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Everybody Else is a podcast about the invisible people who make life happen. What began as conversations with behind-the-scenes builders in the music industry has grown into a broader exploration of how people think, work, and carry responsibility across industries and across disciplines. Hosted by Wes Luttrell, the show centers on thoughtful dialogue with creatives, leaders, and operators whose work often goes unseen but shapes the world we live in. New episodes streaming every Tuesday.
speaker-0 (00:01.292)
This is the Everybody Else Podcast.
speaker-1 (00:10.39)
Most of the authors of the human story are unnamed. Invisible contributors to the greatest story ever written. So who are the invisible people writing our chapter today? Because behind every great city, industry, movement, and way of thinking are people who dedicate their entire lives to work that'll go virtually unnoticed. Work that builds on where we've been, shapes where we are, and points us towards where we're going.
There are those in the spotlight, and then there's everybody else.
speaker-0 (00:57.262)
It's funny you should say that because when you look back on your life, you see all these turning points and you see all of life as a turning in some ways. But there was a few like clearly critical moments. So the first one was when I was 24 years old, I think it's the one you're referencing. I had, you know, grown up in America, like Bible Belt. My dad was a minister, went to church every Sunday, grew up in the church, all that stuff. So.
faith, Christianity, religion, these were very familiar things to me. But then I went off in a story like many, many, many, people, maybe similar to some of your own story. I went off to university, got away from like the rhythms that had saturated my life, was encouraged to think on my own. And for the record, my parents always encouraged me to be, you know, they weren't like, you know, strict.
this my way or the highway, you know, they encouraged exploration and and thought and so But you know, you're young your brain still like actually forming completely and you're influenced by your upbringing and culture So anyways, so I go off to university Get exposed out of the rhythms of life I had grown up in and known and then get exposed to all these ideas like Eastern religion philosophy
And they're convincing, they're just as convincing as any other worldview. And so one of the things that I learned in college or at university was this idea of internal coherence to a worldview. So every worldview has internal coherence. In fact, we're always working towards coherence because if we don't, if we don't have that internal coherence in our own mind and settle, can't.
we can't live in real life. We would be disjointed or schizophrenic or, you know, like our behaviors would be erratic and not tied to the things that we believe. So we're always working towards this internal coherence. But when you're growing up within a very limited view of reality, you don't like understand that other people outside of your own worldview also have internal coherence. Like you can apply that to other religions, obviously, Eastern religions, but also
speaker-0 (03:16.846)
philosophies like atheism or hedonism, it doesn't really matter what it is, there's an internal coherence to it that helps you live out your life, So I get exposed to all these other worldviews and they all also look good. You know, like they all make sense, like within their own narrative of reality. Like Buddhism's pretty attractive in a lot of ways, right?
hedonism when I'm looking across a girl at a party seven eight beers deep that looks pretty attractive too. Yeah. So anyways, so so I had kind of like set aside all the ways in which I had believed and thought about things and I was like, you know how naive I was in my in my younger years of like thinking I want to start with a blank slate and I want to re-like investigate everything.
So, you know, I got a seasonal job at a ski resort out in Colorado and I went out there and I was leaving everything behind me and I was going to explore the world and reality and thought and religion. And I brought a books full of like all those Eastern religion books, the philosophers. And I was just going to spend a lot of time out there in Colorado skiing and working and working through what I figured out in life.
And what I figured out in life is that if once all those undergirdings are removed, for me anyways, it was all about hedonism. For me, was whatever was pleasurable in the moment. it didn't matter what it was. It could be good things, doing good for the community. I think there's a negative connotation on hedonism, but it's really like whatever's good in the moment.
that's what I choose to do. And so I kind of settled into that and
speaker-1 (05:15.81)
guided by pleasure though, would you say that? Would you say that that's how decision making is guided by what feels good in the moment? So if helping somebody move the furniture feels good or getting drunk, yeah.
speaker-0 (05:19.128)
Sure.
speaker-0 (05:23.5)
Yeah, you know brings
Or sitting in my bed and meditating and thinking about, you know, the mystical realities of transcendent being. Like it doesn't really matter what it is, but that was what was informing my life, right?
speaker-1 (05:47.758)
conscious choice or you just, this is where you were at this time?
speaker-0 (05:50.818)
both like after exploring all these things, you know, but then also just kind of natural where I was as a young man, not tethered to anything, you know, the world is your oyster type of thing. But yeah, but also there was some intentionality to it for sure. So anyways, I get this call from a girl, that lady, young lady that I had not talked to in five years and
Like one month later, just through emails and more telephone calls, we were engaged over the phone without having seen each other again. And then I was married within five months. And so it was just like this rapid change in my life. And I was ripped out of like that hedonistic pursuit to living in Southern Illinois in a town of 2000 people with a three-year-old stepdaughter, newly married. And it was like, ooooh. Is this your...
speaker-1 (06:47.544)
current life.
speaker-0 (06:48.27)
Yeah. Wow. Anna, who you know is that three year old. This is the, Okay. So, so, and she was a Christian. So she was following Jesus very actively. Like faith was a major part of her life. And so that turning point was those 18 months. I was really trying to wrestle through this thing of like this disruption in my life coupled with the faith of my
speaker-1 (06:54.158)
I did not realize it.
speaker-0 (07:17.802)
wife which had echoes of the you know, my own life, but not only life but like Western civilization like it's really easy to live in the Christianity in America because especially in the Bible belt because that's just all of our narratives and how we make sense of the world and all these things so So but I was exploring this but I was also kind of not wanting to believe because I didn't fully like understand like I didn't understand the state of popular
Christianity, like the political right and the way that lot of churches function. And so I was like resisting it, but being drawn to it, watching it in my wife and reading all these amazing thinkers like CS Lewis and Nancy Pearson and GK Chesterton. like I was like being exposed to all these new thinkers and thought leaders that I had never grown up in within church. Like it was very shallow intellectually. And then so I'm reading all these amazing thinkers and I didn't know, like I was being open to a whole new world.
of depth of Christianity that I had never really experienced before. And so there was this turning moment where I was partying on 4th of July and had done everything that I'd always done with my friends, like start drinking at 10 in the morning, stop just 3 a.m. You know, whenever it's done. And I realized waking up the next morning that
speaker-1 (08:38.52)
Whatever.
speaker-0 (08:45.174)
And I almost hate now that it's such a cliche story. Like I was drinking and then I, know. Because we can come back to that if we want to, but like, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with drinking. But that's just my story, right? So I wake up the next day and I'm like, that wasn't me. Like that was not, even though I was doing those things, like that's not who I was in my being anymore. Like I don't know how to, to...
explain it any more than that of like even though I was like my identity had shifted to the point where it was disassociated from my behaviors like there was a true self that I knew and it was real and and was the core of my being that was not this thing what the Bible would call your flesh that was doing these actions and I remember waking up that morning
the next morning and being like, the old me is dead. I'm a new creation. And that was a turning point. And that has sent me on a completely different life trajectory than the one that I thought that I was pursuing and had laid out for myself. And it's completely, I mean, it has literally turned my life in a 90 or 180 or whatever degree direction. so yeah, turning point's an apt sort of...
Name for it.
speaker-1 (10:14.478)
for sure. what were the immediate implications of your waking up to this new just matter-of-fact reality that you and I mean what I mean by that is I think that when these sorts of fundamental identity shifts happen it reorients who you see as this is who I want to be with
this is who I want to spend my time with, this is where I want to do my work, this is who I want to learn from. It reorients the field of things that resonate with you as true. What were the immediate implications?
speaker-0 (10:49.311)
absolutely.
speaker-0 (10:54.226)
yeah, the immediate implication was just a hunger to have more of that experience and to know this state of being more. And so I wish now in hindsight, or I don't even, I don't really regret almost really nothing in life, but like the things happen that need to happen or whatever. But I do like, I woke up with such a hunger to know more than I immediate, I mean, like by the next week I had applied for seminary. Wow. because
Like in the West, in Western civilization, if you want to learn about something, where do you go? You go to a school. You go to school to learn. Like we know that's not the best way to learn anymore, but it's so ingrained us. So like I just wanted to know about God more. This thing that I was, that had transformed my understanding. I just wanted to go and experience it more. I wanted to go learn more about it. So I immediately redirected everything. Like we physically moved.
So that was in July 4th by September, I was taking classes. Like that's how quickly that happened. A month and a half, my wife was six months pregnant with our first child. And so, I mean, it was like a complete reorientation of life, like completely casting aside all the things that we had been thinking about, like law school and moving. Like all these things were completely gone. And it was like a...
intentional directed purpose towards that. But now I look back on that and I'm like, to your point, like, I needed that time in the desert, if you will. I needed that time away from those things because I needed to reor, like I needed space to explore these new thoughts and this new identity and these new, these, you know, was true transformation like metamorphosis, like I was
not a worm anymore, I was a butterfly. And so if I would have been around the same influences that I had had, like, I don't think that I would have, the formative process would have been as influential and changing in my life as it were. So like, I had to get away from all those things that were like ruts in my brain and in my behavior. And so once I had separated,
speaker-0 (13:20.674)
from those and we had went off like I felt truly free to explore all those things. so, I mean, that was four years though. Those four years of life, like a lot can happen in four years.
speaker-1 (13:34.442)
But it's interesting because I think when you know, you know. And what's funny on the outside looking in, if I was at that party with you and then the next week I see you again, you're like, just applied to the seminary. You're like, I'm gonna take a different path. Seminary.
speaker-0 (13:42.924)
yeah.
speaker-1 (14:00.398)
From the outside looking in, because there's several people in my life who have made drastic choices related to faith specifically. And even in my own life, I feel like I'm going through my own identity shift in my early 30s here. And it's happening really quickly. And I can sense that from the outside looking in, I might look like unstable or even a little like, what the hell are you doing? However, on the inside, it feels that...
I'm taking the information I'm getting and I can't, there's a relationship between me and my conscience that I have to live out that is stronger than the relationship between me and a previous identity that I have like sunk and caused in. don't know, like there's like something that would be like, you should keep that one alive too. It creates a dissonance where it's like the more I lean into what is true, the more information I get, the better I feel.
speaker-0 (14:49.41)
Yes
speaker-0 (14:58.712)
The more like-
speaker-1 (15:00.878)
The more aligned I am, the more fruitful life itself, like reality itself for words. It's just like more of a...
speaker-0 (15:08.398)
Well, I think of it like, not to force music into this, you know, we're both music lovers, of course. it's, I think it's like, it's the harmony. It's when all the notes are hitting together, like, and you can do that thing over there, but that's, that note's off. That's dissonance. Like that is not, that is, that is not creating the beautiful music of life that I want to step into. know?
And you can tell and you can tell when you're hitting an off note once you've had that transformation So I did want to add and it may take us into the next thing. The other immediate transformation is that I woke up from that or you know Waking up as maybe I was raised to new life with a very clear telos or directed purpose
I remember looking around like almost with a like an urgency of this global revolution that I want to, it's surely about ready to take over the world. like this. mean. Well, yes. But that, that carries so much baggage. Yeah. Yeah. But so like, guess I would say like.
speaker-1 (16:22.542)
Christianity?
speaker-1 (16:28.75)
2000 years, I mean, it's pretty old.
speaker-0 (16:35.98)
The revolution of Jesus, the upside down kingdom, the reorientation of all life, like this is one of the things that I always talk about. sorry if you've heard it many times, but like it is remarkable to think that the Jesus revolution started with 120 followers on a mountain and overtook the Roman view of the ancient world within 300 years without firing a single shot.
it's a peaceful revolution. that's, I always wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself, but I was never, I certainly didn't want to go to the front lines with guns. Like I abhor violence. Like, like to think that you could join a revolution that's peaceful, that's built on love, that's actually been proven historically to, to be viral in that sense. Like I seriously thought the gospel as I understood it, is that, that kind of idea of
of sacrificial love, humility, and using your influence for the good of others, especially marginalized neighbors. Like all the things that we could talk about, like I was like, this thing's about ready to take over the world. And then you get smacked down, right? Like, yeah, it has been around 2000 years and like we're living in America. Everyone's rejected that. And haven't you read Nietzsche? Like God is dead. Like all these things, like the church is stagnant and ineffective. Like.
Catholic Church, you know what they did. Like you could just go through this long list of like naysaying, but I'm just talking about those early moments. Like this, this revolution that had happened inside of me that I saw could and has revolutionized real, the real lived experience of people. I just was like, I got to go join it. And so that was like this, this idea of like this outward impulse or, or impetus maybe like.
going and finding the mission of God and joining with it to help bring about a revolution of love, like that was immediate.
speaker-1 (18:39.438)
Did you find yourself when you began down the path? Okay, how does this newfound enthusiasm to live this out? How does, like, where does this land practically? Through this journey, how did you become, in your own words, the neighborhood guy? How did, how did, how did, because there's a lot of different areas that this could have like played out. You could have manifested this.
and so how did this, how did you get to there?
speaker-0 (19:13.102)
Yeah, that's a great question. Like, because, okay, so when Wes says neighborhood guy, vocationally, like my nine to five job or whatever, just my job is as a neighborhood of realization. So I work alongside neighbors in a neighborhood to bring about sustainable change from the inside out. So it's resident centric. It's centered in residents.
And then now I get the great honor and privilege to coach other neighborhood based organizations in the same process. And so there's five love your neighborhood initiatives going up in our region. we kind of like started that whole movement. Yeah, from our from the faith. know, what's the greatest way of life or greatest command? I like to say way of life because
speaker-1 (19:55.022)
did you get the idea from it?
speaker-0 (20:02.85)
command comes with so much connotation too. But the greatest way of life is to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, or you could say with your whole being, with the wholeness of being, and then to turn and love your neighbor in the same way. And we like to say that neighborhoods are just full of neighbors. And so that's why we love them. so- you are, it's funny. No, yeah, go ahead.
speaker-1 (20:26.478)
You operate with the assumption, it's a positive assumption. It's a positive assumption that people are capable, that nothing's broke, it's not broken, like these people aren't broken. Something is, it's a very positive orientation towards those that you're serving.
speaker-0 (20:36.223)
Absolutely.
speaker-0 (20:50.618)
absolutely. And that again comes from faith. it's like, man, I always feel like I'm like stumping for Christianity so far in this conversation, but I'm just sharing out of my own experience. Like, so yeah, it comes from the view of reality that is called the imago de, the image of God, that human beings are actually created in the image of God and so therefore have inherent dignity and infinite worth.
every individual. Like, I don't want to get into like a negative comparison, but when you think about that, like that's a unique expression among world religions, certainly among atheism and natural selection, materialism, the materialistic or mechanistic model of reality or of the world or life itself would never explain that. Like, we would have to import that meaning instead of it being inherent, right?
If everything is just rolled out through natural or mechanistic ways, right? So that doesn't make it, that doesn't mean you couldn't have meaning or dignity or value within the systems. just that it's not inherent. It's placed upon them. Right? so anyways, sorry, a quick side track there, but yeah. So if you start with that premise that every single human being that you interact with is
literally created in the image of God, then within them lies the ability to become world changers, to be co-creators, to be generators of fill in the blank, music, art, concrete buildings, green space, whatever is in them that needs to come out. Like I heard a
Uh, fat talk about leadership talk. It was kind of heartbreaking, but also exciting. The potential of it is that like 96 % of people when surveyed believe that they have more to offer the world, that there's something in them that is not being released or let out of the world. So this, this idea of the approach that we take in neighborhood work is just that we want to meet neighbors, engage them in the change process by drawing out whatever's latent inside of them that.
speaker-0 (23:11.988)
is longing to come out. And when you think about that in terms of marginalized populations, people that have been, you know, pushed to the edges of society, whether through choices of their own or systemic issues, it doesn't really matter from our, from my view. A lot of times their voices have been stolen, tramped on, ignored. They've been told that they're a certain kind of something and that, you know, whether again through past choices or just
racism, injustice, it doesn't matter what it is, their kind of agency has been stolen from them. And so in the neighborhood work, we step into neighborhoods recognizing that each individual neighbor may be the next person that can change, know, join in in that global revolution or at very least help fix the block they live on.
speaker-1 (24:06.702)
So, practically speaking, let's just say it's an ordinary day at Community One. I heard you say, you know, going door to door. that it really began with you having conversations with people. Your journey.
speaker-0 (24:26.978)
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, yeah, you talked about my personal journey towards neighborhood. Yeah. So I had started with the idea that the thing that I wanted to contribute to the world was to bring together people to then enact transformation or change in the world. So some people might call those community mobilizers.
I just saw that as my gift and my interest and my talent. just, I'm so curious about people and how they interact and why they might gather and what they might change. But really that's kind of been my whole, I've realized on the last 15 years of my life, that's kind of to summarize all the iterations of my work, whether it was House Church Network or working at One Life or now working at Community One and neighborhood work. Like that's been the core thing that's sustained throughout is like,
bringing people together to affect change. so early on in that, my idea was to start house churches, just to start alternative expressions of Christian community because my goodness, how many people have you met that have been hurt by church? And I personally hadn't, I'd had nothing but good experiences, but...
I had met so many people that had, and more importantly, I had so many friends from those years of living outside the faith that they didn't want to have anything to do with classic traditional Christianity, certainly not any organized church, right? So our first expression was to just gather up people into what we called house churches, and then they would go in, then as a community, like as a, they would find something in the world that they wanted to go join and participate in, and
actually do that, like participate in their lives with that. Well, I got engaged in almost accidentally going and because of that, I was connected to a community of people that wanted to go door knocking and listening to neighbors in the East End. I didn't know anything about neighborhood work or asset space community development or anything like that. But I started knocking on doors, just listening to neighbors, really because I was there with people that I wanted to
speaker-0 (26:51.028)
affect change with. And then I fell in love with the process of the neighborhood work. Because seriously, like every time you open that door and meet someone, it's like, man, here's someone whose talents, gifts, skills are different than mine. And what might happen if we combine those with other people who have different gifts, talents, skills, and what might be produced in the world?
by bringing these two things together. Like I remember another conversation about the idea of collisions. Like when two things collide that are dispositioned to receive one another, then something new is born. And what a beautiful picture it is of whether it's people creating music in a studio, the producer musician relationship.
or two neighbors in T.P. Park that are coming together to do something like when you're taking two different people that have whole other worlds of access to them of experience and skills and you bring them together towards a common vision, man, you never know what's gonna be birthed and the world needs that, so.
speaker-1 (28:10.954)
So when you, so now that you have, you first start, don't know anything about this, but you're charged by what happens when two people meet face to face in the most simple sense. So tell me now, fast forward 15 years, how does the work look?
as an organization now, like you have terminology now, you have ways of thinking about it, you have measurements. How does the work, what is neighborhood work? Because I think when you talk about it, what's interesting is the way that you, the way that it's like we go in and empower those in the neighborhood to make the change from within. It's a form of, I mean,
to me that's what a really good consultant does at a company is goes in not assuming hey I got all the answers I'm gonna spew them on you guys but I'm gonna come learn about the organization and then empower from the inside out like good leadership does these so what does it look like today what how do you explain what you guys do today now that it's an organization now that it's also being duplicated and scaled
speaker-0 (29:17.474)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (29:29.878)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, gosh, don't even know how to begin the answer. Let's start with as simple as possible, right? So when we partner with a neighborhood based organization, because that's another thing is like community one as an organization doesn't go in and do all this in all these neighborhoods, right? Because that would be counterproductive to our whole approach, which is, you know, proximity. Like you talked about
One of the things that we do every day or every week at least is we are in the neighborhood alongside shoulder to shoulder on front porches in neighborhood meetings. And we are prox, I moved into the TV park neighborhood like so that could be, so it wasn't an us them, it was a we like, so this idea of proximity is extremely important and one of our core principles like part of the problems in the world that we are experiencing right now.
is the lack of proximity. Proximity to one another, proximity to our neighbor. When we think about the political divide, all these things, right? Like, a lot of the stereotypes, a lot of the preconceived notions, a lot of the narratives that we tell and place onto people, those immediately get eradicated by proximity almost every time. There's exceptions, of course. There's exceptions as a rule, but for the most part, all those things are destroyed through proximity.
in a good way. And so what we do is we make our approach that we're modeling or not modeling, that would be that we're piloting or trailblazing or doing our best to do in TV park alongside and with neighbors. then allow other neighborhood based organizations that are rooted in those neighbors because they're not going anywhere to pick up
our framework and then get coaching from us. But in, cause we want to remain practitioners because I don't know about you, but I've had a lot of consultants come in over the years. And one of two things usually makes me very skeptical and cynical of them. One is that I can tell that they're not practicing what they're preaching. They're not actually doing the things that they're saying or that's big tell. And it's like, so that immediately makes me not want to want to listen to them.
speaker-0 (31:51.02)
The other one is that if I do trust that they, at least in the past, have had deep experience of practicing this stuff, I kind of need some help. Like, they've come in, give me a bunch of good content, a bunch of good practices, and then they leave. But we know the best way to learn something is to do with someone the first time, right? Like, I actually will do something.
It doesn't matter what it is, change a tire, brush my teeth as a little kid with my new grandbaby. You need to do the things with people so that they feel confident that they could do it on their own, right? If you just give them and say, luck, that's not helpful. And so when we set up our Love Your Neighborhood coaching, we really wanted to do it like, we're gonna be with you, we're gonna be alongside with you, we're gonna come alongside you. But anyways.
So the very basic process, I said we were going to get into the simple and I went off on a rampage. The simple process to any neighborhood work and this really, it can be with any community change. This is a beautiful thing is like, yeah, we apply it to neighborhood work, but I believe this is the best way to affect change period. So it's listen, align, act, then measure. So we just listen to neighbors. That's both formally and informally. And so we will spend a whole year.
speaker-1 (32:49.447)
That's good.
speaker-0 (33:14.934)
just listening and engaging residents because in our line of work, a lot of times neighbors that are living in disinvested neighborhoods, they've been told that what to do. This is what's wrong with you. This is what you need to do. You know, they have not been listened to.
speaker-1 (33:37.134)
So when you ask, tell me about things. Do you recognize then like maybe initially like a pattern that you're like that's the narrative, I get that, but tell me like what do you really know? Like tell me what's underneath the... Because I could see that there's like, we kind of like we always do this. It's always been this way. But it's like, but tell me like give me the...
speaker-0 (34:04.174)
Well, exactly. And we use two listening tools in that first year. One's just a SWOT analysis, which anyone is just strength to weaknesses, opportunities and threats. You know, could ask that about Wally Opus music. You could ask that about your own family. That's right. Any organization. You could do any analysis real quick on that. The other approach that we use though is called appreciative inquiry.
So what we do is we take an assets-based community development approach instead of deficits-based. So we don't recognize what's missing. We recognize what's there. Well, and of course, the greatest asset in any community are the neighbors themselves, right? Because if you think about TP Park, there's 1,800 neighbors. That's 1,800 potential world changers, right? Remember the inherent, infinite worth? Like every one of those have a whole world inside of them ready to be unleashed. And so...
But anyways, so we use a listening called appreciative inquiry in the first year because we want to draw out what they appreciate about their lived experience. We want to draw out what they appreciate about the neighborhood. They've already, they already know what's wrong with it. You know, they've heard high poverty rates, dilapidated band housing, know, nothing good comes from that side of town, bad schools, blah, blah, blah. Like, they've heard that over and over again. How has that done us?
as a society, how's that done us as a community, how's that done us as a neighborhood? And so we want to very intentionally ask appreciative inquiries. Like here's a good question, when did you feel the most alive in X? know, like when did you feel the most alive when you were producing music? Seriously.
speaker-1 (35:47.278)
So I will say this, when after you've thrown shit at the wall for a while, okay? Then everybody's settled into the room and it's no longer about any of us, but it's about what's unfolding in front of us, which would be the song, and how by the end of it, you can't even believe that we've created something so exciting that
There's just like, there's probably like a dozen times in my life where I am jumping up and down in the room. Just I can't believe, I don't care if anybody ever hears this. It doesn't matter. Because what I just experienced was bigger than us and outside of us. And it's now lives. And what's funny is if I could go back to the last decade of my life, I would fight to preserve the thing that was made in that moment.
and protect the fumesing with it afterwards that happens in editing and post-production, I would lean into a much more Rubian philosophy, Rick Rubin philosophy of protect the essence of the creation. Don't add a bunch of sparkles and glitters and also don't change it fundamentally because it's easy to do in the computer. It's easy to sync stuff up to the grid. It's easy to, everything's perfect now.
and this song is dead. We've sucked the soul. Anyway, so it's that moment when, it's the moment when the creation becomes bigger than all of us and surprising to all of us.
speaker-0 (37:13.838)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (37:20.718)
Yeah, so just remembering that, I'm sure that gets your heart racing a little bit. Yeah, I'm literally ready to...
speaker-1 (37:25.747)
Make a beat. You play guitar, let's get this.
speaker-0 (37:29.728)
Yeah, I play a bad rhythm guitar is what I say. no, so that's the idea though. So imagine asking that about the lived experience of neighbors in the neighborhoods. Like that lady that we're talking to, she remembers when she used to sit on her porch after school and watch the kids get off the bus and just kind of watch over them and the sense of peace that she felt as the birds are like, so these are the things we're drawing.
speaker-1 (37:54.67)
awesome
speaker-0 (37:57.154)
they already are starting to move internally towards something, right? Like a new future in which that's possible again. Or maybe I'll take an action, maybe instead of watching Oprah at 2.30, I'll go sit on my porch because that guy asked me and I remembered, right? But that's just the beginning. So we listen first, but then we align towards the commonality. So imagine then we ask,
500 producers across America, know, when did they feel most alive in the studio, you know? So now we don't only have an individual experience, we have a collective aim. And so we analyze the data, we put it into a digestible form for neighbors, we put that information that we list to them for a whole year, right? So we've got thousands of hours, or least hundreds of hours.
of qualitative listening data, so it's scientific in that way, social science. And we put that together and then they identify based on what their neighbor said, what we collectively said about the neighborhood, what we've already identified, what we appreciate about the neighborhood and lived experience. Now this is the preferred future that we would like to see. And so we help them in an alignment process to come up with a plan for change for their neighborhood.
speaker-1 (39:21.312)
off of what they said.
speaker-0 (39:22.502)
Based off what they said. Right, right, No, no, yeah. Based off what they said and their priorities. So we're not projecting anything onto them ever. Right. Ever, ever, ever. If we're projecting anything, it's this very loose, basic framework for a change process.
speaker-1 (39:40.174)
The thing you're projecting on them is belief that they could do something about together. It's an assumption that it's possible. And to me, there was one thing to infuse into, if there was one agenda to have, it's that you guys are capable. Seems like a belief in them. like a...
speaker-0 (39:49.303)
Mm-hmm.
speaker-0 (40:00.194)
Yeah, exactly.
speaker-0 (40:03.924)
you not only can you do it, you will if you want to. If you want to, if you want to take that action, if you don't, that's fine too. That's actually one of our, we've developed so many little slogans and taglines over the years as we've practiced the work. And one of them is we just move at the speed of the neighborhood. And so like it's hard sometimes, especially in our culture, you talked about measurement and maybe we come to that eventually too, but like.
It's hard when you have to report on grants, when you have to justify these investments that other people are making financially into this work as a nonprofit, that you want to move things ahead at your pace, right? I mean, I get the amazing opportunity to do this. Like I get a paycheck to do this, which is just amazing to me. Like it's all-inducing, like humbling in my life because I would do it anyway. Actually, I did it anyway.
for like five years as a volunteer that I was not getting paid to do. I just did it anyways, because I loved it. I fell in love with it so much. And now I get to do it every day and I actually get paid to do it. That's an amazing thing. But on a Tuesday afternoon at three o'clock when I'm on the clock or whatever, you know, working, these guys are running banks, they're raising kids, they're thinking about, you know, what dinner and how they're going to pay the bills. Like, they're not thinking about...
Listen, align, act, measure, you know, behind a vision for change plan and assets basically, you they're not, they're not thinking about anything like that. so it's just an amazing opportunity. okay. So align. Yeah. Now we have, so now that we have a cut and the way that I like to say, you know, to close out the alignment section is if you want to create genuine impact in the world, you need to be hitting the bullseye over and over and over and over again. Well, all the alignment plan does is create like a
Pipeline if I throw three darts at a dartboard, it's they're gonna be all over the place But if I'm just sliding it down a tube to the bulls eye, yeah, it's guard rails up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah so if this is a Neighborhood's vision for change that's built on the priorities that neighbors said based on what they already Know about their lived experience in the neighborhood. I mean, so they're informing everything now when we take action on Anything in that vision for change plan?
speaker-0 (42:27.054)
bullseye, hit in the dart right in the bullseye. So that's the importance of alignment is that you know you're affecting change, that you know you're getting to the heart of what residents want for their own community. And you're aligning not an individual's perspective, not the squeaky wheel, not the person who's the loudest, not the person who has the most influence. This is the community's plan. But now we got to take action. And action is extremely, extremely, extremely important. In fact,
It sounds like it's linear, you actually, it's actually just a flow, right? Like you're not listening, then aligning, then acting, although that you can do it in that progressive way, but you always need... Yeah, they're all starting to happen. And then once you act, you still listen, you listen while you're acting. But what's important, why action is so important in these communities is because they've oftentimes been over-promised and under-delivered.
speaker-1 (43:04.236)
starting to
speaker-0 (43:20.95)
And I think mostly it comes from a good place. Like people want to help, but it's hard. Life is hard. Like running an organization is hard. Living like, and so.
speaker-1 (43:30.432)
Changing culture. Like imagine that you're voted in, like local political person who campaigns, you get voted in and you have two to four years to do something. And we just talked about how long it takes to change culture. And you've got to also be like all these other things to think about to actually go do what you said you were going to do to get all those votes. It automatically...
is honestly an incredibly huge challenge. It's easy to judge people for, they said this, they didn't do this. It's like, can you imagine how hard it is to do fucking any of that? And just even to get a hold of the right people to tell, like, anyway.
speaker-0 (44:16.396)
No, and that's one of my major learnings, what's been formed in me from practicing this work for so long. It's made me extend a lot more grace to individuals. Now, I have a lot less grace for systems. But I think most people are trying to do good in the world. Most of them. Systems are just really hard to overcome.
speaker-1 (44:45.966)
They're easy to hide behind, easy to manipulate.
speaker-0 (44:49.236)
Yeah, they're easy just to go with because they're there. Anyways, again, we could come back to that.
speaker-1 (44:58.67)
Real quick, is why you said that basically honing in the North Star that's gonna guide all of this action, that alignment, who are you, who's responsible, or who are you even communicating to about these findings to where collective alignment occurs? Because to me, just because you found all the information, well this is incredibly valuable, and as the
people doing the work, you probably begin to see, okay, we see direction here. How then do you translate that into the actual community and who's the leaders that are gonna like step up and do the work, put things into action? Who's gonna actually act? Because that seems tough.
speaker-0 (45:41.346)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (45:48.248)
That's a great, another great question, hitting it right in the sweet spot. there's a great quote that I say all the time that came from my, I found in my literature review for my dissertation and it says, when change is done to you, it's experienced as violence. But when you're the agent of change, it's liberation. And so the dynamic in a lot of these communities is that when change occurs,
It's usually done again by probably well-meaning people, but when it's done to neighbors, it's experienced as violence and then they're displaced. And so they don't actually benefit from the community that's been developed. But if they're the change agents, that's liberation. And so because we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours of listening, because we've been proximate, because we spend every day, well, almost every day
on the ground in the neighborhood because we've committed to them as people. The best practice is that you develop a community of leaders. Okay. Now, every neighborhood initiative is different because every neighborhood is different and every neighborhood based organization is different. So like I'll speak for TP Park specifically.
When we came as community one to partner with them in the change initiative, there was already a robust active neighborhood association. So we approached them as a neighborhood association and said, Hey, will you guys partner with us in like a formal neighborhood revitalization effort? And so for us in TB Park, there's always been a core group of leaders that have from the neighborhood residents in the neighborhood that have been driving the change. Okay. But then there's the next tier.
of leadership is like, you don't have to be in like this formal thing to be a leader in your community.
speaker-1 (47:49.23)
As we discussed earlier, our buddy, Tad Dickel, would say leadership is defined by one's ability to influence others.
speaker-0 (47:57.838)
Yeah, yeah. And that's again another way in which that alignment document is so important, that change plan, because whether you're serving on the leadership team that meets once a month in the clubhouse and we're working through decisions as a neighborhood and you're working with youth in this program that's officially started like this last Saturday of every month, or whether you're just a mom who hangs out on her porch like you mentioned earlier as the kids.
get to their houses off the bus to create a safe environment for kids to walk through. Like you're both contributing to the flourishing of the community. if you don't know that, there's what I would say is that we do a full court press of saturation by any means possible to communicate to neighbors. We have a neighborhood text messaging system.
We have social media platforms. have newsletters that go out. We go door to door. We do flyers. Because if a tree falls in the forest, it make a noise? The whole existential paradox question. If your neighborhood is changing and you're not tuned in to the change,
Is it actually changing for you? I have a great story. Do we got time for stories? So I have a great story that I thought I think draws out this principle so well. So when in 2018, we captured a baseline measurement for what residents in TP Park thought were like, we asked them like 80 questions, wish on hindsight, we wouldn't have asked so many questions, but lowered it to about 20. But we asked them like,
different questions about their experience of quality of life in the neighborhood. And one of them was, there enough activities for youth? And it was the low, was the tied for the lowest score on the whole survey. Only 20 % of neighbors agreed that there was good activities for youth in the neighborhood, right? The other lowest one was sidewalks. Poor sidewalks and activities for youth. That's not a good recipe for a neighborhood, right? Like very basic things. so-
speaker-0 (50:10.23)
So we want to go to work on those things. We want to identify neighbors that want to work with youth. We want to pull them together, go through the alignment process. What do you guys want to do? How do you want to act? you run a robotics and coding program. Okay, let's, you want to call TechMe? Okay, let's launch that and get that going. Let's build that. Let's resource that. Let's do that. So anyways, there was these two moms that had had this like Popeye moment of like,
I can't stand this anymore, so I gotta do something about it. That kid that was carrying a gun, now thankfully it wasn't loaded, 11 year old kid had found a gun in the park, and so they found this kid. They're like, we can't stand that anymore, like we've gotta take action on this thing. So they started doing rock painting club. I guess it's a thing, like paint rocks and they place it, it's like a geocache.
You put it online on Facebook group and then other people find the rocks or whatever. So they just were doing that once a month, but then they started getting so much, so many kids coming around on Saturday mornings that they started doing every month. And then after that, they started adding some weekly, like midweek after school programs a couple of days a week.
speaker-1 (51:22.008)
So wait, monthly, weekends, and then now it's heading into the...
speaker-0 (51:25.454)
Right. And so then they started getting, asking for some money. These are just two mops, you know. They started, and so then they started taking, getting really interested in this approach called the Kids Zone Approach or our wrap around care, walking kids cradle to career, just two everyday moms from the neighborhood. So what's fascinating is if you, and we did go back and ask people like,
Five years later, 2023, we asked the exact same 80 questions to see if we've moved the needle, if the quality of life, the residents perspective, because we want to be effective, you know. We're not afraid, like if things don't, aren't working, we'll just adjust, you know, we'll adjust our tactics and, but we feel like we're doing the right thing. So anyways, so there was some movement. That's the good news. I think like it was up to like 32 % or something like that. So there was some positive momentum, but you know who knows?
that there's like 100 % agree that there's activities for youth, those two moms, because they're leading it, they're participating in it, they're being the change agents. And so in their survey, it wasn't, you know, any question, is there activities for youth in our neighborhood? Yes, because I'm doing it and I'm living it. And that's the difference between them being the agents of change and some organization from the outside coming in and running a program that they run their kids through, right? So when you talk about
building a sustainable community from the inside out. That's what we mean. Like we are taking neighbors that have been marginalized through either poverty or these communities that have been disenfranchised in systemic injustices, whatever. And we're helping them in whatever way that small bit that we can play in it to organize a process to which they're
rediscovering and finding and maybe owning for the first time their change agency. And then we're resourcing that financially, because we live in a Western capitalistic society, so they need money. And then we just, as friends, as neighbors, we come alongside them to help them enact that. And it's just a beautiful, amazing, amazing thing.
speaker-1 (53:42.51)
Do you... So monetarily, how are organizations like yours funded? And then does any of the money flow directly to the neighborhoods?
speaker-0 (53:57.526)
Yes, good questions also. So we have a mix of funding base and you're actually asking the wrong guy. This is the guy that they keep off the books. Yeah, it's funny. let him do his thing. Just generally speaking. but generally speaking, we're funded by, I would say three main ways. So one is private foundations. Two are just individuals and three are
partners. a lot of times, like Community One was launched out of a local church crossroads. So they were financial supporters and still are to this day to get it going. But we receive very little federal and state money, city money. Now that's enabled us to kind of have a little bit of freedom. I'll just leave it at that. That maybe some other organizations haven't had. I know that we're kind of sticking our
toes into some other funding streams, but for the most part, Community One has been built on private money, which has enabled us to kind of set our own course, which is nice. To be true to the mission. And as an answer to the direct investment, yes. So we've learned this term through practicing the work again as a best practice from other communities that doing this, but yeah, we directly invest
speaker-1 (55:09.152)
is to stay true to
speaker-0 (55:26.956)
financially into the lives of neighbors. we do that through human resourcing also. So we have two full-time employees now that oversee our work in TP Park, Eric Tillman and David Felton. And so they are accessible. They're moving at the speed of neighbors, but they're keeping agendas moving. They're organizing. They're communicating. They're meeting new neighbors all the time. They're listening, aligning, acting. They're just doing that day on the ground.
is really, really important, right? Like to any endeavor, like to have a backbone of a person who's owning the forward movement of something day in and day out, like that's an essential part of the change formula.
speaker-1 (56:07.33)
It keeps the continuity of the guy who knocked on my door two years ago and then the survey I took last year and then the kids I see running around with rocks that are painted to then see, to just to know that there's people walking around still. I don't know, I was assuming they were like walking around. it keeps the continuity of that. would even think it keeps the...
a story of the positive story that I shared in the beginning of whenever you first talked to me, if I'm a neighborhood, if I'm a neighbor, it keeps alive that, just the vision of hope.
speaker-0 (56:52.16)
absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so I don't want to ever forget because sometimes I forget about that. But how important the heat because I just take it for granted. But so I don't want to like that is a financial investment into the lives of neighbors, right? It's not directly in their hands, but it is absolutely crucial to the school. So besides that, we are experimenting in all sorts of ways in which we we do
put cash directly in the hand of the neighbor. So we have these things called action projects. So in like the formal assets-based community development literature, like a best practice they recommend is to build momentum early, is to do these things that they call early action projects. It's really just, you got an idea for action to quick win project in the neighborhood. Here's, well, there's a process. But here's money to go do that.
Well, we had, it was such life giving to us and helped us connect with neighbors and gave us so much credibility and trust early on that we've kept it going. So in the literature, it's like just for the first two years, but we're eight years in now at TP Park and we've done it every year. And so we invest $10,000 in action projects every single year directly into the hands of neighbors. We do these things called action teams now, our neighborhood teams where if three or more neighbors want to come together to...
to take direct action on something in the Vision for Change document, they can submit an application. There's $6,000 in that bucket annually, and then once it's gone, it's gone. We've been exploring and piloting this thing called entrepreneurship funding, because one of the things that's unique about TP Park is that we discovered so many entrepreneurs, so many founders, people that have business ideas, social enterprise ideas.
We've actually opened up $10,000 every year for entrepreneurship fundings that the leadership team decides on so we don't those community one does not decide on that Again all these things have application processes. They're they're documented. They have reports that they need to submit This is not willy-nilly But and then we've been also exploring we piloted last year something called neighbor navigator Where we would walk alongside a neighbor for their customized?
speaker-0 (59:08.11)
pathway to flourishing. they define what goals they want in their individual life. Say they want to be a music producer. We would just walk alongside them like we're not taking action for them. We're not telling them what to do. Yeah, it's like we just think about it as being like a friend, being a good neighbor, accountability partner, someone who's helping them navigate these systems. And then what happens, as you well know, then that when you are
walking alongside with someone, there's a whole other social network that's opened up to them. And when you've lived inside of a community for so long, it doesn't even have to be an impoverished community or a disinvested community. Like, it becomes an echo chamber. It becomes hard to break out of. And so when you introduce the other, and the more that they're other than you, the better as far as social capital and social networking and access to different resources.
And so that's the idea is you're partnering not only with the individual that's helping you as your neighbor navigator partnership, but then you're also getting the whole access to the TP Park leadership team as a leader, as a network of leaders and Community One as an organization and all the partners that are helping us do the work. We're just really expanding the influence of that. that comes with a monthly stipend that's not like,
You don't get the stipend because you're getting paid. It's an investment in the vision that we're drawing out of you. So if we're going to tell a neighbor, hey, here, you need to set goals for your life to take you where you want to go. Well, then we want to financially resource that they could, so then they can apply those finances to make that happen. But we don't control that spending because remember
Every neighbor has created an image of God and has inherent dignity and infinite worth. And so we don't want to control that. We believe in them as change makers. And so we believe that they're adults and highly capable people and they can make the decisions to where that best goes. But again, that's just a pilot. So yeah, we're always looking for more and better ways to pass that money directly through into the hands of neighbors in the neighborhood.
speaker-1 (01:01:23.768)
Two things came to mind. One was that you said that the doing the action-based projects, funding those initially to show change early on is really important for successful campaigns. mimics like someone was telling me this about starting a company or launching a new project. It's so much effort up front. It's analogous to a rocket launch. but you know, I'm not a rocket scientist, but I'm probably gonna botch all these numbers, but it's something like.
you know, 80 % of the fuel or whatever. The majority of the, yeah, it's all used to get through, get off the ground and into the atmosphere. And it makes me think like similarly there where it seems true to get it off the ground is to show action, visible action creates like, okay, yeah, there are really things happening. Maybe inspire somebody else to build something in their backyard on their own.
And another thing was that I think that this is happening in other areas too. I met with a person who works at E-Rep and she was sharing with me their newest onboarding PDF for if you were to join the Chamber of Commerce. I don't know if they call it the Chamber of Commerce, that's what it is.
speaker-0 (01:02:42.51)
Yeah, they did that joining together.
speaker-1 (01:02:48.982)
Anyway, but she would show me one of the documents was impact. So she said, a lot of people think that when you sign up to join EREP that you are paying for the hangouts, the meetings, or you're paying our salaries. And she's like, a lot of the funds, whatever percentage, they flow through the company, they flow through the organization into the community.
And then they had like all the measurables in a beautiful graphic. And I was like, that's really interesting. That's like, that's, it's nice to know that where the money hits, where it lands, and then what springs out of that. And it's, something that I've been talking to others about, churches, Catholic churches, which I am a part of, is that, you know, I think it's like 1.5 % of, of Catholics tithe, 10%.
No, no, no, they don't even, it's not even that, it's 1.5 % give. Okay, I would say 80 % of that 1.5 probably give, 20 % of that probably give 80 % of the funds. What we were talking about, I was talking to somebody who's in a leadership role around here and I said, do you think that if there was more transparency, not exposure, like you have to know every single thing that happens when a dollar is given to a church.
if there was transparency about how that money flows from tithing into impact, that it would encourage people to give more, which actually probably just exposes more like, well, we don't even know where, perhaps where the money goes with huge organizations that gets into it.
speaker-0 (01:04:36.782)
Yeah, this is gonna open up a can of worms here. But this is like, yeah, that trickle down reality of like money. Again, I just don't think there's very many nefarious people. Of course there's examples, right? Like there's exceptions to the rules. There's small percentages on either end that's all true and all amazing angels and devils and demons, right? That are hurting people. And there's a spectrum of that. But I just haven't found...
A lot of those demons and those devils playing. And so it's like, so it's such a fascinating thing to me of like, what is the problem then? And these systems that we've created just suck away all the resources. And you don't even have to call it financial resources. All that's obviously a huge part of it. But when you think about like most churches spend about 95 % of their budget on internal ministries and processes.
Like imagine if that was flipped. What if 95 % of it went out? Well, okay, that's extreme. What if 51 % of it went to impacting the world? I would say like, God's already given us everything we needed to accomplish what he would like us to accomplish. We just have to be responsible and obedient to the call. Like you talked about tithing. I just happened to be writing.
speaker-1 (01:05:38.2)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:06:02.644)
on tithing at the moment, wrapping up book number six on that exact topic. And so some of the research in that is like, American Christians, just American Christians make $5.2 trillion annually. Well, 10 % of that's $500 billion. Is that math right? Like, or is it 50 billion? I don't know, somewhere in there. The number's astronomical. When you think about it, like that's money that could literally transform
our communities, we could bring heaven to earth if we were more obedient towards using those in that way. Well, it's the same way with civic government, know, like the money of taxes that's meant to directly impact and help the people and lives on the ground after it trickles down through this department and that department and this department and that department. By the time it hits our alleys to pick up our trash, it's getting a very slim margin of what it ought to.
to create the impact we all hope and desire. So I don't think the enemy is necessarily people. I think it's these systems that we've created that suck it. And you talked about church, like, my goodness, what you measure usually depend, or, you know, is where you direct your resources, time, energy, talents. And for most churches in America,
The church growth model still prevails and they define success by how many people attend their Sunday service. Yeah, yeah. And when that's your definition of success, then you're going to put all of your time, energy, resources, thought, innovation, all of it into that thing. until we change the definition of success for the local church, I just don't think there's going to be change no matter how good the messaging is, no matter how
speaker-1 (01:07:31.255)
enrollment.
speaker-0 (01:07:52.96)
many people write books like Neighborhoods in Jesus that call to a different, you know, like way of operating for local churches. You have to change your definition of success to start. What is your telos? What is your directed purpose? That will illuminate a lot of the dark places.
speaker-1 (01:08:13.582)
There's a, there's a, you might be interested to hear that there's like, to me that there is a fundamental sort of call in the Catholic Church that at least I'm tuned into where it is a call to move. And I did a short podcast on this because it applies, think, beyond churches, it's just the inter-organizations in general. And do you still have time to keep going? It's 3.15. Okay.
But the call is to move from maintenance mode to mission mode. that the church over the Catholic Church, we've inherited these big footprints, big buildings, big campuses. And we have found ourselves maintaining these communities, maintaining these traditions. have a lot of old activities, quilting.
fish fries, which are not inherently good or Bingo. All of these things that have been inherited. The buildings are old. The structures are old. They're beautiful. They need to maintain though. They're expensive. God knows what a pipe organ costs that's the size of a small building. And who knows where to get the stained glass people to come in and fix the stained glass that's a hundred feet up in the air.
speaker-0 (01:09:25.486)
Beautiful.
speaker-1 (01:09:42.188)
So lot of unique challenges as well, but the call to shrink the church is, feels alive and to move into mission, to move into the mission field. But in my interpretation of it, it's a, it really closely resembles the work that you're talking about, the work that you do. It's the mission of, it's not a mission of, at least in my eyes and towards others who I've talked to.
of believe this or you're going to hell. is a mission of positive is to share is to how can we help? How can we be of service? It feels like it feels like that that story is becoming alive. That's why when you even I was talking to somebody yesterday who worked at a large corporation who now joined a small team into the music industry.
And she went to her first on-site gig over the weekend and she said, nobody was negative. Like no one talked shit about the venue or the other people there. was possible. don't even know how to cope with it. She's like, I'm not used to this. we're always talking shit about everybody who comes in the door or how dumb this person is or how ridiculous this person's songs are. And what I told her was like, I
speaker-0 (01:10:52.43)
That's such a refreshing nom.
speaker-1 (01:11:09.824)
I wonder if the positive is a sign of health and if that health is how things are designed to be, oriented to be. And that when you go into a room or into a neighborhood or into somebody's house and you compliment something right out of the gate, how immediately we've now oriented ourselves towards positivity in some aspects.
speaker-0 (01:11:23.842)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:11:37.123)
And that begins the transformation in and of itself. Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:11:40.782)
It's such a base level thing. It's a small...
speaker-0 (01:11:44.078)
Yeah, that man, I hope this connects. It does in my mind. But like, there has been, there's a reason why we're doing the work at TP Park, right? Like it does have some needs, right? So we don't want to ignore those. Like those are lived experiences for neighbors. Like, so I don't want to act like it's heaven on earth over there, you know? So as an example, you know,
As I've been there, there's been since I've been living in the neighborhood since 2019 There's been at least three murders in the neighborhood. Like I've heard gunshots out my window at least 12 14 times, you but and I again in no way want to minimize the Experience and horror of those things especially for those families and the people that are affected very very directly by those deaths and not just the deaths right like
the people who get caught and have to go to jail. It's like lives ruined on both sides. So in no way minimizing that horror. But in the same time span, think how many millions of acts of love, like even basic things like order. Like I stopped at that stop sign instead of plowing through. know, like our existence is predicated on
order from what easily could and maybe ought to be chaos, right? Like interactions between neighbors every day where they choose to show grace and welcoming and belonging and care for their neighbor in small and untold ways that they may not even be conscious of. Like, I'm going to choose to not park in front of my neighbor's house because I know they park there and they don't have a driveway, right? Like small, insane things like that. Everything from small things like that to starting
youth club painting rocks like to gather children in the name of safety and so like that is the baseline and so when you're talking about like when we align with positivity, I think we are aligning with the ground of all being like the anomaly is not the good stuff.
speaker-1 (01:14:01.122)
Bye.
speaker-0 (01:14:01.666)
The anomaly is the bad stuff. We're talking about millions of acts of love versus three acts of violence. Yes. You know? Yes. And it's like, when we tell narratives around only the violence, because it's clickbait and because people, like, this is the damage of media. This is the saturation of systems that I was talking about. And it's like, how do we awake ourselves?
awaken to the reality of the beauty and wonder and awe that is existence, that is the other, that is the unknown, that is my neighbor. And that's really the core of what we're trying to do in the neighborhood work.
speaker-1 (01:14:44.834)
beautiful. It makes me think that not only is that a larger truth, on the individual level, when someone says, or even in my own mind, I've had this last year, going a lot of change, the narrative of failure or the narrative of letting others down, of not following through on certain things like I believed I could.
you can paint the picture that those are losses or failures or wasted time, things like this. There's actually a more true story that would say, well, imagine I didn't do any of it. Imagine I didn't do any of that stuff. imagine, like, thank God I did all those things. Thank God. I gave a talk recently to a group, like, it was a proposal. It was pitching a proposal and it was a presentation and it...
I kind of botched it. Honestly, was like botched. It just didn't land. I don't know. I don't really know. mean, some people were like, this was great. And other people was like, I can just tell like, oh, I wasn't it. I don't know. It's just something. but I told my coach, I have a coach and I told her that I am learning to, I am learning to see that having the courage to stand in front of 20 people and I'm
speaker-0 (01:15:44.012)
That surprises me, actually.
speaker-1 (01:16:10.766)
10 years younger than all of them and give a proposal for what I believe could positively affect this organization. I commend myself for having the courage to stand up there. Not like I'm not like, good job Wes. It's just that story is just as true that I had the courage to do that and learned a shit ton in the process. That story is just as true as the story of, fuck that one up. You know, probably more true.
speaker-0 (01:16:38.798)
No, it's absolutely more true. so, you you sent me a couple questions to Ponder beforehand. And one of the things you talked about was outcomes. And that's really what we're talking about right here, right? Like, what was the outcome of that? And how do you measure that? So what do you measure in your work? And I've personally become convinced, and again, this is very much tied to my view of reality, my worldview, my Christian faith, but...
I would say that we can't control the outcomes, nor should we even try. So a lot of times when they put this logic model together and it's like inputs, outputs, outcomes, impact, and you're trying to put the perfect puzzle together so that you're making the change in the world, the impact in the world that you want to see. I think that that's a false narrative. I don't think that that's possible.
And the reason why I believe that is because under a view of world where there is a transcendent reality, then ultimate outcomes are outside of the material mechanistic world. Now, are some things logical? Sure. Like you could go into the lab and come up with the atomic bomb by manipulating the oneness. But once you put that into the world, you don't know what's going to happen. You don't know what the outcome...
of that's going to be. In fact, we still don't know. We will never know until the end of time exactly how it affected and what's worse or what's the same. We don't know what would happen if you would have removed it. Like it doesn't matter. Like that's an uncontrollable outcome where you, and that's the same with what you're talking about in this pitch meeting is like, so the question that I've been become obsessed with is, are we being faithful?
Are we being faithful? Not are we producing the outcomes, but are we being faithful to the inputs? we bringing our best self, our best work, our best pitch to this moment that's informed by hopefully good things, but are we bringing our best self and then leaving as an offering to
speaker-0 (01:19:04.238)
what I would call God, but the ultimate process that is delivering these outcomes into the world. And so I don't think that we can measure our effectiveness in that, but we can measure our faithfulness and then we can taste and see the fruit of that outcome. And the seeds that we planted, we can absolutely taste and see and celebrate when they land.
like create the outcomes that we hope see, well then we just go back and we redo it and faithfulness again, but then we can release it into that gap where we don't have to control the outcomes and it's such a freer way to live.
speaker-1 (01:19:47.042)
That's great. You know, it makes me think that when you're talking to a group about doing transformation work, which is essentially, first of all, it's like, are you, you're going to sell me transformation or you're to like, you know, consultancy or advising or coaching. And it's, it's, what's interesting is people will say, well, what do I get? What do I get with this? Like, what's like, what are you going to do? And it's like, I don't know. Here's, but here's what I do know is that.
I, you get my commitment, you get my presence, and I don't mean that as like a gift, I mean that as like a, an effort, an activity, you get my sustained focus on sort of a, like a, I think about it like as like air traffic control, I'll be watching your plane as it travels, I'll be paying attention to things, I'll be holding the line of continuity between where you're at and where you, where at the end of this we're gonna take some sort of
speaker-0 (01:20:23.97)
Exactly right.
speaker-1 (01:20:45.89)
check in Mark or wrap up this initiative. And what's funny is I think people often want like, well, what's like the ROI on that exactly? And I think, let's just, okay, imagine that your organization or your team is aligned, okay, so you now know where you're going, you know what you're about, you have an identity. Imagine how, let's say that you're a church.
Imagine how easier it would be to invite people to your church by saying, you should come to my church. They say, well, what's your church like? Or what's your church about? And you could explain in one sentence, this is what we're about. Okay. And then you say, well, okay. And then you say, and then you're going to ask for fundraising. Okay. Where's my money going exactly? It goes here, here and here. Cause that's aligned with our mission. And it's like, bam.
speaker-0 (01:21:25.89)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:21:38.254)
Come and taste and see.
speaker-1 (01:21:41.71)
Imagine how much more convincing that is than... Like I was at my mom's house recently and there was a... She's helping out with a nonprofit to raise funds for an upcoming event. And I looked at the... I was just standing there and I like picked up the flyer that she's mailing out. And I'm like, I just said, did you write this? She's like, no. I'm like, it doesn't say anything. It just talks about the nonprofit.
which everybody knows this non-pride, it's like a global non-pride. I'm like, it doesn't say anything. It's a bunch of words that don't say anything. It tells us how much we raised last year and that it goes to this sort of research, but I'm like, it doesn't fucking say anything. Why would I give other than I give every year? But what's inviting me in to participate into the mission of the work, it is just maintenance.
speaker-0 (01:22:24.726)
Yeah.
speaker-0 (01:22:35.63)
Well, and let's take this thought just a little deeper even. So let's assume that it is a mechanistic model, that there isn't a transcendent gap and that you can manipulate to impact. So what happens in that then is that if you do produce the outcomes that you're hoping for, then you're God. You made that happen.
You are in control. You manipulated the oneness or you deserve all the credit. And what happens if you fail? You're the worst. You need to be fired. Your vision should go to die, should perish. That was an incorrect, just fill in the blank. So there's danger if you're responsible for the effectiveness of the outcomes to where
you're either God or you're nothing, you know? And we see that outplayed in so many people, like from, get a little controversial, to our president, know, like to people who put themselves in the seat of power and control because they can produce whatever outcome they think they can anyways, that they want, all the way down to depression and these poor, you know,
your generation, people slightly behind you in generation, late 20s who spent their whole life thinking they were going to be social media influencers. They can't do it because you can't control the outcomes. And then now they've seen failure, their failures, their loss. They don't know what to do with themselves.
And it's just like, why would you do that to yourself? So instead, it's like, as an artist, a musician, I'm going to be faithful to producing this work of art that's inside of me that needs to come out, but then I'm gonna leave it at the feet of God or at the feet of the muse, the feet of the uncontrollable mob, like whatever you are putting in the gap. I'm gonna leave it there.
speaker-0 (01:24:51.006)
as an offering and the outcome of it is not going to affect my identity because I know that I brought the truest expression of what I needed to produce in that and how much more attractive to that.
speaker-1 (01:25:05.422)
Actually the best bet you could make would be the one that would be just
speaker-0 (01:25:08.878)
It not be this formulaic way that produces this pop hit, but man, it's going to be true and people are going to find it. And if you define success by my faithfulness and releasing it into the world and then tasting and seeing the outcomes, you're going to taste and see a beautiful fruit instead of a nasty one.
speaker-1 (01:25:29.528)
Well, I'm with you. I am behind you all the way in rewriting the narrative of success being really one's own commitment to their relationship with life itself. To work, to family, to whatever it is is to... I think that there's something happening even in my life where I am saying, fuck, I'm 32.
I've got two kids and another on the way. I live here in southern Indiana. I love my life. But I could be doing more. There's more that I can be doing. it's a, to me, is a, it's a call for, it's a call to responsibility in the most like boring, but like exciting boring way where it's just quiet, simple, quiet.
doing the work, living it out, sharing it openly, not being afraid. And what I keep thinking is like, I think this is how we got here. I think it was a bunch of people. Well, not always, but I think that there's a time where people really took pride in their, like I saw a clip of Jerry Seinfeld saying, he's like in the seventies, it wasn't about how much money you made or, he's like, he goes,
It was about like how cool your job was. He you could work at a car wash and be cool. You could drive a garbage truck and be cool. it was because it was yours. And you were a part of the thing. And I think that there's just a call. There's just some sort of call I hear to go back in a new way. Like get back to like what really matters.
for for today like to get us forward you know
speaker-0 (01:27:33.182)
Yeah, we've we've for for a hot second, you know, we've we've allowed And you know, I don't know what a win out in the end, but we've allowed Media platforms to set the narratives of success And it really is unfortunate I mean you can go all the way back to the example of like Walter concrete Speaking news in a monotone voice because he didn't want to have bias to where we are at today. We're
bias and news media are hand in hand. And now guys like Alex O'Connor, or O'Connor? Alex O'Connor, is that the right word? I don't know. he's doing like apps that test for bias. Like there does seem to be a movement back towards, or maybe it's forward. Maybe it's not even back. I know. A movement forward to a new thing where that
There seems to be a subversive sub movement to remedy the ailments that we've placed upon ourselves. I don't know. We'll have to see.
speaker-1 (01:28:46.964)
Man, you were somebody just maybe two years ago who when we talked about one of your book launches and you're like, I don't use social media. And I thought, fuck, I don't really know what to tell you. Like, I don't know how you're to connect with people. And here I am. I get on LinkedIn sometimes. I haven't been on Instagram in two months, Facebook maybe once in two months. Yeah. And...
Now when I think about it, or people tell me, did you see something? I'm like, I don't even know what I'm tuning into. I'm not even sure what, there's a chance I'll go back, I don't know. The thing now that I was interacting with, the thing that I was like, that relationship that I had with the outside world through those apps was some.
speaker-0 (01:29:28.472)
Sure, yeah.
speaker-1 (01:29:44.232)
weird distortion where value of who I am and my identity and the value of my work was judged on my idea of what other people who I hardly know or don't know would think about me. What is this like? What is that? I'm not sure what that is, but I'll tell you what, it made me pretty fucking miserable and I'm having a lot better time like...
speaker-0 (01:29:46.264)
Yeah
speaker-1 (01:30:13.304)
getting coffee with people and having podcasts with people and like I'm having a lot better time just like spending the Saturday hanging with my son.
speaker-0 (01:30:22.41)
I'll say this, I did stick my toe into the water, the social media Swap roles. Well, no, it was just for that. I know, I felt like I actually was a little ingenuous, disingenuous by kind of using the social media platform to crowdfund for my book. But I was genuinely trying to reengage a little bit. But it started to violate
Even the little bit I did and you know, I don't have an app on my phone, you know, I just get on there occasionally on my desktop, know, just to, but one of the things that's given me the most joy in life, what's made me most whole in life is this thought by Tim Keller and he borrowed it from other people, but it's the power of self-forgetfulness. It's just a small like 60 page book. It's definitely worth the read for anyone.
But what he says in there is that the goal is not to think less of yourself, but to think of yourself less. social media is designed to make you think about yourself. And then it's doubly dangerous because whatever you post and put into the world, a lot of people are going to think less about you. And so it's like a double whammy and attack on your identity in person because you're thinking about yourself all the time.
And then you're also opening up the door for other people to think less about you. And that is just something that I just couldn't reenter for now. Like you said, I you may one day, I just refuse to do it. Because if you think about just a simple act of even posting one post, you have to think about yourself a whole lot. Just for a simple post, just a life updates post, a picture of your kids, right?
You're thinking so much about yourself. I'm not saying there's anything inherently wrong in that for the record, but I just think as a general approach to life, what has created the most space, the most wholeness, the most freedom, the most joy is thinking about myself less. I just, the social media that draws is the exact opposite way. So I just stay far away from there.
speaker-1 (01:32:38.06)
I have often wondered that some people seem to do it really well. Really well and like prosper and it's very good for them, for their brands, for their work, for the impact it has on the world. And I've actually gained a ton from seeing things that led me to people, whether it was books or podcasts. But then there does come just the conversation with myself at some point where I'm like,
speaker-0 (01:32:42.978)
Yes, I'm doing.
speaker-1 (01:33:06.002)
I feel called to exit this and to go into my own desert of sorts and to figure out what I am or who I am and what I want out of this life. And that seems that that stream, whatever that is, who's by the way, I don't really even know what governs what I tune into. I don't even really know in those channels. I'm not really sure who's behind it. I'm not sure what's real and what's not anymore. So let me just go back into the world where
I can have honest conversations with people even if we see things differently Come from different places different backgrounds different religion politics Anything it would just any of it. It's in real life. It is the
speaker-0 (01:33:53.07)
The real life piece is the part that I want to at least hit on. We were talking about this when we were setting up the mics and we might have caught some of it in the thing, but like, I feel like as we've moved into further technologies that have allowed us to express ourselves in a digital platform that's disembodied from our physical selves and our environment, like our physical environment, that we're losing the most
basic creative impulse and that creative impulse is to take some is to produce something from nothing to Generate something new that wasn't there before mm-hmm, and that's applied to anything community work neighborhood work. It's applied to music art Right Asian writing yeah anything it just just really it's and and I personally I think it's only the potential for that is only exponentially
opened when you add one person, two person, three people. Now there probably does become a the return, like the investment, like, but like I think about the Beatles for crying out loud, like those four coming together, well three, Ringo, whatever, but like what they created, what they generated for nothing was so much more beautiful than what anyone could have done by themselves, but anyway.
speaker-1 (01:35:21.454)
It if Ringo was a prolific songwriter.
speaker-0 (01:35:27.462)
Yeah, just did his part. Yeah, there's something to be said for that too. What is that great Ted talk about? A lone leader is a nut until he has his first follower or something like that, her first follower. yeah, the following and playing along is extremely important to any movement. But that act of generating...
something from nothing. And I was giving you the example of even like as something simple as a game night, like the idea that 10 or eight different people are spread throughout our city and would have spent Friday night or Saturday night alone or gaming or just with their wife, which is not bad in and of itself, but like now we're generating, like someone has to be responsible to have the vision.
for friends sitting around tables having fun playing a game, laughing together, calling and communicating and organizing, then doing like that, generating something from nothing takes responsibility. It takes energy, it takes leadership. And I just feel like for probably a multitude of reasons that sociologists would tell me, we've just, we've begun to truly lose the art of that since COVID.
I think it was projecting that way through technology and digital platforms, but I think COVID like hit fast forward on that. And now we're here five years later and it's like, I just, and I do tell my children this, but I need to remind them more. like, if you want to separate yourself from your peers to be successful in life, however you define that, be a generator, be someone who's going to take nothing, something from nothing.
and move it into real life, into the real lives of people. That's gonna be what differentiates it. That's what our moment needs, I feel like so desperately. It's what, gosh, we just need people to create, to generate.
speaker-1 (01:37:35.992)
I think that's so, it's funny, I had a talk with a teacher this morning, like I said, and she said, you know, they want to incorporate the powers that be, want to incorporate more, get rid of like more textbook, you know, like planners, move everything on to digital and get more iPads and things for classrooms, which my wife and I are like totally on the opposite. We're like...
Our kids, trust us, when they're older, they're gonna pick up on the iPad, no problem. What they could use now is learning how to write their name with a pencil and learning that maybe four quarters equals a dollar and look at the quarters. We could use some just like really, really fundamental, boring instruction. That's what we would really value.
speaker-0 (01:38:08.745)
Yeah
speaker-0 (01:38:23.48)
Yeah.
speaker-1 (01:38:33.522)
And like she said too, she said, what's funny is when I was a teacher or when I was younger with no devices, we encouraged kids to play. Go play. Before class, or you get here early before class starts, go play with the toys. Like go just build something or here's some paper, write. Instead now it's, here's an iPad and you can put the shape inside of the appropriate shape. But it's like,
This could be maybe the only place where kids who do have unlimited screen stuff at home What if this was the only place where they actually came and learned tactile formative things, you know
speaker-0 (01:39:15.886)
That's the word right there, you know, like I mean, I guess we'll see. I mean, we're running the test whether we want to and I as a society. So maybe, I mean, if the world is just a collection of happen chance, you know, random natural selection, know, materialistic, mechanistic models of things, then...
It doesn't really matter, right? Because we're just going to evolve into whatever the next thing is. maybe that's the narrative. I hope not, but maybe it is. And I guess we'll see. But if the other narrative of existence that I personally find more attractive, that our existence here, our presence here into this crazy thing called consciousness,
The fact that we're sitting here doing this talking to microphones, like that's...
speaker-1 (01:40:08.206)
fact that the stuff you talked about today really resonated with me today is even crazier.
speaker-0 (01:40:14.126)
is you're like, so like that there is that like we are grounded into being by a personal being that's of course, you know, like transcendent, but like, if that's true, then our physiology is all one. It's all connected. Yeah, we might have heart, mind, soul and strength. We might talk about the different compartments that create the whole, but they all affect one another and they're all interrelated. And so if we remove the physicalness, the tactileness, as you said it, like,
from our learning process, we don't know what dangers that that's going to lead to. So I could not agree more. need to be exploring. I'm not one of those like we need to eschew all digital stuff because that would be insane. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just, it's a losing battle anyways, but it's like, how do we not lose the other pieces? How do we not lose the tactile learning? How do we not lose
speaker-1 (01:41:00.354)
love my phone.
speaker-0 (01:41:11.938)
the things that form us and have formed us, you know, for thousands and thousands of years, minimally.
speaker-1 (01:41:19.648)
And I love the fact that it is our responsibility, to use the word again, or it is our opportunity as adults who have come through the technology, like the impact of personalized technology. some of us are seeing, okay, there's stuff about this that I want to keep, but there's also stuff about what we were doing before that was useful too.
you know, building fangs and playing music with other people or like going to a friend's house like what we did over the Christmas time and singing in the same room and like how free at what how fun
speaker-0 (01:42:00.43)
Moving your body. Let's talk about the most basic things like obesity. yeah, remember we gotta move instead of sitting in front of screen all day or at this desk all day.
speaker-1 (01:42:11.662)
I mean our yoga studio, we go to the yoga space down on Haney's Corner. They've been doing these monthly events where it's like two hours on a Friday night. It's a sober event from 7 to 9 where they turn the yoga studio up to like 125. So it's sort of sauna-ish. Two ice baths outside and then they've got like loud dance music playing.
We went to the last one and it was, and then you're just sitting, you know.
speaker-0 (01:42:45.462)
My friend Merrick just went to that. Did you see Merrick?
speaker-1 (01:42:49.774)
I don't know. I met several people.
speaker-0 (01:42:50.926)
He's half-tied by nationality, might have stuck out a little bit.
speaker-1 (01:42:55.79)
I don't know. This is the first crowd. It really was.
speaker-0 (01:42:58.702)
That's great. Yeah, that's fantastic. I really think of, I don't anyways, which is probably my limited existence. Diversity and yoga don't necessarily scream at each other. But Zola's down there, right? Yeah, that's good.
speaker-1 (01:43:00.735)
and
speaker-1 (01:43:10.484)
Yeah, she teaches some things, some of her classes. But I left that night, so it was probably the most human, and I mean like I felt like a human being, like from the total sense of, well first of all was like right after the snowstorm, so was like 34 degrees outside, and I'm in an ice bath outside, surrounded by other guys who are like...
you know, yeah, let's get it, like let's go. And I'm like, you know, and then I walk in and then like everybody's like, you know, only wearing partial clothes because we're all in the yoga studio. So it's like very tribal, it felt like, and then you're sweating and you're like having like, meaning, there was no bullshit conversations. And I went to bed that night thinking this is the best I've ever felt in my body. Like I feel so good. So I think to myself like, well,
I don't want to lose any of that. That felt strong and human. But at the same time, I do love learning about the way things work by asking chat GPT, tell me about how this system connects to this thing. I saw this today. Like I've been learning about the power grid because I'm like, there's a lot we, hear tons of complaints about Centerpoint. So I think to myself, okay, let me like learn about how much does it cost? How much does a
How much does an electric pole cost to put up? I don't know. Like, to start asking questions that even people who work there, can ask, but they don't necessarily know, but I can kind of trace it by looking at, looking on the internet. So, you know, it's like, I think there's an opportunity that we might live in, like, just an incredible time to have the time, but also the knowledge to be human still and like have conversations and, yeah.
speaker-0 (01:44:57.71)
way.
speaker-0 (01:45:05.644)
Yeah, and create to-
speaker-1 (01:45:07.118)
And create together. Yeah.