An Army of Normal FolksInga Arvin felt called to move to the challenging Louisville neighborhood of Portland, but her husband Shawn didn’t want to because he used to buy drugs there. Their obedience strangely led them to get a house for free if they bought a community center, which of course led them reinvigorating it with over 200 kids playing basketball, a 400 person fish fry, a school, and a thrift store. Welcome to Love City, who’s beating heart is neighbors loving neighbors.
Hey, everybody, it's Bill Courney with an army of normal folks. And we continue now a part two of our conversation with Sean and Inga Arvin. Right after these brief messages from our general sponsors to get to love city, you two guys met, how briefly we've eaten up so much time with some really cool stuff. Briefly, first of all, how do you get from there to Louisville? And why? And then how to jell me?
So kind of when I said in the beginning, like when you join the intelligence community, it's like joining the military. So even as a contractor, it took the government about five years to catch up on their hiring. So about five years into it, I remember, I'm still doing the job of a government employee. The government started coming to all these contractors and saying, okay, we're if you want to stay doing this role, you're going to have to be a government employee, or you tell your company you want to go somewhere else.
So that's what started happening.
So I started seeing the writing on the wall, and then it was it was the same decision that I had to make when I was in that briefing. Do I want this to be my life and my career. And I felt no, like that.
I don't I.
Already had, Like I mean, now, watch, this is only part of what I did. Like I already had a whole bunch of stuff I couldn't talk about. And it's real hard to get another job when you say.
Well, I have experience, but I can't tell you what it is. So I decided to get out.
And I have family in Lexington, and so I just drove out to Kentucky. It's like, Louisville feels nice.
It's an hour away from Lexton.
That's good.
That's good.
So then I just started applying for jobs and got a job with Humana and moved to Louisville.
And you all met.
You'll maintain that part, sure, yeah, So we remember I was telling you I went to decided to apply for Bellerman and got accepted, and so I'm going that's in twenty fourteen, and I'm going through the NBA program thirteen and didn't know her, but Inga applied in twenty fourteen to go to Bellarmin and that Bellament. One of the things that you have to do is you have to study abroad, and studying abroad means you got to go for two to three weeks and a country that they select and you get to go there and learn about how they do economics. And so we both. I applied for the end of my study, and you can had a choice. You could do it at the end or you could do it at the beginning. And Inga applied for the beginning for us to go to Italy. I didn't know her, never had met never hung out with her, never talked to her, didn't know her all. But I was in the class twenty thirteen. She was in the class of twenty fourteen. We get to Italy. It's the very first day we're We get there on a Sunday. And the crazy part was because I just had fall in love with Jesus and I was like wanting to learn everything about this thing that how did it get this way? Where did it come from? So as soon as we land, man I'm beat feeding down the corridor of the airport to get in a taxi to go to the Vatican because it was Pope Francis's very first Mass ever. And so man I get there in time, and Saint Peter's is just like packed elbow to elbow with people, but Inga didn't go. She stayed. So the next day we wake up and we're going to these classes and I'm in the lobby waiting for the bus to come to get us, and this lady walks up. And a part of my past was mormonizing, you know, that was just a part of my past, you know, brokenness, looking for a mother's love. I mean, you go through multiple people, think I can fix people. I can fix this woman, I could do this, I could do that, because that's what you live from your childhood. So here we are sitting in the lobby and this woman walks up to me and I'm dooling. And when I'm dooling, I'm getting these visions and these words from the Lord about like what the kingdom of having here looks like on earth and how to restore it. I'm writing all this stuff in these books. And Inga comes walking up and she says, are you waiting for the boss? And I was like, I still have my head down. I said yeah, and she said I said yeah, I'm part of the Bella my groom. She said, so am I. So what are you doing? And I look up and I see how beautiful she is, and I'm like, whoa, and get the hell away from me. Man, this is men. Come on now, man behind me, satan, Man, I get what's going on here. I just put my head down and ignorder. I was just like, yeah, man, I'm not going there. I've already did that part of my life. So later that day, if you've ever been overseas, especially in Europe, man, when they take a break, it ain't the American ten minute break and everybody get back to work. Man, they man, you thirty forty fifty hours. He has this. Man, it's like for real life, you know. And so we get this big break and I'm sitting over by myself again and I'm doing the same thing, writing all kinds of dreams down and I'm like just chilling out. And then he walks up again and she says, no, like really, what's going on with you? And man, it was the very first time in my whole life that I felt free that I could just be this new creation, this new person and tell this woman the truth. And I look up at her and I just said, yeah, you want to know what's going on with me? I tell you four months ago, man, I fell head over. He was in love with Jesus, and I told him, man, I just go anywhere, do anything, be whatever you want me to be for the rest of my life. And man, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. I don't even know why I'm married at this college, finishing up this degree. I don't even care about this. And that's how I want to live my life for the rest of the time I'm here on this earth. And I'm thinking, man, this check is gonna go what a nut case? Man like, dude, you are like a nut case. And she looked at me and she said, wow, won't you tell me more about that story? And I was like, how what interest did you? So?
You know, I had known Jesus my whole life, and by then I was thirty three and I couldn't have kids because of my heart condition, and I didn't really I hadn't. I mean, even though I'd grown up in the church my whole life, I hadn't really met anybody. This might sound weird, but I hadn't really met anybody that knew Jesus the way I knew Jesus.
Like they all said they did. But it just it wasn't.
I just couldn't tell, you know, And so I had kind of given up on dating because in that in like the Christian dating world, like if you couldn't have your own kids, you were kind of like pushed this out a little bit to begin with. And then I I was just like, I don't, I don't. I don't agree like, I don't, I don't agree with this like whole church thing, Like there's just something like, yes, I love Jesus, but there's just some off and I'm not I don't quite know what it is, like I couldn't put my finger on it.
And so I had kind of.
Given up on meeting anybody that knew Jesus as a potential, like you know, spouse.
I was like, well, that's just not going to happen for me, I guess.
And so what was that sad for you?
Oh?
I was angry. I was very angry. I was very angry. I was angry at God. Yeah, I was very angry at him. And and so he gives you when he busts out a.
Son of a prostitute and an almost suicidal form of military guy.
Yes, thanks.
When he busts out with that, I was like, I'd never heard that from I was like, tell me some more about that, Like huh, like that was like the best pickup line ever for me, which he had no idea that that was the case.
Sean got god game.
Yeah, man, just going hey, yeah.
So you meet in Rome of all places, all.
The way later that day, we're going to the Roman Colisseum as a group and we get there and uh, Inger's all the way on the other side of the Colosseum. I'm on one side, and ever since I've fallen in love with Jesus, I'm a feller, Like I can feel the stuff, you know, like like I never had that before, or maybe it was just hidden, you know, it was robbed in that verse.
And let me ask you, yeah side note, Yeah, does that include empathy and things like that?
I think that there's three forms of that word that you would just use. I think there's sympathy, empathy. I think there's different forms of it, yeah, compassion, and I think that most people get them misconstrued. They don't understand because they're so uneducated. Empathy means, yeah, I feel something for you, but I really I'm going to feel something for you, but it really didn't matter. And then empathy means I really feel something for you. I want to help you, but I'm not going to do anything. And then compassion means, really, man, I feel these things for you, I agree with them, and I'm going to do something about it with you.
I've heard that definition before and I love it. Yeah, I just mean coming up the way you came up. I'll just say this, coming up the way I came up. Oftentimes I recognize people's hurt, but I was dealing with so much of my own life. I wasn't able to be fully empathetic or compassionate. And when you say, prior to knowing Christ, I didn't really feel things, And once I knew him, I started feeling things. I wondered if that isn't included things like.
In this particular, in this answer that question, I'm sitting there and I'm observing the Roman Colosseum. Have you ever been there?
No?
Oh, it's like crazy like and there's all these feelings, you know, like from the past, historical Oh my gosh, man, thousands of thousands of Christians, followers of Christ who probably back in that day really were followers of Christ, were in these battles and just fed the lines and there's catacombs right outside the Colosseum, these big, huge, just mounds of dirt and they would just throw them in there and kick a little dirt on people. And man, I'm sitting here observing all this is going on, and I'm just bawling, if you want to know, I'm just like a little kid, going, oh my gosh, what is going on in this atmosphere? And I'm just like it was so overwhelming, and I felt the Lord just say to me, hey, I need you to lift up your head. And when I lifted up my head, I looked across the couseum and Inga was lit up like an angel and this goat and glowing and she was so just like magnificent and beautiful. And he said, that's going to be your wife. And I was like, I don't want a wife, man, I just want to be free. I just want to go do whatever I want to do. I man, I don't want He was like, no, that would be your wife. I was just like, oh man, and but so overwhelmed with like what is going on here? And we ended up leaving there and we go down to the Forum and if anybody you know, the Roman Forum is where they all the Greek gods and all the Roman gods they used to build all these temples and they would worship them. And this is the craziest thing about religion, is the most nuts for me. Now, you got to remember a four year old baby reborn lamb if you want to call me, you know, who doesn't know anything about this past and know any of this stuff. But man, it is just being overwhelmed by all this like false stuff that man, it's like so unreal that I'm just looking at it and going, this is nuts. We get to the forum and the dude who's with us is like one of the most profound professors in Italy Sean. I don't remember his last name, but he was like worked for the Vatican, you know. He's this dude is like top notch and teaching and he says, yeah, you all won't believe this. But when they destroyed all this these false gods, they took all the remnants, all the gold, all the marble, and they took it over here and they built Saint Peter's And I'm like, and as baby, going, you are just took one false thing and built another false thing, And was so overwhelmed that I was just like, this can't be real. So they asked if anybody want to go back. They were gonna go do something, walk over to the Vatican and like, anybody want to go back early? And I was like, yeah, well I do. And then there was about five or six more than wanted to leave because we had jet lag. People were super tired and uh. They were like, well, Sean, you know how to get back, right, Can you just leave them? And I said yeah. It was like a mile and a half walk back. So Inga was walking beside me and we're just talking and and I was like, oh, you know, man, you live in Louisville. And she's like, yeah, you know, maybe we should hang out sometime someday in Louisville, you know, if you want to. She was, yeah, that'd be cool. So we're walking up this hill and there's just like, uh, in Italy, the restaurants they always store front like whatever they're gonna cook that night, like fresh, like sea bag, it's an ice, you know, up there. And you're I go, what are you doing tonight? You have different plans? And she was like no, not really, And I said, how about we go out the dinner tonight? And she was like, okay. So we're still walking, we're all talking, and we get back to the hotel and the Lord's already told me, Man, this is gonna be my wife, right, And I believe that because then when he tells me stuff, I truly believe it. So they all get on the elevators go up to the rooms, and I told him, well, when we meet like seven o'clock and down here in the lobby and we'll go and man, soon she goes to the elevator and she gets in. I beat feet over to the concierge and I'm like, dude, where is the best restaurant in all of Rome? And can you get me in there tonight? And I want you to have a car here, and man, it was insane and we drove up and it's right above the Spanish Steps and it's this beautiful restaurant that overlooks all of Rome. We sit there and have the most beautiful dinner. Man, just conversations, and it was so crazy. At the end of it, man, a firework show goes off.
Over the stats in the background, fireworks going.
Off, and pretty good first date.
I bet you weren't angry, you weren't angry anymore.
The story about it day.
Oh yeah, I didn't know.
I mean, I so I can be a little so my dad's family's German, and I can be.
A little literal.
And so when he was like, oh, let's just go have dinner, I was like, oh yeah, cool.
So we go have dinner.
And now, granted, like we just met and we're in a foreign city, right, and I had traveled internationally a lot before that, but so I was pretty comfortable. And so we so we go, we go down to the lobby and there's a taxi waiting, and so we jump into tax and I'm and I'm like, oh, where are we going? And he's like, oh, it's a surprise. And I was like okay, Like I'm in a foreign country with somebody I just met, getting into a car, not knowing where I'm going, and I'm like okay. So we pull up to the restaurant and this this huge like mansion on top of the Billburghasy above the Spanish steps, and Red.
Tell me, at that point you realized it was a day.
At that point I realized it was a day. We got out and I was like, oh, I'm on a date.
Okay, you get married.
Yeah, so that night when we finished eating dinner. No, we didn't get married that night, but close we go down the Spanish steps and at the bottom of it that night we had a very first kiss, like right there on the Spanish steps in Rome. I mean, yeah, there you go. But it's written by God. The plane man, it's pretty amazing and beautiful.
We'll be right back.
Just over the next ten days we're traveling throughout learning about economics, and then we end up like uh, fall deeper head over heels in love.
Uh.
At the end, ending was supposed to go back and I still had I was supposed to go just backpacking through Europe on my own. Yeah.
I was just.
Gonna go do my thing, you know, with Jesus. I already had sold all my stuff. I had a fire, I caught a fire sell like on that Derby morning when the Lord was talking to me, he told me to sell all my stuff. I sold everything except two beds and two suitcases full of clothes in my in my house and sold everything like all the cars took them the car MIC sold them like just got rid of And the more I got rid of stuff, the man that for your I fl and so I'm thinking, man, I'm gonna go backpacking, and me and her fall in love. And we're sitting in Florence at this crazy like I mean, like this place looked like an eight star, you know, but nobody was there, and they let me in the ingage just like hang out there like that. We would come friends with them and they were just like, I'm in there. If you want coffee, just go back there and I'll show you how to use it. It was just crazy and free Wi Fi. So we're sitting there and I said, so what are you gonna do? And she said, well, I gotta go back because you know, I can't change my airplane ticket Delta. And I said, let's just track, and so she gets on, she calls. We call up Delta and they're like, oh, yeah, no problem, man. We will change your airplane ticket for you so you can extend your staying the other five days.
And we're like you got no fee?
Yeah, like okay. So we're sitting there if we get that done, and they it's like, man, what are we gonna do? What do you want to go? I said, Man, I ain't got a clue. I said, uh, but man, I've always wanted to drink again us in Ireland. And if you know anything about European travel, if they have this thing called Ryan there, it's like spirit and like your allegience.
It's like an air taxi. Yeah, you go anywhere.
You go anywhere for thirty bucks. Like you just get on it and just go. And we ended up catching a fight. And we were walking around Holte Island, which is right outside of Dublin, doing a hike and uh, man just felt like we should commit ourselves to one another right there overlooking the sea of Ireland. And man, it was the most beautiful moment I've ever experienced. And we both committed to hey, man, we're going to do this thing called life together forever. And did it. Made a commitment to God right there, and uh we believe that, man, if you are united through God, that's the first most definitely wedding that you're going to have is with him. And then the second one was a piece of paper for man just to solidify.
That's two weeks.
Yeah, yeah, nice job for being angry to marriage.
Yeah, God's like here take that.
Okay, we're married, So now we're going to get to love to suit. So you guys are now back in Louisville. I'm sure there's a story, but we're back in Louisville, and you gotta find a place to live.
I had a house, Okay.
So remember I moved from DC, Yeah, to Louisville.
So I had a one bedroom of condo in DC that I sold for the same price that I bought a three bedroom, two bath house in like a really nice section of Louisville.
That's how it works. That's how it works, leaving places like DC and New York and going to Memphis or Louisville. So you got so I.
Had a house, so he moved in because he had just sold everything. So we just we just moved into my house and we lived in. It's an area of Louisville called Crescent Hill. It's on the east side of downtown.
And nice area.
Yeah, I mean like coffee shop right there, like stores, restaurants, you know, Hips Street. Yeah, yeah, no parking, but it's a great area.
And so then we're, uh, man, she's going to work every day. She's going to work every day, and I'm waking up making her breakfast and make packing her lunch and loving honor and thinking, man, life can't get no better and this is pretty sweet, you know. And from where I came from to that moment was just like and she would leave and I would get up and I would study scripture for like twelve hours, like just like I wanted to know, like what what is this thing called following Jesus? And uh I was about the first year I was just immersed in Matthew, Mark Luke and John because I think during that period of time, I know now we're looking back, you know, he wanted to solidify my identity in him, because those are the books that, man teach you who you are and who you are and where you come from and who you serve and what you're supposed to be a part of. And I did that for about a year. And meanwhile, Man, I was hanging out at the conference shop every once in a while, hanging out at the bus stop when people I'd meet people and I'd be like, hey, man, you ever heard about this dude named Jesus. I'd have crazy conversations with people, you know, just wanting to know like other people's perspectives. And we started opening up our house and every Friday night we would have just opened up the back gate to the patio and man, all of our neighbors started coming over and people would just show up, and there was I had this guy one time, uh break into our house. Came INGA left the side door unlocked once you came home. And I was upstairs studying and there was this guy come in, came in the house and we had a bulldog, English bulldog, and uh, he didn't make any noise. But I heard some noise down in the kitchen and I was like, man, what is going on? And I was like, tanked On, that's his name, tank And I said, he don't make noise like that. And I came downstairs and there was a guy in our kitchen like who had came in? And I went back upstairs and ben ex military, I do have a firearm, So I told Inga, I said you stay up here until I cleared this house. And because there the wall was where you couldn't see it and you could look out in the story, it's a crazy funny story in the end. Uh, but but there's this wall and you can't see I can only see he won. So in my past, you know, I was like, how am I going to clear this with only one person? And this dude's behind this wall, and I don't know if there's more you know, I don't know if there's more people back there. So I sneak around to the side and I see him and he's in the fridge, and I draw my firearm and and I'm like, dude, you better get on the ground right now. And he, uh had pulled out a bottle of wine and he was trying to get and like he's in this fridge and he puts it down and he gets down on the ground and I clear the rest of the house. I tell Inga to call nine one one. She calls nine one one, and you know, we're telling people where somebody's in our house. And uh, I tell INGA get out of the house, go out the front, and go next door. And we used to have this hippie dude who lived next door to us named Dave, who was a military navy. I said, go burn and get Dave and have him come over here right now. And I've got him on the ground and he's like just laid out, and Dave comes in and he's like standing there, and all of a sudden, you can start to hear sirens in the distance coming and the dude starts to get up and Dave goes, hey, buddy, man, I don't know if you know this, but this dude is an army dude with a ton of PTSD. And I suggest that you just laid or he's gonna blow your head off.
Like guy just lays back down.
I cannot tell you, but the dude just like all air went out. He laid down. Man. Come to find out, Man, this dude was an ex veteran man in the Vietnam War and had came in who was an alcoholic, got disorientated, had a tumor in his brain. He was in his house and was just pouring himself a glass wine and man, they get him out front and they get him into the car, and I'm sitting on the front porch withing and our swing and I'm just balling. I'm a mess man. I'm just like, man, I still got a lot of healing to do. And I asked the police officer and by then they had like the FBI there and all kinds of people swat and I just said, can I please just go over and I can just pray for him? And they said yeah, sure, man, And I pray for all the police huddle up and I pray for them, you know, just because man, they go through so much trauma that they end up hating people instead of loving people. And I prayed for mister fall Bush and man, it was just amazing. And then we stayed connected, came friends. I would win. Then it would take him Thanksgiving Bill. He would come on Friday nights to the back porch with everybody else, have a couple of beers. One day, Inga's getting in the car to go to Human and we're sitting I'm walking her out and this big truck like three f three fifty pulls up in the and it's this big, huge, burly man and he jumps oute of the car. Is there a Sean orvind that lives here? And I was like, holy crap, man, this is gonna be a big task. And I tell your man, baby, just go ahead and go I got. He comes over and he whipside his hand. I mean it was like a huge paw and he was just like, dude, I want to shake the hand that saved my brother's life. And it was mister Faulbush's brother who used to be an offensive lineman for U K and was just like dude, I don't know how you did that, but thank you man, thank you. Yeah, it was a crazy story.
So how do you get it to the place that you bought?
So so all that was happening.
So so we I had lived there for five years and knew hardly none of my neighbors, and Sean moves in and within three months new on the streets.
Everybody. So we had people come in.
I could tell you pre Jesus that was not like this, I got it.
So we had people come in every Friday just hanging out. And we felt like, I mean that because that that neighborhood is fairly old, and so the house was one hundred years old, and so we felt like, well, let's just get a little fixed up, get.
It painted, put it a new HVAC. You know, it's thirty year old of hvax.
So we started doing all that, and then we felt like we should put it on the market.
Like not any idea.
We were going to move or where we were going to go or anything like that. We just felt like we were being allowed to put it on the market. So we put on market and it's.
Sold, and we put it for like.
A high.
A little higher. Yeah, and we got a cash offer.
I mean it was you know, one walks up. I'm in the house. This woman walks up. We just put it for sales, signed out. She walks up, bangs on the door, and I come out and she was like, yeah, I want to see the house. And I said, ma'am, you gotta go through my rip call my road right there. And she goes, I want to see it now. And I was just like, man, we have my dogs out. I mean, we're not set up for it like for you. She goes, I want to see it now, and I said, ma'am, you just call him and then he'll tell me when every the appointment is. She she goes outside, and about five minutes later, our roader calls and goes, dude, you better let this lady because she wants to buy the house now. And she walks in. She walks around the house, and she goes, okay, I'll be in contact with you that afternoon. It was cash offer for what we asked.
Wow.
Yeah. We were like woa, yeah, this is crazy.
So at that at that point, we we had a little cabin down at a lake like an hour and an hour south of Louisville and so we were like, well, I guess we will go stay there for a little while. So Sean went down for a few days just kind of pray and get away, and I mean, it's.
Only twenty four hours. And I was like, can I come down and hang out with you?
So we love to be together? Yeah, good, like non stop, I guess. So I went down. They're like, I need my space. You got your name, man, there is no space, so I'm in your space.
So I'm driving down to the to the cabin and yeah, you have to go out sixty four to Indian and then go south back into Kentucky. And so going that way you go past Portland, like on the west.
Side of Louisville.
And so I go past the twenty second Street exit, which is right there Portland, and it just it was one of those things where like it wasn't like an audible voice, but it was like, we're.
Moving to Portland, like God saying like you're moving to Portland.
And I was like, okay, I don't know what that looks like, but all right, now, remember I'm not from Louisville. So I go down to Sean and I say, hey, you know, I think we're supposed to move.
To Portland, and he was like, you mean Oregon. I was like, no, no, in Louisville.
And he was like yeah, no, no, no, you're talking about it.
That ain't gonna be moving.
Because that's why you spy my drugs in that neighbor. I knew, like, this is not the neighborhood for us to move too. And she was adamant. She was like, no, we're moving there. And I was like, okay, man, let's go see what's Yeah, we'll be right back.
So we just down there and started driving around.
Found a house that we most definitely was just like, wow, man, this is the house that we love. I just want to come here and do the same thing like we did over in the other side of town and just get to know our neighbors and love people and man, just be on the journey with them. Uh.
I heard the But the house deal itself was interesting.
Yeah.
So the house had been boarded up for about thirty years at that point.
Is that all? Yeah, I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it.
Yeah, yeah, was right.
Yeah, there wasn't really much anything right with it.
So the house was was basically the house was.
The house wasn't yeah.
So the the the bones of the house was were good, but the house was.
Not all that was there.
So no toy, there wasn't no yeah, there wasn't anything.
It was framing was there.
But the how next door to the house was a twenty thousand square foot old community center. That so we so we went to go approach the owner of the house because there wasn't like a first sale sign or anything out front.
And we were like, we're interested in the house.
Who it was? And we went over there to talk to him, and man, what a story. This dude had an or from at eleven years old from New York City, caught a Greyhound bus, ended up in downtown Louisville and just built a life for himself and Bobby and just owned a car lot there. We go over to talk to him. He takes us in the building, shows us all around. We're recording it, you know.
Looking He's like, he said, well, the house is it's a package.
Like if i'll give it to you for free.
I'll give it to you for free, but you got to buy the building, the community.
The community.
You can have the house, you can house twenty thousand behemoth sitting here. Now, why why was that his.
Deal because it was all on one d and he wanted if he was going to say, so, you guys are looking for a house. And then we ended up with the community center and he told us he told us, he told us the price, and we were like, a man, let us go home and think about it. We want to pray. And uh. I think one of the most beautiful parts of that story was we get home, we're thinking about it. We're like, man, man, are we supposed to do that?
You know?
We know how to do this, how loving on people, and that's a big endeavor, you know, And we're we're contemplating about it. And I said, I tell you what, man, you go to your prayer room, because then you had a prayer room, And I'm gonna go up to my office and spend as much time as you need. I'm going to pray, and you pray, and let's get back together when we're done. And asked the Lord to tell you what we should offer. And we both came back down probably by half hour later, was sitting in the living room and we both had it on paper and we flipped them over and it was the same exact number, fifty thousand dollars less than what he was asking. And we walk in and we're talking to him, and this dude is like he loves inga not too fond of Sean. You know. He's just a staunch business o rough.
Yeah, I mean, he's got a heart of gold.
Yeah, he tries to hide it up, like the dude plays Elvis, you know, the dude it has up in the parades and anything we ask him to do, he'll come.
He'll show take people in the neighborhood.
I mean, but it's all hidden. He's you know, he doesn't want people to know. And so we walk in, we're talking to him, and I was just like, here's our offer, and we tell him what our offer is. And he stands up and he's got tears in his eyes, and he comes over and he shakes my hand and he says, you gotta deal. And I've been waiting for you waiting he didn't know it, didn't even know it, said, I've been waiting for you all to come. And he's watched us over the years, just transformed this boy.
Yeah.
So you get the house done eleven weeks with no idea how to do construction at all. Yeah, Yeah, so now you've got your house, but you've got this twenty thousand foot thing over here. There was a tenant in it at the time, and we thought they said they wanted to stay there for like five years. They were going to do all this work in the community. And we were like, man, cool, we can do we can do it together, you know. And then first month Comes doesn't pay his mortgage. Second month, Comes doesn't pay his rent. Third month, and we're like, bro, you gotta like pay your rent, you know, And he's like, no, we're in you know Jesus, and I know Jesus, so maybe I shouldn't have to pay. I don't know what kingdom you lived, that's not that Jesus, the kingdom economies, you know. And then and then that turns into.
Like did you look at him and say do you know you need to pay your rent? Because my wife is this dude had.
Like over standing in my living room all of us and all this stuff. And then turns around and it's like you're a terrible person.
Because you're making yeah, okay.
Well, then the next word is goodbye.
Yeah. Wait then the process oh yeah, And then we had to go through the court system, which I hate it because I have such a big heart. Man, I'm just like, this sucks. We're sitting in there and the judge goes hit her gavel for us to come up, and we get up there and she goes, oh, this should be interesting. Someone's kicking a church.
Yeah, let's see who's the big thing of church. And I'm like prejudice.
Much like, man, this just got like so we had to get a lawyer involved, and then we found one pro bono who helped, and we had to get Oh it was horrific.
Yeah, that was the first That was the first experience.
Experience and we were just like what God, man, we know you called us to do this, you asked us to come down here, you were doing it. Man, I don't know about this. This is like, so this dude ends up moving out. That's in October. Me and Inga have no idea about Love City, like what we're going to do.
It's not even a name Love Now.
We didn't even name Love City. So we start praying. It was like the end of September October we started You're fifteen fifteen, and then we we ended up going down to Savannah, Georgia, where Inget's families from on a road trip, like we are here with you. We get down there and we're staying in the Marriott and we just start getting all these I opened up those books about the dreams that he had given me, and we start putting posted notes all over the room of like how what's this look like? You know, it was just like dreaming and praying and asking like what do you want? What do you want? What's this look like? How do we help? And by the end of those four days, we had a five year business plan of like what it would look.
That community center which was attached to a house because you needed to buy a place, was eventually going to look like yep.
And we had this dream. And the way he Love City came about is in scripture, it says I love because he says that we are created in his image. And a lot of people think that's a human form. But what does he say his image is. He says God is love and that's his image, and that's what he wants us to be is the peerness of him, because that's what Jesus was. Jesus was full of God, full of human We could get into a long debate, but I believe that so are we We're just uh. Jesus says that, man, I'm the firstborn brother and the minie, so we're all sons and daughters and we all should be living with the same power and the same love that Jesus came here to bring to earth, is what I would say. But a lot of people don't know this. But it's hidden and it says Love City, but it really means God's City, because God is love. Got it?
So how does it start? This thing's got a basketball floor?
Yeah, yeah, like literally laying in the floor and we're like, what are we gonna do?
Now? Yes, it's crazy, man, We're just like laying there and I'm like, well, we got a basketball I mean and when I tell you, man that the gym today doesn't look like goals were falling down, no nets. It was just oh, broken down bleachers that you couldn't even pull out. It was just a drop down ceiling. We're half the ply with was falling down because the roof if it rained hard, man, just like in the corner just put me.
It was just like it was a disaster.
It was just like what am I doing here? This is this is insane. I'm sure you know from us being knowing your story there was you probably asked the same questions on a drive home on a lot of nights, like yeah, yeah, this is what I got say from each other. Now you know, looking back, I love how God works and I'm sure he worked this with you. He tingled your heart, he got your attention, he got your yes. I think that that's the most important thing is the follower of Jesus is get your yes and then you get he gets the yes. He moves you into it. He doesn't give you any like what you're going to go through, and then all of a sudden you go through all this stuff and that's when you start questioning, like because we're humans, right and we're.
H you mean like you mean like being angry and fourteen years later being engaged over a Guinness in Ireland. Yeah, something like that.
Yeah, yeah, something kind of like that, something kind of like that.
Right. So you open this place for kids to come play basketball, expecting ten kids to.
Show up, have over three thousand and five years. That's put you went too fast? What happened the first year? First year? So there was this kid that when I was redoing our house, there was this kid and we have to go back a little bit. But pre Love City in July that year, we moved in in June twenty fifteen into the house, thinking, man, we got five years because this dude's going to be in the in the building and we're gonna have a block party. And we decided, man, let's have a black party and see what happens. That's in July, and we think we're going to maybe fifty of our neighbors will show up, and we had over eight hundred people show up from across the city into this across Portland.
We're not even talking more of them.
Okay, Yeah, like people come from everywhere. Eight hundred people.
Including the dude that broke in and stole your wine. Mister, Yeah, I wish you.
Would have been welcome, So it would have been. But we did have Kenneth who helped do a lot of repairs on our house, who lived over there on that side. But we had a lot of people from our neighborhood. They did come down and see what we.
Were, including I think the Heather who bought our house.
She can't she came.
Okay, so all these people show up. Yeah, but still this is not Love City. This is a broken down.
Community center that you're saying, hey, everybody show up. So then we end up uh being still got her job, she still want I got paid the bills here. You know, we bought this. A lot of people don't understand, like how it evolved was, meaning bought this off the surplus of what we made off of her house. And people don't understand when you get a commercial loan, it's not like you're putting five thousand dollars down. Man, if you're a first time person ever doing something they need or more. Yeah, and a two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars loan, and they went fifty thousand bucks. So all the money that we had, like off that's oude of the house.
Went straight up the went to the.
Bank for us to get this commercial loan to get started.
So then we took get started with something that didn't even a thing yet.
Yeah, right, they didn't need any thing. So then we come back from Savannah and I told.
Inga meaning, you guys really put.
Literally everything when when it monetarily, not emotionally, not spiritually, but physically monetarily without having a single person in the place.
Yet you literally put everything you had into this house and this his property, on blind faith that something good was going to come of it.
With no idea of how we were going to sustain it.
You didn't even have income.
No, no, I mean we had got my job, which was paying the mortgage and that was about it.
Yeah. So no, no, no form of sustainability.
And you said the school that you both got your nbas from is a good school. You said, this is a good school.
Right when you followed Jesus Man, all that goes out the window. Okay, so people love writing a plan and then asking God to bless the plan and he laughs and he goes, no, it's my plan, and you just followed me.
We'll be right back. So what happens?
So I told inga uh Man. There was a kid that used to walk down in front of our house every day when he get off the bus when I was renovating it. And his name was Dante uh Deontae Deonte and he would always have a basketball and I was like, dude, you any good and you know, shooting the crap with him and he would be like yeah, man. I said, man, one day, dude, I'm gonna show you basketball and I'm gonna school you and just talking, smacking me and him would talk smack him. And when we got back from Savannah, they had love, had no idea what was going on, didn't even know the buttons to turn on the lights anything in the building. Figuring all that got a group of keys like this being don't even know. You don't even half the air conditioning don't work, none of it works, no heat. Man, It's just like insane. So that day, when when we got back, Inga went to work and I said, I'm open up the gym today and just see what happens. And she was like, okay, I said, I'm gonna. I said, I'm gonna do it at two thirty when they get it. When the bus comes out front. And the bus pulled up out front and I'm sitting on the steps out there and the first person get off the bus was Yonte And I said, you ready for that game, sucker? And he was like, what do you mean? And I'm sitting in front of the building and he was like what do you mean. I said, Wow, I owned the gym, I thought me, and you could choose some hoops and he was like, you don't own that building. I said, yeah, dude, man, I just never told you. I just when you know that I'm just a neighbor who loves you. And he was like, yeah, man, I'll shoot some hoops. And that one kid grew into over three thousand different kids coming into that atmosphere over the next five years.
We had about between like two to three hundred a day that were coming between two thirty and eight.
You alone cannot handle two or three hundred kids.
I did for about the first year, and then people started showing up that wanted to help. And the first year there's a sign in the gym that there's like six rules that you got to follow, and I used to just have them on a poster board hanging up as you come in, and I don't remember them all. One of them is no racial slurs, and at the very end it says most of all, you got to love one another. And it's just simple. God. I had to come up with some rules. Don't come on yeah, like it was crazy. So I just had a poster board hanging up on the gym. We didn't have signed in, we didn't keep recording anybody in the early beginning.
No insurance in case somebody.
Breaks and in October when we got the name Love City. We came back and ing It says, I'm gonna apply for a five O one C three And we figured out how to do it ourselves, but they said it could take a year to two years forever. Yeah, by November first we had five one.
Really yeah, print.
Take four every November first we got it in the mail, got it in the middle.
So now you've got and I assume over the five years that these kids are coming in, you're doing little upgrades on the building.
Yeah, and and and then also the very first we're standing out back a Friday night, me and inga Are and the group that had been before they were serving some sandwiches out of the back, like fish.
Uh.
And there was like ten people who would come on Friday and get a fish sandwich or something. And so I'm standing back there one night we're locking up and these people pulled in the back park a lot and they said, can we get a fish sandwich? We don't have no fish And they were like, oh, well, maybe you should. And I was like, and maybe we should. The next week we started a fish fry in the back of an illegal don't have a hood.
Why did these people think you had a fish sandwich in the first place.
Well, the people who were renting the building from us occasionally they would do fishing.
Us.
So we're standing there and I was like, huh. So by the next Friday, I had figured out how to do a fish fry. So we had one Fridaddy. I'm talking about Friday one Friday, yep, and it was going to work. I put up, took another piece of post ward, put a sign upside fish fry and hung it on the fence like with packing tape, and said five dollars fish sandwiches. And man, that week we had probably eight people come in and buy a fish sandwich. And in those five years it grew from five people on that first Friday to over four hundred people coming in every Friday buying fish. So we would have the gym going on, we would have people hanging out, we would have neighbors what we called near and far coming and buying fish. But we had a community. We got a community going on now and we're self sustainable.
Because so my paycheck was still paying the mortgage, but the light and water bill for that building was as much, if not more.
Mortgage fifteen hundred bucks a month.
Right, the fish was paying that.
Yeah.
Yeah, So meanwhile you're growing the safe. Yeah, while we got kids that didn't exist.
You have no idea, you do you? Yeah, I saw your document. I said. We were both going yeah been there, been there? Oh yeah, yeah, uh been a part of that. And and what we didn't know was the complexity of what was happening there. So many people were coming that we had like four different gangs showing up everything out in together, and I had them all working together every once in a while. Man, it takes something.
So it's a fairy difficult culture to navigate when you're doing stuff that those kids are melding together happily. But then when they leave you and they go back to their.
Colors, yeah, and they go to the Instagram and they go back, and all of that requires.
A different type of interaction and balancing those two can be really, really difficult.
And we had like six, you know, events per year where people would come together every every week.
Did it we go out? The first time you would see two kids having a lot of fun and getting along together, and then you would find out later that each of their two groups of friends were then fighting and carrying on. Did you.
They wigged me out. The most was when I had a family in there. A kid who was fourteen. There's his brothers who were like six and eight. And then I had another group that was like the same age, and you got to remember my past. So I dis sermons off the hook. You know, I know what's going on here. I mean drugs. I know what's what you guys are going through. So I could speak truth to them and love. Man. It took me a year. Bill. I used to say, I love in the movie how the one dude said the other dude was gay. And when I used to tell all those dudes because there would be eighty percent of those three thousand work dudes, because we had a gym for you to shoot, and they would show up and I would tell I knew every one of them by name. I knew every day. When they were leaving, I would give them a hug and I would say, I want you to know I love you. And they used to. At first, they would be like pushing me away, dude, don't you man, don't say that to me. And then and then about after six months of doing this, they finally started saying, hey, miss Sean, I wants you know, I love you too, but no, homo.
That's always.
Listen.
One of the weirdest things was, you know that movie that you're referencing was my six year and you see me hugging on those kids and them hugging me back. But start when I tried to hug somebody first, So like, man, what's wrong with you? Get your hands off me? What are you doing?
You had a father do that, but they've never seen male. I've never seen a male do that, which is God's love. Yes, I never seen It's exactly John Tanda, enemy comes to kill, seek still in destroy, and that's what it does to that that those kids. It makes them feel like it's weird when it's not supposed to be weird.
Yeah, it's it's. Uh.
The first time I saw that. That hit me the most is I have this one group and this other group and then they on the fourth of July when luck we weren't even open, they're at the We restored a whole city park. The city gave us the keys to it to use. They owned it, but it was horrific. Yeah, So me and Inga went out and probably raised over two hundred thousand dollars and redid the whole park and made it like where it was super beautiful and the kids are over there and everybody's using it. They get into a fight at the We put a full court basketball in over there. The dad of one group as ex banger himself out of prison. And when you start getting that age group, that age group don't play like the young cats, but you can fight. But that age group is a different story. And sitting at home one night on my front porch, we meaning of love sitting down on the front porch because by this time, man neighbors had started coming out of their houses and people would start to like believe that the community was changing. And I hear the precincts right around the corner. And every time that you hear like six cop cars, you know that there's shooting.
You know what, I was wondering if you heard the gunshots themselves.
A lot of times in the first month that we lived there, we had three murders right around our house, and you hurt them, you know, like people buying drugs. People. It was at nighttime, and that night I'm sitting on my front porch and I hear the cop cars take off and at the same time, my phone rings and you know, and it was one of my kids telling me, man, you better get down the twenty sixth and bank because the Mary Hunt's dead. And I have ran down the street because it's only like a bark away. And that group from the first they had gotten that fight at that playground and that dad gave a kid a gun and they walked up to the car and they shot him five times in the head. So it was so unreal. I just couldn't even believe it. This kid's fifteen years old. It was just so unreal. It was like in time. Man, it doesn't even matter what the military with my past. It was so just unreal. Like I remember, yeah, I held his grandmother at the funeral home while she platted his hair while they tried to put his face back together, and I remember having the funeral by now we have a church. During that five year period, right around the counter corner was a church called Saint Cecilia that the Catholics had decommissioned and wasn't using it anymore, and they were seeing what we were doing. So they came to us and asked if we'd be interested in buying the plant of land with the rectory and the church and the Bingo Hawks.
And.
I remember there was like nine other kids in that church. We had his funeral there, and I remember what I told them. It doesn't have to you know, Man three thousand came through that building. But there's over seventy five that we have documented that's either in prison or dead.
We'll be right back in New Chicago, which is where mana Issa sits. An eighteen year old male was three times more likely to be dead or incarcerated by his twenty first birthday as he is to have a job. Sounds like a similar area.
The tenth most impoverished area in America, right, but we have This is where I get like, if you want to call it preach you or pissed off or don't understand, you, gotta remember I'm a dude who did not grow up in this system called church. I do know Jesus. And for someone to even try to remotely try to disagree with me in that statement that you got to go to church to know Jesus, like you're telling me I got to go to Hooters to have wings. Nobody.
That's an interesting metaphor.
Hooters wings, their wings suck. But there's other things there.
For you to Hooters was ever going to be one of our sponsors. We just lost them, all right, So first of all, I get it, and it's a really good reminder to all of our listeners. If you have the temerity, the courage, and the desire and the passion to enter into a place like Portland, Kentucky, or New Chicago in Memphis or any of these other thousands of averyas that need our help, you got to understand the reason they're in that shape is because there's all kinds of trauma and disaster there, and it is not as easy as just going up smiling and open the doors to a basketball court and everything's going to be.
Yes. If you want to do two hours and roll out.
Yeah, well that's but that's that doesn't do any But that doesn't do any good. Yeah, And even if you want to do two hours and roll out, it's still going to come with this sudden challenges. I have six former football players who are no longer on this earth. I have three that are incarcerated despite all of everything I tried to do. But it's not the failures, it's the successes that would have never happened had that communities that are never been opened up. Had you not ever sold the first five dollars fish sandwich.
I mean, you have a my Asia, who just graduated from a college in Nashville, who at the top of a class, who used to fight in the gym every day, literally beat some girl to a pulp like where her mom came and we had to pay hospital expenses because and then but she just graduated when all.
Those headaches were going on, did you ever look at each other and say, she would just shut this thing down? I know, I know the answer. I want you to to tell our listeners the heart art conversations you had about are we're really doing the right thing here? I know you had to.
Value in the very beginning when it was just so much turmoil, so much craziness. There's like a little lot next door to the building, and I literally wore a circle, and I mean just walking and just screaming, why do you have me here? I don't understand? And I remember there was a turn where he literally audibly said to me, will you quit on me? Like the rest of them did? Will you quit on me? And I remember just falling on my knees and pulling up my big boy pants and saying, no matter how hard it gets, we're gonna fight through this.
Yeah, Inger, have you ever felt unsafe?
You know, I've never felt unsafe, Like.
But Sean, don't ever do everything Sean does.
No, I don't do everything he does. But I remember there was one time where Sean got asked.
To help lead a trip to Israel.
So he was gone for like a week, and I was home and I was running the gym and we had a couple of like twenty one year old volunteers guys that were there with me, and a couple of a couple of known like gang bangers came in and it was getting a little rowdy and it was getting a little crazy, and I was like, Okay, we're gonna We're gonna shut down because we used to do that, you know, like we didn't have to stay open, Like if it got crazy in the gym, we'd just.
Be So it was like, okay, tomorrow they were fighting and nuts and crazy and.
The community is on time out for active.
Yeah, just walk over to the light switch and shut them all off. And they knew once I did that. Back then, we enough old light bulbs, and once they saw the lights they would be like, ash, we're done.
So in this particular occasion, I tried to do the same thing. So I was like, Okay, we're done, we're gonna we're gonna come back tomorrow. And so I went to shut the lights off, and it had the opposite effect and they went more crazy, and so then it took thirty minutes to get the lights back on. And so the guys they finally they helped me finally get everybody out, and there was this one kid that was still there and he was like getting all up in my face and like you know, trying to like intimidate me and everything, and I was like, you got you just gotta.
Go, Like you just gotta go.
And so that's really the only I didn't but I didn't feel unsafe, like I didn't.
I don't know if it's in.
The community knowing you're doing what you're doing now stand up in the face of that on your behalf.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
That's the interesting transformation city.
Ah four years ago at the end of our six year jaunt of like battling and fighting and that was the Love City then. The Love City now is a total difference.
So that's that's a great segue today, I will.
Say back in that old Love City, when you were asking, uh, we were having a basketball tournament and I had to tell one of the kids he had got you know, how man anger is this? Like they the emotionally controlled. They have no idea how to manage any of that. And I get it.
I get it. There's very little filter for anger for people. Can we stop for a second, I want our listeners to hear. Yeah, I'm gonna say this. I had a manassas football player once tell me how angry he was and I kept asking why and he could not articulate why he just was. And it was in my first year. Over the course the next three years, I started to understand that trauma makes you angry, and trauma will make you angry, and you angry and me angry, and anybody listens to Now, if you are traumatized over and over on a daily and weekly basis for your entire life, you know what you get. You get pissed, and then anything happens to piss you off. That's the only emotion you have to rely on it and it's explosive. It does not make them bad people. What it makes them is traumatized, and we have to get our arms around that. There's no difference in that trauma and the trauma veteran experiences when he comes back from a rock at all, or an abused woman experiences when she's been beaten by a man or a rape victim. It's different types of trauma, but the level of trauma and what it does to the human psyche is not that much difference. And so we got to quit asking ourselves why people from the hood, or people from disadvantage areas or people from poor areas who have experienced nothing but their lives in trauma, why they're so angry all the time, and why they might fight and lash out, or why.
They may smoke a little weed because to self medication. Yeah, to self medicate because they can't to have them.
It is not excusing any of these anti social behaviors. It is explaining where they come from. And until we understand where they come from and why they happen, and until we quit demonizing the result of the trauma and start understanding where the trauma comes from and addressing it, all we're doing is demonizing the most vulnerable among us.
And that's where I would say that's the difference between empathy and compassion. So are we going to do something about it or we're just going to keep talking about it?
Well, the open Gym program is now I cannot believe I'm saying this, a K through eight community school called Mighty Oaks Academy. So what we've got here is your ridiculous, screwed up life finding yourself at forty five on a beach in Miami talking to a homeless dude boiling an egg on a can and a former CIA Black Ops person who get married in two weeks in Rome, who find themselves in Portland, Kentucky getting a free home but having to buy a community place that they don't even know what they're doing with. Who fights for six to ten years open thing, and you now have a school.
Yeah, I think what happened with we were we continue to grow, right, it doesn't stop. So we end up buying the Catholic church called Saint Cecilia, which is extremely beautiful on the inside, and then we moved the fish fry over to there, and.
Why not that's a Catholic church, that's our fish.
Had the gym used to be owned by the same church. Yeah, get it?
And so you basically reconstituted the original property back together.
Keep trying to say we're not doing anything extraordinary. The community. I think Katas way of creating community is beautiful. Do I think that they also put too many strings without a lot of Jesus in it. Yeah? Probably, But I'm not going to throw stones at that.
I want to be careful here. But the corporate church environment, despite what I think is a lot of well intentioned stuff, who to this day still does an amazing amount for our communities, has in some respects chased people from the church. And it is important I think that we understand church membership and church attendance and faith can be the same thing, but they are not always the same thing. And I think the American church is waking up to the fact that we have work to do to reteach ourselves that faith precedes church, not church precedes faith.
And the words I would use is I would say we're wakening up to teach people that you don't have to be a church goer but a Jesus follower.
But the thing happens is if you're a Jesus follower, you end up wanting to go to church to be around people like you anyway.
But why can't you just do it all the time.
I'm not saying you can't, I'm just saying oftentimes, if you're a Jesus follower, you want to go to church and hang out with other Jesus followers. It's a cool place to commune.
I thought so too, but they try to destroy me. But you have a church. I have a church building. We don't do so anyway.
I'm not here to argue that with you, because I listen a guy that taught my New Members class when I was thirteen years old, a guy named Craig Strickland here in Memphis who started who left a big Presbyterian church and he started Hope Presbyterian Church out of a restaurant and bar, and it grew into one of our county's largest churches. Style is called Hope Church. And his whole deal was, I'm starting at church for the unchurched. It was back when everybody wore tie. He encouraged jeans and t shirts and coffee and hanging out. And he didn't have a choir. He had a band, which was one of the first people to do that. And he created a church for the unchurch for the very people who were interested in faith but were put off by the corporate church traditional thing because they'd had a bad experience or freakdom or made them uncomfortable where they didn't feel welcome. So all I'm saying to this, I hear you, I feel you, and I agree faith precedes everything.
But because when you agree, now you're talking about a dude who's only been doing this for eleven years, who fell in love with Jesus didn't know anything about that right. So a lot of my questions always comes from the childlikeness in me, not a fence towards something an institution. It never does that, But because I have so many like childlike questions, Like when me and Ninga Fayvers get married, I was like, are we supposed to go to this church thing? And she was like, I don't know. If you want to, we can, And I googled it one day she was at work in our zip code and there was fifty two churches. So it started like tripping me out, as somebody who don't know anything about any of that stuff is like tripping my forehead out. When she comes home, I got like one hundred questions waiting on her because She's grew up in this thing, and I'm like, why did they do that? And why do they call themselves different names? And why is there a Baptist or first bat.
And here's another good question. Why is Sunday the most segregated day in America? It should be the least segregated the.
Whole podcasts even Sunday.
Here's another thing. Here's another thing. Alex often asks, why when there are how many thousands?
There's one hundred fifteen thousand kids.
There's one hundred and fifty thousand kids in the United States foster care system have been terminated.
They could be adopted today, right, And there's four hundred.
Thou country if one of three, if one of three had one person to adopt a child, there would be no foster care system unitstates.
Or homeless or people who need food or people who Why do we have to have a food bank? Tell us to come here and give. If you really love your neighbor, why aren't you just doing it that? These are all the questions I have. These are all the like crazy childlike questions. How does eighty eighty nine percent There was a pewpo taken and you can look it up online and you could google it and it was a real pupo. It wasn't just something made up, and it was about Christianity and Kentucky. Eighty nine percent of the people in the state of Kentucky eighteen and above that they polled said that they believe in Jesus and God. Then, while we have so many problems because it's not real, we're not creating Jesus followers. We're creating church goers.
And there's a lot of people who call themselves Christians because their grandmother went to church.
It's easy to put a fish sticker on the back of your car.
We'll be right back.
What I think the most beautiful part about that is, in the eleven years I've been doing this, there is a great awakening going on across America. Where you say army of ordinary people, but I would say people who have been anointed and appointed, and they don't have to be in that building, but you do gotta love your neighbor. And man, it's so different than me pulling in here and you saying, man, I don't know about staying at that courtyard, but I met some chick there last night. That man is the most beautiful person in the city of Memphis. That told me her whole dream and like, man, how she wants to change the world. This morning they told me I don't get free breakfast over at this courtyard. Okay, So me and they decided to ride down here to this Starbucks. I don't even know where. We just ended up there and we pull in and we're about ready to leave, and we meet this lady in their name, the young lady who is vibrant, on fire, so much joy, and she's telling us about this story about how she talked her and her manager talk Starbucks corporate world into making this a community Starbucks and that they have like every Friday, the kids from the neighborhood come in there and what was it. They play games, play and they gave out like thousands of backpacks all from the Starbucks that they built relationships with the target. I was like, that's what corporate America should be doing. We shouldn't be dislike building these silos. It's all biblical. Man, You're building these silos, putting all your profits in it, but you ain't helping your neighbor. So how we got to the school, I know, I'm I know, I'm getting a little fired.
Up because you get fired up. I don't care this bull crap.
I mean, that's the whole point, is right, We need to say this is bull crap.
You got well, you're on the show that does.
It, and you got fifty You have fifty two church buildings in this one zip code in Louisville, Kentucky, on a very wealthy side of town. Fifty two, fifty two mortgages, fifty two light bills, fifty two plumbing bills, fifty two pastor bills. It's ridiculous. But my kids on the other side of town can't get an education and are killing each other because they can't read by the time they get to the twelfth grade. And we're pushing them through saying this is.
Okay, they're old enough, advance them.
It's bull crap.
It is bull crap.
It's total bullcrap.
So what's Mighty Oak Academy doing about it?
So what we did was during COVID. You know what happened with the open gym was and the community center was COVID shut me, down, me and hang and down. They said, you can't kids in there, you can't gather, you can't be a part of this. And we also had a preschool at the same time I'm going, so they shut that down. They shut down everything that we could do to get together. But we started doing open air gathering out on the front porch during COVID. You got to remember, man, where we come from, just a few blocks away. We had this thing during COVID that happened with the Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, not far from us, not far from us, and it brought a heap of mess. Man. People were downtown in the middle of Portland, busting windows, robbing our neighbors. Nobody ever touched one thing. It love city, people said, seaning, Man, how come you ain't going to board up the windows? Said, man, I'm not going to live in fear. On the night that the guy got killed at the barbecue stand on Broadway, the National Guards person when they brought him in shot a dude and killed him. The Lord woke me up in the middle of the night and he said, tomorrow we party, And I was like, what do you mean. He said, you start loving deeper and harder. I need you to awaken this community. And man, I woke up the next morning. I told anga, Man, we're just gonna have a big party right out here. We're not supposed to do we're not supposed to gather, we're not supposed to be together. But we're just gonna do it out here on the on the front porch and on the street. And man, we just started doing it every Tuesday night called Parties on the Porch, and the neighborhood awakened. And man, we'd have three four hundred people show up every Thursday night. And we had Carrie Ohki, we had an ice cream truck, we had you name it. Man, But we weren't going to pay attention to that spirit because it's not real. That didn't want us to love one another. Man. That's the thing about like a lot of people don't understand impoverish people. I grew up in I grew up on offerre, I grew up on food stamps. I get all that. Man, we're a whole lot more tight knit than people can even imagine. Impoverished people then got each other's backs. They have to, and they don't care about whether you're white or you're black. Man, we just see each other like man, we got love one another. We got to hold on to each other. We we gotta make it through this together. That's how it works. And when you're growing up in that, nobody cares about man, you talk about people in my neighborhood. We're about fifty to fifty, and I can tell you I never hear racism like people try to proclaim. It's like none that's real. None that's real. When you're poor trying to just survive.
I've lived that. I understand that it's hard for people to gather that that is just a thing that's really doesn't exist in those communities.
It's not real. It's just really I hate most of that stuff comes from rich folk on the other side of town.
I was gonna say a lot of it. Yeah, that's all. Another thing at school, yeah, school.
You know what we did was during COVID when the preschool shut down. Uh, we were trying to figure out, like, what's going to happen to the kids because they're not going to go to school. We know our kids they're not going to go to school. So before I don't know about here in Memphis, they started opening up some churches and buildings and stuff, and they would pay them. The school system did to have like laptops, but they wouldn't open up the school buildings. So before that, we created something called the Bridge and we were just trying to get kids to come and we had about one hundred kids every day show up and we would all go into chromebooks. They had chromebooks that were given to them. We would help them because just like I saw no parents, no fathers, no mother. Can you imagine having an eighty year old grandma or chromebook and say maybe help help.
You help your kindergarten.
Granddaughter needs to sign in. Huh yeah, that's what they would say, Miss Sean, come on, will you be I don't know how to do any of that. Not only that, but I don't have internet.
Yeah they don't.
I don't have internet. So we started assessing kids on our own. We had a doctor who was on our team at the time with a PhD. And she had early childhood education, and we came up with an assessment system to assess these kids just to see where they were they were coming.
I bet you were devastated.
Devastated wasn't the word? Our brain was just like, no, wonder we have so many problems.
When the valedictorian of a high school makes a nineteen on their act and when the World History exam, the questions are, what's the Tennessee state bird? Your seniors in high school are not graduating ready to do anything other than maybe possibly man the friar at McDonald's. It's no dreams.
I remember when we very first got in the community, I would ask the kids, what's your dreams for? We can be like right, and you know what they would Someone would say, who were older ones, My dream, mister Sean, is to get a check. It took me a long time to figure out what they were talking about, and then I realized they were just trying to get a government check in the system. They wanted to stay in the system that they were brought up in.
The school today, the school today.
So we started assessing kids. We're devastated. We couldn't believe that we had ninth graders that couldn't read. Jill ran up the heill right like you're talking about your forehead.
She should be shocking the most ninety five people listening to it. So it's not to me because I lived it, but I know exactly what I'm saying. It is. It floored me.
So we're it's October two thousand and twenty twenty and we're all down in the basement and doctor Stovall is going old the demographics and what she had found, and she's bawling. She's African American or black man today's world. I don't know what. Just black, yeah, yeah, black and white. Just I think she's sitting there and she's laying it all out, and I hope I didn't offend you with that. Yeah, I just don't see that stuff. I'm sorry, yeah, uh uh. She's laying it all out and I'm like, man, this is crazy. She's bawling and she says, I don't know what we're gonna do. And man, as soon as she said it, I said, we're gonna start school. And she was like, come on, man, what do you mean started school wear in the middle of COVID shot. I mean, and that that could be a plan down the road, But what do you talk about started school? I said, now, we're gonna start school and she said when I said, we're gonna open January to fourth, and she was like, we don't have educated, we don't have anything shot or I don't even know how to comprehend what you're saying. I said, Man, the Lord will provide in January fourth and twenty twenty one, we opened school and now it's K through eight nine.
How many kids in school about seventy That is unbelievable, But it keeps school. How do you fund the school? When I read that, I know that, I know that the folks going to the school. Is it a private school or a charter school.
It's a private school because in the state of Kentucky we don't have charter systems, so it's our private school. Voted against it because the teacher union is so strong in the state of Kentucky. It shut it down. I got it, and nobody wants to hear. But now, man, I'm telling you, right now, you're talking about people who voted no for it, and on that amendment to at least an amendment was just to like investigate what was best for the child, for the future, what it could look like. But I'm going to tell you right now, man, if if what I can see is true for the future, man, if you don't conform, they're gonna cut off your funding on this, on this overall of education. If it's true that we're gonna really shut down the education system at the top, and we're gonna and if you don't perform and you shut then, man, it's your fault that you didn't vote for at least to investigate it.
You know what, Aristot, know what Plato said about the You know what Plato said, The penalty for not involving yourself in politics is right. Plato's Plato. Plato. Yeah, it was a while back. He was hanging out close to where y'all got engaged. Yeah, dude, the penalty for not involving yourself in politics as you end up being governed by your inferiors. Yea, yeah, so you better pay attention.
And I kept trying to say, at least open it up for uh, some kind of thought process, you know. And people, man, they're strong to their beliefs.
So it's a private school. I can't imagine your your students have a whole lot of money to pay. How does this thing get funded?
Uh? Private, no government, no big sponsorship.
You have people funding this for you and your students.
Just like, uh, this is I can tell you this is the very first time I've been on any I haven't done any interviews in a long time, just because I said no to all of them.
I appreciate you being Yeah, I.
Was supposed to be here, and I think that I'm supposed to bring awareness to what is going on there because I think it's not just there, but it's I want to make sure it's place, it's all over there. I want to make sure I encourage other people. Ah. The school is privately funded by a bunch of people who believe and not what sean Ning is doing there, but what God's doing there. And I could do you in three years, we have seen some miracles that you probably wouldn't even believe.
Are you planning on going through twelve?
Yep, that's our our plan is to have. So a few years ago we bought another Catholic church right down the road that was abandoned and that's crazy story in itself, and that will be our preschool and that will be for the Little Acorns what we call and our thing is the Oak. Acorns to Oaks, that's our tag is Acorns to Oaks. Really went diapers to graduation. So we down here the preschool. We're in the middle of doing a capitol campaign for it because we need to raise about one point five million to renovate this building so that it can conform to the Kentucky standards for daycares, but it will be a preschool and then we can use four seeds to help fund that because people in our community they need a place for their kids to be able to go the baby, so that they can get to work and they get off these systems. You know, people don't get married in our community. It is not because they don't want to know.
It's because if you're a woman with children, if you get married with the government gives you cut you off.
So how crazy is we hold it?
Hold it? How hypocritical is it? We have a government. We have a government who on one hand will say we must have the nuclear family return in order to help children in our communities, and then they actually talk down to people who aren't married in a very paternalistic way. Then on the other side, we incent people to not be married. So the one thing we say one thing as a government, and then we people the hypocrisy and its finest it is the most One of my arguments is that the government, although many of these things that are there have developed over the last forty to fifty years, and I do believe most of the things that were put in place at one point another were well intentioned, but what has evolved is this horrifically paternalistic system that keeps people exactly where they are.
You guys can go on all day. You guys all love each.
Other, but I'm going through, like what else do you guys have? I'm getting there, hanging.
Around so way over sass we are, and I gotta go, but so me too.
The point is the point is you're trying with the school to break that cycle.
I think that if you don't, it will never change, will always be nassing. So do you understand because at ODD School, we don't just address academics. We have trauma based learning. We have trauma based people there that will help them with that trauma that they've been inflicted with. You know, one time I took last year, I was at I worked with the eighth graders a lot, and a volunteered there because I don't get paid a love city, and I took the eighth graders and I love going out and doing contemplation, teaching them to be able to listen. I take them up to this place called Mount Saint Francis. And up at Mount Saint Francis, we're sitting up there and one of the little girls who I just deeply adore. She just starts bawling. I said, man, gracid you okay? She said, no, I'm not. And I said why, man, beautiful, it was just me and her and it beautiful and the rest of them are taking hikes and stuff. She said, this is the first time in my life I've ever heard silence. What's wrong man.
Inga?
Yeah, what's nice.
For Love City?
Oh well, so, like Sean mentioned, we've got a capital campaign.
We got to build out of high school, we got to build out a preschool, we got to build a middle school.
Building, which money is all. They're gonna cost six million.
That ain't much. Yeah, do you feel like that's much?
Six million dollars? It's a whole bunch.
But rebuilt a man back in the day six six.
It's a whole lot of money for some, it's nothing for others.
So yeah, I'm like, so if we're called man, we've been doing this for nine years and I ain't never begged anybody for a penny, and I'm not going to and I'm not gonna pimp poverty. I'm not gonna take pictures of little black and white kids and tell everybody how poor they are, and man, can you do this for me? But we should be loving our neighbor. It's it's not a I think for me, especially what just destroys my forehead and my heart and this thing that we call Christianity. And I would not say that I'm a Christian, but I would say I'm a follower of Jesus. You know, it's not an ask when he says you're supposed to love God with all your heart, mind and so, and you're supposed to love others as you love yourself. It's not an ask, it's a mandate.
I often say. People always say it's so nice what you did. I Anassis and all that, and I try to tell people and I don't think. I think people think it's some all shucks, false humility sometimes. But I didn't do it to be nice. I did it because I felt required.
H Yeah, Like when I was talking to Alex when before we came here to do this, he said they wanted me and Ninga to come on here to have a chat with you, and he used the word radical. You guys are so radical in what you do. I'm gonna tell you, man, me and Inga, we don't see ourselves any other way than just some people who fell in love.
With Jesus Christ was radical.
But what if it's just normal.
Well we could argue that forever. Tell me how people found love City.
So we have a website.
It's driving to Portland, Kentucky and looking around. Yeah, they find it virtually.
So we have a website. You can go to love Cityinc. Dot org.
Okay, and that will connect you to all of Like so everything that we do has its own brand, So like mydiok has its own website, the barbecue rest and has its own website, etc. But you can get to all of that through lovecityink dot org, which is amazing.
And we create sustainability. When you ask how we get funded, we have a thrift store, We have a restaurant. We have a thrift store car Merriment Thrifts. People can donate to that close. We resaw it in our community. We believe you. No more handouts, but some hand ups. And man, we've gotta charge you a quarter for a T shirt for you to be able to be a part of the community. Man, let's do it. And then we have a restaurant where people can come and man, you can work for an hour and you can eat for free. I mean it's community.
The restaurant is a lot like we highlighted a place in Jackson, Tennessee called Community Cafe. Come Unity Cafe, and the menu is what the menu is. And if you can afford twenty bucks paying it, if you can't afford anything, eat and wash dishes for thirty minutes, and you will have bankers and attorneys sitting next to homeless people at community tables eating food together. So that's what sounds like, that's what your restaurant is that helps support all of this.
And I love and would can end on that. What you just brought up the word community because we're uneducated people who go to this building on Sunday. The word community actually is derived from the word ecclesea, which means the church. There's one God, there's one Jesus, there's one Holy Spirit, there's one kingdom, and there's only one community that the Lord owns and operates in. Thank you, real appreciate your time.
I'm sitting across from two people who come from amazingly vastly different backgrounds that in two weeks formed a union and that union's turned into Love City and the community that you just so beautifully explained, is I am. I am so inspired by your stories. I'm so enthralled by your stories. And Alex is right. I could sit here and talk to you guys for another five hours, but I don't think our listeners. But maybe when you get to high school, you come back and join us and we catch back up. Yeah, take a little trip back down to Memphis one time, or maybe you come up, or maybe I come up.
We set this up.
I love it. Inga Sean, thank you so much for join us. You appreciate it, and thank you for joining us this week. If Sean or Inga Arvin or other guys have inspired you in general, or better yet, to take action by loving your neighbors more, starting something like love City in your own neighborhood, donated to them, or something else entirely, please let me know. I'd love to hear about it. You can write me anytime at Bill at normalfolks dot us, and I swear to you I will respond. If you enjoyed this episode, guys, please share it with friends, share it on social, subscribe to our podcast, rate it, review it, join the army at normalfolks dot us. Consider becoming a premium member there, do any and all of these things that will help us grow an army of normal folks. The more of you there are, the more impact we can have. Thanks to our producer, Iron Light Labs, I'm Bill Courtney. Until next time, let's do what we can
