Nothing I Asked For, But Everything I Needed | Arsenal Stories (Week 3) | Nate Kindig

Today you get to hear a story of a person that is

Incredible like what one of the kindest people you'll meet one of the smartest people you'll meet

The job that he does is just this incredible work

and

And more than likely

He might be one of the few people in this room

That knows more

About college women's gymnastics than I do

And that's saying something

He's also the one that will call me out when I say something wrong about sports

But he knows a lot about church he's been in it a long time

But I want to welcome Nate to the stage

Meet Nate

All right, you have officially given the mic over to me now I have all the power

So there's no telling where we're gonna go from here. I don't know

But I'm really excited to share my story with you guys today

Very grateful to Chad for him asking me to speak

So I'm just gonna jump right in but first before I jump into my story

I think we all grow up in

There's a background a

Sociological structure right that we all grow up in and so I want to explain just a little bit about my background

That I grew up in

So I grew up in church. I didn't just grow up going to church

I grew up with a dad that was in vocational ministry

So I was there Sundays Wednesdays Fridays Saturdays

You know was there multiple times a week running around in the back, right?

And then was there on Sundays as well?

And so my dad started out his ministry in the Southern Baptist Church

And so for those of you who which show of hands who has attended Southern Baptist churches at one point or another

Okay. Wow, that's a lot of you guys. Okay. Wow

So there are plenty of you who may not know a lot about it. I have a

Slide that is the history of church denominations

So you can see this is this is the slide that is like the history of all the different church denominations

So obviously hang on

This one the Southern Baptist one is the correct one, right?

so

So yeah, so that is the church that I grew up in I did not learn until maybe

Two years ago the history of the origins of the Southern Baptist Church

So the Southern Baptist Church I grew up in Georgia the Southern Baptist Church was formed in Augusta, Georgia in

1945

Originally you had the Baptist Church, which is a little bit above that in history

There you got the Reformed Baptist Church that was formed first

The reason that the Southern Baptist Church was formed was because the larger National Baptist

Organization had decided that they did not want slave owners to hold ministry

titles in the Baptist Church

So then there was this group of 300 churches that decided we're not a part of you anymore

We do want slave owners to hold ministry titles

And so that is basically the origins of the Southern Baptist Church

So eventually

The Southern Baptist Church did apologize for their history of their stances on slavery and

Racism does anybody want to guess when they formally apologized?

for their views

Last year, that's a very good guess any other guesses. I don't know

2020 they were focused on other stuff in 2020. I'll get into that

So they officially apologized in

1995 they were also were

publicly against the civil rights movement, so they apologize for that in 1995 as well

but

Shortly after that they started to focus on other

areas other organizational

things that they saw what they believed so since 1995 they have focused on things like

Reducing and further reducing women's role in ministry so way back when they didn't have any official doctrine on women being you know

In vocational roles, and then they decided hey women can't be lead pastors

And then I think just this past year if I'm not right they said women cannot have a pastor title in any way whatsoever

They also have

I don't know if you guys know the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News is that right Chad

I don't know if Chad's even here

Yeah, so they did an investigation in the Southern Baptist Church that basically

Showed that they as an organization were intentionally covering up their leaders sexual abuse

and so

all that to say

That one right there is the right one right like all the other ones are wrong

and so

That's the history of the Southern Baptist Church. However the family that I grew up in is not necessarily a reflection of that at all

so my dad before I was born he

His first assignment was to be an unpaid intern which some of our people here might be able to relate to that

But an unpaid intern

At a church near Atlanta

To be a youth pastor and so they asked him to do neighborhood ministry

and

So my parents because they were young and he was an unpaid intern

They lived in a very modest apartment close to the church building

and this was in the late 80s or early 90s and

And so he was tasked with doing neighborhood ministry

He lived in a modest apartment close to the church building started doing neighborhood ministry close to the church

well that neighborhood was a majority black neighborhood and so black kids started showing up to youth group and

After black kids started showing up in the youth group the church leadership called him in and they were like, hey just FYI

We didn't want you to do neighborhood ministry here. We wanted you to do neighborhood ministry over here where our kids are

And so my dad

Which my parents did not grow up in church

They met in high school because they said the prayer, right?

My dad immediately was like, what are you talking about? I'm done like peace out

so

So my parents right were growing up and this culture that they didn't understand their faith was relatively new

My dad was in vocational ministry, right? But and he was figuring this stuff out as well

now to kind of

just get into me and you know growing up in this family where there I think from the

Beginning there was a little bit of this dissonance right between the culture that we were in and our family and then me

So I was the second-born I grew up. I was very much a rule follower

Which is not always common of second-borns, but my older brother was a rule breaker

And so I was like, well, I don't want to do that

Because I'm gonna get in way too much trouble if I do that. So I'm gonna do this over here, right?

so I

Was a

Rule follower, like I said, I got good grades. I was able to meet everybody's expectations around me

I went to Christian school. I was able to follow all the rules there and never got in trouble

and

Was able to kind of maintain everybody's expectations around me and that fit with me wanting to like keep order keep peace, right?

Alexis talked last week about the kind of like stages of spirituality being order

Disorder and then reorder I was really really good at the order stage like I could have everything figured out

I could follow all the rules

And I did kind of grow up in a bubble in a Christian school. My dad was in vocational ministry

He did eventually like, you know, I was like, okay

I don't know if SBC is fully for me and went to those non-denominational, right churches

those mega churches, but

I grew up in this bubble and I also grew up with a pretty narrow reading of Scripture and how to interpret Scripture

But then you know, I went to college I went to a very, you know secular college

It was a very diverse school

Which I think it's the greatest school in the world. It's Davidson College

We have the greatest basketball player ever to go there a Steph Curry

Which I know is not a good thing to say in San Antonio, but

But yeah, so

so I went to school and then I still maintained my order in college, but

I was able to follow all the rules and meet people's expectations

But I could see the diversity around me and see that not everything always fit neatly into place

and then after that I

Moved to the Dominican Republic when you move to a different culture and see people living life a different way

There's no Southern Baptist churches right in the Dominican Republic

maybe there are I could be wrong, but

But I didn't go to any of them and so moving there it just you you start to I don't know

just see that what the where you grew up just doesn't fit with everybody's story around you and

so I started to

Live kind of in awe right in college and then lived in awe

In another culture. I technically went as a missionary and I do put that in quotes because I

Really didn't have anything to offer in the Dominican Republic. It is a very Catholic Christian country, right?

They know who Jesus is I was working at a school, but meanwhile

Dominicans were teaching me how to live day-to-day life, right? They were teaching me

How to live life differently how to have a different rhythm

How to do laundry a different way, right how to turn on the stove a different way all these very basic things

They were teaching me how to do and they were teaching me their language, right?

And I was learning everything through their language instead of my own

and

So it was a very

Chad's talked a lot about awe. I had just a lot of moments of awe living in the Dominican Republic

And when it came to spirituality and Bible study and going to Bible study in Spanish instead of English and realizing that

Things are written very differently in different languages and those word families of what this word means. It's not the same, right?

It's not you just can't read it exactly the same because it's a different language

and that being a very positive experience for me finally allowed me to start to

Okay, maybe I can step back in this thing that I've studied my whole life. I can read differently

Read it through different lenses

And figure out I don't know more about it and more about what it's saying what it's not saying

Maybe the things I was always taught growing up

are not

You know, maybe there's other ways to look at it

and so

When I moved back to the States, I went to grad school

So I was going to school to be a school psychologist. That's what I do now

I

Gave myself permission to go back and read through everything again

Read it with more of an open mind go back to what those original Greek Hebrew Aramaic words might have meant right?

Go and study what rabbis say about this passage and not just what a Southern Baptist preacher would say about it, right?

So go and listen to those different perspectives

and

To give myself that permission at the same time one thing that I was really struggling with was my sexuality

and I was always taught growing up that like hey if you believe enough if you

Pray enough if you do all the right things

Then you're gonna have a very fruitful life with a wife and two and a half kids and you know all the things, right?

And so so that's what like, you know, I really wanted to believe that about myself growing up

But I was getting to a point where I just couldn't deny who I was anymore and so

So I went through and really studied and I came up with every single good argument as to why that

traditional view of marriage is like too narrow and doesn't you know is

You know outside of how God truly sees humanity and how he sees people

I'm not going to get into that today

If you're one of those people who has those questions or wants to get into it

I spent so much time studying all that stuff and going back to what the Bible says

So if you want to talk about that with me, you can talk about that some other time

Chad's done it too

Even though he's a straight white guy, right?

so

You can do it with Chad as well. I actually encourage you to do it with multiple people with multiple perspectives

but

So I was able to convince myself and debate myself

You know the teachings that I had grown up with that

This was okay that this was not flawed and I believed it up here

But it took a lot longer for for me to believe it here

and

and

Around that time period I was you know finishing up grad school getting into my career

Around that time period my mental health started to deteriorate the pandemic was happening. That was not fun

But I started having panic attacks and funny enough as a mental health professional

I've seen panic attacks and other people the first time I had one I

Thought that I was dying. I thought I was having a heart attack

You know, I felt my body reacting

And I was like I called one of my friends

I was like I need to go to the hospital like I don't know what's going on and then he came over and he's like

I think you're having a panic attack and I was like what no I'm not having a panic attack like I know what those are

He was like, yeah, I think you're having a panic attack. And so he helped me out but

But I could just I just had this very obvious like I know what these are

I continued to have some panic attacks and anxiety attacks

I had one while I was driving at one point. That's not fun

so I

got to the point where I

Had realized that I would hear I was believing that I was still broken

And I felt that separation from God, but it was a belief about what was going on here

It wasn't anything about what I was doing or how I was behaving

and so

And so there's this there's different perspectives on psychology so you can go to the next slide

There's seven modern perspectives on psychology

Most of them are kind of like their own thing

But the two that get compared the most because they're complete opposites are behavioral psychology and humanistic psychology

So behavioral psychology I was going to quiz another

Psychologist, but she's not here today

So a behavioral psychology is hey, we're only going to study what's observable what's repeatable and what we can see

and it is a very scientific approach to the study of human behavior and emotion and

Whereas humanistic psychology is pretty much the opposite

It comes out of this belief that all humans generally have a good

Will for their own life and the life of others

That they have free will that they can choose in moments

You know what to do that. It's not just hey, they're reinforced to do this behavior because of this that and the other

And it's funny. My mom was also a psychology major and she worked in the behavioral psychology lab

And then one of my seminars my senior year of college. We all were looking at the different perspectives. It's pretty much evenly split

And the senior seminar with all of us about kind of the one we identified with the most but I was reading this humanistic

View of psychology and I was like, that's what I believe about people most

And humanistic psychology doesn't really fit well with rule following religion

Because you are innately believing that even if someone like sinned that they had a good reason for why they did what they did

And that it was what they thought was going to lead them to a more healthy life overall in that moment, you know

so it doesn't really fit well with the rule following nature of things but

But yeah, I so I kind of started taking that view a little bit more into

Reading the Bible and so I want to talk just a little bit about

one passage I'll set it up before I read it, but

It's the story of Zacchaeus

Which those of you who raised your hand earlier?

You probably know the song about Zacchaeus like Zacchaeus was a wee little man. See

See trauma that's trauma

right there

So

So, yeah, a lot of you already know this story

So Jesus at the time in his ministry, he was gaining a lot of popularity and a lot of traction

He had large crowds following him around he had been healing people

Performing miracles he had been doing his teaching and he was a pretty popular guy

In an area right where Rome was occupying

You know Jewish space and and then we have Zacchaeus who's this guy who?

He it's you know, the text says that he is short in stature

basically at that time what that means is that he had a physical flaw and

When he had a physical flaw that automatically marked him as being separated from God within Jewish religion and culture at the time

so

We have Zacchaeus and then he also is a political traitor because he's a tax collector for the Romans

and so

Basically, nobody likes this guy, right? And so that's a little set up. We'll go ahead and read it

Does anybody want to volunteer to read it? I'll have it up on this screen here. Anybody anybody I

See people whispering

Yes, awesome, okay Jackson you've got the first side up there awesome

All right, go ahead and you got it

In the city of Jericho there was a very well-manning Zacchaeus who was a supervisor over all the tax collectors

As Jesus made his way through the city Zacchaeus was here to teach Jesus

He kept trying to get all the way down to the crowd around these masses Zacchaeus would be very short and we couldn't see over the hill

So he ran off and knows everyone in the line of blossoming victory so he could get a glimpse of Jesus in his bathtub

When Jesus got to that place, he looked up into the tree and said Zacchaeus, hurry up now, I don't know if you can stand at your house today

So he scurried down the tree and came face to face with Jesus

As he was left to go, Zacchaeus made a big round of flames

Look at this, of all the people out there with, he placed in the house of a crook

Yeah

I'm so glad I asked you to read because you read it so much better than I would have read it. That was great. Thank you so much

So now that I've given myself permission to read this more like humanistic view on this story

Right that Zacchaeus generally has goodwill. He's trying to make the best of his life, right?

Looking at Zacchaeus and what it describes about him, we know he's someone who like automatically just saw you're separated from God before he ever even became a tax collector, right?

And so if you're kind of kicked out or kicked to the curb in one culture, like why not go ahead and help out the occupying group and be a tax collector for the Romans, right?

Because they at least see a little bit of economic value to you and the Jewish people don't see value to you, right?

So it's like I might have made the same decision as Zacchaeus, right? I might have been a tax collector at the time

And the thing that I keep coming back to over and over again in my life in this story is that this one is structured in sequence just a little bit differently

Because the thing that was separating Zacchaeus from Jesus was part of who he was. It was not necessarily what he did

Yeah, it does talk about what he did and him being super unpopular, but he was pushed to the side because he was shorter than everybody else. They knew that they could push him to the side

And because he was shorter than everybody else, the crowd's like, "Yeah, get away. You know, we want access to Jesus. You have to be pushed to the side."

And so that kind of sticks with me because I think a lot of times I hear about being gay or there's a lot of different identities that we all have that like, "Oh, is it your identity or is it just a behavior?"

"Is it a lifestyle?" "Is it a choice?" "Is it not a choice?" Right? All these things that we hear that, you know, when you start to live it yourself, just don't fit into the story, into my own story

And then as the story moves on, it's not Zacchaeus getting Jesus' attention, right? Zacchaeus doesn't say a prayer. Zacchaeus doesn't ask to be healed, right? He is just up there in the tree and Jesus is the one who spots him, right? Zacchaeus didn't do anything, you know?

Zacchaeus separated from Jesus because of who he was and then he didn't do anything besides climbing a tree to try to like, see him as he walked by and then Jesus is the one who points them out.

Meanwhile, Jesus is super popular in Jewish culture and he's pointing out someone who's helping out the Romans all at the same time, right?

And so, like Jesus knew this was probably the inconvenient, unpopular move, but he chose to do it anyway. And so, when I just look at this story, I see that Zacchaeus, right? He doesn't promise to live a righteous life and then Jesus be like, "Okay, yay, now you're saved," right?

Jesus seeks him out before Zacchaeus ever promises anything and Jesus shows him that no matter who you are, no matter what you've done, no matter how inconvenient it is for me, that I love you and I choose you and I'm going to stay with you and spend time with you in your house, even though the crowd hates you, has outcast you, all of those things.

And so, it wasn't Zacchaeus promising to live a righteous life that then Jesus was like, "Okay, I'll have a relationship with you." Jesus chose that beforehand.

And then out of Zacchaeus believing his identity that he was loved by Jesus, he then turns around and says, "Okay, now I'm going to," like, it was like a response to Jesus' love where he's like, "I'm going to live this moral kindness, this righteousness, right? Like, I'm going to give back all of these things."

And so, I think that for so much of my life growing up, I was trying to live a righteous life, right? Trying to stay right with God, be right with God, and then there's something in my identity that just blew that wide open and made that impossible.

And I really struggled with those moments where I didn't believe it and when I felt most separated from God was when I didn't believe that Jesus loved me for who I was.

And so, you know, it takes a lot of work to get it from here to here. It takes a lot of time. But this is just a story that I think shows that someone is acting out a belief that they're loved and it's a great example for me.

And so, back to, I'll close out with a quick story. The thing that really ended up helping me, I mean, I wasn't in a mentally healthy place, so believe it or not, mental health professionals do have to go to therapy sometimes.

And so, I went to therapy. When I was looking for a therapist, I thought, "Okay, I want a guy who's gay, a little bit younger." I did not want to date this person, I promised, right?

But I was thinking like, "I need someone who understands what I'm going through, right? Who's in relatively my stage of life."

So I was looking around for different therapists and then the one that was recommended to me was a woman in her 60s. And I was like, "That is not what I was asking for."

But then I started therapy and y'all, this woman, she's been doing therapy for 35 years. She's amazing, right? She was the perfect therapist for me.

She helped me to figure out how to believe what I knew up here for myself. And I also asked for specifically non-Christian, right?

So believe it or not, Jesus can show up in therapy when it's non-Christian therapy and teach you how He loves you through that.

But it was towards the end of my year of therapy that I had with her where I was talking about coming out to my parents and all that stuff.

And that was the stressor at that time towards the end of my therapy. And at the end of one of the therapy sessions, she said, "You know, I keep my relationships with my clients very professional and I don't disclose a lot of personal information, which I'm a mental health professional.

I know that she was doing all that stuff like she was supposed to do very ethically." She said, "I just want you to know that I grew up in the Baptist Church and I'm a lesbian and I came out later in life.

I was married, had a daughter, and came out later in life. So I just want you to know that I know what you're going through."

And so for someone to build this therapeutic relationship, to use scientifically backed therapeutic methods, to not bring faith into the conversation too much, but then to show up in that way and to have been that unselfish in therapy when she probably could have said for eight or nine months, like, "Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too. Yeah, me too."

But, you know, Jesus showed up in her, in that relationship with me. And so, you know, even though she was nothing that I asked for, she was everything that I needed.

But yeah, so that's most of my story. I thank you guys for listening. It's been great sharing it with you guys. If you have any questions about more details of my story, I'm more than happy to talk about it with you all. But thank you guys so much.

[Applause]

One thing you didn't talk about was your handsome husband. Sam, stand up. Give a wave. Come on.

[Applause]

When I was sitting in my office, I don't know who it was that was talking to him, but they were like, "Hey, you're first lady?" I think it was Taryn. She's like, "Hey, how's it feel to be first lady today, Sam?"

If you grew up in church, the pastor's wife, first lady, that was cute. I think it was Taryn. I just started laughing.

Man, we have a community here that I think is just incredible. I love that we get to hear stories. Thanks, Nate, for sharing.

I'm going to tell a quick story. I wrote a substack a month or so ago about this story about a river where bodies were in a village next to a river and this body came floating down.

They went and they grabbed it and they pulled it out, and then another body came and they pulled it out. They got to the point where there were so many bodies coming down the river that they were building out like this assembly line to grab and pull bodies out of the water.

During this process, it just kept coming. They were building stuff. They were doing all this work. There was someone who was like, "Hold on."

They started to walk away from the assembly line. They started to get yelled at, "Where are you going? What are you doing? You've got to help us. There's so much happening. You've got to be here."

This person walks away and begins to walk upstream. As they're walking upstream, what they're doing is asking the question of, "Where are these bodies coming from? We've got to go figure out what's happening. Why are these bodies floating down the river?"

In my story, I talked about how when I grew up in the church, there was this system that I was taught of how to do church and what to do and how to be a good Christian.

There was a moment in my life when I started to deconstruct where I was like, "I have to go upstream. Something's not working here. I know we're just trying to save bodies, but it's just not working."

As I began to walk upstream, I got yelled at. People told me I'm a heretic and then I'm a cotton candy preacher. I just want to love everybody. I think that's the point.

In the story that I wrote, I talked about how when I got upstream, I found a group of people that had built a fire. They were around the fire. They were trying to help save people from going into the water.

It was a place where when I got there, they began to invite me to the fire and give me food and teach me about what forgiveness and love and care and kindness and what joy looks like and peace in your life.

The people in my life that I began to find that from were people like Nate, who I had been told my whole life can't be with Jesus, is too short. There's something wrong with them.

It was people like Nate who when I got up there, they taught me what forgiveness really was and what caring for someone really is. It was a lot of my LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters that began to teach me things about Jesus that I never experienced as a kid growing up in the church.

And I can't thank them enough for teaching me what love is. It changed my life. It changed how I see God, how I see myself, and ultimately how I see others.

And it made a way for us to start to put together this community that we can just love people well, that we can realize that the people that Jesus did life with are the people that a lot of religion just says they don't belong here.

And the reason they were already up river when I walked up there was because they'd already been told that they're not part of this anymore.

You can be part of it, but when you ask to start to volunteer, they're like, "Hold on. You can't do that until you fix some things. You can't greet someone at the door. Or you can't work in a killed kid's ministry." And they were like, "All right." And they walked up river, but it was up river where they were actually teaching people what love looks like and forgiveness and grace.

And when I got there, they were the most welcoming group I've ever seen.

And so I can't thank Nate enough. There's so many. Judy, Debbie. I could name the people in my life that have just shown me what love is. And as Nate pointed out, as a straight white man, there's a lot of unlearning that I had to do.

And there was a lot of, even in the process of trying to figure out what we were going to do with the church and when things got tense and we had to make some decisions and we were told that, "Hey, we can keep doing this thing. The money will keep coming. You just have to stop telling people that they can be here."

And I remember sitting at the table and Rob and I, Rob, also a straight white man, looking across and being like, "You realize the theology that we hold and the places that we're at and the people that we've experienced, if we can't welcome people, then I don't think we're teaching the gospel.

And also you realize that as two straight white men, this is not the best decision for us as a church. We could go do the system and we could do this thing the way it's supposed to be done.

So if you want to ask me to do that, I can't anymore. I've already been upriver. And so if that means that you're taking money and you're leaving, then we'll figure it out.

And we have for a year and a half. It hasn't always been easy, but man, as Martin Buber says, when you experience the "thou," the "I thou" moment, it's a moment of experiencing a peace of the eternal thou.

And I don't think there's anything more important than that or more valuable than that. And so that's why we are who we are and we operate the way we operate.

Because I think love is all we're supposed to be about.

So take that with you and go love well because it's who you're made to be. And we'll see you next week. We've got another story coming and it's going to be incredible. So love you guys. Thanks, Nate.