HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) — As Evan Tanner stands on the stage at Catalyst Church, where he’s an associate pastor, you can tell preaching comes naturally to him. He’s a storyteller and a performer.  But this isn’t his “forever.”

“The preaching, itself is a passion of mine,” Evan said. “I think a bigger passion would be just working in a church itself. I don’t know if I see myself preaching full time for the next forty years like most people in ministry do, but I do see myself either starting a business that helps churches, that gives resources to people that need it, mostly smaller churches that need help, who can’t afford big equipment and resources. I’d love to come in and help those people.”

But just because he may not want to preach for forty years doesn’t mean faith won’t be at the center of his marriage to Katie, who both sings and runs a youth group at the church.

“I mean… it’s pretty a pretty big deal,” Evan said of his shared faith with Katie. “We both grew up in the church. And for most people, that means they might step away from it at some point when they hit college or something like that. And I think we were able to capture our own faith. We’ve both been pretty independent people our whole life, so we were able to capture our own faith and move into adulthood with that faith…so we base a lot of decisions on it.”

Evan does some community theater as well. When it’s his turn to give the sermon, he uses some of that performance instinct that drives him to act.   

“I’ve noticed that because, whenever I preach, I like to put in… real-life examples: like this is what the Bible says, but here’s what it actually means in our life today. And you can’t avoid COVID at all with it because our life today has been formed based on COVID,” Evan said.

See him preaching in this edition of our Project 2021 series of reports.