How Protestants and Catholics can Dialogue Fruitfully (w/ Keith Nester)

well hey everyone welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you're here today and we have a very special episode for you today because i am joined by the one and only keith nestor keith nester is the host of the keith nestor youtube channel the podcast catholic feedback and the author of the recent book a converts guide to roman catholicism he was previously in protestant ministry for over 20 years and is now a catholic and we are going to talk about that journey and what he's learned and why it happened today so keith thank you for being here i am so glad to have you austin thank you so much for uh inviting me i'm so glad to be here i love your channel i love your videos and i love your heart and i have enjoyed watching you um go through this experience it reminds me so much of what i went through so i'm so thankful that you invited me on well thanks yeah it's it's been a blast getting to know you and hearing your story and so i want to share some of that story with the audience today some of them might have seen it in your very popular conversion story video it's great i'll link that in this channel and everything else down below but so you were in protestant ministry for over 20 years and then you became catholic how and why did that happen well it's it is kind of a long story and i'll let you know if anybody wants to hear the semi full version just watched that video but the long and short of it was you know i grew up the son of a pastor i grew up in united methodist church but i've been in lots of different situations within you know evangelical protestant christianity and ultimately for me the thing that started my journey towards catholicism not unlike your story was i met a catholic who actually knew his faith and was on fire for the lord which according to my own understandings or misunderstandings that that just didn't quite line up you know i i thought that catholics didn't have a relationship with jesus didn't know their bibles i didn't know if they were even really saved i kind of thought it was cultish and a little bit weird and certainly nothing connected to the the gospel-centered ministry that i just knew and loved as a person brought up in uh protestantism or whatever and when i met this when i met this man it it began to challenge me with some of the things first of all i just began to learn about catholicism and then i was like oh okay well that's not what i thought it was and then i began to see how it was lived out in the lives of some catholics that really just that i i was drawn to it and as a matter of fact at one point in time i almost converted about 20 years ago but i chickened out you know i became convinced that that christ was was present in the eucharist through a lot of the things i was reading and different things i was studying but then like i was faced with this idea of hey this is my job i have three little kids i have a wife i have a wife who used to be catholic that i brought her out of the catholic church to come with me i i can't do this and i freaked out and then you know many many years later as um my own denomination that i was a part of which was the united methodist church was beginning to fracture even more as so many other protestant denominations have about around issues of of social issues and biblical issues i i was wrestling with the ramifications of what it meant to not have a centralized authority when it came to our faith because of course everybody wants to say what are you talking about we have the bible you know but i would get into these these conversations with with other pastor friends of mine about issues and we would come into this to the same with the same bible but to completely different conclusions and at some points in time they would say things to me like well we just don't agree with the bible on that and we look at it differently we interpret it differently and i remember having a conversation with a guy who was he was actually like the i think he's the president of a seminary and i was sitting with him at this meeting and we didn't know each other but i just heard him give a presentation about the crisis that the methodist church is in or whatever and i said to him i said i said well how are we what's the way out of this how are we supposed to find our way through this if we don't have any authority beyond our own interpretation or understanding of what it means to follow the bible like if i can say the bible means this and you can say the bible means that but at the end of the day it just boils down to our own personal opinion or interpretation how do we get through this and he looks at me and he just and he had no idea what i was going through but he just looks at me and he goes well it sucks to be protestant doesn't it and i just went oh man that was not the right thing for me to be said uh for him to say to me because i was like i was wrestling through those ramifications you know and eventually i had to come to that place where i i you know i had a lot of things that i didn't like about catholicism i had a lot of doctrines i struggled with and wrestled through and eventually a combination of things happened austin that took those those those um intellectual stumbling blocks and the issues surrounding my life right what am i going to do all of that and just sort of put me in this place where literally i felt jesus christ speak to me one night and it was a powerful experience i wouldn't say it's a mystical experience but it's it's it's like a lot of people say when they say god spoke to my heart you know i had i had a very real experience of that where i was on my knees praying before a a at a catholic church getting ready to hear a catholic talk from a catholic apologist and feeling led into this and recognizing that i needed that that authority you know and i and and i i was coming face to face with with some real heavy issues with all this but i needed to know i needed a way you know i needed there to be a way for this to come to play like what am i going to do you know so i i prayed i said lord if you want me to become catholic i will do it but you've got to make a way and i'm looking i'm i'm you know maybe i was already lost at that point in time according to people who think catholics are lost because i was i was praying in front of a eu after the eucharist i got my blessing you know and i was i was praying in front of this crucifix and i really felt like the lord spoke to me and 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 at that moment austin i felt like it all just clicked it was like if i really understood that jesus christ was present in the eucharist then there couldn't be anything else more important than that no job no financial security no relationships no uh difficult conversations i would have to have no lack of security whatever if if christ is truly present there and he's calling me to to receive him in that then i had to put everything else aside and then and then of course this this uh this talk was given and the guy's name is steve ray who gave this talk about how the early christians were willing to go to their death before they would deny their faith you know and and that's just historical fact i mean the early christians were persecuted heavily and many were martyred over refusal to burn incense to the gods of you know the caesar and the roman gods and there i was sitting there thinking i believe this is true but i'm afraid because of a job and these catholics p these these christian people were were willing to die but i'm not willing to like not know what i'm gonna do and it just hit me like like a like a a freight train you know on top of that i had done some preaching in my church okay through some issues around mary which of course for a lot of a lot of us catholics marry is a big stumbling block and i know you've mentioned that before for yourself and i had to preach a sermon series called who gets the news and it was it was an advent series you know and it was all about when different people got the good news that jesus christ was coming so the first week i preached about zechariah you know luke chapter one where he and the angel gabriel appears to him and and tells him that he's gonna have a son you know john the baptist and zechariah's response of course was to go how can this be and then zechariah or gabriel gets mad at him he can't speak and he comes out of the temple and he's like you know well then the next week i preached about about when when the virgin mary received the good news and while i was while i was in the preparation for that sermon i'm sitting in my office i'm working on this sermon you know i just began to feel this unbelievable like emotional spiritual presence welling up within me that as i started to prepare this message i began and i was like in my office i began to cry and i'm like i just something just feels weird i'm in the middle of all this catholic kind of weird stuff learning about things exploring this again and i'm just i feel something when i get up to preach this sermon that sermon actually turned into basically like a catholic answers tim staples apologetics for mary is the new eve mary is the new ark of the covenant and i didn't know any of that like i didn't i in my research for that sermon i i came upon these ideas and these truths and i looked into what was going on with gabriel why would he approach this young woman and say hail full of grace so i looked into the greek you know okay cara told me now i looked into the why is it in some translations highly favored one why is it full of grace over here and what i what i discovered was it doesn't really matter the same thing is like it meant in both ways but this idea that this greeting given to this young woman by this angel who according to his own testimony stands at the right hand of god the father almighty why does he approach this this young woman who's a nobody right zechariah is the high priest he doesn't say anything to him why does he do that and i and i began to preach this and as i'm preaching this i'm feeling the holy spirit i'm feeling these he's in the same and my methodist congregation is hearing this sermon people are weeping and they're coming forward afterwards they're telling me they're like keith we have never heard anything like that before this is incredible they have no idea that any of it was like rooted in catholicism neither did i really um so all of that is going on i have this experience at this steve ray talk i go up to him afterwards my friend drags me up there and introduces me to steve and tells him who i am and what i'm you know i'm a protestant pastor feeling led to catholicism he hands me a copy of his book and says i know where you're living right now and i'm going to tell you this advice and this is probably the advice he'd give to you austin i don't know if it's good advice for you but it was for me he said you either need to become catholic right now or you need to turn around and run the other way and never look back because it's gonna it's gonna hound you it's gonna dog you and you're gonna never read the church fathers never pray the rosary never do any of that stuff again because you're gonna want you're gonna be you're gonna go crazy because god's gonna continue to pursue you in that so you either you need to do something and i was just like blown away so on the way home i told my friend who took me to this talk i said that's it i'm doing this i'm gonna become catholic i went home and i told my wife i said okay here's the deal i'm doing this and she said to me she said keith uh this is your deal i'm not really feeling this but you're my husband if you feel like this is what the lord's calling us to do i'm behind you 100 wow and so the next day i went into my my senior pastor's office and i told him and i had my meeting with the board and everything like that and i told him i said i need i need to resign i need to be i'm going to become a catholic and they they were just like whoa what it was crazy you know and that was in uh that was in 2017 in the spring of 2017 i actually came into the church in october of that same year and when i received the eucharist for the first time and then we passed the piece you know the the sign of the peace i felt a tap on my shoulder and i turned around and the guy standing there was steve ray he lives in michigan i live in iowa okay he just happened to be in my town i knew he was going to be in town that weekend but i didn't know he was going to be at that mass this church i mean it was we live in a good-sized town he happened to be at that parish that mass and any 10 minutes shorter he said welcome home brother you'll never look back um and it's been the ride of my life ever since i'm telling you it's been absolutely amazing um but you could see the full version if you watched that video i left a lot of stuff out but that's kind of the longest yeah well thank you so much keith for sharing that and if you guys enjoyed that you will love the long video i watched it and it was incredibly moving and i am not surprised that it has become so popular and i'm sure you can see that from what you've heard there it's a powerful story and keith i want to commend you on a couple of things so i'm a protestant and so we have disagreements and there's protestants on this channel who will look at that and they might disagree with some of it but what i think we can all seriously commend you for is the fact that you saw this thing and you wrestled with it and you did the intellectual work but then when you were convinced it was true you were willing to say i'm going to do this that that jesus he is the way i i don't need to wait for him to make a way and that's convicting that's powerful and just good on you for that that that was a blessing for me to get to hear well i wish i would have done that in probably like 2001 the first time it happened but i was afraid i mean i was young yeah and i was scared you know and my life kind of took some zip some zigs and zags after that and i look back and i think man if only i would have listened um but eventually you know maybe it's getting older whatever you get to a point in your life where you know you want the truth more than anything else and i think that has to be true for all of us whether we're catholics processes whatever we are because i i don't think that god only speaks to catholics and i think that there are obviously people in the protestantism who you know god is leading you into something that may be very difficult for you a situation or sacrificing something or or whatever it might be and to be to be obedient to christ in that particular situation in your life might be really difficult and it might cost you and it might be might be troubling but i want to encourage you you know jesus christ said that that whoever puts his hand to the plow and looks back is unfit for the kingdom of god you know like for service of the kingdom of god like there's this element of following christ that has to include moments like that where you just lay on the line and go because one of the biggest problems i think that we all face you know catholics protestants included or whatever is this this weird medium beige mindset of christianity that just says jesus christ came to enhance my life and just sort of fit into what i'm doing and he would never require anything of me that would hurt or that would change my my trajectory um so there's this sort of built-in mindset that it's all about me and what i discovered when i was learning about the church fathers and the early christians and of course and then seeing this in a lot of people was that that certainly wasn't the example of the apostles and it certainly wasn't the example of of of historic christianity i'll just go with that where throughout christian the history of the christian church there's been a lot of sacrifices made a lot of martyrs a lot of people who have had to lay things on the line so who are we as you know north american you know whatever people to think that it's going to be different for us i love that you bring that up keith and that really segues into the the next thing i want to say although before i say that i do also want to give credit to where credit is due the fact that your wife said this is going to disrupt our life but i am with you in this i mean that is incredibly impressive and i'm sure that meant the world to you so i haven't met her but good on her for that and it was tough for her i mean she we had a lot of weeks where she would just be crying the whole time in church because our kids didn't come with us you know our kids are older and our family was split up and and she didn't get it and she didn't like it and uh you know she's in a way different place now but she had to go on her own journey of discovery and and everything and now she's you know she's great with it but i i really respect her a lot for the fact that she was willing to make that sacrifice you know um for me because so many so many people aren't willing to do that yeah incredibly impressive and so that really that idea of sacrifice i want to talk about that a little because it brings up it's going to highlight a misconception that i had that i don't think i have any longer but you know i think in christianity in general we struggle with this right we have a very comfortable christianity today but if you would have asked me you know is catholicism difficult is that asking a lot of you i would have thought like you just go through the motions and like it's it's not really a serious thing i would have said you know the people who are on fire for their faith they're clearly evangelicals and catholics they got born into this thing but as i've met catholics like you and others i've realized that there's a lot to catholicism as i look into it there's a lot of sacrifices to really be a practicing catholic and so i want to get into kind of obviously you know you brought it up you had some misconceptions about catholicism i think many people do but now as someone who has experienced both you have experience as a protestant pastor and now as a catholic who's making great content and writing what would you say are some things that you could you wish you could tell your protestant self or maybe some protestant listeners about catholicism that they might not understand yeah uh great question um i would say first of all you can't lump all catholics together as though they all are one way or another way um so a lot of people say things like oh well you know you catholics you don't you don't know your bibles or insert whatever um not all catholics are the same so catholics are individuals so so some catholics are a certain way and some catholics are a different way so try not to generalize when it comes to the behavior of people and how people relate to their faith because you can't do that right and again i always say that goes both ways but specific specific misconceptions that i would let protestants know is that number one catholics absolutely believe that jesus christ is the only way to be saved okay there's there's not this idea that oh well you pray to mary to be saved or you pray to a saint to be saved or what like in catholicism it's it's it's so centered on jesus christ it'll make your head spin it's just that a lot of catholics they have other stuff going on too and sometimes protestants just get drawn into the other stuff like you know the intercession of the saints or or different different different ideas or whatever but at the center of everything is this belief in jesus christ and his redemptive work on the cross i mean that that's huge because i think a lot of protestants think that salvation isn't about jesus for catholics it's about works and it's about all this other stuff and i would say those things play into things a certain way but i would argue they do in every church um whether you say they do or not so number one the absolute centrality of jesus christ for salvation number two the catholic church is completely biblical okay and what i mean by that i know that people are losing their minds right now go what are you talking about but that's a misconception that i used to have is that the catholic church is unbiblical the catholic church just has a different understanding of the role of the bible than most protestants do so if it's it has to do with this idea of the authority of the church and the authority of the bible okay but you don't sacrifice one for the other they they go together they're they're linked together but that doesn't mean that the catholic church isn't biblical so i think that would be the second thing is that catholics don't read their bible or they don't care about the bible um and then i think the third thing is sort of related the first one is that catholics don't have a personal relationship with jesus christ like that's just you know nonsense to catholics or that we're not born again i mean i've heard people say things to me like oh well as catholics catholics have said to me oh well you know i have this friend and he's a born-again christian but i'm a catholic and i'm just like what are you talking about if you're if you've been baptized you're born again you know that's that's that's a that's a catholic thing so this whole idea of personal relationship with jesus christ not being a catholic thing i think that's a big misconception too so there's plenty more but i'll just go with those with those three big ones yeah and those are really helpful and i appreciate you bringing those up because something i'm passionate about here on this channel is bringing together christians of various backgrounds for good conversations on these things because there's so much that we actually do have agreement on but we don't realize it because of some of the misconceptions and then there are areas of disagreement but i think we can have a lot better conversations on the areas of disagreement if we push aside those things that are just caricatures and unhelpful and so i really appreciate you doing that along those same lines so i mean i think we both hit on those misconceptions but so you're you're catholic now but i imagine you still have a lot of people in your family or in your life or just in general that are protestants absolutely and you haven't i imagine just completely blocked them out of your life you're still dialoguing with protestants and i'm sure they show up on your youtube channel what would you say you have learned about those dialogues because that's something i'm really interested in so i'd just love to hear your wisdom on what do you think it takes to have good and healthy and productive dialogue between protestants and catholics well i think i think you hit it when you said that we got to get rid of the caricatures and the straw man arguments and i think you know just as there are a lot of protestants that have misconceptions about catholics there are a lot of misconceptions that catholics have about protestants too and i think i think they're just as wrong so for example i think a lot of protestants or a lot of catholics think that protestants um you know have no regard for history or the church fathers or whatever they might think oh well you protestants you just you just invent your own ideas without you know without any regard for what the church is taught well that's not always true i mean there are a lot of protestants that love church history and that love process i know that it was i think it was a john henry carl newman or whatever who said that to be see to be to to learn history is to be ceased to be protestant you know to be steeped in history to cease to be protestant and i and i think that that's that's a great quote but that we have to acknowledge that there are plenty of protestants that have that have a good understanding of church history okay yeah so we can't just think that as catholics all protestants don't don't understand church history okay um and there could be other misconceptions too i think i think another misconceptions that catholics have about protestants is that every single person who is a protestant chose to be a protestant because they hate the catholic church yeah that's a good point this hit me really strongly when i was on a trip and this was years ago i went on a trip to rome actually with a bunch of catholics um and this was probably 20 i don't know over you know about 20 maybe a little over 20 years ago i was nowhere near wanting to be a catholic okay i gotta go even before the first time yes yes that you were interested this was before well i was be i was the the the people that were that i was learning about catholicism with invited me to go on this trip with them okay so they said hey come with us we'll pay for your trip and i'm like okay i get a good i get a free trip to rome i'm sure you do the same thing you know oh yeah i was like i'm all about that you know so i went over there but i wasn't like okay i'm learning about the catholic faith because i want to i just kind of like i'll go there i'll put up with the catholic stuff but you know i was learning a lot and god used that trip for me but we went we were we were in rome and we we had just gone to saint peter's or something it was and it was incredible and we were sitting in this in this cafe and there was like 30 catholics and then me and this this woman looked at me with disgust um she's part of our group and she just says i don't know how you could have ever left she's like especially now after you've seen the beauty of the catholic church how could you have left you know how could you have made the decision to become protestant to leave you know and she knew i was a pastor like she knew that or i was a youth pastor of the time she knew that about me she knew i was raised process but her mindset was that somewhere along the line in my life i had seen the claims of the catholic church seeing the beauty of the catholic church and chose outright to reject it and embrace protestantism and she attacked me and i and i i looked at her and i said um i never left i was born this way you know i'm like i was i was born this way i i never left i was never there you know and of course she didn't care what i had to say she was just she just wanted to be wanted to you know talk down to me and attack me um and i thought about that and i'm like what in the world not and i've heard other catholics talk the same way that you know um or other protestants talk the same way that they get this vibe sometimes from catholics that like the catholics think that they made this decision to leave they don't i don't think catholics understand what it's like to grow up not understanding catholicism or not being a part of catholicism to grow up in protestantism and to have a faith in christ and to read your bible and to know your bible and then to be discus then to discover a catholicism later in life like i don't i don't think i don't think they understand that sometimes not of course not everybody but that's i think that's a misconception that all protestants at some point in time made the conscious decision to leave the cat catholic to become protestant which is just not true yeah i find that so helpful i'm really glad that you brought that up because i run into people a lot and some of them you know i don't want to paint bad intentions on them it might be a genuine question but i get this question fairly often not as often as i get people just commenting to be deep in history as to cease be protestant so i appreciate you bringing that up as well yeah i love the quote by the way yeah yeah and i i think if i was catholic i'd like it too um i just it's not going to convince protestants just by commenting on a youtube channel but anyway to the other point i get a lot of comments that are uh along the lines of why are you protesting or drop the protest yeah and to me now i'm not an expert on catholicism but i do try to understand catholic teachings and like when i read in the catechism the portion on the church it talks about we can't charge the descendants with the like we can't charge essentially me with schism being born 500 years after the reformation like schism's a real thing and i don't think anyone wants that in the church but i'm not luther and neither like we're not in the 16th century anymore where we are actively saying yet we grew up in this and we don't want it now i think people they they interact with the arguments and they say okay you know i don't agree with that and i think that's that's partially where i'm at right now waiting through all this it's like i see where it is but there's things i disagree with but i think it's so valuable that you point out that not everyone grew up in the catholic church and then ripped themselves apart from it and additionally that most people are where they are and this this might do a number on our competence and our ego because we like to think that we're just these purely rational creatures that evaluate every argument that's where we are but at at the very least this has to be in the answer of when you ask me why am i a protestant well i was born to protestant parents grew up in a protestant church like i think we have to recognize that and be humble about the way that shapes us but also allow that to shape the conversation these people i think it goes so far when we don't assume people have bad intentions when we're conversing with them that catholics are catholics because they're militantly anti-protestant and don't like the things we stand for or vice versa so thank you for pointing that out i think that's really helpful yeah i don't i don't think it's helpful to call someone and i don't think it's accurate to call somebody you know like you or like i was a skismatic you know because to be a schismatic means that you have to act actively do something and being born isn't actively doing something you know you might you might be and i don't mean to say this i don't mean this disrespectfully but you might be an unbeliever in the doctrines of catholicism on some of them anyway but that doesn't make you a skismatic it doesn't like it doesn't mean that you said hey i'm out of here you know that's different than just waking up and real and and going well this is where i am you know and i think that sometimes catholics can can still act like they're fighting with luther when they fight with a lutheran you know and it's different so yeah and i think when we recognize that it goes a really long way so i so appreciate your ability to just think critically about the catholic church and the press i mean obviously you're a catholic and from what i gather you love being catholic and i love watching your videos and your enthusiasm with it i i'm curious yeah absolutely so what are some of the ways that your life has changed as a result of being catholic i mean you you believe jesus was god before and you still do but i'm sure lots of things have changed yeah a lot of things have changed um i i didn't really have this like weird moment where i was like oh i used to think this was how you got saved and now i think that's how you get say it like i mean i guess some of the biggest changes i would say with regard to beliefs would probably have to do with baptism um okay because i was i was even up until the time i became catholic like i struggled with infant baptism i i didn't when i was a protestant like i didn't buy into it i didn't but i hadn't i hadn't really considered all the arguments behind it i had just been trained in the mindset that no baptism is something you do when you make a decision you want to follow christ and for whatever and when i began to see the the picture of catholicism with regard to baptism you know i had to i had to change my thinking on that um now i don't have little kids so it's not a practical practical matter but i didn't have like this big oh well i used to believe that you got saved by doing this and now i think you get saved by doing this because i don't think it's really that different now i know people are going to freak out yes it is um but i'm a very practical person so to me when someone wants to argue with me about well you're not saved by by faith alone you're you know or you are saved by faith alone we i get in a lot of discussions with that that are probably very frustrating for people that want to talk to me about it because the minute they say you have to do something i go well there you just blew up your own argument um but where my life is different was more about like how i worship and that has completely changed i i went from being like the the contemporary worship guy that wanted no rules no structure to be completely you know free to do whatever the holy spirit led you to do or whatever you thought was cool or whatever you thought was gonna be awesome um and relevant and would appeal to bring people into the church i went from that to being a guy who goes to the latin mass you know and and i can say this with 100 integrity i have never felt a more deep sense of worship than i do now wow and that's been a powerful thing for me to like come to terms with because i never would have thought that would be possible for me i thought that going to church was gonna be something that i was just gonna have to like endure as a catholic you know because i'm like all right i'm gonna go to mass i really love sermons i love deep teaching i love practical teaching i love worship music i love all that kind of stuff all the stuff that's probably awesome at your church like i love all that stuff and i thought you know when i go to catholic church and sometimes the priest is gives a great homily and sometimes he doesn't and sometimes the singing would be awesome and sometimes well i don't know that i ever saw it be awesome but sometimes it would be really really bad and sometimes i just be like oh man well when i discovered the latin mass and gregorian chant and this worship like it just completely overwhelmed me and i feel like i've tapped into something you know that has been incredible and i feel like that a lot like i guess i feel like when it comes to my catholic faith and you could say this about worship you could say this about especially about about the marian stuff you know i call it in my book i call it the merry stuff i have a chapter called the mary stuff um i and i use this illustration in the book i feel like i went from a guy who drank like you know um the cheapest wine you could find to a guy who now just was served the best wine ever created and and i'm not a wine snob but i i couldn't tell you a 500 bottle of wine but i could tell you probably a three dollar bottle of wine you know yeah but i feel like you know i remember the first time i ever drank like really really good wine and i was like oh wow this is something different okay i feel like that's what i'm experiencing now as a catholic you know i had the substance of a lot of it as a protestant but now that i've stepped into it i'm experiencing the sacraments i'm experiencing the liturgy i'm experiencing the relationship with with the blessed mother and the saints and all the stuff that used to freak me out now that i've i've embraced it and experiencing it i feel like i'm i'm drinking the finest wine ever so the way i worship is completely different the interaction that i have with with with the saints and with our blessed mother's different you know i i pray a rosary every day i lead a rosary group live stream every single day um yeah and that's just blown me away my prayer life has been completely turned upside down completely and my relationship of course with the sacraments my personal holiness and i don't say this out of pride you know i'm more aware now than i ever was of my sin and how destructive it is because of course in in catholicism you know we joke about it we have that catholic guilt but and and that can be a problem sometimes but really what what i've experienced in the sacrament of reconciliation or confession has been the most freeing thing that i could ever imagine because now when i'm in situations where i'm tempted to sin in different ways it's no longer just this personal thing that that i have to think about in my heart and go well i'll just pray later and jesus will forgive me like i have to know that if i walk into that sin i'm gonna be i i have to like actually literally confess that to a priest and say yeah this is what i did and i'll tell you that's kept me out of some stuff you know and it's it's helped me to grow in a knowledge you know people say things like oh well catholics they don't they just have confession that means that they can just do whatever they want go to confession and they don't take their sins seriously like i found to be the opposite that because i recognize the relationship between you know my sin and and my relationship with christ and the church it's made me take it more seriously but also what i've received in that sacrament has been so freeing and joyful people used to say to me why would you want to confess your sins to a priest and my response has been why wouldn't you if you believed if you believed what the bible says about confession if you believe that jesus christ literally gave his authority to forgive sins to his apostles and that they pass that authority down to their successors and that your priest is in line with that by the laying on of hands from his bishop who is part of that succession and if you believe that that that the promise of christ that whosoever sins you forgive are forgiven then why wouldn't you want that why wouldn't you want that because you know i i've wrestled with some stuff in my life where i've had to go okay i think i've really been forgiven because i asked jesus to forgive me but then later in life you go well are you really forgiven you know the devil can attack us and be like no you're really not you're really not forgiven and throw your sin back in your face you know whenever the devil throws my sin back in my face austin now you know what i say to him i say get out of my face i have been i have been absolved of my sin literally by jesus christ through his ambassador like it's not that priest who does it it's christ through him right so you got nothing devil get behind me you know so that's i don't know that's just some examples but it's it's been it's been incredible i go to church now as often as i can man you know and i don't work there i'm just a guy you know but i love it whereas thank you yeah as a protestant it's like okay we do our thing but i would never go to church like during the week if i didn't have to you know um except for maybe like a wednesday night bible study or something but like if i can get to daily mass i love it so a lot of that thank you stuff yeah for sharing all that i don't i don't mean to overwhelm you with all this stuff i no not at all i i love it it's it's great to hear and and i you know i said this already but i love your passion about this and just to make a plug for your channel you know i run across a lot of great catholic apologists who are really into the intellectual side and and you're a very smart guy but what i love about your channel is it's not just about that it's not just how do we argue people into catholicism because for me that seems i mean that's just like a front door but is that there's got to be more and so the work you do with praying the rosary and unpacking the mass it's it's really neat to see i think thank you so much i appreciate that lest people doing that yeah and so i i love that i know most of my viewers are catholic so i know they'll enjoy it but even if you're not catholic i'd encourage you to check it out because i think you'll enjoy it well i kind of yeah i kind of want to turn the corner here and we'll wrap up soon but i i want to flip that question just a little bit and i'm not sure if you're going to agree with this first statement but i hear it a lot and i'm sure you've heard it is that protestants make the best catholics have you heard that uh yeah i've heard that i've heard variations of it too okay so whether you buy that statement or not i think the audience will be familiar with at least that sentiment but what i and you started to hint at this you gave all these these ways that being catholic has has powerfully impacted you from confession to going to the mass and and all of these things but what ways do you think that your protestant upbringing has helped you are are there things that is there a foundation that laid that is still continuing to influence you still as a catholic or like did you just have to chuck all that out oh absolutely i did not have to chuck all that out and absolutely there are things about about my protestant upbringing that have helped me as a catholic um and other people have talked about this but i would say first of all the the the love of scripture you know i mean when you're a protestant that's all you got is you know the bible so it's like you dig into it you want to learn more about it um also like the love of good of good preaching you know i i feel like i feel like that tends to be more of an emphasis in protestant churches although i have heard some awesome catholic sermons and i've heard some crappy protestant sermons too we all have but like the the love of just exposing god's word that that's something i brought with me into my catholic faith um and then another thing that's a little bit different a different angle of it but it's just the understanding of how important it is to reach out to to other people because i think sometimes catholics because of the ma because of the way the mass is functions and what it is there can be less of an emphasis on evangelism and on trying to relate to people who don't get it and i know you've experienced this too but like when i was going to mass i didn't know what the heck was going on and yeah you know when i showed up at the door there was nobody there to say hey um are you new here do you need this or do you do that like there's just there's a very little there's almost like there's low expectation in in catholicism that new people are going to come in that don't know what's going on you know and you almost if you're new to the catholic faith you have to fight to like get into it and i got an email the other day from from a person who said to me keith i've decided i want to convert and i've called the church and nobody will call me back you know i can't get a response and i'll tell you this when i was a pastor if somebody would have called the church and said hey i want to become part of your church i would have not only called them back immediately i would have probably gone to their house taken them to taking them to coffee sat down with them and and found out everything i could about them and we would have walked them through it i would have introduced them to somebody i would have helped them every step of the way that i could through that experience because you know that was just part of our mindset and i think that that mindset of evangelism hospitality is something i brought with me and of course i'm not saying that no catholics have that mindset but i think predominantly most most catholic churches aren't set up from the standpoint of how are we open to newcomers that are coming in and how are we hospitable and how are we making it easy for people to come be a part of this and that's something i'm working on that and i'm trying and i and every priest i talk to about it agrees with me and says yeah that's a problem we have to do better with that i don't think there's like some doctrinal thing that goes against that i think it's just right you know i think it's just how the nature of how things are um so i i feel like evangelism is another is another piece of that too yeah those are those are great points and like you mentioned i i've experienced those things myself i feel like you know and protestant churches are at least in secret sensitive churches like i grew up in and it sounds like you have experience and like we want to the rungs go all the way down to the floor like we want to help the like we'll get you in like the new members class and we'll get you this and we'll connect you in a serving group and all this and we'll have someone sit with you and it's really i mean and some catholics might critique it the way it comes across as a business if you will but like it's a it's a well-oiled machine and at some churches they're all different but i think it's it's definitely an emphasis and i love that you bring up that there's no doctrine of the catholic church that keeps them from doing this and so even as you know a non-catholic i have an in like i want the catholic church to to be all it can be with that area like it i think there the catholic church is reaching out to people and i i'd hate for someone to call a church and you know be interested in the the message of the gospel and to not hear back and so this isn't a condemnation of all catholic churches i was talking with you earlier i've met some great catholics who have helped me just feel comfortable out of mass and all of that but i love that you highlight that there's things that have come from your protestant background that are helping you as a catholic and that's one of the reasons that i'm so passionate about having conversations like this when i really think we are better together not that we're just trying to form some hybrid third other thing and that we're just doing that not at all but i think i think we can learn when we engage with people who are different than us and there's you know even even if we set doctrine aside if we just look at church service which i know setting doctrine aside if any of my moody friends could hear me or i'm a theology major that would probably get me kicked out but like just in practice there's things we can learn from each other and so i appreciate you being willing to point some of those things out and i think as a protestant i know there's things i've learned from catholics from you and others and from mass like you talked about confession i mean we we don't have that structure but i know some people might say i'm not gonna go confess to a priest but you can take that concept and i'm not saying like that this is the same or as good for catholics but like i've had those experiences with like an accountability partner when you know that someone's going to be checking in on you and they're going to be asking like there's there's principles you can take there um even as as you're sorting all these things out just because something is catholic seeming doesn't mean as a protestant you can't learn from it and vice versa thank you so much for that yeah i really appreciate that so you know as we close out here and thank you so much for all that you've shared from your story to just the things you've learned and the way it's impacted your life and all of this stuff what do you see as the future of these conversations i know that you are passionate that the catholic church is the fullness of the church and the truth and and i respect that and we have our disagreements on that but so on one level i'm sure the answer is well i'd just love for protestants to become catholic and i get that i respect that but like where do we where do we go from here because i i know there's a lot of people that watch my videos that are considering becoming catholic or aren't but no matter where they are in that that's not going to happen overnight despite the hopes of some people in comment sections so how can we have these commerce like how do we work together in the midst of our disagreement but learning from one another well i'll tell you how how it worked out for me and i think this is a good pattern you know when i first began that relationship i told you about with my friend who was catholic we we existed to try to convert each other okay so it was just always fight fight fight argue argue argue here's this book here's this article here's this thing there's that thing and while i think there's there's always an importance on presenting truth and combating falsehood what that did was it put up it caused me to put up walls in my heart to the things that were true that i didn't want to admit were true okay and when we finally stopped doing that we got to a point where we said look let's just let's just we can talk about our faith we can talk about what we're going through you be you live out your faith the best that you can i'll be me and live by my faith the best i can and we'll just walk together on this road of faith and we'll stop trying to argue with each other we can have conversations but we're not like you know gonna be aggressive about it that allowed my my walls to come down and then when i was able to see some of those things a little differently and more clearly i didn't have this fear of oh man now i have to eat crow and admit that i was wrong and all of this and so i guess what i'm saying is this where we go from here i think we have to be able to have real open honest conversations about what we're thinking what we're feeling what we believe but we also have to be willing we have to be willing to embrace whatever we determine to be true okay so if we come acro and understand that when we do that it's okay it's okay it's not it's not doesn't have to be this horrifying thing so we have to we have to let go of of the aggressiveness of the name calling of the you know the condemnations that well you're just this and you're just that and we also have to we have to acknowledge that this that conversion to anything is a complicated in-depth process it's not just to snap your fingers one thing happens and you convert there's way too many layers to think of it that way so we have to be willing to walk with each other through all those levels and ultimately be be available to each other so like i would say this to you austin i would say to you i want you to think of me as somebody that you can talk to if you have a question that and and that by asking that question it doesn't mean i'm going to beat you over the head with the catechism and say aha you know yeah twist your arm because that's not my job the holy spirit is going to do what the holy spirit is going to do in your faith and i have to and i have to let god be god and you have to let god be god too and consequently you have to feel like when when you talk to me like you don't have to walk on eggshells if you find something about catholicism that you that you think is offensive or you don't like and think oh i can't say that that'll offend keith we all have to we all have to let go of being personally offended when we have these conversations that's that's the biggest thing i think i'm trying to say so that we can just be real but that's so good first of all thank you for that offer truly that means so much to me and i think it's such a sign of your genuineness and it comes out in your videos and in conversation with you so honestly thank you for that and i love the point that you make i think you really hit the nail on the head that we need to set aside our pride and our ego in this and that step alone can help us just get so much further in these conversations so keith thank you so much for being here on the channel it's been an absolute pleasure and we filmed a video on keith's channel as well and i think you guys are really going to enjoy that but speaking of your channel keith one more time could you just tell people where they can find you sure so um my youtube channel is just keith nestor i also have a website down so the ministry that i've started is called down to earth and the website is down the number two earthministry.org so down to earthministry.org um and i also have this book that i wrote the conference guide to roman catholicism your first year in the church you can buy this on my website or you can get it on amazon.com and it's basically like my story of it's not like my conversion story but it's about what it's like to convert to catholicism in through the eyes of a protestant guy you know and um i talk about and it's there i'll tell you there's some stuff in here it's a real look at that it's not all like oh we'll just read one church document and you're fine it's there's the good and the bad and the ugly in here so um that's where you can find me and i also have a podcast called catholic feedback with keith nestor wonderful and you know i haven't read the book yet i would love to and it sounds to me that whether you're a protestant thinking about converting or you've recently converted or even if you're roman catholic and you want to understand protestants who are coming in it sounds like so many people could benefit from that book and i'm sure they're going to love it so keith thank you so much for being here and to all of you thank you for your time today i so appreciate it and a special shout out to my patreon subscribers and merch buyers for making this possible i appreciate you guys so much and we will see you next time but until then go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 19,350

Keywords: Keith Nester, Catholic Conversion, Evangelical to Catholics, Evangelicals and Catholics, Protestant conversions, Becoming Catholic, Ecumenical Dialogues, Ecumenical conversations, Down 2 Earth Ministries, Catholic Feedback, Protestants and Catholics, Gospel Simplicity, Austin Suggs, Disagreeing Civilly, Protestant vs Catholic, Protestant catholic debate, Is Catholicism True, Why be catholic

Id: Nom5G9jNqug

Length: 54min 0sec (3240 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 30 2020