Joining God’s Global Mission

TEAM’s Justin Burkholder on our call to be obedient stewards

Christian Leadership Alliance President and CEO Tami Heim recently interviewed Justin Burkholder, International Director, TEAM.

For more than 130 years, TEAM has existed to send the called, plant seeds of the gospel, and invest resources effectively for the glory of God. Today, TEAM is a global community of Christ followers on a mission to partner with God’s global church to connect people and resources for kingdom expansion.

Prior to his appointment as International Director in July 2024, Justin Burkholder served in a variety of leadership roles within TEAM, including the position of Executive Director of Global Ministry.

Justin and his wife Jenny served alongside the Guatemalan Church in Guatemala City and participated in planting and leading two churches. Justin was profoundly influenced at a young age by multi-cultural relationships and experiences having grown up as a missionary kid in Mexico City.

He graduated from Moody Bible Institute with a B.A. in Theology and later received his M.Div. He is the author of Sobre la Roca and Quiero Cambiar, two books written for the church in Latin America. Justin and Jenny have three daughters: Isabella, Olivia, and Zoey.

1. Can you tell us about TEAM and the key initiatives you are currently pursuing?

TEAM is a missionary-sending and church-planting organization that was founded in 1890 to send missionaries to China. We currently serve with over 500 workers in more than 50 countries. Our workers are engaged in a variety of different platforms, from medicine, arts, business, education – all with the goal of seeing new disciples formed and gathered into maturing and missional churches.

Our mission is to partner with the global church to send disciples who make disciples and establish missional churches to the glory of God.

In terms of key initiatives, we are pursuing a renewal of our focus in what we have identified as “contexts with limited access to the gospel.” Possibly 2 to 3 billion people on earth will be born and die without meeting a follower of Jesus. This is the type of problem that keeps us up at night. We want to accelerate access to the gospel in these places by sending disciples of Jesus to share the good news and start bodies of maturing believers.

In addition, after 135 years of primarily sending missionaries from the United States and Canada, God has opened the door for us to begin sending missionaries from other parts of the world. We partner with the global church. The church in the Majority World has grown rapidly and there is tremendous interest in engaging in global mission. We have much to learn from these newer movements but also have things to offer.

This is a big transition for TEAM to move from a primarily North American organization to embracing the global diversity found among God’s people.

2. Describe the journey that brought you to the role of International Director. How did God specifically prepare you for this role?

I grew up in Mexico City as a missionary kid, which provided a multicultural opportunity to see first-hand the work that God is doing around the world. Additionally, my family has served for 12 years as TEAM missionaries in Guatemala City, focusing on church and leadership development. These two experiences have been tremendously formative in shaping a vision to see “that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God” as is stated in Habakkuk 2:14.

For the past five years I have served in a variety of regional leadership roles within TEAM. With the impending retirement of TEAM’s CEO, the board began the search process in 2023 for the next CEO. At the time, I was serving on TEAM’s Senior Leadership Team. I surmised that it would be a long-shot that the Lord would call me into this role. However, after much prayer and consultation with trusted counselors, I put my name into the process.

The search process was extremely helpful and encouraging in learning more about my gifts and abilities and seeing the prayerful intentionality with which our board stewarded the process. In December of 2023, I was quite surprised to learn that I was the candidate the search committee decided to present to the board.

The journey into leadership has been primarily about exploring what is the best investment that I can make of this life and the gifts that God has given me. I’m convinced that the gospel is true. The tomb is empty, Jesus is King, and the world needs to know, so I want to do whatever I can to accelerate knowledge of the gospel into a world that needs to hear.

3. What are you most passionate about in the mission and work of TEAM?

TEAM has an incredible legacy of church planting around the world. We have started perhaps tens of thousands of churches. There are denominations in South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia that were founded by TEAM missionaries. This combines two things that I’m most passionate about in TEAM’s mission and work: its legacy and commitment to the Church.

TEAM has an incredible legacy of church planting around the world.

I believe establishing a church is the greatest impact that we can have in a context where there is little presence of the gospel. And when I say church, I don’t mean gathering a congregation or building a new church building, I mean the development of a thriving and maturing body of missional believers.

Local believers, empowered by the Spirit, begin to work together to determine what it means to see the kingdom of God come in their communities as it is in heaven. Captured by the vision that God wants to renew all things, they begin to engage in all spheres of society, through their various vocations, participating with God in his purposes to make all things new.

This is what TEAM has done for 135 years, we send out disciples to places where there are few to no followers of Jesus, and we establish these types of churches.

4. What is your vision for TEAM’s future?

Over the past few years, I have spent a lot of time listening to our global workers. This has included travel to over 20 countries, meetings with hundreds of workers and leaders, and a variety of surveys to better understand our current situation. We’ve dedicated time to evaluating our focus and have entered a planning season to shape the contours of our future.

Our vision for TEAM as a community is that we would become a relationally strong, missionally courageous, and globally diverse community. Relationships are at the heart of following Jesus – relationship with him and relationship with one another. If we go to the ends of the earth to proclaim the gospel, then we need to experience transformed relationships that testify to the truth and power of the gospel. As with any community, this means hard work, honesty, repentance, and transparency among other things.

Missional courage is about the willingness to do hard things and go to hard places, even facing risk, to make the gospel of Jesus known. Globally diverse, as mentioned above, is about seeing the beauty of all of God’s people engaged together in mission, which puts God’s grace and wisdom on display.

Contexts with Limited Access

Our vision for TEAM’s impact is related to increasing our focus on contexts with limited access to the gospel. We are sharpening our focus in this area. I would love to see us mobilize workers from around the world to establish maturing bodies of believers among the top countries with the least access to the gospel. Countries like Pakistan, China, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bangladesh and others. Some of these are places where TEAM has served and has a presence, and others would be new for us.

TEAM cannot do this alone, and it is a joy to know that there are other organizations alongside TEAM that are traveling this same path. But additionally, none of these things are possible without prayer as a bedrock. We depend deeply on God to fulfill his purposes.

5. Our edition theme is Grow Giving. How does TEAM engage with givers to partner in the worldwide gospel work of TEAM?

We believe that every child of God has a role to play in God’s global mission. There are those who go, but they could not go nor be sustained without those who give. We take seriously then that giving isn’t just about making TEAM function but is an act of participation in God’s mission. When people give to TEAM, their giving helps send global workers out faster and keep them serving and disciple-making longer. It isn’t just a philanthropic commitment; it is an eternal investment in the expansion of the gospel.

It is an eternal investment in the expansion of the gospel.

In our generosity efforts, TEAM is donor-centered and committed to the expansion of the gospel. Our goal is to steward the resources God has given to effectively engage each giver, whether that giver has given an annual or a legacy gift. Communicating clearly and compellingly what God is doing through TEAM, its impact, and how each financial gift has made it possible, serves as the foundation for generosity. We share this in a variety of ways such as traditional direct mail, social media, and during in-person meetings.

Additionally, we seek to steward each relationship by honoring their role in God’s mission and ensuring that we use their gifts as intended. We desire for these relationships to not be transactional, but transformational, as we journey together in following Jesus.

6. What encouragement would you share with other Christian ministry leaders on trusting God for his provision?

Hudson Taylor, a contemporary and friend of TEAM’s founder Frederik Franson, has said it best: “God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack God’s supplies.” Ultimately, our call is one of obedience and submission to God. He owns all resources, and he is distributing those resources to fulfill his purposes. It is our job to obediently steward what he gives us with vision, integrity, and boldness.

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Learn more at team.org.