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Interview with Dr. Eric Bryant: Pets as a Path to Outreach

Updated: Feb 12, 2024

I was honored to be interviewed by Dr. Eric Bryant, Executive Pastor at Gateway Church in Austin, Texas about My Beautiful Bellissima: Stories of Love and Heeling, and how we can experience God and learn from Him through his creation, including our precious pets. Watch the full interview here, or read the abbreviated transcript below.



Dr. Bryant serves as the Campus Pastor for Gateway South Austin and Gateway Online. Gateway Church is known for their mottos: “no perfect people allowed” and “come as you are, but don’t stay that way,” Dr. Bryant lives out those mottos every day, loving people well as he has grown the South campus from 200 to 1000 over 7 years while also sending out core groups to start campuses in Central Austin, Buda, Dripping Springs, and Pflugerville.


Eric is the author of Not Like Me: Loving, Serving, and Influencing our Divided World; and Fruitful: Becoming Who God Created You to Be. He is also an adjunct professor at Bethel Seminary, and creator and host of The Post-Christian Podcast, one of the resources provided by his non-profit Catalyzing Community which helps church leaders make disciples in a post-Christian world.


Prior to his time with Gateway, Eric served as part of the leadership team with Erwin McManus at Mosaic in Los Angeles, a church known for its creativity and diversity. 


Dr. Eric Bryant: On today’s episode of The Post-Christian Podcast I’m on with A.J. Diaz, the author of My Beautiful Bellissima: Stories of Love and Heeling.  


The timing of your book for me and my family has been just perfect in many ways.  We recently lost our dog; she was 16 years old. It was a very tragic, awful experience but we’re so grateful for our dog. It was really meaningful for me, as my kids who are now 21 and 24 were holding her in her last moments, I just had this realization that this little dog for 16 years brought comfort to my kids, and now they were able to give her comfort in her last moments.


Talk about your story and why you wrote the book. I’m just eager for people to hear of your journey in trying to make a difference by telling your story as a person of faith but also someone who loves dogs.   


A.J.: Well, it really was not a very direct path. 


Thank you for sharing some of your life experience as well. You know our dogs really are family, they are part of my family and they are family members. I love them very much. They are God’s creation, and I believe He created them to bless us, to bless our families, and through them we get to care for His creation in a very personal way.   


The writing of this book was not a very straightforward path for me. I never said that I would write a book!


A few months into Covid I started struggling with a lot of issues around fear, worry, and anxiety, some of which I share in the book. Our church at the time had a push to encorage people to try going to Restore (Recovery) meetings and they were saying that it could be for anything, including fear and worry. They said “if anything feels like it could be making your life insane” this would give you a reason to try Restore, and my worries truly were making my life insane. When I could get myself into a logical place where I could examine them I could see that there was no basis for them. In most cases, I was just feeling fear, there was no sense to it, and it was robbing me of my joy. So I started going to Restore and ended up doing 12 steps for codependency. I never would’ve imagined that would happen, but as I learned more about codependency that’s where I ended up. During this process, kind of smack dab in the middle of it, we adopted a feral cattle dog. Which of course makes a lot of sense doesn’t it? You’re dealing with fear and anxiety, so adopt a feral dog. But we did. She chose us, like my husband Shaniko says, she chose us, and so we brought her home. 


Fast forward a couple years and Gateway (our church) changed the name of the umbrella of ministries for restore, or one could say reconciliation, to HEAL. It struck me the analogy between the word HEAL and the HEEL command for our dogs. As you may be familiar, “heel” for our dogs means that they should know where we are, they should be beside us, they should be close. They can enjoy their surroundings, but they need to be aware of where we are and following in step with us. I realized how for us as Christians, when we heal, a lot of that is in learning how to follow God, to heel to God. And for me, I realized how much I needed to trust Him more. As I was working with Bella, I needed her to trust me so that I could provide for her and care for her. And I realized that I had a lot to learn about really trusting God with my life and the lives of those around me. So I wrote an email to Doug and Brian, two of the pastors in Restore ministries, about this relationship between HEEL and HEAL, and with some encouragement I continued writing stories of the dogs in my life and how I have learned from and been blessed by them. I followed a process, but ultimately those stories written down into a google doc became the book My Beautiful Bellissima: Stories of Love and Heeling


My hope was to create a book that would be appealing to dog lovers, that would be well received by dog lovers regardless of if they knew God or Jesus, and perhaps bring some new ideas and perspectives about God and Jesus, and also share some ideas about codependency that may help others. I knew so little about codependency when I first started going to Restore, what I've learned since then has meant so much for my life and bringing back my joy, my life, and I hope I can share that with others through the book.


Eric: I just love your heart for helping others in the midst of their loss. We have probably more dogs in Austin than people who follow Jesus, Austin is a very dog loving city. Only 13% of Austinites go to church and that might even be lower now due to the pandemic. I just love how your heart for people led to the effort it took to write a book. From what I’ve been able to read so far, it’s really encouraging and incredibly meaningful. I have all sorts of friends and families and neighbors who do not know Jesus but do love their dog, I think this book could open a conversation. Talk a little bit about some of the things you learned writing the book about God's love for us, the dogs that we have in our life and their love for us, some of the things you’ve discovered, and maybe why God gives us these pets.


A.J.: Those are some really big questions! I am a lover of all of God’s creation, you may know that in the past I was heavily involved in Outdoors ministry. I love the outdoors; I feel the peace of God when I walk outdoors. In a recent sermon you gave you talked about being in the outdoors and walking down a path when you saw an owl and it made you think about wisdom, and about what God may be trying to tell you through that owl. I feel that when we can just slow down and walk through creation, spend time with our doggies and observe them, just take time to slow down and observe creation around us, we can learn a lot.


I believe God created His creation to be something that we enjoy, that we love and we get to take care of. People hear words like “dominion,” that God gave us humans dominion over the kingdom (terrestrial kingdom/creation) but I see that as stewardship. He gave us a right and a responsibility to steward His kingdom in the way that a person would give over the care of their child to a babysitter or caregiver. You would hope that person would care for your child the way you care for this child that you and your spouse created. I believe God put these animals in our life for us to love, for us to be loved by and give us love. I think this of all animals really, but there is something very special about our relationships with our dogs. 


Eric: I was driving around and read this bumper sticker that said something like “become the person your dog thinks you are,” this idea of unconditional love that we receive from our dogs provides a little glimpse of God’s love for us. Our little dog named Emma, we got her at Christmas and Emma is short for Emmanuel, literally in Hebrew “God with us.” The way that my kids would cuddle up with their dog and comfort their dog. It really was kind of neat to see those muscles being developed and learn how to find comfort from God's unconditional love.  For someone who lost a pet recently, what kind of encouragement would you give them? As you reflect on losing dogs over the years, what has helped you through that and what do you think would help others who may be grieving now?


A.J.: You are going to get me all teary-eyed! First, I would say to allow yourself to grieve. It is socially acceptable to grieve when a parent dies or when a friend dies. Well, it’s acceptable to grieve when your pets die as well, and you’ll go through a grieving process. It is a loss. And bear in mind that we have different levels of connection with our animals. I had one dog in particular that he was my dog, Beau. I share about him in The Best Dog Ever chapter in the book. We had a very strong connection and I’ll tell you six months after he passed, my husband Shaniko and I were walking on the trail and I burst into tears remembering all the times I spent on the trail with Beau. He was wild and free and fun and sweet and being on the trail made me think of him. I said to Shaniko that I swear when I walk into heaven Beau is going to be the first one to greet me! That’s how we feel, we don’t know exactly what will happen when we get to heaven but I do believe our dogs go to heaven. I think most Christians agree there are animals in heaven, since we have a depiction of heaven in the Garden of Eden. There were animals in the garden of Eden, and we should be able to envision that there will be animals in heaven. I’m sure you’ve heard John (Burke’s) stories about people seeing their animals in heaven. While most Christians believe there are animals, some question whether or not our specific animals will be in heaven. I think it was Randy Alcorn who made the best argument which was more or less “Why wouldn’t He?” Why wouldn’t God have our animals with us in heaven? Why would He keep that from us? He gave us these animals to enjoy here on earth, why would He not let us have them in heaven? So to your question about what would I say to someone who recently lost a pet, I would say to grieve them, enjoy the wonderful memories you have from your time with them, and I believe that you will see them again some day, and for now they are happy and they are frolicking and having fun in heaven.


Eric: I love what you’re saying there. You may already have heard this, but our founding pastor at Gateway, John Burke, in his book Imagine Heaven and his follow up Imagine the God of Heaven he has said the most common question he gets from all his research of the medical journals, talking about near death experiences, and, of course, knowing the scriptures as he does, the most common question he gets is, will my dog be in heaven? He tells several stories of folks who were clinically dead and came back and were able to tell stories of their experience in heaven. In a couple of these stories, just as you describe, their first encounter with someone they loved was their dog. One of the stories John tells was about a man who experienced a lot of abuse as a child, and struggled with trusting God for all he experienced, he even wondered God where were you when this (his abuse) happened? The one place this man found comfort was his pet, his dog, and in his near death experience that dog was the first one to greet him in heaven. It is again a wonderful reminder of God using all of creation to communicate his love to us.  We’re going to give away a couple of copies of your book. I just recently purchased another to give to a friend who lost their dog. Thank you for taking the time to write your story, and for those who are considering sharing their own story, learn to tell your story as God comes to you and helps you and you might be amazed at the open doors it brings to those you’re trying to serve and reach. Thank you so much Annemarie for this book and taking the time to be with us today. 


A.J.: Thank you Eric, you have a wonderful, blessed day.



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