Walking Through Samaria

Our hosts are joined by Rev. Alvin C. Bibbs & Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen on the final episode of Walking Through Samaria   Rev. Alvin C. Bibbs, Sr. is a Justice, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Executive and a highly sought-after motivational speaker, author (Crazy Enough to Care: Changing Your World Through Compassion, Justice, & Racial Reconciliation, published by InterVarsity Press) and serves as an organizational coach/facilitator to congregations, corporations, and not-for-profit organizations across North America. Along with currently serving as President & CEO of the Justice Journey Alliance™, Leadership Foundation of Chicago. Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen is the executive director of Parity, an NYC-based national nonprofit that works at the intersection of faith and LGBT concerns, and the Director of Blessed by Difference. Marian has worked with youth and families in various denominations and settings throughout the country for more than 20 years, focusing on strengths-based interventions and supports to affirm beliefs and faith practices for LGBT persons. In 2013, Marian was named Person of the Year by Q Salt Lake for her visionary leadership, and in 2015 was named a Petra Fellow for her work with LGBT Homeless Youth. Marian attended Western Theological Seminary and Eden Theological Seminary, she is a Doctor of Ministry candidate at Eden Theological Seminary with the topic Covenantal Pluralism, Religious Freedom and Mission: Evidence for Healing the LGBT and Faith Divide.

First - Mike is a husband to Karen, a dad of 5, and constantly learning what that all means. Mike worked in Christian retail for 25 years at various levels. His last position was AVP of Ministry Partnerships at Family Christian where he advocated for orphaned, vulnerable children and families. He led efforts for customers to support Family's ministry partners, and developed programs with: Back2Back Ministries, Children of Fallen Soldiers Relief Fund, Compassion International, iDisciple, Operation Christmas Child, Pray America, 410 Bridge, and World Vision. He is currently the Advancement Director at Back2Back Ministries in Cincinnati, OH where he has been the last 5 years, being responsible for leading the fundraising and marketing teams since April of 2020.   He serves on Cincinnati Children's Hospital Psychiatric Patient and Family Advisory Council and previously on the Ohio Interagency Council on Youth as a parent representative with lived experience. He is passionate about organizational health, encourages vulnerability-based trust, authenticity ,and self-awareness in leadership.  Mike is also certified by The Table Group as a Working Genius Facilitator.

Born and raised on the South Side of Chicago is where Anthony Thompson's life of resilience began. His mother gave birth at the age of 15 and continued her toxic behavior.  She would live 7 more years before she died of a drug overdose. Anthony's biological father is still unknown to this day.  Growing up with so many rejections and fears crippled Anthony for the majority of his life. As a result, Anthony buried his pain in drugs, sports, and status.  While working with celebrities and Fortune 500 companies, Anthony received an invitation to work and travel with a renowned evangelist. Anthony accepted the offer and had an encounter with Jesus that changed his life. He later met and married the love of his life in Sydney, Australia.  While in Australia, Anthony launched and grew a successful 6 figure social media agency. He also went on to serve alongside Hillsong and their executive team as Head of Growth.   Most recently, Anthony's personal access and observations of some of the greatest leaders in the world led him to focus his efforts on helping executives get healthy in spirit, soul, mind, and body. Having worked with executives from Meta, Salesforce, Google, Hillsong, and others, Anthony views these opportunities as God's workmanship.  Anthony, Chantelle, and their three children live in Scottsdale, Arizona where you can find them enjoying the incredible heat.  Anthony has a passion to speak, write and inspire others to grow in spirit, soul, mind, and body. He believes God's Word has everything you need to become the champion you were created to be.   Welcome Anthony to the Walking Through Samaria podcast!

Meet Peter Mutabazi. As a child in Uganda, he grew up with shelter, food and clothing scarcity. But more than that, he grew up with safety scarcity. He feared for his life from a father who threatened him, frequently called him “garbage” and “useless.” To survive, he ran away from home to live on the streets of the capital city, Kampala.   “I was treated like a stray animal in most ways — as you say, we were street rats because that's the way people looked at us,” said Mutabazi, who would get by on as little as one hour of sleep a day. “As early as [age] 4, I had kind up given up on life. … I think every morning, I felt like, ‘I wish I didn't have to wake up. I wish I woke up and was gone.' That was my wish every day because of the misery I was going through.”   He was eventually taken in by foster parents and it changed his life. He learned to speak seven languages. When he reached adulthood, he found himself in position to give back to vulnerable children. He wrote a book titled, “Now I Am Known,” and started a mission of the same name,  giving at-risk, foster children the message Mutabazi desperately needed to hear when he was in their position.   But Mutabazi still had unresolved feelings toward the father he fled that required healing.   “My hatred toward my dad, it was so, so bad that I wanted to harm him,” Mutabazi said.   Mutabazi gave his life to the Lord and realized that he couldn't go down that path.   “I can't live my life this way,” he concluded. “I have to forgive my dad.”

Meet Cole Forrester. He's the son of one of Walking Through Samaria's recent previous guests, author Link Forrester III, and he's also the co-founder of True Radical Love, a website devoted to fighting the pernicious evils of pornography. He and his co-founder wife, Kayla, have purposed “to end pornography one heart at a time, because if this evil will always exist, then the only way to win is to win the individual's heart.”   Neither Cole nor Kayla arrived by accident at this mission, which they started in May 2020, at the height of COVID-19 quarantining. He was exposed to pornography at a young age, before he recognized the effect it would take on his life. She also recognized that sex slavery and trafficking were still prevalent in their suburban metro Atlanta backyard.   Recognizing it was one thing. Doing something about it, however, has been a much tougher task. But neither shies away from the challenge.   “Porn fuels the demand for trafficking, meaning it's a progressional sin or issue,” Cole said. “Like my story, it's started off whenever I was in secret, I could look at it. When I was at college, I could look at it whenever. And then when I was in the professional world, I would use my resources toward where my heart was going. People say that where your money is, your heart is also. With pornography, it's backward. Your heart is being established in this sin and then when boys become men, or children go into adulthood, their money starts following where their heart is. Most people seeking prostitution or trafficked women, I'd be shocked if they don't have a porn issue.”

Meet Brian Frazier. He's the director of peer-to-peer fundraising for World Vision USA, a Christian humanitarian organization that tackles the causes of poverty and injustice in the world. He's also one of the guiding forces behind World Vision's involvement in Oregon's annual Hood to Coast relay race, the world's largest.   Teams of runners trek almost 200 miles from a snow-capped mountain in northern Oregon to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, and Frazier — who is also one of its leading individual fundraisers — will pound the pavement in hopes of realizing World Vision's 2022 goal to provide more people in South Sudan access to clean water.   A graduate of Texas A&M, Frazier and his wife of 21 years, Colette, are the parents of four children. He doesn't just walk out his faith as an example to them and others — he literally runs with patience the courses God has put in front of him. That's why he and World Vision were such a hand-in-glove fit, and together they bridge uncomfortable gaps to do the most good.   “At Team World Vision, we talk about meeting God on the other side of fear, and just stepping through that fear and seeing what God has for us on the other side,” Frazier said. “It's when we're talking about people that are different than us that God is at work in relationships — that is a perfect place to meet God, that's where breakthrough can happen. When we're stepping through those uncomfortable things, or the things we're not used to … then, all of a sudden, that's when magical things can happen.”

Meet Link Forester III. He's an author whose life story, a winding path of triumph and tragedy, is readily identifiable with many of our own. The only difference is, he's put his into a book titled The Side Road: Finding Joy and Purpose Through the Twists and Turns of Life, which takes him through an earlier-than-expected pregnancy, marriage and fatherhood in 1987 to an early and never-expected tragedy in 2011, when his son Tyler died.   Simple pleasures have helped him cope — the love of golf, good wine and grandchildren — but mostly it has been his strong faith in God. Through it all, from his initial days in sales at IBM to his management of a financial planning firm, Forester's 35-year marriage to Carla has survived and thrived and he's learned lessons about what traveling “the side road” really means.   “Just being a follower of Jesus puts you on the side road,” he says. “It's an easy club to join but it's a hard life to live. It can be a lonely life.” Yet it is one full of purpose and perspective and leads to a lot of hilarious tales that his son, Cole, finally got him to put into print and he recounts some of them with Dan and David on the Walking Through Samaria podcast.

Meet Talli Moellering. For the last 13 years, she has been the executive director for A Beacon of Hope, a metro Atlanta-based organization that assists women facing unplanned pregnancies — and particularly women who feel that abortion is their best or only option.   In the light of the recent Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which had the effect of overturning the 1973 precedent-forming case Roe v. Wade, Talli provides expert insights into what it will mean. No matter which side of the abortion debate you favor, she says, the only true victory is when pregnant women are addressed and treated with compassion.   “There's no way we can just focus on the baby,” Talli says. “The only chance that we have of saving the life of the pre-born is if the mother feels heard and cared for. That's what the focus needs to be.”   Talli wrote “Let's Talk About Sex,” a book which has become a tool for parents. Published in 2015, the book is based on Talli's 20-plus years of teaching sexual health education in private and public schools. A graduate of Indiana Wesleyan University, Talli leads a team of 18 employees and 25 volunteers at A Beacon of Hope. They strive to ensure that every patient who enters her clinics in Decatur and Johns Creek feels safe, and is informed, prior to making a choice. Talli has been married to David for 32 years and they've considered Atlanta home since moving from the Midwest 20 years ago. The Moellerings have three married daughters, three grandchildren, and two grand dogs, all of whom live in Georgia.

Meet Kelly Miller. Formerly a standout in the software industry, Miller became the Dean of Student Life for the Amazima School in Jinja, Uganda, and visits the Walking Through Samaria podcast to talk about what the Holy Spirit has done and is doing in the lives of people who are “going against culture to follow Jesus” and becoming examples in their own communities.   He has been married to Danlyn for 25 years, and though they have no biological children of their own, they became father and mother figures to their Ugandan students, who used to call him “Uncle Kelly.” He's undertaken 13 overseas mission trips, but upon rigorous self-examination questioned whether what he was doing was genuine service to God as opposed to a point of religious pride. Once he resolved that question, he says, he found himself on a “journey to unshakable faith and complete joy” which led him to write an upcoming book called “No Greater Joy.”   The key, Miller says, is being properly motivated.   “If somebody's motivation is for the other person's benefit, whatever we're doing — whether it's buying somebody's Starbucks coffee or just asking somebody, ‘Hey, what do you know about Jesus?' — you can do ministry everywhere, anywhere, anytime,” he says. “If we want to do something meaningful for others, meaningful for the Kingdom, and faith-building for us in our own walk with Christ, we have to do it with the strength of the Holy Spirit. If we try to do it on our own, we will fall into selfish motivations.”

Meet Matt McKee. An author, entrepreneur and ordained pastor, among other things, he has found his sweet spot at the intersection of parenting and technology. He likes to think of himself as “just another guy trying to make a difference.”   Married for 23 years to Jessica, with whom he has two teenaged sons, McKee has — and is in demand to speak publicly — a wealth of information and insights about raising kids in the digital age. He has written Parent Chat: The Technology Chat for Every Family and co-wrote Parenting in a Tech World with Titiana Jordan.   “As a parent, we really have to up our emotional intelligence more than anything else in helping our kids deal with all the difficult things happening on tech,” he says.   In addition to founding three technology companies, McKee also is the senior vice president of business development with Bark.us, an internet safety solution that helps parents and schools keep children safer across social media, text messaging, and email. One of the solutions that makes the most sense to McKee, that builds greater trust and rapport with your child, involves making your kid your teacher.   “Go ask your kid, ‘Can you teach me how?' '' McKee says. “Can you teach me how this app works? Can you teach me how this video game works? Can you teach me how this device works? And what you'll start to see is technology through the lens of your child and because of that, you will be able to give them purpose, and without purpose you can't have accountability. Without purpose, you can't get them to the places you want them to go.”

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?”

Meet Bob Dalton. He's the founder of Sackcloth & Ashes, a mission-driven company that donates a blanket to a local homeless shelter for each one purchased. It's an admittedly “insanely ironic” place for him to find himself because he used to perpetuate the stigma of homelessness. He was the guy who would drive past a homeless person and mutter, “Go get a job” under his breath.   That changed when his mother, a waitress with two college degrees and a healthy work ethic, spiraled into homelessness on the streets of Florida in 2013, after leaving Oregon and trying to restart her life after the deaths of her mother and brother.   Her plight inspired him to call his local homeless shelters and simply ask what they needed most. All said blankets. That also became the impetus behind his Blanket the United States campaign, which has a goal of donating 1 million blankets to homeless shelters by 2024. He even tried to make blankets himself when he read the words “what are you waiting for?” on the sleeve of a coffee cup.   “What coffee company puts quotes on a sleeve?” he says. “That was my first thought. And then my second thought was, ‘I'm going to do this.' … I'm just going to go buy some fabric and a sewing machine and I tried to learn how to sew. And I realized really quickly that I'm horrible at sewing. That was my first obstacle. I had two choices at that moment: I can either quit or I can find somebody who can sew. And I found a sweet old lady named Tammy and Tammy started sewing blankets for me.”   Dalton didn't want to start just another one-for-one business but wanted something that would make Sackcloth & Ashes, clothing symbolic of mourning and repentance in the Bible, stand out. He asked himself, “How can I innovate, how can I evolve, how can I reimagine it to make it unique?”   The company's hyper-local emphasis, something that could allow concerned people to benefit their own communities, seemed to work best. “The local component sets us apart,” Dalton says. So, when a person purchases a blanket, the company donates a blanket to a homeless shelter in that person's community.   Dalton says anybody following his example shouldn't do so out of guilt. If they can meet a need, they should simply do so. “However, 90 percent if the time, most of the time, you don't have the ability to meet every need, but you do have the ability to be a bridge-builder and you have the ability to connect somebody who can meet a need with the person that has the need,” he says. “Most of my work is bridge-building.”

Meet Shaunti Feldhahn. A well-known ground-breaking social researcher, best-selling author and popular speaker, Shaunti is a Harvard graduate and former Wall Street analyst who lives in Atlanta with her husband, Jeff, their daughter, son, and two cats who think they are dogs.   She has authored devotionals and Bible studies for iDisciple Publishing — her “Find Series” of includes Find Rest, Find Balance, Find Peace, and Find Joy. They guide women to discover the path that will take them from stressed-out to peace when they lean into God's truths and begin to live the life designed just for them.   “Living in a fallen world is going to come with some stress, but the whole point is He wants us to navigate that, so we don't have a life of stress and that we have that sense of joy no matter what,” Shaunti says. “[The books] are not just about reading something and going, ‘Oh, that's nice.' It's about ‘How do I apply that every day to my life?' ”   Shaunti's books delve deep into relationships — the best-selling For Women Only, followed by For Men Only (co-authored with Jeff) and her most recent work, Thriving in Love & Money – the money book that has little to do with money. These rigorously researched books help couples finally “get” what has been so often misunderstood about each other and what the roots of stress in their relationships might be.    The books have been sources of insight while much of the country — and, indeed, the world — has been under stress with COVID-19. On a personal note, Shaunti has dealt with that and then some. She not only battled COVID-19, but stage 1 breast cancer and a withering attack from a Christian sister on the teachings in her books concerning sex.   She has resisted a public back-and-forth battle, citing Scriptural teachings and the common-sense that says, “You can't heal hurt with further hurt.” Instead, Shaunti aims to help because that's the essence of a Good Samaritan — one who goes out of their way to help.

Meet Rich Stearns. He's the former and longest-serving president of World Vision U.S., an organization committed to human transformation, seeking justice and bearing witness to the good news of the Kingdom of God. After 20 years as its president, and now as its president emeritus, Stearns has authored a book, “Lead Like It Matters to God.” In it, the Bellevue, Wash., resident expands upon 17 crucial values that transform leaders and their organizations.   He and his wife, Reneé, are the parents of five children and grandparents of six. Stearns holds a B.A. in neurobiology from Cornell University and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He joined World Vision to answer God's call on his life, forsaking a corporate career that included CEO roles at Lenox and Parker Brothers Games.   That choice was hardly easy, one borne of what he calls “grudging obedience,” but few walking in the spirit of the Good Samaritan find avenues of convenience. His became a course of sacrifice and surrender to God, a walk steeped in accountability to the One to Whom we must all answer. It led to his direct involvement in combatting HIV/AIDS in Africa, where more than 13 million children have been left orphaned by that plague.   As Stearns can attest, God honors even grudging obedience.   “What are the things that are going to matter to God when you stand before Him on that day?” he asks. “It's going to have very little to do with the business you were in or the profession you've chosen. It's going to be about how you treated the people entrusted to your care, the people that you led. It's going to be about the human beings around you during this whole career you've chosen, and how you helped them to flourish.”

Meet Brian Roland. He's the co-founder and former CEO of Abenity, a Tennessee-based company that helps employers, alumni groups, and associations supplement their employee benefits with private perks and discount programs. Now living in Scottsdale, Ariz., he's also a husband, a self-proclaimed girl dad, coffee nerd, trumpeter and drone pilot.   But what stands out about Roland is his generosity. The company he built — and served as CEO for 13 years before resigning in 2019 — has made the Inc. 5000 list for six consecutive years while giving more than $1 million to causes like World Vision, which battles global poverty. Many companies plan to give, almost as an afterthought, but built into Abenity's DNA was a sustainable plan for generosity: The company committed 15 percent of its annual profits toward the United Nations' goal of ending global poverty by 2030.   Roland says we can make the same thing can work in a smaller scale in our daily lives, ensuring a way to put legs on the parable of the Good Samaritan. Likewise, it simply starts with a plan that helps us avoid being the priest or the Levite who walked by the mugging victim on the other side of the road.   “By having the plan to give and being present in the moments around you, that's the story of the Good Samaritan,” he says. “The priest that walked by — his head was just in the wrong space, and he didn't have a plan that he could follow that allowed him to serve that person right then. He let his schedule, to wherever he had to go, take precedence. … One thing we like to do is we keep $5 McDonald's gift cards in the middle console of our car, so when we see somebody in our community standing around, we've got a McDonald gift card and a Bible verse card in there, and it's like ‘Here's a meal.' … There are simple steps that you can do.“

Remember Batya Ungar-Sargon? She’s baaaaaack. Officially, the first repeat guest on the Walking Through Samaria podcast, Batya rejoins us in response to a fresh outbreak of violence in the age-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. She lived in Israel. She went to high school there before earning a Ph.D. over here at the University of California-Berkeley. Not only can Batya recount the history of the Holy Land hostilities, she tells us why that history is so important. But then, she looks forward, not backward. “To me, when I look at the problem there, I try to see it through a political lens, through a moral lens and through a lens of justice,” she says. “And, of course, then it’s very obvious what needs to happen, which is that every single person living in that territory should have full civil rights and should have access to safety, security and dignity.” A few things have changed since Batya last visited with Dan and David. She is now the deputy opinion editor for Newsweek magazine, where she co-hosts a podcast called The Debate, in which people from opposite ends of the political spectrum engage in substantive conversation about real problems, rather than spewing talking points at each other without listening. Even though she approaches the Israeli-Palestinian problem from a Jewish perspective, she can see faults on both sides. Because rhetoric matters, she strives to avoid the kind that keeps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict raging. “They’ve rebranded the problem in such a way that will make sure it will never be solved,” Batya said. “You have these very vocal Congresswomen talking about Israel as committing genocide against Palestinians or as being an apartheid or as engaging in ethnic cleansing, and these are all rebrands of actual problems that exist in such a maximalist way the only thing that would solve it for them, the only thing that would make them feel that there was redress to the Palestinians, would be what Hamas wants — which is Israel not to exist, and that is never going to happen.”

Meet Terry Johnson. He’s a major-gifts fundraiser for World Vision, a global Christian humanitarian organization tackling poverty and injustice.  Johnson serves as the organization’s area director for philanthropy in the southeastern United States.   A husband to one wife (Suzanne) and father to one daughter (Meredith), Johnson was destined to do something great after he survived tumbling out of the “suicide doors” of a Lincoln Continental at 70 mph and onto the sizzling pavement near El Paso, Texas. He was 3 years old at the time.   Now, he wants to make sure underprivileged kids around the world and their families survive their tumbles — which are far more dire than a momentary case of road rash. The people Johnson tries to help face an ongoing pandemic of poverty, living on less than $2 a day, which makes the coronavirus crisis look mild and short-term by comparison.   “There’s no stimulus check coming to the lion’s share of the world,” says Johnson, whose mission work has taken him to the hardest-hit areas of Ethiopia, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Honduras — “places their own governments won’t even go.”   Johnson endeavors to show that Jesus is alive in the places that it’s hardest to be a child and encourages more people to make something good happen.   “If we have the good fortune to travel and see the real need in the margins, how do I fit into that?” he says. “How do I become a part of that? I think those are the questions we need to ask ourselves.”

Meet Rick Dunham. He’s the founder of Dunham+Company, a Plano, Texas-based organization that is a global leader in providing fully integrated marketing and fundraising strategies for nonprofit organizations. It has served more than 100 organizations in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Dunham holds a bachelor’s degree from Biola University in Los Angeles and a master’s in theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He’s on the board of The Giving Institute and is the immediate past chair of the Giving USA Foundation, which publishes the most widely respected annual report on giving in the U.S. Dunham also is a member of The Giving Coalition, the national voice for American charitable organizations. To him, success isn’t about how much money you have or can generate. It’s all about the heart. “If you look at the whole teaching of Scripture around money, from the Old Testament to the New Testament, the one consistent thing is the heart,” Dunham says. “Go back into Exodus and you’ll see where God ordained the first fundraiser in Exodus 25. He says you need to command the people to come and you need to take up an offering and [accept from] everyone whose heart moves them to give. So God established back in Exodus that it’s really about the heart. … What giving is is really the exercise of demonstrating that we are not owned by what we have, but that we’re owned by God. … God doesn’t want His people on a guilt trip about giving. What He wants is a heart that’s wholly His.” Dunham has channeled his heart into a pair of books — Secure: Discovering True Financial Freedom and If God Will Provide, Why Do We Have to Ask for Money? He has also been published and quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, USA Today, Dallas Morning News, Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, among others. He has served as a commentator on Fox Business News and is a frequent guest on numerous regional and national radio programs. Dunham is married and has three children and nine grandchildren.

Meet Benjamin Watson. A first-round draft pick out of the University of Georgia in 2004, and a Super Bowl Champion with the New England Patriots in that rookie NFL season, Watson was a star tight end until retiring in 2020.   He had 44 touchdowns on the field but may be best known off the field for his courageous pro-life stance. He starred in Divided Hearts of America, a moving pro-life film he produced with Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson, former Georgia state representative Alveda King and activist Abby Johnson. Watson and his wife, Kirsten, devote time and money to assist pregnancy resource centers and he spoke at the 2017 March for Life in Washington, D.C. The Watsons also formed the One More non-profit organization, a source of educational and enrichment opportunities through charitable initiatives and partnerships. Watson also works with the International Justice Mission to combat sex trafficking.   Abortion isn’t the only hot-button topic this former football player tackles. In 2015, his thoughts on racial tension in America made him an internet sensation, reaching more than 44 million people. That opened a door to his first book, Under Our Skin, which earned critical acclaim, and a second literary work, The New Dad's Playbook. “So many of the ills we see — whether it’s teen pregnancy, incarceration, poverty or self-esteem [issues] — so many of those things are tied to the lack of, or presence of, a male figure, and more importantly, a father in the home,” Watson says. “There is an imperative call for men. When men are involved, all those things I talked about before are flipped on their heads.” His positions often put him in a tug of war politically, but Watson welcomes the tension as long as he stands for truth. “The truth should rise above the tribe, rise above the trends,” he says. “That truth also, as we discover it, it may change our stances and we have to be OK with that.”

Meet Paul Byrd. Many may feel like they’ve met this former Major League Baseball pitcher already because of his familiarity as an Emmy-winning commentator on Fox Sports’ Atlanta Braves broadcasts or a best-selling author. He’s a man so genial he was widely considered “the nicest guy in baseball.” In fact, former Braves manager Bobby Cox once was quoted in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper that Byrd was “too nice to pitch.”   Broadcasting for one team and pitching for seven — including two stints with the Braves — have given him a platform by which he can communicate his faith in Jesus Christ. And while there’s a baseball idiom that “nice guys finish last,” Byrd isn’t so nice that he won’t fight for what he believes in.   “When you are considered the nicest guy or a nice guy, there’s this feeling of that you’re weak, you’re soft, and you may not want that guy on your team if you’re going to war,” says Byrd, who almost got into a brawl in 2006 with a Cleveland teammate needling him about his faith. “There’s a time to turn the cheek and there’s a time to crack the whip in the temple and both are manly.”   Byrd inherited that toughness from his father, whom he led to Christ only minutes before he died in 2017. He had doubts when he hung up his cleats and walked away from three guaranteed contract offers to pitch after the 2009 season but had the strength to put first things first — his 27-year marriage to Kym, with whom has two sons.   “I want to connect to Jesus and have such an intimate relationship with Him, talking and listening and learning,” Byrd says. “I want to go love other people because that’s who I am. And that only happens when my heart is right with Him.”

Meet Rev. Marian Edmonds-Allen. She is the executive director for Parity, a New York-based national nonprofit that works at the intersection of faith and LGBTQ+ concerns. She’s also the director of Blessed by Difference, a project that seeks to promote curious and collaborative bridging across the LGBTQ+ and faith divide. A longtime holy warrior against homelessness, Rev. Edmonds-Allen has served in many pastoral capacities, including church planting, parish ministry and chaplaincy. She is married, has four children, and is a passionate skier and outdoor enthusiast.   She has paid a price for her controversial stances on LGBTQ+ issues, even losing her place in one seminary because of it, but Rev. Edmonds-Allen still tries to bring people together through what she calls “holy dialogue.” It’s the “curious and collaborative bridging” in which she helps the LGBTQ+ community find and build relationships with the faith community, based on common ground. “I’m seeing God at work in it,” she says. “Everyone’s a winner when people come together and share core to core.”   Through her Good Samaritan-type efforts, members of the LGBTQ+ community are rediscovering their place in the church. Strangely enough, the COVID pandemic has helped. With people forced to quarantine and shelter in place because of the virus, many now interact with their churches online. What physically closed doors worldwide has figuratively opened doors previously shut to LGBTQ+ community members.   “Some LGBT people feel really worried about walking through the doorway into a church,” she says. “But with now all these online services available and churches advertising what they offer in terms of services, LGBT people are now able to explore different faith settings and worship services and to find something that works for them.”

Meet Steve Haas. A catalyst for change, and a former vice president for World Vision in Federal Way, Wash., Haas has worked with church leaders, and poured a lot of sweat equity into serving the poor.   Haas believes in combining inspiration with perspiration, a concept he learned as a cross country runner at the University of Kansas, but which has served him well in his every endeavor, whether it was youth ministry in the Philippines or aiding Thai, Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in southeast Asia. It also led him to Oregon’s annual Hood to the Coast relay race, which helps World Vision raise money to provide clean water for many without access to it.   “It just seems like God has this undeniable lean toward the poor and this undeniable lean toward those who are broken,” Haas says. “If that’s true, then it just, for me, it seemed to me I want to be at the heart of whatever that is, and I want to lean my energies and my gifts and my abilities toward constructing whatever it is God’s leading.”   His career also has included serving on the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago, one of America’s best-known megachurches, where he developed small group ministry and then local and international ministries. Mostly though, Haas is always seeking the heart of God and it keeps him moving from place to place and from task to task. He has learned that following the Holy Spirit makes an impact on lives not just of the people he helps, but on those who watch the helpers.   “When the Spirit takes on an obedient life and you actually follow those promptings to do things that you would not typically do in the natural, in the normal, I guarantee you there’s a following,” Haas says. “There’s a group of folks who are watching that life and taking notes.”

Meet Suzy Sammons. President of Hawkeye.pro, Sammons is a brand-strategy expert who learned how to help companies put their best foot forward by learning how to put her best foot forward.   She came to spiritual rebirth at the age of 40, following a series of broken relationships — her father cheated on her mother for years, she endured her own divorce and then lost her father in a tragic automobile accident with a truck that was so horrific, the mortician told her, “I don’t know if we can make him presentable.”   Those words stuck with her and became a way for her to not only make the companies she worked with presentable to the world, but to make faith in Christ presentable to those she influences. Some of those people feared that Sammons would shun them because of her faith, but her message to them wasn’t the judgmental response they’d come to expect from evangelicals.   “Jesus stepped in and put me back together,” said Sammons, now happily remarried. “The least we can do is offer that grace to others.”

Meet the Rev. Alvin C. Bibbs Sr. A native of Chicago who grew up in its tough Cabrini-Green public housing projects, Bibbs is a motivational speaker, author and mentor. He serves as an organizational coach/facilitator to congregations and not-for-profit organizations across North America and, in addition to serving as President and CEO of The Justice Journey Alliance, Bibbs is the Founder and Principal of The Obsidian Consulting Group, LLC.   Even Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. seemed to sense that Bibbs was destined for big things. When Bibbs was 6 years old, sporting an Afro that would’ve made young Michael Jackson proud, King spotted Bibbs during a church service at which the civil rights leader was preaching. Afterward, he asked Bibbs’ parents if he could pray with the young man. King laid his hand on the boy’s Afro, denting it, and prayed a prayer of dedication over him. When King was assassinated months later, that moment was seared into Bibbs’ heart.   “It’s no accident that God selected Dr. Martin Luther King to commission your life to do the work you’re called to do,” Bibbs said.   That set in motion his life’s work, which has been geared toward bringing multi-cultural and inter-generational leaders, churches and organizations together for honest dialogue on race and relevant issues on social justice. He’s challenging the Church to play a vital role in making that happen.   “The Bride of Christ, the light of the Church, is not shining as bright as it should,” Bibbs said. “We can’t stay in our comfort zones, we can’t stay in our holy huddles and we can’t stay in our holy tents. We have to go out on the other side.”

Meet Danielle Strickland. A well-known voice in Christianity, she is the author of six books and a major in the Salvation Army, which is a lot more than people ringing bells in front of stores at Christmastime. A proponent of what she calls “aggressive compassion,” Strickland trains, advocates and inspires people to live differently, in large part because she saw how the marginalized of society are treated.   Among other things, the Salvation Army is one of the largest providers of homeless shelters to the LGBTQ community, and her call to action was shaped by seeing a young person kicked out of his house for being transgender.   “I remember being horrified by a type of Christianity where people would prefer to see their kid on the street rather than wrestle through the realities of what’s going on,” she says.   In a time where that kind of division is more commonplace than ever, Strickland has one piece of advice, and it has nothing to do with more Bible studies or leadership conferences. “Get out of your head,” she says. “Practice what you already know. Serve and stop yelling at each other.”

Meet Dr. Anika Prather. She and her husband Damon are the founders of The Living Water School, located in southern Maryland near Washington D.C. It’s a unique Christian school for independent learners that she somewhat reluctantly launched when God answered her prayer about how to educate her firstborn son, who had one of the worst stuttering problems speech therapists had ever seen.   “I think this is crazy, I think this is impossible and … You understand I’m flat broke,” she argued with God from her prayer closet. “We had nothing! I’m not saying this to be dramatic — we had nothing!”   But Dr. Prather watched as God moved miraculously at every turn. The school was only supposed to be for her kindergarten-aged son and maybe a dozen others, but parents who couldn’t find answers in the public school flocked to her with their children. Retired educators willingly returned to the classroom when they heard about her vision, and she kept having to expand the vision — first to sixth-graders and then to high school seniors.   “In the first year of the school, we went to visit my mother-in-law, and this is how I knew God was at work,” Dr. Prather says. “My mother-law, who was a little suspect about me starting this unique Christian school that didn’t have traditional grade levels, she says to me, ‘Nika, did you notice that Dylan doesn’t stutter anymore?’ I hadn’t even noticed!”   As a result of being taught unscriptural things in her youth, such as that God made one race to be subordinate to another — and this in a “Christian school” — she uses her platform to be an agent of racial reconciliation. She tries to educate people that the road to healing isn’t paved by politics and division, but with love and diversity.   “If you look at the story of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, you see a God Who’s saying, ‘I want diversity! I want diversity!’ What did Peter say in Acts? ‘Of a truth, I see that God is no respecter of persons.’ “

Meet Batya Ungar-Sargon. She is the opinion editor of The Forward, a newspaper published out of New York City that is one of the most influential Jewish media outlets in the nation. In a short time, she has transformed its opinion pages into a space of radical diversity, publishing conversation-driving articles on a range of topics. Just don’t try telling this Class of 2021 Civil Society Fellowship fellow how divided the country is, because she’s not buying it. A cause near and dear to her heart is “dispelling the illusion that we’re polarized. Our politicians are polarized because they get power out of being polarized. The media [are] polarized because [they] get money out of being polarized, but Americans are not.” It takes effort because we are conditioned to think the worst. “When you see something about people you disagree with, that really fits the worst thing you were ready to think about them, take a minute and do a little research before arriving at your conclusion or allowing it to add to your confirmation bias,” she says. “Take a minute to see if there’s a way to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

Meet Nate Butler, songwriter, producer, preacher’s kid, and self-proclaimed thermostat — meaning that he figuratively changes the temperature of any room he inhabits. For eight years, he has headed Passion City Church’s college ministry, but God has used his experiences for so much more.   His background includes work with music luminaries like Luther Vandross, Bobby Brown and Sugarland, and television shows like “Showtime at the Apollo” and “America’s Got Talent,” among others. But there was a time he was poor. Here, Butler issues a small correction.   “We were po’ — we couldn’t afford the ‘o’ and the ‘r,’ ” he says. But that produced a sensitivity that drew him to World Vision’s efforts to eradicate global poverty. Butler hopes God gives him as much success there as He gave him in a bout with the coronavirus. He sees the hand of God in both the illness and the cure, because of what it reveals about citizen and country alike.   “The thing I love about COVID,” he says, “is it actually squeezes the breath out of your body. When something is squeezing you, you see what comes out and God will use it — all of it — for His glory.”

Meet King Randall, who at the ripe old age of 21 is the founder of the "X" for Boys organization in Albany, Ga., where the motto is, "Let US Make Man."    That’s just one of the ways he’s trying to fulfill the word he stunned his grandmother with when he was just 2. “I’m here to finish what Dr. Martin Luther King started,” he told her. She had no idea he knew anything about Dr. King, but she never let him forget it.    Taking the initiative to fill a void among young black men, Randall hosts a variety of automotive workshops to teach them how to change brakes and oil. He also has home improvement workshops to teach them how to replace light fixtures, toilets, and how to paint. He’s also a chef after graduating at the age of 17 with a degree in Culinary Arts from Albany Technical College — even before graduating Westover High School. He also hosts a weekly book club for boys to improve their literacy skills and also to teach them important life skills about growing into a young man.    “Say, five to 10 years from now, when I’ve raised new doctors and lawyers and police officers and judges, you’ll see a shift in the atmosphere — or even the nation,” Randall says. “We have to train the replacements.” 

Meet Edward Graham. The grandson of the late evangelist Billy Graham, Edward is the Assistant to the Vice President of Programs & Government Relations at Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization providing spiritual and physical aid to hurting people around the world since 1970. Samaritan’s Purse has been particularly active in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, erecting emergency field hospitals all over the world to relieve overburdened medical centers. Their presence paid immediate dividends.   “When we showed up, we got to be a part of a miracle, and people started living,” Graham says.   Samaritan’s Purse also runs Operation Christmas Child, an outreach that provides God’s love in a tangible way to children in need around the world. Together, with local churches worldwide, it shares the Good News of Jesus Christ and has reached more than 178 million children in more than 150 countries over since 1993.   “It gives me kind of goosebumps because I’ve seen those children’s faces,” Graham said. “I’m all about the long term and that’s the Gospel. It’s about never passing up a ministry opportunity. You can do it right there in your own community.” Learn more here!

Meet MaryAnn Osborn. She’s one of the key members of the Partnership Innovation Team at World Vision, a Christian humanitarian aid organization that, among other things, combats youth drug addiction in Ethiopia.   “My heart was broken for kids living in poverty, who had also lost their parents because of poverty,” she says. “The work World Vision does actually prevents kids from becoming orphans in the first place. And at that point, I thought this is where I need to be and what I need to be doing.”   Osborn has been on the front lines of this fight for nine years and testifies that how God has used World Vision is “a game-changer.” Through the organization’s efforts, more than 6,500 people, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, now have clean water for life where they lacked it before.   “What God is doing through World Vision is so cool to watch,” Osborn says. “World Vision reaches a new person with clean water every 10 seconds and three new schools a day with sanitation and hygiene facilities. And so there’s this just this beautiful ripple effect of unlocked potential in communities and it’s powerful.”

Meet Kitti Murray. Among other good things, she’s the founder and CEO of Refuge Coffee Co., which was created out of a dire need to make a way for peace, human connection and healing among multi-ethnic peoples a long way from home. In a country that too often ostracizes and assumes the worst about aliens and foreigners, Kitti swims against the stream, noting that “our country was founded by refugees. Jesus was a refugee.”   Her peacemaking and healing efforts revolve around a coffee shop in Clarkston, on the ragged edges of Atlanta, in a community CNN deemed the most diverse square mile in the world. She was determined to build a place where everybody can feel welcome, where people can sit down and lower their voices rather than raise them in acrimony and accusation.   “The thinking has shifted in our country, for some reason, from we allow people in and we help them based on their vulnerability to based on what they can do for us,” Kitti says. “And that shift is really troubling.”   So, she and her husband of 42 years, Bill — affectionately known to their nine grandkids as “Kiki” and “Chief” — try to counteract that shift by steering clear of agendas, be they political, cultural or otherwise. They show that being a Good Samaritan isn’t a mistake-free existence, but one that dares to get involved and meet needs where they arise.

Meet Sam Collier. He’s a pastor, speaker, writer, and host of the A Greater Story with Sam Collier TV show and radio podcast that currently airs in 100 million homes. He’s also the son who, along with his twin sister, Sara, was given up by a mother who couldn’t adequately care for twins by herself at age 21, after already having three kids. Though he was adopted into a great family in what Collier calls his “Moses story,” he never gave up finding his mother.   Thanks to Steve Harvey, the famous TV host, Collier and his sister were reunited with their mother, Elinor, on national television 25 years after the separation — and not just with her, but with three siblings they’d never met.   “God is still in the miracle business,” says Collier, who includes this in a book called A Greater Story. “He still can take a mess and turn it into a miracle. And in this season of Covid-19, civil unrest and all these things, we all need that. No matter if you’re Black, White, Asian or Hispanic, we all need to know that God can take our specific mess and create the miraculous out of it.”

Meet Jimmy Mellado. Born in El Salvador, he spent much of his youth becoming an elite decathlete — member of a national-championship team at Southern Methodist University in 1983, a participant for his native land in the 1987 Pan American Games and the 1988 Seoul Olympics.     He still plays to win, but now it’s as the President and CEO of Compassion International, a Colorado-based, holistic-child development organization dedicated to the long-term development of children living in poverty around the world.     His battle now centers around improving the lives of a staggering 385 million children across the globe who live on less than $1.90 a day, the World Bank definition of extreme poverty. Mellado says the key in being a Good Samaritan is to focus less on doing great works and more on being like Jesus Christ.    “The most important contribution you’ll make to the kingdom of heaven isn’t what you, do but the person you’re becoming,” he, says. “And in becoming the person God wants you to become, you’ll of course will do those things, but they’ll be fruit of the person you’re becoming [rather] than human-driven.” 

Meet Dr. Tony Evans, the senior pastor of the Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, and one of the country’s most respected leaders in evangelical circles. As a pastor, teacher, author and speaker, he serves the body of Christ through his unique ability to communicate complex theological truths through simple, yet profound, illustrations.   While addressing the practical issues of today, Dr. Evans is known as a relevant expositor — and at no time might his insights be more relevant than they are now, in a country wracked by division and disunity over political and racial problems.   “The theology of unity is critical right now. Unity is oneness of purpose, not uniformity of persons,” Dr. Evans says, adding that God “will not allow His Unified Person to be comfortable in a disunified environment. … God’s glory will only be manifested in biblical unity. When Satan is able to keep us illegitimately disunified, we keep God’s glory at bay.”   Dr. Evans says the church has been a “co-conspirator” in slavery and Jim Crow discrimination, by “giving it theological and religious sanction, either by actively endorsing or passively not speaking against it.” But now, he says, the church must lead racial reconciliation, effecting change by serving others. “When we can get into a serving mentality rather than a seminar mentality,” he says, “then we can see the fruits of racial reconciliation.”

Meet Dr. Ray Norman, Global Sector Lead, WASH of World Vision International. The son of medical missionaries, Dr. Norman is married to Hélène, a French national, and they have two adult children, Nathaniel and Hannah. He has spent more than 20 years leading and managing water, agriculture and poverty-reduction programs in developing regions.    An American raised in rural west Africa, Dr. Norman has spent his life committed to poor and vulnerable communities — and at no time was this more evident than in the aftermath of 9/11. He was living in Mauritania, a Muslim country with a foreboding climate and topography — spiritually and geographically — at the western end of the Sahara Desert. He and Hannah, then 10 years old, were shot at point-blank range by a Muslim extremist. While his pastor and friends advised him to flee and shut down operations, Dr. Norman thrust his Christian witness into overdrive.   “My question after I was shot and people were telling us to shut down was, ‘What kind of witness is this when, all of a sudden, we become vulnerable?’” Dr. Norman says. “Do we shut down our end of the deal? Do we pack our bags and go home, especially in a Muslim country?”   They went home, but just long enough to heal. Not only did they return to Mauritania, they forgave their gun-wielding assailant and advocated to get him freed from prison. Back in the United States now, Dr. Norman and his wife are members of Living Water Community Church in Harrisburg, PA, an inner city; multi-ethnic church that works to bring justice and hope to the urban communities it serves.

Meet Jay Stewart and Derrick Hawkins, an unlikely pairing of pastors from North Carolina. Stewart, a fiftysomething White man, and Hawkins, a thirtysomething Black man, knew that something needed to be done to speak to the racial rift among Christians. The spotlight found them when a 43-year-old Black man was shot to death by a Charlotte policeman in September 2016, just after their improbable joining of forces. But the two held fast, believing that God had united their congregations preemptively to bring about healing.   “I want to be voice for racial reconciliation,” Hawkins says, “but I also want to be a voice for racial equity.” His decision did not come without cost. “I took a lot of flak and controversy for the decision and the stand I made … but I believe it is imperative for us to have these conversations.”   Said Stewart: “We have to be willing to cross the road, the whole premise for this podcast. A lot of people don’t understand the incredible amount of racial tension that existed between Jews and Samaritans. … It’s been costly for Pastor Derrick to make the decision he made. It’s been costly for me. I’ve had people quit our church because I’ve used the #Black Lives Matter.”

Meet Katie Kenny Phillips, author of the “God, You Make Me Feel … “ children’s book series and foster care advocate. She is mother to five human beings and a pencil-eating Australian Labradoodle that they named Norm, after the “Cheers” character from the show where everybody knows your name. Don’t ask why, but, unlike the character who heads straight for the bar, he doesn’t answer, “Beer.”   She calls being a foster parent “a broken and beautiful road” she follows as a means of “pouring Jesus into kids.” People love to read when she blogs about the subject, but getting them to do more than simply read about it is a whole other matter. “Not everyone is meant to foster,” she says. “Everyone can help but not everyone is called to bring kids into your home.”

Meet Philip Langford, the president of IJM United States, a part of the global International Justice Mission organization dedicated to combatting modern-day slavery, sex trafficking and abuses of state power. It’s a multibillion-dollar industry that exists because oppressors can freely abuse vulnerable people without fear of punishment.   With his legal skills, Langford has been on the front lines of the battle in places like India and has helped IJM fight injustice in places like Kenya, Uganda and the Philippines. “It has always been the people of God who have had a prophetic voice to rulers about how they use their power,” Langford says, adding that Christians everywhere need to join the chorus. “We have to find our prophetic voice as a church to rulers.”   Langford currently lives in northern Virginia with his wife, Lacy, and their five children.

Meet Pat and Sue Bradley, who began what is now Crisis Aid International by providing 2-pound bags of rice to people in South Sudan. That blossomed into a ministry that has served people in crisis from 11 countries. With partners, they have provided nearly 15 million pounds of food and serve more than 2.4 million adults and malnourished children. They have rescued more than 1,050 girls from sex trafficking, girls who ranged in age from 4 to 30 years.     They had to get their own house in order before they could do that, however. “It got to the point where my drinking destroyed our marriage,” Pat said. “She, for lack of better terms, kicked me out of the house and she divorced me, which really got my attention.” But when Pat got saved and committed himself to sobriety, God restored them over time and they got remarried to each other.    In today’s episode, the Bradleys talk about what that reunion has produced, how God helped them venture into destitute red-light districts in East Africa and snatch hopeless girls out of prostitution. They even bought a brothel and turned it into a retraining center, so that once free, the girls could become women who remained free indeed. 

Meet Beth Guckenberger, a Co-Executive Director of Back2Back Ministries, an international Christian non-profit organization dedicated to providing holistic orphan care to orphans and vulnerable children. She is the recipient of the 2013 International Network of Children’s Ministry Legacy Award and the Cincinnati Christian University Salute to Leaders Award for her and Back2Back’s impact on children.   Global statistics say there are 163 million orphans and that half the world’s 2 billion children have experienced trauma. Beth and her co-executive director husband, Todd, believe they and Good Samaritan-minded Christians can do something about it. “Whatever hand we’ve been dealt, whatever circumstance we find ourselves in, that’s not the end of the story,” she says. “It really takes the intervention of one safe adult in the life of a child to turn it around.”   The Guckenbergers have walked that walk: Between biological, foster and adopted children, they have raised 11 children, while living in Monterey, Mexico, and Cincinnati. She has found the time to write nine books, while traveling and speaking regularly at conferences, youth gatherings and church services.

Meet Matthew Soerens, the U.S. director of Church Mobilization for World Relief, where he helps evangelical churches to understand the realities of refugees and immigration and to respond in ways guided by biblical values.    He acknowledges that immigration is “a touchy topic that plenty of people would like to avoid altogether, but we’re convinced that if we’re going to obey the command that says to love your neighbor, we’ve got to figure out ways to engage this conversation.” He deals with that conversation in Costa Rica, where Nicaraguan immigrants flee, in Turkey, where Syrians look for refuge, and in Colombia, where Venezuelans seek cover.     In today’s episode, Soerens talks about the global extent of the problem, which affects 26 million people who leave their countries, and another 40 million who aren’t officially considered refugees because they haven’t crossed the national borders, but are nonetheless internally displaced. “The Bible has some pretty specific things to say about how God’s people are to treat those who are foreigners in the land,” Soerens said, adding that immigrants who often are accused of “stealing jobs” often produce more than they consume.