Hard Men Podcast
Hard Men Podcast
Impactful Missionary Work, Church Planting, & Navigating Cultural Challenges with Alex Kocman
Discover the dynamic world of missionary work with Alex Kocman, the Director of Communications at ABWE, as we uncover impactful strategies for church planting and spreading the gospel. Alex shares invaluable insights into ABWE's unique funding model for missionaries, encouraging accountability and financial resilience, while also highlighting the distinctions and cooperative efforts between ABWE and the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board. This episode is your gateway to understanding the intricate balance between emotional revivalist traditions and the necessity for properly trained and qualified missionaries.
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This episode of the Hard man Podcast is brought to you by Joe Garrisi with Backwards Planning, financial, by our friends at Alpine Gold, max D Trailers, forge Beard Company, salt and Strings, butchery, premier Body, armor, reformation, heritage Books, boniface Business Solutions, white Tree Solutions and by our supporters at patreoncom All right.
Speaker 2:welcome back to this episode. My name is Ethan Senn, I'm Chief of Staff at New Christendom Press and I'm joined today by Alex Kokman. Alex, thanks for being with us.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Speaker 2:Alex, you're the Director of Communications for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism. Can you tell us a little bit about your organization and what you do there?
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Yeah, it really rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? We're a mission-sending organization for about 450 like-minded churches. We have about 1,000 workers reaching into nearly 90 countries. So preaching the gospel, making disciples, planting churches and training local qualified men as shepherds, elders, leaders to continue on the work of mission.
Speaker 3:We were founded about 100 years ago, splitting off of the Northern Baptists at a time in history when they were apostatizing. They were getting into the social justice of their day and our founders and our early first missionary said we're not going to do that, we're not going to play around with that. Instead, we're going to focus on preaching the gospel, jagged edges and all, and winning disciples and gathering them into sound, biblical, faithful, local churches. And so we've been about that ever since, and I have the privilege of leading a team here where we're putting out content that addresses topics of missions, topics of evangelism, but from a theologically grounded perspective, but from a local, church-centric perspective as well, trying to do all of that in a responsible and faithful way and mobilizing people to care about their nation and then, as the overflow of that, also the nations as well, and what Christ is doing to build his kingdom, or build a new Christendom, or maybe it's the same old Christendom all along, and it's a delight to lead that team as we celebrate and serve missionaries by telling their stories.
Speaker 2:That's great. How long have you been with the organization?
Speaker 3:Been with us here about eight years serving in a couple of different roles, so spent some time mobilizing missionaries to the field, spent some time also currently serving on our leadership team as well, with our president. And what makes it all interesting, ethan, is I am not a missionary and I make no pretensions of being one. I'm not somebody who believes that every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter, as Charles Spurgeon said. We love the Spurge, but I think he was wrong on that one, and maybe when we get to heaven, he'll convince me otherwise. Instead, I would just say that every church has a mission, though, and every church needs to be intentional and responsible about not only what's happening in its pews but the institutions that it's forming, the other churches that it's planting, the way that it's advancing the kingdom and the gospel out into every sphere, and doing so locally and globally. And we just believe that a thing that healthy churches do is they send and they think about their broader impact in the world beyond them, and so we're trying to help churches do that well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's great. So my background trainings is with the Southern Baptist, so really familiar with some of their organizations. How would you say that your organization is different or distinctive, or is it kind of just parallel streams or is it kind of just parallel streams?
Speaker 3:We are I would say we're cousins of the International Mission Board of the SBC. Many of our Southern Baptist brothers and others are going to be familiar with their work. We appreciate the work that they're doing and in some ways our journeys followed similar trajectories. We come from the north, they come from the south, they're about double our age and they have about four times the number of missionary workers that we have. But we're driven by that same impulse to receive missionaries from churches and to get them into teams, get them trained and send them to the nations. We have a few advantages that are unique to us, that are different, that the Lord's given us, and one is that, as our missionaries are individually raising funds, it means that they're not only accountable to the organization but they're primarily accountable to their sending churches. It also means that if central networks of churches, denominations of churches, even if they fall on hard times financially not that we've seen anything difficult economically in the past four years or anything like that at all but if you fall on hard times financially, there's a diversity of supporting churches and supporting individuals as well, so that people don't have to come off the field. Missionaries, church planters don't have to come off the field. They can develop their support base such that they can be anti-fragile and they can persevere in ministry the way that they need to. And we're also working with churches that are united around a core set of convictions the SBC, obviously, big Ten.
Speaker 3:I know a lot of the trainers at the IMB and they're trying to do something very particular with emphasizing healthy churches and biblical definitions of local church, and we would say, yeah, we're about that particularity as well, proclaiming the sovereignty of God and trusting in the way that he works, in evangelism, wanting to see churches planted that are led by qualified men as shepherds and pastors, and churches where the word of God is trusted, the whole counsel of God's word is preached and upheld, and so we're able to hold to those theological distinctives, because we're working with a band of churches that's chosen to affiliate with us and we're not beholden to just one particular denomination or network of churches.
Speaker 3:We like to network broadly within the broader Baptistic sphere, but we appreciate the work that they're doing and we're cheering them along. The way that I explain it to churches is, if you like, the model of working with a mission board, but maybe you're not a part of something like the Southern Baptist Convention that has all of those resources, then we're available as a similar tool for you to make sure your missionaries have everything that they need as they're being sent, but also to help the local church own that and feel that personal responsibility of themselves holding the rope for workers overseas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's great. So, in terms of training for your missionaries, what does that look like? What's the process or how long does it take to become a missionary, to get sent out?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, we're actually building some incredible things right now, which some of it should be public by the time this episode premieres. But we're just about to announce and you're hearing it here for the first time that we've added a new executive director of training, a friend of mine whose published works are out there on the web under the name ED Burns. Ed's written prolifically with Founders Ministries and with other groups that are in some of our spheres, in some of our orbits, and he's bringing a robust, theologically rich, confessional mode of thought and thinking about the church and about missionary life and what does it mean to persevere as a Great Commission worker at home or abroad? And he's bringing that to our missionaries and we're looking forward to building out some incredible new things in training, not just the theological education piece. That's a big, big chunk of it. That's necessary as well, because we're increasingly seeing churches aren't training their men in doctrine the way that they need to be, and so we're looking to solve some of that and make sure that men are getting equipped before they head to the field to plant churches, and their wives and women in teams and other individuals as well are getting the types of training that they need. And then, in addition to that, I mean we're even talking about what is your physical fitness and readiness for the field and we recognize not everybody is going to be a world-class athlete heading to the mission field but also, is there anything happening in your life where, even just at a physical level, you don't have the stamina for this? And how can we introduce some basic principles of resilience and being anti-fragile in every sphere of your life to what missionary training looks like. And so it's spread out over the process.
Speaker 3:As you're raising funds, you go through different courses and trainings and can take someone anywhere between a year and a half to two years, and we partner with other groups as well to get training from a variety of sources. So, whatever experience that you're coming with, we're going to supplement that. We're going to look at what you have, but also what you don't have, and try to add to that tool belt as well. But I'm incredibly excited for the depth of training that we can get to our missionaries. And, if you don't mind, I mean we can take the conversation any direction you like.
Speaker 3:But, eric Kahn, I mean we've had some conversations on Twitter and I've seen some of the things and I think you can lodge some legitimate critiques of modern missions based on sending a lot of untrained, underqualified people to the field, and I think that everybody in missions organizations has to take a good hard look in the mirror and make sure that we're not guilty of that same thing, just sending kind of anybody that raises their hand, anyone with a pulse okay, you can go to the mission field.
Speaker 3:Well, hang on. If you wouldn't be a greeter in my church, or if you're a man, you want a church plant but you're not even qualified to be an elder or perhaps to serve as a deacon in your local church, but we're going to send you to the field. Some of that thinking is backwards and I'm really excited that we can continue to build out a training regimen that addresses that and hopefully brings us not just more workers for the harvest we pray for that, matthew 9, 38, but better workers for the harvest, not just to preach the gospel, but we need to plant churches and Christian communities that are interconnected. Not just to preach the gospel, but we need to plant churches and Christian communities that are interconnected. And you do that through trained and qualified men as shepherd, pastor, teacher, theologians in a new cultural context. So there's a lot there that I'm very excited about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds awesome. Yeah, I think that that's been a lot of the experience, you know, like you said at the beginning, where almost everybody feels like they're called to be a missionary and if they're not doing it, they're. They're, you know, not as good of a Christian as they could be, and and so how do you, when, when, when you're looking for missionaries or guys are wondering am I, am I called to this? How do you, how do you distinguish that or help them to confirm, confirm that calling, or maybe tell them actually you actually probably aren't called to this.
Speaker 3:I lay a lot of the blame at the feet of Charles Finney. You can look back on the history of evangelicalism and see so much started out of that legacy of revivalism that made it into our churches, that turned things like whether it's the salvation conversion event or a call to ministry, or perhaps a call to ministry abroad in a cross-cultural context made all of that this subjective, emotional churning experience. You have a robust, charismatic preacher, teacher. You get the music to swell and crescendo into this moment where you feel this fluttering, this quiver in the liver. You walk an aisle and you make a commitment to missions and some people have a legitimate experience that way and there's a staying power there and I think God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks. But bottom line for us is the question of calling. Yes, we want to see that you have an internal call. Obviously you should feel compelled to the work. If you're not drawn to the work, whatever it is, if you're not drawn to it, there's not going to be the persevering, enduring power to your ministry there. But that's not sufficient. And feeling called does not a calling make. And feeling called does not a calling make.
Speaker 3:And we emphasize the external call. Where have your elders, your pastors, qualified men in your local church have already faithfully bringing the Word of God to others. He's showing hospitality in the context of his church. He's faithful on the job. He's making disciples in the community. He even has an aptitude for biblical learning, for languages, for other difficult tasks that are a part of missionary life. Maybe he has some entrepreneurial instincts and he's somebody who could potentially have a platform overseas and do business as mission, because how else are you going to get the gospel into some of these difficult contexts? And so it starts with that objective calling of people recognizing that in you of the local church and its leaders, saying, okay, the Spirit of God is doing something in your life and in your family, in your heart, and we're going to lay hands on you, we're going to commission you to this work.
Speaker 3:And that's exactly what you see in Acts 13. That's how the first missionaries, paul and Barnabas, are sent out. And what's interesting in that passage it's as those elders and teachers are gathering, praying, fasting and doing that they're having an elder meeting, essentially at that church that the Holy Spirit says to the elder board okay, now lay hands on Paul and Barnabas and send them out for the work to which I've called them. It doesn't say anything about what they subjectively felt in the pit of their stomach in that moment. These days we bring in a charismatic mission speaker.
Speaker 3:We wait for people to feel a certain way. They approach the elders, they approach the church and say, hey, I want to be sent. Here's my give send go page, send me on my way. And we want to say hold up. Actually, the way that calling seems to happen in the New Testament is this trickle down where qualified men and leaders are identifying other qualified individuals to go and carry the local church forward and to do so through proclaiming the gospel in places where Christ hasn't yet been heralded. So we seek to treat calling in that way and we trust the local church to say here's somebody that we believe God's calling is upon them, the Spirit is doing something unique in them and they can plug in and lead a team or be a part of a team where the church is being established. And then our job is not necessarily we want to evaluate that, but our job is to trust those local church leaders that are like-minded and then say okay, how can we help you to advance your church's mission of sending to the nations?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's wonderful, I know. I guess, in my experience with a lot of this, instead of doing it from a position of strength like you're describing, it's almost like a guilt or a guilt trip where people feel obligated and they're like man. I really think I ought to be doing this and not evaluating. You know, can I do this, or should I do this, and do I possess the skills and the abilities and the calling and everything else, Like is my house in order? Should I be focusing on something you know more, like discipling my kids or loving my wife and things like that?
Speaker 3:absolutely well there and there's so many horror stories of people that haven't asked those questions and yet have gone.
Speaker 3:And I know of some individuals who have gone and served short term and and they're they're in tears and they're broken down and some people have even entertained the thought maybe God won't love me if I don't do this right.
Speaker 3:There's so much of a guilt motivation that comes with a lot of the radical style preaching and teaching over the last several years of missions mobilization and we want to say instead what does it look like for ordinary churches that are worshiping to have the overflow of that be sending to the nations? I think a lot of us have heard that John Piper quote that missions exists because worship doesn't. But we also want to say missions exists, yes, to create worshipers where there are none, but missions also exists because worship does, also exists because worship does, in other words, the overflow of ordinary worship, ordinary church building, church growth, church establishment, maturing of saints in households and in other Christian institutions locally that the overflow of that is going to be that occasionally the Lord's going to set aside typically an elite few, if we're being honest to go and now cross-pollinate, send that, carry that work out elsewhere into the world and we want to be there for it.
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Speaker 2:In terms of short-term, long-term, do you guys have kind of a standard commitment when somebody I don't know how long you send somebody somewhere where they're going, or I assume the whole family's?
Speaker 3:going? Yeah, for sure, and that's actually one of the distinctives of ABWE. Some organizations are less favorable to people with school-age children, people even with teenagers serving on the field. And on the one hand, I get it there's certain things that, when you have young kids in the home, just aren't easy to do. You don't want to fool yourself into thinking that you can do everything when in reality that's your primary ministry, that's your primary mission field, that's your calling is to disciple those young ones well. But we also recognize that the Lord uses families that way in ministry in incredible ways, and a highly functional household can be an incredible witness, even apart from the words that they're saying. Just seeing that in action is an incredible gospel testimony.
Speaker 3:So we do send whole families and, yeah, with ABWE you can certainly take a trip and visit a field and try to encourage a missionary. But there's short-term, anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. There's mid-term, which is like your apprenticeship experience, and, okay, can I do this for a career? Or maybe can I be a part of an initial assignment for one to four years and make an impact, but then the Lord's going to shift our focus elsewhere. But our bread and butter is people that are willing to say that I want to focus on the long horizon of obedience, that I know that we're not trying to grow dandelions, we're trying to grow oaks, and that means investing a career indefinitely, starting with a four-year term. But just looking beyond that, people willing to learn language, culture, people willing to suffer for the long term in order to see a healthy, vibrant body of believers established where currently there may be none, so that that church can not only just come into existence but then themselves become a missionary sending church and continue to send and accomplish the Great Commission in its context. So, ultimately, we're looking for people that are thinking long-term about how they're going to use their life for the Lord.
Speaker 3:That's not to say that people don't shift directions, but I think for so long we've had this short-term church-planting movement mentality in evangelicalism, where we're going to gather in a storefront and we're just going to slap a sign on, or we're going to stand in a storefront and we're just going to slap a sign on, or we're going to stand up a sandwich sign on the front curb and we're going to live in this transient mode. And yeah, those are things that church plants do and they're glorious and not everyone needs a permanent building. But in the spiritual sense not even always literally, although literally would be great. In the spiritual sense we're trying to build cathedrals, we're trying to build the types of movements on the mission field that are going to take generations where you might not see the fruit. It might not be your children, but your grandchildren or their children after them that see the long-term fruit of the investment that's happened. And so, ultimately, we're aiming for people willing to answer a long-term call as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I worked for the air force for 10 years and they move you around every two or three years but it's like, by the time you start to get good at your job, you've got a new one and you're moving somewhere else and, yeah, it's a lot. It's uh, you know, really to put down roots and to, um, to just walk with a certain group of people for a long period of time where they can trust you and you can shepherd them, really know them, like that. That that does take, take years.
Speaker 3:Well, and and it's all what we're aiming at as well I mean we, we know the Lord could tarry or he could not tarry, and the Lord could wrap things up on history pretty quick here if he were to so choose. We don't completely know what the future holds in that way, but we're also called to labor in such a way to where, if the Lord doesn't return, for another 10,000 years, we've been faithfully at work the whole time. We constantly have to have that short-term and that long-term vision as well, and I think a lot of harm has been done in missions, in evangelism, in church planting, with that short sightedness where we're not thinking long term about the effects of that. I've heard from other missions leaders on this as well. There's methods of getting the gospel out quick where you're not even relying on missionaries, you're just relying on untrained, sometimes unconverted, locals simply to be catalysts that are sharing it with their friends.
Speaker 3:A lot of it resembles multi-level marketing, to be perfectly honest, and I've heard some mission leaders make comments like well, we don't see any heresy in any of these movements. Well, praise God for that. But the question is, what's it going to look like in 100 years or 150 years and I think much harm is caused when we're not thinking about the long-term fruit. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I know I believe you're an elder at a 1689 church. Is that right?
Speaker 3:Our church is not technically Second London, although we would be aligned in a lot of different areas, but it is a Reformed church. We have a particular confession. We're unique. I is a reformed church. We have a particular confession. We're unique. I'll tell you about it sometime. But we are a confessional reformed church. Yeah, I serve as an elder there.
Speaker 2:Okay, so in terms of church planting and missions, how, theologically, how do you approach that? Or how how big is the tent for the ABWE?
Speaker 3:Yeah, for ABWE, we well, we would say we're bigger tent, but in reality we recognize that as conservative, Bible believing evangelicals that believe in things like the sovereignty of God over salvation. We're such a minority of a minority, of a minority in culture. You look out on the negative world around us and you realize, OK, that it's not that big a tent at the end of the day. And you realize, okay, it's not that big a tent at the end of the day. But for us we're fundamentally looking for people that are like-minded, prioritizing gospel preaching, but not only the gospel, the whole counsel of God's word. You know the Great Commission is to teach them everything that Christ commanded right. So fundamentally we're looking not just for people that believe in leading people across that line of faith and getting a decision, but also churches that are committed to the whole process of discipleship. And so we actually just made a few changes, even in our own doctrinal statement, to say that churches in that Baptistic tradition we're here to serve as many of those that are committed to the same things that we're committed to, obviously a high regard for Scripture, but also a high regard for the history of the church. Our doctrinal statement is built on the foundation of, classically, what Christians have taught and believed in the early creeds and confessions of the church, explaining the nature of God, the natures of Christ, the nature of the Holy Spirit. And so we've strengthened some areas of theology around who God is. We've strengthened our anthropology to sort of stand guard against the craziness in terms of sexuality and marriage and things that are controversial now that weren't 30 or 40 years ago. And we've strengthened our doctrine of salvation as well to recognize that it is a work of God from beginning to end, regardless of how we color in some of the details of application on certain points, recognizing that God sovereignly works to change the heart when his word in its fullness is proclaimed.
Speaker 3:Eschatology, abwe comes from a certain tradition historically, but we've even broadened slightly in that regard to say you know, we're looking for people that are, on the one hand, ready for the Lord's return tomorrow, should they stand before him, and on the other hand, they're building oaks, not just planting dandelions, and they're thinking, 10,000 years from now, what does this church planting movement that we're working at actually look like?
Speaker 3:And so we've broadened on that point because we're just recognizing, hey, fundamentally, what we're looking to partner with is churches and missionaries that are passionate to preach the gospel, preach all of Christ, and apply that to the lives of people who've perhaps never heard that news before. We do come from that Baptistic tradition that's the B in ABWE right Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, but we still love our Presbyterian brothers and sisters as well. In fact, we were just at a conference and I interviewed a number of people there and we're having some conversations with church leaders, and I turned over to my co-host of our podcast and I said wait a second, I think we've just interviewed six Presbyterians in a row. I don't even think we remembered to interview any Baptists.
Speaker 3:Let's get a couple of Baptists on just to know what to get us mad about. Yeah, that's right. So you know, we're we're. We're about Christendom, we're about the kingdom, and not not just one particular tribe, even though we all have our unique tribe that we're a part of too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely that's great. So, uh, so you host a podcast you host two podcasts now, don't you?
Speaker 3:So technically three. So we've got, uh, the missions podcast. We've been doing that for seven years and, uh, really, what we do is talk about these issues of missiology and some of it's controversial, uh, but we do some from a theologically grounded perspective at questions now that are. They've kind of become political questions like what is a nation? How do you define nation? Stuff we've been talking about for the last seven or eight years on the show from a missiological lens and suddenly that has broader cultural applications today. So we're wrestling through all those sorts of issues.
Speaker 3:On the Missions podcast, cloud of Witnesses, we do one season a year and it's a limited run season, but those are stories of veteran missionaries. Just heard one story from our season finale for season two that we just wrapped up. You know jungle work, tribal work, you know running from angry natives I mean some of the most exciting things that you just need to hear. They're just good for your soul. And then we also have a little bit more of a lighthearted approach. I host something every other week called the Worldview, and you'll see that on X. If you've ever seen the Wade Show with Wade, a friend of mine calls it, the Alex Show with Alex, and so for anyone out there familiar with those things, let's just say imitation is the highest form of flattery. That's right. But that's where we're dealing with issues of Christian thinking, christian worldview, through not only a national but a cross-cultural lens too.
Speaker 2:So I know you get asked to kind of travel around and speak on some of these different issues. What you know, if you had to pick your kind of go-to one right now that you think is the most critical, what issue do you think that is right now for us as a church, or in the mission field, or mission work, or the nation?
Speaker 3:Well, first of all, you should know the risk of saying to any preacher like you know, basically you know pulling the ripcord and waiting to see, so hopefully, hopefully, you can get me down off of off of the high. But one thing that I've been passionate about I've spent the better part of the last year or two living in Philippians and I have a book coming out with Founders Ministries on pre-order now and then the new year we'll start fulfilling orders, striving for the faith, a journey through Philippians for life on mission, and the premise of that is really looking at some of the debates that we have on Twitter and even things recently that I think are good questions to ask. Like you know, should we be sending our young single daughters untrained to the mission field? I mean, that's a question that a father has to ask, right? Of course, you see these controversies pop up in the church and then, on the one hand, you know everyone's a missionary. On the other hand, over here you have the far extreme of no one's a missionary.
Speaker 3:The Great Commission was just for the first century. It's like man. Can we just find what that sweet spot biblically in the middle is? And the New Testament doesn't fill out all the details of okay, here's how many missionaries every church should send. Here's what percentage of the budget should go to missions. Here's how many times you should share your faith personally on a weekly basis. We don't get that. And we don't get that because, actually, what the New Testament is giving us is encouragement and exhortation for people that are theoretically already doing the work right. They're already living intentionally for kingdom objectives in their own day-to-day life, and so what I see in Philippians is a perfect example of that, and this Sunday I'm preaching at a friend's church on Philippians 127, where Paul says whether I see you or whether I'm able to visit or not, only let your life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that, whether I see you, whether I visit you or not, I can hear that you're standing firm, you're standing side by side, striving together for the gospel one heart, one mind, and doing all that and not terrified in anything by your adversaries, which he says this is a sign to them of their striving together for the gospel. One heart, one mind and doing all that and not terrified in anything by your adversaries, which he says this is a sign to them of their destruction, but to you of your salvation, for it's been appointed for you to suffer. And he goes on from there.
Speaker 3:But what I'm gathering from that is there is this vision in scripture for churches of ordinary households, not just people that go as missionaries, but senders as well, and prayers, and the laity and the deacons and the elders, and every function, all the diverse functions in the body of Christ. There's a way for all of us to be arm in arm on the front lines of the battlefield. You think of like the Battle of Thermopylae. Right, You've got the Persians that are mostly slave soldiers, you know, clanging their chains into battle. And then you've got the Spartans, where the song you're hearing their war songs and their battle cry and they're singing as they go to battle and their arm in arm and, yeah, they lose, but now everyone knows about the 300 men and nobody cares about the Persians. Right, In another way, they really won the moral victory.
Speaker 3:I think there's a way that Paul's describing for the church to together, set its feet in the same direction. Strive, you know, agonize, it's an athletic term strive together in the same direction to achieve an objective, a shared purpose in advancing the kingdom and reign of Christ through preaching the gospel, applying his truth to all of life, and I don't always see that. Instead, I see people fight about missions. I see, on the one hand, people that are zealous for it, sometimes use that as the bludgeon for beating everyone else over the head with well, if you're not going, like me, you're not at my level of Christianity. And then I see other people that rightly react to that and they pull away from that. You know we're not going to focus as much on that, we're only going to focus locally, and I understand both sides.
Speaker 3:It's that classic body of Christ dynamic that you see Paul address in 1 Corinthians, where you know, if everyone was a hand, then we would be really better off as a church.
Speaker 3:Right, If everyone was a foot or an eye or an ear, well, we need all of those things, but we need the combined toe weight of all of those muscles in the body pulling the same direction, trying to achieve the same thing.
Speaker 3:I think right now, post-election, in the moment that the church is in, there's some things that we can do locally and globally by being purposeful, by being organized in our churches, whether it's business leaders, the missionaries, the elders, officers of the church, things we're doing in terms of education.
Speaker 3:You know, if you were to take every muscle in the human body and somehow line it up in the same direction, assuming your bones wouldn't break in the process, the toe weight is something like 25 tons. There's a lot that the church can do if we're all striving in the same direction, instead of going to war, brother against brother and torn apart by all sorts of internal dissent. So my passion is not just to send missionaries that's a piece of it. My passion is to see the church strive together, side by side, for the sake of the gospel, which is going to include sending for missionaries, praying for missionaries, which is going to include sending for missionaries, praying for missionaries. It's going to include a lot of other activities as well, but now is the time to dig our heels in and assume that ready stance together.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Amen to that.
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Speaker 2:Speaking of, you know, the election, American politics and things like that. What is your take on kind of where we are right now? Do you see this kind of being an opportunity for us the next couple of years to build and to align those muscles you describe, or what would your kind of encouragement be for this time that we're in?
Speaker 3:Well, I know it's an opportunity because one of our leaders at ABWE recently related to me that as soon as the election results came out, we had generous supporters, sacrificial donors of the mission calling and texting and saying, ok, now I'll give that gift to this project or to that missionary, I'll give that gift to this project or to that missionary. And so we've already seen that, when things are going better here economically, one of the many outcomes of that is that ministries are supported, and that's biblical. We're not supposed to muzzle the ox while it treads the grain. So I think this is a critical time where we can be direct and intentional and make sure we're putting down deep roots. The reality is is moments like these don't last forever. Things come and go.
Speaker 3:Not that long ago, even a year or two ago, we were asking hard questions about okay, what are the vaccine regulations that missionaries are being faced with when they're going to other countries and going to certain countries in the EU, and how do they deal with these policies?
Speaker 3:We had some missionaries that had to leave certain fields because of convictions, and we're thinking about other things in terms of okay, well, in Canada, you can't speak negatively against the LGBT movement anymore and actually you have to present your sermon manuscripts to local authorities, which is an insane thought, and so we were assessing things very differently not that long ago and starting to wonder okay, what does it look like just for us as a missions institution to stay firm and anti-fragile through all of that?
Speaker 3:Well, now we've got an opportunity to be proactive, to build, to send missionaries, also to reach into our own nation as well, and I think one of the things that a lot of people in our world are realizing is that there's a mission field on the right. With this vibe shift happening in the US, there's a lot that can be done to bring the gospel to people right now who are open to things like traditional values, open to things like classical education. There's lots of conversation around these things. Now all they need to do is bring that into connection with the lordship of Jesus Christ over all things and his atoning death and his victorious resurrection and present reign at the right hand of the Father. If we can connect those dots for people, then we can strengthen churches and mission institutions in the US so that we can continue to send to the nations far beyond them and partner with what God's already doing around the world. So I think it's a critical moment right now we can't pass up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think what you're describing is kind of like the red pill manosphere, kind of like you know which, that they're right for the harvest and you know would align on a lot of, a lot of the cultural or secondary kind of issues, but are just missing that, that key piece, that that that they need.
Speaker 3:That's a big piece, for sure. It's a. It's a big. It's a big piece to miss as well.
Speaker 3:But you know, and, and I'm sorry, I, I I really don't follow UFC. Maybe you do so. I don't know the fellow's name, uh, the, the fighter that just won, um, that particular title. But when you have somebody publicly bearing witness to the Lord Jesus Christ and Joe Rogan nodding along right in the midst of this interview, then he hands the belt to President-elect Trump and he's doing the dance, I mean you just have to look at that and recognize OK, the cultural math that we're doing has changed. Perhaps we're taking you know we've taken 15 steps towards negative world. Maybe we just took two or three steps back closer to neutral world.
Speaker 3:However you assess the current situation, there's opportunities, there's conversations for us that are opening up right now that wouldn't have opened up otherwise. I mean, I'm having conversations in my own life with people that are progressive, that are sexually very libertine, that part of the LGBT apparatus who reject wokeness and they reject the craziness, and suddenly there's common ground to where now I can say have you considered that the reason and the order and the truth that you're looking for can only be found in Christ. So people are waking up and there's a lot to do, and that's not just true nationally, that's true globally as well. There's a lot for missionaries to seize upon as well. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2:What um I mean? I mean we've we've seen, like, when you describe negative worldview or negative world, we've, uh we've seen a lot of persecution um in America for for holding conservative beliefs and Christian beliefs and exercising some of those things. What has, how has that affected um, either your church or your, your organization or and? And do you expect that to continue or do you think we're going to get a little bit of a reprieve from that?
Speaker 3:Well, my, my perspective on this is maybe different from some. I just had a conversation with our friend, uh Michael Clary on his show about that Uh when. When we recorded yesterday, and typically in the American church, what you see when the topic of the persecuted church comes up is a couple of different responses, and I think, first of all, make all of the necessary caveats right. We're not suffering the way that believers in China or North Korea are, and in light of that, though, we tend to do a couple of things. One of them is we put these persecuted brothers abroad on a pedestal, and we do that in some ways because they're worthy of it. These are believers who are faithful at a level where just many of us just haven't had our faith tested in that way, and we have to recognize faithfulness when we see it. You know, game, recognize game. I mean that's part of what's happening there. But whenever we put anyone on a pedestal, if it's a missionary, I mean that's part of what's happening there. But whenever we put anyone on a pedestal, if it's a missionary, if it's a leader in an underground church, a part of what that can tend to do over time is excuse ourselves, where we start to think, oh, it's just different for us and they're living in a completely different context. But persecution exists on a sliding scale and sometimes it's the very direct persecution where, if you even name the name of Christ, your persona non grata. Other times I think the majority of the time persecution is by proxy. Yeah, it's more soft, absolutely, in the ancient church. Right, it wasn't. You could worship Jesus under the Roman Empire. You just also had to recognize that Kaiser is Kourios, his lord, and in the same way. Now, look, you can go to church, you can do all of the things, you can even talk about your faith, but you have to bow the knee to the LGBT mob, you have to bow the knee to all of these other issues as well in the culture. And so it's usually by proxy, like the frog in the pot, as the heat's getting turned up long before it turns into the direct type of persecution where you're asked to recant. And so, as we pray for and admire our brothers who are standing faithful globally, we also have to recognize that for us, the temperature is still, overall, increasing. Maybe the temperature's turned down a little bit right now, but overall that temperature has gone up significantly in the last couple of decades.
Speaker 3:And I'll share one thing from a friend of mine who's a missionary pastor in a Muslim country. And you've seen the maps, you've seen the posters from organizations that emphasize the persecuted church and prayer for them. You know, you'll see the countries that are red and you'll see the countries that are green and everything in between. And he says you know, our country, where he serves, never shows up on that map. He says, but it should, because it's illegal to evangelize. There's all sorts of problems for the church, and he lists them. And so I'm wondering OK, well, why doesn't it show up on those maps? Why isn't it flagged in the red?
Speaker 3:And he explains it's because the church here in his country, he says, has already given in, so they're not out there preaching the gospel because they've made peace with the fact that it's illegal to lead this majority people group out of Islam. And so they're not doing the thing. They're still gathering in their churches. Maybe they're reaching out to some of the minority people groups, but they've ultimately made peace with their position and they're not trying to rock the boat. And so there aren't headlines of this church leader, that church leader, thrown behind bars because they capitulated in a lot of ways. I think the threat for us with persecution, the biggest danger, is not that we're all going to be locked up or silenced or canceled. The biggest danger is that we cancel ourselves before anyone else externally in the government has a chance to. I see a lot more people canceling themselves proactively instead of letting the world deal with us reactively. Yeah, absolutely.
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Speaker 2:Tree Solutions, your trusted data and technology partner. Let's win together. No-transcript. And it's just, isn't it wonderful that you know, we just get, get all these people who need to hear the gospel, and they're just, you know, you're, you're next door neighbors. Um, is that? Uh, is that that's the right way to think about it? Or how? How should Christians be thinking about the border crisis and the illegal immigration and those those things that we're we're dealing with today?
Speaker 3:I mean one of the one of the things that I think is helpful. Uh, always, and you hear this in our circles, even with conversations about Christian nationalism, the conversation keeps coming back to think in categories. There are categories of theology, there are spheres that have to be distinguished, not everything separate and disconnected, but you have to make distinctions. So I'm firmly convicted that we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I can see God's hand of providence in some ways bringing blessing out of brokenness, while also recognizing that in the civic and temporal sphere there's things happening that are harmful and are actively destructive of a culture with integrity and with staying power, with integrity and with staying power. So, on the one hand, I do see the providence of God in bringing unreached peoples within access, reach distance to the gospel, and I have examples of that. I love the fact that ABWE, when the US totally botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan, abwe providentially came into contact with some Afghan underground church leaders who were literally on the run from the Taliban for their lives, and they were seeking not only to come to the US for safe harbor but specifically to continue as missionaries to their fellow Afghan refugees from Muslim backgrounds, and so we were able to partner with them as they were coming in, work with them, commission them as missionaries. And now we're seeing Afghan Muslim refugees coming to Christ, being led to the Lord by other Afghans, and now Afghan churches are being planted. There's incredible ways that the church can be involved in that and see God's hand at work while at the same time recognizing if I'm a pastor, I can do that. If the Lord's called me to be a civil magistrate, then I have other duties that attend to that office and those duties pertain to what is going to result in the greatest natural and spiritual, ultimate eternal good for the particular people over whom I've been appointed as a head, even as a covenantal sort of head. I'm going to stand before the Lord and give an account for what did I do in the sphere of this polity that I was appointed over.
Speaker 3:That means that when you have 10, 20 million people coming into a country, even if they're the salt of the earth, there's nowhere to put them all right. There's certain things. I'm not loving my neighbors. If I invite 200 people over my house, I can't show them hospitality, it's going to be chaotic. I'm not loving my family, but I'm not even loving my guests.
Speaker 3:At this point, we're at the point where we say we're loving our guests.
Speaker 3:We're not even loving our guests with all the ways that they're taken advantage of and you see the activity of traffickers and cartels at the border.
Speaker 3:And so to look at that from an earthly perspective, using principles from scripture and from natural law, and to say, well, we have to scale back in order, yes, to love the sojourner and to love our own people and make sure that there's simply the enduring power for a nation and making sure we still have our core identity as a nation intact, while at the same time, recognizing God works through the turning of events in history and the migration of peoples, and people can be exposed to the gospel and, to the extent that we have opportunity in our communities, let's also make sure let's not let our heart grow cold. Let's recognize okay, this person is now next to me, they wouldn't have been. I can preach the gospel to them and I can take advantage of those ministry opportunities and when it comes time to advocate for what types of policies are for their long-term good and my long-term good. There's other concerns there as well. I think we can walk and chew gum there's other concerns there as well.
Speaker 2:I think we can walk and chew gum. Yeah, absolutely I uh, I moved around a lot, uh, in the air force, so we'd we'd always try to find the best, best church we could in the town we got got stationed in, and one church we were at claimed, you know, the church in revelation. Looks like every tribe, every tongue, you know, or that. That's that's in the eschaton, what, what it's going to be so in this church, in this place, that's what our church needs to be right now. Is that? I mean, obviously, you, you deal with all kinds of different cultures and ethnicities and people, groups and everything. Um, what is what? What should the goal be for a particular church in a particular place? Or or is that something that that doesn't matter, or something we should strive to be multi-ethnic or multiracial, or you know what's ideal there?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's a great question. I think we can all recognize a church in a place like Ogden, utah probably isn't going to have the entire United Nations assembled on a Sunday morning, going to have the entire United Nations assembled on a Sunday morning, and that can easily become this sort of legalistic standard where if your church isn't as multiracial or multiethnic as the throne room in Revelation 5, 9, and 7, 9, then somehow there's this hidden form of systemic racism in the way that you've organized your church. And I think we've seen over the past several years the insanity of some of that logic. We should also recognize that a church that's preaching the transcultural gospel will naturally attract whomever the Lord is sovereignly drawing to himself for salvation. So if there's an incredibly diverse community and only Koreans are attending the church, maybe I should wonder okay, are we failing to reach out to our whole community with the gospel? And so there's ways in which it's good to ask the question of are we bringing gospel light to all of the different pockets in our community in such a way that they can respond in faith and find a home in our church? And each church has to exercise prudence in their own context with that question individually. But one of the biggest ways that I think we get that question wrong whenever we turn to Revelation 5, 9, and 7, 9, and try to derive a theology or even a methodology specifically out of it. I think there's a way that we get it right and there's a way that we get it wrong.
Speaker 3:Something that's good to do is to recognize, at the very least, okay, if every nation finds its way into the kingdom of God, in the final analysis, then we need to particularly have a strategy for those nations that have no access, have no Bible, have never heard, and whatever we do locally, we still have to make sure we're sending workers to those places, because we know that's a part of God's will is to draw all of the peoples to himself, and so let's not neglect the unreached language groups or people groups in particular. That's one valid inference from that passage, from those types of passages. But the other thing that's going on in the throne room in Revelation? But the other thing that's going on in the throne room in Revelation, everyone's attention is transfixed on the lamb, and isn't that just the most North American thing to do?
Speaker 3:Modern, deracinated North American thing to do is to look at that passage and to be fixated on the diversity of the audience rather than recognizing why are all those nations gathered? Not just to have a diversity party. They're gathered around the lamb, and the thing that should amaze us is, yes, the breadth of the kingdom of God, but the fact that it's all centered on the Lord, jesus Christ. And ultimately, I don't care what the composition of your church or your church plant is. You need to be fixated on the glory of Christ, his majesty, his power, his work in redemption and in providence. That should drive you. Out of that Can come any number of wise strategies that are suited for your context. We've got to keep Christ at the center. Yeah, absolutely Well said.
Speaker 2:So I guess the other question I wanted to ask, when it comes to you, you're looking for for mission work and, in your opinion, how has the feminization of our culture and our nation, our church, how has that affected mission work and what can we do to kind of?
Speaker 3:turn that back? It's an important question because you see a lot of these negative trends that we see in the evangelical world in general, you see them on the mission field. First. I think it was Carl Truman that said something helpful that was along the lines of most heresies had their start with missions. It's the tip of the spear for new heresies with missions. It's the tip of the spear for new heresies, and that's not to say that every missionary is a heretic, but it's to say that a lot of lies come from the best of evangelistic motives.
Speaker 3:I'm sure Arianism, when it was taking over the world early in the life of the church, came from the best attempt to contextualize the gospel for the ancient Hellenistic mind. Right, and we can look back in history and see those best of intentions don't always pan out, and I think what's happened in a lot of missions. Mobilization is we do mobilize lots of singles and some single men, but I think we know that single women vastly are overrepresented in a lot of places, including on the mission field. And on the one hand I'm sympathetic. You know I'm a priesthood of believers, all believers, kind of guy, so anyone that's saying that they want to be a light and a witness to other places and peoples around the world. My driving impulse is to validate that desire. That's a godly desire. I don't want to quench that as well, but we've gotten the Great Commission wrong.
Speaker 3:It's not just about sending a quantity of workers. It's about sending out a certain quality of workers, which means you have to have, if you're going to baptize and teach people to obey everything Christ commanded that assumes a local church, that assumes ordained leaders of a local church and that assumes men who can administer the sacraments of baptism and of the Lord's Supper and who can preach and teach continually. Everything in Matthew 28, 18 through 20 assumes a local church, and you can't have local churches being planted and led in a healthy way without men, without fathers. After all, the church is what it's a household of households, and you need fathers and qualified men at the center of that. I do think that if we're aiming at that bullseye, other people will come along the way. You'll have Aquilas and Priscilla's and Phoebe's that throw themselves into the work to join with men like Paul and Timothy and Titus and Silas and Barnabas who are spearheading the work. You'll certainly have teams of people performing a variety of functions, just like all of our churches depend upon an organized and mobilized laity doing a variety of tasks. It's not just the pastors and the preachers that are getting all of the credit and all of the glory. But if we don't focus on raising up those types of qualified men, what we're going to continue to export is a weakened, soft, americanized gospel, and I don't want to export that. The problem is, america does export not just solid, healthy gospel. We export prosperity gospel. We export things like that across the world.
Speaker 3:There's multiple reasons that a doctrine that's biblical, like male headship, matters on the mission field, not only for planting churches, but also if we're teaching everything that Christ commanded. Well, christ commanded certain functions in the marriage relationship. You look at the household codes, right, all of this is a part of what Christ commanded. We need missionaries modeling that. We need new church plants on the field, modeling all of those sorts of things.
Speaker 3:But the problem is, with the best of intentions, we do things without considering the consequences and we certainly need all of God's people involved in missions. But I just want to say where are the men? Where are the men that are willing to lay down their lives? And I do want to say some of the fault is on missions organizations. I think in the past we've painted missions as this fun, easy thing. You know, a lot of the missions ads look like travel agency ads and don't you just want to snuggle this you know little orphan baby and hold him or her on your hip, and we really do appeal to that more feminine instinct with that. So we also need to be projecting a vision of the Great Commission that is calling up men with that Shackleton kind of call and summons to say this is hard, prepare to suffer, prepare to endure, prepare to preach the gospel. Die and be forgotten, as Count von Zinzendorf said, and then the Lord will bless that work.
Speaker 2:Little pay, little chance of return. Probably get lots of hard men signing up for that.
Speaker 3:If only there was a podcast for hard men.
Speaker 2:Man. We need that. We do. I guess, in terms of different roles in the field, I assume male roles and female roles are going to look very different In terms of if you go somewhere, plant a church, are you looking to raise up pastors and deacons from the local community, and what does that process look like and how long does that typically take?
Speaker 3:Well, we certainly are, and that timeline varies greatly. I spoke to some new missionaries of ours Gen Z couple and they're zealous. They were just appointed a few weeks ago. They're intending to serve in a Middle Eastern country and I appreciated so much the perspective from them. They just said we might spend our entire career planting seeds and never see a church form. Right, that's not pessimism, that's just realism about an Islamic context. I appreciate that perspective and hopefully they're able to maintain that perspective, whether the Lord blesses them with immediate success or not. And so sometimes you have a very long tail of developing leaders. But in other places it's not even just that leaders are raised up more quickly.
Speaker 3:We're increasingly seeing, you know, that the gospel is doing what the gospel does, whether or not we're there first. And yes, there's pioneering work to do to send missionaries where none exist. But there's also a lot of places where we're actually the Johnny-come-latelys. God is already building up his church. The Lord Jesus Christ is building his church among nations and we're coming in as Titus and Timothy style missionaries. And some of the Pauline missionaries are locals who've been there long before us and their powerhouse evangelists that I can't even hold a candle to. Our church supports some national partners like that through ABWE. It's one thing I like about ABWE we're not just sending Americans, we're also identifying solid partners that we can enter into, these mutually beneficial relationships with and share resources and theological education, funding and prayers and all those sorts of things as well. So increasingly I'm amazed by the partners, including qualified men and officers in churches, who are already there, and a lot of what we're doing is just drawing attention to what God's already doing among the nations.
Speaker 2:Are there any areas right now, kind of globally, that you're really excited about? I don't think the American church has a really great grasp on what's going on in Africa, or in China or Iran, like I don't know. You know everywhere you guys send missionaries to, but are there any areas that are like really exciting? Or you've seen a lot of, you know, growth lately?
Speaker 3:It's hard to pick because we have works in 89 countries and yet there's a few that do excite me In a South Asian Muslim country, and I'll say that and you can decide which one maybe that refers to. I'm excited. On the one hand, we need medical missionaries, specifically people who their platform will be medicine, helping in a hospital context, but also preaching the gospel, also working with church plants and theological training efforts At the same time that we need that. I've seen multiple people mobilize, including younger people, to that field to do theological education, to be intentional on the church planting piece of that task, and I'm seeing the Psalms translated into the local language for singing, because we need robust worship on the field, not just in our churches as well. So I'm very excited about some of the progress and the momentum in a place like that. I'm excited about multiple new workers being sent to Japan.
Speaker 3:Japan historically has been the graveyard of missions. It's super developed we all know how developed Japan is and yet it's also either the first or the second largest unreached people group in the world, depending where the exact statistics fall any given day. Typically it's number two on the list. It's just not been a place where there's been momentum, and yet I'm seeing missionaries and potential missionaries inquire about serving there in droves, which makes me wonder.
Speaker 3:Is the Lord doing something among his people that all of a sudden, hundreds of people are waking up and noticing a need for church plants in the greater Tokyo area, and so we're mobilizing people there as well? There's so much to be excited about. I'm even excited about what we're doing in the States to a friend of mine who's a solid brother, for all I know he's listening to this podcast. This is the type of podcast that he would listen to. He's recently been appointed to lead our US church planting efforts. He's based out of Kalamazoo, michigan, and has previously been pastoring for a number of years and doing biblical counseling, and so there's a lot to be excited about.
Speaker 2:That's great. You guys think you'd do any church planning Utah.
Speaker 3:We're like 2% Christian here, so you know, you know what? If somebody is interested in that, have them reach out to me. Alex, at at at abweorg, because I will connect you with the fellow I just mentioned, a guy by the name of Ray Brandon. He would love to send church planters to Utah. Utah is super interesting because it's never been Christianized right, it's always technically kind of been pagan.
Speaker 2:Pagan. Yeah, absolutely, it's definitely, definitely a mission field in Utah. But yeah, what if guys want to learn more? You gave your email address and anywhere else they can find you on Twitter or your podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I am on X because it's the most fun app right now by far. Haven't joined Blue Sky yet. I might join it just to troll people, but I am on X at AJ Kochman that's K-O-C-M-A-N, and so you can follow me on there, abweorg, to learn more about the organization. Then we've got missionspodcastcom as well for our show, where we're tackling a lot of these issues and more, and you can follow Missions Podcast on social media as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. We'll try to put those in the show notes for people. But, Alex, I just really want to thank you for your time. It's been a great conversation, really exciting work that you guys are doing and really really happy to hear about it and to share it with the audience.
Speaker 3:Ethan, thank you for what you're doing and thank you for what all you guys are doing there at New Christendom Press, and may your tribe increase. Thanks, god bless.