61. Empowering Leaders for Secular Groups that Thrive, with Darrel Ray

 “Most people want community, and yet these communities keep disappearing.”

Dr. Darrel Ray is a psychologist, author, and organizational leader who has spent decades helping individuals leave religious belief systems and supporting secular communities around the world. He founded Recovering from Religion and the Secular Therapy Project, wrote influential books such as The God Virus, and recently launched the Institute for Secular Leadership to strengthen secular and humanist organisations through better leadership practices

Register interest in the Secular Leadership Course here.

Dr. Ray's Organisations & Projects

• Recovering from Religion – international nonprofit supporting people leaving religion
• Secular Therapy Project – connects secular clients with vetted secular therapists
• Institute for Secular Leadership – newly launched leadership training for secular organisations 

Books by Dr. Ray

• The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture – Darrel Ray (2009) 
• Sex and God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality – Darrel Ray (2012)
• Teaming Up: Making the Transition to a Self-Directed, Team-Based Organization – Darrel W. Ray & Howard Bronstein
• The Performance Culture: Maximizing the Power of Teams – Darrel W. Ray & Howard Bronstein

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Dr. Darrel Ray & the Institute for Secular Leadership
• 5:17 Why Secular Groups Rise And Fall - Common Challenges
• 7:48 Conflict Avoidance And Its Roots
• 10:54 Secular Leadership Course Syllabus
• 10:56 Top Leadership Mistakes In Secular Orgs
• 15:13 Structuring Volunteer-Led Organisations
• 19:18 Money, Transparency, And Trust
• 24:59 Self-reflection & the Toughest Lessons Learned
• 27:51 Common Success Factors for Groups that Thrive
• 31:06 Future of Secular Leadership
• 34:46 Find Out More & Contact Darrel
• 35:46 Changing Minds

Transcript

James Hogson: 0:01

Welcome to the Humanism Now Podcast. I'm your host, James Hodgson. One of the questions we are most often asked is how to get started in creating groups, leading a community, and helping it to grow in a sustainable way. So I'm delighted to say that our guest today is someone who's not only done exactly that on multiple occasions, but is now helping others to do the same and thrive. Today we're joined by Dr. Darrell Ray. Dr. Ray is the founder of Recovering from Religion, which for more than 15 years has supported people questioning and leaving their faith. He's also the founder of the Secular Therapy Project, which helps to connect clients with licensed, non-religious mental health professionals in more than a dozen countries. Alongside his work as an author, psychologist, and internationally renowned speaker, Darrell has decades of experience as a community and organizational leader. And he's now bringing that experience together through the launch of the Institute for Secular Leadership, aimed at strengthening leadership capability globally and helping secular and humanist organizations build healthy, thriving communities. Dr. Darrell Ray, thank you so much for joining us on Humanism Now.

Darrel Ray: 1:08

Thanks for having me. That's a privilege. Appreciate it.

James Hogson: 1:11

So perhaps we can start with understanding a bit more about the new institute which you've launched. So, what is the Institute for Secular Leadership and what problem are you trying to solve?

Darrel Ray: 1:22

It's a big problem. I've been watching the secular community for over 20 years, probably could say better, like 30 years. And my background as an organizational psychologist is I've watched organizations and studied them and consulted with them literally all over the globe. And I've seen the mistakes that groups make and leaders make over and over and over again. And then when I really got into the secular community about 20 years ago, I started seeing the same problems I was seeing in, say, corporation, but in a much smaller scale, the local humanist group or the local atheist or skeptic group. And I would see them start and die and start and die. And they would have a dynamic leader for a few years, and all the people would come and it'd be very exciting, and then they'd die because the leader left, or there was a conflict in the group. In other words, there was a lot of wasted energy, a lot of people doing a lot of work and that work all going down the drain in very short order sometimes. And it's all preventable. This is not a mysterious problem. It's just a basic issue of leadership and skills. So what I've seen over the years is many, many well-intentioned, very intelligent people trying to start groups and run groups when they simply don't have the skills and they end up undermining their own best efforts. And it's very frustrating to them, but it's just as frustrating or more to the people who are trying to organize. Everybody wants community, and yet these communities keep disappearing. So that's the problem. And my solution is to create an organization that is dedicated to teaching good leadership skills within the secular world. But more important than just teaching is creating a network of leaders that can compare notes, learn from each other, interact, and support one another in the greater mission of the secular world. And that's not to say that every technique, method, or leadership skill fits equally well to all groups. I mean, I think there's a real difference between an advocacy group, for example, that's politically engaged, and your local humanist group that meets or the book club. There's differences between these. But the common denominator is they all need leadership.

James Hogson: 3:33

Yeah.

Darrel Ray: 3:33

And that's what I'm trying to bring. I've just begun, we just launched the institute this month. I will be teaching the earliest courses along with a colleague of mine, Sharon McKean. And then we will be moving on to probably trying to find other people who can help teach these things. And then in the back end, once people graduate, they'll have a common language to talk about. They'll have common skills, they have common techniques. And we will then provide a platform on Discord, probably, for people to compare notes and come together and keep in touch over the years as they grow their organizations and share successes and failures with other people. This is a long-term project. I'm looking at three years minimum to really get it off the ground. So that's where we are. I hope that answers your question more than you wanted, maybe.

James Hogson: 4:23

Definitely. And I think from your answer there and also from what's available online, we can say this is available globally. I think there are some time zone restrictions, but really this is for anybody who's either currently active or seeking to be active in a leadership position in a secular or humanist organization.

Darrel Ray: 4:40

Yep. In our very first class, we've got a person from Australia, person from New Zealand, people from all over the United States and Canada, and one person from the United Kingdom. We had applicants from Africa. We couldn't let everybody in because we're limiting the class to 10 people, roughly, plus maybe a couple observers. It's already international. When I started this idea, I thought this is not a North America thing. This is an international thing. Everybody has the same problem.

James Hogson: 5:08

Let's dwell on, dive deeper into that, I think, because you mentioned seeing some consistent challenges or mistakes that groups were making. What are some of the common leadership's mistakes that you've seen, particularly as it relates to secular group leadership?

Darrel Ray: 5:25

Yeah. There is a difference between, say, corporate leadership and nonprofit leadership. But within nonprofit leadership, there's even a more unique niche of secular leadership because I think there's unique problems in the secular world. So you've got to, I'm diving down two levels from corporate to nonprofit to secular. And I do we have three hours to talk? The list of problems is enormous, but some of the really, really difficult ones is conflict management within organizations. Another is founder leader syndrome, where the person who founds the organization can't let go, can't train, can't has to micromanage the group, can't let other people's ideas become a key part of how the organization. They don't know how to build teams. That's an essential skill of a leader: how do you build teams? Because you cannot do everything. And yet, so many leaders try to do everything, they get frustrated and they quit. They get frustrated or people leave. They get frustrated and people get mad at them for not letting them have any say into the process. I don't know if you know it, but in my earlier career, I wrote two books on this very process. That book, Teaming Up by McI published with McGraw-Hill, and this one, The Performance Culture, which I published with IPC Press. Both those books deal with that very issue. How do you create teams as a leader rather than be the be all in and all of leadership? I'll just give you three. The third thing is really simple to correct, but hard to implement, and that is stay off the damn social media. You are creating more problems when you get online and you criticize other people in your own organization, or you vague book them on social media, or you criticize another group. When you can't handle conflict privately and respectfully, and you take it to the social media, you just sign the death warrant of your own group. Who wants to follow somebody that would do that to other members or to other groups? It is such a common sense thing, and yet I see way too many leaders putting all their group problems on Facebook or on other social media, and then wonder why they can't get anybody to come to the meetings. Who wants to come to a meeting? Their name might show up on the social media criticism list next week.

James Hogson: 7:48

Yeah. It's very interesting that two of the three you mentioned there really are around this theme of conflict management. Do you think this is something where, in your experience, you know, both from the corporate world and then in the nonprofit world, but specifically looking at secular groups that perhaps we've not been best equipped for is in the area of either being too conflict diverse, or as you say, some people going the other way and being too proactively seeking conflict in their management styles? It two questions there. One is, do you think there's something unique or specific about secular groups that lends itself to those issues? And secondly, how do you, and without giving too much away, how do you advise people find the right balance there?

Darrel Ray: 8:27

I don't mind. I'll give it all away. I want to help people. If you whether you take our course or you don't take our course, I still want you to know that you can do better. Let's just put it that way. So don't worry about spoiler. I'm not going to do any spoiler alerts. I'm going to give you whatever we have time for, spoilers. Great. I think the thing that's unique to secular groups is that so many people came out of religion. And one of the things religion does very well is teach conflict avoidance. Many religions tell you that if you're in conflict, then that's sinful, that you have to forgive your abuser. All the notions around the preacher's always right. If you question the preacher, then you're causing unnecessary conflict. In Scientology, they call you a subversive person. I think that's the word they use, a subversive person. If you're questioning anybody or you're causing conflict. Same thing in Jehovah's Witnesses, same thing in almost any church I've ever been in. Asking the wrong questions is seen as causing conflict. And you are taught do not cause conflict. And you also are taught not how to deal with conflict constructively. No church, no church teaches this. However, I will say there is at least one church that tries, and that's the Quaker Church. Early on in the Quaker movement, the Quakers were pretty good at identifying conflict and using conflict productively and positively. But that's the only church I've ever seen that even tried. So when somebody comes in, leaves church and comes into the secular movement, they don't know how to deal with conflict. And they're using religious ideas about conflict is bad rather than the way I see conflict is good. If there's conflict going on, that's probably where the squeaky wheel needs some grease. It's telling you we need to talk more, we need to listen better, we need to plan more carefully. If that's what comes out of conflict, you're going to be a better organization real quick because you're going to learn from your mistakes, you're going to listen better, you're going to plan more carefully in the future. Those are important skills, but it doesn't come if you're conflict avoidant.

James Hogson: 10:34

I can see the advantages, then I guess this is just one of the topics which is going to be covered in the course. So there's the first cohort has been announced.

Darrel Ray: 10:43

And whilst there's limited places, not only had filled the entire class, but we doubled it. 24 people signed up, and we can only take 10 plus two observers.

James Hogson: 10:52

Yeah. But it's great to know as well that there will be future editions of the course as well. So if for those who are interested who are listening in, what can participants expect from partaking in the course?

Darrel Ray: 11:04

Nice that you asked that question. I can just bring up my syllabus right now and talk to you about each. There's actually the course is going to be four sessions plus four sessions. So it's eight sessions total, but it's two different courses. So we're calling there course one and course two. So you got session one deals with the foundational philosophy of leadership. Some of the stuff we've just already talked about a little bit. And then the second session looks at the mission and vision and how leadership behavior impacts an organization. The fact that somebody puts conflictual stuff on social media, that's behavior. And we can look at leadership behavior. We can ask, why would somebody do that? What is motivating them? So within the first two sessions, we're going to be asking people to really reflect, take stock of their own behavior, take stock of their own philosophy, and identify behavioral issues that could be undermining the mission of the organization. The third session will deal with meetings. And I see meetings as the heartbeat of any organization. Most organizations do not know how to run meetings. I've seen thousands of hours wasted in terribly organized meetings or meetings that were not productive or didn't manage the conflict. So instead of a one-hour meeting, you had a three-hour meeting and still didn't resolve the conflict. So meetings are such an important part. We're going to spend a whole session just on that. And then the fourth session is going to be leadership and delegation. Because most leaders just don't know how to delegate.

James Hogson: 12:35

Yeah.

Darrel Ray: 12:35

And there's a skill to delegate. And we're going to read a famous article from the Harvard Business Review about delegation called Whose Monkey Is It? You can look it up. Whose Monkey Is It? I won't go into details about it because I don't bore you today. And then that's the end of the course, the first four sessions. That's the end of course number one. And then after we finish that, we're going to schedule a second round of four, and that'll be the advanced. And we'll start off by looking at how to develop a learning and praising culture because people learn best when they're positively reinforced. I'm a psychologist, so I take a behavioral approach to a lot of issues around leadership. Now I'm not a rabid behaviorist. I'm actually a cognitive behavioral psychologist. So that's slightly different than just being a skinarian behaviorist. But once people feel comfortable and feel like their work is going to be recognized and praised, they do more work. So the question I'm going to ask is why do some people do really well and some people don't do so well as leaders? And oftentimes it comes down to failure to recognize the people that are doing the work. Because if you're doing the work, that's bad. You got to find other people to do the work. And if you're not a good enough leader to bring other people in to do the work, that's a problem. So that's session five. Session six is talking about technology and communication, virtual teams. Many, many organizations are basically virtual teams now. Even if you live in the same city and you could drive 20 miles to have a board meeting, you probably don't. You get on Zoom and have the board meeting. That's a virtual team. There are some rules, guidelines, methods to making a virtual team work. And they're not quite the same as if you were in a face-to-face meeting. And then the seventh of our sessions will be on boards, how to get board members, how to treat board members, how to bring people onto a board, and finances and fundraising. That'll be the key people, key things on the seventh. And the eighth, the last one of all eight is conflict, culture building, and long-term leadership development. So that's all eight course, eight sessions through the two courses.

James Hogson: 14:51

Yeah, so much in there to unpack. As you said, we could easily talk for two hours, so happy to invite you back on. But I'm interested in your thoughts generally. Again, you've advised in the corporate world and the nonprofit world, and now with secular groups in general. Some secular humanist organizations are professional, but most, I would imagine, are volunteer-based and fairly almost social. What's your thought on the best structure when you're dealing primarily with volunteer-led organizations? You know, how many people should be part of that leadership team? And how do you avoid that dependency, which I think we can always see of one person who is driving the group who probably is then taking on too much, the group becoming reliant on one individual? Do you have any thoughts on best practices in terms of team size and structure?

Darrel Ray: 15:35

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Let's start off with governing structure, because there's really two structures in an organization. One is the operation structure, and then the other one is the governing structure. And there are two different things. One, the governing structure is the board, which will have a structure within itself, perhaps like in our organization we cover from religion. I'm the president of the board, but we have a secretary, we have a treasurer, we have a parliamentarian, and that all governs the internal, that's an internal governing system for the board. And I see a lot of local humanist organizations that have that kind of a board or governing structure. And then you got the operations structure, which are people actually doing the work out there. They're the ones picking up the phone or making the brochures for the next meeting or getting the speaker or identifying the next activist piece we want to do, or where are we going to feed the homeless? There's people that are organizing stuff all the time. And they're just doing it within a supervisory structure, I guess you could say, that may have it comes under the board, but it may be an executive director that runs the operations but reports to the board. On the board, I have some pretty clear guidelines. The minimum number of board members you have to have legally in most states is three, but that's way too few. At the same time, you don't want to get too many. I've said there are major boards in the humanist community that have 17 or 20 people on the board, which I think is absolutely absurd. That's not a board, that's not a team, that's a mob. And a team has to develop a sense of trust and reliability on each other. And you can't do that if you got that big a group. So my guidelines is probably seven is optimal for a board. Seven or plus or minus one, maybe, is optimal for a team. I look at boards as a team. It's a governing team, if you will.

James Hogson: 17:30

Yeah.

Darrel Ray: 17:31

And there's certain things that happen in teams. Teams have to trust each other and have to follow up on what they say. They have to feel like the members are all committed to the same mission and not hidden agendas and egotistical responses to problems. That's on the governing board side, but also there's going to be many different sub-teams within an organization. And you have to pay attention to who is on those teams, how they're constructed. Are they clear about their end of their team's mission? Because the mission of people who are feeding the homeless once a month or once a week can be quite different than the mission of the team that's doing legislative activism. And they could both be under the same umbrella. But we've got to be real clear about this because these can appear to be in conflict, or they can actually be in conflict, especially if there's budgetary issues. You know, who gets the money here, for example. Of course, there's a whole issue, which very last session, as I mentioned earlier, is going to be on fundraising and finances. And there are best practices that I see many secularizations violating. They do not take proper care of the money that is given to them. That's second. First is they never asked for money in the first place. I've met so many groups over the years that say we just we don't want to look like a church, so we don't ask for money. How the hell do you think the church's got to be as big as it was? It wasn't sitting around twindling its thumb. It's asking for money. That's one of the secular issues that people come in is we can't ask for money because we don't look like a religion. That's really self-defeating. Money is there. People want to help you, but you've got to show them one, you're taking care of their donation. It's going somewhere, and two, they can support what the mission of the organization. And though their money is safe and they can support the mission.

James Hogson: 19:22

I think there's a general discomfort in asking for money in general, particularly when you're from a volunteer organization. I've definitely seen that, but I've not heard people say necessarily that it's because they don't want to look like a church. But I think more a case of, and maybe this is a British thing. I know you were out in the UK recently, but maybe it's a British thing. There is a more of a discomfort of being uh of openly asking for money or donations, particularly when it's more of it you're a volunteer group rather than, let's say, a registered charity.

Darrel Ray: 19:51

Well, it may be a British thing, but it's also a US thing. It's also an Australian thing. I'm all over the world with this stuff. I've seen it. Nobody seems to be want to do it. Here's the way it works, though. If you ask for money, you have Have a clear set of guidelines and practices, and at least once a month, if not once a quarter, you have a full reporting on the finances to the entire board, and that report is open to anybody on the group. They can see where their money's going. When people know where their money's going and they support the mission that that money's going to, it's a lot easier for them to open their checkbook or their PayPal or whatever they're using. That's the lesson I want organizations to the money is there. But if you never ask for it, you'll never get it. That's a pretty simple lesson. You never ask for it, you'll never get it. It's that simple. And then in the very last session, we're going to talk about finances. And there's some real specific practices. For example, there should always be three eyes on any bank account that's owned by the organization. So if you got a local humanist group and you're collecting 10 bucks a month from people and you're doing a financial report, you need a treasurer that sees it. You need the operations person, you need the president of the board. All three of those people should have access to see what's going on in that bank account. Because the worst thing that can happen, almost the worst thing that can happen, is shenanigans around finances. And we have all seen it happen. It happened in churches all the time. When I was growing up, I saw dozens of cases of financial shenanigans going on in various churches. I still do, of course. But what so when people come to the secular community, they're wary of giving money where it might be stolen or it might not be used for the missions being said it was going to. So I'm avid about financial transparency. And we're very proud at Recovery Religion. We are a platinum-level member of GuideStar. They've changed their name recently. I forget what this now, but anyway. Our finances are right out there. You can see our budget. You can go online and see our budget every dime and where it goes and what classification it comes under. And that creates confidence in your donors that, and they'll give more. Next year, when you ask, they'll realize, okay, my money went where I wanted it to go. I'm going to give more this year. Pretty simple thing. Yeah. Requires discipline, is what it requires.

James Hogson: 22:23

Definitely. And I think it really gets a sense from everything you've been saying is getting those structures in place and having clear structures and everyone knowing their responsibilities within that and also the opportunities that are there. And then I guess the next part is creating the culture that you mentioned and also developing new leaders within the group as well.

Darrel Ray: 22:41

Yeah. I use the example. I've used it literally for decades. When I go into, say, a big Fortune 500 company, and I'm working with the vice president for manufacturing or something, we'll go out on the shop floor. And I've done this so many times in my career. I'll go with the vice president out onto the shop floor and I'll stop and I'll ask, with the permission, of course, of the president or whatever, I'll say, uh, what do you do off in your off hours? And I'll ask a number of people those questions and they'll say, Well, I'm I like to bowl. Are you involved in the bowling league? Yeah, I'm the president of the bowling league. Okay. What do you like to do? I'm really involved in my church. What do you do in your church? I'm the head of the elders in my church. Or I run the study school program. I'll go through and I will, person after person, when you talk to them, you'll realize they are a leader in their personal life.

James Hogson: 23:36

Yeah.

Darrel Ray: 23:36

And they're excited about that leadership. And they're spending hours and hours of their own free time trying to make that bowling league work the best it can, or that baseball league, or that soccer league. And I come back to the vice president and says, those people aren't getting paid to do that, and yet they're spending hours and hours and hours to do that. Isn't that interesting? What if, and I tell this to the vice president, what if you could bring that level of excitement and energy right into this workplace? What if that person that liked, that works on the bowling league was just as excited about manufacturing that widget as he is about doing the bowling league? And I asked the vice president, why do you think he does that? The answer to the question is because that's where he gets his emotional paycheck. And I use the term emotional paycheck a lot. Volunteer organizations exist on the emotional paycheck. They can't pay people, they don't have the money, and never will. But they can pay people emotionally by treating people in a certain way. Anyway, that's my brief sermon. And I can preach this one big time. That's the whole thesis of this book, the performance cultures.

James Hogson: 24:47

I totally agree. I'm going to adopt that phrase going forward, the emotional paycheck. So drawing out again, you have decades of experience creating groups and building them, as well as, as you mentioned, your professional experience as well. What's the hardest lesson that you've personally learned in building organizations which last?

Darrel Ray: 25:06

The hardest lesson is looking at yourself and saying, what part am I contributing to this issues and problems of the organization? For example, I ran my own consulting firm. I had five employees. I had enormous clients. So Commons Diesel Engine, General Electric, the Crossbow Shield. Some of those names may or may not ring a bell with you, but enormous companies, big giant companies. And my staff and I were involved in developing specific customized training for those particular companies, the subsidiaries, oftentimes of those companies. And one day we lost a client, or we thought we'd lost a client had made some requirements. And I said, we can't do that. We're not going to go there. My staff practically rebelled right there in the in our staff meeting, said, Daryl, we think you're too rigid. We don't think that's the right way to interact with this customer or develop that process. This was 20, it was almost 25 years ago this happened. But because my staff felt comfortable in challenging me, yeah. I'm not the god of my company. I had to stop and think, wow, what's going on here? Because they had never done that before. And I thought, if my staff is that concerned and they're making that statement, I better listen. It's not them, it's not the customer, it's me. So I had to sit down right where I'm sitting right now and spend a couple of days thinking through before I responded to that customer's request. I came back, brought a special staff meeting together. I said, you know what? You guys are right. I'm being too rigid. I'm going to be flexible. Here's what I'm going to do. And I gave them my revised proposal for the customer. They shot back and said, we want a little bit more here. And they made their own modifications. And we went back to that customer, gave them the proposal, and we got the contract. And we had that contract for almost 10 years. It's really about nine years. That's an enormous amount of money that came into my company because I was flexible, because I stopped trying to be the know-it-all or whatever that company or customer wanted. That's just one example. It's happened to me many times over my career. But when a leader is forced by the people he or she is working with to reflect and stop and take note of how's my behavior affecting this team or affecting that customer, it can lead to lots of growth and development in the team, in the individual, and it can help the mission of the entire organization.

James Hogson: 27:44

And when you look at groups that do thrive, those that have managed to create long-term success and develop outside of dependency on one individual. What are some of the core success factors that you see that those organizations have in common?

Darrel Ray: 28:01

They've developed a core of leaders that trust each other. Oftentimes they've gone through leadership transitions, at least one, if not two leadership transitions, smoothly. That tells me whoever it was that put that together knew what they were doing. And when they left, the place didn't fall apart. For example, right here in Kansas City, I helped start the Kansas City Oasis. You're familiar with Sunday Assembly, probably. Yes. Kans City Oasis, Oasis is a similar movement, just yeah. I think we've got 11 or 10 different Oases around the country. But in 2014, I helped start the Kansas City Oasis. And I was an advisor. Let's put it that way. I told them I wouldn't be on your board. I'll advise you, but I'm not going to be on the board. I got too many other things on my plate. And as a result, they started off with one leadership model. When that leader left, they got another leadership model. When that leader left, they revised once again. And that third effort, whatever it was they did the third time, is working beautifully to this day. What it does is it tells me that the first two leaders that came and went were able to develop teams that then could survive long after they're they've gone. This is an organization that's routinely getting 75 to 100 people showing up every Sunday morning at 11 o'clock to hear a scientist talk, or to hear a psychologist, or hear me, or hear local community activist talk. And then they're feeding the homeless once a month on a Monday night. And that's we had a No Kings ralli that we're having. The last one, Oasis is not an activist organization. But at the meeting after that No Kings event, somebody in the leadership asked, How many of you were at the No Kings rally yesterday? 80% of the hands went up that were in that room. So even though it's not an activist organization, it's got a lot of activist people in it. And those people did not know each other before they came to OASI. And that growing of a good board, a good trusting board that runs place, runs a place well, and they are not afraid to ask for money. And I love it. I'm very proud of my organization. I say my, I don't want to take too much credit because they did all the work. I was just an advisor early on. We bought our first building two years ago. We own our own building. That was a goal early on, was for us to have a physical home. And that physical home makes a lot of difference in the way the organization operates because it gives you a place, it kind of is a route for the whole organization. It's an old Methodist church that we uh converted into a secular in meaning event, which I think that proves that there really is karma.

James Hogson: 30:59

And looking ahead with the Institute for Secular Leadership starting its first course next month, and congratulations again for being oversubscribed straight away. But looking ahead, if you are successful, what does success look like? What would you like to see as a change in the landscape of humanist and secular organizations in five to ten years?

Darrel Ray: 31:17

That's a great question because it's the very question I'll be asking the people in the class as well. I'm lookout three years. My vision is that three years from now, we will have a cadre of trainers, probably three, maybe four people who are certified to train these courses. I will stay involved. I'm not leaving that quickly. But at about three years, give or take, I don't know how long it'll be exactly. I would anticipate transitioning the institute into this right now comes out of my own bank account. This is my own personal effort. I didn't want to have to deal with a board. I didn't want to have to deal with all that stuff that would have to be legal around it. I will get this the way I want it and the way I know it can work, and that I've got a team, I can put a team together the way I need to do that. And then my vision is in about three years, we will transition it into a non-not-for-profit. It will become its own entity, it won't be Daryl's thing anymore. We'll have a board of directors, we'll have all the legal requirements for a nonprofit. And what will have happened is by that time we'll have one, two, three hundred people that are trained in this system. And they will all be part of the chat on Discord or whatever else we end up using. And they'll be able to talk to each other. We may even see an opportunity to meet physically in maybe a leadership conference or something like that. My goal isn't just to get people trained, it's to have people talk to each other. And the leader of the Manchester humanist can pick up the phone or send an email to the leader of the San Diego humanists and they can talk and they can compare notes and they can coordinate stuff if that makes sense. That's what I want to see. People talking to each other. Right now, they don't talk to each other. The leader of the Omaha, Nebraska humanists doesn't even know a group exists in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Now they will because they went through the class together, or they know somebody that did go through the class. That's in my experience, James. Once you start connecting people, you have no idea where that's going to go. And it almost always goes in a better direction. It's that synergy of like-minded people having permission to talk to each other, supporting each other, trusting each other, that creates great things. And that's what I want to see. I want to see people creating great things. Not because I planned it, I don't even know what these people are going to do. I will tell you this: when I started Recover from Religion in the year 2009, I had no idea I would be talking to James Hobson on a podcast from England. I just wouldn't. It was not in my plan, okay? But our people at Recover from Religion are incredibly creative, and they're all over the social media, and they're they're reaching out to people who are dealing with the loss of religion and loss of family and that sort of stuff. And I would say 90% of what's happening in Recovery from Religion is not something I imagined back in 2009.

James Hogson: 34:27

Yeah.

Darrel Ray: 34:28

So that's what happens when you just give people permission and a structure. They can do some great stuff. I don't have to manage it. They manage it very beautifully all by themselves.

James Hogson: 34:39

And we'll include links to everything in the show notes in terms of how to get more information or follow the course. But if you were to direct people, if anyone's listening to this and they really want to be that participate as soon as possible, what's the best way to get in contact?

Darrel Ray: 34:53

I'll give you the link. There's an application link. You can go there and just ask a few questions, like we need your email address, that sort of stuff. I will give you that link. And they need to go to that link and fill out, and that will put them in the list because you can't take the course unless you registered. And I take the list and order people's application, roughly speaking. So if you don't get in there, you can't get in. And you just don't call me up and say I want on the thing. Get on there and do that. Do the registration.

James Hogson: 35:22

And we'll make sure to put that right at the top of the show notes for everyone who wants to participate.

Darrel Ray: 35:27

I want to be clear, this is not free. It's $300 for the first four and $300 for the second four classes. You're paying for something. And I think you're going to get the value you're paying for there.

James Hogson: 35:37

Before we go, uh standard closing question. What's something which you've changed your mind on recently and what inspired that change?

Darrel Ray: 35:45

Well, the recently part of it's that was what stumped me because I've changed my mind on a whole lot of things over my life. It was about 2000, year 2000, when my one of my close friends and I were talking about religion and stuff, and they knew I was interested in it before I written any of my religion books. And I was using the word agnostic and like Christianity light, that kind of language. Finally, one day she said to me, Daryl, you should shit or get off the pot. You're an atheist and you know it. At that moment, I had to stay and wait a bit. Okay, she's right. I gotta admit it. I am an atheist. Why did I not come out and do that earlier? Well, it's because I was afraid. I had a business to run. Some of my colleagues and some of my clients were very religious, so I had to be careful about that. But once I made that leap, changed my mind. I'm no longer have to be afraid. It's been great ever since. I love the liberation of being non-religious. There's just so much better world when you don't have to deal with Jesus every day.

James Hogson: 36:49

Out of curiosity, did you find it had an impact on your business career? Were there any anyone who treated you differently once you were more Oh, hell yeah, it had an impact.

Darrel Ray: 36:58

When I wrote The God Virus, now most of my staff knew I wasn't religious, and many of my customers did, although I didn't. I'm in business. I'm not there to talk about religion. Yeah. So I never did. But when I announced to my staff that I was writing the God virus, my office manager turned white. She said, Daryl, we're gonna lose clients over this. And this was 2008. And I told her, I don't know, I have to do this. This is just something I have to do. And we probably will lose clients, but I don't think we're gonna lose very many. And that was 2008. The book comes out in 2009. Within six months, I'd lost all but two of my clients. I lost clients that I'd had for literally 20 years overnight. I lost all these, they would not return my phone calls, would not return my emails, ads. So it was much worse than I thought it would be. I literally ended up having to lay off my staff. It was the same time as market crash happened with real estate. So the two put together. So I basically lost my business or most of my business in a very short period of time. That's the downside. The upside was the Godvirus sold so well, became a bestseller basically, and it made up the lost income, which I never dreamed I'd make money off of a book. Authors generally don't make money off of books, they make money off of what comes after the book, which for me was consulting gigs. I made a lot of my money off of consulting gigs, not off the book sales. Anyway, that's what happened. And so it was a big consequence to lose my pretty much lose my whole business. But it also forced me to transition into what I'm doing right now, dealing with secular world. I have had an entire career since 2009 just doing secular world kinds of stuff. And I love it. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't. I'm retired. I've been retired for 10 years, so I'm doing what I want to do.

unknown: 38:51

Dr.

James Hogson: 38:51

Darrell Ray, thank you for everything that you've contributed to date. We very much look forward to hearing how the first course goes. And thank you, of course, for joining us on Humanism Now.

Humanise Live: 39:01

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