Episode 100: A Theological Journey | The Branch

"I've come to peace with it because I love God and I know God, I know his character- but the biggest question I have is why were we even able to sin."- Pastor Matthew Johnson

The Branch Podcast hit a milestone with Episode 100, and Pastor Matthew Johnson, Pastor Anthony Lombardi, and Pastor Chris Reed marked the occasion the way they always do- with an honest, unhurried conversation. No fanfare, no formal retrospective. Just three friends and colleagues sitting down to talk about ministry, theology, and the journey that brought them to this point.

The episode is a fitting celebration of everything The Branch has always been: accessible, grounded, and genuinely real.

Before the conversation turned reflective, the pastors took time to revisit some of the funnier moments from ministry life. Pastor Chris Reed recalled a man who attempted to knock his hat off during a church interaction- an incident that required security involvement and left a lasting impression. Pastor Matthew Johnson described leading communion, dropping the bread mid-service, and invoking the five-second rule in front of the entire congregation. A short clip of the moment went viral within the church community, though not without some criticism from viewers who felt it crossed a line.

The stories kept coming- awkward mid-sermon situations, unexpected visitors in services, public speaking stumbles, and the behind-the-scenes conversations that never made it to air. Pastor Anthony Lombardi shared that he once told a woman in a meeting to stop talking, a moment his colleagues found both shocking and, knowing the circumstances, completely understandable.

Underneath the laughter was something genuine: a portrait of three men who have spent years in the unpredictable, occasionally absurd, always meaningful work of pastoral ministry.

The podcast did not start with a strategy. It started with a conversation.

Pastor Matthew Johnson described how the three of them would regularly gather in the open office space at The Tree Church and talk through theological questions- sometimes sparked by a sermon he was preparing, sometimes just by curiosity. Staff members began stopping to listen. Eventually, people started telling them they should record it.

What those listeners responded to was the format. Theology was being discussed in plain, accessible language by people who clearly cared about it- not as a performance, but as a genuine working-through of ideas. That combination of depth and approachability became the heartbeat of The Branch.

The podcast launched first as a pilot series called The Holy Podcast, covering eight episodes, before evolving into the ongoing weekly format it holds today.

A significant portion of the conversation centered on why theology matters beyond the walls of a classroom or a seminary. Pastor Matthew Johnson reflected on a lesson he learned during seasons of cultural tension, particularly around COVID and the political climate that followed. When the church made decisions or took positions, some people read those decisions through a political lens rather than a biblical one. The solution, he said, was not to avoid the topics but to clearly communicate the why- to show that the church's positions were rooted in scripture, not preference.

The Branch became one of the primary ways The Tree Church could do that. Rather than a quick post or a brief statement, the podcast gave the pastors space to show their reasoning, model a biblical worldview in real time, and invite listeners into the process.

Pastor Anthony Lombardi added that the dialogue format itself was part of the value. In a cultural moment where civil disagreement has become increasingly rare, watching three people work through complex ideas respectfully- and sometimes land in different places- models something many people rarely see.

Each pastor shared how his relationship with theology developed, and the paths were notably different.

Pastor Anthony Lombardi came to faith around his nineteenth birthday while attending Malone University as an undeclared student. Once he encountered Christ, he said, there was nothing else he could imagine doing with his life. He described sitting for hours reading through books of the Bible with a hunger that surprised even him- a firsthand encounter with scripture that felt entirely different from the secondhand Christianity he had grown up hearing about.

Pastor Chris Reed's entry point was a hermeneutics class at Malone- a course on how to read and interpret scripture. He admitted that before that class, he had found the Bible repetitive. He already knew the stories. What the class revealed was the depth beneath the surface, and it opened something in him that he described as an insatiable desire to understand who God is and how he interacts with humanity.

Pastor Matthew Johnson grew up with a father who was a pastor and a serious student of scripture. His father's phrase- book, chapter, verse- shaped him from a young age, instilling the discipline of grounding every belief in what the Bible actually says rather than personal opinion. Even so, he entered ministry carrying significant insecurity, convinced he could never match the depth of his father's knowledge. What he discovered over years of weekly teaching was that the knowledge came through the process of preparing to teach others.

One of the most candid stretches of the episode came when the pastors discussed how their theology has changed over time. Pastor Matthew Johnson described a shift away from the expectation that theology was a fixed destination to be discovered, toward an understanding that it is a lifelong, nuanced conversation.

He shared a specific example. While reading through Revelation in personal devotion, he found himself unable to locate the rapture in the way it is commonly taught in American evangelical culture. He brought the question to Pastor Anthony Lombardi, who told him plainly that the concept as popularly understood is not clearly present in scripture- and that the theological framework most American Christians assume is largely a product of teaching that emerged less than a hundred years ago.

For Pastor Matthew Johnson, that moment was not destabilizing. It was freeing. Unlearning something he had assumed to be settled made him feel more grounded in his theology, not less.

Pastor Anthony Lombardi spoke to the broader pattern: dogmatism, he said, feels stabilizing because it eliminates uncertainty. But intellectual honesty requires acknowledging that scripture contains complexity, that context shapes interpretation, and that two thousand years of church history have not produced a single, tidy answer to every question. The goal, he argued, is not to have everything figured out but to remain open, curious, and anchored to the ultimate purpose- knowing God, worshipping him, and obeying him.

The episode closed with each pastor naming a theological question he still wrestles with.
Pastor Matthew Johnson pointed to the passages in Joshua where God commands total destruction of a people- passages he has studied extensively and still finds difficult to fully reconcile with the broader picture of God's character. Pastor Anthony Lombardi named the uneven distribution of suffering in the world, the apparent absence of rhyme or reason in why some people carry far heavier burdens than others. Pastor Chris Reed named what he called the ultimate question: why God permitted the possibility of sin at all.

None of them offered a tidy resolution. What they offered instead was the posture they have cultivated over years of study and conversation- trust in God's character, comfort with mystery, and the recognition that faith is not the absence of hard questions but the willingness to keep asking them while remaining rooted in relationship with Jesus.

As Pastor Chris Reed put it, scripture is not a comprehensive document designed to answer every question. It reveals what God intended to reveal- enough to know him, trust him, and respond to him. The rest, as all three pastors acknowledged, requires faith.

Looking for a church in Lancaster or a church in Logan? We would love to meet you on Sunday.

The Tree Church is a community of faith with two campuses in central Ohio, meeting every Sunday at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM.

Lancaster Campus 837 E Main St, Lancaster, OH 43130

Logan Campus 195 E Hunter St, Logan, OH 43138