: I probably shouldn't have brought the trail mix because then you're gonna have something in your mouth. One of my earliest memories with being a part of the weekend experience is there's always been trail mix. And one day I went and reached for the trail mix and I either was about to put some back or didn't feel like I got enough. And you and Todd and whoever was in there gave me all kinds of grief. Like the Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Whatever you get. Blessed be the name of the Lord like you're not supposed to take out the part you like yeah No, no, no Chuck you can't do that right now, right? No, if you want it, you gotta take it, right? Again, like, return all the raisins. Not for sanitary reasons, but because no rest of us don't want raisins either. Just buy yourself a bag of M&Ms if that's what you want. This is Trail Mix. That's right, it's Trail Mix, and you get a mix. Welcome to the Aggressive Life. You might be going, wait, I thought these episodes came out on Tuesday. I know, but it's Monday. Why Monday? Happy MLK Day. That's why, Dirt. Happy MLK Day. Don't do it. Yes, I'm talking to you. Don't do it, Whitey. Don't do it. You know, I don't know, it's a podcast. I don't know if you knew it or not. I'm white. And the majority of America is white generally. And not only that, we generally hang around people who are like us. So I would I would guess there's a good percentage of whiter people who are listening to the aggressive life. And for a percentage of us, we hear MLK day and all of a sudden, some of us go, oh, no, is this going to go race? Oh, I don't know if I can handle another race conversation. I get it. I do get it. I think we're going to talk about this today. I think I empathize with you more than you might think. I may. tell a story later on today that may have you nodding your head. But I want to encourage you to hang in there today, whatever your race you are, whatever your background you are, it's called the Aggressive Life and Dudes, I got to tell you, and dudettes. Martin Luther King was an unbelievably aggressive man. We're going to get into him. We're going to talk about his life, his legacy, his shortfalls, his pitfalls, his leadership, his unbelievable ability to speak. Just a fascinating guy who has a little who. holistically had a life that left a mark on the universe better. And we're gonna talk with a couple friends of mine. We got them in the studio today. A couple guys who have co-authored a book. I've been in ministry with these guys in the same church, or like still on the same staff with one or friend with other. The first one is, of course, everybody who I say is friend is gets a nickname. So first we have M-I-N-G-O. M-I-N-G-O, Chuck Mingo. M-I-N-G-O and Mingo is his name-o. Man, thanks for having us, Brian. I love that. I love that you sing it every time. It is every time too. It is, it is. Because nicknames are about what I like. And I like to sing M-I-N-G-O-M-I-N-G-O. And we also have Troy Boy Jackson. Troy Boy, how are you? I'm great. And when I first was walking into man camp this year with Chuck, that's the first thing I heard you do was sing M-I-N-G-O. So I knew. that I was in the right place. You were in the right camp. All right. Gosh, I hope you don't feel like it was too mealy-mouthed just talking about race and how beat up people are about it before we even get into the discussion I want to have today. I mean, I think you're being honest about where people find themselves, especially as we come into the beginning of 2024, where I'm sure I'm probably not the only one who's bracing a bit for what are going to, what's this year going to look like for our country. So I think you're recognizing where people are. I think that's real. Yeah. Well, the... The Martha King discussion is, I find him a fascinating, fascinating guy. A lot of people just have not looked into him that much. And I say a lot of people, probably the majority of people who have not looked into him are later skinned. I find the guy just utterly fascinating. Which of you two wants to give us just a flyover of him and his life that the average person wouldn't know? Yeah, well, thanks Brian for having us. And... Dr. King grew up son of a pastor. So he was rooted in the church. He was rooted in scripture. He was rooted in Jesus. And eventually ended up pastoring in Montgomery, Alabama. He had a doctorate. I think he wanted to be a professor or college president. And something was stirring in the water in Montgomery. And there were women who were beginning to advocate to change what happened on the buses. Rosa Parks gets arrested. And King gets a call, will you support the boycott? And his first response was, let me think about it. So he was reluctant. So he didn't think of the boycott himself. It was not his idea. Interesting. He gets drafted in because he was young and not as controversial in Montgomery. But eventually, as he saw the groundswell of momentum in the community, he says, yes, I'll support it. And then in what I think was an aggressive move, as he's 25, 26 years old, says, I'm in, I'll lead the Montgomery Improvement Association. And from that moment on, the aggressive life for him was living under death threats almost every day for 12 plus years. And going through all the ups and downs and controversies, King's funeral, I think no former presidents or presidents attended, when Coretta died, they all showed up. He was that controversial when he died. So we have this... way of remembering Dr. King today that sanitizes. I mean, he was a very flawed figure, but what I am always so impressed by is the courage he demonstrated day in and day out. Far from perfect, but someone that was courageous and who got a lot of his identity and energy and courage from his relationship with God. So 25 is what he's drafted in and he gets killed at what age? He was 39 and I guess he would have been 26. I'm trying to do some rough math here. That's fine. Yeah. 26, 30. I was just watching last night, not in preparation for today, but I just live his out of town for a week, which means a couple things. One, it means I spend more time in the garage working on my projects. Two, it means whenever I come to work, I bring Peanut with me. And three, it means when I watch TV, I watch stuff I know she wouldn't be that interested in. So last night, I watched the three-part series of Wilt Chamberlain. Huh. Yeah. I thought it was fantastic. You guys seen it at all? I haven't seen it. No. Yeah, it was strong. And of course this was their agenda. Every documentary has an agenda, which is good. You gotta have an agenda or else you don't have any art to create, you know? But their thing was, it was David and Goliath, and they were talking in the documentary how we all want to root against Goliath, and that Wilt Chamberlain was the Goliath. That we all, that America has just... gotten used to rooting against. Bill Russell got all of his championships, but he didn't get any champion, well, he got two. He got two championships, 20,000 sexual conquests, so he said, overwhelmed all the rest of the body of his work and his life. The black community didn't receive him. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar couldn't stand him because he wouldn't change his name, like he did and like Cassius Clay did. It really, as they talked about this guy and what he did, you really just got... just massive empathy for him. It's really... and what gets me back to Martin Luther King is they showed him going to... I didn't realize this, the day that Martin Luther King died, they were... it was the NBA Finals. Oh. And of course, if you know much about this whole thing, you had Bill Russell, 6'10", you had Will Chamberlain, who is seven foot, as he said, seven foot and one sixteenth of an inch. Be specific. Exactly. So when King is assassinated, they get together and both locker rooms say, we can't play at night. We're not going to do that. So they went and told the league, and the league was going to abide by it. But then some other voices came to him and said, respect if you don't want to do that. That's fine. But I think you really ought to reconsider this because. having the country have something else to be diverted by for a couple hours might be actually good. So they took a revote on it. And I think Chamberlain, if I'm not mistaken, Chamberlain still said, I don't want to play, but his team said, let's play on the second vote. So they played. And then they showed footage of the funeral. Then they called off the thing the day for the funeral. And then went to the funeral. And it actually all that to say, yeah, I didn't see a presence, who's who that's cool in America was at that funeral. People streaming out of that church. Yeah. Do you think that Martin Luther King had any understanding at 26 what he was getting himself into? You know, it's an interesting question to ask. And I think about, actually, I know this because Troy and I went down there. So when he was the pastor of Dexter Avenue, he had a parsonage. And that parsonage is the place where It was bombed. And thankfully his family, and Troy, correct me at any point if I, you know, having a good friend who's also a PhD in civil rights history makes it really hard to talk history. Especially it's always good when white people correct. That's wonderful. That's good. I'm having the experience in that. Racial humor. That's our first bit of racial humor. That's right. Much more to come. That's right. That's right. We should tell people, we should tell people if they don't know us that this is a part of our relationship. It has been for 20 plus years. That's right. That's right. In case you don't know Chuck, by the way, Chuck is African American. He's been a right hand guy of me on my day job at Crossroads. He's been the number two teacher forever was all that stuff. And African American Troy is not. on more on the whiter side. Yeah. So anyway, back to Rachel. Yeah. So, but that's the place where it was bombed. And thankfully his family, nobody was killed or injured in that bombing. But there's a moment where Martin Luther King talks about being at his table and having a conversation with God. And in that conversation with God, he's really wrestling with, is this, is this what you called me to? Does it mean this? Does it mean my family gets bombed? And he talks about really having a sense of reassurance given to him by God. So I would say, I don't think at all he knew what he was getting into when he first said, I'll join the boycott. I don't think he knew probably for years all that he was getting into, but I do think that was a moment where Martin Luther King, as best as he understood, said, I'm gonna make an aggressive move and I'm gonna keep going after this. And David Garrow, who wrote one of the first Pulitzer Prize winning biographies of King, calls it bearing the cross. basically says from that earliest moment in 1955, King's life is one of bearing the cross. And so he was often exhausted. He was hospitalized occasionally for just exhaustion. He was always talking about, can I take a sabbatical? Can I take a break? Can I get a vacation? And constantly feels this pull of what is my responsibility? What does the movement need? What does the nation need? What is God calling me to? and really sacrificed a lot of his wellbeing for the sake of the movement. You said talking about taking a break, taking a vacation, did he ever take one? And I'm rereading that book right now, because I've written on King, but it's good to just go back to the stories. He would often make plans to take a break, take the break, but get called out of it. He rarely followed through. There was always something. And we know in leadership, there's always something that can get in the way of our self-care, can get in the way of us living balanced lives. And King sacrificed, and I think one of the biggest challenges in his legacy is sacrificing being the husband and father he should have been. Right, right. It's what... What's the confirmed number of adulteries he had? It's dozens and dozens, right? It's not good. Well, I say confirmed. It came out of the Herbert Hoover, no, not in Herbert Hoover. FBI wiretaps. Not Herbert Hoover. Edgar, J. Edgar. Yeah, Herbert Hoover was in the president. Right, so whatever it was. I mean, it was a lot. It was a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. And I think for some of us who... some of us who might have at some point felt beat down by the race conversation. It's, it's something that a white person who feels like they're, who feels like they're stuck in a corner on their beliefs. And oftentimes belittle cause they're not inside the cultural context. It's one of the things that a person could grab onto and go, ah, yeah, but look, I mean, I had dozens of them. Okay. OK, that's a worthy thing to understand. Well, let's just let's talk about that. I want to get back to Martin Luther King. Let's talk about that, because I've actually had an interesting metamorphosis on this, and I didn't realize, Troy, what you said about the vacation thing. Yeah, because I was one of those guys that was like, I respect them. Yeah. Black people have been mistreated. Yeah. We needed to get better. Yeah. But man, Martin Luther King, she's I'm not true. And the thing that's really helped me turn on him was a number of things. First, just seeing the body of his work. I'm not deifying the man. I'm not saying he didn't have to answer to God for his sexual improprieties. I'm not saying that, but seeing the body of his work of how he improved the lives of millions and millions of people, right? And then the other thing I've thought about, and you just gave me another data point, was I'm big on hobbies. I'm big on excursions. I'm big on hunting. I'm big on restoring things. It's, it's, I think it's one of the ways I haven't cheated on my wife and done XYZ. I think, I think a lot of guys and women, when we don't have that, somehow recreation is going to come out, positively or negatively. And so that was probably his only form of recreation that could come out. And when you're depressed and you're overworked and you're carrying the weight of the world and you don't have the boundaries and don't make time, it's going to come out in ways that are destructive. And that was true. I mean, he was clinically depressed at the end of his life. I have a friend who DQ'd out of ministry years and years and years ago. And the sad part about it wasn't just that he DQ'd out, but that he told his board, I'm fried. I got to get out of it. And the board was, well, we need you here. We got bills to pay and we got, I don't know how we're going to be able to work without you for three months or six months. You need to stay in the saddle for a bit longer. Well, they had a much, much bigger problem a year later. Massive problem that they dealt with for like a decade because of that. Tough. OK, what else about Martin Luther King is something that we should be inspired by? So I'm glad we got that. Let's put the marital indiscretion aside. We've all done things that have been awful. Hopefully none of us have done dozens of adulterous affairs. But we've got to look past that and see the body of his work, the body of his sacrifice. What kind of things can the average person learn from MLK that we could apply to our lives? Well, I'll start with one, which is Dr. King said regularly, I'm a symbol of the movement. I am someone who's been elevated. I'm someone who is able to communicate. Dr. King was great at communicating across race, across ethnicity. One of the best speakers, I think we would say, in US history, global history. He also, at his best, was very careful to say that the reason the civil rights movement is happening, I didn't start the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I didn't start the civil rights movement. I wasn't there on Bloody Sunday crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge at SOMA. That was John Lewis and Hosea Williams and others. For the average person, if we think I'm not like Dr. King, well yeah, probably not. But the— names and faces of those who gave, put their bodies on the line, made deep, courageous, aggressive sacrifices for justice, black and white and Asian American, Hispanic, who stepped in at various times in that movement. I'm inspired by that. I'm inspired. And Chuck and I went to Selma and just read there's a foot soldiers of the movement in Selma and it's names you'd never know. But it's the Joanne Robinsons and Rosa Parks who was, well, go ahead and I want to share one story in a minute, but what would you say to that? Yeah, no, I agree with what you're saying though. I think the other thing that I respect about Dr. King is that I don't think he ever stopped being a learner. You know, if you think about where he started and even Montgomery, right? Like he was learning from the people, oh, this is this, this has to be a community organizing thing. Like, I don't think he had that mindset going in, you know, he was a preacher and he was very clear about that. Um, so I see him learning. I think about later in his life when he was willing to be confronted with the reality of poverty in the North, right? A lot of his work had been in the South. but then he goes to Chicago and he winds up actually moving to Chicago and living in kind of around the poverty that was a part of the northern cities because one of the myths was that life was so much better in the north. And that really shifted him. He caught a lot of flack for his very, very vocal disagreement with the Vietnam War. But again, I think he was willing to be a learner and you know this as a leader, every time you learn something and are willing to step out on it. as a leader, there's a cost because you've gotten a level of comfort and a level of competence right where you are in your box. And anytime you step outside your box to say, you know what, I'm being convicted about this issue, people are going to say, well, you're not an expert in this issue. I don't think you're coming at this issue with good intentions. I mean, there's all kinds of pushback that leaders get. And that certainly is true with the race conversation. That's one of the things that I respect about Dr. King is what seemed to be an arc of his life that included continual willingness to learn and change. I like that idea that he didn't initiate it. That's a really good thing for all of us to remember is that I think we all feel like I hope that God uses me or to start this thing or become entrepreneurial XYZ. And we just gotta be faithful in what's before us. That's pretty cool. And even, let's go back to some history here, okay? You mentioned Bloody Sunday. I first heard that term with the U2 song. Sunday, bloody Sunday. That's Ireland, right? Right. Na na I thought it was a mashup between Martin Luther King and Jesus, and Sunday, Bloody Sunday, was Jesus on a cross. Oh wow. Yeah, wow is right. Because like, Oh no, actually he died on a Friday, not Sunday. Friday was bloody, not Sunday was bloody. But you were getting Bono on that. Completely, completely. It's just art. I don't listen to the words. But that's just, you know, classic, classic upper middle class white guy stuff. It wasn't like inherent in my story to understand that. So there could still be some people like what Sunday bloody Sunday, Selma Briggs. John Lewis, whoa, take us back to what was that? Yeah, I mean, 1965, right? And at that point, I think they were very clear that what we need is a voting rights act, a national voting rights act. And so the work that was happening in Selma was really drawn, and this is where I lean on Troy. So there had been some violence in Selma, right, that kind of predated that. So why don't you tell that part of the story? Yeah, there was a young black man who'd been killed, and this comes after the Mississippi movement in 1964. So if you've ever seen Mississippi Burning and Goodman and Cheney and Schwerner were three young civil rights workers who were lynched in Mississippi in 1964. They were working on voting rights big time and the movement really shifts to Selma in Alabama because of Dr. King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other organizations saying, this is where we wanna focus. When this young man is shot and killed, they say, OK, we're going to go after it. We're doing marches regularly to get people registered to vote. They kept getting pushback. And they finally decide, we're going to go march on the Capitol. We're going to start marching. They knew they were going to meet hostile forces. But they decide to march anyway across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. And there was Sheriff Clark. And the blood, the blood. brutality follows. They just open up fire. Basically, not guns, but clubs, beating, kicking people, concussions, horror. And this was about not just the right for non-white people to vote, but also to not have to take a test before you voted. not have to take a test, not have to pay a poll tax. Yeah, there's so many things. Not that, not have- So in other words, up until what date? 1960? This was 65 in August. Until 1965, if you're black in this, that's not that long ago, that's when I was born. To vote, oh, you're black, you can vote. But first you have to take a test to know that we know that you're smart enough. And I saw that test. Americans would not pass that test today. I don't think I would pass that test today. It was very hard very tough Some of the tests were asinine I mean some of the tests were how many raisins are in this mixed nuts jar like that was literally one of the questions And you know obviously No one's gonna know that you know yeah, yeah Yeah, and so they were they were basically saying we need voting rights protection and some of that's And part of that was to have overseeing, because elections, I mean, we've learned way too much about elections the last eight or ten years as a country, but elections tend to get administered locally and they're overseen by states, not the federal government. So part of it was to say we need some folks to be able to make sure at the local level, at the grassroots, that people are being treated fairly, because that's where the worst things were happening in these small counties where people would sometimes even be. brutalized for just continuing to try to register to vote. Yes, yes. So what do you think at this point? What do you think, how should we view Martin Luther King? Yeah, I mean, I think part of this is rooted in kind of my Christian belief, which is, you know, all God has to work with is broken people. And so if you look at me, I am disqualified in a lot of ways for the ministry that I lead and for the things that God has called me to do and be. And so I think that's true of Martin Luther King. But I think it's also true that it's kind of hard to deny that he was a prophetic voice at a time when the country needed someone who could be a prophetic voice. And I think someone who could really preach from the Christian worldview, I think it was really important for the United States at that time. that the voice of this movement was so steeped in the way of Jesus and so steeped in the word of God. And so I think Martin Luther King was a man of his time and a man for his time. He wasn't perfect, but I do believe that God used him in some unique ways to advance racial healing and justice in this country. Yeah, and one of the things we did as we worked through the book, Living Undivided, and looked at history was there's a lot of stories now about the things we've gotten wrong historically. And we need to reckon with that. I'm not, I'm an historian. I don't think we should be covering it up or whitewashing it. We need to deal with reality. I don't think we do enough, a good enough job of looking back and saying, where were the Titans in the heroes who were not perfect, but who lived faithfully in their era? So when I think about Dr. King, I think of someone who we can be inspired by. that it is possible, not only Dr. King, but all those who were part of that movement, to say God can do something like that now. God can do something like that in even 2024 in and through people who are following Jesus. And so that to me is the legacy of, it's the legacy that like Paul would say, do as I have done. And... Paul wasn't perfect, Dr. King wasn't perfect, but what does it mean to live aggressively and courageously for the things God has put on our hearts? Yeah. Chuck, I wonder as you're leading Undivided, do you find yourself ever saying, what would MLK do? Oh, I mean, I would be very clear and say, his writings in particular have deeply shaped and formed how I view this work. because his writings are deeply steeped in the truth of the gospel and the truth of who Jesus is. So yeah, I absolutely see him as someone that I feel like I'm in conversation with, if you will, because I wanna do this work. Undivided is about racial healing and justice today, but it was birthed out of a local church. I mean, we're here because Crossroads is the kind of church that does aggressive things like pursue this. And I think it's really important, especially in this moment. where this conversation can be co-opted, and even our words can and will be co-opted by people who aren't coming at it from the same worldview as we are. And so I think it's really important for us that we have an anchor in the truth of God, the truth of the gospel. And so for me, that's first and foremost starts with, obviously, my relationship with Jesus, our relationship with Jesus, being in a local church, being in a context of community, but also looking at people like Martin Luther King to say, man, if there are people who have written on this and lived this out from a biblical worldview. What were they seeing and how can I catch that vision and learn from that? So I absolutely think that's true. And that's something I think for all of your listeners, we can all do that work. And I think that's important work is that we're not letting the sound bites of the day win the day, but we're really rooting this in what does the scripture say? What does the Bible say? And how can I as an average Christian live this out faithfully? Did MLK lead? An organization or did he just speak and his leadership was what he was speaking? Like, was he engaged in like people reporting to him and stuff? A lot of his energy and time and stress was he first was pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. He left that to become a co-pastor with his father. So he wasn't leading the church his last eight years, but he led the Montgomery Improvement Association, which was the group that led the boycott. As soon as that boycott was over, they established the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in early 1957. Dr. King was the director of SCLC for the last 11 plus years. So he was dealing with budgets and personal issues. Budget shortfalls, people infighting, critiques from other organizations who wanted to be more conservative, more radical. I mean, all the things. And I think that's one thing for me as I think about. how I think about Dr. King and what he would do is, when King was at his best, he was not following or listening to or allowing the critics and the critiques to guide his clarity on what decision was right. He was in touch with what was clear. And he often would wait. When he would gather with people, the story after story says King would not speak much. He listened. Interesting. He would listen to every voice. ask questions, inquire, and then often not make a decision at the moment. He would often spend a night in prayer, a night in reflection, wrestling with what is the right decision and make a decision that next morning. So I think that's what does it mean to hear and really pursue the voice of God is something that I know in this day and age and the courageous work, I also am so appreciative of Crossroads for the aggressive, courageous decision to say, when Chuck got this call in 2015 to lead Undivided, I think the next week you were up on stage with him saying, we're in this. And I- He wanted to leave, that's why I was like- Well, there you go, but- Get your ass off staff. I mean, it's a more fresh blood. No, that's the exit plan, okay, fuck. But it's costly, right? This is costly, it's costly, Chuck, for you. It can be costly for me, it's been costly, I know, for you and for Crossroads. But to be in this and to say, we're not stepping away. That's part of the story of Crossroads and your leadership and aggressive leadership that is saying, I don't have it all figured out. We don't have it all figured out. It's gonna be messy. And what is God calling us to do? And so I think there's an example of Dr. King in that, that I wanna continue to abide by. Yeah, it's pretty impressive what that man was able to do and the stress that he was under. I've also got to think if he's doing all of that stuff. I just empathize with them more because I know that when I'm stressed. to the edge, that's when I'm most likely to fall into the flesh. So I'd be curious, like all the adulteries, I'm assuming it didn't happen immediately. I'm assuming it happened later on. I'm also assuming that as great of a speaker he was, he probably could have been better, because I bet he was phoning it in so frequently because of the pressure. And that was the whole thing at the mall, right? He phoned that in, didn't he? He just added to the, he added that, the whole part that we know, the content of our character, you know, that we'll, a dream that we will be judged not by the color of our skin but the content of our character. That was a woman in the front row who prompted him, say that thing, say that thing. Tell them about the dream. Right, tell them about the dream, what she had said before. And she, well her name is Vanilla Jackson? No, Mahala. Oh, okay. Vanilla Jackson. That's another one of my nicknames. She would be Vanilla. If she'd be my friend, she'd be Vanilla. She wouldn't need a nickname. It would just be vanilla. But I thought interesting, you know, that his most memorable thing that we all talk about wasn't even supposed to be in that speech. It was just tacked on, you know? And he was, though, someone that put in the 10,000 hours. So early on in some of the work, he wrote out every sermon until the boycott. He had it typewritten. He did it manuscript. Like, And then about six months into the boycott, that almost stops completely. And people would say, King would get ready for a speaking event and he would get out a piece of paper while they're getting ready to introduce him. And he would write down his outline and he would just go, he would have one sheet with maybe 20 words on it. And I'm sure it was great. Yeah. When I say phone it in, we talk about phoning it in like, Oh, it's crappy. You're just phoning it. No, phoning it in where it goes back to is your back when we used to have media. I'm out. and people were on staff to actually investigate things and source things, somebody would be out on a story and they were going, doing the nth mile, doing the research, doing the research, and all of a sudden they weren't gonna be able to hit their deadline. So they had the whole thing written, but they weren't gonna be able to get there and actually, so they called somebody at the news desk, news run, and they read them what it was, they phoned it in and they typed it out. I didn't know that story, yeah. I didn't know the context. Yeah, yeah, that was the whole thing. It wasn't like today phoning it in is you don't even try. You don't try. No, you're on it. You're doing your phoning it in. So when I said he was phoning it in, I'm not saying he's not trying. I'm saying that because of the number of things that he was doing leadership wise, you cannot do a manuscript and rehearse it again and again. You can't. No. It's not, and in fact, if you do, One of the most heartbreaking stories, this isn't a Patches podcast, but I'm a Patcher, so I gotta bring in one as well. One of the most heartbreaking things was, we've had a dearth of just a number of young Patches over the last several years that have commenced suicide. Wow. And one of the themes in them, or at least I'll speak to one, because I've heard his widow speak on this, is just going in on Saturday mornings to the office. to, as he would say, get my message from my head into my heart. But as she said, it was to handle your performance anxieties and to get your talk memorized so you would look good on Sunday. I'm putting some words in her mouth, but that's basically what she said. Where am I going with that? What I'm going with is this is, I don't know anybody who... leads something really, really well and has the same message preparation skills that they used to have. You can't, one of the things has to die. Your message prep has to be different, not awful, but it's gotta be different, or the organization you lead is gonna fall into disrepair. Yeah. That's for sure. Completely, yeah. So I empathize that with him. And he's probably, and actually as I've digested my, my speaking, my rhythms or how I actually prepare, they look a lot different, but I also, I think my quality's probably gone up because you're right, the 10,000 hours, you just get, whereas a 30-year-old, you needed six-page manuscript with highlighters, once you get so much in, now you're like, okay, if I got something here, I'm good to go, you know, so. Yeah, and it's coming out of lived experience and it's more authentic. Right. Yeah. Flying K Ranch. Today's episode is brought to you by them because I believe they're producing some of the most mouth-watering, healthy burgers, steaks, roasts I've ever had. They're in Finley, Ohio. Flying K raises their beef with no hormones or antibiotics so you know you're getting the most natural product. It's a family business partnering with state national certification boards to ensure both cattle and customers are happy. You can find out more, place your orders I'm liking it a lot! All right, so let's talk about your book, your book that you guys have co-authored together, Living Undivided, Chuck Mingo plus Troy Jackson. I like it. I like the plus sign. I haven't seen that since I was in like sixth grade when it was so-and-so plus this equals love. So I guess Chuck Mingo plus Troy Jackson equals love. We hope so. So what's your heart for the book? Why write a book? Cause we talked this, but I'll just. voice for listeners like really another book on race don't have you realize that no one reads these books so why what why did you write this book and what's your hopes for it yeah well we've said this I said it's anything on my book like no one right no one reads men's books you know I keep writing them what we desire this book to be is and we I've said two things a bat signal and a roadmap so What I think and know is that there are people, and these are people that look across the racial hue, who have that sense of exhaustion, but also feel like I wanna be faithful in this, that I see the issue, I don't need to be convinced, you don't need to talk me into it, but what I do wanna know is how do I live this faithfully as a follower of Jesus? Because I don't wanna do something that is out of alignment with my deep beliefs, but I wanna make a difference. And so what we want this book to be is an invitation, a bat signal for those kinds of people. And then a roadmap. I mean, we say this in the book, that undivided is not based on a hopeful hypothetical. This isn't theory, this is practice. Our stories aren't the only stories in the book. You're gonna meet a lot of people who are living this out. We've had over 10,000 people experience undivided. There are communities where people are doing this work of living undivided all across the country. And so we believe that... This book is an invitation to join a network, to join a movement. This isn't just about ideas. This is about how you can get connected to a relationship that can lead to real action and make a difference for real people. And when you say living this out, what's the this? Yeah, the this for me is, you know, our mission as we talk about is unite and ignite people for racial healing and justice. So living it out means a couple things. One, reckoning with your own story. We all have a story as it comes to race. How do you do that well? then how can you be in relationship with people who have a different story? And we talk about how to do that. And then together from that place, how can you think about making a difference in your local context? Because there are ways for you to make a difference. In fact, one of the things that I believe in, Troy and I talk about this all the time, when you think about solving race, even a national level, that is just so abstract for the average person. And for me, it's like, what does that mean? But you know, we've got an experience here in Cincinnati of Preschool Promise campaign, right? We knew that one of the things that we were leading in our city and didn't want to be leading in is childhood poverty. And that one of the ways that we can make a difference there was investing in quality preschool. I met Troy because he had entered he connected to you and wanted to have Crossroads get involved with something called the Preschool Promise campaign, which eventually was a ballot initiative that passed by a historic margin. And literally while we're here today, there are thousands of kids, and they're not all black and brown kids, but disproportionately black and brown kids that are in preschool right now because of that. So there are ways to do this work that don't- Which for those who don't know, give us again why that's important. Because I'll give my little thing and then you can bolster with facts. It's the same reason why I'm telling people, people are asking me, hey, what do you wanna, what's a- I have boys. What should I do? What should I know to raise boys? And I generally say the same two things. One, let your boys do dangerous things. Give them knives. Let them hike places you're afraid of. Let them climb trees. Help them know that you trust them with danger and you'll see their competency and their confidence grow. And the second thing, which is normally the first thing, is, well, it's one, start your kids late in school. start your young boys a year late because boys' brains develop way slower than girls' brains. And this is just very well documented now. And so little boy goes into school and he can't read as quickly as girls. Girls in his class, he falls behind and he starts feeling stupid and he just gives up. You gotta forget this. And he gets a bad attitude and it lasts on all the way throughout the rest of his time, which is why today we have 70% of grad schools are inhabited by women and not men. because boys gave up. And there's a whole other thing in our educational system. Basically, that dynamic is a play. In preschool, same thing. Kid in poverty doesn't learn some of the basic skills that someone who has resources learns that their parents are more rooted, they have time, they have assets, they start reading books to their kids, all this stuff. It just gets the kids. Greasing the skids to get going and when you don't have that you don't have a preschool education it puts you behind and likely never gonna catch up and Likely going to drop out of high school and once that happens, you know your financial futures of peril, right? Would you bolster that with anything or how else would you say? Yeah, and I think what's key in there is how do you help? young people children Have an experience that's not sitting at a desk for six hours when you're three or four, but rather age appropriate, learning the social skills, learning what it means to be in these spaces and how to interact. And there's lots of coordinated play and a lot of like Montessori theory where self-directed, which gets into young boys and girls figuring out what do I want to experiment with? What do I want to explore? And giving them a positive experience in that environment. help set them up at age five, age six to go into that kindergarten, that first grade, and not at least have those social things to contend with among the other challenges of the education system. Yeah, that's good. So what's different about this book or this teaching that you're giving us versus something else that was there? Or is it not much different? It's just your voice and... and good for you to get on paper. I mean, I think a couple things that I think we do in this book, one is this is not an academic book, first and foremost. We are practitioners. We live this every day through Undivided, through our work with churches and leaders. We have an organization that's in the trenches. And one of the biggest challenges, most wicked problems of US history is the problem of race. How are we engaging with it? So we have academic abilities and we try to make this an informed book both in biblical knowledge and history. And this is about praxis. This is about what do we do with this? And I think that as a white guy, We, well, both Chuck and I try to be really vulnerable in our stories, make them accessible. We spend time talking about the times I've messed up, the times, or maybe didn't even mess up but was confused by race growing up. What's going on in this dynamic? So some of that is there. I think the big thing is, and I'll speak for white people, the temptation to check out is so deep. the temptation to say, I'm gonna put my head in the sand, or I've got other things to worry about, it's very deep. And the consequences of avoidance will continue to crop up in our churches and in our nation. So where we want people to be is not riddled with guilt or shame. We may have to go through some internal work. And what does it mean to be confident as people created in the image of God to be in relationships across race and ethnicity, to be on God's kingdom purpose together. We think we provide examples and stories and a pathway and a roadmap for white people, black people, folks from different ethnicities to say, I have a place in this, I'm welcomed. I don't need to be second guessing myself, worried of making a mistake, but I can be me and be part of this. And that's our invitation. 100%, but it's for different reasons than you mentioned. My reasons for wanting to check out isn't, I see the problem, I see that if your skin is more brown than mine, you've got some more difficulty ahead of you than I do, I just think the data is pretty clear in the anecdotal story, I think that's very clear. I see that, but that's not for me, I'm tired of being policed. that my thoughts or my views aren't true just because I'm white. I'm just, I'm sick of it. I'm just sick of it. I, yeah, I'm tired. It just pisses me off, quite frankly. It does. Well, and I'm speaking freshly from the situation that happened here a month or so ago. Do you know about that, what happened here? Example, example. Okay. Example. going into a staff meeting, again, this is not a Crossroads podcast, everybody. That is my day job, and both these guys come to Crossroads, so there's a lot of Crossroads talk here. So I am one of those guys who is very, very engaged in the leadership of the church and speaking. So I'm around, I'm around. So I walk into our all-staff worship and teaching meeting or training meeting a month or so ago, and our... one person says to me, hey, here's what we want you to do. We want to do a little fun thing. We want you to get up on stage and say, hey, Crossroads is going to be, we are concerned about diversity and we're going to be doubling down on diversity and making it really important thing. And then you're going to turn it over to Kyle. And then we're going to do something really, really funny with it. We're going to have this and that. And they explained this thing to me and I went, really? You want me to do that? African American. Yeah, yeah. And then number two in command, this whole thing comes up. He's an African American. Trust both of them very, very deeply. Good, very rooted, very, very solid people. And I said, you think this is, you think I'm gonna do, you don't think I'm gonna get in trouble for doing this? No, it's gonna be great. Okay, okay. So I go up and I do this and there's a lot that's going on. So I don't want to give the all the, all the, all the, it was, But then afterwards, I realized I should have gone with my initial instinct, because I spent 48 hours putting out fires of why would we do this? What did Brian mean when he said this? So was Brian not serious about diversity? Well, he said that, but then this, we're laughing about it now? What about this? And I'm just going, oh my gosh. Oh gosh. So I think that's where, I think it's a lot of us are, we're like, okay, we do understand at least more than we did that this is a problem. but we're just so sick that we don't understand enough. Or you're not doing enough. Or if you did, you would say this, but you said that, so you must mean that. But if you, oh gosh, go ahead. Rebuke me or encourage me, whatever you want. Here's a couple things. One is, you're having- You sound so reasonable. You're having- Here's a couple things. You're having us. on a podcast a month later. So, apparently you're not totally dead. So, I want to affirm that. I'm not totally dead, you said? No, done. Done. Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So, well done. The other thing that I think... But I didn't want to have you on the podcast. Well, there we go. I only said it like Chuck Mingo. There we go. So go ahead. I appreciate the courage, but go ahead. No, no. Part of what I think we have misunderstood as people is that, and I think it especially gets targeted to people who are in roles like you. that if I care about something, my responsibility is to try to get you to do me a favor and talk about this thing. Or let's get Brian to say, X, Y, or Z on Thursday night or on Sunday, or maybe do a podcast on this. Let's try to get how many hours a day or a week or a month are people pulling on your shirt saying, would you talk about this? Would you do that? And a lot of times, it's just asking you because, hey, it's the right thing to do. do me a favor on this. And part of what we try to teach people is start with people around you, build something. The ability to get Lyndon Johnson to move on civil rights was not by waving your arms at Lyndon Johnson for five years, they may have done some of that, it was they did some stuff. on the ground, they built some things, they organized, they were activated, they got involved, and they built enough, and we often have a very negative view of power, they built enough power which basically means the ability to achieve purpose. To go to Lyndon Johnson, to go to those in authority and say, here's what we demand and here's what we're bringing to the table. And so I'm always encouraging folks to look inward. What are you doing about it? in your life. And that's not to say there shouldn't be accountability or those sorts of things, but I mean, if I wanted to go into a church and be the police of everything every preacher or teacher said every Sunday, I would be exhausted within 10 minutes listening to you or Jack, right? Especially me. Well, I mean, I'm not, I mean, but that's not why I go to church. I don't go to church to agree with someone. I go to church because I need community. I go to church because I need to be challenged. I go to church because that's the body of Christ. And I feel like that's part of what it means to be faithful to Jesus. I don't go to have someone tell me what I already think or what I already believe. when I heard the story, what they were going to do, there was like a white Jesus, a black Jesus, an Asian Jesus, I thought this would be really funny. But, and I, you really, yeah, and something on my side, he said, dude, you've taken your lumps, you can have somebody else intro it. Maybe listen to that. I know, I know, I know, I know. So I did it, and again, the majority of the room, all different colors, loved it, and we're laughing, but, ugh. Let's move on. Let's move on. Let's move on. All right. Deep breath. Okay, all right. So the book, which I've gone through, I've gone through a number of times, you guys have done a number of revisions on it. And I think it's helpful. I think it's helpful and good. What's your dream for what happens with this book and what happens with race relations? And I know it's also just not, it's not a white black thing. It's a white brown thing, it's a Korean black thing, it's all of the all things. And by the way, how do you think we are as a country? Think we're getting better, a lot better, not better, getting worse? Do you think we're just, you think we're talking about it but nothing is substantively changing? Do you think that things may appear to be worse just because people are talking about it but they're actually getting better, yada yada? What's your personal opinions on that? Boy, that's a tough one, because I do think, I forget who said it. Because if you answer it, someone's going to be upset no matter what you say. Where you stand depends on where you sit, right? I mean, that's just true. I think about, I've been thinking about this a lot lately, I think about where we are with race, like acne. And I know that sounds crazy to say, but in a previous life, you know that I was a pharmaceutical salesperson. So I was involved in pharmaceutical sales. And one of the things that I sold were medicines for acne. And one of the things that's true is if you have acne and you apply medication, we would say this over and over again, it's going to get worse before it gets better. Like that's just true when it comes to acne medications. That's true if you think about it, with a lot of ways that we apply medicine to our bodies. And if I think about what do we need as a country, if you think about it, not just different opinions, but as a sickness, like there is a heart sickness of division, there is a heart sickness that we've been impacted by, any medicine applied is probably going to make it feel worse before it gets better. And I think that's where we are. as a country is I do think there's been a raising of the conversation again. Certainly if we think about the last four years, not that it's ever gone away, but there's been an elevation. I think we can all see 2020 as an inflection point. And there have been various medicines being applied to this problem, this challenge. And so I know that for many people, it feels like it's worse. Like maybe we were better off when we weren't talking about it. And I would argue that's never true. Because again, going back to acne. Once you get through that difficult phase, you actually do start to improve. Now, I am not under the opinion that we're ever gonna solve this one. I believe that this is a fundamental human issue, a sin issue, and we're never gonna be perfect on this. What I do believe and what my hope is, you talked about what is our hope. My hope is that if you were to go out 10 years from now, 20 years from now, one of the stories that would be unavoidable is that something happened in the church, something happened. There was a shift. in the church. And I'm not saying this is all us. I'm thinking there's a lot of ways God's doing this, but that the church of Jesus, specifically in America, but not only in America, is reflecting a kingdom picture of unity and diversity in a way that they never had before. And you just can't avoid it. And so for all the people who want to write off church people for this reason, my hope would be that 10 years from now, 20 years from now, you just can't write off that the church is living something different. They're playing from a different script. That would be my hope. Yeah, and not much else to add. I will say that we never know when a breakthrough is going to happen. And I remember hearing James Cohn, who is written, The Cross and the Lynching Tree and Spirituals in the Blues, and one of the great theologians of the 20th century in the United States. He came here in 2016 and we were asking him about You know, every Trump had just been elected, there was a lot of tension in the air, not that tension's gone anywhere the last eight years. And one thing he reminded us of is that no matter where you're sitting with the struggle of race, that those who were enslaved resisted, prayed, tried to bring liberation for a few hundred years, it didn't get better until it was enough and it did. So what does it mean for us? I don't think, I don't see anywhere in scripture where we're promised things are gonna get better. The enslaved Hebrew people, 400 years, right? That's generation after generation of people undergoing oppression. What we're called to is to be faithful and to struggle together and... to be in community. And so what I'm confident of is that is possible and it's most possible in the church. And if people are going to take Jesus as credible in the United States, we have to do a better job of being in struggle together in community together in pursuit of racial healing and justice. It's a really good, that's not good. It's a stimulating thought that this is never gonna get solved. because it's a human condition. It's almost, I haven't thought about this before, to just said it's like, you know, Jesus says, you'll always have the poor among you. He obviously doesn't mean don't care about the poor. He doesn't mean don't try to eliminate poverty, but he just said, this is kind of a condition of this world. So you're saying probably in a similar way, this is sort of a condition of this world. There's always gonna be some level of racial tension. Yeah, totally. Fascinating, fascinating. All right, hey, the book is called Living Undivided, Loving Courageously for Racial Healing and Justice by Chuck Mingo plus Troy Jackson. And if someone wants to get this book or find out about your work, give us the advertisement. Absolutely. The easiest place is to go to undivided.us. Undivided.us has everything you need to get connected with our movement. We'd love to engage with you if you think, hey, this is something I want to pursue with my church. And you can also find all the information about purchasing the book there as well. Undivided.us. Awesome guys, thank you. Thank you. Hey, I hope there's something you found here. This is again, not the interesting thoughts life, it is the aggressive life. So maybe that means you're gonna strike up a conversation with somebody who's got a different skin tone than yours. Maybe it means you're gonna do something like you wouldn't normally be turned on to reading a book about race, but maybe you're gonna pick it up. Maybe it means you're gonna write a note to somebody who's been involved in this work and encouraged, I don't know what it is, but why don't you do something. Let's be aggressive, we'll see you next time on the Aggressive Life. Thanks for joining us on this journey toward aggressive living. Find more resources, articles, past episodes and live events over at bryantome.com. My new books, a repackaged edition of The Five Marks of a Man and a brand new Five Marks of a Man Tactical Guide are open right now on Amazon. If you haven't yet, leave this podcast a rating and review. It really helps get the show in front of new listeners. And if you want to connect, find me on Instagram, at Brian Tome. The Aggressive Life is a production of Crossroads Church, Cincinnati, Ohio.