Latest / Finding God at Work / 6: Loving Your City (Zack Wilson of LINK Kalamazoo)

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6: Loving Your City (Zack Wilson of LINK Kalamazoo) · Finding God at Work

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  (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
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  This is Finding God at Work.
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  Just a reminder that Finding God at Work isn't just a podcast.
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  It's also an online course.
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  Check it out at findinggodatwork.org.
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  Our current series is Meaningful Work, Calling, Formation, Service, and Love.
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  And today we have a special guest with us, Zack Wilson.
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  He works in IT and the healthcare industry.
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  And he is also one of the founding members of a group called Link Kalamazoo.
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  He's gonna tell a little bit of that story on today's podcast.
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  And Zach and I have known each other for
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  almost 30 years since we went to the same school growing up.
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  So five year old Chris and
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  Zach were hanging around playing soccer at some point probably.
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  But Zach, it's so great to have you here.
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  Thanks for joining us.
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  Thanks for having me here, Chris.
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  I'm excited to tell everybody about Link Kalamazoo.
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  Awesome.
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  So before we dig in, I usually just like asking the question,
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  what helps you find God at work?
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  What helps you welcome God's presence on a normal work day?
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  Yeah, on a typical work day, I'd say the main thing is actually,
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  from our second grade class, we memorized Colossians 323, and
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  whatever you do, working it with all your heart.
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  It's working for the Lord and not for men.
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  Keeping that in mind can really get you through those tough moments when maybe
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  you're not happy with the work that you need to do or under stress.
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  Just remembering that I'm doing all this for the Lord and
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  it represents the Lord to the people around me.
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  Cuz many of my co-workers know that I'm a Christian, so
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  the attitude that I bring into the work day is incredibly important.
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  Yeah, that's great.
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  I love that little plug for just keeping a verse with you.
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  Memorization doesn't have to be this big complicated thing.
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  Yeah.
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  And how that can renew your focus.
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  I also, I remember in second grade, it was Mrs.
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  Mitchell, and her theme for the year was frogs.
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  That's exactly how I remember that.
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  She had lots of frogs, yes.
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  Green frogs, rainforest frogs.
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  Fully rely on God.
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  Yeah, and it was an acronym.
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  Yeah, fully rely on God.
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  It was like a cheesy evangelical, but hey, we still remember it.
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  So-
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  Crazy, it's hard to remember a lot of things in a lot of verses, but
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  that one is locked in for life.
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  Yeah, yeah, well, that's beautiful.
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  So I wanna spend most of our time talking about Link Kalamazoo.
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  In this series, we're talking about calling formation service and love.
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  And part of service, part of how we love our neighbors,
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  is promoting the common good.
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  Promoting the flourishing of the whole community that we're in.
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  And Link Kalamazoo really does have that focus of the whole city of Kalamazoo,
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  the whole community.
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  So I would just love to hear, how did you first kinda find your way into thinking
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  about something like this for the city of Kalamazoo?
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  Yeah, that's gonna be a bit of a long-winded story, but-
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  That's great.
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  We'll stick with me on it.
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  So I moved to Kalamazoo in 2020, in March of 2020, actually.
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  And it's right when the pandemic started.
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  So I didn't really know anyone here.
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  I couldn't go to church, cuz all the churches were shut down.
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  So I spent a lot of time just walking around town, going to parks, and
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  praying over Kalamazoo, protecting us from COVID and things like that.
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  And as I just prayed, walking around the city,
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  I started to really feel God's heart for Kalamazoo.
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  And why couldn't something great happen here?
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  Why couldn't we see God's presence break through in a unique way in Kalamazoo?
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  And it just really marinated over the course of probably six months,
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  while I didn't really have any friends or community here.
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  And then in summer of 2021, I was just downtown.
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  There's food truck Fridays, they call them, and I was there.
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  This one guy just commented on the jersey that I was wearing, and
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  it sparked a conversation and talked with him for a little bit.
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  Told him I recently moved to Kalamazoo and that I love it here.
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  And he was really intrigued, wanted to know why I loved it.
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  Coming from Chicago and Grand Rapids, why did I like small town Kalamazoo?
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  And I just explained a few things to him and sparked a friendship,
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  which I was not really expecting from that conversation.
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  But we connected, shared information.
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  I found out later that that man was the mayor of Kalamazoo for 12 years.
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  And so I didn't expect any sort of follow up or anything.
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  But he did, the next day, invited me to an event that was going on downtown.
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  And we built a friendship.
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  His name's Bobby.
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  He's a great friend of mine and huge supporter of Link Kalamazoo.
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  He's really the one that started it all.
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  He's connected to everybody in the community.
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  So I'll skip over a few things.
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  We did some trial runs, basically, but they didn't become consistent until 2024.
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  And he brought a handful of young professionals together to say,
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  we need to start something for the young people in Kalamazoo,
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  because we need people to stay here.
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  We want people to see that their future is in Kalamazoo.
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  We met over a span of many months and strategized, what do we really need?
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  What's the aim of all of this?
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  And we boiled it down to a few different circles of questions
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  that people are trying to answer for themselves.
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  So for a lot of college students and young professionals, it's, where's my future?
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  And we want people to think that their future can be here in Kalamazoo.
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  Same thing is, which is crucially important, is where are my people?
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  And then the last is, how can I make an impact in the community?
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  And so we really, we boiled it down to those things and said,
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  how do we create a space where those questions are being answered for people?
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  Where they can see their future can be here in Kalamazoo.
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  There's unique events going on.
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  There's plenty of job opportunities.
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  There's just, there's like great people that you can meet.
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  And then lastly, making an impact in the community.
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  One of the advantages we have being a smaller city, for those listening,
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  it's Kalamazoo itself is 75,000 people.
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  And then the Metro is about 250,000.
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  And the difference you can make here is you can actually join a board of a non-profit
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  or be on a city commission position with the city.
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  And it's less competitive for those things.
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  You can actually find those opportunities at a young age.
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  Like for myself, I serve on our city's planning commission
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  as a result of learning all this stuff.
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  So anyway, the analogy we use is like, Kalamazoo is like a speedboat,
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  whereas a place like Chicago would be a cruise ship.
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  Whereas we can make a lot of change and adapt pretty quickly
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  as a community because we're smaller.
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  So let's use that to our advantage.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  I love that vision of the speedboat.
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  Like a smaller city is a more nimble city.
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  There's more opportunity for younger people to step into roles of influence.
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  And it sounds like Link has brought a lot of those younger people together.
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  What have your gatherings looked like?
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  Like what is a Link event and who comes to it?
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  Yeah.
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  And I'll also, I realized I never finished answering the how it started.
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  So I'll do that too.
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  So we formally started in July of 2024.
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  We had no money, no sponsor, no backer.
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  So we paid for this out of our own pockets
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  and bought Costco burgers and hot dogs and really basic food
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  and just invited everybody we knew, sent out a mass email,
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  texted friends, said, hey, meet at this place and we'll hang out.
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  And that first night we had at least 60 people
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  just show up, hang out, build connections, new people meeting each other
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  and started to formalize over time.
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  So now we're a little over a year in
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  and we regularly have between 100 and 150 people show up to our events.
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  We have an email list of about a thousand people that we email out each time.
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  As for what a typical event looks like,
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  we usually will have food and drinks,
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  we'll be in a unique location downtown.
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  So we want to show people that there's spaces
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  that they might not be aware of in downtown Kalamazoo, the heart of our city.
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  And we will make it a unique feel.
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  So for example, this upcoming Thursday, actually,
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  we are turning a like alley into a beer garden
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  and we will have turf, string lights, a beer vendor,
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  and then we'll have some food trucks that we'll put in the alley as well.
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  We'll have a live artist playing.
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  So we bring all these things to make it a unique experience.
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  And then we always have what we call speed networking.
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  And it's just quick questions that are icebreaker kind of questions.
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  We have different games or ways for people
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  to interact with new people each time as they do those.
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  So there's actually been people have brought up
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  how they've built new friendships because of this.
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  And it's actually people's favorite part of the events,
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  which I find comical just because I can think of those things.
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  It's like, oh, they're making us do this thing.
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  But yeah, scripted icebreakers, et cetera.
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  Yeah, yeah, I really value it.
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  And then the final part is really the purpose, right?
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  Why are we coming together?
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  So we'll have a different speaker or activity that we do together.
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  So for this next event, we're having our city commission candidates
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  come and actually share what they see for the future of Kalamazoo.
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  So people are going to be voting in November
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  for who they want on the city commission.
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  It's really important for our young professionals to be aware of
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  what are these different candidates about?
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  Because we have 20 of them.
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  And so we want to build that closeness
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  where you can actually interact with these people and ask them questions
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  because they're going to help direct the future of Kalamazoo as well.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  Thinking about the awkwardness of the icebreakers, maybe, but people loving it.
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  It feels like that's that people piece, right?
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  Finding your people.
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  And that's so huge when you're getting started in a community or in a career.
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  I could definitely see how that would be people's takeaway.
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  But those other pieces, too, that kind of like Kalamazoo can be my place.
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  Thinking about my future is having a place here.
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  And then the sense of purpose.
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  How can I make an impact?
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  What are you most excited about in terms of that impact piece?
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  And you can draw on your planning commission experience, too, if that's helpful.
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  But looking at Kalamazoo in the next few years, what are you most excited about?
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  There's a lot of different things.
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  So one is that seeing these different organizations that all care about Kalamazoo
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  work together for the overall good is something that has come out of link.
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  It's intentional in our name that we're constantly working with these different
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  organizations in the community to make something bigger than we ever thought possible happen.
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  For example, actually, right now we're in the middle of what we're calling 269 week.
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  That's the area code for Kalamazoo and surrounding cities.
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  And we have partnered with several different organizations in the community and businesses
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  to actually throw over a week's worth of events for the city.
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  And we've created a separate social media page that's communicating out like the 15
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  different things that are going on this week and ways that people can get involved.
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  So common critique we hear about Kalamazoo is nothing's happening.
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  So we worked with all these different people that are doing things.
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  And we made a comprehensive list for people to see this is what's going on.
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  Let's be a part of it.
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  So I'm really excited to see where that goes from here because we're going to have that
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  be an annual festival for celebrating Kalamazoo and coming together as a community.
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  That's like one thing I'm really excited to see.
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  I'm excited to see link continue to grow.
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  We have a vision to see over 1,000 people at our events because we estimate there's
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  about 20,000 people that might fit in our bucket of young professional in the area.
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  So we're saying 1,000 should not be too crazy of a target for people to be connecting.
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  And the last thing I'm really excited to see though is we have our city's 10 years
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  master plan coming up.
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  And already as young professionals, we've been able to meet with the group that creates
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  that 10-year master plan.
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  And we've given our feedback as young professionals by doing a brainstorming session with them
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  and providing a curated list of all that feedback.
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  So now that I'm on our city's planning commission, I'll be voting on that 10-year plan as someone
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  who's representing young professionals.
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  So we're really just at the beginning point.
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  It's well-timed to actually see the things that we want to see in the city will start
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  to happen over the next 10 years.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  I bet there's a lot of municipalities in the nation, like similar like small-sized cities
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  that wish they had a link for their city, you know, that wish they had that kind of
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  engaged young professionals, not just thinking about themselves, but thinking about the
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  city and the city long-term and how to make it what it's meant to be.
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  That's really inspiring.
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  Maybe listeners on this podcast will be inspired to start something like this in their city
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  if it doesn't exist.
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  It doesn't take much to make a difference, too.
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  I mean, you guys had $0 in 2024 and a vision, and all of this has happened since then.
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  Right.
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  That's incredible.
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  One final question.
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  So LINC itself is not like an explicitly Christian organization, but obviously your faith is
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  part of how you think about contributing to the common good.
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  How would you talk about that relationship?
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  How does your faith intersect with the work that you're doing with LINC, with the Planning
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  Commission, and in other ways?
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  As I mentioned earlier, when I was prayer walking around Kalamazoo, I couldn't help
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  but feel God's passion for the city.
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  I've always been minded that way of wanting to transform communities, and I think it comes
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  from the Great Commission.
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  The first word of that is to go.
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  And when I get to go to LINC in our events, I'm in a group of people that I would not
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  see at the church in my week-to-week basis.
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  It looks very different from any category you want to pick as far as race, political
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  views, economic status, priorities and values in life.
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  It's a whole different group of people that I get to connect with, and that's the example
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  I see Jesus setting when He is ministering to people on the earth.
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  He's connecting with people very different than Himself, and He's meeting everyone where
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  they're at.
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  So for me, it's always exciting to meet the many different people that come to LINC,
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  and I learn a lot from them and from their life experiences as well.
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  Personally, I just think that Christians should be the most passionate people on earth about
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  transforming their communities, because we believe people are inherently valuable and
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  created by God, and we have purpose and meaning when we get to participate in God's redemptive
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  plan.
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  So I don't see how our communities are not part of that and wanting to make them a place
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  of thriving and flourishing.
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  Amen.
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  Amen.
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  Well, I wish we could keep talking, but I think we'd better wrap up.
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  We're trying to keep our commute-length podcast to a commute length.
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  But Zach, would you be willing to just close in prayer for our listeners, maybe anybody
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  who's been inspired to think about their city, just hearing this story, and for all of us
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  that we would lean into what God's calling us to?
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  Absolutely, I'd love to.
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  Jesus, we just welcome Your presence into this place, wherever everyone is at right
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  now as they're commuting to and from work, or working out in the gym, or wherever they
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  might be right now.
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  God, I pray that You would just speak to people's hearts of what You've created them
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  to do.
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  I know that every single one of us is created to make an impact in some way, and I pray
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  that You would give people hope and drive, because it doesn't take much to make a big
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  difference, and that they can start with what they have in their hands.
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  So God, I thank You for just the fact that You are still moving today.
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  You want to move through people, and all You're looking for is someone to say yes.
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  So I pray for people on this call that are just open-handed to You and want to serve
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  You and to serve the people that You've put them around.
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  God, I pray You would place ideas into their minds to bless their communities, and I pray
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  all this in Your name.
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  Amen.