A Problem Made for the Church to Solve - Mark Atkinson

00:01 - Speaker 1
My whole talk was about the fact that sometimes we get too used to the brokenness of this world that we stop seeking the wholeness of heaven, and maybe it's not just about what we would usually desire, but it's about the fact that heaven actually has the right answers for us and that the kingdom of heaven is actually anti-racist, right. The kingdom of heaven right. God himself created the differences in this tapestry, so he wants it to all work together in a beautiful manner, and so the best way that we can do that is by joining with heaven to bring heaven to earth. Hi, my name is Mark Atkinson. I'm associate minister at the Church of God of East New York and I'm also the New York City area director for Care Portal in New York City. And this also the New York City Area Director for Care Portal, new York City, and this is my Faithfully Story.

00:48 - Speaker 2
Welcome to Faithfully Stories, the podcast that brings you inspiring tales from conversations with church leaders as they navigate the peaks and valleys of their faith journeys through their ministry work and everyday life. Join us as we delve into their challenges, moments of encouragement and answered prayers. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. Learn more at faithlyco. Get ready to be uplifted and inspired as we unveil the heart of faith through stories from the front lines of ministry. On the Faithly Stories podcast.

01:30 - Speaker 3
Could you tell me how your faith journey started?

01:32 - Speaker 1
Absolutely. I actually came to faith at a Christian school. So I went to what is now called Valley Stream Christian Academy. It's a school that was created by a church called Bethlehem Assemblies of God out called Valley Stream Christian Academy. It's a school that was created by a church called Bethlehem Assemblies of God out in Valley Stream, long Island, and I came to faith because I struggled with suicidal tendencies and ideation, self-harm and abysmal self-worth, and also was made fun of a lot by other kids and really struggled in that regard, dealt with a lot of self-hate, and there was a moment in my life where I really was contemplating taking my own life.

02:19
And so there was a chapel upstairs in the school, and so the classes were downstairs, the chapel was upstairs, and so I would just go to the chapel to pray.

02:31
I just go up there and and and sit there and say God like, if you could, if you could save me from this and what I'm currently experiencing, I'll serve you for the rest of my life, for the rest of my life.

02:46
And there was a moment, there was a moment that I had, I believe, with the Holy Spirit, where he where you know, I was up there for a few weeks just wouldn't eat lunch, would just go up there and sit there. And it's not like I started praying right away, but I started saying, you know, like if I could do something, maybe prayer helps. And that's when I started praying that prayer. And afterwards I remember there was a moment when I was sitting up there and it just felt like somebody hugged me and if I could give a tangible expression to how peace feels, it felt like that hug and that's when I gave my life to the Lord. And so I tell people you know, I didn't get saved because I was afraid of hell, or I didn't get saved because I necessarily wanted a new life. I got saved because God gives purpose and that's what saved my life.

03:39 - Speaker 3
I call it the swaddle.

03:41 - Speaker 1
You know how you swallow the baby yeah.

03:44 - Speaker 2
So what were?

03:44 - Speaker 3
you going through. That made you think those things and believe things about yourself.

03:50 - Speaker 1
Yeah. So I think there was a lot. I think some of it was racial. I grew up in East New York, brooklyn, and then we had to move to Long Island for a better life. Honestly, east New York was just known as one of the roughest neighborhoods in the whole country not even just in New York City, but in the whole country and so we knew that. The statistics at that time of a young Black man growing up in that neighborhood was you either end up dead or in jail, and my mom didn't want those things for me, so she moved us to Long Island, scraped together every penny she had in order to do that, and when she moved us to Long Island, I started going to a Christian school in the suburbs, as I just spoke to you about.

04:38
But because I was young, I couldn't understand the history of neighborhoods or municipalities or townships and how that works, right. And so I'm seeing where I grew up, which is really a dilapidated neighborhood in East New York, and then I'm going to school in this place that you know is really nice and my friend's parents are picking them up in really really nice cars, right. And so I couldn't I couldn't rectify for myself without the historical knowledge of what is going on, what is making this so different, right? And so, unfortunately, because I didn't have that historical context of gerrymandering or redlining or the war on drugs, right, because I didn't understand any of those things, I just, you know, started to say to myself well, maybe people that look like me just can't handle good things, maybe we just can't have good things.

05:33
And it was a struggle. It caused this self-hate inside that I don't believe God wanted me to have, right, and I think it was that also, coupled with the fact that, you know, I was made fun of a lot by other kids and it destroyed my self-confidence and my self-esteem, right, and so it just made me not want to be here anymore. I actually thought the world would be better off without Mark Atkinson in it, and that if I wasn't here, people wouldn't notice, and so I think that was what really brought me to that point. Do you have siblings? I have half siblings that live in Jamaica, older siblings from my father, and so, yeah, they live in Jamaica and I get to see them every now and then. Did you grow up with them? I didn't. I grew up as an only child.

06:34 - Speaker 3
So that must have been tough being bullied and no one to go to.

06:37 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and it's tough because you go to your parents and as a preteen teenager, you don't really. You go to your parents and, um, you know, as a preteen teenager, you don't really want to go to your parents too much because you know they're, they're supposed to love you, right, like they're supposed to say the good things to you, right, but you're, you're kind of looking for somebody outside of your parents, somebody outside of your nuclear family, to really speak into your life, to really say that, no, you're worth it, you belong here, right, you're loved and accepted and you belong, right. What most human beings desire to hear, and so, outside of that nuclear family, looking for that message, not being able to hear it, could be pretty damaging for a young person.

07:21 - Speaker 3
So, after that moment of prayer, how did you start rebuilding your identity and worth?

07:26 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I just threw myself into trying to learn as much about God as I could, right, like I had just had this experience with this God that I, you know, I went to church my whole life and I would always say I did the dance to get the hug right, like it wasn't that it was a personal faith to me, but it was how I grew up. It was culture, if you will right, and so I grew up in the spiritual culture, the spiritual climate, but I didn't really have a relationship with God for myself until this moment. And, yeah, I just started to really engage in reading my Bible and listening to worship music and I actually preached my first sermon about three or four weeks later, which was a crazy time. We were having a youth meeting at my church and the youth director at that time he said that he felt like the Lord was just saying, and impressed on his heart, that I should do sort of like a mini sermonette before the main preacher came up. And I did, and that's how I recognized and realized that the Lord had also called me to preaching and leadership.

08:39
And so it was an interesting thing because I went from sort of like the school pariah to parents at the school telling me hey, we've been praying for positive peer pressure and we believe that's what you are. You're the positive peer pressure our kids needed, and so it's. It was an. It was an interesting switch, but I think that's what happens when God puts purpose into your life, when God builds you with this purpose and expresses it to you. Miles Monroe has this quote where he says there was something that God needed done, that made you necessary, and it's just a really, it's a really paradigmatic moment when each person realizes why they're necessary, and I think that's what changed for me.

09:27 - Speaker 3
So was preaching always part of your growth as a Christian throughout your high school and junior high school years.

09:35 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I guess it was. I was sort of known as, like, the young preacher at that time. I preached my first sermon when I was 14. And so it was, and it was a way for me to really connect with God. I think preaching is a grace for me, because it always keeps me coming back to God, it always keeps me reliant upon God. But, yeah, I started to preach more and more often, which is cool and started to become more passionate about things in the community as well as I went on to college and as I grew older as well.

10:19 - Speaker 3
So how did all those experiences kind of lead you to where you were?

10:23 - Speaker 1
heading? Yeah, that's a good question. So I went to college, went to Hofstra University, and while I was at Hofstra University I met someone who I call my fairy godmother. Her name's Dr Lisa Merrill, and she's one of those people that do what I call the second look. Right, sometimes you see something and then you thought you, you thought you saw more, and so you look again. She, she did that with me, right? She, she gave me that second glance, that second look, and she saw more in me than I saw myself.

10:56
And so I was taking one of her classes and she asked me if I wanted to be one of her peer teachers, and so I basically peer taught for her like five or seven times while I was in college. She would let me teach some of her college classes. It was actually pretty amazing and she voluntold me for one of these, one of her classes that was coming up. It's called Democracy and Performance, right, right, and basically the, the, the whole crux of the class was every single one of the students would have to do this culminating performance at the end of the semester. But they all had to be, they all had to be shaped around an issue that was prevalent in the past that is still prevalent today, right. And so everybody's choosing these different people. Somebody chose Woodrow Wilson, somebody chose Ida B Wells right, there are all these different people that are being chosen, and so I'm trying to figure out who I'm going to be, and she chooses for me.

12:02
She chooses someone named James Weldon Johnson, and for those who don't know who James Weldon Johnson is, he's called the Dr Martin Luther King Jr before Dr Martin Luther King Jr. So this man did it all. He was a songwriter, a poet, field secretary for the NAACP, a teacher, a principal. He was the first Black man to pass the bar in the state of Florida. He pretty much did it all. Right, activist, you name it. But I think the thing he held most closely in all of his identity was that he was a man of faith, right, and he was a man of faith that grew up in the Jim Crow South, and in that time we know that there were tons of racial tension and racial violence going on. And so she chooses this script and she sort of writes it with me, and in this script James Weldon Johnson actually comes across in the Jim Crow South, a Black man being burned alive at the stake, and he's hiding in bushes because he doesn't want to be caught himself. And he starts to have this dialogue in his mind where he says how could a nation that calls itself the beacon of democracy to the world openly burn its citizens alive, right? And so he's having this discussion, and he ends this discussion in his own mind with himself saying if the Constitution of the United States of America can't wrap its strong arms of protection around the weakest and the humblest of its citizens as it does around the strongest and the proudest, which is also known as the National Black Anthem.

13:52
And I had to get up and perform this over and over and over and over and over again in something called a Chautauqua performance. So a Chautauqua performance is when you are the character as soon as you put on the costume. You are the character until you take it off, and so when people come up to you throughout the day, even in between performances, you are still James Weldon Johnson, and so you need to know that character inside and outside enough to be able to say and do what they would do as they reacted to questions or to different things that are happening in their environment. And so, as I'm performing this over and over again, danny, it just felt like God broke something in me, that there was this self-hate that he just broke. I literally felt something breaking in me as I'm performing it over and over, breaking in me as I'm performing it over and over.

14:53
And I believe what God broke in me was this self hate or this self deprecation for how he created me.

14:57
He chose the skin I'm in, he chose how he wrapped me. He created me in his image when he created me as a black man, and I think one of the beautiful parts was that I feel like it also connected me to this rich ancestry that we have in this country of people of faith who were freedom fighters, who fought for a more just society for everyone, not just because they believed in a just society, but that they believed in the kingdom of heaven and that the kingdom of heaven is the most just society and that's why they fought for it. And so it's almost like God connected me to that in those moments and I walked away and I told Dr Merrill what had happened and she smiled and she quoted the Reverend Jesse Jackson to me and she said great, each one teach one. She's like I want you to go and do for other people what you've experienced here on this stage, and so that's how I kind of got involved and engaged in my professional career.

16:06 - Speaker 3
I love that you said that, because one of my biggest struggles, especially with the BLM movement and the George Floyd issue with COVID, is that I saw a lot of Christians rail against social injustices and whatnot, but I never heard them at least preach it under the umbrella of kingdom justice. Do you know what I mean?

16:26
Justice for all unity of kingdom justice. You know what I mean justice for all unity, um, because it's it's always tribal right and I feel like that's just the world's influence of trying to even make issues that we want to fight for as christians to create these dividing lines rather than like no, we have an open door policy and we want conversation and want change, because no one should be oppressed based on, like how you look, where you grow up, so for you, like how do you reconcile that in such a tribal climate?

16:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, there is a lot of tribalism in our climate, that is right, and the fact of the matter is this when we hear a picture of what heaven looks like, it's that every tribe and every tongue together worships right. And so that means that, like we know that every single human being, their life matters, their experience matters, their voice matters, and so one of the things that we do and that we can do in activism, especially kingdom activism, is making sure that we center what the kingdom of heaven would want on earth right that there is this influence that we know comes directly from God. The reason why God cares so much about society and so much about justice and so much about laws is because he himself is a king. He runs a government right, and he is a just king, and so he runs it in the best way for all people and all parties involved. And what we are trying to do is we are trying to take that heavenly influence and bring it to earth right. That's why I say thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, not ours, not our utopia, but God's. And so, actually, a quick story that I could share, if you will.

18:14
I actually met Reverend Adam Durso, actually during one of those moments, with George Floyd and BLM when that was happening. And there's this great organization in the city called Pray March Act that was bringing churches together, led by James Roberson out of the Bridge Church, who was bringing organizations together in order to say, hey, we don't want the church to be on the backside of this. Right, there is a reckoning happening in our country and our voices need to be loud so that we can influence the culture with the, with the culture of heaven. Right and um, we're there, and one of my best friends his name is tim jean he's he's helping to organize one of these prayerful protests. They were called in long island and he asked me to be one of the speakers at them. Um, and so, unbeknownst to me, reverend Adam Durso was also going to be there, and if anyone knows Reverend and Pastor Adam Durso, he is one of the most rousing and magnetic people that you could ever meet, and so he gets up to pray and he prays this really, really rousing prayer that really moves everyone.

19:27
At this point in the protest and at this point the protest, and at this point we are actually on the steps of Nassau County Supreme Court, and one of the things that I didn't know at that moment was that he had said in the car to his wife I think I'm supposed to pray the Lord's Prayer when I go up there, right, he gets up there, he prays this prayer, but he says he feels like something was leading him not to pray that prayer. And that's, that's just the weirdest thing, right? Why would the Lord lead you not to pray the Lord's prayer? Well, the reason why is because I was coming up right behind him to speak and my whole talk was about the Lord's prayer, about the Lord's Prayer.

20:11
Right, my whole talk was about the fact that sometimes we get too used to the brokenness of this world, that we stop seeking the wholeness of heaven. Right, and maybe it's not just about what we would usually want, or maybe it's not just about what we would usually desire, but it's about the fact that heaven actually has the right answers for us and that the kingdom of heaven is actually anti-racist. Right, the kingdom of heaven, right, god himself created, right the differences in this tapestry, and so he wants it to all work together in a beautiful manner. And so the best way that we can do that is by joining with heaven to bring heaven to earth right, and so that's sort of a moment that literally speaks to the question that you just said.

20:58 - Speaker 3
Yeah, one pastor says there's only one race, it's called the human race right. And so the color of our skin, and it's just cultural right and just different expressions of who we are. But at the end of the day we're all the image of God, right?

21:10 - Speaker 1
So that always stuck with me.

21:12
Yeah, and I love the fact that God is so big, right, that there is no one shade or no one purpose that any one human could have.

21:25
Right, like that could describe all that God is. And so I love sort of that depiction of, hey, there's only one race, the human race, but there are all these different shades because there are so many different facets to God and he wants to show the goodness of his mercy and show the diversity even of his heart in the way that he created us. I even think about it in terms of purpose. Right, all of us have different purposes, but they all lead up to this one God who loves us and wants to see this world redeemed, because his heart is so big that not any one of us could have all of his heart, so he almost breaks it up in little pieces and gives it to all of us, right, and I think it's even the same in culture, it's even the same in shades and hues, right, that all of these are pieces of the tapestry that God really has for us. I love that.

22:16 - Speaker 3
Yeah, I read in a book without diversity there's no harmony, and I was like dang, that's so good Because music's a big part of my life, yeah, so how did all of that lead you to lead NYC?

22:30 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so actually I was an educator at the time. So if I pick up the story from Dr Merrill, she told me each one teach one. I was getting a degree in speech communication with a minor in anthropology and sociology and I was like, huh, what do I do with that? Right? So I went into I actually went into teaching with that right. So I went into. I actually went into teaching.

22:51
I started teaching in Brownsville, brooklyn, which is a place that's much, very similar to East New York Brooklyn, right In the background of it, and my goal was to put the paint where it ain't right. My goal was to be the equity that's often divested from communities that need it most. So I wanted to put myself back into the equation in this community and so I was an educator for almost 10 years and it was amazing, right Like started as a teacher in residence, became a special educator, became the eighth grade history teacher, became the chair of the history department and then was a principal in residence. And that is the moment at which I met Pastor Adam Durso and when we met at the protest, he actually hit me up and he's like I never hit people up, people hit me up, but he hit me up and he just said hey, man, like you did really well and we have this position open at Lead NYC. I would love if you could come and join us here. To which I said hey, that sounds like a great opportunity. You're talking about collective impact, and that's my jam. However, there are too many, too many people that leave my babies and leave our kids in Brownsville, and I just can't be one of them, and so I can't say to my kids hey, I'm leaving you to go make your lives better. I need to see this, I need to literally see this year through with them. I can't leave them before that year is up.

24:25
And so he considered that and he came back, and I really credit him and I'm grateful to him because he came back and he said all right, we're gonna leave this position as the Neighborhoods Director at LeadNYC open for you for a year and I just need you to have some touch points with us throughout this year. But after this year, I want you to come and work with us, because we wanna do collective impact across the whole city to make sure that the government, to make sure the private sector, to make sure the nonprofit sector and also the church sector are working together in order to provide the best outcomes that we can for neighborhoods. And I said, sign me up. I loved it, and so I finished my job at the school and finished well, and one of the things that I started to notice in those last and final years at the school was that sometimes it felt like we had failed the kids before they even sat in our classrooms.

25:23
Right, as an eighth grade history teacher, if I have a child coming into my class at a third grade reading level, even if I get you up three or four reading levels, which we did in a year, you're still not prepared to leave my classroom and go to high school. And so there was this hunger and desire in me to say, man, like, what could we do to get further upstream? And I started to hear this quote over and over by the late Reverend Desmond Tutu, where he said at some point instead of just pulling people out of the river, you need to go upstream and figure out who's throwing them in in the first place. Right, that, instead of just dealing with symptoms of society, we need to get to the roots of these issues. And it was something that led me into this work with LeadNYC into this collective impact work that we started doing. That it was deeply, deeply formative.

26:19 - Speaker 3
So what were you doing specifically at LeadNYC?

26:21 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so at LeadNYC, I was the neighborhoods director, and so collective impact for anyone who's listening, basically is this process and term that was coined by Stanford School of Innovation and Research, which basically is asking the question how do we do ground up systems, change in a neighborhood that's good for everyone? Right, and so they came across these different tenets. Right, and some of the tenets are you need to have a shared vision, you need to have common metrics, you need to have continuous communication, you also need to have a backbone organization that helps foster all of that together. And then we added another one on, which is that you need to have uniting prayer as well. And so, basically, what we were doing was we were working with some of the 10 most struggling neighborhoods in the New York City metro area to build these coalitions of the willing to build these coalitions of collective impact. And we worked with amazing people like David Bidel in Urban Hope in Staten Island, or Justin Adore with Redeemer East Harlem in East Harlem, or Al Santino and Peter Rhee in Washington Heights.

27:40
Right, we worked with some amazing people in order to start this process of dreaming again for our cities. Right, dreaming again for our neighborhoods. Asking the question hey, in 10 years time, if God moved in a major way in this community, what would be the ways we'd be able to tell right and then working backwards from there and saying, all right, if that's the vision, what do we have to do in three years to get there? What do we have to do in one year to get there? What do we have to do in a couple months or in even a couple weeks to start to work our way up to that shared vision that we have for this community? So it was a very, very exciting time about building coalitions of the willing, about building the shared vision and about building partnerships that would actually help us move the needle in these neighborhoods.

28:32 - Speaker 3
So what does that look like specifically, Like what were some of the I don't know what you would call it programs or strategies that you implemented, and what were the metrics that you were looking at.

28:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a really great question. That's a really great question. So we partnered with an organization named NABA and they did something called these ministry impact was sent out and then we used MIT's living wage calculator to really just calculate out hey, what is the hour cost of what the church is actually doing in these neighborhoods? Here's some really cool stuff we found. One of the cool things we found is all of this was going on during COVID. We were doing this measuring during COVID.

29:30
We were trying to build these coalitions during COVID, and we saw that, as a lot of people were leaving the city, as a lot of people were trying to get out of literally the epicenter of COVID death around the world, which was New York City, the church was actually running towards where everybody was running from, because they knew that's where people needed the most help, right, and so we saw churches holistically engage in more than they would normally do in order to meet the moment of crisis that our city was going through, right, so that was a really cool thing. Another thing was we started to see what the heartbeat of each of the neighborhoods that we were serving was, and so the heartbeat in Staten Island may have been different than the heartbeat in Eastern York, or the heartbeat in Eastern York may have been different than the heartbeat in East Harlem, but here's a real cool thing that we actually saw that was a common denominator in every single one of these neighborhoods. When asked, every single one of these neighborhoods said one of the top two priorities for them was caring well for the next generation, that they wanted to make sure that their kids were set up for success, to live the lives that God really ordained for them to live. So that was a really, really cool thing to see as well. And then the other really cool thing to see was that, after we aggregated and calculated all of the data, the impact of the church on the city was actually much more vast than anyone could have guessed by themselves.

31:13
And so then we asked the question all right, if we're all doing this individually, it's not even like we're all tied together yet, but if we're all doing this individually, we're all making this impact individually, we're all caring about the next generation individually, we're all running to the fire from the fire individually. What would happen when we did it together? What could happen if we did it together? And so we use that in order to do these neighborhood town halls with each neighborhood in which we brought the leaders from that neighborhood together, each neighborhood in which we brought the leaders from that neighborhood together government leaders, nonprofit leaders, church leaders, private business leaders together, to say, all right, this is what we've been doing apart. Now, what could we do together?

31:59 - Speaker 3
So how do you go from that to Care Portal?

32:01 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's a great question. So we say that Care Portal was incubated at LeadNYC. We say that Care Portal was incubated at LEAD NYC. We actually believe Care Portal is a collective impact tool, right? The fact of the matter is we were all looking for ways to serve kids in each of these neighborhoods. We're all looking for ways to be tethered together to serve kids in each of these neighborhoods, and Care Portal just made sense, right, it just was the thing that made sense. And, for those who don't know, care Portal is a care-sharing technology that empowers communities to care for the most vulnerable among them, right? And so here's how it works. We started finding out, as we did more studies about how we care for the next generation, that pretty much the ground zero for where bad things start happening to kids in our neighborhoods is really the foster care system. We heard some stats that just shattered us the first time we hear them, and still shatter me every time I say them, and so we could boil the stats down to this 78% of every person who's been trafficked, incarcerated or in poverty or is homeless has spent time in the foster care system. You just boil it down to that 78% of those who've been sex trafficked, of those who have been incarcerated, or of those who are homeless, have spent time in the foster care system, which then begs the question what is happening? What is happening that is causing these outcomes for kids? And it's simple Most cases that child welfare agencies come across are not actually abuse cases. There are abuse cases, but 70% of those cases upwards to around 80% of those cases are actually what we call neglect-based cases, and usually neglect-based cases are biased against people who are in poverty.

34:06
Now I'll give you an example. I used to be a teacher, right? As a teacher, I was something called a mandated reporter, which meant that if I saw something happening with a kid, I had to say something. No matter what, I had to go to the school counselor and say, hey, this, this looks a little off. One of the things we were told is that if a child is coming into the classroom wearing the same shirt for multiple days in a row, you're starting to smell a little body odor. You need to go immediately to the school counselor. Why? Because this child may not be to be getting taken care of at home, right, and so there are a few times when I did that, but when we started to unravel the trail.

34:42
We started to realize something, right. We started to realize, all right, this kid wearing this Spider-Man shirt for three days in a row. It may not actually be that his mom is neglecting him, but it may be that his mom is actually working two jobs and she is laying his clothes out for him every day, along with his breakfast, but she's not there in the morning when he's getting dressed and getting on the bus. So he's putting on that same Spider-Man shirt every single day because he loves into the Spider-Verse. Who doesn't, right? And then we also know that, because he's a preteen boy, he's not not showering every day, right.

35:19
And so something that's actually a symptom of poverty then becomes this marker that can actually remove this child from their family, when the reality of the fact is mom just needs help, she doesn't need her child taken from her, she needs support in taking care of her child, right? And so what Care Portal does is it actually anchors itself into agencies, child welfare agencies, into pregnancy resource centers, into schools, so that when these cases come up and we see that this is poverty-based neglect, this is not abuse, we can actually help those families instead of hurting them by separating them from their kids and it works like this the caseworker can see, oh, this kid needs a bed, or this kid needs more clothes, or this kid needs a uniform. They can then put that request in the care portal. And care portal is my favorite part.

36:15
Care portal tells all of the churches that are trained around in that neighborhood hey, this mom needs some help and there's a case that could take this kid away if you don't get involved raise their hands and say, oh yeah, buying some uniforms, we could do that. Getting a mattress for a bed, we can do that. And the church gets to be the point of care. It's not that they give that product to the agency and then the agency gives it to the family. No, the deal is that the church gets to show up at the door, say, hey, we just want you to know we're here for you, we're supportive of you. We're just from the church down the street and we wanted to know if you need anything, we're here for you, and that Jesus loves you as well. And there have been some beautiful stories that have come out of that, and so that's a way that we've been uniting communities to care for the next generation in the same way we were trying to do at Lead NYC through the neighborhoods.

37:12 - Speaker 3
Yeah, that's why it's so important to know the whole story of a family and their entire context, because it's so easy to judge, like a character, without knowing the story.

37:21
Like I always joke like if people knew how I grew up, like I'd be in foster homes, not because my parents were neglectful, but like they both worked. You know, like I was a latchkey kid and like I would pick up my brother and sister from school, from elementary, we would walk home. I remember like my mom would give us a 20 and like we'd be home all by ourselves, yeah, right. And now, looking back, I'm like wait, did she ever wonder if we would burn down the house? But you know, so it's so crazy that like yeah, so how did you get connected with Possum Trot?

37:53 - Speaker 1
Yeah, so the Sound of Hope. It was renamed to the Sound of Hope, the Possum Trot story. So the way we got connected is Care Portal is a subsidiary of a larger organization called the Global Orphan Project. Right, the leaders of this organization had been doing some benevolent work, benevolent missions, work around the world, places like Haiti, places like India, places all over the country, all over the world rather Right.

38:26
And one day, as they were on a flight somewhere, the chair of the board, now great man, his name is Mike Fox, who founded the Global Orphan Project. Mike Fox, who founded the Global Orphan Project, he said he just heard from the Lord. He heard from the Lord really clearly, where the Lord said to him I need you to stop flying over kids, to go serve kids. You can do both. Right, and so Mike turned to the team and said we've got to figure out how to grow home. We've got to figure out not just going home, but growing home and also internationally simultaneously. And God sort of miraculously dropped the idea for Care Portal in the lap and in the mind of our president and founders. His name is Adrian Lewis. God just dropped that into his heart and they started to utilize this thing right In a really amazing way that started changing the country in many different ways as well. But as they did this, they were saying, man, if we're really talking about reversing the foster care crisis, we need to find some examples where it's actually happened, like we need to find some movement leaders and submit to their authority on this so that they can be our covering as we do this work. We can't act like we're the first ones on the block to come up with this idea. And so they found the story of Bishop WC Martin in Possum Trot, texas, which you cannot find on a map, and in Possum Trot, texas, him and First Lady Donna Martin, who is a powerhouse herself, they went on this journey and sort of discovered what was happening to kids in foster care and they said it was unacceptable. And so their small little church, which is 22 families, their small little church went on this journey to adopt kids, and it was not easy. It wasn't all sunshine and it wasn't all rainbows. It was difficult, but they adopted the hardest to place kids in their area and effectively reversed the foster care crisis in that part of Texas, which means it's possible, right, which means this is something that can happen.

40:49
One of the things that I get scared of is when we say these big statistics, people's brains sort of turn off and they're like, ah, we can't do anything about that, like that'll always be around. But the fact of the matter is, if you think about nationally, there are 400,000 churches estimated to be in the United States of America and there are 100,000 kids who are currently up for adoption. Right, that's a four to one ratio of churches to kids. Like that's a difference you can make. And if we talk about the actual amount of kids in foster care in general, it is 400,000 to 400,000, 400,000 churches to 400,000 kids. It's almost like this problem was custom made for the church to solve, right.

41:37
And so the movie of Possum Trot really illuminates that. The movie of the Sound of Hope, the Possum Trot story, really illuminates that for all of us that this is an issue, that if we joined hands and said, no, we care about kids, we care about the most vulnerable among us, and we can make this difference together, you can see the change that can happen. And so the movie is incredible. I've seen it a couple times. It comes out on July 4th. It's going to be in theaters all over the country. I would really urge anyone to go and see it. I think sometimes the biggest detractors when a movement starts is awareness and education. How do you get people aware and then how do you get them educated properly? One of the great things about a movie like this is it does both of those things for you while just sitting in a movie theater eating some popcorn. Right, so that you can actually leave the movie theater and say, man, let's go do something it's one of the best movies I've seen.

42:40 - Speaker 3
Like I love the sound of freedom, I thought it was better, right, and I love the fact that like because when I first went in it's like a foster adoption story.

42:49
But then you kind of feel this like anxiety or fear because, like again, again, raising children is hard, so you're taking it in all their issues. But I love the heart of the movie, where it wasn't just families, it was a community of families doing this together and so they could do anything together and just, yeah, people need to go watch it and bring your tissues, like I was balling, I was balling, bro. It was so crazy.

43:15 - Speaker 1
You're right. You're so right, danny, and Angel Studios, who's producing both this movie and also produced the Sound of Freedom. They see the Sound of Hope, the possum trot story, as the direct follow-up right that the Sound of Freedom presented a problem and the Sound of Hope will present a solution. And what I love about it is that at the end of the movie, danny, there's going to be an opportunity for people, literally right then and there, to get involved. Right, it's not just walk away and think about it and feel bad about it, but it's no, let's get involved right now in this Kairos moment and make something happen. So absolutely, I 100% agree with you.

43:49 - Speaker 3
So what are you doing now, what's going on in your life and how God's been like? Because I feel like, from what you were sharing, like everything you went through as a child, which is preparation for you to like get involved with, like children, and it's this incredible thing Like I feel like without it's like your origin story, you know, like you're a superhero like a fighter for kids and justice, and it's like it started here and now it's like this full-blown thing, and so what do?

44:17
you see God leading you to the rest of your life?

44:20 - Speaker 1
That's a good question, brother, and that's something that I am discovering right now. I know that your 30s I'm 31. So I know that your 30s are deeply formative for the rest of your life, that pretty much they set up the railroad tracks for the rest of your life, and so that's what I've really been seeking the Lord about, but I've always had this vision of seeing cities renewed. That's really been a big part of my heart. Danny, have you ever been to Sight and Sound theaters?

44:54
No, it's in my bucket list, but I really want to go, man, I'd really encourage you to go. A moment where God sort of spoke to me well, he always speaks to me whenever I go and see a show at Sight Sound, but they were doing a production on Jonah not too long ago, a few years ago a production on Jonah not too long ago, a few years ago and I was sitting there and as we were watching, we sort of see Jonah go through this moment where he runs away from Nineveh and he doesn't want to do it and God spits him up on the shores and then he probably preaches the worst sermon in the Bible to them because he does not want them to be saved. It's probably the worst sermon ever preached right to Nineveh and it's amazing because the way that they depicted it was amazing. He preaches this word to the city that doom is basically coming unless they repent. And you start to see the city change throughout the next 40 days. It's a beautiful thing. And how they did it Like at the beginning of the 40 days, the city changed throughout the next 40 days. It's a beautiful thing in how they did it, like at the beginning of the 40 days.

45:57
The city of Nineveh has a very warlike sound. There's a lot of clanging, a lot of metal right, and as the time goes on, you start to hear more choruses of repentance throughout the city. Right, even the very walls themselves in the city, the city right, even the very walls themselves in the city. They used to have spears up on it and swords up on it right, and these banners of war. And as the light cycles go signifying the different days, you start to see that these cloaks and cloths of purple and white are being placed throughout the city as well. The people themselves who are wearing armor at the beginning of the 40 days are now wearing these linen cloths of white at the end of the 40 days. And you can actually see in real time the city repenting and turning back to God, and that it's not just the people, it's the systems and the structures in the city. Even as I described the wall, it was like the walls themselves were repenting and turning back to God. Right, and what would it look like if we didn't just focus on the people in the relationships, because that's important, but also focused on the systems and the structures and how those can repent to God and how those can be influenced by the culture of heaven, and so I feel like God sort of put that in my spirit and I was just bawling, crying as I was watching it. But I feel like God put that in my spirit because really the goal for me is that I want to see people in every community. I want to see them live in an economically invested, in an economically equitable community. I want to see them fully politically represented, right. I want to see them have access to health and the potential to build wealth as well, and I want them to know their God-given purpose At the end of the day.

47:57
To really distill it all down, the gospel is a holistic gospel. It doesn't just preach about our souls. Jesus talked about money, so much. Right. He talked about physical health, right. The gospel talks about our emotional health, our psychological health, our relationships. The gospel is holistic, right. So the gospel we preach must also be holistic. But the fact of the matter is, in some neighborhoods and in many neighborhoods actually, people cannot actually realize the wholeness of the gospel in their lives yet, because there are stumbling blocks, right. There are systemic stumbling blocks that are keeping people from being able to maybe see the gospel realized in their mental health or see the gospel realized in their physical health. And so what would it look like for us to look at neighborhoods and say I want to remove every stumbling block from people living out the holistic gospel? I think that's really what I'm trying to figure out. How do we do that? How do we work through that? How do we make that happen on a city level? That's really, I think, the next step for me.

49:08 - Speaker 3
Yeah, it's hard to thrive when you're too busy trying to survive. Exactly, I think we as Christians forgot there is prosperity in the gospel, right. But it's not merely material, but a heart that says, hey, I want to make as much money possible so that I can help others, come out Right, like there's nothing wrong with making the billion, it's just keeping it. That's the problem.

49:28 - Speaker 1
Yeah, man this was so refreshing, exactly.

49:31 - Speaker 3
Yeah, man, this was so refreshing. What are you hoping for at Faithly?

49:44 - Speaker 1
Yeah, I really love the idea of Faithly right Like a LinkedIn for people that are Christian ministers, laypersons or people that just want to connect with others of faith, right. I think it's an incredible, incredible idea. I think my hope is that it starts to open doors Right. One of the things that has been tough, we know, for people in ministry or pastors is like man, how do I connect to people to get to different places where I want to go to? And something that we've also seen is that you know, for pastors transitioning out of ministry like, what are the options? Like where do we go? What do we do? I think Faithfully kind of offers an answer to that by continuing to connect them to different networks of people who maybe have done the same thing or can open their doors to those that are looking to start on a new journey. So I love that. I love that about it and I'm hoping that we continue to see it built out in some amazing ways.

50:41 - Speaker 3
And how can we be praying for you?

50:44 - Speaker 1
That's such a kind question. Yeah, I think what I shared about the city and about kids, I think, praying for those two things, that cities all across this nation, all across this world, would truly be renewed by coalitions of the willing people of faith, willing to work with others to make change happen in their neighborhoods. And then the second thing that I would ask everyone to pray for is for the kids in our neighborhoods, and to really ask the Lord how do you want me to go upstream, how do you want me to get to the issue that's causing kids to fall into the river? Because, at the end of the day, danny, something that I've prayed about and thought about a lot, is this right? The reason why I'm hanging my hat on this foster care crisis right now is because, man, could you imagine what it would be like in New York City if we were able to point and say, look, there are no more kids in care, no more kids that need to be adopted all over the city? And we know what happened the church started collaborating with child welfare and with nonprofits and it woke up and it said no, we will do something about this, because these are our kids Now.

52:05
I want you to think about that kind of world, in which that happens in New York City, and ask yourself how could revival not happen if that were to happen? How could a reformation, a transformation of the systems and structures not happen if the church showed up in that sort of way? And so that's what I want us to do. I want us to pray that what we say is the child that's been cut out by the sin of the world has actually been sent to purify and unite the church. That we would realize that these kids are a gift and that they're not just these kids, they're our kids and they are a gift to us. And then I do believe that revival might lie with these anointed children who deserve and need and belong to be with us. So those are the two ways, people can pray.

52:53 - Speaker 3
Thank you, mark. This was very, very good for me. Thanks for coming on. The podcast Awesome. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. All right, that's it for the podcast, guys, bye.

53:03 - Speaker 2
Thank you for tuning in to the Faithly Stories podcast. We pray this episode gave you the encouragement you needed to continue on your journey. The Faithly Stories podcast is brought to you by Faithly, an online community committed to empowering church leaders, pastors, staff and volunteers. The Faithly digital platform offers innovative and practical tools and resources to enhance connection, foster collaboration and promote growth within the church and ministry space. Remember to subscribe, rate and review our podcast to help reach more listeners like you. Stay tuned for more uplifting tales from the front lines of ministry on the Faithly podcast. Stay bold, stay faithful and never underestimate the power of your own story.