Building Relationships: An Interview with Katelyn Newsome
faithcoop • March 06, 2024
About the series
All work matters. It’s one of the main ways we can commune with God and join Him in bringing flourishing to the world. But oftentimes this biblical concept is hard to live out in our specific vocations. It can be challenging to know what it looks like to serve God in our work, or to really believe that what we do matters on a daily basis. So we reached out to men and women across our city to capture stories that shine a light on God’s redeeming work through their work.
Our prayer in this series is that these beautiful stories of faithfulness would inspire imagination for what faithfulness could look like in your own vocation. May you be encouraged by the work God is doing in Chattanooga, refreshed with a deeper understanding of why your work matters, and built up by the advice and wisdom of others.
In this next interview, we reached out to Katelyn Newsome, Director of Operations at Chattanooga FC Foundation, to hear her heart for the game of soccer and how her faith in God shapes her posture towards her work and the people she serves.
(For a full backstory on the blog series, view our first post here.)
The Interview
A Passion for People
Faith Co-Op (FC): What drew you to the work you do?
Katelyn Newsome (Katelyn): I was drawn to the people – specifically to people in our community who don’t feel like they quite “fit” the surrounding majority culture. I think that draw has to do with the way I grew up. I spent my growing up years in Nagoya, Japan, and have spent much of my life trying to figure out my “fit” in the culture around me. Going between cultures was never easy, and one of the only constants I experienced was in playing the game of soccer. Whether it was in Japan or the United States, the game was the same. The way playing with people broke down cultural and social barriers was the same. Some of my closest relationships have come from meeting on the soccer field, and learning to work closely together on a team.
FC: What do you love about your work? What are some of the challenges you face?
Katelyn: Over the years, I’ve worn a lot of different hats in this work, which is to be expected working for a small and growing organization. There have been seasons where I’ve worked more with the kids and families, other seasons my attention has been on creating organizational systems that work, and other seasons where I’ve been mostly concerned about raising our annual budget. Throughout all the years, I think what I love about my work remains the same: creating and building teams. Sometimes, it’s incredibly frustrating and hard, but in my experience, it’s in the context of a team that some of the most life-giving and fruitful moments happen. It’s truly a beautiful thing when a team works hard to bring everyone’s unique and diverse gifts together, towards a common mission and goal, and actually succeeds in doing it.
“It’s truly a beautiful thing when a team works hard to bring everyone’s unique and diverse gifts together, towards a common mission and goal, and actually succeeds in doing it.”
Probably my biggest challenge I’ve consistently encountered is my own impatience with how slow things are to change. “Love is patient” is probably one of the hardest realities for me to understand. I’ve never been one to like the slow, steady movement or growth of something. I’d rather drive in the fast lane, run through the self-checkout line at the store, and when we decide we’re going to do something at work, do what it takes to make it happen, as fast and efficiently as possible. It definitely doesn’t seem like that’s the way life was designed, though. I have been keeping a garden in my backyard for the last couple of years and watching the plants grow has been really, really good for me. God seems to have designed his world where most good things take a good amount of time and intention to grow up well.
Loving the Outsider
FC: How does your faith inform the work that you do and what are some biblical principles that guide you in your personal work?
Katelyn: There are two main “principles” that I try to hold onto that I think are deeply rooted in my faith in God. I still have a long way to go in really understanding and applying them to the work we do but my prayer is that I could keep growing in them. First is the idea to care for the outsider, or the “alien” in our midst. This isn’t just a call to love and serve the immigrant but I try to view it as a call to love and serve the “misfit” in every context, both in the communities I work in but also in the team of staff that I am working alongside.
Second is the idea that God is a deeply relational God, who at the end of the day cares about being intimately close with his kids. So if we are going to be like him, we should be continually growing and striving to have close, authentic relationships with the people around us. Even if it’s hard work, and it hurts, and it requires a lot of forgiveness and patience.
“If we are going to be like [God], we should be continually growing and striving to have close, authentic relationships with the people around us. Even if it’s hard work, and it hurts, and it requires a lot of forgiveness and patience.”
A New Posture Towards Work
FC: Are there daily rhythms you practice or words you read that help orient your mind for the workplace?
Katelyn: I got to the point last year where I was feeling a good amount of burnout in my work and it had a lot to do with my posture and forgetting the difference between my place and God’s place. I spent the summer trying to unlearn some of the ways I had been thinking about things. I kept a small journal of ideas that I knew I would need to come back to and remind myself. Here are some of those ideas:
- Find rest in my belovedness and “work” from there
- An unhurried, slow life is meaningful and impactful
- Giving other people responsibility and the room to succeed is being a good leader
- What makes a leader has very little to do with their position and title
- Efficiency can get in the way of connection
- Look for the gift in the disruption
- Relationship IS the mission
- Perfection is an illusion – reaching for it leaves me disappointed, frustrated and cynical
- Most people are doing the best they can, and when they are shown love, their capacity expands
- I’m moved to grow when approached with curiosity and compassion, and so is everyone else