Latest / Get Real with Jim Weiss / Pastor Michael McBride, Executive Director of Live Free USA

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Pastor Michael McBride, Executive Director of Live Free USA · Get Real with Jim Weiss

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Speaker 1: I'm Jim Weiss, chairman and founder of Real Chemistry, and
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Speaker 1: this is the Get Real with the Chairman podcast. So
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Speaker 1: today I'm sharing an inspiring conversation with Pastor Michael McBride,
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Speaker 1: a leader at the intersection of faith, social justice, and
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Speaker 1: public health. As executive director of Live Free USA, he's
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Speaker 1: at the forefront of initiatives that address the criminalization of
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Speaker 1: people of colored, gun violence, and criminal justice reform, all
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Speaker 1: really to make communities safer for all of us. Pastor
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Speaker 1: Mike is the lead pastor at The Way Church in
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Speaker 1: Berkeley and a co founder of the Black Church Pack
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Speaker 1: and Black and Brown Peace Consortium. He's a prominent voice
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Speaker 1: in promoting equity and reducing violence. He has changed really
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Speaker 1: the face of crime, reducing the number of guests from
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Speaker 1: gun violence incredibly impactfully. So I think the work he
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Speaker 1: does saves lives and improves lives in ways you know
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Speaker 1: that I find kind of unusual.
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Speaker 2: This conversation really moved me deeply, and I think it
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Speaker 2: will resonate with all of you as well. Don't forget
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Speaker 2: to rate, review, and subscribe. Every interaction helps extend our reach.
1:23
Speaker 2: Really enjoy this episode from wherever you're listening. How are
1:29
Speaker 2: you doing.
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Speaker 3: Yeah, just trying to navigate this return to a airs
1:34
Speaker 3: up we wouldn't have to deal with so quickly.
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Speaker 2: Again, I mean, you're so accessible as a person. I
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Speaker 2: wonder if you can begin to help some of these
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Speaker 2: people see things differently.
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Speaker 3: I do believe that it is an important moment to
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Speaker 3: reflect on not just the history of the country, but
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Speaker 3: like the future of the country, and the honest about
1:59
Speaker 3: perhaps we are not as exceptional as we may think
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Speaker 3: we are when it comes to certain forces. I don't
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Speaker 3: want to assume that all of your listeners or even
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Speaker 3: yourself may find the kind of political drift towards what
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Speaker 3: appears to be a kind of demolition of norms of
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Speaker 3: governance and constitutional sensibilities feels like to many of us,
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Speaker 3: particularly black folks, struggling for some assemblance of fairness and
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Speaker 3: equality and civil rights. But it is frightening. You had
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Speaker 3: an elder tell me that he's seventy two, and he
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Speaker 3: feels terrible that he believes or he at least feels
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Speaker 3: like we are going to have to fight giants that
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Speaker 3: they thought that they slayed in the forty fifties and sixties.
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Speaker 3: When it comes to just like inclusion, we just got
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Speaker 3: to wait to see. But it does feel terrifying for
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Speaker 3: a lot of us, quite frankly.
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Speaker 2: Given what you've always done, does that in some ways? MODI?
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Speaker 3: Well, I think it's important to acknowledge that the struggle
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Speaker 3: for peace and justice and equality is never accomplished in
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Speaker 3: one person's lifetime, and so to the extent that we
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Speaker 3: continue to do the work that many of us perhaps
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Speaker 3: feel call to do, are compelled to do. No, it
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Speaker 3: doesn't stop, but it's kind of like, will the conditions
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Speaker 3: for us to do the work be more harsh? And
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Speaker 3: I think that perhaps is the calculation. It's kind of
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Speaker 3: like my beloved forty nine ers, and it's obvious that
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Speaker 3: Drop Purdy cannot throw the football in the ring, but
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Speaker 3: when it's not raining, he could throw for three hundred
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Speaker 3: some yards in an almost perfect quarterback Brady, And that's
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Speaker 3: the best analogy comes to me today, is like, well he.
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Speaker 2: Had trouble in the snow in Buffalo too, right, so
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Speaker 2: snow in the rain right first, as a sunny sky's.
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Speaker 3: Baby with a little wind, you're there. I think that
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Speaker 3: for many of us, it is about the conditions where
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Speaker 3: we have to do this work that will make it
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Speaker 3: either more difficult or less difficult, but it will be
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Speaker 3: difficult nevertheless. And yeah, so I think folks are going
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Speaker 3: to have to stay the course, and I hope that
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Speaker 3: others rise to the occasion because it is going to
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Speaker 3: take all of us to try and continue to move
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Speaker 3: forward and not take steps back.
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Speaker 2: So you have been on a path. You're a fourth
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Speaker 2: generation Pentecostal pastor. I don't have conversations with those people
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Speaker 2: all the time, not all the time. You know, I
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Speaker 2: grew up in the church and it hasn't always been easy.
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Speaker 2: You haven't always been working in the best of conditions.
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Speaker 2: Yet you've overcome a lot. Why don't you tell us
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Speaker 2: a little bit about how'd you get here? I'm an
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Speaker 2: Nator of San Francisco. My father was a gi Bill
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Speaker 2: Vietnam veteran.
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Speaker 3: Lama was a teacher. I graduated from Lowle High School
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Speaker 3: in Mills College. My father's size films from North Carolina,
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Speaker 3: Goldsborough to be exact, and so after the Vietnam War,
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Speaker 3: he joined my grandmother would since relocated to Oakland, East
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Speaker 3: Oakland to be exact, and was a head nurse at
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Speaker 3: Kaiser Hospital for almost twenty five thirty years. We've had
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Speaker 3: a life that has been characterized deeply by faith. I say,
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Speaker 3: we're in the family business of for generation holiness Pentecostal,
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Speaker 3: which just means we do speaking tongues, roll on the floor,
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Speaker 3: swing from the chandeliers, and on a good Sunday we levitate. Right,
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Speaker 3: we have great, high spirited encounters with the Almighty, with God,
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Speaker 3: and it fuels and sustains us. It also gives us,
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Speaker 3: I believe, ability to see beyond the current circumstance. It
5:39
Speaker 3: gives us like a sense of vision, almost like an
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Speaker 3: extra set of three D glasses, to see things that
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Speaker 3: perhaps may not always be obvious. But it doesn't keep
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Speaker 3: us from being impacted by the social hills. And so
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Speaker 3: as a youth pastor, I was physically, it's sexually assaulted
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Speaker 3: by police officers while I was serving at a church
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Speaker 3: in San Jose. But you can kind of go your
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Speaker 3: whole life with like a super conservative Bible thumping church
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Speaker 3: in the Bay Area and still find yourself getting beat
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Speaker 3: up by the cops for no particular reason, and none
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Speaker 3: of those police officers being held accountable, even though there
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Speaker 3: was some admission that their encounter with me was obviously
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Speaker 3: brutal and unnecessary and So what I have found throughout
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Speaker 3: the course of my life is that you can do
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Speaker 3: everything that you know to do right and still have
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Speaker 3: to deal with trauma that you did not ask for,
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Speaker 3: that you did not expect. And I think that is
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Speaker 3: the fuel for why I try to do this work.
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Speaker 3: It informs my experience, my trauma, my pain, the healing
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Speaker 3: journey I had to go on. It reminds me that
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Speaker 3: without such healing, without such structure and support, I could
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Speaker 3: have had these traumatic experiences turning into a monster. Right.
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Speaker 3: It could have turned me into someone who had lots
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Speaker 3: of anger, fear, and pain that was not interrogated, that
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Speaker 3: was not fully engaged, and turned into almost superpower. And
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Speaker 3: I find that many, many individuals, particularly in low wealth communities,
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Speaker 3: in black, brown communities, particularly young men, are experiencing trauma
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Speaker 3: at levels that blow our minds. And yet there is
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Speaker 3: no infrastructure in our city, state, or the country for
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Speaker 3: young men to have their trauma effectively dealt with. And
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Speaker 3: so I try to be a living example of that,
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Speaker 3: but also acknowledge that my faith, journey, my family, the systems,
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Speaker 3: institutions and structures that have held and produced me. It
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Speaker 3: gives me a bit of a superpower, a leg up,
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Speaker 3: a lot of dare I say, privilege and opportunity to
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Speaker 3: not be defined by the worst thing that happened to me.
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Speaker 2: Well, obviously you've channeled that in an incredible way. You're
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Speaker 2: involved with a bunch of foundations, right in addition to
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Speaker 2: being the lead pastor of The Way Church in Berkeley.
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Speaker 2: I'd want to hear a little bit more about how
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Speaker 2: you do this work through each of these and I'm
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Speaker 2: going to list them. So, you're the executive director of
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Speaker 2: Live for USA where we first met, Yeah, the Square
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Speaker 2: one Project, the Way Church obviously, the Black Church Pack,
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Speaker 2: and the Black and Brown Peace Consortium. You know, why
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Speaker 2: are you involved in so many of these things and
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Speaker 2: what are you up to? What does a day in
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Speaker 2: the life of Pastor Mike look like, and what are
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Speaker 2: you trying to accomplish?
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Speaker 3: Well, Jim, I feel like my ultimate goal is to
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Speaker 3: introduce folks to a faith. Dare I say, A God,
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Speaker 3: a higher power of transcendent being that has not abandoned
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Speaker 3: us right, that has not left us to our own devices,
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Speaker 3: that has given us a sense of calling being your purpose,
8:56
Speaker 3: that at the end of the day is about our
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Speaker 3: collective well being. So the church, particularly in the Black community,
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Speaker 3: has been arguably the most important influential institution we have.
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Speaker 3: Black churches in the Black community was one of the
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Speaker 3: few institutions that we were able to build, even though
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Speaker 3: often they were still attastic the historical legacy of the
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Speaker 3: kind of slave master and the plantation over time, the
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Speaker 3: building of the Black Church on Sundays was not its
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Speaker 3: only function. Monday through Fridays. The Black Church was our
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Speaker 3: school on Saturdays. It was our juke joint, it was
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Speaker 3: our club. So I mean this was the center of
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Speaker 3: Black licke and so for a lot of us in
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Speaker 3: our communities, this is the historical kind of meeting place
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Speaker 3: in space where we build power, where we make meaning,
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Speaker 3: where we serve as a hub for our communities. I
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Speaker 3: feel called to serve the Way Church since two thousand
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Speaker 3: and five. It's going to my twentieth year pastorage because
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Speaker 3: it was there where I found not just a robust faith,
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Speaker 3: but it also is a space where I was able
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Speaker 3: to make meaningful connections with families and communities and young people,
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Speaker 3: form incarcerated individuals, elected officials, the lamanthropy leaders, folks like
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Speaker 3: yourself and others. It just became a foundation for not
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Speaker 3: just communal healing and solidarity, but also for us to
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Speaker 3: build power to change the conditions of our community. So
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Speaker 3: I'm a spiritual leader there. I get to interact with
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Speaker 3: hundreds of folks on a week, week to week basis
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Speaker 3: who are real, everyday people living in the Bay Area.
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Speaker 3: Phrenominantly black folks, but we have a wonderful mixture of
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Speaker 3: non black folks that raisee from immigrants, undocumented folks, Latino folks,
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Speaker 3: Angian folk, white folks. It's a super dope diverse class space.
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Speaker 3: It's just an amazing institutional spot and we hang out
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Speaker 3: there to try to make meaning and help each other
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Speaker 3: to get through the week to week, day to day hardships.
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Speaker 2: So you've spoken about men exploring the other side of
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Speaker 2: their constitutions, their vulnerabilities. How is this openness impacting their
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Speaker 2: health and longevity? I mean, do you feel this is
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Speaker 2: one of the beneficiaries of all the work you're doing.
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Speaker 2: Tell me more about that notion and concept you started
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Speaker 2: before in your own experience, But how have you paid
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Speaker 2: that forward?
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Speaker 3: I have found that the lessons and the gifts and
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Speaker 3: the spiritual tools, the resilience, the hope, the joy, the love,
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Speaker 3: the peace, all these virtues that are often channeled through
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Speaker 3: the space and place of our faith institution has built
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Speaker 3: enough power in me that I hope I can we
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Speaker 3: could figure out ways to build that for other folks.
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Speaker 3: And so, whether it's a church or community based organization
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Speaker 3: or institutional kind of container, what I find is that
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Speaker 3: this is arguably one of the first iterations for many
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Speaker 3: many men, particularly Black men, where they're not connected to
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Speaker 3: an institution, where they are literally like wandering looking for
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Speaker 3: meaning and places to belong. And so I've tried to
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Speaker 3: curate and create spaces where not only can they belong,
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Speaker 3: find meaning, find home, find purpose, but they can also
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Speaker 3: find healing, they can find community, they can find direction,
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Speaker 3: and do it at a pace where their life is
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Speaker 3: not as at risk. Right. And so these institutional spaces
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Speaker 3: from the church to live free to these other kind
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Speaker 3: of iterations that emerge from there, where there are small
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Speaker 3: groups behosts, whether they're community walks that we do, whether
12:48
Speaker 3: they're bringing individuals called is violent encounters, whether folks coming
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Speaker 3: home from jail in prison. Curating space where folks can
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Speaker 3: belong to institutions is a very important part of the
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Speaker 3: role I and we play as we build these institutions.
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Speaker 3: They have to be intentionally curated. Unfortunately, most of the
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Speaker 3: institutions that have young men of color in mind are
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Speaker 3: the penal institutions. It's the jails, it's the prisons and
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Speaker 3: their structure to receive these individuals. And I and we
13:19
Speaker 3: want to create spaces where these folks can find that
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Speaker 3: community without having to be in touch with a law
13:27
Speaker 3: enforcement officer or a causual system. And I know some
13:30
Speaker 3: folks say, well, just don't break the law. Well I
13:33
Speaker 3: would agree, right like, I don't know what should break
13:36
Speaker 3: the law, right, but I find a lot of people
13:38
Speaker 3: who break the law and they don't get in touch
13:40
Speaker 3: with the carcial systems. So the question for us is
13:45
Speaker 3: should folks have to live in exemplary life without any
13:49
Speaker 3: mistakes in order to have access to healing and opportunity
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Speaker 3: and second chances. I would say no, right, I would
13:58
Speaker 3: say that the mistakes I made in my life, even
14:01
Speaker 3: though I tried to do everything right, there was something
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Speaker 3: that caught me that allowed me to not have to
14:08
Speaker 3: hit rock bottom. And that is the work that you're
14:10
Speaker 3: trying to do. We want to intentionally churate and create
14:14
Speaker 3: these spaces and this country and many folks want to
14:18
Speaker 3: do that on the cheap, I want to say, no,
14:20
Speaker 3: let's put some steroids in that equation. Let's scale it
14:23
Speaker 3: up and make it muscular, so we can help save
14:27
Speaker 3: and heal and redeem a lot of a man's.
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Speaker 2: Lives, right, and then they become really awesome members of
14:34
Speaker 2: their communities continuing that whole thing, and you're having success
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Speaker 2: with that. We met related to gun safety and violence
14:44
Speaker 2: community violence through Coach car. How are community violence intervention
14:49
Speaker 2: programs like the ones you're involved in in places like
14:53
Speaker 2: the Bay Area, Chicago and New York City? And how's
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Speaker 2: that transforming even public health and health care people living
15:03
Speaker 2: maybe more purposeful, healthier lives, better lives.
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Speaker 3: It's having arguably a generational impact. What we found in
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Speaker 3: most cities across the country that less than half of
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Speaker 3: one percent of the city's population is responsible for as
15:21
Speaker 3: much as fifty to sixty percent of the gun related
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Speaker 3: shootings or homicides, which just means that there's a super
15:27
Speaker 3: small number of individuals who are caught in cyclical, repeatable violets.
15:33
Speaker 3: And with very specific interventions on this significantly small number
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Speaker 3: of individuals in your city, we could without mass incarcerating
15:43
Speaker 3: everyone or engaging a mass, disproportionate or unconstitutional policing. We
15:49
Speaker 3: could literally reduce the cost of public safety. We could
15:53
Speaker 3: increase investments in public health and target individuals who are
15:58
Speaker 3: at the houses of shooting are being shot in the cities.
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Speaker 3: We saw fifty percent of production over about five years
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Speaker 3: from twenty fourteen to fifteen, all the way up to
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Speaker 3: twenty nineteen. Then the COVID generational crisis and pandemic caused
16:14
Speaker 3: violence to shoot up all across the country because much
16:16
Speaker 3: of our programs went offline while people were obviously sheltering
16:20
Speaker 3: in place. A lot of our folks workings in the
16:22
Speaker 3: first responder so we just could not do the intervention.
16:25
Speaker 3: But now in the last two years, we started to
16:27
Speaker 3: do the intervention, and now we're starting to see the
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Speaker 3: virus go back to pre pandemic levels just in two years,
16:33
Speaker 3: and it's even going deeper in a lot of other
16:34
Speaker 3: places thanks to the investment that we've been able to
16:37
Speaker 3: advocate at the federal and state and local level to
16:40
Speaker 3: the CBI interventions. So Oakland has seen a huge reduction.
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Speaker 3: Oklahoma City, where we work, almost a seventy percent reduction
16:47
Speaker 3: in this neighborhood where they've been working Detroit, Michigan historic reductions,
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Speaker 3: I think forty seven to percent. We're in Orlando, Florida's
16:54
Speaker 3: gone almost six months without one the related homicide in
16:57
Speaker 3: their city, and so we're in well over ten cities
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Speaker 3: currently just live free, engaging in the work of peacemaking,
17:04
Speaker 3: and our finding that when men are engaged with healing,
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Speaker 3: with opportunity and with some structure, they opt out of
17:13
Speaker 3: violence without having to go to jail or even at
17:17
Speaker 3: times take a job. Now, we want them to obviously
17:21
Speaker 3: have opportunity because it is important, but what we have
17:23
Speaker 3: realized is that these young men and their families want
17:27
Speaker 3: to live. They're not also kind of death wish. Very
17:31
Speaker 3: often are just overwhelmed with anger, fear, and pain, often
17:35
Speaker 3: trying to protect themselves from what they have you to
17:38
Speaker 3: be real or imagined or assumed violence. And so our
17:41
Speaker 3: intervention helps to make sure that we can keep people,
17:45
Speaker 3: as we say, living free from violence and incarceration. And
17:48
Speaker 3: that is the work that we do and it works
17:51
Speaker 3: all across the country. Our hope now is just keep
17:53
Speaker 3: scaling it up.
17:55
Speaker 2: What role does faith play and religion and all that.
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Speaker 3: Some people have deeper religion and deep faith because some
18:01
Speaker 3: people don't right. I feel like the role as I
18:05
Speaker 3: see it for faith and religion is meaning making. Right,
18:08
Speaker 3: it's helping people to understand that there is a purpose,
18:12
Speaker 3: there is a calling if you will, there's a vocation,
18:15
Speaker 3: there's something greater than themselves that they ought to be
18:20
Speaker 3: in the service of. So for folks who come from
18:23
Speaker 3: say a faith tradition where they're Christian, Muslim, Buddhists, you
18:26
Speaker 3: can appeal to ideas, concepts, philosophies that are age old
18:31
Speaker 3: that can unlock the God gene that you know is
18:35
Speaker 3: measured inside folks across the world. And then some folks
18:38
Speaker 3: are agnostic and atheists. They've seen too much or they
18:41
Speaker 3: come to their own reasoning that they don't believe in God.
18:44
Speaker 3: And yet there is something greater than them love, peace, joy, justice,
18:49
Speaker 3: some idea that we hope to unlock within them, to
18:53
Speaker 3: cultivate ope. And so it is about meaning making. It's
18:57
Speaker 3: about them being able to see be yond their circumstance.
19:01
Speaker 3: Faith is the ability to see beyond that which you
19:06
Speaker 3: are limited through your own sensus, to believe something is better,
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Speaker 3: something is greater, and we inject that through our actions
19:16
Speaker 3: first and when welcomed our speech later.
19:20
Speaker 2: And you're not saying everyone has to go to church
19:23
Speaker 2: per se. Right, Oh no, that's not the deal. But
19:26
Speaker 2: you're the pastor, So tell me walk me through. You
19:30
Speaker 2: hit a city, what do you do, how does it
19:32
Speaker 2: set up, how do you recruit? How do you get
19:34
Speaker 2: people involved?
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Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll use Oakland and Berkeley as an example since
19:38
Speaker 3: that's where a lot of our work happens. So on
19:40
Speaker 3: any given day of the city of Oakland or the
19:43
Speaker 3: city of Burkers, some of the surrounding areas Richmond, we
19:46
Speaker 3: have individuals who wake up every day and their singular
19:50
Speaker 3: task is to focus on the twenty to thirty young
19:55
Speaker 3: men and their families who are on their caseload. We
19:58
Speaker 3: use a public health mod or because we appreciate if
20:01
Speaker 3: you've been shot by a gun or shot with a gun,
20:05
Speaker 3: if you've been shot at, then you likely have been
20:08
Speaker 3: traumatized like no one's getting shot at, no one's getting
20:12
Speaker 3: shot and it's like, oh, that doesn't impact me. So
20:16
Speaker 3: public health has to be our first kind of approach.
20:19
Speaker 3: Every day in our communities. We are attempting to prescribe
20:23
Speaker 3: a public health response to what is often considered a
20:28
Speaker 3: police response SOLD or a carcial response SOL we want
20:31
Speaker 3: to say, if you have experienced gun violence, have you
20:34
Speaker 3: been shot, or have you been shot at, or your
20:37
Speaker 3: family member has passed because of gun violence, then you
20:41
Speaker 3: are a walking ball of Trump. Most people in our
20:44
Speaker 3: communities don't get access to a public health response. So,
20:49
Speaker 3: for instance, I was in Buffalo, New York, a couple
20:52
Speaker 3: of days after the shooting at that hospital, terrible shooting,
20:56
Speaker 3: and David Hall, who was one of the survivors of
20:59
Speaker 3: the park There shooting in Florida, happened to be there
21:02
Speaker 3: with us, and it was so interesting just to see
21:05
Speaker 3: and hear the way he talked about how the response
21:11
Speaker 3: in Parkland was so much different in the response in Buffalo.
21:15
Speaker 3: He said that there were dozens of trucks and hundreds
21:18
Speaker 3: of counselors that were extended to the students in Parkway,
21:23
Speaker 3: and in Buffalo it was perhaps less than one or
21:27
Speaker 3: two therapists who were extended just to the family, and
21:31
Speaker 3: one of the therapists was afraid to be in the
21:33
Speaker 3: room by themselves. They ask a police officer to come
21:36
Speaker 3: stand in the room to be with the while they
21:39
Speaker 3: provided therapeutic services to the family. The schools did not
21:42
Speaker 3: get any therapists for the children who witnessed this massacre
21:46
Speaker 3: on a Saturday morning. And so just this idea that
21:49
Speaker 3: people can experience that level of trauma and not get
21:52
Speaker 3: any public health support, then of course then their own body,
21:57
Speaker 3: their mind, their spirit is going to process it in
21:59
Speaker 3: their own way. In cities across the country, we hire
22:03
Speaker 3: either fullycarcerated or do we call them directly impacted community members,
22:07
Speaker 3: people who have been shot themselves and being rehabilitated, people
22:11
Speaker 3: who have done the shooting and being rehabilitated, people who
22:14
Speaker 3: have been shot and survived, and their families, and we
22:17
Speaker 3: train them on public health interventions on how to help
22:20
Speaker 3: people who are having a mental health crisis, and that
22:23
Speaker 3: when done well, it reduced to violence by thirty forty
22:27
Speaker 3: fifty percent within eighteen months.
22:29
Speaker 2: You were talking about this concept or faith as a
22:33
Speaker 2: transcendent interlocutor elevating us from mundane realities and connecting us
22:42
Speaker 2: to broader narrative. How does this process of creating meaning
22:46
Speaker 2: through faith aida in this public health initiative?
22:50
Speaker 3: So I do believe that when we come to like
22:53
Speaker 3: meaning making, when we come to purpose, sometimes one can
22:58
Speaker 3: be so anchored or dare I say, being pulled down
23:02
Speaker 3: by the vicissitudes, the difficulties, the hardships of life. That
23:07
Speaker 3: just the ability to look up, the ability to have
23:11
Speaker 3: a vision that transcends your particular circumstance, is all some
23:16
Speaker 3: people need in order to wrestle their way out of
23:19
Speaker 3: hopelessness and despair. Often tell the young people I work
23:22
Speaker 3: with that hopelessness is as deadly as a bullet. And
23:26
Speaker 3: so if faith, if meaning, if purpose can be the
23:30
Speaker 3: kind of like center of a wheel with spokes shooting
23:34
Speaker 3: out of it in all different directions, that serves as
23:37
Speaker 3: the structure by which you resist the urge to give
23:41
Speaker 3: up or to perhaps be a part of the problem
23:44
Speaker 3: of the solution. If hope is all you need, then
23:46
Speaker 3: my job is to grab your hopelessness right and use faith,
23:51
Speaker 3: use music, use art, use culture, use relationships, use resources
23:57
Speaker 3: to figure out a way to jump start the hope
23:59
Speaker 3: that I believe is within them. See, most people think
24:01
Speaker 3: faith is this set of dogmatic ideas, and I want
24:05
Speaker 3: to say that faith is action. It is a commitment
24:10
Speaker 3: to that part of us that we can't fully see,
24:13
Speaker 3: but we know is there.
24:15
Speaker 2: How do you do that? How do you bring the
24:17
Speaker 2: God and divinity or some of that into your work?
24:21
Speaker 3: I'm very much formed by the depth and breath of
24:26
Speaker 3: the Christian tradition. I found a holiness beene cost. So
24:29
Speaker 3: the dumb thing about the Christian tradition is is thousands
24:32
Speaker 3: of years old, and so there are things that are
24:35
Speaker 3: implicit and there are things that are exquishing. So, for example,
24:38
Speaker 3: in our tradition we have this kind of monk or
24:41
Speaker 3: mystic called Brother Lawrence, and he talks about practicing the
24:44
Speaker 3: presence of God by breathing, by looking at nature, by
24:48
Speaker 3: acknowledging that that which you see is an extension or
24:53
Speaker 3: an expression of the divine. Implicitly, that then means that
24:58
Speaker 3: every action that I do you is an act of faith,
25:02
Speaker 3: and by my faithfulness to that practice, I'm introducing faith implicitly,
25:07
Speaker 3: not explicitly. But people will ask you, can you pray
25:11
Speaker 3: with me? Of course I can pray with you, right?
25:13
Speaker 3: Can you sit with me? Can I confess some things
25:16
Speaker 3: to you? Can we read sacred text together, whether there's
25:19
Speaker 3: a scripture or the Koran or wisdom writings from different
25:22
Speaker 3: religious traditions, And all of that together, I think is
25:25
Speaker 3: an expression of how faith shows up. Implicitly, it can
25:29
Speaker 3: show up as one of my favorite theologians. Francis of ASSISI,
25:34
Speaker 3: who Pope Francis currently was named after. He has a saying.
25:37
Speaker 3: It says, preach the Gospel at all times, preach the
25:41
Speaker 3: good news at all times, and sometimes speak, which is
25:46
Speaker 3: to say, like, implicitly, through our actions, we can proclaim
25:51
Speaker 3: good news, and then explicitly, through practices spiritual practices, we
25:56
Speaker 3: can give concrete expression of that which we been proclaiming.
26:01
Speaker 3: And so I have and we have young men and
26:03
Speaker 3: women and families all the time, whether they are part
26:06
Speaker 3: of a religious tradition or not, they welcome through our
26:10
Speaker 3: as I say, ministry of presence, their comfortability with us.
26:13
Speaker 3: They welcome us to pray with them, to invite them
26:16
Speaker 3: to some of our religious spaces or services that share
26:20
Speaker 3: food together, break bread together, read spiritual text together, sing
26:25
Speaker 3: songs together. Sometimes we engage in acts of healthy eating together.
26:30
Speaker 3: On and on. All these in our tradition are spiritual
26:34
Speaker 3: practices and they unlock spiritual power.
26:37
Speaker 2: We started this off with how you're feeling in the
26:40
Speaker 2: midst of all the things that are happening relative to injustice?
26:44
Speaker 2: You know, can faith be a bridge to rectify injustice?
26:48
Speaker 2: I feel like in talking about all this to battle
26:52
Speaker 2: that having faith and working the way you do cannot
26:57
Speaker 2: be the bridge.
26:58
Speaker 3: I certain believe faith has a huge, huge role to
27:00
Speaker 3: play in the bridging of divides in our society, for
27:05
Speaker 3: good or for bad. Faith has such a civic role
27:08
Speaker 3: in our society. It has for many years served a
27:13
Speaker 3: kind of meaning making, kind of framework for our society.
27:17
Speaker 3: I often say that the worst of our faith's traditions
27:22
Speaker 3: ought not be seen as the representation of faith in
27:27
Speaker 3: our society. I think that the opposite of bad faith
27:32
Speaker 3: is not no faith. The opposite of bad faith, I
27:36
Speaker 3: would say, is good faith. Right. And so the question
27:38
Speaker 3: for us is it can bridge so many differences and
27:42
Speaker 3: challenges as long as it's to be expression of good faith,
27:46
Speaker 3: as I say, of faithful faith. The ability to allow
27:51
Speaker 3: our practices, our beliefs, to appeal to our higher selves,
27:55
Speaker 3: to speak truth and love, to embrace the this enfranchise,
28:00
Speaker 3: to share with the hungry the clothes and nake it.
28:03
Speaker 3: All those callings are things that have to often be
28:08
Speaker 3: called out of us, because we are shaped in this
28:10
Speaker 3: country to be radically individual people who in times of
28:15
Speaker 3: tragedy we can have a temporary response of charity, but
28:19
Speaker 3: not fully appreciate that it is the day to day
28:23
Speaker 3: decisions we make that make tragedies less likely and make
28:27
Speaker 3: abundance more accessible. And so I do believe that faith
28:32
Speaker 3: has a huge role, but I acknowledge that it has
28:35
Speaker 3: to be good faith, it has to be faithful faith.
28:37
Speaker 3: I am an adversary for a kind of faith. I'm
28:41
Speaker 3: an opponent for the kind of faith that would be
28:45
Speaker 3: used to oppress individuals and harm individuals and steal from
28:50
Speaker 3: individuals and promote scarcity and hatred and malice. People do
28:55
Speaker 3: use faith to do that, just like people use their
28:58
Speaker 3: money to do that. Right, we don't throw the money.
29:00
Speaker 3: You just say, well, let's be more responsible with our money.
29:03
Speaker 3: And that's what I would say about faith. For me,
29:06
Speaker 3: for us, this is a act of faith. It is
29:10
Speaker 3: a collection of actions activities of faith. Because we believe
29:15
Speaker 3: our community members who are caught in violent cycles need
29:18
Speaker 3: someone to see them beyond the violence, and you need
29:23
Speaker 3: faith to do that or else anger, fear, and pain
29:25
Speaker 3: may win the day. And so I pray that expression
29:28
Speaker 3: of faith happens not just here in our region, but
29:32
Speaker 3: across the country. Dare I say it across the world.
29:34
Speaker 3: People of faith are not need to use bombs and
29:38
Speaker 3: weapons to live in harmony. People of faith out to
29:42
Speaker 3: use peace, love and abundance. And that's what I want
29:46
Speaker 3: our faith, my faith, the faith to be used for.
29:49
Speaker 2: The labels don't matter, So it's non denominational, right, it's
29:52
Speaker 2: pretty universal. How you harnes us to drive this faith
29:58
Speaker 2: for positive outcome, I would think.
30:00
Speaker 3: So I just offered humbly that sometimes we have a
30:04
Speaker 3: predilection to move too quickly to the ambiguous and the
30:08
Speaker 3: amorphous rather than the concrete. It's valuable to start somewhere,
30:12
Speaker 3: to put your feet firmly somewhere and be accountable to
30:15
Speaker 3: those practices, because the accountability to the practices that are
30:19
Speaker 3: specific are what turn you into another creature, if you will,
30:25
Speaker 3: a perhaps improved person. Like right now, I'm trying to
30:28
Speaker 3: get my bearings and be more healthy, and I'm trying
30:31
Speaker 3: to do it without a trend. And it's hard because
30:34
Speaker 3: when I hit my point of resistance, my body will
30:36
Speaker 3: just be like, Okay, I think you're supposed to do twenty,
30:39
Speaker 3: Well let's just do fifteen. You know, let's just do
30:40
Speaker 3: fifteen because your muscles ay tired. You're done enough. But
30:44
Speaker 3: that trader will be standing over me saying hey, keep pushing,
30:47
Speaker 3: because on the other side of twenty there's a breakthrough.
30:50
Speaker 3: And I think that the faith traditions that can be
30:55
Speaker 3: concrete for us can give us at least the anchor
30:58
Speaker 3: that does not cause us to be overwhelmed by idology,
31:02
Speaker 3: and whereby we just make faith into something that reflects us.
31:06
Speaker 3: I want to suggest that faith at its best is love.
31:11
Speaker 3: It's joy, it's peace, it's hope. Whatever religious tradition gets
31:16
Speaker 3: you closer to those I say, jump in with both feet,
31:19
Speaker 3: but take it seriously because it is the discipline of
31:22
Speaker 3: faith that gives you. I believe the transformation that is
31:26
Speaker 3: necessary for both yourself and those around you. We often
31:30
Speaker 3: say the first revolution is an internal one, so attend
31:34
Speaker 3: to that internal revolution. It may it lead to many
31:38
Speaker 3: expressions of transformation all around us.
31:41
Speaker 2: So let's talk about the future.
31:44
Speaker 3: I think we need leadership in twenty twenty five that
31:48
Speaker 3: takes seriously the threats that are before us, so we
31:50
Speaker 3: can take seriously the solutions needed. I'm hoping I can
31:55
Speaker 3: lead and Naiven tell you behind and get much more
31:58
Speaker 3: clear about what is required of me as a leader
32:02
Speaker 3: in this unique moment in history. And I think our
32:05
Speaker 3: country has to get serious about the internal threats to
32:08
Speaker 3: this democracy that are easily exacerbated by external threat threats
32:14
Speaker 3: to this democracy. And we need political leaders, we need
32:17
Speaker 3: faith leaders, we need government and business leaders. We need
32:20
Speaker 3: citizens who are serious about this stuff so we can
32:24
Speaker 3: we can leave a better world to our children. And
32:26
Speaker 3: right now I'm worried. I don't want to be a fool,
32:30
Speaker 3: you know. I want to be someone who's too serious
32:32
Speaker 3: about making sure that this thing is better because all
32:35
Speaker 3: this is happening on my watch. I turned fifty next
32:38
Speaker 3: year and I realized that, you know, for the last decade,
32:40
Speaker 3: like I'm supposed to be a leader, and this is
32:42
Speaker 3: all happening on my watch. I feel terrible about that.
32:44
Speaker 3: I feel some responsibility about that, you know, So I
32:47
Speaker 3: don't want to just take that very lightly.
32:50
Speaker 2: Well, you're going to do a lot of the same things,
32:52
Speaker 2: just with more focus, more perseverance that I can buy. Yeah,
32:57
Speaker 2: we've talked a lot in my firm about AI, right,
33:01
Speaker 2: you know, the issues of AI. Do you envision AI
33:05
Speaker 2: impacting access to religion or your profession? If AI could
33:11
Speaker 2: develop a meaningful sermon, what would that mean to you?
33:15
Speaker 3: I mean, I have colleagues and friends who use AI
33:19
Speaker 3: for sermon writing and research. I want to believe that
33:24
Speaker 3: my sermon prep would be better than AI, that I
33:27
Speaker 3: bring a unique spirit and intuitiveness that cannot be replicated
33:33
Speaker 3: by artificial intelligence. But I definitely think that AI has
33:38
Speaker 3: already impacted AI technically. Are the algorithms in our social
33:41
Speaker 3: media we feed chad GPT is a help of folks
33:45
Speaker 3: write books and all kinds of things. So if it's
33:47
Speaker 3: had an implicit, maybe even an explicit impact, the question
33:51
Speaker 3: is not if it will have an impact. My question
33:54
Speaker 3: is what will AI do to our souls, to our spirit,
33:58
Speaker 3: the parts of us that are not seen. I think
34:01
Speaker 3: one of the challenges we have is we are increasingly
34:04
Speaker 3: becoming a technocratic society, and Doctor King warned against this,
34:09
Speaker 3: and I think we must not induce ourselves to our outputs.
34:15
Speaker 3: I think we have to remind ourselves that we are
34:17
Speaker 3: uniquely situated among all created things, with something that cannot
34:23
Speaker 3: be boiled down to an output. We talked about faith earlier,
34:27
Speaker 3: we talked about human resilience, earlier, we talked about the
34:31
Speaker 3: ability to connect emotionally with folks. I think that we
34:35
Speaker 3: have to remind ourselves consistently these things like AI have
34:39
Speaker 3: to be seen as tools, but not replaceable of that
34:43
Speaker 3: which is ineffable, that which cannot be created with our
34:47
Speaker 3: human hands. So I hope that it's a tool and
34:50
Speaker 3: not a cheap replacement for sure, for religion, faith, for
34:54
Speaker 3: all things.
34:54
Speaker 2: Well, that's all. I think a lot of people are
34:56
Speaker 2: freaked out about it. I think one of the many
34:59
Speaker 2: things we're freaking out about. But you said, gotta stop
35:02
Speaker 2: freaking out, you gotta focus, you gotta get shit done,
35:04
Speaker 2: and you got to solve the problem seriously, And that's
35:08
Speaker 2: you know. I do think like you said, it's a tool.
35:11
Speaker 2: It's a tool to help. But I kind of agree
35:13
Speaker 2: with that. Look I always, and on a little bit
35:16
Speaker 2: of a lighter note, I like to get some personal
35:19
Speaker 2: stuff out. So I like to always ask, what's your
35:21
Speaker 2: guilty pleasure?
35:23
Speaker 3: So my guilty pleasure is going into the all the
35:27
Speaker 3: sports games. I can go to forty nine Ers, the Warriors,
35:31
Speaker 3: spurgeonal seats that I can't afford.
35:34
Speaker 2: All right, now we're putting you on a desert island. Now,
35:37
Speaker 2: what album would you keep if you can only keep one?
35:40
Speaker 3: Earth Wind and Fire. I was just playing that, do
35:45
Speaker 3: you remember September? I was just playing that for my
35:48
Speaker 3: sermon on Sunday, so it's at the top of my
35:50
Speaker 3: Earth with a fire would definitely be with me on They.
35:54
Speaker 2: Are the best.
35:55
Speaker 3: You're right, I love them.
35:57
Speaker 2: They're so good for me, it's all he is grateful
36:00
Speaker 2: that all the time. But I love my earth, wind
36:02
Speaker 2: and fire. All right, Well, thanks for your time today.
36:05
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me Jim and.
36:07
Speaker 2: Being so real honest. Keep up the great work you're doing.
36:11
Speaker 2: I mean, that's some faith I got faith in you.
36:16
Speaker 3: Love you brother.
36:17
Speaker 2: Good to be iame here. Hey everyone, thanks for listening
36:24
Speaker 2: in today.
36:25
Speaker 4: The Get Real with the Chairman podcast is a production
36:28
Speaker 4: of Real Chemistry.
36:29
Speaker 2: I want to thank my team, led by.
36:31
Speaker 4: Executive producer Kate Moss, audio engineer Nick Murphy, and composer
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Speaker 4: Matt Lipkins, and special thanks to Danielle Clark Brown and
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Speaker 4: the amazing team of Real Chemistry. If you like what
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Speaker 4: you're hear, don't forget to review our podcast on Apple, Spotify,
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Speaker 4: or wherever you listen. Also, please subscribe to the podcast
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Speaker 4: so you don't miss an episode. Again, thanks for listening
36:53
Speaker 4: and we'll see you on the road.
37:00
Speaker 3: H