everybody. We are thrilled that you've joined us for another episode of The Non-Profit Show. Welcome. Today, I'm very excited because I have on one of our favorite guests, drum roll. They're ransom nonprofit nerd. Welcome. Well, thank you. You know, every so often we turn the seats on each other, Julia, and we have brought up donor segmentation, what it looks like. We've brought up customization. So you had asked me if I would dive a little bit deeper on this topic. So I'm excited to share some of my secrets of success. Well, I really am interested in what you have to say, Jared, because I mean, I'm always interested in what you have to say. I think you're one of the great minds that we have in our nation about the sector of philanthropy, if you will. So I always love what you have to say. And again, if you don't know who we are, I'm Julia Patrick joined by the nonprofit nerd herself, Jared Ransom. But we're going to talk today about segmentation. And we want to make sure that you know that these episodes of The Non-Profit Show are sponsored by partners with us in the nonprofit sector. We want to make sure that you know that Bloomerang, American Non-Profit Academy, Fundraising Academy, The Non-Profit Nerd, your part-time controller, and Staffing Boutique are here with us day in and day out. And if you haven't heard this before, we're marching towards our 500th episode. Yeah, we're marching fast. Marching fast. Okay, so we wanted to get into donor segmentation. And the reason why I thought maybe we could have you on to talk about this is that we bandied this word about segmentation. And I don't know if we always know what that means. And I'm learning as we spend more time with a variety of nonprofit leaders across this nation, it means something different to everyone. And that's true. It's fascinating to me. It's like one of those things that we're all talking about, Jared. But I don't think we're fricking the same lingity as we like to say in my family. Right. And we could be segmenting, you know, our constituency base differently, separately, you know, just there's a there's a lot of ways to slice and dice this. And so when I talk about donor segmentation, and this is, you know, something I bring up in previous episodes, for me, what I'm referring to is literally classifying our constituencies on some type of characteristic. So the official term is we're going to put them in a bucket. Yes, all the time. We're going to put them in a bucket. I love that you have these different paint cans as a graphic on on the image here in front of us. But really, that's exactly what it is. So we're taking a look at our donor database, or our event attendees, or our board members. I mean, you can segment just about anything. And so when you think about this, you know, in particular for our donors, there's a lot of ways in the secrets of success that I like to share. But first and foremost, I think it's important to create a list of particular classifications, right? So we could do gender, we could do age, we could do by the date in which they gave to us, perhaps their anniversary date, perhaps they give to us monthly, and that's a whole nother segmentation. And I keep thanking Julia, we had a fantastic guest on that talked about personalization and customization and how those two are different in and of themselves. And those strategies can be applied to the segmentation. But we have to segment first. So I've got so many questions for you. So first of all, let me ask this, is all donor segmentation the same? I think you're going to say no, because it depends on what you're doing. So I get that, right? But then how fluid is this? So for example, we started our donor segmentation, do we have to like live with that forever? Or can we add something? Because it's going to dilute how our metrics are working, right? Great question. And so I do think that it should be fluid in some way, shape or form. Now, we don't want to change it every month. We don't want to consistently change our segmentation, you know, as we go. But there could be some crossover segmentation. So for instance, right? If you have an event in this donor or supporter or individual in your database, segmented then are classified as having attended that event, you will know to send a follow-up email to this individual specific to that event. You're going to let them know of a save the date. When is that next event happening again so that you can make sure that they are in attendance? So that is one small, you know, segmentation area to consider. But that event attendee may also be a monthly giver or they might be within a certain anniversary date. So that person could be in multiple lists. Okay. Thank you for bringing that up because so what I'm thinking of is an educational system. I'm thinking of the school. And so maybe the first segment would be year graduated, right? Yes. Everybody in your list in theory is well, maybe not, but the majority of your people in your database are going to be assigned or have the ability to be assigned to that, right? And then another another category could be are they are they donors? And then within that are they monthly givers? Have they given to endowment?  You know, stuff like that, right? So so you're taking this almost like in a in a spider web format and that they can cross over? Yes, absolutely. And you can dig even deeper in regards to the educational format. Perhaps you know that this person was on a sports team, right? And so you want to contact this person and share about the athletics or perhaps you know that they were in, you know, a production or theater class and then you could segment that way. Again, there's so many ways how you can splice and dice this, but it's really about classifying into interest and categories. And that is so you can customize and personalize in a much easier fashion than to every single donor or supporter every single time. Okay, so that like is a little bit of a hair on fire moment for me because I know which is always a good thing.  Can you get too many segments? Probably. Now, here's what I recommend is as you build out your communications calendar, you're identifying which segments you are communicating with, right? So that way you're mindful throughout your year of all of the different communication towards your segmentation. So for instance, I just helped an organization separate a list of individuals that had not given a gift. So they're in the donor database as someone of interest but has yet to give a gift. So we sent an email out to this particular segmentation. We customized and personalized the email based off of their name and where they came into the organization. So again, an event. Our ask to them was to make a $5 donation because our goal was to move them from a zero to a five, right? But we would not send a $5 donation request to someone that's a major donor because that would be a moot point. We would be going down the ladder if we're playing shoots and ladder actually we would we would just slide right down that slide. So we did not send out an email to the larger donors. Okay, so then I have so many questions. So I'm in the hot seat. You are, sister. Okay, so let's go back to the school model. Okay. And the school models are so interesting to me because as most of us know, the largest fundraising institutions in our in our nation are higher education universities. They're the ones that are the best funded. They have the largest endowments. And it's not just the Ivy League schools. I mean, it goes across this country. It's really an interesting model and system for fundraising. Because in essence, their there's their their engagement ends or recirculates every four years, right? Right. So they don't have this information. So I want to go back to this classification of when you have let that situation where your alums or the folks that you've worked with are maybe no longer in your community or how do you keep up that segmentation and make sure that it's accurate and that you're working it properly? Or do you just have to like give up at some point and put them into a big group? Yes, and probably a little bit of both, right? And I can speak about my particular alma mater. We've had them on Landry University. So I was a mass communication communications theater undergrad. I was an athlete and I, you know, lived in the same same state. So my home state was the state of this university. Then when I graduated and now I live across country from this or from this university, right? So I guarantee you I am in these different segmentation. So a Phoenix alumni chapter, right? I would receive anything that might come to place in the Southwest community. And now if something came up in particular with soccer, I am also receiving information on that because of my involvement with the sports. And then the same for my for my degree or my major is I receive information on the mass communication program. And so I'm receiving multiple communication pieces from my alma mater, but based off of my involvement and engagement with this institution, and we can do this as human service organizations, as animal shelters, we can we can do this in just about any of our top nine nonprofit sectors. Okay, so get out your crystal ball, sister. Okay, I got it. And this is like a weird question. But how many segments do you think that with your alma mater, you're in?   Geography, gender, because I know they will be launching a Women in Philanthropy program, right? Okay, gender. So we're four. I mean, what, what are your thoughts? Like, you know, how, how many buckets is there in that CRM? And that when Jared Ransom pops up, it's like, bing, bing, bing, bing. Yeah. Well, and it's not just segmentation, you know, there are for a variety of organizations in the CRMs that they use the client relationship management tool. And I have had the privilege of working in plumerating, right? And so that's been a lot of fun. So there's classification, there's category, there's attributes, there's groups, there's a lot of ways in how you can identify key words or key targets for your segmentation purposes. But I feel like we're kind of intertwining, you know, is this person in a group or are they, are they in this segment? And so there's, there's some difference there, but all segmentations are not the same, right? And so what I'm doing for one organization may not be the same for another organization. This also comes in greatly with moves management.  We have this bucket of individuals that are in our database, but literally have not given a single dollar. So our moves management strategy on that segmentation is simply to move them to make a financial gift of $5, right? And so again, the monthly givers, if those are in a separate classification, some states have a wonderful state tax credit. And so for instance, in our state, Julia, it's 400 for an individual, 800 for my Mary jointly, that is one of my favorite buckets to classify because as an individual, I know that their giving capacity is up to 400. So let's say they've given us 200, only half of that, we know that there's a $200 gap in which we can customize and personalize our conversations or communication with these segmented groups strategically for moves management. I can nerd out about this forever, but again, every organization is different. It depends on what are your goals, what are your your motivation points for your customers or your constituents. And there's so many ways in how you can create and utilize segmentation. Okay, I'm like super excited about this because I just see that this works seamlessly with if you get it to work right correctly with your digital communications. It's just like genius. But if you would help us to understand like classifications, let's say we're just starting out, or maybe we want to revisit to revisit this, I mean, I know so many of us in the nonprofit sector were like, get their email address, get their email address, and then we'll worry about the rest. But, you know, if we're like looking at holistically going through this data and really trying to navigate this, what are some basic starting points that you would say like this is level a beginner and then, you know, we move from there. Can you can you help us synthesize? Yes, I always always say, let's start with the giving threshold. Okay, so again, if you have $0 donors, meaning they have not given to you and they're in your database, or maybe they haven't given to you yet this year, and they're in your database. So that could be a libut or cyber meaning last year, but unfortunately not this or some year, but unfortunately not this. So they've given to you, but they haven't this year. Okay, that could be one classification. Then I like to start at $1 to let's say $249. That is going to be, you know, your second lowest because zero is as low as you can go. And then your $1 to $249, $250 to $499, $500 to $1,000 or to $999. But you really also want to identify and reverse engineer Julia, what is your major gift? So for some organizations, it might be $50,000. While other organizations might have a major gift level at $5,000. So I do like to do some reverse engineer based off of some metrics like that. You know, I love that you said that because I was just working with a very large organization. And we had Fundraising Academy on Jack Alotto and many others talking about major gifts. And it was a whole week that we did that. They had some fascinating ways of calculating and measuring it. So I've been asking nonprofit leaders, what's your major gift threshold? Yes, two camps. One camp, top 10, top 25. It's a hard number. And then I've had other camps that have been like, well, if you give $1,000 or more, if you give $5,000 or more, if you give $10,000 more, nothing has been where I thought it would be. They've all been really low numbers. And so I'm fascinated by this because to me, that's a classification issue that maybe is not being monitored enough. Well, I think it changes. You know, I have one organization that will say, well, technically $5,000 is our major gift. But we get a lot more $1,000 gifts instead of, you know, the $5,000. So those are also our major givers. So there's discrepancy within a singular organization. But again, I think the larger your organization by way of operating dollars, the larger your major gift amount tends to be. So if you are, let's say a $5 million organization, the chances of your major gift being $1,000 or even $5,000 is probably pretty slim. You're probably looking more at $25,000 or above. Okay. Interesting. Along this line of classifications, I'm wondering, do you ever see organizations that you work with turn this information into like a monthly report or some like a, you know, kind of like a status report so that everybody outside of development kind of knows what some of these numbers are, not like a printout of everybody's record, but just some metrics so that we could see how many people we have that are donating at this level or that level or does it tend to just stay in development? So another great question from you, Julia. And I'm sure you remember seeing annual reports that list the entire donor database at these various levels. So not only has that information been used internally, but truly externally as a communication from many organizations now that practice has slipped to the wayside, there's still organizations that do it, but I would say the majority of organizations have stopped doing that for multiple reasons. But I do think when it comes to internally with your team, it's important to share that information and also for, you know, as we talk about breaking down silos within departments as we share information across, you know, organizational departments, it's really important to say what a $5,000 gift can do for your organization and why we are seeking more of those or why we're pushing a monthly sustainer group, right? Even at a $5 a month donation, you know, five times 12 months, that's a pretty decent gift. And that in and of itself is one group of supporters. So this makes me ask this follow up question is, it seems to me like this would be amazing information to put into a dashboard report so that everybody could be seeing this that would demonstrate the growth or the slide depending on what's going on. And I'm wondering if you've ever worked with an organization or that where you would set sub goals, okay, we have as of January 1st, so many people in this classification, but we want to get to X.  Yes, absolutely. Because that ties into moves management. So for instance, you know, if I am the chief development officer, and I am managing in my portfolio, all of the major donors, the goal for everyone on the team is to get as many donors on my list, meaning they're giving 5,000 or 25,000 or above. And so working them from, you know, not have giving in the past, maybe they started off on that $0 list. And then now they have been cultivated and steward, perhaps we use the cause selling education model, right? And then now we've engaged them to that to that major donor level. So there's a lot of strategy strategy that goes into place there.  But if we could move someone from, you know, a $249 gift a year to $1,000 and above, that is a huge win for your mission. Yeah, I think it's really interesting. We don't have much time left. And I have been riveted by this conversation. And part of me wants to witness to all of our viewers, I wish we had had this earlier. And we talk about this so much with our guests in between you and I. But I've really appreciated, Jared, you pulling this back in and giving us a more realistic approach in the cadence to which, you know, our organizations can use this. But I'm wondering, is this the sort of thing where we need outside help, like a moves management, like Sasha Lewis, somebody to come in and help us? Or is this stuff that we can be doing internally? Because it sounds to me like you kind of got to set it up and then work it a while. Like you said in the get go, you can't be changing this every month. No, and I think there's different layers to how you use this and some of those best practices. So could you bring someone in to help you? Absolutely. If you are committed to be intentional with that work, right? But I would say, you know, at the very basic, I would identify your donor database in monetary buckets or in gift ranges. And once you export these reports, if you have a donor database, like something like Blumerang, then you can manipulate an Excel file, right? Then we can manipulate and say, okay, you know, we have a development team of 10 people. So here's how I'm going to divide up our 3,500 donors, right? Everybody will have a list of individuals to get to work with. And this makes it much better to increase our personalization, again, personalization and customization. So there's a lot of ways to do this. There are so many basics you and your team can do on your own. And then when you're ready to level up to that next step and you're ready to truly be intentional on working that strategy, you might want to bring someone in to help at that next strategic level. So what I hear you saying is you kind of got to get in the rhythm and the discipline of thinking this way and working it and then work towards the refinement versus starting out. And it's like totally, you know, totally in there because this is only as good as your information, right? Garbage in, garbage out. If you're not... Absolutely. Yeah. And so I took the Fundraising Academy Cost Selling model and I put it into a donor database. And so each person in this portfolio on the constituency list now is at one of those three phases for cost selling. So there's so many ways, yeah, there's so many ways you can utilize this. Okay. Second here on Fire Moment of the Day. Brilliant. Yeah. And I'm sorry, Bloomerang. It was a competitor CRM. But the point is you can do this. You can engage this and you can customize your donor databases so that you can include these moves management and segmentation tactics. Wow. Well, this is amazing.    I mean, to be sharing your knowledge like this, it's really cool. And it's just such a powerful way to be thinking about our organizations. And I can see, Jared, to your point, it's a discipline. It is. And it takes some work. And especially if it's a new change, that in and of itself brings some unfamiliarity. But for me, it is so much fun because it gamifies the development donors. Yeah. And yeah, I can totally see it. And I can see the value in really creating that dashboard or that methodology so that you can track what's going on. You know, because if you don't know where you're going or what the journey is, it's, yeah, I mean, it's a big, big issue.  Thank you so much. You know, if this is an episode that you've been watching us live and you feel like you might want to share this with your team or go back and access some of these talking points that Jared had with us, check us out. We are on Roku. We're on YouTube. We're on Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo.  Yeah, I think that's our next update. So our software update will allow that. Let me tell you, I have to watch, you know, I don't have to, but I do. I watch these episodes pretty much every night on our big screen TV to learn and to refine and to see what's going on. And it's a bit jarring to see, you know, us on the big screen, but nonetheless, you can see it. Again, we want to thank all of our sponsors who are with us in this amazing conversation, Bloomerang American Nonprofit Academy, Fundraising Academy, The Nonprofit Nerd, Your Part-Time Controller and Staffing Boutique. These folks are with us day in and day out and it's really been a pleasure to work with them and to get to know them because so many of the products and the services they sell dovetail to what it is we talk about here on the show. And so something that just is really been a blessing in our lives and in having us afforded the opportunity to work with our viewers every day. Jared, you've really given me a lot to think about and I love, love, love how logical and natural it is, but that it is a practice. It is a practice, absolutely. But it, it should help to elevate your development initiatives. And again, the whole point is the more money we are able to bring in, the better we're able to support our community. So bringing a profit to your nonprofit is really important. It is. I love it. Wow. Well, you know what, my friend, this has been great. I, again, you've given me so much to think about as you always do. And I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your time and your talent with us. We like to end every day with this mantra, if you will. Stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.


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.  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 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.  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.  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


now it's just a painful thing you know what I mean like it's something that try to use it like they try to leverage it on Twitter to like put someone down and I'm like that's really gross don't you know like I don't think that's good it's the world has got so much negativity it can use a lot of positivity it really can and I can tell you in my field of research in getting the doctorate in psychology a cross cultural preference in leaders doesn't matter if you're China the US Saudi Arabia doesn't matter anywhere on the planet people like leaders who are positive so be a leader be positive and the thought for me is just I have no positions on like the divorce or anything like I'm not saying any position on like who's right or wrong and from what I've heard and read from Hunter himself it's been amicable that they've been so the point is this I just it's a heart breaking thing you know it's kind of a it's a type of grief to go through a divorce like you're losing someone that you love and that was important to you so the reason that I say this is just that I don't think any of you would but I just see some people on Twitter and like I'm actually very sincere that I don't think any of you would but I see some people on Twitter that are just nasty and it's just like bro it's practically like in a way you know like it's like almost like a death it's almost like experiencing a death it's not in the most real way because you know it's not like the person that you can't speak to them at all in the same way that um depending on your theology because I'm not trying to push any particular view I know that some people maybe the theology would be different but but or there maybe they don't have a theology and they say you can't talk to somebody when they die like it's just done whatever it is so it's not exactly the same obviously but it is in a very real way it is grief and you are losing someone it's just kind of a different type of loss and so anyway I just my heart goes out to Hunter because even though I don't agree with Hunter on a lot of stuff like and I'm not trying to say that he's wrong by the fact that I disagree I'm just saying like there are plenty of things we disagree on but I'm just like oh man that's got to be painful and so I hope the best for Hunter and Carissa and hopefully there's just no drama like I said I don't think any of you guys would so I probably don't need to say that but I just something on my heart because it's just like it's just a painful thing and then the internet the internet can bring out the worst in people potentially especially twitter and I'm not joking twitter can be nasty it's just thanks for your support subatomics thanks for your kind words thanks for streaming James Bernie thanks for your support James Smith thanks for your support Tanner McLaughlin thanks for coming by thanks for your support Kevin Howe thanks for your channel membership support man and thanks Charles Lainer says great job policing the debate tonight man those are the ones where I'm like I'm trying so hard not to take a side when the debaters are both speaking over each other and like actively they're just not you know they're not going to get ground because they're thinking like this guy's not giving me any ground like I've got to stand up for myself and so I'm like I'm like oh this is hard because I usually have to say you know I break it up I pull them apart and then I have to say who goes first so you know I have to say either Matt what was the point you were making or Cliff can you finish that point and that for me is like the hardest thing where I'm like like maybe I you know what if I my bias my my perspective is only one so I could be wrong where I'm like you know go ahead Matt or go ahead Cliff and I mean might be wrong did I say Stuart before I'm pretty tired so I should go it's getting pretty late here but I want to say thank you guys for your your kind words thanks for all your love and positivity I'm encouraged that modern day debate is grown as it has we can totally by the way get to 750 likes we have 1,100 people watching live right now some of them have probably fallen asleep next to their computer or phone while this is playing and you know so that's okay they can't hit like they're asleep I mean theoretically they could but let's not count on them instead could you hit like because it really does mean more than you know so I do want to say I highly encourage you hit that like button we can easily get to 750 we're only what 75 not even now it's not even 75 we're climbing fast it's up to 680 now thank you guys for those likes it means more than you know seriously it is like a personal favor to me like I am asking like will you do it for me like will you do it Mike Lucas and will you do it dead fishies I mean I have to like I'm going to call you out in the old chat yeah thanks for your support and also though like I said oh yeah yeah I was going to say I got distracted I was going through the old live chat modern day debate we do put our debates on the podcast within 24 hours of the debate being live so if you're kind of like oh okay tell me more it's ad free you can find us on it's that green one spotify and apple podcast you can find us on every single podcast app I'm very serious like I've worked really hard to make sure modern day debate is on everyone google podcast pocketcast podcast addict your uncle Mike's podcast I made that one up we're on everything so I do want to say if you haven't yet seriously for real I know that most of you actually watch on your phone in the creator studio I want to say my dear friends check out modern day debates podcast on your phone right now you can do it with me right now so right now I'm looking at my phone I got distracted but what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull up my favorite podcast app I'm looking for it right now let's do it together please say yes is I'm clicking podcast addict because that's what I started on a long time ago and you can search modern day debate and we will pop up so it's a cool resource that you have where you're like hey you know if I'm going to be on a plane and I lose my data you know I don't have any connection and maybe they don't have wifi you're flying a frontier or whatever maybe the wifi doesn't work that day I've had that happen before too or they promise the wifi and it doesn't freaking work it drives me nuts is hey you could say oh that's right I've got all those modern day debate podcasts that I've downloaded it's just the audio so it's not going to take up much room on your phone anyway and so I'm totally serious like pull out your favorite podcast pull up your phone or look in your phone pull up your favorite podcast app and follow modern day debate and hey you know download a couple of debates and that way like I said if you ever get on a plane and you're like oh it was like or maybe you're traveling or driving out in the middle of nowhere like I've experienced this and you have poor service Grand Canyon is an example that's not a joke at least the last time I went Grand Canyon it was like pretty bad service me and my buddies and hey you want someone to listen to all the time it's convenient you can just download the podcast so I want to say thank you guys for your support wow KV says there's three in pocket casts for modern day debate I didn't know that that's interesting huh but yeah thank you guys for your support Kazel says will there be another debate on this summer I'm so busy during the school year man I wish you could do it this summer but it's actually not going to happen we planned on it we tried and just too much stuff fell through the cracks it's really hard actually to do it this summer probably going to do it in the fall and the spring and probably the winter we might not do it this winter I think we're going to do this we're going to probably do it this fall and then again in the spring we'd maybe depending on how my dissertation goes because I've got to do my dissertation this fall semester depending on how that goes and when it wraps up maybe we would do a winter one which if we did it it would probably be I don't know maybe like early February so I don't know if that helps you if you're in school but Eric Q says if I rewatch this debate in YouTube will I be able to see chat uh very temporarily because I'm actually probably going to go back and delete the start where it has the first 30 seconds where it's just advertising the podcast but yeah let's say Yuma won thanks for coming by says Dave oh you're just in time to listen to James thanks for coming by Dave oh we hope you're doing well glad to have you here thanks for your support and James Smith thanks for your support says I'm going to have to watch this podcast I got the end of it Mays I appreciate you checking it out yeah I think you get a kick out of it Mays Forbens says hey James how do I take you for a question on mobile next time I don't even know what that means I'm like a boomer I'm sorry I don't know what that means not sure see you there in the live chat thanks for your support yeah I love you guys thanks for all of your support KV says I subscribed to the podcast James I'll add you guys to my dog walking Q thanks for that also here's another thing too if you guys want to like this is a genuine favor I'm asking if you guys want to go the extra mile because we've gotten to 700 likes and I appreciate that more than you know so thank you guys for hitting the like that was a lot of likes so thank you guys for that first you know doing that and it means more than you know also find us on your favorite podcast app and if you could rate us it really does help for real there are some people that the podcast is growing pretty well 100% ad free we don't make a dime off it I've been putting those podcasts up for three years now we've never made a dime so I appreciate you guys supporting it it means more than you know is if you go to a debate podcast and if you rate us if you rate modern a debate we appreciate that it really does mean more than you know so would you be willing to rate us right now while we're all here we got our phones in hand to most of us would you be willing to do that favor for me I seriously I really do appreciate it but I should be going it's getting pretty late I want to say thank you guys for your support debunking ignorance someone said did you have enough chairs at the last conference yes we did where did that where that question go Zen 2011 ask that yep we did I was close though we got pretty booked up like it was it did sell out so because else is how do I rate you on Spotify that's a great question I don't know what it's like on Spotify for me if I want to rate one on what is this called podcast addict I click on the main page for the podcast let me see here how do I do it on podcast addict that's a great question I'm glad you asked download favorite not down not explicit what let's see I click on these three little dots on mine I don't know if yours is the same I don't have the green one I don't have Spotify is we got search sort display settings download reviews you could actually give a review to so I do appreciate that maybe that's the way if you're able to do it from your fear of podcast app thanks for your support guys I love you guys it's a fun debate I'll let you go I got to get some sleep I want to say thanks for your support I love you guys thanks for making this fun I'm pretty tired can you tell maybe you're like James I don't do the whole podcast thing I think it's very soy maybe it's true maybe you don't even have a podcast app will you if that's the case because I'll thanks so much as I figured out thank you thanks because I'll seriously appreciate you doing that it means for real like I'm genuinely like thank you for doing that means a lot that you're helping so is I would say another thing is if you're like well James I don't have a podcast app I don't do that podcast stuff because here's what's interesting 81% of adults in America use YouTube to some degree or another only about 19% I think it's 21% use podcasts so there are probably some of you who are like James I don't have a podcast app if that's the case is there a friend or a group online that you can share this debate with and say hey you might enjoy listening to these in like kind of your background as you're working or as you're cleaning or exercising whatever it is so anybody who has an interest in debates like this or controversial topics please do us a favor and share the link from this debate with them would you do that thanks for your support love you guys I hope you have a great rest of your night keep something out there reasonable from the unreasonable and we will see you next time love you and thanks for all your support take care and I'll see you at the next one which is this Friday and Saturday I'll be hosting those those are with Daniel Kikachu and Javad Hashmi it's going to be super spicy like you're going to want to see those debates it's going to be entertainment for real thanks guys I love you guys thanks for all your support take care and I'll see you next time