Preparing missionaries for the rigors of foreign missions service is an important and often neglected task. The sending and support role of the local church is, after all, bigger than financing the mission. In today’s program, Bro. Matthew Stahlman tells us about his efforts to help the church do a better job at preparing men for foreign missions service through the Beyond Borders Missionary Training Camp.
Additionally, we talk about the homeschool curriculum that he’s recently launched to inform another generation of young people about the historical, geographical, and religious layout of the world that Christ has called the church to evangelize. Bro. Stahlman is really passionate about the Great Commission and he’s fervently and thoughtfully doing what he can to help churches and families do their part to obey our Lord’s parting command.
Beyond Borders - bbmissions.org
Impact Geography - impactgeo.org
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations.com.
My guest today is Bro. Matt Stahlman. I’ve looked forward to talking with Bro. Stahlman about some of the resources he’s been developing in the realm of missionary preparedness and global missions awareness. But in this first segment, Bro. Stahlman relates the background out of which these resources have been birthed, both from his personal experience and from twenty years of missions thinking and observation. Bro. Stahlman’s transparency about his family’s experience in foreign missions deployment afforded us an opportunity to address some territory that hasn’t been previously addressed on the podcast. I think it was both interesting and helpful.
Your feedback is welcome. You can contact Bro. Lee by email at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
Today, Bro. Thomas Irvin and I pick up where we left off in the first installment of our conversation concerning his family’s first year on the field of Uganda. I ask Bro. Irvin about some of the day-to-day challenges that commonly put a strain on newly transplanted cross-cultural workers, but we also talk about the weightier considerations of functioning in a very different political and governmental environment than what we’re accustomed to as Americans. We finish the conversation discussing how the ministry has taken shape in this first year and what is on the horizon for his labors among the Ugandan people.
Your feedback is welcome. You can contact Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
You can find Thomas Irvin's podcasts and prayer letters at plenteousredemption.com.
Transitioning to a foreign mission field is a big deal for any family. That first year is especially critical with so many dramatic adjustments being made. On the program today to talk about the first year on the foreign field is my dear friend, Thomas Irvin. Bro. Irvin was one of my first guests for the podcast, a program in which we tackled the subject of deputation. Since that time Bro. Irvin had deployed to Uganda in East Africa, and he’s recently reached the one-year milestone in this new field of service.
This is the first part of a two-part interview on The First Year, with Missionary Thomas Irvin.
Your feedback is welcome. You can contact Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
On today’s program we pick up exactly where we left off last time recounting how the Lord’s dealing with Cody concerning African missions dove-tailed with the Lord’s work in my own life forming a missionary partnership for the country of Zimbabwe. I hope the program is a blessing to you.
This is part two of a two-part interview with Cody Rich on our Missionary Partnership to Zimbabwe.
Your feedback is welcome. You may email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
Our family made our entry into Zimbabwe at the end of March this year, and we were accompanied by the Cody Rich family, also from our home church back in Tennessee. I’ve referenced Bro. Cody a few times in describing my call and deployment to this land because our stories have been providentially intertwined over the past few years in relation to African missions. Bro. Cody and his family spent twelve weeks with us here in Mutare, Zimbabwe before returning to the states to commence their deputation travels in view of returning to Zimbabwe to labor along side us.
Before Cody and his family headed back to the states we took some time to talk over how the Lord put missions in his heart as a young man and how Cody’s heart for missions intersected with mine at Cornerstone Baptist Church. This conversation is a more personal, less formal interview than usual. I hope you will rejoice with us and pray for us as we rehearse what the Lord has done and is doing to get the gospel here to Zimbabwe.
This is the first segment of a two-part interview with Cody Rich on our Missionary Partnership to Zimbabwe.
Your feedback is welcome. You can reach Bro. Lee by email at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
My guest today is Pastor Adam Summers of Faith Baptist Church in Chelsea, Michigan. Pastor Summers leads a church that is involved in many of the staple efforts that we would expect to find at any missions-minded church: local outreach efforts, an annual missions conference, a concerted program of missions giving, etc. But he's also leading Faith to get involved in some more creative, less common ways that helps the entire church family to personally and intentionally own the responsibility of getting the gospel to the world.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
There are a multitude of useful evangelistic methods at the disposal of the foreign missionary. Some are perhaps more effective in certain places than others. When we go back to the practice of Christ and the apostles we find the bold, straightforward public proclamation of the gospel message in whatever venue might have been available. While there are some places where this is outlawed or impractical, there are many other places where it still works… if we will just try it.
My guest today is Bro. Dana Vogelpohl. Bro. Vogelpohl has served in the country of Scotland for the past ten years or so, and for the length of that time he’s taken up this simple apostolic method of public preaching in the High Streets of Glasgow. In our conversation today we discuss conversion and call to foreign missions, he recollects a trial that his family endured while on deputation, and we discuss his mission efforts in post-Christian Scotland with special emphasis on street preaching.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
We all know that prayer is a critical part of world missions. The command of Christ to His disciples was that they pray the Lord of the Harvest that he might send forth laborers into His harvest. That text in Matthew 9 and the subsequent selection of the apostles in Matthew 10 sets forth a pattern that has been repeated time and again over the history of the church.
My guest today is a man that has taken prayer for missions seriously for a long time and now His prayers to the Lord of the harvest has resulted in his call to the foreign mission field. Bro. Tony (we’re withholding his last name for security reasons), pastored in the midwest for the last eighteen years before being called of God to take the gospel to the Middle East. Bro. Tony relates his call to foreign mission, including the important part that prayer played, and then he and I discuss Biblical principles of missions and prayer and some of the instances where these principles have played out over missions history.
Today, I continue my conversation with Bro. C, who has labored in a majority-Muslim country in southeast Asia for the last seven years. In my estimation, he’s not only a good missionary, he’s one of the most consecrated Christians I’ve had the privilege of knowing. In today’s conversation, Bro. C. helps us to count the cost of missionary preparation and then proceeds to answer some questions about some of the adversity that his family has known since deploying in foreign missions service. But stay tuned to the end, because he tells the story of a man he calls Paul, a beautiful story of what missions is all about. We conclude the conversations with Bro. C’s vision for his work going forward.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
My guest today is Bro. C. We’re withholding his full name out of an abundance of caution. Bro. C and his family are serving the Lord in a creative-access, Muslim-majority country in Southeast Asia. This man is one of my personal modern-missionary heroes having sacrificed a great deal for the service of Christ and taken up the mission of evangelism and church-planting with wisdom and patience.
Today, Bro. C relates his family’s call to foreign missions and deals with the cultural and linguistic chasm that must be traversed in order to minister effectively in the field of their labor. At the end of this installment of the conversation, Bro. C gets into more of the mentality that missionaries, pastors, and churches should adopt concerning missionary preparedness.
Your feedback is welcome, you can contact Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
The Cadenheads are Zimbabwe-bounds. Here's a brief review of our pre-field preparations, developments related to our departure, and a quick update on what's to come for Great Commission Conversations.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
I was privileged to be with Dr. Don Sisk in a missions conference at Capitol City Baptist Church in Austin, Texas. Dr. Sisk, after several years of pastoral ministry in Kentucky and Illinois, went to the country of Japan as a church-planting missionary back in 1965. In addition to his missionary efforts he’s served as the Far East Director for Baptist International Missions, Inc., and eventually became the president and general director of BIMI, a position he held for 19 years. He resigned from this role back in 2002 at the age of 69, but continued to serve the cause of missions as a professor of missions and a popular missions conference preacher. His travels have taken him to over 80 countries around the world and as of the publication of this program, at the age of 88, he continues to serve the Lord Jesus Christ through his itinerant preaching ministry.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com
My guest today is missionary Joel Haynes. Bro. Haynes is one of the most intense men that I’ve been around in a while. I’d heard of the work he’s doing among the Navajo a few years back and it was my privilege to be with him in a missions conference a sit down to discuss their ministry and amazing fruit that they’re presently seeing after many long years of plowing and seed-sowing among the Navajo. The conversation also took us to the subject of serving in missions as a family. I enjoyed this interview immensely and I think you’ll be blessed and provoked by Bro. Hayne’s testimony today just as I was.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
In our previous program we heard from veteran missionary to Ukrain, Chris Rue as he explained how the Lord dealt with him about missions and directed him to the country of Ukraine. I saw Bro. Rue’s ministry presentation quite a few years back at a missions conference in Florida and that presentation included some of the Biblical research and missionary strategizing that he was doing at the time. That exposure was really timely for me as I had been studying the missionary pattern in Acts and doing some reading on missionary and church-planting methods. If you’re interested in these kinds of considerations I think today’s program will be a blessing to you as we tackle Paul’s missionary methods, the challenges and limitations to the indigenous principle, and different approaches to church-planting efforts, along with the progress and future vision of Bro. Rue’s efforts in the Ukraine.
Your feedback is welcome. You can contact Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
My guest today is 28-year veteran missionary to Ukraine, Chris Rue. Bro. Rue has had a lengthy, fruitful, and thoughtful ministry in Eastern Europe that stretches back to a time shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union - a particularly exciting time in terms of evangelistic openness and opportunity. One of the reasons that I wanted to have this conversation with Bro. Rue is for the fact that he is thinking deeply about Biblical missionary methods and trying to employ these methods practically in the field where he is serving. But the methodological questions will have to wait for the second installment of this interview. In part one, Bro. Rue traces his conversion and call to Ukraine, at length, including some amazing stories of how God grew his faith and gave supernatural direction and guidance to get him to the very place that he’s labored for more than two decades.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
When it comes to church planting and local church multiplication and reproduction, one of the most fruitful fields that I know of in terms of recent missions history is found across our southern border in the country of Mexico. Because of its proximity to the US - basically representing our continental Samaria - a lot of laborers and resources have been poured into this field and many Mexican missionaries have engaged in this great work in cooperation with American missionaries and churches. While some of that interaction and cooperation has been limited in recent years owing to the violence associated with the drug cartels, the work of church-planting has continued. For years I’ve heard of the labors of missionary Sonny Fritz. Bro. Fritz went home to be with the Lord a few years back, but I was in a missions conference recently with his son-in-law and fellow-laborer Rubin Murillo. I was told that if I wanted to meet a church-planter I should get to know Bro. Murillo. Bro. Murillo agreed to sit down with me and talk a little bit about his 45 years of church-planting mission work in the country of Mexico, including the methods they’ve undertaken over the years to multiply local churches in an amazing way.
Your feedback is welcome. You can reach Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
My guest today is Bro. Jim Fellure, the director of the Victory Baptist Press located in Milton, Florida. I pastored for twelve years in Brewton, Alabama, not far from the Victory Baptist Press and I am thankful to have been introduced to Bro. Fellure and the work of the Press early on in my pastoral ministry. Bro. Jim has been a friend to me and I’ve followed the work of the Press closely over the years I’ve been acquainted with him. Back in 2018 the Victory Baptist Press assisted me in shipping a container of John and Romans to Zimbabwe, something a pre-cursor to what the Lord has since called our family to full-time. I sat down with Bro. Fellure recently to discuss the ministry of scripture printing and to get his insight into how the pandemic has affected the American church and what VBP is doing to sow the word of God in America in these last days. I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation with Bro. Fellure, as I always do, and I hope that you’ll be blessed by it as well.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
There were some amazing moves of God that took place across Eastern Europe following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some of the ongoing mission works in that region of the world are a direct or indirect result of the revival that God visited upon them at that time.
My guest today is Missionary Zach LeFevre. Bro. LeFevre has ministered among Turkish-speaking people in Bulgaria and Romania for the past 26 years. The story of how this labor commenced with Missionary Ralph Cheatwood following the fall of the USSR is fascinating. And the ongoing work of the LeFevres and their fellow-laborers is cause for rejoicing as they’ve witnessed a once despised, forgotten, oppressed people group embrace the glorious gospel of Christ.
Your feedback is welcome. You can email Bro. Lee at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com.
While in a missions conference at Shady Acres Baptist Church in Houston, Texas I had an opportunity to sit down with Bro. Mullins and talk to him about his ministry over the course of more than 28 years in New Guinea. I set out to speak with Bro. Mullins about pioneering, which is largely what he was engaged there in PNG over the course of nearly three decades. We did address this subject and Bro. Mullins provides some helpful insights into pioneering a work in a tribal setting like that in which he labored in the mountains and swamps of New Guinea. But perhaps more than this, the theme of my conversation had to do with following the leadership of the Lord, or perhaps better yet staying out of the Lord’s way, as God did an exceptional work at a particular time and among a particular people whom God had specially prepared.
If you would like to contact Ted and Lyn Mullins to obtain one or both of Mrs. Lyn's books they can be reached by email at ted.lynmullins@gmail.com.
Your feedback is welcome. You can contact Bro. Lee by email at greatcommissionconversations@gmail.com
