From Concept to Concrete // Here & Now: Building our Future in the Present // Read

“The best is yet to come!” This statement has often been a popular rallying cry, especially for the Church. It’s a declaration rooted in the belief that God has great things in store for his people just beyond the horizon. And it’s a sentiment we’ve shared and stated here at Cornerstone...but, not anymore. Of course, we still believe the future is bright. But who has time for what’s to come when we’re too busy being blessed by what is? You see, the best isn’t “yet to come”—it’s here and now! God is on the move, and he is doing a new thing now, in the midst of our present circumstances. Instead of focusing on the future, we’re determined to follow God’s lead, right here and right now.

“A vision without a plan is a hallucination.” We have big dreams for our new facility—what it will look like, how it will expand our ministry. But they must be more than dreams. Church, we have to believe and move the vision God has given us from rough draft to reality.

Man, I'm so glad you guys are here worshiping with us today. Welcome to Cornerstone, everybody on site. Welcome to everybody watching online as well. Thank you so much for being here today. Thank you, Matt. Happy to be back. I was pretty sick last week. So I'm excited to be back here preaching again. Today. I've appreciated all the prayers that everybody was praying for me reaching out to. Not sure if I have a food allergy if it was food poisoning, or what, but I'll put it this way. I lost seven pounds in a 36 hour period. It was pretty intense. Yeah. I know people like Wow, can you cough on me was it. It wasn't viral, so don't get too excited. But for real, thank you so much for your prayers; it means more than I can tell you. So we are in this series here. And now here now. And what we're talking about what we're focusing on is the idea that it's so easy in the church world, we can use very churchy language, and one of the things that you hear a lot is the best is yet to come. Right? We all hear that the best is yet to come. And while that's true, in a sense, right, that whenever you follow Jesus, there's always greater days ahead because he just gets to prove his faithfulness, time and time again. So that is true, in a sense, but what I worry can happen is whenever we think that the best is just yet to come, we neglect the faithfulness of God in our just normal moments, our day-to-day moments that God is faithful right here. And right now. And so that's what we've been talking about, this idea that God wants to do incredible things, for His glory in our life right here. And right now, not just in some distant future. And so we've been looking at how that plays out not just in our lives, but how we believe that's going to play out for our church, as we look to renovate our facility look to add on multipurpose space. And so we're looking at what it means for God to be faithful, not just in the future, but in the here and now. And I think we can all agree; we need some changes to our building, can I get an amen, right? Like we, we need some changes. You guys remember a few weeks ago, I was talking about how we almost had pipes freeze on us. And we had to get space heaters out there to warm them up real quick. The whole reason we have these lights, don't worry, I'm not getting really vain. And I wanted awesome lighting on myself. That's not what this is our lighting bar actually up here. During the week, we had one of the power sources for it blow, and so we had to rely on bringing in some other lights. So there's just a ton of little things here. And there. We just need some help. Our facility needs some help. And we believe that we're gonna see God do some great things as we continue pursuing his will for our church. One of the cool things that's actually happened recently, and I'm going to make sure I cover their name because they would like to remain anonymous. Right here, I've got a check for here now campaign for $41,000. From isn't that incredible?

This is from a couple in our church. This is an incredible, incredible gift. These are people who believe exactly that you know what they believe in the mission of Cornerstone. They believe in the way that we try to live out the kingdom of God and the Kingdom of God ethic. And so they're partnering with us in this incredible way. And it's so exciting to see God continue to move again, not just believing he's going to do it in the future, but trusting and knowing he's going to do it right here. And right now. So that's just an incredible thing. Something for us to be grateful for now; last week, you may have heard it mentioned that we'd had a very much grassroots campaign so far. So far, our building campaign it's been a lot of small donations, right, which is incredible. We've raised guys; we've raised over $300,000. And a lot of that's amazing, right? That's amazing stuff. In the vast majority of it has been small donations; it hasn't been big, bad boys like this. Like, it's been a lot smaller stuff, which is really cool. Like that's, that's great. And that's actually on purpose. Like we don't have a lot of big donors at the moment. And that's intentional. You see, we have some people; we have some networks and connections that we're going to approach. And we're going to talk to people who can write pretty large checks, but we specifically haven't yet. It's for a bunch of reasons. First off, we haven't talked to these people yet because we don't want anyone to feel like we're expecting them to come to do what we should be doing. Like, oh, you want me to sacrifice and write you a check while your church isn't really doing anything like you guys aren't trusting God with your finances. You're not really doing anything. You just want an angel investor to come in and build this thing for you. And that's not the case we want to show; our church doesn't just say we believe in God. We really believe in God. We trust Him with our time. With our talent with our treasure, we're doing everything we can when you join and partner with us. So that's, that's one reason for it. Another reason that we haven't talked to a big donor yet is that we want to make sure all of our plans, all of our concepts, everything is as solid as it can possibly be. Because while there may be, you know, an exception to the rule here or there, the vast majority of people who can write really big checks want to see a plan. I can't blame them. I can't blame them. I wouldn't be eager to write a fat check to someone who's like, Dude, I can't tell you what it's gonna look like, but it's gonna be sweet. Like, it's gonna be cool. Like, Oh, great. Let me crack out the checkbook. How many zeros like that's not how that's gonna work. Those people want a plan. They want to see it. This was thought out that this was prayed over, that you fasted over this, that you sought the best advice and the best counsel that you could have. And so that's what we've been doing. We have been waiting. We've been waiting. We're planning this thing out. We've got a dream. And we've got a plan for that dream. I've heard it said, and I, I love this. This is so good. I don't know who to attribute this to. I wish I did. But this quote is so good. A vision without a plan is a hallucination. Right? A vision without a plan is a hallucination, right? You can have vision all you want. But if you don't have a plan, a God-honoring God structured plan, it's nothing more than just a dream. It's a hallucination; nothing's going to really come of it. And I think about that, I think about how in my own life, at the beginning of every year, I like to structure the year ahead. And so I plan out my calendar, and I start adding big important stuff. And then I start going to fun stuff like fun stuff that would be nice to do with the family. And so, you know, I put in like, oh, events at the IX center, this would be cool to go to, that'd be cool to go to Christmas in July. That's something that would be fun to just kind of have, like on July 25, do something fun at the house with the kids. Put that on there. Oh, halloweekends at Cedar Point, that's a blast. I'll add that on there. So add all these things to my calendar. And I gotta tell you; it's embarrassing how few of them I actually accomplish. Because I add them to my calendar. They're a vision, they're a dream, there's something that I think would be fun, but they don't transition from my calendar to my to-do list. Do you follow me? They don't make that transition. So since I'm not actually planning, I'm not building out a plan around these things. They don't end up happening. And for our church, our dream of this facility where we're going to be able to welcome more people and welcome more people into the family opened up our doors for more kinds of community events. That can't just be a dream that we have; it can just be a vision that we want to have; we have got to put flesh on it. We've got to build a plan around this. And I would say the same is true for your life. As we get into scripture. Today, we're going to see this to be true in your life in my life if we want it to be a life that honors God, a life that actually makes a difference. And we make an impact that lasts beyond us. It's not going to happen from well wishes and hopes. And I hope I hope; I hope that my life turns out good. I hope I'm making an impact I hope and make a difference. We need to plan. We need to strategize; we need to think things out. We can't just dream because a vision without a plan is a hallucination. My wife is actually at Disney. This weekend. She's in Orlando. And the whole reason she's able to go there. The whole reason that they're down there is that she and her sister have had dreams of doing a sister's trip doing something like this. And her sister Rachel, a few months back, got an email for flights out of Cleveland to Orlando, get this round trip. This isn't the price of one ticket. This is the full price of a trip down and trips back $52 $52. It's cheaper than a tank of gas, right? To get to Florida and back, which is just incredible. And so what happened at that moment was this thing that was just an idea, that was just a vision that was just a dream. Suddenly, it had some flesh on it. Like oh, well, we might be able to do this. And so they started looking at discounts, and she gets discounts for rental cars and hotels and offices and stuff. And they were able to go down there on just you know, barely you wouldn't believe the budget that they're able to go down there. Just have a couple of days and go to Disney one of these days. It's amazing. And it's all because they planned. They plan. They didn't just Oh, wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be awesome, right? Where would we be as a church? If that's all we say about the new facility? Oh, man, could you even imagine? Oh, wouldn't it be awesome? Wouldn't it be great? Yeah, would be what are we doing? To make it happen, though? What are we doing to actually fill out that vision? So it's not just a hallucination? We need a plan. So with that in mind, if you have your Bible and you want to open it up, we're going to be in the book of Nehemiah. Today, the book of Nehemiah. It's a historical record that we find in the Old Testament. I'm going to give you just a little bit of a cliff notes background before we dive into we're going to be in Nehemiah chapter two. Nehemiah, he's an incredible guy, an incredible man of God. He's As a Jewish man who is living in Persia; he's under Persian rule. Because at this point in Israel's history, they have so sinned against God that their sins have actually led to the destruction of their kingdom, this kingdom, this nation that God wanted to raise up to be a light to the rest of the world, they have turned their back on him in so many ways. God has let them go on their own devices, he let them face the consequences of their sin, and the consequences were ugly. The consequences were the destruction of their kingdom. The consequences were the destruction of the city of Jerusalem, which think about it, the city of Jerusalem was supposed to be the city that was going to be a light to the rest of the world, the city that was supposed to be hey, look, this is what it looks like when God is King. This is what it looks like when people follow God as King. And instead, they turn their back on God time and time again. And so the city is in ruins. And Nehemiah, this man who is Jewish, who's living now in Persia under King Arthur Xerxes, he's working for him, he hears about this, he hears about the ruin that Jerusalem is and how the walls have fallen, and it breaks him, it completely breaks his heart. And that's where we pick up. We're going to be reading today from Nehemiah chapter two verses one through eight and how this is going to work. I'm going to read down through it. And then, for the rest of our time together, we're going to kind of dive back into it to see different things that we can learn from this account. So this is what it says, In the month of Nissan in the 20th year of King Arthur Xerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the King. I had not been sad in his presence before. So the King asked me, Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart. I was very much afraid. But I said to the King, May the King live forever? Why should my face not look sad? When the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins. And the gates have been destroyed by fire. The King said to me, what is it you want? Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the King if it pleases the King, and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it. Then the King, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me how long your journey would take? And when will you get back? It pleases the King to send me, so I set a time. I also said to him, If it pleases the King, may I have letters to the governors of trans-Euphrates so that they will provide me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah in May I have a letter to use Keeper of the Royal Park. So he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the Citadel by the temple, and for the city wall and for the residents I will occupy. And because the gracious hand of my God was on me, the King granted my requests. King granted his request here. So there is so much we can learn from this. In fact, I would wager if you've ever been to a church that's doing a building campaign; they've preached on Nehemiah as every church does it because there's so much good stuff here. So many good things that we can extract from this scripture. And I would encourage you to read the entire story of Nehemiah. There's such good stuff in here. We're just focusing here on Chapter Two today. But there are so many great truths that we can take. And what I want us to do today is we're going to be kind of running along two tracks. So the track one, we're going to be talking about how we can apply this to our church family, how we as a church can take the truth that we learned from Nehemiah, and how he handled his situation, as a church family, but also as individuals, when it comes to just our own individual life, how we can learn from Nehemiah and make sure that we are following God's plan in the best way possible. So if you're taking notes today, if you're a note-taker, our sermon title is from concept to concrete. From concept to concrete. Now, every concept starts with a question. It starts with the question, why? Right? Why? Why is the first question of any concept, and I know you if you're relatively new to Cornerstone, you may be wondering, why are we building like what's the point of the building? Isn't this good enough? We've actually had people say that to us before like this building's good enough. We don't even need to add on. We don't need to do anything. Well, the why for the building here at Cornerstone is because I fully believe, and I get it. I'm biased. I'm the lead pastor here. But I fully believe Cornerstone is just built differently. We are a unique church. We're unique; the way that we live out the kingdom of God, the way that we try to love like Jesus full of grace and full of truth, the way that we live that out is unique. It just is that's why we have person after person come here and say, Man, this just this felt different. I can't really put my finger on things just kind of felt different here, and we love hearing that because it means we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, that the Spirit of God is filling in that people aren't walking away going. Oh, I loved it because pastor Jacob is so skilled. Oh, I love it because the worship team is so good. No, we want people coming in saying not something else. I can't put my finger on it. We want people moved by the Spirit here, not by us. And we feel like that's happening that this is a unique church. And we don't want to limit how many people can experience that. We just don't. I know like you just real quick look around the room. If you're online, you can't tell. But just look around the room. And here real quick. You might be thinking to yourself, well, there's some, you know, there are some open seats. There's some here, and there's some here do we really need to build, though. Do we really need to build? You want to know something, the only people who are like pumped, pump, pump pump, whenever it's completely packed out. There's nowhere else to sit is like the staff. And the pastor. Like for the kids. It's packed to the gills in here. That's awesome. Think about whenever you go to a movie as you go, you get your popcorn, you get your nachos, you got your drink, and you round the corner. And as you walk in the auditorium, imagine it's just packed. Are you excited? Like, Oh, what an experience this is going to be. I can't wait. It's packed in here. You're like, No, we're gonna break our necks sitting in the front row trying to watch the whole time. And that's exactly what new people think when they come in there. They're not looking at and going; oh, well, of course, there's a seat here. And when they're, they're going, and I don't want to, like sit right by someone. Come up front and sit by the pastor. No, I'm out. Like I'm going. Am I going somewhere else, right? We want to make room we want to make room. That's why it is making room for people. We're not, let me tell you, and I know the building looks great. You've all seen the designs; it's out there. And in our lobby, the building looks great. We're not building so we can have a church that you're proud of to post on Instagram. It's not why we're doing it so that you can get on who finally it's a church that I Huh, see, look, this is where I go, Isn't this cool? Look how cool we are. That's not why we're doing this. We're building this church for people, for people, people to be able to come more people to be able to come and experience we were trying to clear the way as much as we can for people to come and be a part of what God is doing at Cornerstone. And that's what gets me pumped when I think about what we're doing here isn't the building itself but the people that we're going to be able to welcome the open gyms that we're going to be able to have that kids are going to come and be a part of. And then later on, whenever something happens in their life, either a great thing like a wedding or a sad thing like a funeral, they're going to remember Hey, we don't really go to church but remember that church that we had that open gym, and maybe they would be interested in doing it. And then they connect with us. That way, there are so many ways we can connect with people. And that's why that's the why behind the concept of what we're doing. And whenever I think about that, I look at Nehemiah as why. Nehemiah is why his heart was broken because this city was supposed to be a symbol of God's faithfulness and God's greatness to the rest of the world. This city was in ruins. As he said, Why? Why can I look anything but sad? When the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and the gates have been destroyed. How can I be anything but sad whenever I realize this city that was supposed to symbolize God's faithfulness to everybody else is in ruins. It stirred his heart and captured his heart. And I think about that, and I'm like, Man, I want what captures God's heart needs to capture my heart. What stirs God's heart needs to stir get my heart what breaks God's heart needs to break my heart and Nehemiah had that Nehemiah had his heart moved by the things that move God's heart. And for us, that's the same thing. Our heart can't be moved. Because we want to have social media, we're the church. That's not it. Our heart needs to be moved by what moves God's heart, people, people, people, finding the father finding a family, and finding a fulfilling future. What captures his heart should capture our heart. And so I want to ask you on a personal level, not talking about the church just personally, what's capturing your heart? What are you dreaming about? What are the plans that you have in mind for maybe relationships, your career, the way you parent, your kids? What are your dreams and thoughts? Are those dreams and thoughts? The same thing that captures God's heart?

Are they lining up? Are they lining up? Or are the things that you're dreaming, and you're so passionate about? And you're so focused on? Are they good things but not God? Things? And you're putting your all into these, and you're focusing everything your time, talent treasure in an area where it's not really what God's focus on? What are you dreaming of? Is it aligned with God? I gotta tell you, I'm so thankful for all the times God has told me no, to the areas I've been dreaming about, and it wasn't aligned with him. Or, again, not even that it was a bad thing. But it just wasn't a God thing. And so God said, Hey, no, no, we're not moving forward with that concept. We're not. We're not going any farther. I'm so thankful for those noes for those things that have remained on the concept board. I remember whenever I was going from high school to college, I was considering going away to college somewhere, maybe somewhere probably still in the state but away a little bit. And that was hard. I thought about it for a long time prayed on it. because a lot of my friends were going to colleges out like out a little way, they've stayed on campus. That was difficult because I'm like, Well, man, they're all doing it. But I kept felling feeling this urge, this nudge to stay home to not do that. Even though there was a pretty big desire, a pretty big pool to do the opposite. I'm so thankful that I didn't do the opposite. I'm so thankful I stay at home. And then I said no to that thing. Because by staying at home, I was able to start working at the church, I got even more involved here. I met my wife here like there are so many things that God brought out of it. I'm so thankful for that. No, I'm thankful for that concept, staying on the drawing board. So whenever I think about that, from the perspective of our church family, there are so many noes that we've gotten that have been for our benefit. They've been for our benefit. Because God had bigger things in mind, the things that were capturing his heart were different things, and what we were thinking of, I think about our old facility on 578, Killian Road, beautiful building, I got married in that building, I love that building. I have nothing but good memories there. But honestly, it's probably a good thing. We don't have it anymore. In some ways, it limited us. I guarantee you the steps we're taking as a ministry, the ways that we're reaching out and trying to do new things; we would not be able to do those things. If we were still there, we just wouldn't. We're thinking about ministry in a whole different light than we ever used to. And it's because we are having our hearts captured by what captures God's heart. We are so focused on people now. The building is almost like an afterthought, right? We're so focused on people in God's been building that up in our church over these last years. And so I'm thankful for that. No, I'm thankful that it didn't work out. Because what captures God's heart is what should capture our heart. And I'm so thankful we're able to make that decision as a church. That's because we have a church that prays as because we have a board of directors that prays and fast and make sure that we are doing exactly what we are supposed to do following God's plan. And here is a huge key, and we see this as we continue reading in Nehemiah chapter two. Here's a big thing, too. It's not enough to just say yes to God's plan. Like that's not enough. It's good, right? Like we want our hearts to be captured by what captures God's heart. Amen. That's awesome. But it's not enough to just say yes to that. We need to say yes to God's plan. And yes, to God's providence and what providence is, let me define it for you real quick. Providence is called God's sustaining guidance. That's what Providence is. And so, when we say yes to God's plan, we can't just stop there. We need to say, God, I'm saying yes to your way. And I am saying yes to your sustaining guiding hand all throughout. Because I don't want to just say yes to a God thing, but then do it my way. No, like I want to say yes to a God thing. And I want to do it your way. I want you to guide me the whole way. I love this. Listen to Nehemiah. This is again, chapter two looks in diverse for the King said to me, what is it you want? And then mid-conversation, mid-conversation with the most powerful person in the world. The King of Persia. DMI says I pray to the God of heaven. Mid conversation. Does King say, what do you want? Nehemiah praise, right then? Because he came in with a plan. I need to go. I need to rebuild Jerusalem. I need to rebuild the wall. But that was enough. He says, and I need to do it in God's way. I don't want to do it my way. My way is not the right way. I want to do it in God's way. And so he prays to God, he prays to God for a favor, he prays to God for insight, and we need to do the exact same thing. Because when we partner with God when we don't just say yes to his plan, but yes to His providence, he does things we could never do on our own. You're not as smart as you think you are. Don't worry; I'm not either. I'm not as skilled as I think I am. I'm not as good of a person as I think I am. I need God's help. We all do. Has anyone ever heard of Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS Shoes, Toms Shoes? Maybe you've heard of that. Toms Shoes is an incredible organization. Blake Mycoskie he's a born-again believer. And what they do is they do shoes, they give shoes away to kids and adults across the world who are in bad need of them in third world countries, places where people can't afford footwear, they give them shoes and how it all started was back in 2006 I believe Blake Mycoskie was on a trip to Argentina. While he was there, he saw another organization giving away shoes, and it just moved his heart. He just was moved. So like man, I just never even thought of this being a tangible need for people. You just always think about food and water. You don't think about apparel. You don't think about shoes, but it's such a need for people. And so what captured his heart was something that captures God's heart, right? Felt needs for people who are suffering people who are walking on all kinds of terrain. with no shoes, I have no shoes. So this thing captured his heart. That's good. What breaks God's heart broke his heart. And so he thought on that, and he prayed on that. He's like, Man, I know I need to do something. What? What do I need to do? So he's saying yes to God's plan, but this is what's so great. He didn't just say yes to God's plan. Like, Okay, God, it breaks my heart to him going to give people shoes. He followed God's providence. He followed God's guidance throughout the whole thing. And so that means he prayed, he sought counsel, he took advice, he looked for the best way to do things. And so the best way to do things he started to realize from advice and from counsel from prayer, he's going, you know, what, if I just one time, gave away shoes, if I just did a fundraiser, to try to get 50,000 $100,000, and I go over there, and I give the shoes away, then guess what? I'm done. After that, it's like, well, there you go. That's it. He actually said his friend put it this way for him. He said, Blake, that's great that you want to give away shoes. But what about the next pair?

Like that? The kids are not going to wear size eight for the rest of his life. What happens when you need another pair, and you're gone, and your money is exhausted? What happens then? And that just troubled him. And so he thought I thought I had, that's how he came up with the one for one concept that almost all charities seem to use anymore, he came up with this idea, this idea of you know what, what I'm going to do, instead of doing a complete nonprofit, I'm going to have a for-profit company. And this is how I'm going to do it, and I am going to sell shoes back in the States back to people who can afford them back to people who need them. And for every pair I sell, I give one away for free. That way, this thing can continually go on and on. And it's not just this one-time thing. And then that's how that kid gets the next pair of shoes. And the next one, I can give someone shoes from birth to death essentially this way. And the number is even higher now. Because this was back in 2018. In 2018, Toms Shoes gave over 60 million pairs of shoes away, not sold given that many away. That's incredible. Do you think Blake could have come up with that all on his own? Of course not. Of course not. That's God's providence. That's God's guiding hand guiding him the whole way through. That's Blake saying, God, what breaks your heart breaks my heart? I want to follow your plan. And I want to follow your way. I want to follow your guidance guide me the whole way through. We need that in our church. And we need that in our own personal life. We need to be able to say, God, you know what I want your will. And I want your way in my life when it comes to my relationships, when it comes to how I parent my kids when it comes to the kind of husband I am. I don't want to just say, Yes, I'm going to be a good husband, and then try to figure out on my own what that looks like. I want to say to God I'm going to be the best husband I can be. And then I'm going to follow your steps of what that looks like. I'm going to follow your guidance on how that actually plays out. When we do that, we will see miracles happen in our midst when we say yes to God's plan. And when we say yes, to God's providence acts is something I forgot to mention the last service to the people who gave this check that we have up here. The people who gave this check. They were people who were back a year ago, and this is just nuts. This is nuts. Back a year ago, whenever we were first talking about the campaign, everything we got cards printed out, you can see him you can grab one for yourself out there. And one of the people who wrote this check, whenever we were looking at the cards, he said, Hey, look, I don't want to. I know we've already got these cards printed, so it's too late. I get that buys one to say some of the numbers on here. I'm worried they're too big.

Pastor Jacob Young

Like the suggested amounts, like telling people like hey, if you give this much is how it play out. He's like, I'm worried they're too big, because honestly, it may like get people to press feeling like, Oh, I could never give that amount. And he pointed out one of the mounts he's like, like that one. I feel like you'd have to probably be like a millionaire to be able to give something that big, right? We're like, Yeah, no, I mean, I totally get what you think. And I get your train of thought. But you know what, we just this is the best advice we've gotten from people, and so we're just gonna keep rolling with it. And thank you, that I mean, I get it, I get where you're coming from. Little did they know, in one year from that day, they would be giving a check for that amount. How crazy is that? That's nuts. But that's because those are people who didn't just say yes to God's plan and say yes to God saying you you know what, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm going to try to honor you with my finances. They really follow that through; they follow God's guiding hand of like, Okay, what does it actually look like to trust God with my finances? What does it actually look like to put all of my faith and my trust in Him? And because of that, God did a miracle. He did a miracle. So what I want to say is whenever we do these things, whenever we Have our heart gets broken by what breaks God's heart, whatever, what stirs him stirs our heart. And whenever we start saying, You know what, God, I'm gonna say yes to you and your plan, but not just your plan, also to your providence to your guiding hand, when we do those things, we need to be ready. We need to be ready because we have no idea when God is going to move his plan for our life from concept to concrete. We have no idea. We have no clue it can happen like this. Let me read again. This is Nehemiah listening to the story. So Nehemiah tells the King, hey, this is what's breaking my heart, the city of my ancestors, the city. That means so much it's in ruins. The King says to him, Hey, what is it you want? Nehemiah says Please let me go travel back there to be able to fix the city. And I'm sure it would have been easy for the conversation to just end there. Right? Like, okay, well, we'll work out the details later, we'll figure everything out. But listen to this. So he says that the King says, Okay, what do you want? Nehemiah says I want to go back and rebuild the city. Then verse six, then the King with the queen sitting beside him asked me, How long will your journey take when we get back? It starts probing a little bit deeper. Imagine if Nehemiah hadn't really thought this thing out. All he knew was like; You know what, this breaks my heart that the city is torn apart. And you know what? I'm going to say yes to God's way. And I'm going to, I'm going to ask the King about this, and we're going to do something about it. What if he had just said to the King, let me go rebuild the city. And the King says, Okay, well, how long do you think it will take?

It's a good question. I don't know. I don't know. I haven't really thought about that yet. Okay, what are you gonna need anything, Niemeyer? Like, do you need anything on your way? That's another good question. I actually hadn't thought about that. Maybe like I might, I'm sure I will. I can meet back up with you in a couple of months after I've thought this out a little bit more. Right. Can you see how that would have happened? But it didn't happen. You know, why didn't because Nehemiah was ready. He was ready. He had been thinking about this. He knew that at any moment, God's plan could move from concept to theoretical to wouldn't that be nice to Oh, suddenly, it's here. Suddenly, I have the opportunity to do this thing and do this thing. Now. I think about the back whenever the Cavs won the championship in 2016. I was still working at Allstate at that time. And how they do PTO, how they handle paid time off is it was split up into halves. So the first half of the year and the second half of the year. And the first half of the year is whenever my family goes on vacation. So I didn't have that much PTO left. But I knew there was a chance that the Cavs could win a title, a slim chance that they could win a title. And it's on my bucket list to go to a championship parade for the Cleveland sports team. So with that little bit of PTO that I had left, I hung on to it. I hung on to it, no matter how slim the chances seemed, especially whenever they got down three-one. Look, it didn't look like I looked like I was holding on to this for no good reason that I was preparing and preparing it. It was never going to amount to anything. But the rest is history. Right? We all know they battled back; they ended up winning the series for three won a title. And guess what I did? I had PTO. So I put that bad boy in, and I was up in downtown Cleveland, the day of the championship parade. I got to experience like a once in a lifetime thing. It was utter insanity was so great memories I'll never forget. And the whole reason I was able to do that was that I prepared for it. There was a plan. It wasn't just a concept. I was ready that you know what? They probably won't get to the title. They probably won't get there, but just in case, I will be ready, just like Nehemiah. I'm sure Nehemiah thought, you know, there's a chance that King says no, but if he says yes, if he starts to probe a little bit deeper, I want to be ready. I want him to know I've been thinking about this. I've been praying over this. And so whenever Nehemiah responds, he actually brings things up to the King doesn't even ask. King says How long will it take? When should you get back an email? He's like, Yeah, this is about how long. By the way, I'm going to need this kind of order for safe passage. I'm going to need to talk to this person so I can get the right building materials. I'm going to need to talk to this person. He had thought this whole thing out. He was ready. Are you ready? I'm serious. Are you ready for what God could do in your life? Are you like Nehemiah, where if God brings an opportunity your way? If a relationship comes your way, if a job opening comes your way, if a friendship comes your way, are you actually ready for it?

Will you actually be able to steward it well? Are you preparing yourself right now? No. Will you be taken off guard? Will you be stuttering? I don't know; I bow. Let me try to get things in order real quick. You have no I do when that thing that you're hoping for that thing that you're praying for will move from concept to concrete. And you want to be ready. Back at Christmas of 20, Christmas of 2019. Here at Cornerstone. We were heading up to the end of the year, and our staff had been praying about it because we knew that we needed to do a giving campaign. We wanted to do some fundraising towards the end of the year. We knew that God was putting it on a heart to do it. But we had no idea why, like just no idea. We needed a better tagline than vision and victory. Give us your money for an unspecified reason. Like it's not very motivating. Is it right there? You don't want to give to that. But we didn't have a tangible thing on it. We just knew God was putting this on our hearts. We're like, Well, okay. This is how we're going to talk to people about it the exact way we feel God putting it on our heart that we are looking to raise money to help move Cornerstone forward. And we told people that we were joking, like, hey, look, I don't know if this super inspiring. But this is what we're looking for. We're looking for money to help push our church forward. We don't even know what that looks like yet. But will you partner with us? And people did we raise to get the $70,000 more than $70,000. And just that one weekend, it was incredible. A movie God, just incredible stuff. And we had no idea that in less than three months, the world would just go to crap. We had no idea that in less than three months, COVID-19 would be shutting down churches left and right, that we would have to go online only. We had no clue. But guess what, when it happened, we were prepared. We were ready. We weren't caught with our foot out the door like we were good to go. A bunch of other churches is what was so great. We got that money. One of the things we did was start investing in cameras. We started investing stuff to make sure you know what we want to be able to broadcast online. Like in a good way. We've been doing it for years, but just not of great quality. We're like. We are actually going to upgrade our quality. This is something that we're going to do. So we did that ahead of time. Thank God we did. You couldn't contact any of those live streaming, live streaming companies during the early days of the pandemic. They were, like, completely booked out for months, be like, Hey, we're on backorder for everything, we can't help anybody because all these churches that have never cared about it being like, whatever. It's not a real church unless you're in person, right? It's not an actual Church. So they've never done anything. Suddenly this hits, and they're beating down the door, saying, hey, we need ring cameras, we need streaming equipment. Thank goodness we were prepared. We were prepared. Don't you want to find your life in a similar way? If you're praying for someone, you're praying for a relationship, don't you want to find yourself ready for that relationship? If you're praying for a job that really feels like it fulfills your purpose? Don't you want to be the kind of person who actually would do things for God in that job? So whenever he hands it to you, whatever he gives it to, you're actually making that difference? You gotta be prepared. You gotta be ready because you have no idea when God will move his plan for your life, from concept to concrete. We're trying to do that as a church. We're trying to make sure we're as ready as we possibly can. The consultants that we've worked with, they've talked about, when we do start building like not even when the building's finished, just when we start building and people are driving by, and they see the exterior changing, and they see construction happening. They said Do not worry about if you're going to grow. That's not an if question. That's a win question. It's happening. You are going to get a lot, a lot of your location here, your name recognition in the community, you're gonna get a ton of people here. The question isn't if you'll get people. The question is if you'll be ready for the people. Like are you actually going to be able to handle it? Are you going to have systems in place, people in place to truly care for people? Are you going to welcome more people? Have your doors open, and people are falling through the cracks left and right. People are being loved in the way you used to love on people. People aren't being noticed. Are you going to be ready? So we're doing everything we can to be ready. That's why we're constantly saying, man, get involved as a ministry partner, not just so that the church can be ready, but you can be ready. You can be ready for what God's bring your way. Start getting involved now so that when the moment comes when God brings something our way, we are ready to seize it. I think about King David. He is a model example of this of just being ready because he was anointed as the next King of Israel at the moment between his anointing and his actual enthronement as the next King was more than 20 years. Think about that. Twenty years of concept 20 years of man one of these days. What if he had done something in those intervening years to just completely remove God's hand off of his life? What if you had done something in any of those years to get himself unprepared?

What if that happened? But he didn't; he was ready. So when the moment struck, when God brought the opportunity his way, he was ready to seize it. I want the same to be true for us as a church, and I want us to be ready. When people come, I want us to be if someone writes us an even bigger check with an extra zero on end. I want us to be able to tell them we know exactly how that'll get spent. This is where it will go. We've already been planning for it. We've been preparing for it. We've been praying for you. You don't even know it. But your gift is an answer to prayer. We've been planning for this rather than Whoa, that's a big number. I don't know. Thanks. I don't know. I don't really know what we're gonna do with it. But no, we want to be thinking ahead. We want to honor God and everything we do. And we do that when we get ready. Now, you may be someone who feels like you're stuck right now. Like you're kind of stuck in the concept phase. Has anyone ever been there before? Amen. Right? You feel like you're just kind of stuck in concept. You're like, can we ever become concrete, like ever see something shift here, I want to tell you while you're waiting, just keep working. Just keep working. A pause in the plan is not a pause for productivity. Right? Just because it feels like the plan for your life that you thought was gonna happen is paused right now doesn't mean you won't still be productive for God and still do the things you know you need to do and still serve. And so give of your time, talent, and treasure and still try to become as much like Jesus as you possibly can. Get yourself ready. Get yourself ready because you never know when things will move from concept to concrete. And we're seeing that happen here in our church. We're seeing people's spiritual lives move from just kind of this more theoretical concept to No, and I actually see tangible results in my life as I'm following Jesus. I noticed I'm Kinder; I noticed I'm gentler with people. I'm just I'm changing. We're seeing that happen. And another cool thing is we're seeing the changes start to happen in our actual physical church building as well. We're getting closer to concrete. We're starting to dip our toes out of the concept phase. And so, with that in mind, I want to let you guys know we have a special guest here today. Monty Trask. He is the president of construction team management of the group that we've hired to kind of oversee our entire building renovation and construction project. So I'm going to ask if you would let's give a warm Cornerstone welcome as it comes to stage. Monty Trask.

Thank you so much for being here. Again, Monty, I appreciate it. So good to have you on-site with us. I gotta say, from the second we met Monty, we fell hard for him. He's, he's an incredible guy. Just super humble loves the Lord knows his stuff knows his way around construction. And we're so happy to have you here with us today. Just have a few questions I'd like to ask you to as we dive in today. First off, can you just share a little bit about your background in the construction industry? Sure. Your I gotcha.

There it goes, now it's powering up all right. No, no, I think it's there we go. There it is. All right.

Monty: I'm kind of soft-spoken. So I probably should have a mic.

Jacob: Right. Yeah. So just your background in the construction industry.

Monty: I've been in construction for exactly 40 years. I started out in residential framing. I worked for a nice guy that taught me things that I didn't think I'd be able to learn. I eventually started my own business. And then I built custom homes for quite a while, designed and built custom homes, and then eventually got into real commercial construction. So I guess I build anything from a dog house—$ 200 million shopping centers. I've got a little bit of experience in all aspects. I've run jobs I've, you know, helped in a lot of different ways. So it's really all I know is construction.

Jacob: That's awesome. That's so great. And what about your background in the church? Can you talk about that? Just a little bit?

Monty: Oh, sure. I wasn't raised in the church. Like I think I said, the last service. I think my father's he's the greatest man I've ever met. I always thought if I could be half the man he was, and yet, you know, he didn't know God when I was younger. So I met a girl. Does anybody else have that issue? She was raised in the church. So it was important to her, and I wasn't really the kind of guy that her dad was probably all that excited to have come over. But I knew that church was important to her. So, of course, anything any smart young man would do, I said, I'm gonna pursue God. And what I found was that God pursued me, and the rest is history. So that's awesome. I started, you know, being involved in the church, we started having kids, and, you know, from teaching Sunday school to youth leadership to leading worship for several several years. My kids lead worship and other states, you know, it's just God's really blessed us to, you know, take someone from my humble, you know, beginning with him to even use me any possible way is amazing.

Jacob: That's so cool. That's awesome. And that's one of the things that drew us towards Monty and construction team management from the onset was the fact that you work with churches. We've talked to other construction companies that were really nice, really great. But they're not familiar with churches, but you guys are, so who exactly is construction team management, and what makes construction team management unique when it comes to church construction?

Monty: Sure. So church and construction, they don't even go together. I mean, a kind of seduction is a process of building things for people. And when you're building something for God, it's a whole nother ballgame. It's hard to be frugal with God's money because he doesn't need it. So most churches, they end up, you know, getting taken advantage of because they're a one time, you know, maybe you'll do two campaigns in 20 years. But you know, ultimately, you are a one-stop-shop, and you're not going to get the best deals, and you're probably not going to get what you want. Because the architects or the construction people don't understand the church. So Sean's case is my partner in this mess. And he has been a minister for years and years. He was actually my kids, my older kids, youth minister when they were little. So I've known him forever. He's my best friend in this world. And he has this great knowledge of how the church works, how it functions, how teams work together, how teams go out, how you reach your community, and the importance of community, and he also has a design background. So between the two of us, we love the church. We want the church to be successful. We want the church to get a fair deal. So being able to about six years ago, we created this company that, you know, for the rest of my time, doing this kind of work, I want it to be in the kingdom so that we can help churches reach their potential, not what we see, but what they see in themselves. So that's why we started awesomely.

Jacob: As I said, whenever we met Monty, we loved him and loved how just evident it was that he was just a humble guy. They love the Lord. But we also got to go see his work. We got to go see a church that he worked at, Southbrook Sean's Church, down in Dayton. And we're just blown away. It's absolutely gorgeous. It's just so good. So he's also very, very skilled at what he does. And he's been able to see how the projects once churches are done how affects that church's ministry. So could you just talk about a little bit how you see a project like ours impact the ministry of churches?

Monty: Well, sure, the fact that I didn't scare Rachel, the first time we met for sure, I had a big beard and a cowboy hat. And a mask? Well, what I have seen is the churches that are the most successful with coming up with a plan or churches with a vision of who they are. So one of the things we wanted to make sure that we do and hopefully we do that, well, when we sit down with someone, we make it awkward because we're going to make you tell us who you are. I mean, that's our whole deal. We don't want to come in and create something that we think is best for you. So our whole goal is to get churches to speak to us and talk to us in a way that we can understand who you are. And being here today even helps that even more because now I've experienced your service. I've heard your sermon, I worshiped with you, I felt the presence of God, and that's all-important for me and Shawn to understand who you are. So churches that do this, well, they don't worry about how it's going to happen or when it's going to happen. They worry about who it's going to happen for. And if you have that heart, and you have that desire, the rest is gravy, you know, people sometimes think, well, you know, I can't give any more. Or I can remember, I'll give you three types of people. One would be someone who forgot his wallet on Sunday and shot the offering plate went by again. And then all I've given next week, and I'm giving you twice what I did last year, which was nothing. And then you have those who actually learn how to tie, and that's hard. I've been there, I've been all three of those people. And it takes these kinds of projects to take every single person in the congregation. Now you don't have to go home and smash your five-year-old piggy bank, but you should 15 years from now that five-year-old should see that you are invested in their future. So I've seen churches that go into the community, and I referenced going to Mexico or a third world country where you see poverty, and people are so happy because they have this community that we've lost. So the churches that build that community and they open this facility to the public, those people come in and use this facility, and they're loved in a way that they don't know anything about. And they, you know, understand, but they grow, and they get involved. So it's one thing to say, Hey, I'm giving my time, I'm volunteering, and I'm gonna keep volunteering during this project, but God wants that treasure, it's gonna take every nickel, and I promise you, I can't do anything after you open the facility. But we use every single dollar to the best of our ability to get you everything that you can get. So that you can love the people out there, because that's what success is, it's not going to be anything. It's not gonna be a pretty building or space. That's awesome. It is going to be the awesomeness of God loving the people out there. So every one of those churches is a success story. And it always is because God's in control. So don't be afraid. Don't be afraid to be a part of something that's bigger than you because God wants to use each and every one of you. And I promise He will if you allow him to.

Jacob: One of one of the things that Monty has worked on is he works out of space. They call it the reverie is out that is at Southbrook. One of the projects that he worked on, they wanted to build a chapel to be able to use for funerals, weddings, things like that. This place, I would encourage you to look it up online. It's called if you want to see some of this work. It's called the reverie, and you can look it up in Dayton, this chapel, this wedding venue that they have built. It's what did it when from the not the wedding website.

Monty: It has been for the past two years. It's the top wedding venue in the state of Ohio. It's at a church, but it's so uniquely cool. But the thing that makes us cool is the vision of the people that had it there. And I will tell you. I press these two pretty hard about who you guys are. And you know, sometimes they're a little wire, they ask him anything you see our design, it's a reflection of these two right here of what they see from you and who you guys are. And that's what the plans are all about. And I know up front, there's a lot of thinking, there's a lot of oh my gosh, can you just tell us what to build? And no, no, we cannot; it takes we need to define who you guys are. And you guys should be proud of these two because whatever we've shown you out there was because of that too. They will see you in the future. And that's pretty exciting stuff.

Jacob: It's its exciting times. Anything else you want to add as we close out Monty Yeah, right. You can check where you go. Go ahead and get to work. Right. Well, we are so thankful to say that we are blessed by this partnership with Monty and Shawn and construction team management, as a massive understatement. We couldn't have hand-picked people to work with better. We're so thankful. Thank you again for being here. Monty, can we give him a round of applause? Thank you so much. Well, hey, as the worship team comes back up, I just want to remind us that's where we are. We are currently still in our concept phase, but man, we're getting closer and closer to God moving us into the Concrete phase. And what's so cool is, that's a promise that he's made not a promise specifically about the building, but a promise about his church, which is us, the people, we talked about this vision Sunday, this year, we, we listed a whole lot of goals that we would like to hit a lot of things that we would like to see achieved here this year. And it would be incredible if we hit those things, right? Like the new building, that's gonna be amazing whenever we have that thing. But that is not the end goal. The end goal is not the building. The end goal isn't any of those. It's not what we do. It's who we become. Are we becoming the people that God has created us and designed us to be people who look and who love as Jesus did? And so if we reach the end of 2022, and that's all that's happened, it's been a good year. If we can say, Cornerstone is the church that embodies the love of Christ. It's a good year. And so that's what we're doing. That's what we are trying to remember and trying to focus on that while we are trying and working with God to build the physical church. We can take confidence knowing he is building his church. He's building it right here and every single one of us.