Wednesday, September 1, 2021 PM

Yeah, it's been a couple of years. I started spacing it out a little more, and I stopped bringing my family when

I came a couple years ago. Somebody saw Dana, and they said,

Dana, you look great. Ryan, it's been a tough year, hasn't it?

That really happened. That really happened. So I thought, you know what,

I think I'm just going to postpone this next visit. All right, this is to keep me on track.

I had a PowerPoint that I wanted to make sure that I used it so that I knew.

I didn't leave anything out. I want to show you quickly my family.

And if you forget or didn't take any notes tonight, I have a brochure that you could look at that would give you a better idea of what exactly that we're doing.

And this is our prayer card right over there.

I didn't come exactly prepared. They all look the same height to you. Do what? They all look the same height to you.

See, the insults continue to come. I'm not going to keep showing up if this stuff continues.

You're suffering for Jesus. I know you don't believe. That's right, because I like coming here.

Because as I was telling Brian, missionaries are an extension of the local church, are they not?

I mean, that's exactly what we are, is we're a church on mission, on fulfilling the great commission at that, knowing

God, making him known. And what we do, the natural process of that is as we're making disciples, we're going to send disciples to the nations so that we continue to make

Christ known. And that's not for everybody, but God has given me that privilege to join him in what he is doing on a global scale.

And I am humbled by that fact, and I'm passionate about it.

I mean, I love it. It's just everything within me just wants to share Christ with the nations.

So as Michael was saying, for the last 10 years I was in France, and we were planting churches there.

And eventually, after planting, we did a plant at a French national church in Versailles, France, right next to Louis XIV's chateau in Versailles.

And then we went on to a rejuvenation work. It was a church plant from long ago that wasn't doing well, and we came in there to basically rejuvenate the flock and to encourage them to make disciples where they are and to go back to the word of God.

And we began preaching the word of God and investing in leaders there so that we could go on and continue to plant churches.

Well, that was a tough one, the rejuvenation.

I'm missing the word. What is that? When you go into revitalization work.

That is tough, tough work. If you think moving to a cross -cultural setting and doing ministry is tough,

I mean, then you add a revitalization work on top of that. That was, I think, the last time that you guys saw me and I came back kind of in rough shape.

But the Lord was good, and His grace was sufficient, and we went back, and we partnered with some

Americans, and we planted an international church right in the heart of Paris. Now, that was something that I wasn't very excited about, to be honest with you, because I'd spent a lot of time learning the language and the culture, and I loved everything about it.

But this is where the Lord had us at that particular point, and so doors were opening up.

I was like, I'm committed to this, and I know that you're going to use this for the glory of your name.

And suddenly what I realized is that you've got people from the nations, 30 different nations to be exact, in a period of three months begin walking in the doors of our church in Paris.

And then I started all of a sudden realizing, like, wait a minute, this international church, actually, we're making disciples of the nations right here in Paris, France, who are then going back to make disciples in areas that I cannot go.

And I got excited about that. And so then, did I tell you guys about the college ministry that I started at the, did

I tell you that the last time I was here? Did I? Well, that's too bad. I wanted to tell it again.

That was a fun, that was a fun thing. That was a fun thing, because I remember

I was doing, I was surveying an area, and I wanted to plant a church near my home.

And so one of the ways that I'll survey an area is I just begin sharing the gospel with individuals in this particular area.

So there's this prestigious engineering college there. It's the MIT of France, about 20 minutes from my house.

A lot of it's under, like, top security type stuff, and it's gated off. But then there are open areas.

So I go into the open areas, and I begin sharing the gospel with some of the students.

And I found that there were a lot of international students there. And I found that they were quite receptive to the gospel.

I thought, well, this is pretty cool. So I started a Bible study with one of the guys.

And then from there, I said, you know, if you know of other believers, why don't you invite them? And he said, so I'll do that.

And I said, well, you're a student here, right? He said, yeah. And I said, can you get us a classroom or something, or we could meet?

And he said, yeah, yeah, I could do that. And then I said, are there other clergy type folks here?

And he said, yeah, there's a Protestant pastor and a Catholic priest. The Catholic priest runs everything.

The Protestant pastor shows up on Wednesdays. I went home, and I googled his name. This guy,

I didn't even want to see him, because I knew he's what the

French call a heretic. No, that's what we say. So I was like,

I do not want to be around this guy, because this is going to get ugly. And I don't want to mess things up.

So I just avoided that building on Wednesdays. So then I thought,

OK, let me think about this for a minute. The Catholic priest has all the power, and then this

Protestant guy is not preaching the gospel. I've got a Bible study going right here, and this can continue to grow.

But if they find out, then what's going to happen? And so all of a sudden, the priest ends up in one of my

Bible studies. I was just like, oh, this is interesting. And then one of the students invited a

Muslim girl into the study. I had invited a refugee from Iraq to the study.

Now I'm sitting at the table, and I'm just like, oh, I wish you guys were here. I wish I could take a picture of this right now.

This is crazy, right? A Catholic priest, and an Iraqi immigrant, and then a

Muslim, and she had the hijab on and stuff. And I was just like, this is too cool. So I went straight to the scriptures.

I preached the gospel, and I just thought I'll never be back on this campus again. Surprisingly, though, the

Catholic priest was just kind of like, you know, I like what you said. I agree with what you said.

I was like, well, I must have said something wrong. But the point is that we ended up having a good relationship at that point.

And then all of a sudden, people started asking me, who are you, what are you doing here, and all that. Well, there was already a

Protestant guy there. I could not go around saying, I'm the Protestant pastor here, because he would suddenly pop up on the radar.

Well, anyway, I'm getting too ahead of myself. I don't have enough time for all this. But long story short,

I thought, well, there are international students in this Bible study. We do speak

English from time to time. Who am I? I'm the international Protestant pastor here on campus.

I started introducing myself for that. And eventually, they gave me keys, and they gave me an office. And I just,

I couldn't believe it. I could not believe it. So I started this international ministry on this campus that's like the premier engineering college in France.

And the French were, I mean, some of the French campus guys would meet me and just go, what did you do?

How did you do this? You know, we've been trying this for years kind of deal. And I was like, well, I'm an American.

I just do it. But they like to kind of hang around the perimeter and stuff.

But what I ended up doing is I ended up handing that over to French nationals later on, because that was ultimately objective.

It's still when we're planning churches as well. We want these to be French national churches, and we want them to be run by the nationals in the country there.

So my point, though, of telling you all of that is that suddenly I just, my heart was always about getting the gospel out.

And that led me to missions in France. And that's where I began to have an affection for the

French culture. And that's why I didn't eat your food. I'm only playing, kind of.

But I ended up loving the French and everything about them and learning the language.

And then all of a sudden, with that international church, I started getting excited just about the nations.

Like, I didn't want to just be in France at that point. I wanted to be a part of everything that God is doing all throughout the nations.

But I'm just one guy, and I wasn't really sure how that was going to happen. But I was really enjoying this international thing, when suddenly

I realized that through my doctoral studies, I started hanging out with guys from Reaching and Teaching.

And what they do is something that I was like, I want to do this.

This is exactly what I want to do. So here's what I do. Now, I'm based in Fort Worth, Texas.

That gives me a direct flight to many places all throughout the world. And there are multiple roles to this.

First, I will go into areas where there is no opportunity for any type of theological education or deep discipleship for national pastors and leaders.

And I'll go into those areas, and I'll survey it to see, are there believers there that are in need of deep training, deep theological training, deep discipleship?

And if there is, are there opportunities for us to continue to go there, to continue to invest in those national leaders?

And is it possible to sustain that over a period of three years?

So that's one role I do. And after I see that it's like, OK, this is a viable spot.

We can get there. It's relatively safe. I use that term loosely. Relatively safe.

There are accommodations that Americans can handle it. There are multiple national leaders there, a minimum 30, that are looking to grow in their theological education.

And we're talking about pastors and leaders. And if that exists, and I have a strong partner there, if those things exist, then

I come back to a church like Sunnyside Baptist, and I say, guys, we've got an incredible opportunity to invest in national leaders and pastors in a country like Benin, for example.

That's one of the countries that I'm currently surveying right now. So let's just say that it works out. I come back, and I just say, this is an incredible opportunity to invest in these national leaders and pastors.

Would you partner with us so that we can invest in these guys? Meaning, would you send your pastors, your elders, over to teach theology to these individuals that deeply need it, that theological training?

And so if you guys say yes, which you better, then we will go over to Benin, and we will teach nine modules, teaching modules, over a period of three years.

So that's three modules every year. And that includes topics like Old Testament, New Testament, homiletics, ecclesiology, hermeneutics.

Give you an example. In two weeks, I go to Burkina Faso, and we're teaching the seventh module, which is church planning and missions, which

I'm really excited about. So that's what we basically do.

So I go over there. We invest in those national leaders. But I help the local church engage in cross -cultural missions and investing in national leaders and pastors from all over the world.

We have a women's ministry as well. The men's ministry is focused primarily, obviously, it's focused on the men and their pastoral development.

And that takes about 40 hours each module. The women, we also invest in women.

So we have a women's ministry, and that requires about 10 hours. We like to do those sometimes simultaneously.

Like, for example, I'm working on a trip to Uganda, possibly in March. And one of the things that I'm going to try to evaluate is if we have women, there are plenty of women that would also like to understand

Bible study and how to invest in other women. I'm going to see if they have accommodations for both teams to come and if we can do this simultaneously.

So we have a men's ministry. We have a women's ministry. We teach the nine modules. 85 % of pastors have no access to theological training.

18 active training sites right now. Two active women's sites in 11 different countries in Central and South America, the

Caribbean, and Africa. My role is primarily for Western Africa. Can you guess why

Western Africa? They speak French.

A lot of them do. What language do they speak? A quick quiz. What language do they speak in Liberia?

English, trick question. Ivory Coast. French. I would say

Nigeria, but they have all kinds of different. So what we will do is we arrange for, through that national leader, we arrange a translator to go if we're not going to Monrovia.

I'll just tell you some of the current sites that I'm working on right now as I'll be in Monrovia. Lord willing, in November. In that one, we are teaching church history.

Church history in Monrovia. While I'm in Monrovia, we do have a church partner that's coming along with me.

Part of that preview trip is I'm going to do another preview trip with another pastor and another group of leaders a little bit farther away with this current site.

And what I'll do is I'll do the preview trip, and I'll also do a two -day teaching on the history, authority, and herency of the scriptures.

So what we want to do during that preview trip is just lay the foundation of the scriptures, and then we just build upon that.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Now you know why I love France, right? Literally getting to reach the nations by investing in national leaders and pastors who then go off and invest in their local church.

Can I just tell you one of the most important things, or one of the most exciting things about being with Reaching and Teaching is that we are committed to the local church.

We believe that missions should be centralized around the local church as well. So what you see when you work with Reaching and Teaching is a heavy, heavy focus on the local church.

So we want to build church partnerships and send teams that are attached to their local church.

And then we're going to focus on the local church and stress the importance of the local church overseas as well.

Any questions on that? Yes, that's right.

So the trips last about five days, but when you're traveling to Africa, then you're going to add a couple of days of travel on with that.

No, my marriage does not allow me to do that. Is that, that was a trick question, wasn't it?

No, I obviously, I have to pace myself. And well, okay, here's what

I'm doing right now, if you wonder. There are sites that are currently going on, they're ongoing right now.

So I go to Burkina Faso, or yeah, Burkina Faso at the end of September in November, I'll be,

I'm sending a team. What month are we at? October, I'm sending a team to Sao Tome.

So with that team, I'm not going on that one. I'd be in deep trouble if I did.

So what I'm doing is I'm preparing that team to go to Sao Tome to teach, because obviously, you know, it's not just a dissemination of information.

We have to understand the culture that we're going into. There's some cultural competencies.

You have to be able to teach. We wanna provide an outline with the, we do provide a curriculum, but we also wanna give you the freedom to add the things that you think is, that you wanna focus on, and even subtract some of the stuff.

But that's also my role. And that's what I'm trying to do right now, is I'm trying to work myself out of having to go to those so that I can spend more time.

There is a long list of individuals that are wanting me to come and preview their area so that we can develop a church partnership to go and invest in that particular country.

And send their teachers to that place over, successively, over the course of time to teach.

Yeah, yeah. So they get used to it, they'll get competent in the experiences that are not meant for you to be there.

Right, right. But we also know like, a three year commitment in iModules is a huge commitment.

We don't really expect that. So we always recommend a one to three trip, partnership, and then we just see how the

Lord leads as we move forward. Now you gotta think about the benefits of that to Sunnyside Baptist, for example.

When we're training up the next generation and we're training up leaders, and then you add that teaching element in there and then you add the cross -cultural element, which shakes you up because many of you know when they, a lot of guys you start to disciple in a local church, they start strutting after a certain point.

And then you gotta send in their cross -cultural context and then they become more humble over time. No, I'm just,

I'm kind of joking. But you can see the value of that when you're raising up leaders in the local church.

Those churches that you go to, is there much there or are most of these just stand -alone churches?

Yeah, I'm glad that you asked that. So let's just say, for example, in Nigeria. Nigeria is, it was a, they were begging me to come.

I had a PhD student from South Africa at a

Southern seminary, contacted me, and said, I have friends in Nigeria that are in big trouble.

Their Baptist Association, a lot of the members there, they have internet, choppy internet, but they're finding these prosperity preachers on YouTube.

And so the prosperity gospel is wreaking havoc on these pastors. Not to mention that syncretism is another aspect in Nigeria.

So they said, will you come here to invest in our leaders, our

Baptist leaders within our association? And so I said, yes, yes, let's make this happen.

And as I started moving forward, all of the embassies are closed down,

Nigerian embassies are closed down except New York City. I would have to fly to New York City for a 10 -minute visa trip.

And then I thought, if I call up Michael and say, hey, let's go to Nigeria and go and invest in these guys, syncretism, prosperity gospels, wreaking havoc, yeah, let's go, okay?

Well, it costs 3 ,000 for the week. By the way, you're probably gonna have to spend about a grand to go to New York City to get that 10 -minute trip.

I was like, I can't do that. That's not a viable option right now. So we had to stop. But my point is is that I got connected with that because I had a trusted friend that would connect me to, and IMB missionaries, we work with a lot of them as well because they have cluster leaders.

And those IMB missionaries have a lot of connections in there. So with Benin and with Uganda and with Guinea, I'm working with IMB missionaries there.

Idols? No, it's taken the - What's the form of the false doctrine?

Well, it's taken the religion of their culture, of their upbringing, and then combining it in with Christianity.

Yeah, well, it could include all kinds of stuff, yeah. Jesus plus - I thought you were expressing disgust using the

Lord's name in vain. I'm glad that you continued on with that statement. I was gonna - You know, there was some victories in 2020.

I will say that it has been extremely challenging right now with international travel.

Even the country I know and love very well have closed their doors to Americans, and then obviously we can't go there, and then they cannot come here at this point.

I was supposed to be in Nigeria and in Liberia a few months ago, but then that ended up being canceled at the last minute.

Monrovia had the fourth wave of COVID. They closed everything down, said you can't come. I'm holding on to Burkina Faso loosely at this point, but so far everything is a go.

Monrovia was rescheduled until November. Sao Tome, it's another one, too.

It's just like, in this particular climate, you never really know. But we still opened up multiple women's training sites during 2020.

We did have two pandemic graduations. One was Belize, and the other one was in Mexico.

This time has been used to make more contacts with missionaries on the field, trusted sources for us, where we can continue to open up more opportunities to go and preview.

And obviously, having the time to come and visit you guys opens up the doors for more possible church partnerships.

Wink, wink. Any other questions?

Oh, yeah. The health clinic in Fort Worth, the nurse there that deals with international travel,

I think we're on a first name basis at this point. And sometimes I'm with my kids, and they're like, dad, did you get like six shots?

And it's true. I got three in one arm and three in the other arm last time I was there. So to go to Burkina Faso, even to get a visa, you have to have the yellow fever vaccine.

You have to have one of those cards. I've had it all.

Anti -malaria drugs, I've got a bag of them at the house. Thanks for asking.

Horrible. No, they're good. It's been extremely difficult coming back.

Reverse culture shock is big. Where are they? They're at home in Fort Worth.

So we just moved to Fort Worth, I mean, from France. And it was just a quick deal.

We just went from France and came straight to Fort Worth. The kids are doing well.

They're resilient and doing well. We talk about France probably every day.

They want to go back to France almost every day. But when we were in France, they wanted to come to America.

So you know. But it goes there versus here.

They yell a lot less here. Yeah. Believe it or not.

Yeah. No, it's been an adjustment. But I mean, it's been good. I mean, it's just Texas, as probably many of you know, it's like a different country in itself.

And finding a local church and all that kind of stuff, it's been hard. It's been really hard to do that.

And we haven't done that in years. And we've been planting churches.

But anyway. And so now I walk into a church. And I come here. You guys are like, oh, hi. I walk into a church in Texas.

And they're just like, they don't even know you. You just have to go up and introduce yourself.

And just like, back to the bottom. I know,

I know. But I don't like it. But it's been a humbling experience. But it's been good.

Four to sixth grade, right? That's what, yeah,