Transcript: Values that Guide: Building a Healthy and Christ-Centered Nonprofit Culture // Kevin East, Mentoring Alliance

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“Values that Guide: Building a Healthy and Christ-Centered Nonprofit Culture“

December 30, 2024

Kevin East

Intro: Is the key to transforming your organization's impact hidden in the lives of your staff and volunteers? Well, in today's episode, Kevin East shares how clear values, intentional mentoring, and Christ-centered leadership create thriving workplaces and with eternal impact. You'll be inspired by Kevin's journey and equipped with insights to strengthen your own team and mission.

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: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of Road to Flourishing. And my passion is to equip Christian leaders like you to create engaged, flourishing workplaces. Thanks for joining us this season as we're dedicating our Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast to the most powerful driver of a flourishing culture, and that's inspirational leadership.

I'm delighted to welcome Kevin East to the podcast today. Kevin's the president of Mentoring Alliance.

Throughout our conversation with Kevin, we’ll learn how clear organizational values drive decision making and create alignment across teams; discover the power of mentoring and developing leaders and fostering a thriving workplace culture; to gain practical strategies for integrating faith into leadership, ensuring your mission stays Christ centered; and understand how investing in staff and volunteers can multiply your organization's Kingdom impact.

I think you’re going to love this interview with Kevin East. But before we dive in, this podcast is proudly sponsored by the Best Christian Workplaces’ Employee Engagement Survey. Don't wait. Now is the perfect time to gather vital insights from your employees to assess the health of your workplace culture. In today's episode, Kevin East described how much he appreciates the Best Christian Workplace Survey for its ability to develop organizational health and keep it front and center all year long, emphasizing how it informs key decisions on communication, rewards, and overall culture care. He highlighted the importance of measuring workplace health annually and reporting progress to the board, creating accountability and ensuring the organization focuses on loving and supporting its staff. Kevin also valued BCW’s longitudinal insights, which provides a clear picture of organizational cultural growth and challenges over time, making it a crucial tool for improving both internal health and external impact. Are you ready to transform your culture? Well, visit workplaces.org to learn more and to start your journey to become a flourishing workplace today.

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

Let me tell you just a little bit more about Kevin. Kevin's the president of Mentoring Alliance, which serves children and families in East and Central Texas. The ministry includes high-quality after-school programs, summer camps, and dedicated mentoring relationships. Kevin has served as president of Mentoring Alliance for more than 10 years, and before that, he was the executive director of ministries at Pine Cove, a camping ministry in Texas. He's a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary and Louisiana State University. Kevin and his wife, Stephanie, have five children. They adopted two of their children after serving as foster parents, and they have a heart for mentoring children and providing godly love, security, and healing.

So, here’s my conversation with Kevin East.

Kevin, it’s great to have you back on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast.

Kevin East: Yeah. Great to be back with you, Al, for sure.

Al: Yeah. Well, let’s start, Kevin, talking about your mission and the program of the Mentoring Alliance, maybe even an example of the impact of your ministry and how it helps kids and their families in your area.

Kevin: You know, we like to say about Mentoring Alliance, it's kind of the succinct mission, is we want to mobilize godly people into the lives of kids and families to provide tangible help and eternal hope. And what that looks like is we mentor kids, as we say. That’s what we do. We connect godly people as part-time staff mentors through after-school programs, summer-staff counselor mentors through our summer camps, partnered with public-school districts. And we connect godly people as volunteer mentors from churches and communities with at-risk kids in their communities as well.

So a great example might be, you know, you mentioned an example. There's a long-time volunteer mentor in East Texas, a guy named Steve, who's been mentoring a young boy named Matthew for over 10 years now. And Matthew just graduated high school this spring. And this guy, Steve, and his wife, Susan, have been faithful mentors to this now man, Matthew. And Matthew and his mom would tell you he's graduated high school largely because of his mentor’s involvement.

But it's not just about graduating high school, as we both know. It's about sharing Christ with them as well and seeing hearts transformed and future transformed for all of eternity. And so that's what we do kind of in a nutshell at Mentoring Alliance.

Al: Hm, that's fantastic. And your organization’s growing, Kevin. So you're serving now in Tyler, where you started, but also Waco, and now you're expanding into Abilene, Texas. So share with us how the season of growth is going. You know, what are some of the challenges that you're facing? You know, growth brings challenges. That's fun at the same time, but it certainly brings challenges. And I noticed that you structured it in such a way that you've got an executive director and local advisory board in each of these areas. So tell us a little bit about that.

Kevin: Yeah. You know, we opened Waco in 2021. We opened Abilene last summer, in the summer of 2024. So now we serve Tyler, Waco, Abilene, in Texas, and the school districts surrounding them, about 10 different school districts now. And with each city we've moved into, we learn new lessons. You know, any time you're looking to be a faithful steward of the organization that you lead and you have the opportunity to impact more people, you're always wanting to learn as you go. And that's been the case for us. We're learning from mistakes.

One of those things we learned is we want to see a better kind of local ownership of what we do. So it doesn’t just look like Mentoring Alliance is coming to town, but it's more involving people in that community, “Hey, could this community be good for what we do? Is there a need here? Are there other people already serving needs in this way?”

And so, yeah, we hire an executive director in that community. We raise up a local advisory council, as we call it, in that community. We partner with school districts. We meet with superintendents in that community as well and the neighboring districts as well. And we seek to really kind of partner both with churches, with school districts, with local funders, and ultimately parents who entrust their kids with us in our after-school programs and our summer camps or with us just for their child of a mentor. So it takes a lot of people working together, but it's been neat to kind of learn and grow along the way as we've sought to impact kids in other cities as well.

Al: So you're a Christian faith-based organization, and you're working with school districts. Let me just ask, so what does the school district, how do they relate with you, and what encourages them to work with you?

Kevin: Yeah. So there's a national Supreme, or U.S. Supreme Court precedent, I should say, back from 2001 called the Milford Central School District v the Good News Club. And in that opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, the majority, that public schools could be used for religious purposes after hours. And so we're able to do what we do in that way. We offer Bible studies in our programs that we do. We meet on public-school campuses, but we ask parents to opt their kids into our Bible studies, optionally. About 98% of families do. And these families come from all different socioeconomic backgrounds, all different ethnic backgrounds. They're just grateful, oftentimes, that their kids need to learn about God, as they say. They want to learn about God.

And so superintendents are motivated to work with us because we actually partner with the districts to serve kids in their communities. We measure academic outcomes in a way that they're already measuring them, from standardized test scores they're taking in the fall and the spring, and we compare them with kids in our programs versus kids in their same schools, and they see, “Wow, these kids in your programs are actually doing way better than kids not in these programs.” And so more and more school districts are calling us, saying, “Hey, what would it look like for Mentoring Alliance to expand to our community as well?” So we've tried to operate in a way that’s very transparent; that we learn from mistakes; that we seek to partner, not just to come in and do our own thing, which takes us being dependent on a lot of different people, you know, a lot of different types of organizations. But so far, we continue to learn and grow together as we do it.

Al: Hard to argue with impact, isn't it? especially when, so you have mutual goals, you know, student success and A-B testing; work with the Mentoring Alliance, your students do better than if they don't. Wow. That's, yeah, that's fantastic.

So one of the FLOURISH factors that is really strong at Mentoring Alliance with your staff is uplifting growth, and you invest in your staff and your front-line people. And people feel like their supervisors, your employees feel like your supervisors care about them, that they talk with them about their progress, give them opportunities to learn and grow. These are really fantastic attributes about your staff. So what are some of the practices and programs that help your team equip supervisors and managers for positive impact?

Kevin: A few things come to mind, Al. First, you know, establishing core values of what we're looking for in the staff to bring on our team. We've even just recently re-gone through our core-values process, refining what we had, changing our previous core values to being really our philosophy of ministry, and kind of talking about these four things that we do. We want to hire people, and we charge them to love one another. Right? To serve humbly is another one. Another one we say is to get after it. And then, to do excellent work. And so it starts on the front end of trying to bring on the right people that say, “Hey, look, this is how we operate here. This is who we're looking to hire here.” People who want to love one another, who don't want to get caught up in drama or gossip or things like that, but who want to love one another, which means bearing with one another. It means forgiving one another. Being in a workplace where you're pleasant to be around, you know, you're a pleasant person to work with, that you serve humbly, that we want to give other people credit before we take credit for ourselves. Things like that. That we get after it. We still work hard, and we want to do excellent work.

So it starts at core values, but, really, I think where that key is, and surprisingly, I still talk to organizations that don't do this all that much, but it's just the idea of regular communication with your people. So one on ones, you know, organize scheduled one on ones each week with your team. We even do kind of quarterly check-in one on ones for me and other parts of the organization as well, where it's just kind of regular sit-downs. To provide council feedback, kind of talking about a vision for them, where we see them going, where they see themselves going. And it just kind of keeps us on that same page but allows them to grow. It allows them to bring up things that might be issues for them. But just that idea of regular touch points like that, I think, is a big win for us in that area.

Al: Yeah. Do you have regular one on ones? Is that a normal process, or is it more as time allows?

Kevin: No. We do regular one on ones here, so it's scheduled. So it's like with every leader, they have scheduled one on ones with each of their staff people each week. And so it can seem a little bit forced to somebody from the outside. Like, you always have a scheduled meeting? It's like, yeah, it's just a scheduled meeting. It's a one on one. And it's not long. It might be 30 minutes; it might be 45 minutes. But it's the idea of just that regular touch point, and it's a way for us to be able to care for our staff and communicate well with them.

Al: So you described, you just went through your core values, created them. Tell us a little bit. You know, many leaders are saying, “Okay. So how do you do that?” How did you go about creating these four unique, specific core values to love one another, serve humbly, get after it—I love the way you described that—and, you know, do excellent work. How did you go about creating those at Mentoring Alliance?

Kevin: You know, I've been leading this ministry for 12 years, and the 12 years we created some core values. As we looked at them recently, we realized these values are more about the organization, and those values are Christ centered, biblically grounded, grace based, excellence driven, multiethnic. And as we looked at those, we’re, like, this described really our philosophy of ministry, which is what we changed that to be. We changed it from being our core values to being our philosophy of ministry.

Then, we really started to talk about as an executive team, and we included other levels in the organization as well, like, what do we look for in people here? Like, what are y’all thinking? What are y’all thinking? We kept narrowing and narrowing and narrowing, and we created a task force, again, a multilevel task force, to really kind of say, okay, let's really continue to kick this around some. And then, we landed on those four areas that love one another is something you see talked about in Scripture a lot. It's a big, bold statement. So with each of those four things we have, like, which is what's really helpful, Al, with it, is we have some descriptors, like three or four or five bullet points of what we mean by “love one another.” And then, we have the antagonist, the anti value we call it, that describes a few things as well. So, like, “love one another,” the anti value would be gossip. It would be holding grudges, things like that.

So we try to describe both aspects just to make it crystal clear this is how we want to work together here. And I think people have appreciated it. So they're not even hung on the wall yet. They’re just something we talk about. We use them in our performance reviews as well. We give out awards based on them to keep them alive, kind of a bunch of different areas.

Al: Yeah. I love the integration. Then, also, you said you do awards, you talk about them, they're integrated into your performance review already, and even before they're up on the wall.

Kevin: Yeah.

Al: That’s great, Kevin. Yeah. Thanks for that feedback.

A lot of the work you do is through volunteers, I know. And so, many of our Best Christian Workplace ministry partners also depend on volunteers to extend the impact of their ministry. So how does your team, then, recruit and train volunteers? I'm sure these core values are part of it. But how do you do that, and what's challenging, what’s hopeful as you work in this area of volunteer recruitment and management?

Kevin: Well, let me broaden the term volunteer, if I could, a little bit, because we hire many, many summer staff each summer from college campuses. We hire part-time staff in the communities that we serve. And we recognize they don't have to work with us. They could oftentimes make more money somewhere else than working with us. And so although we pay them, we see our summer staff, our part-time staff, our full-time staff, and our true volunteers, probably all of that same lens of they're volunteering to be here with us.

Trends that we see if you look at kind of half a dozen one way, half dozen the other, there are some people who want to live life with impact in mind, the front of their mind, not their own personal comfort. And there are others who really are led in life by their own personal comfort, not by making an impact. And so we recognize any time you go into a church to recruit people, there's going to be people not that just don't want to volunteer with us, but maybe we just don't want to volunteer anywhere. That's just not really—they haven't kind of gotten the memo, I'll call it, that God has rescued us. He’s restored us. He's redeemed us. And He's made us ministers of reconciliation, the Bible calls it in 2 Corinthians chapter five. And that idea of being an ambassador of His is something that we look for in people that are going to be working with us here. Like, “Hey, look, this is what this is about. This is about building the Kingdom here on Earth, and this is how you can do it through Mentoring Alliance.” It's not about building the name or the brand Mentoring Alliance; it's about being used by God to build His Kingdom here and to show His Kingdom here. Compassion, what it looks like, love and mercy and grace, all those great attributes of God. And so we look for those people who say, “You know what? Man, Lord send me. Here I am; send me.” And the messages that we promote are not a simplistic or an easy version of volunteerism, but more of, like a, hey, look, this is a big ask. You know, we recognize this is a time commitment, and it's about kind of denying your own pleasures or time spent, but more being used by God to make an impact. And so that's who we look for: people who want to make an impact.

Al: Amen. That's for sure. And busy people are busy people. And those are the kind that you oftentimes want to get involved. I love the way you described that. Thanks.

Now, let's come back to this impact. And you just even described it again as those are the kind of people you're looking for. You know, here at Best Christian Workplaces we're all about data-driven practices, and we do surveys and statistical research on that data. And you do a lot of and experience a lot of intangible benefits from mentoring. But also, you're able to measure the impact that you're having. So share with us some of the tangible results that you're seeing in your ministry. And how do you see having a healthy workplace culture actually impact the quality of your ministry?

Kevin: Yeah. We measure a lot of things, Al, as you can imagine. I've heard it described, you can measure inputs, you can measure outputs, you can measure outcomes, you can ultimately measure impact; and we want to be measuring all four of those things. So weekly we're measuring inputs of what are we doing that we think will lead to the right outputs? And so what are we doing that might get more mentors or mentees in our programs? That's an output. There's more of them. But then, the outcomes become a little bit more tricky. Okay, how do you measure things that are more difficult or broader or bigger?

And so we've hired outside companies to come in to measure. They take standardized test scores from kids in our programs, compare them with peers from their same schools, to recognize kids in our programs are doing better. But we're also measuring things that have to do with social-emotional learning, that if kids aren't safe, they can't learn. And so if they don’t feel safe, they can’t learn. A lot of kids have come from trauma, from challenging circumstances as we call it. Their brains have what Dr. Karyn Purvis referred to as, like, a disconnected brain. The physiology in their brain, the synapses just aren't firing together. And so that's going to result in tears and tantrums and things like that. And so we want to measure how safe the kids feel in our care. Do they feel comfortable to try new things and fail? Things like that, that are softer things.

But then, we ultimately measure inputs like, how many times are we sharing the Gospel? So last year we self-reported that we—and through our measurements—we measured over 17,000 times we were able to share the Gospel with kids in our programs. And with hundreds of kids coming to Christ is a result, which was something we were really excited by, especially with the kids that we’re serving in public schools, we recognize going to church these days is optional for people, but going to work isn't. And so for them to go to work, oftentimes, they need their child a place to be that allows them to work past the school day. And so we feel honored they entrust us to that. And then, we measure all those different things, again, hoping to see impact as a result.

Al: Sharing the Gospel 17,000 times in a year. That's a lot of impact, no question. Or maybe outcome is the right word.

Okay. So how does having a healthy workplace culture, then, translate into good outcomes?

Kevin: You know, Al, we were talking before, and we realized that we've been measuring through BCW now for nine years. I mean, that is wild to think about. And we were a vastly different organization than we were nine years ago through you and your team’s help. Cary, on your team, is a fantastic man and friend. He’s become a consultant over the years but a friend of me and how we do here. So being healthy is even something we put in kind of our vision statements now. We want to have a healthy, impactful, growing impact that we're making on communities. But we've added the word healthy in there because we recognize that without being healthy, it's kind of all for naught. If we're not loving our own people here, and starting with making sure it begins with that, then we just kind of feel like we're skipping over the people that we're around the most.

So for us, every year the BCW Survey, for us, it just keeps it front of mind all year, through decisions we're making, how should we communicate this?, how do we reward people? All those different things, we see it as just of utmost importance to make sure that we're healthy.

And look, every year we measure it, and every year I report to the board our results. We bring our HR lady, our VP of people, as we call her, and she reports to the board. We look at a longitudinal study, here's where we've been; here's where we are. And I love the accountability that brings for me as the leader of the organization of, you know, are we really caring for our people well?, which has been very helpful for us.

Al: So caring for your people, your staff, translates into even more effective work with those that you're serving. That's what I hear. Yeah.

Yeah. So I've been talking on this podcast with leaders this fall and winter, focusing on inspirational leadership. And in your own leadership journey, are there some specific practices or habits that keep you on track and following Jesus in every aspect of leadership? How do you build, for example, your own character as a leader, and what keeps you moving forward in leadership? I know you've been through personal hard seasons; ministry, hard seasons. How do you keep things going in a positive forward direction?

Kevin: Yeah. You know, I mean, you hear about this a lot, but I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago and had the joy of going through all the treatment and things like that. And I praise God that I’m healthy today, and grateful for that. And in that season, you begin to learn how important Christ-centered friendships are. When we told our best friends that I had cancer, I remember his response was, “We want to get together every day now to hear how you're feeling and how you're doing.” And, Al, that was coming up, or just past four years ago that we've been still getting together almost every day in the afternoons and just catching up as couples. So I think Christ-centered community’s really key. I know it's been a huge blessing to me as I've gotten older. Christ-centered community has been all the more important for me and my sanity.

Being in God's Word is always one of those, how do I be in His Word, but in a way where it doesn't feel duty filled? It just feels like that He has the words of life, you know? And that's the only thing that's going to replenish me or satisfy me or fill me. And so that's an important time.

Maybe the last couple of things I would say, the idea of always having an outlet. For us in ministry, it's easy to kind of let your job be your ministry, but not really outside of that. And so even for our family, serving together as foster parents has been a sweet part of our spiritual journey of when kids show up at our house in the middle of the night, and our kids are excited to welcome them and greet them, I think they're partaking in the Kingdom of God right there in our own house, that they're seeing our house become a manifestation of the Kingdom of God. And so having that outlet to serve, not just in your workplace but together with your family, I think has been a really, really key thing for us, so that, then, as we're on mission together, it's enjoyable and satisfying.

And then, as you can imagine, with all that going on, just the idea of Sabbath and a regular—and my high school senior is writing a paper right now, is what is the negative impact of not living a life in rhythm? And he's talking about spiritual rhythms and physical rhythms and emotional rhythms. And so whether it be things like sleep—that we recognize the rhythm of sleep is a gift, and we need to take God up on that gift—but also the season, the rhythm of detachment and of unplugging and of, for me, mowing the grass, Al. I love mowing the grass. I love making my front yard look really nice. So that is such a Sabbath practice for me is just enjoying taking care of my grass. So things like that.

Al: It's great to see progress, isn’t it, to see when you mow that lawn, you can tell it's been mowed, right? Yeah.

Kevin: I just love it. That's right.

Al: Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Well, those are great ways to keep balanced and to keep, you know, really healthy as a leader. No question. Thanks for sharing. That's fantastic.

Well, let's also talk about your senior leadership team. What have you been learning about building a strong team and encouraging each member of your team to keep growing themselves as leaders, both in character and competence and the way they work together? So are there some key or particular practices that you employ with your senior leadership team to help them stay engaged and to build their own leadership?

Kevin: Yeah. I wouldn't say, Al, we didn't do this for about my first eight years or so here, sadly to say. And so this is relatively new for us, maybe we've been doing this for four or five years. But quarterly getaways together as a leadership team have been just—I don't know. It’s been very impactful for us. We get away for two days. It's time for social time. You know, we'll go to dinner together, maybe go play Topgolf together, things like that. Just different fun things. We've got on Christmas-light tours together and carriage rides. We've bowled together. We've done all sorts of things together. But then, also, during the day, there's time for prayer. There's time for planning for the next quarter. Also, considering the yearly goals. We have the three-year goals. But that rhythm of getting away as a team. We, obviously, meet once a week as well, in our key meetings. We have staff chapel together, things like that. But when it comes to our leadership team, having that quarterly getaway, where it's just us, to be together, to eat together, play together, pray together, plan together, it's just been really transformative for us here, for sure.

Al: That's great. I mean, relationships are really critical. And how about practices for encouraging growth, Kevin?

Kevin: With each of them, we're constantly sharing ideas, of books they're reading, podcasts we're listening to. I encourage taking kind of spiritual days of reflection, where, hey, look, just take a day off, or you're not even taking a day off—it's just a work day—but go be alone and just pray and plan and think and decompress. But just time to evaluate.

I remember Dr. Howard Hendricks told us years and years ago, you know, that just because he's been a teacher for 50 years at the seminary doesn't mean he's been a good teacher. And his point was the key was evaluation. He said, you know, his words back then, if I remember it correctly, were, you know, he evaluated one hour per week, one day per month, and one week per year that he would spend time in evaluation. Like, how am I spending my time? How am I doing this? And I encourage our leadership team as well to be doing something similar in the sense of just spiritual getaways, times of evaluation, times of reflection, things like that.

Al: Yeah. Speaking of evaluation, have you had much experience with 360s?

Kevin: We have. Y’all helped us do 360s. The team’s done it on me before. We've done it at times, kind of like a laser. We want to really get to the bottom of something, so we might do a 360 on an individual for a core purpose. But BCW’s 360’s been very, very thorough and very helpful for us. But just the idea of a 360, of getting people around each individual. Every year now, when we do our reviews, we ask three to five different kind of colleagues around them, some laterally to them, some people that they lead, and some people that are their leader. And they all kind of combine some feedback, which ends up being a lot of loving comments, honestly, a lot of encouraging things. But sometimes you'll see a trend here or there of, like, “Hey, look, this is something to look out for. A couple of people have mentioned this.” But just the idea of getting that kind of feedback from all around you is very helpful.

Al: Yeah. That’s great.

You know, we hear a lot about mental-health challenges, and it's one of the questions I want to ask you is because you're dealing so much with this generation of young people who are dealing with loneliness or social-media pressures or family issues and more. So as you look in the future, what makes you hopeful about the possibilities for growth in this upcoming generation that you're working with? And how about an example of some young people your team invests in by helping them as young leaders among their peers? And then, what are some of the issues that you and your staff are praying for and asking God to intervene in with this next generation?

Kevin: Yeah. You know, Al, I believe it's a great opportunity for those of us in ministry to be impacting people because I think—I mean, obviously, there's a book, The Anxious Generation, just recently released on this this past year, just how isolating the impact of social media is and digital world, how hard it is on kids’ brains. And I think kids, these days, are aching for real relationships. And so they're looking for real people to invest in them, real people to connect with. So, like, for us, we’ve started a Gen Next program, we call it. It's just younger leaders that we've invited into a program. In fact, I just got to speak to them this past Saturday. They come in on Saturday mornings from nine until one. I mean, they're spending their Saturday mornings with us, Al. I mean, these young people, young college kids. You know, this past week we were talking about everything from professionalism in the workplace to how do you network all of this, just kind of some soft skills that maybe they're not taught in their colleges or whatever, but it's our way of investing in them. And they're eager to be a part of it. You know, I mean, they spend four hours with us on a Saturday to do that.

So it's things like that that we recognize young people today are eager to connect with people. They're eager for real relationships. We want to capitalize on that, meet them in that place; form a relationship with them; share Christ with them, yes, but also share our lives. You know, 1 Thessalonians 2:8, we always quote on here, it's how we define mentoring, when Paul says, “We were well pleased to impart to you not only the Gospel of God, but our very own lives.” And that's how we see mentoring: sharing the Gospel of God and our very own lives at the same time.

Al: One of the issues is identity in Christ. Share with us how you help your students in that aspect, you know, grounding them.

Kevin: That's right. When you talk about identity, you know, our staff, we had a very transformative situation happen here years ago. There was a lot of civil unrest across America, a lot of chants and slogans, things like “black lives matter” or “blue lives matter” or “all lives matter,” and things like that. And we had a young leader on our team, who happened to be an African American guy, who was wanting to communicate into his community, as he would call it, and he wasn't wanting to get sucked into any kind of national narrative. He didn't want his words to be misconstrued to mean something that he didn't. But he also saw the hurt on these young African American kids in the community that he was from. And so in our summer-camp programs, Al, he went out and literally bought an off-red-colored carpet, like a maroon-colored carpet. He set it out front of one of our summer-camp locations, and he took a sandwich board, and he just wrote on one side, “God loves you,” then the other sandwich board, he wrote, “You matter.” In other words, “I'm not going to be sucked into some national narrative of ‘black lives matter,’ ‘blue lives matter,’ ‘all lives matter.’ I just want you to know that you've been created in the image of God and have immense value. Solely because of that, you matter.”

And, Al, his faithfulness as a young leader in our organization turned everything around. We bought red carpets for all of our summer-camp locations, and every day, when kids come into our summer camps, they literally walk the red carpet, and staff are there to cheer for them or to fake like they're paparazzi, still with signs that say “God loves you,” and “You matter,” and His identity narrative for us, that you've been created in the image of God, and for that reason, you matter. It doesn’t matter how much money you have or don't have, how many parents you have or don't have, you have been created in the image of an Almighty God and, therefore, you have value. From there, we want to share with them the truth of Jesus and what His finished work on this world has done. And we hope to see them begin a relationship with Christ as a result. But it begins with an identity statement as they come into our programs is that you matter.

Al: You matter. Wow.

And when you think about what you're praying for, as you see needs in this generation, what comes to mind?

Kevin: We're praying oftentimes for the hearts of the kids that we serve. I was talking to a mentor this past week and has been mentoring a boy faithfully for eight or nine years, and that boy was just arrested. And it was a reminder of his story's not finished. How many of us did stupid things in high school, even with two-parent homes or from middle-income backgrounds? And here we have the additional challenges of poverty—financial poverty, that is—of single-parent homes, things like that. It's, like, kids make bad decisions, but it's not the end of their story. And so we're constantly praying for hearts to be changed. We're praying for new communities to open for us. Like, okay, what are other communities that what we do could fit in that community? There's a need in that community. Would you raise up champions in those communities, that they might hear about Mentoring Alliance and say, “Hey, we want to talk to you about expanding here.” We're praying for those opportunities as well. But it all comes back to seeing kids’ hearts changed.

A friend of mine says, “We know how long your kids will live for—they’ll live for all of eternity. So parent them with eternity in mind.” And so we think the same thing with the kids that we get to serve. They're going to live for all of eternity. So we want to lead them, walk with them, share Christ with them, with eternity in mind as we do that.

Al: Fantastic.

Well, Kevin, this has just been a great conversation. Thanks so much for sharing with us. You know, as we even go back to the tangible ministry impact that you're seeing, vibrant faith, academic success, emotional resilience, you mentioned those. The growth challenges that you've got, so many ministry leaders are experiencing those same growth challenges. So congratulations on seeing new communities that you're moving into, and it's just really exciting. And then, you said something that really struck me. You said it a couple of times. We learn from our mistakes. And isn't that the best humble position to be in is to say, “Yeah. We learn from our mistakes, and let's continue to have that attitude”? Appreciate your insight into being a great supervisor and how you train your middle managers, your supervisors, to give regular feedback. And I love that conversation on core values and how it was time for you, you felt, to come back, and why you had originally core values that were really ministry principles. It was time to go with the next step. And as you've been in ministry, what is it that is important to you? And to love one another, to serve humbly, to get after it, to do excellent work. That's just fantastic. And then, we talked about measurement and our own leadership development, how you've worked so well with your leadership team and even this next generation. So this has been a great and rich conversation.

Is there anything you'd like to add that we've talked about?

Kevin: It's always good to talk with you. I would tell you I just really am grateful for y’all as an organization, for BCW. You've come alongside us for years. You know, I've gotten to learn the big circles and the small circles and the difference between them over the years, and what really moves the needle and culture. And every year, it seems like, more and more—it seems elusive, some years. Like, hey, we're trying. But you always keep it top of mind for us. And so I do appreciate y’all coming alongside us. And the great consultants that you have, like we talked about, Cary, just how he’s been with us for all nine years, I believe. I mean, how helpful that’s been. Y’all’ve seen us through, and so thank you for all that you've done for us.

Al: It's been a pleasure. And it's just thrilling for us to see that, yep, you're taking what we say personally and positively and to see the growth that you've been able to experience as an organization and seeing more and more of your students come to faith and excel in their lives as they grow. So, Kevin, thanks so much for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to serving God's Kingdom by mobilizing godly people into the lives of kids and families. Thanks so much, and thanks for taking your time out today and speaking in the lives of so many listeners.

Kevin: Thank you, Al. Good to be with you.

Al: Thanks so much for listening to my conversation with Kevin East. 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.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing cultures, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And keep listening to our weekly podcast as we continue to learn from leaders who are proven inspirational leaders exhibiting Christian character and excellence in their leadership.

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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.

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