Welcome to Speak The Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship. Hello. Hello. Hello. We are still on the road in an undisclosed location.

I'm excited about today's episode. We have a really interesting guest that I just met, and I'm excited to talk with him further. I'm joined with Danny Falcone. Danny, how are we doing?

Doing great now after getting to know you, my brother. But, yeah, very excited to be on this podcast with you. Thanks for having me.

Yes. And, y'all, we are gonna be talking to Danny. I'll be talking with Danny a little bit about missions and biblical counseling. So we're I'm still at the Biblical Counseling Coalition Global Summit, and this is where I had the opportunity to meet Danny. And so we're gonna talk a little bit about missions and biblical counseling and hear a little bit about Danny's life and his ministry, but more importantly, outside of that, what he's doing now in his heart and hope behind missions and biblical counseling.

So, Danny, you just wanna share a little bit about yourself and let us know what you're about, man. What are you

doing these days? Yeah. So about me, married to Melissa. Been married to her for, let me do the math here, twelve twelve and a half years. Lord willing, is accurate on the math front.

Four kiddos, ten, nine, six, three, girl, boy, girl. So a lot of as I mentioned earlier, joyful exhaustion in the home. I love it. It's been a blast. We live currently in Alexandria, Virginia, and I am serving there as a lay elder at Delray Baptist Church.

It's been a blessing. We've been there about eight years, and then I have been full time with a ministry I helped another elder from Delray Baptist Church start about three years ago called Frontlines Ministries.

So tell us a little bit about Frontlines. What's Frontlines frontlining? Yeah. Frontline is Frontline,

and so Frontlines yeah. So we I'll tell you where we've been and where we're going. Yep. The heartbeat of it was just when I first met with Cody Montgomery, who was executive director of Frontlines, and I head up the training or the, yeah, the training and equipping. So he and I had a conversation.

We got connected through John Henderson, and he and I both were had some experience with missions, and we're seeing a massive rate of attrition and burnout amongst missionaries. And then come to find out even statistically speaking about within about three years, fifty percent of ministry missionaries come back off the field. And, again, there's gonna be some moments and reasons why it's a good thing for them to be coming back home and even wisdom would have them do. But roughly around two thirds of those reasons are considered potentially preventable. And these are like, it's team conflict, it's emotional issues, it's spiritual issues, things that we thought, man, Lord, there's gotta be a way for the resources that in particular are found in a biblical counseling foundation framework ministry, one another in ministry, and also bringing in the local church could really help with some of this burnout and attrition that's happening so that these brothers and sisters being sent out can really continue to, Lord willing, endure faithfully on the field.

And so Frontlines got launched a few years ago, and we the main vision of it was to help churches strengthen their missionaries and care well for their missionaries to extend faithful years and avoid burnout through heart focused church centered training, counseling, and consulting. And so the heart focused piece is just, again, it's a robust theology of the heart. Any kind of biblical counseling foundation, biblical counseling one zero one, theology of the heart type of framework. And then the church centered piece was, hey, how do we, as churches, send out? How do we help them think through what does that relationship look like between a church and their sent ones?

From the time someone says, hey, I'm interested in missions. In the training that Lord willing is happening, is there any conversations around growing in a awareness of their hearts and life hits and they respond, recognizing, okay, what are the influences on my heart? Do I even understand from scripture the role of the heart in my life and the Christian life? And am I able to then invite others in to help me begin to grow in heart awareness before you go to the field so that when you're somebody is sent to the field and the heat gets cranked up to a 100,000 degrees Yeah. They are not, in some ways, not surprised, and they've already have a process in place of inviting people in and being asked these heart level questions to be able to bring them to the Lord and have wisdom and discernment and understanding.

And, Lord, here are some of the things that are happening below the surface of my heart that I can bring Christ, his word, and his people into. And so that's where we started. Now in the conversations we've had with missions pastors and churches over the past few years in particular, one of the things that kept arising was, hey, we by God's grace, the training's been helpful. The counseling that we do, and I'll mention even on the counseling front, as we counsel with missionaries, we'll ask them, hey, is there someone either from your field church or if you don't have a field church, from your sending church that we can invite into the virtual counseling room with us so that they can be learning about hearing about what's happening so that they can continue that care for you guys as a church. And that's kind of the church centered aspect of the counseling that we try to continue to emphasize, or if they can't be in the room that hopefully the we have the missionary then send a recap of what we discussed and some of the scriptures we discussed and send it back to their church.

So in these conversations with missionaries, with pastors on the the church side, one of the things we were noticing is that they kept saying, man, we are we just feel very disorganized when it comes to missionary care. We would love to be more mindful and thoughtful about what the needs are and even what life looks like for them over there and what needs they have spiritually and otherwise. But we just it's hard for us to keep up with all the different newsletters and when church kinda missions teams get together, oftentimes, half the meeting is, hey. What's the latest update on so and so? Any updates happen at all.

And so in conversation with churches, we said, hey. If we were able to develop essentially this care and equipping platform where churches could pull up basically just a dashboard that had all of their missionaries listed. Click on the missionary, see their bio, all the important information that's there, also just some care notes that they were able to have, whether the pastors were putting them in or people that were part of the care team for the missionary were putting in just updates and prayers and ways to be caring for them where just right there in front of them in one dash where they can pull it up and there it is. We said, hey, churches, would that be helpful? And it sounded like the resounding answer was absolutely.

And so we, with the help of some very just wonderful godly brothers and sisters and one guy in particular who is a genius type developer, he's been donating his time to help build out this platform. And so we're hoping to launch that this next year. And then within the platform, there's also an equipping aspect where, again, our hope and prayer is that before, missionary gets sent out, there's thoughtfulness of kind of that pre field equipping that includes heart awareness, that includes understanding a again, that robust theology of the heart. And so our training is built into there, but then churches can build out their own training based on their own pipeline built on they can add their own training. They can pull in other trainings that they think are helpful and basically set up this sequence of training to be able to organize all of that.

In that same conversation with churches, say, could this happen for member care? Because our church, we wanna be able to care well for missionaries, but we wanna grow in how we care well for our members. And so that is also the hope of this platform is that it can do both, that it can help churches who wanna use it to help do care for their members, even have whether it's small group leaders or if they have lay counselors or just pastors. Right? In particular, for pastors to have that pastoral dashboard of seeing what's happening in the lives of the people, issues that are getting flagged, they wanna be able to follow-up on.

And then even churches that have pastoral internships to do training as well from the same platform, this care and equipping platform. So pastoral internships, member care, and then for missions, same thing. Here's the training pipeline for missionaries. Here's the missionary care hub for them so that Lord willing they can be raising up care teams for these missionaries that know how to have heart level conversations. And so that is where we're hoping to go as a place where we're hoping to embed all of our kind of training and resources there.

So we still do counseling. Missionaries are still very much drowning. We're trying to get as far upstream as we can to the local church because we again, we wanna say, hey. From the time someone's interested in missions, how can we help them think well about preparation, especially at the level of the heart for their missionary? What does that look like?

Because certainly they're gonna have to do some good theological training for the missionaries, cross cultural language acquisition for them, some great ministries that do that, and then even the training affirmation of the church. Are they evangelizing, discipling here stateside? But then the character piece, how much the, again, the foundations of biblical counseling ministry, again, it's God's word opened up, applied to our lives and heart. There was it seemed like that was not being the awareness of that in the world of missions was it seemed very low. And so we now have some training for that, for both the missionary, but also for the care team to come alongside and do that with them.

And so that's where we've been and where we're going, Lord willing, starting next year.

Wow. That's a lot, man.

It's a lot.

Big task. Speaking of the task, the missionary task that you're talking about. Right? So that's trying to get on the frontline of that where they currently are and then actually getting back to the point of equipping the preventative piece. So you guys are definitely sounding like you're trying to build a robust framework for caring for them in so many different ways, not to mention providing the actual counseling for them.

What are some of the people that you're currently working with? Like when I talked with you earlier today, you would we've got some people here at the global summit that are representative of other countries and ministries that they are. So what are some areas that you're currently working in country wise?

Yeah. Good question. So we yeah. We've done we've worked with missionaries and also pastors, indigenous pastors in Africa, China, Middle East, and so those have been the primary places currently that we have been doing a lot of our work. Now we and even with the kind of the MENA region, Middle East, North Africa, we've done some work there with a team, which interestingly enough, there was we were doing some counseling with for a couple that was in that region, and we ended up learning more about their team dynamic.

And so we ended up starting to do counseling for everyone on that particular team. And things were difficult, and they did not even recognize, okay, how do we work through this? Do we bring in the agency? Do we bring in the church? How do we think through this?

And by God's grace, we got connected then to the church of the leader there. And that church now has been able to come alongside that particular couple to help work on, okay, what does this look like for them to grow and be sanctified in their own walks with Christ as they now consider how to basically reenter back onto the field, which by God's grace that seems to be happening in in the coming years. And that's the kind of work we have done with missionaries that we, again, try to as much as possible then get connected with those churches. But there is a brother that's here at the conference, Ronald Cogo. He's just been a wonderful brother, and he is wanting to so he himself is a church planer there in in Kenya, and he is also sending out other church planters.

And he is recognizing, hey, the work on the frontline side that we are doing, he said, man, this is absolutely applicable to pastors in his context and area. And so we've been doing some cohorts with that particular group as well. And the hope is that, and by God's grace, it's been able to land enough enough for them with their understanding and tracking with what we're hoping for from the hardware framework that then they can take it, make it their own, translate it. And so there's a few other regions that we're hoping to do similar things with in the coming years. That's really great.

So how would churches for those people who are

listening who are thinking like, man, I think my church would like to get behind this, or I personally would like to get behind this and support it financially or any other ways that they can support Frontlines. Yeah. Great question.

I would say on the church side, the easiest way would just be to go to our web our website, flmin, flmin,flmin.org, and you can reach out to us there. We should have pretty soon even just a layout of, hey. Here's what the platform can hopefully help, the church do. Here's our training and resources that come with that. Here's, counseling that we offer.

So they can reach out to us through the website on the church front. Those that are interested in financially supporting Frontlines, our hope is that as we continue to partner with churches, the donations over time can become such that we build up more of a scholarship type fund to be able to for, again, the pastors that we're doing this with in places like Africa, where that can be fully funded through donors. And then also we wanna make the counseling as affordable as possible for missionaries. So by God's grace, many of these missionaries, their churches will cover the counseling cost for them, but we'd also there's there are those missionaries where the churches are not able to cover that, and so we'd wanna make that as affordable as we can. So that's another way that donations are very helpful to make that more affordable, both for that hard places initiative and with the pastors, indigenous pastors, but then also for the missionaries themselves to receive counseling.

Nice. That's good. So what about okay. So we've got the churches, and we've got the individuals of those churches. What about nonprofit organizations who feel like maybe that they have some services that would benefit assuming because you mentioned within that robust nature of care that you're giving, what would be some ways for nonprofit organizations to be like, for those people who may be like, wow, man, I'm I think I can I can offer some service and partnership with Frontlines that would obviously terminate on the pastor or whether it's equipping or actual providing counseling, what would be the pathway for that?

Yeah. In a similar way, reach out to us because within that platform that I mentioned, the kind of member care, missionary care platform, there is within it basically just a library of content resources that churches can add their own, develop their own, or just pull in others to have a part of the to be a part of that library so that as they're building out the training pathways for pastoral interns, for care teams, for missionaries, they can use that content from the libraries to build that out. And so I would say if there are churches who like, ABC, for example, that do help churches be equipped churchwide in biblical counseling, it would be wonderful for churches to be aware of some of those resources to say, hey, brothers and sisters, here are just some good resources to help your kinda on the churchwide care. Of course, the trickle down, if churches are able to care well for members, they're gonna be able to care well for missionaries. So I would say reach out to us as well.

Or even through the churches themselves, if there are ministries already partnering with churches, have them reach out to us about the platform to say, can we get those resources that they're already using to be in more of a streamlined place where they can make it more accessible and build it into their training pipelines for pastors, missionaries, care teams.

Yeah. That's really great. And so with with all of that service that you're offering at the proactive level and then just the just the reactive level as far as providing counseling, what would be some other ways for them, for whoever wants to support you outside of reaching out to your website and those sorts of things, but just being able to pray for you, what would be some prayers that would be helpful in the consideration of just supporting your midst? It's a

great question. Yeah. In on the prayer front, as you can imagine, as we've stepped into this world of just wanting to raise awareness Yeah. Of how biblical counseling can be helpful in this world of missions, the need is massive. The need is massive.

We've been overwhelmed at times with the things that we have been asked to do, and we've had to step back and say, okay, Lord, how can we be the most thoughtful in our limited finiteness, but also try to continue to grow and raise awareness for church center heart focused kind of training and counseling? And so prayer for wisdom from above would be we would very much covet that. And in all of it, we are just like we've been talking about through this whole conference. The hope and prayer and goal is that this faithful endurance that we're praying will increase on the field for those that are sent out. That would increase, Lord willing, and people hearing the gospel, churches being planted, the worship of Jesus among the nations, that we would be able to point these missionaries and churches to Christ himself.

That is where the endurance is gonna come from worship communion with the savior. And so in all of the things that we can get pulled in a thousand directions that we would be centered in our own lives, in our own ministry on Christ so that from there we can help encourage others in that same direction because it's very easy, as you can imagine, to begin to try to work in our own wisdom, our own strength, our own strategy, and we just need the Lord to work in all of those ways. So definitely prayer there would be significant. And then just as we continue to partner with churches, that the Lord give us wisdom on how to best help the bride of Christ. We wanna be as helpful as we can to churches.

So that's why even in this kind of platform, it's come from conversations with pastors, with ministry leaders. And so we just pray that the Lord can continue to, through those conversations, give us that kind of feedback so we can be helpful to the church.

Danny, that is awesome, man. That is a tremendous work that you guys are setting out to do. So please y'all, for those of you who wanna support prayerfully, just ultimately, I would encourage you as you're listening to this podcast, just maybe pause it and just pray for Frontlines and just for that wisdom and that care from above just to to really help with the needs that are definitely needed. This is a tremendous task with missionaries. I know, as you pointed out, Danny, the statistics are frightening that there's a lot of care that goes undone to those who really just wanna get the gospel to those who don't have it.

And so that's tremendous work, and so thank you for your heart in doing that. And it has absolutely been a joy to hear your heart for missions, and I think that is something that is desperately needed because part of the missionary task in preaching the gospel of people come to faith in Christ, a church forms. Then there's the leadership development piece where the church gets strengthened, but all the while the pastor is exhausting himself. Then I'm sure these pastors have the heart of Paul in that sense where they they're they're being poured out as as a living sacrifice to that end, but it is very difficult work. And that leadership development piece and helping the bride of Christ grow to your point is very difficult.

And so being able to have those on the front lines with them, caring for them, and then helping alleviate some of that burden to equip the saints for the work of ministry that they're all trying to do is very helpful. But I think from the onset of our conversation of just at the heart level, right, the theology training, the practical theology training, but just really beginning to develop. And so I like that heart of it as well that you guys are doing where it's, let's meet them where they are, and that's great. Unfortunately, we do that, but we stay there in a lot of ministries. We just continue to meet people where they are versus getting them and just having more of a proactive approach in our ministry.

So I think that is a tremendous heart and task. Thank you for sharing that. And, guys, again, all of this will be in the show. Whatever way that you can support Frontlines, I pray that you would consider doing that. And, Danny, thank you for your time, and thank you for just sharing your heart for missions and biblical counseling.

Thank you guys for what you're doing. So grateful for this ministry and this work. So blessed to be on this podcast with you.

Yeah. Thank you, brother. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll see you guys next time.