Sacred Sitdowns
Sharing one’s personal story is sometimes hard, but it is holy. Sacred Sitdowns seeks to allow a safe space for faith-filled conversations with members and friends of Geist Christian Church. Hosts Kyle Brown and Danny Gulden hope that all those who hear will be enlightened and inspired. Listen with us. You’ll be glad you did.
Sacred Sitdowns
Rev. Chris Furr
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Danny and Kyle sit down with Rev. Chris Furr. He serves as senior minister at Covenant Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Cary, NC. Chris recently released the book Straight White Male and hosts a podcast with the same name. Chris is married to Katie, and they are the parents of two boys. Chris is an avid UNC Tar Heels and The Office Fan. In our conversation, we talk about how privilege (or lack thereof) shapes how we move through and see the world. Chris will enlighten and challenge you.
Let us tell you a story.
SPEAKER_01A story that will transform, enlighten, challenge, and change how we see the world. My name is Kyle Brown. And I'm Danny Goulden. And we'd like to welcome you to Sacred Sit Downs. A conversational podcast that explores how the Spirit of God moves within this world through the power of story.
SPEAKER_02In today's episode, we will sit down with a member or friend of Geist Christian Church as they share their dynamic, faith-filled story.
SPEAKER_01We hope you will be enlightened and inspired by the word shared today. This is Sacred Sit Downs. Well, good uh good day, Kyle. How are you doing? Danny, I'm doing great. How are you? I am doing wonderful. This is uh, we are actually on site. We are away from the office. We are on a uh peer group retreat this week in Nashville, Tennessee. And so we have the unique opportunity to sit down with some of our colleagues who are uh brilliant pastors and writers and thinkers and uh get their thoughts and record them. And so today we are here with the Reverend Chris Fur. Chris uh is one of uh uh both of our uh dearest friends. Chris is the pastor at Covenant Christian Church in Carey, North Carolina, just outside Raleigh. He is also the author of the book uh Straight White Mail, a faith-based guide to deconstructing your privilege and living with integrity. And he also hosts the podcast by the same name, Straight White Mail, that you can find on Apple or Spotify wherever you get your podcast. And we are, Chris, uh just very grateful to have you on today. Welcome.
SPEAKER_00Well, thanks for having me, guys. It's uh exciting. I've uh been able to listen to a few of the episodes that y'all have put together so far. I think it's uh an awesome idea. So it's fun to be on, be able to have this chance to do it in person.
SPEAKER_02Well, we appreciate it. And it it'll be good to, you know, talking about story, and and we'll get into your book here in a little bit about how your story has shifted or changed based on you know this deep dive of research that you've done on a very heady and difficult topic. Um, but first let's um let's get a little bit about who you are, what what your call story. How did you come into the um the position of pastor? Where did you find that call and and and what was that process like for you?
SPEAKER_00Well, I was born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina, um, right on the coast, and I was um dedicated and raised and baptized at uh first Christian church there. And uh when I was nine years old, David Shirley came to be our senior minister, which I know some folks in Indiana uh know David well. Um and so David was there from the time I was nine to the time I was eighteen. We had this wonderful season of vitality in the church, and the church was growing and exploring new things, and uh it was really a tight-knit community. I saw uh the strength of church and what church could be. Uh my mom says that when I was 15, I came home from a mission trip and said I was gonna be a pastor one day. I don't remember it that way, but moms are usually right. Moms are always right. Um, so I uh I felt that sense of call there um because I think I just saw the power of community. I mean, there were all these people that I normally saw only on Sunday mornings, um, briefly, especially not just youth, but other adults who were there uh working with us as youth and getting to know them and see them on a different level. And uh the church went some through some really traumatic deaths around that time, and I saw my parents' circle of friends in the church turn toward each other, draw closer together, and I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to spend all your time in an environment like this? And so that's where it uh where it kind of uh uh seed was planted, and then I went off to undergrad and did uh four years at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and as a religious studies major, which religious studies at a state university is not Sunday school. Uh so I was in, you know, studying American religious history and did you know what you were getting into when you majored in that, or did it open your eyes kind of even wider? I I think a common thread you will see through this story is that I generally don't know what I'm getting into. Don't try and I don't think too much about it. Which why the three of us get along so well? Um No, I just thought, well, I want to be a minister, so here's the religious thing that you can do in college. And you know, one of my very first classes was with Bart Ehrman. Some of you may know if you read New Testament scholarship and and know that uh that he is one who pushes questions um a lot, and you know, it was this lecture of 300 undergrads, and um this lecture of 300 undergrads, and um he's uh presenting us with a lot of questions that I'd never considered before uh about scripture, and I saw you know one corner of the room that um really tried to kind of shout him down or push back or didn't really want to hear what he had to say. And he used to have his office hours at this Mexican restaurant near ch near uh near Chapel Hill. And we went to his office hours one time with a group of students, and he was sitting there with the New Testament in Greek. He didn't have a translation, he just had the Greek, and so when we were talking about stuff, that's what he opened and began to read.
SPEAKER_01And so I thought, well, um I'm guessing he was the only person in the Mexican restaurant with a New Test New Testament in Greek.
SPEAKER_00Safe assumption, yes. And on the last day of class, actually, he stood up and told his story, and told his story of coming from sort of a very evangelical way of thinking about the world to sort of what at that time he called a hopeful agnostic. And he's explaining this to this room of 300, you know, college kids who think they know everything, and I'm sitting there recognizing that he is articulating something about what he believes and why, and then probably not many people in this room have done that kind of searching um for what they believe in why. And so just that experience kind of shaped the way that I went about those next four years because I just thought what I realized in that class is that if facing up to the questions he was asking was going to undo my faith, then I didn't have faith to start with. And so I had to have a faith that could that could withstand those questions and make peace with those questions that he was asking about translation and textual variances and all the things that we know about when you look at scholarship. Um and if I if I couldn't do that, then uh it wasn't gonna withstand the questions that life throws at you about faith. Um the things that happened. And so that kind of shaped the way I went about those next four years. And then I saw at the same time, I saw some conflict brewing in my my own my home church and right around 9-11, and there was this uh conversation around the flag and whether that should be in our worship space, and um there was a conversation happening across our region about um LGBTQ ordination and things like that, and um what happened was I found myself really disappointed with some of the things that were viewpoints that were coming from people that I really respected. And so I thought, well, here I'm in this environment where everybody's comfortable asking themselves questions and nobody and nobody's um judging somebody else for where they've landed on the answer to the question, but they've they've searched it out, they can tell you what they know, what they think, and why. Uh and I saw a group of people who from the outside looking in didn't seem to want to face questions at all. It settled it. And so I thought, well, that's not the environment I want to be in. I love this one, but I don't want to be in a place that where people don't want to explore or ask questions or challenge themselves. And so what happened was I got to the end of my four years, and there's really not a lot you can do with a BA in religious studies.
SPEAKER_01Um go back to school or wait tables.
SPEAKER_00That's it. Yeah. So so again, another um another decision I didn't think through very much was going to divinity school because that was really the only thing that made sense. And so I didn't know if I was gonna I I knew I did not want to be a part of a church. I did I wanted maybe I'll do counseling. I don't know. I didn't know what I was gonna do. I did not want to be involved with church people.
SPEAKER_02And how long have you served churches?
SPEAKER_00Uh this will be 17 years.
SPEAKER_02Which I love. Tell God a plan and watch God laugh.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Well, what happened was I got convicted in there by Will Willemon in one of his classes, and he said, you know, the the wonderful thing about pastoral ministry is that it's not about you. And I so I had sort of had this, it's one of those moments where you remember where you're sitting, and I realized that everything that I everything that was keeping me from accepting a call to ministry had I, me, and I in it. And so I thought, well, if this is what God's gifted you to do, then who are you to say what you will or won't do with what God gifted you to do? Um and so that changed things. And then once I once my perspective changed, then I began to fall back in love with the church and see again the things that I'd seen as a teenager. Um it's not perfect. You know, there's brokenness in it, there's imperfection in it. Um we bring all of our our hurts and our our idiosyncrasies to bear sometimes in community with each other, but um but there's beauty there too. So that helped me to to come around to being in church. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think our church people will understand this. I know very few ministers who entered into graduate theological education and said, I want to serve a church. It was always, I'm gonna do this and do something else. And in some ways, divinity school, seminary, even though it's not really designed to do that, it kind of brings you back to the church if that's your calling. It gives you an appreciation for the church.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I think it gives you the permission to ask questions. I mean, that's like that creating an environment where you can, you know, I had a professor say, uh, you know, if you walk into a church, you can't just pull people's blocks out, their foundational blocks of faith, without being willing to put something back in its place. And it may not be the same, but it is a disservice as a pastor to do that. And I think that freedom to ask and learn and to grow in a s in a space that for me felt safe, and I know that may not be true for everyone, uh, helped me. I mean, I I I I really fell in love with that aspect of it. Is is it was a chance to to ask hard questions and maybe not always have the answer to the question.
SPEAKER_01Well, to create safe space for others.
SPEAKER_02Right, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00And that's shaped sort of how I how I see ministry as well. I mean, I was I was um I do ministry the way I was taught, and that's really only one way. Um, but the way that that I learned was that it has to be deeply connected. What we say on Sunday mornings, what we do in church together, has to be deeply connected to the things that people are wrestling with Monday to Saturday. And so if you come on Sunday morning and what you're hearing or what you're experiencing or what you're talking about has no connection to what you heard on the news or what you talked about with your neighbor or what's going on in your community, my point of view on that is I don't know why you would come, actually. Uh, because there are other things you can do with your Sunday morning, other places you can get just general wisdom for your life. But uh for me, it's all ministry is contextual, right? It's it's about where we are, where where we're living, who we're living with, and it has to it has to relate to the things that we're wrestling with. Uh there's no sense coming on Sundays and pretending like we got all this figured out, or like there's there are no questions to to ask about scripture or places where it might you might feel it contradicts itself or doesn't make sense. Um These are the things that are that are that are on your mind at other times, then let's be honest and real with each other and community. And that's that's if church has church has purpose for me, that's it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01I think the strength in your book is that you help people name things they're thinking about and wondering about, and wondering about how faith fits into that, but can't name it. And I think your book, at least for me and and people I've shared it with, it helped name this idea of privilege. If it's okay, I want to read a uh a passage and perhaps have you um respond to that. Would that be okay? That would be amazing. Okay, so this is this is from Chris's book, uh Straight White Male, a faith-based guide to deconstructing your privilege and living with integrity. And this is the passage that sort of hooked me. It's early on in the book, page 16. Uh, you write, straight white men have done a lot of staring straight ahead, waiting for the light to change. The lies we tell ourselves are the ways of not seeing. Probably just spending on alcohol, or why doesn't he get a job? In the same way we say he should have complied with the officer's orders. She was asking for it. Marriage equality redefines marriage. None of these things are true, but they help us drive past inequality, violence, and oppression without feeling obligated to stop, without having to change anything about our own lives or give up any of the power or privilege we have acquired in order to make things right. As the need in front of us becomes more difficult to ignore, we retreat deeper into the lives we tell ourselves. I think it's a very powerful piece of the book. And like I said, it was it was the piece that grabbed me. Um I want to ask you where how did you get the inspiration, the vision, uh, the calling to write this book? Because I think this book and your podcast is a is a calling. Um so just maybe start with that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've always been interested in issues of racial justice since I was a kid. I was in third grade. My dad, uh I was going my my elementary school had been the all-black high school in my town, and I had to do a third a history report in third grade, and my dad said, Well, you should do a report about your school, because he knew the history of that. And so I found out that my principal actually had been one of the first students there is when it was desegregated. And so that that sort of stuff, and you know, having a dad for a history teacher fascinates. I got a fascination for how do we get here, you know, um, why are things the way they are? Um, and so I guess I also saw there's a lot of conversations happening around these um these topics right now. I mean, you can especially when something grabs the news, right, and then all of a sudden all the books that people are reading go to the top of the bestseller list because they want to figure out racism or they want to figure out, you know, uh sexual violence or why it's happening, etc. Um, but I didn't feel like there was anybody who was sort of turning around, turning around and talking to the people like them. Right. And I think white folks, men, straight folks, we have our own work to do to understand where we at what our position is in these places. And and the sometimes I think the space for doing that work is not in like sort of coalition spaces where there's you know a diversity. You know, if if you've got stuff about whiteness you need to work out, uh you shouldn't do that in front in front of black and brown folks. You need to get with some other white people and talk it out so that you can be honest and and not and not hurt somebody else with your honesty. So so that's what that's what my my my hope was that it would be you know something that would it advance the conversation a little bit and also that that we would begin to see some of the common ground that these you know the book is divided into three different sections about race, gender, and sexuality, but there's a lot of common ground, I think, in the formation of patriarchy and white supremacy and anti-LGBTQ plus bias. So um exploring that common ground, I think helps us understand it a little bit better as well.
SPEAKER_02So I am curious, what did you in this process? I mean what did you learn about yourself, your own um experience coming from that lens? I mean, in in a lot of ways, this book kind of unpacks your own work um and uh and invites others to participate. I mean, one of the things that I have learned is when I walk in and do a study, I really do try to claim the privilege that I've begun to recognize within my own life based on the people around me who have helped me see that. And trying not to be defensive in that um calling in versus calling out is just it's a place for someone to say, Kyle, that's really not the best thing. And and and I want to sit and say, all right, well, tell me why and how do I how do I do better in mine? And so I I've learned that in studies I really try to call out my own that has been helpful because I found that when you call someone else out, it really does not do well, no matter how informed or caring that person may be, we tend to get defensive um and and we put up our walls and we're un able to hear what the other person is trying to really lovingly teach us. Yeah. Um, so what did you learn um from your own voice as you look back on the whole process?
SPEAKER_00Well, I I I wanted to be really intentional about um being confessional. I thought that was a very important part of the book, um, or that would be a very important thing for it to have integrity would be that it had to be confessional because um A, the people who are affected by these things need to hear us tell the truth. We've we've we've done a lot of you know obfuscating and trying to hide, you know, the truth of our past, the realities of our present. And so I felt like I had to uh tell the truth and also own my part in it and be honest about the fact that these are not things that I have figured out. I mean, there are places in the book where I say very clearly that I I have thoughts and feelings that about these things that I don't like or want, and that's part of my own journey. And I think when you put yourself in the midst, when you put yourself um confessionally in the place that way, it disarms a little bit of that defensiveness because I'm not asking anything of anyone else that I'm not also asking of myself. Sure. So I think that's important. I mean the other, but there is um, there is, I think, this work that has to be done around getting behind that defensiveness. Uh, because when we do receive that challenge or we we receive, you know, correction for lack of a better word, about a perspective that maybe we we need to shift in order to see somebody else's full humanity, there's that defensiveness about it because we're afraid to be wrong. Um, we're afraid that you know we're gonna be labeled. Um and that fear comes from a place of insecurity. You can't be afraid to be wrong. And I've said that from the I knew I hadn't I had to acknowledge that writing the book too, because as soon as it's the type of thing where our conversations around these topics are are changing so quickly, as soon as the paper the ink was on the paper was gonna be out of date. So um, you know, I had to say, like, there's I'm gonna do my best here, but this is probably not there's gonna be stuff period people don't like.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Um, and so and that's okay. I don't, you know, um you can live, right? You can receive that correction like that you just talked about and live. Like it's it's not gonna kill you. And so um, and actually the great the more you can lean into um God's love and God's grace, um, the more freedom you have to to not be so defensive because what are you defending yourself from, right? You already know that that you're a beloved child of God, you already know that the grace of Jesus Christ is for you. So there's you know, you can you can confess that you've gotten it wrong or you're gonna get it wrong, and then accept if all those things are true, what you said about God is true, then just you know, move on, embrace it, embrace the transformation that comes with it.
SPEAKER_01You um, as three straight white men, upper middle class white men living in America, sitting here talking about this, it it occurs to me that we have the dominant world, like the most of the world has been forced to look at the world through our lens, and yet I feel like we have one of the most limited lenses as well in terms of other people's experiences. We've been able to, as you said in the book, sit at the stoplight and just go straight through, and that's been fine. Um, what do you did you have an experience or two that began to broaden your view or your lens? Something that that looking back was sort of an agent of transformation for you?
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah, I mean, the summer I spent at um at William Barber's Church changed my life. Um when I was in divinity school, I was um able to do a field education placement at Reverend Barbara's Church, and this you know it was before Poor People's Campaign and Um all the things we know about him now, preaching in inaugurations and things like that.
SPEAKER_01He was a local church pastor.
SPEAKER_00I read about him I went I read about him in the Divinity School magazine because he was a Duke Divinity alum. And uh and it it was it was a type of ministry that I didn't know existed, right? To your point. Um because here is a person who um is challenging the school system where. Where they live about the way they're using the Title I funds. And I'm kind of wondering as a 24-year-old white guy, why is this a thing that a pastor does? And he explained to me that this is a matter of pastoral care. If I have children in my congregation who are affected by or whose schooling is limited by this, and I don't act, then I'm failing to care for them. And so it was uh very much a different way of viewing ministry than anything I had ever experienced. And I often say that when your eyes are open to some of those things, and your your eyes are open to some of the ways, and I went, you know, I would went in a lot of rooms with him, um, and I would see casual racism at work. You know, every he would go in the room and everybody would assume that he didn't know what he was talking about, or that he was just there to grandstand, and I would just sort of sit back and wait for the inevitable embarrassing moment when they realized that he was actually the smartest person in that room and knew precisely what he was talking about. So you see those things, and all of a sudden you begin to see, okay, well, this is what he has every reason in the there's every every reason for everybody in this community to respect him as a leader in it and how what he contributes to it, and yet when we stop by the town hall for him to introduce me to the mayor in this small North Carolina town, he won't come out of his office. Right? So you begin to say, okay, well, this is what other people are living with that I'll never have to live with, right? And it does change your perspective. And then the thing is, once you see it, you see it everywhere.
SPEAKER_01You can't unsee it.
SPEAKER_00You can't unsee it. You can't.
SPEAKER_02Now I know uh working for uh in with and alongside Reverend Barber uh is an important part of your story, but I also know that you've traveled uh in some of the places that you've gone to, South Africa is extremely important to you and and your story. Um what about that time uh also helped shape uh and probably ultimately led to some of the things that that that we see within this book uh that you've written?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's another opportunity to see outside of your I mean the reason that I saw that sought out that experience was because in divinity school I had a professor um who had been a white male leader against apartheid in South Africa and had paid dearly for it during his time there, and he was teaching a class at Duke called God and Caesar about the interaction between the church and and the government. And one of the things he said, he said, you know, America is sort of a modern-day Roman Empire. Everything that America does has its imprint all around the world. We live in Africa and we I live in Africa, you know, a 20-hour flight away, but we see your movies, we listen to your music, uh, we pay attention to your politics, what happens there matters around the world. And he said, if you want to be a responsible citizen in Rome, you need to know what it's like to live on the fringes of the empire.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Whoa. And so uh I said, okay, well, I think that's probably true. Um let me see what it's like to live on the fringes of the empire. And so so I went uh so we I went there and spent a summer and just saw um the stark contrast between um the reality of life there. You know, I would go to the church where I was the intern, and they would have this, you know, uh very traditional Methodist worship service on Sunday morning with all white people there. And then I would go to the mall and there would be no other white people there. And so it's amaz it was sort of amazing to me to to see like how in this place when you know white folks managed to create this homogeneous identity in a place that affords them a lot of um, I mean, I I think there are 13 official languages in South Africa. There's so much diversity and so much beauty in that, and the white folks there had sort of cloistered themselves off from all of that, and I thought, you know, that's a that's a tragedy. And then you begin to see in in in another place, you see your own place in a little different um light. So um, so just broadened perspectives, different experiences, um, different relationships um that change you.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you write uh at the end of your book, the way of Jesus will not allow us to live free while others are bound. We cannot be whole until others are too. And I think that that's so true and so powerful. Um, since you wrote the book and now doing the podcast, uh how how do you see the work you're doing in this evolving in terms of deconstructing uh privilege?
SPEAKER_00You guys got deep questions.
SPEAKER_01We have some not deep ones coming.
SPEAKER_02I'll be bringing those to the table.
SPEAKER_00Don't worry, guys, Christian Church, you have you have powerful, insightful pastors. Um I really the thing that I am um thinking more about now is that I believe that a lot of what I call in the book patriarchal white supremacy, which sort of I is the term I came up with to try to as an umbrella term for all of those things, because I believe that a lot of um the the stuff that we have around LGBTQ folks is bound up in patriarchal norms. But I think that all of that comes from a wound. And I talk about this some and actually James Baldwin is the one who talked about it because actually some of the people who have seen, for example, white folks most clearly are are are people of color, like James Baldwin. And James Baldwin said that white people need to figure out why they need, you know, black people to be what they've made them to be in the culture. And that's a that's the white person's problem. Because if you need if you need um, I mean he used the n-word, if you need that, um, if you need someone around you to be that, then there's something within your spirit that's unwell. And uh I'm paraphrasing him, and I think that's right. And I think what we often have masked as power, and um what's often been masked as power comes from a festering wound. And that if you believe in your own belovedness in the sight of God, then you don't need to feel superior to a woman. If you feel comfortable and beloved in your sexuality, then I don't think somebody else's sexuality is a threat to you. If you feel that you are beloved in the sight of God, then you don't need anybody else to be less than you or have less opportunity than than you do or less access than you do because of the amount of melanin in their skin. And so what I'm thinking about is what is how do we heal that wound in ourselves? Um, what do we need to be preaching? What do we need to be teaching? What do we what is it that we have not heard about the gospel that has not healed this wound in us? And is and is and and until we heal that wound, then it's gonna, I mean, we all know the phrase that hurt people, hurt people. That's I think that's what's behind a lot of this. It's hurt people, hurting people. So we have to heal the heart of the of the one who's doing the hurting, heal the heart of the oppressor. Um, and so I think about a lot about that and what that means, because I think we see a lot of hurt. That I mean, a lot of what we see now in our culture that's um manifests itself as power or like vitriol, like really harsh speech, anger comes from deep pain. Ruby Sales asked this question in the conversation she had. She's civil rights activist Ruby Sales asked this question with when in a conversation with Krista Tippett. She said the question we have to ask is where does it hurt? And that then we can begin to really understand where the rest of these things are coming from.
SPEAKER_02So one of the things that we typically do at the end of our time um is to talk about a TV show. We we we tend to end lighthearted, and yet there is way too much meat on this bone to end with uh such a simple question of that. I I but I do I I like that question, so I'm gonna reframe it um for our conversation. What is a podcast or a movie or a show that would begin to highlight privilege in a way that uh our listeners could lean into and say, you know what, that's my starting point. That's not my end point, but that's my starting point. And I'm gonna see where I go from there. It's a great question.
SPEAKER_00I think the way I want to answer this question is to point back to kind of how you transitioned to it into it, which is the heaviness of all of this. Sure. And, you know, we've we've joked off offline about you know the writing environment for reading this book. This is not beach reading, it's not pool reading.
SPEAKER_02No, I tried that the first time. It did not go well. Uh it's it's heavy stuff, it's hard stuff.
SPEAKER_00It'll ruin your vacation. And and I'm I'm mindful of that. And I but I mean you also have to you can't walk around in this um in this stuff all the time. And so um I I've learned like there's some things that I haven't seen, like, you know, 13th, the the movie about the 13th Amendment that's was very popular on Netflix. I've never watched it. Um because I I know what's in it, and I know that I have to limit my exposure to um I have to limit my exposure to some things that are going to just um lead me into wallowing in in injustice and um you can almost become a voyeur in that way, like you just you're just watching it happen and you're just consuming it all the time. And uh if you don't if you don't have any if you don't take any steps back from that, then um then uh you lose joy and and you're you stay in a wounded place and not a not a not a healing place. So I I actually think that what's most inspiring is uh to be intentional about the art that you consume, whether that's movies or music or podcasts or whatever, and uh pay attention to the voices that you're listening to. And I think if you can find things that will show you beauty, to Danny's point earlier, about uh beauty that's coming from other perspectives and from other places. Um there's a show on I think it's on Hulu, maybe FX put it out originally called Res Dogs. And it's about this group of teenagers that live on a Native American reservation, and um I I I have no idea whether it's an accurate depiction of what it's like to grow up on a on a Native American reservation. But it is so far outside the world I know that it drew me out of the world that I knew, and it it's artwork that's being made by someone who is who does live in a world that's different from mine, and so but it's also funny and beauty, beautiful and poignant, and it's human. It's you know, there's it's not all you know um rooted in those things, and so um it's out there. I mean, I often say, you know, um there's there's a lot now, actually. Folks are having this conversation more and more. There are plenty of books you can read and shows you can watch. Um, can I talk about like my funny favorites?
SPEAKER_01Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_00Um so I um religiously watched The Office. I've probably seen it I don't know how many times through now. Um, and that is I I think there's uh I started during the pandemic, and I think there's a pathology behind it. Um, because it is silly and ridiculous, but there's also deep beauty in in the story and in the characters and the evolution that happens.
SPEAKER_01And um and it's not all that different than working in many corporate offices either, so yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, yeah, I mean, I I think there's a I think there's a book to be written about the theology that's there in the office. Um I mean the the ceiling quote of it is um you know Pam talking about why, you know, a small paper company was chosen for a documentary, and she said she says, you know, there's a lot of beauty in ordinary things, and isn't that kind of the point? Right. To me, that's what the story tells. And so actually exposing myself to things like that, um it's therapy for me. Sure. You know, it helps me um to stay grounded in the beauty that's in the midst of all this pain.
SPEAKER_01Chris, thank you for being with us. Chris's book is called Straight White Mail, a faith-based guide to deconstructing your privilege and living with integrity. Uh, it's published by Westminster John Knox Press. You can get it on Amazon or wherever you get books. Uh, his podcast is Straight White Mail, and it um on the podcast, he has conversations with some of the contributors in the book, and it's a powerful listen. Chris, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
SPEAKER_00Appreciate it. Just a short plug for the you guys folks that since you live in disciple world, that a lot of the guests on the podcast are also disciple pastors, including our general minister and president Terry Hort Owens. And so if you're not a podcast person or you know, just not interested, that's fine. But I would highly recommend you listen to the conversation with Terry as a disciple. Um, I think it's a really important and insightful thing for disciples to hear because um, even for me, it was uh an amazing time to spend with her, and she was very candid and open, and I think you'll learn a lot about our GMP from that.
SPEAKER_02So we'll be sure to include that in the notes at the bottom. Yeah. Thanks again, Chris. All right, thanks, Chris. All right. This has been another episode of Sacred Sit Downs. We hope you will join us next time as we explore the power of story. We can be found on all major platforms, so be sure to subscribe. As always, thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Sacred Sit Downs.