Forward in Faith: Showing up financially

All right. Great. Well, we're continuing on in this short series, four-week series called Forward in Faith. This is week three.

So what we've been doing is making our way through Luke 14. So if you want to open your Bible to Luke 14, that would be awesome. It'll get right where we need to be. Luke chapter 14. And we're in the last two thirds there. We're going to be picking up, I think, what is it? I'm in John. That explains it. Didn't seem quite right. Hang on. Luke 14. Okay. Yeah. Picking up in verse 25. So you can follow along with us as we go along here.

What we're doing right now in Luke 14 is, well, we're paying attention to Jesus's words, which are really like, this is a section that's really punchy. You know, it's like Jesus, Like we have this idea, oh, Jesus, he's so nice. He says such nice things. He's always comforting people and healing people. And he would just, it's just so easygoing. And then we get, sometimes we get the other side of Jesus, right? Which is where Jesus is really direct and he's really clear and he's saying

hard things, right? And this is a, this is like a hard thing section.

In the last two weeks, we've, we've looked at a parable that Jesus gave, the parable of the large banquet, right there in the, in the kind of middle section of Luke 14. And we're just making our way through. And as we talked about the clear message, the clear and punchy message that Jesus seems to be communicating to his disciples is that you really have to show up, right? And we've been thinking about that idea of showing up. It's kind of a...

Full person kind of thing. It's not just like mere attendance. It's not, it's not only like, there's like a lot of aspects to it. And we've been thinking about that as we go along here and thinking about our own faith and how it's expressed and thinking about like what, what a healthy, healthy discipleship and full, full person discipleship looks like. But Jesus really makes it clear in this parable that showing up matters, right?

Because he, he expresses that Some people just weren't showing up, and it's a parable against those who are simply too busy or unwilling to come and be present, and how they can't be disciples. Jesus doesn't leave it there, right? He speaks in these parables. Sometimes in the Gospels, in the accounts of Jesus' life in teaching, he speaks these parables, and he doesn't explain them, or he doesn't comment further on them. But in Luke 14, it goes on, and Jesus is commenting on the parable.

He's kind of helping us to understand and think through it a little bit and its implications. So he doesn't leave us just with the image itself, with the parable itself. He keeps digging.

So we're going to pick up there having after the parable and his explanation, his expansion of the thoughts and ideas behind it. So we're picking up in Luke 14, verse 25. And it goes, he says this, Now great crowds were traveling with him. So he turned and he said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. So yeah, really nice, easygoing Jesus, right? I mean, these are probably, of all Jesus's words recorded in the New Testament, the most, I mean, the most disturbing in like a very realistic way. Like, like this would have disturbed those who heard this because it is obviously a very high bar that Jesus is laying out for what a discipleship, what a disciple is. He is not pulling any of his punches.

Jesus is letting something difficult land. Now, to be clear, I think we have to take his words about the need to particularly hate his own father and mother, wife, children, brothers, and sisters. We have to read it literally, but when we read things literally, we read them in their context, right? So we don't just cut and paste them, remove them from the way in which they're presented to us. These words are presented to us in the context of an explanation of the parable

that we've been looking at the past two weeks. So we have to read these words in their context, in the context in which they're coming in, because they are an explanation, an expansion of the parable. See, Jesus had been explaining in this parable that he kind of paints this picture that there is a host who invites his friends to a banquet. He just wants to fill up his house and have a big party. And so he invites many of his friends and he ends up only receiving their excuses.

We get three examples of people who have been invited who are just saying, no, I can't do it. In each of the examples, they're busy. In one of them, they're busy with family. Somebody says, oh, I just got married, so I can't possibly make it. In two of the other examples, the people are busy with work, with their finances, with their investments. They need to attend to them. And so they send their excuses.

They can't show up because their time and their attention and their love is consumed by other things. And Jesus presents the reality that that is a problem. That is a problem in the context of discipleship. See, Jesus isn't prescribing a generalized hatred for your family, but he is coming in no uncertain terms for his disciples' loyalty, for his place as first in their affections and in their priorities. He understands that—I think it's not just selfishness on Jesus' part.

I think what he understands is that people back then and now are finite. We have limited amounts of attention. We have limited amounts of the word we say right now is bandwidth, right? Like whatever that means, as if we are a network of some kind.

But Jesus understands that people are limited. They're finite. And he makes it clear that if we're going to be, that the human experience back then and now is that in order to be people, we have to shortchange something. We have to ignore certain things. We have to deprioritize certain things. And Jesus is just making it clear, if you want to be my disciple, you can't put me at the bottom of the list. It's just a very, I think, a fairly practical thing.

He says, if you're going to shortchange something, it can't be me. See, Jesus has no category for people who are like half disciples. I mean, literally a disciple is somebody who's following after Jesus, like leaving behind everything and putting him first. Now, that may not look like in our lives, in a contemporary setting, it may not look like it looked then necessarily, but we have to understand that the standard for discipleship is very high.

It's demanding. And Jesus is demanding about some things. Because he knows that discipleship just can't be a side project. If discipleship is a side project in your life, it's a non-project. It's something you will ignore. It's not something you can do halfway. It involves your whole self. That's what he's saying. He says you not only have to hate, you know, wife, mothers, you have to hate your own life, right?

You have to come to the point of recognizing that all these things that consume you or consumed you before you met Jesus, like they amount to very little. And we have to begin to account for them and understand them to value them correctly, which is that they need to become less valuable in your life than following after Jesus is. It can't be a side project because it involves your whole self. Being a disciple is an identity category. It's something that is meant to be

just fundamental to your life. It shapes your character. It's part of being a whole self in the eyes of God. Your whole self in the context of discipleship and following after Jesus is being remade.

You're being adopted into a life with God. You're being invited into the kingdom, into his presence. And that means that you become someone different. because you're caught up in a relationship with the God who created the universe. So that is going to, that is not something you can do on the side. It's going to remake you. That's why he says, whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

I think it's interesting when we think about the imagery of the cross because at the time that Jesus is speaking this, he's obviously not dead and ascended to heaven yet. This is before he is crucified on a cross. And so his ministry is not yet associated with a cross, as it will be. In fact, this would be kind of a strange thing to bring up.

But anyone who is hearing this because they live under Roman occupation would know what a cross is because they've seen people get crucified before, because that is Rome's just preferred method of killing people. And people would have known this. To carry a cross is to show up for your own execution and to be a participant in it. And Jesus says, and that's what it looks like to be a disciple.

Because Jesus understands that in order to follow after him, it's not this instantaneous process of, oh, I'm just going to follow Jesus and everything's going to be different. No, it's the daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, decadely. That's not a word. I know that's not a word. But like an ongoing process of just saying, I'm chasing after something better than what I have now. And though it's painful, though it's difficult, though it costs me something, I'm going to pursue it.

And sometimes that discipleship feels, it feels painful. But Jesus is making it clear. If you're going to be my disciple, then you need to be dying to who you used to be. You need to be dying to these like categories that like put obligations on you. Like even to the point of family, like there's good family obligations and then there's bad family obligations, right? We think of the, like the rich young ruler.

If you've ever read that passage, like he comes in, he wants to follow Jesus. He's willing to do everything. He says, but I can't. Give up my commitment as the head of the household because I have all these people expecting things from me. So he goes away sad from Jesus, right? There's all these people who like, like if you want to follow after Jesus, Jesus says, look, it's going to cost you something.

You're going to have to die to the requirements and obligations, some of the ones that you were born into that are trying to take supremacy over your commitment to Jesus. You're going to have to die to the commitments and obligations and your own self-made ideas of who you are and what you deserve and how great you are and all the things that you're capable of. Jesus oftentimes will ask any disciple to just lay those things at his feet.

And then he gives us a new identity that's so much better than the one we've created and fought for and striven for our whole lives. And that's painful to put that before him. You're dying to the estimations of others, what people think of you. And that hurts because it's a embarrassing and humiliating process.

To feel like you're disappointing people, disappointing yourself, disappointing your family, disappointing people because you're saying, well, I'm just going to be a fool for Jesus and that's better, better than being wise in the world. And sometimes Jesus lets us go through difficult things and that's all part of this process of dying to yourself. You just die to your own estimations of who you are, again, what you deserve.

And to follow Jesus, I think, is to care purposefully and intently and exclusively or increasingly exclusively about his estimation. And what does he think about me? And what are his thoughts and feelings? And what is his intention, his plan for me? And that's a long process and it's a painful process. But following Jesus is living for an audience of one. And that's in the end what it is. Following Jesus is just living for an audience of one. And...

It's funny if I were, if you, if you were like me standing on this stage right now and you have an audience, like everybody has an audience. And in the end, like following Jesus is just saying, I'm just going to annoy the rest of these people away, which I'm working on. Like, I'm just gonna like, like just so lock in on Jesus that I only care what he, how he's reacting. Like I only care what he thinks in my life.

That's going to cost me a lot of other relationships if I really do that. Or it's not. Or I'm going to find people who are also living for an audience of one, and they're going to be my close friends. They're going to be people supporting me in that walk. But Jesus asks us to seriously consider what a commitment to him, this kind of discipleship commitment might look like. He goes on from there in verse 28.

He says, again, pushing this image further. He says, which of you wanting to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, after he laid the foundation and he cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him saying, this man started to build and he wasn't able to finish.

Or what king going to war against another king will not sit down and decide if he is able to with 10,000 oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000? If not, while the others are still far off, He sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

In the same way, therefore, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple. Again, very soft, very nice, very easygoing. Look, I think we get the logic. I mean, it's clear that Jesus was like a very reasonable person. He used reason to persuade his hearers. We understand the logic that Jesus is using. He uses these kind of double image of building a tower and going to war.

And I mean, if you're going to build something, if you're going to build a tower or a building or whatever you want to build, he's making it clear that you better take a good stock before you start out, before you lay a foundation, before you sign any contracts or do anything, you better take stock of what it's going to cost you. Because a half-built building is not worth building. You can't live in it. You can't do anything with that. Like, it's a useless waste of money.

If you're going to start a war, if you're going to just go out as a warrior and you're You're going to start something against a foreign enemy. I'm really not trying to make any references to things that have happened over this weekend. This was the text. I didn't set up this text beforehand. I'm just saying. So, boy, that's funny. Common thing, I guess. Going out, you know, making sure that you can think.

I mean, think about this in the Christian life, though. I mean, look, if you're going to sit out and follow Jesus, basically what you're doing is you're poking Satan in the eye. You're telling him, look, I belong to the living God who purchased me by grace. Like, I'm going to stand with him. Well, then, like, I mean, if you're going to do that, if you're going to make him mad like that, like, you better just be somebody who's just going to commit to that.

You're going to stand with him. You're going to stand on his promises because Satan's going to throw everything he has at you. And so, like, are you strong enough? No. But can you take shelter in the Lord? Can you trust in him? Yes, you can. And so you'd better do that. I mean, look, I'm applying this to our spiritual lives, but I mean, the logic is very sound. When we set out to do something, we better take stock of what's going to cost us.

We all get that part. But then at the end here, Jesus says stuff that makes, I think particularly Americans, pretty uncomfortable. He says, every one of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple. So what does that mean for us? Like, what is he talking about here? Well, again, just like with the hate your father and mother passage, we need to read it literally, but that means reading it in context.

And the context is he's given this parable. The first one gives an excuse. He's getting married. He's got family obligations. And the next two, proportionally that's interesting, are about a guy who bought some new oxen, so he's got to work his oxen. A guy who bought a new field, he's got to work the field. So you have these economic obligations. I have a field. I need to make it fruitful. I have this new equipment. I've got to test it out and get it going so I can't come to your party.

It's very, very, very clear. And so in that context, it makes sense that he's talking about renouncing possessions or at least putting possessions in their rightful place in terms of their obligations that they come on me. But he's, so he isn't, I think, I don't think Jesus is prescribing forced poverty, but he is prescribing a reordering of priorities. He, and he is, I think.

Warning us. And this is where I think we don't always lean into this very much because we can understand, okay, yeah, have my priorities set, put my economic priorities under my discipleship. We can compute that very easily. But I think what Jesus is doing, he's also warning us against being blind to the power of wealth and money in our lives. And we don't like that because we live in a culture that worships money.

That is our idol in America. We are the wealthiest nation ever in the history of the world. Okay. Right. And that's just a fact.

So, so, but Jesus is, he's not saying, I don't think what he's saying is you can't have any money. And I certainly don't think if we look at what Paul teaches about money or anything like, like that is not the, always the go-to in the, in the new Testament. The new Testament does not, It's not some kind of forced poverty prescription, but we need to have our priorities, all right? And we need to understand, and this is so all over the New Testament,

that we need to cautiously handle our wealth. And we need to not be arrogant and prideful about having it. I think of like a good image is like nuclear power. Nuclear fuel is great. It can do amazing things, but you had better be careful how you handle it, because it will hurt you. It has the power to, if you grab onto it, to just take you out.

And that's not just me, that's Jesus, that's the witness of pretty much any saint who we look back at as a pillar of the, how we handle wealth, the wealth that we have really matters. That's why Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 6, 21, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Jesus understands that to have treasure, it's not like that's a huge problem.

But when we treasure our treasure, when we treasure our wealth, when we hold it as most dear in our lives, it has a power to draw our attention and our love and our affection. And so we end up spending more time maintaining the things we have than maintaining our relationship with Jesus. Jesus understood this to be the thing that all humans will risk by having things in the world. There's simply something about wealth. It can do. It doesn't have to do, but it can do something to us.

At the age of 85, John Wesley gave a sermon. It's called Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity. And if you don't know John Wesley, John Wesley was ministering right at the beginning of the Great Awakening. He was a very young man, and he had this revival of the heart. And he established this movement that we call Methodism that remains kind of still does it. It remains somewhat today. It remains in a, I think, a seriously diminished form today.

But it was a massive move of the Lord in England and in the Eastern United States and out into the West, which was really not really the Midwest back then. But in the 1700s, and like the first Great Awakening came, and then just at the end of his life, he saw the second great awakening, these huge moves of the Lord throughout the whole world, where there was just revival, massive revival.

And so John Wesley saw many things. And at the end of his life, two years before his death, he preached a sermon called Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity. And his final point in the sermon, he considers the challenge of wealth. He says this, does it not seem, and yet this cannot be true, that Christianity, true scriptural Christianity has a tendency in the process of time to undermine and destroy itself.

For wherever true Christianity spreads, it must cause diligence and frugality, which in the natural course of things must beget riches, and riches naturally beget pride, love of the world, and every temper that is destructive of Christianity. I think what Wesley understood is he understands this thing. I mean, Wesley was a guy, he would circuit ride. He would go wherever the gospel wasn't getting preached.

And so he would go out into places where there weren't churches and go out into places where just people needed to hear the gospel and people from all walks of life. It was very much like in the parable, sending out and finding people on the highways and hedges, people in the side of the street, people just calling people in, people who weren't good enough to go to church. Wesley would bring church to them and he would go and he would preach the gospel in power.

And so he saw this throughout his life that the gospel naturally develops diligence and frugality because you see all these people who were drunks and who were just prostitutes and street people, right?

And he'd go and preach the gospel to them and they were in poverty and their lives were broken and things were terrible and they'd get saved and not instantly everything would change, but over time, they would start to be people who served and who saved and who controlled themselves and who developed these great habits that come along with faith.

And he'd say, and so these people who were once destitute would come to Jesus, and then quite naturally, the fruit of the Spirit working in them changes their hearts, and they become people who can care for themselves and serve others and who can store up and who are diligent and cautious people and wise people. And then they become wealthy. And this is not the problem The problem is not at this point Because of course these are good things But they weren't prepared.

Spiritually To handle this wealth cautiously And some, It turned them Prideful. Because they weren't ready for it. And so naturally, like their zeal for God cools as they get more comfortable. And there's pride and love of the world and there's apathy and complacency. And I'm just saying, Wesley, having seen the big cycle of a move of God, he just recognizes that some things at the end can go wrong.

And he asks us to consider it the same way that Jesus asked us to consider these things. And look, in this series, Forwarded Faith, we've been looking at the words of Luke, right? And just that's a great thing to do, like reading the Bible, talking about the Bible. This is something we should always do. But we're doing it also considering some of the moment that we're in as a church, okay? All right. And so I think everyone here kind of knows what's going on.

So I'm not going to do the whole explanation, right? But we're moving in the process of moving. We're placing the septics here. It's coming along. It's just every step is seven steps. you know. So we're on step, I don't know, 5D or something like that. I don't know. When I know something definitive, we have signed contracts this week and moving along into that process. It's only $135,000. That was a joke. No, no, it's, oh, no, sorry. It is $135,000. The only part was a joke.

That was more than I expected. Remember counting the cost? I thought I had, but I guess I hadn't. I'm sorry. Let me get focused again. We're doing this thing. We're moving, moving buildings. And the point of this series really, really, the reason I wanted to be here is, is that I'm asking us all to consider what we will need to do and be as a church and as individuals to show up when we, when we finally take this step and are in a different place that is.

Where we can reach a community and be present in a community and, and just like, just, just be there. We've talked already about showing up like personally, right? I mean, that's just, just like, like the fact that this is a community involves our, our personal investment and our personal presence. Cause you can't have community unless you're there.

We've talked about showing up missionally. We've talked about last week about just like what it looks like for us to, to, to care and be, and be a church that is, that is on mission and able to reach hurting people, people who need the gospel. We talked about that. And today we're talking about just showing up financially.

And part of that is us just counting the cost of being a disciple and stepping into this new season as a church. There's an element of this that's financial. And so I want to make just three quick points about that, okay? We are on our way. We're doing all right time-wise. The first thing is I just want to, and I feel like I've been leading into this, I want you to understand this. Generosity is spiritual self-care.

Generosity is spiritual self-care, right? Because I think I've got a slide for that. It's not that, like, Wesley understood these things, right? He didn't like, and Jesus, like, he didn't just hate wealth. He didn't condemn rich people. Paul doesn't condemn people who have wealth. But he says, but in order to be a disciple of Jesus, to be wealthy, you also need to be generous. Like, that's how you take care of yourself. That's how you can handle this thing rightly.

Jesus and Paul and countless men and women of God throughout the ages have understood that wealth is not in and of itself evil, but it needs to be handled with care. This is what Paul says to Timothy as Timothy is planting churches. He gives him some advice in Timothy 6, 17 through 19.

He says, instruct those who are rich in the present age not to be arrogant or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of wealth, but on God who richly provides us with all things to enjoy and instruct them to do what is good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share, storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the coming age so that they may take hold of what is truly life.

You understand that Paul here, he warns about wealth, but he doesn't just say, ooh, spooky. He offers practical guidance of how you can be rich, because this is instructions to wealthy people. And some people are wealthy. And around here, a lot of people are wealthy because of Amazon and Microsoft, too. You know, because this has been economic boom time for 30 years here in the Pacific Northwest. Great. But in the midst of all that wealth, Paul gives practical advice.

So how do you manage the spiritual side of being wealthy? And the way to manage that, Paul says, is to be generous and to do good works and to set your eyes upon your hope on God alone and to be diligent, understanding that wealth has this deceiving power. And so you need to all the more be focused on the Lord because you're just a normal human being.

And you're going to be victim to all the things that normal human beings have been victim to for millennia, You're going to want to get caught up into keeping up with the joneses and doing the next thing And all the things that come along with wealth He says, well, just be spiritually healthy, Look, I don't believe that in the New Testament There is a fixed law or standard for how much you need to give, right?

In the Old Testament, it was very clearly You had to tithe, that Jesus had to tithe That was part of their commitment. They're part of their covenant obligations to God. But when the New Testament talks about giving, the standard is not, it has to be 10%. The standard is generosity. That's prescribed over and over and over again. And what generosity is for some people and what generosity is for others is probably gonna be different.

To me, the standard that I try to hold myself to is I want to give so it hurts at least a little bit. Just so that I, because if I'm giving and I don't notice it, I'm probably not being generous, but if I'm giving and I feel the ache a little bit, that's good. It's like if you went to the gym. If I have gone to the gym, I am working out three times a week. I've done it for a month now. Boom. Sorry. My biceps hurt so much. I'm sorry. That's just the worst.

That's the worst. I just don't want to die early. That's literally my motivation at this point. It's a high bar. I know. If you're going to the gym and you don't put any weight on the machine, you're just there. Right? Doesn't hurt. Doesn't do anything either, right? But if you put a little bit of weight, you don't need a ton of weight. You get some tone. You get some muscle. You work yourself out a little bit. I'm told. I think. I've seen the light.

It's like there's a standard where it's like, okay, you just want to give because the New Testament standard is not, oh, there's a law and you have to do 10%. The New Testament standard is we are to set our hearts on loving the Lord our God with all of our hearts and with all of our souls and with all of our minds, which doesn't look like vows of poverty, but it looks like, oh. Having from ourselves the same kind of generosity and love and grace and kindness

that Jesus displays, letting that play out in our own lives. It looks like that. And so the New Testament invitation is for people who have received the kindness and grace of God to do likewise to others. And so we ought to manage our wealth by being generous. And that's how we keep Jesus the center.

A second thing just like relevant to us in this time, in this moment as a church, if we're going to succeed missionally, that is to say, if we move to the downtown Snoqualmie and we have people coming, then if we're going to succeed missionally, what we're going to do is we're going to reach broken people and broken people are usually broke people. We have to acknowledge that. We're not looking to All the people have their

lives all together. I mean, they can come. God bless them. That's wonderful. Like if people really want Jesus, let's have everybody come. We will preach the gospel to all people. But oftentimes people come to church because they're divorced. Oftentimes people come to church because they lost a job, because they're bankrupt, because their life is in shambles. And usually broken people are broke people.

And so if we all of a sudden have like 50 people who show up who are hurting and broken, like our budget will go up almost nothing. Do we understand that? But our costs will go up a lot. We get that? So I'm just projecting forward. I'm not saying right now, but I am saying projecting forward, we should anticipate a time if we succeed and if we're actually reaching people and we're hurting people that we are probably going to have to pay their way, those of us here right now.

Right? If we're going to serve these people. And I think there's a lot of economies of scale. I don't think it's a one for one thing. I'm not saying be prepared to double your giving. I'm not saying anything like that. But I'm just saying as we go along and as we get missional, I need us to understand this is a super generous church. I don't talk about money that often because I don't really have to talk about money that often. That's great.

You guys are faithful and you're generous, but I could see us getting to a place where it's like, oh, we've grown, but if you have baby Christians, you usually don't have giving. Giving comes later in the cycle of growth, just because that's just the way it tends to work. So I'm saying, again, I'm not asking for anything right now, but I'm saying as we look forward, I think there's going to be a sense that if we're reaching people, we're going to have to be prepared for that.

And I mean, honestly, and this is sort of hearkening back to my first message, I think the greatest cost to us is not the financial side of things. The greatest cost is that if we have baby Christians, people are going to have to disciple those people. And that's going to take an investment of time. And that's like we're going to have to lean into those relationships if we're dealing with broken people.

Because broken people take a lot of time because they need some love and they need some care and they need some attention. So we should also anticipate that. I think that's what's going to hurt more than the financial side of things, honestly.

And then okay worship team is going to come up here right now last thing relevant to to our moment in time right now is that to get where we're going like to make this this leave this this move to a building i mean there's there's an opportunity to do some investing right now. Look i don't talk about giving them much like i said because you guys are super generous and i don't have to very often. And I also just like, I don't want to manipulate anyone.

I will not stand before Jesus and say, oh, you try to like deprive people of their money and, you know, do all this stuff. Like there's enough scandal in the church. Like I don't want anyone to feel like they are investing something they don't want to be part of or there's peer pressure. So like here's how Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9, 6 through 8, he says this about the way people should give, okay? The point is this.

The person who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and the person who sows generously will also reap generously. Each person should do as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make every grace overflow to you so that in every way, always having everything you need, you may excel in every good work. Not from compulsion. God loves a cheerful giver, not reluctantly. So this is this balance that we're called to.

Don't be reluctant to give. Like, you know, don't be withholding of your financial generosity, right? But don't do it from compulsion. And so I don't talk about money a lot because I don't want you to be manipulated. So here's what I'm going to do. We're going to just, I'm just going to stop my sermon here. Worship team's going to, we're going to just worship the Lord together. Like we're going to worship the Lord because he's been so generous and kind to us.

And then I'm going to come back and I'm just going to present to you the facts about the financial situation and what we're going into and I'm going to give you an opportunity. If you want to, there's not going to be any music going on. I'm not going to have a moment. Ask the Lord, how much should you get? I'm going to tell you the information and then you're going to go home and you're going to talk and you're going to pray about it, but I'm not going to put you on the spot.

I'm just going to come in very, very boringly tell you some information about the financial side of things, right? because I'm not going to manipulate you, okay? Not on me. Somebody else might do it. I'm not going to do it. So with that in mind, let's worship the Lord. All right. So yeah, let's just stand up. Music. I'm just going to pray us out, okay? God, thank you so much. Thank you for blessing this church, Lord, and for the opportunity that's in front of us, Lord.

Thank you for your generosity and your kindness to us, Lord. And we want to be led by your spirit, wherever that is, whatever that looks like. So Lord, would you, would you please direct our steps? Would you direct our hearts? Lord, would you provide what is needed? Lord, would you get us our eyes fixed on what's to come? Lord Jesus, our life is yours. Everything we have is yours. Lord, we want to be your disciples. First and foremost, we want to glorify you

and know you and love you, Lord. So would you lead us, Lord? Lord, would you lead us? We pray that in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, so I'm just going to, like, look, I just got to give you the information, right? This is the information. These are the things. We've been doing some of this over email, talking to you guys about, like, the internal financing side of things. Some of you guys have been a part of that. Some of you haven't. It's okay. It's great.

So I just want to give you an update. So I think I have one slide. Are my slides not working? There they are. There you go. So just, like, details, right? So the total projected cost of this move, right, of tonight. Oh, yeah. Okay. I do have it in the right order. Okay. So, like, we're purchasing this building in downtown Snoqualmie, which has some retail space on the bottom, which we'll be landlords of, right? So effectively, it lowers our operational month-to-month cost with that extra

income. But we're purchasing that for $3.48 million. Why that $4.8? I don't know. But this is the way it goes, negotiating. And then I've put... You might notice it is a difficult time to decide how much things will cost in the future. So I put, I think, an overly large number amount of remodel costs, $400,000. In our earlier presentation, I had that lower. But since the septic was $60,000 more than I thought it was, I said, you know what? I'm going to raise that number a little bit.

So it might not cost us this much to do this remodel. It's still too early to even get quotes. like until we actually purchase we can't do all this stuff the upstairs remodeling is very simple.

Because there's no load-bearing walls in the whole building there's just like posts and so they made it to be really configurable and mostly what we'll be doing upstairs is just opening things up so the upstairs will be very inexpensive the most of the cost will be downstairs in the cafe space that we hope to have so that four hundred thousand dollars includes all that and equipment you know we're going to need stuff to put in the building.

Just a big empty room won't serve us for what we need it for. All right. So that's, again, just an estimate of how much this is all going to cost. And then the next slide, where is that money coming from? Well, most of it's coming from the sale of this building. And we should walk away with about $2.5 million. Like there's, you know, extra little costs here and there. So it could be a little bit lower or higher than that.

We are going to, the seller of the building is offering us some, a small amount of financing to get us down to $300,000. So that's easy enough. And then so the total remaining cost that we have to either raise funds for or finance is $900,000. Again, that's like a higher estimate of what I think the remodel will cost, but just to be safe, okay? So really the only thing we have to raise is that amount of money. We're already actually making some progress towards that.

I think I got another slide here. We're pushing this two ways.

We're thinking of like, okay, we want to finance about 550 finance it internally we already have commitments, to the tune of 425 000 people have committed to to help us to finance so we need to finance another 125 000 and there's a few other people who still haven't who might be interested so i'm pretty confident we're going to hit that and that's you know we're just borrowing from from people giving the six percent rate of return and and like that's that's pretty straightforward,

The other side, there's not any commitments because I haven't asked anyone for any money yet. But this is like the side we're thinking about. Like there's another $350,000 that I'm saying, okay, we hope to ask the congregation over the course of three years, a three-year pledge to help us raise that $350,000. And that is what I'm asking you to think and pray about.

I'm not, again, we're not gonna have a moment. We're not gonna make you write things down or do things or any kind of high pressure thing. I'm asking you because you're mature people. To go before the Lord and say, well, I don't know, God, can I be a part of this? For our congregation, $350,000 is not that much. That is a little less than our annual giving. Most churches, they say you can raise three times your annual giving. We're only trying to raise one times our annual giving.

Larry Brown, a man of great faith, was like, well, maybe we'll just raise it all, like including the financing and gifts. So he's a faithful man. He should be the pastor, that Larry Brown. That would be awesome. Let's do that plan. That would be a great plan. I would love that plan too. So look, that is what we're doing. And there's, again, I'm asking you to go back and to think about what that could be.

$350,000 is like, if we had, I'm doing the math now, I probably should have done this beforehand. 14 families gave $25,000, that would be $350,000, right? If 35 families gave $10,000, you know how to do it. you know how to divide. So I'm not going to do more of that to you. That is a lot of money. I'm not going to lie. It's more money than I have. But if we are all involved in this, and if the Lord leads us all to do this, I think it's a totally doable amount of money.

So I'm putting that out there, letting you know. I have one last slide. If you go back and you think about it, or you just want to take a picture, there's two ways to get involved. Number one is we're having this forward in faith dinner on Saturday. I sent an email that said Friday, which is why we're hiring a communications person. Cause I, I there's, I will keep doing that. There's no, I will never learn my lesson ever. I am too ADHD for this.

So I apologize, but I'm not going to get better, right? So that's why I don't want to apologize. He's like, I know I can't get better. It's not possible for me to do this better. This is my best. Isn't that sad? Look, two ways to get involved. I would so much prefer that you come to this dinner because we're going to just like pray together and we're going to fellowship together and get excited about this together. And then we can fill out little cards together.

Again, no high pressure things, and then we can count it up and celebrate. It'd be fun to do that in person. I think that's way more fun of a way to do it. Maybe you guys don't know how to have fun. That's fine, right? And I know it's a Saturday night and some of you guys are going to be away and stuff like that. But if you would want to be a part of this, just come to that thing. And if, by the way, there's a way to commit to just prayer.

Like everybody can be a part of this in some way. Like whenever the Lord leads you to, that is what I'm asking you to do. So if you want to RSVP for that dinner, that's this Saturday, 6.30? Six, thank you. Okay, good. Thank you, Marilyn. Keeping me straight.

There's food there's child care if you need it that's like the preferred way of doing that if you can't make it and you still want to be a part of that process of counting up the numbers and being excited about it then you could fill out a commitment card digitally and i'll send this out via email too okay so so those are the ways like like we would love to buy probably within a two-week time frame just know if you want to be a part of this or not okay within a two-week time frame.

So, boy, that's a really anticlimactic end, isn't it? What's that? Let's go. Oh, Funch. It's time for Funch. Yeah, that's right. Yes. So, I'll follow us up with an email. Probably there'll be several typos, but you'll laugh. You'll laugh at it. And if you can make it on Saturday, that would be great. If you can't make it, you know, and you still want to be part of it, go ahead and do that. So, let's pray ourselves out here. Oh, we didn't go too bad.

So, Lord, thank you so much. Thank you for this church. Thank you for what you're doing and where you're calling us to. And Lord, you know, you've got the cattle on a thousand hills. Or we can trust you. We can trust you even when there's like crazy wars going on. Lord, we can trust you when our lives feel upside down. Lord, we can trust you when we have needs. And so, Lord Jesus, we just trust you.

But we also just recognize that we get to be a part of your work in this world and what a great privilege that is, Lord. And so, Lord, we want that delicate line of not being compelled, but also being willing, Lord. Would you give us willing hearts if we're able to, and if you're calling us to that, to be a part of this, Lord. And Lord, would you just provide all that's needed? We pray all that in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, guys.