Ep. 10/ Redefining Missions in a Connected World ► Rob Hoskins

Discover the transformative power of individual action with Rob Hoskins, President of One Hope, as he shares his incredible journey from a missionary childhood to leading a movement that has touched the lives of over 1.9 billion children worldwide. Rob, co-author of Change Your World with John Maxwell, unpacks the ways in which each of us can harness our unique gifts to create meaningful change in our communities. He offers a hopeful perspective on the evolving state of the church in North America, where a decline in nominal Christianity gives rise to a younger generation embracing a more resilient and engaged faith.

Join us as we explore the shifting dynamics of mission work in the evangelical community, particularly in a post-colonial world. Rob sheds light on the evolving definitions and approaches to "mission" and "missional," emphasizing a global perspective that moves beyond Western-centric views. With insights into the impact of globalization, urbanization, and technology, Rob challenges us to rethink traditional roles and structures, advocating for collaboration with the majority world church. As believers navigate these changes, we are encouraged to embrace open systems and foster authentic spiritual engagement, tapping into a newfound independence and autonomy within the modern church landscape.

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Transcript

Brian Stiller

Hello and welcome to evangelical 360. My name is Brian Stiller, Global Ambassador for the World Evangelical Alliance and host of this new podcast series. On evangelical 360, I interview leaders, writers and influencers about contemporary issues which are impacting Christian life around the world. My hope is that it will not only be a global meeting place where faith is explored from different perspectives, but that each person listening will come away informed, encouraged, challenged and even inspired.

Today's guest is Rob Hoskins, one of the most respected global development leaders I know in the world today. President of the organization One Hope, Rob and his team have shared the gospel with over 1.9 billion children around the world. He's a gifted futurist, a relentless visionary and global connector who's known for his innovative strategies and his commitment to nurturing future leaders. The title of Rob's co-authored book says it all Change your World: How Anyone, Anywhere, Can Make a Difference. Like me, I think you'll be inspired by Rob and his articulate passion to empower the next generation. Thank you so much, Rob, for joining me today on evangelical 360.

Rob Hoskins

Well, thank you, Brian. It's a joy to be here with you.

Brian Stiller

Rob, you lead One Hope, a large publishing ministry for children and young people's Bible literature publishing ministry for children and young people's Bible literature. Also, you have reputation and experience in mobilizing younger leaders globally. I know your father was a remarkable preacher in his own right but you were raised in that kind of world. But you emerged out of your own gifting and calling into this global leadership. Give us a thumbnail sketch of that journey.

Rob Hoskins

I grew up as a missionary kid in the Middle East, so my parents were missionaries, my wife's family were missionaries, so really, I've been around missions my entire life, kim and my entire life. It's been our legacy, but it's also been our calling. And so, yeah, growing up in and with the global church just gave me this deep passion to love God's church and to see it as that vehicle of transformation, and so we've dedicated our lives to that and, through the building of One Hope, have had the opportunity just to serve the church globally and to also identify, maybe, some of the great needs that the church has in helping fulfill the mission of the church that God's given us His Missio Dei, and how we can serve and participate in it. And so, yeah, I think the combination of the heritage, the upbringing that I came from and the present role I have just has made me acutely aware of the need to continually be investing in the next generation and raise them up to help serve the Lord and serve his mission.

Brian Stiller

Rob, in your recent book Change your World, is that an overused phrase, or can people actually go about and change their world?

Rob Hoskins

That book came about with my partnership with John Maxwell, who's been a great leadership guru and a personal mentor of mine, and he had actually been reading my dissertation that I'd written around a theology of the city and kind of a theory of change. Can a city be transformed? And I think that you know through that work what compelled John to want to write the book with me was I kind of lay out a science of transformation, if you would, and I think you know there's obviously theological implications and ramifications against it. There's obviously theological implications and ramifications against it. What is God's part? What is our part? What is sovereign? What is agency? Can we really change anything?

And really the title of the book is not Change the World, it's Change your World. And so I think it's that connection that each one of us has as a steward of being a kingdom citizen and living in this world but not being of this world, that allows us to say we're salt and light, we're a transformational power. And how do we steward the giftings and the callings and the opportunities that God gives us in our world? Yes, indeed, we can change our world. We can change the outlook of our neighbors. We can change the social ills that exist in our cities. We can change the fact that so much of the world presently doesn't have access to the gospel. So there is human agency involved. But I think learning how to steward our gifts and talents and abilities and contacts and finances in order to serve the mission of God on the earth does bring change, does bring transformation.

Brian Stiller

Rob, you and I are in North America, I'm in Canada, you're in the US, and the assumption is, at least within the popular media, that the church is losing its hold. That young people are not attending. But as a global leader, what are you seeing in the church more globally, both in terms of the development of the church and the nature and the age of leadership?

Rob Hoskins

I think what we found in North America is that pretty consistently over the last three to four decades, the number of self-proclaimed Christians among younger millennials and Gen Z has been going down. There is this sort of rise of what we call the nuns or people that are unaffiliated with the organized church, don't want to be labeled sometimes, but what we found pretty consistently is, when we really measure spiritual vibrancy, these are believers that live a very committed life. They're resilient believers, they're resilient Christians. We find that that number has stayed pretty consistent over the last 20 years and in some cases we're even seeing that it's kind of rising. So what I would propose in North America is nominalism might be post-truth, in some cases pre-Christian mode. Those that are deciding as young people to follow the Lord are having, in a pluralistic context to build a much thicker gospel, a much more resilient faith. So I'm not despairing for the church in North America because I think what we're seeing is that there is this maybe dying of nominalism and a shallow faith. It's like Walter Brueggemann said about the West it's a faith widely held but greatly reduced, and what we're wanting to see is a faith greatly thickened and more widely spread because it has more of a message to bring to a society that is looking for answers and looking for truth and looking for authenticity, particularly among Gen Z. They want authenticity. Is this an authentic faith? And I think the authentic faith of our younger believers is beginning to rise. So I'm actually optimistic about the West.

I think the church is in a state potentially of renewal and revival. One of the things I studied a lot in my doctoral work was the Great Awakenings and I love what Hans Kung says. He says the church cannot do with the constant renewal of its form. Renewal of form implies change of form by means of human decision and human responsibility. So I think there's a generation that's taking seriously their faith and they're making changes in the way they think and the way they act and that could spur on another awakening in the West. So I'm not getting up on the West yet. That being said, I think what we've experienced in the last 100 years, over the last 120 years, with the student volunteer movement, with the birth of modern mission into the world, years with the student volunteer movement, with the birth of modern mission into the world, it has been amazing to see the rise of what we call the majority world church around the world.

When you look at a place like Africa that's gone from 4% Christian in 1900 to the place where it is now, where they're saying, you know, by 2037, half of all Christians in the world will be in sub-Saharan Africa. But if I look at the total landscape, I'm not in fear of God building his church. In fact I'm seeing this renewal in the majority world actually bringing life to the rest of the world. Maybe I sound too optimistic, but whether it's in the North of America or whether it's in the rest of the world, the state of Christianity is not in jeopardy. It's actually, I think, at an amazing moment of global awakening.

Brian Stiller

The focus of your studies, and obviously of your own life, is on the issue of leadership.  As you see the emerging church in the global South Africa, Latin America, Asia, what is the nature of leadership in this new generation, as compared to yours and, of course, compared to mine? 

Rob Hoskins

What we found is that Gen Z globally is probably the most cause-oriented generation in the history of humanity. They're actually much less materialistic than boomers were, the busters were and even millennials. They're much less materialistic and I think that bodes well for the church. Their ambition is to see transformation, is to see change, is to see the common good begin. So just naturally, the whole generation is more cause-oriented. What I think that does is it allows Christian young leaders around the world to be very missionally focused.

What I find in young church leaders their metrics are very, very different than older church leaders. I think so much of evangelical growth maybe rightfully for their generation was built around church growth. But I think there's a new generation of young evangelicals around the world that want more than that. They don't just want to measure their outputs and they don't just want to measure their activities. They want to measure outcomes, they want to measure social, cultural. They're really believing in a healthy theology that the entrance of the gospel brings life. It brings life abundant and that abundant life is going to transform culture and the struggle that we've had literally for more than several centuries now in the West that there's not a holistic vision of the gospel that is both fully evangelistic and fully transformational in society and culture, but they've sort of been pitted against the progressive side of the church.

We can see that historically with the emergence of the World Council of Churches and the emergence of Lausanne and other more conservative voices says no, no, you're thinking too much about the social gospel. We need to maintain our evangelistic zeal and measure our spiritual kind of outcomes and I think we don't see that in the majority world church.

They're holding a gospel that is very holistic, that is fully committed to the preaching and proclamation of the good news and not seeing it as competitive, to being involved in society and working on behalf of the poor and seeing the common good of the city flourish. Because we have the gospel in our hearts and the natural outgrowth of our spiritual life is to see transformational and societal change. So in many ways, brian, I see the majority world church is more holistic than the church in the West and I think that's some of the tension we're even seeing now in the West in our political frameworks is that young Gen Zers desire to see a holistic gospel that fully embraces their spiritual development, their spiritual transformation, but that it actually flows into a life that's bringing transformation into society into culture, into their cities, into their communities. So I'm finding that's kind of the difference of the type of leaders that are being raised up around the world and even here in the West recently. 

Brian Stiller

Over the last number of decades, globalization has been the idea that we have framed our evolving world. But now, as we talk about post-globalization, how is that affecting the church, as you see it?

Rob Hoskins

I think what maybe has been amplified is kind of the loss of identity that comes through globalization, that people are resisting and there's a rive of tribalism, there's a sense of wanting to be part of a unique cultural context which everybody desires to find out who they are as a community and sort of the distinctiveness of that community. They don't want to lose that ideational distinctiveness that is part of our human family and so sort of the resistance to globalization has produced a newfound, at its worst, fundamentalism. That is, an extreme fundamentalism where people feel like they're losing their culture and identity through globalization and so they fight all the harder to maintain their tribalism and their uniqueness and the values that perhaps they have held dear in their family and their community or through their religious background. So we're seeing simultaneously the spread of globalization but also the spread of tribalism and fundamentalism, whether it be Hindu, muslim, buddhist or Christian nationalism. In many ways that is a fundamentalistic response to globalization. So instead of seeing it, brian, as sort of globalization's time is over and we're entering into a new era, I think all we're seeing is the world beginning to navigate, the connectivity, the flatness, the emergence of a global identity. But I think I'm finding a generation that says I want to be fully committed to my identity, personally and tribally and communally, but I also want to be fully committed to being a global citizen. And I don't think it has to be an either, or I think it can be held in tension to say what is it about globalization that is going to benefit our community?

You know literacy in our. You know we're, as you said, very involved in publishing and our mission statement is God's word, every child. Well, the dispersion of that word through the rise in literacy over these last 50 years is unbelievable. You have millions of people that are literate for the first time. That is an impact of globalization in such a positive way that now you have individuals that have the ability to actually read, entire people groups, entire language groups that now have access to literacy that we have taken for granted of in the West over the last three, four hundred years.

But the rise of global literacy is changing the very dynamics and giving opportunity and giving actual justice to people. And now, with the advent of you know this device right right here, it's not just that they have access to a few books, but increasingly they have access to all the knowledge that exists on on the earth.

This is a very real reality of globalization and in fact, I would say it's a very positive effect. Now, with that obviously comes all the negative effects, and when those negative effects infringe upon who we feel we are as humans or society or community, we tend to resist and fight against it, and that's why we see this simultaneous rise of tribalism and fundamentalism, and I think all of us are going to have to navigate and learn how to operate as citizens of the kingdom that exists in a world that is dynamically changing and dynamically creating opportunities for connectivity and, at the same time, creating opportunities for people that feel left out of the global community, that are going to resist, fight, be filled with fear, and we have to take a loving view of this and say, hey, how do we respond with the message of Jesus, in the reality of this present context that God has called us to minister?

Brian Stiller

Rob, core to the evangelical community over the last couple of centuries has been mission -- sending missionaries to other places with the witness of the gospel, and of course that has been associated with colonial activity as well. But now we're in the post-colonial era. But how does mission today operate, as distinct from what my generation, or even your generation, would know as being the heart of the church in its sending of missionaries?

Rob Hoskins

Well, I think the church in many ways gets really confused around the word mission and missions. I think that in many ways we kind of need to redefine what we mean in the present context, because people use terms interchangeably they use the term missional, they use the term mission, they use the term missions. There's also the rise of what we call the Missio Dei, which I think is a concept that Gen Z love, and so Missio Dei is very God-focused. It centers around God's sort of reconciliatory work in the world into which we're called to participate. Every one of us, as soon as we accepted Jesus Christ, also accepted the responsibility to do what he commanded us to do to go and make disciples of all people, no matter what our calling or our vocation would be. It is our job to spread his message, spread his word through our actions and through our proclamation and through the lives that we live, and that to me is very much the mission of God again that we join. But then I think being missional is something that this entire generation feels called to. We feel called to be missional if we're not in full-time vocational work, and then I think that missions itself is really calling. Ed Stetzer calls it calling focused, and that is essentially the task of what I would call what we have traditionally labeled as mission, is more missions, which is cross-cultural, vocational in the original sense of being a missionary, which in the New Testament terminology of being a sent one, being sent from one culture into another, that's more the term of being a missionary. So sometimes I get a little concerned when I hear everybody is a missionary. Well, I think everybody is missional, all of us have a calling, but I think we don't want to lose sort of the value and the power of what we've been experiencing in two to three hundred years, of the great missionary movement that we're coming out of, which is a calling to be sent out.

Now, how we do it is becoming very, very different. Instead of a from the West to the rest mentality, we need this from all to all, where the rise of this church that we talked about earlier needs to be mobilized. So for Western missionaries, I like to say the 21st century missiology needs to change from a 20th century missiology. The way we do missionary work according to reach and make disciples of all people needs to change because of globalization, because of the rise of the church, because of urbanization, because of technology, we need to change our methods, and changing our methods by its very nature begs the question what is our role as Westerners? What is my role as an American? What is the role of the emerging majority world church? How do we work together? We have to understand what God is doing and where we fit into the picture. That changes the very nature of the missionary movement.

What I love is that this entire generation is becoming more missional. They're understanding that no matter where God has placed me, no matter what sphere of life, my primary responsibility is to be on mission for God. That's why they're so cause-oriented and I think they're going to live out a much more authentic faith in trying to understand. I'm going to not try and bring God into my work. I'm going to try and bring the right type of work into my missional calling as a citizen of the kingdom that's here to be salt and light for the years I have here on the planet. So I just think it's important for us to understand these distinctions between being missional, being on mission and being a missionary.

Brian Stiller

Historically, Rob, the church, the Evangelical Protestant Church, has been divided up by major denominations. But in this age where you have rapid urbanization, you have migration all across all continents, and then digitization -- to what degree does that organization of our church by way of major denominations, how is that being carried forth? Or, is the horizon becoming pretty flat and not so much pyramid driven?

Rob Hoskins

it becoming pretty flat and not so much pyramid driven, for many different reasons. One is just a spirit of independence that begins to emerge in a knowledge economy. You know, when we look at moving from an agrarian society to manufacturing society, to a knowledge economy, in many ways what it does is it empowers the individual to make decisions for their life that are very different. There's a lot more self-realization and in many ways we've obviously seen this in the West where there's this rise of the independent person that determines. Well, that's very different than societies that have existed throughout history that are very tied to the land and accountable to a community around there. In agrarian society it's very different than a manufacturing society where you're very dependent upon a corporation to make decisions for your life. So this sense of autonomy that comes in a knowledge economy isn't just about individuals, it's also about institutions, it's also about the institution of the church, and so you see this atomization of the church that says, hey, we have our own vision, we don't need a gatekeeper to navigate that for us, we can figure that out on our own. We have great access to knowledge and I think there's a beauty in that. I think it's causing a rapid spread of the church in many ways in the majority world that isn't just confined by sort of denominational structures, because one thing we've seen in the last really 50 years with technology is that we've moved from a world of closed systems to a world of open systems. So, with closed systems, you have gatekeepers that have access to the knowledge and, on behalf of the community, they're interpreting that knowledge and then they're dispersing it through a structure that is very institutional in its very nature, it's bound to geography and leadership and it's more hierarchical. Well, as we move from closed system to open systems, it's much more democratic and Web 3.0 will accelerate this greatly. This is what we're seeing with the emergence of a Web 3.0 blockchain economy. Cryptocurrencies are all the breakdown of sort of hierarchical top-down management structures that are becoming increasingly, at some level, less relevant, and people are looking for governance structures that are from the bottom up, that allow the community to make the rules, rather than them being driven from the top down the bottom up. Well, you can see how that could be very disruptive to a denominational structure.

Now, what I challenge young people is because part of what we talk about in Web 3.0 is the emergence of what we're calling DAOs, decentralized, autonomous organizations. And what I tell this generation is you're dying for community, you're dying to be part of some sort of tribe that governs itself from the bottom up. The problem is, this generation wants community without accountability and there is no such thing. There is no community without accountability.

God structured us. The language he uses is the language of family. The Godhead itself in the Trinity makes itself co-accountable to the Father, son and Holy Spirit co-accountable to the Father, son and Holy Spirit. The nature of the church that Jesus gave us under the power of the Holy Spirit is structured as a way where we have spiritual fathers and mothers that we read about in the epistles. The nature of the family as a missional family is how we need to be operating.

So I see some great advantages to a knowledge economy, to decentralization, great advantages to a knowledge economy, to decentralization, to open systems rather than closed systems. But I also see the need for us to apply good theology and good biblical principles to the nature of who we are and accountability to our missional family that understands that the wisdom of older generations is needed for the fast-changing movement of knowledge in the younger generation. So that's my passion, brian for intergenerational missional families. How do we continue to operate as a family with older fathers and older brothers and older uncles and aunts and grandmothers that help guide us with their wisdom, and how do we, as older leaders, really listen?

It's not that the world has never changed, it's just the rate of change is happening faster than ever before, and so these digital superpowers are disrupting things faster than they ever are before, and, as spiritual leaders, we need to understand that, be aware of it, open up our eyes and ears and reckon with it, rather than just trying to fight against technology or fight against globalization or fight against urbanization or fight against immigration.

These disruptive forces are not catching God off guard, but we, as the sons of Issachar, need to understand our times and know what to do, and understand. Accountability in a denominational structure can be a very, very healthy thing and a very wise thing, but if you're trying to run a denomination now the way you did 100 years ago, and create hierarchical leadership rather than empowering young voices to be part of the process, you're doomed to die. Let me tell you right now we have to understand. We're working in open systems, we're working in a knowledge economy and we're working in a cause-oriented generation that wants agency. So in some ways we need to change our language, but we need to hold true to those biblical principles of authority, accountability and the missional family that have guided the Church since the Holy Spirit came upon us on the day of Pentecost.

Brian Stiller

Rob, in this is the final minute, speak to those of various generations who are wondering how could I in my world bring about change?

Rob Hoskins

If I was to land on one thing, Brian, I think it would be on self-awareness. So my dad always taught me Rob, you find God's purpose in the confluence of what do you love, in the confluence of what do you love, what are you good at, and what is the world's great need. You know, we've sort of grown up in a Disney-esque culture that says I can do anything, I can be anything. No, you can't. I mean, like I'm a football, a soccer buff, like what I love is soccer. I don't have the speed to ever be a professional soccer player. I'm dreaming Like I don't care what Disney role I get. That's never happening with the body I've got.

So you know, it's this self-awareness to say what am I really great at? God designed us, it says. He designed us masterfully. And so who am I? Who has God made me to be? What do I love? Where is the world's great need? If you could lean into that, you can become a change agent. You can begin to change things around you, because God's going to make it really clear what your purpose is.

Brian Stiller

Rob, thanks so much for joining us on evangelical 360 and for giving us a global perspective on leadership, unwrapping ideas on how to understand the shifts and the changes in our world. We look forward in having you with us again.

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