Great news from Kansas City Business Prayer group.
Leaders of City Serve and First Priority of America join efforts to build a bridge into the kingdom by working with our local KC schools and churches. God’s Relay Race is approaching a time of transition and multiplication!
Show Notes
God’s Relay Race is a workplace prayer gathering that meets on the second Saturday every month at the Plexpod in Wesport from 8:00am – 10:00am
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For more information about this prayer group go to:
www.kcpray.com
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Nathan Sack 00:00
Hello welcome to another Faith Horizons Kingdom brief. These are short podcasts between 5 and 10 minutes. The purpose of a kingdom brief is to share highlights from ongoing Kingdom activities and announce events in Kansas City. Great news for the Kansas City Kingdom of God! Leaders of City Serve and First Priority of America join efforts to build a bridge into the kingdom by working with our local KC schools and churches. On another note, God’s Relay Race is approaching a time of transition and multiplication. Here’s my conversation with Scott Stanger. This past God’s Relay Race you had brought up we brought up in past podcasts about City Serve, and then also First Priority of America. So it seems that the two of these have now met each other. And they’re now somewhat collaborating with both the church and schools. Can you just describe a little bit about what’s going on there? And what would be the multiplying effect of these organizations coming together?
Scott Stanger 01:09
Sure. Well, so First Priority of America is a youth movement that was really initiated by business men and women as well. But I’ve met some of them, the business men, and they started this in Nashville, like 20, 25 years ago, and business people are primarily strategic thinkers. I mean, we don’t just open up a business and hope that people come. We strategize, how can we attract customers? How can we take market share, provide a superior product or service and so on. And anyway, these strategic minded business people started thinking about how can we reach the next generation. 85% of Christians in the United States come to Christ at the age of 18 or younger. And so they felt like this generation was being lost. So they went out there, and they created this, this ministry called First Priority of America. And it was to come alongside churches, because they discovered that all of the public high schools and middle schools in the United States have seven churches within their immediate proximity. And so they came in with a training program starting in Nashville, and now it’s nationwide, and has just recently come to Kansas City. Because of a businessman who’s brought it, God put it on his heart to bring it to our city. But anyway, these business people, were going in and financing a training curriculum for the students, those middle school and high school students in those seven churches that would surround a school, a public school, and they would train and equip these young people to go into their schools and evangelize and disciple their peers. So it’s not adults going into the schools. It’s the high schoolers and the middle schoolers going in there, equipped and empowered by God’s Holy Spirit, to go in there and evangelize and disciple. And it’s brought 10s of 1000s of young people to the Lord. And so this thing is now in in Kansas City. It was launched a month or two ago, and it’s in it’s moving forward, funds are being raised, resources or people are being brought together and so on. They’re working through the church, not around the church through the church to reach public schools. All right. Well, this City Serve is another ministry that’s recently it’s been nationwide, and recently been introduced into the Kansas City Market. And it was, it’s a ministry that takes the surplus or overstocks of major retailers like Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and so on, and takes their overstocks allows them to donate them get a tax write off millions, 10s of millions, hundreds of millions, I don’t know I’m told it’s very large, and millions of dollars of toiletries of, you know, linens and household items that people need. So this City Serve, just as it says in its name, serves the city, and it uses the local church to distribute these overstock tax write off items to families in need. Well, they’ve discovered, you know, they do that through the local churches. But in the years that they’ve been doing that, they’ve discovered that guess what- I’m sad to report this, that the schools are more in tune with the socio-economic needs of the families and the neighborhoods that they serve than the churches. The schools the public schools, especially are more in tune with-
Nathan Sack 04:43
They’re definitely serving their kids every every day.
Scott Stanger 04:47
Yeah and that teacher notices that that child who comes in every day disheveled and it looks like they didn’t maybe get a good hot breakfast or whatever, and so they are ministering to the needs of that student and their family at the same time, well, then City Serve is coming along side those public schools and helping them to identify these families, these neighborhoods that have the greatest need, and channeling these items that would be needed linens and, you know, whatever is needed for their households. So here we’ve got these two ministries that are working through the public schools, First Priority of America is training up through the, through the churches to evangelize and disciple into the public schools. And then we’ve got this other that’s meeting the needs of families through the public schools, where we’re feeding people spiritually, and feeding and caring for people, practically these two ministries, why shouldn’t they come together and synergistically bring the kingdom in a
greater way, and to these, these places of need in our cities. And that’s, that’s what kind of happened this over the last couple of weeks is these two ministries here in Kansas City are being connected. And right now, there are prayerful pilot programs that are being you know, developed here as we wait on the Lord and say, okay, how do we do this? Let’s proceed with Your wisdom with Your empowerment. It’s not this, you know, ready fire aim kind of mentality were these, there’s strategy that’s going into how to do this most effectively. And I can’t wait to see what develops and be able to report on whether it’s in these podcasts or continuing at the God’s Relay Race on Saturdays of reporting on what’s happening in our city.
Nathan Sack 06:42
One of the things I just I think that these two organizations coming together is just absolutely phenomenal. But one of the things that one of the members brought up and this last God’s Relay Race was that, you know, they have incredible numbers, although they are not trying to satisfy stockholders, they have incredible numbers. He also said they are positioning the schools and the churches to be the hero.
Scott Stanger 07:05
Yes, that’s right. Yes, just as you said, it’s not about the numbers, although we like them. We like numbers, who doesn’t I mean, we measure things we’d like it when our teams score more points. We like it when our businesses grow more sales. And and so certainly we like it when more families are impacted, and lives are touched. But we’re doing this unto the Lord. And we’re doing it with the skills that He’s put in us business skills, and how to how to grow and scale and these things are happening here in our city of Kansas City. And where God’s Relay Race is it is about incubating this, you know, we’ve been meeting for the last couple years, the second Saturday of every month in the Plex pod in Westport, the Plex pod has several locations four, five around the city as a business incubator, but we’ve been there and meeting in that location to incubate this. And that’s, that’s what’s happening. And we’re, we’re now we’re kind of in a in a time of transition, we’re going to be stepping out of a single location and moving it into businesses across the city. And, again, we’re waiting on the Lord to get His His wisdom and input on this. But I’m excited about what is going to be unfolding over in in the second half of 2022 of how God is going to take this relay race thing you know, we use the metaphor of a relay race or you’re running your leg and handing the baton off. But now it’s becoming a multi-lane relay race. It’s not just handing off to one generation, but it’s handing off batons of prayer in the marketplace to businesses all over the city.
Nathan Sack 08:49
Businesses and business leaders. God’s Relay Race has likely reached a transition, a transition point. And one of the things you also mentioned was that the 10 Day event that we recently had, at the end of August, I think into September, can you just tell us a little bit about you’re going to kind of be maybe removing that from part of the God’s Relay Race offering and just-
Scott Stanger 09:10
Yeah, we’re going to be shifting our focus, the 10 days of prayer for the marketplace, was what initially launched this and there was so much positive feedback from everyone who participated and said, wow, we need to do this more frequently than once a year. And so then-
Nathan Sack 09:30
When you initially started the 10 Day event, there was like, what, 50,60 people per day there? Right?
Scott Stanger 09:35
Yeah, we had as many not per day, but we I can remember one day in particular, we had more than 50 people gathered at one time. And there’s been an ebb and flow sometimes there’s you know, just a couple of people and sometimes there’s as many as 50 people at once. But numbers do not matter. And so we’re we really feel as we’re gathering and waiting on the Lord that there’s a time of transition here that the focus is going to become more frequency, multiplication across the city. And so all the effort that went into the planning and coordinating of, of a 10 day event is, is we’re not going to do that starting this year we’re going to transition and put the effort and the coordination on multiplying this each month into businesses across the city. So there’ll be a lot more you know, energy towards just getting the word out so that people know okay, this month that said, you know, business ABC and next month it’s at business XYZ and so on, making sure that everybody shows up at ABC when they’re supposed to not XYZ.
Nathan Sack 10:46
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