...From White Supremacy: Quantity Over Quality w/ Michael Kim-Eubanks

In this episode, Brandi is joined by Michael Kim-Eubanks to talk about quantity over qualities and the death dealing blows that it lands on our well being and theology. We discuss where the value comes from and some VERY practical ways to get out from under it. 

You can find Michael and his music at @eubanksme and his partner, Erina's work at https://medium.com/@erinaspeaks.

Taking our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. 
@reclaimingmytheology

Transcript

Reclaiming My Theology, Episode 13: Quantity Over Quality

Brandi: Hello, and welcome to Reclaiming My Theology, a podcast seeking to take our theology back from ideas and systems that oppress. As always, I’m your host, Brandi Miller, and today, I’m joined by Michael Kim-Eubanks to talk about quantity over quality.

And, y’all, I basically describe this conversation as one giant theological and practical “ouch.” So, as you enter in, we use a few swears. Well, I do; I don’t think Michael does, he’s probably too saved for that. But as we enter in, I just want to give you that warning and let you know we talk about a lot of things that might affect you more deeply than you expect.

So, please, take a breath, be gentle with yourself, and pay attention to what the Spirit might be prompting in you to pay attention to while you listen, if that’s something that you’re into. And if it’s not, maybe it’ll just help your experience make a little bit more sense.

So, with that, please enjoy this interview with Michael Kim-Eubanks.

**

Brandi: Yeah, let’s get started. I am really, really happy to have you on. You were my first depiction of Black Jesus, so thank you, Michael, for being on the show today. [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Michael: That’s hilarious and awesome, and it’s really good to be here. 

Brandi: So, Michael, for those folks who don’t know you, and, um, you weren’t their first depiction of Black Jesus—which, I probably shouldn’t have been 20 when that happened. But, for those folks who don’t know you, what does it mean to be you?

Michael: You know, I – I must say I’m an avid Reclaiming My Theology podcast listener, so I hear everyone answer this question, and I’m like, “Oh, this is so fascinating.” And, to be honest, when I thought about this, I thought about my family. So, and – and I had to write it out, right.

So, here’s right now what I think it means to be me. I am son of Diane, grandson of Lois and Wilbert Senior. I’m raised by Aunt Jenny, Aunt Kim, Aunt Burt, Uncle Will, and about seventy other church grandmas and grandpas and uncles and aunts. Adopted by Aaron Senior; he was one of three birthed children and one of twenty adopted children in his own space. Brother to Aaron Junior and Brittany; covenant partner to Erina; parent to Amara and Jarena; uncle to Kaden, Kaden’s soon-to-be sister Elodie, Colton, and Shay, and some other babies. [Brandi laughs] Chosen family to a bunch of people. My – yeah, my chosen and given family is so important to who I am and what I bring to everything. So that’s sort of the main thing. And then the other thing I’d say is I’m a Black man in 2020 trying to follow Jesus.

Brandi: Yeah.

Michael: Which, good God, help me. Just help me. [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Brandi: Seriously, though. This is – these are, as they would call it, by a cliché, unprecedented times, and a particular time to be a Black man in America, so I’m sure there’ll be some space to hear more about that from you. But I’d love it if you would tell folks a little bit about what you do, what’s your sense of vocation, what do you feel like you bring to the world?

Michael: So, I’ve – I’ve been, sort of – it’s not a new idea or even new wording, but I’ve been kind of attracted to the concept of making spaces for a long time. And I think, as I think about myself as a pastor, as a musician, as a person embodying this world, that has been more and more true over time.

So I think what I seek to do in life is to create spaces where folks get to be them, be themselves, vulnerably, authentically, joyfully. Right. And so, as a pastor, I co-minister Bethel Community Presbyterian Church with my wife, Erina, and that’s a lot of what we do: give some space for people to breathe, to know that God is with us, to live that out, to make the mistakes, to – to just be you as you are right now and know that God is with you right now and has been, right.

And then, with music, I think I’m trying to tell vulnerable, interesting stories. Like, I think that’s – that’s kind of what is needed, especially right now, but in general, right. Like, that art should give you an opportunity to – to recognize who you are and to really kind of grab on to who you are, so – and I’ve seen a lot of ways that vulnerability and art kind of does that.

And then the thing that’s new for me, in terms of how this plays out vocationally, is, um – well, not as new – is shared living, as a part of my vocation, is just becoming a central part of what it means for me to be human and living in community, owning in community. That kind of thing is a thing that I kind of seek generally, as a – partially as an act of repentance, partially as an act of liberation, partially as an act of – of joy. So I think those are kind of the vocational pieces that are central right now.

Brandi: Yeah, that word “space” feels so special. Because you said you love to make spaces, and I hear that in how you’re talking about music  Like, music is a place where you tell stories and make space for story, and then even, like, the physical space of your home or your resources or your body among other people. And I think that there’s something really liberating about that invitation in that, an exhortation in some ways, out of your own life and who you are, to make space. Because I think for so many of us, life with Jesus hasn’t been a place where we’ve had space—to be ourselves, to be fully our identities, to make space for the people that we care about, to make space for ideas or for questions. And so I think I just hear some of the liberative journey that many of us are on in that – in that exhortation from your own life to make space.

Michael: Yeah. It is so interesting to see people discover that they have permission, right. And – and even to, like, eschew the concept of – of permission, even, as something that, “You’ve been given permission to be who you are.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Actually, you’ve been created. So – and you’ve been created in love. So, who you are already matters, and you just get to discover the fullness of that.”

And if the church ain’t that space, then the church is failing massively. And so it is. I mean, every day, right, it’s an invitation for me, even in our family, right. I won’t get into parenting and the implications of parenting in all this, but let me just say a three-year-old’s emotions, you just gotta work with it and know that they matter. And also, my Lord, what a force in the world, I’m just gonna say.

Brandi: That is fair. [Brandi laughs]

Michael: But yeah, yeah, you’re right. Like, it’s – it is, like, making space for everyone. And knowing that there is space. There really is. I just – there really is.

Brandi: Yes. And I wonder how things would change if we actually thought that. And I actually feel like that’s a pretty good segue way into what we’re talking about today, because the lack of space to be fully makes it so that we have only one option, which is to pursue a quantitative expression of spirituality over a qualitative or quality one.

And so, yeah, we’re going to talk about quantity over quality today. I actually want to give a little precursor to this one, because I think that this conversation could be a lot more triggering to people than maybe they’d realize, because I think it reveals the ways in which many of us have been used or used other people as minions of ministry rather than fully beloved people. And so I think I just want to name that, for those of us who have been in ministry context for a long time, there might be a deeper thing that happens for us rather than just ideologically or abstractly reclaiming our theology. I think this is actually a conversation that requires us to reclaim ourselves and may require some repentance of us in the future.

So I just want to give that as a – as an opener. But I would love for you to talk about quantity over quality thinking, this value of white supremacy. What is it? How do you see it play out? Talk to us a little bit about that.

Michael: Yeah. So I know there’s definitions out there, and so I was just trying to think about, like, in my experience, what have I observed? I’ve observed that this is about value and worth. Like, this is a conversation and a dynamic that really is about what’s worthy and who and what’s valuable. And particularly what’s worthy and what’s valuable is things that a) can be measured by numbers and b) whose numbers are big and high, and even low, if you’re talking about efficiency. It is – this is – it’s a worthiness thing.

Another way I talk about it is – is in terms of questions. So, quantity asks, “How much? How fast? How big?” And quality asks, “How good? How loving? How spacious?” And so – and – and – and then the last thing I’d say is it’s about the priority of those questions. So, often in a quantitative space, you’ll ask the quantitative questions first and basically only. And maybe if you have time, you’ll get to qualitative things, but they’ll always be read in light of the quantitative descriptions.

So, what I mean is that you’ll ask what’s good and what’s loving, but you’ll define love by the number of conversions, right. So it’s – it’s reading the qualitative things through the lens of the quantitative things such that they’re subsumed, and what you end up with basically is numbers.

Brandi: Yes. And I feel like, in that, one of the things that I’ve heard – because I think that there is some intuitive sense that that is not the way of Jesus. And we’ll talk about that. I think we can intuitively say that.

But I think when we can intuitively engage with something about Jesus, it requires us to make excuses or have a source of blame for why we do the things that we do. And I think one of the narratives that I’ve heard is, like, “Well, there’s a whole book in the Bible called Numbers.” And I’m like, “Have you read Numbers? That is 100% not the point.” But it’s like, “The Bible has numbers in it; there were seven days; so we should talk about numbers.” Or, “There were 5,000 people that were measured at the feeding.”

And so I think there’s some theological justifications that undergird even that – that presumption and that when our intuition says like, “Hey, that’s not right,” we lean back pretty frequently on weird cliches to make our points.

Michael: When I think about, like, where – where this comes from, I tried to search my heart and my experience and my brain for, like, “Why do we do this?” Like, why is this thing such an integral part of white supremacy? And, Brandi, I just – there is one word. The word is “colonialism.”

Brandi: Yes! [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Michael: It is the word! I literally – I was like, “I’m done. I’m done.” Like, this is literally why we do this.

And the way I was thinking about it is, like, colonialism is older than being white. Right? Like, and I think that’s important to say, because people think that the notions behind white supremacy are, like, invented. And what’s invented is the special way that white supremacy is evil.

But the – but the dynamics are really so old, right. And – and empires want more stuff. They want more land, they want more people, they want more capital, they want more praise. Right? Like, that’s – it’s always been about extraction with empires. The reason this is white is because this is, like, the entire premise of all of Europe and all of Turtle Island. It’s just everything! You got the Dutch that wanted more stuff, and so they went to Africa. And you’ve got the French that wanted more stuff, so they went to Africa and these little tiny islands, and the French had a little problem on one of those islands, I just gotta tell you. Look up Haiti. Just look up Haiti. It’s just a – it’s wild.

Brandi: Like the revolution.

Michael: Whoo! I mean, I was like, that’s a – that’s a new reading. I’ma do that in 2021. [Brandi laughs] That’s some – some full on Black pride and read about some Haiti. That’s amazing. Right? Right? And, you know, the Spanish want stuff. They go to the land south of Turtle Island. The English want a lot of stuff, right, so they go everywhere. You got the word “Commonwealth,” my friends; it’s just everywhere.

And then – this is where I got to shout out Willie Jennings. Because Willie Jennings has tutored me on what it means to be a colonial subject, and I know he’s not the only one that tutored me, but he – he did it, right? And he talks about Portugal, and a lot of people talk about Portugal and the work that Portugal did to express its desire for more is amazing to me, right. And that’s where you get into the theological bit more than most. Because what they did to express their work was they wrote to the Pope. And the Pope wrote back, the Papal Bull of 1452.

Brandi: Yep.

Michael: 1452. Right. We’re coming up on – one – five hundred and seventy years of a – of an official church document saying, “You go get everything you want.” Oh – oh my Lord.

Brandi: Yes. And, to that end, it should not be surprising that the US is one of – is maybe the only or first nation to be birthed both capitalist and white supremacist at the same time.

Michael: Yeah.

Brandi: Because the desire for quantity means a desire for land. And when you steal more land than you can till, what do you need but a quantity of workers to continue to preserve and push forward your economic engine? And what happens when those people are too large a number? I think the Exodus story can tell us a lot about what happens when numbers grow and the danger of that for empires.

But when that happens, you have to export – you have to figure out where your exports are gonna go, and you have to import from different places, and so you colonize and annex every place that you can. And you do that all in the name of Manifest Destiny, because God has put you over the, quote unquote, savage people. And so quantity over quality also requires a certain type of white leadership that dehumanizes those who cannot produce the same quantity, regardless of quality.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah, and that’s kinda the work that Jennings does with that Portu – with kind of the Portuguese expansion, is he uncovers documents that basically rate the races on their ability to produce in the world. This is redone in the Enlightenment; Immanuel Kant does a great job of expressing the hyper-racism of the Enlightenment, in his own words, by rating the people and talking about what the Christian project aligned with the governmental civic project is. That’s a shoutout to J. Kameron Carter; thank you so much. [Brandi laughs] It’s amazing to me that it’s in everything. It’s baked. It’s baked. And I think that’s why your invitation before is so pressing, because we will find, in us, this impulse, in too many places. It’s gonna be so uncomfortable.

Brandi: Yes. It absolutely is uncomfortable. And uncomfortable is maybe an understatement to the violence that I think this causes, both historically but also presently, to the bodies of folks who are trying to play out this project in the world.

And I think we’d be remiss in some ways if we didn’t even just mention – and this is not my area of expertise – but saying, I think this is actually why the church has such a problem, or lack of conversation, around disability justice and any kind of neurodiversity. Because ability to produce in a white, capitalistic culture disallows us to think about ability and disability in cohesive ways, which then causes us to misread and demonize folks who are disabled in the text. And so I think that there’s lots of ways that this plays out.

Michael: That’s interesting. And I will say, in my experience, going from college ministry to church ministry, is really going from 18 to 23-year-olds and maybe, you know, with the ministers from 23-year-olds to 40-year-olds to, like, 30-year-olds to 90-year-olds, that’s what that range is like. And you’re dealing with a – a – a variety of ability issues as folks get older that are coming into play when you talk about church participation. Even – and so, there’s a way in which I’ve noticed in myself, I’m like, “Well, why can’t they just get on Zoom for church?” like, this is – this is how baked in quantity over quality is. We grade people’s ability to – to kind of engage technology. Like, their technology – the amount of their technology savvy equals the amount of their participation in our faith community. That is quantity over quality, right?

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: What we’re – what we should be saying is, “What do I need to do to help you access the faith community?” Right.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: As a pastor, that’s the first question. I need to help you to access the faith community, right. Like, I need to know – and then the second thing is to say, “You have something to give.”

Brandi: Yes. Yes.

Michael: “You have something to give. I want to discover what you have to give.” Right. The mutuality piece—when we get back to sort of the question of how do we escape this, I think mutuality is going to be a key.

Brandi: Yes. I totally agree. And I think for me, as a person who’s done campus ministry for a long time, the word that comes to mind when we think about this quantity over quality and ability and all of that stuff is “extraction.” Which is the same – the same basis as colonialism. Which is to say that people are only as valuable as what you can extract from them. Product, time, ministry, accolades. And so when students, in my context, can’t give a certain amount of time to, say, leadership, it becomes about them and their faithfulness, not about the unrealistic expectations that I as a minister have put on them.

So I’m having to do a lot of repenting right now, like figuring out what it looks like and if, like, I have to apologize and how to do all of that, for the years of ministry that I’ve done where extraction of students’ time and energy and relational resources has been done in order to expand the thing that I care about, even if they’re not receiving something from it that is equal to or even close to what they’re giving.

Michael: Oh, I – I had to live this out in repentance doing student ministry, because I had been in sort of a residential campus scenario for a while, and then I moved to another campus which was also sort of residential, but doing ministry primarily with Black students. And my brain broke.

Brandi: Yep.

Michael: Like, my brain broke, because we had a lot of commuters and – and then we also had folks that also had, like, at least a job or three, and then, you know, it – it was amazing to me how much I had to, like, actively repent by basically functionally changing my model of ministry.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Like, I just had to be, like, okay. Leaders meetings are an hour. Like, they’re an hour, and it’s on me to do – to basically put forth the amount of content needed for you to – to be discipled communally in an hour. Done. That’s me. I was used to these two-and-a-half hour meetings, I got all this space and time, and they’re like, “Nah, we don’t have time for that.” I was like, “Okay.”

Brandi: [Brandi laughs] Yup. And that’s true. And that’s true.

Michael: Right.

Brandi: Time is the most finite resource that we have. It’s the thing that we’ll never get back, and I think there’s a way that extraction models and quantity over quality thinking devalues people’s time or pulls value from people’s time, assuming that if they’re not doing the thing that I believe in or care about or the growth model that I’m committed to, then they’re not committed to Jesus. And so I think there’s even, in this quantity over quality thinking, a confusion between what is faithfulness to God and faithfulness to the mission of a ministry that was unrealistic to begin with.

Michael: Yeah. That’s – that’s really important. It’s really important. Because I’m just thinking about all of the immigrant churches wherein folks are working several jobs, but, like, are we saying that because they can’t pay their pastor, because they’re on low-wage salaries, because our economy won’t provide for them, that their church isn’t good enough, right? Are we saying that, because they don’t have the time to go to a four-day retreat to teach them how to lead small groups, because they gotta work ten hours every day, again, because our economy is extracting the life and time out of them, that their church isn’t worthy? Right, like, this is so racist.

Brandi: Yes.

 Michael: The quantity over quality thing, basically, it sorts. It – it sorts out people based on their ability, like we’ve talked about, to produce, and – and to give—give specific things, right.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Let’s be clear about that. Because, you know, there are ways that churches that are predominantly led and facilitated by people of color and by queer folx are the most generous spaces we know. Just – just be honest. They’re hyper-generous.

Brandi: For real.

Michael: And – and trying to be faithfully so. They’re not just trying to put on a show. And yet we – they don’t get celebrated. Which they’re not even asking for.

Brandi: No.

Michael: But they’re also not being honored; I think that’s the word I would use.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: They’re being dishonored in a lot of ways, because, like you said, they can’t give the thing that we consider to be the valued commodity.

Brandi: Yes. And I think what – the word that becomes weird here is that churches and ministries ask folks to serve. And that word “serve” becomes really relative to “privilege” because you can only serve with how much time you have available, and time is relative to money, and money is relative to privilege, and privilege is relative to race and proximity to whiteness and maleness.

And so, if, like in the situation that you’re talking about, a Black student can’t give three hours to a leaders’ meeting that probably doesn’t have that great of content for them anyways, if I’m looking at my own experience, and they need to work, then they’re not going to be as highly esteemed as white-guy-whose-parents-are-paying-for-their-college, or as the pastoral intern who’s the son of the worship leader who can come every week because they’re getting a ride there and can show up to the space, to give of themselves in a way that makes them seem valuable.

And then they move up in organizations, and so Christian spaces then become led by people who are able to give a certain type of quantity of a specific white value of things theologically, that then hold them and give them more and more power, thus creating a cycle of quantity over quality relationships that extract and extract and extract and exclude and devalue the faithfulness of those who do not have privilege.

Michael: It’s amazing. And – and – and what’s interesting in what you’re saying is that it promotes a certain kind of church culture, of – of what it means to be a part of a faith community. I’m sort of new in the being, like, a church pastor minister space. Like, I’ve done ministry in other spaces, but being in kind of the local church, what’s interesting to me is that, if I look at how I use my time, in fact, a lot of what the church kind of needs right now from me, and from us I would say, is to be in the community more. Right, like, actually – actually you should probably pay me less, and – and we should be in the community more, is what—

Brandi: [Brandi laughs] Yeah.

Michael: And – and don’t get me wrong, I’m not getting paid like these mega-mega-megas are being paid, right. Like, that’s not happening over here, right.

Brandi: Yeah.

Michael: But, even still, like, what you need from me is to serve more. You – like – um, and it’s – ah, it’s so weird. It’s so troubling. And – and the other thing I thought about when you talked about that is how most – at least in most, like, Black non-denominational small churches or Black Baptist churches or, you know – the pastor is bi-vocational or tri-vocational.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: And a lot of white people see that, and they’re like, “Oh, poor them. They don’t make – aw, their church doesn’t make enough money.” And for a long time, I thought the same thing. I was like – I wasn’t like, “Poor them.” I was like, “This is injustice!” And then I’m looking at my own life now, and I’m like, “Well, it’s complicated.”

It’s complicated. Because you know what, maybe our vocation isn’t totally wrapped in that whole system you just talked about. Maybe – maybe what – what me working 20 hours a week at this church does is give the opportunity for somebody else to work at this church 20 hours a week.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: [Michael laughs] Right? Like, maybe what it does is it allows us to pay our cleaning staff a living wage. Like – you – you know what I’m saying? Like, as soon as you undo the assumptions of that whole cycle that you just brought up, you gotta start asking yourself some weird, crazy questions.

And then, right, like, and then this is where we go. We go all the way out. So, if I’m only making – if you’re only paying me 20 hours a week, then am I still a pastor? Does the denomination still see me as a pastor if I’m only working 20 hours a week, right? I don’t know. In my case, I think the answer’s yes, praise God. [Brandi laughs] But if I’m only making 20 hours a week, what am I doing with those other 20 hours? How do I seek resources for our family such that we’re not going hungry? And then you gotta talk about how you get those resources. And then you basically are building your life escaping, repenting from quantity over quality. [Michael laughs]

Brandi: Yep. Absolutely. So in all of this conversation, which I assume is probably troubling the waters of some people’s souls, as I think it is for me too, because I know this is probably the attribute of white supremacy I am most guilty of and embedded in, because of the ministry contexts that I’ve worked in, but I am aware that these ideas don’t come out of nowhere, and Christians don’t hold these ideas neutrally or without theological embeddedness.

And so let’s talk for a little bit about the Bible and where we gather these ideas. Because I know you and I both love scripture and are students of scripture, so let’s talk a little bit of Bible. I would propose that we start – I’m gonna start us with Acts. Because I think – 

Michael: Aw, you went to my place! [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Brandi: Yes. I think fundamentally the obsession with quantity over quality in white spaces comes from a church boom model that we think that we see in Acts 2.

Michael: Yep.

Brandi: Where it’s thousands were added to their number, and thousands were added to that number. And we never go far enough—like, we never get to, like, Chapter 9 or 10, where we’re, like, those numbers have suddenly dwindled or become a big-ass problem. So let’s talk about it. What do you see? What do you see in all of that?

Michael: You went to Acts, which I was like, “That’s the – that’s – that’s like, the – that’s the pinnacle for me!” Right. You – you know. We’re gonna skip over the whole Old Testament. Just so people understand, white folks have used the entire Old Testament as sort of a proof text for a growth model. “You see those people, as numerous as the sands in the sea will be your ancestors,” they said to Abraham. You know the thought I had? Is literally that statement is actually a testament to the faithfulness of God, because infant mortality rates were insane!

Brandi: Yup.

Michael: Like, that’s actually what that’s saying. It’s saying, like, “I, God, am going to bypass insane infant mortality because babies died so much. And – and you having numerous ancestors is a testament to my miraculous power. It ain’t about you.”

But we gon’ skip all of that. I just wanted to say it so that we say it and then we gon’ get to the New Testament.

And, you know, you’ve said this at least once on the podcast and many people have said this—Jesus had a fledgling ministry at best. His numbers weren’t very good. If he had to fill out a form, they’d be having conversations with him, having to talk about, “Okay, you need to go to this training to get the numbers right. I just feel like you need more converts, you need more disciples, dahdahdahdahdah.” We gon’ get to the quality of Jesus’s discipleship community hopefully later, because it’s bonkers. 

Brandi: Yep.

Michael: And then you get to Acts. And I just – oh, gosh. I feel like, like you said, we love to talk about Acts 2. We love that because we see the numbers, right. More and more, the day by day, the five thousand people, not including women and children, all that stuff, another few thousand people.

I just have to say, in my ministry, as I’ve taught this to students, part of what feels sad to me is that I missed out on the ways that the Acts community is literally putting their middle finger in the eye of the empire. Like, that’s actually what’s happening, right. And – and the empire temple conglomerate is what I would say, because it goes back and forth between how this new counter-cultural community is basically saying “Nah” to the temple and saying “Nah” to the empire.

It just – it keeps going, and that, to me, feels like that’s the big story of Acts. The big story of Acts is that the Holy Spirit basically says, “I’m going to foment a community of people whose qualities are intense.” And that’s what’s important, and the numbers thing is interesting. Because, in fact, what the numbers do is the numbers force them to stay put.

Brandi: Yup.

Michael: Right? The numbers basically force a semi-Babel moment. They’re too numerous in Jerusalem. In Acts 1, Jesus was like, “This thing, I’m trying to create counter-cultural communities across Asia Minor. Across all of the nations. I’m trying to tell Caesar, ‘F you, Caesar.’” Right? Like, “You – you need to – I’m gonna send you to do that.” And they were like, “We love it in Jerusalem. We’re gonna just build our one church, in Jerusalem.” And – and the Spirit was like, “No! No.”

And then what broke them – here’s what breaks them: it’s death. It’s the anti-quantitative move. When Stephen dies, that’s what disperses them. Sacrifice and – and, you know, it’s a complicated word. But in Stephen’s realm, Stephen is like, “No. I will not abide the way that we are comfortable with how big we’re getting and all this stuff. No, no, no. This is a counter-cultural empire. Jesus is sovereign and nothing else is.” And they’re like, “No, no, no, no, no.”

And so I think actually what Acts does is it uses the numbers to describe something, but the description isn’t theological. Or it’s not theological, and as we always need to do is we need to understand that we bring ourselves to the Bible. And if we bring ourselves as people that are just hopped up on quantitative analysis, we’re already going to read the numbers as a good thing.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: But what we should really see as the good thing is that Stephen says, “No. No. This – Jesus is Lord, not Caesar, not anyone else, and all y’all Jews conspired with Rome to kill him, and look what happened anyway.” And they were like, “Whoop.”

Brandi: “Whoop.” [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Michael: And then they scatter. So, I don’t know. I just feel like – like we likely need to examine our own lenses, know that the numbers are descriptive, they’re kind of cool, but also they become kinda not.

Brandi: Yes. And the reason I bring up Acts first and – and skip over literally all of Jesus and all of the Old Testament is because I think that, as you’re saying, that Acts is this pinnacle of what I think is actually the entire scriptural narrative, not just the narrative of Acts. Which is that God is trying to produce an anti-empire people. God frees them from enslavement and then invites them not to become the empires that they’re freed from.

And so if that’s the narrative, and then their judgment throughout all of the text is for the ways that they become like empire and cozy up to empire that’s trying to build and expand and build and expand and create more quantity of money, of people, of space, of all of that, of cultural influence, even—which I think is a place where quantity over quality in Christianity hits a real sticky spot, is the exporting of our own culture. But it’s the entirety of the Old Testament.

And I think it’s why God gives things like the Jubilee in Leviticus 25, because it gives a counterbalance to what happens when you capitulate to empire. And I think that’s why Jesus brings up the day of the Lord without the vengeance of God in Luke 4, because he’s calling them back and saying, “Hey. Y’all stepped into empire. Again. Y’all did it again.”

And so when I think about Jubilee and this, like, giving back of land, the sharing of resources, this freeing of captives, and then I see that play out in Acts, I always have to ask the question: how did people in Acts who are following Jesus know to do that? Because Jesus didn’t do that in his ministry explicitly, but he did train them in their discipleship to have a taste of Jubilee, so when the Spirit came, they knew how to not just lead a quantitative ministry that would have been their gut.

Because we see that in the disciples early on, where they’re like, “Jesus, all these people are here for you!” And he’s like, “We gotta go. We gotta go. We gotta go find other places.” And so it seems like, in the gospels, Jesus disciples this anti-empire Jubilee model as a way of killing this quantity over quality thinking in them early on. And so I love that the Bible isn’t ignorant of this in any kind of way.

Michael: I love it. And this speaks to that dynamic that this – this quantity over quality thing, it’s older than whiteness.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: It’s – it’s way older. Which is why, like you’re saying, it’s so – it’s such good news to us. Like, Jesus already knew that – that we would be tempted to participate in the empire.

I want to break everyone’s brain like my brain has been broken recently and just – for me, there’s one passage that really, kind of, messes with me. And – and it’s the one that is also a proof-text, and this is Matthew 25. Right? Like, you know, people love, they love, love, love, “Well it just says in the text, right. They – they invested some, and they got more. Right? You’re gonna get more, as you do the thing that God asks you to do, you’re gonna get more.” And I’m like, “Let’s stop for a minute, because there’s a parallel text in Luke 19.” And the parallel text in Luke 19 ain’t about more. It’s about who.

Brandi: Mhmm. Yes.

Michael: It’s about who. And in Matthew 25 is also about who. Right. Because, you gotta understand, like, the parallel text in Luke 19 is where – really where I go. Because you got a noble who is seeking to be king who goes away and who comes back. And then you have been given by the noble some stuff, and the noble is like, “Do my business.” It’s not, “Spend my money.” It’s, “Do my business.”

What is the business of Jesus? Let’s go to Luke 4. That’s the business of Jesus. Let’s go to the Sermon on the Plain. That’s the business of Jesus. So, “Do my business.” And what I love about that, that I’m experiencing in this moment, is that I’m seeing activists who hate church do the business of Jesus. And all these people are like, “Oh my god, this is the most liberative thing I’ve ever experienced in my whole life.” Because it’s – oohh. “Do the business of Jesus.” Right? Um, I know – I know people are going to be weird about me saying that. I don’t care. Because it’s literally what I’m seeing.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: I’m seeing people articulate justice, articulate goodness and rightness and – and sort of economies of sharing that the church literally has actual text to support that we, especially in the white evangelical space, have just chosen not to do.

Brandi: Yes. Absolutely.

Michael: Other folx have said, “Yes. I’m gonna do that.” And, in Luke 19, the noble comes back and becomes king. People tried to pop off on the noble. They tried to challenge the noble’s sovereignty. And the noble was like, “Nah, I’m good.” Comes back and the question is not, “How much have you gotten?” It’s, “Did you trust that my way was good? Did you trust that – that – that seeking liberation and – and – and giving to the poor and ridding yourself of – of the empire’s notions of violence? Did you trust that that way was good?” Right?

And you have someone – you have two people that did trust. And the thing I love about Luke 19, too, is the fact that you know people thought that noble was a little bit arrogant. So when they’re doing that noble’s business, they’re over there being like, “Well, you know your noble is nah, nah, nah, nah.” And I’m sure these folks doing the noble’s business were like, “Sure, maybe. Also, here’s what the noble’s business is.” And they’re like, “Well, that’s not terrible.” [Brandi and Michael laugh]

Brandi: That’s exactly right.

Michael: I just think that once, again, once you ditch the quantity over quality mindset, you make room for more people. You always do!

Brandi: Yes. Yes. And, well, I think there’s so much stuff that’s happening here. But one of the things is that Matthew 25 text is followed directly by the rest of Matthew 25. So, right, you end at, I think it’s verse 30. Verse 31 is, “The nations are gathered, and they’re separated into sheep and goats.” And the basis on which they’re judged is how they use their stuff based on how they see people.

And so it gives you a quick counterbalance to this, like, “Let’s just get as much as we can.” Because the judgment then becomes on what you have and how you use what you have. And so we should be wary of a quantitative approach to any of these kinds of things, because the text itself uses damnation as a metaphor for what happens when we use our stuff in a way that doesn’t honor the poor and the marginalized. Oh my gosh.

Michael: It’s amazing. And it’s such a good articulation. Because you could read the middle of Matthew 25 and you could be like, “Oh yeah, more, more, more, more, more.” You better keep reading. You better keep reading. Because the nations are sorted like the wheat from the chaff, and here it is, and they don’t even know. Right. At the end of Matthew 25, they don’t even know why they’re there. They just – they don’t know. And I just feel like – like that’s – that’s the thing that we lose. Like, this is – this is what’s at stake. What’s at stake is literally that we will dehumanize the – the marginalized. But the problem is that we will all become like – we all will enter into situations where we need – where we need a community to respond to our suffering.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how much you are bought or not bought into white supremacy. You are going to need a community to respond to your suffering. And quantity over quality basically says if you are suffering, you don’t matter.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: And when you get to the end of Matthew 25, if you have adopted that mindset for your life, you end up on a particular side absent of Jesus.

Brandi: Yes. Which we have evidence, because the first chunk of Matthew 26 is them being like, “And then they went out to kill Jesus.” And so it’s exactly that. It is that quantity over quality is the path to death.

And I think we see this in – to be – I want to give a CONTENT WARNING around, like, self-harm and suicide, but I think this is why we have a high suicidality in Christian ministers or a high burnout rate, at the very least, among ministers, because we cannot live up to the quantitative standards that we give, because we’ve never been received – we’ve – because we’ve never received the quality of discipleship that could hold even a remote amount of what we’re trying to do quantitatively, which is machine-like ministry work.

And I think that we pulled that out of some weird place where we’re like, “Yeah, God would want more people to know God.” And I’m like, “Is your god so small that you believe that you or your church or your ministry or the pretty song that you wrote is the only thing that’s going to cause God’s love to reach people?”

And even if you do reach them, what happens to those people in three years? Because, to me, what I’m watching right now is people who’ve been in ministry for a decade watching every person they discipled decide they don’t want to follow Jesus anymore, because the quality that they gave them was nothing more than cheap community, or maybe good community, but that didn’t last.

Michael: That’s right. Yeah. I’ve had that experience. I – I’m looking, I’m watching students that I have discipled on Facebook. And I’m wondering. I’m wondering. I’m like, “Do you still love Jesus? Do you still love Jesus?” And maybe the question is, “Do you still love white Jesus?” Maybe that’s really the question that is ruminating in my soul as I see these students.

And I feel like – I feel – I feel repentant. I feel sorrowful. Because having been in that white evangelical space for a long time, I was sold a false bill of goods. I was sold that, personally, my Blackness was used to sort of promote a lot of agendas around quantity. I was sold that in terms of ministry model, in terms of what we’re counting and how we’re counting and why we’re counting it.

And I – I can say to you honestly that there was always a part of me that was like, “This is weird.” But there was never a part of me that knew how to challenge it. I never knew. I can say that confidently, that I was always perplexed about how to respond. But in the fallout of – of Eric Garner and Mike Brown, Jr., I was like, “How do we do ministry?” And I was like, “I don’t care about numbers anymore. Screw your numbers. I don’t care. I don’t care.”

Because what students need to do is know – they need to know that they’re worth it. They’re worthy. They’re worthy of love. I don’t care what the numbers say. Because if I do things this way, this student’s going to think they’re unworthy. And then you want to talk about depression and communities of color? I was like, “It’s done. 2014? It’s done.” And it was costly, certainly. And it was worth it. My god. 

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Worth it personally, worth it, like I – I have integrity. I – I feel good about the decisions I made. And I feel like it is death. It is death on so many levels, and I feel – I feel sad.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Honestly.

Brandi: Yes. I feel that too. Because I think there’re just things – there’s harm I know that I’ve done in not doing what you’re saying, that I cannot measure, that I cannot quantify, but that I know will be something people have to unlearn or pay a bunch of money in therapy to unlearn the things that I know I did to folks, or mostly things that I don’t – that I don’t know that I did to folks.

And one of the things that feels tragic in what you’re saying is that, even when we know instinctively that something is not right, the cost that is presented by the institutions, organizations, or churches that we work for is painted as too high to humanize people. Like, we would rather dehumanize people and get a paycheck than question – take that line of questioning or reasoning far enough to go, “Oh, this way of ministry is killing people.”

Michael: Yeah. And this is where what’s resonating with me as we talk about this, is that what I’ve learned is simply that when you escape this, and you really kind of dial into the quality of the ministry shaped by our triune God, it’s spacious not just for people, right. It’s not just spacious in terms of like anyone has a space here, a good space, not a three-legged chair space, but a full space. But it’s also spacious in terms of our failure. [Michael laughs]

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Like – like – that’s – that, I think, is what is the most liberating to me. There’s trauma in my own life around, kind of, broken families, and how do I navigate that, and – and things being my fault that weren’t my fault. And I definitely have a sense of, like, over-ascribing blame for things that was definitely taken advantage of by my white evangelical space to make me feel bad about not hitting numbers and make me feel like the faithful thing to do was to do more blank, blank, blank, right.

Brandi: Mmhmm.

Michael: But I return to: What is the doctrine of God? I’m in a reformed space right now. [Brandi laughs] It’s the USA. I just gotta call it what it is. Talk about a space that has more space than people keep saying it does. I just gotta tell you. People keep saying reformed things, and they’re saying them wrong. They’re saying them wrong. [Brandi laughs] Y’all gotta understand, they’re saying them wrong.

But the doctrine of the trinity is the most – it – it – it is our model, right. Like, we are created in love. Like, creation is made in relational love. And it’s a relational love that takes – that takes shape in history through covenant. And in most of the covenants, when they cut the covenant, right, it’s usually God who assigns Godself the consequences of when we break the covenant.

So, in a triune God space, and then you think about Jesus, right. This is exactly what God does in Christ. God literally says, “You’re going to break the covenant. And here I go. Here I go. I have made a way for you to be back in. There is always a way back in. You are – there is always a way back in. When you’re ready, here’s the way back in.”

And it’s not like, “You did a wrong thing.” It’s the prodigal father, it’s the running, it’s the pursuing. “I’ma come get you.”

And by the way, just for all your people, this is where Ken Bailey has broken another one of my paradigms. Because he calls that dad “the father who acts as a mother.” There is no Middle Eastern dad who runs; there is no Middle Eastern dad who leaves the party. There – it doesn’t exist. It is a father who is a mother. In the salvific agency of God, of the saving actions of God, are entirely motherly. Okay?

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: And in that, there’s always space for us. So, even as we are exiting this – this dynamic, part of what we just – I need is to know that it’s baked in you, and also Mother God is gonna come and is gonna come get you. And – and, you know you’re the older – you’re the older son. And you’re out there, like, “Why nannananaana?” And Mother God is gonna come and be like, “Would you come back to this party, please? This space is still for you. Just because I am rescuing people from the way”—and this is where we gotta make room, right? Like, this is the challenge, right. As soon as you escape this, you gotta make room. And you gotta make room for people you don’t like.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: You gotta make room for people who are in process. You know, you don’t get to erase and cancel people immediately just because they haven’t made the way. And there are complications to that, obviously, and this is also why I like to think about things locally more than I like to think about things broadly, right.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: But you don’t just get to cancel your friends because your friend says something out of pocket! Like, you can talk about it. There’s a moment where cancellation can happen, right. Matthew gives us models for how to deal with cancellation, right. [Brandi and Michael laugh] But it’s, like, a seven-step process. Like, seriously. It’s layers upon layers of one person, and then three people, then this group, then this group, then this group. Then, after all of that, if there is no good response, right. Like, we are not doing that work right now. Right? So I digress a little bit, but that’s just to say that there is a spaciousness even for us escaping, and part of that spaciousness is therapy. Let’s be real.

Brandi: Yes. 100% it’s therapy.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Brandi: And I just think – well, one, I love that you draw us back to love of the Trinity and love of Jesus. Because I think that if Jesus were to walk into a lot of the spaces or ministries that we work for, mine included, I think he’d go full Black grandma. Like, “Baby, what is he doing? Like, what in the name of me are you doing? Like, what are you doing?” [Brandi laughs] Because I think there’s ways that we cheapen the love of God In such substantial ways that it is almost unrecoverable for those of us who have been traumatized by faith. That we can’t even look at something like the cross, which is this grand invitation of God to radical forgiveness, co-suffering, enemy-loving relationships that don’t have anything to do with quantity. Because think about the quantity of followers that Jesus has left at his death. It’s a group of women.

Michael: It’s the ladies.

Brandi: It’s a group of women. And so I even see even that mother imagery, even that image on the cross, right, of this great adoption is Jesus in his own death inviting people to be family together, and to remember that family isn’t just him in person, but that family is the bond that we choose each other in an intimate way. And we cannot do that when we see each other as minions. We cannot do that when we see people as cogs in our ministry machines. We cannot do that when we see ourselves as being needed by God in some way to do God’s mission in the world.

And I think, for me, that is one of the redemptive arcs that a lot of us may need to take—is to know God’s love for us when we simply are. To know God’s love when we are silent, to know God’s love when we don’t love ourselves, to know God’s love in failure, to know God’s love in kindness, to know God’s love in cuddling with our kids or our friends. In pursing platonic intimacy, in pursuing church relationships that are non-toxic and healthy, in pursuing multi-gendered relationships that don’t have to look, like, weird and sexual like purity culture has told us that they do, to redeem all relationships because God invites us into an expanded version of what family is, even for those of us who have had family bastardized by church specifically.

Michael: That’s right. That’s right. And I will say that actually, going back to what you said, it is those women that teach us – the women that are at the tomb, they’re the ones that tell us what quality looks like. Because quality discipleship is ministering to Jesus when Jesus is dead. It’s going to honor Jesus when Jesus has literally disappointed your expectations. It’s going to gather – it’s a family, it’s a group of women going to gather to say, “We honor Jesus. We honor what Jesus did. We also honor Jesus in Jesus’s death, in this moment that seems like utter failure, we go. We go – we go towards Jesus.” It’s – they’re the ones. And they end up – they’re the first apostles; let’s just be clear.

Brandi: Yes. Yes.

Michael: Like, Jesus tells them, “Go run and tell the brothers. The brothers that ran away, who were so hopped up on this quantity over quality that as soon as they saw me die, they assumed the mission was over, they ran, they left, they chose absence in the midst of – of that.”

And that’s what – that’s what it does, right. The consequence is really that you choose absence. And we’ve talked about it. Like, you run away from people who don’t fulfill your desires. You know, we – we tell people they can’t be leaders and they can’t be pastors if they can’t pay for a seminary degree, if they can’t pay the time to get trained. That space is competitive, it’s hypercompetitive, right.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: It’s zero sum. It’s – it’s like, “It’s either you or me.” It’s always, “It’s either you or me.” Our churches are competing for people. It’s gross; oh, it’s so gross.

Brandi: Yeah, it’s terrible. And I feel like, in whatever you say about the Bible, I feel like the brilliance of the Bible is that it gives us examples of all of these things. Like, Luke 10 to 19 track of the disciples is them going like, “Hey, who’s the best? Who’s in and who’s out? Jesus, look how many people are following you. Look how successful we were in our ministry.”

And I think that there’s something to be said about Jesus’s low bar for people choosing in that should give us some sense of how we should invite people in. Because Jesus sends out the twelve in such a ridiculous way, with no power but with authority, which I love. They come back, they’re successful, and I bet they’re like, “Yo, we are the inner circle, we’re in the celebrity culture, the crowds are now following us.” And then Jesus takes that crowd, he finds 72 other people, and he’s like, “Y’all go too.”

And I wonder if the disciples internally are like, “What the fuck?” [Michael laughs] “Seriously?” And the reason I think that they might think that is because guess who leaves when the crowds leave Jesus? His disciples. The people who are supposed to be with him, who are supposed to have had the highest quality of discipleship, go when the quantity goes. And then they have to reset and figure that out, but when the church begins, and they don’t know what to do with it.

Michael: And then in contrast, you go to, I think it’s – aw, I forget which chapter in John. It’s somewhere in John, where – where Jesus is like – the cannibalism sermon.

Brandi: [Brandi laughs] Yeah.

Michael: Jesus gives the cannibalism sermon: “You must eat my flesh and drink my blood to become my disciples.” And he’s like – and people ghost.

Brandi: Yup.

Michael: They’re done. And – and then he turns to them, and he’s like, “Hey, y’all going too?” And Peter’s like, “Ahh…where else are we supposed to go?” And then in one of Peter’s greatest moments, right, he’s like, um, I think he says, “You have the words of life.” Right? Like, this is such a qualitative thing. Like, in the midst of, like, people leaving, numbers leaving, Peter’s like, “No, no, no. I know what your words have done for me.”

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: “I know what I’ve seen. We have seen and come to know that you are the holy one of God. That God has chosen you. That you are from God.”

And I feel like one of the invitations of this moment is – is for folx to get in spaces where, harkening back to Luke 19, you can kind of see the business of Jesus being done. The counter-cultural escaping materialism and wealth, choosing into mutual aid and sharing as, like, a basic rule of life, getting around that and seeing how communities really negotiate that. Because otherwise the whole extraction thing is everywhere. Right? So, you know, you can say to yourself, “You know, I want to be a part of – you know, I’m going to really dial into my theology and know more.” And I’m like, “Look, you go read Numbers and everything. You gon’ see it. You have to be in an intentionally de-accumulating community.”

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: Like, you gotta get around that; you gotta participate in that. And actually, maybe it’s a community that’s de-accumulating itself in order to distribute to those in need. Like, that’s always doing that. Good luck finding it, because, you know, I’ll just say Roman and temple popped off on that. So. [Michael laughs]

Brandi: Yup. Well, in all of that, just to swing back to Peter for a minute, I think that the most quality moment of his entire ministry is probably the Acts 3 sermon where he is no longer concerned with numbers. And you know that, because the main point is, “Y’all killed Jesus, and y’all killed Jesus, and you? You also killed Jesus, I killed Jesus, y’all killed Jesus. So what do y’all got to say about that?”

And it’s in his negotiation – it’s in his refusal to negotiate with the system that he finds himself being fully himself. This guy that popped off in the beginning, popped off in the middle, popped off in the end, but then had the quality of discipleship to integrate all of who he was through all of his mistakes and failures that didn’t disqualify him from ministry because it wasn’t quantitative enough, but rather gave him opportunities to grow and to be fully himself in such a way that the gaze of people outside of him, people’s perception of the success of his ministry, no longer mattered to the degree—and he has – say what you will about him later, but is willing to alienate everybody to tell the truth.

And I think that’s where I see even the story of Peter in the protest movements that we’re seeing right now. That there is a strong willingness to be fully ourselves, to embody ourselves fully in protest, but in a way that says, “Our full humanity is the only thing we have. And what we produce is not who we are and capitalism is not the gospel and money is not the king.” And I just think that we have a long way to go in doing that. And I think that it’s nearly impossible in a celebrity Christian culture where crowds follow single leaders instead of this thing that you’re inviting us to, which is mutuality.

And so I think one of the questions I have for folks as we get ready to close up is really just: What have you had to negotiate in yourself to be a part of this quantity over quality model? And what is the quality of discipleship that you want, and where might you find that that may not be the space that you are right now?

Because you can negotiate your whole life in a space that will never accept your full humanity. And there is no perfect space, but there are spaces that are willing to be in the messiness. And so I think there’s an invitation, but over the – the cleanness and the objectivity – um, it’s not even objective, but the supposed objectivity of quantity. Because y’all know every church and organization is lying on their numbers. I got the numbers from them, from the person I worked for before I worked for them, and showed up to a ministry and was like, “That was a lie. Y’all were lying.”

And so I just think that there’s a way that we can divest from those spaces that treat us like machines to spaces that let us be messy, even if it feels terrifying and theologically uncertain to do so.

Michael: Yeah. So, essentially what I’ve had to do, personally, is to say, “I am created by God in relational love, whose desire for me is to be a part of the community of creation that is meant to give witness to the relational love of the triune God.” And everything I do gets filtered through that, right.

So there’s a lot of little things that I’ll suggest really quickly.

So, one is Rublev’s icon. Rublev has an icon; you can just look up “Rublev icon trinity.” It – and then you can look up Kelly Latimore, who has redrawn that icon—you have it? Yes—who has redrawn that icon with three women. I kind of think that those are the three women at the tomb, personally, that are just literally like, “Come into the community of the trinity. Come into the community of the triune God; there’s always a place for you.”

And to just know that. There is a place for you in the life of God. And there’s a bunch of shit that’s gonna tell you that there isn’t, and they’re lying. It’s just – it’s a lie. So that’s the first thing. You’ve gotta dial into a practice that lets you know there is a full-fledged, four-legged, comfy-ass seat for you in the reality of God.

The thing you’ve got to figure out, then, like, when your Spidey senses tell you, “This person’s trying to negotiate me out of the community. Hm.” Pay attention. Pay attention to when people are trying to gaslight you out of your own pain. Trying to gaslight you out of even your own trauma narratives. To, like, rewrite your own lives’ trauma narratives to be seen from the perspective of, “Oh, well, if you overcome that, look at all the great things you’ll do.” No! Go to therapy. You’re afraid. That emotion is telling you something. Go to therapy. Dial into that. Like, that’s what you need to do.

So, as you have that filter for who you are and what it means for you to have spaciousness, get some antennas for when someone’s trying to gaslight you, right. The thing that I have learned in terms of a church perspective now that we’re ministers, part of – it’s the expression, but it – it plays here, is “inch deep and a mile wide.” That is essentially quantity over quality, right.

So what does it mean to go deep as a faith community? Well, it means to give everyone an actual voice in most decisions. It means that when your – when your church is coming up on a budget, and they didn’t ask you, they don’t care about you. Let’s just be real; they don’t care what you think.

For us, we’re trying to show people drafts of budgets. Multiple drafts of budgets. Here’s the vision, here’s the budget. Speak now. Again. We’re doing it in a couple months. Speak again. Like, we’re trying to get as many eyes on the church budget as possible. And we’ll filter out for when things don’t feel, you know, like, when they’re in that sense of love. We’ll do that. But that’s hard work, and it takes longer.

Another thing in terms of that is learn the history of the place in which you live. I’ll just give a note here. What we did not talk about is this thing called the homogenous unit principle, which basically defines what a megachurch is and the way that we have done a church that erases our notion of place and land. If your church does not give you a sense of where it is, you should go get one.

And when you learn about the place that your church is in, and your church says, “Well, it doesn’t matter that we’re in this place, because we’re looking to expand the gospel,” just know that that is a McDonald’s model of church meant to erase people from the place that they’re in to reframe that place as a place where “primarily what we do here matters most.” And you should think about if you want to be in a place that’s literally erasing the narratives of the people that have been there. This ain’t even the Native people! I’m not even going there! I’m just talking about the Black people that have lived there for fifty years. I’m talking to you, San Francisco; I’m talking to you.

And then the last thing I would say is, like, de-accumulation.  As a people obsessed with quantity, we need to begin to de-accumulate. Some of us are pretty good at this already. But I’ma take you all the way to land. I’ma take you all the way to houses. And just tell ya, we should own less houses by ourselves. The suburbs are literally a place designed for white people to separate themselves and to accumulate massive amounts of wealth as opposed to people of color. I live in a neighborhood that literally designed restrictive housing covenants for thirty years. They – they – they rejected an entire generation of Black people.

And now we’re here, and we live in this suburb, and I feel very uncomfortable. And as I dial into that feeling, I’m like, “Well we need to co-own.” Where in this city do we co-own? I’m not sure. Because the dynamics of this city is that it was made up of ten basically housing communities that bought into the city’s vision of a post-World War II purely white place.

So that is the – that is the ground upon which we live. That’s important for doing ministry. If you were in your church, and its history of redlining and racism and white supremacy isn’t important to the ministry of your church, you should think about that. Those are some things that I think are existing in my own body. And I’m having to negotiate, right. Like, fifty years ago, they wouldn’t have sold me a house to me here. Our realtor was Filipino – Filipina. Fifty years ago, she wouldn’t have been our realtor.

Brandi: Yup.

Michael: Right? Like, they wouldn’t have let us live here. The person we bought the house from, they were, I believe, Chinese American. Fifty years ago, they wouldn’t have been allowed to live here. Like, you just gotta think about where you live. Willie Jennings, again—I love the man—he says the answer’s in the dirt. And so those are some things that I think I am and we are negotiating as we try to kind of – kind of extract ourselves from quantity over quality dynamics.

Brandi: Well, and, for me, one of the things I’ve been thinking about is wealth accumulation as a Black person. Because as I have more accumulation power, I’m not actually building any wealth right now, because the gut impulse is to give it all away, because there’s people like me who don’t have the same come-ups that I do.

So as I’m thinking about wealth in the Black community, I realize that a lot of us don’t produce intergenerational wealth in a way that isn’t necessarily intentionally trinitarian, as you would say it, but that is. Because it goes, “I’m not going to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, because there’s other people out there with direct needs that need to be met now.” And what that does is it puts us in a super vulnerable place.

But, for me, I’m having to ask, “What is the cap that I’m going to put on my wealth that after which I’m going to give the rest away? What is the point that giving certain amount of money is not enough?” Like what percentage of my money – like, I’m asking, “What does it mean to give away 20-25% of my money every month? What does that look like?”

Because, for me, to unhook myself from quantity over quality is to reduce the quantity that I have and see. And it’s super hard because I think that’s – it’s questioning my materialism, it’s questioning my accumulation of things for projects and for fun and all of those things, and it is a constant, a constant test of: How willing am I to live the way that I think Jesus has invited us to live?

And so my invitations for folks are maybe slightly more elementary or simple. One is to ask questions about the teams that you’re on and the ministries that you’re a part of. Do they value you, as Michael was saying, or do they value what you produce? And if they value exclusively what you produce, get out. Or negotiate a way to be there where you get to set the terms of how you stay. Because you cannot live your life if you dehumanize yourself constantly. And if you do, we will inherently push that same kind of dehumanization on the people we say that we’re leading.

Michael: It is multiplicative death.

Brandi: It is multiplicative death. I think, in that, we have to learn to love ourselves and to see ourselves the way that God sees us, which isn’t some churchy, “God sees me through my success”—because this is the same thinking, “that God sees me through how much I repent or how many confessions I give or how many gratitudes I write down.” But it goes, “God loves me because I’m a goofy-ass Black nerd. And that is enough.” And if I can learn to love what God loves about me, it changes the ways I’m willing to or unwilling to dehumanize others.

Michael: Mmhmm.

Brandi: And the thing I would say lastly in all of that is we need to question our theology as we are on this podcast all the time, because the only kind of fast discipleship is indoctrination. If we learn something quickly, and we gave the thing away before we lived it, then I think we need to ask some questions about whether that was indoctrination for the sake of a mission of some sort or if it was actually discipleship. Because I think the only fast discipleship is indoctrination.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

Brandi: Well, Michael, anything else you want to add or anything you want to plug as we – as we finish up?

Michael: Well, I’ll add one thing that goes into kind of the plugging. So, one of the ways that I vocationally exist is as an artist. So, one of the things that I’m trying to do as I dial into who I am and how God’s made me is to make space for myself to make art regularly. But, you know, what’s interesting in what you just said is that I can’t fathom myself as an artist outside of a community. And so all of my ideas actually have to do with making teams of people.

Because I know that, you know, I love to write songs; that’s kind of how I operate as an artist. But I love when those songs end up in different places, and I also love – you know, I was talking to some folks, some theologians, and I was like, “If we’re going to write better, less violent songs about the cross, then I need some theologians that are actually gonna, like, talk with me as I do it, as we do it.” Right.

So I just think that – that – that sharing, it’s, you know, trite, it sounds so trite, except it really is at the heart of God. [Michael laughs] Like, sharing is really important, and sharing vocationally. Like, sharing as a way to kind of do what’s most important to you with people who have a sense of that.

Brandi: Yes.

Michael: So the things I’m up to I’m – I’m trying to make music more. I’m still trying to figure out what that means, but a lot – these days, I’m trying to put that on Instagram. So, eubanksme, E-U-B-A-N-K-S-M-E, is where you’ll find much of my musical life these days. There’s some stuff in other places, Soundcloud, YouTube, you can search it, but I’m gonna send you to Instagram because that’s – that’s the most interesting place I’m making music I think right now.

And then if you wanna check out Bethel Community Presbyterian Church, you are more than welcome to. This is covid church days, which means, you can come, right. Like. So you can go on our website, https://bethelcommunitysl.org. And, finally, I just got to make it known that part of my existence is as a covenant partner, and my covenant partner is dope AF. So you can find Erina on Instagram, you can find her on Facebook, you can find her on Medium. She blogs pretty frequently about some things that a lot of you will find interesting in this process of – of – of reclaiming theology and reclaiming what it means to be God’s people and be a whole person.

Brandi: Yes. And her stuff is so good! It’s so good. So, oh my gosh, it’s so good. Well, Michael, thank you so much for your time, for your insight. We’ll get all of your plugs in the show notes and make sure that people know where to find you, because it’s such a gift to get to talk to you. And so I hope that people get to follow you along a little more closely from now on.

Michael: Yeah. And I just got to say, like, I just keep having friends who I don’t think know you who are posting about how good this space is, so I – I feel so grateful for the ways that this is allowing people to find themselves and find God in these days especially. So thanks for having me, and thanks for what you do.

Brandi: Oh, it’s a great honor on both accounts. Thanks, Michael.

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Brandi: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Reclaiming My Theology. As I say every week, I appreciate your partnership so much in making this happen, and I’m excited for what’s to come as we approach the upcoming political season, which is just a giant mess, so hopefully as we engage with that a little bit it’ll be helpful on all of our journeys together.

If you haven’t already, please subscribe, rate, and review. And if you want to join our team and partner financially, join us on Patreon at Patreon.com/BrandiNico. As always, with everything that we’re doing, y’all, it’s kind of an exhausting time. Please breathe, do what you need to heal, grieve as you need to grieve, and experience joy wherever you can so that we can do a little bit better together.