Training and Equipping Church Planters

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Tony Merida: Welcome to Churches Planting Churches, a podcast on the theology and practice of church planting. I’m your host, Tony Merida.

Tony: Paul told Timothy, “You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.” Paul clearly prioritized training other men to be equipped for ministry in order to establish and to shepherd healthy churches. Most church planters and pastors understand the importance of second Timothy 2 Ministry, but not all are clear on how to do it. When you throw in the challenges of training others on limited [00:01:00] resources, or in hard places, or in the face of other unique, contextual issues, then many how-to questions arise. With me on the podcast today to talk about training and equipping church planters is Philip Moore. Philip serves as the Acts 29 director of Europe as well as the vice president of training. He and his wife Rachel live in France, and they have five children.

Tony: Philip, welcome to the podcast.

Philip Moore: Good to be back on, thanks Tony.

Tony: Yes, sir. So I don’t know how Philip Moore and I can limit a conversation to 30 minutes, but we’re going to try to do it today, especially on this subject because we love to talk about and to do training. Philip, as I indicated on the brief bio there, is in this new role in Acts 29 as vice president for training. Recently we had a wonderful meeting in Paris [00:02:00] at his church building with individuals from around the world. We had guys right from Dubai, Australia, all over from parts of the states, and just talking about how to train and equip church planters in the various ways in which we hope to be training guys in Acts 29. So, very excited to talk about this subject with you, my friend.

Philip: Thank you, Tony. Yeah, Columbia as well. You forgot to mention Columbia.

Tony: Yeah, Columbia, yeah. We cannot forget our Columbian friends, yes.

Philip: That was amazing.

Tony: It really was amazing. Philip and I have been able to do some teaching together in Ukraine. We were together in Belgrade, but that was the first time we were actually in your ministry location together in Paris. So I just told Kimberly a couple of days ago, I think we should go to Paris every December. Whether or not there’s a meeting, I think we’re just going to plan on doing that, Philip, every December.

Philip: Hey, we’ll you’re very welcome, as always.

Tony: Tell the listeners a little bit about yourself. You’ve been on the podcast before, but briefly just how you came to faith and your journey into church planting.

Philip: So, I was born in a Christian family, mom and dad both Christian, my brother was a Christian, my grandparents were Christian. So it was really a generational thing where the faith was passed down. And of course, that’s another way of training as we think about it in terms of families. The ways in which families train is very similar in the ways in which churches train, and so their face was passed onto my by my parents. [00:03:30] And they trained me and brought me up in the ways of God, and so I came to faith really quite early on. I was baptized as a teenager, and then had quite a linear path through life in terms of growth as a Christian. No major periods of rebellion, but the grace upon grace of discovering what God was about and how we could serve him in his world and pursue holiness and pursue mission. And so I’m just very blessed from that point of view. [00:04:00] And then in terms of ministry, when I was in a really good church at university, the guy who was leading that church, Vaughan Roberts, and some of you will know him, he took a real interest in me and really set me on a path towards ministry. He was the guy who made me think that I could perhaps have a role in God’s church. He read the Bible with me one-to-one, he showed me what it looked like to minister God’s word faithfully. He’s an excellent expositor of God’s word. He showed me what it’s like to lead a team of people on mission [00:04:30]. In fact, I think I learned more in that one year with him than I ever learned by the college, which is a very interesting point to take home as we think about training. And so, after that I went into sector employment. I was a French teacher for nine years, and then after that nine period, I hope I matured as a man and as a person, as a husband, as a father. By then, at age 33, moved to France and started this adventure here.

Tony: the listeners will pick up on that beautiful Irish [00:05:00] accent, which…

Philip: That’s right.

Tony: I covet. But you also speak fluent French as well.

Philip: That’s right.

Tony: You are an educated man. Vaughan Roberts, when I hear, when I think about you and Vaughan Roberts, we were on a bus in Berlin going from the airport to the hotel where Vaughan was going to be our speaker.

Philip: That’s right.

Tony: And I had the privilege of sitting the row behind you and Vaughan, and we just started talking about what we were preaching on and we started talking about [00:05:30] the psalms in particular. And you had just preached on Psalm 25, on the soul lifted up to God.

Philip: That’s right.

Tony: Do you remember that conversation?

Philip: I do, yeah.

Tony: And I just, that was so cool. And that was before I even know you and Vaughan had that kind of mentoring relationship, and so, you know, and it also makes me, well one, appreciate just that investment, that’s what we’re talking about on this podcast. But [00:06:00] I can also see the similarities, having watched Vaughan expound the text so well and knowing what a gifted expositor you are also. It is so important to learn preaching by listening to and being under good preaching, right?

Philip: That’s right. And it was really key for me to have that relationship, both in terms of the example he was, but also in the way that he poured into my life. And that’s something we’re going to be talking about, I think, all the way through this conversation. It’s not abstract, it’s [00:06:30] not theoretical.

Tony: Yeah, you’re right. Talk to us a little bit about maybe from that point on, your trajectory in training pastors and planters. How did you first get involved in that and to leading you up to where you are now?

Philip: Yeah, good question. So I came to France as a pastor, not essentially as a planter, and the church called me and the church that had called me had been a church planted quite recently, in the previous 25 years. And actually had never forgotten that it was a church [00:07:00] plant, I had never forgotten that it was planted by somebody. I think that’s a key thing for all churches to remember that they were once church plants, and then that’s the way in which they continue the path of church planting, by remember that in fact that’s where they used to be. I think the same principle is true for leaders and for disciples, if we remember that we weren’t always a disciple but became a disciple by God’s grace, then we’ll be making other disciples as we reach out in other branches of the mission. And if we remember that we weren’t always a leader in God’s church, but that we became a leader in God’s [00:07:30] church by God’s grace through the investment of other leaders, then in a similar way we’ll keep on [inaudible 00:07:37] more leaders.

But at any rate, the church that I arrived in, it was a church that had not forgotten that it was a church plant, and was keep on church planting. And one of the church plants that we tried to do was a church plant that I was involved with, and actually it failed. And so we were facing a situation where the person we’d asked to lead the church plant turned out not to be fully equipped to do that. That wasn’t his fault, that was our fault. We asked him to do something that he [00:08:00] wasn’t actually equipped to do. So we were sitting thinking how can we do this better? So that was when I got in touch with Acts 29 and asked them to help us think through assessing, and training, and coaching, and supporting church planters. Through that they asked me if I would not be interested in doing the church planting assessment. I did that and then started to plan the church. And that was my first step in church planting. And then because of that experience, and because I was so convinced about the worthwhile nature of what Acts 20 was doing, [00:08:30]

I began to want to do that through the association that I was working with, and through the other evangelical groups that I was involved with in France. France is very small in terms of Evangelical populations, it’s less than 1%, but it’s actually quite strong in Evangelical collaboration. And so the things that we were doing in and around [inaudible 00:08:46] attracted some attention and people began to ask me to train other church planters in a way that was totally surprising to me, and unexpected. And so we started training church planters, and we did two courts of two years [00:09:00] of training a small group of church planters to plant or to start thinking differently about the plants that they were going to be involved with. And those were far from perfect, but they were also great experiences. And so we began to use the things that we were learning from everywhere, but not away from Acts 29 training church planters and sending out church planters. And by God’s grace, those churches are still in existence and prospering.

Tony: Now, Philip, I know that you love second Timothy 2, or I think as you say 2 Timothy 2 [00:09:30]. What strikes you most about this passage?

Philip: The first thing is the first verse. So 2 Timothy 2:1, “Be strong in the Grace that is in Christ Jesus.” Now that is absolutely key because what we often do is we jump [inaudible 00:09:45] and we get going, but in fact the relationship between the trainer, who is Timothy in this context, and the people he’s going to train depends on the prior relationship that Timothy has with the Lord Jesus Christ. If Timothy is going to do [00:10:00] what is impossible, which is 2 Timothy 2, then he’s going to need to be in a vital relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs to be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and he needs to do it in a conscious and determined way. And that means reflecting on the Gospel, living the Gospel, meditation on the Gospel, working the Gospel into your life. Because that’s what it means to be strong in the grace that is Christ Jesus. And so that is the first absolutely essential part, knowing the God of the Gospel in the Lord Jesus Christ. [00:10:30] And then being convince that the Lord Jesus Christ is not a local [inaudible 00:10:34] but a cosmic Lord. And that means that if you work that through to the end, if you work that theologically, then you’ll come to the point where Jesus can’t be just the person you worship in your local church, but he must be worth worshipping all over the world, and he must be worth training people so that they can take that message to the ends of the earth, and that must be true now but also in the future. [00:11:00] And so the eternal cosmic nature of the lordship of Jesus Christ impinges on your mind in such a way that you can’t think other than to train people to take this forward and further away. And so you want to be somebody who’s been trained, who’s training others, and you want those people that you train to be able to train others so that geographically and in time the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ can reach out. And so that’s Timothy verses one and two as I see it. And so then after that, you work out ways contextually that you can actually put into practice this 4G [00:11:30] ministry of 2 Timothy 2.

Tony: That’s excellent. That’s excellent. What are some of the holes you see in the way we train church planters today? How can we do better?

Philip: Well, I think that you’ll see those holes if you compare them with the kinds of best practices that you see, both in the Bible but also around the world as you look at what happens. I remember very vividly being out in the Ivory Coast, we’ve got some excellent stuff going on with a guy called Ben. I was watching him as he planted the church, and if you want to think about best practices, and if you then want to think about what we don’t do well in our different contexts, this is what I would say. He was determined to put into practice four things, four key elements in terms of training the people that he was in touch with.

And that didn’t matter if they were already Christians, not yet Christians or people he was training for leadership. [00:13:00] And those four key elements, as I saw them, were proximity, intensity, regularity, and intentionality. So he was always with the people that he was training. He wasn’t remote, he wasn’t doing it from an ivory tower, he was alongside. He was in amongst, he was getting to know them. They were seeing him live, he was seeing them live. They were in proximity. There was a great deal of regularity, so it wasn’t just one-off [00:13:30] it was week-in, week-out. It was day-in, day-out. His context in the rural Ivory Coast lent itself to that because he was essentially available perhaps in ways in the west we aren’t always. But the sense of regularity was really interesting to me. Because he was in proximity, because he was able to do it regularly, there was a sense in which the progress was visible week on week and day on day. And the things that they were learning, they were being tested on, and asked on, and put through the paces on in a really regular way. There was intentionality about it, [00:14:00] so he was really clear what the next step was for each of these people, and so he was thinking to himself, “What does this person need to learn in order to move to the next point?” So those kinds of elements are really key, I think, to the kinds of holes that we could have and some of the best practices that we can develop.

Tony: That’s excellent. I think you see that, don’t you, in 2 Timothy with Paul and Timothy’s life of the, you know, Paul [00:14:30] took Timothy with him, there was that regularity. The way he calls him his son, his child, as a term of endearment.

Philip: And he was able to say to Timothy all the way through, “You know my life, you know my practice, you know what I did, you know why I did it.” In other words, when they were thinking through Paul’s doctrine, they were looking at his doctrine through the lens of his practice, they weren’t separating out Paul’s church planting mission from Paul’s church planting theology. And so because they could see those two things in such clear relation, when [00:15:00] Paul is talking to Timothy, we should never forget that he’s talking as a church planter to a church planter. He’s talking as a pastor to a pastor, but what you shouldn’t ever forget that Paul’s drive and mission and ministry was to the end of planting churches, right to the very end of his life when he wanted to get to Spain to plant a church there. And so Timothy was never thinking, “Paul is talking to me as a pastor, but not as a church planter.” As if church planters were a different kind of category. And so when Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4, “Do the work on a vast list. [00:15:30] Fulfill your ministry.” Timothy would hear that in terms of mission, church planting, etc., etc. So I just think that’s a really key facet of what’s happening in that relationship that we have to read back into Timothy 2:2 in a very legitimate way.

Tony: That’s good. That’s good. When you think about seminaries today, what are some weaknesses? In that paradigm you’ve laid out, proximity, intensity, regularity, intentionality, seminaries can do some things well, right, in training? But there are going to be some gaps, and they know that. [00:16:00] That’s not a slam on seminaries, right?

Philip: Yeah, for sure.

Tony: How do you see this relationship between church and academy when it comes to training?

Philip: Yeah. And again, that’s something that we’ve been thinking through. If I go back to my experience of bible college, it also wasn’t a good experience in many ways, not at the bible college that I was at. I think what was lacking was the clarity and intentionality of their goals. And so because they were catering from many, many people, they didn’t really have a tailor-made approach to me, and to train me to do what they thought [00:16:30] that I ought to be doing in collaboration with my local church and so on and so forth. It was that kind of a one-size-fits-all approach, and that is limiting to some degree. The other thing is that they don’t get to see people necessarily in their contexts putting into practice the things that they’ll learn. And so they’re very good at developing deep theology. They’re very good at presenting that, teaching that. But they don’t see people in their context, putting it into practice, [00:17:00] or not necessarily. And I think those are the kinds of things that I think we need to work hard as churches. And it could be that there’s a paradigm shift coming in terms of theological training where we’re going to put together theory and practice in missional reform theology in a better way. And I think I see that beginning to happen in places like Crosslands in the UK.

Tony: Yeah, yeah. Can you talk to the listeners a little bit about that. Like, what does that look like?

Philip: So, Crosslands, its got a foundation level [00:17:30] which is very good. It’s the older Porter Brooke material that you can still access, I think, in the states. But it’s also got a master’s level, and in the master’s level it’s really equipping key church leaders. But the way it does that, it has weeks off in pensive learning where people come together in one location and really have the benefits of excellent or even world-leading scholars doing the teaching and getting to know other students in that context, and really getting the benefits of everything that you would associate [00:18:00] with traditional bible college. But then after that time they’re sent back into their church contexts where there’s a real relationship of accountability with the local church leader, and they’re expected to put into practice almost straight-away, almost live, the things that they’ve just learned. And so that is a real combination of the things that I was talking about, proximity, and regularity, and intensity, and intentionality, all those kinds of things are being put into practice in the local church. And at the same time they’re getting really high quality Education.

Tony: That’s good. [00:18:30] Now, Philip, as a guy who travels around, you’ve already hit on some of this, but if you think about planting, or excuse me, training planters in hard places where perhaps resources are not as accessible, can you talk about some of the challenges and how to do training? I mean, I’m thinking first of pastors in some really rough places, hard places, even dangerous places. How do they do training? And then I’m also thinking of another category of [00:19:00] guys who may travel to hard places to do, you know, a week of training with pastors. But there’s often a lack of awareness that how we’re training them doesn’t always connect, and there are some gaps. Just so the challenges of training in places where people don’t have access to great books, where they may have terrible internet even, where it may not even be safe to assemble. How do we think through some of that?

Philip: Yeah, well, [00:19:30] I think the stuff that’s going on in Churches in Hard Places in Acts 29 is exemplary in this respect. So we’ve got people who are thinking through what it is that people need to know and how it is we can chop that up and deliver it over a period of time so that the skills, the competencies, the knowledge, the character, that can be built in over time. So we’re not rushing to get somebody from where they are to where they need to be to plant a church. We know that it takes time, we know that in certain contexts it’ll [00:20:00] take more time, and so at the minute the Churches in Hard Places cohorts go through two years of regular and consistent coaching and training, with a reading program, with writing exercises that are adapted to their culture and context, that take them through the essential building blocks of planting a church. And they’re in cohort, so they get to each other well. They’re visited by the leaders of Churches in Hard Places. They are walked through by coaches who are experienced and well-equipped to do that, and then they gather two times [00:20:30] in that time in order to be encouraged and equipped even further.

And so, breaking it down and walking people through it remotely seems to be very effective in terms of the Church in Hard Places experiences, and that’s been working in all kinds of contexts. So it’s been working in different languages, it’s been working across different continents, it’s been working in different ways across the world. And so I think what we’re doing there is developing something that will be highly effective in training people in those contexts. And so what I would say to people [00:21:00] who are in that kind of context, and who want to start training their people to plant churches for their field would be to, well first, believe that God has put in your local church people that he wants to train to carry the mission on. So believe that you can actually put into practice 2 Timothy 2 too, that there’s not a single church in the world, in my opinion, where that isn’t the case. So you’ve got to believe that. You’ve got to believe that the people that God is beginning to gather in your local church has in it some people who would be capable of taking the mission [00:21:30] Further.

So having believed that, then you’re going about intentionally looking for those people, and inviting those people into that space where they could become those people who would take the mission further. And having identified those people and plucking them in to something like the Church in Hard Places program, and finding the Church in Hard Places to come and do road show to cast the vision and to invite you into that. We’re going to do one in March in France in Strasbourg, and I’m really excited about that. It’s got the potential to move the mission in France on [00:22:00] a good bit as we think that.

Tony: That’s excellent. So let’s say we have a pastor listening to this podcast, first of all, thanks for listening, Pastor. And he’s very much involved in 2 Timothy 4:2, preaching the word, but not as involved in 2 Timothy 2:2, in investing in others. Believes he should do it, has perhaps just been swamped with other responsibilities in the church, etc. How would you encourage him and what direction would you [00:22:30] point him? What is that we want to impart to those that we’re teaching> what would be, perhaps, a weekly rhythm? What would it look like for the busy pastor who is doing a lot of really important and essential work to incorporate this into his weekly ministry?

Philip: So, I think in very different contexts in different places. Let me just give my example back from [inaudible 00:22:58], what Vaughan Roberts did with me and give that [00:23:00] as an example, and it’s something that I’ve been trying to put into practice myself with greater or lesser success, depending on the times and seasons. But essentially it’s passing a vision from ministry that is joyful and positive, and feels worthwhile. Because in certain contexts you’re going to have in your church many people who could choose between a number of different careers. You’re looking for people who have got some kind of capacity to learn, some kind of capacity to speak in public, some kind of capacity to lead other [00:23:30] people. Those are the kind of people that might actually end up in different walks of life, different areas of expertise. And what you want to do is you want to cast the vision about the Gospel, about mission, about ministry, that is appealing to those kinds of people. It’s not to say that we don’t need people in walks of life, we do, but we also need some of those people to opt-in to ministry in a really intentional way because they see the value of it. And so, the first thing I would say to the busy pastor is, “Communicate joy in [00:24:00] Christ. Communicate joy in ministry. Communicate the worthwhile, and the fact that it’s worth giving your life to this.” I think part of Paul’s effectiveness was that when he went round, people could see that he believed it. People could see that he was giving his whole life to it. People could see that this was the thing that mattered the most in the world for him, and so when he said things like, “For me to live as Christ [inaudible 00:24:21]” people believed it because they could see him in prison suffering for the Gospel. So give this vision of joy and purpose in serving Christ as a church [00:24:30] pastor or as a church planter. And then having cast that vision, and having worked hard in making sure that’s where your heart is, and that’s the kind of things you’re communicating, don’t be grumbling about ministry, don’t be saying how tired you are and how hard you’re working and all those kinds of things as if it isn’t this huge privilege to serve the Lord Jesus Christ.

Tony: Amen.

Philip: So having cast that vision and being that kind of joyful pastor, then look around your church and see who it is that would be wanting to do that kind of thing. And then invite them into your life, [00:25:01] invite them into eat in your home, invite them to be with you. Read the Bible with them. Get alongside them, open the Bible. Show them how you read the Bible and invite them to read the Bible with you in that kind of way. So Vaughan, when he started mentoring me, read 1 Peter with me, so Vaughan and I would just meet together for an hour every week, and we would open the Bible, and he would ask me questions in 1 Peter, and I would try to answer as best I could, and he would correct me theology and my thesis and my different bits and pieces, and it would really be formative but it would [00:25:30] also be building a friendship together as we did that. And so, read the Bible with the people that you’re doing this with. Let them see how you respect and love the word of God and how it changes your life. And then take them with you as you do different things as appropriate. Let them show you how you visit people, let them see how you pray with people. Invite them into your prayer life. Anyway, just let them see what it is like for you to do it. Again, we’re back to those same things, regularity and proximity, and intensity, and [00:26:00] intentionality. Those kinds of things really make a difference, and so open yourself up to it and then pray that God will indeed raise up those new leaders so that you can train them and send them out.

Tony: Yeah, so what I’m hearing here is that you don’t need this robust program that’s requiring hours, and hours, and hours of work and preparation, but rather an hour around first Peter, inviting them into your home, taking them perhaps on a trip, or wherever. It’s nothing that is going to require [00:26:30] a whole lot more additional work, as much as it is inviting them into the stuff you’re already doing, right? And just being with them.

Philip: I think that’s right. Yeah, and then also, you know, on top of that, as you get to know them is you’ll be able to see the kinds of things that they need to read. Not, I think every pastor has this in the back of their minds, so somebody who doesn’t yet know the Bible storyline, what book would you give somebody to get them to get the arc of the narrative of scripture? [00:27:00] Somebody who hasn’t get got to grips with what scripture is, what book would you give them to talk to them about the narrative of scripture and how a scripture is used to both bring people to faith and to bring people on in the faith? What is the church? You know, books that you would have in mind that you would give people in order to give them a theology. But once again, that is not huge amounts of extra work for you, it’s things that you have at hand that you give out to people, and that you say, “Read that [00:27:30] and tell me what you think.” Maybe even write a short paper on it. I know [inaudible 00:27:35] in London has a system whereby he gives his interns books to read and papers to write, and he meets up with them and talks it through. But as your church grows, I can imagine this will be the case in the states, and you have more and more people doing this kind of internship, you might want to organize some structure, but most churches in the states are actually under 100 people big. And so for that kind of pastor, this kind of informal but very intentional sense [00:28:00] of training people and forming people through life on life leadership formation I think is the starting place.

Tony: I loved your opening point there on the joyful pastor. Like what can you do to impact future generations? Like, enjoy the ministry yourself.

Philip: That’s for sure.

Tony: Give them a compelling vision of it. And it reminded me of William Perkins who, in his book “The Art of Prophesying”, if you order it today it also comes with this other little book [00:28:30] called “The Calling of the Ministry”, and Perkins is lamenting what he called the scarcity of true ministers. And he said that good ministers were, like, one in a thousand so he, in this book, he is encouraging Christians to realize the importance of good schools and seminaries, but then he said something really striking, and I pulled it up when you were talking. He put the burden on pastors, that the scarcity of true ministers is due to [00:29:00] the lack of pastoral investment. And he said this, “Let each minister, both in his teaching and his life work, in such a way that he honors his calling, so that he may attract others to share his love for it.”

Philip: That’s great, isn’t it? That’s a very simple, condensed way of saying what I was trying to say.

Tony: Absolutely. Just in your teaching, and in your life, work in such a way that you honor your calling and you attract others to ministry. And I think [00:29:30] that’s a great question for all of us who are pastors. Like, are we teaching and working in such a way that people would want to be in the ministry?

Philip: That’s right.

Tony: That’s a great challenge for us. And something that gets at the character of the pastor. Not so much, you know, his intellectual capacity or his ability to write books or whatever. I mean, this is a character aspect. And so, let’s not settle for mediocrity or just run-of-the-mill attitude, and disposition, [00:30:00] and work ethic, but like, let’s be zealous and joyful, and see if that others may follow behind us.

Philip: Sure. Because Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, right in the middle of the place where he’s going to talk about the hardship of ministry, he says, “By the grace of God we have this ministry.” Paul never thought of his ministry as a burden, first and foremost, but as a gracious gift that God had given him, and a privilege that he had, that he couldn’t believe that he had. And it was a grace. Everything was a grace. Everything was a gift. And so, when Paul went around [00:30:30] doing the ministry, it’s no wonder that he had a following of people that used to leave their homes and their jobs and follow him because it was obvious that he loved it, it was obvious that he thought it was worth it, and it was obvious that it was partly used by God.

Tony: Amen. Philip, last question, this has been so helpful. But anything you want to talk about with regard to training in Acts 29 specifically, like, I’m sure there are many things in the works that you can’t talk about, but maybe just give the listeners a taste of what you’re excited [00:31:00] about in the coming years by God’s grace.

Philip: Yeah. So I mean, there are things that I would love to be able to talk about but I can’t. But some of the things that I can say is just referring back to Paris. We had a great time with people, and I’ll just give the list so people are aware of it. From Columbia, where there is a very exciting thing going on with [inaudible 00:31:23]. We have people from the states, so both US west were the equip program is really, really useful for training people. [inaudible 00:31:29] is being launched [00:31:30], you know all about Grimke. I don’t think I have to say anything more about that, I think there’s been a podcast on it. We have people as well from Canada, they’ve got context training there and it’s really exciting what’s going on in Canada. These are all Acts 29 initiatives that are being shaped into Acts 29 academies, and that’s going to have a definition that’s going to be quite robust. Then if you leap across the Atlantic, we had Crosslands being represented there. We had a theologian who’s part of the faculty at Crosslands, Dan Strange, he was there. It was excellent to have his input. We had [00:32:00] southern Africa represented through Beth, it was really exciting to start to imagine what it would look like to have theology being created from Bible truth in this diverse global family that we’re becoming. We had the Middle East that was represented through the Gulf Training School. We has Australia represented there. It was just astonishingly diverse, and rich, and healthy to see all these people gathered around with a determination to train people for ministry along the lines of the things that [00:32:30] we think are important, theological clarity, cultural engagement, and mission innovation. It was just super exciting and I say just watch this space, I think there will be more announcements to come.

Tony: Amen. Amen. Philip, thanks so much for taking time to be on the podcast.

Philip: Thank you, Tony. Always a pleasure.