Walking Through Samaria

Meet Debbie Causey. She’s a licensed professional counselor, an ordained minister and has served 24 years as the care director at North Point Ministries in Alpharetta, with responsibility for nine different ministry areas ranging from marriage counseling and financial support to substance abuse and parenting LGBTQ+ kids. It’s a big job and the coronavirus pandemic has kept her busy.

 

She has been married to Al for 33 years and they have four kids, three of whom are married. She has two grandchildren, with more on the way. Some of the best training she got for her North Point job came in 2014, from within her own family, when her one of her children came to her and revealed that he was gay.

 

It wasn’t a joke, even though her family is known for playing them. That caused her to reexamine her theology, provided material for a book titled, “The Big Reveal,” and led her to some other surprising discoveries about sacrificial love.

 

“There’s a lot of things that are gray that I once thought were so black and white, but in the end you do not have to choose between your faith and loving your kids,” she says.

Meet Matthew Harrison. He’s the senior Vice President for Talent & Development and Diversity/Equity/Inclusion at Jackson Healthcare. A graduate of the University of Georgia and Emory, Dr. Harrison is also well known for his research on colorism, which deals with discrimination against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group.

 

He worked toward that position after learning early in life that he didn’t want to be a farmer like his father in Maysville, a small town northeast of Atlanta. Acknowledging that baling hay in Georgia’s summer heat can shape your career choices every bit as much as encountering prejudice early can, Dr. Harrison used a cool February day to address the biases that makes Black History Month a necessity in the first place.

 

“As human beings, we’re wired to be more naturally OK with people who are similar to us,” Harrison said. “One of the biggest issues we have … is that we all want to ignore that we have that bias. The bias isn’t what the issue is — because we naturally have it. … What potentially makes you wrong is how you choose to allow that bias to impact the decisions that you make. We tend to get so stuck at being able to even acknowledge that the biases exist that a lot of times, the conversations stop there.”

 

Dr. Harrison says it takes boldness to take the next step.

 

“I think to act like a true Samaritan, we have to take that walk from Jerusalem to Jericho together,” he said. “The Black Lives Matter movement is not just about Black people. The #StopAAPI hate movement isn’t just about Asians and Asian-Americans. The Women’s Movement really wasn’t just about women. The sooner we realize that something just because is happening to someone else … we have to realize that it also impacts us. it’s about coming together and walking together.”

Meet some of the African American employees of Giving Company. George Saffo, LaQuoya Robinson and Darryl Maxie evaluate the state of race relations in America, talk about their personal experiences with racism and how it might be healed.

 

Their histories are dotted with the in-your-face hostilities of the South, both Black and White. After moving from Los Angeles to Atlanta, Darryl remembers being pelted with Coke cans and beer bottles as a teen pedestrian, and White drivers swerving to drive him off the road in his own neighborhood, which transformed from a White community to a Black one in less than five years.

 

LaQuoya, or “Q” as she’s more affectionately known among her co-workers, came from a melting pot in Savannah, GA, and says she didn’t experience racism until moving to Alabama, which somehow still didn’t keep her from becoming a Crimson Tide alum.

 

And for George, a native Atlantan and a grandfather to two biracial boys, his first experience was an exercise in reverse racism. He stood up to defend minority Whites from being bullied in his predominantly Black elementary school. Standing up for what was White earned him a few beatings, but George has been Walking Through Samaria on the hurting side of the sidewalk most of his life.

 

They speak of the root causes of the problem — fear moreso than hatred — and the ways that America might begin to heal its original sin.

 

“Churches need to be more open to talking and talking about things that make them uncomfortable,” Q said. “Nobody wants to talk about things that make them uncomfortable. And then we’re back to square one and then we’re separated.”

 

They also give their evaluations of how Giving Company, the host of this podcast, is addressing racial situations. And they talk about the role of the Church in bringing about healing because there’s place we all aspire to, and racism is a major road block to getting there.

 

“Truly, when we all get to Heaven, there’s nowhere in the Bible that I’ve read where there’s a section for Blacks, a section for Whites, a section for Hispanics, a section for this or a section for that,” George said. “The Bible refers to Heaven as a place and we’re all going to be in that one place.”

Meet Toni Collier. Longtime followers of this podcast have met her husband, Sam, on a previous episode, but his better half stands as a force in her own right — a speaker, host, consultant and the founder of Broken Crayons Still Color, an international ministry that helps women process through brokenness and find hope.

 

That ministry gave Toni the foundation to co-author “Overcomer: Defeating Anxiety and Abuse,” an iDisciple Publishing book that, in devotional form, helps women navigate hard plights to find holy heights.

 

She and Sam, the senior pastor at Hillsong Atlanta, lead a congregation that shares a Midtown building with one of the city’s well-known nightclubs. Party spot by Saturday p.m., sanctuary by Sunday a.m. — with a disco ball hanging near the pulpit — the place illustrates the inclusive message that Toni hopes will permeate the church they’ve planted.

 

“We thought church was a place for saints where we had to stay inside of the four walls and protect ourselves from the heathens out there,” she says. “What I love so much is that this is a space with equal dwelling, where 12 hours ago it served a different purpose, with a different group of people, and we are no different — we’re all crazy, ratchet sinners, living our best and most glorious life, doing our best to point ourselves back to Jesus and live a life of sanctification. It just makes us feel more normal, which is what we should be.”

Meet Andy Peterson. He is the founder and principal at Docs/ology, an initiative of Aspiration Ventures for promoting extraordinary documentary films through grassroots marketing & publicity and its companion editorial platform, DocsologyFilms.com.

 

Since 2005, Peterson also has been involved in helping to launch dozens of independent and studio feature films and TV series, including projects from A24, Abramorama, AMC, Dick Clark Productions, Focus Features, FOX, IFC Films, National Geographic, Neon, NBC, Paramount Pictures, Participant Media, Roadside Attractions, Sony Pictures and more.

 

But he wants to tell a different story.

 

“The life that I’ve observed, the life that I’ve lived, is not one so far — at least that I have found — that if I pray hard enough, my life always works the way I want it to,” Peterson says. “That’s not what I’ve experienced. I hear a lot of that, I hear a lot of that in Christian entertainment and I certainly hear a lot of that in some of the faith-based films that are out there, but that’s just not my experience.

 

“My experience is that life doesn’t work, that I can’t make it work, that I do need a Savior and that is the intersection that I’m interested in, in films that tell that real story, and sometimes the gritty, raw, hard story, of what it feels like to be human on this earth, in this broken place we live in.”

Peterson serves on the Narrative Feature jury for the Nashville Film Festival and is the creator of the Justice Film Festival, an emerging film festival that takes place in New York City that has been shining a light on social justice since 2012.

He is a graduate of Taylor University and has lived in Nashville for 25 years with his wife Becky. They have three children.

Meet Josh Deckard. He’s the founder of Hammerstone Capital, an investment company focusing on early-stage opportunities, and a former assistant press secretary to President George W. Bush. He was the longest-serving member of the Bush press office staff, his tenure spanning from 2002-2007.

 

During his time at the White House, Deckard oversaw media operations, including major international summits and addresses to the nation, as well as nationally televised press conferences at the White House, Camp David and abroad. Having traveled nearly a million miles to more than 55 countries with the president, Deckard served as a liaison for the United States government to his counterparts around the globe, despite being younger than most.

 

“I was flying on Air Force One before I could drink a beer,” he says.

 

His favorite job, however, is father. He and his wife, Ali, are parents to four children in Arlington, Va., including Chase, whom they adopted from Uganda in 2013. That was an adventurous process fraught with would-be extortionists, other opposition and discouragements. But believing they were on a God-ordained mission, the Deckards persisted, and it included what Deckard calls “the hardest and best five weeks of my life … The Lord really provided in ways that we’ve never experienced before or after.”

 

The “pure religion” that James 1:27 references — “to look after orphans and widows in their distress” — is what Deckard uses his platforms to promote. He has found it intensely rewarding.

 

“Does that mean every Christian, or every person needs to adopt? No,” he says. “Does that mean that every Christian needs to care for orphans in some capacity? Yes.”

Meet Max McLean. He’s the award-winning founder and artistic director for the Fellowship of Performing Arts (FPA), a not-for-profit New York City-based production company that has produced theatre and film from a Christian worldview since 1992.

If McLean sounds familiar, it’s probably because his is the official voice of the Listener’s Bible, and his narration has earned him four award nominations from the Audio Publishers Association. McLean received the 2009 Jeff Award for Best Solo Performance — Chicago theatre’s highest honor — for his one-man show Mark’s Gospel.

 

McLean portrays a man who goes from hard-boiled atheist to one of the most beloved Christian writers of the 20th century in The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold C.S. Lewis Story. It is one of several works about Lewis that McLean has been involved with over his celebrated career. Just as Jesus used parables to illustrate the Kingdom of God, McLean believes integrating theatre and film with faith is one of the best ways to present God’s Word to all people.

 

“The power of the arts is to tell stories,” McLean says. “God is the Great Story Teller. Stories tend to expose our needs. It also exposes our pride.”

 

Born in Panama, McLean moved to the United States at age 4 and overcame a fear of public speaking during his study of theater at the University of Texas, where he graduated in 1975. He says we can find effective ways of spreading God’s word, even if it isn’t on stage in front of a theatre audience.

 

“Anytime we do anything that approaches what the Good Samaritan story is leading us to do — in any form, whether it be business, engineering, the arts, law, medicine — I think we’re doing Christ’s work,” McLean says.

Meet Geoff Duncan. He’s the 12th Lieutenant Governor for the State of Georgia, husband of 24 years to Brooke, and father to three children ranging in age from 19 to 11. A former minor league pitcher in the Marlins organization, Duncan saw his Major League dreams derailed by an injured shoulder. But that didn’t keep him from aiming for success, and he found it as an entrepreneur and a politician.

 

Those experiences formed the background for “GOP 2.0,” a book he authored, though he contends the title — and most normal, everyday Americans — aren’t nearly as partisan as they sound.

 

“Because of social media and other elements, the outside 5 percent on both sides feel like they’re driving the narrative,” the lieutenant governor says. “The reality is that there’s a silent majority that just wakes up and doesn’t really care about a Republican or Democrat being in charge — they want to make sure they got a job the next day, they want to make sure their kids are going to a good school and that their communities are safe, and their nation is secure. Those are the real issues. When we stop looking through the lens of being reelected and start looking through the lens of actually doing stuff, that’s where this starts making sense to people.”

Meet Janine Maxwell. Along with her husband, Ian, she’s the co-founder of Heart for Africa, a faith-based humanitarian organization which has focused on the areas of Hunger, Orphans, Poverty and Education (HOPE) in Eswatini and Kenya for 15 years.

 

How a Canadian, who was running one of that country’s most successful marketing companies, ends up in southern Africa is a compelling story. In 2001, Janine was a self-proclaimed “capitalist pig” in New York, right in the heart of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and fleeing from gunshots echoing in the madness. It was the kind of life-changing event that plunged her into depression, took her through a period of deep introspection and onto a path for the true meaning of life. When the rollercoaster ride stopped, she found herself in Africa, where she encountered the AIDS pandemic, hunger and disease, and her life forever changed.

 

“If you say that’s not OK, then what are you going to do about it?” Janice says. “You can’t say it’s not OK, then not do something. Especially not as believers.”

 

That’s what she’s written three books to address. A graduate of Evangel University in Springfield, MO, Janine most recently wrote “Hope Lives Here,” through iDisciple Publishing. She and Ian are parents of adult children Spencer and Chloe, and serve as adoptive parents to more than 300 orphans in Africa. Some of what they’ve seen has been miraculous.

 

They have witnessed blind children given sight, deaf children’s ears opened and lame children who now not only walk but run to school every day. If that’s not miraculous enough, consider that of those 300 Janine is helping raise there are some 40 “terrible twos.” Yet she has maintained her sanity — all because she decided to act and encourage others to do the same.

 

“Do something!” she says. “It doesn’t have to be Africa. Do something. Just stop looking in the mirror and stop complaining.”

Meet Colleen Swindoll Thompson. The daughter of prominent radio evangelist Chuck Swindoll, she has weathered just about every blow that life can throw at her and lived not only to tell the tale but also to give birth to a ministry that helps address it. Colleen has lived through domestic abuse, a body she calls a “genetic nightmare,” parenting a child with multiple disabilities, identity theft, a difficult divorce and betrayal from trusted Christians. And this isn’t to say all this is in the past and done, a hurdle once overcome and forever overcome. Some of these remain present-tense ongoing situations.

 

There was a time that she would ask God why. She doesn’t do that anymore, even as some of the slings and arrows rock her faith to its core.

 

“What is ‘why’ going to change?” Colleen says. “It didn’t change Job’s situation. It didn’t change Joseph’s situation. It didn’t change David’s situation. It didn’t change Esther’s situation. It’s accepting what God has allowed in my life. I may never understand it. I may never like it, but I will release my will in surrender to a greater purpose that I may not see on this side of Heaven. I know that His love never fails. He is forever loving us, and I have to cling to that.”

 

In her clinging, she has made peace with the uncomfortable parts of her story. Colleen gave birth to Reframing Ministries out of that pain, helping sufferers come to terms with their pain and helping them also learn to cling. It helps care for caregivers, based on one overriding strategy.

 

“Empathy has been shown to be the most impactful comforter when someone is suffering,” Colleen says. “Not sympathy or pity, but empathy, which says, ‘I’m putting myself in your shoes.’ Can you do that?”