Chris and Elaine Whitney on Food Insecurity in Tennessee
Chris and Elaine Whitney, founders of One Generation Away, join Spencer and Carli to discuss their nonprofit food ministry that began out of the back of a Hyundai Santa Fe and now distributes millions of pounds of food annually. With a mission to bring hope, honor, and dignity through food, the Whitneys share their deeply personal journey from facing food insecurity themselves to creating a logistics-driven solution that serves thousands across multiple states.
About Chris and Elaine Whitney
Chris and Elaine Whitney are the founders of One Generation Away, a nonprofit dedicated to eliminating food insecurity and bringing hope, honor, and dignity to communities in need. Their mission began in 2004 when they moved from St. Louis to Nashville, answering a call to serve others in a bold and unconventional way.
What started as rescuing surplus food from grocery stores and delivering it directly to families in need has grown into a large-scale effort. Under Chris and Elaine’s leadership, OneGenAway distributed 4.2 million pounds of food in 2021 alone, providing 3.5 million meals to neighbors across the region. Their work addresses both the physical and emotional challenges of food insecurity, ensuring every interaction is filled with kindness and respect.
Having experienced food insecurity themselves, Chris and Elaine bring deep empathy and passion to their work. They credit their success to obedience, faith, and fearlessness—the same qualities that propelled them to start this journey.
Join us in supporting Chris and Elaine Whitney’s incredible mission to end hunger and uplift communities and help donate today!
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Spencer 00:35
Chris and Elaine Whitney, founders of one generation away. Welcome to signature required.
Carli 00:50
Thank you, ma'am.
Chris Whitney 00:51
What a pleasure to be here.
Spencer 00:53
I have a big heart for both of you too. So I don't often know guests before they come on the show, but I have the distinct privilege of knowing both of you all and your heart for the Lord, what you're doing for the community, not just in Tennessee, but in our country. And I am so excited to have our audience get to learn about what you're up to. And I'm convinced that by the end of this podcast, you are going to have converted all kinds of new people into one Gen supporter. So maybe just take a second and tell us what one Gen is about. Give us just for someone that's never heard of it or never seen one of your trucks on the road. What do you do? And we'll go from there.
Chris Whitney 01:36
That means me, we take you. Yes, yes, yes. So we are a non profit food ministry that started out of the back of a Hyundai Santa Fe that is replicating around the country now. And our mission is hope, honor and dignity shared through food. And I feel like that just says a lot, right there,
Spencer 01:56
hope, honor and dignity shared through food. That's interesting. Tell me more about that. What does that mean?
Chris Whitney 02:05
Receiving food may be one of the hardest things for a human being to do, and we unfortunately had to experience that at a period in our life when our middle daughter, who's now going to be 34 was born with spina bifida, and I was in the construction business back then, and it was a very brutal year, weather wise, and constructs, which impacts construction, and almost half of our income went to medical insurance premiums. Wow. So we were and then we had a house to live in, you know, I mean, so it was just really tight. So we lost everything we owned. Elaine was in a food line for like, six months, and the shame you feel is unbelievable. Well,
Elaine Whitney 02:48
you know, they ask you all these questions, you know, how much do you make? And why did this happen? And how, you know, just and I told Chris, when we started this, I said, I don't want anybody to feel that way. I don't want anybody to feel shameful. And so we don't ask any questions. We ask no qualifying questions at all that whoever is in line to receive food will get food, honest. And that's on a Saturday morning normally, that we have, like, 300 families getting a grocery cart full of food for free. And so we serve all of these different families, and they come from all walks of life, that our line, the faces and our lines are just changing. You know, it might be the working poor, it might be somebody who lost their job, it might be somebody who lives in their car like just all kinds of different people, but it's such an honor, and that's why we want, you know, with hope. We want to bring hope to them and dignity back to them.
Carli 03:38
I was in preparation for this podcast, there was a stat I received, 41% of Tennessee families with children report experiencing food insecurity in a given year. And I think people would be surprised to know 41% that's almost half of families with children, that that number is so high.
Chris Whitney 04:00
Well, we live in Williamson County in Tennessee, anywhere between seventh and 12th wealthiest counties in the United States of America, depending
Spencer 04:09
on what, how you measure, how
Chris Whitney 04:10
you measure Franklin special Franklin special district in downtown Franklin, Tennessee, which is kind of what I would say, the seat of the county of Williamson County. And since Brentwood, Franklin, where we where we live, 41% of those kids are on assisted lunches in downtown, one of the wealthiest places in America. We have trailer parks, we have public housing. Yeah, and there's people that have no idea that they're there. No Imagine that.
Elaine Whitney 04:40
Yeah, what's so sad to me is in that school district, there's kids that leave home and leave school on a Friday and they don't eat again until Monday. So we have this one story of a child that, you know, they get the fuel bags, which we love, the fuel bags too, and they took their fuel bag home, dug it in backyard, a hole in the backyard, put it in. So he would be able to eat. So what we do also is we help the kids in the school, so the social workers knows, like, what families that that need it, so they'll come to our warehouse, or we'll take it to them and give those families a growth I mean, a banana box of food, of non perishables, so that the whole family can eat for the weekend.
Spencer 05:18
Did you say a fuel bag?
Elaine Whitney 05:20
What? Yes, what is that? That is some organizations do like a little fuel bag. They'll put them in the kids backpacks, like little snacks and, you know, drinks and stuff like that, yeah, juice and things that they would be able to eat over the weekend.
Chris Whitney 05:34
And statistically, by the time they reach middle school, only 10% of those kids will do it because of stigma,
Carli 05:43
so they won't accept the fuel because they're afraid
Elaine Whitney 05:47
and they're embarrassed of their Yeah,
Chris Whitney 05:49
and the reason we engage social workers is the fewest amount of contacts for people suffering food insecurity helps maintain dignity, so we don't need to be seen. We can hand it to a social worker who's helping them with other things, then they get to be the ones that hand them the box of food, and another organization is like the juvenile justice never even thought about that, right? Sure, I was speaking to a group of principals and Zani Martin, who's a good friend of mine here in Williamson County. She runs it, and she handed me a card and said, I'd love to talk to you. And I'm thinking, Did one of my kids do something I don't know. And she told me about that we we have families that are given children in juvenile court that weren't expecting it, and we would love to be able to do something for them and give them a box of food and and we got a great story. I was a a teacher, was in juvenile court with a family member, and she was awarded three children that were not hers at the moment, probably nieces and nephews. And they handed her a box, and she started to cry. She goes, I had no idea how it would feed these extra kids. Wow. And then Sandy said for her people to do something kind, you know what? I mean? It's that's a difficult, difficult, emotional place to be in, right? And she said, for us, for the people that work with us, to be able to do something like, to give something to someone with no questions or anything. She said, it's just been, it's changed the atmosphere of our employees. Crystal lane,
Spencer 07:19
one of the things that is so unique about your story is that you speak with an authenticity of having needed food yourselves, and that is really rare, and it's also one of the fingerprints of how God works in people's lives, is that he often burdens our heart, sometimes first in pain, so that we can then serve in a very special and unique way. And so food as an area of shame is something that you've talked about, and I struggle when I see people that are hungry, that are homeless on a corner, because oftentimes I don't have food in my car to give, and I can give money, but as soon as I give money, I'm wondering in my head of whether I am enabling purchase of alcohol, drugs or something else. So how do you think about providing food versus money? How do you what goes through your head when you see somebody on the corner, or do you just carry food in the back and just doing that? You know, the Santa Fe? I
Elaine Whitney 08:35
think what happens to us when I see people like that and and, you know, I'll feel prompted to give them money sometimes, you know, but to me, it's like I want to be obedient to what God's telling me to do. And so if I give food, if I give money to me, I was obedient. And what they do with that, that's between them and God. That's kind of how I do that, with people that are on the streets and coroners asking for Thank
Chris Whitney 08:58
you for having that heart. Yes, which is, first of all, it starts there, right? That even to have the thought that, yeah, I'd really like to do something, but so what I recommend is get some gift cards to McDonald's or Wendy's, and carry them with you. Okay, five or $10 gift card, it's a great idea, and then you just hand them a gift card to a fast food place, and they can't spend it on alcohol, and they're gonna have to spend it on some type of nutrient, right? Okay, and that way it's, it's just, if you had, like, five, $10 gift cards in your car or something for you, just hand them a gift card and they can go to a restaurant and eat, and you're gonna know right away if they won't take it, then you're like, Well, good thing I didn't give them. Can
Spencer 09:37
see, y'all, I knew you'd solve this for me, because I needed this answer, because it does, you pull up and your heart breaks and for any number of different reasons. And I that is great. I am going to do that. And that is thank you. Another
Chris Whitney 09:50
cool story. I mean, we have a million stories, but right here, not far from where we sit, where, where Old Hickory crosses over 65 There's someone that sells newspapers there, right, there, right? Well, our drivers are at that left hand turn signal fairly often, yeah, every day. And they've gotten to know this guy, and they know he needs potassium, so they always keep bananas and give him bananas when they drive by and they're in a 26 foot refrigerated truck. So they got to catch the light, right, you know? But when they do, they always have something for him, to give to him, so feel like that's the heart. It's it's the it's just being creative in the moment right there. There's things we can do. We talk about this all the time. It's people ask us often, well, what about people taking advantage of you? And first of all, they're not taking advantage of me. It's they're they're taking advantage of a commodity we've been given or we purchase. We may have purchased, but we may have rescued it, or whatever. But that's not on us. That's between them and God. And I tell people all the time. I said, the people we serve, maybe 1% I would say, literally, if any are taken advantage of us, most of them are like this. Can I ask a question? My neighbor couldn't get out, and I know they need food. Is it okay if I share my food with them? That's the common that's that the people we serve, that's what their heart's like. Elena,
Carli 11:19
I want to go back to something you said a minute ago, because what you do is has a heart for the Lord, but it's also a logistical process. And Spence, and I know logistics, and we have hired so many different people to drive vehicles and handle logistical problems, and you just spoke about the heart of your drivers. Tell me about the people that are on the boots on the ground, because you've grown to be such a large operation. It's not just you two doing this. Yeah,
Spencer 11:47
give us a size for the scope, because it's pretty impressive. Well,
Elaine Whitney 11:50
our drivers are incredible. We call them first responders, and they will, you know, they rescue food, and they feed people, and they just have the heart to when they see somebody, they're like our ambassadors. So everywhere they go, every store they rescue food from, they just know the people in the back, and they just have a heart for them, and they just get to know them and know, Hey, how's your son, or how's your daughter, or how's you know, they had a surgery, what they're just so they just love people, right? And it's just so honoring to us to be able to work as a team with them. They're just incredible. They really are.
Chris Whitney 12:27
You were asking about scope. So we're we have warehouses in Franklin, Tennessee, Decatur, Alabama and Panama City, Florida. Just numbers can get jumbled, but in 2014 we did a million dollars worth of food on a $25,000 budget, which means nobody got paid our rent, 1000 a month. Ergo, our budget was $25,000 Yes, yes, yeah. Welcome to StartUp. Many years, yes, but and then in 23 we closed at $2 million cash budget and almost $26 million of food, 9.3 million pounds of food,
Elaine Whitney 13:12
7 million meals. Wow.
Spencer 13:14
How do you measure the value of food? Are you looking at like what it would sell for retail or what it we're looking
Chris Whitney 13:20
at what we sell for retail. So we, and it varies, because we rescue Costco, fresh market, Trader Joe's, I mean, all some high end stores we we got, like a pout of truffle oil the other day. You wonder, how much trouble do you know? No, I mean, it was outrageous. The
Elaine Whitney 13:35
palette alone was $120,000 for that truffle oil.
Spencer 13:40
Oh my gosh, yeah. So, I
Chris Whitney 13:42
mean, we get, we get a lot of, you know, so we pick a number, you know, in that 250, to $3 a pound range, we kind of just use an average number, yeah? Because when you're doing millions and millions of pounds, and it's coming and going, like, Day of food we rescue is on someone's table that day, like, you know, so it's hard to okay, and you got 5000 pounds of food in the back of your truck, yeah? So it's hard to go through every Well, that's a squash. How much is a squash?
Spencer 14:11
Yeah, that's that's important, because we often talk with nonprofit leaders and people outside the business world. And one of the things that Carli, and I always say, is that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it, that's right, and it's so important just in how you fundraise and how you communicate your success. And this is echoing something you already do well, but speaking to a lot of listeners that are not nearly as advanced, is that there's a heart there, but sometimes that heart doesn't ever translate into the actual numbers that enables fundraising and the type of growth that you've experienced, Chris and just living life with you over a number of years, I always love to hear about the latest capture of exotic food that you have today. Just captures like. I remember one time you came in, we were like, got 10,000 pounds of frozen salmon that we've got stocked up in the warehouse. I mean, it's just the most wild things that you get. So how much of what you get is is, like, fresh food that you have hours to get rid of, and how much of it is like, Okay, we've got a little bit of time to work with this. Most
Chris Whitney 15:18
is most. We've got a little bit of time. It just depends on the produce we rescue, where the stage in life it is, but most things will have a day or two. But we we often talk about we hold until these disasters that just happen. We normally hold about 140,000 pounds of food in our warehouse. So people in amber really come in one month and then come in the next month, and they're like, Well, gosh, you've got all the same food. And we're like, No,
Elaine Whitney 15:46
it's not the same for daily.
Chris Whitney 15:47
It just looks to you like it's the same. But this stock rotates, you know, rather quickly. So we've, we've never been in the business of holding food no matter what it's always how fast do we get it to where it needs to go. And there's some business reasons behind that that shrinks our footprint of warehouse space needed, which lowers what we have to pay in rent and electric. And you know, so a lot of these things were out of necessity because we started so small. So you learn how to be very efficient with what you have, and you learn how to rotate things out very quickly. If we're holding food, that means someone's not eating, and if someone's not eating, we've missed our mission for sure. So you move it as fast as you can, whether we're not so much concerned about shelf life as we are people not going hungry,
Elaine Whitney 16:38
I think the food too that they rescue is great food, and it does have two to three days left. But I think what is so, and talking about our drivers, what really fulfills them too, is that the food that they rescue literally is on someone table, someone's table that evening. So somebody's going to be able to eat like we'll go to different, you know, homeless shelters. They'll go to different, like domestic violence shelters and but then they go to these elderly high rises because the elderly, which is shocking, only get $19 of food stamps a month. So how is anybody supposed to live on $19 a month? So, you know, we're not their source, but we help supplement that. And so they'll go into elderly high rises and just open the truck up, they'll take it into their community room. And the people just come down. They love to see them. They just shop for fresh fruits and vegetables. We'll have, and it'll be protein and, you know, just all kinds of things. It might be desserts, and it's like, literally a full meal, you know, for them. But they just do that. And we do that. They have different routes, if they go on, and they might be there, you know, two times a week or three times a week, and it just really helps. And I think just having that heart that our drivers have, it just is so fulfilling. It's so rewarding for them too, as well.
Carli 17:50
I love hearing about the dignity at every age and stage, because you're helping families, you're helping people in the workforce, you're helping the elderly. The need for dignity and the need for food never goes away. It's an life span. I want to ask you, because we have a couple on a couch and we never get a couple on a couch. Spence and I are unique, not to you, but unique in our peer group that we've started businesses while we're having babies and we're trying to grow our family and our companies, and there are really good days, and then there are really hard days. Yes, it is, and what you're doing is true entrepreneurship out of a need that you saw. How has it been building this together all these years? You
Chris Whitney 18:41
start with this No, I expected this question. We get this question. I think quite often it is. I think one of the reasons we gravitate to the two of you is like we feel so much like you get it there's not we have a lot of great couples that are friends of ours, but very few Can we talk to? Like we can talk to the two of you? Yeah,
Spencer 19:04
we have some
Carli 19:07
similar scars. Yeah, it is, yeah. And, I
Chris Whitney 19:10
mean, you're, it's, it's the discipline of, how do you not talk about work or your kid? I mean, when that's all you do is work together and you raise kids together, you know I'm saying
Elaine Whitney 19:20
so for seven right, work together at home, together. No, it never, it never
Chris Whitney 19:24
goes away. And so for us, it's learning that discipline of how we can cherish our time together, things like that. But I think it's been for us, it's, I think Sarah being born with Spina Bifida was probably you talked, you said some earlier Spencer that I, I hope people got that circumstances in our lives shape a lot of who we're going to be and how we're going to be. And that moment, we had to come together, because we, we had no hope, medically, no it was nothing. It either was God shows up. You. Or we're in really big trouble. Yeah, there was no there was no in between. There was no medical procedure that could fix this. So I think that moment galvanized us in such a way that we learned how to flow together. But I do tell one funny story, and this is a true story, as much as you two will hilariously
Elaine Whitney 20:16
laugh, you're gonna tell the same one. Go ahead. Yeah,
Chris Whitney 20:20
she's heard it a million times, but we often, not often we used to, we don't so much anymore. We would always say, you know. And so one day, I just said, Hey, if you would have known, then what you know now. Oh, yeah. And Elaine looks at me, and she just deadpan looks at me and goes, today's not a good day to ask that question. No, take it time for us to go to different rooms.
Elaine Whitney 20:42
Okay? If
Chris Whitney 20:45
you work together out there, you totally know what I'm saying, in
Carli 20:48
the fetal position under a chair, right? You're what? Yeah, well,
Elaine Whitney 20:55
you know, it's it. You had talked about that, but when that happened to us with our daughter born with Spina Bifida like you have no you're just surviving, right? You're just literally trying to survive. And we had another child too that was two years old. So, and you tell us what Spina Bifida is, too? Yeah, sure. So we found out when she was, I was four months pregnant, that there's Spina Bifida. So what happens is, is your spine comes together, and a million cells, or a billion cells come together to form the spine. But hers stopped, and then a sac was on her back on the outside, and there was five vertebras floating around in that sac. So when we got the ultrasound, you know, you're going for your ultrasound, you're all excited, you know? And you get there, and then more doctors come in, more nurses come in, and you're just like, what? What's going on, you know? So what happened is we literally saw the vertebras. He showed us, like, here's the vertebra. He first of all, this was devastating. He does the ultrasound, he puts the paddle down, and he says, Well, your child has spina bifida. It's one of the largest I've ever seen. Your child will never be able to walk, never have control of her bows or and I'm just like, we're just blown away, because you're just thinking, everything is fine. And so, so that's what happens. And then, so the day after she was born, Well, God miraculously healed her. When she was born, her spine, other vertebras were back in place, and there was just spinal fluid and nerve endings in that sac. And it was miracle. I mean, everybody was just that, everybody in the delivery room were crying, and the doctors and, I mean, it was just like, she came out, and the doctor was like, it's a girl, because we didn't know, and she goes, and she's kicking her feet, She's moving her legs, and we're just like, you know, it was incredible. I mean, it was just, I can't even describe what that feeling was. We
Chris Whitney 22:45
have so many stories. I mean, we have a million. I mean, we all talk. We talk about one Gen a lot, but that was our first foray as a couple of like I said, being fully engaged in something that it was almost us against the world, in a sense, right? We did have, we did have a lot of believers that were but and family and but there were people that couldn't believe what we were believing. I mean, literally told us later that I just avoided you because we couldn't believe what you were believing for, and which is courage. And I love the maturity of having the courage to say that. So I think they're looking back, you know, we'll be married 38 years next month, and looking back now, those moments in time, I believe, forged us to be entrepreneurial, yeah, forged us to do the crazy. Moved to Franklin, Tennessee, 20 and a half years ago. We didn't know a soul, no financial support, and started church. We always
Elaine Whitney 23:42
say that's not the brightest move, but we were obedient. That was a tough move,
Chris Whitney 23:47
but, you know, so those those things of when we looked at each other, that when we found out and went home and called our parents and told it, you know, nobody knew that there was even a chance. And there's a lot of crying, a lot of tears, and and I looked at Elaine, and I just said, so what are we going to do? Are we going to belly up and die? Are we going to fight for what we know to be true? And, man, she's so tough. I love this woman. She just looked at me and said, We're going to fight. And I said, game on. And so we never got another ultrasound till the ninth month. We just literally believed, God, there was nothing
Elaine Whitney 24:27
guinea pig, right? I mean, it was just they wanted us to come in and do all these tests. And we're like, No, I'm I'm not going to do it. Like, there's no way. Because, yeah, I knew for me personally, and I know for him as well, that if something happened, it would, like, really devastate us. And we're, like, totally standing and believing God, and I don't want anything to thwart that at all.
Chris Whitney 24:46
And there's a lot of cool stories in that journey that were amazing, that, yeah, for sure, God just reaffirmed over and over and over and like, we
Elaine Whitney 24:53
tell that story, but we don't tell how like, so Sarah is great. She is she'll be 34 Next month, she walks. She's great. She's She walks with a little limp, but that's it. She had scoliosis, which she had 110 degree curve, and they got her she'd have spinal rods in her neck to her back to her pelvic and, you know, multiple she's had 17 surgeries and got paralyzed and surgery to read teacher how to walk. We were supposed to be in the be in the hospital for three weeks, supposed to be for three weeks in there for three months trying to teach. And we just had to tough love her. It was the hardest thing we've ever done. But she's great now, right? And I mean, she's walked, she's living by her on her own. So she's she's been just literally a miracle all of her life. I know
Carli 25:40
your faith obviously plays the whole foundation all of this, as it does for us as well. But I want to touch too. And so many times in marriage, you reach those points. I always say there's the day you get married, and then the day you realize you're actually married, because it's the day where you look at each other and you're like, I don't know if I can stay, I'm so mad. This is really way harder than I ever thought it would be, and you choose to stay, and that's the day that you're actually married. Yeah, that's really good and good point. Not everyone makes it to the actually married stage. They think this is too hard. What for you guys? I know your faith is part of it, but what pulled you through so that it didn't drive you apart, but it seems like it really solidified you as a team.
Chris Whitney 26:28
I think getting saved was the time, don't you? Probably,
Elaine Whitney 26:31
are you talking about during, when, during all
Carli 26:33
of it? Like, what kept you guys together instead of falling apart?
Chris Whitney 26:38
I think really, you know, we when we got married, we were both raised Catholic. I wasn't practicing Catholic. Elaine was more of a practicing Catholic, and but I had been with some guys that were what people would call born against believers, you know. And actually I prayed, and I'm 25 Elaine's 22 at this time. And I actually prayed with a guy when I was 21 just so he would shut up and leave me alone. It's very true. And and I started building all these churches, and I knew the lingo, and I knew the language, but so we're married and having a candlelight dinner, BK before kids. Because when you have a candlelight, candles, when you have children,
Elaine Whitney 27:21
and you don't have time, right? You don't
Chris Whitney 27:23
have the time or energy. And we, and we were literally sitting there one night, and Elaine, so Elaine had told me it was lent, so it was Easter season, and she said, I want to go to Mass every day. And I was like,
Elaine Whitney 27:33
Wait, first of all, Chris calls himself a C and E Catholic, so Christmas and Easter and sometimes just an E Catholic, yeah. So and I went every day during Lent. So she
Chris Whitney 27:43
wanted to go to church every day, which and I was like, mass every day. And I was like, I'd rather you just stick my head in the door and shut it, you know, or something, you know. I mean, I'm like, I was not on my top of the list of things I wanted to do, but I'm like, Yes, dear, I'll be glad. And so we did, and then we were just having that dinner one night, and she said, she just looked at me. She said, There's got to be more to this than what we're getting right now. And so I called one of the guys I worked with, and I thought later they probably dropped the phone and went for four years, it's like, oh my god. And, and I think that commitment, then we got water baptized together together, I mean literally in the tank together. I mean we just, I believe God just not to sound strange, but he knew that we needed to be forged together because of what he had called us to do, and that there was going to be, this was this was just the beginning of the level of attacks that were coming and and so I think people get fearful about the attack, and I'm like, you know, that's just once again. It's just a character building thing, man, I read the end of the book we win. We win this thing. We really do. We are more than conquerors. We are going to win. But I tell
Elaine Whitney 28:55
Chris sometimes I'm like, Look, I like my character just the way. I don't want any more trials. Literally, I learned not to pray for patience either, because you will definitely get trials
Chris Whitney 29:06
and and I think for us, it's like one of the reasons, once again, we love the two of you is because, you know, we've got a few years on you guys, obviously,
Elaine Whitney 29:16
and more than a few,
Chris Whitney 29:19
yeah, but it's we, kind of, I think in some ways, see a little bit of us in you guys. I think you're gifted, more gifted than we are, smarter than we are, in a lot of ways. But your faith in your marriage and how you how you love your children, well, we admire tremendously, and we and so we love, we want to be a part of whatever we can do to pour into that, you know? I mean, that's what's in it for us, is we? I mean, I'm in the stage of life, and you've heard me a little bit about this, about passing batons, and so for us, it's how many batons we're in, a stage now of one gen's growing, thriving, and we feel like we're coming. To a precipice of what we were supposed to do, where we were supposed to get it, and then someone else needs to take it from there and run it. We're going to stay plugged into it and be protect the why, and continue to be the founders and the visionaries, but yet somebody else is going to do all the other stuff. But then we can start to pass all these batons. And our batons won't just be from a business perspective. We believe it's going to be marriage, and especially couples that are married and work together. Because if divorce is hard, not working together and being married, imagine what it's, it's I think people think it's easier, and it's like no man, it's harder. It's really many
Elaine Whitney 30:38
times, though, and I think it's God's just works all this out, of course, but you know, there's days that Chris wants to quit and I'm like, No, we're not. And it's never happened on the same day. Thank God. One day that one day, I said, No, don't ask that question. But we never, literally, like we're always pulling each other up. You know, if you're having a bad day, I'll pull you up. It's, you know, vice versa. It's just, and what's so crazy is, I guess I was so naive. I thought this happened to everybody. I just thought that everybody's marriage was like that. Because I was 22 years old, I was so naive. Didn't, you know, lived a great life, you know, with my family, and everything brought up that way. And I just had no idea. And so I don't know. It's just interesting, though, but God literally know, knew exactly what we needed, and just brought us together, and, like you said, just forged us together to know this is it, we are married. You know that moment? Yeah, the
Chris Whitney 31:31
key, key to me, to marriage, is intentionality. You need to be intentional in love, in in challenging conversations, and you just, and you just have to understand, there's, there's a difference between a desire to quit and quitting. The desire to quit makes you human. Quitting makes you a quitter. Yeah, right. There's a big difference. So just don't be a quitter. The desire to quit is normal. Man, my God, we all
Elaine Whitney 32:04
feel it. We all feel that right, like sometimes on a daily basis.
Spencer 32:09
Something that I see throughout your stories is that you all seem to have a great discernment of what season of life that you're in, and it's one of the things that left a lasting impression on me and Carli and I have this conversation often, is that there's four seasons there, the spring, the summer, the fall and the winter, and different things happen in each of those seasons. If you try to plant something in the winter that is most often going to end very poorly for you. Springtime is for planting, and then in summer, if you try to do winter activities in summer, that is going to result in suffering. And what's amazing is that life as a whole is rarely aligned in one season. For sure, you're going to have one season of your relationship and say, You know what, we may be going through a winter season, which is when winter does what winter does, which it kills off the week it's a pruning season. It's painful, but that's what creates room for spring. And then you hope to get to fall, where it's harvest, and that's everything you've been waiting for and working for. But sometimes your relationship is in one place, your business is in another place, your relationship with the Lord is in another season. And I've noticed it with my own friends. I have friends that I've had my whole life, and I've gone through seasons there. So the discernment that you all have to recognize, even in your current season, that you have had a sustained fall period of time, and that you are harvesting the work that you have done in one Gen, the types of numbers that you have produced, whether you measure it in pounds of food or the money that you've raised in a backdrop of an extraordinarily difficult period of time, like no other nonprofits are experiencing what you all are experiencing in harvest. But I also hear you saying I feel a little bit of the winds of change, you know, and not to speak a winter season over you like,
Elaine Whitney 34:18
fall, yeah, that's
Spencer 34:19
right.
Carli 34:20
So I look good in autumn. Colors
Elaine Whitney 34:22
stay right there.
Spencer 34:25
So maybe you can just speak to a couple of periods prior to one Gen. So you all have had a life prior to one Gen when you've shown an ability to be able to transition from one season into one Gen very effectively. So maybe take us one chapter back in the book and tell us what predated one Gen. Wow,
Chris Whitney 34:51
I was in the insurance but I got in the insurance business part of what part of the Spina Bifida was a whole, and then losing everything. And. Starting over again. Everything, you know, we've had, I've had some significant failures, things I didn't do very good at, you know, when I, when I was in construction, and felt like there was more that I was I was gifted beyond that. So I have a high school diploma. I've been to college now, I went to a week at Harvard Business School, which is really weird, you know, yeah, you know, to get a week at Harvard Business School first time, and only college campus I've ever been on, we so if you're gonna start there anyway. So I had a high school diploma. I was smart, but just came from a very dysfunctional family. My dad was an alcoholic. It was a real tough childhood situation. So I started, I figured, well, I'll sell home improvements, because it's kind of in construction, you know. And I failed miserably because of the process. It was fake. And I just, I don't like fake. I want to, you know, I just genuine. So I failed
Carli 36:00
to know you. To know to know you is to know that. Yeah, so
Chris Whitney 36:03
just it was weird, you know, like, fake a price and then act like you make a phone call, you know? I mean, like, That's so cheesy, man. I couldn't, I couldn't get in. I just couldn't believe in it. But, you know, God's fortuitous nature. I sold a door to a guy went to high school with, went to a Jim Rohn conference, read the greatest salesman in the world by og mandino, which everybody should buy that $5 book and read it, because it's fantastic. Changed my life, didn't it? Yeah, for sure. And he said, You ought to get in the insurance business. And I did. So I was very good at insurance. And so in that process, we Sarah's born, we were in a church where we were going to be licensed and ordained. It got really strange doctrinally. One year in, left that the thing I thought I was called a pastor, went to this startup church at the time that grew. I'm
Elaine Whitney 36:49
pregnant with Sarah, so we're going through all of this changing. That
Chris Whitney 36:53
church grew to be 4000 people, and we ended up being unpaid youth pastors in that church.
Spencer 36:57
Was this in Tennessee for 13 years
Chris Whitney 37:00
prior to Tennessee, yeah, for 13 and and then that that there was a really, really difficult leave in that whole process. So some of the major dysfunction you would see in a church we experienced like, we're literally black, bold, black, bald publicly from a pulpit wall and stuff. So we, we've been through a lot of stuff. I mean, we got stories on. I mean, layers of of experience, unfortunately. You know, I heard a guy, Billy Joe Watts once shared, God rarely extracts leaderships from the ranks of the unscarred. And it's a great quote. And we got a lot of scars, man. I mean, unfortunately, but we it was, it hurt us more than we knew. Yeah, for years. And so we we were, we were, I was really successful in the insurance business in St Louis, one degree of separation from probably knowing almost anybody in the world, you know, just and I learned so much from business owners. I dealt with a lot with business owners. I sold medical insurance so I could get to meet the business owner and do buy, sell agreements and do estate planning. So I learned, I mean, I started to learn some business principles nobody taught me. I just figured that was my mailbox money, right? Health insurance paid monthly, and then I could get to know the business owner, the employees, and they became my clients. So I didn't have a I didn't have this broad book of business. But what book I had? I sold deep? Yeah,
Spencer 38:25
there's a lesson in that. There's a big lesson, and
Chris Whitney 38:27
it was about relationship. I learned about relationship and serving. That's where my serving so unpaid youth pastor of a fourth house. So I there was a year I preached twice a week and ran in a commission only insurance business, and
Elaine Whitney 38:41
was a husband and a father, and I was not
Chris Whitney 38:43
husband and father, so I failed miserably, but that so I was an undiagnosed alcoholic. My dad was an alcoholic. I it was God gave me a gift. Elaine would tell you, I used to drink almost a 12 pack
Elaine Whitney 38:57
of beer a night, every night when we first got married and after I got
Chris Whitney 39:00
saved, one day, I was looking at her watching a game, football game or something, I looked at her says, Be the last drop alcohol ever drink. And that was 38
Elaine Whitney 39:08
and inside, you guys, I mean, after going through, you know, all of this, of him drinking every night, I thought, Okay, right? You know what I mean, but it's been, yeah, what, 37 years, and he hasn't had one drop even of non alcoholic, like he has, just hasn't had a drop of alcohol. And it was just like that that just took that desire, that
Chris Whitney 39:29
addictive personality goes somewhere else, right? See it in I didn't know any better, so I just work. Work was my at that was my drug was work. And so Elaine wanted to be at stay at home, mom and she was and I was there. We had to be, and I was bound and determined. I would do whatever that took to make that happen for her and but that's where my heart to serve came in and and we led mission trips overseas with 50 teenagers and did Street. Dramas and stuff, crazy, crazy stories, you know, really cool seeing God just do some really neat things. But that so that was prior to Tennessee, I mean, and we moved to Tennessee and didn't know a soul, and I would commute back to St Louis. We're trying to start a church with no money, no anything. Didn't know anybody you know, so couldn't have done anything harder on Earth, almost. I
Elaine Whitney 40:21
think that was so funny, because when you're talking about that, how, you know, Chris was in insurance, right? And he was a workaholic, so he worked all the time. He had an office that he would go to and, you know, he'd leave early in the morning, come home, you know. And I barely can see the kids, put them to bed, you know. And then when we moved to Nashville and to Franklin, the very first day we moved in, and next morning, everybody kids off to school, you know, and I look at Chris, I thought, Oh, my God, he's here. Like, wait, wait a minute. Like, wait,
40:52
where are you?
Elaine Whitney 40:54
No office to go to? I thought, Oh, my God. How am I? Like, I clean a house. I have all these, you know, things that I do in my routine, right? Yeah, I got all this routine to do, and I'm looking like, oh my gosh, how's that gonna happen? And so what was so great, I think, like you've always said, though, that we knew we were here to start a church in Tennessee, but what really was, was God was literally just forging our marriage even closer. So we would do our work. In the morning, he would do his work, and we just go and get a coffee Starbucks downtown Franklin, and just walk around and meet people. I mean, it was like it was the best time. It was really, we had such a great time.
Chris Whitney 41:31
Couple lessons came out of out of the church in St Louis and then Tennessee, when we moved that that about my character, and I wrote a book called The dirty church, and it's like it talks about the first parts, what I call biblical justice. The last two thirds of the book is all about serving. And I talk about when I remember I was an unpaid youth pastor, so I thought I was all that in a bag of chips, and a guy asked me to be an usher, and I literally went to Elena, said, What does he think I am? I'm like a pastor, like I'm going to be an usher. And God, really, oh boy, convicted, right? And I and I repented, I repented, it became an usher and and out of that, God opened up these doors to people that changed our lives forever because I was willing to be an usher and and then when we got married, I mean, we got married, we moved here. Elaine went to work outside the home, which is how one Gen started. Was this job she took. It was really the beginning, the beginning genesis of one Gen and but when she would she went to work at Embassy Suites. This was after this job. The next job was Embassy Suites, and she had to be at work at six in the morning. She would get up at 430 and God convicted me. He said, I want you to get up every day and cook breakfast for your wife. She served you all these years, it's your turn, and that's why I wrote my book. I said if you're not serving your spouse, you're not serving anybody, you're kidding yourself, because that's where it starts. And so I would literally make her breakfast every day before she went to work. And I loved it because it blessed her. It
Elaine Whitney 43:24
did. But boy, was that hard to receive. You know what I mean? Because all these years, like when in St Louis and I would get up and make coffee, I take it to him every morning, you know, while he's getting dressed and, you know, just having that conversation. And so when he started doing it for me, I was like, this is it's just, you know, it's always easier to give than it is to receive, but sometimes we have to learn to receive, yeah. And that was a very difficult moment of that. And when
Carli 43:47
you took into your nonprofit, is helping people receive, yeah, and that's
Chris Whitney 43:52
what I hope people understanding is, I'm trying to weave the story of how we became who we are right now and and it's become the fiber, I think, of who we feel like, who we are as a couple we try to be, and we want to protect that, but it is the essence of who we are, serving people unconditionally. Is, I believe, the key to a successful society in any way, shape or form.
Spencer 44:22
It's one of my favorite biblical narratives that I see come through, which is before the Lord called anybody to do much of anything of consequence, there was a wilderness experience prior to that calling. And Jesus went through a 40 day wilderness experience. Moses went through a 40 year wilderness experience. And I think the timing of you all starting one Gen. How old were you all roughly when you started one we
Elaine Whitney 44:53
moved here 20 years ago. I'll be 6012, years I was 4040,
Chris Whitney 44:58
yeah, when we moved but we started. Number one, Jen, I was 51 and you were 48 Yeah,
Elaine Whitney 45:03
yeah.
Spencer 45:03
I think that's a really important message to say. There's some people that are sitting exactly that age that feel like, man, what's getting away from me at this point? Right? Like I'm moving towards what could be the last couple chapters of what I'm here for, and the fact that you all have probably done the most successful and life changing work, starting at effectively 50, and the legacy that you've created from that is amazing, but it ties to the wilderness experiences, and some of it was, you know, over a hot anvil fire forging, really, having to go through some tough stuff. And Carla and I, you know, we don't have time to tell the stories that now, but we have them. You know, is that we have,
Elaine Whitney 45:54
I want to hear those moments another day.
Chris Whitney 45:57
Yeah, flip this. Yeah, right. You want the couch, and we'll sit over there. We're the
Spencer 46:01
ones that ask the questions,
Chris Whitney 46:05
planting that seed right now, you know, we
Spencer 46:08
ask the questions here, Chris, so maybe let's just do this as as we just kind of bring it back to present day, because I want to make sure that the spirit of something we try to capture in every podcast really ties into people that are doing something for the state of Tennessee, either by being here, or something that I feel like Tennesseans should really know about. So food insecurity is enormously impactful. We have a foundation, the patent foundation, that just commissioned a study that studied at 1000s of people across the state of Tennessee, and discovered that 70% of people are reporting food costs as their largest pain point that they deal with from a budget perspective, which really checks out with the numbers we've been talking about already, that 41% are reporting food insecurity. So talk to us from a policy or a legislative perspective. Is there anything Carla uses this analogy. Well, if you could wave a magic wand and you were able to bring about a change or two. Is there something that you would point to that could make a difference, that could help?
Chris Whitney 47:31
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think so. It was part of the vision. I believe when God birthed us, let me, let me piggyback on something you said. I firmly believe God has to take you to the backside of nowhere to get you out of you so that he can get in you. Yeah, that's really, that's the wilderness, and it's not fun. No, gosh no. It literally is a purging, yeah, of of who you are, because if you literally are going to lay your life down for Jesus, that's what it takes. And that is a that is a lifelong process. The wilderness experiences are just the foundation of getting you even to a place where you can be molded and shaped and like on the potter's wheel, right, where you can listen where you can listen to him and but, but to your point, on, on, on policy. So I believe in Isaiah, 58 verses, six through 12, that there are some mandates by God for the body of Christ. How's the homeless, feed the hungry and clothe the naked. I don't believe it's supposed to be a legislative policy to to fix food insecurity or fix hunger. If I could wave a magic wand, and we're starting to have some of these conversations. We're in a it's just been a crazy couple weeks, even, but that some of our as nonprofits, and you've heard me say this, that we would, we would all start to play together and not be siloed. How do we integrate? How does the body of Christ, that's one of my passions, is the body of Christ doing the same thing the church, not a church. If we as as believers, would, would learn how to play together, work together. Businesses do this all the time. You we have businesses have to work with other businesses to function. Yeah, but in the nonprofit where we feel like we got to be our own little thing and nobody, don't you come near me, don't you tell my donors, don't you. Yes,
Spencer 49:39
scarcity mindset. Scarcity Mindset.
Chris Whitney 49:41
Instead of saying, take
Elaine Whitney 49:42
my donor, there's so much anyway, yeah, no. Need to be like that, but it happens to
Chris Whitney 49:47
dial back into food. There's so much food thrown away, wasted, that's perfectly edible, perfectly easily obtainable. It's a logistics. Issue. It's not a supply or demand issue. We feel like we've got a pretty good logistics model on how to make that happen. So I feel like if I could wave a magic wand, that the state and the federal government would come to us and say, we think that you can end hunger better than we can end hunger. So we want to take our budget and give it to you, and what I would say is I don't even need all of it. Just give me this portion of it, but with the caveat that that other portion clothes and houses, and we get creative on housing, how to house homeless people and and there's another segment of this population that nobody's talking about, that we've just come to, where 27% of our active military are food insecure. No, just get that. Put that around your head. They're serving our country 7% active military or food insecure.
Elaine Whitney 51:00
And so it's not counting the veterans, veterans
Chris Whitney 51:02
that are retired, you know? I mean, so this, this is, I am not upset with the federal government. We, as the body of Christ, I believe, acquiesced our responsibility to the federal government in the 1930s with the New Deal. Oh, the government's gonna do it. Great, you do it. And they were never called to do it. We are called, mandated to do it. So therefore, I believe that if I could wave a magic wand, that's the magic wand I would Mave is that we would have a dialog with state government, with national government, to say, look, I'm not asking you to hand it over today. I am? I Yeah,
Elaine Whitney 51:42
but I'll
Chris Whitney 51:45
patiently walk you through it. But I honestly, I think that that as a non, as a nonprofit, I feel like we've built something God's allowed us to build something he's built something that he's allowed us to steward, is really what this is and that. And we have great voices in our lives, like the C 12 table, we said, right? That are great leaders speaking into our lives. So I feel like if, if I came to my C 12 table and said, hey, the government saying we can feed the state, I'm like, I'm fully we'd be like, Yeah, we could do that, right? And so then imagine what that's like, man, and that's going to empower people in our state, because we have 13 employees, but we have 1000s of volunteers. We are the Volunteer State. Yeah, and churches. What is Jesus came not to be served, but to serve. And so what if we mobilized all the people in the state of Tennessee to say we are going to end hunger in our state? Love
Carli 52:52
that I love your community. Message in that that it's all of us together, has to be I also want to do a call out for listeners that don't know what C 12 is, Chris and Spencer met each other at a round table. You're on a board of 12 Christian entrepreneurs, business owners of a certain size and scope that you get together every month and not only study the word but hold each other accountable for your business practices and what it looks like to live out your faith in the workplace, in the home, etc, etc. So just a call out to that, in case people didn't know that background. But to piggyback off the question of if you had a magic wand, Spence likes to ask, and maybe I'm stealing your thunder a little
Chris Whitney 53:37
bit. We're in the couples. It's over now, yeah, we've lost control. That's
Carli 53:42
my favorite podcast answers we've had is when Spence asked the question, okay, you have your magic wand. But what if you could tell listeners? Tell everyone one thing that you don't think people know, that they don't understand about food scarcity, about what you do. What is the one takeaway that anybody listening today, if they left and could repeat, then you have been fruitful in this moment.
Chris Whitney 54:07
I think one, one thing I think of is the face of hunger isn't what you think it is. Oh, that's good. It looks just like you. Yeah, it looks just like you would never, ever know. So true, wow, because I see it
Elaine Whitney 54:27
and neighbors, right? Like, no matter where they live, anybody lives, your neighbor might have this huge home with no furniture in it because they can't afford that, but they want the home, but they don't have any food. I mean, those people come through the lines. I mean, we have our the faces of our lines just change constantly, especially with the increase of the food cost these days. And people just can't afford it. They can't they can't feed their family. So it's just, it's shocking, to be honest, and it's just, we
Chris Whitney 54:57
had a woman recently, we've spoken we were. Speaking at a luncheon, and she raised her hand to kind of interrupt me, which I asked her to, yeah. I said, Please interrupt. And she said she was in a domestic violence situation. Now she's gainfully. She's leading part of this ministry. Wow. And she raised her hand and she says, You don't know me. She goes, but I was in your food line, and me and my kids would not have eaten if it wasn't for you. See, the face is not it's true if I, if I said anything, eliminate your stigma of what hunger means and understand it's the face of anybody in a grocery store, the anybody in a line, anybody in your church, but they're not going to let you know, because it is so hard. So let's not make it hard, man. Let's not, let's not say pull yourself up by your bootstraps, or just go work harder, or just go do this. Just say, How can I help you? Because most people are in a season. You mentioned seasons, right? And our job is, instead of demeaning them in that season, what if we said we're gonna walk with you in this season together. We're gonna walk through this season.
Spencer 56:24
That's why your message is so powerful, because you bring the authenticity of having been those faces of hunger and our faces. Only from that place are you able to then come and speak to an audience to say, hey, people walked with us and look today, just a handful of decades later, what an impact, what fruit you have bared through your journey. And it's really why Carli and I love to have you all in our lives as well is you marry well a non profit heart, while still having a business acumen that for those that haven't ever seen your branding before, you all are very intentional about your branding. Your trucks are not running up and down the road in worn out beater trucks, you could justify not decorating and branding the trucks like you do, but you do, you decal them. And I know Chris because I see your trucks all over the place, up and down the road, pictures
Carli 57:33
and some expenses like Chris in the wild,
Spencer 57:37
yeah. And I just am so excited for those that are on a nonprofit journey of their own, to hear and learn from some of the wisdom for how you all have have grown this. And it's also not lost on me, as a logistics person that you know, Amazon has just launched this kind of new same day delivery thing about two or three years ago that has the world enamored you all have been doing same day delivery. Welcome to the game that one was good. So thank you for being here with us today. We are thrilled to give one Gen away a megaphone. People are getting a great return on any investment that they make in what you all are doing, and so please stay sensitive to the spirit of where the Lord is calling you all, whether it's to stay exactly where you are, or whether it's going on to the next thing, because I know from the amount of forging that you all have gone through in life that the Lord has not done yet. So whether that's good or bad for you, there's gonna be more chapters ahead. Yeah, that's right. We're
Elaine Whitney 58:54
honored to have even been asked to be here. So we love you guys and believe in you guys, and are so proud of you for what you've done and what you're continuing to do. So thank you.
Chris Whitney 59:04
Yeah, I think the tag on what you just said is, you know, we've all heard of most of us have heard a message preached about a tapestry, you know, and the hot mess on the backside of it. And we talk about, we've lived enough life now to see the backside, but we've also got to see some of the front. So we are extremely motivated about creating some more hot mess so we can see what's on the front. I mean, we're not I really appreciate your encouragement, and I hope everybody out there listening, whatever season you are in life, you're not finished Exactly. Yeah, don't quit. I always believe our former years are meant to be more greater, or, you know, than our than our latter years. I mean, our latter years are meant to be far greater than our former years because we've learned so we should have learned enough right now, right? So we can be it'll appear that we're more impactful. In a shorter window of time when really we've been that impactful, we're just feeling it because of the short amount of time. And I think we're more efficient, and we're more we adjudicate at a much more efficient manner, if that makes sense. And so I appreciate that in that encouragement, and I'd say the same for the two of you. You know, there's going to be a lot of seasons coming, man, yeah, and they're all going to be a blast,
Elaine Whitney 1:00:21
and just put on that seat belt and enjoy the ride.
Spencer 1:00:33
Chris and Elaine and one Gen are just some of my very favorite people.
Carli 1:00:36
That was one of the most meaningful conversations I feel like I've had in a really long time.
Spencer 1:00:43
I think there's just different people, and in their case, couples that the Lord brings into your life that you journey with. And sometimes it's for a season where you're there for a specific purpose. And sometimes it stretches for far beyond. And it goes through a lot of seasons in a lifetime. I really feel like Chris and Elaine, uniquely are positioned for a lot of seasons of journey with us. They recognize it, and in some ways, I think we recognize it too, that while their scars are a little different on the surface, that's about it beneath it, they're pretty much the same. We've experienced a lot of the same, forging you and I that they point to, our story is just unique to us, and their story is unique to them. But I really appreciate how much their marriage shines through as something that has bridged through all of the tough stuff, because they had a lot of off ramps along the way. And you said that well in the podcast, that you're married on the day that you say, I do, but there is that day where you're really married. And I also think that you say, well, marriage isn't always about happiness. Our culture is full of well, he or she's not making me happy anymore, and that means that they're doing something wrong, or I'm not enough, and it's the wrong Gage.
Carli 1:02:12
Yeah, I think it's important to know that some marriages aren't meant to be. And I'm always sensitive because I feel like I hit the lottery, and even though we've been through some stuff, you are kind and compassionate and such a great partner, and we've grown up together to be that way. I mean, we weren't always where we are now, certainly before neither were, neither were Kirsten and Elaine. So I'm always quick to say there are some situations where it's not an option, and I have a heart for them too, and I think that's important to note, but I think you're right in that marriage on paper is one thing. It's a day of commitment. It's love and rainbows and white dresses, and my very favorite part, the cake. But there is that day where you look at each other and you realize, like, do I choose you against all reason? And it may be a day where you're embarrassed, it may be a day where you're furious, it's maybe a day where you feel deceived, because nobody's perfect, and you have to still choose, and they have done that. And I think the other thing that came out. You and I, we always joke. People keep telling us we're too young to do stuff. When we were too young when we got married, we were too young when we had our kids. We were too young when we started our first businesses, and we did a lot of things the hard way, but we ended up in a place where I wouldn't trade it for anything. But I think that journey along the way it did for just together. But part of that is because it can feel really isolating from the people in your community. A lot of times, best intentions, family doesn't understand. Best intentions, friends don't understand. And someone's like, what does your husband do? It's like, Well, it's complicated. There's all things to explain. And so I just, I felt really seen by Chris and Elaine. And I think there's a lot of other entrepreneurial marriages, or people that don't have that normal nine to five, or maybe the female is the breadwinner and the male is staying home, people that live different than maybe their community, that can see like, hey in isolation is forged something special.
Spencer 1:04:26
I think we often see that your ability to lead is directly proportional to the pain that you've experienced leading up to that. And they were very transparent in their own seasons of humbling, of having to stand in a line asking for food and be questioned about why and how much money they make, and the authenticity to say there was so much shame in that season. And Chris given a story about. Out, I'm not going to be an usher in a church like that's beneath me to tell those stories is very vulnerable, and I think it's incredibly relatable that we may not be as brave all the time to tell those moments of humbling in our own lives. Hopefully we become that brave, because it shows what an impact that those stories can have in giving permission for people to see themselves in the stories and lives of who they're listening to, and they do a great job of being able to show a pathway of great success and blessing, but not cover over the hot mess behind the quilt that Chris talked about at the end.
Carli 1:05:52
I think that's really right, and I think where we are in our journey is the hard has been so hard, and the faith component of it is still so raw that I think sharing those stories is important. I think I'm still learning how to articulate what the Lord has done over the last decade in our lives, and some of it isn't our story to tell. Some of it is the very personal family stuff that we're walking through with each of our kids, who are uniquely gifted in their own ways, but have their own challenges. There are things that I pray that the Lord won't waste our scars and that Chris and Elaine have them, and now they know how to share them, and that's part of their passing the baton. And so I think my prayer for us, Vince, in this moment, is that we learn the lessons we need to learn. We treasure them up in our heart, and then when it is our turn to pass the baton, we know how to share them. Well, I
Spencer 1:07:01
think that's exactly right. It's we share stories, and then you're right that some stories are uniquely for us. It's kind of like when you wake up from a scary dream or a funny dream, and you try to describe it to somebody else, and it just loses something like, you're like, Oh, well, this thing jumped out and it was like this, and you can kind of tell halfway through the story that it's one for you. And I think that also is something that we have planted in each of us individually, is that there are some things that are for us that have shaped who we are and are not meant for everybody else along the way, and then there are others that are exactly for that to say, look at this journey. Look at this path, and it serves as encouragement.
