The Mission Matters

How can the illiterate read the Scriptures? Through animation and heart-language engagement, iBIBLE connects deeply with both children and adults in remote areas—many of whom are seeing the Bible in their language for the very first time. In this episode of  The Mission Matters , Matthew Ellison speaks with Steve Cleary, founder of Revelation Media and Executive Producer of iBIBLE, a groundbreakin...

The global church is growing exponentially, but traditional training models are inadequate and inaccessible to emerging leaders. With less than 10% of global church leaders having received any formal theological education, Rich explains how Global Action uses competency-based theological education (CBTE) to meet this urgent need—offering a nine-month, contextually relevant curriculum that trains p...

Many people going to the missions field have little exposure to actually sharing the gospel and need significant training. Why? The church has a passion for evangelism but traditionally, there has not been much focus on how to do it for regular people. Christians generally know how to explain the Gospel, but there's fear and ignorance of how to get into spiritual conversations. How do you get...

Is it possible to 'do missions' without ever sharing the Gospel? Not according to Scott Hildreth. In fact he's written a book called  A Short Guide to   Missions and Evangelism  ( https://a.co/d/8cCsKWv ) that contains a warning to the western Church that she's dangerously close to walking away from the mandate to carry the Gospel to those who need it most. Listen in as Ted Esler a...

How are American Christians thinking about engaging non-Christians in the United States? According to recent Barna research there are 60 to 80 million Americans who don't fit the paradigm that a lot of Christians have about those outside of the church. They are not really hostile to discussions about faith and spirituality and are actually spiritually curious at the right moments. Join Ted Esl...

It’s easy to fall into the trap of doing things the same way they've always been done. After fifteen years as the missions pastor of a large church, Larrie Fraley began to reevaluate their missions strategy. He realized that there must be a better way to steward God's resources. What were the pivotal moments in his journey of rediscovering missions, and where does the church stand now? Tun...

What happens when a group of ministry- and mission-minded men decide that they want  more than a social gathering and want to change the world? The G6 World Changers in Scottsdale, AZ come together with intentionality - to know each other better as well as each other's passions. One outcome is that they support worthy organizations together through finances and any other gifts members bring to...

How should an American Jesus follower view attempts by other Christians to enter the United States? Immigration is a contentious issue in our politics and culture in 2025.  What should the church's attitude be toward people who are suffering, hurting, and fleeing persecution or even economic challenges? Guest Steve Moore gives his take on the current immigration crisis with Ted Esler in this e...

Are there unchurched and unreached peoples who might be missed by current methodologies and mindsets? Is innovation in church and missions primarily a process that has to do with ideas/technologies/tools/methods or does it reside in something else that God gifts us with?  Pioneering isn’t easy - the Church needs better pathways to nurture ideas, support innovators, and build collaborative movement...

Research (Dr. Elliot Stephens) has shown that there are three factors that affect attrition on the mission field: interpersonal skills, ministry competency and spiritual formation. Agencies can train for skills, but it's these softer skills that are often neglected at higher levels of Christian education. Ed Scheuerman built his program at Lancaster Bible College largely in response to this resear...

Immigration is not a new topic, but its place in a global missions worldview comes to the forefront due to politics in the USA. What role does the movement of peoples have in the making of disciples in all nations? Is it Biblical or moral to have borders and to restrict immigration? How should a Christian engage illegal immigrants? Guest Alex Kocman addresses these questions and more in a conversa...

In a recent survey (to be published in 2025, stay tuned) of pastors, those with seminary or divinity school degrees were significantly more likely to report passion for those in their community and little toward cross-cultural work or missionaries. Is this the result of a marginalization of missions in theological education? If so, how can seminary education be refined to present missions as worth...

We cannot be successful in gospel obedience without an element of risk. What is a Biblical theology of risk, and how can mission leaders manage risk so that missionaries thrive in their contexts?  Scott Brawner is co-founder and President of Concilium, a non-profit organization that builds capacity and resilience into Christian missionary orgs. Join Ted, Matthew, and Scott as they discuss risk and...

There are three billion people with least access to the Gospel. Motivated by this fact, author and mission strategist Jeannie Marie writes and teaches everyday Christians how to share their faith to Muslim and Hindu friends. These least reached are not just around the world -thanks to the diaspora, they are across our street. Join Ted for this conversation with Jeannie as they talk about what the...

Fifty years ago Ralph Winter spoke at the Congress of World Evangelization in Lausanne, Switzerland. He laid out a vision of world evangelization that transformed the perspective on the unreached not as countries or nations, but ethnic people groups. What progress has been made in global evangelization since that moment? What does the remaining task look like? Matthew and Ted interview RW Lewis, w...

Reflejo are a group of Latin-American missionaries called to be forerunners to Gospel movements among the unreached. What are the pathways for Latinos to be sent and what are their unique advantages being sent to the unreached? Dave Matthews is president of Reflejo ( https://reflejo.org ), a missions sending agency based in Latin American. Dave joins Matthew and Ted to talk about the need for send...

SIM has a long history in Nigeria. As a teen, Joshua Bogunjoku became a follower of Christ and was discipled by an SIM missionary. Years later he became the first non-western International Director of SIM. Eleven years later he has retired. Join Ted and Matthew as they listen to Joshua's interesting story and to some of his reflections from his time as International Director.

God has equipped Gen Z with a unique set of gifts for our time and culture. Gen Z are inclusive, empathetic, collaborative, and individualistic. How can we contextualize our mobilization efforts towards these talented young people? Jolene Erlacher (author of  Mobilizing Gen Z  and founder of  http://leadingtomorrow.org ) talks with Matthew and Ted about how to steward our relationships with this g...

How can the global missions community address the challenge of reaching the nations? In this episode of The Mission Matters podcast, Matthew and Ted speak with David Bennett, Global Associate Director of the Lausanne Movement, about the upcoming Fourth Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, also known as  Seoul-Incheon 2024  in Seoul Korea. David addresses Lausanne’s goal of fostering ‘collabo...

Many leaders struggle with decluttering the chaos. Coaching is a discovery process with a trusted advisor to chip away at something to see what God is going to uncover. In this episode, Matthew interviews Rob Wassel of Tekton Executive Coaching (www.tektonexecutivecoaching.com) to learn how coaching is not consulting, mentoring or counseling, but a Spirit-led carving-away,  to make something new....

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

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

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

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

National Geographic and Disney+ are releasing a documentary called "The Mission" about the life and death of John Allen Chau. While they interview many of his friends and family, there's more to the story. Dr. Mary Ho, International Executive Leader of All Nations, the organization that trained John before he went to the North Sentinelese, shares her personal memories of John and why...