Episode 78: Michelle Kinder

Michelle Kinder is on Good God talking about her childhood in Guatemala as a third culture kid, and how her work led her to Dallas to lead a movement helping kids and families succeed.

Listen here, read the transcript below, or click here for the full video version.

George Mason: 00:00 We hope to train up our children for success in the world. But what does that really mean? How do we understand success? Michelle Kinder is going to be with us to talk about her upbringing as a third culture child, the product of missionaries in Guatemala, who are U.S. citizens and how that shaped her vision of service in the world. Stay tuned.

George Mason: 00:33 Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host, George Mason, and I'm delighted to welcome today, Michelle Kinder to Good God. Welcome Michelle.

Michelle Kinder: 00:44 Thanks so much. I'm so pleased to be here with you.

George Mason: 00:47 All right. Likewise. I've looked forward to this for so long. So for those of you who are watching or listening, Michelle works with leaders around social change and seeking to improve the wellbeing of individuals and families and communities and has been at work in doing that for several decades now in various roles in the nonprofit world and uh, counseling and education and writing and advocacy and all of those sorts of things, right? So,anyway, Michelle, it's...

Michelle Kinder: 01:20 The several decades thing stings a little. I had to kind of get my head around that. But I guess,

George Mason: 01:25 But you started when you were a teenager. So let's put it that way.

New Speaker: 01:28 A wee pup.

George Mason: 01:29 That's right. But let's go to that wee pup idea because part of this whole question of who we are and what we do and how it's linked is about how we're brought up with the circumstances of our life. And how we came to a self understanding about location. And your story is a fascinating one because you're a third culture kid. Explain to people what third culture means. And in your particular case, especially,

Michelle Kinder: 02:01 Yes. So third culture kid is a child who's growing up in a country that is a different culture than the country their parents grew up in. And so my parents are from the United States, from Texas, but I was born and raised by them in Guatemala. Right.

George Mason: 02:18 One of six kids. Amazing. Yes. And so here you are. Your dad is this seven foot tall, big, giant white man in Guatemala. And you live and grow up there to what age?

Michelle Kinder: 02:37 So I was there pretty much full time until I was 14 and then I came to boarding school in the States, but my family was still there, so summers, Christmases, so pretty much my whole life.

George Mason: 02:49 So what are the values that shaped you from your faith experiences and missionary kid there?

Michelle Kinder: 02:55 Hmm. I've thought a lot about that and like many kind of went through the steps of how it's all scaffolded a little bit asleep until I started reflecting on it. But now looking back, there are some key things. I think one is from the beginning, my parents embodied this idea that they belong to the community and that we just understood that and we saw it and the way that they spent their time and in the way that they talked about what they cared about in front of us. And so I don't think I ever imagined a life different than that. And so even though I, my expression of that is different than theirs, I think I always understood I belong to the community. That was a big one. The other, I think the gift of having grown up in Guatemala as an American child is, you know, every single thing around me at all times was done at least two different ways. And so there's just a real appreciation for difference and diversity and a hunger for understanding well, why do people do what they do and why do people think like they think that always felt engaging to me and not threatening. Which I think is a thread that's carried through as well.

George Mason: 04:21 When you think about that, we seem to be afraid of cultural differences today. There's a great sense that we have to sort of preserve our culture because it's being infringed upon by another culture. I understand anthropologically the language of culture rituals and the way people organize their lives, but I think we're not really talking about food and family and the way people relate to one another on an everyday basis. There seems to be some other kinds of fear about that. What do you, how do you put your finger on that?

Michelle Kinder: 05:08 What captures me about that is just the fear piece and all the ways that we play smaller in the world when we're believing that there is just a certain amount and if we don't scramble for ours, then we are left. And so I think that just understanding that there's a choice to sort of operate culturally and just in the world from a posture of scarcity or abundance. And I think when you're coming from a posture of abundance, which is, you know, speaking of the God part of this podcast, that's the promise, right? There's, there is that promise of abundance. And if you can kind of stay in that mindset, then you get really comfortable and curious about differences and the ways that other people's culture bumping up against yours shapes you in a way that can be enriching and not threatening.

George Mason: 06:11 It does seem to me that when I read the Bible, this is a very common theme in the scripture, right? That when the children of Israel were in Egypt, they were taught a scarcity mentality. And when they depart from Egypt and they are journey into the promised land of what, milk and honey, right, abundance, it's out there all along the way. They receive their daily food. Jesus does the miracle of multiplying the loaves and fish challenging always this scarcity mentality. And yet we have a Christian people today and our religious community seeming to support a vision of our country that is based upon this sort of zero sum game. There's only so much, and we're going to lose if we receive immigrants into our country or if we send jobs overseas, and foster a global economy, so that everyone can prosper. So there's a kind of forgetfulness that's takes place, which is what makes our religious communities so vitally important is to keep the true narrative out there. The true story, isn't it?

Michelle Kinder: 07:42 Yes. I, personally, when I think about the things that would break God's heart, the one that's probably most profound to me is just the way we're captured by fear and scarcity. And I just picture God up there just like, just with tears like you know, what are you forgetting? Like what, how are you losing sight of the fact that there's enough for everyone and that you are all each others?

George Mason: 08:10 I want to go back to being a missionary kid growing up in the church and in a religious household. It feels today like so many people who grow up as preachers' kids or missionaries' kids, they rebel, they leave the faith, and even those who just simply grew up in the church, there's a lot of loss of confidence in faith and in the church these days. How have you been able to maintain your faith and what had been some of the keys? What would you tell people who are fragile about their faith today?

Michelle Kinder: 08:52 I would say as I fall into the in of many crowd, in that I definitely rebelled and definitely felt like I don't understand a lot of how religion was framed in my growing up years. And I still am not OK with so much of that, especially the parts that are excluding. The thing though that kept me grounded, and there were big periods of my time where although I was guided by this, I wouldn't have called it anything. I would've just said that's not for me anymore. But when I look back, I can see the thread that kept me grounded was the way my parents were in a personal relationship with God. And, um, and they were so service oriented and so normal, you know, they were just grounded, normal, kind, loving people who sought to give to everyone they were in relationship with, but also be changed by everyone they were relationship with. And so there was not that I'm gonna collect souls. I'm not here to save you. Like they were way ahead of their time on the mission field, with understanding that this is about relationships and it's about showing up in community.

George Mason: 10:27 Reminds me of the Lilla Watson quotation that I know you know too about "If you've come here to help me, you're wasting your time. But if you've come here to join our liberation with yours, then you're welcome. Let's work together." And I agree. And I think that some of the things that people are rejecting about the faith today are things that probably you and I reject about the way faith is practiced the way people envision it. You used the language of exclusion, for instance, dividing up the world and in certain ways in order for us to be able to feel in or out, those sorts of things. So, I always tell people who come to me and who are struggling with faith and the church, to recognize that it's human beings. And, that faith is evolving too.And I think that we are in a deep struggle to understand what is the true nature of the story of God in the world. And, increasingly what we're realizing is it's not about God swooping down to pick out a few favorites and to provide charity for others, but it is this grand narrative of God's unconditional love for the world that is transforming and inviting all of us to join it.

Michelle Kinder: 12:01 Yes. That's so lovely. And I think that's how it shows that for me today is just that belief that we can all be vessels for that, like plugging into a divine and unlimited source of love that can then flow through us, that is never about us. That to me is something I can sign on for. And then something that makes me feel very close to God, very close to other, and feels like a fair fight with the complexity of the issues of the worlds and also the ways that religion gets weaponized. Like those two things feel so huge to me that when I engage in those spaces, I'm plugged in to just my own finite source of power. I get depleted really fast and I get overwhelmed and sad and depressed and you know, what the heck? If I can sorta stand in the face of that incredible complexity, but see myself as a vessel for grace, having nothing to do with me, but just can I clear my vessel? Can I live in a way that actively clears my vessel every day so that whatever needs to flow through me can, that feels doable.

George Mason: 13:32 Wow. I think the language we're using there about flowing through is important because so many think of the life of faith as people having a kind of permanent deposit. You know, that you are holding something and you have been filled and this is who you are, but there is a sense and you're a runner and the more energy you expand, the more capacity you have for energy. And so it's a little like that in the spiritual life, isn't it? It's more this sense of God flowing through us.

Michelle Kinder: 14:10 Absolutely. And I think the work is, are you so clogged up with your own stress, fear, ego, whatever, that that is not happening. Or can you make, can you build practices into your day so that you are a clear vessel, right? It just feels, uh, the doable word. I'll repeat because it is overwhelming right now to show up in the world as a presence for love and truth and justice. But if you can depersonalize it and think instead of, or I'll speak for myself when I depersonalize it and don't rely on my own wisdom or my own anything except for my commitment to be as clear a vessel as I can and pursue like unapologetically pursue alignment when I do those two things. And I think whatever I'm meant to do in this world seems come to pass. Right?

George Mason: 15:18 Well let's pick that up after this break. This has been fun to get started, but we have so much more to talk about, so thank you Michelle. We'll be right back.

George Mason: 15:30 Thank you for continuing to tune in to Good God. These conversations are part of a larger program that is called Faith Commons, the umbrella organization you might say of Good God. Good God is the first project of Faith Commons, which is a nonprofit organization that is intended to do public theology, you might say. It's multi-faith, not just Christian Jewish, Muslim, other face, but all of them becoming involved in the question of how do we promote the common good together. There are so many areas of need and concern in our community and faith commons is trying to help bridge the gaps between religions and peoples in our community so that we can have a more just and peaceful society. Thanks for continuing to support us.

George Mason: 16:26 Welcome back to Good God. I'm here with Michelle Kinder and we were just talking about the intersection of faith and vocation. And Michelle, you spent 20 years as the CEO of the Momentous Institute. Tell us about how you got there, how you discovered a sense of call to this kind of community work and how all of that came to be.

Michelle Kinder: 16:49 Oh, perfect. Yeah, I was there 20 years. I served as CEO for six, but I was there 20 years and it's actually to me a super God oriented story of how I got there. I'm three years prior to starting there. I was leaving Austin to move to Dallas, just had my master's degree in educational psychology, was working as a therapist and I got that community council book, I don't know if you remember it, I don't think it's printed anymore, but it's about a two inch book of all the nonprofits in town. And I was, you know, an arrogant, just got my masters 20-something. And so I started calling everyone in the book and nobody was going to hire me. I didn't have my license, I was too green and, and it was depressing. And I called Lane Kenny, who was the clinical director of what's now Momentous Institute.

Michelle Kinder: 17:41 And she also was not going to hire me, but she was so kind and she related to me as a human and then spent a little time talking to me and I just made a mental note that I want to work somewhere where people treat everyone that way. And so I worked for three years in other places got my license and then I went and knocked on Lane's door and said, I want to work for you now. And that was 20 years ago. And so it was an extraordinary time, had the opportunity to work as a therapist, school counselor and then led the clinical team. And then the last six years led the team. And it's an unmatched experience. I can't say enough good things.

George Mason: 18:27 And it was really focused on at risk kids, right?

Michelle Kinder: 18:30 Children and families and social emotional health and yeah,

George Mason: 18:35 in a, in a kind of holistic way in fact, which is something that is not always done because people focus on one aspect or another.

Michelle Kinder: 18:47 True. And I think we stumbled in those same directions. I think because it's a hundred year organization, we had lots of time to marinate and lots of time to course correct. And you get to make most mistakes and hundred years and learn from them. And so we, if you kind of look at the history, I still use the we and us pronouns, maybe I always will. But if you look at the history of Momentous Institute, it definitely follows that same pattern of focusing first on the child and then understanding that the child is part of a family and then understand the family as part of a community. And so it absolutely was a more holistic, is a more holistic approach now than when it first started. And I predict five, 10 years from now, again, they won't recognize their work because it's just a highly iterative, very innovative place.

George Mason: 19:44 So what would you say were some of the important marks of your tenure there? When you look back and say, you know, this is what I'm proud of. This is what I'm grateful for. This is what I've learned and how we helped move the needle a bit while I was there. What would you say?

Michelle Kinder: 20:04 I think the first big thing is we moved the team and the board and the salesmanship club away from thinking about our work as providing a service to participating in a movement. And that was big because it's a humble group. And so they literally, we were not talking about ourselves unless we needed clients and we never needed clients. Right? And so what, what happened is we moved from that mentality to a mentality of how do we become good stewards of this almost a hundred year history and share what we know as widely, as freely as we can and how do we, you know, shout from the mountaintops what we've learned about what works for children and families and communities. So that was a big shift and I think it helped us impact way more children and families and communities and other professionals than we could have ever served directly.

Michelle Kinder: 21:06 That's a big one. Um, I think another really proud point for the team and for me was during my tenure, we were recognized as one of the top 100 best places to work for women in the country and one of the top 50 best places to work in Texas. And what that translated to me is that we had operationalized this commitment to parallel process and that we understood that if you don't create conditions for the team doing the work that are socially, emotionally healthy, they cannot provide that social emotional health for the children and families. And then the children and families can't embody social, emotional health. So, so, so very often in the nonprofit world, there's a mentality of, you know, people just need to work way, crazy hours and there's a correlation between suffering and how much you care and you know, some of those old adages. And so I think we pushed way beyond that to a place of understanding that a high performing well cared for team is your best shot at these complex issues.

George Mason: 22:18 Well, I wanna take that even another step in when I listened to you about that, it also occurs to me that that's true in for profit corporations, that even if they are philanthropically generous and involved in the charitable world, often, they, it seems, don't take a hard look at their own culture to make it friendly to people's health and wellbeing to make it a place hospitable to women's work life. And so what happens is they maximize their profits, and they some times take advantage of their workers, but then get the good feelings of being philanthropically involved in charitable causes in the community, which then has to go address the very things that they've helped to create in their own corporations. It's a really vicious cycle, isn't it?

Michelle Kinder: 23:25 Really is. And it's an unfortunate exit ramp that the community has tolerated. The generosity on the philanthropic end almost pulls light around a way from integrity, from beginning to end. And there is a sense of frustration for many communities around this money that is given a small percentage of the money that is given to solve problems that were created many times by the very people that are giving the money or the policies, the political policies that are put in place sometimes very on purpose, to help some and hurt others. So yeah, I think, I hope that we have an evolution coming where we are looking at also not the zero sum game for corporations, right? So more of the conscious capitalism of like, how can all of your stakeholders be well taken care of? And how can we close some of the exit ramps that don't hold people accountable for how they're investing. They're meant corporations and people. How are you investing your money? How are you making your money? And then, yes, thank you for giving some of it away. That is great, but it doesn't absolve us from the other parts of the puzzle.

George Mason: 24:54 Right. The caring for your workers, for incentive law and realizing that you are part of a community. And that the only people who have a stake in your company are not the shareholders. That the stakeholders are also the people who come to work everyday. So we have this very kind of situation right now with the new ordinance that's been passed in Dallas for earned paid sick leave, for instance, which is something that shouldn't really even have to be addressed because if businesses were treating their employees in a fair and generous way, that would be something that would relieve the anxiety of workers and create a wellbeing and families and consistency in businesses and loyalty and all those sorts of things. And yet when the city council has to step in and pass an ordinance about this, then it's contested by the business community with the idea that there should be no pressure on business to do the right thing, even if they're not doing the right thing. And so we end up with this. There's this really unnecessary contest between the public and private sectors on something that is about humanity and our social wellbeing.

Michelle Kinder: 26:20 Right? And the lie that if you take good care of all your stakeholders, you make less money and that's a lie. But it's a short game lie and most people are trapped by the short game.

George Mason: 26:35 So just to go back to Momentous for a moment, one of my partners in Faith Commons and Good God is Jay Pritchard and he worked at the Richards Group and helped to name Momentous and rebrand you and all of that. And so Jay, I just did a plug for you, so feel good about that. But, tell us about the process of moving into that new identity and branding. What happened there?

Michelle Kinder: 27:03 Yeah, it was an important step. Prior to that we were the Salesmanship Club Youth and Family Centers, right. Which is a mouthful. Most people didn't get the acronym right. Didn't get the name right.And it took you a full two minutes to explain the name and you never even talked about kids yet. And so you sort of lost your audience before you could even get to work. Um, so that an important shift. And that was a time when we moved away from that sort of service providing mentality of like, I do a group for depressed moms on Thursday night too. We're about social emotional health for all children so they can achieve their full potential. Right. And that was Ruth Fitzgibbons who zoned in on that, that idea that social emotional health is the one thing that kind of glued everything we were doing together authentically.

George Mason: 28:01 We've had Ruth on Good God, by the way. And she's delightful and is now finding her way in her retirement years to figure out how she's going to be involved in the community. So, what a delightful soul she is. When people hear about the connection with the Salesmanship Club, I think many people automatically think red pants and the Byron Nelson golf tournament. And it is a remarkable fundraising tool that they've had. But I'm not sure everybody understands that these are all business people who have committed themselves to a kind of earnest, work in this club. That it is a real service oriented club. It is not just about the prestige of wearing red pants one week a year. But the amount of money raised for the causes of the Momentous Institute is really quite remarkable, isn't it?

Michelle Kinder: 29:02 Oh, it's remarkable. And, beyond the dollars, which you alluded to, their commitment to the organization is all year long. They have a huge presence there. And they started first. A lot of people don't know that like the Salesmanship Club came first and then they started Momentous Institute, which is the flip of many, many times that there's an attempt to kind of galvanize a volunteer base, right? So they're not really volunteers. They're really owners and they act like it and they think like it and they're invested to that degree.

George Mason: 29:41 And one of the things that impresses me about them is that they have been learning through the years that they haven't just established a culture, but just as you shifted in Momentous a kind of a move from a sort of service provider to being participants in a movement. I sense that they buy into that shift as well or they that they're part of that transformation.

Michelle Kinder: 30:09 Yeah, there's a desire to help the most kids possible in the best way possible. And so I think they see the ways that the narrative around the importance of social emotional health that no one was talking about, you know, several years ago has now embedded itself in all the school districts around here, the charter networks, families. And so you know, that that's a kind of impact from their blood, sweat, tears and money. That is way beyond the 5,000 we might serve directly any given year.

George Mason: 30:47 Well, you're not any longer employed by the Momentous Institute, but you are at work in the community still and helping all the rest of us do our work. And we have another episode. We want to pursue some of those questions with you as well. So thank you for being on Good God, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

Michelle Kinder: 31:06 For sure. Pleasure. Thank you, George.

Jim White: 31:11 Good God is created by Dr. George Mason, produced and directed by Jim White, guest coordination and social media by Upward Strategy Group. Good God: conversations with George Mason, is the podcast devoted to bringing you ideas about God, faith and common good. All material copyright 2019 by Faith Commons.