Beeson Podcast, Episode #689 Dr. Yvonne Huneycutt Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I’m your host, Doug Sweeney, and I’m joined today by Dr. Yvonne Huneycutt who just shared with our students and community during one of our Global Voices lectures. Dr. Huneycutt’s very career experience includes the corporate world, local church ministry, mission ministry, and managing a nonprofit organization. For over 30 years she has partnered with the organization that designed and facilitates the perspectives on the world Christian movement course. A mission, vision, and mobilization course. She’s currently on staff with Perspectives Global, serving the dozens of national perspectives programs around the world. And she recently authored Propelled By Hope: The Story of the Perspectives Movement. Thank you very much, Yvonne, for being with us today. >>Yvonne: Thank you very much. I’m happy to be here. >>Doug Sweeney: Let’s start out by just welcoming you, introducing you to our listeners. Tell us a little bit about how you were brought up, how you came to know the Lord, and then I’ll remind you of this later in case you forget, but how the Lord got you excited about his work around the world and Christian missions. >>Yvonne: Okay. Happy to. Well, I was very blessed with Christian parents. My mother led me to the Lord when I was six years old. I remember it vividly. She said I had been asking since I was five but she wanted to make sure I knew I was a sinner. By six I did know I was a sinner. And so knelt at my bed and I asked Jesus into my life. It was really the growth aspect that happened when I was around age 15. And I was privileged to go to a tremendous event called Expo 72 in Dallas. It was at the tail end of the Jesus Movement. And joining with a hundred thousand young people that were just turned on to Jesus in the Cotton Bowl Stadium. That so impacted my little 15 year old life. At that point I felt called into ministry. >>Doug Sweeney: How did you get to go to that? Did your parents take you to that? Or youth workers, church? >>Yvonne: My church was sending three buses. Well, all of Nashville. I grew up in Nashville, Tennessee. They were sending three buses from Nashville to Dallas. So, we joined that, I was with my youth group, and it’s where I first learned to share my faith, and that’s where I led my first person to the Lord. It was the Dr. Pepper man selling Dr. Pepper at the back of the stadium. It’s where I learned about the Holy Spirit – that the Holy Spirit wants to fill us an empower us to live a life that God wants us to and to give us the power for witness. And so it was a major trajectory for my life with all of those things happening at age 15. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow. That’s exciting. I’ve seen video and photos and read accounts of it, but I was a little bit too young to go myself that year. >>Yvonne: Yes, well, I am dated. (laughs) >>Doug Sweeney: All right, so what happened after that? How did you get ready to serve? >>Yvonne: I knew I was called to speak but I didn’t know what that looked like. Then I came here to Samford University for my undergraduate. And in my very first year there was the Jan Term. I don’t know if Samford still has that? >>Doug Sweeney: Not quite in the same way. >>Yvonne: Okay. So, you had a special course you could take or you could spend it at home and that particular year I spent it at home. I was struggling with the sense that God was calling me to some sort of global ministry. But I struggled with it because I felt like it was my own personal desires driving that. I just wanted to travel the world. Or I wanted to be famous or something like that. And so I was talking with my mother about it and went to bed one night and I woke up in the middle of the night and the presence of God in my bedroom was so strong and vivid. I felt like Jesus was sitting on the end of my bed. God spoke very clearly to my heart – not in audible words, but in my heart – “Yvonne, those dreams are not your dreams. I’ve placed those dreams in your heart.” Word for word. That’s what he said. I knew that God was calling me to this global type of ministry. But I didn’t know what that looked like. But to be really honest, I told the Lord, “Okay. Global is good. Don’t make me a missionary.” I didn’t want to be a missionary. My experiences of missions growing up, I just kind of thought it was boring. >>Doug Sweeney: I thought the problem was you loved to travel so much you thought you were being selfish? >>Yvonne: Yeah! (laughs) >>Doug Sweeney: At least you had that going for you! >>Yvonne: So, I’m a Boomer generation and in that generation the mission presentations were always the same. As a younger person it just seemed like the missionaries ... they’d been gone so long they didn’t have a clue what our culture was. So, I was looking through the eyes of a young person. So, that was my thinking for the longest time. It wasn’t ... I really didn’t understand my global call and my ministry mission until I took the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement course. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. Was that at Samford? >>Yvonne: No, it was later. It was post seminary. I ended up in ... I did a little ministry church and then ended up at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth ... where my grandfather went, actually, many, many generations before. He was a pastor. And so after that God put me in the business world and I say that because I had grown up in a Christian bubble all my life. I felt like I was very not prepared to relate to the average person. So, in consultation with my pastor I ended up at Tandy Corp working in the computer industry, and then the company Dell Computers started and they came and raided all of the computer companies. So, I ended up with many colleagues down at Dell in their very early days. When I moved to Austin, Texas I visited this church and the very first Sunday I was visiting they were praying off a mission team that they had raised up out of the church going to the nation of Turkey. And I started talking to people and the people in the pews were studying Turkish, planning on vacations to Turkey, they knew about the Turks, they were praying for the Turks. I said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. What happened?” They told me, “Well, the pastor took this course called ‘Perspectives.’” I said, “What’s that?” And so when I went and visited the course I found out that there was the textbook I had in my Intro to Missions class at Southwestern. And so I joined the class and my whole view of missions changed. But I realized that God needed to change me as well to prepare me for what he wanted in missions. >>Doug Sweeney: Let me ask you a question about seminary. We have a lot of listeners who are wondering whether the Lord has seminary for them. Probably a few of them are wondering whether the Lord has missions for them. You said some things got sparked by you at Samford but you really didn’t get excited about missions until even after seminary was over. And when you went to seminary there weren’t as many women who went to seminary as there are today. >>Yvonne: Not at all! (laughs) >>Doug Sweeney: What were you thinking, as you went to seminary what do you think the Lord was doing and how is that related to how he later got you excited about missions? >>Yvonne: Well, I believe God was giving me confidence. To be a woman in seminary at that time we were usually one or two in a class. I mean, going to preaching class for one was difficult. But I knew God had called me to speak. And so I believe it gave me the theological basis, the biblical basis, and so forth that I needed in the future. But then my education in the business world was equally as valid because I was able to take all the things that I had taken in with my faith, but then learn how to apply it in the everyday world. And so that experience taught me how valuable people are in the business world – no matter what they’re doing. Whatever their skill, they’re called and God can use them. And so being able to understand that and put all of that together for me was very valuable. In terms of missions it was purely seeing a church totally transformed and understanding, a church, somebody sitting in a pew or in a seat or whatever they’re in, a lay person in a church can be equally involved with God’s purpose in the world as someone who goes to the other side of the world. The difficult with the challenge is that we don’t know it. And so we don’t know what God is doing. And so as we get awareness of what God’s doing in the earth and realize that God has called all of us to be global Christians, world Christians and disciple makers and engage his purpose in one way or the other however he’s created us, that made a real difference to me. >>Doug Sweeney: Let me ask you to say just a little bit more about that. We can move on and talk about your current work in just a second. But I’m also thinking about lay people who might be listening. And saying to themselves, “I wonder what she means by that. I mean, she’s lived her whole life traveling all over, mobilizing people for missions, she got to go to seminary, so she must be different from me. She just said to me on this podcast that I can be as active, involved in what the Lord is doing around the world as she can be.” I think for some people that’s going to sound counterintuitive. What do you mean? >>Yvonne: Let’s just take for instance someone with a particular business skill. Business skills are needed everywhere in the world. And it’s not that that person needs to go but they might find ways that they connect with people who are living in places where they can offer their training, their expertise. I mean, we can do that virtually nowadays. You can do it on a short term trip. And then they get engaged with what God is doing in that land and among those people – utilizing their skills. I always thought it was a shame that when you ask a CEO of a company to go on a mission trip and say the only thing that we can have you do is build a house or teach children. And that’s a wonderful thing but they have so much skill and ability and things to offer. So, looking at the ways that God has created us individually. Or prayer. Prayer is one of the greatest things. Welcoming the ... God sent the nations to us. So, every one of us can have a very critical piece by being engaged with the ethnicities that have come to our shores. Many of them from unreached people groups. And they could be Muslim, Hindu, whatever. But they’re from places where the gospel is not easily accessible. But it is here. All we have to do is invite them into our home. We know how to cook a meal. And they would love that. And just be friends. Pray for people! God changes the world through prayer and that’s something every one of us can do. So, there’s multiple levels that we can engage. I think one of the biggest things is for us to even be aware. That takes a little bit of initiative to connect to websites or connect things like Voice of the Martyrs and the persecuted church or places where we can be aware of what God is doing. And then find places that we can engage when something catches our eye that fits us. >>Doug Sweeney: Sometimes even just paying attention to and finding ways to learn a little bit about what God is doing in our own backyard. I was thinking about people who live in Birmingham. They may go to wonderful churches but their churches may not tell them a lot about or give them a lot of evidence about what the Lord is doing with other sorts of people in Birmingham. And every once in a while I think lay people just need a few tools, a little encouragement, just to think through, “How could I get involved?” >>Yvonne: Yes. I think probably every city has ... if you’re talking about for instance immigrants or refugees, every city has organizations that work to help resettle refugees for instance. And those are plenty of ways you can get involved. You can just volunteer and say, “Hey, I’ll be here for the family that’s coming in.” Let’s just say they’re coming in from Iran. “I’ll be here with this family. I’ll meet them at the airport. I’ll welcome them and make them feel welcome here. I will go help them get set up in their apartment.” Or, “I’ll take them to the DMV to give them ...” that’s a big sacrifice to take them to the DMV. (laughs) To help them get their license. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s scary enough if you’ve grown up in town! (laughter) >>Yvonne: So, these are just natural friendship evangelism sort of things you can do, but if you can impact a family that’s come here from another place, they always impact their families back there. So, in a sense you’re finding out about their culture. You’re learning to pray for them. And you’re sowing seeds of the gospel with them that will travel back into their countries. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great. All right. Let’s get back to kind of your story, how we got to today with you. What were some of the first things the Lord had you do in the area of global Christianity missions and so on? >>Yvonne: So, after I took that Perspectives class I relocated back to my hometown in Nashville. And I was reading my organization’s magazine which is Mission Frontiers. And it just gives all kinds of things God’s doing. So, I was reading it, educating myself, and I noticed that there was a list of Prospective’s classes and there was one in my city. And so I said, I’ll just randomly volunteer. That’s how I got involved. I started volunteering for the program. I ended up coordinating for a decade in Nashville and running an office there for mission mobilization. We were able to see well over a hundred new missionaries be raised up within that decade of at least two years or more. And dozens upon dozens of churches have become intentionally involved in missions, of all different kinds of stripes and denominations and so forth. And we saw things like churches coming together for the ethnicities. We for instance did a festival of the nations highlighting all the ethnicities that were coming into our city so that the church people can say, “Hey, they’re here. How do we engage?” Things like that. And so I got more deeply involved. Took a trip to Russia, spent a year there. Because I wanted to understand if I’m mobilizing people to engage God’s mission, I’d like to be on the other side and see what that looks like. >>Doug Sweeney: Was that with Perspectives Global? How did that happen? >>Yvonne: No, it was my church. The Soviet Union had just collapsed. It was 1994. My church had been involved with Russia for a while with bible smuggling. And so a new church had been birthed, started by the most famous rock-n-roll singer in all of Russia, but he became a believer. He’s spent time in KGB prisons. But now he was preaching the gospel. And so his church was growing very fast. And so I just went over to encourage him, serve him, do whatever he needed. And teach the bible school there. And just be there as a servant but at the same time I was able to educate myself – what does it look like to cross a culture? What does it look like to engage yourself into the language as you’re trying to learn it and be as fluent as you can? And all those sorts of things. I was trying, actually to be honest, I was testing the principles we teach in Perspective’s about crossing cultures to see if they worked. And so I did the things that I learned in perspectives and I found out they worked. And that made such a different to me because it gave me a greater confidence upon what we were teaching in the course. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. So, your local church sent you as part of a group, or were you all by yourself? >>Yvonne: I was all by myself on that. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow. >>Yvonne: I was totally connected back to ... well, I don’t know, I won’t say that. We didn’t have the internet the way we have it today. So, we didn’t, I wasn’t able to be in that deep of connection but ... back and forth from the US. But I was so amazed how I knew when people were praying for me. I could just sense it. And I would never have known that if I had not been on the other side when you’re really feeling sick, or you’re feeling you know discouraged or tired. You know? And I would feel the energy I would get that I knew was coming from prayer. So, that began to show me, wow, prayer, you can feel it on the other side of the world. And so all those little things that I was learning made a big difference for me going forward in mission mobilization. >>Doug Sweeney: Wow. Was that ... I’m thinking about some of our listeners again here. Was that a scary experience for you? Were you totally prepared and it was just fine? I’m imagining somebody ... they’re kind of inspired by your story, they want to get more involved, and they think, “I could never go all by myself to a place like that.” What was it like? How much courage did you have to kind of muster to make it happen? >>Yvonne: I will confess, I’m a little adventuresome. And there are a lot of things I never told my mama. (laughter) For a reason! But on the other side of that, I will say God has asked me so often in my life ... and it wouldn’t just be Russia, it would even be things that I did in the business world, as well as in mission – to do things I had no clue how to do. That I was completely unprepared for. I knew that I knew he was saying, “Do this. Go into Russia.” It was so clear. I was unprepared. I did start taking Russian before I went so I was trying to get as prepared as possible. But I wasn’t trained in missions. That was not my degree. I just knew God was calling and so I went and, yes, it was kind of scary but it was also very exciting. And God prepares us, he equips us for anything he calls us to do. And I think he calls us to take that step out of the boat onto the water far more often than we are willing to really actually do. It’s an adventure when we do it. And really trust him that he does equip us with everything we need. >>Doug Sweeney: I wonder sometimes how many of us need a little more encouragement from people like you to step out and do the things the Lord is asking us to do. How many of us will get to a certain point in our lives and look back and think, “You know? I wish I would have had the faith, the courage, the gumption to do it, because I felt like I was supposed to do it, and I was just too afraid.” >>Yvonne: Yeah. If you look through history, God so often used young people for just world changing things that he wanted to do. Why young people? Because I think they’re a little more willing to take those risks. And they’re not quite as attached to the things of the world. >>Doug Sweeney: They have less to lose. >>Yvonne: That’s right. The hardest thing for me when I went to Russia ... don’t laugh, but it was leaving my cat. Because I was so devoted to my cat and I had to leave him with my parents. And that was really hard for me. And I will say also the crossing cultures, I realized your heart does not always follow, or your emotions don’t always follow what you feel like you’re supposed to be. So, I found myself – just true confession – at some point caring more for the cats than I did the Russian people, because they were freezing and starving in the cold on the ice. And I realized, okay, I am here for the glory of God in the name of Jesus. That’s my sustaining motive. My emotions are going to go up and down. Maybe I’m tired. Maybe I’m mad at the Russians because they don’t do things the way I want them to do. You know? Those sorts of things. My emotions are going to be fluctuating. But what sustains me is knowing that this is God’s purpose. He loves them. And he is wanting them to know him. And I’m just a piece of his plan to bring them to him. And that’s the sustaining motive, not how I feel any one day. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Wonderful. All right. Let’s tell our listeners a little bit more about Perspective’s Global AND about the new book that you just did called Propelled By Hope: The Story of the Perspective’s Movement. Can you give us just a little intro to the movement so that we know what it is? >>Yvonne: Sure. So, Perspective’s is 50 years old this year. It started as a result of the Urbana Missions Conference for students. And Dr. Ralph Winter who started this course he was at that Urbana and there was a remarkable result of students that were saying, “Yes, I will go. I will be a part of whatever God wants me to and whatever he calls me to in the world.” And Dr. Winter says, “We need to help them to know what God is doing and have a foundation upon which to go.” So, he started this Perspectives’ course, we’re 50 years old. And so we have now grown ... it was mainly just US for the first two and a half decades and then it began to go global. We do not try to export the Perspective’s course but we wait for those in the nations who want to have it in their nations to awaken their churches and to mobilize their churches to get behind what God is doing in the earth so they can send their own missionaries and they’ll have churches who will support them and pray for them. And so Perspectives is a 15 week course. It lasts over a semester. And the uniqueness of it is it has a different instructor every week that brings their experience or their knowledge to the particular topic. And we look at what God has done throughout history, what he says in his word his purposes are globally, understanding that, what he’s done throughout history. And then we look at what he is doing today. And what are the barriers to the gospel? What are the challenges that we need to address? Whether we ever go or whether we sit on a church’s mission committee. Or whether we’re praying. We know how to address those challenges because we understand them at a deeper cultural and strategic level. So, it’s an awakening, it’s a vision course. In terms of Perspective’s Global, we get to work with the cream of the crop. We’re in 45 nations. So, we’re working with leaders from all these different nations that generally are national leaders at their association or denominational levels. And so they will pull together other churches and leaders who will run courses in their country. We just come alongside them in the first few years. We have equipped them. We have helped train. Whatever they’re needing. But we expect them to be self taught, self led, self funded within about two to three, four, five years – depending on the economy of that nation. Some of the fruit we’ve seen come out of it ... I’ll just give you two examples. In Rwanda, we had the very first truly indigenous Rwandan mission agency started. A young couple that took Perspective’s and had been involved with the [inaudible 00:23:41] sister course of ours, and they saw the need for an indigenous Rwandan missions agency. And they started it. They’re already sending their own missionaries and they’re supported by the Rwandan church. In Malawi our newest program, our leader there is a national leader, he says the Malawian church is always seeing themselves as a receiving church. And everybody else, the West comes to us, and we receive. And he says, so my goal is to turn Malawi from a receiving nation to a sending nation. He is fast doing that and Perspective’s is just one of the tools in his tool belt. So, we’re seeing those kinds of results. >>Doug Sweeney: Fantastic. So, can any church get the course? Is it difficult to get the course? Is it expensive? What do people want to do if they want to have their church benefit from this? >>Yvonne: So, going to Perspectives.org and you can see more information about what the course is and you can click on a map to see the cities that it is offered in. So, in a city, for instance, we try to see at least two or three churches come together to host this course. It will usually be spring or fall. You can connect the class in your city or we have an online option. So, our online cohorts start every two months. And you might be in a cohort with people from all over the world that are taking this class. And so you read on your own timetable but you discuss together and turn in your response papers and things like that on a weekly basis. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. Thank you, again, for the talk you gave to the students over lunch today. We want our listeners to listen to the recording online. Can you give them just a little teaser? What do they get if they tune in and listen to the talk that you gave today? >>Yvonne: Yes, so we were talking about how God gave Abraham this vision of there’s going to be ... through his seed all the nations will be blessed. And we see in Revelation how there are some from every tribe, tongue, and people, and nation. This has been God’s purpose but he is really populating that vision, filling that galaxy, as I like to say, today in this generation. There are more people alive today. To be reached than ever before but the church is larger. And so God has equipped everyone of us to join in this mission to see the last people groups, the ones who still have zero access to the gospel. Ways to pray for that, ways to connect to that, so that we can see this galaxy populated with every tribe and tongue and people that God designed to love and know and worship him. >>Doug Sweeney: I remember you talked a little bit with the students, too, about the 10/40 window. That’s something that in seminaries gets talked about a lot. And I bet a bunch of lay people in churches have heard it before. But they might now know exactly what that is and why missionaries like you emphasize it. >>Yvonne: Okay. So, the 10/40 Window is a parallel window from 10/40 degree latitude on the globe. But what it encompasses, if you think about it, is all of North Africa, all of the Middle East, and over into China. This is where the most unreached peoples in the world live. It’s also where most of the neediest peoples in terms of poverty and health and life expectancy and those sorts of things are. But this is the places and the peoples that have the least access to the gospel. And in some places zero access to the gospel. Our greatest challenge as we have done even more research lately is India. There are more “frontier people groups” with almost zero access to the gospel in India and the subcontinent there than any other place on earth. So, if you pray into India ... you can go to JoshuaProject.net and look at all the people groups there and see how to pray for them. Because there are prayer resources. Then that’s another way to help bring in the Kingdom. Because when we pray, God answers. Jesus said, “Pray to the Lord of the Harvest that he would send out laborers.” Well, if there’s no laborers among those peoples then it’s our responsibility to pray that he will send out those laborers. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. Yvonne, thank you. This has been wonderful. You may not know this, but we always end these interviews with guests by asking them what the Lord is doing in their lives these days. Just as a way of edifying our listeners by way of conclusion. After all of these years of ministry, is the Lord still teaching you things? Is the Lord still doing things in your life? And if so, is there one of those things you could highlight and encourage our listeners with? >>Yvonne: I will give you the one from this week, how is that? So, in preparation for this actually I was reviewing the story of how the gospel came into Mongolia in these last 50 years. I was so impressed as I read these biographies, stories of the power of prayer. And I realized I just don’t believe like that. I can pray but it’s more of a begging sometimes. And it’s not the expecting, near as often as it should be. And I was challenged as I was reading, which we so often are when we read about missions. I was challenged about how those on the front edges, they just learn to pray. And believe and expect God to answer it. And so I put that into practice this week because I was facing a very, very busy week of travel and teaching, speaking ... today was my sixth time in five days for a few hours each time. And so I knew from my own personal history that I get really weak and weary. My voice goes out. And so I asked people to pray. And this time I really expected God to totally carry me through. And my voice not to give out. And that’s exactly what happened this week. And I’m so excited to go back and report to my prayer partners – thank you for partnering with me, because you are the ones in your prayer that made that happen. But it also taught me – expect more. When you’re seeking to do what God is wanting you to do, expect him to show up. And do the things for his name and for his glory. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s great. A wonderful way to end. Listeners, you have been listening to Dr. Yvonne Huneycutt. She is with Perspective’s Global. She has spent many years as a missionary and mobilizing other missionaries and teaching people what the Lord is doing around the world. We’re deeply grateful for her presence among us today. We tell you, you ought to go check out her book, Propelled By Hope: The Story of the Perspective’s Movement. And consider taking one of these classes. A wonderful want to get excited about and learn how better to participate in what the Lord is doing around the world. Thanks for being with us. Thank you, listeners, we love you, we’re praying for you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.