ALEX KOCMAN - Christians, Don't Waste This Moment: How Trump's Election Changes the Landscape

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast. This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world. New episodes release every Friday. It's been quite a week, huh? Let me tell you a bit about how it's gone for me.

I'd scheduled a Wednesday recording with this week's guest, Alex Kochman, Director of communications for the association of Baptists for World Evangelism and co host of the Missions podcast. And I'd originally planned to release an episode about the Beatles today. But then Monday night my flight from Dallas and Fight Laugh Feast was delayed. It left me sleeping on the DFW baggage claim floor. So Tuesday was a bit weird as a result and it disrupted my usual production process.

Then came the presidential election, keeping us all up late. By Wednesday afternoon in victory's afterglow, I thought, why wait weeks to release this conversation with Alex when we could capture the moment live? The election talk would feel a bit different later. So this episode is my live stream recording with Alex, which is already on YouTube and you can check the show notes for that.

In this conversation, Alex and I discussed Trump's election and its impact on global missions and how America itself has become perhaps our biggest mission field. If you enjoy this podcast, thank you. Please leave five star ratings on Spotify and Apple podcasts and share this episode with friends. You can Support [email protected] for ad free content or click Buy me a coffee in the show notes.

But most importantly, please support our advertisers to help build generational wealth as we rebuild the West's Christian foundations. And please welcome this week's guest, Abwe's Director of Communications and the co host of the Missions podcast, Alex Kochman. Alex, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast. Thanks for joining me live on this exciting day in American history and this exciting moment for Christians.

Good to be here, Will. Well, so we were originally going to do this as a sort of a pre recorded podcast that would go through my usual production process. But given the exciting election of Donald Trump to the 47th presidency of the United States, I figured we take advantage of the moment and have a, have a real time conversation and just, and just go with it and let everyone kind of enjoy this wave of perhaps relief, this wave of excitement that I think is passing over many people today.

Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. It's dizzying. I mean, it's exciting from even just the standpoint of. Think of how many groundbreaking Events have happened just in the last six months to a year that on their own would have driven the news conversation for years at a time. Right. And we've had them all happen in rapid fire. I can barely keep up. There's so much to react to. So, so. Well, let's go back to. I don't know. I think the big turning point, I think that there were a couple of them.

I think the big turning point in the campaign was obviously the first debate between Trump and Biden. And I think that was really when people got a good look at what many of us had been saying for a while, that Biden is not fit for office. And I think that's what opened everyone to the possibility that maybe there had been quite a bit more propaganda going on than they wanted to believe, perhaps. So, like, go back to like, what was that like for you? And then we'll just run it forward to today.

And I also want to make sure to touch on how this. And we'll hopefully spend quite a bit of time on this, how this affects your particular missions with Abwe and your podcast as well. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for that. So, yeah, I was watching that unfold like everyone else, probably like you. We were under no impressions that Joe Biden was fully, cognitively with it. Those who followed, especially conservative leaning media for several years were aware of that.

But that was the moment that everybody in the nation really saw that, regardless of what news source that you were watching. I think what that did for so many people was really just disturb this nice American picture that we have of stability. We just assumed that all of our institutions are fundamentally stable. I mean, there's a lot of unstabilizing elements and factors that have happened over the last couple of years.

That was one thing in particular, where that became a question for everyone. Even looking at most powerful political office in the world and saying there's, there's radical instability even at that level. What's happening, whose hands are really at the control. And I think as Christians, that's critical to keep in mind.

I think we become ineffective in our mission, in our walk with the Lord, when we assume that everything around us, the status quo, is really, it's just going to be the way it is all the time. All things continue as they were, as Peter writes. And that's not the case. Right. To be effective, to be active as men in our life and on mission, to recognize that there's other factors and forces at play in the world and we have a job to do. We can't just comfortably Assume it's business as usual.

You know, nations rise and fall, men rise and fall. We certainly saw the fall of one man in that situation. And I think for a lot of people it was just an awakening moment of realizing they can't assume that things will always continue a certain direction. So I want to go off roading immediately and divert a little bit and pick up on something that you said. We can't always assume that things will continue going in the direction that they have.

And that's something that I think is really a trap of thought, that it's really easy to fall into that thinking that whatever is represented in this moment, if you just run it out linearly, then that's just how things are going to be forever. That it's just going to be a long slow decline, right. Or a sharp upwards improvement or whatever it is to extrapolate out from this current moment that the future will look like this, only more so.

And that's the thing, that it's so easy to start thinking that way and to panic or to get too excited. But as Christians, I think our call is to be wise as serpents, perhaps to the flows of history, empires rising and fall, men rising and falling, and not get too caught up in trying to imagine that we can predict the future based on current events. I think you put it well, it's the whole Francis Fukuyama end of history paradigm. It's the whole idea, you know, on, on, on the Internet. It's, it's.

Nothing ever happens and suddenly a lot of things happened, right? Yeah, but I think there's a significant percentage of not only Americans, but American evangelicals, Christians in our churches that have assumed that paradigm. We live lives, most of us, even if our bank accounts have suffered over the past couple of years, perhaps we do live lives of relative stability. And it's easy to assume that.

And by the way, I work with missionaries, I work with churches that are sending missionaries and church planters to the US as well. And one of the things that I've seen is I think over the past several generations of missionary sending efforts, even something as tip of the spear as Christian missionary sending, I think has really been coasting in some ways off of the fumes of this modern American consensus of how the world is.

There's certain assumptions that we make about globalism, about political stability across the world, about freedom and democracy and freedom of conscience. And missionaries often do assume those things. Those are the things that allow us to get on an airplane, go somewhere, right, and tell them about Jesus because of this relative stability that's existed. But there's so many assumptions under the surface with that that we do have to look at and examine.

And I think as you see that consensus start to break down in a lot of people's thinking. I think what we need to do is have a new missiology that's tailor fit for the current moment that we're in. So this is not necessarily the world of America is automatically the glorious city on a hill preeminent in all things. And from the United States we're going to send missionaries to the ends of the earth.

Of course we want to send missionaries, but I think instead, and just using missions as an example, I think there's all parts of the church that this touches. But I think what we have to realize instead is that actually we live in a world that is all contested and there's contested factions and groups and nations with differing identities, and nations are gonna do things differently.

We can't assume the stability in the global order, and yet we still have to do the very hard thing of going to our neighbors and going abroad. And so I think we need to make sure that these assumptions of multiculturalism, these assumptions of diversity, those things that are a part of that modern American consensus, that that's not really what's driving things like missions, when actually what's driving things like missions is a zeal for the Lord, a zeal to see the lost brought to Christ.

And obviously we need that same zeal in our own nation too. Will. So you referenced a term that's quite popular in the moment, sort of the post war consensus. Now that idea is swirling around and some of our shared corners of Twitter in a particular way. But I hear you talking about it in sort of a different way, sort of this, this idea that you mentioned, the Francis Fukuyama, the end of history, that everything is just that we've reached it. We did it, guys. Great work.

So in the context of what you're talking about with missions, what do you mean by this? You didn't use the phrase post war consensus. Perhaps you use cultural consensus, something like that. What are, what are you referring to as. As it relates to missions work specifically? I think it's a similar idea. I think that obviously post war consensus, that's the triggered term, right? And those of us that are very terminally online people like you and me, know what that means.

And I'm not of the school of mine that says let's relitigate World War II. I do think, though, that we have to look at the way History has gone and the assumptions that are now built into our minds. So for instance, we've become accustomed to reject nationalism and to do so strongly. But I'll tell you, some of the missionaries that we're working with, they're finding rising nationalisms everywhere they go. It's not just an American phenomenon.

We're going to places like India and finding radical Hindu nationalism that not only says there's something good about being a part of this people, ethnically or tribally, but specifically that to be Indian means to adhere to the Hindu faith in the Hindu religious system. So those types of assumptions are in the water table all over the world and we have to be willing to look at. Yeah. How do we wrestle with those things globally and locally as well.

So I think there's a lot to be done on that topic. I really like Rusty Reno's book on the topic, of course. I think he does a really good job of deftly scratching the surface of those issues without giving way to, I think a lot of the concerns, conspiracies that I know you've addressed and I think are helpful to look at both sides of the issue and make sure that we're not given to a certain extreme.

But I do think that at the end of the day, what's made a lot of modern missions possible in the 20th century is the immediate availability of things like global air travel. And we have to recognize when we see the global order breaking down all around us, we got to get smarter about how we think about the Great Commission. How do we think about the Christians duty on Earth?

Maybe it's not just doing the thing your youth pastor told you to do and hopping on a plane and doing a seven day missions trip and putting a roof on a building. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but maybe it actually means focusing your labors at home, in your neighborhood, your community, your Judea, Right, your Samaria. And then beyond that, are there national believers and churches overseas that you can partner with through prayer, through giving of gifts and perhaps going.

But looking at that critically, I think again that all of those assumptions are sort of baked together and to define that consensus just shortly everyone looked at what happened in the 20th century and said never again.

But what that means is that you've got all the global powers are committed on paper to certain things about liberalism, freedom and democracy that I think we as evangelical Christians have seen those can be used and weaponized against the church just as easily as they can also give you a setting in which to do the Christian life. So you mentioned. And yes, yes to all of that. And I think what's. There's a couple things that I want to touch on.

But before I let the point slip away, you know, I've spent a good bit of time in India in particular six months and 2019, 2018 and 2019. And so I was not a Christian at the time and I saw India essentially, I don't want to say by foot, but like, I didn't, I didn't get around, you know, in luxury air travel. Like I took mostly overnight buses, some trains, a couple flights. So it was very connected to the ground. And there's no tourist bubble in India.

There are some countries you can go to where there's a very well traveled tourist trail that's like the front of a house, the front stage, sort of at a restaurant, you might think. And then there's the backstage area where people live and the actual cultural life of the nation goes on there. Argentina is a good example of a country with a life like that. India, on the other hand, has no tourist bubble. You're there, you're there.

You arrive at Delhi airport, you are right into the thick of India. There are thicker places, but there's no thinner places. And so I had a really unique experience before I was a Christian, seeing and appreciating the nation for what it was, both good and bad. And so I've had interaction with the Bharat, the Hindu nationalists, because I've written a couple of tweets about India that sort of saying, look, these are real phenomena.

There are wonderful things about India, but there are real phenomena that are going on with the nation that, that the world needs to know about. And the amount of pushback that I've gotten from that group specifically, and the vitriol and the hatred and the, and the anger from. I think what I had been attempting to say in a loving way, like loving. Feedback has been a real eye opener to me, particularly though not about India per se, but about what nationalism can become even in America, period.

Like, that there can be a love for one's nation and I might put love and scare quotes that actually turns into a hatred for the other, right, that we call it loving. But there's no, there's no feeling of the fruits of the spirit, let's say of love within it. That actually becomes quite reactionary.

And so I think the challenge with regard to the post war consensus in many ways around the world is how do we appreciate and value our nation, our people, without it becoming an exclusivist kind of like, the only way that I can love my people is by hating yours. And I think that's, I think that's the shift that we have to figure out because again, none of us have grown up in a nationalist world, but I think we're about to be turning back into a sort of nationalist world.

Maybe we can kick that around because the work that you do is exactly going into these other nations and bringing the light of the gospel to them, you know, promoting that work. Sure, surely. So perhaps you get a different perspective on, on what that, on what that looks like. So maybe from from within, from where you sit, what are some of the virtues of nationalism? Particularly let's, let's frame it in an American context.

So as you, as you bring yourself as an American to these locations that can be pro or anti America, like what is it that you do to, to promote sort of an anti exclusivist view of the things and the people that you love? Great, multi layered question there. And I was smiling at the beginning of that because you mentioned some of the heat that you took for India discussions and content that you put out. And my camera guy here, producer, I could smile at him as well.

We got some of the hottest reactions on an Indian interview that we did earlier this year, again with an Indian pastor, Indian Christian pastor in Manipur, who's dealing with the violence and the strife between these two tribes. 1A predominantly Christian tribe, the other kind of a Hindu nationalist sort of movement happening within that tribe. And man, just wading into that. It's like you thought American politics on the Internet were feisty. You have no idea.

And truth be told, I've not been there. You spent more time there. I'm certain. I don't understand any of the situation on the ground. What I do know though is that the believers in a place like that aren't dealing with this built in handicap of all of the bifurcations that we make in our mind when we approach the political sphere. And I think we've all seen it done.

People who, it's pie in the sky piety where the gospel doesn't actually touch ground in terms of culture, in terms of the state, the community, all the things that all of Christ for all of life, right? I have a pastor friend, years ago, he said to me, brother, I try never to get political in the pulpit. And I just, I didn't really give him any grace. I said, brother, the second you say that Jesus is Lord, you're making a political statement of some sort, right? And that's not to say that.

That the pulpit is the place to do partisan stumping, but you are making a statement about power dynamics in the world. You're asserting that there's a king that's over all of it, right? And that he has obligations that bear upon us. And so some of the believers in that part of the world that I've seen, they're actually willing to engage locally. I was talking to another Indian pastor in another city just this morning.

He's describing people in his congregation that are engaged in local civic boards and that are advocating. Some of the other folks that I know are advocating for the Christians to even get their own Christian government in Manipur. I don't know if that's possible. That doesn't make any sense to me.

But the fact that they're willing to go there mentally, they're just thinking in different categories than we are, where our sensibilities are very American sensibilities about what separation of church and state means and all that. To simply say that when. When that proclamation of Christ as Lord goes out, that has implications for every part of human life and existence, and that includes the state, and that includes the culture that it subsumes.

And so when it comes to a question like nationalism, which, again, another triggering word, I think it's more helpful to think in terms of circles and spheres than it is spectrums. And when I say that, I feel like I'm doing the cheesy, like, circles versus rose thing that we've seen. I love it. I love it. And that's not what I'm attempting to do. But hear me. We tend to think of loving one's nation versus loving the nations. And you hear a lot about that in the evangelical church, right?

Love the nations, love the world, God loves the world. But we put that on a spectrum like two opposite ends of a pendulum swing. Like either you're. You're an America first, blood and soil, right? Like that. You're very much about here versus you love the world, you love all the peoples, and there shall the twain meet.

And I would say that the best approach, and I think the most biblical, the most supported in church history, is to think in terms of the ordo amoris, the order of loves, the order of affections, which starts with you and your God. And I said this recently in a sermon. I do hear pushback on modern missions, because people have heard the modern missions talk for generations, and they're starting to say, okay, but what about my school board? What about my own neighborhood? And that's.

That's Fine. I'm not against that at all. I think we need a little bit of a dose of that as well. But what I would say to the person that's cynically jaded every time they hear about loving the world, loving the nations, to me that sounds like you're asking me to love the anonymous orphan on the back of the brochure that I'll never be able to meet. You're asking me to love an abstraction. You're asking me to love the most far away thing that doesn't affect my life.

How can I have a moral obligation to that? Realistically, what I would say is the center of the circle. Think of these concentric circles. The center of the circle. It's not just your family, not just your nation. The center of the circle is loving your God. And if you love your God, if you have a zeal for your God's glory, of course you want him to be glorified in your neighborhood, at your local. What do we have to say on this platform? Reproductive health clinic.

But you also want to see your God's name not sullied, but glorified in a place like Delhi where it's actually the cow that is worshiped along with a multiplicity of other pagan gods and demons. Right? You don't want to see the name of your Lord sullied in that place either. And so I think we need to think in these concentric circles. And then I think we need to recognize things like global missions that every evangelical, every church wants to talk about, wants to support, needs to support.

That should be the overflow of loving God, loving my family, loving my nearest neighbors. And then that love will overflow each of those successive rings until, yes, I'm actually able to go out and love and serve the nations. But not out of an idealistic whim, but actually just because I have got my own house in order, I'm qualified, I'm called, I'm walking with the Lord, My house is in order. I'm seeking to serve the Lord here and then out of that also.

Yeah, I want to be faithful with this other relationship, with this place that the Lord's put in my sphere of influence, with this far away people group that I've developed a burden for. So I think we can walk and chew gum, but I think that to do so means more thinking in these concentric spheres and less of the spectrums.

I think that's a wonderful way of framing it because I think part of what's happened in American culture, I can speak for America for the past, say 60 or so years is this idea that we have to, we are commanded to. And where the command comes from is we can probably talk about that. Commanded to love the other more than we love ourselves, that loving the other is the priority.

Even that the marginalized, the outsider, the downtrodden, something the quote unquote victim, that that person needs to be loved. Which is to say not just a felt sense, not just a sentiment, but needs to be shown in an action and word and priority of funds allocation, especially over whatever might be happening in your own home, in your own household, in your own nation, even with yourself. Like there's a, there's a recklessly self sacrificial quality to this projection outwards into loving.

And I think there's a real resistance that many people have to be like, no, we have to focus on ourselves first because we don't understand what that means. To focus on ourselves in a healthy sense without immediately falling into the ditch of this is selfishness, right? It's this kind of zero sum thinking that says if I give to myself, there's nothing for anybody else. Instead of the understanding that no, it doesn't work that way at all.

In fact, by proper, only by properly caring for ourselves in a God honoring way, can we ever care for anybody else. In physics, inertia is one of the most difficult things to overcome, right? It takes more energy to get something moving than to keep it moving. And so, yeah, there's probably a reason that in the past books like Radical have kind of maybe overcorrected in pushing us beyond the comfortable, the familiar, you know, the typical white picket fence, middle class.

And so I understand pastors, I understand missions leaders who lean hard into the message of sacrifice go. Because we do need to be awakened. We need to be cajoled into doing that. And sometimes that pretty black and white rhetoric is the only thing that can get through. But there's a difference between that and the zero sum thinking that you're talking about. I think zero sum is the exact right word for it. I got a phone call last night from a prominent Reformed Baptist pastor.

I won't, I won't rat him out, but your listeners would likely know his name. And we were talking through things that he sees even in his own church where there's this, it's the same situation that was happening in the Corinthian church. One person says, oh, I've got this gift, you know, I've got this gift, only it's not tongues and you're looking down on others for not having tongues. But it's this gift of cross cultural evangelism.

It's the hand in the body of Christ saying, man, if everyone was a hand like me, you know, then, then we'd be really, we'd be really handy, right? And that's, that's cheeky and corny.

But, but the, but the truth is, any person, if they're, if their spiritual gift, if their inclination is to focus on things at home, maybe you have a passion for your marriage, maybe you have a passion for fitness, maybe you have a passion for the political realm, maybe you do have a passion for unreached people groups or door to door evangelism.

But every single person in every church and every community does have a temptation to look at their own gift set, the things that they're passionate about. And then, okay, everything looks like a missions problem because I've got this shiny missions hammer and so everything looks like a missions nail, right? You start to judge, condescend upon others that don't have that same wiring. I think it's incumbent on Christian leaders to recognize all of these gifts, inclinations, strategies.

They have a seat at the table of the body of Christ. No single one of them should override everything else. Because we're actually called to do a lot of things. We're supposed to obey everything Christ commanded. That means there's local obligations. That means you have to work on yourself, work on your household, and then you have to care about what God is doing in the world. Because God is a global God. He fills all things.

And so I think that there is a real easy way to go from one extreme to another. And my prayer for the men that you talk to often, for the men that I talk to, I see this in my own heart. My prayer is that we can make the right corrections, we can get our own houses in order. We can take advantage. And I know this is the purpose of the interview.

We can take advantage of maybe things like the next four years and maybe things economically and culturally, or maybe there's a little bit of a respite from some of the culture war that we've seen, that we can take that, but then capitalize it and listen, just not let our love grow cold.

And my concern anytime we're in a moment like this, culturally, is that we can believe the right things, we can have the right view of 20th century history, of our doctrine of salvation, of our view of the local church, of personal fitness and wellness, and whatever else that is. But our love can grow cold. And you know this and this is something that Michael Foster would sign off with on his podcast regularly.

Is that that same point where Paul says to the Corinthian Church, act like men is also where he says, do all things in love, those things go together. And I think we have to make sure our love doesn't grow cold. That's a great point to avoid driving from the ditch of. How do I say that? Maybe extreme selflessness, an abdication poverty theology. Is one of the things that's thrown around. Sure. Okay, cool. So I'm glad you went back to that. So I did not read Radical by David Platt.

I barely know who the guy is. Like, I'm new to this. I'm new to this, this thing. So. So what do I need to know? Because I've picked up a lot, sort of environmentally, atmospherically about what the book is. You know, it's got an upside down house. And I know that he's a very charming and charismatic guy who. Charming, charismatic preachers who build us these massive online ministries. There isn't always a lot beneath the surface. And so my sense.

And plus there's this big expose of something that happened in his church, but I unfortunately haven't had time to watch yet. But so what specifically did that book kind of promote? And then we can, then we can frame in a larger conversation because I think what's happened is, it seems to me, and you can tell me, it seems to me that the message of that book, which I think was written in the 90s, I'm guessing, or the. Early 2000s, perhaps 2007. Okay, 2007. So.

So it embodied a set of ideas that at the time everyone probably kind of took for granted. Maybe in the Christian world, everyone kind of took for granted. And he crystallized these ideas. And whatever those ideas are, it seems like this moment with Trump and Trump's election is a repudiation of many of those ideas. That's what it feels like. It feels like radical. Feels like again from not having read it, it was a product of its time.

And that the full flowering and the fruiting of those ideas has come to pass and let's say the past four years. And so now you have, you have a repudiation of those. That things had gone too far. So what exactly was going on in the book Radical. And then run it forward for how that played out over the subsequent. I guess it came out in 2007. So how it played out up until 2024, let's say. That's a great question and some interesting analysis. You're connecting A few dots that I hadn't considered.

But with Radical coming out in 2007, I do think you're right to point out it's a product of its time. Every book is, of course, specifically, I do think that there's pendulum swings. And so in some ways that was a corrective to the entire megachurch culture that had started to peak out in the early 2000s. Obviously that was huge through the seeker movement in the 70s, 80s, 90s, Bill Hybels and all of that sort.

But what you have is you have not only churches that we would look at now as theologically or morally compromised. We tend to associate the big showy, entertainment driven churches with, with, with softness of preaching and whatnot. And that's increasingly become the case. But especially back then, you had all sorts of churches that appeared not only large and thriving and healthy and full of programs, but then, but then solid content driving those things as well.

Some of your listeners will remember the elephant room, which, the elephant room certainly didn't age well. Many of the men, pastors that were a part of that are men who've disqualified themselves for ministry right now. But that was sort of this high point of the late 2000s where you did have a lot of these young burgeoning voices with massive platforms. But then into that comes this corrective of, I'm not sure we need to spend $400,000 on our AV equipment.

Maybe we should take some of that money and put it into our missions program. And those types of insights are a lot of the steam that radical picked up. And he picked, he got flack from others at the time over those sorts of things. What are you saying? We can't have goldfish crackers in our children's ministry. We've got to give that money to the missions budget too. And there were debates on public platforms over literally goldfish. That, that was not hypothetical hypothetical.

That was discussed. But some of that is a useful. Okay, how big do we. Man, will you. You've missed a crazy two decades being an evangelical. Let me just say, you've got, you got some family history to catch up. I guess so, man. Like, you know how many people tell me. I, I had to check. I had to ask somebody once. He said he was telling me about the number of church splits that happen over like new carpet. And I was like, your kid. Like, is that something. That's a joke, right?

Like that's, that's a, that's a euphemism. And like, no, it's literally over the carpet. I'm like, what are you talking. Well, you know, it's, it's, it's never really about the carpet. But what is this really about? Okay, yeah. So you look at it as a product of its time, and there's a couple of different voices. Francis Chan puts out a book called Crazy Love, similar premise.

He. He steps down from his megachurch and says, all of the smoke and mirrors and the lights, and I really feel like I need to be doing ministry at a smaller, more intimate level. And these guys receive criticism. And I think we can look at that and say there's some, maybe good correctives. There's some things where, again, I'm not sure I agree with all of the criticisms. Pendulums go back and forth. That's kind of what it represented at the time. But I do think you're right.

I think there's this broader mentality within the evangelical world that's very willing to say, sacrifice, go down in a blaze of glory and love the nations. But then at the end of that, you actually haven't got your house in order. You haven't loved your near neighbors in many ways. That's my autobiography.

I haven't really shared this publicly anywhere, but one of my earliest experiences with missions, after going to a Christian university, kind of getting bit by the missions bug and getting really closely connected with an organization that I loved because 100% of your money went straight to partners on the field. So anytime, I mean, I got my paycheck, anytime I got any cash in my pocket, I gave absurd amounts. At least it felt absurd as a starving college student at the time.

But I wasn't putting anything into savings. I was throwing it all at this missions organization. Came to find out a matter of months later, this. This missions organization was embroiled in scandal and was embezzling those funds, even. Even got a small check back as part of a class action lawsuit. I mean, it was, it was a nightmare. But there was the youthful zeal and enthusiasm that, that represented in my heart where I. I wish someone had come to me and said, your.

Your love for what God is doing in the world is good and it's proper. And the best way for you to channel that is to build wealth, is to steward what you have, to build a foundation for the future from which you can be even more generous 15, 20, 30 years from now, rather than just simply emptying your account every time a little bit comes in. And so each person has a different biography and story with missions, and that's just a part of mine.

One of the things I love about Abwe, by the way, our president, him and I have had this conversation before about radical or ordinary Christianity. What's funny is, back in 2007, Michael Horton put out a book that the COVID looks a lot like Radical. It's orange, it's got this lowercase look. Instead of saying radical, it says ordinary. And a lot of people at the time thought that it was meant to be a direct repudiation of radical. I interviewed Michael about it. It wasn't.

It was pure happenstance, or we might say God's sovereignty, but both of those came out right around the same time. I personally lean a little bit more towards the ordinary paradigm. I think they both have a time and place, but, you know, ordinary faithfulness, I think looks like, okay, what does it mean to be faithful with the things that I've been given so that God can give me more, and then so that from.

From that I can overflow in generosity and love and outreach and mission and all of the things that we know? If our churches are preaching it to us, the things that we know are important, but to do so in a way that's sustainable, where I'm not going to burn out in a blaze of glory or deplete my savings in a year or two, but I can actually sustain the long horizon of obedience. Not that you'll avoid suffering along the way. Okay. The alternative to poverty theology is not prosperity theology.

The alternative is faithfulness, though. And sometimes blessing comes with faithfulness. And then when blessing comes, you steward it, you enjoy it, and you also share it. You open up your hand. And so these are not radical. There's the word. These aren't radical Christian concepts. But if all you're doing, I think, is just reading the latest book on either side, all you're doing is, no offense to you and me. I mean, I'm in the same boat as well.

But if all you're doing is listening to podcasts, if you're not getting under godly older men that can lean into your life, that can put you under their leadership, their spiritual formation in a sound, biblical local church, if you're not being formed in that way, if you're not being fathered, you're not going to learn those lessons.

You're going to go, you know, finger in the air wherever the wind blows you, whether it's too far to a radical extreme or too far to a complacent, ordinary extreme. I'm sure your listeners are thinking, this is the worst election coverage I've ever heard. No, it's amazing. Election coverage. No, this is. But all this stuff is really related to the election. But the one thing I think we can all agree on is that no one should listen to podcasts. Let's just put that.

Except for the Will Spencer podcast and. Except for the missions. Except for the missions, obviously. Maybe you can throw in some. Maybe we'll give you a green light to listen to a Rogan podcast every now and then. So. But I think this is all very relevant to the election because we've lived through. And when I say we, I mean not only Americans collectively, but I think also you and I in our lifetimes and probably the majority, if not everyone who's listening.

An era of the, say, the past 60 years, where the prioritization to the other at the expense of self, at the unrighteous expense of self, has been the cultural value, right? So you weren't discipled to save your money, to sock it away into investments or bank or something like that. You were discipled to give it away to a corrupt organization, but you didn't know it was corrupt.

But the mission is you should be taking care of these other people around the world and helping them reach the gospel at the expense of your own future. And so we run that as a cultural value. And when you run that out, what you get is we need to abduct kids from schools and put them into transgender surgeries, Right? Because, because a kid came in and said, I think I'm a girl. Right? That's where, where the prior, the prioritization of the marginalized.

When you turn that to 11, that's what you get. That when someone says, I think I'm a girl, you, they immediately get thrown into the most at risk, high risk, marginalized category. And we have to do whatever they say. And that's a, that's ripe for exploitation. It's the same phenomenon. And I think what we're seeing with the Trump election, in fact, I know what we're seeing from the Trump election is hold on.

The notion that we need to sacrifice ourselves, essentially slit our own wrists in order to, in order to water the marginalized with their own blood is not a sustainable proposition. Because whether you do that as an individual, young man in college, whether you do it as a, as a family, right? We have a. I'm going to pull up a comment from YouTube in just a moment. Whether you do it as a family or whether you do it as a nation, it is not sustainable.

And you eventually have to drive the truck back. You have to get it up out of the Ditch and put it back on the road without driving into the opposite ditch, which is don't let your love grow cold.

So I think what we're talking about right now, just in the conversation about your experience, is the American experience in microcosm, to say that as a young man that you were told to give your money away to help this organization that be helping someone somewhere half around the world, like, well, maybe I don't need to be doing that. Maybe I can put my. Please go ahead now. Many good points, and what I love is that Scripture does this for us.

This is complex, multilayered, but it's not overly complex. Excuse me? It's not overly complex in that if you're reading scripture, if you're hearing it faithfully preached and exposited, you're going to run into the Book of Acts. You're going to see what it looks like to be scattered and persecuted and to be preaching the gospel along the way, and to be living as kind of a pilgrim on mission. And there are seasons of that.

You'll also read Jesus denouncing the Pharisees, though, in the Gospels, saying, listen, you guys cross land and sea to make a single proselyte. And when you do, you make them twice as much a son of hell as you yourselves. And for those that are anti missions, I mean, they're not saying anything that's more harsh than that. That's about as harsh as you can get on that side.

It just goes to show you that whether you make the going and loving, the faraway abstract thing, if that's the center of your system, or if the center of your system is self and personal interests, if anything other than Christ is not at the center of your system, the center will not hold. The problem is isms. Okay?

So if you take the ism and you use that to absolutize these abstractions about the marginalized, the this or the that or the nation, again, and I'm not opposed whatsoever to a righteous love of one's own nation. I think it's definitional. I think it's essential. But if that's the center of your system, of course it's. It's not going to sustain itself. Right?

The Lord has to be the center of your thinking about your finance, the thinking about your evangelistic duty, your obligations to your family, to your church, to the broader community and the world. And if he's not, that center won't hold. And it has to be the thinking of your politics as well. And I think that's what's happened for many Christians. This is the Christian nationalist discussion.

I don't, we don't need to launch into a discussion of what that means of the various Christian nationalist, you know, factions in terms of like a label. But, but to say that we need to make Christ the center of American cultural, economic and political life.

And this, this speaks to a live stream I'm doing with Doug Wilson next week on Monday about the book Idols for Destruction by Herbert Schlossberg, which was written in the early 80s and then republished in the 90s, which was an overview of the, of the great idols that American culture worships.

And I thought of that while you were talking about your experience giving away, giving away your income as a poor college student to a missions organization, that actually, that you were living out a cultural value that was much more widespread before you or I were really around. Which is, which is the idea of the loss of the value of Christian saving, of Christian frugality, that we lived in this age of apparent affluence based on the back of money printing essentially.

And so we have this notion that there's just endless money to throw around because essentially there is. And so you can just, you can just give it away or you can consume. Even if you're donating money. That in the way that you were framing it, it sounds still kind of like a form of consumption. Obviously you're not buying, you know, like a Bugatti. Right. But it is a form, it is a form of like, well, I can consume or I can save and giving away is definitely not saving.

So in a sense it falls into consumption or at least from the perspective of the missions organization, it's almost a form of consumption versus we need to, I need to hold this back for myself, but in a righteous, God honoring way. And so we put Christ at the center of politics, economics and culture and we get a very different approach to society. We get a very different approach to, to everything.

And that I think is what's happening now in a way that gets more true to what Scripture says, as you said, rightfully in acts, also in Proverbs, et cetera. Not a sentimentalized Christianity where we're called to love, by the way, just to. I'm going to, I'm just going to divert from that in a second and point something out.

Just how much the notion of loving your neighbor, that idea, which is very Christian in nature, how much that has been twisted and manipulated to guilt and shame people into doing things that have ultimately been self harming and that that's. I don't know, maybe you can talk about that because when you say that I'm catching up on a family discussion for the past 20 years of your. Yes, I am.

But the one theme that I see repeated over and over again, particularly on Twitter with people who have, who are still part of that era, let's say, is the term love your neighbor can mean whatever political agenda someone wants it to mean. That is, that's baffling to me just how like, like they spread it all over everything. Love your neighbor at the massive expense of yourself. And can you talk a little bit?

It sounds like something that you might have gone through, that you might have experienced sort of a waking up to that. Maybe you can speak to that for a second. One thing that your question and comments there brings to mind is, is the fact that so many of the arguments that you see coming from the secular left, progressive side of this nation's culture are borrowing capital from the Christian worldview in a lot of pretty obvious ways.

You know, we all remember being told what it means to love your neighbor a few years ago during the pandemic. A lot of those arguments were sincere. A lot of them were less than sincere. But they had freight because our culture is still haunted by the ghost of Christendom. You say things like love your neighbor and that still has a certain resonance even though our society is increasingly unchurched, de churched, biblically illiterate.

Couldn't tell you who said love your neighbor as yourself and so on. I think that that creates an opportunity for us actually to take some of those assumptions, expose them, bring them into the light of Christ. I think we can look at sort of the glasses half full there, but then show them, hey, you actually don't have a basis in your worldview for why should I love my neighbor as myself? Smarter people than me have written about this in places like First Things.

But one thing that you see in our nation between the political right and the political left is the pitting of what? And Protestant theologians don't talk about this as much. Certainly Roman Catholic ones do. The pitting of the theological virtues against the cardinal virtues, these other virtues. And so the theological virtues being faith, hope and love. Right. And how does that strike you with modern ears? Faith, hope and love.

I think I could use those three words at any political rally and people would have their hearts warmed. Right? A political rally on either side. Those are, those are things that appeal especially to the left of center. If you start talking about love and hope. Right? Those are words that have been politicized and captured for a certain non Christian, anti Christian agenda. But you have those biblical virtues. Think of 1 Corinthians 13, right?

Those are the top of the virtue hierarchy, pit against and thought of in exclusion to other virtues like prudence, fortitude, courage, things that ground us, things that have to do with situations, applications in real life of those virtues. And I think if we're not careful, one side of the spectrum only has those grounded virtues. They can lose the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

And the other wants to sort of frolic around in those abstractions without actually thinking of the practicalities of life. It's why some smarter people than me have quipped that the difference between a conservative and a liberal is that a conservative has been mugged by reality. There's a certain reality to the fact that if you've been mugged, if your purse has been stolen, you suddenly realize, okay, that we don't merely live in a world of flowery abstractions, right?

And the point there is not political so much as it is how do we approach issues of worldview right now as that pendulum swings and it looks like there's a shifting cultural landscape for the next four, four years.

I do think that as we seek to be faithful with the gospel in our Judea, our Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, I think that that means that there's a lot of normal red blooded Americans in our midst who suddenly are open to conversations about family values, open to conversations about God, very open to conversations about spiritual warfare.

Many people are more convinced of the existence of Satan and demons than they are the existence of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, of course. And you know, you can get into all of the paranormal phenomenon with that. I know that's something that you've spent plenty of time working through, but with all of that, we have, we have a massive mission field that's, that's opening up for us among ordinary Americans. And yeah, there's migrants, there's, there's the nations coming to us as well.

And that's also a mission field. We have ordinary Americans that for some reason there's a spiritual openness there that there wasn't there before. I think the last four years have really served to help people realize, okay, this world can't be all there is. There's a battle of good and evil in this world and you've got to choose a side. And we know of course, that that battle is not merely a political battle. It's spiritual in nature, but it does touch ground in culture.

It does have ramifications. And I think that that should give us boldness with the gospel and with the whole counsel of God's Word. So before we, before we dig into that, I want to highlight a couple comments that Philip M. Has left on Twitter and have you comment on them. He said, I'm a missionary kid whose parents mission hurts so many of the children in order to reach tribal people. He said a significant portion. Hopefully this comes up a significant portion. Where'd it go? Oh, there it is.

A significant portion of my fellow mks, which I suspect means missionary kids aren't even following Jesus anymore. So I would imagine that stories like this are relatively common, certainly not uncommon. And as we talk about sort of the next four years, as we sort of talk about all these different themes of coming back to focus on self and home and family and nation, I wonder if you can comment on some of Philip's experience now. Missions is a new thing for me.

It's not something that I've been on. For example, I was the beneficiary of a mission, although it was to the Burning Man Festival. Not exactly the same thing. But I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit as we sort of look at this new era of like, okay, who are we as individuals? How can we go back to righteously focusing on our own needs? Who are we as families going back to, as Doug Wilson says, not an atomic society, but a molecular society.

So he talks about individualism, the big bag of BBs, that modernity sort of frames us all as individuals in a big beanbag versus molecules. Families are the building blocks of society. So as we're going back to a reconstitution of ourselves as individuals, ourselves as families, as ourselves, as nations, it seems to me that Phyllis experience was to say parents who needed to give themselves and their own family so fully away that they lost touch with their own kids, with their own self, with.

With the integrity of their own families. So maybe you can comment on that a little bit as we look particularly at the next four years and how you see those shifts playing out in the mission field. So heavy hearing that testimony, and I've heard many stories like that, so my mind goes to a couple of different places. I think you're right, Will. I don't think we can talk about the household too much. That's the fundamental molecular structure. And if you want to say, hey, I'm single.

Why are you picking on me? Okay, well then you're a household of one, but you're still a household. But that's the fundamental building block that you see God operating on throughout Scripture. In the Book of Acts, you see households converted. We see in many parts of the world on the mission field today, households still convert en masse. Not always. Sometimes you have, you know, father against son and mother against daughter.

Jesus talks about that too, and I'm a Baptist, so I don't think it's automatic. But I do think that we cannot really overemphasize the importance of those household principles in Scripture. And what I want to say to individuals that have come from a situation of hurt like that, though, is fundamentally can we look beyond the sins of our fathers to see the Father?

And can we extend the same forgiveness that's offered to us in the Gospel, the forgiveness that maybe our fathers and mothers who weren't present for us were offering to far away peoples and to natives in various places? Can we take that same Gospel tract, hold it up to our noses, stick our face in it, read it, and simply recognize that I can receive that forgiveness. I can also give that forgiveness to them? I will say this. I've seen many We've seen it.

It's not just missionaries, it's pastors as well. It's working men everywhere frequently sacrifice family on the altar of career ministry missions. In one sense, it's a unique missions problem. In another sense it's not find me a father anywhere who's working, who feels like his vocation has meaning, that's not tempted to perhaps put that above his domestic obligations. And so perhaps it's not uniquely a missions problem.

That said, I know there's particular circumstances like the ones that our commenter is describing, and in those situations as well, I do think there's a better way. I see the beauty of the multiplied impact when the entire family is mobilized and involved in the ministry. And here's the thing. We know this. If you, if you bring your kids to work with you. I brought my son to work with me here last Friday. There are inefficiencies when you're working together as a family on a business.

There are inefficiencies when your whole family are missionaries and not just dad or not just mom and dad and the kids are shipped off somewhere. There are massive inefficiencies to doing ministry together. But it's so much sweeter and richer and thicker. The impact and the fruit of that takes longer to grow, certainly takes longer to till, to plant, to do everything that you need to do. But then it's more enduring. Not always, but I've seen it be More enduring.

I spoke with a missionary in Peru this morning with Abwe, who he's not only planted multiple churches, but got to hear about how his children are grown. They're ministering in the same country as well. And so for as many horror stories, there's also stories of intergenerational faithfulness, and I delight to see those as well.

I'd say whether you're a missions person, whether you're an America first person, whether you're some combination, whether you're just in a secular occupation, the temptation is always there to sacrifice one over the other. But the important thing is to get the order of affections right, to be faithful to God. And that's going to mean trade offs, that's going to mean cutting corners here or there to focus on family.

But that's also going to mean that the fruit that our whole family can bear on mission together, the fruit of people not only looking at your life and seeing the gospel portrayed in that, looking at your relationship with your children and seeing the gospel portrayed in that, that is palpable, that's powerful, that can have an impact among anyone.

What I'm really enjoying about this conversation, many things, but one of the things I'm really enjoying is that there, there's so much, at least in the way that I see it, that's wrapped up in, again, in the microcosm of this one issue that I think we're experiencing in a broader cultural sense because you touched on like, can we forgive our fathers? Can we forgive our parents? And the far reaching implications of that single idea, beginning from individual psychological wellbeing.

So many people, and this is, I think the root of so much quote, unquote trauma in our culture is like, oh, my parents did something bad to me when I was a kid. Maybe they failed in some minor or even some gross or negligent or perhaps even criminal way. Yes, all that, all that. But there needs to be, and there hasn't been a spirit of forgiveness from children to parents, perhaps as a result of the psychologization of culture, which is a much longer conversation.

I can go into that, but the freedom that comes with saying I will, first of all, you can set aside the fifth commandment. I mean, you shouldn't, but you can. But the benefit of forgiveness, of saying, okay, this person wronged me grossly, negligently, right? Maybe they didn't quite torment you, although that is also the possibility. But they've wronged me and, but I have been forgiven. Can I forgive as I have been forgiven? That is our call as Christians and the freedom that comes with that.

Please go ahead. Well, I agree with all that. Will. I actually don't know if you have any kids. Not yet. Not yet. But I have four, and I serve as an elder in our church. We have many parents of children that are young, that are old, many that are grown and out of the home, and we've got several parents of prodigals, of wayward children. And these aren't missionaries that were in the situation that we're discussing here.

But I don't know anyone who walks with the Lord, who thinks glibly or lightly of when their children drift and wander and backslide and ultimately even apostatize. And even the person who's so immersed in ministry that they can't see if they're blind to it, I just don't know. I'm not saying they're not out there. I just don't know anyone that isn't broken and torn to shreds over their children if and when their children drift from the Lord.

And so I think that's something we can certainly lay at the feet of Jesus and ask him to, to heal and to give many of us the power to forgive. And frankly, who hasn't had to forgive their parents of something along the way? Right. But as a cultural value. Right, because we talked about the post war consensus and so much of the dialogue about that issue coming from the destructive direction is hatred for baby boomers in particular. Right.

Among many others, which is like, okay, so let's, let's just stipulate, and I think we could probably land this case, that there was a cultural failing of, of the baby boomers as a generation. Broadly, though not every individual, specifically, the sexual revolution was a, was a, Praise God, a near catastrophe. Right. Like a, like Kamala Harris.

A Kamala Harris presidency, which has been, would have been, I see it as the final flowering of feminism and the sexual revolution would have been disastrous for America and therefore the whole world. Right. So we have, praise God, been spared that. And there still exists a significant amount of resentment for the baby boomers, although I think it'll probably pass us as time goes on for those particular failings that led to this near disaster. That doesn't.

But just because we've averted the disaster doesn't immediately mean that, okay, job's done. There are still roots of bitterness that lives within many men's and women's hearts. Like, you can look at all the meltdowns on Twitter over Trump's election. Is that over Trump's election. Or is that. Or are you just mad at your dad? Right. And so maybe we can talk about the notion of forgiveness that. Not forgetfulness. Right. We can't just, we can't just forget. We can't forget the Pat.

We can't forget everything from 20 to 202020 to 2024. We can't just, like, pretend it didn't happen. But the notion of true mercy and grace, I think is very much up for the mistakes that have been made consciously, perhaps willfully, manipulations over the past years. Right. I think that that's because. I think that's going to be a theme. We're not going to feel it today, you know, reconcile a national reconciliation. It's Wednesday. Let's gloat. And I'm gloating all over Instagram right now.

It's. It's delicious. So, but, but next week, going forward, maybe there is some room to talk about, okay, how are we as Christians, as leaders, as men, looking towards the future, Going to learn to teach. Going to teach others to properly relate to the past. So many important things highlighted there. One of the things that really alarmed me during this last election cycle was some of the commercials that the Harris campaign put out depict. I mean, full stop right there.

But, but specifically showing parental discretion warning 3, 2, 1. Showing a man masturbating in bed and watching pornography. And, and, and the message of the commercial was, you want to vote in such a way to protect this? No, I didn't watch. I was like, I don't want to put that in my eyes. I send you the link. It's one of the ones where a politician barges in on him and says, you know, not under Project 2025, you can't do this. And then the message was, and I, I wish I was making it up.

I mean, no, I know you're not, unfortunately. Yeah, but. And, and multiple along those lines, some of the more mild ads were, were showing husband and wife pairs heading into the voting booth and, and the wife lying to the husband, saying she'd vote one way and then secretly voting another. Saw that one and I look at that and I'm like, so, so what, what we're actually saying here is that the ideal is sexual promiscuity, immoral, immorality, household division, toxic, unhealthy marriages. That's.

That's what's being sold. That's the vision of this culture and of this nation. Look, why do we send missionaries to the nations? Well, because they're under judgment, right? Unless they turn to Christ. Our Nation is still under judgment. I think that the hand has slowed. I think this is a speed bump. We're still under judgment so long as commercials like that represent what's actually lurking in the heart of most of our people. And that's that.

That's where the Christian church needs to come in and obviously bring Christ and his Word to bear in those situations. But I also think then the key to so many of those things, in addition to the gospel, in addition to all of the things that we, we value, is the household. Again, we have something that's so much better. We have intact marriages. We have marriages where the husband can delightfully lead and rule and also sacrificially serve.

We have marriages where the women can serve, can even submit and do so joyfully and experience dignity and value and love through that. We have households where children can also submit, can learn, can grow, and can develop in masculine and feminine virtues. Those aren't the same things. Those are different tracks in the degree completion program with different outcomes. They can learn how to do those things in a way that's within the grain of their natures.

And my unbelieving friends, my secular friends, are much more primed and ready now to have a conversation about natures, about not just what is a man, what is a woman, but also what's a man for, what's a woman for? They're ready to have those conversations where six or seven years ago they weren't because of all of the assumptions of egalitarianism, wokeness, et cetera, that were just baked in. Now it's a lot easier to have a conversation and just sort of say, like, okay, so what is a man for?

What does it mean to be a man? Of course we would say, what does it mean to be a man following the Lord Jesus Christ? What does it mean to be a woman who's following the Lord Jesus Christ, who's, who's under the leadership of her husband in the home serving all of those sorts of things. Those are now conversations where there's a plausibility structure for those things that there wasn't before for.

So I think that if we, we understand, okay, our nation, like any other, there's, there's judgment apart from Christ. So let's bring the gospel to bear. Let's also not apologize for what we know to be true about human nature. Let's lead with that. Let's not, let's not save that for after they've been at the church for three months and, and, and now we've got them now we'll bring them the hard truths.

Let's lean with what we believe about natures that God has created, that are beautiful, that are fulfilling, that are so much better than the empty lives that our young people are sold on. TikTok about modifying themselves and their identities. Let's, let's lead with that. Let's show the gospel is the key to unlocking all that purpose and joy and fulfillment and goodness that's there. And then from that, that's going to spill out into other areas of life.

So you said something that I think is really key to pick up on. There is an openness to conversation. And so I titled this live stream, Christians don't waste this moment. Right? And I think, what is the moment right, like, as in today, what is available in this moment today that might not be available in later moments? And I think you just gave the answer to that, which is there is an openness to conversation that's beginning right now. And I think that there will be a window of time.

It's impossible for me to say how long. Could be three months, six months, nine months. Who knows? It depends on how the administration rolls out. You know, God willing that when that day comes, there's an openness to conversation of, hey, these cultural values that we've lived with, let's just say, throughout our adulthood, we can see now, and we're ready to admit that they weren't working.

Trump's victory was significant enough that it was a, as a massive repudiation of, just say, liberalism, progressivism, broadly massive repudiation, like popular vote. I don't even, I don't even know if the final Electoral College totals have come in. But last I checked, Trump was up by 20 electoral college electors as well. And I think there were some states still waiting to be called. I think Arizona was one of them.

So both in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, massive repudiation of liberalism, broadly wokeness, progressivism, feminism, et cetera. And so you're going to have some percentage of people who are going to, they're going to ride that, you know, they're going to ride that anchor, that millstone in some cases, to the bottom of the sea. You know, lord, bless them to cut loose.

But I think that there are going to be other people who are going to say, as I did eight years ago, I tweeted about this yesterday. When Trump won his first election, I was a liberal. And I discovered in a moment like, okay, clearly I have missed something about my own nation. So I went to the friends that I knew who were Trump supporters and I said, I'm a blank slate. I have no agenda. Please explain it to me, because I was open to conversation.

So perhaps the moment that Christians need to not waste with their secular friends and maybe even with the world is a sudden openness to conversation about values that have been put on the back burner for 80 or so years. Well, look, we've got Thanksgiving coming in a couple of weeks and we're all told that the way that you ruin Thanksgiving is by talking about religion or politics. But look, everyone's talking about politics right now.

Why not just break both rules, do the taboo thing, talk about religion and politics. They're all intermeshed these days anyway. Yes, do it right over Turkey. That's right. The best way to do it. On a more serious note too, you're absolutely right.

There is a mission field, there's a big expanse of, call it fly over country, call it whatever, but ordinary red blooded Americans that are a little more open than they were before, and we have to capitalize on that, not just from a political standpoint, but specifically to have these types of deeper conversations that are going to bear kingdom fruit in the long run as well. I think there's other things that we can do.

So speaking with one of our leaders earlier today, this, this was fascinating to me. As soon as the election was called, he was getting phone calls from wealthy donors. Watching the Dow futures last night. Yeah, it's up to at least like 1300 right now watching those and saying, hey, I was contemplating giving that gift to a certain missionary or a certain significant project overseas and said, now I'm ready to do it.

So like it or not, they're making some of their generosity decisions based on that. Look at what first Timothy says. Paul says to those that are rich in this age, like, they shouldn't put their trust in riches. They should trust in God, who richly gives us everything to enjoy. So you can enjoy it. You can enjoy the fact that I'm really hoping the price of eggs goes down because we will go through an entire carton of eggs every breakfast. That's what we do in my household. I believe you.

And then generosity is a part of that because Paul adds, be ready to share. It's a both and save, enjoy, share all of those things to go together. So I think, have the conversations, I think build that wealth for future generations for generosity to support the work of the Lord. And if you're not involved in two different key institutions locally, look, consider getting involved in your local civic context. If that's going to a school board meeting, even if it's just praying for your leaders.

Because we are all commanded to pray for our leaders. We have to at least do that. And then if you're not a part, part of a strong gospel preaching, Bible believing local church, I have to believe that if we're on X, if we're talking to a lot of our Internet friends, there's probably a lot of guys that are drifting around and aren't anchored and tethered to a local church yet. And maybe you don't want to put your anchor down there because it's too. Normie.

They're not, they're not, you know, giving me the red meat that I want on a Sunday morning. I would say trust the Lord's ways. Do it anyway. It's biblical. You need that. We all need that. And whether you feel like you need it or not, it's commanded. And God works through that institution of the local church. Christ said, I will build my church. He doesn't say that I'll build my Christian nation. As great as it is to have a Christian nation, we want all the nations to be Christian.

That's the point of the Great Commission. But it's his church that he uniquely covenantally pledges to keep and build. And so there's a lot that we can be doing right now to not waste what looks like some cultural economic respite. There's a little, it's like, there's a gap. It's like we weren't sure, I don't know that anyone was really sure how things were going to go towards the end, towards the end of the election cycle.

Leading up to the day of Trump, the Trump campaigns seemed very relaxed, relaxed, playful. The whole garbage truck thing was quite fun. And then I guess there was the whole squirrel thing over the weekend. And everyone was making crazy memes about that, you know, dogs, cats and squirrels. It has been so entertaining. I mean, I. It is the most entertaining election of my lifetime for sure. I'm gonna miss it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

I mean, I think the next 60 days until the inauguration, I think there's gonna be plenty of excitement to enjoy. So we're not quite there yet. And if Trump's first administration was any, was any sign, I'm sure that this moment of exuberance that we're all feeling like we probably won't be able to care. We go back to the start of the conversation. We can't look at this particular moment and say, oh, it's just going to be like this, but better over the next four years.

Like, let's enjoy this little gap in time, this little gap of this relief, this excitement, this moment of possibility and potential, and notice the amount of opportunities that we have around us for conversations, for planning, for building right for redemption. We get this window of time and the window of time, you know, could. It's opening now, how long will be open, who knows?

But there's an opportunity for us to make many shifts because we can see, like, okay, disaster, at least insofar as compared to a Harris administration, has been averted for the time being. That's not to say there won't be challenging days ahead. In fact, you know, I'm going to look at my crystal ball and say, the crystal ball says there will be challenging days ahead. So I don't think there's any great prophecy there, but. Exactly. But there.

But there's a moment that we have right now to create real leverage with this enthusiasm, with this energy, with this excitement, with this relief to say, okay, there are so many areas of our lives. I was going to say my life, but I think it's true for our lives, broadly, individually, that everything has been in this holding pattern, like, frozen. Like, what's going to happen? What's going to happen? Right. Are we going to, are we going to have more social strife, turmoil?

Is, is, is it going to be a. Another stolen election? Is there going to. Or is there even going to be weeks of uncertainty while they're counting ballots and ballot drops are showing up? Praise God, we appear to have been spared all of that election has been called. No one seems to be challenging or contesting the results of it. It's settled. We won in a big way. Too big to rig, I think, is probably a very accurate way of describing it. Okay, now everything can start moving again.

Our social relationships, our family relationships. We can start planning for a real future. We can start building. And not to, not to waste this moment of saying, like, okay, just let it pass by and coast through it. No, no, no. This is a moment to lean in as Christians into all the areas that have been waiting for four years. Four years, I think is probably fair.

Including our own lives, including our, our careers, including our families, including our own sanctification, including our churches. And I think that's a really important question that I actually want to kick over to you. How do you see a Trump presidency? You're a pastor and you've been in the faith for a long time. How do you see a Trump presidency affecting the church going forward. Maybe let's just, let's just talk about the next 12 months. Let's start there.

Because who can say beyond that, besides God's kingdom coming to earth in a post millennial vision. From your lips to his ears. Right? But no, and speaking as a, as a lay elder, thinking of the people that we, we shepherd in our church, you know, how would I want to counsel them to think about the present moment? And I've, I've never been Trump deranged. I've also never been a, you know, Cheeto Jesus saves. I'm, I'm squarely in the middle.

And, you know, with that, I think, sober analysis, you know, sure, save it for next week. Next week. Let's do the sober analysis. Now is the time to lean in. Now the real work really begins. You know, on the one side of things, on the one hand, it's, it's not too surprising to see how overwhelmingly he won because he's aligned himself with a lot of what traditionally 15 years ago we would have said was, was the left and was even some anti Christian ideas concerning abortion, concerning marriage.

Those are all battles that have to be fought. Conservative Christians used to feel very at home in something like the Republican Party. And now they're realizing, okay, this is a very diverse coalition and we, we've got to evangelize the people that are, that are wearing the same T shirt and putting up the same yard signs as us. This is the mission field. This isn't all just us. We're actually coming from very different worldviews. Even within what looks like one movement.

It's many different things. And so the work begins. You know, you look at the referenda across the country, life did suffer in all but two of those. And we praise God that amendments three and four in Florida did not get the supermajority that they needed. But in other places, they did get the majority that they needed. We have battles to fight for the cause of life. We have battles to fight for sexuality, for marriage, and what God intends those things to be.

I'm all for the memes and the silly dances we're all doing now. And those things are fun. And I think after such a heavy cultural season, it's good to cut loose. It's good to have some fun. Let's not feel too at home in the world. Let's recognize we're in the midst of a battle that continues, a war that continues. Rather, an individual battle was decided, a spiritual war and a cultural conflict around that still remains. On any number of different issues. So now's the time to lean in.

Now's the time to get to work as well. And I would liken it to. There's so many bad, I think, attempts to compare someone like Donald Trump to a biblical figure or historical figure. I feel like a lot of those analogies fall short. I'm sure this one will as well. And let's say, okay, the Persians came to the gate and Nebuchadnezzar pushed them back. Let's say that that happened. And okay, the Babylonians hold the kingdom, and maybe we're excited about that.

But it's not until Nebuchadnezzar actually has his seven years in the wilderness and then bows the knee and admits that the God of heaven is the true God of gods, then let's get really excited for that. I'm praying for our president's President elect's conversion. I'm praying for the conversion of his administration. I'm praying for the conversion of people on both sides, as many as the Lord would grant. That's what we're called to pray for. In Paul's letter to Timothy.

If we're praying that our leaders would lead in such a way that the church can live peaceful and quiet lives before Christ, I think that means that they're following Jesus and they're being good to his church. So we're biblically called to pray for their conversion. I'm very encouraged to hear Donald Trump say things like, I think God spared my life. I certainly hope his position evolves over the next four years away from what we heard eight years ago, I've never had to repent. Right.

And we can recognize man, the godliest man repents every day. Right. And can we get closer to seeing not just him, but others in positions of influence, locally, state level, to see them bow the knee to Jesus? And so I think that however we react to the present moment, we have to keep our eyes on the prize. And the prize is winning the hearts of leaders. The prize is enacting real things that will result in the good of our neighbors. Neighbors, including our unborn neighbors.

And let's not forget, okay, let's get our hand to the plow. Let's not look back. Amen. So let's talk for a minute about, about your podcast, the Missions Missions podcast. As you look at all these different trends that we're now currently sitting in the middle of, like we're, we're here, it's 3:30 in the afternoon.

We're where I am, you know, 12 or so hours after, after most people went to bed, I think, oh, it's actually 3:00am on the east coast where Trump came out and had his sort of victory victory speech. In fact, I think Kamala Harris is going to be doing her concept concession speech in about 20 minutes or 30 minutes, something like that. So how is this going to affect the we've talked a little bit about how it's going to affect the missions, maybe some missionaries.

How is this going to affect the missions podcast? Like what, what does it look like for you is like how, how is all this going to going to land in, in your, in your content career? Let's say the, the joking answer is not much because we've pre recorded episodes out through the rest of the year. So you we don't. Well, if you listen to the Missions podcast next week, we don't know how the election turned out.

Okay. In reality though, as, as we begin to look at the US As a mission field, yes, we are fixed on our true north. The Missions podcast exists to help goers think and thinkers go. So we talked about that chasm between sort of your poverty theology and your prosperity theology. There's, there's another dichotomy that's out there. You know, we all know the sort of reformed, erudite, ivory tower, sort of Christian intellectual.

And maybe their thing is theology, maybe their thing is ecclesiology, maybe their thing is political theory. But it's all cerebral. We know that type. We see that type. My heart leans in that direction. I like to think the big thoughts I like to write. On the other side, we see the practitioners. The boots on the ground is necessary as well. But we see it in the church here in the US we see it on the mission field. Practice becomes unsound and heterodox, quickly divorced from sound doctrine.

And so what we've always sought to do from a biblical standpoint and acknowledging our theological history too, as a tradition, is bring those two together and to have a theologically grounded, healthy missiology.

And so I think the thing that we're going to be doing in the coming years, and this is beyond the election, but I think groups like Abwe, groups like the Missions podcast, my co host and I, we of course have our show every Sunday night, 7pm it posts to the main feed and every week putting out fresh content. Just dropped a great interview with Paul Washer. Many people know Paul Washer. He's pretty cool. Blessed to have a lot of great guests.

Voddie Bakum joined us several months ago and so we've got a star studded lineup. But the thing that we're looking at constantly is, again, how can we ground our motivation to love the world, to love our neighbor from the most biblical place possible? And that's not just loving an abstract thing that's way out there on a brochure that I'll never touch, where I feel like I, as a consumer got this euphoric payoff for giving that impulse donation. That's not what we want to ground it in.

Rather, we want to see that grounded in a zeal. The Lord, a zeal for his church, a zeal for his glory and his fame. And I think again, as a lot of people are shifting their thinking about culture, thinking they're shifting their thinking about the nation, we're going to hopefully be there to rewire with the Holy Spirit's help, seek to rewire people's affections.

They're thinking about, okay, how do I love my household and my church and my neighbors and the faraway thing in the right way so as to be faithful? How can I make sure my missions program is not just inherited from all of these assumptions that we make about multiculturalism, when in fact it needs to come from a biblical perspective that God is gathering all the nations to Himself. Revelation 5, 9, Revelation 7:9. So that's what we always do. And in that sense, nothing's changed at all.

It's just another day for us here at the missions podcast. The mission is the same. And then I think the other thing is what does it look like to focus on the mission field at home and have more of those direct conversations? We are having a conversation soon with an individual whose ministry is not to get people sharing the gospel. I don't know about you when I'm talking about these things. It's not hard for me to share the gospel with my friend once the conversation starts.

The hard thing for me is to start the conversation. The hard thing for me is to build enough relationship and rapport and get over myself and take my headphones out, get out of my own cone of silence and actually cross the street. Pray for my lost friend, pray for an opportunity. And then we start talking about some of these immense, eternally significant topics. He's built a system of accountability and prayer and program for local churches to do that very thing.

Not just evangelism, but all of the pre evangelism and relationship building that goes into that. So I'm really excited to get tools into people's hands about how they can do that well, how they can activate themselves on mission day to day, not in a grandiose way. A lot of people are still living ordinary lives, going to work, but to do all of that with an eye for God's glory in Christ among this nation and all the nations, that's our true north.

Will, do you have time for a couple more questions? There's something you said, a couple things I want to ask about. Let's do it. So you talked about the ordo amoris as sort of the guiding principle behind how you approach missions. As you and other people have a more, let's say, radical approach to missiology. As you bring that, as you bring your approach out there into the missions, the field of the missions field, if you understand what I mean. Do you experience pushback for that?

Do you experience people saying like, no, no, missions need to be higher on your list of priorities? Do you find that your perhaps, we'll call it worldview is controversial in the way that you order the approach of missions related to other things? Perhaps. And we'll see as that idea circulates what pushback there is. And look, I'm not a missionary. I know some people would say every Christian is a missionary. I don't agree with that.

Is every Christian supposed to steward the good news and put that on full blast in their lives? Certainly. But not every Christian is specifically commissioned, called, sent out to learn a new language and plant a church far away. Right. So clearly not every Christian is a missionary in that technical sense of what a missionary does.

So I'm not a missionary and I'm not necessarily in the trenches on the field in such a way where, yeah, I can certainly imagine someone having a different perspective and thank God for it. I think we need iron to sharpen iron.

At the same time, what I see among the missionaries that I know is that what sustains decades of faithfulness through unsexy, difficult circumstances, spending years learning multiple languages, starting businesses from scratch in an unfamiliar setting, sludging through eight, nine hours, just walking a market, trying to do your.

Your basic groceries and errands because you have the language ability of a third grader in the context where you serve, feeling completely like a fish out of water for years and going through the whole bell curve of culture shock in all of those sorts of settings that the people that I know that can endure that and who have endured it and have stayed and been fruitful and faithful for the long haul, they're not the people that have the most incendiary radical missions rhetoric.

Some of them are, and God bless them. I'm thinking of particular individuals, even outside of our organization, who ruffle a lot of feathers and try to say everyone should go. And sometimes do they use a little shame? I don't know, maybe. But God bless them, they are serving the Lord. And the last thing I want to do is throw stones their direction.

But the people that I know, that have endured for decades are people who hold one of Abwe's core values of biblical family and having a mission in an organization that's marked by a biblical family atmosphere. And so often in networks like ours, what you hear is don't focus on the family. In fact, a pastor who I named earlier in the podcast preached a sermon years ago called don't focus on the Family. Again, know your evangelical history. There you go. That was free will.

But we will say no. Focus on your family. Biblical family atmosphere matters because if you're walking with a limp because your marriage is out of joint or because your kids aren't being educated, you're not going to be fruitful, you're not going to be faithful, you're not going to please the Lord in your work.

And so what we seek to do is come alongside and say, you know what, we'll coach you in how to educate your children if you choose to do private school or homeschool, depending your country, your field. But we'll hold your hand, help you do that well. We'll provide biblical counseling and other resources for your marriage and other free resources and seminars and trainings that you can go through to make sure those things stay intact.

We're going to give you a furlough time, we're going to give you rest time. And so there's resilience that's necessary, for sure. I mean, it's a hard slog being a missionary. These are people who've gone out, they've chosen to suffer for the sake of the name Third John. And so we applaud that. But here for us, I actually know many more missionaries that have been there for years who would say a lot of the same things about get your own house in order.

Love your family, love them well, they're your first mission field. And if you don't get that right to the best of your ability, sometimes it's beyond your control. But if you don't get that right to the best of your ability, do not pass go, do not collect $200. You're stuck on that square. And many of the missionaries that we're privileged to serve, I've seen them do that really well. It's a joy to see. I think that's.

If the mission is just what you're doing with your mouth and it's not something that you're living, how can that possibly be sustainable over the long term? If you, as a man, for example, are going into these very challenging environments, like I've been into missionary type environments, the kind of places that missionaries would go to, some very difficult third world places in the world that will never develop. There's the developing.

There's the developed world, United States, Japan, England, stuff like that. There's the developing world, Peru, China, and then there's the parts of the world that will never develop. They're just. They're just not going to get there. I've been to some of those locations. It's not easy to visit. It's even harder to build a life there. And so the idea that a man with a family can go out there into those places and not spend time focusing on his family to.

If only to bolster him, there's far more reasons just to do it. But if only to bolster him and his continuance of the mission, I don't know how that can possibly be successful. And I think that there's a lesson for that.

Back here at home again, going all the way back to radical and everything that we've been talking about, we've been as a nation, as individuals, as men, so enculturated to reach so far beyond ourselves, to try and connect with the other, to try and bless and benefit the other, that we've been left exhausted, spending billions of dollars for Ukraine and how many other projects that our own. Our own inflation rate is out of control. And that's a much larger conversation.

Well, what it actually is is it's a counterfeit. So we think we're overextending ourselves because our leaders are doing so. Every problem is a leadership problem at some level. So I think Satan is a master of deception and manipulation. And in our case, we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we're faithful world citizens because our governments confiscate money and then distribute it to all sorts of global entities, when in reality that's just a counterfeit, like a fake bill.

That's a false version. It's the bizarro universe version of Christian missions. We know we have a global obligation, but it looks much different. It looks like churches. It looks like networks of churches and sending organizations and individual believers praying for missionaries by name around their dinner table at night with their kids.

That's what happened in the life of Hudson Taylor, his family praying for China at the dinner table each night is what ultimately burdened him in his late teens to go to China and eventually found China Inland Mission. So we know how it's done. The problem is we've been okay with the cheap substitute for so long. That's a really great way of putting it because we. Because I can even land that in politics and economics. Just how much shifted when we moved to a fiat currency standard? Right.

And I see that as happening in the 80s when the money printing sort of started to take off, or certainly we began. We became unhitched from the gold standard. And I've told the story a number of times that if you go to YouTube you can watch compilations of 80s commercials. It's quite nostalgic for me because that was a lot of my childhood. So I was watching commercials I hadn't seen in a long time. Some of the jingles are still stuck in there rattling around.

But then I was looking at all of this and I was like, this is all cheap fiat Chinese manufactured stuff.

So we stopped having well made American manufactured products and we substituted, we have a cheap substitute for things made overseas at a far lower cost, subsidized with money that we've printed out of nothing that has been our whole cultural value essentially for 40 plus years is to say we will take the low cost, apparently abundant substitute for the rich and nourishing real thing and we can even see that in our food. We can. RFK Jr. Is going to have a lot to say about that. So maybe we're.

And man, I could probably even say we've had that in Christianity as well. The low cost, abundant substitute for the real rich nourishing gospel. Yeah. I mean, another metaphor is, it's another one of your subscriptions that comes out each month. We've got some for entertainment, we've got some for education, we've got our vehicle payments, our mortgages. A lot of these things are on autodraft and you know, missions.

That's another box that you check in your life and, and maybe it's these, you know, global entities that your taxes are going there. Or maybe it's okay, I support this organization. I like what they do and the money blindly leaves my account each month and I don't think much more about it. I get it. I've been there. Maybe in some ways I am there. It's easy to feel that way rather than recognizing, especially as a man, obviously speaking mostly to men, here you have a mission.

Your mission is not something that can be reduced to one of the subscriptions in your life that you see on your bank statement each month, and it filters down into every part of your life. Anything where you're putting it on autopilot and you're out of sight, out of mind is a surefire recipe for complacency. I think we've seen that. I think we see it when we see it. Those that give to overseas causes, they want the best bang for their buck.

That's why I'd love to give to so and so if they're living at a much lower standard and they can evangelize more people than your expensive American missionary can. And I get that there's good reasons to support national partners, but when there's somebody who's totally a people group that's completely unreached, unengaged, okay, somebody's still got to actually go and be the first boots on the ground. In other words, it's not always just this blind sending money.

There's sometimes you, sometimes you send the money. Sometimes you actually have to send your best, your own, your friends, your family, your loved ones from your church. At our church, we sent out and commissioned not a missionary, just one of our pastors to take another pastoral role. And that. That alone hurt. And there was tears that were cried. They're only going 30 minutes away, but it hurts to do that.

But that's the difference of when a community of interconnected molecular households is engaged in the mission of God together in their locality and beyond. That feels a lot different from living as this isolated individual who all my life is. As this subscription payment goes out, I walk into the poll booth once every four years and all these things are happening on autopilot and I feel like I've met all of my obligations and no walking with Christ is going to take more of you than that.

That's so interesting because I think. Well, I know that one of the trends that we've been living in, like the water that fish breathe, has been a hyper individualism. It's not bad to be an individual, but there is a degree to which the. The individual to the exclusion of community has been prioritized since the 1960s. I think that's where we can take it back to it's. It's further than that, but that's been a thing. And so my.

Though I haven't explored missiology very much, I think from what I hear you say there's a way in which that same hyper individualistic mindset has been applied to missions. As you have this bold man venture or perhaps even with his family venturing out to the frontier as this solo guy on a quest.

That might not be the most precise language, but I'm trying to capture a feeling versus the idea of a community, of a church, you know, et cetera, building up their resources to such an extent that the individual or the family becomes an outreach of an existing community. And so that person who's out there on the frontier is supported by a much wider network at home versus an individual who's just supported by a faceless organization. Do I have that right?

Is, am I picking up on something, on something real? I think you are. Because the Great Commission is not an individualistic thing. Yeah, converts get made at an individual level. Each individual soul stands alone before God, either in Christ or not in Christ. But we're told to disciple the nations. That's collectivistic. You look at acts and it's its towns, its households, its regions that are either coming to Christ or rejecting Christ, sometimes en masse.

There is a real communal, collective element to what we're doing. And I think so many of us approach the Christian life again with this commoditized, modern, individualistic mindset and missions. The same way it's going to be me hopping on a plane, airdropping a few tracts, coming back home so that I feel like I've met my moral obligation, when in fact.

And I. I love the talk that I'm hearing from so many in some of our communities online about building strong, interconnected, antifragile Christian boroughs of schools, of churches, of other connected local businesses, obviously households close to the center of all of those things, and all of it's centering on worship. And I love the idea of these boroughs forming networks with one another.

And let me tell you, I think historically those types of things have not only effectively reached our localities, I think those things are the settings out of which missions movements form. You look at somebody like William Carey who says, yeah, I'll go down into the hole, but only if you hold the rope for me. Not just his individual pastor, but a whole network of pastors in London at the time, and particular Baptists who were a part of that early missionary sending movement.

I think if we're going to send the few elite who must go long term and do that thing, first of all, what are they doing? They're planting churches again. Their job is to plant these communal structures in places where they don't exist yet. It's going to take a massive support network behind them to do that. And if we're doing that, well, that's going to bear fruit locally. It might take generations. It might look like death before resurrection, but it's going to bear fruit locally.

So talk about for, for the patience that's required to do this as opposed to some sort of quick hit overnight success which, you know, God willing, may happen.

The patience and commitment that is, that's necessary to support something like this from, whether from a community or an individual basis, hopefully from a community to say, we are going to do this and we are going to invest in this mission, in this, these missionaries to support them going out there and we are going to commit to it for the long term. Talk a little bit about that. Well, I'm a millennial. You are too, as far as I know. Gen X. Gen X. Okay. Well, you hide it well. Thank you.

I don't think for either one of our generations, patience is common. Sure. For nobody in the technology age, is that a common thing? For us, it looks like retraining sensibilities in our own lives and certainly in our churches as well. I was speaking with a group of missionaries, about 18 new missionaries that we were delighted to appoint to commission and send out last week here at Abwe and hearing some of them share. Okay, tell me your why.

Okay. Why should somebody pray for you, support what you're doing when there's so much else happening in the culture Right. When our nation's on fire? Why should I care about the broader world? And one of the most helpful things that I heard from one of our young couples who's preparing to go to the Middle east was, you know, we're not telling people, hey, we're going to see explosive movements.

We're going to see church planting movements on top of, you know, fourth level catalytic disciple making exponential. We're not going to say that at all. Rather, we're planting seeds, we're putting our hand to the plow for the long term. And maybe we'll have fruit, maybe we'll have converts. We might not now. They're, they're young and they'll learn some even harder lessons along the way.

But they do have the right mindset, is that you might spend a lifetime merely tilling the ground, merely planting seeds, not seeing the growth of those things. I think sometimes in the US that's the case as well. That's not a unique Middle Eastern or overseas thing, but they're communicating that with their fellow believers.

Well, is that the expectation is not that we're going to see the payoff of all of these things in our lifetime, Whatever you're doing locally, politically, in your vocation, in your household, the fruit of all of those things is delayed. The most valuable, important things grow slowly and invisibly. We're not growing dandelions, we're growing oaks. That's true in ministry, that's true in work and in all of life. And so it's retraining our sensibilities there.

Then it's also doing that in the context of churches. We've worked with churches to help them do at least two things differently. One, every church wants to say, yeah, we want to be involved in local outreach, or we want to be more salt and light. Our community, we want to send a missionary. Every church, in theory, wants to be more engaged, doing its part. Well, have you proactively set aside part of your budget to do that? Or are you only responding to requests as they come in?

Because it's easy to say yes or no when somebody's knocking on your door. But can you actually proactively carve some of that out, set that aside and pray, Lord, would you give us someone to support, someone to send, someone whose work we can sustain? Maybe they're in our community going to the local abortion portion mill, or maybe they're going to the ends of the earth and then beyond that as well. You look at Acts 13, you see the first missionaries called there and set apart for their work.

Traditionally in the States, when we think about what it means to be called as a missionary, it means I had an internal emotional experience, like at some kind of a revival or a concert, and I walked the aisle and those things happen and praise God for when he uses them. But what happens in Acts 13 is the exact opposite of that. Usually somebody has a quiver in the liver. Then they go to their pastors and ask for money.

And the pastor, if he's smart, he doesn't want to say no. He'll say, well, talk to the missions committee, right, and gets it off his desk. And instead what you have in Acts 13 is local church leaders, qualified godly men ruling themselves and their households well, worshiping God, being faithful. They're gathered in worship. And then out of that, the overflow is the Holy Spirit says to them, set apart Paul and Barnabas for the works, which I've called them.

He didn't even call the individuals, as far as we know. He called the whole church. And he starts with the leaders of the church. It's hierarchical, it's top down, it's trickle down calling. And then they objectively, externally call them, they lay hands on them, they Say, hey, the Holy Spirit has said this to us. We're recognizing these gifts in you. We're sending you out with our blessing, with our support, our prayers, all these sorts of things. They fast, they pray, they send them out.

And the modern missionary movement hasn't ended since then. That was the birth of Christian mission to the broader world. In that chapter, we have to rewire how we think about these things. Finding purpose for your life as a man, as a woman of God, is not just you with a Bible under a tree, listening to music, waiting to feel that quiver in the liver.

It's being plugged into one of these molecular communities with godly older influences who can say to you, either you're not qualified, get your house in order first, get your life together, love you, but you have other things to focus on first, or you know what, the Lord has been working in you. You have strength, talents, resources that you can afford to give in overflow to others.

And have you considered doing this before it rewires how a lot of us are willing to think about mission, but even for a pastor listening to this, I mean, ask someone in your church, I mean, would you consider being sent, say, to a man in your church, have you thought about starting a business? I always hear you complain about work. You've got all these ideas. Have you considered starting a business? I mean, I think there's so many ways to apply that principle.

People need the extra encouragement. I think the Lord works through that ordinary church network matrix of relationships where we could be challenged and called outside of ourselves. Bro, you're speaking my language. Good. Because what I hear you saying, at least in some of that, is the quiver in the liver emotional experience that people take as some sort of, perhaps a sign of the direction that this should be going and that ultimately there's.

It's not disciplined, it's not structured, it's not reasoned, it's not rational. It's an expression of this sudden emotional experience that has a certain amount of heat and temperature to it and energy, but that burns out. And that isn't a sustainable way to choose. To choose. Exactly. And so. And so, I don't know. Do you want to get in a little. A little trouble with me? Well, you don't have to. Maybe I should. But. But one of the.

That's something that I. That I think is such a big part of our. Of our culture today, particularly around young people who have an emotional experience. And that emotional experience is ultimately not durable, whether that emotional experience be towards Christ or on a mission or whatever. It is that it's true, because my emotions tell me it is. Well, hold on there. And I think that there's a way in which I've heard it talked about in vague terms that we've lost.

And maybe you can speak to this. Generations of young people that have gone overseas on mission trips rather than, hey, young man, you need to be setting yourself up for a future and a career and a life to support a wife. But instead the men like, oh, no, I'm having this emotional experience. I need to go to this place. And young women as well, who will often spend years overseas in the missions field and not become mothers.

And none of this sounds like what you just described in Acts, which is on a careful selection, a setting apart, an examination, a laying on of hands. It's not that. It's here's a young passionate kid, we can throw some amount of resources at them. They don't have any attachments, they probably don't own a lot of stuff and shoot them off overseas and they can have their emotional experience and maybe the gospel gets spread. That's very different from what you described in Acts.

And multiple things can be true. God draws oftentimes straight lines with crooked sticks. Of course, you look at some of the missionary heroes. I mean, someone like Hudson Taylor probably had no business being a missionary at his young age. And you can look at William Carey and his marriage was a wreck. And there's a lot of bodies in the wake of some of our missionary heroes and saints. But there is a lot of truth in what you're sharing.

And. But we do have to make sure as evangelicals that we're not a part of that problem of what Carl Truman's described for years as expressive individualism. Right. And he wrote multiple books on the topic. We actually brought him on our podcast a couple of years ago to talk about that in the context of the missionary call, basically to say to him, hey, we hear what you're saying. I think you're describing Western culture accurately.

It's all about this sexualized, politicized, psychologized self that's ultimate. And my purpose in life is to actualize and express that self. Whatever it is, being a wax nose, be whatever it wants to be, whatever I want it to be, and what but just a wax nose you can bend into any shape at all. Oh, God. Okay, but the point of that being, we talked about this with him. We do that with calling, with calling to ministry, with calling to overseas ministry.

One of the top articles on our website was from one of our Precious, Precious missionaries. I love the family. They're serving with us in Tanzania. Young, in their 40s. Husband, wife, pair, multiple happy children, including some older children now. They've adopted at least one child that I can name off the top of my head, if not more. He does theological education.

She leads a business, micro enterprise, sort of training setting for at risk women to hear the gospel, learn vocational skills, and get into a better footing in life. And they're doing amazing, amazing work. And really, they're the picturesque missionary family. If you were to look at them on Instagram. I mean, she's fashionable like the kids are, you know, mixed race. I mean, they look like they could be the COVID of an Old Navy catalog. And not just. In fact, I think.

I think we've used their picture on things promotionally, but that's beside the point. They're a wonderful couple and a wonderful family. But she wrote an article that was so insightful called Missions or Wanderlust, and she diagnoses it perfectly. There is this wanderlust that many people have, especially in our age of digital creators, people like yourself. You've traveled the world. I mean, there's a market for that now that can so easily come into the picture here.

And look, if that's what you want to do, God bless you. That's not the same thing as being called. I think most Christians who, if that's your leaning, you probably need to put down some roots first. You probably need to pay off your student loans. You probably need to learn suffering and how to Change diapers for 10 or 15 years and then go plant a church and then go learn a language and be a missionary. And I think we do ourselves better to give people time to develop.

Sometimes we're too eager to send people out. That certainly happens. God's sovereign over that. He can draw a straight line with that brokenness. But we got to ask that question of motivation, right? Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Because I think, again, that's one of the big shifts that I think that we're living through right now is in, like today, a shift away from. Yes, we're all excited, we're all relieved. The memes will flow. The salt mines. The new meme is in imprisoning liberals and crystals.

I don't know if you've seen that one at all. That's. I had to look that one up. Yeah. So I think that one did not make it on my radar. Was that a. Was that a Superman 2 reference? Was that like the Phantom Zone crystal? Is that what's going on there. I think. I think it might. Okay, I understand. Yeah, I read last night. Yeah, exactly. So. So we're. So. I think we're so liberals will get in the crystals. I saw a bunch of people saying that yesterday. So we're taking a cultural corner.

We've turned a corner. I think that's the feeling. Yeah. Of some sort. Yeah. Yeah. And so in that enthusiasm, in that rush of acceleration and in the exhilaration of the centrifugal force, almost not to go spiraling off the cliff and to smoothly take the turn into the next generation, I think one of the shifts that were. That we're feeling broadly is that, okay, we're going to turn away from this expressive individualism to more communal values. I don't want to say collectivist values.

That's not correct. More communal values. Community, home, family. Yeah. Nation more grounded. And that lands itself in the missions world as well. Yeah. And again, there's counterfeits that are out there. There's the sort of we are the world counterfeit where. Where it looks like we're all in this together, but as some have used the metaphor of, yeah, you're together. You're like a sack full of BBs. There's. There's absolutely nothing to keep you bonded together.

And we want to say, no, we're together, but we're together in these household structures, in these church structures, in these structures of. Of mission groups that form and teams of people working together that might come from different churches. There's multiple types of networks that can form. God seems to prefer to work through those things. He works through leaders. He works covenantally. He works through communities.

He doesn't only work with us as individuals, although he does that as well. And I think, again, we've got the real thing. The world has a version. We've got the real thing as well. And that's the beauty of what we get to do, is not only participate in those communities, but seek to see other gospel saturated boroughs multiplied across the world.

Our friend, I don't know if you know him, Rhett Burns does some writing online and he's a pastor, and he recently, a few months ago, wrote a piece for American Reformer. He's working on a similar piece for our website. The title is Restore Baptist Churches to Save the West. And he just talks about the fact that people are more open to traditional ideas.

And so you're boring traditional Baptist church that still has, you know, the board in the back with the numbers of the hymns that we're singing today and how many people raised their hand in the decision of faith, you know, and you can, you know, nitpick if that's the right way to do church, but that type of church that's prevalent throughout parts of our country, what are what the elites would call flyover country, right?

But that type of old time religion that can actually have an impact now because people are open to normal seeming, traditional things, at least for this moment. Let's take advantage of that. The church has something they can capitalize on. Amen. You've been incredibly generous with your time today.

I know it's quite late over there, so I've really enjoyed getting this perspective from within your unique world of, you know, where things have been, where and where we are now and how we can capitalize on this sense that we're having to make shifts in the areas that are relevant to us, individuals as individuals, and of course you in the mission field. And if we could just close on one question as you look out over.

We're coming around, let's say we're coming around the corner and we're looking out at the horizon, knowing that, you know, of course not everything's going to progress linearly, as we had said, that the future will not necessarily be an extrapolation of the present, but as you look out, what excites you the most? Let's say for your life and for awe and also for the missions podcast. Great question. So I'll start with Abwe.

We have seen incredible generosity to the mission, even through years of inflation. Now we've seen record setting numbers of people still going, still being sent out. And they're not blind to the fact that there's problems here at home, but they're doing the thing. They're trying to get their house in order. And they're also loving other things outside their immediate sphere of influence.

They're thinking about the fact that there's as many as 3 billion people in the world that have no access to the gospel. And people are going out obediently with a burden, with solid sending churches behind them to do long term church planting. And I'm seeing that increase. I'm seeing our organization for 2025 is putting a focus not just on mobilizing or raising more funds. Our laser focus for 2025 is how to serve those local churches better.

Because that is God's Plan A. It's not parachurch organizations, it's not governments. His Plan A is his church. That affects all sorts of things, but it starts at that church level. And so I'm excited to Lean into that, pour into that together. This year we, we have operations, ministries in almost 90 countries and five new fields opened this year. Multiple new fields, including places where there's still multiple unreached language groups, unreached people groups.

So that, that excites me immensely. But I'm also excited about. We have a US Division as well. That's church planting. One of my good friends, a guy named Ray Brandon in Kalamazoo, is working as our director of US Church planting too. So we're recognizing there's a mission field here and we're seeking to raise up churches and goers that can be concerned for both of those things. Our missions podcast, we did launch a paywall, a premium membership this year as well.

And so if people join for 9.99 per month, they get access to bonus episodes where we go real deep into the cultural stuff as well in our country and how that might overlap with the theology, the missiology. We have conversations a lot like this all the time in our main episodes and in the overtime. In fact, Brian, you'll have to remind me of this. Let's set up a coupon code.

If they use coupon code Spencer missions podcast.com premium if they use Spencer, then we can, we can give you your first month free for sure. So we'll get that stood up as soon as we're done with this stream. We'll get that stood up here in the next few hours. And yeah, it's just a blessing and a privilege to be a part of this. And, you know, for years, I felt like I was drifting in life. I was, I was given this, this sense of guilt and dread from some of the missions rhetoric that's out there.

What we've talked about. I'm. Am I doing enough to please the Lord? Am I doing enough? Well, the answer is no, right? That's why I need a savior. And yet how cool he was able to take us and put us in a headquarters of a mission where we can send missionaries, we can be on mission here at home, locally, and we can see what God's doing around the world, and we can do it while using our vocational skills. So we're just blessed.

An incredible way to serve here with this team telling stories of what God's doing around the world and doing that through podcasts, magazine, all sorts of different things like that. So follow me on x@ajkocheman abwe.org and then missions podcast.com premium promo code. Spencer, thank you so much. Alex. I was going to ask you where people can go to find out more about what you do, but you already. You already answered that. Not my first podcast rodeo, brother. I know.

Slip it in while I can, right? It's so fun talking to fellow podcasters, so you know how the whole thing works. Yeah, for sure. And, brother, I appreciate the work that you're doing. Love following the journey that you're on, and I think you've got an important voice. And, Lord, may he continue to use it. Thank you. It's all a gift from God. Thank you so much, sir. All right, Lord, bless you. Thank you so much. Take care. You too, Sa.