Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: My name is Ethan Daly, a longtime CCDA member and community practitioner, and I get to be the host for this episode.
Speaker: And today is really special because I'm joined by two very special guests.
Speaker: We're going to share about the ways God is moving in our city of Grand Rapids.
Speaker: Of course, Grand Rapids is where we call home.
Speaker: We are here in West Michigan.
Speaker: So this just so happens to be a beautiful time of year with the changing of the seasons, the fall foliage coming out, all the beautiful colors.
Speaker: West Michigan is really beautiful this time of year.
Speaker: And so, Martha, I want both of the guests to introduce themselves.
Speaker: I want you to give your name.
Speaker: how long you have lived in Grand Rapids, and then one thing that you're currently excited about, whether that be with the changing of the seasons here in West Michigan or with your current work.
Speaker: So you can share about either of those.
Speaker: But Ryan, I'll kick it off to you to go ahead and start first.
Speaker: Thanks, Ethan.
Speaker: Ryan Walkus, executive director of a youth development organization called Bridge Street Ministries.
Speaker: I've been living here in Grand Rapids my whole life.
Speaker: I've been doing this work for about 20 years.
Speaker: And, you know, in Grand Rapids here, it is beautiful weather.
Speaker: And we get about three of these weeks a year.
Speaker: And so I am, you know, I'm really excited for one of the three great weather weeks that we have this year.
Speaker: And, you know, I apologize for everybody coming into Grand Rapids in November when it may be snowing or who knows what it's going to be.
Speaker: I just, we don't ever apologize for Grand Rapids for the weather here.
Speaker: It is what it is.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker: We, you know, we love this time of year.
Speaker: Um, uh, excited.
Speaker: We've got program launch happening in just a couple of weeks with young people.
Speaker: And, you know, this, this space, our team's been just spending some time refreshing the summer and planning and, you know, the space will be buzzing with, with young people in, uh, in just a week or two.
Speaker: And so just excited to be back with young people.
Speaker: And my name is Christy Carlin-Kanich.
Speaker: I have been in Grand Rapids for the last 28 beautiful years.
Speaker: And one thing that I am just over the moon excited about is that I can cheer for my Pittsburgh Steelers.
Speaker: I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: And so NFL season is upon us.
Speaker: I got a draft tomorrow night for my fantasy league.
Speaker: And my children and I are eager to participate again this year.
Speaker: And I'm also really thrilled that today was the first day of school.
Speaker: Although this recording will come out a little later, I'm very excited that the season of school is upon us.
Speaker: Yes, we are all excited about that.
Speaker: I sent my kids off this morning.
Speaker: Wonderful time.
Speaker: We have a nice quiet house.
Speaker: We get our house back.
Speaker: It's wonderful.
Speaker: And so, Christy, it sounds like you're also not a Detroit Lions fan, just so we're clear on the record.
Speaker: Is that correct?
Speaker: To be clear, for the record, I am of the opinion that everyone should cheer for the Lions.
Speaker: They need a Super Bowl.
Speaker: We should all be behind them in that endeavor.
Speaker: And we'll see how the Lord loves the righteous this year.
Speaker: Perfectly diplomatic answer of you, Christy.
Speaker: That's wonderful.
Speaker: Very much appreciate representing Michigan there.
Speaker: Love it.
Speaker: So each episode, there's a theme.
Speaker: And the theme for today's discussion is about building bridges, building bridges in the city.
Speaker: So we explore that from many perspectives between neighborhoods, between communities, across generations, across ideologies, right?
Speaker: Across lines of difference.
Speaker: But to understand the city today, we want to look back at the history.
Speaker: We want to explore the history alongside the central idea of reconciliation.
Speaker: So as we understand that, reconciliation comes through this biblical concept that we often talk about at CCDA of shalom.
Speaker: That is a position in where we're storing relationships and where nothing is missing and nothing is broken.
Speaker: So here's a backdrop of the city of Grand Rapids as we enter into this conversation.
Speaker: The history reflects kind of two different realities.
Speaker: As recently as 2012, Todd Robinson wrote a book, City Within a City.
Speaker: It was released and a lot of people read it about the city of Grand Rapids.
Speaker: Really two different realities at work, right?
Speaker: So you have one where, you know, you've got sort of mid-20th century, the manufacturing base is up.
Speaker: There's some urban renewal happening, but there's also school desegregation that's happening, right?
Speaker: Then the manufacturing base starts to decline over some time.
Speaker: But at the same time, you had a lot of CCD groups, faith-based groups, grassroots leaders responding with different models, centering on presence, centering on reconciliation.
Speaker: And then more recently, there was some unrest after the killing of George Floyd.
Speaker: in 2020, and then followed up by the police shooting of Patrick Loyola in 2022.
Speaker: These sort of inflection points highlighted the city's ongoing struggle with equity and justice and the work of building bridges.
Speaker: So alongside that history of division, there's another narrative that often pops up.
Speaker: This cultural emphasis on civility, often described as West Michigan Knights,
Speaker: Or Midwest nice, depending on where you're from.
Speaker: But this mindset tends to value politeness, order, perhaps a little bit of conflict avoidance.
Speaker: Many see it as maybe that's a key to helping to keep the peace between different groups and preserve the city's otherwise reputation as being unbearable.
Speaker: family friendly and a welcoming place.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So folks support that view that it falters cooperation and stability.
Speaker: But other folks argue that it can mask deeper injustices and silence the hard conversations about race, about poverty, about inequity.
Speaker: So it feels like harmony sometimes can feel like dismissal to others, raising the question as to whether peace is found in avoiding conflict or pursuing it in honest, open conversations.
Speaker: So with that as the backdrop, Ryan, Christie, I'm really excited to have this conversation about building bridges in the city.
Speaker: So given that we have these two realities, these two stories of Grand Rapids, right, how do you see these narratives overlapping or colliding with one another?
Speaker: Chrissy, I want to start with you.
Speaker: You've been here a long time.
Speaker: You came from Pittsburgh here, but describe how those realities play out.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I look at equity and I think about housing.
Speaker: I think about racial division when it comes to experience with our local police departments.
Speaker: I think about the desire that this West Michigan NICE often contaminates a lot of our ability to see funding go into the appropriate places and really
Speaker: causing folks to think that they have to fight over the crumbs instead of an entire pie.
Speaker: And where we have neighborhoods in Grand Rapids where I think about the most disinvested neighborhoods that we see, where we see the highest amount of rental properties without homeownership to have a neighborhood where people can be housed by choice.
Speaker: Spaces where you have 10,000 nonprofits in one location, but you don't have businesses that are owned by people in the community or not one sit-down restaurant that you can go to or lacking a bank that is in an entire neighborhood.
Speaker: There's not equitable access.
Speaker: And that's signs of disinvestment.
Speaker: That's signs that we've placed
Speaker: resources in certain spaces and we've decided not to put resources in other places for whatever the reason is, right?
Speaker: We begin to look at communities in Grand Rapids as these are the places where we need to go and help.
Speaker: And these are the places where we go to shop or eat or spend time.
Speaker: And that type of division, I think, is where we see these two stories begin to really emerge of where do people want to spend time?
Speaker: Does everybody in our city see those places of investment as for all or just for certain folks?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And when we think about how to dismantle these narratives around our city, the idea that we want to just keep the peace, we just want to try to have harmony in our city.
Speaker: So then it often will end up where people of goodwill are.
Speaker: really begin to own this narrative of this is where we go to help and this is where we go to do life.
Speaker: And so how can we begin to break down those divisions?
Speaker: And I think that's something that CCDA has done a great job of beginning to help us have language for how to begin to address these things.
Speaker: But that's how I see some of those narratives that
Speaker: overlapping and colliding because we don't want to say the thing.
Speaker: We don't often name the thing, but until you name it, you can't address it.
Speaker: And so one of the reasons that I take the most joy in being a CCDA practitioner is that CCDA gives us language with which to begin to name things.
Speaker: the things that West Michigan Knives will often encourage us to just look the other way, pretend it doesn't happen, or not name it because we don't want to offend the helpers.
Speaker: And so how can we begin to change that narrative and get everybody at the table so that we can begin to say, this is the thing we want to see change and we want to make sure that the people who get to shift the narrative
Speaker: also are the people most affected by the narrative.
Speaker: You touched on several important things that are really interesting to me, Christy, because, you know, the idea that Grand Rapids is a city that values philanthropy and giving back and helping.
Speaker: And as a reflection of that, we have a pretty robust nonprofit sector.
Speaker: I mean, you threw out the number of something like 10,000 nonprofits.
Speaker: That might actually be close to the reality, I feel, at some times that we have a robust social sector that you could argue in many ways.
Speaker: But distinct from that is this other aspect of, you know, we help here, but this is where we go and otherwise go about our life and enjoying the city in these other ways.
Speaker: Ryan, you lead a nonprofit that's proximate to right there downtown on Bridge Street.
Speaker: You spend a lot of time in the community.
Speaker: How are you seeing these realities play out as a nonprofit?
Speaker: Yeah, I'm one of the 10,000.
Speaker: To be fair, it's not quite 10 Batson.
Speaker: I think I've heard something like 700, something like that.
Speaker: But we do have a lot of nonprofits and a lot of great nonprofits in a very philanthropic community here.
Speaker: Christy said something that's really a really important distinction of how we view different neighborhoods and different neighborhoods are objects of charity.
Speaker: Others are where we go to spend our money.
Speaker: Even when we look at it from a financial standpoint, some are neighborhoods where we go to give charity.
Speaker: Some is where we go to patronize business.
Speaker: But those often aren't the same neighborhoods.
Speaker: When you listen to the language about the investment in different communities, even the end goal is often different.
Speaker: We've got different neighborhoods who the investment is for crime reduction, which is a great starting point.
Speaker: But is that really the end goal is crime reduction?
Speaker: But that's all you hear about in that neighborhood is crime reduction.
Speaker: You don't hear about neighborhood thriving.
Speaker: And what does it look like for that neighborhood to thrive?
Speaker: And so I think that was a really important point.
Speaker: And again, we work, you know, our organization, our quote unquote target, I don't even like that language.
Speaker: I just haven't come up with better language than target neighborhoods.
Speaker: But the neighborhoods that we work in are disinvested neighborhoods that are the objects of charity and don't have the eye of investment, the amount of investment that's necessary to thrive.
Speaker: And even when you look at just dollars and cents, and again, we have a very charitable, very generous,
Speaker: philanthropic community.
Speaker: So I've got nothing bad to say about that.
Speaker: Well, when you look at dollars and cents and where, you know, the money's going for charitable contributions versus economic investment, they're not proportionate.
Speaker: And if we want thriving neighborhoods up where we're putting economic development investment, the numbers just don't quite match up.
Speaker: You know, people are giving enough money to help neighborhoods survive.
Speaker: Is it the same investment that we're giving to neighborhoods that we want to thrive?
Speaker: And I, you know, I think it's worth even sharing.
Speaker: I've got an interesting personal perspective.
Speaker: I grew up in West Michigan my whole life.
Speaker: And, you know, I grew up in a very monolithic, conservative Christian environment where everyone looked the same, thought the same.
Speaker: We were taught to be polite.
Speaker: And that was not malicious.
Speaker: There was no malicious intent in that.
Speaker: That was the culture.
Speaker: That was the air that we breathed.
Speaker: We were taught to be polite to people.
Speaker: The last 30 years I've lived in the city, and the last 20 years I've lived in one of the most disinvested neighborhoods in the city.
Speaker: Now, what's interesting about the neighborhood I've grown up in is it's one of the most disinvested, but it's also experienced an isolation that's unique to the rest of the city.
Speaker: It's a neighborhood that has experienced political isolation, physical isolation, geographic isolation, and has endured all of the marks and the struggles of poverty.
Speaker: When you look at crime rates, when you look at poverty levels, when you look at educational achievement and opportunities, and yet the neighborhood I live in is predominantly European descent.
Speaker: And so that creates a whole different narrative and a whole different struggle.
Speaker: And it's a neighborhood where it's not West Michigan nice.
Speaker: And I had to learn that language early on where the neighborhood I live in is much more direct and much more frank.
Speaker: And so just even learning that language and now this neighborhood has also in the last 10 years seen a lot of that nasty G word that we don't like to talk about, gentrification, right?
Speaker: And immense gentrification.
Speaker: economic investment that now is also causing other.
Speaker: And so I've kind of lived through it all.
Speaker: I've, I've, I grew up just breathing the air of what we call Michigan nice.
Speaker: And that's just the air that we breathed.
Speaker: And then seeing the impact of that on disinvested communities.
Speaker: But now seeing the investment that's coming in and the other challenges that that creates for those that are caught in the struggle of poverty in our community.
Speaker: So it's a kind of seen the full gamut of this, the implications of this.
Speaker: I do want to touch on the point about investment, but I don't want to go there just yet because I think that it's easy to get there pretty quickly as we talk about like economic disparities, for sure.
Speaker: There's a lot of conversation around things like gentrification and the lack of investment.
Speaker: in a lot of the neighborhoods that we're talking about.
Speaker: But I want to go back to a certain point before we go there, and that's the idea of the faith culture, the church culture in West Michigan, and how that looks from one community to the next.
Speaker: So we're talking about reconciliation across neighborhoods, but what about across faith communities?
Speaker: What does that look like?
Speaker: What does that look like right now?
Speaker: Ryan, I'm going to go back to you for a second because you talked about how you grew up in one place.
Speaker: You're now working and serving in another.
Speaker: How has that journey been for you from a faith perspective?
Speaker: Yeah, it's been a difficult one, to be honest with you.
Speaker: Growing up in a certain Christian tradition, which I value and I love and I'm so grateful for foundations that were laid in my life at a young age that carry through today.
Speaker: I'm grateful for the faith foundations that were laid in my life.
Speaker: Inherently, what it also did was gave me a suspicion against anyone that thought differently.
Speaker: Because when we worshiped together with everyone that thought the same, that looked the same, that sang the same, that smelled the same, that dressed the same, that anyone that didn't fit that mold was suspect.
Speaker: Their faith was suspect.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: So a couple of decades now, just living in a very diverse community and worshiping at diverse, different diverse churches.
Speaker: And, you know, our kids go to a very diverse school.
Speaker: I think it's done a couple of things.
Speaker: Um, it, it, it was for a while hard to kind of find that, where do we fit when we, when, when we want to experience the kingdom in, in the, uh, a fuller expression, where do we fit in that?
Speaker: Um, so that was challenging.
Speaker: But it also just gave me just a beautiful appreciation for the different expressions of the Christian faith that exist and just found such beauty in that.
Speaker: And when we are able to find that, it just, it feels like the kingdom when it's not just one single expression or one single color or one single smell, but it is a truly diverse, and I don't mean just ethnically, I mean, in a variety of areas, it just
Speaker: When you find those moments, it just feels like the kingdom.
Speaker: Christy, where do you experience the kingdom?
Speaker: And did you grow up in the church, by the way?
Speaker: I want to ask that as well.
Speaker: Just what has your journey been of that experience?
Speaker: I did not grow up in the church.
Speaker: I didn't become a Christian until late in high school.
Speaker: And so it's very interesting to me because in West Michigan in particular, a lot of my peers, I would say, have gone through a very intense deconstruction of their faith.
Speaker: especially those who grew up in a West Michigan nice culture.
Speaker: When I got to Grand Rapids, I had been a Christian for maybe two years-ish in two very formative years in high school.
Speaker: I grew up with teen parents and I really didn't know how to like look for a church.
Speaker: Like we would say we were Catholic, but that really meant we were culturally Catholic because we were from Pittsburgh and everybody was Catholic in Pittsburgh.
Speaker: And that's kind of,
Speaker: That's who we are.
Speaker: So West Michigan, if you're not familiar, is made up of a lot of Dutch folks.
Speaker: And this was a large space where Dutch immigrants came and established themselves pretty.
Speaker: They're very rooted in West Michigan.
Speaker: The CRC.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or other expressions of reformed nest.
Speaker: And so I came to West Michigan and I'd never met a Dutch person before.
Speaker: And I'd never heard, like not even heard of the Christian Reformed Church.
Speaker: So for me, that was a big culture shock.
Speaker: I went to a university here that had Reformed roots.
Speaker: It was like walking into a space where
Speaker: Like you mentioned the air we breathe, Ryan.
Speaker: I didn't breathe that air.
Speaker: So it was a very, like I sneezed a lot when I was first coming to West Michigan as I began to acclimate to what was life like here.
Speaker: After university, I finished and became a social worker and worked in a large social work setting with young people here in West Michigan who were involved in the systems in different ways.
Speaker: And so I began to see the systems and how they were operating, but they weren't the systems that I had breathed the air of growing up.
Speaker: They weren't the
Speaker: This wasn't the city that shaped me as a young person growing up, but more it shaped my young adult life.
Speaker: And so when I was looking for a church here, I ended up in a space where diversity was celebrated.
Speaker: There was a director of multicultural living.
Speaker: I didn't know church any different than that.
Speaker: And eventually I would go on to become a youth pastor in that same church years later.
Speaker: That is actually when I began to really experience the headbutting that would happen across cultures in the church.
Speaker: when we would show up to an event and we would be, you know, a wide multi-ethnic group of young people and we would be the only ones or we would be one of two out of one, out of a hundred different youth ministries, so to speak.
Speaker: And so what,
Speaker: I really felt like when I came here and I began to do, and I began to be introduced to Christian community development and practices and what it meant to be a CCD practitioner, I was able to have CCDA shape so much of the early formations of who I was.
Speaker: And then when I walked into a room and I had blonde hair and I had blue eyes, but I didn't speak,
Speaker: what everybody thought that I spoke, the inherent understandings.
Speaker: And so that's why I always felt far more at home in the multi-ethnic settings that I was in, because I felt like I came here as an outsider.
Speaker: So we're in this interesting time, 2025, right?
Speaker: This post-election, there is a ton of backlash around the idea of diversity, equity, inclusion, right?
Speaker: That
Speaker: Those three things together are now somewhat anathema to many people.
Speaker: So from your experience, what is diversity?
Speaker: How do we define it right now?
Speaker: Christy, what's your thought?
Speaker: How do we define diversity now?
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Defining diversity in 2025, I think, is important.
Speaker: Still a pretty difficult thing to do, depending on the room that you walk in, because it describes all of your personal experiences, your values, the worldviews that arise from the differences in fill-in-the-blank things, whether it's race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, religion, denomination, language, food preference, right?
Speaker: Like, then we add politics on top of that.
Speaker: The amount of division that is caused when someone simply wants to be able to be in a room where I'm not going to be around everybody who sees, thinks, or experiences the world the same way I do ends up being diversity to me these days where it's not just all the things I can see, it's all the things I can't see too.
Speaker: And I feel like as a believer, I
Speaker: One of the tests of do I really follow Jesus is often can I show up into a room and love the person sitting across the table from me without exception?
Speaker: Ryan, it seems like Christy is helping us to perhaps broaden the definition a bit.
Speaker: Would you agree with that?
Speaker: Is that what needs to happen now?
Speaker: I think diversity has to be looked at more than just a single metric.
Speaker: Diversity isn't just race, ethnicity.
Speaker: It's not just gender.
Speaker: But it also has to be more than just statistics.
Speaker: I think diversity often is reduced to statistics.
Speaker: As a nonprofit leader, I fill out grant applications and every one of them, I've got to fill out this diversity statistics.
Speaker: And very rarely do people care about, do we love each other?
Speaker: Do we get along?
Speaker: Do we understand each other?
Speaker: You know, what is the actual function and heart of a team?
Speaker: I think diversity often becomes a numbers game and a statistics game, which I think can be equally damaging to
Speaker: If that's all it is.
Speaker: So diversity is welcoming everybody as they are and believing the best in people and wanting to know people's stories, wanting to know that when people are different than you, allowing that to elicit curiosity and interest rather than fear and suspicion.
Speaker: You know, imagine if when we met somebody that looked different than us, then talked different than us or sounded different or had different experiences.
Speaker: And our initial response was curiosity and inquiry rather than suspicion.
Speaker: And I think that then invites conversation and relationship.
Speaker: So I don't know if that answers your question.
Speaker: I do get a little bit tired of diversity just being reduced to statistics.
Speaker: which often, at least in my world, it often is reduced to statistics and people aren't statistics and they're not numbers.
Speaker: They have stories.
Speaker: And I think if we believe the best in each other and actually are curious about people's stories and journeys and value people as image bearers of God and recognize that people that are different than me actually have something to teach me about the character of God that I might not know.
Speaker: That if all I know are people that look like me and sound like me and have the same experiences as me, I really have a very limited understanding of who God is.
Speaker: If we all bear the image of God together as a people, then I should be excited about learning and being in relationship with people that are different than me because that teaches me more about who God is.
Speaker: That sounds incredibly hopeful.
Speaker: And I certainly hope, right?
Speaker: I mean, it's a beautiful vision.
Speaker: So what's an example of that?
Speaker: from your life or from your work, Ryan?
Speaker: How have you seen that?
Speaker: I see that in my team.
Speaker: We have an incredibly diverse team, ethnically, experientially, life story, age, gender.
Speaker: Having a diverse team sounds romantic on paper.
Speaker: It is incredibly hard work to have a healthy, diverse team.
Speaker: Because it takes an immense amount of time and relationship and communication, listening to one another, wrestling with one another, disagreeing with one another.
Speaker: I think that is something that we've lost is this understanding that we can disagree with one another and still love one another.
Speaker: It's actually okay to disagree with one another and still love one another.
Speaker: And our team is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
Speaker: And we have our own struggles along the way, but I can say it's a team that loves one another.
Speaker: And so we get to see that.
Speaker: I just have the benefit of seeing that every day.
Speaker: And again, it's hard, it's hard work.
Speaker: It is hard work to love one another well.
Speaker: I see at a church, people who come together and worship together.
Speaker: And there's all kinds of different diversity, age, race, gender, socioeconomic.
Speaker: And yet there's a common space in worship that looks different each week and sounds different each week.
Speaker: And, but it's a beautiful, beautiful space where there's a common connecting point in the Christian faith and we can rally around that.
Speaker: Chris, can we disagree and still love each other?
Speaker: Is that, is that possible for me?
Speaker: Yeah, it's impossible today.
Speaker: That's a million dollar question right there.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Thinking back about diversity and just as I'm reflecting a little bit more and listening to what Ryan's saying, diversity isn't often just who's present in the room or at the table.
Speaker: It's often, do people feel valued?
Speaker: Can they engage?
Speaker: Can they have ownership in the life of a community?
Speaker: Can we practice respect and cultural humility in the midst of theological conversation?
Speaker: Can there be mutuality?
Speaker: I think that these types of questions are what are going to, do we even value that or want that anymore?
Speaker: Do we want to feel like we can value and engage people in the life of whatever community, whether it's our team that we work on, whether it's the people at the grocery store, whether it's the community organizing that we're doing, right?
Speaker: It's not just about who shows up.
Speaker: It's really far more about do the people who show up, do they have a voice?
Speaker: Are people who show up engaged?
Speaker: And do the people who aren't showing up for some reason, is that why they're not showing up?
Speaker: And as we think about diversity, I really appreciate what you said, Ryan, around it's not about numbers.
Speaker: And I think that one of the things that has often happened too in neighborhoods in Grand Rapids is we've been counting like, who's person of color, who's white?
Speaker: And that just eliminates so much of the diversity that we actually see present in Grand Rapids.
Speaker: It's not
Speaker: It's not just white and non-white.
Speaker: And I think that that is oftentimes what has been a big driver of conversations because there's so much nuance that diversity welcomes or can welcome if you want to see it at the table.
Speaker: Well, that's the good news, right?
Speaker: I mean, the good news is that we do seek belonging with one another.
Speaker: Despite the division that we see, the good news is that we still, inherently to us as people, we still want to belong.
Speaker: We want to be known by others.
Speaker: That's something that we value.
Speaker: What does that look like in each of your faith communities right now?
Speaker: What does belonging look like right now?
Speaker: I think this will partly answer your question, but it's also a carryover from the diversity piece.
Speaker: I think sometimes in our effort toward diversity, it still is getting people that may look different to all sound the same and act the same rather than actually celebrating who we are.
Speaker: And this can show up in so many different ways.
Speaker: I can tell you a lot of spaces I show up where diversity simply means not a white Christian male.
Speaker: That's like, if you're not a white Christian male, then you're welcome here.
Speaker: That's a real thing in some spaces.
Speaker: There's other spaces where we want to have, again, a lot of different color here, but it's all going to sound the same.
Speaker: We need you all to sound the same.
Speaker: We all need you to dress the same.
Speaker: We all need you to look the same.
Speaker: And man, again, it's hard.
Speaker: It's just hard work.
Speaker: It's hard work to truly celebrate differences and not be afraid of differences, to enter into hard conversations and not be afraid of hard conversations.
Speaker: Again, I'll say to believe the best in one another and not assume the worst in one another.
Speaker: I think if we can just show up and believe the best in one another and not assume the worst based on any circumstances, I think that just, I think that goes a long way.
Speaker: If we can show up and believe the best in people,
Speaker: That goes a long way in creating a healthy environment.
Speaker: I'll piggyback on that and say relationships move at the speed of trust.
Speaker: And one of the things I appreciate about the faith community that I'm a part of is that we don't make quick decisions on huge things.
Speaker: Now, it doesn't mean that we don't speak out or speak truth to power or tell the truth or seek justice, right?
Speaker: We want to pursue healing even when it's messy.
Speaker: But I really have appreciated our church has taken on this form of listening circles where when we're wrestling with something as a body, we will ask people and we'll host a wide variety of listening circles and then look over everything that people have shared so that we can understand the nuance around us and try not to paintbrush something in one giant stroke when it really is
Speaker: a wide variety of small strokes and that make the painting beautiful, so to speak.
Speaker: But that's something that I've seen that in our faith community where it's really shown up is to do just intentional listening with one another.
Speaker: And then recognizing when we do that listening, who didn't show up
Speaker: and then intentionally invite them to the table or say, can we actually sit down with you because we want to hear your voice.
Speaker: We noticed that you didn't show up for any of these listening circles and we want to make sure we didn't miss what you had to share or give you that space.
Speaker: So if you're interested, we'd really like to sit down and hear from you about whatever we're wrestling with in that season.
Speaker: And so that's something that I've been, I've really valued and
Speaker: Even if the church makes decisions that maybe not everyone agrees with, no one can walk away and say we didn't have an opportunity to share where we were at.
Speaker: So that's a way I've seen it shaped in our first community.
Speaker: Something that somebody shared with me years ago that's really impacted me as well is just this idea of inviting people to the table, taking a step back from that.
Speaker: are they welcome to help set the table?
Speaker: I've been to India quite a number of times and the way they eat at a table is very different than the way we eat at a table.
Speaker: And if you eat, you know, invite an Indian person who has never ate at an American table to your table, they're not going to know what to do because they eat with their hands.
Speaker: Do we welcome people to help set the table?
Speaker: Now, I say this is one, we don't always do this perfectly.
Speaker: I don't do this perfectly.
Speaker: But that's sat with me over the years is are we inviting people to help set the table?
Speaker: Often we invite people to a table that's already set, but it's set differently than the way they're accustomed to engaging.
Speaker: I want to talk about having hard discussions, truth-telling, discussing hard truths, creating space for that in our churches, in our communities.
Speaker: How do community leaders start to model a different kind of civility that's rooted in honesty, listening, and repair?
Speaker: I would love to shout out, actually, one of the things that I have seen is a number of our local Black churches have had a number of leaders who have invited a wide variety of other faith leaders from other cultures to come together.
Speaker: and host joint services to worship, and then to also speak out about how do we prioritize justice and dignity over prioritizing comfort.
Speaker: And I have been very, I would say encouraged might be the right word, to see who's showing up and how the invitations are being received.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that for leaders who are being bold and courageous to say, we're going to lead this effort and invite you to the table.
Speaker: And oftentimes, I think in Grand Rapids in particular, folks are accustomed to white leaders being the first ones to, you know, think about them setting the table.
Speaker: But
Speaker: I've been seeing a new movement rising up where actually we're seeing Black pastors, Hispanic pastors, the refugee community has been rising up and inviting folks to the table.
Speaker: And you had mentioned the killing of Patrick Leoya.
Speaker: And that really was...
Speaker: a catalyst in our community where Grand Rapids is still grappling with the truth and the realities of what is killing revealed about who we are as a community.
Speaker: And who showed up and began to ask questions and say, what does it mean to have a community that is truly multi-ethnic here in Grand Rapids?
Speaker: And knowing that one leader can't be the only representation for an entire group of people who live in Grand Rapids.
Speaker: And I've been very blown away by who's engaged and who hasn't, and also encouraged by who's engaged and who hasn't.
Speaker: And the new questions that can now be asked are,
Speaker: around a wide variety of tables to say the idea of a politeness culture, a West Michigan nice culture where you silence everybody's voice to just keep the peace and equating the idea of peace with quiet and instead defining peace as the presence of justice, that peace is what begins to amplify marginalized voices.
Speaker: And that's actually what's going to lead to peace when we're hearing one another and embracing conflict as a catalyst for healing.
Speaker: Ryan, we talk about embracing conflict as a way of achieving peace and shalom.
Speaker: How do we see that playing out over these next few months as we lead up to the conference?
Speaker: I think embracing conflict, it requires trust and relationship.
Speaker: And that takes time.
Speaker: It takes an immense amount of time.
Speaker: I think, you know, this idea of truth-telling was so valuable.
Speaker: But truth-telling without relationship is just shouting.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Say that again.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Say it.
Speaker: Rewind.
Speaker: Take that back.
Speaker: Truth-telling without relationship is just shouting.
Speaker: And without trust, it brings condemnation, not conviction.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And and so I think the hard conversations, again, it requires trust and it requires relationship.
Speaker: And when you trust somebody, you believe the best in them.
Speaker: And then you can have hard conversations.
Speaker: And even even when they say something that might be offensive to you, you still believe the best in them.
Speaker: And you believe, you know, this person means well.
Speaker: They just said something that is sitting wrong.
Speaker: So I'm going to ask some questions about that.
Speaker: Rather than making judgments about what this person just said or didn't say, we have a relationship.
Speaker: And I believe the best in this person.
Speaker: I know this person means well.
Speaker: And so when there's trust in a relationship, it invites more conversation and more trust.
Speaker: And without that, I don't know where we go, to be honest with you.
Speaker: I do, you know, I think some of the pastors that Christy mentioned are setting a great example.
Speaker: And the way our city, I mentioned our neighborhood is, you know, we've endured a century of political, social, and geographic divide.
Speaker: And so unfortunately, my neighborhood isn't involved in a lot of those conversations because we don't have a strong church presence here in the west side of Grand Rapids, and we don't have a diverse church presence here in the west side.
Speaker: And so it's a little bit harder, but I've watched from a distance and seen some of those conversations.
Speaker: And I think they are setting a great example.
Speaker: There are a lot of pastors that are setting a great example of standing together.
Speaker: Across denominations, across social boundaries, and showing relationship that's rooted in trust and being able to say, you know what, we're speaking here based on with relationship that's rooted in trust.
Speaker: And we're not just shouting.
Speaker: And I think, too, just recognizing where you have relationship and where you don't have relationship.
Speaker: And I think the Lord gives certain people a platform to be able to reach masses with their voice.
Speaker: But I think those are very few.
Speaker: And I think people are trying to grasp that platform and use a megaphone that has not been granted to them.
Speaker: And that's just causing more division and more confusion and more condemnation.
Speaker: And unless the Lord has granted you that platform where your voice can influence the masses, and there are a few people that have that influence.
Speaker: then where are the relationships that you can work in and build those relationships and build those relationships with trust?
Speaker: So we just so happen to have a platform through CCDA.
Speaker: And what's more exciting is that we get to host the conference here in November.
Speaker: So we know that's coming up.
Speaker: As we move towards that, this is a question that gets asked for every episode.
Speaker: So I want to make sure that I ask it.
Speaker: How do you see the CCD philosophy at work in Grand Rapids?
Speaker: And what do you hope for as the conference approaches that that platform gets leveraged in the right way to model Shalom for the many, many people across different divides that will be converging here in the city of Grand Rapids?
Speaker: So two-parter.
Speaker: How do you see it at work currently?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then what do you look forward to in November?
Speaker: There's a couple of levels of that to me.
Speaker: I'll try to keep it brief.
Speaker: I'm excited for what it can mean for the church in Grand Rapids.
Speaker: You know, I've been on the leadership advisory team here and I've been connected with CCDA for many years.
Speaker: And I'm excited for what it means for Grand Rapids.
Speaker: You know, CCDA gave me language when I moved into my neighborhood 20 years ago.
Speaker: I didn't know CCDA existed.
Speaker: I didn't know anything about the principles of CCDA.
Speaker: But I moved into a neighborhood to live in an intentional Christian community and was just trying to be obedient to what God was doing in my life.
Speaker: And CCDA gave language to that.
Speaker: And I hope that it can give language to some other people that feel these stirrings of God.
Speaker: And how do we do that?
Speaker: And I think CCDA does a great job of giving language to that.
Speaker: As Coach Gordon always says, CCDA is not the only way, but it is a way, and it's a good way.
Speaker: And I found it to be a good way.
Speaker: And I love that it's a way of life.
Speaker: And the thing that I so appreciate that I think is so valuable to people is that the principles of CCDA are an interconnected way of life.
Speaker: You can't truly practice Christian community development and say, you know what?
Speaker: I want to do relocation and that's what I want to do, therefore I'm going to do… Or the work of reconciliation.
Speaker: You can't do that outside of the church.
Speaker: Jesus made a way for reconciliation.
Speaker: Without the gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit in us as followers of Jesus…
Speaker: civility is our own.
Speaker: That's the best we can hope for.
Speaker: That honestly is the best we can hope for.
Speaker: We can't hope for actual reconciliation without the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
Speaker: And so this idea of church-based
Speaker: We want to do reconciliation.
Speaker: Well, I don't think there's actual reconciliation outside of the church.
Speaker: Listening to the community.
Speaker: If you're going to relocate and you're not going to listen to the community, you're going to do all kinds of damage and harm.
Speaker: So it's just given, I know for me, it's given language.
Speaker: And I think for so many other people, it can just help give some language and some guidelines.
Speaker: Again, as Coach says, it's not the only way, but it's a way and it's a good way.
Speaker: And when you really look into the principles of Christian community development,
Speaker: It's so biblically grounded.
Speaker: It's so biblically rooted and so practical.
Speaker: It's a way of life that you can actually live out.
Speaker: It's also a proven model.
Speaker: You can look at and say, when people have put this into practice for a long time, there's proven fruit that comes out of it.
Speaker: One of the things that I love so much about CCDA is that it is holistic.
Speaker: It's not about a quick fix.
Speaker: It's about long obedience in the same direction.
Speaker: I think that God's vision for Grand Rapids and for cities and communities is exactly that, shalom.
Speaker: Nothing missing, nothing broken.
Speaker: And I'm grateful for the folks who have come before us in Grand Rapids who were practicing CCD long before.
Speaker: It was an acronym or a conference.
Speaker: And it was folks who were truly wanting and desiring to live out a biblical call.
Speaker: to love their neighbor.
Speaker: And when I think about how it's at work in Grand Rapids, like what's already happening, I love when I meet a new organization or I look at the worker, I introduce somebody, I say, hey, this conference is coming.
Speaker: Y'all should be a part of it.
Speaker: And the realities are like, wow, we've been doing CCDA for forever.
Speaker: Like we've already, this is why we were founded.
Speaker: And they don't even realize that there's a whole greater movement that's happening around the country.
Speaker: And so I am thrilled to see practitioners and people who have been
Speaker: demonstrating this idea of a long obedience in the same direction, coming together and realizing they're not alone.
Speaker: Another thing I appreciate is it's not one size fits all.
Speaker: And so it's a lot more about let's be collective and share what we know so that we can grow the swear inch that God has entrusted to us.
Speaker: And when I can learn what you're doing in your square inch and we can visit another person's square inch that they have been tasked with trauma-informed care, youth empowerment, or housing, or...
Speaker: all the different ways that they're catalyzing Christian community development in each unique space and place, we realize that we are part of just a greater story that God is writing in our communities.
Speaker: And so I am really hopeful that as a result of CCDA being in Grand Rapids, that it's going to A, help folks to see that they're on a journey that is, it's a long journey.
Speaker: But it is one that we're not alone in and that not only is the Lord with us, but there are lots of folks who are doing the good work that you're not the only one who is supposed to be expected to get it all done.
Speaker: In fact, the expectation is that you can't do it all.
Speaker: And actually we need one another.
Speaker: And so I'm thrilled to see what networking is going to happen, what best practices, A, that the amazing practitioners in Grand Rapids can share with those who are coming to visit, but also that those who are here will see, look at all the folks who are coming from all over and all over the country.
Speaker: There are movements and catalyzers who are practicing relational presence and who are doing life together.
Speaker: And no one is alone in this.
Speaker: And that we can have frameworks and some shared language that can help us to do the things that God has called us to do to see shalom happen, not just in Grand Rapids, but beyond.
Speaker: Christy, Ryan, want to thank both of you for this time.
Speaker: And I want to echo that sentiment that as we approach November and as we get ready to host so many other folks here to come to the city of Grand Rapids to share in this longstanding movement, that we are privileged to be among a great cloud of witnesses who have a legacy.
Speaker: and a longstanding tradition of obedience in the same direction.
Speaker: I love that language.
Speaker: And so we have this calling upon us to live out these biblically gospel-centered, rooted principles that we hold dearly.
Speaker: And so we hope we welcome folks, and we welcome that time of gathering together to celebrate that legacy and those principles that
Speaker: As we look forward to the future and the next generation of leaders that will keep this movement going long after all of us have passed on.
Speaker: So again, I want to say thank you to both Ryan and Christy for being here today.
Speaker: And for those of you that are going to be listening, thank you for listening to this podcast.
Speaker: If you want to learn more about the conference in November, you can check out the show notes for this particular episode.
Speaker: Also, don't forget to subscribe to this podcast everywhere you go, Apple, Spotify, anywhere on the web where you can get your podcasts.
Speaker: This episode happens to be produced by our wonderful friend, Sarah Callen.
Speaker: in association with Christina Fore from CCDA.
Speaker: We will be back with another episode featuring some practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience God's Rome.
Speaker: We'll see you then.
Speaker: Stay in Grand Rapids.
