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Lead with Prayer: Lessons from the Global Church (Ryan Skoog) · Thinking Christian: Bible, Theology, and Culture

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  Speaker 1: The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that
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  Speaker 1: deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become
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  Speaker 1: as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast.
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  Speaker 2: I'm Dr. James Spencer.
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  Speaker 1: Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways
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  Speaker 1: God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural,
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  Speaker 1: and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ.
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  Speaker 2: Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, Dr.
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  Speaker 1: James Spencer, and I'm happy to welcome Ryan Skoog. He's
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  Speaker 1: the author of Lead with Prayer and also the president
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  Speaker 1: of an organization called Venture. And so we're going to
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  Speaker 1: have kind of a wide-ranging discussion today about his business,
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  Speaker 1: his ministry work, about prayer, and about the global church. So, Ryan,
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  Speaker 1: welcome to the program, man. It's great to have you here.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, I'm so excited to be here. This is awesome. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So tell us a little bit about yourself.
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  Speaker 1: We talked a little bit in the pre-interview just about
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  Speaker 1: the different ways that your businesses are kind of structured
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  Speaker 1: and how you do what you do. So maybe talk
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about what Venture is and then how
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  Speaker 1: all of it sort of supported, funded, how it all
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  Speaker 1: works together.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: So when I was 18, I got started into mission
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  Speaker 4: work by smuggling Bibles into China. Like that's what you
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  Speaker 4: had to do early before smartphones. And Got apprehended by
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  Speaker 4: the police and had these miraculous rescues and eventually met
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  Speaker 4: a guy named Brother Moses. And he had been beaten
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  Speaker 4: 100 days straight in front of the prisoners of his
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  Speaker 4: prison for his faith. And they literally bring him up
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  Speaker 4: in front of them and they say, deny your faith
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  Speaker 4: in Christ. And he would just with tears in his
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  Speaker 4: eyes say, I can't. He's done too much for me.
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  Speaker 4: And I met Brother Moses as an 18-year-old. And this guy...
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  Speaker 4: had more joy in his eyes than anyone I'd ever met.
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  Speaker 4: And I thought, this is a saint. This guy had
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  Speaker 4: been beaten and down more than anyone I've ever met
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  Speaker 4: and had more joy than anyone I've ever met.
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  Speaker 3: I'm hooked.
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  Speaker 4: I want to serve the global church. And I grew
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  Speaker 4: up in a family, kind of a travel family. My
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  Speaker 4: dad started a travel company, and then my brother started
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  Speaker 4: a travel tech company, and I started one. You kind
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  Speaker 4: of had to start a company to show up at
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  Speaker 4: the dinner table is the culture of our And my
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  Speaker 4: dad never took us to Disney World, even though we
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  Speaker 4: had passes all around the world. We went to refugee camps,
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  Speaker 4: and we went to places in gnarly, gnarly areas. So
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  Speaker 4: out of that, I just was hooked on wanting to
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  Speaker 4: see God's kingdom break out in the really difficult, crazy places.
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  Speaker 4: And the word venture, it means to go to a
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  Speaker 4: difficult or dangerous place. And for us, we define that
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  Speaker 4: by the three uns. So we go to places that
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  Speaker 4: are unsafe. unreached and unresourced. And unsafe, when I say unsafe,
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  Speaker 4: we're talking war zones, persecuted areas. We've had seven of
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  Speaker 4: our partners killed for their faith. Even just one several
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  Speaker 4: months ago, Brother Thunkham. Another one was tortured and put
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  Speaker 4: in stocks, like a 16th century torture device. I mean, real,
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  Speaker 4: real stuff. Another 51 have been arrested in the past
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  Speaker 4: two years. So really unsafe areas. And then we go
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  Speaker 4: to areas where 80% of a village would be trafficked and,
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  Speaker 4: and we'll see God's kingdom break out. And now it
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  Speaker 4: was 0%, you know, that kind of thing. And then
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  Speaker 4: we go to unreached. And when I say unreached, like
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  Speaker 4: hinterland places where up in the Himalayas and, and, uh,
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  Speaker 4: places where if a woman is having her period, they
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  Speaker 4: think that she's cursed by the gods and they kick
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  Speaker 4: her out of the village. And, uh, they're sacrificing animals
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  Speaker 4: to rocks and trees while the kids are still starving.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, just crazy, crazy out there places.
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  Speaker 4: And then when I say unresourced, unfortunately, only 1% of
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  Speaker 4: Christian giving goes to the unreached. So if it's super
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  Speaker 4: bad and they've never heard Jesus and virtually no one's
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  Speaker 4: giving there, that's where we want to be. And we're
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  Speaker 4: seeing the kingdom of God break out. We've seen over
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  Speaker 4: 15,000 house churches planted and those house churches have risen
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  Speaker 4: up and stopped trafficking and rescued thousands of girls out
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  Speaker 4: of trafficking and gotten meals like 85 million meals to
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  Speaker 4: people through farming and feeding and you know training in
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  Speaker 4: feminine hygiene like we're talking about where women are not
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  Speaker 4: being kicked out so just transforming villages some villages where
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  Speaker 4: so many people became christian the brothel in the town
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  Speaker 4: shut down because of lack of demand because the reformation
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  Speaker 4: that happened in the village so just beautiful things the
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  Speaker 4: kingdom of god in these tough places is breaking out
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  Speaker 4: and even uh Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, they have a
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  Speaker 4: center for global Christianity and they've been tracking people, how,
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  Speaker 4: how the movement of Christianity around the world and missiologists
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  Speaker 4: are saying, we're not seeing numerically, we're not seeing the
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  Speaker 4: largest movement, movement towards Christianity in our lifetime. We're seeing
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  Speaker 4: the largest movement towards Christianity in the history of the church.
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  Speaker 4: Like this is, we're living through the largest and most
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  Speaker 4: explosive growth the church has ever seen in the history
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  Speaker 4: of the church. And it, It doesn't feel like that
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  Speaker 4: all the time in the West. You feel a little
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  Speaker 4: bit of a dimming light or something. But as one
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  Speaker 4: of my academic missiologist people crassly said, just remember we're
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  Speaker 4: crushing it around the world, man. We're crushing it. And
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  Speaker 4: so that's, I love being able to be a part
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  Speaker 4: of this because I see firsthand, I've been collecting stories
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  Speaker 4: from our partners and matching them up with the chapters
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  Speaker 4: of the book of Acts. And I've got a story
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  Speaker 4: for almost every single a chapter in the book of Acts,
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  Speaker 4: a story from one of our partners that matches similarly.
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  Speaker 4: And so it's like, it is happening all around us.
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  Speaker 4: And so that's the venture side. And then I'm also
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  Speaker 4: a business owner. So I kind of split my time,
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  Speaker 4: own several travel technology companies and some other, like in
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  Speaker 4: the food service and things like that. A little bit
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  Speaker 4: of venture capital, if you will, like a mini, very,
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  Speaker 4: very small, but our businesses cover all the admin of venture.
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  Speaker 4: so that when people give, 100% of it goes straight
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  Speaker 4: to the programs and projects and partners that I was
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  Speaker 4: telling you about. And so I kind of split my
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  Speaker 4: time back and forth between both of those and just
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  Speaker 4: seeing God do unbelievable things. And Venture, it.
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  Speaker 3: Actually started as a, like, early days, it started as
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  Speaker 3: a bike ride.
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  Speaker 4: A friend of mine in college, he was in college,
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  Speaker 4: I'm just out of college, and he goes, dude, because
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  Speaker 4: everybody said dude back then.
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  Speaker 3: He was like, dude, you know, right?
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  Speaker 4: He said, let's, Let's, uh, let's bike across the country
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  Speaker 4: and raise money for hurting kids and missionaries. And I
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  Speaker 4: was like, oh man, I had no idea you're a cyclist.
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  Speaker 3: He goes, oh, I'm not. And I was like, do you,
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  Speaker 3: do you even have a bike? He's like, nah. And
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  Speaker 3: I was like, do you, do you know how to
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  Speaker 3: raise money? Do you have any money? He's like, no, no, no.
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  Speaker 3: I was like, when do you want to go? And
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  Speaker 3: he's like two months. And, you know, I helped organize it.
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  Speaker 4: He went on it with some friends and it raised
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  Speaker 4: like $ 16, 000, which to us, I mean, that could have been.
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  Speaker 3: A million bucks, you know?
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  Speaker 2: It was huge back then.
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  Speaker 3: She's like, wow, this is epic.
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  Speaker 4: And by God's grace, I was starting a company right
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  Speaker 4: around that time, my first company. And so as the
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  Speaker 4: company would grow, adventure would grow. And a guy named
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  Speaker 4: Don Miller, who wrote this book, Blue Like Jazz, he
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  Speaker 4: went on one of our tours and wrote about it
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  Speaker 4: in his next book, and that took off. And so
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  Speaker 4: it just started these tough things for tough places. And
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  Speaker 4: so it's just on an adventure that never ever planned
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  Speaker 4: that God had. And it's just been wild. So that 16,000,
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  Speaker 4: I think it's raised over 65 million now. So it
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  Speaker 4: was something that God's just really taken off. I never
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  Speaker 4: would have thought it would kind of become what it is,
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  Speaker 4: but it, it's, uh, it's been a really, really wild
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  Speaker 4: ride to see that happen.
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  Speaker 2: How do you identify the places you end up going?
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  Speaker 3: Um, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Super, super good question.
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  Speaker 4: Um, So we have what's called an unscore for different
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  Speaker 4: regions around the world. And, and we, we give an unscore.
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  Speaker 4: So how unsafe is it? How unreached is it? And
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  Speaker 4: we partner with, you know, whether it's, we look at
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  Speaker 4: state department databases, Joshua product project databases. We'll look at, um,
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  Speaker 4: it's a pretty academic. We have a PhD from Princeton.
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  Speaker 4: It was our director of international programs. She taught at Columbia. Um,
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  Speaker 4: Ben Bernanke was one of her colleagues, just an absolute global,
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  Speaker 4: global genius kind of person. you know, white, white papers
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  Speaker 4: on international tax law and all these things. And so
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  Speaker 4: she academically helped us create, um, this is, she's almost
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  Speaker 4: done with her second doctorate, uh, this unscore and, and it's,
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  Speaker 4: it's way more detailed and economic and everything like that,
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  Speaker 4: but it comes down to here's the, the most unsafe,
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  Speaker 4: unreached and unresourced places on the world. And they get
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  Speaker 4: you to, you know, we, we have partners in, uh,
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  Speaker 4: Somalia and, and Sudan and Myanmar and, uh, Bhutan and,
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  Speaker 4: allows and, and a lot of these really, really hotspot
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  Speaker 4: play Pakistan, you know, like really hotspot places. And, uh,
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  Speaker 4: that's if, if I told you like the percentage wise
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  Speaker 4: fastest growing church in the world is actually in Iran.
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  Speaker 3: Like you, you.
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  Speaker 4: You never even believe that, but that's what's happening. The
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  Speaker 4: kingdom of God is breaking these places like, like nothing else.
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  Speaker 4: And it's miraculous and dreams. And like, it just, all
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  Speaker 4: these crazy things are happening.
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  Speaker 1: One of my buddies runs a nonprofit, it's called Grain
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  Speaker 1: for Pain, and he takes sacks of grain over to
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  Speaker 1: South Sudan. He was actually trying to do his dissertation
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  Speaker 1: on education in South Sudan and do some stuff there.
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  Speaker 1: But the school he was with said it was too dangerous,
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  Speaker 1: like he couldn't get in to do the field work.
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  Speaker 1: And so I'm familiar with that sort of part of
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  Speaker 1: the world just through his work. It's sort of a
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  Speaker 1: fascinating ministry that he's running as well. But it's really interesting,
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  Speaker 1: like how you, the unscore, I love that.
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  Speaker 2: It's, that's impressive.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, we're so excited to be able to like bring
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  Speaker 4: this out to the forefront. and, and share with people like, Hey,
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  Speaker 4: the worst places are getting the least amount of money.
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  Speaker 4: Like we should really change that. And so, and, and
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  Speaker 4: for us, it's not just about venture, our organization, like
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  Speaker 4: if we can get the word out for all the
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  Speaker 4: other ones. And, you know, when you, when you work
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  Speaker 4: in the tough places, uh, everyone's just like, how can
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  Speaker 4: we work together? Like it's not competition. There's not any
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  Speaker 4: of that kind of stuff that you could see in
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  Speaker 4: other ministries or nonprofits.
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  Speaker 3: It's just like, you're here. You care about these people too.
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  Speaker 3: Let's go. You know?
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  Speaker 4: And so I tell people where we work, they don't
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  Speaker 4: even know what a denomination is. Um, you know, and
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  Speaker 4: so like, you'll see Catholic bishops working with, you know,
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  Speaker 4: just village pastors and, and it's just beautiful. Uh, persecution
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  Speaker 4: in some ways helps, helps mitigate a lot of the other,
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  Speaker 4: challenges that you would see in the Western church?
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  Speaker 2: You know, it's fascinating you talk about that. I've been
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  Speaker 2: teaching through Revelation.
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  Speaker 1: And so you kind of hit these different points in the,
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  Speaker 1: you know, you're going through the seven letters. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the things I've kind of realized this time teaching
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  Speaker 1: through it is that, you know, the Jews and the
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  Speaker 1: Christians were often viewed as the same during that period
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  Speaker 1: of time.
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  Speaker 2: The Christians were viewed as a Jewish sect.
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  Speaker 1: But as we go through the book of Revelation, you
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  Speaker 1: start to see these different hints that the background is
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  Speaker 1: shifting and the Jews are really distancing themselves further and.
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  Speaker 2: Further from Christians.
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  Speaker 1: Because they had dispensation from Rome not to participate in
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  Speaker 1: all these different pagan worship ceremonies, and they could avoid
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  Speaker 1: persecution in that way and kind of throw it all
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  Speaker 1: on the Christians. And so that just comes to mind
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  Speaker 1: as you talk about that persecution does forge a community.
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  Speaker 1: Because it really demonstrates, hey, we're all in this together.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely. The differences stop mattering. They really do.
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  Speaker 4: You've got two factors. One, most of where we work,
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  Speaker 4: they're illiterate and won't be literate in our lifetime.
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  Speaker 3: That's just the reality.
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  Speaker 4: And so we practice disciple-making movement model where it's house
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  Speaker 4: churches that plant house churches. And people have audio Bibles
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  Speaker 4: and they memorize 60 stories of the Bible and And
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  Speaker 4: they say it's better to memorize 60 stories and obey
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  Speaker 4: them than to know the whole thing and not obey it.
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  Speaker 3: And so it's a real obedience focused.
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  Speaker 4: And people like Esther, she's 26, hiking through tiger infested jungles,
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  Speaker 4: goes to a village, starts training in feminine hygiene, and
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  Speaker 4: then starts sharing the gospel. And she prayed for a
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  Speaker 4: five-year-old and an eight-year-old boy who were both crippled. And
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  Speaker 4: they both get up and start walking. And the whole
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  Speaker 4: village gets baptized. And I mean, that's the kind of
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  Speaker 4: stuff that's just crazy that's happening.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And you're right, the persecution, we recently had, you know,
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  Speaker 4: you talk about Revelation and the martyrs, and there was
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  Speaker 4: a Tertullian who said the blood of the martyrs is
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  Speaker 4: the seed of the church. Well, their brother Thunkham was
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  Speaker 4: killed in November in the northwest region of a, I'm
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  Speaker 4: not supposed to say which country, but in the northwest
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  Speaker 4: region of one of these countries, and Normally, like, in
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  Speaker 4: that region, our team would see, like, 20 people come
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  Speaker 4: to Jesus a month, and we're really excited about that,
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  Speaker 4: those 20. And he died, he was killed for his faith,
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  Speaker 4: and they even declared it was for his faith, for
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: inciting people to believe in God was the actual, you know,
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  Speaker 4: claim against him. And they just, they shot him six times,
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  Speaker 4: and I thought, man, the church is going to retreat.
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  Speaker 4: And one of my old crusty missionary mentors had said,
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  Speaker 4: You're going to see one of two things happen.
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  Speaker 3: Either the church will retreat or you're actually going to
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  Speaker 3: see a revival.
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  Speaker 4: And in the past six months, we've seen over a
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  Speaker 4: thousand people come to faith in Christ and hundreds of
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  Speaker 4: house churches started in that area, that very region where
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  Speaker 4: he was killed. And so it's like the church just
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  Speaker 4: rallied around his death and went forward instead of backwards.
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  Speaker 3: So it's just so inspiring. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: That's pretty unbelievable.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, when I think about, you know, we're trying
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  Speaker 1: to do a lot with discipleship, even in the West,
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  Speaker 1: and we work a good bit with Eastern European churches
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  Speaker 1: that are in relatively dangerous areas, but nothing like what
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  Speaker 1: you're talking about.
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  Speaker 2: You know, this is where being a Christian isn't.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly at the social capital is a lot different than
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  Speaker 1: places where Christians are.
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  Speaker 2: Just being killed for being Christian.
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  Speaker 1: But when you think about discipleship in a non-literate space,
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  Speaker 1: the only experience I have with it is when I
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  Speaker 1: was with Moody Bible Institute, we used to send these
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  Speaker 1: small solar-powered, almost indestructible audio players out to bush.
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  Speaker 2: Pastors in Africa.
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  Speaker 1: And so is that sort of what your system kind
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  Speaker 1: of looks like?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we'll do the audio Bibles.
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  Speaker 4: We have oral cultures are very, very focused on memorization.
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  Speaker 4: It's in a way we don't understand. Kind of, the
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  Speaker 4: only explanation I have is pre-your-cellphone use to memorize phone
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  Speaker 4: numbers of all the people you knew.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And your mind could hold a ton of phone numbers.
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  Speaker 4: And now, like, I can barely remember my own sometimes,
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  Speaker 4: you know, like that kind of a thing. And so
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  Speaker 4: oral cultures are bent towards memorization. So they memorize and
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  Speaker 4: probably have memorized more scripture than most Christians in America
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  Speaker 4: or in the West.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And so that focus on memorization and the audio Bibles
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  Speaker 4: are just phenomenal. And there's audio Bibles, but there's also
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  Speaker 4: discipleship material you can put on smartphones. And, you know,
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  Speaker 4: you can go to a village in the middle of
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  Speaker 4: nowhere and they don't have running.
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  Speaker 3: Water, but they have smartphones. Like, it's just weird, this
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  Speaker 3: world that we live in.
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  Speaker 4: And I think it's by God's grace we're able to
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  Speaker 4: get the gospel and get discipleship material and things. But
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: we're We're really focused on this. It's called DMM, Disciple
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: Making Movements, or CPM, Church Planning Movements. And movement training
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  Speaker 4: is instead of trying to figure out all the parts
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: of the Bible you don't understand, work on obeying the
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: parts you do. And C.S. Lewis even said that. He said,
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  Speaker 4: it's not the parts I don't understand in the Bible
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  Speaker 4: I have a problem with. It's the parts I do
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  Speaker 4: understand I have a problem with because they're really hard.
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  Speaker 3: They're really difficult to do. And that's C.S. Lewis.
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  Speaker 4: So I'm like, okay, that's really important to keep that
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  Speaker 4: obedience-based discipleship. So they want, in the places we serve,
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  Speaker 4: they want every believer to do five things. They want
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  Speaker 4: every believer to be praying and in Scripture one to
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  Speaker 4: two hours a day. They want every believer spending time
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: with the lost weekly. Every believer is serving the poor
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: and the needy. And the reason you say needy is
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: sometimes people, you know, you could be a millionaire, but
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: you lost your son. Like, you're needy.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: You might not be poor, but boy, you're needy. So
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: it's poor and needy.
• 16:43
  Speaker 4: And then every believer is weekly getting together, doing something
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: called the Discovery Bible Study, where you walk through, the
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: Word is in the center, and you have a facilitator,
• 16:54
  Speaker 4: and that can rotate. And then you ask simple questions about,
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: what does this say about God? What does this say
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: about people? How can I obey this? And you hold
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: each other accountable to that. And next week, like, how
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: did you obey what you said you're going to obey?
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: And it's a real high accountability on that. And then,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: and then every believer is training someone else to do these. And,
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: and those five things, you know, our, our joke is
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: whether or not you're at a mega church or mass,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: are you doing those five things of disciple making and, and,
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: and how you worship is much less important and how
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: you practice the, the, the elements of disciple making. And most,
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: most American or Western disciple making or discipleship is how
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: you can be a disciple, but very little of it
• 17:39
  Speaker 4: is training you how you can make disciples.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: And it's like missing half of it.
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: And actually, I would say some of the greatest growth
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: in my life is when I'm helping disciple someone else,
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: not just trying to be a disciple myself.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: And the woman at the well said, give me this water.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: And Jesus says, no, I want to make you a well.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: I don't want you just to have the water.
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: And it And I think maybe like 90% of our
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: discipleship can be like having the water, not being the well,
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: if that makes sense.
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: And I would say even when I do a lot
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: of work in the AI space, you know, thinking about
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: technology and those.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: Kind of aspects.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: And so some of the questions that have been raised about, hey,
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: what about AI sermons or what about AI generated content?
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: You know, if they're writing articles and those kind of things.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And the way I usually talk about it, I'm like,
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I would hate for AI to rob me of the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: ability to write something because the process of writing is
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: so formative just in and of itself. The process of
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: teaching someone else is often, you know, like that idea
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: of when you're making a disciple, you're actually getting more
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: growth than if you're just trying to grow yourself. Like,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: I think that those opportunities, if we're not careful, we
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: lose them. And it's a really crucial point I think
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: you're making is that we tend to, learn an awful
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: lot when we're interacting with people, we're trying to help
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: them grow.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: It just naturally comes up.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Oh man, I need to grow too.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: And I mean, if you don't mind me geeking out
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: for a second on this, um, Jim Wild, Jim Wilder, uh,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: he's a neuro theologian and, and so he, he, he
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: maps how theology affects your brain. And, and so we
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: have these neural networks that are like our center for.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: What I'll call the fruit of the spirit.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Character, And love and awe and worship and kindness and
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: joy and all these things. And that area of the brain,
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: you cannot see growth in that area without tapping into
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: the relational part of your brain. Meaning that character growth
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: is basically contingent on relationship. So, for example, you can't
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: just tell someone a precept of courage. They have to
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: see courage embodied. and modeled in a person and have
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: relationship with that person to truly see growth. And that's
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: why fatherlessness is a huge issue. And that's why literally
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: Jesus came as a person, had relationship, and modeled. And
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: it's as if our brains were wired for the Incarnation.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: That's cool. And that's where.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: Like ascetic Buddhism and all those other things, they fail
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: because they don't have a relational aspect to them. Like
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: our brains were wired that we had to have story
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: embodied relationship. And so we had to, for us to
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: know God's love, we had to see a cross. That's
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: the way our brains are wired. And so we had
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: to see the incarnation. And so Jim Wilder's stuff is
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: just fantastic on this. It plays into prayer as well.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: Bowling Green did a study on meditation versus prayer.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: And they had one group doing like, have you heard
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: about this?
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: I've heard about this study, yeah, but go ahead. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: So Bowling Green, they had one group doing like sand
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: is soft and water is wet, all this mindfulness and meditation.
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: And then they had the other group doing.
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: Like God is love and God is with me right
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: now and Jesus is real and like all these other things. And,
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: you know, there's benefits to meditation, there's benefits to prayer
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: that are really clear. Those benefits were 10x for the
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: group that was praying to a relational God, because those
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: benefits can't really fully be ignited in their neural networks
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: without the relational part. And so when it comes to prayer,
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: it comes to discipleship, it's all of that. And I
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: think to your point with AI, AI can give us
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: all the principles, but it can't embody... That's right. That
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: courage in a person. And so, you know, God, He
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: didn't tell us, be courageous. He gave us David and Goliath,
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: the story. And then we can go, oh, okay. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: then we can see someone in us, you know, I
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: can see my brother Thuncam give his life for Christ.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: And I see courage. You know, like, have relationship and
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: have a story. And then all of a sudden those
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: beautiful things happen. Sorry, that's like a tangent.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: No, not at all.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: It's great.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think I haven't read through the neuroscience stuff,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: so I'll have to check out Jim Wilder. I'm interested
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: to read some of that stuff. I've stayed more in
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the cognitive psych space with the embodied cognition and those.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Kind of ideas.
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: And it's just so, it's such a crucial point because
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: I can remember, you know, I went to seminary and
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: it's a pretty sanitized environment. right? You're sitting in a
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: really nice classroom. It's usually air conditioned.
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: If it's not, people are complaining, right?
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: You know, and so you're listening to a professor talk
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: and the professors are great, but they're always on campus.
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Like you don't really interact with them much anywhere else.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: And so you have sort of this artificial space that's
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: created where there isn't a lot of time for you
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: to look out and see courage for you, you know,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: to use your example, right? Where is a college professor
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: really demonstrating courage?
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: Well, they're not often.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: But this I remember in my systematic theology class, the
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: first one I'd ever taken, we were talking about the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: sovereignty of God. And this gentleman from Africa kept saying
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: that he didn't understand it.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: He didn't understand it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: So the professor was finally like, well, why don't you understand?
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: And he tells this story about African soldiers who came
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: in and, you know, abused his wife and his kids,
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: left him for dead. And he's like, I don't understand
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: the sovereignty of God. I'll never erase that from my brain.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: I mean, it sort of encapsulates and framed everything I
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: did from theology that.
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: Point on forward.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: It was such a powerful relational story where you're seeing
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: this guy and he was an older gentleman. I mean,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: he was in tears telling the story. And you're just like,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: that is what we're dealing with. That's how this stuff
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: fits into life.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: And so I think.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: There's something really crucial to what you all are doing
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: because doing discipleship in context... in hard context in difficult
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: space is very different than the way we usually deal
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: with it in the West where we're doing it. It's
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: not that hard things don't happen to people in the West.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I don't want to, I don't want to portray that.
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. Yeah.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: But oftentimes we have luxury that, that other folks just don't.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah. I, I, the one thing that's really hits me,
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: you know, cause I've been in, I've been in places
• 24:20
  Speaker 4: where they're, they're, A couple hours from mortar rounds going off,
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: we got evacuated with the army showing up. They're lighting
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: the policemen on fire with gasoline and things like that.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: So I've been there.
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: And what I do daily is I remind myself that
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: as I go to bed, our partners overseas are waking
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: up and they're not safe. And when I wake up,
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: I don't even think about whether I'm safe or not.
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: You know, one of our partners, I won't even say
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: her name. I'll just call her, I don't know, Sandy.
• 24:56
  Speaker 4: But she's in a really difficult war zone. And many times,
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: 1130 at night, they bust into her house and they
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: grab her cell phone and see what's on there. So
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: we have to delete every communication we have with her
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: and she has to delete it on her side. And
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: we work with her to move millions of meals and
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: plant churches in this really difficult area.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: Like the idea that we don't even think about the
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: fact that we wake up and we're safe and we,
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: you know, like how often do you think about danger?
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: And so that's something that I just live with because
• 25:30
  Speaker 4: that's in my inbox and that's, you know, in our
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: connections and when we go overseas. And so, yeah, I
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: guess maybe what you're saying, and this is just thinking
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: out loud, but maybe our theology would have a different.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Bent to it if there is danger.
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: You know, like if there's... You know, like there's just stuff.
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Like that that hits.
• 25:49
  Speaker 4: And so that's really what's been one of the great
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: journeys in my life is this one question. And that's
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: what if the church in the West were to sit
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: at the feet of the exploding global church and say,
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: can you teach us to follow Jesus?
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Not the other way around.
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: Because we might have a lot of information in the West,
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: but like they embody these things of the scripture in
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: ways that I need to learn. And that's what, that's
• 26:15
  Speaker 4: actually what led to, writing a book lead with prayer
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: was because I, you know, the church is exploding.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: And I thought, man, like what is the leadership principle?
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: What's driving this? Like what?
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: And there are some things about the disciple making model
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: where they're all disciples who make disciples, but the real
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: driver wasn't the leadership principle.
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: It was a prayer life.
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: And I was, you know, like, and when I say
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: prayer life, like Roosevelt, our partner who's serving in a
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: war zone for three decades, um, Um, I asked her
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: about her prayer life and she goes, Oh, I, when
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: I was 18, I wanted to tithe my time and I,
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: I wanted to tithe, but I had no money. So
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: I figured the only currency I had was my time
• 26:57
  Speaker 4: is what she said. So I started praying for two
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: and a half hours a day. And that's what I've
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: been doing the past 30 years. I was like, Oh,
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: so when you say prayer, And I say prayer.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: We're talking about different things.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: It's different.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: And you're on a different level there.
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: And I, and so I came back and I realized
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: I got a shelf full of leadership books on how
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: leaders lead.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: Deep into their lives.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: And, and really targeted. I don't have a single book
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: on how leaders pray.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: And, and so we, my buddy Cameron Doolittle and Peter Greer,
• 27:31
  Speaker 4: who runs hope and cam runs John Mark Comer's ministry.
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: we went on a journey and interviewed over a hundred
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: leaders around six different continents.
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: And we, we did the whole gambit.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: So we did, you know, Francis Chan and John Mark
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Homer and Tim Mackey and Johnny Erickson Tata and John
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: Ortberg and Mark Patterson, all these folks. We interviewed Christian billionaires.
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: We interviewed mega church pastors, and then we interviewed people
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: in the war zones. And we interviewed people planning churches
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: in the Himalayas and people running banks in the middle
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: of Africa. And we like interviewed, We hit the whole bit,
• 28:04
  Speaker 4: you know, from business to leadership to, you know, ministry
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: and pastors and everything in between. I didn't want anyone
• 28:13
  Speaker 4: to say, oh, that's for them. And so, you know,
• 28:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, two different billionaires we interviewed, and they pray
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: more than most pastors I've ever met. You know, like really,
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: really powerful things. And we stumbled upon an incredible discovery,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: and that's that I thought their prayer lives would be
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: all over the map. You know, I mean, we're all
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: these desperate, you know, like some guy in the mountains
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: in the Himalayas, Francis Chan and a New York financier.
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: You know, like they're going to be so different.
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: And the, and the exact opposite was true. Their prayer
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: lives were so similar and I couldn't believe it. And
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: we were like, so every chapter in the book of
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: lead with prayer is this, there's the commonalities that we
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: saw amongst all the leaders, these similarities. And, uh, and
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: it just was so life-changing for me. It's changed, completely
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: changed my life. Learning to pray at the feet of
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: these leaders.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: What are some of the commonalities?
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll give you like two or three real quick ones.
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: The first one was friendship first.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: And what I mean by that is I thought they
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: would be so good at just praying heaven down on earth.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: And they were.
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: I mean, they all did that. But the core of
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: their prayer lives was friendship. And so, for example, Rosabelle,
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: who I told you about, she took in her first
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: war orphan. when she was 16, and now we partner
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: with her to care for about 5,000 war orphans. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: she's in a war zone, but she starts her day,
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: she goes, I just love Jesus. I just take a
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: walk in the woods, in the jungle, and I'll look
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: at a spider web and go, oh God, it's so intricate.
• 29:59
  Speaker 4: Can you weave my heart that way? And she said,
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: I just spend time with my friend Jesus. And then
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: you go over and talk to Francis Chan and he's like,
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: oh man, I've got all these pressures on my ministry
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: and international. I just have to go take a walk
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: with my friend Jesus and just be with him. And
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: then I talked to a New York financier who's downtown
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Manhattan over hundreds of millions of dollars. At one point
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: he was over billions of dollars of capital and he
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: puts these big blocks of time in his calendar that
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: say waste time with God. And I was like, what?
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: And he said, it's a double entendre. In his world,
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: if you're not trading, you're losing money. Time is money, man.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: You're wasting time. He said, but I put it there
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: because that's what friends do. Friends spend time without agenda.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: They waste time with each other. And that was the
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: foundation of the prayer. Several other pastors and folks were
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: just like, oh, I just stop and talk to them
• 30:54
  Speaker 4: throughout the day. Each day, I just talk with my friends.
• 30:57
  Speaker 4: I just have to be with God with no agenda.
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: And so I just started, I started practicing that, like
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: just taking a walk and being with Jesus and just
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: letting him talk and asking questions like, how can I
• 31:09
  Speaker 4: please you today? And, and who should I pray for today? And, and,
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: and what, you know, all of those things, it was,
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: it was like the disciples, man, they, every night they.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: Had these, what, a campfire with Jesus. Yeah.
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: And they would be like, it said later that night
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: that the disciples would ask him, Hey, you know, like,
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: where do we miss you?
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: And, How did we do today? And what was that?
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: And it was just this beautiful relationship and friendship.
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: And Jesus said, I don't call you servants anymore. I
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: call you friends.
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: And he said, if you abide, then you're going to
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: have fruit that remains. And so it's utterly abiding. So
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: that was the first one, was the friendship first. That
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: radically changed my whole framework of prayer and my relationship
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: with Jesus. Even Mother Teresa talked about when she, four
• 31:54
  Speaker 4: times a day, for very long periods of time, she'd
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: go pray.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: Remember that? Yeah. Do you remember that interview they had
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: with her on that?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: It was unbelievable.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And she goes, they're like, he's like, what do
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: you do when you pray? And she's like, not much.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I just sit with my friend Jesus. And I listen.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: And the reporter was like, oh, you listen. What does
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: he say?
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: She goes, oh, not much. He just sits there with
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: me too. And, you know, it's just so cool. So
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: that idea has been, like on Sundays, I don't ask
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: God for anything. I spend a whole prayer time just
• 32:26
  Speaker 4: thanking Him, being with Him. I pretend that all my
• 32:29
  Speaker 4: prayer requests have already been answered. What would you say
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: to God if all my prayers have been answered? And
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: so then on Wednesdays, I always do, it's always, God,
• 32:39
  Speaker 4: what's your prayer list today? You know mine, what's yours?
• 32:42
  Speaker 4: And I just try and listen, and I'll text people
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: that come to mind, and things like that.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Just listening. It's just beautiful. So that's the first one.
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: The second one was, I thought they would have just
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: the I just realized that they didn't have a prayer time.
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: All these leaders we interviewed, they crafted a day with God.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: So there were morning habits and there are evening habits
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: and there are midday habits and there are, you know,
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: certain triggers and there were, you know, once a week
• 33:10
  Speaker 4: habits and like they really crafted a day with God.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: And that, you know, so like John Marcoma, Dallas Wheeler,
• 33:17
  Speaker 4: John Ortberg, these guys were, what is your morning psalm?
• 33:20
  Speaker 4: You wake up and the first thing out of your
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: mouth is a psalm.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: And, and, you know, just the word of God and
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: prayer on your lips.
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: And, um, and I started rolling out of my bed
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: under my knees every day and, and just having that
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: posture of surrender and saying, okay, Lord, I need you.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: I'm, you know, I can't do this without you.
• 33:38
  Speaker 4: And, um, it was just beautiful, uh, to have that
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: type of posture and add those morning habits and I'll
• 33:44
  Speaker 4: take a walk and, and then, um, and then like
• 33:48
  Speaker 4: throughout the day, Um, they would have, you know, the,
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: the Pope who created the, the idea of having a
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: church and a bell tower, Pope Savinius, like in 605, he,
• 33:55
  Speaker 4: he came up with this idea of like, yeah, I'm
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: going to have a tower and a bell in the
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: center of every town. It's going to ring every hour
• 34:02
  Speaker 4: and remind people that God's with them, remind people to
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: stop and praise God, remind people. So like, like metaphorically,
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: all these leaders we talked to had these bell towers.
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: In their day. Um, and some of them were crazy.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Like Mark Batterson was like, when people annoy me, I
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: take it as a bell reminder to pray.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: And he says, he's just like, I pray all the
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: time because people really annoy me. So like, it's just fun,
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: you know, but like, like what is, what is your
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: practicing the presence of God look like?
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: How do you practice for the day? I have these
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: prayer cards on my desk.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: We took the habits of all the different leaders that
• 34:37
  Speaker 4: we interviewed and created a deck of prayer cards. And,
• 34:40
  Speaker 4: and they're just like little simple things like, God, remind
• 34:43
  Speaker 4: me of your love in this moment. Make me a
• 34:45
  Speaker 4: blessing to people here. Just little sentence prayers and breathing
• 34:49
  Speaker 4: prayers just throughout the day. And then what are evening habits?
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: Our family, we take communion every night now and remember
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: the body and the blood of Christ.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: It's been so transformative. It came out of a really.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: Dark time in our family and having to do with
• 35:04
  Speaker 4: my daughter having these demonic nightmares. And we took communion
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: and she didn't have them. And we took communion the
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: next night and I was like, Kids, we're Catholic. We're
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: going to take communion every night.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: And we've been doing that for years.
• 35:18
  Speaker 4: And I can't tell you how transformative remembering the body
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: and blood of Christ is.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: That's cool.
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Or what's your campfire with Jesus at night, where you
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: just kind of review the day with the Lord? And
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: how can I please you, Jesus? Where did I miss it?
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: What do you mean by this happening? You know, like
• 35:35
  Speaker 4: all those disciple questions and And so crafting a.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: Day with God is so different.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: You just walk in with your friend throughout the day,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: not having your prayer time be done on your workout,
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: on your, you know, it's not a box you check.
• 35:47
  Speaker 4: It's leave the phone off the hook and be with
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: them all day. And that's way different, you know, than
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: what I was doing personally. So those two are transformative.
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: And then the last one was investing in prayer. One
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: of the guys in Australia, he's like, he says, mate,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: where's prayer line items?
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: In your budget. I was like, what?
• 36:10
  Speaker 4: He says, Hey, if you value something, it makes it
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: to the budget. And, and so in venture, we started
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: doing 24, uh, seven, seven round the clock prayer centers
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: in the different countries that we serve. And since doing those,
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: we've seen unbelievable things like a thousand person mass baptism
• 36:29
  Speaker 4: in a country where it was completely unreached. Uh, 26
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: unreached people groups are all present and the government tried
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: to shut it down. And the leaders got together and said,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: if you shut this down, we'll all vote against you.
• 36:41
  Speaker 4: And the leaders were like, you can have your baptism.
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: It was like this critical mass moment where the church
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: was able to have enough voice to rise up. And
• 36:50
  Speaker 4: things like that started happening since we started really investing
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: time and energy in prayer. So like in Venture and
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: our team here, you can pray on the clock. And
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: we learned that from Gary Haugen. And he has half
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: an hour a day on the clock that people can pray.
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: And he said, I did the math, and it's almost
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: like $ 4 million a year that we invest into prayer
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: as an organization.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: And that's so vital.
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: So what does it look like to invest in prayer
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: in your own personal life, invest in prayer as a culture,
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: as an organization? And so the leaders we interviewed, they
• 37:27
  Speaker 4: invested in prayer.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: They made it. And for some leaders, kind of going back.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: To what we talked about.
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:37
  Speaker 4: They'll put their life at risk to have a prayer meeting.
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: They're not going to stop having a prayer meeting.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: And, and, and, and, and, uh, I've, I've got pictures, man, of,
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: of these things being interrupted by communist soldiers. And like
• 37:53
  Speaker 4: Laos is actually a 1970s communist country, like the old
• 37:56
  Speaker 4: school Russian communism. People don't realize that there's still relics
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: of that existing still around.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 38:03
  Speaker 4: No, no right to assembly. No more than nine people.
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: you know, all these things. And, um, yeah, it's crazy.
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: So they'll put their lives at risk to have a
• 38:12
  Speaker 4: prayer meeting. And I was like, wow, that's so inspiring.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I will say, I got a taste of this, what
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: you're talking about. Yeah.
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: Number one, I think that the comments on prayer are
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: really great. I'm interested to get the book and read it. So, um,
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: lead with prayer is where I can find all that.
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: And, um, we actually have a lot of the, the
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: habits that we learned from the leaders that, You can
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: download for free. Leadwithprayer.com is the website. And you can
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: get these prayer cards, the deck of cards, and you
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: can get a whole schedule to map out a personal
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: liturgy and craft a day with God.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Nice. And all those things.
• 38:51
  Speaker 4: And stuff like how to do a prayer retreat and
• 38:54
  Speaker 4: all these other different things that we learn from these leaders.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Cool. Okay, so we'll put that link in the show notes.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: That's awesome.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Because I think people really ought to... we wrote a
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: book on prayer. Me and a buddy had a book
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: that we wrote on prayer and we had edited chapters.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: And different things like that.
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: But we're such academic geeks that, you know, I said
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: the challenge for me in writing a book on prayer
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: is that I'm so much more prone to study than
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I am to prayer.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: That, you know, it takes me time to get into
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: prayer where it doesn't take me any.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Time to get into study.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: If you, you know, set a, you know, a book
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: thick with footnotes in front of me, I'm like excited.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: It's just so much harder for me to get into.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: So that's taken me some time to sort of grow
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: into a prayer life. And, um, it's, it's kind of, um,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: it's been fantastic, but it's also been one of those
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: challenges where it kind of is like, yeah, this isn't
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: natural for me yet. You know, I'm still sort of
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: disciplining myself toward it.
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what's helped me is these prayer cards because
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: it has all these different prayers. The early church fathers,
• 40:01
  Speaker 4: they called liturgy, they called it a lattice to help
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: the vine grow. And the idea was like these steps
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: to help you grow to heaven kind of thing. And
• 40:10
  Speaker 4: so these, I just have a couple of scriptures to
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: read slowly, like Lectio Divina style, where you just read
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: slowly five times And the global church always says, by
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: the fifth time, it just starts getting interesting.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: And we're the ones that like, by the fifth time,
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: it gets boring. I know it now. It's like, well,
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: you don't know it. You don't know it.
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: It has to get in you. And so these prayer cards,
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: I'll just grab seven or eight of them. And it
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: helps you go from five minutes to half an hour
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: as you start walking through praying scripture and some written
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: prayers and guided prayers and simple things like holding your
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: hands down for 60 seconds and just letting go of
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: the pieces of your.
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: Life concerning you. And then flipping your hands up and
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: just walking through the fruit of the Spirit. Oh, Jesus,
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: help me to grow in your love. Help me to
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: grow in your joy. Help me to grow in your peace.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: These beautiful things like that, just interactive prayers like that
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: have really, really helped me. And praying through the Psalms,
• 41:07
  Speaker 4: not reading through the Psalms, but praying through them, it
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: gives you the language of prayer. It gives you the
• 41:13
  Speaker 4: language of calling out to God or rejoicing with God.
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: I have my top 10 psalms that is actually like
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: top 30 because it keeps growing you know like oh
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: yeah this is my favorite psalm and this is my
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: favorite psalm you know but yeah it's it's beautiful i.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Will say that's definitely been one of those things that
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: i've used because what i found was that i had
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: to for one reading through the psalms gave me that
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: structure and like you're saying the words to say but
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: then i started sort of transitioning from that to writing
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: some of my own prayers out because I'm so much
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: more prone to writing than I am to just thinking
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: in my own head. And so I'd write some of
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: those out and I still have that sort of practice
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: that I'm doing and trying to continue to grow in that.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: But it's, I've sort of, like I usually tell people,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: I'm adapting to my strengths, right? I'm just going to
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: lean into the geek and that's going to, you know,
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: that's going to kick off the prayer life and then
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: it'll take on a life of its own later, but
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: for the moment.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: I got to kind of lean in here. Cause I
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: don't know how else to do it.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: No, those are, those are runways, man.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: They're like runways to, for the plane to take off
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: as far as like, I start liturgically and I end
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: up extra extemporaneously, you know? And so I start reading
• 42:24
  Speaker 4: a Psalm and then I'll hit some line of it
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: and I'll go, Oh God, right now, this is what
• 42:30
  Speaker 4: I feel like.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. You know, can you meet me in this moment?
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: You know, it's just beautiful.
• 42:34
  Speaker 4: So yeah, it was like runways to get the help,
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: the plane take off to connect with God.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: And, I love that. I write prayers all the time.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: In fact, one of the– so Terry Looper, he's this
• 42:44
  Speaker 4: Christian billionaire guy that his company that he started, that
• 42:48
  Speaker 4: he owns– I think he just sold it, but he owns.
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: It's the size of the GDP of Belize. Like that's
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: how big his company is.
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: And so like if someone's like, oh, I'm really busy,
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: I'm like– this guy really finds a way to pray.
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: You can do it.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: You know, he's probably busier than you are. Yeah.
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 43:07
  Speaker 4: I'm guessing he kind of, you know, and then, or
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: as Peter Greer would say, so we're busier than Jesus.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: That's why we can't pray. You know, like Jesus found time,
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: you know, it's just so good. But he, he has
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: this thing.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: He said, write out a prayer that you can pray
• 43:21
  Speaker 4: every day until it goes from your head to your heart.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 43:26
  Speaker 4: And, and he said, it's like, like water dripping on
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: a rock, eventually burrowing a hole, from your head down
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: to your heart. And he said, there's a prayer that
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: I prayed for 10 years. And I feel like it's
• 43:37
  Speaker 4: just now starting to be true in my life. And,
• 43:41
  Speaker 4: and it's just beautiful. There's something about that repetition. Um, yeah,
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: I know people say the definition of insanity is like
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: And I always counter that like mostly, but if you're
• 43:55
  Speaker 4: chopping down a tree, You do the same thing, and
• 43:57
  Speaker 4: then something happens.
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: Then something happens, right.
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, or as you study Revelations, it said that there's
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: a bowl in heaven filled with the prayers, and when
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: it gets full, it tips out on the earth. Well,
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: that's praying something over and over and over and over, persistent,
• 44:12
  Speaker 4: and then something different happens.
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, something different happens. Yeah.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: That's very good, man. Hey, we're coming up on the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: end of our time together. And I usually ask guests
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: kind of a closing question. So I'm going to modify
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: it a little bit for you because I'm kind of
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: interested in what you think. So usually the question I
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: ask is, what do you think that the church could
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: do to be more faithful in being and making disciples?
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: That's the normal question.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: So what I'm wondering is if we can kind of
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: tailor that to your global experience and say, what do
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: you think the Western church really needs to do, start
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: to think about, attend to, that would help them help
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: the Western church be more faithful at being and making disciples,
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: maybe even in relation to the global church. Like, how
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: do you, how do you see the Western churches strengths,
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: maybe hindering us from moving ahead as disciple makers and
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: becoming disciples in ways that we could really learn from
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: that global church?
• 45:15
  Speaker 4: Um, there is a, uh, six-figure study that was done
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: on the prayer lives of leaders in America. It was
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: paid for by one of the biggest foundations in the
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: country and one of the most reputable polling firms. And
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: the data came back and it was so bad that
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: they never published the study.
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: And I got to see it.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: And the guy who paid for it said, this is
• 45:37
  Speaker 4: one of the most depressing studies I've ever seen. And
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: the deal is, is that we're not praying in the West.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: We're just not. And the Christian leaders are not building
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: cultures of prayer or talking about prayer. And yet in
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: Timothy 2.1, Paul said, I write this letter to you,
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: first of all, to urge you to pray. And so here,
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: Paul discipling Timothy, and the first thing he says, here's
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: why I'm writing this letter to you, is I'm urging you,
• 46:10
  Speaker 4: the number one thing as.
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: A disciple is you gotta pray.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: And so.
• 46:15
  Speaker 4: The one thing that came out of the study was
• 46:17
  Speaker 4: the more education, the more leadership, and the more experience
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: that someone had, the less they prayed, not the more.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: And I genuinely think the scripture that says, my people,
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: humble themselves and pray. And humble yourself is before the
• 46:36
  Speaker 4: prayer part.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: Because if you think you got it, you don't need
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: to pray. Yeah, yeah. Right? Yeah. And so you've got
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: to humble yourself and go, I don't have this.
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: God, without you. Like Moses, I can't go one step
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: without you. And then seek my face. And it says
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: prayer twice, really. Prayer and seeking. Go for it. Then
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: I'm going to heal your land. And I think the
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: global church has a lot to teach us about suffering
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: and sacrifice and how obedience-based discipleship versus knowledge-based. But I
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: think the thing that they can teach us the most,
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: is instead of, you know, if you have a two
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: by two, people would think prayer is on one side
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: and productivity is on the other. And I would say,
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't, we don't agree with that. We think prayer
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: is on one and activity is on this, but productivity
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: is a prayerful leader.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: And I think, you know, the myth of activity being
• 47:37
  Speaker 4: productivity is is a prayerless activity actually being productivity is
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: what's keeping us. And so I think if we learn
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: to pray as leaders and we teach others to pray
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: the way Paul said, the first thing I'm writing you
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: is I want to teach you how to pray. And
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: we talk about it more and we start building cultures
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: of prayer and we start leaning in. Jesus promised if
• 48:01
  Speaker 4: we abide, we're going to see fruit. And the global
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: church abides. Cause they have nowhere else to go and
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: they see, and they see fruit. So that's, that's something
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: I would probably, it's probably one of the big dreams
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: of my life is I could be helpful in the
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: spark of seeing prayerful leaders form cultures of prayer.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: And I think that would change everything.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: Fantastic answer, Ryan. Really? That's amazing. Thanks so much for
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: being on the show, man.
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: Oh, like I said, an honor.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it really has been a great conversation. I'm glad
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: Billy Halliwell connected us. It's just for the listener's viewpoint.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Billy Halliwell, he's a journalist. He does a lot of
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: work with CBN and various other Christian stations, but he
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: connected Ryan and I. And so it's just been a
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: real pleasure to meet you. This is the first time
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: we're talking, but this has been a fantastic conversation.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: I really appreciate it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I love it.
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: And any other time, I'd love to be back. I
• 49:00
  Speaker 4: love these conversations and so much fun to talk about.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: We didn't, we didn't get to dive into it, but
• 49:05
  Speaker 4: there's a whole neuroscience of prayer. That'd be really fun
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: to dive into.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: I'd actually love to have you back to talk about that.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: That'd be fantastic.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Love to.
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: So we'll, we'll get.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: It scheduled because, uh, yeah, those are things that I
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: think are really crucial and, um, it's an area that,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, prayer is one of those
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: areas that I've always struggled with. Um, I came to
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: Christianity late, didn't really understand a lot of those disciplines.
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: Studying came easy to me, reading the Bible came easy
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: to me, you know, but, um, even obedience to some
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: degree came easy to me.
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: But prayer never really has.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: It's, it's an interesting sort of one of those where
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just like, yeah, you know, I'm, it's a, it's
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: an ongoing process for me. So, um, talking about prayer
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: is one of those things I really love to do. And, uh,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: so anyway, um, give the website one more time. We'll
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: include it in the show notes, but yeah.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: So the, the organization to that serves the global church
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: is venture.org. Okay.
• 50:03
  Speaker 4: And then, uh, leadwithprayer.com is where you can get the
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: free resources. And, uh, yeah, and the book you can
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: get anywhere. It's, I think it's in seven or eight
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: different countries, um, around the world now. It's, it's, we're
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: just blown away by the reception of it.
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: So, yeah. Very cool.
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: All right, everybody, we're going to put those in the
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: show notes. I'd recommend you go check them out. Um,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: check out Ryan's organization and check out the book, lead
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: with prayer, check out the website, lead with prayer, and, uh,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: we'll catch on the next episode of thinking Christian. Just
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: want to take a second to thank the team at
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: life audio for their partnership with us on the thinking
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more.