One month into the launch of the NW Campus, Peter and Kate discuss their favorite moments, the most important lessons they've learned, and how they've seen God move so far.
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One month into the launch of the NW Campus, Peter and Kate discuss their favorite moments, the most important lessons they've learned, and how they've seen God move so far.
Stay up to date by following us on your favorite social networks.
Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube
Have questions or comments? Email us at contact@kingofkings.org.
Thanks for listening!
Hey there, king and King's family, welcome into another episode of the Beyond Sunday multi-site podcast. We are about a month into our Northwest campus, which is located at Concordia, omaha. Just so much exciting stuff happening. Today we've got Peter Bay, the campus director, and Kate Solberg she is the associate campus director. They're going to kind of walk us through what this first month has been like, how we've seen God move in this new area of town. So first of all, guys, just welcome to the podcast. Thanks for coming on today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having us Dan.
Speaker 3:It is great to be here. How are you guys?
Speaker 1:feeling right now, because I know so much work went into this, like months, well really years, of planning, but especially over the last several months, just months and months of meticulous planning, thinking about everything. Are you excited, thrilled, exhausted, ready to retire a little bit of all of the above? How are you guys feeling right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, how about you, Kate?
Speaker 3:Energized, I think for sure. But all of those things depending on the moment, not ready to retire, though that's good.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know if I've used this analogy before and I know it's a very dangerous analogy and I respect every mom out there and when you go through a childbearing is unlike anything I will ever experience, so just wanted to give that preface.
Speaker 2:But this in my life may be the closest I'll ever experience to like childbirth and let me explain this in no pain way and in most ways it's not. But this way it is is that it was like so much prep to get there Like over a year of like work and figuring things out and getting things ready and cleaning up the space and finding a space, and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada. And then the church planted and now I was like, oh, it's just beginning, we got to keep this thing alive, and so that was a wild realization for me and it, I mean, gave me some empathy for your momma's out there, but just like Holy smokes, it felt for so long like a finish line, but it really was the starting line of the race. Fortunately, sustaining this child is much more on God's side and he invites us into it. So I'm still feeling renewed and excited and at times exhausted, but overall just really blessed to be part of what God has done and birthing this new church.
Speaker 1:How have you changed your mindset as that realization has come upon you? That, yeah, it feels like that first Sunday was almost like a culmination of all this hard work and effort, but but no, it's not the end, it's actually the beginning. Like, how do you reframe your mind to wrap your header on that?
Speaker 3:I think it was important to celebrate that, I mean be in that moment, celebrate because it was so many people coming together to do all the back work and planning and organizing and that's one thing about our church I love is all the details matter. It, king of Kings, doesn't leave much for well, we'll see how it goes. No, there's a lot of planning and organizing and knowing who's responsible for what, all to hopefully give glory to God, and we work as if we're working for the Lord, and so that's why it's easy to want to put all the effort into it and all the planning and organizing. So, yeah, we definitely celebrated October 1 and it felt awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean that transition from preparation to this is a living, breathing church. I think for me, yeah, one is celebration celebration all the core and lost families who are part of this, who have worked really hard to set this up, celebrating the incredible support we've had from King and Kings. I mean. So here came Kings, now we have central directors and those are the people who, like, are thinking about communication for both campuses and future campuses, and of those central directors, there's so much involvement and availability from them. I'm thinking about the first couple weeks where we had, like, pastor Greg was there and Julie Easley, our executive director, was there, and Dave Owen, central Worship, and Patrick Peringer, central Production, and the list goes on and on. They were all there and so the incredible support. So recognizing that, one, the core and lost team. Two, all of that support from important, knowledgeable staff, and then, most importantly, that this is a work that God is doing for his kingdom. And so, although we prepare really hard, there's still a lot outside our control. A big one is who's going to attend.
Speaker 2:We kind of don't know, I mean it's shaping up a bit. We know our core and lost families are attending and there's a handful of families that have been there three weeks in a row that I've talked to, that they're going to be attending. But beyond that it's like who's God going to bring? And the fun thing with that is a lot of that. He uses us by our invitation and that's been sweet too, the number of invitations going on.
Speaker 2:So, all in all, the transition was weird, but it was only weird because, like I knew it was coming, but until it actually happened my brain didn't really process it. Yeah, and now that I've gotten over that, the beautiful thing is like oh, so now we're going. Now also I can start to find a groove so I can be more available for my wife and kids again, and there's like actual people to do stuff with. Right, we had the core and lost team, but we weren't meeting with them all like this last year. So now it's like we've gotten Wednesday nights and we've got Sunday mornings and there's people to do life with, so that it's a good trade off.
Speaker 1:Peter, you mentioned something beautiful there you talked about. Yes, there was meticulous planning, you know. And Kate you talked about, we had all the details that we could control. We had those in order, but there were things that were outside of our control. We needed to see God move. Do you guys have any examples off the top of your head where it was just like a situation where we didn't know how it was going to come together? Or maybe it was a family that showed up that we had no idea how they even heard about us. But here they are. They're here. In what ways have you guys seen God move over these first months, for six weeks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean over the first month. I mean, looking back a little bit further, I would say the location was a huge one, right, I mean that was up in the air for so long, and so to now have this location at Concordia is so amazing. And over the last month, six weeks, over and over again, the communication, the partnership with Concordia has been wonderful. We get to work with a bunch of leaders over there. One of our main people is this amazing gal named Kristen Herrera. She's director of operations at Concordia and she has just been so great. She doesn't always tell me what I want to hear, but she tells me the truth and she makes it quick and that helps us to keep moving forward and I really love that.
Speaker 2:So, like those have been really pleasant surprises, because there's going to be a ton of things that come up that we're like oh, we didn't know about dot, dot, dot. Or like, would you guys be okay if we I'm trying to think of a specific like storage there in the middle of construction and so we were super blessed. Band of brothers said, hey, you can use our trailer, but we will need that for peak challenge next summer. And it was like great, that's like a summer away that like that doesn't even exist in our minds. But but now we already have to start thinking, oh boy, like that will come quicker than than we're thinking.
Speaker 2:And so to reach out to Concordia and be like, hey, we're thinking that we'll need another conics box, and like, get back to us really quick. And a conics box is like a giant storage box, and they're like yep, we can figure this out, we can do this. Yeah, the idea so that communication, holy smokes, is a blessing. And you know, when you're working with someone who doesn't communicate with you like ugh, you feel so helpless and just sitting there waiting for that email response, just waiting, and waiting, and waiting Right Exactly, and it's outside of our control is like we don't know the obstacles that are about to come.
Speaker 2:But we do know where God has placed us and the people that he has placed around us, and so we can start building those relationships and loving on those people and then, when those obstacles come, there's a little more receptivity there. Also, it's like when you're working with people you enjoy, it's not a, you're not training the commodity of like if you do this, we'll be kind, that kind of trash going on. It's like no, let's just talk through this and find out what's viable.
Speaker 1:When you guys look back at the last month, what's your favorite memory Like? What, what moment, what interaction, what morning pops to the front of your mind first.
Speaker 3:For me. I think of one of our volunteers, judy, who's really blessed me. She helps get the coffee brewing in the morning and our first service is at 915. However, the guts team starts rolling equipment out at 530 AM and on her own accord she came to me and was like Kate, I feel like the guts could use some hot, fresh coffee earlier than we have planned. And so she comes up at 5.30 in the dark and gets the coffee going. So the guts volunteers, as they work, have fresh, hot coffee ready to go. Not only that, but she said I'd like to make breakfast for this group as well. So for has it been three weeks already? Three weeks in a row, have we been going Okay?
Speaker 3:So for the past three weeks she has prepared breakfast burritos Get out of here, yeah about 20 to 24 breakfast burritos from her own kitchen, has them ready to go and set out for the guts crew. So as they finish their work about seven or 7.30, they can sit down, have hot coffee and a warm breakfast. So that's been a huge blessing.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Judy Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for me. So at the end of services at King of Kings we often do this moment. It's a Jesus invite moment and we know that the Holy Spirit works over years and lifetimes. But there's also times where people hear God's word and for the first time in their life realize, oh, my goodness, this is for me.
Speaker 2:And so oftentimes at the end of a service we give people an opportunity if that happened to them, to raise a hand, and in week one we had a guy raise a hand and so kind of a funny part of this story is literally across the aisle we're doing this moment and an adult age son turns to his mom and says why do we do this?
Speaker 2:Who in their right mind would ever raise their hand? And then the guy right across the aisle raises his hand and he says to his mom like yep, nope, you're right. And but that man for the first time realized this is for me, jesus is for me. And so our prayer volunteers one of our prayer volunteers saw that, was able to bring him a new believer's packet which just walks through, like what it means to be a Christ follower, and I was able to pray with them after service and that's something that's like. It's like God delivers these moments on incredible, like golden platters where we just get to get a glimpse of heaven and the celebration going on there. As people say like Christ, I want you to be my savior.
Speaker 2:They have their realization. So that to me was probably a highlight that stood out from the first three weeks.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. So something we talked about on our podcast episodes preceding the opening of the Northwest campuses yes, this is going to be another King of Kings campus, but it's gonna have its own personality. It's not just gonna be a clone of what happens on I street. There's gonna be. Northwest is gonna have it its own quirks, its own personality. How have you guys started to see that emerge where, yes, this is still King of Kings? But here are some things that make the Northwest campus uniquely the Northwest campus.
Speaker 3:Well, the most obvious one probably is just, it's on a smaller scale, so it's a smaller group, which is delightful in that you learn names quicker, you get to know people more quickly, and so it does have a little bit of a tighter knit feel, which I've loved. And after Zach Sermon last week, the cards coming in of okay, I'm ready to accept the challenge to serve, like that has just blessed me, and so I feel like it's almost like a quicker turnaround, like where someone comes in sometimes it can take a year or longer to say, okay, now I'm ready to serve. It just feels like it's like a little quicker turnaround as far as like okay, for someone to say I like this place, this is gonna be my place, and now I'm ready to serve. So that's been incredible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, some of the characteristics of King of Kings. Northwest. It's a very excited and friendly and loving group. This might have been a weakness of mine or just a proclivity of mine, but yeah.
Speaker 1:And we're breaking out the big words.
Speaker 2:Look it up. I don't know if I used it right.
Speaker 1:We'll just say bonus points.
Speaker 2:So when I was over like a year and a half ago, when I was inviting people to be part of the core team and then people to be part of the launch team, I noticed that I invited a lot of people, like a lot of happy, friendly people. So not as many of like strategic, analytical, like like thinkers. I mean there's a lot of smart people. You're all smart in your own ways, but it's like a real friendly, loving group and so that's really obvious. And the symptoms of that are like lots of hanging out in between services and after services. People are hanging out and eating donuts and meeting each other and laughing and talking and playing and like on Wednesday nights we have to like shoe people away because they just want to talk and the kids want to run and play together and. But that's a beautiful picture of what you can do a little bit more with a smaller group and kind of the turbocharged relationship time.
Speaker 1:And I think we've definitely seen that with the Northwest Connect groups. I mean, selfishly, I'm the director of Connect groups, so I am very aware of that. But like we recruited leaders for four groups and we were like we hope that there are going to be people that sign up and there have been like the response has been great. The we actually had to close one of the groups because so many people were joining. Or like this isn't a small group anymore, this is a medium group that could become a large group and I mean that's a blessing to know that people are actually enjoying community. They're not just coming to church sitting for the service and then sprinting out the door at the end of it, but they're like, hey, this place is cool. I want to, I want to get to know these people a little bit more. That's really what it's all about.
Speaker 2:Right, and in that Connect group are some people who came over from my street. In that Connect group are people who didn't even have a church prior and got the postcard and said I'll come and check it out. And so that's. In one of those Connect groups, Jan and Bob Bonk there's the self-proclaimed best group is what they say.
Speaker 1:So lots of confidence, even self-proclaimed self-assurance in that group Great group.
Speaker 2:They're a great group and one of the things that they did is because at Northwest we don't have we don't have a commercial kitchen, we don't have an incredible food volunteer squad Maybe someday something to strive for in the future.
Speaker 2:But that group was like we'll just bring food and come and eat together early, and those are the type of decisions that are able to be made, sometimes in a smaller setting. But they, on their own, were like, ok, we'll do this, and the relationships are just, they're just budding so fastly. So something that I've been praying for is like sometimes, when, when things happen quickly, it's like Lord, let this not be like the seed that fell on the rocky soil where it like sprouts quickly and dies. So I'm like Lord, let this be on fertile soil that it grows. And after Wednesday nights these Wednesday nights have been so fun and some moments has been like, wow, this is going to be smooth what I've said to the team is like man, if we could put our chin on the windowsill of heaven to see what God is doing here, like what relationships are being created and crafted, and God knows exactly why. Because down the road it's going to be needed down the road. He's doing something amazing as he's building his church.
Speaker 1:So King of Kings plans on opening more campuses in the future and we're actually working on that right now. We're getting right to it. What are some things that you guys think that we learned from opening this campus? It's going to be really instructful or instructive is the word I'm looking for as we open future campuses.
Speaker 3:I think the creating a core team is just. I don't know who came up with that, but it's just a brilliant idea. It's just something about being invited to do something very meaningful and I think that's how the core families would describe it that they took it seriously and they committed to attend regularly, to serve, to be in a connect group and to give, and I feel like they accepted those four things with joy and have done it, and it's such an encouragement to me to have that group yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, julie Easley is the executive director here at King King's. She will really be the one taking these instructive things and using them in the future. They came King's has worked with a group called Elevate that helps church with this exact process. How are you going to best multiply yourself? And so one be praying for Julie because she moves right on. Like we are, we get to be privileged to be part of a new existing church body King's, northwest Omaha whereas Julie needs to immediately share her focus with that and also the new plans to come. So be praying for her, for energy and wisdom, and be praying for locations and directors and all that it's. It's a big undertaking, but yeah, I totally agree. Having a core team, having a launch team, having people that are set to to be the body of Christ there from the jump, is really important for me as a director. That gives me assurance also that, like three months from now, I don't know who will be attending. I trust that God will bring people. I know some of the people. I know that the core and launch people will be there. So it's like we're okay. We're okay and we're going to keep inviting Otherwise instructive things.
Speaker 2:We did a lot of stuff in the community prior and I think that was really effective. Not, it wasn't like all those people are coming to the church, but it was our way of saying to the community like, hey, we're coming, we love you, we're here for you and that's. That's a big statement, because oftentimes when people think of the church, they think of whatever church hurt they might have had from growing up, or they may think of what they hear or see on media which could be a negative portrayal of the church. And we want to be people who love the people around us. And if the church were to disappear, would the community notice or care? We're hoping that by living with it for the spirit, the actual, the answer would be like oh yeah, the community would be frustrated, they'd be disappointed. So that's I'd say for future, like how can you get out in the community and show love even a year before you exist?
Speaker 1:Obviously, we're only a month in here, so there's so much ahead. When you guys look at the future of the Northwest campus six months, one year, two years, five years, 10 years what excites you the most about the potential of the Northwest campus? Jesus?
Speaker 3:Always the right answer. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I honestly saw, dan, the way that I live, the way that God has made me, is like I'm good, now's the time, you live in the moment, now's the time, not the time. That's a hard way for me to even think. I trust that God will be there and his word will be active and there will be likely more people who know Jesus and a bigger fervor. What do you think?
Speaker 3:I agree, kind of like you already said, peter, we do all these things hoping people will come and experience Jesus. But ultimately we would just wanna show people love and hopefully, you know, they come to see our motivation as Jesus. But you can't go wrong when you show love and you're generous and you're authentic. And I like Peter when you say a lot of times Peter will say at the end you know, maybe people we show love don't end up coming to our church, but maybe when they get to a difficult point in their life they remember experiencing love and knowing our church showed love and they might say I'm gonna try church out. It might not be ours, but we just want people to come to know Jesus whatever way that is. And so when you do your part, you trust God's has the rest. And so I agree with Peter, like we do have goals for down the road, but we are here today and we wanna honor God today and trust that Jesus has that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And for those of you who are futuristic and are like, oh boy, don't know that, I trust this guy, well, talk to my wife. And then number two yeah, there are certain things. So concord is in the process of phase two of their construction. Part of phase two is an auditorium mix you space that we will get to use.
Speaker 2:Once that is complete, That'll be a wonderful. I mean, the space we have right now in the auxiliary gym is wonderful as well, and it's when you come and check it out on a Sunday morning at 9, 15 or 11, you'll be like is this a gym? Because it just feels so welcoming, so warm, and so it feels like an awesome worship space. And then, when that auditorium is complete, we'll get to be in there. So I think that will change the complexion and feel of things. But beyond that, we have a 10 year contract at Concordia. So we wanna be at Concordia for the long haul. We wanna build relationships with that school, with all the families who don't have churches, with Standing Bear, which is our OPS connection. In 10 years from now. I don't know if Principal Amelia will still be there, but I would love to have a deep relationship with her and her staff and one where we get to help fill the needs at that school and be the hands and feet of Christ when we walk into that building as well.
Speaker 1:That is a lot to look forward to in the future. But, like you said earlier, kate, I think it's also important to celebrate what's happened and take a moment to look back and just be like, wow, all this hard work that we've put into this, it's come to fruition and God is moving. Thank you, guys, so much for all the hard work that you've done and everything that's coming. I mean, this has been a long time coming and, like you said, peter, the baby's alive now. You guys are taking care of it. Well, we'll just see how it grows and how it matures. So thanks, guys, for all your hard work. Thanks for coming on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Yeah thanks for having us it was awesome. Let's do this thing.
Speaker 1:King King's family. Let's keep living our faith lives beyond Sunday. Thank you.