The Five E's to Ministry Multiplication

This week we welcomed a Guest Speak - Ryan Rought of TACTICA Ministries Global.

Acts 14:21-23 Engage, Establish, Equip, Empower, Entrust

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Pretty awesome, amen. Amen. Well, hey, we also well, I wanted to announce we have an awesome speaker. Ryan Rock is going to be coming to speak with us a little bit. I remember when they first started this ministry, the tactical ministry is going to be talking about. And it started at Jelby Road Baptist Church. And I remember as a kid watching him and I was thinking, wow, he's really got my attention. I didn't fall asleep once. And he's a very gifted speaker, and we're privileged to have him here today with us. Let's give a nice warm FPC walk when it arrives. He comes over.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Well, good morning. It is super exciting, exciting for us, for Gretchen and I to be back at First Baptist of Pentwater and share with you, have the opportunity to share with you this morning from God's Word, and also simultaneously talk a little bit about what God's been doing over all these years, last 20 years, in Tactica Ministries. And just a quick moment of reflection. I'm glad I kept you awake. That's a really cool thing, right? Hopefully you don't fall asleep today, right? But back 20 years ago, when Tactica was kind of an idea, had never been done, and God had laid it on Gretchen and I's heart to start this ministry to the law enforcement or to that first responder community. We went around and presented at lots of different churches, and First Baptist of Pentwater was one of the very first churches that took us on 20 years ago. Believing and having confidence and faith in the Lord that He was going to do a work through a couple of nobodies really from Kalamazoo, Michigan. And we're just so thankful. And we just want to take a minute to just reflect on that, on God's goodness, and to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for more than 20 years. Really, it's been almost 21 years of faithful support and prayer support and generosity and just pouring out love on the ministry and what God's doing, but really our family specifically. And so thank you. And if you don't know me, uh my name's Ryan, and I'm a homegrown Pentwater boy right here in town. And so, yeah, we've got a lot of familiar faces. And um it's great to be home. Lots of memories of growing up here. And I told the during the first service that where this building is at right now, it used to be just a mode field where they had some soccer nets. And I remember coming and practicing soccer on my off time to, you know, when I was in high school, and just having that uh opportunity to do that and seeing God work and grow even here in the church. So thank you for that. You can go to the next slide. So this is our new prayer card. They're out on the uh entry in the entryway in the foyer on our table out there. Please take one of these because it has our new address, uh, our new phone numbers, all of our emails, the all those ways to get in touch with us and stay connected with us. And for us, this prayer card is bitter sweet. Sweet in the sense of, man, we're celebrating this season of ministry that the Lord has us in. Bitter because this is our first prayer card without having the picture, or including our two daughters, Adrian and Miranda. Now, if you don't remember them, go to the next slide. There they are. 21, or that was probably 22 years ago when they were just little whiffets, as I call them, right? And we were getting ready to go to the mission field. And if you're the parents, you'll understand this. I still see them now at 25 and 20, uh just about 24. That's still how I see them. You go to the next slide. But this is really how they look today. So, Adriana, the the blonde on our left, our oldest, she is a pediatric nurse down in Kalamazoo at Bronson Hospital. Loves it there. Her husband, Nathaniel, is a youth pastor at Calvary Bible Church in Kalamazoo. Miranda on the other side is uh lives down in Dayton with her husband, Noah. Miranda's a fifth grade teacher at Dayton Christian School, and Noah is a police officer in Beaver Creek. So my daughter's married a pastor and a cop. Imagine that. Who'd have thunk it, right? Yeah. And we're super excited because uh we we finally got like the official approval because now everything has to be passed through the approval of our children. But we got the official approval to announce that we're going to be grandparents for the first time. Yes, this October, Lord willing. And we did the big gender reveal party, and we're gonna have, Lord willing, a little baby girl. So we're super, super, super excited about that. And my mom's here today with us, which is another exciting thing. So I don't even know the number, Ma. You must have 30 whatever grandkids and great-grandkids, and right? More than she can count. More than she can count. So we're super thankful to have her with us today. It's a big blessing. You go to the next slide. So Tactica's focus is on training police officers or first responders, those in that serving community of the government, to be professional and more proficient in their vocations. But the main focus of Tactica is helping them to truly understand who they serve and the responsibility that they carry under Romans 13 to be God's agents of justice here on planet earth. It's a big responsibility. And we try to help them understand that. And we know that while we can provide police tactics and help them with medical, different medical trainings, that this is only fully accomplished when our identity is found in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so that is our focus. So we've been doing that for 20 years in Costa Rica, but back in year 17, right around there, and I don't want to say the ministry was on cruise control, but we felt good, didn't we? I mean, we were comfortable. Like we had systems in place, we had people in place, we knew all the governments. We've given, we God's allowed us to give Bibles and minister to two Costa Rican presidents personally. Like he has opened up doors to kings that two people from Pentwater, Michigan should never have ever had or had that opportunity. But in year 17, we felt like God just given us this nudge. And we're like, Lord, what's going on? Like we feel really good right here. Can we just stay? And he's like, Have you felt that? Yeah, he's like, Well, you step out. Step out into the unknown that requires faith and be obedient. And so as we pursue that, and it's a long story, but as we pursue that, God opened up the door for us, and in 2023, Tactica Ministries became Tactica Ministries Global. And it was birth, and it is our current missional journey. It is our ongoing, and our next chapter in the missional story for Gretchen and I and for Tactica. So, what does all that mean? So, what I want to do this morning is we're gonna take and look at a passage, and if you want to open your Bibles, you can. Acts 14. We'll be there in just a second, but we're gonna open that passage and we're gonna take you on a multiplication journey. How this whole thing kind of happened came about, because um, once in a while people will say, Wow, that's really creative. It's not us. We have a creative God. And we were put our faces into God's word, and scriptures showed us, let's do this. Oh, here's the recipe, here's the model, and that's what we want to share with you how the scriptures directed us and how his spirit empowered us to do this, because there was a lot of bumps in the process, and it was a very difficult road. Highs and lows, and we're gonna talk about both of those things today. But that's where we'll be at. And my prayer really this morning is that as you kind of hear that personal testimony, as we examine God's word, that it brings conviction in your own life. Those areas of where, you know what? Maybe I'm getting comfortable. Maybe I am on cruise control, and it's time for me to step up. It's time for me to take that position. My mom just told us this morning, she said, next week I'm working in VBS. She's 85. Praise the Lord, man. We got servants serving at that age. Yes, it's dynamite. You go to that next slide. We're gonna read this passage. This is uh Acts 14, verses 21 to 23. This is at ESV. When they had preached the gospel to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch. 22, strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church with prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had belief. Let's pray. Father, thank you for this morning. We thank you for opportunities we have. Lord, for even for the freedom to come together, to worship together corporately. Now we pray this morning that your word would stir our hearts, that we would be men and women that hear your word and then take bold steps of action and response to your word. Now we we desire to leave here men and women closer to you than when we came in the door. And so that is our prayer and our desire this morning. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, and go to that next slide. What I want to take you on in this journey is what we called, what God kind of showed us in with to Gretchen and I in Tactica, the five E's of ministry multiplication. Five E's of ministry multiplication. And you can see there it says, what God is going to do in this world, he is going to do through all of his people, not just the people that have a vocation as pastor or missionary or professional clergy. All of God's people have input and play a role in this process. Each and every one of us actively serving and actively multiplying. Now we're going to look at these couple verses which we just read kind of in depth. That's kind of the micro version of what this ministry multiplication is. If you take a big step back and you look at the macro, you see that Paul wrote this all through his letters in the New Testament. So the first E of engaging, you see that specifically wrote out primarily in the letter Galatians and in Romans, in Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians, we see those middle three E's of establish, equip, and empower. And then that final E of entrust, and this is a super important one, because many times we've seen ministries where the pastor or the missionary that's heading up or the director of a ministry never gets to a point where they entrust the reins of the ministry over to new leaders. And you know what happens? They stay beyond their shelf life. You ever bought a product that's beyond its shelf life? Doesn't smell real good, right? We have to make sure that we're training up and multiplying those new leaders. And we see that in 1st and 2 Timothy. Next slide. So let's hit that first one real quick. Engaging. It's in the first portion of verse 21. When they had preached the gospel to that city. We'll find out what city it is in just a few minutes. Engaging means that we live a lifestyle, excuse me, of evangelism. Not a program, not a course. Programs and courses are good, but what I'm talking about is a day-to-day living where our life illuminates the gospel. We're sharing it. People like want to know. In fact, I even heard one pastor in Costa Rica told me, he says that on this very point, he said that when we walk into a room, unbelievers should be like, smells like Christians in here. Now that's probably an extreme, right? Hopefully it's a good fragrance. But anyway, you get the point, right? That we our life should illuminate that. God has raised up a committed and unified team of national believers in Costa Rica that are working with us in this multiplication process, and we are so thankful for that. Engaging is the preaching of God's truth from God's word. You heard that next slide? This is the name of our leadership team that we kind of developed in Costa Rica called the Force Multiplier. And you can see it in Spanish, Fuerza Multiplicadora. And that key verse there is Acts 6, 7. And the word of God increased, and the number of disciples greatly multiplied. So that connection between God's word, discipleship, and multiplication, it's this chain that cannot be broken. So the key is there is no growth. There can be no multiplication without the preaching of God's word. And so as followers or believers in Jesus Christ, we are not called. Some people kind of have this philosophy where they think it's better to kind of live in a bubble, a bubble of protection, right? Circle the wagons, let's protect everything. Rather, God's word calls us and commissions us to humbly and lovingly engage people in the places where they live, work, and play. Engage our culture. And remember that Paul demonstrated this particular commission to us and calling to engage the culture, and that it's not dependent on how it is received, on how the culture receives it. So if you take that passage in Acts 14 and just back up to verse 19, it says, But the Jews, but the Jews came from Antioch and Iconium, and having persuaded the crowds, they stoned Paul and dragged him out of the city, supposing that he was dead. Verse 20. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city. Clearly a miracle. And the next day he went with them to Derby. And so that's where we see him at now, is in Derby. Now, this preaching of God's word. Theologian Lewis Allen describes it this way. He says, It is declaring God's truth in Jesus to the praise of his name. Charles Spurgeon. If an average person has, I think the average is about 13 to 14,000 words in their vocabulary. Charles Spurgeon, the prince of preachers, was said to have over 26,000. And hear how he describes this preach you Christ and Christ and Christ and Christ and Christ and nothing else but Christ. That's a vocabulary, right? That's focus. A pastor for the Gospel Coalition said preaching is this: God speaking in the power of his Spirit about His Son from His Word through a man. Paul describes it in 2 Timothy. So this word preach in Greek, it's actually translated and it's the word kirokson, which simply means to publish or to proclaim openly. Publish or proclaim openly. So in this context, any presenting of the truth of God's word is preaching. So when pastors evers sermons, and you can have them in now how many different options every day of the week, right? On all the QR codes, just be like, boom, you can listen to all those sermons again and again. Each Sunday is certainly preaching of God's word. However, the word concept also implies that preaching should also take place during teaching times as well as in normal conversations. And there's all kinds of examples. It can happen through the internet, through the visual arts, through regular conversations. But here's the key point. All of us are responsible to preach, that is, to communicate God's word to others in whatever situation we find ourselves, and with whatever tools of communication that we can muster. Next slide. For us in tactica, this engaging or evangelism process is often done through our tactical training, tactical and medical training. And yes, our great God can even use silly police tactics for his kingdom glory. And so we're super thankful for that. Now, this is a portion of the ministry that gets talked about a lot because it's, I don't know, it's the guns and the bullets and the Bibles and everything combined, and seeing police officers with tattoos and everything, all there praying and reading the Bible, it's it's exciting. It's different. It's a niche ministry. But beyond the flashiness, maybe of the machine guns and hostage rescue tactics, these courses give us a couple things. One, it gives us the platform to reach deeply into the lives of a lot of police officers and their families in a short amount of time, in a very concentrated amount of time. Secondly, it allows us to establish a base of trust. Like we're giving them an incredible police product. And I probably should have said this in the first service. The issue is that in once you leave America, a lot of times as you work South, and you talked a little bit about it, these countries are plagued with serious corruption issues. Serious corruption issues. Like you've you can't even imagine. And so for us to be able to come in and offer a quality, high-quality police product and training that doesn't exist. We actually have a little note on my computer that says training is currency. And that's really what it is in Latin America. And so we use that and leverage that for the gospel of Jesus Christ. So those are the things that it does for us. You can go to the next slide. We also engage through hospitality. And Gretchen is a wonderful cook, and she is constantly cooking and preparing food, and I'm constantly going to the store and buying food. And so it's a great relationship. It works out really well between us, right? And so, but it's it's that always that preparing of having people into your space. Because when you bring people into your space, relationships can be built, trust is developed, and transparency is manifested. And that's what it's all about. We try to not ever let them know that we're the missionaries that live up on the hill and you're the ones that live down there, and you can come visit us when we designate it and program it. You know, come into our life. We want this place to be a refuge for you. And hospitality is the key part of that. And you go to the next slide. That second E, if engaging is evangelism, establishing the second E is discipleship. Now we find that in the second half of verse 21. When they had preached the gospel of that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lyshtra and to Econium and to Antioch. Believers are established in the faith and strengthened in their walk with Christ. Living life together, celebrating life together, eating together, raising kids together, giving the keys of our lives to each other. In fact, we even have a motto in Tactica. It says this. I'll translate it. In English, it says, Living life together according to the scriptures. Let your life be like that. Live life together in community according to the scriptures. Fulfilling the great commission that we see in Matthew 28 requires us to make disciples actively. Of who? Tactica? Nope. Of Jesus Christ. Right? I tell the officers all the time tactica is not your end game. Being a faithful follower of Jesus Christ. That's the game. That's the end game. Next slide. Real quick, I want to share with you. This officer's name is Oscar. He works for the Federal Police in Costa Rica. He came to our course, and like many of most of the police officers that come, they think it's a police course. And so they come, just a police course. They come to the police course. First thing we give them is their own Bible, a little camouflage Bible in Spanish, and we give them a devotional in Spanish called My Tactical Time with God, a book that Gretchen and I wrote a couple years ago. And we go through this and study the Bible twice a day on the breaks during the police course. Oscar came to faith in Christ at the end of that. That was a five-month-long course that he was in. Surrendered his life to Christ and said, Come, come take this, bring, help me bring this message to my family. We bring the message to his family. Come to find out his wife is already saved, but his children hear the gospel. We disciple them. You can see that kind of around the table, right, in their home. And they we were they were in our house. That other picture on the right side is in our home, connecting them with other believers and bringing them into community to the point where now they're connected into the local church, one of the eleven that we partner with in Costa Rica, serving there, and their daughter, who's just a little tiny girl in that picture, her name's Brittany, she took over the Tactica Kids Ministry when Adrian and Miranda moved back to the U.S. for college. And so you see this cycle, right, of multiplication happening. And that's just one of many stories. You can go to the next slide. That third E that we see is equip. Now that's found in verse 22, if you want to go back to Acts 14. Strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God. So, in spite of the trial, In spite of the obstacles and the difficulties, we're still called to come alongside and give encouragement, remaining always faithful to the teaching. Now, back in 2002, there was a military film put out called Blackhawk Down. Y'all seen some of you seen that? Okay, basically, it's a uh uh a story of our of our military when they we were in the Mogadishu. One of the helicopters goes down, it's a rescue mission to pull them out, and all of the tragedy and heartbreak that went along in that process. And the interesting thing that happens in that movie, in the movie, is there's a point where there's a there's a small team element of army rangers that are trying to evacuate out of the city, and they have a Delta Force operator that's attached to their element, and they just can't. Like, there's no vehicles that can get in. The combat and the gunfire is too heavy. They end up self-evacuating out of the out of the city on foot, basically running. They get back to the to the forward operating base, and they've been injured, they're exhausted, like they've just been through it. Serious combat. And they get back, and uh in the in the movie, one of the Rangers is like, oh, I'm done. He's like taking off his vest, putting his equipment down. He's like, he made it back home, right? He's safe, he's done, it's over. The Delta Force operator, different mindset. He's exhausted, went through the same thing, injured, he goes back, and the first thing he does is he goes up to the line where they have all the equipment, and he starts reloading his magazines, he starts loading, uh, refilling his canteens, getting everything ready to return to battle. And this is exactly what this is describing, right? This phase that we're talking about is that despite distraction, despite obstacles, despite hardship and suffering, we are called to return to the mission. Now, we've had some exhausting moments in Costa Rica, right? Yeah. And we've had some huge difficulties that we face. We come back and we love to share with you all that God's done because he gets the glory, and that's what we want to convey. But you all know, because you've all ministered in some capacity, it's not like that all the time. There's mountains, tops, and there's valleys. 2019 was a horribly difficult year for us. Lost my dad, tragically, Gretchen, both of Gretchen's parents, all that within a six-month period. And everybody was like, they're done. I mean, that's too much. Now listen, when we experience these things, we're not called to be done. Rather, we return from battle, from difficulty, from hardship, to the body of Christ for a season where we can recuperate, where we can reconsolidate and resupply. But our mindset always has got to be to go back out. To go back out and return to action. The Bible calls this steadfastness, the Bible calls this perseverance. Our family uses the word stick toativity. We made that up. Right? Stick to ativity. This is talked about in Romans when it says rejoice in our suffering. It's repeated in James, count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. Because it's for our faith building, it's for our obedience, it's for our good, even though it hurts. In Costa Rica, what does it look like, what did and does it currently look like for us to equip others? It's simply preparing them for service, preparing them to serve Jesus. How to handle God's word, how to be ready to get answer people's questions. 1 Peter 3.15 calls us, says, to always be ready to give an answer for that hope that is in us. Now, I want to put a little caveat in there. Many times we don't know the answer. Right? Can't remember the passage exactly, or you're like, no, that kind of stumps me. It's okay to say that. There are a lot of Latinos that I've ministered to, and they're like, I've even had one. This is funny. It came to my mind. It was one time when I was in Ecuador, and this guy came up to me, and I remember him because he had he had braces, and that doesn't happen down there a lot. But anyway, he had braces and he came up to me and he's like, Ryan, I gotta, they always they they like to do this. Like, just can I just talk to you for a little like a like a minute can be that small. But there's like like for a minute, sure. And he said, Um, I'm really struggling with something. I'm like, perfect, let's talk. Boom, open God's word. Got my Bible already, thinking through my head what this is gonna be. He said, So, are there aliens on other planets? And you know what? That's a good question. And so, what do you do? I'm like, I don't have like a Bible verse right now that I can go to for that, right? I need some time to think and process. So uh here's just a little hint. This is so not my notes, scratch, I'm sorry. Anyway, um I like to say on questions like that, you know what, that's a great question. We're gonna go take that and park it in the great question garage, and we'll come visit it at some point later this week. And you can buy yourself some time, right? But anyway, you don't have to have all the answers, but we know where the source comes for the answer. So even if you have to say somebody, you know what, I don't know right now, but let's study God's word together and we'll look for a solution or look for an option. Go to the next line. Let's go to that fourth E of empower. That's found in the first portion of verse 23. And when they had appointed elders for them in every church, stop right there. So this appointment of elders in the church is a key moment in this process. And they did it so that the apostles could dedicate themselves to what they needed to be doing and not be tied up on other things. So here's the point putting leaders in charge according to their spiritual giftedness. And the second half, providing them with the platform to lead. We've seen a lot of missionaries that have said, Oh, you're really gifted in this area. I want you to be in charge of ex ministry. And they leave them and just kind of let them go. The second half of this is also providing them the platform to lead, preparing the way and making sure that they're comfortable so that they can move forward and do it with excellence. Now, in uh Hebrew there's a word called kason. Kason is basically the Hebrew word for vision. And let me give you how we do this in our in Tactica. So we take um it's a it's like a Bible or a study that you can do, and there's a book written on it, but it's basically describes three bubbles or three circles. The first circle is um you identifying all of your spiritual giftedness. And you can take online surveys and get all that and and and print those out and put them in there. The second circle is your core values, those things that you're most passionate about. Or another way to look at it is if these things don't happen, it really kind of gets me upset, right? So your core values. And then the third thing is the third circle is all of your life experiences. I say the good, bad, and the ugly. And so you take these three circles and you start bringing them together, merging them together, and they don't ever fully overlap 100%. But there's always this spot, right in kind of in the middle, where each circle will have a little portion where they overlap. That's your cason, or what I call your sweet spot for serving Jesus. As ministry leaders, we want to try to find that and provide opportunities for people to work in, minister in their cason, because that's where they're most effective. Now, are we called to do the work of the ministry? Yeah. You know what? There's a lot of things that with Tactica, we have big building and properties and everything else, and I don't know, that's not really what I thought of as ministry, but it's part of it. So we all have to do the work of the ministry, but finding your specific sweet spot, and as leaders, putting them in and empowering new leaders in those areas is absolutely phenomenal. Next slide. So in Costa Rica, we've had this happening by grace, by God's grace, time and again, these these officers are being empowered to take leadership roles. And that is really cool because it allows Gretchen and I to take a step back in a lot of areas, let them kind of blossom, but allows us to kind of be a sounding board in their lives. Mentorship and help them with planning, help them with strategy. It allows us to applaud their quality work, but simultaneously help them still tweak those areas where you're like, you know what? Have you thought about this? Have you considered this? And to kind of tweak those areas. So here's kind of the moral of the story. In a world full of critical spirits, and you know our culture is like this, critical spirit and competition reign in our worldly culture. However, God's kingdom takes everything in our culture and flips it on his head. If we want to see the kingdom of God grow and we want to see ministries multiply, we must learn to choose celebration over comparison. Choose celebration over comparison. Comparison is one of many cancers that infect the body of Christ. It's deadly. Choose celebration over comparison. Next line. With prayer and fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed. These elders were placed into the Lord's care, not micromanaged. There has to be a point of release. There has to be a point. Do you still help? Do you still pray? Do you still guide? Yes. It's the process is mimicked. It's a mirror image of how we should be raising our children. You walk them through the same process, and we had to do it when we handed those daughters of mine off to those boys. Right? We still love them. Nothing changes, but it's a different role. And you have to entrust ministry over to new leaders. Go to the next slide. And that's exactly what we've done in Costa Rica. These are just some pictures of all of these couples that God has, even seven, eight years ago, they didn't even know Jesus. They were introduced to him at a police course, came to faith, discipled. God's done a mighty work, and now they're already passionate, right? This should be the logical progression. They're already passionate about fulfilling the Great Commission. So they're like, we're really busy and we both have jobs and we're both working, we're raising families like everybody else, but we want to volunteer to be part of tactical leadership to take this same message that changed our life to our partners and transform our nation. Next slide. So Costa Rica is a very exciting time in the country for us and for the nation as well. The Costa Ricans are living on mission together and they're building into others, multiplying, and building God's kingdom there. Go to the next slide. I want to talk fast forward to March of 2026. This last March. Well, just over 20 years. This was our 20th anniversary, 20-year anniversary. Of course, sometimes my tongue's still stuck in Spanish, sorry. So we had a large course, 80-some officers from uh primarily from the Costa Rican FBI. Um we've trained over 6,000 officers in 20 years that have passed through our doors that have heard the gospel message. And that's significant when you think about the fact that they only have uh about 13 or 14,000 officers in the entire nation. And so we've had the ability to train and to share the gospel with many of them. And this course comes around and uh we we provide the training. It was a two-week long course. Now I want to initiate something, our last few minutes here, that you participate with me. Okay? So in a few moments, I'm gonna be reading something, and when I say the word words, in uniform, you respond with on duty. Got it? Let's practice it. In uniform and perfect. You guys are great. So in this course, we're we do the training. This particular course was on um how to respond to active shooters. So at schools and businesses, all those things. It was an instructor-level course, so it was pretty in-depth, lots of book work and everything. About 60% of these officers had been through our courses in the past years. 40% were new, like this was the first time they've ever come to a tactical course. And at the end, this is this is the picture. At the end, of course, we we're talking about the Lord and the gospel and everything all throughout the week, but I kind of do a full gospel wrap-up at the end of the week. And this was the auditorium we were in, and I asked them, I'm like, Man, if you want to make this decision today, today's the day to do it. Now is the day of salvation, the first Corinthians tells us. And um, if you want to do it, make it public. Don't close your eyes and hide and everything. You come up. If you can't stand for Jesus in front of your peers on the day of your salvation, there's issues. Look at that stage. Overflowing. 37 officers, many of them coming up to me afterwards saying, You know what? This is my seventh course. I've heard this message seven times, and God broke me today. Don't give up. Don't give up. On those sons and daughters that have strayed, don't stop praying for them. Don't give up on them. Continue to be faithful. Those people in the community that you're like, oh, now what do they do? Don't stop. Don't stop. It's not about us. The power of the gospel is not in the sower, it's in the seed. So don't forget that and stay, have stick to activity when it comes to that. And so we're super thankful for all that God's just did, currently, and continues to do in Costa Rica. All right, you can go to the next slide. I want to real briefly just talk about a couple other nations that we're working in. So in Ecuador, we've been there actually now for about um 14 years, but only on short-term trips. So going in for a week or two and then coming out, going in for a week or two and coming out. You want the next slide? And so now that Costa Rica has is being entrusted. So these big, huge ministry things that Gretchen and I always traditionally had to do have now been passed on to the next generation of those leaders. We now have uh it's more than time, it's bandwidth. We now have the bandwidth to put more energy into Ecuador, into Panama, that we're going to talk about in just a minute, so that these nations uh can have a deeper investment, so that we can dedicate more time to them. So just in Ecuador, uh in the last 14 years, we've trained probably, I don't know, maybe over a thousand officers, and we have seen well over 150 officers and spouses come to faith in Christ. Ready for it? In uniform and exactly. You go to the next slide. Same things happen in Panama. Uh, like I said, Panama just sits just south of Costa Rica. It's actually the last nation in technically Central America before you get to Colombia and South America. You can go to the next slide. And we were just there just before the Costa Rica course in March, in February, we were in Panama with a team, and we trained, I think, only 48 of their special operations officers, and we saw 11 of them come to faith in Christ in uniform and absolutely amazing what God's doing. You go to the next slide. This is the one I want to talk about because for years and years and years coming back home and reporting, we were kind of doing it every other year and visiting churches. We'd kind of come to Pentwater and report, I don't know, every maybe three or four years just to kind of give you an update. And every time, every church, somebody or a group of people always said, You so gotta do tactica in America. And we were like, I can't really happen. The dynamic's too kooky here. I just, it's it's it doesn't, it's not gonna work. Well, that is what we always thought. And I we certainly can see now, and I think you can probably all see, this increased need to reach first responders here in America. Um several years of, I call it kind of the the craziness, where we had the COVID thing and all that came with that, the drama and trauma. Then we went into this huge movement within America where it was actually programs and movements to defund the police, anti- and officers were just like hit rock bottom. And I was just trying to encourage them when we were back on a on a short furlough. I'm like, this you're you're feeling the direct impact, but understand, this is an attack on the authority that God has established. This is an anti-authority movement that happens not only with government and those that represent justice, but it happens in the family, it happens within the marriage. This is like part of Satan's plan being played out. And so as we began to kind of be stirred about thinking through what this could look like in America, um, God began to lead us and direct us, and we we investigated it. Like, what is the real status? Like, what would we we'd be facing if this happened, if we chose to open up a division of tactica here in America? And I'm gonna read you just a handful of very startling statistics among the law enforcement community in America. 57% of officers say they are addicted to alcohol, 53% divorce rate, 14% of your officers carrying guns on the street admit to having suicide regular suicidal thoughts. 25% feel others would be better off without them. 43% admit to being addicted to pornography, 25% admit to having signs and symptoms or well within the trauma of PTSD. Go to the next slide. Despite all of this, God opened up doors for us to start Tactica USA as well. Our one of one of the first places that we were able to minister in was in Uvaldi, Texas. Now, if that name kind of kicks off in your brain, you think back to 2022, right? Robb Elementary, 17 students died, were murdered, two teachers murdered. Crazy, horrific, really response, police response, and how it was managed. And it's just all kinds of drama surrounding that incident. And God opened up a little door for us to come in and put Bibles and devotionals in the hands of all the officers in the Sheriff's Department that led to Bible studies, that led to this, that led to having our first police training there this past September, or I'm sorry, December of 2025, to having an open door to minister to cops in America. Departments are that desperate, like all of the plans and solutions and great trainings and things that we have available to us, and departments' heads are coming to the realization that I don't know, let's try this. You know, even if they're not in agreement with the gospel, they know it's a valid option at this point. So these two officers in particular from that community have um joined Tactic on a volunteer basis and come to Ecuador with me to train and led officers in Ecuador to uh to the Lord. And uh kind of a side note, this a beauty of the whole Texas thing is most officers or a good portion of officers in Texas already speak Spanish. So it has to limit the amount of translators that I need. You go to that next slide. This is another opportunity that God opened up for us to partner with uh Answers in Genesis, the uh the Ark Encounter and Um Creation Museum. We've had lots of contact with them. This is our fourth year of partnering with them on doing a on teaching, instructing a canine explosive detection course for not just their police force, but for surrounding agencies in Ohio, Indiana, northern Kentucky, and even in Michigan. And so that's been a huge blessing. We've seen officers in America coming to our canine course and surrendering their lives to Christ in uniform and in America. In America. So we're so thankful for that. Go to the next slide. Uh we've also been able to do, Gretchen and I are very passionate about marriage ministry, and you heard the statistics about divorce. We want those police families staying together, but we know that that that staying together, that stick to activity in marriage, happens when the bond is Christ, right? And so we we've brought huge uh groups of police officers or police couples together in this um marriage retreat that we call Vow to Victory. Be praying for that. I'm gonna have you go forward just a couple of slides here. One more, if you wouldn't mind. Gretchen's been doing um back up one. There you go. Um so, Gretchen, out of the the marriage ministry, Gretchen has had a bunch of in-depth kind of personal one-on-one counseling that she's been doing very regularly. Um, if you didn't know, she finished her master's degree a year or two ago um in crisis and trauma counseling, specifically with the emphasis on helping officers and veterans, military folks, um process that that either PTSD, certain events that happen, or cumulative stress in their lives. And so it's been a huge blessing. And while she's kind of doing that, I get to hold the babies, right? So that's preparing me to be a grandpa. You go to the next slide. One more. There we go. Okay. Trying to fast forward here for time purposes. So the point of the message this morning, we see the global need, uh, we do, to multiply and to take the gospel of Christ to the authorities of the world. God's opened up doors for us, and we're in, I don't want to say negotiations, but basically that's what it is in Argentina, in Peru, in Guatemala, Dominican Republic. Uh, Gretchen and I will most likely be going to Spain in November. God just keeps opening up doors. And you know what? I'm not contacting these places. This is believing police commanders that go to their conferences in Latin America and tell them about a ministry that helps help their departments. It's like they're advertising, quote unquote, for us. And so it's just a wonderful thing to see what God's doing. You go to that next line. So our calling is to serve Jesus and to preach the gospel wherever he leads us. That's the geographical part. To whomever he brings across our path. That's the demographical part. And I just feel like I need to say this to you: multiplication. God is working and it's happening across the globe. And you might be in here in Little Tiny Pentwater, not even a city, just a village, the village of Pentwater, but know that you're playing an active role in that, in building God's kingdom globally. Gretchen and I truly consider you to be your global ambassadors. So this morning, as we can wrap up, um remember that. Saying back at the beginning, what God is going to do in this world, he's going to do through all of his people. This morning you've been challenged from personal testimony, us sharing what God's done in our lives and from God's word. You think it might be time to take a step of faith? Surrender some things that you may have plans that are in your own plans, and say, you know what, Lord, I want to dedicate and surrender these to your perfect plan. Maybe that's what you're feeling in your conviction today. If it is, don't set it aside. Don't pour water on it. Fuel it. Fuel that fire and pursue after it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for your goodness poured out in each of our lives. We thank you that you've called us to go. But you know what? The same heart that goes is the same heart that gives. It's the same heart that prays. And so, God, we thank you for this church that has been so faithful for all these years, pushing us and prodding us and encouraging us to take bold steps forward. And God, we just stand amazed at what you've done, not just with the police, but even here locally. Look at what you've done just here in this community. And so we say that with great thankfulness in our hearts, but simultaneously, God, don't let us get complacent. Don't let us get comfortable. Push us to new highs, push us to take big steps that make us uncomfortable, that challenge us in all the aspects of our lives to move your kingdom forward. We thank you and love you in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you, Ryan.

SPEAKER_01 48:33

Welcome. I was wondering if you could share a little bit of uh what's going to be happening in July with your wife.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Um so we had Gretchen was involved in a car accident lots of years ago back in 2001. It's been a long road. She's a tough gal. She's had a lot of surgeries, um, to the tune of about two dozen, um, recovering from that, one of which was spinal fusion on her back from the original injury in the accident. And um the need now is above where the fusion has happened, that disc invertebrae, because of the additional weight and load that it's had to carry all these years, um, is in need of fusion as well. And God has opened up an incredible door for us to at the Mayo Clinic in their spine department with awesome surgeons. Um, but the the reality is um she's facing, not facing, she has surgery scheduled for July 8th to fuse that next vertebrae up. And so please be praying for us as we travel out there and just for endurance, it's Christian's carried such a huge heavy load. You would never know it because that girl's got a smile on her face all the time. But it's it's a heavy load for her for both of us.

SPEAKER_01 49:51

Why don't we invite both of you forward? And we love it in God's word. It says his house will be a house of what? Prayer. So if you feel led to come forward and put your hands upon them, let's pray for them. Pray for that surgery July 8th. Yes, anyone who feels a call to come forward, yeah. Father, we thank you for this amazing couple. And thank you for the amazing impact they're making in your world, Father. I pray that you would just be with them right now with uh with gr with Gretchen's back, Father. I pray that you would give the doctors wisdom, knowledge, and discernment beyond their years as they go through this new procedure, and Father, they would be able to uh to fix what's been going on. And Father, that she would have no more pain. We know you have a healing hand and you can put that upon her, and we ask that you do, Father. We pray you heal your daughter from any more pain that she has. We thank you for them. We pray that in the time of anxiety, times where they're they're not sure what's gonna happen or how things are gonna go, Father, you remind them you're with them. You've been with them all the way through this mission for 20 years, and you're not gonna abandon them in the surgery, Father. So pray that you would help them, remember that, and you would heal your daughter, Father. We thank you for them. We pray all this in your name and all God's people say. Amen. Amen. While we all stand together, we'll close our service with one more song to our Lord.