Terence Lester

Review: From Dropout to Doctorate

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Cover image of "From Dropout to Doctorate" by Terence Lester, PhD

From Dropout to Doctorate

From Dropout to Doctorate, Terence Lester, PhD. InterVarsity Press (ISBN: 9781514011485) 2025.

Summary: A personal memoir underscoring the structural obstacles for Blacks in poverty who aspire to advanced education.

Dr. Terence Lester, his sister and mother fled an abusive husband at age five. At age nine, the Rodney King beating at the hands of police deeply traumatized him. Despite his mother’s efforts, Terence joined gangs, became a juvenile delinquent, experienced homelessness, and then dropped out of school when told his grades weren’t good enough to graduate with his class. At one level, this book is a narrative of how Dr. Lester, over twenty years went from high school dropout to earning five degrees including a doctorate in public policy. During this time, he launched Love Beyond Walls, a Christian ministry among Atlanta’s homeless.

This book is about more than an inspiring narrative. It is also an account of the barriers impoverished Black children face in working their way out of poverty. Lester delineates five components of trauma that undercut even the hope of a better life: historical/systemic oppression, injustice/policy, poverty/social conditions, trauma/barriers, and educational injustices.

First, Lester recounts the history of systemic oppression of Black from slavery to the war on drugs and Rodney King. He describes the pervasive impact of poverty as it impacted his life. For example. he scored ten out of ten on the ACEs scale (Adverse Childhood Experiences). He describes the trauma of showing up at school without pencils and in secondhand clothes. However, when educators who are not trauma-informed approach such children, they miss opportunities for support.

He shows the injustices of educational redlining, in which certain districts in poverty areas have substandard funding and resources. Living in proximity with poverty comes with multiple challenges, which Lester enumerates. All these were contributing factors that led to his dropping out. Through the encouragement of a man at a YMCA, friends of his father, his mother, and a teacher who saw his potential, Lester returned as a fifth year senior, and graduated. Around this time, he attended a Bible study and said “yes” to Christ.

He began attending church while working a demeaning warehouse job to earn funds to go on to college. Then a businessman who saw his emerging gifts talked to him about his future and offered to help pay for college, setting him on the road to earn four more degrees, culminating in his doctorate. In addition to directing Love Beyond Walls, he directs the public policy and social change program at Simmons College. Throughout, he chronicles how important was the support of his Christian community and of educators who create safe spaces for the advancement of Blacks and other people of color.

The book also describes the healing the trauma of the broken relationship with his father beginning with a visit to the ICU when his father had suffered a serious stroke. As they continued to talk, his father described the traumas of his own childhood, illustrating the reality of generational trauma. There were apologies and forgiveness, and then his father decided to be baptized.

This book is more than an inspiring personal story. It is also a call to recognize the systemic challenges impoverished Blacks and others face. Lester shows how Christian community and educational support can be so important. But he also underscores the public policies needed to address educational injustices. Sadly, it appears we have opted to believe the playing field is level and without obstacles. Lester’s story does not support that narrative. Rather, he shows how, despite the barriers and the uneven field, he overcame because of substantial personal, financial, and educational support. His story makes me wonder how many others have aspirations like his but struggle to maintain hope that they, too, might one day achieve the status of “Doctor.”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Zion Learns to See

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Cover image for "Zion Learns to See" by Terence Lester and Zion Lester, illustrated by Subi Bosa

Zion Learns to See, Terence Lester and Zion Lester, illustrated by Subi Bosa. IVP Kids (ISBN: 781514006696) 2024.

Summary: Zion goes to work with her father at the community center and learns how those experiencing homelessness matter to God.

Terence Lester leads a community mobilization organization addressing various poverty issues. One Saturday, as he was headed out the door to work, he asked his daughter if she’d like to come with him. She decides this is more interesting than helping with household chores. As they drive to the center, she notices the neighborhood changing. she sees tents on the sidewalks.

Dad stops to get her favorite breakfast sandwich–then orders 50 more! They are for the people on the street around the center. Dad calls them “friends.” He knew their names and introduced each to Zion as she gave them a sandwich.

These happy moments are disturbed when Zion hears a driver curse out a homeless family. She can’t understand why someone would do that. Terence doesn’t know either but says that when you understand that every person matters to God, you begin to see them differently.

They talk about why these people don’t have homes (in the afterword, we learn over a million school children are homeless). As they pass out basic necessities, Zion meets lots of homeless people that day–adults, teens, and young children. They share about God’s love.

Zion decides two things. She wants to go back and also tell others what she saw. And some amazing things happen after that, including this book!

This beautifully told story by the Lesters is accompanied by the illustrations of Subi Bosa. Together, story and art convey the joy of treating people as those who matter to God. But there was one unhappy person in the story– that irate driver who just saw people living on the street. It’s a story that builds compassion and shows how we can matter to those who matter to God. Even when they don’t to society.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: All God’s Children

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All God’s Children: How Confronting Buried History Can Build Racial Solidarity, Terence Lester. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2023.

Summary: A plea that we need to confront the history we try to hide of racial injustice and that real reconciliation can only happen when we stand together in soliarity against racial injustices

Terence Lester leads the Atlanta-based Love Beyond Walls, a Christian community development organization addressing poverty, homelessness, and community development. He’s served as a pastor in both black and white churches and worked in the middle of efforts to address racial inequities and to foster racial reconciliation.

This book reflects the continued polarization in the United States around matters of race. The first part addresses our long-standing and currently increasing effort to suppress the history of racial inijustices and the contributions of Black Americans to our country’s history. Lester experienced this in his own education and it was only through reading and learning on his own that he understood more deeply the history of racial oppression beginning as early as 1619, running through the system of slavery in which both South and North were implicated, contributing to our young country’s economic prosperity, and continuing to control lives and livelihoods of Blacks through Jim Crow, lynchings, redlining, school-to-prison pipelines, voter suppression efforts, and continued concentration of economic resources within powerful interests.

It’s a history many do not want to acknowledge or understand. Against the arguments that teaching this history only perpetuates racial division, he contends that only understanding can lead to Whites and Blacks joining in solidarity to advocate for more just policies and practices. He argues that God is not colorblind but likes gathering those of every color around his throne. It is folly to pretend that we are. He contends that we cannot have racial reconciliation without racial justice.

Solidarity is a key idea for Lester. Solidarity is more than posting a black square or “Black Lives Matter” on social media. It means that we arrange our lives to be in proximity with people of color. It means supporting businesses of people of color. It means recognizing bias, including the skepticism of the competence of leaders who are people of color (he recounts having to provide far more evidence of credentials and competence than White peers, for example). Solidarity means doing, volunteering alongside others and accepting their leadership. Solidarity means speaking up on behalf of the other as Mr. Rogers did with Officer Clemmons, sharing his wading pool, both in 1969 and 1993 as a powerful statement of racial solidarity. Solidarity means not just making space at our tables, it means truly letting it become their table. Token presence is not inclusion.

Lester describes the pain of those who have walked away from him as he spoke about racial justice. Yet this is a book filled with gritty hope, encouraged by friends, both Black and White, who have stood and worked in solidarity, who have stopped theorizing and temporizing and waded in with him to tackle challenging problems. It is also a hope nurtured through the way of the cross, that realizes that only the seed that dies bears fruit, that we only save our lives by losing them. Terence Lester’s passion, pain, and persisting hope in gospel-nourished solidarity in pursuit of justice reverberates throughout the pages of this book. One senses his deep longing that we not miss this moment as the people of God to seek the shalom of all God’s children.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher.

Review: When We Stand

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When We Stand, Terence Lester (Foreword Father Gregory Boyle). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2021.

Summary: Makes a motivational case for mobilizing with other to pursue follow Christ in the pursuit of justice.

We see so many things that are not “the way it’s meant to be.” The problems seem so big. We seem so small. Until we find others to walk together with us, where we are part of a mobilized community where everyone’s gifts multiply our impact. Terence Lester has been there and formed an organization called Love Beyond Walls focused on poverty awareness and community mobilization. He makes the case that we are better together than separate when pursuing justice causes. He writes this book to motivate us to mobilize in community and shows us how it is done.

It begins with getting out of our bubbles and figuring out who is proximate–our near neighbor in need. It requires making more time, doing a reset on our lives and figuring out what our “let go” list is to make space for others. Often we are absorbed with the pursuit of ephemeral success when we have the opportunity to devote ourselves to pursue something real, of eternal value. Lester describes two friends who sold a nice home for one that wasn’t as nice but well-suited to caring for foster children. He calls us to be willing to unlearn our previous notions, particularly around poverty, race, and justice. It may mean changing our way of living or even how we lead.

One of the shifts in our thinking is a shift from me to we, to be willing to collaborate to pursue social change. He notes how such collaboration means a willingness to die to what Dr. King called “the drum major instinct.” At the same time, this doesn’t mean we deny what we have to offer, even if it is the basic skill of cleaning and stocking a hand-washing station for the homeless during a COVID epidemic. Often, it begins with a modest first step, like the beginning of Love Beyond Walls out of the Lesters’ garage.

Lester comes back to the idea of time in a chapter on “living intentionally.” Far from the vision of the harried activist, his call is for margin, for deliberate thought about our schedules and what we do best when. He also reprises the “we” idea, encouraging us to bring others with us, to look for partners, to share the weight, and invite people into community. He urges us to maximize our impact through assessing our “social capital” and to play our part in God’s interconnected world.

Most of each chapter consist of stories Lester relates to share his point. This makes for an easy read and one that is inspiring as well as instructive. He tells a story of a man who stepped out and cared for someone proximate to him. Lester came out of a troubled home, often spending time away, sometimes on the streets. One night, he called a friend, Erik, who checked with his father, coming back on the line, saying, “Yeah, come on over–my family loves you.” He then describes how that love changed his life when he arrived at Erik’s home, and Mr. Moore came out to greet him:

“When I arrived at their family home after a long drive, Mr. Moore came out to my car, carrying food for me. I remember him looking at me and asking me to look at him….

“He looked at me earnestly and called me a leader.

“A leader?

“The word didn’t seem to fit at all…

“But when Mr. Moore said it, he meant it. He said that he saw something in me that no one else had. He’d seen the makings of a leader within me and had decided to speak to this capability.”

Lester, p. 28.

A friend’s father who opened his home, who noticed, and who shared what he saw. Someone who came alongside a homeless youth and practiced “we.” It changed a life and launched a young man on a life of community organizing.

Lester offers us stories like this throughout the book in a challenging and inspiring argument for mobilizing together. He leaves me with two questions that I will consider: who is the proximate for me, and who will I join or invite to join me?

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.