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\f0\fs24 \cf0 \uc0\u8202 So, welcome to the very first Intersection podcast. Now, I'm going to leave it up to Bob initially, and then Hugh, to introduce themselves and talk all about Cities Project Global. Bob, take it away. Well, thank you. I appreciate the introduction. This is about the intersection. We had a book recently put out called The Intersection, Faith, Work, and Life.\ \ And it's where all these things come together. I think it's the notion of having a fulfilled life, having an abundant life. Jesus talks to us about having an abundant life, and when I think of that, I think of this notion of being fulfilled. Having the fullness of God in your life, just experiencing the joy of living and contentment, having success as you see your giftedness proceed, being a light to others.\ \ Experiencing the warmth of a healthy family, all of those things are things that a lot of us want. And it's some of the things that we cover in the work that we do here at Cities Project Global. So Hugh, you have any, uh, any thoughts that you could add to that as we just think about, uh, both the book and the leadership circle that we do?\ \ Well, my name's Hugh Brandt and I'm delighted to be on the podcast. And I, years ago, went to Africa as a school teacher. And in doing that, I was living out my faith as a school teacher, but over time I realized something was missing, and I, I, I was not completely understanding God's, larger grand story. And over the years, we now communicate this grand story where God is reconciling all of his creation.\ \ And what this also means is that all work matters to God. So we want to see people living a fulfilled life, doing what they're doing. whether they're doctors or lawyers or teachers, and doing it for God's glory and doing it for the common good of all people. So, excited that what was, what I felt was missing in those early years has been filled up with this understanding of the God's grand story and calling all of us to understand our role in that grand story.\ \ Yeah, it was about, for me, it was about 45 years ago. I was in some real estate. There was a little bit of a crisis in the United States. So my buildings weren't selling, so I was standing looking at my nearly empty buildings. And for the first time in my life, I'd been a Christian for about 10 years, I heard God say, Bob, did you ask me before you started this project?\ \ And I remember thinking, of course not. I mean, why would I ask you? You know, just as you said a few minutes ago, I didn't think God cared about all that other stuff in life, you know? So, um, it was a little while later, we did a merger IPO of, of my first. And I thought, well, okay, I, I got the rest of my life to live.\ \ I'm out of a job, I just sold a company. So what do I do? I guess I got to go pray. Right? So I began praying and I felt this notion that I should find some company that had a prototype product. And I thought, Oh my goodness, you don't know how to do that. This is ridiculous. I can't do that. So, so I prayed, okay God, if you really care about this stuff, okay, here we go.\ \ I need to find somebody with a prototype product, uh, that needs a CEO, uh, and okay, thanks God. So, about two weeks later, a guy that had worked for me in my first company came to me after the church service. He said, Bob, been working with a few guys, we got three prototype products, we need a CEO. We want to know if you want the job.\ \ And I thought, you're kidding. He said, no. I said, okay, let's talk. So I thought to myself, okay, God, is that how you work? That's really cool. I mean, you care so much about all of what we do. I mean, I was reluctant in my prayer. I mean, I, I, I hardly believed it until after it happened. So it's, we want to, we want to help other people understand how much God cares about, you know, in Psalm 139.\ \ It talks about God knowing us before we were born. And in fact, it says the thoughts that he had about us were more than the stars in the sky. I remember the first time I read that, I thought, oh my goodness, are you kidding? God's thinking about me? You know, it's true. So there are so many people who are Christians who don't really understand how much God cares about who they are, what they are doing, and how they're using the giftedness that God has provided.\ \ It's interesting. I, in many ways, my story is similar, but in a different way, but it literally was 45 years ago for me as well, as I went to Africa as a secondary school teacher, and I went there for a desire to make Jesus known and to help people to make a good informed decision to follow him. But as I was there, I discovered that only 7 percent of the students in that country graduated from high school, from secondary school, and I was stunned by that.\ \ But what I found as I fell in love with the students, fell in love with the country and the people, and I found as I would wait to go into the classroom, as I would be standing there praying that that each of them would know Jesus and want to walk with Him, I also found myself praying that they would pass Jesus.\ \ the mathematics tests, that they would do well studying their own language or all the other subjects like science. And I found that this mattered to me. And what I've discovered over the years is it matters to God. And I was beginning to live the integrated life back then as a school teacher. And again, I didn't necessarily have the theology to back it up, but I was beginning to live it.\ \ And I was, I have to say, I was living a fulfilled life in those early 1980s. And I guess the desire is then, is that if God cares about everything, God wants these students to graduate, and to have a good job, and to have a family, and to make a difference in their country. And this is what he was impressing upon my heart, and the Spirit was motivating me to pray in this way.\ \ It all began 45 years ago, and it's been growing in me. So Hugh, how has God guided you through those 45 years? And have you always listened to him? Have you always even asked him, I suppose, is another good question. That's a great question. You know, I have to say, not always. I was following the basic disciplines of being a Christianprayer and Bible study and going to church and witnessing.\ \ And yet, I can't say I was learning the art, the skill, the discipline of listening to him. Because I believe that God speaks to us every day. The question is, are we listening? And I now am learning to listen for his voice, to recognize his voice different than maybe my own or somebody else around me. And so I'm learning to listen to his voice, and I believe that he speaks to us through our deepest desires.\ \ And when we then listen to what he's saying, it uncovers our design. And out of our design emerges our destiny. So the importance of hearing His voice and listening and paying attention every day, I'm learning to do that. It's becoming one of my daily disciplines. I even start out each day asking myself the question, what do you have for me today, Lord?\ \ And then I wait and I journal on what I believe He is saying to me as I start my day. So before you did that, who, what took you to be able to do that? Because it's not always that easy to move from the, the mind to the heart, if you like, you know. I'm, I'm very conscious that, yes, we need to know God to make him known.\ \ You know, if you don't know him, how can you make him known? It's like, you know, you know, the man down the street, but you don't really know her. Uh, so you can't make him known. So how do you move from the head to the heart? That's a great question. I, I realized that, um, as I was growing as a Christian, I was going in my knowledge, in information about Him, studying the Scriptures, being in many Bible studies, leading many Bible studies.\ \ But again, through all of that, it was increased knowledge in my head, but not necessarily knowing Him deep in my heart. And so, hearing some additional teaching, and again, going deeper into the Scriptures, and understanding that God's calling us to conversational intimacy, some of those phrases really began to manifest.\ \ Come alive in me. And so, and the great thing, it was also true happening in my wife's life. So we were watching each other. We were listening to each other. We were praying together about this. And we're getting to the point now that as, as if someone begins following Christ, we believe one of the greatest things we can do is begin to communicate the idea that God is speaking.\ \ Are you listening? And here's some ideas. But I have to say also one thing that really began to help, I began to journal. I began to write down. I'd ask God a question. I'd have a blank page in my journal and I would begin to write down what was, what was being impressed upon my heart, believing the Spirit was speaking to me.\ \ And it's quite interesting when you do, Jer, I have journaled in the past myself, but I don't at the minute, I have to be honest, um, is that when you do go back and look What you journaled, and my wife does this all the time because she journals every day. She will go back and show me, look, this is what we prayed for and this is where we are now.\ \ And actually, we're probably even in a better situation than what we prayed for. So, I think it's also confirmation of what God is doing in your life as well, not just that you're able to write it down. I mean, is that something that you practice as well, Bob, that you journal, or not? I have journaled in the past, a little bit like you.\ \ I'm not doing it right now, but I have a number of journal books sitting over in my files over there. And it is remarkable. When you begin to write these things down and then go look back and see what, what God has done in your life. I know one of the early things that, that we used to do is to sit with my kids when they were little and, uh, somewhere between Christmas and New Year's, we would say, what do you think next year is going to look like?\ \ What would you like to have happen next year? You know? And of course, as little kids, they had little things that they did. As adults, we had larger pictures. But what was fascinating, and we didn't quite do this every year, but about five years into doing that, we looked back and we thought, my goodness, look at what God has done.\ \ You know, these are things that we were thinking that we could do. Some of them were travel. Some of them were a different house. Some of them were starting another company. I mean, they were those kinds of things that were ordinary things. They were not entirely what we would call spiritual things. But they were things that God cared about because He cared about our lives and how we were living them out.\ \ So, uh, I, I think, and it's, that's some of the things that we, we have a, a course that we call the leadership circle. We put a curriculum together, uh, that runs about nine months. And typically we meet once a month. Uh, some of the places in the world meet differently. Um, I mean, in, in Egypt. They meet in retreats every so often, and we're on a couple topics.\ \ But in any case, it takes a while as you're thinking about looking at a new perspective of what God is doing and listening to peers. I mean, it's quite something to learn from one another. That's the kind of thing we practice in the leadership circle. Just like you were saying, Kevin, you know, you, you, you ask one another questions and you ask, how did you do this?\ \ And how did you do that? And you get a new topic on the table like, work is worship. And you begin to ask yourself, well, how, what do you mean, where, you know, I think I got that in my head, but I don't have that in my heart. And you know, what, who has an experience that helps me understand how to put that into sort of my whole self.\ \ So we try to bridge the gap between knowledge and experience because the experience is the thing that, that reaches deeper into your soul than the knowledge. You've got to put the knowledge and the experience together, um, and I think that leads us to wisdom when you then marry that with the Scriptures.\ \ You know, Bob, I think one thing that, um, we really work hard at is learning to tell good stories, learning to tell Bible stories, and learning to tell stories of what God is doing in our lives. And I often say stories change lives. And I can say that because Jesus told stories and lives were changed when he did.\ \ But when I sit and think about it, some ideas come to my head is I believe that when stories are told, they create readiness and it nudges people toward receptive insight. And we know in any good sermon, what people remember are the stories, and the stories illustrate maybe the major points that have been communicated.\ \ So in part of the leadership circle that Bob was describing, we emphasize stories. And we believe that stories get down to the worldview level. And ultimately, if your worldview is changed, and then your beliefs, ultimately, it can change your behavior. And our desire is that for all of us, our behavior would line up with what God's calling us to do, to be part of His grand story.\ \ But we teach, encourage, help people to learn to tell good stories. We use a, uh, a quote from, uh, Ivan Vanilich, Hugh, that you, you've brought to us and I really appreciate it. He's an Austrian philosopher, a Roman Catholic priest, sort of a maverick social critic, and here is what he says about changing culture because of stories.\ \ Here's his quote. Neither revolution nor reformation can ultimately change a society. Rather, you must tell a new powerful tale, one so persuasive that it sweeps away the old myths. and becomes the preferred story. One so inclusive that it gathers all the bits of our past and our present into a coherent whole.\ \ One that even shines some light into the future so that we can take the next step forward. If you want to change society, you have to tell an alternative story. So we, uh, we try to do that with one another. Hugh, you had a thought? Well, again, um, what are these alternative stories? You know, and it's stories of, again, what Jesus did, the compassion He had, where He was healing people constantly.\ \ The stories of good news and good deeds, and how, and stories of, of people living an integrated life where they live out their faith in every single thing they do. You know, it's interesting, You know, I'm thinking, Bob, that we've had people as they learn about common good and how God causes the rain to fall and the good and the, and the good and the evil.\ \ Well, the same way he's calling us to show common good to all people. And when we talk about that, many people are saying, I've never heard this before. I didn't know that this was, was part of his story. And it's fun to see, wow, that means that literally everything I do matters and doing things that cause, that bring common good to people.\ \ What we're literally doing is creating new culture. We're learning to treat people with respect, with dignity, reflecting the way Jesus did it, the way he wants us to do it. Right. Yeah, it reminds me of a fellow named Marco that we, uh, he was in our class in Sao Paulo, Brazil. And, uh, he, uh, he makes his living in finance.\ \ Uh, he, he, he, uh, gives seminars and sells his books and that kind of thing. And he was in the midst of writing a new book. Uh, it had 10 principles. And the gentleman who was facilitating that said to Marco, he said, well, you know, Marco, if those principles are any good, uh, you They're in the scriptures. Now as Christians, we know that.\ \ We know that the good things come out of the scriptures. But we often forget. You know, here we are writing a book about finance, it's got ten principles, and so often you don't think to go look at the scriptures. Well that caused Marko to go look at the scriptures. And he found multiple scriptures for each one of his principles and wanted to have those scriptures then in his book.\ \ Well, guess what? This book was what we call a secular book produced by a secular company, right? And sometimes if you don't fully understand God's common grace and you don't understand that everybody is made in God's image, I mean, whether you believe in God or not, God does what God does, right? And then we respond.\ \ So Marco decided to go to his publisher. Now his publisher had a lifestyle that Marco didn't entirely agree with, right? Sometimes people have lifestyles you don't like. Well, he went to Marco anyway. Well, why is that? Well, Marco was gifted in words. That's why he was the chief editor, right? He's good with words.\ \ So Marco goes to him and says, look, I would like to put a scripture in each one of my chapters. And thankfully, the editor said, yes, he said, but I need your help. I need to pick out which scriptures, because I got a lot of them now. So for three weeks, he and the editor went through, uh, each of those scriptures and they picked one for each chapter.\ \ And one of the exciting parts is not only did they put it in the book and get published, but at the end the, the editor said, you know, I had no idea how much wisdom was in your scriptures. Well, we don't know what that does to another person, but each one of us gets led down a path. With some new pieces of information and God uses all of it, you know, so this I, you know So I think the editor was changed.\ \ I think the people reading the book are changed I mean, there's lots of places where change takes place. It's really fun Yeah, lots of places of influence in terms of the things that we do we often drop A stone in the, uh, in the middle of a flat lake or puddle and, uh, we don't know where the rings are going to stop doing it, it, it, it moves out.\ \ But one of the questions that came to my mind when we were talking, just dragging you back a bit to journaling. How often do we write down our prayer requests and later in life we thank God that they were not answered? Anything you can think of where you thought, I really want that to happen. It didn't have.\ \ I think I need to, I think I need to bring a piece to our next podcast. I've got a song, uh, that Tennessee Gurney, Ford Sings. And at the beginning of it, he goes through, I asked for this and I got this. I asked for this and I got this. I asked for this and I got that. I think famous. Forget all the famous country Senator Singer as well, uh, who he says, uh, thank God for unanswered prose.\ \ Uh, you know, it's a love song, uh, Brooks, is it, and what's his first guy's first name? Giles Brooks sings a song about Anon's prose as well. But have either of you got any examples in your own lives that you think, I really wanted that to happen and it didn't, and thank goodness it didn't. I, I think I have a good story to illustrate that, um, at this time I was working as a chaplain at the University of Zimbabwe in the, in the capital city of Harare, Zimbabwe.\ \ And we were wanting to start a, a training school for people coming from approximately 10 countries that we'd go through it for nine months. It was all planned out and we just needed to have our work permit extended and it was not. So then literally we were given two weeks to come back into the country because we'd left.\ \ And we had two weeks to leave after having been there. For over seven years, but our prayers, of course, our prayers was that we would be there and we would have this Training school and it would be people being trained to go all over southern africa and it didn't happen And I believe god did not answer that prayer is I found out I was in a rut I was in a rut of going going going serving serving serving, but I wasn't necessarily again Listening to him.\ \ Well So, he got my attention, and he sent me back to the United States, and I was not able to remain in Zimbabwe. Some ways, I say now, if he had, um, answered that prayer, I might even still be there to this day. But, he, in a sense, sent me back here. And I was here in the United States for three years, until then he called me to go and serve in London, England.\ \ That prayer was not answered. In fact, I prayed it so many times, and instead, he sent me back to the United States for a period of time. Indeed. Thank God for unanswered prayers. You remind me of my story now as well, because my, my unanswered prayers was I had a, a couple who had got married and they were Lebanese and they were helping in a cafe that we had on the Shankill road in Northern Ireland.\ \ And they went back to renew their visas. And obviously our prayers were your visa will be fine from the UK government and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And, uh, one month went past, two months went past, three months went past, no visa. British government said, no visa. So there's me now stuck without this couple to run the cafe and I was like, what am I gonna do?\ \ What am I gonna do? Anyway, step forward. They then invited me a year later to go to Lebanon at Christmas time to help in a camp that they were gonna do. And guess what? That's where I met my wife. Um, and now I have a wife, two children, and I live in Egypt and Cairo because God didn't answer that prayer and they were praying day and night, fasting, praying, all of those things.\ \ But I often say to them, I said, you know, my life changed because those prayers were not answered for you. So, uh, there you go. Unanswered prayers can often be better because who knows better, us or the Creator? It's like, sometimes we, sometimes we think we know better. In fact, most of the time. So yeah, sometimes, uh, we should listen.\ \ So maybe this is a good time now just to, um, for both of you just to give short testimony, and then we're going to have a worship song, and then we will talk a bit more about, uh, about the projects that you're involved in. I have a testimony that's come to my mind. As we were talking about listening to the Lord.\ \ A good 10 years ago, I was involved with some church leaders here in my city, and we began to talk about listening, listening to our own hearts and listening to the Lord's voice. And we came up with an idea that for 40 days, we would call each other in the morning, two of us, we paired up, and we would ask each other that question.\ \ What is your heart saying to you? And what is God saying to you? And some days you'd say, I don't know what's going on in my heart. And then you'd say, I haven't heard anything from God. But most of those days you could share something. But we discovered that we men, if you ask how you are, how's your heart?\ \ You'd say, I'm okay. So, we discovered we would not allow ourselves to say, okay, and we came up with a simple acrostic called SACHET. It's spelled S A S H E T, stands for sad, angry, scared, happy, excited, tender. So we were giving words to ourselves so that we could express the emotions and what was going on in our hearts.\ \ And we did that. Also said that he can't just be only a little scared or only a little excited that no, you are excited and you are scared. And we discovered that we have, we could have multiple emotions at the same time. The point I'm making was we did it for 40 days so that it would build this.\ \ Unforced rhythm of grace, as Peterson calls it, is discipline of paying attention to our own hearts and also paying attention to God's voice. And that discipline of doing that for 40 days has built this into my life and I do this to the very day. So, practice, practice listening to my own heart and listening to God's heart.\ \ Yeah, that's really good. There's a reason, there's a reason why Jesus went to the desert for 40 days, no? Because it makes, uh, you know, it turns it into a habit. That's, you know, we, we find it hard not to do those things after we've done them for a period of time and that's both good and bad habits, you know, if I, I know my, my worst thing to do is drink Coca Cola and if I stop for a long period of time, I can normally keep stopping, but then if I start again, what happens?\ \ I'll drink coca cola and I'll drink too much sugar and it'll be bad for me and you know It's a very simple habit, but that's the reality, isn't it? So what about you Bob? Testimony. Yeah, mine is probably not as put together as well as Hughes's But you know years ago I my wife and I did not accept Christ until we were in our late 20s And we recognized, uh, in the scriptures in Exodus, it talks about the sins of the parents being visited on the children to the second or third generation.\ \ And we thought, you know, we began to pray, uh, about our own family, okay, which we didn't have yet. And I didn't entirely know what that meant. I didn't know what it looked like. I didn't know how to, how you would overcome it, what the blessing would look like on the other side. But now, here we are. Nearly 58 years after having gotten married, which we did shortly before we accepted Christ.\ \ Uh, so we got married and then accepted Christ. And our family is an absolute blessing. I mean, I'm looking at my grandchildren now, you know, the, the, the next, the second generation after our kids, right? And I'm watching my kids raise their kids. And we have Cousins Night once a month or once every two months, where all six of the cousins come together.\ \ We're blessed by having our children, you know, 20 minutes in one direction and the other one's 20 minutes in the other direction. And they get together and they love one another. They love coming together. And I see that. And I, and I see them talking about the Lord. I see them going into a public school and having a whole bunch of different friends.\ \ And yet at the same time, having been steeped enough in the scriptures. with us, with their parents, uh, with the things, the churches we go to, uh, and engaging together. So naturally, we continually pray for our grandchildren. Uh, they have much of life yet to go. We cannot guarantee, you know, we're, we're actually not quite in charge, uh, of what happens for them.\ \ Uh, but we're so pleased, uh, that we can see the warmth of our family, that we've, we've taken a couple trips. We went, uh, on our 50th anniversary Uh, we took the kids on a Disney cruise, uh, in the Mediterranean. You know, here you are 10 days all together every day, you know, and we did the same thing in Africa just a year ago.\ \ We went down to safari for two weeks. And it's such a joy to be able on the one hand to do that, but in the midst of doing that, to have the family all get along, you know, to, to, to not have crosswords. To not have the two different families that my daughters are now moved into. I mean, because when, when a woman gets married, she, she marries into the man's family, uh, and whatever was happening in that family comes into yours and it's all blending well and nicely.\ \ So I, I just thank the Lord that he is honoring our prayers about our family. Uh, and having a healthy, warm family is, is, it's a daily delight for Sandy and me. Yeah. And what, what really occurred to me there is in, in these next generations, are people going to live that close that they can live that beautiful life that you, your family has actually had?\ \ Because I know even in my family and lots of families, I see that people just aren't close enough to each other to be able to do that. Yeah. So it's not the norm. So, we're particularly thankful, I mean, we didn't specifically arrange for our kids to come back home. Our youngest ones were off in, um, Latin America for two years.\ \ Colombia? Venezuela? Venezuela. Venezuela. They were in Venezuela. A lovely place. They were there for a couple years, and, and yet, and then when they came back, they didn't come back here. They came back into Maryland somewhere, and, and yet, here we are finished, and, and they're settled in, and, uh, it's. It's a delight, and most of the people we know Uh, like you, Kevin, have, have families that are in different parts of the world, lots of our missionary friends.\ \ You know, I've got one in Spain, I've got one in, uh, in Bangalore, I got another one over in Perth, Australia, you know, I mean, that kind of stuff. You got people everywhere. So I, I feel particularly blessed. Indeed. Okay. So we're going to just have a worship song now. Hugh, do you want to just introduce this song, and then we'll, uh, we'll play it, and then afterwards we'll talk a little bit more about, uh, Citi's global project.\ \ It's a short little song by Michael Card. It's, it's entitled, The Gentle, Gentle Healer Came Into Our Town Today, and describing the impact that Jesus had in the lives of the people of that town.\ \ Just to say, I love harmony. And, um, what I love is that it talks about him coming into a town and he's healing people. It's extending common grace and saving grace. But also what I like. Is, um, I think he's creating new culture in that, in that town as being described. That people are being healed, healed.\ \ People are now beginning to live the way God initially designed us to live. So anyway, I've been listening to it for a few years, but I love the context is, it's Jesus and what he's doing in the lives of people in a town. In a city. Yeah. And that brings us right on to Cities Project Global, which, tell us a little bit, Bob, how did this come about?\ \ How long has it been, uh, going, and, um, yeah, what is your, I suppose, uh, overview of your mission? What, what is your mission? Well, the mission that we have actually is to awaken, equip, and unleash Christians Uh, to do what God has intended for them, what his plan is for them. And what we have discovered is that there are many, many Christians who are suffering from, uh, what we call a sacred secular divide, where we distinguish between these things which are holy and sacred and the godly and these other things which don't matter to God.\ \ I mean, that's typically the kind of separation that we see. We, in this country, and I think, uh, in, in the U. S., uh, and I think we have, again, exported it around the world over the last century, so that this divide is present globally. And it's like any piece of culture, when you're swimming in it, you don't know that you're in it, okay?\ \ So most Christians don't know that this is an issue. So it's one of the things that we wrestled with. Way back at the beginning, and, you know, you heard a little bit about, uh, some of my testimony and some of Hugh's, and we got together in, what, 2007, you think, Hugh? Something like that? 2008. 2008, okay. So, uh, a colleague of mine recommended that Hugh give me a call, we talked, and immediately, I think, What Hugh felt in Africa and what was missing in his life, he began hearing from me, because I had found some of it already, uh, and over the course of, uh, the next years, we've put together this.\ \ It started in earnest, uh, around 2014. where we got together and put a curriculum together that lasts nine months. And the reason we do it, uh, we do a number of things in the structure of this. First of all, we do it over nine months so that God can work in your heart. We believe that we present different pieces of information each time we meet, and it, it takes a while for a new perspective to, to take hold.\ \ So we, we want to give, Each of the participants time to work through these things with God, okay? So there's a month in between each one of the topics. Another piece is that we've studied, we've done research on education. How does it work? How do people learn? How do people understand? And we've chosen a model that has four different ways of people, and we try to put that inside each one of our teaching sessions.\ \ And we limit ourselves to 10 or 15 minutes out of an hour, so if a session is about an hour long, the facilitator will only be talking for 10 or 15 minutes out of that hour, and the other people in the room will have an opportunity to share. Or we'll have a, uh, a video clip from some, some third party coming in.\ \ So that we, we look at peer to peer learning as, as very important. So we go over nine months, One topic a month, um, a lot of, uh, peer to peer learning and discovery. Uh, with one another, and coming out the other end, we often have people say, why did I never hear this before? You know? And, and a lot of it has to do with taking on a different perspective.\ \ We use a C. S. Lewis quote, that if I'm, if I'm a certain kind of person, and standing in a certain place, and looking over at an object, I see it a certain way. But if I move to the other side of the room, and look at it, I see it in a different way. Now, I do need to be a different kind of person, because, I mean, it depends on the person I am.\ \ Because if I'm not a person that's willing to take new input, um, then standing in and getting, getting a different view of something doesn't matter. I need to be willing to change, I need to be willing to listen, uh, I need to be humble enough to, to say that my perspective is not necessarily the right one.\ \ You know, God's is the right and I gotta figure out what that is. So those are the kind of things that we, we talk about in the leadership circle. Hugh, Hugh's done a lot of work looking at right and left brain stuff and looking at this educational piece. So I think he's probably got a lot more to say about it than I do.\ \ Well, you know, Bob, I like what you're saying. We often say it matters who's in the room, because we're not there to teach, we're there to facilitate learning as we introduce ideas. And it's people engaging with them, engaging with each other on those. So initially we'll have them read an article or two, we have them watch a video.\ \ So when they come together, they're ready to discuss something that's been introduced to them. We think lecture is the least best way to learn, and so we do not lecture. And we use stories, we use case studies, we use examples, we, we look at lives. You know, one that we look at is William Wilberforce and how God used him and the larger group he was a part of that today we call the Clapham Circle.\ \ And how they brought substantial cultural change to the country of England, to the city of London. You know, they're known for stopping the slave trade and eventually after 40 years stopping slavery. But they did so many other things. But something, something recently we discovered is that it wasn't just this vision that God had laid on the hearts of these 40 plus people who were living near one another in Clapham of London, but there was an uncanny love they had for one another.\ \ And we discovered it's this Hebrew word in the Old Testament called hesed. What would be comparable in the New Testament would be agape. What is God's faithful love? God's love, His loving kindness. It's, it's used 250 times in the Old Testament, and many theologians say it's maybe the greatest description of who God is, this love, and it's We now communicate this chesed, and we talk about leaders and cities working together and having a chesed community, this uncanny love for one another that prompts them to deal with the problems of the city that they care about, but it keeps them working together for a long time.\ \ So we spend time now investigating what is chesed, What's God saying to us? And I have to say that when you meet someone, Chesed, it should be expressed through the person's eyes, their face, and the tone of their voice. Because when you meet someone, the first thing you look at is their face, their eyes, and then you hear their voice.\ \ And What should be, I think what God is calling us to, is that this Chesed love is being expressed through our face so that right away, as neurologists would say, Chesed is communicating, I'm happy to be with you. So when you meet someone and they say, wow, Bob's happy to be with me, Hugh's happy to be with me, immediately now this love is being expressed and over time we learn we can work with one another to accomplish those things that God has placed on our hearts.\ \ It's really pretty exciting when you begin to think about the robust nature of communication. We in the Western world typically like information. Information is made up of lots of words. And I remember reading a study many, many years ago, decades ago, and I think it's still reasonably accurate today. It was a study of how much the words matter for communication, how much the tone of voice and the body language, the face that she was just talking about.\ \ And it's astounding that the, the scientific result is that only 8 percent of communication is actually the words. That 37 percent is the tone of voice, and an amazing 55 percent is what's going on in your face, what's going on in your body, what's going on with your hands. So we try to have people understand what that is.\ \ We have a book by Jim Wilder called The Other Half of Church that we use, because the left brain is the one that's got all that information, but the right brain, Is, is the one that has you take your hand off the fire before you, before you know it. Okay? It's the one that acts immediately, but it's also the one that sort of goes down into your soul.\ \ I mean, it's the, it's that kind of thing. So we, we not only have biblical information in our course, not only have coaching, which we talk about as well, but we have this whole idea of the whole self. What is the whole self and how does that work? And we have people sharing their experiences because. Out of the experiences, out of those stories, uh, you, you get a better picture of of the whole self.\ \ And when we think of transformation, I mean we, we measure ourselves by the kind of transformations that show up way at the end. Okay. Which is really hard. 'cause when you begin something, you don't get to the end for quite a while. Okay. But there's three different kinds of transformations. The first one is the individual one.\ \ How am I now receiving information? How am I now passing on this chesed to others? If I'm, if I'm supposed to be the light of the world, then what kind of light am I and where does, how does it show? So I need to be transformed. Then we take a look, if we take a look at our book, The Intersection, Faith, Work, and Life.\ \ The faith part is what affects me personally. I begin looking at work and all of us work somewhere. So is there something I can do in the place that I work that transforms that? How can I transform the company? I can tell you a story later about my own company, the telecommunications company that I had for eight years.\ \ And then we look at the life part, and how is it that you affect all of society? So there's three different kinds of transformations that we look at, and I praise the Lord that we have seen instances of all of them. You know, Hugh, you might want to talk a little bit about, um, what's going on in Denver. Uh, a group of people, they, they use the word from Wilberforce, they call them the Clapham Circle.\ \ And they're, they're looking, they're attacking a huge problem called generational poverty, which exists all over the world. It happens to exist also in Denver, and they're looking at it in Denver. You got some thoughts about that, Huw? Huw, just before you answer that question, I want to also ask the question, why is it Do we need to integrate faith in that situation, in the work?\ \ Why do we need the faith in the work that's going to make a difference to the cities and the world? Why? Why don't we just go ahead and turn up to work? Well, what if, and what we're saying, what if all work, all dignified work, matters to God? Well, then He's wanting us to do that work again, as we said, to honor Him, to glorify Him.\ \ Amen. Amen. But we're also doing it for the common good of others. And I have discovered on my own life, when I see people who love what they do and they do it well, I pay attention and I say, what's going on? Why are they so good at what they do? And I often will stop and say, why do you do what you do? And why are you so good at it?\ \ And it's amazing what I hear. I think when we, when we do our work well, all work again, whether you're a lawyer or a teacher. Whatever you might be, a nurse, when you do it in this way, people are stopped and they say, Who are you? What motivates you to do what you're doing? And this gives us a chance to acknowledge and say, Well, I have A person that I follow, his name is Jesus.\ \ I have many stories where I see and I watch how people are working and I thought, something's different. What is it that's causing them to do their work so well? And to do it with joy, to do it with love. So why do we need to take faith into work? So that the, so that the world sees that God is alive and working.\ \ He is a divine conductor. He's, he's, his work is going on all the time, but I think oftentimes we miss it because we're not paying attention to the everyday, as one guy says, the everyday marvelous things that are happening around us without number. Are we paying attention to those marvelous things? And if we recognize that there isn't a sacred secular divide, but for God, everything is sacred, then we're paying attention to those things.\ \ And I think that causes us to say, I want to know this God. Amen. I want to follow God the way I see this person who's doing such good work, the way they're following God. And the reason, just to hop onto that same piece, that, you know, a simple answer to your question, Kevin, is that God says so. God says. I mean, my life's verse, which I got back in the first year that I had accepted Christ, I was invited to a couple's house, an older couple in the church.\ \ And we went to their house for little sandwiches after the service. And the lady told me that I could do anything, whatever I'm doing, I should do for the glory of God. And she said, I do dishes for the glory of God. You can, you can mow the lawn for the glory of God. I remember smiling and thinking, sure, yeah, you stay to the dishes.\ \ that stretch. God has never said to me, I will do dishes for the glory of God. , I can tell honestly, say that, am I cook by glory? God, not the dishes. Well, yes, yes, but it's fascinating. I mean, my life's first. Then First Corinthians, uh, 10 31, whether you eat or drink. Whatsoever. You do do all to the glory of God.\ \ And there's a similar verse over Colossians I think it is, that says, whatever you do, do it as unto the Lord. And I remember thinking, if God doesn't care about this, how can I do it as unto him? I mean, how can I please him when I'm doing something he doesn't care about? You know, so, so he tells us we're supposed to do it.\ \ And Hugh just described some of the reason he becomes known. But another key idea that we talk a lot about in our leadership circle is, as we um, this four chapter kingdom story. And what Bob is describing, I would call it, is redemptive activity. But how can I know what God is calling me to do, the redemptive activity He's wanting to be involved in, if I don't originally understand, if I don't understand His original design for His creation, which is Shalom.\ \ So we talk about what is God's original intention for his creation, and it's to live and experience this wholesomeness called Shalom. But then ultimately we know what is one day coming, the final, the restoration of, of his creation. And so now this helps me to know what redemptive activities should I be involved in, knowing, understanding his original intention for creation and understanding, as I look at the scripture, what's coming.\ \ That then informs the, the activity I'm involved in that brings glory and honor to God. And what we're discovering is this, the work he's calling me to is everyday work. Everyday work. Not just once a week or once, one week a year when I go on a mission trip, but instead, what I do every single day matters.\ \ And I, I am doing it in a way that is Reflecting God's purpose of Shalom and the coming kingdom. So does this mean we have to be intentional at all times about this type of stuff? We have to recognize that God is present with us all the time. I think it's, and as you said a little earlier, if I do something often enough I get in the habit of it.\ \ So I have over the years been able to get in the habit of recognizing that God is present every day all the time and then I get to see him. And I get to see things, and I, and I see them in a variety of ways. You know, I get to see them in the way somebody smiles, and it's so often, you know, when I'm at an, at a grocery store or a retail store, and, and I'm being waited on by someone, and I see their smile and I think, I think God's in you, you know?\ \ Just because of the way it comes across. And I thank them for that usually, okay? Or I'll be going, walking down the street in the spring, and I see a little flower coming down the street. Yeah. Or I go look at the, at the, at the driveway and I see a little green thing popping up in the middle of the blacktop.\ \ And I think, how does God make life do that? It's incredible, you know? And then you watch a sunset or a sunrise. You know, or you see the stars and, I mean, it just, it happens everywhere all the time. So just understanding the presence of God, those are the kind of things that we, we try to do in our leadership circle.\ \ And it happens because of the fellowship around the table and people share their own experiences that help one another. So here, and we're going to come back to your Denver situation because I interrupted you. You know, it fits. Some men that went through our leadership circle here in Denver, different years, they met, they discovered they cared about the same thing.\ \ They saw that there's a huge percentage of people living in Denver who are working poor, that what they're earning is not enough to live on. And they realized that's not how it ought to be. That isn't shalom. That isn't What God wants, and so they now for a couple years have been working together along with people representing 30 other organizations, both non profit, even government and for profit.\ \ And they're coming together to find out how can we help people working poor get career jobs that will provide for them so that they can live full lives, happy lives, abundant lives, as we were saying early on in this podcast. And so they are, they're recognizing, but there's hurdles to overcome, like good transportation or job training, or finding employers who are willing to take a risk of hiring someone who's been working poor, but now taking a risk to say, I'm going to hire them because I too want to see them thrive.\ \ I too want to see them flourish. And they're recognizing it's going to take years and years, but they're make, making great progress. We're more and more people working poor. are, are getting jobs, career jobs, that allowing them now to live life to the full, where their children can, can go to good schools, where they, um, have good transportation, where, again, they, as people working within a particular company, are working in such a way that people stop and say, Who are you?\ \ Why are you doing such good work? And they're seeing the joy on their faces, which, Kevin, I have to then read three verses that have really impacted us, the same idea. It's the doxology in Numbers chapter 6, verse 24 through 26, which says, the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord protecting us. The Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you.\ \ The Lord turn his face. Toward you and give you peace, give you shalom. God's desire is, his face is shining on us. He's showing his chesed love toward us, and he's calling us to do the same thing. So for these people getting these career jobs, God's calling them to shine their face on the people that they serve, that they work alongside.\ \ In doing so, People will experience God's grace and God's peace, God's shalom. Let me, let me just go ahead and say something about that, because the structure that they put together is interesting. I mean, first of all, Hugh mentioned that there's three different people that graduated from our leadership circle that, uh, we brought together and they found out they all cared about this generational poverty idea.\ \ And they're concerned about it. So, they went and put something together and it now has about 30 different companies working together. And there are things like, uh, job skills, and job preparation, and housing, and legal ideas, and food and nutrition, and financial problems, and social capital, uh, transportation, health issues, child care issues, I mean, all of those things.\ \ And what they've done is they've, They've looked for people who actually want to get out of this poverty, and they've assigned a navigator to them, which is a neat idea. It's like their 9 11 call. And simple things, you know, it's amazing. When you're growing up in a, in a really tough place, where it's, it's, there's just not enough money to go around, uh, and the house doesn't work, and all these things are broken, and sometimes the families are broken as well.\ \ You driving to work, you finally got a job, you're driving to work, something happens to your car, you haven't known that you're supposed to call your employer to tell them you're gonna be late. Simple things like that. So they help people say, you call them a navigator, you have a problem, and we'll, we'll talk about it, and I might even do something for you, like call them up, or get the AAA, or do something.\ \ So, it's, it's a fascinating structure, and they're beginning to get some, some real success out of it after a number of years of, of getting going. So it's, it's pretty exciting to see. Good. And this was one of the reasons, yeah, it was one of the reasons why, you know, we're We're actually physically doing this now, we discussed this as one of the purposes of the podcast was to look at all of the people in the alumni that you have already gone through this training, God has touched them, and maybe they haven't done anything about it.\ \ So just give us your vision on the podcast and how hopefully this is going to reignite the, um, the alumni and also encourage more people to do it. Yeah. Well, we have, uh, 400 to 450 alumni right now, uh, who have gone through the course. A good number of them have done things like we just talked about in the, in the Denver issue.\ \ But, you know, it takes years to actually have this kind of thing happen. So thankfully, we're at the place where some of these stories are beginning to show how you can begin to change something in society that's broken. We typically ask people, when you look around, what is it that you think breaks God's heart?\ \ And, and you see that because of what God's put in you. Uh, so that, that helps people move in that direction. So there's a long vision. The vision that we have is to mobilize Christians, all of them, okay? We think only about 10 percent of the Christians have a good understanding of this faith and work. You know, answering the question, why should I bring my faith to work anyway?\ \ Why does it matter? So it could be that another 20 or 30 percent kind of know that, but they don't, they don't know. They don't experience it as a daily thing, okay, it's, it's not, it's not habitual for them. So, we want to help people all over the world, uh, all Christians, to be mobilized. We've, uh, taken it upon ourselves to look at how many cities in the world have a population over a million.\ \ You know, we know that, that people have been migrating to the cities for years now. And a few years ago, uh, more than half of the world's population are actually living in cities now. Okay. So cities are a place one has to go to, to begin making some of these changes. Uh, we found about 700 cities that are over a million and I don't know how many decades it's going to take.\ \ Okay. I'd probably won't be here by then. The thought here is to say, okay, if we can go to one place. In a big city like Sao Paolo, you know, it's got 30 million people, you've got a couple in Mexico City is the same way, you've got lots of really big cities. If we can go to one place and begin to make some changes, and then we go to another place and begin to make changes, and another place and make changes, so these pockets at some point begin to overlap and come together, and maybe they get large enough for, we take a look at all seven spheres of society, one of them is communication, broadcasting.\ \ So, we're praying. That the broadcasters, whether Christian or not, would begin to see things happening in this place in the city, in that place in the city, and would pick it up and kind of say, oh my goodness, look at this great thing that's going on. Look at how that part of the city has changed, and begin to broadcast that.\ \ So that, uh, we're, we want to take advantage of existing broadcast capability to show the value of some of these changes. And, and we've got, we've got a place in, in Lieberville where, uh, some of our people have, have built a, a medical clinic for some of the poor people that couldn't get served. We've got a, uh, what do you call it, a high school or a school built just outside Abidjan.\ \ Uh, for the some of the same reason, uh, we've got some parks in Latin America that are put together so that there are places that people can go that are safe and, and beautiful. So I mean, there are a number of these kinds of things going on and we're praying for more and more and more of those in more parts of the world.\ \ I might just jump in to say some years ago, we had Barna do some research for us here in the United States, and interviewed many Christians, and we discovered that just around 1 percent of Christians are functioning in the religion sphere, either at church or parachurch, Christian schools. Ninety nine percent are functioning in the other six spheres of society, and the majority of them, over 50, over 50 percent are in the business sphere, the economic sphere, and approximately 18 percent in education and so forth.\ \ So we're talking, what does it look like? to mobilize Christians in those other six spheres of society that make up 99 percent of Christians in our country. And we feel pretty confident it's similar around the world. So we want these people, again, a businessman, a businesswoman in the economic sphere, to see themselves on mission with God, doing what they're doing, but now doing it for extending common grace and saving grace for the common good of all people.\ \ And we believe when this starts to happen, we're going to be able The broken things are going to be healed and change will begin to come. But again, it's mobilizing this larger audience. But dualism has said to us, no, if you're not a missionary, if you're not a pastor, then what you do doesn't really matter.\ \ But we're communicating that's just the opposite. What you're doing does matter. And you can do it again to honor God and glorify him. And people will see the difference and it will break some of them. It will solve some of the problems that we're discovering in our cities. And we're in the process, uh, we have a number of partners already that we put together, uh, back a number of years ago, and we're looking for more.\ \ Because we're, we're not the only people in the world doing this, okay? There are other people who care about faith and work and are beginning to put that together. Uh, it's a small percentage. But they do exist. And we we're talking with a number of them and trying to, to work together because we, we have a way, which we do this, we think it's wonderful.\ \ We think it works well. Uh, other people are gifted differently and they have some insights that overlap with ours. Um, and that's a wonderful thing. Also, we just wanna mobilize Christians. To do what God has designed them to do in all the spheres of society. Okay, so I think the, the general, uh, uptake of this is, uh, yeah, don't hide your faith under a bush, and, uh, get up off your butt and do something, really, I think is ultimately what we're trying to say in a, in the politest possible way.\ \ And we hope you've enjoyed it. Yeah, we hope you've enjoyed the intersection, uh, it's going to be at least a monthly podcast where we will bring you guests. And, uh, reviews and, uh, some worship and some prayers. And I'm just gonna now leave it to Bob and Hugh just to finish in prayer. And we look forward to, uh, to Christmas as we move forward the birth of Christ, and to see what the new year holds for, uh, for us all.\ \ And, uh, we'll be back in January with another podcast. Over to you, Bob. Well, Lord, we thank you. We thank you for being with us. I, I certainly thank you. Hugh and I have been together for about 15 years enjoying, uh, our work, uh, for you and trying to get, uh, others to understand, uh, that our faith actually matters and we need to bring our whole selves to work and to the grocery store and to the neighborhood and wherever else we go.\ \ So Father, thank you that we have this opportunity here. Uh, to provide some of our own experiences so that others might hear. Thank you, Father. Father, we pray that your will would be done on earth as it is in heaven, and we pray this around the globe, and we pray this in cities, that your will would be done in each of these cities as it is in heaven.\ \ Thank you, Father. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thanks for your time and listening to us today and, uh, we look forward to, uh, listening, uh, or for you to listen again, um, just subscribe, um, wherever you've picked this podcast up and, uh, you will be able to, uh, listen to any new releases that come out.}