This month’s bonus episode is on the ways that middle- and upper-class churches often function in ways that exclude poor people and reinforce classist structures. We also talk about how to operate congregations more in line with God’s vision for the Church. Jonathan couldn’t make this one, but we have Gabrielle Apollon back on the show as a guest host. We have a lot of really helpful tips and personal stories in this one. Enjoy!
Shake the Dust is a podcast of KTF Press. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Find transcripts of this show at KTFPress.com.
Hosts
Suzie Lahoud – follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Sy Hoekstra – follow him on Twitter.
Gabrielle Apollon — follow her on Twitter.
Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra – listen to the whole song on Spotify.
Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam – follow her and see her other work on Instagram.
Production and editing by Sy Hoekstra.
Transcript by Joyce Ambale and Sy Hoekstra.
Questions about anything you heard on the show? Write to shakethedust@ktfpress.com and we may answer your question on a future episode.
Transcript
Suzie Lahoud: Can we also just throw out this heretical lie that people suffer financially, chronically because they're lazy? Because they don't work hard and are therefore less righteous. That is such a lie. In fact, I feel like the people I know who are the most hardworking, who deal with levels of stress and exhaustion, unlike anything I've seen any of my middle-class or upper-middle-class friends struggle with, those are people who come from low-income backgrounds.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “I need to know there is justice/That it will roll in abundance/ And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy Hoekstra: Welcome to Shake the Dust: leaving colonized faith for the Kingdom of God. A podcast of KTF Press. My name is Sy Hoekstra. I am here as usual with Suzie Lahoud. Jonathan could not make it because of just some scheduling issues that came up. So today we have with us a guest host, and previous guest of the show. Welcome back Gabrielle Apollon.
Gabrielle Apollon: Hello.
Sy Hoekstra: We are so happy to have you back. For those of you who don't remember, Gabrielle is, A, my wife [laughter]. And B, a human rights attorney who works at NYU Law in the Global Justice Clinic, former immigration attorney, all-around boss. And today we are going to be talking about classism in the church. So before we get started, real quick, as always, thank you for subscribing. This is a subscriber only bonus episode. Please remember, if you don't, do follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. It is very helpful when you do that. When you show other people, when people look at our little profile and they see that you follow it and they’re your friend, it's good for us. That makes us look good, and we really appreciate your support in that way. Follow us on your podcast player, give us a rating and review, and I think those are all of my usual entreaties to you. So let's just get started and jump right into the conversation. So let's just talk some basic ways that churches exclude low-income people from daily operations or make it difficult for poor people to participate in church community.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. So I guess I'll just jump right in. And full disclosure, I feel like the two contexts that I'm most familiar with and will be sort of speaking from, are one, having spent my college years in the Bible Belt in the South. So that context of church where I feel like one of the major cultural barriers that I saw, was even just this basic idea of Sunday best, and people getting dressed up. I remember going to one church and it was like everyone was just wearing J. Crew or Lilly Pulitzer [laughter]. And just wondering, if someone just wandered into this church or didn't have the means to dress in that specific way, I felt self-conscious coming over as a missionary kid who had no sense of fashion.
And how would that make someone who didn't come from that same socioeconomic background, even that same culture, how would they feel walking through the doors of that church? Would that be a barrier to entry? I think it would be, again, even speaking for myself, I felt less comfortable in that space. It felt like there was a uniform that you had to wear that I didn't have access to. So that, it's a very simple thing, and sort of more on the surface.
But then the second context that I'm familiar with, is having lived in Lebanon for seven and a half years and my husband and I were a part of, and actually still technically are members of a church in Lebanon. I have to say, the Lebanese church as a whole is an amazing case study for this in the way that a number of churches, there was sort of a movement of responding to refugees coming across the border from Syria and watching churches struggle with this idea of wanting to incorporate or not wanting to incorporate Syrians into their congregations. One of the tensions there was just, to be honest, when you have folks who are living in tents in the Beqaa Valley, or living in unfinished apartment buildings or living in attics or basements, these are folks who also don't have access to regular running water. They can't afford to spend a lot of money on personal hygiene items. So honestly, one of the complaints that we would get a lot from folks is, “I don't want them in my church, in my pews because they smell. They don’t smell good.” And that was just a very simple, real thing, but it just made me so sad. Like we shouldn't even be talking about that. That shouldn't even be an issue. Why would we keep people out of church for that reason?
Also, it upset me because the assumption was that that was a problem because they had poor hygiene habits, when really it was a problem because these people all are fighting for their lives every single day. They are struggling to feed their kids. They're struggling to literally have a roof over their heads, and for them taking a shower is not an easy, simple thing like it is for you and me. They're living practically outdoors in these tents. So I think just the lack of understanding and sort of compassion and empathy that a question like that, or a barrier like that, that we've created, I think it shows a really ugly side of us that is not in keeping with the teachings of Christ.
One thing that one of my mentors in Lebanon used to remind us a lot, his name is Rupen Das. He wrote an amazing book called Compassion and the Mission of God. He would always remind us that when Christ was preaching, if you imagine Jesus teaching the Sermon on the Mount, he's speaking to a population that 90 percent of them were most likely, based on historical records, living in poverty at the time. So I think the final point that I want to sort of touch on, is that another barrier we see in the church is not just who do you allow through the doors? Who do you allow to participate in your community? What are the expectations in terms of how they dress, how they smell? But also, are there barriers to them being in leadership?
Because I think if we understand the context in which Christ preached the kingdom and carried out his ministry and the people who were involved in his ministry, I think we need to understand that a lot of times it is folks who come from low-income backgrounds, who are actually experiencing real levels of poverty, who are most equipped and qualified to understand the teachings of Christ and to understand the kingdom of God, and to allow us to understand it. And how many of those folks, if you look at your church, are actually in leadership? How many of those folks are you asking to lead Bible studies?
And if you're not doing that, if you're not realizing that they actually have more to give than even receive, I think a lot of times when we welcome them into our church, we're like, “Oh, well, this is a charity case.”
Sy Hoekstra: Look at us and how great we are.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. We're going to let them in and be nice to them because we're good Christians and we want other people to see that we're good Christians and we can help them. And that, I think that's such a wrong model because again, it's the upside-down model of the kingdom that shows that actually those are the folks that are going to understand what this is really all about on levels that you, in your middle-class comfortable lifestyle, cannot even grasp. So you need to be willing to sit at their feet and listen to the things that they have to teach you and watch them live out their faith.
I think that when you're not willing to do that, when you don't see that representation, again, even in your leadership, in terms of who is teaching the word and shaping your understanding of the gospel, I think that's actually a form of prosperity gospel. Because I think the subtle assumption there is that if you were a real follower of Christ, you would be living a comfortable middle-class lifestyle or even an upper middle-class or wealthy lifestyle. And again, I don't, I think that's heresy.
Gabrielle Apollon: I appreciate what you mentioned, just so much of it, but especially what you just said about the prosperity gospel, because I think that we often just talk about just how the prosperity gospel kind of, in it's most explicit forms, exploits poor people and capitalizes on the very real needs and manipulates it by incorporating all sorts of stuff related to faith, and what it means to believe and what it means to give. All of those things, but I think that there are so many different subtle versions of the prosperity gospel, or really ways that we exploit poor people or exclude them, that I think should also be talked about.
I think that if we don't talk about issues of class and make a space, a safe space, for people of different classes, then you are actually harming people. It becomes like a potential place of harm because as you mentioned, there's this like air that we breathe, and there's the stigma about poverty that is kind of in all of our, I think, world and all of our cultures, and it winds up in church. And if, unless we're discipled out of that, as I think we have to be discipled out of white supremacy and other things, then we remain steeped in that and we perpetuate it in our churches in various ways. So we either often look the same as the world in this way or sometimes we look worse in our kind of homogenized bubbles and left to our own devices.
I think, you mentioned these issues and when people were actually in the door. When refugees were in the churches in Lebanon, but I think there are so many things we do that stops people from even thinking that these people can come into these spaces. Or I'll just speak for myself and just share a little bit of the context that I come from. So I grew up with very little money, I guess comparatively, in terms of, our family was undocumented for quite some time as I've mentioned in the other podcast. So money was a very real struggle for a long time.
Then I, but I went to a private school and so I was very much kind of in between different worlds in high school, and then went to Columbia for college. So very different world there [laughter] to put it lightly, but also in the churches. The churches that I started going to in New York City and on the Upper West Side, the vast majority of the people who went there are well-to-do. And knowing kind of my background and knowing, you know, we were homeless for a little bit and bouncing from home to home, and having that context and hearing the messages and hearing the assumptions that were made in a lot of spaces, but even in sermons, really made me, I think, think twice sometimes about who can I invite into the space.
Sy and I have a few examples of sometimes we would invite homeless people there and sometimes it was like really embarrassing, the types of examples and…
Sy Hoekstra: Should we talk about that video?
Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah, go ahead.
Sy Hoekstra: Oh, okay. I'll do it. Yeah, sure. There was one homeless man in particular, he came to church with us and the moment we sat down, we were a little bit late, so we missed the first couple of worship songs or whatever. The moment we sat down, we had a video come on the big screen, and it's a couple from the church talking about how they actually had moved to New York City in order to be a part of this church that we were in. And they just kept going on about how big and lovely their apartment or house was in wherever they came from before they moved to New York City, and how they had sacrificed so much to come and live in this somewhat smaller apartment in New York City [laughs].
That was the first thing that happened when we walked in with this man. He actually liked the service overall and the message from the pastor and everything. But it was just an immediate like, “Hi, hello. Welcome here sir, this church is not for you.” That isn't to say that we shouldn't talk about sacrifices that people make. I just think we need to put them in their proper context and not sort of glorify the relatively small sacrifices that people who have enough money for food and shelter and everything make, and put… you know like Jesus did with the widow who puts the two coins into the offering, instead of the rich person who puts way more in, and Jesus makes it very clear, that person is the sacrifice that I care about.
They've sacrificed more. You need to take that context into account. And if you don't, I think you are missing the way that Jesus sees things. Suzie, in light of what you said, I was just thinking camel through the eye of a needle [laughs] it's going to be one of the main texts you're looking at if you're thinking about how Jesus actually thinks about these issues.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.
Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah. It just, I think it's a good example of like what does either the invisibilization of someone's experience, or just not even crossing people's minds, what does that communicate to people who are in very, very different situations. And how is that harmful or not? And the verse that came to mind was, in 1 Corinthians 11, we often hear the verse about communion and whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. And that's something people are like, “Oh, examine your heart before you take communion” and whatnot. But the context of that story I think is, one, I think it’s quite telling that we don't ever…
Sy Hoekstra: Talk about the context of that story? Yeah.
Gabrielle Apollon: …use this context when we discuss this. But the context is, Paul is critiquing the church because they are having the Lord's Supper, celebrating the Lord's Supper, and rich people are coming in with all their yummy food and alcohol, and the poor people are watching them eat because they didn't have anything to bring. And he is chastising them. He's saying, he literally says, “Your meetings do more harm than good,” and is calling people to examine themselves in light of this disparity. He, I think he literally says, making people feel like they are nothing and humiliating them, and that's obviously, some people are like, “Oh, that's kind of a strong example, we would never do that.”
But what do we do when we aren't acknowledging these differences and we're not acknowledging… and acknowledging or differentiating people's responses to the gospel? Like I often was like, “Wow, why can't we just acknowledge this illustration or something is related to a certain context, and just make that explicit and acknowledge that might not actually align with your context or whatnot?” And it always felt like, am I asking for too much? Am I asking people to consider all these people who might not even be in the pews? But one, I think we, again are discipling people as to how to think about issues of class, even if they're middle-class or upper-middle class.
But two, I've seen it done well. I've seen people, and actually this church we're checking out, I've just appreciated Renaissance because even as they do a sermon series about money, it's not just like, “Yeah, everybody, you need to give,” but they're actually like, “Okay, if you are struggling financially, here's what we, we have a Deacons’ Fund. Please use it.” They're recognizing that not everybody is in the same place, and it just feels like, oh, I'm seen, I'm heard. And it doesn't mean that none of the other stuff could apply to you, but it means that you're acknowledging that this is a reality that matters.
It's a reality that deserves to be talked about and not just in a separate announcement. Because we often do that, where it's like outside of the sermon and you're like, “Oh yeah, if you need money let us know.” But we don't integrate it in our discipleship or in our teachings. And I think that that really does matter.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Shout out to pastor Jordan Rice and Renaissance Church, doing a good job talking about money.
Suzie Lahoud: Love that.
Sy Hoekstra: I was going to say, I think like when Gabrielle, when you and I were talking a little bit about this beforehand, we talked about that verse in James, where James says not to show favoritism to the wealthy people in a congregation. And I think the example he gives, he mentions like reserving good seats for them in the… is that true? Am I wrong about that [laughs]?
Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah. I think it's like letting them be up front or giving them some prominent space.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.
Sy Hoekstra: I probably should have looked this up [laughs], but that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is, I think we want to think about classism a little bit like the way that white people often think about racism. Like it has to be this overt thing. It has to be, oh, you rich people come sit up here in the places of honor, and you poor people go and sit in the back, like segregation. And that's what classism is. And we don't as often think about it in terms of, Suzie, like you were saying, saying I don't want people in my congregation because I don't like the way they smell, that is, that's the same thing. That's showing favoritism to people who live indoors and have running water and can afford deodorant. You know what I mean? It's the same thing, it's just done in a more roundabout way.
In a similar way, what you were just saying about the verses about communion Gabrielle, the incredible thing that I think so many churches have done, is allowed kind of the world around them to segregate for us so that we don't have to do it directly. So many of those churches are just, they just live in wealthy neighborhoods. They just, the sermon illustrations they give are all about, are from a perspective of somebody who has money, and the services and the community gatherings they offer are for people with money.
They go on expensive retreats and they, maybe they provide scholarships, but maybe they're not enough. Or maybe the ways of getting it are a little opaque. Or maybe the people you have to talk to aren't the safest people to talk to about your financial circumstances or whatever. I think we just do all of those little subtle things, and then manage to pull that verse out of context and make it about sitting there and contemplating whether or not you got angry at your coworker. Like that's the thing that you have to repent of before you go and take communion and not whether or not you are doing an injustice in your community in the eyes of the Lord.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.
Gabrielle Apollon: Suzie, I mean, I think this feels like an extreme response and I don't think you can, or extreme example, and I don't think you can completely chalk all of this to colonialism and this culture that we export through missionary culture. But I do think that it is connected. I recall, so my family is from Haiti. I had gone to Haiti after the earthquake and was there with kind of a, like a Cru, a mission trip like thing, which, plenty to say about that, but that's okay [laughs]. And we’re talking, we were inviting people to this church that was run by Haitians in this particular area that had been hit by the earthquake.
And this woman was sharing with us, she didn't feel like she could go to church because she didn't have, she had lost all of her things and had none of her good clothes to go to church with. And it was one of those things where you're like, well, that's definitely not what the gospel should look like. As a Haitian, I can say there's plenty, there's so much class stuff also just within our country and our communities. But I do think there's something about the religious kind of culture that we export that says people have to look a certain way, and like you mentioned Suzie, Sunday's best, right?
But what does that look like when you are in extraordinarily dire situations also, and there are these huge barriers that come up that logically should be like, okay, of course you should, even if you've lost everything, God definitely wants you to go to church and it doesn't matter what you… or meet him in one way or another, and it doesn't matter what you wear, but it's a very different thing when that has been inculcated for decades or sometimes centuries within your community.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. And what I didn't even realize at the time, again, going to, so dropping little missionary kid, Suzie from Uzbekistan into the Bible Belt. And I didn't realize there's an actual theology around it, that you're right, absolutely gets exported. Because again, I did experience similar strains of theology in Lebanon that you are dishonoring God if you can't dress nicely on Sunday, if you can't show up clean. So I sort of laughed it off before, but I didn't realize that really it’s become a theological understanding that then you can judge other people by. To go back to those barriers, so again, that's just one that is so horrific.
But it's, back to your point to Sy about location, I think thinking about the location of your church, if it's in a suburb, especially in the US where we have red lining and all of these things, and like you said, society has done a lot of this dividing for us in a really ugly way. But also, do people have access to your church through public transportation? Because that's a thing too. And again something I saw in the US and in Lebanon, can people get to your meetings if they don't have a car? Like, that's a very basic thing that I think creates a barrier. So I just wanted to circle back to that, just because I think these are really practical things that churches should be thinking through.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I appreciate that. We talked about, Gabrielle and I, this one group we were in, where it was a bunch of relatively wealthy people and then there was one poor homeless woman in it. And they just kept, when we would do worship, telling people, “I emailed you all the song lyrics, bring them up on your phones.” It's like, and she didn't have a smartphone. So we kept trying to get people to print out lyrics and people just wouldn't do it. It was weird, but that's the kind of thing, like access to technology is a big thing. Like if everything about your church service or the, I don’t know, the ways that you register for things, all your processes, if you're different kinds of like online video calls or whatever.
If all that stuff just requires someone to have some expensive piece of technology and internet access, you need to provide those things. And I'm not saying don't use technology. The same as you’re not saying, don't use cars. Just, like, carpool. You have to figure out a way to normalize helping people out and to not make, to make your community safe enough that people aren't afraid to ask for those things, that it's not weird when you offer those things. All that kind of stuff has to be taken into account.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah.
Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah. Well, and the reality is oftentimes it can be less convenient, right? Like speaking of the car situation, like growing up, we didn't have a car for a long time and it was truly only because people from church would come and pick us up and take us to church. And sometimes we didn't live…
Sy Hoekstra: And school.
Gabrielle Apollon: Yeah. Oh yeah, and school. And sometimes we didn't live in convenient areas and that required somebody to get up even earlier on a Sunday morning and come get us. That stuff's not always, obviously, I feel like it's stating the obvious, that's not always fun. That's not always easy, but it enabled us to have access to these communities and this space that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
Yeah, I think I've definitely seen this stuff not go well, like Sy mentioned, or not work out in the best ways, but I've also seen, like I have this just very distinct memory. So we talked about what happened when we brought, we invited a homeless guy to church, kind of here in New York. I studied abroad in Paris for a little bit and was part of a church there. And I did not expect this I think, but I just invited this guy who I saw on the street on my way to church to come to church with me. I was like, “Oh, there's coffee.” So I'm pretty sure he came mostly for the coffee [laughs] and food. But the way that I saw that church kind of wrap themselves around him and like it wasn't, once he got there and… you know, I left after a few months because I was in study abroad, but I was able to see through social media and just staying in touch how they continued to support him. And he actually became an integral part of that community. It’s sad that I actually don't think I expected that.
Often you’re like, “Okay, well, I've got to figure this out. I've got to figure out if I'm going to invite him to lunch afterwards. And that, a lot of that onus kind of feels on you sometimes, but to see a whole community gather together and actually embrace somebody in when it's not the easiest thing sometimes. And like you said, when there are challenges or they're not coming from the same place as you, is so cool and such an example I think, of God's love in an incredibly powerful way.
I think what you said before, Suzie, is also really important just to keep in mind, that like yeah, not everybody's a project. But to see what people can do when they do actually bring somebody in and treat them as part of the community and not different, or like you said, a charity case, is really cool.
Sy Hoekstra: Can we talk a little bit about specifically the issue of sharing money? So you've mentioned the Deacons’ Fund, Gabrielle. But there are obviously many verses and stories in the Bible about the people of God sharing resources in all kinds of ways that are pretty foreign to a lot of wealthy Western churches nowadays. How does the process of sharing resources and sharing money, even though it's ostensibly for the benefit of anyone in the congregation who needs it, how do we do that in ways that are harmful and exclusive?
Gabrielle Apollon: I mean, I think one thing that comes to mind, and it's really the Deacons’ Fund, but it's also related to other ministries, like financial counseling, which is ostensibly good and important, but there are lots of, I would say maybe sometimes non-biblical, but lots of kind of white middle-class norms that people are also exporting through that. So I know for me, like I actually, I've had good financial counselors and I also had someone who yelled at me when I was basically explaining how it was a non-negotiable that I had to send money to my family in light of their circumstances.
And that just didn't make sense or compute to them in what they thought was financially responsible. Yes, there were other financial needs, but there was also like, my family needed to have money to pay rent. That was something that a lot of people aren't used to, whether it's children of, like adult children or people they're like, “Oh, you shouldn't be responsible for that.” It's like, all right, well, I'm glad you can say that.
Sy Hoekstra: But I am though.
Gabrielle Apollon: [laughs] It’s just, yeah, this was just my reality. And what does it mean for, whether it's like family support or even support to you, if people restrict that because they're like, “No, that's not exactly what this is for,” and you're like, “Okay, well then I guess I'll have to figure this out myself,” even though there's definitely money there.
Sy Hoekstra: I think another way that that particular issue manifests itself is like, there are restrictions on how you can, how the church can give money. So saying like I can give money to members of the church, people who attend the church or whatever, but if the families of the members who live somewhere else, or aren't a part of the church need money, that's not who this money is for. Which ignores that same reality. It’s like, okay, but I as a member of the church, I’m responsible for these people, even though it's my aunt or my grandmother or my cousin or my mom or whatever.
Those things, those are people who in my community and from my background, I am responsible for and I'm going to pay for this thing for them, whether or not you reimburse me or I have to use a credit card or whatever. So if you want to help me with this, you can, and then a lot of churches just say, “No, that's not what this is for.” You know what I mean? Like that kind of tight demarcating of the boundaries of where your money that you're giving out as a church can go, really runs along lines of white middle-class ideas of who people should and shouldn't be responsible for and how we should be using our money to, as little island individuals, make sure that we are not ever a financial burden upon anyone else or the system or whatever.
Then I also think, like I was at a church, I lived in Chicago for a year and I went to this church that had mostly middle-class and wealthy people in it, except for this one guy who my roommate and I were friends with, who was pretty low-income and was living in a shelter. He would show up really consistently and he would always be super helpful with helping set up and tear down, and was a kind of integral part of the Sunday mornings. He was, I don't know what he was involved in more broadly in the church, but he was always around and he needed help because he was poor, but he didn't just need help one time.
Like he, I think a lot of times when we run these Deacons’ Funds or whatever, we expect to help somebody one time with a rent check they can't pay or whatever. But he had ongoing needs because he was not a middle-class person. That's just how it is. And the people who ran the Deacons’ Fund just didn't understand this. Like did not know how to deal with somebody who kept coming back and asking for the church to meet his needs over and over again. And they couldn't deal with just dismissing him I think, as irresponsible, or somebody who hadn't taken advantages of the meritocracy of America or whatever it was that they believed.
And they just, they were frustrated with him all the time. He in turn then got frustrated with them. They wouldn't understand sometimes the urgency of some of his needs. They would promise him some money, but they wouldn't give it when they said they would, or somebody who needed to give him a check wasn't at church one Sunday, and I saw him get really frustrated about that. And it just created so much tension, because this was an entire church of people who had never seriously interacted with anyone poor for any long amount of time and didn't know how to handle their needs. I think that is, it was just this really interesting case for me of somebody making that reality so plain, just by continuing to show up in a place where I think a lot of people thought he didn't belong.
Suzie Lahoud: Gosh. Yeah. Sorry, as you're sharing that story Sy, I just can imagine what maybe some of those conversations looked like. And it just reminds me of even doing relief work in Lebanon, something that comes up a lot is this idea of dependency, and you don't want people to become dependent. And that just makes me so angry [laughs], because I feel like it shows such a fundamental lack of understanding for the fact that… I mean one, as human beings, none of us is completely independent. Even as a middle-class person, you are dependent on someone, and if you're not dependent on someone, you're dependent on systems that you take for granted that prop you up.
And I think just the lack of compassion and just basic understanding for folks who do have ongoing needs, and that doesn't mean that they're taking advantage of your generosity. That doesn't mean that they're lazy and not doing the work. Sy, I feel like that maybe provided a segue to a point that I just want to make sure it gets hammered home which is, can we also just throw out this heretical lie that people suffer financially, chronically because they're lazy. Because they don't work hard and are therefore less righteous. Like that is such a lie. In fact, I feel like the people I know who are the most hardworking, who deal with levels of stress and exhaustion unlike anything I've seen any of my middle-class or upper-middle-class friends struggle with, those are people who come from low-income backgrounds.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah, absolutely.
Suzie Lahoud: You don't even understand the levels of like working multiple jobs and not having a car. Having to take care of your kids and work at the same time. Like all of these struggles that people face, and then we call them lazy? In the church? That just, that's outrageous to me. So all that to say, and I think it goes back to this point that I think you brought up earlier Gabrielle, but I know it's something that we also wanted to bring up in this conversation, which is, and I think I was touching on this a little bit earlier as well, representation in your church leadership of folks from low-income backgrounds and different cultural backgrounds.
Because I think socioeconomic cultures are real, so class cultures are real, but then also different cultural backgrounds of, Gabrielle, you mentioned coming from a Haitian family. And then with my husband's Lebanese family, we talked before about how I've struggled with finding good marriage books. Because yes, money is a part of marriage, and the expectations around where your money goes, it’s not going to always follow these WASPy models and norms that you were just touching on Sy. So all that to say, you need to have folks represented in your leadership from these different backgrounds who understand those dynamics so you don't fall into the pitfalls that Sy, you were just alluding to.
Because you need to admit the limits of your own understanding if you don't come from that background. If you've never had those struggles before you probably are going to miss it, and that's going to do damage and do harm. So the best thing you can do is have people on your staff who do understand that. I think that also gets to some of the favoritism you were touching on Sy, that obviously the book of James talks about. Where a lot of times I feel like elders are appointed also based on how much money they can give to the church. I feel like I’ve seen this happen in a lot of churches, that you are seen as a “pillar in the church,” and not just because of your moral disposition or the model that you are of faith, but also I think sometimes based on the size of a check you can write to support the church budget.
Sy Hoekstra: You’re a financial pillar.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, exactly.
Sy Hoekstra: You’re a giant stack of money pillar [laughter].
Suzie Lahoud: And I'm sorry, that is favoritism. That is favoritism. Just because you can write a bigger check, God bless you for doing that. God bless you for investing your money in the church, but that doesn't always mean that you should have the biggest say in where the money from that check goes. And you need to be okay with that as the giver and the church needs to be okay with that and to understand that. Sorry, go ahead Sy.
Sy Hoekstra: No, I was just going to say, I think that implies that people who do have a lot of money and are giving a lot of money to the church, because the default culture is to sort of honor you, it's kind of on you to say, to understand that you're wielding a lot of power and to not use it on your own behalf. It is up to you to then leverage, like we were talking about with Dominique DuBois Gilliard, talking about leveraging privilege. That's something that you should be doing on behalf of other people, and it's not something you should be doing for yourself. You should be making that clear to the staff, I do not want you kind of bending to my whims because I'm somebody who pays your salary and your rent and whatever.
On that track, can we talk a little bit before we end, about how churches can do better in this area? We've given some examples, but any more final thoughts?
Gabrielle Apollon: I do have one thing just to say about something Suzie mentioned earlier. Which you mentioned the systems of injustice and inequality that have affected how much people have. It's amazing to me, I don't know how many years I've been in church now. I think, well, yeah, I basically grew up in the church, but this recent sermon series about money that Renaissance did, I think was the first time that in a series about money, I ever heard a pastor say, yes, the realities of inequality and injustice and racism actually do impact who has the money and who doesn't.
I was like, huh, it's amazing that this is the first time I've ever heard that. And that was not hard to do. It's just acknowledging these realities and making things more plain, I think in speaking truth to the situation. As opposed to being like, okay, what do I need to say just to make sure everyone is more generous and not thinking about people's very stark experiences with whether it's discrimination or racism or inequality that really matter and that really have impacts on people's lives. So yes, we should go to examples of things that are good, but that one I was just encouraged by was like, oh yes, you can do this. This is not hard to actually just make plain to people.
Sy Hoekstra: Well, I mean, that is one example. That's great.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah. I mean, I think I should go back and say too because I, by the way, Gabrielle, I love that you always come with the positive examples. I think that's so good and so beautiful and so helpful. Because I feel like I tend to hammer home like the critique and the negative examples [laughs].
Gabrielle Apollon: They’re both real.
Suzie Lahoud: No, but I just think that's so beautiful. So thank you for bringing that piece consistently. I should say, going back to the example of churches in Lebanon, I learned so much from watching Lebanese churches grapple with the struggles of trying to incorporate a population that comes from a different socioeconomic background, a different cultural background, coming from traumatic experiences of war, that also I should say, a lot of Lebanese folks could also relate to from their own past. But watching that struggle, I learned so much and I think there is beauty in the struggle. I think one of the things I want to get across is, it's worth diving into the messiness of this.
Sy Hoekstra: Because it will be messy.
Suzie Lahoud: Yeah, it will get messy. And I think that's also one, that needs to be one of the things that you're willing to do, is to allow it to get messy. To allow it to loosen your grip on quote-unquote “church order,” that really is just WASPy norms that we've wrapped the church in. Even around, again as you were saying Sy, like how we manage our finances as a church, all these things, you need to allow it to get messy, and you need to… Okay, I hesitate to say this because I don't want people to hear this the wrong way. But you will make mistakes and you need to be okay with that, and you need to know how to learn from your mistakes in a healthy way.
Sy Hoekstra: Which doesn't mean ignore the ramifications of your mistakes or don't go back and apologize and fix things. Yeah.
Gabrielle Apollon: Right.
Suzie Lahoud: Exactly. Yes. Because what I don't want to do is justify the harm that churches cause, but I think, and I say this because our church and churches that we partnered with made mistakes. And a lot of it came from not understanding people's situations. Even basic things like having meals together as a church and people coming and hoarding food, and all of a sudden it becomes like a free-for-all. Having close to riots breaking out at one of our first distributions of trying to provide assistance to people, people that we also wanted to feel free to come and be a part of the church.
There were just different dynamics and we made mistakes and had to learn, but at the same time, we got to have fellowship with folks that we wouldn't have had fellowship with otherwise. One thing that I really loved that we were able to do, was do just Bible studies in our homes. And the way we did it was, some of you all may be familiar with the Discovery Bible Study method, but basically you're not allowed to use any previous knowledge or understanding of the Bible. You just look at the passage and you ask three basic questions: What does this passage teach us about God? What does it teach us about man? And what is something that we can apply to our lives from this passage?
And it was so beautiful because when I said earlier I feel like folks who have experienced want and need, that they have a deeper understanding of the teachings of Christ and the gospel than oftentimes I do, I really mean that, and I've seen that. So it was so powerful, just not having a Bible study where it's like one person from the church is leading these other people from different… It was everyone sharing from what they gleaned from the scripture, and also just put things in perspective. Like one of you talked about this point of things that I look at in my life as struggle and sacrifice, pale in comparison to what other folks are struggling with. But also the fact that they were willing to share their struggles with me meant so much to me.
And so just, there's so much richness that happens and so much faith stretching that happens. I don't know, so yeah, there is beauty in the struggle and the messiness. And also we as, I will say for myself, I know that I have so much to learn from people who have walks of life that look very different from my own. And I want the church to be purged of these ugly expressions of classism that have become so inculcated, as you were saying Gabrielle.
Sy Hoekstra: The thing that I was going to talk about was also like proximity and humility. Those are kind of some of the main points for me. Then like the messiness that you were talking about that you're going to have to work through is just another one of the million applications of why, as we've talked about on this podcast before, emotional health is so important in a church context. And why not being someone who is easily overwhelmed by conditions that you're not used to, or someone who knows how to deal with those feelings of being overwhelmed and uncomfortable in a healthy way is just crucial to this work.
Gabrielle Apollon: Suzie, I really appreciate you going back to this, I think, truism of people who have been affected in this way and are directly affected whether it's by poverty or whatnot, have so much to teach us. I just remember that growing up, the people who watched out for us the most in our church and watched out, and dropped stuff off even when we didn't ask for it, were people who knew what the struggle was like. Were often not the people who just like had so much overflow to give, but it was other people who had been poor or were still poor and are like sharing out of what little they had.
I think that just really, I think, speaks to that which you said. Like that's where, that's actually what leadership and that's what discipleship — where I learned this is what you do. You give back even if you just have even a little more. Then to be honest, to answer your question Sy, I think sometimes, and this is obviously not just when it comes to class issues, but what I have seen is that sometimes even, it's non-church communities that sometimes do a better job at this than our churches. And not all the time, like there obviously, as Suzie you mentioned, there are some great examples of churches living out like loving our neighbors as ourselves.
But for me, just thinking about even in school, academic environments that I was in, so I'm now like a little jealous because I’ve seen like a lot more kind of first-generation student groups pop up post me being in college, and I'm like, man, that would have been nice. It would have been really nice to be able to talk to other people about the survivor's guilt that I felt and navigating how much money to send home and how much to keep for myself and…
Sy Hoekstra: Sorry, just for clarity. When you say first-generation, you don't mean first-generation immigrant, you mean first-generation college student.
Gabrielle Apollon: That’s true. Yeah. I mean, both would be great, but yes.
Sy Hoekstra: And you happen to be both, but here we're talking about college students, yes.
Gabrielle Apollon: Exactly. But, and especially this, and I just want to kind of name some of these things, because I don't think we talk about this stuff enough in our church communities. But I really had the strong pressure, feeling that I had to compartmentalize everything that was going on at home so that I could get my schoolwork done and whatnot. And those are just things that have been really nice to have a community or space to process those things in. And I had a wonderful Christian fellowship. I had amazing people, I went to a church, but there wasn't, we didn't talk about that kind of stuff at the end of the day.
Or if you did, you were the only one that was bringing that up because most of the people were not having those similar experiences, which is a certain level of vulnerability too. So I didn't necessarily have that in college, but I did do like, in law school, I got a scholarship that was for first-generation grad students. And seeing how they, the type of community and the type of resources that they provided, I think really gave me a glimpse of like, oh, you can actually do this. As I was mentioning, not constraining resources to these very concise, discreet topics. Like you can pay rent for this and whatnot.
And they were like, we know that you guys have needs that don't fit in traditional molds, and like just come to us and we'll see what we can do. And those needs sometimes looked like trying to figure out whose criminal defense fees that I needed to pay or things like that. Things that were going to be the things that stopped me from doing my schoolwork, but weren't necessarily like, oh, you need a laptop or whatnot. Then they made space for community where you could talk about that stuff. And it would be amazing if one, there were enough people from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and more churches that that space was possible. That community, that people could find that community and be comfortable enough to talk about those kinds of issues within our faith communities.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. And that program really was great. By the way, shout-out. This is the AnBryce Program at NYU. They're incredible.
Gabrielle Apollon: Thank you for giving a real shout-out.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. But one of the things was you got full tuition from this program, but that doesn't mean that you have money to eat or pay rent. And like they were serious when they told you to come to them with other needs that you had because you went there and they helped you find a truly incredible loan to pay for those things. I don’t know, it's just putting in that kind of work and making, leaving the door that open for people to come is super important. The other people, Suzie, I think we should shout-out who are doing this well for the church, is Sub:Culture Incorporated, which is — the author of our next book, Tamice Spencer, it’s her organization, she and Robert Monson.
She, Tamice’s story is kind of that she was a campus minister for a long time and the only thing that she was ever allowed to raise money for students, was for them to go to a retreat or something. And she's like, “but all the Black students that I have, they need money because their car broke down” or whatever, and that wasn't something that the campus ministry wanted to pay for. So she started her own ministry where they do pay for that stuff, and that's incredible.
Gabrielle Apollon: Truly incredible, but also not something you can't do.
Suzie Lahoud: These things are not hard [laughs].
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. Immediate action step for listeners. Go donate money to Sub:Culture Incorporated [laughs].
Suzie Lahoud: As you were speaking, Gabrielle, it also made me think just as a small side note, one, yes, absolutely, check out Sub:Culture Incorporated and the work that they're doing, and the resources that they have around this. But also as a church, maybe recognize that sometimes the best resources, because I know I shared, I gave a sneak peek into some of the mistakes and things that my husband and I have learned over the years, but also not to, I also don't want to bless ignorance [laughs]. So do the work in the sense of go do research and read helpful resources and recognize that unfortunately, sometimes the best resources will not be explicitly Christian resources.
So they may not be books that are written for churches trying to do this, but they may just be resources on this period. I think that churches would be better resourced if they would look into those things. So, yeah, again, Sub:Culture Incorporated is amazing because they are doing this through a Christ-like lens. But also just try to just find the best of what's out there on supporting folks from these backgrounds and creating communities that address socioeconomic injustice and are aware of the challenges and the disparities and all that.
Sy Hoekstra: Gabrielle, did you have any thoughts before we finish?
Gabrielle Apollon: I mean, I do think, I just want to kind of reiterate maybe the need for our pastors and our leaders to help disciple people out of this classism that is so, it permeates everything we do. I can't think of a subject or an issue that doesn't have a class component, but we’re not usually talking about this. And as Suzie mentioned though, that takes them, discipling them, like getting discipleship themselves so that they're not, leaders aren't saying ignorant things that make the situation worse, which is definitely a risk also when people bring up these types of issues.
But I think that that's critical, because again, yeah, this is the air we breathe. This will be what seeps into every aspect of our church communities, unless we're fighting this stuff. It's the whole, what are you discipled in six days out of the week and then you only have a day to try to maybe undo that stuff? Like you actually need to talk about this stuff. It's not just everybody, as you mentioned Sy, that everybody is the same or, because we know that inherently, but our culture is discipling us. Or we know that in our faith, I should say, but our culture is discipling us very differently the rest of the week.
Sy Hoekstra: Yeah. I think you will not be able to get away from being discipled that way if you take seriously the real unfiltered words of Jesus. Meaning unfiltered through all this stuff that you've heard about what Jesus thinks about money. In the Sermon on the Mount in Luke, Jesus straight up says give to those who beg of you. There's no qualification whatsoever. How many times have you heard Christians try and qualify why they shouldn't give money to that person on the street? You know what I mean? There's just stuff like that where if you really take Jesus' words seriously, you're going to start to change.
It just takes a lot because you're going to have to be really different unfortunately, than a lot of the Christians around you.
Suzie Lahoud: So yeah, I'll just say this because I know Gabrielle, you're also from a somewhat Pentecostal background. But when you start to take Jesus' words seriously and directly and unfiltered, you will also see miracles happen. I really believe that God provides in miraculous ways. When churches step up to the plate and dive into the messiness and hit up against their own limitations, and then you see God provide in incredible, miraculous ways. That's another blessing that you receive. You're so right Gabrielle, that this is integral to the mission of the church, and there is so much more that we need to dig into, not just as a side topic or side ministry. This can really, I think, transform churches when they're willing to dive into this and experience the fullness of all that Christ has to offer on this.
Gabrielle Apollon: I know we are, Sy wants to cut us off. And I'm only a guest and so I shouldn't take over, but I promised Sy I needed to make a joke about nepotism since this is my second time on here [laughter]. As your wife, I feel like I'm just going to take the liberties and say, Suzie, I would love, because I feel like you have direct experiences about that particular point you made, and I think it's worthwhile if you don't mind, like sharing an example. Because I think when people haven't seen that happen, they're like, “Yeah okay, maybe. I don't really know what that means.” So if you do have an example, and Sy won’t literally turn off the recording, then I’d love to hear it.
Sy Hoekstra: You’re making me sound like a real authoritarian host right now. I’m perfectly fine with this question.
[laughter]
Suzie Lahoud: Oh man. Yeah. Just, well, like I shared, so for I guess two years, we had this weekly Bible study that would meet in our home and it was my husband and I and this community of folks that they had fled to Lebanon from Syria and were interested in getting involved in the life of our church. We were really careful to try to not provide assistance with strings attached, not make folks feel like they had to be involved in the church if they were receiving assistance, but there was a community that really wanted to, they said they wanted to study the Bible with us. So that's what we were doing.
And there would be weekly prayer requests, and there were regularly things that came up. But what stand out to me are examples of, honestly just like physical healings when folks couldn't pay for medical care and when hospitals were overloaded. So like a guy who had completely thrown out his back at work doing construction work. I remember we laid hands on this one guy who had damaged his back and he came back the next week and he was fine. There were different cases like that.
Yeah, so just, and then there was one that I shared in the article in our book, that's probably still the one that most powerfully stands out to me, which was a young girl who had a brain tumor and we laid hands on her and prayed for her. And I have to say with like, from my end very little faith, that God could heal her, and he did. This is a family that the UN didn't have money to provide assistance. There's no way the family could have covered the medical bills because there were other cases where we would have to sit down with families and be like, “You can't afford this chemo, and that's not your fault.” So, but in this case, God healed this baby girl. So yeah, I mean, and again, it's that the messiness and the hardness of it, because you also lose people and you also see people go through difficult things, but God is real in the midst of all that. I'm sorry, I didn't have one specific example to share [laughs].
Gabrielle Apollon: No, no, no. Those are, you had lots of examples. Right. I think that it just comes to mind obviously like different scales sometimes. But for me, I just distinctly remember there were days, I mean, one, there was, my mom literally would get up like three hours before I had to go to school and start praying that somebody would be able to take me to school that day and reach out to however many people to try to get someone. And the Lord would really provide in that way.
But I remember, and I was, I actually had recently come to faith in a real way, but we would have to pray for my, we'd have to like drop my brother off to see his dad and there was no, like we didn't have a ride to do that, and my mom would get in trouble with the courts if it didn't happen. So we were just praying that miraculously, somebody would be willing and available to do it and it would happen. But it would happen often in the nick of time, but it would be people from church oftentimes who's like, “Oh, you were just on my mind and I called and checked to see if there's anything you needed.” And things like that, that I was like, well, the Lord is somehow making this work because I don't have any other reasons to identify as this happening week in and week out. But yeah, seeing communities and people of God stand up and do things is such a testament to the Lord's work, for sure.
Sy Hoekstra: I think that is as good a place as any to end, on that positive note.
Gabrielle Apollon: I'll allow it.
Sy Hoekstra: You'll allow me to finish?
Gabrielle Apollon: Your own podcast.
[laughter]
Sy Hoekstra: Thank you, Gabrielle.
Suzie Lahoud: I like having Gabrielle on. I think we should do this more often [laughter].
Sy Hoekstra: I mostly do also. Thank you. No, I'm kidding [laughter]. So thank you so much Gabrielle for being on and joining us today. We really appreciate it.
Gabrielle Apollon: Thank you guys.
Sy Hoekstra: Thank you all so much for listening. Just as a reminder, please do follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @KTFPress. Follow this podcast on your app. Subscribe, follow, whatever the button says in your particular player. Leave us a rating and review, and thank you so much again for being subscribers and listening to this bonus episode. We will have, by the way, information on season two coming soon. So stay tuned for that. You will not have to wait another month. And this may actually be the last monthly bonus episode for awhile because we might start, I think we probably will start that up next month, but we will have more definitive information on that coming soon. Our theme song is “Citizens” by Jon Guerra. Our podcast art is by Jacqueline Tam and we will see you all very soon.
[The song “Citizens” by Jon Guerra fades in. Lyrics: “And that you’re building a city/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home/ Where we arrive as immigrants/ And you call us citizens/ And you welcome us as children home.” The song fades out.]
Sy Hoekstra: I think for me… [siren noises in the background] Oh, there's a siren coming. Suzie, do you want to talk?
Suzie Lahoud: Oh sure. By the way, I have some church bells going in the distance that, you all aren't picking up on that? Okay.
Sy Hoekstra: Nope.
Suzie Lahoud: It would be nice except that I'm on a podcast.
