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Thank you for daring to listen.

Today we are sharing James's story with you.

We've been journeying through sharing this story for almost a year now, and we would like to begin by telling you a little bit about that experience.

In our intro episode for this series, we talked about how as people rise in the ranks at the stone, they become complicit in and sometimes perpetrators of abuse.

It's a nefarious fruit that has profoundly harmed many people we have spoken with Throughout our time talking with James, we have had the privilege to walk alongside him as he's processed the ways he was complicit in the system.

We have watched, as he and others behind the scenes have grieved owned and healed as they come up for air after their time at the Stone.

James has a heart for justice that is rare and beautiful.

He deeply cares about people.

His capacity to love and fight for others is commendable, and we are honored to have his voice as a part of this series.

I'm Jonna Harris and this is The Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast.

I am all about blessed subtraction There there is a pile of dead bodies behind the Mars Hill bus and by God's grace, it'll be a mountain.

By the time we're done, you either get on the bus or you get run over by the bus.

Those are the options.

Put the bus ain't gonna stop.

You either get on the bus so you get run over by the bus.

Those are the options.

Put the bus ain't gonna stop.

Welcome back to another episode of Bodies Behind the Bus.

We are continuing our conversations with people from the Austin Stone.

Today we have James with us.

James was at the Austin Stone for about eight years.

He served on various roles including campus ministry and other leadership roles within the church that he'll talk to us about today.

James, it is an honor to have you today on the podcast.

Thank you buddy.

I'm glad to be here.

Well, let's jump right in to this story.

It does span about eight years, so I wanna start with why you moved to Austin.

'cause I think that's critical to your story.

Yeah, so it, it started with my desire to see churches planted in.

Marginalized communities, specifically black and brown communities, as someone who is Mexican American and grew up in those communities.

It was, there was just no, I mean, there was maybe Catholic churches, but as far as a Protestant church goes, you maybe had a charismatic one here and there pop up, but there really wasn't a presence of, I mean, what I now know as evangelicals in under-resourced communities.

And so as someone who came from that community, but then also was trained by affluent evangelicalism, you know, I have multiple masters from Liberty University, which that's, that's its own story, but I, I really wanted to be the bridge that brought those two worlds together and I didn't know how to do it.

And I learned about the Austin Stone from the Verge Conference, which they used to host back in the late.

Two thousands, early 2010s.

And from there a friend of mine was like, Hey, have you heard of this book called For the City that this guy Matt Carter wrote?

And it's about this affluent white church that's doing, you know, great things in this predominantly under-resourced black and brown neighborhood called St.

John's in Austin.

And so, as soon as I read it, I was like, between what I'm hearing at the conference around, you know, missional engagement and just missional living missional was the big thing, you know, about 15 years ago.

And then reading the book and seeing how this church is not just talking the talk, but presumably walking the walk and caring for the marginalized.

I was like, I'm in, I, I wanna be a part of it.

What do I need to do?

I applied for a residency program at the stone.

A couple times and was accepted a couple times, but having never support raised, I was like, that's a deal breaker for me.

I just, I don't, especially again, in, in Hispanic communities, uh, specifically in in Mexican American communities, the idea of support raising is.

I mean beyond taboo.

And it was even crazier for me to like go to friends and family having just finished my first seminary degree.

And they're like, you just got a master's degree so you can hit me up for money so you can go get a job.

That makes no sense.

So that was a big deal breaker for me.

But eventually I got to a point where I was like, man, I want to be a part of this.

I want to be a part of what God's doing here.

And so my wife and I took our two kids at the time who were three and 16 months and moved to Austin, got an apartment.

I didn't have a job, I didn't have.

Friends, I, I, I had one friend in Austin.

Basically I started washing dishes outta Whole Foods from 3:00 AM to

00 AM to put food on the table.

But it was also so that we could get involved at the St.

John's campus of the church.

So you make this move, no job is promised to you.

How would you kind of describe the vibe and the culture of that St.

John's campus?

Yeah, so early on the campus was.

It was one building, but they had morning services and evening services.

And the way it was broken down was those were functionally two different campuses.

And so when I got there, the one friend I had was a, a resident at the church.

And so I just asked him, Hey, what, what service has the biggest need?

Where can I, where can I be the most use?

And he was like, go to St.

John's pm They always need people.

So that's where I ended up plugging in.

And the atmosphere of the church at the time was, and I mean it's always been true of the stone, but very young, professional, very affluent.

That was one of the first things my wife and I noticed is there's this church that's been, or this campus that's been put in this marginalized community.

And we've always lived in the community.

We're like, the condition of the community compared to the condition of the campus is, is very stark.

But we also know as it's very affluent, it's very white, but you know, these people have their hearts in the right place.

They're here at least, you know, coming to this campus.

So that's, that's a great starting place.

Let's, let's see where it goes from there.

It was always super young people running everything.

I think for the first few years I was there, they didn't really have a set campus pastor.

It was just kind of a rotating elder every couple weeks to couple months.

And then the residents basically ran the, the campus.

And you're talking guys that are 24 to 27 functionally running the campus.

And did they all have a master's degrees like yourself?

No, I think none of them had even gone to Bible college or seminary.

Yeah, it was really just, so the stone has a huge tie with Texas a and m, so most of these folks are a and m grads, and so they just finished like a bachelor's degree in whatever they got their degree in and had the social circles to where support raising was one, not taboo.

And people had the means, the excess means to give.

Without hesitancy.

And so it was really, you know, we're a and m grads and we have the ability to support race.

So here we are running the campus.

So you paid them to pay you to work for them?

Yes.

So that is something I didn't realize till after I became a resident.

So for two years I was told by one of the executive elders, Hey, we don't know you.

We didn't ask you to come to Austin.

We didn't invite you to come be a part of our church.

So, you know, we're not promising any help, we're not guaranteeing any help.

You can come and be quiet and serve faithfully over a season of time, an undefined season of time.

And after that season, if we've decided, you know, we trust you, then we can talk about you doing church planning residency in particular.

And so for about 18 months to two years, that's what my family and I did.

We never missed a Sunday.

I could.

To this day, blindfolded, put together and take apart the St.

John's campus because of every volunteer role I did.

Yeah.

It wasn't until I became a resident that then I learned the way it works is any surplus you raise at the end of your residency, that doesn't go back to you.

That gets absorbed into the church's budget.

But then, now this wasn't the case when I was there, but I know having supervised residents, it is the case now where they use a company, and I don't remember the company's name, that they outsource the finances, but basically as a resident, you're raising your own.

Support to live, but then a certain percentage gets taken and paid to the church for like, Hey, you're using our electricity, you're using our lights, you're using our paper to print.

And so yeah, you're at the end of the day when you, if you were to line item what a residents pay is about, essentially they are paying the stone from their raised support to work for the stone in a ministry position.

That candidly, if we looked at the like full roster of number of residents that have gone through, I would be shocked if they were even in the double digits of percent of residents that actually take a next step after the residency towards full-time ministry.

And just anecdotally, based on the stories that Jay and I have heard from residents, I don't.

Know why they would want to continue on, if that's what ministry meant.

I think that now might be a good time to also just ponder this question, who was being hired at the stone and how did they know those people that they were hiring?

Yeah, so that's kind of a two part question, right?

'cause a majority of the day-to-day repetitive tasks that are getting done at the church are residents.

And so something I didn't realize till much later is I had this stipulation put on me of like, Hey, shut up and serve for a year and a half, two years.

And then we'll have a conversation where the vast majority of the residents coming in were people off the street, right?

What gained them trust with leadership that I didn't have the privilege of having is they're coming from Texas A, like they're, they're white, they're aff fluent, and they're coming from an alma mater that the vast majority of the senior leadership also went to.

So from a.

Resident's perspective, that's kind of it, right?

Could you raise the money?

Were you a fanboy of the Austin Stone and do you have some kind of connection to Texas a and m?

If you check those or, or ut, because of the college ministry at the stone, if, if those boxes are checked, welcome aboard.

I didn't check any of those boxes, so I got a two year.

You had a master's degree, that's, that's not good enough.

Yeah, that's nothing.

Yeah.

You can't have that.

Right.

So I think that's, I mean, that's very common in these spaces to where you're, you're hitting, you're hitting on all the the right things there, right?

You gotta be white, you gotta know some people and you gotta come from an affluent background and have those connections.

And you see that pretty consistently with these churches that we talk about, where it's kind of the buddy system or their bros.

They get their bros in and they get their job and that does come to play in your story.

So I have a question.

So early on 2012, and then you become a resident 2014, did anything click then to where you were like, this is feeling a little off to me, or were you just all in where you're like, this is gonna be amazing?

Yeah, so early on it was absolutely, this is gonna be amazing.

And so.

The day I went back and had a conversation.

So eventually the St.

John campus got a, a full-time campus pastor.

I built a relationship with him and then eventually asked, Hey, would you be willing to go to bat for me with this elder so we can have a conversation about be becoming a church plant resident?

Which he did.

So even in that sense, it, I really needed two years to build up who's the inside, good old boy that will vouch for me.

When you were awaiting those two years, did you see other people come in and become residents immediately?

And did that, did that raise any questions in your head?

What's going on here?

What am I not doing right?

Yes, a hundred percent.

And they were, again, all one, they were all younger than me.

They were all less educated than me, but they were all white and they were all affluent.

The only thing I can say is seemingly it wasn't any.

Sexism going on because it was male and female residents coming in.

But yeah, and so early on it was, what am I not doing right?

What am I not doing enough of?

How do I prove myself here?

But then at the same time, being told, if you have that mentality, well then you're really not making this about Jesus.

You're making this about yourself.

So you know, there's this like internal struggle of me seeing literally kids coming off the street can work here, and I'm serving my tail off and doing everything I'm being told and getting zero opportunity.

But I'm told I'm not supposed to question that too, because then that somehow makes me less holy.

And so there was a lot of.

Internal turmoil and a lot of, you know, bedside conversations with my wife at night saying just what do I freaking gotta do to get someone to gimme a chance?

So you get to be a resident eventually in 2014.

You've already talked about the fact that you raised the money.

You raised the money fast, right?

I mean, it was quick, which is great.

Yes.

The day I found out, so the day I met with this executive elder that had told me, Hey, you know, shut up and stack chairs kind of thing.

I went back to him after the campus pastor went to bat for me.

We had a conversation.

He was like, yeah man, if you can raise the money you're in.

And I honestly was like ecstatic.

I was like, God's finally opening a door.

Jesus, you didn't abandon me.

You know, all that good stuff.

And I went home and you know, was like, Hey babe, I have great news.

And she was like, good, I have great news.

And I was like, well, I haven't told you my great news.

So.

I don't know what your great news is.

So I was like, you go first.

And she was like, okay, I just took a pregnancy test and we're having baby number three.

And I was like, okay, my great news feels less great.

Now I feel kind of scared because I just found out I can be a resident, but now that means I have to raise two years of money for five of us.

And so that also lit a fire under me.

And, and so I raised the full two year salary in 45 days.

And admittedly, one of the things that made it happen was being at the St.

John PM campus, they never had a homegrown resident, if you would, no one ever came up from the ranks of the congregation to then go through a residency and see, you know, could, could you do ministry full-time vocationally?

And so 90% of my support was raised from within the campus.

I mean, except for maybe like.

My mom and a distant aunt who just so happened to also be Protestant.

No friends or family within a minority community supported us either because again, it was taboo or we love what you're doing.

I don't have excess income to give.

All right.

I wanna move further into your story, but I do have one more question surrounding this.

Was there a path to paid staff roles in the church that did not include residency?

No.

So the only way I've seen people walk in the front door with a job was if you knew an executive elder.

If somebody within the inner circle of the stone knew you, vouch for you, and were the ones that were like, that's my dude, we should bring him in.

That was the only way you could do what?

You just said.

Okay.

So if you are friends with the pastors and elders, which is very common in these spaces, you can get a job.

So let's say Tommy goes to seminary and he's friends with one of the pastors, he gets a job right off the bat if they wanna give it to him.

But everybody else has to do to pay the church to work for them to hopefully work their ways up the ranks to get a job.

Yes.

So the only example I can think of, of an outsider coming in who was not connected to.

One of the executive elders was a campus pastor that did not last very long in the role, but he got in straight away because Russell Moore went to bat for him to the executive elders.

So I'm like, okay.

So you either know an executive elder or Russell Moore and you can, you can get hired.

Surely yes.

Casually know Russell Moore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's super helpful.

Well, and I think it's also to mention James is not banking here with the support raising, I'm assuming this is a very modest amount of money that you're raising compared to the six figure salaries that some of these pastors are bringing in.

Correct.

So in my, and again, I, I got quote unquote lucky in, in a sense because there wasn't as many, as much structure around the residency to where, I mean, anywhere that they can take an extra nickel and dime, they're doing it now.

I got in before that happened, and so because of that, you know, my wife and kids were all on Medicaid the entire time I was a resident because I was like, I cannot afford.

To add, here's our cost of living and I need to go find private insurance and, and for five of us, that just wasn't, so, I used the VA because I'm a veteran and my wife and kids were all on Medicaid for a while.

We had to use food stamps because even with what I was raising, it was like the money just doesn't stretch two weeks.

So yeah, no, we were not at all living high on the hog.

As a matter of fact, the entire time, with the exception of my being a resident, so six outta the eight years I was at the stone, we lived in basically a family from the church, had a half of a town home that they let us live in at a prorated cost so that we could stay in the neighborhood where I was pastoring.

So we never paid market rent the entire time we were.

On staff because if we had had to pay market rent, I could not stay on staff.

We would've been, we would've been done.

So, all right.

So you finally, you, you do the residency program and then you get called up, you get that big position, full time staff.

Where's the dollars?

What was the role and what were your responsibilities for that full-time position?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So as a resident, you know, it was like I was a church plant resident and there wasn't a lot of meat on those bones.

It was literally, you're a church plant resident and if you're gonna be a church planter, you need to be an entrepreneur.

You need to be this specific Myers-Brigg type.

And you know, we need to see that we can throw anything at you.

And regardless of what end of the pool we throw you in, you can swim.

Which was a really, really fancy way of saying we don't know what the hell we're doing and there's no job description.

And so going in my first day as a church plant resident, I was told, you have your regular church plant resident responsibilities.

And then the kids' ministry had been.

On its death legs for a little while, just because, I mean, not a lot of young families are going to church at six o'clock at night on a Sunday.

So like, okay, you're gonna be the new kids director and we wanna see if you can rejuvenate that ministry.

None of our other current staff members like administrative tasks, so you're also now the communications director, so you oversee all of the admin stuff and then on Sunday, just whatever we need you to do, you're kind of a jack of all trades.

So that was my role throughout the church planning residency, which I did for only about nine months.

It was supposed to be a two year residency, and it ended fairly quickly because the campus pastor.

Decided he wanted to go be an overseas missionary.

And so when that created a gap, that's actually what led me to getting hired.

It wasn't like, Hey James, you're killing it.

Hey James, we really like the work you're doing.

Although I turned around the kids' ministry, it went from, I think three volunteers and six kids to, at our biggest, we were sitting at around 40 kids a Sunday.

We built out two full service teams, so nobody would have to Ms.

Church consecutive weeks.

And then we also had a substitute, like it was the healthiest it had ever been.

Missional communities went from three missional communities.

I think we topped out at 11, which for a campus our size I thought was, was solid.

But all that to say, every task they gave me, I met or exceeded the expectation.

And the only reason I was hired, well, two things.

One, I was hired because the campus pastor was leaving and they're like, we need to keep consistency here.

And so you're the resident that's been here the least amount of time, so you'll.

Presumably be here the longest when he leaves, so we'll hire you.

The second piece of it, it was only on a one year contract, and that was actually something I forgot, and my wife was the one that reminded me.

She was like, Hey, remember when they hired you?

It wasn't like, Hey, you did it.

You've, you've crossed the threshold, you're on the team now.

It was more like, Hey, we're gonna.

Give you an extended tryout, but this time we'll throw some insurance in there.

Also, I, I took a pay cut when I went from a resident to full-time staff, and I remember again, same executive elder that initially told me to wait and then said, you can have a chance.

He was the same one that offered me the one year contract.

Uh, I remember him sitting with me looking at what I was getting paid as a resident and then what I was about to get paid and him saying, oh, there must be a mistake on your resident paperwork.

You couldn't have been getting paid that much because of how much I was going to take a loss on with what they were paying me now.

So, yeah.

And that, that was actually a pattern that, that persists through each of my roles at, at the, at the church each, each new role came with initially either a cut in pay or a promise of getting to a certain level of pay, and then when it came time for the rubber to meet the road, I was not given that pay.

It's literally the MLM of evangelicalism.

This whole model is buy in, like you pay to work for us and sell our product, and maybe you'll get to diamond level.

It's so upsetting, but what it's preying on is your passion for ministry and your passion for people, and it's heartbreaking.

Eventually the, that campus pastor position does open up, so you do try to apply or you already full-time when you try to apply.

Walk us through that.

What happened and what were you told, you know about that position?

Yeah, so when the campus pastor announced he was leaving, it was before I had been brought on full-time.

When he shared that with me and I knew I was gonna be around, I asked explicitly like, could I throw my name in the hat?

For this campus pastor role, since you're leaving, it's a smaller campus.

I had all of the merits that they were using to like justify we're gonna give you a one year contract.

I was trying to use to justify, give me a chance to lead.

Because that's the whole reason I signed up for this to begin with.

And so that campus pastor went, had a conversation with the executive elder, came back and was like, Hey man, I told him I don't, I don't think you can handle that role.

I don't, I don't know if, if this is something that you're a good fit for, if also Matt Carter, who at the time was a senior pastor, his then assistant wants to be a campus pastor and it looks like they're gonna give it to him.

So there was never any formal process or it was literally a conversation where I asked could I do it, was told.

I don't think you're the fit for it.

And by the way, the senior pastor's gonna appoint the guy.

Okay.

And why couldn't you do it?

Did they give you any reasons?

No.

So just an ambiguous, you can't do this.

Right.

So at the time, the stone goes through phases where like they come up with like little catchphrases, almost like political slogans, right.

And at the time it was called qualified and gifted.

Everything was, we take, we, what we're looking for is called qualified and gifted men and women to do ministry.

And so from what I remember, it was some excuse they came up using that criteria of, we think you're called, you've shown us you may be qualified.

Gifting, we don't know yet, so we're not gonna take a chance, if I remember that right.

But again, it was all in vague.

Like non-helpful, non developmental terms.

But who did you say who got the role though?

Did we already talk about who got the role?

Yeah, so it was Matt Carter's personal assistant who became my, oh, he went to ut.

So he came up from the college ministry at the school.

Okay.

And yeah, that was.

That was how he got in.

Here's what I, I, I don't understand.

Uh, here's one of the issues I have with churches like St.

John's that are in neighborhoods with marginalized communities.

They, they put in place all, all like it's fluent white people and they put in systems and processes that basically keep the community out of their church.

Yes.

And, and then when you have someone like James who wants to do the work, that, that I would say is the cr is the work that Christ would do in a community.

It's not good enough.

All you gotta have more faith, all you gotta be qualified and gifted.

All you gotta serve more.

Oh, you gotta do this.

Oh, you gotta do that.

Oh, we can, yeah, you can get tired on staff, but you gotta take a pay cut.

Oh, the money's for the church.

Oh, you gotta be happy with the money's for the church.

It's never equal.

Ever, ever.

And, and that's just one of the things.

So here you have an opportunity for an individual, if I think back at 2015.

You're qualified, you're gifted, you're educated, you represent the community, you live in the community.

You want that role.

You would be a slam dunk in that role, but no.

Yeah.

Well, and I think tied to that, so part of the conversation, so there was two things when I first signed on to, to come onto staff that have always stood out to me.

The first was the like, oh crap moment of.

You're taking a pay cut to join our team full time.

But then the second was, I was told, and this actually got brought up later in my time at the stone, and so the elder that I was having this conversation with doesn't remember this, which if he says he doesn't remember, I, I, I take him at his word, but I vividly remember him telling me, just know if you try to get ahead of the elders on helping this campus become more multi-ethnic or pursue any diversity within the community, things will end bad for you here.

And that was like, okay, sure.

I mean, I have insurance now, so I'm happy, but what am I supposed to do with that piece?

What, what did you do?

Like how did you walk away with that?

Yes.

How did that conversation sit with you at the, at that moment, if you can think back.

So there was a lot of internal conflict, to be candid.

So again, the culture at the stone is the stone.

Likes to present itself as the city on a hill, right?

And so it's like you're moving up within this organization.

And so like, it was very common for residents at, at, at the time I was there for staff to explicitly tell us, do not expect to get a job here.

You're not going to work at the Austin Stone beyond your two year residency.

You're not gonna make the cut.

We're, we're like, we're, we're such a tip of the spear when it comes to churches.

The likelihood of you coming here full time is slim to none.

So then for me to be a resident that did cross the threshold was like, James, oh my gosh, within the institution, you're doing what's seemingly impossible for the vast majority of residents.

You should celebrate that.

But at the same time, I felt torn because I'm like, the more I'm moving up in the organization, the more I feel like I'm moving away from my original.

Desire, which was to see the gospel and a, a healthy church with means to holistically care for an underserved, marginalized community.

Do that as and and bridge the community with the church to see both grow and flourish in the ways I'm seeing Jesus teach and model in the New Testament, part of me felt like it was dying a little bit because it was like I'm having to put what I feel like is.

A God-given conviction consistently on the shelf.

But somehow that's a good thing because within this white megachurch, affluent megachurch, I've moved up half a ring on the ladder.

Right?

Because I can't even see, it's a full ring.

'cause I didn't even get a pay raise.

It was like, you're just full time now.

And that that counts as moving up.

Yeah.

And you're being shamed for it too.

You're being shamed for even having that conviction.

So in 2016 there was a big change at your campus, right?

There was a merger.

What was that campus?

And there was a shakeup in the staff.

Yes.

What was that shakeup and And how did that play out for you?

Yep.

So 2016, obviously the world is going crazy already 'cause of that election.

Trump, right?

John PM campus, we saw our numbers go from, I want to say it was like mid four hundreds to like.

But then within that, our St.

Mid to high three hundreds.

It was a noticeable drop off.

I think the average church on planet Earth is like 80 people compared to the vast majority of churches.

We're still doing fine numerically, but for whatever reason, that DIP led the executive elders to say, this is no longer a good use of resources.

We're gonna merge the St.

John Am and PM campuses together, and it's just gonna be one campus.

Now.

That's what drove the change.

But then what ended up happening, as with most mergers in any industry, there's now redundancies.

And so St.

John am already had a campus pastor.

So what happens to the PM Pastor St.

John a am already has a leadership director and a communications director and a kids director.

Which would the, I was fulfilling all three roles.

So now what happens to me, what ended up happening is the campus pastor kind of put his hands up and said, obviously I'm keeping my job because the St.

John Am campus is bigger than the pm and I've been here longer, so I stay.

But for myself, the other leadership director.

The campus pastor I was working for and the missional community director.

I think he was missional community director.

We may not even have that role yet, but those four of us, he was like, you guys figure it out.

So we go into a conference room.

The leadership director from the AM campus writes the four roles that are available on the whiteboard.

Now, mind you, I'm probably early thirties by now I'm probably like 32 ish, 33 maybe.

I don't think anybody else in the room was even 30.

I actually had just finished my second master's degree, so I now have two seminary degrees.

I don't think anybody in the room had gone to, I think they may be in seminary at this time, but nobody had finished any credentials and we get into this room, he closes the door and says, okay.

I'm the leadership director at the bigger campus.

I want us to keep my role.

That rolls off the table.

Then he goes to the campus.

Pastor was like, you were the campus pastor, so you get to pick your job next.

He picked his job and then the communication, missional community, whatever role he was, was hired by the leadership director.

He was recruited and hired by the leadership director.

So he tells him, Hey guy, there's two jobs left.

Which one do you want?

He picked his, and he is like, okay, James, your communications director.

So through the merge, I went back to an entry level position at the campus.

Even though I was the oldest in the room, the most educated in the room had met every goal and expectation the church had set for me in all the roles.

They'd throw me in while taking pay cuts.

And so now I was, yeah, essentially starting all over.

Oh my God.

What reasoning was there?

Like I'm just sit thinking to myself like you're just, are they four?

Are they all white dudes in the room or is every Yes.

White dudes.

So white dudes in their twenties, which is, you know, we, we see what white dudes in their twenties do once they listen to a Joe Rogan podcast.

I can only imagine what that vibe was like in that room.

And I'm a white guy, so I've been a white guy in my twenties too, so I put myself in that club as well.

So what the hell are you thinking?

Like when this is going on, what is going through your head right then and there?

My.

First thought was, so for context, that leadership director and the campus pastor I was working for are also very close friends outside of work.

And then the third guy was brought on by the leadership director, like he was recruited by him.

So I'm the only one that does not have a personal relationship with the leadership director in the room.

I made my voice heard, I protested against, Hey, it feels like we're kind of just casting lots here.

We're just picking straws, but you've already determined I'm getting the small straw.

So we're really just kind of picking straws as a way to make me feel like, I don't know what it's, it sucks.

But it quickly became the three of them.

Like, Hey James, nobody else has a problem with the way we're doing this, so if there's an issue here, maybe, maybe it's you.

And so I bit my tongue and said.

You know, I still feel called to ministry.

I still need to put food on the table.

I'm still at the campus that I wanted to be at.

The whole reason we moved to Austin, I guess the good quote, unquote Christian thing to do is shut my mouth and swallow it.

First off, can I just tell you something?

I'm really sorry.

I just wanna say like, I see you and the fact that that happened to you is shitty and I'm very sorry.

Thank you.

I'm sorry To all those people, like maybe you're nice people, maybe.

Hopefully you've grown since then.

Yeah.

As human beings and as leaders, and maybe you went to like a class or two about how to actually manage That is wild.

Who, but it wasn't like Boy Scouts, right?

These are jobs.

I just think like for most mergers, sometimes if there's a.

A redundant job, you re-interview for it or you at least have an opportunity to interview for other jobs if that's available.

I just keep thinking like, why in the world where people not be like, here are the jobs that are available.

Let's all interview for them and then, you know, we'll see who gets the job based on that.

Sorry, I just wanted to add that Jonna, 'cause I was gonna forget it because that is what people that actually know what they're doing do.

Okay.

So in the same year you start to have some super serious health issues going on.

Yes.

So if you like expand on that, like at that, like what, what, what happened?

How are you doing during this time?

Like emotionally, physically, what's going on with your family?

Walk us through that.

Yeah, so in line with all of this, it was around October I just started getting sick.

Like at first I was like, oh, I must have caught a stomach bug.

Maybe it's food point.

But you know, no changes in my diet.

No.

You know, I wasn't taking, I wasn't drinking slim fast.

I don't know, slim fast is even a thing anymore, but, you know, whatever.

I wasn't doing any, you know, ozempic or something, you know, I, it was literally just, I'm sick and I cannot hold food in.

And so from October to Thanksgiving, I lost 45 pounds.

Without changing anything.

And I was gaunt and I was sick, and I started seeing every doctor specialist you can imagine.

I mean, it was horrible because doctors just had no idea what was going on.

And everybody was like, okay, it's gut related, so you know, let's keep checking the gut.

And I had doctors thinking it was Crohn's, it was IBS, it was stomach cancer.

Twice they thought it was stomach cancer.

Twice they thought I had AIDS because of weight loss is apparently, uh, symptom.

And they, they're like, well, you are losing weight.

Maybe it's that.

And then my wife's sitting there with me like, it's a hundred percent not that anything they could.

Throw at the wall.

They were, and they could not figure out what was going on at, at my worst, I think I was taking 21 pills a day just to function it.

It was a nightmare.

And I mean, I can kind of spoiler alert, skip a few years ahead.

It turned out I was dealing with severe stress, anxiety, depression, and trauma.

And so once my mental health was addressed, and once I got into an environment where I did not feel like I was constantly in a state of survival, I started getting healthy.

When you say that you were going through trauma, I think that people can deduce, based on what you've said.

What that trauma sort of, how that took shape.

But can you walk us through what that actually means?

What did that mean for you?

Like now that you're out a couple years and you're able to actually process what you were experiencing during that time?

Because to me what I hear is your body knew what was happening to you before you were processing what was happening to you.

Yes, yes.

So I became a workaholic.

I would not stop working because in my mind, I'm doing everything I'm being told to do and I'm exceeding in it, and somehow I'm continually regressing within the hierarchy, if you will, of of the institution.

I'm not making more money.

My family's barely getting by.

I'm taking demotions in my role.

And so it got to a point where, you know, as a communications director.

I am sending emails and writing and like copywriting emails most of the time, which I can knock out in a matter of hours.

And so tied to this season, you know, is is the first Trump election.

And it's also where we saw an increase, or not even an increase, we saw racial tensions start coming back into the headlines as as a society.

And so, you know, we saw Michael Brown, we saw Trayvon Martin, we saw just all incident after incident of police brutality against the African American community.

And so all of a sudden, evangelical churches are starting to care about race because it's in the headlines unknowingly at the time.

But as time goes on, and then now looking back in hindsight, I started to become the token brown person for the stone.

And tied to that, my new campus pastor, so the one that stayed in his role and was like, I'm not gonna have anything to do with who's getting what role.

You guys figured out, very hands off, was staunchly conservative politically.

And looking back now, I can see where Republicanism Capitalism, free market systems, and Christianity in their mind is all one and the same.

And so, because I had time on my hands, I'm just kind of sitting around most days at work now, he starts asking me like, Hey, read this article by Thomas Soul, or Watch this video from Prager you, or listen to this podcast from Ben Shapiro, which mind you, I had no idea who any of these people were beforehand.

I mean, it was like, read this book by Milton Friedman again.

I didn't know at the time.

Very conservative, very far right, talking heads that he's giving me content to.

And it's just like, Hey, as a minority, what do you think of this as a minority?

What's your perspective on this?

And candidly, it was the first time a leader gave me any attention since I'd been there.

It was the first time anybody gave me the time of day or even like, was interested in my thoughts or perspective.

So I, I took what he's was giving me and I digested it and tried to share my thoughts on it, try to share my perspective on it.

But the more I consumed and, and you know, my wife, you know, God bless her, was the one that called it out on me one day.

I was watching a Thomas Soul video on YouTube, and she was like, your face is just getting red.

Like I can just see.

You're getting angry, what's going on?

And I told her, I was like, I, I genuinely, the more I listen to this, the, this perspective, the more I'm thinking I'm supposed to hate myself, the more I'm realizing I don't fit into a predominantly white affluent, you know, everybody look out for themselves and somehow if we're all selfish, the greater good gets served.

Like, I'm like that, it makes no sense to me, but everything I'm hearing is telling me to be a good Christian.

I have to now believe these economic theories.

I now have to believe these political viewpoints.

And I don't, and now it, now I feel like I'm a bad Christian because of it.

I mean, I really did have a crisis of faith, a crisis of who I am, a crisis of everything.

I, I, I literally who I was as a person.

I was like, I don't even know who James is anymore.

And during this, what did that look like?

I mean, you've said like you're probably like some of the only diversity on stuff.

If not the only diversity.

Does that look like people that aren't white are coming to you during this to talk about stuff?

Or were you a little insulated from that?

So it, it's kind of a twofold thing.

It started with.

Where I would concede things to this, this campus pastor.

Things like, yeah, personal responsibility is a thing.

Is it the end all be all?

No, but is it a thing?

Yes.

So anywhere I would give ground, if he had a congregant who would come and like, Hey, I feel like the church isn't talking about race enough.

I feel like we're not addressing this.

I feel like we're not talking about systemic issues.

He was like, okay, James, all the stuff we talked about, all the things like, you know now so you can go talk to them.

And so I beca again, that's where I really started feeling that like, oh, I'm being tokenized.

And at the time I felt it and didn't have the language for it, but it was like I'm supposed to represent the viewpoints he gave me.

Because implicitly I've been taught those viewpoints represent not only the church, they represent Christianity and I have to defend Christianity.

And by defending Christianity it means I have to defend the Austin Stone.

And that was really hard because I would have conversations.

With the white brothers and sisters, black and brown brothers and sisters, that we're genuinely in a state of distraught and we're genuinely looking for care and compassion and empathy from their church.

And instead of giving it to them to, you know, quote unquote, be a company, man, I just fed them the talking points from the crap I was hearing and eventually was like, I can't do this anymore.

I can't.

And so it was at this time the director of what was called the, for the city network, who's the brother-in-law of the senior pastor of the church recruited me.

He was like, Hey, why don't you come be our local missions guy?

You have a heart for the community.

You've lived in the community.

You know, I've built trust with you.

I want to give you a seat at the table.

And tied to that seat at the table is the responsibility that you feel like you've earned is the, the voice that you feel should be heard.

And yes, they'll be pay to go along with it.

Yeah.

That was like, okay, God, I've, I've kind of, you know, been doing my wandering in the desert here.

Seems like you're opening a door.

I'm gonna take it.

And right off the bat.

I knew things were not gonna go as I had hoped because just in the like conversations of, of me coming on board, he was like, this is gonna be the title you get, which was gonna be a director title.

So for an auxiliary ministry, it was akin to an associate pastor type level where here I was an administrative role.

And so he was like, you're gonna get this title, it's gonna come with this pay, and these are the things I see you as being responsible over.

And that was what we shook hands on.

And then it came time for me to fill out the HR paperwork and I was not being given a director role.

My pay was going up, but not to what we had agreed.

When we shook hands.

The influence that he wanted to support me and back me in was not coming.

And so when I went back to.

Because I was like, okay, I guess this is what negotiating is.

So, you know, but we've already shook hands, so let's go, let's, let's play the game.

But I trust you, you're an executive elder.

I've built a relationship with you.

You've told me these three things are coming, so let's just finagle and figure out how we get there.

And the first time I went back to try to like negotiate his response was, this is the role.

This is, this is what it is.

It's take it or leave it.

And so when I asked what happened to this, this title, it was, oh, well, you know, other elders don't think you're ready for that kind of role.

Well what about the pay?

Well, the pay came with the title.

So sorry.

And what about the influence?

He's like, well, we'll build that up over time.

And I'm like, I've already been here for multiple years.

And again, I had already told the campus, Hey, I'm taking, if, if, if I'm offered the job, I'm taking it.

I was offered the job.

So I'm like, I can't go back.

I don't want to go back and I still have to put food on the table.

I still have to pray for my family.

And I feel still God has called me.

To ministry.

Alright, so I guess, I guess I gotta take this deal.

And that's, that's how I ended up leaving the campus teams to join the local mission team.

Did any of these leaders that had, that you were with, did they live in the community at all?

Yes.

So that was part of the reason why I was excited to, to join the for the city team, was at the time two of the three directors of that department lived in, in the community.

They were familiar with it.

They saw it, they knew it.

As a matter of fact, at one point my wife and I were, were renting a little duplex, and our neighbor who we got to know, he was a great kid.

I mean, still to this day we stay connected.

But his older brother had gotten into a dispute with someone over$5 when they went to a movie.

And so one night, the guy that he got into a dispute with, drove up and did a drive by.

But didn't got confused at which house it was.

So he shot up my house like in the windows where my children were sleeping.

And so two out of those three directors were there caring for my family as we were trying to deal with that because they lived in the community.

There was a certain amount of trust that I implicitly gave them because I was like, you don't have to be here.

You're choosing to be here, and because you're choosing to be here, that that says something to me and so I'm, I'm willing to trust you.

Yeah.

That quickly eroded.

What about the campus pastor who you worked for previously at the St.

John campus?

Did he live in the community?

No, no, no, no, no.

He lived.

30 minutes away in the burbs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I mean, and I guess the point they have is I've listened to all of those.

I, I know this is going back a little bit and then we can go forward to the tweet, tweet gate, which is what we all wanna talk about is tweet gate.

But, you know, like I've listened to those resources before that you mentioned some of those, those conservative voices and, and you know, like one, I would say as someone who's consumed that, that content, it, it is very, it is very, not only is it very white and privileged, it is naive to the concept of loving your neighbor.

And it is naive on purpose.

And so it is striking to me when leadership like church leaders are so fixated on pushing this agenda that only benefits them.

Just them.

And it strikes out and strips out the, the very basic thing that Jesus said when the Pharisees or Sades asked him What is the great greatest commandment?

He didn't give him one.

He gave them two.

And the second was, love.

Your neighbor is yourself.

Sorry, I just wanted to say that.

'cause like I've consumed that content and it's garbage.

It's absolute garbage.

Well, and in that whole conversation, James, whether you knew.

Consciously or subconsciously the survival instinct of you knew what you could or could not say back.

And so you're playing chess to figure out how to maintain some form of dignity and enter this conversation to the point where you have lost 45 pounds in a month and you are wasting away and you're, you're being erased.

Like you, like literally physically being erased.

And so that was all prior to for the city though, right?

So you're super sick.

You're like, I, we gotta make a change.

God's provided this new awesome role that actually ended up being kind of a lie, but you move over to, for the city, it's at least.

On paper better than what you're leaving?

Correct.

All right.

What was your time there, like in that role?

What did you do there?

So when they took off the director piece in typical Austin Stone fashion, it became a lot of, here's our new kind of three values for this season, and this job's gonna align with those three values.

But functionally, day to day, what does that look like?

We have no idea.

So I ended up kind of creating a role for myself in doing resource development.

And so taking a lot of the things I was hearing from this campus pastor with the content he was giving me, one, it, it made me realize the reason content like that exists is because it works.

And so what if crazy idea, the church created content similar to that, but.

Just laying out the facts.

Let's just tell the truth on Austin, like, how did Austin get segregated?

Why, why are all the churches in Austin that are, you know, the model quote unquote true?

Why are they all outside of the city?

What does it really mean to love your neighbor?

What does it really mean to care for the marginalized?

How do you even define marginalized?

And so it was really like, let's, let's tear this thing down and just rebuild from a foundation of let's just tell the truth.

And as we tell the truth historically and economically, let's ask ourselves, well, what does the Bible, if anything, have to say to this?

And in light of that, what should we do?

And so that's what my role became.

There's so much discourse right now about like the church and inte integrity and truth and like what you are talking about is what we all thought we were bought into.

We were very convinced, like it's a very convincing message that the truth.

Matters the most.

Yes.

And integrity matters the most, right?

Yes.

Let's dig deeper.

James, how did that go?

Yes.

Yes, it they, they're willing to co-sign to dig deeper unless they're implicated.

So as soon as I started writing, I was getting pushed back immediately.

You can't say this, you can't say that.

And then the, the tag for that season became you have to pastor the people we have, not the ones you hope we get, which was code for saying we are an affluent, conservative white church.

You have to say things that will appease conservative, affluent.

White congregants.

And so it was always masked in like, Hey, you're a prophetic voice, so you're, you're, you're, you're naturally gonna run ahead of the pack.

But as a leader, you have to know to slow down enough to pull people at the pace they're willing to go and at the pace you hope they go to.

Which to me, that's completely asinine.

I'm like, if we're gonna talk about racial and economic justice, literally the entirety of America was built on those injustice.

These are centuries old issues.

I'm not like inventing them last week.

So it's like people have had time that the issue is everybody coddles, everybody babies, everybody says, we don't wanna upset the money tree, so let's dance softly.

I thought we were agreeing.

No, the truth is what's gonna direct us, not where's tights coming from?

And I was wrong.

And so this elder who also lived in the community, and so it, it was actually the duplex my wife and I lived in.

His parents were the owners, and so I'm getting this prorated rent from my boss's parents.

My pay is being dictated by the same man, and so it felt like my economic ability to provide for my family was so ingrained in this one person that, again, I felt like I, I, I got myself into a situation and was like, all I can do is shut up and play ball.

The way they're saying Play ball or my family's livelihood is a done, but by this time, I think because of my health and my realizing, I think there's something more here than.

I'm having stomach issues.

I decided I'm not gonna hate myself anymore.

I'm not gonna just lay over and play, you know, the injured dog every time you want to kick me.

Because I've been doing this for five, six years at this point.

I feel like we're just going in circles.

You know, church planning's long been out the window.

My ability to earn the trust of these leaders, like I've, I literally will do anything you tell me and I'll do it incredibly well and it still has no merit with you.

So I think a part of me, I was just getting tired of, of, of being the punching bag.

I started standing up for myself more, which.

Which led to more, more friction.

When did the Christmas party happen?

Yeah, man.

So was that that same year?

So I think it was Christmas, it was, uh, 2016 or 17.

And so for context, again, we, my, I really thought working at, for the city was going to be a, a, a healing space for me.

It was gonna be a place of respite.

It was gonna be a place where I could be myself, you know, I could quote, unquote, let my hair down and James would be accepted for who James is and our shared love for Jesus and the gospel, and seeing that message and the teaching of that man.

Bring about justice and rejuvenation to marginalized, under resourced community.

That was gonna be what tied us together.

And so I, I had some freedom now and realizing I didn't, we went into this party and it was at the new North campus, well at the time, new North Campus, and it was quote unquote Mexican themed.

And my wife and I walk in and immediately are like, what the hell are they doing?

It's Mexican themed in the sense of they hung some PA picado, which is like the little tissue paper where you cut out pictures.

They hung some of that.

They had some nicely colored table claws and, you know, quote unquote Mexican food, which was like chips and canned.

You know, nothing like, I mean, taco Bell would be like, come on guys, this is not Mexican food.

You know, my wife and I sat in the back corner 'cause we were like, I don't know what the hell, whoever put this together.

I don't know what they were thinking as one of maybe three to five minority families in this staff.

I don't know how other people are feeling.

I've already been taught, if I speak my mind, if I share what I'm thinking or feeling, but the majority doesn't feel the same way or even understand where I would, that perspective would be coming from.

I'm going to be labeled the bad guy.

So I'm gonna sit in the corner.

I'm gonna shut up.

We, we, and we're gonna leave.

We, you know, I can at least say, Hey, we showed up, we participated.

I was being a team player, whatever.

And we go to where there's food and I'm trying to get my kids some snacks.

And Kevin Peck, who's the senior pastor of the Stone, comes up to my wife and I.

Now, mind you, I'd never, neither one of us had ever spoken a word to him at this point.

I knew him only because of his role.

He looks at my wife and I and is like, Hey, y'all must, y'all must feel right at home here, huh?

And my wife's eyes just blow up and she looks at me and walks off and is holding back tears.

And I'm trying to hold my kids.

And Kevin's like, yeah, hope y'all enjoy the party.

And walks off.

I got back to the table.

My wife's like, I'm, we're done.

We're gone.

Yes, we are.

And, and we left.

And when I tried to bring that up later to my elder, who was also my boss, who's also Kevin's brother-in-law, uh, it was like, Hey, he was joking.

It was misinterpreted, you know, he was just trying to make you feel comfortable.

And honestly, it, it, it, it was, uh.

It was a boys will be Boys Excuse.

Yeah.

Our racism is excused because, you know, we, we we're just being boys.

We're just being boys.

And you know, like the reality is, is that James, like that's a heartbreaking story, but.

You know what we have to do, and I'm speaking to the fact that I am a white male on this call or on this thing, and we have to understand where that's coming from and do the hard work to root that out before we can even think, before we can even think to have a conversation, to say anything, anything.

We have to do that work.

We have to understand how these systems are built and how we have profited from them, and how we are putting people in positions to demoralize them, humiliate them, and make them feel less human, less Christ-like, whatever you wanna put on that.

I, I just think that a lot of people, especially white people, can listen to that and be like, well, that wasn't that big of a deal.

I just, I wanna invite people to be curious about why.

Your experience of hearing that is so starkly different than James and his wife's experience and whether or not that actually matters to you.

Because if you claim Jesus and our job is to love our neighbor, and our neighbor is telling us that the way that we engage in conversation is dehumanizing and demoralizing and causes like deep grief within them and othering, then maybe it's a bigger deal than you've been led to believe.

And maybe the way that we've been taught is okay to talk and okay to joke is actually deeply racist.

I'm just asking people to be curious about that.

And I think, you know, and it's something my wife shared, is she had gone in, and I didn't know this till fairly recently because I think she had stuffed so much of it, but going into.

That Christmas party, she was already feeling on edge before we walked in the doors.

And mind you, we had no idea what the theme was like.

We were like, we were going to a staff Christmas party.

It's gonna be Christmas, you know, not some horrible, you know, the most stereotypical version of our culture.

But the reason she had been feeling some kind of way already was because on Instagram she had seen a bunch of the.

Elders wives and executive elder wives having, uh, a party where it was Mexican themed, and so they were all in poncho.

These are all white women when ponchos and curly mustaches and Soros taking pictures with their margaritas.

I, I just, I could talk about that all day.

I don't, I we can cut this.

They just don't care.

Like they don't care.

And, but Jay, the thing that I struggle with when you say that is you're right, but it's like you got to the end without the journey.

Yeah.

Like, people don't know.

They don't care.

Well, they are convinced that they care.

I, I agree.

And this is how you care.

And, but I, but I agree.

And so I guess my point is in church space like this, John might say they don't care.

They're not willing to do the work.

They're not willing to do the work, this and that.

This, that is the truth.

The thing is, is you can't say you care about.

Your neighbors and not do the work of learning about their experience in the world that is actually caring.

Like if I love, if I love the people on this call right now, I'm going to actually get to know them.

Getting to know James and Jay.

Looks like learning about your culture, learning about your family, learning about your struggles, learning about your successes, learning about the things that make you cry, and learning about the things that make you overjoyed, because that's what loving someone is for so long.

We have decided that caring for people looks like just listening to whatever the dude on the stage is telling us, caring for people is, and not actually human connection.

Like it even spans outside of Christianity.

Like we have more of a responsibility as Christians to go the extra mile to care about people and to understand these things and to do that in our work, but just on a human level.

I can look at you and see you, and then I can decide how I move in the world.

I don't wanna hurt you like I can.

I can do those things as a human being.

But as Christians, we have completely taken that out of the way we engage at all.

Like it's literally just whatever dude says it has, who cares what the person in front of me is going through.

Who cares what Jesus actually said?

Who cares how Jesus actually lived?

All that matters is what this dude said.

And this dude's watching effing Ben Shapiro and Yeah.

Yeah.

And Prager.

You.

All right.

So I, something happened during this time too, James, that kind of prompted, I think the beginning, basically your departure.

Eventually it would leave to your departure.

So can you talk to us about, and I love how you named it, what was tweet gate?

You know, what did you tweet into the world that was so, uh.

Concerning for this church.

Yes.

Yes.

The act of Twitter heresy.

Yeah.

I, so it was, the Gospel Coalition posted an article, I don't remember what the name is, I don't remember what the, who the author was, but it, he was talking about the teachings of Paul and how, and, and the letters of Paul, and how you can't fully live those out in a multi-site church context.

And so one of the examples I remember him giving is, is, you know, when Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ.

Well, when your pastor is doing the sermon 20 miles away, five hours earlier in the day, how do you imitate the guy?

How do you, how do you obey this scripture?

And so as I read that, and I'd been on staff.

At one of the multi-sites of the Austin Stone for, I mean, years, I mean, the better part of a decade at this point, I was like, yeah, no, I, I, I really can see how, how what he's saying is true.

But then on top of that, from a minority standpoint, the multi-site makes it even more complex because now there's cultural dynamics at play, there's relational dynamics at play.

There's trust dynamics.

I mean, even just being a white pastor, you know, mark Driscoll doing his thing in Seattle to a bunch of white dudes.

Yeah.

You can throw your 50 screens.

You're talking, you know, in, in a, in a sense you're talking to your people, quote unquote.

But here you have a fluent majority white men who are.

Speaking to a group who they're not going to default give you that trust.

As a matter of fact, they've been taught through experience and history to default.

You're working from a negative, you're working from a state of distrust.

And so what happens when you're already starting with that posture and now the person that's teaching is not even in the room anymore.

He's 10 miles away and haven't given that sermon five hours earlier.

So all I did was retweet.

Here's the article, and here's where I've seen like this is even more true when you are in a minority context and a majority church and majority being, you know, white and affluent.

And a friend of mine at the time responded in the comments in Spanish, joking, are you trying to get yourself fired?

Because it's kind of like, it's one of those where conversations minorities regularly have at the dinner table, I let the, I let the majority culture hear that conversation, and so that was the, what he meant in jest.

That tweet got to Kevin Peck, the tweet was screen captured, and then Kevin Peck told my boss again, his brother-in-law, you need to go fix this with James right now.

Somehow, some way, in Kevin's mind, I committed this egregious sin.

And so the narrative that was created.

And that was told to me was because of my tweet, I've, I've lost all the trust in the executive leaders.

I've pissed off all the campus pastors, especially the ones who are leading a multi-site campus and all the work that my director has done to build me up and help me be a voice in the church.

I've burned down in one tweet.

So in a nutshell, that was Tweet eight.

What happened as a result of tweet eight was Kevin told my boss, get James.

He needs to repent, he needs to apologize.

He needs to, you know, we should fire his ass.

Was one thing I heard from a staff member who was familiar with the conversations going on.

And so Justin and I went to have lunch to, to hash this out.

And the place we picked, ironically, our entire team, so the entire for the city department was having lunch at the same place at that time.

And they all sat right next to where he and I were, were meeting.

And so what was supposed to be a conversation between, he and I was open to our entire team and he basically said, Hey look, this is what's going on.

You need to apologize.

You need to repent for this and you need to start doing the hard work of, of rebuilding trust.

And candidly, this is the first time I stood up for myself and said, no.

I didn't do anything wrong.

I didn't say anything wrong.

I didn't cross any lines.

I don't understand how, I was like, as a matter of fact, the campus pastors that you're saying, I've pissed off and broken trust with, I've talked to you directly about this topic, and they've agreed with me.

So if all of a sudden they're saying, no, he pissed me off.

I don't know if I can trust them because they're telling me one thing to my face and then doing something else behind my back.

And so he gets livid, turns red, and, and I just, I, I, I become candid with him.

I'm like, man, maybe I don't fit here as a minority.

Maybe this isn't a place where I can be.

'cause there just seems to be so many cross lines, so much misunderstanding, so much reading into things I say and do.

When I thought we were on the same page, and immediately an African American worship pastor was thrown in my face to justify the issue was not race.

The issue was James, because it was, well, look at this worship pastor.

He doesn't have these problems.

He's a black man.

He loves this, this church, he loves everything about this church.

Why are you having issues?

Clearly it's not a race issue, and I knew once that happened, there was gonna be no progress in that conversation.

And so we drove back to the church and ironically, I was scheduled to lead our team because it was MLK week.

King's, I Have a Dream Speech, and we were having a conversation, so I still had to go do that.

And so I was reading in full Dr.

And so on the way there, I'm like, man, maybe, maybe right.

I'm not a fit.

Maybe this, maybe I, I'm, I'm saying this like I, I'm, I'm, I'm not a fit here.

And it kept becoming, man, you just gotta remember, you gotta pastor the people we have, not the ones you want us to have.

And I'm like, I don't understand what my role is here or what my purpose of being here is.

If everything I do or say that is being transparent with what I've seen and and experienced is now going to label me as these things is now going to villainize me.

And so things got so heated.

We brought in another elder and he went directly to all the people that allegedly I pissed off and lost trust with.

And every single one of them had one of two responses.

One, they were like, we don't even know what you're talking about.

What Tweet are, are did James, I didn't know James was even on Twitter or they verified what I said, oh, I've talked to James about this.

I agree with him.

I don't have a problem with the tweet.

And so this whole thing, I was basically lied to by my boss as a way to get me to get in line because his boss, who's his brother-in-law got pissed off and was like, go get him in line.

What was the, what was the sin when they said you needed to repent of the sin?

What did they allude?

What did they say the sin was that you were doing?

If I remember correctly, it had to do with not trusting leadership, and it was me going against the vision and the direction that the leadership was trying to take us in.

What's interesting is they keep saying like, pastor, the people, I don't know what the motto is, I'm not even try to say it.

Whatever the motto they told you, but you were pastoring the people.

Like you are actually digging into things.

'cause you're digging into your community and you're, you're, you're bringing your, you're saying This is how we need to pastor, this is what we need to do.

It just strikes me, James, every time you try to bring your full self, every time you try to show your full and embodied beautiful soul, it is shot down.

It is, it is simply said, that's not welcome here.

Right.

Yes.

Well, and I think, I was thinking as you were saying that how many times, like we, we have an unknown factor here of how many times did other people that are minorities come to these leaders with problems that weren't you and then you were used mm-hmm.

To say, look at James.

He's here.

He's fine.

He co-signs all this.

Right.

So it's a you problem.

Like how many times have, or how many other ways have they been u utilizing that and weaponizing that against minorities who bring up.

Very real, very appropriate things.

Yeah.

That they're struggling with within the system of the stone.

Yeah.

Okay.

Your wife ends up sending a letter to leadership.

When did that happen?

Did that happen after Twitter day?

And why?

And why did she send a lead?

What inspired that?

Yes.

So if I remember correctly, that happened shortly after this conversation, the tweet gate, and I think Tweet Gate played a role.

So my wife, I mean, people can't see on the podcast, but I'm light skinned.

I'm pretty.

Ethnically ambiguous.

Most people when they meet me, they're like, you're light, but I don't think you're a white person.

I don't know what to do with you.

But because of that, I do get privileges that other Latinos who are darker skinned don't.

My wife looks very indigenous.

My wife has beautiful jet, black, straight hair, beautiful brown skin.

There's no ambiguity.

When my wife walks into a room, but from the day we got to the stone, she struggled being often the only brown woman in the room.

And for years she.

Swallowed the every aggression, every comment.

She believed God called me to ministry and she supported that.

And she's like, and the doors have opened for this to be the place and the vision you have of, of seeing these two worlds, bridge and holistic restoration and justice be brought.

She's like, I've always believed in that.

I've never questioned that.

And if this was my cross to bear, then it was my cross to bear to deal with stupid racism within the church.

And so, you know, as an example, one of the first times when we had just connected to the stone, so this was all the way back in 2012, she was in a woman's development program, which was like the Stone's way of, you know, we're gonna, the way we're gonna disciple.

Our congregants is we're gonna take 'em through Wayne Gruden's systematic theology.

And by the time you finish Gruden's systematic Theology, you are now, you know how many, you're a mature Christian, and so they break you into cohorts to do this.

Yeah.

And my wife was in one, she didn't want to do it.

And I a like, Hey, I'm, I'm trying to make a good impression.

I'm trying to build trust here.

So I put her in that situation and one of the first times she goes to one of the leader's house to meet for study time, the host who's, who's one of the leaders I think had just finished working out or something, and they're all sitting down to eat and the first thing out of her mouth is, Hey ladies, I'm sorry that I smell like a dirty Mexican.

And my wife looks at her and says, are you saying this because you're insinuating all Mexican Smeller that we're all dirty and then all the women in the room who were white gave my wife crap.

For speaking up.

And so that was incident one of, at this point, six to eight years of crap and seeing everything I was experiencing, everything she had had been experiencing and just for the sake of showing she could be loyal, staying quiet was like, I've had enough.

I can't.

I can't.

So she wrote a letter, I think it was five pages, unpacking everything she experienced and everything how she felt.

How she was perceived as a minority at the Austin Stone, and before she sent it, knowing how the game is played.

I was like, you can't, you can't just be vulnerable and you can't just be honest because everything needs to be quantifiable.

Okay, so then how do I fix it?

How do I, right.

So we, we need to have a plan.

And so the plan was she would send it, and my boss, who's the person I just had tweet gate with, who's Kevin Peck's brother-in-law, it was agreed he would get it to every executive elder and every campus pastor.

And the church would go through it and they would discuss it and they would talk about what are systemic ways they can make changes to the church, so that doesn't happen to anybody else.

And she wrote it.

She sent it, and it was a few months, we didn't hear anything.

I mean, complete crickets, nothing.

And eventually I go to my boss and I'm like, Hey dude, what, what happened?

Where?

What's going on here?

He tells me like, just can I give my wife a status?

She's been walking on eggshells for months.

Knowing these men with all this power in our lives, spiritually, economically, morally, have seen her bear her soul.

And you've not said a word, can you gimme something?

And what he did was apologize.

He was like, I'm sorry.

I've not shared it with anybody.

Like I said, I would, I've not done anything with the letter, but if it's any consolation, tell your wife.

I think about it every day and it breaks my heart and I was not happy.

It was like, you know, I've dealt with shit y'all have done to me, and I've dealt, I've taken it and kept a smile on my face.

You're fucking with my family now.

That's not okay.

And so I went to a different elder, shared what I was told.

He agreed.

That's not what we said we were gonna do.

That's not okay.

And so he held that elder accountable to go and do with it what they, they said they would.

At the end, my wife received a ton of empathy and I'm sorrys from senior leadership.

I functionally Did anything change?

No.

If anything did change, it was, it pushed me into a more defined token role.

It was, now James is gonna be the brown person that we use to speak on, on issues of race at the stone.

And we did have a meeting with.

The elder that did not do anything.

My boss, the elder that held him accountable, and another elder who's best friends with Kevin Peck and also Korean.

And so they came to our house and it was like, let's have a conversation.

And as we were sharing everything that had gone on and my wife's sharing everything she shared in the letter, she's re-traumatizing herself for these men to get them to see and understand and and empathize.

The Korean elder's response was, well, the issue here is you guys need to have thicker skin.

To which I am eternally grateful.

The one white elder in the room said, that is the wrong answer.

That is not what needs to happen here.

But even then, my wife at that point lost all trust in the church.

And so I've been almost for maybe the last year I was at the stone.

She would not go to church anymore.

She was like, I'm, I'm done.

I don't trust these people.

I don't think anything they say is the truth.

I don't think, I think they're very much, they say one thing and do another.

And so through that, you know, the last, you know, again, year or so was me fighting because I still felt like, okay, God, like this is the only door that opened.

I still feel this is the direction you're, you're calling us to that, that you're moving us in.

But now my wife's out, which means my kids most Sundays are out.

I don't know how to hold it all together.

And so the elder, my boss ends up resigning.

He went to go take a job in the corporate world and.

Once he left, basically my wife's letter was dead after that.

And I mean, just it nothing, it wasn't until a few years ago that a, a couple of reliable sources came to me.

I didn't get their permission beforehand to share more than they were reliable sources, but who were close to both Kevin and Justin, who were explicit.

The reason Justin sat on it for months was because Kevin told him, I don't want that shit getting out.

Squash it.

Don't let that get out.

Which, you know, we were, we'd been gone for a few years by this point, but it surprises me, but doesn't shock me in the least bit.

Yeah, it's devastating.

I'm just sorry for you, for your wife, for your kids that, I mean, I could, I just say like, not feeling safe or seen or supported in the place where you, you're supposed to be the most vulnerable, the most connected, and where you're worshiping, it's just devastating.

It's just devastating on so many levels.

So did, did this ultimately kind of lead to your departure or what, how you're, you're a year out now, so what led to the departure?

How did you ultimately decide I, I gotta get outta here.

Yeah.

So throughout this whole time, my health is still abysmal.

Fortunately, I ended up finding a primary care doctor who had.

The wherewithal to say, Hey, I'm looking at your chart, everything, which way in your gut has been checked?

I'm curious if we did a mental health exam, what would happen?

And she gives me this 20 question survey exam, I dunno what they call it.

And I answered it as candidly as I could.

And she was like, okay, you got 19 outta 20.

And I was like, oh, I aced it.

She's like, the lower the number, the less stress and anxiety and trauma you're dealing with.

She's like, you are dealing with incredible amounts of anxiety.

And that's the first time I learned, you know, that the gut and the brain, or, you know, they call your gut your, your second brain.

And she's like, I think what's happening to you is mental, not physical.

And so she encouraged me to go to counseling.

So I did at the Austin Stone Counseling Center.

How did that go?

So horrible.

It was a lot of, so mind you, the, the counselor I met with was also very pro Shapiro, pro Joe Rogan, all, I mean, like it was same, same, you know, I think a lot of these guys that started in Acts 29, you know, in the late two thousands, 2010s, like as they've gotten older and they can't be, you know, the old dude that's like still wearing the varsity jacket at church kind of thing.

Like they've just kind of, the natural evolution was they became groupies to this movement, whatever the hell that is.

And so a lot of it was, bro.

Yeah, it's in your head.

Yeah.

You're you, you went to war in the military, you dealt with trauma.

Like it was a quick like Yes, I think the doctor's correct, and the solution is you're not trusting Jesus, so you need to pray harder.

The solution is, I mean, at one point he was like, I need you to fast for seven to nine days.

You had lost 45 pounds.

No.

Yes, yes.

I'm like, I can maybe keep one meal down a day.

Yeah.

And you're saying get rid of that one.

No, and at the time, I mean I saw my counselor as like a friend.

I was like, you, you have my best interest at heart.

Right.

Obviously gospel counseling's the best counseling in the world because you're taking the best of science and the Bible.

And, and now, I mean I am a strong proponent for anyone in need of mental health.

Do not go to any type of counselor that uses the term biblical anywhere in their name or title because you are not receiving mental health care.

Yeah.

That was a train wreck.

And, but I was, my primary care doctor did start putting me on an antidepressant.

'cause she was like, I can't prescribe that far without being a clinical psychologist.

And that is actually the first time I started getting.

Any sort of physical relief at the same time.

During this, during my last probably six months, I started having panic attacks daily, like the room would get hot regardless of the temperature.

It always felt like the room was shrinking on me.

I would break out into a cold sweat.

Sometimes I would shake, sometimes I would get so stressed I would not be able to get outta bed for days at a time, and so I was like, okay, I'm starting to kind of be able to eat.

My weight is slowly moving in the right direction, but my body is now finding different ways to let me know something is still off.

And counseling with the stone didn't even begin to help with that.

What's so sad about this is that counseling was that your counseling was actually spiritually abusive.

You were getting counseled with.

Tools of spiritual abuse.

So you are at your rock bottom with your mental health and what you're hearing is you are wrong.

Like you are inherently wrong, that you are experiencing this and your wrongness is, is affecting your body that much.

Like you have such a disconnect from God that you can't keep weight on and you are having panic attacks.

We're not gonna touch the fact that there is maybe some underlying cultural things that are adding to this.

It's all about you not being right before God.

Yes.

And and that's the counseling.

Yeah.

So do you ever give up on the counseling or do you just like grit and bear it to the bitter end?

I, I did grit and bear it to the bitter end.

And if, I mean, honestly, even looking back in hindsight, it's like why I, I thought my counselor was my.

I was like, and friends wouldn't hurt friends.

So how things ended was, this is where I was physically and health wise, but for the city was trying to go through this rebrand and I mean we spent, I don't know how much money with some agency in Nashville and they were going to completely, you know, revamp us and we're gonna relaunch and it was gonna be this great thing.

And Kevin's brother-in-law who was the founder for the city and my boss, that's when he decides to resign.

He leaves in sadly typical stone fashion.

Instead of looking for candidates, checking people from the outside, they gave the role to the guy who was Justin's right hand man.

What that process looked like, I don't know, but I know I did advocate for like, can we like let somebody just look at the books, who's not?

In-house, right?

Let's get fresh perspective on how can we do this.

Well, we've all been here, we've all been in this environment for so long.

Even if we're not gonna hire them, what's the harm in getting a fresh pair of eyes here?

That never went anywhere, but the guy they gave it to, God bless 'em, he was set up to fill from the beginning.

He took over and similar to me, was promised a title, was promised responsibility, and was promised a voice at the table only to learn.

Within a few months, the stone turned over the keys to the Titanic to him, from what I understand, because the, the founder for the city is Kevin's brother-in-law.

He essentially was playing with house money he could raise money in.

Great.

He could lose money in great whatever he did financially.

The stone was going to bail him out.

When he left, we were no longer playing with house money and the state he left for the city.

Was so horrible, there was no way that the new director would, would realistically be able to get us out of that hole.

And so once the executive elders looked at the books and realized that they got rid of our department, was the ministry from what all of you were experiencing doing okay.

And sustaining on its own financially?

So from my role, so eventually I did become a director, and it did come with a pay bump.

I, I don't think I ever made what, initially I was told, Hey, if you join this team, this is what you'll make.

I don't think I ever made that.

But from my position, the team, I mean, we had just made a handful of hires.

We brought one woman team member all the way from Seattle.

To join us.

Like we paid to have her move.

And you know, we had, we had made some strategic hires and so even just based on like, okay, we're, we're in a place where we're hiring, we're, we're probably doing okay financially.

I did get a little bit of a bump.

I think we're okay financially, but I mean, even with this marketing organization that we brought in, myself and one of the other directors who were, who went to Nashville to be a part of all this, both of us were like, they're robbing us.

Like what they are charging us to deliver is egregious.

Like we are way over paying for this.

But apparently a giver with a trust fund who was like, Hey, I will give, I can take care of your financial situation, you know, or, or the lion's share of it was adamant.

If you go with any other marketing agency, I'm out.

And so.

That ended up being what led us to use these people.

But I mean, from what I could see on the outside, we, I mean we were using old camera gear.

How did money come in to that ministry?

There was conversations of the campuses would start giving towards the pot there.

But for the majority, I don't know if that ever actually came to be, but I do know the stone did give some percentage.

Uh, but the majority of it was fundraised from the outside because for the city was its own 5 0 1 C3.

Were you ever privy to like what the fundraising goals were?

No.

Interesting.

Who the heck was fundraising?

The directors.

Who?

So those are the only people I know that were like in the weeds with the budget.

Weird.

So like for me, I would get a budget saying, for your team this fiscal year, this is the dollar amount you get.

And then that's all I saw.

I only saw that piece of the pie.

Very few people saw the whole pie.

Okay.

So your department.

Goes away because there's no money.

Yeah.

Which initially we were told by two executive elders months before, this was like August, September of 2019.

Hey, you know, we're gonna have to, you know, based on where we were financially and where the stone had a vision for, for the city going forward, there was probably gonna be some reshuffling happening, which did not excite me at all.

'cause I'd already been through that with the stone.

And reshuffling usually meant I'm gonna get a demotion.

And so everybody's on eggshells.

Every, but we're like, you know, again, it's the same.

Trust the leadership, trust your elders.

We, we know what we're doing.

And the two or three times we met with the same elders, they were adamant, it's a reshuffle.

Nobody's losing their job.

And that was like the one thing we all held onto was, okay, this is gonna look different.

We're gonna have to roll with some punches, but we'll all be here to do it together.

And it was around Christmas of 2019, my, my new boss comes to me and is like, Hey, for the city's going away.

Nobody knows this yet.

I need you to help me care for the team as this starts to happen.

So then I think it was like early January, 2020 is when we were told we were all being let go.

As much as I was holding on for dear life with the situation with my family and my wife, and the broken trust she felt from the church.

How much.

Crap I had continued to deal with at the church.

I genuinely love that for the city team.

And I was like, I, I want to do the best I can to serve them well.

And so I was called in by an executive elder and he told me, Hey, because you have a heart for the community and you've lived in the community, like, we're gonna, we're gonna try to find a role for you on the team.

My response was, please don't, I don't want to be here anymore.

If y'all are doing away with this department, I, I don't wanna continue.

But here's the name of someone that loves this church that has gone similar to me, gone above and beyond everything y'all have asked him to do.

You should really consider keeping him.

And it was an immediate, yeah, no, he's, he's, he's not gonna stay.

And so from there, it became all of us getting our paperwork.

Of being let go, which did include NDAs.

And I even brought up, Hey, I don't feel comfortable with signing the NDA, at which time the executive director of HR said, that's totally fine.

We completely understand.

But no, if you don't sign it with the NDA, you will not receive any severance.

And so after almost a decade of being at this church, doing everything they said, how they said it when they said it, the way it unglamorous ended was, if you don't feel comfortable signing an NDA, you can leave and we'll keep our money.

And so that's how my time at the stone Indian.

Gross, gross, gross, gross.

I Any listener listening right now, if you don't know already, NDAs have no business in churches, and we've spoken to that extensively.

I would love for you to scroll back in our pod feed and find the episodes where we talk with our board member attorney Robert Callahan about NDAs and churches and what to do if you are being faced with this as a staff member.

But I also just wanna say, and I'm so sorry, that's so I icky, and you feel it.

You know it.

As soon as something like that happens in a faith community, you feel like they're buying your silence.

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Shut up, smile and take the money.

And we're gonna take your voice Yes.

At the end.

And then what's.

Crazy is that, it's almost like when a, when a plane lands, you know, and it's like kind of, it lands, but it skips and then it lands.

That was the skip.

And so my, I took a job in Atlanta.

I mean, we just left Texas.

We were like, we're done, we're going, we're leaving.

A couple months after being there, you know, COVID hits and COVID is going crazy.

It shuts the world down.

And I get an email from the HR director who's under the elder over hr, where she's requesting that I resubmit my paperwork, you know, leaving the stone because she wants to change it from, I was let go to, I chose to resign so that the church wouldn't have to pay back the PPP loan that they took from the government for COVID.

And so that was the only other time I've ever heard from Kevin Peck because I CC'd everybody and their mother that I could think of on my response email saying.

No, I'm not going to lie.

You did let me go.

I was not actively looking for a change.

This isn't okay.

I'm not doing it.

Uh, to which Kevin did send a response of like, Hey, no, sorry, that was our mistake.

That didn't get approval before she sent the email our bat.

And that's the last time I've ever heard James, thank you.

This has been a devastating story, but just your courage and your bravery, it's commendable.

Just appreciate your time.

Appreciate your voice.

It's been, yeah, thank you.

It's just so important.

All right.

Last, we always ask the same questions.

You can, you can, however you wanna ask, however you want to answer them.

We wanna really understand why you wanted to share your story and if you have any words or anything you wanna say to people in similar situations and the church leaders of the stone.

Yeah, those are great questions.

Yeah.

The reason I wanted to share my story is for a few years I naively believed I was the only one who experienced this.

I genuinely like.

I was gaslit so well, I thought the issues my family experienced, which already, it's like my family experience.

It wasn't just me, but it was limited to only us.

And it wasn't till a few years ago that I learned, and honestly it's, as you know, sexual abuse incidents ironically have come out about leaders at the stone that I realized, oh, this was ha, this was much more widespread.

It makes sense that it, there wasn't as many people dealing with it from a race perspective.

'cause there's not many minorities there to begin with.

But there are women experiencing this.

There are L-G-B-T-Q folks who have experienced this.

There are just regular congregants.

Have had these same tactics used against them for calling for any transparency or accountability from leadership.

And so I wanted to share my story.

So one, if there's other people out there who also think, oh, this was unique to me.

No, it's, it's not.

This is, this is a systemic problem.

There's a, there's a poison at work here, but two is, I wanted to leave a digital testimony.

So whether it's in a month, a year, 10 years, if other people find themselves in similar situations at the stone or any church and they look for like, man, is this unique to me?

Am I.

Or am I the crazy person?

This, this is a little eban, or, no, you're not the crazy person here.

You're in a toxic situation and, and you should leave.

Which for folks who are experiences, my advice is leave there.

There is nothing godly about being treated this way.

There is nothing wholly about allowing yourself to be subjected to this type of toxicity and trauma and abuse, specifically spiritual abuse.

I think spiritual abuse is its own unique cocktail of trauma because it's so tied not just to who you are, but it's impossible to experience spiritual abuse and not question God.

And who God is as a result.

And so, yeah, I think for folks that are still at the stone that are hearing this, I know a lot of folks have seen this, there's still a lot of folks there that know parts, if not the whole of our story.

And the most common thing I hear is, well, if we don't stay, how's it ever gonna change?

And my response is, you are not going to be the one to change it.

The way institutions like this.

Change is something traumatic has to happen at the leadership level.

And a lot of times, if not Mo, if not all of the time, it actually needs to be broken back down.

Like you need to tear down the foundation and rebuild completely from scratch.

And even if that happens, it's not gonna be the same institution you have now.

So don't convince yourself you're being a martyr for some greater good.

You're not.

And I think finally to the leaders, I would say there's a lot of talk about, this is for the gospel, this is for Jesus, this is for the kingdom of God.

And I think you've done a very good job of masking your own insecurity and your own desire for power and a sense of purpose behind Christian language and what the Austin Stone is about and what it represents has little to nothing to do with Jesus.

I think if you think about every giving campaign the Stone's ever had, it's always for expansion.

It's always new buildings, new sites.

It's always, we need more numbers.

We need bigger, we need better.

And I think when you look historically, when Christians have done this, immediately, what comes to mind is the crusades, right?

We need bigger, we need more.

It's all for God.

We've seen the rise of fundamentalism.

We've seen the rise of Trumpism all birthed on the back of.

The exact philosophy you're using to build and sustain the Austin Stone.

And so I think you can call yourself a church in name and that's totally fine.

You have the freedom to do that, but to be a representation of the life and teachings of Jesus, you are far from hot damn beautifully said.

Do you have anything else you want to say?

No, thank you guys for creating the space.

I think it's very common inside and outside of Christian circles for people to write off spiritual abuse.

I think for people inside, we don't want to admit that things are as bad as they are because again, it gets to the foundation of, well, is God really sovereign?

If this many churches could be doing this, is God really?

You know?

Building his kingdom if this many pastors are hurting children, you know?

And so instead of dealing with the reality and questioning, maybe my theology is contributing to this, we'd rather play blind and just accept our theology without question.

And for outsiders who aren't religious to begin with, it's just really hard to grasp the idea of like, you voluntarily go to these places.

You voluntarily give your money to this.

What do you mean they're hurting you?

It's like me saying, my city basketball team is traumatizing me.

Well then I'm not gonna play basketball anymore.

You know?

But you don't understand how much that spiritual component and the community shapes your sense of being and your sense of belonging.

And so it's really rare to find spaces where people like you, you guys mentioned earlier, will let you just come as your full self and empathize and show compassion for what you've experienced.

So I really appreciate that.

Thanks for sharing your story with us and trusting us on this journey.

You said something really profound in what you were saying, where it's like usually something very like groundbreaking, earth shattering has to happen at the top levels of leadership and child sexual abuse was not enough to shake this.

So what do you need?

What needs to happen?

What cost needs to be paid for this institution to turn around?

It was an honor to have James on the podcast today.

We're so thankful for him, his courageous voice, and as a reminder, this is a series in the Austin Stone, so if you haven't yet, please take time to check out the three previous storytellers that we featured.

Next week we'll be back with yet another storyteller from the Austin Stone.

For now, thank you for daring to listen for Johnny Harris.

I'm Jay Coyle and this is The Bodies Behind the Bus Podcast.

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