S1 E4: Reynolds Chapman
TIME STAMPS
0:00 – Welcome & Intro
2:45 – Difficult Paths & The Evolution of Vocation
8:50 – How DurhamCares Pilgrimage of Pain & Hope Was Born
17:33 – Honoring Black Neighborhoods as a White Family
25:05 – Why Listening to the Community Matters
DESCRIPTION
In this episode, we sit down with Reynolds Chapman, Executive Director of DurhamCares, to explore what it means to truly love your neighbor. Reynolds shares his journey from small-town Connecticut to Durham, North Carolina, where his experiences at Duke Divinity School and with the Christian Community Development Association shaped his commitment to justice-rooted ministry.
We dive into the story of DurhamCares, its innovative Durham Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope, and how the organization helps churches and residents learn the sacred story of their place—connecting Durham’s history of racial and economic injustice to the ongoing work of reconciliation and beloved community.
Reynolds also reflects on the deep impact of community elders, the legacy of Dr. Keith Daniel, and how place-based discipleship continues to shape his faith and vocation. This conversation is a powerful reminder that local history matters to God, and that loving your neighbor requires knowing their story—and your own.
GUEST
Reynolds Chapman is the Executive Director of DurhamCares, a nonprofit organization in Durham, North Carolina, dedicated to equipping residents to love their neighbors well through listening, storytelling, and fostering collaborative relationships across racial, economic, and denominational lines. Before stepping into this role, Reynolds worked with the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, experiences that deepened his passion for justice, community-rooted faith, and transformative storytelling.
Reynolds holds a Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity School, where he cultivated a theological vision shaped by public witness and holistic community care. At DurhamCares, Reynolds continues the legacy of Dr. Keith Daniel, a revered community leader whom Reynolds describes as “the priest of Durham.” Dr. Daniel’s emphasis on faithful presence and spiritual formation through the story of place has profoundly shaped Reynolds’ approach to leadership and ministry.
A firm believer that local history matters to God, Reynolds helps guide DurhamCares’ signature program, the Durham Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope, which invites residents to encounter Durham’s history of racial and economic injustice, while discerning what faithful love of neighbor looks like today. Through his work, Reynolds embodies a vision of ministry rooted in place, where the stories of neighbors, churches, and communities are not just remembered—they become the soil from which faithful action and reconciliation grow.
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Learn More About: DurhamCares
TRANSCRIPT
Dooley: Reynolds Chapman, thank you so much for being with us and joining us on the South to America podcast.
Chapman: It's good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Dooley: I'd love to start off by hearing from you—just sharing—who is Reynolds Chapman?
Chapman: Yeah, so my name is Reynolds, and I have been in Durham, North Carolina, since 2008. I moved here for Divinity School at Duke. I grew up in a small town in Connecticut and went to college in Virginia at the University of Richmond. I lived in Charlottesville for a year and then came down here after that.
A lot of my draw to Durham was that I had actually gone to my first Christian Community Development Association (CCDA) conference the year before I moved to Durham. I sensed a call to Divinity School and also wanted to be in a place where I could learn from the place.
That year, in 2007, I met Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove and Chanequa Walker-Barnes at the CCDA conference. I learned about the Rutba House and thought, “Wow, it would be a gift to be close to the Rutba House,” the community where Jonathan lived. I wanted to learn from them while I was also learning from a theological institution like Duke.
That's what brought me to Durham. I met my wife here—she actually moved into the Rutba House the year after I moved here. Her name is Caitlyn, and we decided to stay in Durham. We love Durham.
Since then, I've served at a church, I've worked at Duke, and in 2016 I started as the Director of DurhamCares. DurhamCares has been around since 2008, and I had the gift of joining the team in 2016. I've been at DurhamCares ever since.
We’ve lived in Walltown, Bragtown, and now Northern Durham. We’ve learned a lot from those communities and from so many amazing people here in Durham. That’s a little bit about me.
Dooley: I was just in Phoenix at Neighborhood Ministries. We sadly had a good friend of ours pass, and I attended her memorial service yesterday. She was someone who was deeply passionate about community development work—being in and with those who are often deemed on the margins by society.
Her family shared a story about how she had the opportunity to attend a university on scholarship, but instead chose to live among the residents of a low-income neighborhood that Neighborhood Ministries serves.
I feel like there’s this common theme for those called to community development work—this sense of sacrificing something for something even greater. I hear that theme in your story too. Could you share a bit more about how your vocation evolved over time and how that led you to your work with DurhamCares?
Chapman: Yeah, I think sometimes you mentioned sacrifice—it might begin as a sacrifice, but it becomes a gift.
Moving to Durham, being in relationship with people in Walltown, worshiping at St. John’s, and having friendships with folks we met at the Rutba House—in some ways, you could call that a sacrifice, because I wasn’t just coming to Duke for theological education. I was splitting my time between my studies and the neighborhood.
But it quickly became something that ministered to me. It was a gift. It was something I needed more than something I was giving.
Vocation-wise, I felt called to pastoral ministry—serving the church—and theological studies was part of that. But I also sensed a call to ministry that pursued justice and placed me in relationship with people who are poor and oppressed.
I didn’t know exactly what that would look like, but my time in Divinity School helped that evolve. I still have a sense that I could serve a local church in a pastoral role, or I could continue in a role like my current one at DurhamCares, working outside the church but still very much engaged in ministry.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that vocation is more than just the job you do. It’s about who you are around—who shapes you, whose lives you impact—and it’s also about place.
Part of my vocation is a call to place. Over these almost 20 years in Durham, I’ve realized that place and vocation shape each other. It’s a mutual relationship—you are shaped by the place, and you shape the place.
Dooley: That’s so good. I love that. Talk a little more about how that led you to DurhamCares and where you lead now.
Chapman: When I started at DurhamCares, we were going through some transitions. The organization was founded to help people love their neighbors, with the story of the Good Samaritan at the heart of our mission. That calling to love your neighbor inspired me.
At the time, Dr. Keith Daniel, who you had on the podcast recently, was the Board Chair. I really respected Keith, and the chance to work with him was such a gift. I was overjoyed to join the team in 2016 as Executive Director.
Our main focus at the time was church mobilization—helping churches engage with the community in healthy, listening, and rooted ways. That meant equipping churches to prioritize the voices of directly impacted people.
Then, a few months after I started, Abby Riak, who was the Operations Director at the Duke Center for Reconciliation, reached out to Keith and me. She asked if we’d be interested in partnering on a Durham pilgrimage.
Both Keith and I had experienced similar pilgrimages during our time at Duke Divinity, and we knew this could fit beautifully with DurhamCares’ mission to help people love their neighbors. What better way to love your neighbors than to know their stories and the story of your place?
We launched the first Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope in 2016. It was so powerful that participants kept asking us to offer more. Since then, we’ve hosted over 60 pilgrimages with about 1,000 participants.
The pilgrimage helps people learn the story of Durham, connect it with their own stories, and see how it all connects to God’s story.
Dooley: That’s so good. It feels like DurhamCares has discipled the city to love its neighbors more. How would you describe discipleship in a civic context, and how do you measure its impact?
Chapman: It starts with recognizing that place shapes us. Great thinkers like Willie Jennings have helped me understand this. I took a class with him about place and formation, and it changed how I think.
We are shaped by the story of the place we live in—the ideas, laws, businesses, schools, infrastructure—all of it forms us. And we also shape the place through the ways we use and steward its resources.
DurhamCares tries to help people connect those dots—what does it mean to follow Jesus here, in this place, knowing the story of this place?
Dooley: That’s good. For you personally, how has your work with DurhamCares deepened your theological understanding of justice and reconciliation? How has it shaped your faith in different ways?
Chapman: Well, I've been able to go on the pilgrimage by virtue of leading it dozens of times.
So, the pilgrimage is a weekend-long experience. It starts on Friday afternoon and ends on Sunday afternoon.
We start with hearing the story from somebody connected to the tribal community in Durham. The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation was our partner for a while, but other people connected to the Indigenous community in Durham also share about the story of Native people and that connection to Durham. So that's how it begins.
Then we do a tour of the Stagville Plantation, which was perhaps—possibly, probably—the biggest plantation in North Carolina, at least one of them. It was in what is now Durham, before Durham became Durham. So we hear that story.
On Saturday, we go to different sites downtown. We hear from a civil rights leader, Miss Virginia Williams. We go to the Hayti community. We hear from the Latino community. We worship.
All these different pieces, and then we kind of end with this talking circle where we reflect on how Durham’s story, our story, and God's story connect.
For me, being able to hear all of these stories from elders in the community and put my feet on the ground in each of these places, and have that reflection time, has made me reckon with the history of colonialism.
For example, if I'm hearing somebody from the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation talk about their story and the ways that laws and colonialism have impacted their community—that shapes me.
And then doing this at Stagville—all these different things—each time I do that, it stirs up new reflection about it.
And throughout the pilgrimage weekend, we're reflecting on the biblical story. So to go do the Stagville tour and then reflect on the story of—like we read a passage from Exodus—it just connects the dots between our Christian faith and the place that we live in right now.
So yeah, I think just to answer your question about how it's impacted me—I have the gift of being able to go on these journeys. Not only hear from the people who tell the stories, but also from the participants and their reflections, and that impacts me.
So yeah, I think that’s one of the main ways.
Dooley: Even connected to that question, with your own kind of personal story—you mentioned that you had lived in Walltown for a while and then Bragtown, which are both kind of these—well, I know Walltown is no longer, but was this historic Black neighborhood and its history.
And I know Bragtown is this under—underserved section of the city as well that's formerly Black. And I know that you and your family go to a church there in that neighborhood.
Share a little bit more about how your experiences in those places—what they've taught you, what you've learned—yeah, in those spaces.
Chapman: Yeah. Well, so if we go back to 2007, I was kind of introduced to Christian Community Development Association, and a real big idea within CCDA was this idea of relocation.
And the emphasis with relocation at that time—this is early 2000s, right—was people who grow up in marginalized communities encouraging people who grow up in those communities to stay, and to not think that just getting out is the answer to your future success.
For people who had moved out, encouraging them to return to their communities.
And then for people who grew up in relative privilege or in white communities—basically like homogeneous white communities—encouraging them to relocate into marginalized communities, historically Black communities, as an effort to be in solidarity and also to pursue reconciliation and community across racial lines and racial justice.
So I remember being very inspired by that when I was in 2007.
And since then—and back in 2007, I don't think I actually ever heard the word gentrification. I don't think I knew that word, yeah. And I don't think that word was being talked about very much within CCDA.
I don't think—I’m sure people were—but I just don't remember that being a common conversation.
So I felt like, okay, this is what I can do, being inspired by people like John Perkins and a lot of people in the CCDA world who have moved into marginalized communities.
And also more historic movements like Dorothy Day and the settlement houses movement. So there's a lot of kind of Catholic Worker houses—that was kind of the inspiration.
So I moved to Walltown, right? Historically Black community, historically poor community. Those are not always the same thing, right? I want to be clear about that. But Walltown—I think moving to Walltown was a way of saying I believe that God calls white people and Black people to live in community together, and that our separation is not right.
And I also believe that Jesus calls me to be shaped by people who are poor. And Walltown is historically poor.
So I moved to Walltown, and then I started hearing about what's happening with gentrification, and realized that a lot of the houses in that community are owned by a couple of developers that rent out to college students and are really trying to turn that neighborhood into a housing community at that time for undergraduate and graduate students—which then became, after that, professionals moving to Durham.
And now it's kind of becoming—you know, houses are selling for more than half a million dollars in that neighborhood.
So I was beginning to hear about people being displaced and gentrification.
As a white person living in that community, and then after Caitlyn and I got married—we stayed in Walltown—as a couple living in that community, we were wrestling with: What is the harm that's done as a white couple by living in a historically Black community?
And can anything good be done—for our own lives, or for this community?
We sensed a call to a community that was not being gentrified—or so we thought at the time.
And so we, in discernment with other people—you know, this wasn't a decision that we made on our own—we decided to move to Bragtown.
Bragtown is further on the outskirts of the city. We were visiting a lot of churches in that neighborhood before we moved there, trying to get to know the community, going to community meetings.
We ended up moving there. And I think one of the big learning experiences with that was realizing that, as a white person, gentrification goes with us wherever we go.
Because the way our society values people based on their race—that impacts real estate value.
Because we have been conditioned to see the world through this lens of whiteness. And because of that, the moment white people start moving into a community, real estate agents start saying, "Hey, this is a community we can sell houses in," because of the way society values people.
Wow—that was a really hard learning experience.
And yeah, there's a lot more to this. But I think what we had to work through is: How do we listen well to leaders in our community and join the work that's happening here—even as these larger forces of economics and racism impact our city?
And are there ways that we can resist the forces of gentrification and racism, even as we might be contributing negatively to that?
That’s been part of that personal journey that we've gone through.
Dooley: Yeah, yeah. So good.
And kind of my last question now leads up to where you're at now—with just the life that you live, the church that you serve at, and the people that you interact with through Durham Cares, which again includes some folks who have been historically marginalized or are still marginalized by society.
What's one thing that you would say our listeners should know about what those folks can teach them—whether it's the church you serve at, or the folks who are marginalized that you come in contact with?
What is one thing that folks should really be listening to and paying attention to from them?
Chapman: Wow, I feel like I gotta think about that one for a second.
Yeah—what comes to mind is a posture more than a specific lesson to learn.
I think it's just like—no matter how many times, Kendall, where I think that I have figured something out, I realize that I have a lot more to learn.
And I think one of the things that—one of the harms that is done to me as a white person living in America—or maybe it’s more the way I live into the racism and white supremacy and whiteness—is thinking that I understand the world in a way where I’ve arrived at some profound understanding of things.
And then I make some kind of blunder in some area and realize there’s so much more to learn.
So I think it's having an ongoing posture of listening and learning, and believing that God has given me gifts and God has a way to use me.
But I also believe that Jesus has modeled for us a way of ministering through listening.
Like, the Incarnation begins with him in the womb of a woman—that’s where it starts. And in that space, he's not giving Mary special instructions on how to take care of him, but he’s totally vulnerable to and dependent on his mother for nurture and care.
And then he grows up in Nazareth, spending his whole childhood and young adult years listening and learning before he begins his public ministry.
And even when he begins ministry, he encounters people in situations where he gets feedback from them and learns from them.
He asks, "What do you want me to do for you?"
And then there’s the story where a woman says, "Even the dogs eat the crumbs under the table."
All these stories show a dynamic where Jesus listens and is shaped by that listening.
I think if Jesus can model that kind of listening posture, then surely we can learn a lot from that.
Dooley: That's so good.
I think it was someone there from Durham, actually, who was just talking about bringing to my attention how—for 30 years—Jesus was just listening before beginning his public ministry, which lasted three years.
For the first 30 years, he was just listening—to his community, to his family, to his tradition.
Chapman: Yeah, yeah. That’s so good.
Dooley: I love that.
Chapman: Yeah, I mean—I should give honor where honor’s due.
Sam Wells and Marcia Owen wrote a book called Living Without Enemies, and Marcia Owen started the Religious Coalition for a Nonviolent Durham. She was one of the founders—if not the founder—and they do vigils at the sites where homicides have happened in Durham.
One of the things that Sam Wells and Marcia write about in that book is how Jesus spent the first 30 years of his life in Nazareth, just growing up and being with people.
Later, Sam Wells wrote a whole book called The Nazareth Manifesto, which is a more extensive reflection on Jesus’ first 30 years.
So I think we can definitely thank them for reminding us of the value of Jesus’ being-with ministry in Nazareth before he launched into proclaiming the Kingdom of God after his baptism.
Dooley: Yeah, so good.
I'm excited to be with you, man. Erin and I—come May 2025—we’ll be with you, locked in arms, and I’m so excited to be your neighbor soon and appreciate the work that you do.
Thanks so much for being with us.
Chapman: Yeah, thank you.
RESOURCES
DurhamCares Resources
MUSIC PLAYED
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