Welcome back to the Christianity of Business Podcast, an initiative of the RCW Dunham College of Business at Houston Baptist University. I'm your host, Derek Sheer, and this is the show that helps Christian business leaders integrate biblical values into business. On this episode, we're joined by Steph Barnes. Steph is the co-founder of Global You, a Christian gap year program for artists, builders, and entrepreneurs looking to live a life on mission. And if you're not familiar with this concept of gap year, it's basically when a young person graduates high school, and then a lot of times nowadays are taking a year off to really decide do I really want to go spend, go $40,000 into debt for college, or do is there another path that I might want to take? And Seth is offering another path. He's also the founder of Adventures and Missions. Adventures and Missions is an interdenominational missions organization that has taken over 125,000 people into the mission field since 1989. Some for as short as a week and others for as long as a year or longer. And to fulfill this vision, Seth founded the World Race in 2005. I actually know uh at least one person who went through this and had an amazing experience. The World Race provides trained teams of young adults the opportunity to engage in 11 international mission contexts in 11 months using an experiential missional discipleship model. Uh he's actually taken, uh he told me before the interview, he's taken 16 students from Houston Baptist University uh abroad as well. Uh so we're really excited to have you, Seth. Welcome to the show.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Darren. It's a pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Tell us about that experience with the the HBU students.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was 2004, and uh, was partnered with uh a man named Bruce Wilkinson, who is one of the great men of faith that I've ever met. He wrote The Prayer of Jabez, which was a runaway bestseller, and millions off of that's right. And uh he invested a lot of his money in a calling that he felt at the time, which was to help the country that was having the worst AIDS epidemic in the world. 44% of the adult population at the time uh was uh tested positive, not for you know something like COVID-19, but for AIDS, which at the time was a death sentence. And so it was urgent, something had to be done. And uh we took nearly 900 people over the course of one year to uh go into every high school in the country and uh share for a week. Uh you know, how can they prevent themselves from getting AIDS? And so it was exciting, and to have HBU there uh really at times was um for me very encouraging because the leaders of of the team were were excellent.
SPEAKER_02And and so you're a you're a missionary, you've been uh give us a better sense of kind of the the journey that you've sure on as a missionary all these years.
SPEAKER_01I'm not a typical missionary. So you think about a missionary and you go, well, you know, he's probably a preacher or something. I'm not a you know, I'll preach, but it's not my favorite thing to do. Uh what I God has gifted me to do is to start things. I'm an entrepreneur, and actually, um you know, I was in college and had businesses, and you go all the way back to my college experience at Wheaton College, uh, my senior year. I had a couple of businesses and I was engaged, uh, or almost to the point of being engaged to my future wife. Uh, life was good, and then God reached out to me through a magazine article that I saw talking about this genocide going on in a country called Cambodia. And it was the killing fields, and um two million of the Cambodian population were being killed. That's 25% of the entire population, and nobody knew about it. This is the first and anybody had seen these horrible pictures of people struggling to get across the border into the refugee camps. And I felt the Lord saying, go, like these are my people, leave everything that you have, you know, your your uh wife to be, your friends, your uh school program, and and help my children. And so I did. Uh within two weeks, I was on a plane to Cambodia or to Thailand, actually, where the refugee camps were. And that experience uh changed my life. Uh I realized, oh my goodness, I can I can actually help people. And you know what? As as pitiful as these refugees were coming across with nothing but the clothes on their backs, uh, they were able to act as as little entrepreneurs, and uh we would give them 300 uh chicks, little baby chicks, and they would raise them into uh a place where we could sell them and uh give them the profit, and then they'd turn around and do it again, and we were able to put them back on their feet. Did the same thing with pig farming, and you know, I just saw, my goodness, uh, we don't have to hand out food or or money to these people. We can just give them a hand up. And that kind of changed my paradigm of what my life should be about. Not just going and starting things myself, but helping others to start things. So after getting married uh to Karen, we uh went and worked with the microenterprise loan fund in Indonesia and worked in Bali. It was one of the first ever uh back in 1980. And there again, I was able to kind of continue on helping others as entrepreneurs to launch their dreams. And from there on to the Dominican Republic did the same thing, started a group that's called the Asociación para Inversion y Empleo, which means the Association for Investment and Jobs. And if you go there now, you'll see uh dozens of offices around the country and hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been created through microcredit. And so, you know, I I just early on was fortunate to see the power of business to change lives. And uh it's kind of been the theme of my life is to take uh the Lord's giftings and his his body and to uh help them to flourish by using business.
SPEAKER_02And what led to you starting Global U? I know you've you've been you started Adventures and Missions uh back in 1989, and 125,000 people have been deployed all over the world. And uh fairly recently you started Global U. What what's that all about?
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, there's um a young man named Josh Owen, and uh he has uh he's maybe 26 years old now. And uh a couple of years ago, Josh and I were talking about how as entrepreneurs in college there really wasn't anything for us. And even now, there may be classes that are taught for entrepreneurs, but uh there's there's little in the way of the kind of mentorship and opportunity that you need to help you get to be better. And he he had discovered a group called Y Combinator, which uh does a good job, but it's you know it's a secular group, and we just wondered what if we could uh create something that would be like an accelerator that would help young people to start their businesses and help them to learn how to be uh not just an entrepreneur, but a very successful one that would help address the problems of the world and to use that as a learning experience. And so we um began to just brainstorm what would that look like and how could we create the kind of school that we would have loved to go to, that would have maybe saved us years and years of our own lives uh had we been able to go to it uh you know when we were instead of college. And so that's that uh a couple of years ago we did we started Global U, uh finished our first year in May, even through the COVID crisis, and now we're launching our second class. And along with it, we're we're developing a program called Entrepreneurs and Residents. And the idea is to put people through an accelerated kind of shark tank experience where you take an idea, you begin to develop it, you go through the shark tank with angel investors and mentors, you get additional funds if you need them, and then you go on and kind of explode the thing outward. I've seen it, you know, for 40 years now, I've been doing something like this, and I've seen businesses scale very quickly, and I've been a part of that, and just want to pass on the secrets to others.
SPEAKER_02And how do you see discipleship happening in the midst of this educational context?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, discipleship is a broad term. Yeah, there's certainly the the spiritual elements of growing in Christ that are uh you know about, let's say, inner healing and identity formation and how do we study our Bible, how do we pray, all of these things which we you know associate with maybe Sunday school or with Young Life or a program that we had when we were young, but uh so much of life uh we're not discipled for. Like, how do you as a boss treat your employees? How do you create an ecosystem where uh you're given the opportunity to express the the spiritual mandate that you may have? How do you create a company that fleshes out the values that God has given you? And that's um I think that's the the sort of thing that that young people deserve to not just learn about in books, but actually see in reality and and to talk to uh to the kind of mentors that have done this over and over uh before.
SPEAKER_02Do you have any examples of maybe students or uh just memories, uh recent memories of what's been happening in global you?
SPEAKER_01Sure. So many. Um you know, before let's trace it back uh maybe six years. And uh if you go back about six years, uh there was a program that preceded this, which was uh it was similar, but I we hadn't formulated a lot of uh uh the superstructure of global you. And there was one young man uh along the way named Justin Schneider. And I've known uh Max Schneider, his father, all my life, and uh have watched Justin grow up, and he's just one of these young men that's gonna change the world. And you can see it, you know, he was a decathlete and he did well. He went to Notre Dame and he did well, and he was a designer for Nike, designed shoes, uh New Balance. Uh actually, it wasn't Nike, it was New Balance and a couple other um uh shoe companies. And um he went on this you know program for a year with us, and we were hiking in Spain on the Camino de Santiago. I remember having a conversation with him where he said, you know, what should I do next? Should I go and and get my MBA at Stanford or maybe start my own firm? And I said, you know, Justin, you've always succeeded at everything you've done. And uh what I think you need is the opportunity to fail. I think you need to raise the stake sum and see if you um can, you know, how how high can you jump? Because he had been a high jumper too. And uh he eventually did that and started his own shoe company and uh called it Wolf and Shepherd. And within about four years, that thing had an evaluate had a valuation of like $30 million. Wow. Uh tremendous success. He was in Forbes 30 under 30. And uh, you know what? Um it's been interesting to watch him pivot during the COVID crisis because he sells high-end shoes that also are performance shoes, and he's had to make several extreme pivots. And he's uh you know gone from high growth to break-even, but he's continued. And you know, that's the that's the sort of thing, wow. Can't you know, can you develop the kind the company in the first place? That's a huge lesson. But then secondly, when circumstances change, can you pivot? Can you lead through the crisis? And so seeing him do that so well, you know, just that's the sort of thing that others need to learn. And and so Justin became one of our mentors, and he is uh very interested in giving back. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like uh somebody like Haley, who put us in touch um with one another. Um Darren, uh she she connected us to a third-party Bob Davis, and here I am talking to you. And Haley is has got similar dreams and went and visited uh Justin in Southern California. And it it looks like somebody like um, oh uh, let's see. Um there is a program called uh Books Unbound by Sophie Danielson. Sophie went with us this past year, and and Sophie uh completely different direction, not a high-end uh performance shoe, but a uh just creating the opportunity for refugee children to learn how to read and to do that for the largest refugee camp in the world, and to go and to live there and to create uh dictionaries that uh that taught uh young people using pictures. I mean, just a real innovative approach. And and she uh, you know, was another one who, having gone through our process, was able to be uh more and more successful. So you know, you you just it doesn't matter, you know, what kind of a dream you've got, if it's a dream that that comes from God about building his kingdom, there's a process that uh can be imparted that makes those dreams come true. And that's what we're about teaching.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Where Seth, where do you see uh missions heading in terms of business as as being part of the um the engine for fueling uh global missions? Yeah, where do you see things headed? Because it seems like back in the years ago, it was the paradigm was you know, you just kind of raise support and then you go and you start a church or something like that and and just kind of be like a chaplain type missionary. But is that is that changing at all?
SPEAKER_01So much. I mean, it's if you're gonna go into the 1040 window, if you're gonna uh you know go to Muslim countries, you you really do need to have uh some kind of a an enterprise as an engine. I'll give you an example. One of the the companies that we went and and helped uh was uh called Cloud Factory, and our team went into Nepal and uh we engaged in uh a process of teaching their their staff and workers in leadership and discipleship as a Christian uh founded uh business, but it's it's about uh taking data, uh analog data, and turning it into digital data and huge projects for like the uh the US Census. And and uh they would train people in very poor countries like Nepal or Kenya to uh you know to work on computers and give them these basic jobs. And they wanted them to be discipled as well, and they wanted them to learn leadership. So what a great opportunity to partner with them. And uh it didn't matter that you know this is a for-profit business because they were able to impact people uh probably a lot more profoundly than many churches that might have attempted to get into Nepal. So um I I have seen over and over again that uh for certain environments, the the way to get to get in there and to make a difference is through business. I mean, if you look at Nigeria now, some of the biggest churches are founding all these businesses and and they're developing uh massive um developments where maybe 5,000 houses of parishioners are are there and they've got businesses all around. And and so you know, if you look beyond the U.S., uh oftentimes we look at our bubble here and we go, well, that's you know, you're limited in what you can do. And and um and I I just want to say if anybody who is interested in making a difference in in the world and wants to go beyond our borders, uh boy, the the fields are white. And uh learn how to do business, learn how to be an entrepreneur, and you will uh never run out of opportunities.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And of course, right now we're in the middle of this uh COVID crisis around the world. And how is this impacting uh your missionaries and and just kind of your current paradigm for because I know for churches, everything's going online. What are what are missionaries doing?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's definitely hit the pause button. So when it happened, February, March, uh, we had 600 people uh overseas. Um not we have eight or nine different bases with hundreds of people at those bases. Those people stayed on, but the 600 or so people from America, young people that were on mission, had to come back within a week. So within a week, we had to uh bring back these all these young people and to book tickets, we had to make huge changes in our plans. And then um, you know, it was kind of um sad for them, hard for them, because uh they had all these expectations that they had to be debriefed and you know what to do next. We've had to pivot a hundred times, but for something like Global U, they'd been to Spain, then they went on to Thailand from there to Nicaragua, and with a couple of months to go, we brought them back to Gainesville, Georgia, our base, and we continue to teach them and to help them to actually ask the question how can we make a difference in a world that's infected by this virus? What can we do? And so each uh student had to answer that in a practical way, not hypothetically, but actually, you know, some planted gardens, others, others made masks and some adapted their projects to address the needs. And and that's what we're trying to impart is is not like here's the standard template that you follow, but uh, how do you um listen to the Lord and pivot in ways that uh allow for a changing world to impact you as much as you're impacting it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Seth, as we wrap it up, what are some of the the current opportunities, you know, despite what's going on with COVID right now, what are some of the current opportunities you have for Christian business professionals to get involved in what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01One thing I'll I'll put out there because it's actually uh, you know, it you may go, well, it's August, then it's um, you know, real maybe you know, too late for this uh uh this school year that would begin in September. We have a program for entrepreneurs called the Entrepreneur in Residence Program. And we actually just got a couple of uh entrepreneurs that signed up and basically yesterday completed the sign-up process. So they're gonna be showing up uh at our uh base here in in Gainesville. And uh, you know, it's a it's amazing how inexpensive it is. It's gosh, like about a thousand dollars a month just to to live and work with us. You you help mentor some of our young people, but also you get to sit under mentors that have uh built large and profitable companies and and receive their mentoring. And so it's a real for the right person, it can be a great learning experience as well as a giving experience. And I just um want to encourage anybody who's listening to this to uh potentially um if you've got a business, if you've got a business idea that you're developing right now, get in touch with us and we'd be happy to talk with you about that opportunity. Also, for the young person who just is not convinced that going back to school right now is the thing for them to do, uh, get in touch with us, and you'd be surprised how quickly it might be possible to come and visit us, or uh, you know, if you solve the funding issue to uh enroll with us and start your own business. So um both those things can happen given the fact that we're in such a fluid environment right now, and I've got a team of about seven, eight um uh staff, and our our uh our class is 15. We actually can go up to 20, 25 people, and um and everybody just stopped signing up back in the spring. And so that's that's one opportunity for others. Um there are people who want to go overseas, and you know, there really aren't many opportunities, but as soon as the COVID crisis begins to get some remediation, is if there's a I heard yes yesterday that there's a a um that in Russia they've got a vaccine. So hey, I don't know how soon we're gonna get uh be able to be vaccinated, but if we can resolve some of those issues, then I guess we can get back on planes again. And uh we're hoping that as of uh next year that that can happen.
SPEAKER_02Yes, amen. Vglobal you.org is the website. Are there any other links or places you want people to go to uh to fill out any forms to to initiate that process?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're I mean we're real hands-on because we're small, uh and and you know, pretty selective. Uh, we're hands-on. So uh either Josh or I, we we'd be happy to talk to you if you feel like uh you might be interested. Uh go to theglobal you.org or just go to my uh podcast or my um my website. So Sethbarns.com is how you can reach me and go to the contact me page, Seth Barnes.com. Uh and I'd be happy to, you know, regardless of what you're trying to do in life, I'd be happy to help you. And uh maybe uh maybe it's global you, but maybe there's a contact I've got where uh it's a better fit.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. Well, Seth, thank you so much for your time today. Thanks for the work you continue to do to advance the the Great Commission and just mobilize Christians to go all around the world. Um appreciate you and uh thanks for sharing with us today.
SPEAKER_01I appreciate it, Darren. It's uh it's a really a privilege. And uh I I just uh you know, anybody hearing me right now that they're kind of discouraged, I want to encourage you that God is not at all discouraged. He's got a plan, we got to find out how we fit into it. Let's listen to his voice and he'll guide us. So uh I want to encourage you to to just keep pressing into him because he's got a solution to your particular problems right now.
SPEAKER_02That's a good word. Thanks for that, Steph.
SPEAKER_01Yep, it's uh pleasure to talk to you, Gary.
SPEAKER_00We hope you've enjoyed this episode, and if so, we would greatly appreciate it if you would leave us a quick rating and review for the Christianity in Business podcast on iTunes. You can get more information about HBU Center for Christianity in Business at Christianity in Business.com. Thanks for listening, and remember to keep integrating biblical values into your business.