Episode 37: A conversation with my pastor on faith, work, growth, Easter 2020, and more

If you read some of the stuff I write or post, you may not think of me as a religious person. In some ways, I am not. I believe I was baptized Methodist, but as a kid I really only went to church on big events, or for weddings/funerals. It was not an active part of my life. I converted to Catholicism before marrying my ex. My mom was Catholic and my aunt is very Catholic so I had some context for it. That relationship did not long-term work out, and even after that conversion, I wouldn’t say we were very religious or church-going. Since late 2017, when I first met Katie, I’ve been going consistently to First United Methodist in downtown Fort Worth. I’ve been thinking about faith more in that process as well. So, what follows here is a conversation with one of the senior pastors at that church, Lance. He is the pastor of “The Gathering” service that I attend, along with a bunch of my church friends. We taped this right before Easter, and we’re actually going to start by talking about the repercussions of Easter not being in-person for most of us this year. There’s a lot of faith and work and spirituality “wokeness” in here, so enjoy it. I’ll say one final thing: a lot of times, I asked kinda three-part questions here and that might get irritating, but I promise you the conversation has some value. Let’s roll.