Virtual Volunteers For The Great Commission - Switchboard

We talk with Scott Elequin from Global Switchboard about building “Kingdom Relationships” that connect everyday believers to real needs on the field right now. We explore how prayer, encouragement, skills-based help, and smarter mobilization can reduce missionary isolation and move the Great Commission forward. 

• Revelation 7 vision and the reality of unreached people groups 
• Global Switchboard explained as a matching platform for missions service 
• “Kingdom Relationships” as the true north metric for lasting impact 
• Expanding beyond skilled volunteering into prayer, encouragement, sharing, and giving 
• Real stories of how prayer can spark deeper support and collaboration 
• Church and organization dashboards that show live engagement and global reach 
• Security and safety design that protects workers while enabling collaboration 
• QR-code onboarding to mobilize rooms of people fast 
• AI matching that improves with better profile input 
• Prayer circles and real-time updates replacing polished newsletters 
• Helping gospel workers with capacity, not just specialty “purple squirrel” needs 
• Rethinking resource allocation, generosity, and connecting younger givers 
• Affirming business as mission and marketplace callings as strategic 

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Transcript

Vision For Every People Group

SPEAKER_02 0:05

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 land. Yet today, there are still over 7,000 unreached people groups around the world. My family and friends have been on the journey to find and find the task remaining. As we share the supernatural stories of God at work to the minimum he is called to reach the unreached. Hello, friends. Welcome back to the Unreach Podcast. Dustin Elliott and Clint Hudson here today. We're going to co-host because we've got one of our favorite guests back in the studio today. We've got Scott Elliquin with Switchboard. And y'all, globalswitchboard.io. You've heard us with episodes on it. You've heard us plug it on other episodes. Scott's going to give you all the more reasons why you need to get involved and build a profile on global switchboard.io. All these incredible ways to get in the game. So, Scott, welcome back. Hey guys, good to see you again. You got some new initiatives. You got some development, some growth. We want to talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

You know, um, connecting with people for the last two and a half years now, we've just we've learned that people are highly variable and there's a lot of reasons they would connect. And frankly, the needs in the field are very, very diverse. So and so um, we're actually launching some new things in 2026, which frankly make it possible for every single believer to be personally involved with the ministry today. I love that.

How Switchboard Matches People

SPEAKER_02 1:41

So maybe let's just where where are we now? Like so far, we've launched switchboard roughly two.

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Two and a half years ago is when the minimum viable like product hit the market.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Right. And the minimum viable product was you kind of think LinkedIn for great commission, Christian, global Christian audience. So you build a profile, you tell it what a little bit about yourself, if you've got a specific skill set in accounting or supply chain management or social media or grant writing or any number of things, and you tell it what you're what you're good at. Uh, someone else has a mission or uh ministry, they're telling switchboard what they need, and then the technology is giving you an introduction. So you get an email and it's like, hey, so-and-so uh is out here. This is the description they put in for what they need help with. You may be a good fit. Then you say, Yes, I'm interested, and you schedule a Zoom and you talk about it, or you can say no, that's not exactly my fit. That's even helpful too, because that can keep them in the pool to go in and find someone else. Is that right?

New Ways To Serve May 7

SPEAKER_00 2:47

That's exactly right. And and honestly, our our initial kind of mentality, our initial objective was that I am called. Everyone's called to the Great Commission, everyone can participate. And what we found is that when you make those connections, they're amazing. They're really high impact, they're personal, they're meaningful, they're persistent, they last. And um, the thing that we also learned is that maybe we like over-engineered some things. We started to make it like a job interview. We had an early board member, Tim Allen, that you guys know that's like, Scott, it's about the relationship. It's not about like the skill set. I'm like, yeah, but they gotta have a skill set. Well, we found is that it's it's both. So the the the connections and our our true north metric is called a kingdom relationship, a KR. So if you two meet and you guys are ministering and working together 10 years from now, that's a win. If you help them and you don't really necessarily feel called to someone's ministry, that's okay too, because you help them. But I mean, we made it about the work, and so what we found that there are two major dimensions of success. One is that the person that's engaging has got to have some meaningful way to impact the ministry. They have to be a benefit to the ministry. And the ministry has got to really feel the the calling of the individual that's participating. Uh-huh. So, Clint, if you care about human trafficking or or our or church planting or a particular region or translation, I mean you should serve with ministries that fit the calling. The thing that you are uniquely called to do and helping in other places is fine, but the long-term relationships really need those two dimensions. And so, really, that what has happened for us is that in the last two years is that we've we've recognized that plugging in people other ways and not trying to orchestrate that initial interaction makes it much easier for people to meet. So to me, the the what we're announcing actually as of May 7th, so the timing of this is perfect is um for National Day of Prayer, you can connect for encouragement. Uh-huh. You can find a ministry that kind of that that speaks to you and you can connect with the individual and pray with or him or her. You can volunteer virtually or answer a question or provide expertise. You can support them financially. Um, you can share their story. So the ability to connect with someone and to I mean, if you can imagine that someone's in Malaysia or they're in South America and you join their ministry, well, what do they do? And what do they need and how can I participate? So we're much more expansive in terms of the way that we view what service really is. And and the basic unit of service, the core value proposition is that an individual can join a ministry and that they can serve together.

What A Kingdom Relationship Looks Like

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Dude, this is awesome. Like two years in, and you guys are scaling to something new. You've learned some stuff. Let's let's do this. I I want to push the button on the KR thing because that was really cool. I love that. The king of K. The Kingdom relationship. That's awesome. Can you put some skin on this a little bit? Can you tell our audience a KR story, one of these stories about somebody within the switchboard network and the relational equity that they've been able to develop with somebody that they're working with?

SPEAKER_00 5:43

I I wish I could pull up the uh Austin Ridge dashboard because you can see it playing out as people are interacting. If if I were to connect with someone because they posted a prayer request because their son is going to the doctor, and and so you pray with them for that purpose, but in the process, you know, they're you know, I'm a CPA or I'm a financial planner, or they're telling what they're good at. Then all of a sudden the the ministry is is building out a network of people that really care for them that they know, but they also know this is where they went to college, and these are the languages they speak, and these are the skills that they have, and these are these are the things that they care about. To just be very like base a lot of their relationships in terms of join my newsletter and see what's going on is really more about maintaining a stream of funding, getting people to kind of be aware of your ministry and communication. But when they start serving together, then all of a sudden the guy that answered a CPA question is now in Vietnam visiting the ministry or they're introducing their friends that can help with other things. And and then frankly, we don't track funding because the funding doesn't flow through our prep platform. But once people serve and they're involved and they've been to the facility that needs to be fixed or they understand the the initiative they're trying to solve, they they typically participate financially as well. So so to me, allowing the relationship to start at the most natural level, which many times foundationally it's prayer. I care about you, and we can meet and talk about that and we can pray. Let's it blossom into whatever it needs to be. And that that experience is actually the thing we're officially launching on May 7th. We've seen it anecdotally over and over and over again, but we intend to capture those interactions in the system so we can see how they're participating on an ongoing basis.

Dashboards That Show Mission Impact

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Okay, before we pull on that thread, I want to double-click on you you mentioned I wish I could pull up the dashboard. If you're leading an organization, if you're leading a church or you're part of the leadership team, when you have people that have signed up on switchboard, then there's a dashboard that shows everyone that's serving through switchboard at your organization. And so then Scott and his team can meet with you, the leadership, and say, here's the seven or seventeen or seventy-seven people in your group that are now working. Here's how many KRs have happened, right? Here's all the different countries that they're serving in, and you're probably gonna be blown away. You're probably gonna be blown away when you see the growth that's happened.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

It's amazing. Um, you know, it and it's it's kind of a natural progression. So you're looking it's so again, the the base unit of service is the connection, the kingdom relationship between individuals, but providing oversight to some like pioneers of these are the ministries that are meeting with people from all over the world. And these people go to these churches that have sent our missionaries for decades is a whole new value so that they can know how to inform those churches. Hey, you've got a bunch of people that are working in Eastern Europe. We should do more of that. I mean, it creates all kinds of inroads to show that progress is happening. I think that the thing about investment in ministry, I'll just say in gospel, gospel workers in ministry is it's tends to be anecdotal. Ooh, here's a heart-tugging story about this thing that happened, and here's a picture of someone who is laughing and smiling. It's like, no, here's a guy who engaged yesterday and did a thing and made a difference, and you can see it live. So the ability to get visibility organizationally says, we should invest in this. We should do what's going on.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

If they pulled that up at the at the monthly staff meeting and they're like, hey, you know what? We just want to celebrate today.

SPEAKER_00 9:14

How about we put it as an object and an iframe on their website that gets updated continuously so that anybody that comes to the website says, here's what we're doing. And by the way, click here so you can join our team so that you could do it with us.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Do you have churches all over the world who want to become sending churches, who want to have a better understanding of Great Commission? And they have members who are actively doing this that they had no idea unless they raised their hand at some point to the missions pastor or pastor and said, Hey, by the way, I'm doing this over thing, this thing in Uganda. Now they actually have access to the data to say, here is what the local expression of this church is doing for the Great Commission.

Security And Safer Storytelling

SPEAKER_00 9:49

Hey, here's 51 churches that are involved in Austin, Texas. And guess who's winning? These guys are doing this, and these guys, we're not showing that stuff, but we know, we know that stuff. So I there there's a a well-known sending church here in Austin that the head senior pastor used to be in management consulting, and we're talking benchmarking, live analytics of real data happening in real time. And I'm not sure, but he he may have swooned. He may have swooned. There was like this the look that came over his face as he kind of rocked back in his chair, and it's like we're just not used to that. We're basing the experience on a core level of referential data. Everything you do everywhere can be seen by like anybody who has access to it. And so designing the experience of who can see what and what that looks like with respect to security, which I don't know if we want to talk about that here, but we have some really clear security parameters that we're working with those organizations on to make sure that we're telling stories and providing analytics in the aggregate and doing it in such a way that it it doesn't disclose anything that would, you know, result in any kind of risk. Almost Yeah, it's important to say that.

SPEAKER_02 10:54

It's important to say that for somebody that may be a worker at an organization to not feel like that you know this may cause problems for them, right? So it there is a lot of thought to security and safety here. And the the purpose of it is not to expose you and the work you're doing in a negative light, but the purpose is uh for collaboration. Because if you're doing some work that you used Eastern Europe, then we tell the organization, well, there may be six other people with a lot of focus there, and there may be missionaries the church is supporting there that you don't even know about. And now we can do some connection and some sharing of resources, and oh hey, we're already here.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

It inspires mobilization. Absolutely. If I if a guy like me did something really cool to help somebody, it's like, well, I could have done that. It's like do that. You know, fill out your profile, tell us about yourself. If you look at the systems design in terms of concentric circles, the gospel worker is at the center. I mean, this is about the Great Commission, it's not about cool analytics. The next is the experience between the believer and the gospel worker, and then the metadata layer is the organizational layer. And the enterprise piece that we're launching this year is to make it so that it's worth it for those organizations to want to mobilize their people in mass because they get the benefit of that inspiration and that kind of dashboarding. But we're we're really doing that experience just so we can get them to buy into getting all their people involved, which is ultimately we what we want is mobilization.

SPEAKER_02 12:14

Yeah, well, and I mean, look, we're not we're not in it for credit, right? I mean, we we play for an audience of one and and all the glory goes to God, but you know, you could be in some capacity leveraging the credit of all that work in your organization to share those stories and inspire more of it. So, you know, good stories beget more good stories. Exactly. Exactly. I love it. So uh National Day of Prayer is May 7th. Is there a certain kind of timeline of events and things that you're gonna roll out here that we can kind of be aware of?

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Yeah, we're trying to build a mass orientation onboarding experience that you could sit down with a smartphone, click a QR code, talk to it, describe yourself, what do you care about, what are you good at, click a button, and then within one minute, I'll say it's actually like 30 seconds, but I'll say one minute just to give my tech team a little time. You'll get an alert that says, Hey, Dustin, based on how you describe yourself, here's how we see a guy like you being able to serve. And by the way, based on how you describe yourself, here's one organization that you could pray with right now. Here's an organization you could volunteer with right now, here's an organization that you can encourage right now. Click a button. You click the button, and it's like, okay, I'm gonna introduce you to Clint who's in Malaysia. Um, describe, you know, tell us a little bit more about yourself so I can introduce you to Clint. You click a button and you're dropped into a chat window with Clint at that moment so that you are now connected. If Clint happens to be online, he may chat with you then. But this is the ability to stand in front of, you know, 10 people, 100 people, a thousand people in a room, and within 15 minutes, every single person can be directly connected with a missionary in our system right now and probably 114 countries by last count.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

My goodness.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Somewhere in the world, and by the end of this year, it'll be every country because through organizations like Lizanne, there's lots and lots and lots of ministries and indigenous missions, especially, that don't have connections to the rest of the world that we can actually make happen very easily.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

Man, you know, so Scott, your last couple of episodes are in the top 10 all time for downloads. Um, the other guy that has some of the top episodes we've ever done is Todd Aaron. And Todd, through our relationship with him and you know, his gift of speaking and mobilizing, he might he's in the conversation for who's mobilized the most college students without doubt. Yeah, in the world right now. He's brought Clint in, and Clint has gone to MC a couple of conferences called For the Nations. And you're talking 800, 1,000 college students uh in a room, and what you're telling me is that Clint on stage could throw a QR code up during a talk and say, hey, everybody take the next 30 seconds to fill out your profile, and before you get to the bathroom break of the conference, you're gonna have a connection opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

And that connection opportunity a thousand people at a time.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

It's that that's not just an opportunity to do something, that is pick one, click a button, and actually be dropped into a chat with the individual that has that need.

SPEAKER_02 15:12

Can you imagine if you're these individuals? So you're just out there, you're doing your thing, it's a normal groundhog day for you, but then ping, right? Here's so and so college student from Arkansas. In Arkansas, in Michigan, in Dallas, and wherever, and they'd like to visit with you.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And pray, you posted a prayer need, or they, you know, maybe you're maybe you're a former, like you, you're a razor back and they're going to Arkansas. I mean, there's reasons to connect that are not necessarily, you know, gee, I want to like do some theology thing. It could be just, hey, I want to know you kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 15:46

Scott's where it's the thing that I keep thinking about is you are granting access to these relationships that would not happen on this side of eternity otherwise. Like I cannot stop thinking about the fact that I can hop on this, fill out this profile, describe myself and the giftings that I have and the calling that I have, and then all of a sudden I get connected to somebody that otherwise, without this platform, I would not have an opportunity to talk to about the kingdom work they're doing unless we're actually on the other side of eternity.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It's crazy. So, first thing is I yes, I I hate to say some things easy, but the thing you just described, our services leader Julie Zavodney, she and I argued for six weeks, three years ago, about the taxonomy. What words do you use to let you know that if there's a million people and 50,000 ministries, who should we introduce? Was impossible. It was literally impossible with with some of the AI tools that we now embedded in the app. It's like it's it's it's I don't know. I I I still can't make myself use the word easy. It it just happens. And by the way, it's accessible. It's now it's now accessible. And the better you can describe yourself, the better we can say, well, then you should probably meet him instead because now I know that you're this age or that you have raised boys, or that you go to a Baptist church versus a Methodist church versus an Anglican church or whatever. The more you can tell us about yourself, the more we can say, Well, gee, you might want to serve as so-and-so because your your family is from Croatia. You speak Croatian, so we should totally connect you with the ministry in Croatia as opposed to someone in Dominican Republic.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

It's really important because in this scenario, out your output really is based on your input. So you need to be thorough with your input. And let me just give everybody an example. I'm I'm on my switchboard profile right now. I can click on a tab about my opportunities that match my skills. There's there's 30 in my profile right now. Right. And you have a lot of skills. You have you have them ranked. Um so my front page is a hundred percent match. Yeah. There's this little green, and then it goes down to you know 58% match or 33% match. And so I can scroll through 30 different opportunities right now. Anything from fundraising consulting to marketing consulting to how to run my business. Yeah, yeah. Um that mentorship, yeah. Mentorship, yep. I can fund and I can just go through here and click on these and say, hey, yeah, I'm interested. And I can set aside some time in my schedule each week to go in and and spend time with these folks. Yep. Think about how you could scale your own time. Like quit Doom scrolling and watching the next hot Netflix thing and spend your time giving it right here to people that truly need it and have real authentic connection for the task remaining.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

I was literally about to say, like, all right, listener, here's your challenge. Like, don't open Instagram, don't open Facebook, don't open LinkedIn for five minutes. Just five minutes less of your doom scrolling. Yeah. Go to globalswitchboard.io and just check it out, fill out a profile and look see what God does. Yeah.

Stoplight Moments For Prayer And Help

SPEAKER_02 18:47

And yeah, you're going to get emails with specific ones every once in a while, right? That's like, hey, this is a really good match for you. But look beyond your email because you've got a whole dashboard in here with a whole bunch of opportunities you may not even be aware of as a current user.

Prayer Circles And Real Updates

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Well, and the future opportunities might be, you know, hey, it's your birthday. Like, bless somebody who is in another part of the world whose birthday it is today, or here's a prayer request around a specific thing that fits the thing you say you care about or the thing you're good at. You know, we we call it kind of the stoplight experience. You can get an alert at a stoplight, you can see it, you can pull it up, you can pray, or send a note, you can click, and then you can go. I mean, it really should be something that you could do as just part of your daily conversation. And we'll talk a little bit about the prayer experience and some of the things that I've learned from a key partner of ours around creating conversations between the field. I mean, right now, um, it's kind of quarterly newsletters, maybe monthly newsletters. A lot of times corporate missions prepares it and then you do your part and they stick it in so that it's kind of a thing. Yeah. But it's always what happened. Oh, and it's always kind of good stuff. It's not like the, oh, you know, I'm really struggling or my son's sick, or I had this really big meeting, and then the guy canceled. So there's a group out of um Orlando called Prayvon. Ian Sue, he and I have met, we meet every other week and pray together and just talk about how we can make an impact together. And what those guys have learned is you know, having your prayer circles, where I can say, I'm going into town tomorrow, I have this big meeting and I'm really trying to accomplish this thing. Please pray, 2 p.m., you know, uh Philippines time, which is here. Um, and then then you know the next day it's like, here's how it went, and praise God, or we have this concern, or my son's sick. All of a sudden, people are like in a conversation with you and they're like on the field with you. And so for people that are really good at communications and involving people in their ministry, all of a sudden it's not just here's my report card, I did good again, kind of a thing. It's a very different interaction. So now all of a sudden you take prayer and encouragement and service and those conversations and you blend that into all the other things that are going on, and it creates a very different dynamic, which creates entirely new opportunity for service.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

Now you're explaining that really well. That didn't exist anymore. It didn't exist anymore.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, it's a it's it's an entirely different thing. So for May 7th, we're basically going from skilled volunteering to multiple ways to interact and to serve and to engage. Um, we have a communications platform, which we, you know, honestly, some people in some parts of the world are terrible at email. Some people in this part of the world are terrible in email. Um, so creating a chat experience where you can do ministry updates or you can do prayer circles where people can connect through that means you have a much, much easier way. And then if we are able to roll that into like an iOS, like a mobile app experience, then all of a sudden you're getting alerts, whether it's WhatsApp or anything. It's like all of a sudden the the comms, the the technology of the comms, we're we're bringing much closer together. So that becomes a very persistent thing. So I would expect you to check it when you pull up at a stoplight or you've got 20 minutes before your next meeting is just hit it, see what's going on. You know, with those ministries you care about, find out what's going on with them and then talk to them and say about like you know, what it what what can you do to participate?

Team Mobilization Rollout Timeline

SPEAKER_02 21:59

Yeah. That's amazing. So if you're if you're leading an organization, if you're doing a conference, if this idea of kind of group mobilization and switch word profiles makes sense for you, when will that kind of QR code and availability be ready?

SPEAKER_00 22:15

So the the the the functionality in the software actually will be will be available May 7th. The group model, the ability to mobilize as teams, as an organization, it's a lot to absorb. So what we're saying officially with our larger partners that um that we will pilot this two-sided implementation, this two-sided network. We are telling them that we're gonna load demand in July and that we will start to bring on the supply side, the the members in September, October. We'd like to get five major organizations done this fall. We're gonna take our lessons learned from that, and then we will basically take that experience. So the software is pretty close, but making that work and the curated experience and populating the demand and all the things it takes so that if 5,000 people signed up tomorrow, they'd have something to do is the key part. It's the balancing supply and demand. So technically we will do this as an organization starting in the summer to answer your question. Got it. If you're like not an early adopter type that's gonna help us work out the details, we're ready to go gangbusters starting in QN of next year.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Okay. All right, because I'm just thinking, I mean, obviously any missions-related conference makes a lot of sense here, but like the Kingdom Advisors Conference. Oh, yeah. You know, 2,500, 3,000 of the Christian financial kind of leaders, um, that would be in a great, that'd be a great event to have on stage and say, hey, everybody do this together.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

Um I'm thinking about churches that have a mission Sunday.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

And there's a mission Sunday at church. Yeah. Everybody out in the congregation. I'm thinking like, you know, every big corporation, mine included, has a Christian focus group of some sort with thousand, fifteen hundred, two thousand people in it. You know, you do a monthly call.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

And those affinity groups, I mean, they literally have a lot of like major organizations say that if it's a certified nonprofit, you can actually do work hours toward the ministry and get paid for it.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

That's right. But you know, somebody And they actually want you to log your hours so they can take credit for it. Absolutely. Good for them, take the credit.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

So, you know, recruiting volunteers within each of those organizations that when people sign up and say they want to do it, they can teach them how to do it. You got a local guy who could say, Oh yeah, talk to Jimmy. He knows exactly how to do that. You have one of those for Oracle, one of those for Google, and one of those for Salesforce. And I'm telling you, the ability to mobilize, it's like it is limitless. And I think you've got two types of mobilization: a church, lots of ages, lots of skills, lots of people, lots of reasons to mobilize. You got the Salesforce Affinity Group or the Meta Affinity Group. It's like, I'm good at this, and we're gonna do a ton of social media. And so I'm assuming that the Facebook, you know, affinity groups, good at, you know, Facebook. And there's a whole lot of indigenous missions that would love to have Facebook skills to help them tell their stories to the world. So, you know, depending on the type of organization, you swizzle it differently. When you talk about the Kingdom Advisors, I was in Birmingham um last week with a very well-known Christian financial services organization, uh planning organization that wants to build a domain area of expertise that talks about financial planning for missions. So you've got, you know, there's a very large church that has uh about 800 ministries and they want to have their their missionaries meet with a financial planner once a year. Well, this organization is like, we want to be a part of that. So let's create a domain area for financial planning that understands mission ministry and missions, and then let's connect those guys. And so it turns into, I mean, guys, eBay was built for someone to sell their PES dispensers. Did you know that? It's like I just want to sell my PES. So they did an online thing. It's like, well, I guess if we could sell PES dispensers, we could sell other stuff too. And the next thing you know, there's a there's a domain area for people that you know have night like late 1960s Dots and Roadster parts that has people from all over the world that you know go into this group. So the ability to take the platform that just brings people together and do whatever the heck God has you to do with it, that's the innovation that comes from outside of us. We're just connecting the people that want to innovate.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Yeah, by the way, for the uh Salesforce uh group you were just talking to, there's one in my queue that needs Salesforce specialist help for donor management. So y'all get in here and build a profile and help these people help them out.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

I just got a text message from a buddy of mine today that asked me a favor, whose sister's a missionary, who's a Salesforce guy. I'm gonna send that down.

SPEAKER_02 26:28

There you go. I I didn't realize that was out there. There you go. This one's about serving uh kids in the San Francisco Bay Area, particularly just how not as much uh actual going to church happening there, maybe as there have been in other times. And so how can we get to the kids that are kind of getting maybe not led there?

Helping Missionaries Avoid Isolation

SPEAKER_01 26:44

I'm telling you, the needs are many. Let's let's talk about the needs. I want to swing to the other side of the looking glass here and talk about the actual missionaries on the ground, the people that are doing businesses missions. What's the pitch to them to communicate in a different way? The standard used to be hey, we'll either put something in a newsletter or we'll come on a podcast and tell a couple stories. Now there's an opportunity to have real-time connections and real-time needs met. So, like, give the pitch to those folks too.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

So um, if you go to seminaries, you go to sending organizations, you know, it's guys that can translate Greek and guys that can preach and guys that are, you know, they're more M-div guys. That the idea that you need to have project management experience or supply chain experience or uh operations experience is never part of it. So part of my my message to the field is guys, you if you had unlimited resources, you would you need to get good at managing a lot of resources. And our best customers are guys, I've got a guy in the Philippines that, man, you could send him another 50 people and he would have everyone put to work. Part of them would be managing other people, putting them to work. So using people who are volunteers to like engage other volunteers or building prayer teams led by people who run prayer teams. So thinking differently around the work itself, I think is part of it. Um, the second thing is that if you look at kind of the everyday sent missionary, there's a part there's kind of a sense that I'm a lone wolf. I'm on this on my own. I got to figure it out. You know, that's the way it goes. I live in isolation. And so this sense that if you say, What do you need, you know, basically they'll say, you know, well, the one thing I can't get done is this thing. And it usually is a purple squirrel. It's something that's like, oh, I need a guy who could do Salesforce in this environment who's coded and React Native. And so there's like this super hard things to to to for us to find people that have that skill, that have a heart to serve. So if we said, you know, every believer is in is now in your cell phone, everyone can help. If you had somebody that could proofread or somebody that could, you know, help you write these documents or help you do different things, then help you with your you help you with homeschooling. So there will always be specialty things. There'll always be specialty things. But if everybody wants to participate, for God's sakes, involve them so that they can participate. So instead of like 97% of my time is filled up and I just can't do this one thing, it's like, well, find people to like help you with like 40% of what you're currently doing. You know, finding someone in the United States that can follow up with your donors to just say thanks once a quarter, and here's what we accomplish. Or who knows what? It's like thinking differently. If everybody was involved, think differently about what you can do. And then our goal at Switchboard is every time we see somebody do something that's like super smart, like, that's a great idea, let's tell everybody else. You could be doing this too. And we've already populated the supply side, so you can have people involved in your ministry. So as we re-architect how you know that as we reform the supply chain of the Great Commission, as we reform how we could deliver services, let's make sure everybody knows it so everybody could take part of it.

SPEAKER_01 29:49

Dude, this is brilliant. The supply chain of the Great Commission is such a cool way to look at this too. Scott, you guys are actively creating opportunities for people who are living their life and giving their life towards missions to not remove themselves from the field. These are the things, the things that are not being solved for them. Yes, the isolation, these are the reasons they leave the field. It's because I couldn't get help to do this one thing. I couldn't make my business successful, I couldn't do this. Like, and now you're like, hey, hey, hey, hold on, hold on. We're gonna give you an entire worldwide network of people who are gonna throw their weight behind this.

What Pilot Tests Reveal

SPEAKER_00 30:23

You were no longer alone. So we ran some tests in Q4 last year. You know, we're the virtual volunteers for the Great Commission. And what we found is we connect people, high impact. The the field, the gospel workers are like, thank you, that was so great. I need to have that done. And, you know, awesome. I didn't have to pay for it. And I met a new guy. The the volunteer, the kingdom consultant, is like, you've blown my mind. I can't believe I could use my skills for the kingdom. I can't believe so. The the the NPS, the net promoter score on the supply side was like off the charts. The man they're like, okay, good, thank you. When we tested prayer and made them inbound prayers, unanticipated new connections for people in prayer, the the the the the believ the believers, the kingdom consultants like the script. That was so great to talk to somebody, you know, awesome. The field was like, I've never experienced, I've been here for 12 years. I've never had anybody find me and connect with me to support my ministry. So when you start talking about the sales part, we're not doing a lot of selling to gospel workers yet, because when we do this thing in July and we're gonna populate a ton of demand, a ton of reasons to connect. We want to say, you could do anything, but if you do these eight things, I'm telling you, like we'll make something happen immediately. We'll connect you with a lot of people. So we're trying to be prescriptive around the staging of the catalog so that you know the stuff that we've, you know, that I used to say if it's in stock, we got it. The stuff that you're asking for is stuff that we've already got and we're ready to go. So we tell these 800 ministries, you should meet with a financial planner once a year. I've got 91 financial planners, so I'll do one a month. Let's just get them scheduled. Let's hook them up. So it's like bam, it just hits. So the the kind of closing the gap between supply and demand by curating the experience so it's super easy for them to connect, whether whether it's through a skill thing or through a prayer thing, I mean that that's kind of key to the experience, I think, with the 26-year-old is that you know what? I kind of want to see it. I want it to, I want it. I mean, when you guys first signed up two and a half years ago, it's like, well, you know, at some point you might get an email and you know, somebody might have a need that kind of fits what you do. But now it's like, no, you could do something right now. You have the initiative, you have a desire, you could connect with someone in a way that really matters at this moment. And that's it's taken two and a half years for us to really figure out what that needs, what what that looks like.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Man, that's uh that's that's a lot. I think first thing I would say is obviously I think we spent a lot of time talking to the sub to the like the demand side of you know the people like us that could build a profile and could help. Um but but the supply side's got every bit as much of a part in this conversation because you're gonna need more and more supply to meet all the new people that are gonna come in. That's exactly right. Right. So if you have an organization, if you have a need, it's a great opportunity for you to get on and build a profile as well. And the second thing I want to say is I don't know if anybody else gets lost when Scott starts talking tech tech mode, but man, you your tech background comes out in this and you start going into language. That's a that's a different language group, my friend. Sorry, this is a different language group. He dropped the NPS on there, and I was like, oh, okay, acronyms and the KPIs and KR this and yeah, but you know, I think what it does is it speaks it speaks to your um your uh affluency. You're you're capable of being the guy that God's called to do this work. Yeah, it gives us great confidence that you're taking this so seriously and you are equipped and you have the background and the skill set coming out of the tech world to do this with excellence and put these pieces together. And you know, personally, we we do give to Switchboard. We've been supporting for a long time. We're gonna continue to. Um, as a donor supporting what you're doing, I'm thrilled. I'm just thrilled with what you're um continuing how you're continuing to grow and evolve. You're not saying we have all the answers, you're testing this and you're testing that and you're seeing what's working. Okay, let's put resources where God is moving. And that's how we should all go about participating in the Great Commission. Where is God moving? How can I put resources to that movement? And that's exactly how you're running switchboard.

Generosity And Better Resource Flow

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Well, I'll tell you the the other opportunity that we see is it's also outside our realm, but I think that we can help with is the kingdom is not necessarily good at allocating resources for the Great Commission. I mean, if you look at the allocation to Western ministries versus local ministries, if you look at the amount of money that's in donor-advised funds, it's ready to go. You look at the fact that you know raising money is expensive. So you can't talk to a 26-year-old kid that doesn't have a lot of money. And we feel like connecting people directly with ministries does two things. If there's a guy that's sold their business 10 years ago and put their money in a donor advice fund, a lot of time they don't really think about it because they've already kind of donated it. But connecting them directly with ministries is going to cause them to go, oh, I I can now personally see needs because I'm directly involved with those organizations. And connecting that 26-year-old kid with a ponytail, I'll just add to it because I my kid always has a ponytail. That's your kid. My kid doesn't have a ponytail, but um um, but anyway, it's like they're like, hey, I'm helping you with your Google Analytics and fixing your website or helping you with social media and telling your stories. It's like, hey, I could pitch in 10 bucks a month, you know, and you know what? 10 bucks a month if you're in Malaysia is a ton of money. That's like that's life-giving. So getting like that sense of generosity involved at a new level, I think it's disruptive because right now we just don't talk to those guys. And most of the people that we know that raise money, they have fewer donations from you know older people who gave more than they gave last year, but they're 71 and they'll be 72 next year. And it's like, you know, I just I feel like we need to reconnect the uh what I call the Zillennials, the Z and Millennials into this process so that they're personally involved.

Business As Mission Without Guilt

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Yeah, I agree. So let's talk about uh there's traditional missions, there's businesses missions for lack of picking one of the 97 different terms that we use in that realm. And switchboard is really bridging the gap because you may have a connection or 10 to nonprofits, and you may have a connection or 10 in for-profit ways too. You're not saying you've got to quit doing what you're good at in the marketplace to participate in this, you're saying bring every part of you to this the opposite. And and Clint and I've spent a lot of time, Andrew Scott and Dana Tucker and others, and we're talking about this. We don't want to only tell tell the next generation you've got to quit being good at your job or quit being good at marketplace work and give your life to missions. There have to be senders and goers. And some of the most strategic ways left to get to the places we haven't got to through traditional missions, which you cannot get to with a missionary visa, right? You can absolutely get in as an employee of an international company or as an entrepreneur entrepreneur taking your company to another place or starting a company there, you can employ people, you can disciple through the work. And switchboard is meeting that medium and and using kind of both and to engage people and bring people in. And so for the next generation, if you're parents and you're listening to this episode, please share it with your kids so they can share it with their friends. And and and understand, we're not glorifying the goer over the sender or glorifying varsity Christians as missionaries over someone running a business and discipling their employees in their community. Both are important. And as as conferences go on and as mobilization goes forth, we want to be sure that we're very intentional about supporting the calling of those folks. Boys, girls, young men, young women, even, you know, uh Steve Richardson just wrote a new book, right? Silver and bold. Even even the community coming out of the workplace into what culture would call retirement, which is only used once in the Bible for Levitical priests. We were not designed to retire. We were designed to run this race through to completion. And like another friend of ours has said, like, get to heaven exhausted. You know, Tebow, I want to get I want to get there. I don't want to get there feeling well rested. I want to be exhausted. So this gives you an opportunity at every stage of life to engage.

SPEAKER_00 38:37

Completely.

unknown 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

I mean, you're you are uniquely and wonderfully made, and you are part of a body, and you are not all parts. And so finding your calling and your gifting, do what you're good at, not what you feel like you can make money at. And if you're good at making money, then yeah, you can give, but that skill may help you get products from one region to another. It would allow somebody that's running a business as mission in an area actually sustain themselves. I mean, it's just, it's, it's huge. I mean, in some ways, the those those skills are stronger for ministry. I mean, I uh one of our lead engineer teams is actually based in let me just say the Middle East, and they went there for the purpose of hiring local people so they could do exactly what you just described. And we've got uh an engineer in Cairo and two that are in the Middle East that are, I mean, there for that exact reason. And it's amazing and it's easy and it's lower cost of living. It's it's also good business. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why this is a really smart thing. And I and and these are creating sustainable ministries that could go on for decades.

SPEAKER_02 39:43

And it very much could be uh different chapters of your life, different stages of your life as well. I mean, people transition. You may do one role for five or ten or fifteen or twenty or thirty or forty or fifty years, and then you may have another role to play.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Well, you you bring up a good point. I mean, the number of um it's interesting. We've seen two things cross over. One is the the, you know, you may be trying to start a business in a particular part of the world. Um, talking to Dustin Elliott in Austin, Texas might be amazing, probably will be, but there might be another guy or gal who started a business in that exact part of the world that lives 15 kilometers away. They could say, Oh, I know exactly how to fill out the paperwork. So getting the ministries to help the ministries, that's also a big change as we've adjusted our data model so that the KCs can be the GCOs and the helpers can be helping the industry.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

It's happening, Scott. It is happening. Like, think about just guests recently, if you're a regular listener that we've had, the collaboration across ministries is opening up like it never has before. Exactly. Even across denominations, uh, the the playbooks are really getting opened up and saying, here's resources we have, here's relationships we can leverage. Again, something as simple as, yeah, we know how to fill out the paperwork. That open-handed posture of the big C global church that we're all experiencing in real time right now, and that's something to be celebrated, it's something to be leveraged, it's something that we need to lean into. And again, here's a platform to help mobilize that, to help encourage that, to help really force multiply that concept.

Using Modern Tech For Good

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Dude, thank thank you for doing this. Oh, like Dustin and I get to sit here and hear stories all the time, and we're so compelled that we feel like the like the great commission can be fulfilled in our lifetime. We feel like all of the synergy is heading in the right direction, exactly what we just talked about about all the collaboration. But like I feel like what you've created is a crucial tool that's necessary to see this happen. And so, dude, like just just thank thank you, honestly, thank you for doing this.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

I'll tell you what, I Melanie and I, so my wife Melanie and I, we we kind of came to a conclusion five years ago. It's kind of like we raised our family, we went to church, we had this great little life, and then we look around, it's like you look at the numbers, you look at the church, it's like it's like the world is literally falling to pieces. And so there's this kind of sense of despair. It's like, wait a minute, things have changed, and we could actually, it's not too late. And whether or not we finish this race or we get this thing done, it's like we get to be a part of like potentially like taking the pendulum and swinging it, swinging it back, taking these technologies that people have put on our ads and say, you know, let's use use those for good instead of evil. I mean, you pick up a phone, you take a Starlink, you've got platform technologies, you've got um, you know, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. And so you've got global infrastructure, and now you've got artificial intelligence, and you can literally connect with any person in the world face to face today, now. I'm like, so what would you do with that? It's like the fact that we can even be a part of that. I cannot how cool is it? I like pictures of it. I mean, how cool is it? Like, what on earth? Why do we get to be doing this? It's just impossible. It's not true.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

I pray, I pray every listener, every listener has an experience with this. I really do. Because Clint and I have. It's so rewarding. Like you will end that Zoom with the biggest smile on your face, and they, on the other hand, will end that zoom with the biggest smile on their face, and don't feel pressure to make something extraordinary happen. That's not what this is about. This is just about authentic connections. Yes. It's just to say, I'm here and you're there, and we're on the same team, and I've got your back, and I'm praying for you. And yeah, is there anything I can help you with? That's it. And and it may not even be you. I even I think said on one other episode, you know, the result of one of the calls I had was I needed to introduce them to four other people I knew, and I sent four emails, and that was it. And then those emails that took off in those other relationships. I I knew people that had a better skill set for what they needed. And in this case, it was people that could be clients or customers of this engineer is what he was doing to help kind of support financially. Uh, you know, that one was seven kids and a bunch of college costs coming up. And how do we do that on I know missionary budgets?

SPEAKER_00 43:58

But my guy in Jordan has seven kids.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah, well, we might be talking about the same guy. But that's the point. The point is, you know, it may it may also just be who you know that they don't know that you can connect them to. So one commitment I want to make, and I think it's safe that we say that we we we want to do this at the conferences over the next year that we have a chance to be a part of.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Absolutely, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_02 44:20

Is that fair?

SPEAKER_00 44:21

I I I can't wait. Cannot wait.

SPEAKER_02 44:23

And then and then we'll do it. We'll find some stories to tell from the results of those and maybe you know do a little series next year on you know the results, the fruit, the impact, the uh KRs. The KRs like that.

SPEAKER_00 44:36

Kingdom relationships. We will be generating stories of people affecting people that they will self-publish that you can present day in and day out that are live stories. I mean, I want the internet and social media, I want modern culture to realize that people can change the world. I want to have make it super easy. I mean, getting someone to write a story is really hard. Getting a story to self-generate and let somebody say, Yeah, that happened and publish it is a totally different thing. And that can happen at scale. And those types of things are the things that will drive innovation, that will drive activation and mobilization that will make it personal. There's a lot of social currency in that. And I'll tell you the one thing that we see is that you know, if you're a conservative, let's just say you get kind of caught up in modern culture and you gotta stand your ground. It's like, well, maybe you don't argue with somebody about something you never agree on, and you just say, you know what? Here's what I care about, let me tell you about it. It's a very different thing. And making these personal connections, I just think is gonna create so many opportunities outside of just what switchboard's doing that I just think that we will never fully know the like the impact that we can make if we just will pick up the button, tell what we what we care about, and tell what we're good at, and just let God take over.

Closing Prayer And Listener Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 45:46

Amen. Amen. Hey, you know how we end them. You said you did that. You just so you know, Scott came in today and goes, just don't ask me to pray another language. You've already speak, you know, you've already spoken another language quite often today. Yeah, it's the the tech language. Um but you know, as always, Scott, thanks again. And uh would you close us in prayer?

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Yeah, I love you guys. I just appreciate what you're doing and the stories you're telling because this is this is how we need to think. We need to be really aware of the rest of the world, and we're very insular, we really are. So thank you guys as well. I I really love the ministry that you guys are are bringing to the world.

SPEAKER_01 46:20

Thank you. Thanks, man.

SPEAKER_00 46:24

Father, what an amazing day. I just pray that you would allow every person that hears this message to recognize that they have a very specific place that they can connect in this world, that there is some ministry somewhere in the world that as a whole that is exactly their shape. And I pray that people would be would be called to that, that they would be encouraged, Father, and that they would just recognize that they can make a difference, that they should not be disillusioned, that they should not be um disenfranchised, that they would recognize that it is not too late, that is something that they could do today. I thank you for Dustin and Clint. I thank you for this ministry, I thank you for this church that we're in, and the amazing impact that they've made. We just love you, Jesus, and we thank you.

SPEAKER_02 47:06

Um 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 your role in 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, D group, wherever you do life. And if you want to connect with us, find us on Instagram at unreached podcast or email us at unreachpodcast at gmail.com.