Dennis Green and Charles Dyson

[00:05] CHARLES DYSON: And you can go ahead, Charlie, and read the bio or read the intro.

[00:10] DENNIS GREEN: My name is Charlie. I'm 80 years old. Today is Tuesday, May 30. I'm in Ashland, Virginia, and I'm here with my one step partner, Dennis.

[00:31] CHARLES DYSON: My name is Dennis. I'm 64 years old. Today is May 30, and I'm in Richmond, Virginia, and I'm here with my one step, small step partner, Charlie. And, Charlie, if you can see Dennis's bio, go on and read that out loud. It should be in the chat.

[01:06] DENNIS GREEN: Dennis is married man of 40 years, two children and two grandchildren. Part time pastor and full time entrepreneur. He operates an automotive repair shop as well as a non profit having to do with cars. He believes the church is the hope of the world, as well as a major reason we find ourselves so divided.

[01:38] CHARLES DYSON: Charlie's bio is he is a 78 year old white male, grew up in southern baptist church, currently an elder in the christian church. I don't know what Doc means. Maybe I'll find out else. Registered independent. Voted GOP 95% until recently. Vietnam veteran, retired factory service representative for major agricultural equipment company. So, Charlie, why did you want to participate in one small step? Why are you here today?

[02:18] DENNIS GREEN: Well, I feel like there's so much division in our country today, and I think it's good to listen to people and get an idea about what their values are and why they have the values that they do. And I felt like this exercise would give me some experience in trying to do a better job of that in my daily life.

[02:58] CHARLES DYSON: I would say that you answered that extremely well for me, too. So I could almost just say what, what you said, Charlie. I, um. It's very troubling that we find ourselves in such a divided country, a divided community, a divided church, and in my church, often divided families. And that's just troubling. And so I'm just on a quest, when I can, to listen and to better understand what's at the root of the division. First of all, Charlie, let me say thank you for your service. And I do want to ask you this question, but before I get there, I want to. I want to say I've had a. An interesting whatever, for whatever reason, kind of exercise going on for the last year or so. When I get into opportunities to ask people this question, it generally starts a pretty good conversation. And so the question is this, if you had a do over, Charlie, anywhere in your life, what would that do over look like? Because for me, it would be, I would want to serve my country. I did not do that. I was just under the age of the draft, so I didn't have to. And I chose school and work, but if I had a do over, I would not. I would. I would choose to serve in one of the armed forces. So if. Would you have a do over, and if you had one, do you know what that would look like?

[04:52] DENNIS GREEN: I can't really think of anything that I would do different of a major. There are a lot of things that I've done in my life that. That small things, interactions with people, things that I could have done a lot better, but as a major thing, I can't think of anything that. That I would have. Have done differently. I've been very fortunate to have a good marriage. My wife and I will have been married 59 years in just a few weeks.

[05:35] CHARLES DYSON: And congratulations.

[05:37] DENNIS GREEN: Thank you. And I had a good career. I've always been interested and agriculture and growing crops and have done part time farming on the side and was able to have advantage of the GI bill when I got out of service and graduated in agricultural engineering, was able to work with a very good company and stay involved with agriculture. So I've had. I've really been very blessed in my life, and as far as major things, I can't think of anything that I would do differently.

[06:35] CHARLES DYSON: Did you grow up in Ashland?

[06:37] DENNIS GREEN: I did not. I grew up in Rockville, actually, in the western part of Hanover county. We had a small farm there, and we live now, actually, on the place that was my. My father's, my grandfather's farm. My father was born here, the family, when the estate was sold, the place at auction, and my wife and I were able to buy. Buy it at auction, and that's where we live now.

[07:20] CHARLES DYSON: That's cool.

[07:23] DENNIS GREEN: I have.

[07:24] CHARLES DYSON: You said in.

[07:26] DENNIS GREEN: Yes. Go ahead.

[07:28] CHARLES DYSON: Well, I was gonna say, go ahead.

[07:30] DENNIS GREEN: I just. I wanted to ask you from your bio, how did you get into part time ministry? And you mentioned the division in the church, and I was wondering if you could give me some idea what your idea might be, what the church can do different to alleviate some of the division.

[08:03] CHARLES DYSON: Well, we only have 50 minutes, Charlie. I mean, you know, you ask a pastor a wide open question like that. Wow. I came to faith at 24. My wife and I are from Georgia, and when I was dating my now wife, she said, if you're going to hang out with me, you're going to have to go to church. And I didn't grow up in church, didn't know anything about it. But I came to faith at 24 with just a lot of questions and a different way of seeing things. And then in the Bible belt, particularly in the early eighties, there, you know, the church was still largely the center of the community, and this was a rural community anyway, where she grew up. And so they just weren't used to people like me, Charlie, that didn't have any frame of reference for any of the biblical stories, for any of the understandings that everybody just assumed that everybody knew, and I didn't. And so I knew pretty quickly that God was going to use that. I can't explain to you how, but that God was going to use that different, that different frame of reference that I had to help pastors and help the church. But it was several years later before I said yes to the Lord. And so I was actually in my forties. And when I agreed, finally, total God, yes, and I would serve him. And I knew that he wanted me to do that in, like, coaching pastors and helping revitalize churches that were stuck and that were kind of having a hard time moving forward. And so all of my schooling and all of my kind of education went to being certified in what's called now church revitalization and coaching to help pastors. And so it was never my idea to become a pastor. That happened. That was all God's doing. And he did that 15 years or so ago, and it was a full time position, and the church grew very large. And then I left that church and went to a smaller church, and that church grew very large. And then I just knew God was calling me out of full time, of full time pastoring and more back to helping churches, helping pastors. And at the same time, he had created this opportunity for this auto ministry, which is a whole different subject. But it's. I do probably more pastoring in this automobile repair shop ministry than I even do at church. So that's a really short story there, Charlie. But the. I actually preached on this last Sunday, not this past Sunday, the Sunday before that. The church. Our country is so divided. And I think the church if is, if it is not the main reason why. It is one of the main reasons why our country is so divided, because the church has for so many years told society that they're not welcome if they don't dress like us or look like us or think like us. And the church has told society that they have to get themselves together before they can enter the kingdom of God, which is the total opposite of what Jesus taught. So without going into a sermon, that's kind of the 64,000 foot view of your answer to your question. I think.

[12:00] DENNIS GREEN: Well, thank you. I appreciate your perspective. I grew up in the christian home and was my parents, they didn't just take me to church and leave me. They went to church with me from the time I was born, I guess. And so I've been a part. And the doc, the church. Christian church stands for disciples of Christ.

[12:43] CHARLES DYSON: Gotcha.

[12:43] DENNIS GREEN: That's what the doc stands for. It differentiates it from just the christian church and the church of God, which they all three kind of came out of the same movement. But my journey has been one that has taken a lot of different direction, I guess, over my lifetime of my beliefs. And I think probably the things that had changed my views have been a result of two major things. The first was probably my time in service when I served. It changed a lot of my views. And the second thing that has been a major thing that has changed my views has been the fact that we have three children, two daughters and a son. And one daughter is a nurse practitioner and one is a special ed teacher. And our son works in. Has worked with nonprofits, and our son is gay. And that's been a major thing that has changed my views in my lifetime. And I guess I feel like the church, many churches, as you said, don't accept people that are different. And I think it's a very unfortunate thing for the churches.

[15:00] CHARLES DYSON: Well, thanks for sharing that. It is unfortunate for the churches. It's unfortunate for everyone. So you mentioned those two major things in your life. Your son, your son's choices, and then the entering the military. What other you said changed your views? What other views were changed, maybe through the military experience, other than what you just told me about, about your son?

[15:30] DENNIS GREEN: I think the major thing that changed my views in the military was my view on race relations in our country. I was born in the early forties, so I grew up in the Jim Crow area of our society. And I saw things in my childhood. My father worked for a trucking company and he was assistant shop foreman. They had a large shop, had a lot of different job opportunities for people in that shop. They employed about 50 people, and they had two African Americans that worked for them. And of all the skill jobs that they had that were available, those two African Americans, their job was to wash trucks. That's the only job that they will ever given or able to do. And I didn't think much. I didn't think anything about it. I just thought that was just the way it was. And when I got into the military and I had to serve alongside of people that were different from me, began to. To really change my views and bring to light to me a lot of the disparities that were in our society. So that, I think, was a major thing that began to change me during my service time.

[17:40] CHARLES DYSON: That's a real eye opening kind of exposure. Thank you for sharing that. You said in your bio that you're independent and you. But you vote Republican most of the time. What, what do you think is the difference between being independent and being republican?

[18:01] DENNIS GREEN: Well, as an independent, I always tried to look at who I was voting for or what that person stood for, not what party they. What party they belong to. I wasn't. I wasn't loyal to any particular party. I just. I tried to look at the. The values that I felt they embodied, and that's the way I voted. So I considered myself independent. I didn't consider myself a Democrat or Republican, but I did vote republican more times than not. But recently, I know my views have changed, but I feel like the republican party has changed as well. And I don't feel like it's the same party that I voted for for most of my life. And so that's why I have, more recently, have voted more Democrat than I did Republican.

[19:33] CHARLES DYSON: What do you, what do you think is the. What do you think that individuals, you and I, can do that would help facilitate opportunities for conversations between folks who either, as Marie said, either made assumptions about us or have some opinion about us that's probably untrue? How can we begin to heal the division in our country?

[20:04] DENNIS GREEN: I guess the only thing I can say, Dennis, is I think about the hymn let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. We just have to be one on one with people and meet people where they are and try to listen to them and try to. Try to understand where they're coming from. And that's what I try to do. I guess it's kind of like throwing a pebble in the water where the ripples go out. And I think, you know, people would just, on a one on one basis, try to be more understanding. I don't know that there's any great thing, the thing that you're doing with your vehicle work. I think that, you know, those kind of things certainly are very helpful. I haven't done anything like that. I would like to wish I had. I have worked with Habitat for Humanity and since I retired and tried to participate in those ways, but I feel like if we do things on a one on one basis, show by example, that's the best we can do. What are your. Do you have any ideas of things that you can think of?

[22:25] CHARLES DYSON: My ideas are probably not very realistic, but, you know, I think that our political system is so broken, and until we get some kind of structure in place that's going. That's going to tell us the truth. And, you know, when we're in a situation now, we don't even know how to believe. We don't know where the truth comes from.

[22:56] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah.

[22:56] CHARLES DYSON: Because, you know, the Walter Cronkite's not around anymore, and so everything is spin now. There's no. That's the news of the way it is. And I wish somebody would just tell me the way it is so I can decide, make my own decisions. But we don't have that. We have everybody trying to spin it to accomplish some greater, in their opinion, purpose. So until we can get some, some leaders who really understand and care that this is just my opinion. Of course, the primary reason we're where we are is this great big hypocrisy cloud that encompasses. That covers all of us, both from politics to religion to, you know, social media. But we all, and I do include myself in that. We live one way, and then we judge others for not living the way that we think they should live. And, I mean, who has any right to do that? But. But yet we do that. And so the church is famous for the hypocrisy that goes in it and the politics, both sides of the aisle, or just they drive people. They divide people through this big hypocrisy, do what I say and not what I do kind of deal. And. And until we can get real with that, I'm just. There's a question I read somewhere Marie has up there that makes me fearful for our country's future. And I am fearful for our country's future, for my grandkids future, because it seems like the speed of change and the speed of division and the speed of unhealth in our country is ratcheting up every week. And it's scary.

[25:03] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah, it is. It is. Scary really is. One of the things that I. I fear in the churches is christian nationalism. It's good to have a love of our country, but it seems to me that we have this idea that that's kind of been brought down to us of our country being founded on Christianity, which really, if we think about it, our country was embedded in the genocide of indigenous people and the enslavement of a large group of people, which both of those things are certainly not christian. I feel like that somehow this christian nationalism has kind of eroded into a lot of our churches, where we have kind of. We idolize the country, and we think that we have to be white christians in order to be legitimate part of our country. And as a member of Christian Church, disciples of Christ, we have one belief. We don't have a doctrine or creed or anything. We believe that Jesus Christ was the son of the living God, that he died on the cross for the sins of mankind. And that's it. That's our belief. And I believe that Christ died for everyone, for all of mankind. And when we. When we begin to idolize that country and bring this christian nationalism in, I feel like we're making God kind of like a mascot for our country, which I think it's a bad thing. As I said, I am a christian, but I don't like this idea of christian nationalism.

[29:13] CHARLES DYSON: Understood. So, when your son made his declaration to the family of his lifestyle choice, was that divisive in your family, or are you still able to sit around the table and have these kinds of conversations?

[29:30] DENNIS GREEN: Yes, we are able to have these kind of conversations.

[29:36] CHARLES DYSON: What does your son say and your daughter say? How do they feel like we need to move forward?

[29:45] DENNIS GREEN: Well, I think they. They feel like people in our churches need to be more accepting. I know I have one of my. One of my daughters that she doesn't attend church because she feels like a lot of christians are hypocritical. So, you know, it. I think it. A lot of our young people that this has turned a lot of our young people away from the church not being. Accepting that. The real. To me, the real question comes down to this. With the LGBTQ community, are they born that way, or is it a choice? That's the real question. And seeing. Seeing my son and knowing him and watching him grow up, I believe he was born that way. I believe that these people are born that way. And I have friends that don't agree with me on that. They say, you know, how can I be a Christian and accept him? But that. And I had one. One of my relatives say to me, I don't believe God made people that way. But we have people that are born children that are born without limbs. We have children that are born with. Have bipolar disorders. We have children. My daughter is a special ed. She had a child in one of her classes that was born missing a chromosome. So the way I look at it, things get messed up in the womb. If. If a child can be born with. Without legs or without an arm or with all of these other things. How can it not be that a child can be born with having feelings that are different from what we might call normal? And that's my way of looking at it.

[33:07] CHARLES DYSON: I have had conversations and counseled with numerous families in your situation. And it is always sad to me how others want to judge. And the reality is that we all have the sin in our life, and one sin is not greater than another. And we can't. We can't. It's a hard, it's a hard thing for the church, I think, to get their head around. It's human nature to try to judge and rank those sin, but God does not. And so, for when I have, I have said this from the pulpit, I've preached this many times that there will be homosexual people in heaven just like they'll be drug addicts and alcoholics and I, in any of the list of on and on sins. And if we, if we think that ranking them for our own society is doing the kingdom of God any good, we're so, we're sorely misjudging God and his, his intention for our, for his creation. I'm, I'm sorry that you have to endure that kind of thing with your friends and even family members. That's always sad to me.

[34:47] DENNIS GREEN: Have you, have you ever had a thought? I've had this thought. I'm asking you if you've had it. Was, was it me that took the crazy pill and I've gone off to bail? Or was it everybody else?

[35:10] CHARLES DYSON: I have had that thought, yes. Where, where does winded, common sense cease to be common? Yes. Do you have grandchildren, Charlie?

[35:32] DENNIS GREEN: I do. I have four. We have.

[35:35] CHARLES DYSON: Congratulations.

[35:37] DENNIS GREEN: We have twin granddaughters that are identical. Yeah. Identical twin granddaughters. 16. Another granddaughter that's twelve and a grandson that's seven.

[36:00] CHARLES DYSON: Congratulations.

[36:02] DENNIS GREEN: Have to get my wife. And you have, I believe you said you had two grandchildren.

[36:09] CHARLES DYSON: I have two, yeah. We have, we have orders in for more, but they're not paying attention to our orders.

[36:16] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah.

[36:17] CHARLES DYSON: So one of the great, I didn't know this when my kids were small, but nobody told me this, but I learned this after. And so one of the great joys of, and responsibilities, I think, that I'll share with you that we've learned in our family is particularly with grandkids around now we can sit there and say, no matter what the issue is of the day, no matter what the challenge is of the day, that. Did my ten year old grandson get picked on at school or did he, did he plays football? Did he have a bad experience of sportsmanship or whatever the issue is, it's. Now the questions are, how do you think that Jesus wants us to respond to others in this kinds of situations? And I wish I'd have asked my kids that when they were growing up. I wish I'd have known to have those kind of conversations around the table, but nobody told me. But now the chance to get to just share real life and how it impacts us, and then what our responsibility should be, not that we always get it right, but what our responsibility to others should be in order to keep the great commandment of love God and love others. And so that's been really fun, and I'll just throw that out to you in case you decide you want to try that with around your dinner table one evening.

[37:43] DENNIS GREEN: Thank you. Thank you for that suggestion.

[37:46] CHARLES DYSON: Can. Can I ask, is there a specific moment that you can think of, like, a specific conversation that you had when you asked that question? Dennis? Oh, sure. It happens. I mean, if you're intentional, it happens most every time we get together, and we're very fortunate in that my son and his wife live five minutes in one direction, and my daughter and her husband live five minutes in the other direction. And so every Sunday, they all come to the house for dinner. And so, most recently, it was my son, my grandson plays football, and it was some bad sportsmanship on the other team and how my ten year old, how that really aggravated him so much. And so we got the chance to just talk about what. What should our response be? If we claim to love Jesus, then what should our response be when those kinds of things happen to us in life and what are some options? And so we just got to, you know, we got to share. Everybody's been there, right? We got to share what we did that was not right, and what we did that was right, and. And we get to share our different opinions on kind of the right way to move through that. So that was very recent. That was probably two weeks ago. Marie. But we talk about it in school. We talk about it, you know, in. In workplace situations with my kids now. But, of course, they're all grown. But it's particularly effective when you're kind of around the table to be able to hear the different perspectives and to be. It's also a great opportunity as you learn to trust one another so that you're understanding that you're not going to be judged for what you say, but we get an opportunity to share together.

[39:45] DENNIS GREEN: Dennis, have you ever done anything that you thought was really crazy?

[39:57] CHARLES DYSON: Yeah. Yeah. Five years ago, I was full time pastor, large church. I mean, things were, we were growing. Things were just going great. But because I've always been a car guy, I kind of developed this reputation and in, within the church. And so for years prior to that, so I'm talking 15 years ago, ten years ago, we were always helping people with cars. People would just call me up with car questions and we would help people with cars. And so we kind of had this unofficial ministry. Car ministry. It was never part of the church budget, but it was always church sanctioned, and people would donate cars. And through myself and my son and a couple other mechanics, we would rehabilitate those cars and give them away and help people with repairs who couldn't afford them. And so my story is the very classic, my story is the culmination of the very classic line that you hear in Christianity. Them sometimes when they say, be careful what you pray for, Charlie. So I was praying that God would send somebody to kind of take this rag tag ministry and really do something amazing with it. And I prayed that for a few years. And I finally figured out that it was me that God wanted to sin. It was me. He wanted to do something with that. And when I began to understand that and seek, I sought counsel and wisdom from people I knew in the industry. And they said, I said, here's what I believe God's calling me to do. I'm going to start my own repair business, and I'm going to incorporate this ministry into it. What do I need to know? What do I need to have? And so they said, you need to have $150,000 cash. You have good credit. You need to have 600 customers already or have a lot of money for marketing and a marketing blitz. And you need to have this kind of location that looks like XYZ and high profile traffic and all of those things. And I had none of those things. I had really none of those things. But I felt like God was calling me. And so it was absolutely crazy. And I left full time pastoring and, you know, pretty, pretty solid income with no worries and went out on faith. And God has just been faithful every single day. It's just been amazing. I hope one day it'll become a book. But the stories, the stories of God's faithfulness and provision over and over and over, just remarkable. So, yeah, it was crazy, though. And everyone, no one hesitated to tell me that it was crazy.

[43:01] DENNIS GREEN: Well, that's, that's amazing that it turned out.

[43:07] CHARLES DYSON: It is. So as my son and I started, and now we have eight full time employees and able to help a lot of folks. And God continues to be faithful to that, which I believe he's called me to do. So it was crazy. What about you? What's the craziest thing you've done?

[43:26] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah, well, I guess. Craziest thing I did. I jumped out of an airplane to raise money for habitat for Humanity.

[43:43] CHARLES DYSON: That's cool. I agree. It's crazy. I wouldn't want to do it. So how old were you when you.

[43:49] DENNIS GREEN: Did that 7th day?

[43:52] CHARLES DYSON: Wow. Would you do it again?

[43:58] DENNIS GREEN: I would. It would. It was. It was fun. Kind of scary, but. But it was fun. I. I had people. Well, we did it to raise money with, you know, like, people will do a run and have people sponsor them. So it was like that. But I did it around my birthday, my 70th birthday. So I told all of my friends, rather than give me a big birthday present, they could make a donation and sponsor me in this. And all the money went to Habitat. And so.

[44:57] CHARLES DYSON: That was five minutes. Okay, so what question should I have asked you, Charlie, that I didn't know to ask? What do you want me to ask you? What do you want to talk about? What do you want to tell me?

[45:09] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah, well, I'm trying to think of something. I really can't think of anything else that comes to mind. How about you? Do you have anything that you.

[45:58] CHARLES DYSON: No, I don't think so. Let me ask you this question, though. What about from your. From your christian kind of perspective, have you ever been put in an uncomfortable situation trying to defend what you believe, or have you ever felt persecuted for believing the way that you believe?

[46:19] DENNIS GREEN: Yes. Yes, I have. I think that's happened a lot of times in my life. I think when I think back over my lifetime, I know during my time in service and when I was in Vietnam, some of my time, when I would always had a little pocket Bible, you know, some of the people would. Some of the guys, you know, would kind of look at you and make comments. Um, yeah.

[47:22] CHARLES DYSON: Charlie, will you say that again? I think the sound kind of broke up. You always had a little pocket of what?

[47:28] DENNIS GREEN: Yeah, Bible. I had a pocket Bible, actually. My father gave it to me before I left to go to Vietnam, but. But I also. I had a buddy that wasn't a Christian, and I made contact with him a couple of years ago. It had been, well, how many years? 50. And. And he probably paid me the best compliment I've ever had. He said, I have become a Christian, and it was because of you. And now at the time in Vietnam, so. But there have been been other times, you know, particularly, you know, with my son, that, you know, my beliefs and how I interpret the scriptures. And I guess I don't take everything in the Bible literally in the Old Testament as an example, I don't believe that Jonah was swallowed by a whale and spit out on the shores of Nineveh. I believe that's. I believe that it very well could have been Jonah, and God called him to go to Nineveh, and somebody was inspired to write that story. I don't believe it literally, but I believe it figuratively. And I believe it teaches us important lessons that when y'all calls us to do something, we can't run away from him. And more importantly, that God thinks just as much of those people that we think are despicable as he does. I think that's the important lesson of that story. I don't take everything literally in the Bible, but I believe that everything is inspirational and has a message for us.

[50:42] CHARLES DYSON: Amen. Can I ask you all to just each, like, take a moment to say, what's something that you'll take away from this experience?

[51:04] DENNIS GREEN: Well, I think I gained an appreciation for Dennis and the work that he's doing and his commitment. I think it's very commendable. I think it, you know, it reinforces my feeling that it's important to talk to people and find out what their views are while they had the values that they did.

[51:46] CHARLES DYSON: Yeah, same. Same with me. I appreciate the reminder, Charlie, of how, you know, your values have been challenged various times in your life, and you've had to work through kind of what that. What that new version of Charlie is going to be and how that's going to, you know, how you're going to move forward and what your values are going to say about you and to others about you and about your relationship with God and whether that's in Vietnam that you influenced a young man, or whether that's around choices, other choices that have come in through your life. I'm grateful to be reminded that I'm too often too narrow in my focus of what others are going through. So thank you. I've really enjoyed meeting you. I appreciate your candor.

[52:45] DENNIS GREEN: Thank you.