This "Quire Cast Podcast" episode is brought to you by Wild Olive, where we host game-changing conversation about literature, culture, and the Bible. I'm Jennifer Bird, a biblical scholar. And I'm Jean Petrol, a literature scholar. If you want to change your Bible-reading game, you can try reading the Bible as literature. The way writers such as Emily Dickinson, Octavia Butler, Ursula Lekwin, James Baldwin, or Tony Kushner do. Every other week, we let modern writers give a fresh take on a familiar Bible story. Tune in to Wild Olive, wherever you get your podcasts! Welcome to "Honoring the Journey." I'm Leslie Neesh, your host. And today, we're going to honor the journey of someone really, really special. Actually, to me, he probably doesn't even realize, he is Stephen Knight, and you might know him as Knightopia on the internet. You might follow him, who knows. He's very into social justice. And I've been following Stephen, even when I was a conservative Christian evangelical in ministry, because I followed him as a communications director for a missionary organization back in 2009, and he was the one who had the job before me. And he left, and so I was like, "Oh, I'm going to follow him because maybe he can help me do this job because I was terrified." And it was a big job. And so I would follow him, and I realized, "Wow, he's really going through something." Like he was starting to come out, I think, of concert. Is that right, Stephen? You were coming out of it. Yeah. Yeah. That was a big point in my journey, for sure. Yeah. So it was just really interesting to me, to see him really leaning into the way Jesus actually lived, and not the way we were taught to believe the way he lived, and so now he is all over the Internet. He's very outspoken about social justice issues. He's a communications director at Just Leadership USA co-founder and a board member at Transform Network, and very active. I love it. It's like your passion is social justice. So I could not wait, number one, to get you on just to be able to talk to you in person, because I've been following you for so long. But I also really, really want to hear your journey, because I bet it's interesting. It has been pretty interesting, yes, yes. And I've been really looking forward to this conversation since he reached out, Leslie. So I'm glad to be here. Oh, yeah. I'm so glad. This is going to be a lot of fun. I've been looking forward to it, too, and just kind of looking into some of the things that you are passionate about, and it's inspiring. There's a lot of people, I think, especially when I was in my conservative area, who were social justice is taking the place of Jesus, you know, and you shouldn't be so concerned. And I'm like, wait a minute. Isn't that what he did? I don't know. So what you're doing makes sense to me. I think it's pretty awesome, and I can't wait to hear more about it. But before we dive into that, Steven, I am very passionate about getting to know my guests on more of a personal level, a little bit about your childhood, how you were brought up. If you could maybe give me an idea of like a core memory that you have from your childhood, that sort of formed or had an impact on how you turned out as an adult today. Yeah. Yeah. That's such a great question. I grew up in a conservative evangelical home in the suburbs of Minneapolis. My parents had met in college through a college ministry, the navigators, evangelical college ministry. And we went to church every Sunday, I went to youth group every Wednesday night, me and my brother. We were typical every time the doors were open, we were there, kind of thing. My parents hosted Bible studies, vacation Bible school in the summer as kids like the whole nine, you know, we did it. And I think, yeah, one of the rock star people in our church, our little, you know, Baptist church was a guy that worked for the Billy Graham organization. And that was my parent's dream that I would, you know, grow up and be a good evangelical and work for Billy Graham and I did that. I did that. I went to work for Billy Graham and we'll get to that. Yeah. Yeah. But because that was right before I went to work for that mission organization. But yeah, like for me, the core memories are probably just Bible verses and scriptures that were instilled in me that I memorized growing up that I studied and that just got into me, you know, and we're sort of guide posts and guiding lights for me as, you know, one of them says like a light onto my path, that sort of thing. And even through deconstruction and reconstruction of my faith, like I, those scriptures are still in me and with me and guiding me every day. So I think there are certain scriptures that I can't let go of because that they speak life into my heart and into my mind, into my spirit. And so I do believe there's something to scripture. I just think we have twisted it. I think we have a very loose translation in the, you know, English language of what these words actually meant, who they were meant for. All of that just gets a little, a little murky. You know. Yeah. And I think the whole deconstruction thing gets a bad rap because one of the criticisms is you don't love scripture, you don't trust the Bible or, you know, it's like, and that's actually not true about who we are in our faith. So anyway. You sleep debunked. We debunk that one. Yeah. It's done. It's over. Yeah. Nobody's going to ever think that again now, Stephen. Thank you. Okay. What other things can we debunk and just one episode? No, I'm so sure that like it really does, I think get a bad rap. I feel closer to God now. I feel more free and more alive now than I have ever felt. And, and you know, then they would say, well, it's not about feelings. So I know exactly what the arguments are. But anyway, I digress. This is not about my journey. Let's talk about you a little bit. So you grew up in Minneapolis and your parents were very evangelical. It sounds very much into Billy Graham had their hopes and dreams for you. Was it did you have siblings or what was that one older brother? Yeah. One older brother. Yep. You guys like they had the way packed out for you. And what is, what did it look like? How did you end up sort of breaking away from the tradition and sort of leaning into more deconstruction for a while? Yeah. So, so we, we both, you know, my parents sent us to, to private Christian school, kindergarten through 12th grade. I got the Christian character award, you know, one year in high school. But I also started publishing an underground magazine and part of that was I would do book reviews and music reviews and I would interview Christian bands. But like the books that I was reading that I, that I started getting introduced to were sort of off the approved evangelical reading list. There were things like Thomas Merton, a Catholic contemplative mystic, the sermons of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. like growing up as a weight evangelical, like I would just like in a very white, private Christian school suburbs of just sheltered and, and, you know, the racism and slavery, that's something that happened in the south. That's not really our problem. We didn't want to solve with that. So that was kind of the mindset growing up, but I started reading these things and, and really getting exposed. And it was also early, early emerging church postmodernism type stuff that Leonard sweet and Dallas Willard, who were presenting ideas and theology that was challenging, the just really cookie cutter slot machine Jesus version of God had been given growing up in that. So even early on as a teenager, I started questioning things and being exposed to a broader idea of what Christianity even was and beyond. So yeah, that it started then for me. And it just continued. How did your parents react to that? Were they scared? You know, I mean, my parents have always been super supportive of me, despite our many disagreements. They are still very conservative, very evangelical, and yet love conquers all. And I know that's not everyone's story. And so I am grateful every day, I'm getting emotional talking about this. I'm grateful every day for that part of my journey that I've had parents who despite our disagreements, and we have a lot of them have always been supportive of me. They have let me know that they disagree with many things that doesn't stop them from loving you. And it hasn't, yeah, and so that's huge. That's powerful. Yeah. And it's not. You're right. It's not the story of a lot of people. A lot of people just get written off. But I do think people are starting to wake up to the fact that like really and truly loved as conquer all and let people have their journey, don't be intimidated by it. Don't try to change it. You know, just trust it, because do you trust that or not, because if you do, your child is right where your child needs to be, you know, and God will take care of it. And I think we all have these different views and callings and, you know, passions that drive us and we just need to let each other be sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. I think as one Christian author put it, love wins. Oh, yeah. Wait, was he a Christian or was he a heretic Steven? I don't know. Just kidding. Yeah. It's debatable. Yeah. It's debatable. Here's the thing. I appreciate that you were asking questions even at a young age, because I do think many of us who are going through deconstruction have always been precocious and like questioning and like not just taking answer. You know, I think there's something to being a creative with the ability to see things not in black and white, but in color. Yeah. You know, I think that there is something to that. Most of my guests are on the creative spectrum. The ones who are going through deconstruction, and he doesn't surprise me, but I don't know. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, I haven't studied it, but I have a real inkling that personality type really has a lot to do with whether you are comfortable with the questions or if you desire certainty and the questions are threatening. I think there's, I've always been fascinated by Myers-Briggs and all that the Enneagram and all that when I discovered the Enneagram, that was huge. It's one of these great lenses for understanding who we are and how God's made us individually, but I absolutely think I couldn't tell you, you know, this type is like this and this type is like that, but I think we are predisposed one way or the other. So it's harder for some people, I think, to take this step, but I'll just say this right now because this is one of the biggest insights that I've gotten in recent years, and I'm going to blank on his name, we'll have to edit this and come back and drop it in. He wrote the book Atomic Habits, not a Christian, not a religious author, but he wrote this article several years ago called Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds. And there's literally like two paragraphs in that article where he just lays it out and he says, you know what, it's facts don't change people's minds if they're going to lose community. If the choice is between changing what I believe and losing my community, I'm not going to do it. And I think, and I look at my own parents and I look at a lot of people who, despite everything, have stayed where they are, and that's the biggest factor, that's the biggest, it explains it for me. They don't want to lose their church community. They don't want to lose their conservative Christian-friend community. If everyone around you is sort of in agreement and you're afraid that you're going to lose that and they're going to turn on you and you voted for Joe Biden, you're a heretic and like you're a baby killer and like you can't, you just can't do it because you can't face that rejection. It has a lot more to do and anyway, I'm probably, I'm not doing it justice, but- No, that actually is, it makes so much sense, it makes so much sense. Yeah. You know what doesn't make sense to me is that community is my jam. Connection is my passion. And I stepped away from all of that and had to form it again because it made no sense to me anymore and I just couldn't pretend. And I just, it blows my mind because I am one of those people that would have never done this. If it wasn't that important to me because literally people and connection and just having community for me was everything. Right. I don't know how I crossed that line. Now that you say this, I'm like, wow, that's powerful. That's an even harder journey. I think then for me, I pretty early on started developing community that drew me and supported me along the way. Right. By the way, his name is James Clear. James Clear. Yeah. Google, James Clear. Why facts don't change our minds and it's brilliant, like it's just, I think it explains so much. When did you read that? It's been around for several years. And I've mentioned it in, I don't know how many TikToks probably now. It's one of those. I read a book called Merck Left by a guy named Ian Haney Lopez. That book had a huge impact on me. That's more about politics, but that, I mean, it's essentially a blog post. It's just on a website and I came across it. And I was just like, ooh, I'm going to read this. I'm going to read it because I do love, I don't know, I love hearing new perspectives. I mean, like, because I'm in communications and I have been for so long and so are you. I think that we do, we want to communicate and sometimes, you know, you hear things that are new and different and as a believer and as a evangelical, you know, in the Bible Belt, I wasn't allowed to listen, like even the book we spoke of earlier, Love Wins, I was not going to read that because he was a heretic and he was going to take me down a really dark road and try to get me off my path. And now that I'm not living in fear anymore, I listen and I take what I want from different journeys and different stories and I don't, you know, things don't align with who I am and what I believe. I don't need to believe it, I don't know why we were so afraid. Yeah, we're talking about Rob Bell. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's him. Man, where I love to have him on. So if you know him, Steven, yeah, no, he's, he's still fun. He's one of those guys who, I know Brian McLaren, Brian is a great friend and has been a great mentor to me, even while I was working at said mission organization. That's a whole, I don't know if we want to get into all that. That's a very funny part of the story, Brian and, and Rob are good friends and I always try to get Brian to connect me with Rob and it just never happened. He's very evasive. I get it. He's probably got a lot of people after him. But here's the thing, I just remember finding Rob when we did the Numa videos and so when he came out with that video talking about his book Love Wins, I like couldn't breathe. I was like, even allowed to ask questions like that. Can we even think? So I just like wrote him off at that moment. And then when I started constructing, yeah, when I started deconstructing, I'm like, you know what, I think I'm just going to listen to this book and just see what happens. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's everything I've been thinking. And it wasn't like he was teaching me anything. He was just affirming what I was already feeling in my own heart. So it wasn't like, Oh, now I'm following Rob Bell instead of Jesus. It wasn't like that at all, which is, of course, what we all get accused of isn't that hilarious. Right. It's kind of like the perfect segue into talking about Brian McLaren and mission organization. But like in order to get there, I think I have, you know, quickly just connect the dots from underground magazine, emerging church. I went to work for the Billy Graham organization in 2000 when it was still based in Minneapolis. And in 2003, it got relocated to North Carolina. Franklin Graham really took over the organization at that point with an iron fist. Billy was still around, but he was on the way out. Yes. And Franklin was not his father. And I was headed in one direction, and Franklin was going in the to the far right. Right. Yeah. I remember some of the speakers he would have come in and speak at chapels to the staff where, you know, after the tsunami in Asia that killed all those people, you know, he had a pastor come in and said, Oh, that was because of the homosexuality. That was God's judgment on homosexuality that that all those, you know, hundreds and thousands of people die because we know the heart of God. And, and I literally got up and walked out. That was one of the, I was like, not my God, not my Christianity. Like this is, and I remember getting into debates with my coworkers at Billy Graham about like biblical inerrancy and things like that like, like I was into, I was, I was reading all the emerging church stuff and postmodernism and, and, and I was just like, I was like, I was deconstructing and letting go of a lot of that stuff. While working for Billy Graham. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I was eventually, I worked my way up to being in the head of the internet division for, for Billy Graham and, and then I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't work for Franklin Graham and like, I, you know, I had to be in meetings with the guy and he was just not a good person, like, just like one of the scariest people, honestly, I've ever encountered, like, not trying to demonize him. By any means, just yikes, get me out of here. So, um, so I, the opportunity to work for that mission organization came up and I, and I took it, um, and it was a big, I'll be honest, it was a big salary drop, but that was a great organization. And I love working with that organization, um, but it was 2008, 2007, 2008, Obama was running for president and I had decided to support Barack Obama for president. I had a bumper sticker on my car and I had a particular coworker who decided that was the signal that I was not a conservative evangelical, not conservative enough. And he went on a witch hunt and I'd heard, I'd heard people, um, because I was hosting a monthly emerging church discussion group in Charlotte at the time. And I'd heard from different people that this had happened to them and it happened to me. He can't, he, he went to the HR department of the organization essentially with a ream of stuff he had printed off the internet, like, and it came down to a single comment that I'd posted on a queer, emergent blog, which was a emerging church blog for LGBTQ Christians. And I simply said, I'm glad there's a place online for gay Christians to support each other. Like that's, that was the comment. That's all I said. Wow. And, and like my views on that particular issue had been changing, but I hadn't landed the plane. And so that organization, that, that accusation, because I was a spokesperson for the organization, they needed to know, are, can we trust you to toe the, you know, toe the line? And so it led to a, a process of what I called theological accountability. And, and, and, um, I'll try to, I'll try to keep this as brief as possible. The Brian McLaren part of this was Brian was coming to Charlotte on of his, uh, everything must change book tour. And I organized the event. I organized the entire book, book tour event. And some of my coworkers in that organization, I, I told them about it. The international director of the organization came to the conference. It was, it ended up being like a two day conference thing with Brian McLaren and all these other people. And, um, and they said, can you get us a meeting with Brian McLaren? We'd like to, we'd like to talk to him. And so the, it was the Friday, Saturday conference and then Sunday morning, we had a meeting at Cracker Barrel by the airport in Charlotte, where all of these, all of the guys from that commission organization, both the international office and the US office because they're right next to each other across the border, but North and South Carolina, but, you know, they're very close together. And they came and they peppered Brian McLaren with questions over pancakes for like two hours. And at the end of it, they were like, we don't agree, but he's such a sweet guy. He's a very nice man. He really is so nice. What, what, you know, he's a good guy. Yeah. And then, you know, he, three months later, this coworker makes these accusations against me. And it ends up that one of them, one of the charges against me was that I was friends with Brian McLaren. And I was like, well, you met him like, you didn't have a problem three months ago, but now you have a problem. And literally, I had to write essay answers to questions, Leslie. One of the question, name one thing that Brian McLaren believes that you disagree with him about. They just needed one. You're like, none, I don't have any. I was, I was like, like, I don't even know that Brian McLaren knows what he believes about everything. And I'm not him, like, how do I know what Brian McLaren believes about everything? And I made up some answer, like, if Brian McLaren thinks this about that, then I would probably disagree with him on that. Like, I don't even remember what the answer was, but, you know, I had to come up with something. But mean, in the meantime, I was on the phone talking to Brian, and I was telling him, like, this is what's happening. And Brian was probably the first person who said to me, you're going to have to resign. You're probably going to have to walk away from that. Yeah, they're scared. I mean, there, that is a fear reaction. Yeah. I mean, if, if, if well is on the line, the way that we were taught, you have to react that way. Like, you literally, like, I get why they feel that way. Yeah. I don't feel that way anymore. But I get it. I get it. Yeah. And you probably did too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know that I've actually ever really talked about all of this on a podcast, but the international director, he had been the UK director. He was Scottish, loved, loved, lovely man, loved him, loved working with him. He would come into my office and shut the door, and he would just cry. And he would just be like, if this organization was based anywhere else in the world, we could disagree and still work together. But in the United States, there's fear and it was about losing funding. It was about losing the support of people and churches for the... Always about that, Stephen. And 100%, and that's what it was. And he knew it, and he was admitting that, and yet he felt kind of helpless about the situation. And to their credit, they didn't have to give me any kind of severance, but they did. And that was the best decision of my life, Leslie. Back away from like, what was a great job and a great organization, and I loved the work that we were doing, but I couldn't be completely who I was until I left. And once I left, I was free to say what I really thought and ask all the questions and just be honest. 100%. 100%. And that was 2009, and I was in conversation with a group of people. We started a thing called Transform Network, out of that that's still around today, and originally was about forming new, missional, emerging types of churches, and has gotten more into social justice and contemplative activism and things like that over the years. But, yeah, I haven't looked back, like, there was one where I was like, can I still call myself evangelical? And then I went to, you know, I got to know Reverend Dr. William J. Barber the second, and it calls himself an evangelical. And so he helped me, you know, sort of reclaim, we exist, it's a real thing, you know, I'm not going to, I'm not going to let go of that, you know, and let, you know, the other side when. Wow. Well, right around that time is when I applied for that job, for your job, the job that you left, for the mission organization, and I started it. And I want you to know, those people were lovely, they didn't have a bad thing to say about you all, all of them were very, very, like they missed you, I could tell, tears would well up. And it was really sweet. And I also felt like, oh my gosh, I'm never going to be able to fill those shoes. Like, I'm a radio person, I don't even know what I'm doing. Like, it was so crazy. And then I started getting health issues that were actually remnants from when I was on Survivor in 2007, I had this MRSA infection that I could not get rid of. So they put me on IV antibiotics. And then I went into this, like, horrifying reaction, like, cigarette, or it looked like cigar burns all over my body, ended up in the hospital for a week, like, and then I had to have surgery. It was like, all these things were happening. It was like, the universe, God, what I was saying, this is not where you're supposed to be. Let's see. And so I ended up having to leave. I think I was only there, like, maybe eight months, maybe six, even, but it was interesting because you came from the Billy Graham organization to that organization. And I went from that organization to the Billy Graham organization. I started working in their Christian radio station once I was healed up and feeling better, like in 2010. So it's just so funny how our lives intersected and like, we never really got to really connect. So this podcast is like, so it's filling my heart right now. Just hearing your perspective and the things that you've been through and knowing the people in your life that, you know, that you went through this with, I get how hard that was. When I left, it wasn't on terms like the way you did, but more just like, I can't stay healthy. I don't know how I can do this job. I need to focus on my health. And but with you leaving like that, I know that had to be really hard, but also bringing, like you said. And to get like, I'll just be completely honest, like, when we moved to North Carolina, I was married. I had three kids. We joined the church because it was sort of known as like an emerging church, got super involved and then super burned out. Like my wife and I at the time were involved in the arts ministry of the church and helping plan the worship services and like, I would find myself driving home from church every Sunday, like angry and complaining like, Oh, this didn't, this, you know, we should have done this. And I was like, what am I doing? Like, I'm like, I'm working all week long and then I'm working on church and then stressing out and I had to leave, you know, and I remember if anyone's watching this and listening to this, like this, this may be your experience too. Like, I went out the lunch with the pastor and I said, I got, I'm going to leave. Like we're going to, we're going to stop going. And in, I don't remember exactly what he said to me, but it was pretty much like, yeah, okay. Good luck. You know, like, who cares? You know, like, yeah, lots of people we can trust. And no one from the church reached out to us and was like, Hey, where'd you guys go? You know, you went being super involved to not being here anymore. And you think people might care and you think people would reach out and then they don't. And so I was out of church for a while. And that was a good, honestly, it was painful in some ways and necessary in a lot of ways. I just, I had deep walks from church. And also in that process, I was hosting this monthly, we call the emerging church discussion group. And we'd get together at a coffee house in Charlotte and we would talk about theology and books. And we'd have special guests come in and talk to us and different things like that. And but my primary conversation partner about all this stuff was my, was my wife. And we ended up in different places. Like I was sort of deconstructing and reconstructing my faith. And, you know, I felt like she was sort of letting go of everything. And so that, you know, it got to, we got to a place where I was, I was still interested in faith and she was not. And that was, you know, one of the things that led to our marriage ending. And this stuff can be hard and it can lead to the ending of marriages and important relationships. And that's a part of it too, that's, that, you know, we got tired. And I love that you're acknowledging that because I recently had Tim and his wife Sarah from New Evangelicals On and they shared their story and they were amazing. And they're on different pages, but they have figured out how to make it work. And so it's good to hear like it doesn't always do, like let's be real. Like sometimes it doesn't work. Are you and your wife, like, are you able to, are you friends or how, how are you now better, you know, we're friendly. I wouldn't say that we're friends, but we parented well, we have three adult kids. Our youngest just turned 18 and yeah, so he's graduating from high school. Our daughter just graduated from college, you know, so sorry that it affected the marriage. I really, really hate that for you. But you know, I do believe every journey has the ups and the downs and we learn and we grow. And so, so where are you now, Stephen? Where is your faith now? Yeah. So I guess the, the quick sort of bring you up to speed. I left that mission organization in 2009, the really the fall of 2009 we launched Transform Network. We did our first conference in 2010. And I got connected to the Christian church disciples of Christ through that process through one of the other co-founders of the organization, who was a disciples pastor. I'd never actually heard of this, you know, it's one of the mainline Protestant denominations that I'd never really heard of, you know, small, yeah, if you've heard of the United Church of Christ, UCC kissing cousins to the UCC, the disciples of Christ. And so they actually were interested in doing sort of emerging missional church type stuff. I got hired at that point to basically be a full-time consultant with the denomination, went to work for them and then I went to work for their publishing house, the denominational publishing house. And that commissioned as a minister in the disciples of Christ, that, you know, began my 10 years of being a pastor, not ordained because the disciples of Christ had two paths. One was ordination. You had to have a seminary degree and jump through all these hoops. Or you could just be commissioned. And I never wanted to be a traditional pastor. And so I never was, I just got commissioned, you know, I did some weddings, hope to start a couple of disciples' churches in the Charlotte area that are still going, so that are still alive today under different leadership, obviously. I'm not there anymore, but, and there's good and bad, you know, painful things about those stories as well. And for the first time in my life, in there, just real quick, I went from the publishing company related to the denomination to working, we published Reverend Barber's first book called Forward Together, got to know him through that process and the social justice work that he was doing. And you know, I got fired from that job because I was the director of sales, marketing and sales. I was good at the marketing part. I was not good at the sales part. So when I got let go from there, I reached out to Reverend Barber and said, if there's any chance, I would love to go and work with you. And eventually that door opened, and again, like my parents were there to financially support me for about six months, while I was, you know, without, you know, work, you know, doing consulting and bringing in some money, but not a full time job. And, and, and they helped me make it until I got hired by Reverend Barber and his organization. And I worked for him for five years, we, you know, was part of the team that relaunched the Poor People's Campaign in the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's original Poor People's Campaign and was the first national faith organizer for the Poor People's Campaign and then just special assistant and communications manager for his organization and traveled with him all over the country and doing that work. And then during COVID for the last couple of years was the online minister for his church. And again, just sort of got burned out, to be honest. And, and so I started looking for other jobs, other opportunities and a friend sent me this, this Director of Communications job with this organization called Just Leadership USA. And it's one of the nation's largest criminal justice reform organizations that's both founded by and led by formerly incarcerated people and justice impacted people. And the work I'd been doing with Reverend Barber and the Poor People's Campaign was all about amplifying the voices of directly impacted poor and low wealth people. And so, you know, a huge overlap in the formerly incarcerated justice impacted community, 70 plus million people in this country who have a rest or conviction record, 20 million Americans who have a felony conviction on their record, like our former resident. And, yeah, so, so I've been working with Just Leadership USA for the last couple of years. First time I haven't been in ministry, the first time I haven't been working for a faith-based organization. And I love it. I love it. I actually have been going to church still or? I am not. I am not. You're not. So you're a human like me. And I think about it, I think about it. I have great friends who are still in church ministry and I'll tell you, honestly, for the past several years, I've been a part of a Friday morning men's group that usually meets online. We started meeting during COVID outdoors in like a park, but then it mostly has been via Zoom. And I meet these guys every Friday morning or just about every Friday morning and, you know, a couple of them are pastors or, you know, I think we would all say we're people of faith, I think, trying to think, yeah, and that's been my community. Yeah, the community is the biggest part for me. And, you know, there are churches, I'm like, okay, I'd really like to try that church. And then I look at the statement of faith and I have like this trigger moment of, oh, yikes, nope, can't do that, you know, and I'm like, one day, maybe I'll find something. I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. This is actually a really, I hadn't planned to talk about this, but people listening should check this out and look into this. So my, my friends, Gareth Higgins and Brian Ammons, they started a thing called the porch magazine, the porch magazine.com. If you go on that website, there is a section on there called porch circles. And that's essentially what this Friday morning group is and anybody can do this. Anybody can do this. Gareth is from Northern Ireland and his friends with Roger Gotuma, if you're familiar with Patrick and he's a poet, he's on NPR on being anyway, he wrote this little prayer book and that's what we use. And it's, it's essentially an Ignatian Examen where we, we have, you know, we ask a series of questions and it's just a check-in, but it's, it's, it's, and anybody can do it and you can do it without the religious spiritual Christian part of it too, just by asking these four questions, it's a four or five anyway, four or five questions, no, that's so cool. And and it's, it's been life-changing for me, honestly, it has been the community that I needed to keep going. In this season. Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. That's so great. Well, and Steven, you have something coming up in July. You're going to be at the Wild Goose Festival and you're going to be a, what are you doing? You're doing something fun there. Yeah. I, I think it'll be fun. I'm actually moderating a panel discussion on ending mass incarceration and what people of faith do to get involved and I'm excited to have a few of my formerly incarcerated justice impacted colleagues sharing their stories and talking about criminal justice reform. It's related to the work that I'm getting to do now. But if you never get to the Wild Goose Festival, it's here in North Carolina. I used to be here in the Asheville area. I live in Asheville. It's, it's just north of Charlotte now. It's about an hour north of Charlotte and a place called Union Grove or Harmony, North Carolina, Wild Goose Festival dot org. I've been involved with the festival since it began, since before it began. How long has it been around? It started, I want to say it started in 2011 was the first, it was either 2010 or 2011. I have kind of it, I just heard of it this year, my friend Keith Giles was talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, it's here in North Carolina. People come from all over when, tell me a little bit about what you guys do there. What is the, what is the purpose and all that? So it's, it's, the tagline has sort of been the intersection of art, music, faith and justice. So it's always been sort of, there's, there's always great music. But the emphasis has, has mostly been on the speakers. And so you have, you know, I think John Pavlovitz is going to be there again this year. Flamey Grant is going to be performing if you, if you're familiar with Flamey, you know, there's always been great music, but also a lot of great speakers and then panel discussions, just like conversations, food, beer and hymns, you know, if you're, if you've never done beer and hymns, like that's a whole, they do it whole experience. Yeah, it is. It's so good. It's so fun. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild goose. Well, I'll put a link in the, in the show notes. So if people want to check it out, I've actually thought about it. And then I thought North Carolina in the middle of summer, I know, you know, it is hot. At least where it was 10 degrees cooler. You know, that would be a little more doable for me, you know, I'm getting, yeah, I really have thought about it, but I am going to theology beer camp this year. So I think my husband probably would be like, okay, pick one. You can't do both. So maybe I'll do it next year. Yeah. Yeah. That's so fun. I love trip Fuller. I, I'm, I'm kind of hoping that I can come to theology beer camp too. Oh, that would be great. I do. I will give you a shout. Let you know. Yeah, well, if you do use current, use code journey 2024 and you'll say 50 bucks. Yeah. There we go. And no caps or I mean all caps, no spaces, journey 2024. Yeah. You get to say 50 bucks off the registration now, it used to be 25. So I'm super pumped about that, but yeah, it's going to be fun. And I mean, what, how great that you get to do what you love to do with people that you love to be around and you're free and you're in a good place. Sounds like your, your journey has been definitely incredibly relatable for one thing, especially with me. My goodness. We intercepted a few times, but I honor it. I honor that journey of yours, Steven. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and your journey with us. And if somebody wants to find you online, where would they go and what are they going to find when they find you? Yeah. Pretty much every platform. That's Natopia, yeah, KNI, GHT, OPIA. It's like utopia. Only better. Definitely. That's your tag line. Okay. Good. Very nice. And you're going to find me, yeah, probably, I'm doing a lot of political stuff. This is people are going to be annoyed and I've, I've realized that I'm kind of a socialist leftist. I'm not a mainline Democrat. So you're, you're not really concerned what people think about you. You just want to be able to speak your mind. I love it. I know. And I do. And, and, and people disagree and, and hopefully I try to disagree and love and encourage other people to do that as well. And yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah, and I've been commiserating lately about our J J Baker, the son of Jim and Tamsay Baker. Oh yeah. If you haven't had J on, you should invite J. Oh, I will definitely be doing that. Yeah. I'm trying to get John Piper's son to Abraham, you know, that guy, I know he's crushing it. He is crushing it. He's so fun. But getting ahold of him seems to me like kind of trying to get ahold of Rob Bell, like it's very, they're very elusive. So hopefully one day I'll get both of them. But for now, I've got you and that's pretty freaking awesome. So thank you, Steven. You have been such a gem. I've appreciated your time. And thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for inviting me, Leslie.
