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. Grace Kozak
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Grace is an Indiana native and graduate of Christian Theological Seminary. Prior to seminary, after completing her Masters of Social Work degree in 2015, she worked as an organizer for Clean Water Action and the American Cancer Society. Grace’s call to ministry is animated by her core belief that God desires a world where all people deserve to live with enough resources to thrive in healthy, supportive communities. Grace currently serves as State Organizer for Indiana at Bread for the World. When not changing the world, Grace loves to read, have people over to visit on her porch, and work on her family’s flower farm.
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.
SPEAKER_00And I'm Danny Goulden. And we'd like to welcome you to Sacred Sit Downs.
SPEAKER_01A conversational podcast that explores how the Spirit of God moves within this world through the power of story.
SPEAKER_00In today's episode, we will sit down with a member or friend of Geist's 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.
SPEAKER_00Well, Happy Eastertide, Danny.
SPEAKER_01I was not expecting you to lead with that. Well, we are in that season of the East. Well, it is Easter Tide, yes, yes. But I just no one's ever said Happy Eastertide. Grace, has anyone ever said that to you?
SPEAKER_03Like not in this context, no. Thank you. That's what I meant. So it's unexpected, certainly.
SPEAKER_00I'm sorry. In Kentucky, we walk around all the time. It's like happy Eastertide. And then you can always tell, like, whether someone goes to church or not, because they're like Wasn't that like three weeks ago? Yeah, what do you mean? Right, right. So for those listening.
SPEAKER_01This is not the Sunday after Easter, it's the second Sunday of Easter. That's right.
SPEAKER_00So no, we're in that 50 days of Easter.
SPEAKER_01I'm not debating that at all. I've just never been greeted with Happy Eastertide.
SPEAKER_00Well, it I just But Happy Eastertide to you.
SPEAKER_01Grace, happy Eastertide.
SPEAKER_00Happy Eastertide. All right.
SPEAKER_01Now all our all our listeners are going to begin with Happy Eastertide to people. It rolls off the tongue. Here's your challenge, listeners, just in your daily life. Just greet people that way and see what they say to you.
SPEAKER_00I think it'd be great. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of guests, uh, we have uh Grace Kozak today uh with us. She is a Bread for the World state organizer for Indiana. And uh Danny and I had a chance to meet her a couple of weeks ago uh in April uh about um we had a food insecurity event, we watched a movie that WFYI had put out, and um we had different organizations present, and Bread for the World is one that we have partnered with in the past as we write letters, and I was just blown away by um her presence and story, and I said, Danny, we we've got to get her on the podcast to talk a little bit more about Bread for the World, and and I really just selfishly wanted to hear more of your story, and I wanted to kind of share that with our community that joins us on podcast. And so you were an undergrad at Ball State, chirp chirp, right?
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00Uh and then you got your master's uh of social work at Michigan.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_00Uh, and then you got your MDiv at CTS.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and graduated this past May. Oh my gosh. Yes.
SPEAKER_01Congratulations. And recently ordained, right?
SPEAKER_03Yes, um, ordained in October. Um, yeah, so really excited to be a minister in the Christian Church Disciples of Christ.
SPEAKER_00Awesome, awesome. Well, tell us a little bit like how tell us a little bit about yourself, like where you grew up and where you're from, and kind of giving us and those who are listening a little bit about your background.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Both of my parents went to Purdue and met, uh, well, they met because my dad was in love with my aunt uh and uh through Prior to her being your aunt, I assume. Right. Yeah. So my and so this is a little bit of a tangent, but my dad heard that my aunt had broken up with her uh boyfriend and followed her home uh to see if he could make something happen with my aunt Cindy and uh met my mom there. Uh so that's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so anyway, what a great story.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so they um they you know met and fell in love. Um my mom was supposed to go to like a small liberal arts school in Ohio, and she went for a year, she had a full scholarship to go there, and my grandma Bonnie was very disappointed that she left to go to Purdue to follow my dad, but it all worked out. So um, but anyway, they were at Purdue, Purdue Christian Campus House, and they moved um after graduating into a neighborhood in Lafayette with a bunch of the friends that they made uh at Campus House. And so um my first experience of church was five families who lived on the same street, and we all met at the Welch's house. So we would walk down to the Welch's house for church, across the street was the Jannuwax house, and that's where children's church was. So for me, that was sort of my first experience of church, and the one that has um still uh even though we moved away when I was four, has been very formative in my life.
SPEAKER_01Um I and very much how the earliest Christians gather, right? The earliest followers of Jesus gathered.
SPEAKER_03Right. And um, one of the things that always had a big impact on me, if not when I was a little kid, but as I've learned more about how that church continues to gather to this day, is the amount of impact they're able to have in their own community, in their own neighborhood. Um, and just uh seeing the way that they've given back to their community over the years. At times when I've uh, you know, fallen in and out of disillusionment with the church, um that they're a faith community that makes me really believe in the power of what the the church communities could do together. Um so you know, was there for a very brief time, but then we moved back to uh my dad's family farm when I was four years old, and uh it was through um that community that I became part of the disciples of Christ, went to Pendleton Christian Church there, and that's how I got connected to Disciples Church camp. So another really formative experience for me uh was going to camp every summer. Grew up I grew up on a farm, and so I had to work every summer. Uh, the one week I got off a year was to go to camp. So to me, like camp was the absolute best place on earth because uh you didn't have to work. Um, and I got to um meet so many amazing people, and in a lot of ways, uh camp was where I um had the opportunity to explore faith for myself too. So yeah, I went went to camp. Um, but through my time, you know, growing up on this farm um and growing uh growing up in this sort of context, um one of the things I am very fortunate to have experienced in my life is we had people from all over the world, many different walks of life, who would come and intern on our farm every summer, which really kind of opened my eyes to um, you know, I grew up in an extremely homogenous community, very small community, almost all white, almost all Christian. But in the summers, you know, um one summer we had a kind of he was homeschooled, very fundamentalist Christian, and then we had an anarchist from Seattle uh who lived with us that summer. And they became uh very good friends, actually. And it was so it's a very interesting way of growing up to see people across very significant differences, um, living together and working together and developing really um beautiful friendships. And it also um I think having those experiences is what put me on the path toward um toward ministry, but toward a very different kind of ministry with organizing. Um I've always uh kind of one of the cool things about an organizer, I think, is that we have the world as it is right now, and we have this vision of the world as it could be, and organizing is about the space in between those two things. And so, and and it's can be very messy, very challenging, but it's uh being able to act, uh, act in hope that we can get from where we are to where we want to go if we're willing to do that work together.
SPEAKER_00I think it's so I mean talking about the early church. I mean, even your example on the farm is when we because I preached on what the early church was like um on Sunday, it's fascinating to me. And I know Danny, you preached on it two weeks ago, is you know, all these new believers coming together, and you know, uh Peter says they had all c all things in common, or Luke states that they had all things in common. And I feel like that's a little bit of a stretch. Anytime we've been in any community, uh not everyone has all things in common. Um and so when you're together and you don't always agree, but when you live and work together, you begin to care for one another and you see beyond just those superficial things. Um and so an anarchist and a fundamentalist can work together on a farm and form a relationship that otherwise probably would not happen had it not been for that. And so it's amazing that your early experience of growing up in a home church and then this farm experience is is very much my hope of what the church could be as we learn to to grow and and work with one another.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell Do you do you remember what they had what where they found common ground?
SPEAKER_03That's a great question. And I I really don't, you know, I think they were there when I was 10 or 11, and so there's a lot of stuff I think that happened um that you know I wasn't privy to, which is fine. You know, that we had as good of a working relationship as like a 10-year-old and 22-year-olds can have. But I'm sure there was you know stuff that was happening uh where they didn't want a 10-year-old tagging along, but um I but I think I do think the experience of um of doing something really hard together, you know, um you know so we were uh at the time it was an organic produce farm. There's just so much labor that goes into that. You know, there's there's not a lot that and you fight and you have to find things to talk about too, right? So like I remember um for me two very difficult, tedious, labor-intensive jobs that we had to do were weeding, because you know, you can't use like weed control, um, and then picking green beans. It's just like miserable. Like I mean, it's just like um, but you're usually doing it with a few other people. And so there's um there's not a lot of ground you can't cover. And I think the other interesting thing about talking about hard things or you know, finding common ground with people who are different from you while you're working is you're able to do it without a ton of eye contact. Um it's sort of like I have two younger teenage sisters, like you wanna you have the best conversations with them in the car, you know, because like you don't have to look at each other. And sometimes there's a certain amount of vulnerability that you're able to get to because you don't have the vulnerability of the intense eye contact. So I think that um so I couldn't tell you exactly what it was that they bonded over. Uh it could have been I I you know, I think pop culture can bring people together. I know they went to the movies together some, so that could have been it. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you mentioned green beans.
SPEAKER_03What else did the farm uh all kinds of vegetables? So like green beans, tomatoes, um, kind of the stuff you would associate with like an Indiana August. But we also did a lot of um like specialty greens, so like mustard greens, spinach, bok choy, pok choy, lots of like Asian greens.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm getting hungry now. I know, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So we also had like free-range chickens um and cattle. So we uh had eggs and then we did some beef and and chicken. So um we did um yeah, we we did quite a range. We also did um about eight acres of fresh cut flowers. Um and did awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So growing up in the city, uh farm life is foreign to me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00What is one thing the farm taught you? Uh that that life, that experience that uh someone like me probably is unaware of.
SPEAKER_03You know, for for better or for worse, I don't know how to do much other than work really hard. You know, like that's not a bad thing. I would yeah, I was gonna say you can definitely, you know, burn yourself out that way, but I um it have done a good amount of therapy in my life. And one thing my therapist uh it's funny, some my brother also has done a good amount of therapy. Um, and it's almost like, you know, our therapists should be talking to each other because we've had you know some similar experiences that have it interesting that have changed us in interesting ways. Um, but according to both of our therapists, like farm kids who grew up on farms um have a very hard time figuring out what to do with downtime. You know, so it's like we're we kind of have two modes of either like total sloth or like work, work, work, work, work.
SPEAKER_01When you're down, you're really down.
SPEAKER_03And otherwise it's it's like we're we're really going. So it's been sort of a lifelong struggle to figure out okay, what kind of things could I be doing for fun? You know?
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_03Um so just like that.
SPEAKER_01City kids are like, I'll go work on a farm for fun for a week, but you're not gonna be. City slickers. City slickers.
SPEAKER_03We would have friends over who would be like, Oh, I want to go out in the barn and play and like shoot a BB gun. And we're like, we would like to play video games, you know, like we'd like to like to do something that's not like our regular life. So, but um so just like that value of of of working really hard, again, I think it is a good thing. And I um and it certainly serves me well in the job I have now. Um, another thing um that it taught me about is is how little we have control over. So my my dad and I, uh when I was in fifth grade, um an elementary school opened a mile from our house, and um, but we weren't allowed to walk there because you know, just country roads, no sidewalks, things like that. But my dad is just like, you can't tell me what to do. So I I'm gonna walk her to school and then ride my bike back. So my dad would walk me to school every day. And um, I had the um we had a wide-ranging conversations, but one day I I really still remember very clearly he asked me, and I don't know how we got on this topic, but he was like, Grace, do you think you would ever be a farmer? And I was like, Absolutely not. Like, it's so stressful. Like, there's so much that we do that is completely outside of our control. Um, you have no idea if a flood's gonna come, if a drought's gonna come. It's just too stressful. And I I find that so funny now because I'm like, I went into Christian ministry. And I just have to laugh because it's like the this idea, it serves me so well, especially as an organizer, when you really wanna, you want to win victories for people, right? You want like to win policies, you want to, you want so much, again, for that space between the world as it is and the and the world you want it to be, you want to close that gap, but you also have to realize like there is so much in this work, no matter how hard we work, that is outside of our control. And so, um, and and just the recognition that we can labor and we're not, we're just not God. Like we're just not um we don't have that full picture of how this is all gonna come together. And that that's not to say that that idea doesn't still greatly frustrate me. Um I I wish, you know, right? That I I could just like know that the fruits of my labor are going to go in the way that I want them to. But just so it's it's helpful to have that perspective because you could do um it's just helpful. And one other quick story, um just kind of taught me about again, there's a lot that's outside of our control, and it got me um, you know, thinking about um the grief that can come with that. I one summer we had two cows that got pregnant before they were physically able to give birth. And so to have the experience of being a very young person and like being with my dad and like trying to physically pull a dead calf out of its mom because the calf died before it could be born, and um, and being unable to do that, and so we had to put the cow down, like that kind of pain that you're exposed to. Like, I've always been like a very sensitive, I was a very sensitive child, like so, like to be exposed to that kind of reality of like what loss can look like, even though the cows weren't our pets, but it's just it's just devastating that that's that was the reality, and it's also something that's completely unchangeable.
SPEAKER_01So many lessons you learn. I I do remember we had I had an uncle who had like a family farm and he just or a great uncle, and you know, he he grew up mostly with a family, had a little roadside stand, but now when you mentioned the green beans being hard to pick, I recall every time we went over, we always wanted to go work like on the farm, you know, and he would always make us pick green beans. And now I know why, because it was the hardest. It's like I'll find someone else to pick those.
SPEAKER_00I got some extra hands to pick up. Right, right.
SPEAKER_01I was like, oh yeah, you want to. So you went, you got a master's of social work, which is amazing. And then so what led you then to go back and get a master of divinity? And what what how did you feel called into ministry?
SPEAKER_03So all through my camp years, there were many, many disciples' ministers who were like, Grace, you need to go into ministry. And I was like, No, I don't. I um can do the work I want to do in the world without doing that. Um, and so you know, so many moments.
SPEAKER_01Did you know you wanted to do something around food, hunger?
SPEAKER_03I mean, was that so I I knew I wanted to do something around um around systems change. I didn't know that I didn't actually know that. Like when I was in high school, I was like, I have no idea what I want to do. Like I took one of those intensive personality tests, and they were like, and I scored like super average on a bunch of stuff. It's almost like um I like broke the test. Like I couldn't, you know, because I just had this wide range of interest and I had no idea what I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01You would be fairly decent at anything, is what it kind of told me.
SPEAKER_03Except for chemistry. That was the one thing I I distinctly remember. It was like, do not be a chemist. And also, I think don't be a physical trainer. So like it I did, you know, cross- I marked those off. But it's not I uh did absolutely abysmally in AP chemistry, so it's not like that was a super big mystery to me. So um, but um, so I I did elementary education because that was the thing I scored highest in. I go to my first class in undergrad, and this is again, I didn't have the words for what community organizing was at the time, but I went to my first class and an assignment we had, I don't know why, was we were put into small groups and we had this big piece of paper, and they were like, What do you what does your ideal community look like? Now I'm like, Okay, ideal community, this is anything we want in it, right? This is not this again, this is not the world as it is, this is the world as we want it to be. And my group had like um like a Walmart and like a police station, and I'm like, you guys, like this is anything we want, like perfection. You think in the per no, the most perfect community There's a Walmart. There's a Walmart and a police station, like that we haven't figured out public safety in some other way.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_03You know, like yeah, you're you're implying in your perfect community the existence of crime and big box stores, and that just is not settling with me. Right. So um, so I ran from elementary education very quickly. I was like, yeah, I don't it just was not right. Found out about social work um through an advisor, and it it was good, um, it was closer than elementary education, but I still was struggling um with uh Kyle, something we brought up at the hunger event that we had a couple weeks ago. This idea to me, so much of social work was catching people once so many like of life's hardships had come at them, at the the the babies or people floating down the river, right? And not talking about how are they getting here in the first place. That question of how are they getting here in the first place had always been important to me.
SPEAKER_01And so, you know, I was social work was just pulling them out of the water for you rather than being able to go upstream and and ask why.
SPEAKER_00Again, you see it's band-aids and why do we need band-aids to begin with? Right.
SPEAKER_03So I had I had a really great professor, uh, a couple of great professors, um, one social work professor who introduced me to the idea of macro social work. So, what is that big picture stuff we're looking at? Um, and then I also was a a peace and conflict studies minor, and so was learning, I just like learning about all this stuff that I had never heard of before, and I was like, this is all so terrible, so overwhelming. Like, how how do we even start to tackle this? And so, um, and so yeah, I was introduced to this idea of community organizing, this um, this way of bringing communities together so that communities could have greater agency and a greater sense of power. And by power, I mean like the ability to make decisions about their own lives. Um, and so that they would have the ability to um yeah, to to be in that decision maker seat. And of course, it's a more this sense of shared power, not that we're wielding it over anyone, but that a whole community could come together and say, you know, this is really how we want our life our lives to be. And so So I got into community organizing, my master's in social work at U of M, the concentration was community organizing. So I was taking those classes, started working as an organizer for um a couple of different organizations after I graduated. Um one was Clean Water Action and then the American Cancer Society. But the thing that I was struggling with was this sense of almost feeling divided against myself. Like I um I felt like I would go to church and I couldn't be an organizer at church. And I would go to work and I couldn't really have this spiritual aspect to my work, even though a lot of my favorite organizers are religious people. Um, so you know, like Caesar Chavez and William Barber, more contemporary example, or um my favorite organizer, her name is Miriam Kaba, and she's Muslim, you know, so they have this deep spiritual grounding in what they're doing. Um, and so I um was just really struggling with that and didn't really know like how to bring these parts of myself together. And that's really where the call to seminary came in. So I had gone to a conference uh called the Christian Community Development Association. They have a conference every year, and I was like, oh, look at all these people like doing this thing I want to be doing. This is amazing.
SPEAKER_01Um these types of roles exist.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. And so, and but the very last speaker of the conference, her name was Gail Song Bantam. Um, and she said that and this is very much stuck with me. She's like, so many young people come to me and they're they see all these problems in the world, they have no idea how they can make an impact, and she always advises them to look at their own past. Um and for me, growing up um out of a disciples congregation that seemed to really support me up into a point. It was like once once I went to once I went to college and started to have all these questions about my faith, there was there all of a sudden it was like, or questions about how my faith could be actualized into into how we live our lives. It was sort of like you can be a Christian, but not like that, was sort of the the sense that I got from that congregation. And it made me very scared to share myself. Um, because you know, you don't want to be uh rejected by a community that you that you thought like really cared about you unconditionally, you know, like there was that huge fear fear of rejection from people who I really cared about. And so um for me, being able to um uh go to seminary, I sort of discerned the call. Um, I was at the American Cancer Society and uh had a baby. 10 days later moved to Indianapolis, so didn't have a job to go back to after maternity leave and was at home with my daughter Maggie for a year. And it was in that year that I was like, I think it's time to really think about like, how how am I showing up in the world? And is this what I really want for my life? And so applied to CTS and it truly was such an amazing experience for me. Um I was able to explore all these questions I had about uh like the spirituality of community organizing. I did a wonderful, had a wonderful experience doing an independent study on that topic and how post-colonial theology can help inform our understanding of community organizing. Like there was just so much richness to my experience there. Um and there was also a time I mentioned my therapy journey.
SPEAKER_01I was in seminary and going to going to therapy once a week and discovered so much about myself about and how and how um this is a reminder that if you're a therapist, you should set up shop near a seminary and you'll do okay.
SPEAKER_03Exactly. Oh my gosh. Yeah, gotta there's so because seminary itself, you it's stirring up so much stuff, you know, like you're just you're learning away.
SPEAKER_01It's designed to do that, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and you need a good place to go sort that out. So uh shout out to the CTS Counseling Center where I found my therapist. So yeah, big fan of their work.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And it's great they have a counseling center though. I mean, they know, yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, and it also highlights that if you are worried or questioned about going to see a counselor, there is power in having a person listen to you absolutely tell your story and to help you process that story in a way that maybe you have never thought of in the past. I mean, it there is there is great um great power in that that moment too.
SPEAKER_03So yeah, and that's so I graduated in May. I did end up, I will say, I went into seminary thinking I'm never gonna work in a church setting. That's not what I want. Ended up enjoying that much more than I ever thought I would. You know, I and it was interesting, you know, I grew up in a a disciples' congregation, but that was, you know, more theologically conservative than many of many of them are. And so I had never like heard a woman preach to a mixed audience before. You know, like that was a total, you know, I've heard like women's conferences, like that you can women can preach to other women or whatever, but definitely not to a body of believers. And so, like, um, for me, so I am a member at Central Christian Church downtown. So, like the first time I heard that was Linda McCrae preaching, and I was like, I didn't know how much I needed to hear that. And so I went into seminary thinking, well, this isn't a role I could have. I I just never like particularly seen that modeled. And I was um, so even things like preaching, I was like, I'll take the preaching class because I want to learn how to be a better speaker, all this stuff. And then I got in the class and I was like, oh my gosh, I've been like writing sermons in my head my entire life. I didn't know what that that was how that was though. You know, like the way that I would talk back to the sermon, even in my head. I of course never shared that, but it was like, oh, like, you know, I had all this stuff going on, and I was like, maybe this is a better fit than I thought it would be. Now, of course, I think organizing is my true home, but um did enjoy the church work more than I thought I would.
SPEAKER_00Awesome.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think at its best, too, like you were talking about the early church, you think back, most of the early church people were community organizers. And then some one of my critiques I would make of the church today is we've lost our voice as a community organizer, yeah, and lost kind of the expectation that our professional clergy lay leaders will be community organizers as well. But I think when you look at the vibrancy of the church at a certain period in history, it's because they were led by community organizers for sure. So you uh so Grace, tell us a little bit about uh Bread for the World. So you you finished, you ordained, you started here as the state director in Indiana of Bread for the World. Here at Geist, we have done letter writing campaigns for many years, along with Bread for the World, and people have heard the name and may know a little bit about what bread does, but uh tell us a little bit about Bread's World, uh Bread for the World's role in fighting hunger.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so Bread was founded almost 50 years ago based on this idea that uh even a small group of committed pastors and lay people in each congressional district in the United States could have a huge influence over what kind of food policy was passed in the United States. Um, it came together very ecumenically. Um kind of the first steering committee was seven Protestants, seven Catholics. I mean, it was this idea that we could have a collective Christian voice around hunger, um, and that we could, you know, in spite of whatever theological difference or um or other political differences we might have, we can agree that um the mandate to uh feed the hungry is uh one that we just can't ignore with our with our Christian witness. And so um, so going to where we are now, um we do have you know really great volunteers across the country who do the work of building relationships with our elected officials across the country in order to uh kind of move the needle on what kind of hunger policies are being talked about and are being passed um in United States Congress. And so um one kind of one great example of that is um we have a relationship with uh Greg Pence, uh representative Greg Pence, who is in the 6th district, which is kind of the southern part of Indianapolis, Richmond. It's fairly large geographically. Um but he was a person who relatively new member of Congress who didn't know a lot about bread or about hunger issues. And it was because we had really dedicated pastors uh who do uh offering of letters in their congregations in his district uh that we were able to have um a meeting with his staff to talk about um to talk about hunger because we were able to deliver lots of letters and build that relationship. Uh one caveat I should throw out here is that um we actually do a really large offering at the Greg Pence's home church, and his mom wrote him a letter. So I think if you get a letter from your mom, you might be more likely to um move on our issues. But so I will I will voice.
SPEAKER_01Mom's voice is a powerful voice.
SPEAKER_03It's a really powerful voice. Um, but we were able to though the work that we do ultimately is extremely relational. We believe that um there is a huge amount of power to be built through um the really understanding the motivations of our representatives and truly um going into a public relationship with them, understanding why it is that they do what they do and helping them understand how um these hunger policies align with their own values. And so um, so with this example with uh Greg Pence, he's a very new member of Congress in a very short amount of time. Um because of advocacy done by Bread for the World, he became a co-sponsor. He didn't just vote for, he co-sponsored legislation uh to address global malnutrition. Um and so, and that was a bill that ultimately each member of Indiana's congressional delegation voted to pass. Um, and when it passed in 2022. Um, and so the the other piece of what Bread does, it's very relational and it's also nonpartisan. So we do not endorse candidates. Um, we are when we do our advocacy, we do it with everyone regardless of what side of the aisle they're on. Um, and we are really focusing on what are these best uh practices, kind of policies that we can be advocating for to um to make a difference. Um, you know, and I think um right now, more than any other time, in recent, in my recent memory, um, people I hope are understanding just how much of an impact federal policy has on how many people are hungry. So um, I mean, you can talk to um anyone who works at Gleaners. Like when Indiana officially declared the pandemic over, which meant uh ending pandemic uh level funding for SNAP, um the lines at Gleaners grew by about 50%, you know. So like it's it's not a matter, it it's not sometimes federal policy can feel like this like ambiguous, like you don't really know what the impact uh these things have, but I mean then the numbers are very clear. Like the more we invest in nutrition programs, the fewer people are hungry, you know, and so Bread for the World is um really focused on yeah, how can we um how can we uh use our collective Christian voice to um find out what are those policies that can really make the difference for the most people.
SPEAKER_00You know, I always think it's uh it's interesting uh as I talk with church members, um they're really good at donation to food pantries and and uh season of giving where we partner with families and we're really trying to to meet an immediate need. Uh kind of that mission. Um there is uh a difficulty at times to shift to that justice where we're using our our voice and our pen uh to reach out to our um elected officials. It's it's like we've done this separation of church and state and and we're trying to navigate this, and so when we step over that line, people get uncomfortable, and yet the work the Bread for the World is doing is it's hitting hunger at a different issue. Right. Um You told uh a really powerful story at the the hunger event that we had a couple of weeks ago um about the need to reach out to our uh elected officials. And I would love, if if you don't mind sharing that with our audience today, because it it really was eye-opening for me of why we have to do both. Right. Um because it doesn't matter how much we raise on a local level, if we don't ensure that our elected officials are behind it, then um it it may be all for naught. So if you don't mind.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. So um the story I shared is about um a Bread for the World volunteer. Actually, his name is Dave Minor, and um he's been a very long time active volunteer in the hunger space. So the um sort of his first step into that was um he heard about this inner faith coalition coming together to address hunger, both in Indianapolis and at a site in Kenya where they were gonna provide um school lunch, which is really important, especially for keeping girls in school. So um, so that was what this group came together to do. And Dave was like, I really want to be involved with this. And his wife very wisely said, Um, you work 60 hours a week. So when did you, you know, when were you planning on finding the time to do this? And he was like, Yeah, you're right. And then he retired and uh became the full-time volunteer executive director of this inner faith coalition. Um that was he had never done any inner faith work, never raised any money, you know, he but he was surrounded by a lot of people who knew what they were doing. Um, and in uh over the course of six years, um, they raised uh $750 uh thousand dollars, which is a great achievement, did a lot of great work for um for local food banks building up uh food pantries, kind of building up their infrastructure, improving their ability to serve the community, and also providing uh school meals for about 3,000 students in a community in Kenya. Uh felt really good about this work. And then uh Dave heard about um a single vote in Congress around the same time that they were really getting into this work, um, that with this one vote, uh, they took away, uh Congress took away $800 million from a school lunch program that provided the same kind of lunch that uh all over the world that they were providing these 3,000 kids in Kenya. Uh and uh Dave would be the first person to tell you that he does not regret any of the time that he spent doing this work. What he would say is that he wished he had been paying attention, he wished he had done both because um he because what the work that they did was really, really valuable, um, but it really pales in comparison, like the the impact that this one act of Congress had thousand a thousand times the impact in a negative way than they were able to have in a positive way. And so um and so that is really what began to shift the focus of Dave's work.
SPEAKER_01And so many of those members of Congress, what I've noticed is you all are very good at educating lawmakers who may not be I can only imagine serving as a lawmaker on the federal level is a little bit about like drinking out of a fire hose trying to but you all seem to do a very good job of of getting those lawmakers to sit down and listen and learn. Um and and just in my uh couple of interactions I've had between bread and lawmakers and some of those gatherings, it it really is enlightening for them. They really learn a lot that they they did not know about hunger before.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Unless a member is like on a committee that's specifically dealing with these issues, there's a good chance that our volunteers know a lot more about than they do about hunger in their own community and about the policies that can make a difference. So one other quick story um also about Dave, he calls it the $35 million email. So he had been asked by Breadstaff to contact at the time Senator Dan Coates about um a committee, uh committee uh hearing that they were having on a $35 million bill. Now, in Congress, $35 million is I don't know, like $2, you know, like to an average person. It's just not a lot of money. Um, but this money was if it was going to pass out of committee, pass in Congress, would provide um it that money would go to famine-affected areas um to purchase food from the same region. So rather than shipping food, you know, from the United States to a famine-affected region, this money would have a huge impact on local African farmers and get uh local nutritious food sent much shorter distances. And instead of flooding the market with cheap commodities and pricing local farmers out of business. Um, so $35 million in the grand scheme of the federal budget, not a lot of money, huge deal for this affected region. And so Dave um does what he's asked, he sends an email and uh goes about his day, doesn't really think about it. Uh, when he goes to check his email later in the day, he has two emails back from the staff person that he had emailed. The first one was Senator Coates is out of town, he's not gonna vote. But the second one was a lot of people have been contacting our office about this, and we found a way that he can vote remotely. So we'll keep you posted. Wow. So they got a third email later that day from the staff member. Um, and the bill passed 16 to 14 out of committee because of the work that we've come to find out maybe 10 people from Bread for the World had contacted this office. That was the number of people it took to be like, oh, this is a lot of people. You know, like a lot of people care about this this issue. And, you know, Dan Coates, uh Senator Coates was a you know fairly uh fiscally conservative guy, but hearing from that many people and about the impact it would have on that region really moved him. And he, you know, did put in that extra effort to vote for the the bill.
SPEAKER_01So well, and a lot of that type of legislation that affects hunger, food insecurity seems to me gets tucked in with other bills that get the headlines. And so unless you're really like you said, people are reaching out and saying, hey, this is here. I mean, I think uh what it proves is that when people are educated and uh they're moved, they're moved by the community organizing of, hey, this is important and people care, and this is a really good point. I mean, so it it uh you know I think sometimes people think, well, I'll just write a letter. But those letters do they make a difference, right? They make a difference.
SPEAKER_00So one of the things that you uh talked about early on uh in our time together, and it's been kind of sitting with me as you continue to share your story and and stories, um is uh when you started to have questions, your concern was the church wasn't ready to hear those. Sure. Um and so uh you have so such a unique skill set and such a uh wonderful view, and so I'm curious uh where the church is now and where the church you see the church going. What are some things you th you think churches could do in that community organizing spirit to help us move forward? Because I think I think fear keeps us stuck. Right. Um when you start asking questions, it requires work and um moving out of that black and white to more of the gray. And um that makes us a little uncomfortable. And so I'm I'm curious uh through seminary and and this way of organizing and and seeing what are some things that we as a church could probably do.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think the thing I'm supposed to say as a staff member of Bread for the World is, you know, volunteer for Bread for the World. That's not uh that's not my actual answer, but please do brought to you by Bread for the World. Please do feel free to volunteer for Bread for the World and you know give me a call. But I I j I think the one of the things that can help us move past our fear to the work that God calls us to do. Because I think the work the work that God calls us to do is generally um, if you really think about it, kind of scary. It kind of freaks me out sometimes, right? You know, it's like um when you when you think about like the the implication of resurrection is like there's death first, right? You know, that you sink down into that death, and you know, we're in Eastertide, and so you have this sense of like Happy Eastertide.
SPEAKER_01We bring him back. There we go.
SPEAKER_03So with Eastertide, you know, it's a sense that resurrection is ongoing. You know, like the the hope of resurrection stays with us, but it also requires letting a lot of things go. It it it does re I, in my opinion, you know Resurrection means the death of things that sometimes are extremely comforting to us. And so the number one thing I would love to see and any church doing is how are you, how are we building connections with each other? How do we move past uh I see in a lot of church settings, it can feel very much like we're here to receive some sort of service, you know, like this this service is very comforting to me. I I think I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with being comforted by worship. I think that's part of our life together. But I would just love to see um how how are we connecting to each other in a way that builds trust that we actually can do these really difficult things together. Um, I remember when uh when I was at Central, um we were talking about um how can we transform white institutional values into these transformed values where we really value um where we really value every single person in the community and the work that we can do together. Um and one of the things I I remember preaching about was uh we have the scarcity mentality because I think that if if we genuinely believe um that we are all we have, that we have to get through this life on our own, then there actually isn't enough to go around. Like if we're all just gonna hoard up as much as we can, you know, like if we don't have trust that the the body of believers can that we can rely on them too, like if we don't have that trust to do things together, um then the scarcity is very real, you know? But so it takes it takes trust. And I think sometimes the the the work of organizing, um, to me, you have to have a community, you know, like it can't be done alone. And so um starting very at that very basic level of like how do we um build the kind of relationships it takes to take these big risks together?
SPEAKER_01So we asked Grace, every uh guest on Sacred Sit Downs a common final question, which is what is a uh television show, a podcast, a book you've read recently, or one of each, or several of one that um really moved you, that you enjoyed, that you'd like to share. And um, as we tell everyone, it does not have to be something very highbrow, but just something you you want to share with folks.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Well, I hear that you guys are big fans of Ted Lasso here.
SPEAKER_01Um we are, yes.
SPEAKER_03Yes, and um so yeah, that's definitely been one of the things I've been watching. Um very good.
SPEAKER_01You can come back on this video. Who is your favorite character?
SPEAKER_03Oh gosh, that's like really hard to answer, but I there are things I like about all of them.
SPEAKER_01It's almost dependent on the episode.
SPEAKER_03Exactly, because they they each have their own kind of hero moments, and like um I'm really enjoying the relationship between Jamie and Rory right now. You know, just like the the the change in their dynamic. Um I I don't know, like this episode's been out for a couple weeks. Can I say what could potentially be a spoiler? Or should I should I let people you know it's been two weeks.
SPEAKER_01You know, yeah, I'm I'm okay with it.
SPEAKER_00Because this won't come out for a little bit. We'll still be an Easter dad, folks. But I mean people will be. Yes, you could say, yes.
SPEAKER_03People will have had time, but um just um Roy expressing his fear of or like the sense of loss that he had about losing his grandpa, and that's why he never learned how to ride a bike because he's grandpa was gonna come back and teach him how to ride a bike, and then his grandpa never came back. And so uh Jamie stepping into that kind of very vulnerable place and teaching him how to ride a bike, you know. Uh I don't think I've ever seen anything like funnier to me, or also so like poignant. So that that dynamic has been very uh fun for me recently. Um and then books. I uh this past summer read a book called The Dawn of Everything, and it was uh an uh from an anthropologist uh perspective, they were studying kind of prehistorical societies. And if you ever want to just get your mind blown like over and over again uh about things, like I think that they take a very difficult topic and explain it in an extremely accessible way. You know, I'm not an anthropologist, didn't really know the lingo um uh look at how prehistoric societies organize themselves. Um so you know, as an organizer, I was very interested in that. Um but I think anyone could enjoy it. I listened to the audiobook um and uh the narrator had a very soothing British accent.
SPEAKER_00So all right. I'm always listening to the not while I'm driving. No, no. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for coming to our food insecurity um event a couple of weeks ago. Um I give a shout out to Deb Struck Cuss who um connected us with you uh and your relationship um with her at Allisonville and her her children, and um it was a really wonderful event. I look forward to seeing where the church takes what we've learned and and how we implement those things both mission-wise and justice-wise. Um but thank you for coming and sharing your story with us today. It was just such a delight to have you. Thank you. It was great to be here. Thanks, Grace. 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.