How to be Kingdom Builders

Glad to see you all gathered here ten am service.

Welcome to all of you who are watching online. We're

glad that you could gather with us this way. I

would take online service as an invitation to join us

at a campus sometime, but we're glad that you're here.

If I haven't met you yet, my name's Christian Lindbeck,

one of the grateful pastors on staff here at Venture. Welcome,

glad to see you hey, Part two of Kingdom Builders.

The crowd roared with excitement. I hope you were here

last week to hear part one of Kingdom Builders. If

you were not, I hardly ever do this. I really

want to urge you, maybe plead with you that you

go back and catch part one of Kingdom Builders.

There's tons of places you can find it.

You can find it on our website, you can find

it on our YouTube channel.

I invite you to check out.

It's on the app, we sent it out in the

Weekly E News. There's lots of places for you to

find this message. And I'm just asking you personally please

if you call Venture home, please go check it out.

And the reason is this, we desire for Kingdom Builders.

And if you hear the first time, stick with me

for a second. We desire for Kingdom Builders to be

Kingdom Builders, to be a central part of who Venture is.

We want it to be part of our common language

and our common desire, and our common mission and our

common schedule that it becomes a part of the heart

and the behavior of Venture Church altogether. And of course,

last week is it going to be your only opportunity

to hear that.

We're going to talk about.

The heart and the why of Kingdom Builders for weeks, months,

and years to come, but I'll rarely take thirty minutes

to really underline why we're doing. It's a foundational message,

so check it out and then we'll all be on

this same page together. But if you weren't here, if

this is your first weekend, like it's my first week,

I'm not gonna go catch up.

Cool cool, cool cool cool.

I'll do my best to catch you up right now.

But if this is your home, go do it. I'm

gonna simplify again. You may remember last week I tried

to begin by simplifying it.

Actually, when I read this sentence.

I'm like, that's the most complicated, simple sentence you've ever written.

Christian. Here's what kingdom builder is. Reminder, kingdom builders.

This thing that we're talking about, and I want to

think of it like a program. But this culture adventure

being the kind of people who participate with Jesus to

build kingdom. Kingdom builders is our combined effort. Now, you

may do solo things in your life. I hope you

do to be about building God's kingdom, but we're talking

about here. Adventure is our combined effort. And that's time, resources, effort, energy,

talents right, our combined effort to participate. If I can

underline another word there, it would be participate. If you

are a note taker, write down participate. If you're wondering

what Jesus wants you to do, it's participate. Come be

hand in hand with Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Come

participate in the mission that Jesus gave. How many Christians,

every Christian. Maybe you're wondering is this for me? The

answer is yes. It is that Jesus gave every Christian

to do what to work together in a community of faith.

See how important it is to be gathered in a

community of faith. This is why church cannot just be

solely an online thing.

That you do.

It's not about just receiving content from somebody. It's about

a community of faith participating.

Together with Jesus, a community of faith.

To do what to builds God's kingdom until Jesus returns,

judges and restores everything.

It gives every.

Individual life, every kingdom life, and every kingdom out there,

every church everywhere, a living, breathing mission to be a

part of. Like, I know so many people in this room,

and I think you could define your life by so

many other things. I see accomplished business people and teachers

and homemakers and firefighters, and you can't.

That is a part of who you are.

But none of them can bear the weight of being

the foundational mission of life, like participating with Jesus.

And building his kingdom can.

It can withstand the change of every profession, Your resources

can go up and code down.

Your fortunes can be great or can be louthy all

the time.

Your life can be underscored by participating with Jesus in

a community of faith to build Jesus' kingdom.

They thank you.

I'm like, we may not be like Pentecostal Pentecostal church,

but that's a spot for an amen, Amen, how do

we do that?

Christians?

So we did why last week? And I hope you

left last week if you were here, going hey, I want.

To do that.

That like I want me to be that kind of person,

and I want us to be that kind of church.

And I promise I talk about well, how then do

we do it? Now?

I'm going to grant as soon as we switch to how.

This is going to be heavy on practics. So if

it's your first time welcome, you're going to get under

the hood a little bit.

Otherwise it's gonna be like, man.

This is pretty practice. Yes, it is. We organize our convictions.

Write that down. A conviction without an organized way to

carry it out is just a hope. We organize our convictions.

We have to talk about how it is we do this.

So let's begin.

I want to talk about the three big objectives of

Kingdom Builders. Three objectives. There's tons of things we could do.

These are the things that we are going to do.

Three objectives. Expand the global mission, make a local impact,

develop future leaders.

Now, let me just that out very quickly.

Expand the global mission, as we will work tirelessly with

joy and intentionality and gratitude, and hope and tell every

person on the face of the earth has the chance

to hear the good news about Jesus and have their

life transformed by it. This is like the heart of

our mission. It's the heart of Kingdom Builders. Really, the

biggest person of Kingdom Builders is expand the global mission

of Jesus. Partner with these organizations and individuals around the

world because we desire that every human being has this

opportunity to meet Jesus.

But certainly we also.

Want to make a local impact, like we want to

actually see our neighbors, care about our community, identify in

justice where we see it.

We want to serve the vulnerable and.

Alleviate suffering here like have you ever noticed some people

will get on a plane and go be bold for

Jesus in another country, but won't live their faith right here.

So here is where we start. Starts in your home,

and it starts in our community. And there are people

neighbors around us right now that would be well served

by Christians who are participating with Jesus. To be Kingdom Builders.

We serve this community as we serve the world, and

finally we develop future leaders. One of the things that

I love about venture is the kind of demographics from

old to young. We have a lot of young people

in this building on fire for Jesus. And I like

when I think about reasons to get up, be excited,

come to work, what I love.

Is young people excited about Jesus.

I want you to know, in case you thought you

feel despondent about culture or the state of the church,

young people are excited about Jesus and they want to serve,

and they want to go, and they want to be called,

and they want to.

Do something authentic for Jesus.

And we're going to be all about supporting that growth.

So we're going to have a great internship, and we're

going to have great kids ministry and great youth ministry.

We are going to intentionally disciple and raise the next

generation of Christian leaders so that the church does not

die with us. Have you ever heard the mission of

Christ is about one generation from gen neration from going away.

I turned to that word into generation. It's okay, you

can laugh at it, Jim, I love you, But like,

do they ever hear that?

Like faith doesn't have we don't have grandchildren in that way,

like we each adopt our faith. So these three guiding

objectives will orient kingdom builders what is it we do.

It'll focus our prayers, help us make decisions, guide our investments,

where do we put our resources, and shape the ways

that we all serve together.

It's a it's a bold plan.

If I if I could just stop right now, like

if you tune out for me and you just remember

those things, what is it and what are those three

global objectives? Then that would be enough for today. And

I hope that the rest is still worth while. But

I do think it's a good.

Time to pause, slow down and pray. So would you

join me in a prayer?

Father, I slow down, and I just quiet the noise

of making plans. I quiet the noise the busyness of

a gathering, or the noise of kind of ego where

my own little empire building is.

Slow it down.

I just say, Lord, you see that these are bold plans,

and they're.

Really courageous declarations.

It's just a good time to admit we are just

humans and we are prone to building stuff for our

own namesake and purposes. So we stop and submit our

plans to you in humility. Scripture reminds us that unless

you build a house, we will labor in vain. King Solomon,

who is full of wisdom and accomplished so much, prudently wrote,

submit all your plans to God, for only he.

Can make them succeed.

And so we take this strategy kind of out of

make it happen mode, and we give it to you,

First Lord, and we reject church empire building and communal

fame and the hoarding of resources. We choose instead to

go with you, unworried but urgent, hand in hand by

the Holy Spirit, participating with you in intelligence, care and

courage until you return or until you are famous everywhere

in your good name.

Amen, friends, How will we build this?

How do we organize this work together to make sure

we are making a good effort? Like I said, I

shared the three bold objectives Global Mission, local impact in

future Leaders, and I want to talk about a little

more brass tacks of how we achieve them. I'm going

to give you three frameworks that we're going to talk

about this morning. So if your note taker actually writing

these three frameworks down is helpful. The first is head

heart hand or heart head hand, whichever direction you want

to do. Introduce updates, Celebrate and February through December now,

I know when you read those three categories you think compelling.

I hope I could make them interesting, but they are

necessary for understanding how we are going to do this

work together. And let's start with heart head hand or

head hearthand whichever direction you want to put them in.

This heart head hand is a framework I first learned

at Northwest University.

I learned when I was.

Working there under the administration of doctor Don Argue, who's

sitting right back there and he now attends.

Here and serves on his board.

But carry the call with heart head hand was the

mission that we had at that time, and it became

such a simple way for us to remember what it

takes to faithfully carry this out. You see, to actually

have a living, vital, functional Christian faith that's growing, it

must be all through. It has to permeate our thinking.

It has to soften our heart, it has to embolden

our resolve so.

That we will do something with it.

And if one of those is missing, it will actually

be deficient.

A young man came and asked me after the service.

He's like, you are you saying to me, like for

my faith to go, I really have to actually go

do something with it, And I'm like, that's precisely what

I am saying. That is exactly what I am saying. Like,

if one of those misses, then you're missing something. You

ever seen somebody who knows that they ought to do something,

but does it begrudgingly? Have you ever been with somebody

who's feeding the poor because they know they should, but

actually despise the people that they are feeding.

It's because their heart isn't there.

Have you ever known somebody who knows something to do,

cares about something to do, but fails to do it.

That's a special kind of torture, you see.

The first thing that has to do is that it

has to permeate the way we think about it.

It has to mean our head is in the game.

So I got talk about today's gonna be heavy on practice.

That's not boring because we organize what we desire to

cultivate or grow. Bob, I keep looking at you because

I think about like Bob grows things. If Bob wants

to grow acres and acres of corn, Bob can know

how to plant corn, desire to plant corn.

But unless he goes out and plants corn, nothing will happen.

Have you ever prayed in a harvest of corn without

planting seed hasn't happened.

We have to know what we're doing. That means we

know why we do Kingdom builders.

We're familiar with the scripture, we understand the omission, we

know the objectives, the schedule, our partners and opportunities. It

has to live here in our head so that we

can organize what we're doing. But we know that's not

another right. So what is in our head? Have to

make that perilous journey to our heart? You ever heard

that described as the longest like twelve to eighteen inches

in the world. Because you have to actually care about this.

The desire of Jesus, i said last week, isn't to

raise idea followers. You just know Jesus' ideas. He is

our rabbi, our great one, the one we follow. We

have to care about what he cares about. Jesus is

trying to like shape our heart what we know and

what we love, and we will do what we love.

We Americans think we will do what we know. False.

You will try to do what you know, and what

will draw you back every time is what you love.

It will start a great conflict in you between what

you know and what you love.

I'm a brilliant author. One of my favorite a guy

named doctor James K. Smith.

Sometimes you heard Jamie Smith wrote a book called You

Are What You Love, And I'm gonna simplify it for

you and tell you change what you love. You will

not do what it is you want to do. The

liturgy you have to form is less about the liturgy

of the mind and more about the liturgy of the heart.

Jesus is trying to shape our.

Heart to love what he loves, so that when you

go care for the vulnerable, or you fight in justice,

or you take the name of Jesus, it's not only

because you know you ought to.

It's because you can't wait to do it. Your heart

is in it. You love doing it, and I'm going

to talk about it in a minute.

To love to do it, you actually have to try

doing it. So Kingdom Builders is a great opportunity to

shape what we love. Kingdom Builders is a chance and

opportunity to shape what we love.

Why do this? Why give? Why go? Why get involved?

This just feels like another opplication at what's the word

I'm looking for, obligation? It just feels like another obligation,

when in fact, what it is is a chance you

shape what you love through habit, and you can shape

the things that you love if you will apply yourself

to it.

Kingdom Builders is a chance to shape what we love.

So you got your head and your heart and then

finally your hand. Now look, I just said this, but

you know that head knowledge and heart desire without hand application.

Is a real bummer. In fact, it might be the most.

Chrtious thing to know what you need to do and

care about what you need to do and fail to

do it.

I have a son who I will not name and

who will never.

See this, and so it's okay, but please don't tell

him if you know him. But he has said to

me several times, Dad, I know what I want out

of life, and I know it and I actually want it.

I just lack the discipline to do it. Bruh, you better.

You better write that one down too.

You have to love it to ever have the experience

of loving it.

Guess what you have to do do it.

I think the easiest analog for me to say is

let's say you know, you know you should go to

the gym and eat healthy, and you really want to

do like a man. I prayed about it. I really

want to, like go to the gym, and I want this.

But you don't go to the gym and eat healthy.

It's worse, but better to have ignorance over what you want.

It's worse if you will not do it.

It takes this.

Like we were just reading Acts chapter four and the

Shared Bible reading for the Church today, and in that story,

Peter and James begin to do the things that Jesus

has done, and man.

They get bold. They are fired up for Jesus.

They will declare in a crowd, they'll stand against conflict.

You know why I think they're doing that.

They've started to taste the reward of doing what Jesus

called them to and it is addictive. I see what

it's like to know it, to love it, and to

do it, and I want this more for my life.

So you connect your head and your heart and your

hand together.

Hand together is how we do this work.

It's kind of funny because I finished the Why message

last week. I walked out in the lobby after the

service and a friend of mine walked up to me

and said, oh, Christian man, I'm excited for Why.

Thank you and I'm interested to hear about the how.

But if you tell me it's just about writing a

check every two weeks.

I'm going to be disappointed. And I was like, zing heard,

it will be some of that. But if it is

only that, that wouldn't be participation.

Now I want to address that head on. How do

we then, Christian? How do we apply our hands? And

I know this is going to be another three and

I hope you're note taking and whether or not you

remember this precisely is unimportant to me.

But this is classic. This won't be ear shattering. We

do these three things.

We get involved, we go where we give, or we

get involved, and we go and we give. We it's

kind of those seeing three things working together again. We

get involved, we go to we give, we get involved.

Kelsey Fairfield, if you haven't met her, that's Kelsey right there,

and she's probably sitting over there somewhere back there.

Kelsey help us with the global mission.

Also, she coordinates all of our local impact ministry. She's

put together an extraordinary calendar of opportunities. The next year

is me loaded with opportunities for you to put your

hand in the work.

But this is one of.

Those things that you got to have to actually show

up and do. And again, really extraordinary opportunities coming up

this week, but these are chances for us to go

and apply our hand.

And it means if we want to raise future leaders,

we need.

People who get involved with kids and youth and internship.

Get involved. We rolled out a new section of the

website this week about Kingdom Builders.

It's big, so brace yourself.

But I would invite you this week go check out

Kingdom Builders. Just right at the top of the menu,

and you're going to see all the ways and the

objectives and individual partners and organizational partners. But every single

page ends with this invitation get involved.

How can I get involved? I'm gonna get involved in that.

I love that.

I'm gonna put my hand to it. So we get involved.

We have to kind of practically be involved ourselves. The

second is to go, and by that I mean like

out of this building, out of the safe spaces of

our small groups and homes, like go into our community.

As a Christian you are a community leader, Go into

our communities and go around the world carry this Kingdom

building mission with us outside. Part of the big goal

of Kingdom Builders is to massively multiply the number of

short term mission and service opportunities that are available and

the number of.

Partners that we work with around the world. In the past, we've.

Had a mission or maybe a mission trip, a short

term missions trip every.

Available every year or so or every other year.

This year we will have four short term missions trips

available you can check those on the website, with a

goal to have seven to ten short term missions trips

available every year. I want every person who can have

an opportunity to go. So we will offer a smorgas

board of times and dates and locations and opportunities and

we'll just see what flies and what doesn't. But we

will have driving our mission that we create opportunities for.

Us to go.

Right now, we have about twenty individual partners or missionaries

that we partner with. But it's our goal through Kingdom Builders,

that every single Northwest Ministry Network missionary that comes to

Venture Church and says will you support me, without question

or hesitation or answer will be yes. So we will

see that roster of people grow as we are faithful

to Kingdom Builders. This is about these opportunities to go.

And last week I was meeting with Sue pent Sue

helps coordinate our Mexico mississ trips.

She's been doing them since twenty and eleven.

This year they're going to Ensnata, Mexico to build another house.

And I was talking to her about her excitement, and

I was moved by her accounts of how the lives

of people are changed.

When they build a house.

But I was also just delighted to see Sue light

up like Sue, like her whole expression change as she

talked about how short term missions had dramatically impacted her life,

how it had like shifted. It was an inflection point

where she reframed what life was all about. And she

lit up because she knew that's the power of going,

the power.

Of doing it.

And so I just got excited that Sue was excited

and how excited she is to take you next time.

So go on the website find out when Sue going again.

Get signed up. You can go build a house and

it's not a Mexico. The last one under there is Give.

Now. I don't want to be shy about give either.

Obviously, Give is going to be a portion of the

work that we do together. We will combine our resources

in a common Kingdom Builders Fund, and this common fund

that we share together will multiply our impact to our partners,

individual and organizational, and it will assure them We've got you.

We never miss a payment, we are always here to

support you. It simplifies everything. In fact, from here on out,

there'll be two ways to kind of support the mission

at Venture Church. One will be if the faithful tithes

that keep this organization running, and the second will be

Kingdom Builders.

We'll give to Tithe.

We'll give to Kingdom Builders, and with Kingdom Builders together

we'll support all of those objectisatives that we have set.

You don't have to give to Kingdom Builders, honestly, a

kingdom generosity is the goal. But Kingdom Builders will endeavor

to be one of the best investments you can find.

We will deliberately and intelligently invest our common resources with

partners that we know and have vetted and have relationship

with and can measure their impact. Every single dollar will

be carefully managed with sharp accountability to our board, to you,

and to Jesus.

So be a trustworthy place for us to work together.

So we will apply head, heart and hand as we

get involved, go and give the next two frameworks are

really fast, trust me. The one I want you to

know is introduce, update, and celebrate. And here's simply what

I want to convey to you is that we will

talk about this every month save January. Every month I

will introduce you to a new partner or plan or

initiative or hope.

You will get to know who it is we partner with.

Around the world and it will give you an update,

how are they doing, how's Kingdom builders doing? And then

we will celebrate everything that Jesus has done through our

faithfulness together. One of the things I have found in

church is often you get somebody will get up and

get you riled up for someone We're gonna building something somewhere,

and you're like, yay, you can help, yay, and then

you never hear about it again.

Like we're gonna do this together. It means we get

to celebrate together.

You get to know, and I pledge to you transparency

and regular communication hold me accountable.

You will know.

Introduce every single month, update every single month, celebrate every

single month, and that will run over and over through

the last framework. I know this is the thriller you've

been waiting for. February through December, your weight is over.

I'll finally this topic. I know you've been waiting.

Kingdom Builders will run on an annual cycle. Remember, we

organize what we want to cultivate, right we want to grow.

Kingdom Bills will run on an annual cycle from February

to December. So starting in February, every single year, we'll

introduce our annual plan, our partners, opportunities, mission trips, our

budget for the year, and then we'll begin to roll

it out this year with a reasonable stretch and all

of the ways that we bring money through Kingdom mills.

This year alone, we are planning you ready, one million

dollars to expand the global mission, make a local impact

and develop future leaders. One that's on top of what

we do one million additional dollars. This is the power

of our cooperative effort together. Throughout the year, we'll introduce updates, celebrate,

We'll lead up to a Kingdom Builder's Banquet in October,

and then two weeks before Thanksgiving. Every year we'll start

kind of a generosity wave through the Miracle offering.

It'll carry us through the end of the year.

We'll close all our obligations that we made where our

partners will take a breath in January and then we'll

start all over again. So we'll just make this habitual

rhythm as we grow together to love what Jesus loves

and do what Jesus does, and every year growing partnerships,

plans and places, building God's kingdom with intentionality until he's

famous everywhere, or until he returns and judges.

And restores everything. That's the simple plan.

After his resurrection, Jesus was preparing to take his rightful

place back on the throne of heaven, where he rules

from right now, And he was inaugurating this great church

age of participation that we live in, and he gave

us a clear and guiding mission from which we draw

ours Matthew twenty eight eighteen through twenty. Then Jesus came

to them and said, all authority in heaven and on

earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make

disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of

the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

and teaching them to obey everything. I have come and you,

and surely I will be with you always to the

very end of the age. Can you see how this

is essentially, make Jesus famous. Go everywhere and make him

famous into every human heart, every culture, every place. Go

make my name famous, baptize them into my name, disciple

them into the kind of life that I have seen

you discipled into. Go make Jesus famous, and ask you,

like I did last week, Ventcher, when do we stop

doing that? When we were like, well, that was good,

I guess we can pause, engulf When do we stop

working with patience, with urgency, but no fear, no anxiety.

This doesn't sound like crazy paste thing. When do we

stop with love and attention and faithfulness and stretch planting

churches or supporting missions, or loving our neighbors, or taking

great care of kids and raising them up to be

the next generation of Christian leaders.

When do we stop noticing.

The vulnerable and feeding the hungry and.

Clothing the endclothed.

When do we stop moving into our neighborhoods and moving

around the world to make Jesus famous.

Friends. We don't ever stop until he returns or until

he is famous everywhere.

And I just suggest to you, as I did last week,

if you take this as another obligation, it will be

a bummer. But if you take it as a joy

to underline every single human life and a reason for us.

Why do we get together?

I mean, I love being together every one hundred and

sixty eight hours once a week so that we can

worship Jesus. That's great, but that is not the end

of what we're doing. We gather to prepare ourselves to

worship and reorient so that we may participate and the

missions is the greatest joy of life to participate in the.

Mission of Jesus. John Wesley, a great Christian leader, wrote a.

Kind of a prayer charge that I hinted at last week,

but I've changed a little bit.

I've just changed the pronouns to the common plural so

that it.

Can be for us. But I give you this charge.

Hear it now, and I mean, listen to this.

Let us do all the good we.

Can by all the means we can, in all the

ways we can, and all the places we can, and

all the times we can, to all the people we can,

as long as ever we can. May God give us

strength to be kingdom builders faithfully all the days.

Of our life.

This week, I've given us three concrete steps that I

want you to think about. The first is I'd love

you to go read Matthew twenty eight eighteen through twenty

the commission given by Jesus, and like last week, I

want you to sit down and put on your imagination

hat and ask, Holy Spirit, how am I participating in

this mission?

I just want to say, like.

Pastor's heart to you, to go through life building your

empire and not participating in this mission is a missed opportunity.

To participate in this mission will make all the rest

of the parts of your life fall into place. Lord,

how do I participate in this mission too? I'd love

for you to go check out the Kingdom Builder's website.

Would you dig around see what says just get like

a better sense. Also, find mistakes and send them to me.

I am a fallible human being. Kelsey and I have

certainly made mistakes. We'd love to know and get them fixed.

So if you find a mistake, send it to us

and we will promptly get it fixed.

The third is always think about a concrete step.

You get these huge ideas and that if you don't

do something with them at hearthand they get lost, and

it can be something tiny.

This week, I will do that thing. I'll stop and

think about it.

This week I will spend some time digging around, try

to understand what it looks like.

Or this week I'm.

Gonna, you know what, I Am going to become a

regular recurring donor to Kingdom Builders. You go on the website,

find that whatever it is, find a concrete way to

start living this life.

It's a great invitation. Again, I just want to say,

it's not obligation.

Only Jesus, who is good and has loved us, has

obligated to life to conquer death and to invite us

into a life worthwhile. And so I turned that into

a prayer, King Jesus, maybe live with you, by you,

through you, by your strength, participating in what you're doing,

because that will be the best life we could ever lead.

I thank you, I bless Venture Church, ask for your

help in this good work in Jesus' name.

Amen,