 My name is Toby Kavanaugh and I'm the Director of Radiant School of Ministry here, but my secret identity is for the last 15 years, we've led a ministry in China called Campus Target. So when I was 23 years old, I was finishing up grad school and I was in apartment with my best friend Matt, and one day as we were just deciding what we're going to do next in our life, we were talking in our living room about life and jobs we're going to get, and girls we're going to marry, and all this kind of stuff. As we're talking about that, I looked over at Matt and I said, Matt, before we get married, before we have kids, before we start our careers, what if we just gave a year in missions? Do you think God could use us? Matt was sitting next to me on the other couch and he goes, okay, let's do it. Where are we going? I said, I hadn't even thought that far ahead yet. He said, how about China? I said, okay. That was the beginning of our adventure. It was not like this since I was three years old. I had a call to China or I had a moment and a beam came down from heaven and the angels were singing, oh, thou shalt go to China. It was not that kind of experience. It was an experience of us volunteering and offering ourselves up to the mission that he had given us. And so about six months later, we are on an airplane on our way into China and we have no idea what we're doing. We don't know Chinese. I don't know anything about Chinese culture. I just learned the name of the city that I was going to. I wish I could communicate just how ignorant we actually were. And so we land in China and there's a missionary that's hosting us and so he is trying to set us up in retrospect. Now I look back on it and I realize, I don't think he really knew what to do with us because we had no idea what we were doing. And so he goes, I'll set you up some classes in the morning and there's a university up the street. Why don't you go see if you can meet someone there who speaks English? Okay, so first Friday we're in China. We walked through the south gate of this university and there's a huge sports building kind of looks like a beetle over here this huge kind of quad open square area and in this quad area, there's just hundreds and hundreds of students milling about in some kind of activity. And so I don't know if anybody can speak English in China. And so I walk over to a group and I tap a guy kind of on the edge of what's happened on the shoulder and I'm just like, what's going on here? Because I had not yet learned that very important missions principle that if they don't speak your language, it doesn't matter how slow or loud you say it. But the guy looks at me and he goes, oh, this is an English corner. This is where we get together to practice our English. So I was like, sweet. Okay, and so me and Matt walk in this group of several hundred students and me big tall, goofy American guy who speaks English as a first language, I'm like a rock star in this group. And so I got a group of like 15 or 20 people around me peppering me, asking me questions about my life and what it was like. I remember, do you have any siblings because they were all from one child policy? The guy asked, is your life like the TV show Friends? Not exactly, you know, Ross like a little bit, but not really, right? And they just asked me all these kinds of questions and in the midst of it, one of the guys looks at me and he goes, hey, are you a Christian? Do you believe in Jesus? And I kind of freeze for a second because I don't know what I'm doing. I know I'm in a communist country. I know you gotta be careful, but this guy just asked me this question. And so I just start to share my testimony just about how Jesus had saved me and how he changed me and transformed my life. And as I'm sharing this story, I literally will never forget it to the day I die. Around this half circle of 15 or 20 students, it was like you could literally see spiritual hunger lighting up in their eyes. It was this lean forward and this look that was like, I've never heard what you're talking about and I really need it in my life. So that moment kind of passed. I didn't really share the gospel in that moment or anything like that, when that time was over, I kind of just started writing down people's names and phone numbers in a book ahead with me. And I just put like a little check mark next to their name if you kind of saw that look in their eye a little bit. And over those next few weeks, Matt and I just started calling up those friends and saying, hey, Gary, you wanna play basketball? Hey, Ren, you wanna grab lunch? We began to see person after person after person give their lives to Christ. It was absolutely unbelievable. I'd never seen any kind of openness like it. And God marked me and erected me during that season and what I was like, hey, I'm just gonna go for a year and do this thing. It was like, what else can I spend my life doing? These people are so hungry here on the universities of China, the leaders of the nation that's going to be holding the steering wheel for the world for the next 50 years. And it just erected me. And so missions is a huge part of my DNA. Most of my adult life, I've actually lived in China, bring another young adults over there as we plant churches on the college campuses. And you are just meeting me today, but many of you are familiar with Radiant being here. And you might not know that missions is a huge part of Radiant's DNA too. You see, when Pastor Lee and Jane were first married before Radiant was ever started and Jane was pregnant with their first baby, they were on their way to the Philippines. They were gonna be missionaries to the Philippines. Their church had already decided to send them out. They'd already said goodbye to their families. They were making plans for Jane to have the baby over in the Philippines. They'd raised all their support and they were going. And it was one of the last things they were doing before they left. They were going to Jane's parents. They had a cottage that was on a lake. And they were there just kind of spending some family time before they left. And Pastor Lee was sitting out by the lake on a lawn chair. Jane was sitting next to him on another chair. And he was reading a book by the persecuted Chinese theologian, Watchmen Ni, called Concerning Our Admissions. And when you hear Pastor Lee tell it, he remembers the details to this day. He says it like this. It was on page 47, left side of the book, bottom paragraph. It's etched in my memory forever. And he read these words. No amount of ambition, no affirmation from leaders and mensual attentions can substitute for the call of God. And all of a sudden Jesus said to him, I'm so glad that you're willing to go. But if you will plant a mission-sending church for me, you will impact this world even more than if you went yourself. And it was literally in that moment that the dream for Radiant was born. And so from the very beginning of this church and this movement being planted, it was on this idea that this would be a mission-sending place. And the very first check that Radiant Church wrote, check 1001, before any salaries, before rent for a building that they would use, was checked that was sent out to give to a missionary who was serving overseas. For many years, the sanctuary right over there, the sanctuary where it used to be, the whole back of the room was filled with flags, 65 flags of different nations of the world that were places where Radiant was sowing its money that the gospel would go forward there. Every week for decades in this church, they would pray and they would pray for a people group or they would pray for a nation that the cause of Christ would go forward among them on the earth. And that is a huge part, even till today, still on Sunday mornings. One of the few regular things that happens in this church in addition to worshiping, preaching and talking about the offering, is they pray over a people group that God would bring the gospel to the ends of the earth. And from the very beginning and the very deepest roots of our movement, missions is central to the DNA at Radiant. And my invitation for those of you here that work in different ministry roles or churches or even in your own life, is to take missions and put it at the very center of your DNA too. Oh, why? Why do we do this? The thing that Jesus wants more than anything else is worshiping sons and daughters from every people group he created. And if you will take time to read the scriptures through that lens, you will realize from the very beginning, the first page in Genesis, all the way to Revelation, this thread goes through all scripture that the thing that Jesus wants more than anything else is worshiping sons and daughters from every people group he created. Since I've gotten married, I've learned a few things over the years, trying to pick up on what are the kind of, how do you know what someone wants? What's the kind of gift they want? You can buy your wife a gift or you can buy your kid a gift. And here's some of the things I've seen. You look at what do they dream about, right? What does that person want for their future? That's a great gift you could buy for them. Well, here's what Jesus says as he describes his dream in Revelation chapter seven. After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count. From every nation, tribe, people and language standing before the throne and before the lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands and they cried out in a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and unto the lamb. And when Jesus looks at the future, the end of all things, what he's hoping for in the days to come is that there would be a crowd of his lost sons and daughters who've been saved that have all gathered together and they're worshiping him. And in that group there's those from every tribe, every tongue, every people and every nation. And that word nation is translated in English and the Greek the word is ethnos. And it's not what we think of today when we think of a nation like America or Mexico or China that has some kind of national boundaries. It's what we get our word ethnic group from. And the idea is a unique people group that has their own unique culture and their own unique language and a unique group of people. So for example, in China, as we've reached college students there over the years, one of the things we've done is we've launched them out on missions trips. And so one of the things they'll do is within their own country, one time we just totally based it on Luke 10. So they had no money with them and these college students have traveled up into the mountains of China together. And as they do, they come across these other people groups like the Tibetan people that you may have heard of. You know, one of the people groups they come across in these trips was this very, very small people group, only a couple thousand people called the Malimasa. And this group through all of history, the gospel had never come to them. And when our young people went up among that group and they were traveling up in there, they found and discovered that one of the people from this people group had intermarried with another tribe. They had some Christians in it. And this person had married a Christian. And so that family had converted to Christ. And so they came into this tribe and they found the first Christian in all of history among the Malimasa people. And so when the Bible uses this word nation, it's not talking about China or America, it's talking about the Han Chinese people and the Tibetans and even that little Malimasa people group. That's what Jesus is talking about. And that's what he says is his dream in the future that there would be rescued people from every one of those. And when you look even a little deeper at what is Jesus planning for? He says this in Matthew chapter 24, 14. This gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations. There's an ethnos word again. And then the end will come. Jesus is literally planning all of history around this issue. He says the gospel of the kingdom will first be preached to every one of these people groups. And then he will initiate and things. And he is in heaven waiting right now that the good news would go to every one of these groups that people will be rescued from every one of them that he could initiate and things and come back to the earth. He's planning all of history around it. This matters to him. It is the deepest part of his heart. It's the thing he longs for more than anything else. And man, you know, when you hear right now even as we're encountering this cry for revival and the service that God would move. One of the things when you look at all of history what happens when there is a move of God, his spirit is poured out is that mission bursts forth in a new way. Why? Because we are getting in touch fresh again with the heart of Jesus. Because it's the thing he wants more than anything else. You know, some of you may be like me and you're not really good at looking for clues or what kind of gifts somebody wants. You need someone to kind of tell you directly. So Jesus helps us too. He says this, Matthew 28. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations. It's that same thing again. What he commands us with his mouth, what he dreams about, what he's planning history around and what he sprinkled in clues all throughout the Bible is this deep, deep desire of his heart that people would be rescued from all nations. And you know, as a pastor or a leader something can swell in size. It says, that's amazing. Yes, in our church we are doing the great commission. We're seeing people come to Christ in our community. It's amazing what's happening now. You should have seen the baptisms after Easter and all these things. And the Lord delights in that and he's so excited. But I wanna say something. Yes, Jesus wants his lost sons and daughters to be rescued. Yes, he wants to see them worshiping him and baptized and come home. But he specifically says throughout the pages of scripture he wants that happening in all people groups. And it's very important to understand that because it's a little counterintuitive actually. But let's think about it like this. Let's say us in here, we are the staff at a Coast Guard station, okay? And so we're on the East Coast of America. We got two giant boats that can go out to rescue people. We run the thing. And so we're just kind of on break while we're waiting for needs to happen. We're playing cards, we're eating lunch and we do all this kind of stuff. And then all of a sudden in the midst of it, doot, doot, doot, the alarm goes off. We all jump to attention. We run and grab our stuff and get our equipment ready. And we start running to the two boats loading everything on. And the noise comes over the loudspeaker. It says there's been a terrorist attack. Two miles offshore, a cruise ship has been struck by a torpedo. It is going down over the last hour. You're the only ones close enough to help. Besides who you rescue, all souls will be lost. So we are passionately running, hurrying, getting everything ready that we can rescue people from the ship. And as we're loading on the ship and just getting ready to take off, the alarm goes off again, doot, doot, doot. And we hear over the loudspeaker again, there's been another terrorist attack. 20 miles out from shore, there's been another cruise ship that was hit with a torpedo. It's going down unless you can help people, all souls will be lost. In that moment of our station with our two little boats, our leaders have a horrible decision to make, don't they? And the most efficient way to think about it for those leaders are, okay, we got one that's only two miles away and one that's 20 miles away. If we focus our resources on the one that's two miles away, we will be able to rescue more people. It's a horrible decision, but this is the right thing in the moment. We have to do that. We're gonna focus on the one ship. And so that is what is most intuitive, but it is not what Jesus asked for. Jesus asks that we would rescue people from both ships. You see, all around this world, there's thousands and thousands of people groups, each one of them a sinking ship on its way to a Christless oblivion. And as it heads down that direction, what Jesus is saying is, I want people rescued from every one of these ships. And the initial response is, but it's more difficult to get there. We'd have to learn a different language or we'd have to travel in all kinds of ways. We have so many people right here that need you. Shouldn't we just efficiently focus our resources right here? And Jesus says, no, that's not what I'm asking you. I want people rescued from every people group, from every ship. And when we begin to understand that, it changes the way we think about life and it changes the way we think about ministry. Because all of a sudden, I cannot just purely think through the lens of what is most efficient. I must think through the lens of what does Jesus's heart want? You know, I say it with shame a little bit, but in the first few years of my marriage, I knew what my wife would want for gifts for Christmas and birthday, and I didn't get it to her. Because I knew the kind of things she'd want were things that were like beautiful, like clothes and jewelry and stuff like that. And I just did not come from a family where we bought that kind of stuff for each other. We buy each other like gadgets and things that were useful and stuff like that. And so when I knew that was what it was in her heart and what she wanted, I was psyched out by it and I was intimidated by it. Because buying clothes for girls, that's like the worst thing ever. It's like you buy it too big, you mean something bad, you buy too small, you said something bad. It can go wrong in so many ways, okay? And so I knew in her heart that was what she wanted. But I was not willing to actually do it. I wanted to give her what I wanted to give instead. And for some of us in the church, even some of us in ministry, we actually find ourselves in that same position where we've oriented our lives around giving Jesus what we want to give instead of what his heart longs for. And the thing that Jesus desires, the thing his heart longs for is people from every people group rescued and worshiping before his throne. And so as that starts to wash over us, when we start to say, okay, if that is what is in Jesus's heart, I want that in the DNA of my church. I see what Pastor Lee was doing, why it was the first cheque he wrote, what all those stupid flags were about. You know, I get it a little bit. Okay, I understand. How do I begin to put that into the DNA of our church? That's what I want to talk about a little bit today, just kind of four practices that can help in the process of actually working that into your church. Because for some of you as leaders, you have it inside you, but you know it's not really built into your church. Here's how we do it. Number one, put missions into the rhythm of your church. Put missions into the rhythm of your church. What do I mean? Each of our church has rhythms, things we do every week, things we do every month, things we do every year. A rise shine is a part of this church's rhythm here. It's something that's built in, it happens every year. True North is another thing that's an annual thing. They have certain things they do in the service every week. These are the things that are part of the rhythm of our church. But let me say it like this. Statistics would say in your church, over the last month, probably 70% of the people that have attended have given money of some kind. They also say that in your church, 10% of the people that have attended have shared the gospel with somebody else. Sure, 70% of the people that have attended your church in the last month have given financially in some way. 10% of the people that have attended your church have actually shared the gospel with someone else. What's the massive difference in those two numbers about? Any thoughts? Fear, comfortability? What else? Yeah, you talk about money every single week. When was the last time you talked about sharing the gospel in your church service? Okay? Money is built into the rhythm of your church, sharing the gospel is not probably. It doesn't have to be that way though. Like when I think about our time in China, you know, I'm trying to see church playing movements that happen among college students in China. That's what we do. And so as I'm contending for that, I have to wrestle with a really big reality. There's 25 million college students in China. There's more college students in China than there are people in the whole continent of Australia. Okay, just to give a little picture there. So when you look at China's campuses, imagine Australia sinking into the sea. That is what's happening spiritually on China's campuses right now. And so as we engage with this reality in our team of 60 people that we're contending to see this stuff happen, we have to wrestle with something that's way bigger than us. And no matter how boldly we share the gospel, that's not enough. We have to mobilize the believers that are gonna reach to share the gospel. So they reach their friends and the gospel goes to their friends and the gospel goes to their family and friends and it spreads like that. But we had a problem early on in starting churches and that was the new believers were just depending on us to share the gospel and they weren't actually sharing the gospel with their friends and family. And so as we sought the Lord, I want to do about this, we realized we needed to somehow build it into the rhythm of the church. And so in that unique kind of house church setting of China, we made a plan that basically every single service when we gather together, someone stands up and they talk for just two or three minutes passionately and challenging people, encouraging people to share the gospel with their friends and family. Guess what happened? People started sharing the gospel with their friends and family. Why? Because we put it into the rhythm of the church. And if you want missions to be a part of the DNA of the church, you have to find a way to somehow put it into the rhythm of your church. You know, most people on our churches are not engaged with the Great Commission because they literally don't know what it is. Okay, got your statistic. Among millennials right now, only 10% know what the Great Commission is of those who go to church. 50% say they've never even heard of the term. Another 40% have heard the term and they don't know what it is. We're just not talking about it in church. They're not getting exposed to it. They're not getting open to it. And so there's no way for that DNA to get imparted in their heart that's just not getting talked about. And so how do we do that? There's different ways. It could be a weekly thing. You know, one of the things actually, Pastor Lee just started doing recently again after doing it for decades and that practice having stopped was he started having us on Sunday mornings actually pray over a nation or people group in the world. And so we do that. And so again, in addition to preaching, worship and offering, that's like the only thing that's happening on a Sunday morning. What is he saying? This matters. And so I'm putting it into the rhythm of the church. If this is the deepest desire of Jesus' heart, how can I leave it out of what we do together? And so he built it in that way. That's not the only way to do that. You could have monthly someone in your Sunday morning service get up and share a report from a missionary of something powerful God's doing around the earth from where you guys are investing your treasures and your finances and what's happening. That's amazing. You can have annual stuff. The movement of churches I grew up in, they'd have like a missions conference every October and there'd be like a missions emphasis for the month of October and everyone would talk about and people would commit to give for the year and they'd have a giant gathering around it. There's tons of ways to do it, whether it's annual, whether it's monthly, whether it's weekly, but you have to deal with the question, am I actually putting this into the rhythms of the church? And if I'm not, am I saying this is not important to me? Because what is important to me, I put into the rhythms of my life. If you care about exercise, you put it into the rhythm of your life. If you don't care about exercise, you look like me. And so if you care about this is something that you do. If you care about time with your family, you probably have some kind of family dinner during the week where you actually talk and share. We put into the rhythms of our life what matters to us. And here's my challenge for us today. We have to make what is most important to Jesus' heart, most important to our heart too. Okay, number two, put your money where your mouth is. Put your money where your mouth is. The second way to build missions to know our church's DNA is to invest our finances there. Jesus says this, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. How we spend our money tells us where our priorities are. This is true in our personal life and it's true for us as churches. And if you survey across evangelical churches in America, less than 1% of the money that comes into a church's budget goes out to do anything reaching unreached people groups at all. And so that's us saying out of all that's been released to us that we're stewarding as leaders, Jesus to the thing that is the deepest desire of your heart, here's 1%. And that's the reality of where it is right now. I'm not saying your church is specifically there, but we have to invest, engage with the fact, where am I investing my finances? Commit yourself, that's my challenge. Commit yourself to give radically into missions. Think about it, if this is the deepest desire of Jesus' heart, what is the appropriate amount for us to spend on it together? Consider at least investing 10% of your church's budget, a tie that goes into missions outside of your church that's bringing the gospel to unreached people groups. Churches that we recognize as heroes, I think at John Piper's church, they give 30% of their budget into missions every year that's going out to reach unreached people groups. We have to be radical in our giving in it. And as we commit ourselves to give financially as churches, it will make a difference in the Great Commission being completed. I think of myself, when I was first called into missions, I go on to China for that first year and I was able to fund it out of money that I had when we went and then I got married to my wife and we felt the Lord calling us to go back to China. And so now we're going long term, like we have to have some kind of team that's financially supporting us to make this happen. And I don't know if any of you would feel this way, but I feel very, I felt very psyched out about that idea. That's like, I have to ask people to invest this, am I worthy of their investment, is this a good thing? And I just was in my own head wrestling over all that kind of stuff. And I was sitting at my desk at work one day and I got a phone call. I picked it up and it was a pastor named Bob Walls. And I'd met him for like 20 minutes, three or four months earlier, told him we were feeling called to China. I'd never been to his church. I'd never had a conversation longer than this 20 minutes. But he calls me up, so I'm like a little shocked and surprised. I'm like, hey, he's like, hey Toby, how you doing? Shoot the breeze for a second. He said, hey, I was talking to the elders of our church and we know you and your wife are getting ready to go to China. And so we talked about it. And so we're going to begin supporting you for $425 a month. My jaw literally hit the desk in front of me. I started crying actually on the phone while I was talking to him. I said, thank you so much. So we're so excited. This has been so much to me. Get off the thing. And I walked away from that phone call as I went back to my apartment. And it said something to me that Jesus saw me and that he was sending me out. And that phone call from that pastor literally is what launched me into missions. I think I may have frozen up and never even taken that step, but it was the encouragement that came from that moment, from them investing in me that actually launched me. And now I've literally launched out hundreds of people into long term missions, at least a year. And God's used them in all kinds of incredible ways. And that may have gotten aborted at the very beginning before it ever started. But somebody was willing to give. I later went and visited that church for the first time since I'd never even been there before when they made that decision. I found this church that was an inner city that was great in Pennsylvania. Maybe 40 or 50 people in the room. 10 or 15 of them looked like homeless people that the church was reaching as they shared the gospel. The pastor himself was bivocational, was not even paid full time staff. And they made the decision to invest $425 a month into me. Not me, into missions, into Jesus' heart. When we make decisions to give radically, it furthers the cause of Christ and the world in ways that you cannot even imagine. The ultimate impact of some of those decisions to give are things you will not even be able to comprehend until you get to heaven. But we put our money where Jesus' heart is. Number three I wanna talk about here is to create a going culture. It can be very easy as we're trying to faithfully put missions into our church's DNA to work to build a sending culture because that's what most of our people are going to be doing. But what you actually want to do is build a going culture. A sending culture is good in many ways. We believe in missions, we give financially, we help those who go. But what I've found is when that's what's trying to be established, it's always missing the heartbeat of what Jesus wants. Because the heartbeat is when I get so touched by what he wants that I would say Jesus, I will go wherever you want me to go. And when that spirit gets released in the congregation, everything gets released to another level. And so one of the biggest ways this plays out is in giving short term missions trip opportunities to the people of your church. You know, there's been a lot of commentary over the years, is short term missions trips even good? Is it fruitful to do this? Is this efficient use of our money? And I honestly believe that entire conversation misses the point. The point is this, when someone goes on a short term missions trip, it changes them as they serve others. And their changed life advances the mission. What do I mean? Well, think about it like this. Let's say you got a young dad in your church and he spends $2,500 to go on a trip you guys take to Mexico together, and Jesus touches his life in the midst of it. You can pick at, oh, maybe that $2,500 could have been spent a little more efficiently if we gave it to a national missionary, this kind of thing. But what studies show is that people who go on these kind of trips actually give more radically to missions afterwards. And so this dad now gives $2,500 a year for the rest of his life into missions. Was that a good investment? Absolutely. Studies show those who go on short term missions trips pray for missions at a different level. For being in a movement here who is all in on the fact that prayer changes things, is that a worthy investment? I think absolutely. Those who go on short term mission trips are more likely to become long term missionaries in the future, which is an actual gain changer for the Great Commission. And so we want to engage people in this idea of short term missions trips because it changes things from the inside out in their heart and that changes the culture of the church. Short term missions trip change lives. When they survey people who have gone on short term trips, 75% point it out as a life changing experience that they've had. 75%. How many things can you say about life for three out of every four people? It will be life changing in their own words. Okay? When people experience that kind of thing, it changes them from the inside out. The problem though is only about 10% of church goers actually go on mission trips. And so we're 90% of the people in our churches, we're leaving on the table a 75% chance of a life changing experience for Christ. And so we want to encourage that and stir that up. Don't be satisfied with just a sending culture. Create a going culture. This is where the magic really happens. It's when people's hearts get activated and radical sacrifice starts happening. Just as kind of contrast, a sending culture gives out of its excess. A going culture gives sacrificially. A sending culture prays when you tell them to in a service. A going culture prays in the secret place from their own burden. A sending culture says, here's 10% of my stimulus. A going culture says, here I am, send me. And when you allow that spirit to get fostering your people, it does not just change what's happening overseas. It radically changes what flows in their life right here in the States too. And so this is the key for us as pastors and leaders in the church. Well, obviously, we want to allow our hearts to be connected to Jesus' heart and we want our church to be ordered and prioritized according to what's most important to him. But even beyond that, when I allow a mission's culture to come into my church, there is a release of blessing and God's presence that is unique. And we see it right in the Great Commission, right? Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Then what does it say next? And lo, I am with you always to the very end of the age. That promise of his presence is not in a random place. It's literally connected to the mission. And when we step into his mission with him, there is a release of his blessing and his provision and his presence to our churches that we cannot access any other way. And so we want to allow our churches to get this kind of spirit. And as we wrap up here, the last one and probably the most important one, but I think also the most difficult one is this. To put mission's DNA into our church, we actually have to put our children on the altar. The single most important thing you can do to put mission's DNA into your church is to actually communicate about it and launch your kids out into it, which becomes profoundly uncomfortable. Like my kids grew up in China, so like we're like on the one pretty far edge kind of how we engage with this kind of stuff. Well, not too long ago, I was sitting in my house with my family and my oldest daughter, Maya, who was nine at the time. She comes up to my wife and I and she goes, I guess you don't, guess where I want to be a missionary to? And that was like kind of a cool thing. Like, oh cool, our daughter's embraced us too, we're excited. And I'm thinking she's going to say India because we just watched a video about Amy Carmichael, who was a missionary in India, and I'm like, that's cool, she got this. And we go India, she goes, no, North Korea. I go, okay. I was pretty far in, I'm not sure if I was that far in, right? Okay. And I had to actually go back to my heart as a missionary and say, Lord, are my kids actually offered up for your purposes? Because I was in as far as China, I'm not sure if I was in for North Korea. Spurgeon, famous pastor in England, a mom came up to her son, was getting ready to actually go to China as a missionary. And she said to him, she said, would you talk to my son, he's gone nuts, he wants to go be a missionary to China. And Spurgeon looked at the mom and he said, ma'am, if your son wants to be a missionary, he should not stoop down to be a king. And that perspective that there is no more noble calling than our children literally offering up their hearts and their lives, the thing that is most important to Jesus. And that can be very tough to swallow when your daughter tells you she wants to go to North Korea. But it is actually in that act of intentionally laying our kids on the altar before the Lord that our church becomes more powerful than you could possibly imagine. I think of a little church in Cortland, New York that I remember when it got planted maybe 15 years ago. It was reaching college students a little bit, but it never totally took off. They maybe only had 40 or 50 people that were in the church at a time and Hartford to grow, but it wasn't really happening. And during that maybe five years that I was interacting with that church, I saw them send 15 people out in missions in China. That's like a third of the size of the church. And so this church that some might look at on the outside and say, oh, it never quite reached the impact that the pastor wanted, never quite stepped into it. It literally is going to have an inheritance at the throne before Jesus of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Chinese college students that came to Christ. Why? Because they offered their children up on the altar. There was their young people that went. How do we do this practically? With our kids, I'm thinking like now, like grade school and younger, the key is this for them. Give them missionary heroes. There's curriculums that do this. There's a torchlighters video series that's really excellent on this. If any of you got exposed to that, you can prepare your own stuff on this, but don't let their heroes be people they see on TV. Don't let their heroes be the musicians they're listening to. Don't let their heroes be people that are influencers on social media. Give them heroes who have given their all for Christ. And you give them those kind of missionary heroes, you know, talk about Amy Carmichael or Hudson Taylor and you read those stories to them at night and you give those books into your families and your church. Something begins growing in the seed of a child even as young as five or 60 years old that they begin saying this is something I aspire to. I wanna give my life unto Christ. I mean, that's where that stuff happened with my nine-year-old where she's making this crazy North Korean statement is that we have actually sowed those seeds into the soil of her heart over the years that we've parented her. This is cool and this isn't even us. My daughter, now she's 10, she's involved in the junior high group here and I was putting her to bed the other night. She'd been going to prayer meetings with the junior high group. I was putting her to bed the other night and I'm praying with her and I'm putting her to bed and all of a sudden she interrupts and goes, oh, wait, wait, wait. And she stands up and she climbs out of her bed and she walks into her closet. I'm like, what are you doing? Like we were in the middle of praying right there. And I see her get down on her knees and I didn't know it, but she has this little calendar in her closet that's for unreached people groups in the world. My little 10-year-old just starts praying for the people whose back is standing and she's crying out to God that he would move there and he would say, that wasn't even for me. I didn't buy her that calendar that was no influence. I don't think that I did. That was the people she's with in the church are fostering that kind of spirit in her that she would contend for that and that's what a church can do in the life of a child if they sow into this area. Second one are teens. For your students, do all that same stuff you do with your kids, give them heroes, that kind of stuff, but this is one of the most important decisions you can make in this area. Send your teenagers out on a short-term missions trip. Let it be absolutely annual, built into your rhythm unless COVID comes again, that's happening no matter what, we're doing this every single year. This is like the thing we're doing because when young people get out and they actually experience another culture, they experience being used in ministry, it changes them forever. All that other stuff I said about short-term trips in general for the church is like doubly true for teenagers. Catch this statistic. This was a study done between 2010 and 2016. 84% of new long-term missionaries indicated they had previously served on a one or two week missions trip prior to signing up for long-term service. 84% their first experience was on one of these short-term trips. I'll catch this one. In addition, 50% of all missionaries overseas serving long-term took a short-term trip to that country before they went there. And so when your kids go on a trip to Mexico, 50% of the future Mexican missionaries are there on a trip like that right now. It absolutely is game-changing for the Great Commission going forward, sending our teenagers out and this kind of stuff. My own testimony, I'm not gonna take time to share it right now. I was 17, I went on a trip to Israel, it changed my life, turned it upside down, and here I am now, 20 years later, standing in front of you saying, I've now given my life for missions to go forward in China and around the world. It was because I experienced a short-term trip. Okay, our last point here we'll make is this. Talk about our kids, we talked about our teens, I wanna talk about our young adults for a second. Here is, I feel like, where a lot of churches do so much of the groundwork, but they actually fumble their inheritance at the last moment. And that is, they do talk to their kids about stuff. They do have a short-term trip for their things, but they don't offer their young adults a chance to take the next step. You see, we've awakened now this burden in the hearts of our young people as we're talking about this. And like that church I talked about in Cortland, if you actually will give your young adults to go and a challenge for them, take a gap year, give six months, give a year in missions, let God use you in some kind of way, that is the thing that absolutely changes the game. Catch the statistic. For us to finish the Great Commission in this generation, all we need is one out of every 200 American evangelicals aged 18 to 30. If one out of every 200 American evangelicals, not even talking about the missions forced through the rest of the world, not even talking about other wings of the church, 18 to 30 year olds, if one out of 200 would offer themselves up into missions, we would have every person we need to finish the Great Commission in this generation right now. It just takes us mobilizing our young adults to go. And so this is the challenge I give to you guys as church leaders, as believers, take the young adults of your church, the most precious treasure you have, your best and your brightest, and invest them into actually going overseas. Some of them will go over for a year and they'll end up staying overseas. Some of them will go over for a year, their life will be totally changed from the inside out and they'll come back and they'll sow into the church in ways that you never could have hoped for before. I think of people that have come with me to China over the years. I think of Alex Seidler, the punk Bible school kid who came to us in China and is now leading the missions expression of a whole denomination of churches. I think of Allison Chamberlain, the academic all star with three majors who gave a year to China and ended up spending 10 there and now helped us start Radiant School of Ministry this year. I think of Amanda Randolph was here right now who gave a year into China and God's used her as an evangelist over there and now she's gonna be training the whole Radiant Church and evangelism stuff sometime in the next month. These are people that took that little step in the beginning and God takes it and he does incredible things through that offering. And so this is even my challenge as we wrap up our time here today. If you feel like I don't know how to do that with young adults, this literally is what I've given my life for. And if we can help you guys in your church in any kind of way, help you mobilize your kids, your teens.