I wasn’t going to post this week as our conference is happening, but we recorded this Friday and it might be good for some coming to the conference.
Here is the AI generated transcript:
Ted Esler: I want to welcome you to this little video that we're going to be putting together, posting on the Substack. I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation with two gentlemen that are involved in a, what I would say is one of the most innovative and unique ministry projects going on out there.
I want to introduce Wei-Jing Zhu and Brent McHugh. Welcome to the call gentlemen.
Brent McHugh: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Ted Esler: And they work with an organization called Cherith Analytics. And I think what I'm going to do get started is just ask Wei-Jing to tell us a little bit about Cherith and what the goals and objectives are with Cherith and we'll get started with that.
So Wei-Jing, could you tell us a little bit about Cherith Analytics?
Wei-Jing: So in a three minute version Cherith Analytics started out with the tagline of AI for Faith about eight years ago. That was all before the AI craze. And we started out having several gentlemen that really have a heart for missions, but at the same time in the workspace, right?
In Silicon Valley and in in the AI space. And so we started out doing AI projects and with Bible translation and things like that. And God had really blessed this project and this experiment. We didn't know where, what we were doing at the time, but just trying out and that just attracted a number of other brilliant people Christians from all walks of the workplace.
So we expanded to have projects in technology in apps and in websites and all that. At that time somehow we got linked to Missio Nexus and Ted, you were very gracious to introduce to us many amazing mission organizations. And upon interacting with them for example with Brent we learned, the true needs of missions and a lot of time it's on business. And so we start venturing into the business as missions space. And through that we were blessed to attract several serial entrepreneurs who helped us in establishing some of the things that we're going to talk about, which is basically real businesses with high value proposition that can actually make money, but at the same time do work that aligned with mission goals. And we'll talk, with examples later. But that's basically what we're doing now. Daring to try out the things that for the kingdom, a lot of experiments and just try out new ways of helping the mission's world with businesses solutions.
Ted Esler: Brent tell us a little bit about your story. You actually worked for, I believe, a large drugstore chain. Got into missions leadership and now you're with Cherith. Could you just give us a little bit about that background?
Brent McHugh: Yeah, it was God blessed me with, to work for a Fortune 17 company for 20 years in the US and during that time, I felt called to missions.
I went through a discernment process with my church. They felt that, oh yeah he's going to be our next senior pastor. And my wife and I came back and said, no, we feel called to work with least reach people. And they blessed us and sent us off to Asia Minor where we served for 12 years. Saw God do some amazing things in church planting.
And then because it was a fruitful ministry, maybe I got kicked upstairs and became CEO of the mission organization and served in that role for 11 years before coming over to Cherith. And how I got connected with Cherith was through Missio Nexus, where Cherith was being introduced. And I was part of a group of CEOs that got exposed to Cherith and listened to what they wanted to do.
And then right after that, I became a board member of Cherith served on that. And then the time came where I transitioned over to chair and have been serving with them for about three quarters of a year.
Ted Esler: Thanks for all the love on Missio. And I would just say those are the stories we love to hear.
We wish we could capture more of them because we know they're happening, but people make these powerful connections. But te tell us a little bit what's unique about what. You do at Cherith that is actually, I don't think it's being done widespread. But tell us what's unique about what you do, Brent.
Brent McHugh: What we're really excited about in this business as mission space, we've developed kind of three bottom lines, right? We look at the mission cause, of fulfilling the great commission in three ways, sustainability, profitability, and church plantability. Because we have leveraged some very talented people and been gifted with some finances, we've been able to invest in world changing organizations.
The World Health Organization, for example, says that one in six women have been diagnosed as infertile. We have the answer, the solution to help 81% of those women worldwide. And it doesn't matter class, it doesn't matter nation, it doesn't matter location that this is one in six women worldwide and we have a great opportunity through this company to minister to those people at.
The deepest level of pain in their life. They are hoping that this is their future. This is their, children of their retirement or maybe God's put, you know it in them. And through natural family planning, we're able to have the best. We're number one in the marketplace, okay. In North America.
We just became number one in Europe and we're expanding throughout Asia and through that by serving people by. Equipping consultants that can come alongside people. We have such a great opportunity to minister to them at a very deep level. So, for proclamation, discipleship, and gathering people that, that's just one example.
Ted Esler: So let me jump in, ask this question. So how does AI play into that?
Brent McHugh: We have the best AI app on the market for telling what's happening in a woman's body. And so even doctor's offices and clinics and IVF organizations want our charting because it's it's so detailed. Be because the woman snaps a picture of the test strips she uses, does it for 20 days, and we know exactly what's happening in our body.
The best information available in the fertility industry is on our app.
Ted Esler: So Wei-Jing as you look at that kind of application of AI, does Cherith actually hire the engineers to create that? Do you find people, do you do buy products that are in existence already? What's your, what approach in terms of using AI in this.
Wei-Jing: This is a good example and a lot of times just in general like we partner with existing technologies. And so we help. So for example, we partner with this particular company that has the best fertility application and we introduced the AI talents to help them improve the precision of their algorithm.
And and then it's a women's situation. When we help mission organizations they will just make use of these great tools and and then they can help people where they need their, their deepest needs, but at the same time, like even if example a missionary can, aim to get started and just try to get the business running, while the fact that they are helping people with these personal needs, they are already establishing these deep personal connections.
And the next month when they, when the missionary decided to share the gospel. Basically the channels are already established while they're making the business. And so it's just there are many and our other examples are similar whether it's like in leadership training and all that, we aim to make genuine, useful technologies that, pays the bill and at the same time pave the channel for gospel sharing in the future.
Ted Esler: Brent, one of the words you used was church plantability.
Brent McHugh: That's my own word.
Ted Esler: I've seen a lot of businesses mission, operations or ministries do a lot of business, but not a lot of the mis the ministry part. How you could just take the, we can stay in the same example. How has this produced [00:08:00] church plantability?
Brent McHugh: For a traditional worker there, there's a, couple things that, go on as the CEO of a large mission organization. I would go and visit fields and I would hear the traditional worker say the challenge that the people that they want to reach, they don't have access to, except on late in the evening when they're off work or, maybe on the weekends when they're not working right. And so they have to retrofit their ministry to the availability of people. But when you are offering such a service, that, that is so impactful. I was just in South Asia and the people were streaming in, talk to our consultants about fertility.
In the middle of the day, in the middle of the week, and the line was out the door. We had tremendous access to people at a very deep level. And, by using spiritual snacks to, be attentive, have your radar up to the opportunity to pray for people, the opportunity to share your testimony through as a way to present the gospel.
Very few barriers in that for people to experience, have an important meeting with someone who wants to share their faith, that wants to minister to them in ways that sometimes traditional workers have difficulty with because they didn't have access to the people they wanted. So, in that case the data, the research shows that social networks are the way in which church planting moves forward.
And what we found when people have a common, problem or a crisis in their life. And you are serving in that. It's much easier at the gathering stage if they know that P person, if they'd been in a webinar or may maybe a an outreach that happened that, that was a clinic that we ran, that those people begin to recognize people.
And so when you get to. You move beyond proclamation to discipleship to wanting to put people together. There's less barriers than if you take the corner gas station attendant on one side of town and, the dry cleaner who's on the other side of town who have never met before, who done don't have anything in common.
What I see happening is that this accelerates the ability to put groups of people together. And I think in my ministry of being a church planter for the last 25 years that really added fuel to what we were doing. So this is just one of a number of businesses you're involved with, I believe.
Ted Esler: How many total businesses are you currently working with and through?
Brent McHugh: A number of them, but mainly four. Mainly four. One is the fertility company and it has huge scalability. It's, we're in about 120 nations right now with our product and able to deliver our service there.
The second is in the consulting realm, right? Consulting for business education and life coaching. At the highest levels of government on the high the highest levels of education to rural locations in education, so it's education. ministers in a remote area in Southeast Asia.
That would like to have a consultant come in and to work with them, giving the US access to that. The third is language studios. And we're able to you can imagine in the US there's something called Planet Fitness. So workout gym, okay. Where you pay a very low fee to work out anytime you want.
With our language studios, you pay a one time fee. And you are propelled into the most technologically advanced language learning school on the planet. Okay? I don't have them here, but you put on your meta goggles, okay? And if you want to learn English, you are propelled to the UK and walking through a grocery store, to practice your language.
Okay? And it's you are an avatar. The science behind it actually shows that people are less anxious about practicing the language if they are an avatar instead of themselves, and that's one of the biggest hurdles for people to get into using language. And so we call this a business as mission and a backpack, right?
The worker with five sets of goggles can set up a studio anywhere in the world. And you get five people every hour for eight hours a day, times five days a week. That's 200 accesses. You have 200 people who are paying you just a minimal fee to use your service, but it is the most. Technologically advanced program available.
You have 200 language teachers available to you online through these goggles, right? And there, there's such a desire for it that, people are starting these things very quickly for us and engaging the community in that way. And then the last one, really came outta COVID, right?
And it's we call them e-commerce startup academies. E-commerce what we do is we take people through a seven week program that talks about who they are, right? May, maybe where they're going and putting together what would motivate them in the morning, to get up and to run an e-commerce company that engages them in the local people that they want to work for.
I'll just give you one example in that it's a couple coming from China that wanted to work in Asia Minor and they, after the interview, the wife said what I'm really passionate about is skincare. Okay. And were skincare. What are we going to, how are we gonna put that together?
But it turns out that the place they were going okay, is the foundational flower the organic chemistry of the top selling skincare product in China, right? So they're going to Asia miner. There, there's fields and fields of this particular plant that can be used and is very popular in skincare in China.
So this this couples sustainability in the country that you can't get a visa to go anywhere out. You can't be a student anymore. You can't be a long-term tourist. They have their own viable business and they are just crushing it and. I just was there visiting and the community, the couple walked away and I can speak the language of the people and I said, Hey, can you tell me about them?
And they're they're amazing. They've opened up this whole network in China for us Okay. Through their e-commerce site. And I said are they serving you? They said, yeah, but we can't get them to stop talking about Jesus, and and the, so the people they wanted to reach were the distributors, the people that working in the fields, the people that were selling the product.
And, but the, what is making it sustainable is that it's a much needed product back in China. And so that, that connection of the sustainability, the profitability, and the church plantability to step into that community. Fit very well with the makeup of the couple. What she would get up every morning to want to study, to want to find the latest product for,
Ted Esler: So your role as chair in this chain here is explain what you do, what's your offering in this value chain?
Brent McHugh: So we provide the portals, right? So what we do for mission organizations is that we white label these portals, the language studios, the fertility consultant, the business consultant and the e-commerce company. We white label them. So the mission organization, when they're on campus or they're in a church.
And they are asking, how do our people get to the field? And they say we have these four portals, and they are part of our organization. They're provided by a partner, but they are that organization's portal to use to get their people to the most resistant places on the planet.
Ted Esler: So if you're a mission leader out there, you're listening to this and you're thinking, whoa, I wonder if we could use that in a particular place. How do they best connect with you besides coming to the Missio Nexus conference? Besides that?
Brent McHugh: That would be the only way. No. And if you're hearing this before the Missus Conference, we are hosting.
A reception on Thursday evening. I think it's at eight or eight 30. To talk more about these and to answer questions, but if you wanted to get in touch with us, you can write to me at brent B-R-E-N-T atcher.io and I'll put you in contact with the right person that would be able to take a call with you and to unpack this for your organization and your people.
Ted Esler: I gotta say I'm on day two 70 of using Duolingo to learn Spanish, and I'm feeling a little bogged down. I'm feeling like I need to try something else. So it sounds like I gotta get somehow take some Spanish classes from you at some point here.
Brent McHugh: I find this to be, see you next week. I will bring you some goggles and you can get started on your Spanish.
Ted Esler: Okay. Thank you very much for being on the call. And I just want you to know, Godspeed, from my perspective.
This kind of creative thinking is where we need to go in the future. So thank you. Thank you for your ministry and what you're doing at Cherith guys. You have a blessed day.
Brent McHugh: Thank you, Ted. We really appreciate you as well. Bye.
