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The Stakes Are High!
Somewhere near 85 percent of Christians come to Christ by the age of 18. It is imperative that people are reached before leaving high school.
In this episode Scott shares about a Kansas City businessman who is helping bring First Priority of America to our city. This organization focuses on uniting Christian students to share the hope of Christ with their friends and classmates.
Show Notes
First Priority website 😀
https://firstpriority.club
God’s Relay Race is a workplace prayer gathering that meets on the second Saturday every month at the Plexpod in Wesport from 8 – 10 am.
You’re invited to pray with other business leaders!
To add to your calendar, click on the link below. 📆🙏
Add to Calendar
For more information go to –
www.kcpray.com
Transcript
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. So another really cool thing that came up this weekend, which I didn’t even know about it, and you referenced it a lot of people don’t even know about it. So in this God’s Relay Race, I learned about First Priority of America, what is First Priority of America? And why does it matter to Kansas City?
Scott Stanger 00:41
Sure. First Priority of America is a ministry that’s been around for 25 years. And I wasn’t aware of it either. until just recently. And somehow they connected to a prominent businessman, who I know through the business community, the kingdom minded business community that I’m a part of Acumen. And this businessman, Dustin Doll, is very successful businessman, and he has a heart to bring the gospel in and through his business. And he just I just so thankful for men and women like Dustin who are out there looking for every opportunity to bring the kingdom. And so this ministry is unique, because, you know, there are lots of ministries that work through the youth. I came to Christ through Fellowship of Christian Athletes in high school. So I’m familiar with these ministries that like that, and Young Life and Campus Crusade and so on. Well, this one’s a little bit different. First Priority of America, they really are very intentional to not work around the church, but work through the church. And they’re, it’s birthed by businessmen. And so they think, and walk and talk and act like businessmen and everything that, you know, let’s develop a strategy, let’s go out and execute the strategy. Let’s revise it to maximize its effectiveness and so on. And one of the things they found is in in the research, and strategizing is that every public high school and middle school in the United States has, on average, seven churches within its close proximity, seven churches surrounding every public high school and middle school in America. And so those churches, we as business people can come alongside them and help them mobilize to a greater degree to go in and evangelize and disciple inside of those schools that they surround. Well, they’re not going to do that, though, through the lay people, or the pastors, they’re going to do through the kids, the high schoolers and middle schoolers. And so this ministry, like I said, it’s been around for 25 years, and has been extremely effective in raising up, training these young people inside of these churches, on average, 7 to 10, that are surrounding the public schools, and then sending them in and evangelizing and discipling 10s of 1000s 10s of 1000s of young people who have come to Christ through this ministry, business people mobilizing and working through the local church, around the high
schools and middle schools, extremely effective. Well guess what? They somehow connected with Dustin Doll. And Dustin said, that sounds awesome. We don’t have that in Kansas City. Let’s bring it here.So last week, he hosted this luncheon where I guess there were 100 plus business executives from across the city who came there. And he had this really compelling slide presentation that he did, and, and some of the board members from First Priority and other chapters across the city came in and testified of here’s what we’ve been able to accomplish. And here’s how we’re gonna get this thing rolling. It was awesome. It’s just so inspiring and faith stirring, and I invited a couple of people to come to it as well. And they came away the exact same way that I did of, wow, this is awesome. God’s doing this in our city. He’s reaching the next generation, reaching them through young adults that are going to come to The Send, reaching families through The Flood the week prior, and now we’ve got a long-term plan to reach the young people. I can’t remember if I said it here, but 85% of Christians come to Christ before they turn 18 years of age. And so we’ve got to reach this generation, less than 4% of the high schoolers polled know anything about Christ or active in a church and so on. Again, there were so many stats that were thrown at us. I can’t recall all of them, but they were, they were really compelling. And so it’s captured our hearts and we are mobilized and poised and ready to take the kingdom into the high schools and middle schools of Kansas City.
Nathan Sack 05:23
That’s incredible. I just, I thought the whole thing was just absolutely well done. And, and you had mentioned also that they also had incredible lawyer backing to be able to stay their stay their course.
Scott Stanger 05:36
Sure. Yeah. Well, as you can imagine, anytime you’re doing things like this, they’re going to be you’re going to be attacked. And they have successfully gone out and, and defended themselves and litigation and shown that, hey, freedom of religion is protected under our Constitution and Declaration of Independence. And so that’s, that’s reassuring, especially as a big group of business people are there and saying, wait a second, am I putting a big bullseye on my back? I’m going to be litigated by, you know, some of these organizations and so on, especially as we see, so much is going on right now in society. But yeah, you we’re going to suffer spiritual attacks. But bring it on because praise God, we’re going forward with His kingdom. And this week is the Passion Week, the tomb is empty, the tomb is empty. Our King, our Lord, our Savior has risen from the grave and seated the right hand of God the Father, He has triumphed over sin and death. And we’ve read the end of the book and we know that God wins and we’re on His side Hallelujah.
