Story Wars and the Search for Truth with Pastor James A. White

by on May 15, 2026

How do we live faithfully in a world where stories no longer seem to anchor us to a shared reality?

Returning to the Allender Center Podcast, Pastor James A. White joins Dan and Rachael to wrestle with the confusion, distortion that shape our cultural moments, both past and present. 

Together, they explore the idea of “story wars”—the deeply human tendency to create narratives that help us survive, but can also estrange us from truth, one another, and the heart of God.

At the center of the conversation is the resurrection story itself: a story so disruptive and improbable that even Jesus’ closest companions struggled to believe it.

And yet, the resurrection is precisely what recalibrates reality. Not because it erases suffering or uncertainty, but because it offers a new way of seeing: that even in places marked by grief, confusion, fear, or loss, hope and transformation are still possible.

This conversation invites us to examine the stories shaping us personally and collectively, and to ask difficult but necessary questions about truth, power, fear, belonging, and hope.

About Our Guest:

James White is an architect of identity-driven leadership who designs environments where leaders and organizations align values, systems, and culture for lasting impact.

As Senior Pastor of Christ Our King Community Church, he integrates strategy, story, and spiritual formation to develop leaders who strengthen both communities and institutions.

James served for more than two decades as an Executive Vice President within large-scale, multi-million-dollar YMCA nonprofit systems—first in the Raleigh–Durham Triangle and later with the YMCA of the North in Minneapolis. In these executive roles, he designed leadership formation systems that developed emerging and senior-level leaders, aligned mission with operational execution, and strengthened organizational culture across complex community-based institutions.

He has facilitated cross-sector leadership labs for executive teams in both for-profit and nonprofit sectors, creating learning environments focused on identity clarity, values alignment, governance structure, and systems coherence. Over the course of 40 years, James has engaged audiences across academia, think tanks, business, nonprofit organizations, state and local government, and professional sports organizations throughout the United States and Canada.

At the core of his work is a simple conviction: identity shapes leadership, and both individuals and institutions have the opportunity to design a better story.

More Episodes with Pastor James A. White:

About the Allender Center Podcast:

For over a decade, the Allender Center Podcast has offered honest, thoughtful conversations about the deep work of healing and transformation. Hosted by Dr. Dan Allender and Rachael Clinton Chen, MDiv, this weekly podcast explores the complexities of trauma, abuse recovery, story, relationships, and spiritual formation. Through questions submitted by listeners, stories, interviews, and conversations, we engage the deep places of heartache and hope that are rarely addressed so candidly in our culture today. Join the Allender Center Podcast to uncover meaningful perspectives and support for your path to healing and growth.

At the Allender Center, we value thoughtful dialogue across a wide range of voices, stories, and lived experiences. In that spirit, our podcast features guests and hosts who may hold differing perspectives. The perspectives shared on this podcast by guests and hosts reflect their own experiences and viewpoints and do not necessarily represent the views, positions, or endorsements of the Allender Center and/or The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology.

To become a supporter of the Allender Center Podcast, click here. If you and your organization would like to partner with the Allender Center Podcast, please reach out to Clay Clayton at cclayton@theallendercenter.org

Episode Transcript:

Dan: Rachael, we’ve talked often about the reality that both of us are crazy. Is that a fair beginning?

Rachael: Oh, I thought you usually talk about how you’re the French meter of normalcy, but yes, I’m glad to hear you owning that we might be a little unstable.

Dan: Nonetheless, we both know that this is an era that feels mad, crazy, sort of dark, et cetera. And we need people who provide us with some linkage to reality and to goodness and truth and beauty. And today it’s our delight to have Reverend James White from Christ our King Community Church in the triangle area of North Carolina. And James, I’m going to say a little bit more, but just to say welcome, sir. You are those figures for both Rachael and I that provide us hope, truly a sense of connection to we cannot thank you enough for just joining us and our audience is enamored with you.

James: Well, I just know I am so thankful to be a part of conversations that matter. I just feel that when we come together, we have this conversation that I know connects with my soul that’s the complete being of who I am in a very powerful way and is very thankful and always looking forward to being here.

Dan: Well, I just have to say, somebody was having a conversation I was saying that James White’s going to be on and they said, “Really, James White?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” So too long a conversation, but it was like, “Wow, he’s a pretty severe strict Calvinist.” And I’m like, “What?” We went back and forth and I eventually had to go, “What? No, this is … I mean, your theological depth breadth is rich and yet I would never have viewed you as sort of a severe fierce Calvinist.” And so we got to a point where I looked online and realized, oh, there is another James White. And the only two things as you put it, because I had to clarify that before was you’re both bald and you both bear the sartorial splendor of wearing bow ties. So that’s my introduction. Anything else, Rachael, you want to add?

Rachael: Just a lot of gratitude and anticipation of this time. So thank you.

Dan: Yeah. And I’ll just say again, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation where I’ve had the privilege of hearing you preach, teach podcasts or the number of conversations we’ve had over Zoom where I have not walked away saying, “I know Jesus. I know Jesus.” You’re a man who gives me a return to what at times feels like gets obscured or lost in the midst of the madness around me. So as we step into this, I really want to say that most of the time we have questions, we have directions, we ain’t got nothing because all we want to do is be able to say, “James, talk.”

James: When you say talk, so I want to talk, but I want to begin with, I think the best answers are found in your questions and questions set the direction. I think questions set the directions of our lives. I really do. So my question that is just as I’ve been watching media and every day there is something that comes on the screen or we read and you go, this can’t be real. This can’t be… And it’s almost like we’re at a point where you’re not even quite sure how to converse about it.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: But this is a question as I’ve been listening, watching, how do you, because the genius of your work is story. That’s a fundamental thing I’d say for all of us that is near and dear to me is story that really story has shaped and created our lives and the world that we live in story. And I know I’m being very basic here, but how in the world do you even engage and have a conversation and even have life when now stories are not even told or communicated in a way to even bring any kind of common ground and I would even say understanding at a very basic level, you tell a story in order to bring clarity at a very basic level. I mean, when you look at Jesus, that was his communication method. If you didn’t understand, he’s going to tell you a parable or story to bring clarity. Now it seems like stories are bringing confusion. So how do you even navigate a world where stories bring confusion and even stories now have become a tool to maintain power because now you recreate and tell the story that you want to… even you make up a story or you borrow from other stories that are not even true. So please, I think that’s sort of a question that is becoming a clothes line in my mind and I’m trying to figure out what to hang on it.

Rachael: Well, I mean, two places my brain went right away. One is just in some ways you have to actually start talking about truth and delusion because if stories become unmoored from any sense of truth or shared reality, then you are having, as the teens say, become delulu. You’ve really got to give yourself over to delusions. And so that’s like one place my brain went because it definitely feels like I’ve had to start kind of interacting with certain people I love almost as if there’s like a level of insanity around the story they’re living in, which is certainly a resistance to being grounded in a real story and certainly a gospel story. But the other place I went is in our Story Workshop, we talk about being in story wars and in many ways storywork, we’re always dealing with that collision of like where there’s truth, but then there’s also interpretation or meaning making or fantasy that we tell to hold onto some version of the truth that helps us quote unquote survive our stories. So thinking about if you just take it really basic down to like a child, great observer of reality but often will interpret in ways that allow them to keep connection with the people who are caring for them so the stories get distorted because you don’t have the luxury as a small person of being like, the truth of my story, there’s this profound failure or there’s this actual harm and abuse happening. So kids internalize things, that’s true.That’s a very individual way of thinking about story wars or where there’s in some ways idolatry, right? At its core foundation, it’s propping up a somewhat untrue story to hold onto a sense of reality that allows us to stay safe and I think as we become more mature in adults, maybe we don’t become more mature, but as we grow and become into adulthood, very much wrestling with that sense of maintaining power and volition and control and in our current context dominance, coercion. So those were two places I just went. In some ways we’re always in a story war and the way God has been interacting with us since the beginning of creation is trying to help us see the truer story that we’re a part of and those competing stories that actually lead us very far from the heart of God and far from living together in ways that we’re meant, we’re most created for, we’re most meant for.

Dan: And I will join Rachael to go kiddo back to you, James. Where does it take you?

James: Yeah. So Rachael, even as you talk about delusional, that’s just delusional. Okay. And again, I think for me, and this is not just because I’m a pastor, this is also because I’m a Christ-follower. So Easter is this time where all of us come because we’re looking for hope. We have a story that matters in many ways and many times Easter time we tell this story that is, okay, now this is going to offend maybe some of the listeners, is a bit delusional. I mean, I believe that’s why the gospel writers gave you such detail because the resurrection is a delusional story you’re talking about… And here’s how we know it’s delusional because even the men who he had been with and had said over and over-

Rachael: This is going to happen.

James: Again, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. They still don’t believe it. And even the one, the women who were in touch with him intimately, Mary Magnum who shows up, she doesn’t show at the tomb expecting him to be risen. I mean, the gospel writers let you know that they don’t believe this delusional story because she shows up expecting to find a body that needed to be treated with more care because she knew that in the hands of Rome that his body was going to be treated any kind of way. And then even the writers of scripture lets you know that it was so delusional that even after he rose again from the dead, they still don’t believe. He has to go and with Thomas, so in John’s gospel, he has to show him the wounds because Thomas is not going to believe it until he sees the wounds. I know we’ve only got a few minutes, but man, you could go a long time with just how the showing of wounds reveals the truth of what’s happened because what is so horrific and ghastly–a man died, we’re going to know you’re alive by the wounds that actually created the murder, the nails in the hands, and he says he’s not ashamed of his wounds because it’s in the wounds that resurrection really has life and he tells him to touch. And then he says blessed those who believe and haven’t seen. But then even after that, they still don’t believe even after in Luke’s gospel, you’ve got the two men on the road to Emmaus… two who come back with testimony, which is legal and they don’t believe them and Jesus shows up in a miraculous way and they still the Bible says they still are amazed. There’s still a level of surprise. Then what Jesus does is he now communicates with gentleness that, yes, it is me, I am alive. I have risen and he does it with gentleness on the guys on the road to Emmaus. What else is interesting too. And this is where the examining and the careful story and truth become important because the way that they know it’s him is not because he did some kind of supernatural thing. It’s not because he hovered the way he revealed who he was… This is where stories and truth become important. Again, Luke reminds us that he opened up the scriptures to them, but then what did he do? He gave them a proper hermeneutic. He gave them proper exegesis of the Old Testament, demonstrated the typology of Christ. He gave them real Christiology, the typology of Christ from Genesis on up through and that’s how they go on. So what did he do? He engaged their minds, he engaged their intellect and now they know that the resurrection is true. But you look at all of what it took for them to believe the essence of what it means for us that makes us different as Christ follows the resurrection. And from that point on, what is he doing? What does the resurrection do in many ways? And you said this interesting, the question of that, is this really real? Is this really real? Well, this is where Christians, the resurrection is supposed to reset reality because now when you live in the resurrection, now this is what reality is. This is the fundamental story that says death doesn’t have the last word, that the truth of who God is all throughout the scripture, that really Genesis chapter three, this is true, this is the answer to it. So Christians are supposed to live with a whole different reality because of the resurrection, which really causes us to see everything clearly. And yet Christians, unfortunately many, and I’d say and make this distinction, cultural Christians, make it seem as if the resurrection hadn’t happened and we’re dependent on Caesar and Pilate and we’re dependent on political power, empire power in order to make sense of the world. And we’ve made decisions rather than this story who has risen again and he changes everything and why do the disciples die martyrs deaths because death has been defeated. Why do they love and care in these crazy ways? Why do you have an apostle Paul who talks about his grace is sufficient in weakness? Why does he say the audacious, crazy stuff to live his Christ and to die is gain? Here’s why because his reality has been recalibrated with resurrection. So anyway, I know I don’t want to go off topic, but I’m talking to your audience that’s Christians that’s been challenging for me the resurrection is supposed to bring clarity and yet unfortunately many who named the name of Christianity, they’re quoting Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction to justify the violence that is done through an American system. And I’m looking at this story that we have that is supposed to make everything in a way that the world has never seen. We seem like we’re following the empire and we’re choosing that. Anyway, Dan, you’re going to say something.

Dan: You’re just disrupting, disrupting. It’s so lovely, but I can even feel in my body a sense of everything you’ve said I couldn’t agree with more. It’s just so disconcerting. I am no different than those disciples who at some level are wondering whether the resurrection actually occurred. So this process of being able to go in John 5, I think maybe it’s John 6, where the disciples depart, many depart because he invited them to eat my body and drink my blood. I mean, it’s just like Jesus, you couldn’t have been, we just have to work with you about branding here. This is not helpful. And so many depart because too hard to hear. And so there you’ve got the question that he asks, who do you say I am? And Peter confesses, but he also confesses, “To whom else shall we go for you alone have the words of life?” And the men walking post reflection on Emmaus, “didn’t our hearts burn within us?” So there’s something that is the difference between a gospel that it gives you access to raging against others or a gospel that burns within you with a sense of there’s a life here that is disconcerting, upheaval, and really in some ways turns the tables not just on the culture as well, yes, but also on my own disposition of cynicism, despair, hopelessness, and self-satisfying control to the algorithm that provides me the stories that only confirm my own bias. So that’s my response.

James: Well, and to that, Dan, as I listen to you, it is a gospel that should give us courage rather than a gospel that makes us complicit to the empire. And that’s what you begin to see in the disruption when you read the rest of the New Testament. And then when you follow Luke’s second volume of the story of Jesus in the Acts, they are no longer complicit. They are courageous. Peter and John, y’all better stop. We can’t stop speaking in his name. Stephan, he hadn’t been a deacon that long. Next thing you know, he gives this incredible sermon the way he does trace the whole story of Jesus and now he’s martyred. And so what you’re naming I think is, again, we’re supposed to have courage to be distinct, but we’ve become complicit. And I would even say as we had our conversation several months ago on Black history, this is the place where for me, some people have often accused the African American church of not having a proper orthodoxy. And there’s some like, again, and I’m not trying to name him or anything, no debate with the person whose name, same name as I have. Incidentally, my middle name is Alfred, and let’s keep that distinction, James Alfred White, but some who would say that the Black church has not had an orthodoxy that is biblical and have taken it into those kind of arguments. And what I would say is in the Black church, our orthodoxy has been proven by our orthopraxy. That because of the way you see the practice. So for example, Harriet Tubman, the way you explain… how could a woman who had a head injury, was a slave that led her to have an epileptic fit, how could she make so many trips in the underground railroad to rescue people? And then after the Civil War gets started, you would think her job is done. She becomes a spy for the Union. I’ll tell you how, because she believed in resurrection. She understood that death doesn’t have the final word. And many, when you go back and look at African American history, when you go back and look at that story, the reality of the story, whether you are a Christ follower or not, that’s part of the key to understanding the courage that existed and even knowing that you may not see. Again, knowing that you may not see the victory, then why are you still fighting with strategy and systems? Here’s why, because we believe in a resurrection. We believe, again, that because of resurrection, that that’s where life is real because Jesus continues and we’re living, we’re practicing resurrection by caring for others, giving our lives and we’re practicing it too. This is Dr. King and yet we critique King, et cetera, et cetera, but this is also at the basis of I’m not going to hate the way someone else will hate. Why? Wouldn’t Gandhi resurrection, that’s the essence of Christianity. Gandhi, nonviolent, et cetera. So the question and the other challenge though, and I realized in our last conversation, part of where I feel like I’ve made the mistakes sometimes in my work and this is my own, this is something that I’ve been wrestling with as well is I spent a lot of time the whole DEI world, I think we thought that there was victory if you named it. Even sometimes in settings, if I could just name how ridiculous this is, sort of name once again, Bloom and Block, the skull theory, name Bacon’s Rebellion, how race is a created construct. If you could just name that, if you could name historical incidences of the GI Bill and who benefited from that and name all of these historical things, then people would get it. I think I became a part of that. Naming, once again, if we name White supremacy, if we name, you get this whole idea of white males, et cetera. But what I realized naming it doesn’t mean that people have the moral righteousness to do something about it. And I almost think we over index and don’t get me wrong, I appreciate Ibram x Kendi’s work on how to be anti-racist. Robin D’Angelo again had a space a lot of work that people have said, “What happened?” Well, maybe they were never serious about it in the first place. And what I think has happened is we named it, but we didn’t create and help people know how to build a system to do something about the problem we named. And we just automatically thought, some of us did, if I named it, it’s that simple. Surely you’re not going to continue to live into a story that is filled with injustice that only benefits you. And that’s when I go, man, I should have read my Bible closely. Because even with the resurrection of Jesus, everybody didn’t believe it.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: They created other stories around it. People rejected it. Why? Because man, there’s some stories if you really begin to live it out a solution to it, you’re going to lose power.

Dan: Yes.

James: And I think that’s one of the mistakes and I can put myself in that as well too of doing this work. Even our last conversation, people want to know, “Okay, well, what do I do? How do I respond to it?” And so many of our conversations have not moved there because all we did was name it. And listen, because all we did was name it, then an administration can come in and wipe out the work because all we did was name it, but we didn’t put a system in place in order to how to do something about it.

Dan: I know, for me and for others, the question still lingers there as you have pondered, even your own complicity in terms of the story being named, the invitation then is to create what?

James: The invitation is, and this is where I think the Allender Center at times comes in. When I think about you all and your work, which is incredible, your work helps people to name, but then not only to name, but then to be in a process of how to deal with their personal trauma. You do that better than I haven’t seen this is not to be a commercial for the Allender Center just because I want to get invited back, but you do that incredibly well.

Dan: You know you are, but go ahead, keep going.

James: But now here’s the challenge. Do we do the same work of helping people name the system that their personal construct and trauma has come about? And that’s where there can be a gap because just because I understand my story, do I have this same rigor in understanding the context that my story takes place in that has influenced my story?

Rachael: Well, I think that’s part of the tragedy of … There’s a lot of words I could use here, how the resurrection and the work of the resurrection and the story of the resurrection got reduced to a personal salvation decision where you don’t have to reflect on what is the mission of God to confront, expose and disarm systems because so many people walked away because the resurrection as it stood wasn’t triumphant enough in the powers of this world. They wanted the political system to be upended so that different people could be in power. And so yeah, so much of that work for me of having to, as you put it, grow in many ways the character and moral righteousness to bear the death and the dying and the relinquishing and the courage has actually changed the story of the resurrection for me and the fullness of what it means. And I think many people have actually been discipled in a way that has given a really cheap version and a weak version of the resurrection that doesn’t require any kind of moral courage because if you experience a lot of privilege, then you can feel like, oh, look at the resurrection playing out in my life. It doesn’t actually feel that costly.

James: Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So I think some of it is how do we help people understand that we’re not giving you this historical understanding of culture and how we were framed. We’re not giving that to make anyone feel bad to blame White people, but we’re doing this so that we can all understand the context that we’ve got to work in, that we’re explaining many of these truths that we’ve often talked about here when we’ve communicated so that we can understand what we’re working from because just like in your own personal story, in your own personal story, you begin to discover, man, I’ve been working from a wound in my childhood that had everything to do with the way my father engaged me. That’s important work of understanding my woundedness, understanding my trauma, but there’s another layer to that work that I think is important. What was the system that my father grew up in that framed him?

Rachael: That’s right.

James: There’s a system that framed him that really has led to him responding the way he responded. So for example, to not take into account, and this is where I struggle with those who want to say that race doesn’t matter or the history doesn’t matter. I would say without history, you don’t have a correct context for your story, which is what we see now is why you go in your erase history. Because part of what’s going to make things successful is having more of a heroic context so that no one can be held accountable and responsible. We all now pick ourselves up by our bootstraps rather than going in… Context is important in order for me to know how to create a better company, in order for me to even have a better educational system. But if I create this false narrative that you’ve got some people who are just criminally and you’ve got some people who just can’t learn intelligence is different. When I create, then that’s going to change the way I teach, that’s going to change my educational system rather than giving the truth about how power has worked in this system, about how relationships and connections have worked in these systems and about the way we have viewed people have operated in this system. And so part of what I’m saying is too, I had an experience not too long ago where I got a chance to go to an archive. And here’s what I think we’re in danger of if you don’t do this broader work of helping people understand the context. Because if I do that, then I can do the work without naming or villainizing anyone. But here’s why I think we’re in danger of. We’re in danger of that which were archives for us of becoming artifacts. And becoming artifacts that nobody else will pay attention to. They’ll just say, “Oh, I remember where…” You think about it. We treat moments when we say Black History Month and it’s this one month we treat it as an artifact rather than as an archive that we can go back, read and learn from. Oh, that was so good. And see, wasn’t it good that you had a Booker T. Washington who did all these things even in spite of? It’s our artifact, but we don’t view it as an archive. Let’s learn what Booker T. Did. Wow. Let’s look truthfully at this because now we can learn how Booker T. aligned with Julius Rosenwald and he took the economic system of Julius Rosenwald and helped build schools, YMCAs. So you see a philanthropist connected with someone who understood what was right and to do it in a righteous way, gave him a system. That would give us learnings rather than just saying, I like Booker T. Washington, and he was a great speaker because of his Atlanta Compromise speech. So history gives us an example of things that we can use to change today. Accurate history can also give us an example of things that we need to avoid doing today. Did we not learn from how we did our indigenous brothers and sisters? And let’s learn how could you take a truth of who really were the people here who inhabit the land and create a story that would have you dehumanizing a people, have you even creating a whole ‘nother system of evil, a boarding school to where you’re trying to beat the identity of a person out of them. This is why history is important so that you create a better and more righteous system. And I think part of the challenge in our conversations we identify, but we don’t instruct and help people understand how do we build a different system. And then here’s the other thing too. It’s safer to just identify than to start coming up with solutions because when you come up with solutions, now you’re going to lose money. Now you’re going to realize this is costly. Now you’re going to realize this is going to cost you everything in order to make this change. And so when you do that, then you begin to go, I really just don’t want to do anything any different. And I like benefiting and thinking I’m better than simply because of an outer layer of skin. That’s a lot easier than having to go back, say, you know what? This historian was biased, was wrong. Let’s change the names. Let’s get rid of all the evidence in the museums. Let’s again, create another narrative that weakens and says you’re less than, you’re being threatened. Let’s create a narrative also that says you got to have different groups as well who you got to be against each other. And therefore you make sure that whenever we have a conversation, we don’t just talk about Black people. So we got to talk about women. We got to talk about LGBTQ+. We got to talk about different abilities. Have you ever noticed that part of the whole thing with the DEI industry is identifying rather than real solutions to any of those different dimensions of diversity. So that’s where I think story becomes important, but not just personal story, but broader systemic stories become important as well.

Dan: Well, I certainly have seen working with couples, working with families, this interplay between erasure. Let’s erase the story that disturbs us. It’s too compromising to have to bear the shame that comes embedded in these stories, but it goes further than erasure and you’ve named that well and that is whether we call it distortion or just a rewriting of a story that simply is not true. So when you see that in our current era, James, where do you see that erasure and/or distortion and a telling of a story that may have an element of truth, but it’s not true?

James: I see it everywhere. I see it, but it’s been that way for a while. There’s a reason why there’s certain things you know about Seattle and other things you do not know.

Rachael: That’s right.

James: There’s a reason why there’s certain things you know about the NBA or the NFL and then there are other things you don’t know. And that’s intentional because there’s a story of power that has been created that is a lot simpler than as you do the personal work. Nobody wants to tell the real story that, man, we got this land because my father swindled it out of another brother’s and that’s how we … Nobody wants to go back and tell that story. Nobody wants to go back and tell the story. Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, hundreds of years later, nobody wants to tell the story that Thomas Jefferson had kids by a slave, by someone who he kept enslaved and kept the kids enslaved just in another level of … Nobody wants to tell that story. And this is once again where Christians should… resurrection comes in because when resurrection comes in, you’re able to tell a truthful story and you’re able to come up with solutions that will cost everyone, but real solutions and strategies you name but you don’t blame. And I think too much of the conversation move to blaming, but not really naming that. You know what? We don’t even have a system that we’ve put in place to deal with the broader construct. And it doesn’t mean you create one, but it just means, for example, we talk about what’s missing rather than saying, well, this is who we are and if you want to fit in, I mean, this is what essentially, and I don’t want to oversimplify this, integration did. Integration said, well, we’re going to open the doors and if you want to come, come, you got to earn your way. And we did affirmative action for a few years, even distorting that story, but so come. But okay, no longer are we going to make it so that again, people who come from a particular ethnic group or people who are Black can’t come to school here. Now, you’ve kept that in place. You did hundreds of years of slavery. You did 90 years of Jim Crow. And then you did that for about several decades, see, didn’t work. So now we got to go back, but you never really dealt with the root of the issue. The root of the issue wasn’t just exclusion. There were intentional narratives that you didn’t even teach your kids that you know what these housing contracts that we had, the neighborhood that you grew up in. The reason why we got this property is because we had neighborhood covenants that said we couldn’t sell to a Black person and we kept that. And that’s why now in 2026, it still looks the same racial makeup and the same economic makeup in the neighborhood. Rather than telling the truth and saying, man, let’s begin to undo this or let’s tell the truthful story so that you don’t have a group of people who grew up in a certain particular place in Seattle or in Philadelphia, somehow think they’re better than other groups of people. Let’s tell a more human story so that we can have more belonging. That’s why education becomes important so that we understand, and I’ll say it simply, education becomes important so that we understand the systems that got us here, but then we can create new systems that change how we live in the future. And again, all I’m saying is that we’ve become that we do that on an individual level, but there has to be a work of doing stories on a systemic level and that is risky. The reason why it doesn’t happen is because now you’re going to disrupt power.

Dan: Yes. And in that disruption, the high probability is you will be excluded.

James: Yes.

Dan: You will pay the price. A dear friend, and I’ll say way outside of the Seattle area wanted to bring into the Christian school that his children attended material that would allow a different conversation on Black History Month. And it was polite but clear, this is not what we will spend time on because we’re about the gospel. So right there is that core framework of, well, but you’re teaching American history and there are certain elements that will be emphasized and certain things that will be slanted and frankly, certain things that will be outright denied. So when we begin to ask the question, and he was the one who put words to this, he said, the history of the development of Christian schools, private Christian schools, came largely, not exclusively, but largely in the context of White folk fleeing from educational systems that would have been more integrated, but also with more material about the nature of the larger story of our world. So already when you’ve got systems that are committed to the story being slanted and it takes me immediately back to the people who had to deal with the fact that Jesus is not in the tomb, told the soldiers, not only will there be no consequences, but we’ll pay you to tell the story that his disciples stole his body. So we’re in a world where, and I love the way you put it at the beginning, Rachael, we’re in a story war. And again, we don’t claim to have the story truth, but to begin to say, if the story of the resurrection does not open the door for a more truthful story personally, corporately, familially, culturally, then somehow we can underscore the story is being used to keep empire in place and it’s not the kingdom of God. It is not the kingdom of God. It is the empire that will exclude you, will write you off for being too political. And yet what I hear you saying, James, is the gospel messes with every part of our story.

James: Yes, yes, Dan. Yes.

Dan: Well, as we come unfortunately to an end, and there always is an end, but with you, James, there will always be another beginning because you are one of those sources that disrupt, but also invite. So thank you.

James: And Dan, it’s interesting, it’s been a challenging few months, but I have hope and that hope is how do we help people, one, tell and live better stories. Secondly, this is interesting to me with Christians especially, how do we help us to not be afraid of the truth even though the truth will cost us? Now, you know this on a personal level that it takes levels, especially when there’s trauma and woundedness to get people to even embrace the truth. But as a Christ-follower, and you named it and even you look in the scripture and see the evil that happens. And again, part of the framework of the evil one is he’s an accuser, he’s a father of lies.

Rachael: A liar.

James: But so how do you begin? And I think we can as we look at this recreation of creating belonging, creating environments where we are connected together, part of it is to do the storywork of how do you help people to not be afraid of seeing the story of their system, not just their personal story. And again, I know we’re talking about The Seattle School of Psychology and Theology and boy, I can leave there with a personal story that is healing and important, but who’s going to help us understand the systemic story that that personal story fits in and that just as a personal story can be healed, a systemic story can be healed as well. Who’s going to be the company? Who’s going to be the organization? Who’s going to be the church that really gives a truthful systemic story and not a gospel to escape, but a gospel to transform. Not a gospel that says, let’s just be racially reconciled. Let’s just make sure we deal with John 17 and Revelation and we all going to be together and not be segregated. No, but a gospel that says, hey, the reason why we’re segregated on Sunday morning is because there’s still lies that we’ve allowed our broader world and are there going to be a people who are equipped to live out and build the truth so that the transformation can still happen? Sometimes it feels just as ridiculous as a man dies brutally tortured. Three days later, he rises again from the dead and there are witnesses who see him and experience him. If I can believe and live that story today, can’t we believe and live a story of a whole new resurrected different system in these United States that as one writer says is yet to be united and I would say has yet to experience real resurrection, not an artificial Make America Great Again, but a real resurrection of American can be something that it could have never imagined that it could be. So looking forward to us continuing the work and continuing that work together.

Dan: Dear friend, amen.