Alex Kocman, the Director of Communications for the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism and co-host of the Missions Podcast, joins host Will Spencer to discuss the evolving landscape of global missions, particularly in light of recent political changes in the United States.

They emphasize the importance of grounding missionary work in community and family values, moving away from hyper-individualism towards a more collective approach that prioritizes the local church's role in sending and supporting missionaries.

As they explore the implications of the recent election, Kocman expresses optimism about the renewed openness to traditional values and the potential for churches to engage more deeply in both local and global missions. The discussion underscores the necessity of fostering strong, interconnected communities that can sustain missionaries and support impactful work at home and abroad.

Takeaways:

• Alex discusses the changing landscape of missions in America post-election.
• The conversation emphasizes the importance of focusing on family and community as foundational elements for effective mission work, rather than relying solely on individual emotional experiences.
• Listeners are encouraged to recognize the value of building enduring relationships and sustaining a support system for missionaries, highlighting a shift away from hyper-individualism.
• The podcast highlights the need for patience in missions, as true growth often takes time and requires a long-term commitment to nurturing communities.
• There is a call for Christians to engage in their local communities and to foster connections that can lead to fruitful mission work both at home and abroad.

Watch on YouTube.

CONNECT WITH ALEX

• Website
• Twitter/X
• ABWE.org
• The Missions Podcast
• Alex's Personal Website

🌟 The Will Spencer Podcast was formerly known as "The Renaissance of Men."

FOLLOW US FOR MORE

• Substack
• Twitter/X
• YouTube
• Instagram

Buy Me a Coffee

FREE Men's Chastity Guide

Communications Powered by PaxMail

The Will Spencer Podcast is a weekly interview show featuring extended discussions with authors, leaders, and influencers who can help us make sense of our changing world today. I release new episodes every week on Friday.

ADVERTISERS

Mentioned in this episode:

Puritan Treasures

Reformation Heritage Books offers 15 Puritan classics in modern language with new introductions for today’s readers. Use code SPENCER for 10% off.

https://heritagebooks.org/

Will Spencer: 00:00:28

Hello, my name is Will Spencer and welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer: 00:00:32

This is a weekly show featuring in depth conversations with authors, leaders and influencers who help us understand our changing world.

Will Spencer: 00:00:40

New episodes release every Friday.

Will Spencer: 00:00:42

It's been quite a week, huh?

Will Spencer: 00:00:44

Let me tell you a bit about how it's gone for me.

Will Spencer: 00:00:47

I'd scheduled a Wednesday recording with this week's guest, Alex Kochman, Director of communications for the association of Baptists for World Evangelism and co host of the Missions podcast.

Will Spencer: 00:00:58

And I'd originally planned to release an episode about the Beatles today.

Will Spencer: 00:01:02

But then Monday night my flight from Dallas and Fight Laugh Feast was delayed.

Will Spencer: 00:01:07

It left me sleeping on the DFW baggage claim floor.

Will Spencer: 00:01:10

So Tuesday was a bit weird as a result and it disrupted my usual production process.

Will Spencer: 00:01:16

Then came the presidential election, keeping us all up late.

Will Spencer: 00:01:20

By Wednesday afternoon in victory's afterglow, I thought, why wait weeks to release this conversation with Alex when we could capture the moment live?

Will Spencer: 00:01:28

The election talk would feel a bit different later.

Will Spencer: 00:01:31

So this episode is my live stream recording with Alex, which is already on YouTube and you can check the show notes for that.

Will Spencer: 00:01:38

In this conversation, Alex and I discussed Trump's election and its impact on global missions and how America itself has become perhaps our biggest mission field.

Will Spencer: 00:01:48

If you enjoy this podcast, thank you.

Will Spencer: 00:01:50

Please leave five star ratings on Spotify and Apple podcasts and share this episode with friends.

Will Spencer: 00:01:56

You can Support us@willspencerpod.substack.com for ad free content or click Buy me a coffee in the show notes.

Will Spencer: 00:02:03

But most importantly, please support our advertisers to help build generational wealth as we rebuild the West's Christian foundations.

Will Spencer: 00:02:11

And please welcome this week's guest, Abwe's Director of Communications and the co host of the Missions podcast, Alex Kochman.

Will Spencer: 00:02:24

Alex, welcome to the Will Spencer Podcast.

Will Spencer: 00:02:27

Thanks for joining me live on this exciting day in American history and this exciting moment for Christians.

Alex Kochman: 00:02:33

Good to be here, Will.

Will Spencer: 00:02:35

Well, so we were originally going to do this as a sort of a pre recorded podcast that would go through my usual production process.

Will Spencer: 00:02:41

But given the exciting election of Donald Trump to the 47th presidency of the United States, I figured we take advantage of the moment and have a, have a real time conversation and just, and just go with it and let everyone kind of enjoy this wave of perhaps relief, this wave of excitement that I think is passing over many people today.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:01

Yeah, there's a lot to talk about.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:03

It's dizzying.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:03

I mean, it's exciting from even just the standpoint of.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:06

Think of how many groundbreaking Events have happened just in the last six months to a year that on their own would have driven the news conversation for years at a time.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:16

Right.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:16

And we've had them all happen in rapid fire.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:19

I can barely keep up.

Alex Kochman: 00:03:20

There's so much to react to.

Will Spencer: 00:03:22

So, so.

Will Spencer: 00:03:23

Well, let's go back to.

Will Spencer: 00:03:24

I don't know.

Will Spencer: 00:03:25

I think the big turning point, I think that there were a couple of them.

Will Spencer: 00:03:28

I think the big turning point in the campaign was obviously the first debate between Trump and Biden.

Will Spencer: 00:03:34

And I think that was really when people got a good look at what many of us had been saying for a while, that Biden is not fit for office.

Will Spencer: 00:03:42

And I think that's what opened everyone to the possibility that maybe there had been quite a bit more propaganda going on than they wanted to believe, perhaps.

Will Spencer: 00:03:52

So, like, go back to like, what was that like for you?

Will Spencer: 00:03:55

And then we'll just run it forward to today.

Will Spencer: 00:03:57

And I also want to make sure to touch on how this.

Will Spencer: 00:03:59

And we'll hopefully spend quite a bit of time on this, how this affects your particular missions with Abwe and your podcast as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:06

Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:07

Thanks for that.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:08

So, yeah, I was watching that unfold like everyone else, probably like you.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:13

We were under no impressions that Joe Biden was fully, cognitively with it.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:20

Those who followed, especially conservative leaning media for several years were aware of that.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:26

But that was the moment that everybody in the nation really saw that, regardless of what news source that you were watching.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:32

I think what that did for so many people was really just disturb this nice American picture that we have of stability.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:38

We just assumed that all of our institutions are fundamentally stable.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:42

I mean, there's a lot of unstabilizing elements and factors that have happened over the last couple of years.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:47

That was one thing in particular, where that became a question for everyone.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:51

Even looking at most powerful political office in the world and saying there's, there's radical instability even at that level.

Alex Kochman: 00:04:58

What's happening, whose hands are really at the control.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:01

And I think as Christians, that's critical to keep in mind.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:05

I think we become ineffective in our mission, in our walk with the Lord, when we assume that everything around us, the status quo, is really, it's just going to be the way it is all the time.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:15

All things continue as they were, as Peter writes.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:18

And that's not the case.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:19

Right.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:20

To be effective, to be active as men in our life and on mission, to recognize that there's other factors and forces at play in the world and we have a job to do.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:29

We can't just comfortably Assume it's business as usual.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:32

You know, nations rise and fall, men rise and fall.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:35

We certainly saw the fall of one man in that situation.

Alex Kochman: 00:05:38

And I think for a lot of people it was just an awakening moment of realizing they can't assume that things will always continue a certain direction.

Will Spencer: 00:05:47

So I want to go off roading immediately and divert a little bit and pick up on something that you said.

Will Spencer: 00:05:54

We can't always assume that things will continue going in the direction that they have.

Will Spencer: 00:05:58

And that's something that I think is really a trap of thought, that it's really easy to fall into that thinking that whatever is represented in this moment, if you just run it out linearly, then that's just how things are going to be forever.

Will Spencer: 00:06:10

That it's just going to be a long slow decline, right.

Will Spencer: 00:06:13

Or a sharp upwards improvement or whatever it is to extrapolate out from this current moment that the future will look like this, only more so.

Will Spencer: 00:06:22

And that's the thing, that it's so easy to start thinking that way and to panic or to get too excited.

Will Spencer: 00:06:29

But as Christians, I think our call is to be wise as serpents, perhaps to the flows of history, empires rising and fall, men rising and falling, and not get too caught up in trying to imagine that we can predict the future based on current events.

Alex Kochman: 00:06:44

I think you put it well, it's the whole Francis Fukuyama end of history paradigm.

Alex Kochman: 00:06:49

It's the whole idea, you know, on, on, on the Internet.

Alex Kochman: 00:06:52

It's, it's.

Alex Kochman: 00:06:53

Nothing ever happens and suddenly a lot of things happened, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:06:57

Yeah, but I think there's a significant percentage of not only Americans, but American evangelicals, Christians in our churches that have assumed that paradigm.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:07

We live lives, most of us, even if our bank accounts have suffered over the past couple of years, perhaps we do live lives of relative stability.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:16

And it's easy to assume that.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:18

And by the way, I work with missionaries, I work with churches that are sending missionaries and church planters to the US as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:26

And one of the things that I've seen is I think over the past several generations of missionary sending efforts, even something as tip of the spear as Christian missionary sending, I think has really been coasting in some ways off of the fumes of this modern American consensus of how the world is.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:47

There's certain assumptions that we make about globalism, about political stability across the world, about freedom and democracy and freedom of conscience.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:56

And missionaries often do assume those things.

Alex Kochman: 00:07:59

Those are the things that allow us to get on an airplane, go somewhere, right, and tell them about Jesus because of this relative stability that's existed.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:07

But there's so many assumptions under the surface with that that we do have to look at and examine.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:12

And I think as you see that consensus start to break down in a lot of people's thinking.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:18

I think what we need to do is have a new missiology that's tailor fit for the current moment that we're in.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:25

So this is not necessarily the world of America is automatically the glorious city on a hill preeminent in all things.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:34

And from the United States we're going to send missionaries to the ends of the earth.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:37

Of course we want to send missionaries, but I think instead, and just using missions as an example, I think there's all parts of the church that this touches.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:45

But I think what we have to realize instead is that actually we live in a world that is all contested and there's contested factions and groups and nations with differing identities, and nations are gonna do things differently.

Alex Kochman: 00:08:58

We can't assume the stability in the global order, and yet we still have to do the very hard thing of going to our neighbors and going abroad.

Alex Kochman: 00:09:06

And so I think we need to make sure that these assumptions of multiculturalism, these assumptions of diversity, those things that are a part of that modern American consensus, that that's not really what's driving things like missions, when actually what's driving things like missions is a zeal for the Lord, a zeal to see the lost brought to Christ.

Alex Kochman: 00:09:27

And obviously we need that same zeal in our own nation too.

Alex Kochman: 00:09:30

Will.

Will Spencer: 00:09:31

So you referenced a term that's quite popular in the moment, sort of the post war consensus.

Will Spencer: 00:09:38

Now that idea is swirling around and some of our shared corners of Twitter in a particular way.

Will Spencer: 00:09:42

But I hear you talking about it in sort of a different way, sort of this, this idea that you mentioned, the Francis Fukuyama, the end of history, that everything is just that we've reached it.

Will Spencer: 00:09:53

We did it, guys.

Will Spencer: 00:09:54

Great work.

Will Spencer: 00:09:55

So in the context of what you're talking about with missions, what do you mean by this?

Will Spencer: 00:09:59

You didn't use the phrase post war consensus.

Will Spencer: 00:10:01

Perhaps you use cultural consensus, something like that.

Will Spencer: 00:10:03

What are, what are you referring to as.

Will Spencer: 00:10:04

As it relates to missions work specifically?

Alex Kochman: 00:10:07

I think it's a similar idea.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:09

I think that obviously post war consensus, that's the triggered term, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:10:14

And those of us that are very terminally online people like you and me, know what that means.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:19

And I'm not of the school of mine that says let's relitigate World War II.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:24

I do think, though, that we have to look at the way History has gone and the assumptions that are now built into our minds.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:31

So for instance, we've become accustomed to reject nationalism and to do so strongly.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:37

But I'll tell you, some of the missionaries that we're working with, they're finding rising nationalisms everywhere they go.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:44

It's not just an American phenomenon.

Alex Kochman: 00:10:46

We're going to places like India and finding radical Hindu nationalism that not only says there's something good about being a part of this people, ethnically or tribally, but specifically that to be Indian means to adhere to the Hindu faith in the Hindu religious system.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:05

So those types of assumptions are in the water table all over the world and we have to be willing to look at.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:11

Yeah.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:12

How do we wrestle with those things globally and locally as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:15

So I think there's a lot to be done on that topic.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:18

I really like Rusty Reno's book on the topic, of course.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:22

I think he does a really good job of deftly scratching the surface of those issues without giving way to, I think a lot of the concerns, conspiracies that I know you've addressed and I think are helpful to look at both sides of the issue and make sure that we're not given to a certain extreme.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:39

But I do think that at the end of the day, what's made a lot of modern missions possible in the 20th century is the immediate availability of things like global air travel.

Alex Kochman: 00:11:51

And we have to recognize when we see the global order breaking down all around us, we got to get smarter about how we think about the Great Commission.

Alex Kochman: 00:12:00

How do we think about the Christians duty on Earth?

Alex Kochman: 00:12:04

Maybe it's not just doing the thing your youth pastor told you to do and hopping on a plane and doing a seven day missions trip and putting a roof on a building.

Alex Kochman: 00:12:12

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but maybe it actually means focusing your labors at home, in your neighborhood, your community, your Judea, Right, your Samaria.

Alex Kochman: 00:12:24

And then beyond that, are there national believers and churches overseas that you can partner with through prayer, through giving of gifts and perhaps going.

Alex Kochman: 00:12:32

But looking at that critically, I think again that all of those assumptions are sort of baked together and to define that consensus just shortly everyone looked at what happened in the 20th century and said never again.

Alex Kochman: 00:12:46

But what that means is that you've got all the global powers are committed on paper to certain things about liberalism, freedom and democracy that I think we as evangelical Christians have seen those can be used and weaponized against the church just as easily as they can also give you a setting in which to do the Christian life.

Will Spencer: 00:13:08

So you mentioned.

Will Spencer: 00:13:09

And yes, yes to all of that.

Will Spencer: 00:13:11

And I think what's.

Will Spencer: 00:13:11

There's a couple things that I want to touch on.

Will Spencer: 00:13:13

in particular six months and: 2019

Will Spencer: 00:13:22

And so I was not a Christian at the time and I saw India essentially, I don't want to say by foot, but like, I didn't, I didn't get around, you know, in luxury air travel.

Will Spencer: 00:13:32

Like I took mostly overnight buses, some trains, a couple flights.

Will Spencer: 00:13:36

So it was very connected to the ground.

Will Spencer: 00:13:37

And there's no tourist bubble in India.

Will Spencer: 00:13:39

There are some countries you can go to where there's a very well traveled tourist trail that's like the front of a house, the front stage, sort of at a restaurant, you might think.

Will Spencer: 00:13:48

And then there's the backstage area where people live and the actual cultural life of the nation goes on there.

Will Spencer: 00:13:53

Argentina is a good example of a country with a life like that.

Will Spencer: 00:13:57

India, on the other hand, has no tourist bubble.

Will Spencer: 00:13:59

You're there, you're there.

Will Spencer: 00:14:01

You arrive at Delhi airport, you are right into the thick of India.

Will Spencer: 00:14:05

There are thicker places, but there's no thinner places.

Will Spencer: 00:14:07

And so I had a really unique experience before I was a Christian, seeing and appreciating the nation for what it was, both good and bad.

Will Spencer: 00:14:15

And so I've had interaction with the Bharat, the Hindu nationalists, because I've written a couple of tweets about India that sort of saying, look, these are real phenomena.

Will Spencer: 00:14:27

There are wonderful things about India, but there are real phenomena that are going on with the nation that, that the world needs to know about.

Will Spencer: 00:14:35

And the amount of pushback that I've gotten from that group specifically, and the vitriol and the hatred and the, and the anger from.

Will Spencer: 00:14:43

I think what I had been attempting to say in a loving way, like loving.

Will Spencer: 00:14:47

Feedback has been a real eye opener to me, particularly though not about India per se, but about what nationalism can become even in America, period.

Will Spencer: 00:14:57

Like, that there can be a love for one's nation and I might put love and scare quotes that actually turns into a hatred for the other, right, that we call it loving.

Will Spencer: 00:15:07

But there's no, there's no feeling of the fruits of the spirit, let's say of love within it.

Will Spencer: 00:15:12

That actually becomes quite reactionary.

Will Spencer: 00:15:14

And so I think the challenge with regard to the post war consensus in many ways around the world is how do we appreciate and value our nation, our people, without it becoming an exclusivist kind of like, the only way that I can love my people is by hating yours.

Will Spencer: 00:15:32

And I think that's, I think that's the shift that we have to figure out because again, none of us have grown up in a nationalist world, but I think we're about to be turning back into a sort of nationalist world.

Will Spencer: 00:15:43

Maybe we can kick that around because the work that you do is exactly going into these other nations and bringing the light of the gospel to them, you know, promoting that work.

Will Spencer: 00:15:53

Sure, surely.

Will Spencer: 00:15:54

So perhaps you get a different perspective on, on what that, on what that looks like.

Will Spencer: 00:16:00

So maybe from from within, from where you sit, what are some of the virtues of nationalism?

Will Spencer: 00:16:06

Particularly let's, let's frame it in an American context.

Will Spencer: 00:16:08

So as you, as you bring yourself as an American to these locations that can be pro or anti America, like what is it that you do to, to promote sort of an anti exclusivist view of the things and the people that you love?

Alex Kochman: 00:16:22

Great, multi layered question there.

Alex Kochman: 00:16:23

And I was smiling at the beginning of that because you mentioned some of the heat that you took for India discussions and content that you put out.

Alex Kochman: 00:16:31

And my camera guy here, producer, I could smile at him as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:16:36

We got some of the hottest reactions on an Indian interview that we did earlier this year, again with an Indian pastor, Indian Christian pastor in Manipur, who's dealing with the violence and the strife between these two tribes.

Alex Kochman: 00:16:52

1A predominantly Christian tribe, the other kind of a Hindu nationalist sort of movement happening within that tribe.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:00

And man, just wading into that.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:03

It's like you thought American politics on the Internet were feisty.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:07

You have no idea.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:09

And truth be told, I've not been there.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:11

You spent more time there.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:13

I'm certain.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:14

I don't understand any of the situation on the ground.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:18

What I do know though is that the believers in a place like that aren't dealing with this built in handicap of all of the bifurcations that we make in our mind when we approach the political sphere.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:34

And I think we've all seen it done.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:36

People who, it's pie in the sky piety where the gospel doesn't actually touch ground in terms of culture, in terms of the state, the community, all the things that all of Christ for all of life, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:17:50

I have a pastor friend, years ago, he said to me, brother, I try never to get political in the pulpit.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:56

And I just, I didn't really give him any grace.

Alex Kochman: 00:17:59

I said, brother, the second you say that Jesus is Lord, you're making a political statement of some sort, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:18:05

And that's not to say that.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:07

That the pulpit is the place to do partisan stumping, but you are making a statement about power dynamics in the world.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:13

You're asserting that there's a king that's over all of it, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:18:16

And that he has obligations that bear upon us.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:20

And so some of the believers in that part of the world that I've seen, they're actually willing to engage locally.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:26

I was talking to another Indian pastor in another city just this morning.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:30

He's describing people in his congregation that are engaged in local civic boards and that are advocating.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:37

Some of the other folks that I know are advocating for the Christians to even get their own Christian government in Manipur.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:45

I don't know if that's possible.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:46

That doesn't make any sense to me.

Alex Kochman: 00:18:47

But the fact that they're willing to go there mentally, they're just thinking in different categories than we are, where our sensibilities are very American sensibilities about what separation of church and state means and all that.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:00

To simply say that when.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:02

When that proclamation of Christ as Lord goes out, that has implications for every part of human life and existence, and that includes the state, and that includes the culture that it subsumes.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:13

And so when it comes to a question like nationalism, which, again, another triggering word, I think it's more helpful to think in terms of circles and spheres than it is spectrums.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:26

And when I say that, I feel like I'm doing the cheesy, like, circles versus rose thing that we've seen.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:32

I love it.

Will Spencer: 00:19:33

I love it.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:33

And that's not what I'm attempting to do.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:35

But hear me.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:37

We tend to think of loving one's nation versus loving the nations.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:42

And you hear a lot about that in the evangelical church, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:19:44

Love the nations, love the world, God loves the world.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:47

But we put that on a spectrum like two opposite ends of a pendulum swing.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:53

Like either you're.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:54

You're an America first, blood and soil, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:19:58

Like that.

Alex Kochman: 00:19:59

You're very much about here versus you love the world, you love all the peoples, and there shall the twain meet.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:09

And I would say that the best approach, and I think the most biblical, the most supported in church history, is to think in terms of the ordo amoris, the order of loves, the order of affections, which starts with you and your God.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:22

And I said this recently in a sermon.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:25

I do hear pushback on modern missions, because people have heard the modern missions talk for generations, and they're starting to say, okay, but what about my school board?

Alex Kochman: 00:20:34

What about my own neighborhood?

Alex Kochman: 00:20:36

And that's.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:36

That's Fine.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:38

I'm not against that at all.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:39

I think we need a little bit of a dose of that as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:43

But what I would say to the person that's cynically jaded every time they hear about loving the world, loving the nations, to me that sounds like you're asking me to love the anonymous orphan on the back of the brochure that I'll never be able to meet.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:57

You're asking me to love an abstraction.

Alex Kochman: 00:20:59

You're asking me to love the most far away thing that doesn't affect my life.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:03

How can I have a moral obligation to that?

Alex Kochman: 00:21:05

Realistically, what I would say is the center of the circle.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:08

Think of these concentric circles.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:10

The center of the circle.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:11

It's not just your family, not just your nation.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:14

The center of the circle is loving your God.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:16

And if you love your God, if you have a zeal for your God's glory, of course you want him to be glorified in your neighborhood, at your local.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:26

What do we have to say on this platform?

Alex Kochman: 00:21:28

Reproductive health clinic.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:32

But you also want to see your God's name not sullied, but glorified in a place like Delhi where it's actually the cow that is worshiped along with a multiplicity of other pagan gods and demons.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:48

Right?

Alex Kochman: 00:21:48

You don't want to see the name of your Lord sullied in that place either.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:52

And so I think we need to think in these concentric circles.

Alex Kochman: 00:21:55

And then I think we need to recognize things like global missions that every evangelical, every church wants to talk about, wants to support, needs to support.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:04

That should be the overflow of loving God, loving my family, loving my nearest neighbors.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:10

And then that love will overflow each of those successive rings until, yes, I'm actually able to go out and love and serve the nations.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:19

But not out of an idealistic whim, but actually just because I have got my own house in order, I'm qualified, I'm called, I'm walking with the Lord, My house is in order.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:29

I'm seeking to serve the Lord here and then out of that also.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:32

Yeah, I want to be faithful with this other relationship, with this place that the Lord's put in my sphere of influence, with this far away people group that I've developed a burden for.

Alex Kochman: 00:22:40

So I think we can walk and chew gum, but I think that to do so means more thinking in these concentric spheres and less of the spectrums.

Will Spencer: 00:22:48

I think that's a wonderful way of framing it because I think part of what's happened in American culture, I can speak for America for the past, say 60 or so years is this idea that we have to, we are commanded to.

Will Spencer: 00:23:03

And where the command comes from is we can probably talk about that.

Will Spencer: 00:23:06

Commanded to love the other more than we love ourselves, that loving the other is the priority.

Will Spencer: 00:23:13

Even that the marginalized, the outsider, the downtrodden, something the quote unquote victim, that that person needs to be loved.

Will Spencer: 00:23:25

Which is to say not just a felt sense, not just a sentiment, but needs to be shown in an action and word and priority of funds allocation, especially over whatever might be happening in your own home, in your own household, in your own nation, even with yourself.

Will Spencer: 00:23:42

Like there's a, there's a recklessly self sacrificial quality to this projection outwards into loving.

Will Spencer: 00:23:51

And I think there's a real resistance that many people have to be like, no, we have to focus on ourselves first because we don't understand what that means.

Will Spencer: 00:24:01

To focus on ourselves in a healthy sense without immediately falling into the ditch of this is selfishness, right?

Will Spencer: 00:24:08

It's this kind of zero sum thinking that says if I give to myself, there's nothing for anybody else.

Will Spencer: 00:24:14

Instead of the understanding that no, it doesn't work that way at all.

Will Spencer: 00:24:17

In fact, by proper, only by properly caring for ourselves in a God honoring way, can we ever care for anybody else.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:25

In physics, inertia is one of the most difficult things to overcome, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:24:29

It takes more energy to get something moving than to keep it moving.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:32

And so, yeah, there's probably a reason that in the past books like Radical have kind of maybe overcorrected in pushing us beyond the comfortable, the familiar, you know, the typical white picket fence, middle class.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:47

And so I understand pastors, I understand missions leaders who lean hard into the message of sacrifice go.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:55

Because we do need to be awakened.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:57

We need to be cajoled into doing that.

Alex Kochman: 00:24:59

And sometimes that pretty black and white rhetoric is the only thing that can get through.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:04

But there's a difference between that and the zero sum thinking that you're talking about.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:07

I think zero sum is the exact right word for it.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:10

I got a phone call last night from a prominent Reformed Baptist pastor.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:15

I won't, I won't rat him out, but your listeners would likely know his name.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:19

And we were talking through things that he sees even in his own church where there's this, it's the same situation that was happening in the Corinthian church.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:31

One person says, oh, I've got this gift, you know, I've got this gift, only it's not tongues and you're looking down on others for not having tongues.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:37

But it's this gift of cross cultural evangelism.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:40

It's the hand in the body of Christ saying, man, if everyone was a hand like me, you know, then, then we'd be really, we'd be really handy, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:25:47

And that's, that's cheeky and corny.

Alex Kochman: 00:25:49

But, but the, but the truth is, any person, if they're, if their spiritual gift, if their inclination is to focus on things at home, maybe you have a passion for your marriage, maybe you have a passion for fitness, maybe you have a passion for the political realm, maybe you do have a passion for unreached people groups or door to door evangelism.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:07

But every single person in every church and every community does have a temptation to look at their own gift set, the things that they're passionate about.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:16

And then, okay, everything looks like a missions problem because I've got this shiny missions hammer and so everything looks like a missions nail, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:26:24

You start to judge, condescend upon others that don't have that same wiring.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:30

I think it's incumbent on Christian leaders to recognize all of these gifts, inclinations, strategies.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:36

They have a seat at the table of the body of Christ.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:39

No single one of them should override everything else.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:42

Because we're actually called to do a lot of things.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:44

We're supposed to obey everything Christ commanded.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:47

That means there's local obligations.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:48

That means you have to work on yourself, work on your household, and then you have to care about what God is doing in the world.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:54

Because God is a global God.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:56

He fills all things.

Alex Kochman: 00:26:57

And so I think that there is a real easy way to go from one extreme to another.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:03

And my prayer for the men that you talk to often, for the men that I talk to, I see this in my own heart.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:10

My prayer is that we can make the right corrections, we can get our own houses in order.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:15

We can take advantage.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:16

And I know this is the purpose of the interview.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:17

We can take advantage of maybe things like the next four years and maybe things economically and culturally, or maybe there's a little bit of a respite from some of the culture war that we've seen, that we can take that, but then capitalize it and listen, just not let our love grow cold.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:33

And my concern anytime we're in a moment like this, culturally, is that we can believe the right things, we can have the right view of 20th century history, of our doctrine of salvation, of our view of the local church, of personal fitness and wellness, and whatever else that is.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:53

But our love can grow cold.

Alex Kochman: 00:27:55

And you know this and this is something that Michael Foster would sign off with on his podcast regularly.

Alex Kochman: 00:28:04

Is that that same point where Paul says to the Corinthian Church, act like men is also where he says, do all things in love, those things go together.

Alex Kochman: 00:28:13

And I think we have to make sure our love doesn't grow cold.

Will Spencer: 00:28:16

That's a great point to avoid driving from the ditch of.

Will Spencer: 00:28:21

How do I say that?

Will Spencer: 00:28:22

Maybe extreme selflessness, an abdication poverty theology.

Alex Kochman: 00:28:29

Is one of the things that's thrown around.

Will Spencer: 00:28:30

Sure.

Will Spencer: 00:28:31

Okay, cool.

Will Spencer: 00:28:31

So I'm glad you went back to that.

Will Spencer: 00:28:32

So I did not read Radical by David Platt.

Will Spencer: 00:28:35

I barely know who the guy is.

Will Spencer: 00:28:37

Like, I'm new to this.

Will Spencer: 00:28:37

I'm new to this, this thing.

Will Spencer: 00:28:39

So.

Will Spencer: 00:28:40

So what do I need to know?

Will Spencer: 00:28:42

Because I've picked up a lot, sort of environmentally, atmospherically about what the book is.

Will Spencer: 00:28:46

You know, it's got an upside down house.

Will Spencer: 00:28:49

And I know that he's a very charming and charismatic guy who.

Will Spencer: 00:28:52

Charming, charismatic preachers who build us these massive online ministries.

Will Spencer: 00:28:56

There isn't always a lot beneath the surface.

Will Spencer: 00:28:58

And so my sense.

Will Spencer: 00:29:00

And plus there's this big expose of something that happened in his church, but I unfortunately haven't had time to watch yet.

Will Spencer: 00:29:05

But so what specifically did that book kind of promote?

Will Spencer: 00:29:09

And then we can, then we can frame in a larger conversation because I think what's happened is, it seems to me, and you can tell me, it seems to me that the message of that book, which I think was written in the 90s, I'm guessing, or the.

Alex Kochman: 00:29:21

Early: 2000

Will Spencer: 00:29:23

Okay,: 2007

Will Spencer: 00:29:24

So.

Will Spencer: 00:29:25

So it embodied a set of ideas that at the time everyone probably kind of took for granted.

Will Spencer: 00:29:31

Maybe in the Christian world, everyone kind of took for granted.

Will Spencer: 00:29:33

And he crystallized these ideas.

Will Spencer: 00:29:35

And whatever those ideas are, it seems like this moment with Trump and Trump's election is a repudiation of many of those ideas.

Will Spencer: 00:29:44

That's what it feels like.

Will Spencer: 00:29:45

It feels like radical.

Will Spencer: 00:29:46

Feels like again from not having read it, it was a product of its time.

Will Spencer: 00:29:50

And that the full flowering and the fruiting of those ideas has come to pass and let's say the past four years.

Will Spencer: 00:29:56

And so now you have, you have a repudiation of those.

Will Spencer: 00:29:59

That things had gone too far.

Will Spencer: 00:30:00

So what exactly was going on in the book Radical.

Will Spencer: 00:30:04

And then run it forward for how that played out over the subsequent.

Will Spencer: 00:30:08

I guess it came out in: 2007

Will Spencer: 00:30:09

So how it played out up until: 2024

Alex Kochman: 00:30:14

That's a great question and some interesting analysis.

Alex Kochman: 00:30:18

You're connecting A few dots that I hadn't considered.

Alex Kochman: 00:30:21

ut with Radical coming out in: 2007

Alex Kochman: 00:30:28

Every book is, of course, specifically, I do think that there's pendulum swings.

Alex Kochman: 00:30:35

rted to peak out in the early: 2000

Alex Kochman: 00:30:46

Obviously that was huge through the seeker movement in the 70s, 80s, 90s, Bill Hybels and all of that sort.

Alex Kochman: 00:30:53

But what you have is you have not only churches that we would look at now as theologically or morally compromised.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:03

We tend to associate the big showy, entertainment driven churches with, with, with softness of preaching and whatnot.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:10

And that's increasingly become the case.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:13

But especially back then, you had all sorts of churches that appeared not only large and thriving and healthy and full of programs, but then, but then solid content driving those things as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:26

Some of your listeners will remember the elephant room, which, the elephant room certainly didn't age well.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:33

Many of the men, pastors that were a part of that are men who've disqualified themselves for ministry right now.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:39

f this high point of the late: 2000

Alex Kochman: 00:31:51

But then into that comes this corrective of, I'm not sure we need to spend $400,000 on our AV equipment.

Alex Kochman: 00:31:58

Maybe we should take some of that money and put it into our missions program.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:02

And those types of insights are a lot of the steam that radical picked up.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:10

And he picked, he got flack from others at the time over those sorts of things.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:14

What are you saying?

Alex Kochman: 00:32:14

We can't have goldfish crackers in our children's ministry.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:17

We've got to give that money to the missions budget too.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:20

And there were debates on public platforms over literally goldfish.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:24

That, that was not hypothetical hypothetical.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:26

That was discussed.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:27

But some of that is a useful.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:30

Okay, how big do we.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:31

Man, will you.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:34

You've missed a crazy two decades being an evangelical.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:37

Let me just say, you've got, you got some family history to catch up.

Will Spencer: 00:32:41

I guess so, man.

Will Spencer: 00:32:42

Like, you know how many people tell me.

Will Spencer: 00:32:44

I, I had to check.

Will Spencer: 00:32:46

I had to ask somebody once.

Will Spencer: 00:32:47

He said he was telling me about the number of church splits that happen over like new carpet.

Will Spencer: 00:32:52

And I was like, your kid.

Will Spencer: 00:32:53

Like, is that something.

Will Spencer: 00:32:53

That's a joke, right?

Will Spencer: 00:32:54

Like that's, that's a, that's a euphemism.

Will Spencer: 00:32:56

And like, no, it's literally over the carpet.

Will Spencer: 00:32:58

I'm like, what are you talking.

Alex Kochman: 00:32:59

Well, you know, it's, it's, it's never really about the carpet.

Will Spencer: 00:33:03

But what is this really about?

Alex Kochman: 00:33:06

Okay, yeah.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:09

So you look at it as a product of its time, and there's a couple of different voices.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:14

Francis Chan puts out a book called Crazy Love, similar premise.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:17

He.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:18

He steps down from his megachurch and says, all of the smoke and mirrors and the lights, and I really feel like I need to be doing ministry at a smaller, more intimate level.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:27

And these guys receive criticism.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:29

And I think we can look at that and say there's some, maybe good correctives.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:33

There's some things where, again, I'm not sure I agree with all of the criticisms.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:37

Pendulums go back and forth.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:39

That's kind of what it represented at the time.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:40

But I do think you're right.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:42

I think there's this broader mentality within the evangelical world that's very willing to say, sacrifice, go down in a blaze of glory and love the nations.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:55

But then at the end of that, you actually haven't got your house in order.

Alex Kochman: 00:33:58

You haven't loved your near neighbors in many ways.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:01

That's my autobiography.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:03

I haven't really shared this publicly anywhere, but one of my earliest experiences with missions, after going to a Christian university, kind of getting bit by the missions bug and getting really closely connected with an organization that I loved because 100% of your money went straight to partners on the field.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:21

So anytime, I mean, I got my paycheck, anytime I got any cash in my pocket, I gave absurd amounts.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:28

At least it felt absurd as a starving college student at the time.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:32

But I wasn't putting anything into savings.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:34

I was throwing it all at this missions organization.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:38

Came to find out a matter of months later, this.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:41

This missions organization was embroiled in scandal and was embezzling those funds, even.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:48

Even got a small check back as part of a class action lawsuit.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:51

I mean, it was, it was a nightmare.

Alex Kochman: 00:34:54

But there was the youthful zeal and enthusiasm that, that represented in my heart where I.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:00

I wish someone had come to me and said, your.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:03

Your love for what God is doing in the world is good and it's proper.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:08

And the best way for you to channel that is to build wealth, is to steward what you have, to build a foundation for the future from which you can be even more generous 15, 20, 30 years from now, rather than just simply emptying your account every time a little bit comes in.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:28

And so each person has a different biography and story with missions, and that's just a part of mine.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:35

One of the things I love about Abwe, by the way, our president, him and I have had this conversation before about radical or ordinary Christianity.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:45

What's funny is, back in: 2007

Alex Kochman: 00:35:51

It's orange, it's got this lowercase look.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:55

Instead of saying radical, it says ordinary.

Alex Kochman: 00:35:58

And a lot of people at the time thought that it was meant to be a direct repudiation of radical.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:03

I interviewed Michael about it.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:04

It wasn't.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:05

It was pure happenstance, or we might say God's sovereignty, but both of those came out right around the same time.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:11

I personally lean a little bit more towards the ordinary paradigm.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:16

I think they both have a time and place, but, you know, ordinary faithfulness, I think looks like, okay, what does it mean to be faithful with the things that I've been given so that God can give me more, and then so that from.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:26

From that I can overflow in generosity and love and outreach and mission and all of the things that we know?

Alex Kochman: 00:36:33

If our churches are preaching it to us, the things that we know are important, but to do so in a way that's sustainable, where I'm not going to burn out in a blaze of glory or deplete my savings in a year or two, but I can actually sustain the long horizon of obedience.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:49

Not that you'll avoid suffering along the way.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:51

Okay.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:51

The alternative to poverty theology is not prosperity theology.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:55

The alternative is faithfulness, though.

Alex Kochman: 00:36:57

And sometimes blessing comes with faithfulness.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:00

And then when blessing comes, you steward it, you enjoy it, and you also share it.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:03

You open up your hand.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:04

And so these are not radical.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:06

There's the word.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:07

These aren't radical Christian concepts.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:09

But if all you're doing, I think, is just reading the latest book on either side, all you're doing is, no offense to you and me.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:17

I mean, I'm in the same boat as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:19

But if all you're doing is listening to podcasts, if you're not getting under godly older men that can lean into your life, that can put you under their leadership, their spiritual formation in a sound, biblical local church, if you're not being formed in that way, if you're not being fathered, you're not going to learn those lessons.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:38

You're going to go, you know, finger in the air wherever the wind blows you, whether it's too far to a radical extreme or too far to a complacent, ordinary extreme.

Alex Kochman: 00:37:47

I'm sure your listeners are thinking, this is the worst election coverage I've ever heard.

Will Spencer: 00:37:51

No, it's amazing.

Will Spencer: 00:37:52

Election coverage.

Will Spencer: 00:37:53

No, this is.

Will Spencer: 00:37:54

But all this stuff is really related to the election.

Will Spencer: 00:37:59

But the one thing I think we can all agree on is that no one should listen to podcasts.

Will Spencer: 00:38:02

Let's just put that.

Alex Kochman: 00:38:03

Except for the Will Spencer podcast and.

Alex Kochman: 00:38:06

Except for the missions.

Will Spencer: 00:38:07

Except for the missions, obviously.

Will Spencer: 00:38:09

Maybe you can throw in some.

Will Spencer: 00:38:10

Maybe we'll give you a green light to listen to a Rogan podcast every now and then.

Will Spencer: 00:38:14

So.

Will Spencer: 00:38:15

But I think this is all very relevant to the election because we've lived through.

Will Spencer: 00:38:21

And when I say we, I mean not only Americans collectively, but I think also you and I in our lifetimes and probably the majority, if not everyone who's listening.

Will Spencer: 00:38:31

An era of the, say, the past 60 years, where the prioritization to the other at the expense of self, at the unrighteous expense of self, has been the cultural value, right?

Will Spencer: 00:38:45

So you weren't discipled to save your money, to sock it away into investments or bank or something like that.

Will Spencer: 00:38:53

You were discipled to give it away to a corrupt organization, but you didn't know it was corrupt.

Will Spencer: 00:38:58

But the mission is you should be taking care of these other people around the world and helping them reach the gospel at the expense of your own future.

Will Spencer: 00:39:07

And so we run that as a cultural value.

Will Spencer: 00:39:09

And when you run that out, what you get is we need to abduct kids from schools and put them into transgender surgeries, Right?

Will Spencer: 00:39:19

Because, because a kid came in and said, I think I'm a girl.

Alex Kochman: 00:39:22

Right?

Will Spencer: 00:39:22

That's where, where the prior, the prioritization of the marginalized.

Will Spencer: 00:39:27

When you turn that to 11, that's what you get.

Will Spencer: 00:39:29

That when someone says, I think I'm a girl, you, they immediately get thrown into the most at risk, high risk, marginalized category.

Will Spencer: 00:39:37

And we have to do whatever they say.

Will Spencer: 00:39:39

And that's a, that's ripe for exploitation.

Will Spencer: 00:39:41

It's the same phenomenon.

Will Spencer: 00:39:43

And I think what we're seeing with the Trump election, in fact, I know what we're seeing from the Trump election is hold on.

Will Spencer: 00:39:48

The notion that we need to sacrifice ourselves, essentially slit our own wrists in order to, in order to water the marginalized with their own blood is not a sustainable proposition.

Will Spencer: 00:39:58

Because whether you do that as an individual, young man in college, whether you do it as a, as a family, right?

Will Spencer: 00:40:03

We have a.

Will Spencer: 00:40:03

I'm going to pull up a comment from YouTube in just a moment.

Will Spencer: 00:40:07

Whether you do it as a family or whether you do it as a nation, it is not sustainable.

Will Spencer: 00:40:12

And you eventually have to drive the truck back.

Will Spencer: 00:40:15

You have to get it up out of the Ditch and put it back on the road without driving into the opposite ditch, which is don't let your love grow cold.

Will Spencer: 00:40:23

So I think what we're talking about right now, just in the conversation about your experience, is the American experience in microcosm, to say that as a young man that you were told to give your money away to help this organization that be helping someone somewhere half around the world, like, well, maybe I don't need to be doing that.

Will Spencer: 00:40:41

Maybe I can put my.

Alex Kochman: 00:40:42

Please go ahead now.

Alex Kochman: 00:40:44

Many good points, and what I love is that Scripture does this for us.

Alex Kochman: 00:40:50

This is complex, multilayered, but it's not overly complex.

Alex Kochman: 00:40:56

Excuse me?

Alex Kochman: 00:40:58

It's not overly complex in that if you're reading scripture, if you're hearing it faithfully preached and exposited, you're going to run into the Book of Acts.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:07

You're going to see what it looks like to be scattered and persecuted and to be preaching the gospel along the way, and to be living as kind of a pilgrim on mission.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:16

And there are seasons of that.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:19

You'll also read Jesus denouncing the Pharisees, though, in the Gospels, saying, listen, you guys cross land and sea to make a single proselyte.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:27

And when you do, you make them twice as much a son of hell as you yourselves.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:31

And for those that are anti missions, I mean, they're not saying anything that's more harsh than that.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:37

That's about as harsh as you can get on that side.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:39

It just goes to show you that whether you make the going and loving, the faraway abstract thing, if that's the center of your system, or if the center of your system is self and personal interests, if anything other than Christ is not at the center of your system, the center will not hold.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:58

The problem is isms.

Alex Kochman: 00:41:59

Okay?

Alex Kochman: 00:42:00

So if you take the ism and you use that to absolutize these abstractions about the marginalized, the this or the that or the nation, again, and I'm not opposed whatsoever to a righteous love of one's own nation.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:17

I think it's definitional.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:18

I think it's essential.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:19

But if that's the center of your system, of course it's.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:23

It's not going to sustain itself.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:24

Right?

Alex Kochman: 00:42:25

The Lord has to be the center of your thinking about your finance, the thinking about your evangelistic duty, your obligations to your family, to your church, to the broader community and the world.

Alex Kochman: 00:42:38

And if he's not, that center won't hold.

Will Spencer: 00:42:41

And it has to be the thinking of your politics as well.

Will Spencer: 00:42:44

And I think that's what's happened for many Christians.

Will Spencer: 00:42:50

This is the Christian nationalist discussion.

Will Spencer: 00:42:51

I don't, we don't need to launch into a discussion of what that means of the various Christian nationalist, you know, factions in terms of like a label.

Will Spencer: 00:43:00

But, but to say that we need to make Christ the center of American cultural, economic and political life.

Will Spencer: 00:43:06

And this, this speaks to a live stream I'm doing with Doug Wilson next week on Monday about the book Idols for Destruction by Herbert Schlossberg, which was written in the early 80s and then republished in the 90s, which was an overview of the, of the great idols that American culture worships.

Will Spencer: 00:43:24

And I thought of that while you were talking about your experience giving away, giving away your income as a poor college student to a missions organization, that actually, that you were living out a cultural value that was much more widespread before you or I were really around.

Will Spencer: 00:43:39

Which is, which is the idea of the loss of the value of Christian saving, of Christian frugality, that we lived in this age of apparent affluence based on the back of money printing essentially.

Will Spencer: 00:43:52

And so we have this notion that there's just endless money to throw around because essentially there is.

Will Spencer: 00:43:56

And so you can just, you can just give it away or you can consume.

Will Spencer: 00:43:59

Even if you're donating money.

Will Spencer: 00:44:01

That in the way that you were framing it, it sounds still kind of like a form of consumption.

Will Spencer: 00:44:05

Obviously you're not buying, you know, like a Bugatti.

Will Spencer: 00:44:07

Right.

Will Spencer: 00:44:08

But it is a form, it is a form of like, well, I can consume or I can save and giving away is definitely not saving.

Will Spencer: 00:44:15

So in a sense it falls into consumption or at least from the perspective of the missions organization, it's almost a form of consumption versus we need to, I need to hold this back for myself, but in a righteous, God honoring way.

Will Spencer: 00:44:26

And so we put Christ at the center of politics, economics and culture and we get a very different approach to society.

Will Spencer: 00:44:33

We get a very different approach to, to everything.

Will Spencer: 00:44:36

And that I think is what's happening now in a way that gets more true to what Scripture says, as you said, rightfully in acts, also in Proverbs, et cetera.

Will Spencer: 00:44:45

Not a sentimentalized Christianity where we're called to love, by the way, just to.

Will Spencer: 00:44:51

I'm going to, I'm just going to divert from that in a second and point something out.

Will Spencer: 00:44:54

Just how much the notion of loving your neighbor, that idea, which is very Christian in nature, how much that has been twisted and manipulated to guilt and shame people into doing things that have ultimately been self harming and that that's.

Will Spencer: 00:45:09

I don't know, maybe you can talk about that because when you say that I'm catching up on a family discussion for the past 20 years of your.

Will Spencer: 00:45:15

Yes, I am.

Will Spencer: 00:45:16

But the one theme that I see repeated over and over again, particularly on Twitter with people who have, who are still part of that era, let's say, is the term love your neighbor can mean whatever political agenda someone wants it to mean.

Will Spencer: 00:45:30

That is, that's baffling to me just how like, like they spread it all over everything.

Will Spencer: 00:45:35

Love your neighbor at the massive expense of yourself.

Will Spencer: 00:45:39

And can you talk a little bit?

Will Spencer: 00:45:41

It sounds like something that you might have gone through, that you might have experienced sort of a waking up to that.

Will Spencer: 00:45:47

Maybe you can speak to that for a second.

Alex Kochman: 00:45:50

One thing that your question and comments there brings to mind is, is the fact that so many of the arguments that you see coming from the secular left, progressive side of this nation's culture are borrowing capital from the Christian worldview in a lot of pretty obvious ways.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:08

You know, we all remember being told what it means to love your neighbor a few years ago during the pandemic.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:14

A lot of those arguments were sincere.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:16

A lot of them were less than sincere.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:18

But they had freight because our culture is still haunted by the ghost of Christendom.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:24

You say things like love your neighbor and that still has a certain resonance even though our society is increasingly unchurched, de churched, biblically illiterate.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:35

Couldn't tell you who said love your neighbor as yourself and so on.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:40

I think that that creates an opportunity for us actually to take some of those assumptions, expose them, bring them into the light of Christ.

Alex Kochman: 00:46:48

I think we can look at sort of the glasses half full there, but then show them, hey, you actually don't have a basis in your worldview for why should I love my neighbor as myself?

Alex Kochman: 00:46:59

Smarter people than me have written about this in places like First Things.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:03

But one thing that you see in our nation between the political right and the political left is the pitting of what?

Alex Kochman: 00:47:10

And Protestant theologians don't talk about this as much.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:12

Certainly Roman Catholic ones do.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:14

The pitting of the theological virtues against the cardinal virtues, these other virtues.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:21

And so the theological virtues being faith, hope and love.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:25

Right.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:25

And how does that strike you with modern ears?

Alex Kochman: 00:47:29

Faith, hope and love.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:30

I think I could use those three words at any political rally and people would have their hearts warmed.

Alex Kochman: 00:47:37

Right?

Alex Kochman: 00:48:53

A political rally on either side.

Alex Kochman: 00:48:55

Those are, those are things that appeal especially to the left of center.

Alex Kochman: 00:48:59

If you start talking about love and hope.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:02

Right?

Alex Kochman: 00:49:02

Those are words that have been politicized and captured for a certain non Christian, anti Christian agenda.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:09

But you have those biblical virtues.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:11

Think of 1 Corinthians 13, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:49:14

Those are the top of the virtue hierarchy, pit against and thought of in exclusion to other virtues like prudence, fortitude, courage, things that ground us, things that have to do with situations, applications in real life of those virtues.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:33

And I think if we're not careful, one side of the spectrum only has those grounded virtues.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:40

They can lose the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:43

And the other wants to sort of frolic around in those abstractions without actually thinking of the practicalities of life.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:50

It's why some smarter people than me have quipped that the difference between a conservative and a liberal is that a conservative has been mugged by reality.

Alex Kochman: 00:49:59

There's a certain reality to the fact that if you've been mugged, if your purse has been stolen, you suddenly realize, okay, that we don't merely live in a world of flowery abstractions, right?

Alex Kochman: 00:50:09

And the point there is not political so much as it is how do we approach issues of worldview right now as that pendulum swings and it looks like there's a shifting cultural landscape for the next four, four years.

Alex Kochman: 00:50:22

I do think that as we seek to be faithful with the gospel in our Judea, our Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth, I think that that means that there's a lot of normal red blooded Americans in our midst who suddenly are open to conversations about family values, open to conversations about God, very open to conversations about spiritual warfare.

Alex Kochman: 00:50:45

Many people are more convinced of the existence of Satan and demons than they are the existence of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, of course.

Alex Kochman: 00:50:54

And you know, you can get into all of the paranormal phenomenon with that.

Alex Kochman: 00:50:57

I know that's something that you've spent plenty of time working through, but with all of that, we have, we have a massive mission field that's, that's opening up for us among ordinary Americans.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:08

And yeah, there's migrants, there's, there's the nations coming to us as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:11

And that's also a mission field.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:13

We have ordinary Americans that for some reason there's a spiritual openness there that there wasn't there before.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:20

I think the last four years have really served to help people realize, okay, this world can't be all there is.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:28

There's a battle of good and evil in this world and you've got to choose a side.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:33

And we know of course, that that battle is not merely a political battle.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:36

It's spiritual in nature, but it does touch ground in culture.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:39

It does have ramifications.

Alex Kochman: 00:51:41

And I think that that should give us boldness with the gospel and with the whole counsel of God's Word.

Will Spencer: 00:51:46

So before we, before we dig into that, I want to highlight a couple comments that Philip M.

Will Spencer: 00:51:52

Has left on Twitter and have you comment on them.

Will Spencer: 00:51:54

He said, I'm a missionary kid whose parents mission hurts so many of the children in order to reach tribal people.

Will Spencer: 00:52:01

He said a significant portion.

Will Spencer: 00:52:05

Hopefully this comes up a significant portion.

Will Spencer: 00:52:07

Where'd it go?

Will Spencer: 00:52:08

Oh, there it is.

Will Spencer: 00:52:09

A significant portion of my fellow mks, which I suspect means missionary kids aren't even following Jesus anymore.

Will Spencer: 00:52:16

So I would imagine that stories like this are relatively common, certainly not uncommon.

Will Spencer: 00:52:24

And as we talk about sort of the next four years, as we sort of talk about all these different themes of coming back to focus on self and home and family and nation, I wonder if you can comment on some of Philip's experience now.

Will Spencer: 00:52:37

Missions is a new thing for me.

Will Spencer: 00:52:40

It's not something that I've been on.

Will Spencer: 00:52:42

For example, I was the beneficiary of a mission, although it was to the Burning Man Festival.

Will Spencer: 00:52:46

Not exactly the same thing.

Will Spencer: 00:52:48

But I wonder if you can speak to that a little bit as we sort of look at this new era of like, okay, who are we as individuals?

Will Spencer: 00:52:55

How can we go back to righteously focusing on our own needs?

Will Spencer: 00:52:59

Who are we as families going back to, as Doug Wilson says, not an atomic society, but a molecular society.

Will Spencer: 00:53:06

So he talks about individualism, the big bag of BBs, that modernity sort of frames us all as individuals in a big beanbag versus molecules.

Will Spencer: 00:53:17

Families are the building blocks of society.

Will Spencer: 00:53:19

So as we're going back to a reconstitution of ourselves as individuals, ourselves as families, as ourselves, as nations, it seems to me that Phyllis experience was to say parents who needed to give themselves and their own family so fully away that they lost touch with their own kids, with their own self, with.

Will Spencer: 00:53:35

With the integrity of their own families.

Will Spencer: 00:53:37

So maybe you can comment on that a little bit as we look particularly at the next four years and how you see those shifts playing out in the mission field.

Alex Kochman: 00:53:47

So heavy hearing that testimony, and I've heard many stories like that, so my mind goes to a couple of different places.

Alex Kochman: 00:53:58

I think you're right, Will.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:00

I don't think we can talk about the household too much.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:03

That's the fundamental molecular structure.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:06

And if you want to say, hey, I'm single.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:08

Why are you picking on me?

Alex Kochman: 00:54:09

Okay, well then you're a household of one, but you're still a household.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:13

But that's the fundamental building block that you see God operating on throughout Scripture.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:18

In the Book of Acts, you see households converted.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:21

We see in many parts of the world on the mission field today, households still convert en masse.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:26

Not always.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:27

Sometimes you have, you know, father against son and mother against daughter.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:31

Jesus talks about that too, and I'm a Baptist, so I don't think it's automatic.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:36

But I do think that we cannot really overemphasize the importance of those household principles in Scripture.

Alex Kochman: 00:54:44

And what I want to say to individuals that have come from a situation of hurt like that, though, is fundamentally can we look beyond the sins of our fathers to see the Father?

Alex Kochman: 00:54:57

And can we extend the same forgiveness that's offered to us in the Gospel, the forgiveness that maybe our fathers and mothers who weren't present for us were offering to far away peoples and to natives in various places?

Alex Kochman: 00:55:07

Can we take that same Gospel tract, hold it up to our noses, stick our face in it, read it, and simply recognize that I can receive that forgiveness.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:16

I can also give that forgiveness to them?

Alex Kochman: 00:55:19

I will say this.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:21

I've seen many We've seen it.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:22

It's not just missionaries, it's pastors as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:27

It's working men everywhere frequently sacrifice family on the altar of career ministry missions.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:37

In one sense, it's a unique missions problem.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:40

In another sense it's not find me a father anywhere who's working, who feels like his vocation has meaning, that's not tempted to perhaps put that above his domestic obligations.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:52

And so perhaps it's not uniquely a missions problem.

Alex Kochman: 00:55:56

That said, I know there's particular circumstances like the ones that our commenter is describing, and in those situations as well, I do think there's a better way.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:06

I see the beauty of the multiplied impact when the entire family is mobilized and involved in the ministry.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:13

And here's the thing.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:14

We know this.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:14

If you, if you bring your kids to work with you.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:16

I brought my son to work with me here last Friday.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:19

There are inefficiencies when you're working together as a family on a business.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:23

There are inefficiencies when your whole family are missionaries and not just dad or not just mom and dad and the kids are shipped off somewhere.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:32

There are massive inefficiencies to doing ministry together.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:36

But it's so much sweeter and richer and thicker.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:39

The impact and the fruit of that takes longer to grow, certainly takes longer to till, to plant, to do everything that you need to do.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:46

But then it's more enduring.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:48

Not always, but I've seen it be More enduring.

Alex Kochman: 00:56:50

I spoke with a missionary in Peru this morning with Abwe, who he's not only planted multiple churches, but got to hear about how his children are grown.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:00

They're ministering in the same country as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:03

And so for as many horror stories, there's also stories of intergenerational faithfulness, and I delight to see those as well.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:12

I'd say whether you're a missions person, whether you're an America first person, whether you're some combination, whether you're just in a secular occupation, the temptation is always there to sacrifice one over the other.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:23

But the important thing is to get the order of affections right, to be faithful to God.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:28

And that's going to mean trade offs, that's going to mean cutting corners here or there to focus on family.

Alex Kochman: 00:57:33

But that's also going to mean that the fruit that our whole family can bear on mission together, the fruit of people not only looking at your life and seeing the gospel portrayed in that, looking at your relationship with your children and seeing the gospel portrayed in that, that is palpable, that's powerful, that can have an impact among anyone.

Will Spencer: 00:57:53

What I'm really enjoying about this conversation, many things, but one of the things I'm really enjoying is that there, there's so much, at least in the way that I see it, that's wrapped up in, again, in the microcosm of this one issue that I think we're experiencing in a broader cultural sense because you touched on like, can we forgive our fathers?

Will Spencer: 00:58:13

Can we forgive our parents?

Will Spencer: 00:58:14

And the far reaching implications of that single idea, beginning from individual psychological wellbeing.

Will Spencer: 00:58:24

So many people, and this is, I think the root of so much quote, unquote trauma in our culture is like, oh, my parents did something bad to me when I was a kid.

Will Spencer: 00:58:33

Maybe they failed in some minor or even some gross or negligent or perhaps even criminal way.

Will Spencer: 00:58:39

Yes, all that, all that.

Will Spencer: 00:58:41

But there needs to be, and there hasn't been a spirit of forgiveness from children to parents, perhaps as a result of the psychologization of culture, which is a much longer conversation.

Will Spencer: 00:58:52

I can go into that, but the freedom that comes with saying I will, first of all, you can set aside the fifth commandment.

Will Spencer: 00:59:00

I mean, you shouldn't, but you can.

Will Spencer: 00:59:02

But the benefit of forgiveness, of saying, okay, this person wronged me grossly, negligently, right?

Will Spencer: 00:59:11

Maybe they didn't quite torment you, although that is also the possibility.

Will Spencer: 00:59:15

But they've wronged me and, but I have been forgiven.

Will Spencer: 00:59:18

Can I forgive as I have been forgiven?

Will Spencer: 00:59:22

That is our call as Christians and the freedom that comes with that.

Will Spencer: 00:59:26

Please go ahead.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:27

Well, I agree with all that.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:29

Will.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:29

I actually don't know if you have any kids.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:32

Not yet.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:33

Not yet.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:33

But I have four, and I serve as an elder in our church.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:38

We have many parents of children that are young, that are old, many that are grown and out of the home, and we've got several parents of prodigals, of wayward children.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:49

And these aren't missionaries that were in the situation that we're discussing here.

Alex Kochman: 00:59:53

But I don't know anyone who walks with the Lord, who thinks glibly or lightly of when their children drift and wander and backslide and ultimately even apostatize.

Alex Kochman: 01:00:07

And even the person who's so immersed in ministry that they can't see if they're blind to it, I just don't know.

Alex Kochman: 01:00:12

I'm not saying they're not out there.

Alex Kochman: 01:00:14

I just don't know anyone that isn't broken and torn to shreds over their children if and when their children drift from the Lord.

Alex Kochman: 01:00:21

And so I think that's something we can certainly lay at the feet of Jesus and ask him to, to heal and to give many of us the power to forgive.

Alex Kochman: 01:00:31

And frankly, who hasn't had to forgive their parents of something along the way?

Will Spencer: 01:00:35

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:00:35

But as a cultural value.

Will Spencer: 01:00:38

Right, because we talked about the post war consensus and so much of the dialogue about that issue coming from the destructive direction is hatred for baby boomers in particular.

Will Spencer: 01:00:50

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:00:50

Among many others, which is like, okay, so let's, let's just stipulate, and I think we could probably land this case, that there was a cultural failing of, of the baby boomers as a generation.

Will Spencer: 01:01:02

Broadly, though not every individual, specifically, the sexual revolution was a, was a, Praise God, a near catastrophe.

Will Spencer: 01:01:11

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:01:11

Like a, like Kamala Harris.

Will Spencer: 01:01:13

A Kamala Harris presidency, which has been, would have been, I see it as the final flowering of feminism and the sexual revolution would have been disastrous for America and therefore the whole world.

Will Spencer: 01:01:24

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:01:24

So we have, praise God, been spared that.

Will Spencer: 01:01:29

And there still exists a significant amount of resentment for the baby boomers, although I think it'll probably pass us as time goes on for those particular failings that led to this near disaster.

Will Spencer: 01:01:44

That doesn't.

Will Spencer: 01:01:45

But just because we've averted the disaster doesn't immediately mean that, okay, job's done.

Will Spencer: 01:01:50

There are still roots of bitterness that lives within many men's and women's hearts.

Will Spencer: 01:01:55

Like, you can look at all the meltdowns on Twitter over Trump's election.

Will Spencer: 01:01:58

Is that over Trump's election.

Will Spencer: 01:02:00

Or is that.

Will Spencer: 01:02:00

Or are you just mad at your dad?

Will Spencer: 01:02:02

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:02:03

And so maybe we can talk about the notion of forgiveness that.

Will Spencer: 01:02:09

Not forgetfulness.

Will Spencer: 01:02:11

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:02:11

We can't just, we can't just forget.

Will Spencer: 01:02:13

We can't forget the Pat.

Will Spencer: 01:02:14

to: 202020

Will Spencer: 01:02:18

We can't just, like, pretend it didn't happen.

Will Spencer: 01:02:20

But the notion of true mercy and grace, I think is very much up for the mistakes that have been made consciously, perhaps willfully, manipulations over the past years.

Will Spencer: 01:02:34

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:02:34

I think that that's because.

Will Spencer: 01:02:35

I think that's going to be a theme.

Will Spencer: 01:02:37

We're not going to feel it today, you know, reconcile a national reconciliation.

Will Spencer: 01:02:41

It's Wednesday.

Will Spencer: 01:02:42

Let's gloat.

Will Spencer: 01:02:43

And I'm gloating all over Instagram right now.

Alex Kochman: 01:02:47

It's.

Will Spencer: 01:02:47

It's delicious.

Will Spencer: 01:02:48

So, but, but next week, going forward, maybe there is some room to talk about, okay, how are we as Christians, as leaders, as men, looking towards the future, Going to learn to teach.

Will Spencer: 01:03:01

Going to teach others to properly relate to the past.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:05

So many important things highlighted there.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:07

One of the things that really alarmed me during this last election cycle was some of the commercials that the Harris campaign put out depict.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:17

I mean, full stop right there.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:19

But, but specifically showing parental discretion warning 3, 2, 1.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:26

Showing a man masturbating in bed and watching pornography.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:30

And, and, and the message of the commercial was, you want to vote in such a way to protect this?

Will Spencer: 01:03:37

No, I didn't watch.

Will Spencer: 01:03:38

I was like, I don't want to put that in my eyes.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:40

I send you the link.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:41

, you know, not under Project: 2025

Alex Kochman: 01:03:48

And then the message was, and I, I wish I was making it up.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:51

I mean, no, I know you're not, unfortunately.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:53

Yeah, but.

Alex Kochman: 01:03:54

And, and multiple along those lines, some of the more mild ads were, were showing husband and wife pairs heading into the voting booth and, and the wife lying to the husband, saying she'd vote one way and then secretly voting another.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:07

Saw that one and I look at that and I'm like, so, so what, what we're actually saying here is that the ideal is sexual promiscuity, immoral, immorality, household division, toxic, unhealthy marriages.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:22

That's.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:23

That's what's being sold.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:25

That's the vision of this culture and of this nation.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:29

Look, why do we send missionaries to the nations?

Alex Kochman: 01:04:32

Well, because they're under judgment, right?

Alex Kochman: 01:04:35

Unless they turn to Christ.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:37

Our Nation is still under judgment.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:40

I think that the hand has slowed.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:42

I think this is a speed bump.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:44

We're still under judgment so long as commercials like that represent what's actually lurking in the heart of most of our people.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:53

And that's that.

Alex Kochman: 01:04:54

That's where the Christian church needs to come in and obviously bring Christ and his Word to bear in those situations.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:00

But I also think then the key to so many of those things, in addition to the gospel, in addition to all of the things that we, we value, is the household.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:09

Again, we have something that's so much better.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:12

We have intact marriages.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:14

We have marriages where the husband can delightfully lead and rule and also sacrificially serve.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:20

We have marriages where the women can serve, can even submit and do so joyfully and experience dignity and value and love through that.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:29

We have households where children can also submit, can learn, can grow, and can develop in masculine and feminine virtues.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:37

Those aren't the same things.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:38

Those are different tracks in the degree completion program with different outcomes.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:42

They can learn how to do those things in a way that's within the grain of their natures.

Alex Kochman: 01:05:48

And my unbelieving friends, my secular friends, are much more primed and ready now to have a conversation about natures, about not just what is a man, what is a woman, but also what's a man for, what's a woman for?

Alex Kochman: 01:06:02

They're ready to have those conversations where six or seven years ago they weren't because of all of the assumptions of egalitarianism, wokeness, et cetera, that were just baked in.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:13

Now it's a lot easier to have a conversation and just sort of say, like, okay, so what is a man for?

Alex Kochman: 01:06:18

What does it mean to be a man?

Alex Kochman: 01:06:20

Of course we would say, what does it mean to be a man following the Lord Jesus Christ?

Alex Kochman: 01:06:23

What does it mean to be a woman who's following the Lord Jesus Christ, who's, who's under the leadership of her husband in the home serving all of those sorts of things.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:32

Those are now conversations where there's a plausibility structure for those things that there wasn't before for.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:37

So I think that if we, we understand, okay, our nation, like any other, there's, there's judgment apart from Christ.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:44

So let's bring the gospel to bear.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:45

Let's also not apologize for what we know to be true about human nature.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:49

Let's lead with that.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:51

Let's not, let's not save that for after they've been at the church for three months and, and, and now we've got them now we'll bring them the hard truths.

Alex Kochman: 01:06:58

Let's lean with what we believe about natures that God has created, that are beautiful, that are fulfilling, that are so much better than the empty lives that our young people are sold on.

Alex Kochman: 01:07:08

TikTok about modifying themselves and their identities.

Alex Kochman: 01:07:12

Let's, let's lead with that.

Alex Kochman: 01:07:13

Let's show the gospel is the key to unlocking all that purpose and joy and fulfillment and goodness that's there.

Alex Kochman: 01:07:18

And then from that, that's going to spill out into other areas of life.

Will Spencer: 01:07:22

So you said something that I think is really key to pick up on.

Will Spencer: 01:07:26

There is an openness to conversation.

Will Spencer: 01:07:29

And so I titled this live stream, Christians don't waste this moment.

Will Spencer: 01:07:33

Right?

Will Spencer: 01:07:34

And I think, what is the moment right, like, as in today, what is available in this moment today that might not be available in later moments?

Will Spencer: 01:07:45

And I think you just gave the answer to that, which is there is an openness to conversation that's beginning right now.

Will Spencer: 01:07:52

And I think that there will be a window of time.

Will Spencer: 01:07:54

It's impossible for me to say how long.

Will Spencer: 01:07:56

Could be three months, six months, nine months.

Will Spencer: 01:07:58

Who knows?

Will Spencer: 01:07:59

It depends on how the administration rolls out.

Will Spencer: 01:08:01

You know, God willing that when that day comes, there's an openness to conversation of, hey, these cultural values that we've lived with, let's just say, throughout our adulthood, we can see now, and we're ready to admit that they weren't working.

Will Spencer: 01:08:16

Trump's victory was significant enough that it was a, as a massive repudiation of, just say, liberalism, progressivism, broadly massive repudiation, like popular vote.

Will Spencer: 01:08:27

I don't even, I don't even know if the final Electoral College totals have come in.

Will Spencer: 01:08:33

But last I checked, Trump was up by 20 electoral college electors as well.

Will Spencer: 01:08:38

And I think there were some states still waiting to be called.

Will Spencer: 01:08:40

I think Arizona was one of them.

Will Spencer: 01:08:42

So both in both the popular vote and the Electoral College, massive repudiation of liberalism, broadly wokeness, progressivism, feminism, et cetera.

Will Spencer: 01:08:51

And so you're going to have some percentage of people who are going to, they're going to ride that, you know, they're going to ride that anchor, that millstone in some cases, to the bottom of the sea.

Will Spencer: 01:09:01

You know, lord, bless them to cut loose.

Will Spencer: 01:09:03

But I think that there are going to be other people who are going to say, as I did eight years ago, I tweeted about this yesterday.

Will Spencer: 01:09:10

When Trump won his first election, I was a liberal.

Will Spencer: 01:09:13

And I discovered in a moment like, okay, clearly I have missed something about my own nation.

Will Spencer: 01:09:18

So I went to the friends that I knew who were Trump supporters and I said, I'm a blank slate.

Will Spencer: 01:09:23

I have no agenda.

Will Spencer: 01:09:24

Please explain it to me, because I was open to conversation.

Will Spencer: 01:09:27

So perhaps the moment that Christians need to not waste with their secular friends and maybe even with the world is a sudden openness to conversation about values that have been put on the back burner for 80 or so years.

Alex Kochman: 01:09:40

Well, look, we've got Thanksgiving coming in a couple of weeks and we're all told that the way that you ruin Thanksgiving is by talking about religion or politics.

Alex Kochman: 01:09:49

But look, everyone's talking about politics right now.

Alex Kochman: 01:09:51

Why not just break both rules, do the taboo thing, talk about religion and politics.

Alex Kochman: 01:09:56

They're all intermeshed these days anyway.

Will Spencer: 01:09:58

Yes, do it right over Turkey.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:00

That's right.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:00

The best way to do it.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:03

On a more serious note too, you're absolutely right.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:06

There is a mission field, there's a big expanse of, call it fly over country, call it whatever, but ordinary red blooded Americans that are a little more open than they were before, and we have to capitalize on that, not just from a political standpoint, but specifically to have these types of deeper conversations that are going to bear kingdom fruit in the long run as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:30

I think there's other things that we can do.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:32

So speaking with one of our leaders earlier today, this, this was fascinating to me.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:38

As soon as the election was called, he was getting phone calls from wealthy donors.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:44

Watching the Dow futures last night.

Alex Kochman: 01:10:47

eah, it's up to at least like: 1300

Alex Kochman: 01:11:00

So like it or not, they're making some of their generosity decisions based on that.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:06

Look at what first Timothy says.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:08

Paul says to those that are rich in this age, like, they shouldn't put their trust in riches.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:12

They should trust in God, who richly gives us everything to enjoy.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:16

So you can enjoy it.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:17

You can enjoy the fact that I'm really hoping the price of eggs goes down because we will go through an entire carton of eggs every breakfast.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:25

That's what we do in my household.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:27

I believe you.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:28

And then generosity is a part of that because Paul adds, be ready to share.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:32

It's a both and save, enjoy, share all of those things to go together.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:37

So I think, have the conversations, I think build that wealth for future generations for generosity to support the work of the Lord.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:45

And if you're not involved in two different key institutions locally, look, consider getting involved in your local civic context.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:55

If that's going to a school board meeting, even if it's just praying for your leaders.

Alex Kochman: 01:11:59

Because we are all commanded to pray for our leaders.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:01

We have to at least do that.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:03

And then if you're not a part, part of a strong gospel preaching, Bible believing local church, I have to believe that if we're on X, if we're talking to a lot of our Internet friends, there's probably a lot of guys that are drifting around and aren't anchored and tethered to a local church yet.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:20

And maybe you don't want to put your anchor down there because it's too.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:22

Normie.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:23

They're not, they're not, you know, giving me the red meat that I want on a Sunday morning.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:27

I would say trust the Lord's ways.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:30

Do it anyway.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:31

It's biblical.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:32

You need that.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:33

We all need that.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:34

And whether you feel like you need it or not, it's commanded.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:37

And God works through that institution of the local church.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:40

Christ said, I will build my church.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:42

He doesn't say that I'll build my Christian nation.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:45

As great as it is to have a Christian nation, we want all the nations to be Christian.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:49

That's the point of the Great Commission.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:50

But it's his church that he uniquely covenantally pledges to keep and build.

Alex Kochman: 01:12:55

And so there's a lot that we can be doing right now to not waste what looks like some cultural economic respite.

Will Spencer: 01:13:05

There's a little, it's like, there's a gap.

Will Spencer: 01:13:06

It's like we weren't sure, I don't know that anyone was really sure how things were going to go towards the end, towards the end of the election cycle.

Will Spencer: 01:13:13

Leading up to the day of Trump, the Trump campaigns seemed very relaxed, relaxed, playful.

Will Spencer: 01:13:19

The whole garbage truck thing was quite fun.

Will Spencer: 01:13:21

And then I guess there was the whole squirrel thing over the weekend.

Will Spencer: 01:13:24

And everyone was making crazy memes about that, you know, dogs, cats and squirrels.

Alex Kochman: 01:13:28

It has been so entertaining.

Alex Kochman: 01:13:30

I mean, I.

Alex Kochman: 01:13:30

It is the most entertaining election of my lifetime for sure.

Alex Kochman: 01:13:34

I'm gonna miss it.

Will Spencer: 01:13:35

I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.

Will Spencer: 01:13:37

I mean, I think the next 60 days until the inauguration, I think there's gonna be plenty of excitement to enjoy.

Will Spencer: 01:13:43

So we're not quite there yet.

Will Spencer: 01:13:45

And if Trump's first administration was any, was any sign, I'm sure that this moment of exuberance that we're all feeling like we probably won't be able to care.

Will Spencer: 01:13:54

We go back to the start of the conversation.

Will Spencer: 01:13:56

We can't look at this particular moment and say, oh, it's just going to be like this, but better over the next four years.

Will Spencer: 01:14:01

Like, let's enjoy this little gap in time, this little gap of this relief, this excitement, this moment of possibility and potential, and notice the amount of opportunities that we have around us for conversations, for planning, for building right for redemption.

Will Spencer: 01:14:19

We get this window of time and the window of time, you know, could.

Will Spencer: 01:14:23

It's opening now, how long will be open, who knows?

Will Spencer: 01:14:26

But there's an opportunity for us to make many shifts because we can see, like, okay, disaster, at least insofar as compared to a Harris administration, has been averted for the time being.

Will Spencer: 01:14:38

That's not to say there won't be challenging days ahead.

Will Spencer: 01:14:40

In fact, you know, I'm going to look at my crystal ball and say, the crystal ball says there will be challenging days ahead.

Will Spencer: 01:14:45

So I don't think there's any great prophecy there, but.

Will Spencer: 01:14:48

Exactly.

Will Spencer: 01:14:48

But there.

Will Spencer: 01:14:49

But there's a moment that we have right now to create real leverage with this enthusiasm, with this energy, with this excitement, with this relief to say, okay, there are so many areas of our lives.

Will Spencer: 01:15:00

I was going to say my life, but I think it's true for our lives, broadly, individually, that everything has been in this holding pattern, like, frozen.

Will Spencer: 01:15:08

Like, what's going to happen?

Will Spencer: 01:15:09

What's going to happen?

Will Spencer: 01:15:10

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:15:11

Are we going to, are we going to have more social strife, turmoil?

Will Spencer: 01:15:14

Is, is, is it going to be a.

Will Spencer: 01:15:16

Another stolen election?

Will Spencer: 01:15:17

Is there going to.

Will Spencer: 01:15:18

Or is there even going to be weeks of uncertainty while they're counting ballots and ballot drops are showing up?

Will Spencer: 01:15:23

Praise God, we appear to have been spared all of that election has been called.

Will Spencer: 01:15:28

No one seems to be challenging or contesting the results of it.

Will Spencer: 01:15:32

It's settled.

Will Spencer: 01:15:33

We won in a big way.

Will Spencer: 01:15:34

Too big to rig, I think, is probably a very accurate way of describing it.

Will Spencer: 01:15:38

Okay, now everything can start moving again.

Will Spencer: 01:15:41

Our social relationships, our family relationships.

Will Spencer: 01:15:44

We can start planning for a real future.

Will Spencer: 01:15:46

We can start building.

Will Spencer: 01:15:47

And not to, not to waste this moment of saying, like, okay, just let it pass by and coast through it.

Will Spencer: 01:15:54

No, no, no.

Will Spencer: 01:15:55

This is a moment to lean in as Christians into all the areas that have been waiting for four years.

Will Spencer: 01:16:02

Four years, I think is probably fair.

Will Spencer: 01:16:05

Including our own lives, including our, our careers, including our families, including our own sanctification, including our churches.

Will Spencer: 01:16:12

And I think that's a really important question that I actually want to kick over to you.

Will Spencer: 01:16:16

How do you see a Trump presidency?

Will Spencer: 01:16:20

You're a pastor and you've been in the faith for a long time.

Will Spencer: 01:16:22

How do you see a Trump presidency affecting the church going forward.

Will Spencer: 01:16:27

Maybe let's just, let's just talk about the next 12 months.

Will Spencer: 01:16:30

Let's start there.

Will Spencer: 01:16:30

Because who can say beyond that, besides God's kingdom coming to earth in a post millennial vision.

Alex Kochman: 01:16:38

From your lips to his ears.

Alex Kochman: 01:16:40

Right?

Alex Kochman: 01:16:40

But no, and speaking as a, as a lay elder, thinking of the people that we, we shepherd in our church, you know, how would I want to counsel them to think about the present moment?

Alex Kochman: 01:16:49

And I've, I've never been Trump deranged.

Alex Kochman: 01:16:52

I've also never been a, you know, Cheeto Jesus saves.

Alex Kochman: 01:16:56

I'm, I'm squarely in the middle.

Alex Kochman: 01:16:58

And, you know, with that, I think, sober analysis, you know, sure, save it for next week.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:02

Next week.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:03

Let's do the sober analysis.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:05

Now is the time to lean in.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:06

Now the real work really begins.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:08

You know, on the one side of things, on the one hand, it's, it's not too surprising to see how overwhelmingly he won because he's aligned himself with a lot of what traditionally 15 years ago we would have said was, was the left and was even some anti Christian ideas concerning abortion, concerning marriage.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:29

Those are all battles that have to be fought.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:32

Conservative Christians used to feel very at home in something like the Republican Party.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:38

And now they're realizing, okay, this is a very diverse coalition and we, we've got to evangelize the people that are, that are wearing the same T shirt and putting up the same yard signs as us.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:50

This is the mission field.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:51

This isn't all just us.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:53

We're actually coming from very different worldviews.

Alex Kochman: 01:17:56

Even within what looks like one movement.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:00

It's many different things.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:01

And so the work begins.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:03

You know, you look at the referenda across the country, life did suffer in all but two of those.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:10

And we praise God that amendments three and four in Florida did not get the supermajority that they needed.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:16

But in other places, they did get the majority that they needed.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:20

We have battles to fight for the cause of life.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:25

We have battles to fight for sexuality, for marriage, and what God intends those things to be.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:33

I'm all for the memes and the silly dances we're all doing now.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:37

And those things are fun.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:39

And I think after such a heavy cultural season, it's good to cut loose.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:42

It's good to have some fun.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:44

Let's not feel too at home in the world.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:47

Let's recognize we're in the midst of a battle that continues, a war that continues.

Alex Kochman: 01:18:52

Rather, an individual battle was decided, a spiritual war and a cultural conflict around that still remains.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:01

On any number of different issues.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:03

So now's the time to lean in.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:06

Now's the time to get to work as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:09

And I would liken it to.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:11

There's so many bad, I think, attempts to compare someone like Donald Trump to a biblical figure or historical figure.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:18

I feel like a lot of those analogies fall short.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:20

I'm sure this one will as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:23

And let's say, okay, the Persians came to the gate and Nebuchadnezzar pushed them back.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:28

Let's say that that happened.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:30

And okay, the Babylonians hold the kingdom, and maybe we're excited about that.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:34

But it's not until Nebuchadnezzar actually has his seven years in the wilderness and then bows the knee and admits that the God of heaven is the true God of gods, then let's get really excited for that.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:45

I'm praying for our president's President elect's conversion.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:49

I'm praying for the conversion of his administration.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:51

I'm praying for the conversion of people on both sides, as many as the Lord would grant.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:56

That's what we're called to pray for.

Alex Kochman: 01:19:58

In Paul's letter to Timothy.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:00

If we're praying that our leaders would lead in such a way that the church can live peaceful and quiet lives before Christ, I think that means that they're following Jesus and they're being good to his church.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:12

So we're biblically called to pray for their conversion.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:15

I'm very encouraged to hear Donald Trump say things like, I think God spared my life.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:21

I certainly hope his position evolves over the next four years away from what we heard eight years ago, I've never had to repent.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:27

Right.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:28

And we can recognize man, the godliest man repents every day.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:32

Right.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:33

And can we get closer to seeing not just him, but others in positions of influence, locally, state level, to see them bow the knee to Jesus?

Alex Kochman: 01:20:44

And so I think that however we react to the present moment, we have to keep our eyes on the prize.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:50

And the prize is winning the hearts of leaders.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:53

The prize is enacting real things that will result in the good of our neighbors.

Alex Kochman: 01:20:59

Neighbors, including our unborn neighbors.

Alex Kochman: 01:21:01

And let's not forget, okay, let's get our hand to the plow.

Alex Kochman: 01:21:06

Let's not look back.

Will Spencer: 01:21:08

Amen.

Will Spencer: 01:21:09

So let's talk for a minute about, about your podcast, the Missions Missions podcast.

Will Spencer: 01:21:15

As you look at all these different trends that we're now currently sitting in the middle of, like we're, we're here, it's 3:30 in the afternoon.

Will Spencer: 01:21:23

We're where I am, you know, 12 or so hours after, after most people went to bed, I think, oh, it's actually 3:00am on the east coast where Trump came out and had his sort of victory victory speech.

Will Spencer: 01:21:35

In fact, I think Kamala Harris is going to be doing her concept concession speech in about 20 minutes or 30 minutes, something like that.

Will Spencer: 01:21:41

So how is this going to affect the we've talked a little bit about how it's going to affect the missions, maybe some missionaries.

Will Spencer: 01:21:47

How is this going to affect the missions podcast?

Will Spencer: 01:21:50

Like what, what does it look like for you is like how, how is all this going to going to land in, in your, in your content career?

Alex Kochman: 01:21:56

Let's say the, the joking answer is not much because we've pre recorded episodes out through the rest of the year.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:02

So you we don't.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:03

Well, if you listen to the Missions podcast next week, we don't know how the election turned out.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:09

Okay.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:10

In reality though, as, as we begin to look at the US As a mission field, yes, we are fixed on our true north.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:20

The Missions podcast exists to help goers think and thinkers go.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:25

So we talked about that chasm between sort of your poverty theology and your prosperity theology.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:32

There's, there's another dichotomy that's out there.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:34

You know, we all know the sort of reformed, erudite, ivory tower, sort of Christian intellectual.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:42

And maybe their thing is theology, maybe their thing is ecclesiology, maybe their thing is political theory.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:47

But it's all cerebral.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:49

We know that type.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:50

We see that type.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:52

My heart leans in that direction.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:54

I like to think the big thoughts I like to write.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:56

On the other side, we see the practitioners.

Alex Kochman: 01:22:59

The boots on the ground is necessary as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:02

But we see it in the church here in the US we see it on the mission field.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:07

Practice becomes unsound and heterodox, quickly divorced from sound doctrine.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:13

And so what we've always sought to do from a biblical standpoint and acknowledging our theological history too, as a tradition, is bring those two together and to have a theologically grounded, healthy missiology.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:27

And so I think the thing that we're going to be doing in the coming years, and this is beyond the election, but I think groups like Abwe, groups like the Missions podcast, my co host and I, we of course have our show every Sunday night, 7pm it posts to the main feed and every week putting out fresh content.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:45

Just dropped a great interview with Paul Washer.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:47

Many people know Paul Washer.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:49

He's pretty cool.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:50

Blessed to have a lot of great guests.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:51

Voddie Bakum joined us several months ago and so we've got a star studded lineup.

Alex Kochman: 01:23:56

But the thing that we're looking at constantly is, again, how can we ground our motivation to love the world, to love our neighbor from the most biblical place possible?

Alex Kochman: 01:24:08

And that's not just loving an abstract thing that's way out there on a brochure that I'll never touch, where I feel like I, as a consumer got this euphoric payoff for giving that impulse donation.

Alex Kochman: 01:24:20

That's not what we want to ground it in.

Alex Kochman: 01:24:23

Rather, we want to see that grounded in a zeal.

Alex Kochman: 01:24:25

The Lord, a zeal for his church, a zeal for his glory and his fame.

Alex Kochman: 01:24:28

And I think again, as a lot of people are shifting their thinking about culture, thinking they're shifting their thinking about the nation, we're going to hopefully be there to rewire with the Holy Spirit's help, seek to rewire people's affections.

Alex Kochman: 01:24:44

They're thinking about, okay, how do I love my household and my church and my neighbors and the faraway thing in the right way so as to be faithful?

Alex Kochman: 01:24:56

How can I make sure my missions program is not just inherited from all of these assumptions that we make about multiculturalism, when in fact it needs to come from a biblical perspective that God is gathering all the nations to Himself.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:10

Revelation 5, 9, Revelation 7:9.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:12

So that's what we always do.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:13

And in that sense, nothing's changed at all.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:15

It's just another day for us here at the missions podcast.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:18

The mission is the same.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:20

And then I think the other thing is what does it look like to focus on the mission field at home and have more of those direct conversations?

Alex Kochman: 01:25:27

We are having a conversation soon with an individual whose ministry is not to get people sharing the gospel.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:34

I don't know about you when I'm talking about these things.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:37

It's not hard for me to share the gospel with my friend once the conversation starts.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:41

The hard thing for me is to start the conversation.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:43

The hard thing for me is to build enough relationship and rapport and get over myself and take my headphones out, get out of my own cone of silence and actually cross the street.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:54

Pray for my lost friend, pray for an opportunity.

Alex Kochman: 01:25:56

And then we start talking about some of these immense, eternally significant topics.

Alex Kochman: 01:26:01

He's built a system of accountability and prayer and program for local churches to do that very thing.

Alex Kochman: 01:26:08

Not just evangelism, but all of the pre evangelism and relationship building that goes into that.

Alex Kochman: 01:26:13

So I'm really excited to get tools into people's hands about how they can do that well, how they can activate themselves on mission day to day, not in a grandiose way.

Alex Kochman: 01:26:23

A lot of people are still living ordinary lives, going to work, but to do all of that with an eye for God's glory in Christ among this nation and all the nations, that's our true north.

Will Spencer: 01:26:35

Will, do you have time for a couple more questions?

Will Spencer: 01:26:38

There's something you said, a couple things I want to ask about.

Alex Kochman: 01:26:40

Let's do it.

Will Spencer: 01:26:41

So you talked about the ordo amoris as sort of the guiding principle behind how you approach missions.

Will Spencer: 01:26:47

As you and other people have a more, let's say, radical approach to missiology.

Will Spencer: 01:26:53

As you bring that, as you bring your approach out there into the missions, the field of the missions field, if you understand what I mean.

Will Spencer: 01:27:01

Do you experience pushback for that?

Will Spencer: 01:27:03

Do you experience people saying like, no, no, missions need to be higher on your list of priorities?

Will Spencer: 01:27:07

Do you find that your perhaps, we'll call it worldview is controversial in the way that you order the approach of missions related to other things?

Alex Kochman: 01:27:16

Perhaps.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:17

And we'll see as that idea circulates what pushback there is.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:20

And look, I'm not a missionary.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:22

I know some people would say every Christian is a missionary.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:25

I don't agree with that.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:26

Is every Christian supposed to steward the good news and put that on full blast in their lives?

Alex Kochman: 01:27:33

Certainly.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:34

But not every Christian is specifically commissioned, called, sent out to learn a new language and plant a church far away.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:42

Right.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:43

So clearly not every Christian is a missionary in that technical sense of what a missionary does.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:48

So I'm not a missionary and I'm not necessarily in the trenches on the field in such a way where, yeah, I can certainly imagine someone having a different perspective and thank God for it.

Alex Kochman: 01:27:58

I think we need iron to sharpen iron.

Alex Kochman: 01:28:01

At the same time, what I see among the missionaries that I know is that what sustains decades of faithfulness through unsexy, difficult circumstances, spending years learning multiple languages, starting businesses from scratch in an unfamiliar setting, sludging through eight, nine hours, just walking a market, trying to do your.

Alex Kochman: 01:28:25

Your basic groceries and errands because you have the language ability of a third grader in the context where you serve, feeling completely like a fish out of water for years and going through the whole bell curve of culture shock in all of those sorts of settings that the people that I know that can endure that and who have endured it and have stayed and been fruitful and faithful for the long haul, they're not the people that have the most incendiary radical missions rhetoric.

Alex Kochman: 01:28:57

Some of them are, and God bless them.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:00

I'm thinking of particular individuals, even outside of our organization, who ruffle a lot of feathers and try to say everyone should go.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:06

And sometimes do they use a little shame?

Alex Kochman: 01:29:09

I don't know, maybe.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:09

But God bless them, they are serving the Lord.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:11

And the last thing I want to do is throw stones their direction.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:15

But the people that I know, that have endured for decades are people who hold one of Abwe's core values of biblical family and having a mission in an organization that's marked by a biblical family atmosphere.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:30

And so often in networks like ours, what you hear is don't focus on the family.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:36

In fact, a pastor who I named earlier in the podcast preached a sermon years ago called don't focus on the Family.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:43

Again, know your evangelical history.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:45

There you go.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:45

That was free will.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:46

But we will say no.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:48

Focus on your family.

Alex Kochman: 01:29:49

Biblical family atmosphere matters because if you're walking with a limp because your marriage is out of joint or because your kids aren't being educated, you're not going to be fruitful, you're not going to be faithful, you're not going to please the Lord in your work.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:04

And so what we seek to do is come alongside and say, you know what, we'll coach you in how to educate your children if you choose to do private school or homeschool, depending your country, your field.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:14

But we'll hold your hand, help you do that well.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:17

We'll provide biblical counseling and other resources for your marriage and other free resources and seminars and trainings that you can go through to make sure those things stay intact.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:25

We're going to give you a furlough time, we're going to give you rest time.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:28

And so there's resilience that's necessary, for sure.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:31

I mean, it's a hard slog being a missionary.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:34

These are people who've gone out, they've chosen to suffer for the sake of the name Third John.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:38

And so we applaud that.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:40

But here for us, I actually know many more missionaries that have been there for years who would say a lot of the same things about get your own house in order.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:48

Love your family, love them well, they're your first mission field.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:52

And if you don't get that right to the best of your ability, sometimes it's beyond your control.

Alex Kochman: 01:30:57

But if you don't get that right to the best of your ability, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Alex Kochman: 01:31:02

You're stuck on that square.

Alex Kochman: 01:31:04

And many of the missionaries that we're privileged to serve, I've seen them do that really well.

Alex Kochman: 01:31:09

It's a joy to see.

Will Spencer: 01:31:11

I think that's.

Will Spencer: 01:31:13

If the mission is just what you're doing with your mouth and it's not something that you're living, how can that possibly be sustainable over the long term?

Will Spencer: 01:31:24

If you, as a man, for example, are going into these very challenging environments, like I've been into missionary type environments, the kind of places that missionaries would go to, some very difficult third world places in the world that will never develop.

Will Spencer: 01:31:38

There's the developing.

Will Spencer: 01:31:39

There's the developed world, United States, Japan, England, stuff like that.

Will Spencer: 01:31:42

There's the developing world, Peru, China, and then there's the parts of the world that will never develop.

Will Spencer: 01:31:47

They're just.

Will Spencer: 01:31:48

They're just not going to get there.

Will Spencer: 01:31:49

I've been to some of those locations.

Will Spencer: 01:31:51

It's not easy to visit.

Will Spencer: 01:31:52

It's even harder to build a life there.

Will Spencer: 01:31:54

And so the idea that a man with a family can go out there into those places and not spend time focusing on his family to.

Will Spencer: 01:32:03

If only to bolster him, there's far more reasons just to do it.

Will Spencer: 01:32:07

But if only to bolster him and his continuance of the mission, I don't know how that can possibly be successful.

Will Spencer: 01:32:12

And I think that there's a lesson for that.

Will Spencer: 01:32:15

Back here at home again, going all the way back to radical and everything that we've been talking about, we've been as a nation, as individuals, as men, so enculturated to reach so far beyond ourselves, to try and connect with the other, to try and bless and benefit the other, that we've been left exhausted, spending billions of dollars for Ukraine and how many other projects that our own.

Will Spencer: 01:32:38

Our own inflation rate is out of control.

Will Spencer: 01:32:40

And that's a much larger conversation.

Alex Kochman: 01:32:42

Well, what it actually is is it's a counterfeit.

Alex Kochman: 01:32:45

So we think we're overextending ourselves because our leaders are doing so.

Alex Kochman: 01:32:51

Every problem is a leadership problem at some level.

Alex Kochman: 01:32:53

So I think Satan is a master of deception and manipulation.

Alex Kochman: 01:32:59

And in our case, we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we're faithful world citizens because our governments confiscate money and then distribute it to all sorts of global entities, when in reality that's just a counterfeit, like a fake bill.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:15

That's a false version.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:17

It's the bizarro universe version of Christian missions.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:20

We know we have a global obligation, but it looks much different.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:23

It looks like churches.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:24

It looks like networks of churches and sending organizations and individual believers praying for missionaries by name around their dinner table at night with their kids.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:33

That's what happened in the life of Hudson Taylor, his family praying for China at the dinner table each night is what ultimately burdened him in his late teens to go to China and eventually found China Inland Mission.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:45

So we know how it's done.

Alex Kochman: 01:33:47

The problem is we've been okay with the cheap substitute for so long.

Will Spencer: 01:33:50

That's a really great way of putting it because we.

Will Spencer: 01:33:54

Because I can even land that in politics and economics.

Will Spencer: 01:33:57

Just how much shifted when we moved to a fiat currency standard?

Will Spencer: 01:34:00

Right.

Will Spencer: 01:34:01

And I see that as happening in the 80s when the money printing sort of started to take off, or certainly we began.

Will Spencer: 01:34:07

We became unhitched from the gold standard.

Will Spencer: 01:34:10

And I've told the story a number of times that if you go to YouTube you can watch compilations of 80s commercials.

Will Spencer: 01:34:17

It's quite nostalgic for me because that was a lot of my childhood.

Will Spencer: 01:34:20

So I was watching commercials I hadn't seen in a long time.

Will Spencer: 01:34:22

Some of the jingles are still stuck in there rattling around.

Will Spencer: 01:34:25

But then I was looking at all of this and I was like, this is all cheap fiat Chinese manufactured stuff.

Will Spencer: 01:34:32

So we stopped having well made American manufactured products and we substituted, we have a cheap substitute for things made overseas at a far lower cost, subsidized with money that we've printed out of nothing that has been our whole cultural value essentially for 40 plus years is to say we will take the low cost, apparently abundant substitute for the rich and nourishing real thing and we can even see that in our food.

Will Spencer: 01:35:01

We can.

Will Spencer: 01:35:02

RFK Jr.

Will Spencer: 01:35:03

Is going to have a lot to say about that.

Will Spencer: 01:35:05

So maybe we're.

Will Spencer: 01:35:06

And man, I could probably even say we've had that in Christianity as well.

Will Spencer: 01:35:10

The low cost, abundant substitute for the real rich nourishing gospel.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:16

Yeah.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:17

I mean, another metaphor is, it's another one of your subscriptions that comes out each month.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:24

We've got some for entertainment, we've got some for education, we've got our vehicle payments, our mortgages.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:30

A lot of these things are on autodraft and you know, missions.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:32

That's another box that you check in your life and, and maybe it's these, you know, global entities that your taxes are going there.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:40

Or maybe it's okay, I support this organization.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:42

I like what they do and the money blindly leaves my account each month and I don't think much more about it.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:47

I get it.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:48

I've been there.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:49

Maybe in some ways I am there.

Alex Kochman: 01:35:50

It's easy to feel that way rather than recognizing, especially as a man, obviously speaking mostly to men, here you have a mission.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:00

Your mission is not something that can be reduced to one of the subscriptions in your life that you see on your bank statement each month, and it filters down into every part of your life.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:12

Anything where you're putting it on autopilot and you're out of sight, out of mind is a surefire recipe for complacency.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:22

I think we've seen that.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:23

I think we see it when we see it.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:26

Those that give to overseas causes, they want the best bang for their buck.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:32

That's why I'd love to give to so and so if they're living at a much lower standard and they can evangelize more people than your expensive American missionary can.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:40

And I get that there's good reasons to support national partners, but when there's somebody who's totally a people group that's completely unreached, unengaged, okay, somebody's still got to actually go and be the first boots on the ground.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:53

In other words, it's not always just this blind sending money.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:56

There's sometimes you, sometimes you send the money.

Alex Kochman: 01:36:59

Sometimes you actually have to send your best, your own, your friends, your family, your loved ones from your church.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:05

At our church, we sent out and commissioned not a missionary, just one of our pastors to take another pastoral role.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:11

And that.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:11

That alone hurt.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:13

And there was tears that were cried.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:15

They're only going 30 minutes away, but it hurts to do that.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:19

But that's the difference of when a community of interconnected molecular households is engaged in the mission of God together in their locality and beyond.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:29

That feels a lot different from living as this isolated individual who all my life is.

Alex Kochman: 01:37:35

As this subscription payment goes out, I walk into the poll booth once every four years and all these things are happening on autopilot and I feel like I've met all of my obligations and no walking with Christ is going to take more of you than that.

Will Spencer: 01:37:50

That's so interesting because I think.

Will Spencer: 01:37:54

Well, I know that one of the trends that we've been living in, like the water that fish breathe, has been a hyper individualism.

Will Spencer: 01:38:05

It's not bad to be an individual, but there is a degree to which the.

Will Spencer: 01:38:10

as been prioritized since the: 1960

Will Spencer: 01:38:17

I think that's where we can take it back to it's.

Will Spencer: 01:38:19

It's further than that, but that's been a thing.

Will Spencer: 01:38:21

And so my.

Will Spencer: 01:38:23

Though I haven't explored missiology very much, I think from what I hear you say there's a way in which that same hyper individualistic mindset has been applied to missions.

Will Spencer: 01:38:35

As you have this bold man venture or perhaps even with his family venturing out to the frontier as this solo guy on a quest.

Will Spencer: 01:38:44

That might not be the most precise language, but I'm trying to capture a feeling versus the idea of a community, of a church, you know, et cetera, building up their resources to such an extent that the individual or the family becomes an outreach of an existing community.

Will Spencer: 01:39:00

And so that person who's out there on the frontier is supported by a much wider network at home versus an individual who's just supported by a faceless organization.

Will Spencer: 01:39:10

Do I have that right?

Will Spencer: 01:39:11

Is, am I picking up on something, on something real?

Alex Kochman: 01:39:14

I think you are.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:15

Because the Great Commission is not an individualistic thing.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:19

Yeah, converts get made at an individual level.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:23

Each individual soul stands alone before God, either in Christ or not in Christ.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:29

But we're told to disciple the nations.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:31

That's collectivistic.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:32

You look at acts and it's its towns, its households, its regions that are either coming to Christ or rejecting Christ, sometimes en masse.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:40

There is a real communal, collective element to what we're doing.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:44

And I think so many of us approach the Christian life again with this commoditized, modern, individualistic mindset and missions.

Alex Kochman: 01:39:53

The same way it's going to be me hopping on a plane, airdropping a few tracts, coming back home so that I feel like I've met my moral obligation, when in fact.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:03

And I.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:04

I love the talk that I'm hearing from so many in some of our communities online about building strong, interconnected, antifragile Christian boroughs of schools, of churches, of other connected local businesses, obviously households close to the center of all of those things, and all of it's centering on worship.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:26

And I love the idea of these boroughs forming networks with one another.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:31

And let me tell you, I think historically those types of things have not only effectively reached our localities, I think those things are the settings out of which missions movements form.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:45

You look at somebody like William Carey who says, yeah, I'll go down into the hole, but only if you hold the rope for me.

Alex Kochman: 01:40:51

Not just his individual pastor, but a whole network of pastors in London at the time, and particular Baptists who were a part of that early missionary sending movement.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:04

I think if we're going to send the few elite who must go long term and do that thing, first of all, what are they doing?

Alex Kochman: 01:41:11

They're planting churches again.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:12

Their job is to plant these communal structures in places where they don't exist yet.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:17

It's going to take a massive support network behind them to do that.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:20

And if we're doing that, well, that's going to bear fruit locally.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:23

It might take generations.

Alex Kochman: 01:41:24

It might look like death before resurrection, but it's going to bear fruit locally.

Will Spencer: 01:41:28

So talk about for, for the patience that's required to do this as opposed to some sort of quick hit overnight success which, you know, God willing, may happen.

Will Spencer: 01:41:39

The patience and commitment that is, that's necessary to support something like this from, whether from a community or an individual basis, hopefully from a community to say, we are going to do this and we are going to invest in this mission, in this, these missionaries to support them going out there and we are going to commit to it for the long term.

Will Spencer: 01:41:59

Talk a little bit about that.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:01

Well, I'm a millennial.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:03

You are too, as far as I know.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:05

Gen X.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:06

Gen X.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:06

Okay.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:07

Well, you hide it well.

Will Spencer: 01:42:08

Thank you.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:09

I don't think for either one of our generations, patience is common.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:14

Sure.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:15

For nobody in the technology age, is that a common thing?

Alex Kochman: 01:42:19

For us, it looks like retraining sensibilities in our own lives and certainly in our churches as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:26

I was speaking with a group of missionaries, about 18 new missionaries that we were delighted to appoint to commission and send out last week here at Abwe and hearing some of them share.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:37

Okay, tell me your why.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:38

Okay.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:38

Why should somebody pray for you, support what you're doing when there's so much else happening in the culture Right.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:44

When our nation's on fire?

Alex Kochman: 01:42:45

Why should I care about the broader world?

Alex Kochman: 01:42:47

And one of the most helpful things that I heard from one of our young couples who's preparing to go to the Middle east was, you know, we're not telling people, hey, we're going to see explosive movements.

Alex Kochman: 01:42:58

We're going to see church planting movements on top of, you know, fourth level catalytic disciple making exponential.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:08

We're not going to say that at all.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:10

Rather, we're planting seeds, we're putting our hand to the plow for the long term.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:15

And maybe we'll have fruit, maybe we'll have converts.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:18

We might not now.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:19

They're, they're young and they'll learn some even harder lessons along the way.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:23

But they do have the right mindset, is that you might spend a lifetime merely tilling the ground, merely planting seeds, not seeing the growth of those things.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:32

I think sometimes in the US that's the case as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:36

That's not a unique Middle Eastern or overseas thing, but they're communicating that with their fellow believers.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:42

Well, is that the expectation is not that we're going to see the payoff of all of these things in our lifetime, Whatever you're doing locally, politically, in your vocation, in your household, the fruit of all of those things is delayed.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:54

The most valuable, important things grow slowly and invisibly.

Alex Kochman: 01:43:59

We're not growing dandelions, we're growing oaks.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:02

That's true in ministry, that's true in work and in all of life.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:05

And so it's retraining our sensibilities there.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:08

Then it's also doing that in the context of churches.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:11

We've worked with churches to help them do at least two things differently.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:15

One, every church wants to say, yeah, we want to be involved in local outreach, or we want to be more salt and light.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:21

Our community, we want to send a missionary.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:23

Every church, in theory, wants to be more engaged, doing its part.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:27

Well, have you proactively set aside part of your budget to do that?

Alex Kochman: 01:44:33

Or are you only responding to requests as they come in?

Alex Kochman: 01:44:36

Because it's easy to say yes or no when somebody's knocking on your door.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:40

But can you actually proactively carve some of that out, set that aside and pray, Lord, would you give us someone to support, someone to send, someone whose work we can sustain?

Alex Kochman: 01:44:51

Maybe they're in our community going to the local abortion portion mill, or maybe they're going to the ends of the earth and then beyond that as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:44:57

You look at Acts 13, you see the first missionaries called there and set apart for their work.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:04

Traditionally in the States, when we think about what it means to be called as a missionary, it means I had an internal emotional experience, like at some kind of a revival or a concert, and I walked the aisle and those things happen and praise God for when he uses them.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:20

But what happens in Acts 13 is the exact opposite of that.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:24

Usually somebody has a quiver in the liver.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:26

Then they go to their pastors and ask for money.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:29

And the pastor, if he's smart, he doesn't want to say no.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:31

He'll say, well, talk to the missions committee, right, and gets it off his desk.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:35

And instead what you have in Acts 13 is local church leaders, qualified godly men ruling themselves and their households well, worshiping God, being faithful.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:45

They're gathered in worship.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:46

And then out of that, the overflow is the Holy Spirit says to them, set apart Paul and Barnabas for the works, which I've called them.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:51

He didn't even call the individuals, as far as we know.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:53

He called the whole church.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:55

And he starts with the leaders of the church.

Alex Kochman: 01:45:56

It's hierarchical, it's top down, it's trickle down calling.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:00

And then they objectively, externally call them, they lay hands on them, they Say, hey, the Holy Spirit has said this to us.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:06

We're recognizing these gifts in you.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:07

We're sending you out with our blessing, with our support, our prayers, all these sorts of things.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:12

They fast, they pray, they send them out.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:14

And the modern missionary movement hasn't ended since then.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:18

That was the birth of Christian mission to the broader world.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:21

In that chapter, we have to rewire how we think about these things.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:24

Finding purpose for your life as a man, as a woman of God, is not just you with a Bible under a tree, listening to music, waiting to feel that quiver in the liver.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:36

It's being plugged into one of these molecular communities with godly older influences who can say to you, either you're not qualified, get your house in order first, get your life together, love you, but you have other things to focus on first, or you know what, the Lord has been working in you.

Alex Kochman: 01:46:55

You have strength, talents, resources that you can afford to give in overflow to others.

Alex Kochman: 01:47:02

And have you considered doing this before it rewires how a lot of us are willing to think about mission, but even for a pastor listening to this, I mean, ask someone in your church, I mean, would you consider being sent, say, to a man in your church, have you thought about starting a business?

Alex Kochman: 01:47:19

I always hear you complain about work.

Alex Kochman: 01:47:20

You've got all these ideas.

Alex Kochman: 01:47:21

Have you considered starting a business?

Alex Kochman: 01:47:23

I mean, I think there's so many ways to apply that principle.

Alex Kochman: 01:47:26

People need the extra encouragement.

Alex Kochman: 01:47:28

I think the Lord works through that ordinary church network matrix of relationships where we could be challenged and called outside of ourselves.

Will Spencer: 01:47:37

Bro, you're speaking my language.

Will Spencer: 01:47:40

Good.

Will Spencer: 01:47:41

Because what I hear you saying, at least in some of that, is the quiver in the liver emotional experience that people take as some sort of, perhaps a sign of the direction that this should be going and that ultimately there's.

Will Spencer: 01:47:56

It's not disciplined, it's not structured, it's not reasoned, it's not rational.

Will Spencer: 01:48:01

It's an expression of this sudden emotional experience that has a certain amount of heat and temperature to it and energy, but that burns out.

Will Spencer: 01:48:10

And that isn't a sustainable way to choose.

Will Spencer: 01:48:14

To choose.

Will Spencer: 01:48:14

Exactly.

Will Spencer: 01:48:15

And so.

Will Spencer: 01:48:16

And so, I don't know.

Will Spencer: 01:48:17

Do you want to get in a little.

Will Spencer: 01:48:18

A little trouble with me?

Alex Kochman: 01:48:19

Well, you don't have to.

Will Spencer: 01:48:21

Maybe I should.

Will Spencer: 01:48:22

But.

Will Spencer: 01:48:22

But one of the.

Will Spencer: 01:48:23

That's something that I.

Will Spencer: 01:48:24

That I think is such a big part of our.

Will Spencer: 01:48:27

Of our culture today, particularly around young people who have an emotional experience.

Will Spencer: 01:48:32

And that emotional experience is ultimately not durable, whether that emotional experience be towards Christ or on a mission or whatever.

Will Spencer: 01:48:41

It is that it's true, because my emotions tell me it is.

Will Spencer: 01:48:46

Well, hold on there.

Will Spencer: 01:48:48

And I think that there's a way in which I've heard it talked about in vague terms that we've lost.

Will Spencer: 01:48:56

And maybe you can speak to this.

Will Spencer: 01:48:57

Generations of young people that have gone overseas on mission trips rather than, hey, young man, you need to be setting yourself up for a future and a career and a life to support a wife.

Will Spencer: 01:49:09

But instead the men like, oh, no, I'm having this emotional experience.

Will Spencer: 01:49:12

I need to go to this place.

Will Spencer: 01:49:13

And young women as well, who will often spend years overseas in the missions field and not become mothers.

Will Spencer: 01:49:20

And none of this sounds like what you just described in Acts, which is on a careful selection, a setting apart, an examination, a laying on of hands.

Will Spencer: 01:49:28

It's not that.

Will Spencer: 01:49:29

It's here's a young passionate kid, we can throw some amount of resources at them.

Will Spencer: 01:49:34

They don't have any attachments, they probably don't own a lot of stuff and shoot them off overseas and they can have their emotional experience and maybe the gospel gets spread.

Will Spencer: 01:49:43

That's very different from what you described in Acts.

Alex Kochman: 01:49:47

And multiple things can be true.

Alex Kochman: 01:49:48

God draws oftentimes straight lines with crooked sticks.

Alex Kochman: 01:49:52

Of course, you look at some of the missionary heroes.

Alex Kochman: 01:49:55

I mean, someone like Hudson Taylor probably had no business being a missionary at his young age.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:01

And you can look at William Carey and his marriage was a wreck.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:04

And there's a lot of bodies in the wake of some of our missionary heroes and saints.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:10

But there is a lot of truth in what you're sharing.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:12

And.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:13

But we do have to make sure as evangelicals that we're not a part of that problem of what Carl Truman's described for years as expressive individualism.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:22

Right.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:22

And he wrote multiple books on the topic.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:24

We actually brought him on our podcast a couple of years ago to talk about that in the context of the missionary call, basically to say to him, hey, we hear what you're saying.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:32

I think you're describing Western culture accurately.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:35

It's all about this sexualized, politicized, psychologized self that's ultimate.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:41

And my purpose in life is to actualize and express that self.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:47

Whatever it is, being a wax nose, be whatever it wants to be, whatever I want it to be, and what but just a wax nose you can bend into any shape at all.

Will Spencer: 01:50:55

Oh, God.

Alex Kochman: 01:50:56

Okay, but the point of that being, we talked about this with him.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:00

We do that with calling, with calling to ministry, with calling to overseas ministry.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:06

One of the top articles on our website was from one of our Precious, Precious missionaries.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:12

I love the family.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:13

They're serving with us in Tanzania.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:16

Young, in their 40s.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:18

Husband, wife, pair, multiple happy children, including some older children now.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:23

They've adopted at least one child that I can name off the top of my head, if not more.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:29

He does theological education.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:31

She leads a business, micro enterprise, sort of training setting for at risk women to hear the gospel, learn vocational skills, and get into a better footing in life.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:42

And they're doing amazing, amazing work.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:45

And really, they're the picturesque missionary family.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:48

If you were to look at them on Instagram.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:50

I mean, she's fashionable like the kids are, you know, mixed race.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:54

I mean, they look like they could be the COVID of an Old Navy catalog.

Alex Kochman: 01:51:59

And not just.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:02

In fact, I think.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:04

I think we've used their picture on things promotionally, but that's beside the point.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:08

They're a wonderful couple and a wonderful family.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:11

But she wrote an article that was so insightful called Missions or Wanderlust, and she diagnoses it perfectly.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:21

There is this wanderlust that many people have, especially in our age of digital creators, people like yourself.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:28

You've traveled the world.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:29

I mean, there's a market for that now that can so easily come into the picture here.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:34

And look, if that's what you want to do, God bless you.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:36

That's not the same thing as being called.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:39

I think most Christians who, if that's your leaning, you probably need to put down some roots first.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:44

You probably need to pay off your student loans.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:46

You probably need to learn suffering and how to Change diapers for 10 or 15 years and then go plant a church and then go learn a language and be a missionary.

Alex Kochman: 01:52:55

And I think we do ourselves better to give people time to develop.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:00

Sometimes we're too eager to send people out.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:02

That certainly happens.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:03

God's sovereign over that.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:05

He can draw a straight line with that brokenness.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:07

But we got to ask that question of motivation, right?

Will Spencer: 01:53:10

Yes, we do.

Will Spencer: 01:53:11

Yes, we do.

Will Spencer: 01:53:12

Because I think, again, that's one of the big shifts that I think that we're living through right now is in, like today, a shift away from.

Will Spencer: 01:53:21

Yes, we're all excited, we're all relieved.

Will Spencer: 01:53:23

The memes will flow.

Will Spencer: 01:53:25

The salt mines.

Will Spencer: 01:53:27

The new meme is in imprisoning liberals and crystals.

Will Spencer: 01:53:30

I don't know if you've seen that one at all.

Will Spencer: 01:53:32

That's.

Will Spencer: 01:53:32

I had to look that one up.

Will Spencer: 01:53:35

Yeah.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:35

So I think that one did not make it on my radar.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:38

Was that a.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:39

Was that a Superman 2 reference?

Alex Kochman: 01:53:40

Was that like the Phantom Zone crystal?

Alex Kochman: 01:53:42

Is that what's going on there.

Will Spencer: 01:53:43

I think.

Will Spencer: 01:53:44

I think it might.

Alex Kochman: 01:53:44

Okay, I understand.

Will Spencer: 01:53:46

Yeah, I read last night.

Will Spencer: 01:53:48

Yeah, exactly.

Will Spencer: 01:53:49

So.

Will Spencer: 01:53:49

So we're.

Will Spencer: 01:53:50

So.

Will Spencer: 01:53:50

I think we're so liberals will get in the crystals.

Will Spencer: 01:53:53

I saw a bunch of people saying that yesterday.

Will Spencer: 01:53:56

So we're taking a cultural corner.

Will Spencer: 01:53:59

We've turned a corner.

Will Spencer: 01:54:00

I think that's the feeling.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:02

Yeah.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:02

Of some sort.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:03

Yeah.

Will Spencer: 01:54:03

Yeah.

Will Spencer: 01:54:04

And so in that enthusiasm, in that rush of acceleration and in the exhilaration of the centrifugal force, almost not to go spiraling off the cliff and to smoothly take the turn into the next generation, I think one of the shifts that were.

Will Spencer: 01:54:22

That we're feeling broadly is that, okay, we're going to turn away from this expressive individualism to more communal values.

Will Spencer: 01:54:32

I don't want to say collectivist values.

Will Spencer: 01:54:34

That's not correct.

Will Spencer: 01:54:34

More communal values.

Will Spencer: 01:54:36

Community, home, family.

Will Spencer: 01:54:37

Yeah.

Will Spencer: 01:54:38

Nation more grounded.

Will Spencer: 01:54:41

And that lands itself in the missions world as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:44

Yeah.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:45

And again, there's counterfeits that are out there.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:48

There's the sort of we are the world counterfeit where.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:51

Where it looks like we're all in this together, but as some have used the metaphor of, yeah, you're together.

Alex Kochman: 01:54:57

You're like a sack full of BBs.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:00

There's.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:00

There's absolutely nothing to keep you bonded together.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:03

And we want to say, no, we're together, but we're together in these household structures, in these church structures, in these structures of.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:12

Of mission groups that form and teams of people working together that might come from different churches.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:17

There's multiple types of networks that can form.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:19

God seems to prefer to work through those things.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:23

He works through leaders.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:24

He works covenantally.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:25

He works through communities.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:26

He doesn't only work with us as individuals, although he does that as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:30

And I think, again, we've got the real thing.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:34

The world has a version.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:36

We've got the real thing as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:38

And that's the beauty of what we get to do, is not only participate in those communities, but seek to see other gospel saturated boroughs multiplied across the world.

Alex Kochman: 01:55:50

Our friend, I don't know if you know him, Rhett Burns does some writing online and he's a pastor, and he recently, a few months ago, wrote a piece for American Reformer.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:01

He's working on a similar piece for our website.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:05

The title is Restore Baptist Churches to Save the West.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:09

And he just talks about the fact that people are more open to traditional ideas.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:14

And so you're boring traditional Baptist church that still has, you know, the board in the back with the numbers of the hymns that we're singing today and how many people raised their hand in the decision of faith, you know, and you can, you know, nitpick if that's the right way to do church, but that type of church that's prevalent throughout parts of our country, what are what the elites would call flyover country, right?

Alex Kochman: 01:56:37

But that type of old time religion that can actually have an impact now because people are open to normal seeming, traditional things, at least for this moment.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:47

Let's take advantage of that.

Alex Kochman: 01:56:49

The church has something they can capitalize on.

Will Spencer: 01:56:52

Amen.

Will Spencer: 01:56:53

You've been incredibly generous with your time today.

Will Spencer: 01:56:56

I know it's quite late over there, so I've really enjoyed getting this perspective from within your unique world of, you know, where things have been, where and where we are now and how we can capitalize on this sense that we're having to make shifts in the areas that are relevant to us, individuals as individuals, and of course you in the mission field.

Will Spencer: 01:57:15

And if we could just close on one question as you look out over.

Will Spencer: 01:57:19

We're coming around, let's say we're coming around the corner and we're looking out at the horizon, knowing that, you know, of course not everything's going to progress linearly, as we had said, that the future will not necessarily be an extrapolation of the present, but as you look out, what excites you the most?

Will Spencer: 01:57:34

Let's say for your life and for awe and also for the missions podcast.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:38

Great question.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:39

So I'll start with Abwe.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:43

We have seen incredible generosity to the mission, even through years of inflation.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:48

Now we've seen record setting numbers of people still going, still being sent out.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:54

And they're not blind to the fact that there's problems here at home, but they're doing the thing.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:57

They're trying to get their house in order.

Alex Kochman: 01:57:59

And they're also loving other things outside their immediate sphere of influence.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:05

They're thinking about the fact that there's as many as 3 billion people in the world that have no access to the gospel.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:12

And people are going out obediently with a burden, with solid sending churches behind them to do long term church planting.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:18

And I'm seeing that increase.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:20

m seeing our organization for: 2025

Alex Kochman: 01:58:26

Our laser focus for: 2025

Alex Kochman: 01:58:31

Because that is God's Plan A.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:33

It's not parachurch organizations, it's not governments.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:36

His Plan A is his church.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:38

That affects all sorts of things, but it starts at that church level.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:42

And so I'm excited to Lean into that, pour into that together.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:45

This year we, we have operations, ministries in almost 90 countries and five new fields opened this year.

Alex Kochman: 01:58:55

Multiple new fields, including places where there's still multiple unreached language groups, unreached people groups.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:02

So that, that excites me immensely.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:04

But I'm also excited about.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:05

We have a US Division as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:07

That's church planting.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:07

One of my good friends, a guy named Ray Brandon in Kalamazoo, is working as our director of US Church planting too.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:13

So we're recognizing there's a mission field here and we're seeking to raise up churches and goers that can be concerned for both of those things.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:22

Our missions podcast, we did launch a paywall, a premium membership this year as well.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:28

And so if people join for 9.99 per month, they get access to bonus episodes where we go real deep into the cultural stuff as well in our country and how that might overlap with the theology, the missiology.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:41

We have conversations a lot like this all the time in our main episodes and in the overtime.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:47

In fact, Brian, you'll have to remind me of this.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:49

Let's set up a coupon code.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:51

If they use coupon code Spencer missions podcast.com premium if they use Spencer, then we can, we can give you your first month free for sure.

Alex Kochman: 01:59:59

So we'll get that stood up as soon as we're done with this stream.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:04

We'll get that stood up here in the next few hours.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:06

And yeah, it's just a blessing and a privilege to be a part of this.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:10

And, you know, for years, I felt like I was drifting in life.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:14

I was, I was given this, this sense of guilt and dread from some of the missions rhetoric that's out there.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:20

What we've talked about.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:21

I'm.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:22

Am I doing enough to please the Lord?

Alex Kochman: 02:00:24

Am I doing enough?

Alex Kochman: 02:00:25

Well, the answer is no, right?

Alex Kochman: 02:00:27

That's why I need a savior.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:28

And yet how cool he was able to take us and put us in a headquarters of a mission where we can send missionaries, we can be on mission here at home, locally, and we can see what God's doing around the world, and we can do it while using our vocational skills.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:42

So we're just blessed.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:43

An incredible way to serve here with this team telling stories of what God's doing around the world and doing that through podcasts, magazine, all sorts of different things like that.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:52

So follow me on x@ajkocheman abwe.org and then missions podcast.com premium promo code.

Alex Kochman: 02:00:59

Spencer, thank you so much.

Will Spencer: 02:01:01

Alex.

Will Spencer: 02:01:01

I was going to ask you where people can go to find out more about what you do, but you already.

Will Spencer: 02:01:05

You already answered that.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:06

Not my first podcast rodeo, brother.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:08

I know.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:08

Slip it in while I can, right?

Will Spencer: 02:01:10

It's so fun talking to fellow podcasters, so you know how the whole thing works.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:14

Yeah, for sure.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:15

And, brother, I appreciate the work that you're doing.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:17

Love following the journey that you're on, and I think you've got an important voice.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:21

And, Lord, may he continue to use it.

Will Spencer: 02:01:23

Thank you.

Will Spencer: 02:01:24

It's all a gift from God.

Will Spencer: 02:01:25

Thank you so much, sir.

Will Spencer: 02:01:27

All right, Lord, bless you.

Will Spencer: 02:01:28

Thank you so much.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:29

Take care.

Alex Kochman: 02:01:29

You too, Sa.