VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Speaker 1:
I feel like it’s half circumstance and half choice. You still have the ability to go out and go to school and go to work if that’s what you really want to do to pull yourself out of poverty. But as far as like being born into it, that’s kind of out of our hands.

Speaker 2:
In my opinion I don’t think it’s usually a choice, but it definitely can be.

Speaker 3:
I think it’s all about your will to work. Your determination sometimes.

Speaker 4:
Some people choose to stay in that life form and some people choose to seek help and seek the steps to getting out of it.

Speaker 1:
I think we need a lot of more people to lift people up and to walk with them through their situations to get them out of poverty.

Andrew Green:
What other questions have you guys heard from people asking if they maybe do have a misconception or they just are interested in learning more? Go ahead.

Phil Edwards:
Yeah. Yeah. I think over the years of interfacing with volunteers who are willing to impact poor people’s lives, they ask questions such as why are women having multiple kids by different men and that always seems to be the normal question. And then, when I share about my past of growing up in poverty and the Lord just pouring into my life through his people, and people ask, “So how did you get out?” How was it possible for you, experiencing poverty, losing my dad. My dad was murdered when I was 10 years old, and the question of we know that people are in poverty for generations and how was that you were able to get out of it. So, that’s a major question that people ask me based on my history.

Andrew Green:
Yeah.

Tim Streett:
And what’s your answer?

Phil Edwards:
Yeah. It’s the grace of God. It is God using people whom he’s raised up to pour into my life and have established life on life relationships. And of course, another part of that has been, I have the willingness to take advantage of opportunities. So poor people do not always have access to a better life, to better resources, and I was one of the ones, one of the fortunate ones, not only that God send people to me, but I was willing to embrace and to do life with folk that wanted to help me. So I had a part to play.

Tim Streett:
Yeah. Yeah. I actually use your story occasionally when I talk about a friend of mine. And I remember you telling your story in detail and talking about the one particular gentleman who worked for one organization and how he poured his life into you. And I tell people all the time, nothing happens outside of a relationship, no significant learning, no significant growth. And anytime I meet somebody that’s broken the cycle of poverty, that’s truly from generational poverty. One, it’s usually a person I admire because they’ve done more than I have with the opportunities that they’ve had, I think.

Tim Streett:
But invariably, I’ve never heard a story that didn’t have one person, sometimes two, sometimes three, that made a difference. It was this person, it could be a teacher, but, but only if that teacher really has a long-term relationship with the child, and it could be an uncle, it could be an aunt, it could be a friend, it could be somebody who just loves the Lord and is committed to pouring himself into other people, but ultimately it’s about relationships.

Phil Edwards:
Absolutely.

Tim Streett:
And you don’t meet somebody who’s broken the cycle of poverty unless they’ve had that in their lives. Sometimes it’s just a mother who just says I’m not going to let you fail.

Phil Edwards:
And I think within those relationships, it’s quite challenging. You have to be in it for the long haul. It gets rough at times. And honestly, poor people in general, anyone in general I think, I would say they don’t trust people that they don’t know. And so you have to build some relational capital. And that means you got to spend some time doing some hard life with them. And sometimes they don’t want to talk to you or sometime they don’t trust you. And they don’t feel like you have their best interest at heart and you have to work. You have to weather the storms. And as you are able to show that you are committed to working with the poor or walking with the poor, then they open up to feeling more comfortable about sharing their pains and then they allow you to come a little closer into their world.

Phil Edwards:
But I also think it’s important for there to be some reciprocity where there’s some exchange, where even those who were helping the poor could be vulnerable to say that, “Hey, you know what, I don’t have it all together.” And I think poor people need to see that so they don’t see themselves as a project, or someone’s someone’s pet project, if you will. But being able to say, “Hey, you’re you have struggles just like I have struggles and how can we do life together?” I think that is so important.

Tim Streett:
Yeah. I remember when we first moved, back to your first point, when we first moved into the Martindale Brightwood neighborhood, we were white people moving into a predominantly, almost all, African-American community, a poor community. And there was an incident that we’d lived there for six months and my son had just been born and a bullet came through the house and it scared us, as you might imagine. And my wife, who’s always the first to remind me that Satan exists, said it’s just Satan trying to scare us away. And after lots of existential angst and stuff, we decided to stay. Years later… And I didn’t tell anybody in the neighborhood about it, but there was one boy from the ministry who was at the house that day. Well, years later we found out that he had told everybody in the neighborhood about this bullet that came through the Streett’s house.

Tim Streett:
And his mother told us years later that everybody in the neighborhood was always talking about us and just sort of had this informal bet about how long we’d stick around. When they heard about the bullet, they were all like, well they’re leaving tomorrow. And she said, then the moving truck didn’t show up. And she said, that’s when you got accepted by the neighborhood.

Phil Edwards:
Instant credibility.

Tim Streett:
Instant credibility, but it was investment. I’m here no matter what happens and I’m going to live my… And that’s what that ministry was all about, which is I’m going to make my personal interest the same as the personal interest of my neighbor. So as I advocate for my kids for better schools, I’m advocating for better schools for my neighbor’s kids. And when I can tie my interests into your interests, then I can act selfishly. I can act like a normal parent would want to because not only am I helping my own children, I’m helping my neighbor’s children as well.

Tim Streett:
But we got that capital that I think what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good. And we developed that capital with our neighbors because we didn’t leave.

Phil Edwards:
And it goes a long way.

Tim Streett:
Yeah.

Andrew Green:
It takes a long time sometimes.

Phil Edwards:
Oh, it does.

Tim Streett:
Oh it does, yeah.

Andrew Green:
I’ve been mentoring a kid for almost eight years and he’s still… I think trust is still an issue. But what we tell a lot of our mentors in the program is the fact that you come every week and show up and hang out makes a ton of difference. So even if he’s not saying it, and he’s not thanking you for coming, I’ll ask questions and, “What are you getting in my business for?” It’s like, “Because I care about you and I want to find out about you.” But it’s just that long-term relationship like you were saying. Any relationship has to be over a long period of time.

Andrew Green:
And the other thing that stood out to me when you were talking was that everybody has something to contribute. And I think when it’s the reciprocity that you talked about, and I think that’s a huge part of someone breaking the cycle is realizing that they have something to give back. And it’s not all one sided, I’m taking, somebody is going to come give me everything, but I have something to give back. And sometimes it’s something monetarily, sometimes it’s volunteering, but I’ve just seen that breakthrough happen with some people when even kids that are doing service projects, kids at Shepherd are doing service projects and they’re collecting food bags for kids at another school in the neighborhood and maybe those food bags are usually going to them, but in this case, they get to give back. And I think that’s a huge switch in mindset.

Phil Edwards:
It gives them value. It helps them to know that they have something to bring to the table and that they are contributors. And that’s important to know. It helps with their identity, with who they are in Christ, in their family, in their neighborhood.

Tim Streett:
I remember when Shepherd first wanted… We wanted to make sure we served milk to all the kids at the academy and we didn’t have a source. And we started asking the parents to bring a gallon of milk a week and I just remember how much pride they had walking that in because they were contributing. I mean, they were paying for the school, not much obviously, but then there was more that they could add. Your earlier point reminded me of a story Dan Fuller told, I remember, about one of the first mentors at Shepherd that he matched with a kid who came to him and said I’ve gone to this house. I’ve set up a time to pick up the kid five times and all five times I rang the doorbell and nobody’s home.

Tim Streett:
And Dan said just keep going back. And eventually the kid was home one of the times and the mentor said later he found out that the kid had been home every time peeking through the curtains and he realized it was just a test. Are you going to keep showing up? But he passed the test and he earned his trust. Well, I don’t know if it was complete trust, but he certainly earned that capital that this guy’s going to keep showing up so I might as well go do something with him.

Andrew Green:
Absolutely. Good story.