#Columbus HarvestGate HowDoWeChurch Episode2

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The Harvest Gate Podcast - Episode 2

Below is a written transcript of Episode 2 of The Harvest Gate Podcast.

Now available on harvestgate.org/podcast , Apple Podcast or your favorite podcasting app or service.

New episodes posted Sunday.

Episode 2: Our Mission Statement

*Intro Music*

Greg: Hey this is Greg

Zack: And Zack

Greg: Welcome back to the Harvest Gate podcast. This week we'll be talking about Harvest Gate's missions statement. You may have heard it in the outro of the first podcast, that is of course, "Connecting Faith to Families, Communities and Marketplaces"

We're also going to talk about our first financial update, lay out some goals, our current timeline and some upcoming events to add to your calendar.

But Zack, to get started this week, since we're part coffeehouse, we should take a moment to talk about coffee.

Zack: Yea, so what are you brewing today, Greg? 

Greg: Well, I'm brewing what I brewed yesterday, I'm drinking what I brewed yesterday, which is iced coffee or cold coffee. Emily and I like to brew our coffee the night before and stick it in the fridge so its ice cold first thing in the morning...refreshing! Wakes you up a little bit. No ice! Not so it's watered down. Full, high octane effect!

Zack: Okay, I am picking up what you're putting down. 

Greg: How about you?

Zack: I am drinking from my local coffee house that I love, River Road Coffeehouse.

Greg: Shout out to River Road!

Zack: Shout out to River Road! I am drinking my regular, which is a regular latte with 2 packets of Sweet-n-Low. It is delicious, I recommend River Road, if you ever get the chance to go there in Newark or Granville, Ohio.

Greg: And we've, of course, had many of our conversations at River Road. I recall that being your regular order as well.

Zack: Yea, that's where our friendship, sort of, started to blossom. 

Greg: Blossom, like the design on the top of your latte, if I recall. 

Zack: That's true. They're that good.

Greg: Oh very good! Alright, let's dive in, we've got a lot to talk about this week. We want to really breakdown the mission statement of Harvest Gate. As I stated before, that mission statement is "Connecting Faith to Families, Communities and Marketplaces."

How did you...where did that mission statement come from, how did it originate?

Zack: Yea so, I think that our mission statement answers the question of why? Why generally tends to be...a question that people are...there's an issue and they want to know why that issue exists and how to resolve it. Our mission statement, "Connecting Faith to Families, Communities and Marketplaces.", answers that why questions.

It seems like so much in Christianity, at least in America today, seems disconnected from faith. We almost look at life in 4 different domains in America. 

We have our faith, then we have things we do in our family. We have things we do in our community and finally things we do at our jobs or workplaces.

Greg: And those things are often disconnected, they are sort of independent of each other.

Zack: Yea. I've found that a lot of people who are disenfranchised from the church or who don't care about church all that much would say there's a disconnect between what people say it is that they believe and how they actually act in these places in life. 

Greg: Yea!

Zack: Greg, as one of those people potentially, have you found this to be the case that sometimes people's faith is disconnected from the other areas of their life?

Greg: Yea, I think I've had friendships or relationships with people that, were it not for the fact that you maybe know they go to church or someone told you that they regularly attend church, or something like that, that you would have no idea based on their actions and how they live their life, that that is actually something that is important to them, or that their faith influences their everyday life or the decisions they make.

Zack: Yea, we would call that cultural Christianity, meaning that, "I am a Christian simply because I grew up in a place that has Christian values. Yea I don't really practice it, I go to church every once in awhile, maybe on Christmas and Easter, maybe I go more frequently than that. Maybe I go every Sunday but it is disconnected from the rest of my life." 

Greg: Maybe its like a pick-me-up, a sort of feel-good message to start your message. 

Zack: Exactly! So what tends to happen, or what I have seen even in my lifetime, I'm relatively young, I have seen that church is a place that you go on a given day of the week and that is the extent of our faith a lot of times. 

Greg: Right.

Zack: And so I believe that, and this is rooted really in biblical principles, that everything we do should be viewed through the lens of our faith. We're told in 1 Corinthians 31, Paul says this, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of god." 

Paul again tells us in Colossians 3, he says, "In whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the lord Jesus." And then a couple verses later in Colossians 3.23 he says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart." 

This is all informed by Jesus' words when Jesus was walking here on the Earth. Jesus said, "In the same way, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and good glory to your father who is in heaven." 

It seems, like I said Greg, that everything should be viewed from the lens of faith. What tends to happen is faith is relegated to a certain day of the week, at a certain place, maybe if you're really spiritual, someplace in the midweek. 

What we want to do is we want to be a church, a network of people, who view all of life through the lens of faith. We say it, that we're connecting our faith to our families. How do we view our families in light of our faith? How do we view and live in our communities?

And that could be a really big community, it could be the town or the village or city that you live in. 

Greg: Yea, your next-door neighbor.

Zack: Could be your next-door neighbor. It could be just your group of friends but also in the marketplace. In our vocation, in our jobs. Whether you are a stay at home mother, or whether you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, we think that all of life should be viewed through that faith lens. 

Greg: So the connection between faith and trying to build those connections to those different places. Give me an example in your community let's say, or in the community around the coffeehouse in the future, where we're hoping to settle down, how do you take...or build that connection.

Zack: Yea, if you remember from our last podcast, we had talked about how the church is supposed to exist for the community. And this is kind of what informs our name of Harvest Gate. We say that the harvest is plenty and the workers are few. Then Jesus says, "I am the gate. None come to the father except through me." 

But then there is a deeper meaning to the word gate, where the church was a gathering of people, much like the people who gathered at the gate to bring value, wisdom and clarity. There would be town elders who gathered at the gate, that gathering was meant to bring clarity and value to their city. 

We are hoping that as a faith community, that we would bring value to our city. In this case, it's Columbus. Right now we live in Newark, Ohio.

Greg: Yea. 

Zack: And we want to bring value to Newark, Ohio but we also want to bring value to wherever it is that we live. Our big goal, our big dream is that we want to have a transforming presence in every zip code in Columbus and there are 49 zip codes in Columbus. 

So we believe that that means we should be joining in on what we call kingdom endeavors. Helping to decrease the illiteracy rate in Columbus. Helping to feed people who are hungry. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack:  Caring for the orphans and the widows and the strangers, these are all different people groups that God says throughout scripture that we should care for. On a more practical way, this could mean that I live in a home, my next-door neighbor is an elderly woman who is a widow and let's say her front porch is rotting out. We would hopefully come together as a community, as a faith community, and help her rebuild her porch. 

All of the tithes and offerings that come in through the church, 40% of that would go to what I call local missions.

Greg: Okay.

Zack: 40% would go to foreign missions and 20% would be for operational costs. 

In most churches today, if you're pretty healthy financially, roughly 40% of your budget goes towards paying staff members. Maybe another 30-40% goes to paying for your facilities.

Greg: Churches tend to be in very large buildings, those aren't cheap. Even just running costs, if you paid off your mortgage, to heat it, to power everything, that's going to cost some big bucks.

Zack: It is! You're left with, 20-30% to actually minister to people.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: I heard about a study, where people went and looked at church budgets. They did church budgets, how much a church budget was compared to how many people were baptized. 

They found that they average cost, if you will, to get somebody baptized is around $1.5 million dollars. 

Greg: That seems a bit steep...

Zack: It seems a bit steep! Our hope is that we can, through the generosity of those who are in our faith community, that we can bless our community.

We would take money from our local missions, of that 40%, and go and buy material and hopefully, in our faith community we would be able to have somebody who has expertise in building and all they need are hands. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So then we would go next door and build a new porch for her, or whatever the case might be, it might be raking leaves, it might be...it doesn't have to be a building project. It could be generally helping the community.

Greg: Yea! That concept of, or that scenario of, an elderly neighbor with something that they can't do, that needs to be done to help them. I think anyone, if you ask them would you be on board with supporting that personally, would you want your local government to support that, would you want local community members to help them with that. Or would you yourself help them with that, I think everyone would answer, "Yes.".

But in reality that so often doesn't actually happen. I think it is important to find ways...this is one of the things I connect with most about this project is that, it doesn't matter whether you believe or don't believe a certain thing. If you want to do good, just go do it. If you're, kind of, on the fence thinking, "Should I volunteer to help someone with something or support my local food pantry or homeless shelter?", make it happen! Get involved with that kind of stuff and make a difference in your community because we're the people that live there and we're the only ones that can make a difference.

Zack: Yea, exactly! From a pastoral standpoint, this is a great opportunity, in this elderly woman, she might say something like, "Why in the world would you do this?".

This is great opportunity for me to share my love of Jesus and to share the love of Christ with the world.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So I think that we have this perception that to share Jesus with people, we need to go and stand on street corners, and I'm not necessarily against those kinds of things, but I think through genuine love and serving of our neighbors, it allows to open up for really great conversation around faith.

So connecting faith to our community can take any kind of number of things and one thing that I want to make sure we're careful of within Harvest Gate, and this would probably just be a caution to all churches anywhere, is that we don't do things to grow the church necessarily, that is not our responsibility...

Greg: It can be a byproduct of the good work that you do. It can be part of...representing your faith through the actions that you take, representing your organization through what you do...showing people your character and that being the selling point, rather than a hard sales pitch directly to someone like, "Come join us." 

Obviously we want that, but I think if you don't set an example to be representative of that then why should people want to follow you.

Zack: Yea, exactly! People hate feeling like projects. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack: If I did something, if I went and...if we didn't know each other Greg, and I were to do something and you felt like I was doing it to manipulate you to believe a certain way, we probably wouldn't be friends.

Greg: Well, I think there was...I don't want to say there was ever a time in our relationship where that was a thing because it wasn't. But I think that there were times early on where I would talk to Emily about it, or I would think to myself, "Are we just becoming really good friends or am I a faith project?", like, here's not necessarily a vocal unbeliever but somebody who is very clear about how they feel and comfortable in that and, "Can I make changes to that?".

I really really respected the fact that that was never the case. We had many conversations about church and Jesus and religion and spirituality in general and there was never any pressure for me to believe something different than what I believe to validate our relationship or friendship or something like that. You kind of demonstrated that it didn't matter what my belief was, you were showing, I guess, your love of Jesus through just being a friend and a positive influence with no underlying motive.

Zack: Yea and I don't know if you remember this but I said, "Greg, I want you to believe what I believe. But our friendship is not relegated to whether you end up believing what I believe."

Greg: Yea, it's not conditioned on that.

Zack: So our hope is, is that through just loving people, they will come into knowing the love of Christ and the love that he has given for us. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So it's not our responsibility as a church to make sure the church grows. We can, maybe on a micro level, say, "I'm going to become friends with Greg so he can become a Christian." That might be, that might be one scenario.

But on a macro level, in the church generally what we do is, "Hey, we're going to serve these people so that they can come to our church." And if that happens its great, but that's not our, that's not our intention. We want to be obedient. Jesus said that, "The son of man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as ransom for many." 

And so as a follower of Jesus, its my responsibility to be obedient to what it is that he said. He said to follow me, do as I do, act as I act. That means that I want to serve our community, in the same way it goes...talking about our other domains that we're talking about here, like Family.

How do we view our family through the lens of faith? To me this means that my wife and I are in a partnership together. We are friends, there's many things you could attribute to our relationship but we are co-partners. I help her with dishes, I help with laundry, we have a partnership in our family. With our children, when they clean up and they don't want to, we say, "Thank you for contributing to our family, thank you for being part of the Morgan team." 

Greg: Yea. Shout out by the way to the Morgan kids who, Emily, my wife, and I, were hanging out at your place while you guys had date night last night. Which was great! And the kids cleaned up superbly. Maybe the only...the might have in fact done it too well because one of Eli's toys got cleaned up so well that we couldn't find it. 

Zack: Yea!

Greg: So hopefully that turns up.

Zack: Thank you for that! Within our family, its not that we just sit down and...and there's nothing wrong with this and we do this..."Okay, now kids it's time to read our bible." We read the bible and we'll talk about those kinds of things. When issues of life and death and love and respect and whatever the case may be, happens in our family, and even discipline, we discipline through the lens of our faith. Not necessarily in a manipulative way, "Well Jesus would be very said about that."

Greg: That's kind of like how people use Santa Clause for Christmas.

Zack: Yea. 

Greg: You're gonna be on the naughty list...

Zack: I'm going to throw one of your gifts away anytime you're bad...

So we don't want to do that but there's been many times where my kids have been...they've been deserving of some pretty harsh punishment. But I've said, "I'm going to choose right now to show you mercy rather than grounding you...", or whatever the case may be, whatever the form of punishment is, "This is what you deserve but I love you enough that I'm not going to do it right now. I'm going to show you mercy."

What happens a lot of times is the realization of the underserving-ness of that, it breaks them more than maybe the punishment would.

Greg: Like I deserved a greater punishment than I received.

Zack: Yea, I deserve this punishment but what I actually received was mercy and love. Now, this doesn't mean we don't punish our kids, we certainly do, but I believe this is the same thing that Jesus does. Jesus says...in Romans it says, "The wages of sin is death." 

But Jesus came so that we might have life and have it abundantly, that is in John 10:10.

So we might be deserving of one thing but Jesus comes in and says, "I'm going to give you grace and mercy."

I kind of define grace and mercy this way: grace is getting what you don't deserve, mercy is not getting what it is that you do deserve. So we try to, in our family, we try to extend grace and mercy to everyone. Maybe that's how, a quick example, of how our faith plays out in our family context. 

Greg: And that can be a challenge, in the heat of the moment, ya know? When the action that deserves some sort of discipline has just taken place. You have to have that, sort of, self awareness and control to think about, "How do I want to act in this moment? What example am I setting?"

I think you're teaching your kids a lot about your character and of course where you get that character from, in the choices that you make and the values that you have. I think that's really important.

Zack: And, you say that, I should be clear, far from perfect. Because in those moments, in the heat of the moment, I don't respond in the way my faith informs, I then have to do some repenting.

Repenting is, and you may have heard it before, repenting is simply the act of turning away from, turning 180 degrees. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So I might have to do some repenting. First, it might be to God. Then it's to my children and that's a humbling thing.

Greg: Yea, every parent listening is nodding their head, including me. And maybe not even recognizing the term repent, or exactly what it means but I've had plenty of instances where my initial reaction to something that Eli did is not the reaction that I would want and I'll almost immediately have to kind of stop, and sometimes even just sort of explain to him in that moment, "Daddy apologizes and is sorry for raising my voice.", or whatever it was to let him know that I can...I'm not perfect, I make mistakes but I can recognize those mistakes or be aware of those and just because I made the mistake doesn't mean I have to live with that, or commit to it permanently. 

I can stop and say, "You know that was the wrong thing to do", and I acknowledge that and let's try to talk about that in a different way.

Zack: Yea, I think anyone who is a parent, which I have 3 children under the age of 6 and younger and you have a son...how old is Eli?

Greg: Eli's 4, he'll be 5 in April.

Zack: Awesome. Anyone who has children has probably done something and they go, "Well they'll be able to talk to their therapist about that in about 15 or 20 years.

Greg: Yea, yep.

Zack: Just simply saying, "Listen, Daddy did not respond right. It was not okay for me to respond the way that I did." 

Greg: Yea

Zack: "It was not loving, it was not caring, I lost my temper, whatever the case may be." 

What that does, is it helps our children to understand that it's okay to make mistakes, but it's not okay to live in those mistakes and to just perpetuate them.

Greg: Yea. 

Zack: I've heard it said this way, "It's okay to not be okay but it's not okay to stay that way."

Greg: Right. There's a little bit of pride in that, where you don't want to admit you made a mistake, even though you know that you're wrong or you know that you want to change that behavior or that action or something but you're unwilling to admit that to the people that may have been affected by that or to yourself.

Zack: Yea, especially to your children. I don't need to do this to you because I made you! But throughout scripture, it says to honor one another and to submit to one another and I think that that's what that is. It doesn't mean that I give up all of the "authority" I have on my family...

Greg: Right.

Zack: ...but it does mean that when I'm wrong I need to admit it and I need to repent at that and ask forgiveness of my children. One of...from the time every single one of my children was conceived to the day that I die, this has been my prayer for them. My children's names are Lily, Isaac and Naomi, but my prayer goes something like this...

Father, thank you for Lily, Isaac and Naomi. May they know you from an early age and grow to know you. May their faith never falter. May they understand grace, mercy and love as I understand grace, mercy and love, but without having to go through all the stupid things that I went through to understand those things. 

Greg: *laughs* Yea!

Zack: And then I pray over them. Let my children be a powerful voice in your kingdom. May there be millions of people who come to know you because of their obedience and their faith.

That's kind of the hope, we want our children to be better than we are, to do better in life.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: I want them to have a stronger faith than I do. 

Greg: Well, that's a common sentiment that people have and I think everyone says that, but how many people are taking actions to make that happen. Investing in education and the community, safe places for kids to gather and be kids and not have to experience the reality of the real world, maybe earlier than they would be prepared for.

You know, there's a lot of things...

Eli already, at 4 years old, has had to go through these sort of...process of...

When my wife and I had our most recent miscarriage at like 20 weeks, Eli had already well understood that he was going to have a sister. That this whole process was ongoing and we were building it up and we wanted him to be a big brother and he was going to do great...and then the rug gets pulled out from under and we have to try and explain to him, when he's only just turned 4 at the time, what exactly all of that meant. 

That's not something anyone would want to do, but we tried to do that...Emily did a great job of helping him understand that whole process and what happened and why things are different now and maybe as best as he can understand as a 4 year old. We always want to protect our children from these sorts of things that can happen or whatever. 

I think, how can we use Harvest Gate for a platform for that? Living our family life, the way that we would want it to be lived out in every other facet of life in a positive, impactful way.

Zack: Yea, exactly, and I think what happens, especially in the church in America, we tend to leave the faith stuff to the children's programs on Sunday mornings. 

I'm not against children's ministries or kid's church or anything like that. However, it becomes, it becomes essentially a  babysitter for us and we go like, "Well, they're learning everything they need to know about faith, Jesus and all those kinds of things so I don't really need to."

I don't want to abdicate our responsibility as a family unit of sharing the love of Jesus with them. 

Greg: So let's transition over to marketplaces. How are we sort of building...bridging that gap?

Zack: Yea, so, Jesus says a lot about money. The bible says a lot about money. Apart from God as the subject, money is spoken about most in the bible compared to any other topic. 

What we see is the pendulum swing. We say things like, "Capitalism is bad and we should just give all our money away." It's so polarized, or, "God's blessing comes through financial blessing."

There's all these different kinds of things but the bible is not against prosperity.

Greg: Yea

Zack: But the bible, and God, is against the poor treatment of those who have less.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: He wants...again you can go to extremes on this. You can say, "Well, all of capitalism is bad because of this.", I don't believe the bible is against capitalism.

What I do believe the bible is against, is unfair practices that make the poor get poorer and that the rich get richer off of the backs of the poor. 

Greg: Yea!

Zack: How do we take, what I would call biblical stewardship principles...stewarding, simply the act of handling something that somebody...if you gave me money and said, "Hey hold on to this for awhile, you know, do something good with it.", how I handle that is called stewardship...but biblical stewardship principles, how do we manage that.

And not only as it pertains to money but as it pertains to people. As a business, how am I treating my employees, am I giving them fair wages or am I paying them very poorly so I can get very rich?

Greg: I think we all know how that often works in our society today.

Zack: Yes. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and the middle class...diminishes.

Greg: Evaporates.

Zack: Evaporates, yea. So I believe that prosperity should be for the entire city. Again there's...there's an ugly heresy within Christianity, the prosperity gospel, that God just wants you to be rich and he wants to, "Here's your jumbo jet!", and all those types of things.

What I find through prosperity gospel is it's usually only the people who are preaching prosperity gospel that are prospering.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: That's not what I'm talking about. When we use biblical stewardship principles, that it is good for everyone.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: In the bible, the old testament especially, it lays out for the Israelites, this system that is completely upside down from any world system that has ever been. And that is that every 7 years, your debts are forgiven. So everyone who has college loans, hey please reinstate that. 

Greg: *Laughs* Yea.

Zack: If you and I had...if I loaned you money and it's not paid off at the end of 7 years, once that 7 years is up, it's done. Then every 50 years, the year of jubilee, what they would do is, all property would be restored to the original land owner, the family. 

It's this process where we say, "We're not against prosperity but we are against injustice, we are against people getting rich off of slave labor or close to slave labor."

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So how do we take our faith and apply this to the workplace? On one level, as an entrepreneur and business owner, it means we practice good business ethics and that we're generous with our customers, that we're generous with our employees. Not only financially but that we treat them well and let them know they are loved and cared for. That our faith would inform all of these things. Just as I show my kids grace, mercy and love, I want to show my employees grace, mercy and love. 

Greg: I think there's a lot of things to be said about business ethics on that because so many businesses are finding ways to eek out every penny they can from the consumer by cleverly downsizing the actual packaging, putting less in...

You know, I have a...I won't say where it's from...but I have a granola bar that we really like to get at our local grocery store, and the box very clearly, comfortably would fit 6 granola bars because that's how they fit into the box, but it only comes with 5 and there is a gap, a granola bar sized gap, where a sixth one obviously would be.

I am quite certain, if I went back to that grocery store 5 years ago, there were 6 in that box and its now the same price. 

Those, sort of, deceptive, dishonest tactics that businesses use are the sort of thing that I look forward to NOT seeing at our coffeehouse because we want it to be an honest business, living out the same values and principles that we have in everything else that we do.

Zack: Yea, yea, yea! And then as an employee, what this looks like is, not only for employees but for the business as a whole, you practice really really good work. 

Because that's not always the case. We generally do the bare minimum of whatever we do. But imagine what would happen if Christians around the world, if we practiced really good work. 

If you are a plumber and you do really, really good work or if you are an IT guy and you do really, really good work or if you're a stay at home mother, you do really good work.

That to me says far more because, again, there can be a disconnect, maybe they are someone who is outspoken about their faith at work, "Hey, Jesus loves you!", blah blah blah, but they do really crappy work.

Greg: Hmm, not really setting a good example.

Zack: Not for their co-workers, not for their employer, not for the customer. 

Greg: Right.

Zack: So there's a disconnect. Everything that we do should be done with excellence. Everything that we do, again, not perfection, there's a difference between perfection and excellence. 

So, I think that a lot of it just comes down to how we're doing in our work. Just going back to those bible verses I pointed out earlier. 

In whatever you do, or say, do it as a representative of the lord Jesus.

Whether you eat or drink, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart. In the same way, let your light shine so that they may see the good work, your good works and give glory to the father who is in heaven.

We're called to do really good work and taking ownership of those kinds of things.

Greg: I think that, it's a good place to conclude on our mission statement.

Connecting faith to families, communities and marketplaces, and trying to see how Harvest Gate is striving to really build a connection between each of those and let faith and those values and the way that we live in that space, affect every other place that we're going to be involved in.

I think that is really a good way to explain what we stand for.

Zack: Yea, and I should just make a quick note here. This is not something that only Harvest Gate is doing, there's lots of businesses, lots of families, lots of community members who are doing really really good things.

Greg: Absolutely!

Zack: And so this isn't like, "Oh, we're the only ones who have this figured out."

We don't have it figured out. We're striving for these things, but this is just, kind of, the culture we want to create. We're not trying to belittle anybody or say that some businesses are bad or something like that. I just want to make that clear.

Greg: Except for the ones that are, you know who you are. 

*laughter*

Greg: Alright, so let's talk about a couple things here to wrap up today. We want to talk financial update, maybe just a run down on our goals, our timeline. It is currently January 24th. 

Where are we now? Where do we want to be?

Zack: Yea, so we have 1 big goal.

Greg: It is big.

Zack: It is big. When I think about it, it terrifies me, to be honest.

But that goal is to raise $150,000.

We believe that through that money, that we can launch Harvest Gate Coffeehouse, to start being a faithful presence in the community.

Greg: Yep.

Zack: But then that would also give us 6 months of operating costs. 

Again, you might be thinking, "Why are we just funding your business?", it's a good question and a fair question.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: Yes, it is a business. I view it more as a mission. We are taking God's kingdom to Columbus. It is already there, it's already existing. 

Greg: To patrons of coffee!

Zack: But we want to be another outpost of the kingdom.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: Often times, missionaries will go to another country and they will go and start a business there and that is there "in" with the community so to speak.

Greg: Yea.

Zack: So we view this as a mission. I've had people say, "Well why don't you just get a business loan?" 

That certainly is a possibility. However, if I get a business loan, I've just relegated myself to the fact that this is just a business. I don't want it to be just a business. I want it to be more than that. I want it to be an outpost of the kingdom of God.

The other thing too is, we need partnerships.

Greg: Yea, can't do it ourselves. 

Zack: We can't do it ourselves, I don't want to do it ourselves. If this is going to be a kingdom endeavor, I want kingdom people to have an investment in it. 

Greg: Yea.

Zack: And so it doesn't just mean financial partnership, we need prayer. We need expertise, we need support, we need you to share this podcast with your friends and families and loved ones and even your enemies, share it with them too.

So, $150,000 is our big goal. We have a, maybe a benchmark goal of $80,000. We believe through conversations with our coffee experts that we can launch Harvest Gate Coffeehouse for about $80,000.

But again, we want to have about 6 months of operating costs so that we can have, you know, incase of a slow start or just learning...

Greg: Pay employees...

Zack: Yea, those kinds of things. 

Greg: Those are important.

Zack: And that is important. We want to be good at business. Ethically minded in our business, there we go.

To reach those goals, we have monthly goals.

Our goal for January is to raise $20,000. Our goal for February is to raise $25,000. 

Our goal for March is to raise $75,000. 

We're hoping by April, we have enough where we can begin to secure a location for the coffeehouse and begin build-out for a launch in, hopefully, June.

So that's where we are there.

So a way that you can do that is go to our website, www.harvestgate.org/take-action

Greg: Not just take action.

Zack: Yes.

Greg: Take "hyphen" action, that's a dash.

Zack: Yea. Not the word.

Greg: Don't write out hyphen.

Zack: Yea, that would be weird.

Greg: Yea

Zack: If you go to  www.harvestgate.org/take-action, you can find different ways to give, you can sign up for our newsletter, you can subscribe to our podcast.

Greg: Which we should point out is now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and...

Zack: Coming soon, iHeartRadio.

Greg: And Google Podcasts.

Zack: Yes, so that's exciting. In May, we're going to be having the Harvest Gate Scramble, for those of you golf lovers out there, you can come out to The Trout Club in Newark, Ohio. We will be having a golf scramble for all you golf enthusiasts and there's going to be some cool hole in one prizes, some giveaways, of course all the usual accoutrements that come with that: longest drive, longest putt, closest to pin, stuff like that.

Greg: And we've also got, sort of early days planning an event over the next couple of months, Gently Used Women's Clothing sale, if you've got old clothes you'd like to donate, again it's women's clothing only, start going through your closet and we'll keep you updated on when that will be. Anything we don't sell will be donated for a good cause so anything you can do for that, we appreciate it.

Last note, other ways you can support Harvest Gate is supporting us through joining our prayer team on our website...where is that on harvestgate.org?

Zack: It is also on the take action page. Our goal is to have 300, we call them prayer and share partners by the time we launch, hopefully in June, so if you are interested in joining our prayer team, check us out, sign up for that and we'll be sending out updates as to how you can specifically be praying for us. 

Greg: Awesome. Thank you very much for listening to The Harvest Gate Podcast and check out our website and social media, lots of stuff coming down the pipeline, we appreciate it. Thanks Zack.

Zack: It's been fun!

*Outro music*

Greg: Follow us on social media @harvestgatenetwork

Zack: There are several ways you can engage with us and support The Harvest Gate Network at harvestgate.org

Greg: You can subscribe to The Harvest Gate Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. If you are as excited as we are about this project, please consider supporting us by sharing, joining our prayer team or donating on our website. 

Zack: Thanks for listening to The Harvest Gate Podcast. Connecting faith to families, communities and marketplaces.

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