3/12/25 - 2085: Revolutionizing Workplace Discipleship

Jim: You've tuned in to iWork4Him, the voice of collaboration for the faith and work movement.

Martha: And we are your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg, and our mission is to inspire every workplace believer to recognize their workplace as their ministry place where they work with God every day. What can that look like in your workplace? Let's find out right now.

Jim: So have you ever read John's, John the Apostle's book of Revelation? In it, as well as in the book of Ezekiel, there are numerous mentions of technology being put in place. Whether it's the helicopter in Ezekiel or the talking statues in Revelation that shoots out lasers or fire.

Either way, technology is part of our future, and it was talked about thousands of years ago, but how do we harness the power of technology for good? How do we get people to use their phones and texting for good? We've seen it in the almost universal usage of the Bible app with tens of millions actually hundreds of millions using that app every day to keep delving into their Bible and going deep with God. So how do we harness all of this technology to encourage workplace believers to get activated in their faith at work?

Many have tried books, websites, videos, but how do you put all of that in a one place and engage more workplace believers than ever before? I believe we know the answer and you're going to hear it today. Michael Boerner is with Mission 17. He's going to share his amazing story and then share how Mission 17 Is ready to mobilize workplace believers like never ever before. Michael, welcome to iWork4Him.

Michael Boerner: So glad to be with you, Jim and Martha. Thanks for all you do. Love your hearts and what you guys do on a regular basis is a thrill. So glad to be with you.

Jim: We're excited to capture cutting edge conversations and stories about what's going on in the faith and workspace, but before we get into all that we always start with this: what's your Jesus story?

Michael Boerner: That's a great and important question, particularly when it comes to the trajectory of how I got into ministry, how we got into technology development, and the summary of it is I was actually raised in the Boise, Idaho area, and I was raised in the LDS Church. And incredibly positive environment, and went off to go to college in Phoenix. For some reason I wanted to be the president of IBM. That was my childhood dream. I don't know why or how.

Jim: Because you grew up with a bunch of blue suits with red ties?

Michael Boerner: Yeah, no, I guess it was more the, I graduated from high school in 83. The whole proposal of computers was really coming. But I was raised in a family that had a very positive impact on me. But in the LDS church you were taught that you have a prophet and the things you would imagine about the LDS environment. But my great grandfather Charles C. Rich had six wives and 51 kids and just this amazing background.

He was on the Council of the Twelve, so had a really amazing Mormon heritage. But when I moved to Phoenix, I ended up meeting a Christian gal who actually came right from the Miss USA pageant through Arizona. She actually lived in California, but she was doing a major event there. And so we met and hit it off and started dating.

And she ended up finding out that the LDS kind of Mormons weren't exactly the same as the rest of the Christian denominations. So I think she used the word Mormon boyfriend to someone and went, wait a minute. So it turned out to be quite the World War III battle between me trying to convert her over to the truth and she was trying to convert me as well, but she forced me to go to Christian churches. Otherwise we couldn't continue the relationship. So I acquiesced and said, okay, no problem. So I visited just to be able to make points.

And one time we visited a church in Scottsdale and she wrote my name on the visitor's card. And I wasn't sure what that did or what that would do. And she put that into the offering plate that went by. And next thing - this is 1986 - knock on the door, Tuesday night outreach. So back in those days humans used to actually drive to other people's houses and thank you for visiting, you know, the church. And so I actually wasn't home, but the outreach pastor, the college evangelist pastor, wrote a really nice handwritten note, left it on my door.

I came home and read this note and he thanked me for coming and invited me to a Wednesday night Bible study. And so I thought I'm not sure what that is, but I think I'm gonna go to this thing for one reason - serious points with the girlfriend. Her name is Sherry. And ended up going on a Wednesday night, wandered in, found the college outreach group, and then at the end he recognized there was a new visitor, came and introduced himself, and realized, oh, I was the young man that he invited. And I said, listen, I'm just looking around, I'm actually LDS.

Didn't tell him about the points for the girlfriend reason, but he goes, really, LDS? And he goes, I'd really like you to meet this guy named Bill Riddle. I said, okay. He goes, yeah, he used to be LDS. I'm like, alright. So right when he said this guy's name, he literally opened the door and walked into the room on this pretty good sized campus of this church building.

And he goes, Hey Bill, I was just mentioning your name. Let me introduce you to Michael. So we ended up that evening standing out on this porch on the second story, and he just challenged my faith. He told me a number of things about Mormonism. And then he said, I don't want you to believe anything I've told you. He goes, you need to study this for yourself. But then he said these words, which really changed the trajectory of kind of my whole life, which was, but know this: truth never fears investigation.

And there was something about that phrase that really just resonated with me. And I thought, wow, I really agree with that. Cause I know that I have the one and only true church. I've known that my whole life. And I'm so frustrated trying to explain all this to y'all. I decided to start looking more deeply at my own faith through a different lens, a lens of, let me relearn the things I already know are true so I can help the people that are around her, around me.

And as you can imagine, when you really study your own faith sometimes, you see it with fresh eyes and then began to find more and more problems and issues with theology. And fortunately, that pastor that knocked on my door, who is still one of my dearest friends in the world to this day, 40 plus years later, was staying with me. And they just kept surrounding me with love and encouragement.

And as I studied more and more of the theology, I began to come across the issues, the contradictions, but then they also, they were introducing me to this concept of grace. And how you could actually have this gift that you don't have to earn. I'm like, wait a minute, you don't have to earn it? That's crazy. Everybody knows you have to earn it. As it turns out, the two big issues I had was the theology of Jesus being God and this concept of a grace gift.

And the more we got into it, the more I realized- it's funny, I used to use John chapter 17 as a proof text. See, here's Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, praying to God the Father. Spatially, they're far apart. They can't be one. It's a whole different subject about the Trinity works. But the other key piece was finally understanding that grace was real and it was all through the entire Bible. And as they walked me through Ephesians and Romans and Titus and all of the places that it's there, it's like these scales finally came off and I realized, wow, this is real.

He goes, yeah, it's always been there. And when I finally realized, wow, so Jesus really is God, and there's only one, and that you get to go to heaven based on his finished work, and then you do the good works because you want to, not because you have to, it was transformative. And prayed to receive Christ, I'll never forget, that pastor became my dearest friend, and we became roommates.

He was single, I was single, so he discipled me and poured his life into me for three years. Just amazing. And that's when I said, you know what? I want to change my whole career focus. I want to go into full time Evangelism. I want to figure out how to scale this message because when you find out as a Mormon that you can go to heaven based on a free gift that you simply ask for, it's like people know about this thing? Are you kidding me? This is crazy cool, and we've got to scale it.

So like really this... holy discontent was why in the world, isn't this everywhere? Why is this not known to the ends of the world? And then I began to find out through my new Christian friends that the denominations, the assemblies of God, the Nazarenes, the Baptists, they all agreed on this whole Trinitarian free gift of grace concept.

And I'm like, really? Do they work together? ... not so much. Especially mid 80s. And so that became the whole passion was, okay, I want to start a ministry to get the churches to work together in unity. And that's where the term Mission 17 comes from. So John 17 is the whole concept of Father, make them one. Why? So the world will believe. So the world will know that you sent me. He's very specific.

And so there's a hidden apologetic in our unity. And frankly, without the unity, we will never have the collective might of the church. And so I was raised Mormon. Mormons are unified globally. It's standard. Unity is like a course.

There's no question about it. And they use the media and the secular power of communication very effectively. So really, we just take a playbook out of not only the Mormons, but every, frankly, association in the world. The dairymen, they all chip in, so they can make their milk and dairy products famous, sponsored by the group. So that's what we ended up creating, was a whole movement to do that.

Jim: What happened to the girl?

Michael Boerner: As it turns out, we became really good friends. And her name was Sherry Rose Goodman. She became a major national author and speaker. Extraordinary person, but, you know how you usually marry your opposite?

I was attracted to people who were a lot like me. Turns out, really bad choice for a spouse, but a really good person to rush to leave the ground and get you to come to Christ. We became good friends, introduced her to a friend of mine, they got married, and then I ended up finding the love of my life, Natalie Jo.

So we met, in fact, it was a funny story because that same roommate got invited to Scottsdale Bible Church's college group ski outing on a Saturday. So it's two o'clock, and he goes, hey, why don't we go out to this ski outing? My associate or friend out there invited us to go. I said, two o'clock?

What time's it end? Four o'clock? It's a two hour drive. It was yeah, but we might meet our wives there. Like, all right, let's go. So as it turned out, we drove two hours. They were all just leaving and ended up meeting Natalie there and we ended up being married. So...

Martha: wow.

Michael Boerner: Yeah.

Martha: That is such a great story. And I love that. And the fact, there's just so many facets, Michael, of what you've shared. that might be incredibly meaningful to the different listeners that we have, and understanding, that God has a plan. He is working all things out. And I love that your initial friend that had you go into the Christian churches, was pursuing that for you, helping you to see the gospel, and God opened the doors. Obviously, you were where you were meant to be at that time.

So you know, we're going to talk how your story connects to now this Mission 17 a little bit more in a moment. But, listeners, I just pray that each one of you has your own Jesus story. If you do, Jesus will impact all of your life, all 24 7. He is with you when you're at home, when you're at work, when you're in your neighborhood, or and in the grocery store. But if you struggle to really see Him in your work, I want to encourage you to read through the iWork4Him Nation Covenant. It's a great launching pad to help you see how Jesus, how His story plays out in your life every day.

You can pray, and who you can pray with, and you can learn from the covenant how to care and love for those that you work with, and it will really show you how to see your work as your mission field. So I just want to encourage you to go to iWork4Him. com forward slash join the nation and that will be in the show notes for you and there you can learn more and I am sure that you'll be glad that you did.

So Michael, as we delve into the now, where you're at today, there's a whole lot that we don't have time to cover, but fast forward to this ability that you have to use technology like a story path that has helped patients to understand all that they should anticipate before and after a surgery. Tell us about that because that's key then to what is happening next, right?

Michael Boerner: Yeah, it is. So that moment when that salvation situation happened, it just turned into a wow, we've got to figure out a way to share this message at scale. And a real life verse kind of John 8: 32. If you know The truth will set you free. And there's something powerful that happens when someone learns a bit of information that changes their equilibrium or their understanding, or the wisdom breaks through in something that's just really creates a lot of liberation or freedom. Of course spiritually it's very true but it's also true in almost every other category. More wisdom helps you be a better parent, a better leader, better you know you name it. And so I just really became passionate about how to share ways to help people really grow in their faith and so that's what the whole concept of the ministry was about, but along the way It was always about how to tell a story that could transform lives.

Well, as we started figuring out more and more ways to do that, we did a lot of broadcast media, but in 2005 something big occurred that people forget was the breakthrough. Do you remember when you got on the internet and it was angry at you every time? The modem was like, screamed at you. And so 2005, a new breakthrough came through called broadband and broadband was five times faster than modems. So 256k is suddenly available, which meant that you could put video and or storytelling on the internet.

People forget you couldn't click a mouse and see video before that because it was way too slow. So as we had that development, yeah, we were always thinking about how do we continue to innovate? And so our heart was almost a little bit like one of the lines from Star Trek that they're going where no man has gone before.

And so we knew what worked in evangelism. Our ministry was designed to figure out what else works, what can we innovate, and how do we get the churches to work together in unity to do city reaching? And so we did all kinds of broadcasts and all kinds of events and was on Gary Smalley's board for years and did all kinds of things around things that would really add value in the community.

But then we started realizing, wait a minute, with this kind of speed on the internet, with this inflection change in infrastructure, you could actually create video content that could be summoned by a mouse click. And I know it's hard to think about this now, but from the history of the world's beginning all the way up until 2005 2006, if you wanted some sort of video medium, you had to go get a VHS or a DVD. There was no click a button and there's Jim and Martha. There was no such thing. So suddenly this was a big moment of an inflection change to be able to make content, make the gospel available on demand. Lifelike, because there's only three mediums, written, audio, video, and video is the most lifelike.

And so we came up with this idea called iQuestions. Talked to Gary Smalley about it. I said, what if you could actually ask any question you would want, and then you click the question, the leading expert in the world is looking across the table, like looking across the coffee table from you in the eyes and answering that questions in two or three minutes?

So that was the concept for a brand new website that would be all video, all free. So we set out to raise 15 million to launch this brand new brand that would be the leading experts. And we actually spoke to a VC about it. And he goes, I think you could do a 1 or 2 billion IPO with this. I'm like, wow, why do you think it's so valuable?

And he said, because your vetting filter you're using and the talent you have, every one of your experts, are the leaders there are in the entire category. Every one of them have millions of followers. You're putting them all in one place in a safe and trusted environment, free of charge. But they also wanted to know, would we be willing to sell it?

Would we want it to go public? Which would have completely changed the format of the content. The reason I tell that story is that's what got us into this technology innovation. That also required that we had to have investors. So our long time ministry couldn't be the container for this because we want it to be free, which meant it had to have carefully chosen ads. Advertising creates unrelated business income. So we had to create a for profit, which meant you now had investors and not donors. This is a very important thing. Investors want to return in this lifetime. Very different scenario. We had to figure out how to make it work. And so to make a very interesting story to answer your question, Martha, is we got introduced to someone at a billion dollar hospital system and they came by and saw what we've done.

And what we did is we made this connection between storytelling and developing software that would intelligently organize short form video storytelling assets and putting those assets into a sequence we call an arc of engagement. We're a modern day yellow brick road with short two minute videos, but put into a sequence that you can like it's snackable content.

It's micro learning. It's almost like the way you eat potato chips one at a time, but sequentially. And so when we did this, we first designed it for churches and for Christian counselors, others who would love to have Kevin Lehman and Gary Smalley and Ron Blue and all these amazing minds in a sequence of content that we could wrap in the brand of the church or the counseling organization.

But they didn't really have the money to have it integrated. It took time and money to actually physically integrate it in their sites. Who did have the money? Hospitals. So one of our friends sent over a business development guy for a billion dollar hospital system and he just was, his mind was blown.

Because what we've done is figured out a new best practice for transferring knowledge using video on the internet in a sequence that will explain any very important, what we would call a high value knowledge gap. So if you're diagnosed with a new disease, guess what, huge amount of gap in knowledge between the doctor and the patient, very expensive.

Jim: Also there's a huge gap in the ability to communicate between the doctor and the patient. (laughter)

Doctors are lousy communicators, almost categorically. Their RNs and their LPNs and their PRNs and those guys can communicate, but doctors struggle. They do.

Michael Boerner: Correct. And they realized, wait a minute, if you shot the video sequence to explain what is type 2 diabetes, what is hepatitis C or when it comes to you're dealing with oncology or heart and vascular procedure or hip replacement surgery.

If you could walk through the entire pre and post op instructions of which there are like 132 items that the patient needs to be aware of and do it on video, it's perfectly explained with a smile every time and most importantly, a doctor doesn't have to explain it 30 times a day. That's game changing.

So as it turned out, this group of people with no background in medical history and content production ended up landing a 7 million contract with that hospital, and we ended up creating a whole new methodology all wrapped in their brand. We ended up winning the most innovative new healthcare company at the Health 2. 0 conference in San Francisco. Like where did these guys come from? So we didn't have any medical background, but we did have a long time producing career in design thinking.

Jim: Okay. So you took that technology. And then you applied it to the discipleship of new believers in a local church. And created that same story path for those new believers to walk them through what would basically be what do they call it when you're at the starting point, like the starting point but the whole lot more than just starting point, but you did that for new believers in a local church.

Then you decided you want to take it and use this story path technology for workplace believers. Talk to me about that.

Michael Boerner: Thank you. That's exactly the trajectory that kind of brings us here today. And so it started out with ministry, it pivoted into healthcare, then it got very big in healthcare. So I spent the next 17 years working with some of the great fortune 500s and we've ended up investing between sales and investments, tens of millions of dollars perfecting this process.

But my heart has never left wow, I miss innovating for ministry. And so we finally got to the place where we're able to actually restart the ministry, bring that technology into the nonprofit environment and allow us to start using it instead of educating, doctors, or patients with doctor's information.

Same thing you just mentioned, Jim, is having someone at the moment, they're, so to speak diagnosed with salvation. There's what we call height of interest, time of need. So putting them on a pathway, a journey, that can drip short form content to them about two to three minutes at a time, each morning.

In this particular case, we have a wonderful relationship with the Bible Project, who's allowed us to use their content for churches all over the country, and now we're working on putting it around the world, but we wrap it in the brand of the local church, so it looks like they invented it. And so we're using a very sophisticated technology that started out with computers and email, and now, you have to remember the iPhone wasn't even invented until 2007.

And so now we have a smartphone in almost every person's hand, no matter of their socioeconomic status. They're everywhere. And so that's an infrastructure breakthrough that allows us to be able to have a streaming communication to almost any person around the world. And so we ended up developing technology, uses mobile first short form sequences of video, but we deliver it via text.

So the text is powerful because that's what comes through to your phone. You don't have to deal with an app. Big breakthrough with our technology. There's no email, there's no password, there's no app, there's no login, but it's personalized to the church, and it's also detailed in the analytics, so it allows it to be intelligent.

Jim: Okay, so that was a lot of really intense stuff, Michael, and before we run out of time, I want to make sure we really get into the meat, because I, it's not that wasn't meaty, but it was like sirloin. I'm looking for the ribeye. Okay, let's go.

Martha: It's like we've had really good appetizers and everything, but for the iWork4Him audience, we know that you have a special way that you are looking to use it within the workplace, right?

Jim: Yeah. Talk to us about what that's going to look like.

Michael Boerner: Yes. That tees it up here specifically for this space, which I'm so glad that brought us together because this technology is really designed to transfer knowledge to its very specific constituency with a very particular context. And so we came across some wonderful people that work in the faith and work space.

And I have to tell you, I've been a Christian almost 40 years now, and I'm embarrassed by the fact that there's this whole space around faith and work that has really done a phenomenal job distilling and uncovering our calling that we are all full time ministry people, right? Our calling, we're a software engineer, we're a, hey, what is it? A disciple of Jesus Christ cleverly disguised as a software engineer, whatever it may be. And I've been around a lot of really great things for years, and when I came across this teaching, it finally really clicked. Wait a minute. We are not properly, especially at the local church level, explaining to people this crazy distinction between secular and sacred.

And again, I'm speaking to the major choir robe here. But it was frankly new to me to have that really distilled in my mind that, wait a minute, we are not properly explaining to the mass audience - and we all know that the pastor is there to equip the saints for ministry or it's somehow reversed - and so we begin to go, wait a minute. We ought to use this technology to build a whole library of content. So that local churches and phenomenal ministries like yours, that iWork4Him and others could make these beautiful yellow brick roads available to their constituencies. So if one little scanner, one little text in, could start dripping them this beautiful story, how to help them understand the powerful way God called them to be able to be, you know, folks that are walking out their calling in their vocational profession.

So we have an opportunity to use a really powerful new technology that's very good at transferring knowledge at scale without friction and put it in the hands of churches, ministries, organizations, so we can finally get the literacy and understanding of what every Christian needs to know up to the level where you guys are. And Jim, when I first talked to you about it, you were like, it's about time, doggon it. I just love your passion for this and I can see now why, the level of frustration.

Martha: I can totally imagine you saying that, Jim .

Jim: What I want to know is, how far along - last time we talked about it, you were on a fundraise, be able to raise some money in order to be able to get this launched. How are you doing on it?

Michael Boerner: Yeah, so we're really excited. We have a whole proposal we put together. We've met with some wonderful people at different foundations like the Living Stones Foundation. We're also working in conjunction with the wonderful people over at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work. Ross Chapman, people like yourselves who have offered to be part of the advisory boards to build out a content infrastructure that really walks through explaining the theology and the practical application of this in your life. And that's what I'm so excited about. So we are actively working to put this thing together so that once it's created, it will be able to be scaled in any and all environments.

Jim: And as you know better than anyone, this is one of the greatest, I think, tools of the enemy to keep this teaching away from most Christians because they don't get it and I didn't get it. I've been a committed Christian forever.

It's like hacking at the Achilles heel of a racehorse because as long as the Achilles heel, if they're handicapped they can't run And this is, we're going to fix the Achilles heel of the entire movement of Christianity in this country.

Jim: Yeah, this technology, Michael, is amazing. And Michael's been explaining it to all of us about how he's going to use this technology for the sake of the kingdom. And when our tech is compromised, it could take hours and tons of money to correct. That's why iWork4Him, we rely on SaferNet to protect all of our devices so we can focus on what God has called us to do. SaferNet keeps us running and keeps the viruses and other distractions out of our system with website filters, virus protection, VPN, and a powerful dashboard to keep a watchful eye on everything. Go to SaferNet. com and see for yourself how you can protect your workplace, your family place, so you can focus on your greater mission. SaferNet. com.

Michael, what I know about, because you and I spend time together on a regular basis on our weekly Bible study, is that Mission 17 isn't just about the story paths, the technology that you've developed, but also about city reaching and unity movements. And you've been involved in some of that right there in your locality in Idaho, and really the whole state of Idaho, whether it's in its current form or its expanded, potential expanding form.

Talk to us. Cause I'd like to hear more about that, but talk to us about how is Mission 17 involved in the city reaching and unity movements that are going on there in Idaho?

Michael Boerner: Yeah it's really all about, I think the way you do city reaching is you get the body of Christ to work together. And so the only way to get the body to work together is to have neutral conveners. And so that's been really our calling all the way back to our first thing we ever did was back in 89 is to get the churches to work together. But it's really all about for us convening pastors. And once you get pastors in proximity, they build friendships. And when you build friendships, that builds trust and trust then leads to collaboration and speed.

Because frankly, we're way too slow in the body of Christ, the things that we do hey, we do a Billy Graham thing, but like every 35 years in the city. Wait a minute, what? We've got to do much more efficient, steady reaching by having relational connectivity and thinking very intentionally about marketplace opportunities.

But what I learned is it's like this pyramid, the foundation has to be relational equity, and then you have to serve the local church. You also have to believe that the local church is one of God's most important instruments to reach the world. We need to serve it. It's plan A. There's no plan B. Quit beating up on it. And then third, when you want to do city reaching initiatives, if you have that relational equity, you can do things very efficiently and effectively, and you can involve the rest of the ecclesia. You can get the people in the business world involved, the media, as well as the business and educational leaders.

And so we've done a lot of things over the years. One of my favorite things that we did was illustrate grace by doing a modern day parable. And we went and met with the mayor and said, mayor, we'd like to illustrate the modern day look and feel of what grace looks like. Could we take over city hall on a Saturday in December, and we want to have pastors all there at city hall in the front steps?

And we'll announce at a press conference about a week before that everyone in the entire metro area that has unpaid parking tickets can bring their parking tickets to City Hall and the pastors will pull out the checkbooks and write out a check to pay them in full as an example of grace. You've broken the law, you owe a fine, but someone will pay it off for you just simply by asking. No work involved.

So we did that and made the leading stories of all the press in the local area and then it went to 50 markets around the country and then actually made international news. But it was such a thrilling situation because you had these people lined up in droves, people in tears. I remember one guy was like, could you just pay half of them? I feel so bad. And the pastor was like, no, we're paying them all. Just like God's grace, it covers everything. And so it's a great example of what happens when you get people to work together to do something you couldn't do alone. And then the press picks it up and makes it even more of a story.

And so the facilitation of unity is amazing. And so we do media, we do TV commercials, radio spots, do major events. We would bring back in the day, Gary Smalley in person, but we would do it in a secular environment. We do it at the convention center or at the stadium, we'd have business people help sponsor it, but it was sponsored by the Christian churches of the Treasure Valley, all in unity.

And then one of my favorite sequence of commercials we used to do, it was when, if you remember when The Passion of Christ came out, huge visibility for the gospel. So we thought, why don't we shoot a bunch of commercials with the pastors, and we'd get the pastors to all agree to wear the same team jersey, with these cool blue shirts with a logo that said the Christian churches of the Treasure Valley, even though from all different churches, if you're on the same team, you wear the same jersey. So we had each of them, we had 12 different pastors in this particular one do 12 different commercials, all talking about the passion of the Christ.

So these are on NBC, CBS, MTV, while the Passion's in the theaters. People were impacted by this amazing thing, but now you got to find out more about this extraordinary Savior in a local church. And so we had pastors talking about the movie, clips from the movie, and then they would say, Hey, it's our passion to serve you, and we'd love you to come to Second Baptist Church.

And then they all said the same phrase, all separate commercials, or go to any of the other great Christian churches in the Treasure Valley. Then we had an 800 number and a website. So every single commercial talked about what was going on with the movie, and then they talked about their church, and then they invited him to their church or any of the other great Christian churches.

Jim: All right, we're almost out of time. Martha, did you have one last question?

Martha: Yeah, I do. I just have a question, because I think that, what God has shown you to do in your area is amazing, and it's big. Because God's given you the ability to think big and you also wanted to be in technology. So there might be listeners that are like, man, I can't do anything that big, and obviously you're looking back over time at all the things that God's allowed you to do. So talk to our listeners for a minute, wherever they may be, and give them something that you can challenge or encourage them with, that it doesn't have to be, oh, I got to do this big thing, but what can I do?

Michael Boerner: Yeah, that's really good. First and foremost, I think it really has a lot to do with what your ministry is about. They need to understand their individual calling because, full time ministry, they're there to equip us. We got this thing backwards. And the iWork4Him message, I think, is the first thing they need to do is make sure, Do I really understand the calling on my own life?

That's huge. Secondly, is be a part of a local church, and make sure you're a Christian, as well. The thing I love about Christianity is it's so simple. It's like, when you get married, you say, I do. It's not really hard. But there needs to be a date and time when that happens. And knowing for sure that you're a believer, and that if God said, hey, why should I let you in? Because I, on this date and time, accepted Jesus' final work.

And third, being connected to a great, life giving local church, and going to say, how do I serve? How can I help? I want to be a part of growing this vision. figuring out what we can do to be able to reach the people in our community. And, I think if you really understand your calling, it makes you plugged in a whole completely different way.

So for us, we're really excited about being able to use this technology. We have whole libraries of content for churches to use all over the country. And there's just nothing like being able to use the latest, greatest tools. And we never want to fall in love with tech. Tech's always going to change. We got to fall in love with spreading the message.

Jim: When do you think the story path for the faith and work movement with the first phase will get rolled out? What's your goal?

Michael Boerner: If I had to guess, it would probably be the beginning of the fourth quarter. So we found a wonderful leader that has a whole lot of content we didn't know was there. A giant treasure trove of interviews with faith and work companies. And so we're really thrilled to accelerate this process. But I have to say, as we close, I couldn't be more grateful for people like you two, who have been championing this message. I didn't realize how long this has been going on. I didn't realize how hard it is.

And so thank you for your years of getting across a message that, if this message gets across properly, it's game over. The enemies are like, shoot, we finally lost because you get the masses understanding what you guys preach every day, it'll be the transformative moment. And so thank you for letting me get it out.

Jim: I would agree. Michael, people want to check out online website, mission17. us, correct?

Michael Boerner: That's it. That's it. Or just call your personal cell number and you can have them call me.

Jim: Okay, no problem. My cell number is on the website. No big deal. Michael Boerner, thanks for being on iWork4Him today.

Michael Boerner: Such a pleasure. Thank you guys.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your host, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field. But ultimately, iWork4Him.