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When the Church Tells You to Leave · The Ethnos360 Podcast

• Ethnos360: Welcome, friends, to the Ethos 360 podcast, where we talk about vital topics, have honest conversations, and unpack the Great Commission. This episode is part of the series we call Rooted and Mature. We hope you come away with greater understanding of how God will accomplish His work through us as we work together toward the goal of seeing every people group reached. Hey everybody. I am so privileged today to be here with one of my best friends, good friends, best friends from many years, Brian Homequest. We have worked together through a lot of blood, sweat and tears, I would say, Brian. That's correct, The heat and sepic region of Papua New Guinea. So I am glad you're with me. Thanks for joining me. Why don't you give the audience just a little history of your experience church planting and tell us who you are and, and, ⁓ yeah, how God has brought you on this journey. Keith, thanks. A privilege to be here. And I'm very thankful that I go back in my family. I'm a third generation missionary. So I grew up actually on the banks of the Amazon river and thought we'd be there a lot longer. And as a young guy, I was about nine years old. My dad had a really bad medical condition, cancer. We needed to come back to the States. And so we came back here and again, trying to figure out life, right? I ended up in college somehow. Again, the grace of God, I was a high school math teacher. And then God started really putting it on my heart that, this, you know, maybe going to be a missionary, but being a math teacher, that seemed the avenue that I would take. And then ended up at Bible school and New Tribes Bible School. Well, that was when there was love at first sight and it was not my wife to me, it was me to her. And through some convincing, you know, we ended up falling in love there. And she grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania and ⁓ had to spend some time overseas as well. And when God brought our paths together, we started talking and dreaming about what it might be like. And again, ⁓ there was a time in particular when we were just processing, like, what do we do? I was teaching school. And we were carrying out of life. then, so we took a season to fast and pray and say, Lord, whatever you want, we'll do it wherever you want us to go. And God started putting on our hearts, the beautiful country of Papua New Guinea. And so we set our sails there and the Lord directed us with another family, Mark and Holly Woodard. And so in 2001, dude, can you believe it? All the way back in 2001. We ended up going all the way around the world, hardly can get farther away and went ahead and went to Papua New Guinea and started learning the language of wider communication and God opened the doors for us to go work with the Baguido people. ⁓ So wait, stop right there. You've had a couple big events happen. I just want to talk to you like, how does God lead a couple together to like make this big life change? And then how does God lead you as a team into you know, a people group, is there like a, you know, did you put out a fleece or a sign in the, in the clouds or what, what does that look like? What does God's leading, what did God's leading look like in, your life? Yeah, thanks Keith. Two excellent questions. First of all, as far as Andrea and I, and we were wrestling, you know, we were sensing that God was directing and I'll tell you, God used our pastor when we were in church one day, he came out after the service and he says, Brian, Andrea, something crazy happened while I was up front in front of the church preaching the sermon. God put you on my heart. And I just want to ask you, have you ever thought about going overseas and pioneer church planning? And we just looked at each other because we were wrestling in our heart, not wrestling, but we were there. And he says, I want you to know we want to be senders. We don't want pew warmers here. And to answer your first question, God used him and we were hyped and let's go, man. So that was awesome. Wow. That is, that is like a cool story. What a cool ⁓ encouragement for pastors. Yeah, to just be sensitive to the Holy Spirit like that. That's really neat. Okay, so and then you get all the way to New Guinea and you're learning language. You're you're paired up with this other couple of Woodards who I know also. Yeah. How did you guys determine determine the Mariama people group? Yeah. So little did we know while God was working in our heart and God was working in the Woodard hearts, you know, bringing us together, directing us to the same place, aligning our goals, objectives. things we wanted to do in church planning, and it seemed like a good fit. Little did we know that God was working amongst a people group. You know, Keith, I think we can have utmost confidence, even while you and I are sitting here having this conversation, like God is working. And so we found that to be true, that the Baguitos, in response to what God was doing, were already sending people out and asking for missionaries. And there were those types of things happening. So that was confirmation. And then as we went in there, It became very clear, you know, and again, God just simply gave us that peace in our hearts that this was going to be home for a long time to come. So we settled in, made the house and, you know, got into life there. I love that. I love that idea that, that, one, people that are considering missions today or ministry overseas today, or even ministry in the States, honestly, maybe even just ministry, informal ministry with your neighbor. I love the idea of. praying that the Holy Spirit would go ahead of you. Start convicting of sin, start drawing people, start revealing truth, man, start giving them a hunger for something more. That's great, great recommendation there for somebody who's looking for an opportunity, like I said, to witness across the street or... Good stuff. Okay, so you move into... Can you throw one in for one second? Yeah. Something that we felt God started impressing on Andrea and my heart was a specific prayer request that we've seen along the way was we started praying God increase our faith to match your will for our lives. Like whatever you ask us to do, wherever you want us to go, you know, the things that we were holding onto, all we did was we didn't like give them up. We just opened up our hands and said, Lord, we'll do whatever you want us to do. Give us a faith, no fear, whatever you want us to do. May we be obedient. That's it, man. That's great. I love it. I love it. It's, it's not like there's some big, ⁓ I've talked to lot of missionaries over the years and, I think quite often people use as an excuse. Well, I've never, I've never had this burning bush experience or this Damascus road experience. So I must not be, I must not be called to do this. And what I hear you saying is actually, it sounds a lot like step-by-step bait interaction with leaders in your, in your, ⁓ church. interaction with other people, reading God's word, those kinds of things, I love it. I love the way the Lord leads in that way. Good, good stuff. So what's next? Well, you know what? Sometimes, I don't know, Keith, we often get like you were talking about, you know, God's word. And you know what? We've staked our ministry on this here that the spirit of God takes the word of God to change life. have a lives, we have a God who communicates and that communication starts with us. And then out of that, he invites us into other people's lives where the spirit of God takes the word of God. and changes lives. That's it, man. That's a recipe there. love it. I love it. Simple recipe. Good. So, so then you guys, you dive, you dive into this church planting. We do. Church planting endeavor. What, what made you think like, okay, this is, we want to do church planting. We don't want to just do evangelism or we don't want to just do a short-term thing. We want to go and do a church. Why church planting? Yeah, that's really good, Keith. I think there's two reasons that I could think of. And the first again comes out of Scripture. I'd like to, for a second, I just want to read if I could, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. We know the great commissions in each of the gospels. It's also in Acts 1-8, but I just want to look at Matthew 28, 18 to 20 and read this for us if I could. So Jesus came and said to them, all right, so let's stop right away. What's the context? Who's the them? Well, the them refers to the 11 disciples. He had taken them off by himself. And if you look in the verses before that, you'll see in verse 17, some of those very disciples who had been discipled by Jesus for three years were had doubt, man, they were scared. And so you think in this moment that maybe he would just kind of soften what he wanted to say to them, but he doesn't. And so those are the 11 that he says, he says, what all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. That's a starting point. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all I commanded you and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." So these verses here, Keith, as I was reflecting on them, okay, I used to preach on these verses and I've preached on these in a handful of churches and I've asked the audience, how many commands are in these verses? And everybody in unison, there's four, there's four, it's obvious. Go, disciple. Baptize, teach. And I used to say, yay, you know what, pass out tootsie rolls. Everybody gets it, you know, and guess what? I don't preach that way anymore. I don't because I actually think that answer is wrong. If you look at this verse, the verses, what you're going to see is that there's only one commandment and the one commandment literally is to disciple. And if you look in the Greek, it's a verb. So that verse there says, as you go, there's an assumption that every one of us are going. And so as we go, that could be in Jerusalem, and every one of us has a Jerusalem. It could be in our Judea. It may be in our Samaria. And it surely is to the utmost parts of the earth, to those who have no chance without hearing the gospel message. And so as I looked at that one, as we go, we are called to do the one command, that is to disciple. And how do we disciple? We baptize and we teach them all that he commanded. So I started thinking about this one here. If the command is to make disciples, I thought about what Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, and you may have heard this before. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, salvation is free. A big amen to that. Salvation is free, but discipleship will cost you your life. Discipleship will cost you your life. And so Keith, I think what Dietrich is saying there is being discipled, okay, first of all, there's an assumption on being discipled by the Lord Jesus Christ, but then making him disciples of others, there's going to be an investment. And I just don't see in this scripture just to go parachute in, give the gospel precious as it is, life-changing as it is. I see the biblical model laid out through the epistles, through the gospels, that you see it's going to be a discipleship approach. And that's why Christ, he spent three years discipling the disciples before he commissioned them to go. And so if I could give one more verse, maybe to just help as I was reflecting on this one. Paul says in Colossians 1.28, what does he say? Him we proclaim, the Lord Jesus Christ we proclaim, warning everyone, teaching everyone with all wisdom, and here it is. Paul's goal was to present everyone mature in Christ. I believe that I have the responsibility before the Lord to steward the ministries given, and part of that is, is to fight for the same thing Paul did in bringing to maturity those who come to Christ under our ministry. That's discipleship. Okay, so. So a couple of questions. mean, I love the fact that you take God's word literally. think that's, that's, ⁓ that's vital for all of us. Yeah. Right. So let me ask you this, like going into it, how long did you think, I mean, what were you thinking honestly, as you were, okay, we headed overseas. Were you thinking this is a 20 year endeavor or a lifetime endeavor or 40 year? What were you thinking? Yeah. So here's the cool thing. Honestly. Naivety of all naivetees. You like I like the next guy when we headed over bro. We just knew he had told us to go and disciple and to teach and baptize. And so we didn't know. Yes, we were trained. Okay. So we were trained. So we had somewhat of an idea like what maturity look like. But the thing is I encourage people when they ask me the question like how long is it going to take? I want to be a church planter. How long is it going to take? I can look them in the eye and I can say that's the wrong question. It's never a question of time. It's a question of maturity. You know, it's like me as a dad, you know what, Keith, you got your kids out of the house in 18 years. I can do it in 17. I can do it in 15. It's not the issue, man. It's about maturity. No, and that's right. And then the reality is, is our kids graduate and they do eventually move out. And then what? It's not like we just stop interacting with them and stop communicating with them. So how long did you end up? in Marriama, just let me just start that off with, yeah, like how long were you there? So we lived in the village for 15 years. And during those 15 years, obviously it took us some time to learn the language, to learn the culture and to develop relationships of trust. And after that, we were able to move into some things. Now, Keith, we had folks who were illiterate. They were, they were non-literate. So we had to develop a literacy program. We had to teach them how to read and write. Now when you're taking adults and teaching them to read and write, it's not the same as kids. They just learn at a different pace. And so that took time. Translation took time. Writing Bible lessons took time. All of these together, teaching them, we ended up spending a total of 15 years until we got to the point where we able to see the church standing on its own two feet. And then it became very obvious we needed to step away and let them depend on the Lord for things they should be depending on Him for. not looking to us. Okay, so 15 years and yet you started in what you say 2001. Now do you continue to go back on a regular basis, semi-regular basis? Are you done or what do you think? Yeah, great question. the church actually, I think of it this way. I'm a dad with four kids. They're all between the ages of 25, 26 down to 21. There was a time that they all started moving out of the home. We got this dad, we're okay. We don't really need you. You know, you're smiling. You know where I'm going with this. And then all of a sudden, a little bit later, they're like, wait a second, hold on. We want to circle back and we need a little more mama, a little daddy time. And so that is kind of what happened in the church plant. They were on their own, standing on their own two feet. They had pastors, they had deacons leading the church. They had done an outreach and yet all of a sudden they just sensed that maybe a little bit of time with their spiritual parents, the church planners would help them. And one of the things they ask us to do is to help them develop more curriculum and also help prepare them to reach out cross linguistically, cross culturally, because they had never really done that before. So we're helping them now part time a couple of months each year. ⁓ So you're, saying it's an ongoing, it's an ongoing process, which will probably continue on much like with your kids until your death. Yeah. Only till death that's till death do you part. That's how it is. That's exactly right. That's right. So, all right. So you said it doesn't matter. Don't focus on time, focus on maturity because that's what discipleship is about is bringing, what was that Colossians verse? Colossians 1.28. Yeah. And the verse says something like bringing them to full maturity in Christ, right? That's the goal. was Paul's goal for the Colossal Church, Colossi Church. And that's our goal for the churches that we work in. bringing them to maturity. how do you even start to, well, wait, back up, back up. Separate out for me just a little bit how the evangelism process went because we would both agree that in order to make disciples, the key part is, is getting, you got to get people to a point where they recognize they need a savior and get saved. So walk me through those early days of the church. And then we'll talk later about maturity down that road. But what's it look like in the early days? Yeah, so first of all, what we did was again, this is just a very slow process. First of all, in 2008, we taught them creation of Christ. we started with again, you you're starting with the book. So you're going to start with the author of the book, start in Genesis. And over the course of three months, we got to the gospel message. And we saw there was quite a few folks that professed faith in Christ and started that journey of growth. And so then what we did is we moved into solidifying those truths, like the identity in Christ. We jumped into X. Now when I say jumped into X, Keith, you and I both know this is going to take us several months, you know, translating, teaching, and then we're seeing the church grow. We start doing outreach with the church. And then afterwards we went into the big one was Romans and that took quite a while to translate. And I think we took four to five months teaching Romans, Ephesians, family life. And Keith, this was jarring for them. Right. They didn't need to just hear something once just like you and I don't. Like I think of how many family marriage conferences I've been to, how many sermons I've heard in justification. You know, it's like the hammer just keeps hammering on this hard head. It's the same, man. So we would just keep going over and over from different angles, slowly to the point we would get through different books and then eventually tight as Timothy and seeing leadership established and then from there. ⁓ So back up, you said something that just kind of jarred me a little bit there. When did you move into the village? And then when did you start teaching? There was a big gap there, I think. Oh, don't go there, Keith. I know, know 2001. And we ended up teaching them in 2008. And what are you doing during that time? Like, I mean, what took so long? Great question. So first of all, all the things that I kind of touched on before learning a language and culture, you know, you're with the people, we were living with the people were the first outsiders ever to live there. There are literally zero believers like zero believers in the whole language group, 100 % unreached. That's sobering, right? That's sobering. So as we're learning the language and culture, we start heading on some worldview things. How's this one? So this one, this one might get you. So we're living in the village, learning language, culture, and some little funny stuff starts happening. The people start coming asking questions that just don't seem right to us, and they don't tell us what they're really thinking. Well, it took us several years before some of them broke this pact they had. and they came to us on the side and said, you do know how we see you, don't you? I'm like, well, yeah, we're your missionaries. You wanted us to come. You invited us in here. They said, no, you know what's really going on, don't you? I said, no, tell me more. You know, and they said, well, we don't believe you're really people. We believe that you are departed dead ancestors. Literally, you used to have skin like ours. You died, you went to the place of the dead, you broke out of your skin, you came back with white skin, and we know. If we just listen to this message right, we are going to get the goods. We're going to have a way of life like you. We won't have to work on and on and on and on and on. And we're like, what in the world? That's what this is all about. they're not, they're not thinking spiritual. No, they're thinking more like we're going to get physical goods. Absolutely. And imagine this, if we would have never known that if we would have just like literally parachuted in there. been not knowing the culture, not knowing what they were thinking and just added Jesus onto all that. I don't know that what took place would have taken place. Well, yeah, and undoubtedly, eventually down the road when they didn't get the goods, they would have moved on to the next. That's right. Getting those whatever that would be right. You're done. Exactly right. You are the wrong one. The wronging door. Mission organizations coming in and giving them services and giving them more, giving them what they want. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So yeah. So I see now why that culture is such a key piece. It is because otherwise you're saying, Hey, we got this great message for you. they're saying, yes, are so excited. and you're going, uh, that's not the message. Yeah. Okay. Wow. All those things took a long time. And then again, just translation. I'm probably a years where the translation just to go through Genesis. to get through key Old Testament passages into the gospels. We did the gospel of Mark just to get enough scripture so we could actually clearly communicate the message. So we know what we were saying. We knew what we were saying. We knew what they were hearing and we knew that there would not be a miscommunication. And then in the midst of all that, Keith, you asked what took so long. You know, those are all the things that we're doing, but God's ways are not necessarily linear as one thing we've learned. God allowed on our team, medical situation after medical situation after medical situation. If anybody wants to know how to deal with malaria, go ahead and call me up. I mean, countless times, my children, you know, us, that's one thing you see your children, dangey fever, going out with taking our son out. Literally, we thought he was going to die. And the doctors did too. And God saved him was so good to him. Our co workers with brain tumor going out the son of the brain tumor, and having to go out and wrestling through all those things. Keith, here's the thing though, the baton of suffering. that the Lord Jesus Christ carried when he was on this earth. He passes that baton of suffering to you and I as his missionaries, as his sent ones, and we go out. I think of Colossians 1.24. are fulfilling what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. We are a visible manifestation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and we will suffer. But here's the thing, in the midst of all that suffering, who's watching? Yeah. Yeah. And you know what? In some ways, In some ways, suffering is one of the very few things that you actually have in common with the folks that you're there to reach, right? Because you can't talk sports with them. don't know what sports we even watch. can't talk, there's politics. They've got a whole, none of that stuff is relevant to them. But suffering, that's a human universal, right? Because we live in this broken world. I love it. I love it. That's so good. Okay. So. You walk them through that. You talked us through that process. You walk them through. So they're starting to mature. You're getting excited. How would you even go about, let's talk about how we would even go about evaluating. Maturity like what, what would be maturity for individuals? What would be in maturity for the church? How would we even go about evaluating that? That's good. Yeah. One of the things that you obviously start seeing anywhere in any church. is you're going to see the maturity starts taking place individually. Some start, you know, progressing faster. Some are lagging behind and you're trying your best to fight for that collective maturity in the church as best as possible. That's what the apostle Paul said. But the way to evaluate it, you have to have a way to evaluate it. So some people use something called, we've probably all heard of the nine marks. That's a really good way. There's the four selves, know, progress towards maturity. We in our organization. have another way we call it the four views of maturity. And so we try to take a look at the church and we evaluate it progressively along the way. So when we go through the book of Acts, we ask ourselves, what do we believe the book of Acts, how should it impact the church? What changes do we see take place? And if we don't see those changes, what do we do? Just keep feeding them or do we have to do something else? And so the four lenses that we talk about, and I know you're familiar with these kids, sorry, Keith, are God's word. for the church, identity of the church, life of the church, and discipleship in the church. And I could tell you more about those, but those are the four lenses. Yeah. I like it. I like it. So you got word, identity, life, and discipleship. All right. So let's walk through them each one by one, just take a little time. What do you mean by God's word for the church? What, like, I know you're doing translation, obviously. So what do you, so is that what you were evaluating? Is how much translation you had done or what were you evaluating? So part of it is, yes, God's word, like you have to have God's word for the church to be growing in it, right? That seems like a no-duh thing. So it's God's word for the church. It's applying it. And also it is seeing, are they able to, is it becoming authoritative in their lives? And do they have the tools that are necessary to understand it? You know, it's one thing to have God's word, but it's another thing to actually have the tools to be able to interpret it. So we would call it a biblical hermeneutic and And in this authoritative, is it impacting their life? That's God's word for the church. That's such a great tool for even the US church that would apply to my own life. Is God's word the authority here or is my political view or my emotions or my feelings or you know, what, man, what a great tool that's just stand back and say, wait a minute, standing back objectively, where does God's word. What position does that word hold in my life? And so, yeah, you're looking at this church, you're looking at individuals and you're seeing, yep, they're starting to, were you seeing them grow in their love for the word and for their desire to follow the word? That's right. As dads, as moms, as families, as a community, are we seeing God's word impacting them and we're seeing that maturation take place. And as you said, is there a deepening love for the word of God? Yeah. Are there big things where they were looking at God's word and saying, Whoa, that, that actually is counter-cultural. There's like anything and everything, you know, I mean, yeah, there's many things. And what happens is though, when you enter God's word into a community and, and, and again, you're starting to teach it. There's not automatic worldview shift that takes place. It's a gradual thing that takes place. Think of it this way. When you put braces into the teeth, right. You don't like take these teeth and just crank them in place overnight. There's a gradual tightening that takes place and there's much wisdom in that. And that's the same thing as you're translating a teaching and you're trusting the spirit of God to see that gradual worldview shift take place. And that just takes place over and again. Yeah. What, what, mean, you got it, dude, the fact that you got, I hate to say it this way, but the fact that you got paid to meditate and dissect and consume God's word all day, every day. That had to be a privilege. Yep. That's right. Absolutely. Yeah. And then taking those and just walking through God's Word and other people's lives, learning as much as they do in that process. So you, you translated how much of the Old Testament and then all of the New Testament. How much of the Old Testament did you do? Yeah. We have part of the Old Testament. We don't have any of the books completed. We do have the entire New Testament completed. Our plan for the Old Testament, because we have bilinguals, Instead, what we're doing is we are creating resources to help them understand the Bible in the language of wider communication. And so we think that's a better way to tackle rather than translating the whole old Bible is to help them understand what already exists in there. And now they interpret the Old Testament through the lens of what we've taught them in the New Testament. And it really seems to be working. like that. I like that because again, it's not just about, it's not just about information dump. Here's, here's God's word figured out. It's. Yeah. Hey, we want you to actually be able to take this, consume it, interpret it, know, understand it, apply it. And those things are, that's good. Okay. So the next, the next topic that we use our lens that we use. if you think of a house, you have four sides of the house. got to look at all four sides to get the complete picture. So the first view is God's word. The second view is the identity of the church. So as we're teaching them, one of the things we're looking to see is, are they growing in their understanding? Do they see their identity going all the way back to the Church of Jerusalem? Like this is the Church of God, the called out ones, the ones that were bought with the blood of Christ. And do they understand in that new identity, do they understand their security in Christ? Do they understand that they are loved unconditionally? And so we start walking through all those identity truths. And then also we start helping them understand that they have responsibilities and privileges now as members of the body of Christ. And we start that early on so that we're not creating a consumeristic church. love it. So, so give me some examples, like what would be their, what would be their identity and what did they have identity in? Yeah. Under their, their original. Yeah. You know, worldview, what were, what were the things that they identified? like this is the strongest identity they had. The absolute strongest one would have been within their family clan, their clans. So when we stand and look out at anything happening in the village, you would always see the clans together. If you'd ask someone, hey, who's your best friend? They would look at me and they'd say, wait, well, first of all, we don't have a word for friend. It's just my clan. Like, that's who we are. We're tight. And so you would never, you would never ever ever go against your clan. But what has to happen, there has to be a transition where God's family becomes more important to them than their earthly family. That's an identity truth that we have seen take place. And that's, that's gotta be in some ways that probably didn't go real well. If all of a sudden the clan doesn't all become believers. Now you've got this tension, right? Yeah. Another thing, I mean, I just sit there and I think of so far you've described two, two views of this, this church. And we are starting with the concept of discipleship. Both of those are going to take time. Understanding God's word takes time, but man, now actually going, ⁓ yeah, I'm a different, I'm a different creation now. I'm a new creation. I'm not, I'm not that I'm this. That's going to take some time to work through. So, okay. Wow. Okay. So that's, that's identity and a major worldview shift there. What about life? you think of life, it's their personal lives, life of the church. literally if I can say it, is Christ becoming the center of their lives. Do the churches have leadership? Are they reaching out to other locations? Do they have baptisms? Do they have communion? What does the life of the church look like? And so what we do is we take time to go through God's Word, teaching it systematically, and then contextualizing it so we're not trying to recreate like what the life of our church looks like. But looking at it, so we actually see it within their culture, how the body of Christ takes shape. ⁓ So, so what does life look like in Mariama church? Like, like what's something that you can see? Like it's, changed over the years that you look at and go, that's, that's, that's the life of a, of a believer there. That's different or life of a church that's different than what they had before. You know, Yeah, big one I've seen is them being willing to sacrifice. is they just they don't sacrifice. They're all they typically without Christ. It's all about themselves. And just what are we at now? We're in January here. Four months ago, when I was in Papua New Guinea, I was privileged to go out with those who were sent from that home church and to go into another village. And I was there for the first couple of days. And I witnessed, first of all, how the church embraced them and cared for these two families being sent out. and how these two families were sent out and started living there and they have left what is comfortable to them. The same thing that you and I as missionaries do is when we're sent out to see them being willing to be sacrificially serving the Lord Jesus Christ because they're thinking eternally. Yeah, that's not natural, right? We by nature, we're self-preservers. We look out for our number one and yeah, only God's word can change and Holy Spirit can change us to make us actually. Other centered and that's, and that is the true life of Christ. We're taking that on. okay. I love it. And then finally, I mean, looking at it, discipleship. What do you mean by the view of discipleship? Yeah. So start going back to where I started a Matthew 28, 18 to 20 on, you know, being really sent out as disciplers that that's what our calling is. So do they willingly accept the baton being passed to them of discipleship? And do we see discipleship taking place in their lives? So when I go in the village, everybody that I see, I asked two questions to right away. Who's discipling you and who are you discipling? Because I know if if discipleship stops in the church, the church is going to die tomorrow. So are they being discipled by Christ? And do you see discipleship actively taking place now? Wow. That, that is a message for those of us around the world right there. You just said something pretty profound. If discipleship stops in the church, the church dies. And, ⁓ man, we got to be intentional about that. love that. And, we, we've got to keep, keep pushing on that all the time. Okay. So what, like, not all of us are teachers. Not all of us are, are preachers. What, what does discipleship look like in Mariama? What discipleship and you're, are you asking with. those in the church. Yeah, with those in the church. Yeah. What does it look like for a church member to maybe he's not the preacher. Yeah, he's not the elder. But what's what's it look like for for somebody to disciple somebody in my Yama? Yeah, I think I was thinking of the outreach actually as a beautiful example of that. So if you look at the the two families that are sent, the two couples that are sent on this outreach, you would see one is a dynamic preacher. ⁓ He's been preaching in the home church. He's been ordained elder for many years. And there he is. And you're like, okay, I kind of get all that. And then see the other guy who's been functioning in the shadows. If I can say it, not in a negative sense, but functioning as a deacon in the church for many years, going all the way back to 2014. And this guy would never say a word publicly, but what you would see is him going there and living relationship with intentionality and that's discipleship. So he goes there. He's not threatened. I actually don't call him Donald. His name is Donald. I call him Barnabas because he is so, does such a good job on wearing the Barnabas ministry. And I encourage him in that. So what I'm saying is discipleship means everybody simply taking the gifts God's given you and pouring into other people, not void of being poured into, but it's living out those relationships of intentionality. That's what it is. I love it. I love it. So even here, here in my home country, yeah, it's, The moms that are taking time with the kids. It's the dads that are, saying, Hey, let's go outside, buddy. Let's, know, let's go hang out. Let's let's put that thing together or let's work on that or what those are all. But not just hanging. I love the fact that you put in that word intentionality. We're, going to try this. We're going to pray earnestly. The guy gives us something spiritual to talk about something from his word to talk about. Yeah. Good stuff, man. I love it. Love it. All right. So. So those are the four views that God's word for the church, the identity of the church, the life of the church and discipleship within the church. How do you know when, how did you know? okay, you know what, we're actually a point where we can, we can move out. How did you get to that point where you could move out of this? This is exciting. This was God ordained. ⁓ there's only been two times in our entire church plant that the church gathered Mark and I and our families together and said, we want to have a serious conversation with you. This was the first of the two. So they got us together in the church building and, you could see that they were just like, they wanted to make sure they communicated clearly with us and, didn't offend us or whatever. And so it started into it. Here's what they said. They, they affirmed us, Mark, Holly, we, really love you guys. You know that? Well, of course we know that Brian, Andrea, same thing. You've treated us like your third family, like you've invited us in. into deep relationships. And Keith, I want to say that again, I just think it's really important for our listeners to understand when we enter into a church plant, it's not us as paternalistic like speaking down to them. These are deep friendships we're pursuing. And the Baguitos, I will tell you, are some of my dearest friends in the face of the earth. And so these dearest friends got us together. And after they said those things, here's what they said. We think you guys ought to consider starting to become itinerant, starting to spend a month away from us. two months away from us, a couple more, because we're finding ourselves depending on you for things that we should be depending on the Lord for. Keith, that was incredible, incredibly insightful. Wow. So they're saying, don't want you guys to be the papas here, the dads. Even though you are spiritually the father, just like Paul was saying, I'm spiritually your dad. They're saying we need a little independence. In a lot of ways, it's kind of like that. Almost like we've gone back to that analogy of a teenager. It's like that first time the teenager says, Hey dad, can I take the car and go get milk by myself? Like, actually think I want to do this by myself. And you're going, not with my car. You can't use your mama's Right? No, but it's that idea of at some point they want to strike out a little bit on their own. And that's not a bad thing. That's a good thing. Okay. So, so they get to that point. What did that look like then walking over those next few months as you move in and out? stepped away and actually moved into regional and field leadership and started serving a little more broadly, helping other church plants evaluate. You know what? We would go into another church plant and we would take some of these guys along and we would pull out the four views, God's word, identity, life, discipleship, and help a church plan that came a little bit after us, help them evaluate their own church plant. And so we would have interaction with them. We would be continuing to help them through lesson writing and things like that, but kind of moving farther and farther away. And again, we had actually moved back here to the States. And after a few years of that, they said, can you please come back and help us specifically, as I mentioned before, with curriculum and reaching out to other people groups. So that's what we're now working together towards. Okay. So you went at first, you went a few months, a month or so, and then eventually longer, longer. So, and when you did that. Were they, were they able to step in? it, did it go smooth or was there bumpy road? Yes and no. As a dad to another dad and, and, and those of you in our audience who have gone through this as well, sometimes you'd need to give your kids, we need to give our kiddos that, that little more leash and they're going to make some mistakes and we're there to help them out. So they did some things. There was times, you know what I think of, you know, after Jesus told the disciples, he was going to die. What did they hear? ⁓ you're going to die. Really? Well, I want to be with you in glory. I want to be on the right side. I want to be on the left side. It's like, did you just hear me? I'm going to die. And so there were those types of things happening, but we're close enough, like with our kids, like with our spiritual kids. Now as a church planner, we're close enough to help them walk through those. Yeah. I, I have a friend and he said, you know, no, nobody, nobody learns to drive without crunching some metal and breaking some plastic at some point. yeah, it's like that in church. too, you know, there's things that they go through and it's sometimes I'm a firm believer that actually walking through failure. It is almost not that I would ever plan for failure, not that I would ever wish failure or pray for failure for anybody. I guess it's just part of life. Right. so you got to, as it happens, think learn to help them, learn to pick back up, sort it back out, apologize, you know, all those things that, need to happen when we fail. think, yeah. think that's good. So, wow. All right. Good stuff, man. I'm excited. So when, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but. Where are you at now and when do you see your time with the church ending? Yeah, so that is a really good question. We are not full time and I honestly would see us for the next, kind of like the apostle Paul. You know what? He made that last, we call it the fourth missionary journey, ended up in Rome and guess what? Life ended and there was no more investment. There was no more assisting the churches in maturity. So right now we just continue. And again, there's not a dependency, a need of them on us or I don't have this need I have to, but it's really helping them out with some specific things that we believe will help them so that they can actually have generational maturity in the churches. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's so cool. ⁓ so now you stand back and you look to where you're at in life. What are some ups and downs that you would look at and go, you know what? These were, these were really. These were really good things in this whole experience on this whole journey. And then maybe, maybe just be at keeping it real. Cause I'm all about keeping it real. What are some things that you're like, that was, that was actually a real big bummer. You know, like I didn't like that at all. Maybe, maybe if, I don't know, a failure or somebody else's failure or I don't know, what's, what's like, I'll talk about yours or Mark's failure. I didn't have them. right. No, you know, one of the things I teach on is church planning here at the training center. And I'm privileged over the course of the things we're talking about now over this 45 minutes hour. don't know what we have here. I get about 90 hours in the classroom to walk through the early, early days and then all the way into the maturity and, what it looks like to become itinerant. And so I'm actually winding up in three days. I'll be back in the classroom. So I'm excited. But one of things I tell the students is that honestly, nothing ever went according to plan. Like we had plan after plan after plan and nothing ever went that way. but I look back now and I see the faithfulness of God and I cannot believe how good God has been, Keith. This is a season of blessing to look back and see all the good God has done in that church plant amongst the people. So you ask about the joys, the challenges. Let me put out the challenges first. Like what are the real life difficulties that, you know, we faced? One of them is thinking back and again, the memory is kind of growing faint now, but how many times we had sicknesses? Yeah. Man, time after time and, and how many times we had to leave even to go get medical help going out of the country several times. Those were not easy to go through. But again, they were, they were a voice of what I say in the class did classes that trust in the message that we give, right? Trust in the message is always based on trust in the messenger. Yeah. Okay. And so we, as the messengers are building that trust through our lives. So that when the message comes, the two should align themselves like this. And by the way, that's how it always is in life, right? That you can't shortcut that. so the sicknesses were a big challenge. Secondly, you know what? We had an enemy. We have an enemy, excuse me. And he desperately, desperately was trying to stop us in what we were doing. I even thought up till the very end, you know, we had all this stuff come together. We had language, we had culture behind us. We had literacy, we had translation, we had the lessons. And we earmarked this day, January 8th, 2008 as a day to start. There was excitement in the village. Everybody promised again, unique situation. Everybody promised to come. day before Keith, the day before for the first time, you're laughing. The first time in all of their history, putt, putt, putt, a motor comes down the river that had happened before, but not the result of it. Somebody from another country comes in and he beckons the people and he shows the money and says, if you we'll just do these things, like leave the village for a couple weeks at a time. I'm gonna come back in three weeks and I am gonna give you the thing you want that you don't have money. And it's like, no, you've gotta be kidding me. And what do you do there? They were buying some kind of product from the farm? They fell a tree, they take the bark off and then they have to dry it over the course of a couple weeks. And it really, what they would tell us is, well, we're not gonna go very far. Well, yeah, you're not going to go very far the first day in the first week, but the next month you're to go farther and farther because you're going to take the closest trees. So we came up with a plan, a rigorous plan somehow to work out both of these and to be able to get them God's word. But that was a picture of how we often felt attacked by the enemy. know what? That is a great story for why people back home need to be praying for. specifically for missionaries and engaged with specific missionaries. Know your missionaries know exactly what they're going through. So you can pray for them because I believe with all my heart, the enemy is real. He's observant and he's, he's watching and, he knew you were getting close. didn't mean may not have known the future. He did not know the future, but he knew it was close and he was going to throw a giant distraction out there. And we've got to keep praying. We've got to keep praying for that spiritual side. Yeah. Yeah. That we can't, we can't fight flesh and blood with that. We can't do that. That's something that only, only God and his angels can do. And we need to, we need to be praying that they will continue to, to, to fight on our behalf. So that's great. That's a great encouragement to pray. So that's a, that's a bummer. That's a challenge. What's some of the highs? And one more challenge, I want to keep the prayer thing going so you don't just see it as like for us, if I could give that Keith real quick one here is the third one that really was a challenge to see is that it's one thing for us to suffer for our faith. But you know, the same way that we see our children suffer and it really tears at us. The thing that has really been difficult is seeing like Paul really felt it deeply when those in the church suffered, seeing those who come to Christ under our ministry, seeing them suffer, seeing them persecuted. seeing men beat their wives, because the wife came to the Lord, the husband didn't. So as we think of praying for missionaries, yes, let's think of those who are coming to faith, who are rising up and who are able to lead and growing in their faith as well. So I just want to put that out there, Keith. No, that's the reality is quite often there's in some ways even a greater cost than we experience here in our home country. There's a greater cost to our folks overseas in different settings. Cause like you said, man, you're, you're, you're starting to, to alter the shape of the community that's all based on these clan lines and now things are reshaping and in the process of that, wow. relationships. I just read that this morning. He said, I didn't come to actually create this unity. I actually came to create disunity in families and in friendships and things like that as some will choose to follow Christ and some will choose not to. That still doesn't mean that it doesn't. hurt. It still doesn't mean that there's not a price to pay right for following Christ. So wow, that's good stuff. We got to keep praying for our brothers and sisters around the world that are facing those challenges. Good stuff. On to the joys. On to the joys. You good? Okay. Sorry. I just want to put that one in there. Good. That's a much bigger picture going on than just us, you know. So, ⁓ the joys, you know what? ⁓ the Bible says when you leave your family, your loved ones, your home, and you go for my sake and for the gospel. You're going to receive so much more. I am just overjoyed as is my wife, knowing that we have family and friends scattered across this world. know, those who we have poured into and then a part of bringing to Christ. that just every day brings much joy. And I'll tell you, as I know you'd say the same thing, Keith, every one of those hardships are so worth it when you realize that some it might be one and maybe many. That's the Lord's doing. But seeing people come to Christ through our ministries. And then secondarily, if you swing back to the first one, I talked about Lord, increase our faith. Looking back over the last 25 years from day one in Papua New Guinea up through now, I'm telling you, it has not been easy. It's not been easy at all. if you see in scripture, the faith tests that God, the Christ gave the disciples, like increase progressively. And that's how it is in our life. But we have seen the faithfulness of our God in the midst of those difficulties. And I just want to say thank you to him for all that he has done. Even when we were very low in faith, like the disciples were. Yeah. There's, there's definitely days when you start to wonder like, what am I doing? Is this ever going to result in anything? All those things. Yeah. And you know what? I agree that the Lord is so, so faithful. What's some verse that you and your wife really cling to during those times? Do you have it? Do you have a set of verses or something or maybe a song that you go to? Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for asking that Keith. And the verses ironically. The starting point becomes the ending point here, Matthew 28, 18 to 20. You know, we talked about the disciple, the go, the baptize, the teach. Let's leave that to the side right now. But if you think of in verse 18, ⁓ what did Jesus tell the disciples? He says, all authority has been given to me. And then he jumps down into verse 20, ⁓ where he says, and behold, I'm with you always, even to the end of the age. You know, it is a sustaining presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. in the midst of everything. Like we were never alone, Keith. Like think about that. Even when we felt alone, even when we sent off our coworkers, convulsing with a brain tumor with their son, like, and we were left alone. We were not alone. And the Lord Jesus Christ expected us to factor His presence into our daily lives. We have rallied around those verses time and time and time again on this journey of increasing our faith to match His will for our lives. Yeah. Yeah. And, and I mean, just for our viewers that that's that young man survived and is doing wonderful today. Loves the Lord walks with the Lord today. So cool story there for another time. ⁓ so what are you doing now? What are you, what are you up to these days? What, what occupies your time now? Yeah. So we're here in Missouri, ⁓ with ethnos 360 training center. My wife and I spend about five to six months of the year, in some levels, helping on leadership and give direction. But really it's being in the classroom, teaching on church planning. And then we go to another country and we spend two months there teaching church planning as well to those who are in that country, reaching their own unreached people groups. And then we swing back to Papua New Guinea, and then it's back to here in Missouri and then off to the country and then to New Guinea. And then that's just kind of our cycle right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, something tells me as I talk to you that being in your class must be a joy, a trip, ⁓ I know how charismatic you are, ⁓ your charisma. It's infectious. like it. I like being around it. It gets me pumped up. So, And, ⁓ that training that you offer, is that a one year, two year program? ⁓ is it missionary specific? What is that training? Yeah, we have a two year training program. You know, obviously we assume that those who come already have a Bible training and we have a Bible school. It could be from other Bible schools. It's all good. But we offer two years of training to those who are heading out heading out for cross cultural support ministries or church planting. So it's fairly comprehensive, but it's very uptempo as well because we want to go send out mature men and women so that they can create, you know, healthy people create healthy people. And so we want to make sure that we hand them out, send them off equipped for ministry. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just put a plug in there too. I just know that, ⁓ your, your staff out there is full of folks, like you all, ⁓ men and women that have been there, have done it, ⁓ experienced it, ⁓ learned from that experience, ⁓ grown in their walk with the Lord from that experience. And yeah, it's, ⁓ again, it's a great tool and we'll put some, put some links in the bottom of this. Excellent. Yeah. This here, so you can connect through to that and, ⁓ reach out to Brian. And to the training center where he works, ethnos 360 training center. If you, if you want to know more about that, Brian, thanks for your time. Appreciate it. This has been so easy because you and I have so much history together. And, ⁓ I said going in, I said, let's just, just make it about being friends and, and yeah, that's, that's easy for us to do. So thanks for your time. And I really appreciate it. Thanks. Any, any closing thoughts or anything else you want to end it? No, appreciate much what you're doing. Thank you. And yeah, it's just a joy to continue to have our lives intersect in ministry and just keep going forward, brother. Job's not done, ⁓ That's right. That's right. When we die, it'll be done. Yeah. That will just glory in heaven. So look forward to it. All right. Thanks so much and you have a great day. You too, bro. Thank you for investing the time to listen to today's episode. It's our prayer that what you heard causes you to think more about your next step as a believer who understands the Great Commission. If this was encouraging to you, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. We don't take the privilege of your time lightly, and if we can help answer any questions this episode may have raised in your minds, feel free to reach out to us at podcast at ntm.org or you can contact us via our socials. And finally, this podcast is a production of Ethnos 360, all rights reserved.