S2 E9: The Hillsong Chapter with Nate Nakao

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_04]: This is a Dauntless Media Collective Podcast. Visit dauntless.fm for more content.

[00:00:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we as Asian Americans have for so long hidden ourselves. It's part of our personality,

[00:00:16] [SPEAKER_01]: it's part of the way our parents raised us, especially if we're children of immigrants.

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_01]: We have been taught to kind of disappear, you know. Part of it was outside pressure on us to do so.

[00:00:30] [SPEAKER_01]: And part of that was our own desire to survive for fear of deportation, for fear of whatever it might be.

[00:00:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So we aren't conditioned to get up and talk. And so I would encourage you to become a part of the conversation.

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_04]: We're going to find new practices that help us feel good and confident in ourselves.

[00:01:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I hope that hearing these stories reminds you that your deconstruction is valid,

[00:01:34] [SPEAKER_04]: and most of all that you are not alone on this journey. You are good, you are loved, and you are worthy, just as you are.

[00:01:41] [SPEAKER_05]: Hello, deconstructionist.

[00:01:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, that countdown. It's a little bit triggering because it reminds me so much of Hillsong and like the countdowns that we had for everything.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh my God, trigger warning.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: In fact, actually on our podcast, Janice and I were laughing about that.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I think it's how we started one of our episodes talking to Janice is like the countdown.

[00:02:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, who's running pre-roll? All right, is the band ready?

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_04]: All right. Well, now that we've got the countdown out of our system.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:02:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Hello and welcome back to part two of Nate Nicao's episode.

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_04]: If you missed his episode last week, make sure you go listen to it.

[00:02:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Nate is the co-host of the Full Mutuality podcast with his wife, Gail.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_04]: And he co-founded the Dauntless Media Collective with his friend, Jessica, who hosts the Leaving the Village podcast.

[00:02:36] [SPEAKER_04]: And his story is so rich.

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_04]: There are many, many chapters to his deconstruction story.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_04]: I said last time there's like five deconstruction stories in one.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_04]: So last week we talked through your time, you know, starting at the Filipino Evangelical Church,

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_04]: and then most of your childhood was in an independent fundamentalist Baptist church.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_04]: You went to Bob Jones.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_04]: And then when you left Bob Jones, you were still at this Baptist church.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_04]: And then some things happened with your brother and kind of decided as a family it wasn't really right for you.

[00:03:08] [SPEAKER_04]: So we're going to pick up right around there.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And can you tell us a little bit about what led you out of that church or where did you go after Persephone Baptist?

[00:03:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Where does your story start from there?

[00:03:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_01]: So after leaving Persephone Baptist, we sort of as a family decided we were all going to go somewhere together.

[00:03:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So I had started attending this budding megachurch that had a rock band on stage.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was thrilled with that because I was starting to go to rock concerts and to be able to attend a church that had a rock band and that sort of recreated a little bit of that energy in church was actually a lot of fun.

[00:03:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And it helped me reengage in my faith in a new way.

[00:03:54] [SPEAKER_01]: My parents weren't quite ready for that, like music cranked to 11.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_01]: So we hopped around for a bit, you know, doing the church shopping thing.

[00:04:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And then we we landed in a couple of churches for just like a week or two where we were running into other people who had also left Persephone.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_01]: We're like, do we really want to be going to a place where we're going to be seeing people from Persephone on a regular basis?

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So we landed in this one kind of one of New Jersey's or one of North Jersey's oldest kind of big megachurches.

[00:04:29] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a church called Hawthorne Gospel Church.

[00:04:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And we were there for a brief time.

[00:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's where I started gaining exposure to different styles of church worship, music, et cetera.

[00:04:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I got involved in their music program and I sang in their band.

[00:04:48] [SPEAKER_01]: It was the first time I'd ever like performed with a rock band.

[00:04:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was kind of fun.

[00:04:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But they weren't exactly like a young church or a young adult oriented church.

[00:04:59] [SPEAKER_01]: So as the church that I would eventually attend started to kind of pick up and become popular among young people in the area, churches like Hawthorne Gospel were sort of trying to emulate that.

[00:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So they would they would send people to go visit and see what they were doing.

[00:05:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, you know, a few years later when I started volunteering at that later church, there were churches from around the area and Bible colleges from like Pennsylvania and New York that would come visit our church to see what we were doing and take tours.

[00:05:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And I used to give those tours to like different leadership teams and stuff.

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like a recruiting program.

[00:05:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: The church was called Liquid Church, which is I find weird looking back.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Back in the day, I thought it was kind of cool because, you know, churches that I had been a part of were all like boring names like, you know, Parsippany Baptist and Bible Church International.

[00:06:00] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, just first congregational or whatever.

[00:06:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Exactly.

[00:06:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Which is ironic now because the church that I'm currently a member of is called First Congregational Church.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_04]: But I did not know that when I said it.

[00:06:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I laugh about it now, but I'm just like, yeah, you know, the whole church marketing thing, it's to me, it speaks to churches that aren't operating like churches, you know.

[00:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And for a little while, I thought that was actually really cool.

[00:06:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Like when I started attending Liquid, I thought that was great because it meant you were reaching young people where we're doing some branding to really make us more attractive, you know.

[00:06:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And back in the day, I remember there was a lot of controversy around, you know, seeker-sensitive churches or attractional model and, you know, so on and so forth.

[00:06:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And all of that just sounds like silly jargon that is incredibly and utterly meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

[00:07:02] [SPEAKER_04]: But also I'm thinking about where you came from and like Michael W. Smith was too progressive or something, too hip.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_04]: And so like there must be something really comforting about something so progressive that it's called Liquid, you know, Liquid Church.

[00:07:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So eventually, as a family, we just sort of landed there. My mom liked the sermons.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And what I think was helpful was that it comes, the pastor there came from a Baptist background.

[00:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: The church that Liquid had kind of grown out of was an old Baptist church.

[00:07:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So their theology was very Baptist. It kind of fit what we were used to.

[00:07:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm. So, you know, my parents enjoyed the sermons. The music was a bit of a stretch for them.

[00:07:52] [SPEAKER_01]: But then Liquid started doing this like Liquid Unplugged, which was like an acoustic service, but it was a simulcast.

[00:08:00] [SPEAKER_01]: They had like a separate room. They were meeting in a hotel conference center back in the day.

[00:08:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So the main service was going on in the main ballroom. And then they had like another smaller conference room that they would do their unplugged service.

[00:08:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was just like an acoustic worship set. And then they would simulcast with the main service upstairs for the start of the sermon.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was like they're experimenting with the multi-site model, which I found out a few years later that they were planning on like launching a multi-site church in various towns and cities around New Jersey.

[00:08:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Would the new sites be called like different types of liquid? You know, like one is like beer, one is wine, one is water.

[00:08:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they had ice church. They had, you know.

[00:08:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, sorry, I derailed us.

[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_01]: That's okay. That's what these conversations are for.

[00:09:00] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, and can you tell us the tagline for Liquid?

[00:09:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, the tagline for Liquid Church was living water for a thirsty world.

[00:09:13] [SPEAKER_04]: It's so good and a little sexual.

[00:09:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, just a little bit.

[00:09:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Which I find it funny because like, you know, they held a very traditional, you know, values surrounding sex.

[00:09:24] [SPEAKER_01]: But the friends that I made at that church, like everybody was going out drinking, having sex.

[00:09:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Nobody cared.

[00:09:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I think they, the, the church leadership wanted to, you know, start teaching some of those values, the traditional values surrounding sexuality.

[00:09:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So they, they had this sermon series called Heat.

[00:09:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was, it was a sermon series, a study through the Song of Songs or Song of Solomon.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And they had a little video bumper before every service or at the start of every sermon.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And they had a trailer and everything.

[00:09:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was, they recorded like stop motion of Barbie's legs just moving along.

[00:10:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and then every, every sermon there was something related.

[00:10:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And like all the PowerPoint presentations had like, you know, Barbie's legs on the side there.

[00:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And of course the, the sermon series amounted to essentially sex is great inside the confines of marriage.

[00:10:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, it's so gross.

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, Liquid tried to play themselves off as like somewhat progressive, but they were just as traditional as, as any other evangelical church.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_04]: It seems like it's all the same teachings wrapped up in like a, a thirsty tagline really.

[00:10:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_01]: They, so example of another sermon series, they, they did this annual series called Pop God or Rock God, depending on the year.

[00:10:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And the band would play, you know, a popular song at the start of the service.

[00:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the pastor would preach a sermon that was somehow related to that song.

[00:11:08] [SPEAKER_01]: One year for Pop God, they did CeeLo Greens.

[00:11:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Fuck you.

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_01]: But well, the forget you lyrics.

[00:11:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Fuck you would have been a little too far.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:11:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think, I don't think that would have gone over well for the evangelical audience, but they, yeah.

[00:11:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the pastor, I think, preached about, I want to say it was Hosea, you know, and God commanding Hosea to go marry this prostitute.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the prostitute constantly left him.

[00:11:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, there's all sorts of problems with that story.

[00:11:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Not the least of which being that non-consensual pursuit of a woman, like, but the evangelicals don't seem to care about that.

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not important to them.

[00:11:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:11:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Because there's story after story in the Bible of non-consensual sex.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_04]: And we talk about those all the time.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:00] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's okay.

[00:12:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, the perpetrators of that abuse are often heroes of the faith.

[00:12:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:12:08] [SPEAKER_04]: David.

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_01]: David.

[00:12:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Yep.

[00:12:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I see where your brain was going.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was kind of my foray into the megachurch world, Liquid.

[00:12:23] [SPEAKER_01]: When I first started attending, there were probably about 500 or so people in attendance.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And then it just continued to grow.

[00:12:31] [SPEAKER_01]: By the time I left, they were closing in on 3,000 attendees on a Sunday.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.

[00:12:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It was, you know, I look back and I think I had a lot of fun.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was sort of an opportunity for me to express myself and go through the adolescence that I had missed in my fundamentalist years.

[00:12:51] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, becoming a part of a church that wasn't really policing my life outside of the church service.

[00:12:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And sure, you know, a lot of the sermons were trying to promote a particular value system for your life.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, like who was going to really follow up?

[00:13:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think part of it also was I was able to maintain a clean conscience because the stuff that I was doing...

[00:13:18] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you know, a lot of evangelical beliefs revolve around, you know, repentance and forgiveness.

[00:13:24] [SPEAKER_01]: So as long as I repented of my sin from the night before, we're good.

[00:13:31] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, God and I are on good terms.

[00:13:33] [SPEAKER_03]: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But at Liquid, I think, you know, even as a kid growing up, I did have exposure to...

[00:13:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Like we were talking about shout to the Lord, right?

[00:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I did have exposure to Hillsong music, although I don't know that I knew it as such.

[00:13:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I was just sort of aware that like these words, these big songs that were being sung by my family's church.

[00:13:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Not the church I grew up in, obviously, but like my relatives' church, like my grandparents' church that I had, you know, been in as a child.

[00:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: My aunt and uncle, they were attending another evangelical church somewhere nearby.

[00:14:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And they were singing these songs by this group called Hillsong.

[00:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So I was aware.

[00:14:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And like I said, shout to the Lord was one of my faves as a kid.

[00:14:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And while I was at Liquid and the other church that my family was at briefly, that's when I kind of gained some exposure to the current Hillsong stuff that was at the time being published and sung in churches everywhere.

[00:14:42] [SPEAKER_01]: The big one that had just come out was Mighty to Save.

[00:14:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So like all of the churches were doing that song.

[00:14:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, and Liquid was doing a bunch of Hillsong songs.

[00:14:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And as I was getting more involved at Liquid, you know, I joined a couple of volunteer teams.

[00:15:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I became a part of the children's ministry leadership team.

[00:15:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I kind of got invited into a lot of like the core group, like the staff, the church staff and the core team of volunteers and various outings that they would have.

[00:15:16] [SPEAKER_04]: And this is at Liquid?

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, at Liquid.

[00:15:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:15:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So as a staff, we would go to Hillsong concerts pretty often because Hillsong was sending both of their bands.

[00:15:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, at the time they had two bands.

[00:15:29] [SPEAKER_01]: They were sending both of them to the New York City area quite regularly.

[00:15:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it was the lead up to them launching Hillsong NYC.

[00:15:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And so we would just we would go every time they were in town, we would go see one of their concerts.

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was absolutely hooked for me back then.

[00:15:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Those Hillsong concerts were life changing.

[00:15:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And I like I ate up Hillsong United was like my favorite.

[00:15:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It's so pathetic.

[00:15:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It was my favorite band during like the the early 2010s.

[00:15:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I think like basically, basically 2009 to 2011.

[00:16:03] [SPEAKER_01]: There was Hillsong United was like the band I listened to all the time.

[00:16:07] [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds so pathetic.

[00:16:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's a box, you know, they did.

[00:16:14] [SPEAKER_01]: They did.

[00:16:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, that was also around the time period that Hosanna came out.

[00:16:20] [SPEAKER_01]: So like that was a that was a big one.

[00:16:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Every church was doing Hosanna.

[00:16:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Is that the Hosanna?

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:16:26] [SPEAKER_04]: Hosanna.

[00:16:27] [SPEAKER_01]: That's the Brooke Frazier song.

[00:16:29] [SPEAKER_04]: I so I only knew about Hillsong as like a like I thought it was just like a worship band, basically.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_04]: I didn't even realize that it was like a church.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I just knew that like sometimes in church we would sing songs or like at a really cool church.

[00:16:44] [SPEAKER_04]: We would sing songs by this cool group called Hillsong.

[00:16:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And at those churches, it seemed to be like the spirit was always really moving, you know?

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_04]: It was very.

[00:16:55] [SPEAKER_04]: It was like they they captured something.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:16:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, they absolutely did.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:17:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Which we'll get to when we get to Hillsong.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:17:04] [SPEAKER_01]: So so that was kind of my first exposure to Hillsong.

[00:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And then not first exposure.

[00:17:09] [SPEAKER_01]: That was sort of my early exposure to discovering more about Hillsong as a band, seeing them live, so on and so forth.

[00:17:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But and there is a bit of history there and and and a story as to why most people only knew of them as a recording group.

[00:17:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, because the church at the time that the group first became popular back in like the early to mid 90s, the church was called, I think, Hills Christian Life Center.

[00:17:34] [SPEAKER_04]: OK.

[00:17:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And their band was called Hillsong.

[00:17:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And then they renamed the church after the band became sort of globally popular.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I see.

[00:17:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:17:45] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah.

[00:17:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So fast forward a little bit.

[00:17:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I started working for Liquid Church in their children's ministry program, and I did that for a couple of years, I think.

[00:17:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And I applied for a full time position there and they didn't hire me.

[00:18:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And looking back, I'm like, it makes sense.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like a 26, 27 year old kid who had no real like ministry experience.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh huh.

[00:18:14] [SPEAKER_04]: But that's kind of their prime.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's true.

[00:18:17] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like who they hired.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:18:19] [SPEAKER_01]: And to be fair, the original children's ministry director at Liquid also didn't have ministry

[00:18:26] [SPEAKER_01]: experience.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, their name is Liquid.

[00:18:27] [SPEAKER_01]: He was a Disney cast member.

[00:18:29] I mean, their name is Liquid.

[00:18:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Are they going for ministry experience or like cool hip young guy, you know?

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:18:36] [SPEAKER_01]: But a very particular like generation, like the end of Gen X is basically their target.

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:18:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Interesting.

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:18:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Whenever they would do Rock God, it was always like hits for like they, they used to do 80s

[00:18:53] [SPEAKER_01]: songs constantly.

[00:18:55] [SPEAKER_01]: When I was there.

[00:18:56] [SPEAKER_04]: This is so interesting.

[00:18:58] [SPEAKER_01]: The big sermon series was Rock God.

[00:19:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I love the 80s.

[00:19:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And they, it was the big hair sermon series, you know, and the band would come out dressed

[00:19:06] [SPEAKER_01]: like, uh, one of the guitarists came out dressed like Slash when they did Bon Jovi's You Give Love

[00:19:11] [SPEAKER_01]: a Bad Name.

[00:19:12] [SPEAKER_01]: I think some of them wore like the Bon Jovi wigs, you know?

[00:19:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And that, like the congregation ate that shit up more so than any of like the modern stuff.

[00:19:23] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, these people did not care about church.

[00:19:25] [SPEAKER_04]: These people wanted to go to a rock band concert and felt guilty about it or something.

[00:19:30] [SPEAKER_04]: There's something, there's something there.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:19:32] [SPEAKER_04]: Did you guys ever sing, um, I'm a believer, but change the words.

[00:19:36] [SPEAKER_04]: We changed the words to, um, then I saw his face as in like, you saw God.

[00:19:42] [SPEAKER_04]: Now I'm a believer.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:19:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Not a trace of doubt in my mind.

[00:19:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Cheesy.

[00:19:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's like, that's a, and as cheesy as liquid church was, um, that, I think that's a level

[00:19:54] [SPEAKER_01]: of cheesy that they wouldn't have.

[00:19:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Should we call it and give them this idea?

[00:19:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:19:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, Hey guys, you have missed the bandwagon on something.

[00:20:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Time for you to catch up.

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_01]: There's an opportunity that you missed.

[00:20:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah.

[00:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So, uh, and, and, and anybody who's familiar with like the evangelical landscape liquid kind

[00:20:16] [SPEAKER_01]: of looks like an Andy Stanley church.

[00:20:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's what they were going for.

[00:20:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, sort of the North point ministries kind of vibe.

[00:20:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, the, so, you know, liquid didn't hire me full time.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So I put my resume out there and I found an opening for a children's ministry director

[00:20:31] [SPEAKER_01]: at another upstart church called emergence.

[00:20:36] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I, I went and I, I visited, like I applied and they told me to come visit the

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_01]: church.

[00:20:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So I did.

[00:20:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And I sat through a service and I'm like, Oh, this feels a lot like liquid, just not quite

[00:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: as, or nowhere near as cheesy, but also, uh, they were, they weren't quite, they didn't

[00:20:53] [SPEAKER_01]: quite have as much an emphasis on the attraction of the, the, the show.

[00:20:59] [SPEAKER_01]: So they didn't have gobo lights for the band, but they still had a band.

[00:21:03] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a little bit more of like a post grunge kind of feel as opposed to pop rock.

[00:21:07] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:21:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the church that over time began to evolve into this like Mars Hill, Mark

[00:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Driscoll style of church.

[00:21:18] [SPEAKER_01]: They took a lot of cues from Mark Driscoll's Mars Hill, like before Mark Driscoll decided

[00:21:24] [SPEAKER_01]: to go Pentecostal.

[00:21:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And they took a lot of cues from Matt Chandler's village church.

[00:21:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was sort of their, their shtick.

[00:21:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And then of course they ended up, ended up joining the X 29 network, which was the, the

[00:21:38] [SPEAKER_01]: church network founded by Mark Driscoll and led by Matt Chandler for a little while.

[00:21:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So they, you know, they liked to imagine themselves way more serious than they were.

[00:21:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and they adopted a lot of Calvinist ideology and, and, and Calvinist teaching.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:21:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So I, when I was working there, I worked there full time as the children and family ministries

[00:22:01] [SPEAKER_01]: director.

[00:22:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And while I was there, I drank the Calvinist Kool-Aid.

[00:22:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I, I went through a program there called intensive discipleship.

[00:22:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was like a year long program for men to be discipled in like basically reading

[00:22:18] [SPEAKER_01]: through the Bible in a year, which amateurs I've done that at least five times.

[00:22:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, you are a better person than me.

[00:22:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I don't think I've ever actually done it.

[00:22:27] [SPEAKER_04]: I couldn't get through it.

[00:22:28] [SPEAKER_04]: It's so boring.

[00:22:29] [SPEAKER_01]: You weren't a fundamentalist and this wasn't like forced down your throat in school.

[00:22:34] [SPEAKER_04]: We had a lot of, I started a lot of those like check checklist, read the Bible in a

[00:22:39] [SPEAKER_04]: year sheets.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:22:40] [SPEAKER_04]: I got lost in like Leviticus.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:22:43] [SPEAKER_01]: I never would have done that if it were up to me, but because I had a grade.

[00:22:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, okay.

[00:22:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:22:50] [SPEAKER_01]: There were, there were requirements.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:22:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I had to, I had to, I had to follow through on, on that stuff, but yeah.

[00:22:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was an intensive discipleship at emergence was sort of like the pathway to eldership.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:23:01] [SPEAKER_01]: So if you wanted to become an elder, you kind of had to go through this program.

[00:23:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:23:05] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's just for men because only men can be elders.

[00:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[00:23:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, they did have a women's version.

[00:23:12] [SPEAKER_01]: The woman who was leading it for a while at the time when it started, she had a lot of

[00:23:18] [SPEAKER_01]: clashes with the executive pastor.

[00:23:21] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, checks out.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:23:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And then she got, she got to this point where she was like, what the hell even is the point

[00:23:28] [SPEAKER_01]: of women's intensive discipleship?

[00:23:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Because the goal for the men is you could be equipped to become an elder or a pastor at

[00:23:38] [SPEAKER_01]: church, but like for women, what are they doing?

[00:23:40] [SPEAKER_01]: They're just, you know, you can, you ultimately what?

[00:23:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Plan the coffee hours.

[00:23:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:23:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Plan coffee hour, teach children's ministry.

[00:23:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Like those were the things that were open to women.

[00:23:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Like at the very least at Liquid, they weren't quite so heavily patriarchal.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:23:54] [SPEAKER_01]: And after I left Liquid, a few years later, they announced that they were going to, they

[00:23:59] [SPEAKER_01]: were bringing a woman onto the executive leadership board and giving her the title of executive

[00:24:05] [SPEAKER_01]: pastor of something or other.

[00:24:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And then they started hiring more women as pastors and emergence.

[00:24:12] [SPEAKER_01]: And I remember when we were up for acts 29 candidacy and there was a conversation about putting

[00:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: in our bylaws that women were barred from particular positions.

[00:24:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I think it, I think that that did make it into the bylaws.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_01]: The person who was suggesting that to us was trying to get us to put it in the doctrinal

[00:24:35] [SPEAKER_01]: statement.

[00:24:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:24:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't want to go that far because there was one elder who was like, no, I don't

[00:24:44] [SPEAKER_01]: run my marriage that way.

[00:24:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So that better not be in the, in the doctrinal statement.

[00:24:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So he was able to prevent it from ending up in the doctrinal statement, but it did make

[00:24:51] [SPEAKER_01]: its way into the bylaws.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:24:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Wow.

[00:24:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:24:54] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so that was like emergence is wildly patriarchal.

[00:24:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, like it's been, well, I left emergence in 2014 or I was asked to resign

[00:25:03] [SPEAKER_01]: in 2014.

[00:25:04] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:25:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, so I don't really know like what the, the inner workings of the church is like now,

[00:25:10] [SPEAKER_01]: but I have called them out a few times on things that I've noticed over the years.

[00:25:15] [SPEAKER_01]: I met a guy who I found out over the course of our conversation that emergence was planning

[00:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: on outing his boyfriend who was still in the closet, but because it was like, you know,

[00:25:26] [SPEAKER_01]: they were, they were revoking, they were planning on revoking his membership because they found

[00:25:29] [SPEAKER_01]: out that he was in a gay relationship.

[00:25:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And so part of that involved bringing him up in front of the congregation to announce

[00:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: that they were pulling him from the membership rosters and telling the congregation why they

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_01]: were doing so, which if you're listening to this and you don't know that that is a horrific,

[00:25:47] [SPEAKER_01]: terrible thing to do to a person, uh, never out someone never.

[00:25:52] [SPEAKER_01]: If somebody confides in you, their sexual orientation or gender identity.

[00:25:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:25:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't please don't know.

[00:25:58] [SPEAKER_04]: That's not, please don't out them.

[00:25:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:00] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not your info to share.

[00:26:02] [SPEAKER_04]: No, it's wildly humiliating to have that happen in front of a congregation like that

[00:26:07] [SPEAKER_04]: and like this public shaming almost.

[00:26:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_04]: So sad.

[00:26:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So, I mean, those were that all of that I found out, you know, at least five, six years

[00:26:16] [SPEAKER_01]: after I had already left emergence, but the environment there was looking back.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I recognize it as toxic.

[00:26:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think I saw it at the time.

[00:26:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I, all I knew was I was uncomfortable.

[00:26:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I was frustrated with my, with my standing.

[00:26:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And as I was beginning to deconstruct Calvinism, I found myself growing less and less connected

[00:26:40] [SPEAKER_01]: to my supervisors, my boss and, and everyone at the, at the church with a few exceptions.

[00:26:46] [SPEAKER_01]: There was, uh, one, one pastor and elder who was kind of, I would say is a, was a bit

[00:26:52] [SPEAKER_01]: of a mentor to me at the time.

[00:26:54] [SPEAKER_01]: He was very anti-Calvinist.

[00:26:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So we kind of, when, when I sort of started to question the whole thing, he sort of took

[00:27:01] [SPEAKER_01]: me under his wing until he was asked to resign.

[00:27:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, which, uh, I have a lot of theories about that.

[00:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: We met up after I left emergence and he told me some stuff and I'm like, I've got a feeling

[00:27:14] [SPEAKER_01]: there were other conversations behind the scenes because of the way that, that my, um,

[00:27:19] [SPEAKER_01]: forced resignation went down.

[00:27:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I still don't have any clear answers.

[00:27:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Not that I really care.

[00:27:24] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:27:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I was going to ask if you know why you were asked to resign.

[00:27:29] [SPEAKER_01]: No, they, um, they gave me like some, I don't even remember exactly what the conversation

[00:27:36] [SPEAKER_01]: was about.

[00:27:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause I was, it was honestly like if that's what, that was one of those incredibly traumatizing

[00:27:41] [SPEAKER_01]: conversations because I had seen that as a career from, for myself.

[00:27:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Like at the time that, that I was, you know, starting to feel a little bit uncomfortable

[00:27:51] [SPEAKER_01]: with emergence.

[00:27:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I was also kind of looking around at other churches to see where were some opportunities

[00:27:56] [SPEAKER_01]: that I could take things to the next step in my career.

[00:27:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, I had begun networking with David C.

[00:28:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Cook.

[00:28:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I had spoken at a couple of their conferences for like children and family ministries curriculum.

[00:28:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, I had become friends with a handful of people who were part of that, that publishing

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_01]: group.

[00:28:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I was looking to see if there would be an opportunity for me to maybe leave the

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_01]: ministry and go into the ministry publication world.

[00:28:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I was looking to see if maybe there were other churches that I could latch onto if emergence

[00:28:32] [SPEAKER_01]: wasn't going to be working out for me.

[00:28:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And then when I was asked to resign, all of that vanished.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the only thing I remember from that conversation was cause I was, I honestly, I was in shock.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I could, I, I re I recall the feelings.

[00:28:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I recall the sensation in my body.

[00:28:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I recall that feeling of like losing color.

[00:28:57] [SPEAKER_01]: I recall like, you know, how am I going to pay rent?

[00:29:01] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, how am I, what do I, where am I going to get income from now?

[00:29:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I don't have much professional experience outside the church.

[00:29:10] [SPEAKER_01]: I've been doing that for five years at emergence, a year and a half at liquid.

[00:29:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And I started that like almost fresh out of college.

[00:29:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Like I, I, I worked in a, in a office environment for like a year or so before I started working for liquid.

[00:29:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But up until that point, everything I knew was just the ministry world.

[00:29:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know if my degree would be worth anything because it was from an unaccredited university.

[00:29:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, I was, I was scared shitless.

[00:29:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, am I, am I going to be able to, to manage?

[00:29:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah.

[00:29:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And I also remember sitting across from the executive pastor and him, like basically giving me the whole spiel of, you know, we're so grateful for everything that you did.

[00:29:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we wouldn't have had, we wouldn't have a children's ministry here without you.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, at the time I had a, uh, a volunteer team of like a hundred, a hundred people.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:30:04] [SPEAKER_01]: The children's ministry was, was closing in on 300 kids.

[00:30:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I was developing like family ministry curriculum at the time.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And all of that, like all of these projects that I had been working on, all of these things that I was looking forward to doing just gone.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And he, he gave me the whole, thank you for everything you did.

[00:30:27] [SPEAKER_01]: All, all of that.

[00:30:28] [SPEAKER_01]: He gave me that speech and then he started crying, which made me feel like very uncomfortable, very awkward.

[00:30:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know like how to react to this.

[00:30:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I started to feel numb.

[00:30:44] [SPEAKER_01]: And that made me wonder, like, am I just like emotionally stunted?

[00:30:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Like he can cry.

[00:30:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Why can't, why am I, why can't I cry about this?

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:30:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Even though I'm the one that is losing a job and, you know, losing a, a, a network.

[00:30:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I, at the time, actually, I also, I, I, I think I thought I was going to continue attending.

[00:31:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, cause that was my church family.

[00:31:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and I stuck it out for another couple of weeks after that, but it was, it was way too difficult for me to, to continue going.

[00:31:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention the fact that like, I already didn't agree with the theology and the sermons that were being preached.

[00:31:17] [SPEAKER_01]: So at that point, like, why was I even going here?

[00:31:20] [SPEAKER_03]: Uh huh.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_01]: And the worship songs that they were picking were all coming from the Mars Hill recording studio or they were songs that were being written in house that were dripping with that sort of neo-Calvinist.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:31:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Theology, which, you know.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_01]: You're broken and terrible.

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:31:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And all of the, um, the wrath of God stuff and yeah.

[00:31:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Do you think it was like, I don't know, like manipulative on his part to, to be crying so that you were kind of comforting him and then would just kind of leave without causing, I don't know, some kind of uproar?

[00:31:56] [SPEAKER_04]: Or do you think it was genuine?

[00:31:58] [SPEAKER_04]: He was really sad and, and that is how it was coming out.

[00:32:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't think, yeah, looking back, I don't think it was genuine.

[00:32:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:32:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So I, I remember, so Steve was the, um, the executive pastor at this church.

[00:32:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Ryan was the lead pastor and Ryan was the one who usually would preach on Sundays.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:32:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And Steve, uh, would occasionally preach and he developed this reputation of whenever Steve was preaching, he would start crying at some point during the sermon.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[00:32:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And people would, would say, oh my God, Steve's preaching.

[00:32:25] [SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be so moving.

[00:32:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Get out, get out your tissues.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_01]: He's going to, he's going to, it's going to be like a really emotionally touching and moving sermon.

[00:32:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Every time Steve preached, that would be the case.

[00:32:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I, I think I, I was suspicious that something was up when I saw him.

[00:32:41] [SPEAKER_01]: He was, he, you know, we had three services in the morning and one service in the evening.

[00:32:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's the identical, it's an identical service for each one.

[00:32:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And he would cry at the same point in each service.

[00:32:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, that's when I started to question what was going on, but I don't, I don't think I could articulate it.

[00:33:00] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't have the language for it.

[00:33:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't, I didn't know that that could be, that that was something people could do.

[00:33:06] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I was like, well, actors do that in movies, but they have like years and years and years of training.

[00:33:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't think a pastor could do that sort of thing.

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:33:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And fast forward a few years later, and I see my pastor at Hillsong, Carl Lentz doing that regularly.

[00:33:26] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when I started to think, oh, this is like a thing some people do.

[00:33:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm .

[00:33:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't connect it to narcissism or manipulative behavior or anything like that.

[00:33:37] [SPEAKER_01]: But I started to get the sense like, this might not be genuine.

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm .

[00:33:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's a video, ABC News did this like report on Hillsong Church back in its heyday.

[00:33:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And when they were interviewing Carl, at one point he starts crying and he's, he looks at the camera and he's like, you know, oh, I must be faking this.

[00:34:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I must be faking this.

[00:34:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And as he's, as tears are like rolling down his cheeks, and he said, stop the cameras.

[00:34:07] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I don't want to, I don't want people to see this, you know, but like kind of jokingly.

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Uh-huh.

[00:34:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Was this in the documentary?

[00:34:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Did they put this clip in the documentary?

[00:34:14] [SPEAKER_01]: They might've put this clip in the documentary.

[00:34:15] [SPEAKER_04]: I feel like I've seen it.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:34:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So I, at that point when I saw that video, that's when I was like, oh, this is like, this is a thing people do.

[00:34:25] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so, so leaving emergence on that note, it would let it, I was very confused.

[00:34:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I was very, uh, yeah, all of it just, I was shell shocked.

[00:34:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I, I didn't know how to process any of it.

[00:34:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And I kept going.

[00:34:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I think I, I continued going for like two or three weeks after the fact.

[00:34:43] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:34:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Before it became too much.

[00:34:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause I would walk, I walked by the children's ministry wing and like, this was a church launch that I was, you know, I launched their children's ministry.

[00:34:52] [SPEAKER_01]: I, you know, I drew up the blueprints for the children's wing of the building.

[00:34:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I designed all of the fun, like classroom paraphernalia, the walls.

[00:35:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I developed the concept of like the town, the downtown square with all of the cool, like things all over the walls to, to design.

[00:35:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And I put like the fake pavement in the hallways to make it feel like a street, you know?

[00:35:18] [SPEAKER_01]: So like that was my baby.

[00:35:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And to have that like sort of ripped away, I was, I was, it was shocking.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:35:24] [SPEAKER_01]: It was painful.

[00:35:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:35:26] [SPEAKER_04]: And probably like a lot of, a lot of grief to work through with that too, which maybe you didn't know or do at the time because it's like, you kind of don't even, you don't even know that that's a thing that you need to do when you're, when you're like in that space still.

[00:35:41] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, yeah, I had no idea.

[00:35:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And then after, after I had left emergence, I think several months later, because I still had friends from emergence that I was getting together with on occasion and having some beers.

[00:35:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, I don't remember what I said to someone, but then I got a phone call.

[00:35:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't even remember what, what could have prompted this or anything, but I got a phone call from, from Steve, the executive pastor at emergence.

[00:36:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I wonder why he's calling.

[00:36:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and the thought, the initial thought was like, I'm wondering if he's calling to like check in because Steve was like the compassionate one.

[00:36:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[00:36:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Even though when I was on staff there, I didn't see that because he was, he was a little bit of that like disciplinarian on staff.

[00:36:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Like he was the executive pastor.

[00:36:24] [SPEAKER_01]: He was everybody's boss.

[00:36:25] [SPEAKER_01]: He was sort of like, you know, the, the lead pastor and him would take like good cop, bad cop, and Steve would sort of play bad cop.

[00:36:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But with this really nice, sweet, kind sort of tone.

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[00:36:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I have concern for your spiritual health.

[00:36:41] [SPEAKER_04]: I get creepy crawlies from thinking about Steve.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:36:45] [SPEAKER_01]: In that like, in, in that, like employee reviews.

[00:36:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:36:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, if I had a bad review one, one month, and he, I would have like monthly reviews with Steve.

[00:36:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I had like a bad review, he would put on that, like, you know, I'm, I'm sharing this with you because I have concern for your spiritual walk, you know?

[00:37:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was, was Steve's role at, at church.

[00:37:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So when he, when he called me, I'm like, well, I'm not, I'm not his employee anymore.

[00:37:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So I shouldn't really worry about this.

[00:37:18] [SPEAKER_01]: But at the same time, it was a little jarring to see his name on my phone.

[00:37:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, I felt myself tense up.

[00:37:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, had to, you know, consciously calm myself down and say, no, that's, he's not calling because of that.

[00:37:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Or because of anything that you did, because you're not his employee.

[00:37:32] [SPEAKER_01]: There's no like review process here or whatever.

[00:37:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So I answered the phone.

[00:37:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, I was like, Hey Steve, what's up?

[00:37:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And he was like, Nate, you know, I hope you're doing well.

[00:37:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So it's come to our attention that you've been talking about your exit from emergence and characterizing it as like a disagreement in theology.

[00:37:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Is that true?

[00:37:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, well, no.

[00:37:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I've mentioned that we disagreed on things theologically, but I don't recall tying the two together.

[00:38:05] [SPEAKER_01]: I remember being pretty clear that like, I don't know.

[00:38:07] [SPEAKER_01]: I was like, you, you guys never gave me a clear reason other than, you know, there were some bad performance reviews or whatever here and there.

[00:38:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But like, there was never any explicit.

[00:38:19] [SPEAKER_01]: This is exactly why this is happening now, you know?

[00:38:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So now I'm left to kind of guess, you know, and I know we disagreed on, on theology.

[00:38:29] [SPEAKER_01]: But of course, this is all what's going through my mind.

[00:38:32] [SPEAKER_01]: I went on defense.

[00:38:34] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so.

[00:38:36] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't, I don't know.

[00:38:37] [SPEAKER_04]: No, of course I wouldn't do that.

[00:38:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Right, exactly.

[00:38:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And then he said, are we going to have to get legal representation?

[00:38:45] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, no, no, no, I'll, I'll shut up.

[00:38:49] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll stop talking about emergence entirely completely.

[00:38:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so I did.

[00:38:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And around that time, like I had kind of taken some time off of church after leaving and then I went and visited a few churches here and there.

[00:39:02] [SPEAKER_01]: But the problem with visiting churches around here is that I got recognized because I had developed a lot of networks while I was in children's ministry.

[00:39:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So I ended up finding Hillsong, not finding Hillsong.

[00:39:14] [SPEAKER_01]: I had already started visiting Hillsong because my brother was, was starting to lead worship.

[00:39:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and so I would visit even while I was working at, at emergence.

[00:39:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And, oh, another thing, actually, probably one of the things that got me in trouble at emergence.

[00:39:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, these mega churches get like really competitive.

[00:39:31] [SPEAKER_01]: They don't want to say they're competing, but they get competitive.

[00:39:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that Hillsong opened up next door, essentially.

[00:39:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:39:38] [SPEAKER_04]: That is a threat.

[00:39:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:39:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So, but my brother was, had joined the band and they were looking for some rehearsal space.

[00:39:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So my brother asked like, hey, is there any chance like you could open up your, your building for, for us to, to rehearse?

[00:39:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, yeah, sure.

[00:39:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Let me just talk it over with Steve and we'll, we'll see if this works out.

[00:39:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So I, you know, talked to Steve and like, hey, my brother wants to come with his church band and, and rehearse.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_01]: And he's like, yeah, sure.

[00:40:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay, fine.

[00:40:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Just make sure that, you know, the sound system is all, you know, managed properly, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

[00:40:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So we did, they came, they rehearsed.

[00:40:11] [SPEAKER_01]: After the fact, he found out that it was Hillsong.

[00:40:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Now we had to come up with a policy and a procedure for all of this stuff.

[00:40:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, it was my brother's church band.

[00:40:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, I, I wasn't gonna, you know, like, I wasn't like out there searching for Hillsong to come.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Right, right.

[00:40:28] [SPEAKER_01]: This is, my brother asked if his church band could come rehearse in our space.

[00:40:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And like both churches are about bringing people to Christ, theoretically.

[00:40:38] [SPEAKER_04]: So this should be a good thing.

[00:40:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Like what, how, how can we all help each other?

[00:40:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:40:45] [SPEAKER_01]: You would think.

[00:40:46] [SPEAKER_04]: You would think.

[00:40:47] You would think.

[00:40:49] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so yeah.

[00:40:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, and, and so I had already kind of developed a little bit of friends at, you know, some friendship over at, at Hillsong.

[00:40:57] [SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't, like, they didn't see me as the kids ministry guy.

[00:41:02] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, they saw me as, you know, Tim's brother.

[00:41:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So when I left emergence, I, you know, Hillsong just sort of felt like a logical place to go.

[00:41:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Also, it was massive.

[00:41:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So I could kind of disappear in the crowd and people wouldn't notice me.

[00:41:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So even if I ran into somebody who knew me as the kids ministry guy from emergence, I could easily like slip away into a crowd.

[00:41:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:41:23] [SPEAKER_00]: We live in an era of unprecedented access to information, news and media.

[00:41:29] [SPEAKER_00]: But what happens when all that information leads you to suddenly realize you spent the majority of your childhood in a cult?

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[00:41:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Join me, Jessica Goforth and Alexis Gray, as we take you into the world of cult recovery.

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[00:41:54] [SPEAKER_00]: On our podcast called Leaving the Village, we talk candidly about our journey out and interview other survivors whose experiences boggle your mind as scandals continue to rock the twisted world of IBLP.

[00:42:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Subscribe to Leaving the Village today so you don't miss a single episode.

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[00:42:17] [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, so then I started attending Hillsong and that to me was thrilling and exciting.

[00:42:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And I felt like I had sort of achieved a goal in my evangelical, you know, career.

[00:42:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that is the top, you know?

[00:42:33] Yeah.

[00:42:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And for people listening, there's a documentary out about it, which we can talk about, too, and how we feel about that, but how you feel about that.

[00:42:41] [SPEAKER_04]: But there's a documentary about Hillsong New York and you can see some of Carl Lentz and who he is and what he's like if you don't know about Hillsong and need a little background.

[00:42:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:42:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So I guess to kind of place myself within Hillsong, after attending for a little while, I joined a volunteer team.

[00:43:00] [SPEAKER_01]: And while I was volunteering there, one of the creative team leads who was in the band, he remembered me from, you know, A, my brother and B, that I had opened a rehearsal space for them to come to a couple of times a few years ago.

[00:43:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So he was like, hey, don't you have like some production experience?

[00:43:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Why are you like, you know, serving as a greeter?

[00:43:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you come work in production and we've got a role for you?

[00:43:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And it was basically the live show producer for, for the service.

[00:43:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, okay, fine.

[00:43:29] [SPEAKER_04]: This is how they get people.

[00:43:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.

[00:43:31] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm just really, this is how they get people to volunteer is like, we have a spot for you.

[00:43:35] [SPEAKER_04]: It's designed for you.

[00:43:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, here you go.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:43:39] [SPEAKER_04]: You're like, wow, that is like, you sought me out for my skills.

[00:43:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Like, this is so cool.

[00:43:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, and they have multiple angles, right?

[00:43:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So for the people who, who don't get that kind of spotlight on them, or who don't get noticed in that way, they get you in by, you know, Carl used to say, you know, pretty regularly, if you ain't helping, you ain't helping.

[00:44:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So he would sort of guilt people into volunteering.

[00:44:03] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm-hmm.

[00:44:04] [SPEAKER_01]: And then there was the other side of it with, you know, me getting noticed and someone saying, hey, why don't you come serve as a, as a service producer?

[00:44:13] [SPEAKER_01]: So I started doing that and that role became, you know, heavier and heavier.

[00:44:20] [SPEAKER_01]: The lift became much bigger as the role evolved.

[00:44:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So one example of, of like the volunteer culture, there was one Wednesday evening I was, I was, I had to produce the Wednesday evening services and they were tiny services, mostly unplugged.

[00:44:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But the pastors still had this high expectation of the production value.

[00:44:39] [SPEAKER_01]: But the problem is like, someone like me who has the experience and who has the, I guess the, the maturity because like most of the volunteer team on production are college kids.

[00:44:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And at this point I was like 30 or 31 years old.

[00:44:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, there's a quote unquote level of responsibility as you get older, you know, so of course they're sort of leaning to leaning into me to kind of organize the team.

[00:45:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was working a nine to five at that point.

[00:45:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, I can't be there at the time that they kept asking me to.

[00:45:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So the campus pastor kept asking, hey, yeah, without fail, like every week, hey, can you be here at 430?

[00:45:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the call time for everyone else is 430.

[00:45:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, yeah, they're all college kids.

[00:45:25] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm working because this is a volunteer position.

[00:45:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:45:30] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, sure, I can be here at 430 if you pay me.

[00:45:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:45:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Volunteering at Hillsong is a full time job.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It is.

[00:45:39] [SPEAKER_01]: It really is.

[00:45:41] [SPEAKER_01]: I, yeah, the amount of time that I put into that and the amount of stress on like Saturday nights, just like thinking, like going through the, the, the rundown of the service, reading through all of the emails.

[00:45:54] [SPEAKER_01]: It's just, it's like, yeah, it invades, it invades your life.

[00:46:00] [SPEAKER_04]: So.

[00:46:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Did it also feel like empowering in a way?

[00:46:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it did.

[00:46:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Because, well, part of it too is Hillsong is, has a class system in their volunteers.

[00:46:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So, uh, when you reach a certain tier of volunteers, uh, that you, you get to be a part of like the, the leadership nights and you get, you get considered a team lead.

[00:46:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how they like break you down.

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Really?

[00:46:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I'll go into that in a little bit, but, uh, this, this specific incident.

[00:46:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So one, there was one Wednesday I showed up late and, uh, tech was not, was not functioning properly and I couldn't troubleshoot cause I hadn't arrived early enough and I had missed most of rehearsal.

[00:46:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So the service overall was a bit of a mess to be fair though.

[00:46:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So if it were any other church, if it were emergence, even if it were liquid, it was a, it was fine.

[00:46:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Probably would have talked about, Hey, can we shore these things up around, you know, next time and whatever we'll forget about it.

[00:46:55] [SPEAKER_01]: But because it's Hillsong and the pastors are all power tripping, they had to use this as an opportunity to start scolding people.

[00:47:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And the campus pastor for the New Jersey location, this bastard's name is, um, Matt Barges.

[00:47:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I fucking hate the guy.

[00:47:09] [SPEAKER_01]: He was my personal nemesis.

[00:47:13] [SPEAKER_01]: I know Janice has like, you know, the nemesis of nemeses, uh, Carl himself.

[00:47:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, but I, I had, you know, the, the, the smaller nemesis.

[00:47:25] [SPEAKER_01]: I had, uh, you know, Matt Barges.

[00:47:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Hey, a nemesis is a nemesis.

[00:47:29] [SPEAKER_01]: That's true.

[00:47:31] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and Matt was, um, yeah, he, he was trying too hard to be Carl and he was just not good.

[00:47:38] [SPEAKER_01]: His sermons were awful.

[00:47:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, like I, I remember just feeling every time that Matt was preaching, I'm like, Oh, this is just gonna be bad.

[00:47:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Like his wife was a better preacher than he was.

[00:47:51] [SPEAKER_01]: And like when she would preach, I'm like, okay, at least we get a halfway decent sermon this Sunday.

[00:47:56] [SPEAKER_01]: But behind the scenes, his wife was probably just as toxic.

[00:47:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a friend who has lots of stories about issues that they had with, with her.

[00:48:03] [SPEAKER_01]: But in any case, after that, that Wednesday evening service and like, yeah, tech was just not functioning for us.

[00:48:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Like the, you know, mics weren't working properly, but it was a small room.

[00:48:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So it wasn't like that big of an issue.

[00:48:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You could kind of go on mic'd and unplugged.

[00:48:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And then, and to be fair, the band pulled it off really well.

[00:48:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Like it was almost like pulling off an acoustic set and it just felt natural and people got really engaged in it.

[00:48:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And like the screens weren't working properly.

[00:48:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So like the lyrics weren't popping up, but this is Hillsong we're talking about.

[00:48:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Like a, it's a Wednesday night service.

[00:48:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So they're not introducing any new songs.

[00:48:40] [SPEAKER_01]: They're singing the hits that everybody knows.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Yep.

[00:48:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And also it's Hillsong.

[00:48:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Each song has like 12 lyrics total.

[00:48:48] [SPEAKER_04]: So you can probably figure it out.

[00:48:51] [SPEAKER_04]: If they say my data save once, they'll say it three more times.

[00:48:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[00:48:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[00:48:57] [SPEAKER_04]: Hosanna.

[00:48:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:48:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Again and again and again, again, and again, and again.

[00:49:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, after the service, Matt called a team leader debrief.

[00:49:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So he was like, all right, can we get the team leads together backstage, whatever?

[00:49:11] [SPEAKER_01]: So we met and this is the kind of thing that he totally could have done just with me alone, face to face without bringing the rest of the team leads.

[00:49:20] [SPEAKER_01]: But he decided to give me a tongue lashing in front of the other team leads.

[00:49:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And he goes, guys, tonight was a shit show.

[00:49:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Everybody had their part to play in what a disaster this service was.

[00:49:35] [SPEAKER_01]: But creative team production just was the worst.

[00:49:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And like all of our problems stemmed from from them.

[00:49:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like them.

[00:49:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm looking around the room.

[00:49:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You have security.

[00:49:47] [SPEAKER_01]: You have venue control.

[00:49:48] [SPEAKER_01]: You have the greeting team and you have creative one team lead from each of those groups.

[00:49:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Who is the great?

[00:49:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you could have just said, Nate, which he did.

[00:49:59] [SPEAKER_01]: He actually did single me out by name.

[00:50:01] [SPEAKER_01]: But he like he could have called us all together and just said, Nate, you were the weak link tonight.

[00:50:09] [SPEAKER_01]: Like instead he goes through this whole like, oh, everybody had a part to play.

[00:50:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, at the heart of our problems was production.

[00:50:20] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm like, really?

[00:50:21] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, did we have to do this in front of everyone?

[00:50:24] [SPEAKER_01]: And then he goes, Nate, you didn't set me up for a win.

[00:50:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, because that's what it's about.

[00:50:36] [SPEAKER_04]: A win for the pastor.

[00:50:39] [SPEAKER_04]: And were people were people saved that night?

[00:50:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Did people raise their hands?

[00:50:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Did they probably go to the altar call?

[00:50:46] [SPEAKER_04]: So like, yeah, isn't that a win?

[00:50:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Shouldn't that be the win?

[00:50:50] [SPEAKER_01]: That should be the win, at least in these people's books.

[00:50:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[00:50:53] [SPEAKER_01]: That's not a win in my book.

[00:50:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But the fewer people that raise their hands for these kinds of things, the better.

[00:50:58] [SPEAKER_01]: But back then, in my mindset, those were the wins.

[00:51:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:51:04] [SPEAKER_01]: You know?

[00:51:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And I do remember one of the team leads kind of taking me aside and saying like, hey, no, Nate, tonight was a win.

[00:51:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Like there was it was a rough situation and we still had we still had a service.

[00:51:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, I'm like, thank you for that.

[00:51:19] [SPEAKER_04]: You know, another way that a leader could handle that is to say like,

[00:51:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Hey, Nate, I know that didn't that didn't go as smooth as it usually does.

[00:51:27] [SPEAKER_04]: But great job to X, Y and Z for, you know, pulling the volume down and and making it so that like we could all hear everybody could hear like lower the instruments.

[00:51:37] [SPEAKER_04]: We could hear the vocals and like wonderful that we had songs that everybody knows so that, you know, it didn't matter that the words weren't up there.

[00:51:44] [SPEAKER_04]: Everybody could sing anyway.

[00:51:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Like there are so many other comments that you could make that would still be encouraging and calling out the wins that did happen.

[00:51:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh, absolutely.

[00:51:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Rather than, again, shaming you in front of a group.

[00:51:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[00:51:57] [SPEAKER_01]: And what's to me, I think where I was sitting and why like my perspective on Hillsong sort of became the way it did as I was attending there and as I was volunteering there was because I had already had ministry experience and a lot of training and like leadership and leading volunteer team that the stuff that was going on there.

[00:52:16] [SPEAKER_01]: It made it so clear to me that these pastors had no fucking clue what they were doing.

[00:52:23] [SPEAKER_01]: And the reason and like, you know, sometimes people ask, well, why'd you stick it out so long?

[00:52:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, it was Hillsong.

[00:52:29] [SPEAKER_01]: That was my dream.

[00:52:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Like as a kid, I listened to Hillsong music and imagined that I would, you know, be there.

[00:52:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:52:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And I was.

[00:52:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I was producing Hillsong services on Sundays.

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[00:52:41] [SPEAKER_04]: And I know like I jokingly said, like, that's the top.

[00:52:44] [SPEAKER_04]: But but really, that is the top.

[00:52:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Like you, you made it when you get there.

[00:52:48] [SPEAKER_04]: And so.

[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:52:49] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:52:50] [SPEAKER_04]: It's almost like if if something feels wrong or I guess I'm wondering if something felt wrong, did it feel like, OK, maybe I'm missing something?

[00:52:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe, maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture.

[00:53:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of.

[00:53:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Kind of.

[00:53:04] [SPEAKER_01]: But I think that ended up disappearing pretty quickly.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_04]: OK.

[00:53:08] [SPEAKER_01]: When I when I volunteered for Hillsong Conference.

[00:53:11] [SPEAKER_04]: OK.

[00:53:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So Hillsong Conference is like this annual event and they do it in like, you know, a few big cities around the world.

[00:53:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And the year I did it, they were holding it at Prudential Center in New Jersey.

[00:53:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[00:53:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's a I love that place.

[00:53:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I actually.

[00:53:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, fun fact.

[00:53:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So completely side tangent.

[00:53:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Cool.

[00:53:31] [SPEAKER_03]: We love fun facts.

[00:53:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:53:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So the Prudential Center is where the New Jersey Devils play hockey and they own the building.

[00:53:37] [SPEAKER_01]: It's that they are the only regular tenants of that.

[00:53:39] [SPEAKER_01]: So it is a hockey arena.

[00:53:41] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's like for this area kind of devoted to hockey.

[00:53:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So I played in in a beer league that was mostly on the practice ice next to Prudential Center.

[00:53:54] [SPEAKER_01]: But one of our games they held on the main ice in Prudential Center and they were doing tests on like the AV system around.

[00:54:03] [SPEAKER_01]: So they had the lights on and they had like the Jumbotron partially on and like the, you know, hockey team logos and NHL logos were like swirling around.

[00:54:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and the Devils had just gotten eliminated from the playoffs that year.

[00:54:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So the Stanley Cup playoffs logo was still on the ice.

[00:54:19] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's so cool.

[00:54:21] [SPEAKER_01]: I got to play on Stanley Cup playoffs ice.

[00:54:24] [SPEAKER_01]: That was amazing.

[00:54:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I like incredible experience.

[00:54:28] [SPEAKER_01]: But anyway.

[00:54:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So.

[00:54:30] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, they held Hillsong conference at Prudential Center the year that I volunteered.

[00:54:35] [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that like Hillsong conference is like an opportunity for them to really break people down.

[00:54:42] [SPEAKER_01]: This was where it became absolutely unmistakable to me that there's a class system amongst volunteers.

[00:54:49] [SPEAKER_01]: They had an army of volunteers, like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of volunteers.

[00:54:52] [SPEAKER_01]: The vast majority of them had no place to kind of rest.

[00:54:58] [SPEAKER_01]: There were really no chairs for them to sit, no, no like back room for them to hang out at, no backstage area for them to take breaks.

[00:55:07] [SPEAKER_01]: They were on all day.

[00:55:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Call time for most of the volunteers was something around 6 a.m., especially if you were on production.

[00:55:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And we weren't leaving the building until like 1030, 11 o'clock at night.

[00:55:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Wow.

[00:55:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Some of the key production volunteers were weren't leaving until past midnight, like 1 a.m.

[00:55:29] [SPEAKER_01]: And then doing it all again, showing up at 6 a.m. the next day.

[00:55:32] [SPEAKER_04]: It is such a long day.

[00:55:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:55:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Not to mention that you're on your feet for most of it.

[00:55:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So that army of volunteers, they don't get to hang out backstage.

[00:55:40] [SPEAKER_01]: They're constantly on.

[00:55:42] [SPEAKER_01]: They their breaks are in this giant room with no seating.

[00:55:49] [SPEAKER_01]: And they get served like cold ham and cheese sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, lukewarm coffee.

[00:55:57] [SPEAKER_01]: They're they they get like thousands and thousands of those those tiny little water bottles.

[00:56:04] [SPEAKER_04]: They're like five sips.

[00:56:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[00:56:08] [SPEAKER_04]: And like Hillsong has money.

[00:56:10] [SPEAKER_01]: They do.

[00:56:11] [SPEAKER_04]: They could they could rent chairs for these people.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[00:56:14] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:56:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[00:56:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But they didn't.

[00:56:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Then there's the the next tier up of volunteers, which that group of volunteers got to be backstage.

[00:56:26] [SPEAKER_01]: So we could like, you know, take naps on the floors.

[00:56:31] [SPEAKER_01]: We still didn't get chairs.

[00:56:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But, you know, if we needed to serve for the upper class.

[00:56:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:56:37] [SPEAKER_01]: We could take naps on the floors and we were like wandering around backstage so we could kind of have fun.

[00:56:42] [SPEAKER_01]: We weren't on.

[00:56:44] [SPEAKER_01]: We weren't on.

[00:56:44] [SPEAKER_01]: We weren't being seen by all of the attendees and they called them delegates.

[00:56:49] [SPEAKER_01]: They called attendees to Hillsong Conference delegates.

[00:56:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Like so.

[00:56:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.

[00:56:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And then for breakfast.

[00:57:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, for our meals, we got like a full catered buffet, you know, scrambled eggs all like hot with the sternos and everything sausage bacon hot coffee.

[00:57:11] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think during lunch and dinner, they would serve like pasta.

[00:57:16] [SPEAKER_01]: They would have, you know, whatever was there catered by the Prudential Center staff.

[00:57:21] [SPEAKER_01]: It was stark, but like I wasn't my place to say anything.

[00:57:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And I they they had ways of of kind of convincing us that like, well, you know, you guys have bigger tasks and more work to do.

[00:57:37] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why you get this at least sort of like the unstated messaging that's going around around there.

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[00:57:45] [SPEAKER_04]: You're doing something more important or something.

[00:57:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:57:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:57:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Something along those lines.

[00:57:51] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was when it became incredibly clear to me.

[00:57:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and then my team lead when I was at conference.

[00:58:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So I misplaced my credential.

[00:58:02] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like basically a backstage pass.

[00:58:04] [SPEAKER_01]: I misplaced it and I had to I had to get a new one.

[00:58:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And my team lead when she found out, oh, my God, like I got ripped into.

[00:58:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know what?

[00:58:17] [SPEAKER_01]: What could happen if somebody just found this your credential that the access that your credential has is like practically all access.

[00:58:24] [SPEAKER_01]: They might get breakfast.

[00:58:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:58:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[00:58:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Those those those plebes in the main volunteer team might get breakfast.

[00:58:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Or like, you know, that gave them access to like the air, the backstage area where like the celebrity pastors and the band, you know, Hillsong United is all back there.

[00:58:45] [SPEAKER_04]: These pastors shouldn't be celebrities.

[00:58:47] [SPEAKER_01]: No, no.

[00:58:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I remember I was chatting with one of my friends who was doing like security, essentially.

[00:58:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And he had to turn someone away who was wanting to come down the stairs and go talk to Brian Houston.

[00:59:06] [SPEAKER_01]: So, oh, the sermon touched me in such a way.

[00:59:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, I just I felt I felt like I wanted to spend some time in prayer with with Pastor Brian.

[00:59:15] [SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, like Brian was right.

[00:59:19] [SPEAKER_01]: He was standing like maybe 20 feet from there.

[00:59:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But he had to say no, because, you know, you have to keep keep the the regular people away from the pastors.

[00:59:30] [SPEAKER_01]: They're they're not supposed to be anywhere near anywhere near them.

[00:59:32] [SPEAKER_04]: And you think that is just to like maintain this class system and keep people?

[00:59:37] [SPEAKER_01]: I think so.

[00:59:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I think that's that's yeah, that's part of it.

[00:59:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[00:59:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So.

[00:59:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.

[00:59:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of like the culture at Hillsong.

[00:59:45] [SPEAKER_01]: I ended up kind of I still I mean, I stuck around for a while after that.

[00:59:50] [SPEAKER_01]: But part of it, too, was like for me, maybe that was like a Hillsong global issue.

[00:59:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that I noticed when I was at Hillsong NYC was that Hillsong NYC had its own culture and concerns and Hillsong Global had different concerns.

[01:00:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe it was a clash of cultures.

[01:00:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was the issue that I was that I was struggling with.

[01:00:09] [SPEAKER_01]: So when we got back to just, you know, Hillsong NYC and the various campuses there, then I felt like, OK, I'm back in my rhythm and I felt comfortable and I was back in my leadership role and all of that.

[01:00:22] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, and they also use the the intense schedule as a way to prevent people from questioning the system.

[01:00:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, you're there all day Sunday.

[01:00:31] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, if you have an early morning call time and you're not out of there until late in the evening and then Monday night was leadership night.

[01:00:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Tuesday night was I don't remember what Tuesday night was Wednesday night was your connect group.

[01:00:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So you met with your small group.

[01:00:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Then Thursday night was team night.

[01:00:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Friday night was Friday night live for young adults.

[01:00:50] [SPEAKER_01]: It was youth night for youth.

[01:00:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Saturday night was college night for college kids.

[01:00:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Or if you were on creative team, you were having prep meetings for for Sunday morning and just do it all over again on Sunday.

[01:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: So you don't have time to question the system.

[01:01:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[01:01:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:01:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.

[01:01:07] [SPEAKER_01]: And then, of course, you know, the the scandals broke.

[01:01:11] [SPEAKER_01]: I left Hillsong in 2017.

[01:01:14] [SPEAKER_01]: So a few years before the scandals really kind of opened up.

[01:01:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, there were already scandals, but we were not quite as aware of them.

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[01:01:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Or at least we sort of it was easy for us to ignore them at Hillsong New York because those were taking place in Australia.

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[01:01:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:01:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But.

[01:01:33] [SPEAKER_04]: And why did you leave Hillsong?

[01:01:34] [SPEAKER_01]: So I left because I was just tired.

[01:01:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Fair.

[01:01:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, I didn't.

[01:01:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I didn't like the environment I got.

[01:01:42] [SPEAKER_01]: So one of the things that Hillsong was really good at was creating a lot of FOMO.

[01:01:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So especially if you were in a leadership position, you didn't want to step down from that role because then you would be missing out.

[01:01:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[01:01:53] [SPEAKER_01]: On everything that was going on.

[01:01:54] [SPEAKER_04]: With the non breakfast people.

[01:01:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[01:02:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:02:01] [SPEAKER_01]: And yeah, so I, I think at one point I'm like, I don't think I want to do this anymore.

[01:02:05] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[01:02:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And I also had a life outside church that I was beginning to develop.

[01:02:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So that was something as far as the transition from emergence to Hillsong was that at emergence my entire life was involved in church.

[01:02:20] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, that was my job.

[01:02:21] [SPEAKER_01]: That was my social life.

[01:02:22] [SPEAKER_01]: That was my volunteer life, spiritual fulfillment, all of that.

[01:02:25] [SPEAKER_01]: Whereas at Hillsong over time, you know, I was developing friends at work.

[01:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: I was making friends outside of the church.

[01:02:32] [SPEAKER_01]: It was a local bar that I would hang out at and I made friends there.

[01:02:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, I started, um, volunteering as a hockey coach and I was making friends there.

[01:02:40] [SPEAKER_01]: I was playing hockey.

[01:02:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So now my life outside church was becoming a little bit of a safety net.

[01:02:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I felt like, you know what?

[01:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: I want to do more of that.

[01:02:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And church was taking away from it.

[01:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: So I felt like I could leave church and not lose out on community and friendship and relationships with other people.

[01:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so I did.

[01:02:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And I didn't look back until, uh, news broke that Carl Lentz had cheated on his wife and now was getting fired from Hillsong.

[01:03:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And then documentaries started coming out and yeah, then, then we, then we're kind of where we are today.

[01:03:20] [SPEAKER_01]: And, um, yeah.

[01:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And, um, yeah.

[01:03:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And like the whole mega church culture coming under scrutiny.

[01:03:24] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's always been coming under scrutiny, but now like even more so, uh, I know Judah Smith, his church is coming under fire and that's Justin Bieber's other pastor.

[01:03:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah.

[01:03:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:03:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, that's another thing.

[01:03:41] [SPEAKER_01]: If anybody's curious, uh, go look up church home.

[01:03:45] [SPEAKER_01]: It's literally one word church home.

[01:03:47] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's some scandals coming out of that church.

[01:03:50] [SPEAKER_01]: And that actually is connected to church home.

[01:03:52] [SPEAKER_04]: The name of the church is church home?

[01:03:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:03:54] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:03:55] [SPEAKER_04]: I, I want to play a game with you.

[01:03:58] [SPEAKER_04]: You played a game with me on your podcast.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[01:04:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[01:04:02] [SPEAKER_04]: But I'm, I, I'm just going to make you do this cause you are the one who is good at planting churches.

[01:04:06] [SPEAKER_04]: So I would like you to think about how to bring in people to this cool hip church.

[01:04:13] [SPEAKER_04]: How are you going to get, you're, you're planting a new soon to be mega church.

[01:04:18] [SPEAKER_04]: Maybe you have hopes of it being a mega church.

[01:04:20] [SPEAKER_04]: What will the church name be?

[01:04:22] [SPEAKER_04]: What will the tagline be?

[01:04:24] [SPEAKER_03]: Okay.

[01:04:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I need one good sermon name for like the service that's going to bring everybody in like the name of the sermon and like three songs you would choose.

[01:04:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Ooh.

[01:04:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:04:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:04:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:04:35] [SPEAKER_01]: So the name of the church, limitless church.

[01:04:41] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:04:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Tagline would be the sky is no limit.

[01:04:48] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's so, it's so like 2003.

[01:04:51] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

[01:04:51] [SPEAKER_01]: That's like where my.

[01:04:52] [SPEAKER_01]: No, it's perfect.

[01:04:53] [SPEAKER_04]: That's, that's when we were in church.

[01:04:54] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's good.

[01:04:55] Yeah.

[01:04:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and, uh, a sermon would be like.

[01:05:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, the heavens declare.

[01:05:09] [SPEAKER_01]: There is no limit.

[01:05:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Something like that.

[01:05:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:05:15] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:05:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:05:17] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm just, everything is branded.

[01:05:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and then.

[01:05:20] [SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's, that's the game.

[01:05:22] [SPEAKER_04]: That's the name of the game.

[01:05:23] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:05:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, God.

[01:05:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Three worship songs.

[01:05:28] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just, I would, I would just go pretty standard, pretty bog standard with worship songs,

[01:05:31] [SPEAKER_01]: you know?

[01:05:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, Oh, to actually fitting with the theme.

[01:05:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, your love is relentless by Hillsong young and free.

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I think it was a young.

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:05:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Hillsong young and free.

[01:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I got, I got really into Hillsong young and free when I was at Hillsong cause they

[01:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: were like the cool dance pop band.

[01:05:46] [SPEAKER_04]: Um, I don't think I know Hillsong.

[01:05:48] [SPEAKER_04]: What is it?

[01:05:48] [SPEAKER_04]: Hillsong.

[01:05:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Hillsong young and free.

[01:05:50] [SPEAKER_04]: Young and free.

[01:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: They were, they were like the youth band.

[01:05:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, after Hillsong United kind of grew up.

[01:05:56] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:05:57] [SPEAKER_04]: They were too old.

[01:05:58] [SPEAKER_04]: They were a little washed up.

[01:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:06:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.

[01:06:01] [SPEAKER_01]: When, um, when the millennials became old, that's when there was a limit on Hillsong.

[01:06:06] [SPEAKER_01]: There was a limit on Hillsong United.

[01:06:08] [SPEAKER_01]: Yep.

[01:06:08] [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, but there's not a limit on how many bands they can produce.

[01:06:14] [SPEAKER_04]: The music is limitless.

[01:06:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:06:15] [SPEAKER_04]: Bands are.

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:06:16] [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, so your love is relentless by Hillsong young and free.

[01:06:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, I'm just going to go all Hillsong cause that's like, what's the most important

[01:06:22] [SPEAKER_01]: what I'm, what I, what I'm familiar with.

[01:06:25] [SPEAKER_04]: Um, and they got bops.

[01:06:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:06:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And then, um, and then we'll, we'll take it slow.

[01:06:30] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll go into like more of a, uh, like an, an anthem kind of song with, um, uh, what

[01:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: was the, um, how the bridge goes, the earth will shake and tremble before him.

[01:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't want to be singing.

[01:06:46] [SPEAKER_01]: This is going to be triggering for people.

[01:06:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Sorry.

[01:06:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, God, what is the name of that song?

[01:06:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, that song.

[01:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:06:53] [SPEAKER_01]: That, that does that in the bridge.

[01:06:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause it's like, it's, it's got that, that hit.

[01:06:58] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's when like one of the, the MC can walk out and really just like ride the crash

[01:07:02] [SPEAKER_01]: out there.

[01:07:04] [SPEAKER_04]: And we'll ask production team.

[01:07:05] [SPEAKER_04]: They'll know that they'll know the name of the song.

[01:07:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Absolutely.

[01:07:08] [SPEAKER_04]: So they can, they can.

[01:07:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:07:10] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:07:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And then the third one will be, Oh God, I'm forgetting.

[01:07:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, you know what?

[01:07:17] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll go, we'll go back to an, uh, to an older Hillsong song.

[01:07:20] [SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we'll go, um, save your King as like a really down ballad, but then it really comes up at

[01:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: the end to get everybody's emotions, uh, really into it.

[01:07:30] [SPEAKER_04]: So yeah, perfect for an altar call at the end.

[01:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:07:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.

[01:07:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[01:07:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:07:34] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm all about that altar call, you know?

[01:07:35] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:07:36] [SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[01:07:36] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, what time is a service on Sunday for limitless?

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:07:40] [SPEAKER_01]: We'll, uh, we'll make it easy for people.

[01:07:42] [SPEAKER_01]: They don't have to roll out to bed to roll out of bed too early.

[01:07:44] [SPEAKER_01]: So we'll go with like 11 o'clock start time.

[01:07:46] [SPEAKER_01]: Sound good?

[01:07:47] [SPEAKER_04]: All right.

[01:07:47] [SPEAKER_04]: So we'll see you all there at a limitless.

[01:07:52] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:07:53] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for humoring me.

[01:07:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:07:55] [SPEAKER_04]: So where are you now?

[01:07:56] [SPEAKER_04]: What do you believe?

[01:07:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:07:58] [SPEAKER_01]: So now I would say my, my spirituality is kind of, okay, well, let me, let me start with

[01:08:04] [SPEAKER_01]: beliefs.

[01:08:05] [SPEAKER_01]: So as far as beliefs go, I'm generally speaking atheist, though I'm pretty agnostic about my

[01:08:11] [SPEAKER_01]: atheism.

[01:08:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, and some days I might be agnostically theist and other days agnostically atheist,

[01:08:16] [SPEAKER_01]: but by and large, I think in terms of believing in some kind of deity that it's like all powerful

[01:08:24] [SPEAKER_01]: or all knowing or transcendent in some way, uh, I would say I'm pretty staunchly atheist.

[01:08:30] [SPEAKER_01]: Though as far as spirituality goes, I, um, I started to kind of adopt a bit of Shinto

[01:08:36] [SPEAKER_01]: into my approach to connecting with, uh, the world around me.

[01:09:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, but they're very like interfaith focused.

[01:09:08] [SPEAKER_01]: The, the pastor there, I think one of the things that's healing is that the pastor is

[01:09:11] [SPEAKER_01]: a woman.

[01:09:12] [SPEAKER_01]: She's very motherly.

[01:09:13] [SPEAKER_01]: She's so like, um, affirming in every possible way.

[01:09:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, so I always just feel comfortable sitting and listening to her, um, and spending time

[01:09:23] [SPEAKER_01]: with her.

[01:09:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Like she opens her office to me and just will let me sit for an hour and talk.

[01:09:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's one of those kinds of, she's not the kind of pastor that'll be like, I have

[01:09:31] [SPEAKER_01]: a bodyguard.

[01:09:31] [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, stay away from me.

[01:09:34] [SPEAKER_04]: You can't talk to Brian Houston.

[01:09:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, exactly.

[01:09:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Or Carl Lentz for that matter.

[01:09:38] [SPEAKER_04]: Um, yeah, I think sometimes it can be healing for people to not be in church at all.

[01:09:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And other times it can be healing to be in a church that is so drastically different

[01:09:49] [SPEAKER_04]: from the church where, where harm took place for you.

[01:09:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, absolutely.

[01:09:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[01:09:55] [SPEAKER_01]: And I would say the same thing to anyone else.

[01:09:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, I, I, you know, for, for me, that church very specifically those

[01:10:04] [SPEAKER_01]: those people are right for me.

[01:10:06] [SPEAKER_01]: But church as an organization, church as a, is as even a principle or as an idea, not

[01:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: right for me.

[01:10:11] [SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things that I enjoy about that church as well is that there's no expectations

[01:10:15] [SPEAKER_01]: that I'm there on a Sunday.

[01:10:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And if I show up, people don't give me the whole, oh my God, we've missed you.

[01:10:22] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, they, you know, people say, oh, I missed you.

[01:10:23] [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't seen you in forever.

[01:10:24] [SPEAKER_01]: But like, they don't give you that the way that people say that, you know, when like,

[01:10:28] [SPEAKER_01]: where have you been?

[01:10:30] [SPEAKER_01]: You know?

[01:10:30] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, maybe they just actually missed seeing you.

[01:10:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:10:33] [SPEAKER_01]: No, for real.

[01:10:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:10:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's how I feel when I, when I show up again, there's that excitement of like,

[01:10:38] [SPEAKER_01]: oh my God, we have stuff to catch up on, you know?

[01:10:40] [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of, and they're like plenty of people, even in leadership positions at the

[01:10:46] [SPEAKER_01]: church who are atheist and you know, they, they continue serving and, and being a part

[01:10:52] [SPEAKER_01]: of the life of that church in every possible way.

[01:10:55] [SPEAKER_01]: So I, you know, I, I enjoy that community a lot.

[01:10:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I haven't been in months on end.

[01:11:02] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the last time I was there was, ooh, I want to say like November.

[01:11:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So, um, but like, I can still text the pastor and she's not going to be like, Hey, we haven't

[01:11:14] [SPEAKER_01]: seen you in a while.

[01:11:15] [SPEAKER_01]: She'll literally just talk about whatever it is I want to text.

[01:11:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:11:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Like there's not like a line that says suddenly you don't go here anymore.

[01:11:21] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, you can still claim it as your home church, the church that you would go to,

[01:11:25] [SPEAKER_04]: even though you haven't been in a while.

[01:11:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah, absolutely.

[01:11:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, I just got an email from the church administrator.

[01:11:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, Hey, we're updating our, you know, directory.

[01:11:33] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you, uh, you know, do you want to update?

[01:11:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you have any updates to put in?

[01:11:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want us to take you out?

[01:11:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you want us to keep you in?

[01:11:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, get me in.

[01:11:40] [SPEAKER_01]: Cause like, I want people from that church to be able to reach out to me and show up at

[01:11:44] [SPEAKER_01]: my door.

[01:11:44] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, most of them.

[01:11:47] [SPEAKER_04]: Um, what does, well, can you tell us a little bit about Shinto and how you've incorporated

[01:11:52] [SPEAKER_04]: that practice into your life?

[01:11:54] [SPEAKER_04]: Like what is, give us a little background about that.

[01:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:11:57] [SPEAKER_01]: So Shinto, um, as sort of like, it's, it's kind of a mythology.

[01:12:00] [SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of how Japan sort of sees itself and how it exists.

[01:12:04] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like the, the, the mythology of the, uh, the birth of the country of Japan.

[01:12:10] [SPEAKER_01]: And that to me is not the exciting part, even though there's, there's some cool stuff.

[01:12:15] [SPEAKER_01]: There's some cool stories in there.

[01:12:16] [SPEAKER_01]: Most people, most Japanese people don't really believe that those stories really took place,

[01:12:20] [SPEAKER_01]: but the mythology is essentially gives way to the concept of the Kami and the Kami are

[01:12:28] [SPEAKER_01]: the gods, the deities, the spirits, and everything has a Kami.

[01:12:33] [SPEAKER_01]: There is the Kami of the river.

[01:12:37] [SPEAKER_01]: There's the Kami of the sun.

[01:12:39] [SPEAKER_01]: And actually there's certain, there's like some kind of hierarchy, like the sun, the sun

[01:12:43] [SPEAKER_01]: God is Amaterasu.

[01:12:44] [SPEAKER_01]: She is the mother of, of all of the gods, you know, and she gives life to everyone.

[01:12:49] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, and also a fun fact about Japan's history.

[01:12:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Prior to the introduction of Buddhism, Japan was a matriarchal society, but Buddhism was

[01:12:57] [SPEAKER_01]: introduced so early on that a lot of that kind of got lost, but it still kind of holds

[01:13:01] [SPEAKER_01]: true in, in their perception of the Kami.

[01:13:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Like their, their lead deity is a, is a woman.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Okay.

[01:13:07] [SPEAKER_01]: So Amaterasu is the sun goddess, but then every other thing has a Kami.

[01:13:12] [SPEAKER_01]: Like this microphone that I'm speaking into has a Kami.

[01:13:15] [SPEAKER_01]: You and I, and the relationship that we have has a Kami.

[01:13:18] [SPEAKER_01]: You have a Kami.

[01:13:19] [SPEAKER_01]: I have a Kami.

[01:13:20] [SPEAKER_01]: The chef that cooks your food in a restaurant has a Kami.

[01:13:23] [SPEAKER_01]: The, the food itself, the animal that died has a Kami.

[01:13:27] [SPEAKER_01]: The plants have a Kami.

[01:13:28] [SPEAKER_01]: And so they're basically the way that we interact.

[01:13:34] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, the way that, that the Japanese interact with their society is that, is that they constantly

[01:13:39] [SPEAKER_01]: have to acknowledge the Kami in everything.

[01:13:42] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and to most Japanese people, it's just Japanese society.

[01:13:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Most Japanese people don't really ascribe a whole lot of spiritual meaning to it, but

[01:13:49] [SPEAKER_01]: they do go to temple and do their rituals and stuff.

[01:13:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And maybe in those moments they might do some reflection, but like by and large the, the

[01:13:59] [SPEAKER_01]: concept of, uh, of the Kami as spirits doesn't like manifest in any real religious sense, which

[01:14:07] [SPEAKER_01]: is part of why I enjoy it.

[01:14:08] [SPEAKER_01]: I can just incorporate it into my day to day life and sort of acknowledge the Kami.

[01:14:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And there's no good Kami or bad Kami.

[01:14:15] [SPEAKER_01]: There's just Kami.

[01:14:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And now some Kami might be mischievous, like inherently mischievous.

[01:14:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Some Kami might be inherently benevolent, but overall Kami are just Kami.

[01:14:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And, uh, so one of the things you'll, you'll see Japanese people do when they, when they

[01:14:29] [SPEAKER_01]: sit down to eat is, um, they'll kind of clap their hands once and say, itadakimasu.

[01:14:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And that is sort of a ritualistic acknowledgement of all of the Kami that went, that were involved

[01:14:39] [SPEAKER_01]: in the creation of this meal, whether that's the, the Kami behind the, the animals that died

[01:14:44] [SPEAKER_01]: to make this, this food, the, the plants that are here and the chef that prepared the food

[01:14:52] [SPEAKER_01]: every step of the way.

[01:14:54] [SPEAKER_01]: You're, you're, you're acknowledging all the Kami that were involved.

[01:14:56] [SPEAKER_01]: And also it's like your Kami opening up to that Kami and, and saying, I'm now taking your

[01:15:02] [SPEAKER_01]: force, your life, your essence and spirit into me.

[01:15:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And you are becoming a part of me.

[01:15:08] [SPEAKER_04]: So it's so beautiful.

[01:15:10] [SPEAKER_04]: It's like, it's like this respect for the things around you and the ways that they are giving

[01:15:15] [SPEAKER_04]: life to you and respect for other people.

[01:15:18] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, just like everything around you having respect for it because everything has Kami.

[01:15:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:15:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.

[01:15:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:15:25] [SPEAKER_01]: And part of that too, um, part of why I've begun adopting all of that is because I want

[01:15:30] [SPEAKER_01]: to, uh, really embrace my racial identity.

[01:15:34] [SPEAKER_01]: And for me, because I don't have quite as much a history, like I was raised in white environments.

[01:15:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't raised around fellow Asian Americans.

[01:15:41] [SPEAKER_01]: So I don't have that kind of language, even though I do want to learn and embrace.

[01:15:46] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm currently, um, reading through, uh, the making of Asian America by Erica Lee,

[01:15:51] [SPEAKER_01]: which I think is, it's an incredible book.

[01:15:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It's harrowing, but if you really want to understand how Asian America came to be, that's

[01:15:58] [SPEAKER_01]: a book absolutely worth reading.

[01:15:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, it's, I, in my, in my opinion, Asian American history is just as, as crucial as black American

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_01]: history.

[01:16:09] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the history of all ethnic minorities in the U S is crucial for Americans to learn

[01:16:15] [SPEAKER_01]: because there's a lot there for us to understand how we as a country came to be and sort of the

[01:16:22] [SPEAKER_01]: darker sides of things, right?

[01:16:24] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, um, the, the, the Chinese enslavement, like when, when the 13th amendment was passed

[01:16:29] [SPEAKER_01]: and black people were no longer allowed to be, well, you were no longer allowed to keep

[01:16:33] [SPEAKER_01]: black people as slave labor.

[01:16:36] [SPEAKER_01]: There were still opportunities that people used to bring in Chinese people as slaves.

[01:16:42] [SPEAKER_01]: However, there were all sorts of problems because as more and more Chinese people came here because

[01:16:48] [SPEAKER_01]: they, they, you know, the slavery itself was illegal.

[01:16:50] [SPEAKER_01]: They still kind of offered some, some pittance, but Chinese people were, were now cheap labor

[01:16:56] [SPEAKER_01]: and a lot of, you know, rich people and corporations were taking advantage of this cheap labor.

[01:17:02] [SPEAKER_01]: And so the Chinese people were coming here in droves, but there was a lot of fear.

[01:17:07] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, the xenophobic fear about the Chinese entering the U S.

[01:17:12] [SPEAKER_01]: So in 1865, they passed, uh, an immigration act that cut off Chinese people from immigrating

[01:17:20] [SPEAKER_01]: to the U S for a hundred years, essentially.

[01:17:22] [SPEAKER_01]: And that's the only ethnic group that's ever been banned wholesale from this country.

[01:17:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:17:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Trump tried.

[01:17:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, he came pretty close with his Muslim ban, even though, you know, um, like people say,

[01:17:32] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's a religion, not an ethnicity.

[01:17:34] [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, we all know what was behind the, the Muslim ban, but it wasn't as successful as

[01:17:41] [SPEAKER_01]: the Chinese immigration ban, but there were already, you know, thousands upon thousands

[01:17:45] [SPEAKER_01]: of Chinese people living here by that point in time.

[01:17:48] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's why you have generationally lots of Chinese people.

[01:17:51] [SPEAKER_01]: There's also the history of, of how this country treated Japanese Americans, the concentration

[01:17:55] [SPEAKER_01]: camps during world war two, there was, uh, the murder of Vincent Chin, which that's a fascinating

[01:18:01] [SPEAKER_01]: story because it involves the coalescing of all of the various forms of racism against

[01:18:08] [SPEAKER_01]: phenotypically Asian people, regardless of what race you were.

[01:18:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[01:18:13] [SPEAKER_01]: And that showed up again during the pandemic.

[01:18:16] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, you know, people weren't, weren't going to check to see with me what race I

[01:18:21] [SPEAKER_01]: am before they started hurling slurs at me, you know?

[01:18:25] [SPEAKER_01]: So that's kind of part of why I, I talk the way I do now, why I look into and study things

[01:18:35] [SPEAKER_01]: the way I do, you know, and, and also my, you know, that, that sense of Asian erasure.

[01:18:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Like that's another thing I could encourage your listeners to like, to, to read up on Asian

[01:18:47] [SPEAKER_01]: erasure.

[01:18:48] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a big part of our media history and our history as, as Americans.

[01:18:53] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, even in people themselves, like Tiger Woods, we forget the Tiger Woods was Chinese.

[01:19:00] [SPEAKER_01]: We always think of him as black man.

[01:19:02] [SPEAKER_01]: Similarly, Kamala Harris, we forget that she is Indian.

[01:19:07] [SPEAKER_01]: She's South Asian.

[01:19:08] [SPEAKER_01]: We see her as a black woman, but now that's become a point of conversation as well.

[01:19:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks to our favorite fucking candidate.

[01:19:19] [SPEAKER_01]: Um, uh, but I think also like one of the things that I would, that that's been popping up and

[01:19:24] [SPEAKER_01]: you know, want to talk a little bit about politics briefly is that, and I know Janice talked about

[01:19:30] [SPEAKER_01]: this on, on your show as well.

[01:19:32] [SPEAKER_01]: And I, I, I want to echo her sentiments.

[01:19:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I think one of the things that I'm seeing constantly is minorities, particularly black

[01:19:41] [SPEAKER_01]: people, but also Asian people being condescended to and talked to and about as if we can't

[01:19:48] [SPEAKER_01]: hold nuanced thoughts about this election and about this candidate.

[01:19:52] [SPEAKER_01]: So I can't be excited about the fact that an Asian woman, a biracial woman, because like

[01:19:58] [SPEAKER_01]: I look at her and I'm like, I, I share that, that biracial identity.

[01:20:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I can't look at her and just simply be excited about the fact that a biracial Asian woman

[01:20:06] [SPEAKER_01]: is the democratic nominee because now I have to couch it in.

[01:20:11] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I understand X, Y, and Z and all of the concerns about her.

[01:20:14] [SPEAKER_01]: And yes, that's all true.

[01:20:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But you know what?

[01:20:16] [SPEAKER_01]: I don't want to, I don't want to hear from white people because you have cousins and uncles

[01:20:20] [SPEAKER_01]: and brothers and sisters who are voting for Donald Trump.

[01:20:23] [SPEAKER_01]: So get them in line before you start telling me about what I should care about with regards

[01:20:29] [SPEAKER_01]: don't like the whole vote blue, no matter who crowd, like get off my case.

[01:20:34] [SPEAKER_01]: When I start to question Kamala Harris's stance on things or the, you know, you're supporting

[01:20:40] [SPEAKER_01]: genocide folks get off my case when I'm excited about a candidate that has a similar skin color

[01:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: to me.

[01:20:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Like we can talk about this amongst ourselves.

[01:20:50] [SPEAKER_01]: We have the capacity.

[01:20:52] [SPEAKER_01]: We're not stupid.

[01:20:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I, I feel like we're being talked down to by white people when it comes to this, you

[01:20:58] [SPEAKER_01]: know, especially, I think I notice it a lot because I'm in these leftist environments

[01:21:03] [SPEAKER_01]: and I, I tend to agree with the policies and ideas coming from these people.

[01:21:09] [SPEAKER_01]: But the people who come down at me and talk to me condescendingly are 99% of the time white

[01:21:16] [SPEAKER_01]: people.

[01:21:17] [SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I know you have a cousin or an uncle who you need to be talking to.

[01:21:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Don't get on my case.

[01:21:25] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[01:21:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Like you want, you want to save democracy?

[01:21:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Go talk to them.

[01:21:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Not me.

[01:21:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, yeah.

[01:21:32] [SPEAKER_01]: So anyway, I'll get off my, uh, my, my soapbox.

[01:21:38] [SPEAKER_04]: No, thank, thank you.

[01:21:39] [SPEAKER_04]: I appreciate you saying that.

[01:21:40] [SPEAKER_04]: I think it is, it's really helpful for, it's helpful for me to hear.

[01:21:44] [SPEAKER_04]: And I hope also helpful for my listeners to hear.

[01:21:46] [SPEAKER_04]: And yeah, just to, to, to hear more about your experience and Janice's experience in,

[01:21:53] [SPEAKER_04]: in this election is helpful and important for us to hear and to know and to understand

[01:21:59] [SPEAKER_04]: and to like close our mouths too, you know?

[01:22:02] [SPEAKER_04]: So I appreciate you sharing that.

[01:22:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.

[01:22:04] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[01:22:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:22:06] [SPEAKER_01]: And like, you know, and, and also something that, that popped into my mind is we're talking

[01:22:10] [SPEAKER_01]: about erasure and I'll sort of like kind of round out with this.

[01:22:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.

[01:22:15] [SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that I felt and I've discovered over, you know, the recent years is that feeling

[01:22:21] [SPEAKER_01]: of erasure, that feeling of invisibility and you know, like, you know, an example when,

[01:22:26] [SPEAKER_01]: when the, the shooting, the, the shootings took place in Atlanta and the active erasure

[01:22:32] [SPEAKER_01]: of the Asian identity of the victims, the way that this was, you know, oh, it wasn't

[01:22:38] [SPEAKER_01]: a hate crime.

[01:22:39] [SPEAKER_01]: This wasn't a racist incident.

[01:22:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Really?

[01:22:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Really?

[01:22:43] [SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to pretend that this didn't, that race didn't play a part just because

[01:22:47] [SPEAKER_01]: why this wasn't like something black and white.

[01:22:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I feel like the conversation surrounding race in the U S is very black and white, but there

[01:22:53] [SPEAKER_01]: are so many other identities that get lost in all of this that have struggles of our own.

[01:22:59] [SPEAKER_01]: And sure.

[01:22:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:22:59] [SPEAKER_01]: I can talk to my family and, and discuss the severe anti-blackness that goes on in our

[01:23:05] [SPEAKER_01]: communities, but that's our conversation.

[01:23:08] [SPEAKER_01]: And then when we look outside and we see us not even being involved in the conversation

[01:23:12] [SPEAKER_01]: or being named in the conversation, that's hard to, to, to hear.

[01:23:17] [SPEAKER_01]: But again, but as well, I think in the conversation about LGBTQ people, I think the, the erasure

[01:23:25] [SPEAKER_01]: in that environment is bisexuality.

[01:23:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not like fully, fully out yet, but I'm sort of slowly kind of coming out in different

[01:23:33] [SPEAKER_01]: environments as a bisexual guy.

[01:23:35] [SPEAKER_01]: I find that it's difficult for me to look at how the LGBTQ community gets viewed, especially

[01:23:44] [SPEAKER_01]: with regards to sexual orientation, that there's either gay or they're straight and whatever

[01:23:50] [SPEAKER_01]: relationship you're in is what determines your identity and not who you are.

[01:23:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So the fact that I'm in a heterosexual marriage then determines that, oh, I must be a heterosexual

[01:24:02] [SPEAKER_01]: person.

[01:24:03] [SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a heterosexual person and I don't want that to be erased.

[01:24:07] [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time, I recognize that I'm not fully out.

[01:24:10] [SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not going to go ballistic on people when they talk about me as being straight.

[01:24:14] [SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.

[01:24:15] [SPEAKER_01]: But when there are people who are fully out as bi and they're being told that they are

[01:24:20] [SPEAKER_01]: either gay or straight based on their relationship, I'll stand up for them.

[01:24:24] [SPEAKER_01]: No, they've told me.

[01:24:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[01:24:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[01:24:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.

[01:24:28] [SPEAKER_01]: So, so yeah, those are some things I think that kind of, I would put under that, that

[01:24:32] [SPEAKER_01]: sort of category of erasure that is difficult for me because I see it happening within my

[01:24:38] [SPEAKER_01]: own like life and identity.

[01:24:40] [SPEAKER_01]: So I think I'll talk much more openly about, you know, Asian erasure than I will about

[01:24:45] [SPEAKER_01]: like, and, and biracial erasure too, like specifically because I don't know, we have like, I think

[01:24:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Donald Trump's speech at the NABJ conference kind of shows that we as a country, I know Donald

[01:24:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Trump is sort of a caricature, but I think that sort of opened up this conversation about

[01:25:02] [SPEAKER_01]: like we as a country have a lot of, I have a difficult time with wrapping our minds around

[01:25:07] [SPEAKER_01]: biracial people, particularly biracial people with two minority identities.

[01:25:11] [SPEAKER_04]: Mm hmm.

[01:25:12] [SPEAKER_01]: That's a difficult thing for people to wrap their minds around.

[01:25:14] [SPEAKER_04]: Right.

[01:25:15] [SPEAKER_04]: So which one are they?

[01:25:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[01:25:17] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:25:18] [SPEAKER_01]: And, and you know what, one of the things too, is that like it happens.

[01:25:21] [SPEAKER_01]: We all do it.

[01:25:23] [SPEAKER_01]: We have more of an affinity for one side of our racial identity than for another side,

[01:25:28] [SPEAKER_01]: or we express ourselves one way publicly and another way privately, or maybe we know more

[01:25:34] [SPEAKER_01]: about one side of our family than we know about the other side of our family.

[01:25:37] [SPEAKER_01]: And that manifests in different ways, just like how Kamala Harris, for a while she was making

[01:25:43] [SPEAKER_01]: appearances talking about her Indian heritage.

[01:25:46] [SPEAKER_02]: Mm hmm.

[01:25:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm hmm.

[01:25:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Now she's making appearances talking about her black heritage.

[01:25:50] [SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't mean that she's less of one than the other.

[01:25:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Right.

[01:25:53] [SPEAKER_01]: It just means that she, it could mean that she's embracing something differently.

[01:25:58] [SPEAKER_01]: She's learned about her, her, that side of her family more or any number of things could

[01:26:03] [SPEAKER_01]: be influencing what she's doing.

[01:26:04] [SPEAKER_04]: Yes.

[01:26:05] [SPEAKER_01]: It's a lot.

[01:26:05] [SPEAKER_01]: And I know that it can be a lot for people to wrap their minds around, but yeah.

[01:26:09] [SPEAKER_04]: No, I really appreciate that.

[01:26:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for sharing.

[01:26:11] [SPEAKER_04]: And Nate and Scott Okamoto have a wonderful episode on Full Mutuality, Nate's podcast about

[01:26:18] [SPEAKER_04]: being Asian American and, and especially talking about the concentration camps here in World

[01:26:23] [SPEAKER_04]: War, like during World War II.

[01:26:25] [SPEAKER_04]: So if you're interested in more of that conversation, I would highly recommend checking out that episode.

[01:26:29] [SPEAKER_04]: It was so good and informative for me and yeah, really important information, like important,

[01:26:34] [SPEAKER_04]: important things to talk about.

[01:26:36] [SPEAKER_04]: So thank you for sharing.

[01:26:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, absolutely.

[01:26:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.

[01:26:39] [SPEAKER_04]: My last question that I like to ask guests is to offer some kind of encouragement to

[01:26:44] [SPEAKER_04]: our listeners.

[01:26:45] [SPEAKER_04]: Could you offer encouragement to the deconstructing, maybe Asian American person who's feeling

[01:26:51] [SPEAKER_04]: like they're not part of the conversation in this deconstruction space?

[01:26:55] [SPEAKER_01]: Hmm.

[01:26:56] [SPEAKER_01]: I would say become a part of the conversation.

[01:27:00] [SPEAKER_02]: Hmm.

[01:27:01] [SPEAKER_01]: I think we as Asian Americans have for so long hidden ourselves.

[01:27:08] [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of our personality.

[01:27:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It's part of the way our parents raised us, especially if we're children of immigrants.

[01:27:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:14] [SPEAKER_01]: We have been taught to kind of disappear, you know?

[01:27:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Part of it was outside pressure on us to do so.

[01:27:23] [SPEAKER_01]: Part of that was our own desire to survive for fear of deportation, for fear of whatever

[01:27:28] [SPEAKER_01]: it might be.

[01:27:29] [SPEAKER_01]: So we aren't conditioned to get up and talk.

[01:27:33] [SPEAKER_01]: And so I would encourage you to join the conversation.

[01:27:37] [SPEAKER_01]: We need you out here.

[01:27:39] [SPEAKER_01]: Scott and I are talking.

[01:27:40] [SPEAKER_01]: We have our friends.

[01:27:42] [SPEAKER_01]: I know Prisca's just recently joined the conversation with Scott.

[01:27:46] [SPEAKER_01]: We've had Angie K. Hong on our podcast.

[01:27:49] [SPEAKER_01]: She's a part of the conversation at one level.

[01:27:53] [SPEAKER_01]: But like, beyond that, there aren't very many of us.

[01:27:56] [SPEAKER_01]: So come on out.

[01:27:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk.

[01:27:58] [SPEAKER_04]: Come on out.

[01:27:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Send us emails and stuff.

[01:28:00] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:28:01] [SPEAKER_04]: Beyond this podcast.

[01:28:02] [SPEAKER_04]: I will happily have you.

[01:28:03] [SPEAKER_04]: Please, please, please reach out and you are always welcome on the podcast.

[01:28:07] Yeah.

[01:28:08] [SPEAKER_04]: Great.

[01:28:09] [SPEAKER_04]: Well, thank you so much for being here, Nate.

[01:28:10] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you for doing a two part episode.

[01:28:13] [SPEAKER_04]: Your story is so rich.

[01:28:14] [SPEAKER_04]: I'm so glad that we split it up into two.

[01:28:17] [SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.

[01:28:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And this one went really long too.

[01:28:20] [SPEAKER_04]: We'll have a three part episode.

[01:28:23] [SPEAKER_04]: So thank you so much for being here.

[01:28:24] [SPEAKER_04]: I really appreciate it.

[01:28:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

[01:28:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me on.

[01:28:27] [SPEAKER_01]: And again, welcome to the Dauntless Family of Podcast.

[01:28:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Oh my God.

[01:28:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Thank you.

[01:28:32] [SPEAKER_04]: This is so exciting.

[01:28:33] [SPEAKER_04]: We're so excited to have you.

[01:28:34] [SPEAKER_04]: Go check out Nate's podcast.

[01:28:36] [SPEAKER_04]: It's amazing.

[01:28:37] [SPEAKER_04]: Full mutuality.

[01:28:38] [SPEAKER_04]: And it's so delightful.

[01:28:40] [SPEAKER_04]: Okay.

[01:28:40] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks.

[01:28:43] [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks for listening to another episode of Hello Deconstructionists.

[01:28:47] [SPEAKER_04]: If you enjoyed this episode or any others, please follow, subscribe, rate, or review the

[01:28:52] [SPEAKER_04]: podcast wherever you listen.

[01:28:54] [SPEAKER_04]: And if you can share this episode with a friend who might enjoy the conversation as well.

[01:28:59] [SPEAKER_04]: Don't forget that you can join the conversation in the Dauntless Media Collective Discord server

[01:29:03] [SPEAKER_04]: by clicking the link in the show notes or heading to dauntless.fm and clicking the link

[01:29:08] [SPEAKER_04]: in the top banner.

[01:29:09] [SPEAKER_04]: As always, you can find me over on Instagram at hello underscore deconstructionists where

[01:29:15] [SPEAKER_04]: together we are building community after evangelicalism one story at a time.

[01:29:20] [SPEAKER_04]: Huge thank you to Amy Azera for writing the theme song for this podcast.

[01:29:24] [SPEAKER_04]: And when this sweet little bop inevitably gets stuck in your head, I hope it reminds

[01:29:28] [SPEAKER_04]: you of this wonderful community that's here with you.

[01:29:31] [SPEAKER_04]: Thanks to all our guests for sharing these parts of their stories with us.

[01:29:35] [SPEAKER_04]: And of course, to you for listening.

[01:29:37] [SPEAKER_04]: See you next time.

[01:29:39] [SPEAKER_05]: And we'll see you next time.

[01:29:40] [SPEAKER_05]: See you next time.

[01:29:42] [SPEAKER_05]: Bye.