Show Notes
Join Case as he sits down with Eddy Moratin, co-founder and president of Lift Orlando, for an inspiring conversation about faith-inspired community transformation.
In this episode, Eddy shares how Lift Orlando is tackling childhood poverty, advancing economic mobility, and renewing entire neighborhoods through a model of asset-based community development. Together, Case and Eddy unpack the intersection of faith, justice, and leadership, exploring how public theology can bring hope and real change to our cities.
If you care about urban renewal, social impact, or faith in action, this conversation will challenge and encourage you to see how local leaders can make a lasting difference.
Episode Resources:
Eddy Moratin’s website: https://www.eddymoratin.com/
Lift Orlando: https://www.liftorlando.org/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website 👉 https://wecolabor.com
Get to know Case 👉 https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Around here, we believe that the flourishing of a city is tied directly to the flourishing of its people. Well, few stories capture that truth more powerfully than the work of Lift Orlando. Lift Orlando is a unique partnership where business leaders and residents are working side by side to revitalize neighborhoods, strengthen families, and create pathways of opportunity. And I am proud, I’m so proud, that this work is right here in my city, the city beautiful, Orlando, Florida. And I’m even as grateful or more that Christ- followers have led the effort every step of the way. What a witness to the renewing power of the gospel. Now Lift Orlando isn’t just about new buildings or economic growth. It’s about transforming communities with dignity, equity, and hope from affordable housing to quality education, from health initiatives to economic mobility, their vision is reshaping the way cities think about renewal. Well, today we’re going to dive into that story, what it looks like to bring lasting change to a neighborhood, the challenges and victories along the way, and the lessons for anyone who cares about faith, culture, and the common good. And so friends today we get to meet the man who organizes and leads it all day to day, longtime friend and truly one whom I have deeply admired over the years, Eddy Moratin. Eddy, thanks for being here today.
Eddy Moratin
Thank you. It’s such a privilege to be on here with you.
Case Thorp
I mean, like, we’ve known each other how long? Almost 20 years? Yeah, you’ve only gotten better looking over the years.
Eddy Moratin
So yeah, it’s crazy though. Life takes its tolls for all of its joys. It still does.
Case Thorp
Yes, for real. Well, to our viewers and friends, welcome to Nuance, where we seek to be faithful in the public square. I’m Case Thorp, and I want to encourage you please like, subscribe, and share this episode. It really helps us to get the word out. Let me tell you about our guest. So, Eddy Moratin is the co-founder and president of Lift Orlando. A social entrepreneur, Eddy’s 20-year career spans inner city ministry, workforce development, and executive coaching.
Before Lift Orlando, he spent seven years directing Lifework Leadership Orlando. We’ve got a lot of mutual friends there, don’t we? He’s mentored C-suite leaders in values-based leadership and served as a senior fellow with Path North in Washington, D.C. Eddy’s civic influence reaches well beyond Orlando. He’s a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s Jacksonville branch and sits on the Florida Council of 100, the Orlando Economic Partnership Board and advisory boards for the Urban Land Institute, Four Roots Foundation and the National Christian Foundation Orlando. Earlier in his career, he helped to launch Workforce 2020 and BAM, LLC and LORIS, a call center venture that created hundreds of jobs domestically and abroad. And he lives in Orlando with his wife Giselle and their two children, Isabella and Christopher, and they attend Summit Church. Phew, dude. Like you’re a big deal.
Eddy Moratin
No, bios just make you sound impressive. Thank you. It’s a very generous introduction,
Case Thorp
Don’t they though? Yeah. What else would you like people to know?
Eddy Moratin
Well, I’m a fan of you and your amazing wife and I love the way that you guys graciously lead in town. It’s a privilege to call you friend. You know, I’m curious, how did you come up with the name Nuance for this podcast?
Case Thorp
Well, you know, that’s a good question, even for our listeners. So I was sorely disappointed through the COVID George Floyd experience. I was sorely disappointed in a number of my peers with how they reacted. And I took responsibility in terms of, well, how have they been so discipled? And I felt like there was just a real dearth of public theology built into my brothers and sisters. And I just feel like there was way more nuance to a lot of those conversations than folks were allowing. So I thought, all right, let’s get out there and start shaping some public theology and bring some nuance to the conversation.
Eddy Moratin
That’s so great. In so many ways, that’s the lost art of our time. It’s the reason for sort of the degradation of our civic leadership and civil discourse and even faithful witness is our ability to understand the value of nuance in interacting with people.
Case Thorp
And it doesn’t mean a compromise of truth.
Eddy Moratin
No, understanding nothing is in a world where humans are sinful and broken, which is the truth for all of us. None of us is perfectly good or perfectly evil, so understanding people as complex creatures made in the image of God, loved by God and profoundly flawed is so important. But we have a hard time at that. I think we want to be more monolithic in the way we think about human beings.
Case Thorp
Yeah, we do. Well friends, you need to know that since the launch of Lift Orlando in 2013, it has built more than $100 million of mixed income housing, cradle to career education institutions, health and economic mobility projects. They’ve cut childhood poverty in the area by two thirds and created over 400 jobs. And all this amazing work is just blocks away from where I sit for this recording in downtown Orlando. Now, Eddy, to start off, could you explain to us, both legally and practically, what is a Community Development District? And then speak more into your methodology of ABCD asset-based community development.
Eddy Moratin
Well, you know when we started Lift Orlando it really began as a camera conversation It’s just business leaders trying to figure out how to do good in ways that were more sustainable, like everybody was involved philanthropically, but when you read the paper it didn’t seem like anything was changing. Phil Hissom, whom you and I both know and love…
Case Thorp
Yes, he’s been a guest.
Eddy Moratin
Yes. Years prior, when he was a graduate student at RTS, there was a research project funded by Jim Seneff at CNL to basically study the state of the social sector in central Florida. It was called Seeking the World for the City.
Case Thorp
And with Angie Nguyen.
Eddy Moratin
That’s right. Angie was sort of the kind of lead on that project, pulled me in, found and recruited Phil into it. And that process, really Phil did a lot of the heavy lifting on with the rest of that graduate class, accounted for all the 501C3s operating in our region and surface some gaps that as generous as our community was, as great as there was a spirit of service and contribution here. Most of all of our good deeds were really focused on crisis relief. Yet up to 95% of our people experiencing poverty were not in any recent crisis. They were in long-term chronic poverty. And so the other gap was that they were highly concentrated in certain geographies in town, yet most of our philanthropy was sort of scattering goodwill to the four winds.
Case Thorp
And when you say they, you’re about those who lived in poverty, were concentrated.
Eddy Moratin
Those who were in the most vulnerable conditions were not equally distributed everywhere in the county. There were just dense populations in certain neighborhoods, most of which we know or could guess. And this is true in most cities. And so eventually when we realized there were some ways that we could work together with this community, the stadium kind of drew our attention. There was data around the need at the heart of the 32805 zip code in all of Orange County rose up.
Case Thorp
And this is the Camping World Stadium that we locals still call the Citrus Bowl. That’s right.
Eddy Moratin
Right, until the name changes again. And the thought that they had was that with their recent redevelopment, their upcoming redevelopment at that time, they wanted to figure out how to be the first football stadium that could be good for the neighborhood it’s in. And so we began to meet and explore that with Phil’s help and the organization he started after that study called the Polis Institute, we sort of engaged in an asset mapping survey that really talked to people at their front doors, 1,500 households, entire population up and down north and south of the stadium to identify what their primary concerns were, what things they valued, and maybe more importantly, how they wanted to be involved in the change. And the approach and response, which is what ABCD or Asset-Based Community Development is all about, Phil really helped inform with the help of some national advisors, people like Bob Lupton out of Atlanta who is a great kind of mentoring coach in this process, really advised us to engage in that asset-based approach, which basically counters the tendency of being deficit-focused with being asset-focused. Instead of showing up in the community and tallying up all the things that they’re missing, you spend more time noticing the things that they have. What strengths, what assets, what talents and skills, what institutions are there, that if you invested in first, they would actually counterbalance a lot of what might be deficiencies. And so that approach was super helpful. And then in the conversations with folks, we began to surface something that really revealed the opportunities to serve and come alongside.
Case Thorp
Now give us an example of a community asset as opposed to a community deficit.
Eddy Moratin
So you might see that the park was across from the stadium and it was easy to only focus on vagrants sleeping on benches or sometimes shady activities, how dimly lit it was and maybe a lot of people who lived there and grew up enjoying it now didn’t feel safe spending time there. The park is called Lake Lorna Doone Park just across the street from the stadium. And in those early community meetings, we had a resident, Tangius, my second, third generation neighbor in the community, lived in a house across the lake from the stadium. And she was the first voice to raise her hand and say, if you care about what we care about, why do we have the worst park in the city of Orlando? And that ignited a conversation about what the park could be. It was this beautiful lake, had the history of being a place where people fished and learned to swim and got baptized and all these rich memories that she had in her own lifetime.
But her beautiful daughter Mimi, who had special needs as she was growing up, Tangie never felt comfortable taking her to the park and letting her play there in the same way. And so the stadium raised their hand first, said we want to invest in that idea and that asset. And then we eventually got the city and they invested up to five million dollars. And then luckily we had friends that followed from the Magic to Arnold and Winnie Palmer to OUC. And it ended up being a nine million dollar reconstruction of that park today. It has wonderful amenities there. It’s the only city park aside from Lake Eola that has staff from 6 a.m. to midnight. And it’s a beautiful place to come walk your dog, see a sunset for sure.
Case Thorp
I imagine somebody listening is going, what? There’s homeless people on the benches. There are drugs being sold and you’re putting in a park? You’re missing it, Eddy, right?
Eddy Moratin
Yes, but what’s so funny about that is that the park wasn’t on our radar right until it bubbled up from the community. But that organizing effort, the catalyzed, their voice, their leadership, their influence, that change begins to do two things. One, this is a classic example of asset based work is that it raises the strength of the people that are there as opposed to only focusing on those who lack the most. And what you found…
Case Thorp
And it’s not just about the park, it’s about the trust building.
Eddy Moratin
Exactly, the trust building, the outcome, the flexing of a community’s voice and strength to see the world impacted by their voice and will. And so eventually you found out that actually this park was incredibly powerful, convening spot, a place to bring life. And oftentimes when people see crime, see poverty, they want to focus on addressing it directly, forgetting that that is actually a symptom of other things that are falling short. So we learned that there was a need to address those things kind of more upstream. Someone used to quote a lot in the early days and still do Archbishop Desmond Tutu said once, there comes a point when you have to stop pulling people out of the river and go upstream and find out why are they falling in? And for us, a clear example of that was learning the apartments around the corner from the stadium were experiencing an extremely high level of crime in this neighborhood that had all these wonderful generational families that had been here for so long were enduring this. And we heard about it, we thought, well, gosh, let’s go talk to the chief of police or something. And luckily it probably was Phil, but somebody in the room said, you know, 70% of the crimes are committed by high school dropouts. Wanting to address root causes, maybe crime is a symptom and not a root cause. So we came and toured the elementary school across the street and as we’re touring, we learned that in spite of the fantastic principle, the dream team of teachers, the things they were doing around STEM and technology and computers and inspiring college careers, the third grade classroom had 100% turnover that year because housing was so unstable. We realized, well, gosh, it’s not enough. Let’s address the housing. Maybe that’s it. And then we think about improving the quality of the housing. Well, parents seem to be able to afford better housing and to that they need jobs…let’s go create jobs and then jobs, better jobs require some training and they’d be better suited if they had a better education early on and you’re kind of back to square one. And so our mission really evolved at that point to say it’s time to stand up a 501C3 is as simple as what we are. But with a goal of strengthening neighborhoods so people can thrive, that’s our mission. And we do it through four pillars of activities, mixed income housing. So redeveloping housing in the area that stabilizes, provides a safe place for children to thrive, but it also creates a wider spectrum of income levels living in the same place, sharing the same community building social capital. Cradle to career education, stewarding our children from birth to healthy development, great education to colleges and careers, and then health and wellness to improve their quality of life and longevity. And then ultimately, a real measure of success is long-term economic viability. Do children grow up to experience greater opportunity and prosperity than their parents did? Our ultimate vision is neighborhoods where children grow up with hope and return with joy. So the definition of success is no longer just getting out in as far away as possible, but coming back and raising the next generation. So, Eddy, I mean, who are your peers out there? Who in the states are doing similar work and finding success?
Eddy Moratin
You know, one of the things that fueled us the most in the early days was through Robert Lupton, actually, we learned of the work that had happened in Atlanta in a community called Eastlake in Southeast Atlanta where the… Oh, Tom had bought the old Bobby Jones golf course and didn’t know what to do with it when he learned about the neighborhood across the street was the most dangerous public housing community in Atlanta.
Case Thorp
Yes, I grew up a little bit down the road from there.
Eddy Moratin
He got to meet some of the residents there, worked with the local city and really began to devise a plan to revitalize that in partnership with the housing authority. And that became what is now known as East Lake and they’re sort of the national poster child for community revitalization. Bob Lupton had been, I think Tom Cousins, one of his first phone calls when he was starting that work. So he pulled us in. And what had happened since the early days of that work is Warren Buffett called Tom Cousins and he, the two of them, and Julian Robertson, these three 80-year-olds at that time, agreed to fund a pro bono consulting firm that would support communities trying to do the same work. So in 2015, we became the 13th city to join that network, the first in Florida. Today, there’s maybe about 30 of us around the country, which has been fantastic, doing this specific model that addresses not only education and what happens at the school, but the built environment around the school to stabilize families and create economic mobility for the whole community. Around in that network, there are a handful of us that they label as pace setters for being a little bit further along. One I’m pretty close to is John Ippel, who is in Grand Rapids. He worked for Mayor Buddy Dyer here in the city of Orlando and got tapped by the DeVos family to do this work over there. And then a friend of mine led the work for the Buffett family in Omaha doing very similar work. He’s now left and works for a large national funder. And so it’s been great to have people at least understand the complexity of what we do today. Thanks to that network, almost all the director level leaders in our staff have a peer they can talk to around the country about this work, which is pretty lonely work, because we’re still kind of a novel approach and unique in town. We are fanning the flame for this movement in Florida. There are three other members now across the state, about 10 other cities and towns that we are in some conversation with to try to get similar approaches at a local level using this model. And I think we’re trying to add our particular flavor of the importance of the role of business leaders coming alongside residents in partnership. And this very hyper local master plan approach that builds a walkable connected community campus at the heart of the development effort. We’re finding that that’s a key part of the secret sauce.
Case Thorp
So tell folks some of the major projects you developed.
Eddy Moratin
Well, you described the major components of it from the mixed income multifamily housing. That’s a major priority for us to create environments that are so elevated in design and quality that higher income families would happily have their child in that school or in that early learning center or come get healthcare at that health and wellness center or live in that apartment. There’s a lot of work behind the scenes to create access and affordability for a wide range of families. And I remember the first time we started talking about this, and what’s resulted in award-winning, beautiful developments in senior residence, early learning, Boys and Girls Club, Health and Wellness, the park. But to a lot of people, I sounded a little crazy. Tom Sitteman and I would talk about wanting to do mixed income, and someone actually asked me once, like, how the heck are you gonna get higher income families to wanna live next door to those people? I remember days later, I was talking to Noel Kalil, who eventually became our joint venture partner. He’s the founder of a housing development organization called Columbia Residential. And he’d been doing this for 30 years with great success, a lot of awards. And I told him that story and I asked him, what do you say to that, Noel? And he just laughed. He said, Eddy, you can mix incomes all day long. What you can never mix are values. He said, the values of wanting to be in a quiet, clean community where people work hard, respect their neighbor’s property, their children can run around safely, that there are people of all levels of income who want that same thing. In fact, there are a lot of people who make a ton of money, you would never want to be their next door neighbor, because they don’t have the same values you do. And yes, I thought so too. And it’s really been a great guide for us as we do this work.
Case Thorp
That is such a great insight. So financially, how do you pull this off?
Eddy Moratin
You know, it’s been really neat to take an assessment recently of sort of the impact of these investments. So you mentioned earlier on, we’ve invested about $100 million now in this campus that’s now operational and we’re still always improving in so many ways. But that initial investment was…
Case Thorp
Wait, let me interrupt. When you say this campus, I don’t want folks to think all of these are on one single property. These various institutions are around the neighborhood.
Eddy Moratin
They, but they’re all contiguous for the most part with the exception of the park. That’s a very intentional part of our approach. What happens a lot of times in our field is, you start working at the school here and then you build an afterschool program a few blocks away and then you some housing quarter mile that way. And there’s a clinic, you know, several blocks in that direction. You can invest millions and never feel the transformation here. Part of the goal is that if you live in the apartments and your baby’s in the school across the street, pick up your child, your youngest at the early learning center and the other child at the Boys and Girls Club and your doctor is around the corner at this brand new, beautiful state of the art facility and you come to the activities and potentially you work at one of these facilities as well, you’re essentially living in a brand new neighborhood without leaving the community that you love.
Case Thorp
Good point. And you walk and move between the events of life, feeling safer and encountering beauty.
Eddy Moratin
Exactly. And one of the things that I think we underestimated, but we’ve begun to discover the power of is the proximity of all of these partnerships and solutions of support compresses the amount of time it takes for our families to move from instability to financial mobility. Because, you know, I had a friend back in the nineties, she was listed in the Orlando magazine as the wealthiest woman in Orlando. And through a series of circumstances, she ended up losing her businesses, her wealth, her health, stage four cancer, waiting to die, gave what little bit she had left, and then went into remission. And so now she was alive and healthy, but did not have a penny and was too old to start all over again. And she ended up having to take in a couple of grandchildren from a distressed situation. And I remember running into her years later, living in actual poverty. And she said to me, you know, I’ve started companies, made millions of dollars. I’ve never worked harder than I work right now just to get the basic essentials for my babies. And her point she was making is when she used to give a lot away, because she was very, very generous, a lot of her friends would say, you know, those people just need to work harder and get their act together. Why are you doing all this charity? And she was like, now I’ve proven in my personal experience, it is a lot of hard work just to survive when you’re poor. What we’re finding is families don’t have to drive all over town to schedule appointments here and there and everywhere to get the fundamentals of what they and their children need because they can find that support right here. And the more of those supports they’re able to stack, the faster they get stable, they build traction, they start to move out of poverty into public. That’s exactly the goal. So what’s been neat, financially speaking, is of a hundred million dollars, only 25 of that has been philanthropy. Our first 10 years, we did not have more than a couple hundred donors.
Case Thorp
And I really want to underscore this because this is a unique component to doing nonprofit work, but to doing development work very differently. Go ahead.
Eddy Moratin
Our point is that the commercial world offers many ways to leverage each dollar for greater impact in the investment in the community. So using low income housing, tax credits, new market tax credits, and a number of other instruments, we’ve been able to invest $4 of capital infrastructure for every $1 of philanthropy that we’ve raised, which has been amazing. And recently we’ve calculated the poverty reduction numbers have been even better than what we’ve reported. We just found out that we’ve been able to see from 2014 when we had 57% of our children experiencing poverty in the neighborhood, that number is down to 20%. That 37 point drop pretty much cuts it in half. And that’s about 200 less children below the poverty line in our population. If you add it up, the return on that investment for our county. So for our local government not having to deal with sort of poor outcomes in education, run-ins with law enforcement, healthcare outcomes, lifelong income potential, the conservative number for that is about $50,000 per year per child that it costs our local community to do nothing. If we don’t do anything, that’s how much it’s costing us when we leave children behind. This then adds up to you know, it’s a massive amount that multiplies the return on the net. That initial $100 million return $200 million a year of impact to our local.
Case Thorp
So that 75% of the investments, I mean, come from private investors who are getting a return?
Eddy Moratin
No, 70% come from tax credits of different kinds, financing instruments that kind of leverage and expand the capacity of impact. So when you sell these tax credits through the typical transaction process for real estate, you monetize value that goes into the capital development so that you’re not having the fundraise 100% of the value of that project, you’re fundraising a fraction of it.
Case Thorp
And it generates a return or no?
Eddy Moratin
Yes, for some of them, For some of them, they’re a nonprofit that’s operating there and we might be fundraising regularly to keep that going. Some of them are, we’ve recruited wonderful best-in-class nonprofits that stand on their own and they benefit from the synergies of working with us so that their children and families they serve are stable faster and prosper faster.
Case Thorp
Now, Eddy, Lift Orlando is not a Christian ministry, right? You’re not a Christian organization per se. You would welcome people of all stripes of life, correct?
Eddy Moratin
Yeah, I would like to say we’re not a faith-based organization, but we are certainly a faith-driven organization. You spend much time with me, with our board, you sit on one of our board meetings, we’re gonna open and pray, and close with prayer and a devotional. And we are very transparent about that. You come to work here, you interact with us, you’re gonna feel the faith that’s in our DNA, but it is not a requirement for us to serve you, for you to work here, for us to partner with you. Ultimately, we’re kind of rallying everyone. We need everyone to come around these communities because it makes our entire community strong.
Case Thorp
That’s so important that phrase, faith-driven. I encounter non-Christians, and some will assume when they hear what we do at The Collaborative and our vision for flourishing communities with Christ-centered professionals for the common good, and they’ll hear theocracy, because they’ve got categories in their brains from poor moments in history and bad examples around the world.
Eddy Moratin
You know, that idea of how the people of God, of the line of Abraham, that all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus are, that invitation for the generations that would follow Abraham was that they would be a people to bless the nations. And that that purpose to be a blessing, not to transact blessings.
Case Thorp
Blessed to be a blessing. I love that phrase.
Eddy Moratin
Not to sell the gospel, not to sign up people to our worldview to prove that we’re right and they’re wrong, but to be a blessing regardless. That is how we are to win the world. It’s through love and through service and ultimately through sacrifice. And so there’s a couple of really powerful for me and my personal development, spiritually teachings that have been informing and fueling of my faith here. One, I give credit to Tom Sittema, who for as much as I’d been a Christian a long time when we met, I never heard somebody, particularly a business leader, talk so boldly and clearly about the biblical command to pursue justice. There’s no way that we could call ourselves followers of Jesus and read the scriptures and not recognize how frequently those scriptures beat us upside the head with the call to seek justice, to find wherever there are vulnerable, those who lack, those who are harmed, those who are mistreated, that we have an obligation to do something about it. And wherever we have power and benefit or privilege or access or voice, part of that must be used for the benefit of others. And that was a big driving force. We talked about that every time we would gather in the days that the years that led up to starting Lift Orlando. So this passion for justice still to this day, we have six core values. The first one is put people first. The second one is justice. And it’s something that we really hold dear and we mean justice in the biblical sense of word. The second thought, and this has been so helpful for me, is the Scriptures call to a redemptive worldview. The very term redemption requires sacrifice. Our friends at Praxis Labs in New York like to describe the distinction between exploitive, I win, you lose, ethical, I win, you win, the typical win-win solution we’ve all kind of grown up hearing, to this redemptive idea that I lose or I sacrifice, we win. And so this willingness to do the kind of work that repairs a broken world, if you want to be about justice, that means you’re gonna be addressing things that are unfair, unjust, broken. In a fallen world, there’s always somebody somewhere taking advantage of somebody else. And if you’re trying to make the world a better place, that means you have to repair that broken thing. And it’s likely the person who broke it doesn’t wanna fix it and the person most harmed by it can’t. So if you’re gonna do it, somebody’s gotta pay the price. And so doing this kind of work always involves some form of sacrifice. And it’s helpful to remember that when it hurts, when it’s hard, when it takes so long, when people accuse you of falsehoods, when someone you’re actually trying to help turns on you, when politicians are extremely fickle, when someone wants to drag your name through the mud because of you were trying to do good. That’s all par for the course. In fact, it’s those moments that bring us closer to Christ because that’s exactly what he did for us. He did the redemptive work that we would be saved.
Case Thorp
Well, Eddy, your passion is really encouraging. I was on your website, eddymoratin.com. Everybody go check it out. And you have a section called The Joy of Justice. And I understand you’ve even got a book and a podcast coming out with the same name, right? Joy of Justice. Now, somebody might hear that and think, well, that’s just, that’s Democrat politics. That’s liberal. You know, one of you, you know, I’m an evangelical. We care about salvation. And, you know, can we or should we really care about justice? What would you say?
Eddy Moratin
Only if you believe the Bible, otherwise you’re fine.
Case Thorp
Drop the mic. Bam. There we go. We’re done. Everybody go home.
Eddy Moratin
It’s very hard to escape. However, I do think part of people’s reaction to it is it’s been abused in so many ways. The word has been misused and abused by so many people in recent years. And even in secular circles, oftentimes we’ve tried to pursue coercing people to care about justice through the instruments of guilt and shame. And that is not only not right and not biblical, but it’s not productive. You use shame or guilt on me and it only makes me want to hide from the issue and hoard more of whatever I’m feeling guilty about. Conversely, to experience the joy of how wonderfully blessed we are when we feel that we are so lavishly loved upon, provided for, cared for by our Father, sharing, wanting to have an open hand, wanting to seek the good of others actually comes very natural. Like gratitude is always much more likely to produce generosity. But the joy of justice is really born out of me witnessing what the work of Lift Orlando has been about really. I love the fact that it benefits people in the community who otherwise may not have access to some of the blessings we work towards. But that’s not the core audience for me. The core audience for me is the Tom Sittemas, the Scott Boyds, the Steve…the leaders on our board, the donors that support our work, because the reality is that they are the ones experiencing, and you could ask them, they’d all tell you this, Bill Diamond, how their lives have been transformed by being active agents with God and seeking the wellbeing of others. And if you have more leaders, business leaders, people in power and influence in any city who have a heart to seek the wellbeing of others, you’d end up not having neighborhoods like this that get left behind and under-resourced and abused because decisions that neglect them get brought up and addressed by people who care about every part of the community, about every child, regardless of their zip code. And I think a lot of times we focus on communities where we see, you we watch the nightly news and you assume, gosh, everybody there is making really poor choices, but you think to spend just a little bit of time there and you find out there’s a lot of people there trying their darndest to make the best choices they can from the worst available options in the city. Suddenly there’s investment in better housing, infrastructure, schooling, healthcare access, things that candidly none of them can control. You will find people making much better choices, because those choices are at hand, they’re available. And so when you think of that Desmond Tutu quote, to think upstream, to think it’s the hearts of the people of God in any city who have voice and agency to bring about change at any level, who have the power to change these places in positive ways that produce life for those who live there. And then the people who live there, the things that are within their scope of control, to serve, to give back, to seek safety and care for children and care for the elderly, they can do all those things just like all of us can. But you’ve removed the obstacles that hold them back and the disinvestment that makes it so crazy hard. And so for me, the joy of justice is just, it’s the true intrinsic incentive of doing this work. The book is meant to tell our story and kind of the journey of transformation we’ve each been through as we’ve learned about the Lift Orlando Method, discovered it and began to share it.
Case Thorp
Now, it’s easier to integrate one’s faith in work when you’re in a faith-driven environment with a faith-driven corporation and the work that you’re doing. Take us though to the Federal Reserve of Atlanta’s Jacksonville branch, right? You’re in a very different environment there. How do you carry your Christian convictions and serve well in such a secular space?
Eddy Moratin
Well, I will tell you this. Number one, the people of God are everywhere. I think a lot of times we, this is the whole point of lot of the things that you sort of advance through the Collaborative and all the things that you’ve done, the whole purpose of the gospel spreading the way that it spreads is that like salt, it just kind of makes its way in the most disparate random places. And you can find light almost everywhere you go. But for me, it’s actually been incredibly refreshing and the primary purpose of my role on that board and the very reason I was recruited to be on there was to help elevate the voices of those that don’t often get heard in those circles. To not just have like bank CEOs around the table talking about what their world is like and how the economy impacts them, but to have voices that are able to say, here’s what’s happening to our working class families. Here’s what’s happening in the housing sector for those that are just trying to get a roof over their heads. Here’s how the decisions that small businesses and employers are making regarding the availability of labor, the cost of capital, the impact of tariffs, and how does that play out in the real world? And it’s fascinating because the board member that has an import-export business has this unique insight into supply chains. The person who leads a credit union can talk to you about what the average worker is holding in their savings account. The person who has a sort high net worth bank for CEOs and business owners can talk to you about how they’re making decisions about credit and lending and capital. And so it’s that full picture. I really credit the Atlanta Fed in particular and the staff there. They invest a lot in what they call the REIN, it’s the Regional Economic Information Network or something like that. Regularly is checking in not only with people on the board, but dozens and dozens and dozens of people across maybe hundreds across the Southeast. Many, many in Florida with regular check-ins, whether it’s a coffee or a phone call. What’s happening in your business? How are you viewing the world right now? How are you feeling stressed? Where are you concerned? Are you likely to hire more people to spend less? And then those things bubble up to our regional boards like Jacksonville. That gets bubbled up before the week that the Atlanta Fed Bank meets, then the Atlanta Fed Bank sort of collective wisdom gets bubbled up to the National FOMC as they make decisions. So the challenge for the Fed is it’s influencing the most sophisticated of machineries, our national and global economy by extension, with a single blunt instrument, interest rates, you know, pretty much. And so that’s what’s really, difficult about it, that it wields this incredible influence, but actually has very little power, directly speaking.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting and an institution certainly for the common good and I imagine your peers there certainly share that perspective and desire and I’m grateful that there are faithful men and women coming alongside and helping them in that.
Eddy Moratin
It is an interesting organization. I have personal friends who hold very strong conspiracy theories and beliefs against the Fed. There’s books written about it because it’s not a public institution in the traditional sense. It’s not owned or controlled by the federal government, but it’s not a business in the traditional sense either. It’s this quasi-public organization with a very powerful singular mission. whether you watched Hamilton or read history like fascinating compromise of a centralized national bank and local influence in our economy that led to sort of the nuance of the creation of something like the Fed.
Case Thorp
Okay, so just last week I was at my 25th Seminary Class reunion in Princeton, and at the last minute a few of us were like, we’re going to Hamilton, let’s go to New York. And so it’s such a reminder how controversial Hamilton’s vision was for collecting the state’s debt, but yet how innovative it was, as Chernell’s book points out, if it weren’t for that move, America would not have blossomed into the industrial powerhouse it became. And so much of our success today can be pointed back to that move on his part.
Eddy Moratin
Yeah, it was a very significant ingredient in the recipe.
Case Thorp
Mm-hmm. So in closing, I mean, you’re a busy man, lot going on. I mean, how do you navigate complex deals, public scrutiny, the community expectations with your walk with the Lord in your daily, weekly rhythms in nurturing your soul?
Eddy Moratin
You know, I think there’s a lot of things all of us would admit we need, whether it’s time in scripture and reflection and prayer, surrendering regularly to Him, community and fellowship, a wife you can pour your heart out to, friends who meet you where you’re at, and then longstanding friends who’ve known you when all you had were hopes and dreams. But I will say, recently I’ve been reflecting on just a beautiful reminder that grace is made possible at the other side of death. And I think a lot of times we hold so dear our reputation, our standing, our accomplishments, our image. We’re fighting to prove the value and worth of our dignity. We’re fighting to be alive, to be worthwhile. And to people who had those attachments in their time, the Pharisees, Jesus was an impossible invitation. It was impossible to hear what Jesus was offering because it meant devaluing all these things I hold so dear. But to the prostitute, to the beggar, to the shepherd, to the lowly, it was like winning the lottery. My life is not worth much and you give me yours for mine and you’re inviting me to be part of this divine family. It’s just like…It is the root of all joy is to realize how unworthy I am and how he and he alone makes me worthy. But that leap, that transition requires death to self. And I have found that, you know, that’s hence the, affection for the call of the work of redemption that sacrifice not only is makes possible redemptive work in the world, but it makes possible my own redemption because I have to die to go through it. I have to die and surrender to my right to be right, my right to choose what I would rather be doing right now, my right to always speak my mind or surrender to what he’s calling me to do. And it creates this daily dependency. So I think a lot back, there was a little Episcopalian priest wrote a trilogy of books about the gospels, the gospels of kingdom, grace and justice. I don’t know if you ever read these. I just love what he does in these books, but the second book on grace is a phenomenal study on the role of the invitation of the cross and a life of dying and how it unlocks the bounty of God’s joy and grace on the other side because of how it affects our relationships with people, how it affects our work, our view of ourselves. But most of us are unwilling to die. We’re unwilling to lay it all down. I am too, but to your question, coming back to that on a regular basis is one of the most renewing, charging, and empowering things I’ve found in this work.
Case Thorp
Eddy, wow, so rich and so encouraging, not only the work that you do, but the man that you are. So thank you. really appreciate your time.
Eddy Moratin
Appreciate you, Case. What a privilege. Thank you, man.
Case Thorp
Well, friends be watching for Eddy’s book, Joy of Justice, when it comes out and for his podcast. And I imagine when that book is ready, Eddy, you let us know and we’ll have you on here again. You can learn more at liftorlando.org, liftorlando.org, as well as eddymoratin.com and follow Eddy on LinkedIn. Well, friends, thank you for joining us. Please like, share, really helps us get the word out. Leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. If you come visit us at wecolabor.com, wecolabor.com. You’ll find all sorts of content. Give us your email and we will mail you, postal mail, the old school way, a 31-day faith and work prompt journal. You can also find us across the social media platforms. Don’t forget, Formed for Faithfulness, a weekly 10-minute devotional for the working Christian that follows the liturgical calendar. I want to thank our sponsor for today, the Magruder Foundation. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
