Dr. Terence Lester on Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice and on His Personal Journey of Resilience

Dr. Will Gravely (00:01.162)
Thank you.

Dr. Terence Lester (00:03.234)
Let me just put my charger on.

Dr. Terence Lester (00:10.158)
have a computer die in this conversation. All right. Yep, I’m ready whenever you all are.

Dr. Will Gravely (00:25.322)
Well, Be The Bridge listeners, welcome to this episode of the Be The Bridge podcast. For those of you that are familiar with the platform, welcome back. For those of you that are engaging for the first time, we welcome you. On behalf of our incredible founder and leader, Latasha Morrison and our incredible team, we’re excited today to have a returning special guest. And it’s none other than Dr. Terrence Lester.

Many of you who have been listening are very familiar with him and his work. And for those of you who are joining us, you have the treat and the privilege of being exposed to his incredible work and legacy and also a couple of new projects that he has before us right now. And so Dr. Terrence Lester, for our new listeners, would you like to say a few words about just who you are, where you come from, and give a bit of an introduction?

Dr. Terence Lester (01:16.898)
Yeah. Firstly, I just want to say I am always grateful for the opportunity to share from a heart. I count it a privilege and honor to hold this space right now with you, Dr. Gravely. I have been over the years deeply inspired and impacted by your brilliance, your intellect, and your bridge work. I think right now it is very critical.

that we maintain the posture of shalom and peace and thinking creatively about how we can show up in community. And I just wanted to say that, but man, I was asked this question not too long ago about how I want it to be remembered.

largely in part because I was in the process, still am grieving the loss of my father. I get a chance to go and visit his grave site and on his gravestone, we put man of resilience, right? Forever forward. It’s kind of like his phrase that he used to say to myself and my siblings. But I was thinking about that in terms of

the end and I would describe how I want to be remembered is servant. you know, servant has a lot within it. A servant means that, you know, you have lived your life in a way where you don’t have a palms up approach, but palms down, not necessarily asking what can you give or what can I take from

you know, those around me or the community around me palms down, meaning I am coming to serve. Servant means that I have lived in close proximity to others in a way where they feel my presence and my sense of solidarity. Servant in the way where I am, I am doing my best, not in perfection, but showing up with the heart of God and wanting to lean in to the heart.

Dr. Terence Lester (03:40.622)
places and spaces that sometimes the messiness of them causes people to flee from. Serve it in the way that I love my wife. I just celebrated 19 years of marriage. Praise be to God. And we are best friends. Serve it in the way that I serve and love all my children. I was just talking to another podcast about, you know, what does it mean to be healthy as a parent?

And that role is always changing. And I am a servant. I am stewarding my relationship with my children, right? And also the ways in which I model what it means to show up in the world that is, as many would say, is a dumpster fire all around us. And so I start there because, you know, most times I start with my story, but I want people to understand who I am and, and, and

what God has done in my life and where I am currently because, know, I still maintain hope amidst everything that’s going on in society. I still want to love and serve my neighbor, even if that neighbor comes from a different social location than me right now. I still have…

this passion and this burning and this desire on the inside of me and call me silly, call me crazy. But I just believe that service itself and the way that we love people around us and the way that we serve our communities is actually how we change the world. And I just wanted to start there. And I know you have some questions for me about my personal story, but servant, that’s what’s coming up on my heart right now.

Dr. Will Gravely (05:29.482)
Thank you for that. And it’s honestly an encouragement and a challenge to all of us to lead a life in service of others. And so you’ve done that for years as a founder of Love Beyond Walls and a passionate and compassionate advocate and also a decorated scholar. And so I just want to hear a bit of your story concerning education, concerning community transformation and engagement.

and even pushing beyond barriers to affect justice in the world, because it shows up in your servanthood and your servant leadership, and it has done so for nearly two decades. So can you just tell us a bit of the lived experience that’s behind a lot of the scholarship?

Dr. Terence Lester (06:18.252)
Yeah.

I don’t know every I’ve been asked this a lot lately and I get emotional every time that question comes up. And here’s why I was talking to a group here recently and I told them I traveled a long way to get here. I traveled a long way to get here and, you know, a person raises their hand and they do, what do you mean? Like,

Did it, was a couple hours in the car, you know, did you fly here? And when I’m talking about traveling a long way to get here, even to be in this conversation with you, I mean that not in a geographical sense, but the journey of resilience. Born in the 1980s in the city of Atlanta on a part of Atlanta, considered the Southwest part in a community.

that was concentrated with poverty. mean, the city and the landscape of Atlanta still has highways and roads of people who were white supremacists, right? There are many cities across the country that are highly impoverished that has concentration of impoverished black and brown families because they were redlined, right? I grew up in a community that had the divestment, that had

the dilapidated buildings that had the food deserts, that had the underfunded schools and the buildings that were almost decaying, that had lack of access to updated textbooks, that had all of that. And then impoverishment in itself is not just about economics. Poverty can be spiritual, it can be emotional, it can be occupational, environmental, it can be

Dr. Terence Lester (08:17.389)
you know, physical, right? It can be psychological. It can be an intersection of all of these things. And you take someone and you, a guy brings me into this world in this community, post-civil rights movement, right? And so you’re still receiving some of the backlash. We see Shirley Chisholm, her name gets on the ballot. Many scholars would suggest that black people didn’t really

become full citizens until we see this. And many would even argue, my social commentators would still say we’re blackish, right? And, you know, we see Rodney King beating, right? Which I would argue is the first social media viral clip, right? Long before social media, because it was caught on camera that spread and we see the riots and we see all of these things revolting against blackness.

you know, anti-black world. And I’m born into that. This is the world that I’m inheriting, right? And in the book, I talk about my struggle of growing up impoverished, experiencing trauma, and then wrestling with this social landscape of injustice. And I do this in the book talking about how, you know, I joined gangs. I was a high school dropout. I experienced homelessness.

for a brief moment of time when I was a teenager, literally getting dressed out of the trunk of my car and sometimes going to school and having to find the emotional bandwidth and the strength and the courage and the gall to connect to a lesson that did not speak to my existential realities. And so what I do, even when I talk about this in this book that I’ve just written,

I connect the lineal intersectional framework of all of these things. You have historical oppression and then you have the injustice, you know, and policy part, right? Because the oppression produces the policy and then the policy itself creates the social living conditions, right? Which is where I found myself. And the social living conditions produces the trauma, right? I also argue that poverty itself

Dr. Terence Lester (10:41.313)
is a form of trauma, right? It’s traumatic when you see a single parent mom working multiple jobs and she can’t spend time with you because she has to make ends meet. It’s traumatic to grow up and not have enough food in the refrigerator because you don’t have enough money at the end of the month. It’s traumatic to have hand-me-down clothes and have students bully you, right?

when you’re sitting in your classroom and you can’t even connect with a lesson because you’re dealing with all of the barriers that surround you. And so this is a little bit about my story. And from that, we have these outcomes, right? We have educational challenges, we have social and systemic challenges, we have these sort of barriers that many people don’t see when we talk about even growing up how I grew up. And that’s just…

to paint a brief picture, but I wanted to kind of lay a framework for the conversation.

Dr. Will Gravely (11:41.352)
Now it’s powerful. And so for your reference, our dear listeners, that book is Dropout to Doctor, Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice. And Dr. Lester brilliantly is highlighting the intersection between policy, people, place, and just what it means to live in the trauma of poverty and where it comes from and also how it impacts our educational systems. You highlighted just a few moments ago this notion of redlining. And can you speak to

systematically this connection between redlining school systems, resources, then ultimately education.

Dr. Terence Lester (12:19.628)
Yeah, I was.

Firstly, we have to see or understand that housing and education are always connected, right? Where a family lives shapes not only their daily survival, but also the schools that their children may attend, the resources those schools can provide, and ultimately the opportunities that are available to students. Like think about it, if you walk into a US classroom right now,

You’ll see the weight of this, specifically in predominantly impoverished neighborhoods, right? You’ll see students who move from place to place because their families can’t keep up with the rising costs for housing. You’ll see students who maybe slept in a car with their family or in a motel or in a shelter while trying to do their best or survive day to day. You’ll see children who show up embarrassed because they lost everything because they’re

Their family had to leave in the middle of the night. You’ll see working families who are doing the best that they can while parents are holding down multiple jobs, sometimes single parents with determination, right? You’ll see all of this, but then you have to ask the question, how is this so, right? Because these stories aren’t isolated. They’re woven into a, I would say a larger system of educational injustice. So like you have the roots of

This injustice being traced back to the 1930s when federal housing agencies developed maps labeling neighborhoods as undesirable, right? Or hazardous for investment. Mostly black neighborhoods, right? Were shaded in red and they were cut off. And this practice known as redlining, some of you may know, that didn’t just limit housing options, right? It drew these invisible barriers for opportunity, including

Dr. Terence Lester (14:18.758)
education, right? And so even though we progressed, right, it was outlawed in the 1960s, right? The residue of redlining is kind of still visible in neighborhoods even to this day, right? With poverty and communities being cut off to wealth, know, communities divided by streets and highways. And these policies themselves created generational wealth gaps is what I’m are.

And what I’m calling this right now is not just redlining in terms of housing, but educational redlining. The starving of schools that serve black and brown and impoverished students, not because of a lack of ability, but because of where they live, right? Because housing, right? Housing itself actually creates the funding, the taxes that we pay.

for public school systems, right? And when you’re wealthy, right? Or live in wealthy neighborhoods, property values are high, operating with stronger school budgets. You have advanced courses, updated facilities. If you drive in certain neighborhoods, even the public schools can sometimes function like…

private schools just because of the families that are in the neighborhood, the wealth that is there, the donations to the school, the ways in which people show up with their stature, their posture, their position, and all of their resources, their network. And so when you grow up on what some may be perceiving as the wrong side of the tracks, you are getting this educational impact, educational redlining, right?

You don’t have access to college counseling. You don’t have access to the rigorous coursework. The preparation for careers such as STEAM, science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics. It creates barriers to college admission, the completion of college in long term and upward mobility. And so all of these things I’m arguing are a form of

Dr. Terence Lester (16:38.344)
educational redlining. And when I look back and trace where I grew up, I still can go back to my neighborhood today because I still have many brothers and sisters and friends and partners and bros and all of that stuff in this community that were never able to escape the reality of what is in the context of that environment. Right? And so while I argue like

God’s grace and the relationships and all of the things that helped me to overcome, man.

There are people still trapped, man. And you wonder why people call it the trap, right? Because how else do you make it out? If you’re not bouncing or dribbling a ball, how else do you make it out? know, 30 states in the United States still adhere to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

I was talking to a group of people not too long ago. asked them, how many of you could survive living on that right now? And then this whole notion that poor people are lazy or poor people don’t have any character or morals. My faith was developed in scarcity. You know what I mean? So that’s kind of like what I mean by all of it.

Dr. Will Gravely (17:57.098)
Right.

Dr. Will Gravely (18:08.586)
Yeah.

Wow, let’s go deeper. Because you raise this point in the book where just because somebody has less resources doesn’t mean there’s less brilliance, less community. There’s so many things there. There’s also some tangible things you’re doing now, even with your daughter, to combat this deficit of resources. So you’re teaching us that the border of redlining creates a barrier for resources. But there are some ways to push back. But it’s going to take a collective effort.

One, can you please talk about this project that has been blossoming already out of two schools, if I’m correct, at this point. And then secondly, reshape, help to reshape the public perspective on thinking that impoverished communities actually have less versus the wealth of other things that are still very much so present in resilient people and resilient spaces.

Dr. Terence Lester (19:11.595)
Yeah. Man, I counted a blessing to do work with my daughter. Years ago, I was in the middle of this campaign. I was walking across the country. She was in the second grade to raise awareness about homelessness. She was so inspired. She took a newspaper that the work was in to school. And she started talking to her teacher about homelessness. And the teacher.

brilliant teacher. She didn’t just tuck this paper away. She used it as an opportunity to educate the other students, right? This turned into a campaign that my eight-year-old daughter started and they got the whole school involved, raised $52 worth of change, right? But this brought attention to other unhoused students who were in the school, right? And so more educators started getting involved and

it became a thing where they were asking, how can we support further students who were unhoused? Fast forward years later, we co-author a book talking about the very subject, which was a dream of hers. And now it’s turned into a tangible project. The book is called Zion Learns to See. And now we have launched Zion’s Closet, which is a program through Love Beyond Walls.

We go into Title I schools, right? Our first Zion’s Closet is in the city of Atlanta. The elementary school where this resource center is, has the highest concentration of unhoused students in the whole county, right? So you can imagine walking into a school and literally we see students that don’t have on any socks or don’t have on…

you know, the right size shoes, holes in their clothes, like all sorts of things. The principal, Dr. Spencer, gave us a classroom and we were able to retrofit it. So this classroom becomes a community center within the school, right? Where if parents couldn’t wash their children’s clothes, there’s washing machines and dryers in this classroom. Where parents, if there’s a digital divide keeping them from accessing technology that some of us

Dr. Terence Lester (21:32.799)
have the privilege of accessing to go online and fill out job applications, the parents can come into this room and fill out job applications because we have a digital computer lab. If the parents need to retreat, right, just from the stress, they can meet with counselors and social workers in a safe space where they don’t have to carry the shame of walking into the front of the building and feeling like I don’t even feel

worthy enough to be in this school. So not only does it drive up parental involvement, but there’s also healthy food. We got refrigeration, got access to clean clothes. And when we launched this, man, I’ll never forget, like there was a, you know, school board, superintendent video, you know, local politicians, legislators showed up, the community showed up. And in the midst of all of that fanfare, there was an educator.

in real time that walked the student into that room because their shoe had broken and they were sad and were able to grab a pair of shoes off of of

of this shelf, you know? And you go, man, like, why? Students are the future, man. Like, they’re future doctors and lawyers and educators and head of schools and college presidents and inventors and artists and musicians. And I mean, this is the work that you’re doing with the hub out there at the community that you’re leading. like, you know, it’s important because

who are we to say or to dictate what is in the seed and children and students are the seed. But our responsibility is to make sure that the soil is right, right? Because if the soil is right, if we step up and say, we’re gonna provide all the nutrients, right? That the student needs, then we will put them in the best position to flourish. How dare we say,

Dr. Will Gravely (23:20.596)
you

Dr. Will Gravely (23:24.785)
Okay.

Dr. Terence Lester (23:43.019)
Poverty dictates what’s in the seed. How dare we say poverty dictates the brilliance that is locked in communities that the soil or their environment has been contaminated. And so that’s the metaphor I want to give back to you. It’s like when we talk about people who are growing up in poverty, no, we can’t talk about brilliance tied with lack of resources because that’s two totally separate things. We’re talking about seeds versus

the environment that may be toxic from the residue of what public policy and white supremacy has done.

Dr. Will Gravely (24:19.786)
Let’s go. Wow. So again, family, poverty has no bearing on potential. Poverty has no bearing on purpose. And Dr. Lesler just gave us a brilliant metaphor of it’s our job collectively as a community. It’s our responsibility to nourish the soil so that what God has already placed in these brilliant, beautiful seeds can actually blossom and bloom. Thank you for that. You continue to give us great practical frameworks for helping to be a part of the solution.

One that you highlight in your latest book is navigating barriers. And there’s four steps as an approach inside of higher education. But you talk about personal resilience, resource support, community, and then faith and spiritual support. Is there anything you would like to offer or unpack deeper for us just around that framework you give?

Dr. Terence Lester (25:12.893)
Yeah.

Meh.

I really think that we’ve got to be more trauma informed, right? Spiritual maturity is also understanding that the people around us go through the type of trauma that may be different from our own embodiment of what we’ve experienced, right? And, you know,

There’s a growing and blossoming language. Even we see more advocacy around the mental health field and people saying that we need to have access to that. But we need a trauma-informed approach, not just in our school systems, a trauma-informed pedagogy, but we also need a trauma-informed approach to our spirituality.

And let me tell you man…

Dr. Terence Lester (26:20.626)
Jesus had a trauma-informed approach. In Matthew 9, it says that they were weary. We don’t know why they were weary. They could have been weary because they were impoverished. They could have been weary because they were living on the streets. They could have been weary because they were up under Roman oppression. They could have been weary because they didn’t have access to fishing, which was a major resource in that era, right? They could have been weary for so many different reasons.

But it doesn’t just say that they were weary, they were also helpless. And helplessness, man, have you ever been helpless? Have you ever found yourself with your back against the wall where you don’t even think that you have enough power to do anything for yourself? I mean, that’s what Howard Thurman argues, right? In Jesus and the Disinherited, that when you are poor, you are living like with your back against the wall. But Jesus, it says that he was moved with compassion, man.

Trauma informed spirituality is more about, we got to stop asking what’s wrong with people and start asking what happened to people. Because we create this space and this opportunity where people can respond authentically with who they are as a person, right? And then that, we hear that, we absorb that, we lament with that, we stand in solidarity with that, then we have to ask ourselves, how should I respond to the need?

How should I show up? How should I stand in solidarity with my brother and sister? How should I have good news for the poor? How should I stand in solidarity with the brokenhearted, right? And when I talk about all of those elements and how we show up, it’s more about presence than we think. There’s a quote that is in our office.

at Love Beyond Walls that says, you can never meet the needs of people that you’ve never met. You can never meet the needs of people that you’ve never met. And we have to ask ourselves why haven’t we met the people that we’ve yet to meet that maybe live in a different neighborhood, that may live in a different social location, right? See, I believe that when Jesus asked us to love our neighbor, he’s not just asking us to love

Dr. Terence Lester (28:43.07)
the neighbor, but also be concerned with the neighborhood that that neighbor emerges from. To also be so concerned with the neighborhood’s issues that that includes other neighbors, right? Because we can’t get proximate to a neighbor and just single somebody out without understanding the context, the very context that the neighborhood is producing, right? This is the difference between the Levite and the priest.

Dr. Will Gravely (28:48.339)
sir.

Dr. Terence Lester (29:08.99)
who passed by the man who was almost half dead on the side of the road. And if we can metaphorically just borrow for a moment, that could be being dead by poverty, dead by lack of food resources, dead because you’re in a food desert. And he inconvenienced himself. He turns off the road to become proximate to neighbor, right? And then he spins of his own resources.

So I asked people, when you think about making a difference in education, man, if it had not been for Mr. Moore, when I was living out the trunk of my car, who told me I was going to be a leader long before I was myself. If it had not been for Miss West, who was my geometry teacher, I was a fifth year senior, dropped out of high school, went back to school, most embarrassing time of my life. She said-

I see you carrying all this pain, but you’re black and you’re brilliant. And I want you to use my classroom as a sanctuary. If it hadn’t been for Mr. Eason, who invested not only in me as a young man, but was a deacon in the church and paid, helped to pay for my college, my undergrad degree, so I can get out of a warehouse job and literally…

pursue the academic heights and the dreams that I had in my heart. And then right before he passes away a couple of years ago, sends me a text message that says I was one of the greatest investments that he made because he saw the fruit of the labor of his investment with me being proximate, with me serving the community, with all of those things. So it has to be presence, right? But it also has to be asking yourself, what can I do? And that may look different for each church.

because each church has its own crop of resources in terms of congregation. And so I’m rambling, man, but I’m so passionate about this, but we have to be trauma-informed because there’s a personal trauma that’s happening. There’s a political trauma. There’s a social trauma, right? But then there’s a collective trauma, right? That we all see it in this present moment.

Dr. Will Gravely (31:18.698)
you

Dr. Will Gravely (31:22.698)
Wow, now that’s profound. And thank you for encouraging us to be trauma-informed in our approach. And I wanna connect that to another framework you offer in your book on this notion of safe spaces. And you highlight safe as an acronym. The S is socially aware, A affirming, F fair or just. I would love to hear a lot more on the justice piece and then E for environments focusing on healing. And of course that points to the trauma-informed. As you’ve approached this,

beautiful project of Zion’s Closet, your decades of work with Love Beyond Walls, and then you highlighting with brilliant frameworks, educational disparity and educational injustice in your new book. How can we more practically help create safe spaces? What would you say to encourage our viewers or our listeners?

Dr. Terence Lester (32:12.71)
Yeah.

I was,

Dr. Terence Lester (32:19.785)
Last year, I was given a professorship at an HBCU in Louisville, Kentucky. Still doing work in Atlanta, but commuting back and forth. I was charged to launch a project called the Open Doors Initiative. And I got a chance to write their public policy concentration under the Interdisciplinary Studies Program. I wrote the entire course work.

you know, through the lens of, you know, poverty, policy and homelessness, right? And the Open Doors Initiative is a program that gives young adults access to higher education if they are unhoused, right? Just this past school year had a conference right there in Louisville, Kentucky, in partnership with the school system. Almost 50 students show up to this conference and

All of them are graduating seniors and all of them are also unhoused. The only school that was present was Simmons College of Kentucky. The reason I bring this up because when those students were inspired and they walked to the table, some of them didn’t know how to even fill out a FAFSA or what a FAFSA was. Some of them didn’t know, you know, that

college was an option for them. Some of them didn’t even know that there was a process or what types of tests do I need to take to even qualify to go to school. And that broke my heart. And I want it to break your heart, right? Because this is important work to give people an opportunity to, one, feel safe, to find the courage, because sometimes people who are going through these types of

I know myself. I had to borrow courage, right? I had to borrow the belief in myself when I did not have it in myself. I had to borrow somebody else’s courage until God continued to transform my life in a way where I was strong enough to adopt that belief for myself because I started to see myself through the lens of how God sees me. But everybody doesn’t start there. So when I talk about being socially aware, I’m like,

Dr. Terence Lester (34:40.647)
Yo, do you know what’s going on around you? Have you done the research? Do you know the organizations that are on the ground doing the work? Do you know the percentages of students in your environment or in your community that are in need? Do you know what’s going on with homelessness? And it could be any issues. Like, are you socially aware to the point?

where you can ask yourself the right questions about how you can get involved or at least advocate to organize people around you, even in your faith community to get involved. Have you been affirming, right? Are you still using second and third hand information or news clips or social media clips to dictate how you believe, right? Are you allowing ideology, right?

or white nationalism or some of these co-opted terms that has been used to mean something that they don’t even mean to dictate your suspicion of what’s going on around you, right? Are you affirming? Have you affirmed in a way that doesn’t cause you to edit the narrative, the true narrative, right? We even see this happening with the…

the stripping of museums right now. And like, this is real. Are you being fair and just, right? Are you fighting for equitable access to resources? I know we talk a lot about equality, but it’s not the same thing as equity, right? It’s difference. Yeah, yeah. Like me and you, we have the same value, but me and you, we don’t start from the same place. That’s why I said in the beginning, I journey a long way to be here.

Dr. Will Gravely (36:07.05)
Yeah.

Dr. Terence Lester (36:31.729)
Some people were already here. Some people already had access. And when we think about it, the community within itself, whose community are, let me say this, it this way. Community is a resource, right? Relationships are a resource. Out of community, you can get networking, access to jobs, insight, wisdom, all of those things. And if you don’t have those things, then

Dr. Will Gravely (36:35.818)
Mm-mm.

Dr. Terence Lester (37:01.575)
You are deprived of them. It’s just like the seeds that are in soil that doesn’t have access to sunlight. Are we being just in our approach? And then the E is like, are we creating safe spaces where people can actually heal, man? It was healing to see students walk in and say, for the first time, I believe I can do this. What if we created our churches and our sanctuaries this way?

Dr. Will Gravely (37:24.21)
you

Dr. Terence Lester (37:29.767)
There’s research that shows right now there’s a high need for tutoring and mentorship that can curve some of the educational deficits and outcomes for students that emerge from impoverished contexts, right? What if sanctuaries like not just have service, but have access to people who want to show up and help students? What if sanctuaries rethought?

the use of that space to become multi-purpose facilities, similar to like what you’re doing out there in Cobb. What do we thought differently about how we use the resources that we have at our disposal to show up and create these safe communities? Because safe communities is also about these environments of healing. Like I healed, I experienced healing, the healing of my soul and my salvation, the healing of relationships, the healing of repair.

right before my dad passed bro I’m in a hospital with him I still have the audio clip I listen to at least once a week

He tells me that he gave his life to the Lord. Me and my family, we were the only family. I went and saw my dad get baptized, bro.

Dr. Terence Lester (38:53.67)
gave his life to the Lord because he was watching how I lived. But how I lived was shaped by the church because the black church gave me a space to connect with deacons, twice my age, to connect with people in the community that I saw who overcame and were successful and gave me opportunities to see representation and see that I could do it for myself.

Dr. Will Gravely (38:57.524)
you

Dr. Terence Lester (39:21.532)
who had people speak life into me, words that were born out of the love and admiration from Jesus Christ himself, man. so, bro, like if I’ve done all this to see my dad give his life to Jesus and was able to preach his eulogy and stand with him until his final days and our relationship be repaired, bro, like, man, are you kidding me? What else could happen if we don’t see like a…

You know, just a single story of like, that’s an anomaly. What if we created this type of opportunity? So that’s what I mean by safe. Like we need these types of safe spaces.

Dr. Will Gravely (40:04.522)
Well, honestly, you’ve given us a lot of hope with all of your scholarship and your work, but especially with this personal story. And I want to ask you that question. And then I want to highlight you have some important events coming up for our listeners. These days with the world as you referenced earlier, many would say it’s a dumpster fire if anyone’s paying attention. There are a lot of things to look at that would be discouraging, deflating.

What gives you hope these days?

Dr. Terence Lester (40:49.928)
Cause God has a resume.

Dr. Terence Lester (40:57.01)
God has a resume. And I um…

There are many dark days, and it’s like, when does it get better? But God has a resume. God has a resume. God has a resume. God has a resume in that He breathes breath into dirt and makes man. God has a resume in that He empowers an orphan named Moses to part the Red Sea. God has a resume where He can touch,

Dr. Terence Lester (41:33.21)
He can touch the feet of Peter to walk on water. He can cause flesh to wrap itself around dry bones. God has a resume. God has a resume to the point where our Savior Jesus can take the lashes, be hung on a cross, but yet resurrected. God has a resume. And so like, bro, I’m doing the work, but I…

a lot of my hope right now is anchored in what I believe changed my life and made me into the person of who I am today. And so, God has a resume. And then secondly, being proximate to stories, man, like…

Dr. Terence Lester (42:23.186)
Bro, I had a, you know, I’m about to go to DC to stand with our brothers and sisters experiencing homelessness, but to hear a brother say, “Man, thank you for being here. Because if it wasn’t for y’all I wouldn’t have had a shower this week.” God has a resume because while he may see us doing it, we know why we are doing it, right? And we get to rejoice in the fact that God provides

for something as simple as a shower to affirm the already existing dignity and worth that a person has on the inside of them. Tomorrow We opened up our second Zion’s Closet at a school and the principal just shot us an email and is like, “I’m so grateful because we had a rough start this year. I’m already seeing needs and students and families will be able to benefit when we do the ribbon cutting tomorrow.” God has a resume bro and like,

that is where I’m, I don’t know if that answers your question, but that’s what keeps coming up to me in this moment.

Dr. Will Gravely (43:30.216)
Yeah, God has a resume, y’all. And it’s still growing. It’s still growing in and through us. Listen, you referenced DC. So before we get to that last event, you’re speaking to a relevant issue, a relevant circumstance right now. We are watching people be pushed out. We are watching seemingly martial law and occupation taking place. We are watching encampments be destroyed and pushed out. You’re going literally, physically.

to stand with our brothers and sisters experiencing this, what would you say to our listenership concerning how we can participate in bringing about justice for our friends there in DC and elsewhere?

Dr. Terence Lester (44:15.814)
Yeah, I think we need to, gotta talk about it, right?

But we talk about it every Sunday if you go to church, don’t we? Because didn’t Jesus say that I don’t have a place to lay my head to? He said that. But we have to ask why? Like even when we open the book of Matthew, Caesar sends out a decree to kill all the first male born children. Had it not been for an angel.

Dr. Will Gravely (44:27.256)
Mmm. Mmm. Mmm.

Dr. Terence Lester (44:50.629)
which in that context means messenger, right? He would have been taken out, right? Then he experiences displacement because he has to actually move. He has to relocate, right? I would argue that because Jesus knows what it’s like that we should be more apt to lean in.

and to use our voices, right? And there’s this narrative being framed right now that people who are unhoused are criminal. there, know, one mayor out in Lancaster, California said that he wants to end homelessness by giving all of the unhoused community fentanyl. That’s how he would deal with it. In a city council meeting, right? And contrary to popular belief,

people experiencing homelessness, there’s research that shows that they’re less likely, this comes out of John Hopkins Hospital, less likely to commit violent crimes. And the people who are more apt to commit violent crimes are people who have access to housing. And so we have to reframe that narrative because there’s no single story narrative when it comes to the experience of homelessness. You have people who…

lost jobs, people who became disabled. I know that to be true. And if I didn’t have support, I could have been unhoused, right? People who became medically ill, people who are fleeing domestic violence, people who lost a loved one. There’s so many ways that a person can become unhoused. we need to start generalizing the entirety of the population because you never know the story behind why somebody is in a tent, right? You know what I mean?

And we got to use our voices and we got to lean in more. Why? Because we talk about it every Sunday.

Dr. Will Gravely (46:42.858)
Let’s go. Thank you, sir. So lastly, we want to highlight an event that you have coming up, even with our fearless leader as well. And so can you tell us about what is coming up, especially for those in the area? We understand that you’ll be traveling across the country as well. can you talk to us about what’s happening September 6th? And then once again, highlight this incredible release coming to us September 9th.

Dr. Terence Lester (47:07.259)
Yeah. So I have the opportunity to sit down with my sister, colleague, co-laborer in the faith and the work of justice, I wish I could call a Dr. Latasha Morrison, but she’s going to join me on September the 6th. And we’re going to have a conversation, live conversation about educational equity and public policy and community engagement.

You can actually attend this event free. It’ll be a pre-book launch talk. at, I guess you all drop a link, but disruptedatl.eventbrite.com. You can attend. We have limited spaces, but this will be a live discussion of how do we actually get involved in the city of Atlanta and across the country to do the work of justice as it relates to education. Because believe it or not,

education intersects with every facet of society. You need education to actually get gainful employment or some type of certification. got to prove the fact that you are able and understand to do the things that you say you can do. I mean, there are even companies that will hire you, but you have to go through educational training to do a job, right? And so Be the Bridge is all about education and training.

And I’m writing about this subject and so we’re going to have a great time there. then September 9th, I actually launched the book and I’m really excited about it. It’s called From Dropout to Doctor It, Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice. So if you like anything that was said, please pre-order or pick up a copy.

Dr. Will Gravely (48:53.578)
Thank you so much. So family, know what to do. Please, please, please go and support to our friend and brother, Dr. Terrence Lester. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your wisdom. And honestly, beyond anything you do, thank you for who you are. We look forward to having you join us on the next episode. And until then, on behalf of our founder and leader, Latasha Morrison and the incredible Be The Bridge family, we’ll see you next time. Peace.

Dr. Terence Lester (49:18.811)
Dr. Boyle, thank you.

Dr. Will Gravely (49:20.458)
Thank you.

*This transcript has not been checked for accuracy. Thank you for your grace for any mistakes!