1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,000 Celebrating the power of possibility. 2 00:00:05,000 --> 00:00:34,000 I'm Pastor Chris Badle and I believe anything is possible. 3 00:00:34,000 --> 00:00:48,000 Welcome to anything is possible. I'm Halloran Hilton Hill and these are great stories about great people who troll you through text messages in your life. 4 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:57,000 Now these are great stories about great people and great friends like my friend Dr. Chris Badle. Thank you for being here today. 5 00:00:57,000 --> 00:00:58,000 Thanks for inviting me. 6 00:00:58,000 --> 00:00:59,000 You do know you troll me right? 7 00:00:59,000 --> 00:01:01,000 Every now and then. 8 00:01:01,000 --> 00:01:03,000 You know what? I love it. 9 00:01:03,000 --> 00:01:10,000 I have loved our friendship all these years and it is great to have you back on anything as possible. 10 00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:12,000 Thanks for having us. We appreciate it. 11 00:01:12,000 --> 00:01:15,000 Oh man your life has changed. 12 00:01:15,000 --> 00:01:16,000 Considerably. 13 00:01:16,000 --> 00:01:19,000 Considerably. I wasn't expecting this. 14 00:01:19,000 --> 00:01:37,000 So when and by the way you can go back to our YouTube channel and you can probably go back and find the original interview that I did with Chris Badle. But at these long Samson-esque locks you were pastor of a growing and booming church. 15 00:01:37,000 --> 00:01:39,000 19 children? 16 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:41,000 Yes. 17 00:01:41,000 --> 00:01:43,000 19 children. 18 00:01:43,000 --> 00:01:44,000 Yes. 19 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:45,000 Please explain. 20 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:57,000 The long story or the short version. So we have 19, 15 of which we have adopted or have legal custody over. 21 00:01:57,000 --> 00:02:07,000 I had two from my first marriage and then with me and Toma got married. She wanted children and we had five miscarriages. And we said well we'll go the adoption route. 22 00:02:07,000 --> 00:02:19,000 And then I was actually doing a revival in Baltimore and she called me and said Chris there's a sibling group of five that are living in three different homes. Can we take them? 23 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:28,000 I'm like sure baby. If you want that's fine. You know. She said well I already told them yes. 24 00:02:28,000 --> 00:02:40,000 And so we got the sibling group of five. Then we had one. Then we had another. Biological after that. And then I went to the doctor. 25 00:02:40,000 --> 00:02:54,000 I think at that point there were eight and they kept coming. It's like if you know if an elephant steps on your toe and another elephant jumps on its back it's not going to make much difference. 26 00:02:54,000 --> 00:03:01,000 But we have a heart for children. Where did this heart though come from? 27 00:03:01,000 --> 00:03:12,000 Wow. I would like to believe it's for a couple of things. It came from a couple of things. Number one my parents and definitely Toma's parents. 28 00:03:12,000 --> 00:03:20,000 Excellent parents. They were there. They showed us love. Showed us what semi-functional families look like. 29 00:03:20,000 --> 00:03:33,000 And then I think it's for our love for Jesus. You know that this love for humanity and when you see people who are hurting and in despair you just got a heart and want to do something. 30 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:47,000 And ours were toward children. And a home was just open. Toma's family they were she said she would come home sometime and that would be these children in the house like where these kids come from. 31 00:03:47,000 --> 00:03:59,000 But yeah that's I think it came from that. Just our upbringing in Cincinnati from our parents. Our love for God and just love for humanity. 32 00:03:59,000 --> 00:04:04,000 Well when first we met I met you as a minister. Yeah. 33 00:04:04,000 --> 00:04:15,000 And you did something within your church that I thought was so forward thinking. You would have these dynamic church conversations. 34 00:04:15,000 --> 00:04:25,000 If it was a hot topic you would bring people in and have the full-throated conversation in the church. You remember this. I do. 35 00:04:25,000 --> 00:04:41,000 So when I was thinking about this interview this is the word that came up for me. When I think of Chris Battle I think of someone that has taken an asymmetrical approach to ministry. 36 00:04:41,000 --> 00:04:54,000 Everybody else is kind of doing it this way or this way. It's like you're going to get there. You're going to get to the heart of people but you didn't seem to want to go the same way everybody went. 37 00:04:54,000 --> 00:05:07,000 And so you're pastoring. You're dealing with all of the stuff that goes along with that. What I remember though as a pastor is your church loved you. I mean they really loved you. 38 00:05:07,000 --> 00:05:18,000 I would like to think they did. It seemed like it to me like they loved you. I just feel that we have all these issues in the world even in our community. 39 00:05:18,000 --> 00:05:29,000 It does us no good to just pray over them because we don't like it or we don't understand it. I said let's have the conversation. Let's talk about it. 40 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:44,000 Let's see the pros and cons. Let's understand why people are making these particular choices. And we may not agree with them. It may not be in our theological frame but we still need to understand it. 41 00:05:44,000 --> 00:05:51,000 And how can we truly show compassion and love for people if we don't understand what they're going through and why they made these particular decisions. 42 00:05:51,000 --> 00:06:03,000 I always loved that about you. You wanted to have this full-throated conversation and look at it from all angles. But then I remember getting a call from you and you said hey just want to give your heads up. 43 00:06:03,000 --> 00:06:16,000 I think I want to make a big change. And I said you're going to do what? I'm going to do a farm. The title of this book by the way is Aim Coming to Your Church. 44 00:06:16,000 --> 00:06:33,000 You missed the word there. I ain't coming to your church but I will come to your garden. The next thing I know you're off on a whole new journey. 45 00:06:33,000 --> 00:06:51,000 And what's interesting to me was the courage to take the leap because you correct me if I'm wrong here but I remember you saying to me I have no idea how I'm going to pay for this, how this is going to work. You sir have 19 kids. 46 00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:21,000 So I'm going to take you back. When I came to Knoxville from Cincinnati I had been pastoring 30 years I guess at that point. And I'm like this is probably going to be my last congregation. 47 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:36,000 So I kind of said let me have a little more philosophical approach to how I'm going to do this as I'm going out. I'm like how can our church affect community? How can we have significant impact in community? 48 00:07:36,000 --> 00:07:52,000 And we were cleaning Odd Fellow Cemetery which is a cemetery right across the street from the church. Most of the people buried there were born in slavery and it was a mess howling. It was just overgrown. 49 00:07:52,000 --> 00:08:07,000 And I said we're going to clean this up. So I hadn't been here three months. We were out there about 30 of us out there cleaning. We're mowing, we're chain sawing, we're putting headstones back up and we have bags and bags of debris that we've collected. 50 00:08:07,000 --> 00:08:17,000 And this brother pulls up in a pickup truck. He stops me and starts thanking us for what we're doing. Appreciate y'all investing in the community so on and so forth. 51 00:08:17,000 --> 00:08:24,000 Now in my Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Training I done caught me a fish. 52 00:08:24,000 --> 00:08:33,000 Brother, won't you come join us at the church? And that's when he said to me I'm not coming to New York. 53 00:08:33,000 --> 00:08:57,000 Church. This is G-rated TV. And it still plagues me and he pulls off and I'm like that's something's wrong. Fast forward to 2016. First Baptist Concord does a study on church attendance in Knoxville. 54 00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:07,000 20% of Knoxvillians in the buckle of the Bible Belt go to church on a regular basis. Just 20%. 20% and regular is once a month. Right. 55 00:09:07,000 --> 00:09:17,000 Roughly 40% are done with it. Love Jesus can't stand the institution or consider themselves spiritual. Other roughly 40% have no religious affiliation. 56 00:09:17,000 --> 00:09:27,000 I'm like, well, something's not right. You know, and I'm talking to my pastor friends across racial lines, across denominational lines, across the country. 57 00:09:27,000 --> 00:09:38,000 I'm like, they're telling me the same thing. Church attendance is going down. Money is declining. You know, I'm like, well, maybe we need to do church differently. 58 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:45,000 But I don't know what that looks like. You know, they say I'm a baby boomer and I'm kind of stuck in my ways. And I don't know what that. 59 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:55,000 But the things that we were doing were for those who are already coming, you know, come as you are Sunday, you know, wear a hat to the side. 60 00:09:55,000 --> 00:10:08,000 I don't know anything. And so it was then was 2018 when I started doing the garden. I've always done a little gardening and we had a plot of land there at the church. 61 00:10:08,000 --> 00:10:18,000 And it's been a nice place for a garden. That way I can say I'm at the church and at the garden at the same time, you know. 62 00:10:18,000 --> 00:10:27,000 And so I called a friend of mine who was working at the Botanical Garden, Robert Hodge, and he came over. I said, man, can you help me with the latest thing out? 63 00:10:27,000 --> 00:10:34,000 What did she look like? I've never done a community garden before. And we learned about food disparity. 64 00:10:34,000 --> 00:10:41,000 And we had a conversation about food disparity and food desert. And I'm like, ooh. 65 00:10:41,000 --> 00:10:55,000 So the USDA says that if one third of your community is living at poverty level and more than a mile away from nearest grocery store, food desert, your food desert, we were two miles away from the nearest grocery store. 66 00:10:55,000 --> 00:11:03,000 And the median income of the one five zip code is like $17,000. And I'm like, we can fix this. 67 00:11:03,000 --> 00:11:13,000 And two things happen. One, we started fighting food disparity, started getting other pastors to do gardens as well. 68 00:11:13,000 --> 00:11:26,000 We started a farmer's market. But the other thing about the garden was that people started coming to the garden who would never come to my black Baptist brick and mortar church. 69 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:36,000 I'm like, huh, they're coming to my garden, but they won't come to the church, which is less than two doors. I mean, literally two doors down. 70 00:11:36,000 --> 00:11:47,000 And I'm like, well, maybe this is how we ought to do church. So I ended up leaving. And we did the garden. 71 00:11:47,000 --> 00:11:59,000 But you're on the way out. You're right at that point in your career where if you just put it on cruise control, you're going to go out nice. 72 00:11:59,000 --> 00:12:07,000 You're going to get invited to all the stuff. You're going to be able to give the good elder chuckle. 73 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:11,000 I remember them days. Yeah. 74 00:12:11,000 --> 00:12:14,000 And you decided to go in a whole new direction. 75 00:12:14,000 --> 00:12:23,000 Like this is like the biggest chance of your life. Because you didn't know how you were going to fund it or let no idea. 76 00:12:23,000 --> 00:12:33,000 Plus we were living in a parsonage. And I think we had eight kids at that time. And me and Tom were, we kind of delayed for like a year. 77 00:12:33,000 --> 00:12:40,000 You know, like, where are we going to live? Where's our income? You know, and I said, baby, we just got to do this. 78 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:50,000 I just feel us being pushed. And the craziest thing happened. So Toma had a nonprofit for single moms. 79 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:56,000 And there was only one young lady there at the time. So her and all the girls moved in there. 80 00:12:56,000 --> 00:13:02,000 All right. And there was one of the elderly lady at the church had a house, a little two bedroom house. 81 00:13:02,000 --> 00:13:06,000 She said, you and the boys can stay over there, rent free. 82 00:13:06,000 --> 00:13:12,000 So for about a month or two, we were living in separate houses. What wasn't too bad actually for, you know, 83 00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:17,000 but too bad. But it was very interesting, man. 84 00:13:17,000 --> 00:13:24,000 I had been at a book club and they had asked me to lead this book club on racial reconciliation. 85 00:13:24,000 --> 00:13:29,000 And I had said some things and I think it kind of sparked something in one of the fellas. 86 00:13:29,000 --> 00:13:39,000 And we met, he wanted to have a breakfast and chat. So we went to Pete's. It was the day before I left my final Sunday at the church. 87 00:13:39,000 --> 00:13:46,000 And I'll never forget it. We had our conversation. I told him, you know, that I was leaving and we were living in separate homes. 88 00:13:46,000 --> 00:13:54,000 You know, so we had our conversation. We had our breakfast. We said our goodbyes Sunday. I went to church. 89 00:13:54,000 --> 00:14:00,000 I said, my goodbyes, Monday morning I'm at the farm and I'm out there just working. It's hot. 90 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:08,000 He texts me, he said, Hey, Chris, can I come talk with you? Sure. You know, so he comes over and he says this to me. 91 00:14:08,000 --> 00:14:12,000 He goes, man, we've been praying. Me and my wife have been praying for you. 92 00:14:12,000 --> 00:14:19,000 Like, yeah, thank you. He said, and we got this big old house and it's just the two of us. 93 00:14:19,000 --> 00:14:25,000 If we moved out, would you and your family want to move in? 94 00:14:25,000 --> 00:14:34,000 So now I'm balling. You know, man, I ain't got no money. I couldn't do, you know, how much can you afford? 95 00:14:34,000 --> 00:14:40,000 And I told him, and he says that's as lowest as we said we could go. 96 00:14:40,000 --> 00:14:45,000 Come by the house tomorrow. Look at it. If you don't want to do it, fine. 97 00:14:45,000 --> 00:14:52,000 We just feel led by it to make this offer to you. Tuesday morning I'm at the farm. 98 00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:57,000 One of the volunteers comes up to me. She says, Chris, me and my husband been praying for y'all. 99 00:14:57,000 --> 00:15:04,000 And we got this big old house and we were wondering if we moved out, would you all want to move in? 100 00:15:04,000 --> 00:15:09,000 And so now I got to make a choice howling between two big houses. 101 00:15:09,000 --> 00:15:13,000 I'm like, okay, God, I'm really starting to believe in you now. 102 00:15:13,000 --> 00:15:19,000 What we were struggling with, what we were holding back from, God had already provided. 103 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:24,000 We just didn't know. And we end up going with the first house. 104 00:15:24,000 --> 00:15:28,000 So that meant they had to go buy a house and they can. 105 00:15:28,000 --> 00:15:33,000 I'll never forget, he texted me, he goes, hey, we found a house. They accepted our bid. 106 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:40,000 If everything goes smooth, we'll close May 30th if you guys can move in June 1st. 107 00:15:40,000 --> 00:15:44,000 Got one problem. What's that problem? 108 00:15:44,000 --> 00:15:48,000 The house we're buying is bigger than the one we live in. 109 00:15:48,000 --> 00:15:54,000 So why don't y'all just move into the big house and the rent will stay the same. 110 00:15:54,000 --> 00:16:00,000 Yeah. And God has been doing stuff like that over and over and over again. 111 00:16:00,000 --> 00:16:10,000 It's just taking care. I don't worry. 112 00:16:10,000 --> 00:16:14,000 What is Battlefield Farm for people who don't know? 113 00:16:14,000 --> 00:16:19,000 So Battlefield Farm is a, we fight food disparity. 114 00:16:19,000 --> 00:16:23,000 We named it Battlefield as a play on my name, Battle. 115 00:16:23,000 --> 00:16:28,000 But also because we're in this war against food insecurity in East Knoxville. 116 00:16:28,000 --> 00:16:35,000 We want to turn food desert into a food oasis. 117 00:16:35,000 --> 00:16:42,000 And so our goal is to make sure people have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. 118 00:16:42,000 --> 00:16:47,000 Your zip code shouldn't determine your accessibility to nutritious food. 119 00:16:47,000 --> 00:16:55,000 And many of the people in our community are literally dying slow deaths because there's no grocery store. 120 00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:59,000 We don't have access to it. There's a lot of liquor stores. 121 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:02,000 There's a lot of corner stores that are selling processed food. 122 00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:05,000 There's dollar stores. There's fast food restaurants. 123 00:17:05,000 --> 00:17:08,000 Because the crazy thing is we're not only considered a food desert. 124 00:17:08,000 --> 00:17:11,000 We're also considered a food swamp. 125 00:17:11,000 --> 00:17:16,000 And a food swamp is when there's four unhealthy choices to every healthy choice. 126 00:17:16,000 --> 00:17:20,000 I think we're like nine to one in our community. 127 00:17:20,000 --> 00:17:24,000 And I'm like, we can fight this. We can win this. 128 00:17:24,000 --> 00:17:30,000 Because I truly believe that we are the solution to most of our problems if we just work together. 129 00:17:30,000 --> 00:17:37,000 So you make this leap. You take a bold step and then God starts opening doors. 130 00:17:37,000 --> 00:17:43,000 And what was a community guard now understand is you're on a couple of acres. 131 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:45,000 Well, so we moved to a couple of acres. 132 00:17:45,000 --> 00:17:47,000 There was a farm called Abbey Field. 133 00:17:47,000 --> 00:17:51,000 I was owned by the old standard knitting mill, which was two acres. 134 00:17:51,000 --> 00:17:56,000 The young lady that was running it left and they needed somebody to run it. 135 00:17:56,000 --> 00:17:59,000 And some reason I raised it again. 136 00:17:59,000 --> 00:18:01,000 And so we took that over. 137 00:18:01,000 --> 00:18:07,000 But that property sold to a developer and it still hasn't been developed. 138 00:18:07,000 --> 00:18:10,000 And it angers me every time I walk by it. 139 00:18:10,000 --> 00:18:18,000 So we ended up with the property on Boyd's Bridge Pike, which was listed for $50,000. 140 00:18:18,000 --> 00:18:21,000 I don't have $50,000. 141 00:18:21,000 --> 00:18:23,000 And I'm talking with the guy. 142 00:18:23,000 --> 00:18:26,000 I'm like, I really want this piece of property. 143 00:18:26,000 --> 00:18:35,000 Maybe I'll offer him 20 and lay down and sack cloth and ashes and, you know, and he calls me goes, 144 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:37,000 Chris, you still interested in the property? 145 00:18:37,000 --> 00:18:41,000 Like, yeah, I just don't know how I'm going to raise the money. 146 00:18:41,000 --> 00:18:47,000 So you know, we never settled on a price with 5,000 work. 147 00:18:47,000 --> 00:18:52,000 I'll have the check for you Friday. 148 00:18:52,000 --> 00:18:55,000 I got plenty of stories. 149 00:18:55,000 --> 00:18:58,000 Just how things like this work is like boom, boom, boom. 150 00:18:58,000 --> 00:19:00,000 It fits into place. 151 00:19:00,000 --> 00:19:05,000 So then People Magazine gets ahold of the story. 152 00:19:05,000 --> 00:19:07,000 Yeah. 153 00:19:07,000 --> 00:19:10,000 Isn't that crazy? 154 00:19:10,000 --> 00:19:14,000 So we, and I don't know how people heard about me. 155 00:19:14,000 --> 00:19:17,000 I know they did do an NPR, all things considered. 156 00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:19,000 And I don't know if it's a result of that. 157 00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:27,000 But yeah, People Magazine, January 20th issue, just in case you wanted to know, 158 00:19:27,000 --> 00:19:33,000 did an interview with us and put us in there and things just start taking off again. 159 00:19:33,000 --> 00:19:44,000 You know, I get interviews with you and been on more podcasts and news shows and papers that I've never, 160 00:19:44,000 --> 00:19:47,000 just never believed the publicity that this has got. 161 00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:49,000 And I didn't ask for it. 162 00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:50,000 I didn't ask for it. 163 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:56,000 It just, like, it just came and I'm just grateful for that because we need funding. 164 00:19:56,000 --> 00:20:02,000 And with that publicity is a corresponding funding and it's been very helpful to us, you know. 165 00:20:02,000 --> 00:20:07,000 My goal, my goal is to go out of business. 166 00:20:07,000 --> 00:20:11,000 I want to not to be needed. 167 00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:17,000 I want our community to be able to have access to fresh fruits and vegetables. 168 00:20:17,000 --> 00:20:22,000 I've seen more missing tolls than I ever want to see in my life. 169 00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:25,000 We have a veggie van that goes out. 170 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:32,000 And there's a guy from Concord United Methodist Church. 171 00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:36,000 He calls me, he goes, Brother Chris, would you like some sweet potatoes? 172 00:20:36,000 --> 00:20:38,000 Sure. 173 00:20:38,000 --> 00:20:40,000 How much would you like? 174 00:20:40,000 --> 00:20:42,000 How much you got? 175 00:20:42,000 --> 00:20:47,000 I came home with 210 pound bags of sweet potatoes. 176 00:20:47,000 --> 00:20:48,000 Good Lord. 177 00:20:48,000 --> 00:20:50,000 I laid them out on the farm stand. 178 00:20:50,000 --> 00:20:52,000 I get on Facebook live. 179 00:20:52,000 --> 00:20:54,000 Y'all come get these taters. 180 00:20:54,000 --> 00:20:57,000 Within two hours they were gone. 181 00:20:57,000 --> 00:21:00,000 People were coming from everywhere. 182 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:02,000 This happened a couple of times. 183 00:21:02,000 --> 00:21:12,000 And then a don to me, I say the demographic, the community I'm specifically trying to reach, may not have transportation, may not have Wi-Fi. 184 00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,000 How do I get this to them? 185 00:21:15,000 --> 00:21:18,000 I get a veggie van. 186 00:21:18,000 --> 00:21:23,000 Veggie vans cost, those mini buses cost $72,000. 187 00:21:23,000 --> 00:21:25,000 I don't mind having $72,000. 188 00:21:25,000 --> 00:21:27,000 Hang on right there. 189 00:21:27,000 --> 00:21:29,000 I want to hear the rest of the story. 190 00:21:29,000 --> 00:21:31,000 Why don't we take a break? 191 00:21:31,000 --> 00:21:38,000 Coming up on part two, you're going to hear the rest of the story about the veggie van. 192 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:44,000 But then I want to talk to you about what God has been teaching you in the story. 193 00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:54,000 My guess is Chris Battle, this is anything as possible.