Episode 381 - Collaborative Missiology: The Future of Global Missions | Rob Hoskins

Speaker A: My dad just had this clear vision. He was trying to explain what he was seeing in this vision. And he said, rob, I'm seeing, like, kids watching pornography on the palm of their hand. In this dream he had, and this was before they were mobile devices, as he's seeing this, he said, lord, what am I seeing? What do you want me to do? And the Lord really spoke to him and said, the only thing that will overcome these lies is truth. My word is truth. Take my word, Give it to every child in the world.

Speaker B: Bold visionaries, faithful disruptors. Some, um, call them crazy, but they are called to create under his power for his glory. The Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. In this episode, we have Rob Hoskins, president of One Hope. He shares how they delivered God's word to children globally for 40 years. He also talks about the pioneer missionary era and how it must evolve into collaborative missiology, where ministries, donors, and entrepreneurs unite around shared goals.

Speaker C: You know one of those things that everybody always asks you when you're passing them in the hall, you're passing them an event, they ask that question, like, hey, how are you doing? And I have wrestled for years with, like, how to answer that question. I'm like, yeah, it's great. It's good. You know, like, you try and mutter through some, muddle through something, but for me, I think recently, I've just can't help but often say this phrase, man, what a time it is to be alive, for sure. Um, and we are facing just massive opportunity, massive, maybe opposition that's unmasked and coming right at us. Massive technology changes and advancement, and it's all swirling around. And I think in the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, oftentimes we talk about businesses and we talk about things, but we don't talk about the times. Um, we don't talk about the times we're in. And Scripture clearly says that we should be men and women of the times. We should understand it. And so, man, what a gift it is to have you here to talk about this, because I think both from your family story, from your personal story, from your outlook on this, just have a really great understanding of this moment that we're in. So, a question we often ask. Who are you? Where do you come from? Tell a little bit of the story and lead us into the conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, um, yeah, I've got a really exciting background. Um, my parents were missionaries, so I grew up on the mission field in the Middle east, which is volatile now, but it was volatile when I grew up there. We were evacuated three times, uh, last Time our house was blown up and was gone. My dad was kidnapped. So had grown up in a really exciting, sort of volatile environment in the Middle east, which was frontline, um, missionary work. And you know, I don't even know when I was called into missions. I just sort of grew up in it and never wanted to do anything else. But it, uh, my wife was a missionary kid. We got married and always thought we would go overseas and do what our, both of our parents did. Um, and uh, God didn't have that plan for our life because my dad had a, had a vision when I was just coming out of seminary. And it was to give God's word to every child in the world. And it was a project at the time, but it became the ministry of One Hope, which, uh, which I've done now for more than 40 years, which is a really simple mission. God's word, every child. Um, my dad just had this clear vision that this generation was so desperate for answers. That was true 40 years ago. It's more true today. Um, and he was just describing this vision he had of how really the enemy, Satan, was attacking this generation in ways that we had never seen before, through proliferation of drugs globally, alcoholism, um, and then I remember he was trying to explain what he was seeing in this vision. And he said, rob, I'm seeing kids watching pornography on the palm of their hand in this dream he had. And this was before they were mobile devices. And then we've seen just the proliferation of pornography through mobility. And so as he's seeing this, he said, lord, what am I seeing? What do you want me to do? And the Lord really spoke to him and said, the only thing that overcome these lies is truth. My word is truth. Take my word, give it to every child in the world. And our family have been Bible publishers in the Middle east and then around the world globally. Um, and so we were printers of scripture. And so we just thought, okay, well, let's get God's word into the hands of kids. And it's been an incredible 40 year journey. We started with public school systems around the world, first in Latin America and then in Africa, taking really engaging scripture, um, in relevant and dynamic ways, which the global church really was doing black and white mimeograph Bible materials for kids. And this generation has just become increasingly more media driven. So we move beyond print. We still do a lot of print. We'll print tens of millions of books every year for kids, really relevant material and content. But we started moving into film and we do a lot of, uh, short films. Animated films. Um, and then we saw this digital revolution coming, and so we have moved into that as well, mainly in partnership with YouVersion, where we've done the Bible app for kids. And, uh, how are kids engaging with scripture on mobile devices is a huge part of what we do. So, um, that's the exciting thing I get to be involved in. It's global. We're literally in every country of the world. We're in hundreds of languages, um, using all different kinds of media to share the word of God with kids who've never heard it before. Um, and about over 50% of our work now is in the hardest to reach countries in the world. The least reached countries in the world. Uh, because we can. You know, where I was growing up in the Middle East, I mean, we would have missionaries that would work their entire lives to see two or three people come m to Jesus. Or maybe they would plant a small cell group, not even a whole church. And now literally, Justin, we're seeing thousands of young people searching the Internet, asking deep questions about their faith and coming to Jesus in numbers that we've never seen in Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, kind of. So like you said, these are the most exciting times. Um, what is it? But they're making us rethink, though, how we do things. Because it's such a different world that I grew up in.

Speaker C: I want to come back to that in a second, but I want to just like, pause for this moment here because many entrepreneurs, maybe they've grown up in a family business and they kind of understand that tension of just like, hey, this is the business we've grown up in. And then there's this like, the new business that's forming or the next chapter. You shared, you know, a little bit of the journey of what you're going on with your dad and his declining health.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Has that given you a moment to reflect upon? Just this idea of like, what a unique opportunity, unique challenges, but also unique opportunities. Kind of growing up in a family business kind of like that. When you look back on.

Speaker A: Well, first I'm just, uh, like you said, my dad's in hospice right now, so it's a really tender, ah, time for our family, but really incredible because my mom and dad were just so faithful to their calling. Um, but what I loved was my dad was an entrepreneur. I mean, he was. So we talk about going to the Middle east, and he was at that time what we called a crusade evangelist. I mean, he would go and, you know, rent a, ah, hall a stadium around the world and he would Preach. He would go on television even. And he was an evangelist. Um, well, he tried to do that in Iraq and he got arrested and he came back to Lebanon and he said, lord, I'm never going to do that again. The Lord said, I never asked you to do that in the first place. That was your dumb idea. So that's where he began to think, well, how am I going to reach as an evangelist? How am I going to reach? And we were in Beirut, and Arab language newspapers came out of Beirut. They were the media hub of the Middle East. And so he started taking out ads in Beirut newspapers. And he was just so creative as an entrepreneur. I mean, no missionaries I know had ever done anything like this. So John Kennedy had just been killed. And so he would ran. He ran a newspaper article with a picture of John Kennedy. Kennedy was really loved in the Middle east. And it was, um. He was the most powerful man in the world. But he couldn't stop one assassin's bullet. Will John Kennedy live again? For questions about life, contact PO Box 6732, Beirut, Lebanon. And we suddenly had all this mail coming in from these kids. And he designed a simple, almost pre evangelism course introducing mainly Muslim young people to who Jesus was from the scriptures. And through that, we saw really a lot of young people come to faith. So dad was always really innovative and creative. And then he had this vision of God's word, every child. And we start with print. But then I remember I got a letter from a missionary in Madagascar. He said, thanks for sending me these books, but only 32% of our kids will ever learn how to read. How are we going to share God's Word with them? And so I remember going to my dad and saying, hey, Dad, I really think we have to move into visual arts. I think we have to do an animated film for kids. Jesus film was out, and that was great, but it wasn't really made for kids. And so. And I remember immediately my dad just in his entrepreneurial mind, he was like, that's a great idea. And our mailing list had been built on this sermon my dad would preach called the Power of the Printed Page. And I remember even that afternoon he was on the phone with one of our partners and he said, no, Chuck, it's not the power of the printed page. It's the power of God's word, whether it's in a book or whether it's on a screen. Wow. And he. So I thank God that I had a dad who was just naturally entrepreneurial and he was A pioneer. And, uh, if you've ever worked with an entrepreneur and a pioneer, that's great and it's fun and it's amazing, but it can also be really, really challenging because they're strong builders. Right. And so he was really innovative and creative, but it was really weird. Justin. He came to me 22 years ago when he was my age now, and without telling me or the board or anybody, he said, um, you know, it's time for you to lead. And I was like, what are you talking about? Like, And I remember saying to him, dad, you're at the top of your game. And he said, rob, it's when you're at the top of your game, when the game's about to change. And he said, I see you seeing things that I don't understand, um, about how the world is changing with globalization and, uh, and I'm just going to support you. And he's done that for 22 years. Um, he's turning 90 this year. Yeah. And he's been my biggest cheerleader and just incredible. So that intergenerational shifting, changing is so necessary. It's so, it's so needed. And, and frankly, sometimes in the missions community in particular, we haven't seen it done really well.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, and as you talk about, we're seeing, you know, every generation can say things are changing, you know, and we say the world has never changed like it is right now. I actually believe that. And it's not because there's never been change that happens in every generation. What I would say is change has never happened as fast as it is right now. Yeah.

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Speaker A: so what used to be generational over a 20 year cycle, now you know, it's millennials, busters, boomers, Gen X, the rising alphas. Now because those, those, those sort of

Speaker C: time frames, cycles are so much faster.

Speaker A: Cycles are so much faster. And so it requires you to move at a speed and A velocity that's true in business. I mean but it's, it's also true in ministry.

Speaker C: It's true in missions, it's true in mission, it's true in ministry. I love that the entrepreneurial nature of your dad's thinking because like, uh, and I think it's a skill set that we need to see as entrepreneurs is it's applied to um, ministry contexts. The ability to accept disruption, accept change and lean into it versus lean out of it. I think the church as an institution, we leaned out, we're afraid. But entrepreneurs, we see disruption and we say man, this is the time to move in. This is the time to put things in the middle of the table.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's hard when you're dealing with something that you feel is so sacred that you shouldn't take risk with something that's sacred. And I think there's also sort of a built in fallacy, uh, trap within missions giving, which is you shouldn't be risky. Like I can be risky with my business, but I'm not going to be risky with the things of God. And there hasn't been a lot of um, bandwidth for failure. And look, there's no innovation without failure. If you don't have an appetite to say I'm willing to fail now, you need to fail. Well, fail smart, fail fast. All those things that are in the innovation risk, not careless risk. Right, right. But you still, if you're going to innovate at the time we're in right now, you have to have a willingness to try things, to fail more often quicker than we ever have before in the missions world. And I remember one of the donors telling me about my dad. The thing I love about your dad is um, you know, everything he does works. And I started laughing and then I went and told my dad that he laughed even harder. And he said, yeah, that guy doesn't realize the only things he's seen are the things that have worked, is the things that we're putting in our newsletter, we're showing this guy, you know, but he said, you know, probably, and I think he's probably right. He said probably two out of every 10 things that I've done have worked. And he said, what that guy doesn't realize is it's on the failure of those eight things that had been the soil that have allowed these other things to grow. So you look at something like Bible app for kids and everybody goes, man, that's the greatest scripture mobility for kids thing ever. They don't know that. I had two Failures before that and actually lost. I hate to admit it, but m. Millions of dollars trying at the early curve of innovation to build, um, a mobile scripture experience for kids that didn't work. But we wouldn't have the Bible app today if we hadn't had those failures.

Speaker C: So we're talking to an audience that's risk on. We're entrepreneurs, and we're listening to this.

Speaker A: That's why I like you guys. And we were like, I love this community.

Speaker C: We love this idea. We love this risk, and we love the application of it. And I love that you're kind of giving us permission to have the conversation about the sacred because, like, sometimes we feel like it's the holy, holy. Step back. Don't touch. Yeah, just leave it. But give us the context. I love some of the language of just kind of how you frame up.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Both this, like this moment, this we're in the language of what we've come from and what you think that we're on the verge of.

Speaker A: Well, first I think we have to say, like, um, we. We. There's. There's been a. And there's a huge risk to this, of being victims of our own success in the missions community. Because if you look at the modern missionary movement, it's pretty young. I mean, William Carey stands up and says, God has called me to India, and he comes to this church denomination. And the actual words were, sit down, young man. When God wants to reach India, he'll reach it without you. And thank God William Carey doesn't sit down, but he's a pioneer that goes to India and plants the church there. And then Hudson Taylor and Adarayan Judson and, uh, Lillian Trasher, and there's all these heroes of the modern missionary movement that's pretty young. And they're all pioneers. They're all entrepreneurs. And they're actually breaking some theological constructs that were developed over many years of theology. And they said, no, yes, there's God's sovereignty, but there's also God's agency, and I'm an agent of change. And they start reading the Great Commission a different way. And they take massive risks. I mean, all those families buried their wives, their children in those foreign lands. They suffered tremendously. I mean, my. My wife's grandparents, um, went to Cuba and they went to die there. They didn't die there, but they did go on to two other countries. And it was like. But that was the mindset, and it was what was needed to be a pioneer. We were doing pioneer missions, and we've been doing that for 200 years. And the thing that is threatening is you look at Africa, which at the beginning of, uh, the 20th century, in early 1900s, only 4% of sub Saharan Africa would be considered Christian. You know, and now we look at Africa, that's 65% sub Saharan Africa, that's orthodox evangelical in their faith and their belief. I mean, look at that. Growth over, ah, just over 100 years is phenomenal because pioneer missions worked for that era. But I got to tell you, what got us here isn't going to get us to where we need to go. Like, there is so much change that's come at us so fast that if we continue to think as pioneers, um, I don't think we're going to be faithful in our generation. You look at something like the Bible translation movement, where you had a pioneer, we call him Uncle Cam, Cam Townsend, who's the father of the modern translation movement, Wycliffe Bible Translators. It's such an amazing story. It's such a romantic story and it moves us because you have families that would say, I'm gonna take my entire life and learn a language that only has 5,000 speakers in the world to put the word of God into that. And we're just like, here, I'll empty my wallet. Like you're willing to go do that as a pioneer, I'm gonna. And so there was something beautiful about that and it was needed and it was romantic. And it would be absolutely foolish to do that today.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker A: Because it's not needed to do it the same way. Because now we live in a globalized community. Now we're able to understand the dynamics of linguistic families where we can actually work in teams and we can develop software. And now we have AI that can do translation in a different way. And you still need harnesses. It's not like you just become irresponsible. You actually build on what the pioneers gave us, but you change it and you make it better. And so that gives birth to a new, what I would call collaborative Bible translation movement, which is going to shorten the Bible translation. I could go through just about every area of missions and say we need that same form of radical change to move from pioneer to collaboration. And this is, I think this is the right missional framework for the 21st century. Is a collaborative missiology. Is a missiology that says now in a. And this is not just true of missions. I mean, this is a collaborative economy. It's the gig economy. You look at technology, you have rivals in the technology space. You know, Sun Microsystems actually working with rivals like Apple. Why? Because they know that there's a level of collaboration in the economy, in the ecosystem that needs to happen. And they will not move forward. They will not be successful if there's not an element of that. And we're at the beginning stages of what I would call collaborative missiology right now.

Speaker C: I love that. Collaborative missiology. And I want to just kind of come back to that here in a second of just like, what does that mean? Because I think this, when people are hearing this, the entrepreneur is like, we will always need pioneers, like, never stop. But we have to be careful to recognize. Like, that leads you to, I don't know, 6,001 different water well ministries. It leads you to all these different things. And in the scale of it, like the pioneering spirit, the innovative spirit is core to who we are, that needs to stay. But I think it's the partnership element of what you're saying. We don't need to stop innovating. We don't need to stop thinking creatively. We just have to recognize these problems we are up against are so much bigger than what one can handle. And I like what you're talking about with like sun and others. People in technology spaces that you never would think would work together are. Because really what they're doing is they're de. Risking it. Yeah, they're helping people see that. No, we need.

Speaker A: They're mitigating their investment and risk factor. And if someone's already figured out an element of the problem, I'm going to build on that. I'm not just going to try and reinvent everything. I don't need to anymore. In a connected world. The same thing's happening with these technology superpowers we have right now. I mean, we have more knowledge coming at us, more accessible than ever before. Of course we're going to leverage that and take advantage of that. And so I think it's just as a theory of business collaboration and a globalized, connected, technology rich world, a more literate world than there's ever been before. Um, it would be foolish for us not to collaborate just from a pure business model standpoint. But then you look at it theologically and you say, oh, by the way, Jesus had something to say about this in John 17, where the word unity, in that last discourse, he has his last instructions to his disciples is the word unity. And he says, until you are united, then I will not be lifted up. But if I am, if you're united and you lift me up, it'll draw all Men and women to you. It'll do what he says later on in the Great Commission, where go reach every nation only happens through unity. And so I think, really eschatologically, if we study the end times, wherever you stand on the eschatological, what you are, John 24:14, this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world, and then the end shall come. It's not for us to determine when that end is, but we do know that every tribe, every nation, every people, that we're drawing closer to that time. And the reason we can accelerate it is because of the conditions. It's like you said, understand our times, know what to do. That's why I would say, like, my m. My father was faithful in his generation. I have to be faithful in my generation. And I would say I would be, uh, unfaithful if I wasn't collaborating. And that actually comes down to a science of collaboration where we, um, need to learn a new language, we need to learn new techniques, we need to learn new practices, we need to have new frameworks. And that's why I love the fact that we're in a. We're in a new almost field of missions called collaborative missiology, where we're learning new things every day. And I would say you're not much of an entrepreneur if you're not willing to change and you're not willing to see, uh, not only what is God doing in this space, but what is possible today that was never possible before. And so we're learning so much right now.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think we need to look just for an interesting statistic that we were talking about as a team as we talk about these big problems. And what does it look like to do more together of just, like, how many ministries are out there? And like, comparing that just to the markets. Like, we did this search and, uh, you know, 1.6 to 1.8 million nonprofits in the U.S. there's only, like, 4 to 5,000 publicly traded companies in the U.S. um, so you have 450 times as many ministries and those things that have started. Then what happens in the market? The market pulls together companies, they consolidate, they merge. They have some of those different things.

Speaker A: They have winners and they have losers.

Speaker C: They have winners, they have losers. They have that challenge.

Speaker A: Uh, but when someone says, God told me to do something, it does make it a sacred, almost a sacred cow that says, we're not allowed to sort of measure. We're not allowed to say, was it working? We're not allowed to ask very pragmatic. Questions. And I think that we could look at it and go, well, there's something pure and beautiful about a pioneer spirit that says, God wants me to do this. But I've got to be honest, like, I'm a missionary kid. I'm the recipient of people that were coming over to the Middle East. Frankly, Justin, they didn't know what they were doing. They were actually harming the church. And I think we need to take some missiological hypocritical oaths above all else, do no harm. And I would say there's a lot of NGOs that, uh, I think they have good intentions, but I think a lot of them don't have good practices. And you have some that have incredible practices. Like there are people that are divinely inspired to solve certain problems. Um, and they can do it at scale and capacity. And those are the people I want to run with. And that takes a humility admission. It takes a humility admission. For me, when I was trying to figure out how to do a Bible Apple.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And was failing. And then I see this anointing on a guy named Bobby Gruenwald who comes up with this idea for you version. I was on the phone with that guy for a half an hour and I go, this guy comes way more than I do. Like he can figure this out for me. And so I told my team after I got off that call, he said, we're not doing a Bible app unless we do it with this guy M and he's building a platform. And that platform is how we're going to run our kids vision. Because what God's called us to is not technology. God's called us to God's word, every child. And if he can build a better mousetrap, I'm a fool not to use that. And that just accelerated our ability to do the Bible app for kids. We could have never done it alone at the scale and capacity that we do it in partnership.

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Speaker C: It's beautiful. And I love seeing that and I love seeing how passionate you've been about that for years of just like this intentionality of you guys working together. I think what other people here need to see is like, you've been involved in a lot of different collaborations. You are involved in a lot of collaborations from. Chosen from other different sides of things. As you said with Bobby, like, there's a conversation that happens when you go from the idea to the reality of it.

Speaker A: Huh.

Speaker C: And I think probably, if I'm honest, like last 20 years somewhere I got fatigued of these events that it was like, come one, come all.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: And it was like, I don't know what other word to put on it. It was like a directory based event. And it was like we get 75 people in the same room and somehow think that by the end of 48 hours there's going to be consensus on some output. And it just never worked. It was like, where we go one, we go all. And it got so watered down because

Speaker A: it was unity for the sake of unity rather than unity for the sake of mission. And having a mission that was clearly defined and we were able to look at as true partners that weren't neophytes. We didn't have nascent ministry. I mean, we had, we had built something that was valuable for the kingdom. And when we came together as capacity partners and looked at a problem that was so big that any of us would have been arrogant to say we could solve it on our own, like this is one of the collaboratives we're involved in right now, which is close the Bible gap, which is all of us have a passion in Bible distribution and access to see the least reached places reached. But they're the least reached places because they're hard to reach and they don't fit into our existing fundraising models because they're more expensive and they're more challenging. And there's all different logistical issues and challenges to get there. There's linguistic challenges. And so a bunch of us came together. Now, we had built years of trust between, in this case, six agencies. Now we're adding more agencies to it into this collaborative, um, and we're creating economies of scale. Yeah, we're able to do shipping and logistics together. We're not all coming to the frontline church planners, our pioneer missions agencies, and saying you have to build a relationship with six different agencies that have six different budget models. And six different. No, we're actually going to come together and make your life easier because you're doing the hard work. And we're actually going to be your resource provider for anything that has to do with God's word, whether it's oral, visual, digital, children's ministry, full Bibles like you get one stop shopping. That's just smart. I mean, and donors look at that and they're able to say, that's smart business. And I, uh, really appreciate the fact that a collaborative missiology is being driven for the most part by collaborative generosity, where so many people like you for 20 years have said, man, I just don't know what to do. I was talking to one major donor, uh, and he said, rob, I just feel like oftentimes I'm in a dark room and I've got a blindfold on and I'm just swinging and I hope I'm going to hit something, you know, And I think that's oftentimes the way some of them have felt. And I think that what you're doing at solving the world's great problems, I'm one of your biggest champions, because I think you really are as a business community, coming alongside the ministry communities. And together we're acting like Jesus wanted to as the body of Christ. And we're saying, hey, let's solve this together. Yeah, um, with the church, with business, with entrepreneurship, um, with ministries. But it's forced us to make some really hard decisions and to have good yeses and hard nos sometimes. But it's accelerating the work of missions. And I've had to get involved in this as being part of these collaboratives. I see that we're able to spend money on things that are not sexy to raise money for, like research. I m mean, I've tried to raise money. I'm a firm believer in research. I'm an academic, and I know if I don't do good and all research is, it's a discovery of the truth, but it's expensive specifically to do it in markets that don't have any existing research. And what I found is that, um, the donor community increasingly within these collaboratives, said, we all need to do research, but let's do it together. And it makes it affordable for the first time.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So now we're operating with a real dashboard that says we know what we need to measure, which oftentimes we didn't.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's not only what we want to measure, but it's also what the customer wants to measure. But before we jump to that like what I want to just affirm is like, I think a lot of times with these collaborations, again, like um, when you bring six groups together, you have to have six pioneering partnering minded organizations. And then when I think what we've seen, whether it was um, Bible translation or Bible gap, there's then another step where you layer on other people and you invite other people to the table. But I think oftentimes we start with this, like, oh, we got to go one, we go all. But I think there's a consistent thing that you see across all these collaborations. The room gets smaller, it gets tighter, it gets connected, it sees how complementing pieces happen and then it gets bigger.

Speaker A: It's a virtual cycle of growth we call it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And uh, you know, we have what we call in most of these collaboratives, we have shared measuring systems, but we also have shared design systems. So you can call it different things. We call ours 5D, which is first we're going to actually discover, we're going to research, then we're going to start designing together and then we're going to go try it, we're going to go do it together. And did it work? What did we learn? Then we're going to go out and after that we're going to come back and we're going to document it because we're going to say what worked, what didn't and we're going to be transparent about it. And it's a lot easier in some ways with a collaboration to admit your failures than when you're in a single ministry out there competing with other ministries doing the same thing. Metrics that a donor wants to hear and says, oh well, they're doing it for a dollar. Why is it costing you $3? And so that shared measuring system, the documentation of it actually begins. I mean, I have one scaffold partner that says, let's get all the liars in the room. I know what he means.

Speaker C: Sometimes a little misinterpretation, but we see

Speaker A: that let's get all the exaggerators in the room together and let's really, with integrity, come up with a shared measuring system that all of us can say we really believe this is. So we're documenting and then we're dreaming. Now we're, and we're saying let's, let's rediscover, let's redesign. And so you're right, it starts tight, it starts small, but then you can build on that and actually make it scalable and grow something of capacity that eventually you want to give away to the whole global church and the loop

Speaker C: of that speaks to the customer. And I think that that's the other thing that you were getting to is, like, especially when we start thinking about solving the world's greatest problems, we recognize that, like, I mean, the old paradigm of, gosh, there was this like, spiritual caste system. Off you go. You're up on the varsity team. If you're a giver, you're on the JV or whatever it is. But, like, that has been flipped.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: I think collaborations, I think of language Todd Peterson's used with illuminations is like the. The power imbalance has balanced and we've seen the left and the right hand working together to do things. I think that the giver. And if we're honest, most of the people that are listening to this podcast, they might have some ip, they might have some technology that might be a rare case where they can jump in on one of these, some problems and roll up their sleeves. But a lot of people are coming to this point where they said, listen, um, you know, John Piper's told us we can't retire and collect seashells on the beach. And the movement has said, God owns it all. And so we've changed how we lead in our business, but we're also changing the perspective of what happens with the fruit. And I think when I think of, ah, faith, uh, driven entrepreneurs we've talked to, people have come to this place of giving, and I think if they're honest, they say, I don't understand why I don't like this more. It's a weird language. There's weird concepts. I can't see outputs. I can't see all this type of stuff. But I think a good disruption because of these collaborations is happening where people are saying, man, there's a chance to measure outputs. Man, there's a chance to really see, like, let's take some swings at some things. As you said, let's. Let's bat 2 or 3 for 10 on some areas where the risk, reward, opportunity is so much greater.

Speaker A: And what I love that I'm seeing is like, the playbook's the same whether you're, uh, a frontline church planner or whether you're, um, a ministry leader like myself, or whether you're a donor partner, a generosity partner. Like, we can work off of a common playbook right now, which gives us language for us to really be the body of Christ, for us to really be united, to do mission together. And it's not just about what we're doing. It's about who we are as well. You know, if the 20th, if the great missions eras were pretty much from the west to the rest, um, now we have a from all to all missiology. And there's a democratization that comes with collaboration. You talked about it. There's a democratization that Todd talks about about where we're on the same thing. Well, the same thing needs to happen with the global church, where the African church and the Latin church and the Chinese church have not just a place at the table, but they're helping build the table together.

Speaker C: Huh.

Speaker A: And it really is Pentecost in the truest sense. You shall receive power to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the world. And as we move further out, our collaboration equity needs to grow stronger. And it's men and women, it's young and old, it's every tongue and every tribe. That's the beautiful vision that they're casting in Pentecost for one day when we gather around the throne. So I want people to see collaborative missiology not just as a functional activity that we're doing, but I want us to see that it's God's vision for his creation, uh, and where he wants us to end up. So I love the fact that a collaborative missiology makes room. It makes room for every people. And some of our greatest innovation is going to come from 17 year old girls in Africa. It's going to come from, uh, someone we never expected in Bangladesh, uh, that is suddenly going to help us uncrack. You talk about being pioneers and innovators and entrepreneurs. Now there's a bigger table for us to hear more voices that should be exciting to all of us.

Speaker C: And entrepreneurs need to hear this because I think a lot of times when we looked at, even in the right now media days, when we're looking at the data, it reinforced everything, which you said it was west of the rest. Rarely would you see viewers in a US context consuming teaching from other pastors globally. It would go one way.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker C: But I think entrepreneurs need to see their calling in this moment because oftentimes we're like, oh yeah, it's for them, but this is for entrepreneurs. That changes with entrepreneurs. We've seen this with faith driven entrepreneurship. Is that the most watched stories for US entrepreneurs is actually not us, US entrepreneurs. It's people from the world.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: And there's such a connection of entrepreneurs that they're like, I get it. You're struggling with the same things. You feel lonely, you feel isolated, you feel like you're taking on the world, you feel like whatever it is. And there's a, there's a path and a highway, I think in the global church where entrepreneurs understand each other so quickly, so fast and so naturally that I think entrepreneurs can be one of the early steps.

Speaker A: There's also a growing frustration in the majority, what we call the majority world church, because look, 75% of the evangelical community is not in the west anymore. And they're the spiritually vibrant part of the global church. And for years they've been recipients. It's almost a charity mentality that has existed where they felt like charity recipients. No one likes that, no one wants to be a part of that type of missions economy. And now what we're seeing is we're seeing this rising voice through collaborative missiology to say, you know, whoever God has spoken to that can fix this problem and if they're closer to the markets and they understand them better, we better be listening to them. And that comes out in this design process I'm talking about. I mean, I look at the scripture engagement. One Hope has 350 different scripture engagement programs, one of them being Bible app for kids, which is high tech, but we've had low tech in the bush ideas come out where I've had church planners that are young entrepreneurs that said, hey, this program called 17 stories and it's 16 different, uh, stories on one sheet of paper for illiterate kids. And oral Bible stories tell one story and every week they give them one of those and then they flip it over when they get all 16. And there's a mosaic of the metanarrative of scripture on the other side. That tool cost us like 30 cents. And it was probably the thing that engaged illiterate children in scripture. Uh, like nothing else we ever created. It came out of the market. That's just a small example. I can give you 100 examples like that of where collaborative missiology really looking at what we call an outcome based ministry where all of us are working together to say what we want to see is transformation. And there's a process to get to transformation. And it's unity and it's collaboration and it's all of us coming together. So, man, I'm just so excited about the moment we're living in. It really is that Kairos moment. You know, I mean, there's two words for, you know, time that we see in the Greek. There's chronos, which is just, you know, as time is passing and what time is it? But then there's what time Is it?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: What age are we living in? And this is a Kairos moment. And I think that kairos is that John 17 imperative of unity. I wouldn't want to do missions any other way than to do it together.

Speaker C: It's a fun time. And I'll finish with this thought of, like, what a time it is to be alive. M There's new playbooks, there's new learnings, there's new sharpening, there's new forms of humility that we're all going to do to walk through as leaders and ministry leaders, as entrepreneurs, to say, hey, we've always been used to, as you said, like that pioneer thing. We want to do our thing. There's romantic about it. But I think what's exciting is there's a new romantic story being told of people coming together to do more than they would otherwise do apart to take on the unmasked darkness that we're facing. And man, just what a time it is to be alive.

Speaker A: It is. And what I love about it is it is biblical in the sense that it's being done by community. There's something lonely about pioneering, um, man. I love the missionary biographies and hearing about the sacrifice of an Adiron Judson that takes the gospel to what is Myanmar, Burma. You know, spending his entire life translating the scripture, seeing a handful of people come to Christ, burying two wives there and his kids and, you know, imprisoned, beaten all. I mean, wow, our heart should just be like, he's a hero of the faith. And I just go, uh, we're a recipient of that. And I want to be as faithful as Adariah and Judson did in my generation. And I think I would be very unfaithful. I m would think the donor community would be very unfaithful if they weren't thinking about how do we, as a community called the Body of Christ, work together to bring about what he wants, which is the whole world to know who he is.

Speaker C: Amen. Great to lock arms with you. Grateful for your partnership, your friendship, and just excited about the days ahead.

Speaker A: I, uh, love what you guys are doing.

Speaker C: Well, friends, you know, at the end of each episode, we love to challenge you not just to think and to receive the message, but to take action. And so you heard us talking about this idea of collaborative giving. Simply put, we think that the challenges of this world are bigger than what we can tackle on our own. That coordinated. That big problems require coordinated generosity. And if we give together, we can go further. And so if you go to solving.org you see a list that is really just a starting point and it's a beginning of where people are coming together around proven ministry models, innovative models. Some of the very same things that you heard Rob talk about of close the Bible gap, Bible translation and anti trafficking work. And so many of these different things where people are saying if we coordinate, we can remove some redundancy, we could go further, faster together. And I would just encourage you check that out maybe through the lens of what God is calling you to or what is God calling your family to, or maybe what is God calling your business to, to step into and have another layer of mission brought to your family or to the work that you're in. So our hope is that this brings the best resources all into one place and it makes it easy amidst the value very busy schedules that you work into. So check that out. It's always great to be with you and we look forward to seeing you on the next episode.

Speaker B: Come for content, Stay for community. Join a Faith Driven Entrepreneur group online or in person. No cost, no catch. Visit faith driven entrepreneur.org that's faithdrivenentrepreneur.org.