evangelical 360°

Ep. 47 / Polycentric Mission and the Future of Global Evangelism ► Joe Handley

• Host Brian Stiller • Season 1 • Episode 47

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Forget the old map of mission. We sit down with Rev. Dr. Joseph Handley Jr., President of A3 (formerly Asian Access), to unpack how the gospel is moving through a polycentric network of churches and leaders—where sending no longer flows from “the West to the rest,” but from everyone to everywhere. Joe shares how A3’s cohort model develops leaders in small, practitioner-led communities over two to three years, multiplying local ownership as alumni become faculty and movements take root in context. If you’ve ever wondered how to partner without paternalism, this is a masterclass in empowering local and contextual leadership.

We trace why South Korea and Brazil became global mission engines, the role of Pentecostal experience in explosive growth, and what happens when worship, deliverance, and close-knit community meet real needs in places that already acknowledge the spiritual realm. Joe makes a compelling case for integrating justice and evangelism—no false dichotomies, just the holistic pattern we see in the life of Jesus. We also tackle faith in the public square: how younger leaders in Asia are stepping into civic life with moral clarity, avoiding partisanship, and choosing witness over culture-war.

Technology enters the picture with surprising hope. Joe shows how AI translation, voice syncing, and transcript-to-article workflows can elevate local voices, bridge language gaps, and accelerate collaboration across borders. The thread through it all is simple and challenging - - get in the game! Whether you bring decades of pastoral wisdom or a week to mentor rising leaders, there’s a place at the table for you. 

You can learn more about the A3 mission through their website and you can buy Joe's book and connect with him through social media. 

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Brian Stiller:

Hello and welcome to Evangelical 360. I'm your host, Brian Stiller. Podcasts, by their nature, are global. But given that I live in Canada, it may imply that our interest is seeing the world only from a Western point of view. My hope is that as you listen, it'll be informative about the world, at least in other places in which many of us live. And that's why I want to meet my guest today, Joe Handley. His world is beyond the confines of where many of us live. He takes us into the Asian world where the advance of the gospel is beyond what I have ever imagined. But it isn't just its advance that grabs my attention. It's what comes from that world back to us in the West. Joe Handley heads up A3, or formerly known as Asian Access, a network that equips church and marketplace leaders across Asia. There's a new word coming into focus as the Global Church thinks and strategizes about how missions operate. It's called polycentric, which is a new way of thinking about leadership, an idea he'll help us understand. And thanks to you for being a part of this podcast. As you listen, when you consider sharing this episode with a friend, and if you haven't, please hit the subscribe button by joining the conversation on YouTube in the comments below. Now to my guest, Joe Handley. Joe Handley, thank you so much for joining us on Evangelical 360 today.

Joe Handley:

It's great to be with you, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, I was raised in a generation ahead of you, and for us in our church, missions was central. Those who went as missionaries were our heroes. But life has changed. We have gone through the post-colonial era, the Cold War ended, the economic resurgence seemed to catch the whole world. There's been the rise of Asia, and now we're living in a time of AI and all of those kind of intellectual properties that are changing the world. At a time, Joe, when secularism seems to dominate, at least in the West. And so I'm just delighted to have you here today to talk about missions because people have misconceptions, they have ideas on while the gospel is diminishing in its impact globally, which isn't true. The activity of missions is no longer around as it once was. Well, it's different, I'm sure, but it's still around. So having you today is really a privilege and will be an interesting conversation for many of people who follow our program, and I trust for others that'll be introduced to us through this. So thanks, Joe. Well, we'll get into that, but I think it's it's good for people to know who you are, where you come from. You had up a mission to Asia, which I'm reminded four billion of the eight billion of the people of the world live in the area that you are concentrated in. So give us a bit of a background to Hugh and what what makes you tick.

Joe Handley:

Oh, great, Brian. Fun to be with you today, and thank you for the opportunity. I grew up in Southern California and was born and raised in a Christian family. I have a very eclectic background, though. My parents were from Four Square Church, a Pentecostal church. They had gone to Bible college and met here in Los Angeles. And then I grew up in that ecosystem until I was nine years old. When I was nine, my my dad left that church. He was a lay pastor and he went full-time into business and did quite well. We went from a Pentecostal church to a Quaker church. And so a completely different atmosphere, as you can imagine. And then I went to a Baptist high school. So I was getting an amalgamation of theology as a young kid, you know. And during during high school, I felt an incredible call to the work of Christ, to fall into or to run into pastoral ministry and into mission. Yeah, it was it was one of those fire and brimstone services where there was a preacher up front giving us a call to come forward and dedicate our, you know, not our life to Christ, but our our calling, you know, to be a witness, a minister of the gospel. And my heart was thumping, I was sweating, and I knew I was supposed to go forward, but I was terrified because I was deathly afraid of public speaking. And so I avoided it like the plague. I went the opposite way. I played Jonah until I was in college. I went to a what was then a small Christian school called Azusa Pacific University. And a friend of mine invited me on a mission trip. And that mission trip turned my life upside down. Prior to that, I just wanted to be a wealthy Christian business guy and give money away. But serving in the streets of Mexicali, just across the border here, God did something in my heart, and it completely revolutionized my perspective and life roadmap. While I was in college, I met this young lady who's now my wife. We got married and have been married 35 years. We have three children and two grandchildren. Um, and our life has been a journey into mission. Even at our wedding, we had all of our family lay hands on us, and the officiating minister commissioned us as ministers of the gospel as a couple. And we have been living that life of mission ever since. I was invited to volunteer for that program that I went on originally and ended up working at Azusa Pacific University for 10 years. Uh, six months in, they asked me to start the Office of World Mission. And it was quite a journey. I didn't know a lot about what I was doing, but learned on the fly, kind of like throwing into the, you know, the swimming pool and learning how to swim on your own. But I did have a lot of mentoring in that process, a lot of wise counsel, a lot of good people to run beside me. And it was a remarkable journey. After 10 years there, God called me to a church in what's called the South Bay of LA. It ended up being one of the top 100 churches in America, according to a book for missions in its day. We're still members of that church, and they ended up sending us out to what was called Asian Access, but now we call it A3 because we're starting to work outside of Asia. So that's a little bit of my journey, Brian.

Brian Stiller:

Okay, Joe. But the world of missions has changed. It began back in the late 1700s with William Carey and then mission boards of all kinds sending hundreds and hundreds of thousands of missionaries globally. And that's kind of the picture of missions. We go from North America or Europe or even elsewhere to full-time vocational life. Is that the way missions is constructed today?

Joe Handley:

There still is that aspect of mission. Like my wife and I, we still operate on that principle. We raise support for what we do, in addition to leading the mission I lead. However, there's been some drastic changes. In 1994, I believe it was, my wife and I took a leave of absence and moved to Istanbul, Turkey to study what the dynamics were in the kind of emergent church of that era of Turkey's development. And I interviewed every Turkish pastor and most of the mission leaders. And what I noticed that year was a significant shift in the center of gravity. Prior to that time, I felt my calling was mobilizing as many as I could to the uttermost parts of the earth. But after that year, I realized that the global church was growing faster than at least the American church and probably the Western church. And so that created a massive shift in my perspective. And so I shifted from a sending paradigm to a partnership paradigm where you come alongside and give your best to indigenous Christian leaders, pastors and mission leaders from the majority world who are doing the work of ministry on the ground. That doesn't mean the old paradigm is lost. It's still important. And so what I call it today is what is a strategic sending. So instead of sending boatloads of people like you talked about in the past, I prefer to send fewer people that are doing more strategic things and spending the bulk of my energy and time on empowering national movements. And so that's that's a big part of that shift that's been happening over the last, oh, maybe 20, 25 years or so.

Brian Stiller:

So when you say empowering, what uh what does that look like?

Joe Handley:

So it's different in different context. For A3, we do cohorts that equip leaders in small communities. You come alongside 10 to 20 leaders at a time over a two to three year process and invest your life in them. We recruit practitioners and not academics, at least rarely academics, people that are pastors or on the ground practitioners, even in business, to invest their lives over the course of a week or so, sometimes a weekend, in the lives of key leaders.

Brian Stiller:

And just so you take you you're you are taking a group of people to a certain country to work with 10 or 20 people. Is that help me understand that?

Joe Handley:

That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So let's say, let's say I'm recruiting you, Brian. You're a seasoned leader in the church, and you worked in the church in in Canada for a long time, worked in the Evangelical Alliance. You'd be the exact kind of person that people would be looking for. I was in China years ago, and my colleague said to me, Joe, please send us seasoned veteran pastors. We have no spiritual fathers. And you look in the West today, people love you know, young people in skinny jeans up front, speaking and you know, talking and writing. But in the global church, Brian, they want guys that look like you, people with white hair or people like me that have no hair, with a little more scars on our you know, backs and a little more history behind us. They love that experience. And so I would recruit somebody like you, Brian, to go to say India and invest your life in 10 to 20 leaders for an entire week. You would live together in the same guest house or resort center, depending on the context, and you'd be life on life mentoring as well as teaching. And the teaching would be more short segment teaching, um, maybe 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and then dialogue and collaboration and small groups and learning from each other. And that life on life learning is powerful. So that's just one example. There are many other means of doing that empowerment. Some do short-term mission trips, some do longer-term stays in academic institutions. In A3's case, we do this life on life mentoring kind of collaborative learning community space where we'll recruit somebody like you who will invest a week of your life or a couple weeks of your life to empower younger indigenous leaders. And then what happens is eventually that cohort turns into another cohort and converts into a third cohort. And by the time we get to a third cohort, some of our alumni become the faculty. So when the day and age comes when, Brian, you might not be able to travel, one of the local leaders is then teaching on the ground. By the end of two or three cohorts, probably half of our faculty or practitioners are doing the teaching that are local. They're alumni of the A3 community. So that's a little snapshot of how some of missions has changed.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, you use an interesting word called polycentric. Poly meaning many and centric meaning center. But what is though what do those two words pulled together mean to you as it relates to this conversation we're having on World Visions?

Joe Handley:

So it's interesting. I did my my dissertation on this subject, Brian, and polycentric has become a popular term in the mission circle today. If you were at the last Lausaune Congress, there was a significant portion of it kind of dedicated to the idea of polycentric mission. In fact, the way they designed the entire process for developing at Lausaune 4 was a polycentric, you know, multi-country, multi-region approach to mission. Well, when I looked at this popular new thread, which I'll describe in a second, I realized it's actually not a modern idea. It's been happening from early on in Christian growth. But we have this idea that mission was typically from the West to the rest. So that we'd be sending people from Europe to reach the unreached nations of the world or from the Americas to reach the world for Christ. So the difference is moving from the West to the rest, which has been kind of the theme of missions in the 20th and 21st century, to from everyone to everywhere. So now today we have missionaries that are going from Brazil to the Muslim world. We have missionaries coming from Korea all over the planet. You have indigenous missionaries from India, like south of India, serving in the north, where there's more unreached people groups. So that's the big idea of polycentric mission is it's from everyone or everywhere to everywhere, rather than from one center to another. It's polycentric, coming from multiple centers to reach everywhere on the planet. And what's interesting is historically the idea of from the west to the rest was really never true. It had a lot of energy after World War II, of course. But if you look at the history of mission, we have studies showing that Indians were going to other parts of India early on. We have Africans coming to America and then going back to Africa long before the modern era of what was themed the West to the rest. And so the idea of polycentric mission is this concept that now we have people going from everywhere to virtually everywhere.

Brian Stiller:

So you have countries like Brazil and Korea and South Korea that are sending enormous numbers of people, as I understand, all over the world.

Joe Handley:

That's correct. You know, the Brazilian and Korean mission force for the last 20 plus years has been some of the strongest on the planet. America still dominates, the United States still dominates in sending vast numbers. But if you look at the percentage based on population and church growth or church statistics, the volume of people percentage-wise coming from Brazil, Korea, and India is surpassing that of the United States.

Brian Stiller:

Let's pick up South Korea. Why has South Korea been such a dominant player in the current world mission movement?

Joe Handley:

What an exciting story Korea has been. And a lot of it was birthed out of a sense of poverty and a sense of kind of pulling up your bootstraps and moving forward with this enormous spiritual resurgence. And so this really dominated the South Korean scene for decades. And they became one of the fastest growing churches on the planet for quite some time. And in that ecosystem, they caught this idea of reaching the world for Christ. And so if you go almost anywhere in the world today, you will find either Korean missionaries or Korean businesses that are operating as missionaries. It's a remarkable thing that's happened in the history of mission overall.

Brian Stiller:

And what about Brazil? Why has Brazil become such a key player in this movement?

Joe Handley:

I think similar dynamics. I'm not as aware of the backstory on Brazil. With Korea, you know, I know people like Young Hun Lee who've educated me. Brazil, though, also has very similar dynamics. A country that was, you know, struggling, that has become a part of the BRICS, BRIC, you know, emergent economy that's growing rapidly. And the gospel spread in Brazil remarkably. And, you know, a lot of this, Brian, comes from the Pentecostal wave. Most of the growth of the church today is from the Pentecostal movements in the planet, charismatic and Pentecostal movements. And so those movements have an enormous drive behind them. This spirit-led influence really compels you. And honestly, I have to say that's true of myself. When you asked me about how I got called into ministry, there I was sitting in one of those pews with a remarkable fiery brimstone kind of preacher saying, God has called you. I think that kind of spirit has captured a lot of Latin America, and Brazil is just leading the pack.

Brian Stiller:

That that begs the question, doesn't it? In in our Protestant world, and that's where missions has, in our experience, has been bedded. Then you have this Pentecostal charismatic movement that starts the beginning of the 1900s, and we have this enormous growth of evangelicals which composes which includes Pentecostals. It goes from what 90 million in 1960 to over 650 million today. What is there in as a as a missiologist, as somebody who lives in the world of strategizing for mission, what is there about this new understanding of the Holy Spirit that has been so critical in the explosion of missions and the polycentric kind of missions that you've described?

Joe Handley:

But I would say that people today are looking for more of an experience. What is lacking in a lot of uh dynamics of the world today is a technocentric reality, a managerial spirit. And what Pentecostalism brings, what the charismatic movement brings, is an experience that goes much deeper than what you can get in a managerial kind of atmosphere. So when church became a little bland or a little boring, or a little like, what does that mean to me, or a little too academic, the experiences of the Pentecostal movement are profoundly moving for people. And it's it's even, you know, I would say there's a spiritual dynamic to it beyond what not just a mechanistic thing. That there is something that burns in the hearts of people worldwide. And when you look at the majority world in particular, this is a world that believes in the spirits. You don't have to, you don't have to convince them that there are demons or you know, weird things that happen in the planet. Whereas in the West, most people don't believe that stuff. And so you have a group of people that are already believers. And when they walk into a church atmosphere or they meet somebody with a power dynamic of either casting out demons or releasing people from their pain or their challenges in life, it has a profound impact on them. And then the community section of that is what builds on it. So the church community becomes the vibrant life-giving force. Let's say you're from a broken home or you're from a poverty instriction, uh poverty-infested area where you have very little community, that that community of believers becomes your family. And so between these two dynamics of family and a powerful experiential atmosphere, you have a potent force to draw from. To that other question about polycentrism. What this has fueled is a vibrant, fire-filled communities around the world that are fervent for Christ. And they start hearing the gospel message, and it's not just another bland, you know, five spiritual steps to this and ways to improve my marriage, and you know, all the how to use the Bible to enhance my business. Rather, there's a clear, clarion call that I am to make disciples of my neighbors and the world. And so I think that's a little bit of what's behind what you're asking me about.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, I notice that also within the same context of missions, which has as its core the winning of people to follow and serve Jesus Christ. There has been the uh the added dimension of serving those who are who are poor, the issues of injustice. I mean, tens of thousands have sprung up to deal with the justice and poverty issue. So, how do those that the the the focus on justice and poverty, how does that integrate with this more internal spiritual redevelopment of an individual and their confession of Christ? Do those mix easily or are do they find themselves in divisions one against the other?

Joe Handley:

Great question, Brian. You know, I would say in the West, particularly in the Americas or North America, the dynamic has been more of a division. And we allowed the kind of emphasis of the social gospel and some of the liberal tendencies of academic theology to influence us to where we separated those two. And you had a whole sector of the church that would only focus on evangelism, discipleship, and church planting, and a whole other section of the church that was only focused on the social gospel, reaching out to the poor, doing justice, doing mercy. And it's fascinating. When you get outside of the US or North American context and perhaps other contexts, but mostly outside of those two, you see something completely different. What I see when I'm meeting with majority world leaders is an integrated gospel. And they they can't even fathom the idea that evangelism should be separate from the work of reaching the poor. For them, it's hand in glove. It's just naturally fitting together. They look at the Bible, the words of Jesus, the life of Jesus, and the whole trajectory of Scripture. And for them, it's all an integrated, holistic picture. They don't see the separation that we've created here in America anyway. Perhaps it's true in Canada where you're at too. But they they just completely don't even understand this concept of why would you divorce these things? They need to be holistic. The way you reach your neighbors is the intersection of evangelism with caring for them. You know, the way you reach people is reaching out in the poor community, being an agent for justice, but doing so with a vibrant, dynamic relationship with Christ that is sometimes quiet, but oftentimes verbal. And you're sharing your faith alongside of your witness to the community. And for the majority world church, I personally believe they're more biblical than we have been. And we've allowed these things to separate us. In essence, they should be integrated. So I think we have a lot to learn from the the world outside the global church.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, as you and I sit here today, I'm a little older than you, but we have the history of our own evangelical tradition where where faith and politics have have no kinship. There's a great divide. Render under things that are Caesars and under God the things that are God's. That's been our mantra. Now, today we are living in an age where there seems to be a mixing of the two. Now, you're an American, and I don't want to get into the American political issue per se, but as I as I travel the world and as you do, we realize that there is a new interest among evangelicals as it relates to what we call the public square, which is which is politics, which is civic matters. As a missiologist, as you lead the this large mission in In Asia, which is, as I said earlier, is one half of the world's eight billion population. What sense are you making of the evangelical mission world and the indigenous missions of the countries that you are a part of? What sense are you making of this interest and sometimes an alignment of faith and politics?

Joe Handley:

Great question. I think when the majority world church or the global church that I, at least the ones I serve, you know, where the countries I'm in, they like to see this integration from what we were just talking about into this public leadership space. And especially the next generation. They are tired of either the confluence of politics with religion or the separation of them. And let me unpack that a little bit. They are very concerned about the confluence of religion and politics when it becomes one particular faction of the political dynamic. And so when you're just aligned with one political party per se, then what kind of witness is that to the rest of the world or to your neighbor across the street? I'm thinking of right down the street from me is a home. There's two homes, literally across the street, just around the corner from me. On one side of the street is a massive, you know, American flag and Trump banner. And just on the opposite side of the street is a rainbow coalition banner. And it's as if these two sides are, you know, fighting one another. And I like to ask myself, when Jesus asks me, who is my neighbor? How do I answer that question when I have both of these folks as my neighbor? And I think when you look at the majority world church, they want to see a public leadership that is, you know, advocating for the things of Christ, advocating for morality and justice at the same time, advocating for the needs and the situation of the poor, as well as advocating for biblical standards of lifestyle and morality. They have a more integrated approach and they want to reach both sides. And so when I look at my neighborhood and I ask that question, who is my neighbor? When I think of public leadership, I realize that both those people are my neighbor. That God has called me to love the Trump supporting community and to love the LGBT community. And I do that, I try to do that through a vibrant witness for Christ. And in the midst of both, there are times where you have to stand up for biblical principles. And there are things on either side that you can either criticize or compliment. And I find that my friends in places like Sri Lanka or Nepal right now, where there's been massive political mechanisms and social unrest, they want to see the gospel embedded into the public leadership space. And so I have younger generation leaders I work with that are actually entering the political fray, trying to create either new parties or join a party, but try to do so in a way that will be infused with biblical standards and the gospel message. I don't know if that's what you're after, Brian, but that's that's what I'm seeing out there.

Brian Stiller:

Are you finding again Asia tends to be your your your big backyard? Is are those interests do they do they end up in battling in culture wars? Or is there a real emergence of of true a kind of heroic leadership that doesn't allow itself to be trapped on one side or the other? I'm fishing for some kind of answer that talks about the engagement maybe differently than what we're seeing here in North America.

Joe Handley:

I think it is different, Brian. I I don't think in many cases they don't dive into the culture war. Rather, they just try to be the light of Christ and the salt of society in the midst of the public space. That said, that same spirit is not true everywhere. There are countries where the culture war dynamic is is present outside the you know US and Canadian atmosphere, for sure.

Brian Stiller:

Let me cycle back into the the the nature of agency ministry. You you lead a remarkable NGO. And if evangelicals are good at anything, they're good at being entrepreneurial. Coming up, they have a they have a C, we see a problem, we we create an answer to it. We have a uh a need over here, and we build an agency to respond to that. And so you have around the world, I don't know, hundreds of thousands of agencies and NGOs and ministries that are under the evangelical tent. Given that, do we go our own way or are there new evidences of partnership that that you see emerging in a in a very uh poly, to use your word, a very polycentric world? Does does polycentrism strategic in ministry does it involve in partnership, or does everybody go their own way doing what's right in their own eyes?

Joe Handley:

Yeah, great question. I I think we're in a day and age where people long for collaboration. And part of the spirit of polycentric leadership is this idea of working together so you get rid of inefficiencies. One of the challenges of the entrepreneurial, you know, uh mantra is that if you just keep starting new things, you're overlapping with other people, at least sometimes. That doesn't mean there shouldn't still be entrepreneurialism. I still think there's a place for it. But it's probably wise to do a lot of homework before you start something up and find out are there other people in this space and are they doing a good job? And the spirit of mission today is a spirit of collaboration. There's a drive both within the circle, the circles that I swim in are the WEA and the Lausanne movement. I'm in those circles a lot, as well as the Pentecostal World Fellowship. And what I'm seeing is a real interest in more collaboration and a concern that our efforts are are overlapping and creating a lot of inefficiencies that aren't necessary. So are we wasting money, Westing Kingdom money, doing the same thing in the same space? Why don't we work together? And so I think this interest in collaboration is just starting to really build momentum. It's been around for a while. The partnership movement was begun probably around the early 70s, around the original Lausanne Congress. There was a big drive to have consultations for unreached people groups and collaborative efforts in different countries. And that's starting to infuse everywhere you go. When, like right now, A3 is growing significantly in the central part of Asia. And most of that is with the alliances. So the the Evangelical Alliance in that those parts of the world are really robust. And they want to see this kind of collaboration, at least from what I can tell so far. We're we're just two years in with that part of our venture. But that's that's an ek example of this ecosystem of a desire for more collaboration, more partnership, not wasting money and kingdom time and effort.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, you've been serving for some time and uh in a key area. With the world changing, AI is not just on the it's not just on the horizon any longer. It's in our back pool or in our kitchen. What what are you looking to? What are you hoping for? What are you seeing signs of as you see this polycentric notion become more dominant in world missions?

Joe Handley:

Yeah, so the onset of AI is quite remarkable, and I know a lot of people are afraid of it. I I personally am trying to leverage it. I I think that any tool can be used for bad or good. And AI has the same kind of potential in my estimation. So, for instance, let's say I'm trying to dialogue with a colleague in Japan, and not everything I express in English is fully getting through. Well, I can use AI to come up at least with some semblance of Japanese. In fact, we just recently did a big celebration for a 90-year-old leader in our movement from Japan. And there were three American leaders, including myself, that did a video for you know our friend, because we couldn't be there. And somebody put our video into an AI framework, and I came out speaking flawless Japanese, and my lips were synced to the Japanese, and it sounded like me. I could not believe it. I mean, I mean, it's a little scary too. I understand the fear out there, but the potential of that for the kingdom is enormous. And I think that the church should be ahead of the curve, not behind it. Why do we often come in reactionary modes and follow the course of the rest of the world? Why are we ahead of the curve? And so my my theory is let's leverage this power for the gospel. And that's just one little example of things that people can do all the time. I'll give you another example. A call like this one, Brian. I now set up calls with my colleagues from around the world, and I have a transcript that is built off the call. And I can convert that transcript into a blog, into the voice of my colleague. And this is a colleague whose English is not their first language, and they're not writers, they're not readers and writers, but they are happy to dialogue with me on a Zoom call or a call like this one with Riverside. And we record it, it converts it into text, and I can then generate something in their voice and their tone, and I send it to them for edits, and it's a remarkable way to share the wisdom of the world. And so these are just two little stories: the one of the video and the one of the interviews with my friends, that can be used for the gospel. Why not use them? So that's my theory on some of that. And in a polycentric world, these things just help us. You know, they're their resources or tools that can help us get along, help us better work together, help us better serve our communities.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, this has been a very rich and fascinating conversation. And as we land, I'm thinking about people who are in somewhere in our generations. I don't want to be caught in one age or another, but I'm thinking of people who have their career, who have children or grandchildren, and who listen to you and ask the question, what can I do? So as a uh as a mission strategist and a executive of mission, what would you say to a person as they listen to us now?

Joe Handley:

Get in the game. So step out and step into the world of mission, whether it's your local community or the world. If there's an opportunity to get in the game, do it. I I'll never forget, you know, it's a little bit of my story, is I feel like most of us in the world, at least in the American church, were taught a paradigm of church that is come, sit, and listen. And so every week we come, sit, and listen. And that's all we do. But when you step out and get in the game, your life can change. Just like I did taking that trip with a friend to Mexico years ago, it turned my life upside down. I went from a shy, quiet kid that is afraid of public speaking to somebody the Lord has used in multiple places around the world, preaching the gospel in front of crowds that most of my friends can't believe it because I was so afraid of public speaking. And your life will become alive. Once you step out into the journey of faith and really live out the gospel, the come sit and listen paradigm is way boring. And I think if you step into the zone of local outreach, reaching your neighbor, going to the ends of the world on a short-term mission trip, it will energize your life and your faith. And I'm I'm just convinced of it because I'm a product of it, and I've seen it happen over and over again. Why continue to sit in the same boring place day week after week when you can be right in the thick of the playing field? And God needs you. You know, He doesn't need us in one sense, you know, theologically, but He has called us. And we are His emissaries and His ambassadors to the world. And so whether you live in Toronto or Tokyo, there's a place for you that God has to serve in your community or in your nation or beyond. And once you step into that space, I can't tell you you'll be in for the adventure of a lifetime.

Brian Stiller:

Joe, thanks for joining us on Evangelical 360.

Joe Handley:

What a joy to be with you today, Brian. Thank you for the opportunity.

Brian Stiller:

Thanks, Joe, for joining me today. Your expansive view of the world helps lift us from personal and national preoccupations to see how the Spirit is engaging the world in this message of Jesus from Nazareth. And so thanks to you for being part of the podcast. Be sure to share this episode and join the conversation on YouTube. If you'd like to learn more about today's guest, be sure to check the show notes for links and info. And if you haven't already received my free book and newsletter, just go to Brianstiller.com. Thanks again. Until next time.