Venture Unfiltered #18: Why Seattle

Hey, people Venture Church as Pastor Brandon here or PV. It's great to

see you again. I think this is episode seventeen eighteen something like that with

our podcast, Tony You'll fix it whenever he's back. My co host Tony

is not available today. He is at a church planning conference in Boise,

Idaho. Then half the staff is away getting ready for Erica Lane's wedding.

So my incredible guest co host today is none other than Die Beals, also

known as your Wife, also known as my wife Privileged. I'm back for

a second episode. I know. Did you know? So far besides the

episode that we did on Hillsong, your episode is by far the most listened

to. Wow. So just quick announcement. I think this is kind of

fun. Maybe I think they're taking a picture, but I'll hold it up.

There's a magazine that is called Outreach. This is kind of a big

deal to pastors, like non pastors don't really care, but it basically evaluates

the top one hundred churches in America based upon size, fastest growing churches that

are the most reproductive meaning they plant the most churches, the most outreach focused,

and our church once again for the second time ever made the outreach one

hundred. We came in as one of the one hundred fastest growing churches in

America. We had a feeling that that was going to happen. Thank you.

I like that you started off by saying non pastors won't care. So

basically all of our listeners, yes, this is just magazine's a big deal

to pass. It's just I don't know if it's a big deal to other

people. But we came in at number ninety seven, so we barely slid

in as one of the fastest growing churches in America. Raider's role. Thank

you, Judah. What today we want to do two things. Day is

going to ask me a bunch of different questions, but we want to talk

about I call it the why we've decided that our next major campus that we're

going to expand into is Seattle. And then we want to take a little

bit. I'm in the middle of a series through the Book of Jonah,

and we want to do a deep dive on the Book of Jonah. One

of the things that happens is I spend days studying for a thirty five minute

message, and there's all these things that I wished I could say, but

I don't really have the opportunity. Oftentimes people will grab me in the lobby

afterwards and they'll say, Hey, have a question about this or did you

know that? And I always know the answer and yes, I did know

it. I just didn't have the time to cover it. And as I

studied last week for Jonah chapter one and this week for Jonah chapter two,

easily in both of these chapters there was like four or five different sermons that

would have been really compelling, great content that I could have taught, but

I chose the particular direction that I went, and I thought this might be

interesting for people that want to dig deeper into a particular topic that we're discussing

at church. And Die is going to ask me a series of questions that

relate to Jonah. But first off, we are going to talk about Seattle.

Die, what are your thoughts on this new campus in Seattle? Very

exciting. I think the first thing that came to my mind, besides that

I was excited about it, was a question that maybe has come to mind

for those who've been around Venture for at least a few months. Back in

January, we had our annual Vision meeting and we made an announcement at our

annual Vision meeting as we were dreaming about this upcoming year that we were going

to plant a campus in Las Vegas, and that is seems to not be

the case. We've instead announced Seattle. And there might be some questions out

there about why we've made that choice. Why don't you speak to that.

I still love Vegas. We all know and love the Raiders Raiders role,

and I love the Vegas nights and things, so I still have a heart

for Vegas. This was a little bit of a process that happened, and

you and I went on that Convoy of Hope trip, and so every year

Die and I joined pastors of large churches around America that are big supporters of

Convoy and we go on a trip and we get to spend time with all

these megachurch pastors around the nation, and lots of things we get inspired with,

and there's many times where the Holy Spirit starts speaking to us. And

the big thing that the Lord really hammered me on on this Convoy of Hope

trip, I just finished this entire sermon series to the Book of Acts.

It took us nine months to get through Acts. And there is a section

and acts at the very beginning where Jesus basically tells the disciples, the Holy

Spirit's going to come upon you, and it's going to come upon you with

power, and it's going to allow you to be my witnesses in Jerusalem Judaeus

Samaria until the ends of the earth. And so I quote that verse all

the time. And while I was on this convoy trip, I really felt

like the Lord said, Brandon, are you really going to plant a campus

in the ends of the earth before you plant a campus in your Jerusalem?

And that's where I started thinking about Seattle. The problem was I'd already gone

down this road with Tony, and Tony and Area were very excited about Las

Vegas and it seemed it was going to change full course for them. But

this was a little bit about what the Lord was doing now whenever I consider

planting a campus. So this is maybe more information than the average person really

cares about, but this is in our thought process. So and again we've

done a lot of talking over the last several months about discovering the will of

God and hearing the voice of God, and so how do I discover what

is God's will for the next location for a campus. And I would say

there's really four key ways that we determine if something is a go. You

don't need to have all four of these things. You'd like as many of

them as possible. But the four things, and they're in no particular order,

but you want there to be a catalytic leader. So you want a

leader who you feel like you can build a campus around he or she is.

They're a people magnet, they're great at building teams, they're evangelistic.

A great example of that is Justin and Amanda Farley in Spokane. I mean,

they are catalytic leaders, incredible and so just a plus quality leaders.

And that's why I really felt about Tony Narrows. So I felt like we

have the catalytic leaders. But that's a piece of it. But the second

part of it is, is there a group of people that we have that

are connected to Venture. Maybe they're connected to our central campus it's in proximity

of our central campus, or they listen online, or we have relationship.

But there's people in a community saying we want an expression of faith similar to

Venture. There, so a group of people. The third piece would be

is God providing a kingdom asset Kingdom asset, meaning that if there's a building

involved, that will move something up a lot. Like if I understand as

a church planner, I spent eighteen years chasing buildings and now we you know,

we were just in staff meeting today and you know, we love our

building. It's been a blessing. But we could have a building twice this

size and it still wouldn't be sufficient for the amount of growth that we have.

So it seems like a church planner is always chasing buildings. So if

God fast forwards that process by giving you a building, that's God speaking to

you. And then I would say probably the fourth piece of this is there

is a clear Macedonian call, like when God told, you know, the

disciples go to Paul, go to Macedonia and minister. If we have a

clear call, Well, I would say with Vegas, we love Vegas,

but we didn't really have a clear call. There's lots of places where we

want to plant churches and in our master plan of the next ten fifteen years

places we want to go, but they weren't necessarily God saying do this one

right now. All these places need Jesus, they're all So you would say

there's a generic call but not a specific two Vegas. There was really no

kingdom ass set at all, Like every time we would try to pursue something

and we thought we had two opportunities, and the door slammed shut big time.

And then the last piece was we knew it was going to be an

effort to get people to move there. We didn't really have a group.

Now we were willing to still do it, and we may in the future.

It's still a possibility and an opportunity. But it was undeniable that God

was giving us a Macedonian call about Seattle when it's as clear as day,

Brandon, why are you going to the ends of the earth before you reach

Jerusalem. Then Tony and I and Ariel started having the same conversation, and

the Holy Spirit starts dealing with their heart too, and their heart begins to

transition to Seattle, and then everything else starts falling in place. So we

feel a Macedonian call. There's a catalytic leader, and we know that there's

actually several opportunities for facilities, and I feel really clearly that by the time

we launched that campus, we are going to launch that campus with a facility,

Like God is going to provide a kingdom asset and people are coming in

droves to want to be a part of it well. And having also walked

beside Tony and Ariel in the early stages of this process, they have a

clear call on their lives to go and plant. I think the question that

you and I kept asking them that they had to wrestle their way through is

God calling you to plant or is he calling you to plant in a specific

place? Because if God has spoken Las Vegas, then you got to obey

no matter how hard it is. And that as they wrestled their way through,

they have the ability to go to a place and have vision for it.

So that's where they were struggling, is they had gone to Las Vegas

and they could see the need, and they could see vision and have vision

for that place. But that didn't mean that God was saying it has to

be here, or you're disobeying me. So that was an interesting It was

fun to walk alongside of them, Probably not fun for them, but fun

for us as leaders in their lives. So we're excited for Tony and Ail

what's coming. That then gives us an immediate next question, what happens to

what Tony's leading right now predominantly Dinner Church, which happens at our Everett campus.

So he is our Everett campus pastor right now. He facilitates our Dinner

Church pastors over that people. The people there, we care about them,

what happens there. We want to continue to have a missional presence in Everett.

So Dinner Church is not going anywhere. This might be an announcement that

many of you are about to hear. We've actually signed a contract to sell

that building. We knew that long term, if we wanted to do anything

expansive in effort, it wasn't going to happen at that location. We needed

better parking, we needed a larger facility. If you've never gone to our

Effett facility, the only bathrooms are downstairs in the back of the kids area,

so you have people they would have to literally walk through the kids area

to go to the bathroom. It just was not an ideal building whatsoever.

And so we've signed a contract. Now we're working through the feasibility process and

things can always fall apart, but we feel like it's probably gonna close.

Part of the contract was that we get to continue to do Dinner Church there

for the next two years. And I always joked that a year adventures the

equivalent of seven years at any other church, and so two years for us

as an eternity. And then I go back to the list that I've already

said, and I go back to this Kingdom masset piece that once we solidify

Seattle, I think God's going to open up a door for Everett, and

I just believe that there is a building there that is going to be more

of a permanent location for us. Then we'll probably move Dinner Church there,

and then we'll start exploring stepping out and maybe doing Sunday morning services there and

different things like that. So Everett is definitely on our heart. It's still

there. We've actually interviewed someone and are about to extend an offer to someone

to be the Everett campus pastor to oversee Dinner Church once Tony completely transitions into

Seattle. So keep listening for those of you that are connected to Venture will

make that announcement probably at the beginning of October who that person is. But

we're really excited about it. I want to go back to just one thing

that you said, when you're talking about what Tony and Ariel were wrestling through

you and I know that when and we've shared this story a hundred times,

what am I saying a thousand times? At one oh one? That we

sensed the call of God to plant and we really felt like that that was

our active obedience, that that was the risk that everywhere needed. Jesus and

the Lord was basically giving us permission per se to plant wherever we wanted to

because we were willing to take that active obedience to plant. Now, there's

many people they're not only called the plant, but they're told by God to

plant in a specific area. But it really wasn't Tony an aerial either.

Right, Yeah, there's a need for churches all over the world. I

just have a hard time believing that God is shaking his head no when we

say we want to plant in Seattle. There's clearly a need there well,

and it's why I go back to those four key metrics that helped me kind

of navigate through God's will for the next place. And again that's kind of

it's not the end all to end all, but it really helps guide well.

In side note, church planning is the hardest thing we've ever done,

so having support people nearby and resources nearby only just helps them have a better

launch in our opinion. Well, okay, so this brings up a great

question. Because you've just stated that Everett remains important to us. We'll continue

to maintain a presence there. We care about Everett, we also care about

our campuses in Spokane and Pulouse, and we need our campuses that are close

by, partly because we can only cram so many people into our central campus

and as evidenced by being on Outreach one hundreds top fastest Growing Church list again

this year. And if you've been to our central campus on a Sunday anytime

recently, you've experienced it personally. We really are completely out of space.

Even just this past Sunday morning, our kids facilities in our ten am service

were absolutely maxed. So talk a little bit about our maybe less about our

space issues because I've just stated we have them. What's what's the plan moving

forward? What are we thinking? Yeah, based upon where we are at

this moment, with our current numbers and trajectory for the Outreach one hundred next

year, we will probably be in the top ten fastest growing churches. So

this was again for our numbers for twenty twenty two. But when you get

to our twenty twenty three numbers, it's far. Yeah, they're crazy.

Exceeds that to give you an idea. I know everybody teases me that I'm

evangelistic, that our role in your life is to keep it from sometimes I

exaggerate, So I don't count any of our numbers. I don't have anything

to do with it. We have ushers that count those numbers, and it's

primarily overseen by Cole, So Cole, Happy birthday, Cole, it's his

birthday to days turns twenty eight. He actually is the one that then gives

me what our numbers were, and he just shared with us in staff meeting,

and then Alex affirmed it. So you got like my two numbers.

Guys who are going to give you complete, brutal, honest numbers. Said

that all three services were up anywhere from twenty five to forty people. That's

what they said, all three of our services this Sunday, So the first

regular Sunday of September. Yeah, first regular we anticipate that. It's usually

it takes till October one for Sunday in October for things to kind of hit

the fall kind of hit it hard in the fall, so we know what

the trajectory is and we are completely out of space. So, by the

way, if you're sing and every whenever you park off site, you are

my hero. You should get a free coffee every single Sunday morning. Thank

you for parking off site. We know that we had about forty people that

transition from the ten am service to one of our other services, and we

really appreciate that, and then we immediately filled it up even more so at

the ten am it's it's just the nature. And by saying we're completely out

of space, do not hear us say don't come to church or only watch

online. We're just saying that capacity wise, we got to think now about

what we're going to do for space. We want people to continue to come,

so where are we going to put them? Yeah, I mean you

guys go to Mariners games when they're packed and Seahawks games when they're packed.

You can come to church when it's a little bit full. We got it

organized, it feels safe, it's super fun, there's tons of energy.

No, I don't think you shouldn't come. You should definitely come. You

just need to come a little bit early to find a parking spot and be

willing to occasionally park off site. We are going through a massive remodel.

It will probably will Priye break ground sometime in twenty twenty four. Let's use

the word expansion. We have to expand our facility. Yeah, it's an

awesome facility. It's still brand new. It just needs more space. We

will add classrooms for adult classes, which that's obviously your areas adult discipleship,

and we want to start doing more classroom type teaching and we just need classrooms.

We're adding about two hundred and fifty seats to the auditorium. We're doubling

our kids space and increasing our office space. So for the average person who's

been to our central campus, do you want to give any information on how

we're doing. Where are these things happening? Where are two hundred and fifty

more people going to fit in the auditorium? We are putting in a balcony.

Okay, what we've done right now in the facility is we've maximized what

we can do facility wise without an elevator, So we're putting in an elevator.

What most people don't know is that there's a lot of empty space right

now. The it's built into the frame of the building that we just left

empty upstairs because we couldn't access it because we have an elevator. So you

put in an elevator accesses that. So if you understand where my office is,

my office is doubled with the same type of space upstairs, and that

will turn into kind of an office wing. And then if you understand where

Alex's office, Kayley's office, and Heather's office behind that is completely empty open

space that is probably about half of the entire current office space can be increased

up there. So there'll be classrooms done. And then we call it the

grassy Knoll. Outside of the kid's space and our back end trends, there's

this little square of grass that is going to become a two story kind of

classrooms and I think each floor will have two different classrooms that it will be

four total classrooms that can double for adult classes and kids classes on Sunday.

And then we're gonna some of the open space that we have in the back

we'll just kind of get filled in. So if you imagine where the hub

ends, that it goes all the way to the end of the grassy Knoll,

connects to the building. You can massively increase lobby space and all of

this. It's gonna sound like it's a lot of money. It's going to

be about four and a half million dollars. That's actually not as bad as

we thought it was going to be. So and we think realistically we can

have that entire project completed within two years. Yeah, it's super exciting and

at which point, if we continue to grow, which we expect to,

we will then max out as much as we can do in that building,

which is why expansion through campuses is part of the vision. Yeah, and

there's going to come a point where we will add a fourth service too.

We were going to do it this fault, and just to be honest with

everybody that's listening, we really considered adding a fourth service and doing it Wednesday

night, So that would have been Wednesday night, would have been our first

service of the week. And the only reason that we held off on that

a little bit was because of our passion to do discipleship classes. Why don't

you just take a couple of minutes and explain what are the Wednesday night discipleship

classes that we're launching in October? Right, So groups are a huge part

of what we do at Venture. Small groups of people that happen all over

the place all year round. That's a great place to build community and a

good place for spiritual development. But again the emphasis is community. Classes is

our way of saying, hey, we want to help you grow at Venture,

and we're going to do that through two pathways. Pathway number one is

groups. Pathway number two is classes. So under the heading of Venture You,

we're going to launch eventually eight classes to begin with in October. We're

going to launch our first two. It will be quite simple. One of

them is how do I love the Bible? How do I read it,

know it, understand it and love it? And the second one will be

who is Jesus? These are the top two things we're being asked by brand

new people coming to church, so great questions. We want to help you.

Each class is one hour long for three weeks, so these will happen

on Wednesday night at seven pm. To partner with this, we also have

kids programming happening, so we will have kids classes that are calling kids you,

and that, along with our youth services, provide something for the entire

family on Wednesday nights. So our classes are going to focus on spiritual development.

Spiritual growth where community will happen. So in these two highways, one

predominantly focuses on community and friendships, one focuses on spiritual development, and together

they help us grow people who are coming here and not just new people,

all people. And we foresee by the end of this school year, Wednesday

Night's going to have up to eight classes going at a time. Yeah,

all eight will be launched. Well space wise, we can really only handle

four or five at a time, so we're thinking we'll alternate them each month

and that'll really be fully up and rolled out by January. We're not going

to roll stuff out in December. That's crazy, crazy talk. So that's

one of the main reasons why we didn't add that fourth service yet, though

we actually really need it, because we want to make sure that this launch

is really well and sometimes if you launched too many things at one time,

it's confusing, but we do want you to be ready venture. There's going

to come a point, probably right around the first of the year, we

are going to add a fourth service. It will likely be Wednesday Nights.

We'll still have our worship in Prayer Night, which is again, why these

classes only go three weeks because we want everybody to go to the Worship in

Prayer Night. So the Worship in Prayer Night will continue to be once a

month on Saturer on Wednesday nights. It will just be a different, different

than our regular service, which will then go back to regular services on Wednesday

nights. But that is the plan, but that will not start and for

a little bit. So between now and then, just know that there's hope

for all of these space issues. This is going to be super fun as

there's lots of things happening and it's gonna comes to a class. You might

be in a corner of something with you know, pipe and drape around you

because we just got to fit people in. And let me tell you,

I have friends that pastor churches with gargantuan buildings and no people. They wish

they had this problem and it's not a problem. It's a joy. We

have the most fun issues to deal with us. So yeah, there we

go. Those are space issues. Let's let's transition a little bit because we

have just launched a new series and we tend to love it. We are

our staff here especially, we tend to love it when we do deep dives

into a book of the Bible, so we've just launched into the Book of

Jonah. And there are so many things that can't go into a weekly message,

and so I'm just going to make a little plug right now. You're

going to hit on some things that you didn't have time to put in your

message last week or your message coming up. But also these are the kinds

of resources that we attached to our What's Next page every week, which is

on our app and our website where you can kind of see what's from the

cutting room floor, what didn't make the message. But there's one really interesting

one, and you briefly mentioned it to me, So I'm excited to hear

you kind of dive in on this a little bit too. And that comes

It came up because recently there was a revival meeting that happened at a church

nearby and they had a guest speaker and as he was speaking, he was

talking about the symbol that is we know it as the Starbucks symbol, the

Starbucks icon, logo, whatever you want to call it, and that logo

has a quarter to this speaker, quite a bit of history behind it,

as well as spiritual meaning. And I don't want to take the thunder away

from the instructions given by this speaker, But so why don't you just kind

of give us what we know was said and what is the meaning behind that

logo. Now, again, I don't know what was actually said at the

service, I know how it was interpreted by some of its fair and some

of the people that hurt it are beginning a boycott of Starbucks based upon this.

Now you're familiar with this Starbucks symbol everyone. If not, you can

google it and see it. And this speaker shared that this is based on

the god goddess Ishtar. The irony about Ishtar is Ishtar is actually the deity

that the Assyrians worshiped. Okay, so give us some background for anyone that

missed your message. Okay, So who is Assyria and how is that connected

to Jonah? So the Assyrians were the empire that had conquered Israel, and

so when God told Jonah to go to Ninevah, Ninevah was the capital city

of the Assyrian empire. And the Assyrians were brutal, terrible, horrible people.

They flayed people alive, they chopped heads off people. When they actually

took prisoners. They would chop the hands off of the prisoners so that the

prisoners couldn't write. They would gouge out their eyes and so they could not

see, and chop off their ears and chop off their nose, and they

were just horrible, vile people. And it really kind of launches the whole

story of Jonah. And again, you really need to hear my message about

it, so if you missed it, please go back to our venture podcasts

and listen to that message. But the real reason that Jonah didn't want to

go to Ninevah was because he hated the Assyrians. And I shared, Yeah,

I mean, they were brutal, they killed his people. They'd all

heard stories. They were ruthless. And Jonah knows the heart of God and

he knew that if he goes to Ninevah and preaches, the Ninovites are going

to repent and then God is going to relent. Now we are all thankful

that God does that in our lives, each one of us. But bottom

line, the Assyrians and the people of Ninevah worshiped Ishtar. I find Ishtar

really fascinating because Ishtar is simultaneously the god of war and the god of love.

So it's usually the symbol is this woman with basically like fish tails,

two of them that kind of connect and then she grabs them. And there's

all kinds of ancient statues of Ishtar that have been excavated, their symbols and

paintings they found on walls, and and we know it's really historically accurate that

the Assyrians worshiped Ishtar, And the Bible's clear it's the very first commandment,

you shall have no other gods before me. You should not. The second

commandment is that you should not make any an idol of any graven image and

things like that. So I totally understand the concern with the image, and

hold on, is she actually Ishtar? Is the logo that Starbucks has?

Does it look exactly like what we see in history? Possibly? Okay,

okay, it is. I mean, I when when I heard the concern

from people, I looked it up and I've done some research and I think

it's possible it could be a siren, and a siren is just a female.

Yeah, definitely is meant to be a female deity and things like that.

Here's my two cents on whether or not you should boycott Stars. First

off, if the Holy Spirit is leading you to do that, you be

obedient to what the Holy Spirit is leading you to do. I'm not gonna

tell one person that they should or shouldn't do anything. I think it is

possibly the symbol of ishtar. Possibly. I think you go back to what

is the intent? Now? Do I believe that In the seventies, when

Howard Schultz started a coffee shop and then he bought out, Like if you

know the story of Howard Schultz, I've read both of his books. Okay,

he buys this coffee franchise that maybe had like eight or nine and we

remember pre Starbucks, there was just espresso stands everywhere. They were like every

they were a dimadzen. There's one on every street corner. And so he

bought a franchise like a group that had like eight of them, that eventually

merged them together, changed the name to Starbucks, and he needed a symbol.

And and you know, Howard Schultz is kind of a strange guy.

He is, you know, oftentimes eccentric billionaires, they're strange. Elon Musk,

he's kind of strange. Bill Gates strange. Paul Allen, My sister

worked for Paul Allen, he's strange, and they're they're all a little bit

strange. So is it possible he went on some pilgrimage and saw this symbol

of ishtar and thought that would be really good. Possible? Do I think

he put the symbol on there so that people would drink coffee and have a

and basically do the equivalent of a demonic incantation. No, you're given the

guy way too much credit. He saw the symbol, thought it was cool,

thought it was memorable. It's gone through like eight different, you know,

variations over the years. I don't think his intent back in the nineteen

seventies was to put that symbol on there. And over the next fifty years,

people are going to become obsessed with coffee. Starbucks will be a bigger

brand than McDonald's, and we will be able to indoctrinate people with the worship

of ishtar. Like I don't. I don't think he has an altered to

ishtar in his office or in his house, right. I think he liked

the symbol, thought it was creative, and went for it. But again,

if you're convinced that he has some ulterior evil motive, then you should

not go to Starbucks. Well, it's interest. It was interesting to you

and I, which is why we've brought this up. That the timing of

this was so unique that that that statement and these little grassroots kind of boycott

that's happening was simultaneous with launching a series on Jonah where you mentioned Ishtar in

your message too. I think it does bring up a broader thought. There

are lots of things in our lives that have pagan roots and to them that

we know about and lots of times don't know about. And so there's a

consistency factor there. For me, I'll speak for myself. If you're going

to be that insistent that something that has such pagan roots to it be excommunicated

from your life, you have to be consistent across where does it end?

Right, Like you can't carve pumpkins because that was definitely has pagan and Satanic

roots to it, or Christmas trees are a symbol of paganism, or I

mean, there's a lot of there's a lot of stuff that we just do

in everyday life and we certainly and I'm not saying don't be cautious or aware,

but there are lots of things in our lives that we don't. We

don't mean for them to be worshipful of a false god. And again,

caution is and wisdom. But that to me is I you know, I

don't go to Starbucks very often personally. I like to make my own coffee

at home. But that feels extreme to me. Yeah. I've done growth

groups in Starbucks and have written hundreds of sermons in Starbucks, and they still

seem to be anointed. I would say, like when it comes to the

boycott cancel culture, I think it's you know, liberals do cancel culture,

Christians do, Conservatives do boycott culture. It's all the same thing. Uh

where did these things end? Procter and Gamble, which many products you have

in your house or from? Remember Gamble? I remember they have that little

quarter moon with the stars and the smiley face, and that is an ancient

mystic symbol. And so there's when was that the nineties? Maybe that was

right when I first got saved. I remember that the preacher stood up and

said, we can't have anything to do with Procter and Gambles. You start

realizing how many products are Procter and gambling. So what we know about Walt

Disney is we know that Disney was friends with Alister Crowley, who is the

author of the Satanic Bible. So if you go back to many of those

original Disney movies, there's all kinds of mystical kind of again you should use

wisdom. Yes, like those. There's a lot of Disney movies with weird

occultism in it that I didn't let my kids, our kids watch when they

were little. But it's broad Nike. Nike is a brand. That name

is the name of the Goddess of Victory three. So yeah, that's pretty

soon. You got to cut a lot of stuff. I just think to

be consistent too. And again I know the whole story between the Nike symbol

and everything too. There there, you're giving the people that decided to use

this brand way more credit than they probably deserve. They liked the symbol,

they liked the sign, they liked a little bit of the meaning and ended

it. But there wasn't like sort of demand on a conspiracy theorist backstories to

them for the most part. But again, you be true to what the

Holy Spirit is speaking to you. Here's what I want to assure everybody overall,

from everything Disney, Nike, Starbucks, go on and on and on

and on and on. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in

the world. Yeah, you're not going to accidentally be demon possessed because you

are holding a Starbucks cut. No, Like, if you have the Holy

Spirit inside of you, you have the spirit of Jesus inside of you.

Demons tremble at the very mention of the name of Jesus. So if you

truly of Jesus speaking inside of you, let's pretend, let's take it to

an extreme that going to a Starbucks is something like demons hang out in Starbucks.

Well, if you walk into Starbucks, you stress them out because they

tremble by the spirit of Jesus that is inside of you. You overcome the

world. You have overcome the world. You have Jesus inside of you.

You redeem everywhere you go. You have to live in the world, but

you are not of the world. And I just do not think you need

to worry about any of that because in the end, Jesus wins. If

you've ever wondered what it's like to sit in the car while Brandon and Die

drive somewhere and what they talk about, I'm sitting here chuckling because we have

actually had this exact conversation in the car, so welcome to our lives.

Yes, all right, I think I have one more big question and then

we'll just see where it goes. Your message really focused in a unique direction

for Jonah. Chapter one, which a spoiler if you haven't heard the message

yet, was really about God's love, So less about Jonah, less about

his obedience or lack thereof, to go where God told him to go,

and more about how much God loves even this wicked nation of people that he

would hand select someone to go and give them the opportunity to repent. So

really, Jonah is about God's love for human beings. But I would love

for you to just take a second or a minute or two and talk about

what happens when we run from God. So we see Jonah's story, it's

quite dramatic, not any of our experiences and most likely won't be. But

what happens? What are what? Talk about what it means to run from

God and how that impacts our lives. Yeah, I'll answer this and then

I'll probably wind this down. This has been like three great podcasts and one

Obviously, ninety nine point nine percent of the sermons that people have heard about

the story of Jonah. It has something to do with this disobedient prophet who

ran from God, and what happens when you run from God? And there's

a lot of principles that you can get from that. And absolutely and we

all relate to God really challenges us with something, and we ran the opposite

direction. And what happens when you run in the opposite direction. So when

I talk ab, I could have preached five other sermons. One of the

other sermons that I would have preached is what happens when we run from God.

So if you're listening to this and God has asked you to do something

and you've gone the opposite direction. Maybe he has asked you to change your

profession and you've gone the opposite direction. Maybe he's asked you to move,

maybe he's asked you to serve, or maybe he's just asked you to be

faithful to him, yeah, or become his follower, and you are running

from him. There's some similarities that happens when people run. And I just

have just three quick thoughts and then I'll wind this down. When people run

from God, they always tend to run to the strangest places. That's the

first thing. So what we see in Jonah is Jonah runs as far away

as he possibly can. He hops in a boat and he's heading twenty five

hundred miles to Tarshish. And I'm going to talk this Sunday about there's many

scholars that they don't believe that Tarshisa is at the southern tip of Spain.

There's actually some that believe that it is almost this hopeful place that people weren't

sure if it existed, that it symbolized paradise, that Ninevah was like the

equivalent of Jonah going to Hell because of the things they worshiped and the things

they did. But instead Jonah hops on a boat and he runs to this

hopeful paradise that he is going off to. So oftentimes when people run,

they run to the strangest places, and they run in the opposite direction.

Always Yeah, So that opposite direction paradise or literal location. It is him

saying I will not only just say no, but I will also actively go

in the opposite direction you told me to the other thing that happens to people,

I would say. Secondly, when people run from God, there comes

a point when their life will begin to unravel and fall apart. And you

and I've seen this over and over again with people. When people willingly choose

to do the opposite of God wants, you don't even need to be a

prophet. You can say here's what's going to happen to you. Your marriage

is going to fall apart, your finances are gonna fall apart, your kids

are gonna rebel against God. Things are gonna go bad. And they look

at you like, you don't love me, you don't care. And then

when all of those things happen, they're like dumbfounded and shocked. But oftentimes

this unraveling when you're rebellious to Jesus doesn't happen overnight, doesn't happen within the

first fifteen minutes, but it begins to happen over time. And I would

there's so many things that I would love to have an exception to the rule.

I just haven't seen one. There's a person that I know used to

be a part of Venture that was part of the mass conservative exodus during COVID,

And maybe there's many of those people. They might have removed for the

right reason, and God led them and they weren't running away, but there's

death a contingent that ran away because it was like, we live in Ninevah,

and they didn't want to go to Nineva. They wanted to go to

Tarshish. And Tarshish is this idea of paradise and everywhere else is better,

everywhere else the grass is greener. And then you get to Tarshish and it

ain't that great. And there there's one particular person, I mean, their

life has just fallen apart since they've done it, and they're trying everything in

their power to move back and and different things like that. And oftentimes when

you run from God, your life begins to unrab and fall apart. I

just were to add a little peace. We find ourselves in the position of

getting asked advice from us or or sometimes a person doesn't ask advice, but

because we love somebody, we will, you know, maybe ask them to

stop and think a little bit about what they're doing. But just as God

has love so much love that he's sending Jonah to Nineveh, that's our role,

and that's bigger than just a pastoral role. That's a Jesus follower role.

Our role in people's lives is they got to figure out how to walk,

just like you and I do. We have to figure out how to

walk and obey the Lord, and we're not going to get it right every

time. And so our role in people's lives is to love them. You

know, if someone's listening right now and they have run away and they feel

too embarrassed to come back, they're ashamed, we would want them to know

we have nothing but love, because we've made mistakes too. So I can

think of one person years ago. He actually he actually scolded me that you

and I go to Vegas and he said, there's so much sin that happens

there. I'm paraphrasing, but there's so much sin that happens there. How

could you even want to be seen in Las Vegas? And I said,

well, first of all, do you not think they're sin everywhere? I

mean, I think every city is full of sin. But also, wouldn't

we want to be right where people's needs are the most obvious for God?

In other words, don't we want to go to the darkest place to be

the brightest light. And that's that's a philosophy. And we're not trying to

put our calling onto everybody, but people gotta fig all of us got to

figure out how do we how do we obey the Lord and not run in

the opposite direction because it's more comfortable or more enticing where it seems more like

paradise. So point number three. Point number three, when people run from

God, it always seems they hurt the people that are in their close proximity.

And what you saw from Jonah. Jonah hops on a boat and there's

a bunch of innocent sailors. I mean God sent a storm because he was

punishing Jonah, and that punishment for Jonah affected negatively all of those sailors.

I mean they were worried about their lives. There's that part in the story

where they start throwing all their cargo overboard. That cargo meant money. They're

losing wealth, They're afraid for their lives. And that's what happens oftentimes when

when we run from God, we don't run alone. We end up negatively

influencing other people too. And one of the nature of being a minister is

we deal with the I would say, the collateral damage that happens, the

wake of damage that happens in people's paths as they run from God. Like

sometimes we're the wake of damage. Yeah, I would prefer that we were

the wake versus having to pick up the pieces of other people that these people

negatively affected. And it seems like we're doing a lot of that right now.

And yeah, a lot of running from God metaphors. So bring a

word of hope to this. The message series we're doing right now is Jonah

Lessons from a Man who ran And without spoiling where we're going to go in

the message series, but right off of this, what happens when someone runs

from God? What's the hopeful message there? So Jonah ultimately ran from God

because he knew God's heart of compassion and love. That God is slow to

anger, quick to forgive, slow to punish, because he doesn't want anyone

to perish, but everyone to have eternal life. That is the father heart

of God for each one of us. One of the greatest parables is the

parable of the prodigal Son, And as the story goes, the prodigal son

demands his dad give him his portion of the inheritance. He takes it and

he goes off into the city and he squanders it all and eventually ends up

dirt broke, ends up working basically eating pig slop, and he finally wakes

up and says, my dad's servants are treated better than I am, and

he goes home, not knowing if his dad is ever going to act up

to him again. And the story ends with the dad sees his son coming

home and he runs to his son and he kisses his son and he wraps

his arms around him and he gives him everything again because he loves his son

and he longed for his son to come home. And that is the way

that Jesus is with us always. Yeah, that same God that was Gonna,

that was trying to send Jonah to Ninovit so that these evil Assyrian Ninovites

could repent and be restored to a right relationship with God, that same God

is still available for Jonah. And that's what you're going to hear about this

week, is Jonah was being punished by God. But the same God that

wants to relent his judgment with the Ninovites wants to relent his judgment on Jonah

and will forgive. And so my advice is you got to overcome the pride

aspect of it is and just say, you know what I mess step,

I made a mistake, turn around, make that one step towards Jesus and

he makes the rest. And my favorite verse is in Jeremiah fifteen and it

says if you repent, he restores you that you may serve him. And

that is the craziest verse to realize that all we have to do is say

Jesus, I mess up, I made a mistake, and take one step

towards him, and he immediately. And the cool thing is the word repent

means to turn. So all that is all we have to do is take

that first turn where Jonah turned and ran in the other direction where the prodigal

son ran away from home. That first turn back is the act of repentance

and God is waiting. That is it for today. Thank you for listening.

Again. We want to do a shout out for our sponsor, Logo

Software. If you want to know how all of us ministers write our sermons.

We are dependent upon Logos. Their information, their content is extraordinary helps

us speed up all of our research. So we thank Logos. Next week,

Tony is gone again and we will have another guest host next week.

Thank you venture again. Go back listen to that podcast on Jonah chapter one

and I look forward to seeing you this week. Jonah chapter two, and

never forget Jesus is the hope of the world.