Why Kingdom Builders | Make Your Mark | Rich Greene

Thanks for joining us you're listening to the life church podcast in these episodes

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So we have been in this uh in these last couple weeks today's gonna be the last

week i'm gonna to actually specifically talk about Kingdom Builders in our message.

But I just, first of all, I just want to say, I love, I love,

I love, I love this church.

I do. Because, amen. Somebody said, we do too.

Amen. Because there is something about your generosity that is contagious, contagious,

that is life-transforming, that causes the average person that comes,

walks through these doors and sits down and says, what's this church all about?

Every person, every one of you, when you, the first day you walked in the Life.Church

and you sat down, you're like, okay, what's this church about?

Can I trust those people?

Do they believe right stuff? You know, all those questions start to surface.

But then when you start seeing the heart of generosity in this place,

and by the the way, just so you know, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about you.

You start seeing the heart of generosity in this place. You get a reflection

of who God is because that's what God is to you and me.

He is a generous, generous God.

Here in Coralville, Cedar Rapids and Wilton, you didn't get this,

but here in Coralville, we sang that song as a dear panteth.

I remember early on in my life, that song, when it came out,

Maranatha, I think it was Maranatha Worship or something like that.

They're the ones that put it out. I remember in my car, putting that little

cassette tape into my, into my car.

Some of you are like, cassette tape? What's a cassette tape?

Don't worry. It's something to listen to music with.

But putting a little tape in my car and listening to that song and weeping because

of the generosity of God towards me, that's what God has done for me.

He gave his life so that I could have life.

And so when you, in turn, are generous to to others, you are exactly mirroring

what Jesus has done for you.

You're telling the world that there's a God out there that loves them,

that wants a relationship with them, that cares about them, that knows their

name, knows everything about them.

And so I love this church. I love the generosity of this church.

You guys are amazing. Amen.

All of you, Cedar Rapids, Wilton, to you too. I know you're not here in this

building, but you're amazing too. Amen. Amen.

So we're talking about Kingdom Builders. Today's going to be the last day we're

going to talk about Kingdom Builders, but at least not as a message.

We're going to talk about for

the last several weeks and about our Kingdom Builders investment for 2024.

Our Kingdom Builders investment for 2024 is going to be $605,000.

Over the last six years, you have given over $2 million to Kingdom Builders.

Well, this year, our commitment is $605,000.

I've asked you to pray. pray. I've asked you to lean into God and say,

God, what do you want me to do for Kingdom Builders? And we have these commitment cards.

They're not here in front of you right now, but they are at the Welcome Center.

So I want to encourage you on your way out, grab one of these commitment cards

and just keep praying, saying, God, what do you want me to do?

It's $605,000. Also on this card is a QR code that'll take you to our partnership

guide that you can see all the the different ways in which the things that we're

doing with Kingdom Builders. Okay, so take a look at that.

All right, so we're talking about Kingdom Builders, and I'm sure that what surfaces

in the mind of many people is.

There's a couple of questions, but I think one of the primary questions is this.

Why does my church do kingdom builders?

Like some of you have come from

other churches before. Maybe you were attending church in another town.

You came here for university and now you're here and you're attending this church.

And you might ask yourself the question, why is it that my church,

why is it that Life Church does kingdom builders? And that's a very valid question.

Why do we do it? And I'll answer that question. but I think it's probably beneficial

for us to try to understand what is Kingdom Builders first.

So we're going to answer the question, what is Kingdom Builders?

And then we're going to answer the question, why do we do Kingdom Builders?

What is Kingdom Builders?

Because I've had conversations, there's people who have been attending Life.Church,

and they're like, well, we've been talking about Kingdom Builders for a while,

and then they go, what is Kingdom Builders?

They'll literally say that question, what is Kingdom Builders?

So I'm going to explain what Kingdom Builders is.

First of all, what you need to understand is that we have two streams of missions

funding here at Life.Church, two different streams of missions funding.

We fund missionaries and missionary projects around the world in two different ways.

The first way is behind the scenes. You don't even know it. We don't talk about

it. We don't get up here and ask you to give towards that stream. We just don't do it.

We've been doing it since the very beginning of Life.Church.

Basically, we administratively, here's what you do.

If you tithe here at Life.Church, if you said, okay, I'm going to to support

the ministry of Life.Church by tithing, when you do that, what we do is on the

back end, administratively, we take 10% of that for missionary support off the bat.

So if you gave this morning $100 in tithing, we take 10 of that to support missionaries, period.

10%. You never see it. We don't talk about it.

And so if you're tithing here at Life.Church, just know that you are right now

supporting missionaries.

We have 59 missionary units that we support here at Life.Church.

That's about 113 different missionaries that we support.

We support them with about 75 to 500 different support levels,

but there's a bulk of them that are $75 a month.

There's another bulk that's $100 a month. And then we have several that are

$400, $300, $400, $500 a month that we support.

And that amounts to about $75,000 to $100,000 a year.

So when you tithe, we are supporting these missionaries.

Missionaries like Derek Quimby, for example. Derek and Taylor are missionaries

on the university campus of Northern Iowa.

And there they are with their brand new twins. What you don't know about Derek,

maybe, is that Derek was, 10 years ago, he was a high school student,

and he was a part of our church, and he was our bass player,

our full-time bass player.

And then while he was here, a part of Life.Church, God began to stir his heart

in calling him to ministry.

He went to the University of Northern Iowa to study, and there he became,

got involved in Chi Alpha, which was led by his brother at the time.

And now he is the campus pastor for the University of Northern Iowa,

Iowa, and they are seeing hundreds and hundreds of people of young university

students give their life to Jesus Christ. He sent me a picture of one of their worship services.

You should see the pictures. I mean, I wish I could show you.

There's a lot of things I'm going to talk about here this morning.

But I mean, the house is full of young university students raising their hands and worshiping Jesus.

They have baptized hundreds. They are seeing many of them journey on and become

become fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ.

We also support other missionaries like Jeremy, I won't mention Jeremy and Emily,

who are, they were with us, I don't know if you remember them,

they were with us back in December.

And they are basically bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to some of the darkest places in the world.

They are in the heart of Islam, preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

So our first line of missions funding is what happens behind the scenes.

You You don't really realize it's happening, but it is happening to the amount

of about $100,000 a year.

We don't talk about it. We don't raise funds for it. It's just an administrative

thing that we do behind the scenes.

We do that on purpose because one of the values that we have here is generosity.

And so we want to know, we want you to know that when you give to the Ministry

of Life Church that we in turn are saying, we're going to tithe to that with that.

We're not going to take 100% of the tithe for ourselves.

We're going to take 90% of it. And 10%, we're going to leverage it.

For ministries outside of our four walls. That's just the philosophy that we

had from the very beginning. That's the first line of missionary support.

So if you're tithing, just know that you're supporting missionaries right now.

If you're not tithing, this is a good reason to start tithing. Amen?

Okay, three of you said amen. Good. All right. I figured. That's okay.

My expectations weren't too high on that amen.

But the other stream of missions funding is kingdom builders.

Kingdom builders. I remember back in 2018 is when we started Kingdom Builders.

And I remember around that time, there was a frustration that I was feeling.

The frustration was this. Many of you know that we were former missionaries.

We were overseas in Bangladesh for many years.

And I have really a passion and heart for missions. And so my door is always

open for missionaries to come through and to meet with them.

I meet with them for coffee.

I meet with them for lunch. They come to my office. We just meet on all different

occasions. occasions, and what I was frustrated about is I found myself saying

no more often than yes to the missionaries.

I was just frustrated about that. Thank you, brother.

That, you know, they came, they would sit across the table, some of them with

tears saying, Pastor Rich, God has called me to those people on the far side

of this world, and I could feel the passion.

I knew they were were called, and yet financially, I could not support them.

I could just simply say, hey, man, we'll pray for you. If something opens up, we'll support you.

And I was frustrated by that.

And so I was asking the Lord for clarity and direction. I had heard about some

churches that were doing kingdom builders. Excuse me.

I had heard some churches that were doing kingdom builders, and so I kind of began to explore that.

And when I explored it, here's what's funny about about it.

When I realized what these churches were doing, I was like, man,

everything inside of me wanted to say yes to Kingdom Builders.

Everything. I was like, this is it.

But then there was this little nagging fear that was in the back of my head

was, I feel like I'm going to get up and preach at Life.Church about Kingdom

Builders and giving to missionary projects around the world.

And you guys, because you're so stinking generous, you're going to give.

And you're going going to give so much that we won't have enough money left

over to keep the lights on here at Life.Church.

That was a legitimate fear. I was like, Lord, what if, you know, what about us?

You know, that was kind of the thing that was going on in my head.

I'll remember that morning, I was in prayer about it, and God spoke to me as

clear as I'm standing before you right now.

He simply said, Rich, if you'll take care of my business, I'll take care of the electric bill.

There's a little bit of fear there, but on that word, we launched Kingdom Builders

back in 2018. Kingdom Builders is our missions accelerating tool.

The last six years, you've given over $2 million to Kingdom Builders.

And guess what? We've never had the electric cut off.

God is faithful. God is good. And so what Kingdom Builders does is it funds

small, medium, and large projects annually, and they're categorized in these

three different categories, global impact, local impact, and future leaders impact.

So this is the heart behind Kingdom Builders. We want to think globally,

we want to think locally, and we want to think about the next generation.

And so all of the funds that come in for Kingdom Builders go to those three specific areas.

Global impact, for example, Pastor Chris talked a little bit about Remade in Calcutta.

And Remade is just this amazing project. Over the last five years,

we have given over $68,000 to Remade. We've helped them build the building that

where she's sitting right now is a building that Life Church helped build in Calcutta, India.

What Rime does is they employ about 90 women, poor village women,

who basically take a sari. What she's wearing right now is a sari.

It's six yards of material that gets wrapped around, and that's a sari.

They take used ones, and then they repurpose them and make them into blankets

and quilts and purses and that kind of stuff, and then that gets sold.

The cool thing about that is it's provided employment to over 90 women,

which I love this idea because I remember back in 2011 going to that village

that these women come from,

and then I was there just this past January, and you know what?

The level of life has increased. Women are contributing to their homes.

God is providing for them. That's a really cool thing. But the other part of

Remade is that they also get to preach the gospel.

And so here, this young man, I won't say his name, but this young man right

here, I met him, I don't know, seven or eight years ago.

He was a teenager that was annoying, to be honest with you.

I met him out in the volleyball, playing volleyball or soccer,

and he just was annoying. He figured out that I spoke Bengali,

and so he was just talking to me in Bengali, and he was just kind of like joking around and whatever.

But he has since then become a follower of Jesus Christ. About three or four

years ago, he went and was baptized in the Bay of Bengal.

And now here's this young man leading this Bible study and leading these young

people, these Muslims in prayer.

So God is faithful. God is using them. That's one of the projects of Global

Impact. impact. Another one is Jason and Luisa.

Listen, there's a whole bunch of them that we have supported.

I'm just giving you a snapshot.

You can certainly go to our partnership guide to look at more stuff,

but I'm just giving you a couple of things. Another one is Jason and Luisa.

They are from Colombia and they are establishing a marketing business on an

island off the coast of Africa.

Jason and Luisa, six months ago, sent me a video just thanking Life.Church and and for sending them.

They were here, I don't know if you remember, they were here last year on their

way to Africa and they've already since then gone.

Now they're on these islands. Take a look at this video.

Special greetings for Pastor Richard Green and Life Church in Crowville, Iowa.

So we want to share to you that it has been 16 long months, really long months,

where we have traveled all around Colombia and also several states from the U.S.

And now finally, we are here in the land of our calling, East Africa in Tanzania.

So we just want to say thank you.

Gracias por traernos hasta aquí. Thank you for bringing us to this place.

Gracias por hacer equipo con nosotros. For teaming up with us.

Por orar por nosotros. For praying for us.

Gracias por venir con nosotros a este lugar.

Thank you for coming with us to this place. Right now we have been studying

for four days the local language.

It has been a challenge but we are enjoying it and it has been an awesome process.

Right now we are really adjusted. It has been around a month that we have been

here in the island and we're so happy because the American team received us

so well that we are just struggling a little bit with language but hoping to

learn it soon so we can communicate the truth of the gospel in their own language

here in their own culture.

Por último, queremos compartir con ustedes algunas imágenes de un momento muy

especial que vivimos hace días.

Last but not least, we want to share with you a couple of really special images

of something that we experienced days ago.

Un momento en el que un joven ex-musulmán fue bautizado.

A really special moment where an ex-Muslim man was baptized publicly.

Un momento que nos mostró que el trabajo en este lugar es posible.

A moment that showed us that the work in this place is possible.

That's why we want to say once again.

Por no invertir solamente en nosotros. For not only investing in us.

Sino en las almas que están siendo añadidas al reino de Dios.

But also investing into the souls that are being added to God's kingdom.

Buena Jesu Asifiuwe. Glory to Lord Jesus.

Asante sana. Thank you so much.

Amen. Amen. Jason and Luisa are from Colombia. And yeah, we could clap for them. Amen.

They're from Columbia. And just so you know, listen, when somebody says,

God, I'll go wherever you want me to go, and they feel calling to go to the

mission field, for an American, for a person who lives in the United States,

who makes that decision,

it's a big decision.

You are leaving your country. There's a lot of change and challenges that go with that.

You have to the fundraise. I mean, it is a difficult work to do if you're an American.

If you're a Colombian, it's exponentially more difficult.

Like Americans, there's some things we should never take for granted.

We get some free passes sometimes when we're traveling internationally.

We sometimes, like I can land in UAE as an American and just get my visa right on site.

I don't have to actually apply for it ahead of time.

There's a lot of things that we get. Colombians are more challenged that way.

I don't know if you remember Jason and Louisa. Jason was here,

but they were both here a year ago.

And Jason was, he's the son of a cartel member in Columbia.

And he witnessed his father getting murdered right there. They were at a gas

station and his father just got gunned down right there in the gas station.

He was a kid at that time, like 11 years old.

And, but through that, through those circumstances, he came,

became a follower of Jesus Christ

and he committed He committed himself to loving Jesus, pursuing him.

He became a kind of a national rap, Christian rap artist in Colombia for a while,

you know, and God called him to the mission field.

And now he made a decision to go all the way to the other side of the world.

And you and I, Life.Church, we've partnered with them.

They're starting a marketing business on these islands as a way.

Now, you're saying, wait a minute, they're starting a marketing business?

What's that all about? Well, one of the strategies these days to basically go

into limited access countries, countries that are difficult to get in,

whether it's because of religious reasons or because of political reasons,

one of the things that we're doing now is called BAMs, B-A-M, business as mission.

And so we have people that are going to these places to start a business as their platform.

It's a legitimate business. They're doing the work of a business,

but then they are, as followers of Jesus Christ, or then sharing the gospel

with the people that they're interacting with. That's what Jason and Lisa do.

And so we've made a decision. We've committed ourselves.

Part of the kingdom is that we've committed ourselves to reaching the least

reached and the least resourced.

And BAMs are going into those places. And so we're committed to supporting a

lot of BAMs through Kingdom Builders.

Local impact is another way in which Kingdom Builders works.

We've supported churches like Refinery Church in Huntington,

West Virginia, Scent Church in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Leon Assembly in Leon,

Iowa, All Nations Fellowship in New Orleans.

Iglesia Aliento in Council Bluffs, Hilltop Church in West Des Moines.

There's several others as well. But basically what we've done is we've provided construction funds.

We help them with purchasing equipment like audio equipment and chairs and those kind of things.

For Leon, we help them buy 75 chairs for their auditorium. We do all those kind of works.

Another part of local impact is starting new campuses.

So you know that we have two campuses. Besides, right, Wilton and Cedar Rapids

are watching right now. Those are campuses. campuses.

Wilton, a few years ago, we had the opportunity to start the Wilton campus.

A building was given to us, but that building needed work.

And so we spent a half a million dollars remodeling that building so that we

could have a Life.Church campus there.

Here's the cool thing. We didn't take a loan out. We didn't have to.

Kingdom Builders didn't pay for all of it, but Kingdom Builders paid for a big

portion of that to be able to actually actually launch a campus in Wilson,

Iowa. So this is local impact.

A third area is future leaders impact. Through Kingdom Rooms,

we also want to impact the next generation.

You hear me say this often when I'm talking about this, is that we will risk everything.

We will risk everything to reach the next generation.

We must do that. So we support things like Sunstream Retreat Center.

We give them $10,000 a year to help them build infrastructure there.

Sunstream is where we send our kids to camp. Here's a picture of our kids.

Last year at camp, you know, they went there.

What I love about our camp is that our kids go there, our youth go there,

and oftentimes for the very first time, they give their life to Jesus at camp.

Sometimes they are already Christians, but they recommit themselves.

You know, they're teenagers, so they're kind of up and down sometimes,

you know, and so they recommit themselves to Jesus, you know.

They get baptized in water. They get baptized in the Holy Spirit.

I mean, God moves in their lives at camp, and it's really cool to see that.

So because of that, we provide scholarships for our children and youth to attend camp.

The scholarship doesn't pay for the whole thing. It just pays for a portion

of it. But the idea is that we want them to be at camp, right?

We also support the Iowa Ministry Network's NextGen Ministries and Outreaches financially as well.

This week, I got a call from Quincy. Grandma is sitting right here in front of me.

I got a call from Quincy Yagnall, who was one of our youth here at Life.Church

and is now in Ames, Iowa at Jesus School, studying for ministry.

He feels God is calling him into ministry. And he called me in his typical deep voice.

You know, he said, Pastor Rich, Pastor Rich, I'm going to Trinidad on a missions trip.

Do you think Life.Church could support me? Sorry, that's a terrible Quincy impression,

but it's like that, you know?

And you know what?

I didn't even hesitate. Resuscitate. I'm like, yes, Quincy, of course,

we're going to support you because part of Kingdom Builders,

I mean, we've already built it.

And part of Kingdom Builders is that we want our youth to go on mission trips.

We're going to do everything we can to make that happen.

So global impact, local impact, future leaders impact. This is what Kingdom Builders is all about.

In 2024, we have some really exciting and daring projects as well.

As I've been mentioning, the Buddhist Hindu priority. I got this image up here.

This is the area. This is China, India, you know, Southeast Asia area.

This is the area that predominates Buddhism and Hinduism.

In this area, there are about 2 billion people, okay?

2 billion people that have not once heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Not once.

And here's what's sad. In this area, less than 10% of missionary funds get there.

They're sent in other directions. And so we have committed ourselves through

Kingdom Builders to be a part of the Buddhist Hindu Priority this year.

We're going to do everything we can to send 150 new missionaries to this area.

We're going to partner with a bunch of other churches and make that happen.

We support another organization called Oasis Bangladesh.

This is a ministry that is in Bangladesh rescuing women from sex trafficking.

They provide counseling, job training, job placement services.

This is an image of one of their services.

This is right, I know exactly where this place is. This is in the very heart of Dhaka City.

In fact, you cannot drive a vehicle to this place.

It's so densely populated and the streets are so narrow that you drive your

vehicle to a certain part, you park it, and then you catch a rickshaw to get to this place.

Right around the corner from this place are some brothels. And this,

I won't say the person's done, but they're doing an amazing,

amazing job at reaching people in that area. you.

This year, we're going to come alongside church plants across Iowa to see churches

planted and established and gain a foothold in our cities, in our towns.

Right here in Coralville, we're doing Friend Connection. Pastor Chris talked

a little bit about it during the announcements.

This is outreach to children in our neighborhood with some after-school services,

after-school fun things that they could do here.

And the idea is it's just started. There's still a lot, long ways to go.

But the idea is that we want to connect with the children in our neighborhood.

And I know that as we connect with the children in our neighborhood,

how many of you love your kids, by the way, parents here?

Like all of you should raise your hand, actually. Just a hint here.

Everybody should raise their hand, even if you're like, I hate them.

But no, we wouldn't say that.

But you know how it is as a parent, that if your kid is happy,

if your kid is doing well, if your kid is succeeding in life, you're happy.

And so as a way to reach our neighborhood, we want to minister to the kids in

our neighborhood through Friends Connection.

So this is really what's coming. There's so many more. I can't mention it.

I encourage you to, again, this is available.

It's at the Welcome Center.

You can scan the QR code and be able to see. It's also a place where you can also commit.

So back to the original question, why does my church do Kingdom Builders?

Why does my church do Kingdom Builders? I realize that these projects that I

mentioned can pull at your heartstring. They can challenge you to want to give.

You can feel compassion towards them, right? Or maybe you look at it more from

a philanthropic standpoint. point, he's like, yeah, these are worthy projects to support.

You know, they're good causes, right? And those are all good reasons,

but that's not the reason, the primary reason why we do kingdom builders.

We do kingdom builders because Jesus has commanded us to go.

Jesus, I'm going to say it again, has commanded us to go.

Now, let me just clarify that. You might be sitting there saying,

yeah, Rich, you, you're a pastor. Yeah, missionaries, they're called to go.

He's commanded every single one of us. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ,

you have been commanded to go.

You go physically, you can go by linking arms with missionaries and praying

for them, or you can go by giving, by sending missionaries to these difficult

places. But we are commanded to go.

Staying, so there's going.

Staying is not an option as a follower of Christ.

Are you hearing me? I'm trying to make some really emphatic statements.

Staying is not an option.

As a follower of Jesus Christ. In Matthew 28, Jesus has been crucified.

He's been resurrected. He's about to be ascended into heaven.

He gives his disciples this one last command.

In verse 18, he says, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

In other words, what I'm about to tell you, this is not up for discussion.

We're not brainstorming here.

Like I have been given authority to ask this of you.

It's not a suggestion. And then what does he say?

Go and make disciples of all nations, not just some, all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.

And be sure of this, I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.

This command is based on an assumption that people need good news.

The 2 billion Buddhists and Hindu in the world need good news.

The 1.4 billion Muslims in the world need good news.

The continent of Africa needs good news.

Here in America, we need good news. Your neighborhood, your co-workers need good news.

Because of sin. We live in a very broken world. People are hurting.

People are suffering. People are struggling.

Some are struggling through the pains of divorce. Others, their lives have been

turned upside down because of the sin of somebody else in their life,

a parent or an uncle or some other person they were connected to. They're struggling.

They need good news. And so we are are commanded to bring this good news to them.

And we're not just commanded to bring this good news to those who are near.

Not just those who are near. Yes, you need to bring good news to those who are

near. You need to speak to your co-workers.

You need to speak to your family members. You need to preach the gospel to them. But guess what?

Sarmila in Nepal, you saw, I have an image of her.

Sarmila in Nepal, who you heard about when Paul was here, her, she needs good news too.

And just because she's far away, because you don't know her name,

and because you don't know her language, and you really have never met her before,

that doesn't mean she doesn't need good news. She still needs good news.

And I intentionally show this picture to you, and I tell you her name.

You know why? Because now you and I have an obligation.

That she gets good news, period. The gospel of Jesus commands us to go because

we've been given this treasure, this great treasure, this priceless treasure.

And I think oftentimes we receive this treasure. How many of you remember when

you first, you first met Jesus?

I know I do. I received that treasure.

I think what happens at times is we start feeling like this treasure is mine.

I'm going to keep it to myself.

For my family, and we can hoard it, and we act like it's just mine.

We act like that servant who buried the treasure because he was afraid that

it would run out, or we can leverage it for the world.

So why does my church do kingdom of the Lord? Because Jesus commands us to go.

Keith Green, this musician that I have followed all my life,

that's inspirational in my life, he said it this way, Jesus commands us to go.

It should be an exception if we stay.

We cannot stay. So what will it take for you to go? What will it take?

Some of you will literally quit your job so you can go.

Go to the mission field. Go to another community. Go to another career that

is about building God's kingdom.

You'll feel a calling in your life to go. So sometimes going,

sometimes you go just by going, by actually getting up and leaving.

Sometimes you go by praying.

This Buddhist Hindu party we're talking about, they're enlisting 50,000 new

prayer warriors, people who will intercede and battle for those missionaries,

who will stand in the gap for those missionaries who are preaching the gospel

in these very difficult places.

So prayer is incredibly needed.

I can't tell you the value of prayer for a missionary, by the way.

Just, I know, you're like, I don't know them. I don't know what's going on with

their life. Let me just explain.

Well, when we were in Bangladesh, we had multiple miracles happen for us.

Things that we needed God's intervention. If we didn't get God's intervention, we would not survive.

That was literally how dire some of those circumstances were.

And then suddenly God would come through with a miracle. And,

you know, maybe I could walk around and be like, well, I must be really something

because God gave me a miracle.

But then I would receive a letter a few months later, because back then there

was no email and stuff. You couldn't send emails.

But I'd receive a letter a few months later, and there'd be some saint somewhere

in some little small town in Louisiana who would say, hey, Pastor Rich,

you know, God woke me up in the middle of the night to pray for you and your

wife. Is everything okay?

And then Christi and I would look at the dates when she wrote the letter and

what the circumstances were around that time, And it was almost without exception.

But that's when God provided a miracle. He woke somebody up on the other side of the world.

Prayer is indispensable for missions work.

So you go by praying. You also go by sending those who are called to go to these

distant and difficult places. You go by giving.

I read some alarming statistics this week.

You know that in the U.S., we, churches, and organizations give $32 billion

to missions and missions causes around the world. $32 billion.

That's a significant number. But we need to understand that number in perspective, okay? Okay.

Because the statistic I read this week said this, we get, we spend $18 billion

a year on specialty coffees alone.

So we give 32 billion to missions. We spent 18 billion on specialty coffees.

That's not so bad. I guess it's less than 32 billion, but then we spend 66.5

billion on lottery tickets.

Ouch. We spend $66 billion on tattoo removal.

I think tattoo removal must be really expensive, I guess, because that's a lot

of money for tattoo removal.

But here's the one that really kind of floored me. Last year,

we spent $132 billion on our pets.

Wow. That's That's a hundred billion dollars more than we actually gave to missions.

Now I'm not telling you to go get rid of your pets. No, I mean, I love animals.

Maybe not cats, so you can get rid of your cats, I guess, but that's fine.

Just kidding. Just kidding. My daughter is a cat lover, and so I know she watched

this, and she's going to be like, I'm mad at you, Dad.

But here's the thing. These numbers, what they do is that they explain why the

need is so great around the world and why we need initiatives like Kingdom Builders.

We must, we must do this.

Jesus, after seeing the crowds that were helpless and confused,

He was moved with compassion. and he says this to his disciples.

He's saying to you and me the same things.

He says, the harvest is great, but the workers are few.

The harvest is great, but the workers are few because we are not sending them.

We're leveraging what we should be sending them with for other things.

Harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who's in charge

of the harvest. Ask him to send more workers into his fields.

Like he's saying, we need to pray and we need to send.

We need to pray and we need to send. You and I have been called.

We've been called by Jesus to participate in this mission of God.

So we can go, we can pray, and we can send. So the question is,

are you going? Are you going? We can all stand.

Are you going? Are you going to your neighbor? Are you sharing the good news

with your neighbor, to your coworkers?

Maybe God is speaking to you. Maybe you're in this room right now and God is

speaking to you about quitting your job and actually going somewhere physically

around the world or maybe even somewhere, you know, locally.

We need to ask ourselves this question. Am I going? Am I going? Am I praying?

This work, this missions work that we're talking about, this kingdom expansion

work that we're talking about is a spiritual activity.

It's not just about human effort.

It's about us interceding and standing in the gap so that the kingdom of God will advance.

And there are spiritual battle going on.

And so we need to be praying that God opens the door so some of these dark places,

these dangerous places where some of the missionaries that we're sending are

going to. And the third question is, are you sending?

Are you making a conscious decision? Are you making a conscious decision,

as I said last week, to sacrifice now to prepare for later?

Are you looking at what you have in your hand, the resources you have in your

hand through Kingdomize?

Something really cool happens when we do that. When we don't look at our stuff

through the eyes of the kingdom, we see our stuff as a limited resource.

We see our stuff as, man, this gets spent and it goes away and it disappears on me.

So I got to hoard it. I got to keep it. I got to save it. I got to invest it

on myself and my family and my kids.

That's how we see it. But when we open our eyes to see things from a kingdom

perspective, perspective, suddenly I see it from a different angle and I see,

no, this is actually a stewardship.

This is not stuff that I need to possess. This is stuff that I need to invest.

This is stuff that I need to use and leverage for God's purposes.

And when I do that, here's what I know. That same promise that the Lord gave

me at the very beginning of Kingdom Builders, hey, if you will do my business,

I will take care of the electric bill.

When I have that kind of perspective, guess what what happens.

God takes care of you, and the kingdom is expanded.

When I have the opposite perspective and I'm holding onto it,

guess what? It is a limited resource. It runs out.

It ends up never being as much as you thought it was going to be.

So, are we sending? That's the question.

So, why do we do kingdom? We do it because Jesus commands us to go.

So, the fundamental question I'm asking you today is, are you going? Amen?

Amen. Let me pray for us. We have prayer teams here in left and right.

We're not going to have any worship at this point.

We have prayer teams here in left and right. If you're here this morning,

I know we can. We're talking about kingdom builders, and I know that that's kind of the focus.

But if you're here this morning and you need prayer, please don't leave this

place without prayer. Amen?

We're here to serve you. Let me pray for us. Father, I just want to thank you,

Jesus, for what you're doing in this place.

I thank you, Father, that you have given us an opportunity to participate with

you in building your kingdom.

Father, we don't want to take that for granted. We know this is founded in the

fact that you have given us good news.

When you saved us, when you healed us, when you restored our lives,

when you gave us, you know, restored our lives after broken marriages or restored

our lives after drug addiction.

God, we're so thankful for what you've done for us. You have been so generous to me.

Will you help me, Lord, to see what I have in my hand as a resource for you.

You don't need it, Lord.

It's not like you're going to run out, but you want us, Father,

to participate with you in building your kingdom.

Music.

So, Father, will you help us to see what we have through your eyes? Will you help us to go?

Music.