What is pioneer missions and why is it important? Today I talk with Mikael Bowman about his mission training school known as Mission 1:11. We discuss how to prepare adventurous missionaries to go to the hardest to reach parts of the world. We are not talking about going to five star hotels. No! We are talking about hard core missions where you sleep under the stars and eat bugs.
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Learn About Mission 1:11: https://www.missiononeeleven.se/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
What is Pioneer missions and why is it important Today? I talk with Mikael Boman about his mission training school, knowing as Mission one 11, we discuss how to prepare adventurous missionaries to go to the hardest to reach parts of the world. We’re not talking about going to five star hotels. No, we’re talking about hardcore missions where you sleep under the stars and eat buds.
The Evangelism Podcast Host (00:37):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:02):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today. I have a very special guest, Mikael Boman, Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast with me.
Mikael Boman (01:12):
Thank you so much. It’s a privilege to be here together with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:16):
We have known each other for many years because you knew my wife. You used to work for Pastor Peter Youngrenan evangelist from Canada, and you helped organize crusades for him in many different countries. Tell me about what you learned about doing campaigns, working with Pastor Peter Youngrin.
Mikael Boman (01:38):
I would say what I learned the most is that we we learned to do what was impossible, time after time. And you know, doing the impossible time after time, you know, place after place, going to many of the difficult places created a a sense of nothing is impossible. That’s what I really brought with me. Number one, working with with Pastor Peter.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:04):
What were some of the countries that you worked with back at that time?
Mikael Boman (02:08):
I mean, we worked a lot in India, worked in Pakistan, really difficult at that time. We were in some really difficult parts of Pakistan Indonesia, you know Tanzania, of course, a little, little bit easier, bar, difficult Congo both the Congos we were into. And we did some other parts that was, you know, challenging.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:32):
And Ethiopia
Mikael Boman (02:33):
Of course, also a lot of Ethiopia.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:35):
Yeah. And, and so now you have a tremendous focus on pioneer missions. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, Could you tell me what is Pioneer Missions?
Mikael Boman (02:46):
What pioneer missions for me is to go to those places, those people groups, language groups, tribes are the least reached. Those that I have never had opportunity hear about Jesus. We are really targeting towards those who we are called, they’re called unengaged. They have never heard about Jesus Christ since the death and resurrection of, of Jesus Christ. And there no Bible translations going on. There are no, no missionaries going there. And you know, basically they’re, they’re untouched with the gospel. So that, that’s our, our, our, our aim and our focus. But of course, we also preach to people that are unreached. They might belong to people group. There are believers there, but the church is very weak and very few believers. So that’s especially on their hearts to do something for them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:42):
I think this is such an important focus for the body of Christ to have, because in my town Tulsa, Oklahoma, there’s literally a church on almost every corner. Yeah. I mean, they joke around and say that if you drop, drop a tract on the ground, a church will spring up. It’s so fertile. Wow. But when you go to some places, there’s, there’s no churches. There’s no Christians, and it takes a real special kind of anointing calling from God to go to those places. How do you train people to go to pioneer areas and really pioneer something for Jesus? Mm.
Mikael Boman (04:22):
It’s really not that complicated. I would say. I, I don’t think we should make it more complicated than there is, than it is actually. But it’s challenging. But we, we, we work with something called Mission one 11. It’s like very intense high impact training. Actually. They, they go through eight weeks a boot camp where we, where we give them some, some ba basic teaching. You know, how do you preach and teach the gospel? We, we give them a tool called storytelling. Basically we were entering into places where they had no idea about what is the Bible, you know, who is Jesus who created the heaven and the earth. So we start from the beginning, you know, in the beginning that was God and God created and, you know, so on and so forth. And we work through the whole testament and into the New Testament, you know, to get, to lay a foundation.
Mikael Boman (05:08):
Why did Jesus have to come? So we work with that for, for eight weeks. We do you know, cross culture training. We do physical training, CrossFit twice, twice a week to build up the physique, cuz some, we go to some rough places. So when after eight weeks we ship them out and they’re out in unreached people group for about six weeks in total, if you say from the leave. And, and then they’re back. And then we do the briefing afterwards and after the, the, this time we, we put them through something. We, we give them the opportunity to go to something called the next step so they can be a part of, you know, continue in their missions calling. So, so really the, the first part is it’s not so complicated, it’s just about, you know, doing it. And so it works pretty good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:00):
So Mission 1:11, you’re in Sweden. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, but there’s also branches of Yes. Mission 1:11 in Canada mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and in the United States. And so the purpose is to raise up people who have a passion for reaching the unreached. Talk to me a little bit more about storytelling, what that looks like. How would someone tell the story of the gospel if they were in a culture that didn’t know anything about Jesus?
Mikael Boman (06:34):
I would say that’s the power of storytelling. That actually storytelling has two pastor is really important. It, it’s number one, the, the, the tool of, of, of telling oral stories about, you know, the creation. You know, how was the world created, you know, the, the the, the follow man sin came into the world and destroyed the world. So we, we work through that and we talk about the prophecies about him that would come and, and you know, laying a foundation. So when we come into, you know, John the Baptist and, and talking about Jesus coming, they, they all see how, how chronologically it fits together. Because if you, if you enter into a people group that have no previous understanding and knowledge of the Bible, you know, knowledge about the living God and knowledge about, you know, who is Jesus Christ, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s trying to contextualize it in such a way, you know, based on the chronological stories of the Bible.
Mikael Boman (07:31):
So they will, they will gain knowledge and revelation from that, from, you know, the Bible scriptures that the, the storytelling is based on. So it’s, it’s really giving them revelation. And of course we believe the Holy Spirit is working through the, through the telling of the stories, cuz it’s basically the scripture that we’re telling them. And you know, that helps them to, to gain knowledge, understanding and revelation about the ways of the living God, you know, how to, why do I need to get saved? You know, what is salvation? You know, what, what, you know, what is the new birth? You know, you know, the Baptists and of the, of the Holy Spirit, you know, all these important things that, that we take for granted as Christians. And, but they have no clue. So in a very short time of, of when they’re out in the, in the, on the mission field for these, you know, five weeks, you know, four or five weeks on site, they don’t have much time. So it’s a very condensed but very efficient, high impact way of, of, you know, sharing the gospel. So it’s because they have no previous understanding, you know, of the God of the Bible,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:43):
What are some parts of the world that you would consider to be in need of pioneer missions?
Mikael Boman (08:50):
I mean, there, there are a lot of, of places, but I i, I would say for my, you know, this our Swedish section, which is part of the mission one 11, of course Mission one 11 was started by, by Carl Haram and Jennifer Haram you know, and a number of years ago. But I’m, I’m heading up the, the Swedish part. And we have our passion is the 10 40 window. And we, we try to, to focus on that part specifically. And I would say like the, the whole of Africa, you have a great need. You have you know, of course the Middle East, but I would say Southeast Asia, where you have the, the tremendous growth of you know, population. But you also have a lot of people groups there. You know, Pakistan, you have India, China, of course Vietnam, Thailand some of the places where people are actually traveling quite often from the western world.
Mikael Boman (09:49):
But there are still people groups that are, you know, in, in areas of these nations where they, they’ve been unreached by the gospel of the gospel and, and where have been, you know, no missionaries going. So we we’re we’re operating with something. We, we have an operation called Operation 326. We’ve done a research to see, you know, where are the remain remaining people groups that have never heard of gospel before. So we are actually sending out expeditionary teams, going out, putting boots on the ground to find out is the test statistics that we, that we reading Joshua project, finish the task and so on. Is it accurate? Because we’ve learned something and, and I know all these organizations, they do the best and they do a great job, but it’s very difficult with statistics. So the only way to figure, find out how is the situation is you need to put boots on the ground.
Mikael Boman (10:40):
You need to, to meet people, you need to interview people, find out, you know, what is going on. So our focus is this summer we’ve had two teams going in Southeast Asia visiting six different unengaged people groups. And we’ve found out out of these six there are two, maybe three of them that, that are actually unengaged. One was in simulated with another people groups and don’t, don’t exist anymore. Two others have been reached, but the statistics says they’re unengaged not reached ever. So that’s a bit of work to do. And, and our passion is for you know, 10 /40 window, especially Southeast Asia. Cuz that’s where the most of the people are.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:22):
So when you send out a team for Mission one 11 and for an immersion six weeks, you’re not going to five star hotels. No. You’re going out into primitive areas and they’ll actually go and live in a village. Yes.
Mikael Boman (11:39):
They’ll, they’ll move on into a village and stay there in a tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag very simple, rough it’s not for everyone, I would say. But we, we find that it’s a lot of, of especially young people that wanna they’re not, I wouldn’t say they’re out after adventure, but it’s like the they feel it’s not fair. How can it be that we have heard gospel being preached over and over again? We get servings of good gospel, good bible teaching. We have prayer meetings, we have cell groups, we have midweek services, we have you know, youth services. We have morning service and Sunday evening service, and we have service and service and service, which is great. We have podcasts like, like this lot of teaching. And there, then there are others who never had their first serving of the gospel.
Mikael Boman (12:32):
So we find that there is the younger generation, they feel that this is not fair, you know something has to be done. And, and you know, some of them are really, they, they feel the calling and they feel the urgency that, you know, I want to be a part of doing something different. I want to be part of helping people that never heard of gospel before. And some, many of those that we, that come to our schools, they have no prior experience at all, are missions, none. So, so it’s it’s a challenge for them, but they’re willing to pay the price. And we are, we’re blessed to work with young and, and also some middle-aged people also coming.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:12):
Tell me some testimonies. What results have you seen in your effort to, to reach these pioneer mission areas?
Mikael Boman (13:21):
Well let’s say we have I can, I can take one from, from Sri Lanka, which is really not an most people wouldn’t say Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is the most unreached place on the earth, but as a nation. But you have villages up in the, the mountainous areas where they have very little contact with, with the rest of the world. Of course, they, they have television they watch, you know, via satellite and so on. But they have otherwise they live in the village. They work ont states or you know, they’re, they’re cut off from the rest of the world, pretty much. So a couple of years ago we sent a, a team with young people and, and a couple of leaders into village where they have never had any encounter with white people before. It’s not that we are special, but no foreigners have been there, and no one had been there preaching to them.
Mikael Boman (14:20):
The only thing we came into, the only thing they had was a, they had a Hindu temple in the middle of the village you know, several hundred people living there and never heard a gospel. And we, we started to, to share the stories with them and evening after evening and, you know, praying for people that were sick. I mean, a lot of people are sick and they got healed. They started to listen. People got saved. And from being nothing, not a single believer, all of a sudden we had the group of believers, you know, in, in, in a few weeks if, if these young people would’ve gone there, these people in village will never heard of gospel. They’ve never been saved without them. So with simple means, ordinary young people can make a difference where preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know, seeing signs, wonders, and miracles happening and, and, you know, people being born again and, and safe eternity. And I think that is a great impact. And we’ve seen this in village after village, you know, in, in different tribes. And it’s, it’s wonderful to have the privilege to be part of this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
I think sometimes churches in America and in Europe, forget about these unreached people places often the church spends money building a, a beautiful building, and then they send out missionaries, but a lot of the missionaries get sent to places that are largely reached. I mean, I was a, grew up as a missionary in Mexico, and there were many missionaries there, but Mexico has very good churches. Yes. But the churches forgotten about some of these areas. They’re remote, they’re hard to, to get to. Yeah. So what would you say to those churches who, who want to obey the great commission, they wanna go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. But h how can a church get involved in engaging with an Unre people group?
Mikael Boman (16:16):
Yeah. I would say there are, there are several, several ways of being involved and engaged in pie in their missions. You know, number one there are good, good sites. You know, Joshua Project finished the task where you can read about the, you know, the situation in the world. You know, praying is one good thing. I would say the other thing that we would encourage them, you know, why don’t they contact us at Mission one 11, Mission one eleven.com. If you’re in the States, and you’ll find a lot of information, you know, how you can be involved in reaching down engaged people groups. I would say mainly why people are not involved. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s because they don’t know. I mean when I, I, I visited, I visited pastors, churches, you know, different, you know, networks and so on.
Mikael Boman (17:02):
And I, and when we start to share about these things, most people think it’s already done. They think that everyone heard, you know, we are basically waiting for the imminent to return out our Lord Jesus. And, and when we start to talk about, you know, there are unengaged groups, groups that have never heard about Jesus before, ever. They’re surprised. And, and the response from many are, How can we help? How can we be involved? I mean, this is not fair. This is not right. Let us do something for these people. So it’s, it’s a lack of knowledge mainly not so much of a heart condition, because when people get to know about this, they say, Okay, let’s do something, you know, let’s be involved somehow. That’s, that’s a lot of the reactions that we get. Then of course, they don’t think, how do we do it? We, we don’t know anything about, we are sending missionaries and, you know, to places that are mostly reached that where have been mission work going on for a number of years. So it has to be a, a shift of focus and that, that might take some time. But, you know, read, listen, you know, a good step is you, you’re listening to this podcast, and now, now when you hear about it, you know, let’s, let’s do something about it and Yeah, sure. Can you one eleven.com?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:19):
Yeah. So, so if you’re listening and, and you’re a young person who wants to go on an, an adventure for Jesus, and you’re not scared, you’re ready to go anywhere that Jesus calls you, I really encourage you to, to pray about going on pioneer missions and, and connect with mission one eleven.com and find out more about how you can go to these, these places that are very hard to reach, but where you can have a, a, a tremendous impact leading people, entire people groups to Jesus. Yes.
Mikael Boman (18:54):
It’s it’s a privilege. I would say that the change that we see in our students’ lives usually when they come, you know, we have, we’ve had people that have been barely saved when they come to us, and we have those that have been saved for, you know, they’ve been believers since as long as they can remember when they go and some up into, to different bible schools, psychologists, you know, prior to ours. Others have no previous experience. So when they work together as a group for these eight weeks during the booth camp, we see a change in the lives. But when we really see the change in the lives is when they are out in the tribe afterwards. When they, when they come back, we hear this over and over again, again, and they say, I didn’t know that God could use me in such a way.
Mikael Boman (19:37):
I didn’t know that I would see miracles in front of my very eyes. I didn’t know, you know, how the situation, you know, among the unreached art, and I’m so happy that I made this step. It, it, it changed their lives, but oh boy, it really changed my life and my heart. So we see transformation in the hearts and in the lives of those going through Mission one 11, as well as in the lives in those that they have shared a gospel with. So it’s win-win situation and the people that you meet will never be the same. And if you go through this, you will never be the same,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:20):
You know, will change your life and it will change the lives of others for, for all of eternity. Absolutely. Well, thank you brother Michael for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I so love your ministry, your passion for, for reaching the lost in very difficult places of the earth. Thank you for standing up for Jesus.
Mikael Boman (20:39):
Yeah, thank you so much, Daniel, for having me. It’s a privilege to be here in this podcast, and, and we were impressed with the work you that you’re doing. You have a great heart for people evangelizing year after year, months after month, and, you know, keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s a great work that you’re doing as an evangelist. God bless you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:59):
Thank you. Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.
The Evangelism Podcast Host (22:18):
For more information about how to share your faith, or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
