Innovation in the Mission Field
We talk with missions innovator Andrew Scott, of Scatter Global, who sounds a call for a new era of missions. Andrew will not only share his ideas for innovation in the missions model, but also share examples of churches that are finding a fresh missions model.
Join Ted and Matthew as they discuss “Innovation on the Mission Field” with guest Andrew Scott.
Transcript
(unedited)
welcome
to the mission matters the mission
matters is a partnership of mission
nexus
and 1615 missions coaching who have a
shared passion to mobilize god’s people
to be a part of his mission
the mission matters is hosted by matthew
ellison of 1615 missions coaching
and ted esler president of mission nexus
when you think of
innovation you likely recall images of
steve jobs in the iphone
or jeff bezos and amazon perhaps elon
musk comes to mind
they are champions of disruption
innovating a fresh
new idea and revolutionizing their
industries
and the world today we talk with
missions innovator andrew scott of
scatter global
who sounds a call for a new era of
missions one that uses the global
marketplace for gospel growth and sees
every christian engineer baker pastor as
god’s image bearer
with eyes on a quickly growing world and
a slower growing church
he sees that we need to rethink our
traditional mission models
andrew will not only share his ideas for
innovation in the missions model
but also share some examples of churches
that are finding a fresh new missions
model
on the mission matters here’s matthew
ted and andrew scott to discuss
innovation in the mission field welcome
once again to the mission matters
podcast i’m matthew ellison and as
always
i am joined by my good friend and coach
ted essler ted how you doing today
doing well and uh excited about today’s
conversation i think it’s going to be a
good one
yeah me too hey listen you didn’t know
about this but i want to introduce you
to a friend of mine
um in addition to our special guest
hey hey there’s that childhood toy you
mentioned a few weeks ago
yes this is super stretch armstrong
we always like to start off the show
with some random thoughts here and i
mentioned this is my favorite childhood
toy and lo and behold it shows up
in the mail by amazon as a gift from my
wife
so look at this guy anyway
i just thought it would be fun to put it
out there for you uh regular listeners
this is super stretch it was a very
innovative toy that we’re talking about
today
at the time this was cutting edge right
here so
so ted today’s kind of random thought is
i wonder if you have any unrealized
athletic dreams or wishes when you look
back on your life is there something
like i wish i would have done that
you know so a few years ago two of my
sons and i
we bicycled from new orleans to
minneapolis
and it took us 30 days we brought all
our own gear
it was an awesome awesome time but
there’s actually a better bike ride
and one that i’ve never been able to
pull off predominantly because it’s hard
to take this much time off of work to do
it
but there is uh you go from key west
to all the way up into the state of
washington in the far corner
of the state of washington and you
basically cut the furthest distance
across the u.s that you can
take um so that’s one i’ve never done
and i don’t know i got a sabbatical
coming up in a year too
maybe i’m going to get to it we’ll see
what happens but you need at least to do
that when you need
probably two full months of uh
of road biking time so so that one’s
still possible for you but
mine is not uh when i was in middle
school i started junior wrestling
and i just had this innate ability i
don’t know what it was i hit the mat and
i could just pin people
and as i got older um you know i guess
8th grade
the practice is starting started getting
harder and harder
and then in high school it was just
brutal i mean it was far worse than
football and i just did not have the
self-discipline at that time in my life
to keep wrestling but guys that i would
be was beating at the time ended up
winning state so that was
that was my athletic dream that i did
not realize so i always tell my boys if
you’re good at something
really think about it before you quit so
yeah well
i was gonna say do they have like
wrestling for old people like master’s
class then i thought i don’t want that
word picture in my head so
well that’s a good question i i doubt
they exist
reliability would be too big
so our guest today is andrew scott and
we’re going to get into who he is in
just a minute but let’s throw that
softball question over to him
any athletic dreams that you had that
you never got a chance to realize
yeah well i’m i grew up in the land
where soccer was king
and my team was liverpool football club
which more and more americans are
getting into soccer now so i’m sure many
will have heard of liverpool
they just won the premier league in
england my dream as a kid i
was always to play for liverpool now i
worked out pretty quickly i wasn’t able
to do that
but yeah that would be the first thing
that came to mind it didn’t take me to
high school to work that out but it was
it remained a dream so andrew i don’t
know if you know
uh john burns who’s the the leader of
greater year of mission right i’ve met
him yeah yeah
so he and i have been having a little
email exchange he’s obviously
uh a big fan of uh soccer
yeah sure football and so we’re we’re
scheming to try to take in a premier
league game sometime when the covet
messes over
absolutely and i will have to slide you
an invite to that
i loosely follow liverpool myself
predominantly because my kids do
so good well you’re bringing up your
kids well good job
well we you know we we served in europe
and it’s pretty hard to
uh to not get into it when you’re living
there well hey our guest today
is andrew scott and he’s the leader of
om
operation mobilization in the us
and he’s done some very creative things
in the area
of um well i’m going to let him frame
that i’m not going to frame it for him
so andrew if we could get started can
you
just give us a little bit of your
background and how you got
involved with om to kind of start this
yeah sure
well thanks for having me on today i
really do appreciate
this chance to have this conversation
and of course
ted you and i have been conversing quite
a bit uh over these last months
i uh well i first of all more most
importantly i’m married to sharon who’s
also from northern ireland that’s my
country of birth as you probably have
already worked out
and we have two children anna and daniel
and is now married
to david who by the way is a
professional wrestler
not not the amateur wrestler but the
professional wrestler uh type
and uh that follows jesus and in that
world
i’ve spent most of my life in om uh
seven years on
one of our ships and the last 18 year in
the u.s 10 of which
i’ve been the ceo of omusa
and about six years ago stepped on to
the global leadership
team of om international
how i got involved in om ted back when i
was growing up i
was om was the mission of choice of
young people in europe back in the day
uh this is of course many years ago and
so whenever i sort of
sensed the the nations were important my
father and mother
read a lot of missions books to us when
we when i sensed that was important
om was sort of the natural choice and i
i stepped into it that way and
and basically just um have been seeking
to follow god over those years i was
invited to come to the us
and i came because the president then
promised to mentor me and
he kept what was that was that obama or
trump
there you go the president of oem usa
now that would
that would have been good that but still
rick hicks did a wonderful job
and i he kept the only thing is he kept
moving the goal post now sooner or later
i find myself as the
ceo uh and uh but have enjoyed
the journey of learning and growing in
an organization that go in
that’s great when you came into this uh
us mission scene what were some of the
first observations that struck you as an
outsider walking into it
yeah you know you take me back really
vividly to first of all i argued with
god that america didn’t need another
christian worker there was enough of
them over there so why are you bringing
me here but when i got here
i recognized very very quickly you know
we had heard stories but i recognized
quickly the potential
for good for the nations is massive in
this country
absolutely massive in north america as a
whole i mean of course
millions and millions of dollars go out
every year and tens of thousands of
workers have gone out i get that
but the potential for much more was huge
and i think that
has been the thing that has kept me here
ted now i know when we’re going to talk
about it today a lot has to change in
the how
but the reality of the goal i used to
refer to as the gold mine
of the us uh where there was a
deep generosity a real willingness to
step
into where there is need that just
excited me
and i i mean i’ve been to 85 countries
now so i’ve seen lots of different
countries in the
and there’s potential everywhere
obviously but still i believe that the
us
has still a big part to play a different
part to play but a big part to play and
there’s
huge potential and i think that’s one of
the things
maybe on the the challenging side is
that there was
a lot of organizations everybody seemed
to be talking about partnership
or collaboration we use more these days
but very very few people were doing it
so it was a great topic but it was
wasn’t a lot of action involved
because it’s tough i mean it really is
tough to partner as institutions easier
as people
harder as institutions yeah absolutely
andrew i think ted and i both share your
conviction there is
latent potential in the church here in
america when it comes to the mission
sending effort but we need to rethink
some things no doubt about it
and so maybe you could give us an
overview of scatter global
and why you believe that this is the
right vision for the time that we’re in
right you might want to explain first
what scatter global is yeah yeah yeah no
it’s great i i think
i mean scatter global is principally
about a way of life
um it’s practically
it is a team of people that are seeking
to innovate around this way of life and
build a platform for people to go live
it out and i’ll speak a little bit more
to
what the way of life is but you know and
i would say
also that you know when i i i would not
in any way say that
it is the vision for the future but it
is a vision for the future that this is
something that um and we want to talk
about it beyond
the idea of it being a model of mission
uh because some people have tried to
put it in that category but but really
at the core of scatter global is this
deep deep conviction
that that pokes at some of the deep
fundamental changes i believe we need to
see in the in the mission world and the
mission effort in the traditional
mission agency
is that uh god’s created purpose for
humanity that he created humanity
to be uh first of all to have the
identity as
his child which is in a wonderful truth
and but with that came a purpose that we
are now
on mission with god we are now part of
what god is doing
in creation as his image bearer so our
identity is as a child of god our
purpose is to reflect our father back to
the world in everything we do
and that include i mean that includes
all of life that includes work life that
includes community life it includes
hobbies
but that is in a sense the creative
creation
mandate that we were to go out into the
world and reflect our father and
and and god’s desire was to make his
dwelling
among us as his people and and then so
that’s identity purpose and the third
thing we speak about in scatter global
is role that every one of us are going
to do it differently
we all have been made differently by god
and you know so often in the mission
space we have not
given that credence we’ve sort of said
if you want to do this i think called
mission you need to leave what you’re
good at what
you’ve done all your life and come to
this other thing called mission
uh and i think sometimes we have taken
the very tools that god has put in
someone to reflect him into the world
away from them to do our thing and so
i believe we have to pay attention to
this idea of role everyone has the same
purpose
you know to be god’s agents of
reconciliation to reflect him in the
world
but our roles will all be different so
how do we build a platform
for people to go live out who god has
made them to be and
and the fourth part of that is the
nations because if the nations is on the
heart of our father it should be on our
heart and it’s not for the heart
of a few specially called individuals
who will leave their job and go do it
but
every follower of jesus every child of
god
should have this on their heart that the
earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of god so how do we build
a pathway so this gets down to the
practical of what scatter global is then
from these principles
is how do we build a pathway or pathways
to let people go do that so if you’re an
engineer
how can you go be an engineer for the
glory of god
not just doing a really good job though
that’s really important and that’s part
of your creative purpose
but in that see your part of your role
is to be a disciple maker to actually
point others to the king
to point others to jesus through every
aspect of your life
so scatter global is a small team of
people still small that we’ve we’ve sort
of set aside
to build this path with these this
platform to create pathways for people
to go to the nations and
and uh i recognize it it’s sort of a
response to my
my book scatter when i i
started to think these things through
that that i remember getting a call from
a business leader in australia and he
said andre
i really believe what you’re writing
here but you need to know that there are
really no pathways built for people to
go do this
in in the mission world in the context
of mission of course you can get a job
overseas
so you need to do something about it so
we started scatter global
and we call it scatter global not just
the om mobilization strategy we call the
scatter global because i said if these
things are true if the trends that i’m
seeing in the world are true
things are shifting out there some of
our theological alignment needs to take
place around these ideas that
i’ve just shared with you that uh if
these things are true
then i want to build something that any
mission agency can use
because they’re going to have to
navigate these changes also so what if
we built something don’t call it om
don’t make it an organization simply
make it a platform that anyone
anyone can use to help people go be who
god has made them to be
somewhere in the world where he’s less
known
but when you talk about some of the
changes that are going out there
on out there give us some examples of
what you’re referring to
this takes me back to a moment where in
many ways this all started
i was sitting in my office here at om
usa and i had just finished a strategic
planning process i was new president
finished i brought an outside consultant
in finished a strategic planning process
to mobilize
we wanted more people and we’d ever
mobilized before more money than we’d
ever raised before you know the typical
thing and we thought we had the plan
and i remember the leader of our work in
the muslim world sitting in my office
and through conversation he said andrew
there’ll be no traditional missionaries
in the muslim world within 10 years this
was about 2012
2013. and i looked at him and i said
what do you mean by that
and he said well they’re not going to
get a visa to get in
number one right so i i and that made
sense to me
i mean i wasn’t the first time i heard
that accessibility was changing in the
world that
countries you used to get mission visas
to were closing the doors to that that
happened a long time ago
and more and more what i call the
perpetual tourist or the perpetual
student visa where you’re in and out all
the time
repeating you’re it that’s becoming
recognized for what it is and getting
the doors are being closed now and he
said this is going to change but then he
said something that
that speaks to the second thing so
accessibility is changing and we have to
recognize that
but he talked about credibility he
talked about if your presence in the
community
is questionable how do you hope your
message will be credible
and i tell you that blew my mind where i
was brought up
ted and i i mean i lived in you know
northern ireland but very conservative
evangelical
uh background where in a sense anything
justified
the end of preaching the gospel to
somebody right i had never thought of my
presence in a community if it was
credible or questionable
and so that just put me in a bit of a
teal spin which caused me to go back
to rethink scripture or rethink some
mysterology and go look for what are the
other trends so we saw accessibility
credibility
i think the other one i would say is
massive and we have to pay attention to
it as mission and church leaders
is this generation is is
coming at the gospel in a very different
way now many people are writing them off
for it
but i believe that just as god i believe
hardwired the george verber lauren
cunningham
bill bright billy graham generation with
a strong thrust towards proclamation
for whatever reason i believe he’s
hardwired a generation to think of a
more holistic gospel
hopefully what we have to do is make
sure they don’t throw out the
proclamation part
but a gospel that speaks more closely to
the idea of the gospel of the kingdom
that when the gospel shows up in a
community
it’s not just about changing the eternal
destination of a person’s soul
but actually how does it change reality
here and now for those people
and that speaks to a generation it also
speaks to
the fourth trend and that would be the
global south the church in the global
south rising up which is now the
majority church in the world that’s
latin america sub-saharan africa then
swing sort of northways
through india and china where the church
is growing rabidly and they’re now the
majority voice who have a different
theology when it comes to
this than the white western church which
was very proclamation driven there’s a
more much more holistic approach to the
gospel
and i think this is going to be a
massive swing in the mission agency and
if us western mission agencies don’t
have a more holistic i believe a higher
view of the gospel of
it being something that that god wants
to intersect here and now
bring hope here and now to people in
these
especially in these covert 19 days if
the gospel hasn’t something to say into
these
other than an eternal destination an
alternative eternal destination i think
we will lose a generation
and i think we will be irrelevant in the
majority voice and mission
as the global south are coming to the
fore so those are some there’s
technology
there’s massive growth in the talent
job market that allows that that allows
people to take value-add jobs in these
countries that
that’s growing every year um the
companies not being able to find the
talent we need
so these are these are our things that
so accessibility credibility the
generational shifts the technological
shifts that
the globe church the ecclesiastical
shifts of the
majority voice in the church these are
some of the shifts that when you start
to put them all together you recognize
that what we’ve built
in the traditional mission agency what
we’ve come to today though it’s had
amazing impact
if i had to come to a place where i had
to realize
i don’t know if this is fit for purpose
anymore this is not a tweak i’m looking
at this
we’re going to have to do some massive
shift disruptive innovation
to get to where we have that
potential to have a key role moving
forward
so the world is clearly changing and all
you described
mandates that the way we approach
missions changes and i
i appreciate that i think it’s of course
true
uh you said something earlier i want to
go back to and you said this is a vision
not the
vision and you invited me before we
started recording to poke and press on
you
and one of the things that i get pretty
concerned about is when i talk to
churches who have adopted
this vision if you will you said you
don’t want to call it a model to
division i also appreciate that
but they have completely dismissed
sending they have shifted in such a way
that they feel there’s no longer a
relevance
for local churches raising up
identifying
and supporting missionaries which is a
model we see in the new testament
and i think it’s still relevant in many
fields today how do you avoid the
exclusivism because you said it’s a
vision not the vision
and again i look at a church’s website
and they’ve completely gone the other
way
and i feel like they miss something when
they don’t sacrificially invest
in goers wow this is the whole podcast
right here
question for you there yeah yeah no no
that’s good and and
i you know this is this is really
where we need to be dialoguing today
first and foremost i mean there’s many
ways i could come out the answer to this
this year and i’ve thought through it a
lot to be honest is
number number one we we do recognize in
scripture that there is a place
for set for supporting someone to go
right we get that in scripture
i think the issue and let me come at it
from sort of an antagonist
perspective here first and then to jump
back again
i think the issue has been is that we’ve
made that the primary if not the only
way to do mission
that’s where we’ve gotten it wrong and
that’s where we deserve maybe some of
the pushback from the church
that we’ve gone and we’re and we have
not
put forward an alternative
uh at least we haven’t done a well
alternative for them so i have met many
of these churches who have basically
thrown the whole thing out and said no
there is i remember
names i cannot mention names here but i
remember prominent figures saying to me
andrew the day of sending american
people overseas is over
well i don’t we don’t want to be
bothered with we don’t want a hundred
thousand dollar missionary we don’t want
we don’t believe in this model
like that and and so they had they had
basically because they didn’t believe
it was worth it they had thrown out the
whole thing
so i i think that we have made it the
primary if not the exclusive model and
we deserve some of the pushback
um it’s clearly in scripture so there is
a place for it but
how do we create a pathway which i
believe exponentially more people can go
down that actually i would say is
more closely aligned to the mission of
god
because you know we have we have made
we have made the mission endeavor about
a few
select called people leaving their job
and going to do something different
called mission and again there’s a place
for that in the scripture but as
oz guinness says he said do not like you
know because we think of paul we think
of
of gideon we think of moses in the
burning bush
he said do not let the experience of the
fume be the expectation of the many
because
and that’s his quote and and the reality
is is that the people of god were made
to be on mission with god
and and all throughout scripture we see
god’s people being shifted all over the
world
all the time that’s why i name my book
scatter so
i think we have to bring on an
alternative way an alternative way of
thinking that i think
will allow as lausanne call it the 99 of
the body of christ to step in
and and so what i’m finding is that many
of those churches that told me the
sending model is done i’m dealing with
three of them right now that we’ve
gotten a roundtable that had literally
given up i’m saying yeah
okay please don’t stop supporting the
people you’ve been supporting
because they’re i’m sure doing a great
work uh
but but don’t give up on the idea of
americans going but let’s look at other
ways where they can go
and live out their life for the glory of
god and because there’s many countries
that still need
witnesses to jesus from afar culture
where the near and the same there are no
same and there are very few near
uh work culture workers and we need them
to go there so
i would say yeah we we need to be very
careful
that we don’t focus in on models that’s
so that would be another point i would
want to make don’t let’s get away from
focusing on models and let’s look at
principles
now if your support raising model puts
you in a place
where you are questionable or your
presence is is not very credible
uh where maybe you’re not being you may
have opportunities to share the gospel
but your life is maybe not the best
representation of the gospel because of
all the trappings that come with that i
do have some questions for that model
quite frankly
um and and i think that a new generation
coming through will not
live with that dichotomy or that covert
presence
that the previous generation lived by so
there’s there’s
multiple answers to that question i’m
probably rambling a bit here but i think
we have to be careful that we we don’t
throw the baby out with the bath water
there is a model for it but what is the
role of those support raising workers i
personally believe that more and more
of that will be equippers of
local and same culture workers to do the
job and and
almost taking a background not the
forefront and the forefront workers are
going to be people
in the marketplace who have credible
presence and can be making disciples one
two
three four people but we’re going to
need these experienced workers who’ve
been there for years and
who can equip them and equip locals and
their cultural workers to do it so
well i mean i think the both and versus
either or kind of thinking
to me is an important piece of
innovation
let’s shift gears just a little bit
because what you’re talking about to me
regardless of whether somebody out there
likes your ideas or not
it’s innovative it’s new it’s different
and i know you’ve got some ideas about
innovation and what leaders should be
thinking about in regard to innovation
so
you know what what do you see as the
role so you’re a senior leader
what’s the role of the senior leader in
this area of innovation
right yeah i think i i this has been a
steep learning curve for me
uh in this in this journey since
probably about 2013
2014 and i’ve learned a lot by mistake
rather than by
by purpose and uh but some of the things
that i’ve been
seeing and learning have been is that
number one innovation
has to be owned at the top of the
organization
and it has to be more than a topic of
conversation there must be an action
plan beside it i think that’s critical
and the the essential to that is not
just the ceo although the ceo was
critical if the ceo is not bought in or
the the senior pastor is not bought in
then you’re i don’t think it’s going to
go very far but then with that
the senior leadership team and i pray
and i would say the board as well and i
praise god in my situation i have all of
those levels bought in
to the innovation and the need for
change in multiple areas
um and so i think that needs to you need
to take time as a senior leader to get
the buy-in
at the top the people around you in that
side of things i think secondly
that one of the things i i did almost
intuitively but
i later i read a book called dual
transformation which was both very
affirming and then pushed me further in
this
line and dual transformation is actually
written to the i
to the idea that existing institutional
organizations can
do disruptive innovation which was very
affirming
because some people believe they can’t
but they said basically what you have to
do is you have to create another space
they call it the b space
a space is your existing organization b
space is the new
new space where you allow for innovation
to take place and that’s what i did with
scatter global i
i literally took it outside of the
budget the existing budget of omusa
and we found funding to fund this and
kept it separate that if we had to cut
back over here we weren’t cutting back
over here
in the b space i created a space we we
hired almost entirely new people i found
someone
within the organization that that bought
the vision and that i felt had the
entrepreneurial
innovative innovation skills put him as
a leader
reporting directly to me and and
basically created a buffer between him
and the existing organization i think
that’s critical
i think another thing for me was that i
had to be his biggest advocate
and when there was pushback from the
institution the organization what are
these guys doing why do they get the
permission to do this
because they’re playing by different
rules right
i had to as dual transformation talks
about you have to arbitrate
with a bias towards b so i had to come
in and say no no these are the guys that
i believe will help us
leap into the future and so i have to
protect them so i think
create the space protect the space
provide funding for the space
and know that
you will probably lose some people along
the way know that no matter how much you
communicate
you will always be accused of not
communicating enough because what these
guys are doing
i mean we had days where i would meet
with the team one week and the next week
i’d come back and it had completely
changed
because they had a new set of data
points that they said our premise last
week wasn’t correct
we have to go in a different a slightly
different direction and so how do you
communicate that
on a regular basis to an existing team
so understand that communication is
critical
but you’ll always be accused of lack of
communications therefore it’s going to
take time
to bring a to where they understand be
properly and you may lose a few people
and you may go through a bit of
uneven bumpy territory and be careful
not to lose heart and so i would say my
final point then would be don’t
lose sight of the why and the why is not
just
the least reached in the nations the why
is if you’re truly convinced
that we need new models we need new
pathways we need new methods in the
future
then this is your best shot i believe
this new space
uh because again what you’ve got over
here is created
and we all feel this pain it wants to
stay the same or at best
change incrementally so this is the
space you’re going to have to
protect and remember the why that that
disruptive innovative change in today’s
world
is critical to the not just the
existence more importantly the relevance
of our organizations in the future
awesome i appreciate something you said
andrew that
you know change is possible you
mentioned some of the folks that said
this
you know organizations aren’t going to
shift they’re always going to default
the status quo and and of course that
happens in many circumstances
but 1615 has been at this for 15 16
years
i’m 15 16 years and uh
um i’m hopeful i know if
leaders are frustrated enough with the
status quo
um if they have divine discontent as
what we call it
then that church is right for change and
it’s incredibly messy
um you know we take churches through a
process of innovation
well it’s interesting we go backwards
before we go forwards we
help them clarify a biblical
understanding of missions
because that’s something we can’t
rethink that’s something we can’t
reimagine
we need to hold fast to a biblical you
know hermeneutic of missions but then
the way we apply missions has to change
and again when they’re frustrated with
status quo when we do an evaluation
workshop we call it a discovery workshop
and you know i just ask open-ended
questions to help them
determine their current mission’s
reality and when that picture’s on the
wall
i say this is your reality you know it’s
not exhausted but
this came out of your mouth right what
do you think are you happy with what’s
happening
and if they knock their head yes i leave
the room i’m kidding i don’t really do
that
but i mean if they’re like no there must
be something else
then that’s when we dig in but i just
want to you know
hit on what you said innovation is
possible but it is
messy right it is incredibly it’s like
swimming through peanut butter you know
right right now and that’s you’re
touching on matthew you’re touching that
that the why is
if you’re not if you’re not truly uh
divinely discontent was that your
term divinely intense yeah you know if
you’re not that discontent you’re not
going to change if you’re a little bit
discontent if
if you think this is like adding a new
room to the house or renovating you know
putting you
you’re not going to go through the pain
of the type of change we’re talking
about
and then the other thing that you
mentioned i think is critical for us to
understand is there is a period of you
said going backwards
there’s a period also of of uh
you know as you experiment and try new
things that you you feel that actually
we’re not only going backwards we’re
losing ground here we’re
we’re we’re sending less we’re doing
less than we’ve ever done but every
innovation does that there’ll be that
dip in the curve before you can see the
the increase
versus the incremental or even flat
lining
that an organization will go so it’s
having the courage to push through
those times that is critic and the last
thing that just came to mind when you
said that matthew was
i find critical to me staying the course
and i you know i’m hopefully still a few
years ahead of me
and hope i can stay the course is
finding a few peers
that believe in the same vision
and touch base regularly with them and
and i’ll not mention names but god
brought
a couple of key figures into my life
around that time who were thinking in
the same space and trying to shift
major major institutions at the same
time and we would touch base every four
to six months
and just have a coffee or a call and it
was like water to weary solas like no no
no i remember now
why we felt this was so important so
find
one two three peers that are are trying
to do something similar
uh as far as monumental change and touch
base regularly with them to encourage
and i think this is where the mission
nexus network ted comes in as
you know able to connect people that are
doing similar things that
that can encourage one another because
this is messy and tough
you know we could go on for i mean i’d
love to talk about this for a lot longer
but
we need to start winding down and one of
the ways we close out our podcast is we
share something i like and
andrew and i corresponded briefly this
last month and i mentioned this book i
don’t know if you can see that probably
not but it’s called
ten types of innovation and
it’s not a brand new book it was written
in 2013 i believe but
what’s awesome about it is they go
through various
large-scale areas which we
in which we can consider innovation
and it it just in the in what they
suggest in the book is that real
innovation doesn’t happen if you just
focus on one of those areas
but a couple of them at the same time
which is why it’s so hard
and um i would really recommend if
you’re if you’re a leader out there and
you’re thinking about well what are the
areas right for innovation in my sector
or what we do in mission um that
book gives you an excellent rubric to
think through some distinct areas
that you might consider in terms of
innovation and what’s really great about
the book is
it’s chock full of hundreds of examples
now do those apply directly to mission
in missionary work no there some of them
are going to be a stretch this thing
kind of needs to be reworked i think
from
a more divine perspective because
businesses have that ultimate metric i
call it which is money
we don’t necessarily have that same
ultimate metric but we do have
other metrics to look at and they can
help
drive the conversation and this question
that matthew asked
before are you happy with where things
are at that’s really an evaluation kind
of a metric oriented
question um so that’s something i like
this
this uh podcast episode uh get the book
we’re actually reviewing it this month
um in our leadership series on the book
summaries uh
mission nexus um
matthew anything else you want to add
andrew if people are interested in
learning more how do they do that
well one of the one of the easy things
to do is go to scatterglobal.com
it’s something we’re rebuilding as we
speak and rethinking through
that whole thing but scatterglobal.com
is basically one of the practical
outworkings of this answering
the three basic questions we set out to
or needs that we set out to meet
how do i find a job how do i find
community and how do i find the tools i
need to go live aside and
and so you can get a little bit of a
look at what that looks like currently
there scatterglobal.com
awesome and if you’re gonna begin an
innovation process you need to be like
super special armstrong
you need to be flexible because blessed
are the flexible they shall not be
broken
hey guys thanks a lot what a great
discussion um
we just have so much work to do in this
area but it’s encouraging to hear what
you’re doing there
at scatter global and uh thank you
andrew very much
thank you thank you for having me that
brings to a close this episode of the
mission matters with matthew ellison
from 1615 missions coaching
and ted essler president of mission
nexus we heard from andrew scott of
scatter global
author of the book scatter an innovator
in the missions field
check out scatterglobal.com to learn
more another compelling conversation
about the great commission but
before you go would you take your first
step of action and visit our sponsors
websites
at 1615.org and missionnexus.org there
you’ll find a wealth of interesting and
challenging information about the state
of the great commission
that’s 1615.org and missionnexus.org
the mission matters is presented through
a partnership of 1615 missions coaching
and mission nexus
welcome
to the mission matters the mission
matters is a partnership of mission
nexus
and 1615 missions coaching who have a
shared passion to mobilize god’s people
to be a part of his mission
the mission matters is hosted by matthew
ellison of 1615 missions coaching
and ted esler president of mission nexus
when you think of
innovation you likely recall images of
steve jobs in the iphone
or jeff bezos and amazon perhaps elon
musk comes to mind
they are champions of disruption
innovating a fresh
new idea and revolutionizing their
industries
and the world today we talk with
missions innovator andrew scott of
scatter global
who sounds a call for a new era of
missions one that uses the global
marketplace for gospel growth and sees
every christian engineer baker pastor as
god’s image bearer
with eyes on a quickly growing world and
a slower growing church
he sees that we need to rethink our
traditional mission models
andrew will not only share his ideas for
innovation in the missions model
but also share some examples of churches
that are finding a fresh new missions
model
on the mission matters here’s matthew
ted and andrew scott to discuss
innovation in the mission field welcome
once again to the mission matters
podcast i’m matthew ellison and as
always
i am joined by my good friend and coach
ted essler ted how you doing today
doing well and uh excited about today’s
conversation i think it’s going to be a
good one
yeah me too hey listen you didn’t know
about this but i want to introduce you
to a friend of mine
um in addition to our special guest
hey hey there’s that childhood toy you
mentioned a few weeks ago
yes this is super stretch armstrong
we always like to start off the show
with some random thoughts here and i
mentioned this is my favorite childhood
toy and lo and behold it shows up
in the mail by amazon as a gift from my
wife
so look at this guy anyway
i just thought it would be fun to put it
out there for you uh regular listeners
this is super stretch it was a very
innovative toy that we’re talking about
today
at the time this was cutting edge right
here so
so ted today’s kind of random thought is
i wonder if you have any unrealized
athletic dreams or wishes when you look
back on your life is there something
like i wish i would have done that
you know so a few years ago two of my
sons and i
we bicycled from new orleans to
minneapolis
and it took us 30 days we brought all
our own gear
it was an awesome awesome time but
there’s actually a better bike ride
and one that i’ve never been able to
pull off predominantly because it’s hard
to take this much time off of work to do
it
but there is uh you go from key west
to all the way up into the state of
washington in the far corner
of the state of washington and you
basically cut the furthest distance
across the u.s that you can
take um so that’s one i’ve never done
and i don’t know i got a sabbatical
coming up in a year too
maybe i’m going to get to it we’ll see
what happens but you need at least to do
that when you need
probably two full months of uh
of road biking time so so that one’s
still possible for you but
mine is not uh when i was in middle
school i started junior wrestling
and i just had this innate ability i
don’t know what it was i hit the mat and
i could just pin people
and as i got older um you know i guess
8th grade
the practice is starting started getting
harder and harder
and then in high school it was just
brutal i mean it was far worse than
football and i just did not have the
self-discipline at that time in my life
to keep wrestling but guys that i would
be was beating at the time ended up
winning state so that was
that was my athletic dream that i did
not realize so i always tell my boys if
you’re good at something
really think about it before you quit so
yeah well
i was gonna say do they have like
wrestling for old people like master’s
class then i thought i don’t want that
word picture in my head so
well that’s a good question i i doubt
they exist
reliability would be too big
so our guest today is andrew scott and
we’re going to get into who he is in
just a minute but let’s throw that
softball question over to him
any athletic dreams that you had that
you never got a chance to realize
yeah well i’m i grew up in the land
where soccer was king
and my team was liverpool football club
which more and more americans are
getting into soccer now so i’m sure many
will have heard of liverpool
they just won the premier league in
england my dream as a kid i
was always to play for liverpool now i
worked out pretty quickly i wasn’t able
to do that
but yeah that would be the first thing
that came to mind it didn’t take me to
high school to work that out but it was
it remained a dream so andrew i don’t
know if you know
uh john burns who’s the the leader of
greater year of mission right i’ve met
him yeah yeah
so he and i have been having a little
email exchange he’s obviously
uh a big fan of uh soccer
yeah sure football and so we’re we’re
scheming to try to take in a premier
league game sometime when the covet
messes over
absolutely and i will have to slide you
an invite to that
i loosely follow liverpool myself
predominantly because my kids do
so good well you’re bringing up your
kids well good job
well we you know we we served in europe
and it’s pretty hard to
uh to not get into it when you’re living
there well hey our guest today
is andrew scott and he’s the leader of
om
operation mobilization in the us
and he’s done some very creative things
in the area
of um well i’m going to let him frame
that i’m not going to frame it for him
so andrew if we could get started can
you
just give us a little bit of your
background and how you got
involved with om to kind of start this
yeah sure
well thanks for having me on today i
really do appreciate
this chance to have this conversation
and of course
ted you and i have been conversing quite
a bit uh over these last months
i uh well i first of all more most
importantly i’m married to sharon who’s
also from northern ireland that’s my
country of birth as you probably have
already worked out
and we have two children anna and daniel
and is now married
to david who by the way is a
professional wrestler
not not the amateur wrestler but the
professional wrestler uh type
and uh that follows jesus and in that
world
i’ve spent most of my life in om uh
seven years on
one of our ships and the last 18 year in
the u.s 10 of which
i’ve been the ceo of omusa
and about six years ago stepped on to
the global leadership
team of om international
how i got involved in om ted back when i
was growing up i
was om was the mission of choice of
young people in europe back in the day
uh this is of course many years ago and
so whenever i sort of
sensed the the nations were important my
father and mother
read a lot of missions books to us when
we when i sensed that was important
om was sort of the natural choice and i
i stepped into it that way and
and basically just um have been seeking
to follow god over those years i was
invited to come to the us
and i came because the president then
promised to mentor me and
he kept what was that was that obama or
trump
there you go the president of oem usa
now that would
that would have been good that but still
rick hicks did a wonderful job
and i he kept the only thing is he kept
moving the goal post now sooner or later
i find myself as the
ceo uh and uh but have enjoyed
the journey of learning and growing in
an organization that go in
that’s great when you came into this uh
us mission scene what were some of the
first observations that struck you as an
outsider walking into it
yeah you know you take me back really
vividly to first of all i argued with
god that america didn’t need another
christian worker there was enough of
them over there so why are you bringing
me here but when i got here
i recognized very very quickly you know
we had heard stories but i recognized
quickly the potential
for good for the nations is massive in
this country
absolutely massive in north america as a
whole i mean of course
millions and millions of dollars go out
every year and tens of thousands of
workers have gone out i get that
but the potential for much more was huge
and i think that
has been the thing that has kept me here
ted now i know when we’re going to talk
about it today a lot has to change in
the how
but the reality of the goal i used to
refer to as the gold mine
of the us uh where there was a
deep generosity a real willingness to
step
into where there is need that just
excited me
and i i mean i’ve been to 85 countries
now so i’ve seen lots of different
countries in the
and there’s potential everywhere
obviously but still i believe that the
us
has still a big part to play a different
part to play but a big part to play and
there’s
huge potential and i think that’s one of
the things
maybe on the the challenging side is
that there was
a lot of organizations everybody seemed
to be talking about partnership
or collaboration we use more these days
but very very few people were doing it
so it was a great topic but it was
wasn’t a lot of action involved
because it’s tough i mean it really is
tough to partner as institutions easier
as people
harder as institutions yeah absolutely
andrew i think ted and i both share your
conviction there is
latent potential in the church here in
america when it comes to the mission
sending effort but we need to rethink
some things no doubt about it
and so maybe you could give us an
overview of scatter global
and why you believe that this is the
right vision for the time that we’re in
right you might want to explain first
what scatter global is yeah yeah yeah no
it’s great i i think
i mean scatter global is principally
about a way of life
um it’s practically
it is a team of people that are seeking
to innovate around this way of life and
build a platform for people to go live
it out and i’ll speak a little bit more
to
what the way of life is but you know and
i would say
also that you know when i i i would not
in any way say that
it is the vision for the future but it
is a vision for the future that this is
something that um and we want to talk
about it beyond
the idea of it being a model of mission
uh because some people have tried to
put it in that category but but really
at the core of scatter global is this
deep deep conviction
that that pokes at some of the deep
fundamental changes i believe we need to
see in the in the mission world and the
mission effort in the traditional
mission agency
is that uh god’s created purpose for
humanity that he created humanity
to be uh first of all to have the
identity as
his child which is in a wonderful truth
and but with that came a purpose that we
are now
on mission with god we are now part of
what god is doing
in creation as his image bearer so our
identity is as a child of god our
purpose is to reflect our father back to
the world in everything we do
and that include i mean that includes
all of life that includes work life that
includes community life it includes
hobbies
but that is in a sense the creative
creation
mandate that we were to go out into the
world and reflect our father and
and and god’s desire was to make his
dwelling
among us as his people and and then so
that’s identity purpose and the third
thing we speak about in scatter global
is role that every one of us are going
to do it differently
we all have been made differently by god
and you know so often in the mission
space we have not
given that credence we’ve sort of said
if you want to do this i think called
mission you need to leave what you’re
good at what
you’ve done all your life and come to
this other thing called mission
uh and i think sometimes we have taken
the very tools that god has put in
someone to reflect him into the world
away from them to do our thing and so
i believe we have to pay attention to
this idea of role everyone has the same
purpose
you know to be god’s agents of
reconciliation to reflect him in the
world
but our roles will all be different so
how do we build a platform
for people to go live out who god has
made them to be and
and the fourth part of that is the
nations because if the nations is on the
heart of our father it should be on our
heart and it’s not for the heart
of a few specially called individuals
who will leave their job and go do it
but
every follower of jesus every child of
god
should have this on their heart that the
earth will be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of god so how do we build
a pathway so this gets down to the
practical of what scatter global is then
from these principles
is how do we build a pathway or pathways
to let people go do that so if you’re an
engineer
how can you go be an engineer for the
glory of god
not just doing a really good job though
that’s really important and that’s part
of your creative purpose
but in that see your part of your role
is to be a disciple maker to actually
point others to the king
to point others to jesus through every
aspect of your life
so scatter global is a small team of
people still small that we’ve we’ve sort
of set aside
to build this path with these this
platform to create pathways for people
to go to the nations and
and uh i recognize it it’s sort of a
response to my
my book scatter when i i
started to think these things through
that that i remember getting a call from
a business leader in australia and he
said andre
i really believe what you’re writing
here but you need to know that there are
really no pathways built for people to
go do this
in in the mission world in the context
of mission of course you can get a job
overseas
so you need to do something about it so
we started scatter global
and we call it scatter global not just
the om mobilization strategy we call the
scatter global because i said if these
things are true if the trends that i’m
seeing in the world are true
things are shifting out there some of
our theological alignment needs to take
place around these ideas that
i’ve just shared with you that uh if
these things are true
then i want to build something that any
mission agency can use
because they’re going to have to
navigate these changes also so what if
we built something don’t call it om
don’t make it an organization simply
make it a platform that anyone
anyone can use to help people go be who
god has made them to be
somewhere in the world where he’s less
known
but when you talk about some of the
changes that are going out there
on out there give us some examples of
what you’re referring to
this takes me back to a moment where in
many ways this all started
i was sitting in my office here at om
usa and i had just finished a strategic
planning process i was new president
finished i brought an outside consultant
in finished a strategic planning process
to mobilize
we wanted more people and we’d ever
mobilized before more money than we’d
ever raised before you know the typical
thing and we thought we had the plan
and i remember the leader of our work in
the muslim world sitting in my office
and through conversation he said andrew
there’ll be no traditional missionaries
in the muslim world within 10 years this
was about 2012
2013. and i looked at him and i said
what do you mean by that
and he said well they’re not going to
get a visa to get in
number one right so i i and that made
sense to me
i mean i wasn’t the first time i heard
that accessibility was changing in the
world that
countries you used to get mission visas
to were closing the doors to that that
happened a long time ago
and more and more what i call the
perpetual tourist or the perpetual
student visa where you’re in and out all
the time
repeating you’re it that’s becoming
recognized for what it is and getting
the doors are being closed now and he
said this is going to change but then he
said something that
that speaks to the second thing so
accessibility is changing and we have to
recognize that
but he talked about credibility he
talked about if your presence in the
community
is questionable how do you hope your
message will be credible
and i tell you that blew my mind where i
was brought up
ted and i i mean i lived in you know
northern ireland but very conservative
evangelical
uh background where in a sense anything
justified
the end of preaching the gospel to
somebody right i had never thought of my
presence in a community if it was
credible or questionable
and so that just put me in a bit of a
teal spin which caused me to go back
to rethink scripture or rethink some
mysterology and go look for what are the
other trends so we saw accessibility
credibility
i think the other one i would say is
massive and we have to pay attention to
it as mission and church leaders
is this generation is is
coming at the gospel in a very different
way now many people are writing them off
for it
but i believe that just as god i believe
hardwired the george verber lauren
cunningham
bill bright billy graham generation with
a strong thrust towards proclamation
for whatever reason i believe he’s
hardwired a generation to think of a
more holistic gospel
hopefully what we have to do is make
sure they don’t throw out the
proclamation part
but a gospel that speaks more closely to
the idea of the gospel of the kingdom
that when the gospel shows up in a
community
it’s not just about changing the eternal
destination of a person’s soul
but actually how does it change reality
here and now for those people
and that speaks to a generation it also
speaks to
the fourth trend and that would be the
global south the church in the global
south rising up which is now the
majority church in the world that’s
latin america sub-saharan africa then
swing sort of northways
through india and china where the church
is growing rabidly and they’re now the
majority voice who have a different
theology when it comes to
this than the white western church which
was very proclamation driven there’s a
more much more holistic approach to the
gospel
and i think this is going to be a
massive swing in the mission agency and
if us western mission agencies don’t
have a more holistic i believe a higher
view of the gospel of
it being something that that god wants
to intersect here and now
bring hope here and now to people in
these
especially in these covert 19 days if
the gospel hasn’t something to say into
these
other than an eternal destination an
alternative eternal destination i think
we will lose a generation
and i think we will be irrelevant in the
majority voice and mission
as the global south are coming to the
fore so those are some there’s
technology
there’s massive growth in the talent
job market that allows that that allows
people to take value-add jobs in these
countries that
that’s growing every year um the
companies not being able to find the
talent we need
so these are these are our things that
so accessibility credibility the
generational shifts the technological
shifts that
the globe church the ecclesiastical
shifts of the
majority voice in the church these are
some of the shifts that when you start
to put them all together you recognize
that what we’ve built
in the traditional mission agency what
we’ve come to today though it’s had
amazing impact
if i had to come to a place where i had
to realize
i don’t know if this is fit for purpose
anymore this is not a tweak i’m looking
at this
we’re going to have to do some massive
shift disruptive innovation
to get to where we have that
potential to have a key role moving
forward
so the world is clearly changing and all
you described
mandates that the way we approach
missions changes and i
i appreciate that i think it’s of course
true
uh you said something earlier i want to
go back to and you said this is a vision
not the
vision and you invited me before we
started recording to poke and press on
you
and one of the things that i get pretty
concerned about is when i talk to
churches who have adopted
this vision if you will you said you
don’t want to call it a model to
division i also appreciate that
but they have completely dismissed
sending they have shifted in such a way
that they feel there’s no longer a
relevance
for local churches raising up
identifying
and supporting missionaries which is a
model we see in the new testament
and i think it’s still relevant in many
fields today how do you avoid the
exclusivism because you said it’s a
vision not the vision
and again i look at a church’s website
and they’ve completely gone the other
way
and i feel like they miss something when
they don’t sacrificially invest
in goers wow this is the whole podcast
right here
question for you there yeah yeah no no
that’s good and and
i you know this is this is really
where we need to be dialoguing today
first and foremost i mean there’s many
ways i could come out the answer to this
this year and i’ve thought through it a
lot to be honest is
number number one we we do recognize in
scripture that there is a place
for set for supporting someone to go
right we get that in scripture
i think the issue and let me come at it
from sort of an antagonist
perspective here first and then to jump
back again
i think the issue has been is that we’ve
made that the primary if not the only
way to do mission
that’s where we’ve gotten it wrong and
that’s where we deserve maybe some of
the pushback from the church
that we’ve gone and we’re and we have
not
put forward an alternative
uh at least we haven’t done a well
alternative for them so i have met many
of these churches who have basically
thrown the whole thing out and said no
there is i remember
names i cannot mention names here but i
remember prominent figures saying to me
andrew the day of sending american
people overseas is over
well i don’t we don’t want to be
bothered with we don’t want a hundred
thousand dollar missionary we don’t want
we don’t believe in this model
like that and and so they had they had
basically because they didn’t believe
it was worth it they had thrown out the
whole thing
so i i think that we have made it the
primary if not the exclusive model and
we deserve some of the pushback
um it’s clearly in scripture so there is
a place for it but
how do we create a pathway which i
believe exponentially more people can go
down that actually i would say is
more closely aligned to the mission of
god
because you know we have we have made
we have made the mission endeavor about
a few
select called people leaving their job
and going to do something different
called mission and again there’s a place
for that in the scripture but as
oz guinness says he said do not like you
know because we think of paul we think
of
of gideon we think of moses in the
burning bush
he said do not let the experience of the
fume be the expectation of the many
because
and that’s his quote and and the reality
is is that the people of god were made
to be on mission with god
and and all throughout scripture we see
god’s people being shifted all over the
world
all the time that’s why i name my book
scatter so
i think we have to bring on an
alternative way an alternative way of
thinking that i think
will allow as lausanne call it the 99 of
the body of christ to step in
and and so what i’m finding is that many
of those churches that told me the
sending model is done i’m dealing with
three of them right now that we’ve
gotten a roundtable that had literally
given up i’m saying yeah
okay please don’t stop supporting the
people you’ve been supporting
because they’re i’m sure doing a great
work uh
but but don’t give up on the idea of
americans going but let’s look at other
ways where they can go
and live out their life for the glory of
god and because there’s many countries
that still need
witnesses to jesus from afar culture
where the near and the same there are no
same and there are very few near
uh work culture workers and we need them
to go there so
i would say yeah we we need to be very
careful
that we don’t focus in on models that’s
so that would be another point i would
want to make don’t let’s get away from
focusing on models and let’s look at
principles
now if your support raising model puts
you in a place
where you are questionable or your
presence is is not very credible
uh where maybe you’re not being you may
have opportunities to share the gospel
but your life is maybe not the best
representation of the gospel because of
all the trappings that come with that i
do have some questions for that model
quite frankly
um and and i think that a new generation
coming through will not
live with that dichotomy or that covert
presence
that the previous generation lived by so
there’s there’s
multiple answers to that question i’m
probably rambling a bit here but i think
we have to be careful that we we don’t
throw the baby out with the bath water
there is a model for it but what is the
role of those support raising workers i
personally believe that more and more
of that will be equippers of
local and same culture workers to do the
job and and
almost taking a background not the
forefront and the forefront workers are
going to be people
in the marketplace who have credible
presence and can be making disciples one
two
three four people but we’re going to
need these experienced workers who’ve
been there for years and
who can equip them and equip locals and
their cultural workers to do it so
well i mean i think the both and versus
either or kind of thinking
to me is an important piece of
innovation
let’s shift gears just a little bit
because what you’re talking about to me
regardless of whether somebody out there
likes your ideas or not
it’s innovative it’s new it’s different
and i know you’ve got some ideas about
innovation and what leaders should be
thinking about in regard to innovation
so
you know what what do you see as the
role so you’re a senior leader
what’s the role of the senior leader in
this area of innovation
right yeah i think i i this has been a
steep learning curve for me
uh in this in this journey since
probably about 2013
2014 and i’ve learned a lot by mistake
rather than by
by purpose and uh but some of the things
that i’ve been
seeing and learning have been is that
number one innovation
has to be owned at the top of the
organization
and it has to be more than a topic of
conversation there must be an action
plan beside it i think that’s critical
and the the essential to that is not
just the ceo although the ceo was
critical if the ceo is not bought in or
the the senior pastor is not bought in
then you’re i don’t think it’s going to
go very far but then with that
the senior leadership team and i pray
and i would say the board as well and i
praise god in my situation i have all of
those levels bought in
to the innovation and the need for
change in multiple areas
um and so i think that needs to you need
to take time as a senior leader to get
the buy-in
at the top the people around you in that
side of things i think secondly
that one of the things i i did almost
intuitively but
i later i read a book called dual
transformation which was both very
affirming and then pushed me further in
this
line and dual transformation is actually
written to the i
to the idea that existing institutional
organizations can
do disruptive innovation which was very
affirming
because some people believe they can’t
but they said basically what you have to
do is you have to create another space
they call it the b space
a space is your existing organization b
space is the new
new space where you allow for innovation
to take place and that’s what i did with
scatter global i
i literally took it outside of the
budget the existing budget of omusa
and we found funding to fund this and
kept it separate that if we had to cut
back over here we weren’t cutting back
over here
in the b space i created a space we we
hired almost entirely new people i found
someone
within the organization that that bought
the vision and that i felt had the
entrepreneurial
innovative innovation skills put him as
a leader
reporting directly to me and and
basically created a buffer between him
and the existing organization i think
that’s critical
i think another thing for me was that i
had to be his biggest advocate
and when there was pushback from the
institution the organization what are
these guys doing why do they get the
permission to do this
because they’re playing by different
rules right
i had to as dual transformation talks
about you have to arbitrate
with a bias towards b so i had to come
in and say no no these are the guys that
i believe will help us
leap into the future and so i have to
protect them so i think
create the space protect the space
provide funding for the space
and know that
you will probably lose some people along
the way know that no matter how much you
communicate
you will always be accused of not
communicating enough because what these
guys are doing
i mean we had days where i would meet
with the team one week and the next week
i’d come back and it had completely
changed
because they had a new set of data
points that they said our premise last
week wasn’t correct
we have to go in a different a slightly
different direction and so how do you
communicate that
on a regular basis to an existing team
so understand that communication is
critical
but you’ll always be accused of lack of
communications therefore it’s going to
take time
to bring a to where they understand be
properly and you may lose a few people
and you may go through a bit of
uneven bumpy territory and be careful
not to lose heart and so i would say my
final point then would be don’t
lose sight of the why and the why is not
just
the least reached in the nations the why
is if you’re truly convinced
that we need new models we need new
pathways we need new methods in the
future
then this is your best shot i believe
this new space
uh because again what you’ve got over
here is created
and we all feel this pain it wants to
stay the same or at best
change incrementally so this is the
space you’re going to have to
protect and remember the why that that
disruptive innovative change in today’s
world
is critical to the not just the
existence more importantly the relevance
of our organizations in the future
awesome i appreciate something you said
andrew that
you know change is possible you
mentioned some of the folks that said
this
you know organizations aren’t going to
shift they’re always going to default
the status quo and and of course that
happens in many circumstances
but 1615 has been at this for 15 16
years
i’m 15 16 years and uh
um i’m hopeful i know if
leaders are frustrated enough with the
status quo
um if they have divine discontent as
what we call it
then that church is right for change and
it’s incredibly messy
um you know we take churches through a
process of innovation
well it’s interesting we go backwards
before we go forwards we
help them clarify a biblical
understanding of missions
because that’s something we can’t
rethink that’s something we can’t
reimagine
we need to hold fast to a biblical you
know hermeneutic of missions but then
the way we apply missions has to change
and again when they’re frustrated with
status quo when we do an evaluation
workshop we call it a discovery workshop
and you know i just ask open-ended
questions to help them
determine their current mission’s
reality and when that picture’s on the
wall
i say this is your reality you know it’s
not exhausted but
this came out of your mouth right what
do you think are you happy with what’s
happening
and if they knock their head yes i leave
the room i’m kidding i don’t really do
that
but i mean if they’re like no there must
be something else
then that’s when we dig in but i just
want to you know
hit on what you said innovation is
possible but it is
messy right it is incredibly it’s like
swimming through peanut butter you know
right right now and that’s you’re
touching on matthew you’re touching that
that the why is
if you’re not if you’re not truly uh
divinely discontent was that your
term divinely intense yeah you know if
you’re not that discontent you’re not
going to change if you’re a little bit
discontent if
if you think this is like adding a new
room to the house or renovating you know
putting you
you’re not going to go through the pain
of the type of change we’re talking
about
and then the other thing that you
mentioned i think is critical for us to
understand is there is a period of you
said going backwards
there’s a period also of of uh
you know as you experiment and try new
things that you you feel that actually
we’re not only going backwards we’re
losing ground here we’re
we’re we’re sending less we’re doing
less than we’ve ever done but every
innovation does that there’ll be that
dip in the curve before you can see the
the increase
versus the incremental or even flat
lining
that an organization will go so it’s
having the courage to push through
those times that is critic and the last
thing that just came to mind when you
said that matthew was
i find critical to me staying the course
and i you know i’m hopefully still a few
years ahead of me
and hope i can stay the course is
finding a few peers
that believe in the same vision
and touch base regularly with them and
and i’ll not mention names but god
brought
a couple of key figures into my life
around that time who were thinking in
the same space and trying to shift
major major institutions at the same
time and we would touch base every four
to six months
and just have a coffee or a call and it
was like water to weary solas like no no
no i remember now
why we felt this was so important so
find
one two three peers that are are trying
to do something similar
uh as far as monumental change and touch
base regularly with them to encourage
and i think this is where the mission
nexus network ted comes in as
you know able to connect people that are
doing similar things that
that can encourage one another because
this is messy and tough
you know we could go on for i mean i’d
love to talk about this for a lot longer
but
we need to start winding down and one of
the ways we close out our podcast is we
share something i like and
andrew and i corresponded briefly this
last month and i mentioned this book i
don’t know if you can see that probably
not but it’s called
ten types of innovation and
it’s not a brand new book it was written
in 2013 i believe but
what’s awesome about it is they go
through various
large-scale areas which we
in which we can consider innovation
and it it just in the in what they
suggest in the book is that real
innovation doesn’t happen if you just
focus on one of those areas
but a couple of them at the same time
which is why it’s so hard
and um i would really recommend if
you’re if you’re a leader out there and
you’re thinking about well what are the
areas right for innovation in my sector
or what we do in mission um that
book gives you an excellent rubric to
think through some distinct areas
that you might consider in terms of
innovation and what’s really great about
the book is
it’s chock full of hundreds of examples
now do those apply directly to mission
in missionary work no there some of them
are going to be a stretch this thing
kind of needs to be reworked i think
from
a more divine perspective because
businesses have that ultimate metric i
call it which is money
we don’t necessarily have that same
ultimate metric but we do have
other metrics to look at and they can
help
drive the conversation and this question
that matthew asked
before are you happy with where things
are at that’s really an evaluation kind
of a metric oriented
question um so that’s something i like
this
this uh podcast episode uh get the book
we’re actually reviewing it this month
um in our leadership series on the book
summaries uh
mission nexus um
matthew anything else you want to add
andrew if people are interested in
learning more how do they do that
well one of the one of the easy things
to do is go to scatterglobal.com
it’s something we’re rebuilding as we
speak and rethinking through
that whole thing but scatterglobal.com
is basically one of the practical
outworkings of this answering
the three basic questions we set out to
or needs that we set out to meet
how do i find a job how do i find
community and how do i find the tools i
need to go live aside and
and so you can get a little bit of a
look at what that looks like currently
there scatterglobal.com
awesome and if you’re gonna begin an
innovation process you need to be like
super special armstrong
you need to be flexible because blessed
are the flexible they shall not be
broken
hey guys thanks a lot what a great
discussion um
we just have so much work to do in this
area but it’s encouraging to hear what
you’re doing there
at scatter global and uh thank you
andrew very much
thank you thank you for having me that
brings to a close this episode of the
mission matters with matthew ellison
from 1615 missions coaching
and ted essler president of mission
nexus we heard from andrew scott of
scatter global
author of the book scatter an innovator
in the missions field
check out scatterglobal.com to learn
more another compelling conversation
about the great commission but
before you go would you take your first
step of action and visit our sponsors
websites
at 1615.org and missionnexus.org there
you’ll find a wealth of interesting and
challenging information about the state
of the great commission
that’s 1615.org and missionnexus.org
the mission matters is presented through
a partnership of 1615 missions coaching
and mission nexus
