The (Im)partial Church : Episode 19 | Doing the Work
March 20, 2023
Gerard and Janine look at the ministry of a familiar congregation to highlight the importance of partnering with churches outside your neighborhood. We see that the benefits go both ways. If this conversation inspires further questions feel free to reach out to us at theimpartialchurch@lhm.org.
The (Im)partial Church
Episode 02-09-19
Professor Janine Bolling: We are activating a new mode of the season, and it is called ... conga roll please. We're entering into the application part of the season. Previously, you may remember we've discussed some of the problems, right? We've discussed problems about the way we approach racial reconciliation in the church. We also learned that the way that we look at the world, the way we think about the world, does not always align up with the way that God looks and sees and thinks about the world. So now we've taken the time to reflect. We've taken the time to sync our hearts to His, and now we are in application mode.
Rev. Dr. Gerard Bolling: Application mode. I love it. You know why I love it? Because oftentimes, and I'll say this is a fatal flaw, I'm always thinking, "How do I fix this? What do I need to do?" Right?
Janine: Yes. And that's a great question because we may not know the answer fully, but we do know that we have a thought, we have a little thought on how we might approach it. And so let's hear about this. Have you heard of the book Atomic Habits by James Clear?
Gerard: Not only have I heard of it, but I listened to it because I listen to audiobooks.
Janine: So you haven't read the book is what I'm hearing?
Gerard: I've read it. It's a cognitive thing. So I don't know ...
Janine: I consumed it in my mind. I love audiobooks, too. Audiobooks are my best friend. But Atomic Habits, it was a best-seller on several lists over the past few years. It's sold a lot of copies, and it's based on something that we talked about previously in the podcast. And I have a thought on how some of the principles in that book might apply to how we tackle issues that we face in the church.
Gerard: But, and I'm interested, don't get me wrong, but shouldn't we play our intro first?
Janine: We absolutely should.
Gerard: Hey y'all. I'm Gerard.
Janine: And I'm Janine.
Gerard: I'm the big brother.
Janine: But I'm the older sister, and we're brother and sister in Christ.
Gerard: We grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
Janine: I'm still living in Brooklyn, but I serve in the Bronx.
Gerard: I'm a professor at Concordia University in Texas, and a pastor at a congregation in St. Louis.
Janine: It's been said Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America.
Gerard: Issues with race and culture still plague our communities and our churches.
Janine: But what can we do about it? Should we see color?
Gerard: Or be colorblind?
Janine: What's our responsibility in bringing about unity in our neighborhoods and in our church pews?
Gerard: It's a delicate topic, but one we must tackle with grace.
Janine: So pull up your chair to the table as we bring Jesus to the center of this conversation of ...
Gerard: The (Im)partial Church.
Gerard: So we left off at the James Clear book, Atomic Habits, right?
Janine: Yes. And with that book, I've had the thought of what if we're looking at the problem slightly wrong? Most Christians would not self-describe as indifferent toward the plight of others. We're taught that the opposite of hate is not love, but indifference, right? So we are not trying to be anti-loving or indifferent. That's what Christians would identify with. And Christians, these same group of Christians, would probably not say that they have issues worshiping with people from other backgrounds.
Gerard: Yeah, most people think that God's kingdom is just for everybody.
Janine: Yes. So what if here, what if the thought in relation to this book, again, is that our reason for our lack of unity, what if it is not intentional?
Gerard: Okay, copy.
Janine: What if it's actually just been formed by a bunch of bad habits that's been repeated over and over and over and over again?
Gerard: I think you're onto something with that. It kind of reminds me of when we were kids and mom and dad told us to brush our teeth. Everybody's gone through this. I'm going to put it this way: I hope everybody has gone through this, right? Where you didn't intentionally pursue getting cavities because you wanted them. I don't think anyone wants cavities. But if you don't have a good brushing habit of brushing your teeth, then you're going to get cavities. It may not be something you always feel like doing or getting up and putting the toothpaste on the toothbrush, whatever else, but you got to brush those things if you're trying to avoid having cavities.
Janine: Yes, and that's exactly what I'm talking about. So the prejudice that we see in the church is due to sin, right? There is no question about that, sin, aka sugar in our cavity analogy. And that sin may manifest as the byproduct of a lack of toughness, a lack of diligence, a lack of attention, a lack of care, when it comes to seeing the needs of others. So similar to that cavity analogy, if the sugar is what slowly ruins our teeth over time, we go to sleep, we don't brush, we don't floss, we say, "Who cares?" We'll wait the next day, we drink a soda. Sin is like that. It's around us. It's at our workplace, it's on the train, it's on the bus, it's in the car, it's on the radio. It's just all around us all the time. And if we don't take care of how we internalize that, then it's going to come out somewhere else. And now like a cavity, there's a big old hole where there shouldn't be one. And you're feeling air, you're confused, your tooth hurts, your head hurts, you're sleeping to get away from the pain, and you don't know what to do. And who do you call? Yeah, you call the dentist, right?
Gerard: Not Ghostbusters. Yeah, the dentist.
Janine: Now you want to come to the dentist after all of that negligence. And so when we're thinking about just that buildup over time, it's unintentional, but it definitely is going to have a negative consequence if it's not addressed and checked at the door.
Gerard: Yeah, I mean it makes a lot of sense. We kind of have to look internally and say, "How can we change our habits to reflect more of the heart that God has for His people?"
Janine: And that's another good question. And you know what? James Clear has an answer. He has three ways of going about doing this. And he says that people make habits honestly for a few different reasons. The first reason that someone might create a new habit is to change an outcome. So what is going on with their life? It's something that they keep seeing popping up, and they haven't been able to make an immediate action to change it. So the first thing is to change an outcome. A second reason somebody might create a new habit is to change a process. So maybe the problem is not the outcome. I'm a high-achiever, but the way I get there is by staying up three nights a week until all hours past my bedtime. So you might need to change the process and create a new habit. And then the final reason why somebody might create a new habit, according to James Clear, is to change their identity.
He says this, "Outcomes are about what you get. Processes are about what you do. Identity is about what you believe." And so if we apply that logic, if we think about what that means, outcomes, processes, identity, then we see that we can change our habits for the sake of having less overall strife. And when he talks in the book, he talks about how our brain is constantly working to make things easier, to make things automated, to make things just a habit, something that you don't even think about, that you just do. That's a good thing. In some respects, that's a really good thing. We're just naturally into action. What you do in practice is what you're going to do in the game. You don't rebound in practice, you think you're magically going to become a different person when the game is on? So we can change our habits so that we can take part in God's mission. Or we can change our habits so that we adhere to our true identity. It's kind of a good, better, best scenario. And operating out of our true identity is the best-case scenario.
Gerard: I love that. True identity is what keeps ringing in my mind of this is not who we are. Our compulsive nature of trying to act in certain ways is not who God designed us to be or who God calls us to be. It's literally changing what those natural feelings are to be more like God, to reflect more of the heart of Christ. And I keep thinking about how much of a high calling that is, but how important it is to drive in that direction.
Janine: For sure. That really honestly it might be because we don't only see ourselves as God's children. There's all these competing things that happen in light of our identity. People may define themselves using gender, class, sexual orientation, their race, their political party. Any number of different variables to describe themselves. And these are all really just drops in the bucket. So all of these are ways that we try to get at defining our identity, but in reality, they're not the truest form of our identity.
Gerard: Yeah. Amen. It's kind of like Clear also says, "Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are, consciously or unconsciously." In other words, this is really seeing ourselves as children of God above all else and then acting like it. Not just saying, "This is who I am." But acting like we're children of God. It makes a lot of sense to me. But a lot of us see ourselves as God's children, and then we act any anyway we want to act. We don't always act like we're God's children.
Janine: Without a doubt. I really do see that it's easy to do certain things and not easy to do others. So it's really not easy to always live from the place that God intends us to. We can hear that little voice. We can sense the Holy Spirit at work in our lives when we're confronted with a sin that really draws us in. However, it's not easy. It's not easy work at all. But the church does have a way of helping us with that. The church does have a way of stepping in and interrupting that. They become the place where God's kingdom is on full display when the Holy Spirit is at work in the church. The church is a place where our identities in Christ are reflected back on us constantly. But the church doesn't really just reveal who we are; it also works to show others how loved and how valuable they are.
One of our producers sat down with an old friend of ours to talk about some efforts that are being done at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in North St. Louis and the impact that those things had on him during his time service there. So do you know who that is?
Chris Knepper: Chris Knepper.
Gerard: Oh, Chris. I love that guy. He did some ministry with us as a field worker.
Chris Knepper: I was reading Bonhoeffer when I was an undergrad. He was just one of those people that totally captivated me just for his advocacy for people and his authenticity in what he believed and what he did. And he has this quote that will stick with me until the day I die. And it's that, "The church is only the church when it exists for the sake of others." I love what Luther does with the Fifth Commandment where he says, "It's not only about not harming people, but it's about taking care of your neighbor and every bodily need." And he goes on in Large Catechism, and he'll say, "It's not only that, but when you ignore opportunities to serve your neighbor, that's also breaking the Fifth Commandment." And so I think Bethlehem is phenomenal at seeing opportunities. Bethlehem just has this Kingdom vision for looking at the opportunities and seeing the things that God's putting in our pathway.
Janine: Yes, you heard him. Bethlehem has a way of showing up for people in their community. Through a ministry effort called EAC, they provide a creative outlet for kids. But the impact of their ministry isn't limited just to the kids that they serve, because while Bethlehem is in the city, they intentionally partner with churches in other communities. To share more about that, we actually talked to somebody else you may know. And this time it's not Chris, because we already heard from him. Do you know ...
Travante Brock: I'm Travante Brock and I've been working with the EAC program for, let's see, six summers, five years now. And so far it's been a pretty blessing experience.
Gerard: Oh, Travante, too, aka "Mr. Brock." These are two of my favorites.
Travante Brock: I think demographically, we don't typically see suburban-type communities heavily involved in the urban communities. But with EAC and the sister churches, they're proving otherwise. They are people who care genuinely, and they come out and they give their time and energy to these kids, and it's heavily appreciated and it's important. It's important for these kids in these urban communities to see a different side of Christ and life in general, other than what they're used to seeing in their communities.
Chris Knepper: The church is diverse. There is no way around it. And when we worship with people from different backgrounds, that is authentically being the church because we recognize the work of the Holy Spirit through different cultures, different backgrounds, different ethnicities. And we honor those and we give those dignity and we respect those, that the Holy Spirit does work through those ways. And to not worship with people from other ethnic backgrounds is to say that we don't want to hear how the Spirit is working through this community. And we don't want to hear how God is making moves in this place and in this space.
If we wanted to experience the fullness of God's work through the Holy Spirit in the world, yeah, absolutely we have to worship with people from other ethnicities. Because God does work through different people in different ways. It's what Paul says about the body has many members. Well, what are you going to do? Cut off a member of your body and decide you don't need your left arm anymore? Life would be pretty hard, right? I mean, you can live without your left arm, but life's so much better when you have both arms. Just like the church is so much better when we have the fullness of it represented.
Travante Brock: It's one thing for people to serve an environment that they're comfortable with or used to, but it's a different thing when you have people who know they look different, act different, talk different, putting all those things aside and saying, "It's not about me. It's about Jesus Christ." And when you have people who think that way, it makes the world a better place. It simply does.
Chris Knepper: I think everything for us always has to start with the Gospel. It always has to start with the Gospel. And it cannot come out of a place of that Law, that condemnation. I think as I'm sitting here just reflecting on it, the Law will always be transactional, but the Gospel will always be transformational. And I think that's what we're looking for. The Gospel is unconditional love and walking with people with that presupposition that, "Hey, this is going to get rocky. I'm not going to like you all the time, but I am making the commitment for the sake of the Gospel to love you without conditions. Period. The end." And I think that's what the Gospel is.
Gerard: What solid dudes. Man, I loved what Chris said about the motives of worshiping with people who are different. If it is based on the Law, what we feel like we have to do, it becomes transactional. "What do I get from this?" But when our actions are based in the Gospel, they become transformational.
Janine: People can tell when we value them, when we're operating from a place of love or something else. This is what it means to authentically be the church.
Gerard: And it's not just about others. The Holy Spirit changes us. Which leads me to another point that Chris made. God reveals different things through different people groups. Listen to what Pastor JT Thomas has to say about this topic.
JT Thomas: I think that communities that are more homogenous have to be willing to pass through Samaria. Meaning, it's normal that our communities are going to look like the communities that surround us, so we can't expect to have a vibrant, multiethnic, multicultural church in the middle of rural Idaho if that's not where the demographics are. So our congregations will reflect our demographics. However, we see throughout Scripture we see the missionary God, we see Paul who was a Jewish man being given grace and being called to the Gentiles. In other words, to people who are non-Jewish, right? So, we see this over and over again, this Gospel that sends us outside of our cultural norms, outside of our comfort zones, outside of our context again and again in order to see a greater fullness of this Gospel lived out in society.
So I think for homogenous communities to do justice is to step outside of your comfort zone, to extend yourself. In Isaiah 58, it says, "Extend yourself on behalf of the poor. Then your light will break out like the dawn." How do we live an extended life? How does a church that's homogenous, who wants to grow in this area and grow in what we call "reconciliation quotient" instead of your intelligence quotient, your RQ instead of your IQ, how do you do that? Well, I would say enter into covenant, not just pulpit swapping with a congregation that may be a little bit more diverse than you. But who has God called you to begin to enter into some sort of covenantal commitment where you say, "We're going to go find a community of color and we want to not just serve them, but we want to learn from them and learn and grow with them. We want to go to battle with them for the next 20 years." Not just doing a service project in the inner city. But beginning to pray, "God, would You give us relationship with congregations and communities that do not look like us, for mutual growth, for mutual learning, and for the advancement of the Kingdom?" And I think that's a clear way to begin to enter into humble, yet fruitful and powerful mutual relationships that ultimately lead to a more mature expression of a multiethnic reality of us being followers of Jesus.
Janine: Right. We should want to see our God at work in others. It is a testament to His greatness. It's not just about serving or helping others who are less fortunate. It's about seeing others as our brothers and sisters in Christ and dignifying them. I love that Bethlehem sees its partnerships as mutually beneficial, a symbiotic relationship, so to speak.
Gerard: And like Chris said, all of the programs at Bethlehem are about just that. We intentionally partner with churches outside of the urban context so that we can be exposed to one another. It's a bi-directional relationship. We want to see what God is doing in the lives of other people, people that don't look like each other or live by each other or act like one another, even. We all stand to gain something when we have that type of relationship, and dare I say it, that type of Christlike friendship with one another as well.
Since we're already on the topic of habits, the author of Hebrews has another important habit for us to keep in mind. And I think it dovetails what we were just talking about. Hebrews 10:24-25 says, "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not neglecting to meet together as in the habit of some, but encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day drawing near." So what day do you think the Scripture is referring to, Janine? When it says, "The day is drawing near"?
Janine: I think it's the end times. Eschatology.
Gerard: It's talking about the big day. The ultimate day.
Janine: Yes, the end times, for sure. And so we often get caught up in living in different tenses. Are we living in the past, are we living in the future, or are we living in the present? And when we think about the habit, I think that's why the word habit is here, is to talk about the present. The habits that we have, we always have the chance to modify, to create, to recreate, to renew. However, when we see the day, the Day, the Day with a capital D, that is the reality that God's going to bring about. And so I think that those two things are very different in our day-to-day lives.
Gerard: I agree. I agree. And there are so many things that we get to unpack in that, too. It's important to stir up one another in love and good works. Well, what does that mean? It means that we don't have to do anything to earn our salvation. Jesus has already done that on the cross, but He does encourage us to love one another as He's loved us, and to encourage one another and build each other up. The Scriptures encourages us to have these good works that He prepared in advance for us to do on our to-do list. We're not just passive in what we do, but instead we have to actively love one another and look on ways to be intentional on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes it's an hour-to-hour basis, and how we're going to love other people that look different from us. I think that it's important to put these things in tangible examples, too.
To the topic of EAC, you have a mostly African-American community of people who are being served that live within a context that's in the inner-city context, in neighborhoods that are neighborhoods that are economically starved and under-resourced. And for the most part, you have different groups of people that come from different churches in suburban areas that are highly resourced, that are literally stepping into a place that to them may feel like a different world. So how do you bridge the gap between these two places? There's so much fancy footwork we can do to try to put language around that. But what I love about our ministry of EAC in connection with the Greater Things Ministry and the overall scope of it is that the best way to build a bridge is one piece at a time. So it starts with visiting, starts with getting to know people. It starts with exchanging in relationship, and then it grows from there. It's this stirring on of love. And one of the things that the author encourages us to do too is he says, "Let us not stop meeting together." Do we know what that is, Janine?
Janine: Yes. It means to have parties together.
Gerard: Okay, yeah. Who doesn't love a party?
Janine: To take different opportunities. New Year's Eve, Christmastime. Anniversaries. Celebrations.
Gerard: It's giving holidays. It's giving occasions.
Janine: Dancing. DJs. Exactly.
Gerard: It is kind of like a party, yes. It's fellowship. And it's super influential for us to have this time of fellowship with one another. Of course, the church, church on Sunday morning is a time where that happens. But also there's other ways that we fellowship as well too, as the body of Christ.
Janine: Yeah, fellowship is one of the main things. Really, the people around you are the people who shape your life. And that's why life coaches always say stuff like, "Show me your five closest friends and I'll show you your future." And when you think of it as a millennial, you're like, "Who has five friends?" But besides that, at church, these are people that should be in your circle. You're around the Communion table with them. However, no one from your church is in your inner circle, I think that's pretty interesting and indicative of how your life might be going.
Gerard: I love that image. You're around the table with all these people, but none of them are in your inner circle. That doesn't make any sense. If you're around the table with them, they should be the ones that are really in your inner circle, and your relationship should be sort of next level.
Janine: That is honest, real talk. Because I think a lot of people that go to church as an event, but the people who are in the church are not a part of their lives. This is especially true, maybe I might be speaking out of an urban environment where people are from all over, but I think it could probably make sense in a suburban context as well, where you have people driving from different places into church. So we're not all from the neighborhood all the time, but we all care about similar things. So when we talk about being in someone's inner circle, these are people you can easily reach to talk through problems or solutions. And as Christians, it can be difficult to find other Christians in the world that we trust. And the church should be a place where we could do that. So when we're thinking about who's in our inner circle, who's influencing us, are any of those people in your inner circle, Christians?
Gerard: That's good perspective. That's good perspective.
Janine: Because these are the people who are going to influence our behavior. These are the people who are going to be the catalysts. These are going to be the people who are going to check us when we're wrong, or when we're falling too deeply into sin, when we're building those cavities, when those things are getting really deeply rooted and they say, "Hey, these were your goals. This is how Jesus acts. This wasn't loving. You're coming off indifferent." These are things that your church friends should check you about.
Gerard: I think that you know what this really reminds me of too, is that this is a high call at a high charge of keeping the main thing the main thing. Keeping your main identity your main identity. Realizing that in a way, this is a family business, the good works of the church and the love that the church is supposed to have pouring out of it. In John 3:16, it says, "For God so love the world that He gave His only Son." And we know the rest of that goes. It means that all people are precious in His sight. And that type of love is infectious. And that type of love also is relentless as well. It doesn't give up on different groups of people or say this type of thing is too hard to do, but instead it chases after it.
Janine: Yes, absolutely. All are precious in His sight. You know what that reminds me of? The little Sunday school song: "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world."
Gerard: Come through vibrato.
Janine: Oh gosh, it's so politically incorrect. I've heard different versions of that from all of the wonderful preschool and early childhood educators out there. There are a couple versions you can throw in, but that song has not aged super well, huh?
Gerard: Yeah, it's kind of eek. Yeah.
Janine: It's a little eek, but the message is the same, right? All are precious in His sight. So when God looks at His children, when God looks at us, regardless of whether we're messing up, we're living in our identity or not at the time, He does look on us with eyes of love.
In an earlier episode, you might remember that we talked about a problem we face in the church as it relates to issues of racial reconciliation. There is also a lack of what? Same reason we don't work out every day.
Gerard: Motivation.
Janine: Motivation. Motivation. We may want to do things but not do them. There was a certain someone in the Bible who talked about this as well. Paul said, "The good I want to do, I do not do, and the very things I don't want to do is what I find myself doing." So the lack of motivation. In this episode, we've talked about how we should be motivated to act because who we are, who our Father in heaven is. But really what trumps motivation all of the time is, starts with a D, and it's not diversity, it's discipline. So being disciplined is more important than being motivated. Being disciplined and consistent is more important. Doing what God says to do regardless of how you feel is more important than feeling intrinsically motivated to be nice to someone, to reach out to someone, to reconcile with someone.
Rather, we should be understanding the model that God has given us and being consistent within that. So if He tells us to love others until the end of time, we cannot then start counting. If He tells us to look at His people with love and to consider others more highly than ourselves, then we don't get to pick and choose when to do that. We often have these little wars when it comes to motivation, and that's where we need to get out of that. That's where we need to think about kind of what we've been talking through. We have to create new routines that are connected with the same cues from God's Word.
So in the book, they talk about cues, routines, and rewards. So what we're all chasing after is the reward, right? The outcome. If we do something really simple like learning a new language, the reward that we want is to be able to be fluent in that language. What we find is that people don't practice the language enough to learn it. So you have a bunch of people who said, "I took Spanish in high school. I never used it, and it never did anything for me." And then I ask, do you use it when you go to the restaurant? Do you listen to music related to it? Do you have any friends in that group? And so if we're not practicing, then how are we ever going to expect to get better? If we're not practicing a routine, how do we expect our habit to change? Because our cue is always the same. It's always the Holy Spirit pinching us somewhere.
Gerard: Yeah, it's always the Holy Spirit giving that little nudge to do something different. But we know that in order to get a new skill or to change something, we're going to have to put some effort into it. It's like when organizational psychologists and other researchers look at this kind of work, it's important for them to learn and utilize new skills in a new metric. And the new word that you'll hear them use is "grit." In the 2013 TED talk, the psychologist Angela Lee Duckworth defines grit as passion and perseverance for very long-term goals. And while much of her work takes place in an academic setting, tell me if you think the church could use more grit. I would say absolutely.
Janine: Yes. I'm very familiar with her TED talk and what she talks about the way that we develop grit, grit is one of those things that puts us head and shoulders above the rest of the people. Like what outlasts talent will be grit. So if you practice 500 free throws a day and somebody's really talented and they can shot a free throw when they're 10 but they never practice free throws in between the ages of 10 and 15, guess who's not making the top team in high school? Because you have to have that deliberate practice. Angela Lee Duckworth talks about that practice being in areas where you need strength.
So yes, always work on your strong skills, live those out. In the context of Christianity, we would name them as our spiritual gifts. So if you are good at teaching, keep on teaching, keep on volunteering for that. Now, where the deliberate practice comes in is with those areas where you're weak within your gift. So that would mean if I am good at teaching, but I maybe don't ever teach this age group, but they need attention, love, care, then that is something that I can work on. I can have deliberate practice to get better at the skills that actively engage me with additional people who need my gift that God's given me.
Gerard: All this talk about growth, it reminds me, because you know I love a good plant metaphor, I'm a plant lover. I'm a plant lover, right? I recently heard that the first several years of a bamboo plant's life are not that spectacular. Did you know that?
Janine: I don't think any parts of a bamboo plant's life are spectacular. I don't find bamboo plants spectacular.
Gerard: Child ... anyway. To the naked eye, for the first few years, that plant is like, "What is it doing?" To the naked eye, there's not a lot of growth happening. Sometimes the plant doesn't really do anything, and you're watering it and you're taking care of it and you're nurturing it, and nothing is happening. Then all of a sudden, that plant begins to sprout and it grows. And it doesn't just grow a little bit. It grows like 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 feet in some occasions in just a short time. And I know it can be tempting to become discouraged when it seems like habits aren't changing much initially, and we don't bear that fruit quickly. But new habits take time in order to build something big. Just like that bamboo plant; you got to water that habit; you got to make sure that you're putting the energy into that habit; you got to care for that new habit. And then all of a sudden, something beautiful grows very quickly after all the work that you've done on the front end.
Janine: Wow, that's amazing. That truly is amazing. I am not a plant lover, but I am fascinated by nature because of what God does at work in nature. So when we think about what it's like to really grind in that time, in that "shadow work," as they call it in the world, but Christians have been doing it for years, that time alone with God, where we grow, we think about what we've learned. We can grow in compassion for others by establishing the habit of fellowship with them. So if you are seeking to grow in compassion and you are wondering where to start, start by getting in front of people who you want to grow in compassion for.
One of my best friends did this to overcome her fear of serving others who had communicable diseases. So she worked at a nonprofit that served people who have AIDS, who have contracted the HIV virus, and they may be in full-blown AIDS, right? So there's different places in their life that she would meet them. And so from overcoming that fear of it, the only way you can overcome that fear is to interact with people in that space. By partnering, in her context she partnered with a group of people already engaged in that work.
So often we feel we have to reinvent, or we have to start it from scratch at our congregation, at our women's group, in our context at our school, when in reality it might look a little bit like the work that Chris, the work that Travante, the work that EAC, the work that Bethlehem does, where you are plugging into something already going on, growing in that compassion, growing in that fellowship, and opening up your world to different experiences that you maybe wouldn't have had if you never chose to overcome that fear. So since God does empower us to be fearless in our walk about the earth, we think about forward. We think forward. We think about what we're doing next week. So next week we're going to be talking to some folks at another church who are intentionally doing the work of racial reconciliation.
Gerard: Absolutely. We cannot wait to see you guys next week. Tune in. We're going to have a lot of fun together, and we're going to learn and grow a lot together as we seek to make new habits. This is us on our episode of The (Im)partial Church.