00:00:00 Paula: Welcome to Tesse Leeds with your host, Tesse Akpeki, and co-host, me, Paula Okonneh. Tesse Leads is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share, hear, and tell your stories and your experiences. We in Tess Leads or at Tess Leads get super curious about the dilemmas that shape your future and our future, and the journey that all of us are on today.
00:00:34 Paula: Our speakers are Dr. Robert Varney and Hugh Brandt, and our theme is Integration and Intersection. Our personal stories. And because this is our personal stories, what I’ll do is give you a snippet on who both Dr. Robert Varney and Hugh Brandt are, and I’ll let them take it over from there. So, just a bit about Dr. Robert Varney, who prefers to be called Bob. So, I’ll tell you, since 2000, Bob has chaired a partnership called Table 71, where he witnessed firsthand how God can bless the world when Christians work together with a high-level, common goal. Table 71 was a loose federation of large nonprofits who, in collaboration of over 80,000 Christians, initiated mission efforts in over 3000 of the previously unengaged, unreached people groups of the world and Hugh, as the Chief Culture Officer and founding member of Cities Project Global. He has lived in three global cities for 40 years and has experienced firsthand the major problems that cities have. He’s experienced, twisted problems of a city that can feel overwhelming and beyond. Okay. I’ll stop here and open up Tesse Leads so that they can tell their stories and also expand on their bios.
00:02:13 Paula: So welcome to Tesse Leads.
00:02:15 Bob: Amen. Well, thank you, Paula. Thank you for the wonderful introduction. Both you and Tesse are wonderful ladies with exciting stories yourselves. And we’re thrilled to be here. I do have a PhD in Computer Science and was an entrepreneur for 25 years, and I did pro bono work in the missions’ world.
00:02:36 Bob: Happened to have a wife of 57 years going on 58. 6 grandchildren. Lots of interesting stories with our grandkids. God has blessed us richly, and I certainly enjoy engaging with Hugh in this City’s Project Global journey that we’re on, and God has taken us for about 10 years already. City’s Project has grown. It multiplies somewhat by itself. I’d love to have it multiply a little faster, but it’s doing well.
00:03:07 Hugh: Yes. Good to be with you. You two. Hugh Brandt. I have the privilege of having lived in Shirazi, Zimbabwe, and London, England, and now Denver, Colorado. And excited to be telling stories of changed life. I actually met my wife in Southern Africa when I was serving there, my young lady from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
00:03:27 Hugh: And we had three children born to us over in Africa, and I’ll be telling a story about that. And yet God has proven to be faithful and transformed our lives as a result of being married together for going on 41 years.
00:03:41 Tesse: Wow, this is amazing. Amazing. And people can’t see us. You can hear our voice, but we can see you. And I’m seeing men who are so happy and in love so many years afterwards. Paula, are you seeing what I’m seeing? You know. Still in love, overflowing!
00:04:05 Paula: In love with their wives and in love with Jesus. Yeah.
00:04:07 Tesse: Amen. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So, who says that love died? Love never dies. Love never fails. So, what I’m kind of typical curious as well as Paula, I used that word. To know what brought you to this project, you know, what was a walk-up to that role; you know, this thing that you’re doing now. Because right now it’s looking, sounding, feeling absolutely inspirational. Tell us.
00:04:34 Hugh: I can go first, Bob. You know some years ago I was, after I returned from London, I was working here in Denver, working in the inner city, primarily mentoring young men, kind of post high school age. And in doing this, I began to feel that something was missing. You know, we had such a focus again on people knowing Jesus and knowing that they too will meet him in heaven, but something was missing for me. And as I began to read and understand and then meeting Bob. I began to realise that again, God’s kingdom story is much more than just knowing we’re going to heaven. Of course, that’s our destination, but how are we to live now? And I think that unrest in my heart that I am. I’ve grown a bit tired of the missionary work I’ve been doing. And God was saying, Hugh there’s something bigger. There’s something wider that my story is grand and you’ve only experienced a part of it. There’s much more. And so, I’ve been delighted to join Cities Project Global, help launch it, and to help people understand this bigger story that includes all of life. So, that’s why I’m, I’m a part of this.
00:05:56 Tesse: Gorgeous!
00:05:57 Bob: I can remember. When I first met Hugh. A colleague of mine, from Ghana, had suggested that I talked to this fellow Hugh Brandt. So, we had a little chat and decided to invite him and his wife to the DC area. And I remember sitting at that Italian restaurant in Reston, and just feeling delighted that. I mean I didn’t use the words back then, but I use them now often. You know, I found someone in my tribe. Oh, and when you find someone whose heart is the same as yours, it’s just so exciting. It’s just so exciting!
00:06:37 Bob: So, Hugh and I have been doing this now for 15, 16 years, right? Do you?
00:06:41 Hugh: Yeah, since 2008. Yeah.
00:06:43 Bob: Yeah. So, it’s been exciting to see how God has orchestrated this. And you know, you mentioned Table 71, Paula when you started, and it’s just interesting how God moved me out of the business world for a while. I was a professor for a little while and a researcher, and then 25 years as basically as a CEO with a number of countries. They call ’em serial- entrepreneurs these days. And in my last company, I mean, I took it public. You know, I took a software company public. But I had been losing my excitement about companies, and I didn’t know why.
00:07:26 Bob: So, after I left that company. I was home and I thought, well, I need to do something. You can’t just sit here and do nothing. So, what should I do? Well, God said to me, think about transition. ‘Cause I’d been through a number of transitions as a CEO, serial- entrepreneur, and my wife had done a number of offsites in her dental practice. So, I called a buddy of mine who has since passed away. But he sent me to Barnes and Noble to pick up a bunch of books. So, I got about six different books on transition. And I thought, well, I’m gonna do my own little master’s program in my basement, you know? So, I’m sitting down there reading these books, and literally three weeks later, I was done with all of them.
00:08:12 Bob: Because I had been through everything you’ve talked about, and what was happening to me is they were labelling things. They were giving me examples. They were showing me research to show why some of these things are true. So, all of a sudden, in a really short period of time. I mean, a ridiculous short period of time. I felt like I was just crammed for a final, you know. I mean, I was exploding with information. Then right then, I got a call from a fellow who ran the Christian Embassy here in Washington. And we’d been major supporters, so that’s one of the reasons he called. But I had done some work with him and he said, look, Bill Bright, who’s president, CEO, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, just announced to all this staff that he is gonna step down. You can’t just let someone step out. There has to be some kind of a plan. Would you mind joining us in the Admirals Club at the Atlanta Airport? I said, sure, you know. So, I didn’t know what this was about exactly. But on my way down I took out my little yellow sheet of paper, which I typically have my pad. And I wrote down a few things just so that I would be prepared in case they asked me anything.
00:09:25 Bob: We were there for a couple hours and the other guys were talking, they were all Campus Crusade staff. I was the outsider. And we weren’t actually getting anywhere. It was a little chitchat, chitchat, chitchat, you know, just thoughts, random thoughts. So finally, since I was the new guy, I waited for a couple hours and I finally said, yeah, hey, you know, I got a couple thoughts. So, I went up to the whiteboard and wrote down eight different things that I thought we should be doing. And they said, oh, let’s do that. And I was really rather surprised and I said, no, no, no, no. Here you take all this stuff, you give it to Bill and you guys go ahead and decide how you wanna handle this.
00:10:03 Bob: Well, a couple weeks later, bill called and wanted me to come out and talk to him and to find that. And so, that was the beginning of me really being the architect of Bill Bright’s transition. But the amazing part was how God prepared me. You know, I didn’t know what I was doing. You know, and I’m an engineer, I’m a computer scientist. I like research. I like, you know, I like my quiet time. And he was thrusting me into this thing leading from the top of a, you know, very large organisation, how this transition was going. And it was all soft science stuff, you know? I mean, not my norm. So, I mean, I felt that God just moved me. Okay. And now in the midst of that, Steve Douglas is going to become president. We’re announcing it over in Amsterdam, where Billy Graham is holding 10,000 people. Paul Eshelman stands up in the group I was in and says, there’s a whole bunch of people in the world, lots of people groups, that no one’s even trying to get to. So, around this little outfit called Table 71 with a number in the table, right? There’s a bunch of leaders of organisations saying this is not okay. This is just not okay. There are people 2000 years after Christ, that no one’s even trying to get to. Yes, yes! Right? Unengaged, not just unreached. Unengaged! So that was the beginning of Table 71, and we met in October that year at Campus Crusade for Christ Headquarters, Lake Heart.
00:11:38 Bob: Everybody around the table was leading a large organisation and Steve got up and said, if you’re not leading an organisation and have a thousand people working for you, you shouldn’t be at the table. Well, I’m sitting at the table. I got no organisation; I just got me. It finally got around to me and I said, I have no idea why I’m here.
00:11:58 Bob: I hardly know what a people group is. And they basically said, well then good. Why don’t you lead us? Anyway, I became the facilitator. So, it’s just amazing as you look at little pieces of what, what God does and how he orchestrates things that you didn’t know about ahead of time. Yeah. And I have had the privilege of watching Christian organisations work together with amazing results. By 2005, we had done a bunch of research and found out there were 639 groups that had at least a hundred thousand people in it. 10 years later, 10 years later, only. There were only six of that 639 that were still unengaged. All right. And it involved 70,000, over 70,000 bi-vocational leaders. Thousands of churches and Christian organisations cooperating around the globe to get this to happen.
00:12:59 Bob: And I thought, wow, this is what partnering with others actually looks like. So, it’s all about the kingdom, and it’s not quite as personal as I think you wanna get to.
00:13:12 Paula: No, and you said it’s not personal. It is because you’re impacting lives and that’s personal. You are changing lives. Some that you will know about on this side of eternity and some that you will find out the other side of eternity. ‘Cause there’s so much that happens. You know, sometimes it’s like a trickle-down effect and we don’t even know, you’re touching people’s lives. But the Holy Spirit is reaching out to them.
00:13:39 Bob: And, it has to do with patients as well. Two years into this. I said to Steve, I said, this is not going anywhere. We’re meeting three times a year. It’s a nice meeting. We’re talking about movements and how movements get going. We read David Garrison’s book and had a lot of information in it. But I said, we’re really not making any progress. And he said, well, you know, you just stick with it. Okay. So, in June of 2002, which is about two years into it. I used to run the meetings and I used to assign people to do devotionals. We had one the first day and one the second day sitting there, and I felt God say to me, bob, it’s your turn. And I thought, no way. All these guys have gone to seminary. Half of ’em are pastors. They’re preaching on Sundays. I’m a business guy. This doesn’t work. Right? So, God is moving me into this other world. I mean, he already told me through my company’s experiences back in the eighties that he cares about everything. Okay? But now I’m in the missionary world, a foreign world for me. And he says, you count there too, even if you’re not a seminary grad, even if you’re not a pastor, even if you’re not running a lot. And I thought, really? So, I sat down and I don’t come out of a charismatic background. But I said to God, okay, I need a word. Give me a word, God gimme two.
00:15:12 Paula: Awesome child. Be you.
00:15:13 Tesse: One for each, one for each ear!
00:15:16 Bob: That’s right. And the words were joined together and I thought, okay, cool. Marriage, that joined the men and a woman together. I thought, okay, cool. He joins. Himself and the bride together, okay? And then as I’m looking through the scriptures, I find Luke 5. And here is Jesus teaching the crowd. And they’re pressing in on him and there’s a couple boats there. One of ’em, Simon Peters. So, he gets into Simon Peter’s boat. He says, let’s push away just a little bit. So, then he continues teaching the crowds. When he’s finished, he dismisses the crowd. Now he turns to Peter who’d been fishing all night long, right? He says to Peter, let’s go out to the deeper water for a catch.
00:16:06 Bob: Now, Peter’s not really convinced as you read the story. But he says, okay, master, I’ll do it. So, he goes out to the deeper water. Jesus says, throw the nets on this side. He throws his nets over there, and suddenly they’re teaming with fish to the point of the nets breaking right. You know the story. What does he do? He turns to his partners on the shore, James and John, I think. And then, and then, they come out with their boat and their nets and their crew. They didn’t say, hey, I missed the organisational meeting. Were you doing this big fishing job? You know, they just came out, right? And the same thing happens to them. And then, peter recognizes. Oh, not just master, you are Lord, so he drops down, right? But as we began talking about that devotional, we began talking about what does God do when he blesses us? And what he does first is he says, follow me. Peter followed him out to the deeper water. Then God blessed him. When the blessing begins, you get to turn around to the partners who all care about the same thing, fishing in this case, and you work together. And I used the word partnering. We didn’t ever form a partnership for Table 71. We were just partners. We just worked together. Nothing official, everything unofficial. I call it partnering. Engaging together for a common goal. And that’s what caused us to go from 639 unengaged groups, 10 years later, to 6. And a few years after that to zero of those, at which point we began working on the other few thousand smaller groups around the world.
00:17:59 Tesse: It’s ever so beautiful what you’re saying. Because you know, as I read the book, The Intersection, I thought about collaboration and a lot of in for-profit worlds, talk about and not-for-profit world, partnerships and collaborations, etc. And what I noticed that ego takes over. What I noticed is that people get very protective. There’s a mindset of scarcity. And when I read your book and read your stories and actually listened to the podcast, what I got was the center of abundance, and that is the story. You know, we serve a God who is so generous, so gracious, so merciful. So, thank you for sharing that. Thank you.
00:18:48 Bob: And it’s, I mean, we met together three times a year. They were not totally unlike other business meetings with 20 people in them. But God met us every time. They gave stories of what happened in the last four months since, and inevitably somebody shared a story that got everybody else excited every single time. I mean, it was, it was exciting. But even in the midst of that, I mean, we’re all human, not everything went well. Once in a while, not too often. These were good people, but they were cross words. They were selfish words. And as chairing the group. They were a couple times where I actually had to go far enough to do what we called intervention. Because the collaboration was so important and so powerful. So, it was just a great front row seat for me to see how God moved me into this place, how God brought me through this place. What happened when people collaborated, what happened when Christians are just people. You know, the good things that happened and the bad things that happened? And it’s a life that’s, it’s exciting to actually walk with God. And I am, I’m trying more and more to do that in my own, literally my personal life.
00:20:07 Paula: And as you spoke about that, well, listening to the podcast. Something that jumped out at me, I think this was related to Denver and Hugh. Talking about the working poor and, you know, generational, I wrote it down, generational poverty. Poverty! Yes, in Denver. And that really touched me, you know, going into, maybe you can talk more about that. Because I mean, that was like bringing Christ into people’s lives. Because that’s what Christianity is about. Touching lives, more than just saying I pray for you. But giving them the bread and the fish when they need it. Can you talk more about that?
00:20:51 Hugh: It’s been so amazing to see men from businessmen who’ve been through the leadership circle and they saw that what really burdened them was the working poor in our city. Denver’s a very, city with lots of money. A lot of oil and gas companies. And yet there’s thousands upon thousands of people that are working poor. They might have a job, but they live in great poverty. And these men, along with others, saw this and they said, we gotta do something about this. So, they began investigating and working and discovered that there were a lot of organisations trying to help the poor. Providing a car, providing childcare, providing soft skills training. Giving people training and use computers, but they weren’t working together.
00:21:44 Hugh: They caught this vision as Bob’s describing, called partnering. They said, let’s work together that we can help one another. Because they discovered that when someone’s working poor, to get a better job, they need help. And they identified they need to have someone called a navigator. And a navigator is someone who, when this person gets a better job and they all of a sudden their car breaks down. Or something else happens, they can contact that navigator to say help. And the navigator then directs them to one of partnering organisations that provides cars. And they said, we’ll have a car to you later today. So literally, they don’t lose their job. They’re not fired because all these different organisations now working together, helping the working poor to get the job, but then to keep the job. And they’ve been working at it now for over two years and they have some great stories. But what’s exciting is there’s probably close to going on now, 30 different organisations. Some working more closely with others, but working together to say, let’s address this problem of generational poverty. So, there’s a lot of good stories of people coming out of it. But the amazing thing as Bob is saying, is that these different faith-based organisations and some government organisations, partnering together to deal with this very large problem that we have in my city of Denver.
00:23:18 Tesse: Wow, this is so beautiful. I mean, it’s beautiful. It’s heart-touching, it’s inspirational. I can go on and on about, you know, the marvelousness of the sharing of these stories. You know, I’m, for people who are listening in, what words of encouragement can each of you give them from your stories, and the stories you have witnessed? Because this is about testifying. It’s about testimony. This is also about encouragement. You know, my sister-in-law before (unidentifiable word?), who lost her husband, Tony, my brother. She’s used to say to me, there is no testimony without a test. (unidentifiable words) This the Tesse there’s no test money without a test. Because she saw how depressed I was becoming. And she said, you will have a testimony to tell. So, what encouraging words do you have today from this space that you have been in and you continue to be in?
00:24:11 Bob: I think you might wanna share about your daughter.
00:24:15 Hugh: As I told you, we have three children, but one has preceded us to heaven. She was our middle child. And literally, just two weeks before she was to be born. My wife said, something’s not right. And we went in, and this is over in Shirazi Zimbabwe. And not many places that could do an ultrasound. But they did it and they said. They said that your, your baby is dead. In the womb. And, but they said, we’re gonna wait until you give birth. And so, for two weeks we wept. We cried. We cried nonstop for two weeks. And then my wife said, I’ve, I’ve had it. I can’t take it any longer. So, she went in, into to be induced and God was gracious. And he allowed her to give birth naturally after just five hours that that evening. But when she was born, she only lived five hours. She was in an incubator. They didn’t allow us to hold her until she had passed away. And at that point, we were able to hold her. Her name was Lauren. We named her Lauren and, um, Lauren Elizabeth. And we, discovered that she was a microcephalic baby, a trisomy 18. The 18th pair of chromosomes didn’t divide properly. It took months before they said. You can try to have another child, but the potential of having another problem-child like this is, is higher.
00:25:35 Hugh: Well, God gave us our second son named Nathan, means a gift from God. But what’s been amazing is what we’ve learned through that, we value life now so much. But to end this, I could go on for a long time, but nine years ago. When my older son now, was having his first child. And they called us together, her parents and his wife’s parents and us, and they then said, what do you want to be called? And of course we had some African names for us as grandparents. But they said, we want to name her Lauren. So, he says, I wanna name my baby, my baby girl. I wanna name her after my sister, who I don’t know, that he had never met. So, we have this amazing story that God has provided for us. I have two granddaughters.
00:26:23 Hugh: Two sons and two granddaughters and God has provided in the midst of great tragedy. And just to finish the story, we were in Africa and back in the day then there was no technology like this. We used to call home once a year. We used to call home once a year ’cause it was so expensive to call. And yet we had so many people reach out to us when they heard this. And we, my family wasn’t there. My wife’s family weren’t there, but we had so many Christians there. With us, comforting us, encouraging us, praying with us and our this. The funeral was incredible. God had raised up an amazing family of Christians there in her Shirazi Zimbabwe that supported us during this great loss, but we’ve learned a lot.
00:27:06 Hugh: If she was alive now, she’d be 36 years old. And, someone has said, when you get to heaven, you what? What are you gonna do? Well, of course I’ll look for Jesus. And the next thing I’ll say is, where’s Lauren? I wanna see Lauren. Because I know she’s there. I know she’s enjoying heaven with him.
00:27:23 Bob: Thank you. And I think when you think of this story and the compassion that other people have. You see it also in which Hugh described in the people working with generational poverty. I mean, there are disheartening things that happened to lots and lots and lots of people, and God calls all of us. To have the compassion that he shows, how many times in scripture is it said, and he had compassion on them.
00:27:53 Bob: PAULA & HUGH —- Amen. Amen.
00:27:55 Bob: He wants all of us to be like that.
00:27:57 Hugh: Yeah.
00:27:58 Tesse: Beautiful. You know, to think God of compassion. And one of the things. One of the, my favorite parts of the Bible and Paula, I didn’t know this when you sent me that book of the alabaster jars of Corinthians. And it was to comfort others, the same comfort that I, that we have received from God.
00:28:18 Hugh: Amen.
00:28:18 Tesse: It was, it was a purpose. It was a purpose. And, thank you so much for sharing your story. There’s no TESTI-mony without a test. But another thing (missing word) said to me, is that don’t confuse God with life. Don’t confuse God. With life. Paula, I hand over to you.
00:28:41 Paula: All that keeps coming to me is that all things work together for the good (some missing words) ……..sweet love. It may look on the outside as a tragedy, but really gives beauty ashes. I have seen that in my life. I’ve seen that in 00:29:00 Tess’s life. Your story was very touching and I knew, Bob, you have more stories you can share with us, or we know that in everything God works it out for his glory and for his purpose.
Outro:
00:29:15 Paula: So, I’m just gonna close us out, to say to our listening audience, as you can hear from this episode, your precious stories and lives matter. So, we continue to ask that you share them with us. Because others are encouraged, they’re supported and nurtured, but they know that they’re not alone. So, while listeners again, we encourage you to head over to Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, or anywhere else that you listen to podcasts, and please click subscribe.
00:29:53 Paula: And if you have found Tesse Leads helpful, please let us know in your reviews. If you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover, we ask that you send us a note. And of course, if you’d like to be a guest on our show Tesse Leads. Please head over to www.tesseakpeki.com/tessetalks to apply. Thank you, you and Bob for sharing incredible pride of sharing your stories of hope with us and with the world.
00:30:28 Bob: Our pleasure.
00:30:29 Hugh: Amen. Thank you for inviting us today.
00:30:31 Tesse: Thank you. This is like a gold mine and it’s full of diamonds, but thank you so much for sharing. Thank you.