SURPRISE!

And he's so faithful and so true. We were reflecting back to about five weeks ago. Katie and I, we were praying on a Sunday and really felt this conviction that we're supposed to gather everyone together and just dive into three days of prayer and fasting. You guys remember that about five weeks ago?

And we talked at that Sunday night, we talked about how we've been on this journey for so many years, 15 years ago, we got this vision, called the bass vision, we've been believing for that vision taking step by step, right? And we just felt this like, hey, the baby is in the birth canal, like the vision is in the birth canal, and we've got to push, we've got to do this persistent widow thing, we got to do this battery ram moment, right? We're going, hey, we're gonna pray this thing through. And oftentimes what can happen is throughout our journey, we felt like we were hitting up against dead ends.

And we honestly felt like it was, a lot of times it was the protection of the Lord. But sometimes there's these moments where we're going, I think the enemy doesn't want this thing to happen. And we're gonna push this through in the spirit. And so we unified together, man, it was such a powerful three days.

We were praying on Tuesday together, we were praying on Wednesday. And God just unified us, it was so special as we prayed together. On the third day of us praying, we started to get texts. So this was on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we started to get texts from people, different people reaching out from the community going, man, I just felt like the Lord said when I was in prayer today that it was finished, that we had burst this thing, that in the spirit, it was already done. And later that afternoon, Candy Peterson comes into me in Josh's office and she's holding sparkling grape juice. And she said, this is my prophetic act. I feel like the Lord said, it's time to celebrate before we see it in the natural.

So that Wednesday night, we gathered in this room together and we celebrated before we saw it in the natural. My faith, we were celebrating that it was actually finished. And then people were talking, they're like, man, wouldn't it be amazing if we'd hear back from this property on Friday, on the third day, after the Lord said it was finished, wouldn't that be crazy? And we're like, it's not possible, it's gonna take at least a week for them to get back to us.

But little did we know, on Friday, we get a phone call that they wanted to do business with us. So we're going, okay, so over the last couple of weeks, we have been working hard behind the scenes. And today we're so excited to tell you, we got the building. Have your heart.

We, you know, over the last couple of weeks, Katie, as she was talking about when the breakthrough happened, when we got the call that it's like, actually these negotiations are matching up, we're gonna get the space. Was three days after, we had felt like the Lord said, it's finished. And we decided such a beautiful picture of the faithfulness of God. And it just obviously reminded us of three days after the cross, right?

And so since that time, we've been negotiating the deal and our boards said, hey, we wanna continue to negotiate on this and that carved off more money off the purchase price, which we're so thankful for, the wisdom of our board. And over the last two and a half weeks, we've actually known that we got the building. But we were, but we were having to wait as our attorneys went back and forth with a purchase agreement, the contract, they were going back and forth, and attorneys, they can just start going back and forth. We were gonna do this last week.

So you can imagine on Friday when it didn't get signed, we were like, oh my goodness. So wait, I don't wait another week. So we have been ready for this moment. Yes, it's kind of like, I don't know for any of you married men, where you bought the engagement ring and it is just burning a hole in your pocket.

That's exactly how we fell over the last, since we left for spring break when we were gone. So our closing day is July 3rd on this property. We're so excited. I just, I think it's so important that you guys understand, like the timing of that breakthrough, where we're like, man, we so badly want you to understand how significant that was, that all that was happening, was we were hitting up against walls, and then we gathered as a people, we unified, we rallied, we prayed and fasted to bring alignment to our hearts, and the door just like popped open.

Like it was just effortless, and it was, you guys, I know you didn't get to hear about it that Friday, which killed us, but we just responsibly wanted to wait until it actually was done, so that we didn't put off confetti and then be like, nevermind, it fell apart. So we just wanna make sure, but it really, we just wanna say thank you for rallying together with us to actually see this thing open. We did this together by the spirit, and it's so significant. So significant.

So I wanna talk about a couple of the details with the property. It is after five years of searching, we can honestly say as a leadership team, that this is the best, even potential building, practically, that goes beyond just the checklist that we've been searching for. It is like beyond what we are expectations. It is the most incredible property for us.

It is amazing. The location is in a central location, it's in Roseville, and so we're excited about that. It is so central, it's the most central property that we've seen in five years. And when we think about how much of a city-wide community that we have, we have people coming from Eden Prairie, Minneapolis, and St.

Paul, and Apple Valley, and Hugo, and South Dakota, people are literally driving an hour to two hours every single Sunday to come to services. At Awakening Service, and Prayer Room, too. I mean, people are traveling from all different directions, and so we've just thought, man, we want to have a property that's close to a freeway. And so this property is just so central in Roseville.

It's really, I don't know if you know that the Minnesota Twins logo, where it has many, which represents Minneapolis, and then Paul represents St. Paul, right? And many in Paul are shaking hands in the logo. We are like, are there locations where the new property is right where they're shaking hands?

It's just like right in the middle, Roseville is the only suburb, only large suburb that's both a suburb to Minneapolis and St. Paul. And we just believe that God put us in that position as a signpost, putting us at the heart of the Twin Cities. So we're really excited about that.

Square footage, this property is 18,000 square feet. This new property is 55,000 square feet. Wild. This property, Elmwood, Elmwood has 130 parking stalls.

Man, we should probably do a drum roll or something. The next building has 330 parking stalls. Let's go. Uh.

We should have had each of you grab another handful for the moment of choice that you wanted to celebrate. There's a lot more bathrooms in this property as well. Oh. Where?

Yes. It should be all the ladies doing that. Yeah. And the ladies are just back there, right?

Before we started, and there was some ladies. Everyone's in the song. Someone goes, well, let's savor these last moments in here, ladies. You know?

So we'll miss. We'll miss those. Oh, what about you? Yes.

Even this needle in the haystack that we've been searching for, even a property that is zoned correctly to actually have church. It's a zoned property for church gatherings. Wild. It's not only approved and like permitted use for church assembly, but it's also approved for retail, for office space, for childcare, for a coffee shop.

Let's go. All right. So there's so many things that we look at. I mean, my favorite cherry on the top.

There is a gym inside. Let's go. There is a basketball gym, and you all are going to get embarrassed by your pastor. It's been we have brought our architects through the space and our consultants through the space.

And our architect is a leading architect for churches in America. So he's walking through buildings all the time. And it's so fun to watch them walk through the space. They were almost giddy about it.

These are 67 year old men that have seen everything. And they're just like, how did you find this? This is like a building that churches dream of acquiring. How did you get it in this location, with all of these different things with it, the price that you got it at?

You couldn't have gotten a better space. And we feel that way. But we haven't walked through all these different buildings that they have. And so there's some of the practical things that I don't think about as much, like the electrical or the HVAC.

And it's all ready for large gatherings. And you don't even have to change this. That saves a ton of money. And even different spaces in this building are already kind of work for our use, where there's some areas where we'll have to put up walls.

And there's definitely renovations that will have to take place. But it's in such good condition. And so we're just so grateful. We didn't know what we would find in this time.

And the Lord said, swing for the fences. I actually want you to grow and establish in this season. And we're going, we'll just take away. You've heard us say, we should be in a tent.

Should we go into houses? What should it look like? And then he provided this. And we're almost, it's like, are you sure, Lord?

It is so much greater than what we thought we would be moving into. So he's kind of blowing our minds with this. And we're just so, so grateful. So we don't have fully locked in where we are going to be temporarily after July 3rd.

And so we don't just move into life or because then there's renovations that happen. And so those, some of those details are coming. We've got actually a couple options. And so we're going to be able to make that decision here in the next couple weeks.

And we'll communicate that. But we're feeling great about how the Lord has even been providing multiple options on temporary location while renovations are happening. So that's really, really encouraging. And I think, as we're talking about this, I think that there's a lot of traffic that people can approach these moments with.

But we just want to say that there are commitments that we as leadership want to make. And as we're making these commitments, we want you to know that as we're going to be raising funds and things like that, that there can be so much traffic that can come in these moments. And so we want to talk about that and just name the elephant in the room. That some of you might be going, uh-oh.

So we're going to have to raise funds. What does that look like? And we just want to cut right to the chase and go, like, let's talk about it rather than having that feel weird for us as a community. Exactly.

I think some of you make a what elephant. And that's great. We have everything across the spectrum represented in this room. Some of us are like, I've never been a part of a building moment like this, where we're going to have to raise a lot of money.

And I'm just excited. And we're kind of starry-eyed about the whole thing and not having experienced it before. And that's amazing. And then you have some of us that have been through it and have had a negative experience with it.

Maybe there's some of us that actually have pain around this topic. Maybe you've been in a community where you felt like you had to give and you felt obligated to give. And it didn't come out of a cheerful place in your heart. Or maybe you felt like you gave more than you had the means to give.

And you have regrets around how much you gave. Or maybe you were in a community and it went on for years and years. And money was asked for. And you thought it was done.

And then a year later, money's asked for. And it was this ongoing journey. There's so many different experiences. And maybe some of us have gone through raising money for a church building before.

And it's gone amazing. And you've had a really positive experience with it. And you're ready to go again. And so we just want to honor the experiences that everyone has had here.

We have our own stories with that stuff. And so our heart, we could come in on this topic and just kind of go high level and pretend that no one has any question marks or concerns or pain around this topic. And we could just be like, yes, everything's great. We're going to raise money.

And it's all going to be amazing. And we're going to feel great about it. Aren't we? And we could do that.

But that's just not how we operate as a family. And so we want to be clear that throughout this time, we want to be so transparent with you and you transparent with us. And we want you to know that as your pastors, we're thinking about those things. And we're carrying your hearts before the Lord.

And going, God, help us to do this well. Help us to do this honorably. Help us to do this with authenticity and transparency. Lord, we're asking him, God, would we be more unified on the other side of this than we are right now?

You know, there can be times where this actually could create fractures or division in a community. And we're just saying, no, up front, we want to go together. And so we just want you to know that our commitment to you is that transparency. And so maybe some of you know this, that when we first started every day, Josh and I made a decision that we didn't want to see what anyone in the community is giving or not giving.

So to this day, we have no idea who gives and who doesn't, much less what people give. And so we want you to know that we are maintaining that same commitment through this process as well. And so we are not going to be setting up studies on what people make. And we're not going to be setting up meetings with you to ask you for a specific dollar amount.

We are not going to go about it in that way, the way that we've had consultants coach us to go. So we, as we've sat with different consultants around us, like, how do you raise this money in a community? We have had to say, OK, we're not able to do that in good conscience. And so it's pushed us to the place of prayer to go, Lord, those strategies aren't going to work for us because we wouldn't be able to lay our head on the pillow at night.

So we have a culture of honor here. And we want to maintain a culture of honor with our people. And so we're going, Lord, what does it look like for us? What does it look like for us to do this as a family?

Not out of coercion, manipulation, control, but to have everyone freely give what would put joy in their own hearts and anonymously, without us knowing. And so we want you to know even going into this. We're going to have to raise a lot of money. And we're going to do that as a family.

And that's something that we can be excited about and not have traffic around during this season. We're not going to go into a giving sermon series. I want you to know that. So you might be looking at this next season and go, maybe I'll stay at home for the next six weeks because I don't want to be there for that.

And we're not going to go into a giving series where we pull a quick one on you and say, it's all about the tithe. You have to tithe. And this is why. That would be convenient, maybe it would.

We're not going to do that. But we will talk about money. We are not going to tip toe around money. That would be weird.

It's weird to tip toe around money. It's not weird to talk about money, OK? And so we aren't going to be talking about money, but we're going to more so in our messaging over the next six weeks or so. We're going to be talking about God's assignment for this house, what we see him wanting to do in our city, where we see him at.

We're going to be clarifying some of the pieces of who we are as a body. Maybe you've had questions about what's this whole thing about building a resting place for God? And the house of prayer and some of that sounds pretty Old Testament to me. Can you guys break that down?

Yes, we're going to. So over these next few weeks, our heart is just to bring everyone together and bring clarity to where we are headed while we are going to be raising funds. So Josh is going to walk us through a little bit of what is our financial position right now? What are we needing to raise?

What does that look like? One of the other things I want to say and this is just part of the culture of honor that we carry is oftentimes those that are high net worth individuals either feel a ton of pressure because there's face to face asks. And that's fine. But we're not going to call you up because we've learned that you have your financial leader.

And we've never talked to you before. But just because you're a financial leader, we're going to sit down with you over coffee and slide a number over the table. Listen, we as a people feel the conviction to carry Jesus' heart of honoring the might. Where the widows might gives a penny, which is a sacrifice to her.

And we're going to honor the penny or the dollar or the $10, just as much as we honor the million dollar gift. Because it's just as costly. It's just as sacrificial. And so if you're going, man, I don't really have that much to give or I'm a college student or whatever.

We want to have it be really clear you're giving to the Lord. And so there's actually commitments that we're making, that Katie just laid out. But there's actually commitments that we're asking of you to make at the start of this process that you'll actually look at the gift that you're going to give to the Lord, and it wouldn't be out of compulsion. It wouldn't be because you felt pressured to, or you should, or you have to.

No, it'd actually be this cheerful number. We are going to decide on cheerful numbers. What makes me excited to give? What's that number?

And I'm going to choose that number. And we're going to do it prayerfully, not like, huh, what's the number? I feel this one. We're actually going to engage with the Holy Spirit.

And I want to encourage us all to be like, I'm going to get closer to Jesus and closer to each other through this process and become more and more unified. So the other commitment that we're making as a community is that this building is a tool, and we need to see it as such. So it is a tool and a resource, but it's not our identity. So the aesthetic of the building is not who we are as a church community.

But the building is a resource that the Lord is going to utilize to create connection with Him, connection with one another, encounter people that don't know Jesus and those that do, and empower them, and send them out. And so the Lord is actually going to facilitate so much of kingdom advancement with the tool of a building. It's just a very expensive tool, right? OK, so what I want to do is I want to just talk really briefly about what's our financial position, where are we at right now.

And there is so much to be thankful for right now with where we're at. With this property, we have enough funds to acquire and close on the property right now. Huge chance. A massive deal that we don't have to raise funds even to purchase it, to get to closing day, to acquire the property.

We have $2.2 million saved that we've saved over seven years. And that's because the board and the staff has been extremely frugal for the last seven years. And because we have been generous as a community, listen, we didn't get planted by some church network that started us with seed money. It's just like we grinded it out as a community.

And the generosity of Elmwood opening up their space, I mean, we've just been so blessed. So $2.2 million that we have, it's amazing. Now listen, we can buy it, but we can't move into it with the money that we have. Because you can acquire the property, but there is significant renovations.

And it's going to be a lot of funds are going to be required for us to renovate the property, so we actually can utilize it for our use. And so that's what we're going to be raising funds for, is to go, if we actually want to move in, we have to do some construction. It has to be under construction. And we don't have any funds for the construction.

And so over the next 60 days, we are going to be raising funds, and you're probably going, well, what do we need to raise? We have to actually go through a process to discover what we need to raise specifically. What's like the minimum that we need to raise. But we don't want to just settle on the minimum, right?

We want to blow past the minimum. And we might have to go through stages if we can't raise enough funds during this time, or phases. Phase one, we finish this part of the property. Phase two, we finish this.

But how many of you know living in a construction zone? If any of you have purchased a house, and then you're like, we have to take it in phases. And we're going to live in a construction zone. We're like, let's avoid that, right?

Let's just do it all at the front end before we move in. But the process that we're going to go through, we have to draw the plans up, the architect needs to draw the plans, contractors need to bid on the property, then the bank needs to look at the bids, look at our financials, and go here, the terms of financing. And then we'll know the specific numbers. And so that's going to be a couple weeks from now of when are we going to know those answers.

But we're going to hit the ground running once we know it. Listen, we have such a generous community. Historically, we have just, whenever there's been a need, it always got met. We literally set up a whiteboard at the front of this altar.

What? In 30 minutes, we raise almost a half million dollars in 30 minutes. We have so much faith that we are going to be able to achieve and overcome whatever number is put in front of us that we're going to exceed it, and that we're so grateful that even as we look at this property as a board, we go, this is actually wise. For us to pull the trigger, we have faith that we can make this happen.

And there's reason to believe even as we've talked to consultants, they're going, yeah, you could probably raise about this much money as your size of the community. And we're going, wow, let's blow past that. Let's reach past it. And so we know that we're in this even commercial real estate that banks have been failing.

And so there's these dynamics of going, like, what is that going to look like? And so we can be praying about that. But we're just full of faith for what God's going to do through generosity. We've kind of been laughing about the timing of this, because it's not great timing.

It's, of course, a short timeline. But I do just even want to say, we haven't been raising money prior to this. I just feel this question popping up, and I want to answer it. It may be like, why have we not been raising money leading up to this?

And the heart behind that has been that we haven't wanted to, what is the right term, blow the whistle too early, because we've been looking for a building for five years. And so we could have started raising money five years ago, because at that point, we're going to find it. So there were buildings that we were coming close to acquiring four or five years ago, and then three years ago and then two years ago. And we could have blown the whistle and said, hey, we're starting to raise money, and then we'd be five.

We didn't know when it was going to happen. So we'd be five years in of you going, are we still raising money? Just what I talked about earlier. And we have had such a desire as a leadership team to not blow the whistle too early, but to wait until we actually have something and can stay with confidence.

This is happening. This is where your dollars will go and that we can do it transparently in that way. And so we know and have known that when this moment comes, it's going to be a short turnaround, and there's going to be a faith journey to believe in work. It's going to be a sprint, but we're built for this sprint.

We really are. So we're laughing about the timing, because yes, it's already short. But it's also just, I don't know if you feel this way, but the month of May is just one of those months, that's over before it starts. May becomes a very busy month.

We're even looking at the next handful of Sundays, and we're going, wait a second, how is this going to work? Because, I mean, let us out. This next Sunday, we have the Kingdom Finance Conference, which, which you can't plan this stuff. I was telling them earlier, the worship set that we did before we celebrated on the faithfulness of God, we didn't plan that for today.

That was planned over a month ago. And we said, hey, let's not change. I didn't even know what we were singing today. So I came in, the first service, we're just crying.

We're like, this is literally our storyline. The faithfulness of God. He knew we'd be talking about it today. Similarly, we didn't know that this was going to be happening.

But the Lord was, remember our word last year. One, two, three, four alignment. Look, 1234, where your treasure is, where your money is, where your resources are. That's where your heart is going to be as well.

And so at the end of the year, we felt like the Lord said, hey, you got to talk about financial health with your people. And we take that seriously. And so we said, well, let's give it a conference then, because we won't be able to do it justice the way that these experts would be able to. And so we're bringing in Stephen De Silva from Bethelen Redding.

And we were intentional about bringing him, because the way that he speaks about this is so life-giving and hopeful. There's no shaming condemnation in it. You're feeling and stealing in it. Yes, there is.

There's so much healing in how he teaches. So I do, I just want to take a moment really quick and say, if the topic of money at all puts a catch in you at all, I want to encourage you to be here. And not because of this building moment of us fundraising, but because our desire is that you would have a healthy home and a healthy heart as it relates to your finances personally so that we can be healthy as a body around finances. We've talked about it before.

Sometimes when we bring up money, the room goes so quiet. And you can just feel the air. Leave the room. And we want to get over that hurdle together.

That is not how the church should feel. And so we want to see restoration on this topic of finances personally and corporately in the church. And so come, just join us. You guys can leave that up for anyone who wants to register.

This is your last night to register. OK, so back to why this is bad timing. This Sunday, we have the Cana Finance Conference, which means that's not really a rallying moment for our community. That's open to the city.

We're not going to be talking about moving and fundraising or anything like that. The following Sunday is a normal Sunday, so we'll be able to gather. The Sunday after that is Mother's Day. That's kind of funny to have that in there.

Then you have a normal Sunday. And then you have Memorial Day weekend. That's kind of a bummer to have in there. And then the next week is what we're going to be calling our big give Sunday, which is when we're also over these next six weeks or so.

We are praying as a community. We're going to talk a little bit more about what that looks like in a second. But we're praying as a community. We're fasting as a community.

And on that Sunday, June 11th, we're going to come. We're going to give. We're going to celebrate together. So it's essentially going to be a worship night where we're going to be celebrating the provision of God.

And similar to kind of that whiteboard moment that we had, we're going to be like watching numbers go live up on the screen to watch kind of in real time the provision of God for our community. And so that's coming up on June 11th. But there's a handful of things that we're going to be doing on the way to get there. Yeah, when we've been thinking about all of what the consultants have told us, we're going, man, this just doesn't fit our community and our value systems that the Lord has given us as a community.

And so we've just been in prayer. We've been really prayerful. What does it look like for us to tackle this together? And we feel so much peace about what we feel like the Lord has highlighted for us.

And really a lot of excitement where we're going. We just have so much anticipation for what's ahead. And so as we were praying about it, we felt like the Lord said, hey, I want you to actually pray together. I want you to worship together.

I want you to celebrate together. And I want you to do it in living rooms. And so we are actually going to converge as we are a city-wide community. We're going to converge into Deacon's homes.

They're going to they have the hospitality gift, you know, and they're going to open up their homes and we're just going to gather in homes. And we are going to worship. We're going to celebrate. And it's going to be this like, let's get back to the living room, gather together, be with one another shoulder to shoulder.

And it's this perfect opportunity to go. We're praying, we're shipping, celebrating, but then we're also it's a safe place to ask questions. It's a safe place for us to go. Like, let's process this together of what we're embarking on.

And let's not just believe for a building. Let's believe for what God's heart is for the city. Like, let's not just pray for provision at these gatherings. Like, let's pray.

Excuse me. Wow. When you got that saliva thing and it's like right in the back of the throat. You don't have to break it down.

So listen, we all knew what happened. I wasn't going to cry. But listen, we're just like, we're very excited about the living room. OK.

So excited. No one's thinking about the living room right now. Nobody is. Nobody's thinking about that.

Nobody's thinking about anything other than that moment. Just go home. OK. Here we go.

But but we are that's what we're going to do. We're going to we're going to set up like eight to 10 or so nights where Josh and Katie, a couple board members, somebody from the worship community, a couple of deacons. We're going to all be there for each of those nights and we're just going to be together and we're going to pursue Jesus together for that night. And it's just going to feel connected like we're going to be connected going into the future.

And that's what we want. We want to be connected to the Lord's heart. We want to be connected to one another and we don't want to scatter in this time. We get isolated, but we want to gather in this time.

We know that we could have done it so many different ways, but this way felt authentic to who we are and it feels true to our roots, to our value system. And we're just going, we're so excited to just be with you guys. You know, in this setting, we don't get to get that same overlap with you. And so Josh and I are just giddy going, we're going to be able to connect so much more with our people at this time when we could scatter, but instead to move toward each other, we're just so excited about.

So we're so grateful to the Lord for his leadership and I go, man, I believe that there is a heavenly strategy on that that we don't even understand yet. And so we're excited to see what it looks like. I just also want to say building off of that that some of us, maybe you just started coming to every day in the last month or the last couple of years and you've heard us talk about the living room, right? And you're like, man, I wasn't part of the original crew and we just want you to know you are at the ground floor and we are going to make memories together.

We've made memories in this room together. We're going to make memories in those living rooms together. We're going to make memories in that future space together and you're not behind. You're like, you're part of the beginnings of the beginning and we're all in the same place.

So it's not like, well, those people have been here for a long, no, it's like, have you been here for two weeks? You're in, right? It's like, we're all going together in this. And so we want you to know that there's not a hierarchy of like time that you've been here that you get to be a part of what God's doing right now.

We're going to be giving ourselves to the place of prayer during this time. So we're going to be gathering in homes. We also are going to be gathering for anyone who wants to on Tuesday mornings at nine. We do staff prayer.

We've been doing that for a couple of years just with our staff over at the offices. But in this season, we want to open that up to anyone in the community that wants to come and pray with the staff. We're going to be calling Tuesday's kind of our prayer and fasting day as a community. So even if you can't make it to the nine a.m.

Prayer time, we want you to know that that's a day to give and to devote to prayer. So yeah, they just put this up for us. This is going to walk it through if that's a little bit more helpful. So Tuesdays are our prayer days, nine a.m.

at the offices. That's like caveman style prayer. We're not even going to have a band or a team there. We're just doing like nine to 10 a.m.

Praying for any of you who joined us for prayer at noon during that 24, three time that we just did recently. Then we're going to do the living room tour. We just talked about that. That's going to happen through May in the beginning of June.

We're so excited. Stay tuned on how to sign up for it. Then the week leading up to big give Sunday. Remember we just did what we call a 24 three burn.

We're now going to do a 24 seven burn. So we're going to do that around the clock sign up for a time slot to be in prayer. I don't know where my night watch people are at, but we can't wait to hit the night watch again. It was the best.

But to pray around the clock for that week believing for that provision to come through for the big give Sunday where we'll celebrate and worship together. And then we close on July 3rd. A couple of other things I want to mention with this is well, first of all, do you guys want to put up that stay connected form? I think it's build the base form.

If you are not getting our emails, I want to make sure that you get on our list because we're going to be sending out how to sign up for the living room tour nights and things like that. So if you aren't on our email list, make sure you are in this season. We're not going to spam you, but you'll find out important things like today, like don't miss service because how sad would you be if you had missed today? So make sure that you're signed up.

We'll leave that up for you guys. But the other thing that we're thinking about, we don't have to snail down yet, is how are we going to mobilize the kids to feel like they're a part of this process. They are so central to what we do. So we're thinking about maybe putting on some type of race or a color run or a fun run where they can like fundraise for like have people sponsor them for their race and just we think that they have the best time.

But I will say, if you've ever put on a race, I love to run in races, but I've never put on a race before. Okay, you don't know me well enough to. I'm a big runner. So I've never put on a race before.

So I'm asking if anyone wants to help and if you have specifically put on administrative some type of race where you would have a skill set and you'd be willing to lend us your knowledge, we would love to hear from you ASAP because we would want to get it scheduled right away for kids. We also are hoping to host open houses on the site so that you guys can actually get in the space and see it and experience what it's going to look like and feel like. But we just aren't sure if they're going to let us in to do that or not yet. So stay tuned.

We're giving you this snapshot, but there's so much more information coming. We just want you to feel like you have a general roadmap of what the next couple of months are going to look like. Does that make sense feel good? So good.

Some of you are probably like, okay, I'm ready. Should I give tomorrow, right? So some of you are probably maybe thinking, okay, when do we get? And we just want to encourage you that we're going to pray first.

Okay? So we're going to do a lot of prayer and then we're going to give together. And so we want to get into this building because we got there together. And if we, like for some reason, everything falls apart and we can't afford it and there's just like, man, I don't know what just happened and things completely go south.

We're going to mourn that moment together. It's not going to be the stab. We're like, we're going to be on this journey as a whole community. Whether it's a failure or it's a huge win, we're going to be in it together.

And so with that, I want to encourage you, if you're part of every day, maybe you've gone, you're gone, man, this is my spot. This is where I'm calling home. We want to encourage you if you're not giving to actually sign up to start recurring giving. And actually whether it's maybe you're going, man, but it's not very much.

No, we're honoring the mic. It doesn't matter if it's not very much. It's where it's a hundred percent participation because we're fully going to own it. We're fully going to own what God is building because we love what God is doing here.

And so we want to encourage you, if you're like, man, I don't know where to start. I don't know what to give. Give what is wise and try to stretch to 10%. Try to stretch to the 10% of your income.

And then once you hit that, you go, man, Lord, I want to be above and beyond generous. I want to keep on going beyond that. It's not the 10% isn't this like rule of thumb. I have to do it or I'm cursed.

The Lord is going, hey, new covenant, but you can actually have that as a starting point because it's good for you, right? It's healthy for you. It's healthy for your heart. And that's what we've been talking about with the Luke 1234, like alignment, right?

And so I, we have so much excitement around that big gift Sunday and just the worship that that giving is worship. So there's like multiple ways that we're going to worship together and celebrate. And so after the Kingdom Finance Conference next week, we're going to have even more details that we're going to roll out with a living room tour and we'll be able to get into some of the practicals. But we are, you can pray for us because we're making design decisions.

Like we're making decisions on where does that room go? Over the next week and half, we're going to go, well, where is the kids wing? And what does that look like? Okay, okay, how does the bathrooms work?

How does that integrate with, you know, it's like all the little details. We're actually in those right now and we'd love for you to pray for us as a team as we're making decisions on the property. So we're not a reminder. We're not gathering around a building.

We're gathering around Jesus. We're not gathering around a funding initiative. We're gathering around the Lord. We're not gathering to see the strategic vision take place.

We're literally gathering around the King and saying, Lord, we don't want to be the only ones gathering around you. We want our children to gather around you. We want our families gathered around you. We want our whole city from every direction as Minneapolis and St.

Paul begin to handshake, Lord, we want to gather the city around your throne in all of our homes, in the new space, in all the church communities. God has a vision for our city and we're gathering around his vision and his ideas. And that's what we want to build. And so I want us to stand up.

We're going to commission us out. And I just want to pray real quick and then we'll commission us out. But you can spread out. Let's just spread out.

Can we have a moment together as a community? Can I just say quickly too? You might go, man, this is a lot like kind of a lot of, I'm going to say hoopla. I don't have to upset hoopla on a microphone before.

There's a whole lot of hoopla for finding a building. And I understand if you haven't been through the journey with us, it maybe won't hit you in the same way that it's hitting some of us of just how long it has felt and how big this breakthrough feels. But I want you to know that something that Josh and I value a lot is setting up memories from memorials before the Lord. It's something personally that we do.

We love to go to physical places where we have met the Lord, where He's done something unique in our life. We like to bring our kids through remembering different things throughout their life. So that we're actually offering Him the worship that He's due for the way that He's been faithful. And so you'll see us do that as a community.

We like to make a big deal about things because we're a people that like to celebrate what God has done. We're a people that want to remember ways and we don't want to be unimpressed. We don't want to be the people that go, oh yeah, we got the building. Okay, next.

So we want to be wild in our celebration because He's so worthy of it. And so if some of this can feel a little out of the box for you, like there's literally confetti in my hair and I'm at church, you know, and it's like, man, I just want to encourage you. This is who we are and we love to celebrate and we want to invite you into that so you also can have that memory in Him to pass down to your children. Let's pray Lord.

We thank you. You are the God of celebration. And so we love celebrating you. We love celebrating your faithfulness.

And Lord, we thank you that you have a smile on your face that you're the King of joy and so that when we celebrate and have a good time, it's like kind of a love language of yours. And where you like, you actually like us when we have fun. You like when we dance. You like when we have a good time and celebrate what you've done and who you are.

You love the laugh. You literally invented it. And so we honor you. We love you.

We thank you for being the provider in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen.