The Journey Podcast – Ep. 13 transcript
This is the transcription of an October 2025 conversation between Jim Killam of the Wycliffe Global Alliance and Jon ImBeau, President of Wycliffe Canada.
Jim Killam Now, you’re not in Calgary, correct? You are based out near Vancouver.
Jon Imbeau That’s right. Yeah. And so, this has been home for me for over 30 years and originally from Ontario but been in BC for over 30 years and a lot of years pastoring and then about 13 years also leading two organizations. One was about 10 years with Awana Canada and Awana International West Coast in BC and in particular, the lower mainland area we call it home and just a lot of networks and a lot of people over the years. So you know I’m able to sit in this chair here as director for Canada but do it from a place where I know a lot of people and have a lot of network.
Jim Killam Interesting change in the way the world operates the past few years where that’s even a discussion right because there would have been a time when you would have needed to be in Calgary all the time. How does that play out for you? Is it odd not being in the main office or is that kind of all changed anyway?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, good question. It certainly has changed, hasn’t it? You know, all workspaces have changed around the world. Remote working is far more of the norm and trying to navigate that as agencies is tricky and I think we’ve found some way to do that, but not sure if it’s the best. way, but we’re trying this, aren’t we? So, you know, I sort of say, hey, look, it’s not ideal. Ideal would be everybody who is Canada assigned or working on administration perhaps in Canada, we should all live in Calgary. We should all go to the office every day and we should all meet at 10 a.m. for coffee. And, you know, that would be ideal, but it’s not practical and especially with Canada being, you know, pretty vast and our people are actually spread out coast to coast. It really is not practical and possible to get us all together in the same headquarters. So, could we do this in a way where we’re still able to achieve the communication and the relationship and the face-to-face times that are needed, but then still live in the communities where God’s planted us? I think so far we’ve been able to pull it off and you know, let’s see if it continues to be viable.
Jim Killam Yeah, certainly tradeoffs, aren’t there? I mean, I work remotely obviously and globally, so it can be very isolating, but the connection you have with people all over the world is I mean, I worked in newspapers when I was early in my career and used a manual typewriter. So, I mean, we’re coming from, you know, that world to this world and you just take for granted that you’ve got people from four continents on the same Zoom call sometimes.
Jon Imbeau Yeah. Right. I mean, guys our age, Jim, like we remember horse and buggy, don’t we? But no, here’s the rub, Jim, is that you know as a missions organization we believe that missions is you know this this work of God which is relational right? I mean the number one way in which we go about doing this missions work is through relationships with people. And so the rub is you know how do you organize yourself as a ministry, a supporting organization where you’re not face to face, you know, can you build relationships when you’re not all in the office every day together and so that’s the challenge. Otherwise you’re saying in the field we want to build relationships and through that the gospel but just not in the office you know just not anybody who’s working from Canada and that you know obviously would be hypocrisy we can’t do that.
Jim Killam What have you guys learned in this period that maybe would benefit others in the alliance to know other leaders? Because I think everyone’s struggling with this question.
Jon Imbeau Well, a couple of things we’re trying to do. I hope we’re learning it. We’re really trying to … when we’re programming in the times when we’re all digitally together and that’s, you know, staff meeting or it’s our once a week listening table is what we call our time where we really press in on Jesus and prayer and story and you know the Scriptures. Anyway, those programmed times for us all to be there digitally, those we really have to encourage and maybe even push a bit and maybe push a lot to make sure there’s attendance that the people are there, right? And so I think it’s worth it as leaders to push for those because it’s too easy to not be there. You know, nobody really notices you’re not in your office if it’s a digital office, right? So, but pushing for that because, you know, those are key times for communicating central messaging. You know, it’s a good time for, you know, for the director or whoever it is to remind us all of our mission and maybe our strategic plan or our four priorities or whatever it is, right? So, they’re critical for the central messaging to stay in front of us. I feel personally like in the time in which we live, if that central message isn’t in front of people weekly. We drift. People drift into maybe what they would prefer the message to be or prefer the mission to be or they just, you know, drift into maybe I should just do this other thing on the side or whatever it is. Anyway, that’s one. And then the second is I mean, yes, it’s expensive and probably more so for us in Canada just because we’re bringing people from long distances and our airplane lights are ridiculous. It’s cheaper to fly to Europe than it is for me to go to Toronto, but is it worth it to invest in the coming together times? So, we’re saying yes, that is a value. And so, it’s maybe not all of our staff, every one of our 400 staff and volunteers coming together in one space, but you know, are we making sure that and facilitating that face-to-face connections and relationship building experiences between our teams or our or two important leaders that need to connect or myself with, you know, with some of my leadership team? Is that happening? We have to plan it and have to make it happen and really work hard to make sure those times are exceptional.
Jim Killam Got to be different for you as a leader. I mean, you came into this under this atmosphere. (It was 2023), right? Was when you started at Wycliffe Canada. So, post COVID. Has it been odd for you as a leader to work remotely? I don’t know exactly what your situation looks like, but I imagine you’re not around your team often. And how do you build anything you’re trying to build when you’re not together day to day?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, exactly. So, one of the things that I’ve done here is I’ve devoted like one week a month to be in Calgary to be in the office for that face to face. And you know. I’d love to be able to say every month it works out I’m there for a week but a lot of the time there you know there are the trips to Ontario or it’s to you know an international trip or conference like the one we both attended in South Africa. So it doesn’t always work out that way. We do have our regular once a week. I have my one-on-one check-ins that are on Zoom and so that’s with my senior leadership team and then we have our senior leadership team and also a leadership team. It’s just the way we divide up our you know the old org chart and so making sure those like everybody else does this I know but making sure we have those regular rhythms and making sure that there’s time for that. And then this is maybe the kind of person I am but when we’re together face to face I really try hard to make sure there’s space for let’s sneak out of the office and go get a coffee guys you know and let’s do something fun and let’s maybe the coffee isn’t all that fun but some something that is gives us the opportunity to build friendship.
Jim Killam I noticed you mentioned as a value helping staff flourish in their unique callings. Yeah. What are some ways you’re seeing that happen?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, that’s great. Yeah, it’s what we’re calling our big idea. So I think every organization should have you know your vision, your mission, your core values. But I think It’s also helpful sometimes to have a really simple big idea. Even if it’s like around a strategic plan, what’s … if you could sum it up in a couple of words, that would be your big idea. And so for us, it’s endure and flourish. You know, we kind of, I suppose, borrowed or purposefully chose the word flourish because, you know, we do partner a lot with SIL and they use the word flourish as well. It’s the idea of thriving in the calling that God’s given you. And so my role as president for Canada is to see this organization as a place where everyone can flourish in the calling that God’s given them. And I and I believe that Wycliffe Canada and I do believe that Western Wycliffes from Western nations do need to endure. There’s a lot of work yet to do and a lot of people and resources that Wycliffes can offer into this. So, I do think we need to endure. So the enduring and you know not just existing but flourishing in that endurance is what I want to see. Well, what do we do in order to see that happen? I mean I can say that one of the ways we go about this is through a strategic plan that includes a priority towards excellence. You know, so we have four priorities with our strategic plan. One of them is excellence. That’s the area where we get right down to goals around what does flourishing look like for our people. So it might be a very specific goal around, hey let’s provide a better health plan. Let’s provide some of the things that our missionaries and our staff have been asking for. Say hey, I would be so much better off if I could just you know let’s say let’s be better communicators because that represents excellence. And so the goals kind of pile up in that way and we say over the next three years could we go from here to there with excellence if we were to accomplish these goals and if we did we really feel like people would be you know flourishing and their calling. So one of the things we did you know kind of give you an example is you know we’ve had an excellent chapel midweek chapel for many years but recently we said is there a way for us to redesign this rethink this this midweek chapel that could purposefully help our all of our team to flourish in their calling. So, if we were to make this around calling and make it around what God is doing in your life and doing in other people’s lives, let’s look at what God’s doing as a chapel, as a devoted, you know, a chapel devoted to that. Then we really feel like people this will really help us flourish and thrive as people in our calling. So, that’s an example of that. And so, we redid And that’s been going for just over a month now as a sort of a new way of going about fulfilling that goal of excellence.
Jim Killam It feels like that goal of helping your staff flourish in unique callings, I like that term, too. Could take you in unexpected directions. I mean, I’m thinking of more top-down sort of leadership that would say, uh, how can we possibly do that because then we’re not all pulling the same direction or something. But how do you work against that sort of a dynamic with that goal?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, it’s great. I work on that with something I call the well, I don’t call it, I’ve borrowed it the sandbox model. So, Leading from the Sandbox is the book. And, uh, that’s been a really helpful way for me to think about how you allow people to to really build whatever that sand castle looks like, you know, whatever they think that sand castle needs to be or when it comes to flourishing and in a calling, you know, what is God calling them to build, right? And as long as it fits within the edges of the sandbox, be creative. Go for it. You know, build away. And those edges of the sandbox are my responsibility. I’ve got to think those through. I’ve got to, with my team, determine what would be a boundary that we don’t want to see people cross. You know, but if God’s saying, “Hey, you know what? This person needs to build a sand castle. It doesn’t fit in your box,” then that’s a little bit easier then to say, “Maybe there’s a different sandbox for you.” And that’s okay, by the way. You know, that really is okay.
Jim Killam Yeah.
Jon Imbeau But those boundaries are not at Wycliffe Canada, I don’t think they’re choking like it’s like, “Okay, I got to build a sandbox here in a thimble, you know, or a teacup.” But we do want that to be fairly large and you know boundaries that would represent our culture. So what does Wycliffe Canada’s culture look like? What’s our preferred culture, maybe is a better way to say it? You know we all have a culture and then we have the one we would prefer to see at in our organization. So I think the boundary, one of the parts of the sandbox, would probably be a preferred culture — our values, our four pillars of translation and literacy, scripture engagement and capacity building. It’s got to fit in the four priorities. You know, we’ve been really strong about that. That, you know, if you feel like you really want to build something, but it’s way outside of our priorities that we have as an organization, maybe it’s a different sandbox would be better. So yeah, that’s the way we try to go about it. And yeah, there are times where we get shocked and go, what did they build? Oh no. But okay. Hey, maybe we should be okay with that.
Jim Killam You spent some years, 19 years I think, as a pastor and then you said you were with Awana Canada for a decade or so. How does all that feed into what you’re doing now in terms of maybe what you learned about leading people?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, that I mean you hit it right on the head, Jim. I think the people part of it – is has been an incredible journey for me. Certainly as a pastor, right? Hopefully your pastor is a people person and I am I’m definitely someone who loves people. I love meeting people and love being in their lives. And you know, that part of it has both, it’s a passion that God’s put in you, but it’s also a skill, isn’t it? Like the reality is that we need to get a knack for working with people, especially leaders who are responsible for, you know, managing people or or helping people move from here to there. Like we need to have a for this and you develop that over time. And so I think if you throw me in a church context, I feel very comfortable there as far as you know that knack goes for chatting with people and getting to know their lives, asking the right questions, listening, uh, hey, let’s do something together, all of that. So that’s been helpful coming into the Wycliffe context here where we just have great people. They’re just really, really good people. So the opportunity for me to get to know them and love them, care about them, and to in a sense bring a pastoral gifting and calling that God’s given me, a pastoral approach to leading at Wycliffe has been really good. But at the same time, you know, I really don’t think you can just pastor or lead an agency like a Wycliffe. You can’t just do what you know works in a church, local church context as a leader there. And I think that’s where Awana actually has been really helpful for me was a decade of of being an executive director for Awana Canada and an international work, you know, sort of learning how important it is to organize well for an organization to get somewhere there has to be you know there’s an act to that too and so learning that has been helpful and both people and organizing is something I’m still learning lots about it just being a constant student of this and wanting to be better at it a good thing.
Jim Killam It’s really interesting to look back at our backgrounds and just how God sort of arranged things knowing where we were going to be in, you know, the next decade or so and never a day wasted. Right?
Jon Imbeau That’s so true. And you see his hand on it. But maybe when I was in it, I was like, Lord, what are you doing?
Jim Killam Oh, yeah.
Jon Imbeau You know, Yeah. Exactly. And but now, uh, yeah, looking back, and I suppose that’s a great heaven moment for us all, isn’t it? Is to hopefully an opportunity to be able to see every piece, every moment, every breath that God’s sovereign hand was upon and just worship him for that. Oh, I can’t wait for that day.
Jim Killam Yeah, it’s going to be good. There’s that Kierkegaard quote about how life only makes sense in reverse or something where you look back on it, you can see how it all fits together. But, um, yeah, you mentioned the church a little bit. I’m interested because so many of our alliance organizations are working with local or national church churches now and it’s a huge priority for the alliance. What are some insights maybe that you can bring to that conversation to say how have your relationships with I mean we we are the church but you know what I mean with the institutional church how has that progressed for you guys?
Jon Imbeau Yeah that’s great. That’s our number one priority. So I was mentioning the four priorities for us. Our number one priority is church engagement and that we look at that two ways. One is the work we’re doing alongside the global church. So our partners that we bring people and resources alongside of that needs to be the church. And so we want to vet, we want to look closely and make sure that whatever we’re doing moving forward with people and resources is come alongside the local church. So we really support WGA’s position that translation belongs to the church.
Jim Killam Why is that? I mean, I think I know, but I’d love to hear you state it. Why is that such a high priority that the church is central?
Jon Imbeau Well, because we really believe, it’s not just me, we really believe that the Lord is building his kingdom through the church. Of course, you know, as Christians, we believe this. And look, we’re recognizing that this is a very unique time in the history of missions where the global church is there. Not everywhere. I get it. You know, there’s a lot of places where the scriptures need to come and there really isn’t a church, but there’s probably a church adjacent, right? There probably is. And what a time the kingdom of God, his church, vast numbers of people all over the world, even in the most difficult places to be a Christian spiritually, you know, politically, geographically, all of that. And so, we think if that’s what’s happening, then we want to come alongside God’s movement in this and what a unique town where there is a church to work with. So, we don’t want to bypass the church. We don’t want to direct the church to do what we think needs to be done from our western perspective. You know, the whole control and power dynamic piece is really important to us in that as Canadians, we really should be and I think many of us are in Canada. taking quite seriously how important it is for the church, the Canadian church moving forward to recognize that power dynamics in the past, the way we’ve used power has been cruel and sinful in many ways. And so we want to learn from that. And at the same time, in case you just went, whoever you are out there in Canada that just heard that, in case you just went and at the same time, boy has God done amazing things through the Canadian church. And so at the very same time, it’s let’s move forward with God’s calling on the Canadian church. Let’s do it well. Let’s do it right. And so let’s come alongside the global church which is thriving right now and in a good way.
Jim Killam Is there a bit of re-education that you are needing to do with churches to understand what’s happening in the global body of Christ right now? Because it’s very different than it was a generation ago. And a lot of the people supporting missions, at least here in the US, are older. And so they bring an understanding of this that may not be reality anymore.
Jon Imbeau Yeah, that’s right. Yes. What you said about bringing that re-understanding or a new … Yeah, absolutely. I would say that’s primarily the kind of talks I’m giving right now where I am across Canada, wherever it is. That’s primarily the kind of talk I’m giving. So let’s get excited. Let me tell you about what God’s doing around the world with his church and let’s talk about what the newest modern missions movement looks like, right? And actually looks so I’m maybe preaching a bit what I often say, but it looks a lot like the first century church. You know, we often hold that up as like, oh, you know, first century church, what a model, how great that was. And true, but I’m thinking specifically of how the first century church was supported and built and established by missionaries who actually came from everywhere and they moved from where they were to somewhere else and they went west, they went east, they went north, they went south. And so I think that’s what’s happening again. What’s happening again is that people from the south are moving to the north or to the west or east or someone from the east is going over to the south or whatever it is. And I just did a little study of taking all the names in the book of Acts, you know, all those from like Paul’s missionary journeys on. There’s a lot of names that come up and you know, doing a little research around who these people were and where were they from and oh, this one was from North Africa and he went to modern day Turkey and this person from, you know, from Assyria, they ended up going to to Greece and this person from Greece ended up going to Syria and it’s like God is moving his people all over from everywhere to everyone. And so that’s a great message I think for our church today. And then finally, I would just say this, Jim, we’re trying to …give honor to and respect to the way missions have been done at Wycliffe and around the world for decades because it’s been really good and it continues to be, you know, really good. But is this because of the shifting world and the growing global church, is this now a new time for us to think differently about missionary? And I think the answer is yes. And so, we’re doing that and we’re trying to do that. Well, we’re calling it Missionary 2.0, you know, and so what does Missionary 2.0 look like? Not as a profile like, uh, oh, the Gen Z and they probably have a tattoo and maybe a hat on in church and, you know, they like worship music I don’t like and things like, you know, not a pro, not a profile, but more of a model. So, what would Missionary 2.0 do? And so, that takes into the um, you know, everyone to everywhere. And some of the stuff we’ve been talking about coming alongside the church.
Jim Killam I’m sure you hear churches that might say, “Well, we are completely locally focused. We’re planted in this community. This is our ministry.” I think you, from what I heard from my colleagues ablout their conversation with you, you would disagree with that approach. Can you tell me why?
Jon Imbeau Yeah, really. I would really disagree with it. And I would say that in my experience in Canada especially, whenever I’ve seen a church that’s globally focused, they’re thriving as a church. And whenever I’ve seen a church that gets inward focused or even just to the community most around them, they’re struggling. And it may be hard to hear for pastors and for churchgoers to hear that, but there’s something dynamic about the globally focused church that I think represents that like I was saying that early move the Holy Spirit where it seems that the Lord has always sent people like he’s ascending God. The father sends the son to be the savior of the world. Jesus sends the spirit and sends us out and he’s moving his people around. So it seems to be God’s nature. And so when we’re doing it, we’re reflecting him. And when we’re not, it’s not it’s there’s an angst to it. There’s a rub. And so as hard as it is to think that, hey, let’s just try to focus on ourselves here to get ourselves healthy as a church, actually focusing outside of yourself is the best way to be a more healthy church. You know, a really wonderful mentor of mine, elderly guy who has had a lot of experience and has a way of saying things and he said, you know, the cow can only get so old before it needs to drop a calf. And I remember he just said that to me when we were talking about churches and I was thinking, “Oh yeah, you know, you’re kind of you’re right.” Like it’s natural. It’s normal. And so I think that dropping the calf is the birth thing. It’s the multiplying. It’s being involved in God’s great commission calling.
Jim Killam And just to clarify, you’re not saying churches should not have local ministries and those sorts of things. You’re just saying there’s got to be a balance there, right? Yeah, it got to be a balance. So, my last church show I was at, you know, we did the classic, many pastors do this, but we did the classic, okay, what’s our Jerusalem? What’s our Judea Samaria? What’s our outer parts of the earth? Because we can’t forget that either. Otherwise, we’ll just get so inward focused we’ll shrivel up. So, our Jerusalem was, you know, in our immediate area, we felt like there was a real need to help people with food insecurity. And so there was a well before I even started as a pastor there, but there was a really good food security program there. And then, you know, we kind of expanded it out from there to build it out to other places of the earth. But yeah, no, not saying that shouldn’t be a focus on the neighborhoods that we’re in. I remember a time when it was like we were so globally minded as churches, missions minded, but we couldn’t cross the street to talk to our neighbor. And so we would be preaching up a storm as pastors going,
Jon Imbeau you know, send me around the world, Lord would sing songs like that. You know, I’ll go around the world for you, but just not across the street. And so maybe we’re just looking for something that I think represents the great commission calling of being local and local and yeah, and all of the above.
Jim Killam Tell me about some of Wycliffe Canada’s or maybe pick one a collaborative thing you guys are doing. I know you have something going on in Peru. I know you have other things happening, but how has that worked and how is that feeding into your overall vision for what this ought to look like?
Jon Imbeau Well, I mean, you just mentioned the Peru one. We’ve got lots of good partnerships with people really partnering well with SIL in many places with WGA agencies and places around the world. Cameroon and Peru are certainly that’s the case. In Peru, we come alongside Pastor Luis in the ministry called AIDIA and his vision to really reach the Quechan speaking people in the country as well as really all Peruvians in their heart languages. You know, we just really want to come alongside that. And that represents for us, I think, a really good example of how Pastor Luis works with the local church. He’s working with believers in the mountains region. of Peru in the Andes as well as down in the jungle area as well. And so you know, are there translators from your church community that could come and get trained by our Peruvian experts who are very sophisticated and educated and brilliant at this? And so my question to Pastor Luis was, if we continue to come alongside you in this, how can we help? Right? What would be the way that we would be best used by the Lord to come alongside of you and it’s the answers that are given to that we go about working on as a Wycliffe. Can we do that? Can we help with that? Can we do that in new ways like a missionary 2.0 model? Are there ways that we could come in a short-term capacity or a take on a specific need there that maybe doesn’t require an embedded life in Peru commitment. And by the way, is there a need for an embedded Canadian to live in, you know, San Lorenzo in the jungle for 30 years? Because if that’s the need and that as the local church would thrive and do so well, then let’s do it that way.
Jim Killam But you’re approaching this with a servant’s heart and with a lot of listening, it sounds like—rather than coming in with a plan.
Jon Imbeau 100 percent. Yes. And we’re done with the model of, “Hi, I’m from Wycliffe Canada. You’ve been selected for a translation, so you better get yourself ready because here it comes.” And then, you know, the worst case scenario would be 30 years later, ‘Here’s a Bible’, and, you know, people stare at us. ‘Who are you?’ Obviously I’m giving like a horror story here. Nobody who’s listening to this would say that’s the way that we’ve gone about this or would want to go about this. But so if we know what the way is that we don’t we don’t want to see that happen. How do we want to see this? And so here’s the two words for us, Jim is well, if you put this as a … come alongside is one. So we’ll just sort of make that one big long word. We’ll put a hyphen there. Come alongside, and the second one is relationship.
Jim Killam Okay.
Jon Imbeau And so in relationship with let’s say we’ve been saying AIDIA with Peru here in our conversation in relationship with them like we care about you. We love you. We pray for you. We’re friends. We want to listen and learn and know what God’s doing in your life. And then are there ways for us now to come alongside of that and support that and that might be a yes, you can come alongside to do a very technical piece of Bible translation ministry, very technical and it takes, you know, language learning and training and years of linguistics work and etc. that’s not the case in Peru. The idea thar that’s already there. Our Peruvian friends have that in buckets. But in other places around the world, not the case. So it could be that very nuanced and technical piece that is you know scripture translation, but it might also be you know the one I I heard recently from Pastor Louise was you know do you have a social media expert that could come and help us do Bible engagement in the Quechuan languages but help us like figure out how to use social media well with that. And I was thinking of how many Canadians we have who are way too expert at social media and they’ve spent their 10,000 hours becoming experts in social media. So yeah, maybe there is a come alongside that looks like that.
Jim Killam All Bible translation movements now talk about transformation as being the goal as opposed to you know production of Scripture or something. It seems like a no-brainer statement, yet it’s harder in reality sometimes. Have you guys experienced that? That there’s a bit of a struggle to get there.
Jon Imbeau Absolutely. And I think you’re 100 percent right. Everybody wants that, of course. And that’s usually like the part of a mission statement for Wycliffe or whatever it is, whatever agency it is, the transformed life is what we’re interested in. Yeah. Well, so I can say that in not every case do we see that being, you know, so evident and so why not, you know, we have to ask, we have to be OK with asking the question, why isn’t that happening? Why aren’t we seeing that? Maybe a community’s had the scriptures for some time. And so where’s the transformed life? But I want to say this at the same time, transformed lives, that belongs to the Lord, right? He’s the one that transforms lives and He’s very capable at it. He’s very good at it and he’s doing that even when we’re not necessarily seeing it. Right. But the truth is that it’s very difficult to measure this. Right.
Jim Killam I was going to say it’s hard to measure and it’s even — this may sound cynical, but it’s hard to raise money around it.
Jon Imbeau Yes. Yeah. That’s true. Yeah. A more product oriented – like, help us finish translating this Bible. That’s true.
Easier to raise money for the first pillar, harder for literacy, maybe even harder for Scripture engagement, and you know, building capacity. Well, you know, do you mean like fresh water? Because that’s cool. We, you know, I don’t mind giving to that, but …
Is it if building capacity is ‘let’s build a church with the believers that have come to Jesus through this work’? Harder and harder to do that. So, I agree. And so, what do we use? Like pastors think of this all the time. How do I know if people are actually getting closer to Jesus in my church or not? Is it growing deep at all? Because, you know, we can just sort of measure people in the seats. We can measure baptisms. You can measure, you know, how many people are in care groups. Uh, you know, there’s a few little metrics in there. You can measure and you say, I hope that equals transformed lives. Um, but really it’s God’s thing. It’s just what he’s doing. And uh, so yeah, we have to really pray that the way we’ve organized ourselves, the programs that we’re coming alongside of is all about that. And then pray like mad that God is using whatever it is we’ve come up with for his transformation work.
Jim Killam And you said it, it’s hard to measure and maybe if it was easy to measure, it wouldn’t be of God. I don’t know.
Jon Imbeau Yeah, that’s true. How do you measure God and his work? Yeah, you really can’t.
Jim Killam Yeah, there’s just kind of a wonder about it. That’s really the fun part, too, is just seeing it move in surprising ways, in ways that maybe you could never predict and never measure, but you can certainly see it.
Jon Imbeau Well, yeah. And where do we always go with transformation? We always go to stories, right? And we say, “Well, I heard of this person and, you know, this great story of someone coming to Jesus.” I just heard one this morning on an earlier Zoom call, you know, someone coming to Jesus in Mexico and reading the Bible in his heart language. And after a while, he said to his family, I think I’m going to join the Christians. I think they’ve got this right. You know, this Bible sure seems to be speaking to me that it’s right. I think that’s so good. Like such a great story of, you know, we translate it, he’s got the Bible, he’s reading it, the Lord’s working in his heart. I think I’m going to join the Christians. That was so good. So stories are what we need for this, right? That probably speaks to that. And so we collect the stories. We collect them. We share them. Sometimes we share them over decades, the same story over and over, but hopefully they’re new ones because there’s so much going on.
Jim Killam You could even start to categorize stories as a way of measuring things, too, can’t you? Where you can see, all right, I’ve got, you know, eight new stories this year of, you know, the book of Psalms being used in this context or something.
Jon Imbeau yeah that’s good. Great idea.
Jim Killam I used to work at the Seed Company and we had conversations about this — can we quantify story in terms of impact? And the answer is probably it’s going to fall short but there are ways we can almost put tags on stories to start seeing all right can we see maybe what God’s doing through different aspects of these stories. And it’s a fun way to look at it. But again, when you try to quantify everything God’s doing, you run up against well, then that’s maybe not possible.
Jon Imbeau yeah, and also we sometimes make the mistake of going, well, there’s no story, so God’s not transforming any lives, so let’s pull out. Or we’ve made a mistake. All that work was for nothing. I mean, I come on. Like hopefully we’re we’ve got a lot of history here to look at to say that sometimes God takes his time and his timing is not our timing. His ways are not our ways.
Jim Killam I wish he would get better about that, you know.
Jon Imbeau Yeah. Exactly. So maybe he is transforming lives and communities and countries and cultures, but in his time. And so yeah, I think I just get really skeptical around anyone who’s saying, you know, Where’s the transformed lives? Where’s the fruit of this? You know, like what are you saying? Like God’s not capable of and is not producing fruit on the vine? Like right, you know, of course he is.
Jim Killam I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Wycliffe Global Alliance. You guys obviously are a super important part of that, but where do you see the Alliance doing well? What is it doing well and where might it improve?
Jon Imbeau So being new at this, I get the privilege actually of having that new, fresh eyes perspective, right? And so I’m going to take advantage of it and say that while I still have these fresh eyes, what I see as being an incredible blessing that the WGA is doing really well right now is providing the come together space for us to listen to one another and to have conversation. And from an outside perspective, I got to tell you, this is just an incredible gift that this movement has that not every movement or denomination or whatever has. And it’s multicultural, many different countries, many organizations, many languages, many places where God’s doing his work in unique ways, but we have a space where we come together for the conversation and we’re OK with the conversation being challenging and how do we move forward? What is God asking us to do? How do we work together in this? What are some of the ways that we should stop doing what we’re doing and do what and do it differently? Where else can we have that if we don’t have the WGA creating that venue for us to have the conversation? Where else does this take place? I mean, it’s much harder. I’m going to tell you that it takes place over print. papers and websites. It takes place over nuance and conversation, but it’s much more difficult. What a gift this is where a bunch of agencies come together to say, “OK, we all agree in these streams.” We’re common in these ways and so let’s talk about this. So, I think that’s a huge advantage and I would hate to see us lose that. It would be a sad day for Bible translation. if we lost what a gift that’s been given to us that not everybody else has. Now, you know, some might say, well, you know, we’re busy, man. like we got to get stuff done. You know, who has time for this, you know, this conversation stuff, right? And
Jim Killam Yeah.
Jon Imbeau but think about that for a moment. Like, if we don’t have that conversation space and that relationship provider, that bridge to connect us together, what we put our heads down to get done is going to be far more chaotic. It’s going to take a lot longer. It’s going to be a lot harder for us to do that work, you know. So, the action stuff isn’t… I don’t look at it like, oh, it’s the WGA’s responsibility to pump out action for us. No, they couldn’t possibly prescribe the bridges and avenues and strategies and all of that. That’s up to us. We have to come away from the listening, the relationship to the specifics around how God wants us to act together. And what a perfect new missions time this is that the WGA fits into perfectly because I don’t know one of our projects where it’s just us, right? There’s four or five agencies in every single project now. And so if we don’t have that space together, you know, hey, I don’t know how that helps us. I think it works for us. So, you know, from an outside perspective, I think it’s great. Hey, is it perfect? No. But neither is what Wycliffe Canada and neither is anybody’s thing that they’re doing.
So, what could the WGA do better? I think just facilitating the bridge piece, facilitating the bridge piece into information. I think information is a fit. So, facilitating that bridge, the relationship, the time, passing the information along, giving us the arenas, the time, the opportunities to be able to figure it out together and hash it out. And then we can’t do that without the right information in front of us. I think there’s probably some practical organization ways to help us organize that could be useful. You know, some tools I think there’s a lot of tools that are helpful that WGA does provide but could provide even more. But let’s see where it goes. Like let’s lean into it and be okay with this being a lot more fluid and malleable and managed by the times and the leaders that God has for today. And if it’s a nonpower dynamic like not trying to abuse power movement, it’s more of a movement than an organization. And you have to let it just be what it’s going to be. You have to let it change and shape as the movement goes. And as soon as you start locking it down with, you need to produce this or else you’re not really useful, well then it really stops being a movement and it becomes another agency which you know is … agencies are good but I think we’ve got a lot of those.
Jim Killam I was thinking this almost takes us back to where we started this conversation about working remotely and you know not being physically in the same room but having to figure this out and we’re almost having to do that on a global scale. We get to be together once every four years or whatever it may look like, but a lot of this is Zoom meetings and a lot of this is leveraging technology that we’re still figuring out. So the fact that we don’t have it perfect yet is not that big of a surprise but not a surprise. It’s an incredible opportunity.
Jon Imbeau It really is. I really want to encourage anybody who’s listening who maybe has doubts about it. You know, maybe it’s my outside perspective coming in and maybe I’m a bit naive to it then because I don’t have the decade or whatever it is to see more. But, OK, I take that for what it is.
But when I hear someone say, ‘Oh, it’s, you know, it’s a bit kumbaya.’ Well, just stop and think about that for a moment. Kumbaya means ‘come by here’. And I think that’s the power and strength of the WGA. We’ve got a space where you can come by here and seek the Lord and seek his direction of what the spirit is doing. And everybody has the same voice. Everybody is respected. Your voice is respected from your country and your country and your language. And so Kumbaya is probably the perfect way to describe it. Let’s come by here. And if we don’t have that space, well, where will we find a place to come by together? I don’t know.
Jim Killam I think that makes a wonderful way to end this conversation.
Jon Imbeau Really good. Sing together?
Jim Killam Yeah, I’m not going to do that. I promise you, you will be very unhappy if I start singing.
Jon Imbeau OK, me, too.
Jim Killam Yeah. But thank you, Jon. This has been really good and I think a big encouragement to people around the world who are leading Alliance organizations and these conversations are just part of what you just talked about. So I really appreciate it.
Jon Imbeau Thanks, Jim. Thanks for having me. What a great blessing and praying for God’s mercy and encouragement and strength on all of us.