Global Voices- Samford In Mission

all right well we have four very special guests today that and they represent various parts of Sanford University and so we have um Rachel belter with us she's with the office of spiritual life um o in particular she oversees the global Mission Scholars Program we have Scott guffin who's in charge of Christian Ministry Department who definitely has an emphasis on missions there um we have Darren white who is executive director of sports analy analytics and professor of marketing and we also have Scott ble um some of you may not be familiar with him he is in the College of Health Sciences and he's the director for the office for Faith and health so um I'm excited to have them here because I've been able to get to know them over the years um some people kind of think of Sanford And beaston as being a little disconnected but since I've been here I've had the privilege of um partnering with all of them in certain ways and and I'm looking forward to to y'all hearing about what they do so let's go ahead and go down the road introduce yourselves a little you know give a little bit longer introduction than what I just said and uh just tell us who you are more about what you do and give us kind of an overview of your Department's involvement in Cross quter Mission thank you my name is Felicia belter most people call me fish um it comes in handy on a college campus to be called fish um I met a student today and he said should I call you miss fish and I was like only like preschoolers call me that so uh if you see me please say hello uh I love to meet new people and interact with people I am actually a 2000 grad of be Divinity School so David was saying that the global Center was old so I guess I fall in that regime but um yeah so I graduated um Bon with my MD in 2000 and worked at a local church for a few years doing College Ministry then um after a couple of years I taught um world religions um through like Phoenix University locally here uh I got invited to come back to campus and so um working with the office of spiritual life like David said specifically the global Mission Scholars Program I've been here almost 10 years um man it's such a gift I adore college students so um I'm just thankful to be on this campus our office specifically reaches out to hopefully every Sanford student on this campus to try to engage them to walk more closely in their faith and to walk more closely with Christ their savior so that's our purpose for our office in general my specific job is I work with students who feel called to missions and so there's not another program like this on campus that exists outside of like an academic program where it's specifically intended for students but over the Under the Umbrella of the office of spiritual life so even in that vein of us hoping students get more connected in their walk with Christ our goal is that if a student comes into this campus and they're saying they have a call to missions our goal is just to keep that right in front of their faces and right in front of their hearts so that they're encouraged to be able to walk that more closely over the next four years my name is Scott guffin and I chair the department of Christian Ministry and to tell you how old I am um somebody on the timeline taught me when I was a student here so uh Dr Carl Worley was uh one of my professors here yeah that makes you really old um I came here in 2017 after 32 years of church-based ministry I was a pastor and um came here to develop the new Christian Ministry degree program and we launched that in 2018 the focus of it has always been Great Commission centered uh my background is a PhD in evangelism with uh minors in New Testament missions my first hire was JD Payne who has now written I think 16 books on missions and evangelism um his PhD is in evangelism with minors in New Testament missions so we kind of had a theme going there right and uh we uh we launched in 2018 fall of 2018 with a focus like I said on Great Commission discipl making two of our key classes that uh students get when they come into the program are discipl making one discipl making two where they are both taught and trained and how to make disciples we uh also in 2019 developed the first full-blown just missions curriculum it's all it is uh that Sanford has had on this campus and uh that's our Intercultural engagement minor and uh Dr Payne drove the development of that and oversees that so if any of you guys or undergrads are looking for a good minor um it's 18 hours we designed it so it's it's doable for a lot of students and uh and that's our focus is to teach and train students to go out and engage their world with a Great Commission for Jesus Christ well great my name is Scott Bickle um as David mentioned and I I have three jobs at Sanford so I serve as as an associate Dean in the school of Health Professions and the College of Health Sciences I'm also a professor of physical therapy over there and then I also have the opportunity to serve as the Director of the office for Faith and health with within the College of Health Sciences and really in terms of um faith and health in CHS is we have three goals for every student that comes through CHS and so CHS is is is um there's probably 2,000 students in CHS a lot of them are The Graduate professional students um we do have several undergraduate programs as well but for every student that comes through CHS we'd like we'd like three things number one if they hear the gospel message at some point while they're here at Sanford number two that they start to consider how's their faith going to impact their work as a health care provider and then number three how's the faith of their patients going to impact any of the services that they may may be providing and so we try to provide resources to faculty to to try to do those things we offer opportunities for students like convos cadres um we're starting a new thing called a CHS passport where they have to get a little faith in credit faith in health um opportunities along along the way during their their time as a student at Sanford but every time as David mentioned um we seem a little CHS is oftentimes disconnected um across the other side of campus but every time I I get the chance to come over here to the global Center I always learn something they knew I feel like I'm an amateur when it comes in in terms of mission and evangelism and things like that so every chance I get I try to come over here because every time I learn something new so thank you for having me thanks for the advertisement I appreciate it uh my name is Darren white that okay everybody good so Darren white I am uh the executive director for the center for sports analytics uh over in the Brock School of Business um has anybody ever seen the movie Moneyball Bean all that yeah so uh we were the very first school in the country to have a Moneyball program and you're probably thinking like why is he up there speaking on this group and so um well the reason why is because uh we have over 150 students in our business school that want to work in sports when they graduate they want to work either on the business side of sports they want to work with coaches but they want to work in sports and one thing about it is when you work in sports you have a tremend tremendous amount of cultural influence and we we recognize that we recognize that you know by working in sports you're going to have a platform or an opportunity and so one of our goals for our students is to help them understand that they're going to number one have that influence but then I also think about how do we leverage that influence for the kingdom and we put that out in front of them right from the get-go from day one and so mentioning cadr we have a Cadre uh good friend of mine I go to church of Brook Hills with Rocky here with me today and we do a Cadre with all the fresh that looks at biblical Theology and sort of looks at how the Old Testament points to Christ and there's some of the Nations involved in all of that um and we do a number of other things as well where we we run a uh we helped run an organization called the Daniel Summit in fact I think that last slide on the slide deck there yeah I actually brought I brought slides so that's he was prepared so yeah so the Daniel Summit is a a group that we help run um with one of my board members and uh it's it's basically executive that work in the World of Sports uh that want to use their platform for for Kingdom advancement and so this is a next year we're going to be meeting at um Passion City Church uh this past year we were out at in California at um North Coast Calvary Chapel and so we we always partner with the church but uh but yeah so this is the sort of thing we do we just uh we want to really think about the fact that we're going to have influence so how do we leverage that for the kingdom and what does that look like and so that's uh big part of what we do yeah all right well um Global voices our tagline is stories from the Nations and so we want people who come here to these events to to get a sense for how God's working around the world what he's doing and so I want to launch straight into that um give me the single most encouraging story um or unique story that's involving a student of yours or a graduate who are now involved um so I want to tell you all a story of a student that graduated a couple years ago her name is Lauren Sterns she is serving in Berlin and um some of our former GS GMS are here just like their light their faces light up and you talk about her because she's just one of those people that is so welcoming and so hospitable in her heart she is serving in Berlin in a community where the gospel like the light is so dim there but she carries the light with such strength and such humility and such beauty and one of the most amazing things that happened this year because she's been there for about two and a half years um she got invited to a local television show to talk about one of the ministry options that she has while she's there one of the ministry opportunities and they interviewed her on the air to ask her why do you invite people around your table what is it that you hope to to make happen at this table of hospitality that you serve these meals at and she got to share the gospel on National Television in Berlin so that made me so happy for her just like a a glorious way that God is making himself known among the Nations so just one huh uh yeah so there's so many uh we have students who you know they just they what I love is they don't see anything as impossible and so like we had a student who served the summer in Paris with the Olympics one who served in Saudi Arabia we've had students in Clarkson Georgia just kind of all over the place um but I think if I had to narrow it down to one that was most encouraging would be a student who um I'm just going to use her first name Molly who graduated uh last year from Christian Ministry um when she came into the program as a freshman had some significant health issues and and other things but she had a heart for the Nations and um said my intention my calling is to be a missionary and I thought okay you know we'll see what happens and I've learned over and over that I'm really not good at calling people um that's God's job and uh and and if I were toh determine people's calling I would get it wrong so often but um I thought okay maybe Molly can work you know State side for a missions organization or something like that she has a real passion for it uh long story short she graduated from our program before she had even graduated um had been hired by the international Mission Board of the Southern Baptist convention she's doing a two-ear journeyman um in an area we can't even tell you where it is because it's uh that secur secure and so I can just give you her first name and tell you she's in a very secure location working with the IMB for two years um and just blows me away I I get those emails from her and um you know the the communication from the work she's doing on the field and just blown away at seeing how God's worked in her life the former student that comes to my mind we'll just call her Jay and just this will just maybe try to encourage some students who are praying about what to do I don't really know exactly what I'm supposed to do and I want want all the details laid out before them but Jay was uh she graduated as from an undergraduate from her undergraduate program um and became a journeyman uh for a couple years in East Asia didn't know what that meant she knew she she loved Jesus she wanted to um share Jesus with others but she also wanted to be a physical therapist and she was kind of torn between the two um and she she didn't she didn't know what to do and so she went and served for a couple years as journeyman then uh God called her called her back to the states to get her physical therapy training and so she did that um again had a had a desire to to go to the mission field um share the gospel with the unreached people groups U but she had a mountain student loan debt and she then just felt just felt like she couldn't go and so what did she do she just worked and um persevered and made disciples here in Burmingham while she was here working paying off for student loans paid off for student loans and you know shortly thereafter uh an opportunity the Lord presented an opportunity to go back to East Asia work with um former Mentor that she she had worked with as a journeyman and she had the opportunity to go over there in same same country in East Asia and work as a physical therapist as part of a church Planning Group um sharing Jesus with people and just again not know she didn't plan that um she didn't plan that from day one but the Lord just works these things in the in the lives of his people to um when we don't know what the what the purpose is there's an ultimate long-term purpose and that's been my most encouraging story seeing that just from from a 30,000 foot perspective uh yes so could you go to the uttermost slide thanks yeah one more there you go so uh this organization uttermost Sports is an organization that we've uh been very involved with for the last 15 years and so I've had students that have uh that work with him in different levels but one student in particular that comes to mind his name is David and uh and so he actually goes back way back uh so I used to be a college soccer coach before I'm doing what I'm doing now David was actually my team captain way back in the day and uh and so David now and his wife have been serving in Southeast Asia using under the platform of uttermost sports uh they um most recently spent about a decade in India on the coast and they started a mountain biking and surfing uh business business if you will and so they were doing mountain biking and surfing and great platform for meeting you know meeting folks and and and all that um and just in general I'll say sports is an incredibly great way to build relationships because it's it's you you know it's ubiquitous it goes across all cultures if I I can take a soccer ball and go literally anywhere in the world and have immediate friends right you can just uh you can it it just breaks down all cultural barriers and you can you can be friends if you're particularly if you're particularly soccer soccer is particularly good at that which is my sport um but uh but but that and that's what this organization does in fact go to the screen if you would with the all the countries on it I think it was one there you go so these are the different countries that uttermost has has worked in using sport as their platform uh and the the ways are just endless and and again we've been involved uh students in my program in in a lot of different ways some of them on short term uh we've had students that have gone over and spent time in Saudi Arabia helping helping start soccer for uh for women you know younger younger ladies we've we've done things in Iraq with them uh Jordan and and different places like that so this is this is sort of our ministry partner if you will that allows us to execute on what we're trying to accomplish so so I started with that question like one single story because we have a limited time and I don't trust Scott guffin to be brief all right and so so so we're doing well on time so now more stories tell us in particular graduates who finished your program now they've gone off encourage us more um so one of the beautiful things about our program is that we tell students when they come in we really want them to leverage their major for the sake of the Gospel among the Nations so actually overlap with Scott overlap with the College of Health Sciences we haven't had a sports analytics student yet but I'm like ooh how can we partner together um but we have students from all different Majors across campus so it's journalism business education um Health Sciences nursing Premed um we have a student who graduated a couple of years ago and his call was to veterinary science and you know I'm like okay God can do anything um but it was really exciting he our students are encouraged to go to missions conferences during their time in our program and so we actually went to one a few of us students a few of us and students went together to one locally and we're browsing around they have to do an internship through our program um for a summer and so this student was saying you know maybe I can just use Spanish I don't necessarily have to use veterinary science and we're walking around to one of these tables and he opens a pamphlet that's laying there and it literally working with large animals in North Africa Middle East and I mean his mind was just blown to see that God could use anything like God designed desires to use the giftings that he's given us to make his name gray like he's going to do it he's excited about that more than we are and so the student ended up not doing his internship through that program but he did go to Spain and he was able to partner with um a local one of our actual GMS grads um that had gone before him so he partnered with that student working through a church um through church growth church planting and he also worked in a local vet clinic and he was able to fund a believer who was a veterinarian and he worked alongside this um female vet in Spain for the summer and his primary gospel sharing experience was with her son so it was so exciting to see that God has these beautiful intentions for us knowing that even God is answering the prayers of that Mom to be able to send someone to share the gospel intimately with her own child that's cool yeah the uh I would say that that our stories and I promise not all of our GR uat or females that start with the letter M but uh I've talked about Molly but then I would also talk about meline and Maggie uh and uh so so meline is one of our graduates from this past year and she is currently fundraising but also intends to go and do work the campus Outreach in New Zealand for two years and so um she's she's headed that way she's um she's one of those students who might routinely be late to class and her excuse was I I just led a kid to the Lord on Ben Brown Plaza and I was like okay you get a pass for that you know so gracious yeah she is our our discipl and is going to do great things um Maggie is actually working with a local more local firm that uh it's called filters of hope that goes out and and uses filters to get uh into places to to provide clean water as a way of getting the gospel um I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that you just talked about in the video Julia Higgins um Julia Higgins is our most recent faculty H if you guys haven't met Dr Julia Higgins you need to meet her um and come hear her when she does her Global voices thing yeah fantastic I'll tell you two quick stories one is from student who um she she was an undergraduate Kinesiology major but minored in Spanish and show so she had I think lived abroad one semester learning Spanish and show so she had this language she wanted to use and um we we have a we had a probone of clinic in a area of town where there are a lot of Spanish-speaking U patients and so she would just come on the days she was not assigned to go she would just come because she wanted to use her Spanish and and connect with people um and you know she has been praying about where to go what to do how to use this and U my small group was just serving here locally at a at a local ESL thing through the Church of Burke Hills and who do I run into this student who's using that Spanish language and using her skills and gifts and talents want to serve others um to to reach the Nations here locally um but I also have another student who um had gotten introduced to um the Nations through short-term mission trips like a lot like a lot of people do and he started going on those pretty regularly um and now is serving in North Africa with a with another former student and they're both physical therapists um trying to figure out how to use that platform um in North Africa they're currently um um they were you know learning language and still then transitioning to try to find out how to how to get their work um involved in find find um find jobs over there but just again just just students you know who were following God's plan for the life at that given time and not knowing where that was going to lead and next thing you know they're living in North Africa ask this question um a lot of times people feel a call pull to missions students um feel like they can't really get because they're just looking at the funding and then they just decide no this isn't going to work um what would you say to them how would youc them encourage them to think about funded yeah well um I would say and this is I want to say this probably because I've been thinking about it but like the very first thing that we are doing when we wake up each morning as a father of Christ is preaching the gospel to oursel so either I believe that God is in control and I'm not or I don't and if when I talk to students because you can imagine being a college student money is like a a big deal anyway I guess it's a big deal to everybody but for a college student who doesn't have as much expendable money asking for money can be very um humiliating I would like to call it humbling but for them sometimes it feels humiliating um and it feels like you're asking for something for nothing but reminding them like God is moving God is on the move and he has such a good plan he's created this story inside of you to tell of his goodness he's going to take care of it so waking up preaching the gospel to myself like I can't do it on my own I'm G to need him and he is going to provide because he wants his name to be let let Out Among the Nations so that everybody can hear from him yeah I would say that you know two of the things you hear often but we hear them often because they're true and that's that nothing is impossible with God that where God calls you God's going to provide for you now that doesn't mean you don't have to work that you don't have to give feat to it make phone calls and talk to people and have a lot of conversations but it does mean that U that that God can bring funding out of places you know the old statement the Old Testament owns a cattle on a thousand hills and uh certainly with Christian Ministry we've seen that we came into being as a department six years ago with with nothing and and how about about $3 million in endowed funds now where people have just given money because they believe in what we're doing and so you know find those people who uh God can match you with who have a passion for what you're doing and also have funding that they desire to invest in that type of ministry and uh it's amazing you'll you'll find I I thought coming into this as a pastor where you just have to you know you you preach that one sermon a year and you hate doing it um but but finding out that there really are people out there that God has blessed with the ability to give and With A Generous Heart and so so just let God lead you to those people and don't be discouraged yeah I can't add a lot I can't add a lot more to that other than just just to reiterate that there are a lot of people with a lot of money that would like to give you some U you know that that um but you just have you just have to you just have to ask for it um because there are some some of us you know AR uh a lot of people are position where where they have the resources but then maybe they don't feel called to go but they'd like they'd like to help help someone else go especially especially a college student um that you know someone has has taken on it had done has done an international experience maybe a student that maybe maybe been life transforming they want to help someone else experience that as well um but also um there's also resources like Scott just mentioned maybe in ow funds there's scholarships available here at s if you just ask your professors and ask your department chairs there may be some funds available to help support you with that but um I I whole hardly agree with Fish And and Scott that um God's going to provide if he calls you to it so I I'll sh a go a little different direction um could you put the The Gospel Coalition article up there you go yeah one more there you go so if you want to read more about this story we we actually did a an article in the Gospel Coalition but this is just a neat funding example so a friend of mine uh used to be the Chief Financial Officer of vapor Ministries anybody famili with VAP Ministries they do soccer missions over in Kenya and different different parts of the world um one of the problems they were running into is is uh FIFA agents and agents of different professional soccer clubs are coming in promising 12 13 14 year old boys and their families that they would take them to Europe and get them big contracts and so over and over again this was happening and and U and a lot of these kids couldn't make teams and they would end up getting left behind but this is a it's a big problem actually it's a form of human trafficking so my friend having multiple times have to get on planes and fly to Europe to rescue 12 and 13 and 14y old boys that had grown up in in the ministry particularly in Kenya and in other places just wanted to do something about it so he and I we talked and we met several times and eventually he came up with an idea and again his background is finance he's a finance major from the University of Alabama and um and he realized that um if you're get kind of getting down the weeds a little bit here but if you are a soccer club like Manchester United for example and you have a a kid that's 10 or 11 and he's stays in your organization all the way up when he becomes a full professional every single time that player gets moves from Team to team there's a transfer fee and we're talking sometimes hundred million do very large amounts the the original in club gets 1% of that for the entire career and so my friend came up with the idea of turning Vapor since Vapor was really a developmental Club that's what they were doing to make them into an official FIFA developmental Club so that when the players do come through and they do get these opportunities it would be a funding source that 1% fee would go back to Vapor uh you know as a result so um that was step one step two was he had to create a safe pathway for them to get to Europe because he's got a lot of players that are good enough to play professionally in Europe and so what he's done is he created a professional team in the Kenyan first division so the kids it's called Sovereign FC Sovereign football club so the kids in the ministry now aspire to play for that team and then the best two three four kids off that team they're normally 18 19 20 years old then uh what he's done is he he's gone out and he's raised money uh from some a lot of different people he's created an organization called the travella group and the travella group is buying lower division professional teams in Europe so far he's bought Walla football club in Birmingham England he's bought dagaba in Ireland and they're about to buy a team in Norway and so the idea being is he's creating a pathway for these players they're coming out of his ministry to play for Sovereign go from Sovereign to draga in Ireland that would be the next level and then go to Birmingham in England and there there there's a pathway for them to continue to progress in their career all along helping them and their families right creating their opportunity to do that but also providing a funding source back to the vapor ministries of the world uh as they progress in their career it's a super super cool story um again I interviewed him his name is Ben boycott and he actually lives here in Birmingham uh we work with some of their teams so like last year we did a project for walaw and so we're helping some of the teams themselves become more profitable as well with uh with some of our students and so we flew over it we fly over to England every year and and help some of their teams we're working on setting up some internship opportunities for our students to intern with some of these teams as well on the business side but it's a it's just it's a really cool example though of of just being really creative taking a problem that existed and and working within the you know within it all to uh create a solution and so again you can read more about it in the article if you're interested so we only have a few minutes left um so Darren can you let us know how can churches and other Christian organizations partner with sports Industries yeah that's good good question um how can they um yeah so I really the main the main part would just be to recognize that when you're involved in sports be it playing sports being a parent you know on the Seline of Youth Sports um you know there's there's opportunity to connect with other people in a way that really we don't have and know there there's you know I mean so again if you if your if your child plays on a barwood soccer team you know you're going to be around people from different cultures people from different backgrounds and just realizing that you're there as a you're there as a light for Christ you're not you know and so I think so many Christians forget that in in terms of uh how they how they act at sporting events and things like that and yet just know that that's an really is an opportunity though to connect with people because you have something that they passionate about that you're passionate about you could be different in every other way but you can connect and form deeper relationship around Sport and then you can use that then of course to to to deepen the relationships in other ways so um so uh it's interesting you mentioned Vapor Micah mckelvin longtime friend when he was first launching that um we actually had him come to my church when I was a pastor and and tell us all about it I would say that's another thing too is find people who are doing it really well and and ask them what can we do how can we help like Vapor uh you can help on the the basic level of providing things for them to sell here that fund their Ministry in fact when you're doing house cleaning take it to Vapor right and uh I would say then beyond that uh have them come speak at your church have them come engage with your missions groups and and uh and ask them what what can we do how can we help and then just jump into it right well um I know we have undergrad students who need to get to class and so before we conclude um know that the convo credit will be up here there Miriam you can find her and um we are um y'all please show them your appreciation for coming today so once again thanks for coming and for y'all thanks for coming and sharing just a reminder we do have open house the rest of the day starting from 2 o'clock 2: to 4: and we' love for you to come and just kind of check out the timeline and check out the document hope to see you with the next bu of voices youall have a good day