Church vs Brunch

Kandice Whitaker hosts a discussion on the decline of church attendance among younger generations, highlighting the shift towards brunch over church. The panelists, including Zach Adams, Dr. Brenda Carter, and Reverend Orsella Hughes, explore reasons for this trend, such as the lack of authentic preaching, the focus on outward appearances over inner holiness, and the disconnect between church teachings and real-life application. They also discuss the importance of kindness, inclusivity, and relevance in modern church practices. Reverend Hughes shares her experience with Serenity Ceremonies, a business catering to Christian couples without a church home, emphasizing the need for community and personal connection in faith.

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Transcript

0:00  
Kandice, welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour Podcast, where each week we'll help you navigate the corporate jungle. Here's your host, Kandice Whitaker,

0:12  
welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast, friends. Here we focus on personal growth, career growth and entrepreneurship, our family, who are your virtual coworkers, are dedicated to providing you with the tools and insights to turn your dreams into reality and help you get your money up. In each episode, we'll explore strategies rooted in my framework, the bail method of resilience, designed to guide you in conquering challenges and thrive. I'm your host, Kandice Whitaker, and at the age of 21 I was a determined young mother of two who wanted to ensure my best possible life and defy the odds. So I took steps towards achieving the life I desire. I got my master's degree. Then I was a sought after consultant, which led me to starting my own company. I have a passion for helping people live their life to the fullest through resilience, using the bail yourself out approach. So I'm happy you're here. Kick off your shoes and relax your feet, fill up your favorite drink, because the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast is about to start now. Hey, y'all Hey, welcome to the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast. And I'm so excited about today's episode, because we got some old friends and we got some new friends. Y'all, so in today's lounge, we have friend to the show, Zach Adams, who's a therapist in the mid Atlantic. Y'all, so Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. We have Dr Brenda Carter, friend to the show, author, keynote speaker and business psychologist and our new friend, Reverend orcella Hughes, who's pastor of the St Luke's AME Church in uptown, baby Harlem, USA, and the founder and CEO of serenity ceremonies. Welcome to the lounge, friends. So y'all, today's episode is an interesting episode that I've been thinking about for quite a while, because a church kid, those of y'all who don't know I am a church kid, I grew up in the church. I don't ever remember not going to church. So being a Christian having a certain set of beliefs and faith has been part of my entire life, right? But as I've gotten older and moved to different places and different spaces, I see that a couple of things, people don't participate in church like they used to, like I am one of the younger people, and I ain't that young, right? I'm in my 40s, and when I talk to my friends who grew up in church, they have a lot of reasons why they don't want to go to church. And let me be honest, if I didn't have kids that I felt like I needed to raise with a certain set of morals and beliefs, I don't know that I would be as dedicated myself. I'ma be real honest, because when put up church versus brunch, sometimes brunch is more fun, yeah, oh, I mean, think about it. Ain't nobody asking you about what seat you sat in at brunch. There's drinks, there's food. They also don't let anybody sing that can't sing at brunch, and they have to sit there with a straight face, hey, oh, I just that's what I said. It's not shade. If it's true, it's not shade. If it's true, we serve a God of excellence. Go find where you can be excellent. If you can't sing, that's okay, cuz it ain't here.

3:35  
Happen to make a joyful noise.

3:40  
He didn't say it in front of the assembly.

You could do that on your own with him.

See, God understands the language of the turtles and the elephants, so he's sounding bad. The assembly is not we don't understand that. I don't understand taro dako, and you sound like one

4:09  
when I don't understand something. I said, I know God didn't put two of those in the ark. He did not put two bad altos in the ark. He didn't do that for

4:24  
I'm like, Y'all stop asking us to accept foolishness like it's normal. Yeah, yeah, that's foolishness anywhere else you would get laughed at in public. And no, it is not entertainment, per se, but it's like, Yo, there's a very real difference between people who can sing and who can't sing. Small tangent, you know, Jermaine Dupri just came out with a video like last week saying RnB is going down because kids ain't growing up in church no more.

4:51  
I just saw that.

4:54  
It's the truth. Yeah, and look, I'm there to touch on this, but it ain't just the singing. Okay, there's some people that can't preach that don't need to be up there, yeah,

5:04  
man, you deep in it.

5:10  
Out there, yeah. Because,

5:12  
to your point, they're not. And if you're not growing up in church, then you're not hearing authentic preaching that actually includes the text, you know, in the Bible, you come on homiletics. You are getting right? You are getting a wonderful motivational speech that's not connected to repentance, sin, forgiveness, and so you just go through life feeling good about yourself, because that's what motivational speaking does. But true, authentic preaching will make you think about who you are in your position and on this world. So now you are spot on with that, with the singing and church overall, like decorum. Oh,

5:58  
Bobby, my husband, he made this. He told me the saying yesterday that he came up with. He was like, I really think people don't realize they're not following actual like people that are disciplined in the word, you're following faith influencers, right? Cuz when you really think about it, they are just faith influencers. It's like,

6:23  
that'll breach his whole self. Well, I will add to the thought process that there are certain preachers who they may have grown up in the church, but their style is say old school, because they say things like, you ain't saved unless you shout, That's not biblical. You're not saved unless you speak in tongues, also not biblical. And then they weaponize the word, and of course, right when the word is preached properly, it should make you examine yourself and be like, Okay, let me get my stuff together. However, comma, I did not put my dry cleaner on to come get a whooping in Jesus name, and then you want me to give an offering for that? What friend man? And

7:07  
it's, it's the true disconnection. And so we're as Psalm 52 so I'm of Gen X, and we were that, so we were that you going to church regardless. And I think that traumatized many of us, and so we said we would not transfer that energy over to our children, and we've allowed our children to make decisions and forget. When the millennials started having children, they weren't they were hardly injured, and so their children really aren't as interested. And there is a responsibility that the pulpit has with making sure that what we are preaching as pastors makes sense to today's family, and two hour long services don't make sense to today's family. Uninterested services does not make sense for today's back in the day, we were forced to do it. We didn't have to be interested in it. We were told to be in it. Now there's an you have to be interested in it.

8:08  
So let me ask you this. Well, actually, before I do that, I had a thought earlier this week, just thinking about us doing this podcast today. And I was thinking about the people who I know, right? And not all of them are Christian. I just talk about Christianity because that's what I am. But knowing everybody that I know, the people who have children and who have raised them in some sort of religion, very generally, have better outcomes than folks who didn't the people I know, and I don't know everybody, but you know, I know people are Jewish, I know people who are Muslim. I know people who are Christian, and they homeschool and they do their own Bible study in the house and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, very new age with it, but the people who have some sort of foundation there, their outcomes are a little bit better with their children. And I don't necessarily correlate that to that one thing, but just thinking about it generally, I was, like,

9:01  
studies that do support that, and even when you talk about, like, marriages and stuff, usually, if there's an anchoring from a religious standpoint, it does produce a better outcome, because there are some guidelines that you naturally live towards. Because it's like, oh, okay, so I'm not going to go out and run out with the first person I see that look good or whatever like, there's a conviction that you feel, and so therefore you abide by that conviction. So there have been studies that do show that when you have some type of anchoring like that, it does help the family structure, part of what I think, where from a church perspective, why people don't want to come as much as is because we didn't clean up what we should have been correcting, and we gave rules to everybody but ourselves, right? And so we told everybody, and I say, when I say, we like because I, you know, same like you. Kandice, I grew up in church, but I was like. One of the kids that was on the backside of the church. I wasn't the Pew baby. I wasn't the one shouting like that. You know, I was in obscurity. Me neither, right? And the thing is,

10:09  
I'm just here, so I don't get fine. But

10:13  
yes, you know, during the 90s, I ain't gonna lie, I started getting my doing my own little thing. And yeah, I got, I got knocked up my head for but so good, um, but nevertheless, what I did find in church, it's, you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't do that. And this is true. There are some guidelines. But then, as I got older, behind the scenes, I'm like, But wait, but you're doing this at a massive scale, hurting people. You let this slide. You let this happen, but you want to get on me about not wearing pantyhose, which makes my lazy, right? Um, pantyhose, yes, and so. And then, as I got older, I saw it become more complex, because, like you mentioned, I saw the word being weaponized. Now, at least I grew up in a church where they taught you about having a relationship with yourself, and so me knowing the word I'm like, but that's out of context. That's not right, and I've seen the oppression that it causes on families, on women, on certain groups, and the control, and it just made me want to be like, I can have my relationship with the Lord. I don't need to be present for that. So y'all can argue all you want about whether I wear jeans to church or not. I'm just going to watch online. So there, there's your argument. You don't have to worry about nobody. Everybody can wear skirts all the way down to the ankles with the pantyhose on. It won't be me. I'm going to watch online. And

11:39  
people also to your point, Dr Carter, not only are they going to watch it online, but they're going to find their connection to the community in different ways. That has always been our connection to all the black church in the community. The black church is connected to the community. The Black church does this in the community. Guess what? People don't need the church anymore to be connected to the community. We are members of divine nine organizations. We are members of civic organizations. It's not the food bank anymore. It's not the diaper bank anymore. It's Yes, okay, this group here, they are touching the community. So I can go do diaper banks over here, and I still don't have to go to your church, because I'm going to tithe, give to the food bank that's doing it. So we have lost the sauce in in the connection with the community, because we have not embraced what the community is actually doing. We're staying in the walls, and the work is happening outside the walls. But because you don't come in the walls anymore you want to go to brunch, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing I've been doing, and not pushing and doing anything differently, until you come back and guess what? They're not going to come back if it's more fun to give out the diapers on Monday night instead of Saturday or Sunday, and then I can just stick with that organization all year long, feel connected to the community, get ministry done, and feel good about myself.

13:07  
There's a lot of things that go in with that. I mean, part of the reason that I stay ame, shout out to the AME, is listening. I am ame. I left for a little while, but, you know, we back. That was my connection to the community and the AME Church's connection to black issues and things that are going on I went to when I lived in Connecticut. I went to a multicultural church, and this is when I decided I needed to go back to the AME Church when I was a little boy in Ohio that got shot for playing with a toy gun at a park. Tamir Rice. When Tamir Rice happened, they didn't even mention it, yeah, and I was like, these are not my people. I must go and you have a son. And I had a son, and this look, this little black boy got shot playing with a gun, with a toy gun, not a real gun. He was playing with a toy in a park, and he got shot, and nobody even mentioned it. I said, No, these are not my people. That was number one. Number two, no, these are not like they are not like us. But number two, when I went to other churches, just going around New Haven because I was a new person there, I didn't really know anybody there. I might be sounding bougie however. You need some credentials to speak. In my life, you can't get ordained on the internet, and so many people have no accountability, no people to say, you ain't crazy. They just open up a church and start taking offerings. And that's problematic. We need to say something about that. You need more credentials to cut my hair, and there are less consequences to cutting my hair wrong than to speaking in my soul wrong. Like, no, this is not okay. Friends,

14:52  
yeah, every profession has regulations except the pulpit. It's not okay. Yeah,

14:57  
this is how you get people who. Get viral videos and they massaging people's private parts. Talk about in Jesus name. I'll get on my nerves with this stupid crap. Oh, my goodness. All right, so this is a good place to take a break. When we get back, we're gonna talk about everybody's thoughts on why they think participation in religion has declined significantly over the years, we'll be back in our virtual happy hour the party never stops. Join your bail yourself out virtual coworkers on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok. Now back to the show. Hey, y'all Hey, we are back in the bail yourself out Happy Hour lounge, we got our new friend guest co host, Reverend orsella Hughes, Zach Adams, and also Dr Brenda Carter. You know, they're friends to the show. Now I want to start with because Brenda and I already kind of told y'all what our relationship was with religion as a child and growing up, but we did not hear from Reverend Hughes. So I'm gonna start there. And then I asked Zach in a second.

16:02  
So like I said, I'm Gen X. So I was brought to church, and there was no option. So from a very right out the balloon, we in church, and soon as you're able to stand on two feet real strong, you go on the junior Usher board, and as soon as the choir will accept you, you won the junior choir, and then you won the youth choir. Then you in the YPD. You were you, I was in church for all my life. And, you know, choir rehearsal, Usher rehearsal, youth trips, all of that. So Church has always been a part of my life. And so as an adult, when it was time for me to make decisions, you know, I went to college, like everyone else, but I stayed home. I was just school in Connecticut, southern Connecticut State University. So I lived on campus for two years, and I still I thought I could be cool and not go to church, but there was a disconnect for me, and so I would have my parents pick me up from my dorm, and we would still go to church. And then when our former choir director was no longer available to direct the children. I said, I'll do it with no music background. So sorry, y'all, I was the one to be no credentials, trying to teach kids and at least

17:10  
sing. Though you can at least sing, I tell you which matter. Right? Singing matters.

17:21  
I do. I do not get on the microphone professing to be Chris at Bucha. I am definitely. I copy what I hear, but I didn't want children to have that disconnect that I had experienced when I was not going to church, so I made a commitment to the to the choir, and then years later, there was a tugging in my spirit to go into ordain ministry, and so I followed that voice, and I followed that inspiration. And so it continues to stay with me, and even outside of church, you know, with the marriage ministry, which we'll talk about probably later, but definitely that's my my connection to church is that from the womb to who I am right now, I've just always been in church, and I love it. I love the community of believers. I love meeting new believers. Yeah, I'm ame, but you check my Facebook wall, I am about as ecumenical as they come.

18:13  
So I know a little bit about Zach's background that I won't tell you, but the one thing I think we all have in common is that we're church kids. And I've met a whole lot of people who are not church kids. We're different. We have a different way of being in the world and a different way of thinking. And it's interesting that I didn't even realize, until kind of putting together this pod, that the majority of my close friends are church kids. Yeah, it's a I

18:40  
didn't, I didn't even

18:42  
realize, like, that's a whole thing we have in common. Because, like, I think there are certain things, like, if you know, you know. And for people who have not been exposed this, like, I feel like I have to explain too much to you, yes, yes. So Zach tell our friends, like, yeah.

18:57  
So for me, very similar. I am a PK. My mom is a elder in the Holiness Church that I grew up in. Yeah, I was five years old when we joined that church. And prior to that, my mom's been saved since she was 16. So So church is all I knew, seven days a week. Of course, growing up in our in this church, water, baptism, speaking in tongues, running up, down the aisle, all the things, right? So church is theoretically fun to some degree as a younger person, but for my own journey, it kind of took a spin once I kind of went through college and then my master's program, and I was like, I can shout, like he do all these things, but like, I want to know God for myself. And that's where the challenge was at, because it's like, I hear the cliches and I can repeat it. But what is God for me? You know, as a millennial, What Does god mean? Like, it's not what my mom talks about. Because. I hadn't got to that point where it was like, you know, I could have lost my mind, right? I hadn't had that yet. So it's like, well, what is God for me? So I went down my own journey, and still am Christian, but it did kind of take me finding my own belief in what that really looked like. And that does come with now, of course, moving to Maryland four years ago now, still not going to a church consistently, so it's been about four years since I've probably been consistently in a church every Sunday.

20:29  
I totally get that Maryland is my third brand new place that I've lived, and finding a church is really hard. It's really, really, really, really hard, really, really, really, really hard. You know, I say it's like finding a pair of shoes. You know, one might look cute and work for Brenda and be great something else for orsella, but I gotta find one that that works for me. Actually, I have a funny story. So you talk about shouting and running around the church when I was looking for a church when I first moved to the DMV. Now, I'm used to people shouting, that's normal. I'm used to people speaking in tongues, also normal. I'm used to people running around the church. But baby, when that lady in the wheelchair kicked that joint into fifth gear and started zooming around the front, oh, I said, If you don't come on, Ada, praise. You

21:22  
stranded. Love

21:24  
that mobile praise, that mobile praise

21:30  
and everything that had breath, come on,

21:33  
praise. Zach, come on, praise,

21:39  
come on. Ada, praise. Whoo, so

21:41  
not the car. They sing that mobile praise. We ma'am, when they get to the BAM. They crutches or their mobile devices, whatever. I love it, they going to move. God,

21:54  
I had a mask on. I was still during COVID time because I had a big smile on my face, and my child said, as soon as we got to the car, I didn't say nothing. I didn't look at her because I said, if I look at her, I'm done. I am going to laugh right now. Did you see that? Was it? I already knew. So that's a

22:15  
good point, though, because even when you talk about raising your kids in church, I noticed that my kids, the stuff that we might have overlooked, right because we grew up in it, whatever? No, these kids will call it out in a heartbeat,

22:27  
in a heartbeat, they're not here. They

22:30  
are not here. What like weirdness? Yeah, they they are not here for any of it. They have no coup. They will not hold they face. They will laugh. They will be like You heard her. She sounded like a nails on a chalkboard. Or, you know, if you preach something that sounds like, you know, culturally, like you know, they going to say it. They will call it out, right? And sometimes they see things that we let slide, and that's what I said, like, we didn't clean up what we should have been correcting, right? And because of that, this younger generation, they see all of that, and they're like, well, we're not going to do that. Deal with this. I don't have to, I don't have to be put in this environment dealing with this in order to feel close to God, right? And so they're finding other ways to even be discipled, because there are people they have access to online where they don't have to do all of that other stuff and deal with the the spiritual hazing that we sometimes experience coming up in church.

23:37  
Come on friend. Well, I'm glad you said spiritual hazing, hazing, because what I have in my notes is from what we were talking about earlier. I was thinking about our generation and how we kind of had this core set of values that everybody understood and tried to abide by. And I think the purpose was the idea of presenting holiness through a set of actions. And then if you don't conform to these prescribed set of actions, then you experience this, the spiritual hazing, as you said. But the problem is, ain't nobody really able to keep that up in real life, because we are all sinners. Say, by the grace of God, we all fall short. And so then you kind of get what and I'm pointing over to what ourselves was saying earlier. Get disappointed by people, because I really feel like, you know God ain't going to let nobody be God in somebody else's life. So essentially, what you're trying to do is prove holiness by a set of actions, which you really can't do. So what are we doing? And choose

24:43  
when you want to to have those standards, because if the person has the right money, if they have the right influence, then you're like, oh well, God forgives, right? And he does, but he doesn't just forgive the person that's padding the church budget. He doesn't just give forgiveness to the person that you think has the most influence and that on the back end could get you in with the politics or whatever. And so when you see like some of that unfairness, it feels like spiritual hazing, because you want me to abide by a different set of rules while you Big Brother, Big Sister, get to discern for yourself. You hear God for yourself on what you should and shouldn't do, but I gotta abide by your rules. And it's like, well, no one wants to experience that level of oppression anymore. We don't came from slavery. We don't moved out our mom or Daddy's house. Like, Ain't nobody trying to go to

25:40  
the well, what happened to kindness? Oh,

25:42  
kindness definitely, just like left the door when people started feeling disrespected. And when I grew up in the church, there was no young adult ministry you, you were just an adult Okay, after you got out of the youth stuff, you went and you did the adult stuff. And I, I'm very vocal about this, even within the AME Church, because I don't believe 40 year olds are young adults. You're adults. So I talk about this at my church all the time, about when we started dividing the church by generation, and it turned out to be, oh, I know more than you, so just follow what I'm saying. It goes right into that. Dr Bren, I promise you every time I say spiritual hazing, I'm going to say your name. It's so real. And I've been trying to tell this to generations that are over, like the 20 year old I said, You all can't lock them out of information, because then when it's time for them to lead, don't don't be mad that they don't know what to do because you wouldn't let them on the line. You know, I'm saying you wouldn't let them in. So here I am shaking up the whole thing like, No, you, you 21 you, you, you have a master. You are making adult decisions. Some of you already married. I got 27 year olds who are married, and I'm not going to put I

27:01  
was married at 20. I was married. Should I not

27:05  
put them on a governing board at the church because they're young? Absolutely not. I'm putting them on because they're young. That's right, that's right. And I'm not calling them a young adult. I'm just calling them a leader, and it's

27:19  
a bit of a pejorative. Think about it. Young Adult in certain situations is a put down. And I am of the generation right after yours, where they just started the young adult thing, and where we started having dances and stuff. And I'm like, but I'm at a church function, and we just got out of church, and y'all playing ruptaker. I am confusion. Yeah, I know we want to have a party, but this what we doing. And then, you know, then you mad when the church conference turns into Freaknik, right? You set the stage for it, friend,

27:54  
you know that wasn't happening in the Holiness Church. So you know, you had to play jackals. And Donnie McClurkin, I at

28:08  
all. Choke hold. Do you understand me?

28:13  
We will stomping it down,

28:16  
though, no y'all should have came to the AME parties. We was lit, and then everybody's sorority and fraternity would come through with their line. I mean, it was Turk turn crazy, crazy at the Adams mark in Philadelphia. Shout out to the Philadelphia conference. Shout out to your lace front. Tony, oh,

28:46  
I'm all triggered back to the 80s and 90s. Okay,

28:48  
let's go back for a second one of the things that you just said, Reverend Hughes, that I would like to address because I was victim of being a young adult who had, oh, some success, and was kind of grabbed into the inner circle of church board and church things, and part of the older generation really actively working to discredit or just make things hostile for no reason, right? And I honestly had a hard time, because initially, kandice's thought was, you don't want me here. Screw you. Okay, I got other things to do on a Tuesday night here too. Okay, I don't need to be here friends. And then the other part of me, my ego, showed up, and was like, I get paid to sit on boards and give them my opinion. You don't want it. Boom, then I got to pray about it. And then God showed me them in a different way. It occurred to me that this is, like, all they had the generation before. This is all they had. They wasn't in boardrooms, yeah? So they have, so they holding. And I mean, I get it, but I have some grace for that, yeah,

29:53  
that part, so I don't care.

29:55  
That's right? And it goes back to what I was saying earlier about the red. Relevance. Okay, we are talking to a generation number one. There are no young adult departments at any job, at any job, okay? That part so that part criminology only exists in the church, in particular in the black church. So to your point that you just made it because I swear it was like falling off my lips while you were saying it. We didn't have social worker in the church, it was big mama that we talked to, right and or the pastor that we cried out to. And so I had just literally two weeks ago at a church conference, pre warned them that the boards are going to look different. Because, number one, we need wellness in our churches as it should, as

30:37  
it should, right, not everything can be the devil. You

30:41  
probably saw my post last week about the new life ministry that's dealing with people with addiction, as if they don't meet at the church. The email is anonymous. You know, we have to look at the needs around us, and so that is to your point. The boards are they're not the same. And I know Zach and Brenda, you have different denominations, but like our young adults are joining, they don't care about a lay organization or a missionary society. They they're not connected to that. Not the new ones coming up, maybe the ones that grew up in the AME Church and whatnot. That's one

31:15  
going to save my inappropriate jokes for the two things you just said, alright, because

31:24  
but if, but if your boards, if you're if the operating system in your church is not connected to the community, please don't expect the community to come in and feel connected. People come they want something different than what they are receiving outside of the church. And so I need to know that my children will feel safe at that church. I want my marriage is safe at that church. And so I look for what is your marriage ministry look like? What is your singles ministry look like? Where do my children get the word? Who are they getting the word from? Are the leaders, do they know the word? So it has to look like, where can I get a change? I'm going to brunch period.

32:10  
I have a story because you said it's my marriage state. So before COVID, we were in Dallas, and we go to a mega ministry, and they was asking my husband, Bobby, to become a deacon. And so if he goes, they want the wife to go as well. So he he's learning the things or whatever. And so then I get sat down by one of the deacons, and he goes, I just, I gotta warn you about some stuff. And he was like, you know, when your husband becomes a deacon, there's going to be things that might happen if he's having to, like, be one of the guards or whatever during the children's ministry the women who are single parent moms, then you talk

32:52  
about church house, church house. We didn't even get to that girl,

33:00  
and he was like, they may come on to him. And then he got one of the older women to come and talk to me. And if you know me, I am not wired that way. Okay, I'm not. I am not prior to, like, it's very I barely got in. I'm still by the door, okay,

33:19  
standing right next to you. So that's why I know space,

33:21  
when Mother Pearl, I'll just say, comes to talk to me, she's trying to teach me about, you know, I guess, how to handle it like a lady No, about to handle this,

33:33  
like, because on this pod, what

33:35  
and why aren't ladies gangsters, sorry, right?

33:38  
I'm like, No, I'm not that one. And she was like, Well, you know, sometimes they have things that they're going through, and they might have a short skirt, and they might try to push up on your husband, and you just gotta pray for No, my version of prayer, yeah, is from the 90s, gangster era of New York. We don't We lay hands a different way. Tuba

33:58  
facts, going high is up for interpretation,

34:01  
plus that movie with Samuel L Jackson prayed before he shot somebody. Oh,

34:07  
yes, that's me. I'm not there yet. I have not been discipled enough yet. And so afterwards, Bobby was like, and this is, you know, us having a strong relationship together, and he knows he's like, as soon as he said that, he was like, I was like, No, this is a it's not because I shouldn't have to sacrifice my marriage or anything like that just to serve in ministry, right? And that thing that we learned even behind the scenes, that's one of the reasons why it took so long. Like, we may go to a service, but we go home, we don't get involved, because behind the scenes, seeing the nastiness, seeing the attacks on marriage, yes, how some pastors even not just the women, because they talk about the women wearing certain clothes, some of these men do it too, to attract the women. When you go in a conference. They got, they mistress in another hotel somewhere, and you sometimes

35:04  
in the same hotel. Yes,

35:06  
I'm in the connecting room.

35:08  
Yes,

35:12  
about what I ought to be doing in my marriage, but you're not doing what you're supposed to do. And we, we just found a possible church home this weekend, and when I went, I felt safe, like I felt like my marriage wouldn't be threatened, or I don't have to worry about my kids, because you gotta understand people, especially in the old church, they put ministry before their marriage, and they expected you to alter and sacrifice it for the sake of saying I showed up, I served in the church, and that never sat right with me. So you may have sacrificed yours, but I'm not sacrificing mine at all. I am mad. I am battling the church too,

35:54  
period. I'm mad at the church. Hope prep, that is ridiculous. That's basically what you got. Because, if you look, listen, because if

36:03  
you want to prep me on the whole,

36:06  
you

36:09  
better presex review. Oh, I love yo. All right, we gonna take a break. Right here. We'll be back

36:23  
join us on Fridays in June and December for real talk, deep dives and a splash of inspiration. Whether you're looking to level up, break free from the grind or just need a good laugh, this is the place for you, so grab your drink. Tune in, and let's get to it.

36:39  
You're listening to the Kandice Whitaker on the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast. Hey, y'all, we back on the bail yourself out Happy Hour podcast with our friends in the lounge today we got Reverend Marcella Hughes, Dr Brenda Carter, and then, of course, friends of the lounge, Zach Adams. What we were just saying over the break, and I said, Yo, this needs to be on the pod is we've lost kindness in the church. And what I was saying was, I have a very low tolerance for being in spaces and places where I'm not like loved and accepted, and for some reason, I don't understand why we and I'm not even going to limit this to church right? In the black community, sometimes we have issues with just regular civility, just being kind to people. So if I'm in a place, you know, I always talk about singing and music in the church, because that's usually my space in the church, right? That's my thing. Grew up with the choir director father, so ended up being a music major, and then, you know, I run from the choir at this point because I don't like the dynamics, I don't like the meanness, I don't like the stupid crap, like I had to explain, and they still got mad at me and they didn't listen. I was like, you know, if you're trying to get more people to join the choir every time we sing, which is really only once a month. Why are you picking a different, obscure color palette? Oh, let's wear yellow and beige and superficially, that seems fine, but I have the money to purchase yellow or beige if I don't have it. What happens to the person who wants to sing and who can sing, but they ain't got money to buy a new outfit every time when y'all decide the week of what you want to wear, and that's not even enough time for temu to send them their outfit from China. I'm just saying, well,

38:27  
that goes to the inclusiveness, you know what I'm saying, because you're not thinking about the different economic you know? And if everybody's there is, like, older and stable, then it's like, yeah, for you, that's automatic, right? But then the other part is we spend, or the church had spent, so much time focusing on the outer, the trappings, looking the part that we never really discipled, on that attitude, on how we treat one another, on things that God actually does care about. Because when you go out into the world, he tells you. He said, there's two things that you should do in life. You should treat others well, you should go out and do good, and you need to fear God, right? That's right. We've gotten away with that because we added our own we said, No, you need to respect this person, right? And when I say respect this person, I don't, I mean in terms of like, show favoritism, right? And that's not respect, it's not respect, right? And you should worry about this, click and make sure you look holy. But I don't want you to actually be holy. I just want you to look holy. I don't want you to be the light, like really be a light, but I do want you to look shiny. Mm, hmm,

39:37  
okay. But meanwhile, you got your yellow and your page on you're not smiling, you look like you are a hostage, like you don't want to do this. You have no victory, no joy. And then wonder why nobody wants to be like you, yeah? What?

39:51  
Yeah. Usually it is a double standard in in kindness of of church, because I can be kind to some people. The. Some people I can't be kind to. That's not one of God, but two. That's not true kindness. It's like a artificial kindness. You know, it can be perceived in a way of kindness, because the pastor's looking when the pastor turns his head, everybody thinks something totally different about you. Do

40:18  
you think this lack of civility, this lack of kindness we described. Do you think that attributes to people picking brunch over church on Sundays? For real?

40:28  
Absolutely

40:31  
yes and no, because not everybody had brunch is civil. So there we sit

40:35  
with our Yeah, you don't have to. You don't have to see them every day, so you don't know. When you go to church, people scour at you. You don't have to do anything. You just come one Sunday looking a

40:48  
little too cute, too cute and then, but also at brunch, there's no expectation. I expect you to be nice at church, but at brunch, I'm just there are no expectations other than we're here to have fun and enjoy each other, and I expect in church to find kindness and love. Listen,

41:08  
the more mimosas you drink, the nicer the crowd is going to get. Then there's

41:12  
that waitress on my waiter to be nice. Don't give me no attitude. And I got right 20% gratuity, yeah,

41:20  
yeah, that's already included on that,

41:24  
because, you know, your cousins ain't going to

41:26  
stop. So the sad part is that we have created these, not created, but we live in these expectations of people in church who can never reach the level of perfection, yet we want it, and there's never going to be that perfect person at brunch at church in our organizations, but for some reason in church, we forget that we are human, and everyone has taken that out of the equation. And so that's why I try at all times to be gracious to anyone that comes to the doors, because I don't know what made them walk through the door. Yes, there are the traditional people that are just coming in, because that's what they do every Sunday. But I still believe that even with that habitual or or that tradition to go to church, there's still something in you that's making you say, I need to be here on Sunday morning and I'm going to give you grace. You don't know what it took me to even prepare the word, you don't know what I'm struggling with, just to try to preach the Word and sing those songs with everyone that so, you know, Kandice, I had two churches where I had to do it all.

42:30  
I mean, now I'm there is a choir. She was a one man band. Y'all seven years

42:35  
of I'm beating the tambourine, I'm leading the song. I'm preaching the Word. And, you know, once a night, you had to go unlock the door in the middle of service, because we didn't unlock it before service started. So you gotta be gracious to people. And we have forgotten that we're human and and we really have to figure out how to let go of the perfection in people that does not exist. I love

42:57  
that you said that, and part of me, as you were saying that the first thing that came to my mind was we did it to ourselves. Yep, I feel like we did it to ourselves, like trying to present this persona of holiness, and we're right, and you need to be like this. We dehumanized ourselves when, in fact, we're like, really, you know, I've heard the church called the hospital. We're a hospital, y'all. We're all sick, all varying levels of sickness, but we all need to be here

43:25  
that should go medicine administered, rather than candy. Like when I see too many people that was good with attitude issues, it means that we have not been administering medicine. We've been administering candy, and so we're not really healing. It's not really getting into the root, like when you go into certain places, you can tell when there's, like, a code of conduct. You can tell when you go to certain churches, like, Oh, I could tell this pastor or First Lady, whoever's preaching they have a requirement to be nice, because you can tell when you go around, they're like, oh my gosh, and you see them loving on each other, and it's not so much that you don't have conflict, because that's a part of being human. But you can tell there's a standard in which it's it's handled. Then when you go to other places, you can tell when it's like, No, we just preach candy, right? We don't necessarily challenge on some of the harder things that require the medicine to say, well, let's talk about it. Like, what's going on to make you want to chase this perfection? Sister Osella, why do you have an attitude? Is something going on right? Like, we don't really get into that healing part of it, or even that growth part of it, to say what's at the core, so that when we can change the truth we're bearing.

44:44  
So one of the things that we were talking about before the show is Reverend or seller has a company where she goes all over the world for real, marrying people who are Christians. See, I didn't know that they were Christians. I just thought they needed to be married. Married who don't necessarily have a church home. So she's found this really dope niche. Look her up, Serenity ceremonies, if y'all getting married. But like, how did you find your tribe? We know they're out there. These are our friends that go to brunch and they like unlimited mimosas with us, right? And

45:17  
I am so glad you introduced it that way, because I love hearing from other clergy about my little business, right? Oh, that's shady. A little business over what? Yeah, or because, or I hear things like, well, what are you going to do with what about your weddings? My What do you mean? What about them? Well, because they think of it as weddings, and that is because of the uptick of people getting ordained online and officiating weddings, and so they mix my business ministry with that type of business I am family ministry that I am intentional in my branding about being an ordained clergy, wedding officiant. I wasn't even looking for this niche. It found me because this generation that's getting married now, they went to college and didn't go back home to their church home that they grew up in. And so wherever they live now, they still think of their church home as their church home, right? I think we're we all do like I go to I'm pastoring, but my church home is still in New Haven, Connecticut, right? And so they have not let go of the connection of church home to where they are now. They call it community. This is where I am now. This is where I'm raising my family. And so when they want to get married like this. This couple I was just talking about before we started the show, they met in church when they were eight years old. Oh, they're now 27 and so when, when I heard that they didn't have a church home, I said, Well, how's it possible? Like, oh, our church home is still at home. That's what they cross the country. That's what they still identify with. And so I would say 98% of my couples are all baby millennials and older Gen X. Well, not well, Gen X is all like the 20s, right? So then I don't have anyone quite that young, but definitely younger millennials in their late 20s, early 30s, who are Christian Faith Based couples come from families that grew up in the church, but they don't have a pastor, or their pastor is whoever baptized them when they were little, and so I'm called their pastor. I remember I am couples who who joined my fellowship, my community of church. They tied at my churches. They when they're in town, they come to wherever I am. It is a niche that only God could have created because I was not even looking for it. Somebody wanted someone to do their wedding, and I did it, and then it just turned into, oh, who did your wedding? And so it, it's grown into this. And I wanted to become trending and viral, like some of the officiants that I see online, it wasn't my thing. I don't got time to train I don't have time to go viral because I still have to pastor people, and I did not want to be someone that's marrying 500 couples a year. Give me my 30, give me my 15 couples a year. That way, I know them. I know their children. I know their I baptize babies, Christian new homes.

48:17  
Lot. That's more than one a month.

48:19  
That's a lot Yes, that's

48:21  
a lot Yes.

48:23  
And when I get when I hit my max, I stopped. So I'm only on 2025, couples, because I just I go through premarital counseling with my couples. It's important that they understand we know what the family means, and according to how God has created the family and love, and how we ought to raise our families and be in community with people. So this, this, this niche I love my couples absolutely over quantity, absolutely I don't need to go viral over this. As long as God gets the glory out of this love and out of these marriages, that's that's what wakes me up every day and really keeps me connected. So when my couples say, Pastor, I get baby invitations. I know pastors who don't get baby shower invitations. I know people who I know pastors who don't marry nearly as many couples as I do. So when I hear clergy say, Oh, it's just, how's your wedding business? I go, baby this is family for me, Michael, they text me to say, Hey, can you baptize my baby? And no, I don't need you to have the altar. I don't need it to be in the church. We going to create a baptism with your family and your community of people who is connected to you. Because you may not live where your community that you grew up with is anymore, but that baby still has every right to be baptized.

49:44  
That's what it's all about, being part of a community and feeling like you're part of the community, and so that's why all those behaviors that we described with people being mean and that kind of stuff, it is the antithesis of what people want. It's into this, you know,

50:01  
it's the that, too, God wants God, that too us to be a welcoming body of believers that first, I

50:08  
was just going to say, it's just a part of that call where Christ wanted you to go out, out, right? And, and sometimes it's, you know, we are the church. You should be the example. But don't just go out and be the example when you are around non believers. There's also another requirement that says that when we are around each other, we should show each other preferential love. So even come around each other our spirits, like I've been around people, where I can tell they're they're a part, they're a believer, right? Yes, and it's like a hundredness that comes out and that that's what, that's what you should see. So we shouldn't get nastier when we're around each other, right? We should put in even that much more effort when we're around each other, you know. But I love what you're doing because it's like, Reverend, you're going out by the highways and the byway, and you're drawing with love, right, right, right? If

51:01  
not for love, then for what? And that's

51:03  
right where we need to wrap it, because that is the whole point of everything we're doing. I can tell this has already got a part two cooking. I feel it in my Shawna. Now I feel it My Spirit. Fill it in my Shawna. Now I want to thank you guys for your time coming to be guests in the happy hour lounge.

51:21  
Thank you. Yes, thank

51:22  
you for having us. How can folks reach you? You hit me up on LinkedIn. My Facebook is for family only, so hit me up on LinkedIn. Doctor,

51:32  
yeah, I'm on Facebook, definitely LinkedIn as well. Tiktok is really my fun stuff.

51:37  
It's don't forget your serenity ceremonies. Friend

51:40  
over that, because my LinkedIn is serenity ceremonies. Of course, Serenity ceremonies.com is where you find the wedding business, but sure

51:48  
if you need a keynote speaker. WW, yup. Linda l Carter com, that's

51:55  
exactly right. Alright. Y'all, thank you for listening. I love you, and I mean it peace. Wasn't that a great interview. Hold up before you grab your hat and head out, make sure you make your way to facebook and join the bail yourself out pod Facebook group. That's where you'll find your virtual coworkers luxuriating and chatting. Thank you so much for listening, and if you enjoy the show, please leave a review. That's how we keep the lights on if you're on social media, follow your girl, Kandice, with a K Whitaker. And you know what? I'd love to hear from you with that I love you, and I mean it because there are people who hate in the world for no reason. I choose to love for no reason. I believe that the great Martin Luther King Jr said hate is too great a burden to bear, so I choose to love. Peace. Y'all. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai