Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology in the rom. My guest today is Craig Greenfield who is the founder of alongsideers international, which is a grassroots youth discipleship movement that is now spread to more than 30 countries.

He is the author of subversive Jesus and his latest book is titled subversive mission serving as outsiders in a world of need, which grows out of his more than 20 years of experience of ministering alongside not to but alongside fellow believers in Cambodia.

And we had a wonderful conversation about kind of cross cultural ministry, even a concept of missions and missionary, whether those concepts are helpful to talk about orphanages versus orphan carrying alternative ways of caring for orphans.

I do want to say that I recorded this podcast kind of early in the morning and I got in super late the night before.

It's always running on very little sleep and I'm not much of a morning person. So even even throughout the conversation, I think I had a couple brain fart. So, I don't know, maybe that'll explain some of the glitches in my brain that just wasn't firing the way I normally does, which even then it's not too much to write home about.

So anyway, love the conversation. You'll really enjoy getting to know the one and only Craig Greenfield.

Here with Craig Greenfield, a person I just met, friend of a friend. So thanks for responding to some random email Craig and coming on the podcast.

Thanks, Christian. It's good to be with you today.

When our mutual friend put us in touch, I immediately went on your website. And then the first blog, the first blog post I saw was, you know, should we, let me just read it here.

Is it time to ditch the word missionary? And I was like, oh, I like, I like this. You know, and I read it. And it was so spot on. But I was like, I would imagine not everybody's gonna like this article, even though I think logically it just makes so much sense.

Anyway, that that might be we can probably put that off first. Like I want to get to know you. And you've been on the mission field. I didn't know so mission field. Let me just say you.

Is there wrong words here?

You've been serving Jesus not in your country of birth. Let's start there. What got you into wanting to serve Jesus in another country?

Yeah, well, back in the late 90s, I took some time off uni and went and spent some time in Cambodia, which I'm actually here now in Cambodia.

It's late at night. That's a bit dark and murky, but really fell in love with the place. And so it took me a few years to get back to Cambodia.

But beginning of the year 2000, my wife and I moved into an urban slum in Nampeng, the capital city of Cambodia and lived there for many, many years amongst the poor.

We were evicted from two different slums along with our neighbors and really just began this long process of trying to discover what Jesus meant when he said, blessed of the poor.

I've come to bring good news to the poor. What does this mean? Coming from a white affluent background of privilege.

I had not grown up with a solid theology that really went into any depth around those around those kind of ideas and how central God's heart for the poor is.

And so it's been a long journey, 23 years, most in Cambodia, but also in inner city Vancouver, Canada for seven years, where we started an intentional Christian community welcoming and books from the streets.

And yeah, all kinds of good things along the way as long as a lot of pain and suffering as well.

So going straight, I mean, I would imagine moving to Cambodia that that's a, you know, a big shift and change and but going straight to the inner city of the slums.

...