Venture Unfiltered: Episode #1

Venture. What's up, Pastor Tony, Pastor Brandon, Welcome to the Venture

Unfiltered Podcast, first episode. The history of this episode, Pastor Brandon,

how you do it today? I'm great? Can I start off by asking

you a question that everybody's wanting to know? Sure? So, when I

occasionally on Sunday mornings, I mean it's super super rare. But when I

occasionally comment on your hairstyle, does it hurt your feelings? No? It's

become white noise. Okay, So all the people that are worried about your

feelings being hurt, they need to know you're totally in on the ball joke.

I'm all in, And here's the reality. It was a second Kings

chapter two. You're gonna some folks are making fun of a life and have

a bunch of bears come out and meet Well, not you, next person

who does it? Yeah? Well, the thing that I like about that

illustration is if you're implying that I look younger than you, you do?

Okay? Good? Where was I the other day and someone I was out

with Pastor Claire. We were grabbing some stuff for the internship, and someone

asked me if I was related to her. They said you like, do

you like her dad or something. They must have been blind. I don't

see the resemblance at all. Hey, one of my favorite moments in the

history of Venture Church was back in our Ashway Building days, and this just

shows Like on Sunday, I was talking about how amazing our staff is and

how we've had no staff turnover for a long time, and I was talking

about you, and my joke with you was we knew Tony back when he

had hair. And I remember Morgan back when he was first on staff and

we were at the Ashway Building and there was this espresso stand right next to

the Ashway Building and the barristad Jordan. We were always inviting her to church

and things, so she knew everyone on staff. And one day Morgan and

I walked up to get coffee and that is where she confessed that she thought

Morgan was my dad. It was really the greatest moment, possibly in the

history of Venture and it would have been more accurate. I better not say

anything. I don't want to get myself in too much trouble on this very

first episode. So the whole point of this podcast is Venture Unfiltered. So

Pobe and I are going to talk Pobe means pastor Brandon if he didn't know,

not peanut butter. Where We're going to kind of just shoot for whatever's

on our minds, address things, hopefully come with a biblical perspective, and

honestly have a conversation we can't always have on a Sunday morning because we don't

have a lot of time, a lot of people in the room. So

before we dive in, Phoebe, what do you think Vegas Nights? Are

they going to the Stanley Cup. They're definitely going to the Stanley Cup.

I hope they finish by winning tonight. Can they beat Florida? I think

they can beat Florida pretty handily if they end up making it to the Stanley

Cup, which I believe they will, I bet they win the Cup in

six games. That's my prediction. I had already predicted that they would beat

Dallas in five games and had a huge debate with Grant Fox about it because

he was convinced it was going to go to seven Vegas to win, and

I just didn't see Dallas matching up very well. YEA, pop culture,

did you just see that Miley Cyrus said she's done doing tours for the rest

of her career. She's so lonely. When she goes and sings to twenty

thousand people, she's done. So, Miley Cyrus, is that Hannah Montana?

Yeah, Hana, I don't even know who she is. Well,

she's done, she's lonely. She should invite her to church. I think

she would come. Yeah, should well? TV? Should we dive in?

I'm good? All right? What's on your mind? What do you

want to chat about today? Well, it's the first time that we're having

this podcast. Oftentimes will maybe dig deeper on the Sunday message talk about things

that are happening around the world. But I think it I think it would

be kind of fun to give a state of where ventures at, a state

of where the church is at. And we've had a really eventful I would

say, last two years. I think one of the things that you and

I should agree on this podcast is we don't ever speak about COVID. Nope,

we don't ever talk about the polarizing election several years ago, and we

just kind of keep it moving forward and looking ahead, and so we can

kind of bring everyone up to speed. What do you think we're positive?

We're positive people here. We don't need to think about life's good right now,

Let's move forward. Yeah, we are post COVID, we've been for

a while, so let's talk about the church. Two years ago, we

were asked God for some big things. You want to kind of elaborate on

that. Where what we were thinking of and praying for It was, Yeah,

I had been at the church. We had started it fifteen sixteen years

before. It was the fall of twenty twenty one, and things were good.

We had kind of navigated through that difficult season that all the churches in

America were dealing with, and we had come out the other side, and

our finances were strong, our staff was united and encouraged. And every year

I get away on a per retreat, and at the pro retreat, I

just got really hungry for a sovereign, sincere move of God. And part

of it was you look at the state of the nation and the state of

the world. All the disunity around the world is like everybody's fighting, everybody's

outraged by everything. It seems like you have to be on the extreme of

one side or the other that if you're a person that lives in the middle

week, you're weak. And those two sides war against each other and hate

each other so much disunity and friction, and it almost if you step back

and you look at it, it almost looked hopeless. And I remember just

praying saying, Lord, what do we do. We're in Seattle, which

is a really challenging area to be a person of faith to begin with,

plus everything happening in our nation, and I just kind of threw my hands

up, I would say, spiritually, and said, this is going to

take an absolute sovereign move of God. Like what we need is revival,

we need we need something that is undeniable, unmistakable, has to be God

where even the biggest skeptic comes in and says that is not man made,

that is not manufactured by a person, That is a legitimate move of God.

And I came back and I shared my heart with the church, just

very open, honestly, transparently. And this is again after talking to the

staff and we kind of united in prayer in that fall and we just were

saying, Jesus, we need you to move we have. Like I looked

at it this way, is what does the church world need? No more

of it needs, no more books we have There is not a book that

has not been written about leadership. There is not a book that has not

been written about church structure or strategy. We have books on everything, like

we have the most information available to us that we've ever had. We can

try multiple different you can be purpose driven, mission driven, missional. You

think any of these things, and you can get a handbook on how to

do it step by step. Yet there were there are less people that are

followers of Jesus in America now than there were five years ago, ten years

ago, twenty years ago. But we have more knowledge, more education,

larger buildings than we've ever had. So what is missing? And we just

need a sovereign move of God. We need revival. And then the staff

we just kind of throw our hands up and said, Jesus, we don't

want any of these other things. We just want you. Yep, that's

it. That's it. I think you know, everyone's focused on system We

need systems, we need good systems, we need strategy, we need all

these things. And I don't want to I don't want to minimize the fact

that we know what we're doing. Structurally at Venture we are where a systems

oriented church. Our entire staff is structured around systems. We believe in excellence

and organization, but we believe that in the end that is only to bring

strength to a real honest move of God. That systems in structure without Jesus

in the middle of it, you're just any other organization, you really are.

And I would say it really did start with obviously you getting away in

pastor Die, but the staff. When the staff got holier, not saying

that we weren't or anything, but they truly sought out Jesus and everything.

It's like suddenly what felt like was maybe a lid or even a barrier was

beginning to get lifted because now it was just about focusing people more on Jesus.

Let Jesus do the speaking, let Jesus do the work. And that

first Revival night with Gleimbertow in January was probably one of the largest gatherings I've

ever been to in the history of our church. That was unreal. Leading

up to that, I remember back in my youth pastor days, I was

probably like twenty five. We brought in this ministry called or Starters and it

was led by this guy named Donnie Marple, who ended up being a really

great friend of mine and dies over the year, and Donnie was the most

passionate, intense, spiritual man I'd ever been around in my life. He's

like David Diaz and close almost. He made a statement, and I'm sure

he wasn't the one that said it first. I'm sure it's been said multiple

times and I don't even know who said it first, but he said,

if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always

got good. And I remember coming back and kind of having the hard to

heart with our staff where I just said, hey, Venture is a great

church. Yeah, we have an amazing staff. It's fun to work here.

You guys like working here. If we don't do anything different, will

always be good. This will always be a good church, I said.

Or we can surrender everything to Jesus and we can see if maybe there's a

new level, new dynamic that he wants to take us too. If we

keep doing what we're doing, we're going to get what we've got, or

we can seek more. And it really led up to that Berto Sunday,

and that was super fun because we all know the story that he almost died.

In fact, he died really eight times, and he's my spiritual father.

He's my hero and ministry and I back then thought I'm never going to

be able to have him preach at my church because we were always in between

buildings and moving and we finally have this large facility, and I was really

excited to have him, but it didn't look like he was ever going to

be able to do it physically. And when he started getting better and he

accepted the offer to come and speak, and our church was pretty jazz because

I had played it up and talked about how this is you guys get to

hear my pastor. I've been your pastor for sixteen years and now you get

to hear my pastor. And the morning service I expected it to be amazing,

and it really was. But the first revival service that we ever did,

I didn't know what to expect because I really believe that a move of

God begins when the people are hungry and expecting and full of faith. And

that was the thing I couldn't gauge with our people. I couldn't gauge.

I knew they loved venture, and then I knew they appreciated the Word,

and so our people are very hungry for the Word of God. But I

didn't know if they were hungry for Jesus and they're hungry for the supernatural and

the Holy Spirit and things. So we had no clue what to expect because

we don't normally do Sunday night gatherings. And one of the things about people

in Seattle, they're fairly protective of their time. Yeah, they like to

sit at home Sunday night. They want to get ready for school the next

day, get ready for work, have some family time, and adding an

extra service that might not have an end. In my mind, I didn't

know what to expect. So I remember I was back in my office with

Pastor Berteaux, and my office is kind of a dungeon. You don't even

have a window to the parking lot, so you don't know what's going on

out in the world, literally, And I just remember sitting back there just

praying, saying, Lord, please, please please let someone show up,

because there's nothing worse than planning a service and no one comes. It's like

planning a party that nobody comes to. And I had who would expect,

and my wife and I we began to gauge, like in our heads,

in our finite mind, if there's this many people, it means this.

If there's this many people, it means this. And so it was.

If there's a hundred people that show up for this unexpected revival service, will

be disappointed, but it'll be fine. If it's less than a hundred,

Yeah, that kind of blows. We missed the Holy Spirit. See what,

people aren't hungry. If it's two hundred, that's about what we were

hoping for. Yeah, anything beyond that, I hadn't even prepared myself for

it. So we're backstage. I just remember walking out and the place is

standing room and that is not an exaggeration. People are standing against the wall

in the back. We're bringing in chairs from the other rooms. I couldn't

believe it. What's crazy, too, is something I really appreciate about our

churches. We're not We care deeply for the lost. We love people who

already go to church. But this wasn't promoted to other churches. Hey,

come bring out a group. This is promoted just to venture. That was

it, and the people now fast forward a few years later that have spoken

me and said, oh, I gave my life to Jesus that night,

I got healed, that night, I got filled with the Holy Spirit.

Spoken tongue. Yes, felt the power of Jesus for the first time that

night. I loved it. And you know what I felt like, are

people needed to see a little bit more of that charismatic Obviously we have a

charismatic bent, but it wasn't in a way that was deceitful or dishonoring to

the Holy Spirit. It was just pure. There was nothing weird about it,

and I think that's where we showed our people you can be spirit filled

and not be weird. And honestly, it felt like that was the first

domino for where if we fast forward two years now, we've had a handful

of these revival nights. Our church has grown immensely, which I want to

talk about that because that presents new problems when the church has grown good problems.

Our staff is more united than ever, zero transition in two years.

That's unheard of, especially at a church our size in western Washington where it's

very expensive to live here. Do you want to talk about the staff thing

real quick before we talk about the church? Sure? What is there?

Why are people staying? What is going on? Why is the morale high?

Yeah? You know you and are connected to lots of churches and lots

of ministry groups in the area, and we're part of a large denomination in

the area, and the one common denominator from every single church and every single

pastor, especially pastors of large churches. It's just constant staff turnover, just

constant, and you kind of anticipate it sometimes and you see it coming.

And sometimes it's healthy for the organization for there to be a transition, and

sometimes it's healthy for the person because sometimes God is promoting people and taking them

into what's next for them. And I just remember thinking back then that if

we had a good three to five year run with this team, which is

full of I would say, first off, you guys are all fun to

work with, like, we all have fun together, so work is fun.

We have great I would say diversity on our team. So we have

ethnic diversity on our team. We have female pastors, guy pastors, there's

age diversity. It's just there's just the spectrum is all over. And the

one constant is we enjoy working together. We like coming to work, we

enjoy spending time together, and that matters a lot. But probably the number

one thing that matters to me is I just want a staff that loves Jesus.

I can't. I can teach you strategy, and I can teach you

systems, but I can't teach you to be in love with Jesus. People

either have that or they don't. And I just wanted a staff that love

Jesus. I wanted us to model a passion for worship for our people,

and us to model a desire to grow in the Word to our people.

And that is what our staff has. Again, you guys are all super

talented. I tell everybody I think there there is not and there's gonna be

other people that are listening to this. And I don't want to offend anyone

when I say this, but maybe this is what pastors are supposed to say

about who knows. But top to bottom, I don't think there's a better

pastoral staff on the West Coast. Oh oh, the hammer has been dropped.

We have stellar worship. I mean the best worship, honest to goodness.

I don't want anyone to know about it. Though. We don't tell

anyone about David because I don't want. Yeah, I want David to be

I don't want anybody know who David Daz is. But we have the best

worship Lord knows who you are, David easily in the state, possibly around

who knows west of the Mississippi. And I'm not just just bragging. Um.

You know, we have our teaching team top to bottom is stellarum.

Our youth pastor Johnny incredible, Claire is doing an amazing job with young adults,

our kids ministry. One of the ways that you know how great your

staff is is everybody's always trying to hire them. Yeah, and it seems

I think some churches, especially in our denomination, have our staff on speed

dial. As soon as there's transition. They just like, immediately, who

do I call first? Morgan, Tony, Kaylee, David. You know,

they just kind of worked their way down seeing who wants And you know

what this if like you're listening, you're a church leader, or you know,

you attend venture, this can kind of sound braggy. It's not.

I think we are celebrating the fruit of hard labor and that is okay as

actually a biblical principle that we have good staff. Think about this too,

pbe this is fun. A lot of the recent hires their internal hires.

There are people that we raised up within. We didn't have to go nationwide

to find someone. So Johnny Claire Brandon like, it's exciting that we have

people that we hired who want to be here and they love Jesus well.

And the benefit of raising people up within your church is they already love the

church. Yeah, they already are bought into you as a leader, and

they understand what the church is trying to accomplish and they have an appreciation for

it. Or oftentimes when you bring people in for the outside, there's that

year feeling each other out. Do they really want to serve under this leader?

Because every lead pastor of a large church, we're we're quirky, we

have idiosyncrasies in our personality, and we have different styles and venture. Our

style is aggressive, but we're super fun yep. And I think, like

when I think of you, guys understand me. You understand that Brandon is

aggressive, wants to go all in for mission, move the mission forward,

reach the city, impact the nation. But on the other hand, he's

never serious. So people from the outside see this intense leader and they think

this guy lives in a perpetual state of like he's like Bill Belichick always and

then they come in and he's never serious and they don't understand. It takes

a little bit of understanding of that. But the thing that I think you

guys figured out is I think our team figured out the grass isn't greener somewhere

else. They have enough friends in ministry all over the place complaining about the

places that they're at, and they're like, I got a good situation.

I love my team, I love my bosses, I love my church.

Why I'm not going to transition until Jesus literally forces me to. And I

think of just the last Easter we just had. So if you fast forward

from that revival Sunday with Glenbertow to our last Easter, we had over six

thousand people here during that week and we had everything going on. I mean,

we did a Sader dinner, we had a Jewish rabbi here, we

had a huge good Friday service. We did what five Easter services here,

not just counting all of our campuses all over I think loose. We had

them everywhere and it was the easiest Easter we've ever had. Hey, I

know you're my boss, So what I'm about to say, please don't get

offended. My sermon was terrible on Easter? Is that way you're about to

say no, no, it was great and we loved it. I just

don't feel like I had to work extremely hard or overtime. I feel like

I just just worked hard. It wasn't like a strenuous you know, Easter

week, you're working five nights a week, you got a kid's thing on

Saturday morning. It just wasn't strenuous. Well it went over really well.

I'm a sportos so everything is a sports metaphor, as anybody listening is aware

of. And a really good team that has played together, like the Nights

you see that that hockey team and it's Jack Eichel throws a pass like it

seems like he's sending it backwards and it's right to Marcia's show, and he

just knows where he's at because they've been playing together for so long. And

that's what our team has. Our team just knows. You know that if

pastor Nicole's responsible for something, she's going to fall through on it. Nichole's

got that covered, and Kayley's got this covered. And we know David has

this, and Sean has this, and Morgan has this and Dye has this,

and there is this trust that everybody's got their mutual trust. So I

am convinced. Why was the easter even though it was the largest one and

should have been the busiest one in the history of the church, because the

team had been together. We this was our third Easter together. Like with

this felt good team, It just felt good. Yeah. So so let's

let's keep this going for the next five years. It makes my life.

Can I get a raise? So here's here's the thing. Obviously, we

realize you can't have the team together forever. So and something I really appreciate

about you that most people don't know PB is that you don't hold on to

anyone with a close grip saying you can't leave. You've had churches call you

left and right for your pastors, and you always tell your pastors, yeah,

hey, go interview, go consider it. I'd pray about it too.

And you've never held on anyone tightly, which is why I think God

has allowed us to have such a good team. And also, I mean,

when we get those calls, a lot of them we just don't even

bring to you because what's the point. But you know, you let your

team roam freely, which is something I appreciate about. Another thing I like

about our leadership right now at our church, no one is micromanaged. Our

departments can breathe and just dream up and there's room for failure. But there's

also just such an expectancy of excellence from everyone right now. Everyone wants to

do excellent, not perfect, but excellent, which I really appreciate. I'm

seeing that with all our departments. So we have some problems with adventure right

now. Big problems. Number one. Sometimes I come to work and every

parking spot has been taken. On a Sunday morning, I have to park

offsite, is what it is. I'll walk, but put a hat on

in ther head will be warm. Of course you want to add a sound

of that, No, don't clap anyways, So we have some problems.

We have three services. I would say the A thirty great crowd. It's

growing the eleven thirty sometimes it almost feels like it's competing with the second service.

Now our church is growing, We have a lot of new people come

in to faith. How do we handle growth and what do we do next

with all this stuff going on? Can I come back to that in like

one second? And sure? Because I really feel like we go back to

us praying for a revival. We have that first kind of breakthrough service with

Glenn Bertow where I visibly saw things shift in our church was right after,

right after the Asbury Revival took off again. I flew there with a couple

of pastors from our region and was kind of there all day long. And

then I flew back and I wasn't even supposed to speak. That Sunday pass

from Morgan was speaking, and it was right after the first service. I

felt like the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said I need you to get

up and preach, and I kind of went up and winged it. And

it was during worship in that service something there was a shift. People didn't

leave, and I would say that shift has just built since our once a

month revival worship gatherings packed. If we do a revival service packed, discover

head like what forty discovers. Our dinner with the pastors, we do it

every month, had like what almost fifty people. Yeah, these are brand

new people that want to head towards membership in our church. We do it

every single month, and we had fifty people in our in our last one,

and again we do this every single month. So I would say the

Holy Spirit is really beginning to move at the church, and I have a

thought they'll come back to with that if if we have time. But so

so where we're at, we we are out of space totally. There is

no more parking. The second service, the standing room only. The third

service is getting close to that same size. You've ever been of the kids

ministry on a Sunday, Yeah, we have no space in our kids ministry.

And first off, if you're a part of Venture and you're hearing this,

thank you for your grade and understanding. And we fill up the parking

lot of the elementary school that people walk here get shuttled here, we fill

up all the street parking. So I really appreciate people that parkoff site that

understand that, just kind of realize that you're gonna you're not going to be

able to come to church and have a road to yourself or have even the

space next to you open. You're it's gonna be full. And so I

really appreciate that. And by the way, that's way better than the alternative

where we just wish there were people that came. We have the opposite of

that, but we do have to figure that out. I really view this

as venture has two major options. Now, we're multi site and we have

plans, like we strategically have plans set up for campuses over the next five

years. Unfortunately, our growth issues right now, growth challenges aren't coinciding with

our plans because our plans are too far out there. We need to figure

something out now. So really we have two options. I think one option

is is that we buy a building in one of the surrounding cities. If

you're listening to this and you're not familiar with the Seattle area, it's all

Seattle. It's like one city on top of another. It's like where Seattle

starts and ends. You don't know. It's just so you can say we're

in mill Creek, but you walk across the street and you're in Lynnwood Walk.

Another direction, you're in Bothel Walk. Another direction, you're in snowhom

As. Another direction you're in Everett. So it's it's like all one big

city is what this is. It's the region. And so there's another city

which is only about maybe fifteen minutes away from here, and there's like five

of them that's surround Mill Creek. And we've considered buying a building in one

of those cities, moving all of our offices offsite being able to eventually start

another venue campus at that building, and then all of our current offices at

the Mill Creek campus reconfigure from top to bottom into more kids space and a

couple of classrooms. And I say the classroom part because part of going back

to this two years ago we one of the words that the Lord spoke to

me really clearly was what's old is new and things that church has stopped doing

twenty years ago, you introduce them again. They're They're like novel and creative

and new and exciting, and gen Z loves them, loves them. Revival

services. I remember when we debated, are we really going to call it

a revival service? That's so old school? And I'm like, it's so

old that no one's heard of it before. This is where we're bringing back

human video led by pastor Nicole eventually yes, or Ariel uh she's busy,

okay um or maybe Kellen's future wife or maybe Killen or killing himself. So

one of the things that I really feel like our church would be super excited

about and our community too, is systematic discipleship classes where you actually sit down

in a classroom and a teacher gets up and teaches you the Bible, or

teaches you apologetics, or teaches you about worship, whatever it is. And

I've talked about it. Our people are jazzed, so we don't have classrooms.

We built a building with no adult classrooms because our style was kids lobby,

auditorium. That's it. And all adult discipleship happened in small groups.

But we want classrooms too, so we would build some classrooms. So that's

option one is we do that, and Option one B is we do a

mass expansion of this facility. We've gotten plans that have been drawn up.

It would add a balcony and adds us a couple hundred seats, would give

us maybe four or five adult classrooms, and multiply our kids space, give

us ample kid space. We would make the hub larger, which would allow

like our youth facility to be larger, our young adult facility to be larger.

And then all the offices we would have an office wing here, two

story office wing. That is another idea. And so what the board is

praying through and our pastoral staff is praying through is we want to honor Kingdom

resources and our church is not a wealthy church, and it just has a

lot of really generous people that together have really made all these things happen.

And we want to do what is the most financially responsible. But I think

in addition to that, we want to do what is going to make the

largest kingdom impact. So in the end, if we determine the largest kingdom

impact is to build the central campus, make it even larger. That's what

we'll do. If we determine, hey, center campus is good, let's

mass expand into multi site. We would do that. I think so too.

And what do you think? What do I think? Well, I

don't like inflation. I'm just gonna say. The other day I bought some

cereal for my wife. She asked for a box of tricks. It was

nine ninety nine. Hey, I filled up my tank of gas in my

jeep. It was a hundred dollars. One hundred dollars. One hundred dollars.

Back in my day, used to get you a lot. That was

five years ago. But you know what, here's the deal. I think,

yeah, we should always expand the building, and we should. But

I also see the other side of it that there are cities with churches and

cities without churches that need Jesus. And we have campuses in regions that need

a move of God with Spokane and Pellus and Federal Way, and I just

think I think we should do both. I think we should do some form

of an improvement, especially for the kid's mystery. As a parent walking through

the kids Ministry on a Sunday, it is wild right now and you could

you could see everyone, all the volunteers, their their hair is standing up

by the end of service. It's because the Holy Spirit's movement and the kids.

But I also think we should expand. I think we should go into

new regions. I think we should. If we have enough people from Central

who live in one city, why not do a gathering for them there in

that city that's closer to home. They can invite people there too. Maybe.

Do you know it's like a satellite. I wouldn't call it a full

on campus where they have their own It's like a venue. Like a venue.

Let them still be in tune with your sermons. They have good worship,

good kids ministry, but it's more like a venue in their region.

I think that's a great idea, and I think we have a pipeline of

leaders who would probably step up and say, yeah, I can go do

that. I'd love to. I mean, if you send me right now

to Hawaii, I mean I'm not gonna say no. That's what do you

think? Can I go to Hawaii? If we do a Hawaii campus,

I will sacrifice. Oh that's do you hear the heart of our leader,

folks, He will sacrifice for us. Is there a button for that?

Oh? Gosh, the Mariners didn't just score home run. This is definitely

the first episode. Uh yeah, what do you think? The biggest part

for me is I just want Jesus to move. That's it. I have

the heart of an evangelist. I just want to see people get saved.

My favorite part of my job, and I would say it's I'm addicted to

life change. I'm addicted to seeing people have their life transformed, and I'm

addicted to the stories. I just can't get enough. When I think of,

especially the last couple of years, just the radical conversions that we've seen

people that if you had a top ten list of least likely people to ever

get saved, they'd have been at the top of every single one of them.

And we just have story and testimony about radical life change over and over

again. And then there's also the stories of people that I used to go

to church, haven't been for a long time, started having kids and thought

I at least need to raise my kids with some good values, and started

coming and then they their faith got reignited again. I love that. I

love the fact that Venture has become a safe place for people that had a

bad experience maybe at another church. And there's many churches in our region that

have had unique histories, and those people come and they find Venture to be

a very authentic place, very genuine staff that we're not pretentious, and so

I appreciate that. But I'm addicted to the stories of life change. I

think my favorite thing of Venture if you walk through the lobby on a Sunday

morning or come to like the youth ministry on a Wednesday night. We have

we represent Mecre so well. We have ethnicities. We have Asian, we

have African American, we have Arab, we have so many people showing up

right now. We have young, we have old, we have divorced,

we have married. We have honestly like a survey of humanity at our church.

And it's beautiful like it is. It just shows you can come in

and really feel like, wow, I am part of this family. Yeah,

we look like Snowmish County. We really do. And Snomish County is

growing like crazy with the fastest growing county in the state. We I mean,

it's it's it's beautiful. Hey, we got to land the plane here

and just just about it. Well, I have a question for you.

This is how will land it? Okay, let's land it. No,

but you're a sharp leader. Here you go. You married? Well,

yeah I did. Gosh, what are you dreaming of for you? WHOA?

Thanks? Pebe. Well, I have disc covered in my life the

things that I typically say I'll never do. God says, okay, we'll

see about that. I said I would never go to Bible College, and

I went to Bible College. Got it done. Eventually, I said,

well, I will never campus pastor. A year or later, I'm still

campus pastoring. I said I would never leave youth ministry. That happened.

I really feel a call recently, Ariel and I have been feeling a call

to pastor in some capacity at a lead or campus pastor level, wherever that

may be. We're praying through what's next for our family? Is it in

Washington? Is it in another state? And I think the fact that you

and I, that I work for you and you're allowing me to have these

conversations with you and not dreading or fearing saying Tony, you can't go,

or Tony, if you go, find here's you get a month of severance,

leave, go figure out what you want to do with your life.

PBI. I can't express to you enough how grateful I am for you that

you're allowing me to process and think through this, because this is a big

life change. I'm thirty two, We've got a couple of kids. My

wife has a business that she's built in a year that is she needs employees

now it's completely remote. We do feel a call to go lead something some

capacity. We don't know when, we kind of know where, but we're

not crazy about pulling the trigger just yet. We're gonna let God open the

doors that need to be opened. And we're not so I mean because think

about it too. It is so hard to leave a winning team who wants

to leave when you feel like the team is doing good. You leave when

everything has gone to heck in a handbasket. Right, it's hard when our

staff is having fun and the church is growing, and man, you're not

just the bald guy on staff. Moore, Well, you get grace from

me in this process because of how much I like Lenni. Lenny is the

fan favorite at Venture Church. Honestly, do you know on her birthday last

week she had more DMS, emails, videos, and voice memos sent to

her than I did on my birthday? I counted she had fifty two people

reach out to her on her birthday or post about her. Fifty two.

You know who reached out to me on my birthday? My mom sent me

a card to five Bucks in it? Oh, how cute? Did your

grandma didn't send you anything? My grandma's bedridden, so thanks for them.

So I obviously took the step of faith years ago and to Venture understand the

risk ministry is a little bit different back then in that pretty much if you

were an associate on staff, you lived in poverty. So going from poverty

and one setting to poverty in another setting, it's it's poverty. This is

a new day and age associates get good salaries, so the challenge of taking

that risk is more complicated. But what do you is that the most difficult

part of all this. You know what I've actually I've come to grips with.

I will. If I need to live in poverty, I will.

If I need to say all my goodbyes, I will because PB going back

to what we prayed two years ago, I just love Jesus and I want

people to find him and if and even the sermon series we're doing right now

worth dying for. If for me worth dying for? Is my comfort,

my life fourteen years at my home church. But it means on the other

side, people are going to heaven. Then that then then that's what I'll

do. Then that's what we'll do as a family, And that's what we'll

do as a church. Yeah. I mean we're we're we're ready for whatever

God wants to do next. Yeah. I think that what I would encourage

like this next generation of church planters to be willing to do is they're much

more risk adverse than we were. And part of it has to do with

life's good And I talked on Sunday. If you miss this, go back

to our message from May twenty. First, I talked about is Jesus enough?

But one of the things that I think is a challenge for us moving

the mission forward is we now define God's will for our life based upon how

easy something is, and if something is difficult, it can't be God's will

because God surely wouldn't have us do anything difficult. And we just need we're

gonna need another generation that's willing to risk everything, take huge steps of faith

and go for it. And in the end, I always tell everybody this,

like, there were days when we started Venture where Di and I got

food out of a food bank and we really struggled with our finances for probably

the first five years of the church. But if you were to sit down

and ask our kids, who are now all adults, they had no clue.

Yeah, Like, it was zero impact to our quality of life,

because the quality of life is our family being together doing what Jesus wants us

to do. And that's one of the things that I would really encourage you

with that if God has called, he has the dynamics ready whatever he's called

you to do, and He's got a plan for it, and there's never

going to be everything aligned. I was just talking to a church planner this

week who and again I'm all for organization and planning. I love it all,

all for it. He has like a four year plan and he's trying

everything he can to raise all the money upfront that he needs to cover the

next four years, which in theory like a great idea. I'm sure it's

written about in ten different books. Yeah. Yeah, But in practicality,

the number of us that get to take a huge leap of faith knowing that

with that huge leap of faith is four years of absolute security. That's yeah,

we're talking about Paul. Come on, God told Paul go to Rome.

Paul's comment about it was, I don't even know what's going to happen

to me there. I just know that everywhere the Holy Spirit leads me hardship

and prison follows and takes a step of faith. Listen to our services to

hear the rest. Well, that was episode one. Thank you so much

for joining us. Don't forget Like and subscribe to the podcast, share it

with someone. Next week we'll maybe we'll have a little deeper on something else,

unfiltered. We'll say whatever want. Yeah, thanks Phoebe, Go nights

go, Go, nights go. Hmmm.