David:

[0:00] Welcome, my friends. I'm excited to have with me Mike Sr. here from Follower of One. We all know that going on a mission trip can change a person's perspective for the rest of their life. However, with time commitments and costs, many people are not able to get off work and to go on a mission trip. But Mike has created a way so that people can go on a mission trip and not even take time off of work. I won't say any more. I'll let Mike explain this incredible opportunity. So welcome, Mike, to Redeeming Business Today. Thanks for coming and sharing some of your limited time with us.

Mike:

[0:32] Hey David, thanks for having me.

David:

[0:36] Yeah. So, a question I'd like to ask some of my guests is, what is one tangible way that we can honor God in our business?

Mike:

[0:50] Well, I think it applies to our whole life. If we just do it like we're doing it for him, I want to, you know, I want to make him the boss of everything that I do. The minute I realized that my boss wasn't my boss, Jesus was my boss, it changed everything.

David:

[1:09] Okay, very good. Thank you very much. And so, Follower of One, I'm not sure how long that's been going on, but take a few minutes and explain this journey you're on and where you are today.

Mike:

[1:20] Certainly. We started about seven years ago. We're an online community designed to help Marketplace Christians integrate their faith into their daily life. And people hear different words. I'm talking about people who don't work for a church. When I say Marketplace Christians, I'm saying people that are in the rest of the world, not working in the church. But many even church staff members have joined us on this trip that we do because it helps us think about the people that we interact with every day. Even retired people go to lunch somewhere where someone else is working or people who work pick up our mail or pick up our garbage. And so, we're interacting with people in the marketplace all the time. And I just wanted a place where I could connect with other people that were trying to live their faith every day. So, we started an online community in 2017.

Mike:

[2:15] We came up with the idea of doing this marketplace mission trip in 2018, where we challenge people to go to their own job like they're going on an overseas mission trip. And we really had a lot of success with it. So, it's been exciting.

David:

[2:31] OK, well, that sounds interesting, but most of us probably don't realize what would that look like? How would that work? I'm going on a mission trip, but I'm going to work. So, could you explain a little bit how that format works and what people do on this mission trip?

Mike:

[2:45] Certainly. So, I figured out if somebody came to my office who was on an overseas mission trip from their nation? They would be doing a job similar to mine. They'd be right next to me, maybe in the cube next to me, and they'd be doing the same job I'm doing it, but they're trying to build relationships with people, maybe for the purpose of sharing about the Lord with them. Well, what if I started just living that way in my own daily job? We wrote 10 devotionals. We have a two-week devotional, and we do this together as a cohort, and we can do it from all over the globe because we're not going anywhere different. And what we would do on a mission trip is we would spend each day interacting with the people that we meet, looking for opportunities to expand that relationship. And then in the evenings, we would get together, talk about what happened and pray. And so, we have our evening debriefs on Zoom or Teams or whatever. We use virtual meetings for that.

David:

[3:51] Okay.

Mike:

[3:52] And we've been doing 45 of these. I think 46 and 47 are going on right now. We do them with people all over the globe, or we also now do them, we let churches do them. We help churches do these. Just like a church would go to a particular mission field every year, they build a relationship and go there every year. We also challenge them to also do the marketplace and invite everyone else in our congregation to do it once a year. And we have about eight churches so far that are partnering with us on that.

David:

[4:26] All right. Very cool. Very neat. So, what do they do when they go to work? Like you have this devotional, do you give them like challenges or things to do everyday kind of thing?

Mike:

[4:38] A little bit. So, we talk about, we came up with what we call our five daily habits, and those are pray, appreciate others, know what you believe, serve others, and speak for yourself. And so, the first week's devotionals are about those five activities, training us on what it means to just be praying for, be more intentional about praying for our co-workers or the people that we interact with today, how we can show appreciation to others or how we can serve them. And then know what you believe is being able to answer in one or two sentences when someone asks, why are you doing this? We want to be able to ask that and answer that question and just let them know that Jesus is part of the reason for why I'm doing this. And do that and speak for yourself. That last one is making sure that I use I and me statements. So, I'm not trying to tell someone else how to live. I'm just telling them why I'm doing this. I'm answering that question because it introduces my relationship to Jesus into this formula. They're trying to figure out why I'm different than they are. Now they know the answer and it just helps our relationship move things along. We're just trying to do the very intro level of living out our faith so that other people would ask. And it's based on that's based on first Peter 30:15, being able to give a defense to everyone who asks.

David:

[6:06] Yes. Very good. I like, I like that. That last one speak for yourself because I have, I've also learned that we are a witness. We are light. And as I say, I'm not going to say, hey, what has God done for you? But if I go to somebody and say, hey, this is what God has done for me. This is how he's answering my prayer. That's your testimony in a nutshell of, hey, this is what God's done for me. And then they start thinking, it's like, huh, if He did that for you, maybe He could do something for me. And that's that witness. And so, yeah, speak for yourself. It's very cool.

David:

[6:40] So are there any, what kind of qualifications are needed to get on a trip like this?

Mike:

[6:47] So you join our community. If we go to work and we pray for our co-workers, we’re on a mission trip, so I don't really charge people for this. We actually ask people to pay it forward so that other people can do it. You can go to followerofone.org and go to Marketplace Mission Trips, which is one of the take action items and request an invitation to our next trip. You will get sent a little link to join our online community and it will put you on the next Marketplace Mission Trip.

Mike:

[7:20] We do the mission trips six times a year as Follower of One so that people can experience this and start thinking, well, how can I get other people to do this? And then we ask people at the end of it to consider paying it forward so that other people can do it. Our long-term goal is to have a group of people in this online community who have all done this. We're all trying to live our faith every day, but then we're connected by occupation or by industry, or maybe we all connect in a city, or we even have subgroups for some other organizations that have partnered with us so that we're in there helping each other live our faith every day, because it's a heavy load to get our pastors to help all of us with all our different occupations, living our faith. And so why not get the engineers to help the engineers and get the salespeople to help the salespeople and the first responders to help the first responders, because it's different living out our faith with every kind of job.

David:

[8:23] That's a good vision there about people joining up together. Very good. So, do you have any stories of one or two stories of how people have what people have done during these mission trips?

Mike:

[8:39] Yeah, actually, we have several. We had one of the very early mission trips. We had a person who got confronted by a co-worker in a meeting at work. So, there she's in a staff meeting on like Tuesday of the week of the mission trip. And her project was confronted in a pretty hostile way by a peer and this staff meeting. And because she was on the marketplace mission trip, she chose not to respond sharply. She said, normally I would have responded in such a way that no one else would have had anything else to say. And things would have been tense for a couple of days and it would have just settled down. But instead, I just said, OK, thanks. I appreciate that. Later that day, she was in the company gym for a yoga class, and she was the only person in there. And in walked the other lady that had started this tense conversation in the staff meeting. And she said the two of them had a much warmer conversation than we would have had I done my normal thing. So, it's those kinds of things where God just changes the temperature of our workplace.

Mike:

[9:51] We've had people who have given gifts to people, and they've said, why are you doing this? And we've had a couple of people who have interacted with folks who have come to the Lord. But most of what typically happens is there's this softening. People who are not Christians, especially in a post-Christian world.

Mike:

[10:14] The first thing they need to be, they need to meet a trustworthy Christian. And so, we're just learning to be more trustworthy as Christians in our marketplace. And then God will bring the tension. He changes the temperature in the lives of all the people that we're working with. He's working in their life too. And now we're in a position to be able to make a difference. One other story was about a friend who had a Dr. Pepper. He was watching them fill the pop machine at his work. And there was an extra Dr. Pepper left over that had been left sitting out cold. And he was getting ready to go home. And he thought, well, this is my favorite drink. I'm getting a free Dr. Pepper to take home with me today. And then he remembered a co-worker who also liked Dr. Pepper and was working later. So, he went, and he took that Dr. Pepper and put it at the co-worker's desk. What was interesting was, I don't even know what the co-worker ended up doing, but another person saw that and had a conversation with our mission trip partner. And he got to have a dialogue about why he did that, why I put that drink on their desk. And it just, you know, introduced that whole argument, that whole discussion rather, into their workplace, just simply because instead of taking the Dr. Pepper for himself, he gave it to someone else.

David:

[11:35] That's neat. That's neat. And those are good examples. Do you find people after this two-week trip saying, hey, this is good. I'm just going to continue this project as we go on.

Mike:

[11:46] Yeah, actually, we ask people for feedback, and the ones who give us feedback, about 80% of them check a box that says they want to keep their mission trip going. We realize that it's all mission field. We don't have to go someplace to be a disciple-making Christian. We are already going. And so, we get a lot of positive feedback about that from the people who are engaged. Surprisingly, about 75 or 80% of the people who sign up don't really get engaged with it at all. And then it's hard for me to track them down because they don't want to tell me, well, I'm sorry, I didn't do it. But I've had several people who have done it twice or three times. And the third time's a charm. And then they give us positive feedback.

David:

[12:36] Okay. Very good. So, for the audience, what, what kind of time commitment is this? I mean, obviously you're spending time at working intentionally doing things. What about side you, you talked about devotional meeting and all that. So, what kind of time commitment are we talking about here?

Mike:

[12:52] So, we have the zoom calls. We have eight Zoom calls during a regular two-week trip. Each of the three Sundays, so the Sunday before, Sunday in the middle, and the Sunday at the end, are like weekly kickoffs or wrap-ups. And then the second week, we treat that like action week. And each night, the second week, we have a little 30-minute Zoom call. So, each of these calls, we try to keep to 30 or 45 minutes at the most, where we're just checking in with each other. That and a five-minute daily devotional each of those 10 days is all it is. And we even tell people, if you miss one of the devotionals, skip it. Just get the one, get today, and go do today. Matthew 6.34 says, each day has enough trouble of its own. I don't need to worry about yesterday's devotional. Do today's.

David:

[13:45] Yep, yep. That's a good idea. Yeah, no, or else you get behind. It's like, oh, I'm two days behind. I'm three days behind. I'm just going to quit, you know. That's exactly.

Mike:

[13:58] That's exactly. We had people do that early on. And when we were doing it in email, I used to just tell people to delete it.

David:

[14:08] Just delete that email. Yep. Okay. Very good. So, what are you looking forward to next year? What are your plans as far as Follower of One? What's new?

Mike:

[14:20] That's a great question. We've started partnering with churches. And so, once someone takes the trip, we actually invite them to ask their church to do it. And we set up a special space just for the church. So, it's just their people that are interacting on the trip. And we've had about 10 church trips. We have eight church partners now. We started out with one, my church that I attend, had to be the guinea pig for a lot of this for a couple of years. But we started adding other the churches, and we're now up to eight churches that are doing this. In fact, there's a church doing it right now, and Follower of One is doing it right now, and they're both happening at the exact same time.

David:

[15:07] Okay. So is your schedule on your... I'm sorry, go ahead.

Mike:

[15:11] Our goal is to get to a thousand church partners, and there's actually a link on that Marketplace Mission Trip page for pastors where they can go to a special page and learn more about how to connect with me so we can help them get their own trip going.

David:

[15:28] Okay. Very good. I lost my question. So that's fine. I'm sorry.

Mike:

[15:33] I killed it.

David:

[15:35] You're fine. So, okay. So how can my audience find out more about going on a mission trip? Back up. I know what my question was. Do you have a schedule? Like if we went to followerofone.org, is there a schedule of here around the calendar or our next mission trips?

Mike:

[15:53] Yes. So, if you go to FollowerOfOne.org, in the upper right-hand corner on the menu, take action, it says Marketplace Mission Trips. Or you can also go to marketplacemissiontrip.com. Either one of those takes you to the same page, and you can see the next four trips there. You can only sign up for or request an invitation to the next one. But you can see the dates for the next four. We try to keep, like I said, we plan six every year. We do them every other month. We're probably going to try some one-week trips next year. And we've also come out with a workbook version. I don't have a copy of it handy here. We came out with a workbook, a six-week version of the mission trip that you can do in workbook format. And you can do this like in a small group. You don't have to do it on our schedule. You can just do it yourself with three or four or five of your friends. And you can find all of that at MarketplaceMissionTrip.com or at FollowerOfOne.org.

David:

[16:57] Okay, very good. And that's what I was going to ask. Are those two places the best place to get more information then?

Mike:

[17:02] Yes.

David:

[17:04] Okay, very good. So, one more question and then we can call it a day. But what is one challenge that you have for my audience to take away from today? To going down the path of seeking first God's kingdom in the business?

Mike:

[17:19] Yeah, the first prayer, the first prayer, we are all five words away from the mission field. Here “I am, send me”. And so, when we just have the guts to pray that prayer every day, Jesus shows up, he puts us to work, and life is never the same.

David:

[17:42] Yeah. Very good. Reminds me, somebody else said, God is always at work and he's inviting us to join with him.

Mike:

[17:49] That's right. Clock in anytime. I actually talk about the prayer, here I am, is me punching in. That's, you know, that's, I'm getting on the clock. Okay, Jesus, here I am. What do you want me to do next?

David:

[18:01] Very good. I like it. I like it a lot. So, I think I want to do this sometime. time. I got to schedule a few hours in for the couple of weeks when I get less busy, but I would like to go check that site out. Very good. Thank you, Mike, for showing up. Do you have any other questions you'd like to ask, or things you'd like to talk about?

Mike:

[18:21] No, David, I'm excited about what you're doing. Thank you so much for inviting me to do this. This is a tremendous honor. And so, I'm grateful for you investing a show in this. I mean, it's amazing how God is calling all of us. We have the technology. We have the resources. We don't need permission. Let's go do something.

David:

[18:53] All right. Take care. Thanks. Bye. Well, there you have it. Our conversation with Mike Henry from The Follower of One. I love Mike's passion for wanting to follow God and giving the opportunity for everyone to go on a mission trip even without leaving their home. I trust you will take Mike up on this challenge to be a light right in your workplace today. We are called to be salt and light in this world, my friends, and Mike has given us a tangible, practical, and dynamic way to learn how to do just that, along with the support and accountability of others. So, what are you waiting for? Plan a trip today. It may just be the best investment of your time this year. And remember, time has limits. You can't do everything. Choose wisely.