I thought I was going to help them. Thirteen trips in, I know it's the other way around. I want to tell you what I found.
I didn't set out to pioneer anything. First trip was 2015. I planned to help. I came home quiet.
Eleven years later, I've built relationships with Pakistani pastors the way I used to build business relationships — by showing up, over and over, in the same rooms, until people start saving me a seat.
Here's what I can't put in a newsletter: the believers I went to serve are stronger than the believers who sent me. I want you to see it too.
Pakistan has 240 million people.
are zealous for a faith that is not yours.
is the Christian minority. These are my friends.
Jobs denied. Kids pushed out of school. Pastors threatened. Churches burned.
Daily. Grinding. Real.
They rebuild. Without a Western fundraising campaign. Without a press release.
Because they actually believe the Spirit is in control.
The ministry I work through — Cross Connecting Network — is an hourglass. Western resources narrow through a single point of trust, and come out the bottom as fuel for Pakistani leaders who already know what to do.
No compound. No American pastor flying in to run the show. No "solutions." Just a connection between people who have something and people who know how to spend it.
Jerry and Sharon Miner started it in 2011. I'm one of the guys keeping it moving.
"We lack something they have. A real, daily, operational belief that the Spirit is actually in control."— The thing I keep coming home with
My friends in Pakistan don't need my pity. They need a door between their leaders and ours — so men like me can learn something we forgot, and so faithful pastors can keep doing what they're already doing.
The specific stories change. The pattern doesn't.
There's a distance between generous and all in. I lived in it for a decade. I wrote the checks. I showed up on Sunday. I led the group. I was changed exactly as much as writing a check changes a man — which is nothing.
The question I kept not asking — the one in the back of my chest — was this: what would it cost to stop managing my faith and actually spend it on something?
The guys I've watched come back different are the ones who stopped asking that quietly. They got on the call. Then got on the plane.
The seat is open. The room is waiting. The only question is whether you're the kind of man who takes it.
I'll set it up. You ask him whatever you want. Fair warning — you will not get off that call the same man.
You'll sit in living rooms with me, meet pastors, visit churches. You will not be a tourist. You will not be a savior. You'll be my guest, and that's the point.
Dan will reach out to you personally. Keep an eye on your inbox.