The Global Goer Podcast

SUMMER SHORT-TERM TRIP SERIES: PROFESSIONAL TRIPS

Last week I took you to Mumbai to show you what a Vision Trip looks like — the Red Light district, the Dharavi slum, Titus and his chai, the maps-on-the ground prayer meeting. That's a Vision Trip entering as a learner, getting more out than you give.

Today is different. Today is about being useful.

In this episode I walk through what a Professional Trip actually looks like — using a specific skill, at a specific invitation, to accomplish a specific task in service of long-term work that's already happening on the ground. I use Nehemiah as the model: he knew what he was bringing, he knew what was needed, he knew who was already there.

Then I tell real stories across several types of professional trips:

✅ IT professionals serving field workers at overseas conferences

✅ My daughter's trip to the Philippines with me — and Dr. Melissa, a psychologist who showed up to care for exhausted long-term workers

✅ Entrepreneurs and business owners coaching Kingdom businesses overseas

✅ Teachers and trainers offering intensive skill-based training at the invitation of a field worker

✅ Retirees as grandparents and coaches — and why I think this is the most underused category of all

I also give the three cautions for Professional Trips:

❌ Don't go without an invitation.

❌ Don't fold into a vision trip.

❌ Don't go directly to the local population without a cultural intermediary.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

✔️ Across the Street and Around the World — Chapter 7, full Professional Trip ideas list + all three trip type checklists

✔️ What Kind of Trip Type are you Planning? Checklist

✔️ Neighbors and Nations Course

✔️ World Changer Type Quiz

Subscribe:

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Don't miss one!

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**Remember: The world is bigger than your zip code. Let's go!**

Next episode: Survey Trips — the rarest trip nobody's planning, and the one that led to me moving my whole family to India.

Send me an email at [email protected]: Are you a professional or retiree getting ideas of planning a trip like this? Let me know your ideas. I'd love to pray for you.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jeanniemmarie

SUMMER SHORT-TERM TRIP SERIES: VISION TRIPS

Rather than tell you the difference between a Vision Trip and a Professional Trip and a Survey Trip (the three trip types), I want to show you what a Short-Term Vision Trip actually looks like.

Not a slide presentation. Not a bullet-point list of activities.

A real trip, with real moments, that did something real to everyone who went. I'll illustrate the true aspects of a great Vision Trip by showing you what it looked like to Vision Trip to Mumbai.

In this episode I take you with me to Mumbai — one of the top ten largest cities in the world, home to about twenty-two million people, a majority Hindu and Muslim population, where families from every unreached people group in India likely live.

I walk you through the Red Light District and introduce you to Sonita, Veronica, and Asha — three women running a one-room community center in the heart of the red light district where fifty-one women gained freedom last year. 

I introduce you to the Dhavari slum, one of the largest in the world with 700,000 souls living on about a mile and a half of land.

I tell you about Titus — a man of peace who pulled us off the street and into his home for tea. And I take you to the rooftop prayer meeting where we got on our knees and prayed Isaiah 58 over a city of twenty-two million.

Woven throughout, I talk about:

✅ Why short-term teams cannot do in ten days what may take ten years to do — and why that's actually freeing

✅ The poverty alleviation caution: what we did NOT do in that red light district, and why it matters

✅ The naming problem: why calling domestic youth service trips "mission trips" creates confusion and false expectations

✅ What a vision trip done well actually produces — and the right way to talk about what you saw when you come home

RESOURCES mentioned in this episode:

✔️ Mumbai Photo Essay and Instagram Stories Highlight Reel

✔️ Search for #MumbaiPhotoEssay2019 on Instagram

✔️ Across the Street and Around the World Book (Chapter 7: Short Term Trips)

✔️ Get the Trip Type Checklist

✔️ Use the Neighbors and Nations Course to train well before the trip.

✔️ Free One Hour Training: Offer Jesus Naturally to Your Neighbors & the Nations

Next episode: Professional Trips  — real stories of real people who used their specific skills overseas, and what happened.

I have a confession to make.

Years ago, I led a short-term trip to India with twenty-two people and the best intentions in the world. We stuffed twenty-two of our forty-four duffel bags with Beanie Babies for orphan children. We built a medical database nobody asked for. We spoke at a Bible school where no one understood our English.

And when I came home, I felt confused, depressed, and deeply disappointed — and I couldn't figure out why.

When I went back a year later, the Beanie Babies were in a caretaker's private room. The database had stopped working. The computers had died in the heat and humidity. And the school director had spent forty nights in jail on false charges.

I hadn't known my WHY.

In this first episode of the summer series on short-term trips, I'm talking about the one question that changes everything before a trip even starts — and what it looks like when a church actually gets it right. I walk through how my own church built a whole sequence of short-term trips in service of one long-term vision: getting long-term workers to unreached Muslims. Morocco, Turkey, Algeria, Bangladesh, and a survey trip — each one with a specific purpose, each one feeding the next.

I also talk about why a short-term trip is actually a six-month trip — and why pre-trip training and post-trip debrief are just as important as what happens on the ground.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Next episode: the three types of short-term trips — and why mislabeling yours might be the most expensive mistake you make.

Why is it that women are often more unleashed in overseas movement contexts than in Western churches? And what does that tell us about the theology we've accepted without examining?

In this episode, I'm wading into one of the most important — and most understudied and misunderstood — topics in global missions and the church: headship theology. I'll clearly define it, then address it honestly, from a perspective of my own learning. And yes, I'll make a case from the Bible for why I believes it needs to change.

In this episode:

✔️ The story of three widows in their 40s who started a movement in the Muslim world

✔️ The Sunday morning that gave me pause 

✔️ What headship theology actually means — authority, covering (and the final-decision doctrine often taught but isn't in Scripture)

✔️ Complementarian vs. egalitarian — both believe men and women are equal in value; the debate is about role

✔️ Why women are more unleashed in overseas movement contexts — and what that costs the nations when headship theology proponents stop them

✔️ Spiritual gifts have no gender label — and what that means for who gets to lead

✔️ What ezer and kephalē could actually mean — and why it matters

✔️ A quick honest look at 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 14, 1 Peter 3, and Ephesians 5

✔️ Why the submission passages are not a blank check — and why they've been dangerously misused in abusive situations

✔️ The curse argument — why building a theology on the fall instead of the garden doesn't make sense

✔️ The love and respect either/or framework — and why it doesn't hold up

✔️ What wives are really asking for when they say to their husbands, "I want you to be the spiritual leader"

✔️ A personal admission — my kids, my marriage, and the work I still have to do

✔️ The Reformation parallel — and why re-examining theology isn't the same as making it say whatever you want

✔️ The single women on the mission field point — and the inconsistency we need to name

Whew, this is a long one. A necessary one. Let me know your thoughts [email protected] 

Resources mentioned:

I just got off a call with a former Anderson Consulting executive who coaches aspiring cross-cultural workers how to start legitimate businesses in countries where religious visas don’t exist. And I thought — he is not at all what I imagined a global goer would look like.

That’s what this episode is about. After a lifetime of living among cross-cultural workers and walking alongside hundreds of families moving overseas, I’ve noticed that there are five distinct types of global goers. Five different motivations. Five different ways God wires people to make a difference in the world.

If you’ve ever thought “I’m not sure I’m the right TYPE of person for this” — this episode is for you. And if you’re a church leader or mobilizer trying to find and recruit the right people — this one’s for you too.

In this episode:

Resouces: 

Take the Global Goer Quiz (before you listen — seriously, do it first!):

Free Chapter 9 download — Wrestling With Calling, Gifting and Personalities

Across the Street and Around the World (my book):

Listen to:

Find me on Instagram and DM me — which Global Goer Type are you?

And is the Five Global Goer Types book something you’d want to read? I really want to know.

This is Part 2 of my two-part series on discerning your calling as a Global Goer. If you haven't listened to Episode 14 yet, I recommend you start there first.

In this episode I tackle the question that trips most people up once they think they might be called: where? I make the case that calling is probably not a where first — it's a who. And once you know your who, the where starts to take care of itself.

In this episode I cover:

Links mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Jeannie Marie:

🌐 Website: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com 

📱 Instagram: @jeanniemmarie (DM me which of the 15 resonated most!) 

📖 Take the Global Goer Quiz: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com/quiz 

🎥 Watch the free one-hour training: Share Jesus Naturally With the Nations Near You

What's Next:

Next week: Episode 16 - Change the Way God Wired You with The Five Global Goer Types

Leave a Review and Subscribe:

If this episode helped you discern your calling, would you leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It helps others who are considering the journey find this show! New episodes drop every Tuesday. Don't miss one!

🍎 Apple Podcasts

🎤 Spotify

A couple of years ago, I sat in a room with about 50 cross-cultural workers living in South Asia — veterans, people with 20+ years on the field. We asked the ones who stayed: what kept you here? Every single one of them said the same thing: calling. Not strategy, not a great organization — a deep sense that God had called them to a specific people, a specific work, and hadn't released them yet. 

I know that people going to the field for the first time know they need a calling. But often they're searching for it so much that they don't even go — because they don't know what it looks like, or how to define it, or even what a calling actually is. So that's what I'm talking about in this two-part series.

In this episode I cover:

This is Part 1 of a two-part series. Part 2 — Called to a Who, Not a Where — drops next week.

Links mentioned in this episode:

Connect with me!

🌐 Website: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com 

📱 Instagram: @jeanniemmarie 

📖 Take the Global Goer Quiz: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com/quiz 

🎥 Watch the free one-hour training: Share Jesus Naturally With the Nations Near You

What's Next:

Next week: Episode 16 - Discerning Your Calling Part Two: Called to a Who, Not a Where

Leave a Review and Subscribe:

If this episode helped you discern your calling, would you leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It helps others who are considering the journey find this show! New episodes drop every Tuesday. Don't miss one!

🍎 Apple Podcasts

🎤 Spotify

In this episode, I get personal about my physical health journey — what woke me up, why it matters specifically for global goers, and the practical changes I'm making now. From walking and strength training to learning to see food as medicine, this is a candid, encouraging conversation about taking care of the body God gave me for the long haul.

Resources Mentioned:

Key Takeaways:

This Week's Challenge: Keep a food and exercise diary for 7 days.

Then ask: what do I have to do to make it to 92? Pick one change. Get a coach, group, or app if you need accountability.

Connect with me!

🌐 Website: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com 

📱 Instagram: @jeanniemmarie 

📖 Take the Global Goer Quiz: www.jeanniemarieacademy.com/quiz 

🎥 Watch the free one-hour training: Share Jesus Naturally With the Nations Near You

What's Next:

Next week: Episode 16 - Discerning Your Calling Part One: How to Know if You Should Go

Leave a Review and Subscribe:

If this episode helped you discern your calling, would you leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It helps others who are considering the journey find this show! New episodes drop every Tuesday. Don't miss one!

🍎 Apple Podcasts

🎤 Spotify

If you grew up overseas — or you're raising kids who are — this episode is for you.

Jeannie Marie is a classic TCK who grew up in the Philippines and moved to the US at 18. In this first episode of a planned TCK series, she talks about:

IN THIS EPISODE

BOOK MENTIONED

Third Culture Kid by David Pollock 

COMING UP IN THIS TCK SERIES

RESOURCES

CONNECT WITH JEANNIE

What's Next:

Next week: Episode 13 - What I'm doing to Stay Physically Healthy as a Global Goer

Leave a Review and Subscribe:

If this episode helped you discern your calling, would you leave a review on Apple Podcasts? It helps others who are considering the journey find this show! New episodes drop every Tuesday. Don't miss one!

🍎 Apple Podcasts

🎤 Spotify

Have you ever thought about creating an online business to help fund your life overseas or supplement your nonprofit work?

What if your years of training and knowledge could reach people while you sleep — and outlive you long after you’re gone?

In this episode, I’m sharing one way I have funded my own global passion and helped others do the same — through digital courses, memberships, and coaching programs built on an all-in-one platform called Kajabi.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you may remember that I used to partner with Amy Porterfield and her Digital Course Academy to help people learn how to create and launch online courses. That was a big investment. Amy isn’t doing that program anymore—so now I want to help you. I have a much lower-cost way to test this idea before you spend a lot of money. We’re talking $99 for three months, plus coaching from me, to see if this is even right for you.

This episode is for you if:

Resources and links mentioned in this episode:

1) Free Info Session: Fund Your Passion and Leave Your Legacy with Kajabi
Is Kajabi Right For You?

2) Examples of successful online businesses using courses, memberships, and coaching:

3) Neighbors and Nations Course: 

4) Inviting Muslims to Follow Jesus Course

5) Travel Hacking Course with Tim Walker

6) Theology of Women Academy with Dr. Cynthia Hester

7) All of the above, plus the Kajabi signup link, can also be found at: jeanniemarieacademy.com/kajabi

8) Across the Street and Around the World book