By Josie Oldenburg — A short-term trip to the Philippines drew Rob Magwood — or Mags, a nickname given by a high school friend — into career missions. (It also drew him into marriage, but that’s another story.)
Mags and his wife, Kathleen, served through church planting and theological education in Ukraine and Russia before returning to Canada, where, in addition to serving as the director of SEND Canada, he is the voice of the Global Missions Podcast.
The Global Missions Podcast recently celebrated its 50th episode, so we thought this was the perfect time to check in with Mags about his vision for the podcast and which of the 50 shows are his favorites.
Q. You’re a busy guy and I’m sure you’re absolutely bombarded with ways that you could use your time for God’s glory, so why did you decide to launch a missions-themed podcast?
We have found that many churches in North America have a limited window for communicating about global missions. Sometimes missionaries might have a chance to speak at an evening service or a midweek meeting, and those opportunities may or may not exist in some churches now. And so we wanted to find another way to talk to people about missions.
That’s where the podcast originated from, and we realized really soon on that we wanted to share it as well. It’s not only SEND that does this podcast. We’re so thankful that it’s not just one organization, but it’s many organizations cooperating together. It’s not just one agency’s point of view, it’s really a mix of ideas that we hope will be helpful, and much broader than any one agency could provide.
Q. What are some of the ideas you have explored on the podcast so far?
So some of our episodes are for people who will not be go-ers. They live in a neighborhood where there are lost people — that probably applies to most of our listeners. For missions at home, we’ve also focused a bit on folks who have migrated into our neighborhoods. They may have come from far away — even unreached places. So we have new opportunities to engage with unreached peoples because they have been brought into proximity through this migration. (Find episodes on this engaging our new neighbors here, here and here.)
We also talk about far-away places — some of the challenges of going and preparing to go to the far-away places. We talk about member care, how do we take great care of our mission workers and their kids?
And the other element of the podcast would be education — some of the tools out there that can be used by a church or a group of Christ followers who want to learn more about missions.
Q. Who do you think could benefit from listening?
We hope it will be beneficial to a very broad audience. When we talk with a guest, before we do the recording, we say, “Can you imagine speaking to a missions committee of a medium-size church?” We don’t want to be too technical. Our prayerful intention is to provide people who want to do global missions well with encouragement, ideas, and resources that would help them.
Q. If it’s not too much like asking you to pick your favorite child, can you tell us your three favorite episodes?
This is so hard. It is like talking about kids; you really can’t pick favorites!
From our first season, episode 19 was called “How Can I Know God’s Will for Me?” Dr. Rick Reed talked about how we can prayfully, wisely discern what God’s direction is. It’s probably one of the most common questions I’m asked: “I’m thinking about missions, but how can I know God’s will? Should we go? Should we stay?” I thought he did a great job of that topic. I highly recommend it.
The second one, I’m going to kind of cheat because there are two that are closely related. One is called “How to Build A Mission Committee,” and the other is “Well Sent: What is the Church’s Role in Sending Missionaries?” This is all about how a church can think about their role in identifying and training and preparing mission workers. I love that it’s about the local church. We are all about supporting the local church as the church does missions.
The last one was pretty recent. It was with Mark Buchanan, an author from the West Coast of Canada, on Sabbath rest and how we can help our workers avoid burnout. I learned and was reminded of so many healthy things in that episode. It was a great talk with Mark as he has ideas about how we as Christ followers should probably be paying more attention to Sabbath practice. And it’s not heavy handed. He doesn’t lay a guilt trip. He just provides some really practical, great ideas that fit missionaries — but would fit any Christ follower who listens to that episode.
There are so many great episodes. As soon as I start thinking even a little bit about it, others come up. Topic like how to do short-term missions better. (Explore ideas about short-term missons here, here, here, here and here.) Or, if a church has missionaries who are going to be returning soon, there are ideas about how you can care for them. There’s tons of great stuff there.
Q. How have you personally grown through doing these interviews?
It has been such a blessing for me to have the chance to engage with these other great folks. And they’re so diverse — women and men and North Americans and non-North Americans. They’ve walked faithfully with the Lord, serving him in some element of this big, huge Great Commission. For me to have had the opportunity to talk with them has been a great encouragement. There are nuggets out of every single episode that touch me personally.
It’s been very heartening to see the riches between agencies. If we just try to do it ourselves, it’s thinner, it’s narrower. Instead, there are these riches that if we’re willing to talk and share, it’s the Body of Christ at work, and that Body is beautiful when that experience is brought together.
Q. How do you hope that God will use this podcast?
I’ve got to say, this is a team effort. There are three colleagues alongside me — Steve, Rebecca and Charlie — plus an advisory group from other agencies who really are behind this podcast. Our team hopes that this will be a winsome and engaging exploration of global mission topics. We want to provide encouragement, ideas and resources. None of our guests are perfect or have it all together, but they have such a valuable contribution to make, and we hope that it will find its way to those missions committees and others who really do want to keep learning and do a good job of missions in the 21st century.
Q. The guests on the Global Missions Podcast often share resources that have helped them as active Great Commission participants. What have been the most meaningful resources in your global missions journey?
I am a book person. I’ll admit that right away. I’m usually reading several books at any one time. So, the books our guests have recommended have been very helpful.
Let me mention the Perspectives course. I haven’t met anybody that has had their life left unchanged after they’ve done the Perspectives course. Kairos is another course very much like it. I haven’t personally done it, but I know a number of people who hold it in very high regard. It’s a shorter time frame than Perspectives, so it might be a more accessible option for some people.
For missions committees, there’s a book I want to recommend from Steve Beirn — “Well Sent: Reimaging the Church’s Missionary Sending Process.” It is a wonderful, practical, easy-to-read book for missions committees or pastors who would like some ready-made resources to help either start or improve our missions programs. It’s a short book — 175 pages of book with about 50 pages of resources at the end.
Q. Is there anything else that you want to add that we haven’t covered today?
We’re celebrating that we just passed 30,000 downloads of the podcast. Praise the Lord! We pray over every episode that the Lord would take it as an offering. He knows who’s going to hear it. We pray that the conversation would be of encouragement, that it would bring ideas and some resources to the church so that we can keep being faithful in the Great Commission until he comes back.
Thanks, Mags! We always enjoy hearing the intelligent, interesting conversations on the Global Missions Podcast. Click here to explore all the episodes, or subscribe through the podcast app on your tablet or smart phone.
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