The executive director of Faith First since 2022, Elliot Sands teaches tangible ways to enact Christian values via multiple media platforms, including a bi-weekly podcast. By combining salient topics with a realistic outlook on life, Elliot Sands improves the spiritual lives of listeners and members without alienating people who don’t share his religious beliefs.

Mr. Sands explains that making lasting change is a process, not a one-time commitment. He describes how overcoming societal cultural and political polarization, for instance, involves meeting people from a different background repeatedly and putting in the same effort to learn from them each time. He doesn’t downplay the challenges listeners may face if the people they meet make comments which contradict their values or offend them. Instead, Mr. Sands emphasizes the importance of prioritizing their identity around their religious beliefs, so the other signifiers people may fixate on to anger them lessen in importance by comparison.

The same balanced approach applies to Mr. Sands’ advice about painful relationships. He admits that listeners may not want to forgive someone who’s harmed them, in spite of religious teachings emphasizing the value of forgiveness. Rather than forgiving someone’s past actions blindly, he suggests that listeners begin by verbally stating that they forgive them during their time allotted for prayer. He explains that even the act of offering forgiveness aloud can relieve emotional stress, and that further steps, like praying for the person involved, can occur as a result of the verbal act.