The Problem with The Jesus Film ***HINT: It's NOT what you think!!!***

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Before The Chosen, there was The Jesus Film, one of the most popular and most widely watched narratives of the life of Jesus in the history of filmmaking.

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And today, we're going to ask the question, what's the problem with The Jesus Film? And I have a hint for you.

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It's not what you think. So stay tuned. Your Calvinist Podcast begins right now. And welcome to Your Calvinist Podcast.

01:28

My name is Keith Foskey, and as always, I am your Calvinist.

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I'm excited to have you on the program today. And before I bring in my guest, I do have just a few announcements to give.

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Want to tell everyone that this week, I will be at the Fight, Laugh, Feast Conference in Fort Worth, Texas.

01:47

So if you're going to be out there, I encourage you to come by and see me. If you see me, stop me and let me know that you enjoy the show.

01:55

Would love to talk to you. It's always a good time to meet people who are watching the show. So again, looking forward to seeing everybody, looking forward to seeing

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Doug Wilson, James White, and of course, some of my really close friends, Greg Moore, Brandon Wood of Eschatology Matters.

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And I'm just so thankful that I'm going to have the opportunity to hang out with those guys. So looking forward to Fight, Laugh, Feast this week.

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Also want to mention, as always, this podcast is a ministry of Sovereign Grace Family Church.

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So if you're in the Jacksonville, Florida area, come visit us at Sovereign Grace Family Church, sgfcjacks .org.

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You can learn all about us, read our mission or our Statement of Faith, Mission Statement, whatever you call it, our

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02:44

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03:05

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03:28

I also want to remind everybody, if I haven't mentioned it in a while, Let's Church. When I was grabbing my coffee this morning to get ready for the show,

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Let's Church was on my mind because this is one of their tumblers that they gave me. Let's Church is a website that takes sermons and podcasts and provides a place for us to house them.

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Absolutely no charge to us. And it's great because it's no charge to you either. If you want to go there and use their service, you can see what we have and you can look at our material and it is all able to be searched by keyword.

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That's what's awesome. You can go there and you can search sermons. You can search podcasts just by keyword because everything is, all of the words of the podcasts are put into a program, an algorithm where it can be searched.

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So it's really cool. Go to Let's .Church and check them out. Ken Powers is the head over there and he's doing a really great job.

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So I want to thank him for all the work that he is doing. All right, guys. Well, you clicked on this video today because you knew

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I was going to be talking about the Jesus film because that was what the thumbnail said.

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And I'm going to be bringing in now my guest, but I'm going to have to bring him in a little differently than normal.

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Ordinarily, I would have my guests video up on the screen, but my guest today is a missionary and sometimes missions, sometimes missions work requires a little bit of anonymity.

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So he has asked that we not put his picture up and we're going to be using a pseudonym that he uses for writing.

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And this is the pseudonym that he used for writing the article that we're going to discuss today. He wrote an article about the

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Jesus film and we're simply going to call him Drew. So I'm going to bring

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Drew in now. Drew, thank you for being on your Calvinist podcast. Thank you so much for having me,

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Pastor Keith. Absolutely. And I want to go ahead and apologize to the audience that they have to look at me the whole time.

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I'm sure if all things were equal, they would much rather be able to see your face.

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I got an opportunity to meet you a couple of weeks ago and you and your lovely family.

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And I want to just thank you for reaching out to me and giving me the opportunity to meet you and hear about your ministry. Yeah, no,

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I feel honored to get to talk, have this conversation with you, Pastor Keith. So it was a pleasure meeting you.

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And if you guys ever want to come down to our neck of the woods, we would love to have you guys. Absolutely.

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And well, your neck of the woods is about to change. And I didn't know how much to say about your ministry.

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So I want to give you the opportunity to say as much as you can to the people. I know there's limitations again, but just to tell people about who you are and what you do without, of course, divulging too much information.

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Yeah, absolutely. So my family is about to move to South Asia in about a month and our hope is to be there long term.

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Where our desire is to see a healthy indigenous church planted amongst a language group that currently has no access to the gospel.

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And so that being said, we do not see this as like, you know, we're going to go for a few weeks on a trip and maybe, you know, pass out some tracts and try to try to disciple someone who professes faith.

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Like we don't even see this as like a five or 10 year endeavor. Like we're guessing it's going to it's going to require several years to become fluent in the national language.

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It's going to require several years on top of that to become fluent in a minority language. But this is our desire is to see

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Christ named or he has not yet been named as Paul talks about in Romans 15.

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And so I think if I could also say, I think that when missions is talked about, things can become unclear in the way that we often define a broad variety of things as missions.

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And there is the error of defining basically any sort of ministry outside the home as missions.

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And I think that that's unhelpful. I think that when everything is missions, basically nothing is.

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However, even when we're talking about a more narrow view of missions where we're talking about crossing cultural and linguistic barriers with the gospel and we're talking about doing that to to plant churches amongst unreached people groups, even that requires more specificity because unreached people group is actually a broad category in and of itself as well.

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The the typical definition of unreached people group is any people group that has less than two percent evangelical

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Christians. And and people group can get a little fuzzy, too. Like some some people would say like, oh, well, you know, the the

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NBA NBA players are a people group or the Q community of whatever city.

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And so even even that question needs to be defined. Like, what are we talking about with a people group? I think that that language provides a very helpful delineating line for that conversation.

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But but when we're talking about unreached people groups, we have everything from, you know, a country like Japan, a language like Japanese, where there are many healthy indigenous

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Japanese churches. Praise God for that. And do they need more? Absolutely. You know, should should we should the church send send more more people there to help train indigenous pastors and plant healthy biblical churches?

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One hundred percent. Yes. However, there is a big difference between the access to the gospel that the

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Japanese people have and the access to the gospel that a people group has that maybe doesn't even yet have scripture in their language and doesn't even have a single believer who speaks that language.

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And so if you want to think of missions in four different lanes, we are focusing on that.

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We are focusing on the lane that I think is is most often overlooked. It is it is the lane of going to these people groups that have little to no access.

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Even if they have the Bible translated, they don't yet have a healthy indigenous church. There hasn't been interaction with the scriptures.

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And so we want to focus on that because it is usually overlooked.

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I think about it last time I checked, I think it's about two percent of people and money goes towards this fourth lane of missions.

10:22

Wow, wow. And and it's interesting, as I was listening to you talk and I'm thinking about a phrase that I heard years ago, and that's the idea of and I know you've probably heard this, but the people who are vacationaries, have you heard that phrase?

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I actually haven't, but I immediately know exactly what you're talking about. No, I'm not. All right. Like we're going to we're going to we're going to do a two year or excuse me, a two week missions trip to Maui where we you know, where we go and hang out on the beach for, you know, six hours a day.

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But then we'll go hand out tracks at a local, you know, a local street corner. And that'll be our missions work. And we'll call it a mission strip.

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And again, I know that's an exaggeration, but stuff like that does happen. People will raise $20 ,000 to send, you know, a group of kids somewhere who are ill equipped, ill trained.

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But but to be able to say they went on a missions trip rather than giving that money to a missionary who's going to live in country like yourself.

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And again, I'm I'm I've been one of the most outspoken people against that. I've been on the

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Chris Arnson Show talking about that. I got real flack about it because I said, I think that we really have a in fact,

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I'll give you a quick story. While I was on the Chris Arnson Show, Iron Sharpens Iron, a guy wrote in and he said, well, well,

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I have a son who was, you know, he was having a difficult time and he was really having a rough time. So I decided to send him on a missions trip to to to help him get straight and get right.

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And I said, so so so you really didn't send him on a missions trip to do missions. You sent him on a missions trip because he was he was misbehaving.

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So you sent what essentially possibly was an unbeliever out as a missionary. That doesn't sound good.

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That doesn't sound right to me. But that's the that's where I've seen a lot of this negative way of looking at missions is, you know, it's just we just go short term.

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We we don't really, you know, make a big impact. We you know, we dig a well or build a hut and then come home and say, you know, we told people about Jesus.

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Is that again, the thing is you're anonymous now, so nobody's going to hate you for what I'm saying. But am I getting it possibly a little bit right?

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Yeah, I think I think you're absolutely right. And I think, you know, I want to say two things. One, you know, usually the the motives are largely positive.

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It's it is good that we have a desire to not be an ingrown, inward focused body of believers.

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We want to see the nations reached with the message of the gospel. But when we couple those good motives with with a very thin theology of conversion or a very, very thin ecclesiology and very pragmatic understanding of of evangelism and ministry, then the fruit is going to be usually pretty, pretty bad.

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And and I say that as someone who, you know, when I was in high school, I went on one of those trips that was absolutely a vacationary type trip.

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And in the Lord, thankfully did use it in my life. But looking back,

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I still very much can recognize like, no, that was not a good idea. Like they sent a bunch of us high schoolers who, you know, a lot of us were not even believers to to do ministry and share the gospel with with kids.

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Yeah, well, I do this is a good time to segue into the topic for today, because I know, like I said, many people who clicked on want to talk want us to talk about the

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Jesus film and what we're going to be addressing may not even be on the radar of some some people when

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I say the Jesus film. That is a very specific film that is used by missionaries for the purpose of sharing the gospel all throughout the world.

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It's not just, you know, it's not just a Hollywood production. This is a movie that was produced for the purpose of doing evangelism.

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And now it is used to do evangelism. And I want to read from your article, because I think this gives a a real overview of how people see this film different than things like The Chosen or Passion of the

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Christ. This film is being promoted as an evangelistic tool.

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So for just a second, I want to read this the first paragraph here. And by the way, I will link the article in the description to this video.

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So people want to read the whole thing. And I recommend that they do. Since its theatrical release in 1979, the

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Jesus film has been viewed more than five billion times and been translated into more than 2160 languages.

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Based on the Gospel of Luke, the movie follows the life, death and resurrection of Christ. It has been heralded as the most widely used and effective evangelistic tool in the world.

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On the Jesus Film Project website, it is stated that since 1979, billions of people have heard

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Jesus's story worldwide and more than 665 million have made decisions for Christ.

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In fact, every 60 seconds, 60 people somewhere in the world are deciding to come out of spiritual darkness and to begin a new life with Christ after watching the film.

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Fundraising campaigns for the film have made the weighty claim that, quote, research has confirmed that for every dollar you send, on average, one person can come to Christ, end quote.

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Now, you talk about those claims in the article, and we're going to talk about them here.

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But for just a moment, I want to say this. That's a pretty fantastic claim. If that's anywhere near being correct, man, we need to bring the missionaries home and build movie theaters.

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That's that. I mean, it's. Absolutely. So when

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I put in the thumbnail, I said, I said, what's wrong with the

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Jesus film? It's not what you think. A lot of people who watch my show being in the in the

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Reformed camp would probably think that my biggest issue with this might be that it's a second commandment issue.

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And there are those who believe that any images of Christ, any depiction of Christ in the film, painting, art, drawing, any of that, any any sculptures, they consider that to be a second commandment violation.

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Now, I have done a show about that in the past. I'm not going to address that hugely right now. I would just say I'm closer to where R .C.

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Sproul was. I believe there can be depiction of Christ that don't break the second commandment. I don't know where you are, brother, on that.

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But that that's I that's not my issue with the film. What do you do you have a thought on that before we move forward?

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Yeah, no, that's yeah, that's helpful to hear. I actually do have convictions that that the

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Jesus film is a second commandment violation. And we can talk about that if we get a chance.

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But the reason I wrote the article the way I did is because I recognize that most

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Christians, most Christians in American evangelicalism, that they don't even have and I'm not talking about yourself.

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Like, obviously, you've thought about these things. You've studied this issue. But but most people in the church here, that's not even like a thing on their radar.

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And I've found that it's really hard to have that conversation with people, especially if they're not coming from a confessionally reformed church.

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So what I wanted to do in the article is is go after some more of what I perceive to be low hanging fruit of problems with the

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Jesus films, things that I think that, hey, whether you're at a confessionally reformed church or not, things that I think any anyone who's who's willing to, like, listen and think through the issue a little bit should should realize, like, whoa, yeah, that that that does not seem wise.

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That does not seem biblical. That seems to be a really truncated view of conversion. So that was my hope with the article.

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Amen. And I want to say this. Ever since I did that show, I did it with a Presbyterian friend of mine who is an elder and he held the 2CV position and I didn't.

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And it wasn't a debate, but it was a friendly conversation. Ever since then, I'm more sympathetic to the position, having heard what he said very respectfully.

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I think I think that there is something to the fact that of something he said, and I do want to mention this.

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He said, anytime we put the wrong idea of who Jesus is into someone's mind, that's a that's a breaking of the

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Second Amendment. So the very least things like the chosen who are who are putting the wrong idea of who

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Jesus is or anything that that would miscommunicate who Jesus is. And if somebody looks at the passion of the

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Christ, like I've heard people look at Jim Caviezel, oh, that's Jesus. No, that's not Jesus. That's an actor who is not

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Jesus and very clearly not Jesus. And so I think I think there is something, like you said, a much deeper conversation than some people are willing to have.

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But certainly something that that should be considered, especially among us who would consider ourselves within the

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Reformed circle, even though our Scott Clarke does not want me in his Reformed circle. Yeah, it's

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OK. He wouldn't want me there, but yeah, no, I think what you said is is so helpful because, you know, inherently, if we're making a movie about the life of Jesus, even if we say, hey, we're just going to try to stick as closely as the to the gospel of Luke as possible, which is what the

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Jesus film tries to do, there is still of necessity going to be a lot of speculation where, you know, obviously the person acting as Christ is not what he looked like.

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It's a different person. But you're also going to have to speculate about so many details that are just not in the text of Scripture, everything from narrative details to the expressions that people in the story are making.

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And so I think that. The quote from your friend is helpful, I think we can't help but.

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Influence how Christians are seeing Christ and coming to the scriptures when we portray things in film, and I think that it's one thing to do it, you know, with with kids who have grown up in the church, for example, but I think it's actually even more dangerous when you're talking about doing this on the mission field, when this is their first exposure to Christianity, like how in the world is that not supposed to deeply influence how they how they understand the the person of Christ and and come to the scriptures after that.

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So I think it's it's a great conversation, especially as it pertains to using it on the mission field and using it in these frontier contexts where it might be the first movie that people have ever seen and the first time they've ever even heard the name of Christ.

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Amen, that's that's a really good point. One of the things in your article that I think was was really helpful to me, and the day we met is the day

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I read it, and I was thinking about it that afternoon, was was the outrageous claims regarding the effectiveness of this video.

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And and that's the part when I said, you know, what's the problem with the film? And I said, it's not what you think, even though certainly

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Second Commandment issues are worthy to be discussed. But the issue you really point out, and you call this a moment ago, the low hanging fruit, is that is it straight up just a miscommunication of facts?

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You know, you know, it's it's just like when I hear someone say, yeah, man, we had a we had a revival at our church yesterday, you know, this past weekend, 300 people got saved.

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And I say, OK, well, what does that mean when you say, you know, 300 people got saved? Well, 300 people raised their hand during an altar call.

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And that's what it means to, quote, unquote, get saved in the evangelical church. It means to raise your hand during an altar call.

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There's no life change. There's no understanding of repentance, confession, receiving of the gospel in a true sense of life changing understanding.

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And then, of course, to be followed up by things like baptism and and joining the church and becoming a faithful disciple of Christ.

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None of that matters. It just matters if they raise their hand. Is that what we're looking at in regard to these, you know, every 60 seconds, 60 people are getting saved?

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Is that the is that what they're exaggerating here? Yeah, I think I think you're right.

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I think a big part of why these numbers are put forth and why, again,

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I don't think that the people who claim these things, I don't think that they're intentionally lying. I think that the problem lies in what you said.

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There is we are aiming for the wrong thing rather than aiming to to have people soundly converted with with true repentance for sin and being baptized into a church where they'll get to sit under the right preaching of the word and the administration of baptism in the

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Lord's to to learn to obey all that Christ has commanded instead of going for that.

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And in part, this is because of, you know, I think you can trace this all the way back to the second

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Great Awakening, where the the theological assumptions of of men like Charles Finney began to to prevent to be pervasive in the water and evangelicalism.

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But but going going all the way back to that, we we have this idea of we aim for the wrong thing.

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We aim for just the raising of the hand or the coming forward in an altar call or the repeating of a prayer. And so if you're aiming for that, man, that is not hard to get.

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That is especially not hard to get people to assent to Jesus in some way on the mission field.

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And so I think that's why you get these numbers. And again, the people aren't aren't being intentionally deceitful.

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I think what was one of the most crazy things to me, though, I knew that there were statistics about conversions that were like that with the

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Jesus film. But when I went on their website, I was shocked to see what they claimed about church planting, because I think that both of us would agree,

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Pastor Keith, that the Great Commission is not fulfilled by merely making converts. And I would go further and say the

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Great Commission is not even fulfilled by merely making disciples, at least as disciples are defined often today.

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But the Great Commission inherently requires us to plant churches so that disciples can be baptized into these bodies of believers and taught to obey all that Christ commanded and sit sit under the means of grace and be strengthened and to live out the one another's of the

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New Testament. And so I was shocked to see that the Jesus film also makes claims about churches being planted from its use.

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And so, for example, the claim on the website was made that 400 new churches are being planted every day through the film.

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And it was also said there was a place where you could. Yeah. I'm sorry. 400 new churches are being planted every day through the film that's stated on the site.

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Yeah. And then what's more is there was a place where you could give where for $165 for a donation of $165, the claim was made that you can reach an entire village or neighborhood with Jesus and plant a thriving church, a thriving church.

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And so I think this gets back to the problem of we are aiming for the wrong things because of maybe watered down theology, watered down ecclesiology, watered down understanding of the church.

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Because I think in a lot of mission circles today, what can be defined as a church is, hey, some people assented to Jesus in some way, like they professed faith in Christ in some way.

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We encourage them to now meet together and to read the Bible together every week and to do what it says.

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And now, regardless of whether they were truly converted, regardless of whether they are meeting again in two weeks or two months or two years, that is often considered a church in at least some circles.

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And so I think that's, I don't think people are intentionally lying with these statistics, but I think just definitions matter and healthy churches are going to send out healthy missionaries.

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And so I think that more than anything, this is an indictment on the shallowness of much of the

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American church. Yeah. I mean, I have a million questions about that claim, and I wonder how they would answer like the question of, okay, so for $160, we're raising up elders or at least a pastor.

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Are we raising up some type of structure to teach the word of God?

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Like you just said, well, they're getting together and reading the word of God and doing what it says. And certainly that's a good thing if people are doing that.

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But is there any, for $160, what do you mean a thriving church?

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How nebulous is that to say this is happening? And are we, like you, going back to your story, you're moving in.

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You're going in as someone who is to them a foreigner. You don't know their language yet.

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You're going to learn their language. You're going to learn their customs. You're going to learn their dialect. You're going to learn a specific language within a smaller sect of the people so that you can interact with them, all for the purpose of being able to pastor, shepherd, missions, work, all those things within that body of people.

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That takes time. That takes effort. That takes a life change for you.

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It takes all those things. And to say, yeah, well, we did the same thing for $160.

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I just, I don't know. To me, it kind of diminishes the work of someone who's really making that life sacrifice, again.

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Yeah. I mean, it did hit me in a particular way because of our plans, but I think more than anything, more than diminishing what we hope to do,

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I think it just burdens me because I want to see the gospel go forth with clarity and power.

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And I want to see people not just make some sort of profession without any understanding or not just sprinkle a little bit of Jesus into their existing worldview.

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I want to see people come to know the living God and to worship him in spirit and truth and to be built up in the faith that they may glorify him in all spheres of life.

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And so when I see claims like that, more than anything,

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I'm just burdened for the bad fruit that I have seen personally and heard many stories of, the bad fruit that comes from these kinds of understandings of missions and ministry.

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Yeah. No, absolutely. And it's just so much to think about.

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And regarding that part, just how much is not being done.

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And getting back to the methodology for a moment, because you've obviously studied this, looked into this, your article is very clear.

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So how does this work? Do they just set up a screening, invite people to come and then ask people to raise their hands?

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I mean, is that oversimplifying or how does this work?

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Let me explain why I'm asking this question. Did you ever hear of the evangel cube?

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I have seen one. Yes. Okay. All right. All right. Well, when I was in seminary, that was the huge thing.

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They actually had somebody at the seminary who taught how to use the evangel cube. That was the tool of the day.

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And it was this, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, it looked like a Rubik's cube. It opened up and every time it opened up, it had a different picture.

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It started with a picture of a man and it was supposed to be an image of God's power and how man is separated from God because of his sin.

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And that sin is taken care of because of Jesus on the cross. And if you trust in Jesus and put your hand in the nail scarred hand of Jesus, you can receive forgiveness of your sins.

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And it was this opening box and each box opened up to a picture. And I never was a huge fan of it because something that you said in the article is something

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I agreed with. Am I not able to articulate the gospel well enough that I need this thing, that I need this tool?

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And you said that. And this may sound mean because some people, not everybody can articulate things as well as others.

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And there are some people that it may help, but you made a point. You said if a missionary can't explain the gospel, why is he a missionary?

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Speak to that for just a moment because I don't want to put words in your mouth. Clarify what I'm saying because I feel like maybe

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I overspoke. No, you're fine. I think that's a really good point that I wanted to make.

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I think that some people could hear what I say and say, okay, well, take out the easy believism that often comes with the idea that we just kind of like decision ourself into the kingdom, the way that it confuses the sovereignty of God in regeneration to make us able to freely and willingly come to Christ.

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I think that the methodology muddies all that. But let's say for the sake of argument that you take all that out and you're like, well,

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I still think it's like a really good tool. To that, I would still want to say, I mean, and maybe part of this is because of my second commandment convictions, but I would still want to say, well, at best,

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I just see it as not necessary. It is just a minuscule tool in your tool belt at best.

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And I think of like with my kids and I know we're both fathers and imagine thinking or imagine, well, imagine that someone in your church came and said,

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Pastor Keith, there's an animated story of the Jesus film coming out next year and we're really excited.

33:09

It's going to be a game changer for discipleship in our family. We can't wait to show our kids. I would guess that you would be concerned.

33:17

You'd be like, whoa, like there's bringing our children up in the discipline and instruction of the

33:24

Lord is a marathon endeavor. It is something that day in and day out we want to be teaching the word to our kids, talking of the things of God, encouraging them in the faith and to boil down all of the discipleship that happens to our kids with the film just sounds crazy.

33:46

And I think that if you're listening to this, you're probably like, yeah, like that is crazy. Like no one thinks that way, but what I'm trying to argue is that, no,

33:52

I think that that is the way that we sometimes talk about missions. That seems to be the way that some people think about missions is if you can just kind of like show the film and then boom, a church pops up.

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And for anyone who would say like, no, no, no, you're misunderstanding. You're misrepresenting. I would say, okay, well then why is it talked about the way that it is when it's such a minuscule part of planting a church, raising up indigenous elders, even just thoroughly sharing the gospel with someone.

34:22

It is such a minuscule part is such a tiny part because you're, you're not getting much about who

34:28

God is. You're not, you're not start. You're certainly not starting at the first three chapters of the Bible, Genesis one through three, which are so necessary to understand the whole storyline of the

34:40

Bible, why we need Christ, our sin. So necessary to understand who God is, is our good sovereign creator.

34:47

And so, you know, there are, there are, there's about five minutes of an intro on the

34:53

Jesus film that goes through some of the old Testament. But again, this is, it's minuscule. And so I think I just want to, I want to try to say like,

34:59

Hey, this is, this is at best just a minuscule part of what the missionary should be seeking to do in ministry.

35:12

Yeah, absolutely. And, and, and, and to make this the goal rather than, you know, a very, very, like you said, minuscule piece, if a piece at all.

35:24

And you know, that, that, that leads to, I think, a broader view of the question of, well, what, what does missions look like?

35:38

If you're not using something like the Jesus film, if you're not doing that, I've always been curious about this and, and, and want to ask you to speak to this for just a moment.

35:47

You're going into a, another country. You're going to have to learn the language. You're, you're going to, with the hopes of building up a church within that, within that group of people.

35:56

And it's going to take time. It's going to take time. You're not going to be able to go in and do this in a week. You're not going to be able to go in and do this in a year, right?

36:03

This is, this is your, like you said, many, the, the, the, the next portion, greatest portion of your life is going to be spent doing this if the

36:13

Lord so wills it and gives you the ability to do it. What's that going to look like? I mean, the steps, what, what, what are your, what are you hoping to accomplish over time?

36:23

And how long do you foresee each one taking? And I know you can't know for sure. I'm just asking, you know, do you, in your mind say, okay, within, within this amount of time,

36:31

I hope this has happened. Yeah, that's a wonderful question. First, before I forget, I want to just go back to what you said about the evangel cube.

36:38

I think that I love that you brought that up because I think it just points to our desire for silver bullets.

36:44

We want silver bullets in evangelism. We want silver bullets in missions. That's understandable.

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We're drawn to the pragmatic, but I think that the challenge for me, and I even,

36:58

I, I, I feel convicted of this myself, but the challenge for me is do I trust the effectiveness of God's word preached?

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Do I trust the means that God has given, or do I think that I'm wiser than God? Because God has not given us silver bullets.

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He has given us means he's given us the, the means of proclaiming the truth, prayer, a godly life.

37:26

These are, these are the means that God has given us, but they're not silver bullets. They're not easy.

37:32

And so I think that, I think that that's why, you know, when we look at the, wow, what does it take to, to see a healthy church planted in a different cultural linguistic context, it is overwhelming.

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And I feel overwhelmed at what my family is desiring to do by the grace of God. But I think we just need to recognize right at the we're always going to be tempted towards these silver bullet approaches, and they can show up in many different forms.

38:01

Absolutely. And I, I just want you to know what I took out a pen and paper and wrote that down because that was such a good point.

38:06

And, and I even wrote down the timestamp of where we are, because I want to, I want to, I want to highlight that in this video, because what you just said,

38:14

I think is the, is the distillation of everything we're talking about today. When it comes to genuine missions work, there is no quick, easy, there's, there, there's no, you know, instant popcorn, silver bullet solution.

38:30

And, and thank you for that. That's a, that's a wonderful thing to be reminded of. Yeah. Thank you, brother.

38:35

That's encouraging. There, there's also there, there's actually a book that came out a few years ago that was published by I think

38:42

Crossway and Nine Marks. It's by a guy named Matt Rhodes. Some of your listeners may be interested in checking it out.

38:47

It's called No Shortcut to Success. And in he's, he's actually the author is a missionary in overseas.

38:58

I'll just say that he's a missionary overseas. We'll be more specific than that, but, but, you know, he's, he's writing, he's writing about for one in the first three chapters, it's fascinating because he looks at some of the current trends in missions today and the numbers that they report.

39:15

And, and he goes, goes through some of the, some of the issues with their definitions of, of discipleship and church planning and, and how they understand different things.

39:24

But then in the, the final chapters, he makes more of a positive case for, for what it, what it looks like to, to be faithful, clear, competent communicators of the gospel.

39:33

So some of your listeners may be interested in looking at that book. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, I'm not filibustering your question.

39:41

So. No, no, no, no. I wasn't, I wanted to go back to the, to the timeline, but I.

39:47

I was born in a middle class family. I was like, I was raised in a middle -class family.

39:56

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So to answer your question, or yeah, I, I think first off, well,

40:04

I want to also give a shout out to a training program that we went through. It's a training called

40:11

Radius International and they, they seek to help churches send competent, equipped missionaries.

40:20

And so the training was a 10 month program in Mexico. And, you know, we, we talked a lot about what is a healthy biblical church.

40:30

We, we talked a lot about current methodologies in missions. We talked a lot about a theology of suffering, but some of the most helpful things that we learned there were the hard skills of like, this is a system for learning language.

40:45

Here's a system for you to go from knowing basically nothing to being able to actually communicate with someone on a worldview level, because we, again, the, the danger of syncretism is always so real when we're talking about cross -cultural communication.

41:07

And what I mean by syncretism is a mixing of a little bit of Christianity being mixed in with someone's existing worldview.

41:16

And so what I love is how they taught us a system for learning language, all for the sake of the

41:23

Bible being taught clearly. And so they're also assuming that we're going to need to have a system because with, you know, learning the national language is one thing, but learning a minority language where, you know, there's no app like Duolingo, there's no class you can join.

41:40

You're going to need to have an idea of how do I go about this? And so that training was profoundly helpful and we're expecting that it will take us two and a half to four years to reach a level of sufficient fluency in the national language.

41:59

And we, we expect that based upon our desire to actually like take a test, take a standardized test to measure ourselves.

42:08

We don't want to just say like, Oh, you know, I feel like I'm good. I feel like I could, you know, clearly answer questions and proclaim

42:15

Christ. Like we want to, we want to know that we want to reach at least some objective level of fluency and, you know, no test is perfect, of course, but, but, but we, we want to, we take language learning so seriously that we're going to, to take standardized tests to measure where we're at.

42:31

So we're expecting the first language will take a few years. We'll also be helping with a business that our, that our teammates have started during that time.

42:42

And then after that, we're expecting that it'll take several more years to learn the minority language.

42:50

During that time, we're going to have to figure out what language group to target, because that is a big unknown.

42:56

The part of the world we're going to is very complex linguistically. Some languages are dying. Some languages aren't.

43:02

There's geographic barriers even to getting to some, some peoples and villages. And so there's a lot of unknowns, but once, once we have the language and once we understand their language and culture well enough, again, this, this is another unknown because in some places like Papua New Guinea, tribes will literally invite you in and say like, we want you to come in and develop a written language for us.

43:28

And then, you know, translate the Bible and teach this, this story to us. That's not going to be the case where we're going.

43:36

And so, so I don't know, it may just be in small groups through relationships and friendships where we're able to start to study the scriptures with people and teach from creation to Christ to consummation.

43:48

Or, you know, it, it may be just a lot of individual conversations and relationships, but the, the hope is to teach the whole council of God that people may, may see their need for a savior clearly, may understand who

44:04

God is, see their, their state of deserving his, his wrath and curse for their sin, and that they would come to see how he is so mercifully provided a savior for them, that they may come to trust in him.

44:19

And, and so if, if we have, have people who, who make sound professions, we'll be able to start a baby church.

44:26

And then from there, disciple these men, disciple men who will Lord willing be one day qualified to lead that church and hopefully proclaim the gospel for generations to come.

44:36

Cause we, we're not going to be there forever. We need that church Lord willing to stand on its own when we leave.

44:43

Amen. Amen. And this is where I can hear, excuse me.

44:49

I can hear someone say, well, you know, you're talking about years and years of work.

45:04

You know what, why not just take them the video? I mean, and, and, and, and I know what the answer is.

45:11

I know that's kind of what we're talking about today, but in America, we're so used to the

45:17

McDonald's mindset. We're so used to the, the, everything should be quicker than that. And so when you're talking about two years, three years, four years, people don't think in terms like that.

45:28

People think in terms of, well, what can you, what, what have you done for me lately? What can you do now? That's right. Right. And, and so that this, you're talking about life investment and you're talking about an investment that is going to hopefully and prayerfully and with God's, with God's grace, create generational change.

45:48

Because if you're leading up, you're raising up men, you're raising up fathers who are going to be then teaching their children who will teach their children.

45:56

And, and, and this is, this is, this is what you're, you're talking about. And so I hope people can see the difference.

46:04

I hope people will read the and, and as I was just blown away by the comparison to this sort of easy silver bullet style of missions versus someone who is, who's dedicating their life to it and, and, and, and giving up so much in a sense of, you know, you're, you're, you're a multilingual person already.

46:32

You could, you could, you could come and teach and you could probably get a job somewhere here and make a nice living and living, live in a nice house.

46:39

And I mean, I'm not trying to, you know, I'm not trying to say, look at what you're giving up, but, but, you know, in a sense you have, you know, you, you, you told me you've already served in several other countries where I'm sure you were, you know, have, have, have learned a lot of things and, and, and as a young man are already skilled in many areas.

46:57

And I, and I look at you and I'm, I'm thankful for brothers like you. As I told you, when we talked, I've never lived more than 30 minutes from where I was born and you've already, you know, lived around the world multiple times and, and guys like you,

47:13

I think the church should be thankful for, we should be supporting, we should be putting you guys out, not on a pedestal to be knocked off of, but out in front and saying, here's what, here's what

47:24

God is doing in the lives of young men still today. You know, the great missionaries of the past are not the, are not the only ones that we should look to, but we should look at the missionaries of today and say, look at these guys who are doing this today.

47:34

So I just want to give you an encouragement, brother, to say that for, for guys like me, you guys are our heroes.

47:44

And I, and I don't say that lightly. So, and I'm not trying to just, you know, uh, uh, be in any way a, uh, flatterer because I don't believe in that, but, but I do believe you, you show honor where honors do.

47:59

So I'm thankful for what you're doing and what you're giving yourself to. Thank you so much, brother. That, that is very, very humbling and encouraging.

48:05

And, and I mean, yeah, I, I appreciate your faithfulness. I think,

48:11

I think as I've told you before, it is a beautiful thing that you've, you've been in one place your whole life. Like, I think there's, there's a beauty to that, that long sustained faithfulness and not trying to just, you know, move on when the sheep bite and, and, you know, seek, seek where it feels like the grass is greener.

48:27

So I think, I think I am encouraged by, by you and your ministry as well, brother, but thank you for that, that word of encouragement.

48:34

That means a lot. Well, I appreciate it. And, and I, I'm, I'm thankful for you coming on the show today.

48:40

I do want to start drawing to a close, but as I do, I want to ask if you would mind, can

48:46

I pray for you and for your family? As I know you're going to be leaving soon and ask our congregation, not a congregation, it's a, it's a podcast.

48:53

Let's be real, but the people, the podcast to just pray for you. Can we do that? Yeah, that'd be awesome. Can I make one more point real quick?

49:00

I want to just, I'm so sorry. I realized I said, I referenced four lanes of missions earlier, but I didn't really explain what

49:07

I meant by that. And so this is something that my friend Brooks Buser has written and spoken about.

49:13

And so, and he's the president of Radius International, but I just wanted to explain what

49:18

I meant by that is that when we think of missions, you can think of it in four lanes, lane number one being the training of indigenous pastors, which is so important.

49:28

We need, we need indigenous pastors to be more equipped and trained, especially in parts of the world where the prosperity gospel is so prevalent and everything is so theologically shallow.

49:39

The second lane being having English speaking churches in different major cities around the world.

49:46

Sometimes that can be a profoundly powerful ministry and beacon of light.

49:51

And so that, you know, having a, having a very healthy English speaking congregation in cities like, you know,

49:57

Beijing or Tokyo or Dubai, that's a wonderful thing. That's the second lane. The third lane is having healthy churches in the majority languages of the world.

50:08

We need more of those, of course, like, are there churches that meet in Mandarin?

50:14

Are there healthy churches that are even meeting in Arabic? Yes, but we need more.

50:19

And so, so those are the first three lanes of missions, and they are all worthy of our prayers and our money and sending people toward.

50:29

But what I meant by the fourth lane of missions is, is more of the, the unreached language groups, the, the, the language groups where there is not yet an indigenous church, maybe not yet even believers.

50:40

And that is the lane that is most often overlooked, both, both in terms of money and in terms of laborers.

50:48

And so I just wanted to say that real quick, because I think I brought up the four lanes of missions and didn't even define it.

50:53

That's, that's my rookie podcasting mistake for you. But, but I hope that's, I hope that's helpful because, again, we want to see the imbalance corrected.

51:04

There is an imbalance of focus that is on the first three lanes, as opposed to the fourth, and yet it is the fourth where there should be the most urgency.

51:13

How can they believe in Him of whom they have never heard? How are they to hear of Him unless someone preaches?

51:20

How are they to preach unless they are sent? And so may the church, may especially churches that are, that are robust theologically and that take, take

51:28

God's word and doctrine seriously, may these churches lead the way in sending people to the ends of the earth.

51:38

Amen. Amen. And, and, and like you said, two, two things that resonated with me in what you just said, the least amount of people are doing that, and the least amount of money and resources is going to that.

51:50

So I want that, I want that to stick in people's minds. This is where there is the least amount of people doing it and the least amount of money being sent to it.

52:00

And, or not just money, but money and resources. So people out there, some of you who are listening to this, you know, if you have the ability in your church to, to speak about these issues, maybe you're on a committee or on a ministry, maybe you're an elder or a deacon or a pastor who can, who can speak to your church about this issue.

52:21

And I, and I will say in our church, I really feel like it's, it's funny that, that we came to know each other, brother, because even before I met you, our heart has been this, this unreached people group.

52:32

And we, we, the, the, we, we support one specific ministry in our, one specific missionary in our church, and that's his whole heart and, and is continuing to reach the, the, the, when he reached the, the, the group that, that, that he now ministers to, they had never even seen a white person before.

52:46

There wasn't even like on their radar. And, you know, part of that, that's part of what gave him his in.

52:52

He was different, right? Like I'd never seen one of those before. And, and so there are still people out there.

52:58

They're still unreached tribes. They're unreached people. And so my, my heart is, is right there with you, brother, and, and, and, and what you're doing.

53:08

And, and I hope that, that, you know, when we think about who we support in missions, it's not always, you know, well, where are we going to see the, the most outrageous forms of like success?

53:21

You know, what does success look like? Well, it's, you know, it's this huge thing. No, maybe it is the hard, laborious work of years of service to reach a people who otherwise won't be reached.

53:33

And, and, and God has his people in every tribe, every tongue, every people in every nation. And so we can know that there, there are elect in those, in those groups.

53:42

There are people who are elected in those groups and who need to hear the gospel. And so we need to be taking that gospel to them.

53:48

Yeah. Amen. We're called to faithfulness, not fruitfulness. We, we are not in control of fruitfulness and that's where, that's where we err.

53:56

I think that's where we err in, in the methods that we've talked about is we think that if we, we can kind of reverse engineer a movement or reverse engineer people's conversions and make it guaranteed that if we do the right things, there will be fruit.

54:09

But again, that, that goes back to people like Charles Finney and different heretical views he held.

54:15

It does not go back to the apostles and to God's word. And to the fact that, that God alone is sovereign over salvation.

54:24

He will, he will move how he desires. He is, he has only called us to be faithful, to be faithful, to do what, what he has commanded, to be faithful, to, to preach and proclaim and pray that he may be glorified.

54:39

Amen. Amen. Well, brother, I do want to pray for you if I could. So you can do that now.

54:46

Father, I want to pray for my friend, my brother in Christ, this young man who is about to take his family to a, to a place that is going to be, to them, very different from the life that they live now.

55:00

And they are going to be committing themselves not to weeks or months, but to years of service in this place.

55:07

And I pray, Lord, that you would make their paths straight, that you would keep them safe in your hand, that you would walk before them and open doors for them where they are needed.

55:18

Lord, that you would give them discernment and wisdom to make the decisions that are important and good and necessary for their ministry.

55:26

Lord, I pray for his dear wife, having met her and seeing her desire to be faithful and standing next to him.

55:32

I know that that is a specific calling in and of itself. So I pray for her. I pray for their children.

55:39

I pray, Lord, that through all of this, that you would glorify yourself through this ministry, that they would be faithful, especially in the hard times, and that churches and other ministries would see the value in what they're doing and would reach out to support them in love and to seek you continuing to work through them and providing for their needs.

56:01

Lord, we know that the work of missions is not easy, but Lord, you have not called us to a life of ease, but you have called us to a life of glorifying you.

56:14

And so I pray that they would glorify you throughout this service. And Lord, we pray all this in Jesus' name.

56:21

Amen. Amen. Thank you so much, brother. Thank you, brother, and I appreciate you coming on the show today.

56:29

I know you got a lot to do before you leave, so I appreciate you taking the time. Oh, absolutely. It was an honor and privilege to get to talk with you,

56:36

Keith. Amen. All right, guys, again, I want to thank you for being a part of the show today.

56:43

And if you want to read the article that we talked about regarding the Jesus film, it will be in the link below.

56:49

Look forward to hearing your comments. Maybe you have some differences of opinion, and we certainly welcome those in the comments.

56:56

As I always say, if you disagree with me, you certainly have the right to be wrong. No, I'm just kidding, but we do look forward to hearing from you.

57:04

And if you are interested in supporting this brother's ministry, there are some ways that we can help you to get connected with that as well.

57:12

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57:21

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57:26

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57:46

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