Did you like the story? You’ll love Echoes magazine.  SUBSCRIBE TO ECHOES

See the Echoes video and article that inspired this episode: RAIN OR SHINE

Read our president David Rogers’ reflection on what he has learned from Rev. Ben McBride: WIDENING OUR CIRCLE

Hear our president David Rogers on Ben McBride’s podcast An Invitation to Become:
LISTEN ON SPOTIFY

Buy Ben’s Book TROUBLING THE WATER

Learn more about the EMPOWER INITIATIVE

00:00:00:00 – 00:02:01:26

Marcus Goodyear

Where are you from? The standard conversation starter is a hard one for me. My dad was in the Air Force. We moved ten times as I was growing up. U.S. census data shows that Americans move 11 times in their lifetime. 11 times on average we will choose a new community to live in. It’s not an easy thing to do.

I mean, I should know. Every time I moved, I had to figure out where I belonged again. I had to rediscover community. And different communities have different rules about who belongs and who doesn’t. The rules in Oklahoma are different from the rules in Alabama or Colorado or Texas. It’s figuring out those rules, finding our place in a community, even just introducing ourselves to other people, it’s tricky.

Too often a neighborhood isn’t a community to belong. It’s just a place to live. Too often, a neighbor is just the person who happens to live next door. So, we find belonging at a new workplace or a new church or in other ways. And this isn’t the way we want things to be. We want the American dream with a front porch and the picket fence and the neighborhood barbecues.

We want real community. How do we find it? And what responsibility, if any, do we have to help others find their community and their place of belonging? From the H. E. Butt Foundation, I’m Marcus Goodyear, and this is The Echoes Podcast. Our guest today is Reverend Ben McBride, internationally recognized faith leader, activist, and sought after speaker, CEO of the Empower Initiative in Oakland, California, and recent author of Troubling the Water.

In 2008, Ben moved his family to East Oakland because he wanted to live in the same neighborhood as the young people he was serving on that side of town. To understand their needs and their community, to serve them better, he became their neighbor – literally. It may not seem like such a big deal, except for one thing. His new neighborhood had a nickname: the Kill Zone.

00:02:01:28 – 00:02:33:13

Marcus Goodyear

I’m here today with my co-host, Camille Hall-Ortega. How are you, Camille?

Camille Hall-Ortega

Doing well. I’m excited for today’s episode, for sure.

Marcus Goodyear

Me too. Me too. Ben, you moved to a neighborhood called the Kill Zone with your family. Why would you do that?

Ben McBride

Well, you know, I have had many moments. I’m thinking about that myself. I think I was responding to a moment that was in front of me, without having a lot of clarity about the many moments that were going to come after.

00:02:33:21 – 00:03:19:18

Ben McBride

But the moment that was in front of me was that I was a faith leader in a city, and did not feel that I was responsive to the highest degree of pain that was happening in the city. And if I’m, you know, absolutely honest, I would say I think there also were some messianic kind of ideas that I had about what I was going to be able to bring to the story.

And so I probably was also putting on a little bit of my Batman costume. I’ve since retired that, but if I’m honest, that probably was a part of it as well.

Camille Hall-Ortega

It sounds like you, obviously with most things in life, found some pros and cons. Would you would you do it again?

Ben McBride

Wow. Would I do it again? I think I would do it again, but I think I would do it differently.

00:03:19:21 – 00:04:43:05

Ben McBride

I feel like I’ve learned a lot, you know, almost 20 years since that move. And I do believe that my presence there helped really contribute in a significant and meaningful way to the saving of the lives of others. And so, I would do that again. What I would do differently was to have more awareness around the impact on my wife, on my children, and not have disappeared their needs as quickly as I did.

There’s actually a psychological term for it called inattentional blindness, where it says when we focus on one thing, our brain literally disappears out of things around us. And I think what I’ve missed in my obstruction spot was the fact that my girls are going to need certain things growing up that I needed to negotiate, that there is a level of honesty that Janelle needed about the work that I was leading into that we needed to negotiate.

So if I would do it differently, I think I would lean into it with a lot more transparency rather than trying to be, the Caped Crusader, as I describe. No, that makes perfect sense.

Camille Hall-Ortega

Marcus and I have heard some of this story before, and we share some of your story in our Echoes article. But will you share a little bit about the experience, about what it looked like to move into the kill zone and some of the challenges that you faced?

00:04:43:07 – 00:07:20:06

Ben McBride

Yeah, I mean, when we moved in, it was the summer of 2008. And so in Oakland, California, like most cities across the United States, the summer is the time when gun violence is most of a challenge, particularly because of all the environmental dynamics and economic dynamics. And so it just breeds a kind of environment where, people are outside of their houses, usually not with all the right things to do.

And it creates a different kinds of conflict. We had just left, you know, a very kind of suburban neighborhood, you know, about 20, 25 minutes away. And we move in and there’s just a stark difference, a vibe, a flow, a fear of of culture, of sound, of smell. And what I wasn’t as prepared for was the feelings that I would have even about people who looked like me.

I had feelings of, fear. Mistrust. I had all kinds of other implicit biases that if you would have told me when I was living 25 minutes away that I had, I would have told you, you were crazy. I would say I’m black. I’m proximate to this community already. I pastored in churches. I’ve worked in community organizations.

But something about shifting where I lived to a place that actually was hearing, you know, feeling, smelling like all of the challenges that, our neighborhood was, it created a visceral reaction in my physical body. And I think over the course of time, I learned more how much my neighbors were negotiating this feeling all the time. And that before I moved in, I would show up to have a transactional interaction without really appreciating their lived experience.

And so I think that daily in and out, the daily negotiation of do I let my daughter go throw this in the garbage can outside, the daily negotiation of is it time to get out of our car and go into the house after picking up the girl from school, because there are some unfamiliar people that I’m seeing hanging out on the corner?

The the daily negotiation of walking the dog and literally pausing behind a camper that’s parked because I see a car driving slowly up the street and, you know, instead of instincts, I like to call it my hood stinks, go up and I say, I think I need to pause. And when I do pause, the car speeds up and does a drive by shooting on the house four houses ahead of where I’m walking.

00:07:20:08 – 00:07:50:24

Ben McBride

The daily negotiation of that caused the level of, I don’t know, adrenaline. It made me more aware is the only way I could talk about it. Just gave me an awareness of the reality that human beings in different neighborhoods have very different experiences. And,

Marcus Goodyear

What I hear you saying is that our neighborhood shapes our perspective. And to some degree, I think you said it shaped your identity or reshaped your identity.

00:07:50:26 – 00:08:19:15

Marcus Goodyear

Yeah. So in this sense, you are choosing the neighborhood. You were choosing to be shaped by that community. Often, I think we’re not even choosing our community with intentionality. So how do we choose our communities with more intentionality? And how do we choose our communities bravely like you did?

Ben McBride

I am not a champion of people simply just showing up into an unfamiliar neighborhood and just trying to figure it out.

00:08:20:21 – 00:09:35:26

Ben McBride

What we always have to keep in mind is in the same way that you have a story about a place that you’re wanting to enter, that place has a story about people who enter and so a part of what’s necessary is if we’re going to really do, you know, the work of getting closer to neighbors and communities that are not like our own?

I encourage people to do that in the context of community, meaning you along with others that can serve as, be brokers, if you will, for how you show up in that community in a way that honors, in a way that still has room for curiosity, but also, is mutually beneficial in the sense that what it is that you are going to gain by nature of being proximate to someone that’s different, that that person who is different also mutually benefits from your presence.

And from that relationship. You know, if we’re going to get close to each other, we’ve got to do it carefully, bravely. I am a Jesus following guy. And so for me, one of the things that rooted in that story is Jesus did not just send his followers into communities to engage without spending ample time preparing them to engage.

00:09:35:29 – 00:09:58:24

Ben McBride

I think we need to get close, but I think we need to do so in community with others and community with those that we’re trying to get close to. And I’m a, I’m a strong champion of going slow so that we can ultimately go fast.

Camille Hall-Ortega

I imagine exactly what you’re describing that, you know, it could feel folks could feel like they were on display or some sort of exhibit.

00:09:58:24 – 00:10:48:09

Camille Hall-Ortega

If it’s like, you don’t even know what it’s like in this neighborhood. And they’re like, well, let me come and see. Well, you don’t know the history. You don’t have this contextualized for you. You don’t know how your presence is affecting the reality that you’re that you think you’re experiencing. So it’s making me think of a couple of experiences that our storytelling team does through Know Your Neighbor, where we do neighborhood immersions.

And so we have like a West Side immersion, an East Side immersion where exactly that happens. We sort of are are able to act as liaison or broker our storytelling team in order to make sure that that everything is done respectfully and it’s honoring the folks that the the people who don’t live in that neighborhood are interacting with.

00:10:48:09 – 00:11:18:01

Camille Hall-Ortega

And I think that’s key.

Ben McBride

You know, Marcus and Camille, I think that’s the work, right? The work is to give it a shot, to try to keep getting better at it because it’s difficult. We have been so segregated from each other by the notion of economy, my identity, religion group. And we’ve been so segregated that we’ve almost collectively lost some of the muscle memory of how to actually engage with each other across differences.

00:11:18:01 – 00:11:56:02

Ben McBride

And as much as our hearts have the aspiration, some of us are more afraid of showing up wrong and creating more harm. Some of us are afraid of being misunderstood and the impact psychological impact of that on us. And it can be easy for us to just tap out and say, you know what? I think I’m just going to go to the movies.

I get it. But I do think if we’re going to get to the world that we know we need, it’s going to be us being willing to see that almost as a part of our fitness as well. Right? We work out during the week to get stronger in our bodies. We participate with spiritual activities to get stronger in our spirit.

00:11:56:04 – 00:12:19:22

Ben McBride

Maybe some of the intentionality of closing our proximity to different neighborhoods is also a part of our holistic fitness that grows our ability to hold community together and to move out of this kind of segregated past that we’ve had.

Camille Hall-Ortega

You used to phrase there that I hear a lot in belonging work I’m thinking of Latasha Morrison would be the bridge in the light of do the work.

00:12:19:24 – 00:12:54:10

Camille Hall-Ortega

And I think so many people want to understand, have a desire to understand, or at least think they do or want to broaden their perspective or widen their circle of human concern. And but when the work comes up, it gets a little tough. What is it? What kind of work do you think this involves?

Ben McBride

Yeah, I think, you know, one of the things I unpack a lot and, you know, I talk about it in In Trouble in the water, but it’s more so be in my formative journey, which is the five A’s.

00:12:54:10 – 00:15:56:24

Ben McBride

So I think getting proximate helps us grow in our awareness. But there’s a few more steps that I think help us in even more. And one is really leaning into accountability. That is a deep part of the work. It’s once I become aware of something, I want to ask myself some deep questions and self-reflection. Is there any way that I’d be complicit?

And the othering, or the lack of people experiencing, you know, a very human experience in this neighborhood, in this city? Is there any way of being, you know, complicit in that, whether it’s overtly or implicitly? But but let me move into some reflection and look at myself. There’s a wonderful author, Doctor Sean Jordan, right? He’s got a wonderful book called The Four Pivots.

And in it, one of the things he talks about is how we need to move from lens to mirror. That sometimes when we see something, what we do is we bring our lens. And his invitation is, let’s move away from the lens and move to the mirror. Then instead of trying to take whatever it’s religiously it’s ideological lens, family lens and see something through it, let’s look in the mirror and say, why do I feel this way?

What’s coming up for me? And when I talk about accountability, the mirror work is about how have I been complicit? But then after we do the work of self-reflection. So that’s the that’s the step is self-reflection is then moving into the last three, which are articulation, advocacy and acquisition and articulation. We spend time learning how to talk about the experiences of others and the ways that they would talk about them.

So that doesn’t mean that I disappear my opinion about what’s happening, but it does mean that I get good being able to talk about someone else’s experience in the way that I can actually look to them and say, am I saying it the way that you would say it? It’s really about making sure we increase the connection with that person to ensure that I’m able to tell your story the way you would tell it, and then after I am getting good at telling your story, then the last two ways are really about advocacy is me looking into my own heart and asking myself, where and how can I show up for these people that I’m growing in relationship with, whose story I’m learning to tell better advocacy sometimes is how do I hold this other perspective in a meeting where this person’s not there? It’s not about showing up with anger or showing up with confrontation. It’s just literally about showing up. You know, at the end of that, to me, is activation, which is my invitation is once we learn how to get closer to others, it’s then at that point that we can start inviting other people to kind of go on a journey that we’re on.

I’m a firm believer that we should not rush through this work and simply get a new story, get some new words, and then start, virtue signaling and judging other people and telling them what they need to do. I think we should slow down, learn how to make it a part of our story. And then, with a spirit of humility, let’s invite others to join us on the journey.

00:15:56:26 – 00:16:17:08

Marcus Goodyear

Hearing you talk about that reminded me of the four quadrants in your book. Here’s your book, by the way. I just want to hold it up, shout out and book. But in the book you talk about these four quadrants of identity, and there’s, power and privilege. And I think what you were just saying, Ben, is about advocacy for people who are persecuted or who are prevented.

00:16:17:11 – 00:16:44:16

Marcus Goodyear

To me, those two parts of the quadrant, the persecuted and the prevented feel like similar things but have differing degrees, in my understanding, that right, that somebody who is persecuted feels blocked sometimes, somebody who is prevented, they just they don’t have belonging anywhere.

Ben McBride

So the way that I would nuance, that is to say that certainly the way that I talk about persecution is people are blocked, as you said, or restricted from that sense of belonging.

00:16:44:16 – 00:18:56:22

Ben McBride

And again, the way that we’re talking about belonging is the ability to co-create the the ability to have agency to shape this thing that we’re going to belong to. Whereas prevention is someone who does not have any agency, they have no access to the table to shake this circle of human concern that we’re trying to build with each other.

All of us are the powerful, privileged, persecuted and prevention based upon the scenario. Right. And so nobody is one thing. So, I know what it feels like to have limited, access and an agency. I know what it feels like to not have any access or agency, but I also know what it feels like in smaller and larger ways to really be able to influence how things go or to benefit from how something is being designed.

When I’m in the powerful and privileged seats, how am I, as a part of my practice being very, emotional, intelligent and self-aware about who’s got limited access to this thing that I’ve got a lot of access to and who has none. And it’s less about me judging why I do have access. It’s more about me having awareness about who does not.

And then because of the love that I have for all human beings across this quadrant, it helps me shape the choices and the actions I take. Because of the awareness I have. I feel like sometimes it goes off the cliff. Is is when we get into this space of we, any of us feeling defensive because we have power or we have privilege, or there’s some sense of if I have power, privilege and somebody saying I’m a bad person or I don’t care about everybody else in the quadrant who has decision making power, who really can help shape something.

Most times, people who’ve had limited access or none at all, limited agency or none at all, don’t just want to be included into something that was designed by somebody else. They want to be a part of helping to shape that thing that we’re all going to belong to. And I think that’s the word, for those of us in the powerful and the privileged not to feel bad about ourselves, but to be aware and to get proximate.

00:18:56:24 – 00:19:24:00

Marcus Goodyear

So America is a very transient culture. People move a lot. I have moved so many times in my life, if I ever move again, it will be too soon. Do people have a responsibility to be less transient or to try to connect with their local neighborhoods and their local communities?

Ben McBride

I think that the opportunities that people have is to think about the, the communities, that aren’t like them.

00:19:24:00 – 00:21:25:01

Ben McBride

How do they get closer, to those folks? But then I think it’s also important for people to figure out how to get closer, to the people that are within their, most proximate communities already. How do I take that opportunity to, get close to them? But then I also take the opportunity, where I live, work, and play with the people who are most like me and have conversations with people who may not necessarily feel as, inspired or encouraged to go across town.

Maybe they’re still telling old stories about these people across town in these narratives that they’ve heard. I think there’s a real opportunity at barbecues, at dinner tables not to be confrontational, but actually to be in relationship and help, folks that don’t have as much courage to go across, town. I have found my experience of being human only gets more enriched when I take the opportunity to get more proximate to people who are different from me, and to get deeper in relationship with people who are most like me.

And so I just encourage us to take those opportunities because the, the worst thing for all of us is segregation and isolation. The more we stay away from each other, the more that we lose the the visual of how beautiful and wonderful we all are that we all have something to contribute to this larger story where a part of I was for a period, but not not anymore, of calling folks out.

Much more of the notion of calling folks. And, and some folks might say, well, that just feels, you know, like semantics. And I say, no, for me, it is a little bit of a different, practice and calling out, I’m wanting to point out to the person where they got it wrong and calling folks in. What I’m wanting to do is to try to understand more deeply where this person is coming from.

00:21:25:04 – 00:21:47:15

Marcus Goodyear

Yeah.

Ben McBride

To speak to them honestly about this notion of, here’s why I feel like that, particular take is, is actually making the circle smaller and not larger. But in the calling in practice, what I’m also trying to do is to almost like a hand of sorts, sit on an egg and wait for it to hatch.

00:21:47:17 – 00:22:15:20

Ben McBride

It may never hatch, you know? I mean, some of us come from different experiences in life. Some of us are digesting misinformation. Some of us have views that are dangerous toward other communities. Some of that can change. Some of it may not change. What I am hopeful for in, in these moments is that we try to figure out, regardless as to whether the person has a problematic perspective.

00:22:15:22 – 00:22:44:19

Ben McBride

How do I learn how to continue my connection?

Camille Hall-Ortega

When politics get involved, it can oftentimes feel divisive. And I know for people of faith, which I know, I imagine that a lot of the folks who will listen to this will be people of faith. We are called to love. And God tells us over and over in Scripture to love our neighbor, to love our neighbor as ourselves, to love your enemies, to pray for those who persecute you.

00:22:44:25 – 00:23:16:06

Camille Hall-Ortega

Right? All of these things that sound great and we know their truth because they’re God breathed. But we go, what is that look like practically? And so I just appreciate the tools that you’re mentioning because these things are really difficult. But we know that God calls us to them. We know that that I mean, even just our golden rule, just treat others the way you want to be treated sounds great and is super hard in practice.

00:23:16:06 – 00:23:51:23

Camille Hall-Ortega

And so I appreciate some of the tools that you are giving us and talking through, because I think they’re really powerful.

Ben McBride

I’m encouraging people to really adapt or adopt, I should say, the practice of the pause, you know, how do you slow down in the face of of rising emotion, rising thoughts, slow down and make a choice to see the person I’m going to see the human, not see the ideology, not see the statement I’m going to see in the human.

00:23:51:26 – 00:25:29:29

Ben McBride

Now I’m going to ask myself, I wonder why this person feels how they feel, believes what they believe. If we can get ourselves to slow down, take a deep breath, and actually re humanize the person because all of us are more than our statements, our beliefs. And I, you know, had folks tell me, you know what? How is it that you feel like you can be in relationship with people that are all across the political spectrum, the religious spectrum?

Some of these people are very harmful. They’re toxic. They’re tearing the country apart, they’re tearing our communities apart. And I’ve told folks, you celebrated me for being in deep relationships with loved ones who were shooters in the community, who were literally shooting and taking the lives of other people. So if you could celebrate and understand my desire to humanize them, then I think you’ve got to think about, the invitation for us to humanize each other who may not be shooting at each other.

Hopefully they’re not caused by this to each other. So, you know, the invitation is to think about who it is that we can become in these moments. And rather than trying to solve all the big problems of our country from a meta level, my encouragement is let’s figure out what this looks like in my neighborhood, in my community, in my city.

Maybe I try to figure out what does it mean for the 4 to 6 houses of the people that I talked to on my block, or the 4 to 5 people that are in the small group at my church, let me figure out how to have the conversation there, and then let the cycle keep getting wider and wider and wider until it can stretch out to bring in even those that were not proximate to.

00:25:30:01 – 00:25:54:10

Marcus Goodyear

That reminds me of Howard Butt Jr., and something he used to say to the H. E. Butt Foundation. So this, I want to go back into archives for a second, actually bring his voice into this conversation. He was really intensely focused on unity. He was intensely focused on hospitality, in creating spaces where anyone could come into, some campsites we run as an organization and feel welcome.

00:25:54:10 – 00:26:47:29

Ben McBride

So we’ve worked really hard to make sure that everybody can accept who we are while also feeling empowered to be who they are. And, so this is some advice he gave to Foundation in 1997, but I wanted to go ahead and listen to it and, and get your take on it.

Howard Butt Jr (audio clip)

When you get hacked at somebody or find yourself developing a slow burn towards somebody, the best thing you can do is find a way to talk to him about it.

You might feel that you need to go to somebody else first. Don’t let those bitter feelings are hard. Feelings fester inside you. If you do, they are poison you. So it’s just so crucial that we get our personal hang ups with each other out on the table and try to understand where the other person’s coming from to practice relational sensitivity, meeting people where they are.

00:26:48:15 – 00:27:16:04

Howard Butt Jr (audio clip)

What that means is that we just don’t try to bulldoze people. We are not in the bulldozing business.

Marcus Goodyear

Do you find yourself in the bulldozing business some time and having to step back from it?

Ben McBride

I understand where bulldozing comes from because I think when we’re stressed out, you’re trying to figure out how to relieve your stress, and sometimes there’s a tendency to run over folks because you’re trying to relieve your stress.

00:27:16:06 – 00:28:39:07

Ben McBride

But I really resonate with what he’s sharing, because I think the invitation is to move off of the bulldozer and to slow down and to listen, to get in connection, to, to move closer and, and in that we’re usually going to learn some things that we didn’t know, think historically, the way that we’ve talked about unity in the country and a lot of our organizations.

You know, I would nuance that to say, let’s move from unity to harmony. And I was in a conversation actually on my street, and the kill zone talking to a muslim imam who was one of my neighbors that moved in across the street. And we were talking about these ideas of unity and being together. And I remember he said something to me and it really stayed with him.

He said, you know, being I don’t know that we need unity, which is just the notion of let’s all come together and be one. He said, I think we should move more towards harmony, which is like agreement in action. We move towards harmony, which allows me to be all with me. It allows you to be all of you.

But we learned how to be it in parallel ways that caused us to keep moving in the same direction. It’s not either you lose and I win or I lose and you win. There is a way for us to move together. We’ve got to pause, get close to one another and do the work of moving in harmony.

00:28:39:07 – 00:29:05:12

Marcus Goodyear

So does that scale up? I mean, the way we’re talking about it here with a few people, harmony sounds great, but what about like, the harmonic states of America? Is that does that make sense?

Ben McBride

Well, I mean, I think the only way that, change happens is it usually start small when a lot of different people, began to start practicing, dynamics and community that, move outwards.

00:29:05:16 – 00:30:35:12

Ben McBride

Let’s get some wins for everybody in this story so that we increase everyone’s belief and aspirations that we actually can do something about it. Violence becomes more, available to people as an option when people feel like they have no other options to engage. We’ve got to think about how do we erect the infrastructure that keeps people participating at the table so that they don’t use violence as the way to deal with their anxiety.

And to me, that’s the work, that’s the programing, that’s the sermons that need to be preached. I’m not looking to the federal government or the state government to erect the infrastructure to bring people together across difference. I think that’s always been the work of the people, for the people. And I think, in the same way that we saw people from the persecuted and primitive quadrants in Birmingham, Alabama and Selma, Alabama.

Montgomery, Alabama, why did the circle and help save the soul of the country? Those were Christian people. Doctor King and Joanne Robinson and Mother Rosa Parks and Claudette Colvin. They didn’t wait for the government to set the direction as to where they wanted to go. They met in their church, they met in the beauty salons, and they set the direction themselves. And all of us are benefiting right now from the leadership that they get.

My question is, 100 years from now, what’s the legacy that all of us right now that are listening, that are watching this? What’s the legacy we’re leaving that future generations will be able to point to us and say, at a point when they thought that the country was coming apart, there were some people who love God and loved each other and made a commitment to keep it together.

00:30:35:14 – 00:30:51:03

Marcus Goodyear

Man, that is a perfect place to end. Yeah. Powerful. Powerful. Yeah. Ben, thank you so much for being with us today. You have been listening to The Echoes Podcasts and we appreciate you being here with us. Thank you.

00:30:51:05 – 00:31:42:24

Camille Hall-Ortega

The Echoes Podcast is written and produced by Marcus Goodyear, Rob Stinnett and me, Camille Ortega. It’s edited by Rob Stinnett and Cam Stone. Our executive producers are Patton Dodd and David Rogers. Special thanks to our guest today, Ben McBride. The Echoes Podcast is a production brought to you by the H. E. Butt Foundation. You can learn more about our vision at hebfdn.org