Mark Gillmore: Hello once again. I’m Mark Gillmore here with our GoMission podcast, and today I am sitting in central Wisconsin with a good friend and pastor, Brother Andrew Haertl. Welcome, Brother Andrew.

Andrew Haertl: Thank you. Good to be here.

Mark Gillmore: Thank you for sitting down with me and sharing the story of your life, as well as what God’s doing in this region. It’s exciting. When I’m thinking missionally, I’m often thinking of global regions.

It’s awesome to be here in central Wisconsin, talking about our own local region—or regions within our own state. I think your testimony has a lot to encourage those who live in the United States of America about their own regions and how God wants to work in theirs.

Now we’re here in a town called Shawano, and you and I both lived in the Milwaukee area, which is about two hours away or so. How did God first connect you here?

Andrew Haertl: The Lord first connected me here to Shawano through a prayer that I had: that the Lord would use me in Great Commission advance. The Lord connected me by way of being in college, and I was asked to be part of a team that would come up and help plant a church here in Shawano, Wisconsin.

The Lord used that to connect me here with this work. Then, fast-forward six-plus years, I was called to be the pastor of Shawano Baptist Church.

Mark Gillmore: What an awesome opportunity in your youth, especially in that college-age range, for God to give you that opportunity. How did that experience in your college years amplify your training experience and your life as a college student?

Andrew Haertl: The Lord used it to show me that He could answer prayer, number one—that He is the God of answered prayers. But also in college, the Lord used it to sharpen my vision for what He wants to do, not just in my state, where we lived in Milwaukee, but there and all around the world.

The Lord used it in my life and in the lives of the other students who were seeing firsthand the faith of that church planting another church.

Mark Gillmore: That is such a key dynamic in the life of a twenty-year-old, twenty-something student: to be part of that reality. I know that what God did encouraged many young people who were part of it or watching it.

You mentioned the answer to prayer. Obviously, there was a spiritual life in you at that time. Tell us your story about how God called you into ministry and shaped you as a teenager to surrender to what He had for you.

Andrew Haertl: That really goes all the way back. I was saved at the age of seven at a Vacation Bible School in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. You were preaching there, and praise the Lord for the spiritual and eternal impact that made as I received Jesus as my Savior.

Mark Gillmore: Hearing you say that reminds me that this is a God thing, isn’t it?

Andrew Haertl: Yes, it is.

Mark Gillmore: We get to be part of it. Like you say, I had nothing to do with the gospel message or even your being there, but I am part of it. That’s the joy of ministry: you are so humbled.

This isn’t about me, but we get to be part of it. Isn’t that the invitation of ministry?

Andrew Haertl: It’s so amazing.

Mark Gillmore: From that point of salvation, go ahead.

Andrew Haertl: I was learning more truth, and at the age of twelve, I remember being discipled by someone in the church. My Sunday school teacher challenged me to read a book, <em>I Must Tell</em> by James A. Stewart.

It was the life story and testimony of a young man who had his heart set on other things and had a mother who prayed for him. Even in the middle of a soccer match, he was convicted by the Lord and prayed as the midway whistle blew, “Lord, would You help me to finish this game? If You allow me to finish this game, I will give You the rest of my life.”

He went home, told his mother, and served God at a young age.

Mark Gillmore: Teenager, right?

Andrew Haertl: Yes. He wasn’t eighteen or nineteen years old or anything like that, but he served God and surrendered to Him. I remember from that point forward just knowing, “God, whatever You want me to do.”

I felt the call to preach at the young age of twelve, but I really didn’t know what capacity that would be in. It was later, in my teenage years between the ages of thirteen and sixteen, that I started to doubt God’s calling. That was simply because I had gotten away from truth.

I started to hang out with some wrong friends. I had gotten into some sin. When you start listening to what the world has to offer and what friends are telling you is important, and stop looking into God’s Word as to what is true, it’s easy to believe the lies of the enemy.

I started to believe lies: maybe God’s calling is for others, but it’s not for me; I will get around to serving God, but maybe not yet; or I can still give the gospel, but living my life seems more enjoyable than living Christ’s life. I really had a heart to serve God, but that wasn’t the main thing. Suddenly I was believing these lies that were stopping Great Commission advance in my life.

Two key events took place in my life where God was so gracious, merciful, and loving to bring me back to Himself and put me back on the right path. Part of that started on a missions trip to New Mexico when I was about sixteen or seventeen. I went on this missions trip that the church had put together for teenagers to reach communities there in New Mexico.

Secretly, I had gone on the trip just to get away from home. There were wrong attitudes there. I really did want to serve the Lord, but there were wrong attitudes.

We spent a few days with some preaching beforehand, and God put a counselor in my path who said, “Hey, I don’t know what it is. I can’t put my finger on it, but something’s not right. I just want to encourage you, whatever it is, to get it right—to get a clean heart.”

He said, “If you have to call home about it, here’s my phone.” He gave me his phone; it was unlocked, and he left it right there on the porch where we were sitting as the sun was setting over the New Mexico landscape. He said, “Why don’t you just call home about it if you need to?”

I remember picking up that phone and calling my dad. As one preacher would say, I was “unloading the truck.” I got the sin cleared and got clean.

That is part of getting toward that vision of Great Commission advance: first in your own life, getting clean before the Lord.

It started there in my life. Praise the Lord, after getting clean, we had a great week doing Vacation Bible Schools on the reservation. Many kids got saved.

God was using it, and I knew at that moment I wanted to do this for the rest of my life.

Mark Gillmore: Praise the Lord.

Andrew Haertl: I wanted to see people saved. I wanted to see the gospel advance. That carried into my college years.

My freshman and sophomore years, I knew that I had a fresh vision to seek the Lord. I had a fresh vision to preach again. Not every college student or teenager will know exactly what God wants them to do, and that’s okay.

God gives you the light for the next step, and that’s where you need to obey Him.

It came to my junior year of college, and I was working that summer. I was landscaping, building decks, and working with a master carpenter. I had a burning desire to know God’s heart for me.

The thought came: if I am going to know what God has for me, if I am going to know His will, I ought to spend time with Him. That might hit you as something very obvious, but subtly, we can go through life and think, “Okay, well, I’m reading my Bible, I’m talking to the Lord in prayer,” and then go about our day and forget to listen to Him. We forget to commune with Him, and we miss out on what God is trying to tell us.

I committed to the Lord, “Lord, I’m going to get to the job site half an hour early, read Your Word, and let You speak to me. Whenever my master carpenter is not telling me what to carry or how to cut something, I’m going to be listening to You. I’m going to be talking with You and listening to You, allowing You to clarify the vision that You have for my life right now.”

Over the course of that summer, the Lord very specifically put on my heart a burden for church planting and for pastoring specifically.

Mark Gillmore: Amen.

Andrew Haertl: I simply prayed, “Lord, I’ve heard stories of guys taking steps of faith and even seeing churches planted and the gospel advance while they’re still in college. God, would You do that for me?” That is where the prayer we started with comes in.

I prayed that specifically. I didn’t tell anybody about it. I just said, “God, would You do that for me?”

The very next semester, God answered that prayer. I was approached about being part of a team that would come up to Shawano and be part of planting a church.

I said, “Lord, You’ve done this. You’re doing it,” and the Lord continues to do that work.

Mark Gillmore: There is so much insight that you have shared. Thank you for how God has directed your steps and how you learned to listen to His voice.

You have obviously hit on a couple of key points when you think of young people learning to hear God’s voice. Getting clear of any known sin—or getting that right with anyone—is a starting point. Spending time to listen, be quiet, and read the Word is the next step, and then just waiting on Him.

That is really what you did, and then God intervened. Something unforeseen that was right from His hand brought you up here to Shawano. Is there anything further you would add when you think of teenagers learning to listen to God’s voice and find His will?

Andrew Haertl: Not all of us come from the same backgrounds. Again, we can start to believe some of the lies of the enemy: “My background dictates how much I can be used by God,” or, “I got a late start. I was saved later in life, or I was saved as a teenager.”

God is not looking for the most intelligent teenager out there. God is not looking for the most—in fact, God uses the not-so-wise things of the world to confound the wise. God wants to use each one of us in gospel advance.

Mark Gillmore: That is good.

So now we are here in Shawano, and you are pastoring, leading this church that was planted when you were part of that team. God is giving you an increasing vision for this area. Could you share the story of what God is doing right now in a nearby community in the matter of gospel advance here in central Wisconsin?

Andrew Haertl: It started about five years ago when I started to pray about God advancing the gospel into the next town. I started going through the book of Mark and studying that out, and some of the Gospels.

Many times the disciples would come to Jesus and say, “Hey, there are all these people here,” and Jesus said, “We’re going to go to the next town. We’re going to get the gospel to the next town.”

I said, “Lord, You want to do that here in Shawano as well,” and became very convinced of that. I started to pray for the towns surrounding Shawano: Keshena, Gresham, Marion, Clintonville, Bonduel, and even Navarino, which has a gospel-preaching church now.

I have connected with that pastor, and he actually lives a few doors down from me. We started encouraging each other during the county fair.

Mark Gillmore: A side note: God’s got His other messengers out there.

Andrew Haertl: Exactly. We don’t even know.

Mark Gillmore: We don’t know, but when we’re praying for that, the Lord connects us with the folks who want to help.

Andrew Haertl: Specifically, I’ve been praying for Clintonville for the last five years. I was praying through that, and I had a friend, Landon Edmonds, who was serving the Lord doing some gospel tent meetings in Iowa. We connected around Christmas last year, 2025, and wanted to see what God would do.

We were praying the same way. He was burdened for the town of Clintonville. I said, “Well, let’s trust the Lord together.”

He said, “What do you think about doing a gospel tent meeting?” I said, “I don’t know about this, but let’s do it.”

We prayed, started planning, and set dates in February for September 13 through 18. About a month later, the Lord really slammed the door on that, and that’s a good thing. The Lord had something greater that He wanted to do.

Whenever you take a step of faith in gospel advance, you are never going to be sorry. If you try a door handle and the Lord doesn’t want you to go there, He will make sure that it is locked and you cannot go through it. He will redirect you in that gospel advance.

The way we found out that was locked was that we had a big snowstorm in February, and then it all melted. The park where we were going to do something was under three feet of water. Several structures were not going to be usable, and the folks in town did not want us to use that place with all the water having been on the grass.

So we started seeking the Lord again, praying corporately as a church. As a pastor, I was sticking my neck out in faith before the church and saying, “Hey, God wants to do something. Let’s pray about it.”

At least monthly, we had a prayer meeting called Prayer Advance, and we would pray. Landon would come to that.

It was in July, July 10, at about eight o’clock in the morning. I was just getting to my second job, and Landon called me and said, “Hey, I just don’t have peace about this gospel tent meeting anymore.” I said, “All right, well, we can continue to pray and see what the Lord will do.”

About four hours later, I got another call from the college in Menomonee Falls saying, “Hey, how about we bring up a group of college students—roughly one hundred and fifty—and do some ministry there?” I said, “That would be great.” We talked through that, and I had my sights set on Clintonville, but I did not tell him yet.

A few days later, I had another pastor call from Appleton, Randy Graham. He said, “Brother, I just want to let you know I’m burdened for Clintonville and for New London.”

A few days later, another pastor, Pastor Ken Griesbach from Appleton, came to an evening service and said, “I moved to Marion, and I’m burdened about a church starting in Clintonville. I just wanted to connect with you. I heard maybe you and somebody else had the same burden.”

God was putting this all together, and that is amazing. Then you know, “All right, Lord, my hands are off.”

“Lord, I am not manipulating anything. You are putting this together, and I just get a front-row seat to watch You work.”

Mark Gillmore: Amen.

Now God has directed you to some door-to-door work in Clintonville, with a couple hundred contacts having been made. Just last Thursday was the opening Bible study for that.

Andrew Haertl: We were passing out flyers and gospel tracts and trying to reach homes with the gospel by knocking on doors. We were inviting people to the community center for a Bible study on Thursday night.

It is four consecutive Thursdays, called “Come Find Real Answers in an Upside-Down World,” looking at the book of Proverbs—the wisdom of God—and connecting that to Jesus Christ. We started with that and had eight guests this last Thursday. We are looking forward to what God’s going to do.

We went out this last Saturday and had several great gospel conversations with people who are searching and religious, but who are trying to live in a good way. What is missing is Jesus.

Mark Gillmore: Surely there is an open door. God is definitely highlighting that town in answer to prayer from multiple angles. As you are inviting people to this Bible study, you are also looking for personal Bible studies to develop with these individuals—key people who would respond, be open, and come to Christ—one step at a time.

Just a final note: you mentioned that you are asking the Lord to enable you to see something happen as Great Commission completion in this area. What does that mean to you? What is this request that is on your heart?

Andrew Haertl: That request is for the gospel to go forward again. The prayer that I had five years ago was, “Lord, would You allow me to see the Great Commission accomplished in my lifetime? Would those five towns surrounding us have a gospel-preaching lighthouse, a gospel Bible-believing church that is not only broadcasting the gospel into its community, but multiplying into other communities as well?”

“Lord, would You do that in my lifetime?” I believe the Lord can do that if we would just believe Him and follow Him as He starts to work.

It is the greatest thing when you take your hands off and say, “Lord, would You use me? Would You show me the next step?”

God starts to work. He starts to do it.

Mark Gillmore: Praise the Lord. So often here in this GoMission podcast, we are talking about Great Commission completion and multiplication. We are seeing a dimension of what that means in your life.

If every pastor or regional gospel worker would say, “Lord, complete the Great Commission in my region in my lifetime,” I think the dimensions may vary—how far and what this looks like—but there ought to be that sense of reality and that goal. God is probably going to take it way further than you could ever think or dream, and I expect that He is going to do that.

Andrew Haertl: If I could say this to any pastor listening: pray. That is where it starts. Pray, pray, pray.

Then don’t be afraid to step out by faith and talk to the church. Say, “Would you come along with me on this journey of faith?”

Be willing to stick your neck out and say, “Let’s pray together for this next town. Let’s do this. Let’s have a scheduled time that we are going to start praying for gospel advance.”

Mark Gillmore: Amen. Your church here, Shawano Baptist Church, has about thirty or forty people, but you are already bearing the burden of the next village and the next town. Sometimes we say, “Well, when we’re big enough or when we’ve got it all together,” but the harvest is waiting.

We cannot allow a time frame centered on our own growth to hold back what God may be wanting to do in our region. I appreciate the steps of faith that are not self-serving; they are harvest-serving.

It is the Spirit directing us into the harvest in answer to prayer. Thank you for your testimony. Praise the Lord.

Amen.