 Today, as I'm standing in the threshold of what used to be our old sanctuary and our old foyer, I'm just so amazed by all God has done for Radiant Church in the last six years. I'm recounting the miracles of what got us to where we are today. And I'm just so amazed I want to retell this story. And I think about it, and it just seems like miraculous to me. Our first miracle was that God would birth this church. That was our first prayer. We began meeting in our living room as we moved into Jackson in 2013. And we were praying, God, would you birth a church? Would you birth a life-giving church? But we had one big issue is we had limited people and no place to meet. And so our second miracle was this very building. This building we seen online, we felt like we got a word from the Lord that he was going to give it to us. But when we approached the church, they literally chuckled and laughed and said it would take a miracle because they already had a buyer and they had a second buyer in place who was offering a full-price cash and it would be a miracle for us to get it. Because we had no people, no money, and we weren't even a church yet. But the other two things fell through and God miraculously gave us this building. So we set out and within six weeks we flipped this church. We ripped up old carpet, painted walls, took out pews, put chairs in, put up a PA system so that by March 2, 2014 we held our first service, our official service. And 120 people showed up and we were so excited. And we thought if half of those people come back, I mean if 60 people are here next week, we got something. And 100 people showed up the following week. And all year through 2014 we continued to grow. We grew to about 180 people. And over four years by 2018 we were nearly 500 people and outgrowing this space. And so we had to believe God for another miracle. And I've been asked like, why has God allowed radiant church to grow so rapidly? When I think about it, here's what I believe. From day one we've set out to be a praying and worshiping church. We want to create environments for people to encounter the presence of God. And because we've decided to do that, I think that's one of the main things. We value loving people. All of those things, preaching the word of God with truth and grace. I believe all of those things set us up for the divine appointment of where we are today. Because of how quickly we were growing as a church, we started experiencing these stress points. One is our children's ministry. We were outgrowing that space. Our foyer became crowded when we would gather in the sanctuary. There was no room. I mean we were packing every place. Parking was limited. We were just feeling the stress points in every area. So we started doing analysis like how long can we meet in this space? The 7,000 square foot facility, is it going to be enough for us in the future? So the analysis came back that no, it wouldn't be enough. That by the fall of 2018 that we would be out of room for growth. And we just knew that that couldn't be the solution. We can't stop here. We have to keep making room for people. So we started seeking the Lord. Like Lord, what's the future for radiant churches? Is it this location? Is it another location? Is it multiple locations? What do you want? So the leadership, the elders, we begin praying. And the Lord gave us a plan and He gave us a word. And the word was Isaiah 54-3. The Lord said we weren't done here yet. And Isaiah says enlarge the place of your gathering. Enlarge your tent. Strengthen your stakes. Lengthen your cords. For you were spread out to the right and to the left. God was revealing to us that we were still going to be here. And we had the growth. So we went to the church on our anniversary of March of 2018. And we shared the vision of this building. We asked you to pray about going on a 24 month spiritual journey to make this building become a reality. And then we came together as a church. And we made a commitment over 24 months. So by September of 2018, we broke ground. And over the next 10 months, we're moving dirt. We're moving asphalt. We're putting up steel. We're putting up drywall. We are painting. We are having parties where we're all coming together to do the work to make it ready for our first service. And within 10 months, by July of 2019, we held our first worship service in our new facility. And over 700 people showed up to celebrate that day with us. So here we are on our six year anniversary anticipating what's still to come. As I recall the last 24 months of our spiritual journey together, as I'm looking back at the last six years of our churches, I'm standing in this brand new foyer space as I'm looking at the pictures on the walls throughout the building. I'm just so amazed at all God has done. I could have never anticipated. I don't think any of us could have anticipated all that God has done over these six years. We've watched hundreds of people respond to salvation. Over 100 people getting baptized. We're watching marriages becoming renewed and strengthened. People are discovering freedom and identity. Lives are being transformed. Needs are being met in our community. Hundreds of people are going through these doors and worshiping Jesus. We are seeing God movement. I believe we're in the middle of a revival. And as I'm thinking about this, I know that physically we built a 12,000 square foot facility. But spiritually, we made room for more people who are far from Jesus. We're not done yet. There's more lives that need to be changed. There's more people who need to be reached. There's prodigal sons and daughters who are still looking for a home. Still looking for a place. There are orphan's hearts that need to find their home in Jesus. All of these things are things that we were believing that God is still going to do in our city. I believe Radiant Church is going to be a catalyst for revival. I believe revival is coming to Jackson. And I want to say thank you for joining us. Whether you've just become part of the Radiant family or you've been here from the beginning or anywhere in between. Thank you for partnering with us. Thank you for saying yes to God. Thank you for trusting us to be a part of your life and joining the vision of this church. And together as we pray, as we seek God, as we're diving into His heart, I believe we're going to continue to advance the kingdom of God in our own city. And I thank you for joining the vision. Thank you for partnering with us. Thank you for saying yes. Let's move forward because greater things are yet to come. Yeah, God was awesome. Did want to just play that for you, but I'm a little barest now since Pastor Lee was like, don't have numbers for success. But in all fairness, it's pre-COVID. It was counted then, it counted. I just want to quickly just share our story and journey. And I see a couple of us have walked in maybe during the video. So at the end, we want to give you all of our resources that we did for our building project, all of our promotion materials, all of our teaching materials, every one of our leadership meetings, all of our emails, all of that we're going to give to you. We'll put it back up at the end. But I just want to share 11 steps. So this is super practical. This is not a teaching or anything, but I'm going to share our steps. I kind of thought through how would this help people and our steps of our building project, which ended up being over 24 months. So when we were growing and we were in that 7,000 square foot space, if we had 100 people in the room, it was feeling really full. So we started asking the question, and here's step number one. You have to answer this question, why is it important to build? And we prayed about it. It's a great solution, actually. We thought, do we need another location or multiple locations? The reason why you want to answer this question is because it's going to help you clarify your vision to move forward. You have to know why are we going to build? For us, it was simple. We're just running out of room. By the time we were doing this analysis in early 2017, it came back, said we were averaging a 25, depending on the year, between 20 and 30% growth, by 2018 we're not going to be able to sustain this. Even adding services would be unsustainable with the size of staff we had. So we knew this is the answer to our question of the why was because we're going to run out of space. So the way you can apply this, and here's what you want to do. You want to answer these questions. Why must we do this? What happens if we don't do this? And the thing I started asking, what would it mean for my city if we just stopped the growth? Because we could have just said, no, we like this, let's just cap it here. We felt like that's a bad idea. Number two, for your spiritual journey, for us, we wanted to determine all of the things that were hindering us. This is key. It may not sound like a key thing to know, but determine every limitation that's hindering growth for you. And you've seen me kind of spell it out in the video that you just watched. This, when you answer that question, you're answering this question. If we build, what problems does that fix? Because it's not enough to just go to the congregation and say, we got a vision where we need to build. They're going to ask, especially financial leaders, they're going to be like, why do you need to build? And have you thought through these things? So you have to know your stress points. So I'm going to tell you what ours were. When we had a full Sunday like Easter or something like at the movies, we literally ran out of parking space. Our facilities is on three acres. We were parking people in the grass. We were parking people in our neighbor's parking lot without asking them. And we were just running out of a room. So we would literally be parking all different properties. So that was one. Our children's hallways were narrow and overcrowded. That was a stress point. Like if you had to pick your kids up and kids ministry in our church, it was a four-foot hallway that was a stress point. We had three identical services. We were filling all of them, except for, you know, that noon service. One and two was getting full. That was a stress point. There was no room in the foyer. So that was a stress point. So this is what we would share with people. We determined to fix all of these stresses. Like we need to build a 12,000 square foot facility so that we can have a large foyer. And I would tell our church like, look, the foyer is where ministry is happening. That's where you're having conversations. That's where discipleship. That's where you're encouraging one another. Ministry is taking place in the foyer. So I would sell all of that. Like I just would celebrate all of those things as the answer to the problems we were facing. Because they were real problems. Our foyer, we didn't even have air conditioning. And it was just so hot. So number three. So step one, why is it important to build? Step two, you have to know your current limitations that's hindering your growth. That's what you need to share. Because that answers the question for your congregation. Number three, you have to create a plan that resolves that tension. You create a plan that resolves those limitations. And that's easy, right? Well, it's not easy. You need a system and you need a plan. You need a system to deliver that plan. So our plan, I'm just going to bullet point these for you is this. We hired an architect who helped us look at our property space our current facility and how to add to that. We did this with the board. We did this with key leaders. We determined anticipated cost, which was way off. We thought we'd built for $1.8 million. We ended up spending $2.8 million. So really far off. It was that whole time when they started putting tariffs on steel and I was like, oh, what's happening that this is way out of there? So we have to determine your cost. Then you're going to need to develop a campaign. I didn't like the word campaign. So I use the word building initiative. So we developed a building initiative. We called it making room. We used that verse from Isaiah 54 3 stretch out your tent pegs. That's what we use for that. And then we started drafting our blueprints designing logos gearing up for this building initiative. And then we created a presentation for the church to share. So that's number three. Number four, you want to develop a proper timeline for your building initiative. So determine your link that you want for a campaign. Most campaigns are probably around three years. We chose 24 months, although we followed through for three years. So we did two years. It was over, but people continued to give to the campaign well into a year. Which is why we were able to go over our initial commitments. So determine the length of your campaign. Ours was 24 months. The first month we met with key leaders to share the vision. So we didn't tell the church yet. We met with key leaders and we started sharing vision with our elders, our key leaders. And then we set a date for our leadership dinner. So our plan was like, let's meet with leaders. Let's plan dinners with key leaders, with financial leaders. I know that may be a weird thing. I'll talk about that in just a moment. But we determined all the key dates. What's going to be a public launch? And we timed all that out. We wanted all our leaders to know before we ever told the church publicly. And we wanted all of our financial leaders to know before we launched publicly so that we could answer their questions. Number five. No, we're doing great. I'm ripping through these. Number five. We began to meet with the bank in the builders. So number five is really blurry where that is in the transition because it can be anywhere in there. But the time to meet with the bank is not on the front end of the campaign. In fact, we had met with the bank probably a year before we started when we had that first analysis as I approached the bank and they said, hey, go see this pastor. He's in a little building project. And I went seeing him and he was the one that gave us the idea, gave us the network that we went through or the organization enjoy solutions helped us with our launch and helped us with our process. So we were meeting with all of them even before. So on the front end, I would go to the banks and say, hey, here's what we're doing. Here's what we're plan. Have some type of architectural rendition so you can show that because the banks for us was the hardest piece. Of course, that would be. We went to the banks in like 2016, 2017. And when we had our commitments and I took it to our bank in 2018. So this was spring of 2018. I shared with them like, hey, we've raised we have commitments to $530,000. We've I think we had maybe 300 or 400,000 of it at the time and they said, yeah, that's nowhere close and we're not we're not going to help you. You need you need to find someone else. So we were looking at all kinds of different organizations nonprofits that help churches kind of get their vision. We looked at the Wesleyan I can't remember the name. Do you remember the name of them? Yeah. Yeah, we talked with those guys and we were we were inspired by them. We talked with the assemblies of God we were inspired by them and they all said, yeah, we can help you do it. But when it got down to it, they wanted a lot more down than we were able to. So it was July of 2018. And our original bank here in the area had said, we need you need this amount. You're not close. We're not going to be able to help you. So we went to all of those nonprofits that help churches, you know, realize that vision. We got there and they they wanted more than we were able to put in. And so I called up the bank in July and I had another organization was ready to help us. But we I just couldn't get there. So I called them and said, hey, I'm discouraged because you know, you guys said you could help us now. You're saying you're not. I said, here's where we are. And we I think we had gotten up to like 500,000 and he said, Pastor Mike, you need about 650,000 for us to finance you, which at the time was I think two point we were over the two point million mark. So I I said, look, our giving is strong. Here's where our commitments are landing. I was sharing all the numbers and I said to him I said his name was Nick. I said, Nick, what do you need? And he told me the number. I said, well, I'm 125,000 off of that. I said, we need to break ground or we're going to it's going to hurt us. If we don't break ground, we're going to stop growing. It's going to hurt us. And he says, well, that's what you need. And I don't know why it came out of my mouth. But I just said, hey would you loan us that difference? And he just said, yeah. And I'm like, what are you doing? So he said, yeah, we're just slowing you the difference and you put all your commitments to make that happen and we got funded. And so I was like, man, I had pulling my hair out for eight weeks calling all of these guys and and I didn't know you could do that. But I just thought I'd ask the question like, well, will you just give me the difference and I'll give it back. And which to me is the same thing as just giving it all to me anyway. But for whatever reason, it was different in his mind. And he made it happen. So somewhere in here, I would say you're going to meet with the banks. You know, if you're already thinking of building, you probably are already doing that because you're going to want to know what are you expecting? You're going to want to know. So for us, we needed for the bank we went with needed to put 20% down. Most of our conversations were around 30%. And that that was the rub for us. We couldn't make that 30% happen and build. Number six. Do you want to develop and unite your leadership so you're going to develop new leaders in the midst of your front end of your campaign and you're going to unite your current leadership and you're going to build teams and all of this. So we started recruiting team members for our campaign or for our building initiative. I'll tell you what these teams were. We had a design team that started designing all of our print and our logo. This was we actually hired someone here from the church. I didn't have someone on our staff yet that was worked in design. So one of the staff members here in Kalamazoo did this for us and designed this for us. So we had a design team and part of their responsibility was handling all the print because we were printing all of this stuff. And we had an event team because we were going to have I think two leadership. We had two leadership dinners and we had multiple leadership meetings before we went public. And then we had a ton of private meetings with financial leaders. We had a follow-up team I'm going to get to that follow-up in a little bit. The follow-up team is really key. And then we also had a coordinator that just kind of touched base with all these teams. So we started meeting with them. Let me talk about key donors and I know I'm a pastor I'm not good at asking you know going one on one. I know some guys are great at this. I'm not going one on one and just sharing. Hey here's the vision you're a financial leader. So what we call a financial leader in our church was anyone who gave $5,000 and above. And I didn't know this. We hired an outside company that took all of our data and said here's your key leaders $10,000, anyone $10,000 and above I met with them. And I know this is probably not kosher to say but I'm just sharing this is what I did. And I told them like I don't feel comfortable doing this and they said you know you need to meet with all your financial leaders. You need to sit them down and you know Romans 12 I believe it's Romans 12 it literally says generosity is one of the gifts. So they said no you need to meet with them. This is incredible because anyone $10,000 above was a personal dinner that I went out with. And we didn't have a lot of those. So it was like maybe five people. But I went out to Darren but what was crazy was this couple had been in our church for several years and I really don't look at people's giving so I didn't know this but I'd learned this couple's name who was a key donor to our church and so I took them out and I apologized and said I didn't realize you know that you were a financial leader in our church. I never really used that term and I'm not a salesman but I just started you know just sharing with them and I share with the vision. Well I asked them what do you do and he says well I'm a builder and I'm like oh and so we're talking and he had built like neighborhoods in our community he had built plazas in our community like he was a legit builder so in my mind I'm thinking is this my builder. So I jump in the car at the end of dinner and wife and I said what if that guy builds our church and so we are meeting with all these builders who were giving us quotes or what they would charge to build and one day before he comes up to me in church his name was Dan and Dan said hey I'd like to help with a building project and I said have you ever built a steel building? He said no I've never built a steel building but I'm telling you I could do it. So I said oh well tomorrow's when we're meeting with all the builders can you have something he said well I really need about two weeks but yes I'll do I'll have it by tomorrow. So he showed up we have the board there the board's there the architects there and we're meeting with all these builders and Dan he comes in and he lays it down and this guy in our church ends up being our builder and that was because I met with key donors so he we were able to build at a you know at a discount that we wouldn't have got without that. So what I did with these key donors as I just shared with them the reason why I did is because they do have to get the generosity and because they're financial leaders they have questions that other people aren't going to ask so I would sit them down and then when we developed our presentation and I want to show that to you I thought I had it here I do right here I had this in an iPad format but this book that's what we gave the church and I walked them through our you know the front of this is here's what we've done here's what we've accomplished here's how many people that got saved and baptized and I'm sharing with them like all of this is here's the things that we've done over the past four years that's caused us to grow and your generosity has made this possible before I shared this on my iPad I'd asked them what is it that you love about Radiant Church and I would remember like what they said some of them would be you know our kids and they'd say something that happened in kids ministry with their kids or they would say something that happened with their prayer partner or during worship you know I just encountered God during worship and I would remember over dinner what they were telling me so then when I pulled this out at the end of dinner I would connect wherever in this brochure that they had mentioned I would say see this kids thing we're out of space you said you love the kids ministry because of what it done for your daughter like we need to make room and like they would start weeping and because I feel awkward like I'm just awkward that way like I've never asked people for money I've never been through a building project where I had to I mean we had here in Kalamazoo but Lee did all that I didn't have to do any of this so I'd come like how do you do this and he's like yeah we're not good at this we're meant for the platform not for the this but I would start sharing like you know when that greeter met me and the foyer that was why we decided to stay then I'd talk about the foyer space and somehow it like just connected with her heart like the foyer sold it amazing so this brochure and this is in that that folder we get in one of the folders we gave you I would just walk them through this and just connect them to that vision so you want to meet with your financial leaders and anyone who is under that 10,000 mark we held just gatherings of maybe 10 to 15 people and what I did as I put them on I put all their chairs on the stage they didn't know I was going to do this but we put the tables on the stage in that little foyer in that little sanctuary that we had in the Baptist box church and we had hors d'oeuvres or something snacks cheese cake things like that and I'm doing the same thing just having conversation it's very conversational I'm not selling anything I'm not trying to share vision but as they're talking I'm remembering what these 12 people are saying to me and then I do go through a video presentation and connecting so when Jenny said this or when Bob said this I would just share that vision with them but at the end of all of it I would say what are your questions because anyone who's going to they trust you they're giving to your church I want all of my leaders and my financial leaders because that's a real thing in church you have financial leaders in your church and they're asking questions that probably the average giver isn't and I wanted all of their questions answered and it was never the one main question I always got asked which I don't understand it but we had this massive massive oak tree in our front yard probably maybe this big around it was probably 100 years old and just about every time someone say what's going to happen to the oak tree I'm like that's what you want to know what's going to happen to the oak tree so we ended up taking it down broke a lot of hearts so yeah we did try to keep it I told Dan the builder I said Dan you got to figure out a way loving that oak tree there were some legitimate questions but that seemed to be the main one so what I did so I met with all of our financial leaders and I developed other leaders during this whole process this is my daughter-in-law in the back she's running graphics her name's Grace she's who we put over our design and creative team to oversee that and she killed it I don't know this is not nepotism but I am hiring that girl and so we did but I wouldn't have known that if we hadn't gone like this building project helped me discover leaders that I didn't know were in the churches I started assigning all of these things and so I think if you do have a building project don't just look at your staff like who in the congregation can we pull into this she did an incredible job and actually there's a couple people we ended up bringing on staff as a result of a building initiative and when we're building I'm not thinking staff members my process wasn't thinking that way but I discovered it so develop leaders and unite your current leadership then we would host then we hosted a leadership launch that's number seven we hosted a leadership launch and what that was was not just financial leaders and key leaders but this was anybody who led anything so if you're leading a community group if you're leading a kids ministry somewhere if you are leading the parking lot team we want to tell you about this vision so we brought them in and we shared the vision again by this time I'm getting good at it I'm feeling bad I'm repenting Lord I feel like a salesman but I'm getting smoother at this and and again I'm asking that this dinner I'm answering all their questions at the end this one I had a presentation for I like shared I'll share something shameless I did I'm not ashamed of it because it got the point across I was just asking like hey what do you think you spend and on your kids equipment for sports I was talking about and everyone's like what's your sport my kids football my kids in baseball or soccer and I said what do you feel like you spend on them and they're all talking at the tables because it was a big dinner and everyone's jotting down their numbers I said hey write it down I want to hear what you guys are giving to that and so they're all shouting out like thousand dollars and I and I said hey how much have you invested into kingdom work to save your children because at the end of the day the coach is not the one they're going to go to when they're 24 years old and having a crisis in their life and a pin dropped in the room and I felt like it was like a God idea to get the point across and it did and we had our leaders make the first commitment I'm telling them at this dinner I said in a month from now we're going to tell the whole church about this and we want the leaders to go first and we want to demonstrate that to our congregation I'm asking you to pray about this over the next couple of weeks so I asked them for their help I said hey guys most of you you're in the room because you're a leader so you get the vision there's some here in our church that they'll be a part of it but they won't get the vision and I'm going to need your help to pass it on to them so I asked them for their help to help people catch the vision pass on the vision people that might not you know I've learned this if you're a pastor you understand this people don't tell their pastor what he needs to know they tell him what he wants to hear so what I learned was to pass that down to my leaders and say help me pass this vision on because they're going to be they're going to ask you the questions so I spent probably 30 minutes just answering every question in the room just what's your question because I wanted them to have all the questions answered so they could help me answer the other questions I gave them that night all the key dates I gave them our public launch I gave them when they were going to have a commitment I talked to them about our teaching series I let them know everything I was going to do I was as transparent as I could be I did that so that was number seven number eight we had you know everyone knows that this is coming but we plan a big public launch and for us this isn't something I came up with it's enjoy enjoy solutions is the organization that we hired to help us if you are going to do a building project I would recommend hiring an organization that does this and the reason why for me it was we had done it here we had two building projects here we did one with an organization that helped us I think round two we did it ourselves because we had one but for me because I was new it was like this is way too important to just try to shoot from the hip and so I wasn't going to shoot from the hip on it they helped me but he's they are the ones that helped me understand like this big public launch this big day that you're going to let everybody know about the vision you want people to remember this day and the thing they said to me was it's like Easter like Easter so we we used a tent as kind of the picture that we would use for this and making room stretch out your tent pegs lengthen your cords Isaiah 54 is what we just pushed through this whole thing and kept preaching from the pulpit so we bought this big old army tent that we thought we were going to put up in this church but realize it smelled like an old musty army tent so I'm like that's not going up in my building we're going to put that out in the yard but so we had that out in the yard this massive tent that you know kids loved and went and played in and we had balloons everywhere and people remembered that they still talk about it on commitment Sunday we had people come up and sign a piece of the the building that was going to go up like they all sign I said put your name down put someone's name down you're believing God to come in over the next couple of years and they would on the commitment Sunday they wrote it we had already had a piece of that building that was going to be erected and they brought that in it was eight feet you know it was massive and they they filled in today it's a that is above our threshold you can't see it because it's you know painted now and drywalled over but that sits there and that people remember that so you want people to remember remember this day also on that day we shared with our church what our leadership had already committed to and what we had already raised so that inspires people number nine so our public launch was a we're telling people here's what we're doing then we did a teaching series I did a four weeks teaching series and I told the church hey we're going to go on a spiritual journey together I really did believe this was going to be a spiritual landmark this is in that folder that we gave you guys it has all of our resources we printed out a 21 day spiritual journey and we just said hey as a church work over the next 21 days we're going to ask God what our part is and I taught a teaching series I taught on sacrifice I taught on generosity I taught on making room for other people and here's why I did this stewardship series to me it wasn't really about money like I was emphasizing that everything is God's and helping people connect with what matters most and the sacrifice that we made and that I really wanted a spirit of partnership and so I was often sharing with the congregation over four weeks like hey a sacrifice I'm willing to give up what you love for something you love even more that's what a sacrifice willing to give up something you love and I would emphasize that over the four weeks so that people knew like yeah I want that boat or I want that motorcycle and I love that but I love the church and I want my family saved I want my friends saved and I'm willing to sacrifice for a couple I'm willing to sacrifice that vacation to make this dream and make this vision a reality that we can reach our community because I love that more I love the vision of Jesus more number 10 I would say this number 10 is the key thing the literal key thing that helped us maintain our commitments and even go beyond it so some of you jumped in the room late we we were told we could raise on the top end 380,000 of commitments and anyone who's been through a building project you've heard the horror stories like count on half of that so that was scaring me what ended up being committed was 530,000 so I'm like okay we're going to get 250,000 over the next two years we actually ended up almost 710,000 shy of 700,000 so this is how we did it is number 10 we kept the vision before the people because usually what happens in building initiatives you get all excited you share the literature you're giving all the pamphlets out you're giving out commitment cards and you're giving out commitment cards and then you get all the commitments and you're excited you're talking about banks and then you stop talking about it and that's where there is no vision people cast off restraint and I would say this way if you don't keep the vision before people they just cast off restraint they forget that you're doing this or they think the needs are already there the banks already provided what do you need so every first Sunday of the month I mean religiously every first Sunday of the month I was celebrating something about this campaign it was coming up every single Sunday this is if you're going to build if you're going to go through a commitment if you're going to have a 24 to 36 month commitment this is the key thing that's going to help people remember the vision and some of the times I would show where we were at like I'd have a pie chart of like this is what we were committed this much came in some of us are here some of us and what I was doing was helping them see where they were at on that pie chart so the first month I did this I would celebrate every single win every single win I would celebrate I mean if dirt got moved I was did you see someone move dirt and they're like yes and it seemed like for nine months all we seen was hill dirt hills just moved and I would get so afraid did you see this hills over here now and like come on somebody dirt's moving and people would start you know getting happy they get happy about it and I did that literally for two years so 24 times I kept talking about it when the township approved something I bring that paper I'm like look at this the township approved whatever and they're like yes it's going to happen and we did have some battles through all of that which I don't have time to share but one of them I want to share with you because it was really discouraging and I don't and I want to leave you discouraged I went through I'm just kidding I'm just kidding we when we started breaking ground and we started meeting with the township we had three property owners behind us three neighbors behind us who we shared a boundary line with there was a neighborhood behind our church and what they thought was their property was ours so here we are we got you know steel coming in and things happening and we get a call from an attorney that's asking us to cease our project and I'm just like what and they're like I had learned a word I'm sure I've heard it before but I must have forgot about it my reticular activating system didn't pull it up but there was a word called acquiescence and it's a real estate word which if I've been using this property for layman's term squatters rights I've been using your property I've been using your property for you know how many years it's 15 in Michigan if you wanted to know then it becomes ours so they're taking us to court and my attorney and the radiant network here hey this is a reason why you want to be in a network they have connections that help you so I'm reaching out to the network here and I'm like I need an attorney I don't know what to do and they felt me find somebody and a real estate guy strong in the you know in Michigan and he said we were getting ready to cut those trees down he said do not cut a tree down he said if you start cutting trees and you lose then you're in trouble and pain a lot so we ended up getting all of the attorneys together getting you know we're in different rooms and we started negotiating this thing out and I had the sign of disclosure so I can't really share like what but basically I said how long is it gonna take if we go to court because we we couldn't build here's the kind of the double bind we were in they wanted the property but we had to have so many parking spots by the townships ordinances to build and if we gave them that property we couldn't build because we wouldn't have enough parking space so we're literally calling an engineer the engineer on this at while we're all you know at this attorney's office like how much property can I give these people without without sacrificing these parking spots and it was basically like 10 feet and so I asked my attorney how long is it gonna take like how long will we be slowed down he said about a year if you go to court you're done for a year I'm like I can't wait a year so I just gave them I can't share what it is for disclosure reasons but I gave them very strong number and said well I'll give you 10 feet and I will pay you to take the 10 feet if you you know if we don't go to court and if you don't take it we gotta go to court because at the end of the day I won't be able to build if you want more than this and let me just say it's a number that made me sick to my stomach but they took the money so you know please ask us to say money answers all things and I learned that it did but it was a miracle for us ended up being a miracle and what how I ended it came to that as I was praying one day and it was I'd never remember reading this in Hebrews before but in the back of Hebrews it says you gladly when they confiscated your property you were glad about it or something like that and I'm like that's in the Bible and and the Lord is telling and I took it was a word from the Lord for me happened to be like what okay alright let's give it to him and that was how I ended up with that solution and it and it did work I share that story but it was not one of the wins I celebrated I did want to say it but I couldn't and then the last one so one year into our project halfway through we did another teaching series on stewardship so in year one this was our commitment card I just want to share this with you and this is like hey what can you commit to over the next 12 or 24 months as a church to help us make this vision a reality and this is what we did in year one so at the very beginning of it so 12 months later real clever we just changed the color but I did this teaching series and here's what I did and I think the church appreciated this because we had new people that came over that last year so what are their on ramps like how do I get them involved so I did it again I did another stewardship series basically the same one it's it is a little different but you got both of them if you get download that folder you have both of those teaching series and this time on this one I release people who I said maybe you committed a year ago and something changed like you lost your job or or you know your income shifted I probably didn't say lost your job but your income shifted or we want to release you from your commitment like so and that happened like some people turned in cars and said I'm not able to do it we thank them like man we're so blessed what you did do and then but other people who were new to the church we we gave them opportunity to give over the next over the last 12 months and we did so it gave new people an on ramp and it released others who weren't able to follow through because I didn't want that was on my heart is like look if you can I'm not going to be we're not going to be the church that's calling you and it's like hey you didn't you missed your commitment we just said hey if you can't we understand so that was our journey that's the steps that we took I mean there's it's very detailed all that you get in the 30,000 foot video but that's that's what we did we have just about 10 minutes left so I want to and while while I answer questions can you throw that number back up because some people walked in late so if you walked in later we want to give you all of the resources that we did through this 24 months all of our artwork all of our files all of our teaching series every email we sent out every letter we sent out that video that you watched all of that we want to just give it to you hope it adds value you can take it you can edit it you can steal the language you can say this is crap and never look at it I don't care but we just we always want you to have it so just text a rise shine with no space to 9700 and we'll give it all to you you can have it all yeah any questions about our yeah right so for those of you watching online I've been told to repeat your questions so tell me if I get this right so you're growing you're leasing right now so but you need to have a solution and but you're not sure that if it's actually logistical right now because all the prices and increased and what you're asking me what what to do okay so he's right though my two of my boys work in construction and they told me that a 8 foot pine 2 by 4 is over $10 now like whoa you know so in terms of stress point it sounds like that resonated with you like yeah we have all those stress points so I share what we did and maybe this will help you because you just at the end of the day you need a word from the God you just need the Holy Spirit to say do this and I'll share a couple so we didn't know I didn't want to build because we were only on three acres I couldn't really see how we could stretch that three acres to grow until we got an architect but I still wasn't convinced it was the right thing for us so and I knew building was going to be expensive and and steel had went up in our what we thought was going to be one eight ended up being two eight so it ended up being you know a million more than what we thought but I'll tell you this if you get a word from God he's going to provide and that was what happened to us like and and honestly I'm a worrier like if I'm just in a transparency can in the stressing moments I worry like how's this going to happen God always always delivered but before we knew what we ended up doing is I was asking the Lord was during our 21 days of prayer and fasting at the beginning of the year and I'm in the sanctuary and the staff is praying and I'm we're looking at other buildings so you're you know your options right your options just keep doing what you're doing and it sounds like that's not going to work so you yeah okay it goes up yep so it's a financial stress point so that might not be the best solution it could be so keep doing what you're doing find another location or purchase some property and build so seriously kicking around was I am going to try to find another location and just have multiple locations and I'm praying about it and we're going to seek and I heard the Lord say you're not done here yet so I knew so I heard that so I thought okay so we're going to stay here but how about the other locations and I was in San Francisco with Pastor Lee and I'm like processing this with him and I don't know if I build or if we just add locations I don't know what to do and he said it was like the Lord spoke through him he said it's both you're going to build and you're going to have multiple locations so I don't know if he was prophetic in the moment but the next step for us was build so you really at the end of the day you need a word from the Lord I mean I am not the best analysis guy to help you determine that but you know your stress points and you can lay out you're going to come to three or four options and the Lord's going to tell you but you know what it would be a faith stretch for your church if you do get a word from the Lord and say hey we know it's expensive right now but this is what God said because to God whether it's a thousand three million or thirty million or three cents and it doesn't matter he can provide and he does so yeah any other questions it's a great question yes oh yeah yeah the building looks great by the way yeah oh yes so the question is how as a pastor as a lead pastor did you handle the weight and the stress of that I thought that was one of the most stressful seasons for me and it really was and you probably sensed that on your parents as they built to we got into our building in July of 2019 so we were in it just six seven months and then COVID happened then 2020 was like oh wait this is more stressful and I'm not ashamed of this but you know I prayed a ton and there was a lot of going before the Lord all my answers are going to be pray but I did pray a lot and honestly I got a life coach like some I talked to another pastor a couple thousand people they're you know way ahead of us and I said hey what do I not know and he says what you don't know is the stress that you're going to go under you need someone to process with so I found a Christian life coach that I meet with every other week and it's really good I'm not a cusser but I could cuss at him and he wouldn't care I just want to tell you how mad I am or celebrate with him I processed verbally with someone outside of the church I did have a couple of breakdown intense moments and there's a couple of times honestly just in my flesh I had to circle back and apologize to people when the builder who goes to our church was behind schedule that's a tough conversation to have anyway just to have that conversation with someone in your church or as a builder not in your church would be hard but now they're also congregate who's also giving to the project and you have to have that like come on let's get this together let's keep moving so I did have to circle back to him but it was a lot but the Lord was faithful honestly I sensed the grace of God I you know handling the litigation stuff I needed words from God and you know am I going to go to the court is the word and he's like no let them have it let them have it and then pay them was a rough thing but it was the leading of the Holy Spirit but processing we're not meant to do it alone I processed and I still have that life coach I'm like hey you help me through this now let's go through COVID together and he's like okay let's do that too yep and honestly I had I had close friends so your network someone close that you can process with is healthy any other questions awesome I'm over schedule let me just say a quick prayer and then we're done Father Lord I don't know what's in the room today but I know destiny is in the room I know calling is in the room and I know that there are cities represented in this room and there are lost people that need to know Jesus so I pray for every woman and every man of God that's sitting in this room that's called by you to reach their city maybe to build Father maybe to purchase something Lord you meet all of our needs Lord and you give us vision Father and if you give the vision you're going to provide for it and so I pray against any spirit of fear that says it's the wrong timing Lord I'm reminded of your word and Genesis talks about the ancient man Lord who sold in the time of famine Father so we will not look at the externals we will look to the heart of God as our source and our guide and I pray Father for an increase of your voice I pray for an increase of vision to be released in hearts to believe you for the next thing to believe you for the next step whether that's to build whether that's to stay whether that's to find a different location Holy Spirit speak to men and women in this room Father I pray for their congregations I ask Lord they would be filled with life I pray that the joy of the Lord would be their Father give every pastor and every pastor's wife that's in the room today Father the source and the strength they need to lead the church in this next era that we are entering as a church and as a nation Father they need your wisdom Father give us the mindset to understand the times and to navigate what we're going through Father so that vision keeps moving forward because vision still is strong no matter what's going on in the world the kingdom of God must go forward and must happen and so I pray that for the men and women in this room Father called by you that they carry the kingdom cause that you put in their heart the burdens you placed on them Father that you would walk it out with them Father and fulfill the things you've called them to do in the name of Jesus Amen