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The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Redeeming the Dirt Podcast
The Untapped Potential of Agriculture in Global Missions
What happens when churches embrace agriculture as ministry? Frank Sindler, Executive Director of Equipping Farmers International, reveals how biblical farming principles are transforming both landscapes and lives across the Global South.
The numbers tell a striking story: approximately 70-80% of Christians in developing nations are farmers, yet for decades, mission efforts have overlooked this crucial aspect of discipleship. While churches planted throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America continue growing rapidly, many struggle with chronic food insecurity and dependence on Western funding. This disconnect between faith and farming has limited the church's ability to demonstrate Christ's redemptive power in tangible ways.
Frank shares remarkable stories of transformation from multiple countries where EFI works. Farmers implementing conservation agriculture principles consistently see four to five-fold yield increases in their very first growing season—without expensive inputs. These dramatic improvements enable families to pay for education and healthcare while empowering local churches to fund their own ministry initiatives. In Liberia, one church network is already on track to replace half its outside funding with local agricultural revenue.
Perhaps most surprising is the evangelistic impact. Without explicit proselytizing, these farming programs consistently lead to conversions among Muslims, Hindus, and adherents of traditional religions. As Frank explains, "Creation is like a doorway into God's heart." When people witness barren soil transformed into abundance through principles that honor the Creator's design, they naturally encounter the God behind those principles. Even an 85-year-old lifelong Christian described the training as "life-changing."
The implications for global mission strategy are profound. As tens of millions come to faith in previously unreached regions, agricultural discipleship offers a sustainable pathway forward, unlocking local resources that far exceed what external support could provide. It challenges our compartmentalized thinking that separates "sacred" from "secular" activities, demonstrating that Christ's redemption extends to our relationship with creation itself.
Ready to get involved? Visit www.efi-intl.org to learn about training opportunities, internships, and how your financial support can equip farmers to feed both bodies and souls.
https://www.efi-intl.org/giving/
Welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. This is Noah Sanders, so glad that you could join us today. It has been an exciting time here in Alabama for my family and I. On our homestead we are enjoying just the spring flush of growth, the pollens everywhere and that is challenging for some people, but the asparagus is coming up. We've been eating that fresh, we've been having that for breakfast and we've got lots of eggs coming out our ears from all of our chickens that are laying. I've got a new flock that I'm kind of doing a trial of free ranging around our barn so we don't have to feed them quite so much, and it's quite an adventure to go look in the hayloft and under this and under that and all um. So it's been quite exciting.
Speaker 1:There's also the challenges. My son and I were going up to milk this morning and one of the cows for the second time which is, you think we would learn, for the second time locked herself in our very nicely organized tack room in the barn. So we opened the door to find saddles and medical supplies and barrels and everything and all in a pile with a bunch of cow manure and a cow that was very distressed. So we got her out and got that cleaned up and hopefully we'll learn some management lessons about what gates to keep closed and what latches to improve. So there's always those adventures that keep you humbled, and right now we're also really enjoying our new baby, meredith. That was born about a month ago and that's just been a really special season, always challenging when mom's not quite involved in the homestead level as she normally is, but it's been really great. So today I'm really excited to talk about a topic that I think we really should be considering more as Christians with any area of life that we're working in, should be considering more as Christians with any area of life that we're working in.
Speaker 1:With this show we're talking about the importance of agriculture and why God cares about it, how we can be faithful with that if we've been called to steward the land, how we should think about it as Christians even if we're not involved with it, and how the church can really be leaders in the area of creation stewardship so that we can bring the redemption of Christ to bear in a field that really affects a lot of people's. Stuff you know around the world, hunger and stuff really impacts people's in a way that causes people to suffer, and so we, as the church, should care about having a good relationship with creation, not a broken relationship. But unfortunately, it's a topic that the church doesn't really address and hasn't done a really good job in engaging with. Historically, you know, if you're working with missions or churches around the world, it's all about salvation, church planting.
Speaker 1:You know theological discipleship and you're like, why don't we do gardening or agriculture? And it's like, yeah, but that's a distract. We don't want to get distracted from the real work, right, and it's not that those things aren't the most important, but eventually, as we're trying to disciple people, it's something that we need to consider how we're modeling that, how we're sharing that with people. And so I'm so excited today to have my friend, frank Sendler here to talk about this topic. He has a really neat story and journey of how he got involved with working with agriculture and church networks globally in a way that is having an incredible impact. It has a lot of potential impact in the future because it's just getting started, and so we're going to wrestle with this topic a little bit today and, frank, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with us.
Speaker 2:Sure, it's a joy to be with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Frank and I were connected, me working with Foundations for Farming. Frank was involved some with Foundations for Farming, kind of learning about some of the stuff going on there, and then he visited our farm and we've been kind of involved in different trainings and work and stuff together, partnering, and now I serve on the board of Equipping Farmers International, which, frank, I guess what are you the president of or what's your role? Executive director, executive director there you go. So we've had kind of a neat journey over the years, but Frank's journey goes back before that. A bit of your, your story that relates to kind of the founding of EFI and what you're doing today. That might give people that are are not aware at all of how this stuff all connects would would really be able to get that bigger picture.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, I've worked basically well over 30 years in in church planting and largely in Muslim ministry, doing a lot of work in particular countries and then internationally with Muslim background leaders, developing resources for the churches. My wife and I and our family lived for about 10 years in West Africa in a predominantly Muslim country 10 years in West Africa in a predominantly Muslim country. We got there in the early 90s and it was a time in which God's Spirit just simply moved, as he had not been moving before. But we saw a lot of churches planted in about 10 years about 20 churches. Our original goal was to work in the urban setting, but everything that we saw happening was out in rural settings, and I should have learned early on that agriculture was going to be important, because literally every single person we saw coming to faith in Christ was probably a farmer and all the leaders and pastors that we worked with had grown up being farmers and still relied heavily on farming. But we didn't. I actually put out some requests while we were there for agricultural interns, never got anybody to come. So we spent 10 years planning a lot of churches with people who probably spent, you know, 60, 80 hours a week out on the farm and we really didn't have anything to say about that part of their lives which, looking back, was very short-sighted on our part.
Speaker 2:Over the years, I have been really and over the years I have been really impressed with the vision and the desire that I see in the global South Africa, asia, latin America for church planting and for completing the Great Commission. There's a huge movement of God's Spirit in that part of the world, to the point that I like to describe it this way If you live in a state that has about 10 million people in it, just think what it would be like if none of those people were believers and your little church was the only church in the state and then, within the next four months, every one of them came to faith in Christ. Well, that's what's happening around the world is that you're just seeing millions and millions of people came to faith in Christ. Well, that's what's happening around the world is that you're just seeing millions and millions of people come to faith in Christ, and the resources in order to plant churches, disciple people, train up pastors largely has historically come from the West financial resources, theological education resources and we are well beyond this point where we can continue to do that. So the churches in the Global South have to develop resources in order to sustain ministry, and I'll give you an example the churches that we worked with. They have gone on to plant many more churches, but they're still relying heavily on Western funding.
Speaker 2:And one of my last roles at my mission organization before I retired to take on heading EFI, I was working with a group of churches that were founded in the early 1960s, so we're talking 60 years of being around really solid group of churches, but their people couldn't feed themselves. They still had churches in rural areas where people weren't having a meal every day and everything that the denomination wanted to do they had to look outside for resources financial resources to do it. So I came away from that just thinking something has to change. And about that time, a board member from ECHO, which is a Christian agricultural research and development organization, came to our mission and said we'd like to do a pilot project Just figuring out how do we get Global South churches and ministry organizations connected to agricultural development resources, and so we started discussing that question in 2019.
Speaker 2:In 2021, we sent a group of about 16 people to Foundations for Farming in Harare and got them trained, and then we started working in a handful of countries just figuring out how do we deliver training and how do we engage churches so that they begin to understand that agriculture is part of their responsibility in terms of discipleship. It's just not something that's usually on their radar. They know intuitively that they have lots and lots of church members who are farmers, but they've never really been shown that that's part of their responsibility nor given tools to disciple people in that area.
Speaker 1:Did you find that the response was kind of resistive? Were people resistant to that idea or were they very receptive to that concept?
Speaker 2:Well, it was so receptive that we got to the point within a year where we were saying we just can't tell people what we're doing anymore because there's so much demand for this. And part of that was just God's timing, because, coming out of the COVID pandemic, because coming out of the COVID pandemic, supply chains had been broken. You also had the Ukraine war, in which the wheat supplies were cut off, so farmers were struggling because they couldn't get fertilizer, they couldn't get hybrid seed. You also had a period in which rainfall patterns were very erratic, in different parts of sub-Saharan Africa especially, and so people literally just were unable to produce crops and unable to feed themselves. And so a lot of organizations, I think immediately when they heard about agriculture and a lot of it would come out.
Speaker 2:I was still working with the other mission organization that I've been part of, and most of my conversations would be about theological education, pastoral training, church planting. But somebody would say well, I understand you're doing something about agriculture, and then the next two hours of our conversation was only about agriculture. It was really strange. So I think it's God's timing. There is a huge amount of interest around the world, and we quickly grew from you know'll have probably somewhere around 1,500 trainers international that we train and are working with and literally seeing thousands and thousands of farmers every year reached through providing tools and equipment for churches and ministries around the world. That's our position in it. We're not trying to grow a large organization. We're trying to create tools for discipleship and for the churches and ministries to use those to provide food security, improve livelihoods and then also ministry sustainability.
Speaker 1:I think that's what's really helped EFI roll out quickly. The demand has grown because you're working with predominantly existing ministry and church networks where you're just coming in, providing the tools for them to reach the people that they already have contacts with in a way that allows them to help with that sustainability for churches and stuff. And what does it take like for the average church in like the that south window to like sustain themselves or provide for themselves? Like, let's say, you're going into an area they rely on Western support, right? How hopeful is it that you could actually replace that with, for instance, some agricultural training to the farmers that are around there, right?
Speaker 2:Well, the starting point is dealing, you know, with food security. Like I said, a lot of places where people can't feed themselves, and it really, you know, my heart was broken as I traveled and I was in places where the church would host us and provide a wonderful meal for us and my traveling companions would say, you know, eat all you want but leave some because they don't know where they're going to get their next meal. And so, you know, providing food security, we've shown over and over again that that's very doable. If the farmers will learn and adopt conservation agriculture practices, they can predictably and reliably produce crops and feed their families. So that's one starting point. They naturally begin to manage their farms well. They will produce excess crops and can sell those excess crops, produce excess crops and can sell those excess crops. So we get anecdotal stories of families that are paying school fees, medical fees. They're putting new roofs, tin roofs, on their houses as opposed to thatched roofs. One family that I met with personally, they had actually gone and bought a better farming property and built a house on the money that they were making. I mean, that's unbelievable, the kind of things they can do.
Speaker 2:And then getting into sustainability, that really depends on the organization and the denomination or the church that we're working with. We have some that are moving very quickly that way. We work with an organization in Liberia where we've spent about two years now training their leadership. This is a pastoral training network called Equipping Leaders International and they do theo-ed and base-level pastoral training, having faculty from outside come in and train trainers and then the local trainers have networks that they work with and their. Their local budget is about 120 000 a year for training throughout the country that they're doing and their country leader just told them that they felt like by october this year that they can replace half of the outside funding with local funding from the agricultural program. So that's $60,000 a year in funding that they-.
Speaker 1:If you like, liberia.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is, you know, this is not typical. I mean I honestly. I mean I've worked in ministry a long time and finding funding for things locally just does not happen usually, and we've seen it over and over again where even churches that we've engaged with early on and they want to get involved and use the blessing that they've received to bless others, they begin to give. We've had churches in Africa giving to EFI and I'd never seen that happen before. So it's very encouraging. I think you know God, through the program, opens people's eyes to the fact that there are huge resources right there sitting under their feet and they just simply have not understood how to make use of those and when they can. You know extremely hardworking, thrifty folks who will make use of what God has given them, hopefully for the building up of his kingdom.
Speaker 1:So, really encouraged by what we're seeing, I think the neat thing about agriculture is it's not just reallocation of resources, it's not just value adding of what's already there, it's not just services.
Speaker 1:It's actually like OK, so I'm applying these principles of farming, techniques that are based in appreciating God's design and creationist stewardship, that have been kind of handed down through Farming God's Way, foundations for Farming. I got off of this field before with like the same amount of input or less, because maybe I'm making compost now. So now there's 10 times the resources in that community than were there before. For that community to now have something to share or support themselves is is significant compared to, you know, opening a coffee shop or something like that, which can be helpful on a you know next level up economically. But without that base level agriculture, where real wealth is produced through god's miraculous addition, it's really hard to see that kind of resources developed where they can come out of poverty like that. But it's beautiful to see. Now you teach them how to tenfold their harvest with their corn, they're in a position they can contribute, which is absolutely so cool.
Speaker 1:I think it's the reason that Satan doesn't want the seeker to get out.
Speaker 2:I think so.
Speaker 1:It's so cool.
Speaker 2:And the thing about the agriculture is it is, it's, it is a creation level production of wealth. And you look at the Old Testament and almost everything that God did with the nation of Israel in terms of building up the nation, agriculture was the basis of that. You know, they went into the land that was flowing with milk and honey and it wasn't just like they had 7-Elevens and lots of grocery stores they go get. No, it was a land that was agriculturally rich and productive and God also intervened in that thinking in terms of the Levitical laws, where God had them do a Sabbath every seventh year and they basically had to come into that sixth year and produce almost two years worth of food. That doesn't work just technically. That works when God is involved and we're seeing that when we do the training. My expectation originally was that people's production would go up incrementally. In other words, as the soil improved, it would get a little bit better, a little better, a little better.
Speaker 1:Which is what we normally see with a lot of approaches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but what we're seeing is we regularly see first time farmers implementing. When they implement the whole program, they're getting four or five fold production level increases, to the point that they're going oh my goodness, I can actually make a living as a farmer.
Speaker 1:This is first season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a first season, it's like season, it's not even maxing the potential.
Speaker 1:This is just the first year they do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then they're getting better at it and they're growing in their management of their farms and things like that.
Speaker 2:But the thing that's exciting, too, is most programs that you're talking about, you're bringing in outside resources and trying to fill a hole, whereas the program that we're doing is absolutely based on. God has already provided you with everything you need. If you are a faithful steward of that, then God will provide for you through that, and so we're not bringing any inputs at all, any equipment or anything like that, and that, I think, really opens people's eyes to the fact that following Christ and walking with Him carries with it this covenantal blessing that God is there to care for his people and to build them up and we don't have to look outside for resources. That's one of the things I think that's kept people in poverty is just the mindset that if I'm poor, I don't have the tools to fix that, because I'm poor, because I'm cursed, and farmers feel cursed because they and most people, you know people don't want to be known as farmers around the world. That's the last thing there's a stigma attached to it.
Speaker 2:There's a stigma attached to it, but understanding that God, you know, is the first farmer that he's called mankind to steward his creation. And that farming, you know, just like being a pastor or being an evangelist, it's a calling from God and God can use that for his kingdom. That brings a lot of dignity. And I think you know little things like with the composting that we teach. I mean those compost piles. They don't buy anything, it's just stuff that they would normally get rid of or burn or ignore, and they're creating. A lot of our farmers are now creating compost and selling it, and the compost piles themselves are $400 to $500 worth of good quality compost.
Speaker 2:So, just realizing the resources that are there and the dignity that comes from I'm making use of that myself.
Speaker 2:It's not someone who's come in and giving me something, but I'm taking what God has already given me and the understanding, and then we feel, like you know, working through the church too. It really builds up the church. If the church is there for people on those very real levels, the church becomes far more important in their lives. Matter of fact, we just got a testimony again from Liberia of a young man who said he'd gone to church a lot, but did not consider himself a believer and was not really interested until the church offered a program on farming and he said wow, I am now a member of church and I'm out telling people about Christ. So it makes discipleship more real and again I feel like the vision and the movement of the Holy Spirit is so significant in the global South that we've got to unlock this potential through agriculture and other types of, you know, training that teaches people how to make use of what they have in order to empower the Great Commission to be completed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think one thing I want to just emphasize so that it's not missed for people that are listening is, you know, a big part of kind of how I got into all of this is as I was trying to farm. I ended up writing that book Born Again. Dirt about, like, how does fate impact something as practical as farming? How do we put boots on the gospel in a sense in that way? And then that's what I love so much about, you know, farming God's Way, foundations for Farming. Why I've been involved with them is because they don't just agriculture, is not just a means by which to connect with people, to evangelize them. There's this baked in beginning with Jesus, beginning with the heart of Christ, and then building from that, these ideas of stewardship and faithfulness and service and generosity, which are what really are the basis of prospering, because God adds to you if you're faithful, he adds to you if you're generous, and when you bake it in, when it's actually like your agriculture is an overflow of your worldview, an overflow of that, and it's not just so. You know there's some programs that the church is involved in, but it's still like. It's like serving into what is kind of viewed as a secular area, rather than like adopting and bringing it in. And so what's?
Speaker 1:Efi is basically taking the same concept, these same tools that others are using. So it's not like we're starting from scratch. We're using proven methods in EFI from all these, all these kind of traditions, but we're. But what really makes it valuable is not, oh, the no till. You know, gardening it's not just the compost, it's not these really cool techniques that have that are really like they are impactful, but it's the discipleship that's baked in.
Speaker 1:That really is the gold. It's really teaching churches to equip their congregation to say I'm not just going out and I'm like how does my faith relate to my everyday life? They're like my goodness, jesus has something to do with my farming. Now, like this guy, he's like this is me. Now, you know I can be involved. You know we kind of hint at this idea of church, churches just about Bible studies and talking about theology and people that aren't gifted in that particular area. Um, it's hard sometimes for them to know how to be plugged in, but maybe just speak to a little bit. Uh, just that part of what EFI is bringing, because, as cool as the techniques are, the secret, I believe, to EFI, just like any of these things is. It's that heart of Jesus that we're starting with. It's that discipleship element that, if we took that away, we wouldn't be having near the impact that we have seen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the best ways to describe that. I mean I've tried to talk with people and explain the program, because we talk about a lot of impact that the program's having evangelistically and people are thinking well, you're teaching agriculture in the morning and then you do a gospel presentation in the evening and I have to explain no, we're just teaching the agricultural program and people understand who God is and what the gospel is by just the program. Now we've interwoven scripture into the training materials that we have and things like that. So, yeah, there is the aspect of God's Word, but really the best way I've heard it described is that creation is like a doorway or a stair step into God's heart and you begin to see who God is and how he loves us. You begin to understand that God is redeeming the world and I mean a lot of theologians have basically called creation a theater of who God is. It's a theater of God's wisdom, goodness, justice, his power. We see redemption played out in creation and so when we're out doing the program or our partners are out doing the program, they just naturally see people and we've seen Muslims, hindus, buddhists, tribals, everybody under the sun come to faith in Christ in a farmer training usually, and I had an interesting experience at a church a few weeks ago.
Speaker 2:The missions chairman was a gentleman who's 85 years old you know, been going to church longer than I've been around and even though I've been around for a while but he just went through our farmer training, actually at a program up near Baltimore, maryland, and he said it was life-changing. And I'm trying to get my head around. How is something life-changing for an 85-year-old Christian? You know who? I'm sure he's been through a lot. But just understanding and seeing you know the scripture lived out in creation in practical reality. Um, I, you know, I went through through the training originally. I just thought it was amazing that that the soil is filled with life and that that life is what imparts life to the plants. It's not just a seed in a, in a neutral, you know, uh, medium in which you put fertilizer and water.
Speaker 1:No, it's all you try to kill everything that doesn't you know, so it doesn't kill your plants. You're like how does that reflect the heart of God? But this idea of it's about building and cultivating life. You're like now that God's solutions to these problems of disease or imbalance is to bring more life into the situation, now that I think, like I, can tie that to who God is very easily in this training.
Speaker 2:And we had a discussion this morning. A tech question that came up with. One of the farmers was asking about their. They had flower drop, I think it was on pepper plants. I don't remember what it was, but the solution was basically like a probiotic a solution those tea kind of thing yeah so they were using uh, uh, coconut milk, yogurt, uh, and then they were fermenting it for a few days and added it to water and the whole, the whole, you know solution was more life, more bacteria yes yeah, it's not all right, let's come up with this chemical that's going to fix that problem or whatever.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's just a lot of little things like that play out in the agricultural sphere that, if you think about it, it has direct correlation with the scripture and with the redemption and what Christ is doing in our lives, and I think that's the evangelistic impact of a program like this. I wasn't something I expected on the front end, you know, I thought, okay, we'll teach agriculture, that's good. People could produce food, they can eat, that's great. And then maybe they can share the gospel. It's become very clear that the gospel is really integral to a lot of life. You know that. We just don't tend to think of it that way. We tend to think of the world as split between. You know what's secular and what's sacred and you know the things of God and spiritual and non-spiritual, and it's really not. I mean God, who's working redemption, created and sustains everything in creation, so why wouldn't they be interlinked?
Speaker 1:you know a lot more holistically than we, than we think, so yeah, and I've seen people you know that even aren't involved in agriculture, like as as as much that maybe go through our trainings or something.
Speaker 1:They, their eyes, are open to this idea of this kind of holistic way of approaching discipleship, which involves evangelism.
Speaker 1:Right is one part of that, but it's less about, okay, how to be an excited Christ follower and how to allow Jesus to like invite them into all these practical areas of your life, whether it's like with crown, financial stewardship of money or you know relational stuff, or, in this case, you have the land.
Speaker 1:In this case you have the land. And once they see, once you, you equip the church to be able to start having not just a testimony of when Jesus saved you 30 years ago, but a super exciting testimony of how Jesus is like making you more excited about gardening than you ever have been this year in your garden and all these examples, then people are like I don't know what that is, but I want it, you know. And you're like I didn't even share the gospel. Then they're like I don't know, but because it's Jesus in us, right, and when you give them something practical like agriculture, I guess I'm just saying, like you can do that in other areas, right, I mean, it's not just limited to agriculture but you can't help but make disciples if you're being, if you have a contagious faith.
Speaker 1:And that's what oftentimes in the church we're kind of like you said, we we were getting get the head knowledge and we kind of have the private spiritual disciplines and we know how to maybe communicate the gospel. But in terms of that, especially for you know people that are gifted in being doers, they're like what do I do, like I need, and more than just going on a mission trip and building a church building for somebody, I want some way to put this into practice. And when you show them that not only does it transform their life, but the result of that is their life begins to transform other people's lives, and then I think the most effective evangelism is when it's the byproduct, not the focused goal.
Speaker 1:And the words that you're saying that do communicate the gospel are what just naturally come out when you open your mouth, not that you rehearsed right for this particular moment, even though that's can be helpful, right, and and that's that's what I think is is inspiring to me and I and I hope for you guys that are listening that it's. It's inspiring for us to think about what the church could potentially see in terms of revival by just being faithful ourselves with the things God's told us to do as a church stewardship wise in our own backyards, and that's why I'm so interested myself with redeeming the dirt and I think with EFI, y'all are going to be starting doing some kind of grassroots stuff in the US as well. We as the church have to get this ourselves in America If we're going to hope to really help people other parts of the world. We can't pass, give away what we don't have ourselves. But I think working with some of these people in other parts of the world and seeing how important that connection of stewardship is to the church is helping us see, well, maybe we should have that too here in the US. Maybe that's something important for even a first world church to have to make connections, because we don't want just you know, this discipleship and gospel and all that stuff being rolled out through kind of parachurch organizations or through special project stuff, like it should be the church itself on the ground in every community.
Speaker 1:That's bringing this, and I think some of these stories that we're getting back from places like this, liberia, is helping us for me, with my network, for EFI, with your church networks to think how do we do that here, you know, and so if you're in the US, that's something I would just encourage you to think about as you are looking at your own resource, your own church is, how can you all seek the Lord so that you're seeing this kind of contagious faith built as you all pursue faithfulness and stewardship of different areas personally and as your own church in your own community?
Speaker 1:And I think being involved with EFI being is a great way, and I think being involved with EFI being, uh, is a great way, I think churches, because EFI is specifically partnering with known church organizations and minister organizations around the world. If you have a church pastor or church leader, that's like what in the world is it? You know it's a great entry tool to be able to open up somebody that's that is in a very traditional church ministry mindset to see the relevance of it and then maybe be open to things that you might could do, as a church yourself, other than just financially support to be able to experience it it's yourself.
Speaker 1:So any thoughts or I know um, I would love to for you to share how people can get involved, financially obviously, but also just, let's say, people that are going to american churches here, what, what are some ways that they can kind of be involved, apply kind of some of the things that EFI is doing in their areas, and what kind of suggestions would you have based on what you're seeing as you're working with churches here in the US?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're starting to explore the idea of actually opening a region for North America. We have seven regional directors for the world Caribbean, latin America, east West and Southern Africa, east Africa and I mean East Asia and Southern Asia and we really intended to kind of stop with the global South. But every time we get out to churches there's a lot of interest in making use of agriculture in ministry, both for outreach and discipleship through the churches, and also practical things, like there are churches that give to food banks and they say well, we would just assume, grow some really good quality food that we can provide for the food banks. So we're looking at the US side the program here will be more about. It's not so much about food security at all though there's some areas probably where that will play into but it's more about a living demonstration of the truth of God's word, because we've shifted more and more into a postmodern mindset in which truth is totally relative. So you can't sit down with the average young person especially and bring the scriptures to them and then they have any sense that that has any authority the scriptures to them, and then they have any sense that that has any authority or any objective reality to it. But if they engage with the same principles in creation, they have to think well, that's pretty real. It's not just, you know, words whatever I wanted to be, words written out into creation and and god does seem to be the God who he says he is in the scriptures. So you know, I'm really excited about that aspect. For the US side of things, I do think it's actually a great tool for discipleship. I mean, how does a person who's 85 go through a training program and say it was life-changing? You know it's got to be some deep spiritual things that he's gathering and I think, again, it's the reality of God's Word worked out in creation. And when you see that, it's so encouraging to know that the God who you've been following in the Scripture is the God who created things and the world is playing out the way he intends it. So white people can be involved.
Speaker 2:We train people here in the US. We have a hybrid model where we do a weekend online training and we do a weekend at a farm. We can do those mobily. We can come to churches that would want to do this in an area where, say, two or three churches were interested. They could do the online and we would come and do the training, because 95% of what we do around the world is done mobily. We don't rely on a center where people have to go to the center. We go to them and do the training. So there's that opportunity. You can find out all this information on our website.
Speaker 2:We have an internship program. It's a four-week internship program. It'll be run in Knoxville, tennessee, this summer. That's giving young people 18 and older that we had a 63-year-old dear woman go through the program last year. We ran it in Rwanda. In Rwanda they can come and spend four weeks learning about global ministry, how to relate cross-culturally, how to work on teams cross-culturally, and then they go through the agricultural training certification program and then at the end they go through our well training program. We do a program on applied tech, well drilling, which allows small farmers to put in all the wells they would ever need themselves. And then they can go on from there and go down to Central America this summer and work with our team in Panama and in Colombia. So that gives them the cross-cultural experience and what we're hoping is that people will do that and then decide long-term to get involved in agricultural ministry.
Speaker 2:A number of mission organizations have come to us and say we need as many agricultural people as you can send us. I mean because they're all working in that same context that I worked in, in which they estimate something in the range of 70 to 80% of all global South Christians are small farmers and most of everybody has gone through decades and decades of building churches and planting them but doing nothing intentionally about agricultural discipleship. So people ask are you going to run out of work? Today I say, well, there's 400 million Christian small farmers in Africa. I don't think we're going to run out of work for a while, but they can do that. Giving. We have a link, it's wwwefi-intlorg.
Speaker 2:Slash giving. Right now we have matching funds, both one-time and monthly matching funds. So if you give $100 one time, it becomes $200. If you give $20 a month, it becomes $40 a month. Right now our average around the world is decreasing in terms of the cost to get training. We still are thinking we're about the $40 per farmer training and that's a one-time cost for that farmer to get the training. And then and then you're not sponsoring a family, you know, for $40 a month. You're sponsoring a new family every month for $40 to get training and that, you know, permanently changes their future. Our trainer training now is is getting really, really low. I've seen as low as cost as a hundred dollars per trainer, which was it's because we're going to the, to the churches, and the churches are picking up a lot of the costs to host the training. But people can give, they can become trainers. We have we have a good many volunteers in North America who get trained and then they go over every summer for a week or two weeks to different places and work with local leaders that we have.
Speaker 2:Like I said, we'll be in 60 countries. So take your pick of your favorite country in the world. If we're not there yet, we probably will be. We really would like to eventually have key partners probably in every global South country so 120 to 140 countries around the world and be working through those partners to impact all the other denominations and church networks and ministries in each of those countries. So eventually, you know, hundreds of millions of farmers hopefully will get the program.
Speaker 2:But it's all going to happen through the church. It's not going to happen through just our little organization and, like he's been talking about it, it'll happen because of different organizations all working together towards this goal and providing good tools for the church around the world. But yeah, I believe honestly, you know, the church has the potential to solve world hunger. I mean, the sad thing is that there's still about 10 million people a year who die of hunger. So I don't know how long our conversation will be this morning, but you know, during that time probably 500,000 people will have died, and in a completely preventable. There's absolutely no reason that that just the small farmers within the church could not solve that problem.
Speaker 1:That's both convicting and inspiring. You know, and that's been the weight on my shoulders in the past. You know, when you realize, wow, you know these tools are so simple, like it's really just a heart issue at the end of the day and a bit of knowledge. And and that's where you know, like when we've done projects in the past, like the well water garden project, where it's really equipping people to say you've got this, has got to be multiplied out, like not no one of us can, can even begin to tap this kind of thing. And you know this, this approach has been a bit unique in the past, so there's only been different people, you know, working in this kind of area. And uh, yet the only way that we're going to work to reach or even be able to begin to tap, making an impact in this way is what I believe is multiplication. So that's where a lot of people ask me hey, what's the relationship of redeeming the dirt and foundations for farming, farming God's way and EFI and all these? I mean you can echo and all these different things? And it's, you know, there's a common story that God's doing, but there's a there's a multiplication as well where different, like with efi, you've got the church networks with foundations for farming, you've got working with different governments and and lots of other. Everybody has their own unique partnerships and basically spheres of influence that if we only had an addition of approach, building one big, you know, connected network, there's no way that it would ever be effective and and right and so like.
Speaker 1:With EFI you know my connection with that it's like hey, can you use the well water garden project as inspiration for what you're going to develop for the US? You know, can I? I've helped with the training for EFI trainers. I've helped with all that because I don't want to have to do what EFI is doing. I want to be there to say you guys do it. I want to be here to help serve and pass on what I've learned, you know, and multiply and do another organization and then continue to. I mean, I'm hoping and I expect that work is going to be so big. There'll be other ministries and organizations that multiply off of EFI because it's their mission and vision is different, and so we have to keep this bigger picture of what God's doing.
Speaker 1:And so, as each of everybody you know one of the reasons I love telling the stories about both foundations, efi, what I'm doing, all these different things is depending on what people are coming, where their spheres of influence are, what their passions are.
Speaker 1:We need more storytelling so people can say, okay, this is what fits with what God's calling me.
Speaker 1:You know, like, wow, efi is exactly what fits with what I'm doing, because that's not what Noah's doing or what Farming God's Way is doing. And yet we're all part of this big thing that God's doing that, the more that we can cheer each other on, learn from each other and encourage each other and set each other free in the different ways that we're doing it, and encourage each other and set each other free in the different ways that we're doing it, but stay true to that connection of Jesus being the heart, the center heart for the poor. All that, then. I think it's going to be an exciting season to see what God does in the future, because I don't know of any other point in church history that we've seen this kind of engagement or impact. I mean, I think that's when you talk about that tens of millions of people coming to faith in Jesus. I mean, at what other point in history have we seen this kind of coming to faith in these different people groups?
Speaker 2:We've seen waves, but we are at the point where we might be in the final wave. I don't know for sure, but we should be encouraged we should be encouraged.
Speaker 2:I forget the time frame, but every language will have been engaged and been in the process of translation within a few years of now and we are down to about half the number of unreached people groups that we were when I started missions over 30, 40 years ago. And the remaining people groups are within reach usually of churches that are close culturally and there's a vision there that I think will carry the Great Commission forward. One of the things we've been doing too is trying to partner across what I call um, some of the silos that exist. So church planting, pastoral training, the more just, more traditional discipleship usually happens among organizations who, um, all kind of work together and they all have very similar ways of approaching things. And then development, christian development all kind of operates over in another little corner and there's not a lot in relief and there's not a lot of overlap. So we've intentionally tried to partner with organizations that are great commission focused. They're doing unreached people groups, they're church planters, things like that, and we're finding that would be a very fruitful place for us to partner with people. So we have a meeting coming up with a group that wants to plant a thousand churches in East Africa and they want to do. They decided before they met us they wanted to do it out of an agricultural base. So they wanted to do agriculture as the way to engage the communities and agriculture as a way to support and sustain the churches when they're planted. And that's I mean, that's kind of a sweet spot for us is to work with a group like that, because we have tools, they have tools, you bring them together and then the church is the one that benefits and the Great Commission and the kingdom of God is expanded. So, yeah, it's an exciting time.
Speaker 2:I you know I'm pretty privileged to live during this time. You know, I started out with Muslim ministry when Muslims were not coming to faith in Christ at all. I mean, you would go decades and decades without hearing of conversions. And when we, when we moved to West Africa, we went to a retirement party of a man who spent 30 years there, never saw anybody come to faith. He got up in his retirement party and said I've been here 30 years, I've shared the gospel.
Speaker 2:No one has. But he said seeds have been planted and eventually harvest. So and that's what happened within a year or two of our getting there was a huge harvest started to spread throughout West Africa among Muslims. So we're in exciting times and I think God has the resources. He's built up the church in Africa, asia and Latin America to accomplish the building of his kingdom and he's not going to hamstring them by them not having resources. He's now opening the doors and opening their eyes so that they say, wow, we have huge amounts of resources. I think there's far more resources available for the Global South churches in things like agriculture than there ever will be through Western funding.
Speaker 1:You think, without our systems that we're used to in the West, you know if I, as I think about equipping Christians here to be faithful with the land, or if they ever had to deal with food security, you go to a farmer in Africa. You just got to teach him how to tweak his farming a bit. You come here. It's nobody's ever even cooked food that they grew, you know. So there's a degree of humility, of understanding. They're really, you know, in sometimes a better position to thrive with the right set of principles applied than many of us are, because we're not that rooted.
Speaker 1:You know what I'm saying in the foundational kind of economic building things, and I think I just love how God works. You know the spirit moves different parts of the world different times. I think Africa and the global south is going to have its harvest. You know that the spirit is going to come in and I'm so, so grateful for those people that sowed seeds faithfully through all those years, because I tell people that in ministry all the time is I'm like there's a harvest season, yes, but you're not a bad farmer just because you don't pick something every day of the year. You look forward to that harvest.
Speaker 2:How to plant.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of patience taken to plant those seeds and it can be exciting what's going on now, but we can't forget those people that gave their lives, that sowed for decades without seeing that harvest yet and now we have that responsibility of the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, honestly, and we need to be faithfully asking God to bring more workers for the harvest field and if somebody is listening to this and that's what you feel like God's put on your heart, connecting with EFI, connecting with any of these other organizations that are doing this kind of discipleship, agricultural discipleship there is more than enough work that needs to be done, that God has a place for you and you just need to pursue that. So, Frank, I would love it if you have any final thoughts and then wrap up just by praying for the people listening and just where God has them, and that he would just direct them to apply what he meant for them to get out of this episode, what he meant for them to get out of this, this episode.
Speaker 2:Well, just final thoughts. I would like folks to pray for us. You know, there, the the numbers of people that we need to reach is daunting. You're talking millions of people across. You know multiple, multiple countries, languages, cultures, things like that, and it's not something that an organization can do, but it's something that a movement can take place, and we just want to be praying that God would give us wisdom as we try to plan, you know, the next three, five, 10 years. How do we, how do we impact all the countries? How do we create tools that can be used by anybody?
Speaker 2:One of the things I'm excited about is we're getting ready to create an oral learner's version of the farmer training, which won't rely on any written materials whatsoever education and looking at how to train pastors, but also give church members a foundation in which they could understand the scriptures when they heard them. But I think, with the farming, an oral learner's approach will be really, really great, and we just need organizations to work together. You know there's a great need for collaboration and working together well and focusing on areas where we do work well and let others do work well in areas they do well in, and then complement one another, and so also any churches. If you have partners that you would be interested in getting the program to, let us know. We love to hear from churches that say, hey, we're working with a group in Somalia or somewhere you know. Please help us figure out how to get this to them. That's that kind of call that makes my day so awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, if you would just wrap up with just praying for our listeners and then I will kind of conclude us, that would be awesome. Thanks for that well.
Speaker 2:We thank you for your redemption that you began in our lives so many years ago, before the foundations of the world. Lord, you purposed to bring us back to yourself, knowing that we would stray. Knowing that we would, our relationship with you would be broken. Our relationship with others would be broken, lord, that our relationship with ourselves would be broken and the relationship of creation would be broken, lord. But you intended to fix that and, when the time was right, you sent your son, who died for us, to open the way for you, to heal all that brokenness in our world, and we thank you for that. Thank you that you're at work today around the world, in so many lives, so many places and so many languages and among many nations, lord, that you are calling people to yourself and that command to go and make disciples of all nations is happening, lord, and it's because you're with us. It's not because we are doing it on our own, but it's because of your promise that you would be with us to the end of the age.
Speaker 2:Thank you that you are with us. Thank you for the beauty, beauty of creation, lord, that we can see into your heart. Through creation, lord, we can see into your love, your care, your power, how you've ordered the world, how you want to provide for mankind and for creation itself, and we thank you for the privilege to be part of that. Thank you that, even though we groan in ourselves and creation groans, that one day we will see it all renewed, lord, and we hunger and thirst for that day. Pray you'd help the listeners as they contemplate just using agriculture in their own lives and in their communities. Lord, they may have started for one reason, but you have a greater reason for them and we pray that you would guide and direct them into that. And we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much Frank, Thanks so much everyone for listening. I hope you are encouraged by this and that God gives you just that, the Holy Spirit, to prompt you to just join him in what he's doing through these kind of things, in the way he's called you to, and you just have your faith increased in that way. So until next time, just encourage you to be humble, to be faithful and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.