Out of Africa

This is Darren Kuhn with the Masculine Journey Podcast, where we search the ancient paths to find ways that God brings light into a dark world and helps set men free from the struggles that we all face on a day-to-day basis. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it.

Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening and for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Welcome to Truth Network. I'm Darren Kuhn, and I'm here today to talk about how we walk out of Africa, because we have some African missionaries that love the Lord, that have been there, one in education, another went. I mean, why would a football coach go and minister on a missions trip to Africa? How is that connected to autism and special needs? Coach Brian Hack, I mean, you've inspired me and all of the men here at Wednesday in the Word.

That's, by the way, why it's so loud, because we just finished Wednesday in the Word. Tell us about what God's put on your heart, brother. The work that I do is inspired by my son's autism diagnosis, and that worked its way into my scholarly work as a professor of Christian education at Piedmont University. Some of the students that I had when I was the director of that Master of Education program actually are professors and staff members at Central Africa Baptist University in Zambia. At some point after they left my class, they contacted me again and said, listen, we want to start admitting students with disabilities, and we want to start preparing our teacher education graduates with a biblical viewpoint of students with disabilities. Because in Africa right now, people with disabilities are viewed as cursed or as evidence of God's judgment against the family, so they're hidden away. And so they said, if we could change the way disabilities are viewed in human populations in Zambia, we could reach tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of students right now who are not here in the gospel. So they had me out there to teach them, to teach their whole faculty what I taught on a biblical view of personhood and a biblical view of disabilities in a biblical worldview. So I went there at their request, and many of you here at Wednesday in the Word helped send me to meet my expenses for the air travel, and so I was able to teach the entire faculty a four-day seminar on a Christian worldview of disabilities in the place of people who have disabilities in human populations. Since I've come back, they've contacted me not once but twice to tell me they've had more applicants to the university who have disabilities in the last three weeks than they've ever had before, and some of them are going to become teachers.

So they're actually going to be employed by the public school system where they can now preach Christ in the public school classroom, and those teachers, when they become teachers, who have disabilities will certainly not overlook the students who have disabilities. So I'm getting goosebumps telling you about it because I could not have made this timing better. We're getting chills when I was hearing you talk about it. Exactly what part of Africa is this? Tell us in relation to where everything is, because it's a big continent.

Right. Well, I was in Zambia, which is in southern Africa. It's not South Africa, the country. It's slightly north of there. So it's a landlocked country.

It's bordered on all sides by other countries, but it was really wonderful people. They love the Lord. Most of them have absolutely nothing, and it's just really done. It woke my conscience up because I concern myself with so many different things that have nothing to do with the Lord, and these are people who have nothing, and they're the most generous people I've ever met. These are people who see manifestations of the Holy Spirit of God in ways that we don't see very often in our country anymore, and, you know, for them, loving the Lord is everything, and the love of the Lord is everything to them, and it was really just an amazing thing to be a part of. And I could even see in the faculty, most of those professors work for very little or nothing.

They're supported by their churches so that they can minister the Word of God from their classrooms in the university so they can prepare and equip believers to go out and spread the gospel even further. I love it. Mark Guthrie, you've committed your whole life to Christian education at Caldwell Academy. You've been in Uganda.

You've been discipling. You're trying to change the lives of 110 million people in Uganda, but when you hear Coach Hack talk about this, what comes into your heart? What comes into your mind?

Well, I love it. It's a forgotten people. The disabled are forgotten people in Uganda, and so, like Coach said, it's most of the time, it's almost viewed as a demonic possession or some sort of curse if the kids have some sort of disability, and so it's really brutal.

They don't go to school. They're really cast to the side, and so it's really a tough, tough road. Really, with any type of mental or physical disability, it's a tough, tough road. There's no net that the government provides in Africa that kind of lifts up those, and so it has to be people with a heart from Christ remembering that every child is made in the image of God, and they're made exactly as God intended them to be made, and that is what gives them infinite value. And so people that believe that then surround those type of children, and they become the men and women that God intended them to be with or without a disability.

That doesn't matter. Well, Dr. Dwayne Carson, you've been a headmaster of Christian schools. You were the head of spiritual life at Liberty University. You've been in academics your whole career, and this man went over to help in a special, neat niche. Who would have thought you're a football coach. You went over, and you have a special needs expertise to help people in that area. You have a son.

Dr. Carson, who would have thought things we take for granted here in America that there's a desperate need in Africa. We have programs. We have schools. There's options.

I've heard parents talk about three or four menus of options. They can take them to this school. They can put them over here, but Dr. Carson, the way we can mobilize missionaries to go abroad to serve is amazing, isn't it?

Talk about that. Oh, there's so many different ways you can use your gifts and talents on the mission field. You don't have to be a missionary to be on mission, and here's school teachers, those who have got those doctor's degrees, nurses.

There's so many different ways, the psychology majors, because all the needs that are around us are around the world, and giving the love of Christ is an endless opportunity. We're going to jump from Africa to Israel, because we're going to come back in our second segment after this and talk to him about his recent trip to the Holy Land. While we're in Africa, Mark Guthrie, tell us about your passion for Uganda, because I hear Coach Hack talk about what God did in Zambia through him, and I think you're going to be going back, aren't you? I think so. They've already invited me to come back. We don't have dates set up yet or exactly what we're going to do then, but we know it's going to be a continuation of the first trip. Mark, you're fundamentally just like Coach Hack, but you went over to Uganda, and you stayed. Now, Coach Hack, this might be a little prophetic thing for you.

Who knows what God's going to do there, but talk about what grips your heart there and what you're trying to do now. Well, for me, it was homegrown, because I adopted two Ugandan sons in 2010 when I was the head of Cold War Academy, and so every time I look at them, I see millions more. Uganda is the youngest country in the world.

Half the population is under 15, and so it really is a country of kids. And so for me, in 2014, I was given the privilege to go build a large Christian school that's secondary in Uganda, and then I've been laying the groundwork for other schools since I've been there. Because like Aristotle said, give me a child until seven, and I'll show you the man. I believe the way you impact generational change, both here in the States and in Uganda and in Zambia and everywhere else, is you attack the hearts and minds of the children. You've got to go after what Satan and God know, it's a generational battle. And so we are involved in the generation. So I think the best use of my time, whatever years God gives me left, is to go after those hearts and minds through the power of Jesus Christ, the finished work of Jesus Christ through education.

You know, Romans tells us transformation by the renewing of the mind, and that's what we're going after. And so we go after all the way from three years old all the way up through S6. It's an English system through high school there. There's six years of high school. We try to implement a biblical curriculum, invest heavily in the heads of schools and what they call DOS, the directors of study, which goes to the teachers, several hundred thousand.

I'm working right now. They've asked me to oversee a transformative work for 6,000 schools there, literally 6,000 schools that are raising their hands. The schools are built, the staffs are in place, and they're raising their hand asking for this training. It's a two year training that starts with the head, starts with the influencers of the school and then goes on to the teachers and then grabs a hold of those hearts of those kids and their families. And so for me, it's such a privilege. I am raising the support to do that because this isn't one school.

Now it's backed up and they've said, can you do this at multiple levels? And so, but all of the schools are very poor, as you saw in Zambia. There's no windows in most of them. There's no electricity. There's not clean water. And just that, just changing that, the ability for a child to have a meal, the ability to drink clean water, the ability to be away from the abuse for the hours you're in the school.

You know, that you aren't in threat, under threat of abuse from the head or from a teacher or anything like that is so, so worth the call. It's so worth the time and the investment because for every one of those lives, every moment that changes who they are. And again, ultimately it's transformation.

And then the villages get transformed, then the districts get transformed and then the country and then East Africa. And you know, when the spirit of God is working, the doors get blown off and it's just a privilege to be part of his work. Praise the Lord. And I want you to hang around a little bit, in case you can't hang around, I want you to give everyone a shout out about what hits your heart when you hear him talk. And how can we be praying for your continued work in Zambia, Coach Hack?

Well, Mark actually said a mouthful right there. The need is so utterly great, but the spirits of the people are so willing to endure hardship. And we have so much here in our country.

We have, you know, we pray at our dinner table every night and we thank the Lord that three times my children sat down to meals. And I think of those kids in Zambia, they might eat today, they might not. And the way that they run school in Zambia is they have like a morning shift and an afternoon shift. And my guide who was taking me around to show me those schools was explaining to me that a lot of the students who come to the afternoon shift are so tired from just running from the abuse or from the many chores that they have. Even as very little children, three and four and five years old, they're exhausted by the time they get to school.

And they really, their capacity for learning has been diminished by what they've been through in the morning. So we have more than enough. Even if you're living paycheck to paycheck, you have far more than the students in Zambia will ever see in their lifetime probably. And if you can sacrifice one latte a month or one fast food meal a week and give to the ministry that Mark is running or help out in some other way to reach a generation for Christ in Africa, you're going to be surprised. Twenty-five years from now, if the Lord hasn't come back by then, Africa's going to be a brand new place. And I'm getting goosebumps again.

I'm so thankful and privileged because I couldn't have planned this for myself. And the university's already invited me back and they've even kind of asked me in passing, would you consider coming here full time? And my answer, of course, is if the Lord makes it plain to me that that's what I'm supposed to do, then that's what I'll do. How can people get in touch with you? We're going to go to Israel next, but first, give us your contact information and your website or what the best way to connect. I saw you and I are on LinkedIn as well. I am on LinkedIn. I'm connected to you, Stu, but people can email me directly. I'm still at coachhack at gmail dot com. That's coach, like a football coach, and my last name is spelled H-A-A-C-K. Coachhack at gmail dot com.

No spaces, no hyphens. God bless you, man. Thank you so much for your work. Mark, for your work. We're going to come back and talk some more about whoever can hang around him, you know, and then about Israel and then a unique connection. A pro baseball coach who happened to be here this morning at the same time as this Ugandan educator and how God is going to bring transformation and connection there on Truth Talk. Don't touch that dial. This is the Truth Network.