Protestant Pastor Becomes On-Fire Catholic | Chris Stefanick Show

brothers and sisters thanks for being with us so excited this week to continue a conversation and we began with jeremy rivera about his journey to the catholic church from being an evangelical pastor thanks for being with us [Music] [Laughter] during the intro reel he was literally just criticizing my lackluster intro a little more energy sorry whoo hi guys and i'm really excited to have him back despite how lackluster my intro was i'm really excited thank you it's gonna take the entire show for my ego to recover from that really though man i got a lot of comments on our last show and i know you did too and i know a lot of people are watching to to hear the completion of the story you know because the uh well i really i have all these notes you can see my messy notes i have all these notes where i thought the whole first show would you know would cover the whole thing and talk about you know how did you go from evangelical pastor to devout catholic and you know i have literally question number one before we get into what brought you into the church what brought you to god and then that was it that was it man and i i dude i was a little worried that we maybe came off as a little too harsh on the catholic church which we're allowed to do because we're catholics but uh but we did bring up some serious um problems sure right in in the practice in practice not in the teaching right but in the translation of all that is catholic into the application of things yeah sure namely that we we tend to overlook the thing that unites all christians which is infinitely more important than what divides us absolutely you know so for my evangelical friends who are watching i love you don't take this i was like hey you guys all stinking we're better then we're a little better but um you know i'm kidding uh but really that but there's but there's truths of scripture like what unites is infinitely more important than what divides but what divides is actually important see some people would see that first part and say well what divides us is irrelevant right that's that's the same as saying our lord's words are irrelevant yeah right so the things that divide are important yeah i think augustine said in in the essentials that there'd be unity yeah in um the non-essentials let there be liberty and in all things charity right i think that's a really good you know kind of a way to decipher but even with those essentials there is some some some you know division and some sad division that still exists in the church for sure there is and it all thinks charity right as we as we deal with disagreements about this but uh so you know we left off the last show and if you hadn't seen it you got to go watch inform watchdogforum.org or on youtube on our channel and we're gonna podcastify this stuff soon and it was beautiful hearing your conversion of jesus and that core message of the gospel that sometimes as catholics is not the first thing on our lips right uh and should be should be um so let's dive deep into what got you from being a successful evangelical pastor i mean it's another layer of conversion to giving that up to being in the average catholic that you are today no you're i mean really you you've been a serious blessing in the church too so you've been able to continue the ministry but not in the same way right as being a pastor uh i want to invite you to interrupt our conversation anytime you could text your questions and we will take them this time all right we got so lost in the story last time i had questions flowing in that we ignored so texture questions two seven two zero six five zero zero one zero zero again the seven two oh six five 0 0 1 0 0. all right so how did your conversion yes and you'll have to make sure that i don't get so on tangents because because uh even though that's where oftentimes the spirit leads so that was that was my spirit but you know before we pick it up like with the chronology of what happened i think that um one thing i wanted to touch on is just how exciting i am to be alive and and that all of us have i think the calling to change frequently you know there's like that quote i shared with you from john henry newman that says to live is to change and to have lived perfectly is to have changed often and the problem with that is as people as humans we generally just don't like change mark twain said everybody hates change except for babies who need a new diaper you know what i mean like like we all hate change and and yet um we're all called to change and so i heard this great line someone said it said your life is god's gift to you and who you become is your gift back to god beautiful and so this is this whole idea of like god's gonna give you grace he's gonna give you all the stuff that you talked about the baby last time who didn't have to earn its body yeah but then had to do certain things to keep its body to keep his body alive and keep growing right cardinal cancer and so just in general i think as a person i'm very i've always been very much a seeker very open to change that started in high school with some metaphysical kind of more eastern you know philosophy i would say was really pursuing that which led to you know led me down that road but i was seeking just like the the magi were seeking right like and if you read scripture it talks about like a seek knock but if you read it in greek it's like ask and keep asking knock and keep knocking seek and keep seeking the word the word disciple in greek actually means a learner it's someone who's learning and keeps learning it's a lifelong learner you never arrive so i think sometimes i feel like we tend to we can kind of plateau and i think in my evangelical experience that had happened where the end of everything was people coming to christ we put our whole service together in a seeker-sensitive kind of environment to get to the point where you lay out the gospel and i did this thought thousands of times at the end of the service pray with me with everyone's eyes closed and if you want to receive jesus christ as your lord and savior open your eyes and look up and let me know we're praying together and i would just see people open their eyes i want to pray i want to pray i want to pray and then you lead them in this sinner's prayer to ask god for forgiveness to accept jesus christ into your heart right we've all heard that prayer oh yeah yeah and um and so but that was the end of the experience whereas in the catholic church i feel like that's where everything just gets started right right right and and there's i mean it's it's primary not only where it comes but primary in importance and that everything comes back to it yep uh but there's got to be in everything that's coming back to it right it doesn't just stop there that would be like uh on a wedding day saying we take our vows and we're good right you know there's a whole married life that does keep tying back to the vows i gotta keep remembering the vows and saying the things that led me to the values like i love you but there's more yeah like we have this phrase you know a lot of evangelicals god loves you just the way you are yeah right and then a catholic would come along and say but he loves you too much to leave you that way right right so welcome to like the school of virtue welcome to this life of not pursuing virtue but pursuing jesus because if you pursue virtue that leads to a lot of bad stuff yeah you know um virtue is the the fruit of faith not the generator of faith if it's just virtue alone divorce and a pharisee man yeah you can or you know you can do the right things and doubt all the eyes and cross you can become an older brother and the story of the prodigal son yeah be empty be empty you know right and so and so yeah so here was an emptiness i sensed an emptiness and then i also started to really struggle with with if we all have the same bible why are there so many denominations and so much division even within protestantism and these questions just came from your own heart and mind and prayer yeah against continuing to seek you know always being a seeker never really fully being satisfied yes you know um you can ask my wife who drives are crazy because i'm never you know i'm always going for more and bro you better not leave the catholic church i'm gonna come get you right and real quick questions came in any suggestions when praying for union for all christians i feel god's leading us to pray for a united church well that wasn't just her question jesus prayed for that in john 17 when he prayed for the unity of of all believers you know that we would be one he says that's just before he died yeah john cena so that's pretty important you know at the end of his life that he's praying for for oneness um which is what catholic means universal yeah but so you sense this this i i think it's a prodding and grace to move on which is uh honestly it sounds terrifying to me because you're successful as a pat you were really successful as a pastor and that's a job that when you have that job man you love that job right yeah no it was a good salary i bought a home i had a bmw i you know i just was in a comfortable comfortable place and i can understand why a lot of men who do feel the tug to go to the deeper end of the swimming pool if you will with families and the responsibility they they i can understand why they don't go that direction what helped you what helped you go to the deep end well it was it was people and i think i mentioned on the last call where we left off was i had bought a home and i was renting out a couple of bedrooms because i didn't want to live by myself and so i found these two guys that were young protestant guys who started running out rooms they knew each other they'd moved in from wisconsin and then within a short amount of time they were going through their own conversion of the catholic faith also seeking very sincerely and i did my best to try to prevent that from happening and said guys i grew up catholic and let me let me just tell you why not to keep going down that road but i started seeing why did you tell them not to go on the road was that i felt like it was my duty i felt like what were the reasons you gave them again my experience being they're going to give you religion and they're going to put the cart before the horse not relationship and not relationships it's not going to be this free gift of god in christ it's not going to be this you know love story this love affair it's going to be everything else you have to do and you're going to should all over yourself with shoulds and you're never going to be enough which is what we do to ourselves oftentimes as catholics wow and uh and so i did that and they were very humble but they said hey we've been going to the sunday night service at the cathedral downtown and we met a man named archbishop charles shapu i never heard him which by the way is pronounced like slap you slap you shape you people don't get better people always like like shampoo right okay go ahead and so they said we've been going to the sunday night mass and we and he we told him that you're the pastor at pathways which is only two blocks away from the church and we had a thriving church we had bought the temple i guess you're recruiting a lot of catholics if you were driven if you were convinced like that religion i mean look you have to have religion with the proclamation of the gospel right otherwise things all fall apart in the in the experience in the user experience right yeah but if you're convinced that religion was inherently opposed to the message of the gospel which is i think where a lot of evangelicals fall into a sad error uh that error would be like saying that my expressions of love for my wife in the in the material like a valentine's day ritual yeah is is antithetical to my love for her no no that's not how it works dude that's where you're coming from were you trying to convert catholics and save them frequently or just your buddies i would say half of our church was was made up that pathways was made up of former catholics wow 50 and that's usually the stat of all mega churches around the country 40 to 50 of the attendees were formerly catholic so something you know wasn't connecting oh yeah yeah and so um i think archbishop fulton sheen has a great quote where he says there are millions of people who hate what they think the catholic church is it's about perception right and he says like not even 100 that hate what it really is and so i had a lot of misperceptions and one of them was that it was a works oriented righteousness that you're saved by your works and you really nailed that last last time yeah but but what was going on inside of me the disfaction inside of me was in the way i had been trained in hawaii and in california mentored was it was very much a cult of personality the successful churches all tended to have this very charismatic speaker this head of the church that was the pastor and he sometimes did the music and the leadership and it all kind of revolved around his cult of personality and the danger with that is that when he falls in some sort of way which happens frequently the whole church falls it's like an upside down triangle you know he falls and the whole church collapses i think you're summing up someone texted a question is there a huge difference in prayer when it comes to becoming being a protestant or a catholic and i i think what you're hitting on right now sums up the difference yeah uh did you see the francis chan video where he talked about the eucharist yeah i did if you look up francis chan i really admire this guy he's an incredible he's the real deal man as a as a preacher as a prize as an evangelical preacher um but he said you know he's like i didn't know that for the first 1500 years of christianity the center of worship was an altar and it wasn't a pulpit right i mean that sums up the difference between the whole orientation the whole orientation of the entire experience of that faith of the worship experience for sure so so long story short so i had i had a lot of a lot of misperceptions about what catholics believed yeah and again again i had kind of been raised in the church very nominally yeah but scott and mark were persistent saying we really want you to just come to a sunday night service wow and meet the archbishop because when they first were like oh we met him and we told him all about you i'm like what did you tell him they're like we told them that you grew up catholic and now that you're the pastor at pathways and and uh i'm sure he knew half the thing and the senior the senior pastor of pathways was a guy named is a guy named ron johnson he leads a church here in denver still and ron had negotiated uh buying the temple event center right down there on 17th and penn i think so it's real close to the cathedral so we bought that building had a great deal on it and the church was growing and thriving and i told scott mark i can't go i i work sunday nights for the sunday night service that we have right at pathways but they didn't know that i had this discontent of like why are there so many churches why is there so much division why do we all have the same bible but we can't agree why is there a cult of personality driven leader you know type of church that yeah and so um so one night i said hey guys i got a night off you know i told him i would go with him on a sunday night and so i went and i endured the mass and i just sat in the back and i didn't kneel and i didn't genuflect and i didn't do anything i just watched and by the way i got you don't know what's going on it's right it's not the ev evangelization 101 experience right you know it that it's uh it's like watching a football game and i don't know what's going on you're not going to be the guy who's excited right i don't know what's a down you know you know right you're not going to be into the football game exactly so i went and then mass was over and as archbishop charles chappie would always do he would stand at the back of the church and just meet people and greet people on their way out it's legendary passport so so scott and mark are i'm pretty much flanked it might have just been scott and another person i don't remember but but they introduced me and scott was like this is my landlord this is my you know the pastor at pathways and archery should shout you if you don't know him i mean you can be kind of a bulldog and he kind of came at me i mean he was he was like is it true that you were you were baptized in the church and i said yes he goes is it true that you were confirmed by cardinal stafford and i'm like yeah light of the world and he goes well don't you know that you're a catholic and you're leading people out of the catholic church he was like it doesn't make any sense to me he's like you're pastoring and i said something really really smart yeah talky to him i said um i said i said well maybe you're not doing something right i remember saying something like that i go the sheep are going to go where they get fed and then he was like fair enough you know he was kind of like wow okay wow and so he invited me to his house because he's like i'd love to just hear what your issues are would you would you be willing to come out that's a real pastor without dropping a beat i said absolutely not nice to meet you really yeah i gotta go i shook his hand and i turned to go and this is one of these defining moments in my life where i can name maybe five or six and i felt his hand on my shoulder and i stopped and i turned as i turned my back to him to walk away and something in his whole demeanor had changed he had like taken his miter off and his staff and he'd hand it to the guy and he just brought himself down to my level and he said would you meet me at starbucks wow and i said something in me was just like i couldn't say no to that so i said yeah i'll meet you at starbucks that's awesome so he met me at starbucks that is awesome that week and we met for three hours on colorado boulevard and he and it was really powerful because he said jeremy he said he said i wanna i wanna if you're willing to go down this road he goes i just wanna lay out for you what the catholic church teaches and i wanna ask you for forgiveness of how we failed you in practice wow what a perfect response yep and i said that that's that's saying yeah we have a fullness of truth here the fullness of truth of which jesus revealed but it's not it's not ours it's jesus gave it to us we're standing under it we're failing there's some times where uh people would look at well you're claiming to have fullness of truth you think you're better than or holier than like no if someone only has the bible and is in baptism and is missing out on all the rest and they're really using that they're holier than someone who doesn't uh but so what what a beautiful posture to convey that truth to you yep uh i'm sure it just lowered your guard it did and it also helped me to understand to be able to separate what the church teaches from from how we have failed in practice over the years you know i was just noticing there was an apology that pope francis made in canada to the first nations and native americans up there for a lot of the abusive practices that happened you know that really happened and had real consequences for people so um we i think we need to ask for forgiveness more where we have failed in practice yeah but the beauty of the catholic faith and the deposit of faith the teaching itself which hasn't changed has been handed down to us so that led us on i really connected with him after the time at starbucks and felt comfortable he said would you come over next time and we'll we'll just start hashing stuff out that's incredible and so for five six months i met with him probably you know every couple two three weeks wow and we would just dive into what my objections were right we talked about mary we talked about authority we talked about contraception we talked about all the issues that protestants tend to have with with catholic faith most importantly salvation right i needed to hear that it was saved by grace which is a free gift it's unmerited favor you know salvation comes by grace through faith it's just a matter of what does faith mean that religion that religious practice doesn't mean you're earning the approval of your father you're living out the the free the gift of his grace and we have to cooperate with it though we have to cooperate with his grace it's not presumed yeah this is a great question came in what's one of the biggest fears for a protestant to convert to catholicism what are you afraid to let go of or is there something with the catholic faith you're afraid to go into what was the uh what was the the last obstacle the greatest fear that kept you from i think i think it was very practical for me it was like my livelihood yeah okay you know it was my job yeah and so i remember being in his residence and i don't remember what we read something in the catechism that just really really won me over and i i remember looking at him and i said what am i to do and he said he said he said number one he said you have to trust god and he said number two you have to quit your job as a pastor wow he said but i know a lot of people in denver and shortly after that he had a a dinner at his house for me and he made all of these heads of ministry come to the dinner i mean it made he invited them and i guess when they bishop invited you to something you know was there and tim gray was there and all these amazing men of god and leading catholic organizations and you know it was like a catered meal and he just said jeremy's gonna tell you his story and my hope is that when he's done you want you guys can take him to lunch or get to know him better and that he would go to work for you guys so he really helped me get a start and so curtis martin and i just really connected with campus ministry because that was where i had my conversion as i told last time and curtis said it's all about just sharing christ with with college students and then leading them not only to christ but into the fullness of truth so you found a ministry home in the catholic church and that was like focus was my the thing i wanted to do yeah okay so what what um what have you missed the most having left and then when i i also want to know what what is i don't know what what joy surprised you the most coming back in hmm that's a good question i think i think i miss um you know like a leadership platform yeah having a having a platform to you know and that's been a more of an internal conversion where i was more in front of the camera on stage before and i did that even in focus in the beginning yeah and it's been more of a a desire for me to go behind the camera and behind the scenes i have found a lot of joy in the self like not being known um building people's brands making videos no you have a cool what's your website again by the way called thelittlej.com thelittlej.com so you can come behind people and help tell their stories tell the story yeah marketing guru and all that stuff uh it's incredible um so yeah the missing that um and it is hard as a layman called to do ministry work which is a an anomaly in the history of the church and it's hard like sometimes in mass when you know you know there's a lot of people maybe visiting for easter or christmas man i know you're just like lord lord please like let this priest just to step away from the podium and just talk to them yeah and just welcome them look at them in the eye and they're so glad you're here you know just welcome them in and be conversational it's hard first you have to go to dinner right yeah so that's that's been tough what was the other part of that question though you said no oh no what was the joy that was a great joy and before you answer that i just want to read this comment because i echo it thank you for your deep love for our lord that you followed him back to the catholic church um i would think that even an evangelical watching right now would be touched by your conviction because um conversion's not a one and done thing right there is the the primary conversion just like there's a primary gospel but every follower of jesus knows that conversion keeps happening and i mean obviously this was uh again even if someone's watching not agreeing with the conclusions you made the heart that was driving you was jesus first and i just want to call it out and honor it that you just like with your first conversion to the lord once again find yourself saying okay man i take it all i don't know what's next and my biggest struggles were probably um the per the role or person of mary in the catholic faith that was one of my biggest fears yeah someone asked about what's your greatest fear and it really came out of a love for jesus wanting to be pure in heart and singular in my devotion to jesus christ and not into any other human entity which mary is human right yeah we revere mary but she's not divine i'll have made peace with that as a catholic unbeliever i can't tell you on this interview because i'll probably burst into tears oh buddy that's the gold that is the goal mary has been like and i just want to freak anybody out because i probably would have been freaked out if someone started talking about mary in that way but all i can say is that as some as a child who had kind of a broken relationship with my mom because she left my dad when i was seven and a broken relationship with women through high school and college really just not really realizing why i would need a woman besides for a sexual outlet wow god sent his mother to help bring a lot of healing into my life and if i could tell you a couple of stories i won't hear but but i literally did have some like supernatural experiences and you know being in a chapel by myself and feeling like i was doused with flowers and no one was in the chapel i thought some girl had walked in and weird things that happened like again again for all of the non-catholics out there it's it's i know it sounds crazy there's this next level of faith that like if you don't limit you just lose your mic sorry no something fall down no you're good if you don't limit god like he will you know it's kind of like the matrix when he says take this pill and i'll show you how deep the rabbit hole goes i took that pill and man did god start to show me different dimensions to my faith that just my evangelical experience it was just me and my bible yeah yeah and in my catholic experience i realized that every letter of scripture was written to the community to a church it's not me and god it's we and god yes it's a family of faith it's it's all of us and this gk chesterton was so uh so apt to say he said the catholic church here comes everyone which is just so true if you know us as catholics you've got you know you've got the whole gamut of people and uh and i love that so so you know so mary mary was a was a very so your big obstacle became your big surprise and joy absolutely as you came in my joy oh buddy i got really what you get because through through that through understanding her role as as uh you know jesus is hanging on the cross and and for all of you you know that like john and mary and mother mary were at the foot of the cross and one of jesus's last words or sayings is he gives his mother to us so he says woman behold your son and son behold your mother and in that sense i've come to understand that jesus was giving his mother to the church to all of us one last gift and it was kind of like a woman i could finally trust and and that for me was so healing to me a woman that i could fully trust and and so i've just had this you know you know i don't know if you call it a devotion or an encounter but i definitely have had this like she's over here and i can never quite you know she's always there and so um yeah i love how it drew from you too that respect for women yeah you know to have that that spiritual mom that our lord honored like that right it just reorients the soul it's like you know i i i'm friends with chiropractors whole practice about adjusting the first connection to the skull because he's convinced though everything else is correct you know and when you get that right relationship with women by honoring our lady it's like it just sends shock waves through how you relate and again you wish it was kind of this like one and done thing but that too has been a process you know that has really impacted my life in in some incredible ways for better and for worse you know of just having to go through hard things and um and so anyway so that that was a big big another great comment i said personally been impacted by jeremy's work how i have to say thank you to archbishop shapu so you're going to watch this shop you're going to i'm going to forward this to you uh say thank you shelby for pouring into jeremy amazing yeah i agree this is how this is how how conversions are made when people look at guys like archbishop chappie and think well you have a big pulpit you're a really important person well therefore the ministry is done and if it doesn't translate to making time for human beings over a cup of coffee humbling yourself getting down on someone's level hanging out talking we're just full of hot air man right you know this is this is where where the rubber hits the road it's like the 99 you know you leave the 99 to go after the one yeah and in in a real way i felt like that won and i know he's a busy guy and here he spent three hours at starbucks and i was busy too and i kind of came in again with the chip on my shoulder right but through five or six months of of learning the faith from him yeah jeremy i the journey back you know the lord's obviously not done using you in the church a lot of people who either were raised evangelical or went uh to the evangelical church and come back or enter the catholic church uh haven't been raised that way um they bring insights that most catholics don't have and that insight is sometimes translated to a dream that becomes a reality for the church some of the church needs um what's your dream for the church man you could snap your fingers and make something from what you learned as an evangelical make something change my dream for the church would be that we would have something because because again the source and summit of our faith is the eucharist right but that's for catholics that's for people who already kind of understand it right because we can't love what we don't know so hopefully we're learning what it is so that we can actually worship it properly worship god properly and receive it properly but but my greatest dream for the church would be to have like a midweek service yeah that is that is not and again the sounds i don't want it to sound like a bad thing it's it's it's a non-sacramental place to bring our non-believing or non-non-catholic friends because trying to bring someone to mass and help them to get it there is a bit of a stretch and so i wish that we had something with radical hospitality that was totally focused on on new people you know that haven't been to church in years or feel unloved or estranged from the church for whatever reason and we can welcome them in through something that's kind of like a step before mass does that make sense yes absolutely in the early church you didn't know what the eucharist was until after you're baptized they kicked you out before the liturgy of the eucharist every every time and then after your baptism they said okay to stay there's more well so for us to now treat that as as evangelization 101 is absolutely getting it wrong uh so i i love what you just said i love planting dreams out there because people sometimes think oh right there's someone watching in iowa right now who might start that because we talk so much about evangelization but i don't feel like it's fair to ask the church to be so evangelist if they don't have any place to bring people you know what i mean yeah it's tough it's it's i mean i push small groups real hard because i say you know the answer is your house over a beer and hit play in a video and then talk about how that touched your heart i mean there's a step the search is a great place to start man right yeah by the way if you haven't seen it you need to google the search um brother i'm i'm really grateful for your life and witness and this is the first uh second of many more conversations i'm sure absolutely because we got a whole episode on mary that was a teaser for the mary episode thanks man thank you for having me yeah thanks for listening to the lord and thank you um archbishop shapu and every pastor out there who's willing to drop everything to make time for that that one person be that guy god bless you [Music] [Music] you

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Keywords: eucharist, Catholic eucharist, transubstantiation, catholic sacrament, 7 sacraments, augustine institute, formed catholic, ignatius press, lighthouse catholic media, lighthouse talks, Dr. Tim Gray, Dr. Brant Pitre, Chris Stefanick, holy communion, catholic church, Catholic Faith

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Length: 32min 48sec (1968 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022