He skipped class to read his Bible in a tree. He quit his engineering career the day he got promoted. And when two doctors declared his baby dead, he prayed for thirty minutes — and the boy came back to life.

Some stories you just have to sit with for a minute. Pastor Oscar’s is one of those. On this week’s episode of On the Move, Leanne White talked with Oscar, the senior pastor of Bread of Life Church in Kabwe, Zambia—and what came out was a conversation that covers every terrain of the Christian life: faith that costs something, miracles you can’t explain away, and a picture of the church that might make you rethink how seriously you take your own walk with God.

The Kid in the Tree

Oscar grew up on the western side of Zambia, the fifth of seven siblings in a family that wasn’t particularly religious. They had some gospel literature around the house—mostly from Jehovah’s Witness visitors—and a Bible storybook called The Greatest Story of the Bible that gave young Oscar his first mental images of who God was. His mother eventually started attending the United Church of Zambia, a denomination with roots in the mission work of David Livingstone, and she began reading the Bible to her children. One chapter a night, from the Good News Bible. Oscar says they weren’t interested.

That changed when he was fifteen. A revival broke out in a Baptist church in Lusaka, and Oscar heard the gospel in a way that reached him personally. On October 8, 1992, he gave his life to Christ—and almost quit school. He was so consumed with knowing Jesus that he’d show up in the morning, get his name marked on the attendance sheet, then sneak out to the bush, climb a tree, and spend the day reading his New Testament.

That hunger for the Word never went away. It just grew.

Promoted on the Same Day God Said “Quit”

Oscar’s mom talked him out of dropping everything to go into ministry right away. “You’re too young to be a pastor,” she told him. So he got a degree in telecommunications, landed a job as an engineer, and did well—really well. Meanwhile, he connected with a pastor who had planted a Bread of Life church in western Zambia and spent nine years being discipled by him. That relationship became Oscar’s only formal ministry training. No Bible college. No seminary. Just a patient man pouring into a hungry one.

By 2005, the call to full-time ministry had been burning for over a decade. But Oscar was thriving in his career, rising through the ranks, and enjoying life as a single man in the capital city. Then, on the exact day he received a promotion, God told him it was time to leave.

He laughed about it on the episode—comparing himself to Moses, who spent decades wanting to lead Israel and then, when God finally said go, suddenly couldn’t think of a single reason he was qualified. Oscar’s employer told him he’d forfeit every benefit he’d earned over ten years if he resigned. He walked away anyway. “I am willing to walk away from everything,” he told them, “to follow this Christ who died for my sins.”

Fifty-Five Kids and a Lot of Faith

His first assignment was youth pastor at Bread of Life in Lusaka. He showed up and found fifty-five young people. He’d just left a job managing 500,000 telecom subscribers. The contrast was brutal. But he did what he knew: he poured into people the way his mentor had poured into him. Same approach—no fancy methodology, just discipleship, investment, and sending young people out.

In three months, the group grew from 55 to 600. By January 2007, it hit 1,200. By 2018, it had reached 5,000. And those young people weren’t just attending—they were planting churches. Oscar trained them to start small groups wherever they went: schools, businesses, neighborhoods. Those groups grew into churches. Eighty percent of the Bread of Life churches being planted were coming out of that youth movement.

“Baby Alive”

In 2008, Oscar got married, and he and his wife had their first son. The boy was born prematurely with serious complications. One morning, they noticed he wasn’t moving or blinking. They rushed him to the hospital, where one doctor examined him and delivered the news flatly: “Baby dead.” A second doctor was called for a second opinion. Same conclusion.

Oscar’s wife was crying. He sat there, stunned, and began talking to God. He quoted Scripture. He reminded God that children are a gift, that His blessing makes rich and adds no sorrow. He didn’t understand. He just kept praying.

Thirty minutes later, the machines showed signs of life. One of the doctors screamed: “Baby alive!”

Oscar says that moment changed his devotion to the gospel in a way nothing else had. Not because God had to prove anything—“Jesus Christ, his death is enough”—but because it confirmed something deep: He who has called me is faithful.

Reviving a Ghost Town

When Oscar’s senior pastor recognized his heart for missions, he sent Oscar and his wife to Kabwe—a city in central Zambia that had been devastated by mine closures and economic collapse. People called it a ghost town. Industries dead. Railway shut down. Poverty everywhere. Hopelessness thick in the air.

Oscar found a church that had been in existence for nineteen years and had about 450 members. He did what he’d always done: trained people, discipled people, made the church more Bible-centered and Christ-centered. In four months, attendance grew from 450 to 1,500. He started a 5 a.m. prayer meeting that packed out daily. He organized prayer marches with banners reading “Revive Kabwe.” He launched a Wednesday prayer meeting for businesspeople downtown. He reignited the youth movement.

And people started coming to Jesus—hundreds of them. From there, Oscar and his team began planting churches in surrounding villages. They now have about thirty churches across the Central Province.

What the Global Church Can Learn from Zambia

Maybe the most convicting part of the conversation was Oscar’s description of what normal Christian life looks like in his church. Every member commits to three hours of daily prayer. Five chapters of Bible reading a day—enough to finish the whole Bible every year. Fasting twice a week. And sharing the gospel with at least one person every week.

He wasn’t saying it to brag. He was describing what happens when a church decides to go back to the cross and take the book of Acts seriously. “If Jesus were a member of my church,” Oscar said, “this is exactly how he would respond. He would not be consumed by what I have or what I don’t have. He would be consumed by what I must do to fulfill the Father’s purpose.”

Oscar also shared a remarkable story about one of his deacons—a prominent lawyer in Kabwe whose son had been born deaf and unable to speak. Two doctors had told the family the boy would never hear or talk. But after prayer and fasting, Oscar prayed for the nine-year-old, and the boy said “Amen”—his first word. The father screamed. And the ripple effect through the community was immediate: if Jesus could do that, he’s worth following.

In Zambia, Oscar explained, faith in the supernatural is already deeply rooted—people often weigh whether Jesus offers more than the local witch doctor. When they see evidence that He does, “they are willing to throw away their idols, their charms. Because Jesus gives them peace. Jesus gives them protection.”

One More Thing

Oscar and his wife have four children: Oscar, Shekinah, Churchill, and Abriana. If you take the first letter of each name—O, S, C, A—you’re four-fifths of the way to spelling Oscar. His wife wasn’t interested in having a fifth child, but when she later felt led to change her own name, Oscar saw his chance. He suggested Raya, meaning “mercy.” She loved it. And just like that, the family spells O-S-C-A-R.

It’s a small, funny detail in an otherwise heavy episode. But it tells you something about this man—he’s deeply serious about the gospel and deeply joyful about the life God’s given him. Both things at once.

Leanne closed the episode with a thought worth sitting with: the question isn’t “Am I called to Zambia?” It’s “Who has God placed in front of me right now to disciple?” Because the gospel moves the same way everywhere—not just across continents, but across coffee tables, living rooms, and everyday conversations. One person at a time.

On the Move is a podcast of 21C International. To learn more about how you can support the training of pastors in the majority world, visit 21cinternational.org.

We have more information than ever — and one of the most lost generations in history. What’s missing? The answer might be simpler than you think.

What if the thing the church needs most right now isn’t a better program, a slicker curriculum, or a bigger event—but a longer walk to the grocery store with someone who needs Jesus?

That’s the kind of reframing that Andrew Underwood of Nexus International brought to the latest episode of On the Move. In a wide-ranging conversation with host Leanne White, Andrew unpacked what it really means to make disciples, why the Western church’s approach is falling short, and how a biblical image of a tree is helping churches across 65–70 countries rethink everything.

A Youth Pastor Changed Everything

Andrew’s story begins with a relationship. Growing up in a broken family, a youth pastor stepped into his life—not with a program, but with a dinner table, a presence at his sporting events, and early morning meetings before school. That relationship set the trajectory of Andrew’s entire life and gave him a vision for what every young person needs: a godly adult who shows up intentionally.

That conviction carried Andrew through years of camp ministry, where he saw firsthand the power of immersive, relational environments. But he also saw the gap: kids would have a transformative week at camp, return home to their youth groups, and have almost none of that relational investment for the rest of the year. The “mountaintop experience” was powerful—but it wasn’t enough.

That question—why isn’t this happening all year long?—eventually led Andrew to connect with Juan Carlos, an Ecuadorian doing similar work in Latin America. Together, they discovered Nexus International, an organization whose entire mission is helping churches build a year-round culture of relational disciple making, especially with young people. Juan Carlos now leads Nexus’s Latin America region; Andrew works in Asia. Both are based in Johnson City, Tennessee.

When COVID Shut Down Travel, God Opened a Door in Mauritius

One of the episode’s most striking stories came from the COVID era. When global travel shut down, a British worker named Abe reached out to Nexus from the tiny island nation of Mauritius—a country of 1.2 million people in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. (Fun fact: it’s the only place the now-extinct dodo bird ever lived.)

Andrew began meeting with Abe weekly over Zoom—for six to seven months straight. Through that relationship, Abe introduced Andrew to Ashley Jury, a local Mauritian pastor who had planted a church in a predominantly Hindu community. Ashley became a Nexus ambassador—a local leader overseeing the work in his own country.

“I thought nothing was going to happen because we couldn’t be there,” Andrew reflected. But through patient, relational investment—even over Zoom—hundreds of young people in Mauritius are now being impacted through intentional disciple making. Ashley has become one of Andrew’s closest friends, and Andrew is heading to Mauritius again in the coming weeks.

The Tree: A Biblical Framework for the Life Shape of a Disciple

At the heart of Nexus’s philosophy is a deceptively simple image: a tree. Andrew pointed out that trees are the most talked-about living thing in the Bible other than human beings—from Psalm 1 to John 15 to Colossians 2. Nexus uses the three-part structure of a tree to describe what a healthy disciple looks like.

Roots represent our abiding life in Christ—the foundation everything else depends on. Jesus said, “Apart from me, you can do nothing.” A disciple’s first priority is being with Jesus.

The trunk represents community and belonging. Andrew noted that many pastors and leaders he works with are deeply isolated—no real friends, no genuine community. But Jesus’s prayer in John 17 makes clear that our unity with one another is meant to mirror his unity with the Father, and it’s through that unity that the world will know who He is.

The branches represent ministry and mission. Fruit always grows on branches—and a healthy tree reproduces. If a Christian isn’t bearing fruit, something is unhealthy. But the key insight is that branches can’t exist without roots and a trunk. Ministry that skips abiding and community will eventually snap.

Nexus further breaks the branches into four “color zones”: Red (moving toward people who don’t know Jesus—on their turf, on their terms), Orange (actively proclaiming the gospel), Green (growing believers from immature to reproducing faith), and Blue (regular rhythms of retreat and rest—the boundaries that prevent burnout).

The Information Age Isn’t Solving the Discipleship Crisis

Andrew offered a sobering observation: we live in the most information-rich era in human history. A kid in Tibet, a kid in Nepal, a kid in London, and a kid in Charlotte, North Carolina all have unprecedented access to podcasts, videos, books, and teaching. And yet this may be one of the most spiritually lost generations ever.

If information were the answer, the problem would already be solved. What’s missing is relationship.

Andrew cited a study from Australia that tracked young people who either came to faith or walked away from it. In both directions, the deciding factor was the same: a relational connection to the church. Not a program. Not content. Relationship.

He also pointed listeners to The Master Plan of Evangelism by Robert Coleman, calling it a masterclass in studying how Jesus actually spent his time. Jesus’s priorities were relational and experiential. He was far more concerned with formational learning than informational learning. And Andrew argued that the Western church has largely inverted those priorities—building systems that are great at delivering information but poor at forming people.

“It’s like sitting my kid down and drawing a shoe and explaining the parts,” Andrew said. “And then saying, ‘Now go tie your shoe.’ We don’t practice tying the shoe. But that’s how we make disciples.”

Wilderness as a Tool for Formation

Nexus also incorporates wilderness and adventure ministry into their work—not as a novelty, but as a biblically grounded tool. From Jesus teaching about birds and flowers on a mountainside to God using forty years of wilderness to shape Israel’s identity, creation is woven throughout Scripture as a space for formation. Andrew noted that one of the four relationships fractured in the Fall was our relationship with creation—and excluding it from disciple making leaves discipleship incomplete.

This doesn’t have to mean grand expeditions. In Taiwan, Nexus partners take kids on bike rides and to parks. A weekend backpacking trip gives leaders 72 hours of time with young people—the equivalent of months of weekly youth group meetings compressed into one intentional space.

Your Next Step

Andrew closed with a simple, two-part challenge. First, put your roots down. Cultivate a deep, abiding life with Jesus—not just in the margins, but as the organizing principle of your life. Second, prioritize one relationship. You don’t need a program to start. Invite someone to the grocery store. Have someone over for dinner. Take your kid on a walk and be intentional about what you’re building into them.

“Ministry moves at the speed of relationship,” Andrew said. “It is the primary conduit God has designed us to live in and minister in. If we can get out of the church boardrooms and empower our people to prioritize relationships—within their neighborhood, their school, their work—our churches would never be the same. And neither would our nations.”

On the Move is a podcast of 21C International. To learn more about how you can support the training of pastors in the majority world, visit 21cinternational.org.

A Facebook scroll, a 24-hour journey, and the sound of gunfire — inside one pastor’s determination to bring biblical training to a nation in crisis.

What does it look like when God takes something as ordinary as a Facebook feed and uses it to ignite a movement? For Pastor Moses, a South Sudanese refugee living in one of the largest refugee settlements in the world, it started with a scroll, a follow, and eventually a message that would change the trajectory of his ministry.

On the latest episode of the On the Move podcast, Leanne White sat down with her husband Steve White, president of 21C International, to tell Moses’ story—and to share how God is doing immeasurably more than anyone could have asked or imagined through the ministry of 21C.

A Pastor in a Refugee Camp With a Smartphone and a Calling

Pastor Moses was living in the Bidi Bidi refugee settlement in northern Uganda—one of the largest in the world—when he came across 21C International on Facebook. Like tens of thousands of other pastors across the majority world, Moses had felt the call to ministry but had no access to formal theological training. He had about a fourth-grade education. He couldn’t afford textbooks. He couldn’t travel to a seminary. But he had a smartphone. And he had a hunger for God’s Word.

21C’s Facebook page—which now reaches nearly 120,000 followers from around the world—posts short daily encouragements, Bible verses, and simple teaching. For pastors like Moses, it’s a lifeline. He followed the page, started commenting, eventually sent a message—and a relationship was born.

Steve connected Moses with Pastor Jabal, 21C’s national coordinator in Uganda, who had already felt the Lord leading him toward ministry among South Sudanese refugees. Jabal traveled to Bidi Bidi, introduced 21C’s training materials, and Moses was among those who began the program.

Leaving Safety Behind to Follow God’s Call

What happened next is the part of the story that stops you in your tracks.

Moses felt God calling him to leave the relative safety of the refugee settlement and return to Juba, the capital of South Sudan, to serve the growing church there. He left his wife and eight children behind in Bidi Bidi because, as he told Steve, it was too dangerous for his family to live in South Sudan. But he went anyway—because that’s where God called him.

Steve recounted a conversation with Moses during a walk along a dirt path on an island in Lake Victoria. Moses described listening to gunfire at night—sometimes from bandits, sometimes from broader conflict. The infrastructure in South Sudan is so poor that it took Moses more than 24 hours by public transport and motorcycle taxis (called boda bodas) to reach the team in central Uganda.

“These pastors humble me,” Leanne said on the episode. “Their love and their passion for the Word and their willingness to do just about anything to get further training—they know what they’re lacking and they are seeking it desperately.”

A Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight: 95% Untrained

Moses’ story is remarkable, but it’s not unique. According to current estimates, as many as 95% of pastors in the majority world have no formal theological training. The reasons are layered: low literacy rates, lack of financial resources, geographic isolation, the inability to leave subsistence farms for weeks at a time, and cultural learning styles that don’t align with Western-style academic models.

“You can’t take a fourth grader and put them in Bible college and call that accessible training,” Steve explained. “They can’t succeed with that.”

That’s where 21C’s model makes a difference. Rather than requiring pastors to come to an institution, 21C brings training to them—in their context, at their education level, and in a format that honors how they actually learn and process information. And the model is designed to multiply: pastors don’t just receive training, they learn how to share it with others.

What African Theologians Are Teaching the Global Church

The episode also took listeners to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where Leanne and Steve attended the ACTEA General Assembly—a gathering of more than 30 African nations’ top theological educators and academic leaders.

The conference wasn’t about inviting Westerners to educate Africa. It was about African theologians taking ownership of theological education on their continent—and contributing to global Christianity from their own rich perspective.

Steve shared a particularly moving moment: a woman in one of the breakout sessions questioned whether her commentary would have value since “the commentaries have already been written” by Western scholars. The room’s response was powerful—she wouldn’t be writing new truth, but she would bring an African perspective that Westerners simply cannot. When an African reads about the twelve tribes of Israel or communal decision-making in the early church, they aren’t translating ancient culture into a foreign concept—they’re reading about the way they already live.

“When an African writes a Bible commentary, they see things I would never see,” Steve reflected. “It kind of made me recommit myself to finding and reading more of the theological literature written by Africans, because they can see stuff that I just can’t.”

Immeasurably More Than We Could Ask or Imagine

When 21C International first set its growth goals, the team aimed for 25,000 Facebook followers by 2025. They surpassed 80,000 by the end of that year. Today, the page has nearly 120,000 followers, and more than 100,000 people have completed a live training course. The ministry is active across East Africa, Asia, and Latin America—and is now launching in the Philippines, with materials translated into Cebuano.

“God doesn’t waste experience,” Steve said. “He sets it up. He uses it. All of this, we can tie back to different things God put in our lives prior to this.”

And then there’s Moses—a man who wasn’t part of any strategic plan to enter South Sudan, but who God brought to 21C with a vision for training pastors in his war-torn country. He’s now launching leadership cohort groups in South Sudan, supported by Pastor Jabal in Uganda.

“We weren’t planning to start ministry in South Sudan,” Leanne noted. “But God saw fit to bring Moses to us with a vision for training the pastors in his country. And Lord willing, this is just the spark of something the Lord can fan into a beautiful flame.”

How You Can Get Involved

Steve closed the episode with a challenge: “Don’t just get the head knowledge—get involved.” Whether through 21C International, your local church, or another missions effort, there are countless ways to make a difference in the global church. When a pastor is spiritually healthy and equipped, it impacts an entire congregation—and, as Moses’ story shows, sometimes an entire nation.

Be praying for:

• Pastor Moses and the new leadership cohort groups launching in South Sudan
• The 21C team heading to the Philippines in April to launch the Cebuano Ephesians study
• The tens of thousands of pastors around the world still waiting for access to biblical training

On the Move is a podcast of 21C International. To learn more about how you can support the training of pastors in the majority world, visit 21cinternational.org.