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Healing the Poverty Mindset pt. 2 with Tim & Terry Andrews: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Healing the Poverty Mindset pt. 2 with Tim & Terry Andrews

disciplenations.org1h 5min

Tim Andrews

00:04

But we have had communities in now 45 countries where, according to independent studies that have been done, it's commonplace to have a tenfold increase in household incomes. When you address a biblical worldview as foundational to everything that you do, economic development, or health interventions, clean water, education, whatever it is, if you start with that, it breaks the dependency syndrome and cycle.

Luke Allen

00:44

Hi friends, welcome back to Ideas Have Consequences, a podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. This is part two of Scott Allen and Shawn Carson's discussion with career missionaries, Tim and Terry Andrews, joining us all the way from Kenya. As always, with this two part series, if you haven't listened to part one yet, we recommend that you start there. And as a quick refresher for those of you who have already listened to part one, in that episode, we learned the back story of how God called Tim and Terry into the missions field in Africa and about their early years of relief work with World Vision in Mozambique. We learned about their time in desperate communities suffering from starvation or cotton war zones, and about a close call at the Andrews had when they were trapped in a crossfire in the civil war in the DRC. And ended our time hearing about an amazing story of how God used Terry's simple desire to teach Muslim children about stories in Genesis and turned it into an incredible ministry that now serves around 225,000 children in 23 different countries today. From that point, we knew we needed to break the discussion up into two parts because we had so many more questions and stories to hear. And we have yet to hear about the role that an understanding of worldviews changed the way that the Andrews approach to their vocations. As I mentioned at the end of the last episode, today you're going to hear about examples of how God is using the empowered Biblical worldview to transform individuals, communities, and even nations. Again, welcome to Ideas Have Consequences, a podcast where examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world to all the nations, but it is to also seek to transform the nations, to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness, and beauty, of God's kingdom. Tragically, most of the church today (but not the Andrews) have largely neglected the second part of their mission. And today, Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.

Scott

02:42

What we're back again with Tim and Terry Andrews of Roots To Fruit and it's just been remarkable to listen to your story Tim and Terry, thank you so much for for sharing just this incredible journey that God has had you on together, so many years serving the Lord in Africa in a variety of different capacities, in so many different countries all the way from relief work and war zones and escaping by a hair's breadth with your life and to starting a ministry for children, just with a handful of Muslim children and just how God has really grown and blessed that, and it's continued to this day to to reach 1000s of children. And Tim, you continue to move up the ladder, I guess, at World Vision, and now you're overseeing at this point, large swathes of operations in places like Kenya, but you talked just before we ended, you talked about how you got to a point where you had a bit of a crisis in your work, I was wondering if we could just pick it up there. And if you could kind of lay the groundwork there and tell us what was that crisis for you? What was precipitating that?

Tim Andrews

03:57

Sure. So first of all, it's kind of embarrassing to have to admit that I was in very senior leadership roles and did not really understand the fundamentals of community development. And it's because I came in with my background as an English literature major and business, MBA in accounting finance. And my gifting is really administrative and orchestrating relationships and making certain that to surround myself with super smart people and then kick barriers out of their way and move everything in the same direction so we can accomplish our mission. And I had assumed that the professionals had figured everything out. And all I had to do is kick barriers out of the way. And that actually was true in terms of the relief work, the emergency response to humanitarian work, which is a very top down almost like a military drill, a lot of logistics that are involved. And there's some very good best practice around how to execute that. And that was my first 10 years in World Vision. And so I had a lot of competence in the professionals that did that. And then my confidence remained as I moved over into the development side of things. And I want to be quick to say that I'm not trying, all of the development organizations I think, really struggle with what does good development look like.

Scott

06:01

Absolutely.

Tim Andrews

06:02

When you're an NGO, there's just a whole lot of nuances. There's a lot of great work that gets done. World Vision has done tremendous work. I mean, very aggressive work, as have many, many nonprofits. But there was this period of time, I think, when a lot of organizations were discovering the kinds of things that were in the book, "When Helping Hurts", and you find that there are unintended consequences, good, great intentions in the work, but the unintended consequence, can increase dependencies, and has the potential and does cause harm, at times.

Scott

06:56

Yeah, explain that. Because you're right, this isn't unique to World Vision. I mean, this is common to anyone that's done work with the poor, either in the United States or around the world, you do have to face some of these challenges about: "Am I actually helping? Is it making a difference?" What were some of those things that you were beginning to observe there that were causing you to?

Tim Andrews

07:22

Yeah. I'll tell you that, the struggle that I had was a worldview problem. It was it was coming from the United States. And in the US, I don't think people appreciate just how profoundly a Christian influence over 1,000 years impacted our culture in such a way that we can do things. There's a high level of trust that you can enter into for business agreements, and you're not going to be cheated. There's just any number of things that facilitate being able to achieve great things.

Scott

08:16

Just to interject again, the one that I always think of about, you're right, we have absorbed ideas over hundreds of years now, those of us who live in the West, because the Bible has been percolating up through, the Jewish and the Christian scriptures, have shaped the culture so deeply. And I remember hearing a story of our good friend in Guatemala, Arturo Cuba, who was working with natives, indigenous people in the highlands. And they had no concept of dominion. And that in other words, rats were eating half of their corn crop every year. And when an American sees that we go, "Oh, gosh, well, you need to protect your crop from the rats and you start coming up with plans and whatnot." And their response was, "Of course, rats always eat half the crop, they always have, that's just the way it is." There was no concept from their ancient animistic worldview, that people were actually to have dominion over things like rats, and I thought, I just couldn't imagine that! So we have that, we have that idea, whether you're Christian or not, we in the West have those ideas, that no, we shouldn't just allow rats to eat half the crop or whatever it is. Those ideas, they're not inherent to human beings. Those came from a particular source, a worldview, the Bible actually. So yeah, go ahead, Tim.

Tim Andrews

09:47

Yeah, right. So because of that, I just assumed that when I would see problems of poverty, that a technological answer is what was needed, like in the example there with the rats, the Westerners see that, and they'll offer a technological solution to that and it won't work, because of of worldview issues.

Scott

10:16

Explain that. Because I'm sorry, Tim, just to keep breaking in, but I don't think a lot of people understand that. Why won't it work? Why can't we introduce some technology or training and have it work? What's the problem there?

Tim Andrews

10:32

Yeah. Let me answer that in just a minute. Right after a story. Because that was not obvious to me. I thought we could solve any kind of problem with money, and technology, and then a proper project plan. So you execute against a plan. And then you should be able to get the results if you have enough funding, and you have the right kind of technology. And that was just my worldview. And because I was working in senior levels, I wasn't down on the ground, actually witnessing what that kind of project management approach was doing, in a context with a completely different mindset, in a different worldview. And so when I went to move to Tanzania as the national director, the first thing that very early on, they took me out to a program where we had been for about 20, 21 years. And it was a celebration, because World Vision was transitioning out of the community, because of the sponsorship funding that comes in, we can make a commitment.

Scott

12:00

Child sponsorships, yeah.

Tim Andrews

12:03

It would not be unusual to be 15 to 20 year in a set of villages in a specific geographical location. And the idea was, after being on this journey, after 20 years, you should be able to transition and there's a sustainable community owned development process in place. And so that's what they took me to. And there were 1,000s of people there. And they were, there were dances and there were speeches and anything that you can imagine, celebratory was going on. And as it got to the end, the chief came up, and he took the microphone. And I was the only white guy there. So he just assumed that I must be the director. And he looked at me and he pointed his finger at me. "And he said shame on you. Shame on you, Mr. Director." And I was I was shocked. I was like, "I think I've been in the country like two days, and I'm not sure what I did to deserve so much shame." But he said, "World Vision, you are our mother. And we are the suckling babe on your breast. And today you have ripped the baby from its breast and has thrown the baby away." That was first tipping point towards my existential crisis. And he was trying to use imagery to really make me feel the pain of this baby being ripped from the mother's breast but I was sitting there thinking, "This is a 20-21 year old baby that's been ripped from the breast" and that's a really ugly image for me. But it made me think, "what in the world did we do wrong?" I mean, if this is the celebration, if that if now the real truth has come out, clearly it didn't work. And so just to be overly general, in the development context in Africa, basically, you either have a rainy season or a dry season, and so half of the year people are really hungry, because there's just not enough rain, so that's either a feast or famine. And half the people generally are chronically malnourished. And then half of the farmers production in Africa will get lost because of poor harvest techniques and poor storage and lack of markets and stuff. So just general, really, this is a really difficult situation. So certainly with the proper projects, funding, and technology, we can fix this, right? And so that was sort of my mind set up at the 30,000 feet. And then I had this chief take me to task as I just explained, and so that's when I began to really look for what is behind this. And the road led me back to to Kenya. And that's when I met three very wise Kenyan practitioners who all understood a biblical worldview, and they understood behaviors and the values that shape those behaviors at the level of culture, this like, "What sort of deep seated beliefs created the kinds of values that resulted in behaviors that would have consequences that were detrimental, or just not developmental in nature." And so, Dennis Tongoi, he was one of one of our mentors, a practitioner, he got involved very deeply in the programming that we were doing in Tanzania, 16 pastors that he had trained. And we would bring these pastors out to their area programs. And we began to address beliefs, worldview, deep beliefs, and that's when I began just really understanding that harmful belief systems will really mess you up. And in the situation in Tanzania that the culture was steeped in a socialist past, a very fatalistic outlook and ancestor worship, fear of witchcraft, a lot of corruption. And so what I was observing, I guess, was a mindset poverty. And it expressed itself in this sort of, it's a never ending sense of worthlessness and powerlessness and fear and shame. And when you introduce technology onto that sort of a mindset, there is no agency, there's no creativity, there's no sense of ownership that can take advantage of it. And so it's seen as something that is brought in from the outside, that will only work when whoever brought it in, stays there and makes it work. It's like the local folks can't own it and understand it, and feel a sense of inferiority such that it's out of their reach. And then I can't overstate, Tanzania at that time, anyway, there was a Pew research that showed that it had a higher degree of sort of animistic beliefs and fear of witchcraft than any other country in SubSaharan Africa. And, and so when that's a mindset, it's a marred identity, and you can't move out of poverty when you are steeped in fear of capricious spirits and ancestral spirits that are not going to approve of the trajectory of your life and they're going to interfere with your plans. And so there's very short term thinking and planning. And I didn't understand all of that until I started engaging with Dennis and then Darryl Miller's materials in the DNA stuff. So I began to educate myself, and I've heard this story from other places, it must be universal, but I remember talking to a farmer. And asking him about. I mean, there were just some obvious things that, you could take dominion over your one acre of farmland by doing some central simple natural resource, collect the water, don't let it run off, don't let it pick the topsoil off, some very simple improved agricultural techniques and some basic understanding of the way markets work and the kinds of crops that you could grow, that would be high value versus low. But it's not that difficult.

Scott

20:59

Just to go back, I think Americans especially we don't understand, because we didn't grow up with an animistic worldview. But I just want to try to add some clarity on that. Yeah. When the lenses through which you see the world or reality are such that it's controlled by these spirits that are often like you say, capricious, unpredictable, fearful. What it does to you as a human being is it leads to it leads to fatalism. You're never quite sure where you stand or what you can do. It's hard to make plans, it's hard to do, it's hard to do things into the future. When you feel like you're at the mercy of these powerful spiritual beings. So development becomes really difficult in places like Africa that are dominated by an animistic worldview because of that fatalism. It's interesting you mentioned Dennis, I'll just tell the quick story because Dennis is, he had the same desire as you did, Tim and Terry, he wanted to see Africa develop, he wanted to see it prosper and flourish. But he was coming at it from the vantage point, because Dennis is a longtime friend, of he was with the Navigators and doing Christian discipleship work. And what he recognized was that Christianity when it came to Africa, it came as a message of salvation. You can be saved through faith in Jesus Christ and some basic discipleship, which is what he was doing, read the Bible, attend church services. But then what he realized is that it didn't come as a worldview that provided answers to these deep questions of reality and what does it mean to be a human being. It was an overlay on to an essentially an animistic worldview. And that's the way it had been functioning in Africa. Then he saw that and said, "Okay, this is the problem. We have Christianity here. People are in churches, but functionally, they're still operating from this animistic fatalistic worldview." And so he began to address the issue of a worldview. And that's where you guys connected?

Tim Andrews

23:12

Yes. So I was about to say, this farmer that I met, and we were just asking some simple questions about things that would be so easy for him to do on his farm, and not understanding why he didn't take the initiative. And his answer was, "My grandfather was poor. My father was poor. I'm poor, and my children are going to be poor." And I've heard that I've heard other people say that same kind of conversation, but it's such a deeply marred identity, that there's this hopelessness, there's no hope, there's no way out. So I don't even try, kind of a thing.

Scott

24:01

So and combine that with, if good things are gonna happen, they're gonna happen from people on the outside, like World Vision, bringing in projects and money and things like that.

Tim Andrews

24:11

Exactly. So where it leads to is the belief that you're dependent on outside support. It either it has to come from the government and politicians play on that in spades. They'll come in and they lie every election season about everything that they are going to do and bring to a community. And people hold on to that, it's the only hope that they have is a lie from a politician. So they get the lies from the politicians. They receive food handouts in hard times and they have lots of hard times. So it's dependency on the government or food aid or on some NGO. And so we began to realize and walk this journey with Dennis and two other Bishop Messika is another Kenyan, he's just absolutely amazing, the way that he will go and confront a poverty mindset. And so we were also working with him. But we changed our whole approach to development where the first and most important thing that we would do was address mindset issues, worldview issues, at the level of culture. And so the journey was to help people understand that when you are created in the image of God. I mean that in itself, that's a powerful concept, if you've never heard it and never understood that a God that loves you that thought you up from before the foundation of the Earth, that wants you in the family and the community, and the country that you're in right now, because there is a purpose for you. And he put all of the creativity and the gifts and the skills and the ability on the inside of you to create things, to create wealth, to be able to provide for your children, to be a good neighbor, to be able to build community. When we began to address those kinds of things, it was absolutely phenomenal. What would happen in remote villages, because it was as if. In an animistic context, it's just total darkness, you're trapped in a poverty mindset. And it's like, "You're created in the image of God" is like lighting a match to a candle. And if you have a candle in a very dark room, it throws a lot of light. And so just the small things like that quickly move a development process along in a very poor context. Now in a more fluid context, or in Nairobi or in a business and all, when you light a candle, it doesn't provide a whole lot more light. And so the changes are incremental, it's slower, but we would see accelerated change in rural Africa, which is mostly where World Vision is. And so household incomes would move very quickly from well below poverty. I mean, it could be like, severe poverty of 38 cents a day. Two thirds of the people in Tanzania were living on a under $1 a day. Wow. But it was their household incomes would increase by 500-1,000%.

Scott

28:36

Tim, because they they were because the Connect that income increased to what you were explaining earlier, the idea that we're made in God's image with purpose and dignity, how did those...

Tim Andrews

28:47

So they understood dominion, that they were gifted, they were called, and another thing that they were struggling with is work is a curse.

Scott

29:04

This idea that work as a curse. Yes.

Tim Andrews

29:07

Yeah. So that was a revelant worldview issue that prevented a lot of productive work and kept creativity constrained. But when they get introduced to the idea, the Hebrew word, the Avoda, the definition of that is both work and worship. And when you begin to understand that the original idea of working the garden was no curse at all, that was worship unto God. And so when you're created in his image, and then when the very work of your hand, the creative work of your hands, is an act of worship. And it's amazing the wealth creation that can happen, and so when they would start becoming very interested quickly in, if we are to be stewards of the natural resources that God gave us, then all of a sudden they were open to technology.

Scott

30:19

It's like, everything was in place for them to develop, except that idea, that piece was missing in their brains, if you will, in their minds. But when that switch got turned on, and that space was created, all of a sudden, they could see things that they couldn't see, and do things that they couldn't do prior!

Tim Andrews

30:37

That's exactly right. So there was nothing wrong with the technology that we were trying to introduce, it needed what we've been calling "the biblically empowered mindset", a biblical worldview, in order to be able to even appreciate it and learn it and own it. And when we would begin talking about improved technology, simple technologies, we were trying to be relevant to smallholder farmers. That's how most people, they're subsistence farmers and so just simple techniques in terms of crop selection and proper seeds and storage. That's what would just, quickly tenfold increase in household income.

Scott

31:37

So really significant. Yeah.

Tim Andrews

31:40

I mean, so the first thing God did was give us a huge encouragement. And that was when we went to a community. So it was another it was part of my journey there, where the first the first big wake up call was the the baby ripped from its mother's breast. And then within a couple of months or so, I visited another one of our programs, and it was a rice growing area there were rice paddies everywhere, from like 20 years earlier, it was a Japanese scheme. And the Japanese were long gone. But it was in an area that was very fertile, lots of water, very green. And I happened to arrive there during harvest, so that people were out in the fields harvesting and I just randomly walked over to a Mama who was knee deep and in the rice paddy and and it was a world, it was one of our program areas. And so I kind of presumptuously said, "So what are you going to do with all your money from your harvest?" And she got this most haggard look. And she said, "First of all, I'm going to lose 40% of it to rodents and insects, because I don't have anywhere to store it. When I try to sell it, the middlemen come in, and they offer me prices that are less than it costs for me to grow this. And if I turn them down, they just skip over me and go to the neighbors and I'm stuck here with all this rice and I can't sell it. And I can't afford school fees for my two children, and they're malnourished." And so that was my second. It was one of these, I know God used it too, I mean, it just felt it felt like God's bulldozer going over me. And I called a ministry friend of mine, I said, "I'm standing in the Garden of Eden, it's lush, if anywhere in Tanzania should be where wealth should be flowing, it is right here. And the devil is still in control." That's what I told him. And I said, "What do we do to address this?" And that was still before I had met Dennis and these other two practitioners and but that then became the focus, it was like, we're going to started learning about biblical worldview mindset change, cultural lies, if you believe a cultural lie, you will get a bad result. And the only good results come from Biblical truth, not Western truth, not African Truth, but real Biblical truth, that's where the flourishing comes from. And so we moved into that community, and we just did, this is not a good analogy, carpet bombing of empowered worldview biblical. I mean, we just went very intense, small groups of people, and addressing issues of identity and of work and of dominion, and then we came in with some improved technology, better seeds, helping them understand how collectively they could bargain with these middlemen. So they don't get picked off one by one, but they can bring all their their production together and then bargain. And it was amazing to see the whole bargaining got flipped around from being picked off by these middlemen to where they had everything in a warehouse and the middlemen, the traders were in a line outside, and they would come in and they would negotiate. And then they would turn them out, the next one would come, so they were going for the highest bidder. And it's it was one of the first times I ever saw Africans look at their watch. Because they would start listening to one of these traders. And if they didn't like what they were saying, they'd look at their watch. And they would basically say, "You got about 30 seconds left." and then they would march them out.

Scott

36:36

That's so funny. It turned the whole dynamic on its head, where they had the power, now these farmers are empowered.

Tim Andrews

36:45

And they figured all of that out. It was their own ingenuity, their own initiative. So there were 9,000 farmers in that area, and in the previous growing season, their collective income was about $8 million, which when you divide that by 9,000 people, is only about $75 a month or so, it's not a whole lot of money. But after that engagement, 11 months later, that same 9,000 set of farmers had a collective income of $19 million dollars. In six months, it was an $11 million incremental income that those farmers did it, and they did it on their own. And they were so happy, and they were celebrating, and they were saying "We did this!" and they would start looking at me in the eye. Before they were always looking at the ground. And they started talking about the dignity that they have as image bearers of God. And they started talking about how they're getting into politics, and how they pick their own farmers, lead farmers, and they're saying, "These are the people we now want to represent us in local government" and it's just all this emergence of dignity and empowerment and ownership was was coming from them. And then and I remember I told them, I said it would take World Vision 25 years to bring $11 million into this community on our current, the way that we we do our programming, and look what you did in six months, when you just took ownership of it yourself!

Scott

38:36

What an incredible story Tim, that's just so powerful. And the catalyst for the change was like you say, it's just true principles from the Word of God, but they never got taught if there was any discipleship there. I'm not sure if it was Christian community or not, but you guys were the catalyst to bring in some of these truths.

Tim Andrews

38:58

And I say, I mean, we've never had a miracle that big ever since then. But we have had communities in now 45 countries where according to independent studies that have been done, it's commonplace to have a 10-fold increase in household incomes. When you address a biblical worldview, as foundational to everything that you do, economic development or health interventions, clean water, education, whatever it is, if you start with that first, it breaks the dependency syndrome and cycle because they start taking responsibility for themselves. And it's no longer the handout. I don't have anything until you give it to me. They start creating and coming up with their own ideas and initiatives. And then when we would come in with the improved technologies, it would start taking root.

Scott

40:09

Wow, I love that so much you guys because you're, you're telling a story that really gets to the heart of what God's called us to do in the Disciple Nations Alliance, it's just it's just to raise up the power of God and God's Word, the power of truth, at a very deep level, to see positive change in very broken communities. And this is true all over the world. I just think it's somehow for the church, it gets overlooked. I think there's an emphasis on evangelism, which is fantastic. We need to do evangelism. I'm not against that. But what gets lost, sometimes it's just this basic level of worldview discipleship. And it doesn't happen, either in relief and development, which is what you guys were working in or in Christian missions very often, but it seems like it's changing Tim, at least at World Vision, it seems like what you did there, that approach, that revolutionary approach for you anyways, is now picking up steam. Is that correct?

Tim Andrews

41:06

Absolutely. So what we did in those early experimental stages, we were working with different practitioners, and then we brought them all together. So we had Dennis and Bishop Messika and Solomon Nebiye from the West, and we we even had Compassion and Tearfund.

Scott

41:35

Other large organizations.

Tim Andrews

41:37

Yeah. So we came together, and we said, "Let us distill the best practices from these organizations and thought leaders and put it into a curriculum, a biblically empowered worldview curriculum", which is what we did, and then because of the dramatic change that was happening in communities in Tanzania, World Vision leaders were coming in from all over the world to see what was going on. And I mean, we had to establish a separate like a travel department to handle the logistics of the airplanes coming in and the vehicles picking them up and the hotel reservations and for a few years there, it was just sort of a madhouse of activity and visitors coming to see what's happening. And so we then had people that would come and train there, and then we have some of our own people would go out and train and other places, rather on a formal basis initially, but it then became formalized, and the biblical empowered worldview curriculum became a project model in World Vision terminology, they try to identify the few things that they want to have operational excellence and best practice and document it, and this is the way that it's done. And it becomes part of the international package that national directors can can pick from when they want to implement programs. And so that's what this has become over time. And it has been such a game changer that as I said earlier, it's moved into about 45 countries are now implementing the biblical empowered worldview World Vision US.

Scott

43:50

That's just so exciting! Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

Tim Andrews

43:53

World Vision US, in the last six months I think it is? Have have launched a fundraising campaign to support biblical empowered worldview as the foundation, savings groups as the second rung on the ladder, and then the microfinance institution, even topping up those savings groups with additional loan capital, and then value chain development, down at the poverty level. And in that fundraising campaign, they've designated $100 million for biblical worldview training like specifically for biblical worldview. So they're taking it seriously.

Scott

44:49

Wow, that's fantastic. That's the largest, funding wise, that's the largest initiative of biblical worldview training that I've heard of actually.

Tim Andrews

45:03

That's over an 8 year period. So it's an 8 year implementation. With that $100 million just designated for the biblical worldview. So I'm just so grateful that I could even be a part of that kind of thing and journey and joy. Oh, my goodness. We've been very blessed.

Scott

45:27

Wow. Well, your story encourages us so much to Tim and Terry, because God called us, really that was our calling as an organization, was to see the power of biblical truth really bring transformation in a community and we trained in our early days, we trained people around the world in this with these biblical truths. It's basically it's an approach to discipleship in biblical worldview, I love the way you call it an empowered worldview, because it really does, there's power in this, there's power to bring change. But Dennis was one of those early guys that we were able to train and he did such a remarkable job of contextualizing our training for Kenya and then of course, he had an influence on you. And then you and your team at World Vision did another job of contextualizing and adapting the material. And now it's being spread to other parts of the world. And so it's all God, but it's thrilling to see even our small role in that whole thing that's happening right now.

Tim Andrews

46:35

Its a pretty big role. You guys are, you're catalysts with impact, I bet, far beyond you will ever know until you get to heaven and get to read the full script.

Scott

46:48

Well, it's so exciting to be part of God's work, isn't it? Because it really is his work. Just like you guys back in your early testimony, were talking about how God had kind of orchestrated things. And Tim, you were about ready to launch into some big career as an accountant with Deloitte, and you just got sick. God had a whole different plan for you, and so he's the one, you know, Darrow talks about a tapestry. And it's just this beautiful thing on one side, and the other side is just all these little threads, well God's the one putting all that together. I'm just so thrilled that we get to connect in some small way. But he's the one weaving this tapestry. Andhe's the one with the heart to see the nation's discipled and blessed and people rise out of poverty.

Shawn Carson

47:36

Can I ask a question?

Tim Andrews

47:38

Yeah.

Shawn Carson

47:39

So, and Terry, you'd mentioned earlier, just this curiosity of the Bible impacting people socially and in their education. And Tim, you're mentioning how it's impacting them the way they're thinking about farming, and the way they're thinking about money. But I'm just curious how, because we've talked a lot about your story, how are these changes that you see being taken by the people that you're working with? How are they also impacting your own understanding of God's word. And you're formulating these things, you've mentioned that before, your introduction to these ideas impacting beyond just kind of the spiritual realm. So I'm just curious, like, how would you say your kind of before paradigm of God and God's Word and His intentions to now maybe your understanding of that now, since these new insights and understanding is coming to you?

Terry Andrews

48:46

Yeah. So I think you're asking, we've seen it impact others, and how's it impacting us?

Shawn Carson

48:53

Yeah.

Terry Andrews

48:56

I think, I don't know, it may be hitting us differently. For me, I'm a very experienced based person. And so seeing these things happen with kids, it's almost like, I know that God's word is supposed to change people. But I think there's a part of me that didn't fully expect that, and a part of me that was sort of thinking, I was really thinking about salvation of souls. And I was taken by surprise, just seeing the changes that I've mentioned, in terms of their family, their relationships, their school performance, and I guess it just showed me, because for a while, I was thinking, "Well, those aren't the right answers. That's not how it should be impacted." But this is what happens and I think what it did for me, it's funny, it's a question I don't think I've answered before, but I've started to become, and now I'm much more so, just alert, we're sharing this now, what changes are we going to see? Because there will be changes. We've talked about forgiveness, what are we going to see? Another sort of peripheral role that I've had in the past with health and has also come out into the spiritual realm is doing surveys and interviews and things like that. And so there's a million ways you can try and measure and it's actually not very easy at all to measure spiritual impact or worldview impact, but I think in a lot of the interviews, there's just huge numbers of stories, it took me by surprise, but maybe it doesn't anymore. I'm not sure if this is really what you're looking for, because I think I'm impacted by what I see in others, and probably the biggest impact is an expectation of change. But I'm still constantly surprised by change. And one of the most, maybe recent ones that, again, just surprised me is right now, at this point, what I'm doing here in Kenya is actually training youth to teach kids empowered worldview. And so that has been happening, and it's been very powerful in the little village that's not far from where we live. But because there's been clear changes in the children, again, school performance, still to this day, and Kenya is a Christian country. And sort of initiative, and that kind of thing, that some of the pastors from other areas have asked us to start training over there, it's the children's youth version of Empowered Worldview. And so we actually had our first group of youth go to Western Kenya to train in Empowered Worldview. And these were, like, 18 to 21 year olds, but they had really been transformed. I mean, things like leaving drugs, having a sense of purpose, even leaving kind of immoral relationships. And I don't know to what degree but definitely less lying and cheating, let's say, I don't know if it was eradicated completely. But they had transformed lives, we brought them to teach in Western Kenya. And we were expecting youth to be taught, but actually, they also brought a lot of pastors and Sunday school teachers. So in Kenya, and Africa in general, the pastor is all important, and the youth should remain silent in the presence of the pastor, for the most part, and I saw a lot of that our Bible studies, whenever pastors would show up, but this time, as the youth started teaching, there was so much revelation and insight, just in who God was. And it was lesson on the power of words, but that by the second day of teaching, the pastor's went to the youth, and they said, "We want you to know that you are the teachers and while we're pastors, we're the students." And so in just two days of Empowered Worldview training, I felt the pastor's had grabbed something that turned their whole church paradigm upside down. And they were willing to be students of and listen to the youth and the youth were just stunned. When we got back home, they said, "Oh, we felt like kings", but they were very humble, because they were still shocked about the whole thing.

Scott

53:59

Terry. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm writing a chapter of a book. It's on 10 words that are richly Biblical. And when those biblical understandings or definitions penetrate a person's life, or in a culture, it's really transformative, and one of the words I'm working on right now is authority. And the biblical understanding of authority is so revolutionary, and it's just not practiced hardly anywhere in the world. Which is what I'm thinking about as I'm listening to you, the idea in kind of the worldly sense, the fallen worldly sense is the authority has all the power and you just sit down and shut up and do what I tell you to do. It's what we might call authoritarian, but the Bible doesn't eliminate the concept of authority or hierarchy. Those are biblical concepts. But it just totally revolutionizes them and you see this of course in Christ, who washes his disciples feet, and there's this kind of profound equality in the biblical worldview that we're all Children of God, and yet certain times we have roles of authority, but they're they're meant to serve those under authority. So yeah, those are, again, that reminds me just the power of these ideas to bring about radical change, but we take them for granted, or we don't know them. So sorry, I just had to interject that.

Tim Andrews

55:20

The way that this insight that I've had to worldview has impacted me is that I am very, very conscious all the time now. I'm always looking for cultural beliefs that are driving the behaviors that I am observing, and what's the value? What is that value that's behind that behavior, I've sort of become hyper attentive to that, because it has so much to do with being able to understand one another, particularly in a cross cultural context. And I see we've run out of time again, we never did get to Root to Fruit, but where we act, where this actually has taken us, is everything that we were learning about the importance of a Biblical worldview, Biblical values, in a community development setting, where there's now we have a small consultancy group and working with Dennis Tongoi, Terry and I, and Wambui. And yeah, so small team. But anyway, we've taken these ideas into the corporate context, and we're engaging at the executive level. And wanting to help them to, first of all, work is a curse is a problem in a lot of businesses. So it's very dualistic thinking that we go and we're holy on Sunday, and then we go and pursue Mammon all through the week. And sort of redeem ourselves as business people by paying hefty tithes or building a church or whatever, but not seeing and understanding themselves as priests in the marketplace, where their businesses can have a redemptive purpose. So working with these organizations, these leaders to come to a place where you overcome, first of all, you're not evil, you're working in the only institution that creates wealth. And we kind of all need that to feed ourselves. And you can create a shared wealth, it's a blessing to everyone, to the communities where you're working, to your staff, to the customer, to the shareholders, but everyone can participate in this prosperity. And then you're working with with staff who are from these communities, that can have cultural beliefs that are not aligned biblically. And to the degree that they're not biblical, then you have conflict, dysfunctions, and your culture is not aligned to your purpose. And so we're engaging on the level of culture, biblical culture in these corporate contexts, so that they can, you can just unleash the full potential of teams that are working well together. We've seen statistics that say, between 40-90% of supervisors time is spent sorting out dysfunctional relationships, undermining relationships. And those are just, so where do those behaviors come from? What are the values behind them? And what is the belief that drives all this organizational chaos? So that's just to bring you up to date?

Scott

59:13

Well, thanks, Tim. You're right, we're getting low on time, and you're a new work with Root To Fruit, as you said, bringing these principles of biblical worldview transformation or empowered worldview into the corporate world. Is it in Kenya or is it beyond that?

Tim Andrews

59:29

Right now, we're just in Kenya doing that.

Scott

59:33

Do you have a vision?

Tim Andrews

59:34

Lots of vision.

Scott

59:35

Or are you just are you kind of piloting it? Or how would you characterize that?

Tim Andrews

59:39

We are, it's a lot of piloting and iteration and learning what works in the boardroom versus in a community context. That's been a lot of learning for us. But we're seeing a lot of good fruit from that. And what we would really like to do is to be able to work with organizations that have platforms that go into multiple countries so that we can achieve some scale because the organization we're working with has scale in different countries.

Scott

01:00:14

Well, it's a small team, but it's a super powerful team. I've met your team. And of course, I know Dennis, and I'm like, Wow, these guys are amazing. So I am really excited to see what the Lord has for you. And you are also still working, aren't you, in an advisory role? You're still connected to World Vision, correct, Tim? Is that right?

Tim Andrews

01:00:32

Not in any formal way. Although we are in conversations about taking our Root To Fruit Biblical foundational truth into World Vision Envision Fund, I mean, Vision Fund is the subsidiary microfinance institution. There's conversations that are going on around that. And it would for us, it would just be such a privilege to be able to serve, if that's something that, you know, if thing work out in that direction.

Scott

01:01:11

Gotcha. And Terry, you continue your work with children, correct?

Terry Andrews

01:01:16

Yeah, yeah. Youth and Children.

Scott

01:01:18

Yeah. Youth and Children. Wow.

Tim Andrews

01:01:21

And as well in Root To Fruit. So as part of that.

Scott

01:01:24

It's part of Root To Fruit, you guys are working together now. Can our listeners learn more about Root To Fruit online? Do you guys have a website?

Tim Andrews

01:01:35

Yes, I think it's root-to-Fruit.com

Scott

01:01:41

root-to-fruit.com. I encourage everyone to check this out. As you can hear from this conversation, Tim and Terry are an amazing couple with just a wealth of experience and knowledge. And they're functioning in the same vein as the DNA, with these empowered worldview ideas to bring about change. And so I really encourage you to check out Root To Fruit and look for ways that you can learn and be supportive of what they're doing. I think Tim and Terry, we need to have you back as I would love to, if your game, I would love to go into more depth on what you're currently doing. We just are touching on it now. But that in itself would be a really rich conversation about how do we bring these ideas into a corporate business setting? And can we do it in other places, can we do in the United States? What would that look like? So I'm sure these are questions that people would have. And it would be fun to explore them with you. Well, listen, I know I just want to keep talking. But we probably better wrap it up. But thank you guys so much, both of you, for sharing your story with us and just praise God for your faithfulness, and just your sensitivity to him and to doing what really honors him and pleases him and I look forward to seeing how God's going to continue to use you both and I hope there's ways that we can continue to work together and encourage one another in the future. So thanks. Listen, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Ideas Have Consequences. And this is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.

Luke Allen

01:03:16

Hi, friends, thank you so much for listening to part two of this series with Tim and Terry Andrews. As you've clearly heard today, grasping and empowered biblical worldview will change your life and the lives of those around you and can even heal nations. And that's why we at the DNA have made worldview training our mission. If you'd like to learn more about being discipled and the biblical worldview, we have a few recommendations of places to start your journey. If you like podcasts, we recommend 31 Days of Worldview Wisdom with Arturo Cuba. If you'd like books Discipling Nations by Darrow Miller is an excellent place to start. Or if your learning style is to watch videos, then we recommend our flagship resource, the Kingdomizer Training Program, which is a free biblical worldview training course. Or if you'd like to see a model of how to apply these principles into your business settings, make sure to check out the Andrew's recent work at Root To Fruit, as they help strengthen businesses and nonprofits in Africa that want to embrace a biblical worldview. If you'd like to learn more about any of these resources, or about the Andrews work at Root To Fruit, go ahead and click the link down the description below and head to this episode's landing page, which has everything you'll need to continue to dive deeper into today's discussion, including all the resources we mentioned today. The transcript of the episode neatly broken up into easy to navigate chapters, key quotes, bios, and social media posts that you can share with your friends and invite them to listen to the show. Ideas Have Consequences is a podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry you can find us on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube or on our website which is disciplenations.org. Thanks again for listening and have a great rest of your day.

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