March 5, 2025 Show with Thomas Smith on “Native Americans: A Mission Field On Our Own Soil”

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this fifth day of March 2025.

Thomas Smith’s Missionary Background in Ukraine and Croatia

And I am very excited to have as a first-time guest today Thomas Smith, who will be addressing a topic on my program that I have never addressed, at least not for a two-hour broadcast. We are going to be addressing the theme, We Must Never Forget the Native American Indians as a Mission Field on Our Own Soil.

And Tom Smith is preparing to be a missionary to the Native American people, and specifically the Eastern Band of the Cherokees in North Carolina. And we're going to learn more about Tom and what has prepared him for this endeavor.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Thomas Smith.

Thank you. Good to be with you.

Well, Tom, first of all, I understand that even before the idea of becoming a missionary to the Cherokee, you were involved in ministry in Ukraine and in Croatia. Can you tell us something about that?

Yes.

I was involved with a ministry, which is still ongoing, and I am, in a way, still involved. It's called the International Theological Education Ministry. Back in 1991, the Soviet Union fell apart, and shortwave radio broadcast listeners wrote to the Back to God radio hour, and they asked for teachers to come over and to train their pastors and church leaders.

Was that Joel Niederhood's ministry?

Yes, it was.

Yes, I had Joel on my program a number of years ago. I had always been a great admirer of his, and he wrote a very nice commendation for the radio program. Is he still with us?

I believe he is. There's a seminary called Mid-America Seminary in Dyer, Indiana. I visited there a couple years ago, and they told me he was still alive in a nursing home that was like a mile or maybe one or two miles away from the seminary.

So as of about two years ago, he was alive, but I mean, he's in his 90s now. But it's my understanding, yeah, Dr. Joel Niederhood is still alive.

Yes.

Anyhow, as the ministry grew, they changed their name from Christ for Russia to ITEM, International Theological Education Ministry. And a number of years ago, the Protestant Reformed Church in Croatia learned about me and some connections I had with Croatia.

And so they asked me, would you come over and help us? Would you come over and help with our church planning and teaching of our young men? And so it sounded to me just like a Macedonian call. And so I went.

But even before I went and accepted that call to Croatia, I had traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, to teach a class for ITEM. And then once I was living, I moved to Croatia in 2012. And from there, I would make some trips into Serbia, Romania, and into Ukraine.

Salvation Testimony and Embracing Reformed Theology

Well, you've got to, next on our list of things to discuss today, fulfill a tradition we have on this program. Whenever we have a first-time guest, which would include you, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised and the kinds of providential circumstances our Sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So let's hear a summary of your story.

All right. Well, I am blessed to be able to say that I come from a Christian family. Both my mother and father, and for generations on both sides, have been professing believers. When I was about four years of age, my father and mother changed churches, and we went to a church in Red Lion, Pennsylvania, a little independent Bible church called Red Lion Bible Church.

And like I said, I was about age four, and I do distinctly remember being in a Sunday school context and being told that I needed to pray and ask for forgiveness of my sins and for Jesus to come and live in my heart.

And I remember praying that prayer or some variation thereof. Now, I grew up attending Red Lion Bible Church, which was very fundamental in their understanding of Scripture. Around age 17, I remember a Saturday night in October when after youth group, the associate pastor talked about the rich young ruler.

I believe that was in Mark chapter 10. The rich young ruler comes to Jesus and falls down on his knees and says, Lord, what must I do to be saved? And the points that really stuck with me were this guy was religious and he was sincere.

And anyhow, I believe the Holy Spirit convicted me that evening that I had been living at least an externally religious existence, and I was sincere. So, you know, that Saturday night when I went home in my bedroom, I prayed very sincerely.

I didn't want to trust on the fact that I once upon a time prayed what a lot of people call the sinner's prayer or, you know, that I prayed this particular prayer, I prayed it the right way, the right words.

But I wanted to trust in Jesus Christ alone and completely throw myself into his arms. And I did. And after that, I just had a great peace come over me. I went on to Penn State University. I studied agriculture.

And when I was at Penn State, I was discipled by a man by the name of Bill Dripps and really got into studying the word of God. And then after college, my first job was in Richmond, Virginia, and I visited various churches.

And there was one church in particular called Stony Point where that Sunday morning I pulled into the parking lot. I was getting out, another family pulled in and parked next to me. The couple got out.

The man said, hi, I'm Phil. And this is my wife, Karen. I see that you're new here. And as we walked into the church, he introduced me. He's like, oh, this is John and this is Bob and this is so-and-so.

And I was just struck by how friendly they were. And when they started singing, people were just really singing with their hearts. There was clearly an atmosphere of love for the Lord. And then when Dr. Frank Crane got up to preach, he just preached in a very direct way that I had not heard before with application.

And I was just hooked. It was like, well, this is everything I've been looking for in a church. And at the time, Stony Point was doing a program called Evangelism Explosion. You've heard of that, right?

Yeah, D. James Kennedy started that, I believe, in the 80s, perhaps?

Yeah, well, this was 1989. And so I got excited about that. I was like, yeah, evangelism is, you know, I think every church should have an evangelism program. And so I signed up. That was that fall. So September of 89, I got involved in Evangelism Explosion.

And I had two prayer partners. And back in the day, there used to be this thing called Monday Night Football. And I'd go over to these two guys. It was Jeff and Jim. And we would watch football until halftime.

And then we turn off the TV and pray. And Jeff, he was the one that started talking to me about the sovereignty of God. And I was like, well, of course, I believe in the sovereignty of God. It's right there in the Bible.

I mean, who can deny it? I mean, you can't run away from what's clearly in Scripture. And as we talked, Jeff talked about some of these Reformed ideas. And he gave me a book to read. And I just got hooked.

And later that fall, I joined Stony Point. And Stony Point happens to be a Presbyterian church in America. And so since 1989, I've been in the PCA.

Great.

I'm assuming that that is simultaneous with your coming to hear and embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace known as Reformed theology.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

So that's my story in terms of having a Christian family and background. You know, I certainly sat through a multitude of revival meetings, a lot of altar calls and things like that. And I mean, I certainly have.

I know as a child, prayed the sinner's prayer many times. But it wasn't until near the end of high school and going into college that I really had peace when I understood the difference between just saying the words and actually trusting Christ.

Amen. Well, as I've already announced, our main theme today is about the importance of never forgetting the Native American Indians as a mission field on our own soil here in the United States. And having started in your evangelistic efforts in Ukraine, Croatia, and I forgot to say earlier, Romania as well, how did the focus shift from those people groups, ethnic groups, to having a burden for the Native Americans?

And how did you arrive at settling specifically upon having the Cherokee in your mind as you are now trying to raise awareness and support for this endeavor?

Wow. Okay.

I will try to pull all those threads together without getting too crazy in the details. So I was living and working with the Reformed Church in Croatia from 2012 to 2019. It had become clear to me by the end of 2018 that my work was really drawing to a close in Croatia.

The church planter who I stay in touch with, in fact, I just talked to him yesterday on the phone, the church planter I was helping was doing great. He had three men in the church that seemed to be spiritually mature.

And so the church planter didn't really need me around to help with the ministry. And then the seminary, which was in a different city, it had fewer and fewer young men taking classes. Back about that time, Croatia had joined the European Union.

When that happened, that opened the door, allowing people to just move to other parts of the EU. I'll give you an example. I know a young man named Veed who has a master's degree in agronomy and agriculture.

And he got a job working in Austria at a truck stop. And he got room and board along with the job. At the end of the month, he had at least 2 ,000 euros left over after all his expenses recovered. He could never get a job like that in Croatia.

And of course, his dream is to someday buy a farm and be a farmer. And so young people were just leaving in droves. I mean, busloads and plane loads of people gone to Austria and Germany and Sweden and Ireland just to get...

I mean, even if it was working what we'd consider basic jobs, they were still making way more money. We saw the same thing happen when Romania joined the European Union. Over 1 million Romanians left and went to France and Italy and Spain and other places just to be able to make a living and have a better life.

So anyhow, there were very few seminary students to teach. And I just perceived, OK, my time here is done. And then at the end, simultaneous with this was Ida needed someone to be their executive director.

And so I applied, interviewed for that position. And out of the candidates, the board selected me. And so then back in the summer of 2019, I moved back to the United States and I started doing this job.

But it involved a fair amount of travel, both domestically and internationally. And I enjoyed it immensely because the ministry of making disciples is so so important, I believe. And I was doing that.

I met my wife October of 2020.

Wow, that's very recent.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So her former pastor is named Sasha Wallachord, but is out in the Grand Rapids, Michigan area. And I was in Grand Rapids and I'd set up a coffee appointment with Sasha and we're talking and I told him about being lonely.

I didn't like being lonely. And he said, you know, brother, there's a woman back in Iowa who I think would be just right for you. And like, oh, come on, man. I've heard that one before. You know, it's like I don't think there's too many American women that they're not into ministry.

I mean, you know, being a pastor or worse, being a missionary, you know, this is not the pathway to the having the quintessential four bedroom house and the white picket fence and two car garage and, you know, the American dream.

And it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. She's different. It's like, OK. So he introduced us. That was October 2020. And one year and a few days later, we were married. And oh, my goodness, my wife. I mean, when when we first got to talking, she was like, well, I have some questions for you.

I want to know about your eschatology and I want to know about your your views of the days of creation. It was like, wow, this is amazing. So I I'm a literal six day creationist, as am I.

And by the way, by the way, I might as well quickly plug my next Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Free Pastors Luncheon featuring six day creationist, the world renowned Christian astrophysicist, Dr. Jason Lyle, who will be my next keynote speaker on Thursday, May 1st.

Here in Pennsylvania. And if anyone would like to register, if you're a man in ministry leadership, email me at Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com, Chris Arnzen at Gmail dot com. And you can register for that luncheon.

But anyway, I interrupted you.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

That's fine. That's fine. So my wife is from northwest Iowa. And since I I was I was working as the executive director for item, I it didn't really matter where I lived. I could be anywhere in the USA as long as I had access to an airport.

And as long as I had decent cell phone service and Internet coverage, I could pretty much do my job. And so I grew up on a farm in Pennsylvania. I love farms. I love the rural area and just living out in the country.

So we made the decision. I made the decision to move out here. And like I said, we got married October of twenty twenty one. And then after the honeymoon, we we settled in and we began talking about the future.

And my wife in in in in bringing up the subject, it was more in along the lines of what she might be doing in terms of her education or education and goals and career. But in that process, God used that and I realized, oh, here's a woman who wants to work alongside of me.

And I'm in a I'm in a current ministry position where I'm traveling a good bit, going out of town at least once a month. And I don't think this is a good this isn't a good way to get started in a marriage.

So I realized I need a local ministry because I really couldn't incorporate my wife in into what I was doing. I mean, I could maybe take her along on one or two trips a year. But. And so I started I started looking at local churches, you know, going back into the pastorate.

But as those doors just didn't seem to open, I I remembered an opportunity that had come to my attention a few years earlier. There is a church out in Oregon. It was, I believe, on an Indian reservation and they were in need of a pastor and they're having a hard time finding a pastor.

And it broke my heart because I thought, oh, my goodness, I would love to go and be their pastor. I have just always enjoyed Native American Indian history and the people. My grandmother supported or gave support to a Blackfoot children's school.

And so they would send her gifts and trinkets and all sorts of things. So I grew up with Native American Indian stuff. I mean, it was obviously Blackfoot things all around my house. And and so there was just an affinity for this people group.

I must confess I love horses. So I've always had an affinity to certain people groups like the Mongolians, for example. But Native American Indians are, you know, many of them are horse people. And so maybe that was part of it as well.

And so I reached out to a guy I knew in Arizona and he got me in touch with his boss, a gentleman by the name of Bill Carr. And Bill is up in North Dakota. And Bill's with Mission to the World. And being in the PTA, I knew Mission to the World, MTW, is the national or international missions agency.

And so talk to them. And Bill said, well, right now we're not expanding any new work. But you can you know, we'd like you to check out some of the existing work and see which which team that you would become that you'd be called to join.

So my wife and I went out to Flagstaff, Arizona, and met the couple there and their work with the Navajo. I really like them a lot. You know, love that couple. We also visited Cherokee, North Carolina, which is in the very southwestern edge of the state of North Carolina.

And this is, of course, where the Cherokee originally where their homeland was. And the couple there, we just really clicked with and it just seemed like a good fit. And anyhow, you know, some things came up and and it didn't seem like it was going to work.

And I was disappointed. And they were just the couple there, Scott and Ruth Hill. They were disappointed. And we left. We drove back to Iowa. But then a couple of months went by and my wife and I had spent the weekend in Omaha, Nebraska, visiting a church and met with a pastor and his wife.

And that morning at the Monday morning devotional, we were going around the table praying for different missionaries that we knew. And my wife just just prayed for Scott and Ruth. And later in the car and the drive home, she's like, I don't know why.

You know, the Holy Spirit put them on my mind and thought about them for quite a while. And and and so we were talking about ministry and in what I'm I was looking for in terms of a calling. And I said, look, I want to go and do something where I can do evangelism and where I can do outreach, where I can do discipleship.

And that evening, once we got home to our home in northwest Iowa, I get a text message from Scott and he said, we've been thinking and praying about you. We really would love you love if you could come and join us.

We need you to do evangelism, outreach and discipleship and just the choice of words. It wasn't just those words, but some other things. And it was like, this is crazy because these were the exact words I used in a private conversation of the car with my wife.

So I gave Scott a call. He told me that this one person who looked like they were going to be a problem was no longer a problem. And it looked like an open door. And so we did this Zoom call together.

We talked some more. And then my wife and I went back out for another visit to Cherokee. And then Scott wrote a letter officially inviting me to join his team and to join the work in Cherokee. So that's how Cherokee worked out.

I wanted to go with MTW because they are reformed, because they emphasize teams. There are some other mission works or ministries for Native Americans, but they're all not necessarily reformed and they don't all necessarily emphasize having teams or working as teams.

When I read the book of Acts, I see the Apostle Paul and then also Barnabas going forth as part of teams. That ministry really needs to happen as teamwork. And so that was important to me. And as I said, MTW only had a few locations.

There was some ministry going on up in Canada, in Ontario and Alberta. But because of Canada's COVID policy, we couldn't get in there to visit. And so that sort of shut the door on going into Canada. MTW has worked in Cherokee, North Carolina, for over 30 years.

Some folks there in Cherokee reached out to the PCA. The Mission to North America, the part of the mission agency that focuses on domestic ministry, they originally were asked or offered the opportunity to work in Cherokee.

But at that time, they were understaffed and they weren't in a position to take on a new work like this. So then MTW Mission to the World was asked and MTW said, sure, we'll do it. And so that was actually their first Native American or indigenous work.

Since then, they're in, like I said, Flagstaff, Arizona, and then up in near Linden, Washington, up with the Nooksack and Lummi people.

Well, we have to go to our first commercial break. And if anybody has a question, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

Don't go away. We'll be right back.

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We are now back with Thomas Smith, who is embarking on a missionary project to the Cherokee people of North Carolina in Cherokee, North Carolina. And if you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. And if you could, Tom, tell us something about the Cherokee people and perhaps anything that you are aware of where they are unique amongst Native tribes across North America.

The Cherokee Language, History, and Early Missions

I don't know if there still exists a great diversity amongst the tribes as there once was, to the point where there were tribes that were warring enemies against each other 150 or more years ago. And so tell us about the Cherokee.

What do you know about them and how perhaps do they stand out as unique?

Well, the number one thing that makes the Cherokee unique in North America is they're one of only about three tribes that have their own written language. You've probably heard of the name Sequoia for which the Sequoia trees in California are named.

Sequoia, along with, he has some help from other people, but he primarily developed the Cherokee alphabet and created the written Cherokee language. I think there's only two other tribes beside the Cherokee that have a written language.

No other, none of the other tribes in North America are like that. The Cherokee have for them, I think, unless you go back to like ancient, ancient times, but up until hundreds of years ago, they lived in the southeastern United States.

Their home territory or home range ranged from north Georgia all the way up into what would be southwest Virginia, maybe a little bit of southern West Virginia. But it was pretty much eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, and then western North Carolina was where most of their territory was.

They're developed or they are divided up into seven clans and they were more of a settled tribe. They had established villages and towns within their territory. They would at times fight with other tribes in the region.

Back in the 1750s or late 1750s, early 1760s, so we're talking 15 to 20 years before the American Revolution. There was a Presbyterian minister in Virginia by the name of Samuel Davies. Have you heard of him?

Oh, yeah. I've done a program on him.

Okay.

From someone who wrote a biography.

Okay. Yeah.

There's a friend of mine down in Florida by the name of Dewey Roberts.

That's exactly who I interviewed.

Okay. Super.

Anyhow, in this biography on Samuel Davies, just so that your listeners have an understanding, he was the pastor to Patrick Henry, the great orator who said, give me liberty or give me death. Probably his greatest theological and political as well as oratory influence on Patrick Henry was Samuel Davies.

And anyhow, Samuel Davies had a heart reaching the Cherokee. And so he took on a few years, but he raised the money and he sent first one and then later a second seminary graduate into the Cherokee territory.

Neither of these two guys lasted very long. I think they got frustrated and they gave up. But that was back, like you said, about

Calvinists aren't supposed to do that. Calvinists are not supposed to do that. Give up.

I know.

We know that God has an elect people in every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And that even if our labors are unsuccessful in a time frame when we are hoping, we are supposed to stick it in there or stick it out or I don't know how you would phrase that.

Stick in there. And in fact, we are more well known for doing that historically, but I guess not with Samuel Davies.

Well, it wasn't him, but it was the guys he recruited.

Oh, OK.

I think they were just young in nature. I really do. I think that had been the problem. So anyhow, these guys. So I think beginning in the mid 1700s, Cherokee, as they encountered more and more European settlers, they were getting introduced to Christianity.

It was probably later. Oh, maybe after the revolution, maybe late 1700s into the 1800s, that there were some missionaries going. In fact, there was one of the. And his name's escaping me right now. I want to say Samuel Worcester, but I don't that might not be the correct.

He's correct me, but he was from New England and the Congregationalist Mission Board. He had he had applied to be a missionary. He was expecting to be sent across the ocean. But instead, they said, no, we want you to go to the Cherokee.

And so he went down there and began ministry back around 1820. So. You know, the Cherokee heard heard the gospel, but I, I really don't believe that there was a very good effort to make disciples. I mean, what drives me and I believe what should drive every Christian is what Jesus said to his disciples in Matthew 28.

Yeah, the Great Commission.

Go.

Exactly. Go into all the world, make disciples of all nations, you know, teaching them to obey all that I've commanded you and baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And, you know, the the imperative verb is make disciples in when you look at in the Greek, you know, make disciples is the verb and the and the subject army or the object of that verb is the nations.

We are to be discipling nations. And when when I look at the Cherokee, I mean, you can visit Cherokee, North Carolina right now and you'll find a smattering of churches. But they tend to be very small and they tend to you sit through a service.

The sermon, no matter what the text, always ends the same way. Come to Jesus. You know, walk the aisle, pray the sinner's prayer, come to Jesus. OK, well, I did that this week. Now what? What's what's next?

Well, you go back and you hear the same thing. Come to Jesus. And week after week, it's come to Jesus. That's as far as you get. And it's like, you know, I believe that evangelism is just the first step in making disciples, you know, just like your wedding day is the first day of your marriage.

But that wedding day is not the sum total of your marriage. That's just the first day. And to be a disciple is to be a student, to learn, to, you know, in Bible times and even today, it's someone who's a student like an intern or like a journeyman or an apprentice.