On the second episode of text.soul.culture, a new podcast from The Seattle School Dr. J. Derek McNeil, Academic Dean, is joined by Jimmy McGee, President and CEO of the Impact Movement, about living as people of engaged wisdom in a complex and hurting world. Jimmy was the keynote speaker at our 2017 Humanity Through Community summit, and this conversation builds on themes he explored in his lecture on “The Myth of the Single Story.”
Derek and Jimmy talk about the need for holistic learning that guides transformation, sharpens the lens through which we view the world, and drives us to action. It is a conversation that demands both the vision to see what is broken and the imagination to see how it could be different—vision and imagination rooted in a desire for righteousness and justice.
It’s hard to get a new imagination without shifting out of an old set of ideas.
In that desire for justice, Jimmy calls on us bridge the divide between spiritual and secular work, and to erase the false dichotomy between social justice and Christian faith. The modern evangelical church often forces split loyalties between those two postures, which leads to fragmentation and cripples the movement of the kingdom of God. “Because we have only believed half the truth,” says Jimmy, “we have been deceived by the lie.”
This conversation confronts us with the difference between charity and justice, between knowledge and wisdom, and between horizontal and vertical righteousness. As Derek names at the end of this episode, it is an invitation to step into both the priestly and prophetic identities of the people of God.