Theology in the Raw - 774: #774 - Israel Trip, Global Generosity, and Becoming More than Christians: Addison Bevere

Episode Date: January 13, 2020

Preston sits down with his friend Addison Bevere to talk about the ministry of Messenger International, a global ministry with a massive reach and a generous heart. Addison also just wrote a book called "Saints: Becoming More than Christians," which comes out on Jan 21. The book discusses what it means to be called "Saints"--a term used WAY MORE than the term Christian in the Bible. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Check out his website prestonsprinkle.com If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I am so excited about this podcast for two reasons. Number one, got a good friend who is on the show, Addison Bevere. Addison is the son of, you might know, John and Lisa Bevere, who have written books that have sold into the several millions, are kind of, they speak around the world like frequently. And as you'll hear in the podcast, their ministry, Messenger International, is absolutely incredible. It's just one of the most generous and faith-based ministries I've ever come across. Truly. And you'll hear Addison talk about that.

Addison is the COO of Messenger International. He's an author and a speaker. The author, well, he's a new author. In fact, his book comes out next week called Saints Becoming More Than Christians, forwarded by Mark Batterson. My goodness. Okay. So we had a great conversation. I'm excited to have you meet Addison. He's just such a humble, gracious guy who just loves the Lord. He just, I mean, he loves the Lord. He loves telling people about Jesus, except on airplanes. And we'll, you'll see what I mean. Um, but yeah, just a really down to earth, genuine dude. And I'm excited for you to get to know him. Also, hopefully you didn't fast forward through

this section because theology in the raw is going to Israel and you are invited. We are going to Israel October 11th through the 21st. And we are inviting, uh, we, as in my family, we're all going and we are inviting the theology in the raw community, anywhere from 40 to 50 people. Now space is already filling up. Uh, my Patreon supporters have already started to sign up. They knew about this a few weeks ago. It's part of being a supporter. I also have a few other friends that are going to be on the trip. But we still have a decent amount of space. I have to check with my wife to see how much we have left. I know we have, well, I'm almost sure we have more than 20, if not 30 spaces left. So there

is time. But if you want to go on the trip, it's first come first serve, you have to mail in a check $100 check for deposit. And once we get 40 or possibly 50 checks, then we're going to close the doors cap it at 50. We might even cap it at 40. We'll see. We'll see what kind of interest there is. But if you want to hear more about the trip, again, it's October 11th through the 21st. You can email chris at PrestonSprinkle.com. Chris at PrestonSprinkle.com. That's C-H-R-I-S at PrestonSprinkle.com. And what I'm so excited about this, well, let me back up. One of the reasons why I'm so excited about this trip is the tour guide is my brother-in-law, Dr. Benjamin Foreman. Now, as you know, there's loads of trips that go to Israel. There's loads of agencies that run trips to Israel. And how do I

say it? My brother-in-law is super unique in that he has been living in the land of Israel for over 10 years. He's fluent in Hebrew. He has a PhD in Old Testament. And he's been teaching the Bible in the land of Israel for the last 10 years. I'm sorry, he's been living there, I think, 15 years and teaching the Bible in Israel for 10 years. So most trips you go on do not have a, well, you have a kind of local tour guide that typically there's, you know, it's an Israeli tour guide who's never read the New Testament and, um, you know, kind of, he does his tour guide thing or whatever, but my brother-in-law is

an absolute, uh, treasure, a wealth of information. And he's not just some random Israeli guide. He's an evangelical Christian with a PhD in Old Testament who's been living in the land longer than most people who lead trips. So it's going to be an amazing trip. Now, it's not cheap. You can, let's see, you can email my wife, chris.pressenspringle.com, and you can get the info on the price. But let me just say it here. Yeah, the price is $2,900.

That's all inclusive, except for your flight. Okay, but once you get there, then meals, housing, bus trips, entry fees, everything is covered. So that's $2,900 per person plus airfare. So I know that's super steep. Like, I mean, my wife and I, we've been married almost 20 years and we're just now getting to where we can go to Israel. So I totally get that that's, you know, going to be really steep for probably the overwhelming majority of you. But if, if you can afford that, I cannot more highly recommend going to Israel. I spent a semester in Israel in fall of 1999. It was in all my schooling. I was in school for probably 12 years after high school. And my favorite hands down educational semester was the time I spent in Israel, hands down, PhD included,

my master's degree included, undergrad, whatever. It's just, it's hard to describe. And if you've been there, you know exactly what I'm saying. It's like you, you just, the Bible just comes alive and you learn so much. You learn so much about the historicity, archaeology, the land of the Bible. And it's just, it's, it's amazing. So if you can't go on this trip, fine, just start putting aside a coffee a month or something. So just save up and go to Israel at some point. I think this is going to be an amazing trip, but if you can't afford this trip, then I would highly recommend saving to go on another trip. Okay. Without further ado, let's get to know the one and only Addison Bevere. Okay, I'm here with my friend Addison Bevere. Thanks so much, Addison,

for being on Theology and Roth the first time. Preston, thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. Yeah, we talked a little bit offline, but I woke up this morning just with this weird flu-like thing where I'd just been glued to my bed, not throwing up or anything. There's nothing weird going on, but now that I think of it, I had

some sashimi last night. Oh, there it is. There it is. I mean, raw fish raw that's like raw sushi so maybe i had some bad fit that just makes me want to throw up thinking that i had bad fish but you know it was boise it was probably like a raw bass or something but um addison let's jump in why don't you give us you're creepy it We fight Ralph on the podcast. Interesting days. Give us a little background of who you are and the kind of unique household you grew up in.

And just go ahead and lead us in the present day. And then we'll get in and really want to hear about your book. Yeah, absolutely. So I right now I'm the CEO of Messenger International. And we're an international organization. We're all about building the global church. And we do that by empowering local leaders. So today, we've given away over 30 million discipleship resources that are translated to pastors and leaders in developing

nations. But yeah, we've been able to give away over 30 million translated resources to developing church. Over 100 countries, over 100 languages. We believe that the local church is God's answer to the problems facing our world today. And we also believe that every single follower of Christ is a messenger. That's the whole messenger international. And all of our lives tell a story. And we're supposed to tell the story of the gospel in whatever world we find ourselves in. We're supposed to break down those barriers between the sacred and the secular, we find ourselves in. We're supposed to break down those barriers between the sacred and the secular, revealing his plans, restoration, reconciliation,

and recovery to the whole world. So that's a part of what we do. We do it through so many different ways, different forms of media, storytelling, publishing, traveling, speaking. It's a pretty significant reach. I'm very blessed to do what we do. Your mom is always on the plane. I'll text her, she'll be like, I'm on Singapore. I'm getting off in Chiang Mai. I'm going to be over in Afghanistan in a couple hours or something.

That's pretty much it. And it was founded, actually, the organization was founded by my parents back in 1990, John and Lisa Bevere. And then in 2006, they were like, you know what? It was John Bevere Ministries. And they were like, this organization is supposed to transcend surname or generation. And so we need to pivot. And we changed to Messenger International. And that's when we started to take on more of a global focus. And it wasn't just about John and Lisa as messengers.

It became about how do we as an organization establish and mobilize and make messengers all over the world. And that's what we do. So our mission is to develop uncompromising followers of Christ who transform our world. And we believe that that mission advances at the intersection of message and attention. So attention is the currency of our day. Everyone's fighting for attention and a message changes everything. When we have a change of perspective, it changes everything about our lives. So the goal is to create that magic at the intersection of a message and attention. So you have, is it mainly John and Lisa producing the material and speaking, or do you have other people that are overseas on the ground doing

stuff or what does the ministry look like? Yeah, we have, we have a lot of teams. So a lot of teams all over the world that do this. And we have over 200 people that do this kind of messaging work all over the world. And then we're also establishing new messengers under the umbrella of messenger international here in the United States. And then we also partner with, with like-minded organizations who specialize in different areas and we bring them into our fold and we say, Hey, you have a message that the world needs to hear. We want to partner with you and use the messaging that we've been able to build over the years to share this message. That's great.

So we do a whole bunch of different things. Yeah, I mean, I'm excited about doing some things with you. Yeah, I know. Me too, man. I'm super just, yeah, honored. I mean, that's crazy. I got to gotta connect you with i've got some friends friends and i started a tiny ministry called touch nepal and we've been doing kind of pastor training through the local leaders there like empowering local leaders to do the training and i mean i say we i you know i go over periodically

um i was heavily involved at the beginning. I don't really do much anymore with it. But they just started, my good friend who's still day-to-day, you know, kind of runs it. They just started doing a lot of like pastoral training up in the kind of foothills of the Himalayas, you know, 10,000 foot hills. But there's loads of villages up there. And yeah, I don't know if i'm supposed to say that i mean you're probably you're probably okay with nepal yeah yeah for the most part you can't um you can you can yeah you can go over as a christian and teach other christians you just

can't proselytize and we don't we we focus on pastor training with with local pastors and let them navigate absolutely so um but anyway, the, the, so they're, they're big into like developing curriculum. And I don't know, I mean, it might be worth even just like a quick email or phone call or

something. I don't know. There's something you guys have that could, you know, that they can use in that setting. Are you guys in Nepal or. We are. Yeah.

We actually in cloud library.org. It's our, what we call our international distribution grid. And every single piece of content that we translate, we put up on that website and people can go and download it completely free of charge. So we have, we have millions of downloads and they're all translated resources. You have stuff translated into Polly?

Yes. Oh my word. We have quite a bit of stuff. So they just need to be aware of it and they can download it and wow. Download it. They can download it. They can print it. They can distribute it however they want. I mean, we say, look, do what you want with this content. We've been able to secure the rights, all the rights to these different languages.

We basically tell the leaders of the church, do whatever you need to do to use this content to help disciple your people. Like Mongolia, for instance, we've been able to put our curriculum in every single church in Mongolia. Across the nomination line, every single church in Mongolia. Wow. Across the nomination line. Every single church, Catholic, Protestant, across the nomination line. We did an event with the government in Vietnam. I can't share this. Where they brought us in to do some marriage and family stuff.

We had over 5,000 leaders, church leaders, civil leaders. I had a bishop there, nuns. I mean, it's really special stuff. I had a bishop there, nuns. I mean, it's really, really special stuff. And we had 150,000 Vietnamese people live stream the event. And it was all about marriage and family. And the government was behind it. We celebrated Vietnam. We put flags under everyone's seat. So when they came in at the beginning, we did this whole tribute to Vietnamese culture. We did all these videos and dances and stuff. And then we told them to reach under their chairs and pull out their flags and wave it.

And the Vietnamese government's absolutely loving this. We used their second largest facility. And afterwards, they looked at us and they said, you really honored our nation and you've honored our heritage, our people. We want you to come back and use our largest venue. We want you to do this again. I mean, I know the answer is the Holy Spirit. Okay. But absolutely. But to get into some of these countries with such a wide reception, is it kind of, is it kind of shocking a little bit? Are you guys so faith oriented that you're

like, no, this is just what it means to be a Christian. I mean, listen, listen, it's radical. I mean, I had a security guard outside of my room 24-7 while I was there being watched. I don't know if the security guard was there for my protection. I think it was more so keeping tabs on what was happening. It's just, it's stuff that only God can do. And it's a willingness to say, yes, it's a willingness to go to these different spaces. It the gospel's for it's for jerusalem judaism samaritan ends of the earth so like what does that mean to go to the ends of the earth and it means that you have to develop an understanding of a culture of ways people's ways how they how they do things what's important to

their to their country to their nation the needs all that kind of stuff and then we we show like look the gospel is the answer. And we figure out what that alignment looks like for that particular people. And again, that's why we work with the local church. We don't go around the local church. We go through the local church because the local church knows the needs of its nation much better than we Westerners out here in the United States with very little idea of what it means to be a follower of Jesus in Vietnam.

So do you travel quite a bit for it then as well? I do. I travel a good amount. I did get to go to Vietnam, which was phenomenal. I probably do four to six international trips a year. And are you speaking? Are you there just on the ground? Yeah, I actually got to speak to some underground churches. It was amazing. Like they were showing me where, where you have to, to go if something were to happen. Like, you know, the escape plan stuff like that all look like storefronts. Amazing, amazing stuff to be a part of a culture,

a Christianity that, that is radical is, it's like they're really laying down everything for the sake of following Jesus. I just, I'm so, I mean, so impressed how generous you guys are, your ministry, your parents. It's just unbelievable. I mean, millions and millions and millions of their own books given away

that they could sell, right? I mean, they could have made, I don't know how many millions of dollars, but then they say, we're doing fine on our books. Let me, let's be generous. God's been generous. It sounds simple, but it's so radical in this day. Like it's amazing how much stuff you guys give away.

It's crazy. It is. And you know, our philosophy is the author's name is on that book because that author was the first person to get to read it. That's what my dad says. He's like, so this is, this is ultimately God's message and I get to steward it. And a part of stewarding that message is sharing it with people who can't afford it. So one of our values as an organization is we make discipleship resources available to every leader, regardless of location, language, or financial position. When you have a value like that, it requires some crazy things.

We have to break the mold on what it means to invest in the nations. Can I ask how – and I really want to get into your story and your book. But is it donor-supported? Is it self-funded through selling resources in the wet in America, both? All of the above. Okay. Yeah, all of the above. I mean, we take our different revenue streams, and we use those to fund it.

And then we also gather people who love this idea, love this mission. It resonates with them. And we say, Hey, why don't you be a part of it? And they give and they sponsor nations, they sponsor languages and they're a part of the mission. So it takes, I mean, it takes a village. It takes a lot of people and it takes a, yeah, it takes a common sense of mission and purpose to make something like this happen yeah yeah i've learned firsthand this last few years with my ministry it's like just to show up and put on it's a conference it's so much work it goes on right you know and it's not right it's not for like people have to eat and the equipment costs money and yeah um yeah it's

it's a lot kingdom what i love about kingdom work is it requires us to look beyond ourselves. It requires us to tap into expansiveness that was written on our hearts, as it says in Ecclesiastes 3.11. And when you come together for a mission that unifies you and stretches you, you start to see things differently. You start to see people differently. You start to see opportunities differently. And that's when God moves. He moves when we get outside of our comfort zones and preconceived ideas of what it looks like to do mission. It's one of the things I love about you, Preston. I love the way you break the mold on what it means to reach people.

I seriously have so much respect for what you do. And, um, and for us as an organization, that's what it looks like for us to break the mold. On that note, do you guys deal with a lot of sexuality questions overseas? And I ask because we're getting more and more global inquiries and stuff. Yeah, we do. We do. I mean, I don't know if it's as encouraged as far as the conversation in general, as encouraged as it is here in the West. Right.

But there are certainly questions and, and we've, you know, we navigate those questions. Um, I mean, we, we have this common sense of humanity of fraternity. And so they're the same challenges, the same questions, they're ubiquitous. Um, but they, they take on different forms depending on cultures and depending on what's relevant to that particular nation or people group. Yeah. But it's there.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. I'm getting more and more, yeah, either requests or, you know, requests for resources. We just, we're just, we're translating some of our stuff in the Spanish for the first time, doing a translation.

Yeah. Well, cool, man. Well, hey, let's, so let's go back. You're raised in a kind of a celebrity Christian household. Oh, gosh, I hate that. I mean, is there, I don't say that. Yeah, it's just, it kind of is, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So what was that like? You know, it's funny. I was taking, I was taking my son on a trip recently. I have a 10 year old son and we were flying home. We were getting on the plane and the gate agent looked at me and she's like, your last name's Bevere. Are you, are you related to John Bevere? And Asher like looked at me, my son. And I was like, yes, I am. And Asher's like, dad, dad,

gee, daddy's like famous, isn't he? Like, Oh no. I mean, he's, he's well known among certain circles. When I was young, honestly, Preston, they didn't have the influence that they do now. I still felt pressure, you know, being John and Lisa Bevere's son. People would come up to me and be like, you're going to be just like your mom and dad. I certainly ran from that because I wanted to be my own person. I didn't want to do what they did. I didn't want to follow in their footsteps. I remember one time I was told that I had the heart of my mother and the anointing of my father. And I was like, no.

That's a great combo. season. Why? Yeah, like, man, comparison, like, okay, so probably two things terrified of comparison, terrified of failing. And I'll throw another one. I just wanted I want to be my own person. I didn't understand the value of legacy. I didn't I didn't understand the significance of how God will often move through generations along the single bloodline. I'm not saying he always does that. But there are times when he puts his hand on a family and says, there's something that I want to convey to the world through a generational movement, generational legacy. And when I started to lean into that and lean into the tension of what that meant for my own life, I started to see things differently. But I remember one time I was at this event and my dad had sent out a CD of

me teaching our team. I had done a message for the team. It was an internal thing and he heard him. He loved it. He's like, you, we need to send it to all of our partners. And so he sent it to all of our partners. It's like, Oh my gosh, you've got to be kidding me. And one of our partners, he does these massive events all over the world and he heard it and he listened to it seven times. And he told my dad, he's like, I'm gonna have Addison come speak at my event. And I was like, 2425, like just out of school at the time. And, and I was like, what? Like, what? No. And I was at an event with my dad, we were speaking with

this man. And my dad told me like, he's looking for he's was at an event with my dad where he was speaking with this man. And my dad told me, he's like, he's, he's looking for, he's going to invite you to speak to that. I left the event. I just left the building. I left the building. I just was out of there. And then a few months later, I get an email from his office. They're like, Hey, we want you to come do this event. Basically turned them down. And then my dad told me I had to say yes. And I never went, I never actually ended up doing I'm speaking for him in a few months but I never actually did it back then it's just one of those things I didn't want to do that like I was it's very private I still am very private I don't have like these illusions of like what it is to be in the spotlight what it is to be a communicator

what it is to live that kind of life. Like I'm not, I'm not impressed by that. I honor and respect people who've given their life to that type of service, but it's not something that I chased, but now it's something that I'm finding myself thrust into and I'm starting to embrace it. I mean, that's the best kind of Christian to be on stage. The one who hasn't chased after it, quite honestly. I right i mean it's the guy that it's the person that once so badly makes me nervous it's like oh

man you know yeah no i still like when i whenever i do this i'm like god like if if you don't show up like i'm gonna run out of this building because like this is not me you know like it's getting to that point where where i my confidence is in surrender like that like it's getting to that point where where my confidence is in surrender like that's that's it like that's that's the only form of confidence that I have in situations like that because naturally I don't enjoy it yeah yeah that's good I feel like I'm like that too much I yeah more and more I'm not I don't look forward to speaking we know what I'm doing it you're in the moment. It's energizing. Absolutely.

Yeah. I feel like for a period of time, I really longed for it. And I don't think it was that bad. I just really enjoyed preaching. And I would discover something in the text and just couldn't wait to tell people about it. You got a message. You got a message you want to share. It's that Ezekiel passage where he's got fire in his – or Jeremiah.

Yeah, Jeremiah, fire in his bones. Yeah, exactly. I literally felt like – I felt like I need to get this out somewhere. And now, I don't know. I feel like maybe I'm just tired or – I love writing. I still – I am much more of an introvert. I like, honestly, just podcasting. I'd much rather be podcasting than on a stage somewhere.

Oh, me too. Yeah. Me too. But I'm embracing it because I do view it as like, I'm stewarding a message. Something that's really helped me too, is I'm there to serve. Like it's not about me. So whatever I share, it's not about me. It's not about what they think about me. It's about what, what happens in their lives based on what I share. Right. And, and my goal is to get out of the way so that what's coming through is what God's breathed on and what he's revealed in the text. And, you know, part of that, of

course, has a flair of my personality and what makes me, me as a communicator, but learning to get out of the way so that he can do what he, what only he can do in those types of situations. So let's talk about your message. Is it surrounding the book or was there other kind of things leading up to the book that you were really passionate about and that drove you? Yeah. So as I mentioned, I grew up in the church. So my whole life, I felt that tension of being a church kid.

And then in my, in my twenties, started really in my early twenties, I had so many friends who started walking away from the faith. They became disillusioned with Christianity. They became ashamed of the faith. They didn't want anything to do with God. Their idea of following God was, was tied with a religious practice. And when I say religious practice, I mean that in the negative sense, not the positive sense.

And so for me, it's this journey. I remember, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago, I was on a plane with this lady and I'm an introvert like you. So when I get on planes, it's like eyes forward. I'll acknowledge the existence of the person sitting next to me because that's just rude not to.

But beyond that, like I'm not having conversation. because that's just rude not to um but beyond that like i'm not having conversation like that's yeah i'm like the same way i go the cordial nod and then i make sure they see the book in my hand and you know yeah yeah yeah like put the put the headphones on or something uh but this particular time like this lady she wasn't having it like she was gonna talk and and that was it and so we talked hour and a half later she shared her whole life story with me I mean everything like shared so many things with me and and I was able to speak into them and I and I could tell like God put me next to her for a reason and then after this whole time she she did what you're not supposed to do on planes you're not

supposed to talk about two things not supposed to talk about politics and religion. And she looked at me and she goes, so what religious practice do you follow? And I remember like, cause I knew cause she had shared so many things with me that made it very clear that she'd been hurt by the church, um, that she was not a fan of Christians. I knew in that moment, if I tell her I'm a Christian, like everything, everything that I've shared, like there's a wall that's going up, everything that I've shared, it's going out the window. And I remember feeling that tension. And it's not that, and Preston, I'm sure you can relate to, it's not that I'm ashamed of Jesus. I'm very fond of Jesus. I believe he's the one person who got this whole humanity thing right. Right? Like, so I love following in his footsteps.

I love working out what that means for me today in my world what wrestling with the text like i love that but i i am ashamed of the stigmas the uh stereotypes the labels that have wrapped themselves around this word christian and i'll say cultural christian yeah and and so several years ago i was reading a book by Rudolph Otto. I don't know if you've read much of his stuff. Okay. I was reading a book by Otto and I was probably, I don't know, halfway through the book. It's one of his books on the otherness of God. It was just this phenomenal book. I think it's called The Idea of the Holy. And I read this paragraph and he used the word saint in a way that I had never seen before. And he described a saint as someone who practices and participates in the mystery of the final day.

Oh, wow. And I was like, wow. So now up to this point, when I thought of a saint, I thought of stained glass windows. I thought of people with halos on their head. I thought of dead people. I thought of it as a prefix that you attach to someone's first name after they die and if they lived a really good life. So it didn't really have much significance or relevance in my life. But I could sense when I read that sentence, it was the only mention of the word Satan, the whole book, only

mention. I read that sentence and the spirit of God is like something inside of me just opened up. And I felt like do a deep dive. And I did. And what I found, and you probably know this because you're a scholar. What I found is that the words Christians use only three times in the New Testament, twice in Acts, once in first Peter, the word saint is used over 60 times, like it was the identifier of the early church. And the way that Paul primarily would use it, he would use it to energize and give meaning and significance to the present. It had nothing to do with the past. So we use it now to honor, dignify, or canonize what has been. But the word was always meant to assign a sense of mission in the present, and a sense of mission that is profoundly human and profoundly

personal and specific to wherever we find ourselves, whatever world we find ourselves in. And if you look at the book of Acts, I love this thread that we find throughout the book of Acts. We find the tension of the early church. They're trying to figure out, okay, so what does it actually mean to fulfill the great commission? And Jesus is on the scene at the very beginning, and he does one thing. One thing. He preaches on the kingdom of God. He teaches on the kingdom of God. That's it.

And the disciples turn around, and they're like, so, hey, when are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? In other words, like, when are you going to make this about our comfort zone? When are you going to make this about what we expected? When are you going to make this about our ethnicity, about what we want to do, where we want to go. And Jesus turns around. He's like, no, you're going to be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. And the whole rest of the book is that tension of like what it means to go into all the nations. And I love Acts 10 when,

when Peter has this vision three times and God is essentially dropping down all of these unholy and profane things. And Peter's like, I'm not going to eat those. Because God says, you know, he's like, I'm not going to eat them. What are you thinking? Like, I'm a holy, I'm a holy man. My lips had never touched that. And God essentially says, like, go get your butts to the Gentiles. Like, that's, that's basically the message. And he's like, listen, what I've called what I've called uncommon, don't call common. What I've called holy, don't call profane. He's like, listen, what I've called uncommon, don't call common. What I've called holy, don't call profane. He's like, get going.

And then Cornelius' men show up, that amazing interaction between Peter and Cornelius, the Spirit of God falls on the Gentiles before they're even baptized. And I think today, if you look at the church in general, we've lost this sense of the gospel is supposed to eradicate every barrier between the secular and the sacred. And Paul is the one who primarily used the word saint. And you got to think about who he was writing to. He was writing to Gentiles. He was writing to the people who were marginalized. He was writing to the people who didn't belong. He was writing to the people who were unholy. And he would start his letters and say to the saints in Rome, to the people who didn't belong. He was writing to the people who were unholy. And he would start his letters and say to the saints in Rome, to the saints in Philippi, to the saints in Ephesus.

So he would tell them, look, this is who you are. This is who you are. And then he would break down these beautiful descriptions of God's covenant plans and salvation plans and all of this. And then he'd say, now, practically speaking, this is what it means for you to be a saint in Ephesus, and all of this. And then you say, now, practically speaking, this is what it means for you to be a saint in Ephesus, in Corinth, in Rome. You say, this is what it looks like. And unfortunately, we've taken this idea of a saint and we've removed it from our everyday lives. And we're missing out on a profound sense of meaning that belongs in the mundane. Does it have a missional component to it? Like to be a saint isn't to sit around being saintly. It's for a missional purpose? Was that reading too much into the... No, no. I mean, it's it's for a missional purpose with that without reading too

much into the no no it i mean it's missional but not just in the sense of like you have to go out and do a special mission right okay it's it's missional in the sense and i mean ever since the enlightenment we've had this this separation profound separation between the secular and sacred it was like okay science arts industry economics all of that, like that's now sacred. And the church will keep its buildings, its services, its prayer groups, right? And now what's happened is we have all these people today, like they're doing regular life, everyday life. They're working as a CFO or a stay-at-home mom or a barista, whatever, right? They're doing everyday life, and they don't see the connection between what it means to follow Jesus in their everyday life. And saints are people who actually break down that barrier between the two,

and they recognize that what we do on Mondays is just as holy, is just as significant as what we do on Sunday. And they live in tune with this vision that we see in Isaiah 11, 9 and back in 2, 14, that the knowledge of the glory of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea. They live with that vision and they ask themselves, like, what does that mean for my world today? What does that mean for me as a parent, as a spouse, as a leader, as a student, as a neighbor? What does that mean? And what it does is it places meaning in our everyday lives, which is where life happens, which is where the kingdom advances is in our everyday lives, is at that intersection of relationship. So yes, like to be a saint, there are moments when

you have these grandiose, like service, like what we see with Mother Teresa, sure. But it's also what we do in our everyday lives. Okay. So I was thinking like back in Exodus 19, where he calls them like a holy priesthood, holy, right? It comes with saint, that's where we get saint. And that's a very like, you know, you're, I'm giving you this law so that you can go and be a holy people as a vocation to kind of reach the nations, whatever. And then Peter picks up on that. Well, he calls them nation of kings and priests. In Exodus 20, he comes to meet with them.

He comes to reveal himself to them. He comes to be intimate with them. And what do they do? They reject them. They say, actually, no, we don't want intimacy with you. Just give us a bunch of rules and regulations. That will be our concept of holiness is following those rules and regulations. So God came to give them a relationship.

They turned around and said, no, we want religion. We want best practices. We want to reduce this relationship to things that we can control, commands that we can control. So tell me more about the book. So you obviously unpacked the biblical meaning of saint and then you address the secular sacred thing quite a bit. Is that it?

Yeah, actually, I do. I spent time on the secular sacred. I start in the first chapter. I start with the idea of the good life. So people are obsessed with the good life, right? Like you look at many of the bestselling books,

top podcasts, you'll find those three magical words grouped together, the good life. Like we're obsessed with it. We're looking for it. And we, we look for it, uh, different places, right? Like most people, it's a magical combination of sex stuff and status. Like they think they can get the right combination of those three things. And I'm talking about inside the church and outside of the church, but they can find the right combination of those three things. They're going to find the good life. And what I show is the, the reason why we crave it is because as it says in Ecclesiastes 3, 11, eternity was written on our hearts. So there's something

larger than what we've seen. There's something expansive within us and it kind of drives us nuts. That's why we, that's why we progress. That's why we innovate. That's why we search. And the point I make at the very end of the first chapter is that the good life isn't something we find. It's someone we become. And the good life of a saint is exactly, like, that's what we're craving. Like, that's what we want. But the problem is, like, when we think of a saint, we think of this small group of people, this holy, quote, unquote, holy group of people that we don't belong to. We don't realize that the invitation is to every single one of us to be saints.

Every single one of us. Well, it's fascinating that he calls the Corinthians saints. Oh, yeah. I know. Look at those groups of people historically that he calls saints. Yeah. It's about their identity and their vocation more than their, yeah're like you said you know they've arrived at holiness and now they well and it's it's one of those things where like he calls us holy and then

he journeys us into holiness like that's that's that's the journey of sanctification which has the same root as saying okay i call it sanctification because it's the same it's the same kind of idea and that's why chapter three of the book the chapter is mirror mirror the whole chapter is about true self and false self okay that's like that's what the whole like colossians three true self false self james one receive with meekness the implanted word which has the power to save your soul and then i go into james 20 like 25 26 27 we start talking about the mirror and what are we going to look at are we going to look at ourselves to the law of liberty we're going to see who we are in the natural. And I talk about that tension between the true self and the false self.

And I think as C.S. Lewis said something along the lines of how there's nothing that we give to God that he doesn't return to us more glorious, more beautiful, more complete. And I think a lot of people have this idea that if they give who they are to God, if they surrender in that journey to him, they're going to become faceless. They're going to become the same as everyone else. But that's that's what we discover, like what it is to be us. Like what it like when you start stripping away the things that that masquerade as individuality, when you start stripping those things away, it's like, whoa, this is this is who I am as a unique display of God's creative genius and that's that's the journey of sanctification that's the journey of becoming a saint you obviously love studying the bible but if I can read back into your story when did that kick in because I wasn't there all along right or yeah I mean I did go to bible school but um my background was in business. It was like I wasn't really interested, to be honest.

Again, like I ran from it. I wasn't interested in it. And then when I was 24, God told me it was like one of those holy moments where like, look, I want you to go through the Bible systematically. And I did. I would read a verse. I would think about the verse, like pray to the verse. And then I would write down what God spoke to me in that verse. And I did that all the way through. I started the new Testament,

did that all the way through the new Testament. And that ever after that, like it created this hunger in me. And then I started reading all these different books on eschatology, soteriology, I mean, all, all the ologies, right? Like I was in it. Like I wanted to learn. I wanted to know. And that was my journey.

Okay. So going like now, you are – have you just started speaking a lot more now? Like when was that kind of running away? And then how long ago was it when you said, you know what, I think God's calling me to, to be a speaker, you know, to kind of follow in the footsteps of my, my parents. Yeah, honestly, man, I hate the idea of being a speaker. Just like, because that just sounds like, you know, a messenger at the microphone. You know, what's funny, I actually remember, I remember the date when I said yes to God.

You know what's funny? I actually remember. I remember the date when I said yes to God. I was, I think I was 27 at the time. So probably about six, seven years ago. And I was cleaning my garage. And I was walking into the house. And the Holy Spirit whispered to me, he's like, are you going to do this? I remember saying yes. And right before I turned the doorknob to go into my house, I said yes, I went into went into my house, I said, yes, I went into, went into my house. Two weeks after that, everything in my world fell apart. It's like, so the CFO of our organization been here for nine years. He was the main leader of Messenger. He left overnight. I found out he was gone after he was gone. I mean, it was, it was crazy. And it was just really, it was really rough. Right.

So I had to step into that. So as the COO, I had assumed those responsibilities and, and it was like, okay, God, I said, I would, I would do this. Like I would do something that I didn't want to do. I agreed to do it even though I didn't want to agree to do it. Now I say yes. And you're sending me in the opposite direction. Like now I'm more engrossed in the day to day and the operations and the legal and the compliance. Like, really? Like, I thought I was saying yes to you. And it was going to be like, okay, now I'm going to move you out and you're going to start doing this. And so for me, it was about that time when I said yes.

But, you know, it wasn't until recently where I started speaking more. Like I would do once or twice or mainly because of relationship. I would go do it because I couldn't say no because of relationship. But now I've started to do it more. Do you speak to younger people a lot or all ages? All ages. Because you mentioned offline that you spoke to a few hundred. Was it college or high school or?

Millennials. It was actually in Boise. Oh, right. Yeah. What was that? Gosh, man, I don't remember the name of the church. The pastor's name is Jordan Werner. Oh, I've heard. Yeah, I've heard of. I don't know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I mean, I've done, I've done that. I mean, I've done, you know, I spoke at, I spoke to 5,000 people and, and, um, it, in Italy last December and done, I've done stuff like that big and small. And for me, it's just, it's another way to serve. Like that's like, if God wants me to do, I'm going to do it, but it's not something where I'm like, yes,

like I need to get out there and I need to be speaking. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy writing so much more. Do you? Yeah. Oh, my gosh, yes. If somebody wanted to find out more about Messenger, obviously you have a website. But is there anything people can do to get involved? Obviously, they can donate money or whatever.

But if they're like, man, that sounds really cool. Or maybe there's a missionary out there or somebody that's like, man, could I be a part of that somehow? Is that, yeah. They would just go to your website? Yeah, I mean, yeah, messengerinternational.org is like the mother website. There's a lot of other ones from that. So we have a lot of discipleship stuff that we do that all stems from messengerinternational. national.org okay yeah that

would be that'd be the best one to go to and then your book is published by who revel so there was so the imprint of baker oh right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and it comes out january 21st well that'll be yeah so this will come out um people are listening right now probably that'll probably like 10 days from from, from the future now. Yeah. Well, dude, thanks so much for being on the podcast. Many blessings on your ministry and all that you're doing. And yeah, I hope you write another book, man.

Are you working on another one? No, I'm supposed to. I was supposed to start soon. But it's like every time I go back to it, it's like God tells me, like, you know, stay here with saints. If there's more than i want you to see with saints and don't get distracted from what you're doing right now and it's it's hit me that like our generation and when i say generation i mean that applies to multi-generations but it's like we need a fresh look at faith for a world losing hope and religion like we are in the midst of a post-Christian world. But the reality is the largeness of following Jesus,

of wrestling with what it means to be a follower of Jesus today, that gives us the sense of purpose and mission and belonging community that we crave. And I hope to be able to reframe that because it is the good life. It is. It is. That's what Jesus said. He's like, look look if you want to find life here you go it's paradoxical but this is the way and i hate i hate that that that profound way of losing our life of sacred service i hate that it's been confined to a few

expressions like i personally hate hate the terms full-time ministry, part-time ministry. Like I hate those reasons for like, it's the five-fold ministry, five-fold ministers. The church is supposed to equip the saints for the work of the ministry. So that's all of us. That's every single one of us. The enemy of our soul does such a good job of removing value from the every day because impact happens in the every day. He says, Oh, one day when you're this or that, one day you have accomplished that degree or that promotion or get married, whatever,

like then you're going to do something significant. Or he says, look back in the past, like back then you were doing something. He's terrified of us discovering that the present moment is full of purpose. He's terrified of us reaching out to the people who are marginalized, who are on the fringes,

who are quote unquote, unholy, unworthy. He's terrified of that today. And that's the life of a saint. It's very practical, very personal, and very specific to who we are and where we find ourselves today. Dude, that's so good. Keep preaching it, man. Come on, man. All right. Thanks for coming on, dude. We'll talk to you later. Thanks, man. Thanks for having me.