Theology in the Raw - The Urban Poor and the American Evangelical Church: Dr. Don Davis

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Dr. Don Davis is the founder and former Executive Director of The Urban Ministry Institute of World Impact, and he currently serves as the Senior Executive Advisor. Dr. Davis has been involved in ministry among the urban poor for over 40 years. Learn more about Don HERE. Register for the Exiles in Babylon conference (Minneapolis, April 3-5, 2025) at theologyintheraw.com -- If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe to my channel! Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw Or you can support me directly through Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Visit my personal website: https://www.prestonsprinkle.com For questions about faith, sexuality & gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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the evangelical church is good for this country. We also have the Holy Post is going to be there doing a pre-conference, and we have several amazing breakouts and awesome listening speakers. It's going to be amazing. Check it out, theologyintherod.com. My guest today, oh my gosh, my new best friend, Dr. Don Davis, who I didn't know from Adam. We have a mutual friend who put us in touch. And then through this conversation, I realized that this dude has hung out with some... He's been involved in all kinds of different ministries that we're going to talk about, and he's just done

some amazing work. He's hung out with John Perkins and Tom Skinner and other people who are just... He's just done amazing work in the church over the last several decades. Dr. Davis is the founder and former executive director of the Urban Ministry Institute of World Impact, where he also serves as a senior executive advisor. He's been working with and among the poor in various urban settings throughout the country, primarily helping raise up leaders from the poor through theological and pastoral training. He's been doing this longer than I've been alive, actually, over 50 years. Be prepared to be challenged, folks. This conversation at Dawn in particular is going to disrupt our, those of us who are

in a more comfortable, suburban evangelical context where we are not hanging out with the poor, we may not even know the poor, we don't even really think about the poor. Don is going to challenge us in a very good way. Challenge me. I mean, I'm still reeling over our conversation and learned a lot and saw the face of Jesus and the work that He's been doing. So without further ado, please welcome to the show, the one and only Dr. Dom Davis. Mr. Dom Davis, good to talk to you. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing good. I'm doing good. You're avoiding those fires out there, right? You're in Northern California.

Well, actually, I'm in Wichita, Kansas. It's quite cold here. Our ministry is headquartered in Los Angeles, but the institute that I founded, this is the 30th year of its founding. It's here in Wichita. Oh, wow! Okay. Are you from Kansas originally? I am. I am. I am originally from Wichita, Kansas. So, it's kind of surreal being back in the place where I grew up. Yeah. Wow. Wow. We got a deal years ago that we couldn't look away from. It's a spectacular facility.

We had a ministry, World Impact, the parent ministry in Wichita, and we had an opportunity to get a 16-acre campus, and it's a beautiful river going through it. We've been here 30 years, and I haven't regretted it, although I wonder what we would have done if we had been based in LA, where our parent ministry is. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, you got Yemba. You're in the middle of a pretty cold storm right now, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right.

Sleeping across. I'm in Boise, Idaho. We have had hardly any snow. It hasn't been too bad. It's a little gloomy. Oh, that's amazing. What a great place. Well, Dodd, I would love to hear about your ministry. So we have a mutual friend that put us in touch and he's like, hey, you got to talk to Don Davis about the work he's doing. And I'm like, I would love to. And I'm just going to do this live on the podcast because several people just have really spoke highly of you and the work you're doing. So why don't you let us know who you are?

We already said you're from Kansas, but how did you get into the work that you're currently doing now? Yeah, I am the former executive director and founder of the Urban Ministry Institute of World Impact. World Impact is a 50-year-old—well, more than 50 years we have ministered in communities experiencing poverty. We, for—I mean, back in the 60s, Dr. Keith Phillips founded World Impact. He was president of Youth for Christ, started a ministry in Los Angeles called World Impact that grew from neighborhood Bible clubs to, quite literally, we had a number, we deployed missionary staff into a number of cities. And now we've really grown our current president,

Dr. Alvin Sanders. He is leading us into a ministry where our focus is equipping leaders to empower them to do effective ministry in broken communities, communities that are experiencing poverty. We, through our programs now, we are training tens of thousands of folk. I mean, essentially, the Urban Ministry Institute is essentially World Impact's church-based seminary, which I founded 30 years this year. It is we train, we essentially give people who can't afford it and don't have the academic background, we enable them to get a seminary-level education for pennies on the dollar.

Pete Wow. Darrell It's designed for those who ordinarily wouldn't be able to participate in any sort of formal academic training or anything like that. We also have a church planning school, Evangel, where we train denominations, Christian ministries, church workers, to plant churches in communities experiencing poverty. We work also with trauma healing. We have a whole trauma healing. We partnered with the American Bible Society to equip those who are experiencing trauma in their neighborhoods, especially among the poor, to find their way out of that, you know, to go from tragedy

to triumph. And then the thing that prompted our conversation, we have done this work of equipping leaders in medium-maximum security prisons. The church-based seminary, which I founded, we actually equipped leaders in prisons to start ministries, plant churches, grow in their own Christian leadership. We've done that now since 2006, roughly. Wow. roughly. And we've trained many, many hundreds and hundreds of leaders in prison. We now are in, I think, last count, I would have to check our dashboard, but I think we're in 70 prisons now, medium to maximum security prisons. We train literally hundreds and hundreds of men and women who have made a decision for Christ, who are being disciples. Train them to, you know, to outfit them for

ministry, whether that's the pastoral ministry or missionary work or Christian workers. So, we have a pretty robust training, World Impact does. I've been a part of that, the founding of that sort of training for a lot of years. I've been married to my wife, Beth. We have three children. One of our oldest son, he died some years ago. He was a fine brother. He was an emo band guy. I mean, he was a hardcore punker.

And share the good news with folk. We're a musical family. You can see my guitar. I see all that. Yeah. I see books on one side and equipment on the other. Yeah. All my best theology I've gotten from Charles Schultz and Muddy Waters. Muddy is a great blues theologian. But yeah, I have a daughter who is a professor at the University of North Texas and a son who works in web tech stuff. Beth and I have been married 50 years. This also is our 50th year of…this will be 50 years of our ministry in equipping those who are poor serving in broken neighborhoods. We have done every sort of ministry you can imagine among the poor, planet churches. You know, I've been chancellor of a seminary.

We do a lot of work still in that. So the dear brother who introduced us, Preston, he knows me from the ministry I've done in sort of spearheading ministry among World Impact, our people who work in prisons alongside those in prisons, training those, providing seminary level training for those men and women who accept the Lord and who are doing great, and many of them who will never get out, which is in its own story. I mean, those who are called by Christ to do effective disciple making in prison as prisoners, knowing full well that they won't leave. Wow. I want to come back. I have a lot of questions about the prison ministry because

I don't know too much about it, but just your general, you said you've been involved with the urban poor your whole life. Where did that come from? Like, why have you been so passionate about that? That's a fascinating thing. I came in, honestly, when I was just very soon after high school, I got involved in the drug life, in that whole thing. It was the late 60s, early 70s. I was with a group of guys who were all altruistic. We wanted to change the world. We got into drugs, rock and roll and all of that, that seemed, I mean, there was a culture there that was altruistic about changing the world. It turned out to just be immoral and hedonistic. It was not the right direction. But as a result of that, one of the guys that

literally I sold drugs with, he became a Jehovah's Witness. He changed his life. I mean, and I was ready for a change. I dabbled in that for a while, but it was to no avail. It was through a person who my wife worked with who gave her a book on the Jehovah's Witnesses written by a Biola professor that I read and became a Christian. I mean, I wasn't prepared for that, but it was through that that I really immediately felt the Lord's tug to go into the, you know, into the communities

that I grew up in, inter-state communities, and to begin ministry. And so I started that right away. It wasn't two years after that that I heard of World Impact, which was based in Los Angeles. Missionary work, it was committed to making disciples in the roughest neighborhoods in the country. And I applied, you know, and roughly two years after that, I became a part of World Impact. I did community ministry. I was its director for a time. I resigned from World Impact in 1985, went to Wheaton College, Wheaton Graduate School, then got a, you know, a PhD from University of Iowa, all the time still being in connection to World Impact, which by then had made a real commitment to planting churches and doing Christian community

in the poorer communities that we were serving. And so, with that commitment to plant churches, raise up pastors, I founded the Urban Ministry Institute as part of World Impact in 1995. And I've been doing that since. Just this last year, I've turned that over, but I'm still highly involved in identifying, recruiting, releasing leaders who really are doing essentially frontline mission work in the poorest communities in America and across the world. World Impact now, oh my goodness, we have close to 400 satellites in 20 countries.

We've trained thousands, literally, of leaders who have gone on to plant churches and start ministries in some of the poorest neighborhoods around the world. In the same way with church planting, we've now, I don't know, I think the number is close to 800 different church plants that we've worked with. And as I mentioned, we're in a number of prisons around the U.S. and overseas, all with World Impact's simple vision to empower leaders to do the work of the ministry in these neighborhoods. We just... Evangelicals have not deployed workers or missionaries or missionary teams to the most dangerous, poorest, most at risk neighborhoods that are experiencing poverty. That's been World Impact's burden for them.

That's all I've known, like you say. And so it's really been thrilling to find ways to creatively, you know, to identify, to equip, and to release this new generation of men and women in these communities to do effective work. What are some of the top greatest challenges of doing specifically work among the urban poor in these dangerous communities. Like what are some things, maybe to frame the question differently, like people who have never really been

in this kind of context have done ministry. Like what are some of the big things that like are very unique to doing ministry of this kind of context? Yeah, well, I think the first thing is to recognize is the benign neglect of sort of evangelical whatever infrastructure to these places. I ministered with Tom Skinner when he was alive. He used to say, Tom Skinner used to say, the Holy Spirit doesn't have the same options in the inner city as he does in other places. He's one of the most brilliant creatures I've ever heard. He gave a talk on racial reconciliation,

I think, back before this was something people were in, like back in the 70s or something, and it was brilliant. Oh, man. Yeah. I was in the country before country was cool. I was on a board with Tom Skinner. I was in the country before country was cool. I was on a board with Tom Skinner, John Perkins, Dolphus Weary, myself. That was back in the 80s. So I've been involved with these guys. And all of them, all of us have recognized

that with all of the extraordinary things that we have done in ministry, you know, Bible-believing churches and ministries, we just haven't deployed to the poorest, raggiest, most dangerous places. And that's one of the biggest obstacles. Is that it? Is that quite literally, historically, evangelicals have just—it's the uneasy conscience. I think C.F.H. Henry, he wrote something in the 30s where he said, you know, there's just—you know, the uneasy conscience of Bible-believing churches in America is that they simply didn't concentrate

on these communities. They deployed other places. And that is just a historical fact. That's a real problem. Add to that, these neighborhoods are habitually and historically at risk, under-resourced, and they are just—they haven't been able to be able to take full advantage of the plethora of resources that most evangelical folk in ministry think about. I think it's hard for us to fathom that, you know, just a few years ago there were no seminaries that were open to anybody. You could have, I used to query a Mark Haberton of Fuller, dear brother, I used to say, you know, you could raise somebody from the dead and not get into fuller.

I mean, in other words, the financial, the racial issues, really a real issues, my dad died, my father died before he was allowed to vote. He participated in World War II. He couldn't participate in the GI Bill. He died before he could vote legally in our country. There are a lot of people who love Christ, who would have loved to serve Him historically, but had no access. You tend to forget that only in the recent history of America were any of the resources and places open, quite literally, even that goes for places like my alma mater. I was chosen this year as a Wheaton alum,

2024 Alumni of the Year for Distinguished Service to Society, which is a great honor. I appreciate that for my alum there at Wheaton. But Wheaton, when I was at Wheaton, this is not kidding. When I was at Wheaton, I was the only African American. I was gonna ask you. I mean, I used to have fun. I would kid saying that the entire population

of the graduate school, the African American population is very upset about this issue. And I can speak directly to this issue. If you think about that, I finished my work at Wheaton in 1989. In 1989, in a fine school that had an extraordinary of array of faculty and curricula of the Billy Graham Center is there.

There are very few domestic African-Americans or Hispanics. They're in the graduate school in 1989. I mean, so if you think about, you say, what is the problem? The problem is that there's been no focus, no deployment, no commitment, or at least if it has been, it hasn't been aggressive and transparent and out in the open for those sort of ministries we're aware of and their involvement in urban poor communities. It's even worse, frankly, being deployed overseas. So the lack of presence, the lack of involvement of the evangelical church generically deploying people in that. I think one of the

things that has always troubled me is that no systematic approach to address the barriers that would allow us to really deal with roughly 60 million people in America. I mean, it's a lot of people who live in these communities. And the fact that quite literally our programming, our training, most of the stuff that we have done neither addresses directly or is concerned with deploying a new generation of workers, pastors, ministries in these neighborhoods. So I've been involved in this long enough to know there's no conspiracy. But if you weren't aware of it, you might think that, boy, there is a conspiracy of neglect and absence. The church is in absentia when it comes to the inner cities of America. I'm always trying to find ways to improve my health. And the work that I do, I have

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I mean, it's unfamiliar, it's possibly dangerous. You're around people you just don't know. Maybe there's extra psychological issues. You're not going to make much, you know, even if people do start getting saved, you're around people you just don't know, maybe there's extra psychological issues, you're not going to make much, you know, even if people do start getting saved, they're not going to pay your salary. That's right. That's right. Beyond that, are there other reasons why?

These reasons that you just mentioned, Preston, are part of, to me, a matrix of issues that's sort of, I mean, it really is difficult. Many communities experiencing poverty are religiously and culturally diverse. They are economically depressed. If you finish a full stint at Gordon, then go to Fuller, and now you're ready, you're equipped, you want to go to—you want to do ministry for God, make disciples of Jesus in a poor community. It's going to be hard for you to plan a church when on a good Sunday the offering is going to be $57.88. There's not a lot of motivation there. Culturally, the communities are dangerous. They are economically depressed. It is not easy to do ministry there. You know, what is interesting though, Preston, with all of this panoply of academically backward, historically neglected, all of those things. Biblically,

these communities are the most fertile communities on earth for spiritual and discipling power. It's not lost on me that James 2, 5 says that God has chosen the poor to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom of God. There's no question in my mind that what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 1, that God has chosen the nothing to, you know, the nobodies, those who are little and small and ignored, to shame the wise, the strong. I've found that the communities that I have served and lived in for these last 50 years are some of the most open, fruitful, hungry. It's just the opposite of what you would think. They might be difficult to both live in, work in economically, they're depressed communities. The social issues, the backbones

of the community, both spiritually, socially, jurisprudentially are difficult. But the opportunity, oh my goodness, I mean, people are open to the Lord. There's opportunity to really make disciples in communities of poverty, not only in America, but around the world. We found that to be true. I remember talking to our mutual friend, Francis Chan, about this because he spent most of his ministry in the suburbs, in Simi Valley, in Southern California. And then he said, he just, I think he just got stagnant, you know, just like, what am I doing here? Like, we're just doing the same thing over and over.

Moves to the inner city in San Francisco, the Tenderloin District. And is all of a sudden walking to streets, sharing the gospel, going to the low income housing complexes, taking care of people's needs. I remember asking him, I think two years after he was there, I'm like, do you ever wish you can go back?

Do you ever miss? And I couldn't even finish my sentence. He was like, not in a million years. He was like, I have more gospel conversations that are like, he exactly just said that there's fruitfulness there, more people being converted, radical conversions, needs being met, and one day, then like a month, two months, six months of the suburbs, you know. This is perspective, I got a lot of suburban pastors and people listening and I, you know, so no shame,

but yeah, I've had friends, good friends, who have been heavily involved in urban ministry, like you, their whole life. And man, they opened my, I talked to them. And I even took a, when I was a professor at Cedarville University, we had an urban ministry minor, I think, Jeff Cook, my friend Jeff Cook headed up.

And he taught a class, it was the most famous class at Cedarville called Intro to Urban Ministry. Blue people's minds. He's, he's as part of the class, he had a, an, an herb, what he's called urban weekend or something where we went to the inner city of Springfield, Ohio, and we slept on the street. We just basically lived homeless for a weekend. It was no big deal. But so as a professor, I kept hearing my students rave about this class. I was like, well, I want to take it.

So I actually took it as a professor. And the weekend he had to sleep out of the streets, it was negative 19 degrees. And as I was leaving my wife and three little kids at home with my sleeping bag, she's like, I mean, he's not really going to do it. I'm like, I don't think so. I'm sure he's got some shelter.

I show up to my, you know, he's my teacher, but he's my colleague, you know? So I'm like, hey, Jeff think so. I'm sure he's got some shelter. And I show up to my, you know, he's my teacher, but he's my colleague, you know? And so I'm like, hey, Jeff, we're not really sleeping out. Like negative, people are going to die. He's like, and he looked at me straight face and said, what are the homeless going to do? I'm like, oh crap, this guy's serious. Dude, we slept outside.

We didn't sleep. We were huddled around bonfires, trying to stay warm as a worst side of my life. But yes, dumpster diving. We didn't get fed. I remember having a, the Sunday when he kind of debriefed the whole thing. It, it, it was like the worst Folgers cup of coffee I normally would have ever had. It was the best, the hot steamy after just 48 hours, this is nothing. But, and he even had some like sweet creamer. And I'm like, this is the best tasting thing I've ever,

and to feel the warmth go down my body. And I just, it was so shameful because I'm like, that was 48 hours. I'm going back to my two story house in the suburbs, you know, and like, it just, it blew my mind, blew my mind. Yeah, you know, aon, what you just shared, it's really indicative of those who meet the Lord and become disciples of Jesus. After living that lifestyle or being a part of that. They are some of the most fearless, remarkable, creative, hungry. They're just amazing Christian workers. What the Lord said, that He who is forgiven much loves much,

is literally true. I mean, in some ways, you ask what is one of the problems? I think one of our problems is that the way that we have read the Jesus of the New Testament seems to be completely odd and out of sync with who He was. He initiated His ministry by quoting that great text in Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach the good news to the poor. When John the Baptist was wondering, are you the one? When he was in prison, Jesus said, go back and tell John that the lame can walk, the blind can see, you know, those who are broken or healed, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And he knew that those elements among them, the poor getting the gospel preached to them, was a sign of true messianic ministry. And we all know, I love Zacchaeus Shorty, you know, when he is eating McNuggets, Jesus

at his house, and Zacchaeus says, look, if I punked anybody, I'm going to give them four times as much, and half of everything I got, I'm going to give it to people who ain't got nothing. Jesus said, today salvation has come to this house. I mean, if without looking, a cursory read of Jesus, the one who separates the sheep and the goats and said, you know, you've done these to the least of these, that Jesus, the Jesus of Scripture, it would be impossible to say that you are intimate with Him and just ignore the broken, the lost. He said in Luke 14, when you throw a banquet, don't

call people who can, you know, return the favor. Call people who are broken, who are hungry, who are lame, who got no voice. You know. I heard a great definition of the poor recently that said by global terms, if you can make any decision about sustenance in your mouth, I mean, there's leftovers, you can find some. He said, if you can find anything that you can eat, that by global definitions, you're really probably not poor. Poor people are people who live in traditions and literally work all day to perhaps eat

that night. I mean, there are millions and millions. You know, we've just turned more urbanites in the world in the last two years than any other human being. There are more people who live in urban centers now than who live anywhere on the planet. And the vast majority of them are poor. I mean, so if someone says, I wanna do right by God,

I wanna engage those who still have yet to hear of Christ in this kingdom, I don't see how you can close your eyes and throw a dart. You're going to find urban and poor people everywhere, in every part of the earth. And I don't know why it's still a boutique ministry among evangelicals. You might have said it. I mean, yeah, there's several deterrents. I mean, you could have an evangelical suburban church that has lots of funds and does what evangelical suburban churches do, but also spread awareness, saying, hey, we want to raise up leaders to go into these neighborhoods. but also spread awareness, saying, hey, we want to raise up leaders to go into these neighborhoods. We're not doing that. This church is not that, but we want to help empower people to do that,

raise awareness. We will give you a salary. You don't even need to raise money. We will take away financial hurdles, whatever. We will be behind you. We just need people to physically go in and do this work. Not everybody's called to do it, but more people need to be called, more people need to be called. See, the one thing, the genius of the ministry that I'm a part of, World Impact, is that it made a decision, missiologically, in around 2011 that has completely shaped the course of what we do, and I think could really impact the general nature of just evangelical deployment to tough neighborhoods. We determined that charismatic, meaning a spirit endowed, men and women who are from these communities can

be equipped to do the job of winning those communities. That is how I got involved, really quite literally, in creating seminary alternatives for those who neither could afford it, who had no academic training in it, who had no exposure to any sort of historic orthodox teaching about the Lord or any of that. It was built on that idea, the idea that instead of helping folk in the city, we need to see them as the vanguard who can do the work. They're the ones who have lived there, they understand the culture, the languages. They are not afraid. They live there.

That's who they are. And instead of getting some decent person to go to Wheaton University of Iowa, like I did, to do that, it would be better to find ways to identify, to equip them in their own context, to provide inexpensive, available, credible resource and training to them in their own neighborhood and allow them to be equipped to do the work that God wants us to do in those communities. And more and more, this has become the flavor, more than a flavor of the month. I mean, in other words, you find what you just said, Preston, that people are saying, I'm not called to do this. I can't do it. I don't think the

Spirit wants me to do it. But surely there are folk who can be equipped to do this work, who can be deployed there, who can be effective, not only evangelize, but make disciples and multiply churches and ministries in those neighborhoods. And World Impact, this is World Impact's entire vision now. I mean, this is all we do is to try to identify potential workers in the poorest communities experiencing poverty. And how can we define new ways to equip them to do that work for Christ? And that includes the prisons and jails

in American and around the world. I want to get to that really quickly, but I'm curious, what are some main, maybe misunderstandings about the urban poor that suburban people have? This is something that was so eye-opening to me when I took that class and talked to people who were homeless and prostitutes and to hear and talked to people who were, you know, homeless and prostitutes and to hear their stories and stuff.

Yeah, one thing that I think a misconception about those experiencing poverty is that they are experiencing poverty. They don't view themselves as poor. They have the same dreams, hungers, desires. They're just as creative. Look, I did my masters at Wheaton in systematic theology. And you can't do an advanced degree in systematics and not understand the Imago Dei, that the image of God is in every human being. That's what Tom was getting at. Tom Skinner was saying that the

poor, just because a person is poor, don't mean they can't understand Aquinas and Seneca and Aristotle or Calvin or anything else. They're poor. They're experiencing poverty. They're not a different species of human beings. They can understand, be as creative, as intelligent, as innovative as anybody. The only problem they have, literally, is that they are poor. And I hate to say it, but it's a real misconception that poor people are, in ways misendowed or unendowed or

off kilter. The imago dei is in them, but it's just not as formed as well. They can't be what God wants them to be. To me, it's just a poor reading of the Bible. I think, I love Advent. I'm from a tradition that loves Advent, Christmas, Todd, we're in Epiphany. You know, Jesus' family were po-pho. They immigrated to Egypt. They were so poor, they didn't have a place to stay. In some ways, if you look at the most fine array of the most remarkable people in the Judeo-Christian sort of panoply of folk, they were all raggedy and Pol and immigrants. In some ways, that's one of the biggest problems that we have today is that we have, our understanding of people who are experiencing poverty has allowed us to sort of erase or eclipse or diminish their potential

as men and women of God. A church that serves somebody in a poor community is a church. There are no remedial churches, remedial pastors. If the Holy Spirit gives you gifts among the poor, the Holy Spirit is giving you gifts among the poor. I mean, it sounds, I hate to be so ridiculous about it, but I'm telling you that there are a lot of people who just simply don't expect and don't allow for the Holy Spirit to do as much among those who are poor as He would. Essentially, a ministry among the poor is helping them be redeemed and being lifted to sort of suburban, middle-class values. What they need to do is be saved and then become like us, not be saved and then become what God wants them to be, serving in that community as they are. we don't see living among the poor as an asset

for ministry and kingdom work. We don't. It's something to be liberated from, not to take advantage of. I work among people who are the most fearless human beings on the face of the planet. They'll go anywhere. They're intimidated by nothing. They are not your average bear. I tell people that I don't work in your mother's ministry. I work in your mama's ministry. I mean, the folk that I work with, I kid you not, Preston, they are the most valiant, they're the most amazing human beings I've ever seen on earth. And no one has ever gone to try to find them, equip them, provide for them, strengthen them, enable them.

That is a big, big problem. You say, what's the problem? That's the problem. I say, what's the problem? That's the problem. I think our image of the poor and those who are experiencing poverty is so low that our confidence in what they are and what they can become doesn't even show on the dipstick. I mean, we would never see them as the leaders of the pack. We would never see them as coming to the Lord and then actually God calling them to lead our megachurch or our great ministries.

When they are, hands down, the finest Christians I've ever met, the most courageous and versatile folk that I've ever met. So, the people that we have trained, we have trained literally thousands since we founded the Institute. Many of them have gone on to start ministries, plant churches. They're doing—I think if you took the aggregate of people that World Impact has trained, I think I looked at our stats this last year. I think we've trained nearly 27,000 workers in our ministry alone. I mean, these are people who are deploying in the toughest neighborhoods on the planet. You know, people who are planting churches under trees in South India or, you know, in

Bed-Stuy. I mean, this is who serve people who shoot up under bridges. I mean, our clientele, they're the most fearless human beings on earth. And quite honestly, all we're doing is trying to find ways to equip them to do that effectively, cheaply, smartly. Wow. So I think that's the problem. It's a long answer to your question, but that's the problem.

The problem is that for all of our— for everything we say about the Imago Dei and everything we say about all of that, we don't act like we believe that God Almighty could do extraordinary things about people who are experiencing poverty. They sort of are left out. They're the recipients of our care, not to be the champions of our, we don't go to the city. That's what Tom said.

Our ministries don't go to the city to find the next great cadre of disciples and men and women who are going to do the most extraordinary work for Christ in the world. They're to be the recipients of our love and charity. That's not where you go to find the finest brothers and sisters to do work. Pete But that's exactly what Paul says. He quoted already, 1 Corinthians 1, in the context of leadership. We're all populists, we're all Paul, he's addressing people who are looking for leaders and then he says, God chose the poor among you to be great. Yeah, I think if that could become our norm, I mean, like I said, I've been a part of,

you know, when I started, when I went to Wheaton, when I went to Wheaton grad school, when I went to University of Iowa, I had opportunity redemption and lift is real. If you're from the streets and you become a disciple of Jesus, you get a seminary degree or some advanced training. There's a lot of people who want to bring you in. There's a lot of opportunity. Why would you go back? Why would you go back to that neighborhood when, brother, you're a star? You know, I'm the prize pony now. You know, I've got that experience. I've got a great testimony of deliverance. I've proven myself smart enough to graduate from some really good evangelical schools. Why not just go and hang out now and find a nice,

cushy position? Look, I'm saying that I think that our whole bent is not toward...the grace of God, Preston, works just the opposite of the way that evangelicals preach it. The grace of God works best among people who deserve it the least. It's designed to flow like raw water, to go to places. It goes to the lowest spot, the spot that nobody cares about. That's where God does its best work. Jesus could do no good work among those folk who didn't want to expect it. Chris This is actually a good segue into your prison, the prison ministry side of things. Cause I would imagine that that is even going a step further

to people who are forgotten by society. Tell us, for those of us who know next to nothing about prison ministry work, what's that like? What are some challenges? Your prison ministry is extraordinary, like? What are some challenges? Yeah, prison ministry is extraordinary, largely because, you know, it has a well-heeled history among our churches. We know people have gone in, and prison ministries, you know, who go into evangelism, churches that have services there, prison ministry in any venue and in any way is really

noble work. The men and women there, we save only South Africa, house more people in our prison system than any nation on earth. We have a lot of people in prison. Yeah, the United States. And our prison system is bankrupting our states, quite literally. We got really ambitious with our jurisprudential laws where we, you know, the three strikes and you're out kind of things. Our prisons really swelled during the 70s and 80s, and now our prison systems just generically have bankrupted. Our states are just—they have no money for programming or anything. So it's a better day for ministries to go into prisons and to start things, especially if they fund them and staff them. Prisons are very, very open to doing all kinds of different things. And there are many creative things that are happening in prison, in education, in all sorts of things. World Impact began

our—we began our foray into prison ministry. We were, like I told you, we had started a church-based seminary program where we allowed churches denominations, we helped them to start their own seminary programs in their churches at a fraction of the cost. We wrote the curriculum, we started the infrastructure, we created an entire seminary in a box, so to speak, for those who couldn't afford it and were serving neighborhoods that would never offer seminary education in them. Well, the same was true for the prison. There was a prison in 2003, a prison here in Kansas, the Ellsworth Prison, where we started with prison fellowship.

We started a seminary class of prisoners, mainly lifers, guys who otherwise, many of them didn't even qualify. In other words, we are deliberately, we have started our programming deliberately unaccredited. All of us had terminal degrees. I mean, we had PhDs, our curricula. I taught at all sorts of different schools. I mean, we could teach anywhere, but we deliberately designed curricula for those who otherwise would not be able to receive it. And we started some of those classes in a class with lifers in Ellsworth Prison in 2003.

And it was such a success, I mean, it was dramatically a success. The guys not only learned, many of them were very interested, went on. It changed the culture literally of the prison there, and Prison Fellowship opened up, and we took that pilot that we did in Ellsworth and started a prison program in California, where essentially we got a grant to start and do the same in 32 different prisons in California to start literally seminaries in yards with students who we, quite literally, the guys, many of them did not have academic background. We didn't care about that.

If they were willing to do the work and got the chaplains, okay, they could be a part of our seminary program in prison. And since that sort of homely beginning, our prison program has grown dramatically, not only in California, but throughout the country. We have trained quite literally hundreds of guys in our, we now have a full four year, it's taken the guys about four years to finish, it's called the Capstone curriculum, 32 hours of seminary level training. We're deliberately not accredited so we can invite anyone into the program, regardless of their academic background. We have been able to, with donors, find a funding strategy that

allows the guys to completely take our curriculum in prison for pennies on a dollar. I mean, quite literally, guys who make 25 cents a day, they couldn't afford seminary. But we have been able to get donors who would underwrite their training. And now I think we're close to 2000 graduates of our program. And many of the guys have not only gotten out,

they have planted churches, they've started ministries. Many of the guys, some of the lifers have been used as staff on the inside of the prison. It has been a revolutionary thing. Those who have world-impact church-based seminaries, those prisons, they're safer prisons. I mean, we have gotten an extraordinary reputation now. This is how Mike introduced you, Preston, to me. It's through this. These programs are so amazing that we have now, I think we're in, like I told you at the beginning,

I think we're more than 70 different satellites of World Impact Church-based seminaries that are prison run, staffed by volunteers in prisons that are teaching this. And we have, I think we're close to nearly, I think we're close to nearly 1,700, 1,800 graduates from our prison program. And many of them, it's really extraordinary. There are some great studies that are going on how our recidivism rate of those who take too many classes is dramatically low.

I think it's under 3%. I mean, I should know all of this. But I mean, it's like the guys who get this training, who do this work, who participate in this discipleship and this leadership development training, it is at profound effect. And it's really, it's made us like more than just a little well-known among the prisoners and the wardens, to be honest. You couldn't do these programs without the full endorsement of the wardens. And we've gotten a wonderful relationship now with a number of prisons.

I think we're one of the only prison programs, seminary programs that has been permitted to have seminary level classes at the federal level. We are training prisoners. We make that available to those prisons at the federal level that want it. They actually are using our curriculum at seminary level in them.

We also, weirdly, we have all of these relationships with accredited schools, even though we have deliberately said we're going to be unaccredited, that when they finish, they can apply and receive direct entree into these programs. Fuller is one of those. NIAC, before they closed, Tabor College, there are like 12 different seminaries that we have. So it's pretty amazing to see these guys, many of them who can barely read. We have designed the curriculum

quite literally to accommodate those who would not have access to traditional, prose-centered, heavy text-oriented, heavy language-oriented seminary training. That's fantastic. But God has done extraordinary work, and it's stunning to see the effect of it. Don, where can people get ahold of you? You have a website or the ministries that you're involved in? Worldimpact.org would be the easiest way. Worldimpact.org will open them up.

It'll give them access to the church-based seminary, what we're doing in prison, all the stuff that we're doing in trauma healing, everything that we're doing in like planting churches, helping church planners, rather. Yeah, Wordimpact.org, and you can, from there, they'll be able to get ahold of me and all of our staff who are involved in all of this. Yeah, that is, that's it right there. Well, Don, I, I, I've got to run. It was so, so good getting to know you and all the work that God's doing through you.

I'm sure this has been a challenging conversation to, to many, which is a good thing. Let the uncomfortableness sit in. That's a good thing. Let the uncomfortableness sit in. That's a good thing. I'm experiencing it. So yeah, thank you for your courage and the work you're doing. And I hope a lot of people check out those websites. Thank you to Preston for even the invite.

I mean, I am so excited about the potential of what God Almighty can do among those who are broken and small. That's awesome. Have a good day, Don. Alright, thank you, dear brother. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus Podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Hey, so I'm launching a new season on the podcast, The Doctor and the Nurse. World renowned brain coach, Dr. Daniel Amon, joins me as a co-host as we dive deep into the mind and the brain of everything high performance. I've been fascinated for years as I've worked with top athletes, high powered CEOs, Hollywood actors, and all high performers and in all types of different fields of how they break through pressure, ignite drive, how they overcome distractions, how they put fear on the bench,

how they tap into flow state and just dominate all these different areas of high performance. So on this season, my good friend Dr. Daniel Lehmann will break down what is actually going on in the brain in these different areas and I will give actionable tools to be able to use and apply in your life. So buckle up the doctor and the nurse on the David Nurse Show coming at you.