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Welcome to the unSeminary podcast. This month we’re focusing on key “Unpredictions”—timeless truths that church leaders need to be focusing on in 2025 and beyond. In this episode, we’re hearing from Mike Mantel, the President and CEO, and Jonathan Wiles, the Chief Operating Officer, of Living Water International (LWI), a faith-based global humanitarian organization. Together we are talking about how the poor will still be among us.

How can churches effectively combat poverty and make a lasting impact on communities around the world? LWI focuses on addressing the water crisis by providing safe water, sanitation, and hygiene to impoverished communities. Tune in to learn about the transformative effects of these efforts on thirsty communities and partner churches alike.

• Water, for life, in Jesus’ name. // Living Water International has been involved in over 25,000 water projects, impacting 7.1 million people globally. The organization partners churches in the US with local churches in thirsty communities to deliver water interventions that also involve teaching sanitation and hygiene, with a strong emphasis on sustainability.
• Celebrate the progress made. // The mission to provide clean water is seeing encouraging results. In 2001, 1.1 billion people lacked access to basic water, but in 2024, that number decreased to 703 million, even with a growing global population. The collaboration between various organizations has accelerated this progress. However, the remaining challenges are more difficult due to the increasing complexity of needs in poorer, often disaster-stricken regions.
• Focus on a community. // LWI has learned from past experiences that water projects need to be long-term and community-centered, which led to the development of their “WASH Program Areas” (WPA). This model focuses on geographical areas, with a commitment to stay for 5-7 years to ensure that communities have lasting access to clean water and that local churches are strengthened as discipleship centers.
• The local church is key. // In WASH Program Areas, local churches are uniquely positioned to serve their communities due to their influence and knowledge of local issues. When LWI partners with these churches, they are not bringing God to a new place, but rather supporting the work that God is already doing through the local churches in these communities. This approach fosters long-term, mutual transformation both in the WPA and the partner church back in the US.
• Partnering with LWI. // US churches can engage with LWI’s work through knowledge-building, experiential learning, and co-investing in projects. Church members can raise awareness through education, take part in “discipling trips” to communities in need, and help fund projects. LWI encourages churches to go beyond just sending money, urging them to make the partnership a part of their ongoing mission.
• Mutual transformation. // The goal of discipleship trips is not mission tourism but mutual transformation. These trips provide opportunities for both US churches and WASH Project Areas to learn from each other and deepen their relationships. The trips are a step in a long-term process of engagement and discipleship, not a one-time event.
• Get involved. // For church leaders who are interested in engaging with LWI, Jonathan explains that churches already committed to specific mission areas can easily integrate clean water initiatives into their existing efforts. By linking their mission work to the pressing need for safe water, churches can create meaningful connections and foster a deeper sense of purpose within their congregations.

Visit water.cc to learn more about Living Water International and how they can plug into what God is already doing at your church. Check out the Advent Conspiracy that Mike mentions here. Plus, don’t forget to download the unPredictions Team Playbook for this podcast episode.

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Episode Transcript

Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. Man, I am super excited that you have decided to join us today. You have joined us amidst these Unpredictions episodes. These are a set of special episodes that we’re kicking off 2025. And today we’re focusing on this idea that the poor will be among us. This was true last year. It will be true this year. It will be true next year. My question is how are our churches dealing with that globally, if the numbers are still correct?

Rich Birch — 700 million people live in extreme poverty. Churches, your church and mine, can and should play a role in addressing this through partnerships, both locally and globally, advocating for social and economic process ah ah policies and just creating opportunity all around the world. And and today I’m excited to have our friends from Living Water International on. If you do not know them, they’re faith-based global humanitarian organization. They link arms with churches around the world to serve thirsty communities through access to safe water, sanitation, and hygiene. ah And an experience with Living Water is just, it’s amazing. These guys do an incredible job. I deeply respect them. I’ve been on the field with LWI, see the work they do. I highly recommend them.

Rich Birch — Today we’ve got Mike Mantel. He ah has since 2008 served as the president and CEO of LWI. And we’ve also got Jonathan Wiles with us. He serves as the chief operating officer. We got the big guns with us today. Welcome to the show, Jonathan and Mike. Glad you’re here.

Mike Mantel — Rich, what a delight, man. Been following you forever. And thanks for doing this podcast and letting us chat with you this morning.

Jonathan Wiles — Absolutely.

Rich Birch — This is going to be great. I’m excited. Jonathan, glad you’re here as well. Why why don’t we start with you, Jonathan? Fill in your story a little bit. Tell us about your connection to LWI. Tell us about ah Living Water as well a little bit.

Jonathan Wiles — I’ve been involved with Living Water for going on 25 years in various roles, but but really my focused engagement on staff and in leadership has been since 2007. Mike came on in 2008 and the two of us have been working together to to really kind of develop this organization in a direction that we feel is really honoring to God and and helping build his kingdom. And yeah, love getting to make a difference with Mike every day.

Rich Birch — Love it, so good. John ah um Mike, why don’t you tell us a little bit about, what does LWI do? you know I kind of gave the boilerplate, but if you were to bump into somebody, maybe you’re you know you’re at a conference or somebody and says, oh, Living Water, I think I’ve heard of you. What what do you do?

Mike Mantel — Like you said, we’re a faith-based organization. We believe that water is the fundamental intervention in people’s lives. If they have access to water, kids get healthy, healthy kids are in school, educated kids have a chance to lift themselves out of poverty. But what’s special about Living Water is we work with and through local churches. Wherever we work, the church is really at the center of what we do.

Mike Mantel — We’ve been doing this for 35 years. We’ve completed about 25,000 water projects. We call them WASH projects, water sanitation hygiene. About 7.1 million people…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Mike Mantel — …now i have access to safe, sustainable water in the name of Jesus because of our partners and churches in the United States and around the world.

Rich Birch — Yeah, this is amazing. Now, the thing about the water crisis in general that I have found encouraging as an outsider to this humanitarian issue is there’s real progress being made against people gaining access to clean water. Like I remember when the number is bigger than the number we talk about today. Jonathan, why don’t you talk to us kind of at a global level. What’s the progress that’s being made there? Which is incredible when we think about this idea of the poor ah of being among us. This is an issue that, man, we’re taking we’re taking steps against. Talk to us about what that looks like kind of at a global at a global level.

Jonathan Wiles — Sure. Well, back in 2001, when the Millennium Development Goals were first developed and there was a lot of benchmarking happening, yeah the number was 1.1 billion people in the world that didn’t have access to basic water.

Jonathan Wiles — And today that number is down to 703 million. So that’s that’s huge progress.

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jonathan Wiles — And yeah as we all know, the population is growing. So the you know the the the mile the the you know the the goal line is moving and we’re still making progress. So that’s super encouraging to see what’s happening around the world. And that’s happening because a lot of organizations are starting to work together, find their lanes and really and and hit a good rhythm of of doing this work that we’re all called to.

Rich Birch — Love it. Now, Mike, I can imagine that like the first 700 million was the easiest 700 million. The next 700 are going to be the hardest. Like, you know, there’s an increasing, I would imagine, I again, I don’t know your world, but I would imagine that’s the case. How does LWI—kind of get into the details here a little bit—how do you work with churches? I like this idea that you partner churches together ah to make a difference. What how does that work? What’s that actually look like for LWI?

Mike Mantel — You know, we’ve been we’re a learning organization. We’ve been learning for since we started. And in the olden days, we’d encourage people to get together, drill a water well, teach a little bit about sanitation, and hopefully that water would keep ah serving ah thirsty people.

Mike Mantel — But we found water wells, the mechanics break. You know, people forget their sanitation and hygiene lessons. And a number of years ago, working with Jonathan, we said, you know let’s let’s just take a big old cookie cutter and carve out a geographical footprint of about 50 to 100,000 people, people that need access to water. And let’s do a baseline study. Who’s got the water? What churches are in that environment? What are the statistics for health and hygiene? And let’s just stay in that footprint for years – five to seven years – until everybody has water, everybody has appropriate sanitation and hygiene, and the church at the center of this work becomes more visible and more relevant so they can continue to make disciples long after the water interventions are done. And that was called a WASH program area.

Mike Mantel — It was a crazy idea. It costs way too much money. We found somebody that supported the idea, and we launched our first WASH Program area, WPA. But what we learned was that the church is the institution in these environments. They can link arms across denominational divides. They can work with municipal leaders and community leaders, and the church really did become the hero. It emerged as the network, the living body of Jesus Christ, that not only brought water in Jesus’ name, but continued to make disciples.

Mike Mantel — And we got to know these church pastors and these church leaders, so we started introducing them to others. And as we moved to new WASH program areas, we were ah and there was advocacy from the last WASH program area.

Mike Mantel — And then we said, hey, let’s go tell the churches in the United States that they got sister churches in low-income areas across the world, let’s just invite them to participate, to link arms with church leaders they may not even know. They they may be denominationally aligned, or they may be stretching a little bit, but let’s just build relationships and see what the Spirit of the Lord does.

Rich Birch — Love it. I remember, so I’ve heard that before. And then years ago, I remember I was in a community um with LWI, friends that are listening in, and this was in one of these communities where the average person was making around a dollar a day. Like it’s a very extremely poor situation and open sewers, which is a you know a fancy way to say ditches with, you know, poop in them like it it was a tough community. I’m like, but the thing that I it it was a moving experience to stand there and be like nobody else was there. That was what was clear to me. The government was not there. There was no other NGOs. Like people were not. This was so far down the developmental, like there’s so much need to be. But you know who was there? There was a pastor there in that community. And that that moved me, moved me big time.

Rich Birch — Jonathan, double click on that. Why is the church on the the field side? So like on the communities we’re trying to help, why is it a great partner for an organization like LWI to deliver? What is the kind of bedrock of development to kind of tackle extreme poverty?

Jonathan Wiles — Yeah, theologically, I mean, the church is is called to be not only the voice, but the hands and feet of Jesus.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — So when they have thirsty neighbors, the church is in a is is it’s just it’s part of the church’s identity, that it’s DNA, it’s calling, to do this work. But just on a practical level, churches have local knowledge, they have local resources, they have convening power, they have influence. um People listen to their local pastors or local faith leaders in a way that they don’t listen to us outsiders.

Rich Birch — True.

Jonathan Wiles — And so when we begin to really in empower and work with the local church, and you know when we enter into these communities, it’s, you know, we’re not bringing bringing God to this place, God’s already at work, right? So we’re entering in with the spirit of service and inquiry. We’re asking questions or maybe telling stories from what we’ve seen God do and in other places to excite the imagination, but we’re really there to say, what is the Holy Spirit already doing?

Jonathan Wiles — What is the vision that you have, if the kingdom were to break into this place in an amazing way? And how can we work with you toward that by addressing this these needs around water and sanitation and hygiene? And as we do that work, see the church thrive, the community become more resilient, and people be served with safe water for for the the sake of their kids, and for the community, and the then the poor among them. And so that that means such ah it’s such a powerful dynamic and it so lines up with God’s calling on the church and with what he’s already put in place with them that we get to help activate and support and resource it.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Sticking with you, Jonathan, but then thinking on the side on the on our on this side, churches here in in the in our country, you know, that I know that a part of what I’ve seen you do partly front row, you know, at our our church when I was at Liquid Church, and then consistent I’ve seen other churches who have have said like, hey, this is a thing that we’re going to pay attention to. Like this is this is a part of what we’re we’re going to actually take this partnership thing and and actually try to live that out. What impact does that make on churches here back at home?

Jonathan Wiles — Well, I mean, it it awakens the the kind of the prophetic imagination of churches of what’s possible in the world.

Rich Birch —That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — It creates opportunities for cross-cultural discipleship. um You know, we’re obviously supporting the the discipleship of people who are in churches in, you know, that we have 912 active church partnerships…

Rich Birch — Wow.

Jonathan Wiles — …in our program areas and in these WPAs Mike was talking about, but we also have 429 vibrant church partnerships here in the U.S. of churches that are seeing their story connected with the story of what’s happening in the world. I mean, that Bryant Myers years ago said that that really the story of Christian development is when our story engages with their story, whoever “their” is in this case.

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — And this in this case, it’s the thirsty with and alongside local churches um in the context of God’s story and all of us being transformed together. And that’s really the vision of what we’re after.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s great. Mike, why don’t you lean in a little bit more on that in the churches on, you know, in our country, how have you seen, um you know, engagement with LWI help that church with, um you know, things that we might wake up and worry about, which is like discipleship and seeing people take steps closer to Jesus. And, um you know, and and and how does this kind of your mission, how do you how do you practically do that? What’s that look like?

Mike Mantel — You know churches begin that journey in various places. We’ve kind of framed up a couple of three big doors, you know ah expanding, growing in knowledge, like what is the water crisis? And really? People are drinking out of rivers and they’re not healthy or are um what is the state of evangelism in in developing countries? You know, a lot of people Don’t really know. So the one big door is growing in knowledge. you know How can we provide resources on both ah water the water issue, evangelism, and discipleship, and the interplay of those in low-income communities? Here’s some information, some videos, some data, some sermon series, some Bible studies, or Sunday School material. Here’s some knowledge. You can grow in knowledge.

Mike Mantel — The next is expand your experience. You know, as adult learners, we don’t really learn by listening to facts. We got to touch stuff. We got to feel stuff.

Rich Birch — True.

Mike Mantel — We got to talk about stuff. So we invite people to take a a trip. They used to be called mission trips. Now they’re called discipling trips where a group of a dozen people go to, they cross a line. They cross a geographic, economic, cultural line where they’re more sensitive to what’s going on in the Holy Spirit. So we get out of our comfort zone, call it a mission trip. We go to Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, and I could probably trace every dynamic, ah impassioned advocate for mission or change to a cross-cultural experience.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mike Mantel — So we we invite people to come on a trip, but not everybody can come on a trip. So what do you do? Well, you can fake a trip. You know you can you know stop drinking Coca-Cola and coffee for 10 days and drink only water and think about the water issue. You you can run a marathon. I know. Did you ever run a marathon at Liquid? I know they they do ah they did a lot of…

Rich Birch — This body’s not made for running, Mike. Mike, this body is not it.

Mike Mantel — I’m still suffering from my running.

Rich Birch — I’ll cheer on the sidelines.

Mike Mantel — You could run, you can walk, you can climb, you can bike, but experience, expand your experience.

Rich Birch — Yep. Yep, that’s good

Mike Mantel — And then the third is a co-invest for impact. You know, we can make a difference, especially you know coming out of COVID. People are eager to make a difference. They they want to move change. But you know often you know an individual is too far from the action. They are a little concerned about how their money is going to be spent. Is it really going to equip churches to help people access water?

Rich Birch — Right.

Mike Mantel — Is it really going to happen? Well, you can only trust that if you build your experience and you grow in knowledge. So it’s kind of like these three doors. You can enter and any one of these three doors. But collectively, we call that a co-laboring church.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mike Mantel — And a co-laboring church will change the world.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love it. Well, I’m you know, I’m going to play the ah I don’t know, devil’s advocate. That’s probably a bad thing to say on a church podcast. But, ah you know what, there it is. We’re going to say it there. Jonathan, you know, the idea of missions trips like, man, is this we’re sending people tourism to pet poor people, take pictures with them, you know, like, look at me. I’m such a great person.

Rich Birch — That’s not your, I know, I can’t even, I can’t play the devil’s advocate. I know that’s not what happened that’s not what’s happening on LWI trips. But for the person that thinks, Hey, isn’t that what that’s all about? What do you say to them? How do you ensure that this is a discipling – I like that – a discipling experience, an experience that helps the the people that we’re sending helps them grow. Talk us through how do you ensure that helps with the LWI experiences?

Jonathan Wiles — Yeah, and you know, ah we and I have have wrestled through those kinds of questions over the years, and we really want to stay away from kind of mission tourism, um or or just creating experiences that are about us.

Jonathan Wiles — And, you know, on the surface of it, you know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to send a bunch of you know, Western people who don’t have drilling skills out to do work to serve a local community with their hands. I mean, we can, I mean, you know, Guatemalan people and Kenyan people, you know, in these communities where we serve are some of the hardest working people I know. It’s not like we need the manual labor, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jonathan Wiles — So on a certain level we don’t need you to go on one of these Living Water trips. But we would love for you to go because it’s transformative for you and it opens up doors for transformation locally in ways that are difficult for our local teams to create on their own. When a group of of Gringos or Zungu show up in your community, it’s a convening moment. it’s ah It’s a moment that validates what’s happening in the local church. I mean, because often they’ll look to these Western people coming in to visit and say, oh, we we want to learn from you. And when we when we say, no, we’re here to learn from you.

Rich Birch — Yeah, it’s so true.

Jonathan Wiles — We want to understand what God’s doing and be able to be part of this mutual transformation process. That’s a beautiful thing. And and our goal really is for these trips to not be the thing. They’re a step…

Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — …they’re part of a long-term multi-year, you know, potentially generational transformational process as US s churches are engaging in the story of local churches in the communities with thirsty people over time. And and there’s some mutuality to that. They’re engaging in these stories you know ah sometimes we begin to have people come from the context where we’re working to show up on mission week at your church and to learn from you in the same way that you’re going to learn from them. We’re we’re creating this kind of back and forth dialogue that’s part of a two-way relationship that our goal there is that the transformation happens both ways. And when you create those cross-cultural moments…

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — …you create story, you build energy, and you open up new possibilities in people’s minds of what’s even possible.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. That, you know, it’s interesting you say that the kind of convening, um you know, the how that’s effective or helpful to the local community. I remember one trip I was on, um and I don’t know if this is still a thing on your trip. So if they don’t do this anymore, like you can, you know, say we don’t do that anymore. But I think it was on Thursday or Friday. It was late in the experience and it was after the well. We had you know finished the well and like, yeah, you figure out very quickly. It’s like, oh, like, yeah, like I sent a lot of emails for my work. Like I’m not a hard worker. Like, you know, I, you know, and, but I’m happy to jump in and try and get muddy and do it all. And like, it’s great. It’s fun. But, and then, but then I remember, you know, on that the end of that week, Thursday or Friday, that the church that we were working with graciously put together like a fun, you know, like we had dinner together, a lunch together. And um They served a meal for us and you know kids came and like people came from around the community.

Rich Birch — And I I loved it because the path there’s a crowd and the pastor got up and he talked he talked about the well but talked to he you know talked about the gospel. And I knew I was it was one of the had that moment where I was like, oh like the fact that we’re sitting here having a meal right now is helping this pastor communicate with his community. We’re, our presence here is, is helping. And he was so thankful. I also remember that it was a, we had chicken, some sort of chicken soup thing. And I remember I had seconds and people still to this day, they’re like, I can’t believe you had seconds that day. Did you see the chicken? And I’m like, it’s a mission trip. You can’t get hurt on a mission trip, right? Push it down to the bottom of the bowl. It’s hotter down at the bottom. It’ll be fine.

Rich Birch — But that’s a that’s a real um, you know, ah for someone who I would say I have been skeptic of these kinds of experiences. I’m like, what what can what difference can this really make? I was like, oh like I can see that now and obviously, you know it had a profound impact on me and my you know and my my leadership.

Rich Birch — So Mike, when you said you said earlier that there are 429 active partnerships with churches here in America. That’s amazing I think if I caught that number correctly. Give us an example of like a church, um not Liquid Church, somebody else, that is like ah a great church that’s like, you know, is is plugged in. What does that look like? If there’s church leaders that are listening in today, they would say, we would like to be a part of this. We’d like to help. You know, ah maybe ah this is a year I’d like to lean in. What, what could, what kind of, what does that look like? You know, practically.

Mike Mantel — There are so many great churches, you know the ones that come to mind, you know Sugar Creek, Ecclesia, Living Stones. There’s so many great churches, but the the one I would talk about is The Crossing in St. Louis.

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Mike Mantel — You know, we became friends when they were like a small church.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mike Mantel — And they committed to cross the lines that divide us to pursue unity of the body of Christ and to help people access water. They early on, one of the pastors, Greg Holder, co-created Advent Conspiracy. Now Advent Conspiracy…

Rich Birch — Fantastic.

Mike Mantel — …was just the result of three frustrated pastors, Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder. They said, Christmas is so hard for pastors.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mike Mantel — All of our congregants are burnt out, they’re overspending money, we’re putting on so many services, we’re burnt out. And so what they did through Advent Conspiracy, it says, well, let’s let’s reconsider what leading up to Christmas really is.

Rich Birch — So good.

Mike Mantel — It is, you know, to four tenets, worship fully, spend less, give more, and love all.

Rich Birch — So good.

Mike Mantel — And they they were addressing a pastoral issue. So what happened, because they hope to fund and you know one water well in Liberia. What happened was over time, kids fired up. And over the last 15 years, 600 specific churches have engaged with Living Water to love all.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mike Mantel — Now, that was just a great idea. It was spiritually serendipitous. Wow, wow. That’s But what happened at the church, in The Crossing is, as it grew, they began to field ah educational ah conferences for church pastors that wanted to sort through issues of unity, forgiveness, reconciliation. This is an American church…

Rich Birch — Yep.

Mike Mantel — …culturally sensitive, but bringing together hundreds of pastors in multiple countries.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mike Mantel — That was their mission, which, Rich, blew my mind because what that helped us do was organize churches within these footprints I was talking about earlier. A U.S. church changed our organizing efforts to deliver water, sanitation, and hygiene and strengthen the church. A U.S. church did that.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mike Mantel — They fielded team Living Water trips. Now you may not run, but a lot of people do run.

Rich Birch — Yes. A hundred percent. Yeah.

Mike Mantel — And so 16 years later, this church is still going on trips, still hosting what they call Genius of One unity conferences, still running marathons, and still preaching about how crossing lines that divide us um are transformative.

Rich Birch — So good.

Mike Mantel — They’re part of disciple making. And that now it’s a big old church. And there’s an engaged hundreds of people from thousands of members that see Living Water not as some organization they fund, but they see Living Water as their extension to churches around the world.

Rich Birch — Yep. Right. Yeah. And that, that’s a great practical, I’ll put an even finer point on that for folks that are listening in, Mike. You know, we just came out of Christmas. Here we are. It’s January. I know you’ve still got some of those burnout, like, gosh, remember those days, late December. Man, it was crazy for you as a church leader. What if you now looked into Advent conspiracy for 2025? If we said, Hey, maybe we look ahead and that is like a it’s an entire movement of churches that it’s still you know partner with that. That could be something and maybe your your leadership team would be a little more motivated this time of year to think about it because we’re this far out and we’re feeling you know pastorally even you know what goes on with people you know at that time of year. That could be a real practical um you know step for 2025 uh you know for you.

Rich Birch — Jonathan, let’s think about a church that – I love The Crossing as an example. Greg’s an incredible leader. He’s a great follower. If you’re not following The Crossing, you should be. They do all kinds of amazing things for sure. ah You should you should do that.

Rich Birch — Let’s think about a church that is or a leader that wants to kind of dip their toe in. They’re like, OK, you’ve got my attention. The thing I love about the water cause is, like I think, you know, yeah we see that our people see it or our friends of friends see it as a good thing. It’s an easy thing for us to communicate. It’s like, I can show you a ball, a glass of water and say there are people, there are 700 million people that wake up today who don’t have access to that. We got to do something about that. That is, and people who don’t follow Jesus get it. Now they see it as a good thing. We see it as a God thing. We see it as a way to see transformation take. I think it’s a great, you know, to it’s a great cause to be a part of for sure.

Rich Birch — But let’s say I’m a church leader that’s like, okay, I want to do something about this. I want to kind of dip my toe in. I want to take some initial steps this year. What would be some of those that would be, you know, knowledge, experience, you know, co-invest. What would be some of those kind of initial steps that we could take this year, Jonathan?

Jonathan Wiles — Well, I yeah I mean, I think the story is, as you say, you know so compelling and so easy to get to step into. You know ah it’s it’s it’s also, there’s there’s layers of complexity behind that really simple idea that people in the world need safe water. And so there is a lot to learn as we as we grow in knowledge. So I mean I think I think you know knowledge is a good place to start. um And I think, you know for a lot of churches, they’re really wanting to engage in stories ah of what God’s doing in the world. And they may already be committed to someplace in the world where, hey, we’re really you know focused on working in you know and and you know the Northern Triangle of Central America.

Rich Birch — Right.

Jonathan Wiles — We’re focused on West Africa. We’re, you know, and so in those those kinds of, um you know it’s it’s so easy for us to just hook into those kinds of existing…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — …ah mission mission focus areas that a church might already have. And and to do some discovery about, well, what it what would it look like for us to, you know we’ve as we’ve been on trips, or if we’ve been engaging with other partners in these places, we’ve been supporting local missionaries, or whatever that looks like for your church, um what would it look like for us to link that to addressing safe water needs? Because as we’ve been on mission trips to those places, or as we’ve heard those stories…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — …we know they’re dealing with that as a problem, and we just haven’t thought about that. What would that look like?

Rich Birch — Yeah.

Jonathan Wiles — So I mean, just just connecting this aspect into this that your church’s existing mission efforts is something that’s really easy to explore and to understand what what what a what something could look like. And and that gives us an opportunity for a toe in the water that’s in the context of something that God’s already doing in your church.

Rich Birch — Yeah. Love it.

Jonathan Wiles — You know? Because it’s it’s really easy to to say, well, hey, we could we could raise a little money through a little campaign during Lent or Advent or whatever whatever season makes sense and and sponsor ah you know a WASH project in that context. But we’d love to figure out a way to make that even more meaningful than just getting you know saying, well, we did that one thing. And we got a report and we know that there was some transformation, but how do we make that something that’s really becomes part of our church’s story and invites us into what’s next? So, I mean, there there are a lot of really simple first steps, but we’d love to love to make that part of the story of the church.

Rich Birch — Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of, you know, there’s church leaders that are listening in, they’re like, hmm, maybe we should add this to our existing, or at least explore, you know, get some more knowledge about, hmm, maybe there’s a way for us to kind of add this to what we’re doing already. If you just go to Living Waters website, water.cc, great website. At the very top, you’ll see a ah link, “Why Us”, which talks all about kind of what Living Water is all about. If you scroll down to the bottom there, you can see the communities that they serve in. um you know it’s it’s ah That would be a great way to kind of get the ball rolling um and then you know reach out, maybe think about the initial trip or something like that. That’s that’s incredible.

Rich Birch — Well, this has been a great conversation. Just as we’re coming to land, ah Jonathan, I want to stick with you for kind of last comments here. I don’t want, I don’t want to skirt by this. We’ve got the operations guy, the guy that really knows what’s going on here. What’s on the horizon for Living Water? When you kind of look up over to the horizon and think, okay, where are we, where are we going next? What, where does kind of our, the stuff that we’re thinking about, the questions we’re asking um down the road a little bit, where’s, where’s your head at these days?

Jonathan Wiles — Well, there there are a couple of ways I can answer that question. One is that, I mean, you mentioned it earlier, you know the first 700 million were easier than the next 700 million, right?

Rich Birch — Yes.

Jonathan Wiles — So you know the the yeah and so we’re we’re really challenging ourselves at Living Water to think about people who are really particularly overlooked and excluded in the areas where we serve. So we’re we’re we’re you know pushing that envelope even more than we have. I mean, on a certain level, we’ve been focused on serving overlooked and excluded people since the very day we were founded, right?

Rich Birch — Right.

Jonathan Wiles — But this is pushing pushing ourselves to think even harder about going to some of those hard places in the in the footprints where we’re already committed and then asking questions about where we might need to go next.

Jonathan Wiles — And so that’s that’s a big question. um For us, um knowing that you know they’re that we’re in an increasingly volatile world, um you know a lot of the the the communities that we’re serving, thirsty and extremely poor communities, are the ones that are disproportionately affected by disasters, ah by environmental degradation.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — And so we’re asking questions around how do we help these local churches develop a ah posture toward creation care and taking care of the local environmental resources, so that water can be there for the next generation, and to help these communities build resilience to be able to resist you know to to weather the shocks of you know just the the disasters and the crises that we’re just seeing pop up and increase and in frequency in our world.

Jonathan Wiles — Those are those are the kind of the the challenges we’re wrestling with. We don’t have all the answers, but we’re leaning hard in those directions…

Rich Birch — That’s good.

Jonathan Wiles — …as we try to figure out how we continue to solve this crisis.

Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Love that. Uh, that’s, yeah, that’s a super good insight. Mike, I want to throw it to you for, for last words. I know one of the things I like about you and LWI in general, but you specifically is, I know you have a heart for pastors, a care for pastors. You want to encourage them. What would you say kind of an encouraging word to, uh, pastors that are kicking off 2025, uh, as they’re thinking about this coming year. How would you kind of encourage them as we kick off this year?

Mike Mantel — Hang in there. The Lord is with you.

Rich Birch — Love it.

Mike Mantel — Continue to lead. You know often the stress of leadership gets you know really, really heavy, but you’ve been called into this work. You’ve been equipped for this work. Living Water and other faith-based organizations want to get behind you so that you can share the good news of Jesus, so that you can make disciples, so that you can love the poor. Just hang in there. um You’re not crazy for doing this work. You’re making a difference. You’re changing the world.

Rich Birch — Right.

Mike Mantel — What you do today will have eternal consequences. So we love you. Have a great New Year.

Rich Birch — Thanks so much, Mike and Jonathan. I really appreciate you being here. Again, friends, I would encourage you to check out water.cc, follow Living Water on all your social medias, you know, to even just kind of stay up to date on what they’re doing throughout the entire year. Really appreciate you guys being here today. Thanks so much.