Bonus Talk: "Walk the Talk 2: Spotlight on Kingdom Work" by five brothers

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Strength to Strength. It's great to get together this morning, and today we have a presentation called Kingdom Opportunities. We did the same or a similar presentation back in January, where we had four brothers from different parts of the world come together on Strength to Strength to share, and we're doing something similar today. We have five brothers that will be sharing this morning.

So, yeah, very happy to have everyone here this morning, and I think we'll get started. So we're going to begin with a word of prayer, and then I will introduce who will be speaking, and we'll go from there. So, yeah, let's begin.

Father, we want to thank you this morning for your blessings. Thank you for this privilege of coming together in this way. Lord, we know that the field is yours, the crop is yours, the fruit is yours, and we just want to be laborers in your vineyard. And so that's why we come together here to see how we can support each other, how we can further your cause. And we just pray that this would be a blessing to the ministries that are sharing, and also a blessing to each of us as we find ways that we can contribute to those who are very actively involved in your work. So, Lord, I just pray that this may be to the furtherness of your kingdom.

We want to see your kingdom grow and expand in the earth. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, so we're going to get started here with James Yoder. James is joining us from Ohio and is working with Christian Aid Ministries. So, James, good to have you with us this morning.

Thank you, Glenn. Yes, it's good to be with all of you this morning, and a privilege to be a part of this and be asked to speak here. Appreciate it. And yes, I'm, as was mentioned, part of Christian Aid Ministries now for about 15 years, five years overseas and 10 years at the home office here in Berlin, Ohio.

And I'm married and have seven children, and we attend the Salem Amish-Manit Church in Bakersville, Ohio. I hope you can all see that. That's great. Good. All right. I'd like to speak about our Biblical Discipleship Centers this morning, in particularly.

Biblical Discipleship Centers was a program that was started about 10 years ago in Haiti, with the vision having been probably 25 or 30 years before that. And it is a program that trains pastors in, can I say, the all things.

One of the best-known scriptures probably is that of Matthew, chapter 28, Jesus' words, "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, of the Son, of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you." And the thought behind this program years ago was to train pastors that would then take the all things of the scriptures out to their home communities where they live and teach others there, teach their churches.

Many of the churches abroad seem to be shallow, what we often say, a mile wide and an inch thick. But that's what the vision was behind this. We started the program also in Nicaragua and in Liberia about three to four years ago.

It was about two years ago. It's been over two years now that some of our—I was in Kenya with our staff there, and we were talking about the various challenges, corruption that we had. We were doing a lot of aid programs. We had supported AMA, or Amish-Mennonite Aid, and their work there in Kenya in the distribution of food and helping orphans and so forth. Some of the things we were just dealing with were corruption and dependency issues, and it seemed like we were being taken advantage of on every side. And it felt like we need to get to the core of some of these things and work on more discipleship than just aid things. And so at that point in time, it was decided that we would try to begin a Biblical Discipleship Center for Kenya.

And I committed myself to looking for a staff person or administrator to lead this out. Well, that's what I'm still looking for over two years later. And part of the reason for this presentation is to introduce this program and then share the need for a staff member to begin this work. It's hard to get a program going if you don't have anybody to lead it out. So the purpose of the program is to teach sound biblical doctrine to pastors and potential church leaders with the goal of training them and discipling them in doctrine, holiness of life, purity of life, so that they can become solid spiritual leaders who are effective in teaching and discipling administrative roles in their local church.

And the structure, we think that's done best in structure, develop a pastor and a student as a student in a structured environment where there's disciplined learning. And we do that through scheduled class times and even free times that are scheduled.

The curriculum that is used in the program is one that we had various writers write over the years. It was first written for Haiti, then translated into working on Spanish at the present. And while we compiled things and put things together, most of this was written by writers, teachers that were used in Haiti, and so forth.

It starts out with the biblical foundation and goes on to the second series of new life and morality, spiritual warfare, then biblical family living, Bible doctrines, and finally ends up with biblical church leadership.

Each one of these, what we call series, is simply a book, about three-quarters of an inch thick, ring binder type of book.

Each of the lessons has—each of the books has 42 lessons, and each series or each book lasts about three weeks to go through. And pastors come for these three weeks from their home communities. They stay for a week, and they're welcome to go home on weekends so that they can go home and preach and teach in their home churches.

Usually, there are about three sessions a day. So three weeks times five days a week is 15, times three is 45, but there's 42 lessons in a book. That leaves time for discussion, homework, and there's also testing.

Students are required to attend all 42 lessons in a series in order to receive a certificate of attendance for that series.

As was mentioned, there's homework with each lesson and then a final test at the end of each series. And there are two manuals, one for the teacher, one for the student. The teacher's manual has the answers to the homework and the questions.

Many pastors come thinking they're going to learn a lot about the scriptures, and truly they do, or they think they already know a lot. And they do know a lot. Many are smarter than many of us. They've spent a lot of time in God's word.

But when they come and really get into it and the sharing and, can I say, the camaraderie, it reminds me of times when I was in a good group, either in Bible school or in some kind of group, men's group, whatever it was. And they find out that the word of God isn't just a head knowledge. It's a double-edged sword that cuts to their own heart. And they begin to share, and many of them begin to spill out the sins that they've been living in, covering up for years and so forth. It's a real blessing. It can be class time or after class time. Class time can become a debate, a time of debate as they speak about whether it is political involvement or whether you should serve in the armed forces and defend Christianity.

And all those things become issues of debate. But it can also be a time of deep sorrow in the classroom and falling down. Many stories of those who just simply fall down and repent from their sins.

There's also each lesson has a discussion time built into the end for students to just—there are discussion questions that are to lead the students into thinking about what was taught. There's also structured evening Bible study and singing times, question-and-answer times with a solid brother, a dean of men, or it could be a house parent that's also there. And these can really lead into very rewarding after-class times, times to share.

So the BDC administrator or the person that leads out this is what we're looking for. An administrator should be a conservative American from one of our Anabaptist circles who is either ordained or commissioned for the work of teaching this Bible doctrine. Should be one that enjoys administrative work and working closely with nationals and able to explain the scriptures and teach Bible truths, live it out, comfortable in leadership roles and classroom, working with other teachers, even from the US, that may get sent in to teach. And as I said, there's basically three lessons a day. It's too heavy for one teacher. So the American teachers can come in or you can look for local national teachers as well.

I might speak on that a little bit later here.

Some of the things on his job description outside of administrating the program would be promoting the Biblical Discipleship Center program to native pastors. Got to find people interested in coming to the class. So sometimes it means going out to conferences or other pastor retreats, local Pentecostal, apostolic groups, so forth, inviting pastors to the center.

Tracking applications and communicating with the applicants, scheduling seminars, and then the seminar activities, which would be really the classes it's talking about here, giving orientation, teaching as needed, giving their homework, test scores, preparing and giving certificates. It's overseeing the evening and afternoon activities of the students and keeping some financial records as well, simply their tuition payments, and there's some reimbursement of transportation and so forth.

Also, testimonies, working with the home office in capturing the blessings behind it. And that's good for supporters to hear, and it's good for us to hear as management as well.

The BDC administrator also hires local workers, a lot of staff, cooks, cleaning ladies, so forth, to keep the dorms clean and keep our stomachs well fed, that type of thing. And then also, it's usually would have a dean of men or it could be a single fellow or someone living close by as a house parent to monitor these evenings. And so that's important to be able to relate with locals in that way.

There's also, I mentioned American teachers that we would send over. The home office here helps find those teachers, but it's a partnership effort with a person on the field with ideas of who could come, might be able to come and help teach in these classes. Local men, nationals that teach are also—we're also open to that, but we require that they attend all six sessions before they're eligible to teach so that we can know whether they're sincere, whether their life demonstrates godliness and kingdom living all the time, every day. And finding sincere men that are non-resistant, understand separation of church and state, can humbly lead, work alongside an American without becoming proud of their position or struggle with that, becoming in favor with the white man.

That type of approach can be a challenge, but we are blessed, have been blessed with many who are a part of the teaching.

At the close of each series, there's a certificate given, and after the end of the sixth series is a graduation. And this is a time of—yeah, it's a celebration, but it's also a time that we try to enforce structure. Many graduations, foreign cultures, are a time of revelry and human achievement. We try to keep this a time of respect for God and have attire and actions that demonstrate godliness and reverence.

Not that it's not a time of joy, but it's a time of, can I say, inner joy for many who now understand Jesus Christ and what it means to live it in their life, kingdom living here and portraying what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ in day-to-day life.

Some comments from those that have attended the BDCs in Haiti and Nicaragua. I'm hearing things I had not heard before. I'm happy we can share this time to sit and discuss together, discuss God's word. We have heard the truth, and now we have a responsibility to preach the truth.

And while I really like the time spent here, it has been like a refuge for me. I feel like the Spirit of the Lord is here in a way that is not at my home. And I think that comment often wraps it up as well. It's a little sanctuary place for these men to go to really get the heart right with God.

If you or anyone you know has interest in serving with Cam in this position, please let us know.

You can reach us at camweb@camoh.org. I believe my bio also has access to our website. You can reach us via our website as well. A couple of links there that take on my bio that take you to our website.

And you can contact us that way as well. So I think I'm through. All right. Thank you, James, for sharing. So as we heard, there's an opportunity to help this effort in Kenya. We're going to have an opportunity at the end for Q&A, which would be for any of the speakers. So again, if you have any questions, just be prepared then to offer those. And we're going to move on to the next speaker here.

Again, thank you, James, and stick by for the Q&A at the end. So Leon Smith is joining us from Wisconsin. Leon has been on here in January with ARC. That's Anabaptist Refugee Committee, and he joins us this morning. Good morning, Leon. Good morning.

Good to have you. Go ahead. Good to be here this morning. I'm going to share my screen here with you. Okay. How's that coming through? That's great. Okay. My name is Leon. I'm from Wisconsin, children of Wisconsin area. I'm married. We have seven children, and we are part of the Shiloh Mennonite Church here.

We started the ARC ministry work almost a year ago. It's a year ago now that the Afghan refugees, the American army pulled out of Afghanistan, and the refugees came across. Esther 4:14 has been our theme verse. There's a lot in there that I don't have time to unpack this morning. We know the story. This is when Mordecai told Esther. He said, "If you hold your peace for this time, then shall their enlargement and deliverance arise to Jews from another place. The down of thy father's house shall be destroyed.

And who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" The challenge I would like to leave from there this morning is God has placed each one of us here in this time, in this place for a purpose.

What are we doing with this privilege? Are we filling the purpose God has given to us?

We have an E4 vision that we have taken from Esther 4, equipping Anabaptists to engage with diverse cultures, creating enduring relationships that ultimately express the love of Jesus. That is our goal here at ARC Ministry. How are we doing this? When I was on with you in January, we were working in Fort McCoy. There were 13,000 refugees held at Fort McCoy in Toma, Wisconsin, which is about two and a half hours from where I live.

And we were sending teams of volunteers in to work among them just throughout the day, spending time with them. And while we were strictly prohibited from proselytizing, handing out any literature there in Fort McCoy, we had many, many opportunities to pray with these people. We heard many, many sad stories. Many of them have seen family members and friends shot, killed by the Taliban.

There are many incomplete homes. Maybe Dad got on the plane, but Mom didn't. Maybe they were on the way to the airport, and the crowds got separated, never to find their family again. So we hear many sad stories there in Fort McCoy.

We heard many sad stories there in Fort McCoy.

That shut down the end of January. By February 15, they had the refugees all moved out. But in the meantime, we had a call to come to Minneapolis by an Afghan man. He is in the US Army. He's been here for quite a few years. And he's asked us, he said, "Can you come to Minneapolis?" He said, "We have a large Afghan community there, and we need help."

So after a number of meetings, we had some meetings, and the question, the need that we heard brought over and over was, "We need English classes." They need English. They cannot get driver's licenses. They struggle to get driver's licenses. They struggle to get jobs without having English. So we are using English as a door to create and build relationships with the refugees.

We don't have an exact count, but we're told that there's about 2,000 of the refugees that have moved to Minneapolis, of the refugees that were just brought across in the last year. So in February of this year, we opened a center in Minneapolis for the refugees. We are teaching English to the men at the tea house. I'll show a picture of what we call the tea house.

Men come to the tea house for their class, and our single ladies' staff go to the apartments to teach the women and children.

We've had more work than we can handle, more opportunities than we can reach out to. We're considering other services and ways to reach the refugees. Here are some of the things that we've been talking about: sewing classes with the women, discipleship classes, kids' club, summer Bible school programs, financial literacy, the Cam Salt program possibly. We've also considered a reading room library that we could staff maybe two evenings a week where they could come and drink tea and read and talk. They could borrow books and just a place to come and ask questions and continue to build those relationships.

So this is the tea house, just a small house there in the middle of Minneapolis that we have rented. That's where the men come. The bottom picture here is what we call the archive. This is an apartment where our volunteers are staying in Minneapolis there.

Here's a picture. I'm going to show some pictures here of our classroom.

I won't make a lot of comments about them.

This is a group of our students and some of our teachers here in the back. This was one of our first teachers here. This picture down here is the beginning of our classroom, and I find it interesting because here the men are all sitting in chairs back away from the teacher a little ways.

And hang on to that picture in your mind, this one here, where the men are sitting compared to where you'll see shortly.

Here is a picture from in-home tutoring.

We are entering into their culture, sitting on the floor, holding their children, drinking chai and snack, and a lot of good memories and friendships are being built. In the evening, we do some classes in the evening, and some of the evenings, there are ladies that come to the tea house. This bottom picture here would be from in the tea house, some of the Afghan ladies there. And this is building relationships. This picture here on the right is a very common scene for our volunteers to take the women shopping and help them to learn how to shop at Target and Walmart and different places.

And again, it gives opportunities to build relationships and have discussions. And one day, some of our single staff had taken some of the Muslim Afghan ladies shopping, and a fellow shopper, somebody else that they met up with, made some snide remark about, "What are the Amish doing with the Muslims?" So that was okay. That didn't really bother us.

We considered a privilege. Some more pictures.

This picture here at the top is a very common picture now. We sit around a table, the teachers and the students having discussions and eating pizza and other things like that. These men on the bottom here, our English class, we have three levels of classes. Our beginner class has 60 lessons, and that's where most of our students are. Then we also have an intermediate. There's a few in that, and we do offer an advanced class, but we do not have any students in that yet.

These four men here are holding their certificates. The beginner class has 60 lessons, and these men have completed that. So when they complete that, they get their certificate. Some of these men know almost no English, and some of them you can whenever they come to our class, and some of them you can communicate with. So it's a challenge to bring everybody under the same page and find your way through that. But we're doing our best to try to do that.

More pictures of building relationships. Again, times of visiting and eating together and talking and trust that is being built.

This young man here, I've blotted out his face. He is a young single Afghan man that is very lonely, and he spends every minute possible with our teachers that he can. He will call him up, "Teacher, can we go out for ice cream? Teacher, can we do this or do that?"

And I'm just going to call him Sammy. Pray for him that as we spend a lot of time with him, that he can see the light of the gospel. He's a single man. I believe he's in his mid-20s.

This picture here is right at the Eid al-Adha. If you're familiar with the Muslim culture, you may know that they have two Eid celebrations. The first one is right after Ramadan. The second one is about a month later when they believe that Prophet Abraham offered Ishmael.

But because God provided a ram and Abraham did not have to offer Ishmael, I'm going by their story right now, but provided a ram, so they too need to sacrifice. And so they have a big feast and sacrifice at the time of the second Eid. Here in Minneapolis, they actually have dubbed it Super Eid.

This year, they've been renting the US Bank Stadium for their Saturday prayer and time. This year, there were 45,000 Muslims at Super Eid there in Minneapolis. So our students—I'm sorry, our teachers—took these young men here to a farm not far from Minneapolis and let them pick out their sheep. And they butchered it right on the farm, took it home, and that night they had lamb chops.

What I'm going to share here next, I'm going to read from my screen here, is taken from a book, Seeking Allah: Finding Jesus. If you are interested in the Muslim, I'll show you a picture of the book here shortly.

For the most part, Eastern teachers have taught the Muslims that the West is Christian, that its culture is promiscuous, and that the people oppose Islam. So the average Muslim immigrant expects the West to be promiscuous and enemies of Islam.

When they do come to America, their cultural differences often cause them to remain isolated from Westerners. What is worse, some Muslims do receive poor treatment from Westerners and Christians. And this bolsters the notion that all Westerners and Christians are the same.

On the rare occasion that someone does invite a Muslim to their home, differences in culture and hospitality may make them uncomfortable, and the host must be willing to ask, learn, and adapt to overcome this barrier. There are simply too many barriers for Muslim immigrants to understand Christians in the West by sheer circumstance.

Only the exceptional blend of love, humility, hospitality, and persistence can overcome these barriers. And unfortunately, not many people make the effort. If they were to intimately know even one Christian who lived differently, perhaps, just perhaps, their misconceptions might be corrected.

This is very challenging. So as you consider the pictures that I showed and the time that we are building with these relationships and the time that we are spending with these Muslim immigrants, perhaps if they can learn to know intimately even one Christian, could their misperceptions of the West and Christianity be corrected?

I took that from this book here in the center, Seeking Allah: Finding Jesus. These are three books that I highly recommend if you're interested in the Muslim reaching out to Muslims, Radical Islam, How Would Jesus Respond by Gary Miller. It's a very short book. I think it's around 50 or 60 pages. This gives you a basic view into how Muslims see Christianity overall and, unfortunately, how Christianity looks at Muslims.

The second book here, Seeking Allah: Finding Jesus, this man grew up in a very, very devout home. By the time he was six years old, he had read out loud through the whole Quran.

It's a very good book. It's a hard book to get through, but if you're interested in reaching out to them, I highly recommend you read it. It will give you an insight into their ways and how they think. Tales of Sumerkan is stories of Christians and Muslim lions. Again, I recommend it for reading material just to help understand them.

The needs that we are facing at our ministry, first and foremost, pray for the work here. We have many questions and many things we're dealing with right now, and we do not know the way forward. We believe that God has led us here.

We believe that God will make a way forward, but we do not know what that looks like at this point. Pray for our families as they support us and sacrifice their time. Pray for volunteers that they can be the hands and feet of Jesus.

They face many pressures in the city, not just working with the refugees. As they work with the refugees, they enter into their lives. They see they're hurt. They enter into that with them. Besides that, they're in the city, and there's much wickedness and evil around. So pray for volunteers that they could be faithful and they could be the hands and feet of Jesus there.

Pray for our refugees, for the refugees, that they could find Prince of Peace, Jesus, the Son of God, the true Jesus that we know, not the Jesus that they maybe saw in the American army or that they see in Hollywood, that they could find the true Jesus.

We need personnel. We would like to have a team, a full team right now. It would be four single fellas and four single girls plus house parents. And I think right now we have two single guys and three single girls. And we have one of our board members is filling in for house parents right now.

So we have a real need for personnel.

We'd like to have a six-month commitment for house parents, but we're very open to working with whatever we can find. Volunteers, TESOL, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages is great, but it is not a must. Unfortunately, a work like this does take funds, and it's not cheap operating in the city. So there is a need for funding. We would like to purchase a property in Minneapolis where we can offer more of these services. Again, that takes funds to do that. So those are some of the needs that we are facing here at our ministry right now.

This is another branch of ARC. Our desire has been to work with refugees, not just the Afghans. And I want to be very, very clear this morning with what I share here. We have talked to other organizations, CAM, MIM, some of the other organizations that are in Ukraine, and they have asked us that we would not bring their people over to America.

So we would definitely want to respect that totally. There is this website here, welcome.us. And on the American side, anybody can fill this out and apply to be a sponsor for a Ukrainian refugee. On the other side, the Ukraines that decide that they want to come some way somehow, they don't really care. They can fill out on their side for a sponsor. And so what we are trying to do is simply connect people from the Ukrainian side that have said they're coming one way or another within the Baptist communities that are interested in helping to provide housing, funding, and work for these people.

So if you or your church is interested in that, you can reach out to us for more details on that.

We've had people call us and say we want to bring a Christian family over because, just to repeat what I said there, because the churches have asked us not to do that. We are not saying that none of these families are Christian families.

They likely are not going to be part of a conservative church, neither the Anabaptist church nor the conservative of Baptist churches there. If you have more questions, feel free to reach out to us on that. As we consider this work, here's a picture and a saying that has really stood out to me over the last few months. We cannot force someone to hear a message they're not ready to receive, but we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed. And I'd like to show this picture. How long did it take that tree to split that rock?

A long, long time. How long does it take the gospel message at times to split a stony heart? We are called to plant seeds. May we be faithful planting them wherever we go. Let God give the increase.

You can subscribe for our newsletter and updates, arcministry.org. You can email us at info@arcministry.org for more information. We do have a Telegram cloud mail channel, Arc Ministry Updates. You can scan this code here, and we try to update at least every week on that. Just sometimes it's prayer requests, sometimes it's needs, sometimes it's just pictures from the day, a little video, just various things there. So you can scan that code to join.

I think I'm done.

All right. Thank you, Leon, for sharing this morning. And so it sounds like there's a lot of good opportunities there in Minneapolis. The next speaker is Bryant Martin. Bryant is actually part of the Strength to Strength team here, and we welcome him to speak about Sewer's Harvest. He joins us from State College, Pennsylvania. Bryant.

Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me? Morning. Yeah.

Okay. So Sewer's Harvest Cafe.

Interestingly, Leon, you're talking about Afghan refugees. Just in the last two weeks, we've hired our first Afghan refugee at Sewer's, and it seems like there's even more coming in the area. So some more opportunities there. And so it's been an interesting cross-culture experience for us. We've had other cultures work there, but never Afghan. So that's been interesting.

So Sewer's Harvest Cafe is a business that my wife and I own, but it is a business that has grown out of the burden to see the kingdom advance, particularly in urban areas, to see Anabaptists, to see kingdom Christians getting back into cities, bringing value to their communities, and also having a platform whereby we can build relationships and connections and encounter or engage a lot of different worldviews of our day.

Tim Keller has a quote, "As I think about the American church and how are we going to reach the world," is a question that we've grappled with for years. My wife and I have always lived in the city and have been engaging with people and with our evangelism and outreach. But the question is, how are we going to see the world changed with the gospel? And I'm confident that the only way we can do that is by not by using past evangelistic methods, but by looking at our world, looking at the worldview that we're engaging with, and just all the different things that are factoring into that. And Tim Keller says, he says, "The Christian church in the West," and by the way, Tim Keller is from New York City.

He planted a church in Manhattan over the last 30 years. He's an older gentleman now, but just still talks a lot about evangelism and how we do that in our day. He says this. He said, "The Christian church in the West faces the first post-Christian deeply secular culture in history.

It has not yet developed a way to do evangelism with the secular and the non-religious that really gain traction and sees many people regularly coming to the faith. The means will entail immobilization of lay people in evangelism as in the early church.

The context will show how to demonstrate to deeply skeptical people that Christianity is respectable, desirable, and believable." So how will we see people transfer from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of his son? And that's going to be through seeing the whole church participating in evangelism. And what kind of evangelism is that going to be? And he's saying, "It's going to be it's going to have to demonstrate to deeply skeptical people that Christianity is believable." And so that's why I care so much about hospitality. That's why I care so much about daily hopeful hospitality.

And I've spoken on hospitality before here on Strength to Strength. That was more in the context of our homes and how to use just the mundane normal structures of our lives. But this morning, I'm going to be talking more about a business platform where we can steward what I believe is hospitality in business for the advancement of the kingdom. And so out of that has grown Sewer's Harvest Cafe. I'm just going to share my screen here, and we're just going to go through some pictures and just talk about some of the aspects of it, of Sewer's Harvest. So Sewer's Harvest is about seven years old.

And let me see here. Does this slide change there? One. And right up front, basically the reason for my talk this morning, my presentation is we are continuing to look for workers at Sewer's, daily workers, people who can be part of the team. And so we say be part of the relational team with an outward focus.

We have at Sewer's, we have local people working there from the community, those who aren't even Christian. We have people from our congregation working there. We have people who move in from a distance and work for a season at Sewer's.

And then we also have those that drive in from about 45 minutes. There's different Anabaptist communities around that drive in. So we continue to have a need for workers. Sewer's is a growing business and with lots of opportunity there. So we're always looking for more workers. So we do have a need there. And also another proposition that we have to share is for future cafe owners. Does the work of owning a cafe interest you?

Maybe you didn't know where to start, and we would be happy to help you overcome these obstacles. You can come join us for a three-year apprenticeship and learn all the ins and outs of running a cafe and then move back to your community and start from there or move to the next city and be the spearhead for a kingdom church there. So that's my need. And I'll put that up front here, and then we're just going to move through and just talk about Sewer's a little bit and then wrap this up. So Sewer's Harvest Cafe is right in downtown State College, right next to Penn State University. Penn State University has about 48,000 students. Here's some of the buildings: 312 buildings, 54,000 students, 22,000 employees, over 100 different countries represented at Sewer's.

And so the world is here at Penn State, right in the center of Pennsylvania. And after we arrived here and got our cafe going and the church was started here, it occurred to me that here sat a city right in Pennsylvania, kind of the Mecca, if you will, of the Anabaptist world. And there's no kingdom embassy here in this town.

Very unfortunate. And I think of all the other cities with universities where the world is right here. We get to spend years with them and influence them for the kingdom. Recently, Coronation Cafe started up in Massachusetts, where Glenn is from, Glenn's Church, and it's right in downtown Amherst, right next to university.

And to me, that's so exciting. There was not a kingdom daily proclamation there before, and so now that is there, and that's really exciting. So Sewer's Harvest Cafe, just a little storefront, not that huge. We have some outdoor dining there.

Our slogan there at Sewer's is Naturally Healthy Cuisine, served with a heart of welcome. Our vision, our destination is to be a kingdom embassy of Jesus in State College. And our mission, our vehicle to get there is by creating a peaceful space to cultivate conversations that change the world. And so we see our coffee, our food has really just been the catalyst for conversation, for connection, for communication there at Sewer's. And out of that, we see not only many connections being made with those of us who work there, but also otherwise. We live in a world that is becoming more individualistic, more lonely, more separate. And if I can be part of creating an environment to kind of bring people back together over food and coffee and conversation, that's fulfilling to me.

And finally, our guiding principles is a relational team, extraordinary customer service, and quality local ethically sourced foods. We won't spend a whole lot of time on that, but we do believe deeply with the relational employee team that if we can be doing well as a team, working together really well, which we have an open kitchen and we work right in front of our customers every day, all day, but as we really do well as a team, that can flow out and it impacts people who come into the cafe and they talk all the time how it's so peaceful or you guys work together so well. And sometimes we kind of grin behind our hands because we know there's a lot of stress happening or whatever, but it is exciting to be part of a team on a mission, really a diverse team.

And so being part of Sewer's is not being part of a bubble. Not only within the team is it diverse, but also obviously across the counter is quite diverse. And so we're looking for mature workers, people who can handle or who are up to the challenge really of engaging people and moving the gospel forward in a way that's winsome to those around. Just some different pictures.

Sewer's is a very busy place.

Yeah, I could talk for quite a while in these pictures, but we're going to keep rolling, rolling. A little bit slower morning at Sewer's, so we have our slower times as well.

Quarterly, we meet for our quarterly team meetings. So part of developing a relational team that knows each other well and where there's communication, we hold these regularly. Every morning, we meet for a team huddle for 15 minutes. We talk about the team leader, talks about the day, the tasks we need for the day. We often share a little nugget or two, and we bow our heads for a brief prayer before getting into our day.

We meet there regularly for prayer in the mornings early, and anybody who wants to join is welcome to be part of that. Also, Sewer's closes at 3:00 every day. So in the evenings, during semester, we do a culture night once a month where we have different international friends tell us about their country and culture. And that's always a very interesting time. It attracts quite a group of people and has really helped us develop connections and relationships. And something we find interesting is when a person has told us about their country and culture, at the end, afterwards, one-on-one, they'll often ask us about our country and culture. And so we have to tell them about the kingdom of God and who our king is, what country we represent.

So some more pictures of culture nights, lots of relationships that we're actively involved in. This is just my family here with some Iranian friends of ours. West, I've mentioned occasionally on here, a radical Catholic student who we have engaged in many, many ways. He's an Apostle Paul, or maybe we'll call him a Saul, but he's just zealous, absolutely zealous. So our prayer is that he would join a kingdom army here sometime. So yeah. And then, of course, we've used Sewer's as step one in a process of relationship building, daily, hopeful hospitality that will result in bringing people into our homes for Bible studies, relationship services, and of course, with the goal of seeing them become followers of Jesus, of moving people on the continuum of skeptic, as Tim Keller was talking about, to where they actually can imagine that, wow, Christianity is true.

It's real. It's powerful. It's hopeful. It's flourishing. It's the answer for the problems. And of course, that takes a long time of planting seeds to see that happen. Just different relationships in our home, Thanksgiving dinner here. It's really interesting.

Leon, you mentioned this quote by Elizabeth Elliott, and I have it here as well. Deeply believe that. Sowing seeds, doing it in intentional ways through daily hopeful hospitality has a way of cracking those hardest stones. And we're seeing that happen. We're rejoicing in that. So pray for us. Pray that Jesus' light would shine forth in State College. Pray that we could be part of moving people on the continuum from skeptics to Jesus' followers. Pray for strength for daily hopeful hospitality. And ending on the slideshow, continue partnering with us, whether just joining our team there at Sewer's or maybe being part of a kingdom franchise, if you will, of owning your own cafe and working with us, joining our team for a time to apprentice with us.

We would love to talk about that. So that's all I have. Back to you, Glenn. All right. Thank you, Brian. Thank you very much. All right. So that was great to hear. Thank you, Brian, for sharing there. And we'll go to Jaron Miller. So Jaron is a co-founder of Anabaptist Perspectives, and he is joining us here this morning from Pennsylvania. So welcome, Jaron. Good to have you with us.

Thank you, Glenn. It is really good to be here. Like Glenn said, my name is Jaron Miller, and my wife, Sarah, and I live in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and are members at Meadville Mennonite Chapel. I'm here to talk a little bit about Anabaptist Perspectives and introduce you to this ministry that God has given me an opportunity to work with and also to share some opportunities that we have identified.

The vision of Anabaptist Perspectives is to use digital media to encourage allegiance to Jesus' sacrificial kingdom. And the way we set out to do that is by describing and defending biblical elements of contemporary Anabaptist lifestyle and theology, promoting biblical, historical, and theological discussions about social and cultural issues, publishing a rich stream of natively digital media in a variety of formats and on a range of platforms, building and maintaining a rich online library, facilitating continued interaction around our content that includes both our audience and our content contributors.

In practical terms, what that means is that we publish biweekly episodes and blog posts on our blog called Essays for King Jesus. These biweekly episodes are conversations or interviews that we have with people in Anabaptist and kingdom-minded churches around a variety of topics. We record these conversations and interviews and publish them on places like YouTube, Facebook, Telegram, and CloudVeil, our website, and most major podcast platforms.

We also maintain the blog Essays for King Jesus.

In many ways, it has content that is similar to that which we publish on our main channel with video and podcast, but it is a distinct stream of content that addresses things that we're not able to on our podcast and YouTube channel.

We're committed to the power of the written word. The bulk of our energy goes into digital media such as video and podcast, but we still believe in text. A quote here from Marlon Summers, one of our board members. He says, "Today, we read texts from other millennia and other places. The best texts endure. Texts lend themselves to rereading, analysis, and discussion.

Audio and video have their advantages, but that must not be a pretext to abandon texts." So we haven't abandoned texts. We maintain a blog, and we're big advocates of reading things such as blogs and books.

So our vision is to encourage allegiance to Jesus' sacrificial kingdom. And that gets expressed in what we publish through the kinds of things that we publish. We publish testimonies of how God is working in and changing people's lives.