Friend of the ministry and keynote missions conference speaker Mark Kittrell spoke with Pastor Walton about his many years of ministry around the world.
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Chris Harper: Welcome to Harvest Time. My name is Chris Harper, and our host on this program is Pastor Gary Walton, the lead pastor of Harvest Baptist Church. Every week, we spend these twenty five minutes together telling you the stories of our church by interviewing our members and other friends of the ministry. We’d like to invite you to join us at Harvest Baptist Church this week. There are two services every week.
The first at 08:45AM, the second at 10:45AM Sunday morning. We have Japanese and Korean translation during that 10:45AM service, and we also live stream at that time at hbcguam.org, hbcguam.org. This week, we’re continuing our missions theme. We’ll be in Matthew 28:16-20 on doubt and belief. Let’s begin today’s harvest time by welcoming pastor Gary Walton.
Hi, pastor.
Gary Walton: Hey. Hafa adai, Chris. We have had a fantastic few days here in the middle of our missions conference. And, yeah, as you met as Chris mentioned, we’re gonna come back to this theme one more time. So the Sunday before our missions conference, pastor Ken did some preaching, preparing our hearts for, for the mission.
We’ve had a great time together with our missionaries and our guest speakers. And, this Sunday, we’re gonna come back one more time with, a very familiar text, Matthew 28. Everybody’s gonna know it’s the great commission. But it’s give it’s gonna give us some really important teaching on what do we do with what we’ve heard. What do we do with what we’ve learned?
And so he’ll, we hope I’m praying it’ll put just a little capstone on this special emphasis of a few weeks together and propel us forward as a church, and as believers as we pursue the mission. I mean, we’ve heard what God’s called us to do. Now what are we gonna do about it? So we’d love to invite you to come and join us. We’ll have a sweet time of worship and fellowship together, and, we’d love to say hi to you if you can make it and join us in either of those services.
It’s been great for us to have Mark Kittrell, back with us, after a couple of years of being away. But, Mark, welcome back to Harvest Time.
Mark Kittrell: Thank you. Hafa adai. And, it’s a real joy to be back at Harvest. I’ve been here numerous times before, pre COVID. Right.
And then, obviously, that kinda shut down travel in the world. But it really has been a joy to be back for the Missions Conference this week.
Gary Walton: I didn’t get this answer earlier. We’ll ask it right here. I know that you’ve come very regularly since the early 2000’s. But sometime in the last week, you mentioned you actually were out on Guam very early. What was that, you know, back in the late eighties?
Mark Kittrell: Late eighties. Yes.
Gary Walton: What was that okay?
Mark Kittrell: Well, actually, after my wife and I were married, we took a mission trip just a few weeks after we were married to Pohnpei.
Chris Harper: Wow.
Mark Kittrell: And so we spent almost a month out on that island. We did a youth camp that summer on Joy Island. Okay. We worked at Calvary Baptist Church in Kolonia, Pohnpei.
Chris Harper: Mhmm.
Mark Kittrell: And then, on the way back to The US, we came through Guam. And, so that was actually the first time, we were ever on Guam.
Gary Walton: Okay. I you said something about it, and I never caught that story. So that’s very interesting.
Mark Kittrell: Yep.
Gary Walton: Yeah. So a long history in this area of the world.
Mark Kittrell: In the islands.
Gary Walton: In the islands. I know you have a love for this area, and God’s given you just a, you know, a broad ministry. Mark is the president of Pacific Rim Missions International, PRMI, and, we’ll talk about some of the ministries, all around the Southeast Asia, region. But he’s here, this time as a keynote speaker for our missions conference. Mark’s a very clear communicator, loves the scriptures.
You can see it and hear it and everything that he says. And so we’re thankful for your willingness to come back and serve us during this time.
Mark Kittrell: Thank you. Joy to be here and and just great to have Harvest as one of our, in in this missions partnership.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. We’re very thankful for that. Been partners together, supporters of Mark and his ministry, and, looking forward to seeing how God continues to expand the the reach of what God’s doing through through that ministry together. Your life has been filled with, you know, serving in evangelism, care about church planting, missions, all of those things kind of culminating in what God’s doing right now.
Mark Kittrell: Right. Yes. Grew up in a pastor’s home, around God’s word and and all, but, God changed my life at 15. Got saved, just the scriptures came alive, Holy Spirit convicted me, and I knew I needed a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Then shortly after that, felt the call to the ministry and, went off to Bible college, my wife.
We spent, some time traveling and evangelism about, eight years, and then God actually led us to Hawaii. And we were there for five years, and it was in that context that we really developed a love for what we’re doing now. So we planted a church. In fact, the church is still there. They just celebrated twenty five years.
It’s pastored by a a Hawaiian guy. And, in that church, we had Chinese and Japanese and Filipino and Korean and Thai and Vietnamese and Pacific Islander. And so it was a very, quite diverse Asian congregation. And that’s really where the burden for taking the gospel to Asia began, and then also the whole idea of training Asians to do the work of the ministry. All of those components were part of this time that we spent in Hawaii.
Gary Walton: I wanna back up real quick. I wanna come back to that. I was thinking about your testimony. You mentioned quickly, grew up in a pastor’s home, but really came to faith at 15. Just just for a minute, can I interact with you a little bit on that?
What were the challenges of growing up, you know, in a Christian home, and and what was it that really brought you to Christ as as a teen? What happened before that? What just Yeah. Just tell us a little bit about that.
Mark Kittrell: I think the the main challenge was in in growing up around Christianity and church and the Bible and belief system in God and all of these things. You you almost get to the point where you, like, take it for granted. Like, okay. It’s just what I’ve heard my whole life.
Or, yeah. Sure. I’m a Christian because my family is Christian. Or, oh, yes. I go to church.
I have a Bible. I believe there’s a God. But it wasn’t a personal faith to me. Yeah. It was it was ritual.
It was duty, but it wasn’t personal. And so I was a very sports minded guy. I was always busy doing sports, especially basketball.
Gary Walton: Well, I
think you said you grew up in Indiana. I mean, it’s the hotbed of basketball.
Mark Kittrell: Yeah. And and I mean, back in the day where Indiana basketball Yeah. Was the big thing on the scene in college basketball. And so I really saw my life going that direction. And even by the time I was in ninth grade, I was already starting to see some success in colleges, taking note, little recruiting, invite you to come to their basketball camp, and I my life was headed that direction.
And all the while, I’m still going to church and I’m in this Christian environment, but, I started to notice a dichotomy between how I was living on Sunday going to church and then how I was living Monday to Saturday. And it’s like, something’s not matching up. But the way God really got my attention is, I was, believe it or not, doing the high jump in a county track meet my freshman year. And when I turned my body to go over the bar, strange thing, I broke my pelvis.
Gary Walton: Mhmm.
Mark Kittrell: It the the the doctor said the the muscle and the tendons are stronger than the bone, and it literally just pulled the bone apart.
Gary Walton: So not a not a collision Right. Actually in the wrenching.
Mark Kittrell: Yep. Just a fracture
Gary Walton: That doesn’t feel good.
Mark Kittrell: Right down, like, the the one side, one third side of my butt all the way through. And so, because it wasn’t disjunctured in any way, he said, I think we can avoid surgery if you do this. You’ll have to lie flat on your back for six weeks. What? And I’m like 15 years old in the height of playing sports.
I already had planned, like, basketball camps all summer and football camp and this and that. Gone. Nothing. But you know what? During that time, and I wanna encourage parents with this, my folks were always about it’s the Bible.
It’s the word of God. And I had a Bible. Again, I read it out of duty. It was a ritual, but never to speak to me personally. And for the first time in my life at 15, I picked up the Bible to read for what it has to say to me.
Like, God is speaking to Mark. I’m not just reading the Bible to fulfill an obligation that my parents or, you know, Christianity. I’m reading it for what God has to say to me. And, you know, after about four weeks into that process, one thing became increasingly clear. I was reading through the New Testament that I’m not a good person.
Mhmm. I mean, I’m nice, Christian home. People probably would say to you, oh, Mark. Yeah. He’s but I’m a sinner in my core.
At my base, I’m a sinner. And that bothered me. And and the guilt of sin was there. The shame of sin was there. I I knew what sin was.
I knew I was a sinner, but God really drove that home. And I knew the gospel too. So it didn’t take a lot. Just one night all alone in my bedroom, I’m like, this faith needs to be personal. It needs to be mine.
And I just cried out to God in my bedroom all alone and asked Jesus Christ to save me. And Gary, radical change to my life. The peace with God, the burden of sin lifted, And I even started changing in ways, like, before this, all I could ever think about was basketball. And basketball kinda started losing its luster. And it’s like, there’s got to be more to life than that, than sports, than and just a few weeks later, I actually answered the call to the ministry.
And so, yeah. Pretty man, thank you, Lord.
Gary Walton: Yeah. One of the great things I love about genuine conversion, you know, testimonies of faith, professions of faith is how different they are. There’s not a cookie cutter. Now there’s there’s always the key elements. Yes.
Conviction of sin. I’m not a good person. I need Jesus. I need a purpose direct. So all of those things are the same, but the timing, the circumstances around it, the things that God uses to draw us, And, a lot of times I’m listening for that as people tell me about their faith.
You know, in other areas, it’s you have sort of this ritual that you go through. At this age, this happens. This age, this happens. And this age, you know, that’s when you’re, you know, somehow magically become a Christian, and that’s not how I see the scriptures at all. And your story is exactly, you know, another example of God’s genuine work personally.
It was a personal conversion.
Mark Kittrell: Very personal.
Yes. And that’s what I needed.
Gary Walton: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. It’s great. And, so then you said, you know, from there, now you’re tracking ministry.
Right?
Mark Kittrell: Right. Absolutely. Bible college, and then God opened the door for traveling. Then we ended up in Hawaii. That’s where he’s he planted the seeds for Pacific Rim Missions and and what we’re doing now.
Gary Walton: Okay.
Officially, PRMI began
Mark Kittrell: 2010.
Gary Walton: Okay. 2010. Currently, you’re involved in ministries in The Philippines? Yeah.
Mark Kittrell: We started in The Philippines. Yeah. And then, that was our first field where God opened the door. And then a couple years later, we ended up in Myanmar, Yangon, Myanmar. And then, a couple years after that, we started a seminary in Dimapur, Nagaland, India, kind of Northeastern India.
And then about a year after that, God opened the door for us to train some, men in Nepal. And, then just recently, I’m gonna say within the last, four to six months, God has also opened a door for us to start training some Bengali, that would be, Bangladesh, some Bengali young men for ministry. And then, even just a couple weeks ago, God potentially may be opening a door in the future for some training in Vietnam. So, yeah, those are right now, that’s kind of, where we’re at.
Gary Walton: That’s so exciting. And just a little bit more on that, Mark. So the idea is training nationals with the foundations of theological, church ministry philosophy. Just describe that for us.
Mark Kittrell: Correct.
Yeah. The the whole idea of Pacific Rim Missions, philosophically, at
its core, was training philosophically at its core was training nationals to do the work of the ministry. And the the idea behind that is, you know, when I traveled to Asian countries, I never got the request of, oh, bring us the gospel. Because really, Asia has the gospel. Even the closed countries have the gospel. And, I I haven’t really gotten the request of, oh, send us missionaries.
And probably because Asians themselves make great missionaries when they get saved. They love taking the gospel to their people. But the number one request, I’ve gotten is we need training. We we we don’t really understand how to in theology, we call this hermeneutics. We don’t understand how to interpret the Bible, teach us how to correctly interpret the Bible, and take those passages apart, and show us how we’re supposed to view that.
So the other theological school educational term is homiletics. Teach us how to preach the Bible and teach people the Bible. So the idea is to train them so they can preach, teach, reach their own people. So, for us that means starting, Bible schools and seminaries where young men can come and they can get a good solid Bible education and then go out and take it to their people. And the advantages of that are one, they know the language and the culture.
Right. Two, you can do it a lot cheaper than bible college education in America. So for them to leave and go, it’s so much cheaper. And then three, they really do understand how their people think and how you minister within the culture. So really, you’re just using Asians who already have an advantage in many ways to reach their own people.
Gary Walton: Yeah. We love that. That’s so great. We were talking you and I were talking earlier about, some of the sacrifices that these students are making in order to avail themselves of this kind of education. Can you tell us any specific things about that?
Mark Kittrell: Sure. Well, for one, most of them are very poor, and whatever they bring to the table is not a law, but they’re willing to bring whatever they have, whether it’s rice or a few pesos or, you know, some other type of I I just I want so you see sacrifices on that end. Right. Obviously, we do raise funds to help scholarship them and provide facilities and teachers. So, you know, we have a lot of skin in the game as well, but so do they.
Gary Walton: Sure.
Mark Kittrell: Some of
them, whenever they come, they either bring their own food, they they work jobs on campus. That’s they’re hard workers. Another big aspect of this though is like let’s take for instance Myanmar. In 2021, there was the military coup, and so it’s very dangerous to travel between cities and states. And a lot of our young men there come from, Chin State.
And so when they came to Bible College, then the military coup broke out. They’ve never left.
Gary Walton: Right.
Mark Kittrell: In fact, I I just finished about three months of teaching them three nights a week online, and I asked them, so tell me about your families. Tell me, you know, how and they’re like, we don’t know. I said, what do you mean? Well, we don’t know if our family is alive or dead or there’s no communication. We haven’t heard anything.
And so they are willing to risk it all and give it all up even even, like, knowing about their families and and family relationships in order to be committed to studying the Word of God so they can graduate and go take it to their people.
Gary Walton: Yeah. The gospel is so precious, to to many, and the burden of adequately bringing the gospel to regions that, you know, they may be from where there’s no training. Pastors are there with no very little teaching. And, yeah, you and I are talking about, you know, some with six, seven, eight churches already established
Mark Kittrell: Right.
Gary Walton: But no pastors at all and, you know, trying to prepare for that. So we love all of that work. Thankful for God’s what God’s doing there. I’m always interested in talking with pastors and Christian leaders, about discipleship, disciple making. It’s a, you know, very significant topic in the scriptures.
We talk about it a lot around here. Tell me about disciple making in the church, the global church. What are you seeing overall? What are you seeing in the context that you’re working specifically at?
Mark Kittrell: Yeah. I do think, discipleship I mean, obviously, it’s biblical. But in in some respects it had been ignored, you know, for years. And I think it’s making a comeback, if I can put it that way. It should have always been.
There shouldn’t have to be a comeback to make, but I think we are. And and there is more of an emphasis of not just building a ministry, like, right now, today, in numbers, seeing how many we can have, but it’s like that surface. We’re talking about the church now understanding over the long term, if you’re gonna have a long term influence, impact in ministry, you have to go deeper with people. And so the whole idea of first Timothy 2:2 there where you’re teaching men who can teach others also, I think there is, more of an emphasis now on generational impact, like teaching these people so they can teach their students, so then they can teach their students because, really, our ministry should way outlast us. And that’s the whole idea of discipleship.
Like with Jesus, I’m going back to heaven. This needs to continue. How does it continue? Through training the 12 to continue on.
Gary Walton: Yeah. So those those investment the investments that you’re making in the lives of those students, discipleship to teaching, would be modeled and then, given out in others. That’s awesome. We’re probably talking about this all along, Mark, but what’s your biggest burden, during this season of your life as you’re seeing the church worldwide? What do you any key things that you say are just burdens either that you see thriving or or some areas that, you know, we gotta we gotta approach?
Mark Kittrell: Yeah. I would say, one, taking advantage of opportunities that the Lord brings our way. Mhmm. And that is all about timing. You know, just like Vietnam, I’ve probably prayed and thought about that for maybe twelve, thirteen years.
Mhmm. And it’s just been kind of a quiet prayer, a secret prayer, and but it has to be the right time with the right people that and, you know, God opened a door with some Vietnamese in the Seattle area. And now we’re in a conversation, and they know people there. And so, so just being ready for opportunities. A second aspect of this would be, there, you I don’t know.
I I guess I’d put it this way. As it gets closer to the return of Christ and every day puts us a day closer. There does seem to be a lot of hostility to the gospel and it almost seems like Satan is making this final push, if you will. I mean, it certainly could be another thousand years, but I’m just saying I’m starting to see that consistently around the world. In fact, I had a pastor from India write me today about the incredible hostility that he’s facing in his part of the world, and and I’m seeing this more regularly and hearing about it more regularly.
So in in in that regard, we have to be ready also to in in the good in a good way, in the right way to stand our ground, to fight for the truth of the gospel, and to keep spreading it no matter what the cost might be. So opportunity on one hand, hostility on the other, and in both cases, just being ready to do what God’s called us to do. I’m with you, Mark. I’ve been saying this for a while.
Gary Walton: I just communicated with some young people stateside. I think we’re in the final lap. Now I’m not making any predictions of whether that’s twenty years or two hundred years or two thousand. I don’t mean it in that way, but I it there is some sense of the final stretch.
And, and I guess maybe we should always feel that anyway. We don’t know how much time we’ve got. The races could end any time. And, and the opportunities in front of us are so, yeah. They’re so great.
And, and we have a tremendous adversary.
We have to be ready for that.
So, he’s one that senses the same, finality. And so I I think we’ll see some increased, whether persecution or just opposition, you know Yeah. As well. I’m praying for faithful people.
I mean, you’re training people that are on the front lines of some of the key, battlegrounds
Mark Kittrell: Yeah.
Gary Walton: For the gospel. So
Mark Kittrell: Yeah. And, you know, I’ll just mention it. If there are any listeners that are like, boy, I’d I’d wow. I’d love to hear about what’s going on with Pacific Rim Missions, what they’re doing.
You can go online to pacificrimmissions.org and find out about all of our projects. And if you’re like, hey, I’d love to donate to help one of these guys train for the ministry. $20 a month. You know, something like that.
It’s like a little bit that goes a long way. So pacificremissions.org, and you can see pictures and stories and updates and if anyone’s interested.
Gary Walton: Yeah.
It’s great. We’d love to encourage people to go. We’re thankful, for the, again, the partnership. We’d love the idea of partnering with people that God’s, you know, blessing a ministry. We see that with you, where we share such a kinship of philosophy and ministry.
We’re thankful for that. And, as a church, you know, we’re invested and we wanna encourage people to invest as well. Happy to say, you know, we don’t always know online, you know, just to our audience. You don’t always know, those that you can trust. And it helps to say, hey.
I know some people who would know some people, and we’ll push you to Pacific Rim, and that website would be great. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for joining us on this whole week. Your teaching has been fantastic.
God’s using you in life of our church. So thank you.
Mark Kittrell: Thanks, Gary. Appreciate Harvest, and, just thankful for the the good gospel partnership. Yeah. Amen.
Chris Harper: Well, thank you for listening to this Harvest Time. We always wanna invite you at this point in the program to our services at Harvest Baptist Church, two on Sunday, 08:45AM and 10:45AM. We have Japanese and Korean translation during the 10:45AM service, and that’s also when we bring you the service live here on 88.1 FM and khmg.org. We hope to see you this Sunday. Thanks again for listening to Harvest Time.