Dave Block has spent more than thirty years living and working in some of the hardest places on earth.

Through WEC International Canada — formerly known as Worldwide Evangelization for Christ — he and his family served across Muslim and communist regions where Christians often represented only a tiny fraction of the population. WEC itself traces its roots back more than a century and continues operating in unreached regions around the world, emphasizing church planting and long-term cross-cultural missions.

But when Dave talks about missions today, he does not sound like a strategist, recruiter, or organizational spokesman.

He sounds like a man undone.

“We don’t want people to come overseas in the service of Christ,” he says. “We want them to come overseas to get Christ.”

That distinction sits at the center of everything he believes.

For Dave, Christianity is not primarily about activism, religious duty, or ministry performance. It is about surrendering fully enough to encounter the transforming presence of Jesus personally — often in hidden places, hardship, weakness, and prayer.

And in his view, modern Western culture has become exceptionally good at distracting people from that encounter.

“We exchange the glory of God for images,” he says, pointing toward phones, streaming media, pornography, endless scrolling, and digital distraction.

The result, he believes, is not simply moral decline but spiritual numbness.

Yet despite his blunt honesty about the West, Dave remains surprisingly hopeful about Canada.

Contrary to narratives portraying the country as spiritually dead, he says he regularly encounters young Canadians deeply hungry for Jesus.

“I’ve got a hundred and fifty young guys on my phone that will talk to me about Jesus any time of day.”

The transformation he describes rarely begins from pulpits or conferences. More often, it unfolds quietly over coffee at Tim Hortons, during friendship, prayer, and deeply personal conversations.

“Tim Hortons is my favorite denomination in Canada,” he laughs.

Then he tells the story that still visibly moves him.

Two weeks earlier, a man phoned him with tears in his voice.

“For my entire life,” the man said, “I yelled at my wife every single day.”

Verbal violence had become normal inside the home.

But after one particular night — a night Dave says he spent praying intensely for him — something changed.

“He woke up the next morning,” Dave says, “and his heart was different.”

For six weeks, the man had not raised his voice once.

Dave pauses carefully before speaking again.

“That’s my favorite miracle.”

Not the blind seeing. Not the dead raised.

But a changed character. Changed desires. Changed hearts.

Ironically, Dave says he once witnessed a man raised from the dead in China — yet he still considers inner transformation the greater miracle.

“We want a Savior not just from the penalty of sin,” he explains, describing conversations with Muslims overseas, “but from the practice of sin.”

That longing, he believes, is universal.

People want freedom from rage, addiction, lust, shame, violence, bitterness, and despair. They want to become different people.

And Dave insists that transformation only happens through ongoing relationship with Jesus Himself.

“There’s no method,” he says. “There’s no series of lessons. It’s His effect on you if you dwell with Him.”

Again and again throughout the conversation, Dave returns to one central challenge: silence the distractions long enough to actually know God personally.

“Close your phone and your computer,” he urges.

For him, the Christian life ultimately begins behind closed doors — in hidden prayer, honesty, surrender, and what he repeatedly calls “supplication”: allowing God’s own burden and compassion to break into the human heart.

The language is raw, emotional, and deeply personal.  But perhaps that is exactly the point.

Dave is not offering a polished ministry formula. He is describing what happens when a person becomes convinced that Jesus is not merely useful, true, or doctrinally correct — but “altogether lovely.”