JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on biblical theology. Today, Jason and Tom talk about training pastors and leaders using Hands to the Plow’s picture-based curriculum. Why do we teach in this way? What benefit does it bring to those preaching and teaching? To see the curriculum for yourself, go to handstotheplow.org. You’ll also find a link to the curriculum and to our preacher’s guides in our show notes.

TK: Hey Jason, we are doing GearTalk.

JD: Awesome, Tom. Welcome back from South Asia. Just delighted to be able to let our listeners get a little window into this recent experience, even as I’m anticipating launching off to the Horn of Africa in the next couple of weeks.

TK: Yeah, it actually fits our topic today perfectly because it’s a window between me returning from a trip training pastors and leaders and you with the team launching on the same thing.

JD: It really is both of us getting to teach the Developing Leaders curriculum. Both of us walking through preacher’s guides, one in Genesis, one in Revelation, and yet at the two different ends of our process. You have gone six times now to walk systematically through all six courses of our Developing Leaders Biblical Theology curriculum. And that means you’ve covered the Law, the Prophets, the Writings, the Gospels and Acts, the Epistles, and now Revelation. I’m gearing up to go into Ethiopia and our team is going to be walking through the first of those courses, the Law of Moses. So you’re coming here with some significant perspective and I hope that we can just enter into that a little bit and hear about what the experience was like. Even thinking back to when you first began and where the students were to where they are now, and reflecting on how you first—well, why don’t we just dive right in? Let’s just let our listeners know that this Developing Leaders curriculum grew up in a context. It grew up out of identifying a need, and it was specifically a need that you saw in Asia. And now the curriculum is able to be used all throughout the world. So just reflect for a few moments on what gave rise to shaping a curriculum that is focused very much on the message of God’s word for the global church.

TK: I think so many miracles went into this. Like all of our Christian lives, we have to believe that God is doing things and orchestrating things in our life all the time. And I just, as I reflect back, even working with pictures, for instance, and having a thought that this is an effective way to teach God’s Word—I don’t think that would happen without my partnership with Mark Yeager all those years in advertising and then traveling with him and just seeing it seems so much more effective to have a visual to talk about what we’re doing. So I just want to say that I think for all of us as believers, knowing we live in a miraculous world that God is doing things. But in this context, I was with the guy actually who did last week’s podcast, Bob McCoy. And we’re teaching to pastors in a setting where they have multiple churches. I think these pastors in the US educational system would be at about a 6th grade reading level and their Bibles had no study notes. And we are—there’s a whiteboard there and we’re just trying to walk through basics of the gospel and realizing that they are hampered in significant ways, none of which would be due to laziness on their part, lack of effort, lack of love of Jesus. So things that would hamper them would be they’re working in a culture where the majority religion is just heavily pressing against them. A majority of the people can’t read, their Bibles have no study notes. So things that we can quickly look up—and I, even as I’m talking to you, Jason, I have my Accordance Bible software open on a different computer screen and I can look up something really quickly. Their Bibles had no center margins, no study notes at the bottom of a page. So as we’re teaching, we would reference something in the Old Testament or ask a question about a passage, and they would struggle to find where we were talking about in the exact same way we would struggle if you took away all our tools.

JD: Right, right. So very early on ministering in Asia, you and Mark Yeager got to take a trip together and here you have godly artist matched by growing exegete and biblical theologian and the two of you saw a need. And even before the biblical theology picture-based curriculum was shaped, you two started using art and seeing it actually be an effective medium for communicating the very message of the biblical text. Share with me a little bit about how the vision of using pictures to communicate biblical truths got started in relation to the ministry of Hands to the Plow.

TK: I can—I’m thinking of a particular building right now. If anybody being in Philippines would be able to imagine this—they love basketball and we were doing training in an outdoor basketball court. And Mark is there and I’m talking about something and he’s just standing by me and they have like a whiteboard or something there. And I asked Mark to draw a picture of something. And anyone who knows Mark Yeager would know he’s just a great personality anyways, everyone loves him. But just realizing the combination of what he drew—and I can’t remember if it was a lion or something—what he drew and the scriptural truths, being able to tie them together and point to the picture and use it as a reference. And so right in front of the people we are trying to sketch out: this is the concept we’re talking about. So it’s very different from how a lot of us will work, where we’re saying these are the three points of my message, 1, 2, 3. Generally, at least for me, I struggle to remember that sort of thing. Like I can’t remember the five points of this or the whatever. But if I can see it and visualize it in my mind, then I’d say, OK, I have a grasp of what we’re talking about here. And I might not even know the three points, but I could pull them all together because I know the story being told. And that’s what was happening there and we were just realizing, wow, this is an effective way to teach. And not certainly not just children, but adults think this way as well.

JD: It really is amazing if we just step back from Scripture. Scripture, in order to rightly understand it, assumes something, namely that we are growing up in a real world with real images all around us. So God will say “Go to the ant, you sluggard and become wise.”

TK: Mm-hmm.

JD: It will call us to “think of the lilies.” But then it will also use images like “the lion of the tribe of Judah,” or it tells sermons in story form. That is, it begins to unpack the story of Scripture, which really begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation. And what do we have? We’ve got characters and plot lines. We have real people in real time, and all of it is designed to awaken images such that we can relate to this person, what they’re wrestling with, the context they’re in. When it says that the mountains will be brought low and the valleys will be raised up, or that the waters parted and they walked on dry ground—we can see that and understand it, because it’s connecting with real things in our world.

TK: Right.

JD: And that’s what the art does. It’s very easy I think for all of us who’ve read the Bible to at times begin to read it and not picture it, begin to read it and somewhat distance it from the real world. And yet to properly engage it, it’s always calling us to utilize our senses, our memory, our feelings, and have it aroused by the engagement that’s being depicted. And this is why—I mean, the gospel can even be presented, the good news can be presented to all peoples at all times in so many different cultures, because we’re humans living on the planet and God entered into our world, speaking our language. And so I just think it’s neat that biblical truths written in words can be communicated effectively to people who don’t know how to read.

TK: I was just going to say even Revelation starts this way. It says, “Blessed is the one who reads it and those who hear”—that idea of in the 1st century, the people did not possess their own Bibles. They’re hearers of God’s word. They need to somehow be able to place it somewhere in their mind. And they’re not going to do it or these are the 17 points of Revelation. They won’t think like that.

JD: And Revelation 1—I mean, for example, in the way that it unpacks the one seated on the throne in all of his white glory and how it depicts through images—and they create images in our mind. And what we’ve simply tried to do, what Mark’s tried to do, taking creative license but trying to be faithful to the biblical text, create images that can go with the person to be used in cultures to teach—to teach to the literate, to teach to the non-literate—the everlasting truths of biblical scripture. We’re not at all trying to say that scripture is no longer needed, or even that a picture is sufficient. Right? But we are noting—and you’ve seen it operative on the ground in Southeast Asia and South Asia—the way God has used these images to cross cultures, to awaken the biblical truths, and also for these same very pictures to be a means of grace to be able to teach those who’ve never had the privilege of learning to read. And that all of a sudden they’re being given a window of recollection, a window to take with them, to remember what it was that scripture was teaching, even though they can’t read the text. They can see the picture and it’s awakening recollection of the deep truths that are lasting and bound in the written word.

TK: That’s the amazing thing. Like that example from Revelation is that the one person reading Revelation and the many listening—like would have in a church with a pastor preaching, the many listening are supposed to have it in their mind. And even John’s creative use of how he refers to the—in Revelation, he never does it in that simple Father, Son, Holy Spirit—like not simple, but that category that you’re expecting. He does it in a different way: “From him who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from the faithful witness”—that sort of thing. Well, the goal of going through this curriculum with people is to kind of help pastors and leaders say, can we help you understand what John is doing here, where he’s drawing ideas from? Something he does—John does it frequently—is he’ll hear something and then when he looks, he sees it and it’s different from what he heard. I never saw that growing up, but like he hears about a lion, but then he turns and he looks and it’s actually a lamb.

JD: That’s right. He hears about the bride of the lamb and he turns and he sees a city.

TK: Right. And those are the sort of things that as we—one, as we pray for people all around the world, like would you help people teach God’s word? Would you help people hear it? But as we give and say I want to support works that are doing this and people who are training pastors and leaders, because I think love of neighbor compels us to say that’s what I would want. I would want somebody to not take my job, but if they had resources—I mentioned this last week with Bob McCoy—to help out, and if they could help me navigate something that I haven’t had tools or training to see before, that’s what I would like. So that was where the pictures started and it really—they really were created in South Asia because I would go back to my room and I was able to be emailing Mark and saying, “Can you put something together? This is what I’m thinking of.” And he would email me back something. And so I had an image to go with what we were talking about. And so we were putting things together while we were there. And part of what you’re battling in a lot of places is just people learn—what, how they’re taught to learn is by rote memory. And it doesn’t mean we understand something if I can give you the right answer. And so the picture kind of almost comes in the back door if you want to say it. Comes in a different way.

JD: Sure. So it starts with a whiteboard and then it moved to stickers and then it turned into a full curriculum, moving from Genesis to Revelation that took multiple years to craft. Both through—by the fact that all six courses each have about 30 pictures in them, along with matching text that’s unpacking the message of each of the biblical books.

TK: And we have—Mark has an app on his iPad. So I would talk to him on the phone and I’d just say this is what I’m thinking. If in each section we’re kind of limiting ourselves to 25 to 30 pictures, saying this is what I’m thinking and we talked for a while and he’d eventually say “Alright, I got an idea” and we’d move on. Actually a funny story—he and his family went to England, it was actually during COVID and we were finishing up Revelation at that point. And he has an app on his iPad that allows him to record our conversations. And he said “You didn’t know it, but because of jet lag, I fell asleep in so many of the things we’re talking about. And I had to go back and relisten to it because the app is recording it” and he draws while I’m talking. And you can see his pen just like drifting down the page because he’s falling asleep. So he showed me—he can replay the app. It was very funny.

JD: That’s great. That is great. So you’re getting ready, Tom, now for the 6th course to train these Bengali pastors. How do you prepare? What do you and your teammates do to prepare to teach in this cross-cultural setting? What does that look like for you as you ready yourself?

TK: It’s a great question. I think something heart-wise, it doesn’t matter where you are, but heart-wise—if the people don’t know that you love them and respect them, it’s just not going to work. So to be able to love people and faithfully work with them, because they’re the ones who are tasked with this in their culture. But I would say that’s a lot of it. But then as you think about—so for instance, we just finished going through Revelation. It would be making sure that we have worked through the curriculum together. And we would typically—so Bob and I, we will divide up what we’re going to teach and there might be a time where he says, “You know what, these three pictures in a row, these ones really matter to me for this reason. I’d like to teach these ones” and we’ll divide it up. We certainly—you can have things, though, where you’d bump into where with a teammate, something like that, you might have a difference, and you might say, “Oh, we see this aspect a little bit different and I think you’re going to want to at least address it with the people you’re teaching with and be able to function together moving forward. You don’t want to confuse people.”

JD: It’s very common—just looking at all the study Bibles we have here in the US, rather than guiding—then thinking about the study notes at the bottom of the page, rather than guiding interpreters to a certain understanding of the biblical message, often the study Bibles will take the approach of “Here’s the four options people have.”

TK: Right.

JD: That’s not the best—the most effective approach in cross-cultural settings. At least we’ve found that it’s not the best approach because often it can significantly distract when they haven’t heard any of these options. They’ve never even thought in those categories.

TK: Absolutely.

JD: How do you think about approaching those kinds of tough questions? You just noted if both trainers who’ve been teaching side by side in this cross-cultural setting actually have a little bit of a different take, all of a sudden it may be necessary to talk about the different views and why each one of you holds what you hold. But often that’s not the way that you go about your training process. Tell me a little bit about what you do and why you do it the way you do.

TK: Yeah, we—so part of this is the preacher’s guides we have. The first one I wrote was—and again this came right out of teaching in South Asia. And I said to Bob, it would be so nice if there was like a sort of a study Bible, but would be like a pastor sitting next to you saying, “Hey, go to this passage. That’s what Jesus is thinking about. This is where this is building.” And we just—as I worked on that and as we talked together, kind of made some rules. And basic rules were: it won’t help to say here are four options and not land the ship. It won’t help because people will say “Well, what do you think? How did you get where you got?” I think sometimes we can also miss the big picture of a passage because we’re just not thinking of how this would be received in a different culture. For instance, I’m thinking of Book of Revelation and if we mentioned something like the Millennium. So if you have a passage like that and you talk to—it depends on where you talk to believers, but certainly in a Western context you might right away have all sorts of arguments about timing and things like that. But if you grew up in a context with a majority religion and you have been dominated, it feels like, by just a beastly power and the church is just always under pressure—to hear a passage that says that an angel came and he grabbed the ancient serpent, the Devil and Satan, and bound him for 1000 years—you’re going to hear that differently from somebody who it’s a theoretical conversation about when’s that going to happen, not is it actually impacting my life.

JD: Yeah. For you, life and death may be at stake right now. And your question is, I mean, God just spoke this—does this have relationship to me? Why does it matter? The power of the devil is around me all the time. I see the darkness. I’m not in the majority. I’m in the vast minority. I’m being oppressed by evil day after day. And is this talking about now? Does it matter to me now? How am I supposed to think about it?

TK: Absolutely. And so we could minimize it and we could say it’s not important. We’re going to skip it. We could say, “Hey, these are a bunch of options. Nobody’s figured it out.” That’s not going to help these pastors. But to even encourage them, do you see in the text here it’s saying that Satan is not all-powerful? And that God has power to bind him, that sort of thing. The churches in Revelation—there’s a part, Revelation 11, it talks about the beast coming and conquering. But right before it says “When they have finished testifying, then the beast who rises from the bottomless pit will come and conquer them.” And emphasizing the church finishes its job, the church conquers. God is watching his people. This book is designed to make us conquerors, not fearful, not afraid. So how do we teach in such a way that they will leave feeling bold and encouraged and feeling like we have to conquer and we’ve been given what we need, versus just feeling like there’s 47 options out over here and nobody knows what to do.

JD: Allowing the word to be a living word that transcends all cultures is so vital.

TK: Yeah. Yep.

JD: And it matters here in the United States. It should challenge preachers here to recognize we need to get beyond just the words to the reality. We need to be able to feel appropriately so that we can live rightly and move beyond simply the observation, the understanding and the evaluation, to actually claiming this text as my own, whatever that text may be.

TK: I’m just—I’m looking at Revelation 20 right now and it talks about people who have not received the mark of the beast on their foreheads, and that—that would be a picture. I think that’s a perfect picture of what we’re talking about here. That can be a theoretical conversation. “What do you think it is?” And that certainly that conversation has gone all over the world, but like teaching these pastors we were with and saying the first people in Revelation with a mark on their foreheads are believers.

JD: Mark of God and of the Lamb.

TK: Right. And saying OK, that should frame how I think about this whole conversation. And the question is this then: do I have that mark? Does that mark my thoughts—that I am the Lord’s, I—the lamb, He is my Savior. He is the one I follow everywhere he goes. I know his song.

JD: I bear his name. Yep. Yes. So I mean, you’re hitting on it. Teaching a book like Revelation in a different culture raises all kinds of new elements that you likely didn’t even anticipate. You couldn’t anticipate all of them because you don’t know the culture thoroughly. What was it like? Can you give some examples of where students may have raised questions or where you were impressed to talk about things in South Asia that you may not have focused on in northwest Wisconsin or anything like that? But I just imagine having done some cross-cultural ministry myself that being in a different culture, people are at times thinking in different ways and seeing things in the text that I may have missed simply because of their backgrounds, their pressing issues. Give me an example of teaching Revelation in South Asia.

TK: I think—so thinking about the book, we have chapters 2 and 3, letters to churches and each one says “To the one who conquers, I will do this.” And you’re talking—you’re talking to people who have suffered a great deal already, and they are constantly suffering. There’s constant pressure. And in part of the curriculum, there’s an image, it’s a picture of a church. But imagine like a photograph—it’s being squeezed from the top and the bottom. So the image is of a church, somebody preaching, the people listening, and at the top of the picture is like dented in and the bottom is dented in. And on the bottom there’s a picture of somebody wanting to stone somebody else. And that picture is a little bit smaller. And on the top is somebody and it’s clear that person’s actually in the church. And then there’s an arrow going into the picture. So what the basis of the picture is—Revelation teaches us pressure will always come against the church, and it’ll come from two directions: one outside and one inside the church. So we fear persecution, we talk about what if the government does this, that sort of thing—that would be outside pressure against the church. What the letters teach us is that the greatest danger to the church is not the outside pressure. The 2nd and 6th churches, that’s what they’re facing and they’re the healthiest churches. It’s the inside pressure of things like tolerating false teaching. So what was really interesting as we’re teaching, and I’ve been to this pastor’s church—he actually oversees 5 churches, really hard area. But as we’re talking, he says the hardest thing we face is somebody always comes in and ruins it. And I said to him, I said “The inside pressure?” and he said “Yes, and we can’t do anything about it.” So I think we—we can have something in our mind like “Well, clearly the hardest thing they’re going to have to face is this outside pressure” because that’s what they live with all the time. And hearing from this pastor the same thing so many of us face—how do I stand up to a false teacher in the church? How do we deal with a person who’s making trouble in the church? Like church discipline sorts of things. And recognizing in that sense, it really is universal that churches need courage everywhere and it’s hard. It’s hard being a healthy church, but we have to do it. And I would have guessed going in, you know, if you said, “What’s the biggest pressure against the church?” they would have emphasized its outside.

JD: Hmm.

TK: But the picture Mark drew—which that picture is smaller, the outside is smaller, the inside is a bigger picture pushing against the church—the picture proved right.

JD: Wow.

TK: That’s the one that these pastors are saying “We need prayer so we can be courageous” because all of them—like pastors and leaders here are facing things that they say—that is, it will take courage to deal with that and I don’t know what to do next. Lord, how do I face this?

JD: That’s a good word. It reminds me of the—how the Old Testament leaders, they were called shepherds. Rather than feeding their flock, they began to feed on their flocks, is how the prophets portray them. And how Paul, speaking to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20, he says “After my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock.” They’re going to be wolves rising from the midst of these churches. And so it is fascinating that your image, the image as it was depicted here in this cross-cultural context, they said “That’s exactly right. The biggest challenge we have”—even, I mean, and he says that living in a Muslim-dominated culture, right, where darkness is everywhere and with the—where the church is just struggling to maintain and grow, he says “Our biggest challenge is from within.”

TK: And that was when he said it, everybody was nodding, and I just felt like every pastor, every elder, every leader I know in the world would say, “I feel your pain. It’s the same.” It’s where we tend to lack courage—is our internal things. And it’s where we’re deceived, too, thinking it’s not as dangerous, but outside clearly will be the most dangerous. But he said it really well. He said “Someone always comes in and wrecks it.”

JD: Well, may God—may God help his church. May he protect it. What a hope we have that Jesus can say, “I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail.” There is hope for us.

TK: I was just going to say that that was just really the theme that became the dominant theme of our teaching—is this book is intended to make you strong so you do conquer. The church has to conquer. We have to make it. This book is a gift to us so that we’re encouraged so we don’t quit.

JD: Something I found in my journeys is that so many in cross-cultural settings, when they’re wanting to gain education, what they’re looking for is leadership. They want a master’s in leadership, a master’s in Christian education. They’re not thinking about Bible. And I’m wondering, Tom—I mean, you had so many different things you could have written on to serve the churches around the world. Christian education, leadership principles, even—or church history, preaching, even skill in how to interpret the Bible, what questions to ask. And you didn’t go there. Instead, you created as step one of developing leaders curriculum, you created a six-course Bible message focused curriculum. It’s specifically “Developing Leaders: Biblical Theology.” And I’m just—I would love to have you reflect a little bit. Why did you choose to create a curriculum that was message-focused even more than skills-focused? We’re not downplaying that knowing how to study the Bible is vitally important. But instead you said though—step one, we want to train the pastors in biblical theology. What was your thinking in crafting the global curriculum this way?

TK: You know, I wonder how much comes from thinking about growing up. I grew up in a Christian home, but the thinness I had theologically in so many ways. And I’d hear something—I remember, Jason, sitting in Hebrew class with you, for instance. And you saying some things and thinking “Nobody’s ever told me that before.” And that changes so much, like having whole categories that are shifting around.

For instance, and moving—and the fact is, I might be—I might have exceptional skills and not know the story at all. And I would take 1000 times out of 1000 the person who knows and loves the story in God’s word over the person who doesn’t but has skills. I think being able to say, “This is what’s happening” and then with any personality, with any culture, for them to be able to say “In our culture, this is what it looks like when we preach God’s word. When we teach, how we do it”—you’re not telling them the how, you’re telling them the what. This is what we have. This is what we’ve been given. It certainly needs to be worked into your context—how you sing, how you praise, how you preach, all of that. But to know this is what God has given us, this is the big picture of the story going on.

I remember, Jason, you and I talking as we’re putting this together and even talking about—do we arrange the Bible in the way Jesus would have read it, the Old Testament? Or do we do it in the way that our English Bibles, our modern Bibles would have them arranged? So Genesis to Malachi in our modern Bibles or Genesis to Chronicles in Jesus’s Bible. And both of us landing in that spot—it changes so much when you realize this is the way they were seeing Scripture. It’s what I would want to hear. So my thinking was—if it’s something I would say that helped me, that got me some places that I wouldn’t have got on my own, that’s how I would like to hear it. I don’t want somebody dumbing it down for me and saying “Well, they’d never get it because they’re from X culture.” What I’d want is give it to me in a way I can get it but then we’ll use it how our culture works.

JD: That’s really good Tom. To be able to add to that, as you were talking, you mentioned Jesus’s Bible. His Bible was framed by the story. There’s these commentary books in the middle. We call them things like Jeremiah and Zechariah, Psalms and Lamentations. But they are embedded within the story.

TK: Yep. Yep.

JD: And that story, because it frames Genesis through Kings and then Daniel through Chronicles, Matthew through Acts and then Revelation—the Old Testament and the New Testament are framed by the story. And they frame commentary books, letting us know that there’s more than just story in the Bible. But the story is the entrance. It bookends both the Old and the New and it’s the invitation to read everything in light of God’s movement from creation to consummation, from shadow to substance, from anticipation to realization. That movement in the story climaxing in the person of Christ. And I remember sitting in my—in a class where for the first time someone opened up for me the story with Jesus at the center. And it was like all these independent stars in a beautiful sky—constellations were formed that magnified all the more the king in his beauty.

TK: Hmm.

JD: And I think that focusing on the message, what it does is it gives pegs upon which all the individual persons and players and perspectives and powers—all of them now have a place to fit. When I enter into my preaching and my teaching—and both of us have seen in this global context people just be awakened to—all of a sudden I feel like I can approach my Scripture because they’re understanding the larger message, right, and how—I mean, it really is an approach that says the whole council of God matters. That’s how Paul talks in Acts 20:27. He says “I’m not guilty of your blood because I didn’t shrink back from declaring the whole counsel of God.” And by that he means God’s purposes as he declared them to be from Genesis to Revelation, from creation to consummation. And Paul unpacked that overarching message with the all-glorious, holy, unique God, a truly sinful people who were called to magnify his glory, a purpose of God not only to judge sin but to make a way for sin to be overcome by sending his son in the likeness of sinful men to magnify God’s greatness, to be what humans were supposed to be in order that all in him might enjoy not only salvation but satisfaction. All who believe in Jesus, even as sinners, could have our sins forgiven and have perfect obedience reckoned as ours. And then a new power for life and joy and obedience in relationship to God. This is the overarching story. And the focus in our curriculum is on that message, helping people see how the message of Genesis relates to that overarching story, how Exodus and Leviticus relate to that overarching story, how Jeremiah and Nahum relate to that overarching story. It doesn’t mean this is enough, but it is, I believe, a very helpful starting point in helping faithful men and women who have loved God’s word for so much of their lives, who are living in very challenging places on the planet—some of the most difficult…

TK: Right.

JD: And what we’re taking to them is an ability to bring constellations together to magnify the greatness of God, to give them a wall of pegs upon which they can now hang so much of what they’ve learned and be able to see how it’s all integrating and working together, making much of Christ and giving hope to people.

TK: You know what’s really fun is you talk about those constellations coming together because you’re talking to people who love God’s word. Like when you heard that in that class, it’s like everything’s been set in place for that to happen very quickly. That “Oh, I see it.” I think of things like growing up, poetry for me fell in the category of “It’s weird. I don’t know what to do with it.” And biblical theology is what gave me the pegs to say it is beautiful and right and necessary in God’s word. And I look—I look for it. But I didn’t have that category before. So it’s like I just saw random things in the Bible like—and I do that with stories too. “Oh, here’s another random weird story about this.” Because I, like I said, being thin theologically and not knowing the story, I had no category to place it. I didn’t know what to do with it.

JD: Last question, Tom. We’ve talked a lot about using this curriculum overseas. How could you envision local churches here in the states using this material for the benefit of their people?

TK: Oh, that is such a great question. I think when we think first of all about our pastors and leaders, our elders, but our people—why wouldn’t you want to train a people with the basics so that they can hear God’s word in the way you just described it, where constellations have come together? Where before I had 66 books and you know, for most people you’d say can’t say them in order, don’t even know where they are—all of a sudden things fitting together and saying, “I understand it” and it just increases our hunger. But I would say for local churches to say, training up your Sunday school teachers because if people can, if children can hear these things from a young age—I think of so many things, I think, “I wish I’d known that when I was, you know, 8 years old. That would have been such a help.” So training your Sunday school teachers, training your youth leaders, whole groups of churches where I—I would say most pastors have never been to Bible school. But where the pastor is struggling, working two jobs and being able to get away and get a refresher or not even a refresher, a brand new overview of the whole story, which would just release him into a spot to be able to use God’s word.

So I think something we’ve learned is what was developed overseas—we use the exact same materials here and see the exact same results.

JD: Well, I love it, Tom. I am delighted you’re back home, but so grateful to God that he let you go off to South Asia one more time. I’m eager for my trip here in a couple of weeks. May God let his word run. May he continue to help Hands to the Plow be faithful.

TK: Amen.

JD: I delight in doing this GearTalk podcast with you, Tom. Look forward to our next meeting. See you soon.

TK: I love it. Talk to you soon.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. For a host of resources including extensive notes, lectures and important articles, visit jasonderouchie.com. You’ll find many resources in a number of languages at handstotheplow.org.