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Bonus: Join a Marketplace Mission Trip! (Mike Henry Sr. / Follower of One) · Finding God at Work

• 0:06
  (Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, I'm Chris.
• 0:08
  This is Finding God at Work.
• 0:14
  For our regular listeners, this episode's going to be a little different.
• 0:18
  Instead of just me talking, we have a special guest, Mike Henry Sr., who leads a wonderful ministry called Follower of One, a real shared heart with Mission Central and with the kind of work that I do and what we talk about here on the Finding God at Work podcast.
• 0:33
  So thanks so much for being with us today, Mike, really appreciate it.
• 0:37
  Thanks for the opportunity, Chris, I'm grateful.
• 0:40
  I know we're going to get to talking a little bit about the Marketplace mission trip, which I just participated in the Marketplace mission trip number 36 from Follower of One.
• 0:50
  But before we get to that, I was wondering if you could just give like a two minute testimony.
• 0:54
  I was really inspired when you shared with me personally and with the group your story of kind of coming to faith, thinking you needed to change jobs, but then eventually coming to a different view.
• 1:06
  So, yeah, I became a Christian at age 30 because I was frustrated at work and I was frustrated at home and I couldn't tell my boss no.
• 1:15
  So I decided to try what my wife wanted me to do, which was go to church.
• 1:20
  And if it didn't work, I was going to tell her no.
• 1:23
  And in the three month period of time while I was there, they had a workshop.
• 1:28
  And through that workshop, I happened to learn a gospel presentation.
• 1:32
  And that's when I learned about salvation being by faith alone through grace, right?
• 1:37
  God's grace.
• 1:40
  And the next day, though, that was a Saturday, Sunday afternoon, Sunday morning, I had a great day at work, I mean, at church.
• 1:48
  The next day, I had a great pit in my stomach because I had to go to work my old job.
• 1:55
  I didn't like it either.
• 1:57
  And so I started begging God to get me out of there.
• 2:00
  I would talk to my pastors and the answer was always, we'll come back out here to the church and we'll teach you this or we'll teach you that.
• 2:08
  I couldn't get away from work.
• 2:10
  I had to work.
• 2:12
  I kept begging Jesus to put me into ministry.
• 2:15
  I found out that our FedEx guy was praying for one of my co-workers and he and I started sharing prayer requests.
• 2:24
  And over the course of the next several years of my career, I continued to struggle with this tug of war between what the church was trying to get me to do and my job and I worked on my career.
• 2:35
  Some I asked Jesus to put me into ministry.
• 2:39
  And the only thing I ever, I never really heard an audible voice, but the idea I got was, okay, you're a minister and I get back to work.
• 2:48
  I remember asking him one time to please give me more Christians at work.
• 2:54
  I was like, I'm the only Christian there.
• 2:56
  Would you, and I, one day I just kind of got this idea.
• 3:00
  Well, you know, I can send the FedEx guy anytime I want, you know, stop complaining and get back to work and I'll send you what you need.
• 3:08
  I didn't save you to take you out of there.
• 3:11
  I saved you to leave you in there.
• 3:12
  I've said that probably the longest.
• 3:17
  And so I spent a few years working on my career and then after 9 11, I actually went back to God and I said, well, career isn't working.
• 3:26
  I, this makes me very aware that there's many more things going on in the world than just my job.
• 3:34
  And what do you want me to do?
• 3:36
  Are you going to put me into ministry this time?
• 3:38
  And as I was driving to work, the only thought that popped into my head was well, I'm not going to get a new job today and I can pray for my co-workers.
• 3:46
  And I started walking through the office mentally and praying for each desk or cube as I walked past it and started asking God to show me how to communicate with people.
• 3:58
  And that leads us to 20 years later, basically 18 years later of coming up with follower of one.
• 4:07
  Now there was an online community that I stumbled across in another platform and I was reading it, rereading an old book today, The Barbarian Way by Erwin McManus, which I probably read in 2003 or 2004.
• 4:24
  And many of my ideas come from that book.
• 4:27
  I mean, we're not, you know, just supposed to do what our pastors tell us to do.
• 4:32
  We're called to fall madly in love with Jesus, as Erwin says, fall madly in love with Jesus and do whatever you want.
• 4:40
  And, you know, it looks a little barbarian.
• 4:44
  Yeah.
• 4:46
  I love that statement though, that it's not limited.
• 4:49
  It's not limited to formal church ministries.
• 4:52
  It's our whole life, wherever we're going, including work, as long as that love of Jesus is moving us.
• 4:59
  Yeah.
• 4:59
  So, I started follower one as a side hustle thing in 2016, 2017, early 2017.
• 5:09
  And applied for a 501c3, which we received in October of 2017.
• 5:15
  And three weeks later, I was let go from my employer.
• 5:18
  Wow.
• 5:19
  And I wasn't happy there.
• 5:22
  I was the reason, but, you know, it was neither here nor there.
• 5:26
  It was God, you know, changing my operating mode.
• 5:30
  And so, for the last seven years, I've worked on follower one part-time and I've worked full-time for the last four.
• 5:37
  So, our goal is to get every Marketplace Christian to realize they're on the mission field and start acting like it.
• 5:51
  And so, we do this thing called the Marketplace Mission Trip and we created an online community because those are the things that we need.
• 5:57
  We need a support mechanism and a large percentage of our Sunday friends are pretty happy where they are.
• 6:04
  They do what they want at church and in their faith life and that's fine.
• 6:10
  And so, I'm not trying to recruit all those people.
• 6:14
  I'm trying to find the ones that are not happy where they are and help them go break something.
• 6:21
  I really love the idea of a Marketplace Mission Trip because, you know, like a lot of people, I grew up doing short-term mission trips when I was in youth ministry, you know, my church partnered with the church in Mexico and there were good things about that, right?
• 6:36
  But this idea that I have to go somewhere else to, quote, unquote, beyond mission was kind of baked into that idea.
• 6:44
  And I love that the Marketplace Mission Trip kind of redeems that and says, what if your everyday was mission?
• 6:52
  What if you're on the front lines when you're doing your normal job?
• 6:57
  So, how did you get that idea of framing it as a Marketplace Mission Trip?
• 7:01
  And what's it been like leading them since you started it?
• 7:05
  So, probably around 2005 or 2006, I was having my lunch with my then pastor.
• 7:11
  And I would always ask, I would have this lunch with him about once every six months or so, I would always ask him, how can I help you?
• 7:19
  Because I worked on that end of town way on one end of town and our church was where I lived way on the other end of town.
• 7:27
  And he would say different things.
• 7:28
  But this time he said, well, you know, we really need people to go on this upcoming Mexico mission trip, because when people go on a mission trip, that's when they get it.
• 7:38
  And I even think he used the air quotes and.
• 7:44
  And he and I don't remember this exactly.
• 7:46
  We've actually talked about this recently, but we don't remember the details exactly.
• 7:51
  Either I said it or I thought it.
• 7:54
  But the statement was.
• 7:56
  I think I already get it, and I drive 30 miles a day to work.
• 8:00
  How is that not a mission trip?
• 8:03
  Oh, nothing resulted from that.
• 8:06
  In fact, it's over a decade.
• 8:08
  I think I that was one of my stories of just complaining about how I didn't fit in the church.
• 8:15
  And but after I'd started, after we'd already started follower of one, I was telling a friend about follower of one and that story came up.
• 8:22
  And he goes, well, why don't you do a virtual mission trip?
• 8:25
  And I went, that's not a bad idea.
• 8:28
  Yeah, yeah.
• 8:29
  And so you just experienced what we what it has grown into after 40 some odd episodes.
• 8:37
  So number 36 is the follower of one mission trip.
• 8:40
  Number 36, we've also done, I think, 11 with churches and ministries.
• 8:44
  OK, cool.
• 8:45
  Just under their banner, whatever that is.
• 8:48
  And it was I mean, if I could just share kind of like my testimony or my experience, it was really cool.
• 8:54
  I mean, and I have to be honest, like I wasn't sure what to expect going into it, you know, because like leading a ministry, I kind of thought, oh, I'll go in to just kind of like see what Mike's doing, see if I can steal some of his good ideas, you know.
• 9:06
  And then once I was in it, I was actually really genuinely encouraged.
• 9:09
  I was like, this is working for me, you know, in my in my day job, because, you know, I still have a part time day job at the food bank.
• 9:16
  And then I leave Mission Central like basically two days a week.
• 9:19
  And so for me, it was really relevant to my food banking experience.
• 9:25
  Yes.
• 9:25
  And so like the I mean, the format, just to give listeners an idea, we have, you know, an online connection portal.
• 9:33
  I pulled it up on my laptop at work.
• 9:36
  There's also an app that I had on my phone.
• 9:38
  I was usually using the the kind of browser version on my laptop.
• 9:42
  And there was a devotional each day with little recording from you and and kind of a way of orienting your prayer for the day.
• 9:51
  And I just loved that, that idea of like clocking in for the day with the Lord, which I think is one of the metaphors you use, like one of the early devotionals.
• 9:59
  And just even realize, even though this is literally like also something I train other people in, how quickly I'll sit down at my desk and just open my email without any kind of intentional rhythm of reorienting to prayer or inviting God into that experience.
• 10:14
  And so it was really helpful for me to be like, OK, what's the what's the posture of my heart collaborating with God in this next hour, you know, at the beginning of each day?
• 10:26
  And then at the end of the day, well, maybe during maybe the middle of the day, I went to the end of the day once.
• 10:29
  You have several spots for prayer.
• 10:32
  So during the second week, it was a two week trip experience.
• 10:35
  During the second week, we had prayer opportunities every day.
• 10:38
  And that was also super encouraging because we had people from all over the world on those calls, like it was mostly United States for my trip, I think.
• 10:48
  But we had at least somebody from the UK, somebody from Pakistan, somebody from Canada, maybe others, too.
• 10:58
  At least those were represented on my specific trip.
• 11:02
  And it was really cool to share like, hey, how did your work day go?
• 11:08
  And you have somebody in a totally different context.
• 11:10
  Like one guy who is a small business owner, somebody else was a massage therapist.
• 11:15
  I'm obviously doing nonprofit work.
• 11:17
  Somebody else is like in journalism.
• 11:20
  And to hear this shared heart for how can we, you know, this theme of the day, whatever it was for that day, how can we welcome God into what we're doing and then encourage each other in prayer was again so rich.
• 11:32
  Like, I wasn't I wasn't like doing homework anymore.
• 11:34
  I was like, therefore.
• 11:36
  Yeah.
• 11:37
  And that was really, really great.
• 11:38
  So that was those were my highlights was the devotional and the prayer.
• 11:42
  So.
• 11:44
  Yeah, it's very cool.
• 11:45
  I mean, it's kind of cool how it's grown up.
• 11:47
  We treat the first week like it's training.
• 11:50
  And so we don't have a lot of Zoom calls.
• 11:53
  We're just trying to respect people's time.
• 11:56
  And then the the second week is action week.
• 12:01
  And that we act like we're on a mission field.
• 12:05
  And we'd actually started it in a couple of different formats.
• 12:08
  But.
• 12:10
  We're we like this format.
• 12:13
  I think for some of our church partnerships, we may even just do a one week version of this, where the church is very self-contained and it fits in a church calendar really well, and we're also trying to make it easier to scale so that churches or ministries can run this.
• 12:31
  And and they can do more of it without our staff being very heavily involved in their own group activity.
• 12:39
  Right.
• 12:40
  Right.
• 12:40
  Your team, obviously, like like Chris on your team, she did a phenomenal job facilitating the trip and kind of keeping tabs on everybody.
• 12:49
  But you've also built a lot of resources where I could see it being very accessible almost to run as like an out of the box tool.
• 12:56
  And that that that that was one of those things where I was like, oh, yeah, I better steal Mike's idea here as I'm working on like some video teachings and things, you know, trying to figure out how to how to make it as use as easy to use as possible without the need for staff time.
• 13:13
  I also really appreciated just the spirit of grace that I feel like permeated it.
• 13:17
  Like I missed a couple of days, you know, I had I had some crazy stuff going on and I just hopped right back in and that was fine.
• 13:24
  Like nobody was like, oh, Chris, you know, you're not representing.
• 13:28
  And I think others had similar experiences where there's very much a spirit of yes, show up for this, be intentional.
• 13:34
  But also, you know, life happens.
• 13:37
  So let's show grace to each other.
• 13:39
  And and that was helpful because, you know, as an achiever personality type, I can sometimes get stuck thinking the wrong way, like a commission.
• 13:47
  We actually.
• 13:47
  Yeah.
• 13:48
  Yeah.
• 13:49
  We we we started out doing this by email and people would complain about falling behind.
• 13:55
  And the emails all said, hey, if you miss one, delete it.
• 14:01
  Right.
• 14:01
  Yeah.
• 14:02
  I mean, the bottom line is, is if I get up this morning, if I get up in the morning and I say, here I am, Jesus, what do you want me to do today?
• 14:09
  Everything after that is his problem.
• 14:12
  My job is to just work for him all day.
• 14:14
  And so if I missed yesterday, hey, Jesus, I'm sorry, I missed yesterday.
• 14:18
  What do you want me to do today?
• 14:19
  He's not going to beat me up over that.
• 14:21
  He's going to put me to work.
• 14:23
  Yeah.
• 14:24
  Yeah.
• 14:25
  I am.
• 14:26
  OK, that being said, the content is really good.
• 14:29
  So I really appreciated the simplicity of the devotionals and that you have both text version and video version so you could kind of do whatever worked for you.
• 14:41
  And if if I'm remembering correctly, the kind of five things, this would be the week two things, the five things were go like Great Commission.
• 14:50
  Go making disciples praying for others, making time for others, listening, delivering excellent work.
• 14:58
  And what was the final one?
• 15:00
  Oh, remember your why?
• 15:02
  Yeah, like the kind of being ready to have a response.
• 15:05
  Yeah, you nailed it.
• 15:07
  And it's so it's so hilarious, Mike, because like I was just working on an evangelism training and your material and mine is so similar.
• 15:14
  In many ways, you know, we're using the same verses.
• 15:16
  We're emphasizing the same things.
• 15:19
  And we have the same source, too.
• 15:21
  Yeah.
• 15:21
  Yeah.
• 15:22
  Yeah.
• 15:22
  It's like, who would have thought, you know?
• 15:24
  Maybe the Holy Spirit is in the mix somewhere here.
• 15:27
  But I really appreciated the spirit in which you emphasize listening and being responsive to others, because that's something I feel like I'm always dealing with when I train people on evangelism is people think it's all about what you say or all about having the perfect answer or when it's really not.
• 15:42
  It's about how can you be that person who's just so good at listening to someone else's story so that if there's a moment that's happening in their life, they can come to you and then maybe you have an opportunity to share something.
• 15:54
  Actually, actually, another idea that I'm I'm not going to incorporate into the mission trip necessarily, but I think we're going to talk about it a lot in the coming months is just being generous.
• 16:05
  Listening is a generosity act, letting the other person speak.
• 16:10
  But there are other ways we can be generous by giving time.
• 16:14
  We talk about this, about staying late on the make time episode.
• 16:18
  It's about coming in earlier, staying late.
• 16:21
  One of the questions that we ask in a quiz that we created is, have you ever completed your work tasks early so that you can be interrupted?
• 16:31
  Most of us complete our work tasks early so we can leave early.
• 16:35
  But, you know, what if we did our job and got ahead and then kept working, doing a good job for our boss?
• 16:41
  But if we get interrupted, we've got time now we can help somebody.
• 16:45
  We're not too busy to help them.
• 16:47
  And, you know, having some margin in our day and just saying, OK, Jesus, who's going to interrupt me today?
• 16:56
  And be ready for that.
• 16:57
  There's the listening, teaching and even the like the remembering your why teaching, the emphasis to readiness so much that it's not like we know in advance what the moment is going to be.
• 17:08
  But if we're ready, then we have the right posture as we're interacting with people.
• 17:13
  And I thought that was beautiful.
• 17:15
  I just by way of like really brief testimony, I feel like in week one and week two, I had some like on the ground moments like that that happened.
• 17:26
  I had a Christian co-worker and he he this was before the mission trip.
• 17:32
  He had come up to me and just like prayed with me.
• 17:34
  He initiated it during the workday, which I so appreciated.
• 17:37
  And so I connected with him and he and I are going to like a prayer night together at my church that some other guys are going to.
• 17:42
  And I think it's helping him grow, thinking about, OK, how do how do we integrate this side of my life and that side of my life?
• 17:49
  You know, all in one place.
• 17:51
  And then another guy who I don't believe he might identify as a Christian, but I think he he's never really been discipled.
• 17:57
  I'm not even sure he would describe himself as a Christian.
• 18:00
  But he had a really severe injury and I offered to pray with him while he was kind of like on his walking boot at work.
• 18:06
  And he was reopened to that.
• 18:07
  So that was just again like, you know, in the moment, it wasn't the first time I talked with him.
• 18:11
  It was in the context of our friendship.
• 18:13
  But just a simple thing of praying for that injury.
• 18:15
  And, you know, we'll see what God does with that as as time goes on.
• 18:19
  But I love that it's like, hey, you know, it's not it's not like a failure because we didn't get down to like challenging him to put his faith in Jesus Christ.
• 18:28
  It's that was a moment in our overall friendship at work that counts.
• 18:33
  You know, and and I loved how the devotionals kind of cued me in to be ready for moments like that.
• 18:39
  Thanks very much for that.
• 18:40
  Yeah.
• 18:41
  Anything.
• 18:42
  Oh, go ahead.
• 18:43
  I'll go.
• 18:44
  Go ahead.
• 18:45
  I'm sorry.
• 18:45
  No, no, that's OK.
• 18:47
  I just for the sake of time, I just want to ask, is there any kind of final thought you would want to share with our listeners?
• 18:52
  The Finding God at Work podcast includes people from all different vocations but who want to find God in their workplace.
• 18:58
  What would be your takeaway for?
• 19:00
  Well, he's there.
• 19:02
  So so he's there doing his thing.
• 19:05
  What we have to do is get on his frequency so that we're here and what he's broadcasting and what he's doing in the lives of other people.
• 19:11
  And that's part of the reason why we actually define ministry as helping other people move one notch closer to Jesus.
• 19:19
  You may work with a bunch of Christians.
• 19:22
  That doesn't mean you can't minister.
• 19:24
  That just means you help them differently.
• 19:26
  They already know him and the people who don't know him.
• 19:30
  We want to try and help them where they are.
• 19:32
  I don't want to take anybody someplace they don't want to go.
• 19:37
  But if people most people want to be closer to God, they'd like the joy that we experience when we live that way.
• 19:45
  And so if we can just live generously following Jesus and being available to help people, the rest of this is his problem.
• 19:53
  Amen.
• 19:53
  That's so good.
• 19:55
  Mike, I would love.
• 19:56
  Can you invite people to connect with follower of one?
• 19:59
  Should I go to the website?
• 20:00
  What's the easy next step?
• 20:01
  Absolutely.
• 20:02
  Go to follower of one dot org.
• 20:05
  And there's a take action button and click to marketplace mission trip.
• 20:09
  You can do that.
• 20:10
  You can actually go to community dot follower of one dot org and request to join.
• 20:15
  And we do six of those mission trips a year.
• 20:19
  The next one is in a couple of weeks in January the 19th.
• 20:22
  But whenever you listen to this podcast, even if you listen to this long after January the 19th, there's another mission trip starting somewhere in the next six or eight weeks.
• 20:32
  Yeah.
• 20:33
  As the whole point being, you people, we need to be on the mission field every day.
• 20:38
  All this mission trip is to do is to get us to wake up to it.
• 20:41
  Yeah.
• 20:42
  Yeah.
• 20:43
  Every every week can be a marketplace mission trip.
• 20:46
  That's what we're learning by doing that.
• 20:48
  So, well, Mike, could you could you pray a prayer?
• 20:51
  Just I usually close the podcast episodes or prayer.
• 20:53
  Could you pray for our listeners?
• 20:55
  And certainly, Lord Jesus, thanks for the people listening to this.
• 20:59
  I pray that you will mobilize us and activate us.
• 21:02
  Give us the the initiative to step into something like this and the intentionality and the purpose and the self-discipline to follow through with it, because we know that when we sow bountifully, we reap bountifully and we get great joy from following you.
• 21:19
  Thanks for loving us.
• 21:21
  Bless each person who listens to this podcast and use us all for your glory.
• 21:26
  It's in your name, I pray.
• 21:27
  Amen.
• 21:28
  Amen.
• 21:30
  Thank you so much, Mike.
• 21:31
  Thank you.
• 21:32
  Thanks for having me.
• 21:36
  Thanks for listening.
• 21:38
  Finding God at Work is a production of Mission Central, a ministry based in Aurora, Illinois, dedicated to forming Christians for mission in everyday life.
• 21:46
  You can subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to this episode to get 10 minutes of teaching on faith and work every Tuesday and Thursday.
• 21:53
  To get resources to go deeper with each podcast series, read our blog and get info about upcoming courses on faith in the workplace.
• 22:00
  Go to our website, missioncentral.church.