on the Lord means that's what we're gonna do. So that's what I've been doing. And early on, you know, because I know all the things you're saying, I'm aware of that. And to some degree, yeah, there's the draw of you know, who will want to talk to me?

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:44

You know, I wanted to, but no, but but this this is early on, and I detected this in myself, and I was like, no, no, that is not why that is not at all the thing, and so I remember look that it is a lucrative thing to go from being a Protestant to a Catholic if then you get into Catholic media of some kind. So yeah, well, temptations there. Um I and I wouldn't blame you for doing it. I I most of most of the Catholic apologists you see are converts, yeah. And it's because they had that that deep love for Christ, they have a deep love for scripture, and then when the when the pieces connect, it's like they just have to tell everybody about it because they're on fire. It's I mean, it really is like a Pentecost that happens to them.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:28

So the dangerous thing about that is that if that's what you want before you're Catholic, then you run the risk of becoming Catholic for the wrong reasons. Yeah, yeah. I didn't I didn't become Catholic for a vocation, for for work, you know. Um, so that that's a thing to be aware of. And and I became I became aware that I was started, I my mind started going in that direction. I just stopped, and I I remember praying to the Lord. I was getting ready one day for whatever, getting ready for the day, and I remember just praying, God, I am ready to be nobody. Yeah, you know, you lead me in the way I need to go, but I'm fine being nobody, I'm fine not being important, you know. And because when you're a pastor, it's not like it's a prideful thing, but you're important in a lot of ways. But those ways were exhausting me. And and so I was fine not being that anymore, but I knew I wanted time, you know. Rob, you've posted things before, and you're right, you know, where someone will say something and given their whole big diatribe, and you'll be like, You've been Catholic for six and a half minutes, you know. Maybe just take a back seat for a little bit. Yeah, I'll definitely so true though.

SPEAKER_03: 1:23:36

Yeah, I'll definitely say, like, stay out of church politics, like stay out of liturgical debates when you first come into church, just be Catholic. Yeah, just like just soak in being Catholic, learn the culture, like because there's something so beautiful about being Catholic, and you and you need to experience it for a period of time before you because there's look there, you definitely have an in-depth understanding of scripture and typology that you can share with people. So there there is a value in that. But like you said, like I think I think it's good for a convert to come. I'm not telling you what to do, but I do think it's good for a convert to come in and just like be Catholic for a little bit and like experience it. And that that's why Keith wrote that book, right? He wrote the the the book on like like uh the like Catholic, what was the book he wrote? Um, like like once we become Catholic now, what? Yeah, convert God, right? Like because it is kind of weird when you come in, it's like bizarre. We got like you know, feast days and we got like devotionals. Well, have uh have you and your wife uh fallen in love with a particular saint yet, or have you haven't gotten that deep yet? Have you gotten into the Pokemon cards of Catholicism yet?

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:44

I hate it that I know what you're talking about there.

SPEAKER_03: 1:24:47

You are far you are online way too much.

SPEAKER_02: 1:24:49

Well, except is he talking about Fuentes or Carlos? Yeah, yeah. Fuentes called devotionals, like a Pokemon card.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:56

Um, you know, it is it's it's a lot. My goodness, it's a lot, and it it's it can be overwhelming. Um, yes, there are saints that have been particularly their stories have been particularly meaningful, and um, you know, her my wife's confirmation saint was Saint Monica. Um, and you know, praying for her son, and you know, her heart for child, her heart for our children, her heart for other people's children. Saint Francis de Sales was mine.

SPEAKER_03: 1:25:26

Um the the only saint that's absolutely necessary for a Catholic is Our Lady, right? Like she is absolutely necessary. Like you you need to have a relationship with Our Lady. I'm not saying like I don't care if it's in doctrine or whatever, I'm not gonna argue with Jimmy Aiken's position. I'm telling you, if you are a Catholic, you need to have a deep relationship with Our Lady because she will save you at the most difficult periods of your life. Like she will be there to save you in those periods. So even if you don't go that deep into different saints and stuff, just I would, I would, I would say, especially as an early uh new Catholic, just develop that devotion to Our Lady and she'll lead you where where she's going to lead you. But like we did uh we did a show on um uh on the um uh what the heck did we do it the other day with Ryan Grant? Um Lopanto. Lopanto and I learned about St. Pius, St. Pope Pius V, and I never really read about St. Pope Pius V, but like I fell in love with him when I started like he was so courageous and brave, and that's kind of how you come across the saints. It's like you don't have to force them down your throat, like something will happen. Um it'll be like a saint's feast day, and you'll go, oh let me let me read into that scene a little bit, and you'll just develop a kinship with them and you'll you'll ask for their intercession here and there, you know, and then all of a sudden you fall in love with them. And that's I I think it's such an important part of being Catholic is that God wants us to love our older siblings, He wants us to really understand that we are the communion of saints, so He will grant you little favors when you when you fall in love with an older sibling to let you know that that connection is very real. Like my my mom has such a deep connection to um Saint Saint Teresa the uh the little flower Therese. Um, yeah, Saint Therese the Little Flower. And whenever my mom prays a novena to her, she gets roses at the end of the novena, like every time. So, I mean, I I know people that have done that and they don't get roses. My mom gets roses every time, so it's just something that'll kind of naturally happen, I think.

SPEAKER_02: 1:27:22

But yeah, 1800 flowers must love your mom.

SPEAKER_01: 1:27:28

Yeah, when you study your way in, you know, it's one that you can come in and know a lot of doctrines and know a lot of arguments and stuff like that. But boy, there's a culture that is just it's a different language, it's a different culture. It's like being uprooted in a different continent, in a you know, with different customs and different ways of doing things. So it takes time and it and it it's it's a process. You're absolutely right about that. There are some things, maybe in the hopper for me. Um some different through different conversations I had with different people. Um I started getting the idea for a book and I set it aside. I kept pushing it back because I feel like I need to stay in my lane. I'm not, you know, on some degree, I have some expertise in what I once what I was as a pastor. I don't have expertise in Catholic theology. I just don't. I read a lot of stuff, maybe I know a lot of stuff, but that doesn't make me an expert. And but the direction that it was going was people wanting to be able to have conversations with Protestant friends and family the way that I sometimes do, you know, and some of the what about these connections? Which ones? What's what is it again for Matthew 16? What's that? And so I thought, well, that I can do, I can think like a Protestant. I know how Protestants think, and I know what tends to be persuasive from the scriptures, not for everybody, it's not a silver bullet, right? The Holy Spirit has to be at work for sure. But so I started working on, I'll just call it a manuscript because it feels presumptuous to call it a book. But I have it almost done. I've had a bunch of people read it, it's been really good feedback. The last one I need to hear from is a priest who's my spiritual director, and um, I meet with him next week. And if he gives me the doctrinal green light, then I may, then I guess I have to make a decision. Do I want to try to self-publish?

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:23

If you are going to put a book out, you let us know. You will come on, we will help promote that book, we will help you sell it. Like, especially because you're in this interim where you don't know what you're doing with your career and you're not working right now. Like, we we're going to be there to assist you. Like, all your we're gonna we're gonna be a family to to our brother, and we will if you if you need us to set like we'll talk privately, but if you need me to set something up to help you guys get through until you figure things out, we'll we'll help you.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:48

Well, that didn't like I have the email for the president of Tan.

SPEAKER_03: 1:29:51

If you that's the thing, you're you're in a very fortunate position where you do know like a lot of professional Catholics who know a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02: 1:29:58

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Keith is the professional, not us.

SPEAKER_03: 1:30:01

Yeah, yeah. I'm not I'm not talking about us. I'm talking about Keith. Like, I'm I like all right. We do have to get off because we have another show. We're go we're all right. So Rob and I are going to be on the rundown in about 15 minutes. Um, I told him we'd be there at 9:45, so we do have to wrap this up, but man, I can start jumping into like Catholicism now, right? Now so Aaron, maybe we'll get you back on post-conversion. We won't talk about your conversion, we'll just talk about Catholicism. And maybe we'll do maybe we'll get Keith on too. We'll talk the three of us, yeah. The four of us will get on, and we'll just have we'll have a conversation with the four of us and we'll just talk about Catholicism.

SPEAKER_02: 1:30:37

Is there anything you have to promote? And if not, is there any prayer requests you'd like everyone to pray for?

SPEAKER_01: 1:30:44

You know, um prayer. Let me start with a prayer request briefly, uh a big verse for you know, here's my Protestant thing. You know, you have a verse that's uh that's a big deal, and you kind of go back to Exodus 14, 14, the Lord will fight for you, you need only be still, you know, when Israel's at the Red Sea. Huge verse in our story, in the whole process of our story. When I was feeling antsy about work, uh I prayed, Lord, I need you to if if the silence in the waiting is the answer and I just need to go do something, then I'm dumb enough that you need to tell me that. I need to know if I'm just supposed to go do something or if I'm still supposed to wait. I don't look at the mass readings beforehand. We went to daily mass the next morning, and the reading is from the first reading is from Exodus 14. And I I look over at her does that, right? Yeah, and it's like, and yeah, it culminates, it goes one verse past that, but yeah, right up to that. The Lord will fight for you, you need only be still. So just the prayer is I we are 100% confident that that's what God is doing right now. He has us waiting, he gives us something to do, and he gives us just enough to say, here's the next thing. But we don't see a lot further than that, and that's part of the training that he's giving us, I think. And so just to just honestly just pray that we will continue to discern, you know, to discern his will and not try to run ahead of what he wants to do. Because that's my I'm very a-type, she's very a-type. We want to take control and take charge and do things, and that's just not what we're supposed to do right now.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:17

And uh yeah, trusting in God's providence is one of the hardest parts of being a Catholic. Like you just kind of have to accept his will and trust that he has your your your your your holy like your your sanctification in mind when when he's doing things.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:31

So um one the other thing to answer the part of your question, I did start a sub stack which gradually will tell some of this story in different ways. It's just my name or the the at is Aaron Gorn or my is it linked to your Twitter? You know, I don't know. I don't remember. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:50

Put your sub stack in your Twitter handle and I'll I'll retweet that. And you have a link to it, bro.

SPEAKER_01: 1:32:55

I have the link to no, that's right. I I did not do that.

SPEAKER_03: 1:32:58

I know I know that I need to do that, but I come on, I gotta teach you guys how to do social media.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:02

You guys have got I don't know anything.

SPEAKER_03: 1:33:06

We'll talk, we'll talk off air, but I will help you with anything that I can if you're gonna start doing anything like this. So, guys, go subscribe to Aaron's Substack. Um, uh we may we me and Rob will talk off air. We may put a little something together for Aaron to help him get through through this little interregnum period while while he's up in the air about where he's going. But Aaron, we we uh I've enjoyed my interactions with you for two years now. Like, genuinely, we you and I are friends, like we've changed mutual, it's very mutual. We exchanged numbers well, way before you became Catholic, and we've we've you sent me a DVD.

SPEAKER_01: 1:33:41

Yes. Why did you play Catholic trivia? Well, I did and I sucked at it, but but you still said you still gave me the prize anyway. It was funny. Well, no, no, no, no. I don't think it was when you happened to bring one back, you know. Oh still a long time ago. It was still a long time ago, but you yeah, you said, Well, I want to send Aaron this DVD, so that that it goes back to at least that point.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:08

Um, Keith, if you're open to that, I would maybe we'll get the four of us together. And I said three because there's three people on screen and my tire, guys. No, he was excluding me. Wasn't excluding. We'll we'll we'll we'll now that we're past the conversion story, I'd like to get both of you on and we'll just talk about what what it's like to be Catholic, and you know, we'll we'll have a fun episode. So um, all right, guys, we're gonna fly. Go subscribe to Aaron Substack. Yep, and anybody that wants to continue the conversation with Rob and I, we're going over to live chat. Rob put the link up. Thank you so much, Aaron. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on with us tonight. I would I'm I'm sorry we left because I would have I I could have talked to you for another hour and a half.

SPEAKER_01: 1:34:49

It's all right. It's all right.

SPEAKER_03: 1:34:51

Um, yeah, we'll set up another show. Aaron, welcome home. I know that's the cliche thing to say, but you are now part of the most dysfunctional family in history, and we are glad to have you as a brother.

SPEAKER_01: 1:35:01

Uh the feeling is mutual. Love you guys.

SPEAKER_03: 1:35:04

Love you too, man. All right, take us out, Rob. See ya.