Ryan Skoog | Lead with Prayer: Lessons from the Global Church

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey everybody, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm your host, Dr. James Spencer, and I'm happy to welcome Ryan Skoog. He's the author of Lead with Prayer and also the president of an organization called Venture. And so we're going to have kind of a wide-ranging discussion today about his business, his ministry work, about prayer, and about the global church. So Ryan, welcome to the program, man. It's great to have you here. Hey, I'm so excited to be here. This is awesome. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself. We talked a little bit in the pre-interview just about the different ways that your businesses are kind of structured and how you do what you do. So maybe talk a little bit about what Venture is, and then how all of it sort of supported, funded, how it all works together. Yeah. Yeah. So when I was 18, I got started into mission work by smuggling Bibles into China. Like that's what you had to do early before smartphones and got apprehended by the police and had these miraculous rescues and eventually met a guy named Brother Moses. And he had been beaten 100 days straight in front of the prisoners of his prison for his faith. And, and they, uh, literally they bring up in front of them and they say, deny your faith in Christ. And he, he would just with tears in his eyes say, I can't, he's done too much for me. And I, I met Brother Moses as an 18-year-old and this guy had more joy in his eyes than anyone I'd ever met. And I thought, this is a saint. This guy had been beaten and down more than anyone I've ever met and had more joy than anyone I ever met. I'm hooked. Like I want to serve the global church. And I grew up in a family that, you know, kind of a travel family. My dad started a travel company and then my brother started a travel tech company and I started one. You kind of have to start like a company to show up at the dinner table is the culture of our home. And my, my dad never took us to Disney world, even though we, you know, had passes all around the world, we went to refugee camps and we went to, you know, places in gnarly, gnarly areas. So out of that, I just was hooked on wanting to see God's kingdom break out in like the really difficult, crazy places. And the word venture, it means to go to a difficult or dangerous place. And, and for us, we, we define that by the three uns. So we would go to places that are unsafe, unreached and unresourced and unsafe. When I say unsafe, we're talking war zones, persecuted areas. We've had seven of our partners killed for their faith. Even just one of several months ago, brother Thunkam, another one was, was tortured and like put in stocks, like a 16th century torture device. I mean, the, the real, real stuff. Another 51 have been arrested in the past two years. Like the, you know, so really unsafe areas. And then we go to the, uh, you know, like areas where 80% of a village would be trafficked and, and we'll see God's kingdom break out and now 0%, you know, that kind of thing. And then we go to unreached and when I say unreached, like hinterland places where up in the Himalayas and, and, uh, places where if a woman is having her period, they think that she's cursed by the gods and they kick her out of the village and they're sacrificing animals to rocks and trees while the kids are still starving. I mean, just crazy, crazy out there places. And then when I say, uh, unreached, unfortunately, only 1% of Christian giving goes to the unreached. So if it's super bad and they've never heard Jesus and virtually no one's giving there, that's where we want to be. And, and we're seeing the kingdom of God break out. We've seen over 15,000 house churches planted and those, those house churches have risen up and stopped trafficking and rescued thousands of girls out of trafficking and gotten meals, like 85 million meals to people through farming and feeding and, you know, training and feminine hygiene, like we're talking about where women are not being kicked out. So just transforming villages, some villages where so many people became Christian that the brothel in the town shut down because of lack of demand because the reformation that happened in the village. So just beautiful things. The kingdom of God in these tough places is breaking out. And even, uh, Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, they have a center for global Christianity and they've been tracking people, how, how the movement of Christianity around the world and missiologists are saying, we're not seeing, numerically, we're not seeing the largest movement movement towards Christianity in our lifetime. We're seeing the largest movement towards Christianity in the history of the church. Like this is, we're living through the largest and most explosive growth the church has ever seen in the history of the church. And it doesn't feel like that all the time in the West. You feel a little bit of a dimming light or something. But, uh, as one of my academic missiologists people crassly said, just remember, we're crushing it around the world, man. We're crushing it. And, and so that's, I, I love being able to be a part of this because I see firsthand, um, I've been collecting stories from our partners and matching them up with the chapters of the book of Acts. And I've got a story for almost every single, uh, chapter in the book of Acts, a story from one of our partners that matches similarly. And so it's like, it is happening all around us. And so that's, that's the venture side. And then I'm also a business owner. So I kind of split my time, uh, own, uh, several travel technology companies and uh some other, uh, you know, like in the food service and things like that. A little bit of venture capital, if you will, like a mini, very, very small, but our businesses cover all the admin adventure so that when people give a hundred percent of it goes straight to the programs and projects and partners that I was telling you about. And so I kind of split my time back and forth between both of those and just seeing God do unbelievable things. And, and uh venture, it actually started as a, like early days, it started as a bike ride. My, a friend of mine in college, he was in college. I'm just out of college and he goes, dude, because everybody said dude back then. He's like, dude, you know, right? He said, let's, let's uh let's bike across the country and raise money for hurting kids and missionaries. And I was like, Oh man, I had no idea you're a cyclist. He goes, Oh, I'm not. And I was like, do you, do you even have a bike? He's like, nah. And I was like, do you, do you know how to raise money? Do you, do you have any money? He's like, no, no, no. I was like, when do you want to go? And he's like, two months and you know, I, I helped to organize it. He went on with some friends and it raised like $16,000, which to us, I mean, that could have been a million bucks. Yeah. Yeah. It was huge back then. Yeah. Whoa, you know, this is epic. And um and got, by God's grace, you know, I was, I was starting a company right around that time, uh, my first company. And, uh, and so as the company would grow, a venture would grow and a guy named Don Miller who wrote this book, Blue Like Jazz, he went on one of our tours and wrote about it in his next book and that took off. And so it just started, you know, those tough things for tough places. And uh so it's just on an adventure that never ever planned that God had. And it, it's just been wild. So that 16,000, I think it's raised over $65 million now. So it was something that God's just really taken off. I never would have thought it would kind of become what it is, but it, it's uh, it's been a really, really wild ride to see that happen. How do you identify the places you end up going? Um, you know, I, yeah. Super, super good question. Um, so we have what's called an unscore for different regions around the world. And, and we, we give an unscore. So how unsafe is it? How unreached is it? And we partner with, you know, whether it's, we look at state department databases, Joshua project databases, we'll look at, um, it's a pretty academic, we have a, a PhD from Princeton who is our director of international programs. She taught at Columbia. Um, Ben Bernanke was one of her colleagues, just an absolute global global genius kind of person. Um, you know, white, white papers on international tax law and all these things. And so she academically helped us create, um, this is, she's almost done with her second doctorate, uh, this

And share with people, like, hey, the worst places are getting the least amount of money. Like, we should really change that. And so, and for us, it's not just about Venture, our organization. Like, if we can get the word out for all the other ones and, you know, when you work in the tough places, everyone's just like, how can we work together? Like, it's not competition. There's not any of that kind of stuff that you could see in other ministries or nonprofits. It's just like, you're here? You care about these people, too? Let's go! You know, and so I tell people, where we work, they don't even know what a denomination is. And so, like, you'll see Catholic bishops working with, you know, just village pastors. And it's just beautiful. Persecution in some ways helps mitigate a lot of the other challenges that you would see in the Western church. You know, it's fascinating you talk about that. I've been teaching through Revelation. And so you kind of hit these different points in the, you know, you're going through the seven letters. And one of the things I've kind of realized this time teaching through it is that, you know, the Jews and the Christians were often viewed as the same during that period of time. Like, the Christians were viewed as a Jewish sect. But as we go through the book of Revelation, you start to see these different hints that the background is shifting and the Jews are really distancing themselves further and further from Christians because they had dispensation from Rome not to participate in all these different, you know, pagan worship ceremonies. And they could avoid persecution in that way and kind of throw it all on the Christians. And so that just comes to mind as you talk about, you know, that persecution does forge a community because it really demonstrates, hey, we're all in this together. You know, the differences stop mattering. They really do. It's, you know, you got two factors. One, most of where we work, they're illiterate and won't be literate in our lifetime. That's just the reality. And so we practice disciple-making movement model where it's, you know, house churches that plant house churches and people have audio Bibles and they memorize 60 stories of the Bible. And they say it's better to memorize 60 stories and obey them than to know the whole thing and not obey it. And so it's a real obedience focused. And people like Esther, she's 26, hiking through tiger infested jungles, goes to a village, uh, starts training in feminine hygiene and then starts sharing the gospel. And she prayed for a five-year-old and an eight-year-old boy who were both crippled. And they both get up and start walking and the whole village gets baptized. And I mean, that's the kind of stuff that's just crazy. That's happening. And, um, and you're, you're right. The persecution, we recently had, you know, you talk about Revelation and the martyrs. Um, and, and uh it was a Tertullian who said the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Well, the Brother Tho Cam was killed in November, uh, in the Northwest region of a, I'm not supposed to say which country, but in the Northwest region of one of these countries. And normally, like in that region, our team would see like 20 people come to Jesus a month and we're really excited about that, those 20. And he died, he was killed for his faith. And they even declared it was for his faith, for inciting people to believe in God was the, the, the actual, you know, claim against him. And they just, they shot him six times. And I thought, man, the church is going to retreat. And uh, one of my old crusty missionary mentors had said, you're going to see one of two things happen. Either the church will retreat or you're actually going to see a revival. And, and in the past six months, we've seen over a thousand people come to faith in Christ and hundreds of house churches started in that area, that very region where he was killed. And so it's like the church just rallied around his death and, and went forward instead of backwards. So it's just so inspiring. Yeah. That's pretty unbelievable. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text Guide to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. How do you, I mean, when I think about, you know, we're trying to do a lot with discipleship, even in the West, and we work a good bit with Eastern European churches that are in relatively dangerous areas, but nothing like what you're talking about. You know, this is where being a Christian isn't exactly have the social capital is a lot different than places where Christians are just being killed for being Christian. Right. Yeah. When you think about discipleship in a non-literate space, the only experience I have with it is when I was with Moody Bible Institute, we used to send these small solar-powered, almost indestructible audio players out to bush pastors in Africa. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And so, is that sort of what your, what your system kind of looks like? Well, yeah. So we'll do the audio Bibles. We have oral cultures are very, very focused on memorization. It's in a way we don't understand. Kind of the only explanation I have is pre-cell, like pre your cell phone use to memorize phone numbers of all of the people you knew. Yeah, yeah. And your mind could hold a ton of phone numbers. And now, like I can barely remember my own sometimes, you know, like that kind of a thing. And so oral cultures are bent towards memorization. So they memorize and probably have memorized more scripture than most Christians in America or in the West. And so that, that focus on memorization and the, and the audio Bibles, um, are just phenomenal. And, and you can, there's, there's audio Bibles, but there's also, um, discipleship material you can put on smartphones and, you know, you can go to a village in the middle of nowhere and they have, they don't have running water, but they have smartphones. Like, it's just weird this world that we live in. And I think it's by God's grace that we're able to get, uh, the gospel and get discipleship material and things, but we're, we're really focused on, uh, this, it's called DMM, Disciple-making Movements or CPM, Church Planting Movements. And, uh, movement training is instead of trying to figure out all the parts of the Bible you don't understand, work on obeying the parts you do. And, and I, and it's, you know, um, CS Lewis even said that. He said, it's not, it's not the parts I don't understand in the Bible I have a problem with. It's the parts I do understand I have a problem with because they're really hard. Like it's really difficult to do. And that's CS Lewis. So I'm like, okay, like that's really um Important to keep that obedience-based discipleship. So they want, uh, in, in the places we serve, they want every believer to do five things. They want every believer to be praying and in scripture one to two hours a day. They want every believer spending time with the lost weekly. Every believer is serving the poor and the needy. And the reason you're saying needy is sometimes people, you know, you could be a millionaire, but you lost your son. Like you're needy. You're not, you might not be poor, but boy, you're needy. You know, so it's poor and needy. Yeah. And then every believer is weekly getting together to doing something called a discovery Bible study where you, you walk through the word is in the center and you have a facilitator and that can rotate. And, and then you ask simple questions about what does this say about God? What does this say about people? How can I obey this? And you hold each other accountable to that. Gotcha. And next week, like how did you obey what you said you're going to obey? And it's real high accountability on that. And then, uh, and then every believer is training someone else to do these. And, and those five things, you know, our joke is that whether or not you're at a mega church or mass, are you doing those five things of disciple making and, and how you worship is much less important and how you practice the elements of disciple making. And most, most American or Western disciple making or discipleship is how you can be a disciple, but very little of it is training you how you can make disciples. Yeah. And, and it's like missing half of it. And, and actually I would say my, some of the greatest growth in my life is when I'm helping disciple someone else, not just trying to be a disciple myself. And you know, the woman at the well said, give me this water. He's and Jesus says,

Yeah, it just naturally comes up. Oh, man, I need to grow here, too. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you don't mind me geeking out for a second on this. Not at all. So Jim Wilder, he's a neurotheologian. And so he maps how theology affects your brain. And so we have these neural networks that are like our center for what I'll call the fruit of the Spirit, character and love and awe and worship and kindness and joy and all these things. And that area of the brain, you cannot see growth in that area without tapping into the relational part of your brain. Meaning that character growth is basically contingent on relationships. So, for example, you can't just tell someone a precept of courage. They have to see courage embodied and modeled in a person and have relationship with that person to truly see growth. And that's why fatherlessness is a huge issue. And that's why literally Jesus came as a person, had relationship and modeled. And it's as if our brains were wired for the incarnation. That's cool. And that's where ascetic Buddhism and all those other things, they fail because they don't have a relational aspect to them. Like our brains were wired that we had to have story-embodied relationship. And so we had to, for us to know God's love, we had to see a cross. That's the way our brains are wired. And so we had to see the incarnation. And so Jim Wilder's stuff is just fantastic on this. It plays into prayer as well. Bowling Green did a study on meditation versus prayer. And they had one group doing like... Have you heard about this? I've heard about this study, yeah, but go ahead. The listeners would have, maybe. Yeah, yeah. So Bowling Green, they had one group doing like, sand is soft and water is wet, all this mindfulness and meditation. And then they had the other group doing like, God is love and God is with me right now and Jesus is real and all these other things. And there's benefits to meditation. There's benefits to prayer that are really clear. Those benefits were 10X for the group that was praying to a relational God because those benefits can't really fully be ignited in their neural networks without the relational part. And so it comes to prayer, it comes to discipleship. It's all of that. And I think, to your point with AI, AI can give us all the principles, but it can't embody that courage in a person. And so, you know, God, he didn't tell us, be courageous. He gave us David and Goliath, the story. And then we can go, oh, okay. And then we can see someone in us, you know, I can see my brother Thunkham give his life for Christ. And I see courage. You know, like, have relationship and have a story. And then all of a sudden, those beautiful things happen. Sorry, that's like a tangent. No, not at all. It's great. I mean, I think I haven't read through the neurosciences stuff, so I'll have to check out Jim Wilder. I'm interested to read some of that stuff. I've stayed more in the cognitive psych space with embodied cognition and those kind of ideas. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just so, it's such a crucial point because I can remember, you know, I went to seminary and it's a pretty sanitized environment, right? You're sitting in a really nice classroom. It's usually air conditioned. If it's not, people are complaining. Right. You know, and so you're listening to a professor talk and the professors are great, but they're always on campus. Like you don't really interact with them much anywhere else. And so you have sort of this artificial space that's created where there isn't a lot of time for you to look out and see courage to use your example. Right. Like where's the college professor really demonstrating courage? Well, they're not often. Yeah. I remember in my systematic theology class, the first one I'd ever taken, we were talking about the sovereignty of God. And this gentleman from Africa kept saying that he didn't understand it. He didn't understand it. So the professor's finally like, why don't you understand it? And he tells this story about African soldiers who came in and, you know, abused his wife and his kids, left him for dead. And he's like, I don't understand the sovereignty of God. I'll never erase that from my brain. I mean, it sort of encapsulates and framed everything I did from theology that point on forward. Right. It was such a powerful relational story where you're seeing this guy, and he was an older gentleman. I mean, he was in tears telling the story. Yeah. And you're just like, that is what we're dealing with. That's how this stuff fits into life. And so I think there's something really crucial to what you all are doing because doing discipleship in context, in hard context, in difficult space is very different than the way we usually deal with it in the West, where we're doing it. It's not that hard things don't happen to people in the West. I don't want to portray that. No, no, no. Yeah. But oftentimes we have luxury that other folks just don't. Yeah. The one thing that's really hits me, because I've been in places where they're, you know, a couple hours from mortar rounds going off. We got evacuated with the Army showing up. Yeah. You know, like, you know, they're lighting the policemen on fire, like, you know, with gasoline and things like that. So, like, I've been there. And what I do daily is I remind myself that as I go to bed, our partners overseas are waking up and they're not safe. And when I wake up, I don't even think about whether I'm safe or not. You know, one of our partners, I won't even say her name. I'll just call her, I don't know, Sandy. But she's in a really difficult war zone. And many times, 11:30 at night, they bust into her house and they grab her cell phone and see what's on there. So we have to delete every communication we have with her and she has to delete on her side. And we work with her to move millions of meals and plant churches in this really difficult area. And like the idea that we don't even think about the fact that we wake up and we're safe. And we, you know, like, how often do you think about danger? And so that's something that I just live with because that's in my inbox and that's, you know, in our connections and when we go overseas. And so, yeah, I guess maybe what you're saying, and this is just thinking out loud, but maybe our theology would have a different bent to it if there was danger. You know, like if there's, you know, you know, like there's just stuff like that that hits. And so that's that's really what's been one of the great journeys in my life is this one question. And that's what if the church in the West were to sit at the feet of the exploding global church and say, can you teach us to follow Jesus? Not the other way around. Because we might have a lot of information in the West, but they embody these things of the scripture in ways that I need to learn. And that's what, that's actually what led to writing the book Lead With Prayer was because I, you know, the church is exploding and I thought, man, like what is the leadership principle? What's driving this? Like what? And there are some things about the disciple-making model where they're all disciples who make disciples. But the real driver wasn't the leadership principle. It was a prayer life. Yeah. And I was, you know, like, and when I say prayer life, like Roosevelt, our partner, who's serving in a war zone for three decades. I asked her about her prayer life. And she goes, Oh, I, when I was 18, I wanted to tithe my time. And I, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I wanted to tithe, but I had no money. So I figured the only currency I had was my time is what she said. So I started praying for two and a half hours a day. And that's what I've been doing the past 30 years. I was like, Oh, so when you say prayer and I say prayer, we're, we're talking about different things. Yeah. It's different. Yeah. You're on a different level there. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and so I came back and I realized I got a shelf full of leadership books on how leaders lead deep into their lives. Yeah. And, and really targeted. I don't have a single book on how leaders pray. Yeah. And, and so we, my buddy, Cameron Doolittle and Peter Greer, who runs Hope and Cam runs John Mark Comer's ministry. We went on a journey and interviewed over a hundred leaders around six different continents. And we, we did the whole gambit. So we did, you know, Francis Chan and John Mark Comer and Tim Mackey and Johnny Erickson Tada and John Ortberg and Mark Batterson, all these folks. We interviewed Christian billionaires. We interviewed megachurch pastors, and then we interviewed people in the war zones and we interviewed people planning churches in the Himalayas and people running banks in the middle of Africa. And we like, we hit the whole bit, you know, from business to, to leadership to, you know, ministry and pastors and everything in between. I didn't want anyone to say, oh, that's for them. And, and so, you know, I mean, we had two different billionaires we interviewed and they pray more than most pastors I've ever met. You know, like really, really powerful things. And, and we, we've stumbled upon an incredible discovery and that's that. I thought their prayer lives would be

It completely changed my life, learning to pray at the feet of these leaders. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide. Or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. What are some of the commonalities? Yeah, I'll give you like two or three real quick ones. The first one was friendship first. And what I mean by that is I thought they would be so good at just praying heaven down on earth, you know, like, and they were. I mean, they all did that. But the core of their prayer lives was friendship. And so, for example, Roosevelt, who I told you about, she took in her first war orphan when she was 16. And now we partner with her to care for about 5,000 war orphans. And she started, and she's in a war zone, but she starts her day. She goes, I just love Jesus. I just take a walk in the woods, in the jungle. And I'll look at a spiderweb and go, Oh God, it's so intricate. Can you, can you weave my heart that way? And she said, I just spend time with my friend Jesus. And then you go over and talk to Francis Chan. And he's like, Oh man, I've got all these pressures on my ministry and international. I just have to go take a walk with my friend Jesus and just be with him. And then I talked to a New York financier who's downtown Manhattan over hundreds of millions of dollars. At one point it was over billions of dollars of capital. And he puts these big blocks of time in his calendar that say waste time with God. And I was like, what? And he said, that's, it's a double entendre. You know, in his world, if you're not trading, you're losing money. You know, like time is money, man. You're wasting time. He says, but he said, but I put it there because that's what friends do. Friends spend time without agenda. They waste time with each other. And that was the foundation of the prayer, you know, several other pastors and folks who have just like, Oh, I just stop and talk to him throughout the day. Each day I just talk with my friend. I just have to be with God with no agenda. And so I just started, I started practicing that like just taking a walk and being with Jesus. And just letting him talk and asking questions like, How can I please you today? And who should I pray for today? And, and what, you know, all of those things, it was, it was like the disciples, man. They, every night they had these, what a campfire with Jesus. And they would be like, they said later that night, the disciples would ask him, Hey, you know, like where'd we miss you? And how'd, how'd we do today? And what, what was that? You know? And, and it was just this beautiful relationship and friendship. And Jesus said, I don't call you servants anymore. I call you friends. And he said, if you abide, then you're going to have fruit that remains. And, and so it's out of abiding. So that was the first one was the friendship first. That radically changed my whole framework of prayer and, and my relationship with Jesus. Even, even mother Teresa talked about when she, four times a day for very long periods of time, she'd go pray. And they'd say, Yeah. Do you remember that interview they had with her on that? It was just incredible. Yeah. And she goes, They're like, he's like, what are you doing? You pray. And she's like, not much. I, I just sit with my friend Jesus and I listen. And, and the, and the reporter was like, Oh, you listen. What does he say? She goes, Oh, not much. He just sits there with me too. And you know, it's just so cool. So that, that idea has been, I like on Sundays, I don't ask God for anything. I spend a whole prayer time just thanking him, being with him. I pretend that all my prayer requests have already been answered. And what would you say to God if all our prayers have been answered? You know, like. And, and so then on Wednesdays, I always do like that. It's always God, what's your prayer list today? You know mine. What's, what's yours? And I just try and listen. And I'll text people that come to mind and things like that. Like just listening. It's just beautiful. So that's the first one. The second one was I, I thought they would have just like, I just realized that they didn't have a prayer time. All these leaders we interviewed, they crafted a day with God. So there were morning habits and there were evening habits and there were midday habits and there were, you know, certain triggers. And there were, you know, once a week habits and like they really crafted a day with God. And that, you know, so like John Mark Comer, Dallas Willard, John Ortberg, these guys were, what is your morning Psalm? You wake up and the first thing out of your mouth is a Psalm and, and you just the word of God and prayer on your lips. And I've started rolling out of my bed onto my knees every day and, and just having that posture of surrender and saying, okay, Lord, I need you. I'm, you know, I can't do this without you. And it was just beautiful to have that type of posture and add those morning habits. And I'll take a walk. And then, and then like throughout the day, they would have, you know, the Pope who created the, the idea of having a church in a bell tower, Pope civil union, like in 605, he, he came up with this idea of like, yeah, I'm gonna have a tower and a bell in the center of every town. It's going to ring every hour and remind people that God's with them, remind people to stop and praise God, remind people. So like, like metaphorically, all these leaders we talked to had these bell towers in their day and some of them were crazy. Like Mark Batterson was like, when people annoy me, I take it as a bell reminder to pray. Yeah. And he says, he's just like, I pray all the time because people really annoy me. So like, it's just fun, you know, but like, like what is, what is your practicing the presence of God look like? How do you practice throughout the day? I have these prayer cards on my desk. We took the habits of all the different leaders that we interviewed and created a deck of prayer cards. Cool. And they're just like little simple things like God, remind me of your love in this moment. Make me a blessing to people here. Like just little sentence prayers and breathing prayers and you know, just throughout the day. So, and then what are evening habits? You know, our, our family, we take communion every night now and remember the body and the blood of Christ. It's been so transformative. It came out of a really dark time in our family and having to do with my daughter having these demonic nightmares. And we took communion and she didn't have them. And we took communion the next night and I was like, kids were Catholic. We're going to take communion every night. And you know, like, and, and we didn't do that for years and I can't tell you how transformative remembering the body and blood of Christ is, you know, that's cool. Or, or what's, what's your campfire with Jesus at night when you just kind of review the day with the Lord and, and how, how can I do, how can I please you, Jesus? Where, where'd I miss it? What'd you mean by this happening? You know, like all those disciple questions. And so crafting a day with God is so different. You just walk in with your friend throughout the day, not having your prayer time be done on your workout, on your, you know, it's not a box you check. It's leave the phone off the hook and, and be with them all day. And, and that's, that's way different, you know, than what I was doing personally. So those two are transformative. And then the last one was investing in prayer. One of the guys in Australia, he's like, he says, mate, where's prayer a line item in your budget? I was like, what? He says, Hey, if you value something, it makes it to the budget. And, and so in venture, we started doing 24 seven round the clock prayer centers in the different countries that we serve. And since doing those, we've seen unbelievable things like a thousand person mass baptism in a country where it was completely unreached. 26 unreached people groups were all present and the government tried to shut it down. And the, and the people leaders got together and said, if you shut this

Relics of that exist in the world. Still around, yeah. Oh yeah, no right to assembly, no more than nine people, you know, all these things. And yeah, it's crazy. So they'll put their lives at risk to have a prayer meeting. And I was like, wow, that's so inspiring. I will say I got a taste of this, what you're talking about. Yeah. Number one, I think that the comments on prayer are really great. I'm interested to get the book and read it. So Lead with Prayer is where I can find all that, right? Yeah. And we actually have a lot of the habits that we learned from the leaders. Yeah, you can download for free. leadwithprayer.com is the website. And we have the, you can get these prayer cards, the Decca cards, and you can get like a whole schedule to map out a personal liturgy and craft a day with God. Nice. And all those things. And stuff like how to do a prayer retreat and how to, you know, all these other different things that we learned from these leaders. Cool. Okay, so we'll put that link in the show notes. Sure. That's awesome. Because I think people really ought to, we wrote a book on prayer. Me and a buddy had a book that we wrote on prayer and we had edited chapters and different things like that. But we're such academic geeks that, you know, I said the challenge for me in writing a book on prayer is that I'm so much more prone to study than I am to prayer that, you know, it takes me time to get into prayer where it doesn't take me any time to get into study. If you, you know, set a, you know, book thick with footnotes in front of me, I'm like excited. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's just so much harder for me to get into. So that's taking me some time to sort of grow into a prayer life. And it's, it's kind of, it's been fantastic, but it's also been one of those challenges where it kind of is like, yeah, this isn't natural for me yet. You know, I'm still sort of disciplining myself toward it. Yeah. That's what, what's helped me is these prayer cards because it has all these different prayers that the early church fathers, they call liturgy, they called it a lattice to help the vine grow. And, and the idea was like these steps to help you grow to heaven kind of thing. And, and so these, I just, they have a couple of scriptures to read slowly, like Lectio Divina style, where you just read slowly five times and, and the global church always says, by the fifth time, it just starts getting interesting. You know, and we're the ones that like, by the fifth time it gets boring. I know it now. It's like, no, you don't know it. You know, you don't know it. It has to get in you, you know? And, and so these prayer cards, I'll just grab seven or eight of them and it helps you go from five minutes to half an hour, you know, as you start walking through praying scripture and, and, and uh some written prayers and guided prayers and uh you know, simple things like holding your hands down for 60 seconds and just letting go of the pieces of your life concerning you and then flipping your hands up and just walking through the fruit of the Spirit. Oh Jesus, help me to grow in your love. Help me to grow in your joy. Help me to grow in your peace. You know, these beautiful things like that, just interactive prayers like that have really, really helped me. Um, and praying through the Psalms, not reading through the Psalms, but praying through them. Yeah. It gives you the language of prayer. It gives you the language of calling out to God or rejoicing with God or, you know, I have my top 10 Psalms that is actually like top 30 because it keeps growing, you know, like, oh yeah, this is my favorite Psalm and this is my favorite Psalm, you know, but yeah, it's, it's beautiful. I will say that's definitely been one of those things that I've used because what I found was that I had to, for one, reading through the Psalms gave me that structure and like you're saying, the words to say. But then I started sort of transitioning from that to writing some of my own prayers out because I'm so much more prone to writing than I am to just thinking in my own head, you know? And so I'd write some of those out. And I still have that sort of practice that I'm doing and trying to continue to grow in that. But it's, I've sort of, like I usually tell people, I'm adapting to my strengths, right? You know, I'm just going to lean into the geek and that's gonna, you know, that's gonna kick off the prayer life and then it'll take on a life of its own later. But for the moment, I got to kind of lean in here because I don't know how else to do it. No, those are, those are runways, man. They're like runways for the plane to take off. As far as like, I start liturgically and I end up extemporaneously, you know? And so I start reading a Psalm and then I'll hit some line of it and I'll go, oh God, right now, this is what I feel like. You know, can you meet me in this moment? You know, it's just beautiful. So yeah, there's like runways to get the, help the plane take off to connect with God. And I love that. I write prayers all the time. In fact, one of the, so Terry Looper, he's this Christian billionaire guy that his company that he started, that he owns, I think he just sold it, but he owns, it's the size of the GDP of Belize. Like that's how big his company is. And, and, and so like, if someone's like, oh, I'm really busy. I'm like, This guy really finds a way to pray. You can do it. You know, I wouldn't, He's probably busier than you are. Yeah. Yeah, I'm guessing. He kind of, you know, and then, or as Peter Greer would say, so we're busier than Jesus. That's why we can't pray. You know, like Jesus found time, you know, it's just so good. But he, he has this thing. He said, write out a prayer that you can pray every day until it goes from your head to your heart. Yeah. And he said, it's like, like water dripping on a rock, eventually burrowing a hole from your head down to your heart. And he said, there's a prayer that I prayed for 10 years and I feel like it's just now starting to be true in my life. And, and it's just beautiful. There's something about that repetition. Yeah. I know people say the definition of insanity is like doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And I always counter that like, mostly, but if you're chopping down a tree, you do the same thing and then something happens. Right. Yeah. Or, or as, you know, you study revelations and it said that there's a bowl in heaven filled with the prayers and when it gets full, it tips out on the earth. Well, that's praying something over and over and over and over persistent. And then something different happens. Yeah. Something different happens. Yeah. That's very good, man. Hey, we're coming up on the end of our time together and I usually ask guests kind of a closing question. So I'm gonna modify it a little bit for you because I'm kind of interested in what you think. So usually the question I ask is, what do you think that the church could do to be more faithful in being and making disciples? That's the normal question. So what I'm wondering is if we can kind of tailor that to your global experience and say, what do you think the Western church really needs to do? Start to think about, attend to, that would help them help the Western church be more faithful in being and making disciples, maybe even in relation to the global church. Like, how do you, how do you see the Western church's strengths maybe hindering us from moving ahead as disciple makers and becoming disciples in ways that we could really learn from that global church? There was a six figure study that was done on the prayer lives of leaders in America. It was paid for by one of the biggest foundations in the country and one of the most reputable polling firms. And the data came back and it was so bad that they never published the study. And I got to see it. And the guy who paid for it said, this is one of the most depressing studies I've ever seen. And the deal is, is that we're not praying in the West. We're, we're just not. And the Christian leaders are not building cultures of prayer or talking about prayer. And yet in Timothy 2.1, Paul said, I write this letter to you, first of all, to urge you to pray. And so here, Paul discipling Timothy. And the first thing he says, and here's why I'm writing this letter to you is I'm urging you the number one thing as a disciple is you got to pray. And, and so the one thing that came out of the study was the more education, the more leadership and the more experience that someone had, the less they prayed, not the more. And, and I, I genuinely think the scripture that says if my people humble themselves and pray and, and humble yourself is a, is before the prayer part. Yeah. Because if you think you got it, you don't need to pray. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And, and so you got to humble yourself

Jesus promised if we abide, we're going to see fruit. And the global church abides because they have nowhere else to go and they see fruit. So that's something I would probably, it's probably one of the big dreams of my life is I could be helpful in the spark of seeing prayerful leaders form cultures of prayer. And I think that would change everything. Fantastic answer, Ryan. Really, that's amazing. Thanks so much for being on the show, man. Like I said, yeah, it really has been a great conversation. I'm glad Billy Hallowell connected us. It's just for the listeners viewpoint. Billy Hallowell, who's on, he's a journalist. He does a lot of work with CBN and various other Christian stations, but he connected Ryan and I. And so it's just been a real pleasure to meet you. This is the first time we're talking, but this has been a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I love it. And I, yeah, any other time I'd love to be back. I love these conversations and so much fun to talk about. We didn't get to dive into it, but there's a whole neuroscience of prayer that'd be really fun to dive into as well. I'd actually love to have you back to talk about that. That'd be fantastic. Yeah. Yeah, love to. Man, this is awesome. We'll get it scheduled because, yeah, those are things that I think are really crucial and it's an area that, I mean, like I said, prayer is one of those areas that I've always struggled with. I came to Christianity late, didn't really understand a lot of those disciplines. Studying came easy to me. Reading the Bible came easy to me, you know, but even obedience to some degree came easy to me, but prayer never really has. It's an interesting sort of one of those where I'm just like, you know, it's an ongoing process for me. So I'm talking about prayer is one of those things that I really love to do. And so love it. I'm excited. Give the website one more time. We'll include it in the show notes, but. Yeah, so the organization that serves the global church is Venture.org and then leadwithprayer.com is where you can get the free resources. And yeah, in the book you can get anywhere. It's, I think it's in seven or eight different countries around the world now. And it's, we're just blown away by the reception of it. So, yeah. Very cool. All right, everybody, we're going to put those in the show notes. I'd recommend you go check them out. Check out Ryan's organization and check out the book Lead With Prayer. Check out the website, Lead With Prayer, and we'll catch on the next episode of Thinking Christian. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Hey there, it's Nicole Yunus from the How to Study the Bible podcast. And I'd love to invite you to join us as we weekly discover a passage of God's word together from beginning to end, from principles to practicals. We are here to make sure that God's word is powerful and relevant to your life. If that sounds like something you're looking for, I would love to invite you to subscribe. You can go to lifeaudio.com and search How to study the Bible, and we'll see you there.