Episode 87: Taking Young People on Overseas Mission

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Podcast. Hello, everybody, and welcome, or welcome back to the Limitless Leadership Podcast. So please, you could join us today. My name is Tim. I'm part of the team at Limitless, and I'll be your host for today's conversation, which is all about the how and the why of taking young people away on overseas mission trips. Should be a fascinating conversation, and we've got an incredible guest. But before I introduce him to you, I've got to remind you guys, Limitless Festival, come on now. It's just around the corner. It's very close now. I hope that you've got your young people booked in already. But if you don't, fear not, there's still time. The 5th to the 9th of August, 2023 on Staffordshire Showground, we are going to have an incredible week of community, of connection, and of changed lives. So go to limitlessfestival.co.uk, where you can get all your info. You can get your group booked in. I can't wait to see you there. But that's enough of that. Let me introduce our guest to you, my good friend, Rich Ellington. Rich, welcome to the Limitless Leadership Podcast. So good to be here, mate. Very excited to hang out with you for a little while. Yeah, and really, really pleased you could make some time for this. Now, Rich is a church planter. He's working overseas in a variety of nations. We're going to hear all about that in just a moment's time. But most importantly of all, Rich is also part of the Limitless Leadership Team and has been for longer than I have. Probably for longer than I've been alive, actually. It's true. I've been, well, Jesus is the original member and I'm member number two. So we've been there for a while. Yeah, indeed. And so grateful for that. So, Rich, before we track a little bit of your journey, because I think your story in youth ministry and in church leadership and in church planting is a really fascinating one from which we can draw a whole load. Rich, I'd love to hear, first of all, what is it that you're doing right now? What's the mission of ministry that you're involved in right now? So currently, I'm the International Director for Surf Church Collective. So what that means is I help plant and train leaders to plant churches in surf and beach destinations all around the world. So as a passionate surfer, I've always had this desire to be able to bring the gospel of Jesus, the good news, to my community, to my tribe. And I've been working with an organisation called Christian Surfers since, well, for years. I mean, I joined them when I was around about 11 years of age. So I've been part of this Christian Surfers missional group for a very, very long time. And then we started this thing about planting churches because we just felt, OK, we've got this mission to the beach, but how do we get these people that were winning to Jesus into local church? And often we would find that local churches really struggle to accept and understand surfers. To illustrate it, we had some guys get saved in El Salvador, our whole crew, that we then took to the local churches. And the local churches said, you need to wear a suit next week. It's great that you're here, but you need to wear a suit. You need to cover up your tattoos. You need to give up surfing and you need to cut your hair. And then you'll be OK to come to church next week. So no, what do you do? I mean, those those young surfers are not going to, you know, it was just done. So we had to plant a church for these for these young people to grow in their faith and and start to journey in a community of faith. So I get to do that all over the world, which is a phenomenal, phenomenal job. Yes, so tell us some of the nations that you're that you're working in with the search search search. Sure, with the surf church. With the surf church collective as well. There's always a loophole to tell us some of the nations that the surf church collective is working in right now at where you're you know, do a mission to the surf community and your planting churches. So at this very moment, I sit in the southwest of France, a place called Hossagall in this beautiful old chapel, which is where our story began. So we're here in France, Hossagall. We are in the UK down in Newquay and a couple of other places. We are in the Channel Islands, we're in the Canary Islands, we're in Portugal, Spain, Hawaii, California, Florida, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Brazil. Oh, man, the list is great. A Australia, South Africa. That's right. I've just been been there for the last two years, got stuck in covid. That's a whole crazy story. Yeah, when the two months ended up being there for two and a half years. So we decided to help plant the church there for surfers, which is great fun. So yeah, so basically where there's where there's waves or where there's a beach and surfing community, which now with the invention of wave pools is in lots of different places, actually inland. We're busy either planting a church, trying to plant a church or trying to help churches that exist in those spaces be surfer friendly. So maybe maybe around about 15, 20 different nations. And it's truly a collective, isn't it, Rich? So it's not it's not a denomination. It's not a brand. You don't set up church in like in a certain way and slap a logo over the door. You know, it's not cookie cutter, you know, copy and paste church. Is it so maybe you could help us understand a little bit about how that works, but also like how is like a surf church different to what we might be familiar with, at least in the UK, in terms of a traditional church format of, you know, sitting in rows and singing some songs and listening to a word and, you know, having coffee and all that kind of stuff. How might surf church like different to that across the world? Yeah, that's a really good question. So I think the the starting place for me again, while leading a church in Western Superman, an amazing church called Holy Trinity, and I had the privilege of leading that with my parents for a season and then taking over myself. And I would invite and bring lots of my surfing friends to come along to church. And we were, you know, it was a great church. It was rocking. We had, you know, great worship, great visuals. It reasonably cool people leading the intro and outro. And, you know, and those comedy moments in the sermons, you know, it was as as contemporary and as exciting as anywhere that I've been or seen. But my surfing friends would come in and just go, oh, that was nice. And, you know, that was that. It didn't seem to really kind of touch them where they were. And if the surf was good or the weekend was about getting to the beach, then that's where they were going to be. So I realized that actually what I was trying to do is I was trying to get my my friends to jump culture, to step out of the surf world, which is a lifestyle that completely imbibes every aspect of their thinking, their behavior, their attitudes. It's completely it's a massive subculture. It's it's of course, it's very mainstream these days. You see it everywhere, but still those who belong to the tribe belong to the tribe. So I was asking them to drop their culture and then jump across into a very much a Christian culture with all sorts of secret codes to help, you know, that you need to understand to be able to sit within a service. So what does the offer? What's the offering about? Why are we seeing songs at the beginning? What who are these songs about? What is, you know, when the sermon happens, you know, who's in the normal world? People don't sit and listen to somebody give a 30 minute spiel on on something out of, you know, a text that's from thousands of years ago. So all of these things, if you've never been in that world, is a big shock to the to the to the to your head, to your to your way of thinking. So I'm asking those guys to jump into that space. And I just saw time and again that they were struggling. Some some made that jump, but many, many didn't. So I was really kind of put out by that and just what can I do? So it was very much an extension of stuff that we've been experimenting with already. I planted a church for skaters. I planted a church in a nightclub. I planted a church in a coffee shop. So I thought I need to plant a church for surfers in their surf world. And that was contextualized mission. So it's basically helping them. The message doesn't change. All that we're doing is we're bringing that message and placing it right at the heart of that culture. So I think about why are we doing certain things within a church service, within a church community? And how does that connect to the culture? And what are the things that we need to be counterculture in? And what are the things that actually we can flow with the culture? Yeah. And that just really helps with connecting surfers to the to the message of Jesus. Yeah, yeah, because, you know, we all know and understand that the church is not the building and the church isn't the service either. But what what do those gathered church moments if you like, look like when you bring the church together, this community of surfers who are exploring faith or who have come to faith? What does it look like when you when you gather? Well, it's different in different places all over the world. That's the beauty, as you said, of the collective. It's not a cookie cutter thing. So there's people meeting, you know, in by their thousands in some of the churches in the U.S. that would be big kind of mega church style services. But everybody's in flip flops and shorts and got their surfboards in the back of the car. And, you know, and the language of communication from the front will be about Jesus, but contextualized to just beach life. And then there's people meeting around a fire on the beach on a Sunday evening. There's people meeting in the palm trees in Costa Rica. The commonality is a love for Jesus, an exploration of what faith is for those who don't yet know Jesus. So all of our services tend to be around exploration as opposed to trying to give answers. I'd say that's a common theme. Right. OK. So it's more discussion based than didactic. Would you say it's it's both and OK. And there's the space for both. But what there is is at the heart of it, there is this understanding from those who are leading these churches that we're helping people discover faith as opposed to telling them what faith is. So often we are answering questions that people are asking and services that are very ministries that are very pulpit driven. And there's nothing wrong with that. But they they're working on the premise of assumed questions. And I think one of the things that maybe that I've learned working alongside Alpha for so many years is you've got to start with the questions that people are asking. So I like to think about surf churches, a place where you can discover more in faith, that you can go on a spiritual journey. And the job of the leaders is to help empower you to explore who God is. And to find answers. Very good. Yeah. And I'd say that's a part of this division of our church. How can you help us to fulfill it? Yes, like how can we serve you and help you on the journey that you're on? Yeah, very good, very good. Yeah, I think I think you summarise it well. I think that the the the job of a pastor is to equip the saints to the work of the gospel. And I would say that that is primarily what we try to inspire, encourage and facilitate leaders to to live by. If we're leading churches, our job is to help people share the gospel and live out their faith with their friends. Yeah, fantastic. Love it. It didn't start, though, rich with the surf church collective, this kind of, you know, global connection between church planters. You and your family went to Hossagore in the south of France. One of the hardest to reach areas in one of the hardest to reach nations in the world. And you went there to to plan just could you could you tell us some of that story? So we're kind of working backwards in the timeline here, because I want to get some of your youth ministry stuff as well. But tell us the the Hossagore story, how you ended up going there and what those early years were like and and where that's at now in the church and the school. Yes, so 2012 is when we arrived in the southwest of France. And the the the preface for that is, as I said, I was leading this church called Holy Trinity in Western Supermere. Phenomenal church felt so privileged to lead it. But we'd been doing mission to the southwest of France for probably around about seven or eight years. In fact, I've got engaged to my wife, Reggie, here in in Beirut. And we were camping out in this amazing place called Hossagore, which is one of the best spots in Europe, and we got engaged here. And the day after we got engaged, we sat on the the steps of this old chapel, which I'm in right now. And it was derelict at the time. And my wife and I just held hands and we prayed that God someday would open up the doors of this chapel. Wow, to reach the local surface. So we prayed that back in 1999. And then began the journey of doing mission here and doing these big kind of gospel parties would come out in September. There's a big surf competition once a year here. And we would basically work with a local bar, put together a gospel party, which would end up having thousands of local surfers come. It was just crazy. French TV would come and film the party. Quicksilver would ring us up and say, hey, what night is your Christian night? Because that's what it became famous as it was a Christian night. And that's what they put flyers. That's what the local bar would put flyers out Christian night. It became known as the Warren B. Knight, Indy Knight, Christian Knight. That's it, mate. And it was mad. I mean, I remember when he showed me the flyer Christian. I went, you can't put that out. That's the craziest thing ever. And he says, no, that's what everybody knows this thing as. It's it's it's famous for it. So Quicksilver would ring us and say, hey, listen, when is Christian night? We don't want to collide with your night. And what we'd do is we'd show this is mad. We'd show this film Christian surf movie that would share the gospel with great surfing and then we'd have bands that would bring in from the UK. And the bar would do what the bar does and loads of people would come and we would, you know, just have a great time and we'd pray for people. We'd talk to people about faith. They have little moments where we'd share the gospel, you know, like one minute, two minute little hits. But we just felt this momentum of faith and people wanting to explore. But there was nobody to plant a church. So while leading this church in the UK and starting to kind of explore all this stuff about missional church planting, I'm looking at the southwest of France and my wife and I say, well, if we don't go, who's going to go? How can we can we live with the knowledge that there isn't a local church that's really kind of locked into that town? And, you know, here there isn't a church for two hours north and there isn't a church 40 minutes south. So there's really no churches. And and also by this time in my journey of faith in ministry, I really wanted to see what would happen if you stripped back everything. If you had no marketing campaign, if you had no, you know, brilliant musical worship group to kick a church off with. If you had if you had no collective group of Christians that would launch a service, I just wanted to find out what would happen. No budget, no nothing. Yeah, I wanted to find out what would happen if you just walked up five of us in a van. What does God do then? And I kind of needed to just to clarify for people listening, Rich, when you say five of us, you're referring there to you, your wife and your three kids, just you, your family. Yeah. Yeah. So at the time, Eldest was seven. Our Marnie, my daughter, eight A.J. And then my young, the youngest son, Indiana, little boy of adventures, too. And yeah, so we resigned from our church in in Western. My wife resigned from her work in as a nurse and a friend of ours had asked me a question, how much faith does you need to how much faith do you operate in each week to live your life of Christianity? And I thought, yeah, actually, I've got a comfortable, really great church. I've got a lovely house. Kids are in a great school. I've got two cars. And I went, OK, I've got faith for lots of things in church, but how much risk is there in my day to day life? And I thought, no, there's not a lot. And I looked at the journey of the disciples in the Bible and I felt their lifestyle was so different from my lifestyle. There was an immediacy about. About, you know, they'd be crying out to the Holy Spirit leaders, guidance, directors, redirected, they'd have strategy, but they'd be redirected. They'd be living from one town to the next town. There was this this this excitement, an exploration of the world that I wasn't experiencing in my job. Not that I didn't I loved my job, but I just saw this big gap. And I wanted to strip everything back, see what God would do. And also for my kids, I wanted them to see who Jesus was outside of the institutionalisation of church and faith. So, yeah, we got in the van. We drove to France with zero French, rocked up to Hossagore and our friends of ours had actually started alongside that journey of missions and friends from Australia began to pioneer surf church in the summer months. And they had around about maybe five or six people that were were gathering through the summer. And then there'd be some tourists that would come and join them that would get it up to kind of like 15 or 20 people. And then it would be closed down through the autumn, winter and spring. And they said, hey, listen, you guys are here. Why don't you rock on and take this little group of five people and start to pioneer this church week in and week out? And that's what we did. And there began our journey and bizarrely. Hey, you know, I told you about praying on those steps of that chapel. Well, the local Catholic priest, amazingly, would a few years later give us the keys to that chapel and would say, hey, you can plant surf church out of this venue. And so we we took on this amazing chapel right next to the best surf spot in the whole of France. And, yeah, and converted it into a coffee shop, art studio, cinema, gig venue and the church. And, yeah, so it was it was mad. It was mad. Two things between then, you know, in between rocking up in the van and getting the keys to that building, there was a lot of hard yards, Rich. There was a lot of different places that you lived in, including your van. On a number of periods. Tell us a little, you know, I know our time is limited, but tell us a little bit about that that journey in the early days of just going in the community, learning the language, connecting with people, trying to find a home, dealing with the finances. All of that, all of those kind of challenges you confronted in those early days. Yeah, definitely it's I can think about the successes, but the successes came at a high price and lots of mistakes made along the way. Mistake number one was we'd miscalculated when school started. So like a day after arriving into France, we discovered the kids are going to school on day two. And we thought we'd have like a month to kind of settle in. So that wasn't going to happen. So suddenly we're cutting off our eight year old and seven year old off to a school that is completely in French. And they were scared stiff and their first year of education was very hard. My son landed in a school where the teacher just ignored him, put him in the corner because he didn't speak any French, obviously, so they just left into one side. And my daughter was very lucky and she had a teacher that really wanted to help her learn French. So my daughter learned French within three, four months. And my son was, you know, didn't have any French for the first year and was being majorly bullied as being the English kid in the school and was just in all sorts of trouble. So it was it was a tough season for the kids. We moved 25 times in five years because getting a long term accommodation here is very hard because it's a summer town, 20,000 in the winter, 150,000 in the summer. Every rents out their house. So every place that we could get in the winter, we'd have to leave in the summer because people rented out to the tourists coming in. So we couldn't get stabilized accommodation. Also, we had no no money for this. So we were living off the back of, you know, savings, some support from some friends who were helping us and us kind of being creative with getting work here and everywhere and trying to be entrepreneurial. So there was times that simply we were homeless because we couldn't afford to live anywhere. So, yeah, there were some very, very tough moments. And I think your daughter being asked where go on, go. My daughter being asked by the surf instructor, where can I send the paperwork for you to sign up to the classes? And she says, I don't I don't have a home. Yeah, yeah. And that's hard to hear is a dad who's trying to provide for his family. So, yes, I think rich those early years were hard. Yeah. And it's really important to hear that. Because when you talk about, yeah, we're going to Hawaii and El Salvador, Florida and South Africa and planting churches. It can all sound very glamorous, but because I know you and I've known you for the whole time you've been on this journey. And I've been to Hossagore and been out there with you. And I know there's been anything but that. And you guys as a family have made huge personal sacrifices. And as you mentioned a moment ago, taken tremendous risks for the gospel in order to see the things that are happening now happen. So I think it's important to hear that bit of the story. But what I want to do now, Rich, and just before we get to the like taking young people on mission trips and get into some of the practicalities of that and the why of that, you mentioned about the church in Western. Before you led that church, you were the youth pastor at that church. And you had some crazy adventures as a youth pastor at that time as well. So I'd like to hear, Rich, a little bit about your time as a youth pastor. In Western I'd like to hear a little bit about kind of what happened. But also I'm interested to know, given what you know now, given what you've experienced in ministry now, if you had your time again, what would you do in the same way? And what would you do completely differently? So tell us about that time as a youth pastor. Yeah, well, Western was a really rich time. I'd actually come out of another church that I did my first three years of ministry in the in the middle of the country that actually had been quite hard. And I came out of that church a little bit broken, bruised. They say that the kind of like the burnout rate for youth work is about two years. And at the end of that three years, then I was completely burnt out, done over. And that was as a youth pastor at that church as well. That was as the youth master and I really struggled. I felt that the senior team didn't understand who I was, didn't understand youth ministry. There was a real disconnect, expectations were not aligned. And I just suffered at the hands of some bad line managers and really came out of that place, bruised and broken. And in fact, as I left that church on the day that I walked out, that was my final service, they prayed for me and my wife on the stage. And as we left my line manager, who it turns out had been having an affair through the entire time period. He was line managing me, which we would find out retrospectively. But as I as I walked out, he came to me and he said, Richard, you need to leave ministry, the you're not suited to it. And the best thing you can do is it's just go get a job in the secular space. And there's of course, there's nothing wrong with getting a job in the secular space. That's actually fine. But I was and you've got to call me to to full time ministry. And this was just a real slate upon my confidence. So I left really shaken and broken. But thankfully, I was going to go work with an amazing team with my mum and dad heading that up. And and, yeah, being in that space where they allowed me to be me and understood that God had made me different from many others, we've all been made individually individual. So they just really kind of started to work on helping me rebuild from that place of brokenness. And we had 12 young people in the church and my starting place with those 12 young people was just to say, hey, guys, what's what's your dream? What's what's your vision? What what what would you like to see happen? And I think that that's so interesting. That's so interesting, Rich, because, you know, all those years, just connecting what you've just said there about like what what you're doing now. And, you know, the key role of the pastor to equip the saints for work to service. And that being something that kind of underpins and undergirds the ministry philosophy, I guess, of the surf church collective is, you know, helping others to become all they can be in God. It's just so interesting to hear that when you went into that youth ministry context, you didn't say, right, here's my vision for this youth ministry, and we're going to do this and we're going to do this and we're going to do this. And who's on board? Come on, let's do this together. You said, what's your what what do you dream of? And what's your vision and what do you see and how can I help you? And I think that's really, really powerful. Just a really interesting how that thread has kind of traced through your ministry there. I think that my parents did an amazing job of nurturing my individuality while also drawing me into playing a role within community. So they did a really good job of me owning duty and responsibility, but also facilitating the fact that I got ginger hair and I'm slightly wild. And and that that that previous church that I've had a tough time in was all about the vision of the house, the vision of the senior leader. And if you stepped outside of that and had vision for something else, it's almost like you were backsliding and betraying the central central thing. So I really think that that was a big part of that. It was it was a reaction to and an embracing of what I've been taught by my parents. So, yeah, the starting place was, guys, what do you want to see happen? So we sat down with those 12 and we got a big piece of paper out that filled basically the center of the floor, massive, great big wallpaper stuff. And I said, OK, write down your dreams because we want God to work in this place and through you. And we're going to go start about fulfilling what God is putting in your heart, not what God's putting in my heart. Now, I am a visionary leader and vision comes easy to me. But having had my vision and individuality so suffocated for a season, I really felt that I wanted to facilitate those guys. So they wrote down some crazy things. And one of those things is they want to do a monthly concert. There were many, many things on there. But one of the things is they want to do a monthly concert. So I said, OK, we're going to do it. So within the space of a couple of months, we'd started a monthly concert with those 12 young people. They invited their friends and maybe we had 50 people show up. And that concert was, you know, just a band and me sharing the gospel with a bit of comedy. And it was fairly simplistic. We didn't have anything. We had no budget. We had nothing, but we just started from where we were. But that thing would grow to a monthly event that would have well over a thousand young people, non-Christians primarily coming to an event called the Silver Dome. By that time, we'd be renting the premier venue in the town. And and this was all being facilitated by these 12 young people. And we kept that that heart of the 12 or whoever's on the team kind of leading things right from the beginning, right the way through to the end. And many of those 12 would actually end up coming to work for me, either as full time employees or gap year students. And you know, so the thing kind of blew up. And in there, we planted youth church. We skate church. We did schools ministry. And and again, out of the heart of these 12 young people, the thing just it just God did something amazing in the midst of it. And our job was to steward it and to to not to wreck it and to try and, you know, affirm those young people, empower them in their life journey. And I was just hanging out with a girl called Adele, Adele Sutton, who was one of those original 12, she was 12 at the time. And she's been working for Holy Trinity for the last few years. And she's traveled the world helping. Teenage girls that have been through crazy abuse situations. And and she does the whole thing called revealed, where she's she's helping them get over terrible stuff in their past and connect them to Christ. And it's seeing those stories of individual young people who, yeah, we had we had big numbers, big events, all the best bands came to play. And, you know, you know, all of that is great and lovely. But the truth of it is it boils down to around about 12 people every time. Because if Jesus really threw himself into 12, why would I think I could do anything more than that? And so we tried to keep it small and local in amongst the big, crazy crowd. And so it's beautiful to see these young people grown up now, chasing after Jesus in the industry. That's it. And that that is what we all hope for in youth ministry. It is that, you know, in a decade or two's time, there are some young people who we invested a little something in, in our time as youth leaders who are still loving and following Jesus and just being obedient to whatever the call is over their life, but are wholehearted in their apprenticeship to Jesus. That's what we want for youth ministry. So I I always think that almost the catch 22, if you like, of youth ministry is that you don't really know if it's working until a decade later. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, you might have the numbers. You might have that you might have people showing up, but like who cares? Like what what we care about is that 10 years after they leave our youth ministry, they are following Jesus wholeheartedly. That's what we know that youth ministry has been successful. And so we never really know, we never really know in the moment. We might get a feel for it. You might see what the Lord is doing and be grateful for what he's doing. But it's it's the legacy, isn't it? It's the it's the long term impact of that. That really tells us what what the fruit of our time serving those young people was. And you've seen it there in those lives. So back at it, Rich, then, you know, what what are the things that you feel like you learned? What are the things that you feel like if, you know, if I was to go back now and have those same 12 young people, these are the things I would do the same. These are the things that now I would do differently. Like how do you reflect on that? Things I would do the same. I would always start with, hey, where are you guys? What do you want to see happen? I would encourage myself to be me and not try to be anybody else. Allow my natural character to come through and not live under the expectations of other youth ministries. And I think I think that was important. I was just busy, you know, Regs and I were just being young, wild and fun and in love for Jesus. And that was at the forefront. I think that I made as the thing became the big success numerically and all the infrastructure that would go with that and the, you know, big team staff employment. There's moments I ended up serving the machine as opposed to. It was always this tension between that 12 and the needs of the thousands. So that continued to be the tension. And so there was a moment, actually, I felt the Lord say, you've got to end this big, the big event that was happening once a month. And that was after about four or five years. And we were, you know, we would have a couple of crazy events. We had one event where we had 15,000 show up at Summer Festival and we're having, you know, reaching now maybe 2000. So it's all getting a bit wild and mad and brilliant because the town, you know, the town is loving it and we're we're getting awards. We're in the newspapers. We've actually got our own article, the newspaper, you know, all this stuff is kicking off. And it's it's everybody's looking and going, this is phenomenal. But I'm sinking under the administration or managerial driver at all. And I'm missing just being with the 12. But the Lord said, hey, you need to stop this thing. And I was like, well, I can't stop this thing because it's too successful. So and how do I let everybody down? Because, you know, this is like the highlight of their month. It's people, you know, this is a big thing. So I ran the next event and it's amazing in that next event. Because again, primarily non-Christian kids come to this thing. So there's everybody's trying to sneak booze in. There's often fights at these things. We've got the police working with us. These were these were complicated events to run. But wonderful. But I sat there, I stood there at the front of this auditorium with thousands of young people in front of me going, what am I doing? I'm in trouble. It's like it's like the anointing had lifted entirely. And I could and now all that filled me was fear. Because I was doing this without the touch of the Holy Spirit. So I ran two more events. And then I quit the thing and I said, we've got to change. And we switched then to running schools, ministry and investing all of our time and stuff into the small and how we can we work with children and young people in schools in lunchtime and after school stuff. And we shifted again to focusing on the individuals as opposed to the corporate big group. And that was good because it was reinventing the thing for me. And what I've realized is for me as a leader. I'm a pioneer. And I'm my best when I'm pushing into new spaces and experimenting and trying new things. And just because something is being a success doesn't mean it needs to last forever. And sometimes you become the victim of your own success. Yeah, it's really good. And yeah, and I think that I was living under pressure of my own legacy and to switch direction was really helpful for me to feel fresh, excited and to bring energy to the space and bottom line with those few young people that I'm responsible for. If I am shattered, done, broken, full of resentment to the institution, burnt out, then what am I bringing to them? I'm bringing them a very bad version of myself. Yeah. So yeah, great. We've got, you know, people are making taking pictures and putting these in magazines. But the dude who is running it isn't the best with those kids that he committed to walk with then. So I learned some lessons about the failures that you have when you're in a place of success and how, you know, that you are very vulnerable in those moments of perceived success. So what are we chasing? Talk me about not chasing numbers. I've had those numbers. But like now for the last for the last 10 years, I can't tell you how many rock up to church on a Sunday to any church that I've been leading because I don't count because I've lived under that thing where, you know, my my self-esteem is my self-esteem is tickled by the fact that there's, you know, an extra 20 people in the service. Fort is a big one this Sunday. Whoa, that's great. Things must be going well or oh, no, we were 20 down. I feel devastated. What's wrong with my preaching? I've been there, done that, lived through all that silliness. So I don't count because that's not important. What I count is the 12th. Am I still highly invested in a few that I'm sending? The people we should be counting is who are we sending? Who am I sending into mission? Who am I sending into into a lifestyle of really following Jesus and being impactful in their community? That's the only number I'm interested in, not who rocks up to a service or a gig or an event. That's so good. That is so good. Count who we're sending, count who's going out and doing doing stuff for the Lord, who's obeying the Great Commission. Don't count who's showing up. Count who you're sending out. I love that. That's such a challenge. And it provides Rich a perfect segue, actually, because we're talking about sending young people out or going out with young people on on short term mission trips. I wonder if you could just like briefly before we get into how we do that with young people, you could talk about your experience either as a young person yourself, but also as a youth leader taking young people away of doing short term mission and how I'm really interested to know how doing that short term mission as a young person or as a youth leader formed you in such a way that it envisioned you for long term overseas mission. Yeah. So I was maybe 13 or 14 when I went on my first mission trip to Poland. My dad was running European missions for Elon. And he invited me to come and also said I've got to pay, which was like, well, I got a minute. I'm 13. What do you mean? I've got to pay. Isn't that your job? And but my dad, the Yorkshire man, you know, you have to come. You have to. It laid the responsibility. So I started to pray about, you know, just asking God for that financial miracle for me to be able to go. And amazingly, without any advertising or any Facebook message or any prayer letter, I'd really like you to pray for this thing, but also could you give some money without any of that? Without any of that, a family friend came and gave a gift to me of 100, 100 pounds. That was enough to cover my cost to go on this mission trip. And I went out to Poland with my dad and this team and we preached the gospel in a bunch of places across Poland. And I just saw God doing amazing things. I saw miraculous healing. I saw incredible salvation. I saw the hunger in people to explore who Jesus was. I saw poverty. I saw abuse. I saw deprivation on, you know, chaos on the streets. And it just opened my eyes to a global context, a global picture that that that I'd never seen before. And I felt so alive in my faith as I stepped into mission that it was completely transformative. And from that moment on, I knew that I was ruined. All I ever wanted to do from that moment on is to go and share the gospel with people who'd never heard the gospel before. Now, my parents were brilliant in helping me contextualize that emotion, that feeling and that calling into a local scenario. So I came back home and I'm going, "Dad, I've got to go on the mission. If I've got to go on the mission, when can I go on the next trip?" And he goes, "Well, your school is your mission field." So it's from there that I'd, with his help, in my mom's help, I'd set up a Christian union and we'd start to share the gospel with our school friends. And that kind of, you know, blew up a little bit as well. And we started to do all these little groups. But as a young kid, 13, 14, 15, I was leading and sharing the gospel and going for it. And they heavily invested in me and my brother and sister. And, man, we made crazy mistakes. I mean, we did stupid, stupid stuff at these little meetings. And, you know, but they knew that they were growing leaders. So that was a real turning point. I knew how I was excited about mission out there on the field, but I was able to bring mission to where I was living. But the passion to go on adventure and to see new places, to bring the gospel to where the gospel hadn't been brought before was just totally running through my veins. So from that moment onwards, I was, "Where can I go? When can I go? What can I do? How can I get on a trip with my dad?" And that would remain right the way through my adult life until 37, where I actually went on to the mission field in the South of France. And, wow, what a feeling that was. Yeah. Yeah. My next question was going to be, you know, why is it valuable for us as youth leaders to take our young people away on an overseas short-term mission trip? But at least in part, you've answered that because by doing mission globally, you get envisioned for the possibility of mission locally. And I loved how you described. You went away, you saw God, you saw and experienced and were used by God to see amazing things happen and it envisions you for what you could do at your school and you started a Christian union. And so that's at least one reason to take our young people away on overseas mission trip because it envisions them for what they can do in terms of mission and reaching their friends in a local context. But what are maybe some of the other reasons that taking young people away on an overseas mission trip is a valuable thing to do, Rich? Yeah. I mean, when you are planted, when you're planting a church or leading a ministry in another country, it's a massive encouragement to that local context, to have people come in, to bring support, to bring encouragement, to bring prayer. It's quite lonely on the mission field. So whenever, Tim, for instance, you would rock up with a bunch of young people, but that was a massive highlight of our season and our time. And it would also raise the agenda of prayer and support both, you know, spiritually and financially as well for what we're doing. Because often when you're out in the mission field, it's a tough place. It's a place of battle, spiritually. And there's all sorts of prices that are being paid for a family. So for us as a family, when we were suddenly surrounded by, you know, 50, 20, 50, 100, whatever it was, young people coming to spend a week with us. My young people, just my children would just explode in faith because they were around other Christians that were encouraging them and inputting to them, praying into their hearts and minds. So it was massive for us. There were major highlight moments. It came with some problems, of course, in that in reality, when you're in there for such a short period of time and you can't speak the language, there's only so much you can do. So it's often, it's often practical, isn't it? It's often practical stuff you can do, you know, you can you can serve people. You can fix stuff. You can paint stuff. Yes, you know, because, yeah, unless you're going to an English speaking country, you know, the amount of evangelism that you can do in that in that sense is limited. But what I'm really encouraged to hear you say, though, Rich, is, you know, I often think with short term mission trips, and I think it is probably true that you go with the mindset like we're going to serve this group of people in this nation or in this community wherever it is. But usually what happens is that God does more in you than he does in them. As a result of you going and participating in the mission of God in that way. But I'm really encouraged to hear you say, actually, no, you know, as much as it's of benefit for the young person, it really does benefit those who are out on the field as well, even if that's just the encouragement of having a bunch of people there who were cheering you on and just helping you out with a few things, you know, it just lifts your spirits a little bit in that what can be a lonely and isolated place. So it so it does benefit the local ministry and the local missionary as well when we when we go and serve. It's so I was just driving yesterday through the Basque country with my my my family and my two eldest who are now twenty and nineteen were reflecting upon having those young people come when they were little kids. Oh, really? Just yesterday. Yeah, just yesterday, mate. They were saying what an amazing week that was. And and now, being that age, they were talking about how good it feels to be encouraging other kids who are on the mission field. We just spent a year traveling around the traveling around the world as a family, basically on one long short term mission trip. So we've been to about, you know, 15 different countries. And and as a family, we've just tried to minister to those leaders and their families, their kids, wives, husbands, children, leaders, team, you know, and just tried to do what you guys did for us when we were doing this. And my kids have really invested in trying to impact those leaders, kids, because that's what happened when you guys were around them. So it does leave a legacy that's that's very, very significant. I think we made the switch, which was important when when we had mission teams coming, we recognized this is our moment to really impact those who are arriving with us. And how can we share the gospel, inspire those young people in missional living? So what what they're experiencing here in France, when they're with us, how can they take that back to the UK or wherever they're coming from? Yes, because that was what happened to me when I was doing mission one hour as a kid. So I wanted other young people to have that same life lesson going back. Yeah, that's really good. And, you know, we again we I was going to ask you about what are some of the key things we need to consider when when planning a mission trip planning to take the young people away on a short term overseas mission trip. And that was one of the things we did when we did that together. Wasn't it rich in in in hostages? We we did morning and evening sessions for the young people who we were bringing with us. So we obviously did things to serve the community. We obviously did things to serve the church locally and to serve the local mission and the mission field. But then we did stuff for the young people who were coming out to invest in them. So I remember I did all of the morning sessions and it was all we did basically it was a series about equipping those young people, how to share the gospel and how to share their personal testimony and how to answer tough questions and all that kind of stuff. And then you were taking the evening sessions and you were talking about mission and what it's like to church plan and, you know, and all of that kind of stuff. And of course, there was worship and prayer. So that's one of the things to consider, isn't it? It's of course, we're considering primarily how bringing a bunch of young people into this space, this nation, this community, wherever it is, can serve these these local people. But we also want to consider, OK, how can we leverage this opportunity to invest in the young people that we're that we're bringing it out? Yeah, I think, yeah, we were very intentional about that. And and that's because previous to those moments that had teams that have come and their expectations of what they wanted to achieve in the local space were just unrealistic. So, you know, the questions would be asked how many people have you led to the Lord this week by the senior pastor that sent the kids? Yeah. What did you do at the crusade night? And how many people did you pray for on the street? And and they just not how I was, you know, when I've got a bunch of foreign speaking young people let loose on my town because we're a relational church, it can wreak havoc. So, you know, I think when you're planning something like this as a youth leader, you have to have realistic expectations of what you want to achieve and talk that through very clearly with the the missionaries on the ground. And also, yeah, what the expectations are with the parents who are sending those kids and the senior pastor. So there's there's an accord of a vision and a recognition of what the end result is going to be. That's really, really essential. So, yeah, I think it's it's an opportunity when young people are abroad, some in a new culture, a new space, you you're able to, you know, to inspire them and excite them about their journey, their life, they're outside of their normal, normal lifestyle. Gives them opportunity to think. And I think that's a big, a big moment to be utilised. So, yeah, that was very intentional for us. Yeah, absolutely. So so give us, Rich, all of your best short term mission ship hacks. So I want to take a deep dive here on some of the practical implications. There's all sorts of things to consider, isn't there? That's all that I know. I know you love your health and safety, Rich. I know that's a big thing for you. So I'm sure you're going to want to sarcasm. I'm sure you're going to want to speak a little bit to that. So some of that stuff, yeah, like the transportation considerations, like maybe you could talk to us about some of the ministries and organisations that would help to put together a missions trip. Just give us the the practical, the practical stuff now about the actual how we do this. Yeah, OK, so the hacks. It's really, really important that when you're planning this thing, that you you are whinging it when you're abroad, does not work with a group of young people. You've got to have systems in place. So so and having tried to win it with young people, I know this from experience. You've got to have systems in place. So so organisation is key, systems are key, clear communication between you and the young people, you and the parents is going to be essential. The plan cannot be a neglected needs to be highly valued and you need to come at it with time. So getting into the conversation with the place that you want to go. And my recommendation is always to start small. So instead of like, OK, let's take out 50 young people to this location that you never been before and you have no idea what the infrastructure is. Go and check it. Go test it yourself. Go with your leadership team and see what there is on the ground to do. But test the thing out before you take a whole bunch of young people. Because when this goes wrong, it can really go wrong. So you've got to know for confident you're taking your young people into something that's going to be beneficial for them and that the local crew understand who's coming and what your expectations are and you understand their expectations. So the conversation at the front end is essential. Price points are really important as well. So you can try to run this as cheap as you possibly can, which is often what we do at a youth youth level is we, you know, we want to make this as affordable for as many young people as we can. But when that affordability is causing major problems, the other side in that you're having a half experience because you've cut so hard on the budget, so the food is terrible. There's no excursions to go explore the community. You know, all you're doing is centred around the church. The accommodation is everybody is for 12 days sleeping on the floor. You have to think through the price points and are they sustainable? Is that is that going to enrich some of his experience? Or is it going to really pull it down? It's not that it should be the most expensive thing in the world, but you've got to think through the cost-cutting exercise that we do, because often we just try to make it as cheap as we can. And then we place pressure upon the host to fix all those things. So you rock up. There's no transportation being organised because you're trying to do it as cheap as you can. So then the local church is busy trying to organise a thousand cars, which becomes a massive headache. And actually you won't. Yeah, in terms of like fundraising, like people in local churches, as in people in your local church, as opposed to the missionaries kind of side in your local church, like they love to give to young people doing mission and going overseas mission. Yeah, they do. If you do some fundraisers in your church, like you will find that people will give to that and you can subsidise your budget significantly through that. Yeah, 100%. And not only that, it's when you can fundraise within your local church. So you're able to help that budget, but also go in and be a blessing upon the church or the missionary project that you're going to, you know, support, help and, you know, bring young people to. Then that's massive, because, you know, there's teams that came out here and they would give us a gift that honestly kept us practically, you know, at the time that that would help us stay in the house as opposed to sleeping in the van in the field. So there's there's major things that you can do coming from a wealthy nation like the UK that can really help people in the mission field. So I think clear communication at the front end, systems, a tick list and then review. Hey, lots of people don't do the debrief, they don't debrief. So they go have this experience and then they don't really talk about with the local team there that they've been to and with the young people that they know what worked, what didn't work, what will you change for next time? It's just OK, that the Lord that that's on and finished. Now we've got the next problem. But also with that, it's it's the practical debrief. Yes, and that that's helpful. But it's so important to take time to really with the young people to really draw out all that the Lord did in them. You know, the thing that you described, well, I have, you know, God's just given me this appetite for mission. OK, Rich, well, what does that look like in your local school? You know, that's brilliant, mate. That is so important on the other side, isn't it? Yeah, and I think journaling that. So what often now when I'm going and speaking at places or doing little kind of mini events, I buy everybody a journal and I get them to write down what God's talking to them about. Of course, we can do that analog with pen and paper. But there's, you know, there's nothing wrong with getting young people to put to video diary their experiences and the highs and loads of things. And what I want on a missions trip is I want highs and lows. I want there to be mount and top moments, and I want there to be some pressure moments where things are uncomfortable and it's not meeting expectation and it's not just plush and wonderful and everything's a sing song because it's in the hard moments where you're being tested. You know, purposely, we took all our young people to the top of the mountain and push them if you remember. I do remember it well, yeah. So we wanted them to go through the journey of conquering stuff, overcoming stuff. Now, for some young people that you bring in their overcoming stuff on a daily basis, they've got resilience, you know, down. There's other young people that are having a much more yeah, chilled out experience in their youth where things are comfortable and they need to be pressured and and pushed a little bit. So, yeah, that debriefing things really good and journaling their experiences as they go, making a video as you as you do the experience together as a corporate group. But with the video thing, with that video thing, let's just make sure that often the video is just a highlight reel of what the young people, our young people did who were on the short term mission. Yes, we need to make sure that we remember to highlight actually what the mission does and the difference that they're making on the grounds because I see lots of videos come out, which are basically all look, there's Johnny that I gave 20 quid to who's helping that poor person. And really, the story is about Johnny, not about the people in the locality. So I think for video editors and, you know, we need to think about how we tell the story of what's going on in the location that we're going to do mission. Yeah. And I guess there's a there's a couple of ways to get young people away on short term mission rich, isn't there? There is the kind of package holiday version, if you like, which is where you would work with an organization, say like, I know Urban Saints, for example, will do a go away to Mexico and build a house. And then you've got the DIY version, which is you've got a connection with a local missionary from your church. You you talk with them, you work it out, you make you do the plans and you take your young people and you you serve in that way. So those those are a couple of ways that that we can do it rich. I know that our time is up. And so I'm just going to ask you any any final thoughts, closing words that you'd want to say to youth leaders listening about taking your young people away on short term mission. Yeah, I do, as you've asked the question, I'll I'll definitely like to do that. I think that we need to remember that faith should be adventurous. This if your if your Christianity is boring, if your experience of leadership is boring and painful, and, you know, it's like you feel like you're going where going nowhere, doing nothing effective, then you need to rethink what it is that you do, who it is that you're investing in and where it is that you're going. I think that when you are walking with young people and with Christ into the mission field, whether that's at home or abroad, faith comes alive. It's supposed to be outside of the box of church meetings. We come together to celebrate God's goodness, but we go together to bring God's goodness to the world. And we spend too much time together, not enough time going. And the mission field is the moment to inspire young people and yourself to a life of adventure and faith. So you've got to get out there yourself and you've got to get young people out there. And, you know, I mean, for many years, I used my holidays to go and do mission trips. Because there was no other space in my diary, but I had to get out there to do it. So there's lots of things that can tie us down to the. There's nothing wrong with the regularity and normality of life. But these these watershed moments where you step outside of your bubble, really a great moment to see God turning up and showing off in different places around the world. Educates your heart and, you know, enriches your spirit and pushes you deeper into your faith. And without it, I think that, yeah, I don't know who I would be. It's been such an important part of my life. A lot of people are deconstructing right now when you are out in the marketplace, sharing the gospel. You're only ever constructing a beautiful story of who Jesus is to people around you. So questions are super important, but we've also got some answers that we can share with people. Yeah, Rich, it's so good. Thank you. Thank you so much for your time today. But more than that, thank you to you and then to your family for your life, your life of mission. You you constantly inspire me, Rich. I mean, that sincerely, you're absolutely the real deal. You're living it out there, you know, day in day out. And you remind me that as I get older, it's no excuse for for, you know, a mundane Christianity, but that I can continue to be obedient to God when things feel scary. And I can continue to to use that old story to to step out of the boat and walk with Jesus on the water, even as family responsibilities increase. And, you know, all of that kind of stuff, we can still do that. And your life and your family inspire me in that rate, Rich. So thank you so much. And thank you for joining us on the podcast. Tim, it's been an absolute joy to speak to you, mate. I loved every second. Fantastic. And to all of you guys who are listening, just thank you. Thank you for what you are doing to serve young people where you are. It's it's so important. It's so important what you're doing to invest in the lives of young people. And our hope and our prayer is that this conversation would have inspired you in your own walk with God, but also would maybe inspire you to think about taking your young people away on an overseas mission trip. Maybe this is something that just you've never done before, maybe it feels scary. Maybe it's not on your radar, but we want to encourage you to think and to pray about it as a result of this conversation. It's talking about taking your young people away. Can't wait to see you at the Limitless Festival from the 5th to the 9th of August on Stafford Showground. It may not be Hossagore in the south of France, but it's going to be just as sunny. I believe in it in faith. So limitlessfestival.co.uk is where you can get your tickets for that. Keep going. Don't give up, guys, because what you are doing serving young people is so very important. God bless and we will see you next time on the Limitless Leadership Podcast.