Q&A Panel

It's a joy to be here with all of you once more, and a joy to be here with some of our speakers. I think you've been introduced to each of these men already, but we have with us John Piper and Chad Vegas and Kevin DeYoung and Brooks Buser. And I'll direct questions to each of them and then some questions to all of them. and our goal here is to try to cover some of the kinds of questions we've been getting throughout this week and some of the ones that we anticipated as we came into this week. So I'll start with Chad. Chad, the conference is themed The Lord Who Sends, and I know that was very intentionally entitled. So why is it important for the church to remember that our God is a God who sends, is a sending God?

I think that in part we picked the name and the sessions, even with Kevin and myself, that we did with the Am I still on? Yeah. Son being sent and the Holy Spirit being sent. Largely because... We can sort of move away from the Lord himself to just the doing of mission and forget that it's the Lord whose heart is for the nations, for his people, and that he has sent his Son to redeem us. And he sent the Spirit to apply the redemption of the Son to us because he wants us to know him.

And so we wanted to emphasize that, and we wanted to sort of get rid of some of the error that exists. In this concept of the Missio Dei, the mission of God, where somehow the mission of God is this generic mission that anybody can participate in.

Whether or not they are believers in Jesus Christ, they can do creation care, and that's the mission of God. Or, you know, they can do something kind for their neighbor, and that's the mission of God, whether they believe in Jesus Christ or not. That somehow the mission of God is more expansive, and thus the mission of the church is more expansive than the mission of the Son, and the mission of the Holy Spirit. And so I think that's the mission of God.

And we wanted to say, no, no, no. The mission of God is what we see in the Son's redeeming work and in the sending of the Holy Spirit to apply the Son's redeeming work. And so then we're sent out as the church to continue that work. You know, the Lord Jesus himself continuing to do and teach through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We're not sent out just to do whatever we wish, but to do something very specific that's tied to what the Son and the Spirit are doing.

You mentioned mission drift. You mentioned the drift there and the drift in missions. And, Kevin, I know you've written about that, the mission of the church. How does that have bearing on this whole discussion of God's work in sending?

When we ask what is the mission of the church, we need to pay attention to both of those words. So you just heard about mission. In this conference, I said a lot about the church, that some Christians can hear that question and think, what are all of the good things I might do as a Christian? What are all the things I might do in obedience to Christ, under the lordship of Christ? When we're asking something narrower than that. So people say, well, isn't the great commandment is the great commission? Well, or our mission is the great commandment and the great commission. Well, of course, we want to do and we are commanded to love God and to love our neighbors. But there is a propulsive force. There's a reason that Jesus didn't say, now go into all the world.

And love your neighbors as yourself. Of course, we do love our neighbors as ourself. But we go into the world that we might make disciples and baptize them in the triune name and teach them to obey everything I've commanded. Mission drift is a very real thing. When Greg Gilbert and I wrote, I think that was 2011.

What is the mission of the church? And the subtitle is something like making sense of social justice, shalom and the great commission. And you can hear if you remember from 2011. Some of you are we little kids that there's a certain kind of danger that we were sensing.

Maybe the sort of person that says, well, renew the city, redeem the culture. Those are still dangers. I think we have to be honest that there are other kinds of dangers to put it in elegantly. If those were dangers on the left, there are dangers of mission drift on the right.

She might say, well, isn't the mission of we want to save Western civilization? I am very pro Western civilization. Saving Western civilization is not the mission of the church. Is Western civilization a product of Christianity? I think that's one of the main ingredients in Western civilization. So it's not it's not a wrong pursuit, but it is not the pursuit of the mission of the church. So, it's it would be easy maybe for for in a group like this to just look in one direction of where that mission drift happens and not realize that it can happen because this is where it comes as a pastor Somebody says, well, don't you care about?

Yeah, I care about a lot of things. But you're asking, what did the Lord Jesus send and what are we sending people into the world? So wrap this up. I used to put it this is a kind of a Gen X millennial example. I used to put it provocatively and said, if your church's mission that you're supporting on your mission budget, if those things you're seeking to accomplish can be done by Oprah and Bono, let them do it.

If the things that you seek to accomplish can be done by Ben Shapiro and Tucker Carlson, I know they're not on the same team anymore. Let them do it. because they are not going to be about this mission of winning the lost, planting gospel churches, the drift can happen in both ways.

Brooks, we see a lot of encouraging signs when it comes to missions. In the U.S., I think these last few days, many of us have seen had encouraging conversations. I know you have encouraging conversations all the time, but also some disappointing, some concerning signs. So, if you were to look at the American church and think with a bit of a broad brush, our evangelical churches, what are the what are the biggest obstacles to a renewed focus on on missions as it's defined by the scriptures?

Oh, man, I'm I'm always reticent. Take out the punching gloves and go after the church. I think that's a really easy target. I think that can happen really quickly.

I thought our brother Paul Schleyline in his last session

gave a really good nuanced kind of talk on risk and didn't take the easy shots at that. I think there is some things to be excited about. if you're aware at all of what's happening kind of for 18 to 25 year olds and kind of this renewed appetite for eternal things. I think that's an incredible thing to watch, particularly the young men As we start to see young men, sometimes they're seeking it in the wrong places. But we're seeing some incredible things happening with that demographic. and as they get excited about things that are eternal, they want to know what's real. What is real? What's going to outlast me? What's going to outlive me? I think that's a huge encouragement. I think as churches can point them to things that they can put handle holds on, this is where good doctrine, I like most of what Kevin says.

One of his good one-liners, just most, one of his good one-liners, he's maturing. He's maturing. He's getting there. Are you talking about Kevin or me? That we don't have to be imprecise in our categories. And as churches have good, precise categories for missions, this is what I like. What John did with John, or excuse me, Romans 10:13 through 15, goers and senders. What we tried to do with the four lanes of missions as churches give young people better handle holds, more precise categories. I think it helps them. I think imprecision hurts the church and it hurts missions. I think John's definition of unreached people versus peoples. There's there's a there's a gulf of difference there. So I think that watering down of terminology, not caring about like Chad Preston to the Trinity, the Trinitarian Trinitarian nature of the mission of the church, those types of things.

I think, well, those are throwaways. Let's get to the I want to go die for Jesus. That that type of thing, I think, has it's it's got legs. It's going to help them longer on the field. Those things worry me. Obviously, I said it in my in my talk. Movement methodologies and all that's encompassed in that make me nervous. This excites me because there is an appetite for. We want to plant churches that last. So there's always this point counterpoint. Yeah, there's movement methodologies. but praise God that there's a lot of churches here, nearly a thousand, that want to talk about a how do we plant churches that by God's grace will be there in 20, 40, 50, and if the king tarries, one hundred and fifty years. That That excites me. So there's things that I think are obstacles.

Movement methodology is probably the biggest one right now. But there are counterpoints to that that are not just little pinprick, light spots there, these growing strobes of light.

John, you've written a number of missionary biographies, biographical sketches, and we heard a little bit about how those began. But I'm wondering, as you as you survey that work, these are different men, different backgrounds, different places. Are there are there threads that you see in common among all of them?

And are there lessons that we can learn in a sense as a whole from? At least the men that you've spent so much time studying and articulating?

Well, I was on a crusade in 1988 to gather pastors and disabuse them of the error that Calvinism and missions and evangelism were inimical. They were at odds. And I thought one of the best ways to do that would be to give historical figures who were through and through reformed, Calvinistic, five points, and were who were ready to lay their lives down for lost people and grow healthy churches.

So, what you're going to find in that book, though it's not true of all of them, is that they're mostly reformed. And they loved the church and they loved missions, and they contended for the truth. So that would be one common denominator for most of them is that I'm looking for reformed heroes whose theology was rock solid biblical and whose lives contradicted stereotypes like Calvinists don't do missions, Calvinists don't evangelize, Calvinists don't pray, which is all hellish lies.

And so that'd be one. Another one would be, I think almost all of those have a story of suffering in them. People who endured extraordinarily painful things in their lives overcame them by confidence in God's goodness and accomplished remarkable things.

I think that's one of the reasons why the biographies are as meaningful as they are to people. Everybody suffers. No, no exceptions, period. No matter how rich you are. you're going to die, and you're going to get a sore throat, and you're going to have relative degrees of sorrow and loss in your life. You live Live long enough, you lose a lot.

And so that's a common denominator across humanity. And therefore, show me somebody who knows I live with suffering and remain a vibrant Christian and you will help me. So that's a a second thing, you know. So the Calvinism suffering, I think they were all Bible people. They all love the scriptures.

I don't think you can accomplish anything for God if you're not living in the scriptures. If you don't bleed bibline, that would be a third. I could go on, but that that may be enough to

if you were to comment on this. If you were to move from those threads to how we can teach and model these things for the next generation, are there are there particular ways in which you think you can do that either by putting these biographies in front of them or by putting some of these particular driving some of these particular lessons home?

Yeah. I mean, I'll speak as a pastor. I was a pastor for thirty three years. I love pastors. I would like to help pastors. So I won't speak in general about what all of you can do. You can draw the inferences. But pastors, when I'm asked, how do you how you grow up missionaries or how do you build a mission oriented church or a church with the world world vision, my answer is I talk less about missions and more about God, because I think missions will always land on a church as oppressive and burdensome. And I just I'm up to here already in trying to save the marriages of my church. And you're going to tell me to reach the whole world for Jesus. Give me a break. I cannot do everything. And that will be a huge resistance to a missionary vision in a local church because pastors are overwhelmed.

And if they don't, what I want to say to them is, OK, OK. I'm not telling you become an expert in missions. Just know your God and he needs to be really big for those marriages you're trying to save and for this global global vision. If you preach a big, glorious, sovereign, all-wise God for 5 years, your people will feel eager and natural in taking on the world. It's his he owned it. He bought his elect from all the peoples of the world. He will have his elect. He's going to win. And if you show them the God who cannot lose, which I think Kevin's been doing with his church in Revelation, you win, God wins. And if people just ooze, my God wins and he helps me and he strengthens me and sustains me and he sovereignty works everything together for my good.

Bring it on. Show me something big to do. Give our church a vision here. So that's number one. Just preach a great, big, sovereign God. And the second thing, give them a theology of suffering. I don't think enough. Pastors give nearly enough thought to this. I think one of the first five messages I ever preached was Christ and cancer because right brand new pastor right out of the chute. I'm looking at a sea of gray heads, 300 old people in my church. That's all I had. And and I did a funeral every three weeks for 18 months. Bang, bang, bang. And I wanted them to know what I was going to think about their cancer when I came to the hospital Monday.

Am I going to think she had more faith? You wouldn't be lying here. Or is there a theology of suffering from Romans 8 that takes into account that the saints groan with the world and await the redemption of our bodies? So give your people a theology of something because missions is going to be ramping up suffering more than staying here usually. So that'd be a second thing. Big God and suffering scriptures, you know, every sermon should be so saturated with scripture that they say, well, that's the way the pastor lives. I guess that's the way we should live, live by the live by the Bible. So that would be three steps. It's just take all those common denominators and preach them and put Bible underneath them.

Chad Brooks, in your book, Send to Survive, you describe the church as a missionary society. I know that's not brand new with you, but first, could you tell us where it comes from? And then tell us a little bit of what the implications are of thinking of your church in that way as a missionary society.

I mean, I can deal with the question first, where it comes from. And then Brooks can start in on on the part of that question. But I was reading at your encouragement an article by J.W. Alexander, a sermon by J. W. Alexander. it was it which is in the Princeton and Missions book that we gave you all, which maybe just I could take a plug for just a second, make a plug on this.

I was received the gift of a project essentially that I sort of asked for from Greenville, from Log College Press to be able to read all the early Princeton professors and others with regard to missions and to see what they said and to collect their sermons and addresses. And then I got to put those together with us, suggest a series of sermons that I thought were just superb. And they put those together in that bound volume, Princeton and Missions. There's that's maybe the best collection of sermons on missions I have ever read. You wouldn't think that would come out of old Princeton. They they will light your hair on fire. You will just be ecstatic as you read them. I was reading them each day and getting up and wanting to just in the middle of the sermons, I've got to sing a hymn.

I need to pray. I it was they were fabulous. With that said, in one of the sermons by J.W. Alexander, he said, quoting John H. Rice whilst preaching at in front of the General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church at the time, he said that the Presbyterian Church and I think you could put in there the evangelical Christian church. I don't think he would object. The Presbyterian Church is a missionary society and then went on to talk about what is then given to do. And that sort of stopped me in my tracks.

I'm to think about we exist as a lampstand. Right. I mean, that's Jesus's language. He describes us as a lampstand. What do lampstands do? They're instruments that get off, give off light by the power of the Holy Spirit. They give off light and the light is the gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. And so we exist to give off light. That is what we are. And so we're a missionary sending agency or a missionary society.

And that has huge implications to the church also to say. One, and then Brooks can take it from here. but one of the biggest things is we've got to stop telling people or we've got to stop thinking our church needs a better missions program. Like it needs a better children's program or women's program or men's program or whatever.

Our church exists to worship God and to riff on John Piper and then to make him known where he's not being worshiped, to take the worship of Christ where it no where it doesn't presently exist. Right. I mean, that's what we exist to do. That's not just a program of our church.

That's what we exist to do. And so that has huge implications to the way you think about your church.

Yeah, I was struck. I mean, most people know this. You can't find the quote. I don't know if he actually said it, But David Livingstone is reported to have said, if you have a sick church, put it on a missionary diet.

And Chad had an answer in our little breakout prior to this that was as churches start to think through, we don't have the money. We don't have the men. But as we teach the Bible and we teach the Bible in such a way to where missions isn't this outer, we're going to have to bring in some guy. We're going to have to bring in a program.

Churches tend to rise to the occasion as you put them on that diet, whether that's the regular preaching of God's word and how that works its way through. I found that some churches, if you've ever been to a large evangelical church on Mother's Day, there's usually these rousing sermons on Mary or Hannah or these different ones. And then there's bouquets of flowers given away and chocolate teddy bear or something like that. And if you go there during Father's Day, I'm not saying you should do this. I think you should probably stick with the book that you're preaching. But I've heard it said if you go to Father's Day, there's just almost nothing that happens you're going to have to read about David's mighty men. And that's going to be about as good as it gets.

It feels that way in some ways. like when you get to missions. When the passage leads towards missions, don't duck it. Be the type of church that we're going to press in on those passages. We're going to press in on where the scripture as we're working through a book takes us. And one of the things that we pressed in this book was A good missionary church is going to exhibit this in a variety of ways, whether that's in the prayer for the nations, whether that's in the regular preaching of God's word, whether that's in how we handle the young people. It's not going to be this outside thing. It's going to be part of. Of the fabric that weaves its way through the church from start to finish. And so I more and more churches, I'm thankful for the church that I'm from, Clairemont Emmanuel Baptist Church, there's a QR code at the back of that book that has Chad's church policies on missions.

It has our church policies, which has 18 sister churches in minority languages. And a display case of 14 Bible translations in foreign languages that were done by alumni members of our church. And just trying to figure out how do we take some of the DNA of this I praise God for what happened through one youth pastor in the 1960s who led my father to the Lord, who led a whole bunch of other guys. And there's a whole bunch of implications of that. Some of the things I didn't like what came out of the 60s and the Jesus movement. But man, I praise God for all of those churches that are represented there. And how do you take that DNA and how do you replicate that? How do you bring that into another environment? That's really the burden of the book in many ways.

So, as Chad said, we were saying send to survive because we think it helps churches. It doesn't hurt them when they're on a healthy missionary diet.

In part, by the way, that title send to survive also came from another man. You all have maybe heard some of all some of you've probably heard of Charles Hodge, the Princeton scholar. He has a son named Casper Hodge. He has a grandson named Casper Hodge, too. Not good. But his his son, Casper Hodge, wrote one of those sermons that's in that book, the last one where he actually says that the the spirit of Christ is a missionary spirit, that he's come to make Christ known. So he actually argues if your church isn't growing because it's pulsating, I don't mean growing the church growth movement sense, pulsating with the gospel of Jesus Christ and that's going out to the nations from you. If that's not happening, your church is dying because if the spirit of God is there, then the gospel is going forth.

And so he argues that quite effectively in that article. And that's kind of where the send to survive language came from.

I want to talk briefly about sending agencies and the relationship of the church to sending agencies and how they can help and how there are there can be challenges there and concerns. And I'll start with Brooks and then we can we can open it up beyond that. Brooks, what are what are some biblical and healthy ways in which what we refer to as sending agencies, we could argue about the language, but what do you refer to as sending agencies, ways in which they they do help churches do this work that's really the church's work of sending. And then what are some ways in which perhaps they can obscure the church's responsibility?

I'm going to have Kevin handle the obscure the church's responsibility and talk about all the good things just so clear on that. The I think agencies are we're not an agency, but we have a lot of the agencies come down and recruit at Radius. It's very hard to find a church that knows how to get a long term visa in Indonesia. They just don't have that skill set. It's very hard to find a church that has translation consultants that can go in and evaluate a translation and say, "Hey, this is the things you're doing good." or this language Family generally translates this verb in this way. They are handmaidens to the bride. Bride is primary. But then there's handmaidens that come along to serve the bride in other ways. And I think good agencies keep that identity clear.

We're the bride's maid. We're not the bride. We help with what the bride is attempting to do. I think as long as that's kept clear and it's not usurping subtly or overtly, but it's more common when it's subtle, where it's sneaking in and this and the church sometimes has given ceded that authority to the agency, but good agencies can do tremendous things to advance the cause of Christ, to help the bride send her members well.

Do you want to add to

that, Kevin? I think all of us have or are connected to seminaries. That's a parachurch in a way. Christ didn't promise to build the seminaries, but to build the church. But every good seminary is going to see itself as wanting to serve the church. And you would think a good seminary. well, there are some There are some things that are going to be really difficult for most churches to do well, to have the level of expertise in the languages and in all the subjects. that you could say seminaries are a relatively recent invention, at least as we know it now, But to have thorough training for ministers is not a recent invention. So in the same way, as you're making the point, there are some some areas of specialization that a good sending agency can do with visas and even administrative care, getting people from A to B, some potential dangers.

Or if the church assumes the sending agency will do all the necessary training, they'll do all the necessary vetting. And I use the analogy of a seminary because the same thing could happen. The church says, well, this guy went to seminary and he got an MDiv. He must be ready to be a pastor and they have abdicated their responsibility. Meanwhile, the seminary, maybe it's thinking, well, we're an academic institution, we give degree, we trust that the church. And so you have multiple institutions that maybe are trusting the other to do a work that they're they're not doing.

And then, yes, in some instances, if the the officers of the church, which God gives as a gift to the church, then on the mission field become subservient is putting it too strongly, perhaps, but those officers of the church, I'm thinking of pastors and elders, are now in a position of instead of pastoral leadership and authority are in a kind of subservient role with well-intentioned, org chart structures that suddenly we have some things reversed and even sometimes with complementarianism, Things are getting. mixed up. And then just a final danger that could be true for any organization that's trying to come along the side. the church is you could become interested in preserving your own organizational or institutional footprint or have such a mechanism that's necessary to keep this infrastructure going, to use the trellis and vine.

It becomes so much trellis and you have all sorts of people who are on your mission's budget. Missionary, missionary, missionary, missionary. And then you realize, well, they and I'm not saying this in a disparaging way. You know, they work in the H.R. office for the organ that we need people. If you don't have good H.R., things go haywire.

But if you're not careful, you're not really having the right categories. You realize, well, how many people does it take to to get over there? And is anyone actually getting over there and learning the language and speaking of Jesus and planting a church?

I'm so glad that we're saying some positive things about H.R. Agencies, because I think here the note is the church sends the church is the sending agency. And and those of you come such scratch your head saying, hmm, they can't really do everything, can they? And we've already heard some really significant positive things said about the agencies. I want to add the personal note like this.

I don't think I would exist on this panel or with a church that grew a missions movement apart from George Verwer, Greg Livingston. And Ralph Winter, who were never pastors, just crazy, crazy inventors of agencies, Founding Frontiers. founding Operation Mobilization, founding the U.S. Center for World Mission. I was just blown up by these people. They were my heroes and they're all gone.

And so I'm really defensive for them. I was going to beat up my guys. So I just think God raises up crazy people to do some crazy things. And those things can wind up being less than perfect and doing some things where I'm like, "Mm, I wish they weren't doing it that way. But I hope you're hearing from others as well as me that there is a place in missionary.com and Radius and this panel for really useful expertises that the elders of a local church just cannot have. They're too busy. They're too focused. They cannot. They cannot become the kind of experts that they need to be in order to cover all the bases that it takes to get a person and keep a person on the field.

John, I want to come back to you on a related question, but not speaking about agencies in particular. What are some of the ways you spoke about some of the priorities in preaching and teaching and modeling that are important, vital for raising up a generation of of men and women who are willing to go.

But I want to talk even more broadly than that. How do you keep the Great Commission in front of your congregation? How do you make sure that the main thing is the main thing?

Well, God is the main thing. And so you preach about him every Sunday. Missions is not the main thing. It's a means to the main thing. And that is really important to say because if you get them backwards, it's crushing. It just destroys your soul.

But I take your question seriously. Several things proved to be the case. And I've given some tough experiences. You weave mission illustrations into a lot of sermons. It does not take a missionary sermon to have a missionary wallop.

It takes a three-minute illustration of some glorious commitment that Amy Carmichael had. And you've got the women in your church on the edge of their chair ready to go lay down their lives. Yes. So that. That's the first thing. It's just weaving regularly stories from real live missionaries into the sermon. Secondly, is dealing with the issue of the tension that grows up in a church between domestic ministries and frontier missions.

So those are my categories that I used in the church because the domestic ministries people, these are the people that are on the street dealing with homeless. They're dealing with broken marriages. They're dealing with abortion and fighting it out in the capital and just all kinds of local burdened issues. And they're starting to feel like second class citizens at Bethlehem because Piper's always talking about missionaries.

Like they're the heroes. That's a real thing. And you've got to fix that. And the way we fixed it was to talk about these two categories, domestic ministries and frontier missions and the kind of symbiosis that. That has to exist.

You people who are laying your lives down in downtown Minneapolis, in urban Minneapolis and are feeling like second class citizens. what you really want is for all the domestic ministries you care about right here to be taken and planted in peoples that have zero churches that can do those domestic ministries. Don't you care about that? And you make sure if you really are authentic and you care about those ministries here, what about there?

Well, somebody has to do the exporting of that potential. They're called missionaries with gospel orientations, not home, not that orientation. So they see that their ministry demands missions. And you say to the missionaries, "Don't you realize that this this whole existence here is the platform from which you're going to go?

And what you want to happen there All these kinds of things through the gospel. And I did everything I could to pull. Pull the plug on tensions between those two groups and help them feel like we really need each other. We really believe in each other. So that was a big thing for making an healthy missionary church. I think there are others, but that's enough. Can

I can I ask a question, John, just based off not that answer, but the one that came prior, because you've seen more come and go in the missions world than all of us probably on this panel together. And you and I have been in some meetings where the topic of Urbana came up.

You were there with George Verwer, 1974, Lausanne, what came out of that, Ralph Winter, all of those types of things, the issues that popped up at those times that those guys were addressing in the issues today. Do you see them as the same issues and is there from the history of looking down this long lens of that's how that started?

This is where we're at in 2026. Any thoughts, any reflections about any of that? Just the historic side. Kevin, you've been there from the beginning. Beginning with Cross. So kind of the same question, just maybe a little more recent.

Well, there are fresh new challenges. The ones we were hearing about earlier from Mark of rapid movements that are thin and don't last was not what George Verwer was concerned about. Both Verwer and his contemporary, they owe each other their lives, I think, and Greg Livingstone. The problems were burdened by it just wasn't being done.

The Muslims were not being sought. They were a problem. They were fear. Who's going to the Muslims? And that's what drove Greg Livingstone. He said, I'm just going to give my life to helping people get to Muslim peoples. So that was the unique thing. And not today the there I think your focus on languages is fresh and helpful as a clarifying point on the whole issue. You have hidden and unreached peoples. So that's fresh. That feels new. That feels energizing. And I think healthy for the church movement.

Ralph Winter. Oh, I wish you were here. Alive, I mean, and still having input. He walked into my house one night. First time he was ever in my house. Same house I'm in now.

Give a 30 seconds on Ralph Winter. A lot of people never heard of him.

Ralph Winter was my professor at Fuller Seminary in missions. He was a mission professor. He was a missionary. He's largely responsible for the EEE, TEE, Theological Education, by extension. I forget. It was just getting people trained and educated in theological pastoral work on the field without having to leave and go to a seminary in America. So that's part of it. And then he founded the U.S. Center for World Mission. He bought a campus for $15 million. I gave him $2,000 out of that $15 million. And he bought it all by himself. Just he and Roberta, his wife. They just bought it.

And planted a university, William Carey University. Our school exists because William Carey University exists today. So, okay, I don't know if that's helpful or not. But he was an engineer. And he went to the Navy. And then he got into missions. He walks into my house.

And the first thing he does, doesn't say a word. He opens the door. He sees a bathroom there. He sees my wife's workroom here. He sees a dining room here. And he says, "You know, if you built a wall right here and close this off, you could turn that into an apartment and put an outside room and you could have missionaries here."

He's redesigning my house. As soon as he walks in. That's what he did with missions. We need people like that. They see problems. And he just had a brain that, you know, he'd come out of a problem and he'd say, how would the Navy do it? Just, you know, he'd come at it from angles that nobody thought of. So that's my little contribution to what they were facing. I think we just need people like that all the time, whether it's then or now.

I don't know if this is answering Brooke's question, but something that's been running through my mind is John's been talking. How does God call someone to this work? And John and I have had lots of conversation. I think we we basically land in the same place with some different terminology, but normally you are going to get called to a missionary work in part by having a hero.

Jesus is the hero, but you're going to have somebody in a biography on a stage, that you say and something is bubbling up inside of You feel inspired. You feel like I, I want to do that. I don't know how to do that.

And you need some, you need old people like us to make sure that it's not just all I'm fired up. And now whatever, just next boat, next plane. I'll go do it because that's not going to win the nations. If you don't get trained and you don't stay, you don't do something like Radius. So you need, you need some old people to say, Hey, some of those feelings are going to wear off and you got to do this for the long haul.

And you also probably don't go without some point having some of that feeling, some of that zeal, some of that You read a story, you heard it, Somebody gave you that inspiration and you thought, Lord, if I could just do that with my life, it doesn't always work that way. We got different emotional registers. If you want to know what else John is passionate about, he feels things strong. Uh, it's true, everything is so amazing.

It's amazing. Open your eyes. And what I love about John is none of that is manufactured and it comes through deep, patient, penetrating thoughts, Bible and theology, not the shortcut just to emotion. John liked when I said that I even Presbyterians have a couple of emotions too.

That's a 50% improvement. We have joy and we have joy. I'm agreeing with John. I'm saying you need to have heroes to get you from here to there. And I'll tell you when I went to Urbana in 1996 and yeah, you can not hear to say where, where others have, have not done the things that, or have lost the plot in some ways. But we started cross in part because we thought something needed to be said that wasn't being said as clearly and as carefully. As we thought it needed to be said, I remember hearing very strong call to missions in such a way, wrestled and sat there and you know, they had people stand up and I felt like I'm going to feel so bad here if I don't stand up and I didn't stand up and then they said, who wants to send?

Okay, I can do that. All right. I can send. Well, some of that is just in me and and you've got to you've got to be okay that sometimes there's a, do you want to go and do this and you have freedom in Christ that you're not, I'm not preaching about missions. I'm not a missionary. I'm a pastor.

I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina. Our church is big. The next Baptist church is bigger. The next church down there is even bigger. There's a lot of churches in North Carolina. You can do a lot of things. So this isn't to say good, better, best. But missions is such a thing, such a category that unless you have conferences like this, unless you have inspirational biographies, unless you have these three minute vignettes in the from the pulpit, most people are not going to get there. And the Lord uses that. And if that's what you're feeling, you need to talk to somebody in your church and don't waste good feelings. How do you like that?