Transcript: Trends, Justice, and the Biblical Vision for Reconciliation // David Bailey, Arrabon

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Trends, Justice, and the Biblical Vision for Reconciliation”

January 15, 2024

David Bailey

Intro: What does the Bible say about reconciliation, specifically racial reconciliation? Practically speaking, how can we live out biblical values of reconciliation and healing in our communities and workplaces? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we’ll focus on racial reconciliation and how to cultivate long-term healing in our communities from a biblical perspective versus our currently divisive cultural narratives.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the Road to Flourishing: Eight Keys to Boost Employee Engagement and Well-Being, which was a finalist in the Christian Book Awards. I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

Today I’m delighted to welcome back David Bailey to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast. David is the founder and chief vision officer of Arrabon, an organization committed to equipping Christian communities to pursue healing and reconciliation in a racially divided world.

Throughout our conversation, you'll hear David talk about a biblical basis for reconciliation; how spiritual formation pursues racial healing by being transformed to the image of Christ; the foundations of a reconciling community by overcoming fear, grief, anger and shame; and a hopeful view of the future and a vision that Christians set the example as the best examples for true reconciliation in community.

I think you're going to love this interview with David Bailey. Before we dive in, this episode is brought to you by the Best Christian Workplaces Leadership 360 and our new leadership and group coaching. We help you transform your leadership effectiveness with our stakeholder-based coaching process. You’re going to love it and see a big difference. Learn more by going to workplaces.org/coaching, and check it out today.

Well, hello to our new listeners. And thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this one.

But let me tell you a little bit more about David Bailey. David’s the founder and chief vision officer at Arrabon. This ministry helps communities practice biblical reconciliation and Kingdom building as a way to heal racial division by building reconciling communities that reflect the love of God in practice. They do this through resources like curriculum, worship offerings, and organizational change guides. David's a public theologian, a culture maker, and a catalyst focused on building reconciling communications. He's also a musician and worship leader. He's coauthored many resources that Arrabon is using in their work.

So here's my conversation with David Bailey.

David, it's great to have you back on the podcast. I continue to learn so much from you, and I'm looking forward to our conversation today.

David Bailey: Oh, man. I'm so glad to be here, and I'm glad that it's—I enjoy these conversations, and I'm glad there's been a benefit for you also.

Al: Yeah. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

You know, one of the things I appreciate about your work on reconciliation is, especially in our racially divided world, is that you have a solid biblical basis. Our listeners are Christian leaders in churches, nonprofits, schools, and Christian-led businesses, and they’re people who are committed to growing and leading as followers of Jesus. So remind us, let's go back, and maybe you can give us a few examples in the Bible about reconciliation. Help us focus our conversation on what God's Word shows about the importance of reconciliation. Bring us back to some of the core issues that we see, core stories and examples in the Bible.

David: You know, Al, I'm glad you asked this particular question as to where we're starting, because the word reconciliation can be such a challenging word. I mean, a lot of it has to do with the fact that, what's the context of the word reconciliation is being used? If it's in an accounting context, it talks about reconciling receipts, right? If you're in a toxic relationship, you know, there's a notion that maybe something’s broken, and we should reconcile that relationship back to where it's supposed to be. When you say the word racial reconciliation, that could be such a loaded word. And for some people, they don't really like the word racial reconciliation, not because they don't necessarily want people, different race groups, to be together, but when the conversation is grounded in the narrative of the American context, you know, folks are like, “Hey, you don't want to bring the relationship back to its original status, where the European, the indigenous person, and the African, you don’t want to bring that relationship back to the 1600s.” You know, if anything, you would call that maybe conciliation, but not reconciliation.

But even as problematic and challenging, I would say, the word reconciliation is, we still tend to use that word. And the reason why is that in the Christian narrative, the Gospel, the Good News is that the world was whole, it was good, and it was beautiful. It was whole; it was good; it was beautiful. It was diverse. It was the unity and diversity that was happening in the flourishing as God ordered the world in the way it ought to be. And then in Genesis 3, the world was broken. Our relationship with God was broken; our relationship with one another was broken; our relationship with ourselves was broken; our relationship with creation was broken.

And so for the Christian, any narrative of reconciliation doesn’t start in the American context. It doesn't start in whatever society it is. It actually goes all the way back to the way the world was started. The world was whole; it was good. Then it was broken. And Christ has been in the process of reconciling all things. And it doesn't end in our current reality. One day there'll be a new heaven, a new Earth. The old order of things passed away because Christ and God is making all things new. There's a healing that will happen, and that's what we live for. I try to be conduits to a little bit more heaven on Earth.

And so when we use the word reconciliation, we're carrying that with this word arrabon, which means a foretaste of things to come. And when we practice, engage in the work of reconciliation in a divided world, we are being a foretaste of the Kingdom of God that’s to come.

Al: I love that. Christ is reconciling all things, all things new. And we're, yeah, we're looking forward to the world returning to being whole, good, and in unity. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s refreshing.

So, you consult with many churches and organizations, and you guide them in this long-term process of reconciliation. Share a story of how you've seen this make a difference for a church or an organization. Do you have a recent example or highlight from your ministry there at Arrabon?

David: Yeah. And I can imagine somebody listening and could say, you know, I mean, either somebody’s in the midst of a challenging situation right now and says, “Oh, man, we need this.” Or it could be folks who say, “Hey, there's nothing going wrong. You know, it might cause more trouble to engage in this work.” And we say, you know, Arrabon’s a spiritual-formation ministry that equips the American church to actively and creatively pursue racial healing in their communities. And we really talk about people’s communities because all problems are local. Therefore, all peacemaking ought to be local. Therefore, all the practice of reconciliation and the mending of broken should be local. We say actively because folks should actively pursue versus being reactive. And so we want to get ahead of things.

And then the other thing is, is that oftentimes the world gives us false binaries. Either do this or that, and these are the only choices. Either you’ll be anti-racist or anti-woke. And we say, no, let's not… there's other options. There's a third way where we can love God, love our neighbor. And so what does that look like? So how do we creatively pursue healing racial brokenness?

And so what's been great is that there are organizations that have said, “Hey, I would love to be a part of that journey.” So we work with their leadership teams. We spread this out over a few months, but day one, we do foundations of a reconciled community, where we help people understand that the way that Christians engage with conflict should be different than the way the world engages with conflict. And so we should see the practice of reconciliation, that spiritual formation, as an opportunity for us to be transformed. But then, also, whenever we deal with issues of race, class, and culture, it brings up emotions of fear, anger, grief, and shame. And so we are like, how do you disciple people through this kind of activity and these challenging emotions? And so that's the thing that we work on that one day. It gives folks the tools.

You know, everybody, like, the majority of people that go through the Discipling Four Complicated Emotions, they say, “Hey, this is worth just the price of admission, because we oftentimes as a leader, when people are angry, when people are grieving, when people are fearful, when people are dealing with shame, we don't know how to navigate with that. We don’t know how to navigate that within ourselves.” So we spend a day with the leadership team, talking through that, building the emotional and spiritual bandwidth to deal with challenging things. Then we do a consultation in between.

So then we have a two-day thing, where we deal with pillars of a reconciled community, where we give leadership teams these tools, these best practices, to kind of build an ecology within your community where you're actually practicing reconciliation. And then we go through that, give some tools, and then have another consultation with the organization.

And then we end with the last piece, and that is an action plan for reconciling community. You know, things don’t happen by accident. It takes intentionality. So you've got to have an action plan that aligns with your mission, vision, and values as an organization, saying, what does it look like for us to be a reconciled community?

And I think about this Pastor Jeff, who's in Chicago, and he says, “The training Arrabon provides doesn't play according to the rules of Left or Right, woke or conservative. Arrabon gave us fresh language and a biblical perspective.” And I mean, this was so refreshing because that church is now on a pathway of being able—where these conversations were fraught with so much anxiety and pain and hurt, and they actually have a pathway forward.

You know, another guy, Brad Layland and his COO over at The FOCUS Group, Steve, Brad said, “Arrabon (unclear 10:46) diversity. A diverse community is about how we look; a reconciled community’s about how we act and think.” And Steve, his COO, was like, “Our time was productive, durative, and not adversarial.” And so even as an organization, you know, they have a plan, they have a strategy that aligns with their mission, vision, and values, to say, “Hey, what’s it like for us to be a reconciling community?” And clarity leads towards all kinds of kindness.

Al: I love that example, the four-step process. And of course, we've had Brad on our podcast, at The FOCUS Group. They're a flourishing workplace culture. They've been working with us for a number of years, and it's exciting for me that they're pursuing this and would be a great example. That’s, yeah—thanks, David. To really have the foundations, have a couple-day event, and then ultimately, then, a plan for a reconciling community going forward.

But you know, you've talked about how the work of reconciliation takes some time. You know, there's no silver bullet here, is there? I mean, you talk about complex emotions. So there isn't a quick fix, and it takes time to really create a lasting organizational and community transformation. So as you've worked with organizations over years, what are some of the key practices of a reconciling community? What characteristics do you see in an organization that's committed to lasting transformation?

David: Well, we all talk about the reconciling community house. That’s an image that we use. And at the foundation is understanding reconciliation. The practice of reconciliation is spiritual formation. Spiritual formation is like what Ruth Haley Barton says. It's the process of being transformed into the image of Christ for the glory of God, for the sake of others, and for the abundant life. And so that process of being transformed in the image of Christ for the glory of God, for the sake of others, and for the abundant life is the same process. We can change out the word spiritual formation for reconciliation. Reconciliation is the process of being transformed into the image of Christ for the glory of God, for the sake of others, and for the abundant life.

And so just understanding, like, if David and Al, we have a conflict, God doesn’t care if David's right or Al’s right. God cares about how do I care for my brother and even in the midst of that conflict? How do I open myself for God to speak to me and to be transformed and me to be transformed by God and for God to be glorified even in the midst of our conflict?

Now, I think it's really important to set that groundwork within Christian organizations or the way Christians show up in the workplace. It’s a basic foundation. I think another thing that's real important we talk about is making sure that people understand how fear, grief, anger, and shame influences us, you know, and to be able to disciple how people work through these types of things and not just ignore it or sweep it under the rug, because you keep on sweeping things under the rug, you'll eventually trip up on the things that are piled up. And so that is something that is really key.

And then, we can even have that commitment to the foundation. If you get that foundation, then you can put pillars into those foundations, things like cultural intelligence that says, hey, people are different, and we could talk and communicate across difference, and we need to understand to kind of be culturally multilingual. We need to understand our historical context. You know, like, we're here today because what happened yesterday, and so we shouldn't ignore our history both locally or in a bigger part of our community to understand why are we here today is really key. We need to understand how to work together across differences. You know, all of these are skill sets. These are knowledge-based things that when they are put in the foundation of reconciliation and spiritual formation and knowing how to care for yourself and care for others, then there's a place for it. And then, you can put this, like, protective covering. The protective covering, what we call is, like, creating new culture. And clearly, folks on your podcast, because they're leaders that understand that leaders create culture, well, we can create culture that is vacant about reconciliation, or we can create a culture that's reactionary to when conflict happens. We could be a culture that thinks about issues of race, class, and culture and ethnicity, or we can be one that's reacted to it. And so we just feel like we should be proactive.

Al: David, you've mentioned cultural intelligence in historical context and working across differences. Where can we learn about cultural intelligence? I like that, and I think I know what it means. Give our listeners an idea of that.

David: Cultural intelligence is a term that was coined by a guy named David Livermore, that actually it’s called the Cultural Intelligence Center. But it's a basic idea of the ability to be able to navigate across cultural differences. No matter what city you live in, when you go from one part of town to the other part of town, you’re crossing culture. If you're working at a factory, you’ve got the people in the C-suite who might be “white-collar” jobs, and then you go to the kind of blue-collar jobs, and you're crossing culture. What's appropriate, what's inappropriate, what builds social capital, what doesn't is crossing culture. When you go from one generation, a Boomer to a Gen Z, you're crossing culture. And this is true around, like, racial differences, ethnic differences, economic differences, educational. And so just being aware of these things that, like, everybody doesn't think like you, no matter who you are, however that's being defined, and so the ability to be able to navigate across those differences, to be aware, is a skill set that's really worthwhile investing to grow in.

Al: Yeah. Thanks. That's great. Yeah. So cultural intelligence, and we all need to kind of work on that, no question.

So David, you know, the Bible speaks about the unity of believers. And Jesus’s prayer in John 17 is one example where it talks about the unity of believers. So give us a vision of how we can have unity as believers while celebrating the diversity that God has created in His followers.

David: Well, I think this one thing is real important to understand, that, like, Kingdom unity is unity in diversity. When you look at Egypt or Assyria or Babylon or Rome, Persia or Babylon as a metaphor, the way they do unity is unity through a uniformity. They do unity through force. But what the Kingdom of God does is this unity in diversity, and it's a work of the Spirit. It's a work of the Spirit in creation in Genesis 1. It's a work of the Spirit in the birth of the church in Acts 2. It's a work of the Spirit in Genesis 1 when the Spirit of God is hovering over and then God speaks and creates a whole world with unity in diversity. It's a work of the Spirit when the Holy Spirit fills two men to build the tabernacle, and it’s the whole community that builds the tabernacle. We call it the tabernacle of Moses, right? There's unity in diversity that's happening in that space. It's a work of the Spirit when Jesus prays for those who would believe on the message that the disciples are sharing, that we may be one. And our unity is not just because everybody thinks alike or because everybody has uniformity, but what’s happening in that unity in diversity is because of the love of God, that what's happening in this Trinitarian dynamic, that we're reflecting that Trinitarian love and dynamic, and heaven as is on Earth. And you see when Acts 2 happens and they're praying, you see that the nations are gathering, and the Holy Spirit gives them power to be able to speak their own language and yet understand one another. And out of that you see unity in diversity. And out of that you see there's nobody lacking anything, right?

And so that is the thing that’s important to understand that we don't do—the empire does unity through uniformity; the Kingdom does unity in diversity. And we need the Holy Spirit to lead and guide us and receive that invitation to be obedient in that area.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back, with David Bailey.

And I like your analogy there of the Trinity. I mean, that is unity in diversity in itself in many ways. Yeah, exactly. Nobody lacks.

So, in Arrabon’s work, you teach that proximity affects our ability to engage cross-culturally. And I've recalled this many times over our discussions in previous podcasts, that proximity affects our ability to engage. So flesh out some ideas of proximity and how we can engage effectively across differences. Can you give us some ideas of different styles of cross-cultural engagement?

David: Yeah, you know, my grandma has a saying. She says, “A heap see, but only a few know.” You know, like a heap of people might see something, but only a few people really actually know what's going on. And I think that's just another colloquium way of seeing how you've got to get close to a situation and not assume that you can understand and analyze things from a distance. You know, one of the privileges that I've had growing up was I grew up in the suburb of Richmond, Virginia. I went to church in the same inner-city housing projects that my dad grew up in. And so I was crossing culture. I was crossing racial ethnic cultures, and I was crossing economic cultures in really significant ways growing up. And that was “normal” to me. I didn't know it was anything different until I was in the sociology class and people were talking about those people. And a lot of times, “those” people were people that were very different than them, and they had these strong opinions about those people. But then I realized, you don't know any of those folks by name. You’re basing it off of, like, either a stereotype or very limited interactions.

And so that's what I mean. Like, I think we should be very suspicious that a lot of our solutions for people in this situation, it's very, very clear until we get a proximity with folks in that way and to kind of get hands on the ground. I mean, again, it's like if you and I are in an office of a manufacturing place, and we hear that something on the assembly line is broken, there's no way we would try to solve that problem, sitting in one of our offices. We would actually go to where things are, where the problem is, and we would actually listen authoritatively to the person who deals with that machine every day, to see if we can put our heads together and try to come up with a solution. And it'd be very arrogant and not a pathway for any kind of a fast-track pathway that if we sat around and feel like we could solve the problems from our offices. And so that's what I mean by proximity and what's so important to engage in this type of work cross-culturally.

Al: Yeah, I think that is really a key. And I love, yeah, “those people.” When you hear that word, “those people,” you know they haven't walked a mile in their shoes. I think of that, walk a mile in your shoes. If somebody asks you to walk one mile, walk two miles in their shoes. And that will help you, again, with that cultural intelligence so that you know. I love it.

All right. I’m going to surprise you somewhat with some data here, David, and that is we’ve been surveying workplaces, Christian-led workplaces, now for over 20 years, and we break out the results by demographics. And we're starting to look at the trends over the last five years. So starting pre-COVID, 2019, we got ’20, ’21—of course, we had George Floyd in the middle of that—’22, ’23, and we're seeing African Americans in the Christian workplaces actually exceed now their white counterparts in engagement. And we're seeing more diversity. Actually, the numbers of people—again, we're looking at as a percentage—and the number of people that we're surveying each year is growing, so we're actually seeing more diversity in the Christian-led workplace. Any thoughts about what's behind that trend? Are you seeing, you know, that there's more—I mean, I interpret this as, reconciliation between whites and African Americans is actually improving in the Christian workplace, that there's more engagement and improvement in results. Any thoughts on that, other than Arrabon is actually being very effective in your work?

David: Well, I mean, to me, I think it might actually be—I would give the credit to you all at Best Christian Workplaces. I mean, I think—I mean, there's a couple of things that's happened. This is a really good stat, an encouraging stat, to hear and see. You know, I think that sometimes, you know, we go to the doctor's office. Sometimes the doctor can give you bad news before he tells you good news, or he or she tells you good news. And, you know, let's just say 2020 might have been that way, where you just kind of think, like, “Oh, man, things are maybe a little bit worse than I thought. Thought things were better than they were,” or whatever the case may be. And it was just, like, it did feel good in 2020 for a lot of different reasons.

But to see that three years coming out of that, that there's a space where we've been able to have conversations that we’re moving towards better engagement, I think that's great. And I think it seems like to me, and this is, you know, again, my first time seeing about this data, is that it's not just the consciousness. It's actually there's a best practices, and you’re making a flourishing environment for everybody and creating a place of belonging, a place where, you know, people know what they're doing in their work matters and it means something. And I think that's a really great and an encouraging thing to do. And I say, keep up the good work.

Al: I mean, this is data that literally is, you know, just weeks old, from our perspective, as we're beginning to prepare kind of what's the Christian workplace like. And I just thought, since we're having this conversation, I'd get your thoughts on it. Yeah. So when you are creating a flourishing workplace—I like that—you know, it's true for everybody, not just one certain group. Yeah. Well, let's keep moving that forward, that's for sure.

So, David, in addition to the biblical basis for reconciliation, we also know that justice is on God's heart. And we all know the Scripture, Micah 6:8, called to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly. You know, some Christian organizations have justice as part of their mission statement, but God's call to act justly is for all of us, not just for those with justice in their name So, you know, are there some practical ways that Christian leaders can embrace and promote justice in their organizations?

David: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I would start off is really important when I'm seeing this trend happen a lot more recently is that to really understand, where are we getting our definition of what justice is? There tends to be more political discipleship on injustice than there tends to be biblical perspective on justice. And I just will, like—I'm going to show my bias. I just don't believe that any political party is going to totally fit within what the biblical standard of justice is. It’s too narrow. It’s too small. Or if it does fit into that space, your understanding of the Bible is too narrow or too small. But biblical justice—and I don't care if it's from the Left or the Right—like, I just think that when we are truly being biblical, there are going to be some things that are going to both invite us, that we can say, “Oh yeah, this particular party, they got these things right,” but then you're going to also look to see like, “Oh, these things are wrong.” And if we feel like our political party, you know, has it all straight together, then there's just no need for Jesus. Jesus could have just sent political parties, and we could have been fine, you know?

So I want to say that I would start off by just really trying to get rooted in the Scriptures about what is justice in the Scriptures and not allowing our political lenses to interpret how we see justice, but allow the Bible to interrogate and review our political lenses. The word justice oftentimes, like, the words justice and righteousness is interchanged, and it’s kind of in this kind of, like—so there’s both a social holiness and there’s also a personal holiness. And so how we live, but then also how do we treat one another is really important. All of this is in the background of this kind of Jewish Hebrew word called shalom. It’s, like, flourishing. The word is oftentimes interpreted as peace, but it's not like an absence of conflict. It's like God weaving things back together the way God originally intended it to be for flourishing. So when we engage in the work of shalom, justice, flourishing, and we are thinking about people who are not—that flourishing just doesn't happen for the people who have the most education or the most money or the most resources, but flourishing also happens with those when Jesus calls the least of these, then that is an act that will bring us shalom or act of doing the work of biblical justice. And this is what we want to lean into. And this vision is bigger than any political party it can contain. So I want encourage people to really lean into that.

Al: So when we see shalom or flourishing, even for the least of these, then we're starting to see real biblical justice in that sense. Yeah, yeah. I love that. Yeah. Yeah.

So, David, you’ve been working leading this work in reconciliation for a long time now. As you look ahead, what do you see on the horizon? What are some hopeful signs that you see in your work? Are there some maybe even some areas of caution that you've got, or concern?

David: Well, you know, we are heading into an election cycle, and it just seems to be getting worse and worse, just in what is okay, what is permissible. I mean, there’s hardly any kind of decorum. The ends justify the means. The most extremes on both sides of the party are really defined in the terms of negotiation. And it's concerning. I thank God that I don't find salvation into a flourishing political system. I mean, I have seen a flourishing political government. You know, I don't want to take that for granted.

But I want to say where I find my encouragement is that there are a lot of people of God who are saying, hey, you know, we'll pray for our presidents; we’ll pray for our public elected officials; we’ll pray for our government. But what we aren’t going to do is wait around. Like, we're going to have the church show up. We're going to have people and Christian nonprofits, we're going to have Christian business owners do the things that the world can't do. And that’s be like Christ’s hands and feet on the Earth, to be the people who are loving God and love our neighbors as Christ has loved and sacrificed for us, and as we love ourselves.

And so we want to definitely live into that, you know, particularly on this next election year, to be rooted in the Scriptures; to be rooted in healthy biblical Christian dialog; to learn how to love people, love our neighbors; to model that sacrificial love that Christ has done for us. And what's really blessed and I'm encouraged by the work that I get a chance to do, I get a chance to see the best of American Christians and see a lot of the innovative things that people are doing to engage in this work. So I want to encourage you to be encouraged and you be a part of that story instead of allowing the kind of millions and billions of dollars that is being pumped in to manipulate us to do whatever political party wants us to do.

Al: Yeah. How exciting to see the best of American Christians and really even Christians globally. That's a vision in itself. Yeah. So to be the people of God, you know, to actually show up, that's inspiring and encouraging, you know, to be the hands and feet, to go into the world, to be rooted in Scripture, to model sacrificial love. Those are easier to say than do, but important nonetheless.

Well, David, we learned so much from our conversation. Again, thank you so much. You know, I think about the conversation we've had, starting back to even talking about reconciliation. You know, examples of where you've seen reconciliation happen. You know, to know that God cares, and how can I deal with issues of fear and grief and anger and shame and still come out in reconciliation? How to really understand justice and particularly biblical justice. These are all looking ahead at the horizon. These have just been great conversations. Thanks.

Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about? Kind of a bottom line.

David: If you appreciated just the tone and tenor of this conversation and you would like to get more rooted and grounded in the Scriptures, particularly around God’s heart for reconciliation and justice, we have a study series that goes from Genesis to Revelation about God's heart for justice and reconciliation. It will help you to get more familiar with the Bible and these various movements. There's, like, eight movements of the Bible that we have broken it up into, and you get familiar. So on the app, where you can actually not only listen to the videos or listen to the content or listen to the Scriptures yourself, or you can watch it by yourself, but you also can journal in through the app for yourself, and you can share with others, and you can actually practice having civil dialog with those you’re in community with in a way—and it’s rooted around Scriptures, not on the latest political thing. So I want to encourage you to get that practice in, particularly over this next year. And yeah, just say, “Hey, how can we be different? How can we engage in conflict? How can we engage in politics? How can we engage in working towards the flourishing of our communities in a way that’s different than the world?”

Al: I love that idea, David. Thanks. You know, I know a lot of people who are looking for biblically based approaches to reconciliation, to address the topics that have become just so political and to the point where we just are afraid to even bring up or talk about it. So, yes, to have a biblical basis for justice and reconciliation, to have a real civil dialog, again, a desire that many of us have.

And I want to thank you for your contribution, David. Most of all, I appreciate your commitment to helping Christian communities pursue healing and reconciliation. And thanks for taking your time out today—I know you've been at a workshop today—and thanks for speaking into the lives of so many of our listeners.

David: Oh, thank you so much. Blessings to you, my brother.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with David Bailey, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

And you can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

If you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or you have any questions about flourishing workplace cultures, please email me at al@workplaces.org. That’s my email, al@workplaces.org.

And leaders, if you want to improve your leadership, expand your organization's impact for good, and see greater faithfulness in our broader culture, help us see more Christian-led workplaces on the road to flourishing. And to help, please share this podcast with another leader or launch a project in your organization to discover and improve the health of your workplace culture. If you're interested in learning more, please go to workplaces.org and request a sample report.

Next week, we're really honored to have David Riner back with us from Student Mobilization. David and his HR director, Stacey Howard, will be joining us as we talk about employee engagement and workplace culture at the rapidly growing ministry called Student Mobilization. We look forward to talking with you then.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al: Next week, our guests are David Riner and Stacey Howard, who will be sharing about employee engagement and workplace culture at the rapidly growing Student Mobilization. I know that you will really enjoy this dialog between the CEO of Student Mobilization, David Riner, and his director of human resources, Stacey Howard.