S2S Roundtable: "Behind The Scenes: History, Vision/Mission, and Exciting Update"

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, this is Strength to Strength, and we give you a special welcome to join us here, us in the admin team here at Strength to Strength, along with a special guest, Regan Schrock. And I'll talk about Regan here a little bit and why he's joining us. And so, yeah, this is our first roundtable. We've never done this before on the Strength to Strength platform. We've talked about it, dreamed about it. And so finally, here we go. And this evening, we're going to be talking about the history of Strength to Strength, kind of our vision, and some of the things that we're doing, and some of the new things coming down the road here as well.

So again, we welcome you here. So the verse that really captures the heart of Strength to Strength is where we get the name. And that's out of Psalm 84, verses 5 and 7. And it goes like this: "Happy are the people whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.

They go from strength to strength, each appear before God in Zion." And so, as I understand, the Hebrew words there for strength to strength is actually chazak, chazak. Really cool words. And it's this idea of going from getting stronger and stronger.

And as Christ followers, as God's people, hopefully, that is what we're doing. And that's our goal. That's our vision here with Strength to Strength is to encourage not only ourselves. We need it too. We're weak people here in this circle, and we need to get stronger. And so that's our vision, is that this platform would make us stronger. We can go from strength to strength. And also our prayer here at S2S is this: that in a shaky world, our resources will give you solid footing and strengthen your love, faith, relationship with King Jesus.

That is our goal, and that is our heart. So again, welcome here. Regan Schrock is joining us. Some of you might recognize him. He often is hosting people over on Anabaptist Perspectives. And so welcome, Regan. We look at Anabaptist Perspectives as our big brother. I think you guys kicked off like in 2017 or something like that. And in many ways, you've been impacting the world for Christ ever since then. And so, yeah, you've set a really good example. And in some ways, we're kind of following in your footsteps. We've kind of found our own little niche, you know, in the digital world. But we definitely have collaborated, and we'd like to do that more as we go into the future.

And so with our roundtables, we hope to always have a guest with us to discuss whatever topic we would like to discuss. But this evening, we're specifically asking Regan to actually host this call, and he's going to moderate it and kind of help mine out what is the history of this platform of Strength to Strength and the vision and purpose and all those things. So Regan, welcome here. And we're going to kick the ball into your court, and you can take it from here.

All right. Yeah, thanks for having me on this. This is an honor. And yeah, I've known you, Bryant, for a number of years now, and it's been an honor to interview you several times over on Anabaptist Perspectives, which is a podcast, a ministry that I helped start. And we do a lot of mostly interviews, to publish some essays and some other things as well.

Just this idea of using the digital space to change, or maybe not change, but to put out the message of Jesus's sacrificial kingdom out into the world. And you all are definitely doing that as well. So it's been really fun and enjoyable to watch what y'all are doing, grow and develop. And hopefully this evening, we can dig in a little bit of that as far as who are you all as an organization and also about each of you individually as well. I haven't met most of you in person, actually. And so I'm really looking forward to getting to know you all a bit more as we go through some questions and some other things that I have prepared here.

So maybe just to kick it off, let's start with each of y'all on this call. Can you just share a little bit about yourself, who you are, your family, church, etc.? And then why are you part of Strength to Strength? And then the most recent book you've been reading as well, just for something different. So I'm not sure what order you all are on each other's screen, but Glenn Martin is the first one on my list. So Glenn, I'd love to hear you answer those questions.

There we go. Now I'm unmuted. Yeah, well, thank you. And appreciate you joining us here. Yeah, so my name is Glenn Martin, and I live in Massachusetts. And I've been a part of Strength to Strength from the beginning. I was invited by Patrick for the very first meeting, and I've been with it pretty much ever since.

And yeah, so to your questions, yep, so I live in Massachusetts, a part of a church called Disciples Fellowship. We're a small congregation and trying to lighten up this part of the world. And then, yeah, in my free time, I'm devoted to projects like this, and I'm very happy to be a part of it. And yeah, it's really a thrill. I really do enjoy being here. And yeah, I think most of you I've known for a number of years. Some of you, I've only met online, I believe. Justin, I don't think we've ever met in person. And as far as I know, Regan, I don't think we've ever met in person either.

But yeah, I do feel like there's a real camaraderie among us just because of this type of interaction, which is pretty amazing. So yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Glenn. And yeah, Patrick, you're next on my screen, so. He forgot to—what books are you reading? Oh, oh yeah. Maybe what books are you writing? Yeah. There you go. Please, yeah, maybe not too much detail on that, Glenn, but do mention that, actually, if you don't mind. Sure. Yes, of course. Yeah, so I have been reading a variety of books and resources in recent months, actually, most of this year, in my work on preparing a book that I'm writing myself. So we'll get to that a little bit later. But yeah, when you write—there you go, Bryant. Bryant is showing you the screen there. So that's a book that's just coming out now.

It's called Righteous Lot, and it's a historical retelling of the story of Lot, Abraham's nephew. So a book like that actually relies on a lot of different sources. And there's this statement that I say sometimes that my best friends are all dead. And so it's all the historical figures for the past millennia.

Yeah, that's who I've been reading a lot. Yeah, very good. Yeah, yeah, I just found out, actually, that you'd been working on that book. So I'm very excited to get my hands on it once it's finished. But we'll probably hit some more of the details on that a little bit later. But I thought that was definitely worth mentioning. Patrick, why don't you go next? Okay.

Can you hear me well? We can hear you well.

What do I tell them? I'm involved by—I feel like I'm behind the scenes. I listen. I don't interject as much as I used to because sometimes my opinion's a little stronger than it should be. And I feel like I just listen, and I learn from these guys.

I started this because during COVID, I kept looking out my window and realizing that Satan was out there doing push-ups. And I was in my house, and I was getting weaker and weaker. And so I grabbed my phone, and I called everybody. And as you can imagine, I heard a lot of no's, but I heard a few yeses. And Glenn was one of the first yeses. So when the time came that I needed to move it on, I passed it on to him.

Yeah. Yeah, very good. And Patrick, where do you live currently, and what books have you been reading? I live in Chambersburg, and I go to Chambersburg Christian Fellowship. We also have a small internet ministry called Sound Faith. I don't know if any of you've heard. That's Daniel Willis.

I attend Chambersburg Christian Fellowship. I run a place called Harkin House Ministry.

And the books that I'm reading right now, I'm an attention-deficit person, so I'm reading a lot. I read a lot of little. One of my favorite books is Rooting for Rivals.

A lot of times in a nonprofit world, you feel you need to keep it all. And I'm realizing that God's allotted what he's going to give you. And if you help others to achieve, it won't help your bottom line, but it will help your heart. There you go.

Rooting for Rivals is just a wonderful story about how you just let go because it doesn't—we're all going to get what we're going to get. God's already preordained that. I don't know if I should have said that. Somebody will come back to emphasize that statement.

You're good. You're good. But basically, it's my heart that I have to deal with. And if I'm treating this stuff like it's mine, then I'm not doing his purpose. Another book I'm reading is Crucial Conversations, The Influencer, Stories of Transformation, The Power of Lifers, Prisoners, and a book called Get Free and Stay Free.

And it's Septuagint and Martyrs' Mirror here and there.

Yeah. Very good. Bryant, why don't you go next? Okay. Yeah. So Bryant Martin. My wife is Lynelle. Lynelle is part of the admin team for the sister side. So yeah, we have seven children. We live here in State College, Pennsylvania.

Have the privilege of journeying with the church called Followers of Jesus here in State College. My wife and I, yeah, we have seven children. I think I said that already. 13-year-old down to one-year-old. So there's not a dull moment in our house. And there's a good chance I'll get interrupted this evening, which right now—hi, Chippy.

Yeah. Okay. I'm on a call. You can go now. Yeah. Do you want to come sit with Daddy for a little bit? Okay. You see the one-year-old? Yes. Nope. This is my three-year-old. Can you see him? Can you say hi to everybody?

His name is Chandler, which means light maker. And he's our sweetheart. He lights up the world. So yeah. And it was kind of a joke downstairs. How are we going to have the—how are you going to have an hour and a half call without being interrupted? Saturday mornings at 6:00 AM, the house is pretty quiet. But the chances are a lot higher this evening. So anyhow, yeah, my wife and I, we own Seward's Harvest Cafe right here in State College.

Of course, any of you or anyone listening ever coming through State College, please feel free to stop by. Love to have a coffee with you. Also work with a ministry called All Nations Bible Translation, some with Kingdom Fellowship Weekend, and also with Strength to Strength. So it's exciting to work in God's kingdom in this way. And a book that I've been reading is this book right here. I'm about done with it. It's called The Six Conversations by Heather Holman. She's actually a Penn State professor. Actually, one of my friends—well, I've never met him before—a gentleman that listens to Strength to Strength messaged me and said, "Hey, my wife is reading this book by Heather Holman from Penn State."

I'm assuming you know her, right? Because she cares about conversation. And isn't one of your visions of Seward's is to cultivate conversations that change the world? And I was like, "Yeah, that's true, but I've never heard of her." And so I got her book, read most of it, ordered 30 of them, gave them to all our workers at Seward's. And it's quite a book. It really is a powerful book. So anyhow, we're hoping to actually sell the book on our bookstore. Whoops, I let it slip.

Seward's, I mean, Strength to Strength is starting a bookstore. And we're going to be bringing up more of that here as we go along here. So anyhow, maybe even Glenn's book, maybe selling Glenn's book. We'll see. All right.

So did I miss anything, Regan? What other questions you got for me? Yeah. No, that's good. Thanks for covering that. Justin, you're next on my screen. Go ahead and introduce yourself. All right. Yeah. I'm Justin Zehr from Ontario, Canada.

And I'm the newest guy on the team here. I joined in early May of 2021. I had been a faithful in—well, I don't know. I probably shouldn't use that term, but I joined quite a few of the morning sessions. During 2020 and then into 2021, for sure, we were experiencing a lot of lockdown, quite a bit more than any of you Americans were. So this was a great way to just stay connected with what's going on in the kingdom of God and to be encouraged in the faith and in my personal walk while Satan's out there doing push-ups, like Patrick mentioned. So yeah, it's been a real blessing. So then, yeah, in May or probably in April already, Bryant contacted me and asked if I wanted to join the team here and help with the work.

So my job here with Strength to Strength is to put out the media, put out the messages on the different platforms. We have WhatsApp. We have Telegram or CloudVail, and we have Signal. And then we put it also on Facebook and send out an email as well. So I've put those out to make sure everybody knows what's coming up. And then also publish the video once it's ready. We have Daniel Willis do the video editing, who also does Sound Faith, like Patrick mentioned. And once the video is ready, then I get a description ready for it and publish it. And then I put out the messages on those messaging platforms again to say there's a recording available.

So yeah, I'm part of Grace Mennonite Fellowship up here, and I've been helping with the work at the church as well. So been busy. I'm a businessman as well. I run a meat shop. We cut meat for the local farmers as well as sell retail, wholesale. And yeah, food industry is always busy. There's always lots of hungry people around. So that keeps me really busy. I don't have a lot of time to read, actually.

But I was working through the book, The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down, and then it went missing on me. So I guess I'm going to have to order another one. But I listened to it on audio already.

And then also on audiobooks, which I use a lot, by the way, because that helps me digest books. Right now, I'm going through The Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard and really enjoying that.

Awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing that. Sam, why don't you go next?

Sure. Hi, Regan. It's nice to finally meet you, I mean, virtually. We'll have to do for now. One day, we can meet in person. I really appreciate what you all do over there at Anabaptist Perspectives. And I have to say that some of the interviews, messages, testimonies that I've listened to have been impactful in my own life. So keep up the good work with that.

So my name is Sam Bair. I am from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And I've been a part of Strength to Strength since 2020, I believe, close to the end of 2020. And I'm part of the admin team here.

I am married, my wife, Christina, and we have four children. And we're a part of a new fellowship here in Calgary in the community of Brentwood. We just formed here. Actually, one of the families just moved here two weeks ago, I believe.

And we had spent some time in Boston. So we're back from Boston this summer. And another family came back with us, and the third one just moved in. So we're a fairly new fellowship here, really excited about what God is doing.

And we feel like we're on the verge of seeing what He can do. And our goal is to be humble and hungry so we can be in the way of His work and make it happen. So one of the reasons I enjoy being a part of S2S is the wide impact that these messages are having around the world. I've been amazed at the people who come on the live meetings on Saturday morning, and they're from all over. I mean, the list of countries, I mean, Australia, the Netherlands, Mexico.

Last Saturday was Albania. My brother spoke. And it's phenomenal to see. And I think that that's what keeps me inspired. It's difficult sometimes, considering the time zone, to get up at 3:15 in the morning and try to splash cold water in my face and slap it around a little bit and talk to myself for a while to get in the headspace of moderating a call at that time. It's up at 3:15 on a Saturday morning.

Well, you must be hungry, brother. It has its drawbacks, but I got to tell you, by the time 5:30 hits and we wrap up the call, I am on fire. And so at 3:15, sometimes I wonder why I'm a part of it. And by 5:30, I remember why that vision is relit.

A couple of the books that I'm working on right now are The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee, pretty impactful book, and Leadership and Self-Discipline. It's written by a group. It actually doesn't have one author.

And yeah, they have been inspiring me. I think that's, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for sharing, Sam. Wendell, why don't you wrap us up here?

Good to see you here. Facebook a few times. Just respect is good to have you here on Strength to Strength. And so yeah, I'm Wendell Morin.

I'm the third Martin on this crew, but none of us are—we're all brothers, but not very closely related by the flesh. Anyhow, I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and I'm part of a little church plant here that has been going for just about two years. So we're pretty new as well. There's four families here, part of our group, just trying to be a faithful and compelling witness here in Pittsburgh.

My wife, Janet, and I have six children, and our oldest is 16. Our youngest is one-year-old. And here he comes.

I'm telling you, it's like magic to show up.

So maybe you should take it.

So yes, I've been honored to be part of Strength to Strength, and I love what—I love, like Sam said, the connections that are made through it. And also, yeah, the encouragement and the good teaching that we've been able to get out there, thankfully.

And it's been a blessing. I was on pretty soon. I don't remember when Patrick started this; it was probably the middle of March. Do you remember in 2020? Actually, the first meeting was on April 1 of 2020. April 1. Okay. So yeah, it's been a blessing. And yeah, to be on it from the get-go when it was started as a way to encourage people. And I remember what Patrick says there about he felt like the devil was in his front yard doing push-ups. And so yeah.

April Fool's Day. April Fool's Day. So yeah. Oh, books. So I am reading When Helping Hurts by Steven Corbett and Brian Ficker. I just cracked this one open recently. I've been told for quite a while I need to read it, so I'm getting to it now. And then I also—I think my next one on the stack is this Reading for Rivals that Patrick was recommending, so.

Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Thanks, everyone, for introducing yourselves. That's really helpful for me because, again, I haven't met most of you in person and kind of get a sense of what goes on behind the scenes, so to speak, because, like clockwork, there's a new piece of content coming out, but there's a lot of work happening here and a lot of logistics and working together. And I think that's actually pretty important for us to realize. It doesn't just happen.

Sam is over here getting up at 3 o'clock in the morning and other things like that, that level of, I guess, sacrifice or commitment, maybe. That's really powerful. I'm thinking I was on some of those early calls, too, with Strength to Strength back in 2020. And I look at that where it started with a pretty small WhatsApp group, and then I was on y'all's YouTube channel on your website earlier this evening. I'm looking at, wow, this has come quite a long ways. It has reached a phenomenal amount of people, as some of y'all mentioned, all around the world.

I'd like if we could do a bit of a broad stroke of how did we get from Patrick, you're having an idea in your head, to it starting to here we are today. How did this thing start? How did we get here? I know y'all hit some of the little pieces, but I'd like maybe the broad stroke. So Glenn, would that be something you could kind of kick off and then the rest of you pitch in as we go along? Sure. Yeah. I'd be happy to. So it was in March of 2020 during the early part of the lockdowns.

I get a message from Patrick. I had known him before, but not for very long. But anyway, he said he's organizing a prayer call for the following morning, I believe it was. And I actually have a copy of his text message that he sent to me. He says, "Let's come together, reaching towards God for our stability." So I think he sent it to his contact list, and I was in there, fortunately. So I was happy to receive that. And yeah, so I joined the call, and Patrick said, "Hey, let's have a time of prayer." And yeah, it was just very informal. There was nothing recorded. There was no YouTube channel. It was just a few people that got together on Zoom to visit and to pray together.

So that first meeting was April 1 at 6 o'clock in the morning. And then Patrick says, "Let's do it again tomorrow morning." And so we did it April 2, and we did it April 3, and we did it April 4. And so yeah, it was every day for how long, Patrick? Maybe a few weeks?

A couple of months, yeah. A couple of months. Okay. Yep. And then at some point, we adjusted the schedule, and it's been adjusted a few times to where we are today. We're doing it every other week. But yeah, that's how it got started. So Patrick was the engineer behind this. It was his inspiration to do this and his organization and so on that caused it to happen.

And then at some point, Patrick is, I think, pretty busy with a lot of different things. And he said, "You know what? He's going to be stepping back." And he said, "If it's going to continue, somebody else is going to need to step up." Well, yeah, it was through that.

The calls continued for a number of weeks without a lot of organization until, I think, Patrick was working behind the scenes, talking to Bryant as well and seeing if he would want to join. And so Bryant called me, and he's like, "Should we keep this going, what Patrick has started here?"

But Patrick, at that time, what was it called? It wasn't called Strength to Strength, was it? Weak, W-E-A-K, to Weak, W-E-E-K. Because each week, we're getting weaker and weaker.

Okay. So anyway, after Patrick had stepped back from it, that was my number one thing to change the name.

So sorry, Patrick, but it became Strength to Strength. And so that's the name we've been with ever since. But back to the story. How did it become Strength to Strength? I actually didn't even quite know the details there. It's vague in my mind. Yep. So John D. Martin had a talk on a Saturday morning. I don't know the name of the talk, and it was prior to us doing any recordings. But it was really good. It was really great. And at the end of the call, I was moderating, and I found it hard to say, "Thanks for joining week to week." I was like, "Wow, this should be something else." So I said, "Well, let's rename this.

Let's call it Strength to Strength." And so that's what it's been ever since. But yeah. Yeah. So Patrick had been talking to Bryant about joining to, or yeah, getting behind the effort. And so Bryant called me up and said, "Shall we keep this going?" And I was like, "I enjoy it. I like it. Let's do this if you're into this." That's not the way it was, Glenn. No. You are redoing history there.

It was more like Glenn called me and said, "Bryant, Patrick threw this thing into my lap." And Patrick said, "You got to make this happen or it's not going to happen. And can you help me?" And I said, "Let's start. Let's do it."

Okay. Fair enough. I didn't think that was the way it was. But nonetheless, Bryant and I got connected in some way. And yeah, then we've been working at it together as a project ever since and getting more people involved to help.

So yeah, it was sometime shortly after that, we got better organized. We said, "Look, let's record these things. Let's put them on YouTube." And so we did that. We started the website. And yeah, since that, we have a podcast and a few messaging channels that all got started about that time and kind of made it more of an organized effort. And yeah, from there, it's just been growing and developing to where we are today.

About when was that, that you started recording again? I can check that here pretty quickly, like when our first recording was. Yeah. I was wondering the exact same thing. And while you're pulling that up, just observation too, it seems like this started out fairly simple.

Let's not overcomplicate this. We need to support each other and help each other. And then over time, it's kind of incrementally morphed into what it is now. And I think there's some real beauty in that simplicity. I don't know if any of y'all that were there when it started want to speak into that, but it strikes me that that seems like that'd be pretty intentional.

And then, Glenn, whenever you want to pull that stat as well. So I actually do have that here in front of me. So the first meeting was April 1, but the first recorded meeting is October 31. So yeah, basically, it started in the spring, but by fall is when it was recorded and put on YouTube and so on. Yep. We went from every day to week to week, once a week at some point. Okay. I forget when. I think it was, yeah, if I remember right, that was fairly directly. I think it was after the first month or so it switched to weekly. I don't know. I think it was on that early group chat and such.

And then from there, I actually don't know what y'all's cadence is now. Is it every month, every two weeks now? Every two weeks. Every two weeks. Okay. So it's changed. It's kind of, again, it's back to that. There's a simplicity here, but it's been kind of tinkered with, and incrementally, we're getting to where we are now. And again, I think there's something pretty neat about that.

Yeah. I would say when I first heard about it and was on the live meetings for the first time, it definitely had a sense of a small group of people who are just there for each other, kind of. Let's get together. Let's be encouraged and encourage one another to follow Christ faithfully. And that was really helpful for me at the time.

Yeah. I would say that this initiative, Strength to Strength, is something like God has just caused to rise up out of the earth. There's that verse in Isaiah that says that God will cause righteousness to rise up out of the earth just like He does the vegetation. And so I felt like that Strength to Strength had been one of those initiatives where it's like we can hardly keep up.

I would say it's like the horse and a chariot cruising along. We're kind of like hanging out the back just so keeping up with it. It's on the move. And so it's been fun. It's been fun.

Let's maybe do a pivot here on the discussion. So thanks for a little bit of backdrop, some context of how this thing came to be. Some of that early vision is the word that comes to my mind. And on that topic, Sam, would you want to speak into the vision of Strength to Strength? What's y'all's vision statement and maybe parse that out a bit for us? Yeah, absolutely.

Our vision here at Strength to Strength is to inspire flourishing communities of faithful Jesus followers around the world. Now, we aren't looking to supplement church. We believe that that is a local, intimate relationship that you should have with other believers. But we are a platform that puts out content, excuse me, that is to encourage and build and help work alongside the church to build those communities and to encourage believers wherever they are. And as this has grown and as the impact has broadened globally, we've seen another vision has risen out of it, and that is to connect believers wherever they're listening. We've been able to connect people in Australia and the Netherlands.

Like I said earlier, I've been connected with a lot of people through Strength to Strength, and some of them have been in our fellowship. And so that goes along with that vision to foster healthy communities, flourishing communities that are passionate to live out their Christian lives and serve Jesus Christ locally.

So we feel like with biblical teaching, simple messages that can encourage believers all over the place that are relevant to every people group around the world.

Yeah. Thanks for outlining that. And as I think through, okay, so that's the vision. And I believe y'all also have a purpose statement. I'd like to unpack that a little bit too if we can. Wendell, is your situation working again? Is that something you could speak into? Well, I was just—I was going to ask Glenn what or who was the speaker on our first recorded call.

Yep. So the speaker on the first recorded call was—I have it here just a moment. Zach Johnson. Zach Johnson. Oh, really? Yeah. A lot better on. Yep. Yeah. So it was Zach. And then the second call was actually Sam. I was thinking Sam was the testimony. Okay.

Right. So am I still coming through clear? Okay. So yeah, our mission is to advance Jesus' kingdom by assisting the church, like Sam said, in earnestly contending for the faith that was once delivered to the saints, once for all delivered to the saints. So in my experience, anyhow, good teaching and testimonies and good discussion has been really helpful for me. And so that's one thing we want to do. Those are the ways we are trying to encourage and build up the church of Jesus.

And especially thinking about this as building on the historic faith, this is not new ideas. We're not concocting something new and exciting, and therefore, you should be excited about it. But it's the historic faith that Jesus, based on a very kingdom-focused message of Jesus' kingdom of heaven is at hand. And that was the basis of his message. And for myself, I was raised in a Mennonite culture and Mennonite community, and I had lots of good teaching. But until I really got a grasp of the kingdom, Jesus' kingdom message, the dots didn't connect for me like they did.

And I'm still understanding it further. So I've been really influenced by some of the speakers that we have on here, John D. Martin and Dean Taylor. We've had on both of those have been something recently. And so the way we do this is we have these—what we say in our statement, we have thought-provoking topics. So some of these topics might be things that even if you are part of a flourishing community or a good church, you may not hear some of these topics. We have tackled some topics that bring up discussion, and sometimes they're a little bit maybe things you wouldn't discuss or you wouldn't hear in your church or in discussion or, yeah, a topic.

So things that can be a little controversial. So we have done that. And yeah, it's part of the—and we also—another part that's really important, I think, of Strength to Strength is the question-and-answer section afterwards. So we say we want to stimulate candid discussions, and that's important for that. Sometimes I've seen it sometimes where the original speaker speaks for less time than the discussion time gets him. So that can be really good and fruitful.

And also by sharing faith-building testimonies. And I definitely remember I thought maybe our first talk was Sam Beard's testimony because I remember being really impacted by his testimony, and I know the people have been as well. And just hearing people's stories.

Jesus told a lot of stories, and we can tell stories and share our own stories to be able to—yeah, just to be faithful and follow Jesus. It's worth it.

Is that—it's your question, Reagan? Yeah. That's excellent. Thanks for sharing that. So, okay, so we've got some context on how it started, how y'all got to where you are today, your big picture vision, like, "Here's what we're trying to do," and then that was on the purpose.

Let's pivot slightly and go more logistical, so to speak. Glenn, I'd love to hear you talk about the how. How are y'all actually going about this? These are some nice, grandiose ideas. Yay. Okay. But actually, how are you doing these things? And I think that's the part that, as a former administrator myself, I really enjoy that because that's important too. How are you getting this material out to people? And what does that look like? And so forth. Sure. Thank you. Yeah. So it's actually not a lot of it happens behind the scenes. Very little of it is seen publicly. So what you see publicly is the podcast and the YouTube, and it's posted on social media and things like that.

What you don't see is how the topics are selected and how it gets from the concept to the recording. So how that typically works, we have occasional meetings where we get together as a team to talk about upcoming topics, who we should be inviting on to speak, what topics we should be covering. And then out of that, Brian usually is the contact person to reach out, most commonly. He would be the one to reach out and see if we can get that lined up. And as you know, we simply do this through Zoom. So we don't have any studio. We don't have any fancy recording equipment at all. Everyone just, if they have a laptop, they can join.

And so. Well, that's true. Yeah. Well, that's true too. Yep. Yeah. So that's how we get the recording, simply by joining on Zoom. And then from there, between Justin and I, we get this recording. Actually, we do have a video editor that we work with as well, Daniel Willis. He takes the raw recording, does some editing. Editing is very light. Usually, some videos get zero editing, and some just a small detail. Somebody's got some technological problems or something like that. But yeah, it's very, very raw video. Anyway, that's what then gets posted. Put it on the website and put it out on the messaging groups that it's available. And that's the long and short of it.

So the thing that really sticks out to me there is back to this concept that we had touched on earlier, but that simplicity, it sounds like that's still very much a driving factor. You want to keep it simple.

This word is overused maybe, but authenticity, it's just a call on Zoom. People can join this, and it's pretty organic. Say again? Organic. Yeah. There you go. That's a better term. You used that before, Brian. And I think that does really capture it. I think there's something special about that.

Yeah. Do you want to say any more on that? Any of y'all want to pitch in on that? I think that it seems almost like a bit of a theme that we keep coming back to. Sure. Yep. So one of the benefits of that is the ability to pull things off in the very short term. So if you have a studio and you need to bring people together for that and fly them in or you fly somewhere to meet somebody, there's a lot of logistics that we don't really deal with at all.

Everyone just meets from their own office or home or whatever. But yeah, so when the Ukraine war started, there we brought together—I think the speakers were from four continents or something, five countries. And anyway, but that was done very, very quickly and efficiently.

And the same thing, similar thing happened with the Israel-Palestine war. We had a conversation about that as well. And those recordings could happen without a lot of—without months of planning because it's just organizing the speakers' time. And yeah, so it's pretty advantageous in that way.

What is our budget?

Well, yeah. So again, that's another side benefit of this type of a platform. We actually don't have a huge amount of expense as we're currently running it.

Yeah. The numbers are well under somewhere under 5,000 a year to run it. Yep. And that's picked up by some contributions and also contributions from the team here and so on. But yeah, it's a very low-budget enterprise.

Yeah. That's fantastic. And again, I think that is a real strength that y'all have is that simplicity and this sense that this is a real conversation. This isn't some polished, perfect thing that's perfectly scripted. I think maybe there's a place for that, but I don't think that would have the same effect that y'all are trying to do just based on what you're describing as your vision and purpose and how you're going about it. I think that's an important piece.

And yeah, thanks for explaining that. Does anybody else have anything you want to add? Anything we may have missed even back on vision and purpose or on the how-to part? I don't want to move on if there's more there.

Sure. Maybe a little bit more on the nuts and bolts here. Glenn, did you talk about kind of what speakers and things that we use? I mean, speakers and writers. So we keep kind of letting this squeak out that we're going to start publishing some books and selling some books.

So yeah, do you mind sharing a little bit about that? Who are we using? What is our focus for the ones who are actually contributing to the topics, to the books of who we are?

Sure. Yep. So for anyone that is familiar with the Anabaptist community or knows some people, if you look over the list of contributing speakers, you would find that many of them are—almost all of them would be somewhere within the Anabaptist tradition.

There would be maybe a priority placed on not bringing in false doctrine and false teachers. And we would rather go with the common man who has a heart after God than to go after the TV speakers who can really do great on camera. But nonetheless, yeah, I would say that we're looking for people who are committed to the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. And that's the tradition that we're pressing into.

Does that answer your question there, Brian?

Sure. And then maybe another aspect too. So I tipped that out there for a second. So if I'm repeating here anything, forgive me. But so we're kind of talking about the nuts and bolts of kind of how we work out our purpose or our mission and our vision.

And obviously, we do podcast videos. And then also we—oh, and books too, by the way. And then also we point people to local communities of believers. And I don't know if you touched on that or not, Glenn. But that's something that we just keep finding ourselves doing a lot. Actually, Glenn and several other brothers are in the process right now of developing a whole ecosystem of kingdom churches, kingdom communities. Patrick, I saw you put your thumbs up. You're the one who kicked that off. You were the one who started a WhatsApp group and said, "Brothers, we need something better than pilgrim ministries, which only includes the Mennonite groups. We need something that includes the kingdom groups."

All right? And so Glenn and them have been working hard at developing a whole website, a whole ecosystem of churches. And Glenn, is that global? That is global. So just to be clear, this is outside of the confines of Strength to Strength. This is not a Strength to Strength project.

Yes. That is going to be unveiled right around the end of this year. So we're only four to six weeks away from making an announcement about that. That's going to be called Church Index. And you heard it first here. So. Yeah. Crunch finders.

So Glenn, you're part of Strength to Strength. You just wrote a book. You just helped create a bookstore for Strength to Strength. You work a job. You have a family. You teach at your church. And you're doing this—wow. You're amazing. You really are. By the way, Glenn runs—I mean, he's the one who puts tons of sweat and work into this platform. Incredible. Right? This is not necessary. Glenn is one of the hardest working guys I know.

Glenn was looking for something when I first talked to him. He wanted something to do. And somehow we partnered up, and I found something for him to do. Good going, Patrick. That was awesome. Yep. I enjoy it. Yeah. That's phenomenal. Thanks for mentioning the—what'd you call it? The Church Index, I think you said. That's correct. Yep. Yeah. I remember hearing about that back when that was kicked around. And glad to hear y'all are working on it because that is absolutely—with what we're doing with Anabaptist Perspectives, it's fairly similar in some ways and different in other ways. But regardless of what y'all are doing here. And yeah, we hear from people all around the world asking questions and, "Can I get connected to churches like this?"

And that was not initially what we had in mind at all. We were just, "Well, we're just going to put this material out there, and maybe someone will find it encouraging." But we've had to morph and add that element to the organization of communicating with all these people from around the world that reach out. And it sounds like y'all have absolutely run into that as well. And that's fantastic.

That's fantastic because then you're going from not just, "Oh, here's this recorded Zoom call that's up on YouTube." It's going to real-world connection and much deeper interaction. And I think that's great to hear that that is happening as well. I don't know if any of y'all want to add more to that, but yeah, I think that's a pretty key piece, actually.

I want to, if I can, Merle Hur encouraged me in a way to teach or to lead people to an idea. I have a reputation, and I strong-armed people into doing things. I don't come from an Anabaptist culture. Well, Merle suggested that I try something, and the technique was to put the problem there, call a bunch of people together and say, "What would you do with it?" And then step back and watch it happen.

And that's what happened. Merle taught me something that I never did before. So the inspiration came from Merle. Neat.

It's a very effective way to get something started. Yeah. Not in my world. I'm kidding. Another fascinating thing to see, and it goes right along that thought of networking and connections. But sometimes on a call, we'll have, say, two people from Australia, and then we connected them. And here, they were from the same city, but they didn't know anything about each other. And so to be able to get brothers connected together in communication in real time and in person is just fascinating to see happen because it's not just about helping a seeker find a fellowship of believers. It's also about helping believers find each other in their part of the world. Yeah. Especially those who are of the historic faith leanings or interest, which people can feel like they're the only one in Israel.