Episode Transcript
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Welcome to the Lead Defend podcast, a show designed to help you grow in faith and leadership as you navigate the stages of young adulthood. We address important faith topics and provide practical life tips, helping you build up your faith as you engage a changing culture.
Now, here are your hosts.
[00:00:29] Speaker B: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Lead Defend. This is Brock, and I am Bill, and we are excited. We are sitting here getting ready. Tomorrow will be lead defend 2025.
[00:00:41] Speaker C: It's kind of like Christmas Eve a little bit.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I feel like the. The energy, the anticipation, Less hot chocolate, less ornaments, but it's still. It's still magical.
[00:00:51] Speaker C: Yes, it is. I love Lead Defend, man. I look forward to it all year long.
[00:00:55] Speaker B: And as part of these podcasts with Lead Defend, we have another one of our speakers from the conference. Here with us, we have Andy Pettigrew, who works for the International Mission Board. Andy, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what your title is with the IMB and what you do.
[00:01:09] Speaker A: Hey, thanks, guys. It's good to be on this with both of you with Brock and Bill. You guys have great names to be able to.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: That's what the last group said.
[00:01:16] Speaker A: Brock and Bill. I mean, it just flows. Nice divine intervention.
Yeah. Andy Pettigrew is my name. I work for the IMB. I've been with the IMB for about 17 years, most of those being overseas.
So I. I spent 13 years in sub Saharan Africa, was in Botswana, South Africa, and Kenya. My job now, so fun. I mean, I loved my work in Africa.
I'm one of those guys, though, that whatever job I'm in, I love it.
You got to.
Now what I get to do is I get to hang out with young people and their leaders. So I lead a team of people that basically spends their time investing in the next generation of missionaries.
So we travel the country, we'll speak at conferences, we'll spend time on university campuses or in local churches helping them as they're developing a new wave of missionaries. So we offer a lot of opportunities for them to go as well. We can talk about that later in the podcast, but really my job is to lead our organization. And how do we think about developing the next generation of missionaries?
[00:02:20] Speaker B: That's awesome. Well, that much time in Sub Saharan Africa, I'm sure you have some great stories, but tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are now.
How did the Lord call you? And then what was the pathway to shaping your way to missions?
[00:02:38] Speaker A: Yeah, in my story, it's never really Been a matter of if, but when. That's kind of how I felt. Even when I was a little kid, I grew up in the church, but my parents faithfully brought me to church and I was saved at a young age. And when I grew up, I wanted to be a preacher. That was kind of my thing, which was a little bit weird for my friends, definitely my family, but for missions in particular, that just, God just continued to lay that on my heart.
I thankfully I grew up in a Baptist church where we would have missionaries that would come and speak and train us and talk to us about, tell us their stories of being a missionary. And I was like, that sounds amazing. Going overseas and sharing the gospel with people. And that's what I wanted to do.
I was also a weird kid that loved to share the gospel with my neighbors. I would ride my bike through the neighborhood and tell people about Jesus. And every time I think about that, like it's as an, as I get older, it seems like a cool thing.
[00:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: But I can imagine it not being so cool when I was a kid.
But hopefully we raise kids to believe. Like if you're a follower of Jesus, you got to tell other people about him as well.
And so that's how I grew up. And I went on my very first short term mission trip when I was in seventh grade and we were, we went about two hours away from where I was living at the time and did kind of a vacation Bible school for a needy community. And that's where I just got the bug and continued to go over and over and over overseas.
The way that we got to Africa was kind of a little bit weird because I studied Spanish in college. I wanted a marketable degree, I wanted to learn language, so I studied Spanish and I thought I'd be in a Spanish speaking country.
And they don't speak Spanish in Africa. For those who are out there listening, wondering, that's right now there's some Portuguese speaking countries and French speaking, but not, not Spanish.
But at the same time I learned the art of learning a language. But the way that I got to Africa was I took a team of students actually from a school in Tennessee called Union University. Some people may be familiar with that school. So I took a team of students to work in Botswana. And when I was there, it was like God said, this is where I want you to spend and your life and move your family. So we did. So we, we moved. It was my wife and two kids at a four year old and a one year old at the time.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: How did that Conversation with your wife. Go.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: She was ready to go.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: Okay.
[00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, when we started dating, she kind of knew what she was getting herself into because I told her, I was like, look, you should know. I mean, I really like you, but I really want to be overseas one day and my life will kind of be on the go. And she said, I'm ready, let's do this. I'm ready for an adventure.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Very cool.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: And the Lord had been laying missions on her heart soon as well into our, into our relationship.
So in God's providence, he eventually led us to Africa. And even my kids, they were fully engaged as well. I'll never forget when we first landed in our home in Botswana, we had been flying for two days straight. We finally get there. Missionaries met us there, took us to our new home. And in the city of Haberoni, Botswana, my four year old daughter was at the kitchen table after the missionaries left and she said, okay, when are we going to start telling people about Jesus? She was ready to go.
And yeah, just fostering that in the lives of my kids. I loved raising my kids overseas. We miss being overseas, but this is where God has us now.
[00:06:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well that's so cool.
So you go overseas and you begin sharing. And how long did you say that you were there?
[00:06:14] Speaker A: We were in Botswana for seven years and then we lived in Cape Town and then we were in Kenya.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Okay, what was the kind of, the thrust, like what was your main work while you were over there?
[00:06:23] Speaker A: Primarily working among university students. 75% of the population of sub Saharan Africa is below the age of 29. So three out of four people that you meet would be considered youth. And so there was a great need to be reaching that age demographic. And we really believed in raising up the next generation of church by investing in young people.
And so we worked on a university campus there in the capital city of Botswana. And that was our day to day. Constantly going on campus, constantly sharing the gospel.
Praise the Lord. We got to see as much as fourth and fifth generation disciples there. So this is what I mean by that is we share the gospel with someone, they make a profession of faith, we begin discipling them and then they do that with the next person and then that person does it with the next person and that person does it with the next person.
Just God's kindness for us to be able to see that happen.
So that's what we spent our days doing, just investing in university students, leading towards healthy church there in the city. And we did that really everywhere we lived in Africa but that was our primary focus in Botswana, working on a university campus.
[00:07:29] Speaker C: So how did you end up coming out of Africa back into what you're doing now?
[00:07:36] Speaker A: Yeah man, that's a hard question because we wrestled with it a lot, honestly. God leads us through seasons.
A quote that has stayed with me since I was a freshman in college is one by Jim Elliot. It says, wherever you are, be all there, live to the hilt. Every situation you believe to be the will of God.
That quote just resonates in my mind just by saying, I mean the will of God really is just looking at your feet. And if you're walking faithfulness, you're in the scriptures, you are surrounded by other believers. If you're, if you're pursuing the Lord in total submission to him, then he will just show you different seasons of your life where you may be moving, doing something different.
And so this was just another season for us and we're going to do this in this season for as long as, I mean there's maybe some practical things in our life that we could look at to say, okay, it was time for us to move, but, but at the same time we just take a step back and say, okay, God, this is where you want us in this season. So we're here, that's been five years in the States and to be honest with you, I'm feeling the itch again, like when are we going to go back overseas? Because we miss it and we love it, but we could be here another five years or ten years.
God leads us through seasons, we trust him in the season. The most important thing though is that we are faithfully walking with the Lord, abiding in Christ and trusting him to direct our paths.
[00:08:58] Speaker B: I think a lot of people could, could look at the decisions you make and you made and, and would think what would lead somebody to, you know, you said you had a four year old daughter at the time, do you have any other kids at the time you had a four year old, you've got a one year old family is close to home, like you're going to be away from any grandparents or any other relatives and like you're just moving. Like a lot of people on our side of the world would think, like what, what would cause you to do something like that? I can also imagine you're, you're in, living in. Someone living in sub Saharan Africa sees this family just show up out of nowhere and they're thinking, what are these people doing here? Why would they move all the way across the world to live with us? Like, we would love to go live with where they were. Why would they come to us?
What was some of the process of you guys answering those questions?
[00:09:47] Speaker A: Yeah, in our first term when we were overseas, our first term was about three years before we came back to the States for a furlough.
And that first term was rich. We had a lot of people who welcomed us with open arms. They're so excited about them coming us, our family, coming to learn culture because our kids were by our sides. And we would stay in homes of Africans and get to know them and spend time training because we wanted to empathize. We wanted to be in the culture as much as possible, because it wasn't like we were bringing the gospel there. We believed God was already at work. We were simply being stewards of what God was already doing. And so that was celebrated because we wanted to see more and more generations of Africans rise up. Because I really believe the next generation of Africa or next generation of missionaries are coming from sub Saharan Africa. I really believe that. And so we got to be a part of that. There was a moment in our journey that was challenging.
There was a time we had actually just moved to Cape Town.
And so, again, our family had been in Africa for about seven years and moved to Cape Town. We were excited about moving there and thinking we're going to be welcomed with open arms.
But we moved into an apartment there in the city, and we had a neighbor that came to meet us, to greet us, to welcome us to the community. He was a South African, and he. One of his first questions to me on the side was, why are you here? And I thought, oh, it's a great opportunity to share the gospel.
So I said, well, I'm here, basically. I said, I'm here to tell people about Jesus. I did it a little different, but that's basically what I said to him.
And his response to me was, first you could see in his eyes, he began to kind of. There was maybe some frustration there, but if anything, there was a little bit of confusion in his face as to why that would drive us there. So I began to probe that a little bit more. And as I began to probe, I began to see he was struggling with the reality that we would move our whole family, leaving the hopes of an American dream to come all the way to Africa, not to serve someone, but to tell someone that they're wrong.
And that's where some of the frustration was on his end.
So you moved all the way to Africa because you think that we are wrong and you are Right.
That was a really hard moment for us, especially me.
At first I was really frustrated. I was like, don't you know what we sacrifice in order to be here? But then I started really wrestling with this question. And quite honestly, I think he's right.
If you think about is that confrontational for us to go in, to move to the other side of the world. Like our mission is to help others see that following things other than Jesus is not right. And I think even in a, in a cancel culture, I think some that are listening to this right now would probably struggle with that reality as well. Like you can differ but you can't oppose is kind of the idea, the.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Culture or like that through the missionary task somehow it's an attempt of colonization, Westernization.
[00:13:03] Speaker A: Exactly.
So we wrestle with those questions.
And I think the thing that we, we took comfort in is knowing the centrality of the gospel. What we are there to do is to not promote ourselves, is not to. To drive some, sell some product that we think is better than something that they already have, but helping them to see the beauty of who Christ is.
And so we really had to ask the hard question, do we believe the gospel enough? Do we believe that the gospel does transform? Do we believe that the.
That people need the gospel, that people truly are in sin, people truly are separated from Christ and people truly need to be transformed by Jesus himself?
And so we had to wrestle with that question, but it also caused us to make sure that what we were promoting was not ourselves, was not some kind of product that we brought, but really the beauty of Christ. So that's, I think, where helpful for us to think about the centrality of the Gospel and the beauty of the Gospels, to not look at it in a negative sense, that they're wrong and I'm right, but to paint the beauty of who Jesus is and look at the hope that you have. True peace, true hope, true joy is found in Christ alone.
And that's the message that we promote. Not ourselves, but Christ and him crucified.
And so that was a good test for us in our second term. Actually that was probably our third term on the field at that point, really second country that we had lived in. Just a test. Like do you really believe all this stuff? Are you the real deal? What is it that you're trying to do? And ultimately it was about promoting Christ.
[00:14:45] Speaker C: Very cool. So let's pivot the conversation a little bit for those who are listening. Some of our listeners are more college age, young adult age.
If they are interested in mission work, what are some ways that the IMB can come alongside them or they can be involved with the IMB to do mission work.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Let's go, let's just have the conversation like that's what I want to do. So the answer to that question is you dream. If God is leading you in some direction, we've got a way for you to serve. But in a little more practical terms, we think in three different kind of seasons of life or three different types of trip. It could be like a one to three week mission trip where you're just going and you're experiencing something for the first time. A lot of churches offer that, a lot of campus ministries, bcms, whatever, they offer those things. And I encourage you, if you are a follower of Christ, get overseas. If at all possible, get overseas as soon as possible. We look at the Great Commission, you look even from Genesis to Revelation, we, we play a part in that.
It will definitely transform your life in terms of just helping you understand that God is a global God. So do one of those one to two or three week trips. So we think in trips, we think it's summer opportunity, which again, that's offered a lot. I know in Arkansas, a lot of students spend their summers overseas.
And there's a variety of ways that we can come alongside of you to help you get overseas for a summer, whether that be four weeks or eight weeks. One of the things about the IMB is that there are 3,500 missionaries and we're all over the world.
What that means for you listening is that there are a lot of ways that you can serve. Everyone is doing the same thing. Everyone's about the missionary task in going to places, entering new places, sharing the gospel, making disciples towards healthy church. Everyone's doing that, but it's done in a variety of ways. Through a business platform, through education, through health care, through college ministry, through a coffee shop. Like, there's lots of ways that you're getting to that. And so a summer is a good way for you to kind of test that out and find different.
What would that look like? But I think we actually deal with a lot of students that sometimes struggle because they, they want to take their engineering degree overseas, they want to take their healthcare degree overseas. And I think that's great. We want to see that happen. But I think an entry point is to just learn how to live cross culturally. What is it like to serve, what is it like to share, what is it like to make disciples cross culturally?
And that is a great way to begin. And then you can kind of connect the dots of your degree or your interest or just your identity with those various ways. So a couple weeks a summer, then. Launching this fall is a new program called the IMB Missions Residency. The IMB Missions Residency is an opportunity for college students or young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 to do a residency, a missions residency. We all know what a residency is. You could do a residency in your degree program, engineering, healthcare, education, whatever, you can do a residency. This really is focused on missions. The beauty of it is you come to Richmond at our training center where all of our missionaries are trained. You get to come there for a week, you're trained by some renowned leaders and missions practice and theology, you get to be trained by them for a week, and then you're deployed out to the field. And you spend anywhere from four months to a year serving alongside of missionaries where you are mentored, supervised, you're part of teams, you're getting to understand the missionary task.
It's short enough where it's doable, but it's long enough to get over the romanticism of missions.
At some point in your journey, you need to get to the point where you're buying your own groceries and you may have to go to the doctor once. When those things happen, you've been there long enough where it's starting to settle in, where, okay, this is real now.
[00:18:53] Speaker B: More than just a stamp in your passport.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: 100%. And that's. And I think we students need that experience. Young adults need that. Especially if you're thinking, I might want to go long term, I'm just not sure what.
[00:19:03] Speaker C: That's a great way to test it.
[00:19:04] Speaker A: So that's a way to test it.
[00:19:05] Speaker C: Yeah, but it's not as long as a commitment as a journeyman, because journeyman is two years, is that correct?
[00:19:10] Speaker A: That's right. Okay, so if we're thinking stair steps, I've said weeks, summer, now residency, the next step would be Journeyman or Project 3000. Both of those are two year experiences. The journeyman program, if your Southern Baptist is fully funded to spend two years overseas. And it is a program like the residency where you are part of a team, you're a full fledged missionary, you're walking alongside of other missionaries and you're engaging the missionary task, doing a variety of things. Two years, fully funded, for Southern Baptist living overseas. And that's for anyone between the ages of 21 and 29. You don't have to finish your college education to do that.
That used to be a requirement in the past, but it's no longer. So that's a great program. The other one I mentioned, Project 3000, there are more than 3,000 unengaged, unreached people groups around the world.
But we don't know where all of them are. We don't have data on all of them.
And so we are asking for 300 people between the ages of 21 and 30 to spend two years of their life researching these unengaged, unreached people groups.
Why? Because we want to see them. We want to see these unengaged, unreached people groups, come to know Christ ultimately. We want to see healthy churches planted among them, want to see a gospel witness. When I say unengaged, unreached, what I mean is there's little to no access to the gospel. Meaningful access, maybe less than 2% evangelical Christian.
As far as we know, no one's working among them. We've already sent some out and they've already come back. So this program has been around now for two years. We're just seeing our first batch come back that spent time researching and they're coming back with stories. Stories of that people group no longer exists, which is good. So we can say, okay, maybe check it off the list. We're finding stories of praise the Lord. There's someone already working among them. There's actually another missionary or another evangelical group that's working among them. So there's already things happening. Praise the Lord for that. The cool stories though are first time gospel witnesses, first time gospel believers. And we are seeing churches planted for the very first time among an unengaged, unreached people group as a result of these researchers going out.
Now the thing about this program, the reason they're unengaged in unreached is because they're hard to get to.
You think war, you think famine, you think remote, you think just difficult living circumstances. So maybe think backpacking. A toothbrush for this. You might be trekking through a jungle or you're constantly on the move. Maybe a one star hotel is luxury for you if you're, if you're one of these missionary explorers. But we need more. So think 300. We're looking for 300. There's 300 jobs out there.
These are fully funded jobs for people to go and to do this.
And each one of those will take about 10 people groups. So that's kind of where we get to the 3,000 and we need more. There's lots of jobs out there and we would love for people to sign up. So those are kind of this. And then after that beyond that would be just career machine learning.
[00:22:16] Speaker B: Yes. Are you guys still doing Nehemiah Teams?
[00:22:19] Speaker A: So Nehemiah teams will be one of those programs that's in the summer.
So I mentioned earlier there's a lot of options for the summer. And Nehemiah Teams is one of those, one of those great options that exist for people to spend time overseas and.
[00:22:32] Speaker B: For different people listening. I mean, you could hear each of those with a different level of impact.
Some of you may think, man, it'd be a lot to like, what, what could cause me to be willing to give up a summer and to come back to what you said a minute ago, is the gospel not worth it? For others listening, it's like, what would lead me to give up air conditioning and my mattress and being able to, you know, go pet my dog and be in the jungle or trekking through mountain villages. And it does come back again.
Is the gospel worth it? And really, you have an opportunity to see what's taking place. In the Book of Acts. When Paul talks about longing to go and build the church where it has not yet built, yet been built, he's not building on somebody else's foundation. And what you're saying is you have college age students, young adult students, who are seeing that very thing take place.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Right at that age. Absolutely. They get to be a part of it.
I'll say this in a couple of veins. One, I hear sometimes, like you would spend maybe two or three thousand dollars raising funds to go into serve overseas for a couple of weeks. And people are like, why would I? How would I raise all that money? Can I just send the money overseas? And isn't going to be much more valuable if I just send them the money instead of raising it for myself? That seems selfish. My response to them every time is money does not communicate the gospel.
We see in Romans very clearly that we must preach the gospel for them to hear and for them to believe. And so we need laborers in the harvest field.
And yeah, you're going to make an impact. I made that comment earlier. About 75% of the sub Saharan Africa being below the age of 29, 52% of the world is below the age of 30.
And I really believe that one of the most impactful ways of reaching that age demographic is for similar ages to go and to share the gospel among them. And yes, you can be fully engaged in the missionary task. We need missionaries that are 18, 19, 20, 21 year old missionaries to be fully engaged in this task, to be advocates we loved when we were living In Africa, we loved teams of people coming to work with us. It was such a blessing for us because it helped us to get further, faster. They were advocates for us, they were in the trenches. And a lot of the people that we got to work among, sharing the gospel, making disciples, seeing them in churches came as a result of these catalytic young people that were missionaries among them. We desperately need more laborers in the harvest and it's never too early to start.
[00:25:13] Speaker C: Yeah, that's good. So I'm glad you bring that up because I was just thinking about whether or not I was going to share this, but just part of my ignorance growing up in a small rural church in Arkansas, very good church, but just not a lot of mission emphasis, at least from what I remember as a kid. And so for me, that was one of the things I always thought for years was why would I spend 2,000 bucks to go overseas for a week or two? Why not just send the missionaries the money? I know they need the money.
But then I served at a church for 15 years, I had a strong mission emphasis. Got to go on my first international mission trip, went on multiple ones after that. But one of the things I learned on that first trip was the value, first of all, that, that it can bring to the, the missionaries on the field, the encouragement, the resources, those types of things. But I also heard from them the value of us coming over because us being there allowed them to do some things they couldn't normally do day to day, you know, get in the schools for English camps and to have some of those outreach opportunities because there were people here from the States on a limited basis. And that, you know, that was, drew people in, they were curious about that. So I'm glad you brought that up because there may be some who are in the same boat that, that I was for, for a long time, quite honestly, that who just doesn't understand because they've, they've not seen the exposure of. There is value in doing those one to three weeks. Yes, the missionaries could use the money, but, but the people going over, you can't buy, I don't think, and that that may not be the right way to phrase it, but that you get and can help come alongside those missionaries for that week or two are at least for the missionaries we interacted with, really invaluable for multiple reasons when it's.
[00:26:45] Speaker B: Done well, I think it also does something for the heart and the health of local churches too because the person who maybe can't go or the person who really doesn't have a mindset for missions or doesn't really think about missions, starts to care about it more when their grandson comes back from a mission trip or, or when someone from their life group comes back and that person is able to advocate for what's going on. So not only does it help what's going on overseas, but when those people come home, they almost become evangelists to their local church for the sake of missions.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: That's right.
Everyone needs to wrestle with their role in God's mission.
And I do believe that some people just can't go and they need to give and we need more people giving.
That's incredibly essential. But I think everyone needs to wrestle with whether or not they should stay, not whether or not they should go. I mean, I think everyone's.
It is God's plan from the very beginning, from Genesis to Revelation, you see that God's intention has always been to be fruitful and multiply. And if you follow the course of scripture, and this is one of the things I'll be talking about tomorrow in the breakout at this conference League Defend is being able to help them see that from Genesis to revelation, that God's plan has always been for us to be fully engaged in carrying out his mission.
As we see fruitful and multiply, subduing the earth, filling the earth, that is us making disciples to bring about God's kingdom in the earth.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Yeah. And that task is worth delaying college or delaying a career, giving up a significant portion of your time, whether it's a few weeks or consider whether it's a year or two years. I think maybe one of the reasons we don't see this happening more is because we just don't call students to the task. We don't just set that possibility and celebrate that opportunity.
We're very thankful for those who go and serve in the armed forces and want to encourage them and champion them. We want to do the same thing with our young men and women who desire to go and be missionaries in the missionary task. Andy, thank you so much for being here at Lead Defend. Thank you for giving us some time on the podcast.
If anyone is listening and they're like, I gotta know more.
How do they connect to hear more about these opportunities and see if this is a potential path for them.
[00:29:03] Speaker A: Seems like a lame answer, but it's true. It's imb.org I mean, it's all over the website.
I mean, an email address would be infomb.org, those are real life people. It's not some bot on the other side. Those are real life people that will get you connected to the right person. On my team I have recruiters.
One of my recruiters is here this, this week. His name is Jacob Hicks. Was just a great guy. So these are real life people that want to walk alongside of every single individual to get them connected to the work that God's doing among the nations.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. Check out what the International Mission Board is doing. There are a lot of great mission sending organizations that God is using. Faithful brothers and sisters in Christ serving in those faithful organizations.
But the IMB is top tier one of unashamedly, I would say one of the best in sending and supporting. Just the fact alone that you don't have to raise your funds but that other followers of Jesus have already generously given so that you can go. It's a huge blessing. And not only are you funded, but you have this network and support system of not only the National Mission Board, but thousands of churches who are supporting you, praying for you, cheering you as the saying goes, holding the rope for you. And so check out what their International Mission Board is doing and consider what God might have you do because the Gospel is worth it. Andy, thank you so much for being with us today. Great to be here.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: And who knows, you may end up on a one week trip and figure out that's what God's calling you to do, man. I'm sure you have lots of stories.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: Of that over and over. Yep. So who knows man, You've been warned.
[00:30:37] Speaker C: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: There's been Bill and Brock. Always check out leaddefend.org to see what's coming up next with the conference and the podcast and we look forward to you listening next time.
[00:30:48] Speaker A: That's it for this episode of Lead Defend. To hear more episodes from the Lead defend crew, visit absc.org podcasts if you liked what you heard, rate and review us on your favorite podcast listening site. Want to learn more information about the next Lead Defend conference? Visit leaddefend.org.
