Walk the Talk #10: Spotlight on Kingdom Work

Lesson Transcript

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. This is Strength to Strength, and we are excited to be hosting our 10th Walk the Talk: Spotlight on Kingdom Work.

And the description for this—this, uh, initiative, this talk, goes like this: "The unsung heroes of Jesus' kingdom are the faithful disciples who serve their Lord without fanfare or applause." Whether you are a warrior in secret prayer, a widow who casts in the last two mites, or a worker advancing the bleeding edge of the kingdom, you can rest assured that—that the deeds of service, that these deeds of service do not escape the eyes of our benevolent King.

And we have a quote there by Aristotle that goes like this: "Where your talents and needs of the world cross, there lies your vacation." And I love that quote. I—I love seeing men and women rising to the challenge of service, of serving their communities, their people, the world, in their unique way.

And these talks, or this Walk the Talk initiative that we've done here in the last couple—number of years, we do two of these a year, one in the spring, one in the fall, has been some of my favorite talks here on Strength to Strength. Just hearing about the different initiatives, it's inspiring. And most of all, the desire of the brothers that are here today, and us here at Strength to Strength, is that God will receive the glory. And so thank you for joining us here today, this morning.

For some of you, it's early morning; for some of the presenters, it's 4 o'clock in the morning. So thank you for sacrificing your early morning to be here. And some of you will be listening later, and so we want to welcome you as well. So before we jump in, let's bow our heads and pray. Father, we come to You this morning in Jesus' name. Father, we're thankful for Your mercies that are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness. And Father, You are looking down from heaven.

You are seeing Your people, Your church, here on earth. And Father, You—You deeply desire us to, to be animated by Your love, by Your passion, and also by Your holiness. And through the animation, we go out and we—we tell the world about who You are. We want to see people—Your body—engaged, equipped for service. And some of these talks this morning are kind of around that idea as well.

And so Father, I pray that You would just bless the five brothers that are sharing here this morning, Father, and bless their efforts. Father, sometimes we seem—we feel very feeble, and I'm sure these brothers at many times they feel inadequate. Many times there's a mountain that looks insurmountable. But Father, You—You're good at lowering the mountains. You're good at raising the valleys. You're good at making our paths straight. And we thank You for that, Lord. We thank You for Your mercy.

We thank You for Your mercy upon our feeble efforts. And Father, we ask again, just this morning, that You would do that, that You would bless this time. And Father, that You would just continue to raise up faithful soldiers, faithful workers in this generation. Workers, people who—who want to steward every aspect of their lives, whether it's their business or their—or their ministry, for—for You and for Your glory. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right. So we're going to start off with Hector Schroyer.

Hector is from my congregation here. Hector and his wife, Lois, and they have five boys and one girl. They're part of the Fathers of Jesus congregation in State College, Pennsylvania, and they are praying towards establishing an Anabaptist community in Louisiana. He believes that it is essential that the Gospel be presented in the context of a faithful community of believers. To that end, he is particularly interested in church modification through the aggressive colonization of new territory.

His desire is to assist and encourage those attempting to start churches in cities and areas previously unoccupied by Anabaptist kingdom churches. All right. Hector, tell us about your vision for Louisiana. Okay, thank you. I'll take a few minutes here and tell you about this—what's happening. We'll be a lot of—a lot to share here, but I'll give you a little background. So, a little background on how the whole thing started, what we're seeing in the area, and where things stand right now.

The area that we're looking at is around Houma, Louisiana. And that's Terrebonne Parish, which is a—they call their counties in Louisiana, they're called parishes. And some of the surrounding communities are. So if you're not familiar with Louisiana geography, Houma is about an hour southwest of New Orleans. You're getting down into the Bayou country there. It's about 40 minutes off the Gulf of Mexico. It's a pretty interesting part of the country.

It's quite different than most—what most of us are used to, both geographically and culturally. And as far as I've been able to tell, there isn't—there's no established conservative Anabaptist congregation anywhere in Louisiana except two Holderman churches on the west edge. And that's something we'd like to change. One of the things that makes this opportunity interesting is that the work Christian Aid Ministry has already been doing there.

Because back in August of 2021, Hurricane Ida came through the southern Louisiana and did a tremendous amount of damage, especially in the Terrebonne Parish. And there were a lot of homes destroyed, roofs tore off, entire communities that were pretty badly devastated. A lot of that was flooding. And CAM came into the area in late 2021 and has been working there ever since. So they've been there for about 5 years now. And they've done a lot of cleanup and repairs and rebuilding.

And one of the things that happens when you have a lot of volunteers coming to an area and helping people repair their homes, you develop relationships. So people get acquainted with the volunteers, they find out a little bit about who they are, where they're from, what they believe. So over the last 5 years, CAM has had quite a bit of opportunity to develop those relationships.

And one thing that's interesting is that CAM holds Thursday evening services at their base, and those services have been pretty well attended. Usually it's just singing and maybe a short devotional, but the local people have really done well at coming to those services. So to me, that's a good indication that CAM has developed a healthy relationship with the community. And obviously that doesn't mean that everybody attending those services is interested in becoming part of an Anabaptist church.

But it does mean that there are people in the community who are comfortable coming to those gatherings and interacting with Anabaptist Christianity. So I think that's a pretty good starting point. My own interest in Louisiana actually goes back quite a few years. Sometime back in the 2010s, I remember hearing that Louisiana was one of the states that had virtually no Anabaptist presence, and that really caught my attention.

So here's an entire state with a pretty substantial population, and yet there's very little Anabaptist church activity going on there. So the idea of planting a church in Louisiana was something that has been on the back of my mind for many years. And about 3 years ago, Larry Scherck and several other people began working on putting together a group of families to move down there and establish a church.

So I was pretty interested in what they were doing, and I was really hoping that I could—that they could get something put together. But for various reasons, that group eventually dispersed. So it looked like the whole project was just going to fizzle out. And I was pretty disappointed about that. So here was an area that CAM had already been working in for several years. There were relationships being developed, and it looked like a good opportunity to establish a permanent presence in the area.

And now it looked like the whole thing might just die out. So I got in touch with Larry. I actually met him the first time, I think I met him through his brother-in-law, Wendell, who I knew. We went swimming together, so that's how I met Larry. And then I—once I heard that this thing was dying out, I got back in touch with him and I offered to team up with him to see if we could still pull it off. So that's where my direct involvement came in.

And since then we've been working together, along with several other families and advisors, to see if we can put together a group that's willing to move into the area and establish a church. So what kind of opportunities are there? There's several things that make it interesting. The biggest one is simply that it doesn't—there isn't an established Anabaptist presence. There are lots of communities scattered throughout southern Louisiana, and quite a few people live down there.

But very few opportunities for people to become acquainted with real kingdom Christianity through a local—a local congregation. So that's one of the main reasons that we're interested in going. But the other is, of course, the relationships that CAM has already developed. They've been working there for almost 5 years. There's been quite a bit of interaction. And so there's—there's a lot of opportunity there. And the Bayou country is a pretty unique place.

It's got a lot of strong Cajun and French influences, a lot of Native American communities, and it's a—it's a real melting pot of variety of cultural backgrounds. It's definitely not like Pennsylvania or the Midwest. And I think there's—I think that's actually a good thing, going to a community like that. So our hope is that families can move down there and get to know their neighbors and establish homes and businesses and begin developing relationships.

So we're not going down there with a group of local people that are already waiting to join a church, but we do have an area where there isn't already an established kingdom witness, and CAM has already spent several years developing relationships. So our immediate goal is to establish a healthy congregation somewhere in the Houma area. Larry has already actually bought a house in Houma. And we'd like to see a number of families move into this community.

And we're looking for a congregation with solid biblical teaching and a strong interest in evangelism and discipleship. And we want a church where people from the local community can become a part of it. But we're not necessarily just thinking about one congregation just in Houma either. When you look at southern Louisiana, there's lots of towns and communities scattered throughout the area. So we'd love to see churches established in a number of these communities.

So that would obviously require quite a few more families than we currently have. And that's one of the reasons that we're interested in having other families join us. So we see this project as a much broader church planting effort than what's already happening in different parts of the country. So there are other groups that are working to establish congregations in other areas where there hasn't been much of an Anabaptist presence as well. And we're glad to be a part of the larger movement.

But right now we're looking at Houma, Louisiana. So we've been working on this for a couple of months now. Initially there were quite a few families that were expressing interest, and we spent a lot of time discussing the vision and working through questions about church structure and figuring out some of the practical details. And people have different expectations and different experiences and different ideas about how things should be done. And so we've had some challenges along the way.

But we've also gotten a much clearer picture of what we're trying to accomplish. So at this point we have 3 families that are preparing to move sometime, hopefully in the spring of 2027. We also have a group of advisors who are helping us work through questions about church structure and doctrine and accountability. And this—we're doing this in cooperation with the Fathers of Jesus here in State College, Pennsylvania, and the Disciples of Jesus in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

So we'd like to have several more families join us. And we're starting with 3 families, but we'd like to see a few more than that eventually. And our plan is just to establish a church where a normal Anabaptist church is not going to be a mission of—of financially supported or anything. We expect families to support themselves and to move into the area. So, yeah, that's where we're at. All right. Thank you, Hector. I'm sure there are some questions here for—and there will be as we work through each initiative here.

I plan to wait until the end to allow people to ask questions here of these different initiatives. So keep that in mind. Be ready to—be have your questions ready. And we're going to keep on moving along here. We have a lot of—a lot of content to get through. And we have quite a crowd, 60 people on here this morning. So it shows a lot of interest in what's being shared here, and that's—that's exciting. So, all right, Hector, hope you were successful there getting a deer this morning with your sons.

Okay, moving right on to the next brother, the next initiative here. And I'm going to go ahead and read Ben Craig's bio. Ben will join us to share the vision behind Anabaptist Engage, a new digital platform. The AE team is animated by a simple question: what might be possible if we as Anabaptists put our full potential into action? What could God's story look like if every Anabaptist with time, resources, or a new—or new ideas could easily find the ministries or people that need them?

Ben and his wife, Kristen, have 4 children and live in Lexington, Illinois. They—their journey into the Anabaptist world began in 2019 when they helped form the Fathers of Jesus in Lexington, a new Anabaptist micro-church. Their family is involved in the Church Planters Forum and Kingdom Fellowship Weekend Midwest, and also operates a small drive-thru bakery. Ben has also been involved in risk management and financial analysis for Morton Community Bank for nearly 20 years. Ben, it's good to have you here.

And tell us all about Anabaptist Engage. Okay. Thank you, brother. And I appreciate the opportunity to share this this morning. So to use a metaphor for the kind of impulse behind Anabaptist Engage, so it's December 1941, and the Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor. So President Roosevelt, he could have responded by just in kind going and sinking the Japanese Navy. However, he responded differently. Instead he put the whole United States society on total war footing.

So what that meant was everything was aligned with the war effort. Car factories were reconfigured to make tanks. Insurance salesmen started selling war bonds. Backyards were turned into victory gardens. And so in essence they had a mission, and that mission required a particular mindset. And so as a result of this—this total war mindset and approach, what happened was soon the total war economy in the US was churning out a new ship every day on average.

So every day they're churning out a new ship for World War II. And so why this matters is ultimately they were—they were actually building ships faster than Germany and the Japanese could sink them. So their overall approach basically overwhelmed—overwhelmed the opposition in World War II because they were building ships faster than the Axis powers could sink them.

And so if this had happened today, you can imagine that they would have created like a central platform, a digital platform, maybe called Liberty Platform or something, to where, you know, if you're building ships you can find the resources that you need. If you're building tanks you can get the rubber that you need for the tanks. If you're a welder and you want to engage in the effort, you can find, you know, a shipyard that needs help.

If you're a citizen and you want to buy war bonds, you could—you buy it centrally from this digital platform. But obviously World War II didn't happen in 2026. But had it happened, you know, this would have been a likely outcome or a tool just in the overall effort at that time. So I say that not to moralize World War II, but as a metaphor for that we also, in a different battle against the powers of darkness, that we as Anabaptist people following Jesus, that we also have a mission.

And that mission comes with a certain mindset. And that at our best we also can be on total war footing in that battle. And so it begs the question, you know, what might be possible if we as Anabaptists did something similar? What if—what if we kind of weaponized our life and our churches and aligned and cross-pollinated and supported each other and put our full potential into action? You know, could we crank out one ship a day so much so that we would overwhelm the powers of darkness?

They couldn't possibly sink them as fast as we're making them. You know, what might be possible if we also created a central digital platform that made that easy to find opportunities and to engage with those opportunities that God is giving among our churches and among our ministries? So that's really the impulse behind the Anabaptist Engage platform that we started discussing a year ago. It's just the possibilities, what might be possible.

We're really excited about what God is already doing in our churches and among Anabaptist people. And we just dream of what might be possible if—if the full potential that we have if we align and put that into motion. So the initial idea, which actually has been tried once or twice already, was to create like a website where basically ministries could post their staffing and volunteer needs.

And then Anabaptist people could just go to one place and find those, check out the details for those postings, and then submit an application on the website. So in the new digital platform that we've created, we are indeed doing that. We call it Anabaptist Go Ministry Opportunities, where you can go and find a central place for those both staff and volunteer openings at Anabaptist ministries. And so, you know, that's—that's a piece of what we're doing. But we said, well, let's dream bigger.

What would be possible if we went bigger than that?

And ultimately we're sort of proceeding with kind of the bigger picture dream, which is not only can you find just ways where you can plug into ministry opportunities, but what if you could also use it as like a central hub, a central resource, you know, a place where resources and energies connect, where you can find Anabaptist organizations, where you can explore what they do and how you can support them, where you can connect to Anabaptist events and learn from other people.

You could, you know, reinforce your thought patterns with healthy hymns. You could stream those from the online platform or from the mobile app that we have. Or even just find Anabaptist people or Anabaptist churches in your area. You know, what if—what if we could do all that? And ultimately that's what we've pursued, and that's what we have live today is that type of platform, both online through a website, but also we do have a mobile app that you can download for your phone.

So it begs the question, so who is this for? Because this—you know, depending on the scope, this could go a lot of different directions. And as we talked, we basically said, you know, we want to main very, very focused on this is built—this digital platform is built by Anabaptists for Anabaptist people. So if you're in a conservative Anabaptist church, you know, this is for people like you. So today 85, maybe 90 percent of our users are people in Anabaptist church, in conservative Anabaptist churches.

There's about 1,200 churches worldwide, so 80 to 90 percent of users are from there. But we also are leaving a little bit of space for just seekers that want to better understand this way of following Jesus, or people that just want to follow a ministry or two. That the platform is for them also. And so we've created a way to both primarily focus on Anabaptist people, but then create space for seekers and others.

But as we do that, it's really important that we communicate that our overall approach is that we're going to honor Anabaptist culture as a faithful way of following Jesus. That's a really important principle for us. It's also important that the energy and focus doesn't migrate away from the local church. So the local church will remain the center of authority and action and continue to be celebrated and supported as a partnership.

And then also any organization that wants to participate in the platform, there has to be respect among the Anabaptist community and that organization. And also win-win relationships, whether that's ministries or even churches that want to participate. You know, if they're parasitic and they don't have win-win relationships with the rest of the community, then also we'll have some hesitations there. So that's who the Anabaptist Engage is for. So what is it for?

So the big picture long-term vision, which we're actively working towards and building towards, is we want it to be a central directory for Anabaptist organizations.

So if you want to know what Bible schools are out there among Anabaptist churches, if you want to know, you know, what immigrant outreach ministries are out there, if you want to know what ministries for sexual addiction for someone in your church, that you can go and find these organizations side by side and understand what they do, understand their strengths, and geographically where they are, and compare and contrast, it's a resource for you and for your church.

And then also you can, you know, if there's 200 organizations and you care about 12 of them, you can follow those 12 and get updates. That as they post things, you can get updates from just the organizations that you feel deeply aligned with or that you want to follow. So a central directory for Anabaptist organizations will be a big focus. Anabaptist Go Ministry Opportunities, which we've talked about, a central kind of calendar of Anabaptist events.

We also want to—and we've built basically a central feed for, you know, strength to strength, Anabaptist perspectives, Kingdom Fellowship Weekend messages, feeding all those into a central place, especially for seekers. Here's an easy place where you can kind of develop the mindset of here's how to follow Jesus in the Anabaptist way. And also I mentioned, you know, a church finder and a people finder.

And then the last really fun feature that we have, I've got a friend that has developed a mobile app that's basically like—it's like Spotify. It's a streaming music library, but it's like a Spotify for people like us. So it's, you know, a lot of really good hymns, and increasingly they're populating with Anabaptist groups, whether it's La Date or Oasis Chorale, Smoker Family, Ashes, et cetera. That you can also stream those from the website or from your phone within the app.

So if you get into the platform, some things that you can expect. So today we already have about 70 openings at Anabaptist ministries. So if you have young people or even someone that's retired just wants something kingdom-oriented to do, you can check out those. They're both, you know, in the United States, but all around the world. We have a lot of international opportunities if that's something you feel called to. We also have already spun up 12 ministry microsites.

So these are just like a mini website where you can learn about a ministry, see what they're doing. You can choose to follow them when they post updates. So we've got 12 of those. You know, Lord willing, we'll have 150 or 200 within a couple of years. You can check out the Christian Light microsite. You can see some of the new chapters of what they're doing.

Everybody thinks they know what Christian Light does, but you might not have known they're involved in Egypt with the Sudan refugees there, or that they train teachers all around the world, or that they sell more curriculum to non-Anabaptist people than they do to Anabaptist people. So you can check out some of the interesting things that are going on at Christian Light. You can look at the ministry microsite for Hillcrest Home.

If you have a young person interested in doing some VS work, that they've got a 15-month program that's pretty transformative and the beauty of the Ozarks down there in Arkansas, you can learn about that in the Hillcrest Home microsite. If you're interested in starting a new school in the city, we've got two organizations, Urban Mennonite Ministries, help you get started with setting up your new school in the city.

And then Urban Educators Collective will help kind of cheer you on with a group of like-minded city schools, you know, around the world. So you can find organizations like that. And then lastly, we've got a ministry microsite coming from a local church up in Bradford, Pennsylvania. And they've got a ministry. They basically have kind of weaponized their local church to just lean into the community.

And so we're looking forward to developing that and launching that for them to inspire the rest of us to take our local churches and to lean into the community. And so what we're trying to do, we're trying to build a community that has both organizations and users. And so the really positive news is we have the ministry community already.

You know, Christian Light and CAM and Church Planners Forum and Ministry Training Center in New York City and Hillcrest and Open Hands and IGO and Ball Legal Boys Camp and Mennonite Airmissions. You know, we've got the critical mass of ministries already in the platform. And that's been really, really exciting. That was part of the reason why the previous efforts to try to do this couldn't get off the ground. It just couldn't get enough ministry buy-in. But this time around we do have that.

So we're pretty excited about it. So now what we need is we need an engaged community of users. So we launched back on July 1. And so today we've got 600 users already. But our goal is to get to 5,000 users by the end of next year. So it's obviously pretty aggressive, but that's our goal. And that would represent about 10 percent of the people in the 1,200 Anabaptist churches that we're trying to serve. So we need users and we need engaged users.

And that's the primary focus right now, is just what will it take to get to 5,000 users by December of next year? So beyond that, other things that we're thinking about or working on, you know, like I said, number one priority is to get to 5,000 users because we've got ministries that are waiting for us all to show up to check out the great things that they are doing and the opportunities to serve. But beyond that, there's a lot of large ministries we haven't onboarded yet.

So that'll be kind of phase two of that step. And then working on to the micro ministries, so ministries that have maybe one or two people doing something themselves that might be a little bit more informal, maybe governed by the local church or something like that, to add micro ministries into the platform where you can follow them and check out the things they're doing.

We also have two church plants already in the platform, and the goal is over time to expand that to probably dozens of church plants, including what Hector just talked about in Louisiana. So if you're kind of interested in following what's going on in a new church plant, that you could do so there alongside all the other ministries. And then we'd also like to build out some modules for seekers that if, you know, a lot of these things you can find on your own and YouTube and things like that.

But if you want a central place to just onboard, like what does it mean to think like an Anabaptist as you follow Jesus, that we would have modules to help build out that understanding. And also for those of us in existing Anabaptist churches to maybe reinforce some of the strong characteristics of our culture and the way that we think about Christianity, to build out some learning modules. It's not that we'll be developing all that content ourselves as much as just bringing it to a central place.

So how can you help us? So the first thing, if you could do this today, I would greatly appreciate it. It'd be forever indebted. If you could just register as a user, go to anabaptistengage.org, or you can download our mobile app. If you could register as a user, you can get in the platform within like three minutes. It's a pretty easy registration process. And then from then on, we can stay in touch with the communications that we're sending.

But beyond just a registration, which is huge, once you get in the platform, we really want you to be engaged. You know, we don't want 5,000 passive users that are just kind of casually looking at information but not giving a lot of feedback or, you know, signing up for opportunities to serve or things like that. But, you know, we want the people that are engaged in ministry to really feel cheered on by the rest of us.

You know, so the more you can go in there and follow organizations and comment and cheer people on, tell them you're praying for them, that the more activity we can get in the platform, the more energy, I think it maybe even helps build the culture that we already have in our churches of doing that in person. That if we can also do that in the digital space here also, that that would kind of be in keeping with the overall goal of the platform. And the other thing you can do too is just help us spread the word.

That we prefer not to spend a whole bunch of money on marketing just trying to get the word out because there's a lot better uses for that money. So if you can help us do that cheaply, you know, share updates on WhatsApp or Cloudveil. You know, we have a Cloudveil or Telegram channel. We've got a Facebook channel. If you just take those ads and repost those on WhatsApp or Cloudveil or share with people at church events or just tell friends and family, "Hey, you need to check this out.

It's for people like you," we'd greatly appreciate it. Like I said, we'd prefer to spend the money on development of the platform and doing Jesus' work instead of just trying to get people on the platform. One thing to just point out, you know, when you're talking to people, that Anabaptist Engage isn't just for 20-year-olds. That it's for everybody from the 18-year-old all the way up to the 75-year-old that just wants to stay involved in Jesus' work as a silver soldier.

That there's kind of a range of levels of commitment as far as opportunities, even for Anabaptist Go Ministry opportunities. It's as simple as, "I just want some ministry training," you know, from CAM or Ministry Training Center or SMBI. You could just start there and then maybe go from there to like an internship, and then from that to a VS opportunity, then working as a staff person, you know, at Christian Light, looking for a technology director.

And then maybe to some really intense stuff like translation work with All Nations Bible Translation or overseas missions with places like DNI. And then, like I said, even if you're 75, we still have things for you to do. So this really is for all age ranges, you know, adults that it's not just for the young people. And just as a side note, donations also would make a big difference for our organization.

That we've got a lot of work in front of us and probably more work than we have capacity, both time and financial. So if we had a steady stream or just a small group of committed donors that could sort of make this happen, that we wouldn't have to do fundraising and be a fundraising organization, that would be super helpful. Just allow us to focus on the things in front of us.

So just in conclusion, just wrapping up with kind of the guiding question, you know, if we as Anabaptists put our full potential into action, what new possibilities might emerge in our chapter in God's story? And not just in our chapter. You know, if we put our full potential into action, what new possibilities might emerge for future chapters, even when we're not here?

That because we went to total war footing ourselves, and what might that mean for future chapters for our children and grandchildren that might not otherwise be there? And so I hope you join us. You know, we're trying to go from 30-fold to 60-fold to 100-fold for our king, whatever that looks like. That we do think that Anabaptist Engage can help facilitate that. We're not trying to make it happen ourselves.

We're basically just like a nerve center, a connection point where all of you and the spirit moving in your heart, moving you forward and caring about these things. That we're just trying to connect the opportunities with the resources and the energy. So I appreciate the opportunity to share this and look forward to any questions or future engagement that you have. Okay. Thank you so much, Ben. Thank you for sharing. That was inspiring. I'm excited to see this platform.

And Ben, you have a lot of gifts of just of collaboration with people. And I'm excited to see you stewarding that gift in that way. And it's you're into a big initiative here. This is a big one. And there's so much potential, as you were laying out, a lot of a big vision here. And so I'm excited to see it. anabaptistengage.org is where you can go. And to get full benefit of the platform, you need to register, which Ben was pointing that out.

And I realized this morning that I haven't even I don't think I've registered yet. So I'm going to register. And then you need to kind of approve that, right? I'm assuming that there's a little bit of a process. Could you quickly step us through that? Yeah. So when you register, we'll be asking like for the church you're associated with and things like that. But basically, you'll get right in the platform. So we don't actually have to approve to get you in the platform. Gotcha. Okay. The approval process comes.

What we'll do is just kind of make sure you're from a qualifying church. And then as long as you are, then within 24 hours, we'll give you access to like the People Finder. Oh, gotcha. The People Finder. And you can see like people's last names. And then you can send messages in the platform. And people that are not a member of a qualifying church, you'll get full access to the full platform apart from basically that People Finder piece.

But even if you want access to the People Finder, but you're not a member of a qualifying church, we can still get you in. All we ask is that you have a church leader from a qualifying church that basically sends us an email saying, "Hey, you know, this is a good guy." We'll give you full access then. We're just trying to protect the Anabaptist people from doing that. Yeah. Interesting. So what is the vision for the People Finder? Yeah.

So People Finder, like if you can imagine a scenario, you've got the Caleb summit coming up and you meet Brother Stan. And you're like, "Gosh, Stan, what was his last name?" I know he's from Ohio. Like, what was his last name? We can go in there and you can search for Stan and you can look on the map to see, is there a Stan in Ohio? And if you find him, you know, maybe you don't have their phone number, you don't have their email address, but if you find him in the platform, you can send him a platform message.

It doesn't share any personal information like phone or email, but you can send him a message saying, "Hey, I really appreciate seeing you at Caleb's summit. You know, we need to reconnect." Or if you can imagine you're on vacation in Western Montana, like, are there any Anabaptist churches or people out here? And you could use the People Finder and Church Finder to figure that out.

If you're a user and you didn't want to show up in the People Finder, you can actually hide it so you don't show up in the People Finder yourself. There is a privacy feature there. Okay. Okay. So me registering puts me into the People Finder? Yeah. By default, it would. Yep. Okay. Interesting. Okay. So yeah, this is quite a data center. You have a lot going on here. And I'm excited to see it. So check it out. They have some really beautiful, very inspiring kind of description of the Anabaptist way and what it is.

So Ben, I know you're very involved with that. Very challenging and inspiring. So yeah, God bless your work there. Okay. We better keep moving along. And remember, keep your questions till the end. And we're going to open that up. And if you have a question, we're going to want you to bring that right away so we can wrap this call up in a timely manner. So all right. Next, we're going to move to Nathaniel or Nat Yoder out of Costa Rica. I'll read his bio here.

Nat Yoder is one of the founders of Javataza Coffee, a company connecting coffee-growing Anabaptist communities across Latin America and Africa with international markets. Nat's dream began at 19 on his hands and knees, weeding his first coffee nursery. There, he envisioned a coffee company that would help Anabaptist communities become financially sustainable while advancing the kingdom of God. Little did he know that his dream would hang in the balance for 19 years and take 33 years to become a reality.

Today, Nat lives in southern Costa Rica, where he pastors a church, mentors men, raises four children with his wife, and operates a poultry company employing more than 65 people. Through business, ministry, and family life, Nat is passionate about helping people discover that everyday work can become an opportunity to serve others, faithfully strengthen communities, and reach people for Jesus Christ. Nat, it's good to have you here. And go ahead, tell us about Javataza Coffee while I sip my coffee.

That I where the green beans come through Javataza Coffee. Yeah. Well, good to be on here. My children are hoping that the status I posted that got me on here teaches me a lesson. They think I post too much stuff on my status. And the reason I'm on here is because Brian saw something on my status last month. And he asked me some questions and I don't even remember what I answered, but he thought that I should be on here today. So.

Well, Nat, the way you and I got connected, I was traveling with one of your business partners in Africa in Burundi, visiting some coffee farmers where I'm partnering with you all to bring coffee in. And there, I got connected with you because you wanted to see my WhatsApp statuses. That's how we got connected. So. Yeah. It is. Anyhow, it's good to be on here. And the picture that Brian asked about was from was way back on a mountain in Honduras last month.

And I just mentioned to Brian about or he asked me about it and I mentioned how it just blessed me so much to go back to Honduras. I can't remember when the last year I was in Honduras, but I do remember my first trip there when we were exploring the possibility of maybe bringing buying one container of coffee from this particular region. We call it where the showalters are from. There's two brothers, Joe and Eric Showalter, that pull coffee together for us there.

And I'm not going to go over my bio much, how it all started. Brian read off. That's basically how it started. This was back in 1995. And we actually started our roaster in 2000. And I think it was along about 2011 or '12 that we were scouting out about pulling in our first load of coffee from Honduras. And we were so broke and we often talked about asked ourselves what we were even doing. They say there's a fine line between faith and having lost your mind. And I've been told I have some of both.

I've been told I've lost my mind and I've been told I'm a man of faith. So I'm not exactly sure what I am, but I remember feeling, you know, the faintness or the weakness of the whole thing and asking myself if we could even keep some of the commitments we were trying to make with the people there. And I just want to I just want to talk a little about sometimes the dreams that we have, I believe, are from God. I believe sometimes there's personal motivations in them.

I believe sometimes there can even be pride about what we would like to accomplish. I was a young man. I grew up in Costa Rica. I went through a lot of pain here. I wasn't planning to go into all of this, but yeah. Anyhow, I was abused as a seven-year-old. And after my wife and I married, we left thinking I would we would never come back here. By then, we had our farm planted in coffee. And this was in '98 when we left. In 2000, we started our roaster. And I was never going to come back to this place.

But in 2006, God I found God about two years after we moved in a real way. And in about 2006, God clearly asked us to come back. And I resisted that for about two years, but I finally surrendered. And I came back in obedience, but fear was eating my lunch. I was afraid to come back to the place that and I didn't even realize what was triggering my fear until years later, but I was so afraid of coming back to the place where I had went through so much pain.

And then as the coffee company kept losing money, it just seemed like my fear had a valid had validity. And it was I don't know. It was some years ago that the Lord showed me that my fear, the debilitating fear that I had in my life was a result of fear of failure. And fear of failure was pride. I can't stand to lose. I can't stand to lose a soccer game. I can't stand to lose a checkers game. I have to win. And it seemed like it seemed like everything pointed to losing.

And so I would argue that I'm just being realistic with my situation. I feel like I'm a pretty down-to-earth person and a realistic person when it comes to finances and business and but if y'all come see me sometime, I can go show you the place where I told the Lord that if failure is what can glorify Him the most, then to just let me fail. And I'm learning. I say learning because I feel like the more I learn, the more there is to learn.

And I feel like the more I learn, the more I understand that there's out there to learn. But I'm learning that throwing in the towel and surrendering with the intent for God to receive glory are two different things. So I say all that because if I would just share what I'm about to share, it might be understood differently.

So for me to go back to Honduras last month and pull six containers of coffee from that specific location, listen to these Anabaptist brothers testify that there has no outside mission money been needed for any of their church functions in the last, I forget, four or five years. It's just it's almost more it's beyond almost my comprehension. Even though I had a dream, even though that's what I set out to do, to see that in reality now is something that only God can do.

And I feel kind of like the little boy with the five loaves and was it two or three fish? I forget. But I feel like that little kid was setting pretty good because I think it's in Mark. It says they had been out in the mountains with Jesus for about three days. And it says that Jesus considered it fasting. And I think it was more personal interests that people had than fasting, but at least the King James calls it fasting. So this was the end of the three days.

The boy has a he has a basket with that many fish or that much bread and that much fish. Apparently, he was eating from that throughout those three days. And he was actually setting pretty good. But when he gave his what he had to Jesus, his lunch became their lunch. And I feel like when we surrender whatever He calls us to, that thing can become our thing. And I'm going to close with probably the thing that most blesses my heart is that we were able to open a coffee lab in a communist country in Asia.

And I didn't even know this when I signed the papers to open that lab, but they were wanting they were needing a business entity to even be able to come into the country, to live there, to be able to stay there. And so we did that. And I find out about a year later that my first cousin that's 35 committed to the next 25 years of his life. There's a people group there that doesn't even have a written language. And they're working with all nations.

And they estimate that the project of helping them develop their written language and getting the Bible translated into that language is going to take 25 years. And so the lab became the entity for them to go into the country. They're setting up there now. And obviously, we want to use the lab to help the farmers there produce better coffee. And I'm sure we'll be bringing coffee from there eventually. And within a very short time, my goal, my dream is to be able to fund that entire project.

And I think that's pretty much all I have to say. Thank you, brother. That was touching. Thanks for sharing the pain of your past. And it's often through looking at our pain, acknowledging it, exploring it, and then building off of that. Out of that comes amazing things, whether spiritually or just practically. And I think that oftentimes - excuse me - initiatives kind of initiatives that are that are being talked about here this morning, there's pain behind that. And thank you. Thank you for sharing that story.

And it's Javitaza Coffee. Check out their website. You can buy their coffee online. There's often a lot of Anabaptist stores that sell their bulk food stores that sell their coffee. It's sourced really well. And that's what I love about Javitaza. They care about their farmers. They work directly, for the most part, with farmers. And then they also empower these farmers. They I'm going to brag on you now a little bit here. They put on an event for these farmers to come to.

And they educate them and show them that they care. And they literally have farmers lined up to sell Javitaza, their coffee. And of course, their biggest area is Honduras, six container loads of coffee. That's unbelievable. And I got to stand go ahead, Nat. It was nine and a half from Honduras, six from that specific community. Okay. Okay. Honduras is a great coffee. Great bean.

And then I got to stand beside one of Nat's partners in Burundi, East Africa, here just this spring, and talk with a whole bunch of coffee workers. And of course, through an interpreter. And these were people who had never seen anybody up the coffee chain. And they'd been doing coffee for years. And no one had ever came there. We ended up picking green going out and picking cherries with some ladies who were often most of your coffee is picked by women. And these people just couldn't believe their eyes.

And that's what Javitaza does is they get on the ground in these communities and tell them that they care. And so it was amazing to walk alongside and just witness some of the ethics, the vision, the ethos that runs through Javitaza Coffee. And so we source our green beans from them and roast them here in State College. So thank you, Nat, for sharing. Again, we'll keep your questions for the end here. And we'll keep moving along. God bless you and your company. Sure. Okay. All right.

Next, we have Austin Schenk with Apirio Impact. Let's see. Austin, there you are. Did I say that right, Apirio? Yes, you did. Fantastic. I'm going to read your bio here. Austin Schenk will join us to represent Apirio Impact where he serves as founder and donor advocate. Apirio is a stewardship platform designed to replace transactional fundraising with radical transparency, relational partnership, and low-friction giving for kingdom ministries.

Austin has a core passion for helping givers connect deeply with ministries they believe in and steward God's resources for lasting fruit. So tell us about Apirio, and I hope you tell us about what the name means. Apirio means open in Latin. And my passion is just to see the partnerships that we have for the kingdom not just be an ATM transaction, but a real open relationship that the impact happens. And so the first question that I have to ask is, what is your donor ROI? What's your return on your investment?

But I think before that question is actually a question of that Nat chose to answer by addressing the is there a way that we can eliminate the need for a donor? And I think that's even a better question that's awesome. And I'm excited about what he's doing and also what Scott is going to be sharing about how he answered the question of how can we be self-supporting. I grew up in urban ministry where my father was a self-supported pastor.

But when the need and vision for an urban school came, that was a need that was way bigger than could be addressed with just the people here working day jobs. And so the reality is there are certain initiatives for the kingdom that need more investment than a local community can sustain. And so that's where a donor comes in. So I'm going to now share the input from a brother in Mexico who has a lot of great stuff to talk about in relation to what does it mean to be an investor in the kingdom.

Is because we're investors in the kingdom. We're not donors to the kingdom. Matthew 13:44, Luke 16:9 are both verses that teach us that we're supposed to be investors in the kingdom. Investors, they investors invest for a profit. They're looking for a profit. Donors look for a good feeling. Investors bring something to completion. Donors are just happy to have been of a help. See, we're called to be investors in the kingdom.

And that's one of the things I'm so passionate about investing in the kingdom, to actually look for a return on investment because we're called to produce fruit that remains. We are investors in the kingdom. And investors in the kingdom, I started looking for eternal profit. To me, it starts becoming so dumb how hard people work. When you ask them why, so I can live well with my family when? Oh, once I retire. When do you want to retire? More or less at 60. How long will you live? Probably till 80.

And we spend our life so that we live good from 60 to 80. But what about from 80 and on? What about from 80 and on? And if we actually believe in eternity, we've got investments to make. So we started looking for value. And I started studying the scripture. What is real value? What's gold? What is the kind of investment that's going to multiply? And you realize that Jesus is passionate about orphans. He's passionate about the despised and the lost.

And he's passionate about making true disciples, like it says in John 15:8, true disciples that bear much fruit and bring the Father great glory. So what if we wrap those four up? We put that on the stock markets. That would be in the heavenly stock markets. That is one of your it's the Nasdaq versus the S&P 500, right? It's a true investment that will bring much fruit. See, the kingdom of heaven advances at the speed of profit in the hands of generous people. You think it's not spiritual?

You going to make a profit in your business? The speed of God the kingdom of God advances at the speed of profit in the hands of generous people. So what currency do you have? People are currency. Souls are currency. In your businesses, you have people that you will probably never see in church that pastors don't have access to and missionaries don't have access to. It's a currency. You have people. That's a currency. Time. If you've gone coaching from Linden, you should have some time on your hands by now.

Time is a currency. But profit is also a currency. And I wonder what it would look like. What would our contributions look like if we could save them under assets in the balance sheet instead of under expenses in the P&L? How excited would we get about contributions? I am passionate about this. I'm excited about it. I'm aggressive about it. And I want you to get excited about it. I want you to get aggressive about it.

And I want you to get so good at turning earthly currency into heavenly wealth that heaven is going to convict you of insider trading. Thank you very much. All right. So the purpose of Apirio is to be a stewardship home for the Anabaptist community where kingdom investors can choose the ministries they believe in, stay connected on their terms, and give without the friction. So we have the values of transparency and proximity and stewardship.

And the way that we think about that is if you're going to be an investor in any type of for-profit situation, you're going to want to know the details. And you're going to want to think about it as Denver mentioned from a long-term you're looking for results. You're looking for what can come out of what I've put in for my investment. And so first is that return on investment.

And the way we do that is we vet the ministries that we have on our platform, making sure they're trustworthy and that they're striving for excellence. So we have a assessment we use that is an Anabaptist version of something like the ECFA or something of that nature. It's called the Clarity Factor Assessment. And it's three pages of details on how do they work with spiritual authority, how are they working on a board level, their staff team, all of those details. We look into that kind of stuff.

And so the way that we show that to you as an investor is we're asking each of our ministries there is two levels of engagement with Apirio. One is me representing your ministry and one is you being present on the platform. And so if I'm representing you, for sure, I need to see these details. What's your purpose statement? What is the job description you have or the agreement with your investors? What is your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats? Are you aware of where you're headed?

Those are the kinds of questions you need to know for a business. So you should know them as well for a ministry. What's your strategic plan? What's your annual budget? How do you make decisions? Those are the things I'm looking for for ministries that I represent. Here's a example of what a profile looks like for a ministry. You can see the financial transparency, what amount of their money is towards their programs, how their funding is going, information. Also have an opportunity to go serve with the ministry.

You can book that trip. You can give to specific funds. You can start a matching fund. You can choose to take a whole budget line item or a partial budget line item. You can be alerted if they're running low. You can choose to support them. Or you can request a meeting, give feedback to them. That's the kinds of things that you can do through our platform. And that brings us to point two, which is we need more than your money. We need your wisdom. You have life experience. You have wisdom you've gained.

And so in order to do that, you need to be able to stay updated and connected. I've heard from many donors that everyone wants their money. Nobody tells us what they did with it. And so I created an option here where you can choose ministries you want to stay updated from and which format you want and how frequently you want it. So that allows you to be able to know what wisdom to give. And then when you have that wisdom to give, you can choose to schedule a meeting with any ministry.

If you're local, you can do that in person over a meal or you can do video calls. So you choose to schedule that. But then also, we just want to make sure the impact is maximized. These are questions you would want to know for a for-profit investment. So the same should be true for a kingdom investment. And so one of the ways that we enable that is you can choose how often you want to give and who all you want to give it to.

And then our system will customize your gift each time it's given based on that current ministry's need. And so that way, you can make sure that what you're giving is actually being given where it's needed. And so go start an account. Similar to what Ben has, Ben and I are continuing conversations about how to collaborate. His site is way more in-depth. Mine is very focused on the giving end of things, the investment part. And so we're working at trying to make sure we can collaborate more.

So at this point, you have to create an account on both sites in order to get the benefit of both. But we are trying to see if there's any way we can continue to collaborate. Thank you. Thank you, Austin. Yeah, you can drop your screen share there. Thanks so much for sharing that. And I really appreciate, Austin, your interest in networking and just a focus on connecting people with the right ministry, the right things that would really give them a lot of purpose.

And also, of course, with ministries and their needs and with investors. So thank you for that. I really appreciate that. All right. And Austin, you're new. When did you launch Apirio? I've been working at it through the summer. I've gone full-time in September 1st. Okay. All right. So you're launching out into the deep here. I'm sure that's quite a faith journey as well. So either you're crazy or you have faith, brother. All right.

Your little logo, boy, that caught my attention the first time I saw your logo, your name. What does that represent? So it's the collaboration. The circle example of the logo is just we're working together. And we want it to be an open I mean, Latin for open. This is a complete picture. We're all in it together. It's not like ministries off on the side and investors over here just throwing money at it. We're together at it. Okay. Great. Great. That sounds good. Okay. Well, we're going to go to our last one here.

Scott, last but not least, I'm excited to hear about Detroit Junk Busters. I'm a big I'm passionate about business as witness or business as mission, business with a purpose. And this is one of those. So I'm going to read that. Scott Stauffer is a recovering syndicate set free by the blood of Jesus. Currently, he lives in Detroit, Michigan, with his wife and four children.

He has a passion for empowering young people through the love of Jesus and purpose to enable an inner city, Christ-centered education for children. Some of the things he loves are playing basketball, drinking Pepsi, and disciplining young people. He is currently involved in a tent-maker ministry. Detroit Junk Busters serves the Metro Detroit and Lansing area with raw-off dumpsters and full-service cleanout. Scott. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for having me on here. It's a blessing.

Good opportunity to share when everyone's sleepy at the end. So commit this to the Lord. It's been just a blessing to be on here and to share. Thank you to each of you who have shared. And just, yeah, one thought I had here is we all experience pain, right? And some of us have shared some of that this morning. And some of us have gone through it. And just the idea we're going to each of us is going to experience pain, but we get to choose what pain.

The pain of discipline and following God's path for our life or the pain of regret. And so which pain do we want to choose? Which pain do we want? And so, yeah, I'm in a season where it's been just God's chipping off some blocks. And I think as an encouragement to any of our younger people who are listening is that you look at some of the older people who are sharing and some of the wow. And you can give them titles like, wow, they're visionaries or something. No, for me, it just started one day taking one step.

And I had no idea where I'd be at this point. And it wasn't yeah, I didn't have a 5-year, 10-year plan laid out. I actually probably should have done a little better at that. But it starts with taking that first step of faith. And so just an encouragement to those listening, yeah, to take that step. Here we go. My name's Scott Stauffer. And I grew up in southern Michigan, near Constantine, Michigan. So it's right on the border of Indiana, which is near the Goshen Anabaptist community there. So I'm part of that.

And I'm not going to get into how we moved. There's quite a story of how we moved to Detroit. But I'm just going to kind of jump in that we moved to Detroit in January of 2014. And my wife and we currently have four kids. And my oldest was just a baby at that point. And so we've been here since then, the same house, and had a real passion through some of my experiences before. One was through Northern Youth Programs and also serving at an orphanage.

And so God was using certainly those two are big aspects that shaped me into just seeing Detroit and seeing the young people population. And I've been given so much, two parents that have just cared for me well, have been a springboard for where I am today in a huge way. And so as we just did some prayer walking going into Detroit, some of the pastors from my church, my home church there in Sturgis, Michigan, came with us and just did some initial there's a lot of need. We could see that.

But is this where God wants us specifically? And so as we looked at that, we just seen the need. And so then we presented, what are we going to do? And so in January of 2014, we moved with Darryl Shrox to Detroit. And as we moved into Detroit, you can see some of the kind of the stats there. As we moved to Detroit, these were some of the scenes back in 2014. It was very different than where we'd come from. And it wasn't known for its rich, warm neighborhoods or a top tourist destination.

But it was known for, yeah, just having a high crime rate. And these were very common scenes, lots of graffiti, broken-out homes. And a lot of that has changed over the years. Thankfully, it's moving in the right direction. But this is what we encountered. And seeing the hopelessness of people and especially again, the youth and the young people. And as we just lived here in the community and got to know our neighbors, we saw in our prayer walking, we saw the need for cleanup.

And so that was where the idea of Detroit Junk Busters came out of. How can we provide just a cleanup company that gets rid of it responsibly and doesn't charge someone and then drives over six blocks and dumps it in the alley? And so that's where Detroit Junk Busters came from. And it was a way just to support us as we moved into Detroit. And so the discipling the young people, having interactions with their neighbors. I'm going to share just a couple of stories here.

So there was a young person in our community who was living with his mom at the time. And mom was having another guy living with her and got into a pretty large argument, as noticed by the neighbors, right? And one day, he leaves. And it's a very tense situation. And comes back. So they changed the locks. They're scared as he leaves at this point. They changed the locks. They're scared.

And he comes back and busts out the windows of every one of her car windows or her vehicle windows, the front window, the side windows, like every single window. And so they're scared. And this young man, he's 14 at the time, and sees all this. He's in the middle of this. They fix all their windows. And the next day, they fix them the same day that they were broken. And the very next day comes back.

And one of the brothers from our church saw this and busts out the driver's side window and sees him pouring something, reaching into the driver's side window, pouring a liquid in the car and reaches into his pocket, pulls out a lighter, and leans in the window, lights it. And of course, there's only one window broken and just explodes. And he comes out and he's on fire and he's running down the sidewalk. But that reality, there's many stories that we could share that we come across.

And Paul says, "But for the grace of God, there go I." And so how can we, as we experience these stories, what are ways that we can reach into it? And George Mueller has been a huge inspiration to us and just his faith and not letting physical things limit that. And so to those of you who know George Mueller, he could have said at some point, like, "Hey, we have enough kids. We can barely feed the kids that we do have." But he didn't.

If there was a need, he said, "My God is able to provide." And then the milk truck breaks down or the bread truck. And so, Lord, how can we touch these people? Well, we didn't feel like there was a real big need for an orphanage. But as we looked around, Detroit has a very poor education system. And that's one of the things that, again, limits why families are moving out is because of the education system. And so that's when Grace Christian Academy was born.

And so here's some more scenes from Detroit with our dumpster business, some of the jobs that we're doing. These are some of the young people that we were working with in the community. There's a couple more young people that so Grace Christian Academy is here in Detroit, Michigan. And this is a current student structure. It's geared for inner-city young people. So we realized that this may not be an unreached community, but we would call it like an underreached.

It's just not a place where a lot of people just enjoy going to Detroit because of various things. And so Grace Christian Academy was born out of just, yeah, a vision for discipling our youth and to be able to have our youth for K through 12, so approximately 13 years, and to set them free, well-trained, train up a child in the way he should go. And when he's old, he will not depart. And so that was what it was born out of, realizing we needed a larger community to be able to do this.

And so my role is not I'm on the board. I serve on the board there, but I am not in the day-to-day activities there at the school. So my role as the owner and leader of Detroit Junk Busters and what Detroit Junk Busters does is we do roll-offs and full-service cleanouts in Detroit, Michigan. So we'll go into houses. We'll lift anything from one refrigerator. Just the other day, I went out on a job and lifted one refrigerator and one other small item.

And that was all that we picked up, all the way up to large cleanouts where we have hoarder styles. You go in and it's just like a path through the house. And so this is a way that we can walk with young people in working in our work. So a young man, trash isn't necessarily like a super noble. I want to grow up to be a trash man.

But what we found is that for some people, when all that they've known is either mom or dad being a substance abuser and maybe held up in a basement somewhere and just the battle of depression, and that's all that they've known in their life. To be able to go to work and to have a great place to work and to be able to provide for them has been very meaningful. And so it's been a great way to connect with people, both of our community and then bringing young people on to work.

And so another story I want to put in here is one of the young men I won't give names, but one of the young men that we've known since he was 11 grew up right here in this community and today, by the grace of God, has made a commitment and been baptized and is serving now at South Carolina Boy's Camp. I'm trying to think of the name right now. I didn't write it down. The Boy's Camp of South Carolina. I can't think of it right now.

And so seeing him kind of go full circle to where he was in a place where he needed someone to pour into his life. And now he's able to have approximately 10 he's in the 8 to 10-year-old range, to have 8 to 10 young people that he ministers to there and is making an impact. So here's just, yeah, some pictures of who we are and what we do. Currently, we have a little over 250 dumpsters that we manage there in the Detroit area. And it goes to support the school.

So some of the ways that we can what are some of the ways that we're needing help? We kind of have it twofold. So we do have volunteers at the school that if teaching is something that intrigues you, working with inner-city young people and some of the battles that they're facing, we have opportunities for you to come and to be a teacher. And we're needing teachers as soon as next year. There's some out there who say, "No way. There's no way I'm going to be able to teach.

That's just not my thing." Detroit Junk Busters has offered a position to where half pay goes to support GCA. So you could move in. And this typically, we've had younger people. We've had an older person. So it could be an older single retired person that wants to come in and drive truck. So you drive truck around the city. You'd pick up dumpsters, take them, and dump them and drop them off, deliver them back to new places. Doing that, you can help generate money to support the school.

And so Grace Christian Academy is self-supported. Now, we have had help in getting into to getting it started. But once it's started, the ongoing needs are met locally. And so our goal is and long-term vision would be to see more schools pop up in these urban places. Another place that's nearby is Flint. And some of you may have heard about Flint, Michigan. It also ranks right up there with Detroit in the quality of education or lack of. The water legionneurs' disease was pretty famous in the news a while back.

And so seeing, yeah, just offering hope in the name of Jesus to our young people through Christian education and also job opportunities after school. So kind of making it a kind of a whole community. I don't have a paper, but something that Austin has helped us with is forming the business partners council is what we're naming it.

And that's where we're getting local businesses to help fund the school and with that, then have an opportunity for our young people as they come out to go into these different businesses. And so that would be more for local businesses. But if there's someone who is listening who would like to maybe partner with us from a distance, that would be a way that they could partner with this is through the business partners council to help support the school. A little bit yet on the working for Detroit Junk Busters.

So having you come in, working for Detroit Junk Busters, we provide housing. So you could stay here. You really only need a license and a way to get around a vehicle. And then we provide everything else. So a room for you to stay. It's fully furnished. The utilities are paid for. And then again, half the wages that you would make would go to support the school. And that would vary too. Some people would have a CDL. We offer more pay on that. So we can accept just about anyone.

And kind of after the work, what we found with those who are teaching, they're kind of wore out at the end of the day from the kids. But for those who are driving in a truck all day, maybe listening to podcasts or messages, they would have more energy at the end of the day. And so being able to just kind of be big brother, big sister. We do have a youth center that is actively going.

And so to be able to then invest just time into some of these kids as a big brother, big sister, and to mentor them, that would be through in the past, people enjoyed fishing. They'd take them fishing. Small engine, mini bikes are a big thing, small engine repairs. So kind of whatever God's gifted you, whether it's sports at the park, whatever God has gifted you, to just use that as a tool to reach some of the youth here in our community. And so I think with that, I'm going to wrap it up.

Thank you so much for allowing me the opportunity to serve or to share here. One verse that has been really impactful for me just lately, especially, is 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. It says, "Therefore, we do not lose heart, even though our outward " my thing is. We can. Can you see it there? We can see it. I can't. Can you see that screen now, the verse? Yep. We can see the verse. Okay.

"Yet the inner man is being renewed day by day for our light affliction, which is but for a moment." And so just a reminder here that the things that we're facing, Paul likens it to a light affliction compared to for all eternity of knowing God. And so just a reminder to keep going. It is worth it. And Paul considers it a light affliction. So just thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share here. Thank you, Scott. Thank you for sharing that.

And if I was a 20-year-old, I would not be looking for a teaching position, but I would be looking for that junk busters position. That would be really at 20 years old, I would have jumped for that 23 years ago. So that's a really neat opportunity. I love the merger of those two visions. Really, really neat. So God bless you with that. And I also appreciate it too how you didn't start out with a grand plan. You were just taking the next step. It's being faithful, looking to serve the Lord.

And it can be the most adventurous journey ever, right? It's amazing. Following Jesus is so adventurous. A lot of mundane, a lot of hard work, a lot of frustrations at times. But look at the grand arc. It's an adventurous journey. And so may that challenge young people just to take that next faithful step. So yeah, thank you for sharing. Any questions from anyone towards any of these brothers, speak up quickly and keep your questions succinct. Thank you. I have a question for Nat.

Where can we buy some Java Tala coffee? And can we get instant coffee? I'm not sure I understood. Are you asking where you can get Java Taza instant coffee? Well, either. Either coffee. Yeah. That was two questions, I guess. Okay. Where can we buy and is instant coffee available? No, it's not. Okay. You can go on our website and you can actually put in your ZIP code and it should pull up the stores nearest you. Or you can just order online. Okay. Thank you for the question. Any others? Okay.

Lots of really good content, lots of inspiring things here this morning. So Hector Troyer establishing a church in Louisiana, looking for more people to partner in that work and join that work. Ben Craig and Baptist Engage, go sign up, get a membership or get registered there with lots of content, growing vision.

Nat Yoter, just the vision of really probably the most powerful thing here is just that moving through your pain and being willing to fail and following God with a vision of seeing God's kingdom come in new ways through aligning or making it possible for coffee growers in South America, Asia, Africa to be connected to other places to sell that. Impact, new initiative, Austin Shank wanting to connect donors with ministries and ministry with donors, that radical transparency, radical giving.

Scott Stalper, Detroit Junk Busters. So we have lots of information on the website for these events or for these talks. If you're listening in via phone, you can email us at contact@strengthtustrength.org. And of course, we're putting this video out here in the next couple of days and getting that out. So all right. Thank you for joining. We had a big crowd here this morning. Tell others about these ministries. All right. When this audio comes out, forward it on.

Think about one or two people who you think have potential of helping whatever particular initiative. Forward this information out to others, help it to grow and where to get out in our broader Anabaptist community. So please consider that. And God bless your day. And we always close with prayer. And Brother Nat, could you just close with prayer here, please? Yes. Lord, I thank you for this time we've had together. And I thank you for your leading in our lives.

Lord, your word says in Psalms 32:8 that you will guide us with your eye. And Lord, a couple of things have to happen when you for someone to guide us with their eye. We have to be able to make eye contact. Nothing can come between us that hinders us from making eye contact. Lord, there's no sin or anything can come between us and you for you to be able to guide us. The more personal the relationship is, the more we can communicate with our eye.

Lord, I just pray that you would guide each of the men that are on this group with your eye. Just pray that we could have that relationship with you where you can communicate anything you need with us. Lord, we need wisdom. We need discernment. Lord, I just pray that you would build up every man on this group. Give them strength to carry the weight of responsibility. And Lord, so often under a lot of weight, we tend to our flesh tends to kick in and we don't always represent you like we should.

And we just pray that you would give us the strength to be strong. Just thank you for the privilege that we have to serve a God like you. I just pray this in Jesus' name. Ask your presence to go with each one. Amen. Amen. God bless you all and have a wonderful day. Goodbye. As Iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.