Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - What Every Church Should Know About Global Missions | Brooke Buser and Jonny Ardavanis

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

In this insightful conversation, Jonny Ardavanis sits down with missionary Brooks Buser to discuss the local church's vital role in global missions. Brooks, who served 13 years as a missionary among the Yembi people, shares practical wisdom on:Key Topics Covered: • Why missions should flow from local churches, not independent efforts • The four primary lanes of modern missions work • How to move from "naval gazing" to global vision as a church • Practical ways families can "hold the rope" for missionaries • Creating sustainable missions budgets and policies • Quality vs. quantity: Why fewer, deeper partnerships work better • What missionaries actually need when they return homePerfect for: • Pastors developing missions strategies • Church members wanting to engage in global missions • Anyone interested in biblical approaches to sending and supporting missionariesBrooks emphasizes that effective missions requires both "goers and senders" working together, with local churches serving as the primary sending agents rather than just financial supporters.

Missions is not meant to be an independent lone ranger, the guy who gets excited about going to India's venture, it's the church's venture. It emanates from the local church, and the goal of it really is to see churches planted. But most of a church is going to be made up of senders, and senders who are willing to have skin in the game, so to speak, that's where a lot of supporters or a lot of those who hold the rope that we're going to stick with this until these ones come off the field or until Christ calls us home. We have a role in this as well. Brooks, thanks for sitting down again. You know, one of the things that I think through and pray through as a pastor, you know, I'm in a, we're in a young church, it's grown, but we're still informative stages, but maybe it could be another church that's very well established.

I'm trying to think through and pray through along with our elder team. What is our church's role in global missions? You know, obviously, I'm in Franklin, Tennessee. We want to reach the people in our immediate context. I told the church this morning that it's easy to become a naval gazing church where we're all about us. And we almost lose sight of the fact that we're called to be a part of God's global work. And so my question for you is, what is the church's role in global missions?

And what would be your encouragement to me as a pastor or to anybody else in a church? How can I support God's global mission just by being? being in my local context. Yeah, I think first and foremost, you've got to be grounded in the idea that missions is not meant to be an independent lone ranger, the guy who gets excited about going to India's venture. It's the church's venture. It emanates from the local church, and the goal of it really is to see churches planted.

We see that in the life of the apostles. How the apostles understood the Great Commission was not. We just go and we go as fast as we can and we evangelize many people. We go and we see people evangelized, then we disciple them. we teach them all that Christ has commanded us, and that's the local church. And so it's from local church to local church, one, and so that premise of, we are the primary agents of this, and the members of Stonebridge Bible, they will be the ones that we send, and then they'll come back to us, Lord willing, someday when they're finished. And so that whole premise of this

emanates and results in local churches, that's the real key thing about it. I think the other aspect of this is to give some definition to what missions is. So I talked about this in the first service. There's four primary lanes in missions today. There's the training of national pastors. There's English speaking churches and strategic cities. Like a Dubai. Yeah, like a Dubai, like a Doha, like Cairo, Jakarta, those types of places. Because English is this global language. It's the language of business. It's the language that we see being used. It's not, let's say, oh, English is going to help us reach the world, but it is strategic for a vein of whether that's migrant workers or airline pilots or diplomats, these strategic cities that

this wasn't a hundred years ago, but it is today. And then lane number three is national language churches. We would never say that Mandarin, Urdu, Bahasa are an unreached language group, but we would say they're a poorly reached language group. I'd love to see more churches in Indonesia, the Bahasa language. I'd love to see more churches in Arabic. But That's a national language. And then there's this fourth lane of missions, which is, I love the way Piper phrases this. There's Timothean missions, kind of the strengthening of existing churches. Timothy goes to Ephesus to see it strengthened.

Titus goes to Crete. That's Timothyan missions. Then there's this fourth lane on the other end of the spectrum. That's Pauline missions. We go where no foundation has been laid and where Christ has yet to be named. And just churches, no church on earth has the amount. of resources to do everything. We just can't be involved in everything, whether that's supporting this or doing that, but to figure out, okay, we're going to focus on lane one and lane four,

or we're going to focus on lane two in lane four or lane two and lane three. That's great. That gives your members some definition to, here's what we're going to be involved in, and they can really clearly kind of point to that. So I think as churches get more specific, they're more strategic, and that gives definition to what you're doing. So even like for us, like we're thinking through, you know, we're starting from scratch from like our missions philosophy yeah you know i was thinking through like if you're thinking a three-legged stool largely i would go well has to be have elements of pastoral training so you work yourself out of a job that'd be the goal you did you did a lot of indigenous uh training and ultimately

you were amongst the mb yummy for 13 years and just talk about how you left there strategically and you could have stayed yeah so taking those guys from square one all the way up to their their own elders, own deacons, of leadership of that church. It was just a, it's a process. This doesn't happen over time. I like in it, I think the closest parallel is raising children. Like you would never dream of taking one of your oldest girl, and she's ready to head out on her own. There's a period of discipleship there where you're holding their hand, but when she gets ready to go to college, you're going to kind of let that hand go.

But you're going to check in on her fairly regularly the first year, and then the second year, then she gets married, and you're checking in. with her, but you're never going to fully let her go. We see from the way that Paul handled the churches that he disciples and that he planted, he always checked on them all the way up to the end of his life. Because in a very real sense, he had birthdays, he says, I've become your father in the faith. And so that concept of we're going to raise them and walk with them, teach them through the scriptures so that they know how to handle them, and they know how to teach them, and then this church is ready to kind of walk on its own. Yeah. No, I love that. And we've been even thinking and praying through that of pastoral training, evangelism, church planning.

You didn't leave a group of people. You left a church and even goes along with just your ministerial philosophy of churches and missionaries, not just you can go with a sending agency or an organization, but ultimately it should be birthed out of a local church. So I want to go back to my original question then of what's the church's role in sending or being a part of global missions? And what I want to get at is, how can I, if I'm a dad and a mom, I know I'm not called to go overseas. How can I support and hold the rope in a way

where you as a missionary feel supported and loved and I'm actually engaged? Because it's one thing to say, you even mentioned that, it's one thing to be authentic or it's another thing to profess or posture authenticity. How can I actually be engaged in God's global work if I'm in the States? Because ultimately, if you have a bunch of families with that mindset in a church, That church together is going to be used mightily by God as a hub. So what would be your encouragement for families within my church for that mindset? Yeah, I think as families catch a vision for missions, and I love that paradigm that John Piper sets up with goers and senders rooted in Romans 10, 13 to 15,

where the goers go, and we talk a lot about them, but most of a church is going to be made up of senders. And senders who are willing to, one, have, skin in the game, and I talked about this a little bit this morning, where this might be my kids. I'm not going to flinch from that aspect of it. I'm going to talk about that. I'm going to be open to that. And then number two, they're going to have scars, so to speak. They're going to be willing to live a different type of lifestyle, whether that's taking some of the assets that God has given them with, and they're able to be involved in that. They're able to get behind young people coming

up in the college group, in the high school group, and go, you know what, there's going to be about 15 of us, we're going to get behind these kids, we're going to make sure that they don't have to go everywhere to raise their support. That aspect of financially being involved, having skin in the game, so to speak, that's where a lot of supporters or a lot of those who hold the rope that we're going to stick with this until these ones come off the field or until Christ calls us home. That, that to me is a really powerful sending church that has thought through, we have a role in this as well. It's not just the goers. You see this in Third John Gaius, the way that Gaius has held up as a model sender. And Paul commends him for sending the missionaries

on their way in a manner worthy of the gospel. And to have that idea behind them, there's senders that I think have prayed faithfully. Spurgeon would talk about this regularly, the prayer, the engine room of the church. And then to know, okay, the members that we sent to Afghanistan, need these particular things that we could get behind and we could send on a regular basis. When we were in Yambi, we had a partnership group, a core group of seven families, and they would send us AA, AAA, AAA batteries, and Tapatio hot sauce about every other month. And just, I mean, I love Tapio, but just something that you couldn't get in country. And then other times where...

Does that go a long way when you get... Oh, man. I mean, it's... Toppeatio. I always call it tapatio, but... Whatever it was. Is that like a lift to your soul? Just don't send me Chilula. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. I'm a Tabasco. There you go. But, yeah, just, I mean, we needed presents sometimes for Bo's birthday that we just couldn't get. And you get like a Spider-Man figurine and like a whole Spider-Man costume and just, they were cognizant of what we needed and what would be a boost to us at that season of life. And those are boosts when you got your hot sauce and stuff like that. Yeah. Truly.

I mean, things that we just couldn't get. And, yeah, that way of holding the rope of tangibly, we're going to stand behind our people and know them so intimately that we know they need. this hot sauce or this particular Christmas gift or whatever it is that will help keep that missionary on the field. Those to me are the most tangible, real things that help missionaries. Yeah, no, that's actually encouraging to hear because growing up I would always, you know, at Christmas time, we would send those boxes away to missionaries. I never heard if it was a blessing or not, you know, I'm like, we would, my dad would, that was even, you know, going back to even part of the way I grew up, that was my dad saying, Johnny, pick a couple

toys and you're going to send two ninja turtles to, you know, Ben and Kenyon. you, and I was like, Dad, Donatello, you know, I can't get rid of them. But that was, I would say, yeah, my whole life, I grew up going, hey, Johnny, you know, this kid's coming over, he's a missionary, go pick a toy to give them, and I grew up that way. And, you know, even it's cool hearing kind of the testimony of that being a blessing. Now, I guess just final question as I think through as a church, you know, I'm in, our church is five or so years old. We're trying to lay out different, you know, we're going to build a building, and we're like other churches, We have a budget.

We're trying to formulate that budget. Yeah. What would be your encouragement to a guy like me or to a pastor going, you know, I want a part of what we're doing just budget. So we work around it to be sent to global missions. Yeah. How do you help people think through that? Obviously, there are certain things that are personal and preferential and there's no rule

in the Bible this much needs to go overseas necessarily. Yeah. But how would you help me think through that as a pastor of making sure that I don't spend more on certain things? Because you said this morning, the Great Commission should cost us. Yeah. And that needs to be both individual at the family level, but also just at the macro level, our church. Yeah. It should cost us. There should be different style of things. We could have gone this, but we did this so we could give more to global missions.

Help me think through that. Yeah. I think at your guys' stage in a church life cycle, so to speak, to lay down certain parameters, whether that's, hey, we're going to give 7%, and we're going to always increase it by 1% every 2 years or something like that. That's just an immutable law to us. so that you have kind of a line in the sand, and it kind of shows your members, hey, if we're doing this as a church, then you guys as a family, consider thinking through that as well that you can be involved in this at a real, tangible level. And then I think to lay down some missions policies, because you guys are a growing church.

You're in an incredible situation. You're going to have everybody who wants to go to the field, whether it's surfing the nations or feeding the poor or drilling wells or going to unreached language groups. You're going to get them all coming to your door and that you have a prioritization of, hey, Stonebridge Bible member first. If they were raised in this church, if they come out of this church, there's nothing wrong with that. But I think if you have a mission's policy that dictates, here's what gets our first priority. Here's who gets first dibs on this. And then, of those things, here's what we want them doing. That doesn't mean that you can't support other

things. But there's a tiered scale here. Like a support missionary. Hey, you've got 10 other churches. we're going to give you this. Yeah. And this, we're, where you're sending church, which is a different ballgame, different level of accountability, expectation. We don't want you for a day every four years. We want you for three months. You're ours.

Yeah, you're ours. Because of that. Now, we're going to hope and pray that there are other partnering churches in this general geographic area. So when you come home on furlough, you can stay close to us. But we want you here the majority of the time. And us serving you. Yeah.

And we're going to support you to that level. But that's the expectation is that we're going to have this tight bond. And when we dedicated the scriptures in Yembe Yembe, the Yembe church leaders, like, I was just going to fly them in and just hand them out. And they said, no, no, no, no. What we need to do is talk to the Mama churches. And they met my home church, Claremont-Emanuel Baptist Church, and my coworkers' home churches, we want them to come over. And from the elders of the Mama churches to the daughter church, that's a church-on-church relationship, to where, okay, they saw something in the way that we talked about the church and the way that we were honored by Claremont-Emanuel Baptist. that was to them the mama church that they came out of.

And to see Stonebridge Bible be a mama church, but those are your people and they know they're your people because that's the policies that you've laid down. Yeah, and I'm just thinking out loud now, and I think I may know the answer, but you have different church missions philosophies, like you walk into a lobby and there's a flag from every country.

Yeah. And the more I think through that, the more I'm going, you know, let's say the Lord continues to bless our church and I hope to one day send, for me, right now I am thinking I'd rather have seven people we're all in on than 45 flags in the lobby. And part of that's just the level of investment. But even I think you referenced this morning, like you can only really know what's happening

in so many countries and be, if we really want to hold the rope, how many ropes can you hold? And so maybe just talk to my thinking, am I thinking the right way from your perspective? Yeah, I very much think so. I think that was a philosophy that maybe was more prevalent 60, 70 years ago. But the fruit of that, your membership can't know 55 missionaries. They just can't wrap their head around. Who is this revolving door of new people that I see every Sunday? Their pictures pop up or whatever. But if they have seven, if you have seven, if you have 10, if you have 12, these are our people. And when they come home, man, we're going to give them 15 minutes at the front. we're going to have them going to all of the different small groups. They're going to be known commodities among us because there are people that doesn't prohibit you from supporting, but that's not going to be kind of highlighted, so to speak. You can help them financially, but that's the second tier. That's a third tier of other people, other ministries.

But primarily you're going to look to yours, and yours are going to be those ones. And so it's just naturally going to be the smaller end of the funnel. I think that tends to, the church has more buy-in when they know, oh, these are the seven that we've been praying for. These are the 10 that we've been praying for, and they're tracking with them with the challenges, but with the victories as well. You own those as a church.

That's, to me, a really good philosophy. No, and I think that's helpful even for me as I think through it. And I guess just my last question would be, you were a missionary for 13 years, you were gone. When you come home and you're at your home church, what do you want from your home church when you come home as far as one, opportunities, they're going to want you to be with people. You want to be able to invest with people.

But from just, I'd like to preach, you know, not everyone wants to get up and preach. But what would you go like, hey, this is a blessing when I come home on furlough or from break for my supporters at my church. I'd like to give them updates. Like you said, different guys have different speeds. And so there's certain guys that are going to want to, hey, we're going to have you do these two or three small group sessions. And then we just want you to be regular church members for like nine months, just sit in the crowd, be part of this. We're going to come long set, but we're not going to ask a lot from you. There'll be other guys that I think you will know, hey, they've got some gifting at this.

Let's put them up front once or twice. Let's let them do other things. And they're like, I would, one, I would watch the marriages really closely, have ladies from the church that you trust, take the female missionary out, how you doing, anything we can do. you know what we're going to blow 300 bucks on you at this mall or whatever like just something to want to think that you can sometimes judge missionaries when they first come back off the field because they're the ones dressed out of place like they just look awkward okay we're gonna we're gonna help you with that we're going to come alongside you we're going to do those types of things for the man hey what do you need we're going to go to home depot we're going to let you go to home depot and here's

500 bucks just get whatever you need because we know you're doing some stuff out there that we just don't know really what you actually physically need or wherever that don't send them to harbor freight, but just tangible ways. Watch the kids. Do your kids need braces? Do we need to do annual checkups, your health, that kind of thing? And then check on the kids and their educational needs, but how they're doing in the high school group, in the junior high group. Are they aclimating well? My wife and I down at Radius teach a class called How to Raise Normal MKs, because there's a lot of ones that pop out and they have just little quirks and to help the parents think through, hey, at these critical stages, their first time overseas, their first time coming back,

they're going through puberty, they're coming back for the final time to go to college. Think through that with them as a church. Those are things that I think bear long-term fruit, and they help the missionary realize, man, my whole church is just all about this. They're around me and the most tangible ways that I can imagine. Yeah, and that's, I think, obviously, a way to support you when you're back in the States. maybe just as a final question and I've been thinking through this and I'm just kind of I'm thinking out loud as I go you know as I was I was talking to another elder at a different church and he said we don't want to bring any more missionaries on than we have elders in the states that can visit them every two years is that something that you go yeah how often did you get visited because it's kind of a funny system when you think about it like hey here's money we'll pray for you but the only context we'll have for what you do especially in a an unreached people group. It's different if you're going to like, you know, Mexico City and

you can go down, you know, and I'm in California, you know, you can drive. How often, or is that even a realistic expectation, you know, because I want to see what they're doing. I want to support them and it changes the way I pray for them. Like I've been to Papua New Guinea, and so I can have at least some context, even though I haven't been to the MBMB. So what would be kind of the goal there for a team of elders, for a church? Yeah. I mean, I think the impetus that that brother that you were talking to, the impetus or the inclination there is really helpful. I would just be careful at the very beginning when they're learning the language, when they're learning the culture, let them be immersed. Yeah, let them get fully immersed. Watch that period of time. When they have a

ministry that's kind of starting to be more in the maturing years, that to me is a really helpful time so that you can pray wisely. You can, I mean, people pray much more fervently about ministries that they understand or that they've seen in touch. It's exposed to, yeah. Yeah, like, I would send regular trips, but I would have one elder on it, and I would have maybe three key church members go with them. So it's not just elder only, but you're saturating the whole body there. That to me is a really helpful. I've been thinking through that, because if you want a church to lead to global missions, they have to go. You know, you talked about even with sending your children on trips. And sometimes it's like, I can preach on global missions. You came this

morning. You preached on global missions. You showed a five minute and 31 second video of what happens in global missions. But there is a point where I want my people to go and see what God is doing. And there is a real element of exposure. And sometimes we either overvalue or undervalue those mission strips. You know, oh, you know, everyone needs to go or no one needs to go. It's not, they're not going to go be a missionary. But to your point, like I want the average business guy in my church to go, man, God is the God of the nations. And you also don't want to be two hands on or two hands off. So I think these have been helpful. kind of things to navigate

even for me you know even for if I'm just a dad going I want to yeah I was talking to this guy he just said yeah I'm going to take my son you know to Africa because I want him to see he's a businessman but he says if I want to raise my kids to support what I'm supporting

they have to watch dad weep over the lost and that whatever you can't put a price tag on seeing things firsthand you've been on enough missions trips but I'm always amazed the impact that it has on dads in particular and as they think through, oh, my goodness, the level of lostness here is so dramatically different than Franklin, Tennessee, than San Diego, California. There's just something about seeing it face to face and then seeing your members that you've been praying for that have gone out and are working in that context.

You just have a knitness together, a bond that is so very different than we've read their prayer letters, nothing wrong with good, well-written, short prayer. Yeah, that kind of stuff. But to see it firsthand, to feel the humidity, to eat the food, to fly in the little airplane, to hear the mosque and the call to print. Oh, please. Exactly. That leaves a lifelong impact. Totally. No, that's helpful.

And I'm appreciative just even of your perspective as I think through it as a pastor and ultimately just as a Christian. You know, I'm a church member before I'm a pastor and I'm a Christian before I'm any of the, you know, like I don't want to overly segregate. But thank you for your help in that regard, Brooks. I'm thankful for your ministry. Appreciate you. Thanks, brother. Appreciate you, too.