Pints With Aquinas - From PROTESTANT PASTOR to Catholic w/ Keith Nester

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

Show Sponsors:  https://strive21.com/matt https://hallow.com/matt Keith's Links: @RosaryCrewwithKeithNester  @KeithNester  https://down2earthministry.org/  

And we are live. This is a we're going live to our local supporters. G'day. Thank you. If you're a local supporter We're here with Keith Keith Nesta and this will be going live on YouTube in a few weeks from now But it is lovely to have you. Thanks for having me Matt. It's an honor to be here Yeah, I was surprised that a lot of our local supporters I mean a lot of knew who you were and we're grateful for the work that you've done But then some of them were like who's this guy do an introduction or something? So for those who aren't aware of you, give us a little intro. A little bio.

Okay, so I grew up going to church. My dad is a Methodist pastor, and I went into ministry when I was about 20 years old and served in various capacities in various types of churches. For about 22 years before in 2017, I became Catholic. And since then, I've done a lot of different things. And since 2020, I've been doing ministry things with relation to teaching people about studying the scriptures, helping people who are feeling the pull

to conversion to Catholicism, and doing things like praying the rosary. I do a weekly podcast called Unpacking the Mass where I take the week's readings and I just sort of work through them out loud in front of people on a live stream and then that goes live on YouTube on Thursdays or Tuesdays, whichever day. You have a couple of YouTube channels now, is that right? I do. I have the Keith Nester YouTube channel, which when I started that YouTube channel,

I really didn't know anything about YouTube. I literally just parked a video that someone had made of me giving a talk, and that was just all it was. And then I started another YouTube channel called Rosary Crew with Keith Nester, which is devoted to praying a live stream rosary every day. And we've been doing that since March 18th of 2020,

every single day. Wow. So it's not like a recorded thing you throw up. It's live every day. We do have recordings on there, but I do a live stream rosary every day on there. I've done it every day since March 18th, 2020. Wow.

When you came into the faith, did your wife come with you? Or was she already? So my wife was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school. So of course, she knows everything about the Catholic faith, but she grew up in the Catholic school, but they never went to Mass. And when I met her, I wanted to date her, but I only wanted to date Christians. And I was at the time when I met her, I was going to like a Calvary Chapel Bible Church. So I was on fire for the Bible. And I was like chapel Bible church. So I was on fire for the Bible and I was like studying the scriptures and getting all fired up and I met this girl like hey do you go to church are you a Christian and she said well I'm Catholic does that count?

And I said absolutely not. I was like not a chance come to me with come to my church with me. So she came to me or she came with me to my church. And I remember like the first night she walked in and she was looking around like, this is church? And the praise and worship music was happening and the pastor gave an incredible sermon that lasted about an hour and a half. But that shook, didn't it? Yeah, but she looked at me and she said, this is incredible. Wow. She said, thank you for bringing me here. What do I do about my Catholicism?

And I said, forget about that. That's not Christianity. That's not real Christianity. You're going to become like a real Christian with a real relationship with Jesus. So she kind of left Catholicism behind. I went into ministry, and she joined me in Iowa where I was moving to at the time. I met her in Philadelphia where she grew up. And then we started this little

youth ministry together and got married. And then so- In Philly? No, it was in Iowa. Oh, I'm sorry. So yeah, so I met her in Philadelphia. That's where she's from. I moved to Iowa to go be a youth pastor, convinced her to come with me. We got married, and then we started this little youth ministry. We had a family and, you know, 22 years of ministry. It was amazing with all this stuff going on. And then when I became Catholic, it was

like, well, what am I supposed to do? You know? And so she said to me when I converted, when I told her I needed to do this, she was like, okay, I'm proud of you for the search that you're on. I don't know what I think about this, but I'm willing to come with you for the sake of our children who were teenagers at the time. Now, they weren't so fired up about it. So that was

tough because our family was divided. I quit my job in the Methodist church, became a Catholic, and I was just going to church and she would come with me. And I remember she would just be mad at me all day. She'd come in Sundays and she would sit there and she would just cry and then she would get angry because she was going through this grieving process really of, hey, her identity was, I'm a pastor's wife. You know, this is who I am. I left all this other stuff behind. What are you doing?

Like, why did you blow up our life? So she was trying to work through all that and it took a long time. And finally she started to have her own journey. I remember listening to other converts talk about the mistakes they made when they've come in and their spouses haven't. What were some of them? Just because we actually have a lot of people who watch and they they'll share with us that I'm becoming Catholic, my wife isn't, or I'm becoming Catholic, my husband isn't. And oh I might be a perilous road. It is is. And the biggest mistake I think we can make when our spouses aren't with us on that journey is to not be patient with them and to make every conversation

about Catholicism and every little thing that we learn about. We go, Oh wow. Yeah, this is awesome. Did you know about this? And they're just like, I don't care what it is that you keep talking about. If all you do is talk about it, they're going to get sick of it. So I was like, okay, I don't want to impose this on everybody in my life, but I'm so excited about it. What do I do? You know, I don't want to hide it either. So I tried to really, I tried really hard with her to not go there, but I mean, a husband and wife relationship, you're going to talk about these things, but the biggest mistakes you can make

are trying to impose what you're doing on other people when they're not ready for it. Yeah, but we all have had that experience. When people have done that to us, it's extremely off-putting. Oh, it happened to me. I would have become Catholic probably a lot sooner for a variety of reasons,

but there were a few instances I had some bumps in the road where there were some unhelpful things said to me from other Catholics or by other Catholics that kind of made me stop and go, oh, okay. Like what? Well, I remember once I met with a priest and the first thing he said to me was when I was sharing with him where I was in this journey, and I had just started to like learn about Catholicism. I didn't really know anything about it growing up.

The only thing I knew about Catholicism was what other Protestants had told me, which you know how that goes. Most of it's wrong. So as I'm beginning to learn from a few Catholics in my life that really do know their faith, and I'm starting to get interested in it, I went to meet with this priest and one of the first things he said to me was, well, whoa, whoa, hold on. I explained to him my story and he goes, your marriage isn't valid. You do know that by the way. man and I was like what he's like yeah your wife was brought up Catholic and you got married outside the Catholic Church you didn't get a dispensation for that so so I have to tell you that you're not really married and you know technically he was right it was it was it how he said it well it I

mean he wasn't like being a jerk about it But I just think it was the wrong time for me to hear that and I certain because my heart certainly wasn't ready for that Yeah, so when I heard that the first thing I thought of was well, then I'm out Yeah, you know, I can't I can't go down this road anymore and then another time I was I was with a group of Catholics and we had we'd been having an amazing experience together. And this person just looked at me, who I didn't even really know them very well, but they knew that I was a Protestant. I was kind of out of, I was on a pilgrimage as a fish out of water, and this

person said to me, I don't know how you could have ever left the church. How could you ever walked away from what Christ has done in his church and the Eucharist and all that? And I'm just like, whoa, whoa! Well, first of all, you didn't walk away from it. It was never yours to begin with. Exactly. Yeah. And I remember. But even if it had been, that's not a very charitable way of putting it.

I just said, look, I didn't walk away from anything. I was born like this. I don't, you know, I didn't know anything, you know, but it just, and I don't want to blame that, you know, I mean, everybody always has those stories of, well, this person said that to me, so therefore I don't have to follow the truth. But I'm just like, I wanted to, when I was in that position, and I'm sure I failed a thousand times, but I wanted to do the best I could to not be unhelpful to the people that were closest to me that was wrestling with what happened to Keith. Why is he Catholic?

Why did he mess up our whole lives? Why did he walk away? I mean, I was their pastor and they're like, we listen to you every week. Like you're our guy, you know, and now what happened to you? I didn't want to represent the church to them in a way that was going to come off as though now I'm some kind of elitist or now I'm just smarter than you are or now I don't think you're a Christian anymore. So that's been tough. But with my family, there's all those other dynamics.

But anyway, with my wife, she had to get to that point where God brought her in her own way on her journey. And I remember it was really awesome how she would talk about, okay, when we were coming home from Mass, she would talk about different things she experienced and say, why do they do that? And I'd say, you didn't learn that when you were in Catholic school? No.

And then what's the deal with this? We would talk about these things and she would begin to sort of open her eyes and the way she would describe it to you, the Lord one time just kind of bashed her over the head and said, maybe if you would open your eyes and stop having such a hardened heart, you might see the beauty that your husband saw in my church. So she started to kind of begin to

open her eyes to it. And then a year after I came into the church, which was October 8, 2017, kind of a random day, I'll tell you more about that later, but we were on a pilgrimage to Medjugorje. We went over there. I had gone there years earlier when I was still a Protestant, like way long time ago. And we had been invited to go back. So I was a Catholic, it was my first year, my one year anniversary, we were there. And we just arrived there and it was great.

The last night of the of the pilgrimage, we were at Adoration and it was late at night and then I could tell God was working on my wife's heart, pretty hardcore, something's going on with her and this guy comes over and says, hey, let's go over to Victor's and get some pizza, which is kind of the local pizza joint in Medjugorje that you go to. Yep. So we go over there and she says to my friend who invited us, hey, what time does confession get done? Oof. And... That's powerful. It is.

You must have been. She had, well, she had a really bad experience as a little girl in confession. She had a priest tell her, she was in fourth grade, Matt, and she had a priest tell her when she confessed the sin of not going to Mass, because nobody took her, and then she received the sin of not going to mass, because nobody took her, and then she received the Eucharist at like a chapel at the school, he said to her, you're a waste of Catholic education, you don't belong here, and your parents don't deserve to have you in this Catholic school. And he just basically chastised this little nine-year-old girl

chastised this little nine-year-old girl for this terrible sin. So she had this like super PTSD around confession. And when we were coming into the church together, I mean for her, and it was, I kind of gave her a hard time because I'm like, all you had to do is go to confession once. I had to do all this stuff to come into the church. I've been studying all this stuff for all these years. And, but when she went to confession with our priest, she told him, she said, look, I'm gonna do this, but I'm just letting you know I got a real problem with it. She's a Philly girl.

So he was like, oh, you're feisty. Well, at this thing in Medjugorje, she felt like God was saying to her, you need to go to confession. And she was resisting it. So at like 9.45 at night, we walk out of the pizza place. My buddy had said, well, they're there until 10, but you're probably never gonna get anybody now. It's late at night

So at least she could have said okay. Well, I tried Lord, you know, you know, we do that sometimes We walked over there and there was one priest with an English speaking little flag there all by himself, which that never happens over there and She walked up to him and he said I've been waiting for you And I'm sitting waiting for you. And I'm sitting in the back, I don't know what's going on, I'm just watching because it's outside. And they're going through this thing

and she's talking with her hands and he's laughing, then he's crying and it lasts for like 25 minutes. Wow. And then at the end of it, she gets up and she gives him this huge hug. And he's got tears streaming down his face, she's got tears streaming down her face. She walks over to me and she's like this huge hug, and he's got tears streaming down his face, she's got tears streaming down her face, she walks over to me and she's like, let's go!

And I was like, what's your penance? Don't you have to do something? She goes, he didn't give me one. And I said, well, you gotta tell me about that. And at the same time, I'm trying to absorb what just happened, and I don't wanna intrude on their confessional experience. Basically, she had an experience where he read her soul. You know,

you hear about the saints being able to do that, and he basically told her what her situation was, how she had come on this trip needing God to speak to her. She'd been in this limbo for a long time, not sure what to do, feeling kind of lost and all these other details. And he said, and this is year last night, and you didn't want to be here, but the Lord told you to come to see me. Wow. And she just dumped her guts out to him.

And what he told her was, keep doing what you're doing. God loves you more than you will ever know, and just be patient. And something is right around the corner. And that was all she needed, right? One of the things that she struggled with was the fact that when I left my career in ministry, you know, I just went from that was my identity in my life to now I'm working secular jobs. I'm not, you know, nothing, which I was cool with. Okay? I didn't

become a Protestant Jew Catholic going, how do I be the next Scott Hahn? Or how do I have a podcast? Or how do I tell people? I didn't want anything to do with any of that. And it wasn't because I was against it. I just felt like the hardest part for me to conversion at the end was, can I let go of my ministry? Can I let go of my identity? Because that's how I felt like God loved me, was because I was this pastor, right? And to not have that, I didn't really know what I was going to do. And when I was able to truly let that go, it was like I didn't just let it go, I just pushed it away and said, fly away. And so for me, I had worked so hard to make that sacrifice and to let it go.

And now that I had done that, I didn't wanna be thinking about, well, how do I do that again? How do I give talks and write books and all this kind of, like the things that people do? And I remember my priest said to me, he said, Keith, people are gonna get you to try to do stuff because of your background,

just don't do anything for a year. You don't need that. Good advice. Just fly under the radar year. You don't need that. Good advice. Just fly under the radar. And I was cool with that. So I went to Mass every week, and I kept a very low profile. I didn't try to make myself known to anybody. I just was just absorbing being Catholic,

and I was so fired up about it, because I was on a journey for so many years to get there. When I finally became Catholic, I felt like this is it. I can die now. I'm Catholic, right? This is it. And I'm so jazzed about it. The last thing I was going to try to do was be like, okay, Lord, but now what about this? And now what about that? None of it mattered. I felt like I was laying down my life for Christ in order to take up a new life in Christ. I didn't want to have an ulterior motive of, well, okay, now how do I sneak back into getting that

again? But for her, that was a struggle because she felt like, and my dad, who's a pastor, you know, they felt like, they're like, Keith, you have for ministry, and we don't think God's done with you yet. So you need to be thinking about that. And I just kept pushing that away. No, no, no, I don't want to do it. And everyone said, when are you gonna write a book? When are you gonna write a book? And I'm like, I'm not that guy anyway. I'm not super smart. I'm not super academic. I'm not some big scholar. I'm just like a down-to-earth practical guy who loves Jesus and wants to understand what it means to follow Him every day. I don't claim to be some brilliant guy. So, for me, I was like, I'm not a book guy. Well, the day after that confession, we're on the bus heading home to, we're heading back to Split, Croatia to get ready to catch the flight. And at 525 is kind of a big

deal over there. Everybody stops, whatever they're and they pray. And, um, cause that's when allegedly an apparition is happening or whatever. Um, so on the bus, you know, and I'm thinking, well, we're not there anymore. Do we need to do that? But, but, uh, everyone just kind of does that. And as we're praying, you've seen the matrix, right? You know, the scene where Neo, like he gets hit in the head with that thing and he goes, I know Kung Fu, you know, it's like everything's downloaded to him. Out of nowhere, this lightning bolt hits me in the head and I grab my phone and I start typing on the notes on my phone and Estelle is like next to me and my wife and she's like, what are you doing? We're praying you heathen, you know, put your phone away. And I'm like,

what are you talking about? And I just started typing down the converts guide to Catholicism your first year in the church and I showed it to her I said this is the book I have to write. Wow, it hit me out of nowhere Matt And I just knew everything it was like boom and I'm so I got off that bus and I said I said to her more other guy I said this is the book I have to write and When we got back I Started trying to figure out how do I write a book? I don't know what I'm doing. And I just sort of like went away to this monastery, and I would take little trips for

a couple days at a time just kind of working through it. And that's how my first book came about. And it was a book written – it's not an apologetics manual. It's not to convince someone to become Catholic. It's a book that's written to people who have already decided they want to become Catholic Yep, but now what right like what's it like being a new convert because I've never read a book like that before I've read lots of books that tell you why you should be Catholic Right and that want to tell you all the devotional things about being Catholic and yeah all of the nuanced things about being Catholic

And here's this saint and that but how do do you find a local church when you are a Protestant become Catholic and you're trying to like search for a church? How do you do that? I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called strive 21.com slash Matt. You go there right now or if you text strive to six six eight six six We'll send you the link. It's a hundred percent free and it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography usually men know that porn is wrong

They don't need me or you to convince them that it's wrong What they need is a battle plan to get out and so I've distilled all that I've learned over the last 15 or so years as I've been talking and writing on this topic into this one course. Think of it as if you and I could have a coffee over the next 21 days, and I would kind of guide you along this journey. That's basically what this is.

It's incredibly well-produced. We had a whole camera crew come and film this. And I think it'll be a real help to you. And it's also not an isolated course that you go through on your own because literally tens of thousands of men have now gone through this course and as you go through the different videos there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that Strive 21. That's Strive21.com slash Matt, or as I say, Text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. I want to talk about your book because I think that's so important to help

new Catholics kind of survive those first few years, but I really want to go back and ask, as a Methodist pastor, how did Catholicism even come on the radar? Well, so I was running this youth ministry, okay, and we started, this was a little church of about 250 people. I had never been in ministry before, you know, I wasn't qualified to take this job, I had no business doing this, but they offered me the job. And we started with about 12 kids, just sort of like, okay, I'll just do the things I know how to do, you know, teach the Bible, lead some worship, have a good time. And this little youth group grew to about 300 kids every week. And this little church grew to about a thousand people.

So this little youth group just blew up the town, and it blew up our church. And it was pretty exciting. It was amazing. And as that's kind of happening, I'm trying to figure out, well, okay, well now I guess I gotta like become legit, right? So I gotta have a logo and a name for our youth group. I can't just call it youth group. We gotta have something to put on stickers and water bottles and t-shirts. So I was looking for a graphic designer who would help me design something because I wasn't gonna leave it to like a seventh grader to, you know, come up with our logo or whatever. So I was looking for a graphic designer who would help me design something because I wasn't going to leave it to like a seventh grader

to come up with our logo or whatever. So this is 1997. Okay, so long time ago, right? No internet, no cell phones, just like, you know, I mean, I think I had a pager at the time or something, but I found this guy named Devin Schott, who I know you know, Devin, in the Yellow Pages, and I called him up and I explained to him

what I was doing and what I needed, and he sounded pretty excited about it, and he said, okay, I'll come up with something for you, and he invited me over to his house to look at his ideas. And I remember the night was, it was either my first or second wedding anniversary. And I told Estelle, I said, hey, I gotta go check out this guy's logos.

I'll be back in about- Is that the name of your wife? Her name is Estelle. That's such a great name. Oh, it's great. And her mom's name- I know I met her. I just forgot that that was her name.

Estelle, it's beautiful. We should bring Estelle back. Keep going. Her mom's name is Estelle, and her dad's name is Walter. Her dad's name was Estelle. And her brother's name is Walter. Her dad's name was Estelle. And her brother's name is Walter. So it's Estelle and Walt. I'll be back in like 20 minutes. I go over to Devin's house and I'm walking up to his front door and he's got like statues on the porch

and I'm like, okay, what's up with that? He opens the door and I go into his house and it's very Catholic looking, which you're probably, you guys are probably used to here in Steubenville, but icons everywhere. There's no TV in the house. There's like a grand piano in the living room and beautiful leather furniture. And there's a little bowl of water by the door. Remember, I know nothing about Catholicism at this point, but I'm in seminary. His are a bowl of water.

Yeah. I'm like, what are you? He invites me in, sits down in his formal dining room, and he opens up this little folder and is showing me these designs, and I was blown away. I mean, he's so gifted. He's designed so many book covers in the Catholic world. He sent a son of mine before I even knew him. He's amazing. And so I'm looking at this and I'm like, wow, this is incredible. And the thought that was running through my head, Matt, was I need to convert this guy so he can become part of our youth ministry. Because he's about the same age as I am. And I could tell he had a fiery personality

and he talked about the Lord, he talked about Jesus. So I'm like, this is going to be easy. So I said to him, I'm like, dude, are you a Christian? He's like, yeah. And I'm like, really? What's with all this Catholic stuff, man? You know, what is that? And he just started laughing. And he's like, well, I'm a Catholic Christian, you know? And I just said, okay, and I'm sitting here trying to think about how do I do this? Because, I mean, we converted Catholics every week in our church. Most of the people in our church were ex-Catholics, supposedly, you know? And most of the kids in my youth group Wednesday night were coming over after CCD class, they'd come over to our church, or they would skip CCD class to

come to our church, because it was the fun church, right? So I wasn't worried that I wouldn't be able to make him a Protestant. I just thought, how do I do this in the right way? Did you consider yourself a Protestant? Oh yeah, 100%. 100%. So, you know, like I said, I didn't know a lot about Catholicism, but I thought I knew a lot about Catholicism. And in my mind, I just have to tell him the gospel and he'll go, wow, I've never heard that before, like every other Catholic I talk to. What do I do now? And then I could tell him and that'd be that. What was your biggest, I want to get back to

David, but what was your biggest misconception would you say about Catholicism? I think my biggest conception about Catholicism is they didn't know their Bibles. Because to me, the Bible was everything, right? I mean, being a guy who kind of came into his faith really strongly in Calvary Chapel, which is all about, I mean, you saw the Jesus revolution, that's all those guys, right? That's the guys, right? And so for me, I figured, well, Catholics just have little homilies, they have all these rituals, they have all these sacraments, but they don't know their Bibles because none of the Catholics I knew knew their Bibles. So that was my biggest misconception. And when I started talking about the Bible with Devin, he knew it better than I did. And he started challenging me on things like, Oh yeah, you love the Bible.

Let's look at John chapter six. So is this the first night when you're there? First night, within 20 minutes of meeting him. Tell me how you, because you said it would be as easy as telling him the gospel and he'd become Protestant. So tell me how that went. How did you begin that and how did he react? I asked him the question, I said, Devin, are you saved? If you died tonight, would you go to heaven? Do you have a personal relationship with Lord Jesus? Those were the questions that I asked him, because I wanted to know how a Catholic would answer, and I assumed that he wouldn't have a good answer to that. Yeah, I'm sure usually Catholics would just deer in headlights to know how to answer it. It's like all the Ray Comfort videos you've ever seen on YouTube, where he asks the kids on the college campuses and they just go, that's what I expected, that's not what I got.

But that's how I started, I just asked him those questions. And he began to fire back to me things about baptism and things about the Eucharist and things about the authority of the church. But he didn't just like beat me over the head with a bunch of words I didn't understand and a bunch of like ho um, hoity-toity kind of sounding platitudes that sometimes us Catholics can give to people.

You know, he didn't call me a heretic. He didn't call me a schismatic, you know, none of that stuff. We just, we just had a conversation, but that's how I started. I just, you know, I just wanted to be bold with him and come right out and go for it. And so what was your impression? Were you thinking you're a Protestant and you just don't realize it? If you're meeting someone who's Catholic and he knows the Bible, how did you respond to his depth of biblical knowledge? It was like I didn't know what to do with it.

I was shocked and I thought, okay, this is gonna be a little harder than I thought. But we'll get there. But we'll get there. Yeah. And but what was going on across the table was he was sitting there thinking, okay, I got to be a little harder than I thought. But we'll get there. But we'll get there, yeah. But what was going on across the table was he was sitting there thinking, okay, I gotta make Keith a Catholic. So the more our friendship developed,

because we kind of linked up pretty quickly that night in terms of just personality-wise, and I felt like we were gonna be good friends, but what happened was that night before I left, and remember it was my anniversary. So I'm also thinking I got to get home. About two hours later, his wife yells down from upstairs like, doesn't Keith have to leave? And I'm like, oh, woman who understands how your wife's feeling. Exactly. And I remember Devon, he goes, hey, before you go, I got

something for you. He said, this guy was like you only worse. And he became a Catholic. And he handed me a VHS tape. Come on. With a guy that looks like my dad shaking hands with the Pope. We all know what that was, right? Dr. Hahn? Yeah, the Scott Hahn conversion story.

I'd never heard about that. Sure. I went home a couple hours late. And you know, I think I watched it the next day and I was blown away by Dr. Hahn. I was just like, this is amazing. Because now I was listening to someone who spoke the language I spoke, but way more advanced than even I was, you know?

And to hear his conclusions. So at the same time, I'm going to a Presbyterian seminary. So I'm listening to this and I'm starting to go, okay, surely my professors will have answers to these issues. So Devin and I would get together, we would talk about things. He was giving me like these apologetics booklets and magazines and manuals. Remember the internet wasn't a thing yet. And we would argue and yell at each other and you know we'd almost come to blows a couple times. Oh we did. Tell me about this, because I've heard people say this, and I always think, is it exaggeration?

No, there's not. There's two times I'll tell you about. The first one was we were sitting outside of a burger place in Davenport, Iowa, on Fourth Street, I believe, maybe Second Street, and we had just had lunch, and we got into a heated conversation, and by this time, the gloves had sort of come off.

You know, we weren't trying to be cordial to each other anymore. Maybe we were a little familiar and comfortable so we can really say what we thought. And we were just like toe to toe talking about what this particular saint said and what the scripture teaches on this. And I remember people were starting to gather around us. And I'm like, we got to chill to listen, because they were worried. They were. I think they were worried.

Like, what's going on here? And then they heard us talking about, well, St. Ignatius of Antioch, then they're like, okay, these guys are just nerds. Angry nerds. The other time was on the first trip to Medjugorje that I went onto with Devin and a bunch of his Catholic friends.

Now this is like 2002-ish, firmly Protestant. I got suckered into going on this pilgrimage because we were going to Rome. I didn't know anything about Medjugorje. I went, what's all this? But yeah, you'd take me to Rome? Sure, I'll go.

So I went on this trip. Why were you even open to going to Rome with Devin at the time? Because I'm Italian and I was making like $23,000 a year and like a trip to Europe was never- Oh, it was free? It was free, yeah. Oh, come on, you gotta go.

That's where I went. Yeah. So a friend of ours invited me to go on this pilgrimage. What I found out later was this guy had a major conversion experience over there and was very successful in business. So he, like part of his mission in life was he would bring 25, 30 people a year

on these pilgrimages. So his daughter was coming to my youth group. So I remember we went out to lunch one day and Devin introduced me to this guy and he's like, Keith, my name is Greg Hanson, my daughter goes to your youth group. This is in Italy? No, this was in Davenport. So I thought I'm in trouble because I'm corrupting his Catholic daughter with my Protestant heresy and he said, I just want to thank you because she comes home every Wednesday night so far on fire for her faith. So in love with Jesus. So thank you for what you've done for her. And as a way to repay you,

I'd like to invite you on an all expenses paid trip. We're going to go to Rome and we're going to go to a little place called Medjugorje. And I'm like, Oh, okay, whatever. So did your wife go with you? No, she didn't go with me on that trip. We had little kids at the time. So I went very, very kind of reluctantly. But on this trip though, I was starting to become open to some things related to Catholicism. I was very interested in it, but I was still firmly convinced that it wasn't for me. And while like the second night or the first night we were there, we were at some ice cream joint or something, gelato or whatever, and I should have just kept my mouth shut.

But they were saying something, and I felt very like, I was still at the point where I was very defensive. Yeah, fair enough. You know, I was very, my guard was up, Matt. You know, I'm learning a little bit about Catholicism, and this is the other thing that I carry with me these days when I'm talking to people. You know, if when we're talking to somebody about the faith, oftentimes people say to me, well, they're just not listening, they're not getting it, nothing is getting through.

And what I always tell people is you don't know that. Because things often get through, but because it's sometimes framed in like a contest or a crusade of conversion, if you're the person on the receiving end of that, you don't wanna let anyone know that there's a kink in your armor or that something made sense, because if you do, they're just gonna pounce on you.

So things were starting to make sense to me. Things were starting to appeal to me a little bit. Some of the questions I had asked my seminary professors that they had no answers to. Can we pause, put a pin in Rome? Sure. I want to go back. Okay. Because I know Dr. Hahn, I've read his book Rome Sweet Home. I love that Dr. Hahn's the biggest gateway drug to Catholicism there's ever been. So many people have sat where you've sat. Have you met Dr. Hart? Yeah, I have actually. All right. Tell me the questions you brought up to your seminary professors and tell me their responses. So the first one I brought up to them was, it was about Matthew 16, 18.

Upon this rock I will build my church. Because to me, I was quickly discerning the lynchpin of Catholicism is the papacy. It's the authority of the church. And that became very apparent to me very early. And I remember feeling like all I have to do is find one instance where the pope has contradicted a doctrine officially and all that stuff, and one instance where the church has done all these things or whatever, and the whole thing's going to crumble. Or I had to find a way to poke a hole in that idea by understanding the real way to interpret Matthew 16, which I'm sure my professors were going to tell me. So when I asked her, it was an Old Testament professor, because the New Testament guy was gone that day, and I said to her, what do we believe about this? And she said to me, well, that's about

Peter's faith, right? The faith is the rock upon which Jesus will build the church. And I said, well, why do we believe that? Because so many of these quotes that I'm seeing from the church fathers make it pretty clear that it's Peter. And her answer to me was, well, because we're Protestants, duh. And I remember thinking, that is not a great answer. Do you think she kind of got caught flat-footed and was trying to be humorous? I don't know. I don't know what her deal was.

But she didn't, I mean, I certainly didn't laugh when she said that. I kind of looked at her like I had my own deer in the headlights moment there because I expected her to be able to show me something pretty clearly and pretty easily what this was all about. And she didn't. Then I went to my church history professor who became the dean of the seminary later, and I started asking him questions about the early church and the papacy and things about what the church believed

about the Eucharist. And I was shocked, Matt, he did not come across, and this is a Presbyterian seminary, so typically reformed, it was PCUSA, so more of the liberal side of things that, but his response was, oh, you're thinking about Catholicism. That's wonderful.

He's like, no, it's not. I was like, no, no, no, dude. I don't want to do this. Yeah. Like I'm here to like, when's when a convert and he, his, his, um, his demeanor about it was not at all like, all right, well, here's what you got to say to convert to people. He was like, Oh, that's beautiful.

You know, that's the, yeah. And here's, here's where we have a different point of view. But he made it sound very reasonable to be a Catholic, which that caught me off guard. So those were, I think the two things that really at the seminary level hit me. There was one other instance where I asked a guy who was the chair of a theology department, a different school. This was years later when I was much more closer to converting.

Our own denomination was going through chaos, the United Methodist Church, which is a complete disaster right now. And I said to him, without an external authority beyond the Scriptures to help us understand how to interpret the Bible, authoritatively, what hope is there for us? How are we going to see our way through this mess that we're in? Because this was a mess that related to the lack of authority, ultimately, and then the consequences of that.

And he just looked at me and he just goes, huh, sucks to be Protestant, doesn't it? And then he laughed. And I'm like, wow, man, they Protestant, doesn't it? And then he laughed. And I'm like, wow, man, they really, they really don't know what to say. Now, to be honest, to be fair, you know, it wasn't like I was going to church with Dr. James White or somebody like that who would have said, oh, come into my office and I'll tell you. Yeah, it's not that there weren't answers

or even answers that would have convinced you at the time. It's just you weren't getting them. I wasn't, I wasn't getting them. So I was feeling more and more drawn to Catholicism, but I couldn't let these guys know that I couldn't let Devin know that. All right. So back to Rome. So you said you had your defenses up. Yeah, I had my defenses up. We were in Medjugorje at the time. And, and he said something just matter of factly about that the Catholic Church is the one

true church and that, you know, whatever. And I just made a comment. I don't even remember what I said. And he stood up, I stood up, and we started, and they're like, you better get out of here. So we went outside. So we were standing outside on the street corner kind of going at it. And I, I, maybe it's in my own mind, I created this, but I think I remember there being like people in uniforms coming around to like talk to us about this and like get us to calm down.

So that was like day one or day two of that first trip. And I was like, I need to chill. I just need to absorb this and just let whatever happens here happen and then deal with it later. And on that trip, that was the first time I really saw Catholics worshipping Jesus through Mary, and that freaked me out and blew me away at the same time. Yeah. Because I thought it was beautiful, but I felt sort of like an outsider. Like,

I wanted to be a part of it, but I didn't feel like I could. But what was beautiful about it? Just how much they loved to pray. How much they loved to worship. Like when you talk about, hey, we're gonna go to mass today, or we're gonna go to this thing called adoration, or we're gonna pray the rosary.

Where I came from, you did what you had to do. You checked it off the list, and then you go and you did the stuff you really wanted to do the rest of the day. To be fair, that's most Catholics as well. I understand that. But the people on this trip weren't like that. They were, and nobody there was like that. Now, I didn't know anything about Marian apparitions or any of that stuff. Our trip really wasn't about that. I mean, it kind of was, but it kind of wasn't. But for me,

I just saw how in love with Jesus these people were and how in love with Mary they were and how those two things didn't seem to be contradictory. The love of Mary didn't extinguish it rather. 100%. Yeah. Which was the misconception I'd always had about them. So I'm seeing this and there was a part of me that like I really wanted that, but I felt like it wasn't for me. that, like, I really wanted that. But I felt like it wasn't for me. And I was wrestling through a lot of those things on that trip. And when I got home, I remember feeling like, okay, what am I going to do with this experience? Am I going to just leave it there or is it going to be part of my life? But I didn't know what to do with it. The other thing that I saw over there that was so beautiful within our group was just the different type of community that Catholic community really is.

And I know there's always exceptions to everything, but this was my experience. I come from a tradition that everything's very segmented, right? You have the youth over here, you have the adults over here, you have the 20-somethings over here, the 30-somethings with little kids over here. Everybody's always chopped up into these little groups. You have eight different times of worship services because, not because you need the space, but because these people don't like this music, and you have, you know, everyone just has their own thing they want church to be for them, including their community.

And in Catholicism, I was blown away by the fact that you didn't have that. You just had all these people of all different types of walks of life, all different life stages, all different parts in their journey of faith, all coming together, loving each other in this incredibly beautiful way in the faith. And that was something that I looked at and I felt like, I remember feeling like, this is probably a lot what heaven is gonna be like. And I've never really thought that before in my life, like that I've ever been in a place where I've experienced that and thought, this is probably a taste of heaven. And that's what I felt

like. And there was just something in me that wanted to be a part of it, but I had so much on the line with my life that I didn't think I could, you know, I'm like, well, that's not for me. I'm a Protestant pastor. Anyway, I want to go back to this one, this one spot. So that street corner where Devin and I got in this big fight in Medjugorje years later as a Catholic on the second trip, when I was there with my wife and Greg, the same guy who brought me the first time we were, we were walking down the street and he says, Hey Keith, and he points to that corner. He says, remember that? And I'm like,

what do you mean? I'd forgotten all about it. He said, that's where you and Devin got in that big fight, right? And I'm like, Oh yeah. Well, I had this picture that someone had just given me the blessed mother on me. And I said, take a picture. So I held the picture of me standing on that corner with the blessed mother and they took, and I texted to Devin and I just said, you win. And sent that to him. So what was it like going into the Vatican and the St. Peter's as a Protestant? Oh, I was blown away. I was, I was like, I mean, first of all, I mean, you know what it's like

just as a human going into something. I mean, I took Cameron Batusi, of course, I mean, you know what it's like just as a human going into something. I mean, I took Cameron Batuzzi, of course, a couple of years ago, and we went into it was nice to see his reaction to that as well. It really was amazing just from the standpoint of, you know, seeing an incredible thing. But I felt like, I felt like, okay, the church is a lot bigger than what I think it is. And yet, it's a lot smaller than what I think it is at the same time. And what I mean by that is, oftentimes, the Protestant understanding of the church is really hard to put your finger on. Because in one sense, it's just about your little local church. And that's it. Your priest, or your priest, I guess if you're an Anglican or whatever, but your parish pastor, your priest, whoever's in charge of you, he's your pope or she's your pope,

and that community is where you live out your faith, and that's the church for you. So in one sense, I was learning, well, the church is much bigger than this. It's worldwide, it's universal, it's crazy. But then it's smaller than what you think it is from the standpoint that if you ask a Protestant, well, what does the Bible mean when it uses the church as a term? Well, it means all believers everywhere in all times and all places.

It's everyone who claims to be a Christian is part of the Little Sea Church. So in that sense, I learned that it was smaller than that view because it actually had boundaries around it. You know, it has a visible head. And there I was in front of it. Pope John Paul II was there. We got to see him out the window. But what really hit me in Rome was when we went to St. John Lateran, which you know how they have the pictures of all the popes up there. I was standing in there looking at that because they have all of the different, you know, years of when each person was a pope all the way back to

St. Peter. And I remember standing there looking at that. That made a bigger impact on me than St. Peter's, to be honest with you. Because it was at that moment when I was like, wow, Catholicism really does go back to Peter and to Jesus. I did the Scavi tour when I was in Rome last and getting to see St. Peter's tomb beneath the main altar at St. Peter's, knowing that he was crucified upside down at one of Nero's circuses, and that early Christians came and paid reverence to him and prayed at his tomb, and that several altars had been built over the history. But it's incredible when you... it's almost like what people say when they talk about going to the Holy Land. It's like, okay, it all became more real

to me on another level. And when I was in Rome, seeing that, that became real to me on another level. Like there is a church that Jesus started. That's the biggest thing, I think, for Protestants to begin their journey is recognizing what it means that Jesus started a church. Because I never hear Protestants claim that he started their church, but Catholics say that all the time. And that was always kind of like a strange thing to say for me to hear, you know, or a strange thing to hear. And I finally like, it sort of clicked in that moment, like, wow. Then all those passages in the Bible where St. Paul talks about the pillar and foundation of the truth is the church,

and in Matthew 18 when Jesus talks about how you resolve differences, if you can't do that with a group of a few witnesses, take it to the church. All these different things I'm seeing in the book of Acts, all of these things about how the disciples were led and how the decisions that these men made under the power of the Holy Spirit, this is a fulfillment of what Jesus said was going to happen with His church. And then when they made those decisions, they didn't just go, okay, here's what we've decided to do in our church, but you all out there in the world, you do what's best for your context and your culture and how you see it and what the scriptures mean to you.

No, they sent out people and said this is what we've decided. And there wasn't a conference or a debate. That already happened. And they made the decision and that was it for everyone. And I started to see how the church functions in the book of Acts and beyond. And then of course when you connect that with the history that Catholic converts have always talked about being so important to them, and it was for me, too, seeing the first centuries of the church functioning in a Catholic way, it just kind of hit me in the face, you know? All right, so you're still a Methodist pastor at this point in your trip at Rome and Medjugorje. What was it like coming back, going back to your office, preaching on Sundays?

You know, had you at this point made the decision to become Catholic, or as you say, did you think, well, this isn't for me, maybe I have a lot more respect for the Catholics than I used to, maybe we can incorporate some of that stuff into our own services? Where were you? At that point in my life, I had come back and that's exactly what I did. I thought, okay, maybe there's some things I can learn about this. I love these Catholics. I love what I experienced, but it's not for me.

This is what God's called me to do. This is where God's put me. These people are under my care. That next summer, I had an experience where we were at our church camp, which was a big deal in my life, and we were leading our youth in like a communion service. And one of my friends who was leading it, he started going through the, you could call it the liturgy part, and he was beginning that, and he said, and Jesus took bread and he broke it and he gave it to his disciples, and he said, take this, this represents my

body broken for you. Yeah, which usually that was a time where it was like part two to the sermon, where then you just kind of go on a riff about whatever else you talked about and incorporate that into the liturgy or whatever. And when he said that, I felt like the Holy Spirit just hit me in the heart. And it was like Jesus said, that's not what I said and you know it, Keith. hit me in the heart. And it was like, Jesus said, that's not what I said and you know it, Keith. And I walked out of there and I just broke down.

And I went down to the front of the lodge area and I called Devin on the phone. This is like 2004, okay? I called Devin on the phone and I'm just bawling. He's like, what's going on? And I said, I'm at camp, this is going on. I said, dude, I think God's calling me to become Catholic. And I was like bracing for him to be like haha you know and he just goes he just goes he's

calling you home Keith you know you need to come home and I just broke down and lost it and I'm like I don't know what to do and he said well whatever whatever you need I'll be there for you and let's just take a pause and say that Devon's one of the greatest men that exists in the on the face of the earth right now. I mean, I know him somewhat. Yeah. What a man. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna really need this guy in my life, you know. So where I was standing was, you know, right out front of this building where all this was happening. As I'm walking back up, I hear all these kids and they're singing praise and worship songs. The lights are down, you know, it's really an emotional time. I walk in and I see my beautiful wife and

I see my three little kids. She's pushing my son Drew in a stroller. My daughter is worshiping. She's a little girl. My oldest son is probably like maybe two at the time, two or three. And I heard this little voice and whisper in my ear, you're going to blow all this up? You're going to wreck her life? You're going to destroy her world because you want to become Catholic? Look around. Look at these kids in here. These kids are here because of you, Keith. You're their spiritual leader. You're going to abandon them. You could be costing them their souls. Stop being so selfish. You don't need to become Catholic. You just need to do a better job and stick with what you're called to do. your call to do. And I became so terrified of what it would cost me. Now, my wife at the time, you know, she was kind of getting a little worried about this, but I kept assuring

her, you don't need to worry about anything. I'll never become Catholic. Did she ever watch that Scott Hahn tape? No, she's not. She wasn't interested in that at all. I probably tried to make her at one point in time and she's like, what are you talking about? I'm not doing that. And she's like, I remember there were probably a couple times she's like, you're not seriously thinking about becoming a Catholic, are you?

I'm like, of course not, not a chance. Why would you even ask? No way, like we got, you know, we're important. You know, look what we're doing, this is amazing. And I was honestly, I was afraid of obedience because of what it would cost me. So I just like was like, shake that off. And I basically I shut that off and I don't know

if I consciously decided not to talk to Devin, but I remember feeling really weird thinking I can't really talk to him about this. So I just kind of pulled away from him and from my other Catholic. And I was just like, I got to forget all this. I got to be done, you know, reading Catholic stuff, doing Catholic things. I can't dance in that world anymore. I have to be all in to where I am. So, you know, basically I was like, forget all that. So that's what I did. Basically, I was like, forget all that. So that's what I did.

I want to just say, like, we really don't appreciate how difficult it is for people to convert often, whether you're Catholic, whether you're Protestant. It's like many Catholics go to a Protestant, they lay it out, and then, as you said, they kind of blame them for not getting it. Whereas you should put yourself in their shoes. I mean, what would it take right now? I asked me the question, like, what would it take for me to become a Protestant? And it's not just the arguments, it's as you say, it's the real I got a job.

I have this Catholic podcast. My wife's Catholic. My friends are Catholic. My community is Catholic. What would it take? It would take a lot. I don't know what it would take. I don't even know if it's possible. Even if I became, I guess I became convinced of some branch of Protestantism, version of Protestantism, what would it take? It would take a lot. I don't know what it would take. I don't even know if it's possible. Even if I became, okay, let's say I became convinced of some branch of Protestantism, version of Protestantism, what would it take? It would take a lot. I really think we have to keep that in mind as we talk to our Protestant brothers and sisters. And not just brothers and sisters, but our Jewish friends or our, you know, atheist friends, like,

to really appreciate how much this is going to cost them, I think will then influence how we communicate the gospel and our invitation won't be harsh, like it was to you from that fellow who said, how could you possibly leave all this? It won't be like that. It won't be triumphal. It'll just be, as it's been said before, one beggar showing another beggar where the bread is. Amen. It reminds me of when Jesus was scolding the Pharisees and he said, you know, you bind up all these heavy burdens, but then you don't lift a finger to help people carry them. Technically what they were teaching them

to some degree was true, right? Jesus said, don't ignore what they say, but ignore what they do. But one of Jesus' biggest criticisms for them wasn't about theology, it was about their lack of compassion for people who they were trying to convert. That's really good. And I think that we have to remember that when we're inviting someone into Catholicism, and that's when I talk with people about Catholicism now, I hate arguments. I don't like, I mean, my flesh loves them, but like to me, presenting Catholicism as an invitation to the greatest adventure

in the universe is how I like to present Catholicism to people. It's not, well, this is right, so therefore you better be Catholic or else. It's, you have to just experience the beauty of Christ's Church and the beauty of the sacraments. And let me tell you how it's changed my life radically. And oftentimes people get really focused on, but what did it cost you? And I'm fine to talk about that, but what I find these days is people don't always recognize when someone else is in that position. Now, I am honored to be able to do that now. Like, people reach out to me all the time that are in this position. And I'm shocked

at how many people there are who are exactly where I was that reach out to me and say, here's where I am. I want to become Catholic, but my wife doesn't want to, or I don't want to lose my job. What do I do? What do I do? It's tough. And that's where I was back in that first kind of go-around back in 2004, where I felt like God was saying, you know, Keith, you need to do this. But, you know, the other thing we have to remember, Matt, is conversion isn't just for Protestants to Catholics. Like, we're all converts. We're all on the road to conversion, because Christ, the call to conversion doesn't end when you become Catholic. That's when it just begins to a certain degree.

So we all have to realize that those moments in the sand where God is calling us out to follow Him at a deeper level of discipleship, that's a daily walk for all of us. And that's something that we have to remember. Some people begin as atheists. Some people begin as nominal mid-Catholics. Some people begin as Protestants. Some people begin as super-traditionalists. It's just we all start where we are, but God is always taking us somewhere. The call of the Gospel is a call to movement. It's a call to constant conversion and constant death. He's saying, � me. So we never arrive at that moment where we just pitch a tent and say, here I am. But so many times in Catholicism I've seen us do this, we plant the flag, we go,

I've arrived. Now it's my job to look down on the rest of you idiots and tell you how to get up here to where I am. And yeah, it's going to be tough for you, but suck it up, you know, offer it up to Jesus, right? But instead, we need to take that flag, we need to go down, and's going to be tough for you, but suck it up, you know, offer it up to Jesus, right? But instead, we need to take that flag, we need to go down, and we need to help carry those burdens to help people get to that point. And then when we get there, we just lock arms and say, now we're together on the same path here. Mason F. Kennedy That's really important. Thank you. Okay. So how did it evolve? Because I like what you said earlier about the papacy really being the linchpin, because it seems to me that if you're a Protestant, I mean, what's

a Protestant to do who becomes convinced of, let's say, the need for purification before heaven or that we can pray to the saints in heaven? It seems to me that a Protestant can adopt these views while remaining Protestant, even though they'd be in disagreement with many others, but it really is the papacy. All right, so how did you then kind of, you said you pushed it away, you didn't want anything to do with it. How did it come back in and how did you? So many years later. And also, is your dad a pastor? He is, he's retired now.

Because I think one of the things I would do if I was becoming a Protestant or an Orthodox, and I was scared of converting, I was scared that the truth of the things I would do if I was becoming a Protestant or an Orthodox and I was I Was scared of converting I was scared that the truth was there I would talk to everybody I know smarter than me which thankfully is most people and I would please help me now You spoke to your professors. Did you ever go to your dad? I went to my dad Later Okay, I went to him. Well, I shouldn't say that I did go to him a few times in the beginning Okay, I went to him. Well, I shouldn't say that. I did go to him a few times in the beginning. With just some questions?

With just some questions. My dad's a very brilliant guy. Like, he's got a doctorate in theology. Like, he's a total, like, he's probably read all these books, right? And yeah, he's very, he's very not Catholic. And he would say things to me. I found myself arguing the Catholic position to him to try to get him to convince me not to become Catholic. And like, I don't know if you ever had that moment with your dad where you realized that you were stronger than he is,

or maybe that like you beat him in chest the first time or something like that. Yeah, or that you're in an argument, you know more than him. I felt, I remember feeling like that a couple of times. I hope he's not watching this, but I remember feeling like that a couple of times with my dad where I'm like, you don't have a good answer for this. Like, and that had never happened in my life before. And so I was quickly running

out of those people, Matt, I was trying, I was talking to people, but I either, I think there was like two camps of people. There were either the people who didn't really know anything about it, but were just super passionate like I was. were like, oh, come on, man Forget about that. It's just Jesus. It's just Jesus. It's just Jesus. Not all this religion stuff It's not all this, you know denominational boundaries. It's just Jesus just Jesus which Isn't really helpful Because that makes it sound like Catholicism isn't about Jesus So I had people in that camp who didn't want to like dig into the arguments, or I had people that they dug into the arguments but they couldn't answer them.

So I felt kind of alone in that part of it, from that perspective. Now, after that experience at the church camp, when I sort of turned my back on the church and turned my back on my Catholic influences or whatever. Yeah, yeah. The temptation, as it were. Yeah. You know, I went through a pretty dark time in life. I went through like a dark time spiritually.

I went through a dark time in my marriage. I went through a dark time in my ministry, my youth ministry that had blown up to this big thing, started to level off and then started to drop. And I was like panicking and freaking out because that's my identity, right? I'm this big rock star youth pastor, you know, which sounds ridiculous now, but at the time, it was like a big deal. And I remember just like getting to a point through a lot of darkness where I thought, I just need to be done with ministry. I need to step out of this. I need to focus on my marriage.

I need to focus on my own relationship with Jesus. So I'm walking away from like full-time vocational church world ministry. And I spent about a year, a little over a year, working on a boys ranch where we took in troubled teenage boys that were sent there. It's kind of like the last step before jail. And our family moved into this little cabin out on this dairy farm and this little ranch, and we learned how to become farmers. And we had these four teenage boys living with us, and we took care of them. God bless you. And it was totally a different experience not being a pastor, being a farmer, you know, but

as I was doing that, I was sort of like, going, okay, God, I don't need to be in a big fancy church for you to love me. I don't need to be a rock star youth pastor. I don't need to be perfect, you know, in every way. I'm very focused on everything's got to be perfect. Everything's got to have excellence. Everything's got to be the best. You know, we have to be the best. And God was just like, no, you don't need to do any of that. Eventually I wound up taking a part-time position as a senior pastor in a little evangelical free church in another town with about 30 people in this little church. And I went down there and I was pastoring them. And I was like, look,

this church is not going to light the world on fire. We're not going to take the city. We're not going to, you know, be a big mega church. We're going to be who we're supposed to be. And we're going to do two things here. They're like, what's your philosophy of ministry? We're going to, I'm going to teach you guys the Bible and we're going to be nice to each other. That's it. That's our big strategy." And they're like, okay. And I was there for about two years and that little church grew.

We had an incredible time there. It was amazing. And I loved it. Were you still a youth pastor? No, I was a senior pastor. I was a head pastor at that point in time. And at the same time, I was also working as like a part-time associate at a different church that was a Pentecostal church in the town that I lived in. So I was like, I was in all kinds of

weird stuff. So I'm driving down to this church doing an evangelical-free, very intellectual Bible study kind of sermon on Sunday morning. And then I drive back to where I lived. I would preach a Bible study sermon to the Pentecostal Church Sunday night. So it was just, there was ministry happening, but it was a completely different context. Well then, about a year and a half after I started doing that, one of my other friends who's a Methodist pastor in a different town, in a big church, he came to me and said, hey, I need you. Will you come and work with me in this church?

It's a big church. We're getting ready to build a $10 million facility. There's a lot going on. I could really use you if you'd be willing to come. And he offered me a really nice salary, and it was a big town. I thought, okay, my kids have lived in this little tiny town we lived in for a while.

I think I'm good enough now, like in my own heart, to go back into this. And my family was in a good place. So I'm like, okay. I in my own heart, to like go back into this and my family was in a good place. So I'm like, okay, I just didn't want to make some of the same mistakes I had made in the past, which was basically to sacrifice my family at the altar of ministry. When you're in Protestant ministry and you have a family, there's a lot of pressure put on you to serve the church. It's, you know, God, family, job.

But when God and your job are kind of the same, and you're a workaholic, and you're a perfectionist, and you're a prideful human being who wants to be the best, you can easily justify a lot of things that are detrimental to your family, which is, you know, that's what I did. And I was like, I don't want to do anything like that anymore. So I was nervous, but I felt like, okay, we can do this. So we moved to this town, I took this position. I was the pastor of worship and youth and mission.

So, and then I quickly, once I started preaching, they moved me into like a preaching role to where I was preaching every other week, sharing the duties with the senior pastor of doing all the preaching too. And at this point, you're not reading Catholic books. You're not reading the church. You're just, I'm all I'm listening to at this point in time in my life is Tim Keller, Mark

Driscoll, Matt Chandler, John Piper, all these like reform guys, like all these, these, you know, this is when like the new young restless and reform group started coming out and Mark Driscoll's thing was a big thing and all. So I was like devouring Tim Keller, which I still love Tim Keller. Yeah, may he rest in peace. But I'm devouring all of this and I'm loving it. Like I never became like a full on Calvinist, but I loved like the way these guys preached. Yeah. Well, there's an intensity to the Calvin strand that there isn't necessarily another strands of Protestantism. There really is. And there's this call to masculinity that had really resonated with

me. People in the Catholic Church are always talking about the lack of a proper masculinity in Catholicism. And there's that same call in Protestantism, but in some of the Protestant circles, you have the freedom to go as far the other direction as you want. And these guys did that. And I thought it was great. So that's what I'm into. Catholicism at this point in time,

I'm like, okay, I don't even, I don't know if that's even legit anymore. I'd really gone the other way. Is Devin reaching out to you? I talked with him pretty sporadically at that point in time. I had left the town that we lived in together and I was maybe on like a once a year

kind of checking with Devin, hey, how are you doing? Okay, good. And we had kind of given up the idea of trying to convert each other, you know, a while back. And we just decided we were gonna be friends, you know? And so I knew that he was never gonna become a Protestant, and I think he knew that I was never gonna become Catholic. So we just were like, okay with that. Well, after a couple

years in this environment, you know, I was telling you about the crisis that was going on in the Methodist Church, where there is this entire faction of people that are in leadership that are departing from what the Church teaches about things like human sexuality and marriage and who can be ordained as a pastor. And, you know, I'm coming from the pretty conservative side of things, and all of this unbiblical stuff is starting to happen around me and I'm like freaking out I'm you know, I was I was the guy that you see on YouTube that's always you know complaining about Catholicism I was that guy for the Methodist guy not on YouTube though But I was always like did you hear what this bishop said? Did you hear what they did? You know, you know how that goes

Yeah, and When that started happening I was I was coming face to face with the reality that we're in trouble. I loved my local church. I loved it. Loved the people, loved what I was doing, but our denomination is a disaster. It's a mess. Right around that same time, my friend Greg, who took me to Medjugorje the first time, he says, hey, I want to come and take you guys to a movie. So him and his wife drove up and they took, Stell and I to go see this movie called Apparition Hill, which is about Medjugorje.

And I hadn't thought about Medjugorje in a million years. But when we went to see that movie, it was like, it just kind of like reminded me of those pleasant memories of what I experienced in Catholicism. And we went out to lunch and I started just kind of sharing with him, man, I think we're in trouble in this denomination, you know. I didn't say anything about Catholic or anything like that,

but I'm like, it was really good to see you guys and this movie. And Greg was just very diplomatic and just very sensitive. He said, you know, Keith, maybe you should start thinking about Catholicism again. And you know, Greg and Devin were two guys that walked with me through some of that darkness in my life, you know, when I sort of isolated myself from everybody else. So that wasn't lost on me. So they, you know, he'd kind of like earned the right to really say whatever he wanted to me.

And so I said, you know, okay. And he goes, would you be willing to meet with a priest here in your town? He goes, I think I know of a local priest here in your town. And I was like, sure, why not? So we set this meeting up and it was going to be after a daily Mass. And I was like, okay, I hadn't been at Mass in ages. And I went and I sat down and a lot of converts have those moments in Mass when they go, whoa, something happened, it was amazing.

Well, that happened to me. But it wasn't like at the consecration or anything like, it was the processional. As we're there, they come in and the deacon has got the gospel and he's holding it up, and he's doing this. And it's as if he is saying, this is our book. This matters to us.

This is who we are. And that just hit me like a ton of bricks, because I was wanting to be biblical. I was wanting to... I. I was wanting, I was the guy that was yelling at everybody, stay with what the Bible says, stay with what the Bible says. And they're saying to me, well, Keith, what's just your interpretation of the Bible? What makes you so smart? Or they were saying to me things like, well, Keith, the Bible's wrong in that area, you know? And I'm learning. I'm like, okay, I can't just talk about the Bible alone. I got to talk about the church. And I'm like, but the

church teaches this. And they're like, well, which church are you talking about? I even had one pastor friend of mine, she said to me, well, then why aren't you Catholic if you believe all this church authority stuff? So I was just like, what did you say to me? Good question. It was like, ugh. So mass happens, and I was like really impacted by that. And I met Father Christopher Podasky afterwards, we went out to lunch, and he's a different kind of guy. Like, he just, he doesn't have time for my antics, or my stories, or my excuses. He just goes, he listened to me for about 30 seconds, and he goes,

okay, so why aren't you Catholic? And I just, I'm like, you know, I don't know, I just, I need more time to think about it, and I'm not sure if I think it's true. I said, I just need some time to pray. He goes, no, you don't. He goes, you need to make a decision. You need to make a decision, Keith. And I told him I'd been at this a long time. He's like, you need to make a decision.

And so I went home and by now YouTube is a thing and podcasts are a thing. Okay, now we're talking 2015. Okay. So I find Pines with Aquinas at some point in time. I find Scott Hahn. Oh, he has more than one talk. Wonderful.

Many, many. You know, I find all of these things that are floating around. It's way easier to get information now that the internet's a thing. And I'm just devouring things. And I'm feeling like all of this stuff is starting to click with me. And I'm just like feeling more and more drawn.

So I go to my senior pastor one day and I say, his name's Pastor Mike, I said, Mike, I think I'm starting to feel drawn towards Catholicism. This is the first time he's heard of it. Yeah. Now he's married to an ex Catholic, okay? And he has no love in his heart for Catholicism, but he just goes, you're crazy. And he was just like, okay, I think we know how to solve Keith's problem. He said, I want you to preach a sermon series on the history and nature

of the Christian church. That'll cure you. And I'm like, are you sure? He's sure you want that. That's what I said. I said, are you sure? I said, I'm reading some pretty Catholic things. And you know what he said to me, Matt? He said, Keith, if that's the truth, why wouldn't you tell our people that? And I said, game on, brother. So did you have to run these lectures by him?

No, he just gave me the freedom. He just said, go do it. All right, so let's do this. I preached a sermon series about the papacy. I preached a sermon series. I didn't call it that. I just, see, everything I did was always framed within the context of, we're going to talk about Matthew, whatever, whatever, whatever, 16 or whatever, you know.

We're going to talk about Luke chapter two. We're going to talk about whatever. So it was always framed in the context of a Bible study, not, let me give you a Catholic-sounding sermon. We did a sermon series through the Book of Acts, and I'm telling you, it could probably be put on any Catholic, you know, publisher's list. It was extremely Catholic. But the real thing that hit me was Advent 2016. I was getting ready to preach a sermon. I was writing two sermons, one on what happened when the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah to announce

that he would be the father of John the Baptist, and then the second one would be on the Annunciation, although we just called it Luke chapter 1. And I preached the first sermon on Zechariah, and it went well, and then I was in my office studying the text for Luke chapter 1, for when the angel Gabriel comes to our Blessed Mother, and as I'm writing this sermon, I just become overwhelmed with waves of emotion any time I would read about the Blessed Mother. And I just start weeping in my office. And I know people always use it like weeping, like, oh, I was sad.

No, I was like literally— Ugly crying. Ugly crying. It was bad. And I'm in there, and I'm just like, I was like literally- Ugly crying. Ugly crying. It was bad. And I'm in there and I'm just like, I don't know what is going on, but I felt her presence with me as I'm writing this sermon

about what happened when Gabriel came to her. So I got up that Sunday and I preached this sermon, how Mary is the new Eve. She's the new Ark of the Covenant. She's the woman of Genesis 3 15 of Revelation 12. I connected all of these things. How in John 19 when Jesus says to her, woman, behold your son, some behold your mother, that that's Jesus giving her to us as our mother. I'm preaching this in the Methodist Church. I'm talking about what saints said

about the Blessed Virgin Mary. I'm putting St. quotes up on the PowerPoint screen and doing all of that. I had no idea that this was, you know, Behold Your Mother or Hail Holy Queen. I mean, it was right out of that stuff. And I preached that sermon, and you'd think people were looking at me like, what is he talking about? They were also crying. Like, it was crazy. I'd never seen this before in my life. People in the service were just listening, and they were like, because it wasn't being presented to them as Catholicism. You're right. This is just, hey. This is not a threat. This is the Bible.

This is the Patristics, yeah. This is the first gospel in Genesis 3.15. I will put enmity between the woman and the serpent, right? Why does Jesus always call her the woman? You know, we've always been taught that it was a derogatory term in John 2 when he says, woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come at Cana. But Jesus is making a statement. John is making a statement. John doesn't have to write that. He could have written or not written that. And yet he chose to show us that Jesus calls her woman. And when I have Protestants now that reach out to me and say, well, he never even called her mother, I'm like, you have such a small field of vision on this. Open it up and look at your Bible.

He does that for a reason, right? And I preached that sermon. I remember there was one young man who came down to the front. We didn't do this in our church, and he just fell to his knees at the front of the church and just began to cry. I went and prayed with him. He's like, I've never heard anything like this before. So I'm like, what is going on? I remember Greg came to visit me and I told him about it. He started crying. And I was feeling like something is happening with the Blessed Virgin Mary in my life and I don't understand what it's all about. So at the same time this is all happening, my mom is diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and

is losing that fight. So our whole family is falling apart. We're just devastated by this because my mom was a wonderful, vibrant woman of faith who was really like the best person you'd ever meet in your life. And she was perfectly healthy. My parents had a very active retirement. They just retired. And now she gets hit with this.

So I'm making these trips to where they live. And I would go for walks with my dad and just kind of check on him. How are you doing dad? And we would talk. And I was telling him, it's dad, I think I'm being drawn towards Catholicism again. I don't know what to do.

And he didn't have time to make arguments. He was just like, Keith, you know, you just gotta follow the Lord, but there's gotta be a way. You can't just quit your job. What are you gonna do? You've got teenagers at home, you've got a mortgage, like this is your career. Like, you know, there's gotta be a way.

If that's really what God wants, He'll make a way. And that's what you need to figure out. So, I was wrestling through that pretty hard trying to figure out what that looked like. And I feel like I'm talking long, like if you want to break in, just break in. If you were boring, I would be. Okay, well, we're getting to like a pivotal part here in this story, because that's what's going through my mind. I'm realizing that I can't here in this story because that's what's going through my mind.

I'm realizing that I can't be in this denomination much longer. I'm feeling the pull of Catholicism, but now all of a sudden it's not about arguments anymore. It's not about church fathers and apologetics. It's about this pull of my heart that I'm feeling towards the Blessed Mother and that I'm feeling from Jesus. And it's just, it's crazy. And I am talking to my wife about it this time. Now I'm like, I mean, now we're like in a totally different place in our life and I'm like sharing this stuff with her and I'm wrestling through these things. I wake up one morning, I'm going to have supper with my friend Greg, who I've talked

about a lot, that night at four o'clock, okay, I Wake up and I'm doing my little devotional thing. I'm praying and I just felt like the Lord spoke to my heart I don't know people say that all the time but and it was like you got to get a hold of Steve Ray And I'm like what now? I don't know Steve Ray I just I'd seen one of his YouTube videos like so many others I'd watched and I remember being impressed with him But I didn't know him. I didn't know anything about, and I am not the guy who like reaches out to people I don't know. I'm always afraid I'm gonna be bothering somebody.

So I'm not the guy who like goes up and talks to the guy at the conference and you know, want and emails the guy and says, hey, I'm not that guy. I'm just like, I don't wanna bother these people. So I'm like instantly like, oh, I don't wanna, you know, and even if I did reach out to him, I don't want to bother these people. So I'm like instantly like, oh, I don't want to, you know, and even if I did reach out to him, I don't even know who he is or how to get ahold of him

or anything about it. I just saw a video. So why is this impression in my head? You've got to talk to Steve Ray. So I'm like, what do I do with that? Well, like I go to meet Greg for dinner at four o'clock and where he lives and where I live is, the Iowa city is right in the middle of this.

So we meet in the middle. and before he even sits down he walks in and his phone goes off and he goes oh hey my wife just texted me tell Keith Steve Ray is in town giving a talk tonight and you guys should go and I was like what you know I really want to yell right now, but I'm not going to be filled with it. But I was like, what? Exclamation mark, exclamation mark? Yeah, pounding table forcefully.

We got to go, like eat your food fast, we can get there. So Greg's like, okay. So we drove to this little parish, our Lady of Guadalupe in Silvis, Illinois. It was about an hour away from where we were. And on the way I'm just like, a mess. I call Devon. I said, dude, meet us at this parish. You know, he's like, what? Okay, I'll be there. So he meets us there. We walk into this parish and they're having mass, and the place is packed. And I'm like, just, okay, Lord, what is going on here? And it came time for the Eucharist

and I went up front got my blessing and I just stepped off to the side and I I Fell to my knees right below the crucifix while people are receiving communion and going back to their seat And I'm just there have my own little Jesus time And I looked up at the crucifix and I said, Lord, if you want me to become Catholic, I will do it. But you've got to make a way. You've got to make a way. And the Lord spoke to me from the crucifix

in a way I've never heard him speak to me before. And he said, Keith, I am the way, the truth, and the life. You don't need me to make a way, you just need me. And people are receiving the Eucharist, they're receiving Jesus, and that's when it like hit, like, okay, I can't have this obedience with boundaries around it anymore where I'll only do what God wants me to do if it makes sense to me and I approve and I understand and buy into it. I was learning in that moment that real discipleship is walking by faith and not by sight, and God has never promised to give you anything other than himself, and he always delivers.

But we oftentimes require much more than what he's promised us. We want him to make sense. We want him to take care of the loose ends. We want him to deal with those issues that we have in our circumstances that prevent us from being obedient. And what Jesus says is, nope, you don't get that. But what you do get is me. And I went to the cross for you. It didn't make sense for me. It wasn't easy for me. It wasn't

something that you could look at and go, oh, I can see how it all fits together. So that hit me and I went back to my seat and I was just like, okay, I get it now. I don't have to, because at the time, like, okay, I get it now. I don't have to, because at the time, I had gotten past the whole intellectual arguments. I like wanted to be Catholic at this point in time, but I was afraid. But now it was like, in the past, my fear was of what I would miss if I was obedient, right?

I'm gonna miss out on all this stuff with these kids. And now I was afraid of what I would miss if I was disobedient. Because when the Lord showed that to me, it was like, you have seen the beauty of my church in a sense. Imagine what you would experience if you came home. And I didn't want to miss that. Right? So I went back to my seat and Steve gets up and he gives this incredible talk about how the early church was willing to die rather than pinch incense to the pagan gods and and I'm sitting here going I'm worried about a job so he finishes and Greg's like grabs me he goes come on Keith

we're gonna go talk to him I'm like no no no no no we're not doing that he's like let's go Greg's very he doesn't care yeah so he goes up and he grabs Steve and he goes he goes Steve this is Keith Nest. He's a Protestant pastor thinking about becoming Catholic. Would you give him your cell phone number? And I'm like, you don't do that, right? So Steve looks at me and he goes, brother, he goes, I know exactly where you are. He goes, I'm gonna give you one piece of advice.

He goes, you either need to become Catholic right now, or you need to turn around and run away and never look back. Wow. And- You're like, I tried that. Exactly. I, I, that's exactly what I thought.

I'm like, I've been there, done that, and it sucks. So I need to do this. And he did. He gave me his cell phone, gave me his book. On the way home, I told Greg, I said, that's it, man, I'm doing this. And, and Greg said to me, like Devon had all those years ago, he said, Keith, whatever you need, I'll be there for you.

And I knew he meant it. And when I got home, I told Stell, I said, look, I have to do this. I have to become Catholic. And there was a part of me that was afraid she was gonna freak out, but there was another part of me that was like, no, she's gonna be okay.

And she said to me, Keith, I'm so proud of you. Wow, what was that? Just got a wave of emotion. Keep going. Bless you, wife. What a good woman. She said, I'm so proud of you. I know I've watched you wrestle with this. I've watched you seek the Lord. And that's all I've ever wanted out of a husband is one who seeks the Lord. And I've never seen you more focused on seeking the Lord than I've seen you in this. So if that's all I've ever wanted out of a husband is one who seeks the Lord and I've never seen you more focused on seeking the Lord than I've seen you in this so if that's where he's leading you then I'm with you 100%. She's like I don't know what it means for me but I'm with you because you're my husband.

I love good wives. She's the best. Now I mentioned earlier what it was like for her personally, that she really suffered and she really struggled through that. That wasn't an easy thing for her, Matt. She didn't go, okay, great. Now, because you can make a decision and the emotions don't have to follow immediately. Right? It's just not like she didn't continue to wrestle with it after. Well, especially when I walked in the next day and quit my job and now we lose 70% of our income, you know, if not more, God bless you. next day and quit my job, and now we lose 70% of our income,

you know, if not more. God bless you. And it was like, okay, we're really doing this. And I remember going in and telling my church, you know, telling Pastor Mike, who's my friend to this day, like, I got to do this. And he's just like, I don't get it. I don't understand why, you know. And my last Sunday there was the Sunday that we put shovels in the ground for the new building

that I had helped design, you know, that I'd helped raise money for, that I was a part of. And it was like all of this excitement over this new thing, we're going to be the new mega church in town. And you know, some of that was, was, was built on what I was going to do there. And now I'm putting shovel, they didn't even give me a shovel, but I'm there, you know, and, and I'm like, I literally went from the newest church in town to the oldest church in town the next week. So I went after that and.

How did your head pastor respond? He was sad. He was, he was like, he, that didn't, he, I remember he said to me, and this is when I, you know, he's a pretty manly guy. Like he's got a lot of, um, machismo to him, you know, and like, he's a pretty manly guy. Like he's got a lot of machismo to him, you know, and like he's always in control. He's always in command, you know? And I saw him kind of crack emotionally because he's like, you know, when I brought you here,

I was there six years. He's like, but I've known him for like 20. And he's like, when I brought you here, you know, I knew that he wanted me to be the successor because he's nearing retirement. And he was grooming me to like take over the whole thing. And he goes, I never saw it ending this way. I just remember him saying that.

I didn't see it end in this way. And when you told him you were becoming Catholic, you didn't give him any sort of reason to think you weren't a hundred percent convinced. He knew you had made this decision. Yeah, he knew. He said to me at one point in time, he goes, you know, I almost thought about trying to argue, but he had known me well enough to know that

when I had made up my decision about this, that I wasn't going to be argued out of it. I had another pastor friend of mine in town who was trying to argue me out of it, and we would meet weekly, and he would show me things, and he would tell me to read books, and he would try to convince me that I shouldn't do it it and it just didn't go anywhere. There was no stopping it. Because at that point in time, I'd already done the whole objection, argument, answered thing. And what I've learned is this, here's the deal.

If all of our apologetic is just bullet points and talking points, that's never gonna, that's a very significant piece of the puzzle, but it's certainly not everything. There comes a point in time where you have to move beyond the intellectual, rational, argumentation part and move into what's going on in your heart. And that's where I think the Blessed Mother has a very important role to play in things, at least she did for me, because it moved from now I worried about.

So I stopped reading apologetic stuff. I was like, I don't need that anymore. I believe, like my priest told me, he said, you need to believe two things are true. You need to believe that the Pope is the successor to Saint Peter and has been given the authority by Jesus to shepherd his church, and you need to believe in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. If you believe those two things, the rest of it will all fall into play. And there were some things I struggled with doctrinally, even through this. Yeah, that's important to point out.

That I didn't feel like I had to solve every equation, because I think sometimes people get hung up on that. I don't feel 100% convicted on every doctrine. What would your advice be to someone like that? My advice would be stop thinking about it as a math equation, okay? It's not a math equation. If you have to think about it in a bigger way than that. And if you believe that the Pope is the successor to Peter, and you believe Jesus Christ is truly present in the Eucharist,

then it's okay if you struggle in those other things as long as you are willing to be obedient. And I'm not saying that you become Catholic and you go, well, I don't believe that, I don't believe that. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that you submit even your lack of having all of that worked out. There's probably a better word for that right now. I think you know what I mean. And again, that all boils down to what's required

of you in order to be a good Catholic. And one of the things that's so intriguing to me about Catholicism is that you have some Catholics that are brilliant scholars, okay, Saint Thomas Aquinas, all these guys, and then you have millions of people who were peasants who didn't know even how to read, and we have saints like that too. You don't have to have it all, it's not a mathematic equation to be solved. It's not like that. It's what's God doing in your heart, you know? But both of those things are present there And I think that people learned with me that no Keith's mind's made up He's not turning back and once I wasn't afraid to lose everything then there was really no turning back because that was the other thing people

Kept saying to me. What are you gonna do for a job? How are you gonna feed your family? What about your ministry? What about this? What about health insurance? What about all that? because you're going to feed your family? What about your ministry? What about this? What about health insurance? What about all that? Because that's unfortunately things that people put before obedience to Christ. And once I got to the point where I'm like, I don't know, who cares? I'm doing this. The only thing that matters to me is following Jesus into his church. And once I get there, he'll let me know what to do next. And it wasn't a thing where I thought, well, okay, I'll do this and then God's going to pay me back. It was, I'll do this, and if I have to be the lowliest guy in the world in terms of a job and be dirt poor, that's okay. And one of the things I tell everybody that are thinking about converting to

Catholicism, I tell them this, look, unless you're willing to be, to lose everything and to be nothing compared to this world, you're not ready to become Catholic because that could be required of you. Are you going to do it anyway? Because so much of what happens in North American Protestant Christianity is do the right things, the right things will happen to you. Do good things, it'll work out. Serve the Lord, it'll give you the desires of your heart. We have all these Bible verses we can strap onto that, right? And what I'm here to tell people is that's all got its context and its time and place, and God's the good giver of gifts and all of that, and He wants you to have life abundantly, but it's His definition,

not yours. And you've got to be willing to leave that to Him. And even if you lose everything, I mean, what did Jesus say? Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses life for my sake will find it. I mean, He doesn't make it complicated. It's simple, but it's not easy. But we all want it to make sense, and we all want to be able to follow Jesus into whatever we want. And it doesn't work that way. And you're going to be a miserable Catholic

if you go into Catholicism with your own agenda and your own conditions. You won't make it. That's why I think a lot of people don't last as Catholics, because they've got all of this other stuff that has to be put in front of it, and Jesus doesn't work that way. What was the RCA process like? Didn't do it. I wouldn't think you'd have to.

Well, I did my own little thing with Father Chris. So when I came to him- What's his last name? Padaski. Okay. Father Christopher Padaski. I don't know if I've met him. Oh man, you would love him. He's his last name? Padasky. Okay. Father Christopher Padasky. Oh man, you would love him. He's amazing.

He's an incredible guy. And I mean, I'm spoiled. I've the priest that he's not our priest anymore. He was moved, but the priests that I've been in my life have been godly, holy, wonderful, helpful men. And I know that everybody has that situation, but I've been abundantly blessed in my life with that. He basically walked us through this whole process. You and your wife? Me and my wife, because we had, so we got our marriage done in the church.

He says, we're gonna do that. He walked me through my first confession. He walked me through all of it, leaving my job, everything, like all of that. He was there, and I said to him, so what do I have to do? Do I have to like, this was in the spring? I'm like, do I, I guess I have to wait until the fall to take your class, right? He's like, nope. He goes, I don't think we're going to do that with you. He said, we'll just meet together, you know, weekly and we'll talk about things. We'll pray. And I remember I came to him after maybe three months of that saying, when do I get to become Catholic? I'm kind of serious about this.

I mean, I already quit my job. I'm like, ready to do this. And he goes, he goes, just pick a day. So I said, okay. So we picked the day of October 8th. Okay. So we picked October 8th, not because it's some big Saint feast day or whatever. It was just a random day. October 8th comes and our church was being renovated, so we're in the basement.

And I go up to get my sacraments and make my confirmation, and you know, it was awesome. I go back to my seat, I'm in the front row, and when it's time to share the peace or whatever, I feel this tap on my shoulder, and I turn around and Steve Ray standing there. Yeah. He was in town. No. In at, I mean, obviously that, that parish, but he was in town giving a talk. I knew he was in town, but I didn't know he was going to be at that parish or at that mask. We have a huge parish with lots of masses and he, and he was standing right behind me the whole time. I didn't even know it. And he tapped me on the shoulder. And I don't think he even remembers,

I've talked to him several times since then, and I still don't know if he like puts it together. But he goes, welcome home, brother. You'll never look back. How funny. And I was like, dude, are you kidding me? I looked, I remember looking at Jesus, I was just like, are you kidding me right now?

How amazing is this? How funny, because the thing he said to you was either become Catholic now or run and never look back. And now he's saying, maybe not even remembering that initial encounter, you'll never look back. Yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was October 8th, 2017. And then the following year was that first day we were in Medjugorje. You know, so tell me what was it like going to confession? Oh man, I was terrified. I was terrified, man.

Which I think most people experience that. So I was worried because I'm a human being and I want people to like me. And I loved this priest. And I was terrified that if I- This could ruin our friendship. Exactly. You know, I mean, all the dumb things that we all think. They're not dumb, I shouldn't say that. They're understandable. dumb things that we all think they're not dumb I shouldn't say that but understand the things that that we think and I remember feeling very terrified about it and scared because you know like I mean I've got a past I've got a lot of darkness I've got a lot of skeletons I've got a lot of I've got a lot of things I'm not proud of and I didn't want to, I worked really hard to rehabilitate myself and come through all these things. And, you know, those are things that are deep in my past.

And it's like, okay, I don't want to go back there. And if I do this, he's going to look at me like I'm some kind of horrible person or what, you know, I'm sure everybody thinks that. And I remember it was the 4th of July, it was Independence Day. And we were sitting across from each other and he's like, how are you doing, Keith? And I said, well, I'm really nervous about confession.

We hadn't scheduled it or anything. I said, I know I need to do that. And I know all the theology behind it. I believe it 100%. But I'm just, I said, just on a personal level, I'm nervous about it because I want you to like me. You know, I, I, and I'm afraid that I'm ashamed, you know, and I so I don't really know where to go with it. And he goes, Well, he goes, I think I know what to do. And I said, What's that? He just goes in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.

Amen. And I said, I'm not ready. He says, You're ready. She's been you've been reflecting on what you would confess. Yeah, you were prepared. I was I was prepared. But not all the way. Okay, because here's the thing.

Sometimes I think it's important for us to prepare to make a confession, but sometimes we need to be caught off guard in confession. And what I mean by that is this, if we over prepare, then we start to over rationalize and over explain away things that we should confess that we don't. Because we might go, well, yeah, I did this,

but you know, I was really upset or this or that. I guess I don't need to confess that. Whereas if we're just in the spot reacting with what the Lord's doing in our hearts and the Holy Spirit's convicting us on, or maybe our priest is prodding from us, then we don't have time to create the explanation or to create the excuse or to not even mention it. So I'd sort of like made categories in my mind of things, but he walked me through it. He knew I didn't know how to do it. So he didn't just sit there and go, all right, let's go. He said, here's how you do this. And then he very gently and lovingly began to ask me questions and draw things out of

me and help me to be able to say what I needed to say. And it was absolutely beautiful, you know, independence day. And I remember walking out of there, and I know it's cliche, I know people say all the time, but I literally felt a weight off my chest. I literally felt lighter. I felt like the sun was brighter, the colors were more vivid.

I mean, it was like people talking about a near-death experience. That's kind of like confession to me, because I think that was really, I don't want to say the last, but one of the devil's strongest strongholds in my heart at the moment to try to short circuit me was, you know, throwing my sins of my past at me and saying, you know, you can't mention this, you can't say it, you know, and it was like that was, that disappeared. That was taken away.

And it was like the Lord said, look, this is what this is for. So to me, like, it's beautiful. It's absolutely beautiful. Now you've been Catholic for nine years or eight years? Six years, six or seven, what was it, 2017? Yeah. So you've become somewhat prominent on YouTube. You've got a great YouTube channel. Have you had former Protestant youth who were part of your group reach out to you or hear about you or try to challenge you?

Oh man, you know, yeah. It's been amazing. There have been people from each of the churches I've served in the past that have become Catholic. And it's been beautiful to see. There's a young man I'm helping right now who's a friend of my son's, who was in my youth group at the last church and was kind of a,

he was sort of on the fringes of even that. And I don't really think he ever got faith. And, you know, I just kind of was gone. But he would, I'd see him around my son here and there. And my son says, Hey, dad, you know, and my kids still aren't Catholic, you know, but my son said to me, he's like, Hey, dad, you know, Ryan watches your videos. Would you be willing to talk to him? And I'm like, seriously, he does? This is your son's friend who's part of your youth group. And I'm like, sure. So I met with this young man, he's like 24. And he was telling me his story,

how he became an atheist and all this. But he was raised Catholic, you know, had no faith, and then started watching videos on my channel. And it just all clicked for him. And this was a kid who was into all kinds of stuff. And it just all clicked for him. And he was like, so what do I do? And we're sitting at like a coffee shop. You become Catholic or you turn around and never look back. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, and that's a dangerous question to ask. I'm like, well, let's go make an appointment to go talk with our priest. Are you cool with that?" He's like, yeah. So I took him to Daily Mass, we met with the priest, and now he's like on his way.

That's like real time happening right now. So yeah, that's happened. If you don't mind me asking you a rather personal question. What's it like, your children not being Catholic, you said? Oh, that's, man, you know, that's been a struggle because at first when I left the church, they didn't know what to do. They were like 15, 17 and 18. Father Chris told me, look, you can't just make them be Catholic. They're too old. You can't just announce to them, Hey, you guys are Catholic now. So, but when I left the church, they're like, well, what are

we all doing? You like, we go to church as a family, we have to go to this other church now. when I left the church, they're like, well, what are we all doing? Like we go to church as a family, we have to go to this other church now? I'm like, well, why don't you guys just try it? So they came to Mass for a few weeks and they just were not getting it. They were like, we don't like this.

Did that break your heart? It broke my heart for a lot of reasons. It didn't make me angry at them because I knew that they just didn't get it. And I told them, they're like, do we have to do this? I'm like, no, you don't have to do this. So they kind of went back to their environments. You know, my daughter ended up moving away and my sons, you know, they're all out of the house now. But it's been hard because like, my daughter is very strong in her faith. She's

a worship leader in a Protestant church, but she was very upset about everything because in her view, she said, are you telling me that everything you've ever taught us is a lie? You know? And I said, no, that's not what I'm telling you, you know? But here's, here's... And in the beginning, I was getting a lot of pushback from people. So I was becoming pretty defensive and I sometimes spoke to them in ways that were overly defensive, which made them feel alienated and made it tougher for them. My sons were kind of just like, we don't care, whatever. But my daughter especially, she really struggled with that for a little while.

So she kind of bounced around. So it's a lot better now. They're older. And one thing that was really cool with my daughter was maybe a year after my book came out. And when I say came out, I mean self-published, it was no big deal, but she made a post on Facebook with a cover of my book, and I thought,

oh no, what's this gonna say? And she said, many of you have wondered what happened to my dad and why he did what he did. If you really wanna know what's going on with my dad, you need to read this book. She's like, I'm not Catholic, but I can tell you guys this, I've never seen my dad more in love with Jesus than I've ever seen him in my entire life. So if this is what Catholicism does, then maybe you guys should give it a chance or something like

that. It was something like that. It broke my heart in a good way. Like I was blown away. So I have, you know, it's a fine line I have to walk. I've had talks with them where they've revealed to me, hey, we don't like when you feel like, when you say things to us that make us feel like you're upset that we're not Catholic. And I'm like, but I am. They're like, well, it makes us feel like you're not proud of us or that you don't approve of us. So it's a hard line to walk. And then, you know, my ministry is pretty public in terms of like, I'm pretty transparent about my family, especially with our Rosary Crew stuff, so people know my kids. So

sometimes, like the people on our Rosary Crew are so kind to my kids, which is amazing. They're so encouraging and kind to them, which really, really helps, you know. So the people that I've to them, which really, really helps, you know? So the people that I've let my kids meet that are Catholics, I kind of have a little screening process. I'm like, okay, you can meet them and not them. And you remember this is what happened to Cameron Batuzzi after I interviewed him. Not only did he, but his wife started getting unsolicited messages from people telling her to become Catholic, saying, saying things quite aggressively.

So I made a video for Cameron. I've never met Cameron, I've never talked to him, but I made a video called Keith's Unsolicited Advice to Cameron Bertuzzi. And it was basically like, don't worry about what other people are telling you. You get to be in charge of you here, you know, like, and what I didn't say, because I didn't know about that at the time, was you absolutely have to shield your wife from that. Now my kids, I've sort of shielded them already, so they've only received good things in that regard that I know about. So I have hope, you know, but it's a fine line because I want them to know that I want them to become Catholic, but I don't want them to feel like I'm disappointed in them

or disapprove of them. Does that make sense? Mason Hickman It does a lot, like I'm disappointed in them or disapprove of them. I was chatting with- Does that make sense? It does a lot, and I'm going to come up with a bit of an analogy here that might be a bit clunky, but I was sitting across this table from Kim Zemba, who lived a homosexual lifestyle and then became a Christian and now lives a celibate life. Beautiful woman. And I asked her, you know, what's your advice for parents with people in the lifestyle?

Now I am not comparing people with, you know, homosexual lifestyle to people who are Protestants, you know at all Don't hear me say that but I think the advice she gave me is it might be kind of similar to the advice you might give She's saying to parents with people with same-sex attraction. They already know Presumably right where you stand you've made it So what they really need now isn't for you to keep reminding them every conversation, but just to have a holistic interest in their life and a journey with them and to love them. And I imagine something similar. It's like, it's not like your kids aren't aware of this. You don't have to say it probably ever again, but you can pray with them. You can love them. You can be show with show them how you're proud of them and things like that. And that's the thing, like, I want them, they know, they know, and I'm confident that they know. And I've had really good conversations with them

in the last, you know, the last year has been a lot better. You know, my daughter's married now, like my, you know, my kids are adults, they've moved out. My youngest son lives in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and there's a beautiful cathedral there. And whenever we go visit him, he will go with us to daily mass. Like I'm saying, Hey, will you come with us? And at one point in time, I was being a dad and giving him a hard time for not going to church enough.

And he said, you know, I went to the cathedral once by myself. And I'm like, you did what? I was so excited. But then a couple of weeks ago he was, so my, my, my youngest son, drew, he was, so my youngest son, Drew, he's an American Ninja Warrior, right? Like, he's been on the show and everything. And he works at a ninja gym in Sioux Falls, and he FaceTimed me with a bunch of his buddies. And they were like, I'm like, hey, and they're like, we were just watching your channel, we were watching your videos, man, we love it, that's awesome.

And I said, are you guys Catholic? And the one guy was like, yeah. He goes, I don't really go to mass. And I said, are you guys Catholic? And the one guy was like, yeah. He goes, I don't really go to mass. And I said, all right, here's the deal. I want all of you guys to go to mass this Sunday and then go to this, there's a really good donut shop. I said, you go there and I'll buy you all donuts. So you guys need to go this weekend.

Not beyond bribing. Exactly, I'm not beyond it, I'll do it. And they did, they went. I was so excited. So I feel like God's given me little glimpses of light, but I'm trying to at the same time Leave that in his hands and I've you know This is gonna sound kind of like super cheesy Catholic II, but like I have given them to the Blessed Mother I really I really have done that I've said look I can't do this and I know that I can't do it

So I don't put that pressure on myself anymore at first I did So I'm not like alright. I'm scheming how to make my kids Catholic. I'm just – and this is what I tell everybody – the best thing that you can do to help your non-Catholic family and friends become Catholic is for you to model Catholicism with joy, devotion, and excitement. If being Catholic has made you a better Christian and they see that, that's going to intrigue them. Not, well, hey, did you hear what this person said or did you know about this or what about the 36,000 denominations or whatever number we've made up today? Let them see how

Catholicism has made you more in love with Jesus, that's gonna open way more doors than, well, Keith, what book should I give them? I get asked that question all the time, what book should I get? Sometimes I'm like, why would you give them a book? Did they ask for a book? If they didn't ask you for a book, why would you give them a book?

Why would you arbitrarily think that people are gonna read these books that we give them about something that they're not interested in. Like if somebody gave me a book about, you know, the laws of thermodynamics, I'd be like, thanks. I'm not reading that. You know? That's a good point. There's a saying, he who is convinced, convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. So you can argue someone into submission, but if it's really,

they don't have the arguments to come back at you But they're not really convinced Well, they're not convinced. Yeah, so it's again. It's about what are you inviting them into? Are you inviting them into the best argument or are you inviting them into something beautiful? The treasure that Jesus talks about that's hidden in a field that once we sell all we have, I talk about this a lot in my talks, like once we sell all we have, we have that that field, we still have to go get the treasure. There's work involved. That's good. Right? You know, it's not just sitting on the top of the of the field,

right? You gotta dig. You gotta dig. Mm-hmm. And when people see you digging for that and then when they see you opening it and going through it and going, wow, did you know about this? That's what I feel like. Every day I feel like as a Catholic, I feel like I find a new piece of the treasure. And I'm like, dude, this is awesome. Did you know about this? Did you know about that? You know, but when you first become Catholic, a lot of people just go, well, that's it,

you're done. No, we're still continuing to grow. And if people who are outside of Catholicism see us in our joy and excitement and devotion, then that's going to intrigue them. But the problem is a lot of us, we're just, we're not that excited or we're not that joyful or we're not that devoted. And the world picks those things apart one by one. Doesn't matter what you have. If someone's raving about something and people like, yeah, but you know, oh, you're going to tell me about the restaurant that you love so much. When's the last time you went there? Yeah. You know, things like that. They've got to see it working

in our lives. To me, that has the potential to open up these doors. Then when you get in those conversations, now you can say, well, hey, if you'd like to talk about more, you want to see things, now they're there. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna say thank you to Hello, which is the best, not just the best Catholic app on the App Store, any App Store, it's the best app out of any app that's ever existed, Catholic or otherwise. I think it's finally time to say that.

If you wanna grow in your prayer life, please check out hello.com slash Matt. If you sign up on their website at hello.com slash Matt, you can get the entire app for free for 90 days That's ridiculous after those 90 days if you don't agree with me that it's worth The money that you're gonna get charged after that monthly which is a relative relatively small amount You can just cancel you won't be charged a cent they have sleep stories They have my Catholic lo-fi on there that just added the Gospels a dramatized version of the Gospels

They have daily exegesis on mass readings, which you can listen to. It is fantastic. So if you haven't done it already, hello.com slash Matt, sign up over there. Try it for free for three months. Keith Nestor, thank you so much for sharing that story. Matt, it's an honor to be here with you.

I really appreciate it. It's amazing how people's stories really, they really help because they're vulnerable. You know, they're not answers to problems. They're just like bringing people along a journey. Yes, where I think conversion really happens, you know.

Amen. We have a ton of questions from our local supporters that I want to get to. Benjamin asks, other than covering our cars and pints with Aquinas stickers, could you mention one or two actions that we

can do as Catholics that seem to have a bigger positive influence on those witnessing our lives, like viewing our lives? Yeah. Huh. Well, I think obviously, I think going to daily mass as much as you can, because everyone asks you, what are you doing today? You know, if that's, if you're daily, living out the faith daily in front of people is a great way to do that. So it's going to motivate you to do that. So if you know someone's going through something, hey, when I pray tonight, I'll pray for you. Or what do you got going on? Oh, sure, we can hang out. Let me go to, I'm going to go to Mass first, you know, or whatever. So if we just live out our daily Catholic lives in front of people, we don't have to always wear t-shirts and,

and, you know, put a bumper sticker on our car. One thing I've started doing is if I see somebody studying the Bible in a coffee shop, or if I see someone with a cross around the neck, I'll always say, hey, glory to Jesus Christ. That's a great idea. Yeah, you know, because I mean, we live in a, not a Christian day and age and you see someone with a cross around the neck, good chance they're Christian. But I do think it's in a way it's more difficult to kind of just strike up a conversation today because relationships have just broken down on every level with the internet after COVID, things like that. It's difficult just to chat with someone on an airplane or chat with someone in a grocery line. Now for me and for you, it's probably a little

bit easier in the sense that if someone says, well, what do you do for work or whatever, you can share that. So what if you don't do anything like professionally ministry? What you can say is this, yeah, I'm a banker and I'm really involved in my church. So always add that tagline to whatever you say about your life, you know, what do you do? Oh, I sell insurance and I'm really active in my local parish. Oh, okay. Just find ways to share what you're doing with people every day, which means you got to be doing it.

S. Lordy says, I come from a non-denominational and Southern Baptist background with an emphasis on the demonic, almost deliverance that was taught since a young age. Catholicism has brought so much peace, brought so much peace, but I still struggle with thinking mostly every nightmare or bump in the night is demonic. It's embarrassing. I'm 37, but it's been ingrained in me since I was eight years old. Any advice? Yeah, my advice is to pray the rosary, you know? There are lots of Catholic devotions that you can pick from. That's my favorite one, but the St. Michael prayer, if you make a habit of praying every night, maybe it's night prayer, you're gonna pray the Divine Office,

whatever you're gonna do, the Catholic Church is like so stinking cool when it comes to things like spiritual warfare, and it just feels like you're in this adventure. And invoke those things, bring those things as part of your daily life. Meditate on lives of the saints that have had incredible spiritual warfare exercises and pray to your guardian angel.

That's the thing in your non-denominational background, you're on your own, right? Now you say, well, I have Jesus. Okay, great. But in the Catholic understanding, you've also got the angels and saints around you. That is, the book of Hebrews tells us, are a cloud of witnesses that surround us. So ask for the intercession of the saints to help you. Mason Harkness And it sounds like this person thinks they might have an overemphasis on this, and so I would say even in that situation, our Blessed

Mother is aware of that and can help heal you of this. There's a classic line from C.S. Lewis who says the devil is equally pleased with somebody who thinks the devil's under a rock, under every rock and somebody who thinks he doesn't exist. Maybe meditating on the power of Christ and how. One way I like to talk to my children, I'm like, Jesus compared to Satan. It's like if you put a hungry lion in the cage with a sheep, who would win? Wow. You know, like just to kind of help them realize it's not like Satan's the opposite of Christ as far as power goes.

Okay. TK is Traddish. What's up? She says, did any parishioners from your church get interested in the Catholic church? You've talked about this, but feel free to go back at it. After you preach your Catholic but not Catholic Bible series. No, because they had no idea. I didn't frame that as, hey, this is Catholic stuff. So they just were like, cool, the Bible's awesome. Which I think is a good reaction.

It is, even if that's all it was. But it may have planted a seed so that when they encounter a Catholic, imagine the Protestant saying, well, I'm not a Catholic, but did you know that Mary's the new Eve? And I think that was kind of an important part of that when I did convert. You know, I think some people remembered some of those things. Let's see here. Daniel says, believing in the intercession to saints and the rosary were my most difficult struggles in my conversion to Catholicism. How did you deal with it? Especially if somebody who has a daily YouTube video coming out, how did you overcome that

obstacle? I never had a problem with that, to be honest with you. That's refreshing to hear. Yeah. To me, like, I saw the intercession of the saints in the Bible before I was Catholic, so I didn't really have this aversion to it. It's been something that for me has helped me practically like in my life, with doing the daily rosary and how that's worked out. Like, I can't even explain the change in my life that's taken place since I've done that just on a personal level. So for me, I've not just, I don't just do these things because you're supposed to do them.

Like it's sort of the air I breathe now and it's become so life-giving to me. So I didn't have that issue where, well, I don't think you can only pray. Part of the problem is most people don't understand the differences in language, the way we talk about things. This is something I talk about in my book, how things mean one thing in Catholic world and a different thing in Protestant world. And prayer is one of those things. And that's one of the objections that all these Protestants are always having. You can't only pray to God. Why do you pray to Mary? And what we're always telling them is we're asking for their intercession. Right. And prayer doesn't necessarily mean

worship in a Catholic understanding. Exactly. Prayer doesn't necessarily mean worship in a Catholic understanding. Exactly. But that's not a category that they have when it comes to prayer. So sometimes we have to really dig into those objections and recognize that we probably are closer in our belief. We just talk about things differently. Yeah. Yeah. I actually did a debate with Cameron Batuzzi that was a very cord very cordial friendly debate on YouTube about the intersection of the saints that might interest people out there if they want to look that up. Tell me some stories from I mean you've been by the way kudos to you for the for the effort and the endurance in doing this rosary thing every day.

So am I right in thinking you were doing on your main channel and then you split it off? I did. So again, this was never part of my plan. This was never part of my agenda. When I started doing this Catholic ministry stuff, which again, I never said I'm going to do that. It just kind of happened. But right before the pandemic is when I was basically going to go all in on doing ministry again. I had a bunch of talks booked. the book was coming out, I was doing like the journey home and all these different things. So I'm like, okay, I'm starting to have to, I'm running out of like days I can take off work to go do ministry things. Maybe I'll just jump in and do this. Well, then the pandemic hit and everything just went to vapor as everybody knows. I was coming out of Mass on March 17th, and I just went home and did a live stream

on YouTube, on my regular channel, and someone on there said, hey, can we pray the rosary tomorrow on your YouTube channel? And I thought, well, I've never led the rosary before. I was praying it, but I'd never led it before because I was super intimidated to do it. I'm like, I will mess this up. I will do something wrong. And I'm completely unqualified to be a Rosary leader. Right. But I thought I can do this. If it's at a computer, I can have it. I can read it. I can, I'll be set. So the next day we went on March 18th, 2020, and we did the live stream and a bunch of people showed up on this channel. And then it was kind of like, well, hey, can we do this again? Yeah. So I thought, okay,

we'll do this for 14 days because that was all the pandemic was gonna last if you remember that 14 days to slow the spread I'm like I can do this for 14 days. No problem. Well long story short it's never stopped and eventually it got to a point where like my entire YouTube channel Became just overrun with these Rosary live streams. And I've never been that savvy of a YouTuber, but I do pay attention to what YouTube likes and doesn't like, and noticing things and whatever. And I thought to myself, okay, I sort of have these parallel ministries going here. One hand it's like talks and sort of like little lessons about Catholic things and Bible studies,

and then this other thing is this daily rosary. I need to make these two separate worlds. So about a year ago, maybe a little bit more than that, we just made its own YouTube channel. And so now I have the Rosary Crew, which is what we call that community, which is worldwide. We've got over 80 countries of people that pray every day, thousands of people. We're on a bunch of different YouTube channels and Facebook pages. Well, only one YouTube channel now, but we're on a bunch of different Facebook pages and people pray from morning to tonight on the Rosary page and

It's become this incredible community that has really like become our family Yeah, please link to that Thursday in the in the usual Rosary crew with Keith Nestor is the Rosary channel There's a 24-7 looping Rosary on there. So I have recordings like I've got a Our Lady of YouTube. Rosary Crew with Keith Nestor is the Rosary channel. There's a 24-7 looping rosary on there. So I have recordings. Like I've got an Our Lady of Sorrows rosary. I've got a Divine Mercy chaplet. I've got a Latin rosary. I've got a bunch of different rosaries on there. But then we have the daily live stream and then the 24-7 looping through. So what's it like when you miss a day? I've never missed a day. Never? Never been too sick or? There was one day when I was so sick that I couldn't talk but I was still there and I had I had a young man Come up on the side of the screen with me and we prayed together

But I just I was going like this, but I've never missed a day in Almost four years and even when we travel with what we do these pilgrimages It's just when I'm traveling which is a lot People know okay the time might be different. I try to do it at the same time every day, but when we travel, it's different. And then, you know, now we have this thing where we travel around the country to pray with these people. Can I tell you about this? No, tell me. Okay. So the job that I did after I quit my job in the ministry was I went into photography.

So my wife and I had a photography business that she's been doing that forever, and we had our own business, and it was kind of like that we bought a building downtown, renovated it, made it awesome. And so I went to work in the business full-time after I quit the church. And when I started going doing ministry stuff, I had to step away from photography. And Estelle was like, I don't want to do this anymore. Let's just sell the building. So that was supposed to be our retirement, right? So we were trying to figure out what we were going to do.

We sold the building in 2021 and we were shoveling snow one night. I remember this. And Estelle said to me, she's like, what do you think we ought to do with that money from selling the building? I'm like, what do you think we ought to do with that money from, from selling the building? I'm like, well, isn't that like for retirement? Cause you know, I had no money at this time. And she says, well,

do you want to just leave it sitting in the bank or do you want to do something for God with it? And I'm like, that's an, I'm like, I know I'm like, I'm like, okay, come on. Like, what are we doing? And her and I, we would like, we would geek out on YouTube watching like these van lifers drive around in their little van motor homes and think, oh, wouldn't that be a cool life? These kids are like 20 and they're driving around living in a van.

And so we'd always fantasized about having like a Sprinter RV and being able to travel. And right around this time, one of our friends in the Rosary crew who lives in Canada sent me an email and she said, Keith, I had a dream that you came to visit me to in the Rosary crew who lives in Canada sent me an email and she said, Keith, I had a dream that you came to visit me to do the Rosary. And I'm like, how would I ever do that?

You know, like, okay, that's it. And I remember thinking about that when it still said that. I'm like, wouldn't it be cool if we bought a motor home and we traveled around instead of like when I, instead of getting on an airplane and flying to a speaking event, which I do, instead of doing that, now what we do is we look to see where it is.

We have a map of our, what we call, Rosary Road Captains, people that have said, hey, I want you to come and pray with me. And then we just make a little tour of where we're gonna go, and so then we'll say, okay, like in February we went to Texas for a month. And we looked at the map and we just kind of said, okay, here's the days, here's where we're going to be and people say, hey, I'm in Kansas City,

I'm in Tulsa, I'm in Dallas, I'm in Houston. And then we just travel from city to city in the RV and then when we show up, they have gathered some people together to pray the rosary and then that's our daily live stream. So it might be like, hey, today we're in Steubenville with Matt and Thursday, let's pray the rosary. And then, and it's crazy because like last Sunday, somebody came to my parish. On Sundays, I do the rosary at my parish because I want to be able to talk to people in the morning. So I just said, well, why don't I just pray the rosary here? And there was a young couple who are engaged to be married on their way from Las Vegas

to Michigan, who did a detour to come to Cedar Rapids to our parish to pray the rosary with us. So I'm in the middle, I'm in a closet in my church and these two walk in. They're like, �Hi, we're here to pray with you. We've been praying with you for two and a half years on YouTube.� And so here we are. Darrell Bock What a gift. Scott Cunningham So that's what we do. Like, we're getting ready to go to California for a month and we just love it.

So my wife and I and our little dog, we'll getting ready to go to California for a month, and we're just, we just love it. So, my wife and I and our little dog, we'll just hop in the van and we'll drive around, and it's been a blast. So I never would have picked that for ministry. I never would have said that's what I want to do, but I think our lady picked that, and it's been a total honor to be a part of that. Mason Hickman Praise the Lord. That's really fantastic.

And I don't want to give any details away. We encountered a person this morning, we just bumped into them and they said that they, well, I don't want to give too much away. So what did, what should we say? Oh yeah. This, this person had had a really challenging time in life with the family member and the Rosary crew was a big part of that. And he was just so excited. And we heard that when he heard I was coming here, he reached out to me and said hey come and say hi and then completely randomly Matt decided to go stop in for water at that place and the guy was there. I was like I'm sure it was total coincidence. Well exactly. Lucy says hi I follow the Rosary crew

thank you. Cool hey Lucy how you doing? I wanted to talk to you about Locals because you asked me about that earlier. Yes yes tell me about Locals Matt. This sounded like an ad set up, it really wasn't. Oh hello there, tell me about Locals. Because you're currently on Patreon. I am on Patreon, yes. How long have you been on Patreon for? Oh man, probably three years.

So when I started Pines for the Quinness, when I quit my job and we were like, alright we need to really try to make this work. Yeah, went to Patreon, was happy with with patreon and then patreon started banning people Because they didn't fit the kind of woke Dog doctrine as it were didn't didn't full step in line with it And so that made me nervous and I was looking at some other ways to bring in money I say, okay, maybe I'll start something on my website, you know, Babylon B does something like yeah Yeah, so you give to Babylon B and you start getting access to everything on the site.

So I came up with this WordPress plugin, spent a lot of money kind of refining it, tried to do that, but it was just, it's so difficult, you know, to create essentially a Patreon. It takes a lot of work. And then I had the fellows at Locals reach out to me. So Locals was started by Dave Rubin and a few folks after after they started banning people. Jordan Peterson and and Dave Rubin had the Cahonies to quit. They weren't even kicked off.

They just decided to quit because they didn't want to be part of someone. Some group that was, you know, limiting speech. So they reached out to me and they asked me if I'd come over. And I wasn't interested in doing it because I thought it would just confuse everybody. I already have this community over on Patreon. If I start talking about this other thing, it's too complicated. And besides, I didn't know these people at locals.

I didn't ask them. I just figured they were trying to get my business. So I was like, no, no, thank you very much. Well they were quite persistent and I was shocked that they were just like really kind people that were like, well, look, we can help you set it shocked that they were just like really kind people. They were like, well, look, we can help you set it up. We think you do really well with it. OK, so I started looking into it. The more I looked into it, the more I was convinced it's the way to go

and way better than Patreon. I'm not telling you to switch because, again, maybe that's too complicated. But for me, it was definitely the right decision. So a couple of things about locals that Patreon doesn't do. One, they don't ban you unless you're involved in like public criminal activity. Secondly, even if they did ban you, it's not locals who's paying you,

it's Stripe who's paying you. And so they take, I think it's 10% of the money you're bringing in, but if you leave locals or if they ban you, which they won't, you just get more money from Stripe. Does that make sense? Yeah. They want creators to be independent, so they don't want you to have to rely on them forever in the way you have to rely on Patreon because there's no way to get out of it.

Sure, if you quit Patreon, you could download the HTML list of all the emails and hope that they'll get the email. But I just thought that that was that was really cool. They did that. The other thing I like about locals is it's much more integrated than Patreon is. So on Patreon, you have to record say an unlisted video on YouTube and then link to it. Yes. Whereas on locals, you just stream directly. That was my question. I was going to ask you that. Can you because I like to do zoom calls with my patrons, but it would be awesome to be able to do a Patreon,

locals, whatever live stream like on Patreon. I can't do that. I have to record a video, put it on YouTube. Yeah, I think you can upload a video now directly to Patreon. OK, I think you stream can't stream to it. So they have that option. The other thing I love about locals is basically everything we post over there. People can go and check out. So I do these morning streams in the morning

and anyone can watch them. But if you wanna comment, you have to be a local supporter. Okay. And what that does is it makes locals basically the real social media as far as I'm concerned. When I think of locals and people who support me on local say the same thing, they're like, this is what social media should have been.

Like it's what social media should have been. Like it's actually, it's actually social. People aren't paying $10 a month to be a jerk to each other and to you, you know? They're invested. And the other thing I love about locals, and I'll finish with this, is whereas on Patreon, it feels like you're the one who has to drive all of the excitement. Like you put up posts, people respond. You put up posts, people you put up post people respond on locals Everyone's posting and everyone's responding to everyone's post and so when I post I can say okay I'm gonna send this to everybody's email My post gets prominence because people are usually there to see the sort of things that I'm posting be it videos or whatever But they're also posting and responding to each other

I love that so it takes the pressure off you as the creator that you're not the only one trying to drive the content. Everyone's driving the content. And so I'm sure a lot of these people would say, I'm not even necessarily there for Matt anymore. I'm there for all these relationships. Oh, that's awesome. So the way I do Patreon is probably the dumbest way to do it from a standpoint of like trying to make money. Okay. Because I don't have like, I don't have levels. Yeah, I basically said I basically said look There are some people that need You know to be able to interact with me on here that can only afford X Yeah, and there are that I can afford more. It's like if you go to my patreon There's a video in the front where I say look my philosophy of giving is this

You ask Jesus what he wants you to give and then do what he says But if there's something that you need from me, it's not going to be connected to a certain level. Right. Okay. The way I, how does locals work? Well, the way I would. So, I mean, the nice thing about Patreon, of course, is that everyone gets equal. Oh, they don't do they? They don't get equal access. That's right. You can put up a post just for your $20 support. Yeah. So for me, when I would use Patreon, what I was doing is I was giving everything I was posting, whether you give a dollar or $20 or a hundred dollars, but that I had these different gifts attached

to certain things. So that was the big differentiator. No, on locals, they don't have a tiered system. Oh, I love that already. They have, you can give monthly or you can give annually, or you can just turn the monthly off and just have one option. Okay.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah, so. I'll definitely I'll definitely check that out. Did not pay me to say that, but I will say they have been incredibly helpful. Like I'm surprisingly

I'll do something on transgender ism and I'll like share it with them. Like, what do you guys think about this? And like, it's fantastic. It's great. Yeah, they're like Orthodox Jews and some Christians and maybe some atheists. But and they and they're

really not just trying to get like people on the right. They they want anyone who's for free speech. and some Christians and maybe some atheists, but and they're really not just trying to get like people on the right. They want anyone who's for free speech. It's not the rumble of YouTube. Is it the rumble? Well, no, it would be the rumble of, it would be an equivalent.

In fact, they're, so now you need to explain what you mean by that. What I mean by that is like everyone always like, I feel like like the super conservative, tranny people are always like got You know, you're exactly right. That's the that's the the the but I think the reason for that is it is conservative voices They get canceled not yeah leftist voices, but I'm sure I would have the same policy where they want people on the left To come over as well. They're not trying to make it an echo chamber

So yeah No, it's it's been really excellent And the people there have been equally amazing to me as I've bought into this. Sometimes people are like always responsive in the beginning until you buy in and then they're nobody to be found. It's been terrific. So did you like delete your Patreon altogether?

No, so what I did, and I would advise this for people who are on Patreon, you wanna move over to locals. Again, I don't care. I don't work for locals, right. But if you did wanna do that, I did a transition period for about six months right away

I did that is instead of saying if you're a patron or a local supporter instead of doing that I would say so if you support me on patreon or locals, so instead of saying patrons I changed the word to supporters. Okay. Okay everything I put on locals I also put on patreon like the first six months, but my pinned post on Patreon was here's three months free Please come join me over on locals and I picture I didn't care well patron now I don't think they care, but they're not gonna. I don't think they even pay pay pay attention to that But you know if I get banned On YouTube then I'm gonna if I get down on Patreon to be over on locals, right?

I get banned on YouTube now. I have so many people who follow me because you can follow without supporting. That's the other thing. Yeah. Yeah. So when I do these live streams in the morning, people get a notification they can watch, even though they're not paying anything. So I like that. So if I get banned on YouTube, then so I've got been on Patreon, you know, you've got locals. But if I get banned on YouTube, too, now I've got a large following. That's so awesome. I think about that sometimes. I think like for my own ministry,

I go, okay, I need to, I need to offer something just for my, just for my supporters, this and that. But then I always feel bad about that. I'm always like, well, these people support me because they like what I'm doing and they want me to reach other people. So I'm always afraid like, yes, if I do something, and it's just an issue I have with my own self, trying to figure out my own what I'm called to do with it, but like I'm always afraid if I do something just for these group of people What if there's somebody out there that needs to hear it, but they didn't which yeah, I don't know

I just probably need to figure that out Fair enough But I guess the other thing to consider is if you allow people to support you then you might be able to hire More people and make your message grow and that's been like, I've got about seven or eight people who work for Pines with a coin. And that never would have happened if it weren't for local supporters. So yeah, I think I get my own way sometimes with that kind of stuff, you know, but it's a beautiful intention. I mean, your intention is they're supporting me so I can share with the world, you know? And there have been times I've shared stuff just for local supporters and Locust was like, please make this public. We don't care. We just want to support you. And I do.

Like, dude, I really, really enjoyed your post that you made the other day on YouTube talking about how we're to deal with the crisis. And I remember thinking to myself, I watched that with my wife, we were driving home and I watched that. And I was like, I thought this to myself and I want to ask you about it. Why doesn't Matt do more of that? Like yeah You're you're phenomenal at this obviously, but like you have a lot of things that you could help With with beyond this even I think that that maybe and maybe you do that in other places But yeah, that's kind of you. I mean, I do kind of chat with people on locals and yeah, we do that That's why we call it morning coffee. It's basically a podcast that comes out every morning. And some mornings I miss it.

I'm not as faithful as you are on the Rosary one. But when I do, we usually kind of like look at teachings from St. Thomas or what saints have said about this. So we just hang out and chat. Yeah, I don't know why I don't do it. I think I really get sick. I hate listening to my own voice. So if I listen to a video,

like if I listen back to this interview and I hear me speaking, I just want to fast forward and listen to you. Oh my goodness. And I think it's one of my greatest pleasures is to put wonderful folks like yourself in that seat so people can see just how beautiful Catholic people are, you know, like there's so many amazing voices. There really are. And many people are familiar with you, many people won't be, and so to have, to be able to introduce you to them is a joy, you know, so. Awesome. Sorry to whoever was asking more questions than I went on a different tangent, but... No, let's go. We have so many questions here. Let's see. How do you better eliminate distractions when you pray the rosary? Oh man, okay. So to me, the rosary and distractions

are all about one thing, the mysteries. Focusing on the mysteries of the rosary is huge for me. the mysteries. Focusing on the mysteries of the rosary is huge for me. Like, like I'm constantly imagining myself on that journey of whatever we're going through with that day's mystery. Like that sets the stage for me and if I do feel myself starting to get distracted, you know, I just I pull myself back with the next beat but I've had those moments too where I've had to start over. Like I've had that, you know, mostly when I was on my own doing it, where I would just get so out of whack, I would be like, okay, that didn't count. I need to start over. But the biggest thing, I mean, practical things are, when are you praying your rosary?

I mean, a good time to pray, or any time you pray is a good time to pray, but sometimes better than others. If you're praying, if you're like, well, I pray my rosary on the way to work. Okay, that's fine, but you're gonna get distracted. You're going to. Mm-hmm. If you say, well I pray my rosary when my kids have in soccer practice and I'm on the sideline. Okay, that's, if that's the only time that works for you, great. But what's better is when you can devote yourself just to that. So find a way to put yourself in an environment where you eliminate those distractions so that you're training yourself to do that.

And maybe that will help, but you have to do what you have to do. If the only time you get is in between things, the Lord knows that, the intention of your heart. Sometimes I feel like it's more grace. Maybe I'm not right in this, you can tell me, but sometimes I think we get more grace when we don't feel like doing it and we do it anyway. Or when we are distracted, but we persevere. I also think too though, not to push back on that, because I agree with everything you just said.

No, feel free. Yeah, but I also think too, sometimes it puts too much pressure on people if you say it's the only time, because I think most people are like, well, obviously it's not the only, I guess I could find time. But I think sometimes too, maybe you enjoy praying the rosary while you're walking and you know yourself well rosary while you're walking, and you know yourself well enough that if you were to try to devote, say, 15 minutes to be in a silent chapel every day, you wouldn't do it. And so you're like, okay, well, I'm going to do what I can do, and I'm going to pray

the rosary on my walk or on my drive to work, and certainly they're going to perhaps more distractions. Sometimes not, though. Sometimes moving is a way to kind of help you keep the focus in a way that sometimes sitting in a silent room doesn't. When I first started praying the rosary, I prayed it on my motorcycle. That's how I, that's-

And don't you have videos of you on a motorbike? Oh yeah, I can have a whole playlist on YouTube called MotoProprio. That is just me with a webcam, or not a webcam, with like a GoPro on my chin cam And then a microphone just driving around talking about things Those those have had mixed results, but but I enjoy those those were fun to make Michael asks for Protestant members of small churches What's the most prudent way to leave for Catholicism, especially if your family isn't going to leave with you?

What's the most prudent way to leave? Wow as a see a pastor or just like I think he's just a Protestant member in a small church. I think you just have to, you just have to pull the bandit off and do it, you know? There's no easy way to do that. There's, there's, there's wrong ways to do it, to stand up and, and maybe shout from the rooftops, oh, you heretics, I'm leaving. I mean, when I first left my church, Matt, you said, what's his name? Sorry, Michael. Michael, Michael, when I first left my church, I wrote a letter to the church about why I was leaving that got rejected by the church council. They're like, you can't say that because it was very much, it was

rooted in some of the things that I was upset about in the denomination and less about Catholicism is more like what you were running away from. Exactly. Running to. So in in wisdom, they came to me and said, hey, don't talk about that. Talk about where you're going. Yeah, I like that. And so to me, that's what I would say as well. Like, like talk about the joy of why you're going there and not like don't don't slam any doors on the way out.

This fella, it's funny, sometimes they have names like Matt or Jenny or Erin. This guy apparently is called GS7181. Ah, 181, okay. Yeah, not 182. I am a convert by the grace of God. I was also baptized twice as a Presbyterian and a Southern Baptist. My father was raised Presbyterian.

My mother was an evangelical. When they decided to switch to Southern Baptist, the whole family had to be baptized in water fully. So was I not a child of God with the first one?" I think you can kind of refer to being a child of God in different senses, right? So like in one sense, every human being that is currently living or has lived has been children of God in one sense, but they weren't regenerate Christians, right? And so, well, you go. Well, no, I like where you're going with that. I also think that, you know, there's that scene in the book of Acts where the Holy Spirit falls upon those who are not yet baptized, right? But then he commands them to be baptized. So it's not as if, as the catechism of the Catholic Church says, we are bound by the sacraments, but God is not bound

by the sacraments. But certainly the ordinary means by which we become regenerate is through the sacrament of baptism. And so if your first one wasn't valid, and it sounds like it may have been, right? He's only saying that was the question. That would be the question I would ask is, why wasn't it valid? You know, I mean, obviously the Catholic church accepts as valid any baptism that's done in the name of the Father, Son,

and the Holy Spirit would run water. I think what he's saying is, according to the Baptists, right? So he's talking about- Oh, yeah. Oh, well, yeah, according to the Baptists, you weren't. Okay. You know, that's why they rebaptized people,

but it doesn't do anything. And I suppose there's different strands in Baptists. Oh, Baptist theology too, right? I'm sure many Baptists who are like, well, baptism is not strictly necessary. Sure, sure. Caution of a Christian once you confess your sins and accept Christ. Okay. Aaron says, what are youth these days hungry for and how can we minister to them well?

I think, man, you know, I went to Mass this morning at the chapel up here at Steubenville, and I was just looking around. I'm like, man. Was it packed? It was packed. And I'm like, these young, just the young people I've met here since I've been here, I'm like, I feel great about the future of the church, because here's the thing. The youth aren't the future of the church, because here's the thing, the youth aren't the future of the church. They're the church right now. So we have to treat the youth as though they matter right now. And we don't dumb the faith down to them.

We don't talk to them. What the youth are looking for is inspiration. And unfortunately, that's the last thing we give them. We give them a cheap imitation of the world's fun and a little nice moral therapeutic teaching, and we call that youth ministry. What we need to be giving them are inspirational examples of amazing, loving adults in the faith that are going to walk with them and challenge them and show them in real time what Catholicism looks like as an adult, and that will inspire them to take it on for themselves.

But a lot of times what we do is we think, well, they're youth, all they want to do is go skating and eat pizza, right? No. They don't need the church to plan their fun. They can do that themselves. They need the church to lead them spiritually and to lead them in the faith, and they need to be inspired in order to do that. Mm. This person says, sorry, not a question. I had no idea supporters could create posts in the group until Matt mentioned in the interview. Cool, all right, well that's good. This guy says, who is Keith Nester?

Okay, you should probably know that by now. I'm nobody. I'll give you everything to our Lord. Kristen says, I'd love for you to ask him how to separate the chaff from the wheat regarding Catholic YouTube channels. By way of explanation, anyone who begins a video-based ministry is charismatic in front of a camera to begin with, but not all are representing Catholicism so well of late. It worries me the folks don't always have the tools at hand to scrutinize them for truthfulness

and or catechesis. Obviously not a reflection on YouTube, fine gentlemen. I mean, it's a fair point just because somebody says that they're Catholic or says they run a Catholic YouTube channel doesn't mean you can trust everything that they're saying. Did you encounter that as you started entering into the YouTube and podcast world? I encountered it all the time. Yeah, that's a great question. YouTube is amazing and really problematic at the same time. Kind of like the Catholic Church, here comes everyone. Yes. Just a lot of different people.

I don't know. For me, the thing about YouTube is this. I want to be helpful on YouTube. That's what I feel like. That's the best we can be. Some people are on YouTube to be entertained. Some people are on YouTube to be entertained. Some people are on YouTube to learn stuff. And there's nothing wrong with any of those things, by the way. But some people are on YouTube because that's their soapbox or that's the platform that allows them to air their grievances.

And it's up to each of us to decide whether or not we're gonna tune in. Some people think that whatever's on YouTube, you just have to watch it. And I remind people all the time, nobody put a gun to your head. You don't have to watch this channel if it's not helpful to you, if it's not guiding you in the faith,

if it's freaking you out, if it's scary. And I've had to do that. There have been channels, I'm not gonna name them, that I was into and then I've kind of pulled back on because maybe at one point in my journey I needed to learn this, but then now I'm not so much interested in this part of it, or maybe the channel changed directions or whatever.

You have to have custody of your own eyes and your own heart so that whatever media you're consuming, no matter where it is, whether it's YouTube, whether it's books that you read, whatever you listen to, those are things that are being compared to a standard. And to me, the standard is this, what does the church teach? That's what I care about. Now, that doesn't mean that I only watch YouTube about what the church teaches. But if I'm watching somebody who purports to be a Catholic, I want to know that what

they're saying is in accordance with what the church teaches. And if it's not, that they're upfront about that too. So for example, if you're watching a Protestant YouTube channel, you don't go, well, that doesn't have a, okay, but they're purporting to be a Protestant channel. So for Catholic YouTubers, I think you just have to do your diligence. And if something feels off, if something feels weird, maybe ask your priest about it, or talk to someone that you trust about it, or dig a little bit deeper. Maybe that person's willing to respond to a question. You can ask them,

hey, you said this in your video, what did you mean by that? People do that to me all the time. But I think that's up to each of us to recognize what's going to be helpful to us and what's not going to be helpful to us. What are some of your, do you watch Catholic YouTube? I do. I do. What are some of your favorite videos to watch? Well, okay. So, um, Gabby after hours is probably one of my favorite ones. And I got to,

I got to hang out with, with Gabriel when I was in Texas, we did some stuff together. That's awesome. He seems like a great dude. I've seen some excellent videos come out of that. He's an amazing guy and his channel is amazing. Cause you know, I come from a photography background too. So I also love things that are artistic and amazing. You know, of course I love Pines with a Quietness.

Everybody probably says that, but I really do. I love Michael often. I've reasoned the theology. I've been to Michael's place and hung out with him. So I like, I know Michael goes in a direction sometimes people like don't like, I also think that's helpful, you know, he provides sort of a kind of a yin to the yang that's out there in some ways if I can use that analogy. I really love, this is kind of a nerdy one, but I really love classic

Catholic audiobooks. Classic Catholic audiobooks? Yes. So that's literally a channel where you can just go on and they have like all of the classic Catholic audio books. Come on. Like, are they done well? They're done. Okay. They've done well enough. You know, they're done well enough. They're done as well as like a LibreVox recording if you want to listen to something. So if I'm on like a long drive, that's a good thing for me to, for me. Um, I also love also love, I love, I'll throw some out as well. I love how to be Christian.

I love Ferris. Yeah. That fella is brilliant. How to be Christian is brilliant. Brian Holdsworth is great. Love Brian Holdsworth, Trent Horn stuff every time he puts up. It's just ridiculously great. So I feel like when I, Joe Heschmeyer now has his channel. It's doing excellent. I think. I feel like whenever I say any names, I'm always leaving somebody out. I mean, there's

somebody I just kind of take for granted, but of course anything Catholic Answers does, I love, you know, Joe and Trent and I mean, my favorite YouTube channel of all time was probably Laura Horne's channel, you know, too far Laura Horne. I mean, like I've never been, whenever, whenever she puts a new video up, I'm like, hey, look, Laura made a new video. I'm like, I'm my wife watching. I'm like, she's great. We screen them before we play them. But my kids love Laura. Um, oh my gosh. What else? My kids have actually climbed into bed and said, dad, can we watch a Laura Horn video? I'm like, I can't believe that people are, cause I know Laura

well, you know, it's weird for people to say that, but they think of her like just some celebrity. And then, so then she came on my show and she was at her house hanging out with me and my wife and they were like, Laura's here. And there's many more than I'm not saying that I mean, I could mention, but I do watch a lot of YouTube. But I also watch a lot of non-Catholic YouTube too.

Yeah. Yeah. I love watching, you know, I'm a huge motorcycle guy. So I love watching moto vlogs. I love watching barbecue stuff. I'm a barbecue nerd. Nice. Jeff Cavins is a big motorcycle guy. Is he really?

I didn't know that. He's given it up finally. I think he's always made his wife uncomfortable, I think. So he's finally given it up. But for the longest time, they would do like cross country trips, cross Canada, across the states. Oh man, that's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I

love that stuff. So what kind of bike do you have then? I have an Indian. I shouldn't have asked that question because I wouldn't have known anything you just said. It's a performance bagger. Which means? You know what that means, just kidding. So it's kind of, it's got a fairing on it, It's got saddlebags on it. It's kind of like an old man bike, but it's really cool. So Indian is actually the first American made motorcycle company. Harley started in 1903, Indian started in 1901. The Harley people are all freaking out right now

because Indian's been bought and sold so many times so that the current iteration of Indian motorcycles now has nothing to do with who originally made it. But it's actually, the bikes are made in Iowa where I live so that's cool but I had a Harley for years so what's the debate on the better quality Harley or is it India or Indian Indian yeah well Harley guys a lot of times think that Harleys are the best and Indian people think they're the best and I think they're both awesome so I mean I don't think there's really any company

out there right now that's making a really bad motorcycle. Yeah, so, you know if you have a Japanese cruiser or a European or you know, whatever Chances are it's probably decent. I remember somebody told me that if you Kind of if that if your bike falls over Let's say you come to a stop sign and full of it You can't pick that thing up and that never occurred to me because I've never ridden a motorbike before. Well, some of them at least. There's a technique to it. Okay. If you know how to do it correctly, you can. All right. So tell me how that the way that you, the way that you do it, you're not going to be able to do it without visuals. Well, yeah, is you have to like get down, put your butt on the ground and like you like reverse squat and push against it

with your back. Okay. Until it comes back up. So my motorcycle is huge, like a 850 pound motorcycle. If it were to fall over, I'm told that's the way to do it. I've never had to do that, but that's the way I'm told you're supposed to do it. Have you ever been near misses or you've had any things that you're like, I'm not gonna ride a bike again after that? I've had, I almost hit a deer once last year.

And that's probably the closest near, but I've never crashed. I've never really been in an bit but I've never crashed I've never really been in an accident I've never laid it down like I've never I'm not that die-hard of a rider I mean I love motorcycles but I'm not riding you know thousands and thousands and thousands of miles a year you know I like to do a few trips a year like lacrosse Wisconsin is about three hours from my house and there's a beautiful shrine to Our Lady Guadalupe up there. That's a great ride.

I go up there two or three times a year and do things like that. I think my wife and I, I hope one day once the kids are grown, we'll do what you do with the van. My wife loves the idea of us getting an RV, but we have a really large dog and four kids and it just seems really chaotic. I don't know if I can do it. Well, here's an invitation. If you ever want to borrow it, you can borrow the van.

You're very kind. And we will watch your kids and your dog and you guys can take a trip and go somewhere awesome in the RV. You'll love it. Well, you can stay in a house and students will. Sounds great. Yeah, all right, deal.

Yeah, thank you. All right, yeah, man, so many questions. What's next? What do you, what's, I mean, Well, I've got to- Keep praying the rosary and- Yeah, we're gonna keep praying the rosary. I did write a book about the rosary this last year called Unpacking the Mysteries of the Rosary.

And it's a devotional book revolving around the scriptural meanings of the mysteries and the practical application of that. So I'm really proud of it. It's probably, it's the thing I'm the most proud of that I've ever like created, is this book about the rosary, which again, I never thought I would do that.

So I love doing all that. The thing I'm also really fired up about is this new podcast called Unpacking the Mass. It started off just as YouTube videos, because I have another podcast called Catholic Feedback. Yeah, so how many podcasts do you have? I have two podcasts, two YouTube channels. I have a hard time saying no, Matt. Yeah, all right. But unpacking the Mass is something that I think is really needed in the church these days. I see.

Where people can be prepared to go to Mass. That's the way I talk about that. It's not a substitute for your priest's homily. It's a preparation so that you have ears to hear what Jesus wants to speak to you through the homily. So it's really like a warm-up. But a lot of people tell me it's really all they got. No. Because they'll tell me, Keith, our priest doesn't even talk about the readings, which I think is just, you know, unbelievable. But this is where we find out, like, what God is doing through the readings. So that's the thing. It's funny because that's the thing I'm most excited about,

but it's the thing that's least consumed on my anything that I do, you know, which as a YouTube content creator, whatever is a little bit frustrating because you know, like everybody else, you know, you want to make your channel grow. You want to do things people want. And one of the things I've struggled with is I feel like it's easy to get a lot of views if you do things that are controversial or if you say negative things about people or you're trying to create some kind of panic in people. Yes.

You see it all the time. Yeah. And I've just, I'm just not wanting to do that, but at the same time, like what I want to do doesn't always seem to But at the same time, what I wanna do doesn't always seem to be the thing that grows. So I have to always have, I feel like the Lord's always having this battle with my flesh saying, Keith,

it's not about growing the YouTube channel, it's about growing the kingdom of God. And this is what you're supposed to do. This is what's helpful, this is what's needed. It doesn't matter if it's not the biggest sensation on YouTube, don biggest sensation on YouTube. Don't worry about that. This is helping people.

I totally hear you. And yet at the same time, you've got over 60,000 YouTube subscribers. I have no clue why people subscribe to my channel like that, like in that way. Was this this morning, this Rosary? Yeah, that was this morning before I came over here. That's fantastic. It's a great, great hotel, isn't it? It was so beautiful.

Yeah, great hotel. Isn't it? It was so beautiful. Yeah. So nice. What's one video that you posted on YouTube that maybe you were surprised got so much reach. Oh my gosh. I made a video called what to say to people who hate the Catholic church. And it was a moto appropriate. It was an on motorcycle look and it had, I think it's got like 80,000 views with every other motorcycle video has like just a couple thousand, you know? And this one like just kind of went viral for whatever reason.

And I was completely shocked because those videos are typically totally ad-libbed. I'm just riding the bike and whatever comes to my mind, I don't edit. I don't whatever. I just, it's kind of like my own therapy session. Yep. And I had been encountering so many people.

Not appropriate. I'm looking at it now. Oh cool. I had encountered so many people who just hate the church so much. I seem to attract a lot of that on YouTube. And I just wanted to talk about how do we deal with that? You know, what I say to people. You know, the best things to do, you know. That's a really cool camera. That's just a GoPro.

Yeah, it's it's nice. There's something kind of soothing about watching this. I think so. I bike cruising along. Yeah. Yeah, that's neat, dude. So every check out motor appropriate if you want to. But it's wild, isn't it?

Like on YouTube, you put something up, you think will do well and maybe it doesn't. And you put something up as an afterthought and it blows up and you have no idea why or how. I have the former happen a lot where I think okay this is going to be good this is whatever and then it's like nothing. So it's so funny Matt because when my first channel first started the only reason why it started was because somebody sent me a video file of a talk I gave that I didn't have any intention on doing anything with. I didn't know anything about YouTube. The description to the talk and the title, like I let YouTube, it's still on my conversion story.

Like, I didn't pick the thumbnail, I didn't make a thumbnail. It's just whatever YouTube put up there and it's a ridiculous picture of me like, and it literally said, the description said, Protestant becomes Catholic. I thought, okay, that's what it is. But you know, I do think there is, we have to avoid being too clever on YouTube. I think sometimes just a simple thumbnail with no text, no fancy things, just you looking at the camera

and a title that says what the video is, is exactly what people are looking for. You know, they don't have to figure out what this thing is. They need to know immediately what it is. I remember confusing keep scrolling. Yeah. And it's the same thing with like intros. I remember like whenever he was all like watching Peter McKinnon videos all the time. Do you know who he is? He's a, he's like a, that's so funny that you don't know who Peter McKinnon is. He's like the most influential YouTuber in the world. Like in terms of how to make YouTube videos. It's so hilarious that you don't know who he is because you have like this amazing YouTube

channel. Peter McKinnon. Yep. He's not Catholic or anything. I can't do before you look at him. I cannot do anything Peter McKinnon does. I'm not talented enough. I just want you to know that. Will you look to me and think that maybe you could start doing this, I cannot. Like you see all these like technically amazing intros and everything, like you think to yourself, okay, I have to do this. And I, it was funny, I was talking to my wife yesterday about this. When I started my first podcast, Catholic Feedback, I made this ridiculous intro. Like I, it's, I'm kind of, I'm a music guy, so I like recorded drums, guitar. I made like this heavy metal

song from scratch and it was like super cheesy. It was like, all right everybody, welcome to... And I literally said, so in the words of Jesus Christ and Dewey Finn, upon this rock, let's rock. And Dewey Finn's from School of Rock, you know. It was so cheesy. And I put all this work into it and then I played it for my ministry team and they're like, yeah, that's really bad. And they're like, we don't want you to use that. And I was like, crushed.

I'm like, but you don't know, this is so cool. So, you know, we went with a little bit more of a normal one and it's much better. But I'm always feeling the tension between doing things that I think are cool versus what people want to see. And there's always that weird tension. Yeah. Yeah. And it's always a moving target because sometimes trends come and go and you think you've locked it down and then something changes and then you might

need to adapt. Right. But for us, like we would have this cool intro, even on our clips. You may remember we'd have pints with Aquinas and the logo would kind of. Yeah, we got rid of that because when people click, we want their attention immediately. Also, when they kind of on the YouTube app and it starts playing, we want them to be gripped right away. So we have no fancy intros. And there's a reason for that.

It's not because we couldn't pay for it, but we just get right into it. Well, that was the trend a few years ago was, I mean, and you could like download the templates and make these cool, and everybody had like a three minute intro. And then finally, like somebody had the bright idea of saying, okay, we're sick of that. Yeah.

So now it's like- We don't wanna wait around for three minutes. Don't have an intro. So I have a very small intro on some of my videos. Some of them I don't. The Rosary Crew has one that's just sort of become our little, it's almost like a dog whistle. The music plays, the thing goes, and people tell me their dogs come into the room when it's time to pray the rosary when they hear the song.

But I don't know, like those trends are, you have to be aware of them, but not in love with them. Yeah. Even Joe Rogan, you'll notice if you listen to his audio podcast, he'll do an intro maybe about his, the dates, his Joe Rogan, you'll notice if you listen to his audio podcast, he'll do an intro maybe about his, the dates, his traveling and advertisements, right? But on the video was never like that. Even back when he was on YouTube, it was immediately into the conversation with no, no lead in, no, no intro. Yeah. I, I feel like as a consumer, that's what I am too. I'm like, just get to the point. Like my biggest pet peeve on YouTube is when is when someone

Just doesn't get to the point. It's like eight minutes, and you haven't told me what you're gonna. Tell me. I'm already gone Yeah, you know so I like what are some right? You've learned then and I know you say you're new to it and all that but I'm you've got a successful YouTube channel What have you learned well I've first of all I've learned that you know, this is goes without saying you can't please everybody You have no control over what YouTube is gonna do with your video So there's no sweet sauce to making something go viral you you have no control over that you have to do YouTube So I'll give you a philosophical thing I've learned and then like a practical thing I've learned the

Philosophical thing I've learned is that you have to make content that you love to make Yeah, that you'd make it whether I don't want to say nobody was watching, but if it was like you and 20 of your friends, you'd still want to do it. Because then you'll be able to keep going. If you get too frustrated when it doesn't take off, if it's all about the numbers, you won't persevere. The practical thing I've learned is that you've got to be very direct in what you're gonna say. You can't beat around the bush.

You have to get right to the point. You know, don't bore us, get to the chorus. You know? Nice. Less talk, more rock kind of thing. You know, like let's just get right into what we're gonna say. And whatever you put in your thumbnail or your title,

that's what you have to do. Like people have very low tolerance these days for click baity things that don't deliver. Dave Rubin's been doing a lot of that Thursday. So developing for this now, what's that? It's called promising and deliverance and delivering. So, so it's like, it's an actual measurable thing. If you like, look into, I spend a lot of time

looking into how YouTube works and what works for analytical reasons. But basically what you're doing with a thumbnail and a title is you're making a promise to the audience and what you're doing in a video is delivering. And so the hook in the video is the hook in the video is immediately delivering and then then you skip back to the beginning and you build up to the full delivering Yeah, so but aren't they worried that people won't watch to the end because I've always heard that too and like YouTube Oh, yeah So you have to promise with the thumbnail and then you also have to immediately deliver on some of the promise But not all of it, right? You got to keep them in case. You got to keep a little bit of it, yeah. So stay to the end and I'll

give you one extra tip on how to have a good YouTube channel. I don't notice people saying that anymore these days, but yeah. Yeah. I fully agree with you about like, would I be doing this if 20 people were watching? Is it worth doing for 20 people and no more to watch or isn't it? And if it isn't, yeah, I think you're right. Because I heard the statistic on people who start a YouTube channel or start a podcast and they never get past episode one. Yeah, I think you're right. Because I heard the statistic on people who start a YouTube channel or start a podcast, and they never get past episode one. Yeah, I think a lot of times you can also get so wrapped up in trying to make it perfect that it becomes this thing that you can't ever recreate.

So there's a lot of balance with YouTube to where it has to be good quality, but it also has to be not overly produced. Yeah, I think people are forgiving of a grainy mic in the way that they're no, a grainy camera in the way they're not forgiving with a bad microphone. Yeah, if your audio is terrible, no one's gonna listen to what you have to say. I mean, you look at like Father Mark Gorin, he just uses his iPad. Yeah. He doesn't do any editing or anything like that. And he's got

so many people that watch his YouTube channels, you know, and then you've got other people who do all this elaborate production, which is, you know, really cool. If they love it. But again, it's kind of like, never believe that all of that is going to equal YouTube success. Never. Because I've watched YouTube channels that are like, how to be Christian is 10,000 times better than anything I'm doing.

And yet I think it has less subscribers, you know? So I've always been like blown away by that. I'm like, why doesn't this guy have way more subscribers than I do? And then on the other hand, yeah, you'll see somebody, Dry Creek Wrangler School, that's my fella. This is dude from Tennessee. He just sits and smokes a cigar and gives advice. Big bearded, manly looking dude. And he's got six, 700,000. No editing, no intros.

I think what ultimately matters is people care about what you have to say, you know, or if they care about what you have to say. Yeah, people will be interested or they won't be and you can't trick them into being interested. 100%. Yeah. I was told that in the beginning, the main metric was how quickly you'd click on a thumbnail and whether you'd click on it. After that, of course, they inserted the idea of how, you know, video watch duration. ABD. So, was it good?

Average view duration. Average view duration? Average view duration. It's not enough to click on it. People have to want to stick around. So let me ask you a question. If you were going to make a different type of YouTube content, what would it be? That's a good question. What do you watch and you go,

man that's cool, I wish I was doing that. I don't watch a lot of YouTube videos. I watch like the Daily Wire guys, sometimes their clips. I'll, uh, but I don't really, I have no kind of genre of thing that I'm into. I like when people are into things, but I'm not really into it. Um, I don't know. I think I might do just, just kind of more solo chatting, maybe about the scriptures or things like that. That might interest me, but yeah, I don't know.

That's not a good answer, is it? If it's the right one, it is. I don't know. Yeah. What about you? I love, I don't know. I would love to do more motorcycle content. Yeah. You know, if I could figure out, because the way I think about it is I've always found a way in my life to connect the thing I like to do that's not related to my faith to my faith

Yeah, so like music for a while was you know a huge part of my life? So I did a lot of things with that you know And I've just been able to do that with some things. I liked your setup, too I mean it really is important what a person's setup. It's gonna tell you something about the person Maybe it doesn't have to but it helps helps when it does. And so for you having those Marshall amplifiers and those guitars, like all right, he's into rock and roll. Yeah, it's so funny because I just took all that stuff down. Did you? Why?

Well, I took the guitars down. I don't really know why. I think I was just bored. I get bored a lot of times with what I'm doing, so sometimes I'll get this wild idea. I'm just, I just gotta gotta redo everything and then whatever I do ends up looking exactly like what I just did because it's like different it is yeah no no no I used to have like all these like posters of different bands and stuff behind me because my my YouTube area in my house is like my music room so I had all of these like posters of these different bands and then I started getting like people would like give me a hard time about that yeah they're like, what's that? Is that Catholic?

This and that. So I just like, all right, you know what? I don't feel like this is why we can't have nice things. A lot of that. So I don't know. I just, I'm always trying to figure out how to do, how to do better with whatever. But I've gotten past the point of going, oh, well, the answer is a different camera or a different light. I've got all that stuff that I need. I just need to, I need to be faithful with what God's called me to do and do that the

best I can and then leave it in his hands. And I think that's really a lesson for all of us. I also know that this YouTube channel could be far more successful if I made it such and hired enough people such that we could do this every night. Like every night at 7 p.m., a couple hours, I'll fly people such that we could do this every night, like every night, 7 p.m., couple hours or fly people in. I could do that. I do not want to do that. So I try to do these once a week. They come out, you know.

Well, you've got kids at home. You've got to wipe. You got to, you know, like, yeah, that's right. But I mean, you know, like if you're hungry enough, you figure it out. You could be like, well, I'm with the kids all day. And then I come in at 7 p.m. And then I record. Like there's probably a way I could do it. It's not just for a lack of time.

It's from a lack of desire. And I think that's also okay, is what I'm trying to say. Oh, it's 100% okay. Yeah. I think that's, and that's the great thing about YouTube, is everybody gets to do whatever they want. Sometimes I'll have people that will reach out to me and tell me what I should do on my YouTube channel.

I'm sure that never happens to you, Matt. But yeah. But I'll have people that will say, hey, well, you what I should do on my YouTube channel. I'm sure that never happens to you Matt, but yeah, but I'll have people that will say, hey well you need to be doing this kind of rosary, you need to pray the prayer this way, you need to do this, you need to do that. I mean it's... I think I prayed the rosary once on my YouTube channel and got like 2,000 criticisms. I'm like you know what? Well I... most of the people that have hung around with me for a long time, they just you know, I mean you know how it is like you tend to... the people that stick with you are the people that have hung around with me for a long time, they just, you know, I mean, you know how it is. Like, you tend to, the people that stick with you are the people that like what you do.

But when you're first starting, you bring in everybody that's sort of like, hey, what's that? Oh, he doesn't do it that way. And I just was like with people, look, there's a million different ways you can pray the rosary. I'm not going to pray 87 other prayers in between the decades. We're gonna do a very simple thing I'm gonna share some meditations a little bit That's how I do it and you're welcome to participate if you don't want to you don't have to and it's amazing how many people

Be like but you do this You don't have to watch you don't to be a part of it You can choose that's the beautiful thing about YouTube and if really care that much, you can start your own YouTube channel and do it exactly the way that you want to do it. And we'll see how that works out for you. Everyone will be happy. Maybe it'll be maybe it'll be 10 times better than this one. Who knows? Yeah. Well, to your point about not being able to please everybody, an analogy that came to my mind is when you try to please everybody, you become as interesting as hotel

art or dentist art. So you were in a hotel, right? And they've got those big posters that advertise their hotel. And the whole point of that is to advertise as broadly as possible. So everybody who can read English is captivated, but it's so boring. That's why contractors paint houses beige and white. Okay. Because it's the least offensive thing. Nobody likes it, but it's the least offensive thing. And I think for some people, that's their bar, is how can I not offend someone? Right, so the point is you'll drive yourself crazy

if you keep trying to sand down parts of your personality that frustrate people. Yeah, and that's a learning curve for new YouTubers. They're not aware of that. They get in and they're overwhelmed by the criticism. I haven't figured that out yet, Matt. I've wrestled with that a lot. It's funny, on some of my other more apologetics videos,

because I do make some of those too, people will say things to me like, why are you so angry? Why is this guy so aggravated? Why is he angry? Why is he yelling? I mean, I kind of talk a lot anyway, but I

realize that that's just how I am. You know, I'm very rarely angry, but sometimes when I make these videos, I'm responding to all of the comments, because I do like a daily Gospel reflection on Instagram and do a YouTube short every day. So I'll make like a one-minute video in the morning on what the gospel reflection is and that has drawn a lot of people in like on Instagram especially and a lot of people are just like You know this guy's an idiot. He's a heretic. He doesn't know this you know and so sometimes I will like That will become material that I'll make a video about and then I end up arguing with people that aren't really there So sometimes I go okay. I need to dial that back a little bit for this but good for

you I mean it's it's it's humble right to realize your shortcomings are what you need to be aware of and that's really good I mean what's nice about YouTube is is always the hide user from channel button which I use infrequently but absolutely use if someone's revealing themselves and just spewing poison like okay you don't have to be here anymore. Bye That's fun. Yeah. Yeah, you don't go into the comments Blocked section very much. Do you know? Okay. Yeah, you would use it much more if you check that often

As I do on the daily. No, it's it's brutal out there man. I had a guy one time when I first started who? He commented on a video I was making and he wanted me to give him the phone numbers of every church that I ever worked at because he thought that I was a phony and a fraud. He didn't believe you were a youth buster. So he was like, I need to talk to these people and to explain to them what a loser you are or whatever.

And I was like, these, you know, and to, to, uh, explain to them what a, you know, what a loser you are or whatever. And I was like, these are my friends. I'm not giving you their number. That's, you know, my wife struggles with a bunch of different chronic illnesses and we've had her on the show talking about that. And there were, there was actually one person who just said she's a phony. Oh, like, yeah, that would be true. Instant ban. I will ban people. I banned, I have like different rules depending on what kind of mood I'm in, but the only time I really ban people is I don't like profanity on my channel and people start doing personal attacks against other commenters. That's when they're gone.

Like I don't care if you think I'm an idiot, but if you put yourself on YouTube you just have to expect people are gonna think that. So that's understandable. But if somebody else is commenting and someone is saying negative things toward them or hurtful things towards one of my viewers or commenters, I just, you're done. Or the other one that I'll typically get tired of is the people that just do the cut and paste comments

that are like 9,000 words long and they're not interacting with the video, they just cut and paste, cut and paste, cut and paste, and it's like every video they do that on, like, okay, I don't even they're not interacting with the video they just cut and paste cut and paste cut and paste and it's Like every video they do that on like, okay, I don't care you're done I'm sure you never deal with that either the worst the worst one Far worse than all of these is the I'm so blessed. I made two hundred thousand dollars and I And then what they do all say the exact thing other accounts that they then all comment

to the boss. I did the same thing and have you had people impersonating you? Yeah, we had one that happened. That was terrifying. Now I'm just now I think people are smart enough. They see it enough on YouTube. They know I've had that where it's you know, on Instagram, YouTube, all that stuff where people are commenting messaging me going, Hey, is that you? I'm like, no, I will never ask you for money. I had someone hack into my Instagram account. Are you kidding me? This is about three years ago, locked me out of it and started posting pictures of Saddam Hussein.

That's awesome. That's actually a great troll. But immediately, I was like, I'm pretty sure this isn't mad, right? But. You should have called him and been like, you want to keep posting pictures, please give me my account back. Oh my goodness. That was wild. Cause I never thought I'd get that back, but I thought, Oh, praise God. What's the, what are you going to do? That happens occasionally. I'm, I'm always terrified of that happening, but you know, a friend of mine who has a pretty,

pretty successful Instagram prayer channel, she said, you know, I've just given this channel over to the Lord. And if that's God's will, if that happens, then that's okay. Yeah. As you wrap up, tell us about your first book. Yeah. No, I didn't realize that was self-published. The book covers fantastic.

Tevin Shah, dude. Yeah. Well, there you go. Yeah, both of them, both of them. So yeah, my first book, both of my books, I just put out myself on Amazon. Good for you. I didn't have any, I mean, nobody.

Did you have them edited at least? Yeah, yeah. So I went through the process to make sure they were edited and whatever. People don't need publishers today. They just don't. I don't. Well, I, you know, if there's some publisher out there that wants to show up and, and pay me a bunch of money to publish my books, give me a call. But you don't need that in order to do something. Right. Um,

what and your website is what down to earth ministry.org down the number two earth ministry.org. Okay. Um, so the conference guide to Roman Catholicism, your first year in the church, that's the first book. And then the second one's called unpackpacking the Mysteries of the Rosary, and that came. And they're both on Amazon. They're on my website too.

So, I mean, Stewardship is selling them now on their site as well, but – Yeah, they look great. Yeah. But yeah, I'm very proud of them, especially the second one. The first one, I hear more from people about that because it's about people coming into the church, and I get messages weekly from people saying, this book has really been a help to me. There are priests that are using it in their RCA programs now, which blows my mind. So I'm just so blessed that this was something that would be helpful to people.

You can tell it's an inspiration because it's such a great idea. As you say, there's books about how to become Catholic, but there's no like, okay, you just became Catholic. Here's what you should know. Like, don't pray every devotion. Calm down. That's a chapter. I got a chapter on it's called how to not have a holy war. It's about coming out as a Catholic. How do you do that? Right? How do you find a local church? Which devotions should you pray? You know, a walk through the mass, that's a little bit more in the context of a person who's a evangelical coming in going, why is this different? So it's just, and it's kind of my story woven into that.

It's not really just, it's not like a book about my story, but I weave in examples from that about, you know, why aren't Catholic churches more hospitable? Why don't we have greeter teams everywhere? You know, why when you walk into the masses, I feel like you just walked into a funeral. Well, there are reasons for all these things. So, um, and I weave in different things into that, but I hope it's helpful to people. That's really what I wrote for. You've got 292 reviews.

Oh really? I didn't even know that on Amazon. That's crushing it. Good for you. Well, thanks for coming on. It's been good. I mean, you were supposed to come on a while ago. Oh really? I didn't even know that. On Amazon. It's crushing it. Good for you. Well thanks for coming on. It's been good. I mean you were supposed to come on a while ago, remember? I was. I was. And then something happened. Well I was. Probably my fault, I'm sure. I don't think it was your fault. I was on a Rosary crew trip coming through Steubenville. I don't know how you guys even found out, but somebody emailed, Melanie emailed me and said, hey we heard you're coming to Steubenville, but the dates were, they didn't work with your schedule. I think you were traveling or something. So it didn't work out, but I'm just honored to be here. I really don't feel like I belong here I feel like you do the people that I see on this channel or so I love watching it and I love listening to you

So it's just it's just so Humble to be here and to get to hang out. So thank you guys for watching everyone support Matt on locals Matt right dot locals.com and soon KeithNester.locals.com. We're gonna talk about that. Thank you so much, Matt. Thanks everyone. That's awesome.