[SPEAKER_01]: Welcome back to the Unison Church podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is Michael Sean, and I'm excited to be sitting down with an old friend today.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of weird that I can call you that, but it has been a long time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I'm that old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I qualify?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our friendship is old.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: We go way back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty far back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I'm technically a homeschool group and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I saw you graduate somewhat aware of you in twelfth grade.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I was more like a side character.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were you were young.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, because you weren't even were you middle school at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was middle school, but like barely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there was maybe six three were young.
[UNKNOWN]: Young.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like a while ago, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a twenty thirteen and fourteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was my senior year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That checks out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now it's twenty twenty five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Us twelve years, dude.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's scary actually.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how I feel about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it really is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, this is my friend Tom Laskowski.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good pronunciation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Thomas sometimes at school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you have like a big last name, but it's not that hard to pronounce.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: The full name is like very like noble.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a king like Thomas Edward Laskowski.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your middle names Edward.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know that about him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like a king royalty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I bet you can't guess my middle name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, I used to wait just kidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's so funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Tom, like many other people that know me through my family calls me Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this my, that I grew up being.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not Michael Sean.
[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't gotten on that boat yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've tried.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it like elsewhere, like people that don't call me the full Michael Sean because a lot of people don't get that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Talk to people on the phone or if you pick up like something I restaurant or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't say Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, sorry.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're always shining my heart.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't shake it for those people that know me by that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I went to Texas for trip this about it was like a little over a month ago now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I saw my old roommate from college and my dad's side of the family.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep, so everybody kept calling me Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I brought a buddy down there because we played in a tournament the first half and he was called me Michael the whole time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it was weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the day on two days I was Michael and then I was Sean for another four or five and I was like kind of weird.
[SPEAKER_00]: I always feel like I'm like an elite friend when I call you Sean.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I know that's incorrect, but like if I hear I'm at your shop and someone's like hey, Michael, can you hear me with this?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like ah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not in the internet.
[SPEAKER_00]: They don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I don't mind either way.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only thing I don't want to be called is Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything else is fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because that's your dad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mike is my father.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a couple people like that insist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a couple of my store.
[SPEAKER_01]: They keep calling me Mike and I'm like, it's Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they got to kick him out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people just don't get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You say Mike when you say Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the problem with that particular variation of Michael.
[SPEAKER_01]: True.
[SPEAKER_01]: You literally say Mike.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, saying with Tom and Thomas, you know, you say, yeah, same deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you really wanted to go by Thomas and not Tom, yeah, it'd be tough because it would just do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, the only name that's like blacklisted for me except for like two people is Tommy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do Tommy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've never heard somebody call you Tommy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rick Jr.
[SPEAKER_00]: calls me Tommy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Does he actually only person in my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Wow, consistently.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you don't mind it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like a older figure like an uncle.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like, all right, you're cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fair.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had one person once that called me Mikey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was the same deal where like just for her, it was fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because she was like a very eccentric lady.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it like suit and fit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my grandfather called me Mickey.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's not the name at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mickey Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it is by people with Michael sometimes go by Mickey.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get the mouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: Michael the mouse.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Mickey.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you just call me Mickey Sean growing up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have a couple people that call me Mickey occasionally.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you should just Michael Sean.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: People do tend to do the whole thing because I introduce myself as out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard them when I hear you introducing yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, oh, Michael Sean.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It works.
[SPEAKER_01]: His Michael is literally the most common name.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is very common.
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, the combo of Michael Sean is more common than I like would think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the name John.
[SPEAKER_00]: The name's John Michael.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Sean, like intermingle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard John Michael.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard Michael Sean.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've heard Michael John.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they're all over the place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you're right.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're so right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not my parents fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my parents parents fault because I have my dad's name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, I can't blame them.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm playing them for pretty many other stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's got to get their own share.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, actually, wait, I think why last episode was with my father.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully it doesn't.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was it?
[SPEAKER_01]: You have that or was the one or four?
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the ones, the listeners will know.
[SPEAKER_01]: The listeners will know.
[SPEAKER_01]: They'll know.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're in town briefly for a mutual friend of ours.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a wedding.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're about to get married yourself.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am going.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fifteen days.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourteen, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourteen days.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: A week from
[SPEAKER_00]: Next Friday, so fifteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're just going to be straight partying for the next two weeks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty much.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we got this wedding I'm in town four.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've got my wedding shower out here and then I'm like wedding prepping as family are coming to town in Arizona and then I've got my own wedding and I got a honeymoon and then I go back to school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that'll be a bummer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you got to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I've, I gotta tell you the story before you get started.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is this is how little I was aware of you when I was in home school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was thinking about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I came back from college for something.
[SPEAKER_01]: It might have been in the summer or something and I went and was the one like homeschool group gathering that I went to.
[SPEAKER_01]: because my family wasn't terribly involved in the year, because my twelveth grade year was like the first year we were in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I jumped in and like I wasn't really connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was working a lot in twelveth grade too, doing a lot of college stuff, working two jobs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good hardware can see me right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Classic, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't do a ton of stuff at the homeschool group, so I didn't know, especially all the younger kids didn't know anybody, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come back now my sisters have both gotten like pretty ingrained into the group.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got a lot more involved than you.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot more involved.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we went to some kind of picnic and there was a water balloon fight.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember there was water.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And at the end, and somebody told me to go dump the cooler of water on Tom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't know in who I was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's the thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew you and Tim were next to each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to jump it on Tim.
[SPEAKER_01]: I dumped it on Tim.
[SPEAKER_00]: Port him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I was like, hey, Tom, and you turned around.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was already in the process of dumping on Tim.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was an innocent victim.
[SPEAKER_01]: He didn't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I mean, he took it like a champ.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was funny either way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was one of the adults that told me to do it and And so yeah, so I did that so that's how that's how little I was aware of you Yeah, they're returning alumni comes and dumps a bucket of water on him and he doesn't even know who you are and I don't even feels bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's him probably knew who I was I kind of knew their family like Oh, did you a little bit just because because like midstate well, no because the oldest daughter graduated with me
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, fair.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was like more aware of being here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whereas I'm the oldest in mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we are like exactly your whole family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, that's the craziest thing about our friendship is Eleanor.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cause Eleanor was like a like a baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: A literal infant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like a toddler running around the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now she's in our youth group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Which is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's in our youth group.
[SPEAKER_00]: Fourteen years or ten.
[SPEAKER_00]: Almost fifteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost fifteen to the month.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes me feel a little old.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, maybe we're getting there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah, I'm getting there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got some years left.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel odd because I have multiple friends now that are having babies and getting married and moving to different places.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have, I think I'm stuck in this mindset where all my friends don't make a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, I've been getting lunch with friends who make like almost six figures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's like, why are you doing, like, how are you doing this right now?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, one of them's a mechanic, the others starting in some business and like, they're just
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a working.
[SPEAKER_00]: Becoming adults.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Having friends that make money is crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we are not in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that's not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have visited when I was in Texas, I visited my roommates stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not like crazy well off or anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I live in Texas, but they just moved into like this house.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, this is awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do Texas real estate man.
[SPEAKER_01]: I live in like an apartment that should come on down.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on down to Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is getting more expensive.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Certain parts, not love it, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love it's cheap.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd have to live in Dallas.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my family's in Dallas.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, Dallas is getting expensive.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, good luck there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they want me to move out to East Texas with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's what the actual plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: They want to come out to like in Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, they're already in East Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: How like half Mike and my grandmother and my uncle, they live in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're in the wrong town of St.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tyler.
[SPEAKER_00]: West Side's where it's at.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you move out to East Texas, I'll probably visit you never.
[SPEAKER_01]: as often as you visit me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're so right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I thought maybe something that would be cool to discuss would be your church journey because I feel like I was with you for a lot of your like developmental years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: As you transition between different churches and moved away and all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I thought it would be cool to maybe talk about that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you tell us a little bit about your involvement with church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you were at big piece of my church journey.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I started off just kind of going to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went to a Christian preschool, you know, the
[SPEAKER_00]: the stereotypical start.
[SPEAKER_00]: My family wasn't Christian when I went to the Christian preschool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was more just because they wanted somewhere with nice people that could maybe send me that they trusted.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, they'll just child the baby.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then a few years later, probably five or six years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: We joined the church for real.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad got invited to a men's breakfast from the same place.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is, I was probably eight, seven or eight years old, maybe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we started going pretty consistently and like right after.
[SPEAKER_00]: My dad got diagnosed with colon cancer and it was rough.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think you guys knew me at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: The math checks out that you might have just started getting to know me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think so.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was Gary, nine-year-old Tom thought that Dad was going to die, but the church came and I call it like the prayer mushroom.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone's going in their laying on hands at the top in front of him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wasn't like a super light church, but there's probably like a hundred, maybe a hundred, twenty people there, and like everyone got up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my family was just sitting in the middle in front of the stage, and everyone kind of put their hand out above, and just big mushroom, I'll look it up over me.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I just so
[SPEAKER_00]: loving and gracious.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it was bizarre because there's nowhere else in the world that you really experience that sort of environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is what I think got me starting to ask questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I still don't think I believe to I would think about it like logically and be like, like there's no way God just exists.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I very much I think my character
[SPEAKER_00]: pertains to the name Thomas that idea of doubting Thomas like needing to put his hand through the palms I just really don't like believing things unless I see them right and so I continued to ask tons of questions and that kind of stuff We got involved in a Christian based home school group and I was involved in that community.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how I met your family and it ended up eventually meeting you Going to youth group at my original church at White Oak Baptist Church and then going
[SPEAKER_00]: to your church at Panhill for a number of years joining the youth group there, starting to actually become involved in seeing that there's, I think, different walks of Christianity because White Oak was fine, but it wasn't super diversified.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lot of just old people with white hair and a lot of really good theology and questions and like that was kind of my basis there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to like put a pause on that because I want to have a couple of questions with you specifically, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So just some backstory, you were going to White Oak at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have a youth group, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They did not.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some of their youth youth was getting sent to our church youth group.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I think, is White Oak Southern Baptist, or are they there?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know anymore, but they are now, or they were Southern Baptist.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were Southern Baptist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're our church has baptisms names.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of, it's not Southern, but there's a lot of things about our church that are distinctly not Southern Baptist in theology.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think because of that, it's like, okay, we'll close enough and let's send him over, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, so there was that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, in the, in, while that was going on, I think you started attending the youth group before I was back from college.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, you're, I forget who.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think maybe you're uncle or something like that uncle or running the youth group at the time I think so and yeah, I was just doing it because I had some friends that were going there right Evolved in the homeschool group and they were attending like that was the main meeting place for that right, but I knew you I was aware of you because you had started going out with my sister exactly so I have come to the realization my sisters have both told me this
[SPEAKER_01]: that they're always very nervous to introduce their boyfriend to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've been told by some other people that I'm like very intimidating at the beginning.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're a scary guy, I guess.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, is this a true fact?
[SPEAKER_00]: I was terrified at first.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not just because you were the older brother, but eventually you came in and we're leading the youth group.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like shoot, like I cannot mess this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm like dating his sister and he's leading the youth group and there's a lot of things that could go wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: So at the time in my adolescent years teenager, I was, I was terrified.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, funnily enough, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So as I continued to get older, I started getting tattooed as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that doesn't help like neck tattoos and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I get a long beard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll be a part of a game.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm finding right now that old people are scared of me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, this is a new finding for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of a superpower, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh yes and no it depends on the context but uh uh sometimes I'll be like I remember distinctly there was one time where I parked my car a few spaces down from this like old old lady that parked her car yeah and we're walking to like a Walmart and she's walking and like I'm walking
[SPEAKER_01]: behind her.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm not trying to be really rude and like race around her.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm kind of behind her like he and she wasn't super slow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, but she looks back and gets scared and she walks like like faster fast as an old person.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what I mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like she's nobody picks up her speed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm walk, we're going to the same place.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm still going.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and then, and I'm like, what do I even do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, what do you even do?
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, like, I'm not scary.
[SPEAKER_00]: I swear I'm not going to connect to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like, that's not anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I find that yeah, a lot of old people find me like scary looking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think if you like end up really getting fat, then you'll be more presentable, like approachable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, like I was trying to tell us something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm trying not to, yeah, I'm getting there, but I'm trying to curb it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's probably for the best for your own health safety.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're really trying to be more approachable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we start hanging out more.
[SPEAKER_01]: And while you were in the youth group.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I had some things were coming up.
[SPEAKER_01]: You were thinking through things.
[SPEAKER_01]: We started meeting like weekly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: We did some weeks weekly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like mentor step type stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we're going through weekly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Going through some certain passages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Definitely deep into some scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it was consistent.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would meet sometimes at like,
[SPEAKER_00]: a Popeyes or something, and sometimes I hear a partman, and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think because I was associated with your sister, dating her sister, I was a groomsman in your wedding, and like there was a story.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's like a makeshift connection that was just seem to be happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, I had so many grooms people.
[SPEAKER_01]: You had a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: You kind of just needed different places.
[SPEAKER_00]: I now understand your pain there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: My ex was just like, she had so many.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: People she wanted in the wedding.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't have that many friends, I don't have that many friends.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dude, like, it's like, that's yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then a couple of my friends couldn't come because they're like, uh,
[SPEAKER_01]: they, you know, they were just graduating college getting into their jobs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like sometimes you just literally can't travel.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, that was a, yeah, that was an experience for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there was just a lot of circumstances that I think were drawing us close together.
[SPEAKER_00]: But those mentorships were helpful.
[SPEAKER_00]: We dove through.
[SPEAKER_00]: I distinctly remember going very in depth in Matthew.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was pretty.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that was pretty foundational to some of my core beliefs.
[SPEAKER_00]: You also had very like different beliefs, which was interesting because I was getting scripture and getting knowledge and education in a Southern Baptist church, which I still think some of their scripture was great, some of their theology was great, some of it not so much.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was being, I don't want to say indoctrinated, but I was
[SPEAKER_00]: learning from that and then I would go to these mentorships and go to youth group or you're leading and you have a very different more independent stance more charismatic stance you have came from I thought you came from the most charismatic like church ever and like Ohio and like you were like oh man like Sean's this far left like Christian dude now and I don't I don't know but I kind of agree with them on a lot of these things somehow
[SPEAKER_01]: yeah that was um that was interesting because it was it was very charismatic I don't know charismatic is like a hard I mean it's about as it's about as clear as um saying Baptist like the yeah this is so many like there's so much diversity within that right but
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I guess I was deconstructing in high school and then in college, it kind of cemented.
[SPEAKER_01]: I deconstructed a lot of stuff in high school, like everybody does, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I dropped a lot of stuff about this very conservative faith that I was raised with.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then in college, I went to a school that had just, and I didn't know this at the time, but over the course of my three years there, they had just kicked out what they thought was a liberal president and a board, and replaced them with my first year was the first year of a new president.
[SPEAKER_01]: who was from the Southern Baptist Convention.
[SPEAKER_01]: Gotcha.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's school that had Southern Baptist roots, but had kind of, I don't know, in their words, drifted away from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had fired half the Bible department.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically, they were cracking down on Southern Baptist distinctive.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Southern Baptist was going through a lot of, I think, just due to that time anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there was like a president change at the SPC and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, there was all kinds of abuse going on that's been revealed now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: but but anyway so they so the school had started like just it I didn't know but they had kind of just reformed into like a more southern Baptist place yeah so I was encountering all this stuff that like I was raised with some of it
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of that I wasn't raised with and just getting like more distaste for certain things, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then while I was at this, ironically, while I was at this more conservative place, I ended up going to a church that was not Baptist at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there were church of God, which was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: not, um, we don't have church of God here in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not many of them at least.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, there's not a ton in Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you know there's there's not there's a couple in Phoenix for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a few in Arizona.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but not in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not many in Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like an independent like they denominationally.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't they're not really unofficial denominations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: This church was in a denomination, sort of, or an association, whatever that existed in Ohio specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, that was for just various charismatic churches, but they, I don't know, out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in Ohio, the closest thing was Nazarene.
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, church of God, Nazarene, both almost the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I would say it's kind of like assemblies of God-ish.
[SPEAKER_01]: sort of yeah that's like the close to me I don't know you know better yeah yeah yeah no so like there's still like evangelical in the sense that the bible's the highest authority right yeah but but then there's like different things in practice they're distinctly not reformed which was a big thing that I was going through in college because the SPC is distinctly reformed yeah
[SPEAKER_01]: So that was like big stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, with that, you've got all like your doctrines of salvation, like can you lose it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you keep it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, um, who gets to decide whether you get to follow Jesus or you as a God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like all that kind of stuff happened.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there was a strong also like
[SPEAKER_01]: What we should be praying for healing and we should be annoying to people in services and all the charismatic gifts are alive, which I believe anyway, even though my church was baptized, this is distinctly not really about this thing, but to be like being able to be charismatic to believe that all the gifts are available to God can do whatever He wants to do, all that's in the stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then at the same time, right after I graduated college, I also was, I think deconstructing the conservative, like politically conservative things that I might have been raised with.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I'm in a whole totally different, like like indistinguishably different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, space from there, not necessarily like, like you mentioned like, oh, left, like charismatic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's what I, the perspective, you know, right, I'm not there either, but like in a totally separate place, you know, that I didn't really have words for until like, even though just a few years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so yeah, hundred percent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think seeing that process of deconstruction and push back against some of the foundational beliefs of mine is what started my own deconstruction process.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like got me, I think critically thinking,
[SPEAKER_00]: about things in a lot more serious manner that I may have been before.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I genuinely think a lot of my independent beliefs quote unquote, whether it's political or theological or that kind of stuff, or more modern beliefs, probably stem from a lot of those mentorship and a lot of the stuff that I was learning from you and from our different conversations or youth group and that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then that compounded itself or snowballed itself into my exploring of a bunch of different churches around.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's pick up the story then.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're like at a Southern Baptist church going to youth group at our weird independent, whatever we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then where do we where do we go next?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm holding my my beliefs fairly close to my chest at that state.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, still believing things fairly strongly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm I'm involved in a lot of worship practices.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm playing the piano and I'm singing and even doing a little bit of violin for
[SPEAKER_00]: either my church or sometimes a little bit of your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I even think I got an opportunity to preach at your church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was like a teen lead service on a Sunday.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was an awesome experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, really getting to take some initiative there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, you were thinking maybe about going into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: What?
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I honestly still do think I might even to this day go into becoming a pastor, go into some sort of ministry, just not now.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at the time, I was going to a community college and studying psychology thinking that that was the most adjacent to pastoral ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: And thinking I could kind of go and transfer in to do something pastorally, which is not common in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: What my realization is, now that I've moved away and I'm seeing the culture in Arizona and in Texas, dude, you could for sure leave and go to school and be a pastor and then go and work for some big church, make some like a
[SPEAKER_00]: good salary, but my, my anxiety and my parents' idea at the time was this is not a stable career path.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, right, if you do this, you're setting yourself up for failure for the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, ah, I don't want to be that failure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I, I think I harbored that journey just a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, I was super still super gun-ho about learning about different theologies and
[SPEAKER_00]: trying to worship God in the most authentic way possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think a big turning point was when the main pastor at my church came out and it was told by the elders that he was having a year-long affair and he was stepping away and he wasn't going to be the pastor anymore and this was
[SPEAKER_00]: like earth shaking for me because I'd never really heard of much like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: This was always like a, oh, like the Catholic priests have like these weird things going on and there's always some scandals, but it never affected me, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so this was shaking in that guy who I was hearing on the pulpit every single Sunday morning for probably seven, eight, nine, ten years of my life was doing this
[SPEAKER_00]: agree just said right and that I think hurt a lot but there was a sense of unity in the church after that that we started really focusing in on the different preachings that the church not based around one pastor on and that it's more of a body and right trying to make things more independent and that was awesome I mean it was really helpful to to hear about but it was still I think just
[SPEAKER_00]: It was still hard to grasp that this mentor of mine had such a bad thing happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I didn't see him.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there was no closure there at all.
[SPEAKER_00]: He ended up going through his own marital counseling and moved to California and I didn't see him again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually just got lunch with him last summer and it was amazing and I'll talk about that later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But from there we started looking for other pastors and I just decided to really stay rooted in that church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to be there to help.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was involved in the youth ministry and in the worship ministry and I was like I'm going to help them get through this storm.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we found a pastor or
[SPEAKER_00]: a guy that was leading another youth ministry at another adjacent church in Connecticut.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he came in as an interim pastor and then supposed to be a senior pastor and I thought he was great.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a young like very charismatic and you know like a lot of energy kind of guy and he was a guy that I think I
[SPEAKER_00]: also went under his wing really well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had to have everything going under people's wings and getting mentors for a while, whether it was you or this pastor or whoever it is in my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then there was more controversy in the church where he was getting pushed out for a variety of reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the main thing was he wanted to preach at the time on racism in the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was the Black Lives Matters movement happening at this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is right like early COVID early to mid-COVID.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the George Floyd stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a church that really exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it's pressing on his heart that we need to preach about this, especially considering that the demographic of the Church is a bunch of older individuals.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Some of which word just racist, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think that they did so intentionally out of a place of hatred, but more out of a place of
[SPEAKER_00]: character development and how they were raised, which isn't necessarily an excuse, but I think it is a reason to talk on that subject.
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But he was pushed out of the church and I, that gave me a really bad taste on my mouth, you know, and I think it did to a lot of other people at the church at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now this church that I had grown up and been so foundational with seemed to be having pretty obvious flaws.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first it was the person at the top the head character that had an affair and that was a bad thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big flaw.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, oh, that's not great.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then it's the body and I got to give me embrace the body and then the body has these flaws and like, okay, well,
[SPEAKER_00]: What is my faith?
[SPEAKER_00]: What is Christianity's way?
[SPEAKER_00]: The sucks.
[SPEAKER_00]: And meanwhile, I'm still rather involved at Pont Hill, but I've already, I've graduated high school at this point and I'm getting older and it's time to take my own faith and take some initiative.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't want to walk away because I think I knew
[SPEAKER_00]: in my heart that it was still a very central point to who I am and my development and my personality and just what I believe the truth to be logically.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so instead I decided to take the opposite approach and kind of dive head first and to exploring a ton of different churches.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I went to I was very intentional that every Sunday would go to a different church of a different denomination that I had never experienced before.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it was Catholic or Pentecostal or
[SPEAKER_00]: and independent church.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went from everything from a mega church to one that was run out of someone's living room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even one that I ended up loving for a little bit was one that was run out of someone's coffee shop.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like a cool vibe and everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wanted to see what was happening there at these other denominations that
[SPEAKER_00]: Honestly, my church I don't they didn't necessarily plantly say it, but there was this vibe that it was us and then there was them and there was two different bodies of faith and they believed two different things and there was no unity there.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no togetherness.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just separate groups and maybe they're saved who knows, you know, but they believe a different thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we're not going to talk to them that much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's, you know, the joke about Baptist, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know the joke about Baptist.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically, like, somebody dies, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: They go to heaven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, say, Peter, whatever, meet some of the gate.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's the big mansion that crisis built for all of his followers.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And same Peter's given the tour, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's walking through.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, you know, here's where all the Catholics hang out.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're taking the Eucharist all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: here's where the Pentecostals are and it's always like a party in there and uh here's where the Baptist are but be quiet because they think they're the only ones here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never heard that ever.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's really funny though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is so like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I still now have this hesitancy even to go and attend those churches and that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think it's warming.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm I've matured a little bit and not just seeing them as
[SPEAKER_00]: some another bad group to point to finger at and say, I don't like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't do the same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just flipping the script with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: But in exploring these other denominations, there was always this very central, it was almost like a feeling or a figure that was like they were worshiping.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and they weren't worshiping some other God.
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't worshiping.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's different than I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were worshiping the same God that I believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: These people that I've never met who are supposed to be believing a different thing,
[SPEAKER_00]: are sitting here singing songs and still keep talking about Jesus somehow.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, how's this guy still around and he's still very central and these people's lives even though they're not they're not the same Christian that I am why am I like relating to this right and some of them were way more charismatic than I was used to so here about like the gifts of the spirit and hearing about different ways that God's still working now was like
[SPEAKER_00]: Dude, is this what I've been experiencing in some of the places in my life?
[SPEAKER_00]: These things that I thought were hallucinations are like a weird inkling in myself that like, oh, like coincidence.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just a real thing that's actually like, publicly accurate.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I exploded in my diversification of my faith and more deconstructing, but honestly more just growing.
[SPEAKER_00]: and unity with God, but I did so in a way that I think was too reckless that I didn't actually have any accountability for myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I didn't have anything keeping myself grounded in my faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was more just like, oh, let's explore everything, let's explore there, let's explore here.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't do a great job at staying rooted in my own faith and like figuring out myself because I think I was still building that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it opened the door, I think, to more sin that looking back on, I would not want my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that the pretty typical, unfortunately typical struggles with different things with porn or at that time, I was in a not great relationship at least for myself, and there was deals with drugs and insecurities.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just, it was a bad, I think personal life.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I would go and live a personal life that was not very faith driven and then go to church and maybe sometimes lead worship or sometimes explore it.
[SPEAKER_00]: A place and it was like, oh, there's Tom.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like the young Christian guy that's on fire.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's going and he's studying psychology.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he'll be a pastor one day.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like charismatic.
[SPEAKER_00]: He knows what's up.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a good Christian right there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And behind the scenes dude, it was bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think it hit a turning point after I broke up out of that relationship.
[SPEAKER_00]: There was some nastiness going on with different bad relationship things that were happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Different trauma as emotional trauma as whether it's infidelity or whatever it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was told and I showed an ultrasound picture of a baby that was supposedly like my child and that I conceived and she had a miscarriage and this was five weeks later and I had a known about it and I was like do like that's where things like fell apart, you know, just sudden
[SPEAKER_00]: trauma that happened like this sin snowballed into a place where on the outside, I'm so good, but on the inside, this just kept building and building and building to a point where like the conception of a child that died.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do it a different health concerns was crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I knew like, all right, I got to I got to fix something here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got to get something in check.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is bad.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what happened.
[SPEAKER_00]: I at the time was going through and I was trying to apply to different graduate programs.
[SPEAKER_00]: I graduated with a batch of business psychology and I was like, okay, this research thing is seems kind of cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll continue to try and explore that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So going and maybe becoming a clinical psychologist was the bet there.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I didn't get into a single PhD program.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it actually kind of sucked.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, oh, this is where God's leading me.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to apply to these programs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: PhD in clinical psychologists are apparently really competitive.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I now know that after being someone that applied to a bunch.
[SPEAKER_00]: I applied to a different type of program, a human factors program at ASU in Arizona.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had a couple of family members that lived there, my aunt and my grandmother lived out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was like, all right, let's do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was a master's program and I was going to get into it and I was going to find a job at the school and I was going to pay for my tuition.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had this given scheme.
[SPEAKER_00]: No way for me to pay for the tuition yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I thought, I'm going to find this place.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you also had free living arrangements.
[SPEAKER_00]: I exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not like the the risks were that high, the risk case scenario.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just bum around in Arizona and yeah, like that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I actually even though I was at this place where I should be like falling apart and like in a really dark place, I think it was at any time that I think it was growing closest to God.
[SPEAKER_00]: yeah yeah well it seems like you had like you had reached a point where you knew you were more open to whatever was gonna happen yeah I was like this way of going the way that I want to go is not working I was kind of like building my way into things right and I was I've always been like I got a plan
[SPEAKER_00]: I know exactly what I'm going to be when I grow up and I know exactly what I'm going to live and how much money you're going to make and like what I'm going to do and all that kind of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And God did it how to great job of showing me like, dude, you got to chill out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this plane you have is obviously flawed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's where things are going wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I was like, okay, we'll take a step back.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I went to Arizona.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not find a job that could pay for my tuition in Arizona.
[SPEAKER_00]: So instead, I just got a job that just made me money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was just coming around and working.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was doing a similar thing, but trying to get more grounded this time, a good community at churches out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I did that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I explored churches once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: I went and I talked to a couple of pastors.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the one thing that they are really good about out there is connecting with new people, like immediately.
[SPEAKER_00]: If I would join a church and give them my email, they're like,
[SPEAKER_00]: So when we reach out and say, hey, let's get a coffee like in two days and go and get a coffee, you know, sit down and give them a good conversation.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't give them the full spiel of what I just gave you, but right, right, some mix of it, you know, like, I'm here in Arizona trying to go to school, blah, blah, blah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, but able to get a decent grasp on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And until I found a really good small group community out there, there where they were really good at just letting you be vulnerable in a Bible study.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, this was a good group of guys who
[SPEAKER_00]: They would go through and just be honest about their struggles, which was not common.
[SPEAKER_00]: People would, and here would talk about struggles, but not talk about them personally.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so going there and having a guy talk about the fact that he was struggling with porn that week, and like this is how bad it was, and being just authentic with
[SPEAKER_00]: What can I do to make this better?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then another guy piping up and said, hey, dude, I was also struggling with that exact same thing a couple years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still have the temptation now, but I have a program on my phone that helps me to reduce this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have this thing that's becoming a blockage because I can't do this alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll like a group of guys realizing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't do this alone.
[SPEAKER_00]: again I keep saying earth shattering but my earth has just been shattered so many times right right and so I'm there and I'm I'm talking to these guys and that was the first time that I opened up about the the ultrasound picture and about the they agreed is said that I just grew uncomfortable with from sure my my time in Connecticut and then they there was no there was no judgment you know there was none of this like
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, like you're gonna go to hell now, like lightning's gonna strike you, like I can't believe that you've told us you're a worse Christian Tom and being willing to be, I think being a different place.
[SPEAKER_00]: And these people didn't know who I was when I was sixteen or twelve or whatever.
[SPEAKER_00]: They there was not this image of Tom as he was growing up, like a lot of people here in Connecticut had.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was able to just be honest with like, this is who I was and this is what I did and this is what I want to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: Help me get there and this awesome group of guys helping me do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: and then getting involved in not just a group of men's ministry but getting involved in young adult ministries out there there's just thriving communities that I'm sure there's some of it that exists out here but I just wasn't looking hard enough and I wasn't doing taking the right steps to get there and becoming I think a new person in Arizona was monumental and
[SPEAKER_00]: making myself into that person that I actually wanted to be and not just existing in the state that I was, this good Christian guy who had these standards set for him, who couldn't live up to it, and then would feel ashamed when he fell short and not talk about it, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so these young adult ministries were great and just getting me involved and keeping me kind of refreshed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And from there, I really started taking a further grasp of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: I try taking grasp throughout my time here
[SPEAKER_00]: but being honest about my story and about the things I was thriving it and the things that I was struggling with and finding a solid group of friends and not worrying about dating anymore and not wanting to date anymore just living as an independent single guy for a while.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome and I grew closer to friends there and a shorter amount of time span that I ever have here in Connecticut and that shorter amount of time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we did a great job of building up off each other.
[SPEAKER_00]: We held independent liking adult music ministries.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was exploring new types of music, which was that's I think my type of worship is I love worshiping through music just talking to God being authentic in the in the lyrics and the emotions that I'm feeling.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes I would go through ways of apathy and that kind of stuff but that's I think the core of like worship for me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So be sure to explore that was awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we continue to grow closer and closer as just a good core group of friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I ended up eventually got really close to this one young lady who I'm now engaged with and our wedding is in a couple of weeks coming up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we were on the fence back and forth because I realized I couldn't really stay in Arizona if I wanted to do this graduate program thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I needed to apply to other places and I applied to a bunch of places.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got into a couple, which was pretty awesome because the first time I dropped out of all of them, you know, rejected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then knew that I was going to move to Texas.
[SPEAKER_00]: And knew that this friend group that I just spawned is these new roots, this like infantile plant there.
[SPEAKER_00]: isn't going to necessarily have a time to grow anymore.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was really, really tough.
[SPEAKER_00]: So should I now that I'm in a better place, emotionally, and mentally, and actually ready for a relationship, should I even bother doing this if I'm going to have to move away in a couple months?
[SPEAKER_00]: Is this a bad idea?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have been on the fence for about it for like, for months, months and months.
[SPEAKER_00]: until finally we decided all right let's let's try long distance we'll start dating will date for a couple months in person and then you'll move away to Texas and then we'll do long distance and we'll visit each other when we can and she did a great job of helping me continue that pattern of authenticity really building me up and encouraging me to be honest not being in a place of judgment and then my story being able to help her
[SPEAKER_00]: through similar things that she'd been dealing with about not being able to just open up about who she was and some of the authenticity that she was struggling to feel with other groups of people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I moved to Texas and I've been exploring churches out there and I found a couple churches and we got engaged last January and now I've been wedding planning back and forth long distance.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I've joined a couple of churches in the sense that I've joined their small groups and like their Bible studies and have been attending them on Sundays but I haven't
[SPEAKER_00]: gone through membership out there just because I'm waiting until she moves out to Texas and we're able to fully explore churches together and make a unified decision rather than I'm like this is the church I'm going to and you're going to join it now and you're going to believe what I believe and yeah all those kind of things let me sense yeah yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: That's kind of the ketchup, you know?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess I have like two questions for you in that as I was listening to you, they kind of came to mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first one is just, I mean, I'd imagine, probably there's people listening that might be looking for a church.
[SPEAKER_01]: and how do you even do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember that was such a hard process for me when I went out to school.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe part of it is just because I was too picky and I was also distinctly looking for something that was different than what I had at home.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I just remember that being kind of a process.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your tips?
[SPEAKER_01]: How would you encourage people to go about looking for a church?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I would you just got to show up to the church man like there's I think there's such a barrier to give walking through those front doors that it's terrifying like even if it's something that you end up hating and there was some of those churches that I went to that I was like, okay, you can believe in God and I like I love that for you dude, but I'm gonna go somewhere else right totally okay, and I think connecting with people and being real with that and authentic with that is
[SPEAKER_00]: is a very valuable thing because then they also get to see you as a Christian and as an entity or as a person walking through their doors who is able to walk in and say, hey, like, I love what you guys are doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to go and do something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that helps to broaden their own ministries as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you got to just show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to go through those doors.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's churches all over town.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you see the buildings.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think showing up and then once you find something that is
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to say good enough, but like once you find something that fits well with you and that feels right and that feels like okay, like this is a great place.
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see myself doing something here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Getting involved is massively important.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_00]: I there was plenty of churches that I went to that I went on Sunday and I went on Sunday for a few weeks and they were fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: They I think fit with me, but they felt shallow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Until I took the time to actually ask what small groups I can join or ask what ministries I can be a part of or do something where I'm contributing more than just my time on a Sunday morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: was massive for feeling connected to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Otherwise, it's just hollow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's shallow.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my activity on the Sunday morning that I've been doing for almost twenty years of my life now, you know, for ten years.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I was looking, I was looking for somewhere that I could be involved specifically.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I want to find a place where I could actually serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because, you know, that's, I mean, I grew up with pastors kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: So obviously, we were obligated to serve, but there was also like a strong theology of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: growing up in church as well that, you know, you don't go to a church to consume, you go to a church to to serve other people too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And obviously that's super thick in the New Testament as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, maybe I didn't exactly know where to point to all the different places that I would now for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I remember like in Ohio when I was in college looking for schools, I those were kind of the two things that I wanted somewhere I could serve and somewhere that was outside of my comfort zone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I went to a lot of churches and I same deal like a lot of things that I kind of considered to be a little shallow.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then also a lot of things that I consider to be like just to, I don't know, like to black and white, like kind of boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, there was a lot of that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's nothing wrong with that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it's, that's person to person.
[SPEAKER_01]: What I find boring in a church is not going to be other people find boring in a church, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So going out and I ended up finding this church plant.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember going away to college, my plan was to eventually become a pastor and people used to ask me if I wanted to be a youth pastor and I said, I don't.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really don't want to work with teenagers.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because because I don't love hanging out with teenagers, I want to work with adults.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, you know, I want to have like intelligent conversations and I don't want to have to provide like
[SPEAKER_01]: These stupid games and stuff like I don't want to do any of that and of course I went to this church They let me play music with them on the first Sunday, which was a big hook I played bass for this church for adding up doing it for two years and I didn't have a ride I didn't have a car in college so they came and picked me up the pastors came and picked me up We went to this this place and it was this little church plant that were like thirty or forty people there Apparently not even actually, but not even forty it was probably more like twenty to thirty
[SPEAKER_01]: Walk in in the small church.
[SPEAKER_01]: They've got like half a dozen teenagers and they have no youth ministry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, there you are.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, I guess I guess that's my cue because I love the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the pastors.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was getting to play music there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I thought the preaching was solid.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it wasn't like they weren't people that were trying to be like really skillful in the preaching.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they were intentionally not doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were just trying to communicate.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scripture really trying to communicate the scripture and trying to spur.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were trying to equip and engage people for ministry because it was this church that had started out of a dead church and there were still some people from the church previous that they were trying to motivate for some kind of new ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: The pastors were new to the church all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was a good time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I liked everything about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, well, I guess I'm just going to have to start a youth ministry here because that's what the church needs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I can do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I jumped into that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I still work with teenagers to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though I'm not really like a youth pastor per se.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of my one of the things that I'm engaged with is like talking to teenagers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so like that's still still.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm dealing with teenagers for the last ten, ten plus years now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have my three younger siblings right under your belt.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sure do.
[SPEAKER_00]: I sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one of them is not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not a joke.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're kicked him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: We kicked him out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, twenty years old.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Pretty wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Kind of not, dude.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is wild.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a big and big.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I really respect that about about you that you don't want to be a passive consumer.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I was going to my church in Ohio, it ended up closing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a church plant.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had no money.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eventually, we had to just say, OK, this is not working.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to move on.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got to push the people here to somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my third and final year of school, they were not around anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we wanted to go somewhere.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I knew I wasn't going to be there long.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I actually spent the first
[SPEAKER_01]: like out maybe eight weeks of the semester doing different churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a roommate at the time at a car or he actually had a roommate who had a fiance who had a car technically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we would go and we would go to different churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we ended up landing in like a boring Southern Baptist church that we were just passively going to.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was, and I just remember how uncomfortable it was to do that, to go and to not do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, it was my senior year.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was super busy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was crammed out all this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I knew I was going to be there long.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I didn't see the point of getting super connected.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I already felt like I had a really strong like community around me in the school.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we ended up doing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing exactly what I didn't want to do when I first got there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was like the worst I would say the worst church experience of my life so far.
[SPEAKER_01]: A hundred percent was going somewhere where you're not committed to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really you know you're going to be out the door in a couple months.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you're not serving at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like they had to set up chairs after service.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'd to our help tear down the chairs.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was the extent of our service, you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know like anybody's name really, like we just went and listened to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is the way that like the majority of Americans go to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: They show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: They sing their songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: They listen to the guy talk and then they go home.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's crazy to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, there's a distinct difference I think in being there and being involved in the church versus being there and just passively consuming it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I wonder then if maybe the person that's looking for a church, I don't want to put anybody under the bus or anything like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I wonder if maybe it's not always like people that are looking for churches, it's not always the churches that are the problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's the people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, thousand per centoon.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you I did this, I was guilty of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I showed up to churches and I was expecting a certain standard and a certain degree of this is what I want the church to look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the ministries I want them to have.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is preaching I want it to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're not willing to compromise on a thing here or there, and you're not willing to actually put forth some effort yourself, then you're going to have a horrible experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're never going to find that, like, perfect church.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you do, you probably need to run away, honestly, because if a church isn't challenged, you need to run a couple things, then it's not a great thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you need to be willing to, I think, put your heart in a position to actually hear what the person's saying, more than what the people are saying, and exactly making it fit your exact box.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, interestingly enough, when when Paul writes like all the letters that he writes to all these different churches and there's like stuff going on in the church, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So like, especially like Corinthians, but you could also go to like Ephesians and Galatians for this too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: and Timothy, and that's the low onions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, obviously all of them, honestly, when he gets to addressing these churches on what they're supposed to do, the encouragement is always, you gotta go there with others' mindedness.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you get together, think about the other people there more highly than you're thinking of yourself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's like hard to do, obviously, you know, it's easier to have than done, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, it's like this is what when we're looking for churches, we should be keeping that in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we're in the churches, we should be keeping that in mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've got a guard against this idea of like being a passive consumer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so easy to do but yeah, I think the trick there is what you said is like the easiness of it and I think that's a trap that a lot of people fall into whether it's with how they're consuming churches or how they're talking to people or whatever they just kind of take the minimal amount of effort to do something or the minimal thing
[SPEAKER_00]: and you need to be intentional about, I think, being more empathetic in life, whether it's this conversation that we're having here and where I'm thinking, not necessarily thinking about what you're saying and what you're receiving, but understanding how you're gonna hear this and all that kind of stuff and how my show up to a church and my being there and being a servant and actually being a part of it is gonna actually change my heart, even though it's not the easiest thing, it ends up being more to beneficial to me than I expect.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the degree like I used to not think that like tithing was very important.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was like, I can serve with my time and that's my payment to the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm worshiping.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't necessarily need to give them money.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did like, that's not a thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the moment that I started giving, I don't even think it was a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to see it was like five dollars a week.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it wasn't even a lot of money.
[SPEAKER_00]: To the church I that heart posture changed suddenly the sermons became way better dude I'm not even kidding like yeah, well everything felt I think more real the more that I was putting into it and the more that I've myself that I had invested in the church Right whether that's serving in time or serving with your financial support or whatever it is you'll have a piece of that pie that is more authentic to you
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the question, and we'll probably wrap up this question that I want to ask a second question of thinking of, you mentioned some stuff with different leaders that you went through.
[SPEAKER_01]: You mentioned your original pastor, the intern pastor, the board, the members of the church, and then you even mentioned being really connected with our youth group.
[SPEAKER_01]: And of course, I'm divorced my ex, like had a huge thing that happened where she's sort of abandoned.
[SPEAKER_01]: me and the church and all and kind of the people in it and it was kind of like a messy especially with the teenagers.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a really messy process.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I feel like in your your I mean first of all it's commendable that you were able to draw the distinction between
[SPEAKER_01]: People can be really flawed, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing to Jesus and following him and then even his church.
[SPEAKER_01]: As flawed as it is, but how is it that you deal with people letting you down in ministry and where, how do we move past that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why should we move past that?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's kind of what I want to have a conversation about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, counseling helped a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, going through, I think talking through some of that was a big piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: But even after a lot of those, and these initial traumas, I mean, my, my ex, her dad was a pastor who was allegedly abusive about in different things physically verbally.
[SPEAKER_00]: I had, there's another pastor of a church that I got involved in that he also got exposed for an affair.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it like seemed like everywhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: People were just falling down like crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like what's going on with
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: These churches.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's nothing new.
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's always been like this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I was just suddenly being exposed to it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: A new young adult.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: But understanding that my experience with the churches not my emotions that I have on a Sunday morning and my like conversations that I have with the people, but rather it's a relationship that I have with Jesus was a massive distinction there where what I
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm experiencing it on a Sunday morning and what I'm hearing coming from the news letter about in a fair or what I'm seeing from my youth pastor in his ex and one of the young adult or youth group like leaders leaving the church and all that kind of stuff and that kind of going off the deep end is is nothing new and it's also not not even necessarily I think a fault of Christianity I think as a lot of people
[SPEAKER_00]: like to point the blame.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, oh, the people are can be bad, but Christianity is good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the people just are bad.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, we have sinful nature.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so...
[SPEAKER_00]: Knowing that my relationship with Jesus and my relationship with Christ is central to my faith and that's what it's grounded upon and not the conversations that I have and not the feelings that I have on a Sunday morning or not the actions that the pastor has actually grounds myself in a place of being able to worship freely like without this guilty conscious that like
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, how am I listening to this sermon when five pastors in my life had all this nasty stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this pastor has a nasty thing going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, maybe he does.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that doesn't make the words that they're saying any less true or my relationship with Christ that's growing, whether it's through my individual
[SPEAKER_00]: Bible reading or from the lessons that I'm hearing from these broken people, any less true, God's still working in the worst of situations.
[SPEAKER_00]: And being exposed to that, I think time and time and time again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't give people permission to do bad things, but it kind of showed me that
[SPEAKER_00]: God is going to work regardless and I can continue to humble myself and know that like I can take a step back on my plan and work on my relationship with Christ more than my relationship with these people in the church and knowing that my relationship with these people in the church will grow and will flourish from having a good relationship with Christ but that's the foundation and I need to really be focused in on that and not equate the two because I think the pastor having an affair or
[SPEAKER_00]: the drama that goes on, the scandals that are exposed aren't necessarily a symptom of Christianity, but a symptom of sin and being able to separate those two things and know that I can still rely on Christ, even with these things happening, because they're going to happen everywhere, not just in the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, one really helpful theology for me because as somebody that grew up as a pastor's kid, you see the worst of people because you see all the behind the scenes stuff that goes on to.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one, one helpful theology for me, so I grew up in a more like fundamentalist background where all people are bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So every human being, you know, you'd get
[SPEAKER_01]: There was like that expression and evangelism growing up.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like in order to get somebody saved.
[SPEAKER_01]: You got to get them lost first.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're sinful.
[SPEAKER_01]: You deserve hell.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus wants to rescue you from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the average person is like, what are you talking about?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm like a fine person.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But, um, and there's it's not that that is not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's that it's not the whole truth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I, instead, with, you know, you have one side of things where a lot, this is where a lot of people are progressive Christianity would preach this and also a lot of people who are not Christians at all would say, people are fundamentally like good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you have a lot of like other people in the culture and then also your fundamentalist conservative Christians might say all people are fundamentally bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what I've grown to understand is that I actually know everybody has a complex mix of good and bad at a more fundamental thing to say about a human being from a scriptural perspective is that we were made good but broken.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, all people are fundamentally some mix, come complex mix of good or good or bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that frees up, like listen to your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, like, it frees up your ability to put too much stock in any kind of leader.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you could put too much stock in a leader.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then once that leader's complex mix of bad comes out, well, okay, now that crumbles, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only person that is all good is Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he's got to be that foundation.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the flip side of that, it also, like you mentioned, you went through all this stuff, you know, people had this like public version of who you were.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was like good and tidy and cleaned up while behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was all this other stuff going on at one point in your story.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's like again, if you're able to look at yourself as being a complex makes a good and bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: It also frees you up from even during those times when you're not living up to the standard that Jesus invites us to live up to, you can still come to Jesus, you can still worship, you can still grow in your relationship with Christ, even if you're not like nothing and not everything about you is fixed yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, you know, and so I think that helps too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then again, it helps in this idea of thinking, okay, is everybody else that's not in this style of church, still part of the group.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's again, if you can think of every church as like a complex mix of good and bad, because we as people have a complex mix of good and bad, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: then they can still have a relationship with Christ.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't have to be all good.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're theology.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if you disagree strongly with their theology, they can still be part of the club because it's about this relationship, but Jesus, it's not about being good or being bad, basically.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there's a way to look at like, even, I mean, everything is Genesis one through three for me, but there's a way to look at this distinction between good and evil as being besides the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it wasn't as important.
[SPEAKER_01]: It wasn't important enough for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: that he didn't give it to his initial humans.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, he said, you don't even really need to know this, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there was this idea that like Christianity should be about your relationship with Jesus, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about your relationship to Yahweh.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was about Adam and Eve's relationship to God in the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was what was central to their humanity, not whether or not they were good or bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, of course, at the time, that's like pre-fallen broken.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're, you know, you can get nitpicky with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But again, it's like people as humans are they're never gonna not be a complex good and bad this side of eternity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But still Jesus steps in that situation invites a relationship with him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what it's actually about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think you need to be able to look at people from that lens.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned the first pass that I grew up with and he had an affair and I was able to have lunch with him last summer.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was a phenomenal experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was taking a road trip through California.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my dad flew out and we reached out and we said, hey, do you just want to grab lunch?
[SPEAKER_00]: I hadn't seen this guy in four and a half years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And to be able to sit down with him and who
[SPEAKER_00]: At one point, I put a lot of blame onto him, I think, and I was like, oh, that's, that's a really a key thing of you to do, and being able to look at it from more of that lens that you're speaking of, like, this, this bad piece of this separation isn't, isn't all that he is.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm not going to base his worth off of this sin that he had, that it did affect the church and affected my life, it affected a lot of people's lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: but now able to sit down and hear about the ministries that he's doing in California now and hear about the healing that he's gone through in the processes that he's gone through and him being able to hear my experience and also see it growth and see that even he preaching these pretty
[SPEAKER_00]: like robust Southern Baptist theology, it's about like the brimstone and fire and like very like raw raw for most of his life and seeing him go and not necessarily back down from that, but I think mature passed that and his current teachings and wherever he was ministering at the time was phenomenal.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean it was an incredible experience to see like what a man of
[SPEAKER_00]: going through this evolution of this growth process where he was the head of the SPC and like the New England district kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: They held conferences at our church.
[SPEAKER_00]: They did all kinds of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then for this to expose and to happen was horrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then to see him now mature and grow past and continue to learn and to continue to embrace that I think that good peace and embrace the good that his relationship with Jesus was awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a very helpful experience.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: I kind of feel like as a way to wrap up, I'll just say, I think there's still hope for each of us, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Regardless of what we've gone through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, still hope for us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah, I do.
[SPEAKER_01]: Definitely still hope for the church.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's worth jumping in and getting involved in being a part of one, even when it's complicated sometimes.
[SPEAKER_00]: it can be very complicated and you don't even necessarily have to agree with everything that the global church quote unquote has you know I think there's a lot of things that a lot of people would disagree with that I as a Christian that's been Christian for most my life would fundamentally disagree with some of the principles that are projected through media and that kind of stuff like that's not what your faith in what your church is there's a lot of things separate from that but you're never going to learn what those things are unless you get involved just exactly dive through yeah that's awesome
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for giving your time, dude.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was really good to catch up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for inviting me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me hang out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's been real.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.