Do the Opposite of What you Want to Do: Lionel Cable + Joi Taylor Johnson

In this episode of Just Schools, Dr. Jon Eckert speaks with Lionel Cable and Joi Taylor Johnson from New Hope Christian Academy in Memphis, Tennessee. New Hope, founded nearly 30 years ago is an urban, college-preparatory elementary school providing students with a challenging, intellectual, and Christ-centered education

Joi, a New Hope alum and now Director of Development, shares how the school helped shape her leadership and calling. The conversation highlights New Hope’s innovative scholarship model, its farm and forest learning spaces, and the school's vision for expansion. The episode ends with a powerful piece of advice from Lionel’s sister, “Do the exact opposite of what you want to do and watch what God does through you.”

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Jon:
Well, Lionel and Joi, it is a blessing to have you here today. I'd love for you to just give our listeners a little bit of an idea of what New Hope Christian Academy is all about, where it's at, what its history is, and what your hopes are as you move forward.
Lionel:
First, thanks so much, Jon, for having me and Joi this morning. So New Hope is going on 30 years old. We were founded in the basement of a church downtown Memphis in 1995, 1996. Basically, it was established because there were no high quality, just private or public education options for kids in the downtown corridor. So we were founded to just offer teaching, learning, discipleship to families in need at the time. So over the past 30 years, we've grown to a little over 420 kids. 80% of our families, they have to qualify for free and reduced lunch. So the core of our mission truly is impoverished families and reaching out to them because we know in order to change that trajectory, it's two things. One, gets at the heart and that's the gospel, and then two high quality academics. If we can bridge those two things together, obviously that's going to change the trajectory of family, but then also change the trajectory of Memphis.
Jon:
And you have kids from age three all the way through sixth grade currently with the hope of expanding in the coming years. Is that correct?
Lionel:
Yeah, absolutely. Past 30 years due to our funding model, which is simply on a sliding scale, it was an impossible thing to expand. Now, with the passing of the Voucher Law in the state of Tennessee, the doors are now wide open for us to expand. So after next school year, we will be adding seventh and eighth grade.
Jon:
Yes. And so it's great to have your director of development on here because she has a vested interest in New Hope. So Joi, can you tell us a little bit about how you ended up back here professionally at New Hope?
Joi:
Yes, it's such a beautiful story honestly. I graduated from New Hope in 2007 and graduated from the sixth grade, and New Hope gave me a scholarship to go on to another independent school here in Memphis named ECS, Evangelical Christian School. And from there I went to the University of Memphis and I was all about social work and helping others. And from there, I helped start a program called the Choose 901 Alumni Program. And the alumni that we were helping were exactly the alumni from New Hope Christian Academy. And so I've kind of just always been in the works, helping our alumni get internships, jobs, and just connecting them to different opportunities and networks here in the city of Memphis.
But as time went on, I kind of yearned to be back home. I wanted to be here and trying to advance the mission of New Hope. We want this school to be known all around the Memphis community and even further, because there's just so many great things happening here. This is the place that helped raise me honestly and cultivate the type of leadership and servant leadership that I have to this day. So it just made complete sense for me to come back and give my twenties, my thirties away to a school that helped make me who I am.
Jon:
I love that. And you mentioned this scholarship that happened after you left New Hope to go to another school. That is an unusual model.
Joi:
It's different.
Jon:
So can you talk a little bit about that Joi? How does that work?
Joi:
Yeah, so New Hope has always been a main proponent of school choice. Whether the actual vouchers have been passed or not, they've always just had a heart to connect students to quality education. Low-income students, underserved students to quality, Christ-centered education. And so they have always been connected to several foundations and donors who really care about what's happening in the Memphis community. And so they did the thing, they made sure it happened, and they've been doing it for 30 years now, funding scholars to go to different schools all around the city.
Jon:
That's such a beautiful thing, especially in a place like Memphis. Memphis is an amazing city, but it's also one of the most racially polarized cities that I've ever seen. And when they integrated Shelby County schools and they tried to connect with other counties, there was a lot of strife in that. And what I love about New Hope is it's, hey, each kid deserves an education that best fits that kid. And so ultimately you have people that have put money behind doing that, and then you have a school that's living out that mission pre-K through sixth grade, and now that's expanding with some additional opportunities.
But even when it wasn't, it wasn't ever just about New Hope, but that's what I love. It was about the kids you were serving, and so therefore you're willing to use resources that a lot of schools would hold for themselves. And you're putting that scholarship with kids over the next six years to get you to the University of Memphis so that you can get through successfully. Do you know of other schools that have that model? I've been in a lot of schools and I don't know if I've ever heard that. Are you familiar with anybody else? Or Lionel, where did that idea come from? Was that just the community that you were in, or did that come from another school's model?
Lionel:
Yeah, so 30 years ago know when we opened, we wanted to go through 12th grade. However, the demand for high quality Christian urban education, it exploded, so we grew faster than what we intended. So the founder, Steven Carpenter, no, I can tell you the scholarship program, that was not a part of his original design for the school. It was around year four or five, we need to figure out are we going to expand or are we going to just send the kids somewhere else? And ultimately our checkbook said, okay, it's cheaper and actually easier to send the kids to our surrounding schools rather than add a grade at the time. So the model stuck.
But I will tell you, Jon, you mentioned just Memphis being such a unique place. In the private sector, there are not a lot of urban ED private schools here. As a matter of fact, they're exact opposite of us. So I would like to think that our children know 30 years ago, they were really the first black and brown kids to go to some of these predominantly white spaces. So there were struggles there, but there was also opportunity for growth in terms of how New Hope could better support our kids when they left us to go to some of these other schools. So we created what was called the Alumni Support Office. There's three people in that office right now who spend 95% of their time on the campuses of the other schools to stay connected with the kids, to act as that bridge, to also act as a cheerleader, but then to also act as an advocate so that the children don't lose themselves in these spaces so that their identity can remain and then also so that they can cross the finish line.
So with that particular model, we've had great success. Over the last 30 years, we have a 99.9% graduation rate from high school. 99.9% of our kids get accepted into college, 70% of which are actually working on their college degree or post-secondary. So I'd like to think it was a combination of the New Hope Scholarship opening the door, but then also that continued support that the organization offers all the way through to the finish line.
Jon:
Well, it's such a beautiful example of building the kingdom because it's not just a gift to your students, it's a gift to those campuses that were impoverished by the lack of diversity. They were not the kingdom because they were only serving a segment of the population. And so you enrich those campuses with the gift of your students. And so that's always one of the things when we study Brown vs Board of Education and the language of that, it's always like, well, how the black and brown kids are being harmed.
And the counter argument to that is, all of the students who were not able to be exposed to different cultures and different kinds of kids and people within their own community, that's impoverishing to everyone. So you have been a gift financially in the scholarship to those schools, but to send kids out who are well-prepared in an academically rigorous setting with a heart grounded in Christ, like what a beautiful gift that is to Memphis. And so sometimes we hear all of the polarizing stories and the separation, and even in school choice discussions, it's this othering of, "how could you be for that or how could you be for this?" And it's like, "No, we want each kid to become more like Christ." And we do that best when we do that in community. And I feel like that's what you're living out.
Now. Joi, can you talk a little bit about that experience of going to ECS? We've worked with ECS, a really fascinating school. How helpful was that office to you? Obviously you were successful, you went on to college, you're part of that 99.9% that Lionel talked about, but what was that experience like as a student?
Joi:
Honestly, it was really difficult. When I graduated, it was still in the early years of our alumni scholarship or support office, and so they were really still trying to understand how to get involved and be on the campus and really understand the difficulties we were experiencing as alumni going to these schools, because as Lionel stated, that New Hope is a predominantly black and brown school. And so when you leave this place and go to a predominantly white school, I mean, when I say culture shock, that's seriously what I was feeling as a seventh grader. We're already teenagers and crazy and feeling all kinds of ways. And so being in a completely new environment without my family really, we went through kindergarten through sixth grade together. And so leaving them and being placed in a completely new situation, it was really hard. It was really, really difficult.
But the ASO office, they were there and they walked with me through all of those obstacles and difficulties and challenges that I faced, and they really encouraged me to just keep going because I was going to come out gold in the end. Even though it was some hard times, there was a lot of beauty in that as well. I tell a lot of people, the ECS definitely helped me academically. I mean, when it came to college, I was so ready. I didn't even blink to some of the work that they were throwing at me. But also spiritually. I mean, it really gave me that foundation of the Bible and knowing these verses and scriptures. Whenever I'm in these science classes or philosophy classes, and they really want to deter you from thinking that Jesus is the Savior and he is the creator, it really just gave me a foundation to know who I am, whose I am, I'm a daughter of the King, and it just really gave me a push to really get through everything. So I think I came out gold from doing all of that and trying to navigate it.
Jon:
Yeah, that joy through struggle is something that I think our current students have a hard time understanding. I mean, we want adversity. We don't want trauma. And so certainly going outside of your comfort zone to a new campus with support, that's adversity. We don't want it to bleed into trauma because I think through that adversity, we grow and become more of who we're created to be. And that's part of learning. I mean, that's the zone of proximal development. It's where you're at on your own versus what you can do with others through struggle, and that's where real joy is, and that's where transformation happens.
So you would do some interesting things, Lionel, at your school with the forest and the farm. These aren't typical things that you think of in urban settings. Can you talk a little bit about what you're doing there and what the idea behind all that is?
Lionel:
Yeah, it was 2013, Mary Leslie Ramsey, who was the teacher that came up with the idea. We had recently been gifted the land from Habitat for Humanity, it's right across the street. They wanted to actually turn it into a subdivision, but found out it was on a floodplain, so couldn't do anything with it, so they gave it to us. She woke up one day with the head of school at the time and said, "Hey, the Lord has given me a vision. Do you see it? Do you see it?" And he kept saying, "I don't see a thing," because there was nothing there. And she said, "No, do you see this farm and this forest?"
So she talked him into it, and obviously we didn't have a budget at the time to get it started. So we partnered with the Memphis Botanic Garden and they gave us all of the plantings that they were going to throw away. And it just really started with this small idea. Since Frayser is a fresh food desert, and the majority of our kids are either apartment dwellers or they don't necessarily go outside like they should, Mary Leslie just, she had the idea, "Okay, we've got to get our kids outside and we've got to expose them to something completely different than what they're used to." So that's when the farm and the forest was birthed.
Currently, it is sitting on about five and a half acres. About one and a half of those acres, that's the actual farm. And it's more agricultural than it is animals. So our kids grow anything and everything from cabbage to strawberries to harvest their own honey. I mean, you name it, it is there. I'd like to think of it as the Garden of Eden because in the middle of Frayser, you wouldn't expect just this beautiful farm and forest that is there. We've got a full-time horticulturist who pours into that, and our teachers are able to go out there and do some applicable things with everything that is growing out there. With what's happening in the classroom, the forest piece is about four, four and a half acres, and we look at that as more of our play space.
There are birdwatching observatories, there's about 1.7 miles of a walking trail that has been excavated there. I mean, just a beautiful space. And it's a way for our kids to really connect with our Lord. I mean, there's no better way to put your hands in the ground to plant something and just see how good God is by something coming up out of the ground.
Jon:
So you've got to tell me, how good are your kids at avoiding the instant gratification trap that gets really exposed in gardening. So they see something that is not even close to ripe, like that's it. I want to try it. Are they good at leaving it and letting it develop to its fullness of what the Lord wanted before they indulge? Or do they give in to that childlike instant gratification of the underdeveloped prefrontal cortex?
Lionel:
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty developed.
Jon:
Okay.
Lionel:
Probably not at the beginning. And let me tell you why. So a part of Mary Leslie's strategy was also to give back to the Frayser community, so our kids understand the things that we plant, it's going towards a common good. So with this being a fresh food desert, every Friday, starting in late March all the way through, I'd say the end of October, we have what is called a pay what you can stand. And we invite the entire Frayser community to come in and grab as much produce as they'd like, and they can pay something or they can get it for free. So our kids know that, hey, we got to wait. We want that fruit to get ripe or those vegetables to be fully developed because it's going towards a good cause.
Jon:
That is so beautiful. The reason why I ask is last week I was at a school that's in a juvenile detention center down here in Texas, and they have violent youth offenders. They have quite a range of kids from age 13 to 18, and they have a garden. And in the English class, they were writing about weeds and the weeds they have in their own lives and then going out and weeding and tilling this garden. It was this beautiful lesson, but there was a very underdeveloped cucumber that one of the guys picked up and started munching for about 15 seconds. Until then, it's all out all over the ground because it was not ready. And the guy who's in charge of the garden says, "Yeah, they lose about 90% of the produce to kids not being able to delay that gratification to the point that it is ripe." And I think your point about they're doing this for someone else, that changes the calculus, that changes what it is.
And now these kids are in juvenile detention through a series of tragic circumstances, bad decisions. Some of it may be related to not being able to delay gratification or not having the security of believing that something will be there the next day and not just taking what's available right now. But it was a fascinating lesson. So when you started talking about what your kids do, I was like, "Oh, I got to hear it." I had not thought about what a great lesson in delayed gratification gardening is. Because you take that too early and that thing that's going to be amazing in a week is inedible in the moment. So I love that. I love that. Joi, you're telling the story from a development fundraising perspective. Anything you want to add to what New Hope's doing that you think is particularly compelling?
Joi:
Yes. When I was a student at New Hope, we always craved for a middle school or a high school. We wanted to be at New Hope for as long as we possibly can. So for me to be here at New Hope, at the start of the transition of us actually bringing in a middle school, I mean, that's amazing to me. It feels like my sixth grade dreams are coming true right before my eyes. So I'm excited that I get to extend this type of opportunity to the current fifth graders who are here now.
And then to the rest of the generations who are coming through, that they really get a chance to be involved and get this, it's like an incubator for Christ-Centered leadership and learning service and different activities that they get a longer chance to kind of experience that before they enter into high school where it really gets crazy. Middle school is just the beginning, but high school, I feel like we give them a chance to be prepared and cultivate their social emotional learning process needs that they have, so that when they are in those frightening or new situations, that they feel more prepared how to navigate these things. And so I think that's one of the best things that I'm excited about preparing or clearing out a new pathway for our students to really get time here with us here at New Hope.
And then of course, it's our 30th anniversary. That's a huge deal. I don't know if we ever thought we would see this kind of day, but we're so blessed and thankful that we've made it. God has been with us the whole time. We've had a lot of obstacles, but we've come out on top every single time because his hand has been over us. And so I want to offer more partnerships and relationships to the community, especially right now. We have a really hectic education system going on, atmosphere in Memphis right now. So I really feel like this is a great time to amp up New Hope and tell more people about it because they are getting fearful and worried about what their child's education really will look like in the future. But we have been stable. We've been here for 30 years, and hopefully we can open our doors to more people.
Jon:
Yes. Love it. Love it. And the fact that you can describe middle school as a dream and not a nightmare, is a true testimony to the work of the spirit at New Hope. So love it. As a former middle school teacher and a middle school kid, I think I would have loved being at your farm and forest and in the culture you've built at New Hope. So that's a beautiful thing. We always end with a lightning round where I'll just ask a few questions and we just keep the answers to about a sentence if you can. I'm terrible at this, but if you can, that's better than me. So the first question is, what's the worst piece of advice you've ever received, as an educator or as a student, but just worst piece of advice you've ever gotten?
Lionel:
I guess I'll go first, Joi.
Joi:
Go ahead.
Lionel:
Honestly, I don't think I've ever gotten really bad advice. It may not have worked out because there's learning and failure. I just learned not to do that again, but I learned from it. So to answer your question, no bad advice.
Jon:
Well, one thing, Lionel, I would say that the piece I always give is people tell you to stay in your lane. And I feel like that's bad advice many times. And if New Hope would have stayed in its lane, you wouldn't have scholarships to send people off to school. You wouldn't exist. You wouldn't have a farm, you wouldn't have the wood. So I'm applying my bad advice that I received to New Hope as a counter example, and I'm grateful for educators that step up and speak out about, here's what we need, here's what we need to flourish, and here's what we need to do together. So I'll apply my bad advice to your good counter example. So thank you for that. Joi, what about you? Have you gotten any bad advice or are you as blessed as Lionel is to never have received bad advice?
Joi:
No, I think I have gotten bad advice before. Being in this new situation, raising money for an independent black school in Memphis, I think people have definitely told me that there are certain groups of people and populations I shouldn't ask money for support from or any type of activity from. But we're learning that our parents, our grandparents, the people in our community might be great people who can give and be a part of this whole mission that we have going on in New Hope. It doesn't have to be one specific person or they have to look a certain way. This is an opportunity for all.
Jon:
That's good. All right. Best advice you've either given or received?
Joi:
I will say the best advice that I think I've gotten actually come from Lionel. It was a couple of years ago, I was still in my previous job and antsy to get back home and to do work here at New Hope. And I talked to Lionel about it, "Like, why is it this not working out? I want to be here." And he told me to be still and wait on the Lord. And that's been the best advice because look where I am a couple of years later. I'm here and an opportunity to really lead in a big way, bigger than what I was trying to do earlier. So being still.
Jon:
Psalm 46:10, always good advice. All right. Lionel, what about you?
Lionel:
Yeah, you may have heard this one already, Jon. I think this advice came from my sister. About 10, 15 years ago, I had an opportunity, between two schools, to be the principal. One, was the highest performing school in the district, the other was the seventh worst performing school in the entire state of Tennessee. I was offered both jobs. Go out to the car, called my sister, I'm like, "Hey, I think I'm going to decline the worst school. I just want to go to the best school." And keep in mind, Jon, I had no experience at a failing school at all. Simple advice from her. She said, "Lionel, God has really blessed you in your career. Why don't you do the exact opposite of what you want to do and watch what God does through you?"
Jon:
That's amazing.
Lionel:
At that point, I accepted the job at the other place, and that's all she wrote. I mean, it was the best decision of my life.
Jon:
Yeah, love that. You have told me that. And it's always a good story to hear that again. Because I think so often I want my desires to always be aligned with Christ. And the more I am praying, the more I'm in the word, the more that is likely. But so often, my selfish desires get in the way of what He wants. And so love that. Okay. What do you see as the biggest challenge for New Hope specifically for the next 30 years? What would you say? And then we'll go back to what's your greatest hope? But we'll start with the challenge first.
Lionel:
Yeah. Prior to this year, it was the funding model. I mean, it's flipped on its head. 93% of our dollars came from donations. Past 30 years, we've never been in the red. Praise God, thankful for that. Now that ESA's vouchers, all of that is here, there is a path forward. So I think the challenge is how can we leverage our 30 years of experience and create more new hopes? New Hope, we serve 44 different zip codes in Memphis. In the north Memphis area is where we planted our flag, but South Memphis is the most impoverished area in the city. And my dream, my desire, my hope is that we can plant our flag in South Memphis and create a New Hope South Memphis, and then hopefully a New Hope East Memphis. So many children here, Jon, they need teaching, learning, and discipleship, and they need hope. And New Hope can certainly provide that through the gospel, but then also change that family's trajectory just through high quality academics and just building that foundation.
So in short, to answer your question, the challenge is, how do we get more dollars? How do we leverage the dollars we have? How do we create these partnerships so that New Hope can grow well beyond Frayser, which is where we are now?
Jon:
Joi, anything you'd add to that challenge?
Joi:
He is the visionary leader of New Hope Christian Academy, so I stand behind him. That's our goal and vision. That's what we're doing.
Jon:
That's great. So then what's your greatest hope for New Hope or education in general, what's your greatest hope?
Lionel:
Oh, that's a loaded question, Jon.
Jon:
I know. We ask good ones for the lightning round and try to get you to give a parsimonious answer.
Lionel:
Oh. For Memphis specifically, and I think there's two parts to that. Memphis specifically, I'm hopeful that the education system will look more like the Kingdom, in particularly the private schools. Because it's not, Jon. I mean, again, New Hope and Collegiate, which is our sister school, we're the only ones that are high poverty, high concentration of black and brown children. Other schools are the complete opposite. And I always say, if you don't like diversity, you don't like heaven, you're not going to like heaven.
And the thing is, I mean, I'm hopeful that in the independent school space that there will be room for growth so that it can look more like the Kingdom and that the leaders will be more Kingdom minded. As it relates to just education? We need more urban Christian education. I think that's the key. In the core of the city, we need high quality options for families because that's where the concentration of brokenness is, and in every major city in America. So I'm very hopeful, you know that the lens will look towards just again, high quality urban Christian education in cities across America.
Jon:
Oh, yes. Love that. Rebecca McLaughlin says, "Don't miss the fact that Christianity is the most diverse multicultural movement in the history of the world. And the church is becoming increasingly black and brown in 2025." So that's a great word and appreciate your heart behind that. Joi, anything you'd add to your hope for where things are headed?
Joi:
Yes. I think when people think of Memphis, their mind goes to our crime rate, our history, our music, and our food. And I think one thing about Memphis that most people miss is that this is a place with a lot of opportunity. And I'm grateful that the ESAs and EFS has made their way to the Shelby County area because crime is a big issue here. Safety is a big issue here. But I do know that that's directly related and linked to poverty. And I know that poverty can be changed with quality education. And so I think this is a great time for us to really capitalize on, now's the time. New Hope is the place for parents and community members to pour into and send people to, and maybe even replicate a school like that in their own city or their own state, that this kind of gospel and movement that we're trying to spread actually spreads everywhere.
Jon:
That's great. This resonates with what the Spreading Hope Network does. They're based out of Minneapolis. I'm sure they're aware of you and hopefully you're aware of them. Love the heart, love the work you're doing. Our team, they got to visit, it all came back. Bill Sterrett was enamored with the farm and the forest. Loved it. The team loved it. So anybody that gets a chance to get through Memphis and visit, I know they find a welcome team there that is just doing good work. And it's an encouragement and there's great joy in the work that we get to do with kids. So thank you for your time. Appreciate your work on our advisory board, Lionel. Joi, it's great to meet you virtually. Hopefully we'll meet you in person soon, and thanks for all you do.
Joi:
Sure. Thank you.
Lionel:
Thank you.