Lance Villio on the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Signature Required sits down with Lance Villio, Executive Director of the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative, to explore how government, churches, and nonprofits can work together to serve Tennessee’s most vulnerable neighbors. The conversation looks at foster care, prison reentry, and poverty through a systems perspective, and why lasting change requires more than policy alone.
About Lance Villio
Lance Villio serves as Executive Director of the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative, where he works to bridge the gap between state government and community organizations across Tennessee. His role focuses on helping government agencies collaborate effectively with churches, nonprofits, and local leaders to address complex social challenges.
Under Lance’s leadership, the office has developed initiatives designed to move beyond short-term responses toward long-term solutions. By translating between sectors that often operate independently, he helps build partnerships that combine public resources with community engagement to create sustainable change.
Faith, Government & Community Impact
Across Tennessee, the challenges of foster care, prison reentry, and poverty are often discussed as policy problems. In this conversation, Lance Villio reframes them as community problems that require community participation. By connecting state agencies with churches, nonprofits, and volunteers, the Governor’s Faith-Based and Community Initiative is working to build solutions that extend beyond government programs alone.
Through initiatives like Every Child Tennessee, the Volunteer Mentorship Initiative, and the Human Flourishing Initiative, communities across the state are stepping into roles that strengthen support systems for vulnerable families and individuals. The work demonstrates a broader principle: when Tennesseans see these challenges as shared responsibilities rather than distant issues, new pathways for stability, restoration, and long-term flourishing begin to emerge.
Resources
Governor’s Faith-Based & Community Initiative
Volunteer Mentorship Initiative
Every Child Tennessee
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Spencer: Welcome to Signature Required. It is intended for Tennesseans by Tennesseans,
Lance Villio, you are the Executive Director of the Governor's Faith-Based and Community Initiative. Welcome to Signature Required.
Lance: Thank you so much for having me. This is, uh, an honor to be here with y'all today.
Spencer: Lance, you have become a real friend of mine over the last handful of months, and I'm excited to unpack the things that you have looped me into.
And so by friend of mine, I mean, you have also put me into places and signed me up for commitments that while very personally enriching, you're very persuasive at getting people to do things.
Lance: That's great. That's great. Well, you could have said no, but you instead chose to say yes and our lives and others will benefit from that.
Spencer: I wanna start off to help people understand what it is that you [00:01:00] do, because the governor has put you in this role. So you are an appointed individual serving at the governor's pleasure, doing a lot of things that you probably wouldn't find in many other states.
Lance: That's right.
Spencer: If you had to tell someone in 30 seconds what it is you do, let's start there and then we'll kind of unpack some stuff there.
Lance: Yeah. So we are uniquely positioned at the intersection between the 23 departments of state government and the community at large. So 7 million Tennessean focused on serving our state's most vulnerable.
Spencer: Hmm. Is this a role that you find in any other state or is this something that Governor Lee has just hatched here?
Lance: Yeah, that's a great question. So there are faith-based offices in other states and the, the actual kind of impetus of this came at the federal level and so. Bush set up a neighborhood and partnership [00:02:00] that turned into this faith-based office. And now you know, however many presidents later, there have been versions of a faith and community office at the federal level ever since.
There was a big push to get states to set these up and some of those stuck, some of them didn't. And in Tennessee, we did not have a faith-based office prior to Governor Lee at the, in the governor's office, now we had one in the department of Mental Health and substance Abuse. And so one of the things that he ran on was, Hey, government has a role to play, a very significant role to play, but it has limitations and we think to really solve some of our most complex issues facing our vulnerable neighbors.
We need something like this. And so he set that up at the governor's office here in Tennessee in 2019.
Carli: As I was preparing for today, I couldn't help but think of, you know, those like story maps you had to do in elementary school where you have one thing in the middle Charlotte's web, and then [00:03:00] you have all these bubbles that come off and by the end it looks like a giant spiderweb.
And I couldn't help but think that your job title is in the middle of that, but man, you've got a web because not only are you a liaison with all of these government agencies, but with every church in Tennessee that wants to be active and supporting the vulnerable, with non-profits left, right, and center.
You are kind of in the center of this intersection of a lot of really interesting, opinionated. That's right. People, but I would imagine. Everyone is motivated by the same goal to help, but how do you start to organize these chaotic things going on that all come across your desk? Yeah, that's a great question because I, you are right.
Lance: No one's gonna argue that we want the best for our neighbor. Mm-hmm. Now we will argue about what the best is. And if you have, think of it as three primary buckets. You have government that speaks government. You have the faith community in churches, and here we have over [00:04:00] 10,000 churches or houses of worship, and you have churches and they speak church language.
And what that means, and they're motivated by certain things and they're skeptical of certain things. And then you have the nonprofit community, which we have. 30,000 nonprofits here in the state of Tennessee.
Spencer: Wow.
Lance: That all focus on different things. Some work really well together and others don't, and so if you understand.
The why and the mechanics of how these three different sectors work. That's really the starting place. And so we kind of say that we're trilingual, that we speak all three of them. And when we, when we want to see the needle get moved on serving our neighbors we have to understand at the state level, what is being done, what are the priorities of the governor, what are the priorities of the department that is serving, that particular vulnerability.
And then how do churches feel about that? How do we localize this? [00:05:00] So for example, when we talk about foster care and there are 9,000 kids in care, well, that means something, but it means something far more personal. If you can say, well, there's 52 foster kids within a 10 mile radius of your congregation.
And
Lance: so hyper locallocalization is really important. And then for the nonprofit community, there's so many people doing so much good work. It is important to know what is already being done. So you don't replicate, but you do try to unify and so you don't have these redundancies. So it is important to know and understand all three of those sectors before you start going about suggesting ideas, if you will.
Carli: I wonder, do the new AirPods translate between church, government and nonprofit speak? Like,
Lance: yeah, I wish.
Carli: Yeah,
Lance: maybe that's something Apple can work on
Carli: that they should work on that. So you find yourself as a translator probably a lot of the time.
Lance: Absolutely.
Carli: Yeah, that makes sense.
Spencer: So for those that are still kind of scratching their head to understand.
[00:06:00] What the role is. Maybe you can just rifle through some examples of what you're spending most of your time on, like a couple initiatives. Mm-hmm. And we'll go through them, but just so we can help everybody connect a little more tangibly about what you're doing.
Lance: Sure. So when we, when we started, I, I got appointed by Governor Lee in 22.
And the office at that time had been set up but had not necessarily built out what we now call initiatives. So how do we kind of develop with those three sectors, church, government, nonprofit, community, what is our strategy? What is our theory of change? How are we gonna go about solving whatever vulnerability we're focused on?
So we made a conscious decision to start working with children. And the reason why is because no one's gonna argue that children deserve our best, right? Mm-hmm. And so it was a, it was actually a, a place that [00:07:00] we could start that would unify people, people that maybe would never sit in the same room, or they would never say that, Hey, we agree on anything.
Mm-hmm. But they would agree that our church, our children deserve our best. And so what we do is we go sit with a department and try to understand. What systemically is going on where you have all of these symptoms that emerge. And the best example for that, that I could give right now is that when we started, we had kids sleeping in Department of Children's Services offices, right?
And there was just
Spencer: literally on the floor.
Lance: Literally on the floor like, you know, I've been in DCS offices and, and actually seen air mattresses and it's really easy to blame the department, right? And there is some ownership that they've taken. But the reality is the Department of Children's Services doesn't raise children.
Right? And so you have to have homes of just Tennesseans that say, Hey, we will take in a [00:08:00] child. And if you don't have those homes, D-C-D-C-S can never control the lever and say, Hey, we're full.
Carli: Yeah,
Lance: that's not an option. And so in, at that point, one of the quickest wins that we saw was we started calling churches and saying, Hey, is there a space that you all have access to where while these children are awaiting placement
Carli: mm-hmm.
Lance: That we could make available to these kids. And we saw in a very short amount of time that across the state churches stepped forward and opened up spaces for these kids to, to stay in with their DCS caseworker. And we've since seen that. That has both come and gone. So it's not like that was solved forever.
But I think what it did was it showed, man, these churches can move quickly. And when you tell them, Hey, we have a real problem, they will jump right in. And so as it pertains to what, what do you know, you ask specifically, what are [00:09:00] some examples of our, of the work that we do when we partner with one of the 23 state departments trying to understand the systemic issue versus the symptoms, and then how do we go about creating an initiative that would involve the community?
And so the three initiatives that we currently run, one is with the Department of Children's Services called Every Child Tennessee. And it has four priority areas, family preservation, foster care, recruitment, foster family retention, and then youth that transition out of foster care at 18. So those priorities, we have a very, clear set of, of actions that are taken involving the community on each of those. Our second initiative is the Volunteer Mentorship Initiative, and that's with the Department of Corrections, one that you're very familiar with, and that's an initiative that invites everyday Tennesseans to commit to an 18 month process.
[00:10:00] They'll go in a prison, get matched with a mentee for 12 months prior to release, not as their caseworker, not as somebody from the department, but just as somebody that is listening to them, helping build trust, helping them prepare, and then staying connected with them six months. Post-release. And then the third initiative that will take a little bit more time because of the complexity is called the Human Flourishing Initiative.
And that's with the Department of Human Services. And the primary thing that we're solving there is that at the federal government, there's 114 programs known as this the safety net or social safety net. Um, and people are served based on their presenting vulnerability. Mm-hmm. So if you come in unhoused, you are served for that particular issue.
And we know that these issues are interconnected. And so our attempt is to create local ecosystems to care for the whole person.
Carli: I mean, [00:11:00] one of those feels overwhelming, let alone to be working on all three simultaneously. I do wanna latch onto something you said, which is how do we tangibly as everyday Tennessean.
Help because we all see this around us, right? We see kids going into the foster care system. We hear these numbers, right? We know that there are people that are being incarcerated and the chances them going back into prison once they come out is astronomical. And then we see people that are unhoused, that are struggling in the food deserts in and around Tennessee.
But darn if when I'm driving down the road trying to get my four kids to practice and get dinner on the table, I wanna pray for them.
Lance: Mm-hmm.
Carli: I wish I could do something about it, but I don't know what to do.
Lance: Mm-hmm.
Carli: So for people out there whose hearts are breaking that are hearing all of this going on, what does the average person do about it?
Lance: Yeah, that's a really great question. And there are endless amount of [00:12:00] things you can do to serve your neighbor, right? Mm-hmm. And, and I don't know that me being prescriptive is, is helpful. Sure. But what I will say is. You know, even just like we had a nice storm a couple weeks ago, right? And we lost power and, and it was, it was scary.
There were people that actually died and the thing that we needed people to do was to go check on their neighbor.
Carli: Hmm.
Lance: Right? Like that little act of am I aware of the person next to me? Right. And if everyone did that, then people are served at scale. I, I think one of the things that, that, you know, the governor, the reason he set this office up was, as I said, government plays a role, but it has limitations.
And so with all of the Tennesseans, with all of the faith communities, with all of the nonprofits, can we harness that sense of serving our neighbors and move the ball forward [00:13:00] in ways that people will likely never see. Now through our initiatives, we try to give people. Options. If you want to engage in helping those coming outta prison, here's an option.
You can go serve as a mentor if you want to serve the foster care community, you can meet a tangible need. You can become a foster parent. You can wrap around a foster parent, right? We're not trying to be overly prescriptive, but kind of choose your own journey. These things really matter.
Spencer: So maybe we'll just spend a little bit of time in each of those three.
'cause I've really enjoyed learning about some of the complexities and also some of the ways to be able to make a difference. So we'll just take it in the order that you presented it. So the first one, in dealing with kids, the most vulnerable in foster care, I heard you mention four different priorities as part of that.
And it really is staggering that the kids [00:14:00] that age out of foster care. Don't have some unit wrapped around them in one way or another are immediately trafficked. They're drug addicted. Their probability of success is basically zero. I mean, the numbers are conclusive and that to me elevates the stakes to say you've got kids that have had every trauma that you could imagine and are likely headed to jail or trafficking or drugs.
And so as you think about the magnitude of that issue and Foster in Tennessee, can you help explain why there is a problem? Because I think when people hear that there's kids sleeping on the floors and air mattresses and and [00:15:00] DCS, they are quick to blame the government, but. I think it's also a very compelling argument from the government of saying, we are not parents.
These are not our kids. These are the kids of your neighbors and of your fellow Tennesseans. So can you help point to some of the underlying causes of what it is that's causing this to happen?
Lance: Yeah. I mean, I, I would say that the family unit right, is a protection for all of this. And so you don't have kids in foster care without having unhealthy families.
And so not that, not that there's a silver bullet, but we do know that when you have a. Healthy family units, you don't have all of these other things. You know, and you, and you kind of mentioned the progression of what happens. So when, what's [00:16:00] important to note is here in in Tennessee, our Department of Human Services, which serves some of our most vulnerable adult populations, they administer 17 of these federal benefits, SNAP and TANF and childcare payments.
Then separately you have the Department of Children's Services. And so how a child or family kind of enters in the relationship with DCS is through a tip, right? There's a, a hotline, they get a tip and there's tens of thousands of tips that they get a year, and then Child Protective Services goes and does an investigation.
Now what's really hard is that it, you know, it is not illegal to be poor. It is illegal to neglect your child. And those things can look very similar. And DCS is not equipped to go [00:17:00] and meet the tangible needs of every family that has needs. They are primarily responsible for the wellbeing of that child in determining is this child safe in this home?
And so it really starts there. Which is why it's so important that we do need to focus on foster care and we do need to focus on youth aging out, but we need to focus on the source of the issue of really creating an environment where vulnerable families are holistically served. So I'll pause there before getting into the rest of it, but does that make sense why that piece is so critical?
Spencer: It makes a ton of sense because if you aren't addressing the root of the issue. Which is the total destruction of the family unit that is often accompanied with acute poverty. Then what ends up happening is you have kids that become the [00:18:00] custody of the state, and sometimes when people imagine taking in a foster kid, they have a picture in their head that is not at all related to really the kids that need to be cared for, like the kids that need to be cared for.
Have intense emotional trauma. They're not sitting on the front step of a firehouse rosy cheek with, their hands out. It's like they're having significant emotional trauma, potentially sexual trauma. They have educational issues, they have major problems. Where when you think about inviting them into your house, that's a whole different scope.
Lance: Yes.
Spencer: But it comes from the root of that family unit.
Lance: That's right.
Spencer: And so I think putting it in those terms and being really honest about why, you [00:19:00] know, I think there's a stat that if every church in Tennessee took one foster kid Right. We would eliminate the issue.
Lance: Yep.
Spencer: 50 times over, but it's just a.
A root cause issue to saying there's a real challenge of how can the everyday Tennessean be equipped to be able to deal with an issue that has originated far beyond the moment of crisis.
Lance: That's right. Yeah. So statistically you've got less than 5,000 foster homes in the state of Tennessee and over 8,000 foster children.
So it doesn't pencil there. Then the complexity of what's called an ideal placement, keeping that, that child with their sibling set or their siblings mm-hmm. And in their county. And I wanna, I wanna share a story with you that when I first started in this job, so three and a half years ago, I, there were a number of kids [00:20:00] sleeping in offices and one of the offices where there was a.
There was a, a lot of young, a lot of children and youth sleeping in offices was in Shelby County and Memphis. And so one of the things that we would do is coordinate meals, kids were eating out of vending machines, like they were not staffed for catering, right. It's not designed to mm-hmm.
Care for children. And so I, I volunteer to go pick up food. And I went to the DCS office in Shelby County. And, you know, my arms are full of, bags of food and walk in. And, um, as I'm holding the food, this little 4-year-old girl comes up and grabs my legs and, you know, I was like, oh my gosh, like, she's adorable and put the food down.
And I, you know, just said, Hey, what's your name? And she said, my name is Harmony. And she said, she said I'm here with my sister. And I was like, wow, you were so brave. And she, you know, she was, [00:21:00] she didn't know what was going on. She had just been removed. And, um, and it really just, it really stuck with me, this little girl and her finding safety in her 11-year-old sister that was with her.
And so after we ate, I went and. Talked to one of the DCS workers and just said, Hey, what's the story with Harmony? And, and, um, and she said, well, there's not a home in Shelby County that can, that can take harmony and her sister. So we're about to split them up. And I just thought to myself, how is that possible that there's not a home that can take a 4-year-old little girl and an 11-year-old little girl?
And there wasn't, now DCS wasn't, they wanted to keep those kids together in that county, but one sister went 30 miles one way and the other went, 30, 30 miles the other way. And it was just like [00:22:00] if churches knew this happened here they would do something about it. And so part of it is this.
This might be a strong term, this kind of wickedness that happens under our nose that we just don't know. And our argument is that you should know. Particularly churches, they should know what's happening in their county. They should be really involved in this stuff. Uh, because I think people will do something if they know,
Carli: and I would imagine so the stats show that it's roughly 15 counties in the state of Tennessee that send more than half of kids into the foster care system.
So it's no slight on them. Like it's not a judgment thing. But it does seem like the counties that really need the help are the ones that are struggling the most. And it makes sense that those counties don't have the support or the families available because the need is so crushing
Lance: Correct.
Carli: In those areas.
And so how. How does that make it even more [00:23:00] complicated, right? Mm-hmm. So if you're trying to keep 'em in a county, but you've got 15 counties that are kind of overrun with this problem, where do these churches even begin? How do we communicate to them?
Lance: You have to look at two numbers, the number of kids in care, right?
And the percentage portion as well. So it's, it's not just a quantity game, it's also a percentage game. And so if you look at like, total population in the county versus you know, the number may look smaller. So in fill in the blank county, well, it looks like they have less foster children. Well, the reality is from a percentage perspective, it's actually so much higher than in these higher concentrated areas.
And so. Folks think, well, it's just our major metropolitan areas that have a foster care problem. That is not true. A lot of our rural counties also struggle with this from a percentage of population. And so what you, what you're asking is the right question is how do you resource, [00:24:00] you know, counties especially that don't have their rural and maybe don't have the amount of people is just really tracking how many more foster homes do we need in this county to serve the kids that we have?
And that's a number that is, is not a, a stagnant number. Right. It's going to grow and we have some sense of it. But it is important for us to be aware of that information, to be tracking it, that, we, we certainly have very strong feelings about our faith community being informed by this data.
Because it is our belief that they. Want to do something about it, but to what you alluded to earlier, it's like, well, either I didn't know or I don't know how to help. Mm-hmm. We wanna eliminate that problem.
Spencer: And just definitionally, when you say the term foster home, does that mean a family that makes their home available to take kids in?
Or is a foster home more of an institution that may have a series of different homes on a kind [00:25:00] of campus, so to speak?
Lance: Yeah. So. No, I mean an actual home. Okay. A a family-like setting.
Spencer: Okay.
Lance: The latter is referred to more of like a group home.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lance: And so when a young person comes in, there's a, there's actually kind of a, a scale that they look at one through four.
One is more of your traditional foster home. So this would be going through the department of children's service, department of children's services, getting licensed and taking in a child that, um, maybe is not showing a lot of trauma or behavioral issues. Then as those children present with more issues, A two and a three would be more of a therapeutic home.
And so we have providers here in the state that work specifically with therapeutic foster homes that get more support. And then when a child is at kind of a four level, they will typically go to some type of residential treatment for some period of time. They can address maybe potential [00:26:00] medication or some behavioral needs or, you know, you mentioned certain kinds of trauma, sexual trauma where they'll go and get more regulated, but then they'll need to step down.
Mm-hmm. Right. And so it is a logistics and you know, logistics. Well, it's very complex.
Spencer: Yeah. I think it's just really important that we spent the time that we did on this one, because I really appreciate your story about harmony. And knowing that there's not a happy ending to that story, right? Those two got separated and they went 30 miles in opposite directions and who knows what's gonna happen.
And I think those stories are really important in raising awareness that these are real lives and real kids. And it is imperative that at a minimum we are aware it's happening.
Lance: That's right.
Spencer: And only from that place can we actually. Figure out whether [00:27:00] we want to do something about it. Right.
I mean, that's really the core ugly question is like, do you care?
Lance: Yeah.
Spencer: Do you care? Do the churches care?
Lance: Yeah.
Spencer: And I'm just thankful to get to spend that time on it so we could spend a lot of time there.
Carli: Yeah. Before we move on, I do have one thing that you mentioned that I think is uniquely important for people in the church community to talk about too is the burnout rate of foster parents.
Yes. 'cause okay. There's this sliding scale of. How to support and help. And we're saying, Hey, churches, you need to do this. But if people are burning out at a fast rate, we also need to be aware in our churches and our communities of okay, if who are the foster parents?
Lance: That's exactly right.
Carli: If I'm not called to do this, I am called to probably support the people that are That's right.
Yeah. So what does, what does that stats, can we talk about that for a quick minute?
Lance: Yeah. Yeah. So it is why so we spent a lot of time on recruitment.
Carli: Yeah.
Lance: And you know, we don't have to get into the mechanics of how we did that, but how do we modernize recruitment so that we [00:28:00] can ensure best practices from the time somebody raises their hand and says, I'm interested all the way until they received the first placement.
But you can't have a recruitment strategy without a retention strategy. 50% of foster families leave within the first year.
Carli: Mm-hmm.
Lance: Right? And so if you have,
Carli: well, that's a staggering
Lance: stat. Staggering. And understandably, right? They're on their own. It is complicated, the turnover rates just, it's, it's hard.
It's very hard. The amount of, you have to be in court, you have to work with the biological family. Like there are all these requirements. And then also you're bringing in a child into your home. If you have kids, there's complexity. Not saying it's not worth it, but it is a significant ask. But if you're not supporting our existing foster families mm-hmm.
Uh, you know, you just mentioned something that's really important. Hey, we may not be in a place to foster right now. But we can support a family that is. And so our strategy for [00:29:00] retention is through something called WRAP teams. And that is seven families, you know, work together to support one existing foster family.
And, and we use one of our partners that goes across the states and trains churches on how to set up actual wrap teams. And so we've seen hundreds and hundreds of foster families now get supported with these wrap teams just to extend the life of that foster family so they can stay in the game longer.
Respite care, laundry, bringing meals over, it is critical that we prioritize supporting our foster families.
Carli: Yeah,
Spencer: I think that's a great call out. 'cause I, another example of that wrap is giving a date night to a foster couple. Yeah. That is amazing. I've heard some incredible stats, just how hard it is for.
A non foster family to get a date night.
Lance: Yeah. Yeah. She's over there kind of like notching you.
Spencer: Yeah. You know,
Carli: but to finish your sentences without ears.
Lance: Yeah.
Spencer: Yeah.
Carli: You
Lance: know,
Spencer: and especially when you're [00:30:00] dealing with a situation that is already disruptive Yep. To a normal family unit, to be able to just go and feel like a normal human being.
Yep. Especially in the situations that are higher on that scale.
Lance: That's right.
Spencer: And I think that's just that whole awareness is what is able to activate those moments of like, we do care. Yeah. Like, there's very few people that are gonna argue and say, we're not here for children's best.
Lance: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Spencer: But then, well, what do I do about it?
Yeah.
Lance: It's shifting the thinking from this is the government's problem to solve.
Carli: Yep. Yeah.
Lance: They cannot solve this problem. The state cannot be in relationship in the same way that. A foster family can be, it's, it, it's not designed to be in relationship. So I would say at a philosophical level, the reason why our office exists is to shift the thinking from, vulnerable people are government's, people to, no, no, no [00:31:00] vulnerable people.
They're my people, they're my neighbor. I have a significant responsibility to play. And I think as the size and scope of government has expanded over the last 50 years, it has pushed out the church and it has pushed out individuals thinking that they have a role to play. And what we're saying is, no, this doesn't get solved without people like you and me saying, this is where I'll pick up the slack.
Spencer: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Okay. So let's go to the second silo volunteer mentorship initiative. So this one addresses another. Section of the population, which is really in a tough spot. The stats being a numbers guy is if you come out of prison, the recidivism rate is 70%. Seven outta 10 people when you come outta prison will go back, and that's a horrifying number.
The results though, from what your initiative [00:32:00] has been producing just over the last handful of years is that that 70% figure has been cut to 35%. We have cut that recidivism rate by half as of the result of this initiative. So just as a quick recap, remind us what it is. Yeah, you talked it earlier, but I just wanna hear it one more time and then let's talk for a second on that.
Lance: The initiative is part of it is understanding Governor Lee's background. 30 years ago governor Lee started mentoring. Men and women in and out of prison with a ministry called Men of Valor. And it was through that experience and others where he got really impassionate about, you know, around politics and and prison reform and just was really exposed to how the system works.
And so when he came into office, one of the things that he wanted to see was at scale, how do we see a mentorship initiative that [00:33:00] is in all 14 of our state prisons? And so we have started this volunteer mentorship initiative that invites all Tennesseans men and women to commit to an 18 month process that they will go into a prison once a month for two hours and meet with their mentee.
For 12 months. So one time every month, 12 times, and then upon release that they will stay in touch with and encourage their mentee for six months. And so that's, that is the, the volunteer mentorship in in how it functions.
Spencer: Having participated in this myself, Lance, the experience is unlike anything else I've really personally had where you're going into sometimes a maximum security prison, which in and of itself is surreal.
Like [00:34:00] you're driving on the way you get there, there's, 15 feet high of fence and barbed wire security is about two or three times what TSA is right at the airport. You feel, you identity. Stripped away as you go into this setting and the spiritual oppression there is intense. It is palpable.
You feel it. And to go inside and to meet with some of these individuals that they never had a chance in life. Some of these men and women you talk to have had every trauma and abuse that you could imagine. And I sit there across from them and saying, you know, if I had half of what you had to go through in life, I would've been four times as violent and 12 times as long of a sentence as you.
Right, it's [00:35:00] incredible what you see there, but the commitment and what I appreciate so much about the training that. VMI offers is to say, you know, every single person that has been in your mentee's life has walked out on 'em.
Lance: Yep.
Spencer: They've failed 'em. They've said, oh, I'll be there for you. And they're never there.
And so the message of it is that if you sign up for this, you better darn well make sure you fulfill your commitment. Do not be part of the perpetuation of the trauma that has put this individual in prison.
Lance: Yeah.
Spencer: And I just encourage anyone, this is my very first time to ever go inside of a prison, much less have a, a mentee.
And you know, I just. Sat across from the first time, and I was like, listen, I don't know if this is good for you or bad for you because I haven't done this before. Yeah. Um, but I was [00:36:00] like, I'm kind of a, a competitive guy. I am kind of an achiever guy. And if you go back to prison after I've done this for 18 months, like I'm gonna be o for one,
Lance: your batting average is gonna be damaged.
Yeah.
Spencer: And I'm not good with that. Yeah. I was like, so you and I have gotta work together this poor man.
Lance: So it's more about me than it's you. So you That's right. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.
Spencer: And you know what? He loved it, it of course. It's like it brought a smile to his face. Yeah. And he laughed and I was like, listen, I don't know if what I'm doing is the right thing or not.
Yeah. But that's what I think you all's program has done so well, is like, it's just being there to show someone that you care.
Lance: Totally.
Spencer: And that can change the trajectory of someone's entire life.
Lance: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. It is important to note a few things. One, people are in prison because they've committed a crime.
Right. And what we're not saying is that. People should not be accountable or responsible to their actions. Right. It's also important to note that 97% of all 20,000 [00:37:00] individuals currently sitting in one of the 14 state prisons will be getting outta prison at some point in their life. These will be our neighbors, right?
Their kids will go to school with our kids, we will see them at restaurants, right? So how do we want them to reenter? This goes back to this is not a government issue to solve In isolation. We have a responsibility to play. And so just creating the mechanism for you to go and meet somebody that has a very different story from you.
Mm-hmm. But I think probably one of the things, at least for me that shocked me was how much we had in common.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lance: The similarities that we had, you know, my entire. Worldview of someone in prison was so misguided from what I'd seen in TV and movies. Sure. And so to go and to talk to somebody and hear about their life and hear about the story and hear what they want for their life is that, is building this beautiful relationship that is both [00:38:00] allowing somebody to experience someone else's story.
And at the same time you have an opportunity to speak into, Hey, I think you can do this. I think you can successfully get out and I'm gonna be your cheerleader all along the way.
Carli: Yeah. I think there's a ripple effect that you guys probably don't even realize too, is the conversations that we have when Spence comes home have been really robust or,
Lance: you
Carli: know.
Committing to do something every month is a sacrifice for sure. Like people need to understand like, there are things you can't do because you are choosing to do this. That's right. But having those conversations with the kids of like, dad's not here, dad's not doing this, he's doing that.
Lance: Yep.
Carli: Have been, I've started making the same dinner every time he's gone.
So we call it prison chicken. That is. And so they know is awesome that I'm making prison chicken when dad's in prison, but it's made them laugh with their friends. Like, oh, my dad's in prison tonight.
Lance: Right.
Carli: And they're like, what? Yeah. And then they, they share with their friends what daddy's up to, but how many kids say that?[00:39:00]
And it's true. It's not. Yeah. In jest. It's not in a mentorship capacity. And so the conversations we even have been able to have about the logistics, the spiritual warfare around it, the what it feels like to be there has really started to impact our family month after month. And so in the beginning you're like, okay, what are we doing?
But now it's a day. I look forward to. Not just because prison chicken is delicious. Yeah. But because I think it really does yield fruit in our family unit. And I struggle just as a woman sometimes in this season of life with guilt because I wanna be there, I wanna be doing some of these things. Um, and the schedule makes that really hard.
Lance: Mm-hmm.
Carli: Right now.
Lance: Yep.
Carli: But we've been really proactive as being like, if he's there, I'm there.
Lance: Hmm. That's really good.
Carli: And our unit is there. Yeah. And it's not just him going, it's the five rest of us supporting him so that he can go. That's good. And that helps because I think there will be seasons of time [00:40:00] where I get to be out there doing the thing That's right.
And it's not sexy or fun or really even splashy in this day and age to be like, I don't get to do all of these things because I am raising
Lance: Yeah.
Carli: This group. But when we support the person in our household to go and do, it's really good. It's all of us. And so I just, maybe that's relatable for someone listening that Yeah.
Lance: And it may be the inverse, right? Like it may be, yeah. And one family. Sure. Dad's staying at home and making the chicken so true. And, and mom is there, you know? Mm-hmm. We have two prisons in Tennessee that are just women's prisons, and so we need both. But I love that idea of, of like, hey, as a family, right, there's a cost to our family, but it's worth it.
And not just the moments while dad's in there or mom's in there, but like, what are the things that we can talk about? Yeah.
And our family's the same way. When, when I talk to my kids when I'm going in, they just are, I have a seven, nine, and 11-year-old. They're so curious, like
Carli: mm-hmm.
Lance: How is your, how is your ment [00:41:00] mentee doing? Like, what is, what does he do all day? Like, all of that stuff to, to start to humanize these people
Carli: Yeah.
Lance: And give them dignity is so important. Right. That we stopped talking in this like. These are just the worst people in our society that we have no connection with.
There. There are some bad people in prison and people are in prison because they're being held responsible. But both things can exist. And I think that's part of the invitation is to, to wrestle with that as a family.
Spencer: Yeah. And what I like about the program too is that they have to advocate to be in the program.
So it's not like the warden just chooses random Yeah, you're random people and says, all right, you gotta just, they have to want it. And they, they want something different in life, but recognize that they have not had. Do not have the tools to be [00:42:00] able to come back out into a world that has changed dramatically Yes.
From when they went into prison. Yep. Like some of them are serving longer sentences, some of them shorter, but like if you've been in there for any meaningful period of time, it's like, what's ai?
Lance: Correct.
Spencer: Mm-hmm.
Lance: What's a cell phone?
Carli: Mm-hmm.
Spencer: Absolutely.
Lance: What's a smart phone? Yeah. How do I, my banking app?
I mean, it's things that you and I would be like, of course we know how to do that. Yeah. Um, one story I'll share, so at, you know, we do recruit ment, but we also go and recruit mentees. Mm-hmm. And so how this, this initiative was created was with 17 men and women from all across Tennessee that were formally incarcerated.
And we've asked them the question, Hey, what would've been helpful to either have. In a mentor or if you had a mentor, what were the most helpful pieces of that? So this has been created by folks with lived experience. Well, when we go and do our recruitment for mentees, [00:43:00] we bring in one or two of our, we call them our justice impacted council.
And in December when we held our mentee recruitment event, we had 25 men that were there and we were talking. And it was amazing to hear, you know, somebody with lived experience. One, one of the individuals says, I was in this prison. My dad, he was in this prison. My dad died in the gymnasium, which is connected to the room over.
And so he says, I know exactly what you're going through.
Carli: Hmm.
Lance: And one of the guys raised his hand and said, Hey, I, got super teary-eyed in prison with, with a bunch of peers and said, I've, I've been incarcerated for 19 years and I am getting out in a year and I'm scared to death to get outta prison.
Carli: Mm-hmm.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lance: It's so important that we remember that is true for a lot of these individuals. They don't want to go back to [00:44:00] prison. Right. But they do want help in that. And government is a transaction. It cannot be in relationship with these people. It will take Tennesseans that go and, and enter into that relationship with them.
Carli: And to bring the wraparound services here to this too. You mentioned banking apps. A lot of these people, we assume, well, they'll go back to their family or their friends or someone, right. They
Spencer: right,
Carli: quote unquote the metaphorical. They will show them how to do all of these things, and that's just not the case.
So there are case studies of churches that have. Houses where they support. Right. And I know a lot of these, I call 'em the Carol Brigade. I know a lot of my bestie carols that will drive people that just got outta prison Yep. To see, their appointments and show them things and try to help. But this is also a church responsibility.
Totally. We can mentor, but there's gonna be a tangible wraparound need when they get out. Yeah. Of what to do and how to do it.
Lance: I think both the [00:45:00] local church and then the people in the church. Right. Yep. The body of Christ. A few other things, like I think it's fascinating that, a significant portion of our New Testament was written in a prison.
Right. Like, that is very meaningful.
Carli: I love that. Yep.
Lance: The, the other thing is like, there's 20,000 individuals incarcerated between six and 8,000 individuals will get outta prison a year. You, you know, you talked about these kind of reentry houses. Yeah. The lucky ones get in a reentry house, but somebody that's coming out of prison, there's you basically either have supervision, which means probation or parole, or your sentence flattens, meaning you've served your time, you have no other obligation.
Well, if you have flattened your sentence and you have no supervision, no obligation, that sometimes can be harder.
Carli: Mm-hmm.
Lance: Especially if you don't have community like you mentioned.
Carli: Hmm.
Spencer: Yeah. Hmm. So we'll spend just a couple remaining minutes [00:46:00] on the human flourishing component. I sat in a big conference room and saw someone from your team give a presentation that just was so overwhelming in.
Demonstrating the issue and what they showed is, you know, there are literally more than a hundred different resources available to people in need, whether they're federal programs or state programs, and it, they put on this slideshow, this massive cobweb of everything under the sun that you could imagine that someone might need in hard times.
But then the reality that you are gonna have to navigate through these programs to determine eligibility, and to apply and to go through it, it becomes immediately obvious that's never gonna happen.
Carli: Right?
Spencer: Those that are most in trouble. [00:47:00] Are never gonna have the capability, the education, the emotional capacity, the physical address, the internet connection.
Yep. I mean, any number of different things. That's right. The mailing address to be able to receive any of this stuff. And so maybe just spend a minute to talk about that aspect too, because I still can remember what that slide looked like. It made such an impression on me to say I could not navigate that.
Yeah, for sure.
Lance: Yep.
Spencer: There's no way that someone that has all these other things going on in life is gonna be able to get through it.
Lance: That's right. Yeah. 114 federal programs, those make their way down into the state. In Tennessee, the Department of Human Services administer 17 of the larger ones. You know, temporary assistance for needy family, TANF Snap, formerly known as food stamps.
Childcare payments. Right. These are all. Either benefit services or goods for individuals in [00:48:00] crisis, all of them have an eligibility criteria, and a lot of it is economic, right? So your economic eligibility determines what benefits are available to you. The systems aren't connected, so it's not like you go and say, Hey, here's where I'm at, what benefits are available to me?
You literally have to go to each one of them and find out your eligibility criteria. Oh. And if you know you are working a job and you get a little bit of an increase in pay, well that can make you no longer eligible. And so those are called benefit cliffs and they are very hard to navigate for individuals in crisis, our theory is this, what if we served people in programs take a backseat?
And the person is what we're focusing on. And, and the kind of the story that I, it's a really bad example, but in my simple brain it works, is [00:49:00] if, I don't understand the mechanics of how cars work, but if I'm driving my car and I can tell something's wrong and I pull that car into a tire shop, they're gonna put new tires on the car, and I get back on the road and the car's driving funny again, and I see a brake shop, they're gonna put brakes on.
They have a tool and they're going to use that tool. Well, what's needed is someone to do a diagnostic from bumper to bumper and say, it's, it's not the brakes. It's not the tires. Here's what's going on and what's going on. There's interdependencies. Right. So it's there, there's an actual term called a wicked issue, right?
This was developed in the seventies, and it's this idea that, that when you have a complex problem, you, there is not a singular solution for solving that complex problem. Mm-hmm. And so what needs to be created is an actual ecosystem. You have [00:50:00] to create an ecosystem of care and you have to create a singular diagnostic tool.
And what that diagnostic tool will do is it will reveal, not one deficiency, but a set of deficiencies allowing multiple resources to work together at the same time to help increase that person's capacity, to reduce their vulnerability.
Carli: So. This may sound simplistic, but I'm assuming you're working on said diagnostic tool, like,
Lance: yep.
Carli: Where is it? Is it a program? Is it an app? Is it paperwork? Yeah. Like what does that, I mean, it sounds great, but what is it?
Lance: Yeah, so I. We went around the country and tried to find, is anybody working on this at scale? Yeah. It will require technology, it will require some form of case management. And we found a partner out of Arkansas called Restore Hope.
And what they had done was built what I'll call a self-sufficiency tool that it [00:51:00] measures these 12 different domains of self-sufficiency, transportation, education, employment, housing. And so they use a model where they go into a county, it's very specific to a county. And they asset map and they find every available resource, every church, clothing closet, every nonprofit, every state agency that has a a, a shop there and they ask them to join an alliance.
They all sign onto this case management system, and there's a singular diagnostic tool that when a client comes in, it could come in through any of these resources. They run that diagnostic tool and reveal a set of deficiencies. But because all of the resources are already on the technology they get assigned to that person's case and then in 30 days they retest and we're not interested in activity, we're interested in outcomes.
Is that person no longer in need of [00:52:00] whatever intervention is required? If I can, one of the things that we found with this model is that it needed more of an emphasis on wellbeing. So the current model stands, its self-sufficiency. Yeah, but if you're familiar, Harvard did a very large global human flourishing research project.
And some of the things that it revealed was some of the most economically poor countries in the world are flourishing the most. And we know here in our country we are among the most wealthy and we're the most sick. And so you can't just look at economic measures or self-sufficiency. You also have to look at wellbeing.
Carli: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Lance: So human flourishing sits at the intersection of self-sufficiency, these 12 domains and wellbeing.
Carli: Mm-hmm. That's so good.
Spencer: I think that's a [00:53:00] great way to capture a lot of what your whole role is. Exactly. Mm-hmm. You have your domains and you're trying to view it through lenses that are both traditional but also unique.
Engaging in resources that you are able to speak a little bit of a different language than classic church or classic government.
Lance: That's
Spencer: right. Uh, and that's amazing to hear all the different things that Governor Lee has made as a priority for you to work on.
Lance: Yeah.
Spencer: Yeah. Um, Lance, the way that we land each episode is I give three short phrases for you to fill in the blank.
So if you'll just finish it with a word or a short thought that you think finishes it, uh, and if you'll just repeat the prompt back to me. Okay. Uh, at the start. Okay. You ready? Okay. Oh, they gave me four this time. This just never happened before. Uhoh, I've got four. All right. Here we go. [00:54:00] Number one, the biggest barrier to long-term change is blank.
I.
Lance: The biggest barrier to long-term change is people seeing themself as the solution.
Spencer: The system fails people when blank.
Lance: The system fails people when it over promises what it can do.
Spencer: Number three, faith and government work best together when blank.
Lance: Faith and government work best together when they have a shared vision. Mm-hmm.
Spencer: And number four, when this model takes root in one community, it looks like blank.
Lance: When this model takes root in one community, it looks like. Everybody sees how they can work towards a lasting solution.
Spencer: Lance, as I started off the episode, [00:55:00] I really have come to know you as a friend and have gotten to see your heart in a variety of different settings. I've gotten to see you speak on stage, and I've gotten to see you in settings like this. I also get to see you in private settings when there's no cameras on, and I can tell your authenticity and the unique calling that the Lord has upon your life is something that I've appreciated getting to play out in a variety of ways because the stuff that you deal with is heavy.
It's angering. Like even in this episode, I find myself getting angry about things and what you. Have to carry through that, yet you find a way to do it with empathy and mercy and realism and [00:56:00] storytelling. All of it is just clear equipping to be able to do what you do. And so I appreciate you taking the time to help Carla and I navigate through some of the domains that, uh, you've been given to Steward over.
And I hope it connects with people that have had the chance to listen to say, I do care about these things. And yes, that caring is gonna look really different and unique for me and my family unit, but here is how we can put our thumb on the scale. And I appreciate you bringing that to life for everybody.
Lance: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you for your kind words. You know, it's. It's a matter of when you see something, you have to make a decision. Are you gonna ignore it or are you gonna do something about it? And everybody's doing something about it will look different. We talked about that is what [00:57:00] can I do about it?
Carli: Yeah.
Lance: And I got a phone call three and a half years ago. I didn't know who the governor was. I didn't know that there was a faith-based office.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lance: And so it has been an honor to work with Governor Lee, if, you know, if you've not heard his story of he has experienced immense tragedy and the way that he has been shaped through that.
And how this office got set up. I think there's so much more opportunity than even what we're seeing now. Yeah. There's. Endless amount of ways that both churches and nonprofits and government can work together to see our neighbors flourish. Truly,
Spencer: Lance Lio, executive director of the Governor's Faith-Based in Community [00:58:00] Initiative First, who knew there was such a job title that you could have inside of government. He's an appointed individual by Governor Lee and playing a super unique role that's also like a classically Tennessee role. Mm-hmm.
Like it's what you would expect out of Tennessee that. Maybe is pushing the boundaries of what faith can technically do inside of government, but the results speak for themselves. And I love that it's kind of an entrepreneurial spirit of, I'm doing this and asking for permission later or ask for forgiveness later.
But we're helping kids and we're saving prisoners and we're doing things that people are gonna have a hard time casting stones at.
Carli: Yeah, you tell a story about us a lot when we're on the road and doing stuff that says it. Several years ago, you and I started praying together that the Lord would break our heart for what breaks his, and it led [00:59:00] to you always say it's the scariest prayer you can pray, because it's led us on a lot of paths that we never expected to be on and some maybe wouldn't have chosen, but.
Don't regret it at all. And I think this is one of those podcasts that's an answer to that prayer is, everything that Lance is talking about is something that you and I have been wrestling with that has been breaking our hearts mm-hmm. Since we started talking about that. And I, I think this is one of those podcasts, which Lance is such a nice guy, he's articulate.
You kind of wanna go like get coffee or a beer with him and hang out, but you can't listen to what he does with neutrality. You can't leave being like, so glad he does that. You know, it's a call to arms for all of us that if this remotely broke your heart, there is a job for each of us to do.
Spencer: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Scripture is really clear that we are to care for the least of these and it's widows and [01:00:00] orphans and those in prison. Like it's right there in black and white. And what I appreciate about. Lance's perspective is that he is ready to meet people where they are able to help. Mm-hmm. And he's very realistic to say the overwhelming majority of people in Tennessee can't be foster families for any number of different reasons.
But you can wrap around a foster family. Mm-hmm. Or you can wrap around an inmate in prison, or you could wrap around somebody in a moment of crisis. There's a lot of avenues and openings to say what you're able to do, especially if you're a church organization, which has much more capacity than an individual by design.
There's definitely ways for them to put their finger on the scale. And [01:01:00] make an impact.
Carli: Yeah, and I think one thing that's encouraging to me is just that phrase that done is better than perfect. Like even if you are called to foster or do all these things, you are never, ever, ever gonna do it perfectly. It is never gonna be the right time.
You're never gonna have the resources. And even talking about you being a mentor in this season of how we make it work for our family dynamic, it's like on paper, there's no reason that should work. And we don't do it perfectly, but we do our best. And I think we can hold ourselves back because we're like, oh, maybe next week, maybe when I get over this cold or get past this holiday, or whatever it is.
And the truth is, there will never be a time when you don't have an excuse and a really, really good one. To step back and let someone else handle it. And I think I'm talking to myself in this moment of being super convicted that what is the one next right step that we could do as a family or me as in an individual knowing that it [01:02:00] will be a hot mess?
Because half the time I'm a hot mess. And that's okay.
Spencer: There's nothing quite like visiting prison to give you perspective on life.
Carli: Hmm.
Spencer: When I'm walking from my car into maximum security prison, you are allowed to bring your key fob for your vehicle. Not the rest of the key chain, just the key fob and your id, not your wallet, not your phone.
You can't wear anything elastic. You have to wear certain materials. You can't bring a pin in. That is a spring loaded pin. You have to have one of the pens with the caps. Like it's real and it puts in perspective life in a way that visiting someone in a hospital puts life in perspective and gives [01:03:00] you great clarity about, you know, I do have things that I worry about or that consume my thoughts, or I'm mad over, but wow, I am not in maximum security prison 24 7, 365.
And so there is some perspective that comes with getting out of yourself and focusing on someone else for what is going on in their life.
