Ideas Have Consequences

Honey, We Shrunk the Gospel with Leanna Cinquanta

• Disciple Nations Alliance • Season 2 • Episode 22

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To their detriment, many ministries pivot between a message of salvation and a social gospel–neither capture the fullness of the Great Commission. Dr. Leanna Cinquanta, the dynamic founder of We Ignite Nations (WIN) passionately challenges Christians to shift their understanding from a shrunken gospel to the comprehensive gospel of the kingdom, which connects to every part of our lives. Hear inspiring boots-on-the-ground reports of God's work around the world, and learn practical ways to apply an unshrunk gospel in your community. Dr. Cinquanta, an author, speaker, and development worker, shares transformative stories and insights that will inspire you to see the Great Commission anew. Reignite your passion, learn how to disciple nations, and be inspired by real-world examples of faith in action that will help you make a deeper impact in your community and beyond.

Leanna Cinquanta:

We are here as his co-creators, we're here as his vice regents on the earth, bringing his goodness, his life, his liberty, his love into this world and into every sector of it. And when we limit him and we try to say, well, it's okay, just preach the gospel, but it does, but your job doesn't matter, just you know, share your faith with people. But it doesn't matter, your hobby really doesn't matter, that's secular or that's worldly, we are absolutely desecrating who Jesus wants to be. Through us, we are you. We are diminishing the good news of the kingdom.

Luke Allen:

Hi friends, welcome to Ideas have Consequences. The podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. Here on this show we examine how our mission as Christians is to not only spread the gospel around the world, to all the nations, but our mission also includes to be the hands and feet of God, to transform the nations to increasingly reflect the truth, goodness and beauty of God's kingdom. Tragically, the church has largely neglected this second part of her mission and today most Christians have little influence on their surrounding cultures. Join us on this podcast as we rediscover what it means for each of us to disciple the nations and to create Christ-honoring cultures that reflect the character of the living God.

Scott Allen:

Well, welcome again everybody to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance. I'm Scott Allen, I'm the president of the DNA and I'm joined today by my good friends and team members Luke Allen, tim Williams and Daryl Miller, and we're thrilled today to have as our special guest Liana Cinquanta. Liana is a person who has a very similar heart to us. She's involved in international ministry, particularly in South Asia. She's involved in what we call and many others, of course, but holistic ministry, a ministry that brings about a change in a variety of ways in nations and cultures Leanna's. I'll just mention a couple of things that stood out to me, leanna, before we turn it over to you for a little bit more background. But she is the founder and president of a ministry organization called WIN. We ignite nations, and so we both have nations in the name of our organization's Disciple Nations Alliance, and we ignite nations.

Scott Allen:

We'd love to hear more about that, Leanna. Leanna has a fascinating background and we'd love to hear a little bit more about that. She's also a scholar. She has her doctorate excuse me, her Master's of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and her Doctorate of Ministry from Regent University in Virginia. So what a fascinating background and we're excited to hear more about your background and your ministry. Leanna, yeah, maybe you could just begin by telling us a little bit about who you are, where you grew up, kind of a little bit about your story in terms of your faith and things like that.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Thank you so much, scott, and it's such a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you. Darrell and Tim and Luke all of you yeah, I was born in Wisconsin in 1970 and homeschooled back in the 70s, when homeschooling wasn't too easy in a lot of states. My mom.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, your parents were pioneers, right yeah, my mom was kind of a pioneer.

Leanna Cinquanta:

She wrote theses to the government, you know, demanding the rights of parents to homeschool, because the schools in our area were some of the worst. And she did. They didn't want to send me, even though we weren't really following christ. My dad's family had immigrated from italy and so a catholic background, mom's family had been methodist, but we weren't really at that time, you know I have. I was basically an unreached young person that had never really heard okay, I'm a Christian. I was like, oh, I'm a Christian because I'm an American. That was my perspective. And oh, I'm not a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Muslim, so I must be a.

Luke Allen:

Christian.

Leanna Cinquanta:

You know, that was all I as I was growing up as a young person. But then we moved a lot because we were always looking for a state where we could not freeze to death, which we were doing in northern Wisconsin sometimes, but we ended up in Arizona and then in Missouri, and every time we would move we would buy a piece of property that we could afford in the boondocks with cash and then spend the summer living in a little 12-foot shack we put together with two-by-fours and tarp paper and build the house with our own hands.

Leanna Cinquanta:

So that was kind of how I grew up, a little bit of pioneering in multiple ways.

Scott Allen:

Wow. So you grew up in a homeschool family, an early homeschool family, and at that time it was in many states I don't know about Wisconsin it was not even legal. So this was a big deal for people to kind of take that step, that countercultural step. But you weren't a Christian and I think that's kind of fascinating as well. When did you come to faith?

Leanna Cinquanta:

Leanna and I would say my parents were exemplary examples of the Judeo-Christian worldview, without having a born-again experience with Christ, yet their lives were based on the Judeo-Christian worldview, which is basically the principles of the Bible which lead to thriving and wholeness, and so I'm very grateful. We did not have a lot of money, but we literally lived on $500 a month at some points. But we were not poor. We enjoyed life. I had horses from an early age. We enjoyed life. I had horses from an early age. My mom got me involved in horses. My dad was an aeronautical genius, had flown fighter pilots in World War II. My dad's dream was to build the first ever truly man-powered flapping wing aircraft, an ornithopter. He built it. He was almost at the point of being able to fly it over the grand canyon to prove it, but he uh. Well then, I'll move to the. What happened next? But, um, but I was, uh, he taught me to fly a plane at age nine and I would have been the youngest pilot if I had continued. But I got bit by the horse bug, thanks to mom, and started going into horses. But I was.

Leanna Cinquanta:

I had no peace in my life, even though I had such a great upbringing, you know, as a young person and tight teenager, as I started going to the public schools. Then, when mom couldn't do the algebra anymore, you know I she gave up homeschooling and I went to high school I would have gone into the very darkest place. I started going off very quickly into a very great deal of anger and bitterness and violence and had no peace, no joy in my life. And it's a long story how I came to know Christ, but it happened in an instant.

Leanna Cinquanta:

March 28, 1986, jesus showed up in my room and I saw Jesus, I spoke to him, I touched him. It was very real. I don't know what to call it. It wasn't. It wasn't a dream. That story and the rest of what happened beyond that and how god called me into south asia is in my first book called treasures in dark places and so that that is available on amazon. That was published in 2017. But I came to know Christ through that experience, just dramatically, and was changed in one night. I was changed and was passionate to serve him from that point onward.

Scott Allen:

Wow, yeah, and I neglected to mention you are a published author who has a book, and a book upcoming, and we'll talk more about this shortly, but I'll go ahead and put the title out there. It's called your Secret. Calling Ancient Keys to Unleash God's Highest Purpose. Love that title, excited to hear a little bit more about that. That's a book that's going to be available in May. Leanna, I want to bring the team in here, but start by talking about your ministry. You talked a bit about your fascinating growing up. So many things we could explore there, but it just sounds amazing and then how you came, kind of miraculously, to faith through the direct intervention of Jesus. Tell us about ministry, then, because your ministry experience is also fascinating ministry then, because your ministry experience is also fascinating.

Leanna Cinquanta:

And that's where we start to move into the exciting, the even more exciting stuff of what God's doing today through the new book coming out, your Secret Calling, because I was very dramatically called but I had no concept at that point of what I call the unshrunk gospel. I was still operating in the regular praise God, let's get saved and go to heaven, and let's share the gospel wherever we can and bring people to know Christ and praise God. That's the foundation. It's the foundation of everything. It's the foundation of everything, and we must guard against entering into the social gospel where we put transformation of physical things around us before the proclamation of salvation through faith and the transformation of the spirit and the transition of the person from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. And so that foundational transformation of our soul, of our salvation of our soul, what I call the spiritual salvation as opposed to then, out of that God would like to bring some semblance of physical salvation, at which point it becomes a snowball effect, resulting in multiplied glory, multiplied salvations, of both spiritual and physical. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Leanna Cinquanta:

So when God called me to go into South Asia, that whole amazing story again. Incredible way, he led me to not go where a lot of other people were going to go, to the unreached, the people who have never heard of Christ. He led me through dreams, various dreams, and a series of them, and that's all in the first book. Okay, that's all stories in the first book. If you want to know how to be led into a very dark and strategic mission field, get the first one, that's treasures in dark places. That's the story, um. But when I got there and we started doing the work and he showed me don't be, don't do it the traditional way. Raise up the native people, honor the local culture, um, bring christ into the culture, don't cancel the culture in the name of Christ. Okay. So these are very strategic things that I wasn't taught in any of my studies up till that point, and and yeah, I was going to ask you if I could interrupt, leanna, did you have your?

Scott Allen:

you know you have these degrees. Had you? Had you done that study prior to this, or was that after you were on the?

Leanna Cinquanta:

mission. No, I had been a part of, and I highly recommend, YWAM Youth with a Mission. It was in YWAM that they exposed me to the teaching on the unreached nations, that allowed the Holy Spirit to guide me there and got me started, and so I really, really honor and I love YWAM Youth with a Mission. At the same time, I did not receive the strategic training on how to bring the gospel into or to bring Christ into and honor that local culture and the local people that I had to discover, and I don't see very few are teaching it even today. So that's going to be my third book actually.

Luke Allen:

If you'd like to explore what a biblical worldview is and how you can begin the journey of transforming your mind to start seeing everything through biblical perspectives, we would encourage you to check out our free biblical worldview training course, the Kingdomizer Training Program, which is available at quorumdalecom and is also linked in the episode landing page. The Kingdomizer Training Program was created to help Christians live out their call to make disciples of all nations, starting with themselves and working out from there. I would recommend this course to any Christian who wants to stop living in a sacred secular divide that limits their faith to only some areas of life, but instead it will help them to start to see everything quorum Deo, which means before the face of God, and to start connecting their passions and their calling to their faith.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Begin to have an impact with Christ in your culture that, if were working with a group, a massive group of people that was. This region was known as the graveyard of Christianity and the poisonous hub of trafficking, of human trafficking, for all of Asia. Okay, and so we started working then in this environment and saw incredible things happen for the first 20 years. Just incredible transformation of lives through the love of Christ coming in, saw a lot of the miraculous healings People being healed physically, Went through prayer in the name of Jesus, demons being cast out, just like in the Bible, I mean, just like in the book of Acts it's saying Holy Spirit's the same, he hasn't, he hasn't changed, okay, he still does. All that stuff, you know. And so a beautiful transformation and just the the love of Christ coming into that community and just so many lives transformed. But as I was doing this work, I kept on having this sense that there's something more. There's something that can release an even greater outpouring of god's love to these people. There's something that can open their eyes and open the eyes of those who aren't seeking spiritually. You know, and and daryl and team this is where this comes into, this uh, that our world here in the west too, because there's a lot of people that you know what they want, jesus, but they don't know it. They don't see yet their need for him. And how will they see?

Leanna Cinquanta:

I want to read one of one passage here from Francis Schaeffer that I've included in my new book coming out your secret calling. We have misunderstood the concept of the lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives and for our culture. And so that's what I started to see, and, daryl, your works were a big part of this. At various times I've connected with your writings and the writings of you know, disciple Nations Alliance and just it's. I really honor and appreciate you and what God's done in your life for helping me to come to the place that I am today, as we continue to discover this together.

Scott Allen:

Well, thank you, leanna. I mean that's. It's always such a huge encouragement to us when we hear how somebody who's involved in such an incredible ministry has been helped by our ministry and the things that we teach Several things. You know, I love your phrase, the shrunken gospel. I'd never heard that, but that's really the problem that we saw as well in the Church that the gospel, the idea of the gospel of salvation, is as you say.

Scott Allen:

It's the fundamental starting point of any kind of change. We have to be changed internally through the power of the Spirit of God. We need to be born again. But it doesn't stop there, and I think this is where you know so much has gone wrong with the Church of late. You know it kind of ends there and really that's the beginning point. Once people are born again, it should have social impact and that begins with the most basic society, the family, and then it ripples outward from there, you know, until really nations are impacted. I think this has always been God's plan, not that—I know when I say this, people always say, oh, you think that we're going to have the kingdom come perfectly before Jesus comes back. I always say, no, I don't believe that, but we need to be working towards that end and we will see transformation, as you've said, you know, in different ways and at different levels. Team I want to bring you guys in. What questions do you have for Leanna?

Tim Williams:

Team I want to bring you guys in. What questions do you have for Leanna? I loved your comment earlier, leanna, about honoring local culture and people, and would love to hear you know how have you done that. What's that been like? You described it as a different strategy than others had. We'd just love to hear more.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Okay, yeah, I love that one. And literally yesterday I was at a small group meeting with Native Americans who had been brought there with their instruments, their native drums, and it was just so awesome to be in that environment of the, the first and the original american people, uh, worshiping jesus with their own instruments and their own style. Not just the instruments, I mean, it was totally their style and their language, and we didn't understand a word, you know. We heard Yahweh here and there and Jesus here and there, you know, but it was just beautiful and but that's then I got up and I told the story that I'm going to tell you of when we first went there and I first started there in, in that region of South Asia that I mentioned was so, such a, such a barren land. It was called the graveyard of christianity, but the reason that it was so is because of the people who had come over so many generations had tried to bring a gospel that was contaminated with our culture, instead of bringing the pure, unadulterated gospel. Like see what did? What did Apostle Paul say? I have determined to know nothing among you except Christ and him crucified. Why? Because he was allowing their culture to fill. I mean allowing the gospel to fill their culture and to redefine their culture around Christ. And so here these folks had gone to this region of the world for so many years and they'd say, well, you can't use that drum, that drum you you've been using that for, for you know, millennia to worship idols and in fact, they had their own style of music that they specifically. This music was almost always used to tell the stories of their the gods and goddesses that there had been this. That was then. It was an oral culture. They most people didn't know how to read and write, so the only way they had of transmitting the traditions was through song and dance, and they had their drum and they would sing their songs as a and they would repeat after each other. It was it was just this learning environment through song that would retell the stories.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Well, we would get up there myself and my colleagues of others, others who were native to that nation but not to this local area okay, so they were all christian background, didn't understand the culture. We get up there with our western guitar, you know, and we're trying to lead them in worship, right, and these native people, they're sitting there and they're just going to sleep. They just that's yeah, foreign, foreign, god, foreign music, foreign they're trying to impose on us. Finally we give, and we call the little guy, just one brand-new believer, that we realized he's been writing music, he's got a gift for writing music. Well, you know what he was.

Leanna Cinquanta:

He didn't know the rules yet when we said, hey, jd, come up here and do one of your songs. Well, he called, he turned to the little guy, little boy sitting there, and said Go in the hut over there and bring one of the local drums. And so then, all of a sudden, everybody's like local drum, oh, we can bring our musical instrument. And so he goes and he gets this drum. They start the rhythm on that drum. That is their heart language.

Leanna Cinquanta:

And he begins a stanza of that song and it's in their own native dialect and it's their own little native brother that's from that own, their own village. They know him as a friend and their relative. And these people just came alive, alive. It called forth who they really were, it honored who they really were, because that's their music, that's their drum. And yet now, what had he done? He had written, he had taken a Bible story and he'd written a Bible story to this song. And so now? Now, instead of singing to the idols that could not give them life, that could not give them salvation, that could not heal them, they are singing and under learning the bible stories and learning about jesus. And all of a sudden, these people were like jesus can be ours now. He's no longer foreign.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, what you're speaking to, Leanna, I think, is just such an important subject when it comes to any kind of cross-cultural ministry, and it's also a very tricky one, because, you know, if you go back to how God spoke to all of us originally, he did it through a particular people and a particular culture at a particular time. Jesus himself was part of a unique Jewish culture with its own traditions, its own music, its own way of doing things and understanding things. So God communicates truth to us through culture, but then when we move across culture, we have to be so careful that we don't— you know, we bring the true message without a lot of our own cultural baggage. And you saw this in the early church, didn't you? When the council right, you see this in the book of Acts, where there was the council of Jerusalem and they had to kind of decide. What you know we're moving—this message of the gospel of faith in Jesus Christ is now moving into the Greek and the Roman world.

Scott Allen:

And do we need to—do they need to act Jewish? Do they need to be Jews with our traditions and our circumcision and all the things that we do as Jews? And they decided no, that they needed to—there was a very basic message that they needed to adhere to, but beyond that, the gospel was free to become kind of embodied within their culture, in their norms. Not that there were certain things, of course, that had to change, but making that jump is so important. You know that I was a missionary in Japan for several years and one of the things I noted in that country was that, while the gospel has been preached in Japan for a long time, it still is seen as a foreign religion. It hasn't really become Japanese yet, even yet, and that's one of the reasons that it's very resistant. So you're speaking about something that's on my heart.

Scott Allen:

It's very true, I think it's very helpful that you learned about cross-cultural ministry this will be actually my next book coming out.

Leanna Cinquanta:

I'll be really delving into this and, yeah, I love what you just said. You know it's just so good, but it overlaps into what we're talking about today and the bigger picture of the gospel as a whole, understanding really who God is, who Jesus is, who we are, in a bigger way. That allows us to relax and step outside of our little christian huddles and be relevant, radically relevant, without compromise, in the world around us, and I tend to one. One thing I say is we've been allowing jesus to be priest, but we haven't been letting him be king we've been limiting him to be the savior of the soul, but that's, that's all.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Again, that's, if we limit him to that, it's. We are limited to people that already have a sense of a need for him. What about all the people out there like, okay, in that story I just shared, those people were not, we're not receiving christ because he wasn't, we weren't bringing him into their cultural identity. Now let's get beyond just culture. Let's just talk about everyday life. Okay then? Um, your secret calling is more about taking christ into everyday life and allowing jesus to be king in every dimension of life, instead of limiting him to what we traditionally think of as spiritual.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, you're singing our song there.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Leanna Right.

Scott Allen:

You're singing our song. Yeah, you know, I think we do have a shrunken gospel. You know, I heard Pastor Douglas Wilson just last week in Moscow, idaho, talk about Jesus in the box, and he was talking about the same thing. You know, we keep Jesus in the box, meaning the church building, on Sunday, but when we leave that box, so to speak, and we go out into the world, we more or less function like the world does, right, you know, although be it a little bit more moral perhaps, or ethically, hopefully, but in terms of the way that we think and the way that we function, we have other. You know, we follow whatever the gods are, you know of the culture. You know, when we're outside the box and I think that's what you're saying how did you come to that understanding, leanna, that we what you're speaking about now, that we need to have a bigger, more robust sense of the lordship of Jesus Christ, not just over spiritual things, but over all things.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Well, I'll tell you one before I tell you some of the actual practical examples where we're literally field testing this. Okay, what's different about what I get to do is a lot of folks teach stuff but don't have an opportunity to actually go out and field test it in their own test tubes and because of this big work we had established over there and admittedly it is a developing nation environment but a lot of it translates right back to here too. So I really want to leave time to tell some of these stories because they're very practical to what others can do as well. But really briefly, one of the really cornerstone moments for me it started with a Baptist pastor. I don't know how I landed in this church, but it was a Baptist pastor on an afternoon midweek service and I'm sitting in the back row and whatever he said and I wish I had written that down, but he was talking about the kingdom and something. This was 2009,. This was somewhere around right there and it sparked something and I went home and dug into the scriptures and it just started to come together, uh. And then, a little while later, uh, my mom invited me and I wasn't involved in any kind of political stuff.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Um, she was involved in some group that was really trying to uphold the constitution and recognizing the need for people to know about the constitution uh, the us constitution. So she has come to this meeting and I've not ah, not interested. Mom, the Holy Spirit said you go to that meeting. And I'm like whoa. He says I'm going to show you something. And so I went to that meeting and it was very simple. It was just here's, all these people that were just interactive, and they weren't just sitting there listening to a sermon, they weren't just receiving teaching and then going home and living their lives. It was all about the. They were coming together for a purpose, on something they strongly believe, and every single person there was on mission to take what they believe, what they their context. It was about we got to get the get people to know about the US Constitution and what it says was about. We got to get the get people to know about the us constitution and what it says, and we got to get that out. And everybody was on mission to bring their passion to the world around them.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Um, but to bring it in a practical way that helped people to really connect. Um, and the lord said that's what church is supposed to be. Um, and I was like, oh my gosh, uh, this is ecclesia, this is. This is the purpose of our gathering is then to be trained and equipped to go forth with the demonstration and the proclamation of the kingdom. So that was where that was the really, really the experience. And then out of that, in my Regent University doctoral studies, I wrote a paper entitled God's Government and Its Implications for the Church in the Context of the Modern West, and that paper really is the framework of my new book coming out your Secret Calling.

Scott Allen:

Yeah, your thesis, I agree. I'd like to hear more about that.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Well, I really go back to a little bit. It's a skeletal version of the new book coming out, but the new book coming out, we're going back and starting in genesis and saying, really, who is god? You know, uh, what did god do when he created human beings? What did he? What was the intention here? And and I show that god is triune, but not just he's father, son and holy spirit, but he is, uh, father, he is creator, and he is Creator and he is King. And so then we go into that and we understand what does that mean? That means, as Creator, he's the source of life, everything that is alive is from him. He is Father, he is the source of love, true love is from God. And then he's king, and all good governance, stewardship, is from him. I use liberty, all true liberty. So life, love and liberty. Creator, father, king.

Leanna Cinquanta:

When we understand this triune nature of God, god, now we're set up to understand who we are, because we are triune, right, and and yes, we are body, soul and spirit, right, um, but in the but ma imaging our creator, see, we all, we understand relationship, love. We are to be in relationship with our father through faith in Jesus Christ and the relationship with each other. There's family, there's the importance of family right there. That's why family is so important, because God is our loving father, who gave us, taught us how to love, embodies true love and sheds love into this whole world. That's why hell is the absence of God's presence, the absence of all good, because all good comes from God. Okay, so then you know like, we go into those three, but so there's our triune identity. We go into those three, but so there's our triune identity.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Creativity, inventions, um, technology. All of that is a is a celebration of god's image in human beings. As we join him as co-creators and taking the stuff he made and building. Isn't a father or mother joyful when their child draws, makes a little picture of artwork, right, and we're taking what our god has given us and we're making something out of it. We're creating with him. It brings him joy. Technology is part of god's kingdom. And then good governance and stewardship, and I stewarding life in alignment with his goodwill, guiding our lives, first our own lives, secondarily the world around us into alignment with his goodness, so that all human beings can thrive. That is the third element of who we are and who we're called to be. So let me give you a few examples of what we're trial testing.

Leanna Cinquanta:

I have to say we're trial testing it. So let me talk about our organization. We Ignite Nations. When the Lord gave us this, we had another brand and we still have that other brand that we've had for many years. But in 2019, the Lord gave us this name. We, we had another brand and we still have that other brand that we've had for many years. But in 2019, uh, the lord gave us this name and he said you form this, uh, this uh vision. You run with this vision. We ignite nations and I will show you what it looks like to disciple a nation.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Because I was wavering, I'm like, oh god, when we ignite, that's an awesome name, but wait a minute. What ignite nations? Wait a minute. I was even in 2019. That was a challenge for me. I'm like, okay, god, I want to be honest to you know, I don't want to project something that we could never do. Um, how about ignite communities, you know? How about help nations, you know? And he said, no, we ignite nations and I'm going to show you what it looks like to disciple a nation. And that was the word from the lord. And I'm like, okay, god, here we go, you know, and the script.

Leanna Cinquanta:

We need some scripture here, the biblical verse. I mean there's so many, but the verse that the lord gave me to base that upon was Jesus statement, which he were. He's quoting Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah. He's quoting in Luke 4, not 18. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he's anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at Liberty the oppressed and the said. We've been spiritualizing that away for too long. It's time for us to actually believe what the Bible says and allow God to do it through us and then, of course, our. You know crowning scripture, matthew 28,. All authority has been given to me. Why All authority means what that means. All authority has been given to me why All authority means what that means. All authority has been given to Jesus.

Scott Allen:

What part of that word all do you not understand, on earth and in heaven.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Exactly On earth and in heaven, on heaven and in earth. Okay, so why can't we wrap our head around that? He really does have authority in the earth. It's like you said. I appreciate that. I think it was Scott who said that. No, we're not saying it's going to become perfect before Jesus comes back. That is wrong, that is incorrect. But we are here as his co-creators, we're here as his vice regents on the earth, creators. We're here as his vice regents on the earth, bringing his goodness, his life, his liberty, his love, his, into this world and into every sector of it. And when we limit him and we try to say, well, it's okay, just preach the gospel, but it does. But your job doesn't matter. Just, you know, share your faith with people, but it doesn't matter, your hobby really doesn't matter, that's secular or that's worldly we are absolutely desecrating who Jesus wants to be through us. We are shrinking it. We are, you know, diminishing the good news of the kingdom. The good news of the kingdom is bigger than that. And so we're like okay, let's so.

Leanna Cinquanta:

This was 2019. We were doing all kinds of you know. We were rescuing kids out of trafficking. We were ending trafficking. Whole villages, 800 villages a year we were ending trafficking. Through our drama team, we were using the arts to attack trafficking and to train people and equip people to keep their kids safe in all these villages. So we had sustainable schools, where we're solving the problem of education, but we're doing it without this ongoing need for foreign funding. So we're really empowering the community and creating something that honors and works with the community, instead of a band-aid on top of it. So we were doing all this stuff, okay, for many years before this, but when we started WIN, we Ignite Nations. We started that in October 2019.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Guess what happened right next? Oh, my gosh, covid. What a tough time to start an organization, right? Well, guess what happened? So we're sending food, you know, we're sending food around and helping our people over there. And what do you do? It's a pandemic in one particular country and and finally I reached out and they said yeah, we're hungry, we are really suffering over here, but don't you send us anything free? We want to start businesses and so, long story short, we identified that this country was receiving almost 80% of some of their meats as imports. But, because their faith and their belief, they love to eat meat, but they don't want to kill any animals. Figure that one out. They don't want to take a life of an animal to eat, but they want to eat meat, and so they would import all their meat, and it was all in for me. It was imported already, processed, right, and now covid has closed the borders and so this country is going hungry. We started a poultry and pork farm. It took our native leader. We've we've our job over here.

Leanna Cinquanta:

When we ignite nations, what we do is is we identify a worthy project and then we raise the funding to help. Now the locals raised funding too and they put all the labor. There was a lot of skin in the game, but we raised this, we sent it and within six months that farm opened and within the first six months of operation we produced nine tons of chicken meat and fed the entire. The government came out and bought our meat and fed the city and it became such a fantastic success that the government has now interviewed our native leader and made an example of that farm and told the nation. Native leader made an example of that farm and told the nation we got to do more of this, and of course they know we're believers.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Okay, this is the all the now we there's our native people there have favor with the government, whereas previously christians were viewed as you know this foreign. You know the same thing colonization and all that nasty um, but they were, they're now viewed as a blessing to the nation and there's a platform, there's an opportunity now to multiply these farms, and the farms are generating the funding that we're going to be utilizing now, both to bring the love of christ to the unreached and remote regions and also to set up a whole bunch more people in business, so there's no more poverty, and so, see, this is a well, you'd say holistic. I like to use the word complete gospel, the complete good news of the kingdom, because holistic has been used in some ways where the, the message of salvation, was eclipsed by the, what we might call social work. Right, we don't want that to happen, and so, but this, the complete good news of the kingdom, is a shalom that brings whole person thriving, spiritually and physically.

Scott Allen:

Amen, I mean you're again. I just think I'd like to hear a little bit about your studies. Is this something that you learned while you were at Regent or at Fuller? Is this something that helped shape this philosophy of mission for you, or was it something you really learned more just in experience on the field?

Leanna Cinquanta:

Liana, Totally Holy Spirit, piecemeal new revelation. I did not, nobody taught it to me. I mean, again, the closest I can come, I mean there were. Again, in passing, and I look back in my sources, I'm like isn't Darrow in there? And I'm like, no, but there were so many of the, the papers I've written and on this, like the one I mentioned, uh, I was surprised. It's like, well, I guess I hadn't connected with arrow yet when I wrote that one. You know, and I don't know if I think miles monroe got in there, maybe but um, but well, there was a lot of.

Leanna Cinquanta:

This was really fresh revelation that the lord was showing me from the scriptures. Um, and that's why I'm confident to write a book on it now is I'm like, yeah, a lot of people have pieces of this picture that I'm bringing out. I'm a lot of these truths I'm teaching in your secret calling are not novel to the body of christ, to certain sectors of the body of christ. But I think the big picture is something that a lot of people haven't got, haven't had an opportunity to sit down and read a book that takes them through the complete big picture or moving.

Leanna Cinquanta:

I'm, I'm learning, we're all learning right every day I get more revelation on them, like ah, there's more um, but something that starts to provide that foundation in allowing jesus to be king and not just priest. You know, right there, just meditate on that. There's so much there, you know.

Scott Allen:

Tell us about the secret calling. What is the secret calling?

Leanna Cinquanta:

Well, the secret calling thank you is to discover who you really are called to be. First of all, it comes out of being all. It comes out of being doing, comes out of being right um, it doesn't. We are not commanded, um, to witness for christ. Okay, we are commanded to to. You will be my witnesses, right. And so it comes out of knowing who you are, knowing who God is bigger picture of who you are, who God is and then seeing these opportunities in life around you.

Leanna Cinquanta:

See now that life is not secular. Life is no longer secular. Your job is not secular. Your career, your hobbies, your family, all these things that we do with our hands, with our mind, with our feet, with our eyes, with our, our toys, they're not secular anymore. They are part, they can be part of god's kingdom and they can be a pathway to influence, to bring christ's love to other people, but not just thinking evangelistically, but thinking holistically, thinking about allowing a little bit of his kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven, allowing him to bring healing to some sector of life that is in darkness. And that might be one person at your job maybe you're going to job every day, you're going to work every day and you're like what's the point?

Leanna Cinquanta:

I wish, I wish I could go, you know, be a preacher. I wish I could go, you know, travel or whatever, and you're like saying why has god got me here? Maybe there's one person there that just needs to see a demonstration of the love of Christ and you're in your life and that that that that real lived out true love of God would open their heart to some kind of healing. Maybe somebody needs you to pray for them. Simple things like that. When we allow our faith to go into the, the, the spheres of influence that we're already a part of, a transformation can happen, and I believe it can then multiply into incredible fruitfulness yes, no I I really believe that uh, there's been a great flood of blessing that has been held back by the church's failure to understand and then do or live out the whole gospel of salvation.

Leanna Cinquanta:

And we've been doing, uh, the social gospel, the two ends of the spectrum, but we've very rarely throughout church history, I believe, uh, have we grasped and actually carried out, lived out the gospel of the kingdom in its glorious fullness, and that's what's exciting to see. So many today are catching on. Like I shared a whole bunch of folks with you all. You know that you may or may not know about right here in the us, uh, that are doing it, you know, and that are that may or may not have a full basis, theological basis for it, but they're doing parts of it. Uh, they're, they're. There's just thousands of examples out there, people in right here in the US. One of my case studies let me see which one do I pick that is from the US in the new book coming out is from, let's just do Bakersfield, california.

Leanna Cinquanta:

I'm actually going to be visiting with that gentleman tonight. That's one reason I'm here in california right now and, um, but he uh had there was all these people that were living on welfare and were about to lose their benefits and go homeless and the the the city had no idea what to do for them. Well, the way this gentleman, he was a pastor, a small, small storefront church. He he felt led of the Lord to go and meet with the mayor of the town. And the mayor said what are you here for, you pastors, you don't care about the city. And see, this has been, unfortunately, this has been what we've demonstrated, what we've been living in our partial gospel where, like you said, stuck inside the four walls of the church, having all of our programs for whoever is coming into the church, but not taking an under, having understanding of disciple in the city of. Oh yeah, we'll do bombing raids out there to just try to get people saved.

Leanna Cinquanta:

That's not what I'm talking about. Hey, that's. We need to be Jesus in the city. We need to be Jesus in the city. We need to solve problems in the city. We're the ones who supposedly have the Holy Spirit in us. We should be the ones that come up with the solutions to poverty, the solutions to homelessness, but we haven't allowed that to be spiritual. Right, that's not spiritual, so that's not really important, that's just social work. So when we understand the complete gospel, then we're like wait a minute, when we, the kingdom people, when the church becomes the ecclesia and begins to go forth into the city, not just saying come to church or not just saying come to Jesus, but saying how can we bring god's kingdom into every sector? That's broken, how can we so this pastor.

Leanna Cinquanta:

So he went to the, the mayor, and he said they said, well, we got all these people on welfare. How can you think you can help them? So he developed a curriculum. It was based on biblical principles but it was uh and I love vishal's book out awesome, praise God. You know, showing that the Bible is the key to the development of the West is awesome. Okay, but it's the biblical principles that have allowed people to prosper.

Leanna Cinquanta:

So he made a curriculum, started training these people, got churches working together and teaching these people life skills so they could go out and get a job, got them on their feet. 80% success rate for 600 families that were completely transformed off of welfare, off the streets, in their own homes, working jobs, and when one-third of them got saved and became believers at the same time. And so all those people or people would have not been in the kingdom, but now those are. Those are people that are saved and walking with jesus, but at the same time, this problem of the city has been solved and I believe this kind of thing can multiply the power of the gospel to transform lives and communities. Wow, that's powerful. I'd love to, I'd love to hear more about what they're doing in multiply the power of the gospel to transform lives and communities.

Scott Allen:

Wow, that's powerful. I'd love to hear more about what they're doing in Bakersfield. I mean, that's a city that really could use some transformation you know, yeah.

Scott Allen:

I so agree. Leanne, I think that you've talked about these two kind of—there's a pendulum kind of that's swung in the church back and forth between these two pendulums. On one side is just kind of preaching the gospel, getting people saved spiritually, kind of that's the end of it. And on the other side it's just do kind of social action and do different kinds of social programs, often not even connected with the Bible, let's just say using principles from, you know, whatever kind of happens to be trendy in the culture. And you know the Church has kind of swung back and forth, especially in the United States and in the West, over the last hundred years between those two.

Scott Allen:

But there's been times in the history of the Church where there was an understanding that brought them together. That started with that, as you said, the gospel of salvation being born again, but then working out of that into every area of culture and society in a way that was true to kind of our original calling as you alluded to, back in Genesis 1, to be stewards over all of God's creation. So when that's happened, you know, in the history of the Church and I think sometimes it's, you know, satan likes to get us off of that, because when it's happened it's been very powerful. You've seen a real change. You know the early Church in many ways practiced this in the Roman world and it's part of what led such dramatic transformation and growth of the Church. So I really do hope and it sounds like you also believe that we're kind of hopefully recovering that again in our own time. This isn't something new. This isn't some new biblical message, is it? This is just trying to recover an old message that we've sometimes gotten mixed up at.

Leanna Cinquanta:

That's right.

Leanna Cinquanta:

yeah, it's getting back to the original the gospel of the kingdom, and one latter chapter in my new book deals with the gates of Hades, and a little further on we go into, really, you know, what are some of the steps we can take to move into our secret calling and to actually start living out this bigger concept and bigger understanding of who God is and who we are. And one of the one of the important steps there is getting out of the defensive. So I think, like what you're verbalizing, there is for many, many generations of the and many eras in church history especially, believers have operated, even despite. I mean, we know jesus, jesus has all authority, but even even so, we operate on the defensive because we don't understand that that authority isn't just about, it is, it's. It's a spiritual authority, but it's an authority to bring his goodness into every part of life. It's not only, says the authority over the demonic, yes, it's an authority to um, inherit eternal life, uh, through faith in jesus christ when we die.

Leanna Cinquanta:

But wait a minute, what about now? Wait, we're here now. What do we do now? And so that's what the devil's terrified? Uh, that we would understand that we have a purpose right now, here now, to bring god's kingdom gently, humbly, as a servant.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Okay, none of this dominion stuff. As a servant, just like Jesus did what Jesus washed the feet of the dirty fishermen, we better be doing the same thing. Okay, we don't go lorded over kind of stuff. It's got to be done. We're gentle, we're humble, we come as servants and we come to bring life. We don't come to teach you this or that, though we may be teaching the word of god and the principles of the kingdom but we come in humility and we bring people out of that place. And we have to come out of that place of the defensive and go.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Wait a minute, I am authorized by the King of Kings, I am one of his stewards of life here on earth his goodness, his life, his love, his liberty, his family, his relationship, his creativity into whatever sector of life that I have been given. And when we get that, the gates of Hades will be invaded. Okay, the gates of Hades will be pushed back. The powers of darkness, the death, hell and the grave that torments people in so many of the different ways we see in our world today, it will all be driven back in that sector in which we are operating. It's not like it's going to be perfect before Jesus comes back, there'll be a lot of evil in the world. That will continue, but we can shine light in the darkness and multiply the power of the gospel to bring life.

Tim Williams:

Amen. I love the way Liana said earlier, you know who better? To solve the problems of the world than the people who are filled with the Spirit of God, who know Him as Father and Creator and King. I mean, we get it. We have the gifts of the Spirit to transform us, to enlighten us, to give us wisdom to come up with these solutions. So I was really encouraged by that.

Scott Allen:

I know a lot of people take offense when we use the language of we bring the kingdom, and I think part of the reason that they take offense at that, leanna, as you were saying, is that it's this idea that somehow we, in our own strength perhaps, are doing this. It's this idea that somehow we, in our own strength perhaps, are doing this, and I just think there's a confusion there. You know that. You know. Again, these are polls. I suppose on one side you could say, oh, it's something we do. On the other side, it's something that God does and we have no role in it at all.

Leanna Cinquanta:

But I don't think either. One of those is what the biblical picture is. Do you want to speak to that at all? Yeah, well, yeah, I guess one way I've illustrated it in the book is showing the difference between the social gospel and then the Greek dichotomy, pagan Greek dichotomy. But then I show the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom, as neither of those, but as something that purifies and redeems and elevates and empowers and breathes life into all of all things around us. It's so people think of them as is in opposition, but it's not the gospel, the kingdom. Wherever the kingdom goes it, it doesn't destroy, it redeems.

Leanna Cinquanta:

Uh, just like the first story where we don't, we don't say, okay, well, you can't use that drum, that's a devil drum've got to use this drum Instead. Who does the music belong to? Music belongs to God, it doesn't belong to the devil, and creativity belongs to God To the greatest extent possible. We come in a spirit of redemption, a spirit of healing, and throughout my book I use the word healing a lot.

Leanna Cinquanta:

In fact, the original title was going to be healers of earth's pandemic, because the sin, sin has opened a pandemic upon good, god's good, earth. He made everything good. He didn't, he didn't make hell for people. He made it for the devil. Um, you know he didn't want all the sickness and terrible things that are happening and child trafficking. That was never god's will, but because it wasn't it that things can be turned around, things can be redeemed, and so, wherever we are, we are in there as a, as one who is has a potential of bringing life, just like God spoke. And life, you know, things were created. We have a potential of bringing life into any place that there's darkness or death or a manifestation of the curse that was released upon the earth through sin. None of that's God's will. We are his authorized representatives in the earth, and so that means there's an incredible potential for us to bring life, wholeness, healing into it.

Leanna Cinquanta:

And yeah, we have to stand on truth and there's going to be a conflict between darkness and light at some points, you know. But overall I believe there's a potential for so much hope and healing to come into every sector of darkness.

Scott Allen:

Amen, and we do it in His strength. It's His truth, you know, it's His power. And yet you know we, as Vishal would often say, we're not zeros. We have to do our own work right. We're image bearers of God. We have to be strategic. We have to use the gifts that he's given us. We have to steward the talents that he's invested in us. So I'm sure you would agree with all of that.

Scott Allen:

Well, leanna, it is just a thrill to find somebody who's just so like-minded when it comes to this bigger, full gospel type of ministry that we're talking about, so it's really been exciting to talk to you today. I want to just mention again the book. That's upcoming. We're excited about it. Your Secret Calling Ancient Keys to Unleash God's Highest Purpose. If this is something that you need to learn more about and begin to apply in your own family, your own community, this is going to be a great resource for you. It's coming up in May and, leanna, where can people go to learn more about your ministry? Is there a website, either for the book or the ministry, that people can avail themselves of?

Leanna Cinquanta:

Yeah, thank you. My personal website is my name, which is a bit challenging to spell lianasinquantacom, but the easy one to go to is going to be our organization website, which is winglobal. That's W-I-N dot global, and if you want to go right to the landing page for the new book coming out, you'd put an oblique after that. So winwinglobal, oblique, your secret calling. No spaces, just your secret calling.

Scott Allen:

Great, awesome, well, thanks for that, and I just want to encourage our listeners today to go check out those resources that are coming up and just thank you. It's so encouraging to hear how God has been using you, leanna, in your ministry, and I just agree with what Darrell said, that God really is doing something right now, I believe, in the Church, so many different people from so many different backgrounds and walks of life are coming to the same ideas. So, again, it's not making the news. We don't read about it in the newspaper, in the New York Times, or hear about it on CNN, but God's doing something amazing in our time, I believe.

Scott Allen:

So, Leanna, thank you so much for your work and God bless you and team. Thank you. It's been a great discussion today and all our listeners. Again I want to thank you for tuning in to another episode of Ideas have Consequences. This is the podcast of the Disciple Nations Alliance.

Luke Allen:

Thank you for joining us for this episode with Dr Liana Cinquenta. I hope you are ready to join us as we seek to unshrink the gospel from making it merely a gospel of salvation to a gospel of salvation and the kingdom. If you'd like to learn more about Liana or any of the resources that we mentioned today, including any of her books or the Kingdomizer training program that I told you about during the break, make sure to head to this episode's page, which you'll see linked in the show notes. This episode's page, which you'll see linked in the show notes, ideas have Consequences is brought to you by the Disciple Nations Alliance. To learn more about our ministry, you can find us on Instagram, facebook and YouTube, or on our website, which is disciplenationsorg. Thanks again for joining us. Please share the show with a friend or leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast or wherever you're listening, and I hope you'll be able to join us here next week again on Ideas have Consequences.