This episode is special because I invite my first guest into the studio with me. My Christian brother, and local fellow musician, Jason LaPorte, joined me to talk about all sorts of things. Jason has a great perspective on many current issues I’m interested in because, like me, he is a Christian brother who actively serves as a musician and worship leader, and is also a staunch conservative with a tremendous interest in politics and some great insight into how we blend our faith with a support of Donald Trump and his policies. UNLIKE me, however, he is a former staunch liberal who was born and raised in a Democrat family, firmly adhered to liberal ideology and only in his post college years began to see the fallacies of that ideology and came to not only educate himself on what he was taught to believe but came to the revelation on his own to move over to the conservative side of things.

We spoke for over two hours so I’m going to put our conversation out in three parts, and I really want to encourage you to check out all 3 parts. If you’re local here to the Bluffton and Hilton Head area — and perhaps the Toledo, OH area — than you’ve likely heard of Jason LaPorte. He’s a great musician who plays music full time as his profession and gigs in this area nearly 300 times a year. Part 1 of our conversation is our discussion about playing music for a career and some of the challenges and fun we experience.

In Part 2 of our time together, Jason and I discuss the issues we face being both Christian worship leaders and secular musicians and how we sorta juxtapose those two realities and make money playing music we love without compromising our faith and diminishing our effectiveness in using our talents to tell people about Jesus.

IN Part 3 of our discussion, Jason shares his very unique journey to becoming a firm believer in conservative values and a Republican voter and current Trump supporter and the challenges he faced transitioning away from liberal ideology and voting as a Democrat. More importantly, we wrap up our discussion with some tips on how we think you can have tough conversations with friends and family who may not agree with you, especially at a time as we move into the holidays and those conversations can be tough around Thanksgiving and Christmas. So again, I hope you’ll tune in for all 3 parts and hopefully be able to take away some insight that might help you in some way.