The Mission Matters

Is it possible to 'do missions' without ever sharing the Gospel? Not according to Scott Hildreth. In fact he's written a book called A Short Guide to Missions and Evangelism (https://a.co/d/8cCsKWv) that contains a warning to the western Church that she's dangerously close to walking away from the mandate to carry the Gospel to those who need it most. Listen in as Ted Esler and Matthew Ellison talk with Scott about his book (available May 6) and this current challenge in the western Church.Dr. Hildreth is an associate professor of missiology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary (SEBTS). He is married to Lesley and has two adult children and two grandchildren. Before coming to SEBTS, he and his family served with the International Mission Board in Europe and Central Asia. Dr. Hildreth serves as an elder at The Summit Church and also serves as interim pastor or guest speaker when possible. He has written on evangelism and missions. His research interests are on contextualization, missiology, and theology of mission.The Mission Matters Podcast is a place to talk about the importance of our Mission as Christians. The Mission Matters is a partnership of Missio Nexus and Sixteen:Fifteen, who have a shared passion to mobilize God’s people to be a part of His mission.

Research (Dr. Elliot Stephens) has shown that there are three factors that affect attrition on the mission field: interpersonal skills, ministry competency and spiritual formation. Agencies can train for skills, but it's these softer skills that are often neglected at higher levels of Christian education. Ed Scheuerman built his program at Lancaster Bible College largely in response to this research. Listen in as Ted Esler, Matthew Ellison, and Ed Scheuerman discuss trends in higher Christian education as it relates to missions and mentoring the current generation of students. After getting his BA in Philosophy (with an emphasis in Religious Studies) from West Chester University (PA), Ed completed one year of formal Bible training, taking 42 hours of Bible and Missions classes at Tennessee Temple University in 1985. In 1986, he completed his MA in TESL from WCU. In December 2007, he completed his Doctorate of Missiology degree from Biola University. He was ordained by Calvary Bible Church in Hanover, PA. Ed and his wife Carol served with PIONEERS, International, in Southeast Asia for 23 years. They served in China for nearly seven years (starting in 1987), teaching and ministering at a university. Their work was primarily with their students, discipling those who came to faith. They were then based in Hong Kong for four years (1994-1998) as a support link to the in-China team. In 1997, Ed was asked to assume the role of Area Leader for South Asia / Mainland Southeast Asia (shepherding the teams from Vietnam to India). The family relocated to Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Area Leader role was primarily a pastoral role, shepherding church planting teams. While there, Ed also became involved in various member care ministries. In May 2010, Ed was recruited by Lancaster Bible College to be the Coordinator of the Intercultural Studies major. His book, Knowing God to Make Him Known: Living out the Attributes of God Cross-Culturally” was published in 2021 and is used by churches and missions agencies to help train potential missionaries. His passion is to help students find and follow God’s call for their lives in the cause for world missions. The Mission Matters Podcast is a place to talk about the importance of our Mission as Christians. The Mission Matters is a partnership of Missio Nexus and Sixteen:Fifteen, who have a shared passion to mobilize God’s people to be a part of His mission.

Are there unchurched and unreached peoples who might be missed by current methodologies and mindsets? Is innovation in church and missions primarily a process that has to do with ideas/technologies/tools/methods or does it reside in something else that God gifts us with?  Pioneering isn’t easy - the Church needs better pathways to nurture ideas, support innovators, and build collaborative movements for the challenges of our time. Tyler Prieb founded Missional Labs to help bring a startup mentality to individuals and teams working on new projects that go after Great Commission impact.Join Ted Esler and Matthew Ellison as they engage Tyler on the need for a renewed imagination in our evolving church and missions fields. Tyler is the Founder & Executive Director of Missional Labs (https://missionallabs.co/), a venture group investing in the frontiers of 21st-century mission. He was previously Chief of Staff at Church of the City New York in Manhattan, and has worked for multiple leading organizations across church planting, leadership training, entrepreneurship, innovation, and global mission.  He’s worked with leaders in over 50 countries, and was named a young leader for the Lausanne movement in 2016.  He’s pursuing a Doctor of Missiology (in progress), and holds an MA in Theology (RTS) and a BA in Economics and Humanities (Azusa Pacific University).  His focus is on the intersection of innovation and missiology. He loves coffee, reading, and travel, and lives in Nashville with his wife Melany and daughter Penny.The Mission Matters Podcast is a place to talk about the importance of our Mission as Christians. The Mission Matters is a partnership of Missio Nexus and Sixteen:Fifteen, who have a shared passion to mobilize God’s people to be a part of His mission.

Immigration is not a new topic, but its place in a global missions worldview comes to the forefront due to politics in the USA. What role does the movement of peoples have in the making of disciples in all nations? Is it Biblical or moral to have borders and to restrict immigration? How should a Christian engage illegal immigrants? Guest Alex Kocman addresses these questions and more in a conversation with Matthew Ellison and Ted Esler in this episode of The Mission Matters. Alex received his M.A. in Media and Communication Studies and B.S. in Biblical Studies through Liberty University. He now serves as Director of Communications and Engagement for ABWE (http://www.abwe.org/), a theologically conservative, church planting missions agency with about 1,000 missionaries reaching nearly 90 countries. Since 2017, he has cohosted The Missions Podcast (https://missionspodcast.com/) with Scott Dunford, interviewing notable guests across the evangelical and missiological worlds. Alex is an author, and his new book, Striving for the Faith: A Journey Through Philippians for Life on Mission (Founders Press), is now available (https://press.founders.org/shop/striving-for-the-faith/) for preorder and slated for release February 2025. He resides with his wife and four children in York, Pennsylvania, where he spends his free time studying theology, weightlifting, and nursing a heavy coffee addiction. He adheres to the 1689 London Baptist Confession and serves as an elder at Faith Bible Fellowship Church, where he leads the missions team and serves as director of communications and worship.

How can the global missions community address the challenge of reaching the nations? In this episode of The Mission Matters podcast, Matthew and Ted speak with David Bennett, Global Associate Director of the Lausanne Movement, about the upcoming Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, also known as Seoul-Incheon 2024 in Seoul Korea. David addresses Lausanne’s goal of fostering ‘collaborative action teams’ for the purpose of accelerating global mission. https://lausanne.org/gathering/seoul-2024New boost

Krystle Roberts and Tyler Collins of the Betsey Stockton Foundation discuss the challenges of support raising for ethnic minorities and creative ways to help send people of color to the missions field. Learn more at https://www.betseystocktonfoundation.com/ 

We’re evaluating the future of this podcast, and we would love to hear from you! We’ve put together a short survey at https://1615.org/podcast/. It’s anonymous, so give us your honest feedback about what you like, what you don’t like, and most importantly, what topics and what guests you would like to hear from in the future.

The values that undergird our society and culture are the air that we breathe, and we take them for granted. If we pull on those values, those threads go all the way back to Jesus. Matthew and Ted interview Glen Scrivener of Speak Life (https://speaklife.org.uk/) and author of the book The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality and discuss the implications for cross-cultural missions. 

Matthew Ellison interviews Rob Wassel, Jeremy Wynne, and Luke Womack at the MissioNexus Missions and Church Leaders Conference in Orlando, FL, in September 2023. Among other topics, they talk about how change comes about by pain, pleasure, or leverage (Wassel), how a church says no to good missions opportunities (Wynne), and eliminating the obstacles to missions goers (Womack). https://pioneers.org/ https://fbctopeka.com/ https://airomissions.com/

There’s a positive misconception that people immigrating to the United States are more religious than the average American and may help stem the secular tide. But Dr. Ryan Burge, professor, author, and pastor, says the data doesn’t support that. What does the data say about immigrants, and how does that affect the future of the Great Commission? Ryan, Matthew, and Ted discuss the opportunities for churches - here and around the globe. Learn more about Ryan's work at https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/ 

Ralph Winter championed the paradigm shift of Unreached People Groups almost 50 years ago, urging the church to focus on the cultures that have the least access to the gospel. Several of the critiques that were offered in the 1970s have recently re-emerged under the banner of deconstructionism. Is missions inherently based in colonialism and white supremacy? Does immigration and globalization displace the need for sending cross-cultural missionaries? Matthew Ellison and Ted Esler discuss the impact of deconstructionism on the future of missions in this episode of The Mission Matters podcast. https://tedesler.substack.com/p/shifting-narratives-of-missions

You might have heard someone declare that Business As Mission (BAM) is THE future of missions - but João Mordomo of BAM Global argues that isn't the heart of Business As Mission. Rather, BAM is driven by a desire to see the whole body of Christ participate in the mission of God. Matthew, Ted, and João discuss the biblical foundations of BAM, why BAM isn't the only biblical model, and scenarios where BAM is extremely effective. 

Jeff Lewis joins Matthew Ellison and Ted Esler to talk about missions, revival, and what we can learn from the life of Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Jeff dispels some of the common myths surrounding Zinzendorf and the Moravians, and shares what he has learned from studying early Moravian primary source materials. They discuss the role revivals play in advancing missions, and what true awakening looks like. 

Business As Mission (BAM) is frequently being hailed as the new method of missions funding. Does that mean the era of support raising is over? Or is there space for multiple models of funding to meet the needs of different contexts? Matthew Ellison and Ted Esler talk with Mark Wilson of VIA Generosity (formerly Support Raising Solutions) as he shares his perspectives of how God is using support raising, particularly to resource workers in the Global South. 

“Kingdom Collaboration” is a special episode for us, because we are co-hosting it with the National Association of Evangelicals podcast, Today’s Conversation. Ted Esler and Matthew Ellison teamed up with Walter Kim of the NAE to co-host a conversation with Michael Oh about Lausanne 4 next year in Seoul, South Korea, and the importance of creating movements of collaboration to advance the Gospel. Learn more about the NAE at https://www.nae.org/ and the Lausanne Movement at https://lausanne.org/.

“Cultivating Resilience” is the last episode in our three-part miniseries “The Hardest Places on the Planet,” with Matthew Ellison and guest Josh Duncan of TRIAD. TRIAD exists to glorify the King by mobilizing, equipping, and deploying followers of Christ into the world’s hardest to reach places and people groups. Josh shares about how they prepare both goers and senders to cultivate resilience and how the Holy Spirit is at work, even amidst persecution. This episode is sponsored by Support Raising Solutions - get the training and inspiration you need to be fully funded and launch your ministry.

“When Dying Is Gain” is our second episode of three in our miniseries “The Hardest Places on the Planet,” with Matthew Ellison and guest co-host Bob Blincoe. Our guest is Mary Ho, who serves as the International Executive Leader of All Nations International, a training and sending agency that seeks to to ignite church planting movements among the neglected peoples of the earth. Mary shares what she has learned from the life and death of John Chau, who was martyred in 2018, and reflects on the cost, suffering, and joy of taking the gospel to the least reached places on the planet. This episode is sponsored by Support Raising Solutions - get the training and inspiration you need to be fully funded and launch your ministry.

Season 3 kicks off with the first of a three-part miniseries: The Hardest Places on the Planet. Bob Blincoe of Frontiers shares about his experiences as the first missionary team in Iraq, and how to build grit and resistance for workers called to the hardest places on the planet. This episode is sponsored by Support Raising Solutions - get the training and inspiration you need to be fully funded and launch your ministry. 

Join Matthew and Ted as they have a conversation with Jason Mandryk, Editor of Operation World.  Learn about the history and the future of the definitive global prayer handbook that has been used by more than a million Christians to pray for the nations. Whether you are an intercessor praying behind the scenes for world change, a missionary abroad or simply curious about the world, Operation World will give you the information necessary to play a vital role in fulfilling the Great Commission.

Matthew and Ted sit down with Al Mueller, President and Founder of Excellence in Giving (EIG), to explore what makes Kingdom philanthropy effective. It all started with a midnight call from God; Al traces his journey from Wall Street to advising high-capacity families and explains EIG’s model: rigorous research, transparent relationships, and reporting that fuels celebration and renewed generosity. The conversation covers donor advised funds, outcome measurement, balancing trust and accountability, collaborative giving funds, and why long horizons matter for work among the unreached. Practical insights abound for donors and ministries alike.https://excellenceingiving.com/The Mission Matters Podcast is a place to talk about the importance of our Mission as Christians. The Mission Matters is a partnership of Missio Nexus and Sixteen:Fifteen, who have a shared passion to mobilize God’s people to be a part of His mission.