Manny Martinez had just finished teaching 40 Egyptian pastors and church planters when his translator came up with a question from the room. "Your English is so good," they wanted to know, "but you don't look American." Manny explained that his grandparents came from Mexico. The light went on. Oh, you're Mexican. The conversations went deeper from there.

Manny is a mission mobilizer with Via. He spent six years in Peru mobilizing the Latino church toward unreached peoples, and now he's back in Austin, Texas, working with Latino believers and with a large North American church. Jenn Chang and I ask him what's different when you mobilize Latinos and Anglos. In many Latino churches the barrier is permission, because nothing moves without the pastor's blessing. In many Western churches, especially large ones, the barrier is comfort and a hamster wheel of programs. Manny's approach to the first is simple. He never goes around the local church.

I also ask him a question I keep wrestling with: what do you do when believers are released to make disciples on the field in ways their sending churches would never allow at home? Manny answers it honestly. Jenn shares how some Thai pastors have helped by offering covering to new house churches. And Manny tells the story of Ronald and Glenda Chunga, who now lead the mobilization work in Peru and do it better, he says, than he ever could.

Maybe you pastor a congregation with Latino families in it. Maybe you're a practitioner watching God raise up workers from the global South. Either way, this conversation will stretch how you think about who goes, and who sends.

Learn more about Via at vianations.org.

Free resource: 3 Mindset Shifts That Unlock Multiplication — resources.daretomultiply.com/3mindsetshifts