Hey guys, thanks for joining me today. On Behind the Curtain, I'm your host, Rebecca Harvin, and this is where we have honest conversations about foster care and adoption. Real quick, before we talk about today's guest, I want to let you know that if you're a regular around here and you tried listening to last week's Rebecca Unedited podcast about learning to let go and you heard a constant clicking noise in the background, um, I'd accidentally clicked the metronome function on our recording device. Total user error. Uh I'm so thankful that one of our listeners reached out to let me know I was able to fix it and re-uploaded the same episode, Sans Metronome. So if you started listening but stopped because of the clicking, you can go back and listen to it now.
All right. Our guest today is someone whose work sits at the intersection of faith, family, and community. Melody Marshall is the co-executive director of My Village Ministries, an initiative focused on family preservation, and the co-executive director of Upstream Collaborative, a nationwide network equipping ministries to support families before crisis leads to separation. With a background in human development and family science, Melody's calling has been shaped not just in classrooms, but in real-life spaces, serving as a house parent for at-risk teens and walking alongside children with special needs. These experiences have deepened her commitment to living out caring for the marginalized. Or, as James 121 says, true religion is caring for the orphan and the widow in their times of distress. Guided by a deep faith and clear sense of God's leading, Melody is passionate about mobilizing the church to come alongside socially isolated families in crisis, helping them build sustainable support systems and real pathways to healing. Today we're pulling back the curtain on what family preservation really looks like, why upstream care matters, and how the church can step in before families fall apart. This conversation is vital to the work that is happening right now in America. Enjoy the conversation. Melody, thanks so much for being
here. I was wondering if you could start with just a little bit about what Upstream Collaborative is, and then if you could tell us how you got into this work that you're doing.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So Upstream Collaborative is a collaborative. So it's a space that we want leaders and those on the front line to collaborate together. And the people that are collaborating are people who are doing work upstream, which I don't know if you've heard of. So working to preserve the families that God created, knowing that we can't preserve all of them. But what if we put a bigger concerted effort towards that? So that's kind of what the collaborative is. Um I could go into a lot more about how we're collaborating, but let's see, how did I get into it? That's a way longer, more personal question. Um, you know, the Lord, the Lord got me into it.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_01He does. So I think I always had a heart to help families in hard places and thought it would look a lot of different ways. And it did look a lot of different ways over the years. So I did things like being a paraprofessional for special needs kids. My husband and I were house parents for Boys Town. I ran a daycare for a lot of years. Um, and I thought that I would probably be a foster parent at some point. Uh, but there just happened to be a family preservation ministry starting at my church right when I we the Lord kind of freed up space where we I didn't have to work full-time anymore. And so I would be able to be home for the most part.
And so we were like, well, the timing is um too coincidental. Um let's do this ministry that's starting our church instead of foster care. It was still like short-term child hosting, having kids in your home. Uh, and then when I went to the training that first day and heard them start to talk about um kind of the like the short game being the kids and the long game being the parents too, and how could we be about the story of the whole family and whenever possible, uh reunifying that family and having them be back together. And then also this idea of um like, but for the grace of God, there go I. These the parents that we're serving, they're not the villains in the story. They also are people with hard and complicated stories, and they need people to be for them the same way that kids need people to be for them. And man, I feel like God just broke my heart wide open for this idea of family preservation, even though I had never heard of it before that day, was marching surely towards foster care or adoption or something along those lines, which I mean, praise the Lord, those are wonderful things too. I think God just made a calling on my life that day.
And so we became a host family, hosted about 500 nights in our home. And then January 1st of 2020, uh Phil Krauss, my co-director, asked if I would join him as co-director of the ministry. He felt like God had gifted him as kind of a starter or a catalyst, and he needed a sustainer to come alongside him and kind of build out systems, make things um able to last longer. And then so that was January 1st, 2020, and then March of 2020. All of our lives changed. It's not a good year to start a job. No, especially a job where you're asking people to have a stranger come stay at their house. And sometimes we had kids come to be hosted, and the parents, of course, didn't tell us this ahead of time. They said they had some kind of medical need. And they were literally dropping off their kids and going to check into the hospital with COVID. And so you talk about like courageous saints who are like, okay, we're gonna host your kid. We don't know what's going on with your health, but we know that your family needs this, or your child is gonna be, there's no one to care for them while you're in the hospital. Um, we had and then also everybody started homeschooling their kids for a short period of time, dep maybe depending on what state you're in. But uh we had one host family that had five kids and they started hosting twin two-year-olds, I think. And then they were all of a sudden still twin two-year-olds, but all five of their kids were now homeschooling. So very challenging situation to be leading anything, but specifically like a pretty risky when everybody's kind of telling you to go isolate and shelter in place and all those terms that we don't hear.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was an interesting time to start a ministry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Oh, I distinctly remember the day that Florida shut down. The day that Florida shut down. We had my two oldest, and then we had a sibling set of three, and then um they we got a call for another sibling set of three, and they came that day. That day, that day, and then we found out also that day that school wasn't gonna start again on Monday because this was uh this happened over spring break. So it was the Friday of spring break, and um got an email that school was gonna be virtual on Monday, and so we had um we had eight kids in our home, and it was everybody's story of that time of March 2020 is so distinctly theirs, right? But I was literally in Costco, like trying to buy food for 10 people, like to try trying to buy no toilet paper. There's like rations on everything. There's no toilet paper. Yeah, no, somebody dropped off toilet paper. A church here in town dropped off toilet paper at our house, and I cried at real tears. Oh, real tears. It that felt like the most loving, kind gesture that anybody had ever done.
SPEAKER_01It is like even when I rarely talk about 2020, but when we do, I'm like, man, there are a lot of like really distinct memories. Um, but yeah, it was the same thing. And one thing that was really cool is so we because we had started being a host family in 2018, now we were in relationship with some families that we had hosted for and had been reunified. And I, Rebecca, I had I have four bio kids. Um, and so that's all the kids that were living in my home that when we went on homeschool. And um I thought I was gonna die. I was like, I'm very extroverted. I was like, I can't handle this. And my husband was like, Don't touch anyone, don't talk to anyone. We would like go on walks and he'd be like, Don't touch that tree. Probably everyone who passes here touches that tree. You're gonna get their turns. And I was like, I'm gonna die. I like can't take this. But the one of the moms that we had hosted for was a single mom of seven kids. She's like just an absolute beast. She's like homeschooling all these kids, keeping her head above water, all by herself, no husband to help her, working from home on her computer, while like the older kids helped the. I mean, she just did so. I I feel like 2020 was also an opportunity for me to see the like work ethic and incredible um spirit, or like uh, I don't know, I don't know the right word that I'm looking for, but push through, like tenacity happened, tenacity, yes, of single moms. And um, yeah, not that I want anyone to have to be a single mom, but I just am saying it really like opened my eyes to how much they could handle because I saw how weak I was. I was like, I am going to either die myself or kill somebody if we don't get out of this house.
SPEAKER_02It would it was very much a rubber meets the road season, yeah. What of what what do you have inside of you? And it comes up to the surface, and you were learning a new job. You didn't, you didn't implode. I mean, large scale, right? Like you might have had many implosions over the days, but like large scale, you didn't implode, you figured it out. So you figured it out, survived. And at that point, it's a ministry at your church, or it's its own separate nonprofit?
It's its own separate nonprofit. Uh, it works through church partnerships. So this is when we get to the upstream conversation. This ministry in Columbus, Ohio, My Village Ministries, is one of the members of the collaborative, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so, and but it's part of the story of how I got there. So it works through church partnerships. We now have 30 church partners. I think we had 12 when I came on in 2020. Um, so 30 church partnerships, uh, and all of the roles within the ministry can be found at those churches. So host families, community coaches, ministry leads, care community. Um, kind of like the main touch point with families who need help are the host families who host kids in their homes for a short period of time. A coach acts kind of like a parent ally, and then everything else is a supportive role. We're gonna bring diapers and wipes and meals and all of these things. And so that's what the how the ministry was functioning then. Um, but in 2021, we started working alongside a few other family preservation ministries, and we were growing more and more excited about family preservation, not just as like a last-ditch effort, but like something that we needed to put a ton more focus on. So, and sometimes I think it can be hard to talk about this topic because we don't want to be offensive to anybody. And I'm an adoptive parent, my co-director is a foster and adoptive parent. So, in every way, we believe the church should be engaged there.
Um, but most studies show somewhere between 70 and 76% of kids in the foster care system are there because of neglect due to the impact of poverty. And so there's this kind of these situations with very little margin because there's not good community support built around these families. They are socially isolated, where kids end up in the foster care system for something that could have been prevented, a medical emergency to a single mom who just doesn't have a good enough community to step in and help care for her kids, or um a family that's living with very little job margin or very little margin and they lose a job, and now uh they're very quickly evicted from their apartment because they don't have three to six month savings or whatever financial assets recommend.
SPEAKER_02What well you started saying that you said like this could be offensive. Like what where where does that go? How does that go? Like, how do what would people be offended about there? Help me understand that.
SPEAKER_01So I think it is that they I don't want to come across as like family preservation is better than adoption or family preservation is better than foster care. Don't sound clip those out, play them for me, because that's not what I'm saying. But I think sometimes when you're trying to make a push for something, like, man, adoption is awesome, but let's do everything we can first to see if this family can be preserved and then look to a great adoptive plan if it can't be. Does that make sense? It could be a little sense of like, why do you think family preservation is better than adoption? Well, we it's not that it's better, it's that it should be addressed first because if possible, we should preserve the family that God created.
SPEAKER_02Oh you are very kind about that, Melody. I am not kind about that. Um family preservation should 100% be the option first. So you are so kind. Well, I've offended a lot of people, so no, I haven't well. I just I'm like, maybe I'm offending people right now, but in but it should absolutely be if it's possible at any end, like we should be preserving families the way that it is plan A. Yeah, it's plan A and plan B and C and D come with so many complications for everybody else involved. Like I love that I'm an adoptive parent, I love that I got to be a foster parent, and God, I wish that my kids didn't need an adoptive parent. Like, I wish that there was something that we could have done for their family to keep it together. There wasn't in their case, and so thank God that there's somebody here, but like I you were so kind about it, and I will say it for for us or for me.
SPEAKER_01Like, I'm like, this is not I well, and I think I want to be kind because it is still such an important role to play. Like, there are kids who have to be adopted, and yes, and we need to fight to be the very best adoptive families possible.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01But how do we like we've been ringing this bell in the church of foster and adoption care, and it's not really changing the numbers of kids in foster care or needing adopted. And so we have to ring a new bell calling more people upstream to say, what can we do to prevent these kids from ending up in the stream? And we do have to be like fairly offensive or unapologetic about it, or it's not going to change. Suzanne Stabil, I heard her say once that adoption is a beautiful story told on the grave of a family that was meant to be. Yes. There's like there's no for my son who's adopted, there's no day one with zero pain in his life. Yes. He will always carry the
loss of that family. He will always have the imaginary, what would my life be like with this family? And so I think that we do have to be more unapologetic about it. The UNICEF study they just did showed that 85% of the world's orphans or adopted children actually have one or both living parents.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And so something culturally is happening where we're just this family's struggling, let's take their kid and forget about the adults. This family's struggling, let's take their kid and forget about the adults.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_01Instead of this family struggling, we're gonna build a hedge of protection around them with people who love and care for them and help them not be struggling. We're not gonna rip the kid away. That is not a solution that is producing generational change.
SPEAKER_02And taking it further, I would assume that there's also then a responsibility on the parents involved in this. Like we're gonna, we're gonna build this hedge of protection around you and you're gonna partner with us, and together we're gonna put these buffers into your life. Like, we're not gonna do it for you. Yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna come alongside you in and be the community, right? There's there are two things that that I distinctly remember wrestling with, specifically in the story of the children that I adopted. And the first one is it is not illegal to be poor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, nor is it a reason to lose your family.
SPEAKER_02That's correct. It is not illegal to be poor, and so just because I can offer them a quote unquote better life with more access to common, um, and I hesitate to even use the word common there, but with but more access, I'll say it like this, to a middle class lifestyle, right? More access to education,
more access to a variety of food on the table, and not what like that is that is additional privilege that is not, and I want to be so careful about how I say this. It is not necessary to exist inside of a family unit, and for that family unit to still be a whole family unit. Like it is icing on the cake, it is not my my kids should never be taken away from me if if we were to have a loss of income and have us have a hard season, right? So that like it is not illegal to be for to be poor, nor should your children be removed because you are poor. Like, I feel so strongly about that because it's such a uh um pre- it's not preeminent, it's not the word that I'm looking for. What's the word that I'm looking for? Like, it's such a preventable thing, but it's also like the first domino that falls, like you were saying. It's the first domino that falls a lot of the time. It's illegal to abuse your kids, it's illegal to neglect your kids, it's illegal to abandon your kids. It's a those things are illegal. If those things are happening in conjunction with poverty,
we've got a bigger problem. But but poverty is not, poverty doesn't mean any of those things are happening, right? The second thing that I that I really struggled with a lot, um, and again, it's it's when I was struggling with it, it happened to be with the children that we were adopting, is that my network of people, should something happen to my husband or I, my network is 20, 30 deep of people that would answer a phone call and immediately say yes to caring for my kids in a in a pickle. Immediately. And and that is like, you know, my my closest net people are just the top, they're the top 10 of, you know, like yeah, it so many things would have had to have gone wrong in my lifetime for there to be not be a single person that could step in.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02And it breaks my heart.
SPEAKER_01I know. And yet, there are people all over our country that are taking an Uber by themselves to the hospital for labor and delivery with no one holding their hand, or they have um some kind of crisis come up and they have not one person to call to
care for their kids. It's just a reality in our country, and it's something that the church like cannot ignore because one of the greatest things we have inside of our church walls is a community. I think that's part of where a lot of us find our communities is maybe you have a small group or home group or whatever your church calls them, or just people you see every Sunday, and you're doing life with each other, and that's one of these rich blessings that we receive within the church. And we just have got, I mean, scripture is so clear, we have got to get outside our four walls and offer that community to those social socially isolated families. Because what we are finding as we do more and more research is that the underlying problem with almost all of these needs is social isolation. And that's a solvable problem. Now, and that doesn't mean it doesn't take any work or there's no pain involved. It's messy to get involved with people's lives.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, but actually, uh Uh, National Clearing House on Childhood Abuse and Neglect found that two of the top four leading predictors for abuse and neglect are social isolation and a temporary crisis. So you take somebody with zero margin, you introduce a temporary crisis, like kidney stones. And sometimes those kids end up in the system because mom had no one to care for them. We had a mom here in Columbus that had kidney stones. She had just moved to Columbus. She's actually moving away from Florida, which is wild to leave Florida and go to Columbus, Ohio. Um, but she was moving away from an abuser. She had four daughters, didn't know anybody in the city, got kidney stones, went to the hospital. Um, they said, we can't think of anything like you have to be admitted. We can't think of anything for you with your kids except call children's services. She called them, they said, Um, yeah, we can take your kids, but you will lose custody. You have to take parenting classes to get them back. And it could be months before you see them again. And so she said, I'm not doing that. And the hospitals have told us so many women leave against medical advice because they don't have a plan for their kids. So luckily, the caseworker that she talked to at Children's Services told her about our program. Um, because still family preservation is not like on the tip of everyone's tongues, even though I wish it was. Uh, and so she called our program and we had a host family host for her, and they hosted one night, and then she was back with her kids. And then her kids, now this has been three years ago, I think, but she's still friends with like four or five different families in that church because they're working hard to engage with her and continue to be her support system. The kids got enrolled at the Christian school that the church kind of owns or runs out of their church. And um, that like one night emergency went from being a reason that family separated to the reason that they found community. And that is what should happen. It ends up being that in these crises, the church steps in and man, you get to hear the gospel or you get to find community, or you get to at least hear, like, man, you're a child of God and
let me pray for you right now. Um, some kind of support that is practical and also truth-filled. So it is just like an a great way for the church to get engaged and is proving to be tremendously effective. So in Columbus, we have a 99.9% reunification rate, meaning when we host kids, they go home to their parents with no further government intervention needed. So no like future foster care stays in our eight years. We don't, we haven't tracked people for life yet. We're only eight years old. Uh, but the number of kids in foster care has dropped by 40% in the last five years in our city. And so there's something about like actively 30 churches actively working together, praying together, fighting hard for preservation that is having obviously a kingdom impact, but like a numerical impact on our city, which is super cool.
SPEAKER_02I am rarely speechless, and I am I I want to like shout from the rooftops. I've told you this every single time that we've talked. Like, I want to shout from the rooftops the work that you are doing.
SPEAKER_01And the I mean, it's the church, man. They are they are standing tall. Yes, we just had to provide them with a functional model for how to do it, but they are showing up for sure. We have 105 host families, not one of them is getting paid. We have 97 coaches, not one of them's getting paid. Like it the church is showing up.
SPEAKER_02It's incredible. And like, I really hope that on some marketing campaign that you've done, it says kidney stones should never be the reason a mother loses her kids.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02I really hope that that goes out to people who are not social media post tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01Good. I hope so. I mean, it's so true though. Like, there are if you don't have any community support, you can very quickly go from you can very quickly take what would be a minor inconvenience for somebody else and have it be just a full-blown disaster. I had to have my gallbladder removed
earlier this year. And I mean, people, it's like so many people are like bringing us meals and visiting at the hospital. And I have like grandparents to watch my kids, and it's not even a blip in my mind. Oh no, what am I going to do about my kids? It it is devastating how often this takes place that families are torn apart because a mom just needs some support or a dad just needs we have we've we serve dads too and couples when it happens. It's just predominantly single moms. Um, but we had a dad whose wife had walked out on him and his three kids, and he was working night shifts and he called us and was like, I just can't, I can't stay awake during the day to care for my kids when I've like worked all night. I think he had a teen teenage. I don't know. It maybe wasn't a great situation that the kids weren't were home while he was working all night, but it was the situation he was in. He didn't feel like he had any other choices. And so the church stepped in and hosted for him and eventually he found a better job and was able to like balance with child care. And you know, sometimes parents have a job but don't have child care set up, so they can't go to their first day of their job, but you can't get child care till you already have a job if you're gonna use, especially if you need to use some of the like the funding, which called Title 20 in Ohio, but the funding needed for the daycare to be like subsidized. Um, and so they get stuck in this pattern when they're like we want them to be independent and have a job and empowered, but we've kept them stuck in this system. They can't go to their job because they don't have child care. It takes a month to get set up. So sometimes it's as simple as hosting during the week while they go to their work and are getting childcare set up, and then they're able to be independent after that.
SPEAKER_02Incredible. That's absolutely incredible. Um okay, keep going in your story. So you start here. No, no, no, no, you're good.
SPEAKER_01So yes. So we're we're doing the local work here. We start working with a few other organizations. There's kind of this idea as you grow of like, I got into this because I love kids and families, but somehow I'm like running HR and building a website and finding an insurance agent that covers like an umbrella policy. Um, and you're just like, I don't know what any of these things mean. So there were four of us that started working together. Uh, we call ourselves the F4 now. Um, you can decide whether that means first four or fab four. Um, but it we were all women at the time, so we liked Fab Four. But um, so it was two executive directors in Indiana and one in North Carolina, and then myself in Ohio. And we started just, we were like working on policy and procedures, man. We were on the phone probably every week, sometimes twice a week. Here's an insurance agent I found. Here's a nonprofit lawyer, take this intake paperwork, take my logo off, put yours on. And we just realized that the same way we don't want the families we're serving to be in isolation, we didn't want to be in isolation in leadership. And so many nonprofits like flare up and then fail. And we really wanted to be excellent in what we're doing. And we felt like it was a better stewardship of kingdom time and money if we didn't each reinvent the wheel, but we like shared ideas with each other. And so we were doing that for a while and it had been like really fruitful. Our ministries were growing quickly. We were really encouraged and like joyful in our work. And then um, we started having people come to us and say, like, we want to do what you're doing, and how do we get these resources? And it was like every time somebody wanted some kind of paperwork, we were sending it to them, and then we forgot who we sent it to. And then so there was no like gathering place for the resources. And we started to feel like maybe we should formalize this a little more. If we're serious about ringing a new bell for family preservation, starting to create like some movement in our country or some movement in the church. Um, let's formalize, create a collaborative where we can really share best practices, where organizations can gather and um remain gospel focused and church-driven. Like, how can we be really serious about mobilizing the church and not just kind of engaging believers here and there, but like mobilizing whole church bodies and communities to impact their cities and to do it um through family preservation, not a transactional, like here's a bowl of soup and a backpack with back to school supplies in it. But like, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna walk through life with you and we're gonna do some life on life relationship building here. So we had our first retreat, uh, and I so we're about to have our third conference, but our retreat was before that. And I think we had 12 people and they were all just executive directors of um eight organizations. And then the next year we had, we had like filed our own 501c3 and we were inviting others to be members. We created a resource bank where people could share paperwork, YouTube videos they liked, books they liked, um, idea sharing. I mean, just really
anything that you could put in there. And we were doing like monthly calls, we had a conference, um, and or we had a couple of conferences, and now we're on our third one. So, and and really about a year ago, we have like honed in on even more messaging and understanding what family preservation could be, that it's not just this crisis child hosting, the way My Village Ministries was doing, but actually the pro-life movement, fatherhood initiatives, mentorship and discipleship, like there are actually a lot of ways that we can support people before their families are broken apart that lead to stronger family units. And we like to think of it as like mobilizing the church to line the banks of the stream so that no family falls in. And there's just like not everybody's gonna be a host family and not everybody's gonna be um volunteering at a pregnancy center or something, but like everybody can do something. And what how do we find kind of that gifting or that skill in them to come join us in a very effective ministry because it's having such a big impact when we solve those issues of social isolation that then makes people ready for temporary crises, which are going to happen to all of us, um, it just makes a big impact. And so we have 20 organizations now. We'll probably have about 130, 140 people at conference, um, still mostly leaders and or like key staff members of the organizations, but starting to have some volunteers come too. I think our vision is eventually it would be an equipping place for a host family or a coach or a mentor or a whoever that's doing work in this area would be able to come and be equipped. Um, but you're catching me right. I mean, it's two weeks from today, is the first day of conference. And so I'm like at the point where there's a million details in my head, but also I'm starting to get really excited because I can like picture it. I can't wait till we're all there. I think the content is gonna be so good. You're coming to do a breakout session. Um, and I'm just excited I there's something exciting about knowing these 150 or so people are pouring out all year and we're gonna gather and we're gonna maybe we're gonna grieve a little, we're gonna worship a little, we're gonna process, but we're gonna be equipped. We're gonna get this shot in the arm of excitement about the work that we're doing. We're gonna go home freshly excited about it. And yeah, it is it is like a pretty special time. I really just throw it for myself because I have so much fun. Hopefully, some other people have fun too.
SPEAKER_02I mean, you know, that's how I started Haven was like, I need this, maybe other
people need this too. And then that's that is the question that founders of stuff ask, like this assumption that like if this is so life-giving for me, I bet it's gonna be life-giving for other people. And and just to collectively remember that the work that we're doing matters so much and validate, like, it's not easy swimming upstream, right? It's not it's not easy going ringing this bell that hasn't been rung for forever, right? Like it's like this is um this is good, solid, hard work that actually genuinely changes people's lives. Yeah, and that that always comes at a cost.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and to get a room full of people together who know the cost and still love the work, yeah, it's incredible.
SPEAKER_01It really is incredible. It I like it's so special to be a part of. I'm like, I think one of the most faith-bolstering things that I've experienced in my life is standing in a worship service right behind somebody that I know is just absolutely going through it. Like their life is being torn to shreds, and there they are worshiping God anyways. Like I just am like, okay, Lord, I can I can do that too. I can keep standing firm. Actually, I'm giving one of the the main session teachings on the
last morning, and it's on this topic of standing firm.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01How like in Ephesians 6 he says, and after all that, to say Stand.
SPEAKER_02Stand.
SPEAKER_01It's like, man, Lord, we don't have to, we don't have to do it all. You're gonna do it all, but we get to go stand with you.
SPEAKER_02The um oh my gosh, I have two thoughts. And then we this might derail the entire podcast, but the the the one of the most profound faith experiences I had was I was serving communion at my church, and we say, like the body of Christ broken for you, and then uh you serve with your like spouse if you're married, or somebody else at church if you if you're not, and then the other person says the blood of Christ shed for you, right? And so we're doing it. It's wrote and I've been a Christian all my life, I've taken communion literally all of my life, and in my line comes this person whose life was trauma after trauma after trauma had knocked on their door. And this was a dear friend of mine, and and she was standing in line and we made eye contact, and I could see her, I could see her faith like like surely this has to be true. Surely this like if this isn't true, you know, like that kind of like I will stand right here on this belief that God will meet me here in the pit of hell. And when she came up and I said, the body of Christ broken for you, like something inside of me, I have never I've never taken communion the same way again. I've never served communion the same way again. Like I cry, my husband and I regularly serve communion at our church, and by the time that we're done, I'm like in tears, like every single time I'm in tears just talking about this thing right now because it's like this hat this this is the meat. This this is this is the meat of what we say that we believe is that like like we will walk through hell, but we will not do it alone because there is a God who broke his body and shed his blood so that we didn't have to do this alone. And and um I love it, I love serving communion now.
SPEAKER_01Um that it was just knowing her story and knowing her absolute dependency on the simple gospel. Yeah, she's not saying all these like fancy Christian-year sayings. She's like, I just need the body of Christ broken for me and the blood of God Jesus shed for me. Like, man, there's something about that dependency that God wants us to have. Like He's desperate for us to recognize it. We are so busy putting all these buffers around us to not recognize our need in any way. And he's like, All I want is for you to recognize your need. My pastor gave a sermon once on the importance of fasting as a spiritual discipline. And well, he was sharing stories about when he fasted and like how you you're grouchy and maybe short-tempered of people around you, and then you're distracted, and then eventually it's like you're you're settled into recognizing your absolute dependence on the Lord. And I was listening to this sermon and thinking about the scriptures that say, Is not this the kind of fasting I have desired to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the oak? And I'm terrible at butchering scripture, but something along those lines.
SPEAKER_02And it was like, okay to to feed the hungry and to clothe the naked and to and to to care for the poor and the needy. Like I was literally just reciting this scripture at lunch. Um, I have it tattooed, I have a portion of this tattooed on my arm. Like I, because then it says, like, then you will call on me, and in that day I will answer you yes. And the yes that he says there is this like, um, my answer is yes to whatever you ask me. It's it is here I am, and my answer is yes to whatever you ask of me. And there are five times I want to say that that men use it in the Bible, and like Abraham uses it, Moses uses it at the burning bush, Samuel uses it. There is only one time that God uses it, and it's right there in that scripture. Like this is I did not ask you to do this other fast. I mean, I he does, right? Like there's clearly scripture that says that he does, but he's like, you do all of this stuff, but you forget the thing that I actually care about, which is the which is the poor and the orphan and the widow and the oppressed and the marginalized in your society. Like you eat your eat your food. Like that is not, oh well, now I'm up on a soapbox. I told you before we started that this was a possibility today. This is I've been duly prepared.
SPEAKER_00I'm ready for it.
SPEAKER_02But but this is the thing. Like, this is the like, is it not to loose the chains of oppression? Like, is that not our job as Christians? And and to go, what is causing this? And how do I how do I come alongside? Yeah, how do I come alongside people who just need somebody to come alongside them? And and that's what you're doing. I I um one more thought before before we keep moving on is the idea of like standing firm, like when you've done everything, just stand. The I um what I always think about there is in Exodus when God has called them out of Egypt and they are going through the wilderness, like they are stopped in front of the Red Sea, and Pharaoh's army is coming, and the people look at Moses and they say, Oh my god, like you've called us out here, and like we're just gonna die in the wilderness, and like, and it's before they're even actually in the wilderness, really, you know, and Moses Moses says something to them, and then he turns around and he says to God, like, What are you doing? Like, you called us out here. Is it just from is it for Pharaoh to kill us right now? And and the Lord's answer is, Why are you talking to me? Like, why like it's it is this like it's the craziest verse in the entire Bible to me, because everything that Moses and the people say feel accurate to me, and how God responds feels very inaccurate of like um the Lord, and he says, like, he says, Why are you talking to me? You just have to stand. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to stand still, and it is the thing that I come back to. I mean, that's probably gonna be like my next tattoo, right?
SPEAKER_00Because I see all these tattoos.
SPEAKER_02I only have a hand, I don't even have, I don't even have a handful of tattoos, but I do have the Tetons and that that um word hanini, the here I am, and my answer is yes to whatever you ask of me next. And it's this reminder of for me and the Lord, like I'm here and you have my yes. And and because I'm here in the middle of this verse doing the things that you've asked me to do, I know that I have your yes too, and that you're not gonna abandon ship.
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, I mean, I think the I think the thing that struck me so much in that moment in the message was like, here are all, and this is nothing against my my pastor at church, because I think they're doing a tremendous job in some of these things, but just in that moment during that message when he's saying, you need to fast from food to recognize your dependency on but on the Lord, I'm like, dude, I the people I know who are serving in ministry that is relational, whether that is family preservation, adoption, foster care, other types of ministry, but ones that are truly relational, not like at Christmas time I go serve turkeys, but like I know the messiness of walking close to the brokenhearted in this world. They know their dependency on God. They have done the fasting that God says that he requires. And and when I am serving in that way, and this is true even now for me, Rebecca. When I'm like doing ministry as my job, I definitely am relying on the Lord. When the ministry comes into my house and we're hosting a kid at our home, it's a whole different ballgame of reliance on the Lord.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and and the church, God designed fasting for the church. And the church is not partaking in it the way that he planned for them to. And so they don't recognize their need for him. And they might be distracted by a lot of sub-arguments and minor great issues and disunity. And does our fog machine work or not? Um, and they're not doing the true fasting that he's asked them to do that would create the dependence, that would create the joy that they can experience in relationship with him and would also give the church back its position as salt and light in the world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not trying to say that I know lots of churches are doing this.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I'm not trying to say that they're not. I'm just saying a lot of them are missing the mark too, or or belie or individuals are. This is this is my new verse that I'm really excited about.
SPEAKER_02I can't wait.
SPEAKER_01Ready? Maybe you already know it. I mean, I'm sure you already know it. I'm sure you've read the whole Bible, but it's from Haggai. Do you already know what I'm gonna say?
SPEAKER_02Maybe. Keep going.
SPEAKER_01Chapter 1, verse 2. This is what the Lord Almighty says. These people say that no, no, no, sorry, I'm writing reading the wrong one. Chapter verse three. Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai. Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses while this house remains in ruin? Isn't that so good? It is so good.
SPEAKER_02And I didn't know what I didn't know what you were gonna say, but I love that verse.
SPEAKER_01We're up here living in our paneled houses, and the house is in ruin and we're missing it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02Um I I love to talk openly about two things. One, the cost, and two, the hope. And um so when we talk about I want to phrase this question though, in a sense of like, this has cost you something. This working alongside people costs you something.
SPEAKER_03But how has it changed you?
SPEAKER_01Gosh, it's you know, and maybe you feel this too, after a certain number of years, you like so don't recognize yourself, yeah, that it's hard to like pinpoint where that change took place because by the grace of God, he just keeps working on it because I'm a hot mess and he just keeps changing me. Um I think going back to that first moment I was telling you about where I was sitting in training, my my story before that of doing ministry was one a very judgmental one. I did see the parents as the villains of the story, and I did feel like, man, if we just get all these kids, we can quote unquote save them from some white Jesus stuff. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I think that when I I there was a woman who shared her story in that training, and it was so lovely, and the Lord just like clicked the light bulb on for me of how of how incredibly wrong I was, and how I have no idea what I would have done in any of their shoes. And there's nothing to say that I would not have ended up in the same situation or worse, and that there truly is advantages I've experienced in my life that have allowed me to be where I'm at. It is not because something inherently is better in me than in anybody else. And there's a this verse in Ezekiel that says, God can take a heart of stone and turn it into a heart of flesh. And I feel like through the walking alongside of people that I never would have met if I had not engaged in this ministry, God has taken my heart of stone and turned it into a heart of flesh. And it has become a muscle that is easy to flex to see people with compassion and grace instead of to judge them. And I think one thing I'm really passionate about is even my perspective that I have now in my heart of flesh is, and which is still in progress, obviously, it is a gift from the Lord. And I can't also pass judgment on those around me with the heart of stone. Because just like I took my first step of sitting in that training and having God open my eyes of compassion, everybody might need to take their next step and they might not be able to jump a decade forward to where my heart is at right now. And so, how do I help another believer take their next step instead of casting them aside because they're not where I'm at in this area? There might be other areas of faith that they're 10 years ahead of me because the Lord has developed that out in them. But I think we can be, and I sense this temptation even in myself, in our church partnerships, it can be tempting to meet a person or a church body and say, they just don't get it, and we're waiting for lightning to strike with just the right one. But if we have a heart of discipleship the way God tells us to, they might not get it. But what is their next step towards getting it? How do we get them on the path towards getting it and put up some guardrails to get them there? How do we pray for them and introduce them to stories that will soften their hearts in a new way? And now sometimes people's hearts aren't willing to be softened, and we do have to shake the dust off our feet and pick somebody else.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Or some that have said no, we really just want to like gather money once a year and hand out gift cards on the street. And that's like the only ministry we're gonna do. And and that's okay, but I think too, in ministry, we can be too quick to be like, they don't get it, they're not a good volunteer, they're not a good church, and and forget that we might get it, quote unquote, but it's because God allowed us to and took us on the journey that we had over the last 10 years. I mean, think about how fundamentally you've been changed. Oh, goodness, your journey. And it wasn't in one day, it was over time, and it was the Lord breaking your heart and mending it over and over again, and it was obedience and saying yes, and then having him open your eyes again. And I think, I think I have been so fundamentally changed, and I want to remain in a soft-hearted posture towards those who still need to be changed in that area or who God's not done with yet.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's a beautiful response. And it made me want to be like you when I grew up.
SPEAKER_01Don't want that. I'm the one who said I wanted to die during I am also a hot mess center friend. Yeah, to make something of I want him to use me somehow.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, but but but I think it's from that place where what I heard you say was like, I recognize that I recognize my own struggles and my own brokenness and my own heart of stone, and that my me recognizing my own stuff, me looking at the the plank that's in my own eye, like whatever, right? Like if we want to throw that in there, has given me actual compassion and grace and mercy for other people to have the same journey that I did, and that they don't have to be where I where I am now today, they can be where they are today, and that there's grace for both of these things. And um let's wrap it up with this. Like, if you could give somebody a first step, maybe there's a pastor listening to this, or somebody that's not a pastor that that is just at their church that has said, I've always felt called to, and and people I think would say it like this every time, right? And you you addressed this kind of at the beginning. I always felt called to foster care or adoption. So they would say that. I've always wanted to foster or adopt, I we hear it all the time. How do you give them a first step towards family preservation and and doing something in the realm of um caring for the the orphan, the widow, the marginalized senses? And I'm and I'm grouping it like that, not because that's specifically you get, but because of the true religion verse in the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What would be your first step if you could give it to somebody?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I mean, I don't know if this is the right answer or not, but I think relationship is the most transformational thing in this world. You gotta go have a friendship that is not in your same socioeconomic status and race. Like go be in relationship with somebody whose lived experience is different than yours, and you'll start to crack wide open and stop kind of just reaffirming your own beliefs, but go be in relationship with somebody else. I think you need to be unapologetic to like look into what ministries are taking place in your city and say, Lord, how can I serve what way that you want me to serve? Because I know that you have called me to serve. One of our host families here, um, her and her husband, she's on staff now, but when they started being a host family, her husband's a doctor. They're very like well-to-do, successful, happy Christian family. And they in their 30s had a total moment of repentance that they were not living out God's heart for those in poor at all, or for those who are poor at all. And um had like totally missed that that whole piece of Christian living and were like out of a heart of repentance, came and started working with the ministry. And so take a look inside and see are you are you so busy building like a Christian fortress that you have forgotten to listen to what God says and the look at how Jesus lived when he was here? Um, so look in, look into what's going on in your city, what you can be involved in. You can go on our website, the website, upstreamcollab.org, and we would be happy to hop on a call with you. We want to see family preservation started all over this country in all different ways. And we'll do an a half hour exploration call and see is your church ready to launch a family preservation ministry? Maybe you have a heart for um the fatherless in your city and you want to work on um creating connective relationships with the disengaged dads uh that are in the city around you. And you, and there's a lot of ways you could get started on that that I won't go into here, but or maybe you have a heart to start a child hosting ministry or um see the church wrap around families who've chosen life or who are struggling still with whether or not to choose life. How can how can we practically support them, not just go vote a certain way? Um and so I think there's a ton of things you can do that we're happy to walk through with you, but also go to the go to the word, go to what's locally happening already in your city and be in relationship with some people who are not your circle of like-minded friends, but maybe have a really different life story than you. And just get started down that path. Like you don't need to jump 10 years in or feel behind. You can have, you can have a heart of repentance, like that couple that I was telling you about, but uh you can also just take the first step into asking the Lord to open up that piece of your heart that maybe is still a little bit of heart of stone.
SPEAKER_02Begin the process of popping your own bubble, like begin, take ownership for stepping outside of your comfort zone a little bit and and popping your socioeconomic bubble. Yeah, I love that. I it's it is um that's a fantastic piece of advice. Okay. Um, at the end of every episode, we do a lightning round question. Do you want to do that with me?
SPEAKER_00Ooh, so excited.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_00Um lightning round trivia or questions about myself?
SPEAKER_02Just uh three quick questions.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_02Easy, no pressure, answer as fast as you can. Okay. First question: what is on your nightstand?
SPEAKER_01Um my chargers and a lamp. It's not very exciting.
SPEAKER_02So you are a clean nightstand person.
SPEAKER_01I am a clean nightstand person. Now, I don't know how accurate this is. So I have one of those like little ottoman things that the top lifts off and there's a case in inside.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01And it is filled with about seven or eight books that I am partway through all of them. They're not technically on my nightstand.
SPEAKER_02Perfect. I'll take it. That's fantastic. Um, okay. Second question, uh, right on topic. What books or other podcasts are you loving right now? And feel free to plug your own.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yes. So we have a podcast in Columbus called The Pod at My Village, which is like 50% nonsense and 50% family preservation. So we just laughed a lot and then we'll talk about like some really serious stuff similar to what you and I have been talking about today. Um, and what other podcasts do I like? I like some very not holy ones. Is that gonna ruin a thing for you? I really like Smartless, it's not very performing. Have you listened to it?
SPEAKER_02It's hilarious.
SPEAKER_01It's so funny.
SPEAKER_00It's like my guilty pleasure podcast.
SPEAKER_02It's not, I am, I am not like a street, I'm not your streamlined evangelical Christian. I live, I live on outside of those lines.
SPEAKER_01Well, I just like, yeah, I really like to laugh. I think that you have to kind of have, if you're gonna have the deep well of sorrow that you sometimes have in this ministry, you gotta have joy. You gotta have joy. It's how you survive. And I think it's really healthy. And I would say our staff is regularly either laughing or crying, and yeah, I love that about us. Um books. I'm reading uh a John Mark Comer book.
SPEAKER_02Practicing the Way.
SPEAKER_01I started practicing the way last year and I love it. No, it's called like God Has a Name or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01It is really good, even though I'm terrible at remembering the name of it. Um gosh, I wish I could think of all of them off the top of my head. Our staff is like passionate. So if you follow us on the My Village Ministries on social media, we are we regularly put like what is the staff reading. We all love reading. We have like a shared library and like a checkout list so we can like check. Buy one copy of them and share them.
SPEAKER_02Oh my God, this is fantastic.
SPEAKER_01What happened to you is like a really solid non-Christian Oprah Winfrey's. Yes. Um, like understanding people's stories and how they lend themselves to how maybe their actions, what they're like today. That's a really good one.
SPEAKER_02That's awesome. Well, Melody, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It has been a real delight having you.
SPEAKER_01It has been super fun for me too.
SPEAKER_02I can't believe I get to see you in a couple weeks. This is gonna be so fun.