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American Reformation
We believe the American church needs reformation. To go forward we must go back. This podcast will explore the theology and practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication and apply those learnings to our post-Christian/secular American culture. American Reformation is a podcast of the Unite Leadership Collective. Follow us at uniteleadership.org. We consult, bring together cohorts of congregations for peer to peer learning, and certify leaders for work in the church and world.
American Reformation
Building Bridges through Compassion and Visionary Leadership with Alan Graham
Join us as visionary leader Alan Graham shares his extraordinary journey from the bustling world of real estate to founding Community First Village, a beacon of hope for the homeless in Austin, Texas. Alan's inspiring pilgrimage along the Camino de Santiago has imparted profound insights into the universal quest for purpose and reconciliation. Together, we unravel the dynamic between humility in faith and the enriching embrace of diverse belief systems, while maintaining a heartfelt conviction in Jesus as the way, truth, and life. Alan's reflections encourage a transformative view on faith and leadership, challenging traditional paradigms.
Discover the power of attractional leadership through the humble example set by Jesus Christ, who reached out to the marginalized with compassion and grace. We examine the stark contrast between Western ideals of success and the selfless leadership that Jesus exemplified, prompting a re-evaluation of the American church's growth models. Our conversation highlights the profound impact of liturgy and historical traditions in preserving the essence of faith, offering valuable lessons for leadership within both sacred and secular realms.
Explore how Community First Village is redefining what it means to be a family, as it fosters community among those who have experienced chronic homelessness. With an eye on societal shifts and the role of communal support post-World War II, we express hope for a renewed sense of interconnectedness among newer generations. By sharing stories of vulnerability and genuine spiritual connections, we emphasize the liberating power of inclusive faith. Walk with us as we journey through these transformative themes, bringing Alan's groundbreaking vision to listeners far and wide.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Ullman here. Pray the joy of the crucified and risen Jesus is your strength. As I get the privilege of hanging out with a brother that I've heard of from afar for a number of years now and his name is Alan Graham, let me tell you just a little bit about him. Alan is the founder and CEO of Mobile Loaves and Fishes, mlf. Mobile Loaves and Fishes, a Christian social outreach ministry that provides food, clothing, cultivates community and promotes dignity to homeless men and women in need, and as the lead visionary, I love this part of your story there, alan.
Speaker 1:As a lead visionary for Mobile Loaves and Fishes, he started Community First, a 51-acre master plan development in the Northeast Austin area that provides affordable permanent housing and a supportive community for men and women coming out of chronic homelessness and for any of you in the Christ Greenfield family, that's where I pastor Alan who have heard about Eden Village. Yes, it is community first who is a pioneer toward our Eden Village work here in the Phoenix area. Alan previously was in real estate investing developer and founded Trilogy Development and the Linux Group which developed Austin's this is fascinating part of your story that developed Austin's airport cargo facility and similar facilities at airports across the country. But it sounds like in your story, alan, the Lord just used your business world to turn your heart toward those who have his heart, who are the least, the lost, the hurting, the broken, the marginalized, the other, recognizing that we're all the other. How are you doing today, alan? Thank you so much for your generosity of time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doing awesome, Tim. Thanks for including me on this podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, yeah, man, the joy is mine. So the opening kind of question, this is called the American Reformation Podcast.
Speaker 2:As you look at the wider church. How are you praying for reformation in the wider Christian church in America? Oh boy, that's a heck of a question. I think that I just got off the Camino de Santiago. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah, a little bit, tell us about it. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Yeah, a little bit, tell us about it.
Speaker 2:So a 500-mile pilgrimage through Spain to where the bones of the Apostle St James are buried in Santiago de Compostela, wow, and this year alone there'll be about a half million people that will do that pilgrimage from all walks of life, do that pilgrimage from all walks of life.
Speaker 2:And obviously, when you're traveling through Spain, you're traveling through what has been historically a predominantly Roman Catholic deal, but the pilgrimage has virtually every walk of life coming together on this 500-mile pathway in order to pay reverence to the burial site of the Apostle James. And I find that beautiful and it was a journey of prayer really and truly, and it was a journey of prayer from everybody, no matter what walk of life they come from, because I think we're all somewhat confused and that you know the revelation will finally come when we die and make our way to wherever God is going to appoint us hopefully to heaven, that judge. But watching people from all walks of life struggling to find their purpose is beautiful. So that's what I hope for the church Well, in that reconciliation, and for us all to find purpose.
Speaker 1:In that I hear humility, a cry for humility, that I have been reading a book, how the Light Shines Through. It's written by a buddy of mine, chad the Keys, and in it he talks about for a decent amount of time the unbelievable parts of our faith. It's not like as a Christian, because I believe in the crucified and the risen one, jesus, but I also have to, at the very same time, with those who have a different belief structure, acknowledge that it's kind of an unusual and I could see how it could be a disbelievable perspective, right, and then I wanted to hear, and I've been claimed by the Holy Spirit so really there's no right for the Christian, those the Bible believing, the Orthodox, conservative, whatever kind of attributes you want to put to the Christian. We have no right to have a legalistic pride toward us ascending to grab on to God because I'm a believer in passive faith. So God creates faith in me. He has to come to me, claim me. So I have no right to pridefully place Tim myself over and above another brother on their journey of faith. And I think their journey I pray their journey is on the way to Jesus, because I do believe he's the way, the truth and the life. But that's not for me, that's for the Spirit to discern and we're all just kind of co-journers on this, on this journey.
Speaker 1:And that sounds kind of I think for some in my tribe because I'm in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, a very conservative confessional church body For some that sounds like you're selling out the gospel or something like that, and I don't think that's true. I think it's. I just want to be well thought of the scriptures. Speak a lot of this. I want to be well thought of the scripture. Speak a lot of this. I want to be well thought of by outsiders, by those who have come to different conclusions. Go ahead, alan.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, pope Francis just made some comments regarding that that that personally, I thought were beautiful but are controversial as well. That, uh, our, our pathways to heaven, um, are, are, are quite a bit different and, um, I appreciate what he was saying and he's really trying to remove the judgment seat from us. We don't sit in that seat, but I read a book by a guy here in Austin that wrote a book on near-death experiences, ndes, and he did it with a medical doctor, scientist, guy I can't remember that guy's name, I can't remember either of their names and they talked about how the brain is alive.
Speaker 2:For about nine minutes post-death, your brain is still moving and this whole white light thing that we've heard so much about.
Speaker 2:You know, really and truly, is Christ coming and seeking repentance, repentance, and I think about the thief that was hanging on the cross with Christ, the good thief, and then the other guy and how, the guy to remember him and admitted to his guilt. And you know, and Christ responds, today you will be with me in paradise. And people ask me all the time Tim, you know what would you like to do if you get up there, uh, or get there, uh, wherever there there is Um, and I said I what? What I'm hoping is that I'm going to get to meet Judas Iscariot, uh, because I'm hopeful that he's there uh, regardless of his, uh, incredulous sinfulness. And you know, there was an attempt to repent and we don't know what happened in the moments when he was committing suicide, what happened during that nine minute window. So, anyway, I think there's hope for every single one of us and that we should hold on as tightly as we can to that hope for every single one of us and that we not become the condemners.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, amen, amen. God is holy other. And as I talk about the things of God is God is wholly other. And as I talk about the things of God because I'm a pastor been a pastor now I've got 17 years or so preaching Sunday in, sunday out and having conversations with people within and outside of the church. There's way more mystery to this thing called life than I think we often realize and I think that leads me toward a divine adventure perspective. We're all on this pilgrimage and my pilgrimage includes getting to proclaim Christ and Him crucified and pray that people will come to believe, because I believe the Jesus way, and not just the way of Jesus, but the work of Christ for the world, is beautiful, right, and let's just get into the story of Jesus as a leader, if you would, before we get into the community. First, moe, willows and Fish's kind of story.
Speaker 1:I've talked leadership a lot. I have another podcast called Lead Time, alan, that deals with the topic of leadership. But Jesus was someone that people wanted to be around, right, I mean, jesus was. There was an attractional element, even though he's God in the flesh Philippians 2,. He humbled himself. There was a humility to Christ. And then there was this very intentional move toward the other, the least, the loss, the hurting, the leper, the marginalized, to touch, to care, to associate, to eat with those who are the outsiders. So let's talk about that from a leadership perspective and you being in the secular and the sacred kind of spaces, if you will, why do some people follow some leaders and not follow others? Let's just talk about attractional leadership, alan. Over the course of your life, what have you seen that should be emulated and should not be emulated, alan? And you can connect that to the person of Jesus if the Spirit leads.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, you and I are Americans and we have grown up and we've been raised in a very Western, a very American philosophy. Our way of life doesn't necessarily exist in many places in the world, in most places in the world, and it doesn't necessarily resonate in many places of the world. And somehow we've gotten on this pathway, this very deep pathway, where we have created an American church that doesn't necessarily emulate the church of Jesus. We're wearing the hats and the I Love Jesus t-shirts and we got the jewelry on, and we will go to church on Sunday and then go about our normal way of life and then it's perhaps rinse and repeat the next Sunday. But between the bookends of Sunday to Sunday, we're living this Western life that does not emulate the life of Christ that we're being called to fundamentally mirror, to fundamentally mirror. And so I think Christ presents to you and I the greatest leadership possible, which is basically to discard everything.
Speaker 2:It's a spirit of poverty number one One, you know, a spirit of poverty which requires us to put on an extraordinary cloak of humility, and that's hard in a culture that wants to win, and that's our goal is to win, and don't get me wrong, go Longhorns. I wanted them to win the game against Georgia real bad and but they didn't. You see what I'm saying. But we're just. We're just. We're designed as Americans to want to win.
Speaker 1:And that's, that's across the board, and I think that's a flaw in the American church that we're struggling with. So to go deeper there, to win is to have a bigger, better church, right.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. Well, I go.
Speaker 1:Nothing wrong with a big church I go. Nothing wrong with a big church.
Speaker 2:No, I go to them all just by the nature of who I am. I've been in them all and it's fun to watch. There's a lot of marketing, you know, to church. I gave a talk and a sermon at a Lutheran church recently and there was probably a hundred people in there. It was very small and and then I've been in churches where there'll be a thousand, 1500 people in those churches and, yeah, you know, I love the simplicity of small-location piped in everything you know. And then you know, tim, and you are obviously, I mean, a big fan of liturgy and the liturgical movement throughout the year and my place of comfort is in the liturgy, you know. So when I move, you know, from one liturgical denomination to another, there's a level of comfort that I personally have in that environment, in that movement, you know, in that liturgical, that annual movement. It's hard to explain to people sometimes, but Well, there's a groundedness to it.
Speaker 1:Now you're going to get me going. I didn't know. You like liturgics, but yeah, there's a church calendar that orients us. And why is this here? I don't think a lot of times I'm a historian. So why was the liturgy even enacted? It was so that the church would have a cycle, a yearly cycle, of telling the story of Jesus, from the expectation to Jesus, from the expectation to Jesus to the birth of Jesus, to the Magi, the epiphany season, kind of the sending out from Jew to Gentile of the message of Christ, to then this season of expectation and kind of holy lament as we look forward to the coming crucifixion of Christ, through the resurrection season of Christ, through the moving of the church calendar through the Pentecost season. There's an order there and there's not just a yearly order but then there's a daily or weekly order as we gather for worship to remember our baptisms. This is the invocation. I'm not going to go through the whole kind of historic liturgy all the way to the benediction, the sending out of. So some of these and I think this is kind of gaining traction in different, maybe non-denom kind of perspectives like hey, maybe we should go back to what our Catholic brothers and sisters had to offer and this is to go into the Reformation story.
Speaker 1:This is American Reformation podcast. No-transcript should just be outright discarded. We should not even outright discard relics or things we have in the church that kind of historically ground us to the saints who have gone before. So a shout out to pilgrimages and opportunities to pray in certain ways, pray historic prayers. So, anyway, the only thing Luther was saying in the Reformation there, alan, was none of those things make you righteous before God. Right, it's not the doing of anything that makes you righteous before God, it's faith alone, I heard, through scripture alone centering us in Christ, christ alone. Anything more to add, though, to I didn't know you were going to go into the liturgy and the history of the church, alan. That's. That's quite fascinating.
Speaker 2:Well, if we're, if we're, if we're honest, tim, about who we are as a people. We are a. We are a perverted species of people and the church, however you describe it, is run by a perverted species of people and there have, there has been historically phenomenal brokenness in that body, no matter what name you put over the top of that deal. The Roman Catholic Church was not at all immune from that. When you walk the pilgrimage, you're know when the Knights of Templar were battling the sorcerers and there were forts and armies and we killed a lot of people in the name of Christ. And we'll continue to do that because of our perverted, sinful nature, of who we are. And Luther no doubt did not want to throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater, but there was some dirty bathwater that needed to be cleansed and still does across the board.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that's an interesting phrase perverted species. When I hear that, I hear kind of original sin which clings to every human like a disease. Is that basically what you mean? And it gets expressed in different cultural contexts in different ways. Yeah, is that kind of what you're leaning into? No, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I mean it obviously led to the fall from the garden. It led to the Cain and Abel deal, where we're willing to do anything. It led to David looking over at Bathsheba and calling her in. And that's who we are as human beings. A cassock or a cross, or get ordained, or you know, any of that kind of stuff doesn't eliminate the extraordinary sinfulness that we all struggle with every single day.
Speaker 1:So while the entire Bible is God's love story toward a perverted species. Yeah, I think of, I think of' story, you know. And he gets so frustrated. Right, the leadership story Just start, you know, should we? I don't know what to do with these people, and God is even frustrated in that. That's a fascinating story. God is like maybe I should just start over. And I love this, I love this kind of appeal to the primary nature of God, which is love. Then what will the nations think about you if you just start over? Don't give up on them. And the height of God's love story is then in the sending of Jesus, who takes on human flesh for perverted sinners in need of redemption, restoration, in need of being brought into a right relationship with God, in need of a desperate love. Anything more to kind of land that plane there. Alan, I love going deep on theology and the role of the humble, dependent role of the church in every Christian today. That's kind of the summary of this conversation.
Speaker 2:Well, the good news about this all is we are going to be reconciled. The only question is when Will it be here on earth, or is it going to be in a different time and place beyond this? So I look forward to the reconciliation, one way or the other.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, all things will be made new on the last day when Jesus returns to raise the dead. Praise, praise God. What a day that will be All right, let's get into. Let's get into your story with Community First, mobile Loaves and Fishes. Would you just tell that story? How did the Lord? Because I have a similar, similar story I started a ministry.
Speaker 1:I didn't start, the Lord started and actually a group of people started, so it's never just about one person, right? I was a part of starting a ministry about 17 years ago called the Table, in kind of an inner tier suburb in the Denver metro area, and it's a meal and worship on Thursday nights, inclusive of, but not exclusively for the working poor and homeless, and we started to build bridges of understanding and care there. And then I've been a part of La Mesa Ministries Now a couple of different sites Tuesdays and Thursdays meal and worship, lots of adult baptisms. It's a place where we can all gather around a table and eat and recognize our shared humanity, our desperate need to eat and to eat on the bread of life which is Christ, to eat and to eat on the bread of life which is Christ. And so my heart was just broken and I wanted to be a part of leveling the playing field as it relates to reaching as many people as possible with the gospel.
Speaker 1:Oftentimes in the church this is my preamble and then I'll let you go. Oftentimes in the church, though, our sociology, our exclusive sociology, overwhelms the all-inclusive theology of Christ. And in Christ now Galatians 3, there is no more Jew, gentile, slave, free, young, old, rich or poor. We're all one in Christ by faith, and too often our churches, we, don't exemplify that unity that crosses socioeconomic barriers, and I think mobilos and fishes is an expression toward that end. So how did the Lord kind of wreck your heart, alan? Toward that end.
Speaker 2:Well, trish and I got married in 1984. We were both Roman Catholic. She was far more Catholic than I was. I could have cared less. But if I was going to marry her, there's no doubt it was going to have to be in the church and I just consented to that and at best for a number of years, you know, we might have been Easter Christmas type Catholics. I didn't care. The bottom line we start having babies. We have four children, plus a niece that we raised, and both Trish and I are seven day a week work people I don't want to use the word workaholic. We love what we have always gotten to do.
Speaker 2:But one day, sunday, I'm reading the paper, about to get ready to go, get dressed, go into the office for a couple hours and get ready for the upcoming week, and the door opens up and there's Tricia going out the door with a couple of the kids I don't remember how many were around then and going to church. And when I looked up and I saw them walking out the door, tim, it looked like the train was leaving the station without daddy on that train. And so, reluctantly, I said to myself okay, I got to be part of this If I'm going to be part of this. I want to know why I am part of this. So I began to really study my Roman Catholic faith very deeply and I became enamored with the church. I became enamored with the heresies, I became enamored with the wars, I became enamored with the sch years. In spite of all of the damage that we have collectively done over the course of those 2,000 years, the corpus of who we are as Christians is still very intact. And so I developed a very deep and intellectual relationship with Jesus. Because on the surface of it there's some things that you just got to believe. God sent his only son. He did it by impregnating a little girl through the power of the Holy Spirit, by the message of an angel, and there was a virgin birth in the whole deal, in a cave, in a manger, and then the ministry begins, spends three years, miracles happen, many of those tough to believe, and then the execution, and then resurrection, and then the ascension into heaven. These are incredulous things that one just must buy into on faith. So it was up here.
Speaker 2:Then, in 1996, I got invited to go on a men's retreat at our parish. A cursillo basically called Christ Renews His Parish, a Curcio modeled very much on the Curcio movement. And had I known, tim, that I was going into a retreat where men were going to hold hands with each other, that would have been absolutely no way, much less do that bromance, hugging it out thing that we do. But I get into this deal and right away, hand-holding, bromance, hugging it out, and I was so uncomfortable, couldn't figure out how to get the hell out of there. And then these men would get up and give a testimony. And the first testimony out of the box was a guy that was vomiting putrid, sinful stuff out on the table and I wanted to go up to him and go hey, bro, there are some things that should remain in your skeleton closet that we don't need to hear. But then he would connect that fall into forgiveness, reconciliation, healing and redemption.
Speaker 2:And after a few of these testimonies, these witnesses, I began to see myself in these men that were standing up there, that what a pathetic human I was. I wasn't honest with myself, I wasn't being vulnerable, my relationship with other men were superficial, very shallow. And here are these men coming out and sharing things that you would never share and by the end of this 30-hour retreat, this intellectual relationship that I had with Jesus just fell right here into the depths of the cave of my heart. Whole different experience and experience with the Holy spirit. And at that point, tim, I just began to look up to God and go hey, what do you, what do you want me to do? But you know, I'm here, man, I'm yours, I'm yours.
Speaker 1:Let's pause there, alan. I think there's a lot of people in our local churches who are where you were, who have this intellectual ascent. And I'm in a denomination, you know, we baptize babies because we believe in passive faith connected to the scriptures. Connected to the scriptures. But I'll give you, I'll give you a. For instance, yesterday was confirmation day for us and we had 32 young people who have given testimony and and we're standing up kind of professing boldly, professing publicly, their, their faith in Jesus, even to the point of death. You know, I mean, these confirmation things are like wow, this is this got intense for the young people. But then we have a moment where we bring them forward and we pray. You know one kind of simple prayer. It's a baptismal remembrance prayer, but then an excorday prayer from the heart, right, it's me just praying over them. And then I give the invitation to parents or, you know, grandparents there to pray over their kids. And it was kind of shocking to me, the um and I I get it's public, it's, there's discomfort, but like moms and dads not not maybe praying over their kids, and I started like just having a reluctance to, and I get it's, maybe because you're up in front, but it wasn't recorded or anything like that. It was just between us and you know the small little family and I think that's a smaller indicator that there are.
Speaker 1:There are a number of people even in my congregation that just talking the things of God in a natural way, as you just did, that move from the head to the heart, like you've had. This personal and it is very personal, this personal encounter with the crucified and risen one and something like and all of life is a continual repentance, right, it's continual repentance, Like I. I thought life was this way, but I found it now unsatisfying. And now I've found the one who is the living water, who is the bread of life, and something like scales have fallen once again from my eyes and my heart now is is softer, um, and I'm more, I'm more open to talk about the things I believe in and the things that I'm uncertain of, and there's just a a vulnerability to it and, and I don't know, in some of cause, we're a very heady denomination, right, very theological. We've got a lot of different categories and boxes, and I think one of the struggles when you've got a lot of these categories and boxes is it can become overly intellectualized and then what Satan does is he goes. You don't know enough, you haven't learned enough, and God maybe is far from you.
Speaker 1:And I think these like Cursillo movements, especially for men, those sorts of encounters with other men who are vulnerable, that is absolutely necessary at certain points in our journey, and so I'm just speaking as one we're trying to create, by the Spirit's power, more of those experiences. But, man, a lot of guys are really really reluctant to talk about their hurts, their hurts, habits and hangups. Right, we're just starting a, we're starting a Celebrate Recovery ministry here in the next few months and, yeah, it will be interesting to see what the Lord does in that sort of a, that sort of a ministry, because we generally, especially in the West, in affluent kind of context, we are reluctant to be in uncomfortable situations around the other, and the other could be just a guy who's crying over here because of his sin. Like this makes me uncomfortable, right, Alan? Anything more to say there and the things the church can do to create that experience more intentionally?
Speaker 2:Well, I love it when people you know will tell me and they tell you all the time hey, man, I'm blessed. They got the house, they got the cars, they got the job, they're making the money and I go. Well, who's not blessed? Exactly.
Speaker 2:I mean, do you actually think that you're more blessed than people who live in extreme poverty, like the men and women on the streets? You know, in a lot of ways they are far more blessed than we are. You know, full of all the resources. Look, I don't care who you are. You ought to dive into a Curcio man If you're even remotely connected to Jesus on an intellectual level. There are a number of ways that you can connect to who you are as a human being created in his image by the creator, and you want to go discover this. So go discover who you are and go to, you know, one of these retreats. There's so many of them out there.
Speaker 1:I love it. So amen, amen, Shout out to Cursillo. So if we paused, how did the Lord lead you then to mobile loaves and kind of putting your faith into action through mobile loaves and fishes and community?
Speaker 2:first Tell that story was a dangerous statement, frankly, to make and really what I was communicating to God I thought was look I'll. You know I'm a member of the church, I'll cook barbecue. You know, on Sundays I'll become a Knight of Columbus, I'll be a Eucharistic. You know, a lector, you know I'll help out. Well, you know, my wife and I are the type of people that when we dive in, we dive in and we're all in, and when you are all in, like that, you become prey to the people that see that you're all in and you get asked to volunteer and volunteer more, and you say yes and yes and yes. And this led to a series of saying yeses where one day, in the spring of 1998, my wife and I were having coffee with the girlfriend of ours and she was telling us about a ministry in Corpus Christi, texas, where, on cold winter nights, multiple churches would come together, pull their resources to take out to the men and women that were on the streets of Corpus and Tim.
Speaker 2:At that moment the image of a catering truck entered my brain, out of my subconscious into my conscious mind, as a distribution vehicle from those of us that have abundance to those that lack, and as a serial entrepreneur, I could not get rid of that idea. Now my wife is married to a serial entrepreneur and I have taken her up and down the roller coaster a number of times over the course of our life, and it took me a week or two to get the courage to go to her and say, sweetie, I've got this idea that won't go away. And she just looked at me, tim, and said, oh my God, here we go again. And so the truck deal just blew, man, it just went. And from that truck operation we began to develop relationships with the men and women on the street so, who I had previously reviled and stereotyped into the lowliest of low, I fell in love with. I fell in love with their stories, I fell in love with their generosity, their authenticity, their brokenness, all the things, their addictions, their mental health issues, their physical health issues, the trauma that they come from. It was just very interesting to me.
Speaker 2:And in 2003, we started going out on the streets and spending the night with them doing a sleepover, basically not to pretend to be homeless but to be on a one-on-one retreat with God, with the Wallace streets of downtown Austin being our retreat center. And now you're becoming even more intimate, human to human, heart to heart, with these men and women, and I discovered in this process that the single greatest cause to their homelessness was a profound, catastrophic loss of family. It wasn't dope and alcohol or mental health issues, loss of jobs. The family had just completely collapsed on them. And then fast forward a couple of more years. I got the idea to go out and buy a gently used recreational vehicle and lift one person up off the streets into a privately owned RV park in the city. And here we are, basically 20 years later, with the movement that is spreading pretty rapidly throughout the United States.
Speaker 1:Well, it absolutely is. So you kind of touch on it a little bit, the stereotypes of homelessness. There's a percentage, and we've seen here in Phoenix maybe it's probably the same in Austin, maybe 10% who are chronically homeless and will never well, never is a strong word, but it's hard to have a full-time job and they may be battling some sort of a mental health issue, but they're still, they're not, they're not addicts there. You know, I think that's the, that's the thing Right. And and the biggest thing, like you said, alan, is the breakdown of the family. And can the church, the people of peace in the community, step in and spend significant time to get to know them, build trust, build depth of relationship and then say, hey, you're worthy of having a roof over your head, no one should sleep outside who are chronically homeless? And we see you, we know you and we want to do something about it.
Speaker 1:So tell more about this movement of community. First, this kind of Eden Village approach. What does the 51 acres look like? Because I think a lot of folks we walked this through with the town of Mesa here in the Phoenix Valley area what is this community going to look like? And is it going to be a black eye, a sore spot in our community, and what we've seen is nothing could be further from the truth. It's an absolute benefit to the community. So to go a little bit deeper into what Community First is all about, and kind of the spiraling, the multiplying effect into Eden Village and beyond, go ahead, alan to Eden Village and beyond.
Speaker 2:Go ahead, alan. Well, we're currently 51 acres. We have about 550 homes. We have about 450 people that live in the village. 90% of them were formerly chronically homeless. 10% were called by the gospel to live missionally in community with the formerly chronically homeless. To be chronically homeless you have to be on the streets of Austin at least a year with a disability it could be mental, physical or addiction disability. Average age here is 57 years old, average time on the streets is nine years and average age of death is 59 years old.
Speaker 2:We believe that every family you and I have never met right Tim, never met. I know that in your family right now you have a drug addict, an alcoholic or somebody battling a behavioral health issue For sure, and we need family, if family exists, to come up underneath those men and women and not give up Amen when the family is broken. Historically, there was always a forged family the community, aunts, uncles, cousins, church communities that would come around and protect those individuals when there was profound, catastrophic loss within the nuclear family. We don't even have that, and so what Community First is all about in the gospel that we're spreading is that we are the forged family. I can't recreate your mommy and daddy and all the family members, but I can recreate a forged family.
Speaker 2:Now let me tell you we got all the things going on here. We have addicts, we have profound mental health issues, profound physical health issues, men and women that come out of trauma, but they're not marauding the neighborhoods next door. Where I am right now is my home, in 400 square feet, in the middle of this village. This is my home, the best neighborhood I've ever lived in, living with 400 men and women that have convicted felons, drug addicts, alcohol. All the things are right here, so the stereotypes and the biases just aren't correct. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:No, that's so good. A couple of closing questions here, alan. Thank you for your time. Jesus loves the other. However, we discern the other. Why is loving the other so hard for you and so hard for the local church? Because you'd like to think that community first is the norm across the American landscape. It's not the norm. You'd like to think that pastors and leaders would be kind of beating down the doorway of Alan Graham to hear the story and I know many are, but you'd think more would and be trying to replicate this, especially in our urban centers where chronic homelessness is on overdrive. You'd think that would be the case, but it's not, and I think part of it is loving the other is so hard. Any comments there, alan?
Speaker 2:Well, loving the other used to not be hard. It's what we did, and it wasn't that long ago, tim, when we loved the broken and we dealt with the broken because they lived in our neighborhoods. Post-world War II, as the automobile became the primary focus of transportation and these subdivisions were built that were full of these what we call a hermetically sealed single family sarcophagus, with eight foot tall privacy fences, swimming pools, sport courts and barbecue pits in the backyard the so-called American dream, all engineered by zoning, which has been devastating and isolating us from one another. We have virtually become isolated from people that are different than we are, and we've also become isolated from our own neighbors. Because we are hermetically sealed inside of these single-family sarcophaguses that we call the American dream, we don't come out anymore. All you have to do is go on Nextdoor and Facebook and all these other things and see the unbelievable vitriol that we express to other people. But it wasn't that long ago, just five or six generations ago, where the preponderance of that was extremely low. We didn't even use the word homeless. It became ubiquitous in about the 1970s or 80s. Prior to that, you had your hobo, which wasn't a lot of people, but these were working people.
Speaker 2:Marvin Olasky wrote a book I can't think of the name of it right now. That's really great about the power of the church and what the church historically had always done. And now we, the church, have abdicated that responsibility to government, which is a terrible decision. And this isn't anti-government we need government. It's positive for us. But when it comes to humans, the government's not coming into your bedroom tonight, tim, and tucking you in. We need human-to-human, heart-to-heart connection. So it's a cultural American, western American failure that is now spreading into the West and we've got to figure out how to turn it around. The church, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the church Go ahead, finish, yeah, well the church is, should be, the tip of the sphere of that turnaround.
Speaker 1:Yep 100% agree. That was such a great, concise, cultural, sociological summary of what occurred in the last three, four, five generations. Couldn't agree more and things may flip. I hear that Gen Z is and when I use conservative, I'm not saying publicly or politically necessarily, but culturally, looking to go back to some of the ways that we were interconnected the norms, the rhythms and the beliefs too. But, yeah, I'm very optimistic to see a change within the next generation or two toward this more less individual, more communal type of existence. We were never.
Speaker 1:The first thing God says is not good. Adam, you're not going to make it old boy. You need Eve and you need the compliment. You need the community, you need the body of Christ, all of her members, all of her gifts and all of her different context. So this has been so much fun, alan. Last note I could have led with this. I chose not to because I didn't want to appear like a fan, but I was a fan boy. But I was on your website and you were on the. Joe Rogan experience yeah, what was it like. So Joe Rogan experience yeah, what was it like. So Joe Rogan just interviewed President Trump and this will be released, probably after the election, so we'll know who our next president is. By that time, at a three-hour interview that I think within four hours, had something like 26-some million views. I mean unbelievable reach that Joe Rogan has. And what was that experience like being on his show? Alan Tell that story.
Speaker 2:Well, it was great. We've gotten to know Joe and his wife Jessica. They've been out here to the village for dinner and a tour. I will tell you he's got the greatest man cave in the history of man caves at his studio and look, it went by so fast. But he and his team were phenomenal people. I don't even remember hardly the conversation. I depend on other people to have listened to it to kind of tell me because it just went by like in a nanosecond. But you know, loved doing it. Again, he's got the largest reach of anybody in the world, I guess at this point in time, and I love the level of diversity that he brings and the controversy that he brings to the table so we can dialogue about it.
Speaker 1:That is the idea. We need to be in relationship with one another, we need to communicate and we need to disagree agreeably and to do so in public spaces. And I'm, frankly, I'm grateful for technology. I like face-to-face better, but for technology that allows messages to get out. And so the ultimate message today, as you heard from Alan I'm just going to summarize humility, listening we haven't said that but basically a deep listening, individually and communally. What does the community need? And a move toward action.
Speaker 1:If you're a leader in a local church where there are people experiencing mental health, I guarantee, pastor or leader, there is a mental health crisis right at your doorstep. You want to be a part of setting space for healing and wholeness and listening and learning and sharing meals. So shout out to Mobile Loaves and Fishes and Community First. You are a pioneering, humble man of faith, alan, and I'm better. I know our listeners are forgetting to hang out with you today. If people want to connect to you and your ministry and just I know you're you're sharing the story in many contexts and it is having that ripple out effect. If people want to hear more about the story, where can they go, alan?
Speaker 2:Well, go to our website, mlforg, and if you want to learn more about our community First Village, you can click through the website and find out one of these in your community. We do these two and a half day symposiums two or three times a year that people can fly in and learn more about us and what we're doing and how we're doing it.
Speaker 1:So let's go. Let's go. I love it, alan. This is American Reformation Podcast. Sharing is caring, like, subscribe, comment wherever it is you take in this conversation, and we pray that the joy of the Lord is your strength, that you have a humble learning posture. As you've been saved, you want to go out into the community just to save just one more and to develop mutually beneficial relationships with those who are the other, who are different than you, recognizing our common need for Christ and for community. It's a good day. Go and make it a great day. What a joy to hang out with you, alan. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Hey, thanks, tim, appreciate it.