Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
That is sparking creativity among our students to say, all right,
I've harmed. What do I have to do to help
repair that harm? And that's when some guys years ago said,
you know what, a lot of us have been pretty
violent against women. What do we do? We would like
to grow vegetables and donate the vegetables to organization that
(00:26):
work with abuse women. And I'm like, Okay, great idea.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney.
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. In the last part, somehow well, it
led to an oscar for the film about our team.
It's called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems are never
(00:58):
going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people
in nice suits using big words that nobody understands on
CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of normal folks.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's us, just you and me.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Looking around in our neck of the woods and saying, hey,
you know what I can help. That's what Todd Chaffey,
the voice you just heard, has done these students that
are doing this beautifully redemptive thing are prisoners. Todd is
the founding director of the Calvin Prison Initiative, a credited
(01:32):
bachelor's degree program that's now inside of a Michigan prison,
and one that's not only transformed their students' lives, but
most fascinating is how it's completely transformed the culture inside
of Michigan's prisons. I cannot wait for you to meet
Todd right after these brief messages from our general sponsors. Hey, everybody,
(02:12):
through a set of strange circumstances that I'm actually a
little bit embarrassed about and angry about because I didn't
get to handle this one. Our executive producer Alex Cortez
ended up hosting this particular episode, and he did a
great job, which is not surprising since he's probably conducted
two hundred interviews of his own in a former life.
(02:35):
So you'll hear about all that and why during the episode.
But to tease it a little bit, given you're hearing
my voice right now, I am alive. Let's go to Alex.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
All right, guys, as you know, this is not Bill
Courney's voice. We were twenty five minutes past our recording time. Sorry,
this makes it sound super promast. I hope Bill is okay.
I'm guessing either at a car racket he's not, or
something serious has happened with his company that he's got
to deal with. So this is the first time that
I am what She actually made me super pissed about.
(03:13):
He walks in here in the next five minutes. But Todd,
I'm so sorry that you're stuck here with me today.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Oh no, it's a tree, all right.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
So chod choffee, choffee, I get it right, Yes, sir,
it's kind of a weird pronunciation for cio.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
FFI's Italian and the ci gets a chuff. Okay, So
I often say coffee with a chu, yeah choffee.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
His Bill will always say welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, thank you very much.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Do you like to Actually I didn't ask you on
the drive over. Did you like the arrive hotel?
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I did. It's a great hotel. It's got a great
vibe about guitar player and so on the bedstand was
a little bluetooth Minie Marshall head. Yeah that I woke
up and could play my music to this one.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, great hotel.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Nice all right? Well, usually we'll start with people's childhood, Todd,
So tell me a little bit about yours. Where you
grew up, your parents, your community, how did those things
shake your life.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
So I grew up in Holland, Michigan, which is on
the west side of Michigan, Tulip capital of the world.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
People don't know what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
So it's it's as the name implies, it was settled
by Dutch folk in the mid nineteenth century named it Holland.
And I'm half Dutch, half Italian. And so my mother
grew up there and it's right on Lake Michigan basically,
and she worked in some resorts on Lake Michigan. But
(04:39):
the resort owner also had resorts in New York State,
and so he said, if any of you want to
go to New York State for the summer, you can
work out at those resorts out there. So she did.
And my father, his parents first generation from Italy, were
are there in Albany, New York, and that's where they met.
So they got married. I had my two older brothers.
(05:01):
They moved back to Holland and that's where I was born.
In Holland, Michigan. So I grew up in Holland still
in the same house. My mom owns the same house
all these years later, and it is the Tulip capital.
When I was a kid, the Tulip Time Parade on
the Saturday which ends the Tulip Festival was the fourth
largest festival in the country.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
Really, yeah, And how many tulips and how many people
come to.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
The oh my word, back in the day it would
shut the city down, all these buses and everything. And
you could go to tulip farms where you get on
observation decks and there's just as far as the eye
can see tulips.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
There's like one hundred. I mean, I've read it before.
There's like hundreds of thousands of tulips.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Hundreds of thousands of tulips, and you wouldn't believe how
many varieties. And you can go to a wooden shoe
factory and they actually have a windmill that was given
by the Queen of the Netherlands back in the day.
And it's all.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
Dutch, all right, So giving you some Dutch again, I
can't help myself, but hanging around your tie of Grand Raptors,
I was telling you drive it over. Yeah, I've heard
all the jokes like if you.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Ain't Dutch much in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Uh, there's actually a really inappropriate one that I'll tell anyway.
Someone you know too said a dutch Man would rather
be caught cheating on his wife than home at two
pm not working.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yes, it's just like that is very true. That's very true. Uh.
So what was interesting, though, is my father Italian Catholic,
my mother Dutch Dutch Reformed, Okay, and uh, you don't
put those two together, right, but they were. And so
(06:36):
I've reflect back on that experience and I realized that
already in my household at a very young age, there
was significant religious diversity. I mean significant at the time,
because there was some Dutch Reformed folk who didn't even
believe Catholics were Christian right, and and so my father
had to navigate that, but so did we, as the
(06:57):
children and so as I got were interested in the church.
In probably junior high. By then, my mom had left
the Dutch Reform tradition and now is going to a
Baptist church. And so here I am, you know, having
some Dutch Reformed influence, Catholic influence, now Baptist. And then
(07:18):
by the time I graduated high school. I was going
to a central a Wesleyan church that basically functioned as
a non denominational church. But I realized at the time
I didn't like it because I thought it was confusing. Yeah,
it was confusing. However, I realized now that it prepped
me for what would end up being a lifetime of
working in highly diverse contexts. Religious for sure, but then
(07:43):
eventually racial, class, you name it. And so it is
one of those things where I look back on my
life and see what I'm doing now. Working in a
prison is an incredibly diverse environment, and I realized, oh
my goodness, all those years actually prepped me for this.
It makes sense to me. So being in a diverse setting,
it seems normal.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
And I want to save this more for later. But
I was surprised prepping last night too that you guys
had a Musslim man in your program and we can
talk about it more in a bit, So let's wait
for it.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yeah, we're just teasing people. Heal a little bit with.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
There is well, and we can tease them this way too.
So what I discover and people don't realize this. People
assume they know.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
The Christian program.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Yeah, a Christian program. But everybody's in prison, so people
have an image because of the media of who's in prison.
And I've met every type of person you can imagine
in prison, and prisons are incredibly diverse places, which good
and bad. Makes it hard. But at the same time, Uh,
(08:46):
these guys have to figure out a way to get along.
They have to. They don't have choices because there's bars
around them and there's walls. And they do a much
better job eventually living with diversity and getting along than
we do when we're so called free.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Any challenges in your childhood, barriers, obstacles, things you got through,
or other lessons that parents or other people influential in
the community taught you.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, So growing up Holland, Michigan, not only was the
home to the largest tulip festival in the US, but
it also had a Hinz pickle company and the Hinds
Corporation would make pickles and we could smell it. And
because of that, there were a lot of farms around
the area and so they could grow the cucumbers and
(09:32):
whatnot and then they've become pickles. It attracted a lot
of Latino folks from the South, mostly Texas and they'd
come up, and so growing up I had a lot
of Latino friends. However, there was real segregation and racism
when it came to that, and so the neighborhoods were
(09:55):
completely split, schools were split, and some of my family
looked down on my having Latino friends. And when you're
younger at the elementary school, and when you're that age,
you don't know. You just know that you like so
and so, and you have fun and you do your thing.
(10:17):
And I would begin to appreciate that as I got
older in terms of family members some neighbors, I realized, Wow,
they're really actually quite racist, and they support segregation. And
then when I learned about the Civil Rights movement, as
I got older.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
Yeah, we should say, to what ye are we talking about?
Speaker 1 (10:39):
These are the nineteen seventies. And by the time I
was old enough to learn about and understand the Civil
Rights movement, I thought, oh, my goodness, I kind of
get that because that was my town. That was my town.
You just didn't mix with these Latino folks. Some of
them didn't speak English for well, and so they'd be
(11:00):
ridiculed for that. And there's all derogatory names and they're Catholic,
and literally I had some friends that went to the
Catholic church just blocks from my house, and I had
some family members just kind of wag their finger at
all that, and that ingrained in me, I think, a sensibility.
(11:21):
I didn't know to call it at this time, but justice.
What does justice entail? And again, especially because the town
was so Christian from these Dutch folk, a Dutch Reform
Dutch Christian people, and yet it was clear to me
that on just a basic level, they weren't living out
a Christian life if it means treating these other people
(11:45):
who are actually, you know, let's face it, making your pickles.
They're farming, They're picking all the stuff out of your
farms around you. They're doing all the manual labor that
you don't want to do.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Probably had something to do with tulips too, Yeah, right.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
They probably did. And I remember just seeing a lot
of yard crews that were Latino and I didn't think
anything of it as a kid, but then I realized later,
oh my gosh, you know, they're mowing white people's lawns.
And so I began to reinterpret that experience the older
I got, especially when I got to college, as an
issue of civil rights and lo and behold throughout my career.
(12:21):
Then I ended up working I've ended up working in
a lot of urban areas with African American communities, and
it just made sense. It made sense because I could
easily identify Now, I couldn't identify as a white person
per se, but I could identify as a white person
about what white people do. And I had to learn
(12:42):
how to own that and be sensitive to that and
allow the other to be my teacher on how best
to overcome these things.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
You talk to your parents about that, and what did
they say, I have, Well, like back then as a.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
Kid, Yeah, I think when I got more to high school,
and those are hard conversations because you want to be
able to say, hey, Mom or Dad, I noticed you
use these derogatory names, and they kind of brush it off. Well,
I'm not racist, I'm not I'm not being mean. I
mean I don't really mean anything by it. And so
(13:19):
to this day, with some family members, including my mother,
really there's a denial. There's simply a denial. And I
had to come to terms with that. And then I
think what it did for me is it made me
realize I don't want to be a denier, I just
have to own it. And as white folks, there's a
(13:40):
history here and if things are going to change, those
who have most of the power and most of the
position have to.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
Change another big one and then let's move on. But people,
even people around me in Oxford who I like and
otherwise you know, get along with really well, say retail
and retarded a lot. Yes, and it just bothers the
hell out of me.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
I've interviewed enough families with kids assism and down syndrome. Yes,
and how that you know, offends them, hurts them, that's
their child. And yet people say, well, I'm not using
it in that way, and it's just like, why are
you throwing that out.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
There exactly into the world and exactly And so it's
it's from the little things about why I don't mean
that word in that way. It doesn't matter what you mean,
it's offensive or to find the supporting structural problems. And
that's for me where my college and graduate training really
helped a lot for me to better understand.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And now a few messages from our gender sponsors. But first,
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Speaker 3 (15:16):
So why did you go ahead in the seminary?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Yeah? So when I went to college, I uh Hope
College and Hall, Michigan Dutch Reformed school, and I thought
I was going to go into ministry after college. I
felt a calling and I haven't lost that since. But
it changed. And so when I went to college. I
was a very average student in high school. My mother
(15:39):
I remember my mother telling me, don't get below a
B in any of your classes. Okay, my mom never
went to college. My dad dropped out of high school.
So I thought, okay, I literally graduated high school with
a three point zero B average.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
I should have set the bar high.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Yeah, exactly, So, okay, B I got it all right.
I go to college and I was completely unprepared. And
so my first year of college I had to take
some remedia classes for no credit, just to get caught up.
And I thought, oh, my goodness, you know, is this
gonna work? And I thought, well, it's got to my
parents said you have to go to college. So I thought,
it's got to work. So I worked hard the first year,
(16:15):
and then I took a philosophy course in my sophomore
year of False Mystery and fell in love with it,
just fell in love with philosophy and who Knew Right
and reading Plato the whole bit. And then I had
to write papers and I did horrible on them, and
so the prof said, I think you understand this material
and then you actually enjoy it, but you can't write
(16:37):
to save your life. So you're gonna to work very hard,
because I'm willing to work with you if you want.
So I did, and by my junior year I was
a pretty decent writer, falling in love yet with philosophy,
falling in love with the liberal arts, and all of
a sudden people started saying you should go do a
PhD in philosophy. I said, well, I'm going to do
ministry and in a reform setting. Uh, the reformed theological
(17:03):
world view says your whole life can be a form
of ministry. Teaching philosophy is a type of ministry, and
I said it is, And so that put the bug
in me, and I thought well, I said, I'll tell
you what I'm gonna do, a Master of Divinity first,
and then we'll see where that gets me, and then
if it makes sense somebody to do a PhD, I will.
(17:24):
So I did my Master of Divinity. Really enjoyed working
in the church. I ended up working in a lot
of non church related ministries, including a prison for a year.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
In seminary well, tell us that story. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Yeah, So we were moving in the dorm in the
for the false semester and unpacking everything, and my neighbor
right next to me the room next to me. He
came out and he said, do you have an internship
for your first year? And I said no, I just
got here. And this is before computers were used to
sign up for everything. And he said, well, look, I'm
signed up to be a student chaplain at the state prison.
(18:04):
Do you want to do that? I said, I don't know,
do I?
Speaker 3 (18:06):
How old was he at the time.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Uh, probably twenty three ish?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Okay, yeah, that's pretty daunting, yeah, three year old? Yeah chaplain.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
I was twenty three two, And so I said, I
don't know, do I? So he told me a little
bit about it. I said, sounds kind of interesting. He goes,
why don't you just do it? I said, okay, just
like that, And so there's five of us eventually, and
we worked in a maximum security state prison for a
year a student Chaplains and back then they gave us
basically free rome in the prison, and so we would
(18:34):
go on to pods or units and the security was
actually quite lax. Now the guys were in their cells,
they couldn't come out, but we would just go sell
to sell and I would talk to these guys. I
would hear their stories, and they were remarkably open, and
I would hear the whole bit about why they were there.
(18:54):
And I'm twenty three years old and I'm talking to
murderers and the whole bit, you know. And that's when
it dawned on me. Everybody's got a story.
Speaker 3 (19:05):
We're actually opened a share. And sorry to interrupt, I yeah.
Have you ever heard Ddrich Bonhoffer's line this, Yeah, I mean,
and this isn't the exact quote, but it's one of
my favorite lines. Is he says, the problem of Christians
is they're lonely in their sins, whereas the centers of
the bar have so much more fellowship with each other
because they share everything.
Speaker 1 (19:22):
It is spot on. That's exactly what I found. I
was blown away by this. Guys would tell me their
stories and I remember one guy he said, I'm in
here for several murders, and he goes, I had a
horrible upbringing. However, the whole bit, and he said, I
am so angry at everything, and he said, if I
get a chance, I will kill an officer. He's telling
(19:44):
me this. We're sitting literally across from each other to
the table, and I didn't know what to say. And
at the time I thought I should have said something,
but now I realized, no, just listening is fine, that's okay.
But that's when it dawned on me that no one
sets out to go to prison. No one sets out
(20:06):
to become the person that, based on their worst day ever,
they're going to be known now for the rest of
their life. No one sets out to do that. There
are whole lots of things that have to happen. Yes,
choices are made, but a whole lot has to kind
of become a recipe for that. And I was very surprised,
given what we know from the media about prisons. There
(20:27):
were so many of guys who said, I wish I
could do it over. I wouldn't do it. I mean
I wish I could do that day over. And they
felt remorse and guilt and shame, and then they would say,
I want to do something with my life. I don't
want to be a complete waste. You know, what is
there anything I can do to give something to another person?
That blew me away. I thought, you're not supposed to
(20:49):
say that. Your murderers, you're this, you're that. You're horrible people,
Horrible people don't want to give, they want to take.
But they did, and then I also dawned. I mean,
there wasn't for them to do. You know, I think
as a country.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
We've progressed a lot on this front. Set you have them.
Back then, there probably wasn't many programs.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
There wasn't, and it was this idea of, hey, look
you committed a horrible crime. We're going to lock you
up and that's that throw away the key, We're gonna
turn our backs on you and basically all we're gonna
do is make sure you don't get out. And that
left a huge impression on me. Lo and Behold it
would be decades later that had come full circle with that.
But I would literally think about the guys I met
(21:30):
in that prison often, if not at first, several times
a week, a month, two there doesn't even today, I
still think about some of them because I know they're
there all these years later, decades later, they are still
doing the same things, the same routines, same cell same regrets,
same hopes, and I don't know whatever became of them personally,
(21:54):
but I know where they are physically, and I've moved on.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
Have your thought about going back to that, I have.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I have. I'm actually going to be there this summer
for a conference on prisons, and I'm going to see
if somebody could actually get me in there.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
I think, with what you've done, I hope so.
Speaker 1 (22:15):
Because it was also the case that, again, I was
twenty three at the time, and many of the guys
I was working with were in their twenties, and so
we've kind of age wise been living parallel lives together
all these years. And again I think of I went
to grad school, I've traveled, I've been to around the world,
(22:37):
I've done this, I've got married, all these things, and
I thought, they're still getting up at whatever time chow
Hall wait Pitt, they're still doing that all these years later,
and I would love to be able to go back
and say, you know what, I actually didn't forget about you.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
I don't want to spend too much time like doing
a timeline in the next day. You're sure I want
to get to Calvin Prison initiative, but take us through
how you got there personally. I mean, obviously you could
have gone down the ministry path or been a preacher
in a church or yeah, I'm sure you had several
options before you, but you get to Calvin Prison.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
So when I graduated with my Master of Divinity, this
was nineteen ninety three, I said, all right, Lord tell
me this. I'll do whatever. I'm really open to moving around,
whatever the case. But I had good advice, as I
told you in the car, from a scholar mentor. He said,
(23:32):
don't do a PhD if you don't have to. There
are lots of people who are so eager to do
a PhD. There's lines to these schools, but there's nobody
going into the inner cities, there's nobody doing these things.
You have a heart for that stuff, go do it.
So he said, the only way you do a PhD
is if you cannot satisfy that itch, and so I
said okay. So I spent seven years after my MDV
(23:57):
do an inner city ministry. I was a co pastor
of an urban church in Detroit called Martin King Junior Church.
My co pastor was African American. I was the only
white person basically in the congregation.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
How was that wild?
Speaker 1 (24:10):
Just wild? Because it got to the point where we
never forgot who's white, who's black. But at the same
time we had become a community. And so I thought
it was such a privilege that they allowed me to
preach on Sundays there because I thought, you know, what
(24:31):
do I have to say exactly to you? And they
conversely said, of course you have a lot to offer.
We all do. And so I was there almost a
year and I got to the point where they were
looking for a permanent pastor and they had asked if
I wanted to do it, and I came real close
saying yes. And I realize the reason I would say
(24:52):
yes to a church at that point was because it
was urban. It was I had issues of race, issues
of class, the whole bit in Detroit, and that was
ringing bells now for me that I recognized the only
thing that stopped me is I also was teaching at
a Jesuit high school. I was teaching Catholic theology of
(25:13):
all things full circle who so University of Detroit Jesuit
High School, and there I was now raised in Hall, Michigan,
but teaching at a Catholic high school. Protestant but teaching
Catholic theologyithmination. And they hired me as the token Protestant
(25:36):
because they said about a third of their student body
were Baptist Protestants from Detroit, and we want to have
a Protestant in our religion department.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
So I said, sure, but teaching Catholic theology, but.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Teaching Catholic theology. And they said, as long as you
teach Catholic theology the way it should be taught. After that,
after it's criticism, that's fine on me. Jesuits can do this, right,
So I said, okay. I loved the classroom so much
that I wasn't prepared to leave it. And that's when
I realized my mentor's words are coming back. If you
(26:10):
just can't shake this thing, then maybe you can't shake it.
So that's when I realized, is there a way I
could go on to do graduate work? Do a PhD.
But now take all these experiences and package them together
and not become just a scholar in the library, but
become the sort of theologian who's constantly looking out the
(26:31):
window at the world and saying, as Christians, as the church,
all right, what are we going to do? And so
I said, if I can do that, if I can
stay committed to that, then I'll go. So I went
back and did a PhD in systematic theology, but I
did it on a political theology with the intent of
(26:52):
all right, how do I help the Church change the world?
And that is what was affirmed by my advisors and
the people around me. So I had a really good
experience in my doctoral program, and then through a series
of you know, hey, look at this school, look at
(27:12):
that school, I got a call one day Calvin College
done is looking for somebody to do a ministry studies department.
You're interested, And I said, yeah, never thought i'd go
back to West Michigan. Now is in the real thicket
Dutch reform stuff with Calvin. But I went back and
the department allowed me to juggle all these experiences with
(27:36):
now students and saying, hey, if you have this experience,
this experience, this experience. Guess what God can use that?
And we're going to figure out a way to connect dots.
And so I got to work with students who engineers,
high school teachers, business people and ask, all right, what
are you going to do in this career that is
distinct in terms of your doing it in such a
(27:59):
way that you're tilting it towards the Kingdom of God?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
If you know about it, I'd love for you to
go into it more. But John Perkins's Beloved Community and
also Martin Luther King's street Sweeper speech. And I'm sure
you know both of those at a way deeper level
than I do, but I don't think we've actually talked
about them on the podcast.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
Well that's just it. So I've actually taught that. So
Charles Marsh wrote this wonderful book. He's a prophe at
University of Virginia. He cut his teeth on Bonhoeffer. But
he's a good friend of John Perkins. And he wrote
a book called The Blood Community, and he uses Martin
Luther King Juniors as the kind of reference point, and
he has a whole chapter there on John Perkins. And
(28:36):
we actually started a Perkins program at Calvin.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
And tell people what the bloved community is. I still
don't even know myself enough about Perkins's background. I mean,
bring us more in there.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, So for Perkins, the bloved community is this idea
that we're called to love our neighbors, but we don't
know who our neighbors are until we move into their neighborhood.
And so you have to literally be willing to change
your proximity. So he said, especially and Perkins's African American,
(29:07):
and he said, especially white people. They come in as
the great White Hope. They kind of implement programs, they
throw money at problems, They maybe even do like a
spring break week trip, and they go home. And he
actually would joke about this with the ministry he had
in Jackson, Mississippi. He would say, we would look at
(29:28):
our buildings and we would save the roughest looking part
of a building for those spring break trips because we
had to give them something to do and they had
to complete something. So they had to be able to
paint all four walls and they could go home thinking
they did something. And he said, but it was kind
(29:48):
of a joke, right. So he always argued a beloved
community from John's Gospel via Martin Luther King Junior is
really about proximity. It's truly about becoming neighbors, shoulder to shoulder,
and for those with the power, it's about going in
becoming a neighbor and not saying this is what your
needs are, but saying, what are your needs? Maybe I
(30:11):
don't know? And that made so much sense to me
when the first time I started reading Perkins and King
giving my experiences all the way back to elementary school
with Latino friends and people talking about them in a
way that just that exposed them to say, you don't
even know who these people are. You have no idea
I go to school with them shoulder to shoulder. That's
(30:33):
not who they are. And finally I could put words
to that. And so that's when I realized, if you're
not willing to put your body in certain spaces, your
words ring hollow.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
And the other part, like, if you're an engineer, how
do you show up in the marketplace? Yes, always remind me,
I mean I love If that people haven't seen it,
you really need to go on YouTube and watch the
street sweeper speech, even just the ninety seconds of it.
If it's your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep
streets like Michaelangelo painted pictures. Yes, it's some of the
most beautiful lines I've ever come.
Speaker 1 (31:09):
And that resonates with John Calvin, right, who's the spine
behind all these reform traditions, including the Dutch reform tradition
that he kind of rethought, reimagined what the word vocation
meant in the sixteen seventeenth centuries, where back then in
the medieval Catholic Church, vocation was reserved for priests and
nuns and brothers. The rest of us we didn't have vocation.
(31:32):
We worked. And what was the significance of your work? Well,
you ate, you were able to provide shelter for yourself.
You worked, and it was toiled. And was there anything
good about work? Not so much. Luther Calvin looked at
and said, wait a minute. God gave us the ability
to create. God gave us the ability to till the ground.
(31:53):
God gave us the ability to sweep a street.
Speaker 3 (31:55):
All right, let's pause for a second. Oh hey, we'll
be right back. All right, Well, sorry, guys, it's just
finally heard from Bill and he had a fire at
(32:17):
the lumber yard last night, and I guess was there
until four fifteen. A. Yeah, that sucks, but I'm glad
he's alive. Yeah, we're going to do with this podcast.
Speaker 1 (32:29):
Yeah he gets a pass.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
So sorry Tom. All right, exiderrupted your thought? Is there
any more you wanted to share there about Calvin and Work?
Speaker 1 (32:36):
Well, just this idea that uh yeah, h sweeping a
street can bring glory to God. And I will add
this that has become a key point working with incarcerated
students because when we started the program, if you're seventeen
(32:57):
eighteen years old and you get a natural life sentence,
a life with no proll in that seventeen eighteen year
old kid's mind, life is over. I have no life.
And so all they talk about is you have to
learn how to do time, and don't let time do you.
So they come up with all these little routines. Groundhog day,
(33:18):
every day, same routine. I don't care if it's Christmas,
I don't care what it is. You know, they go
to the waight pit, they do this, they do that,
and they do it every single day, and they do
it for years and then decades, and that is their
life and their minds. And so when we step in
and say, guess what your life has tremendous meaning and
you're important. They go, what And then we say you
(33:40):
have a calling and they're like, no, I don't. They're like, no,
you really do. In fact, your daily activities bring can
bring joy to God. And here's how we're gonna do this.
We're gonna talk about this and you literally see them
open up and all of a sudden, their life and
its daily routines have meaning. And then we can work
(34:02):
to say you don't have to just sweep a floor
though either. Now we're gonna train you to be a
pure mentor training you to be an academic tutor for
someone who's trying to get a ged. Your life can
have real purpose and impact. And then they start saying,
oh my gosh, even though I'm locked up, I'm not dead.
(34:23):
I'm alive, and I can live a meaningful life even
if it isn't cars rated.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
There's a similar I think you guys have at least
one acting academy in the Grand Rapids area. Yes, and
they have a similar way of talking to students of
saying you have a unique calling that can change the world. Yes,
and it could be I mean, you don't need to
be the president to run a company. You can have
a dry cleaner, as the example the founder uses, and
you can have five people work for you. Yes, and
a thousand people show up at your funeral. Yes, and
(34:49):
you change the world.
Speaker 1 (34:50):
That's just that's it.
Speaker 3 (34:51):
And there's nobody talking to students that way. There's nobody
talking to prisoners that way. And it's really a beautiful
perspective on life that most of our culture is missing.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Absolutely. And this is where in the prison environment. This
is where we say, because everyone wants prison reform. I
don't know anybody who doesn't want prison reform.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Right.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
You talk to a governor prison reform, You talk to
state politicians' prison reform, you talk to people work in prison.
Oh sure it could be better, of course it could.
You talk to prisoners prison reform. And we're all looking
to the government to do it. And I'm saying, it's
right under our nose. It's all these people right here
who are locked up. You are the ones, as we
say at Calvin, you become an agent of change and
(35:29):
you're the ones who are going to reform this thing.
And so when we started our program, our prison was
called Gladiator School. It was one of the most violent
prisons in the state. They would send guys young there,
as they said, to learn how to jail, to learn
how to do prison. So they had send him to
gladiator school. Yeah, it's very intentional. They would send him
(35:52):
the worst place. After about four years, I asked the
warden he was doing this end of year report. I said,
how are things here? Said, normally we would have anywhere
from one hundred and twenty five to one hundred and
fifty major violent incidents a year. It's okay, he goes,
we had eight this year. Eight. It got one administrator
(36:13):
there to say, we've gone from candy Land, or from
a gladiator school to Candyland.
Speaker 3 (36:18):
All right, as Bill will say, you're jumping ahead too much.
Let's let's get there. That is a good yea. I
actually hate the game candy Land. Yeah, it's all luck.
I mean a.
Speaker 1 (36:32):
Candyland. This is agent's a change candy Land.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
All right. Calvin Prison Initiative, Yeah, wasn't your idea, No,
so tell us approach.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Yeah, it wasn't even Calvin's idea. Calvin Seminary. So that's
where it started. A donor gave some money to Calvin
Seminary and said, hey, you need to send some of
your prosts down do Angola Prison in Louisiana. Uh. He said,
I'm connected with that place, and I've seen tremendous transformation
at that prison, and we I think it's by way
of the seminary program they have there. So the seminary,
(37:04):
Calvin Seminary sat on that money for two years, didn't
do anything.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
Is this the donor we were talking about in the
car on the way down.
Speaker 1 (37:09):
No another one. And the donor eventually asked. He goes, hey,
how is that trip to Angola? And the then president said, yeah,
it didn't happen. Wrong answer, wrong answer, because the donor said, well,
if you're not going to spend it, give it back,
and the president said, I'll have him on a plane
right now. So he went to a guy, professor of preaching,
(37:32):
John Rotman, and said, I need you to go on
to Angola Prison. He goes, I don't want to go
to a prison, and they explained the situation and he said, right,
I'll go. So they sent a few of them down
there and it was life transforming. They all of a
sudden were at this place that supposedly is a maximum
security prison sixty two hundred inmates, the largest penitentiary in
the country. Wow. At back in the eighties it was
(37:54):
called the most violent prison in America and you could
go around the place. Then now with his trip, no violence, prisoners,
no custing, no swearing, nothing like that in a prison,
which is crazy. And they came back.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
And said, my word, really swear.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
There was a rule. The warden made a rule no swearing, okay,
and wherever you went, you went here swearing nothing. And
that's not prison. And if a warden could pull that
off with basically over six thousand people, like, what happened?
How do you do that? So I've been there several times.
I've never heard swearing.
Speaker 3 (38:30):
So who's the warden and how did he do it?
Speaker 1 (38:32):
Bro Kine was there at the time he came. He
got there in nineteen ninety five. The prison was such
a mess that the governor tapped him and said, I
need you go change this place.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
And did you tell me before? He was an English teacher,
high school teacher, So how did the governor decide he had?
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Bro Kane had political aspirations and so he's a known
quantity and so I guess maybe the governor's testing him.
I don't know. But he put him in there, and
Cain said, I didn't know what to do other than
as a teacher educate, and he said, I just assumed
that education was going to be somehow key to all this.
Caine's a Christian with the Southern Baptist Church, and so
(39:08):
he got New Orleans Baptist Seminary to come in and
offer courses. He started New Orleans Baptist Seminary and they
just started an MDiv program basically, and so they started
noticing really positive results from this, and they kept it up.
They kept it up. Now at the time, they also
had about thirty prisoner led churches in Angolo, and that's
(39:28):
a long tradition there, goes way back to eighteen hundreds,
and they were training these guys then to give him
formal training to be pastors, social pastors, evangelis of the
whole bit.
Speaker 3 (39:39):
So that was going on before Burl got there.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
The churches were yah and then he refused it with these,
you know, really rich resources, not from a seminary, and
again had extremely positive results. And that went on and
after about fifteen years, violence dropped eighty five percent there.
So everyone's happy and Kane pulled it off. So that's
what the Calvin Seminary Profits are sure.
Speaker 3 (40:02):
There is one story from that I remember that shocked me.
They get there and feel free to rupt me if
you know it. Yeah, they see the prisoners like driving
around cars like.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
They're driving cars. They're out on these little ponds with
boats fishing. Uh. There's twelve guys who live in a
house by themselves. Guys have cell phones, Guys have keys
to the tool sheds. Uh. They become your instructor. That day.
I remember going to the automotive program. I'm talking to guys,
(40:35):
got the automotive share down the whole bit, and he's
running the thing and I said, oh, so what do
you do. Oh, I teach guys this. I teach him that.
And he said, you know, I've just learned that. You know,
sometimes they need to help at night or on the weekends,
and I'm willing to do that. And I said, well,
when do you go home? And he says, what do
you mean go home? I'm a prisoner. I got a
life sentence. But he was in charge of the whole program.
(40:57):
There wasn't an officer in the place, and he oversaw
all the tools and so there was a huge amount
of trust given to these guys and they lived up
to it, not down. And so yeah, they changed. And
that's when these prosts from Calvin said, wait a minute,
if that can happen here, could it happen in Michigan.
(41:17):
So that's how it started. And then they contacted this
prison and Ionia Michigan Richard Hanlin Prison where we are,
and they just said, hey, we'd like to offer a
seminary course. It took a while for the department and
the prison to kick their heads around this why would
you want to do this? But that's how it started
in twenty eleven. And then of course the students are
all doing great and they're like, hey, we want to
(41:39):
earn a degree.
Speaker 3 (41:40):
Are you the director?
Speaker 1 (41:41):
Yes, okay, but not in twenty eleven. We it was
a non program, if you will, just offering courses. Starting
twenty eleven, the students demanded a degree. The seminary said, well,
we're a seminary, we're a graduate school. You have to
first earn an undergraduate degree. So that's when Calvin Summary
(42:01):
went to Calvin College. They tapped me and said, would
you help us navigate the college if we were to
put a program together. So we spent a year working
together on a proposal.
Speaker 3 (42:11):
And this is kind of funny. I think I got
this right, and not to shame your college, but they
originally said no, got them to say yes, it's pretty funny.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah. So we went to student our faculty senate, made
the proposal and the senate voted it down. We're like,
this is a spot onto the mission of these institutions.
What are you doing? And so we said fine. So
we went out to other colleges the seminary and said, hey,
do you want to do this and they said yes.
So back to Calvin College and said fine, if you're
(42:41):
not going to do it, we're going to go to
the Christian University down the street. Literally, And then all
of a sudden, I was like wait a minute, wait,
don't run away. And then we did another proposal and
they accepted it, and then that's when they asked me
to be the director. So I started June one, twenty fifteen.
Now we had a program. Then we got accredited. We
(43:03):
offered a BA with a major in faith and community leadership,
and after about a year or two, the guys kept saying,
you know what we really need are social work classes.
He said, oh, that makes sense, So we put a
social work minor.
Speaker 3 (43:17):
Why if they're never going to get out of the prison.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Yeah right, No, I know you are right, and that
this is the Perkins move. So I remember saying, I'm
not going to assume I know what you need to
become a moral and spiritual leader inside. I don't know.
You tell me. And that's when they said we need
social work. They said, that's we're gonna do then, so
(43:39):
we had a social work miner.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
What was behind their thinking of why they wanted it?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
So they recognize that most problems that men have in
prison are from maladaptive social behavior, whether it's just functional families, homes,
running with the wrong crowd making. So we kind of
had to redo these things. So they needed to know
about family systems, They needed to know about issues of
(44:06):
class and race. They needed to know these things because
the better understand trauma informed mentoring. And so the social
work degree is spot on. It really is the degree
that you get the most out of in terms of
serving a prison community. And they then there's a social
work class on the helping interview, on the what helping interview?
(44:29):
How to interview someone who has needs but that person
may not know how to express them well, and so
you interview and you help them be able to identify
and name what it is they need. Again the Perkins
thing right, and so it was hugely successful. It got
to the point where we wanted to have a double
major faith in community leadership and then a social work major,
(44:52):
but the social work major comes with a four hundred
hour internship, and we just finally said, we don't think
we can pull that off. There. We have a human
services major, which is like a social work major without
the internship. So they double major, they'll end up with
a BA in five years. And much of the shape
now of the program has really been by way of
(45:16):
our students.
Speaker 3 (45:18):
And just to put a finer point of the sol
short part, what percentage of the participants in the program
will never get out of prison, and then there's a
percentage that do. But either way they can serve their
fellow man, either in prison or out of it.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
That's right. When we started the program formally, we learned
that in Michigan at the time, this has changed. At
the time, the Department of Corrections would not offer programming
to someone doing a natural life sentence or a sentence
a life sentence without parole. They literally said, we're not
invested in you because you're gonna die in prison. So
(45:52):
they're thinking, was the only way we invest in a
prisoner is if we know he's going to get out
and we're doing something so we won't come back. I
get that that's important, but then you have this population
of men whose lives are in the department's minds kind
of over So we said, we can't do that, And
we reasoned, these are the guys who own the culture.
(46:16):
They're there, they're there for decades. They're the ones who
can set the culture. Why not empower them, give them
resources because they also will have a positive influence on
the guys who get out, and so you win win.
It's a win win. So we always said two thirds
of our incoming class each year will be guys with
(46:37):
life sentences, the other third with long sentences. So at first,
the Angola model is more about we are going to
raise up leaders who, as far as we can tell,
are going to die in prison. But they're the ones
who are going to transform prisons. They're the ones who
are going to live these lives driven by a sense
of lolication. Really, they're the one They're the They're the engine.
(47:01):
They're the engine.
Speaker 2 (47:05):
And that concludes part one of what was supposed to
be my conversation with Todd Choffe and ended up being
Alex's conversation with Todd. But nevertheless, you don't want to
miss part two that's now available to listen to. We're
about to dive deep into Calvin Prison initiative and Alex
does a great job with it, so keep listening. Together, guys,
(47:28):
we can change this country, but it starts with you.
I'll see in Part two.