Taking Ground Strengthens Faith

Amen, amen. Would you help me welcome all our campuses? Praise the Lord. I'm so excited for this week as we kick off our fall ministry launch again this Tuesday. We're gonna be having student ministries and all our classes and everything going on. If you're a seventh through a twelfth grader, please come on both campuses. It's gonna be great. If you're here in Inglewood, we'll be at the academy building. If you're in Westminster, obviously in Westminster, it is gonna be an incredible time of ministry as we kick off the fall. So glad that you're here today. Would you pray with me as we go before the Lord? I've been sick the last four days, and the Lord got me through the first service. Pray, and I have enough voice to get through this one, so let's pray and ask the Lord for his grace today, amen? Our Father in heaven, we give you all the glory, honor, and praise for who you are. And Lord, we ask you that during the time that we have here today, that you would have your way with us. Father, give me the strength to speak your word so that your people can hear exactly what you are saying, Lord. Because we as a people believe every time your word is faithfully and accurately proclaimed that you are speaking. So our prayer this morning is speak, Lord, for we are ready to hear. And so now, for all who have gathered here who desire to hear the Lord Jesus Christ speak directly to you, who will believe what he tells you, and who will by faith put into practice what he shows you, will you agree with me very loudly by saying the word, amen? Amen. Proverbs 29, 18 says, without vision, the people perish. Or without vision, the people cast off restraint. In other words, where there's not clarity in vision and focus, there's misalignment

and misdirection on how we're gonna get there. When families don't have vision, they fall apart. When businesses don't have vision, they don't accomplish what they want. When nations don't have vision, they fall away. Vision is essential for getting to where you want to go, and no vision is more important than the vision that Jesus has for his church and for your life. So it's important that we clarify what his vision is so we know we're going to the same place. Because when you don't know if you're going to the same place, everything gets confusing. Last week, I preached for a friend of mine downtown, and my assistant Michael was driving me there. And so I quickly pulled up my phone, I said, how long does your phone say it's gonna take to get there? He said, 20 minutes. I said, well, then go my way, it's only 18. So I begin to direct him, and I begin to direct him, and sure enough, as we got there, I'm like, how far is it now? He's like, well, mine's like two minutes. I'm like, well, mine's five. And then I ask him, what's the direction to the church? And they had changed church locations. So while I thought we were going to the right place, my way was faster, we were just going to the wrong place. If we don't have clarity on vision, then we don't know if we're getting there. And the beauty of vision is, vision always attracts and repels. When you hear vision that's so clear, you can say, I'm going there with them, or you can say, I'm definitely not going there with them. If it's on a trip, and you're gonna say, hey, we're going to California or Wyoming, that's where you're going? Okay, then I'll go.

Nope, that's where you're going? I'm not going. So it's important as a church that we understand what God's calling us to do, specifically as his body, so we know where we're going. Now, in the world, people talk a lot about visionaries, and visionaries are people that can see things before they happen, right? I mean, Steve Jobs was a visionary. He saw what the computer was before anybody else did. He understood what an iPhone was before anybody else did. He saw how instead of having television in your house, you could download what you wanted yourself. He was a visionary. He saw things before it happened. Walt Disney was a visionary. He wanted to have a place in Florida where families could come and vacation, because he was totally pro-family, unlike the woke Disney today. He was totally pro-family, and so he formed a place in the swamplands, just bought a bunch of land, saying he was going to have some place, not having any idea what it would turn because he was an incredible visionary. And really, when you see people that are visionaries, you follow them because they take you to places that you've never, ever been before. But biblically, a visionary is not somebody that's a great thinker or somebody that sees things nobody else does. A biblical visionary is one who hears God and is obedient. A biblical visionary hears the Lord say, this is what I want, and then does it. That's a visionary. So, when God called Noah to build an ark because he was going to flood the world in 120 years, he was a visionary. Flood's coming. Why?

Because God told me. I'm building an ark because God told me. And so, the people didn't see it. They didn't realize it until it happened. David was a visionary because he heard God. He knew the land belonged to Israel. So, when a Philistine was in the land, David was saying, what's that Philistine doing here? He doesn't belong here. It doesn't matter that he's almost 10 foot tall. It doesn't matter how strong he is. I'm not coming at him with sword or javelin or spear. I'm coming at him in the name of the Lord Almighty. When Peter got out of the boat to walk on water, it wasn't because Peter was a visionary of water walking. It was because he had a vision. heard the voice of Jesus saying, come, and so he came. And this is where vision starts. It always starts with faith. Hebrews chapter 11, verse one says, now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Biblical visionaries, people that have vision are people that I hear you, Lord, and even though I can't see it, I'm gonna take a step of faith. And the Bible says without faith, it's impossible to please God, amen. So as we start this four week series called Taking Ground, I wanna share with you what our elders have been praying about

for over the past three years and what God is calling us to do as a church and where we're being led for vision because of what we believe we're hearing in the word because of what we believe that God's telling us so that it can be clear. For those of you that call Brave Church your home, okay, this is where they're going, that's clear. I know whether I wanna be on or off. And for those of you that are visiting, this is a great time for you to be here because you can say, ah, I really wanted to hear what they were all about. And so you're gonna be able to hear that today as well. And it's important that you know that because no matter who you are, here's what God wants more than anything else. He wants you to take your next step of faith. And as we're fond of saying here at Brave, the most important step of faith you're gonna take is the next one. The hardest step of faith you'll ever take is the next one. Why? Because all faith takes courage. Why? Because you have to step before you see, amen. And so to do this today, we're gonna be in the book of Joshua chapter one, Joshua chapter one, verses one to nine. Now to set this up, you'll remember that Israel

had cried out for 400 years to be delivered to the land that God had promised them. God sent Moses who did all sorts of incredible signs and wonders before them, delivered the people, destroyed Egypt, gave them the law, brought them all the way to where they were ready to enter the land, which is what God had promised. And then they sent 12 spies in. And when the 12 spies came back after 40 days, two spies, Joshua and Caleb said, let's go. God told us we got this, but the other 10 said, there's no way, we're too small, they're too big. There's no way we can do it. So God punished them for 40 years and gave them 40 more years in the wilderness until that generation died out. And then he said, now, are you gonna do what I want you to do? And Joshua answers the call. And this is where this picks up. It says, now it came about after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses' servant, saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now, therefore, arise, cross this Jordan, you and all these people, to the land which I am giving them to the sons of Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given it to you just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness and this Lebanon,

even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, as far as the great sea toward the setting of the sun will be your territory. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you. Be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers to give them. Only be strong and courageous. Be careful to do according to all the law which Moses, my servant, commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right or to the left so that you may have success wherever you go. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go. And here as God gives the charge to Joshua for taking ground, this is where we land ourselves today as we talk about how taking ground will strengthen our faith and what are the principles that apply to us as we continue to take steps of faith as individuals

and as a church for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm gonna give you three and then I'll spell out some of the specifics of where God's calling us as a church. And the first is this. When you're taking a step of faith, you're the courageous ones. It always takes courage to take a step of faith. So the courageous step into God's mission. The courageous step into God's mission. They don't just hear what God says, they actually step into it. It says, now it came about after the death of Moses, a servant of the Lord, that the Lord spoke to Joshua, the son of Nun, saying, Moses, my servant is dead. Now therefore arise, cross this Jordan, you and all the people, to the land which I am giving to them and to the house of Israel. Now, that doesn't sound like a big deal because we know that Moses died and we know that God called Joshua, but here's what you need to realize. Moses is the greatest leader in Israel's history. Moses is the one who delivered all the people. Moses is the one that God worked through. Moses is the one that God did all the signs and wonders through. Moses is the one through whom all of Egypt's army was destroyed. Moses was the one that provided, that God worked through to provide bread and quail and manna in the wilderness

and water. God worked through Moses to do all these things. God worked through Moses to get the law. God worked through Moses to do all that. What's he saying now? Moses is dead. What's that tell you? God is not dependent upon any one person to get anything that he wants done, right? Moses is dead, the greatest leader's dead. So Joshua, you're the servant, you get up and you lead him. And so Joshua's gonna step in to what God calls him to do, not because Joshua feels qualified, not because Joshua has all the experience, because Joshua's heard the voice of God and he's gonna do what God says. And Joshua is the perfect person to be picked by God for this, because 40 years earlier, he and Caleb were the only two that said, let's go take it. And everybody else turned against him, said, we can't. So now 40 years later, after everybody else has died out, he says, Joshua, Moses is dead, you go. He's like, I've been ready for 40 years. Let's go do this, let's go take ground. God's mission is always forward. You need to understand that it's never backwards. When Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it,

the picture you get is the church being offensive. The church is always on mission, right? When God called Abraham, Abraham left Ur of the Chaldeans and went where he didn't know he was going. When God called Peter to come, Peter stepped out of the boat, not knowing what he was doing. Any great call of God, we don't get all the details before we have to step into it first. We don't like that. We want God to show us that it works. Then if we see that it works, then we can know where we need to step. It never works that way. You have to step without seeing and you have to believe what you're hearing, right? And that's exactly what Joshua does. He steps into the mission. Well, what's the mission of the church? God clearly hasn't given the church a land. There's no land we're gonna go take. There's no application that's exactly the same. But what did Jesus say in the great commission? Matthew 28, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Where does Jesus have authority? All heaven, all earth. Therefore, go make disciples of all nations,

baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey all that I've commanded to you. And I'll promise you this, I'll be with you always to the end of the age. So what's Jesus say? All authority anywhere on the earth and in all the heavens belong to me. Therefore, I'm sending you to go anywhere. And everywhere you go, I want you to proclaim the message of me. And for those who come to me, I want you to get them baptized and I want you to teach them how to walk with me. Which means this, what's our mission as a church? To do that very thing. That everywhere we go, we would honor God. That everywhere we go, we would walk with God. That everywhere we go, we would share the good news of Jesus Christ. And for those who respond to God, what do we do? We build them up in the faith so they can be the fullness of what God wants them to be. That's what it means to take a step of faith. And that's why you're here, whether you realize it or not. Because if you lose sight of that and you think church is about serving you, or you think, well, I'm just here to get fed, or I'm just here so it's comfortable. Then you miss out on why you're here.

You're here because you're on a mission, right? And our vision, as I shared a couple of weeks ago, if right from this text, every church shares it a little different, is to assemble a spirit-filled army to fight for the fulfillment of the Great Commission in our lifetime. Which means as long as God gives us opportunity, let's fight for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. That means everywhere that we can possibly go and be taking ground for the King, let's go. It means this, everywhere you step belongs to Jesus Christ. Every territory in this world belongs to Jesus Christ. Every group that says, we don't want your Jesus as a part of our group belongs to Jesus Christ. So where are we to go take the gospel? Everywhere in the world that we go. And as people respond, then what are we called to do? Put them in their local church, build them up in the faith so that they become part of the mission to tell other people about Jesus and walk in the faith and grow other people up in the faith. That's the mission. No matter where you go to church, that's the mission. You may use different nomenclature, but that's the mission. And when we're on mission, church becomes really exciting because then it's no longer about the building. It's no longer about the people. It's about Jesus and his church advancing the cause

because time is short. It's short. I don't know how short it is. I can tell you this, this is true. Anybody that tells you when the world's gonna end, they're gonna join the ranks of the 100% that are completely wrong every time. So I don't know when, I just know it's soon. And as I see world events happening, I see things picking up. It won't surprise me if it happens in my lifetime. But here's what I do know. Even if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I'm already almost 55. I've only got so much time left. So I wanna make the greatest kingdom impact I have for the king. And I want you to make the greatest impact for the king and continue to pass off the baton to others so that if our generation doesn't get to see the Lord come, maybe the next generation will get to see the Lord come. But let's fight for the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Let's partner with what Jesus wants, amen? That's his mission. That's what we're all called to do, amen? So the courageous step into that mission. Courageous step into that mission. When we moved out here in 2010, I remember telling my wife, we moved out here August 4th of 2010.

We planted the church November 7th of 2010. And when we came out here, Lots of questions like, how are we gonna meet people? Where are we gonna find people? Where are we gonna be? Where are we gonna be located? Where's the church gonna be? Who's gonna play songs? Who's gonna, we didn't know any answers to anything. I just remember I was driving a little silver Honda Accord and looking in my rear view mirrors. We left Illinois to cruise out here. My wife had a, there were three and one at the time in the back seat and car seats. And I called her on the phone because the only person I knew in Denver was my one friend who I'd known for about 30 plus years, 35 years, who clearly wasn't a believer, but promised me if I moved to Denver, he'd come to our church. And all I remember telling my wife is, I don't know where we're gonna find anybody. I don't even know if this is gonna work. All I know is this, if we go out to Denver, I believe God will still honor his word. I believe God honors the worship of himself. I believe God honors prayer and I believe God honors evangelism and I believe God honors fellowship and community.

And we'll go out there to do that. And I said, if the only reason we get there is so my friend Brock can come to know Jesus, it's worth it. And so we were on the phone, we were praying for him. We prayed for him all the time. And we started having launch meetings and he came and he was totally disinterested in all those things until we had our very first service. And our first service was at Cherry Creek High School, November 7th of 2010, preached the gospel on Luke 15, talked about the younger son who had come home, talked about the fact if you were completely lost, God was inviting you into a relationship with himself through repentance and faith. And I preached it, said goodbye, said you are loved, all those things went on my way. And that afternoon I got a phone call from my friend. And it was like two in the afternoon. And he called me and he was all choked up on the phone. And he didn't cry, now I don't cry, but he started crying so I started crying, I'm like, what's up? And he's like, that guy you were talking about in church today, he goes, that was me. He goes, I've been in church my whole life. He goes, I've never heard anything like that. He goes, I trusted Jesus today as you were speaking. Praise God, amen? And that was service number one. We've seen thousands of people come to Christ in Denver

as a result of our ministry. We've seen thousands of people come to Christ through our radio ministry across the country. God is still doing that. More importantly, we've seen God build people back up, put families together, be able to walk in the word, watch him do things, and that's what the gospel and the glory of God is all about. It's not dependent upon a person. It's not dependent upon a pastor. It's dependent upon doing what the Lord Jesus Christ has called us to do, the courageous step into the mission, even when they can't see it. Let me give you a second, the courageous stand on God's promises. The courageous stand on God's promises. Notice what he says here, speaking specifically to Joshua and Israel. Every place on which the sole of your foot treads, I have given you just as I spoke to Moses. From the wilderness in this Lebanon, even as far as the great river, the river Euphrates and all the land of the Hittites, as far as the great sea toward the study of the sun will be your territory. Notice what he says, no man will ever be able to stand before you all the days of your life, just as I've been with Moses. I will be with you. I will not fail you or forsake you.

Isn't it interesting that thousands of years later, people are still fighting over whose land it is in Israel when God promised it to them thousands and thousands of years ago, right? I mean, the land belongs to Israel. It will always belong to Israel. When Jesus comes back, you'll see that it belongs to Israel because that's what he's gonna give. But here's what he's telling them. At that season, when you go into this land, this land, I promise you, I don't care how big they are. I don't care who they are. They will not be able to stand against you because I fight for you. That's what he was telling them. Now, where does God fight for us? God fights for us on his promises. The courageous stand on God's promises. We stand on his word. There's no specific land, but everywhere that we tread in the world, that's the land that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. There's nowhere we could go in the greater Denver area where Jesus would say, that's not mine. That belongs to the enemy. There's nowhere. We can pick any city, any suburb around Denver. We can pick downtown. We can pick anywhere and say, Jesus, this spot belongs to you,

and we're gonna honor you by preaching your word and praying and worshiping and evangelizing and building community. Be like, good, that's my place. That's what he wants. So we stand on that promise. And every great story of the Bible that you love, somebody stepped into the mission because they heard God and said, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be part of the mission, and I'm gonna stand on your promise because I'm gonna believe it before I see it. You have to believe it before you see it. I remember even when we moved out here and we were meeting in a room that had 19 chairs, I remember the day we had to bring in extra folding chairs because we got up to 35 people. I was still picturing something bigger than even what I see now in our city. I see Denver as a place that belongs to the Lord Jesus Christ. I didn't move here because Denver was all worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ, believing that before I die, this would be a hub for the Lord Jesus Christ, for the gospel that goes all over the world. And it's starting to be realized, amen. But you see it in your heart and in your mind. before you see it realized.

And I didn't see it because I'm some great visionary. I just believe that's what God wants. I believe he wants it from every single local church to be part of the mission of the Lord Jesus Christ and to believe him for great things and to be seeking him for great things and to be praying for great things and trusting for great things so that when we see great things, we know it was him all along. He's the one that did it. It was his word that said he wanted to do it and look what he did. And it's all about who? It's all about Jesus, amen? That's what he wants. And the courageous stand on his promises. He had told him, God already gave you the land. God already did this. This is what he was doing. You're just stepping into what I already want. I remember when we were first thinking about where to go, I knew right away God wanted me to move to Denver. But some of those that were counseling me and part of the group at Harvest Bible Chapel wanted me to move to Tampa Bay in Florida. And they said, would you be willing to go there? I'm said, we'll go anywhere the Lord wants us to go. But that's not where I'm sensing the call, but we'll go there.

And I remember asking like, but God's put on my heart we need to go to Denver. Would you ever send us to Denver? And I said, how many people would we need for me to prove to you we need to go to Denver? If we had like 50 people in Denver, would you like say, yeah, it's Denver? And I remember Kent Shaw, who's now one of our overseeing elders. He's like, if you can get five tithing families that support you, he goes, we'll send you there. I'm like, I can do that in any city in the country. I mean, that's just how God made me. And then we're going to Denver. But when we moved here and we didn't know anybody and we're praying for just meeting people and just sharing the vision and who we're gonna meet, we were just praying that God would do that. And by God's grace, he's continued to build his church. We've never wavered from the word. We preach it unapologetically here. We had people early on say, well, when you guys get big, you'll probably stop preaching the word. We're never gonna stop preaching the word here. Amen, we're just not. I remember we got to about 800 people. We started praying in our services and we lost about 200 people that said, I don't feel comfortable praying out loud in church. And they left, which is really hard

when you're trying to grow a church. But I remember thinking, if you're not gonna pray in church, how you ever gonna pray? So we're gonna double down on prayer and do it all the time in church. And then we're gonna start first Tuesday so that everybody comes and prays all the time. And now we're known as a praying church and that's never changed. We're a worshiping church. We wanna give audience to Jesus. I love it here that when I'm, you know, I'm in different churches from time to time. Here's what I love about Brave. It's not just a performance of worship. I hear you singing. I hear us giving honor to Jesus. That's what it's about. It's about the worship of our God. I hear stories about people in our church that share the gospel. I hear stories of people in our church that have gotten saved because people in our church are sharing the gospel. I hear stories of people who have lost their job because they're sharing the gospel because we share the gospel here. And then we're doubling down now, as you know, through Cadres and Corps, just into community so that we can even be better at loving one another

and connecting one another and being there for one another and praying for one another and supporting one another. We've always had those as our values. And those are values that God honors no matter where you go to church. And when you fight for the promises of God, you're not fighting for victory. You're fighting from a place of victory because God always blesses these things. Let me give you a third. Because if the courageous are ones that step into God's mission and stand on his promises, then the courageous get to do this. They get to see God's power in action. They get to see God's power in action. Notice how he says three times this. He says, be strong and courageous, for you shall give this people possession of the land which I swore to their fathers. God says, Joshua, I'm gonna do it, but I'm gonna do it through you now. You're gonna give the people the land, but guess what, I'm the one that's gonna do it because I'm true to my word. Only be strong and very courageous. Be careful to do according to the law which my servant Moses commanded to you. Do not turn from it for the right or to the left that you may have success.

He's like, here's how courageous I want you to be. I want you to be so courageous that you always trust my word. Even when the culture and society says, don't trust the word, I want you to trust my word. Don't ever change that. He says, this book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night so you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it, for then you will make your way prosperous and then you will have success. How do I become prosperous and successful? By submitting to the Lord Jesus Christ, by obeying his word in everything, by not listening to what other people say are lies, by not listening to the enemy, by staying true to the Lord Jesus Christ and not taking shortcuts. That's when my life becomes prosperous. That's when my life becomes successful, when I'm walking in the full strength of Jesus, amen? And he says, have I not commanded you for a third time? Be strong and courageous. Why does he say that? Because taking steps of faith requires strength and courage to do. Because when you're stepping out in faith as an individual or we're stepping out in faith as a church,

it may seem as we're kind of the only ones doing this. How come we're the only ones doing? So I gotta. I gotta be strong and I gotta be courageous. He says, do not tremble or be dismayed. And here's why. For the Lord, your God will be with you wherever you go. See, when you listen to the Lord and you step with the Lord and you stand on his promises, then you get to see the Lord do great things. And we've seen the Lord do great things here. We've seen the Lord do miraculous things as he's provided buildings. We've seen the Lord do miraculous things through COVID. We've seen the Lord do miraculous things at Bandameer Speedway. We've seen hundreds of people come to Christ, thousands of people come to Christ. We've seen him expand our radio. We've seen him do all sorts of things, but it's not dependent upon any one person. It's been dependent upon the body of Christ, hearing the Lord, believing what he says, stepping into what the Lord says, and then getting to see what he wants to do. And here's what I believe. I believe our time is short as a church. I just do. What that means, I don't know. Maybe we get five more years.

Maybe we get 30 more years. Maybe we get 75 more years. Maybe we get 500. I don't know. My time's short. Your time's short. And I wanna make sure that we as a church maximize everything Jesus Christ wants for our church, for all of us, that all of us get to participate because God's gifted each and every one of us in unique ways to serve him collectively in unity for the sake of his kingdom. And so today, what I wanted to point out as we start this Taking Ground series, what we're beginning as a church is a three-year capital campaign called Taking Ground. And I wanna tell you about it. I wanna tell you how we got here. Because as we spent three years, this is kind of a, we've had like three false starts as to when we were gonna do this because we purchased this building. We ended up purchasing a building in Westminster. It was one of those things, we gotta get some more money. We gotta refurbish the churches. We gotta do this. Let's do this. But as we as elders were praying, we just don't hear the Lord. We gotta be clear on what the Lord wants.

So we met with a lot of different people, talked to a lot of different people. One of the ideas that we had was to really beautify our Inglewood campus, do some different things, add a children's wing on in the back, a media and youth center, take down those buildings that we have over here and reconstruct them so we'd have a 500 seat and a 1,000 seat auditorium underneath there too, add another 1,000 seats to this. And that was one of the ideas that we had. And they put together a video for us. So I just wanted to show you the video of what it would look like if we were gonna go this way. But can we roll that video? Do we have it? This'll just give you an overview of what one of our ideas was. So when this group came back, they began to show us that. And as you're seeing that, looks pretty cool from up top, doesn't it? You can even hear the angels singing a little bit in the background. You see it looks a lot more modern and sleek on the outside, looks a little updated. So that's the front from the north side here. As it's coming around, some of those windowed areas would be new offices.

And stuff like that. And as you come around the west side, I mean, the graphics look pretty cool. Like the red and the gray, sharp. And we're gonna go to the south side. This would be where the kids' wing is, where they would come in. There was an upstairs and a downstairs and a basement. So it added several thousand feet to our kids' space as we continue to grow as a church. You got the cool Courageous Kingdom Advancement sign on the way, and so you can get fired up on your way into church there. And then this side over here would be like a youth or media wing. Now the cool thing you're gonna see when you come in from this east entrance is what we finally have is a huge lobby that extends all the way around that we currently don't have. So it'd be a two-story kind of foyer, upper deck to get to the upstairs. Looks totally sharp and fun. So you get this lobby facelifted. You can see some of the kids' wings. New upgrades. That would be one of the areas that would have more seats, more classroom space. Really good-looking bald pastor right there. But then that kind of gives you the idea,

and then they're gonna kind of cycle back from where we're going. And I remember sitting in the meeting watching this whole video, thinking, well, that's pretty cool. And then, you know, that's pretty cool. And then, you know, when the meeting ended, they talked about, you know, because of that, because you're gonna have more seats, you're probably gonna need to buy the building next door, and then you're gonna need to knock that down, and you're gonna have to put a parking lot there. And just so you know, we have a great mayor here in Cherry Hills Village, Katie Brown. She's awesome. But I've been to some board meetings here with the city. I'm gonna tell you right now, just the court costs alone to fight them, to build that, would probably be 10 years and $15 million to just get ready to build that. And then to do this, they said, don't be scared about the price tag. It's gonna be three capital campaigns to get there. But do you have any idea what that costs? $88 million. So it was an $88 million. and they said, well, because you raise about 18 to 20 million a year, you could do it in three phases.

You could probably raise 40 to 50 million the first time, and then this and that. So we just started praying. It didn't feel good. Does it feel good to you? It didn't feel good to me, because I kept thinking, if I'm in Westminster, I'm not giving a dime to that thing, right? I'm like, why would I want that? So we begin to pray, and one of the things I just individually pray, I'm like, if God gave me $88 million, would I spend it on a building? Never, never in a million years. It doesn't advance the kingdom. It doesn't help us at all. And so we begin to pare it back, and then we said, well, what if we just were able to put a lobby here? That would be great to have a lobby. That came back at like 20 million. I'm like, okay, if God gave me $20 million, would I build a lobby? I'm like, I'm not building a lobby. And so we just begin to walk through this process, and I want you to know, we've taken the number from 88 million, which would have been close to 115 million by the time we were done. We've got rid of that.

Over the next three years, here's what our Taking Ground Capital campaign we're asking for, in addition to what our regular giving is, is $35 million, which is a lot of money, but it's very, very doable for our church. And I wanna break down for you this morning what we're looking to do with that, how you can be involved in that. Now, when I talk about money, you need to understand something. I'm not twisting your arm. I'm not asking you to do something. I'm not begging. I'm not cajoling. All I'm asking you to do is this. You simply ask the Lord, Lord, is this a vision you want me to get behind? And if so, what do you want me and my family to do? That's it. And if you'll be obedient to Jesus, we'll totally be fine, amen? So I wanna talk to you about where we came down and what we as elders have been praying about. And what we have said over and over and over and over as we've continued to pray is we wanna be about campuses. We wanna be about placing more campuses. There's a lot of people that can come to this church on Sunday and drive in, but during the weekdays, it's impossible. A 20-minute drive on a Sunday

turns into an hour drive on a Tuesday. It makes it very prohibitive to get involved in the life of the church. And so what we wanna do is we wanna place campuses as many as we can around this area. As you know, we're moving our Colorado Springs campus north. We'd like to put one in either Castle Rock or Parker. We're not saying where. We're gonna let the Lord show us what that looks like. But instead of asking you, hey, give us money, and then we'll find a place. That's not what we're doing. What we're saying is, here's what we're saying. As a church, we have about $17 million in debt, which sounds like a lot of money. We have far more assets than that. But what we're saying is we're gonna pay down our debt. And so this first part of the 35 million is we wanna take $17 million and pay down our debt, which gives us flexibility when we're gonna go build a building, buy a building, find a building, whatever, to go do that. How many campuses? As many as the Lord will give us, right? How do we get there? That's up to the Lord. He's gonna show us. So one of the ways we're talking about campuses is brick-and-mortar campuses. So put one in Castle Rock or put one in Aurora

or put one in Lakewood or wherever the Lord's gonna do. Secondly for campuses, what we're talking about is Brave Academy, right? On Tuesday, we started our third year at Brave Academy. That's worthy of praise to the Lord, just so you know. We'd like to put a Brave Elementary in every single campus that we have to be a feeder into a local high school. Now the local high school is not part of this capital campaign. We realize to be a primary high school in the area, we're gonna need sports, we're gonna need drama, we're gonna need a different building, we're gonna need all sorts of things. That's not part of this campaign unless you want it to be, because if somebody wants to give $50 million to buy the building, I'll take it, we'll use it, we'll glorify God with it, that's awesome. That's not part of this campaign, but we believe if we can get a bunch of elementary schools around that will feed into a high school Brave Academy, that's what we're doing. Right now we have a few students that are in our high school but to really grow it, we're gonna need a different place. But we wanna put Brave Academies everywhere we put a campus. Then third is this, how many participated in 21 days of prayer and fasting this last year? As I was doing that, one of the ways I was praying,

I was asking the Lord, Lord, how do we continue to expand campuses without spending a lot of money? Like it's a lot of money to go build a campus, how do we do this? And God just continued to put Matthew 25 on my heart every single day. I was in prison and you visited me. I was in prison and you visited me. And during 21 days of prayer and fasting, I began to ask, who do we know that does prison ministries? We begin asking around and by God's grace, two weeks later, Pastor Howie Close came onto our screen, we hired him and just so you know, since he's been here, we are already in the Buena Vista Correctional Facility. I know you guys are watching right now. We're already there. We started with a handful of guys. We now have over 116 of the thousand inmates in the Buena Vista Correctional Facility that are part of what's going on. It's awesome. You can be praying for us by God's grace on September 27th. We've gotten all the okays. We just have to get it formalized that we'll be in the Buena Vista Correctional Facility having a yard day where I'll get to preach to all thousand of the inmates. We'll see what the Lord does. There's such favor on that ministry that the leadership of the prison has come to Pastor Howie

and said, this is so good and we don't get a lot of funding for programs in the prison and this is helping us. Would you be willing to take five? Five or six more to which we've said, absolutely. So we're praying over the course of this three years that we can get more and more prisons and reach more and more prisoners. And this ministry is more than just dropping a screen, preaching the word, that's some of it. It's more than just worshiping, that's some of it. Our campus pastor will be an inmate. Our cadre pastor will be an inmate. Our cadre, our core pastor will be an inmate. You get that? And then part of what we do is we come alongside the families of those whose husbands are in prison so we can disciple them outside so that when they reunite, we can be helpful to them. And we also wanna be able to help them when they get out of prison to be able to be reintegrated in this society. So this isn't just a drop a screen, we want you to hear about Jesus. This is a full-on ministry to help people grow in Christ, amen, which gives us as a church opportunity to get very involved in something God cares about, which are those that are in prison, amen. So when we talk about campuses, we're talking about church campuses, we're talking about putting Brave Academies

where the church campuses are, and we're talking about prison campuses, and that's what we're trusting the Lord to do. And in this season, what we're discovering is starting here in Denver is the best place for us to do it because then we can service everybody else. And I'll also say this, as a staff, as we've pruned and changed over the years, every staff person we've had, I love. But it's been interesting, in this last pruning, we talked to a lot of the guys that have gone out and planted churches, and several of them, my brother, one of them, Justin Hart, one of them, all have said, hey, the reason I was at Brave is because one day I wanted to go plant a church. So I joined staff to be able to go plant. Now we're saying we're doing campuses so the people that we're hiring are saying, I wanted to come in and lead small groups, I wanted to come in and lead cadres, I wanted to come in and help people discover their gifts, I wanna get the community working. So the staff that we have now is very aligned with the vision of where we're going, and it's super exciting. So this first part of our $35 million campaign over the course of the next three years is for campus expansion, that's our main thing. And so what we wanna do is we wanna take ground locally.

Second thing is this, we wanna take ground globally, okay? We wanna reach as many people for Jesus as we can. If our assignment is to assemble a spirit-filled army to fight for the fulfillment of the Great Commission in our lifetime, there's a lot of places on this earth we cannot put a Brave campus, did you know that? We cannot put a Brave campus in Pakistan. It won't work. So what we've tried to do is partner with locals who have apostolic callings that are planting churches in unreached areas. Unreached doesn't mean they don't know Jesus. Unreached means that they don't know Jesus, there's no place for them to go to find out about Jesus. There's no church, there's no people, there's no Christian, there's no place. So we partnered with a guy named Paul Simpson who runs a ministry called Issachar Alliance. It was started in South Africa, and we've taken several mission trips over there, we've partnered with him. At the time we started partnering, he had about 300 churches. Average church 50 to 100 people in areas that we would never reach people for Jesus. He had a vision to go up the eastern coast of Africa, and that was his vision, and it's continued to expand. I was over there training 55 of his pastors from 14 different countries earlier this year,

amazing group of men. Just so you know, I said this in first service, they were at 300, and they now have over 850 churches that they're a part of reaching people for Jesus in areas we can never get in. Right? And I just heard this, I got corrected after the first service because Paul had just texted one of our guys who's been over there. They were just in Pakistan the other day, a couple weeks ago, and they learned that, they thought they had 50 churches in Pakistan, they learned there are actually over 200 churches that they have in Pakistan. Each one has like 100 people. So Brave Church is helping reach 20,000 people in Pakistan right now, just so you know. I mean, that's pretty awesome, amen? And so to the glory of God, we wanna partner with people that are doing that in different areas. But we wanna do that here in Denver, in areas that we couldn't otherwise get to. We wanna do that in places that are easier to get to. One of the prohibitive things about going to Africa is it's about a 24-hour flight, about 13 hours time difference. It's very pricey and expensive to go. We wanna find other places where we can get into Latin American countries or other places where we can take a three-hour flight

and have a one-hour time difference or drive there and make it cheaper and easier so we can reach more people for Jesus. But here's the thing. Brave Church, I want you to know when we meet Jesus face-to-face, I want him to tap us on the shoulder and show people from every tribe, tongue, and nation that Brave Church was a part of reaching for the glory of Jesus Christ. And just so you know, we've had people go on these mission trips that have chosen to stay there because they wanna reach more people for Jesus, and that's what we wanna continue to do. So for this part of the capital campaign, there's like a $5 million ask. One of the ways that we're doing that is through that, through Paul Simpson and others, but another way is through our radio ministry. You have to realize that our radio ministry has now gone from just being localized here in Denver to being on all 50 states, over 400 radio stations, some places like Dallas, Detroit. Portland, Washington, D.C., L.A., Dallas, Miami. We're on every single day on the biggest Christian radio station there. And the feedback we're getting back is incredible. So they take numbers based upon when they put you in a slot. Every slot they've given our ministry

has grown in listenership since they've given. We now have over 100,000 followers on Pray.com. And for our Pastor Jeff Ministry app, we just put out there a couple months ago, we have 22,000 people that are following on that. And just a quick word on that, because some people have said, why is it called Pastor Jeff Ministries? Let me tell you. So when we started our ministry, it was called One Heartbeat Ministries. That was the name of the ministry I had before we started the church. Nobody could remember that name because it was six syllables. And people would be like, are you the heartbeat guy? Are you like the one heart? Like, is it ministries or ministry? And I got so tired of that. I'm like, we gotta change the name of that ministry. And so in 2015, we did. And guess what we called it? Brave. Well, three years after that, we changed the name of our church to Brave Church. And then it got a little confusing because Brave was our radio ministry, Brave Church was this. And then we called it Brave Media. But then people, when they listen on the radio,

you can only hear things really, really quickly. And all the consultants said, you kinda need to name it after yourself because when people hear you, they're gonna wanna get in touch with you if they're living in D.C. And unfortunately, my last name's more prohibitive than One Heartbeat Ministries. And so we just went with Pastor Jeff because that tends to be what everybody calls me. And you can go to pastorjeff.com and follow me. And when people are listening online, they're like, oh, pastorjeff.com, pastorjeff.com. I can do that. It's just clarity. Here's what that means, just so that you know. I'm not setting myself up to leave brave. Every radio consultant I've talked to says, the best way you can be a great radio preacher is preach to your own congregation. I'm called here. I preach to you. Other people get to listen in from around the country. But I tell you this, there's a lot of people around the country that are Christians, they don't get their pastor that opens up the Bible on a regular basis and gets to hear it like you do. And so this has been a great ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ.

So as we expand nationally and globally and what the Lord wants us to do, that's a part of what we're doing as we expand our reach and our influence, which will help as we do national men's ministry and women's ministry and all the different things that we're doing. And then finally, we wanna take ground strategically. Wanna take ground strategically. There are some things here in our buildings that we need to take care of. And just so you know, some of them aren't very fun. So whether we have a capital campaign or not, we gotta spend about $2 million on a sprinkler system for this building. Whether we do that or not. I mean, I'm not excited about that. I'm not excited about putting pipes in and I'm not excited about meeting code, but we gotta meet code. That's just something they're gonna make us do or shut us down. But I wanna talk to you about what we wanna do in Inglewood and what we wanna do here and what we wanna do at the academy. Let me start in Westminster. In Westminster, and those of you here in Inglewood may not know, they're running out of parking spaces there. What we wanna do in Westminster is get about another 400 to 500 parking spots.

By doing that, what it will allow us to do is finish off putting the chairs up in our balcony. They have a phenomenal facility, but we're not able to put all those in because we don't meet code because we don't have enough parking spaces. So we wanna add more parking there so we can add more seats to the current auditorium that's already there. It'll give us close to 2,000 seats in Westminster, give us more parking to do what we wanna do. It'll let God advance what they're doing there. Westminster, what also they get as a result of this is as we do some refurbishing here, you're gonna get our LED wall so you're gonna have a better experience with me on a screen than what you currently do right now and we're excited about that. One of the things that we need to do here, I mean, this building's awesome, by the way. Can you believe somebody had a vision for this in the early 1970s? I mean, this is amazing. No church looked like this in 1970. And it's interesting that the Nazarene pastor that had this vision wanted to be a national ministry and reach people all across the country and that's why they designed the building the way that they did. Some of it hasn't been updated since it was built in 1973

and if you don't believe me, walk up one of our back hallways, it'll scare you, right? So what we wanna do here is we wanna, we're gonna reconfigure some of the stuff up here, take down those choir risers that we don't use and move the stage back a little bit, add a few more chairs, make them a little more comfortable, stuff like that. We're gonna do some carpet and paint around the whole building so it just looks updated and fresh. So it's, it honors the Lord in what we do. I just wanna honor the Lord in what we do, right? And so that's what we're looking to do. We also need to do this. When we've had people like Eric Metaxas and Seth Gruber, Charlie Kirk, some of these guys that have come out and shown videos, if we're showing a video here, unless you're here in Englewood and you kinda squeeze towards a pie shape, you can't see it. So we wanna fix our screens and what we do so that everybody has a good viewing experience. What you may not know is when Westminster first launched their campus, I preached there that Sunday. And we showed it back here because we were in the other building and when you were in the other building

and we showed it on the screen, everybody could see it and it was fine. What I'd like to be able to do, while this will be the main broadcast campus, this will be where I am a lion's share of the time, I'd like to be able to preach in Westminster occasionally or preach in a prison occasionally and be able to show that back here and give you a great experience while you're here. So that's part of what we wanna do here too. So we'll refurbish the lobby, we'll do some other things but we've worked with general contractors to keep the price way down on what we're gonna do. so we can just do the necessary things to really upgrade, freshen, and make it a great experience. And then with the academy, what we're doing, and we've taken the liberty to already start moving on the campus here, is we've built 12 more classrooms downstairs. For those of you who come to First Tuesday here in Englewood, we'll be, in October, we'll be next door. You can come see what we've done. We have six students, I believe, from Westminster that are coming to Brave Academy. We're busting them in this year. Next year, we hope to have Westminster done as a campus, at least K through three next year. Maybe more, depending on what the Lord does.

And we're gonna trust the Lord to do a great work there. So those are some of the things that we need to do, and that's a $13 million ask. And when you add all those up, it's 35 million. Now, we've shared this with some of our donors. I need you to know something. 35 million is 35 million. That's a lot of money, right? We, as a church, bring in about 18 to 20 million a year. Here's what that means. All that means is, if you wanna be part of a vision to reach more people for Christ, to get more people into campuses, to see more people get equipped in schools and do what Jesus calls, to get the gospel out to more people, and that aligns with you, here's all I'm asking. Would you spend the next three weeks and pray to the Lord and say, Lord, how would you have me participate? What can I do financially? In addition to what we're already doing, what would that look like for me? And if you'll just listen to Jesus and do what he says, he'll take care of all the rest. I just believe that with my whole heart. This has always been an extremely generous church. It's not dependent upon any one person here to write a check. If somebody here writes a check for 35 million, we'll use that, but we're still gonna raise 35 million more, right?

I mean, we're not depending upon one person. We as a body wanna go together and do everything the Lord wants us to do. Couple things about that. When we raise the 35 million, which I believe by faith we will, we're not done. We're not done. I remember like tongue in cheek with Kent Shaw. He was our first overseeing elder. He's now an overseeing elder here. Two weeks before we planted this church, he asked me, how you doing? I said, really good. But he's like, any prayer requests? I'm like, yeah. If the Lord would just give us 30 more people and $30,000, I'd never ask for anything again. Right? When the Lord gives us 35 million, when we have more campuses, that's just getting started. We're gonna continue to expand the kingdom until we meet Jesus. That's just what we're gonna do because we're dedicated to that. Teenagers, listen to me. You need to be part of this. You have more net disposable income than anybody else in this room.

Now, you may not have the most money. I get that. But again, this is not about, you're gonna hear me talk about giving. Jesus doesn't look at a mountain and say, oh, that's a big gift. As a matter of fact, in the New Testament, the greatest gift he saw was from a widow that put in two small copper coins worth less than a penny, but she gave him everything out of her whole heart. Some of you, maybe you mow grass in the summer. Maybe you give some of that or all of that to the church. I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just telling you, you can be a part of this too. And it's been my experience throughout other capital campaigns that we've done, for those who haven't participated, there's been a couple that have come up to me and said, I'm really, really sorry because when we celebrated the win of what God did, they didn't get to participate in the joy of it. Friends, I'm not asking you to do anything other than what Jesus Christ wants you to do. That's it. If all of us are generous and sacrificial to the way God wants us to be, he'll meet our needs, give us more than we ever thought. We'll be standing here three years from now and say, can you believe what our God did?

Amen. So what you're gonna get on the way out of here today, you're gonna get a booklet like this. It says, Taking Ground. It'll share with you a lot of what I just shared. There's a 21 day devotional in here. I would encourage you to walk through. If you're married, I'd encourage you to do it with your spouse. You can just walk through it every day. It's really short and just be praying, Lord, how would you have me participate? You're also gonna be receiving a card that's inside of this with an envelope on the back. And over the next 21 days, I'm just gonna ask you, just pray over this. Just pray over this. On the 28th, when we gather for church, you will fill this out, you put it in an envelope. We're gonna have buckets up here. You're gonna come. This is gonna be a big part of what we do as a church and we're gonna place these in before the Lord. We're gonna trust Him. We'll be able to count them that week. We'll be able to share with you what's been pledged and where we're gonna go and all those different kinds of things. And we encourage you to do that. When you give, regardless of the amount,

we're gonna give you a coin. Says this, it says, Taking Ground on one side and Brave on the back. You'll get a little stand. I'm gonna encourage you to put this up in your house, somewhere that you see it. So over the course of the next three years, as you participate, hey, Lord, help me fulfill my responsibility and Lord, help us as a church to go over, above and beyond everything you thought we could do. And this is just a way to be a reminder to you as to how we can do that. So the 28th is gonna be a special day. Now, if you're asking me, hey, all we're gonna do is talk about money for the next three weeks, no. I will teach you on generosity as I have consistently in the history of our church, but we're gonna talk about unity and we're gonna talk about celebration. We're gonna talk about all the Lord wants to do. And I can tell you this, I'm so excited to be your pastor. I'm so excited about all the Lord is doing. I'm so excited about the men and the women and the boys and the girls that are here and what Jesus wants to get done. And I believe if all of us seek his face and are obedient to what he says. he asks us to do, he's gonna blow us away

by what he wants done. And so that's our vision. That's where we're going. Campuses, expansion around the world with the gospel and radio and people coming to know Christ and refurbishing some of our buildings and things so that we can have a place of worship, of excellence that represents the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? That's where we're going. Anybody excited about that? I am. I am. The most exciting thing about that is the thousands of people that we're gonna see come to know the Lord Jesus Christ. Thousands. They're gonna be not only knowing Jesus, but are gonna be made disciples. They're gonna walk in his grace. Amen? Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, thank you for today. We give you praise, glory, and honor for who you are. And Lord, as we celebrate you, we thank you. Lord, may these next three years be a dedication to you, glory to you. May nobody in here feel cajoled or twisted or feel like they have, there's no have to. Lord, you love a cheerful giver.

Lord, put all on our hearts what you want us to do. Help us be obedient to you and no one else. And we trust you for the result of everything you wanna do. We give you all the glory and honor. In Jesus' name, amen and amen. Can we give God praise, first word? Amen. Amen.