Well, good morning. I know what you’re thinking. Who is this guy and what did he do with our real pastor? So, let me answer the first question. My name’s Jordan Jackson. My wife and I have been a part of Cherry Hills here for almost as long as Manna has. We got married here in 1988 and have been here ever since. And as for the second question, you’ll be happy to know Kurt is here and will be up here in just a few minutes. But I wanted to just share how excited I am about today because today is the culmination of our month long greater Things campaign. And if you’ve been here, hopefully for the past few weeks, you’ve been a part of it already. And today is Commitment Sunday, and I’m super excited about that. And I wanna share a little bit of my story of my Greater Things journey, because mine’s been a little bit longer than yours.

And and probably a little bit more embarrassing than yours. But let, let me just tell you a little bit about it. So mine started actually six months ago when Kurt asked me if I would go have lunch with him. And at that lunch, he shared the vision of the Greater Things campaign for what manna could be if we had a new building where we could serve the needs of those in our community so much better. And so when I saw the vision, heard it, got excited, said yes, happy to help. And and so when I got home after lunch, my wife asked, so what did Kurt wanna talk to you about? And this is the embarrassing part. Here’s what I said. I said, he wants me to help him with a campaign to build a new building for manna. And while that’s true, it completely missed the point of what it’s really all about.

And so, fortunately, it wasn’t too long through prayer and preparation of what I was gonna be doing, that God was finally like McFly. It’s not about the building. And in my defense, what you need to know about me is I’m a task oriented person. I am a project person. And so as soon as Kurt started laying out, you know, kinda what needed to be done, I start making the list in my mind so I can start checking things off. All right? We gotta recruit people for the committees. We gotta come up with a good communications plan. We gotta raise the money. We gotta make sure the architectural drawings ready. We gotta get the building built. We gotta do all these things, right? And God was like, Jordan, you’re, you’re missing the point. It’s about the people. And and I realized then that it’s really about the community on two sides of the wall.

So our name, cherry Hills Community Church is about us as the community inside these walls. And we have an opportunity to be a part of doing something great greater for the community on the outside of the walls. And we want to be a church of community. And so I said, all right, Lord, I’m, I’m starting to get it. Okay? It’s about the people, it’s not about the task. Okay? Yep. I’m gonna focus on that. And then as I was reading through the end of the gospel of John, something transformational happened in my journey through this Greater Things campaign. And that was, I was reading the very final scene in John, and it’s probably familiar to you as well. This is after Jesus has been crucified, he’s risen again. He’s appeared to the disciples just briefly, to a few different people. But the disciples are distraught.

Their world has been rocked. What they thought was going to happen has clearly been stripped away. And so what did they do? They go back to what they know, and they’re fishing. So they’re out on their fishing boats, they’ve been out all night, they’ve struck out no catch. And as they’re coming into the shore, they see a man standing on the shore who yells out to them, throw your nets on the other side. And of course, they recognize very quickly that this is a deja vu moment because Jesus called them that way. And so they realize, oh my gosh, that’s the Lord. And so even though the disciples know when we throw the nets over to the other side, there’s gonna be this huge catch, and it’s gonna be, you know, a great thing. Peter doesn’t even wait for that. He jumps into the water and swims to shore because he knows that’s Jesus.

And John goes on to describe this really sweet scene of the disciples getting to have breakfast with Jesus. They cook up some fish, they get to connect with him again. And it’s, especially for Peter, it’s a time of restoration for the relationship between Jesus and Peter, because it wasn’t very long before that Peter had denied Jesus three different times, saying, I don’t even know that guy. And so in this moment, Jesus says to Peter, Hey Peter, do you love me? And Peter responds, yes, Lord, you know I do. And he’s of course thinking, yes, I know I denied you. I know I fell short. I know I haven’t done all the things that I could have and should have, but you know, I love you. And this is where things really hit me. I’ve read that story numerous times. I know how it goes. And yet this time it jumped off the page completely differently because what Jesus responds to Peter with is completely different than what I would expect is completely different than how I would’ve responded.

I would’ve probably said something like, there, that’s better. That’s what I wanted to hear. But that’s not what Jesus said. Instead he said, then feed my sheep. And in that moment, the Greater Things campaign suddenly came into focus for me and said, wow, it’s not about a building. It’s not even just about the community of the people that we can work together with to serve the community of the people in need. This was an opportunity to hear the voice of Jesus saying, Jordan, do you love me? And me responding with Yes Lord, you know, I do hearing Jesus say, then feed my sheep. And at that point, the greater Things campaign for my role in it became much more than a list of just tasks that needed to be done. It was an opportunity for me to say and show Jesus that I love him.

And I hear him, I hear him when he says, feed my sheep care for my flock. And I know that I have an opportunity to do that through my time, my talents, my treasure, that I can contribute to this campaign. And so, even though my journey’s been longer and maybe a little more rocky than yours, you may be on a similar journey as Kurt’s been taking us through this month of getting to see the vision of what greater things can be done through our man of ministries. And I’m excited, therefore, that today is the day that we get to commit to saying, yes, Lord, I love you and I will feed your sheep. And so I hope that as we go through today, that you will think, how does this apply to me? Is Jesus asking me, do you love me? And how do I respond to that?

Because for me, it’s been an amazing journey to get to answer that through this greater Things campaign. So if you would bow your heads, I’m gonna pray over this campaign and then hand it over to Kurt. Father, God, we are so grateful to be here in your house together as a community, a community of people who do love you, and a community of people who understand that you call us to feed your sheep. And so, Lord, we pray that you would just humble our hearts, prepare our minds for how we can do that best for you. And we pray for your hand, a blessing upon each person here, that you would just draw them closer into you, into your flock, and into the opportunities to love you well through action. And we pray for your hand, a blessing upon the commitments that will be made today, your hand of blessing upon the actions that will be taken with those commitments and your hand of blessing upon those who will be touched, those who will be fed through our man and ministries. And so, Lord, we say, come fill this room. Be with us now and lead us into the place that you want us to be. We pray this all in your mighty name, Lord Jesus. Amen.

Amen. Let’s thank Jordan.

And there, there’s a whole lot of you that have volunteered and done great things. We’ve, we’ve had a number of different committees. All those committees had lots of different people. One of those committees is our Commitment Sunday committee. And so when we are done, and you probably saw it on your way in, and our atrium is a whole party, it’s a party to celebrate this campaign and celebrate what God is doing. You’ll also get a, a grocery tote bag that you’ll get on your way out just as a reminder of the Greater Things campaign. And the cool part about the Grocery Tote back is any of the extras that we have at the very end, after it’s all said and done we will have a grocery store that we have built that we will use those things. Now, if you are here for the very first time then you are coming in on an odd Sunday because this is not what a normal Sunday looks like.

We’ve been doing a commitment campaign really for the entire month having a conversation about money and finances and generosity, and specifically how it pertains to manage. So yeah, I just want to alleviate the concerns that you might have if you are new. If there’s no obligation today, you don’t have to make any commitment whatsoever. What we would not expect or want that from you. Or if you’re here and you’re relatively new and you’d say that, well, this isn’t my church. We’re just kinda kicking the tires and testing it out. So you don’t have any obligation. Nobody has an obligation. It’s really for our church family that wants to get to participate. So lemme tell you a little bit about what it’s about. First. The actual campaign total is four greater things. The the goal is $6 million. And that capital campaign goal, that goes towards two things.

So about 5 million of that goal will go to the Manna Building itself. That’ll be a prefab metal warehouse building that’ll have a really nice facade. We’ll show you pictures of that in just a moment. And then the extra million will go to renovate the space that currently our Manna pantry and kitchen is in, which is on our nursery hallway. It’ll renovate that space and turn it into some really great nursery and preschool space. Now, when we talk about manna, manna really represents three different things. That manna is the food pantry side, which is Manna Care. If you’ve come on a Tuesday, then you’ve seen that, maybe you’ve experienced that, maybe you’ve volunteered with that. So all day Monday, people set up, then we have a grocery store on Tuesdays for about two and a half hours. Then every other week, we have people that can drive through at night and pick up groceries.

So that’s Man of Care, man of Rescue would be a ministry of volunteers that they come once a month and they make phone calls, and they’re specifically making phone calls with a partnership of Rescue America to people who are in this X Trade. And, and really calling them to help them understand that there is a path forward that helps remove you out of this trade. Many people feel trapped in it. And so we provide resources and opportunities and housing to get people out of that. And then there’s Manna Resource Center. And Manna Resource Center was started about five years ago, and it came out of our Manna Food Pantry with this idea of instead of just giving people groceries, although that’s a tangible and important need that we wanna continue to meet, let’s take one step further and help people elevate themselves out of poverty.

And so there’s a handful of different things that they do. One of those things is they provide career coaching and guidance, helping people equip themselves to get better careers. They also help if our local government community, if they find a family that they would see as at risk that, that they can see down the road, that at some point CPS would have to step in and remove the kids from that family because they think it’s unsafe. If schools or county sees some danger signs they will often send families. Hundreds of families have come to Manna Resource Center in order to get training and parenting classes. And 98% of the families that come through that program do not end up with CPS later on stepping in and having to intervene. So it’s a 98% success rate of families going through getting themselves equipped so that they themselves can be better parents.

And so this new building, and it’s more than just a building, it’s about carrying forward the vision of this ministry from what it started at in 1986 to what it is today to all that God can and will do with it in the future. But in order to better grow that ministry, part of it is to build a building. And so if you have the Cherry Hills mobile app, I’m gonna show some images. They’re gonna be on the big screen, they’re gonna be on my tv. They also are on the Cherry Hills mobile app. So you can fall along and look at those pictures on the app as well. But let me show you where on our campus the building will go. So if you walk straight out our main audience doors, our main entrance doors right there and look diagonally to the right in that back corner of our parking lot there’s a place that we called the Compound Compound has a couple different warehouse buildings on it.

It has snow removal equipment, it has a carpentry shop. And this building will go right in front of that for three different reasons. One is because it’ll be a much more aesthetically pleasing building that will hide the compound. So that’s the reason number one. The reason number two is that on the gray side there’s two different main entrances that we have the main, main entrance, and then this is called the service drive. So this is direct access to the missions building from this service drive. And then thirdly, it, it utilizes existing parking lot space. So pretty much any time of the day, if you come to our church parking lot, there’s cars everywhere. Rarely are there ever cars back here. So it utilizes unused parking spaces without us having to build new parking spaces. In addition to that, here’s a floor plan of what it’s gonna look like.

And this is gonna be really hard for you to see, but you can see in general that the entrance is gonna be on the side so that you have a, a direct entrance either into the food pantry portion or into the Manna Resource Center or into that multipurpose space. So really nice sized market. We’ll do a 3D tour in a second. And so even when you see the first picture of the market, you can’t quite get a feel for it. But when we do the 3D tour, you can wait, go back for a second. So the market is up on this side. We have 10 times the amount of storage than we currently have. One of the biggest problems we have with our food pantry is that we can’t receive all the food that is available to us because we don’t have anywhere to put it.

So way more storage walk-in cooler space Walk-in freezer space, there’s six different offices for our, our team and our staff. In addition to that, there’s four different meeting rooms that seems like a lot of offices, but a lot of what Manna Resource Center does is that one-on-one coaching. And so having space for that is important. Now we’ll show the, the building from the outside. So from the outside, it’s a, a prefab metal warehouse, one story building, but the facade will make it look really pretty same brick color as this building or as close to this color as possible so that they all tie in together. Now we’ll take a look from the side. Notice it has that beautiful overhang. We have amazing weather. Today would be an example of one of those days in Colorado that’s just gorgeous outside. And so a lot of times, especially in the summer when parents bring kids to the food pantry, when there’s no school in session it gives, it utilizes this green space for them to be able to run around that food pantry portion.

You go into the left, the resource center in the middle, that’ll be used for things like Alpha, which our food pantry runs in conjunction with the food pantry. It’s a gospel centered Bible program man resource center. We’ll use that for parenting classes and all kinds of different just event study things that they do. And then to the right would be the entrance to man resource center in those offices. We’re gonna flip to the other side of the building. Some of you won’t care, but that is the loading dock. For those of you that have unloaded the groceries from the truck there’s 16 trips that our truck makes a week. So for some people, they’re like, that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We’ll keep going. We’ll look on the inside of the building. That’s that marketplace that you’ll get a better view of this.

When we do the 3D tour it started way bigger than that. And we actually made it smaller intentionally because right now we’re only open two and a half hours, so there’s a lot of traffic for two and a half hours. But as we expand hours, the goal is that it could be feel a little bit more intimate so that we can work on that relationship side of walking our guests through. Now we’ll look at that resource center room. So multipurpose can do a lot of things in it. On the left side, you can see some stained glass elements. And the the heart behind that is right now there’s a value that if you walk into our food pantry, it’s in a church lobby. And so you can’t miss the fact that you are in a church. And so we wanted to tie in a, a, a as many aesthetic details as possible to make it clear that this, although it will be a grocery store, this is being done because we are a church that we’re doing these things because we love Jesus and because Jesus loves our guests.

We’ll keep going and look at, oh, this is the virtual tour. So we will start on the outside, make our way in through the lobby. And really the heart behind it is how do we make a warm, friendly, very clear that it’s a church, but a space that people can walk in and have a high value of human dignity. That’s why we thought that lobby was important. Coffee some, some sitting areas so that if somebody’s waiting you can see back through there is the, the grocery store will come back through the market. On the backside, we’ll turn to the right and go down this hallway to this hallway. On the right side is that multipurpose room and that multipurpose room. It’s just gonna be a great space that we can do all kinds of different programs through. Now we’ll go down the back hallway and as we’re going down this back hallway you’ll see a lot of workstations and space off to the left.

The offices in the meeting rooms are to the right. And in just a moment, we will peek in and look at one of those offices so that you have a good feel for plenty of space for either one of the licensed professional counselors to sit down and visit with someone or one of the coaches to sit down one-on-one and visit with somebody. We’re gonna walk through the storage area and you’ll get a feel for how much storage it is. It’s a really big space. We won’t go into the walk-in fridge or freezer, but those are right there to the right. Now we’ll come from the backside of the marketplace. And as we’re coming through the backside of the marketplace, you just get a feel for plenty of space but also done in a way that that’s intentional.

So that as we’re walking our guests around, we can really work on and develop those relationships with them. So it’s gonna be an amazing space, an amazing space that takes the ministry that we are doing and then grows and expands it to something greater. Now in addition to that so with the $6 million campaign, five of it will go towards this building, the Manon building. Then a million will go towards renovating that kid’s ministry hallway. So when this building was built in 1995, our kids’ worship space that used to be called Tree House, still is called Tree House, but the tree is no longer there. So tree house that used to be a fellowship hall. There’s a basketball goals in there. And so right next door to it was a, a kitchen and some storage space. So that’s where Manna is right now.

But in changing that space, it gives us a chance as, as Manna goes out to its own building, to renovate that space in a way that benefits our kids’ ministry. So here is a picture of potentially, this doesn’t mean this will be exactly what it looks like, like, but as they’re in the preliminary stage of looking at that space, we’ll get more kids ministry space for nursery and preschool and we’ll get some really premium kids ministry space. Now why is kids ministry such a big deal? I was a children’s pastor for a long time, and I think kids ministry matters for two big reasons. One is because truly we wanna love kids. Well we want to, to teach them the Bible. We want them to know that Jesus loves them. That if we can capture a child’s heart for Jesus early on, it can save them so much heartache in their life.

But in addition to that, that the best tool we have for evangelism for a young family is to do amazing kids’ ministry. And by doing that, it gives us a chance to reach mom and dad. What does that look like? When I was in children’s ministry, this is 17 years ago that the highest grossing musical tour of all time at that point was a group that some of you have probably heard of called The Wiggles. There’s four Australian dudes in turtlenecks that would say, hello, everybody we’re the Wiggles. And that was pretty much what they did. And, and, and to put it in perspective, when Madonna came to Houston 17 years ago, she sold out the basketball arena, the Toyota Center. One time they added a second show, she sold it out three-fourths of the way, but she couldn’t quite sell it out.

The Wiggles came either the week after that or two weeks later, they sold out the basketball arena. The same one that Madonna had struggled to fill out twice. They sold it out within an hour, six times, six shows. Why be because if you are a parent, and if my kid is interested in something or wants to participate in something, our lives in a lot of way revolves around our kid. If you are sitting on a couch and there’s a 5-year-old sitting next to you and you are watching tv, here’s what I know for certain. You ain’t watching what you wanna watch <laugh>, you’re watching something that that kid wants to watch. And, and, and here’s how kids ministry works, that if we could do an amazing job of putting on programming for kids that kids just want to be here and desire to be here, then it gives us an opportunity to reach a mom and dad that don’t know anything about Jesus.

Because they say, well, I I don’t necessarily believe all the things you believe, but my kid so wants to be there, that I will show up. And so we, we want to do an amazing job of building man and building this, this resource center and this this building that can just grow all of the different ministries that that can exist inside the building, while simultaneously continuing to step forward with how do we do kids’ ministry at an exceptionally high level with great space and great, great programming. But how ultimately do we do it? That’s why this whole month we’ve been talking about being generous. What does it mean to be generous? And more importantly, why should we be generous? Because generosity is one of the, the core key foundational things that the early church did in order to advance the kingdom of God and grow the church.

Now look at this quote that I love from Tim Keller. He, he’s a pastor from New York who’s no longer with us, but just godly, godly man. And he writes, the early church was strikingly different from the culture around it. In this way, the Pagan society was stingy with its money and promiscuous with its body. A pagan gave nobody their money and practically gave everybody their body. And the Christians came along and gave practically nobody their body, and they gave practically everybody their money. Do you know anybody like that? They’re just so generous. They just practically give everybody their money. Those people are rare because most of us aren’t like that. When I was in college, one of the part-time jobs that I did on the side was I was a valet driver. And me and, and a group of guys, we worked for a company and we specifically would do valet parties.

So if someone was having a house party and they, they didn’t have anywhere to park the cars, they would hire this company. Now, I’d show up as a college student. There’d be a team of us. And we would, you’d pull up to the house, we’d just like a regular valet, take your keys, take the ticket, give you a ticket, and we’d go find a place down the street to park your car. There wasn’t enough parking by the house. And so we would provide valet parking for these southborough. Now, there’s three things that you learned when you were a valet driver. Number one was that you better learn how to drive a stick because if you couldn’t drive a manual transmission, we called it the walk of shame, that occasionally somebody would come as a valet that could not drive a stick. And they would take the keys and they would get into the car of this person, and then they would just sit there because they were waiting for that person to go inside before they got out of the car.

And they said, Hey, I’m gonna need somebody else to drive this one. And we would, we would just lay it on that person. We’d say, why? And why can’t you just pull it forward? What’s going on? What’s the problem up there? And they would have to say, I, I can’t drive a standard. I need somebody else to come. It’s a manual, somebody else. So one is, you gotta learn that. Number two was that you made no money during drop off. So somebody, when they’re dropping off their car to you, that that has zero value to it other than in order to be there for the end of the night, you had to be there for the beginning of the night. And so you would take a car and you go park it and you kinda leisurely make your way back. And then you’d have to just wait for the duration of the party.

Sometimes three hours, sometimes longer. But you made all of your money in a very small window at the very end of the party. ’cause Most of the time, everybody left at the same time. And so at the end of the party, you were trying to go as fast as possible. Somebody would come out and they’d give you a ticket, you’d run over to the board and had all the keys on the board. You try and find the keys and you would run as fast as you can. ’cause As fast as you can get to the car and get back, you’re more likely to get more cars. And more cars mean more tips, which means more money. Almost all of the money you made that night was on tips. And here’s the other thing you learned as a valet driver, that the people that you think are gonna be generous don’t end up being the most generous.

And so you, you get somebody keys and you’d start instantly looking at those keys as you’re running towards that car and you’re looking down and you’re looking at the make and model of that car wondering, is this gonna be a good tip or not? And then you start hitting that panic button. ’cause That’s the fastest way to find that car. As you’re running. Then you get in the car. And when you’re a new valet, you think, well, the nicer the car, the greater the tip. But that wasn’t true. It was rarely ever true that oftentimes the best temp came from someone driving a 1995 Toyota Camry. You wouldn’t have thought that that would be a good tip, but that person was generous. And then you’d sometimes get some really, really nice cars. It, we had a general rule. If, if the car was worth $150,000, you parked it up front. ’cause We just didn’t want that risk. And I remember one time there was a car, it was probably worth half a million dollars. We parked it right up front. He, he comes out at the very end, he gave us a goose egg. Did not tip the driver, not a dollar. And then to make it worse, as he was getting into the car, he said, the tip was letting you drive my car.

And can I just tell you, driving someone’s nice car doesn’t pay for your groceries as a college student. So what is it that makes someone generous and makes somebody else that maybe even has more money? Not generous. It really comes down to a condition of the heart. Look what Jesus says. Jesus talks about money a lot, and he always talks about in a similar vein. And in Luke chapter 12, sermon verse 13, he says, someone in the crowd said to him, teacher tell my brothers to divide the inheritance with me. But he said to them, man, who made me a judge or arbiter over you? And he said to them, take care and be on your guard against all covetness for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. Now, can I just tell you that’s one of those lines that we struggle with in our culture.

And yet if we can get ahold of that and really imprint it onto our hearts, it changes everything about who we are and how we live. And then he tells ’em in parable, he says, the land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do for I have nowhere to store my crops? And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all, store all my grain and my goods. And I’ll say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, and be merry. Now, what we miss today is that he is using a famous phrase from the first century that that’s why they’re putting in quotation marks. ’cause In the first century, this would’ve been a common phrase that people said, relax, eat, drink, and be merry.

Not that different than a common phrase of what we would say today. Then we’d say, what’s the goal of life? If you sit down with most young people and just said, Hey, hey, what’s the goal? What are you trying to accomplish? They would use different words to ultimately describe a life that says, I wanna get so much stuff and then more stuff, and then lots of stuff so that I can relax, eat, drink, and be merry. He says, but God said to him, fool, this very night your soul’s required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God. And now, now let me pause. ’cause If you weren’t here last week, this is important. Money is not bad and money is not evil. Being rich is not bad and not evil.

In the Old Testament, oftentimes we see God bless people with financial riches. That’s true of Abraham. It’s true of David, it’s true of Solomon. It’s true of job job’s, blessed by God. Then he loses everything and then he ends up blessed by God again. And the the blessing that we see is financial. So having financial blessings is not evil or bad. Jesus isn’t saying it’s evil to be rich. He’s saying, what do we do with our wealth? What’s our heart? What’s our purpose? What is our plan? Because for most of us, the thought is just more and more and more and more. And Jesus is saying that if you are a follower of Jesus, our lives should look different. How we spend our money should look different. And what he says just before this, the chapter of four, this chapter a couple chapters later, is he over and over is telling us to give to the poor.

He’s saying God has blessed us financially so that we might use those gifts for someone else. Look at this quote from a church father. This is around the year three 80 ad. So if you remember a few weeks ago, we talked about that century between two 50 and three 50, where Christianity just explodes in, in the nation of Roman goes from 1.2 million Christians to 33 million Christians in a hundred years. What causes that? Well, this is a sermon that’s coming right on the heels of that, that still captures the heart of what a Christian practiced and believed at that time. Look what he writes. He says, for our money is the Lord’s, however we may have gathered it. If we provide for those in need, we shall obtain great plenty. This is why God has allowed you to have more, not for you to waste on prostitutes, drink fancy food, expensive clothes, and all the other kinds of indu in condolence, but for you to distribute to those in need.

He goes on to say, for you have obtained more than others have, and you’ve received it. Not to spend it for yourself, but to become a good steward for others as well. And then towards the end of his message, he says, so what is the skill that rich people should acquire? They do not need to fashion brass or wood or to build houses. Rather, they must learn how to use their wealth well to the good of all the people around them. The ordinary craftsperson may think that it is an easy skill to learn. On the contrary, it is the hardest skill of all. It requires both great wisdom and great moral strength. Look at how many rich people fail to acquire it and how few practice it to perfection. You see, being generous is really hard. It is really challenging. But he’s saying, if, if we’re gonna follow Jesus, well that needs to be an overflow of how we live and who we are.