(Transcribed by TurboScribe. Go Unlimited to remove this message.)

Welcome back to our GoTime Podcast. I'm Claire Kingsley, and today we're sitting down with Andy and Janet Singletary. They are located in San Jose, California, partnered with Servant Partners.

We last interviewed them back in 2020, right in the thick of COVID, and a lot has changed since then, in the world, in their family, and in their ministry. They've described this current season of life with a phrase that really stuck with me, a season of depth, not breadth. Today, we're going to find out what that means, what God has been doing in the quiet and the hard, and how we as a church can pray with them.

Thanks for listening. Hi, guys. Welcome back. 

Hi, Claire. Hello. Thank you so much for carving out time to be with us today and record a podcast, and we're excited to see you in person in just a few weeks here. 

All right, so to start, a lot has changed since we last spoke. Paint us a picture from September 2020 to today. What has changed in your ministry and what has stayed the same? Yeah, so September 2020, I think there's stuff that's changed in our ministry, but then also the world. 

We're living through a global pandemic, and so at that time, most of our congregation was isolating, and so we weren't in community as well together. Coming out of that season, when we were able to start meeting back together, we did have significant loss, and so the pastors that we are partnering with did transition out after COVID, and after we started back in the fall of 21, it started at the beginning of their departure process. Yeah, so basically from that time, maybe starting in early 22, Andy and I started leading locally our church plant, Shalom Iglesia del Pacto, and yeah, neither one of us had wanted to necessarily have that be our vocation where we're pastoring a small church plant, but I guess it's been the last four years of our lives and had some ups and downs. 

Yeah, I mean, I think our church in that time in 2020 was a pretty even mixture between relatively young in their faith, unchurched, neighbors who had been introduced to the church and to Jesus by our servant partners, interns, and staff, and the other half were older, more traditional, well-churched Latino folks who were less culturally and language-lingually agile, and it was kind of like that other pastor family were leading that section of the church, and Janet and I were leading the younger section. So since that couple left, a loss for the church has been a lot of that older, more traditional population, but a sort of weird other side of the coin gain is I think we feel that the church as it is now is more a people who respond to our leadership and who we feel were able to lead. So for us to have been the pastors, the leaders of the church back then would have been really hard and might not have worked very well, and it works a lot more smoothly now than it did. 

Another part of that is, you know, you're saying the other side of the coin, and yet, I mean, four years later, so about, you know, six months or a year ago or so, some of those older folks who had transitioned out at that time when the family left have come back, and they had said they tried some other places and just couldn't find a place that would fully accept people as they are and, you know, were able to articulate, like, oh, it may be difficult for us to have to hold different languages, different cultural backgrounds, or even, you know, as Latinos, sort of their prejudice against folks who are involved in gangs or who, yeah, are trying to make their way towards Jesus slowly and not in a immediate everything is different in their lives kind of way and just sort of, yeah, seeing the beauty in that and being able to bring themselves back, and so, yeah, so even though we didn't see ourselves leading in that way, we are now at this current juncture, you know, so to close the picture, the church is back to a little bit more of a mix of folks, and so we are having to always make sure that we're translating, make sure that we're, yeah, providing for both sides of the coin and all the different parts in between. Okay, so that was something that when we talked long ago that was a gift to you. You guys were celebrating, like, your fifth anniversary with that church, and thank you for the updates there.

You guys have also had some things change within your roles within your organization, Servant Partners, so would you like to talk a little bit about that? For me, after that time, I was invited, I think, right in that season to be the director of fund development for Servant Partners organization. I asked for a little bit of time before I started. I wanted to make sure Nyle got off to college and that I could really fully give myself to a new role and organizationally, so yeah, so I've been doing that now for three or four years, and yeah, so that has been beautiful. 

I've always loved fundraising and really enjoyed doing that for myself, but then also for our team. As long as our San Jose team has been around, which is over a decade, we've been doing, or yeah, at least for the last 10 or so years, we've been doing a communal pot, and so just making sure that our whole staff team raises together, and so all of our salaries, all of our everything is raised together, and that was an innovative new thing that Servant Partners allowed us to do, and then it just gave me sort of the impetus to be able to try new things for the whole organization to make sure that staff who feel called to ministry who come from under-resourced backgrounds, who come from places where maybe their families weren't Christian, and so they have a really hard time raising funds, that we make new pathways and new ways for folks to get funded and be able to sustain and to stay on staff for a long time along with their calling instead of burning out because they aren't able to raise funds to stay on staff. And Andy, you're still working with the publishing arm of Servant Partners. 

How's that been going? It's been going okay. Yeah, so I think six years ago, I was the entirety of Servant Partners Press department of Servant Partners. Now, my team has grown, and I actually, I'm the editor, but someone else is the publisher, so in terms of that department, he's really the director. 

But yeah, we've tried out some things. We published a zine called The Mural. So the work of Servant Partners can be very serious and very heavy, but it's also, we have pockets of beauty, and we need time to reflect on all of that. 

So The Mural was an attempt to open up space for that. The idea is that in many of our neighborhoods, the walls are the places where art happens, so murals is the embodiment of that. So that was going somewhat strong for a few years. 

It's tapered off now, but that was an important expression of Servant Partners Press. Yeah, and we're continually trying to refine what we're doing as a press and how we're serving the ministry. Okay.

So I think that my role hasn't so much changed, but the team has grown, and I feel more integrated in Servant Partners as I as the press publisher now. Thank you. You look cute.

You've used the phrase season of depth, not breadth, to describe your life right now. So when did it start to feel true to you? When did that start to feel true, and what does that look like from day to day? I mean, I think I would say it's probably marked by the transition of us into leadership, and I think in that season where we had the transition, we're able to hone in a little bit more our teaching and sort of what we're about, what we wanted to do, our focus, and things like that. So yeah, a couple of years ago, I had a number of baptisms, people really wanting to choose into their faith, and that's where I was saying earlier that folks were understanding that our call to them was a call towards Jesus, and that maybe not every decision that they're making in life was fully aligned with Jesus quite yet, but they're moving in that direction, and they wanted to make a proclamation that they're choosing Jesus and that they were wanting to make that public for folks, for our community, for themselves, and only for all those folks that got baptized, we've only seen that depth grow for them as they maybe fail and make mistakes and come back and repent and want to see more of God in their lives, want to see more community in their lives. 

It's been really beautiful to see and to watch that, and then I think for us, values, Serving Partners values integrated into the church that are not just, and not that it's bad, but not just knowledge mentally of scripture, but actively being able to live out the book of Acts and caring for folks outside of ourselves, things like that, so I feel like especially in this last season, Andy's experiment with what the rhythms of church can look like have really caused people to not just know or read their faith, but experience it with real life and with other people. Yeah, this year we started a new rhythm where each month of the four or five Sundays, those will include a Sunday of contemplative worship, a Sunday of fellowship where we share a meal together, that is churches just being together and having a communal time, a Sunday where we go out and do some kind of outreach or service in the community, and then a Sunday of praise and testimony. I think an expression of the depth and not the breadth is that people have really latched onto that, I think. 

I was worried that the Sundays that are a little bit more experimental, a little bit more weird, nobody was going to show up to them. That first time in January, it was a rainy day, and we were doing church at somebody's house rather than the church building, so yeah, I was preparing myself for a sparse crowd. No parking.

Yeah, there's no street parking. There's no driveway at the house. Yeah, but literally everybody who was in town that day came for the meal.

That has held true, I think almost totally, through the year. I think that's pressing our expression and our understanding of what church can be in a deeper way and getting into people's day-to-day lives and experience. So that format is an expression of Acts 2, the end of Chapter 2 of Acts, where it describes the early church really living life together.

So each of the four kinds of church service is taken directly from something that the church was doing at the time. My thought for it initially was we spent a lot of energy putting on the church service and sometimes would have a small crowd and had a feeling of like, is it worth it? So I was trying to come up with a way to spend some of that energy in different ways in moving people, teaching people in different modalities, different ways. Yeah, so Acts 2 is my inspiration for that.

Some of our biggest concerns around actually doing it is how we communicate. On the Sundays, we're not just three o'clock at the church building, having worship where people can slide in at 315 or 320 or whatever. How will everyone know where we're going to be, where we're meeting? We're meeting in a neighborhood today to do a prayer walk and neighborhood cleanup, be here at this time, or we're partnering with another organization to serve food at a park.

The timing is a little bit off. So I think everyone was a little bit concerned about communication and how to get the word out. But again, some of the beauty of Not Breath is that we're not that big.

And so I just send out a text to everybody somewhat individually. We put it in the group text, but I text people individually and let them know what's happening and when it's happening and people show up. And so it's been really, really beautiful.

Good. Thank you for sharing that with us. A phrase that you guys used in the last podcast was incarnational ministry, or just like living alongside, living with. 

And so that type of work is slow. It's relational work, which takes a lot of time. It's not like results driven.

And it's not typically stuff that makes it into maybe newsletters or email updates because it is so drawn out. But we've had five or six years of that work, more of that work since our last time talking with you. And so what have you seen God doing in your lives or in the lives of people around you because of the way that you're living? I mean, I think sharing a bit about the folks who got baptized a few years ago, two of the three or four folks who got baptized, two of them are a couple together with four kids. 

And I think living life on life with them, they would do Bible study with us for a long time before they were sort of fully choosing into Jesus. And so I think what we've seen is just their becoming totally all in with community. I think for many folks who come from the neighborhood, trusting outside of the gang you're involved in or your blood family is just unheard of. 

And especially if that community is different cultures, different ages, who are these people? How can you trust them? And so it was a really long flow trickle for those who were following along. I've known some of these folks for more than 10 years at this point. And they're sort of finally fully in where when there's trouble, the first call is to our church or to someone in the community to say, oh, something is happening. 

We need help. We need just support. We need prayer versus we're going to handle it on our own. 

We're not going to tell anyone. We feel ashamed to share that something's happening. So for the couple, they got evicted from their home a couple of months ago, and they did come to us immediately. 

And we're like, we're probably going to need help in the transition to a new place. We're going to need help with different things. And I know that this happened to them before. 

And in those times, they're just scrambling, and they don't know what to do, and it becomes very dire. And so it's just a more beautiful picture, I think, this time. And then I think also just with the supportive community, because they've gotten benevolence before, we've also helped them to be in financial classes or financial counseling, making budgets, those kinds of things, so that their life skills are also growing in the midst of their reliance on community. 

And so they were able to apply for a new apartment, be approved, and all that stuff took a lot less hand-holding from us than in seasons past. And so that has been just really beautiful. Those are part of the signs of transformation that Serve Our Partners is really about, is helping folks to get out of chains of oppression or just cycles of old things where, because they're around other folks and they're seeing a different way of life, they're able to live into that themselves. 

And then another one of the ones who was baptized, Anna, she was in a life where she, in domestic violence and different things that were happening for her. And yeah, even in this season, more recently, that person came back, vandalized their door, knocked it down. And sort of, we were the first call to have help and to walk alongside, to go to court with her, to help her to be brave in trying to protect her children and herself.

And so, whereas I think in the past she might've gone back with him or we've seen her go back with him or choose that maybe that's all there was for her. And so I think they're making choices towards Jesus, helps them to see more value in who they are and what they're able to receive from God and from community and believe to be true about their own value and who they are. I'm so glad you share it because that's like, how do you summarize that in an email newsletter? That's really hard, but yeah, totally worth sharing. 

So thank you so much for taking the time. Did you want to say something, Andy? The Serpent Binder San Jose site started 15 years ago because Janet and I were leading a class of interns. So young adults who come to get some experience and some training and do a different incarnational ministry living with us alongside us to do urban ministry. 

And we are less fully invested in that work now, but our site as a whole still hosts intern classes. And inevitably, they come with a little bit of a savior, I'm going to come in and rescue people kind of mentality. Even if they're aware of that, there's no stopping it. 

There's a little bit of that story of I'm the hero and people's lives are going to change because I'm moving in to the neighborhood with them. So some of that breadth, but not depth, depth, but not breadth, sorry. And that slow work of incarnational ministry is modeling for the interns that the deepest kind of ministry is just being with people, living alongside them and yeah, being friends, being neighbors with people and trusting God to be the savior, the rescuer. 

And a lot of it is waiting for that to happen and for people to receive that. And then I think also with the intern classes, like the current one that we have of interns is a made up with a few folks who grew up in our neighborhood and lived life in that difficult way and were able to, they're returners, so they were able to go to college, but then felt the call to come back. And so then they're back in the neighborhood and they choose to do the internship to figure out what is it instead of relocators, folks who never lived in this kind of neighborhood, went to college and then want to do this with their lives. 

But, oh, we lived here, we know this context and we went away and we got it, we got education, we experienced things, but we want to be the ones to walk alongside our neighbors and have, and what a beautiful testimony for folks in the neighborhood to see folks go away, but also to come back. Because often the hope is go away and get out of here and reach the stars away from this place of poverty or of pain, of suffering, of lack, but yeah, they feel called back to be a part of the transformation of that. Yeah. 

That's so encouraging. All right. You guys have walked through some significant family changes in the last few years. 

Would you give us a little update there and then share with us how that's shaped you? Yeah. So yeah, so from 2020 until now, so Ana who was basically like a sister to Nayeli and a really good friend. She's about four years older.

She had always been around and then she came to live with us somewhere in that time, but sort of more as like housemates, needed a place to live after her mom moved back to Mexico. And then it evolved over time and over the last couple of years and then a commitment verbally and emotionally and whatever with us. So the four of us have become more as family together. 

So Nayeli and Ana and us, and we celebrated both their college graduations this past summer. So there's been good changes, but again, sort of out of the blue with Ana where we weren't sure if she wanted that parental nature with us and yeah. And so all of us had to get more used to that and Nayeli also like, oh, now there's someone else who wants this parental whatever from us. 

And yeah, so we've all gone through some significant changes and commitment in that to one another. So that has been a change in the last few years. And then in the last year we committed to bringing my mom to come live with us in California.

And she has developed dementia and so that is really difficult. And we decided that December, early December was going to be the last she would be in Indiana just to not have to endure the winter. And so we brought her and a week later there was like 16 inches of snow in Indiana. 

So we felt like it was a good decision when it became winter last year, she stayed in the house and just hunkered down for maybe two months and didn't see other human beings and didn't go outside very much. And so that's really not good for brain development or brain keeping from dementia developing further. So yeah, so she's been here, but we've been in a lot of transition as probably most people know California and the Bay Area is known for housing crisis for not having enough housing that's affordable and available and especially on salaries like ours. 

And so it's been a journey. We've been waiting for permits to work on the back house of our property and that we don't own. So we're working with our landlord and the city of San Jose and we still haven't heard and it's been almost six months. 

Like we haven't even heard that it's okay to do anything. So we've been somewhat jumping from house to house may not be great for my mom's brain, but at least she's with us. And she said that. 

So overall, I think it's been a good decision and we're doing the best we can day by day with her. And we're currently at the facility that we're having her be in for the next six months to eight months. While hopefully the little house on her property is being made for her or being renovated for her.

So that's how that's going. Yeah. You asked how it has shaped us.

Honestly, for myself, I'm still hoping it shapes me into a more hospitable person. I think we were, we recently finished a year of sabbatical. The sort of theme of that time for me was home and what home means and opening up my sense of flexibility and welcome to my home.

In that year was when we figured out and decided that Janet's mom was going to come live with us in California. So that was like, yeah, this theme had been important for me with our daughters and with people in general, but then all of a sudden there was this whole new person coming to live with us. Some hands-on training for that.

Right. So, and not just the person, the other addition to our family is Janet's mom's dog. I'm not a dog person. 

There's a narrative out there that dads don't want the dog and then the dog comes and they end up falling in love with the dog. That has not been my story. So yeah, being hospitable, not just to the people, but to their creatures is a way that I hope and I'm trying to allow God to shape me through our family changes.

Legan. Yes. I probably talked more just about the logistics and the actual things, as opposed to how it's shaping me, but it's definitely helping me to grow.

(This file is longer than 30 minutes. Go Unlimited at https://turboscribe.ai/ to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.)