The Reaching and Teaching Interview | Ryan Robertson

Well, we are back with another episode of the room for nuance podcast. I'm Sean DeMars and I'm here with my guest Ryan Robertson, brother. Will you open us in prayer? Yeah, Lord. Thank you for.

Just the opportunity to have a conversation with a friend God. We pray that our conversation would glorify you I pray that it would edify us Lord. I pray that you would keep us from saying things that are unhelpful and Lord in that you would just give us words to say by your spirit that are encouraging for the building up of your church around.

The world in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Now Ryan before we get started Luke was telling me that you're a bit of a. You enjoy nature and so you'd probably appreciate this little factoid about ants.

Did we talk about nature? Well, maybe we did. Yeah, I love nature. Yeah, here we go. I learned the other day that all ants are female. That's great. Yeah, if they were males, they'd be called uncles.

Man, yes, we're done.

Yeah.

Brother why don't you just start by sharing like a three to five minute version of your testimony? Yeah, we can. Yeah learn a little bit more about you. Great. Yeah names Ryan Robertson.

We live in Louisville, Kentucky. We being my wife Aaron my three kids Avery is 16 Kalma is 14 Reagan is 12 and. They're wonderful. I wish they could just travel with me everywhere I go. We are at 3rd Avenue Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky where I serve as an elder alongside Greg Gilbert.

You should get Greg on here. I've tried. I've tried a thousand said no. He says he says yes, let's get it on the calendar, which I guess is a no. I will get you his PA's Email address by the time we're done.

Oh, there you go. Greg. You've been called out. Yes, so grew up in Canada born and raised. And I'm so sorry brother. It's cold. Yeah, I loved growing up in Canada. We grew up just outside of Toronto in a very multicultural area.

Okay called Brampton huge South Asian population a lot of Indian Pakistani friends a lot of Chinese friends. The Lord was just wonderful to give me just a multicultural childhood. Yeah different ways.

Great great food scene. Toronto. Yeah. Oh, it was so good Louisville. They talk about their food scene.

It's nothing compared to Toronto because in Toronto, it's authentic right. You get it's real.

Yeah, if this stuff comes off the plane, uh-huh at Pearson Airport from India and Vietnam and China and then it goes to the restaurant.

It's not this made-up stuff that a bunch of white people trying to do ethnic food. It's true. Yeah, it's true.

And then when the mothers cook it for you and not the restaurant ten times better. As far as I remember as long as I remember I grew up at Bramley Baptist Church With believing parents who weekend week out heard the gospel and so I gave my life to the Lord a very young age.

After Christmas Cantata, I think it was 1988 1987 1988 sitting there with my cousins. I asked them. What does it take to become a follower of Jesus Christ? They told me and I truly believe that's when the Lord converted me.

I'm super thankful for that. Yeah, and I was baptized probably four or five years later. I'm not an advocate for Baptizing a lot of young kids, but you know, that was that was me then Baptists gonna baptize so there we were and Grew up wanting to be in full-time ministry and wanted to go to Liberty University.

Why Liberty our youth pastor who went to Liberty? And so there was this really weird video that was in our church library. Kind of a recruitment video and I watched it as a teenager and I was like, oh, I want to go to that place.

Okay, I was playing basketball at the time. I started getting recruited by Liberty. I would go down to their basketball camps and in the middle of recruitment Junior year of high school committed to go to Liberty.

I was more kind of looking at mid-majors at that point and Liberty just stood up above far above and beyond everywhere else I'm gonna put my hands into here. All good. So went to Liberty committed to Liberty and then I just started dating my my wife my now wife.

Kind of last semester of high school. Okay, and she ended up deciding that she wanted to go to Liberty too, which was a win for me. No long-distance relationship. I went down to Liberty together. I Went from wanting to be a pastor to in my last year of high school.

Just getting absolutely spooked about the whole idea of pastoral ministry, which I think is good for an 18 year old to kind of bear that Weight. Oh, yeah, I'm not really cut out for this.

We know what you spooked because you came to understand like the the gravity of it. Totally. I loved public speaking.

I love the idea of just preaching on a Sunday morning and then just realizing as I got older. Hey pastoral ministry has a lot more to do With counseling and care than it does just speaking on a Sunday morning.

Oh, yeah, so I think what a pastor does on a Sunday morning is the most important thing. He does senior pastor, but for me, I was. I was not interested in the counseling care at that point. You know self-involved teenager.

So I decided to pursue finance when got a finance degree at Liberty and Left Liberty to do sorry. What was Liberty like at that time? So Jerry Fowle senior was still around. He was amazing got to know him.

Well, I served on the board of old-time gospel hour in Canada. Which is super weird when I look back at that going like why is like a radio program? It was like a TV program with Jerry and the choir behind him.

It was there. I think it was their Sunday evening services taped. Yeah, and They wanted a young Canadian on the board. And so I went on the board is like a 20 year old. Yeah, totally under qualified. Unqualified and just loved our time together.

So Liberty at that time Jerry Falwell senior was still around. I was working on the old-time gospel hour. Kind of television production that they were doing. I was serving on their board. I love Jerry senior.

We would have differing. Can you. I don't. I don't understand much about the history of the Falwell's. It feels like when I hear that name, that would be a controversial statement for you to say.

I love Jerry Fowle. Fowle. Jerry Fowle senior was a wonderful man. I think it is controversial. I think my love for him. I think Jerry and I would have different views right now on things like how we should think about influencing the nation for Jesus.

Okay.

Jerry was very much one of the founders of the moral majority in the 80s. Yeah, super thankful for Jerry. Okay. He would just do things differently than I would at the stage of my life. But it doesn't take away from how much I love the man.

Okay, and I loved my time at Liberty. So Liberty when Jerry passed away Liberty from what I can understand. I'm not an expert on it. Sure, Jonathan Fowle took the ministry of Thomas Road Baptist Church.

Thomas Thomas Road Baptist Faithful Church in Lynchburg, Virginia. Okay, and Jerry jr. His son trained as a lawyer at UVA took the helm of Liberty University itself and They I think just had different visions of what ministry looked like.

Yeah, so Jerry jr. Made some astute business decisions and Liberty blew up not in a bad way at first. Okay in a good way at first. They did a lot of online stuff before anybody else and literally they got to the point where they had like a billion dollars Of assets on the balance sheet, which you look at the way Jerry senior managed it financially.

Liberty was nothing close to that. We were on the edge of financial disaster a few different times because he was more ministry oriented more ministry oriented. They had had a thing in the 80s or 90s where they had a whole bunch of bonds that grandmas had bought through the old Time gospel hour and then they couldn't repay the bonds.

Someone came along and bought them for pennies on the dollar. Yeah, it was a hard situation. There's books out there about Jerry and his impact on evangelicalism the good the bad and the ugly. But I loved I loved him as a man.

He would drive down in his SUV down campus to have this weird horn and all of a sudden like his suburban would jump the curb and you'd be like jumping into the bush. To avoid it and you'd look up and he's like chuckling kind of well, he's just waving at you.

Yeah, so he wasn't acting weird or deranged. It was just Jerry showing like hey, I see you. Love you. I'm just gonna keep driving.

I to try to run people over when I want them to know how much I will have a really cool horn.

Yeah, it's goofy. What's weird all of a sudden becomes quirky and sort of endearing. Yeah, I think it was more like a roadrunner like. Something like that. Jerry, there you go. You had to be there. Hey, you had to be there.

But Jerry Jerry senior wonderful man, Jerry jr. Just took the university in a different way. Yeah, and I don't think it was the Liberty that I attended. I think they've made recent changes that have me very very hopeful.

Oh, they brought a new president. There's a lot of controversy out there around Jerry jr. They brought in a guy named Donde Costin PhD I think at least one of his PhDs from Southern Seminary. Okay, but former military guy.

Just great resume faculty. Love them. Yeah, all of that stuff. So the Liberty was great. We loved our time there. Okay, I thought I was gonna play basketball. Lord had different plans. Yeah, I couldn't make a decision between basketball and School so I chose school.

I had to make a decision. So I chose school. Came came out of our senior year went back to Toronto became a accountant auditor as boring as that sounds. It was even more boring. Yeah in boardroom after boardroom looking at financial statements for month after month after month.

I cannot imagine a life more boring than being an accountant in Canada. You could be an actuary in Canada.

Those are the people that evaluate the mathematical risk of accidents happening and oh, yeah, that's right. So that would be more boring. I almost became an actuary and a friend of mine was like no you should be an accountant great.

All right. Sure. Sounds like a lot of fun. Yeah actuarial science. So you're doing that? Hey doing life. I hate my life got into CFO work at a few different companies chief financial officer. Kind of moving up and then in 2011 read radical.

Radical changed my life. To a lot of people it's yeah, literally we almost we were on the edge of financial disaster. Because I just made radical decisions after reading radicals that I should not have made again financial professional.

Yeah. Textbook knowledge, but hey, I wanted to be radical. Can we pause here and talk about that?

I don't want you to say anything because you on the wrong side of radical and David Platt Work together in the missions world. I remember reading radical as well when I was deployed and it got me very seriously thinking about missions.

I think that book the Lord used it to get me and my family to the mission field. Yeah among other things and then I went back and I read it a little bit later and you know. Sometimes books don't change but we do and I didn't it didn't read the same way.

But I found especially kind of in reform circles after Michael Horton's book came out. Which was meant to be sort of a rejoinder to it. You're talking about ordinary. Yeah, and the marketing on that was fantastic.

Whoever did that but like it almost feels like it's kind of cool now to go back and dump on radical a little bit but Man, the Lord really used that book to open a lot of people's eyes to wake them up to the sort of mundane blog Non-great commission way that they were living.

Absolutely, you know, so anyways, can you reflect on look like okay? So it helps you but also you went a little too far like you went crazy. Like how do you interpret that?

Yeah, I think I think looking at myself in my 20s, I Was already prone from a personality perspective to take big swings and do things drastically. I was not a calm cool collected patient person in my 20s.

And so I read that book did not go seek pastoral counsel. Just literally just made up my own mind okay, here's how I'm gonna adapt this book and adopt it as kind of a mantra for my life and Yikes my my elders ended up calling me two weeks after reading the book and they're like, hey.

We're thinking maybe you should come and meet with us. And I thought oh, I'm in trouble like when your elders call you middle of the week. Hey, yeah, you come in and talk. Yeah I was like, yeah, I'm in I'm in trouble.

They ended up saying hey, we want you to come on staff. And I had a number in my mind. I was like, okay I think I can make this work for like this much money and it was like way lower than that. Okay, and I took something like a 75 80 pay cut to go work for the local church and I thought man that that's radical.

That's super radical. Yeah, I had a I had a Toyota Yaris lease. Ooh, and A lease a lease your finance guy percent financing, baby. Yeah, and it was a Toyota. So it was worth way more. Okay a trade-in than what the buyout was.

So there's some financial incentive I know it's not a good financial move. But I ended up having to get my sister to assume my lease. Which is super embarrassing my baby sister Yeah comes and like takes my hundred and ninety dollar Canadian payment and runs with it because I can't even afford My Yaris and so I was biking to work walking and like minus 20 degree weather to the church from our home.

Just trying to do the radical thing.

Yeah.

And so I think I think if I could go back to 2011 and talk to Ryan with the orange book in his hands I would have said before you make any decisions about this book. Just maybe read it again with an elder.

Yeah, and and ask questions like hey, what do you think? What do you think about this? What do you think about this? Have an older man. I should write with my dad. My dad's super wise man. Super love him.

I get to work with them now reaching and teaching but man, I should have just asked an older man to walk with me through some of those decisions because.

The theology and a lot of the principles aren't wrong. It's usually people who'd kind of take it and run wild with it. You could have had someone say, okay. What does it look like to apply this truly biblical vision of like radical following of Jesus to my life in a way?

That's wise and not dangerous. Oh, well, you even look at the illustration on the front. It wasn't that helpful like upside-down house. Yeah, it's a young guy in his 20s. I'm like, oh, yeah I'm gonna turn my house upside down and show you how radical I am.

I never thought about that. It was it was it was a helpful book. It was not unhelpful for me not to read that book with somebody wise.

One of the things I tell people all the time is you also have to remember the context. That David was writing and he was at a very wealthy church in Birmingham. We're like 80 of the cars in the parking lot in the very big parking lot are luxury vehicles.

Everyone's super comfortable and and I get it, you know. You have to be aware of the broader context. But that really was the context that he was writing to and trying to correct and so when you're trying to break down a big.

That you kind of have to take a big swing a big hammer a big hammer. And I think the Lord can use books like that and others to to press in our hearts. I was sinfully caught up in a Pursuit of materialism and status and more money and I needed to be wrecked.

I needed my pride. Taken to task, but yeah, it would have been super helpful if it wasn't from a pages of a book alone. Yeah with one of my elders walking me through it. So okay, so you read radical. Yeah, it was an idiot, yeah, I almost bankrupted the family and started working for our local church.

Did that in 2011 for seven years? So it was director of finance. We had this huge big multi-million dollar building expansion. Again, it's probably not the like the most radical radical thing the radical purists were going to the mission field, right?

And I'm trying to both end it going like alright, so I'll be radical and personally Could be radical but like this is great and and I'm I'm super thankful for that church. I'm super thankful for the building.

You just you hear the irony in it. Like yeah, I went. Oh, yeah red radical and then I went helped finance a massive multi-million dollar building. Yeah, okay. But that church has been super super helpful and I think they work with radical now, so they're full circle.

There you go but yes did that for seven years in 2014 2015 area we were planted by James McDonald's Church in Chicago. I don't know if many of your viewers right harvest Bible Chapel. Our pastor had been mentored by James.

The church was planted in 2004 just outside of Toronto. We ended up going there after we returned back from Liberty. Love the pastoral staff there got to serve alongside of them but James and some of his issues started to kind of come up to The surface 2014 2015.

Yeah, and I started to ask questions on polity in 2014 2015 and I just to find that yeah polity. How does the church order itself? How do specifically how do elders in a congregation work together? Yeah, how does the authority flow?

How does the authority just do the elders ultimately hold the keys of the kingdom the authority or to does a local congregation? James some outside board or some outside board. Yep. Hello Presbyterian friends.

So hello shots fired. Yeah. No, no, no, no. But so we I started to ask questions about that and discovered the writing of nine marks. As in my kind of pilgrimage started to ask some questions and I wasn't fully convinced of the biblical arguments that I was being given.

Dove into at our church. At our church, which was elder ruled elder rule. Okay.

Super thankful for those brothers. They're really good friends. But I just. I came to a different conclusion on who holds the authority of the keys within a local church. And I knew at that point. All right, I think the Lord's leading us as a family into something different.

My conscience is just a little too tight on this for me to be able to stay on staff forever.

While that's too tight your conscience is too tight.

Everything's too tight, you know. But we decided to loosen up a little bit and move to America. So I had been taking studies at Southern Seminary.

I got to know one of taking studies. Is that like the way you guys say that in Canada?

Everything we say in Canada is is grammatically correct compared to American. So do not be judging my grammar.

Okay.

Yeah, we you take studies. Yeah, don't you guys say that? No. Yeah, we go to hospital.

You go to hospital take fate. We go we go on holiday. You go to you go to studies. Do you guys do maths? No, but I like maths more than I like my really yeah. Did you just watch the new Apple TV episode where they were talking about this the new masters of the air?

They talked about maths versus math. Oh, no. All right. I should watch. Oh, they just launched on Friday. Okay launched. Is that a pun? So we We decided as a family Through those studies at Southern Seminary that making a transition possibly to do doctoral studies down in Southern was was what the Lord Did you already have your master's degree?

I had a master's degree in business administration was leveling up at seminary doing seminary like crazy. Yeah in 2017 in kind of the the full-on blitz of like let's get studies done I ended up finding out I had Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Which I thought was just gonna derail everything. Can you tell the viewers what that is? Yeah, Hodgkin's lymphoma is a type of cancer in your Lymph nodes. Yeah, it's a blood cancer. So to speak. So your filtration system was was totally messed up I I was training for the New York Marathon I know you can't see on my face now, but I was I was pretty skinny trying to get down I wanted to qualify for Boston losing weight like crazy and I just kept losing weight and I thought I was going through spiritual burnout just because of some of the yeah things that were going on in my life and Nope, I had Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Oh, so Had an amazing oncologist. Shout out to dr. Trinkas. I don't think she'll ever watch this but The health care system of Canada. Oh, don't do it came in. You just lost 30 of your What could I say.

So tell the truth. How long did you have to wait for chemo. Five years? Not not a chance.

I was I was I went from having my biopsy to being in chemo and I think seven days.

What was it. One of those things were like you were like Not going to the doctor like a typical man and your wife was like you really need to go to the doctor.

Every woman in my life my mother. My wife my see the reason I say my mom first cuz my mom said it way more than my wife did. Okay, cuz you know moms they're just like always on your case and so my mom was always on my case.

My Erin was I think just trying to be supportive and. But at the same time she was like honey something's wrong with you and in her mind she's like what is wrong with my husband.

Yeah.

This the ladies at the church that I worked on staff with. They would come in some of them like even in tears saying like something is wrong with you. And one of them said like I had a dream that you had cancer.

Oh, that's kind of weird. Oh, I definitely don't have cancer. Yep. I did. Haven't been checked but up trust me. Trust me. I'm good.

I know my own body and this is like over the course of months. I'm guessing right? Yeah, I had lost.

By the time I got tested the level of cancer they said I had it for about a year. But because I was so active They said there's no way that you would have been able to To check in on it. It was really the last I think four months before I was diagnosed that were rocky.

So again, I got a low got in the Lord Heal me yeah, thank you. Thank you Lord for that and Back on my feet Hodgkin's lymphoma is super treatable. So you hear about like not Hodgkin's lymphoma. There's a whole bunch of different types.

Some of them are kind of terminal and some of them are not. Yeah, Hodgkin's lymphoma is a super treatable form of cancer if you catch it in time. Okay, the chemo sucks, so they just absolutely rocked my body with chemo six months of difficulty.

But the Lord used that again to just kind of break me. Yeah, I needed to be brought to the point where I'm. I knew that I just I might not live. Yeah before kind of getting the final diagnosis and it's like okay Lord like I get it.

You don't need me. I Love my family a ton and I'd love to be here for my like as long as I can be. Yeah. But it kind of just humbles you when you look at ministry aspirations. It's like the Lord's gonna build his kingdom.

He does not need me.

Right.

And so that's just a common reminder even even in Days that are really really good that you can get your flesh can kind of lean in and go look what's going on. No, literally I can be taken out and the Lord's gonna build his kingdom.

Yeah, so it was a good reminder post post chemo. So I went into remission in 2018 in March and we moved three months later down to Louisville, Kentucky. Okay, so. Was able to raise support start talking with an organization called reaching and teaching that I now lead about coming on staff with me.

What's your position? I'm the president of teaching. No King sounds good, but I call you. Mr. President. I never do. It would be super awkward. Okay. Yeah, what does Brooks make you call him? Mr. President?

Okay, then just Ryan or president Brooks president.

Brooks are the most honorable.

Yeah, I call him crocodile hunter because he's got all these cool crocodile skulls in his basement that oh, yeah, I killed that one there. Yeah, whatever. He's the coolest guy. I grew up with moose in Canada.

What can I say? Yeah, so. Super lame super lame and they're like 10 hours north. So we're not even comparable. But yeah. Moved down to join reaching and teaching in a kind of a creative access role where I was gonna help missionaries get into closed countries.

Using creative means because there's really no such thing as a closed country. From God's perspective. From God's perspective.

We just gotta figure it out roll up our sleeves. Let's figure this out. Yeah, and When I was hired and moved our family down I realized like there was nobody to work with because all of our workers were in like open countries.

So I was like in the super awkward phase of like so what am I gonna do?

Yeah.

And the Lord just allowed for for work to come with reaching and teaching. That was not what I originally thought it was gonna be. Yeah, and then in 2020 one month into kovat the board approached me and said hey, would you be interested in serving as president?

Let's backtrack a little. Yeah, what was your PhD in? So it's it's currently ongoing. Oh things have been really busy. It's in missions. So missy ology. Okay, so doing a doctorate of missy ology at Southern Seminary with thesis I'm writing on English-speaking churches in global cities.

Ooh, I'm gonna get absolutely wrecked on it by the missions community, but that's great.

That's great. They're great. Yeah, I mean I think about like strategic like what's happening in Turkey UAE Dubai, I mean. Yeah, can you tell us a little but we'll come back to reaching and teaching? Yeah.

Yeah, talk a little bit about the significance of English-speaking churches. Yeah, absolutely.

So if you look at what the Lord has done specifically in East Asia We're gonna use a secure word for that because we got brothers there now and a place like Dubai. It's it's a pretty unique thing when you look at missions history period.

You go to Dubai. We could hop on a plane right now and go to eventual Christian Church of Dubai where John Fulmer pastors. You've got a congregations with dozens and dozens and dozens of nationalities.

Yeah, they gather together with English as their language but there's almost 2 billion English speakers around the world. And because of economic migration and forced migration and The economic opportunity given to people who have English as a second language at a high proficiency There's a ton of English speakers out there.

And so rather than having 75 different Local churches that are homogenous. There's one local church. You look about you look at Ephesians 2 where Paul talks about how the gospel has broken down the walls of hostility between us.

Wow, it's beautiful you got Indians and Pakistanis you've got you you could have Palestinians and Israelis. You could have Ukrainians and Russians and they're all gathered together in one local church saying the kingdom of God trumps any Political power that exists in this world.

I mean and our citizenship is in heaven and that trumps whatever citizenship here on this earth.

So when I hear you say that I don't hear anything controversial. I don't know why any. Well.

There is something controversial in the because when you look at the and I think you guys might have talked about him in Defend and Confirm but when you talk about a guy like Donald McCavern and him pushing for the homogeneous principle.

Which is this idea that churches can grow if everybody is the same. So in order for something to grow an institution to grow.

Yeah.

If you've got people with the same socio-economic background racial background and the more they have in common the faster that thing is gonna grow.

Well.

Someone walking into a place where there's people who aren't like them. Yeah, it's not naturally a place to grow and so from a from a sociological missy logical perspective. There would be a lot of people who have concerns about it.

Another concern with it. Honestly is the fact that English isn't the quote-unquote heart language of maybe 65 of those nationalities that are in that church. Which means they speak another language better than they speak English.

So folks would say like hey, like they may not fully understand the gospel in their heart language. Because they're hearing it in English and how would you respond to that? I look at what Paul's ministry was in in the early New Testament and he was speaking in a trade language.

He was doing ministry in a type in a trade language, which was which was Koine Greek. Yeah, so Koine Greek English. I think there's a lot of parallels there. Yeah, so You you look at a church like that and then out of eventual Christian Church of Dubai.

They plant Redeemer in Dubai because Dubai is huge. It's growing. Dave Furman starts pastoring Redeemer. Then you've got Brian Parks who's at Redeemer. One of the original guys that went over with Mac Stiles in the early 2000s.

He plants Covenant. Hope there's a vibrant campus ministry. That's going on the UAE. Through these local churches and a ministry that Mac Mac found and then you've got Russell Kima. Josh Manley. Another faithful local church there in the Emirate.

You've got Abu Dhabi with Aubrey Sequeira. You've got Fujairah with Jesse Brannan, then you're looking at pushing out past west of Abu Dhabi like time after time after time. Churches are being planted and the nations are gathering together to worship King Jesus.

And they're gathering in these very historically hostile areas, that's what's so significant.

Yeah, and they're coming from historically hostile areas, right? So the amount of effort and money it would take for for you and I to move over to a Pakistan and Train up pastors in Pakistan if we could even get in the country, right is it's huge.

But these guys can come and do an internship for six months to a year be part of a healthy local church experience where the healthy local churches Do the hard work of okay, how does this contextually fit within our context back in Nepal or Pakistan or India and.

Then they do it and it's not a hundred percent successful. I don't think anything is a hundred percent successful in church planning. But you see story after story after story in the Middle East and in Asia of God's grace through these English-speaking embassies.

And when we look at United Nations statistics They say that almost 60 of the world's population are gonna be living in urban centers by 2050 2060. And so what I want to say is like, hey, we've got a common language In English that's being used in economic trade.

I'm not saying it's the only Sure strategy. I'm just saying like it's a strategy and it's a good strat and our friends are bearing fruit from it.

And so let's let's not like we're we're impressing this. It's not like we're saying you have to come and be Western and be English. It's just it's just the truth. There are Christians in these places who want to gather and worship.

Yeah, and they speak English.

That's absolutely right. It's just an opportunity. That's that's absolutely right. And I think another benefit of them is where you can you've got folks moving to do work in the local National dialect or a local language.

They're gonna have to learn language. Well, where are they gonna gather as a local church, right? Sometimes it's a small little house church and that's that's great as long as all the elements of church there.

That's great. But sometimes you can learn.

Arabic or.

Insert the language while being a member of an English-speaking church. And membering well for your first year or two and then going and joining or planting and a church in another language. And I think that's a super important element.

So what I'm arguing for is okay. There's really good missy ology within English-speaking churches and that's not neglect the opportunity that we have here in 2025 and beyond with English-speaking churches and then using an East Asia case study and a Dubai case study is like, okay.

This is how I think it's missy ologically responsible in certain places.

I'm even thinking through the lens of my own experience at CHBC even what you see and throughout church history, it seems like there are often these hubs that sort of Hoover people in you know the Lord just kind of appoints them to be.

The People come in and then they go out through there and then they disperse the DNA that they get while they're there. So think about how many people have come through the internship at CHBC and Transmit that DNA all over the world.

Or you think about Calvin's Geneva, right? Like John Knox came through Geneva got the DNA took it back to Scotland and led the Reformation there. So it just seems like this model even historically makes sense.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then you even look at Paul. Paul was working in Economically vibrant areas like Thessaloniki. He was working in Corinth and Ephesus like these were not like Rome. Yeah, okay. These these places are super important and there's a lot of economic vitality there and a lot of transient community.