Biglife International Trains Indigenous Leaders in 162 Countries to Make Disciples

Disciple-making is one of the few movements that outpaces the birthrate, Biglife’s CEO said.

Photo courtesy of Biglife via social media

“The beautiful thing is when times get really hard and everyone else is running away from danger, the indigenous Christians run toward it because they are passionate about their own people,” Biglife International CEO John Heerema told MinistryWatch about one of the many reasons they train and fund indigenous disciple makers to spread the Gospel to unreached people around the world.

Heerema is an unlikely founder of a missions organization. In 2000, he and his wife were living their “perfect life” with a 2-year-old daughter and baby on the way when he was challenged by a friend at church to read a book titled “Unveiled at Last.” The statistics shocked him. Less than 2% of missions dollars are used to reach 97 % of the least-evangelized people in the world.

He and his wife cried to the Lord for forgiveness for living a self-centered and “little” life and asked the Lord to use them for His “big” work. Not long after, Heerema found himself in Iran at the behest of the Iranian Olympic Committee as a baseball team consultant. He shared the Gospel with a Muslim imam who gave his life to the Lord.

Humbled that the Lord had used him in this way, Heerema came home, sold his business, and started Biglife. The ministry started in Iran, but after the tragic attacks of September 11, 2001, Heerema lost his visa to Iran. The work continued there because indigenous believers had been equipped to disciple others.

Biglife is a disciple-making ministry committed to empowering indigenous people who already know the language and culture and “don’t get homesick,” Heerema said. It is a strategy sometimes called a “new paradigm” in missions, and it has resulted in explosive growth for Biglife, which now has revenue in excess of $14 million.

Its strategy in reaching an area starts with a prayer walk—prayer that the Lord will bring a “person of peace” like Jesus referred to in his instructions to the disciples in Luke 10, Heerema said. Once Biglife finds a person who receives the Gospel and is a person of influence in their community, the ministry disciples them deeply in the Scriptures.

Biglife has 1,800 staff disciple makers in 162 countries around the world. Its biggest ministry program presence is in India. The ministry believes the model of using indigenous leaders is not just advantageous from a language and cultural perspective, but also financially.

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For example, in India, Biglife provides $100 per month to its staff members. In Pakistan, the salary is closer to $300 per month. This contrasts with an estimated $125,000 annually to put a western missionary in the field, Heerema said. While he loves and supports western missionaries, the number of indigenous leaders that can be supported for the same cost is exponentially more.

About two years ago, Biglife began a new endeavor called “special ops.” It identified 158 areas around the world where there was no disciple-making movement. It has begun work in over half; there are 73 remaining which it is focused on reaching in the next couple of years.

The only movement that outpaces the birthrate in the world is disciple-making and church planting, Heerema said. He hopes they can accelerate disciple-making and equip more leaders to reach their neighbors.

Biglife’s revenue has been steadily increasing since 2017, when it was about $3 million. In 2022, revenue exceeded $14 million. Heerema attributes most of that growth to growing awareness of its work in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has also benefited from an anonymous year-end matching grant for the last few years. This year the donor will match up to $3 million in gifts.

After the fall of Kabul and sudden evacuation in August 2021, Biglife International gained media attention for its partnership with organizations like Task Force Pineapple to help evacuate refugees who were under death threats from the Taliban.

As part of that growing attention, Biglife made a one-time media buy to help raise funds to rescue even more Afghan Christians and relocate them to safer places. Its fundraising expenses more than doubled in 2022 because of that purchase, Heerema said, but fundraising costs have now returned to normal ranges.

In the MinistryWatch database, Biglife has a 2-star financial efficiency rating, an “A” transparency grade, and a donor confidence score of 84, meaning one can “give with confidence.”

It has both a CEO and president who are each paid over $200,000 per year. Heerema said that as CEO, he is responsible for developing a big picture strategy while its president Jeff Gibson and chief operations officer Forrest Head are responsible for overseeing the work that has been put in place and more day-to-day operations.

Gibson carried out executive functions within Biglife for years before being given the title of president four or five years ago, Heerema said.