Why would a mega church pastor leave his faith?

And what can we learn from a deconversion story

about how to better love people around us who are doubting their faith

or who have deconverted?

Today we're going to look at a book from 2018.

It's called Goodbye Jesus, and it's from a former

Make a Church pastor by the name of Tim Sledge.

Scott, this is going to be an interesting conversation. This is a huge book. It's

over 400 pages. You and I read it all the way through. I'm curious as we start. When you approach a book that you know is written by somebody who has left the faith

How does that shape the way you approach a book like this? Yeah, this I found, the whole story that Tim tells of his journey from, you know, being raised in a Christian home to sensing a call to the pastorate and then being very

successful in the Southern Baptist Church in my hometown where I grew up in Houston to just sort of gradually becoming more and more

disillusioned and eventually giving up not only giving up his full-time

pastorate but also giving up his full-time faith.

I found it incredibly sad because it was a perfect storm of factors I think that contributed to his ending up where he did,

which we'll get into more of that as the discussion goes along.

The way I approach this from the start

is to say, first of all, how can I empathize

with this person's story?

Because there's much more to the story than somebody just losing their faith.

That's right.

And what are the factors that contributed to that?

Was it an intellectual thing? Was it primarily the way he was

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