072: What Are You Doing About Missions? With Reno Anderson

072: What Are You Doing About Missions? With Reno Anderson

Laurie Graham 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Graham. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.

Laurie Graham 0:15
Hey everybody, welcome back to the Small Church Ministry Podcast. We are all about serving with excellence no matter what our church size, and we’re enjoying watching incredible impact as we serve with excellence. So that’s what we’re about! If you’re new with us, I am just so excited today to introduce you to someone who has been a huge support and help from the beginning of our ministry at Small Church Ministry, and actually way back when it was still called The Creative Little Church. Did I just say way back? Like, way back as like three years ago. So there really is no way back, but anyway, our guest today has served as the chair of our advisory board from the beginning. She’s spoken at conferences, shared her wisdom and encouragement, even our books with us. And two years ago, we were finally able to meet in person and Reno’s life is just full of Gods stories and adventure. And it also hasn’t always been easy, but today we get a little sneak peek into her life. I know you will be blessed because I have been incredibly blessed to know her too. So without any further ado, here is Reno! Reno, how are you today?

Reno Anderson 1:17
Hi, Laurie. I’m just so honored to be with you today. I’m doing well.

Laurie Graham 1:22
Good. And I know your way up in Canada, cause we always laugh about our weather. Tucson, today, is a little cooler than it’s been this week. It’s like in the 70s, upper 70s Fahrenheit. What’s the weather like in Canada right now?

Reno Anderson 1:34
Oh, probably about 40 Fahrenheit. Yeah, we were actually thinking spring might come this year.

Laurie Graham 1:42
Still and, oh my gosh, in April, you’re still 40. Okay, well, anyway, I know you’ll be joining us down in the, in the heat before too long. But anyway, I’m excited to talk today, specifically about adventures in missions, and also, I’m really looking forward to you, Reno, sharing just some really good wisdom for us in small churches. But before we delve into all the mission stuff, um, tell us what you’re doing now, Reno and what’s next for you?

Reno Anderson 2:07
Right now I am being prepared to transition from being full-time pastor’s wife. I already retired from being a Chaplain a few years ago, but my husband will be retiring at the end of June and we will be moving to Tennessee. So I’m looking forward to some warmer weather and curvy roads.

Laurie Graham 2:28
Oh, how fun! That’s exciting. I know you’ve lived in a lot of different places, and I know we’ll get to that a little bit. But, I know that you and Herb have served together for a long time, and with your pastor husband. How did you guys meet? Because I don’t even know if I’ve heard the story.

Reno Anderson 2:44
It was in our senior year of high school and our youth groups got together and I met him over hot chocolate. And he teased me and I kicked him and, you know, that was 48 years ago. Like, that’s really ageing me now, isn’t it?

Laurie Graham 3:02
Oh, well, there’s a plus for, you know, high school youth groups in churches then.

Reno Anderson 3:07
Exactly haha.

Laurie Graham 3:09
So fun. So have you always felt called into ministry?

Reno Anderson 3:12
I think I have because, at least since I was, became a Jesus follower, I remember when I was 13 years old, sitting around a campfire at a summer camp, and the leaders asking us, you know, about what we felt God was going to do in our lives. And I said, I wanted to be a missionary nurse in Saudi Arabia, you know, and because I loved Arabian horses, but I did feel, you know, an urge to go nursing and it just seemed like the right thing that God was telling me to do. Now, I haven’t been to Saudi Arabia, one of the few countries I haven’t been to yet. I was in the medical field for a number of years, just not overseas. So you never know, but it opened my heart to, you know, thinking that there was more out there, that God had maybe plans for me beyond staying in my little town.

Laurie Graham 4:05
Wow, wow. That’s awesome. So I want you to give us a pretty small snapshot, and I know we talked before we came live that this is gonna be hard to do, but you have done so much. So I just kind of want to put things in order because since you met your husband, you’ve served in pastoral roles, I think you took a break and owned a business, you’ve authored books, somewhere in there you were in Malawi. So can you give us like just a quick, just a quick view of how these ,all these pieces fit in your life?

Reno Anderson 4:32
Sure. When my kids were early teens, we decided to sponsor a World Vision child and her name was Saiba and I have met her. And she was a part of our life for quite a few years while she was going through school. And so, that turned into becoming an ambassador for the World Vision Girl Child Project, and one time I was speaking about the needs of women in third world countries and somebody challenged me. He said, Well, what are you doing about these issues? And it really brought me up and saying, okay God, what am I doing about these issues? And so, then it led to starting a girls high school in rural Malawi. And then a year later for, well, seven years later, my husband and I spent a year in Zambia doing a food relief project, we did that together. And then since then, I’ve taken teams to Peru, I’ve taken VBS groups to Kenya, I’ve done an evaluation, evaluation trips to Cuba, been involved in missions in whatever we got has led me. So it’s led me to a lot of different places, but it’s always not been a full-time missionary anywhere except North America, but lots of years of being other places, and either helping or assisting missionaries or communities to do what I feel God is asking me to do.

Laurie Graham 6:02
Wow! Okay, so I’m still learning so much about you. So were you doing all these mission type things, which there’s a lot of them, were you doing these while your husband was pastoring? Like, you were pastoring while all this was happening?

Reno Anderson 6:16
Not always no, When the, my husband was a, being a, what’s the word for it now, bi-vocational, yes. My husband is bi-vocational pastor, when we lived in Edmonton, Alberta, which is when I started working on the Malawi project. And so, I was working at a, my own small company, I had a research company at the time, and which is how I kind of got into all of these things, you know, was with World Vision ecetera. And so, we were in part time ministry there and the other trips that I’ve taken have not been while my husband has been a pastor. So it wasn’t specifically that because I was the pastor’s wife that I was involved in, in these things. I was a member of a church when I was involved in many of these things.

Laurie Graham 7:05
Wow. So you did these, like alongside of other things that were happening. So you kind of talked about, you know, feeling called to missions pretty early on? And then somebody says, what are you doing about this? You know, what are you doing about all these issues? So what were your, like your first steps when you really were, you know, just getting your feet wet on the mission field or taking a trip, or what did that look like for you?

Reno Anderson 7:28
Well, I learned along the way that the thing that I needed to do, which wasn’t always done by people that I was working with, was finding out what the need was in the area where we wanted to go. And I’ve since learned that that’s one of the most important things to do when you’re thinking about missions. You know, you may have skills which could be used somewhere else, and if that’s a need somewhere else, then definitely God might call you to use those skills. But just to do something on your own, because you think they might need it, I learned that that wasn’t always the case. So when we went in, for instance, and took a group of teens to Peru, I was working with a youth pastor who, well, to put it bluntly, he thought that he knew it all because he had once been on a missions trip when he was 13. And unfortunately, he offended our hosts greatly because he wanted things to be just like they were at home, and they weren’t like they were at home. So it was a matter of having to go back later and apologize to our hosts. And he said, well, you know, we won’t ask you back again, sort of thing. So you know, learning some lessons along the way. Not always being in charge of it, but when I was, that I made sure that the people were trained to say, okay, we need some cultural intelligence here. We need to know what the needs are, and I think that was the thing that really made the biggest difference is finding out what the need was, where I was going, or where I could be used.

Laurie Graham 9:01
Yeah, yeah. Well, I love that you’re even mentioning, you know, some of the mistakes we make, because I think a lot of churches, big and small, make a lot of mistakes in missions. And I’ve heard those kinds of things before that, you know, people from you know, whatever culture go over and they’re offending other people, or they’re expecting something or even that savior complex that we’re here to make everything better for you.

Reno Anderson 9:24
Right.

Laurie Graham 9:24
And so, what kind of, what are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen churches make when they’ve done these types of mission trips, like either alone or like taking a group of students or a group of adults? Have you seen any common mistakes that a lot of people are making?

Reno Anderson 9:40
I think that part of it is expecting things to be that like they are at home and then demanding to have those things when you get there, because cultures outside of our culture that we’re familiar with are different and they eat breakfast differently. So they might not serve you, you know, the traditional breakfast that you have at home. So you have to realize Is that okay, I need to adapt. And I need to be humble in a new situation, because not that culture is sacrosanct, but that there are differences, and we need to respect the differences without demanding that our own needs have to be paramount.

Laurie Graham 10:17
Yeah, yeah. Missions is service. It’s not just an experience. I think a lot of times people want to go have this experience in another culture, and they forget to put themselves like in a place of really serving so. So tell us about Malawi. So I am always intrigued by building a school in Malawi, and how my friend, Reno, was able to be part of this.

Reno Anderson 10:39
Well, Malawi is the 11th poorest country in the world. It’s not a big country, it’s next to Zambia and Zimbabwe and Mozambique in that area, but it’s a very lovely country in many ways, in spite of its poverty. And I spent over seven years, probably, at least, oh I don’t know, 10 months over there, in total. And so I would go over there for about six weeks at a time, and we started out just by visiting different groups who said that they needed a school for girls because we really felt like, I put together a group of women, and we felt like education was going to be the key to making any change there. And so.

Laurie Graham 11:21
So, let me stop you just really quick. Who is we? You said we were, were you with an organization, was this a church project, like who is we?

Reno Anderson 11:28
It was not a church project, and in retrospect, in retrospect, I wish it would have been. But I put together a group of seven women who all had skills and interest, you know, like me, to meet, to meet a need. And so we all had backgrounds in education or organization. And so we, we created a nonprofit organization. And for seven years, we, we started and ran the school until we turned it over to a group of trustees in that Malawi community. But we took a few years to get the group together, started with 14 students. And basically, in that area, the girls didn’t have the opportunity or the inclination to go to school to pass grade five. And so they were getting married as young as age 13 and having children early, and then not knowing how to take care of them or feed them properly. So education made a huge difference. In fact, I’ve still in contact with some of those first year students, and, you know, they’ve moved on to other things, or have families or jobs or careers and, and they, they actually made, put together a group on WhatsApp and called me in one time and said, we just want to tell you how much of a difference this made in our lives. And so that was really rewarding.

But this group of seven women changed over a period of time, but we worked with, I usually brought one person from that group with me to to Malawi, so that they could see what the work was, you know, and become more interested in it. But it was pretty, pretty bare bones at the beginning, you know, that our first exploration trip, you know, we rode in the back of pickup trucks and in little mini buses that had, you know, we’re supposed to be for 12 people, and we have 25 people and a few chickens and fish loaded in and, and slept in places where it was $1.50 a night. And we, you know, we were overcharged. You know, and I stayed in a mud hut many times in the village and, you know, with termite droppings under a thatched roof. And so yeah, it was all very interesting. But I found a way to make partners too. With that particular project, we partnered with World Vision, and they were so thrilled with the fact that we were building a school there they, they gave us two borehole wells, one for the school and one for the village that was closest to us. And that made a real difference, because up to then, they were walking kilometers to get water from a dugout. And so, you know, that helped to make a difference in their community as well.

Laurie Graham 14:05
Wow. So you had this heart and you put together a small team of women and you started a nonprofit, and you basically developed a school in a country that is super poor, and didn’t have what you had to offer like, this is so out of this world for so many people. And one of the reasons I love that you’re sharing this and this as part of your experiences, sometimes in small churches, like somebody has a heart for something and they’re like, I really feel the need to start this or to tutor or to do this. And the pastor says, well, we can’t do that and then they like, let their dream die. And, I think, sometimes, sometimes in churches, like the vision that God’s put on our heart isn’t always for the church, but it doesn’t have to limit like us like, if something’s on your heart, you know, and, but I also love that you didn’t just go out like a lone crusader. You said you spent a few years even researching and looking and asking and finding the needs. So what an amazing model.

So when you, when you’ve been part of small churches before, because I know this is in your history for decades just being involved in small church ministry, what have you done with the, in the, within the small churches to help people there either have a heart for missions or stay connected to missions? Because I know you’ve done some things on your own, on the side, but what have you actually done in small churches or what have you seen works well?

Reno Anderson 15:30
What I have helped our church currently do is adopt two missionaries, and that has made a real difference. We have not gone out and visited these missionaries in their fields yet at this point in time, although we might at some point, you never know. But we’ve adopted these missionaries, and we have become a close personal friend to these missionaries so that we know what’s happening with, with them on the field, they email us regularly, text us whenever they can, and we take their information, and we spread it to the church community through a variety of ways, even little video clips. One of our missionaries is in Asia, and so we send little, little video clips from him that come, and we share those on a Sunday morning, and people really, oh yeah, that’s so good to see what’s happening over there.

And then they’re more likely to support it financially, or to get together maybe a gift box, you know. For one of them, we send her gift box that she just had a baby, the one in Zambia. And so we sent her a big gift box with lots of stuff for her little girl that she just had. And you know, and the other one we we send money for his support. And so, it all it’s a way of finding out what the needs really are. And connecting. You know, we connect through social media all over the world. I mean, Small Church Ministry, people all over the world with it, right? So, you know, saying, well, your church needs to connect with a missionary. And I think that’s one of the first things you should do is find out who your missionaries are and connect with them.

Laurie Graham 17:06
You know, I’m so curious about just even changes you’ve seen over, you know, throughout the culture over the last few decades, because when I was a kid, I’m trying to think how much I heard even about missionaries or heard stories, and has that, have you seen that change at all? Because I know there’s a shortage of pastors everywhere, like, yes, nobody wants to be a pastor right now, have you seen the same thing in in the missionary culture or maybe not?

Reno Anderson 17:33
To a certain extent, that’s true. I mean, although I think that there’s still a lot of missionaries out there, they just do missions differently than they used to. But I think in churches, I think there are still many, many denominations that would have missionaries that would possibly come to your church to speak when they’re on furlough, you know, to share some of the work of what they’re doing. If there aren’t, there’s a lot of good websites like missions.org, that would share with you different current mission fields. It’s a site that I trust, that would, if your church denomination or your church, if it’s not denominational, doesn’t have any mission, uh, missionaries that you can contact, then find somebody who has an interest, or is working in a field that you really enjoy and start to get to know them. And then you could still adopt them as a missionary at some point.

Laurie Graham 17:43
I love when you were talking about adopting missionaries that you had become close personal friends with them, like your church and their church, because many churches really talk about having missionaries they support, but not really knowing them. And you talked about social media and showing video clips, and I think that, almost that continuous connection, however it can look, whether it’s an email or video, or just remembering them at holidays and in between or inviting them things. I think that’s really beautiful. I think it’s a great example of what we can be doing. Because the children and the youth in our congregations, they need to see, they need to see people who are sold out and committed and sharing Jesus all over the world.

Reno Anderson 19:08
And it’s hard to do, though. It’s not easy because you have to keep up with it because new things are happening. And you know how our attention span has just shortened so much lately in recent years, that you have to create new videos and, and new information so that people will stay interested in, oh, oh, yeah! Do we still have a missionary out there? Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I haven’t seen a video for a while, you know. We have to continually work at getting the information out there. That’s, it is a continual process. But from the missionary side, you know, they’re there in the work, they’re doing it and their videos that they send your information they send it’s like, it’s like a sideline to what they’re really doing. And it’s, they’re doing it so that we will be involved somehow.

Laurie Graham 19:53
Yeah, so do you think it’s important, in this day and age to, you know, for every small church to be connected some way in missions? Like, what do you think that priority should be for small churches especially?

Reno Anderson 20:05
Well, churches nowadays seem to have decided, in many churches, to become missional instead of missionary minded. And missional is a whole different ball of wax, I suppose you could say, because missional means more likely that you’re going to be looking at what is around me in my community, that I can meet a need. It’s the same principle finding a need and filling it, but it’s something that’s more in your direct community. And I don’t think that that’s bad, but I do also think that we need to also remember the people that are working in a culture that’s totally foreign, and are maybe far away from family and home. And I hear from the missionaries that I’m connected with, you know, it can get pretty lonely sometimes, especially if they’re a single person. And, you know, there’s always probably expats that they can spend time with. But that’s not why they’re there. They’re not there just to go and have a good time with people from the same country as they are. So it can be a very lonely thing. So I think if you have somebody in your church who makes it their mission to connect with a missionary overseas, that’s a really valuable ministry to have. But churches are turning away a little bit from having, on the wall, in the bulletin board, here’s the 10 of missionaries that we support as a denomination, you don’t see that as much anymore.

Laurie Graham 21:36
You know, that’s so funny you mentioned that. My daughter just mentioned that the other day, that the church that her dad pastors that like they used to have this big wall with all the missionaries. She said, Mom, where did that go? Do we even support missionaries anymore? And you know, we do, but that look of it felt dated, I think that’s why it got taken down. It wasn’t that they were gone, but it felt dated. And so instead of replacing it, or putting something up, it ended up coming down. And it was such a reminder to me that these visual representations, the, the symbols, the flags, the you know, what’s on the walls at your church, in your welcome center, like it really does speak to people, it sends a message. And so if we’re not really promoting it, even if we’re supporting it, it feels different too. So, I’m totally with you on all that. So let’s talk about this. Reno, if an individual came up to you today and said, hey, I feel really called for missions, but my pastor, the leadership team, they don’t really want to do anything. And I think I want to have like an experience or go overseas, what would you recommend for that individual?

Reno Anderson 22:44
I would recommend that they connect with some type of missions group that does send out people in short-term missions. I guess I would tell them to start by praying, you know, and really asking God, am I really just wanting a trip somewhere or am I really wanting to go and, and do your work somewhere else in this world? And if it’s the latter, then for sure, there are so many great missions groups that will send you out on short-term mission trips, especially if you are willing to pay for the trip yourself, right? Or you raise your hands to do it. But certainly, I would say, you know, do some reading after, after praying, if God says to do it, then do some reading. Like, there’s a great book called Cultural Intelligence. And there’s a book called when, When Helping Hurts, so that you know things that when, before you go over, if it’s your first time ever to go to a another culture, there’s things you have to be aware of, that you could easily offend, going over to another culture, if you don’t realize some of these things.

You know, some people make great big goofs, and there’s many YouTube videos or whatever on it, about you know, how to make cultural goofs, or how to make sure you don’t do cultural goofs. But yeah, but more in a spiritual sense, there should be a really calling of God, God to saying, you know, you have this skill, I can use it in Saudi Arabia, or wherever, you know. If you’re a nurse, and you want to take a month off to go and do nursing in a village, at a hospital in rural Zambia, I can connect you with that or you can just find out about that hospital and tell them you have a month off, could they use your services because you have this and this skill? I am sure that you would find a welcome, open-armed type of thing as long as you are the right person to, to go and do that, as God is asking you to do that. But it is hard to do without your church back backing you there is no doubt about that.

Laurie Graham 24:48
So I love that, that we’re even talking about this because I think, whoever’s listening, like so many people that I’ve talked to have had a heart for something, to try something, to go in missions, to serve somewhere even very short term, and they almost talk themselves out of it like, well, who am I to do that or how would I or it seems so difficult. And when you talk, it doesn’t seem as difficult, not that it won’t be hard, but like, there are organizations who are sending organizations, and they’re looking and there are hospitals that would, you know, that would would take on somebody with medical experience for short-term things. So I think these places exist, and maybe we need to not get in our own way all the time, if we’re really kind of feeling God’s Spirit call us.

Reno Anderson 25:32
You know, sometimes we make a decision and then, or maybe we don’t make the decision until we feel like we’ve gone through all these hurdles and we’ve solved all these problems. Sometimes you have to make the decision first, and then you just solve the problems in orders they happen to come up, and then you’re still doing what you resolved to do in the beginning. So I see a lot of people, you’re right,you know, when my family and I took a trip around North America on our motorcycles, we had people all the time saying to us, oh, I love what you’re doing. I wish I could do that, you know, and what we’d say well, there’s nothing stopping you. You could sell your house and put your stuff in storage and kick off on motorcycles for a year if you wanted to. It’s like, you have to decide, do you want to take the risk o do you need security? If you need total security in your life, then maybe missions isn’t for you because it is a risk.

It’s a risk following God when God asks you to do something hard. It’s a risk to say yes, God, whatever you say, I’m gonna follow. You know, it’s a risk to go to another country where you might have to take malaria medication or get vaccinations. It’s a risk to enter another culture where you might make a goof, it’s a risk to go and make relationships in another culture. But you know, the rewards, some of the times I have felt most alive in my life, I can think of one time, standing in the back of a pickup truck, my head over the cab, and I’m standing there with a man that I had just met, but he’s going to be my liaison in the Malawi village. And I just know I can trust this man. And we’re standing there looking over the cab, and we’re driving down this dirt road through a little river. And there’s a, you can see the people up ahead wanting to sing to us. And I thought, wow, this is really hard, but I feel so alive right now. And it just felt like God say, yep, you know, this is what it means to follow me.

Laurie Graham 27:33
I am so glad you shared that story. I actually got a bit teary. And I think too, sometimes we, we’re not experiencing all God has for us because we’re scared to take a step or we’re scared to take a risk, or like you said, we’re trying to solve all the problems before we even take the first two steps toward whatever we think, you know, God may have for us. So thank you so much for sharing so much of your heart and your stories with us. Do you have any last-minute tips for small churches who want to get involved in missions? Like, what would you tell them?

Reno Anderson 28:04
I guess I would say that there are needs everywhere and there’s different kinds of needs, but you know, start by finding a missionary, finding a missionary, adopt them, love on them, see what they need, maybe you can go and be a part of what they’re doing.

Laurie Graham 28:22
I love that you’re just saying adopt them because so many people say support them, support the missionaries, and when you say adopt it has such a different feeling like, it’s like, this is my child, this is my person, you know, I’m gonna just give my all. So, I love that. So Reno, I do not want to leave today without talking about your books because this is a whole nother part of you that we haven’t even touched on. I know you’ve written fiction. You’ve written cookbooks. You’ve written Bible studies. Do you want to share a little bit about your author path?

Reno Anderson 28:51
Well, I’ve always written. I’ve written for newspapers. I’ve been a newspaper journalist and editor for a number of different newspapers. I’ve written articles, magazine articles, when that was still in Vogue. And I decided to publish a book and I did. So I’ve just kept on writing. So now I think I have eight books published. Latest one was a NFL football biography, which is kind of interesting, but totally outside of my usual genre. But God said, do it. So I did it. I guess my next thing is probably going to be writing maybe about missions because I’ve been asked by a number of people. So I think God’s nudging me saying, you know what, let’s write something about missions, and you’ve got a lot of stories to include. So I think that’s what is going to happen next. But you can you can find my books on my website. So if you’re interested in any of them, there’s, there’s a lot of different genres going on.

Laurie Graham 29:47
That’s so fun. And I can’t wait for your autobiography too. Like, I’m still pulling for that one because you have quite a story even from wee little so I’m excited to read that someday. So you’ve got to do that. Where is your website and how can people get in touch with you or find your books or connect with you?

Reno Anderson 30:04
Sure. My books are all sold on Amazon. My website is www.thefew.world and stands for the fierce everyday warrior, which is what my Bible studies are about. And so you can find me there and reach me there by email. reno.anderson@gmail.com works well too.

Laurie Graham 30:27
Awesome. Well, we will drop the links, for sure, in the show notes. And just a little plug, Reno is so involved with Small Church Ministry. You can also find her on Facebook in our groups. She’s involved in almost all of our conferences. If you want to hear her speak, I’m hoping she’ll be speaking again for the Pastor’s Wives conference coming up in, in July. And so she is a big part of our community. And I am grateful Reno, I’m grateful that you spent the time with me today. This is just a joy.

Reno Anderson 30:54
Oh, it was my pleasure. Laurie, I always love spending time with you.

Laurie Graham 30:58
Well, very fun. And for those of you listening, thanks for being with us today. Like, thanks for hanging out. If you find encouragement in this podcast, please take a minute and leave a review from wherever you’re listening. If you’re not sure how to do that, we even have some easy clicks in the show notes that will actually kind of walk you through the steps, especially if you’re on Apple. We are on a mission to reach every small church on the planet with support and resources that, honestly, most small churches still do not know exists. So we are so happy to be on this mission together. And your review might just be the very thing that helps somebody actually find the support they need. So keep other small churches in mind near and far and across the globe as we’ve been talking about too. So, until we talk next week, just be a light!