SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne
So that...God's ways may be known on Earth.
"So That" is an FBC Boerne podcast focused on what God is doing around the world with missions and through FBC Missions partners.
SO THAT Missions Podcast | FBC Boerne
Episode 61: Blake McDaniel Coca-Cola & the Gospel!
What if I told you that Christianity is growing faster globally today than at any point in history? While many American Christians see a church in decline, the reality beyond our borders tells a dramatically different story.
In this eye-opening conversation with Blake McDaniel, a veteran mission mobilizer with the Navigators, we unpack striking statistics that reveal God's extraordinary work in our lifetime. Blake shares how the percentage of evangelical Christians worldwide has exploded from just 3% at World War II to 12% today—with the growth curve now pointing straight up. Places like Nepal have seen Christian communities grow from nearly non-existent to hundreds of thousands of believers in just three decades.
Yet this growth isn't evenly distributed. Using Jesus' parable of yeast in dough, Blake explains how the gospel remains concentrated in certain regions while 40% of the world has virtually no access. The regions containing most of the world's Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims receive only a tiny fraction of our missionary resources.
Drawing a fascinating parallel between Coca-Cola's global marketing strategy and Christian missions, Blake challenges us to think strategically about resource allocation. If a beverage company can achieve global market penetration in 150 years, what's taking the church 2,000 years to accomplish the same with the gospel?
Blake's personal journey from systems analyst to missions mobilizer inspires us to maintain open hands before God. When initially approached about overseas service, his immediate "no" eventually transformed into a different "yes" that has led to hundreds of missionaries being sent where he himself couldn't go.
Join us for this thought-provoking discussion that will transform how you see God's work in the world today and challenge you to find your unique role in His global mission. Whether you're called to go, mobilize, or support in other ways, there's a place for everyone in this extraordinary global movement.
Hey everybody, thank you so much for joining us today on FBC Missions. So that Podcast. Today I have a great friend and guest. His name is Blake McDaniel. He works with Navigators and we're going to talk about how God is using us to make disciples. Hope you enjoy. Welcome to FBC Missions. So that Podcast. This is an encouraging place to hear how God is working in and around us. Hey everybody, so glad that you've joined us today. Uh, we've got another fun guest, One of our perspectives instructors. His name is Blake McDaniel. Hey Blake, how are you, sir?
Blake McDaniel:Doing great. I appreciate the chance to be with you today, chad man, I'm so glad that you're here.
Chad Mason:I was trying to think back on how long we've been friends, but it's been a long time.
Blake McDaniel:Yeah, I'm not real good on timelines, but I remember that in a previous life you were the missions pastor at a church down in Beaumont and you brought me down as an instructor there, and so whenever that was I'm guessing what maybe 10 or 12 years ago.
Chad Mason:It had to be 2012, 2013. So, yeah, it's a long time ago. Yeah, it might have been earlier. So my daughter was born in 2010. That's why we were in Beaumont. We came out of Mexico, so it might have been 2011. It was the year that we probably had that first perspectives class in Beaumont. Yeah, the years are ticking off. It's 14 years, man. We've been friends for a long time. Blake, you look the same, maybe a little bit more white in your hair, but you know, you've not aged at all.
Blake McDaniel:Well, you can't tell that on a podcast. You're being very kind.
Chad Mason:Well, nobody knows. I mean, you could look like Brad Pitt in here. Nobody really knows but uh that, uh, you're from Austin, so the Texas Hill Country has been kind to you. You look great. So, uh, tell us a little about your family, about how you got to Central Texas, how long you've been there.
Blake McDaniel:Tell us a little about yourself, blake yeah, I am a long-term Central Texas person. I wasn't born and raised here, but I moved to Austin in 1972 to attend UT and I've been there ever since so over 50 years now and, like a lot of folks that do undergrad or grad work at UT, just fell in love with the city and stayed on.
Chad Mason:Well, you know, in the Hill Country, especially this part of the Hill Country, there's a lot of purple people. You know those Aggie fans and I think you might be the first Longhorn fan, longhorn graduate that I've had on my podcast, and I have been a long-term lifelong Longhorn fan. So I just want to welcome you, blake. It's a special greeting for you today.
Blake McDaniel:Well, you're welcome. I did undergrad, I did grad school and I actually worked at UT for 15 years. Oh gosh, so my blood is very orange. But I've got a daughter. That guess where she went to school.
Chad Mason:I don't know, it has to be Aggieland for us to have this conversation.
Blake McDaniel:It is. She went to the evil empire.
Chad Mason:The evil empire. You know, jeff Lewis, he was here a few weeks ago and he's a Tennessee guy. You know I always joke with him and say that that's the flaming orange school rather than the burnt orange school. And he says that you take that beautiful, bright orange and you bake it in the sun for too long and then you get the Texas orange. And I thought that's a great way of saying that, jeff. So well, we're so glad that you're with us today. Blake, you've been doing really mission mobilization for quite a while, definitely the 14 years we've been friends. But tell me how you got into it. So you were working you said 15 years for the University of Texas. How did you go from full-time career at the university to moving into really missions mobilization, disciple making, which has, I think, been your longer career?
Blake McDaniel:Yeah, great question. In middle age I was working as a systems analyst at UT Austin and was involved with the church that I'm still involved with today, hill Country Bible Church in Northwest Austin, and I was invited by our senior pastor to lead the global outreach effort there at our church. As a layperson, we had done a short-term missions trip to Central Asia together where we were doing some teaching at a church planning training center there, and at the end of that time he invited me to lead our global outreach effort and I did that for about five years. So you know it was entirely as a layman.
Blake McDaniel:I was working full time at UT at the time and it whetted my appetite and decided that I wanted to do what you see a lot of people doing, turning their avocation into their vocation and so I began looking around for opportunities to do mobilization-type work with a desire to operate at a little higher level than I was leading the missions effort at Hill Country and to be able, at that higher level, to work with dozens, if not hundreds, of churches doing the same kinds of things with them that I'd had the chance to experience in my church. So it was really that volunteer role in my church that first got me involved, and I ended up getting involved with an organization that no longer exists called Advancing Churches, and Commitment Did a lot of consulting work. We did conferences and a number of different things to just try to serve as a resource to people like yourself who are leading the missions efforts in local churches.
Chad Mason:Yeah, so I'm glad you brought up affectionately ACMC. When I first got involved in missions leadership, which was only back in like 2002, some of the first resources I was given were ACMC resources. I think by that time probably the ministry had closed already. I don't know when it closed, but by 2002, was ACMC still around?
Blake McDaniel:It was, I didn't get involved with them until 2000. And we ended up merging with an organization called Caleb Project in 2007. Both organizations were struggling and we kind of pulled each other underwater, and we had a lot of intellectual property rights and we had some debt that we needed to deal with as an organization, and so we put those things out on the market for the highest bidder, and pioneers ended up buying all of our intellectual property rights. And then they surprised us by providing an opportunity for anybody that wanted to come on board with them to do so, and so most of my ACMC colleagues had scattered to the four winds, but there were, I think, five of us who accepted Pioneer's offer and came on board with them, and we actually reconstituted ACMC under the umbrella of.
Chad Mason:Pioneer's. Okay, okay, so that's awesome. We had our first instructor for Perspectives this year was Andrew Remke.
Blake McDaniel:Oh yeah.
Chad Mason:And uh, and he's you know church partnerships with pioneers. A great guy did a great job speaking for us, but he's he's local and I've really enjoyed getting to know Andrew, and so a lot of his resources remind me of ACMC and, uh, that would probably be why.
Blake McDaniel:Well, there's a strong connection there. Acmc survived for four years under the umbrella of pioneers, and then it was finally shut down, and when that happened, I joined that team that Andrew now leads. I was part of the church partnership team, and so he ended up taking over the role of the fellow who was my boss when I was part of that team.
Chad Mason:That's wild. The connections are always there, you just don't know it. And so that's pretty neat. He's a great guy and what a great resource. I didn't realize that ACMC had that kind of influence on pioneers with their church partnerships, but it makes sense because there's a lot of similarities. Well, some of those tools that were on my shelf again as early for me as 2002, 2003, have been very valuable to me. They still have value. They still have a lot of great ideas on how do you form a mission committee, how would you organize your church to have a heart for the nations, how do you kind of work through a strategy to mobilize, kind of lift and pull people from within the church to have a global vision and global heart and idea? And so I just love that. That's so much a part of who and what God has used you for in the past and continues to now. So tell me, where are you now? What are you doing now If it's not Pioneers and AMC, mc? How is God using you as a mobilizer today?
Blake McDaniel:Well, I ended up leaving ACMC and Pioneers back in 2013 and ended up coming back to an organization that had a profound impact in my life as a young believer a group called the Navigators.
Chad Mason:I think people have heard about those guys. They've been around for a little while.
Blake McDaniel:We have. We're a little over 90 years old now and I was involved with the Navs as an undergrad and a grad student at UT Austin back in the 70s and they really shaped my view of what the spiritual life is and what the Great Commission is all about. So that was my first involvement with the NAVs was back in the 70s. I served as associate staff with them for five years back in the 90s with the church arm of the organization. And now here I am, later on in life, I'm 11 years into a full-time role with the Navigators.
Chad Mason:And tell me about that role. What are you doing at this time?
Blake McDaniel:Well, I made a move back in the fall to a different arm of the organization. We're big enough where we've got a number of different things that we do, and one of the arms is an arm for senior staff and I decided when I turned 70 that I probably qualified for that. And so I made that jump back in September, and one of the things I love about it is that they give me a lot more latitude with my job description.
Blake McDaniel:I figure by this point in time in my life that hopefully I figured a few things out and so I've got two basic components to what I do with Encore, that senior arm of the organization. One is an international piece and so my focus within the organization is with Eurasia, and different people use that word in different ways, but for us Eurasia is the former Soviet.
Chad Mason:Union.
Blake McDaniel:Okay, and I'm involved in doing research and doing recruiting of new missionaries for that area of the world. So that's one piece of my job. The other piece of my job is local, so it's really fun having both a local and a global component to what I do. And most of the local stuff I do is through my home church, where I first got this experience leading missions 25 years ago. I'm involved in disciple-making and coaching and mentoring and leadership and just have reengaged with our global outreach team after nearly a 20-year gap. Yeah, and I'm doing mobilization work in the context of our church.
Chad Mason:Man, I love to hear that. It's really exciting to see one continuity you know people move around a lot today and there's a lot of changes and to think that you've been a part of the same community of faith for 30 plus years, that you're serving in a place where you used to have various roles over the years, different ways that you've engaged, and yet you've had the same continuity, the same community of faith for that long, is a wonderful thing. I think what you can build in 32 years is different than what you can build in two right You're absolutely right.
Blake McDaniel:As a matter of fact, just to elaborate on that a little bit, I view involvement with local church kind of like marriage. There's legitimate grounds for divorce, but it's few and far between, and I see so many people today that don't hold that view of the local church, that don't hold that view of the local church, and so it's a privilege to have been a 32-year member of this church and to have been with them during times where things were going great, but to be able to persevere through times that were a little bit more of a struggle.
Chad Mason:You mentioned that you were doing the NAVs in the 1970s in Austin. I was also in Austin in the 1970s.
Blake McDaniel:Oh, is that right.
Chad Mason:Yeah, I was born in Seton Hospital in 79. How?
Blake McDaniel:about that.
Chad Mason:My kids say I'm old because I lived in the 70s. I don't remember the 70s so I just thought you know you might not. We probably crossed paths all the way back in 79. Well, there's so many good things that God has been doing through you, blake, but one of the things I get to see and have been a part of is your instruction and perspectives, and you've been a great lesson nine. I think I've had you every class I've led.
Chad Mason:You've come and done a lesson nine along the way, and lesson nine is an interesting part of the class. It's you mentioned today and I always say that it's a hinge. You've spent the first eight weeks. You spend five weeks talking about God's heart for the nations. You're looking at how the scriptures have facilitated his passion to draw all the peoples to himself. Then we talk about history, how God has been moving, of course, through the apostles and since the apostles and into modern day. We've, you know, last week, focused on the pioneers you know and all the kind of big names and the big movements of the last 300 years. And then we get to lesson nine.
Chad Mason:Lesson nine is kind of I call it the report card. It's where you kind of what's happening today? What's going on around the world? Where are we at If this was God's vision from the beginning? Abraham on, and very clearly, the commissioning of the church. The mission of the church is to engage the nations In 2,000 years of Christian history. How are we doing? And so you get to really dive into that space. You gave amazing I mean such a you're a numbers guy, which I think is great because it helps you kind of get through what can be a tedious lesson at times with all the statistics, but what comes out of it is that there's a movement towards the Lord today, unlike anything that's happened in world history. So let's talk just a minute about how the Lord is moving. In the last couple hundred years especially, I think you gave some statistics that that, uh, that are really interesting. Um, but I think one of them was in 1790, I think it was only was it one percent or three percent yeah, it was one percent yeah, so.
Chad Mason:So. So talk about that just for a minute, sure um.
Blake McDaniel:For those of you who are not history buffs, 1790 was around about the time that the individual who's called the father of modern missions, william Carey, went to India and began to work in that area of the world, and at that point in time, only 1% of the world was evangelical Christian, and so there was a huge need for what he did back over 200 years ago. In the 200-plus years since then, god has done phenomenal things, and much of that really since World War II a phenomenal growth of the church. Really since World War II, a phenomenal growth of the church. So we go from a point where the world is about 2% evangelical Christian around the time of William Carey to World War II where it's about 3% evangelical Christian, with that number doubling in the next 40 years to 6% and then doubling again in the next 30 years to 6% and then doubling again in the next 30 years to 12%.
Blake McDaniel:And what I described in the class today as we talked about this for those of you that have a math background, this is called the exponential part of the growth curve, where you plot these data points on an x-y axis and you connect the dots and the line at some point begins pointing straight up. Well, that's happened since world war ii and I think probably for most followers of jesus here in the us, they're oblivious to that. They have no idea that that's what god has been doing in the world for the past 80 years.
Chad Mason:Yeah, it really is remarkable. I mean just straight from 3% to 12%, a 9% increase in the last 30 years. But the shocking thing is from 6% to 12% in the last 30 years and, like you said, the trend continues. So you could see another doubling in the next seven and a half years. Like it's really quite incredible to see how the body of Christ is exploding around the world. But you're right, we don't see it here. Why don't we? Why is it not something that we're all aware of?
Blake McDaniel:Well, I think one of our tendencies as Americans is to look at the world through an American lens and I have to acknowledge I do that all the time. Well, when we do that regarding the church, we get a distorted picture of what's really happening in the world. Because think back on what the church in the US has looked like since World War II, with Roman Catholics, with Orthodox, with most folks out of a mainline denominational background. They've seen fairly significant decline in involvement since that time. And even with many of our independent churches they're doing well if they're just holding steady, if they're maintaining, yeah. But when you look at the numbers outside the Western world, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, it's a very different picture. The church is exploding in those parts of the world and for most of us we're just not aware. It's not part of our frame of reference for assessing what it is that God is doing.
Chad Mason:Yeah, it really. It's mind-boggling. The numbers are astronomical. To try to think about the number I think you mentioned today, there were 400,000 believers in Nepal, when there was maybe like 10 in 1990. I can't remember what the number was. It was something very small in 1990. And now we are 35 years past that and you have 400,000 believers in Nepal and you don't see them, you don't hear them. I don't know enough. I mean, I do.
Chad Mason:I've met a Nepali believer, but not many, and it's definitely not something that's visible at First Baptist Church here in Bernie. But it doesn't actually matter right, what they're seeing, what God's doing isn't contingent on our understanding or knowledge, but it does seem something we could celebrate, it's something that we could—I think most people in the West feel like the church is in decline and they feel like we're losing the battle. You know, they feel like. They feel like the Christianity is is passing away before our eyes and that brings some nervousness, some tension. It kind of feeds into the political day as well, the just this feeling that everything that we know is is passing away in front of us. You know, but it's really not the truth on the global scale, the way that the know is passing away in front of us, you know, but it's really not the truth.
Blake McDaniel:On the global scale, the way the gospel is growing among the places it had never been in the past, yeah, it really is phenomenal to consider what God has done, you know, during the few years of what our lives have been. It's just remarkable. I think there's a tendency among probably Christians around the world to go back when they read their Bibles maybe especially looking at the Book of Acts and Paul's missionary journeys and some of the just amazing stories that are told there and in the Gospels to think, boy, wouldn't it be great if I could have been a part of all of that. But the reality is that God is actually doing things today that he never did in the first century and that we are having the privilege of living in a time where the first century saints probably are looking down from heaven and saying, boy, I wish I could be part of that.
Chad Mason:Isn't that amazing? That's a great perspective, great thought there, blake. So there's a lot more to your presentation, a lot more that we talked about. I think one of the things that was compelling was I think there was a slide that you showed. You walked through each portion of the slide but it said that at Pentecost there was one believer for every 300 people groups or something along those lines and then we kind of or one church, maybe one church, what was? Do you remember the specifics on that?
Blake McDaniel:Yeah, if my memory's not failing me, I think at the end of the first century there were 12 unreached people groups for every church on the planet.
Chad Mason:Every church on the planet. So you needed each church would need to divide up the people groups. For every church on the planet, every church on the planet, so each church would need to divide up the people groups and need to tackle 12 unreached people groups for there to be a thorough saturation movement.
Blake McDaniel:Absolutely, and that's just overwhelming.
Chad Mason:Yeah, of course, and then that's progressed Slowly but it's progressed. And so do you remember I?
Blake McDaniel:I know that I remember the last one, but uh yeah some of the steps along the way, yeah well, one of the steps along the way is around about the time of the protestant reformation, around about 1500, that ratio had dropped to one to one, where if every church on the planet adopted a different unreached people group and took that responsibility seriously, that the world could be one for Christ in a generation. Well, when you come forward from that, come up to the year 1900, that ratio is something like maybe 30 or 50 to 1. And as you come up to the new millennium, that ratio goes all the way up to 600 to one. So you've got the concept of partnership that's being introduced, where today more than 600 churches could partner together, focusing on a single unreached people group. And if we did that in a systematic way on a global scale, we could complete the task in our lifetime.
Chad Mason:The concept is unimaginable. There's far more resource than necessary to finish this task, but the concept, the thing that you mentioned, is that it's not evenly distributed. We have the resources, and those resources are even available in some ways, and yet there are still places in the world, peoples in the world have yet to hear the gospel for the first time.
Blake McDaniel:Sadly that's the case, and one of the parables out of the gospels that we took a look at together today in the class out of Matthew 13 is the parable of the yeast, and, of course, for anybody who's a baker, they know how vital yeast is in the baking process, because whatever you're baking is not going to rise without yeast. Well, the problem is not that there is a lack of yeast, there's plenty of yeast. The problem is it's there is a lack of yeast, there's plenty of yeast. The problem is it's not evenly distributed through the dough, and so there are areas that have an abundance of yeast in it and there are areas of the world that have virtually no yeast in it, thinking of yeast as being a picture of the gospel Sure, and so, as a result, that cake that comes out of the oven after being baked is a really lumpy cake, and that's sad because virtually 40% of the world would be included in those areas in that cake that just don't have enough yeast in it.
Chad Mason:Yeah. So that's another incredible moment as we go through Lesson 9, is thinking through these places that have extremely limited or no access to the gospel of Jesus. And so you always hear the term if you've been on Perspectives, you've heard the term for sure the 1040 window. It's talking about the place on the map where the 10th parallel and 40th longitudes interact and forms a square on a map that shows basically North Africa, southeast Asia and the Middle East, and you put those together and you look at it and you see that it's where the largest majorities of high-population peoples live and the least opportunity to find the gospel. And he even talked about the circle of significance, the India, china, indonesia kind of circle that pulls in Southeast Asia, and you've got in that group 99% of all Hindus, 98% of all Buddhists, huge percentages of Muslims as well, and you just got this huge. This is an area, and then that's where we send I think the statistic was 4% of our missionaries or something along those lines.
Blake McDaniel:Yeah, it's sad that the church really is not nearly as strategic as it should be in terms of how we allocate both manpower resources and financial resources, and I don't mean to be throwing stones at the church, but the places that are going to be easy to reach have been reached. They have been, and the places that are left, it's going to take people who are willing to pay a price in order to go there and to have an impact there.
Chad Mason:I mean when you look at how the gospel has moved throughout history. When it moves into new places, it almost always is met with opposition. What's wild is also met with incredible blessing. The people are willing to sacrifice with what seems to be inordinate courage and great love for their master, and they don't seem to feel like they're sacrificing all that. We would, from the outside, look and say, look what you're giving up, but they seem to be doing it with such joy.
Chad Mason:One of the stories you tell and I think you tell it very well is a marketing illustration about Coca-Cola and that Coca-Cola had a vision to put a can of Coke within reach of every person on the planet. And they kind of work through this process of how are we going to accomplish that. And I love this story. I've used it many times since I first heard you talk about it. But if you are just working for a marketing firm like Coca-Cola to try to get your product in their hands, you know you might think about how you put your resources, marketing resources into practice. How do we get this out there further, right? And so you talk about everything from market dominance where they're strong versus where they're not, where they want to be and how they, how they move towards working to get that that product available. Tell us a little bit in that theme. It's a fun analogy. I have a fun story to go along with it.
Blake McDaniel:Well, I look forward to hearing your story. The statistics are not exactly a third, a third and a third, but they're close to that, and so let's, for sake of argument, say that it is that when a third of the market. In the case of Coca-Cola, you would say they dominate that market. Coca-cola products are widely used within that market. A third of the market Coca-Cola has their foot in the door, and a third of the market they have no market share at all. So how would they choose to allocate their resources if their vision was to put a third of the market? They have no market share at all. So how would they choose to allocate their resources if their vision was to put a can of Coke in the hands of every person on the planet?
Blake McDaniel:Well, coke is a metaphor for the gospel, and what's it going to take for us to put the gospel within reach of every person on the planet? If a third we have good penetration with, a third we have our foot in the door with, and a third we have no influence with at all, how do we allocate our manpower resources? How do we allocate our financial resources in a situation like that? Well, I think any marketing director that was worth his salt would say let's devote a third here, a third here and a third here. And if he was at all strategic, he would say let's take some of the resources from the market that we dominate and shift them to the market where we have no presence. Sadly, the church has not chosen to operate that way.
Chad Mason:Well, we're definitely not united in our ability to do so, even if we did, but it is, I think, a really great word picture. And if you've traveled if you're listening today and if you've traveled internationally have you ever been anywhere where you couldn't get a Coke? You get this picture. This is my story. I was in the Army from 99 to 2001. I'm sorry, from 97 to 99.
Chad Mason:And as a part of my Army deployment, we went to Thailand and we were hiking in the jungles for several weeks as a part of a training mission. It was horrible, it was hot, it was wet, it was miserable. And there was this one day. We had been in the jungle for multiple days in a row. None of us had any wallet or money or anything with us. We'd been hiking forever, and you don't go on those deployments prepared to buy anything. But we're hunkered down in the jungle and if you've been in the military, when you stop, you put yourself in a defensive posture, a ring, so all of the weapons are pointed outwards towards an unforeseenseen enemy, so to speak. And uh, while we're out in the middle of the jungle, we haven't seen anybody in a couple days. Uh, this man comes walking out of the jungle with two big bags of plastic like grocery bags, with ice and coca-cola. And apparently this happens every year.
Chad Mason:The, the american army, is training out in the middle of the jungle and he knows. No, he knew right where we were going to be and he knew that our weapons didn't have real bullets in them or anything. There was no fear. He walks right up to me and he taps on my head and he says ugi, you want coke? And I started laughing because I thought for one, none of us have money. Uh, one of our, our commanding officers, uh had some, some thai money and paid for all theokes and we had cold Cokes in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of the hottest day.
Chad Mason:It made me laugh when I first heard you tell that story about Coca-Cola. I'm like, yeah, they are really good. You're in the middle of the jungle and there's a guy carrying Coca-Colas out to those Americans in the middle of the bush out there and and and you think it is legitimate to think about how many products have had such strong representation in every quarter of the planet. Maybe Coca-Cola has beat the gospel to places on the on the planet, and what a shame that a company with, really, at this point, unlimited resources, but also maybe, highly engaged vision, can do what we can't do in a much shorter time.
Chad Mason:They've only been around for 150 years, right? And yet here we are, 2,000 years later, continuing to try to figure out what's it going to take to get the gospel into some of these places. And it's a great word picture. I hope, as you're listening to this, that it gives you a thought like well, what would it take, what kind of effort would it take to get to some of these places where the gospel's never been? And I want you to know that's a concept that many missiologists, many organizations, many churches are wrestling with today is what is it going to take for us to see this first level fulfillment of the Great Commission achieved?
Blake McDaniel:Let me share a personal story related to the question that you're throwing out there to travel with my senior pastor to Central Asia and to be involved in the very first year of a church planning training center there in that part of the world which at that point in time was considered to be the least reached area on the planet. And at the end of the two weeks there I was invited to be part of that church planning team that was operating there, to be part of that church planning team that was operating there. And I just was not prepared for that invitation being extended and I took all of about five seconds to reflect on the invitation and I said no and I was overwhelmed, as I reflected back on it, at how graciously the individual that I responded to with that no, how they responded Well, god is a God of second chances. And a year later that invitation was re-extended in another context and I responded in a little better way that second time around and my wife and I ended up doing an exploratory trip to consider joining that team and being part of what God was doing in Central Asia.
Blake McDaniel:We decided after that trip to say no, but this time it was a prayerful, well-considered, well-researched, no, and part of what I learned through that process, because my fist had been closed that first time I received the invitation, I was not open at all. I had finally allowed the Holy Spirit to pry my fingers loose and open my hand up, and it was when I did that that God began to speak to me and he said, blake, I've not created you to go, I've created you to mobilize, and I'm going to use you to raise up 100 or more long-term missionaries that will be far more successful than you would ever be in that setting. And so that's what I have been doing since that time is my involvement in mobilization. Now God's calling on. Each of our lives is different.
Blake McDaniel:I'm not saying that God's calling us all to mobilize? Sure, but what I am saying is we have to get to a place in our lives where we're open and where we're willing to say yes to the Lord rather than saying no, like I did in that initial invitation that I got. And as we begin to say yes, God begins to bring light and begins to show us. This is what I created you to do.
Chad Mason:I love that and honestly, I feel like that's kind of where Perspectives leads us. So, like at the end of the class, we're really telling people. We're not telling you what you need to do. You don't have to go, you don't have to mobilize, but you need to be part of what God's doing and how that looks. What that looks like it's going to be different from person to person, but knowing it, being willing, right, it's letting your yes be on the table, like not just immediately rejecting it because it's so foreign to our plan or our vision for our future, and it's a huge part of what we're doing.
Chad Mason:Well, blake, we're kind of at the end of our time here and I just want to say thank you to you for being willing to jump on here. You've taught a class last night, this morning, at another one this evening. We kind of get you through the gauntlet here in Bernie for this loop, but I'm so thankful for your influence. Your work, your influence for me has been a long time and continues to have good things. I love having food with you and you have some gentle words of rebuke and gentle words of leading for me and it's uh, it's always so wonderful to have you here and I really do appreciate you taking the time. I'm glad you're not far away. You can drive down from Austin anytime you like. You have a place to hang out here in Bernie, for sure. Um, but thank you, thank you for what you're doing and, uh, and we definitely will be praying for you. Any last words before we we finish up our podcast.
Blake McDaniel:Only for you. Any last words before we we finish up our podcast, Only to return the thanks to you.
Chad Mason:It's great to be here with you today, chad. Well, thank you Um it, it really was a blessing I watched. One of the things I thought was so special today is when you finished the session normally about we finished right at noon and, uh, everyone's out by like 12.05, like 12.10. Today, everyone just hung out. They wanted to talk. They were chatting with each other, they were chatting with you, they were chatting with the leaders. I think there were still 20 or 25 people there at like 12.15.
Chad Mason:And it was really neat to see how people's hearts were engaged with the content that you gave them and so well done, sir. Thank you so much for again your influence here and we'll have you on the podcast again sometime in the future. But if you're listening today and that this has been encouraging to you, please reach out, tell us what you've enjoyed. If you have any questions, we'd love to talk to you more about how you're thinking about this podcast. Blake is not far away. He's in Austin and I'll put his contact information in the show notes if you want to reach out to him and hear more about what God's doing through the navigators around us and in his work. So thank you, sir, for your time with us today and for those of you listening the podcast.
Chad Mason:We call it the so that Podcast, and we just remember that God has called us for a purpose, and that purpose is not just for our enjoyment of him that's a great part of it but it's so that his name will be made known among the nations and his salvation among all the peoples, and so be a blessing wherever you are. Make sure that you're a gospel light to the people to whom God has sent you. Have a wonderful day and God bless. We are so thankful that you joined our podcast today. We would love to hear any feedback you may have for us. Remember, psalm 67 says may God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us so that your ways may be known on earth and your salvation among all nations. Don't forget why the Lord blesses us it's so that we can be a blessing to those around us. Until next time, god bless.