#15: The Dynamic Challenges of Christian Parenting

Dr. Smith:
Thank you for joining us on Peculiar People Podcast, a podcast designed to think about how we as followers of Jesus Christ under the Lordship of Christ should be distinct in how we engage our lives, how we think, how we act, and how we speak, particularly here in Maryland, Delaware. We are excited whenever we can have conversations with members and pastors of our local congregations here within the Baptist Convention of Maryland Delaware. And so today, we are honored to talk to Pastor Chris Davis, Chris and his wife Morgan, about a variety of issues regarding parenting, and they are relatively new here in the Maryland/Delaware area since they are newly returned to the Maryland Delaware area for him. And we are excited that they are there. So, I was wondering maybe just as we begin, if you might just both give us a little background, where you’re from, where you grew up, and most importantly how you became a follower of the lord Jesus Christ.

Chris Davis:
All right. We’ll try to keep it quick, because our story is long. I’m a Baltimore, Maryland native, grew up in the west side of Baltimore the city, and at 19, I joined the Marines. So I went to Paris Island, South Carolina. That was really what began what would be my transition from Maryland to California. So from boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina to North Carolina, to Mississippi, to then stationed in Camp Pendleton, California, which is where my wife and I ran into each other at North Carolina, but our story, actual relationship began in Mississippi, then it goes into California.

Dr. Smith:
One little parenthesis here, because I always like to mess with people. Did you put your eyes on her or did she put her eyes on you?

Chris Davis:
She started. I say she stalked me, and she can always explain how that happened, and she’s like, “I didn’t stalk you.” I’m like, “Go ahead and tell the story,” and at the end of it, all the guys is like, “Yeah, she stalked you.” I’m like, “I told you, that’s what it is. She stalked me.” But the lord had a plan. And so I wouldn’t change of how we got together, let alone where we are. We’ll be actually celebrating 20 years in this coming September, so that is …

Dr. Smith:
Praise the Lord.

Chris Davis:
Testimony to god’s grace and power. And so try and get out to California for the Marines. I get out the Marines a couple years after that while in Cali, and I wasn’t a Christian. I went to church growing up, and depending upon the folks that are listening, their background, being African American growing up in the inner city of Baltimore, church was part of your life. That’s just normal. And you thought you were saved because you went to the altar every Sunday, you responded to the altar call. But there was no true regeneration there.

Chris Davis:
So California comes, I get out the military, but three months later I get arrested again. So this would be my second time now getting arrested and spending the next year in prison in three of the systems from the federal, to the state, to the county, all in a year, and that’s where I got regenerated in a federal facility not too far from Mexico in California. And since then, that was 17 years ago, and here I am today, pastoring now for nine years.

Chris Davis:
So that would be a very quick biographical background of me, Baltimore, Maryland, the thug, it’s exactly what I was. We don’t call them gang bangers over here back in the 90s but that would have been the equivalent to the West Coast. Get saved in prison after getting out the Marines and then there’s a whole lot more but that’s not what we want to call for.

Dr. Smith:
What was your MOS?

Chris Davis:
6672.We were initially supply specialist. Now, here’s a story right? That’s supposed to be quick. I’ll try to do this. I didn’t sign that. I went in because I was … mind you I wasn’t saved and I’m from the good, the city of Baltimore, okay? Like yeah. I went in open contract. I was like, “I want to be infantry. I want you to teach me how to kill people, so I can come back and take out all my foes.” That was my mentality for going into Marines. And I signed open contract for my first, I saw an open contract from my second, three slots, three things you want to do and the very last thing was finance because I really liked numbers. That was actually what I did when I graduated high school. I did go to community college, I went to be financial management, because I really liked numbers. I was a hustler.

Chris Davis:
So, that should help give some context. That’s not where the Lord sent me. Aviation supply, I am like, “What the heck is aviation supply?” Well, clearly that was part of the design to run into my wife and then go out to California because the Lord had her in the same exact MOS. And his providence was all throughout this. I signed open contract to go learn how to kill people. He was like, “I’m going to teach you how to fish for people. You just don’t see it just yet.” And so here we are.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Sister Davis.

Morgan Davis:
Yes, sir. So I grew up in California. I was born in Arcadia. I grew up in Pasadena. I too, like my husband had a very interesting and colorful past prior to coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And so, went to five high schools in four years, can tell you a little bit about how troubled I was as a teenager, which really stemmed from losing my father tragically at the age of eight and just having this downward spiral ever since. And so, my senior year Marine Corps recruiter came on campus and dress blues and I had to be in that uniform. And so as the Lord would have it, after a lot of verbal banter back and forth with the recruiter, I signed up and that’s where I met Chris. His depiction of how we came to be a couple, of course, is always backed by men, but it was just something about how he carried himself and I just politely let the rest of the young ladies know that Davis was off-limits. And here we are.

Morgan Davis:
I came to faith in Jesus Christ, that could be a movie in and of itself.

Chris Davis:
11 years ago.

Morgan Davis:
Yeah, May 2, 2009 was when the Lord said, “You are mine, and enough is enough.” And that was after having an affair. And I was in a very drunk and high state and that night, the Lord ordained me and I woke up on Chris’s grandmother’s lap and she was praying over me and shared the gospel to me and I surrendered my life to the Lord. We moved back to California a few months later, and I was discipled by a phenomenal group of women at the Passion For Christ movement. It was a church known as P4CM, and these women just opened the Bible, taught me how to read it, how to apply it to my life, made the grave mistake of reading Radical by David Platt in 2010 that made me want to sell everything and move to China and be part of making the gospel known in the 1040 window and ever since then, under the incredible discipleship of my husband, who was my favorite pastor, and just being committed to my own walk with the Lord, he’s given me a passion for missions. And here we are.

Chris Davis:
Amen. That is a funny element of your testimony, because I can remember in black and white settings, just teaching through Dr. Platt’s book, and people just being provoked and convicted, but it also some people just being irritated and frustrated. I was like, “Man, this little thin book did some twists that some of y’all up in nuts.” I say, don’t resist the conviction. That’s strenuous. Just say, “Yes Lord.”

Dr. Smith:
Wow. While you’re sitting here as a couple, I will ask you to tell us about your family members. But then I want to ask you three different movements as you think about parenting. There’s a lot of things we talk about on Peculiar People podcast, but I don’t think there’s anything more essential than us remembering the foundational organizations that God has ordained, institutions, one certainly being congregations and how we affect our communities as salt, light witnesses, but the most intimate institution that God has ordained is marriage between one man and one woman, and then the children, the family that you all have. And so, tell us about your family and then we’ll dig into some more questions.

Chris Davis:
We have three kids. Our firstborn Isaac, he is 18, turns 19 in a month. Our second born is Kenneth, he is 14 he turns 15 in a month, and our baby is Hannah. That’s our daughter, our only girl, and she just turned 13 May, so a month ago. So 18, 14 and 13 and we had our first when we were 19 and 18. So we were babies ourselves having him. And his name is Isaac because my wife wasn’t supposed to have children. She was told by the doctors after her previous pregnancy before me that her ovaries were bruised and she wasn’t able to carry a child full term. And mind you, we weren’t saved, but both of us had again growing up an African American … that’s your culture, that’s your community.You go to church, okay? And so we both knew the story of Isaac, Abraham, Sarah and Isaac, and we were like, “Well, this is the baby that you know, you’re carrying full term. Then that must clearly be a promise child like a child from God, a gift from God. Let’s give them a good name.” So we called him Isaac.

Chris Davis:
Kenneth, the middle child is named after my wife’s dad who she lost at eight. So that’s significant as a way to honor her father, but his middle name is significant to this testimony. Kenneth almost died in the womb. She carried him the longest and it took the last week of her pregnancy for Lord to do a miracle because he was breached, he was feet first, upside down with the umbilical cord tied around his neck with no fluid in the gestation sector. They are like, “Your child should be dead.” And we just praying for a miracle. And it was seven days, he turns around, gets right, then comes out. And we’re like, “That’s the Lord. Oh, wow, God is moving.”

Chris Davis:
And so his middle name is Israel, for he struggled with God and prevailed. In that sense, he struggled and the Lord caused him to prevail. And then Hannah, by now, with the two kids we’re like, “Man, these kids are taking on their names.” Isaac is very much like Isaac, Hebrew for laughter, even though we named him for promise, and he very much models that Kenneth Israel is modeling that. And then so my wife was like, “Well, let’s get ahead of the curve. Let’s give her a big name.” And so, we named her Hannah for it means favorite with God in Hebrew, and her middle name is Marie named after my grandmother who was the greatest influence and witness of my life and my wife’s life, and our marriage and my whole family.

Chris Davis:
She would be the Moses of my family and my grandfather, who is named Moses would be like the. Those two, man they are major patriarchs of our family. And so we named our daughter, Hannah Marie, and she has taken on that very similar attribute of being very considerate, empathetic, et cetera. And our kids are great man. They make us look like we’re better parents than we really are. And so we always like when people look at, your kids are phenomenal. We wish kids … I’m like, “Give credit to the Lord, because they have two dysfunctional parents.” They learn through trial and error to get to where we are and you can’t see any of that in the lives of our children, which means all the glory goes to God, not us.

Dr. Smith:
Amen.

Chris Davis:
So, that would be a summation of our children.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah, I think learning by experience is a wonderful statement. Matter of fact, I owe this because sometimes we are having conversations and I’ll just break out, say, “I’m sorry you got the most inexperienced parents. I’m sorry, you were the first one and we had the last.”

Chris Davis:
We actually just had that conversation with my two younger ones the other day. I was like, “You guys are privileged. Ya’ll don’t even” I was like, “Because you guys got mommy and daddy after we made a ton of mistakes with Isaac.” I was like, “And got saved and grew up.” I’m like, “So you got to. That’s why Isaac been getting on y’all like you didn’t have to go through this stuff. You aren’t getting whooped like I got, you are not getting punished like I got, you aren’t getting none of that. What happened?” But we tell them, but look at how it turned out.

Dr. Smith:
Amen.

Chris Davis:
So take from amigo. So yeah.

Dr. Smith:
God is gracious. In 2010, I lost my father and he was Kenneth Lamar Smith and so Kenneth is a very special name to me as well. So, let me ask you all about this. So the home is ordained by God in Genesis, he lays out marriage, he lays out family. We are encouraged in the law, Deuteronomy 6 to train our children in the things of the Lord when we rise in the morning in the middle of the day when we come in the evening. We are encouraged in Ephesians certainly even particularly, like God doesn’t do a lot of particulars like the woman does this, the man does this. In Ephesians it says, look, fathers, take some stewardship for raising your children in the fear the admonition of the Lord. So the home is so important.

Dr. Smith:
Well, known pastor, Dr. Tony Evans, he has this long string where he says we can have a better world if we have better countries, if we have better states, if we have better counties, if we have better communities, and he ties all that down back to we can have better homes, and then brother Davis of course will say we can have better homes if we start with better men as husbands and fathers. So he goes from the macro to the most micro. And one of those microelements is the home.

Dr. Smith:
And so I just want to ask you in parenting strategy or just in your parenting thoughts, what was your approach? And then how long have you been at Northwest?

Chris Davis:
It’ll be a year in like two weeks.

Morgan Davis:
For you.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah.

Chris Davis:
So in like two weeks, it’ll be a year.

Dr. Smith:
So you brought your children of different ages and in different school and peer groups from California to Merlin. So as parents or what did you think about as far as moving children across country?

Morgan Davis:
When this process began, on terms of seeing if this was going to be a good fit with us, moving across country more importantly, with seeing if the Lord was leading Chris to under Shepherd this fellowship here, the minute that the interview process moved more to a final stage, we started emotionally preparing our children. I think that communication has been key, not letting them find out what the vote June 9 day we’re moving to Maryland, it’s been really important for us to have conversation with them about, hey, this might be happening, and then giving them the opportunity to be completely honest with how they feel about it.

Morgan Davis:
And I appreciate my husband for leading that charge of protecting us from the onset with talks with the pastoral search committee and even how he led conversations with our children was very much, hey, we know that we’re mommy and daddy. But right now, we just want to know how you’re feeling. You’re not going to get in trouble if you say you want to stay here. Tell us what your thoughts are. And so from the onset, it’s been really considering them first. And just to be completely transparent, there were some nights that Chris and I in our bedroom, Chris was moved to tears about how he did not want this to negatively impact our children, their view of God, their view of ministry. And so it wasn’t like this last minute, oh, let’s tell the kids. It’s been very calculated. How can we emotionally shepherd them through this time? How do we give them the space to grieve losses of friendships in terms of proximity?

Morgan Davis:
So because we’ve had a lot of private conversations between us, that would then help us to be better listeners for them, empathizers with them throughout the entire process, but upfront communication and space for them was key.

Chris Davis:
Yeah. And then the bookend of that was we had went through that four years prior when I got hired from LA to Bakersfield as a pastor of small groups and then discipleship pastor and that we didn’t do well. It happened like that, but at that time, I never prepared my eldest who was the one that would have been impacted the most, because my younger ones were much younger, and I think, Hannah still was with a pacifier, right?

Dr. Smith:
And that was a geographical move.

Chris Davis:
It was a-

Morgan Davis:
Two hours north.

Chris Davis:
It was two hours North, same state, but for our oldest, it was a move from … what’s the term?

Morgan Davis:
Stability.

Chris Davis:
Stability. So, for the first time in his young life mind you, I guess we weren’t seeing when we first had our oldest, he went through all kinds of hell. And I’m using that word purposely, all kinds of hell with his two young Marine Corps parents who are not safe for me to understand it. So our oldest went through a whole lot. It took him telling us in seventh grade, “Daddy, I have been to seven different schools and I’m in seventh grade. Can we stay somewhere long enough?” So for him, we folly the Lord kept us somewhere and we spent four years in the community, and then daddy gets hired, and we have to leave from that stability and that impact. So at that time, we didn’t do what we did with the two younger ones moving here, we didn’t do that with our eldest. And it really hurt. He told us … actually, he didn’t tell us. He did a testimony two years later, where he came out and said he was angry with us for a year and a half, because of the decision that we made.

Chris Davis:
So, that’s the book game was how we did this move was learning from the mistakes we’ve made in the previous move. And then the other end of the book in was all three of my kids profess faith in Christ. So, what I wanted to make sure they understand is your life belongs to your savior. He’s your master, you’re his disciple. When he says move, you say yes sir. And you just follow whether you like it or not, uncomfortable or not. None of that matters. He paid for your life, he bought your life. There’s going to come a point in your life where he is going to tell you to do something, and it’s going to be outside of your comfort zone and your response is supposed to be, yes sir, anything for you.

Chris Davis:
This is one of those opportunities, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, because that’s how daddy is responding. Does daddy want to move away from his family and friends? Not really. But when my savior tells me I’m calling you here, my response is, yes, sir. I’ll follow. That has to be your responses the disciple. Can you grieve? Yes. Can you mourn? Yes. Can you lament and express your emotions? Yes, you can do all of that, while you move your feet and following your Savior. You can do that in the process, but you follow him. That is the process. And that was the book in learning from the previous and then grounding them in who they are in Christ. You are a disciple of Jesus first before anything else in your life.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Yeah, the Church of God in Christ, one of the historic black Pentecostal denomination they have a … their theme song really is this little praise says Yes, Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord. I am in. So, they sing and meditate constantly on I need to yield to the will of the Lord. I need to yield to the leading of the Holy Spirit. So the way you’re describing the ages that your oldest finished high school in California or here?

Chris Davis:
In California, and in college in California.

Dr. Smith:
Okay.

Morgan Davis:
And that was the hard part too, because we, by God’s grace, we’re a very close knit family. And so Isaac with his academic and athletic abilities, he really could have went to any university in the country, but he wanted to stay close to home. And so he did his National Signing Day, or what the university is a Christian College Fresno Pacific, it was only an hour and 30 minutes away, and he decided to commit there because for him, he could come home on the weekends. And then June 9 was what happened. So, that was also a dynamic too that we as a family had to grieve and walk our youngest two through because Kenneth and Isaac, they’re like Cory and Shawn on Boy Meets World. They’ve shared a bedroom their entire life. They were each other’s first best friend.

Morgan Davis:
And so Kenneth wasn’t just going to be losing church community and friends that he had established for four and a half years. He was also going to be now 3000 miles away, and an East Coast time difference with his brother. And so, that was also a hard transition. And even Isaac too. Now he’s not just thrusted into many adulthood and having the navigated an hour and a half away, now his parents are across the country. So, it was an interesting dynamic for sure that we had to navigate.

Chris Davis:
Yeah.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah. And then as parents.

Chris Davis:
This is all Lord too. So my wife and I temperament and the way we’re wired, our shapes are different. They complement one another. So my wife is the empath. She feels deeply and so she can discern through her feelings, what other people are feeling without them ever communicating it and I not to imply that she’s not logical, I am more analytical. I lead with my brain and then my heart follows. And sometimes I don’t even follow. I’m just like, yeah. And both of us are Marines, we prepare our kids for adulthood. So we put them through all kinds of different things to get them ready like because guess what, when you become an adult, you might be put in a situation like this, and I don’t want it to be a first time. I want you to have some kind of experience where you recall how we were taught to do X, Y, and Z. And so when the opportunity for the move came, what Isaac got was a balanced perspective from both of his parents. He got the empathy from mom of whether he says it out loud or not, I know this is affecting you, because we’re not going to be here.

Chris Davis:
What he got from dad was when we talked about you being an adult, and maybe God is saying you need this time by yourself to grow and you don’t have us as a safety net. I’m like, “So everything that we have been teaching you, son, you now have to do. You have to remember and live. You wanted to make your fate your relationship with Christ your own, you did that throughout high school. Now you really get to make it your own because mommy and daddy are not here.”

Chris Davis:
So he was able to get that both like, okay, I can feel the way that I feel, I can express that. And then I also have to realize that yes, now I have to walk out what I’ve been raised to do when I got to this point just sooner than I might have preferred. And then we see that since he’s been home, the conversations that we’ve had with from my wife and I just small, like, oh, man, you grown up so much.

Morgan Davis:
Even before that, it’s like a practical example of that was when Isaac began to look for his own church that he was going to go to on Sundays, and he would call and text and say, “Hey, I’m on this Church’s statement of faith. I don’t know if I could come to this church.” And of course, proud dad was beaming with joy.

Dr. Smith:
Stay of the thox. So he’s there, you all move, things are going along. And then a global virus happens. So, the new church that you’re serving, congregational worship and gathering and fellowship is affected, the still in the house kids school is affected, and then the out of the house child, that’s affected as well. So what are your parenting thoughts and what are your parenting strategies as you get into a global pandemic?

Chris Davis:
Well, is probably layered, and it probably built on one another over time. Step one was peace. Let’s make sure our house is peaceful because we’re about to be stuck in it with each other for who knows how long. And so that became not just a prayer, but a practice, arguments that may have been had by anybody in the house was like, let’s resolve quickly, because it’s not like we can leave. So peace and really reconciliation too. Like, okay, so we have disagreements, child-parent, parent-parent, child- child, let’s make sure we resolve not just quickly but appropriately so we can get back to enjoying one another because we’re in this house for who knows how long.

Chris Davis:
And then my wife, she’s probably our emotional stability and center and Hannah. Hannah is the same way. She’s very much like her mother. Let’s do things together. So it’s not that we didn’t do stuff together before, but your attention is going in different directions. It’s easier to put that family quote time aside, because you got to get to X, Y, and Z. And then we didn’t have it. That was no longer an issue. So let’s start doing things together more and we did. And I’ll let my wife speak to her because she was homeschooling my daughter, so she can speak to what the temperature in the house was like prior to this. But what I observed is my two youngest Kenneth and Hannah, prior to COVID-19, they were incrementally getting better in their relationship with one another, but they still picked with each other. COVID-19 sped that up because they went from by Tom’s nagging, they [inaudible 00:27:03] became best friends. They really developed the relationship we hoped they would have developed.

Chris Davis:
But prior to the quarantine, it was just taking a little long, because again, they also had their division to go somewhere else and I have to deal with each other. I forced you to deal with each other. And that’s what I observed was early on, it was annoyance, halfway through it, they were both looking to bother each other. And just, when one would get off the game or something, they go try to hang out with the other one, and they didn’t get rejected, they got accepted, way before the quarantine, I didn’t observe that. And then you can share about Isaac because his component was different until he came home. But the build started with peace and then that quick resolve, reconciliation with situations.

Dr. Smith:
Maybe I ask you a question about you and your sons because this probably not as stressful for your wife and your daughter. How is life with no barber shops? We got to a point where I did some podcasts like two weeks ago and you might not notice this, but preachers are godly but they’re still devilish. And so I’m doing all these podcasts and my friends around the country they texted in like what’s up Cornell West? Because I got like a major Afro. So what was the barber scene at the Davis house?

Chris Davis:
I shaved my head off. So I was good. My son on the other hand, he has this big goal, have Afro, so without him getting his hair cut, his size got bushy and so he never wanted to on his zoom for school, for you. He didn’t want to have his video up at all. He looked like a mop head. That’s what he looked like and sat in the corner and got all stiff after a little while. My daughter was the same way. But clearly she has mom who can do her hair. But if she didn’t want to get a hand, now she throw a hand on him. I ain’t going to do video. I don’t want people to see how I look. And our eldest, he had his hair braided, I think right? Was his a braided?

Morgan Davis:
On the top but he still needed his sides cut.

Chris Davis:
He did get bushy. So it was okay. But the moment the barber shops open, and our eldest was here that time, the quickness, they was like.  “Get it cut.”

Dr. Smith:
Was it like this? Well, back to you, Sister Davis just overall what you were thinking as a parent when COVID-19 happened?

Morgan Davis:
It was the same as Chris. A home we always want to be as much as it can be earthly utopia. We don’t want …

Chris Davis:
I Shalom.

Morgan Davis:
Right. And so when the world beats you up outside you know that you can find grace you can find comfort, more importantly, you can find just the Lord at home and be affirmed by Him and his word through the expression of our family. And so that was really it. Just making sure that on a very practical level, they had the snacks that they like.

Chris Davis:
That’s…

Morgan Davis:
Right. Because we knew we were going to be there. We got an obscene amount of chicks for lay points.

Chris Davis:
Every single week, I think we’ve missed eight weeks. Three months for not every single week.

Morgan Davis:
Right. And so those little things that just would create joy and give them something to look forward to because we wake up and the routine is the same. Pray, do your devo, brush your teeth, wash your face, all the hygiene stuff.

Chris Davis:
Or do your school stuff.

Morgan Davis:
Do your school work and then you can play your games after chores are done. We spend the evening as a family, go to bed, you wake up and do it all over again. So the monotony of it, it became this running joke of what are we going to do tomorrow, the same we did today. And so it was really just keeping them somewhat on a schedule, though, because we didn’t want their routine to get haywire because truth of the matter was we didn’t know when things were going to open back up and we didn’t want to have to recalibrate and go through that process and so keeping them on a schedule was key, but then it was also giving them grace. I’m extending bedtimes to this or extending their technology time to this just so that home didn’t also feel like a prison either, because we were going to be in it together for so long.

Dr. Smith:
Let me ask you this, this to Davis, I think I know the answer because I’m looking at two Marines but doing this lockdown is your house like a pajama all day house or y’all like, “Get up in the morning, make up your bed, put on some clothes, take a shower?” Let’s have marines or go low.

Morgan Davis:
Right and our kids will ask us but we’re not going anywhere. It does not matter.

Chris Davis:
There’s some change. If you sleep in bed. Okay then, get out of that, put some on. “Well, what am I put on?” I don’t care, just not that.

Dr. Smith:
Yeah.

Morgan Davis:
Right. So that was a huge part of it. But then again, something that I am blessed by with Chris and our communication is always a core element in everything that we do, whether it’s in our marriage or in our parenting, and so we also know that our children, especially us occupying the same space, they’re watching us watch the news. And so we’re having conversations about COVID updates and what they need to be doing. And hey, don’t listen to your friends when they text you this because that can’t be verified by a reliable source. And so keeping them informed too as much as what they needed to know so that they’re not fearful. Because at one point, our 14-year-old, he would daily take the trash out, and we had to keep having conversations about how you can contract it and how you cannot. Because running to take the trash out, he would run out of the house, before he left the door he would hold his breath and splint to the trash and come back and then …

Chris Davis:
I don’t want to breathe in Corona air. We like [inaudible 00:32:59], what are you talking about? Well that’s for me to be breathing. If you know well somebody who got … you’re going to pass out when you. What?

Morgan Davis:
And so that happened for eight weeks.

Chris Davis:
No, it was too much.

Morgan Davis:
Oh, it was longer.

Chris Davis:
He is longer, because it really became, you can hold your breath and you will pass out.

Morgan Davis:
So glad you didn’t find them face down in the driveway.

Chris Davis:
Oh, my boy you… Oh gosh, so funny.

Morgan Davis:
So that was the reason why we have to keep communicating what was accurate and what was not, because they’re kids They’re just going to form their own ideas about things and then act accordingly and so just making sure for me, especially with trying to allow Chris because it became really interesting, they love having daddy home. So whether Kenneth does something phenomenal on fortnight or Hannah just wants to go hug and be all over her dad. It was also, “Okay you guys we got to allow for boundaries because daddy is still running a church. He has staff zoom meeting on Tuesdays at 10.” So it was navigating new boundaries while also maintaining comfort levels and communication.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Well, let me turn one more corner. I hate that have to turn it. I don’t want to turn it. I wish we weren’t turning it. But at some point, you all are watching news and you all are helping your children digest COVID-19 and what is the World Health Organization and what’s happening in Europe on African continent and South America, other places and president and the task force and Dr. Fauci and the governor of Maryland, it just all these kinds of things. Then there’s a turn and the news begins to talk about a man in Georgia who was killed by a vigilante and then the news begins to talk about a woman in Louisville, Kentucky game place. I moved here from, that was killed by police with the execution of no-knock warrant. And then the news and social media everywhere begins to show this nine-minute video of a man being killed by police officers in Minneapolis.

Dr. Smith:
Your children of different ages. I’m looking at you too. So I have no idea about your children’s skin tones and how they present or appear in public. But wow, we moved our kids across the country. We’re in the midst of a global pandemic. What do y’all thinking now, parents after you begin to see these things happen on the news? And I don’t know the level or the depth of your kids knowledge of these things. But I know your older child is aware of these things. So strategy again, and just what you all did as parents and as yourself. It’s not like y’all are green parenting black kids, so and yourself.

Chris Davis:
Well, the eldest their conversations was right away. And with the two younger ones it came a little later. It was delayed on purpose, because it’s hard to shepherd the hearts of your kids when your heart is broken. Your heart is filled with extra anger and frustration, because then whether you realize it or not, that could very well bleed over into your kids. And then they take on your [inaudible 00:36:30] and anger and frustration, and that’s not fair to them, because they can’t process it the same way you can, and they don’t have maybe all the context and in that level of comprehension of filtered through things, and so it’s unfair to them. And for us, just so you know Dr. Smith, this goes back to Trayvon Martin.

Dr. Smith:
So you know what? That’s amazing. We had a national SBC conversation this morning with Dr. Ronnie Floyd. And they were asking me how about things were going? It was set up to talk about race in America. And his question was something about how do you see the SBC and progress and everything? And I said, “Well, there was the 50s and the 60s.” And I said, “There was everything up to 2012.” And I say, “I thought then Christian indifference and insensitivity towards one another post put on display.” So go ahead. I just want to say that’s a marker for me as well. Trayvon Martin.

Chris Davis:
We’ve been having these conversations since Trayvon Martin. And so by now, which at this is the sad thing, man. We started those conversations with Trayvon Martin. And we have been having them every single year, sometimes multiple times in a year. And I remember being in LA talking to fellow ministry friends who were white, and they would sit and listen. And my one question to them would be, “Do you have these conversations with your children?” And they would say, “No.” and I’m like, “That’s a privilege.” That is a privilege you have that I don’t have. So here is that as we mourn about the things that we see, we’re not saying that other things are happening, what we’re saying is we are now having to have these conversations with our children, that many of our white brothers and sisters can choose not to have, because it does not impact them.

Chris Davis:
So we get to where we are now and we’ve learned trial and error. We’ve learned along the way, we have to absorb it ourselves, process it ourselves, talk it out, emotion, raw, all at logic, objectivity, all of that ourselves. Then we have the conversation with our kids. Now our eldest, because he’s older, and he spent a full year in college away from his parents. He was having this conversation with us. He was the one who was having the Trayvon Martin conversation with, and then our youngest Kenneth, but then he’s off in college now having those same conversations with his friends. So we don’t treat him as a child anymore. Now we’re parent coach, we’re at things now where you’re an adult, we’re going to treat you with respect. As an adult, you’re going to respect us as your parent, but we’re going to treat you with respect as an adult and have these conversations with you, like we would another brother or sister in the Lord. And so that’s what we did with him. But we didn’t thrust the two younger ones into that conversation until we had processed through it.

Chris Davis:
And then not only could express it to them, but have an answer for them, our response for them of how they can do and then my wife did something, which was the first for any of my kids. And then eventually, we took the other two and I’ll let her share that. So the first thing was we had to process it ourselves before we brought the two younger ones into the conversation. And then my wife brought the youngest one into it a certain way, and she can share that.

Morgan Davis:
Yeah, and I think that it was an important point that Chris made in terms of saying that we have to process it amongst ourselves because still dealing with COVID-19 and still, for the most part, being safer at home and staying at home. There were conversations that Chris and I had to have maybe going in an errand in the car because we needed the space away to be able to be authentic in our expression and how we were dealing with certain things without negatively impacting our children. And it is unfortunate that we are continuing to have this conversation and look at our five-year-old at the time and say, “This is why you can’t wear a hoodie.”

Morgan Davis:
It was hard as parents sitting here or recognizing that our sons love to be creative with their hair, and we’ve had to tell both of them, people are not going to see you as a 3.83 student who has been serving and teaching in a children’s ministry. When you walk down the street, you’re going to be profile this way. And so it’s sobering to have conversations of what’s happening in the world and then affirming them with the truth of Scripture. We just have to mommy and daddy can’t even trust the advice that we’re giving you is going to keep you safe, ultimately we place your safety and protection in the care of the Lord. And that’s hard because children don’t want to hear that their parents no matter how much you’ve shared with them on what to do, right, that that might not unfortunately, for lack of better words, save their lives. And so it is hard because as a parent, you almost feel like, I’m not doing enough but in essence we just have to rest in the reality of God’s sovereignty and just.

Dr. Smith:
Trust him.

Morgan Davis:
Right. And so with all of this happening, and again, making sure our children, the information that they get from us, it’s balanced. It’s not demeaning the character of the Lord in any way. No, this is a man sin. This has nothing to do with God being less good or anything like that. And then helping them to be informed. Our children at the ages that they’re at, this is pivotal and their worldview. And so we’ve as a family, the Lord has … he put it on Chris’s heart first that we’re called to whitespaces.

Chris Davis:
To build bridge builds.

Morgan Davis:
Right. For the sake of working in racial reconciliation, so that Revelation 7:9 can be evident here on earth as well, before we get to that great day. We want our children to have a biblical worldview. And so that meant that even with these sin issues that happen, we as parents have an opportunity to teach them what to do from a biblical worldview. God is a God of justice. So this is how we walk this out in our life. And so with Hannah, our youngest, the Lord just put it on my heart. We’ve always tried to model not just teaching our children what it means to be a disciple, but to actually walk that out in our life. And there was a peaceful protest that was happening in Roland Park and I as a 38 year old African American woman I had never protested before by trade. I’m a professional photographer and there’s a big God story with how he brought photography in my life and countrywise, he sent me to document his work in the earth. But this particular day he pressed it on my heart to just take Hannah to a peaceful protest and talk to her about the why. And the Why always comes back to being made in the image of God.

Morgan Davis:
And so everyone needing to be valued, and their life needing to matter from that premise alone. Not an organization, literally, from what Genesis 1:26 to 27 says. And so I took her to a protest, it was very overwhelming, and also very encouraging to see that non-blacks outnumbered the African American population at this one particular protest and having Hannah see that there were people that we’re advocating for her life mattering and having conversations about that and so sadly having to tell her about Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland and Philando Castile and all these other names that continue sadly to grow on this long list of lives that have been lost or taken due to unjust reasons. And so we protested and after sharing some stories, I asked Hannah so it wasn’t like we’re just going to have this action and then we’re not going to debrief about it. And for her and I can just say this so honestly, this has been revolutionary moving her here in Maryland and being around this very diverse but pro-African American climate because she’s only always lived in white spaces and so …

Chris Davis:
Old enough to remember living life living in LA area.

Morgan Davis:
She didn’t remember, but to go from her being and third, fourth and fifth grade in Bakersfield, California and dealing with self-hate. Coming home and saying, “I don’t want braids. I don’t want my hair curly.” Kenneth being called racial slurs in a cafeteria to her coming over here and being around black beauty and people that are celebrating her hair texture and her skin color. And she has friends from her church that are sending her these Pinterest graphics to say, Black Lives Matter. And really being affirmed, ethnically here. The protest was just the cherry on top because now she’s saying, “It’s not just my ethnicity that saying this.” And even in the midst of grave tragedy, there are people thousands that are marching to say that I was made in the image of God and my life matters on that premise alone.

Morgan Davis:
And so we again have had to give them these things in small doses because we also don’t want them to walk out into this world fearful. We want them to know that God has already gone before them every single place that they set their feet, but then we do have to deal with the reality of sin and how it manifests itself in people. And so it’s been a very delicate balance. But it’s one again the same way with transitioning for the sake of the call of this ministry here. We over-communicate and give them the space to talk about how this makes them feel. And so by God’s grace, they’re taking it in stride. Again, it is very sobering to have these conversations, especially when you’re having conversations with ministry counterparts and they’re like, “Yeah, I don’t have to have that conversation.” And it’s conversations that we have to have with our children.

Dr. Smith:
Amen. Well, I’ll tell you what, I knew it would be and this has been an encouraging hour and to cure your people is bless, Dave the … interact with you two and certainly, a word you use there at the end sister is, I think too many people in marriage and in parenting under-communicate. And so I was really happy when you express the value of over-communicating and making sure things are as clear. I am tremendously prayerful today for my black boys that we’ve raised, which would be two sons and, we raised two great-nephews and I’m certainly prayerful for my black daughter, daddy’s girl, my only girl and it is an interesting day. My oldest looks a little bit like you, brother Davis skin tone and my youngest nephew looks a little bit like you sister Davis.

Dr. Smith:
And it’s just a lot of things going on. And I think a strong word I pray that lessons of this podcast will take from you that if your parents and even grandparents seeking to disciple and be a blessing to your children, communication is so vital. Yes, I know your day is busy. Yes, I know you’re tired when you get home from work, but communication is so vital. And I’m glad y’all are here. I thank the Lord that you’re here. You grew up in Baltimore pastor, I grew up in the DC suburbs. So I’m glad y’all are back on this side.

Dr. Smith:
And I do think affirmation is just tremendously influential in a child’s life. Our state convention has a multi-year partnership with three baptist associations in western Kenya. And two years ago, I took my nephew with me to Kenya and he is very dark and usually gets comments here in the states and all those kind of things. And I was amazed sister Davis, you talk about trying to be in tune with people’s feelings. I don’t think I’m always in tune to people’s feelings. But even I’ve noticed his whole demeanor change, spending a couple of weeks in Kenya, most people look like you. He was teasing me. He was like, “Uncle you’re the odd man out.” And so it was tremendous.

Dr. Smith:
So if being back over here has that effect, I praise the Lord for that. Y’all are in the right area to have a family to about hair, because when I walk in DC and when I walk in Baltimore, I’ll know people are reading books. I’ll know people got time to pray during the day, but they shown up doing them dues. And I’d be like, “People are styling.” So this is write your kids sweet spot.

Chris Davis:
Yeah. Kenneeth he’s the 14-year-old. He started his high school here. And we were looking to buy a home. And he goes to Franklin High School. And for him, it was a culture shock, because for the first time of all of his school, he’s in the majority. And so he walks and he’s like, “I don’t even know what to do. I’ve never been in the majority.” And now he still feels like a minority, but because he’s a believer, and so he clearly doesn’t involve himself in certain conversations. And so we were talking about moving and things like that and he’s like, “I don’t want to leave. No I want to stay here.” Because for him, it’s the culture. It’s I haven’t been around this before. And he’s just good to not be the odd ball out, to look like everybody else. And so that affirmation is definitely influential here.

Dr. Smith:
So he’s 14. Let me ask y’all a 14-year-old question. I don’t be too personal but with the Davis family I got to have a serious tennis shoe budget. Because when you’re 14, them kicks calls.

Chris Davis:
Our kids were good at holding down the shoes, but that’s probably because of me. I’d be on them because I was a dude that grew up with Tim’s, man. So I still got Tim’s. I got like two big Tim’s. And they look like I just bought them. And so I’ll be telling them, “You [inaudible 00:50:26] about the Dustin shoes, you better wash them surface and [inaudible 00:50:28] clean, better go put them broke down ones or even wild side, don’t put them good ones. Oh, what are you doing? Why are you wearing white right now? Do you realize it’s raining outside? Go put them ” They got warned enough. That they see.

Dr. Smith:
Were you going to say something sister Davis?

Morgan Davis:
It was just piggybacking off of Chris’s comment about Kenneth. It was very hilarious when we moved here. He started school because the first thing that he came home and said was, “Mommy there are black people everywhere.” I’m like Kenneth, you do realize you’re black, right? It’s been fun watching him assimilate to being. Yeah.

Dr. Smith:
Well, thank you so much. I’ve been so excited as you all have talked about what Tony Evans calls a kingdom agenda, having our lives reflect the glory of Jesus Christ our King. I’ve been so encouraged by your thoughts about over communication and clear communication and the back and forth with your children. You value them as image-bearers of the Lord and as they grow, you value them in their growing and developing intelligence and even just the part when you talked about even shifting how now you relate to your oldest son. So what a joy. Thank you so much. I pray God’s riches, blessings on the work at Northwest.

Dr. Smith:
I’ll say it even though it might not be true. I’m sorry that you came here and in your first year there was a global pandemic but I will say this, I have been tremendous encouraged because Maryland/Delaware pastors love the Lord, they love their people and are just grinding through this and I just praise the Lord, for everything that is happening. Pastor Chris and Morgan Davis, thank you so much for being well peculiar people and we will definitely be talking to you all again because you are wonderful communicators.

Chris Davis:
Amen.

Dr. Smith:
God bless you both.

Chris Davis:
Thank you.

Morgan Davis:
Thank you.