Today we’re in the Bay Area talking to Jena Nardella of Praxis. You may know Jena from some of her work improving clean water access around the world and her book titled One Thousand Wells: How an Audacious Goal Taught Me to Love the World Instead of Save It. Today she works on building the durability and sustainability of nonprofit organizations and leaders with Praxis and recently their team wrote a book called The Redemptive Nonprofit.
We invited Jena on to share some of her story and also to walk us through some of the points from The Redemptive Nonprofit. If you lead an organization or nonprofit, you’re going to find both her story and her advice to nonprofit leaders incredibly valuable!
We’re so grateful for her willingness to share from her own experience, and we hope that her entrepreneurial journey will encourage you on your own. As always, thanks for listening!
Useful Links:
The Redemptive Nonprofit
One Thousand Wells
Blood: Water
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDI movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Henry [00:02:52] Jenna, it’s so awesome to have you on today. Thank you for joining us.
Jena [00:02:55] Thanks for having me.
[00:02:57] So many of our listeners are really familiar with Praxis. And we’ve had John Hart on Dave Blanchard, Andy Crouch on the Hill already. But you’re a really important part of the senior leadership team, and I feel like we saved the best for last. So great to have you. One of the things that a listener to the future of entrepreneur podcast really needs to hear from us is that we exist for entrepreneurs that are creating enterprises across all different types of sectors of the marketplace to absolutely include, of course, for profit businesses, but also to include not for profit businesses and ministries. And they’re also, of course, solving a problem, creating opportunities, employing people, shepherding a creative vision. And I can think of nobody who’s more thoughtful about that space and what that all means than praxis. And then the leader of that initiative, Jenin or Dallas agenda. It’s great to have you on the program. And obviously, we know you from your work with prices, but some listeners might recognize your name more from your book, 1000 Wells. And for those who you don’t know, you. Can you give us fly-over your story? Just tell us what the book’s about and and share the message. The book is so tied into your experience.
Jena [00:04:06] Sure. Oh, it’s great to be able to have a conversation together. And I had this remarkable opportunity as a young college graduate to start a nonprofit right out of college in partnership with the Christian band Jars of Clay. They were interested in engaging their audience and fan base in the conversation around HIV and water, specifically in sub-Saharan Africa. After a Obama’s poll came out and said that only 3 percent of evangelical Americans would be willing to help someone with HIV. And I was very passionate activist on my college campus and wanted to also be a part of a conversation about what generosity and compassion looked like. Is a Christian response to a pandemic that was hitting our globe in the early 2000s. And I wrote the numbers of the band, a 25 page proposal on how I thought they could start the organization and why they should hire a 21 year old to do it. And they took it seriously enough to allow me to have the chance to start a nonprofit with them. And I moved to Nashville, Tennessee, and got the chance to file as a nonprofit and begin a journey that really involved engaging their fan base, engaging in the storytelling of a narrative around compassionate responses, and then raising money across the U.S. through grassroots donations and then funding grassroots organizations across sub-Saharan Africa that we’re doing great work in addressing HIV AIDS and water challenges in their own communities. And I had no idea what I was doing. I had a lot of passion. I was very hopeful and idealistic about what we could do.
[00:05:56] And I’m journeyed through the startup phase of an organization to having been able to serve almost a million people and raise upwards of 20 to 30 million dollars through grassroots donations and delivered through a journey of 12 years of an organization’s cycle through it all. Both wonderful and very, very difficult experiences.
Henry [00:06:21] That’s amazing. A million people. That’s absolutely incredible. As you go through that experience, you just alluded to it there. There’s some great ups. There’s some great downs. We won’t spend much of our time together talking about this new book that you have. Together with practice about the redemptive nonprofit. But before we get into that. Tell us about some of those ups and downs.
Jena [00:06:40] I think the challenge as starting an organization with such a noble cause is that the beginning, the sky’s the limit and you think you could do anything if you pull together the right amount of resources and great people and are faithful and powerful and you feel a call from God to do something big in the world. The hardest thing is really contending with limitation in the midst of holding the tension of ambition and calling, but also limitation and challenge, not just personally or organizationally, but also structurally. Also just I legitimately thought that I was going to lead an organization that was going to be a major contributor to the end of the HIV AIDS crisis around the globe. And we were and have been a drop in the bucket for that.
[00:07:32] And there’s a lot of hard lessons that come along when your idealism starts to crumble. And you have to really face the realism of how hard it is to do a good thing in the world and how hard it is to keep an organization thriving and healthy and how hard it is to keep a personal life sustainable in the midst of it as well.
Henry [00:07:54] Give us a couple examples of that. When you talk about and I love that whole ambition when rubber met the road and some things got difficult. What were some of the things that were difficult?
Jena [00:08:04] I often think of this one particular project that our local partner in northern Kenya was working on. It was an area that only had two seasons of rain a year, and they were working together through our funding and partnership to build rainwater catchment tanks in an area that was deeply affected by HIV. And the community came together. They did about a year to 18 months of work, of community organizing, of building the rain tanks. We were doing our part in the US in terms of telling the story, raising dollar by dollar. All of the money involved and bringing in the experts both locally and externally. And we collectively came to build these wonderful rainwater catchment tanks. The entire community was trained in water, sanitation and hygiene. And we felt we were at the point of celebration.
[00:08:58] And then we hit the rainy season and no rain came. And we waited for the next rainy season and no rain came and the area had ended up with this massive drought that was completely unexpected. And you just come to realize that you can have all the money, all the hard work, all the faithfulness, all of the community driven work. But we can’t make the rain. And you have to face the disappointment of the story that you’ve told both to the communities and the people that you’ve raised, the money, that ultimately we actually aren’t the rainmaker and we’re gonna keep at it. But that was a very difficult season for so many of us because we were all believing that if we could just do all the right things and do it well, that we would see the results we had all hoped for.
Henry [00:09:55] So lead us into this book. So you’ve taken your collective experience and by collective I mean your experience with together with the band and your staffing and all your partners, but then also with the not for profits that you’ve worked with the ministries, the charities that you’ve worked with your practice and just have, by the way. Give us a little bit of an overview of that before we get into the book. Tell us about the size and scope of practices work with non for profit entrepreneurs. Because all of their stories also work their way into this book and form the key tenets of it. Talk to us a little bit about that and then lead us into the book.
Jena [00:10:36] Yeah. For the last eight or nine years we have praxis. I’ve had the opportunity to walk alongside early stage nonprofit founders and leaders, and we have this unique opportunity of being a third space for them through this accelerator program. They come and they are part of a cohort, usually twelve organizations. So about 18 leaders that come together and they’re able to share with one another and with us a lot of the challenges that they don’t feel comfortable sharing with their team or their board or their donors. And this space has become a place where we have been able to really capture these stories of both struggle and progress. These are remarkable leaders who are leading incredibly impactful organizations, and we haven’t noticed the patterns of their life and work that shed light on one. The reality of how hard it is to lead and build a durable and sustainable life and nonprofit and to the mindsets and practices to equip the leader and the organization to lead well amid the challenges. And as we have had this front row seat to these organizations and these leaders experiences, we’ve been capturing and collecting these these stories. These practices, these ideas and felt like we should put them together and have it as a resource, not just for our community of nonprofit leaders, but for nonprofit leaders as a whole. And that really do look at some structural challenges that make it hard to be even in not just an ethical nonprofit, but in an organization that could be redemptive in its work and in its impact. And to address those challenges and then to offer some very practical practices in many different categories of the organization that could lead to a better story for the nonprofit sector. So we collected these stories and we’ve put it together in a playbook which we’ve called the redemptive nonprofit playbook, and we have organized it first by looking at what we see as two fundamental vulnerabilities for nonprofit leaders. One is the stakeholder gap, which is a structural issue. The way that nonprofits are set up are that oftentimes the people who are receiving the services are not actually the ones who get to make the major decisions or have the power and agency to direct how they are being served. So donors and board members and organizational leaders are often separate from the people who are receiving the services. And there’s a gap as a result in a lot of challenges come as a result of that gap. And it’s made that way. That’s how nonprofits are structured. The other major challenge and vulnerability that we have to face is the nobility trap, which is a human issue. And it’s a sneaky one. It comes in as a result of organizations and people who are doing great work. And often then because the way people treat those who are doing great work, they get a free pass sometimes out of having to be as accountable or the impact of their work. If you can tell a wonderful story, maybe they don’t have to answer some of the harder questions. Where the return on investment actually is and what the social impact looks like. But the notability trap can often create a mediocrity in organizations that I think many people are familiar with that they’ve seen in nonprofits. So those are the two fundamental vulnerabilities, the stakeholder gap and the nobility trap. And then we’ve addressed six major categories of the nonprofit and have identified practices and commitments that could address those two vulnerabilities in a way that I think brings flourishing and releases some burdens for the organizations.
William [00:14:43] Oh, that’s amazing. I feel like one of the best things I see practice to is you guys make it so I guess bite size and it’s so approachable, I guess is the word we had any crouch on here talking about the rule of life playbook, which is very similar to just very organized. And so I’d love it if you could just take a quick flyover through the six sections and talk to us about how you came about those little more and what they mean to you and what they meant to your coworkers.
Jena [00:15:09] Yes, absolutely. So we have six commitments of the redemptive nonprofit, two of which are under vision three or under an operating model, and one is around leadership and. So under strategic vision, we’re looking at story and how can organizations live and tell an integrated story that actually resist the urge to craft a misleading or oversimplified narrative. And that tells a story that has many actors. So it doesn’t put the nonprofit as the hero, but actually acknowledges that there are many partners and many actors in this work. The other one under strategic vision is programs, and it’s really encouraging organizations to have a still logically informed theory of change and designing and evaluating programs with significant leadership from the communities that we serve and an active partnership with others in our field. So it’s not assuming that just because I had a great idea about blood water that I was going to be the one to determine what the answer and what the intervention was going to look like, but to actually engage the communities and to listen and and to be submissive to those who are already in the work and can deeply inform what programs look like under operating model with team.
[00:16:31] It’s really focusing on developing a leadership team that can outlast the current generation in the nonprofit space and in the entrepreneurial space. We have a habit of being very dependent on a charismatic leader and thinking that one person can carry the story, the organization. And so this is the commitment and focus on cultivating talent and being able to develop the people around that one leader in a way that makes the organization much more durable under the operating model. We also look at boards, and boards are generally one of the major reasons that a nonprofit leader will leave an organization because there are so many challenges that happen between them. Oftentimes a board is seen as a necessary evil, but we are really encouraging leaders and organizations to focus on building healthy and engaged forward and really seeing governance as a massive asset, not as this necessary evil, but also really looking at ensuring diversity and unity within the board. It is very difficult to do, but as possible.
[00:17:38] Finally, under the operating model, we’re also looking at funding. So much of the work of the nonprofit is focused on trying to generate the dollars to do the work. And this is an area where we see some of the greatest acts of exploitation that happen from the nonprofit in relationship to those who fund the work. So we are encouraging organizations to seek to build mutually transformative relationships for the people who provide the funding for our work. So being able to constantly approach donors as whole persons and being able to see them as part of the mission, not as somebody that we rely on just because of their resources.
[00:18:20] And then finally, and perhaps most importantly, we really look at leadership intent. And this is really about surrender. I think that founders of nonprofits, especially those who feel like they have a line to their calling to their work, have the greatest challenge around the nobility trap and start to believe that the organization is theirs, start to believe that they are indispensable to the organization. And the encouragement we are making is really to have our leaders surrender their identity and really their organizations to God and to be able to practice. The mindsets and habits of stewardship, which is really to hold the organization open handedly and very difficult to do.
Rusty [00:19:11] You know, I’m actually quite fascinated by the fact that you ended with identity in those six commitments, but you started with story. And they’re very similar, right, for nonprofits. Do you know where your identity is, where your story can be told? But yet storytelling is such a hard skill. It feels like to give people what practical advice would you give to the nonprofit leader who’s trying to become a better storyteller?
Jena [00:19:38] I think the challenge with story, especially for early stage nonprofit leaders or really any founder of a startup, is that you are balancing the need to tell a compelling narrative about what is possible. At the same time that you haven’t actually done or proven the work, and so you actually speak in more grandiose terms in order to paint the vision which is important. And yet it can get carried away in a way that then becomes exaggerated and if not held in check, then becomes telling a story that is very hard to actually be aligned with the truth. So one of the practices that we have really encouraged our fellows is that we have seen with nonprofit leaders is to be truthful and transparent with all constituencies. So bored donors, beneficiaries, the public. Are you telling one story to your board and one story to your team or one story to your donors and another story to your beneficiaries? And the temptation is to do that. But what would it look like to actually integrate that story and tell the truth and make sure that any time that you’re in one room that you’re imagining the presence of another member of the story?
[00:21:05] You can imagine it. You can also embed it so that a board room would always have a representative of a community that you are serving or that when you are speaking with the team about fundraising, you’re actually imagining that one of your donors is sitting in there and that they are being honored in it as well. How does the every version of our story align with the truth as we know it?
Rusty [00:21:29] The other thing I think that you’re hitting on here is you’re talking at the beginning of that about how the story can sometimes get exaggerated and nonprofit leaders or some of the most creative people. Right. They just see these big opportunities. But yet at the same time, they have to focus and they have to take small steps before they can give big steps. Can you give advice on how do you bring that focus in play when you know you’ve got these big grandiose ideas?
Jena [00:21:55] Yes. Yeah. And I think the challenge I would speak specifically for my experience with blood water. We started with a massive campaign called the 1000 Wells Project, which was this ambitious goal to raise enough money to provide a thousand communities in sub-Saharan Africa with access to safe water, sanitation, hygiene. You hear that and it’s huge and seems a little bit ridiculous. And yet it is the thing that mobilized the excitement as a donor base as well as the excitement of our community partners across sub-Saharan Africa. But if our goal was the thousand miles project and ultimately it took us eight years to actually reach that, then you’re constantly working towards this huge thing. And if that’s the only point of success, then it limits what the narrative of the organization and the work actually is. I think the advice that I wish I had for myself and that I offer too many leaders now is what are those more points of progress that you can look at along the way and celebrate? Why can’t we celebrate a small win, a community that’s come together and how to training in a church in the US that has actually had the courage to have a conversation about AIDS and a compassionate response and to embed conversations and storytelling around setbacks? Why can’t we be honest about the thing that is hard about having this conversation in the American church? Why can’t we be honest about the way that a project didn’t actually turn out the way that the community had hoped in Kenya?
[00:23:33] And if we can actually speak in more right sized ways, then there’s freedom to both admit the challenge of how hard it is to do a good thing with the donor dollars and the ideas and everything like that, and also feel the freedom to celebrate the smaller things that are happening. That might not be the big thing you put on your banner, your annual report, or whatever it is that you feel the pressure to do. And our advice has been, if the nonprofit sector can get more comfortable with speaking about progress and setbacks in smaller bite sized ways, it’s going to unleash a truthful storytelling narrative across. Sector versus what happens is you look at these other organizations that are telling these amazing stories of success and somehow don’t have any challenges, then you as a nonprofit leader are feeling like, oh my gosh, we’re really not doing this. How come we’re so far behind? And then it feels like you’re not allowed to admit what is actually true about the ups and downs that come with trying to do this work.
Rusty [00:24:42] Mm hmm. Thank you.
[00:24:44] One of the things I’d like to circle back on is fundraising. You said something there that I thought was really interesting. The active exploitation. And I’d love for you to just unpack that a little bit more. We had a early podcast on the spirituality of fundraising, which comes from a book by Henry now. And that’s something impacts entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs. There are some entrepreneurs that never receive outside funding, but many do. And when they invite somebody in to participate in the story, that can be a very interesting relationship. They can be incredible blessing. And it can also be, I think you put it well, you call it out. It could be exploitative. What does it look like in your experience? And then how do you process that with those that you know, that are seeking to raise funding? And where do people go off the tracks? Where do you see people do it well?
Jena [00:25:32] Well, I think one of the great challenges for nonprofit leaders is this sense of being a victim of a need for a resource that a leader does not have and immediately postures the leader in a state of desperation rather than of being able to feel the openness and the trust that God is going to bring in the right kind of people who will be aligned with the mission. And that we as nonprofit leaders are equipped with the discernment of being able to engage with all kinds of people and identify where there’s great alignment with those who have resources to support and where there isn’t. And I remember a couple of times with blood water where I was engaging donors who I knew deep down that we weren’t so perfectly aligned in terms of what this particular donor cared about and what blood water was actually doing. And I remember being aware of a couple of other organizations that would be more aligned with that donors heart and particular calling and not having the courage to actually offer those organizations an introduction to this potential donor out of my own desperation of making it work for Blackwater. And that was exploitative on my part in terms of trying to make something work because I needed the funding, not because I was stewarding the relationships and the people around me. And so the invitation is really around recognizing that we are all a part of so many different missions and that the stewardship role, I think, of a nonprofit leader is to be open to those who have come out of interest of a shared mission and to be able to work in mutual discernment around whether this is a good alignment or not. And if there isn’t a good alignment, that there would be an openness and a joy in redirecting that individual’s resources in a place that would really unleash opportunity for God’s kingdom. But that’s when we hold it so tightly. We failed to remember that we are all a part of a bigger work and a part of a greater community.
Henry [00:28:08] So you’re suggesting there that when we talk to somebody who we want to invite into our work, we’re hoping that they might come in and write a check, that we actually rejoice when they say that’s not good for me, but instead I want to write a check for somebody else?
Jena [00:28:23] Absolutely. And that we are not looking at these relationships as just what can this person or what could this funding do for me or for my organization, but that we are all collectively discerning where can we be stewards in God’s kingdom and to hold that openly and absolutely rejoice when it is for some other organization or some other part of what God is doing in the world.
William [00:28:50] That doesn’t sound right. That can’t be true. That can’t be the answer. That sounds to how would I put it, biblical. I think I think that’s a little too many fruits of the spirit in that commentary.
Jena [00:29:03] We have one fellow in our nonprofit accelerator program right now who I just spoke with today. She is so passionate about one of the other organizations in her cohort and has connected one of her. Board members who is a major donor, obviously, to the organization that she leads, but has connected her board member to this other organization and has been the person who has unleashed now new opportunities and funding relationship for this other organization, and that is just the beautiful thing that is happening. And there’s joy that is coming for all parties.
[00:29:41] But this particular fellow who made the connection, she said, it has released me from feeling the need to control how resources come into the organization. And the active choice of being generous with those relationships is the thing that releases the need to hold so tightly.
William [00:30:01] Amen, that’s amazing. That’s an amazing story. And I want to dove a little deeper in something on that identity, which is the last part. So I heard a little bit when you talked about that around, you know, losing your identity when it’s too big and things are going too well and how we can’t form an organization around a charismatic leader forever. And I think that’s all amazing. I also heard in your personal story where you came back and said, you know, I had to realize a point where I’m not going to solve this all by myself. I’m actually a drop in the bucket in this greater movement that God is doing. And I’m interested in that because you work with a lot of ambitious nonprofit leaders would be my guess. How did you go through that? How have you seen other people go through that? And how do you stay motivated when you’re an ambitious person, when you realize, oh, I thought I was the one, I thought my organization was the one that was going to do everything for everyone in this space. And actually, no, I’m just a part of a greater movement that God is doing.
[00:30:57] How do you stay engaged and motivated? I don’t know if you have to reframe. I don’t know the answer. But I guess as you’ve you’ve encountered this a few times.
Jena [00:31:05] I’ve certainly encountered it. And I didn’t necessarily go through it very gracefully. I think that I hit rock bottom in not only recognizing the limitation of what I could do, of what our organization could do and realizing most people can’t do the things that we all want to do. And we are ultimately at the mercy of God’s hands and also really the shame of how much I let really the last several years of my leadership at floodwater be about me and how much the narrative was.
[00:31:44] Well, if we can get Jena on the front stages of some of these major conferences, if we can have Jena write a book, if we can get you to be a thought leader and, you know, have all these followers on Twitter, then we’ll be able to do more work in our partnerships in sub-Saharan Africa. And if you follow that narrative too long, it becomes very toxic because then I am promoting myself and my story and my importance in the world and I’ve really had to contend with. Now, looking back at how far off we as an organization went in order to continue to perpetuate a founder’s story, a charismatic founder’s story. And I don’t get to take credit for having practiced anything different. I think this work in the playbook and the work that I do with nonprofit founders now is my 3DO in a sense of being able to encourage a surrender, encourage ambitious founders and leaders of nonprofits to ensure that they aren’t believing the narratives, that it’s really all on them and that they have to recognize that everything around them is going to try to make it be about them. And so even if they are the most humble and the most focused, being more humble is going to bring even more attention. People are going to want to give awards. People are gonna want to have you be the person to, you know, write the foreword or, you know, give the insights and be the expert.
[00:33:24] And if that leader and that leaders organization and the team around that leader is not embedded and tethered to an identity that is surrender to God, a vision that holds intention, the enormous value that their leadership and organization is bring into the world and the tiny small point of work that they’re doing in the grand scheme of things, the drop in the bucket ness of their work to hold those two things in tension and to be able to every day make sure that one is not out sizing the other and being able to be rooted in an identity. That is, we are beloved children of God. We are the hands and feet of Christ in the world. We work faithfully. We work hard. We work with ambition and we lay it at the feet of Christ. Daily, if not hourly, in order to make sure that it doesn’t become about us.
Rusty [00:34:28] Thank you for sharing that, that that’s touching just the way that you take your own story and go through that. I’d remind our listeners, too, that that story you just told us, Jenna, was the exact same story that Phil Vischer told us about what happened at VeggieTales around identity. And if anybody’s listening who didn’t hear that episode, I think we should go back and be a perfect time for them to go listen to it after this episode because it dovetails so nicely and sweetly together. So thank you. I really appreciate that. So on this topic of identity, what are some of the safeguards that we can wrap around ourselves to make sure that we can control where identity might go?
[00:35:10] Yeah, we have to be intentional because it’s not going to come by default. And one of the practices that we’ve seen in our community is that the nonprofit leader actually shares on an annual basis with their board of directors a list of names who they think could be the great next leader for this organization. And succession planning is something that boards are responsible for, something that CEOs should be mindful of, but often out of fear it’s offending or out of the leaders, just inability to imagine that anybody else could be in that position.
[00:35:45] It opens up the conversation and it helps place a leader and the board in the position of. This is about stewardship questions. Isn’t about this one person owning the organization. The other that I think is a remarkable example that Peter Greer, who I know has shared with you a lot of history. He has actually written out a resignation letter to his organization, to the board that is basically in the hands of his wife. And he has told his wife that if ever that it feels like our family and our core community and commitments are being compromised by my role and work at Hope International, you can mail this resignation letter. And that is my point of surrender and open handedness of being able to say that this doesn’t get to be the trump card of our lives and our family. And we actually have some other nonprofit fellows who have gone ahead and done the same thing.
William [00:36:48] And unfortunately, we’re coming to a close here. So we have some things we always like to ask. First of all, this is not a normal one, but I have to ask if I read a twenty five page letter to jars of clay. Can I get them at my birthday? They are probably one of my top five favorite bands in a Landslide and Valley song. If anyone happens to be going through a tough time has gotten me through so many tough times and I’ve given talks on how that song has influenced my life. So I’ll work on that letter. I’ll send it to you.
Jena [00:37:16] You can. You know what? They are so open and responsive. Which is probably why I got the job. So if anybody else had written twenty five feet proposal, they might have gotten in before me as well.
William [00:37:30] That’s awesome. I appreciate that. And their music is still just amazing and sounds like the work they do outside of their music is amazing as well. So that’s always just so good to hear about what people do off the stage there.
Jena [00:37:41] They’re remarkable.
William [00:37:43] And then it matches up with who they are on the stage. But as we do close, we always want to ask. You’ve been so gracious to let our listeners into your personal story and we’d ask one more time to do that and just say, you know, where is God taking you right now in his word, in scripture, where maybe is he taking you that you’re seeing something new? Could be in the season. It could be this morning that his word maybe be opening something new to you and in your life in this season. He has you.
Jena [00:38:09] Yeah. Thanks for asking. I do think that the journey I’m in right now is this post blood water, post leader journey. I’m almost four years out of having been at the leadership helm and in this kind to make sense of some of the shame that I’ve been feeling some of the, you know, definitely glory of the work. But really a lot of I wish I had done, you know, X, Y and Z. And really, again, this element, as does the work that we do matter. Even if it doesn’t completely turn out the way that we had envisioned in that twenty five page proposal when we were 21 years old. And how do you stick with it?
[00:38:53] And especially since now, I don’t get to rework the organization and it’s doing wonderfully outside of my leadership. But there’s still things that I wish I could do. I was struck a couple weeks ago in Hebrews just and that reminder of this cloud of witnesses and this longer story of our lives and. Longer narrative of God. And you know, it goes on to talk about how there’s so many of these faithful individuals who had moments of progress and incredible things happened. And, you know, there were all of these things to be able to celebrate. And then there were also so many who had been tortured and tormented and who were wondering. And all of them in this passage talks about how they didn’t receive what was promised. And I think I’m recognizing how I imagine or live on the assumption that all promises will be answered in my timeline. And just really thinking about this longer narrative of the work of our hands and the work of our lives and that, how do you actually live through these small tortures and torment?
[00:40:08] I think in comparison to the ones that they were talking about and live an arduous life of faith, that it’s risky, that it’s worth it, even if at the end of the day, at the end of the month, at the end of the year, the decade or the lifetime, it doesn’t turn out perfectly in the way that you had imagined.
[00:40:27] And I think also just this reminder of this cloud of witnesses is that we are not alone and that we actually exist within a communal faith that spans time and place and generation. And I think we can tend to be so I contend, to be so individualistic about my personal journey. And I take great comfort and responsibility and conviction around being a part of this broader community of faith.
Henry [00:41:00] That’s beautiful. I wish we go on and on. I think there’s a great opportunity. Do a lot more of this as the podcast continues over the course the next year and bringing on some of the crisis fellows that have gone through the program that have helped to contribute to the stories in the book. And I’m grateful for you and your leadership and your vulnerability and transparency and for your time today. Thank you.
Jena [00:41:22] Thank you. I’m so grateful to be a part of these conversations and a part of this community.
