Rebecca Weiss: Hello.
Fred: Hi.
Rebecca: I am here today with Fred Markert.
Thank you so much for being here.
Fred: It's really a joy to be with you, Rebecca.
Rebecca: Oh my goodness, there's so many interesting things we're
going to talk about, but I do want to hear a little bit of
your testimony, which I was reading on this card.
You were a communist atheist living in Berlin.
You are not that now.
Fred: I'm not that now.
I was raised in the church, but I lost my faith when I was in
high school.
Rebecca: Were you raised in the States?
Fred: I was raised in the States, yeah, and I went to--I
was raised in the Catholic Church.
I did know God when I was young, but then in high school I went
to a Jesuit high school and the Jesuits are kind of the
intelligentsia of the Catholic Church and they educated us away
from our faith and--
Rebecca: Really?
Fred: Yeah, they did and the Jesuits are kind of, they're
revolutionaries in many ways and so they trained us to be
cultural revolutionaries.
So that's how I became a communist atheist, you know,
through that, yeah, it was a natural progression back in
the 1960s.
This was a big thing amongst young people.
We were all kind of going commie and so I became a communist
atheist, went to a Jesuit college.
In pre-med, I wanted to be a doctor, yeah, but then what
happened is there was the Vietnam War at that time and I
was going to get drafted to go to the war and I didn't want to
shoot my communist comrades, the North Vietnamese, so I signed up
under a program the government had for people who did some
medical training already, we could go and trade time to
the government.
They would send us to university to complete our degree, and then
we'd have to trade the time back.
So they sent me to Baylor and then I get to--I got to choose
where I wanted to serve.
So I chose the US government hospital in Berlin, Germany.
I chose Berlin because it's in the middle of communist East
Germany at the time, and I could easily get to my communist
buddies and work for global revolution.
Rebecca: Okay, I need to unpack this a little bit.
Was becoming a--what attracted you to become a communist at
that time?
And was it, when you were living in Berlin, was it what you
thought it would be?
Fred: What attracted me to be a communist was the sense of
justice, fairness, mercy, love for the poor.
I have all of those, those parts are good.
It's the wrong answer to all of that though.
You know, the communist answer to that just produces more
poverty, more injustice, more tyranny, but we didn't know that
back in the day, you know, but we understand that now after the
collapse of communism and everything, we all learned,
but--so that's what drew me to it is the real love for the
poor, care for justice, mercy, kindness, right?
So--but when I got to Berlin, you know, Berlin was--there was
a big wall around it because in the middle of communist
East Germany.
And I saw communism up close, right, when I went into East
Berlin, East Germany, the eastern communist countries.
It was just so obvious that communism was not the answer, so
I was kind of primed, but then I got caught with some drugs,
which is really bad if you're working in a hospital.
And I was going to go to court and there were some people there
from a mission called Youth With a Mission who came through
Berlin at the right time, and they found me at my lowest point
and led me to Christ and turned me from a revolutionary for Karl
Marx into a revolutionary for Jesus.
So, yeah.
Rebecca: Why were you in your lowest point at that point?
Fred: Well, everything in my life up to that point had
gone well.
Everything was going great, had great family, raised in America,
you know, which was just a great country.
I was doing well in my career.
I had a scholarship to go to medical school if I wanted to do
that afterwards and just a lot of great friends.
Everything was going well, but then when I was caught with the
drugs, and it wasn't hard drugs, I was caught with marijuana,
right, which was enough in that day to send you to jail for 10
years, that just--all my friends deserted me, Rebecca.
It's like I--the first thing when I got caught, I went to
my friends.
I said, "Oh my gosh, I'm going to court.
Tell me, what do I do, what do I do?"
And all my friends deserted me because they didn't want to be
seen with me once I'd been caught and so I realized I have
no true friends, I'm in trouble and they're all gone.
I'm going to jail, you know, and I'm gonna lose this scholarship.
I--it just, everything just crashed.
Rebecca: So tell me, how did-- how did YWAM find you and what
did they tell you?
What was that experience like?
Fred: Well, there was a guy from YWAM working at the hospital.
He had been through the first YWAM training school in Europe
back in 1969 or '70 and was working at the hospital at the
time, and God just kind of sicced him on me like a bulldog
and he had been witnessing to me for many months and I totally
ignored him, but the night before I went to trial, I went
to downtown Berlin to this back alley off the main street where
is just a drug club where you go, you drink wine, smoke
marijuana, eat pizza.
So I was just there having a pity party saying, "I'm going to
jail tomorrow," and suddenly the door opened to the street and in
walks this guy who'd been witnessing to me for
many months.
He walked right to my table and he said, "Praise the Lord."
He said, "I'm gonna bring you-- I'm gonna get you with
the gospel."
I said, "What are you doing here?
You're a good Christian.
You're in a drug club."
He said, "I was on the bus on my way to the Wednesday night
service of my church, and the Lord told me, 'Get off the
bus here.'
So I got off the bus and I didn't know what to do.
So I said, 'Lord, what next?'
And the Lord said, 'Go down this alley, go into that club.'"
And then he said, "When I saw you I knew what God sent me
here for."
And so he just started to witness to me and you know what
he knew, Rebecca?
He knew that the reason people don't get saved is that they
don't know that they're lost.
So he worked on getting me good and lost.
He said, "Your life is falling apart."
I go, "Yeah, it's falling apart."
He said, "Your friends have deserted you."
"Yeah, I have no friends."
He went on and on till I realized what a mess.
And then he said, you know, "You really need Jesus.
He's your only answer."
And that led to about a 3-hour experience of getting converted.
Rebecca: Did you feel God's presence?
Fred: Oh, absolutely, because what he did, you know, and we
train this in missions is we don't want to--Jesus talks
about a conversion of our heart, you know, a radical conversion.
We call it conversion sometimes, but then we don't really lead
people through a conversion experience.
We get them to pray a quick prayer.
But what this guy did is he said, "Fred, what are the three
most important things in your life?"
And I said, "I want to be a doctor, my career.
Rock and roll," I'm a guitar player.
My amps go to 11 and guitar players will know that
reference, and I said, "My German girlfriend."
And he said, "Those three things are your gods, and Jesus can't
be your God unless you're willing to get those three
things out of their primary place in your heart."
So he said, "We're going to count the cost," and he told me
the story, yeah, he told me the story of--Jesus told about the
guy building the building and then ran out of money and he
couldn't finish it, "and it was a disgrace," he said, "so I want
you to know what you're getting into."
So he said, "For Jesus to be your Lord, you have to be
willing to not participate in those things anymore."
So it took me 3 hours of wrestling.
I want to be a doctor.
Can I really submit my career choice to the Lordship
of Christ?
What if he doesn't want me to be a doctor?
What if I don't like what he wants me to do?
So I worked through all of that for about an hour.
Then it was, he said, "Rock and roll is of the devil."
He said, "You've got to stop playing guitar for 2 years."
Now he--that's not a blanket statement.
He was doing what Jesus did.
Jesus looked for what are people's personal idol, and he
challenged that.
So for the rich young ruler, his idol was money, he said, "Give
all your money to the poor."
Rebecca: That's such a good point.
Fred: For Zacchaeus, who's with status and he's up in a tree
above the crowds, Jesus says, "Come down from that tree."
So Jesus challenged whatever their stronghold was, 'cause
that's what you're getting convertive out of--converted
out of, your selfishness to loving God.
So he said, "You've got to be willing to give up guitar for
2 years."
Took me another hour to wrestle with that.
Is Jesus worth it?
And then he said, "You're living in an immoral lifestyle with
your girlfriend, and Jesus has moral commands.
You've got to be willing to obey them."
And I wrestled through all of those, Rebecca, and finally
said, "Well, it's not going well for me right now.
I need Jesus."
And then he said, "Great, let's pray.
Repent of those things."
And after counting the cost and accepting that Christ is my
Lord, you know, that I'll do whatever he says, go wherever he
wants me to, when we prayed what today we would call the sinner's
prayer, I had a dramatic experience with God.
I mean, it felt like I was hit by a ton of bricks.
I knew my heart was being converted from doing my own
thing to being a servant of the living God.
So it's quite a wild experience.
Rebecca: So what happened with going to jail and the drug
charge and all that?
Fred: The coolest thing is the next morning I had to go
to court.
It was like a military tribunal.
It wasn't traditional court, you know, three judges and they
decide and when I went into the room, I was shocked.
There was the head of the hospital there at the table plus
the guy who led me to the Lord.
So when we got up to the judge's bench, the hospital
administrator and this guy who I won't name walk up to the
judge's bench and the administrator said, "We have a
big drug problem at the hospital.
This is bad because we deal with people's health, and even though
Fred didn't take drugs while he was on duty, off duty, he's
taking drugs, but that still could affect his performance,"
he said, "but here's what happened."
He said, "This is my friend."
He introduced him.
He said, "I have--he's a born again Christian.
And I have learned over the past few years here that when someone
becomes a born again Christian, their life changes and instead
of being a negative influence in the hospital they're a positive
influence and he tells me that last night Fred became a born
again Christian."
So he said, "I believe Fred will now be a positive influence in
the hospital, so I would like to drop the charges."
Rebecca: Oh, wow.
Fred: And then the court--the judge hit the gavel, said, "Case
dismissed," and I gave my first testimony.
I said, "Wow, this God stuff is great."
Rebecca: So what happened from there?
Fred: Well, first, Rebecca, you know what the coolest thing to
me is I understood something about God in that
moment, instantly.
I understood he's merciful.
I knew I was guilty, and yet God got me, you know, gave me
mercy, right?
I realized, wow, God is here to help me personally when I'm
in trouble.
He's a personal God who will inject himself into my life at
my point of need.
He's not far off and distant.
He will inject himself and move and operate.
And thirdly, I learned that even though I was a sinner, even
though I was guilty, God had a purpose for my life.
So after that, they really, they--the first thing the YWAM
people who are trained in YWAM said is, "Every Christian's
a witness."
This was the next day.
I'm only saved one day and actually, I was asleep most
of it.
It was nighttime.
They said, "We're going witnessing on the main street
of Berlin."
And I said, "I don't know what witnessing is or how to do it,"
and they said, "It's easy.
A witness on the stand in court just repeats what he's seen
and heard.
Just tell people what you've seen and heard."
So I--but they taught me, day one, that we're all called to be
witnesses, that we don't have to know a lot.
All we have to do is share with people what we've experienced
with God.
We don't have to memorize the Bible, the whole Bible, or
anything like that.
So I learned about witnessing.
The third day I was saved, they said, "We all have an obligation
to missions, and we're in the middle of communist
East Germany.
We have an opportunity that others don't."
They said, "We're going to smuggle Bibles into communist
East Germany where they're illegal and you're coming
with us."
Rebecca: Whoa, you got thrown, like, into the deep end.
Fred: Right into the deep end.
So third day I was saved, we were--I was smuggling Bibles
into communist countries which, back then, they executed people
for doing that and--
Rebecca: Were you scared?
Yes.
Rebecca: But you did it anyway?
Fred: I was terrified, but I did it anyway because these people
were all excited and happy and seemed confident and they had
known God a lot longer than I did and so I felt--and I'm
adventurous at heart, so I went along with it and it was just a
life-changing experience, you know.
It was actually, we didn't have Bibles.
I found out when we got to this underground church where we're
going to deliver them, when we opened up the boxes, they were
just Christian calendars.
It was like, you know, a picture of a mountain scene and one
verse on every month.
And I'll never forget this 16-year-old kid in the
underground church held a calendar to his chest and
started to cry.
He said, "This is more of the Bible than I've seen in my
whole life."
He said, "Thank you for risking your life to bring this to me
and the people in our underground church."
And I turned to my friends from YWAM.
I said, "How many people in the world are in this condition that
don't have the gospel?"
It was 75% of the world back then.
And they said, "75% don't have Bibles, don't have missionaries,
don't have a church."
And I just turned my head to heaven in the middle of
communist East Germany, about 3 in the morning, and said, "God,
two nights ago I promised you that you could choose my career.
But God, I take that back.
I want to choose."
I said, "I want to give the rest of my life to bringing the
gospel to people who don't have it."
So that's kind of how I got saved and into missions.
Rebecca: Did the Lord say anything back to you?
Fred: The thing the Lord said was, "Fred, you are my son, I
love you."
And that's the first time I actually heard internally the
voice of the Lord, and I was-- it taught me something else
about God.
He didn't say, "Good job, I wanted you to do that."
He wasn't looking at me as just for what I could do for him.
His first words to communicate with me was, "I love you, you're
my son," right?
And that's what motivates me to do missions is that I want to
ease the pain in my Father's heart, the pain over the
lost, right?
See, that's the motivation for missions, not guilt or fear or
shame or duty or obligation, is when we truly love someone we
want to do things that bless them.
And out of my love for God and his love for me, that motivates
me to help him get his other sons and daughters who are far
from him to bring them to him.
Rebecca: That's so beautiful.
That's such--that is the perspective we're supposed to
have in ministry and in life as believers.
But what's interesting is for as much interaction that I've had
with missions growing up, I haven't had a lot of people
explain it that way.
It was more those other avenues that you described, the shame,
the guilt, the fear.
But really, whole--you know, bringing wholeness, bringing the
gospel, we have to do it through that lens or I think it's going
to cause breakdown in the individual.
Fred: Absolutely, not only, not only missions, but in ministry
of any kind or even in our jobs in the marketplace.
So, like, when I was in Bible school, I was trained we do
missions out of divine command and human need.
Well, guess what happens?
If you're motivated only by God's commands or there's this
human need I have to meet, you will burn out.
First off, "through divine command," that gets old after a
while and you start to think of God as a harsh taskmaster and
everything else and it's miserable.
Human need, there's so much human need you will get
burned out.
So those are the worst motivations to do anything.
The best motivation is, man, I love my Father who's God, and he
sees every horrible thing that happens.
He sees every child abused.
He sees every rape, he sees-- and they're all his kids and out
of my love for him, I want to ease the pain in his heart
over that.
And our love for God is what motivates us to keep on
with missions.
Not even our love for people, because I'll tell you, a lot of
the unreached are not pleasant people.
Rebecca: No, even some people in the church aren't because
there's a lot of hurt people in the church, not pleasant people,
and if that is your source, you will get burned out, you'll get
hurt, you'll get offended, and God doesn't want that for us.
But that's such a beautiful thing, and that is how Jesus
lived his life.
He lived out of his Father's approval and he--everything he
did was for the love of his Father, including going to
the cross.
And his, you know, and the Father wanted all of us to come
into the family, and so Jesus endured the cross for
that reason.
And so I just think that's so beautiful.
And I, you know, I think this conversation is so important
because more people need to have that perspective.
Through your years, having a relationship with God, did God
begin to download you his heart for people and for nations as
you spent time with him?
Fred: Absolutely, when it's hard to really get to know God
without getting an understanding of his love for the nations.
It's all over the Bible.
I mean, literally hundreds and hundreds.
I should count them someday.
I mean, it's in the hundreds where it says--
Rebecca: The whole Bible.
Fred: That--actually, you're right, Rebecca.
The whole Bible is actually a missionary book.
It's God communicating to people who don't know him, right?
So God's a missionary God, but there's scriptures, like in
Psalm 72 is, "My name will be great amongst the nations,"
you know.
"All the nations will turn to me and worship me," or, you know,
and over and over again, the Bible just talks about--ah, I
love Zephaniah 2:11.
It says: "The Lord will be awesome when he destroys all the
false gods in the nations.
The nations on every shore will worship him, every one in its
own land," so the whole Bible's communicating God's heart for
all the nations, and that really sunk in as I read the Bible and
as I had other experiences in smuggling Bibles and
evangelizing in the communist countries.
The problem we have today is people in their churches aren't
being led to share their faith.
They're not being trained to share their faith, they're not
being challenged to learn ways to change their--share their
faith, and so they don't have that understanding of this is
really the core of God's heart, so.
Rebecca: No, I feel like the strongest mandate I've seen in
the American church, this is just my limited perspective, is
really bring people to church.
That's about it.
And of course, there's a bunch of churches and they're all
doing different things, but there has been a huge drop-off
in the call to missions.
I think people in church really aren't being discipled on even
how to share the gospel, how to witness to people, and so I feel
like there's so much potential that the church here could tap
into and it breaks my heart, you know, to see the lack of
missions within the American church.
And I look at, like, the Mormons who are so on top of it and
dedicated and I mean almost every kid goes out when they are
18 and serves a mission, but that's not--we have, like, such
a small amount in our own infrastructure where we're
doing that.
Can you speak to why that is?
Fred: Yeah, there's a number of reasons.
You're spot on about that, Rebecca.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, there was huge push by churches
in the missions and actually the decade of the '90s, we saw the
greatest missions and evangelistic thrust in world
history in that decade because there was a massive push
from churches.
But after 2000 and 9/11, churches in America got very
inward-focused, and then the economic crisis of 2008 and
they're all trying to keep their churches financially alive and
everything, and people just got inwardly focused and
stopped emphasizing.
In fact, Barna Research, which is one of the top Christian
research agencies about how the church is doing in America, they
released a report recently: 51% of evangelical Christians have
no idea what the Great Commission is, which is Jesus's
last words to us, right?
And of the 49% who have heard of it, only 17% knew exactly what
it was.
The others just said, "Well, we've heard of it, we don't know
what it is."
So that's--the churches have changed their focus, and the
fire always dies in the pulpit before it dies in the pew.
So what we need is our leadership again to be
motivating people to share their faith in practical ways.
It's not scary to share your faith if you do it in normal
natural ways, which I and others can train people to do.
And we've got to also emphasize missions because 6000 times in
the Bible it says go, go, go.
Six thousand times, so that's a pretty big message from God.
So our leadership in the church need to have an awakening.
Rebecca: You're right, and I think too, I think at least in
American culture, I think that's a huge thing we're fighting is
we have gotten so focused on ourselves because we live on a
very self-focused society.
And it's just--it will take that fire out, even of you
personally and you have to be intentional to not live a
self-focused life in the United States because we carry devices
around that have cameras where you can focus on yourself,
record ourselves, post about ourselves on social media.
And so, and it's making us sick.
It's literally ruining people's lives because we--it, the
whole, bringing in social media and all this stuff has greatly
shifted society and it's--we see the impact on
the generations.
It's just, is that something that you've witnessed yourself?
Fred: Oh yeah, in fact, there's so many psychologists,
sociologists, they believe that the introduction of social media
is what is literally destroying our country with young people.
They're so self-centered, hyper-dividualistic, right?
So what is God's core bottom line structure?
It's the family.
So it's individuals who operate in a small community, their
family, but we have gone hyper-individual to the point of
disintegrating even families, right?
And social media promotes that hyper-individualization.
And so sociologist and psychol-- Jonathan Haidt, a professor at
NYU, one of the top universities in America, one of our top
sociologists, he's on a big campaign.
He said, "Young people should have no access to social media
till they're 18."
So one of the things we do when young people come to us for
training, we do digital detox, you know, we do.
We say, "We are going to limit your use of your phone," for
just a season of training.
"We're going to limit your use of the phone for 3 months, we're
going to limit your use of social media.
You know, we're not going to cut you off from parents, families,
friends, but there are other ways to communicate that, other
than text and Instagram and Facebook that are more
personalized," and so, and it's hard for young people because--
Rebecca: Yeah, I can attest.
Fred: Yeah, there's the dopamine addiction, you get dopamine
hits, it's more addictive than heroin actually,
physiologists say.
So we have to do digital detox before they can even get to the
point of being discipled, right?
'Cause they are so focused on the screens.
So we've had to--we've really had to work hard at
digital detox.
Rebecca: Yeah, it's so addictive and I have so much empathy
because it's like, it's something I was born in the
generation where we had our childhoods with no social media,
but it became a thing for us, like, in our teenage years.
So I got to experience some life without it, but I've now lived
more life with it and I think anyone you talk to that
experienced life before it said life was better without it.
But yet we all--so many of us have it and are addicted to it.
And so if parents are watching, the farther you can wait for
your children, the better.
But I was gonna ask about what you were talking about because,
you know, I have TikTok and so TikTok is really like--I'm a
millennial, TikTok's like Gen Z and so I even see what Gen Z and
you know, what is underneath Gen Z are up to and it's just so
wild to observe and what you're doing for young people, I think
is so helpful.
So can you talk more about how you're training people to be
missionaries, taking that gap year because so many young
people are lost and they don't have an identity and they're
lost in that swirl of the Internet.
Can you speak to what y'all do?
Fred: Sure, you know, our biggest, one of our biggest
problems in the church is that we lose 60% of our young people
when they turn 18 and they get out of their parents' homes and
go to university or the marketplace.
They haven't been personally discipled in church, so there
are character issues there that still aren't dealt with.
Secondly, they haven't been trained in biblical worldview.
You know, Barna says that only 8/10 of 1% of our high school
graduates have a biblical worldview.
Rebecca: Can you define biblical worldview for people who
are watching?
Fred: Yes, that is we look at the world through the clear
revelation of Scripture.
So we see the world through God's eyes, right?
So a worldview is the lens that we look at the world through.
So in a secular worldview in America, particularly now, it's
hyper-individualization, you know, is the lens we look at.
If something challenges something you want to do or feel
entitled to, then they call that abusive.
You're abusive because you're trying to discipline, build in
disciplines or whatever.
That's why a lot of young people have a hard time entering the
work environment because they see it as abusive to work for 8
hours, you know, so anyway, so a biblical worldview means we know
what the Bible says about life and that's how we view the world
through those glasses.
So the way we have to implant what we do, it's called a gap
year, right?
So in Europe, just about every young person when they graduate
high school takes a year before they go to the marketplace and
get a job or before they go to university and they travel the
world, they'll work, like, serving in a relief or
development organization.
They broaden their perspective of life, the world, it gives
them another year of maturity too before they enter into their
career or whatever.
So we bring them to our center.
We have a center in Montana, beautiful, out in the mountains,
it's gorgeous.
Lakes, hiking, fishing, kayaking, it's awesome.
And 3 months, we give them intensive discipleship.
We say, "Give us a year and we'll change your life through
the power of God."
So 3 months of intensive personal discipleship that they
don't get in churches about all the practical stuff in life, you
know, guy-girl relationships, how did God design these to
work, everything.
I mean, every element of life.
Then we take them for 3 months out to the mission field where
they can learn to share their faith and that is absolutely
transformative because they don't know the world apart
from America.
When they see what the world's like, first they freak out, then
they stop being entitled.
They go, "Oh my gosh, I had no clue how blessed we were."
And they change from having an entitlement mentality to an
attitude of gratitude.
It's like, "Oh, I am so blessed.
Thank you, God.
I love you for what you've given us.
How can I give back?"
So in those 2 months out on the field, they have a
transformational experience.
Then they come back for 3 more months where we teach them
biblical worldview, you know, what does the Bible say?
What does the world say?
What do Muslims say, Hindus say, Buddhists?
We give them a perspective of the different world-views and we
show them the superiority of a Christian worldview.
And that sets them on the course for the rest of their life.
Rebecca: That is, I just feel like that is, like, one of the
best things you could get for someone in that age.
I just feel like if people are watching this, we'll put your
information down below in the description box of this video,
so people who want to get connected.
I did something kind of similar to that and it totally changed
my life and I needed it and I was raised in a great church and
there was so much discipleship that I did not have.
And I remember a lot of it I had to get through Bible school,
further education, and I was like, "Man, why did they ever
teach us this in church?"
And so many of us said that.
And so, so many young people are lacking discipleship.
They've never been outside their home.
They need that experience, but you really flourish in an
environment like that when there is a community and if there's
love and there's that pouring in, 'cause you even, like you
said, you do mentoring and one on one stuff as well and I mean
that--I mean, most people aren't getting anything like
that in church.
Fred: Right, oh no, that doesn't happen.
In most churches, you know, youth discipleship is a youth
pastor in a group speaking to kids for an hour a week.
And discipleship is personal, you know, interactive.
So what, like, what we do is we have--and it's a whole
community life.
You have all these young people in community, you know, learning
how to love one another.
It can be hard when you have a roommate clipping their nails at
3 a.m., you know, that click, click, click can drive
you crazy.
You have to learn iron sharpens iron, you have to learn how do
you live with other people, and character issues come up.
Plus, we have them do a work duty for 2 hours every day
because discipleship when they're working, like, your job
is lunch clean-up, you know, putting the dishes in the
dishwasher, character issues come out during the work time
that we can then disciple, we work on.
Issues come out like that.
So they have, like, a class time every day, a work duty every
day, a small group where they meet, five or six together,
share about what they're learning and how they're
growing, but then every week we also have multiple one on ones
where they have a personal discipler who is talking, okay,
let's talk about this in your life and that and how much
progress you're making, and oh, here, let me help you with this,
et cetera.
So that's true discipleship and that's what's lacking in
most churches.
Rebecca: Yeah, and even stuff like doing the work, that's such
a gift to actually give people, to instill that in people.
It's the stuff that you don't want to do that is some of the
best stuff for you in personal terms of growth.
So that's just such a beautiful gift and to be out in nature,
like, I can--I just feel like that's such an
incredible opportunity.
So you take on people who--you do the gap year for young
people, but you also get people that are actually older in age.
Can you speak to that as well?
Fred: Oh yeah, because this is for people of every age, number
one, but out of those kids who come for--I say kids.
Rebecca: They're kids.
Fred: Yes, okay.
Rebecca: They're kids.
Fred: We get--we do get some long-term missionaries out of it
though most go back to jobs in the marketplace or they go on to
university, which is a healthy thing.
But one of the things we also do is for people who we call life
experience people, they've either, they're in their 40s,
50s, 60s, they've had a career and they want to do something
for the Lord, a 1 year, 2 year, 5 years or the rest of
their life.
They also come and they get the same training.
It revolutionizes their life just as much.
Of course, they're dealing with different issues of an
18-year-old and we take that into account, but their life
gets revolutionized too.
But having them there with the young people, it's a very
holistic community and they sort of mom and dad the young
people too.
And then those who come who are called to be in missions, we
form missions teams of the older life experience people with
wisdom, with the younger people with lots of zeal, and we can
send them both to the field together.
Great combination, yeah.
Rebecca: I just love that.
And what I love about what you're doing is missions work is
so amazing.
But if you don't have--if you're not with the right
people, with the right training, it can be a disaster.
And so you know from your own experience how important it is
to be paired up with people who will train you correctly, send
you off correctly.
How important is that?
Fred: Oh, that, that's absolutely critical.
Yeah, where most people get turned off to evangelism or
missions is because they haven't been trained, number one, we
just throw them to the lions.
Or number two, they haven't had the best training, right?
Because it's--the world is changing so quickly, Rebecca,
that mission training has to change constantly too to keep up
with the world.
But sometimes missions training lags behind.
So that's why, like, my friends who run the gap year program and
everything in Youth With A Mission, they stay up on what's
exactly happening in India, right now, today.
We stay in touch with it because we're involved in
missions there.
We're seeing it day by day so we can inject the new dynamics
right into the training.
Hey, this is the latest thing amongst young people in India.
This is how we're going to reach them.
So the proper training is critical, yeah.
Rebecca: And you also send your people strategically as well
where you send them.
Can you speak to that?
Fred: Yeah, we don't have enough people to send missionaries to
every place on earth, so we have to focus on the places that
don't have the gospel.
Like Mexico, they have the gospel.
Anyone who wants the gospel in Mexico can get it.
There are Catholic churches, Protestant churches, there are
all kinds of churches, right?
The same for all of Latin America, the same for all of
Southern Africa, right?
The same for Europe: churches, there's Christian radio,
television, concerts, anyone who wants the gospel can get it, but
the unreached in the Muslim-Hindu-Buddhist world,
they have no way to get the gospel if they wanted it.
There's no Bibles, no missionaries, no churches, there
may be some media ministry that plants the seeds, but then that
seed has to be cultivated and followed up.
So we need to send missionaries to those parts of the world
specifically that don't have it.
And we take young people there, to the unreached parts of the
world, because we know 90% of people bond to their first
cross-cultural experience and then if they want to become a
missionary, they want to go to that place they bonded to.
Our problem in America is when we do send young people on
missions trips we send them to Mexico or Brazil or the places
that already have the gospel, so they bond there and they want to
go there.
So instead we take them to Nepal or India or China or some place
like that where they can bond where there's great need.
Rebecca: Because there's countries that, I mean, have
very little exposure to the gospel whereas these other
countries that you're talking about either were an epicenter
for Christianity like Europe, or Latin America has kind of become
one of the epicenters for Christianity now, like, they're
on fire.
So there's all these nations.
How many people, you said on another show, how many is--did
you say 7000 groups of people haven't heard the gospel?
There's still a huge group of people, right?
Fred: Yeah, so when we define the unreached, it's people who
don't have enough deposit of the gospel or don't have
missionaries or don't--enough deposit of the gospel for them
to get saved.
They may have heard a little bit, but not enough
to get saved.
There's no missionary, no Bible, no churches they can go to.
That's the unreached part of the world.
So the Bible says Jesus said, "Go into all the nations."
That word "nations" in Greek is ethne.
We get ethnic group from it.
So there's 17,000 ethnic groups in the world, 17,000 ethnic
groups; 10,000 ethnic groups like the Brazilians or the
Argentinian, they have the gospel.
Seven thousand ethnic groups do not have the gospel yet.
They don't have--7000, right, out of the 17,000, so we're more
than halfway there, right?
Yeah, just barely.
There's 41% of the world that's unreached.
There may--and for 1, so that's 2 point, no, 3.4 billion people.
Now, about 2 billion have never heard the name of Jesus
one time.
And the other 1.4 billion, they've heard the name of Jesus
through ministries like Daystar, you know, broadcasting or maybe
their cousin went to America and heard something and mentions
Jesus, but it's not really enough constant sharing of the
gospel for them to get saved, right?
So we've got to send missionaries to the 41% of the
world that still doesn't have it.
It's the greatest adventure of a lifetime.
I mean, that's where miracles are happening.
That's why I'm just so jealous for young people to come.
I go to--I speak at youth groups and kids come up to me
and say, "I'm so bored here," and I go, "I would be bored too.
Come with me to India.
Wait until you see God, you know, do miracles, you know,
people get healed, you know, people's lives turn around,
you know?"
And young people come, they see the power of God in ways they
don't see here in America.
It revolutionizes their life and many say, "I want to do this the
rest of my life."
Rebecca: Yeah, they realize that Christianity wasn't what they
thought it was.
There's so much more to it.
Why do you think--why do you think that is, that in some of
these other countries, it seems like the power of God is more
evident there or there's more miracles or there's more--do
you think it's because there's more the need?
Fred: Part of it's there's more of the need, and part of it,
that's exactly right, there's more of the need.
So let's just talk about northern India, for example.
Northern India is the most demonic place on the planet,
literally, yeah, and Nepal and Tibet right above it,
demonic strongholds.
I could tell stories about that and you know what?
Rebecca: Tell stories, I need stories.
Fred: Okay, but those demonic strongholds have never been
challenged in thousands of years because the church isn't there
to do spiritual warfare.
Like it says in Ephesians, you know, "We do not wrestle against
flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the
heavenly places," so the church doesn't exist there, so they've
had free reign for thousands of years and it's just
entrenched darkness.
So when we go there, like the Bible says, "Where sin abounds,
grace abounds," right?
That's the principle.
Where it's darkest, God shines the most light.
And so when you go there, God does big miracles, you know?
For example, we had some young people come for training.
And all the guys, they just were not very well discipled,
18-year-olds, would not wash their clothes and so they would
go every Saturday morning to Walmart to buy new underwear
instead of washing their underwear.
So we get them to India, we take them to a village that has never
heard the gospel and as we were walking to the village, all the
Hindus, you know, said "Foreigners!"
They came out to meet us, and one of these guys, low
self-esteem, thought he would never amount to anything in his
life, the Lord stirred him up and spoke to him, and
he prophesied.
He said, "We have heard you've had no rain for a year and you
have a drought and you're not gonna have rice and I'm here to
tell you it's because you worship idols, and if you would
change and worship Jesus, God would bless you because God is a
God of blessing.
He wants to prosper you and he will bring the rain."
And then, that was good preaching.
That's the Bible.
But then he got excited and said, "And to prove that we
serve the one true living God and you serve idols, tomorrow
when we come to your village, the second we put our foot in
your village, the rain will come for the first time in a year to
show that we serve God."
And the leader of the training school was, really, he started
to pray, "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus."
And when he got home, I said, "What were you thinking?"
He said, "I was thinking, dude, you won't even wash your
underwear and you're prophesying rain in the nation."
So they prayed really hard and the next day, literally, the
second they set foot in the village, rained for the first
time in a year.
These young people shared their faith.
Forty Hindus knelt down in the mud, got saved.
We took them down to the river.
They got baptized, and the young people who were on that trip,
you know, about half of them said, "This is what I'm doing
the rest of my life.
I'm bringing the gospel."
So where it's darkest, God likes to move in great power.
So that's one dynamic.
The other dynamic is we get complacent here.
We're not desperate for the move of God like we need to be.
We've learned because--it's a Deuteronomy 8 principle.
God said, "I'm bringing you to a land of milk and honey, a land
where you're going to have everything, and you know it's
going to happen, you're going to stop relying on me.
You're gonna forget me because your life is easy."
That happens to us, Rebecca.
We get complacent here and so we don't have this desperate
longing for the move and power of God.
So that's another reason we don't see it as much as here.
Rebecca: Yeah, we're just comfortable.
Fred: We're comfortable.
Rebecca: Oh man, can--I know you can't really go into
specifics about the persecuted church, but you work with the
persecuted church.
Can you, for Americans who just have no, you know, understanding
of what's going on, can you kind of talk about what the scene is
like there so they could get some perspective?
Fred: Oh yeah, it's difficult for Christians, like, all along.
First off, Christians are the most persecuted religious group
in the world.
We suffer more persecution than all the other major religions
combined: Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists.
So, and I believe that's because we're sharing the true truth and
the enemy hates that, so he incites the people who work for
him to really attack us.
But for Christians who live along what's called the Sahel
belt of Africa, so Northern Africa, if you ever look at a
map, the top half is desert, the bottom half is green jungle.
Where the desert meets the green is called the Sahel, and that's
where Muslim Islam meets Christianity.
Southern Africa's Christian, Northern Africa's Muslim, and
along that belt it goes right directly through Nigeria.
Half of Nigeria's Muslim, half is Christian.
The people, for example, who live along the Sahel Belt who
are Christian in Uganda, other places, severe persecution.
Muslims come, they martyr people in their homes, you know, in
northern Nigeria.
They'll come into a small Christian village.
They'll take all the young girls out of the village, they'll kill
the parents, kill the boys, take the young girls as sex slaves
and everything and in Syria right now, there's been just 2
weeks ago we saw the martyring of over 1000 Christians as the
radical Muslims who've taken power in Syria are going on
massive persecution raids.
We're seeing the same thing in China.
You know, China is persecuting both Muslims and Christians very
severely, especially in Western China, you know.
And in India, it's grown, you know, because they want to
preserve their country as a Hindu country only, so there's
even laws.
They've passed laws that say it's illegal to convert from the
religion of your forefathers, from Hinduism, right?
And so they persecute Christians and martyr them, so it's--their
life is hard.
And those they don't martyr are looked down upon in society,
often don't get the best jobs, have a harder time getting into
good schools.
So it's very difficult for a lot of our brothers and sisters
around the world.
We don't realize how easy we have it here.
Rebecca: No, we don't.
That's why I feel like talking about them is so important to
give people perspective.
What--how do, you know, it's like someone from here, it's
like you don't even know what you would even say to someone in
that situation.
What--how do you minister to those people?
How do you encourage them to keep going in their faith?
What keeps them going?
Fred: There's a great ministry I'd like to really recommend to
people, it's called Voice of the Martyrs.
You can find their website.
They really highlight the persecuted church around the
world, Voice of the Martyrs, and they show you to give you ways
to pray, and wait for the persecuted church.
They could even aim you towards, here are some things you can do
that would bring relief, you know, places to donate for food
or different things that can help persecuted Christians.
So I highly recommend Voice of the Martyrs for people to go to
their website.
They also publish every year, like, the list of the most
persecuted Christians in the countries and prayer guides so
that we can pray for these kinds of people.
That's one of the best things we can do.
We can't often go there.
These parts of the world are closed to missionaries, closed
to people coming.
Many times they can't even go as tourists.
So prayer is an effective weapon, like James tells us:
"The effective prayer of righteous men and women
accomplishes much."
So go to Voice of the Martyrs, that would be something very
helpful to do.
But also, we need to send missionaries that are, like, on
the fringes of these persecuted areas, right?
Get as close as possible that we can use that as launching
platforms to go on short-term trips in.
We can't live there but we can go in to visit, to encourage,
you know, to preach, to strengthen, even bringing
clothes and food and things like that.
So we need missionaries for the Sahel belt of Africa, we need
missionaries for Northern India.
The most unreached part of the world is Northern India.
It's the most demonic part too, so we need to challenge those
principalities and powers.
So we really need to strategically place young
people, and 99% of these places are safe.
We don't want to get people killed because then you can't
advance the gospel, so we protect their lives, but there's
so much we could do.
We don't have enough missionaries.
That's the bottom line.
We don't have enough.
Rebecca: No, we don't.
I'm hoping that there will some missionaries that come out
of listening to this podcast.
You know, even though the church in the highly persecuted areas
is suffering so much, I do hear that they're on fire.
Why would you say that is?
Fred: Absolutely on fire.
Persecution drives people to dependency on God.
Even secular psychologists and sociologists talk about
it--this.
They say that people who are persecuted or people who are
poor, people in need, it drives them to God, you know, and
because if you can't depend on the government, you can't depend
on other people, you have no-- nothing else to depend on
but God.
That's number one reason.
They really depend on God.
Secondly, what that does, it develops their character.
So the persecuted church develops greatly in
perseverance, endurance during suffering, you know, strengthen
their faith where they won't back down, you know, and they
become bold and evangelistic.
They have nothing to lose and so they're bold.
So, persecution develops depth of character, but the church
doesn't grow in numbers very fast.
Under freedom, the church grows fast in numbers but not so much
in character.
That's our problem in the developed world.
So there is--they have a little bit of a benefit in the
character area.
We have a benefit in the resources where we can go and a
freedom that we can go and bring them more training and encourage
them and help them.
Rebecca: Yeah, and I, you know, it makes me go back to your
story, whereas I think in the West we have more of a problem
with idolatry because it's just easier to fall into because we
have more things and so we really have to, like you did in
Berlin, is go through our lives and give it all to God and say,
"I'm living for you and you alone," and not live for these
idols or these momentary pleasures, but live for him.
And when we are unbridled by those--unburdened by those
things, we can live freely in the freedom of God and for
his kingdom.
And so, in America, we have to take more stock of that and be
more aware and fast more, you know, not be as--we have to
make us--we have to be intentional to be uncomfortable
because it's so easy to be comfortable here.
Fred: We're addicted to comfort.
You know what, I've trained young people for 50 years and I
ask this question.
I say, "What is--what are the biggest things holding you back
from giving everything to God and submitting to his lordship?"
And you know the two top answers?
If I truly gave my heart completely to God and submitted
to him as Lord totally, he'd ask me to marry someone I don't want
to marry, and he'd send me someplace I don't want to go.
That's people's first thoughts.
Rebecca: What?
Fred: Yes, and you know what that--that's the same thing
that happened in the Garden.
When we sin, it warps our view of the nature and character
of God.
So they had no reason to fear God or to feel a shame, but
they--suddenly, God walks in the garden after they sin.
They hid themselves.
God had never done anything to make them afraid.
So sin warps our view of the nature and character of God.
So what does that say about their view of God's nature
and character?
He doesn't want me to be happy.
He wants me to suffer.
He doesn't want me to have a great partner.
He wants me to go someplace I'll hate.
But you know what?
Here's what I found.
When we--God loves us.
He wants us to be fulfilled.
He wants us to have a blessed life.
He designed us to do something that only we can do.
And when we totally submit to the one who is all love, all
wisdom, all compassion, who only has our best interests, we
submit to him completely, he says, "Great, I know what's best
for you even better than you do.
So let me lead you to that."
Like, I wanted to be a doctor.
Now I know if I was a doctor, I would have been bored out of my
skull, for me.
He knew I should have been a missionary.
He aimed me that way, and I submitted, and now I see I've
had the most fulfilling life because he knew how he
created me.
So we've got to help young people understand that God
loves them.
He wants to fulfill them.
He's not out to make them miserable.
He won't tell them to go somewhere that they'll hate.
He won't tell them to marry someone they don't want
to marry.
When we totally submit to him with reckless abandon, it is the
most fulfilling life we could ever have because God gives his
best to his kids whom he loves.
Rebecca: That's so beautifully said and it's--I just say, it's
so true.
And God knows, he's the one who designed you, he knows what
you're made for.
And every person has a specific design and a specific purpose
and you will have the most fulfillment walking in obedience
with him.
Yes, there will be suffering, there will be suffering in this
life regardless, you know, but it's worth it when you do it
with him and for him.
For the--we're out of time, but for the people, can you just say
a prayer for the people who are watching, those who are feeling
that burning call on the inside of them and they're saying,
"Okay, I want to surrender my life.
Maybe I want to be a missionary."
Fred: Yeah, I'd love to pray.
Lord, I just come to you right now.
Lord, I want to thank you for Rebecca and everyone here, for
the work they're doing for you and your kingdom, and I want to
say to everyone that's listening to this, you know, that, God, I
ask that you would reveal yourself to them in a new way.
Father, I pray that you'd show them your loving kindness
towards them.
Show them, hold them close to your chest that they can sense
your heart of love beating for them, that you only want good
things for them, to bless them, to give them good instead of
evil, to give them a future and a hope.
God, I pray that you would draw them to want to have a desire to
know you more, God, the God who has nothing but love,
compassion, tenderness, kindness towards them, the God who's so
forgiving that you cast their sins as far as from the east is
from the west, who, like your Word says, you understand our
humanity and you don't judge us, you just want to help us to work
our way out of our sins so that we can experience a totally
blessed life.
Lord, so I pray for my friends that you would reveal yourself
to them in this way, in a new way they haven't experienced
before, Lord.
Speak to them more clearly through your Word.
Lord, when they take time to pray, God, I pray that you would
speak to them and that they'd just hear your loving,
compassionate words, God, that they are your sons and daughters
and you care about them and care about the things that they care
about, God.
So, that's the first thing I ask, that my friends would have
an experience with the nearness of God in a new way in
their lives.
And then from that, Lord, I pray that they would be motivated to
serve you, like Paul said.
He said, "I want my life, my whole life, to be poured out
as intercession."
So our whole life is prayer.
So Lord, help to motivate them that, again like Paul said, "In
everything I do, I do it as unto the Lord."
So whether they're called to university or called to the
marketplace to their job, they can say, "I'm doing this for God
because God designed me to do this and to love it and be
fulfilled, God."
So I pray that you help all of my friends hearing this to have
a new revelation of you, God, and out of that revelation of
your love for them, Lord, I pray that they would be motivated to
find new ways to share this loving God with those around
him--around them that don't know him.
God, do that in Christ's name, and I pray you would bless them
beyond all they could ask or think.
Bless them with strength in their emotions that are
resilient, that bounce back from disappointments quickly.
Bless them with clear, clear minds that can think clearly
about the issues of the day.
God, bless them with physical strength that they can have a
great life and a great family, and that they can serve you in
whatever way you call them to, God.
And I pray you bless them spiritually, Lord, that wherever
they show up, whether it's in the marketplace and university
or even on the mission field, that all of hell will tremble
when they show up because they know their kingdom is about to
be decimated.
Lord, I pray their names would be revered and honored in heaven
and that their names would be feared in hell, God.
That's what I pray for everyone who's listening, God.
And I ask you to do all of this through the almighty,
all-powerful name of the Lord Jesus Christ, King of kings,
Lord of lords, Master of the universe, in that mighty name,
do this, amen, amen.
Rebecca: Amen, oh, such a good prayer.
And I feel like there's even people who are watching that
are, like you said, the life experience.
I think there's probably some older people that you might be
called to the mission field through this experience.
Of course, we've linked Fred's information in the
description box.
I have one final question that was--just came to me while you
were praying.
We haven't even gone into the fullness of your life.
We don't have time to.
Maybe for another podcast you can--we can do more of your
story, but you've been through so much.
Would you see ( the thing that has gotten you through
everything and has helped you keep your vigor is your
relationship with the Lord?
Fred: Absolutely, Rebecca.
I could not do--if I did not have my time every day with the
Lord, I could not do what I'm doing 'cause you know what?
The world is wearying and we're trying to change people's
hearts, and they don't want their hearts changed and, you
know, I couldn't do it if it wasn't daily being strengthened
by God, you know, and that only comes through relationship.
When we spend time with God, his fragrance gets on it and that's
what it says: we're a sweet fragrance of Jesus.
So that's the empowering thing is every day in a living
relationship with Christ, and most Christians don't have a
living relationship.
They do things by rote.
That's another thing we help them with if they come for
training, you know, like in a gap year, we help them get into
a very dynamic relationship with God.
That's the thing that keeps me going.
Rebecca: Amen, well, that was a word, folks.
Take heed of that, and I just want to say thank you so much
for being here.
Fred: Thank you for the opportunity.