This is the Vamo podcast with Marty Solman. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are joined by a special guest, Steve Park, founder of Little Lights Urban Ministries in Washington, DC.

Starting from nothing in 1995, the organization now has 14 full-time and 40-part-time staff, as well as 600 volunteers annually. He teaches race literacy for Christians, provides after-school summer programs, adult and employment programs, Christian mentoring and Bible studies, and so much more.

He and his wife, Mary, have been married for over 20 years and have two children. Steve, welcome to the show. Let's get to be here. Thanks for having me.

And if you want to add any extra detail to what I said, there's seriously so much more. I'm not joking. What you've been doing over the last 20 years is really incredible. And we're going to get into that. But if there's any extra detail you want to add there, feel free to expand on what I've said already.

Yeah, sure. I mean, I was born in South Korea. I moved to Houston, Texas when I was like seven years old, and then moved to DC suburbs when I was 14. But yeah, I was very devout atheist in high school and college.

But yes, so I went to high school in the DC area and then after college came back, you know, became a Christian after college and started Little Lights.

Not long after I became a Christian actually, and so to see I have two beautiful kids, one just graduated high school and she's going to be going off to Pomona college in the fall and my son is going to be a junior.

And high school and yeah, my wonderful wife is also works full time at Little Lights too. And so yeah, we've been doing this together quite a long time and working together and raising kids together all in this ministry context. So it's been quite quite a journey for sure.

Yeah, well, Steve, I just want to thank you for joining us today. This is a different kind of a situation. Usually we have people that we know we're connected with. We have a story. We go back at least a little ways.

And our next question of the interview is always like, how did we, how did we meet and what do they know about me or Brent or Bay, or those kind of things and today's different because we don't have any of that backstory today. When did we meet about 15 minutes ago?

And you know, the reason that I reached out, the, you know, the listeners here in season six have heard us talking about some of the ways that we're trying to just become better learners, become more curious, become more empathetic.

And I remember when I was setting up our interviews for season six, I had this big list of names. And one day I looked at that list of names and all of them were men, all but one of them were men and they all looked like me.

And I was just learning about how I wanted to be more, I need to do a better job of a obviously expanding my network. I have obviously insulated myself growing up in rural Pacific Northwest. It was easy to do that.

And I have to put in some work to expand my network to hear from voices from, you know, our black and brown brothers and sisters from the indigenous community from other people of color.

I need to listen and I need to learn. And so I reached out, I don't know how many episodes was it Brent, we had Kate smigol from bittersweet on here. And I mean, the work that they do, this collecting all these amazing stories of people doing amazing things and amazing work.

And I thought, Kate, give me a list of people that I can reach out to, to help me learn and to help me listen to conversations that I'm not having enough of. And Steve's name was at the top of her list. So I jumped on a bunch of websites and I looked at what Steve was doing. And that's why I reached out and Steve was gracious and immediately said yes, and we set up a time. And and here he is.

So Steve, I want to ask you if you can tell us just a little bit about little lights kind of on two levels like, hey, what is the broad 30,000 foot.

What's the what's the big objective that little lights is is working at. And then and then on another level, how do you see that lived out in all the little small things that you do to pursue that objective every single day.

Yeah, you know, little lights were very much about the gospel, right. And I mean, I mean that in like most holistic sense.

The Bible talks about the gospel being good news for the poor. And when Jesus talks about the gospel, you know, he often talks about the kingdom of God and that the kingdom of God is is at hand and it's coming to us.

You know, the broad, the broadest perspective is that little lights is really about being expression of the kingdom of God on earth.

And so a place where there's love and compassion and relationship building, cause for justice, reconciliation.

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