Meet a Scientist Turned Minister

What happens when a scientist-in-training follows a quiet tug into ministry and discovers his real work is showing up where life breaks open? 

We sit down with an anonymous pastor who talks candidly about standing at the edges of joy and grief. He rejects the notion that “everything happens for a reason” and reframes comfort as presence, not ease.

The conversation traces a journey from early jobs that exposed small-time power plays to a non-denominational church shaped by formation over spectacle. We explore how diverse perspectives replace ego-driven models.  

We widen the lens to science and politics without the usual culture-war shouting. From Stephen Hawking to Francis Collins, he explains why an ordered universe can intensify faith rather than oppose it. On policy, he makes a case for subsidiarity and local action

For anyone eyeing ministry, his advice is blunt and hopeful: only go if the call won’t leave you alone. Presence is the assignment; people are the point.

If this conversation challenged you or gave you language for something you felt but couldn’t name, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review. What does comfort as presence look like in your world?

Want to be interviewed? You can remain anonymous. Voice distortion now available. Email or Text us!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. I'm Elsa Barbie. And I'm Don Andrews. We have been friends since sixth grade. Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out. I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion. Meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.

SPEAKER_02 0:45

Every episode, we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work. And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.

SPEAKER_02 1:03

Equal Parts Informative and Tittilly. This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map. Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Hey, thanks for being with us today. We'd like to start with asking you what your very first job was.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

My very first job was selling newspapers at Tripsons door-to-door when I was 15.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

It was the only way I could make money at 14 where people would hire me. And uh and that's obviously ancient of days selling newspapers. But uh did it for a number of months, made a lot of money, and the better I got at it, the worse I felt about myself. Because I would be talking people that already took one or two newspaper subscriptions they weren't using into getting a third.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

That is rough. Nice.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

What did you spend the money on?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I spent the money on a brand new sharp color television, which was probably I think it was like 400 bucks and maybe 13 inches. Now you could get like a 57-inch or TV for the same price.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

You got a 75-inch flat screen.

SPEAKER_00 2:20

Yeah. It wasn't the wisest use of all my hard-earned labor.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

And how long were you doing that job for?

SPEAKER_00 2:27

I did about six months.

SPEAKER_02 2:29

And then what was your job right after that?

SPEAKER_00 2:31

And then I was actually bagging groceries in in our local community, which also I proved to be fine. But it was actually that was my first place actually of getting exposed to crazy workplace dynamics. Like the manager of the grocery store, who's a hard ass and not a very nice guy, was being came pretty clear. He was dating or trying to date one of the attractive young checkers, and he would like hover around her position. And if me or any of the other younger guys were ever talking to her, he would call us into his office and ream us about something entirely unrelated. So it was the first time I realized that all the politics and even a grocery store.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

And how did you end up in your current field?

SPEAKER_00 3:12

My current field, so I had science and engineering background, did consulting for a number of years, was trying to pivot to an academic life and did grad school for a number of years. And then the short of it is a friend of mine was starting a church and asked me to help him. And so I told him that I'd be happy to help and support him, but I didn't want to have any responsibility that I didn't need to have. And then that grew into seeing the value of the work. And so I would describe myself as reluctantly but happily going in the direction of ministry and nonprofit work. So it was, I don't regret the decision, but it was never something I had aspirations for. So I did that four years of grad school and then put everything on hold to go and help start a church. Which, if you had asked me that anytime before that, I would have bet any money I had against that outcome.

SPEAKER_02 4:04

Yeah, it sounds more like a pivot, not a halt, unless you're gonna go back.

SPEAKER_00 4:08

No, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 4:09

You would have bet your$400 sharp TV money, but this would not have happened.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

I imagine if I had put that in something real, it could have made me lots of money.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Amazon stock.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Way back in the day.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Tell us more about what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

I do, I I pastor a church that I helped start about 17 years ago, and then I'm involved with a bunch of other nonprofit work and then do some kind of chaplaincy type stuff in the marketplace. And so a lot of it's really just the difficulty and the privilege of it is being with people at the highest highs and the lowest lows of life. And so that comes with anything. So a lot of it's fun and enjoyable, but a lot of it's really challenging and difficult. So you could go from literally doing a wedding to doing a funeral or going to like the happy birth of a child to to the premature birth and death of another child. So it's just really just being present with people in the midst of all those times can ultimately it's taxing, it's hard, but it is ultimately a privilege to get to be invited into those spaces. But I had been doing volunteer work in a church. When I helped get that church going that my friend was doing, I started doing preaching and doing stuff that he needed me to do. So I it's not quite an internship, but it functionally was like an internship, getting exposed to what the reality of that work was. And then when we decided, my wife and I, that was the direction that we wanted to go. I did some additional kind of ministry preparation. So it wasn't like an immediate commitment. It's okay, let's explore this and figure out what it looks like. And so we spent over a year in that kind of phase before stepping out and doing it full time.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Did you grow up in the church?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

I grew up Catholic. But for me, I would say it was probably more or as much of a functional like ethnicity than it was. I believe we were German, Irish, and Catholic. So that's how it was for me. It was just we were born that way and we're supposed to die that way. So that was the way I looked at it. And so if someone had asked me if I believed in the Bible, I would have said yes. If someone asked me what was in the Bible, I would have said, I think Jesus.

SPEAKER_02 6:11

Pages? Yeah. So when you say that you grew up Catholic, can we ask what denomination is your church?

Faith Background And Non-Denom Choice

SPEAKER_00 6:18

We're non-denominational, but a lot of that's because we're here for San Francisco. And so we're not trying to be affiliated with an outside group or take on someone's politics. We just want to love and serve neighbors, and we believe, like pretty simply, that Jesus is who he said he is, and believe his teaching is good and helpful, and so want people to focus on that. And almost without fail, like outside denominations and organizations come with baggage that you didn't generate, but you have to deal with. Such as Oh, I mean they take a political stance or when a leader falls or when they're embroiled in something that's really important to them but is of absolutely no relevance to your ability to love and serve your neighbor in the city, then that gets complicated.

unknown 7:01

No, no.

SPEAKER_01 7:03

What's the best part about your job?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

Being with people at the high points. But and I said too, like at the low points, I actually think weddings are a blast. And so we usually do some marriage prep stuff. And so being able to sit with people as they're thinking about getting married and ask them why what excites you, what scares you, where do you feel strong, and where do you feel like you want to shore up some things and what how do you come into this based on your background? Because a lot of us, like we were all of our families are broken to some extent, even our parents did their best, but that's the reality. And helping people look at okay, what am I carrying into my marriage that's really helpful? And what I what do I not want to carry in or repeat, and have people able to talk through those things? My main responsibility there is just to help the couple have the conversations they need to have to get them ready to be married because marriage is awesome, but as you guys know, marriage is hard.

unknown 7:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

Was there ever a time in your present career that you just felt at any time that I'm just I'm not cut out for this after all?

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Like imposter syndrome, maybe?

Joys Of Weddings And Marriage Prep

Crisis Calls And Human Limits

SPEAKER_00 8:01

Yeah, I think the there's a number of times when just some of the low point stuff, just the get in call at 12:30 after midnight and sitting at a bedside and the mom's about to give birth to a premature baby that she knows won't survive. And so that's it feels they want to pray and talk. And I'm what do you say other than grieve with them and pray for their comfort? But that's just so that's where I don't know that any human being that could feel like prepared for that moment, or within pretty short time frame of that, getting a call. I don't usually have my ringer on, but I had my ringer on for some reason. Getting a call at 4:30 a.m. and a dear couple that were older friends, and he'd the husband had been struggling with cancer for a while and he had passed away, and she's I'm the first one she calls and live down the street and get there when the body's still warm and encouraged her to go upstairs so I could just call her son and we could tend to it. But just taking the the watch and the necklace off of the still warm, you know, that you don't feel prepared or adequate, and that's when you just tell people you just tell people that. Like I'm not here to give you answers, I'm just here to be with you and to assure you that God loves you and I'm not I have no answer for this. This is horrible, and death is wrong and broken and terrible. When you're at moments of crisis like that, what I've I don't know how long ago I did it, but I basically just tell people my responsibility, my job is to try to help you connect with Jesus more. And I my job is not to solve your problem or to be there for you. So if you're if this is dealing with death or if you're dealing with a crisis marriage situation, like the degree to which you work on yourself and engage God, it's gonna go well. And the degree to which you don't, it's not gonna go well. And I legitimately don't want the credit or the blame. I'm just here to help you. And so I think that freedom has been good. Because I think that you can have this thing early on where, okay, if I just can say the right thing or have the right kind of wisdom, then I'm gonna change everything. And then you realize you you can't change another human being for good or bad. That's all in their hands, that's between them and God and how they want to approach their life. And so you can help, but you can't change somebody. I've got raised three kids and I can you can shape your kids, but you can't change your kids. So I think that's just probably the word for it's probably humility, just knowing what your limitations are, and then and the more you embrace them, the easier it is. Because otherwise you can't emotionally bear all the stuff that you come in into the middle of.

SPEAKER_02 10:27

How do you feel about death?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

I think that death is both like the result of a broken and fallen world, but it's also the end of pain and the connection with God. There's a scripture that says when you're absent from the body, you're present with the Lord, and that's a comfort. I believe that. And so there's I but I can still hate death and not be afraid of death, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah. What do you think about uh people who say that everything happens for a reason, as though that's some kind of comfort?

SPEAKER_00 10:57

I think it's bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

You're allowed to cut on this podcast.

Comfort As Presence, Not Escape

SPEAKER_00 11:01

Yeah, you're on that. I think it's fine. Yeah, but I think it's just like the I think that's false comfort. Because you don't that's just not you don't know, you have no idea. And so I think embracing the concept of mystery, I think there's the interesting concept for me, just the way I would approach faith is, and I've probably learned this more. I go to Malawi about once a year, and like literally among the poorest of the poor on the planet, but also some of the most content and happy people on the planet. And people that do the short-term trips, there's a lot of challenges of that. So I don't like that, but we go back to the same village year in in, year out, and the and we're there to serve in the way that the local leaders want us to serve. And so the what what they like to do is they take Westerners and go visit orphans that are often living alone in these houses and vulnerable. And if they can have Westerners spend an hour or two with those orphans, it both encourages the orphans, but it raises their profile in the community. So we're not there for photo ops, we're not there to build a project and feel good about ourselves and go. We're literally there to be used in the way that they want us to be used. So that's been good. But anyway, I would say, like in our culture, the concept is like comfort is like the absence of struggle. And I think from the lived experience of people like in rural Malawi and the gist you get from the epistles in the New Testament is the real definition of comfort, the lasting definition of comfort is the presence of God with you in the midst of your struggles. Because you can't escape them, they're always going to come. And so what do you do when they come? I don't know where I learned it, probably from some kind of philosophy thing or something. But there was a the categories I think are really helpful are normative and non-normative. Like the normal way that life works is like you go about things and you drop an egg and it smashes on the floor. But I do believe God can intervene in a non-normative way. And often you can't see or understand that until after it's happened. So I think those categories are helpful to me because it's like when people are always living for this non-normative experience and expecting something, it can tend to get superstitious and they can get super discouraged. Or when people act like they're in complete control of their lives, that's also an illusion, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah. What are some myths about your profession that make you crazy?

Myths Of Pastors And Emotional Toll

SPEAKER_00 13:06

You know, and I think a lot of pastors can play into this. It's like Bible answer man kind of thing or being the expert on everything. So I think there's the and again, I think that some pastors can posture and do that and act like they have all the answers or teaching through a text and they're quoting stuff from different languages that they're not super proficient in, but they've written it to make it sound like they are. And so I think I think the it's a it's an earned thing that like this guy knows, but all everything and whatever else. I just am very honest and direct with people about what I think I know and what I don't know, and try to be the same person if I'm preaching as I am if we're grabbing a drink or grabbing a coffee or whatever else. I don't want to have these different personas. So I think a lot of the negative stuff is probably earned. And then and then I think people probably don't always understand. People that are in people facing jobs where they're caring for others understand, but I think people don't understand the always the emotional toil or drawdown that you can have when you're just always oriented towards other people and serving them. We did. We had a I had a our church, and me personally had an amazing opportunity years back to work with a bunch of the unhoused or homeless people in Golden Gate Park. And so there was a group out there that was doing weekly pancakes and coffee. And so I'd be out there every week. I was out there every week for three years in the park multiple times a year, just helping people in all kinds of different ways. And towards the end of that time, started to realize the toll that, again, a privilege, but started to realize a toll it was having on me. And there are all kinds of crazy incidents because a lot of people that are in the park in Golden Gate have yet to meet one that doesn't come from a significant background of physical or sexual abuse that usually led to some kind of being removed from a home or being or running away. And so there's a lot of brokenness and a lot of lack of maturity that can come with it. And so crazy stuff happens. We, my wife's parents, we went with them years back to for their anniversary, we were in like going on a cruise. And so we were at like downtown Disney and Orlando, and a neighbor from where our church building was calls me up and says, There's multiple ambulances and a cop car outside of your building. Do you have any idea what's going on? I was like, Nope. So called the guy in the church that I knew lived near there, and this guy was a musician and a bouncer, so this is a big old Tongan guy. So he's I'll get some of my boys and we'll go sort it out. So then he calls me back about 20 minutes later, and turns out we we would do some feeding and some emergency housing down below, but someone had broken in, people that we knew, but they had broken in and then gotten drunk, and then two of the guys were fighting over one of the women and got in a fight in the bathroom, and the guy hit his head on the toilet, and there's blood everywhere, and there's all the police. So those are the kind of things that you just don't think. And then at the same time, we're doing emergency housing. I come in on a Sunday morning and there's dog crap down the center aisle of the sanctuary because someone, again, unauthorized entry in the building, and then stuff that you're like, oh, we can just love people and just do our best to come alongside them and everything will work out. And that's just it's just not true.

Homeless Outreach: Burnout And Breakthroughs

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Yeah. What's what would you say is the best part about your job?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

I think when you see, so there's one at the end of that time, I was talking about like burnout. The you know, I felt like I had a couple relationships with a couple of the guys that had been. We'd have people over to our home and uh have dinner and hear their stories, and people could shower and get clean clothes or whatever else. And so our boys have grown up, not with like random, faceless, nameless, homeless people, but with what they would call their friends in the park. And so people they actually knew by name. And so there were two of the guys who decided I can't go in the park every week anymore, multiple times. I'm I don't, it's not working for me anymore. And and uh, but there were two guys that we just invested relationship in, and one of them came to me and said, Hey, this is November. He says, I turned 40 in January. If I'm not off the streets by then, I think I'm gonna be dead. Can you help me get a job? And I'd had him doing stuff for the help, helping him with catering events. We did some charitable events at the church building and repair some windows. I knew he had a good work ethic. He just had a really crappy upbringing, brilliant guy. I knew him, I trusted him. I'd known him for a couple of years by that point in time. So ended up helping him put together a resume. And then we had some people in the church had connections to a local grocery store, and so they got him like a favorable intro to an interview, and he got in there and was working his way up. A month or so into it, there he was doing the late shift, and so he's I can't take the job anymore. I I don't have any place to put my dog. And for a lot of homeless people, the dogs are family, the only creature on earth they trust. And so I said, Here's a key to our front gate, just put the dog in our garage or backyard, boys will play with it, walk it, and then you're fine. So then he'd get back at midnight, which was fine, but then take his dog, want to play with his dog, walk his dog, and then take his camping gear, haul it down to the park, and then so not get to bed till 2, 3 a.m. and then repeat the thing the whole day. So it didn't seem very sustainable. And then it started getting really cold and rainy. And it was actually my wife's idea. She's like, I don't feel good about him going out in the rain late at night. So I had an office in the back of our garage that we put a little bed in and just told them, hey, stay as long as you need to, and we're gonna walk with you through all this. And uh stayed for two years, two plus years, which is not what we had anticipated. But it was interesting to be like in terms of it's like homelessness in California, especially San Francisco. I think we spend 65k a year per person. And it's not about money and it's not about resources, it's about community and almost like a rehumanizing process. So these are people that have been like cast out, broken, beaten, and and they need human contact. So like zero to six months, he was like, Okay, I'm gonna save money, I'm gonna get a car and I'll live out of my car. And then six to 12 months, this is ideation, six to 12 months, he's like, I can't live in a car. I need to be able to shower, I need to get a camper van or something. And then like 12 to 18 months in, he's gonna live in a vehicle. I need to just get a room, I can rent. And then about two years in, he's I'm gonna, I need to find a stable room, but the cost of living in San Francisco might not make sense for me long term. And you just saw that process. But midway through that process, as our we spent time, ate meals together, knew the family, we would ask him to take our boys to the playground to go. And I didn't realize we trusted him, he's how much that had an impact on him. He told me later, the idea that you would trust him with like your kids to go take him to the park. So that that was super powerful. So just seeing that kind of transformation that just comes from community and human contact and uh yeah, and which led to another probably the craziest thing that's ever happened to me in ministry life was burying a dog six feet deep under a tree along the 18th fairway at 10 30 p.m. at night.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

What?

Community As Rehumanization

SPEAKER_00 19:35

And it was his dog that had fallen and died, and he called me and is just distraught and like really wasted and not doing well. Met him up there, and there's coyotes on the area, so trying to figure out how deep I gotta bury it to make sure that they don't dig it up. I just remember digging a six-foot trench on a golf course under under a tree late at night is not something I ever imagined I would be doing in my life. I think the humanity and people, that idea in the it's really the idea I would argue that like all the human rights comes from, that every human being is entitled to dignity and worth and honor and love, a Jesus idea. I would argue if Jesus hadn't walked the earth, like everything would look like the Roman Empire because there wasn't dignity and there wasn't recognition. Tribes took care of their own, but there was no universal dignity. And so when you come alongside someone and hear their story, that idea of universal dignity comes through so powerfully.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

What do you think some of the religious and church leaders around these days who are centering faith in themselves and their their ego and their persona?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

I think it's bad. I also think I am this kind of theme of recognizing my limits and what I'm called to, I learned to say a number of years ago, like a professing Christian, because I don't know where they're at or what their personal walk is or if they're a hypocrite or if they're just having a bad day or a bad week, and it's not mine to figure it out. But I can say that doesn't sound like Jesus or look like Jesus. So I think that's a lot of stuff where there is a lot of that's like kind of any field, people can be in it for selfish gain. And when they are, the long-term fruit of that's gonna be negative.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

Yeah. Would you think of your church? How is the membership? Has it increased, decreased over the past couple of years? And if so, why do you think?

Universal Dignity And Hard Moments

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Uh it's grown from the beginning, and but the city of San Francisco turns over. The we're still trying to figure out what the new patterns are, but prior to COVID, the city turns over 25 to 30% per year. And so that is reflected. A lot of people come here for undergrad, grad school, med school, residencies, these the by their very nature, they're temporary kind of things. And so that's some of that aspect, but a lot of it too is like there's all these exit points from the city because life in the city can be hard. So your first job, second job, you get married, you have kids, your kids enter school. There's all these kind of natural exit points where you think life might be easier sometime. Else. And so that is another natural point of it. And so, like our 10, we started 10 years in from when we started, I just did church has always been around 200 or less, but I did a tally of in the first 10 years of the church, people that have been meaningfully involved. They're serving and they're giving time and they're there. They're part of the community. In the first 10 years, there had been 450 that had been with us for a period and then moved on.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

Wow.

Ego, Leadership, And Fruit Over Hype

SPEAKER_00 22:26

Which is also, but then I mapped it just for the we did a 10th anniversary kind of celebration, but I mapped it to show the cities like all over the country and all over the world where all these people had gone. So there's a unique privilege to it as well. They invest in people, try to help them be as healthy and move it in as good of a direction as possible and almost send them off in a good way. So I think that's and then I think too, there's probably, at least in Silicon Valley and the tech world, there's a lot more. Some of it's probably AI and these questions around what it means to be human. Some of it's probably the extreme division in the country that's just led the younger generation in particular to ask deeper questions about what they believe and what life's all about. And so we've had more of a concentration of people exploring faith maybe in the last year than we've ever had in the history of the church.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

What do you think their number one concern is when it comes to their faith?

SPEAKER_00 23:18

I think what should they have faith in? And is Jesus real? And do they have adequate answers for the challenges that are in front of them in their lives and those kinds of things that a lot of people that have come in actually don't come from a faith background at all. Probably forever ago it would have been people who were maybe raised in a church and they slowly come back to it. But increasingly it's people that have never had any exposure to it, and they're just and they've never had any exposure to much of any kind of spirituality, but they realize, man, there's got to be more to life than this, and what is it? And so those are fun conversations to have. And then San Francisco is as long as yeah, is an interesting place too, because a lot of really accomplished, highly educated people come here with a lot of ambition. So I think that probably is driving it too. They're trying to figure out lots of things in life. And so the it's interesting because it's not like a normal cross-section of humanity you might get in your average suburb or other city. It's people that are all like super driven, super highly educated, incredible accomplishments.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Have you had to evolve as a church in comparison to what's going on with the political stance and women wanting more of a voice in churches?

Transience And Growth In San Francisco

New Seekers, Tech Culture, And Questions

SPEAKER_00 24:33

I think it's it our church to we do a thing that we call like a church council every year. So we have all the men and women in leadership come in and they'll spend a day retreat. Sometimes we give them some prep materials, they'll spend a day retreat on what we think the next year's theme is gonna be. And then a big part of what shapes the ministry in the church is then their input and it's really shaped. So it's not me exerting my kind of control or will, it's really us together deciding what we're gonna do. So I have a responsibility to provide some leadership in that. But then, so we've got four people on staff. We've got myself and an associate pastor, and then we've got two women that serve as ministry directors for us that probably lead and direct most of what we actually do operationally and day in and day out. So yeah, I think it's been it's not been like part of the great thing about being in a city like this, too, is if you are deciding you want to try to be a Christian or follow Jesus, it's not because there's a cultural advantage to do it. And so you've people tend to be more well thought out, and there's and I think too, we have placed a high value on not only socioeconomic and ethnic diversity, but also just diversity of perspective. Like we should be able to have different ideas and perspectives, and like the identity in Jesus should be big enough to push through those things. So it's not that we have to agree on everything, it's that we can have disagreement in a way that's actually healthy and good. So ideally, and this is not the case in a lot of places, but ideally, you should have people on a Sunday shouldn't all be in a bubble. They should have different backgrounds and be able to learn from each other, hopefully. A lot of churches got embroiled in a lot of stuff around Black Lives Matter and just different DEI stuff and things like that. But we had that language of like how to deal with the racial injustice in the history of our country and how do we understand history and scripture and what we're supposed to do. So we had those conversations from the very beginning.

SPEAKER_01 26:28

If you had a magic wand and you could change anything about your profession or religion in this country, or what would you do?

SPEAKER_00 26:40

I would I would have every church genuinely focus on how to help people pattern their life after Jesus and not be concerned about attendance and money and not buy into modern methodologies. I think so many church services today, and God can work through anything, but I think so many churches' services today really are more like a concert followed by a TED talk than they are of environments of real formation and community. And so I would love to see more formation and community and people like really wanting to love and serve others and grow in those ways.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Do you think that would be as effective as bring at bringing in younger generations as some of the rock band extravaganzas?

Women’s Voices And Shared Leadership

SPEAKER_00 27:28

It's interesting, and like it's my kids are my kids, so they're you know, I'm in some ways my younger two like me in every good and bad way. They're I would say appropriately cynical, others might not describe it that way. And so they hate that stuff and they see through it and they're like, I don't want to be entertained. Because if I want to be entertained, I can go to a better concert than this. It's just like a cheap invitation. So let's go to a proper rock concert rather than this. So I think that's where there's an old adage, I don't know who came up with it, but it's what you win them with, you win them too. And so if you are cultivating consumers, then you're forming and shaping consumers, and that's not ultimately something that's gonna lead to like self-sacrifice and love and wanting to follow Jesus. I was with an older pastor, this guy that's been writing books for 25 years on all this stuff, he's like in his 70s now. He uh he called it worship tamin.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

How do you separate the two from politics, science, and church? Actually, how do you separate the three?

Formation Over Entertainment

Science, Faith, And Collins’ Journey

SPEAKER_00 28:25

So for me, they're they should be appropriately intertwined. And I'll show you what I mean by that. I think the uh so when I was like exploring faith on my own for the first time when I was like 14 or so, I was also reading Stephen Hawking's brief history of time. And so, in reading that book, and he's asking this question about like origins of the universe, and he is agnostic and leaves it open. He's like, He's I don't know if you can believe in a supreme being. I suppose you could. And I'm reading the Bible at the same time, and I'm like, these actually seem to go together really well. And so for me, like science has always been something I've been fascinated by and pursued and excited by, but it's always been something that's reinforced my faith. Because like the primary tenet, if there is one, is right as cause and effect. And if the universe is the effect, like what's the cause? And I don't believe in an uncaused cause. So I think that's I think acting like science rejects Christianity like out of like natural course is not even true historically. It's more of a 20th century kind of thing. Because you look at unless you believe in an ordered universe, you don't study it. And so, like a lot of the greatest scientists in in Europe and other contexts came from Isaac Newton would say he saw himself as like thinking God's thoughts after him or exploring these deeper things. Okay, if God created stuff, what how? And then they're asking these kinds of questions. So the reason they went to look for the laws of nature is because they believe in the laws of God. And so I think that separation has been unfortunate and doesn't need to be. There's organizations, spent a lot of time with a guy, Dr. Francis Collins, that was the head of the Human Genome Project, which is like one of the greatest scientific accomplishments of all time. And then he was the head of the NIH. And he then he comes to faith, his story is amazing, but he's also a medical doctor and he's just a brilliant guy. And when he was practicing medicine, one of his patients who was terminal asked him, What do you think happens after I die? And he gave her kind of a very like clinical answer. And she's like, just I want to know what you think. And he didn't have an answer. And he's like, Oh, I need to have an answer for that question. And that began him exploring and figuring stuff out. So I did an interview with him a while back where he talks about how science went from being an obstacle to faith to being something that reinforces his faith. And I think like on the politics side, I think it's it, if you look at the fundamental tenets of love the Lord you God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself, there's something like inherently political about that, like how you orient your life is to love and serve your neighbor. And so thinking through who can I vote for that's going to best, regardless of what their party is, like best affect that and what kind of causes or initiatives should I get behind or not get behind. And I think like our city, I think has what I would call like a massively deficient understanding of what it means to be a human being. And that leads to bad policies. So what we do with the addictive population down in the tenderloin in our city is some form of palliative care where we give them clean needles and free drugs and watch them slowly die in the street, and then we call that compassion because our city officials can't imagine what it would look like to have those any of those individuals clean and contributing back to society and renewed. And because they can't imagine that or see that, they choose bad policy decisions. And so I think for me, I can't figure out the national level because that's just a freaking nightmare. But I can figure out like how to engage locally. There's an old, it's actually an old Catholic teaching, although it's on the Protestant side too, from like the 19th century. It's follows on to like urbanization because it was really easy to understand who you're responsible for and who you're connected to when you're in a village. You got your family and you're all together, and you guys all know each other for many generations. And so when you come into these urban environments, there's all these questions of who's my neighbor now, and how do I figure it out? And so they had this kind of idea of subsidiarity, which is all these like concentric circles. So the middle of it's who's most responsible for you, and then like your family, your extended family, your community, the city, the state, and then the national government if there is one. So you can imagine putting whatever values you want in those things. But the primary idea is that the greatest, the most effective solutions with the highest degree of accountability and effectiveness are going to be as close to the middle as possible. And so I can put my focus on where I can have the most influence. And that's not in a national election, but that for my local district supervisor, that's actually immediately impactful. Or my school board, that's immediately impactful. And so I put my focus there and uh try not to get drawn into the crazy on the national scene.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

You've had some great stories, and our listeners always want to know what is the most unforb unforgettable thing that you have witnessed at work in any job you've ever had.

Politics Localized: Love Of Neighbor

SPEAKER_00 32:52

I was doing work for a school district in San Diego County, and they were trying to get schools built, and there were some environmental issues they needed to get by. And so I helped them find a solution that minimized the cost of the district because that maximizes the amount of money they can spend on students. And uh, but it was a solution that bypassed the state regulators, and I had to sit down and negotiate with the state regulators. I found a solution that was good for the environment, good for the school, and cost no money, but I closed them out of the loop and they were visibly and then verbally angry with me. And that was like stuck with me forever. I'm like, oh man, these guys actually don't care about what their jobs are supposed to be, protecting the environment, serving the state. They care about their power and position. And so that is stuck with me in a really bad way forever. So then like set, I wouldn't say it set regulators as as opposition, but it did. I'm like, okay, if these guys aren't interested in doing good, I'll go around them every time. Not illegally. Everything I did was legal. But how old you guys were when you realized that like school teachers aren't inherently competent.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

I think I was like when you realize that.

SPEAKER_00 33:58

I think it was like the seventh grade when I was realized they're just broken human beings.

SPEAKER_01 34:03

I was just gonna like a back to the philosophical. I the older I get, and maybe this is the yoga training in me, but it I come, I'm coming to see the world as in two buckets. And in one bucket, there are people who are primarily scarcity-minded, and in the other, there are people with an abundant mindset. And I the politics that we see unfolding in our country right now really feels heavily in the scarcity mindset bucket. And I just wondered how those concepts fit into your worldview and your philosophy and maybe your teachings.

Scarcity, Abundance, And Generosity

SPEAKER_00 34:35

I think they fit well. So I think that's because I think what I would put in there, like the abundance mindset, I think most consistently in the Christian story would manifest as generosity, your generosity of time, your generosity of your resources. And so when we are heading into COVID, the temptation for a lot of nonprofits and churches was to kind of like circle the wagons, protect ourselves, who knows what's going to happen to giving or whatever else. And we prayed through it and thought that God was calling us to lean into abundance and generosity. And so we gave away more than we've ever given away during the three years of COVID to just all kinds of different causes. We made grants available where just any member of the church could identify a need in their neighborhood and just apply for a grant and then go and award that grant to a neighbor. And so there's a lot of really cool manifestations like that. So I think that's something that I totally agree with. I think obviously you want to be a good steward and be responsible, but I think I would agree with you that like a scarcity mindset is like destructive to your humanity.

SPEAKER_01 35:36

Yeah. What is your church stance on ice and ice going into churches and hospitals and schools?

Immigration, Dignity, And Sacred Space

SPEAKER_00 35:45

We we don't have it in San Francisco, and so we haven't had to take a stance on it. I think it's just been horrible to see. I think the what I'm still trying to figure out and haven't done enough research on it, is how Obama managed to deport way more illegal immigrants than Trump's even come close to, but seems to have done it humanely and without all the craziness. So I think that kind of stuff is like I think everyone would in general support. Like if there's a murderer or like a felon that's on the loose, yeah, get them. But going after anyone and everyone, there's a church in the city, Spanish-speaking church, that two of their guys that have been actually more than that now, have been long-term. They work construction, they're trying to do some process of naturalization, and they got nabbed like on their way to work. No criminal record, nothing out. I'm like, this is just like the wrong focus of any of this stuff. And in general, I think people should respect the sacred space of anyone, whether that's a synagogue or mosque or church. And I don't think anyone has the right to go in and disrupt that, whether that's the government or some private organization. I think that's just I think that's it just shows that you're willing to rob someone else of their dignity. And I think that's I think that's horrible. Yeah, there's I have a friend that's she's a phenomenal like scholar out of Oxford. She's got a book coming out, I think this year, that's looking at the two-pronged dehumanizing effect of cancel culture and what she's calling cruelty culture, and looking at how both undermine someone's dignity and humanity.

SPEAKER_01 37:11

It's such a relevant topic right now.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

If if someone's thinking about entering your field of ministry, what should they know?

SPEAKER_00 37:19

Oh, I think it I would say that it's it should that you should have a sense of, not to put this in like superstitious kind of terminology, but you should have a sense of overwhelming, like divine call, like you have to do it, you can't not do it. Because it's a it's an awful career choice.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

That's my second question is did you choose this career or did this career choose you?

Calling, Cost, And What Sustains

SPEAKER_00 37:37

Oh no, it chose me and reluctantly went into it. Like I had no desire. I love and want to love and serve people, but I think for me, what I realized looking back on it is the desire to have my livelihood dependent upon like volunteer serving and volunteer giving was never something I wanted to do. But I think some of that's just like falling into the myth of, oh, I'm in control and I'm making my own money, and that's not that stuff's not really true either. You're never in full control and your money could disappear tomorrow no matter how much you have, all that kind of stuff. You guys know that.

SPEAKER_02 38:09

Yeah. What keeps you going in the good and the bad times?

SPEAKER_00 38:16

I think that abiding sense of call, like that I'm like I've been called by God to do this, and not like in a weird way, but in a just a quiet and peaceful way. It's almost this is the wrong analogy, but I'll use it anyway. It's almost I've been combat deployed to the front lines and there's work to be done. And if I ever felt like I was being called away from the front lines, then I can stop and think and wonder if I should be here. But if you're at the front lines and you start wondering if you should be there, you're gonna get shot and killed.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

So for me, it's like focus on the work that we have to do. And as long as I feel like that's the call and the direction, then I'll just I'll keep doing it until it's time to not do it.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Thank you for sharing your story with us. You've officially joined the ranks of the brave and of the bold. And with that. Thank you so much for being our great guest.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Thank you guys so much.

SPEAKER_01 39:05

That's it for this week's confession. We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling. If you've got a workplace confession of your own, we're all ears. Hit us up at our email address. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share. Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.

SPEAKER_01 39:30

Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild. This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.