Cru's U.S. Lenses Institute is Shutting Down?

Conversations That Matter

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Welcome to the Conversations That Matter podcast. My name is John Harris. I just got wind of some potentially good news that I wanted to share with you all in the social justice fight, if you want to call it that, within evangelicalism, what used to be called that at least.

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Crew is an organization, now it's been maybe two years, something like that, a year and a half when

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I first started. It's almost been two years since I started doing a few episodes on Crew.

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It's not the primary subject that I focus on, but I have shed some light on a few things.

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I'm not alone in that. A number of others have as well. I think the last episode was from earlier this year,

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I want to say it was early spring perhaps when someone had leaked a document called

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Seeking Clarity from a more conservative group, not an official entity within Crew or anything, but just a group that got together and said, hey,

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Crew's going down the wrong trail. We want to shed some light on what's going on and we want to try to hold our leaders to account.

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We want to try to open up a dialogue with them. We want to share our concerns with them. That kind of thing.

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They made a whole document, that got leaked. Since then there's been, there's a Christianity Today article and I can't even think of what all there's been.

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I know people have sent me things here and there, but there's been progressives leaving

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Crew because it's not woke enough basically, or social justice activists, we'll say that.

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Social justice activists have been leaving Crew because it's not woke enough. And they look at that document as if that's what

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Crew is. Crew is this organization that did not have any sanction from the leadership whatsoever as an official organization within Crew, but just got together to say, hey, we care about what's happening and we think that we're going down a path that's not right.

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It's against the statement of belief that we share. And that, and if anything,

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Mission Drift as well was part of that document. I know I briefly summarized some of it in that episode from last spring where we talked about it.

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That was enough to make some of the social justice advocates within Crew think we're out of here. Which think about it, that's really,

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I don't know how many, I've just been told by people within the organization that there's just a real shakeup going on.

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And one of the emails that I got about a month ago said, hey, there's a lot of progressives leaving. At the same time,

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I know there's also a lot of conservatives that are leaving. And I've gotten those messages. And some of them can be discouraging.

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People leaving, generally, the conservatives who leave, theological conservatives, they don't really say why they leave, generally speaking.

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It's rare that that happens. They just kind of leave. And so this is the situation that's been going on.

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It's been volatile. It's been confusing within Crew. There's just been, they need clarity.

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They need what the document that the conservatives put together, more conservative Concerned Crew staff put together called

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Seeking Clarity. They need that. They need clarity because no one seems to know exactly what's going on.

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And so I wanted to share with you some news that I just got tonight.

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Someone sent me this link. See if I can get the right one. This is the link right here. Jamar Tisby.

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And it's his blog. So this was today. So six hours ago. I'm recording this on the evening.

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It's late right now. It's still the 29th as I'm recording this. And I'll just go through what this says.

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It says, Jamar Tisby, for those who don't know, he wrote The Color of Compromise. I just wrote a new book on how to be an anti -racist kind of thing.

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It's not the title, but that's kind of what it is. I think he's working with Kendi now. But he's, how do

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I phrase this? He's an activist, a social justice activist, kind of like most historians today in the profession, posing as a historian.

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That's kind of how I view him. He's very much a social justice activist. And I just did a video actually last week where I took apart some of his arguments.

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But he doesn't mean he doesn't know anything about history. It just means behind the history he does know, there's a lot of assumptions there and presuppositions that he brings into the craft that he kind of sneaks in as if they are, it's just part of the craft.

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It's just part of being a good historian to believe that, I guess, racism, history proves that racism never goes away, it just changes forms.

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That's kind of his thesis. And anyway, social justice activist. That's not a historical, you don't find that by reading history.

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You come at history with that presupposition and then you make the record fit what you want. But that's

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Jamar Tisby. So he's not a conservative by any stretch. He's coming from the opposite side. So as I read this, just keep that in mind.

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So here's what he says, another casualty of the culture wars. Leaders of the Lenz's Institute, part of Cruz, shut down their ministry of racial reconciliation and understanding due to backlash over critical race theory and related issues.

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Today we see another casualty. The Lenz's Institute, this is the good news I want to share with you.

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Part of Cruz works toward a day when the ethnicity and cultural diverse people of God are seeing, understanding, and acting in ways that display the world that our

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God is one. But today, leadership felt compelled to shut it down. The fear -mongering, that's what he says is causing this, the fear -mongering over critical race theory and resistance to racial justice in general, apparently created a climate of suspicion, mischaracterization, and in some cases, direct intimidation.

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This is a shrewd move, by the way, I think, if that's what they're saying. He's saying, but he's quoting them.

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He's saying that's what they're saying. So we're going to look at their statement in a minute. You can read the full statement from the executive team here.

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And I will actually click on that. And the statement from the

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Lenz's executive team. So we're going to read that in a minute. But let's keep going with some more.

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Part of the context is a statement issued by some crew called

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Seeking Clarity and Unity. I just mentioned that to you. He says that what this document represents is an age -old objection.

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The people who point out racism are the source of division. Yeah, so he's coming at this very slanted.

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He's basically saying that they're the ones that are the divisive ones. It's not crew. It's not the

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Lenz's Institute. It is these concerned people who organically kind of came together and formed this document to share their concern.

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They're the ones that are causing real division by shining a light on what's happening. Actually in the New Testament, it's those who are causing the division are the ones that are bringing the false doctrine in every case.

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Those are the ones that cause division. So in this situation where you have a group of people saying, we think that there's some false doctrines coming in, some things that are subverting our doctrine are coming in.

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It's those who are bringing in the doctrine that would be causing division. So Jamar Tisby flips it on its head. He ends with this.

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He says, the deliberate and concerned effort on the part of some Christians to curtail efforts at biblical unity through racial awareness, justice, and equity is ungodly, spiritually immature, and frankly infuriating.

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Unfortunately though for Jamar Tisby, the wedge is being formed by the people who want to come in and then point the finger and cast blame and be infuriated with people just because of the color of their skin, which

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I guess marks their supposed power, where they stack up on the power scale and their implicit bias and their white privilege, et cetera.

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And then they want to bring about equity by eliminating disparities, by redistribution and reparations, et cetera.

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Those are the people bringing the division and are bringing it into the church. We know this, but Jamar Tisby flips it on its head again and says, it's this effort, this concerted effort, and it almost sounds like a conspiracy, but they wouldn't do that.

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Conspiracy theories are only for conservatives. This deliberate and concerted effort on the part of some

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Christians to curtail efforts at biblical unity through these mechanisms that are all the rage in the world right now, and these are biblical mechanisms of biblical unity, they're the ones that are pouring the cold water on it.

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They're stopping biblical unity because they're against socialism. That's really the bottom line here.

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So he says, this is only the beginning, this marginalization and silencing of Christians working for racial justice is happening in churches, et cetera.

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So the way he views this, I just want you to see this. The way the other side is viewing this is they think this whole thing, critical race theory bans he mentions in K through 12 school, why would a kindergartner need to know about critical race theory?

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That's interesting. All of that effort to keep critical race theory out of the schools, out of the churches, et cetera, this is division.

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They're the ones causing division. It's interesting because they're not the ones that brought the topic up. They're not the ones that are initiating any of this.

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The ground shifted underneath them. They woke up in a world where things were completely different and they were being called all sorts of names and blamed for all sorts of things that they didn't do with no forgiveness insight really.

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And they're the ones causing the division because they said, wait, hold on a minute. This isn't biblical. And that is how the other side view it.

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Up is down, down is up. Good is evil, evil is good. That's you just got to understand that.

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And I wanted to make that point by reading this Jamar Tisby reaction. So here's the statement he's reacting to.

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This is from the Lenz's executive team. Dear ones, not ladies and gentlemen, not supporters, not

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I don't even know, like what would you say? Dear ones? That just sounds interesting.

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Dear ones, fellow, not even fellow Christians or anything like that. To say it has been an eventful 2021 is an understatement.

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So much has happened and we're at the point only at the mid -year point. This is not, let's see, let me skim a little.

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Our emotions are a profound sadness and disappointment. Climate within crew affected by forces inside and outside the organization has become cautious, unclear, and in some places even toxic.

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And Lenz's would be the place I would say that, I mean, I'm going to show you some things from Lenz's.

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Well, Lenz's is where I would say some of these things reside. They're saying though it's not them, it's within and outside the organization.

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For Lenz's, the goal has always been a John 17 pursuit of oneness, grace, and family. And this is the interesting thing.

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The guys who promote, and gals who promote critical race theory, think in their heads that they're the ones promoting unity.

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When in reality, they're the ones bringing the division. There wasn't a division before this. They bring it in, it divides everything up, and then they claim that it's projection, it's ultimate projection.

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They point the finger at everyone else and say, we didn't bring it in here. I mean, this is like you setting a bomb off and then just pointing the finger at everyone who wants to run away from the bomb or try to stop the bomb or something.

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They're the ones that are causing the explosion. You brought the bomb in, but they don't see it that way. They think that they're just pursuing a

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John 17 pursuit of oneness. There are elements within crew who feel

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Lenz's, and by the way, John 17, I should probably just, John 17, you have a group of men, some of them at political odds with one another in some ways before they met

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Jesus and they were his disciples, tax collector, right? You have, you know, zealot, basically, you have people that should be at odds.

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And what's the unity in? The unity is in Christ. Unity is in abiding in him, the unity of the spirit.

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You didn't have to do something extra to do some kind of a reparations or some kind of, there was none of the stuff

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Lenz's puts out there was being done in John 17. I digress though. There are elements within crew who feel

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Lenz's is misaligned with the crew vision and is engaged in a drift from crew central mission. And that's an accurate representation.

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The reality is that Lenz's framework and the biblical structure is within the foundation of what Jesus taught in John 17.

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I'd love to see the argument for that. As a result, our Lenz's executive team has determined that US Lenz's will be closing immediately and taking this action.

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And we are prayerful that crew will find the solutions it seeks and et cetera.

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Okay, so here's the deal. This is the Lenz's Institute. They are the ones that put this out there.

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And this is not that long ago this came out there. I want to take you through some things about Lenz's first.

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And then I just saw, like literally, I was searching on YouTube just for Lenz's and I saw something that just popped up that I want to watch.

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I haven't even watched the whole thing. I started watching like a minute of it and I thought, we'll do this for the podcast. So here's

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Lenz's first and in the seeking clarity document. Let's just type in Lenz's and just see where this goes.

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So there's a bunch of stuff on Lenz's here. Okay, Lenz's training, Lenz's Institute. Lenz's has become crew's premier offering for cultural competency training.

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However, our findings regarding Lenz's were most unsettling. Lenz's five day immersion experience was described by one staff member who attended as dangerous and divisive.

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Staff are required to disclose nothing about the teaching content outside of the training. Independent thinking is discouraged.

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Most authors and scholars recommended by Lenz's are proponents of critical race theory. Gives you some quotes from Robin DiAngelo.

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These are things Lenz's, the Lenz's Institute, remember we're talking about a crew as a Christian organization, large

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Christian organization. And they're sending people to Lenz's and I know people who have been sent to Lenz's.

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And they aren't allowed to talk about what happens there. And these are the kinds of things they have to read.

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Robin DiAngelo, white fragility. To be less white is to be open to, interested in, and compassionate towards the racial realities of people of color.

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White identity is inherently racist. I strive each day to be less white. This is John 17, unity.

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This is Christian ministry. This is when you donate to crew, some of your money goes to this. Like that's what's been going on.

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Kendi, how to be anti -racist. Any gospel that does not speak to the issue of enslavement and injustice and inequality, any gospel that does not want to go where people are hungry and poverty stricken and set free in the name of Jesus Christ is not the gospel.

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There we have our Galatian heresy. So there's a bunch of stuff here.

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Comments about Lenz's. The training involves shaming most of the majority culture in the room. Ethnic minorities are encouraged to view themselves as the oppressed and whites are automatically defined as the oppressors.

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There is no practical path for unity. I left the training with a tremendous amount of guilt and no way to deal with the blame that was heaped on me just for being in the white majority.

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The amount of politics at the training was not okay. There was a lot of left -leaning agenda presented to learn about Lenz's political involvement, and they have a, all right, we'll learn about that in a minute.

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The danger here is that there are deceptive and divisive elements that have quickly embedded themselves intentionally or otherwise into the orthodoxy and orthopraxy of crew over the past five to six years.

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Specifically around the social justice movement narratives. At one of Lenz's training in September, 2020, a teacher was quoted by an attendee saying, identity in Christ cannot be elevated above our ethnic identity.

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Identity in Christ cannot be elevated above our ethnic identity. Yeah, that's real, that's gospel of John stuff right there.

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I mean, remember when Jesus said that? He said that to the, no, like what? I mean, did they really, they really did.

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John 17 unity, and that's, okay. So let's see some more stuff.

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We're gonna flip through some of this. More Lenz's stuff. Here's some of the books they recommend.

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The Heart of Whiteness. How to Be an Antiracist. Divided by Faith.

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Right, it's all the usual stuff here. They got more quotes. Here's more

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Lenz's reading stuff. White people suffer from a malady called shriveled heart syndrome with other recovering white people.

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We relocated to a historically black neighborhood and a historically black church to live a life of repentance because more than anything, we wanted

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God's love to heal our shriveled hearts. And a book is called Restructuring the Gospel.

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Literally, that's the name of the book. Jamar Tisby, Color of Compromise, Robert Jensen, The Heart of White.

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This is ridiculous, this is absolutely ridiculous. This is a ministry, like you donate because you think people are sharing the gospel.

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And it goes to this. If you're giving to crew, this is one of the things that I've encouraged is to put some pressure on them.

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Personally, I know some crew staff have disagreed with me on this, but I wouldn't give to crew. I just wouldn't give to an organization that does this.

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Now, here's the thing, because I know this is beyond Lenz's, but Lenz's, for whatever pressures happen,

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I don't know how it's all come about, but Lenz's says they're shutting down. Now, I'm hoping that's true.

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I always had that little skepticism in me. I don't know if there's a political game being played, but let's just take that at face value, that it's true that Lenz's, at least in the

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US, it says it's being shut down. That's a good thing. And that may be because of some of you out there who were giving to crew and you said, you did exactly what

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I just said. You contacted them and you said, I'm not giving to your organization if this is the kind of thing you're doing. Let's talk more about some of the things that they were doing.

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Oh man, they just got a lot of little testimonials here.

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I'm not gonna read through all of them. They're all kind of the same. Just kind of horrifying division being caused.

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There was a section in this, I know, because a few months ago I was looking at it and it was like retweets and stuff.

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Let me see if I can find that. We'll go down here. And it was from their

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Twitter account. Lenz's Twitter account had some interesting retweets. Let's see if we can find it.

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Here it is. The Lenz's Institute. Lenz's Institute tweets regarding political engagement.

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So Judge Neil Gorsuch will apply the Constitution as it was written. And then they retweet someone,

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Mark Charles, who says, this is troubling because the US Constitution was written to protect the interests of white land -owning men and assume people of color were less than human.

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That's Christian ministry. That's the John 17 unity, right, right there. Here's another one. Frederick Joseph, Lenz's Institute retweeted, no racism is not going to disappear with older generations.

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Racism is alive and well and being actively passed down. And it's a horrifying picture of a kid with a

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MAGA hat chaining up a woman and a black kid. Oh man, there's just so many.

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This is horrible. Fascinating to hear Trump condemn racism and evil, then list

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DAPL and trampling of native rights as one of his accomplishments. Yeah, I don't, might be a little skewed there.

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I don't think Trump listed that as one of his accomplishments. Let's see, what else? Defund the police.

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Wow, Lenz retweeted, defund the police. Twitter account. Oh, and the

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F word is in it. That's great. Lenz is retweeting something with the F word about the police. And here's another one.

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More profanity. White supremacy is a drug. I won't repeat the profanity.

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Straight brainwashing. Look how easily they convince a large portion of the white population that the anthem should play every, so if you, white supremacy, believing the national anthem should be played at every game.

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And, all right. So this is, these are just some of the things that Lenz has put out there.

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Political retweets. And I know that that's just a small portion because I've seen a bunch more. I even talked about it in one of the episodes.

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I remember. Sorry, that's it for Lenz's. Let's, that, I mean, there's so much more you could talk about.

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Here's a podcast, by the way, that's hosted by two Lenz's workers called

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The Rolldown. Society and Culture. The Rolldown. And they just completed their first season.

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Just ended. This is current. July 21st, 2021 is our last episode. Check out some of these.

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Well, let's just, here's the trailer. Why don't we just listen to the first part of the trailer and see what that says.

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Welcome to The Rolldown. This podcast is for people of color who need a space to be known and seen and guidance for those who are in the pursuit of justice.

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We are your hosts, Matthew Melendrez. And Alethea Lamberson. We're here.

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Welcome. Welcome, you guys. We're here. We're launching a podcast. The Rolldown. It's happening.

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Matthew, this is crazy. How's it feel? It's. Okay, I don't wanna do the small talk. Let me,

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I'll do this. Let's just take you through. Here are the titles of some of these podcasts. Now, I don't know.

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I'm not aware that this is like through Lenz's. I don't think it is or through crew necessarily. These are just two crew or Lenz's staff members who are leaders who are doing this podcast.

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So this is the, I might give you a clue into, this is kind of what they talk about at Lenz's. This is what they're talking about on their podcast.

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What kind of stuff is it? We talking about justice. In this episode, we will dive a bit deeper into biblical justice, state of our country,

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COVID and racial unrest, state of our country, election and transition and inauguration.

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To be seen is so powerful. Conversations about anti -Asian -ness in black and brown communities, et cetera.

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Deconstructing and reconstructing faith. What does it mean? Hmm. To deconstruct, what does it mean to deconstruct and reconstruct?

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I'd love to know that. Liberating women from spiritual abuse. Liberating women from oppressive history.

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And there's trigger warnings because this episode contains conversations about gender -based violence. Liberating women from unhealthy masculinity and gender -based violence.

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Liberating women from colonized femininity and purity culture. I'm not, let's see.

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Community and self -care and the fight for justice. Lamenting justice. So this is the kind of stuff.

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This, I mean, if you think that this is from, and it's obvious, if you think this is not from a social justice kind of perspective, you'd be delusional.

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This is, I don't even have to play these episodes. Clearly, the content, the descriptions, what's the description for the podcast?

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A space for people of color to be known and seen and a guidance for those who are in the pursuit of justice. So I just thought that was interesting.

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I threw that out there as well. Let's get to the actual. So this is just a podcast.

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Let me see if I can pull it up here. We are going to go to the actual stuff here.

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The Crew Lenses Training. And some of you probably do not know that this exists, but you will.

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Okay, so this video is on YouTube. It's Crew Lenses Training September 2020. Enemies Within posted it.

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Only 279 views. We're not watching the whole thing. It's five hours long, but you can watch it if you want.

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If you have that time. If you're in Crew or you have a connection to Crew, you donate to them. You might want to just see, okay, what have they been training?

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And is this in keeping with John 17 Unity? Is this within the keeping of the mission of Crew?

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Is this what Jamar Tisby said, that people against it are just cuckoo for cocoa puffs and they're the ones causing division?

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Or is this what's causing division? And I think we could probably even go to just a random point. I haven't watched this whole thing at all, but I bet we could just go to a random place and just see probably that this is social justice kind of stuff.

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Let's just go here. This is the beginning. I don't know who this is. Let's just see what they're saying. As Caucasian. So the contradictory rulings of the courts, the court said that who got to be white was based on the common understanding of the white man.

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In other words, white people got to decide who met the subjective definition of what it means to be white, and then they could be accepted into that white majority.

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Yeah, I could see why white people would feel pretty guilty after something like this.

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But again, this is in the name of Christian ministry. This is supposed to bring people together.

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I wanna focus on something else though. Check this out. So Crew Lenses, I just typed this in on YouTube. The first thing that comes up is this video.

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I have not watched the whole thing. You can see, I started to watch it. I got a few minutes in and I thought, we're doing this. So I wanna watch this with you all.

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And I don't know if we'll get to the whole thing. It's 25 minutes or so. Let's just watch it. Let's see what this is, because to me,

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I'm just so overjoyed that there's someone who's coming out publicly and talking about Crew, who's actually from Crew or was from Crew.

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And saying, this is the problem. I mean, it takes bravery to do this. And so let's see what this particular individual,

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Will Hoyler says. My name is

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Will Hoyler and I was on staff with Crew for 10 years. In January, 2021,

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I chose to leave staff primarily over the issue of critical race theory. They say, if you see something, say something.

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This is true, especially in cases of abuse and even issues of spiritual abuse.

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If you see something or hear something that is potentially abusive, you need to tell somebody.

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I hope people don't mind. I'm gonna speed this up a little just so we can get through more. Let's go to 1 .25

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speed so we can get through a little faster. I know it's hard because you think that you're the only one or that when you speak up, things are gonna make matters worse.

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But the reality is, there comes a point in time where you need to stop, stand up, speak out, and be silent no more.

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I wanna say a few things at the outset regarding Crew. First of all, I've got a number of good friends that are still within Crew who are doing some amazing things.

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God uses and continues to use a lot of people within the Crew organization for the gospel and for the kingdom.

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And for that, we need to be thankful. I'm also reminded that Crew is not the enemy. As believers, we know that there is one enemy who seeks to steal, kill, and destroy.

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And who's a deceiver. And unfortunately, for far too many years, there have been elements within the

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Crew organization who have been deceived with elements of critical race theory that have been injected into various aspects of their trainings and their teaching and of their conferences.

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A lot of the critical race theory issues just started coming into light last year. However, this is not a new issue.

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For the issues within Crew, a lot of this actually started back in 2015 where every two years, Crew would have a biennial staff conference out in Colorado.

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So, the issues started coming to light in 2015, 2017, and then came to a head on Crew 2019.

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A number of the red flags that came up in the staff conferences included things like we had to apologize for the land that we were on for taking over the land of the

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Native Americans. There were times of lamenting our whiteness, our white privilege over systemic racism in America.

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And just the fact that the systems and structures in America were wrong and needed to be replaced. The oppressed versus the oppressor mentality and just all of the elements that go along with that came into focus within a lot of the teaching and the training and the speakers that were brought into the

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Crew staff conferences. In early 2020, I got connected with a group in Crew called Seeking Clarity and Unity.

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This was a group of concerned staff, much like myself, who were concerned. Just for those who haven't connected the dots, that means he was part of the group that created that document that Jim Artispe's complaining about.

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Concerned over the years of the various things that they've seen within the staff conferences, and even, quite frankly, even outside of the staff conferences with the things

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I just mentioned. What I appreciated about this group is the fact that they came together not to complain and just sit around and complain about the things that they were concerned about, but there was a distinct effort to, number one, pray for crew and crew leadership and the direction, the mission of the organization, to bring it back to a biblical mission and direction.

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The focus of the group was also to collect stories and experiences and information that staff have experienced over the years with speakers and training and just the red flags that were prevalent in order to gather all of that information and put it into a concise report, a detailed report, that would go to the crew leadership and the board of directors.

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Now, at one point, the Seeking Clarity and Unity group, they decided to let the crew leadership know about the

30:01

Seeking Clarity and Unity group. Now, as you can imagine, that didn't go over too well. They were a little upset, but they were also, they wanted to be proactive with us.

30:08

They said, you know, if you're seeing and hearing things that are not right, and especially if they're not biblical, we wanna know about it.

30:14

And so the crew leadership came to the Seeking Clarity and Unity group leadership and said, you know, okay, you're gonna put a report together?

30:20

Here's how we want this report to look. And the things that we want you to bring and put forth. And we want this report to be in -house.

30:26

So we want this report only to go to the crew leadership and to the board of directors. And so that was the intent of the

30:32

Seeking Clarity and Unity group and the forthcoming report. However, what we didn't know was that there were one or two moles, maybe a few more, within the

30:40

Seeking Clarity and Unity group who actually got ahold of this report as it was disseminated to the leadership in November of 2020.

30:48

And they proceeded to release this document to an outside blogger overseas who then released this document to the world.

30:56

So when this report came out, obviously people were not happy. People started demonizing our group, demonizing the report, blinding us.

31:02

Just a lot of vitriolic comments. They started scapegoating our group and report. At one point, a very well -known, kind of left -leaning

31:10

Christian publication did an article on our group in honor of a report which only further added fuel to the fire against the

31:16

Seeking Clarity and Unity group and our report. Just again, with more vitriolic. And he's talking about Christianity Today, I'm pretty sure there.

31:22

For those who don't know, Christianity Today, at this point, it's like, you might as well be reading the

31:29

Washington Post. I mean, it's like the Christian version of the Washington Post. And they're playing a strategic political game.

31:37

Very shameful what they did with this. It's interesting, too, that it ended up getting leaked publicly by a social justice advocate.

31:47

It wasn't a conservative that leaked this document. And so,

31:53

I just find that fascinating. So, this was supposed to, leadership didn't want this all in -house, they didn't want anyone to know, and then it's the social justice side, right, that leaks this.

32:04

One of the things that fascinates me a little bit, too, about this is how some of the people on that side, like Jim Martisby, can keep saying that it's this

32:13

Seeking Clarity group that's the one causing the division. How can you say that?

32:18

I mean, in my opinion, they were probably, I mean, I don't know all the ins and outs of Crew and everything, but I would've wanted to put this information out there for the sake of the donors much earlier.

32:30

And it's like they really, really had a lot of self -control. How many people are in that group? Hundreds of people?

32:36

They had self -control with hundreds of people not to share this thing publicly. And then it's whoever the one or two progressives are in the group, one of them ends up sharing it.

32:47

Moles, he says. Just think about that. Think about the whole unity thing, and just think about how this whole thing has gone down.

32:54

All the comments, even geared toward myself, some people even took to Twitter, and were maligning me.

32:59

They were accusing me of hate speech. And one crew staffer even said, in regards to myself,

33:05

I'm so glad he's gone. He was not really well -known in the organization, and he and the organization were going two different directions, so I'm glad he's gone.

33:12

I guess, quite frankly, I'm glad that I'm gone as well. For me, the decision to leave crew staff came to a head in September 2020, when

33:18

I was mandated to take a training from a group called the Lenses Institute. This was actually kind of cased. Mandated.

33:24

Listen to the word he used. He was mandated to take the training. This wasn't an optional thing. Along the lines of seeing the gospel through different cultural lenses, and what that looks like.

33:33

However, this five -day conference training, the start just threw up my red flags.

33:39

To begin with, they had a proprietary statement at the beginning that said, everything is proprietary. All of our thought leaders have gone through countless hours of training, and just no part of this may be replicated or shared, and basically can't share anything about what is about to happen in this training, quote unquote.

33:55

To this day, I still don't understand what this proprietary training was. It wasn't like, okay, here's the secret to Bill Bright's Four Spiritual Laws.

34:01

Nothing like that. And so, to me, if you're not doing anything wrong, and especially if you're teaching and training on things that are biblical, then there shouldn't be a problem with any of that getting out.

34:13

Just my opinion. So this lenses training quickly. This is actually, he's doing a very good job with this. He's, I mean, that's an excellent point.

34:20

Like, why would you wanna, if this is biblical unity stuff, John 17 unity, right? That's what they say lenses is on their official

34:27

Twitter. That's all they were doing. Then why in the world is it all secret? You don't want people being unified?

34:32

Like, why? Why is this such a horrible thing if it gets out? Started going back into all of the different things from the past crew conferences.

34:39

The oppressed versus the oppressor. Having to apologize for the language we were on. The lamenting of white privilege and just systemic racism and the systems and structures in America that needed to be replaced and torn down and so on and so forth.

34:50

And so I just had enough. I said, I'm not gonna put up with this stuff. All of the information about the crew lenses training was clearly documented and outlined in the

34:57

Seeking Fairty and Unity Report. So I encourage everyone to go read it. However, as I mentioned, our group and our report have since been maligned and demonized and mischaracterized, so a lot of people might not take the time to go read that.

35:06

However, what you can do for the next 15 or 17 minutes is to see for yourself exactly what was taught in the crew lenses training.

35:14

In the midst of engaging the curriculum and experience with the lenses group through this experience called

35:19

Lenses Reframed, each element or any other development offering provided by the lenses group is proprietary and that our facilitators have received specialized training and development and have logged countless hours, both as exemplars and in development for facilitating, sharpening their skills and expertise to provide the experiences afforded to you, to the group and those outside the group as well.

35:43

Replicating any lenses elements or learning experiences without receiving appropriate training and or licensing is verboten.

35:49

It is not allowed. If I could borrow the National Football League, it's strictly prohibited. So I have a couple terms for us to look at today that will be helpful for the activities that we're gonna engage in.

36:07

So Taylor's gonna share, yeah, our definitions. Taylor, you can scroll up. I think the ones that I'm doing are, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

36:16

So we're gonna hit stereotype, prejudice, privilege and power today. Stereotype, right?

36:22

Stereotypes are, they can be fixed and distorted generalizations about all members of a particular group, ignoring any individual differences.

36:30

There's a difference between kind of like understanding cultural cultures and some cultural norms and then stereotyping, right?

36:35

So it has to do with this fixed and distorted, that's a key like distorted generalization about a group of people that does not recognize individuality or different patterns of difference in a group of people.

36:45

Could that be like all creations are liars? Like what? Anyway. So we can go from stereotypes and then stereotypes can become conforming to prejudices, which is an unfavorable opinion or feeling formed beforehand without knowledge, thought or reason, right?

36:58

It's not based on truth and reality. So I do wanna share this definition from Beverly Daniel Tatum, which I think is helpful.

37:03

She says, stereotypes, omissions and distortions all contribute to the development of prejudice. And prejudice is a preconceived judgment or opinion usually based on limited information.

37:13

We all have them, not because we want them, but because we are consistently exposed to misinformation about others.

37:19

And this will be something to keep in mind in our exercise that we do later. Then you can jump down to privilege.

37:24

I think it's on the next page. And so privilege can be a triggering word. And so I just wanna break it down briefly. But my favorite definition of privilege is a right, an immunity or a benefit enjoyed by some, but not all.

37:35

So a right, immunity or benefit that is enjoyed by some or not, but not all. And we can experience privilege in our lives related to all different areas.

37:42

We can experience privileges, so rights or immunities, like things we don't have to think about, related to gender, it could be related to age, to able -bodiedness, to our socioeconomic resources, to access to education, and certainly with skin color.

37:54

And so when we talk about privilege, it's in all these different aspects of our lives, but certainly at skin color as well. And so we'll talk a little bit about that.

38:00

And then the last one today is power. Just the ability to influence change. Who has authority? Who's in power?

38:05

And again, those will come into play later. So why are these terms important, especially as we talk about ethnicity and race, right?

38:14

Because of our country's theological history, we have practically suppressed the mentions of ethnicity in the

38:19

Bible, and it has resulted in a weak practical theology of ethnicity, and thus a weak practical theology of how to address race.

38:26

Many times this results in instant application with little interpretation to oversimplified Bible verses about forgiveness for the victims of racial trauma or ethnic trauma, and rarely focusing on true repentance, repair, and a hard transformation for the offender or offending group.

38:39

That discomfort that we feel around ethnicity in the Bible has to do with the fact that any new introduction to how we deal with the current problem can very much feel like it's an assault on our orthodoxy, when a person may really be just confronted with a hermeneutic that they have never experienced before.

38:54

With orthodoxy, of course, it's important to focus on the fact that we have creeds that bind us together.

39:00

And so when a new hermeneutic is introduced. What? A hermeneutic they have never experienced before.

39:09

So we're not, we're outside of grammatical, historical, objective, or hermeneutics at this point. And you don't, it's when you experience.

39:17

You experience a hermeneutic. It's like something that, I guess, what passively kind of comes to you. But there should be one hermeneutic that we're using when we're trying to figure out what the

39:27

Bible means. So this is, yeah, it is an assault on orthodoxy. If it's just, this sounds like we're coming right into a subjective standpoint epistemology, right here.

39:40

Introduced. We should test it to those creeds. And so what happens is that, so as Christians, as believers, of course, we have a very deep connection to our faith.

39:56

It is a high stakes issue for us, right? So yeah, it's a lot of, it is a fight or flight response that when somebody comes to us with something different, even

40:06

John Anochevoy, there's gonna be a whole different array of reactions to his talk from yesterday. Once they were like, yes,

40:11

I feel heard, I feel seen, others might be a bit more tentative about what they heard.

40:17

Because in their whole upbringing, I mean, there's lots of things that come up with this. We are used to a certain hermeneutic.

40:24

And if nobody ever taught us about ethnicity during our time of discipleship, then it's gonna feel completely foreign. We're gonna dig into why that might be.

40:30

And so it's gonna feel very vulnerable, and it will feel very vulnerable. If you've been with crew for a while, you've felt that vulnerability for sure.

40:37

It feels unsafe, completely, to navigate into a new territory. And I just wanna just sit with that, and be able to sit with that with you for a second.

40:47

And really throughout this week, as your facilitators help guide you through that process, just know that orthodoxy is still our central belief and what we kind of hold in common.

40:56

First reason. So yeah, we're orthodox. I really wanna emphasize that. But maybe a different hermeneutic you'll experience, and somehow it's based on race.

41:07

You're gonna have a different hermeneutic if it's coming from a different, this is standpoint epistemology. It's just wrapped in Christian garb.

41:14

Kind of frightening, honestly. I mean, this is indoctrination in crew. This is, it truly is lenses.

41:23

I mean, they're trying to give you new lenses by which to view reality. And so,

41:29

I mean, I can sort of assume what's gonna happen, but we'll play it, and so you can see for yourself.

41:34

We need to unravel the way the secular notion of colorblindness has discipled US believers in the last 60 plus years, amongst other things.

41:42

We're just talking about the 60. This is critical race theory. This is critical race theory. Colorblindness, I mean, this is going right into like Derrick Bell's interest convergence, that colorblindness doesn't get you to have this, that's not gonna help in fighting against racism, because we have to realize everyone's colored because they have different ways of viewing things, and there's different, you owe them something if you're in a privileged class, and they're not, et cetera, et cetera.

42:14

So this, I mean, so far, it just seems like where we're going on this is postmodern. It's, well, at least it's subjective, and it's critical race stuff.

42:24

Years, there's lots that happened before that, but probably one of the biggest things, the biggest impact right now is the issue of colorblind theology, which has no scriptural basis at all, and you can ask me about that later if you would like.

42:38

We have morphed from things like, this is just an example, I don't like your blacks. Because you know in the

42:44

Bible when Jesus was saying, you know, the Samaritans, they're gonna interpret it differently, the scripture and the

42:50

Jews are gonna interpret it differently and it's all because of their social location. And colorblindness, if we just come at it like we're supposed to all try to figure out what the word of God meant to the original audience, then, you know, we're, like this is ridiculous.

43:04

This is absolutely ridiculous, but this is what we're told. This is what, apparently, people are being mandated or were mandated in crew, some of them.

43:14

I don't know how they figured that out, but some were mandated to have to go through this training if they wanna be a crew missionary.

43:20

And work with the organization. So essentially saying, I don't like your blackness.

43:26

Now we don't say, I don't like your blackness, usually out loud. It's usually some sort of coded language. I don't like going to that part of town.

43:32

I don't like that type of music. I don't like the type of language that's used, for example.

43:40

I don't like things about a culture. So this is the doctrinally colorblind way of believing the right things about color, meaning

43:48

I love you no matter what. So you say you don't wanna go to an area of town that has higher crime, and you don't wanna listen to certain music because it's profane.

43:57

I mean, does that mean that you're now racist? Is that what you're saying? Because you have this implicit bias? Color your skin is, but not actually having it impact my life in real and significant and uncomfortable ways.

44:09

And so this is true about so many things in our life. Like we can believe all day long. I believe it.

44:15

Help my unbelief when I actually have to step out in a faith, when I have to live things out, no matter what, whether you're trying to have a courageous conversation with somebody on staff or one of your students are sharing the gospel.

44:27

You can say you're about it, but until you do it, that's when your theology has actually practically been lived out.

44:33

Because of the gap by the majority of our theological forefathers for the last several hundred years, we need to be actively discipled or re -discipled.

44:41

In the interest of time, I'm going to just kind of flip through. And it looks like they're using notes to talk about this stuff.

44:47

So if I can just kind of flip through and see what they're talking about, I can just read some of these notes to you and we don't have to go through all the commentary.

44:54

Okay, so colorblindness was what we were just looking at. Let's see here. Growing in your ethnic identity in a white environment.

45:02

Get in touch, back in touch with the need, the needs and heart of your communities. If you feel distant from them.

45:12

Let's see, so explore the story of your family's heritage. And their struggle.

45:19

Examine ways, oh, let's see. You've participated and are complicit in racial hierarchy of power at the expense of black people and Native Americans.

45:32

So yeah, the oppress, oppressor stuff's coming out. Right there. Okay, so there's no notes here, so I'm just gonna play it.

45:40

The struggle here. I realize that I have this identity

45:46

I was given and it's not what God gave our family line. My question is, is

45:54

God creating a new ethnicity? Say for me, a German, British, Austrian, Scottish, Irish, American ethnicity?

46:03

I don't know. On the 2020 census, I did not check. This is like such an irrelevant thing to be talking about.

46:10

Like so irrelevant for, so outside the scope of what crew should be standing for and doing. Some guy's lost in his own head wondering if God's creating a new ethnicity because of the,

46:20

I guess, the percentages of different regions that his DNA represents,

46:26

I guess. I mean, you could only do this today when you can send in, I mean, I guess you could trace back your ancestors and say you have this or that, but like knowing the percentages, the amounts, et cetera, you can only do this today when you send your

46:37

DNA into like ancestry .com. And it's, I just,

46:44

I don't understand why, how this is relevant or why this is helpful for anyone. You're a

46:49

Christian, you're gonna go do Christian things. Some people you'll be able to reach, some people you won't.

46:55

And sometimes the Lord might use who you are and your personality and all kinds of a hundred things about you that you're not even probably aware of to help in reaching certain people.

47:04

And your job is just to be obedient, run in the lane you have. Anyway, I think, honestly,

47:11

I don't think the critical race stuff would be as popular as it is unless we had a culture that was insecure.

47:17

We have a culture that's insecure, that doesn't have much of an identity, broken homes, moving all over the place, doesn't even know what a boy is or a girl is, and they wanna know who they are.

47:26

And I think that plays into a lot of this, but that's my own stump speech. Let's keep going here.

47:33

The white box, because from what I understand, the census is used to conglomerate power and resources, and where there's a majority, the resources are gonna be allocated to those people.

47:44

So I did not check the white box. Even though this year they had, you could check white and then fill in.

47:52

What in the world is he talking about? If you check in white, then you're helping the powerful get more what?

47:58

European ethnicity after that. But I was like, I'm not gonna do this because that's not what

48:04

I am. So I wrote in the other box and filled in my ethnicity as I understand it.

48:11

Everything he just named was from Europe. I absolutely know that I'm white, and I know the power that that social construct has when

48:21

I'm meeting and discipling non -white students. So you lied on the census. This is not helpful, guys.

48:28

This is really not helpful. So it's like this dual relationship, intersectionality.

48:33

I don't know if you'll touch on that at all this week, but it's this idea that we have different identities going on.

48:41

So the world sees me one way based on the social construct. God, the realities of the kingdom of heaven and earth are different than what the world says.

48:51

And I have to walk in those dual realities. If I pretend I'm not white, then as the social construct, then

48:58

I do a lot of damage to people of color. And this is so dumb. I mean, it's the only word

49:05

I can think of. Stupid, I don't, I know, look, when I was young, I wasn't supposed to say that word. We don't, I don't, you don't just say that word about anything, but it's stupid.

49:15

That's what this is. It's absurd. It's just, this is not, this is so outside the scope of what we should be doing as Christians in a

49:24

Christian ministry that's funded by people who think their money's going to fund evangelism and discipleship. And it's going to this kind of stuff.

49:30

You're trying to figure out in your own head all this intersectionality. Well, it's my identity.

49:38

Whiteness is a power structure, et cetera. And the thing is, I've said this before, but race used to mean, before the proto -Darwin,

49:54

Darwinian ideas, genetic, biological, determinism, et cetera, race just,

50:02

I mean, you could have a race of women, the race, it just meant people. They're tied to usually land, culture.

50:08

I mean, this is before there was this, we weren't in a global kind of situation like we are now, where people are just going all over the place and moving every 10 years to a new location to take a new job all over the world.

50:20

We, you know, most people had kind of, they lived the way that their fathers and grandfathers lived before them.

50:26

And they were tied to a region and they looked a certain way and they didn't get out. And so today, there's a lot of mixing going on, especially in the

50:35

United States, which is fine. But I think what's happened is, we've lost kind of, the term race has gone through sort of an evolution.

50:47

And what's happened is today, it's being redefined to mean just a power relationship, a power structure or something like that.

50:55

It's lost its organic nature. That it's just, it's sprung up, it's tied to a certain place.

51:02

It's tied to a certain kind of people that look a certain way, that have certain habits, et cetera. That's just all it is.

51:07

There's nothing threatening about that. But it's been made into something very threatening and used to shame people because it's now all tied to power structures.

51:18

So it's gone from that, you know, from just people to biological determinism to now, or genetic determinism to now, it's just this kind of like abstract thing in your head that you can kind of trace out if you get a certain lens and understand power relations.

51:38

It's become more and more abstract, more and more internal, more and it's, I think

51:43

Kant is behind this somehow. It's just like, it's just so not organic.

51:49

It's so not, you know, you don't know who you are because of where you're from and who your people are and that kind of stuff.

51:55

You have to like figure it out artificially and it's this whole journey. And it's like, it's just, it's not helpful.

52:02

It's not, especially for Christians who, you have like a primary identity in Christ that roots you and God's sovereignty.

52:10

And that's what you should be focusing on if there's insecurity about who you are. But instead we're playing mind games and Lenz is aiding that.

52:19

High index is not some other social construct. The index, the high index is

52:24

John 17 oneness that Jesus prayed for. Now Lenz has reframed, we've intentionally programmed times where white staff, majority culture staff and people of color, visible minorities split in order to have deeper conversations as a part of this journey of development and growth.

52:39

This is for everyone. So shortly after this meeting, we will have spaces where white staff and people of color, visible minorities can process and connect more in depth.

52:51

And I think that's called segregation. I'm just saying. Great clarity and definition for this time.

52:58

What we mean when we say people of color or visible minority breakouts is that it's for those who may have experienced racism, oppression, colorism, discrimination, or been marginalized because of the color of their skin or their appearance.

53:12

Now, this doesn't mean that there are other forms of discrimination that don't exist or aren't valid for those who are ethnic minorities or of lighter complexion that they haven't experienced hardship.

53:25

However, we do find it necessary to create spaces for people who've experienced these things because of the color of their skin.

53:31

Now, we split out into these two groups for further development, for further connection. I mean, it can be an emotional journey.

53:37

And for many of us on this call right now. John 17 unity means we split into two groups based on our race.

53:50

Just think about that for a minute. We have never really had a space to delve constructively authored by the word of God, by the people of God into these spaces in a constructive, growing, abiding way.

54:06

Now you may feel unsure which group to go to at which time these breakouts take place, but please connect with your lenses facilitator and they will help you navigate that.

54:18

Navigating where to go. I probably shouldn't laugh because I mean, it's sad.

54:28

It really is. Some people, my heart goes out to people who are confused over this, who are just so lost in their own heads.

54:39

And so, I mean, going through this whole truth, some of them it's probably traumatic identity crisis, not even knowing where do

54:47

I go? We're splitting into these different groups and where do I line up? Basically, am I oppressed or oppressor?

54:52

Because no one wants to be the oppressor. And they're forced to make this decision. And this is all in the name of unity somehow.

55:01

And how confusing is that to young people? Young people, impressionable going through this.

55:09

So many of them young, I should say, maybe not all, but so many of them. And be a very special moment in your journey.

55:26

So they're gonna begin a section by playing the Black National Anthem with Different Voices. ♪ Give every voice and sing ♪ ♪

55:42

Children in heaven ring ♪ ♪ Ring with the harmonies of love ♪

55:51

As a witness to an unbelieving world, let us not be distracted. Okay, hey family, we wanna recognize that there are those of you who really have been leaning in hard this week.

56:00

In fact, all of you have. And there may be a desire to actually help augment or support the curriculum that you've been enjoying.

56:08

And I would just ask you to just share with you that the curriculum has been set. It's been very thoroughly vetted.

56:14

And any additional elements that you would like to add to help with our curriculum, that is information you can share with us in our evaluation.

56:22

That is information you can share with us offline via email that we can vet, discuss with you and consider what it is that you'd like to share.

56:34

However, what... It sounds like what's going on is someone in a public chat for this group shared some stuff that contradicted the narrative.

56:42

Is not appropriate. And what is not protocol is to drop information into the chat box on the way out the door of the lens is reframed.

56:56

It's inappropriate protocol. It's, we're gonna believe that it's from a good place and believe the best.

57:05

Judging from what was shared in the chat, it almost diametrically runs opposite to what we've been sharing with you this week.

57:13

And so just lovingly, we would share that if you would like to be helpful and share additional information, that's something that you can share with us on the evaluation.

57:22

And again, we live by your feedback. Indeed, the very reframed product that you enjoy is a by -product of some of the feedback you have given us through the years.

57:34

Judging from what was shared in the chat, it almost diametrically runs opposite to what we've been sharing with you this week.

57:40

Someone's sharing James Lindsay. And Founders Ministry stuff.

57:47

Cody Box stuff in the chat. Yeah, this is Larry Elder. Yeah, okay.

57:55

It almost diametrically runs opposite to what we've been sharing with you this week. They're almost diametrically runs opposite to what we've been sharing with you this week.

58:13

This is kind of, for those listening who can't see, this is kind of biting. This is a, the last frame here says the

58:19

Lenses, moving, here we go. The Lenses group is an expression of Athletes in Action at Crew Ministry.

58:26

Wow, I didn't know that there, okay Lenses is actually under Athletes in Action. So this, I guess, is supposed to help you minister to athletes.

58:35

So, but then this is something that I think the person who made the video added, but, crew, but we have not been perpetuating critical race theory since 2015 at all.

58:44

So he's basically pointing out there's a contradiction here. I think this is a powerful video. I encourage more people to do this kind of thing, to make videos like this, pointing out the hypocrisy, the contradictions, exposing what's happening, because so many of the donors who fund these things don't know.

59:00

And this was very helpful. So if you go on YouTube, you can find it and you can share it. It's Will Hoyler is the name of the channel, but Crews Distorted Lenses and just posted recently.

59:14

First thing that comes up if you type in crew lenses on YouTube. So I hope this was helpful for you and just seeing kind of what lenses has been doing a little bit.

59:25

And then my hope and my prayer is that lenses truly is shutting down and it is truly is going away that it's done.

59:36

And then the other organizations within crew and leaders who are pushing this social justice narrative also leave the organization as a result of this.

59:47

I don't know what the future has in store for this organization, but I thought it was good.

59:54

We all need some positive news, and I think this is positive. And so I just wanted to share that hope that was helpful for you and be inspired by it by this gentleman who decided to stick his neck out there a little bit and show what was really going on because we need more of it.

01:00:11

All right. Well, God bless more coming later in the week, and we will reconvene soon by now.