How can you learn about and partner with Providence missionaries and church planters around the world? And why should you?
Intro
The “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast is a family discipleship resource from Providence Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, that aims to equip you and your family to be on mission with God, to the end of the street, and the ends of the earth.
Andy Owens
Welcome back to another episode of “Gospel Shaped Home.” We’re honored that you would take a few minutes out of your week to tune in. Today, I am joined again by Pastor Phil, who gives leadership to Providence’s efforts in reliance on the risen Christ, of course, but on our church’s efforts to get the good news to the ends of the earth. So, welcome back, brother.
Phil M
Thank you. Thanks, Andy. Glad to be here.
Andy
Yeah. So, today, we’re mainly going to talk about how families at Providence can pray for, partner with PBC missionaries, church planning partners around the world. But before we get there, let’s take just a minute, talk about why this matters. Why should busy families trying to teach their kids the gospel, but also trying to keep them fed, keep them healthy, keep them educated, well-rounded… I mean, our families, they’re busy, they’ve got a lot going on. You’re no stranger to that. So, why should they think about, pray for, partner with our missionaries?
Phil
Well, as believers in Jesus Christ, we want to care for the things that God cares about, and God cares for the entire world. And, at the end of the gospels, He gave us a great commission, at all of them. And He said to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, not just Raleigh, but all nations. So, when we turn our hearts to Him and pray for the people of all nations, it does a work in our own hearts, and it will do a work in our kids’ hearts too. So, I think it’s really important that we keep our focus on the things that God loves.
Andy
Yeah, that’s good. You know, there’s a sense in which helping our kids see that God is the God of all the nations, and that He has a mission to get His good news, His saving message to all nations, it really helps protect the biblical view of God as well. If we only think about our own lives and our needs and our immediate fear, God can, in a sense, seem more and more like a tribal deity. He’s just kind of like a genie for us. Whereas, when we look at the Bible, we see that God is worthy of worship from every person and every people group on the planet. And like you said, ultimately, we can’t follow Christ as king, as Lord of lords and not care about what he cares about. We can’t… And we can’t say, “Oh, I obey Him. I trust Him. I follow Him. But his mission for rescuing people from all the nations of the earth, that really doesn’t concern me.”
Phil
And I think too, even looking back at Ezekiel, when in chapter 36, when God is talking to Israel and He says that He had great concern for His name, that He wanted to vindicate his name. And I think when John Piper says, “Missions exist because worship doesn’t,” when we love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, we will make His name known. I think those are the things that God really cares about, us loving Him and making Him known.
Andy
That’s right. Yeah, and I mean, this is for their joy as well. We would be robbing our kids of the highest and the deepest and the most abiding, unabating, forever kind of joy if we don’t bring them in on what God is doing. Right? We were, it’s kind of what you’re saying now, we’re created to see and savor God, His glory, in the face of Christ. And part of the way we see and savor His glory is by spreading it. Our joy increases as we spread it. And so, we want our kids, our students, to have the most joy they possibly can by being centered on God, His purposes in the world, and helping them see Him as a global God is, I think, a key way to do that.
Phil
Absolutely.
Andy
Yeah. Okay. Well, practically, how can families at Providence pray for and partner with Providence partners around the world? Right, I mean, there’s a difference. It’s good to pray for people groups. It’s good to pray in general. And I’ve even been sending out resources to that end, the Operation World, the Window On The World is a great resource for praying for different countries, people groups, but we as a church, we partner with specific people working amongst specific peoples. So, how can Providence families connect to that?
Phil
So, first, if you’re a parent and you aren’t connected with a Life Group or with our missions group, you can get plugged in. First, I mean, our Life Groups, every Life Group has a missionary or a church planter that’s assigned to them. And within that context, there are prayer requests coming in every week or month. So, you can use that as a catalyst for your family to be praying for those people. But also, if you go to our website, pray.org, and go to the global missions page, there’s a place where you can sign up to receive prayer requests from the missions office on a consistent basis, and pray with your family on those requests. But also, there’s a prayer wall that you can just open up right then. You can be sitting at your dinner table, open up the prayer wall on the global missions page, and you’ll find partners that we support and partner with that you can pray for on a consistent basis.
Andy
Now, are those the same requests that come out in the monthly Providence news? There’s a request for each day of the month.
Phil
Yes. So, we add those to the prayer wall. And then, each month, we send out a mass email to all our partners and request them to send us all their prayer needs. And those come into the missions office, and then the most sensitive prayer needs, they go to the Upper Room, where people can go there and pray, but most of the prayer needs go out, and when you sign up for that missions group, you can get those every month.
Andy
Okay. Great. So, you mentioned the Upper Room, that’s an intercessory prayer ministry here at Providence. And Phil’s indicated here, there’s a section and area of that room, it’s a physical room you can go to pray in, but they have missions binders, there’s cards, there’s maps. There’s some great resources in there to pray for, especially the folks who are serving in more secure locations where they’re more security-conscious and they can’t just post things on the Internet or send out really open communication through email.
You mentioned Life Groups. I’ll just say, as someone who was sent out from Providence, we spent almost seven and a half years in Turkey. Providence is a big church and we love all that God is doing here. But that personal connection with our Life Group was tremendous. It was like a lifeline to help us stay relationally, meaningfully connected to others in the body. So, definitely affirm that as well, as a good avenue for connecting with people who, they need your encouragement, they need your help, your support, prayers.
Phil
Yeah. One of the things that I’ve found at being a missions pastor, and being able to communicate with all of our partners and missionaries on a consistent basis, is that they tell me that the prayers, the encouragement from the prayers have been a life source for them. So, I think, Andy, you served for seven and a half years in Turkey and your family’s there. And we have a Central Asia prayer group that prayed consistently for your family and others there. What did that really mean to you, serving on the field and being prayed for on a consistent basis?
Andy
Yeah, that group, I believe it was before we left that Dixie Harris felt a burden from the Lord to partner with us through prayer, to cover us in prayer, yeah, to be a worker with us through prayer. And she initiated that group, and that group and their prayers for us was… It’s hard to put into words the significance of those brothers and sisters praying for us, month in and month out. And they prayed more often than monthly. They met together monthly to pray, but they prayed regularly for us. And they communicated with us, and told us they were praying for us. We knew they were because they’re asking for updates on requests, things we had shared previously.
And it really, because I believe God works in response to the prayers of His people, I believe prayer really matters. I think it’s inestimable, the value of it. But one practical thing is we, even in our loneliest moments, and there’s a lot of isolation when you live overseas and you’re serving with one or two other families in a hard place where you’re a foreigner, you’re different. You’re weird, in lots of ways. And we never felt alone because of those brothers and sisters praying regularly for us and staying in touch with us. It was a huge blessing.
Phil
Man, that’s good. And I think, too, obviously, when gathered together as families or with our kids, the impact that it has on our kids, when we pray for our missionaries and our church planters, it impacts them because it puts God’s world into their world. But also, when you pray for something with your kids, and God answers that prayer, what a testimony to the work of God, that you can then teach your kids, “Look at what you prayed for, and see how He answered.” I think recently, we sent the Browns to London. And in their Sunday school class, their Life Class, they were raising money for the Brown family, because Evie was in the class. They prayed every week that God would provide. It was amazing. They put together an offering of over a hundred dollars.
Andy
This is a first-grade classroom.
Phil
Yeah.
Andy
Yeah.
Phil
And over $100, they had, most of these kids had gone to their schools to raise funds for the Brown family, but for Evie, one, to be encouraged because her family was going out. But for all the other kids to see, “Wow, God showed up. We asked God to show up and He did.”
Andy
Amen.
Phil
And what a testimony.
Andy
Praise him. That’s awesome. Okay. Just a couple practical steps at the end here. If someone wants to be more intentional to pray for Providence partners, they need to go to the website. They need to sign up for the…
Phil
Missions group on the global missions page.
Andy
On the global missions page. And they’ll get an email with prayer requests. If they want to join a monthly prayer meeting for missions partners, who should they contact?
Phil
Yeah. Tricia West. So, you can just email her at [email protected]. Or if you want to email me [email protected], we can direct you in the right way and get you on the right list.
Andy
Okay. Great. Well, any other final, just encouragement or exhortation you want to give to our people?
Phil
Yeah. I think this is something that has been important in our family’s life, obviously as a missions pastor and trying to encourage our kids for the mission. We try to go through a Pray For The World book, which is similar to the Operation World, on a consistent basis. And that’s been influential in all our kids’ lives to talk about the unreached peoples around the world, and how we can then pray for those places and see God do a work. So, I think it’s been influential, even praying for our own partners and our church planters and seeing how our kids have engaged on their own because of what we’ve done as a family.
Andy
Praise him. Well, may God make us a praying for the nations people. May He use us as a church to encourage those who are serving in hard places around the world, and may he make his name great among those who haven’t yet heard. Thank you, guys, for listening. See you next time.
Outro
Thanks for listening to this episode of the “Gospel Shaped Home” podcast, produced by Providence Baptist Church of Raleigh, North Carolina. For more information and resources from Providence, visit us online at pray.org. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple Podcasts.