Can your unique skills contribute to a purpose far greater than your day-to-day work? Scott Eloquin from Switchboard joins us to share his powerful testimony of transitioning from a successful software career to fulfilling his zeal for mission work, proving that our abilities, when made available, can have an eternal impact. This episode is a testament to the fact that the road to missionary work is open to all, regardless of professional background, and that a heaven as diverse as envisioned in Revelation 7 can only be achieved when each of us plays our part.
We uncover the heartwarming stories of individuals and organizations who have found their calling through Switchboard, like the family who used their experience with autism to support field workers in Ukraine. Their stories illuminate the profound connections and transformations that occur when we volunteer our time and expertise to those in need. Scott and I discuss the essential role of local churches, businesses, and the faith community at large in nurturing these connections, and how every skill—be it digital marketing or AI—can be harnessed to further the Kingdom.
To wrap up, we delve into the exciting intersection of faith and technology—where even an hour-long mission trip can be virtually traveled, and where your expertise can reach corners of the globe you've never set foot in. We dissect the innovative ways that today’s believers, especially the tech-savvy youth, can use their digital prowess to support global outreach, and we highlight the potential for businesses to align with mission work. Our conversation is not just an overview; it's a clarion call to action, inviting you to reflect on how you might use your talents to leave a lasting Kingdom legacy. Join us on this episode for an inspiring look at the future of mission work in an interconnected world.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
Can your unique skills contribute to a purpose far greater than your day-to-day work? Scott Eloquin from Switchboard joins us to share his powerful testimony of transitioning from a successful software career to fulfilling his zeal for mission work, proving that our abilities, when made available, can have an eternal impact. This episode is a testament to the fact that the road to missionary work is open to all, regardless of professional background, and that a heaven as diverse as envisioned in Revelation 7 can only be achieved when each of us plays our part.
We uncover the heartwarming stories of individuals and organizations who have found their calling through Switchboard, like the family who used their experience with autism to support field workers in Ukraine. Their stories illuminate the profound connections and transformations that occur when we volunteer our time and expertise to those in need. Scott and I discuss the essential role of local churches, businesses, and the faith community at large in nurturing these connections, and how every skill—be it digital marketing or AI—can be harnessed to further the Kingdom.
To wrap up, we delve into the exciting intersection of faith and technology—where even an hour-long mission trip can be virtually traveled, and where your expertise can reach corners of the globe you've never set foot in. We dissect the innovative ways that today’s believers, especially the tech-savvy youth, can use their digital prowess to support global outreach, and we highlight the potential for businesses to align with mission work. Our conversation is not just an overview; it's a clarion call to action, inviting you to reflect on how you might use your talents to leave a lasting Kingdom legacy. Join us on this episode for an inspiring look at the future of mission work in an interconnected world.
Follow @unreachedpodcast on Instagram for more!
In Revelation 7, john shares his vision of heaven with members from every tribe, tongue, people and language standing in the throne room before the Lamb. Yet today there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. For the last six years, my family and friends have been on a journey to find, vet and fund the task remaining. Come journey with us to the ends of the earth as we share the supernatural stories of God at work through the men and women he has called to reach the unreached. Hello friends, welcome back to the Unreach podcast. Dustin Elliott here, your host.
Speaker 1:We are in the thick of season two and have a really interesting guest today, a little bit of a pivot from our typical you know out in the field, working among the unreached worker. This is someone who is curating and facilitating access to needs, whether that be professional, ministry related or a combination of the, both worldwide. And so I have Scott Eloquen. Today he's with switchboard, globalswitchboardio, if you want to follow along on the website, if you're able. Right now we are so excited to share this story.
Speaker 1:Switchboard gives people the ability to post what they're good at, what are your talents, what has God gifted you with online, and then ministries and organizations that have a need, whether that be building a website or social content management or accounting or grant writing or whatever the kind of places that you are, you know, gearing up for. You can go on switchboard and maybe find someone that wants to volunteer some time or possibly look for a role with your organization, and so, scott, thank you for being here. I can't wait to have this conversation. We know a lot of the same people, which we'll talk about today, but you and I are just really getting to know each other, so welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Hey, it's good meeting you guys and Dustin and Claude, thank you guys so much for all you're doing to just take the message to the world. I think everyday believers have no idea. They think that missionaries are very mysterious beings that come by once a quarter, and to be able to make it personal and to make it real and to get them engaged is really what we're all about. So thank you guys so much for what you guys are doing.
Speaker 1:Oh well, we love it. You know, in fact, the episode that's live most recently they talk about that exactly. These missionary couple got to the field and then they met the missionaries that were there and the biggest kind of realization they had was these are just normal people, right? And one of my favorite quotes, you know God's not interested in your ability, just your availability. Right, he can work. Can he work through you? Right, it's about what he can pull off. So why don't you start out? Give everybody kind of a little background on you, your family, how'd you get engaged with the Lord? And take us into the story of Switchboard.
Speaker 2:Super, thank you. So I'm probably like a lot of people that are in Austin. I grew up mostly in Austin and been around a long time. I was the guy that was raised in a Christian home, had a great environment. You know vacation, bible school and as I got older I taught mission, friends and I want to, and sang in the choir and all the things that people do professionally. I was a software guy. I was an Oracle guy, so we did big software implementations. We put in systems to run businesses Along the way.
Speaker 2:We married my wife, melanie, in 1989. When Melanie and I first got married, she had just come back from doing missions work in Mexico. That was a big part of her calling and she was very involved in that. We had always really wanted to be much more involved in missions and unfortunately I picked a career that was not very good at that. It was go, go, go. I was working for Oracle and then later I was running a business and I ran it in such a way that it wasn't very easy to take time off and go do things and you know as much as you have. You know a lot of skills that you could help. First thing, most missionaries don't need software skills. And the second thing is it's hard to do it, you know, in a three-day weekend kind of a thing. So my wife did a lot of mission trips, my kids all did a lot of mission activities. We've supported missions our whole lives. But you know, I feel like a guy like me is kind of my future supply side customer. It's a guy who cares, who loves the Lord, who really wants to help, who maybe can do some helpful things but just can't go. And so we motored along in our lives and, you know, things were great. And then suddenly and unexpectedly and happily, we had a group come by and basically bought our company in 2019. So we exited.
Speaker 2:I was out that year and then I was really looking for kind of the next lap, what's the thing that comes next for me, which was really to kind of prepare myself for the rest of my life. And so I went through Colson Fellows, which is a Christian worldview training. That was awesome 10 months, very rigorous and started doing some contract work on the CRO side it's a chief revenue officer. So I was working with a friend of mine who has a software company and then got involved with startups. So if I could insert a God story here. I was actually working with a startup team downtown. That was a group that brings together ventures, venture capital and startups to look at funding and in that meeting I had met a woman who was a believer and we had this kind of sidebar conversation and I started telling about what we were doing with switchboard and it was a great conversation.
Speaker 2:Again, this is a very commercial crowd. Everybody's looking for the next unicorn and I was downtown, I was walking back to my car and it was really quiet and I thought, wow, I have to quit my job and I need, I need to do this full time. Like it was. It wasn't exciting or it wasn't terrifying, it was like it was just. It was very clear. It was clear.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Very clear and unusual for me. And so I got back to the car, drove home, I talked to Melanie. She's like, okay, if that's what you need to do, let's do it. I mean, it was like it was that that was kind of the decision how to stand up meeting with my boss the next morning. I'm like so here's the deal, I have to quit, I have to do this thing.
Speaker 2:He, he is not a believer. Um, hopefully he'll be listening to this at some point. And he kind of got me to hang on for a few more weeks. But then I moved on to do this full time as a volunteer. But we really wanted to see whether or not what we're doing at switchboard was was feasible, whether it was even a possibility. And then the way to end that story is I had a lunch meeting with two of my board members because we were already talking about this concept and had been for six months on Monday, so from Thursday to Monday and these are two guys that actually go to this church. This is Nick Alter and um and Tim Allen. We sit down to lunch and they're going to buy and it's like all great and uh, they lean in and they're like so we've been talking. We think you should quit your job and do this.
Speaker 1:That sounds exactly like Nick Alter, by the way and Tim for that.
Speaker 2:Uh yeah, so I was like so I quit my job Thursday which Nick did too Right. Oh yeah, that's, a good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I remember when he said he was leaving Altered Devils, I was like wait, but it's it's Nick, Altered after you. Nick is like, yeah, I know, but I got to go do something else now.
Speaker 2:But it was. It was really. It was an amazing thing, it was a great validation and, um, for us, um, this was still around. It was a hypothesis. You know we have vast resources in the kingdom and immense, profound scarcity in the field. It just seemed like it just seemed a little unbalanced, honestly. And you guys have talked about the 1%. You know going to the field and the Halloween costumes for your pets and things like that.
Speaker 1:You might've just named the episode. By the way, Vast resources in the kingdom and immense scarcity in the field. Right, that was, that's good.
Speaker 2:Well, there you go. For me to take my skills and make them available is just, it's such an untapped resource. And and what you realize is that mission organizations do all the things that traditional organizations do, their businesses are doing. Yeah, they just don't have the skills to do it. So, uh, back when we first were kind of spinning up, I was under the I'm going to say misconception that well, virtual volunteering, that's going to be white collar on a computer. So accounting websites is good, maybe education.
Speaker 2:And then you realize that I met somebody at a class here at Austin Ridge and he's a software sales guy and I'm like, well, what could he, what could he do for the kingdom? And then I realized that my clients, my mission organizations that you guys know, you know they're implementing workday and they're licensing Salesforce. Having a guy that knows how to sell force licenses on your negotiation team to make sure you're buying the right stuff is huge. I mean, literally two, three hours of time could make an enormous difference. So you know, back to the comment you made earlier about availability Um, it's not ability, it's availability. It's like just make yourself available. And the stories we have of people that have said I don't think I could serve. But hey, here's my name. If somebody needs help with this, let me know. It's like I mean I could go down the list.
Speaker 1:Okay, let me summarize. Software guy, love the Lord already, right, you had been grown up in the home, you had been giving tithing throughout, and I think that there is a concept of I do work and I cut a check and the church kind of the varsity Christians go out and they take care of it, they do the, they do ministry and they do missions in some capacity. And, man, we have been really trying to shift that focus to like, no, you're called by Christ to be a reflection of him, day in, day out, 24, seven, three, 65. You were doing that in some limited capacity as a software guy because of, you know, limited availability on your time. Then the pivot to running a business, then an exit, kind of an unplanned exit. It sounds like somebody kind of unsolicited found you and what a lot of guys do at that point is they end up at a incubator or a lab or in some some capacity.
Speaker 2:Exactly what I did.
Speaker 1:Right when you're connecting new folks who were starting up with new ideas and other folks that have some money from maybe exiting ideas and we've got some smart capital and you need some assistance right. But you also took a 10 month deep dive course that, I think, probably really connected your heart to your purpose in your next season.
Speaker 2:If you talked about really focusing your efforts. I think that's exactly right. And Colson goes through this intensive study and then in month seven, you work on your three year personal ministry plan. That says okay, you know, you know you can change the world. It's your responsibility to get involved, tell us what you're going to do and you write that up. And actually this is what I wrote up for my personal ministry plan when I was commissioned from Colson Fellows.
Speaker 1:I love that, I love that, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:And so we wrote it up. We've got the commissioning. You have the revelation walking out that day because you had met another believer in a space of maybe not expecting to. And then confirmation comes right Through meeting some other guys. So, hypothesized, we've now kind of got an idea of what switchboard is. Now give us the meat. What is switchboard right now? What are you actually doing?
Speaker 2:So switchboard is a platform that we say we connect everyday believers to great commission organizations and field workers that are doing the job in the field. So instead of outsourcing your faith, instead of it being more of a corporate thing, it is if there's a need. We connect a need with an individual that can help you with that need. And the need could be a professional thing I'm trying to file a form or do my taxes. It could be a personal thing, it could be I don't know if I can retire, so can you help me put together a kind of a family personal financial plan?
Speaker 2:We had a woman that had who put in a request. They're actually in Ukraine, it's a field worker in the Ukraine and they had found out that their child had been diagnosed with autism and can't get health care. Things are frenetic there's. I mean, they were very isolated, and so we actually put in a request through the system and we found a family who actually had raised and is still raising an autistic child, and now they're meeting on a regular basis, which is just, oh, my gifting for the great commission, my way that I can be involved in world missions, is to have been blessed with a child that had a special needs that I've suffered with and struggle with and and worked with for years. It's like I mean, let's just cry about that. I'm like, wow, how incredible is that. It's not just accounting stuff, man, you can't quantify that either.
Speaker 1:You can't run a discounted cash flow analysis on that and put a value on it, Right, Exactly. But like when you talk about storing up treasure in heaven with no rust and no moths and no decay right that that pays massive dividends, that's a multiple right there. It's really something.
Speaker 2:I was actually at a Christian incubator here in Austin a few weeks ago. Who are you? What do you do? I mentioned what it is and there was a guy across the room that was staring me down. I'm like he's thinking something. I you know. There was 20 people there. There was 20 people there that was my wife. That's us. What? Yes, wow. It's like you cannot believe what that has meant to her and to our family to be able to minister to this couple. So this is just me talking.
Speaker 2:My hypothesis 10 years from now is we're going to look back and clearly deploying resources for great commission activities for the kingdom is awesome, it's smart, it's a good supply chain move. It's got a high return on kingdom investment. But I think that the volunteers who get actively involved in their faith are going to be impacted more than the people that they're helping. It's a totally different thing when you see there's a tsunami in the Philippines and you go wait a minute, I got to see if my people are okay. Not well, I guess I'll just pray for them. It's a real thing. It's a tangible real thing.
Speaker 1:I love that. And so for the listeners, and you know our connection with Austin Ridge, our local church. You know our connection with Bless, the Bless Foundation, blessworld If you go to the website globalswitchio and you look at some of their organizations, you're going to find a whole lot of our same connectivity, right, you've got Chris Starr on there, you've got pioneers, you've got JVI, justice Finchers International. These are all folks that we have partnered with through Bless and raised resources for and done some really incredible projects with. And so Steve Coffey and Chris Starr man, I love Steve Coffey.
Speaker 1:I got to interview him before we started this podcast through Bless on a video when we did a project I think our first one with them, and that project was so, so special.
Speaker 1:They had, basically they had set up a center on a border between two kind of hostile nations and there was a war, and the war was resulting in a ton of refugees leaving one country, fleeing into another, and typically these refugees were widows and orphans because the father had been commissioned and taken into the military to fight in the war and had most likely been killed or was just unheard of Gone, yeah, and so they set the center up and they were welcoming them and they were going to a warm bath and a shower and food and a bed, and then what can you do?
Speaker 1:And then that took the form of training, a job, a task, something they could actually earn some money and support their family with, and man, it just like that project just broke my heart when you think about the need and then the kingdom coming together here in Texas, here in the United States, to fund it, to pray for it and to build it and to equip it. And that's a microcosm of an example of what you're doing now on a global scale. So if Chris Star switch words around, that was probably 2019, if switch words around then and they need a couple of people to help set up X, y and Z for that project. They possibly could have gone to switchboard and found those people, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So we're piloting a new product release in the next four weeks and we've got nine different volunteers that are engaged with Chris Star right now. Actually, I'll give you an example there's an amazing guy that has a peanut business. He's in Tennessee but he's an e-commerce expert. He's really, really good. Chris Star they're an international group basically has an incubator out of Malaga, Spain, where they bring in entrepreneurs to launch e-commerce business that they can take into country to source goods locally, to be able to sell outside of the region, Creating jobs, creating a kind of a foothold in the country, and it's a very fast-paced e-commerce strategy where the fulfillment and all the technology is taken care of, but they model the business. And so this gentleman, Jay, actually is working directly with a guy that's running Crister International to help them set up that incubator so that they can launch those types of things.
Speaker 1:Love it.
Speaker 2:And these are highly, highly skilled resources who are really good at a very specific thing, who can make guys in the field way, way, way smarter than what they are.
Speaker 1:Another one that's on your list is pioneers. Pioneers is our longest standing partner with Bless. How do you describe the impact this organization's had on the world? Stephen Arlene Richardson loved them dearly, and Nathan Burns on their team, and we've done a number of projects over the years. Now we are engaged, working with specific people groups, partnering with pioneers across Northern Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and so our partnership with them is very focused on taking those people groups through the within reach scale, right From getting workers on site to culture and language training and then into the process of Bible translation, making disciples, planning a healthy disciple, making church right. So that's kind of a short version of it, but yeah, so we're doing that with pioneers right now. How are you engaging with pioneers? I think y'all've got a pretty cool story working together.
Speaker 2:They really came up with the idea long ago. So Steve was in Indonesia. They were looking at deploying resources to help out with just skilled work that needed to happen. It was assumed to be more white collar work and they launched an initiative before my time. I would bet probably 2018, 2017. Steve could tell you exactly called Pro Pell.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Professionals, compelling them to the field to participate in the Gray Commission, and they started studying the. They studied the project and started working with this. They had a full time guy that was on it. He also was completing his PhD. This is Bruce Wilson, is now the one of the senior leaders at GACX, which is a global missions organization, and he completed his PhD in virtual volunteering at Asbury in 2023. So very, very fresh research that talks about the opportunity, the capacity, some of the challenges there, and so, really, steve came up with a lot of the things that are foundational to what we're doing.
Speaker 1:Well, not surprising, steve and Arlene are powerhouse couple and I'm looking through in your website. You've got some testimonials there as well of some different folks and how they've gotten engaged. But I think I just wanted, like I want, to speak to the listener for a second.
Speaker 1:So so often in my career, in my work and in ministry and disciple and guys, you meet people and it's like I want to be a part of something bigger than myself. You know this job is good and it's taken care of me and my family, but I but I feel like I can't be fully who I am at work all day. Right, I feel like I can't be fully engaged and using my skills and you said it earlier, right, I'm not, I'm not able to be a goer right now, in this season of life. I can't pack up and move to another country and spend 10 to 15 years with the people group. I'm not there yet. I might be at some point, but right now I'm not. So, man, I could take part-time some of my time, volunteer time. How can I be engaging if I'm not right now? But I feel called to get in the game.
Speaker 2:One of the first discussions that I had with a, an academic about well, what does students do when they feel called to the field? What he said is is one of his greatest concerns is that you may walk in with computer science background or an engineering like curriculum and what these students are being told is well, you should study Greek because you can go be a missionary. And when you look at kind of the way missions has changed, traditional missions is clearly still a big thing and will continue to be. But creative access countries where you can't be a traditional missionary, where you have to be creative access, that you start a software company, you start a consulting firm, you're, you're a marketplace professional. You have to have skills to go do these things.
Speaker 2:And frankly, if you look at the growth of the global South, you look at what's happened in Africa and in China, you know, as it turns out, there are, there are already Christians there, and what they really need are some things that Americans are really good at. We're good at commerce, we're good at engineering, we're good at computer science. So some of the things that you know, this this individual had had suggested to me is that a lot of times we try to push people down a specific path. That path that is missionary focused and really what they should be doing is, you know, building their heart for Christ and then getting the skills they need to be able to go make an impact in those areas.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I love that and I think there's a few people that are probably needed to hear that. I love that switchboard gives me a chance in my after hours, in my weekend time, to do something for the kingdom. I love that I might be equipped with a skill set in my twenties or thirties or at any point in my life, and not have a little a lot of extra capital. I don't feel like I'm necessarily at this point a big funder of the work, but I'm good at this thing and now I can do this thing for kingdom purpose.
Speaker 2:Right, listen, let me tell you you're a 60 year old grandma who's in tennis shoes, who's been in the field for 40 years and you are great at ministering with traffic girls in that town. But, like every month and a half, you have to go figure it out, update your website. Oh my gosh, it's awful. Or I mean, do you know how many 50 year olds are good at MailChimp Like?
Speaker 2:run zero, right, but there's a 27 year old kid who could go bam and do webflow or do WordPress in a heartbeat and it'd be way better, it'd be way faster.
Speaker 2:And oh, by the way, this is a way to get I call them zilineals, zs and millennials involved in service. You could do something for real that really makes a difference to the field today, and it'll be awesome, and the person that you're helping benefits so much from the very little that you did, because they can't do that thing. So I think it's really ground changing to start thinking of the types of things that we could use to mobilize those individuals around a specific use case. And I talked to a Baylor professor this week. I'm like so here's what, here's what we're finding. We have huge demand from the field, from people that are good at digital marketing, seo, website graphic arts, visualization, those types of things, and I said, if your students are believers and they really want to make an enormous impact I mean it could be two hours a month, but they could rock somebody's world he's like I am ready, let's see what it would take to talk to those guys about that.
Speaker 1:Oh well, let's think that through, I mean in the concept of where is the? What's the, the Magnificent Seven right? Ai, like the massive growth in the marketplace right now, tends to be happening in that space. And if you look at the companies and the demographic of the companies and the location of the companies and where those are, you know, a lot of talk right now is like I'm using AI for this and it's giving me bad results because it reflects its makers and its makers are not Christian and they're trying to rewrite history. And I'm speaking kind of honestly here because it's happening, it's true. Well, we saw it last week. We saw it last week. We're still seeing it. There is a massive need for you, listener, who loves the Lord, to use your skill set in that demographic, in that arena, right, and be a light in that arena. That's huge, and so I love that you're saying like we're kind of calling out the. Don't point somebody in another direction. If that's the skill they're after, then let's leverage that skill set, right.
Speaker 2:Well, and as a point of encouragement, I would tell you you are not alone. I mean, there's a group that's called missionai. They do a conference where it's Kingdom-minded AI machine learning experts who come together and they look at really two different things. One is obviously translation, because it's really good at that, and number two is Kingdom growth. So what are the applications that you can use, that you can like build into the solutions and the types of things you're trying to do, so that we can take these tools and use them for Kingdom purpose, as opposed to have them used against us?
Speaker 1:Another thing you mentioned, scott. I want to pull on the thread of, as you said, take a one hour mission trip. What's that?
Speaker 2:Well, so what we do is that, as we have Kingdom consultants, basically build profiles in the platform. We give them the ability to engage the mission organizations with a thing that they have particular expertise in. So, for example, you know someone has expertise in marketing strategy. You could be a mission organization, say, hey, I'd like to book an hour with this person and talking them about marketing strategy. It could be something about an accounting thing, it could be something about an education or curriculum thing. So the ability to engage somebody quickly on the platform is pretty amazing. And I'll tell you, I was actually at this church at a conference this was a business as mission conference a few months ago.
Speaker 1:Bam.
Speaker 2:A bam conference and we had a gentleman, a young man actually in my world. He comes up to the table, he hits our QR code ding ding, ding ding. We're talking the whole time. He fills out a profile, he clicks a button. He never takes his eyes off of me and the other person that's talking to him. And then I look at the computer and two requests have gone out. And then, before he left, which was about 15 minutes later, both requests have been filled. One was around digital marketing and another was around something to do with supply chain. I mean, literally, he put in two requests. He defined what he wanted, he clicked a button and it went out to the volunteers and both of them got accepted. And then the system, based on what your interaction is, it suggests a time on both your calendars to lock a time.
Speaker 1:So why would I not have a profile active?
Speaker 2:I mean, if you're not serious, I will tell you that the common statistic, 99% of believers don't really get directly involved in the Great Commission and I'm going to argue that 90% say they want to be involved and maybe 50% actually would be involved if poked.
Speaker 2:So if you really don't want to be involved, then you probably shouldn't. I would tell you that if you don't have verbal skills, I mean, we have a woman in Canada who has an accounting background, who had a stroke and she cannot talk and she is available to work on this particular accounting package for the Great Commission because that's her heart and that's what she wants to do. There are no limits. Actually, I have another story about a guy that I met here in the lobby of this church and we had set up a booth and the Bishop pastor here had said hey, and if you want to serve remotely in your skill set, you know from home, you can start tomorrow. Go see a switchboard in the lobby and this really great guy comes up. And this guy has been he is truly a bona fide expert in animation 20 years at DreamWorks, you know.
Speaker 1:Joseph.
Speaker 2:Prince of Egypt. I mean, if you looked at a resume of background, this guy had the most amazing background of anybody I've ever seen Discussion amazing background. And I got done and he took the little brochure and I turned around and I'm like talking to myself, I'm like there is no way.
Speaker 1:This guy.
Speaker 2:I mean this is way too specialized, this is never going to happen. He walks away and he's like gee, Scott seems like a great guy. I love what those guys are doing. There is no way that this is going to happen Within one week and I promise you this is an accurate statement. I could pull emails to prove it Within one week.
Speaker 2:We got a request from a guy who had met one of our guys at a birthday party in Jordan, who had basically built a Facebook page that was targeted it was Christian messaging, targeted at a Muslim audience, and they were getting, at that time, 1.6 million views per month and he had all the statistics on shares and stuff like that, so using images only and so his request was somebody that can help me figure out how to do animation in a way that I could afford it, that understands kind of the big picture and could come up with a strategy.
Speaker 2:If there's any chance you could have a guy like that, it would be amazing. Request comes in. You know our team's like, yeah, that ain't going to happen. And then I saw it and I had just met Bruce, and so I called Bruce and told him, and what he told me is that you know, love what you guys are doing, but I just I put myself on the list to help with construction here in Kyle, Texas, because I didn't think there's any way I could do animation for the kingdom to see how God could take something that even is super specialized, and that there's somebody out there that needs that exact thing. I'm telling you, if you're not willing to do a profile, you're you're just not willing to serve, because there's no excuse.
Speaker 1:There's no excuse and when you fill out a profile, don't limit yourself. Right. You know what you're, what you're really good at. Even if you feel like there's not a use for it, necessarily put it out there. We're talking about, we're talking about the entire global kingdom. Here there's somebody that probably needs you, probably more than one somebody. So if you're, if you're listening and you're looking for another way to get engaged, go fill out a profile. If you're a missionary or a sending organization or a para church or a local church or a company, if you're a company and you want to look at getting work from people that you know have a true North, you know aren't going to bend the knee or kind of take the easy way out, but are going to do things the right way, because that's how they're going to live their life.
Speaker 1:Walk in with the Lord get on there and fill out a profile and talk about what you need, completely agree. So business is missions. Let's, let's pull on that threat too. That's a new acronym, bam. It's starting to pop up everywhere. I'm starting to get linked in requests for people and they've got it, they've got that in their profile, right. So for you listening, be looking for this. It's out there, this concept, and I'll let Scott explain it further. But this concept is look, my, my job, my work is committed to the Lord, right. Colossians three, 23,. Whatever you do the work, you do, do it with all your heart, as if working for the Lord, not for human masters, cause you know you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. So if you take that concept seriously and how you work and the company you own or lead, or a part of you, are doing missions, you are doing ministry all the time. Right, completely Right. So business as missions is this new concept that's kind of tail wagging the dog alongside a few other new acronyms that are showing up of you know how do I invest my money in companies and businesses that are Christian led, that are mission focused and that are changing the world, and so there's this. There's this.
Speaker 1:I was at the Kingdom Advisors Conference in Orlando in February with 3000 other folks in the finance industry and investment world biblically responsible investing. Right? How are we screening in, not just screening out? Right, how are we looking at private markets? How are we supporting the right companies? This is a big push, right, and I think it's a push that even the local church really needs to educate themselves on. We really need to educate the local pastors and the leaders, because it's not just like don't just focus on the 10% or 15 or 20, or preferably more, that you're giving. What are you doing with the rest of it? What's the? What's your portfolio look like? How are you investing that and is it redemptive or is it just kind of going along with everybody else and chasing the index and hitching a ride on the economy in general, and maybe so? The right thing to do right now is educate yourself and take one step forward, right, right, give me your take on that.
Speaker 2:Well you're. You're tempting me to head down a rabbit trail that I have great passion for.
Speaker 2:Go, go, oh my gosh, chase it. First thing is, for years business's mission was kind of an excuse to get into a country. And so you set up a business and I'm doing air quotes here for those who are, who aren't seeing me and what we've learned is that for one thing, that wasn't very you know, that wasn't very accurate, and for another, it's not sustainable. And so real businesses with real business leaders who have good supply chain and good systems and good production, and all those things are really important and, frankly, every country that I've been associated with that won't let mission teams come in as missionaries. As Ms you say, I'm going to start a software company. They're like come on in, we'll give you a tour of the town and invite your friends. So one of the first meetings I had was with a group that was in Macedonia. That was a basically an engineering software company. That was very welcome and doing some really great things, and so to me, businesses, missions is a big part of, I think, what future commerce and future missions can look like.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I think the partnership between the local businesses and the local churches. Now this is moving more away from the, the traditional missionary models, more of an indigenous church, indigenous missionary and a business as mission, kind of all working in concert.
Speaker 1:I think, is where it goes. That's what you're doing with your life, scott, and I love that you've taken a leap of faith and a transition here that probably for some period is not as lucrative to your worldly bottom line, but it may be paying huge deposits into your heavenly bottom line.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. I think that for us, we're just trying to honestly, we're trying to take friction out of the supply chain. I mean to me the allocation of resources in terms of not just dollars but human capital is. It's really rough right now and I think that what's interesting is that when you pull down the barrier whether or not I'm serving with a group that's in Mexico or a group that's in an unreached people in a part of the world you maybe have never heard of, it's the same amount of work. So, all of a sudden, the ability to pour resources into those historically under resource areas becomes a matter of adjusting for time zones. It's amazing how simple it is to serve.
Speaker 1:Let the rubber hit the road for a second here. If there's a business that has managed to get behind enemy lines and is up and running and there are people there that are loving on the community through, possibly an underground church, possibly kind of having to stay off the grid and out of sight, but there are people that are getting help and that business cannot be sustainable. It starts to fail because it's not properly resourced with the right human capital and the right intelligence and the right strategy and structure and design, and those people end up being visas revoked and asked to leave that country. Guys, that's one step forward, five steps back. So if you're not engaged in a place where you can apply your skill set to keep that company profitable and relevant and growing in that place, we're hurting the progress of advancing the kingdom.
Speaker 1:You're doing nothing isn't doing nothing. We know the phrase send never stays where it's committed. But your inaction is probably if I'm pulling really kind of on this whole string here causing an effect somewhere else in the world that you're maybe not even aware of yet. And your action, now that you're hearing this and you're going to take action? I see literally Clint filling out a profile right now next to us while he's recording your action. To go fill out your profile is going to change your future, in the future of who knows how many other people.
Speaker 2:By the way, how long do you think it takes to fill out a profile?
Speaker 1:Well, he's already back taking notes again, so I'm going to say three minutes.
Speaker 2:I would say five. So he's at faster than most.
Speaker 1:He's very quick.
Speaker 2:He's fast. It's really not much, because what really happens is that is that we're really starting a conversation between the field and the everyday believer. So you fill out a profile and you tell us what you can do and then something new comes up that we hadn't thought about. Hey, if you can do this too, click this button and so your profile actually gets kind of dialed in as a conversation between supply and demand. So it gets smarter and smarter over time. And I know you mentioned AI. I will say that there are some really powerful things that we can do with AI behind the scenes that just look at, for example, I say I'm a CPA, you could infer good with Microsoft Excel and I'm probably detail-oriented to some correlation probability. So based on that, then we could go into AI and say, well, guys that are good with Excel or detail-oriented could probably do this kind of stuff too.
Speaker 2:So, as new opportunities come up, we could say, hey, does this fit you? If you're interested, we'll make the introduction.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. So the call to action right. The call to action is let's go fill out a profile at switchboard, right, globalswitchboardio. Take five minutes, fill out a profile and let's see what happens. Let's see what pops up, see what opportunity is coming. Obviously, if you get connected to an opportunity, it is an opportunity right. You discuss it. It may not make sense or be a fit. It's not like you're entering into a contract just yet.
Speaker 2:The way it works is that the mission says here's kind of where I need help, and they document as best they can, and we've got an AI tool that helps them document it. Well, and then you say that might work for me. You click a button and it automatically sets up an introduction that one hour phone call. They basically review the scope, decide whether or not it makes sense. It's yeah, you're right, it's one hour a month and then at the end of it it's a double opt in. So I would love to help with that.
Speaker 2:That guy would be great. And then they're mapped together and we're out of the picture. We're just trying to get you guys introduced and off and run it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna ask a hard question Is there a cost?
Speaker 2:There's only your time. Oh wow, there's only your time.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm not paying to put my profile up or I'm not paying for a connection. So if I make a connection and I end up taking a job with a company, there's not a cut coming back To either side, Wow, to either side.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's incredible, yeah, okay. So here's my ask to those of you listening, whether I know you or not when you do this and you have a connection and here, pretty soon you have a story to tell, would you email me and Clint and give us that story? Dustin at unreachedpodcastcom. Clint at unreachedpodcastcom. I would think it'd be so cool if, a few months from now, we got to tell a story or maybe there's three or four or five and we do, just like an episode of. Here's my stories of how I got connected to XYZ organization and this is what we did and this is what happened. This is what God redeemed through Switchboard, through Scott's faithfulness, through the team and I know your team is growing and you've got great traction right now. I know you're launching some new things. Thanks for being here, scott. What would be your final word? I'm gonna ask you to pray for the listeners, because that's how we end our episodes, but what final thoughts before a prayer would you have?
Speaker 2:Every believer is called to the great commission, and so to me. To assume that you can't or won't or wouldn't be appreciated or that it's hard, you're just not trusting God. So I mean we encourage people to serve however you serve wherever you're called to serve.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that, and would you pray for us on the way out.
Speaker 2:Now on previous podcast, you have people do this in other languages, like I don't know any other languages. Is that okay?
Speaker 1:That is more than okay. That is more than okay. That's just a unique thing. Clint loves that because he's like you've never been prayed for and want a key in You've never been prayed for in Bali Now you have right, but no, we'll stick with our heart language. How about that? Our heart language? We are a people group right. We do count, yes, we are Our heart language.
Speaker 2:Father, what a glorious day and what a time that you bring to this world. That you put us in a group of people that have a heart for you, father, and that we could truly reach the world for Christ. That you have given us everything that we need, even just the technology and the things that have happened in the last few years. We can easily do things that were virtually impossible just 10 years ago. Father, I just pray that, as we are a tradition, as we're a group of people that really have traditional values, that we would recognize the opportunities that you've presented us, father, and that we would embrace the ways that we can use new methods and new ways that we can reach the world. We just thank you and we love you for a chance to be together to do this in Jesus' name, amen.
Speaker 1:See you next time. Thank you for listening to Unreached. Our sincere desire is that what you've heard today will cause you to see the mission of God differently and you're rolling it more clearly. If this adds value for you and we hope it does would you please rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. Also, share with your family, your friends, your church, your life group, small group, degroup, wherever you do life, and if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreachedpodcast, or email us at unreachedpodcastgmailcom.