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SPEAKER_00Well, um, I one day I was uh as a business person, I was having lunch with my pastor, and we were meeting in the middle point because my house was way out in the suburbs and my office was way in town. And I asked him how I could help him. And he said, Well, you know, we got this mission trip coming up, and when people go on a mission trip, that's when they get it. And I said, Well, I think I get it, and I drive 30 miles a day to work. How is that not a mission trip? And we our conversation didn't really kind of come together that day. In fact, I told people that story for a long time, and one day a young friend said, Well, why don't you do a virtual mission trip? And I just started thinking about this, and we came up with this idea of doing a junket basically to your own job, like you're going on an overseas mission trip, and that's what this is. I love it. And so, how does it how does it work? Well, so um it's it takes place inside of this online community that we formed called Follower of One. And in that community, we have a two-week period where we do this kind of cohort. Each day there's a um uh devotional that talks about the message for that day, a video. And then on certain days throughout this two-week experience, we also have Zoom calls where we check in with one another and talk about how things are going. But we challenge people to go to work and practice five things that we think every Christian can do any day in any job that put us on mission with Jesus. And we call those our five daily habits. They're praying, appreciate others, know what you believe, serve others, and speak for yourself. And so the two weeks is a two-week exercise of practicing those things in your workplace, and you check in each day in our online community. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, your pastor was definitely right that when people go on a mission trip, they really get it. And it's it's because of that intentionality. And it just thinking back to mission trips I've been on, you're you're just you're locked in. I mean, there's no distractions, you're kind of uprooted from your uh your normal routine, and you're with other like-minded believers because you know, the Christian life wasn't meant to just be done alone and the mission carrying out the mission of making disciples, which primarily we do in the workplace, because that's where we spend virtually all of our, or not all, but most of our waking hours.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And and you know, being able to just sit around. I remember, you know, at the end of the day, we would have um discussions and kind of debrief like what what happened during the during the the day, and and people just get super spiritual, right? It's it's like you know, you're just you're like for that week or however long you're on that trip, you're on fire for God. And you come off of that, and it's like, gosh, we just we gotta we gotta do this stuff. Like we we gotta um, but but somehow it doesn't always it doesn't make the transition. Like, why is that?
SPEAKER_00Well, we we I think we underestimate the difficulty of the environment that we're in. The business world's pretty godless by design. And you know, many of the people who have had trouble with the marketplace mission trip, their challenge is the fact that they can't operate in a distraction-free environment. We want to shut off all the noise that is our regular world so that we can do something with our faith. And that's the very sacred secular divide that we often whine about is this belief that to be doing something sacred, we have to turn off the secular. And um, we're supposed to be doing those things in the secular, yeah. And so we get surprised by that, and before you know it, our tasks and everything else have swept us away. And it's been three days before we thought about doing something to prayer for pray for a coworker or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and for those of us who have been going to church for any number of years, we've we've seen it, you know, typically it's beginning or middle end of summertime when uh the the pastor is gonna call forward those who are getting ready to be, you know, sent out like um like the apostles would do. And and it's just very exciting. We feel like we're like living the Bible. It's like this is the stuff, man. And and so should we expect the same kind of like enthusiasm? And when they come back, you know, they they come up on the stage and they share testimonies about what God did out there in in Mexico or in Africa or where you know, wherever they happen to go. Like, is that like do you get that kind of uh response from the churches you're working with?
SPEAKER_00So we do. I mean, the one thing that the pastor is well, let me class qualify this just a little bit. So most of the people who've taken the mission trip so far have been individuals. We do have a uh my church has done this a couple of times, and we are we have packaged it now so that churches can do these two-week online mission trips through our group, and we help do that. We also, the reason for the interview and the conversation, the way you and I came together is we now have a six-week version of the mission trip that can be done in a small group, and that's the new workbook that we just released. Yeah, but in both cases, people notice the change just from the intentionality. It's not getting on an airplane and going someplace, it's not even really taking time off work, it's about making this intentional investment in our relationship with Jesus. And the return's always there, and we know it, but we just get so swamped in our daily to-dos that we that we shut it down. Everything that Jesus wants me to do seems like work to my flesh, but it's joy when I do it, and so everybody's experienced that, that's been able to take part in the mission trip that we've done so far.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What kind of uh what what are some of the testimonies that have come out of this?
SPEAKER_00So um most of what we hear as testimonies are people who see God working in the lives of co-workers or things that are going on. We had one young lady who um is a school teacher and she joined our marketplace mission trip, only having got re-engaged with her faith after several years of not being very involved. She read a book and she found us on the internet. She doesn't even remember how, but through the marketplace mission trip, she got some community. And now she's involved in the lives of like 16 of her co-workers through a Bible study that she started and a couple of other things that are going on, but she sees God working in the lives of her students and the way that she's interacting with people. And she's done now, I think, four or five of these mission trips. We do one like every other month. And so uh we've had we've done 24 of them, and it's been just been exciting to see people who have done this.
SPEAKER_01Wow. Well, what else what else has been happening?
SPEAKER_00So the um we have one couple that went to a lot of trouble to buy a uh gift for a friend because of the marketplace mission trip. We challenged people to you know give something away, do something. And so they got this idea they were going to buy a video game that was no longer made. They were trying to find a used copy of a video game for a friend. And uh they found a copy on hand, it was supposed to be in stock at a store locally, but no one could find it. And so they finally went to the store and the store people are looking all around for it. They finally find it. It had been reserved two years earlier by someone who never picked it up, and so they felt blessed because here God had called them to do this, and he'd reserved the inventory for them for two years so that they got to take part in blessing this friend of theirs that way. I mean, when we start looking at what God prompts us to do through his eyes, we see him in everything that's happening. And we've got a lot of stories of people who have found ways to interact with friends. They've been involved in the lives of other people that they hadn't thought of. We have one friend who uh was trying to go out for her nightly walk and she was going to do her best time, but all of her timer apps wouldn't work. So she angrily she just takes off walking, and then sure enough, she got interrupted by someone, a neighbor on this walk, and she ended up spending a bunch of time with that neighbor that never would have happened. And but she was aware of this whole concept because she was on the marketplace mission trip.
SPEAKER_01Wow, wow, she was on mission. I've I don't remember who said it. Maybe you do Mike, uh, you're either uh a missionary or a mission field.
SPEAKER_00Uh and that's I mean, that's I don't remember, but that's great.
SPEAKER_01Um, and that's that's the reality, you know. When we go to our our workplaces, and you know, sadly there's not enough of us, not nearly enough of us who really are are on mission. We just we just compartmentalize like missions work takes place anywhere but here. Um and and I'm I've I've got either, you know, you either give or you send or you go. Uh and you know, give, send, go. That's kind of the traditional model. But um, you know, and there's also the the stay. That's right. Maybe we need to add that one to the to the list, right? Stay and and be, be who you are, you were called to be, right there where the Lord has already put you. So tell us more about the process and and what people should expect during the the during their time on this on the mission trip.
SPEAKER_00Well, if they if they um if they do the two-week process, you join our online community, and you can do that at community.follower1.org and go into the courses section, sign up for the next trip. There's always one ready to go or going on. And um, and then there's a few pre-lessons to prepare, show you how to use the tool and that kind of a thing. And then each day there's a daily devotional. So it begins on a Sunday afternoon with a kickoff call on Zoom, and then Monday there's the first devotional, which talks about pray, about the different types of prayer that we can do in the marketplace to help us be on mission. Um, and there's a video that's with each devotional. In the first week, it's just devotionals, it's just preparation. Then the middle Sunday, there's a call. We get ready for action week, which is the second week where we're actually act like we're on the field in the mission trip. And those devotionals are a little more action-oriented. And then each day after each evening, we have Zoom calls based on your time zone to kind of check in and talk about what happened today. Because in the end, the one of the things that we all have to remember is it's work. You don't see miracles every day. But if there are 10 people on the call, two or three people probably had something cool to talk about, sometimes maybe more. And so we have the Sunday afternoon check-in calls, the Sunday before, the one in the middle, and the one at the end as the wrap-up. And then we have those nightly check-in calls. That's the way the two-week trip works. Many people who took the two-week trip were disappointed because praying, appreciating others, knowing what you believe, the five daily activities, you only get one day on each. And so we decided to do the six-week version of the mission trip so that you could have a week praying and a week appreciating people, and a week practicing knowing what you believe. And you can go through this trip a little more intentionally, a little more long term, because we have to build these habits into ourselves too. People who have taken the mission trip, they get excited about it, but in a few weeks, their task list is back up to where it was, and and you're struggling to just remember who you are and get through work on a given day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What are what would you say is a part of the process that really um is is the aha moment that people have when they it just kind of like snaps them out of their business as usual.
SPEAKER_00Well, almost everyone uh is surprised by how difficult it is because we stay in the same environment. It seems easy, right? I don't have to go anywhere. It should be easy, but our email list and our staff meetings and our work pressures get us. And so almost everyone who goes into it not considering uh something that requires this intentional focus are surprised by how little they get out of it the first time. In fact, most of the negative feedback that we've received was negative about people's own behavior. They would say, I just didn't do it very well. And then when they do it a second time, that's when the aha moment is, oh, let me make sure that I take a deliberate 15 minutes. Let's get up 15 minutes early every day so that we can pray for our coworkers and read this devotional and ask God to use us. Because in the end, I we don't try to make the mission trip very complicated. I think if you go to work and you pray for your coworkers, you're on a mission trip. The rest of this is God's problem. But we don't do it. We tend to just, you know, I used to joke with people about how often my work day was trying to do everything I had to do so that I could go home. You know, well, if you take that kind of attitude into work, then you never experience your faith there. But if you go into your workplace trying to do the things that you have to do so that you can minister to people, that's a different attitude. And God shows up and he makes things happen.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. So how do you how do you get people to what are some practical ways that we can kind of break out of that just normal routine? Because we have, I mean, I mean, like even just maybe things like taking a different route to work, like take a slightly different route to work, you know, walk a different path to get to your to your office, you know, things like that. Like just rearrange your desk for that week or something like that. Like, what else? What else can we do?
SPEAKER_00Well, we actually uh we've even started offering to our members, even though we still are doing this, we created some little inexpensive wristbands. The first prayer that we talk about is Isaiah's prayer, here I am, send me. And so we talk about, you know, making sure that we tell God, here I am every morning, and then watch for what God does during the day. We we talk about um sending a text message to someone you haven't thought of. Ask God to give you the names of two or three people that you can send a text message to and just ask them how they're doing. You haven't talked to them in a while. We've had, we actually have um we've had friends who have done that after our first checking call in the evening. They texted a friend and something miraculous happened because that text was perfectly timed. And so then this man got back on the late call to tell us all what happened after he sent a text to someone on the first call. I mean, God knows what's going on. We don't. Uh, another idea of things that we do is we talk about bringing treats to work or um, you know, trying to make sure that you do something special for someone just because of who you are. But it all a lot of it begins with uh one of our lessons is talking about making time, about getting to work a little early, even trying to do some of your work ahead of time so that people can, it's not the end of the world if they interrupt you. Because I'm the world's worst at being interrupted.
SPEAKER_01So stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. So the you're talking about like, you know, getting your work done so that you can go do ministry is the emphasis on the things that you're doing when you're not actually like doing your job, or is it how do you um keep that separation from happening?
SPEAKER_00That's actually a great question. And so we talk about this in the mission trip. I don't separate our jobs from ministry, ministry is just service. I mean, the Greek word translated minister is often translated serpent, and so um, in to me, being a being very good at my job is the kind of ground rules for entry. It's like the annie for being able to play. We have to be very good at our jobs, and we can't take any money or misappropriate any time from our employers because it's not ours, it's theirs. And but when I say get my work done ahead of time, it's I want to do a very good job and I want to be available for interruptions and things like that. But if it's gonna take very long, I encourage people to use their personal time to follow up. So, hey, yeah, I'd love to talk with you more about this. We're both on the clock. Let's, you know, can you talk after work or could we meet for coffee one morning before? Can we come in early tomorrow and talk before we get started? Our jobs are to be great employees or bosses or whatever our role is. Doing that job very well is ministry. Paying attention to the people around us is ministry. In my mind, it's all ministry. And there are a lot of people who went to seminary who might think that I'm making light of this, or that missionaries who go overseas that I'm making light of what they're doing. That's not my intention at all. It's just that most of us aren't in a position to be able to do those things. And this is where this all started for me was when I first became a Christian, I was already in the workplace, I was 30 years old, and I didn't, I felt it felt like my job was to just stay out of trouble until Sunday. And I never liked that answer. And so I was trying to find a way to invade my workplace with my faith. And this is kind of how this came up, and it only took me 30 some odd years to learn it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, all the ministry missionaries I'm hearing about, you know, nowadays who are going overseas. I mean, they're they've got a job, uh, you know, whether it's teaching or doing business or, you know, something like that. Uh, it it's not, I think people get the uh the wrong idea when they go on a short term mission trip to another country, is that you know, keep in mind how much money you raised to be able to go on this trip and not have to go. generate any income while you're doing that. But that's that might work for like a week. But you know, at some point you're gonna have to go get a job if you're really gonna commit to that place. And and so, you know what God has just already put us in the right places here or wherever people are listening to this all over the world. Um and you know we're I'm a I'm a big believer in digits and indigenous missions. Correct. And I mean another way of talking about that is workplace missions, workplace ministry. I mean it's it's not uprooting you from where you are to go someplace you're not but just activating the uh the gifts and the and the assignment that you have right there in your um everyday life.
SPEAKER_00So Mike if people want to get involved which I know they do uh what um how do is this a a self-study or do they go through um and go sign up on the website or because you because you got the book for people so it's probably all of the above right yeah so on our website uh follower1.org slash workbook you can get a copy of the six week version of the trip the marketplace mission trip a six week mission trip to your workplace it's um it's designed I like to be a small group discussion guide but you can also go through it just as an individual and it will help you get very intentional about how you live your faith on a daily basis and each day's activity because there are daily activities they take five minutes less than that to do and so this is a way to kind of build those habits over a course of six weeks so that your uh your faith is now something's part of what you do every day. Yeah uh you can get some friends and do that because it's designed on a weekly schedule so it has a weekly kind of rhythm to it. The other way would be to join our online community which is community.follow1.org we don't charge for that we don't charge for membership in the community and we don't charge people to take the marketplace mission trip in the online community our goal is to ask people once they've done that if it's been valuable to them to make a contribution so that other people can do it. Because our job is to get us all praying for our coworkers and doing whatever Jesus tells us to do. That's pretty much the the whole ticket is to become an indigenous missionary right where we are now because we can't I don't want to try and figure out how to equip indigenous missionaries in some other country if I can't do it here in this one. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well said uh Mike leave us with one more um one more story one more example of somebody that's gone through this to um so we can really see ourselves uh in that uh on that journey certainly um we have a we have a lady who took she was vice president of a pretty large company and in the second week of the mission trip in a pretty tense staff meeting a coworker a peer another vice president in this company I think was a vice president uh kind of attacked this project that she was reporting on and um and she said that she just got the idea in that moment not to strike back that her typical reaction would have been to snap back and and respond with the same kind of action creating this um tension in the workplace and she chose chose instead to just listen and see what what happened and thank the person for their comments and didn't really do a whole lot about it in the meeting.
SPEAKER_00Later in the day she was in the um company gym area in this yoga class and it was just the teacher and her in there and in came the other person and they got to have a much warmer conversation and had much better dialogue and she said there's no way that second conversation would have happened if I'd have done what I typically do in the first meeting. Those kinds of things happen to us and they help us see this little glimpse into what God's doing in our workplace because he's working in the life of every person that we work with but we get to join him when we're paying attention and we're I talk about using the prayer here I am is clocking in. When we punch in then God starts using even our mistakes to glorify him in the workplace. And so she talked about that and I've told that story a lot that was on one of our very early mission trips we continue to get different stories I just don't remember them all very well but it's it's been cool to see what's going on in the lives of people in our in our body.
SPEAKER_01Yeah one of the things I love so much about it is the accountability of because so many of us feel like the only we're the only person trying to serve God in our workplace. But when you recognize that that Jesus has many of his people like he told the apostle Paul in Corinth that he has many people in this place it just gets a lot more exciting and and encouraging to know that we're not we're not doing this alone nor were we intended to so Mike thank you for the work you're doing thank you for writing this book and developing this program and continuing to lead uh God's people through this um and thanks for sharing with our listeners today everybody followerofone.org is the website uh followerof1.org the book is Marketplace Mission Trip a six week mission trip to your workplace uh thanks again Mike thank you Darren I appreciate it we hope you've enjoyed this episode you can share your feedback and get more information to help you partner with God in business and disciple your company your industry and your community at theologyofbusiness.com the Theology of Business podcast is sponsored by Hybridge Books and Media, a media agency specializing in publishing and promoting the world-changing ideas of inspiring thought leaders through book publishing, website development, publicity, email marketing, social media management, podcast management, and video based course publishing.
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