From Catholicism into Christian Ministry

From Catholicism into Christian Ministry

September 1, 2025

Host: Pastor Matt Recker

Guest: Carmine Carannante

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 9/01/25. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Matt Recker:

Greetings and welcome to Stand In the Gap Radio today as we view life from a biblical worldview. I’m Pastor Matt Recker of Heritage Baptist Church in New York City and I’ve been a guest on Stand In the Gap, and then I began co-hosting programs, but today is my first opportunity to actually host a program on Stand in the Gap. So I want to thank Honorable Sam Rohrer for working along with me, affording me this opportunity. And today our special guest is a dear friend and brother in Christ of mine, Pastor Carmine Carannante. Pastor Carmine is a New Yorker through and through. He’s lived his entire life in Brooklyn, raised in a loving Roman Catholic family and neighborhood, but God showed great mercy and power upon Pastor Carmine and saving him and now calling him into Christian ministry. And our program today will focus on how God has brought Pastor Carmine from Catholicism into Christian ministry.

And Pastor Carmine also works as a full-time HVAC engineer. He’s vice president and technical Director of Mechanical Systems and he’s also an online seminary student at Central Seminary. So we also will talk about how he balances a full-time vocation with seminary training and being an assistant pastor, we want this program to encourage you to serve God in your sphere where he has placed you because each of us are in the unique place and the way God works in our lives isn’t in the same flow and manner that others may serve God. Pastor Carmine, you’ve been a co-labor with me in our church for all of the 29 years of the existence of Heritage Baptist Church and you’ve grown from a church member to a deacon and now a pastor in our church. You’ve been a man of integrity and faithfulness through all the years that I’ve known you, and I thank you brother for your faithfulness to the Lord. And the story of your journey is an encouragement to me and I know it will be a challenge to those who listen as we talk about how God worked to save a Brooklyn New Yorker from Catholicism and put him into the ministry. So Pastor Carmine, welcome to our Stand in the Gap radio today and thank you for joining us.

Carmine Carannante:

Good morning, pastor Matt. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be on with you and it’s been a great 30 years or so ministering with you in New York City. It’s been a challenge and a blessing, so I really am happy to be here on the program with you this morning.

Matt Recker:

Thank you Pastor Carmine. And tell us how it was now growing up in Brooklyn, in a Roman Catholic family, in a neighborhood there then how you came to know Jesus Christ as your personal savior while living in New York City.

Carmine Carannante:

Sure. Well, as you mentioned, growing up Catholic, in a Catholic home in a Catholic school, living in a Catholic neighborhood, I mean everything was and steeped in tradition. It was almost a culture of the day that we lived in. As a teenager, I actually helped out in the church rectory with another friend that I went to school with. And on Sundays we’d actually count the offerings and during the week we would help out in the rectory with whatever needed to be done. So even as a Catholic, I was actually involved to some degree in the church. And I was also blessed to have loving parents that very conservative, strong family values. And I believe that played a major part in Christ bringing me to a place of trusting and believing in him that just that foundation of love and trusting my parents for the things that they gave me and how they raised me.

And I actually think personally comparing it to someone growing up today in Brooklyn with all the negative influence. So social media, I believe growing up in Brooklyn in the seventies and eighties was much better I think for my overall growth as a person in shaping my character. And between that and between that era of time and having such loving parents and a great family environment, I think God laid the foundation for me to come to him. He just drew me. And when I was 22, a childhood friend of mine told me that I needed to be born again to go to heaven. I said, no you don’t. And emphatically I said, no, you don’t. So what did I do? I read the Bible. I tried to read the Bible to prove him wrong, but the more I read, the more I realized I was wrong and he was right.

And God just worked on my heart. And one day I just gave my life to him. I asked him to forgive me of my sin. I recognized my own belief and I turned from my sin, my wickedness, my unbelief, even as a Roman Catholic. And I turned to him. And really I think the verse that really spoke to me, the passage was John three, that discourse between Jesus and Nicodemus and how unless the man be born again, he cannot see or enter the kingdom of God. And that just hit me all these years of being Catholic and trying my best to do what I needed to do on this earth to get to heaven. And it was all for naught. Nothing that I’ve done as a Catholic could enter or earn my entrance into heaven.

Matt Recker:

Yes, that’s absolutely right, brother. And of course Roman Catholicism teaches that the new birth is through baptism when a Catholic is baptized in infancy. But thank God that he opened your eyes, that really being born again is by putting faith in Jesus Christ according to John three 16. So then after you were saved, if you could just quickly give a quick overview of what kind of church you first attended then after you did come to know the Lord, you knew you couldn’t go back to the Catholic church and was it hard for you to find a church? And then how did you come to Heritage?

Carmine Carannante:

Yeah, actually it was difficult in the beginning to find a church. I didn’t know much. I really didn’t know what constituted a good church, a good bible, believing church. So I was visiting churches with a couple other Christians that I knew at the time, and we mostly visited non-denominational churches before we started to faithfully attend a well-known and a large non-denominational church in New York City. And we were there, I would say about four and a half years, really just every Sunday visiting faithfully. And we started listening around that time, around four, four and a half years to Christian radio and came across this program called the Fundamental Baptist Forum. Pastor, we heard you speak actually every Friday there was a different pastor and we would tune in and one day you had hosted the program and mentioned that you were starting a church in Manhattan. I believe it was in June or July of 96, I believe May was when the church, you started the church in Chelsea, June or July of 96 we started to attend. And I knew personally, I knew that this was the place where I wanted to be, needed to be. The messages were challenging, they challenged me.

Matt Recker:

Okay, pastor Carmine, excuse me. Excuse me. We’re going to come up on a break here and coming up, we’re going to continue to look at some key differences between being born again through Christ and coming out of Roman Catholicism into Christian ministry. Stay with us and welcome back. And we’re speaking today with Pastor Carmine who was saved out of Catholicism to Jesus Christ while growing up in Brooklyn, New York. He now serves as assistant pastor alongside me at Heritage Baptist Church in New York City. And as we’ve mentioned, he came out of Roman Catholicism. And sadly for me anyway, the Roman Catholic Church is seeing a lot of growth today. Many are being allured to go back to Romanism. And so we want to talk for just a moment about some of the important biblical differences between Bible believing Christianity and Roman Catholicism. Now, when I use this term Bible believing, I mean that we hold to the Bible as our sole authority for faith and practice, while Roman Catholicism on the other hand has the authority of tradition, the Pope and the church is the authority in interpreting the Bible. So we want to talk about what some of these differences are. So Pastor Carmine, thank you again for being with us. And you shared how you were born again, and I just wonder if you could get more into how is being a born again Christian different from the way that you were raised in Roman Catholicism?

Carmine Carannante:

Sure. I do want to say as a Roman Catholic, like everyone else in the Roman Catholic Church, I was deceived, deceived by his system into believing in a false religion, a religion that actually robbed me from a true relationship with God. And I think that’s the crux, at least what I saw. When the Lord saved me this immense relationship, instead of having an intimate relationship with my savior as a Roman Catholic, I followed the teachings and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church instead of praying to God in a way that was genuine and personal, the Roman Catholic Church taught repetitive prayer, this prescriptive repetitive prayer that really meant nothing. As a born and Christian I was set free from all those lies, free from the deception, the bondage that Romanism puts people under. So the very first thing I saw was just this intimacy, this relationship, this power I had in prayer to really now build a relationship, cultivate a relationship with God that I did not have before.

I think the major, the big difference between Romanism and being a born again Christian is our relationship, our communication, why we do the things we do, not out of tradition, not out of any kind of rule, but because of a relationship we now have like any other relationship, whether it’s a wife, a friend, another relative, it’s a relationship you cultivate. And the Roman Catholicism, it was just cold. It was a cold relationship that really did not cultivate any kind of an intimacy with our Lord and Savior. Did day Christ save me? And I’ll say this, September 18th, 1992, I’ll never forget that day, I started my personal and intimate relationship with a personal, intimate and accessible God. And that’s the other thing I think is the difference is the accessibility that we have as a born and Christian with God that I did not have as a Roman Catholic.

Matt Recker:

Absolutely. I was studying just yesterday for a message from Nehemiah chapter nine and just talk about the personal relationship and how personal God is to us. And God really spoke to me very personally from an ancient text of Nehemiah where it says in Nehemiah chapter nine, just for an example, he says, where God says that he did see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and he heard their cry. So when I read that I was like, wow, God saw them in their affliction and he heard them in their situation and he sees us as well and he hears us as well. And he’s such a personal savior, so that is wonderful. So we do hear a lot in the news, pastor Carmine about people turning back to Rome and all the talk that was very prevalent a few years ago of the abuse and the priesthood has died down. We haven’t heard much of that, which I’m thankful for because that’s all sad, terrible things happening. We don’t want to see that. But that’s all died down and it seems people are turning back to Rome, even young men. So what’s your take on that?

Carmine Carannante:

Well, I did do some reading as you’re right. There is this growth in Roman Catholicism, this rise of people leaving maybe Bible leaving in Protestant churches and going to the Roman Catholic Church. And we have actually, as we know personal thing with that as someone, a member that we had did that as well. And I just read that it was kind of a eucharistic revival and the church is just bringing to a revival of the Eucharist and how their short answer was it was a Holy Spirit bringing them back. And I think they’re right in the sense that it is the Holy Spirit, but I think it’s for a different reason. First Timothy four mentions that how some shall depart from the faith giving he to seducing spirits, doctrines of devils. I believe as we get closer to the end times God is purging his church, God will purge his church of those professing Christians, those who think or say they’re saved but truly are not. God knows who are his children and he will, I believe as the time gets closer, he will purge his church. And this is what I believe is happening today that this rise in Catholicism is God purging his church and where else will they go? They’ll either go to atheism, won’t believe God at all, or will go to Roman Catholocism.

Matt Recker:

Well said. Thank you brother. And you talked earlier since when you were born again and the difference of being born again and the relationship that you have, could you go a little bit more into this in your relationship with Christ since you were saved and especially what are some scriptures that God has led you to? You mentioned John three relating to your salvation. What are some scriptures that have guided you through your journey in your relationship with the Lord?

Carmine Carannante:

The other scripture, and I clearly remember this as a young Christian growing as a babe, Philippians one, six, being confident of his very thing that he, which has to be done a good work in, you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ. And as a young Christian, learning how to be faithful, learning how to be a Christian repenting and turn away from sin, there were times where I failed and this verse here, Philippians one, six just really spoke to me and I claimed it. I claimed it as a promise from God that if he truly saved me, then he will do this work of sanctification in me until Christ returns. So that was a powerful, powerful verse that God used early on in my walk with him. And when the Lord saved me, that’s all I can think about was this personal relationship that I had, this true relationship I had with the only true and living God and it was amazing, totally amazing.

Matt Recker:

Yeah. When he does begin a work in us and people really need to understand that our salvation true is by grace through faith. I mean I even heard our president who we love and pray for, he thinks he might be able to go to heaven if he gets a peace deal with Ukraine and Russia. I’m like, wow, we’re not saved through our works and through our peace deals we’re saved through Christ’s work and then developing a relationship with him and then when he begins that work, we can note we have salvation. So when you did become saved then and you began to grow in the Lord and you had that assurance of salvation, I believe then from verses like Philippians one, six, so how did you find growing spiritually in New York City or did you find, was there obstacles and opposition in any kind of way or was growing spiritually something natural to you or was it difficult for you in a liberal city like New York,

Carmine Carannante:

It was not natural. Again, I was 22, so I did have friends that were in the world. So that was a challenge and difficulty not doing the things that I would normally do with them. So over time, those friends, we just did not have anything in common and I had to leave those relationships behind and learn just like I cultivated a relationship with them over the years, I now had to learn how to cultivate a relationship with God. I had to learn the right way to pray the right way and how to listen to God discern his voice. It was just new. Everything was new that naturally I was not familiar with in Romanism. I had to learn and how to read the Bible and understand God’s word, learn a true meaning of faith, believing that God actually cared enough to listen to me and answer my prayers.

I think though that one of the difficulties in growing in Christ, God puts us in circumstances and we need to trust him. He’s a sovereign God and allowing him to take complete control of our circumstances that we may sometimes have no control over that God himself may have put us in. So that was a challenge of letting go of what I thought I was in control of and just trusting in God and building that faith and trying to cultivate that relationship. So it was difficult with friends and even family that did not maybe perhaps agree.

Matt Recker:

Yeah, that sometimes is very difficult. I love that verse that Jesus said in John chapter 10 where he said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and that no man will pluck us out of his hand and that we’re safe and secure in Jesus. We need to just keep listening to his voice. So up next, thank you Pastor Carmine. We’re going to discover interesting things now about how he was ordained as a pastor and now balances ministry with a full-time career as A-H-V-A-C engineer. So stay with us as we continue our conversation with Pastor Carmine carte of Heritage Baptist Church in New York City. We’ll be right back. And today we’re talking to Pastor Carmine carte, growing up in Brooklyn, raised in Catholicism, now serving in Christian ministry as assistant pastor of Heritage Baptist Church in New York City. And Pastor Carmine, when you were saved, you had just pretty much finished your college education at the New York Institute of Technology where you studied as being an engineer as A-H-V-A-C, heating vending air conditioning engineer.

And then you became saved and you were growing in the Lord available to serve God. And then you came into our church and first you serve just as a faithful layman in the church. I remember the first time I ever asked you to do anything, remember that I think I asked you to help take the offering and I freaked you out. I think you were a bit afraid of that and you said, no, I don’t think I could do that. I think that’s the only time I ever asked you to do something in the church that you said no. But then you did it eventually and then you just took on ministry roles as the Lord led you and then you became a deacon and then you were faithful and demonstrating integrity. And I love that verse in one Timothy where Paul says, I thank Christ Jesus, our Lord who has enabled me for that.

He counted me faithful putting me into the ministry. And I really think that defines you, pastor Carmine, you were faithful and he’s put you into the ministry, but you continue as A-H-V-A-C engineer all these years, which is a very, it’s a high stress job. You travel doing it and you do big jobs too, not small places, but you continue serving as a bivocational assistant pastor in our church. So maybe people listening today want also to get into ministry but don’t know necessarily how to proceed. So get into your story a little bit of how you became a pastor and as you became a deacon and ordained a pastor, tell us how this happened and did you ever expect this to be your life experience?

Carmine Carannante:

Sure, pastor, there was no way 33 years ago when the Lord saved me that I would’ve expected him to take me along this path at all. I believe it was in 2012 when you had first asked me, and as you mentioned, when I first came to Christ and then started coming to Heritage, I was kind of nervous in doing things in ministry. I think I actually said to you, well, I’m just visiting here, but the Lord worked on my heart and he gave me the courage to partake in the ministry and to serve. And you had asked me in 2012 if I would consider being an assistant pastor. And at the time you indicated to me that in many ways I was already functioning in that role. I told you that I pray about it and I think a whole year went by when you had asked me and I never really came back to you with an answer. And I do remember telling you that it wasn’t something that I thought about pursuing, but if it was the Lord’s will, then the church would have to decide. I do recall telling you that. And then in 2014 it was during our annual business meeting, which takes place in February. You did present it to the church and sometime in May I was voted in as assistant pastor and that’s kind of how it came about.

Matt Recker:

Wow. And that’s been 10 years, huh? Yeah. That’s amazing. Praise the Lord and God has used you in our church and really I do look at it that way, that in other words, we placed you as a deacon in our church when you were functioning like a deacon. In other words, you were deaconing serving in the church and then we placed you as an assistant pastor in our church when you were assistant pastoring and just doing multiple vital ministry things in our church. And so I do believe you were functioning in those ways and how the Lord led you. So for those listening out there and we just encourage you get involved in the ministries in small ways at first maybe taking the offering, counting the offering and doing things and coming alongside the pastor, most churches are smaller. Our church is not a large huge church. So we need faithful lay people in our churches to come alongside and help and do a lot of the work that needs to be done. So how do you find the time to balance between ministry and a full-time job as A-H-V-A-C engineer and what challenges do you face with balancing ministry and

Carmine Carannante:

Work? Well, I generally work, I would say between 40 and 50 hours a week when not taking care of family and home responsibilities. Most of my nights and weekends are spent reading and writing, studying, preparing bible studies, working through some of the church’s financial responsibilities, talking and praying with some of the folks from church. So my time is during the day and during the week pretty full. I think the major challenge is trying to get things done in a short amount of time and getting enough rest honestly for the following day. So that is the only challenge. But I think if you like what you’re doing, and God has blessed me with a really great job. I like working where I work and I serve in a really great church and I like what I do and I think I am where God has put me, where God wants me. And I think that’s what makes it somewhat easier to endure the hours and the work involved. So we have a short time in this life and when I get to heaven, maybe I can sleep

Matt Recker:

As well for our listeners. And I think it’s quite interesting, just share a little bit like your HVAC career and some of the well-known places that you’ve helped put the heating, venting, air conditioning into important buildings, if I can say without telling you what they are, what are some of the buildings people would readily know of?

Carmine Carannante:

Well, okay, I did work on the design, the construction of the Clinton Library in Arkansas. I don’t know if people know of that building. I did design and do the construction for the Jefferson Special Collections Library in the University of Virginia. That’s a really nice library. I did a couple of buildings, prominent buildings on the Penn State University campus. The Lewis Ca building is a really nice building. I did do a museum in DC it was called the News Museum. It’s actually not there anymore. It’s actually now a college for JHU Johns Hopkins University. And that was really interesting because I was the original design team doing the museum and then I think it was 2019 where they sold the building to JHU and JHU had brought on the same design team. So I had the really privilege and honor of repurposing that building that we initially designed into what’s there today as a higher ed building for JHU. So that’s some of the few, I did some other notable ones, but those are the few that I can remember right now. But it’s fun.

Matt Recker:

You’ve done athletic arenas, didn’t you do the athletic arena in

Carmine Carannante:

Philadelphia? Yeah, there was the Wells Fargo Arena, there was some retrofit to their major mechanical spaces. So that was maybe in 2021 I think it was. Or 2020, 21, 22, somewhere around there. Yeah, there’s quite a few. So after a while it’s all molds into one job, one project.

Matt Recker:

So with that then those are some big jobs that you’re working along in your career as engineer, then you function in the church at the same time. So what are some of the ministries roles that you have assumed as an assistant pastor at Heritage and how does the Lord use you there?

Carmine Carannante:

Well, as you mentioned, I was already functioning as an assistant pastor I guess in 2012. And a lot of that work, a lot of the ministry that I was doing then, I’m kind of still doing now, for example, overseeing the counting of the offerings, documenting the financial giving of the church members. I still that now teaching adult Bible fellowship, which I love to do. I did that for quite a long time and I will do that from time to time with another brother in the church. I was involved as in the radio ministry for 20 years, oftentimes counseling and praying with those who would call in and occasionally I would fill the pulpit for Sunday service, Wednesday night prayer meeting while URAI did start leading the church in Bible memorization. I believe that happened right about when I was ordained as assistant pastor. So that’s been going great. I do believe that’s a great encouragement. Anyone listening that is a really good ministry, I think for the church to just take a verse a week and commit it to heart, commit it to memory. And I do believe that pleases God to memorize and put the memory instilled his word in our hearts. So I do believe that’s a blessing and encouragement. And then about four years ago we started conducting monthly services at the New York Rescue Mission. That’s just some of the ministries that I’m involved in now and wasn’t involved in the past.

Matt Recker:

Amen. Amen. Praise the Lord brother. Yeah, and it’s amazing when you do one verse a week in scripture memory, how we’ve memorized like First John. We’ve memorized chapters like Romans eight and many chapters in the Bible. We’re doing the Sermon on the Mount now, so it’s a blessing. So time is flying and Pastor Carmine will be back with me in just a moment to continue to share some insights and how one can move from lay ministry into pastoral ministry as God leads. So stay with us for our final segment. We’ll be right back and welcome back to our program and as well as going to the website stand in the gap.com. I find also the app to be very helpful and an easy way to listen to the program. So if you go to either Android or the Apple Store, you can download the Stand in the Gap Today app and that way you could just plug right into the radio program each day and it’ll be a blessing to you.

And I want to thank Honorable Sam Rohr for the amazing work God has used him to do to build the Stand in the Gap radio program and for the opportunity to host today. And we welcome back our guest pastor Carmine carte. We’ve been talking about how he’s serving the Lord in New York City as an assistant pastor, grown up in Brooklyn, raised in Catholicism, brought out of Catholicism into Christian ministry, and now a bi-vocational assistant pastor. So Pastor Carmine, as you grew in your pastoral ministry and you’re doing multiple important works in the local church as well as in your job, and you also took classes in our Heritage Discipleship Institute, but you also sensed a need for further training, seminary training. So what happened next in your spiritual growth and how you were led into this? And now not only are you balancing being a pastor with being a full-time HVAC engineer, but now you are a seminary student. So what led you into this to have a greater knowledge of scripture and how demanding is this for you?

Carmine Carannante:

Good question, pastor. I believe, and I think it was several years before I became an assistant pastor, when it was even just a discussions on it that God put on my heart to pursue a more formal biblical education. And the desire really got strong. Like we mentioned in 2014 is when I was ordained in 2018, at which point I enrolled in the Central Baptist Theological Seminary, which is in Minneapolis. I don’t know if you remember when we went to the Philippines in 2018, that’s when God really, the desire really burst. And I think it was October of that year that I enrolled in the seminary, and that’s again Central Baptist Theological Seminary in Minneapolis. I did enter the master of Arts Theology, MAT, with a focus in biblical studies. It’s basically a 36 credit course. It’s fully accredited, it’s a distant education program. So although I take the classes online, I am in class during the actual class time with the students, with the professor, at the same interaction as someone who’s physically present in the class.

There’s no different really. So it’s really good, really run really well. They offer both semester long classes or a modular class, which is basically one week, five and a half hours a day. And then they give you roughly 12, 13 weeks to finish the coursework. And I do most of my coursework at night when I get home from work and on weekends. And I think two of the classes really that really helped me in ministry or really helped me to minister really is hermeneutics. That was an amazing class. I think that was one of my first classes. And it really helped me to understand and interpret scripture. I think if anyone wants to go into ministry or just be a Bible student, really just a Bible student, I honestly believe they need to take some course in hermeneutics that is really, really helpful. If they take no classes at all.

I think Hermeneutics is a great class to take. It really helps with understanding the Bible and it to interpret the meaning of passages. So that’s a great class. And I think another class really helped me in ministry was Job, the Book of Job. And as you know, we are studying this in a B, F, and it’s a tough book. It’s a really, really tough book. And the professor we had was really good professor and he knew how to help engage us and to really understand the meaning of the book, how it’s structured, the tone. So those two classes I think have really helped me in my ministry. As you know, job is really accounting book and what not to do, counseling someone who’s gone through a traumatic event in their life. So seminary is not for everyone. I do shuffle my work and responsibilities, home responsibilities. So it is something that before someone enters that they should definitely think about. The time is very, very demanding, extremely demanding the reading and writing and the researching. So it’s very demanding seminary. So I do challenge if someone will take it to think about it and know that it’s going to be a sacrifice,

Matt Recker:

Right? And obviously to them. So when you take some of these classes, these block classes, you have to take time off of work, I guess to be in the classroom. And so you are making sacrifices with work and also sometimes with church. But what I appreciate as a pastor is that the Lord has led you to seminary training, but you’ve not been ripped out of our church and been placed in a far away state somewhere. And so maybe we don’t see you as much because you’re doing seminary training, but at least we see you and we still experience the blessing of your ministry in our midst and that you’re training while you’re serving. So I’m thankful for online seminary training like that. From a pastoral perspective, I think it’s a blessing. And you mentioned our mission trips and it’s true. We’ve gone on multiple mission trips together and gone to Russia and Brazil and the Philippines and Ireland, and you’ve always been a blessing as well on our mission trips, brother. So as we’re coming now to the end of our program, how can you tell those who may be interested now about getting into ministry and maybe there’s people out there listening that are where you were before 2014, if you will. So what can you say to people who are serving as you were as a faithful deacon or lay person in the church and maybe they want to even get further into ministry?

Carmine Carannante:

Well be sensitive, be sensitive to God’s leading and be willing to make, like we said, sacrifices. It’s definitely a blessing. It’s given me a closer walk with God, believe it or not, the seminary. It’s a humbling and challenging experience. I do believe if anyone is going into some level of ministry, it’d be worth having some formal biblical education. It may not be necessary for everyone. For me, with having so much responsibility at Work home Church, I needed something that was more structured with the curriculum, with professors that pushed me beyond my limits to read, write, research, biblical issues. So seminary was a good opportunity really also to be exposed to academia and the highly trained professors that I have just helps me to push myself and it helped me build my library. I have so many books and it’s only because I’ve been exposed to these professors that have given me authors to read and books to research. So in many ways, excuse me, it’s been a real blessing. And I encourage anyone, even financially God has provided, because I work, I’m able to support that seminary and the cost there. So that’s been a blessing too. And honestly it’s really not that expensive. So I do encourage anyone to do that, to go into seminary.

Matt Recker:

Thank you Pastor Carmine, thank you so much for being here. And may the Lord continue to bless you and use you as a light of his love, both in your job and church as well as in the seminary. It is a privilege to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. He is a wonderful savior. And so on behalf of those that stand in the gap radio today, grow in God’s grace and stand in the gap, fill in the hedge. Stand for truth as you follow Christ today.