Jason Daye 
Welcome to FrontStage BackStage. This week, we have a hand-picked highlight that we believe you will find valuable. If you do, we invite you to listen to the full conversation. You can find the link to the complete episode in the description, as always, please Like, Comment, Subscribe, and Share, so we can continue to bring you meaningful ministry content, helping you, pastors, and ministry leaders, just like you, flourish in both life and leadership. Are you ready? Let's go. As pastors and ministry leaders, really, this is our calling, this idea of healing, of reconciliation, of restoration, Brenda, oftentimes, oftentimes we look at this, and we think of kind of the vertical aspect of that. We think of, you know, yes, reconciliation, you know, to God through Christ, Jesus, and that's kind of our focus, but sometimes we forget the horizontal piece of that, right? So I'd love Brenda for you to share this a little bit about maybe why we tend to focus on the very, very important, you know, reconciliation, healing, restoration that we find through Christ with God. But sometimes we may not lean into that same kind of reconciliation that God's called us to, you know, with our neighbor. So we're good at Love the Lord your God, but maybe sometimes we miss out on the loving your neighbor part. So talk to us a little bit about that.

Brenda Salter McNiel 
Yeah. Well, I think part of it is our discipleship, because we come into our relationship with God very much through an individualistic lens, right? Jesus Christ is my personal savior. Jesus came into my heart, right? And so I don't think it's because we mean to kind of exclude the horizontal work of reconciliation. I think it's because our discipleship has kind of kind of groomed us to think about how do we personally grow. How do we personally do the right thing? How do we personally seek after God? Right? So when a person like me comes along and says that the horizontal reconciling work of crossing over boundaries and over divisiveness and over, you know, perspectives to make the family of God unified, people kind of go, oh, what does that have to do with you know? So I think part of it is that when we bring people into the faith, we have to let them know that we are not the person of God. We are the people of God.

Jason Daye 
Oh, I love that.

Brenda Salter McNiel 
And that should be the orientation we are becoming a part of the people of God. And it's not just about my personal discipleship.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, that's so good, Brenda, and that's a great reminder, I think, for all of us, that as we are discipling, as we are preaching, as we are teaching, as we are leading our local churches, our local ministries, to really make sure that we obviously don't neglect the vertical, but that we include the horizontal. Right?

Brenda Salter McNiel 
Exactly.

Jason Daye 
Yeah, excellent, excellent. Now, in your newest book, Empowered to Repair. And by the way, I absolutely love the subtitle, becoming people who mend broken systems and heal our communities. I love that, becoming people part, and I want us to kind of start there, because I know for myself and a lot of pastors, a lot of ministry leaders, we tend to like, get really excited about jumping in and taking action, right? We tend to really get excited about, okay, what do we need to fix? What do we need to get into, but you talk about this idea of becoming people, and I think that's beautiful. There's something important there. So to begin, Brenda, before we get to the activity and action and engaging with others, what are some thoughts that we need to keep in mind? Maybe, maybe some things that we need to think about the backstage of our lives, our internal, personal lives as pastors and ministry leaders that we want to lean into to help us have a heart posture that honors God, honors others, honors the kingdom, and that we can enter into some of this activity.

Brenda Salter McNiel 
Yeah, but I think it's really a carry on through from our first question, right, that we're the people of God, and so that was very intentional. It's so much of what I've written, and others have written, has called people to individually think about how should you become a reconciler. And yes, I want us to think about that, but I felt like in this book, I needed to do something more. I needed to push this envelope a bit, because I could tell still that people were still looking at this as a choice they were making to do something right. And I was almost trying to say, No, that's really not what we've been invited into. We've been invited into being the people of God, and we are being shaped into those people together. It is a communal effort that we are representing the kingdom of God. No one person, no one ethnic group, not one you know, church. There's no individual or siloed place that represents the fullness of the kingdom of God. So we need different languages, different cultural perspectives. We need males and females, young and old. We need, you know, the global church, and becoming that means we'll have to step out of our comfort zones and to realize that even though in our local places, we are doing good work. It's not the fullness of the work unless it has more people, both in our communities and outside of the church, who inform what needs to be repaired.

Jason Daye 
That's good, that's helpful. Now, Brenda recently, probably over the last nine months, I've had multiple conversations, and have heard from different people within the church, and from all different backgrounds, ethnicities, races, white, African American, Latino and they've raised a question and somewhat of a concern, and I'd love to get your input on this, and they have a couple concerns, but the overarching thought is that we need to be careful. Okay with making every issue about race right, like somehow inserting race or highlighting race, let's say, in every situation, every issue. And it's interesting because one well-respected African American pastor made mention that there are some things that are just comedy to humanity, to humankind, right? And that one of his concerns was that, and others have voiced this. So there are two major concerns. One is that if we, if we try to highlight race in every single thing, that sometimes that can make the healing more challenging, because it's highlighting something that could be divisive. Okay, so that's one concern that I've heard. Another concern is, if you focus on the differences of race, you know too much when they're when it's not necessarily you know something that needs to be focused on, although there are times that that does that, it can also kind of dilute those times when it's really important to talk about some of these, these challenges that We have with racism or racial tensions, right? And so, there's kind of this, and it's interesting, this conversation. I've just heard more of this over the last, like I said, nine months or so, and I'd love to know, you know, what are some of your thoughts you live in this world? I mean, you teach in this world, you write in this world. So talk to us a little bit about some of those concerns, your thoughts on those, are they? Are they valid concerns? You know, what do you find there to help us in ministry?

Brenda Salter McNiel 
Wow, that's a tough one now. Thank you very much. Um, that's complicated. Um, very, very, very complicated on one level, I thought of as you were speaking, the importance when there is a wound, say a physical wound, that it's, it's, it's, as much as it's painful, it's important that, like, I have two kids who are now grown young adults, right? But when they were small, and something got hurt, they wouldn't want you to like, you know, and you feel like, no, I got to take your hand off of it, because in order for us to make it better, we got to look at it right?

Jason Daye 
Right.

Brenda Salter McNiel 
And I believe in healing. So it's not divisive, because I think the motivation of a person has a lot to do with why what they're saying. My motivation is not division, mine is healing,

Jason Daye 
Right.

Brenda Salter McNiel 
And the analogy I use of a kid, a child, who's frightened to look at it, because we they're afraid it'll make it worse. It hurts. Yes, I know it does. But if I can't look at it and clean that off and really see how deep it is, mommy can't fix it. And so I want to say to the church and to the leaders listening to us, we don't have to be divisive to raise the issues that are happening in our world today, and if we raise it with the heart intent toward healing, because you can't heal what you don't deal with. And I'm trying to suggest that there is a way that Christians have been entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation that comes from a heart of love and not from a place of fear. Therefore, I don't say anything, because God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind. How about we try to demonstrate to the world around us what reconciliation could look like if we did it from a way, from a place of that type of motivation, and not because we're trying to point fingers at people. I don't think that it's an either-or or zero sub game. I think we've got to talk about real things, but how we do that from a place of godliness will make a difference.

Jason Daye 
I love that a lot. Glad I asked a question, because I knew you'd have a good answer, and I knew I had you here. So that is super helpful, because I think it's important, as you said, that we need to address the concerns, we need to address the issues, we need to address the problems. We need to lean into them because we're called to do that. And so how do we do that? I think the posture, like you said, Brenda, it's really comes down to our heart posture. That's what makes the difference, and that is what is going to be, kind of our testimony to the world, right as the church, it's how we're approaching these things. So I love that.

Jason Daye 
FrontStage BackStage is a ministry of PastorServe. Here at PastorServe, we love walking alongside of pastors and ministry leaders. If you'd like to learn details on how you might qualify for a complimentary coaching session with one of our trusted ministry coaches. Please visit PastorServe.org/freesession. Now FrontStage BackStage is more than just another podcast. In fact, we create an entire toolkit that complements every single conversation. You can find this toolkit at PastorServe.org/network for this episode, and for every episode in the toolkit, you'll find a number of resources, including our ministry leaders' growth guide. In the growth guide, you'll find both questions and insights that are pulled from the conversation that you and the leaders at your local church or ministry can process together to consider how this content relates to your particular ministry context. Again, you can find the toolkit at PastorServe.org/network. Now we hope that you are finding this content valuable, and if so, we'd love for you to share, comment, like, follow, subscribe, that engagement is incredibly important. And also please take a moment to give us a review on your favorite podcast platform, your engagement and your reviews help other pastors and ministry leaders help find this valuable content. I'm Jason Daye, and I'm encouraging you to love well, live well, and lead well. Thank you, and God bless you.