Chris Handley - Executive Director - Helping Florence Flourish

This is Coffee with Cool People. I'm Chip Munn, and I'm excited to be spending some time with Chris Hanley.

Chris, how are you? I'm well, I'm well, thank you.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

This is a great example of why I do this show. You and I have known each other for more than 2 decades, all the way back to my Kiwanis Club days. And, um, but it's always great to get kind of caught up and reacquainted. And so, yeah, we were reintroduced, I guess is a good way to put it, my dear friend Angie Ward, and she said, you know, do you know Chris Hanley? And I said, well, I mean, do you ever really know anybody, right? But, um, and I said, yeah, I know Chris, we were in Qantas Club together. And she said, when's the last time you talked to him? And I said, probably 15 years ago. So, um, great to get reacquainted. It's exactly why the show exists. And, you know, back a long time ago, I knew you as one of, if not the pastors of First Presbyterian.

Associate pastor.

Associate pastor, thank you, of First Pres here in Florence, and now you're the executive director of Helping Florence Flourish. Before we get into where we are today, I'm curious, who is Chris Handley?

Well, I can try to give you a little bit of an answer. So Chris Handley is married to Dottie Handley. We've been married 37 and a half years. We've got 3 grown boys. We have 3 daughter-in-laws and 2 grandsons and 2 on the way. 2 grandsons on the way. Wow. So that's all we can do is boys. I understand. So that's very exciting. And so we came to, well, I'll say this first. We met back at NC State way back in the day. We were both North Carolinians. I grew up in Charlotte, Dottie grew up in Raleigh. And we were there during the glory year, 1983, when Belvano took to the pack.

Absolutely.

Cardiac pack to the championship. We courted around that event, and, and then we got married in '85 and went to Richmond, Virginia, and worked with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for 6 and a half years, and then moved up to Boston to go to seminary. Felt the Lord calling me to continue to move toward ministry and got a Master's of Divinity. And ironically, we ended up back in Richmond for a another 8 years serving as an associate pastor at Crestwood Presbyterian Church. And then in 2002, a group of wonderful people called me to come and be the associate pastor at First Presbyterian. And so I've just finished 19 and a half years of associate pastoring at First Pres and have taken up the executive directorship of Helping Florence Flourish, which I'm very excited about.

Yeah, I look forward to, to talking about that. Now, when you were at NC State, did you always expect that you were gonna be in the ministry?

No, and you know, went to NC State probably not really following the Lord and not really serious about anything spiritual, but as you know, you do your freshman year, it's a little bit crazy, and then after that, began to get serious about faith and was involved in Young Life leadership as a sophomore, then ended up in InterVarsity as a senior. Junior and senior, which ended up sending me to the Philippines for a couple months, uh, during— between my first senior year and my second senior year. And, uh, and then, um, that sort of catapulted me toward ministry, and InterVarsity invited me to come on staff. And so I served at the University of Richmond and Virginia Commonwealth Universities up there. Uh, so those were wonderful years. We were starting to have a family and fun times up there.

Yeah, what about the Philippines do you feel like kind of pulled you into—

Oh, I was reading a book called Knowing God by J.I. Packer while I was on the mission field, so to speak, and the experience of walking with the Filipinos through the rice paddies and living in the middle of the rice paddy for weekends and watching them follow God and just the reading about who God is really did inspire me and made me really think, "Huh, this is something I really need to pursue." Sure. So that's it.

Wow, that's awesome. And what a great experience for a young person.

Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, there was one little event that always stands out about the Philippines where I was coming home from a weekend in the rice paddy headed back to the school I was teaching English in, which is ironic that I was a teacher of English, but there was a school for Filipino elementary students and they were playing in the front yard before school started and then they saw this really white guy walking by. A couple of them saw me at first and they come up to the fence and put their faces on the fence and then they call their friends and so by the end of the Time passing, there are 300 kids standing at the fence watching the white guy go by. And I am pretty white, so, yeah.

So you say it's ironic that you'd be teaching English?

English, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm sort of, I'm an English speaker, but to be a teacher of English is a whole different thing.

Well, you know, they say, what is it, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

Exactly. You know, great analogy. Yes, that's about what it was, and we had a great time. I lived with the Filipinos, which was unique. The missionaries lived in their homes as families, and because I was a single guy there by myself, I lived in the dorm with them and really had a great experience.

Yeah, that's really special. That's fascinating. So Fast forward.

Yep.

They recruited you. They came up, recruited you to be the associate pastor here in First Pres. Yep. At First Pres. What was your first kind of impression of Florence?

Uh, we were at Ada and Alva Whitehead's place out on Pocket Road, and we, we drove into the driveway, which is very, you know, when you have a mansion out in the country, it's set you way back. And we drove in and a peacock landed on the car and started looking at the mirror because it saw itself. And this was like a first experience and we felt like we'd stepped back in time and The folks were warm and just really genuine. And that was one of our first experiences here.

Wow.

Yeah. You probably know the Whiteheads. They're great folks. I do.

Yeah. What's the pitch? So when somebody says, "You've got to come and move to Florence." Well, I mean, what they said to me, you mean?

Yeah. Well, it was— there were— the church was a strong church. And so you could tell that as the people were interviewing you, and the pastor at the time, Roger Gulick, was excellent in my mind, and he was the kind of leader that I looked forward to working with. Sure. And so those sort of things really compelled me to move here. So it's been a great ride, 19 and a half years.

Yeah, and then a peacock.

I mean, it's hard to beat a peacock on your first day. I know, yeah, it's awesome.

Now though, you are the executive director of Helping Florence Flourish.

Yes, sir.

What is that? Tell me about Helping Florence Flourish.

Okay, Helping Florence Flourish really was born from some reading I did. A guy named Glenn Barth wrote a book called The Good City, and in it he talks about movements in cities that are set aside especially to try to pull the church together to bless the community. And, you know, I always ask the question, how many churches are there in Florence? And people start going, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. And it's a trick question. There's only one. There's only one. Right. And so, but the mindset of folks is not that way. I mean, we live in our silos. We have our building and, you know, That's where we do our thing, and so a Gospel City Movement, which Helping Florence Flourish is, of which there are probably about 350 Gospel City Movements around the United States. There's one in Richmond, there's one in Charlotte, and Atlanta, and Columbia, and they all have a similar bent or call on them, and that is to pull the church together and therefore help it bless the community. That's the quick way to talk about it. Okay. And so I do pastor gatherings monthly trying to pull pastors together. I do work around certain areas that need attention, like we're trying to develop an education network that helps schools. Been working recently in conjunction with with, um, um, Ron Pruitt and the Good News Club that they do, because they're in every elementary school in, in Florence, which is amazing. But can we, can we create a network where, uh, we are able to, uh, bless a school and its administration in such a way that the school actually improves? And, you know, I know, um, Dr. O'Malley is really thinking of that, and I saw that in the News Journal recently where they gave the grades and the schools were coming up. Can we even come behind that and even help them even more? So networks like education, house repair, leadership development, things like that. And so I'm excited about attempting a lot of that. Some of that's still very much in the dreamy stage, but It's exciting. We got a board of 12 people we meet tonight and talking about what's going on and what we've just done and what we're planning to do. And so it's exciting.

So did you start Helping Florence first?

Yeah, yeah. I guess I got distracted from myself. The Glen Barth book really did inspire me. I sat down with Eric Maréchal and Chris Scott and said, hey guys, what do you think about this? And there was enough interest to say, hey, let's see what happens. So we invited Glenn Barth to come to Florence. He guided us through a process of doing interviews where we ask about 3 or 4 questions. What are the— what are the— your primary concerns about the community? We were interviewing leaders, and so we asked them, what are your primary concerns about the community? And then that's probably the first big question. The second big question, are you willing to work with others to try to address those issues. And so we did that with 65 leaders, came up with 4 different areas of concern, and, and so we got started. And it was interesting, Mayor Steve Wakela was involved, and we met in Cumberland United Methodist and launched Helping Florence Flourish and began to try to think about these networks, right? And racial bridging came out on top as the biggest concern, and that's probably where we've done the most work. We had Tony Evans in town in 2016, we had Nettie Winners last spring, we had Natasha C. Strunk-Robinson, an author from Orangeburg, South Carolina, all of them addressing racial needs and concerns. And so it's been great. You know, I have this vision in my head that when we get to heaven, everybody's going to be around the throne. It doesn't matter, every tribe, tongue, and nation will be there. And if we want the kingdom of God to come now, as we pray on a Sunday morning, it would be incumbent upon believers to learn how to image that here now rather than waiting. And so trying to pull the races together and even love each other and care about what each other's doing and how to support each other and how to even work together to bless the community we're in. So those are all big dreams.

Sure.

It's fun.

Racial bridging was one.

Yeah.

And I don't want to put you on the spot.

Restoration of the family. Okay. Homelessness. Health, and education. Gotcha. We added one which we didn't pop up as one that the leader said, but we feel like it's very important, and that's prayer. And so we have a citywide prayer gathering every month, and we try to move from church to church to do that. So those 5 things are really our priorities.

Sure. Found in my time in the church that it's easy sometimes for people to get a little territorial. Oh yeah. You know, how has a movement like this been received?

You know, it's been received well in some respects, but then those are the people that are showing up. And there's at least two reasons why people don't show up. One is they're really busy and they just can't add anything else, which is totally understandable. Sure. Or they don't see it as something that they need to put time in and work at. And so, but the ones who come, they're all in. We met at Trinity Baptist this last month. That's Calvin Robinson's church.

Right.

And we were probably about 20 of us in the room, and Matt Walton from Trinity Press shared their experience during something we call Serve Flow. It's a season of service that we sponsor, and it was so inspiring, and everybody came away going, "Man, this is awesome." And so the The pastors were encouraged, they were challenged, and that's exactly what you want to see happen, and so I know watching that room is they were glad they were there, and so we're feeling our way through. We're somewhat creating it as we go, but you see fruit of it.

Well, I think like any young endeavor, the more success that you can have, more inspiration that you can provide to any of the participants, we'll call them. I think that spreads out over, you know, somebody once told me in regards to something completely different, everybody has a best friend. Yep. And I think even in the ministry community, even locally, the, you know, for folks who aren't participating Yet my supposition is that, you know, somebody in the room gets inspired and they're going to tell the next person, and next time you've got 21 or 22, and then you've got— and I think that's ultimately— and two, again, going back to that territorial nature of things, sometimes I think the longer that an organization goes on and people realize that they're true to what they say they are— this isn't a cannibalization of something, it's meant to be additive then I think that over time, yeah, people buy in a lot more. What's been the hardest part so far?

The hardest part. Um, so I stepped into the executive directorship in January without, you know, if you step into something that exists there are rhythms, patterns that are set that you just got to step into and fill. Sure. Um, there's no rhythm, really. And so it's what do you, what do you spend your time doing? What are the things and the priorities? And, and then how do you organize yourself to do that? And so that's probably been the biggest challenge. I mean, I'm a little suited for it because my bent is not necessarily regimented, right? And so actually it works okay. But, um, that's been the biggest challenge. But, you know, and some nonprofits would say finances was probably the biggest thing. Sure. Actually, it's not right now for us. Now, that's not to say that we don't need support, but we've been blessed in this season sort of as a startup. First Pres is helping Sure. Helping it happen for me to get paid and things like that. And so that's, that's been good. So they'll, in a 3-year season, they'll— they have set it up so that it will gradually come down, but they're essentially paying a salary for 3 years. Sure. Which really helps. So the main thing is, um, the patterns, the rhythms, what is it exactly. And so, um, like even tonight we'll talk about what What are the things that we need to do as a board and as an executive director? What do I need to do in the days to come?

So that's good. Yeah. What do you model it after? Because at least for me, right?

Because— Yeah, there's nothing.

6 or 7 years ago, we went from a company that was set up to a bit of a startup to some extent. And you have to model it after something.

Right.

So I'm curious when you start trying to figure out, all right, now I have a blank slate, which is really cool and scary at the same time. Right.

So there is, you know, the Gospel City Movement has a fraternity of sorts that's out there that you can glean best practices from. Okay. And so I'll look over my shoulder at some of these other Gospel City Movements that are a little older and go, hey, look at what they're doing, maybe we should pursue that. And there are a lot of tools that have been developed that are being used, one of which we used in August called Global Leadership Summit, which is a leadership development tool that came out of Willow Creek up near Chicago. And they, they are about trying to help Leaders Grow.

Sure.

From a Christian point of view, and, and so we, we hosted their virtual conference, and, and we'll probably do that again. But that's just an example of a tool that is out there that gospel city movements are tapping into. Sure. And so there's a lot of those that are popping these days, and we have, we have monthly Zoom calls where we are in association with one another. I'm in a cohort that's different than that call of smaller group of Gospel City Movement leaders, and we talk about what we're doing with our weeks, what we're doing with our months, what are our goals, and then they always have best practices that they're trying to bring across our path and help us with, so it's good.

Well, I would think it's also locally, you know, again, when you talked about First Pres kind of making a commitment to help No doubt. I would have to think locally there's kind of some proof of concept there, right? If I understand Lighthouse correctly, I mean, that's one of the ways that Lighthouse got started, if not one, but several churches identified a need, got together, and said, "We're going to do this for a season," and then, you know, it became more, at least more self-sufficient. I don't know anything about their finances. But I think locally there's some— I would think there's some ability to get some buy-in based on previous local experience.

Right. And you know, we've been very supported by the city. The city's been really helping us in the sense that it's not for operational costs, but for ministry costs. Not that they are— Their, their money is helpful for things like housing needs, which they would be concerned about, and they know that we're trying to do something in that area in a neighborhood to fix a house. Also, Helping Florence Flourish is associated with a network of homeless shelters like House of Hope and Salvation Army, Naomi Project, PD Coalition, and CAP. The city appropriates a good chunk of change to create incentive to collaborate and to help people, and we, Helping Florence First, helps administer those funds.

Okay.

And so we got a lot of favor in the community in the sense that, you know, people like that, churches, we have several churches, not just First Pres, that are involved in helping support helping Florence flourish. So it's a good start.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's great.

So I'm curious, what has been the thing so far that you're most either pleased about or proud of?

That's hard. A couple things jump in my head. The pastor time is really, really significant because I really believe the kingdom is built on relationships. And so given pastors, which are leaders of congregations, the opportunity to know one another and to encourage one another. That is so helpful because pastors tend to— they're sort of in a different place and they need that kind of relationship. So that's been a good thing. We built a house. That's pretty significant. And a woman was living in a rat-infested home that was falling apart. And so in collaboration with the city, actually, the city demolished it for us, which was about a $5,000 gift. And then we built a house back on her property, which is really cool. And she moved in. July of this year. So that was significant. And currently we're helping refurbish another house for another young lady, which is a neat story that's been in the news. Aaliyah graduated from House of Hope's program. She was homeless. And House of Hope at the same time had been given a house over on McQueen as a gift, which you would think that a ministry like that would sell that house and use the funds to help perpetuate the ministry. Well, Brian Braddock decided, and I'm sure the board was involved too, to give the house to Aaliyah. And so now she's a homeowner. She has the deed in her name. And the only problem is it's not livable yet. And so Helping Florence Flourish has been able to step in and and try to help people reach. Yeah, so it's been fun.

Well, that's— it's interesting because you touched on a couple of different things. One is tangible and visible.

Yep.

In terms of I can ride down the street and see this house that I built, but then also the invisible of what I'll kind of call the scaffolding around the Florence leadership community in the churches. Yeah. Which I think is neat. And one of the things that I think that any leader needs is a group of other leaders to be able to, whether it's have support to commiserate with, because it's a unique position, and I would think ministry is even, even more so. But it's, it's hard to find other people who can understand kind of all the different needs and pressures and struggles, if you will, that folks run into, and I would think that in ministry you're completely vulnerable, or particularly vulnerable to that.

Yeah, it really does. The pastors need that kind of connection, and they can uniquely give it to each other, which is good. Especially now, you know, the turf thing is part of the thing that you're trying to pull down a little bit. And so this kind of engagement helps with that too.

For sure. Well, and I would think, like you said, look, all business is a people business. Oh yeah. You know, and I would think that it would be— it could be challenging, particularly for folks who've been here for a while. You're not the new person in town coming around to meet all the, you know, for established professionals to call on one another would be hard, but having a third party, you know, to come in and call everybody together, you have an opportunity to actually make some personal connection in what I'd consider to be a less vulnerable space where it's not you and I, and I've called you to have a conversation. For a lot of people, that'd be— even for people who are in a ministry profession, that can still be weird. And so the ability to have somebody else facilitating that get-together, that conversation, I would think is really valuable for the people who are participating in it.

I hope so. That's the goal, the goal for sure.

Yeah. Well, so Chris, one of the things that I like to ask, just because I think it's fun, okay, is, um, kind of in wrapping up, is kind of Just something to get to know you a little differently. If you could pick a fictional character, could be book, movie, superhero, that you feel like best represents Chris Hanley, who would it be and why?

Uh, well, I have a couple thoughts. I know the one I'm gonna go with, but I, you know, I love Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings and all those guys and the battle, and that's really good. Um, Sam Gamgee's a really neat guy in, in the, in the, the way that he helps Frodo. Um, but the one I'm gonna go with is Mowgli in Jungle Book. 3 off, I know, because I was going esoteric and then no, not so esoteric.

I like the Jungle Book.

Yeah, Jungle Book's awesome. So You know, fun. I think of myself as Mowgli because Mowgli is on this adventure and he's out doing some crazy stuff, and certainly the jungle animals come around him and help him along the way. But I like the adventure. I don't know quite what I'm doing a little bit, and I feel like Mowgli had no idea sometimes what he was doing, and That's— I can identify with that. And it— but it's exciting, you know, for sure. So it's good stuff.

That's awesome. Well, Chris, I wish you great luck on your adventure. I can't wait to see all the different things that Helping Florence Flourish is going to do. And I appreciate you spending some time with me.

Yeah, Chip, it's been great. Thank you so much.

Yes, sir.