Margin KC | Generosity Story

Your generosity fuels all of Westside's efforts to make disciples, equip families, and share Christ's love here and around the world.

I know exactly who you are. People that love people. People that love their families. People who want a future and a hope. Across racial barriers, across language barriers, across socioeconomic barriers. Arms have been joined.

Every church wants to do a lot more than what they're doing. The problem is they don't have resources to do it.

I see people walking through the door all the time seeking to fulfill their kingdom purpose and they're chained by financial debt.

We sat with a couple on Friday and they have $1,700 in debt going out right now, and the student loans are deferred. All they can see is there's no money leftover right now and they have this big avalanche of payments that's about to start in about nine months and they're not ready for it.

The reality is all the stats are there are people have no margin either in their time or their money. And so pastors like me come in and we want to create great vision. And the people listen to it and they clap. At the end of the day, they're really saying with their eyes in their pocketbook, we love what you're talking about, but we really can't participate, you know that right?

Randy came to Westside by a year and a half ago and came to us with the idea of doing financial piece church wide. Financial piece is such a beautiful thing because it meets people both believer and pre-Christian at a point of need.

And then just one day I thought, because I like city stuff. I liked the big C church. I thought wonder if there would be any other churches that would be interested in this.

Instead of doing a church wide financial piece, why don't we take this to the whole city and trying to get a hundred churches, which sounded ridiculous at the time.

People have their sermons already figured out for the next year. They're not going to change what they're doing in the fall to do this sermon series that they hear about in June and they did.

We were planning and praying over what 2019 is going to look like. We saw a financial series in mind for the second half of the year and just thought, man, just the way that God puts things together, this could be really, really special.

We already do financial pieces at church so what an amazing opportunity for us to reach more in our community and to link arms with other churches so that just the churches of our city can be filled with people that have financial freedom.

We set out on a vision a year ago that may be possibly a 100 churches would come together, united in solidarity to slay the margin monster that's keeping our people from freedom, from the life that God intended them, for the investment they could make into the kingdom. And we're pleased to announce today that he gave us a 110 churches.

That's exciting for the Church of Jesus in Kansas City because bringing us all together I think is visual statement that we are one.

And you can just feel like God is working in this place. He's working in these people.

But it was like Holy Spirit electricity, kind of running through that line. And I felt like I was a part of a tribe. I felt like I was a part of a movement.

Does not have to be a Kansas City only thing. You can do this in Denver, Dallas, Houston, LA. It doesn't matter. You can do it anywhere. If you can look down the road at five, 10 years of the decisions that we're making right now, I think the future before us is so incredible. What's it going to look like when there's thousands of people in our community? Believers who are walking and financial freedom and choosing to walk in generosity.

They're going to be so freed up that they're going to have not only money to purchase the things that they want, that they're going to put first the kingdom of God and we're going to have more resources than we ever dreamed to transform the city.

You helped make these blessings possible through your faithful giving. Thank you.