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Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Andrew Hopper, Lead Pastor of Mercy Hill Church in North Carolina. Planted in 2012 with just 30 people, Mercy Hill has grown into a multi-campus, fast-growing church known for its gospel clarity and sending culture. In this conversation, Andrew shares why adoption and foster care have become central expressions of Mercy Hill's mission—and how those practices flow directly out of the gospel. He also unpacks the heart behind his book, Chosen: Building Your Family the Way God Builds His. Is your church unsure how to engage big social needs without drifting from the gospel? Are you looking for a way to mobilize people beyond church walls while keeping discipleship front and center? Andrew offers a clear framework for doing both. Doing good as a sign of the kingdom. // Andrew addresses a common tension churches feel between community engagement and disciple-making. Mercy Hill refuses to treat these as competing priorities. Acts of service—whether foster care, adoption, or family restoration—are not the kingdom itself but signposts pointing to it. Meeting tangible needs creates openings for gospel conversations. These ministries don't replace evangelism; they amplify it by demonstrating the heart of God in visible ways. A church’s collective heartbeat. // Mercy Hill's deep involvement in adoption, foster care, and family restoration didn't start as a top-down strategy but emerged organically from the gifts and passions within the church. Many leaders and members have adopted children themselves, shaping the church's collective heartbeat. Rather than attempting to address every social issue, Mercy Hill chose to focus deeply on a few—believing churches are most effective when they lean into the specific good works God has prepared for them. This focus has mobilized hundreds of families and created a powerful witness in their community. Rope-holding and shared responsibility. // Not everyone is called to adopt or foster, but everyone can hold the rope. Drawing from the William Carey analogy, Mercy Hill equips members to support families on the front lines through prayer, childcare, meals, financial help, and presence. Over time, they've learned that rope-holding works best when built on existing relationships rather than formal assignments. The goal is to ensure no family fights alone in what Andrew describes as intense spiritual warfare. Big vision with baby steps. // Mercy Hill isn't afraid to cast a bold vision—whether for global missions, adoption, or church planting—but they pair that vision with accessible next steps. Prayer nights, giving opportunities, short-term service, and relational support allow people to grow into greater obedience over time. High challenge without guilt creates healthy discipleship. Why Andrew wrote Chosen. // Andrew wrote Chosen: Building Your Family the Way God Builds His not to promote a program, but to give churches a theological foundation for engaging adoption and foster care. The book weaves together Andrew's family story, Mercy Hill's journey, and a deeply gospel-centered motivation rooted in Scripture. Designed to be used individually or in groups, Chosen includes discussion questions and practical guidance for churches or small groups wanting to explore this calling in community. Andrew's prayer is that the book would catalyze thousands of Christian families to participate meaningfully in caring for vulnerable children and families. Gospel-driven motivation. // Underneath everything is Andrew's conviction that gospel motivation outlasts guilt. Behavior rooted in grace goes further than behavior driven by pressure. Adopted people adopt people. Chosen people choose people. That theological clarity fuels Mercy Hill's sending culture, their community impact, and their ongoing growth. To explore Andrew's resources on adoption, foster care, and grab his book, Chosen, visit andrewphopper.com/chosen or follow him on Instagram @andrewphopper. You can learn more about Mercy Hill Church at mercyhillchurch.com. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it's time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. We have got a multi-time guest on, and you know what that means. That means that I really respect, deeply admire, and want you to listen up, and today is no exception. Excited to have Andrew Hopper with us. He is the lead pastor of a church that they should be following, that you should be following. He’s a lead pastor of Mercy Hill Church with five locations, if I’m counting correctly, in North Carolina, and is repeatedly one of the fastest growing churches in the country. I love this church on many levels. They’re centered on the gospel and have a radical commitment to sending people to the nations. They have a desire to make disciples and multiply churches. Andrew, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here.Andrew Hopper — Man, I’m so pumped to be here. Love the podcast. Really appreciate it, man.Rich Birch — Yeah, I’m honored that you would come back. For folks that that don’t know Mercy Hill, give me a bit of a kind of an update. Tell us a little bit about the church.Andrew Hopper — Yeah.Rich Birch — Maybe update us from last time you were on.Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man. So just real quick, planted in 2012. We had 30 people, all you know kind of young professional age, and man, just really believe that God could do something incredible ah through, you know just through our our open hands, and he did.Andrew Hopper — And so it’s been 13 years. It’s crazy. We’ve been sort of pushing the same boulder up the same mountain for 13 years, just flywheel kind of concept and keep pushing. And ah the Lord has done an incredible thing, like you said, five campuses. And man, just moved into a new home and hub. That was from last time we had a chance. That’s been really great. Andrew Hopper — We were in a rented location for a long time as our main like broadcast campus. We’re a video-based multi-site. And so um it’s ah it was a three or four-year journey to raise the money and build this new facility. But we’re in, and the Lord has really blessed that with tons of new people, highest baptisms, sent ones, first time guest numbers, all everything that we’ve done. This has been a, you know, we’ve gone been on a ride – praise God for that. It’s it’s, um, it’s for his sake and his renown, but this year has been unlike the others. So it’s been…Rich Birch — Yeah, you were saying beforehand, it’s like 30 or something like 30 some percent year over year growth. That’s insane to keep up with.Andrew Hopper — It is man. And the, and the giving does not, uh, you know, the giving doesn’t happen.Rich Birch — Reflect that yet.Andrew Hopper — So it’s, it’s like, we’re trying to do ministry on a budget of a church that’s 3000, but a church that’s running 4,500. And it’s like, how do you do that effectively without killing everybody?Rich Birch — Nice.Andrew Hopper — All your staff, I mean, so, but we’re, we’re learning, man, we’re figuring it out. It’s fun. We got, we just planted our sixth church. So that’s apart from the campuses. This is first time, Rich, we’ve planted a church in our own city.Rich Birch — Oh, nice. That’s cool.Andrew Hopper — It’s been really, a really cool dynamic and it’s been fun. He’s doing great. Man, it was a college student that we met when he was 19 years old at North Carolina AT&T 10 years later. He’s an elder here. He’s done a lot of different things. And man, he goes and plants a new church in Greensboro about five minutes from one of our campuses and they’re doing great.Rich Birch — Wow. Yeah, that’s so good. Well, the thing, there’s lots I love about Mercy Hill, but one of the things that I’ve loved about your church from the you know the chance we’ve had to journey a little bit over the years about it is you just have real clarity around the mission, this idea of making disciples, multiplying churches. It’s like that has been rock solid from the beginning. When you think about we want churches to have discipleship at its core, this idea of a church that actually grows people up in their relationship with Christ. What matters most at the foundation? How are you keeping that so foundational to you know what’s happening at Mercy Hill?Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think um I think that we always sort of bought into kind of what we see in Acts 2 as a little bit of a flywheel. We call it gather, group, give, go. A lot of churches have something like that.Andrew Hopper — The the difference, I think, at Mercy Hill a little bit than what I see ah in in in a lot of churches that we help mentor and coach is that 2020 hit and everybody was like, man, what is a church? What is discipleship? What are we going to do now? And and people were kind of… And I do think it was and it wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t just me. I mean, our, you know, our executive pastor Bobby, he was really integral in this. We sort of really doubled down on no, I kind of think the church is going to come back. Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — And I kind of think what we were doing is sort of what our church is set up to do. It kind of a brand thing. We are sort of a big box sending brand. And that, you know, for us, when we look at Acts 2, we’re like, dude, the gathering, there’s no more there’s no more important hour for discipleship and evangelism. And I know there’s a lot of things written against that. And people are kind of almost like downplaying it. Andrew Hopper — We’re just like, man, we just don’t believe it. We believe people need to be in a group. You know, we they need generosity is lead step in discipleship, give. And we got to teach people that there’s a mission bigger than themselves. And if we do that, it’s going to funnel more people into the gathering. Andrew Hopper — So I think fundamentally what I would say, we need to get, you know, we could talk about our value, you know we can talk about values to gospel and [inaudible] identity, but I think landing on you know, it’s very hard now to, to not get a word salad book form or thing. When you ask somebody, how are you making disciples? It can just be like…Rich Birch — Right. Very vacuous. Who knows what that means? Yeah.Andrew Hopper — For us, it’s just been a very clear, simple process.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — Like, man, we believe if someone is in the gathering, if they’re in relationship, if they’re being pushed on generosity, and if they’re living for a mission bigger than themselves, that’s a current of maturity that will move them. They just get in the stream, they’ll move.Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so good.Andrew Hopper — that’s kind of So you know for us, I think that’s as, you know we’ve we’ve tried to simplify things there.Rich Birch — Yeah. And, and your last episode, I’ve pointed a ton of people to it, uh, to really, and we really unpack a lot of what you talked about there in more detail.Andrew Hopper — Right. Yeah.Rich Birch — You’re going to want to go back and, uh, and listen to that. You’ve reached as a church, you’ve reached a lot of people who don’t grow up in church that it’s like, there’s a lot of people who are there. You know, we used to say we ain’t your mama’s church, but mama didn’t go to church, you know? So, you know, and it’s been a long time that people were there. What challenges have you seen, you know, helping move people from curiosity into real ongoing discipleship? So like, I think there are, we’re seeing a swell of attendance across the country. People are like, oh, I’m kind of interested in this, but we got to move them from just, oh, this is something interesting to like, oh, I’m actually want to grow my relationship with Jesus.Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I mean, and it’s it’s funny too, Rich, you probably have a better bird’s eye view of this than I do. But I feel like churches that have been faithfully growing for like the last 10 years, they’re not really doing a lot different now. Or even though there’s this big swell happening, what I do think is that some churches have sort of decided like, oh, clarity does matter.Rich Birch — Yes. Yeah, that’s true.Andrew Hopper — And don’t try to be friends with the culture. We’re going to speak in and be prophetic. And, you know, even even to the you know Proverbs 25:26 says, you know, there’s there there’s no there’s no benefit in a muddied spring. You know, it’s like you got to be sort of you got to figure out if we’re going to be clear.Andrew Hopper — So, I you know, for me, I think like and you’re right, we do reach most of the people that we reach that are in the camp that you’re talking about our college age. We reach a lot of people, though, ah that are, you know, they’re they’re coming back to the faith because they’re a southerner.Rich Birch — Sure.Andrew Hopper — You know, they they kind of they kind of were, you know, they they did have some church in their background. They’re coming back. Their kids are not only born, but they’re realizing they’re sinners and they don’t have answers. They’re trying to figure that out.Rich Birch — Right. Right.Andrew Hopper — They’re coming back to church.Andrew Hopper — And, you know, I think the biggest thing that moves people from like interest into a decision point is just being very clear on this is what the gospel is. This is the life it compels you to. Are you going to be in or out?Andrew Hopper — One of the things we say at Mercy Hill a lot is like, man, if you’re if you’re just intrigued, you know, if you’re interested, you’re not going to stay at Mercy Hill because we’re never going to let you, you’re going to get pushed every week. And it’s like, man, people are not really in or like that. I’m not going to do that. You know, they’re just like, no I’m not going to sit here and get like pushed every single week on something I don’t really… And the flip side is when people say, all right, you know what? Stake in the ground. I’m in.Rich Birch — Yeah, we’re doing this, yep.Andrew Hopper — I wanna look like this, I want to build my life on this. It’s like, well, now, you know, it’s it’s man, I’m hopefully, you know, putting tools in the belt every single week to live that life.Rich Birch — Yeah. Yeah, it’s good. I do think there was a time where people wandered into our churches where I don’t think that happens as much anymore. I think people, when they arrive, they come with questions, with live active questions that they’re trying to wrestle with, kind of regardless of where they’re they’re at in their journey.Andrew Hopper — Yeah.Rich Birch — And they’re what you to your point around, you know, there’s no benefit in a muddy stream. People aren’t looking for anything that sounds like, well, what do you think? Because the reason why they’re there is because they’re asking questions. And so, you know, they’re they’re looking for clarity, like I think you’re saying. Rich Birch — Well one of the things I love about your church is there’s a high commitment to, you’re you’re you’re tearing down what I think is a false dichotomy. Sometimes I think when churches come to this idea of outreach or making a difference in their community, there’s this there can be this gap or false dichotomy between doing good in our communities and making disciples. Like we gave that up at some point. We were like, you can’t, you know, we can’t do both of those things for some reason. Why, why did we do that? Why did we, as churches say, we can’t both make a difference in our communities and also make disciples?Andrew Hopper — Yeah, I think it’s, I actually have a lot of sympathy for the fundamentalist leaning. I know it sounds a little bit weird. Rich Birch — No, that’s fine.Andrew Hopper — Churches that led from the, you know, from the good do good in your city kind of thing. I don’t think they’re right, but I do have sympathy for that because I understand how quickly that sort of, you know, is so hijacked by liberal, by theological liberalism to where it’s finally man we’re digging wells and wherever but we’re not talking about who the true source of living water is. Like we don’t want to be offensive we just want to do good without speaking the whole you know you know live your life as a Christian only use words if necessary, whatever, you know. And and I so I understand why people kind of fled and have fled that.Andrew Hopper — Like, you know, I’ve even had our church before when I when I talk about adoption or we we have a ministry, and a ministry called No More Spectators. We’re like moving people towards community ministry. And we had people kind of going on like, oh, my gosh, this seems like a sign of like churches start going this way and then they lose the gospel.Andrew Hopper — And I’m like, well, the reason you’re kind of feeling like that is because a lot of churches have done that. You know, you’re not [inaudible] like that just out of nowhere. Now, of course, I think it’s a little bit immature and we’ve got to push through. The way we talk about it, Rich, is, man, we want to do good in our community as signs of the kingdom coming.Andrew Hopper — They are not building the kingdom. You know, if we go repaint a house or house a homeless person, one day that person would parted with that house, whether they, you know, get messed up and leave or whether they do great and then would die one day, you know.Andrew Hopper — Or, if we have, ah you know, if we go and, and you know, we’re going to, for example, we have ah ah a family in our church that they need a ramp built because, man, the the brother is struggling with MS and he’s, they’re they’re fighting it like Christians do. We’re going to go do that. You know, we’re going to go build that ramp. That ramp’s going to rot and die one, you know, rot and rot away one day. And, you know, whether it’s 100 years from now or whatever.Andrew Hopper — Like it’s not literally the kingdom. But when the outside world sees us engage and, you know, our church will talk about this primarily when we think about community ministry, we think about it in terms of adoption, foster care and families count, which I can talk to you about. I think it’s bringing a sign of the kingdom that is to the community around us to say, hey, this is not the gospel. But it sure points to the gospel. Rich Birch — Right, right.Andrew Hopper — You know, it’s a pretty good signpost of like, yeah, there’s a kingdom coming where kids aren’t separated from their parents, you know. And and so that’s kind of the way that we think about, it’s not, you know, it’s not the kingdom. It’s a sign of the kingdom that is coming.Rich Birch — Yeah, let’s let’s dive in. So adoptions, foster care, families count. These are not small issues. Like you started with like putting a ramp on, painting somebody – those are like, okay, I can organize my head around that. And then we jump to what I think are obviously significant. How, it can be easy, I think, for church leaders it can be easy where, you know, we got a lot of fish to fry in our own backyard. When you see big problems like that, help us unpack that. Why do you as a lead pastor, why are you passionate about these issues? Why are these the things that you’ve chosen?Andrew Hopper — I think it’s, man, I think it’s great. I mean if you can’t if you don’t mind I’ll go back and give you a little bit of context. I’m a context [inaudible]… Rich Birch — Yeah, absolutely. Let’s do it. Yeah. Andrew Hopper — …number one so I always want to frame it in where we’ve been. But the short answer to the question is I think that every church because it is made up of individual believers that have individual gift matrix, you know they’re they’re gifted the church is gifted in a unique way because the people which are the church are gifted in a unique way, right? Andrew Hopper — And so to me, you know, slapping, you know, a top down every single church has to to manifest signs of the kingdom in X way, which, for for example, I’m not to pick on it, but like, you know, the whole diversity church kind of movement. I love you know, if that’s your brand, that’s awesome. That’s great. Go, go bring signs of the kingdom in that area. But you know what people do is they take their thing and then slap it on every single church. You know, this is the sign of the kingdom that you have to manifest.Andrew Hopper — I don’t think that. It takes every kind of church to reach a city because there’s all you know, there’s every kind of people in the city. Right? For us, though, and I think for a lot of churches that that maybe are are made up a little bit like we are, I think there is a lot of meat on the bone for adoption, foster care, families count ministry. And I think churches could be greatly helped by latching on to maybe, you know, something in particular, maybe this, maybe this specifically. How we got there, Rich, was we had we had, you know, huge movement in our church in 2019. I was very convicted.Andrew Hopper — Some of the exponential stuff was coming out, you know, mobilizing people outside the walls of the church. And I really was, man, I was just really affected by that. And I don’t want the dichotomy, you know, I don’t want, well, you your people serve in the church and not outside the church. It’s like, no, most people serve outside the church. If you watch them, they are serving inside the church as well. It’s it’s like a it’s like, man, you know, just just because serving inside the church is not the finish line, don’t demonize it because it is a starting place.Rich Birch — That’s good.Andrew Hopper — So it’s like, I don’t like that kind of whole thing. But but it did affect me to say, OK, what are we doing to push to the outside? So we we we did a thing. You would have loved this, man. But it except for the fact that it didn’t really work that good. OK, it was awesome.Andrew Hopper — It was, we still have the domain name – nomorespectators.com – I had the tagline: Jesus didn’t die to create spectators. He died to create servants, not spectators, workers, not watchers. We, man, you could go to nomorespectators.com and, you know, it was like, it was like a funnel for all of these community ministry opportunities in our city. So it was, you know, people from the housing, you know, authority type stuff would post things. And it was, it was all this kind of, it had a bunch of stuff in it. Andrew Hopper — In the end of the day, great idea. It was a little too complex. Our people latched on to the foster care, pregnancy network, you know, ended up being families count, Guardian ad Litem and adoption. So our guy that was over all that at the time our sending director, which is hard for me to have a good idea that ends up dying hard, okay that’s just tough for me.Rich Birch — You had a great sticky statement and everything. Come on.Andrew Hopper — I’m the king of sunken cost bias. Okay. Like, I’m like, dude. And so finally around 2020, he came to me and he said, bro, I know this is hard for you. Cause it was like a two year initiative. He’s like, this is hard. He said, No More Spectators needs to just turn into Chosen. And it needs to be like, you had this idea for 30 different things. It just, this needs to be our niche, man. You know, we we don’t do a lot of these other things, but we do this really well.Andrew Hopper — And it was hard for me. Ultimately, it was great wisdom by them, not me. And we started going down that road. And partly, I think it’s because, Rich, is heart is near to my heart. I have an adopted daughter. A lot of our staff have adopted kids. We just have a guy right now. Our associate director of first impressions at the Rich campus is in Texas right now, you know, bringing their daughter home.Andrew Hopper — I mean, so it’s just, and so it’s sort of started to morph into, and the the the big thing I’ll say, and I, you know, I’ve been talking a lot here, but the big thing I’ll say is, if you think about the way I just ah described all that, it doesn’t start with the need in the community. It starts with the gift matrix of the church. The poor we will always have with us. Like there there is no there’s no scenario until Jesus comes back that there’s no kids that need to be adopted, you know.Rich Birch — Right, right.Andrew Hopper — And it’s just the reality of it. And so there’s always going to be need in the community. It’s more about, okay, what are the Ephesians 2:10 works that your church, because the church is made up of people who are individually called, what are the you know what are those works that God has set out for your church? Rich Birch — That’s good.Andrew Hopper — And, you know, so for us, we just felt like, dude, this is a a heartbeat thing. Our people got more, they get more fired up. The greatest thing I’ve ever been able to mobilize our people for prayer for is go to the abortion clinic and pray. I mean, a thousand people on their face in the pavement. It’s like, it just strikes a chord with our church and who we are. So we wanna run after that.Rich Birch — Yeah. Well, I love that. And we’re going to dig out a bunch of this, but let’s think about it first from a perspective of somebody who’s maybe attended your church. They just started. They’re they’re relatively new, you know. The idea of something as weighty as adoption or foster care, that’s a big ask. And you know when you yeah how do I experience that as someone who’s just new? What are some ways that I could get plugged in? What does that look like? That, that, cause I, I’m hard, it’s hard to imagine that I go from zero to, to, you know, adoption, you know, how do I end up or flying to Texas to, you know, pick up a kid. That’s a lot. Help me understand. How are you, cause I know you guys are so good at moving people along from kind of where they are to where you’re hoping to – what’s that look like? What’s the kind of, how do you bring people along in this?Andrew Hopper — Man, totally. I think you’re right. I think it’s a combination of big vision on one end and then baby steps on the other. But the big vision matters.Rich Birch — That’s good.Andrew Hopper — Like we don’t want to be scared of the big vision. So, you know, for example, our weekender process, which I know you talked about some, you know, that weekender process, you know, people literally for years, we would give them a passport application in the weekender process. Because we’re like you’re at this church you’re probably going to be overseas at some point on a mission trip. And so to me it’s like people are like dude that probably scares the crap out of people. And it’s like well, I mean we want to make sure they know what they’re getting into, you know. We’re not telling them they got to do that tomorrow… Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — …but that is the, and then and then there’s all these baby steps, right? Like hey come to you know, every February we do Sent weekend. Come to the prayer night. Like that’s a baby step. That’s not you getting on a plane to go to Nepal. But you know hey we’re doing this missions offering at the end of the year, like maybe get you know. So there’s all these I would say that our the way we think about Chosen ministry, which again: adoption, foster care, families count, and rope holding, which is a big part of this discussion… Rich Birch — Okay. Andrew Hopper —…is that way. It’s big vision on the front end so we’re never going to tell somebody, hey you know, I know you could never do this. Like I’ll never…I think people can do it and they should. Or or you know more Christians than are should. At the same time we’re also not guilting anybody. Like so I’m I you know the the first thing I’ll tell people is like, hey, you know we start talking about adoption. I always say always say, hey, we have not lined up a bunch of little kids in the lobby for you to take one home today, okay. And then I’ll tell them, that’s next week.Rich Birch — That’s great.Andrew Hopper — Okay, so yeah but and we we try hard to like put some levity in it. Man, we’re not everybody’s not going to do that. In fact, a minority, of a small minority is going to do it. But everyone can be involved and there are baby steps.Andrew Hopper — So we try to highlight giving, man. Like if you someone adopts from Mercy Hill, we pay 25% of their adoption. Okay.Rich Birch — Wow. Yep.Andrew Hopper — If they’re a member and they’re in a community group, they get 25%. All right, well, you know, we’re going to connect that. Like, man, you you are never going to adopt. You feel like that’s, but it’s like, well, I give $100 a month to the church. Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — Well, hey, what? You know, you’re you are you are supporting.Rich Birch — We’re making a difference.Andrew Hopper — We do parents night out, you know, for all of our foster and adoptive parents. We do it quarterly. It’s like, hey, those are opportunities to come and serve, man. You can serve the meal you can do. We do rope holding, which I know we’ll probably talk about. But but the the idea of rope holding is just like, man, I’m not going to do this, but I can be in the corner for somebody. They’re in my community group. I want to be their first call if they need a babysitter or they need, you know, a gift card, or whatever they need.Andrew Hopper — So I think, man, we try to do big vision. You know, we’re going we’re going to set a huge vision, you know, for 2030 for 2030. Actually, we just hit our vision for 2025, which is 200 adoptive or foster families. There’s a lot of ways people can be involved with it.Rich Birch — So good. There’s, I think thing I would encourage friends who are listening in, you really should be following Mercy Hill, Andrew, because I do think you’re a very unique communicator where you, and you just described it. And I think to you, it’s just like, that’s just what you do. But this idea of like, you’re calling people to a high bar, but you’re not leveraging shame, guilt. you know, it’s, and I think so many times our language can kind of lean in that direction. Or we can, if we really are trying to push people towards something, or we can just undersell the vision. You know We can be like, oh, it’s not that it’s not that big of a deal. You know It’s not for everybody. So I would encourage people to listen in.Rich Birch — Talk to me about rope holding. How is that, what’s that look like? Unpack what that looks like a little bit.Andrew Hopper — Yeah, so rope so the the the rope-holding analogy, which a lot of your listeners probably gonna already know this, but you know William Carey, Andrew Fuller, William Carey, father of modern missions, he’s he he he makes the statement, “I’ll dangle at the end of the rope in the pit, if you’ll hold the rope,” talking to Fuller. And Fuller held the rope for him. Like, you know, Carey the mission field, Fuller’s raising money, preaching sermons, organizing mission boards. So that’s kind of the picture. Right.Andrew Hopper — So we say, all right, not everybody is going to go down into the pit of foster care adoption, even even families count. I mean, these are these are massive spiritual warfare battlegrounds you know um which is one of the reasons why our church wants to be involved so much. I mean you if you want to talk about getting to the you can do all the rhetoric in the world, brother, you want to get to the very bottom of societal issues, you you be involved in somebody’s story that’s trying that’s trying to get their kids back from the foster care system. You’re trying to help them with that. I mean, every you could fatherlessness, poverty, drug abuse. I mean, everything you can think, you know.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — So this this is just spiritual war. So what we tell people is like, hey, man. If we got people that are mobilizing for for adoption and foster care, we better have people in their corne,r because the enemy is going to bring his war machine.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — And we see it all the time. I mean, you’re going to see, you know, a family steps in to adopt and you’re going to start seeing them, you know, there can be sickness. They can have marital problems. They can have financial things that come up. They can begin to believe lies, frustrations. I mean, There’s just so they can become, you know, their their heart can start getting hard toward the system. I mean, there’s so many things that come at them. And so what we say is we need people in their corner, right. Andrew Hopper — Now, it’s funny because like the way our church has operated was at first we said, all right, we’re going to we’re going to do, you know, the the community group is going hold the rope for the people. And and that that was fine. The problem is when we really kicked off this ministry, so many people got involved that it became overwhelming to the group. So we said we got to start this… Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — …rope holding ministry. The rope holder ministry is good. It’s like, what does a rope holder do? They kind of do whatever the person needs them to do. Rich Birch — Right. Andrew Hopper — So there are examples of the rope holding ministry going really well, where it’s like, hey, man, they’re they’re helping with ah child care with the other kids when they’re going to foster care appointments in court. And or, hey, we’re we’re helping you do some things around the house whenever you’re overseas doing your adoption, which is going to put you three weeks in country. You know, there are some good examples like that. Andrew Hopper — But the other thing that we’ve learned is, you know, foster care and adoption families that are that are walking through this, they’re going through a very trying time. And to just pair them with somebody they don’t know and say, hey, look, here’s your supporter, it can be a little bit like, oh, that’s awesome, and then they never reach out to them.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — They never reach out – the rope holder’s ready.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — But it’s just like, dude, I don’t I don’t know you. And this is a hard time.Rich Birch — Who are you? Yeah, yeah.Andrew Hopper — And so what we’re trying to figure out now as we reboot that rope holder idea is, you know, how how do you kind of integrate relationships they’ve already had? Almost like, hey, do you have this massive pool of people called rope holders? Or when an adoptive family comes up, you say to them, hey, who can we shoulder tap, rope holder for you.Rich Birch — That’s good.Andrew Hopper — And then we’ll train them.Rich Birch — Oh, that’s cool. Yeah.Andrew Hopper — But not have this pool, but say for you, we’ll put them in. So that’s kind of what we’re, so as part of our reboot for 2030, you know, that’s sort of what’s in our mind right now.Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s cool.Andrew Hopper — We have a whole playbook for the way we’ve done it, which anybody, you know, if anybody wants any of those things, they can go to AndrewPHopper.com/chosen. And I can send you any of that stuff we have, but on the rope holder side, you know, just full transparency, we’re still, you know, kind of, of you know, and I’m sure it’ll always be that way that we make an improvement.Rich Birch — Yeah, always trying to make it better. Yeah. And I want to, yeah, at some point in this journey, you decided, hey, we’ve got to put this vision and framework into writing, like we and you actually ended up writing a book, and friends who are listening in, I want to encourage you to pick up a copy of this book. Listen, we’re almost half an hour in. I know you’re interested in this. This is the kind of thing you, Andrew’s a trusted leader. He’s, I’ve had a chance to take a peek at the book. This will be super helpful for you. But, but that’s a lot of effort to put this together into a book. What pushed you from just leading this ministry to ultimately saying, hey, I want to capture this into a resource that could help other people?Andrew Hopper — Well, you know, Rich, I never really saw myself as like a writer, just like a practitioner, man. Let’s just keep keep working on the thing and going.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — And truthfully, I got approached. Hey, would you have any interest in writing? You know, New Growth Press is the one that’s editing this book and putting it out. And it was funny, though, because the second I was asked, I was like, man, I know what we should do [inaudible] that should be what we should do. It’s it’s our it’s it’s my story’s family story with our special needs child that we’ve adopted. It’s our church’s journey. But more important than either of those two things, it’s a grounding in the gospel-centered motivation. Because I think that is what is so important. We don’t do guilt motivation. And you know, cute kids and sad, cute kids and and sad stories are good reasons, but they you need a great reason, because it’s hard. Rich Birch — That’s good. Yep.Andrew Hopper — You know, and the great reason is of course, adopted people adopt people. And so we delve way into the helplessness of our spiritual condition, how God adopted us and then how, you know, that provides a deep motivation for us to go and do the same for others.Rich Birch — Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think this is, ah to me, a core part of the book that I think is really helpful. Even if you’re maybe listening in, you’re thinking, okay, I’m not sure adoption or foster care is necessarily the thing, but you unpack this idea of gospel rather than guilt. And can you talk us through, you know, how, yeah, just talk us through that part, that concept a bit more. Just double click on that a little bit.Andrew Hopper — Yeah. So, you know, when we think about behaviors that flow from the Christian life, there’s really only two ways to think about it, right? Like one of them is we try to do things in order that God would approve of us, you know, that he would, you know, he would, ah he would, he would let us in his family, you know, those those types of things. And we, you know, this is for a lot of Baptistic world, which I am, this was kind of like, wow, this is really revolutionary, but that was 20 years ago – Keller and all that. You know, we just started understanding what more of a gospel center motivation. Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to think about Christian behaviors is you are part of the family because of what Christ has done for you. And the family has a culture. The family works a certain way. There’s fruit that will pop out in your life, not so that you can gain entrance into the vine. That’s not how it works. Like, ah you know, you don’t you don’t produce fruit to get in the vine. You produce fruit because you’re in the vine. Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, when we think about like like Titus 2, for example, we think about how the grace of God appears to all men, teaching us not just salvation, but teaching us to obey his commands. So there’s something about salvation that and is inherent to the gospel-centered motivation of of of going out, living the Christian life. You know, it’s it’s kind of the John Bunyan idea when they said, man, if you, you know, if you keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever they want to do. And he said, no, if I keep preaching this gospel message, people are going to do whatever God wants them to do. Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — You know, and so I think what we’ve done in this book is just say, hey, that that is true universally in our Christian life. Like if I’m not tithing and I’m stingy, I can do motivation in two ways. Number one, how dare you, you piece of trash that you never, you know why would you never give? Look what God, you know, blah blah blah, blah, blah, guilt, guilt, shame, shame. Right. Andrew Hopper — Of course, the other way to say is like, man, what kind of riches has God given you in the gospel? And what kind of inheritance do you now have as a son of the king? It’s like, all right, that’s powerful, you know, and it will it will take us places that guilt never can. Guilt will work for a while. You can put fire under somebody and it’ll move them. But if you put it in them, they’ll run through a wall, you know. Rich Birch — So true.Andrew Hopper — And so it’s like it’s like, hey, OK, so you could do it with all these different things. We’ve tried to take this book and do that with adoption to say, all right.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — We know James 1:27, we need to care for the fatherless and the orphan. We understand. I mean, dude, there ain’t, when you talk about metaphors, there’s two big ones, marriage and adoption, you know? And so if you want to do adoption well, we can do it from two motivations. One motivation is look how many kids need. That’s all and that’s all true. That moves my heart. You know, look, can you believe this story of this kid? And that’s fine.Andrew Hopper — Of course, you could do guilt, too. Like, how dare you, you know, have this nice, happy family and not go adopt a little poor orphan kid. You know, you could do guilt. All those things will be fine. They’ll put fire under you a little bit. But if you want to put the fire in someone that is going to carry them through the long haul of all this stuff, I think it’s better to start with: All right. There’s kids that need to be chosen. Were you chosen?Andrew Hopper — You know, so like one of the you know, one I’ll give you an example. We know of a family here in the tribe. They’ve got an awesome son that is 20-something years old, kids got Down syndrome, and they adopted him from Ecuador. And his story was one day a carpenter was working on this building and he heard cries coming out of a dump, like a trash heap. This child had just been born and been left you know with his deformities had just been left for the dumpster. Andrew Hopper — And they brought him to the orphanage. And next thing you know, you know about three or four years later, he got adopted by this family that we know. And that family’s father, he said, Eddie’s story is my story. I was pulled from a trash heap by a carpenter. And if you it’s like that is powerful. Rich Birch — Right. Yes.Andrew Hopper — You know, when you start thinking about, man, in my sin, I was one who had no part and parcel in the kingdom of God. I was headlong in rebellion. I had rejected. I was not a son. And God lavished his love upon me, that I would be called his child. And if if that has happened to me spiritually, how could I not want to do that? Or at least help those. you know I’m not saying that’s a call for everybody, but be involved in others that are doing that as well.Andrew Hopper — And so that’s what we say. Adopted people, adopt people, chosen people, choose people. And hey, I didn’t answer your last question. Rich Birch — That’s fine.Andrew Hopper — Okay. Your last question was, why did we write the book? Very simply, I think more people just need to think about what I just said. You know, and I think churches do. And I think that if, you know, a lot of churches have adoption-minded people and a little bit of of fuel in that fire might create some really cool ministry in that church. And this book lays really well for being like, man, make it a small group resource for eight weeks. You know, it’s got questions at the end of each chapter.Andrew Hopper — Like my my prayer is that this book would catalyze tens of thousands of Christian adoptions. Rich Birch — Wow. Andrew Hopper — And that’s why we wrote the book.Rich Birch — Yeah. It’s and I thought the same thing as I was looking through it, that this would be a great resource for a small group, a great resource as a staff training thing. Because again, I think there’s two things happening on two levels. From my perspective, there’s what you’re actually talking about – adoption, but then there’s how you talk about it. And I think even both of those, I think could be interesting as a as a staff team to kind of unpack and think about. How do we ensure that what we’re doing is so gospel-infused. That’s part of why i love you as a communicator. I think you do such a good job on that. It’s just fantastic. So I would strongly encourage people to pick it up.Rich Birch — Help me understand the connection. So Mercy Hill is known for, or at least from my perspective, known as a sending church. You know, the thing, one of the and I’ve told again, I told you this before, you’re the first church leader I’ve ever bumped into that has connected new here guests to number of missionaries sent. This like idea of like this funnel of how do we move people all the way along to that? I think that’s incredible. How does that kind of sending culture and adoption, how does that fit together? How does that help kind of fuel the flywheel of what’s happening at Mercy Hill?Andrew Hopper — Well, you you helped me think about this when you came and did our one day for our for our Breaking Barriers group, you know, for the pastoral trainings that we do. Because in your church growth book, you talk about how, ah you know, community ministry is used as an evangelism tool. I’m not, I’m probably butchering the way you talk about it.Rich Birch — Yep. Yep. Oh, that’s good. Yep. That’s great.Andrew Hopper — That was like a big light bulb for me because because we we definitely do that, but we have not leveraged the communications of that.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — And so, um you know, for us now, what we’re trying to really think about is how does our adoption of foster care ministry and rope holding and families count ministry, how does that create open? We call them open doors, right? Rich Birch — Yep.Andrew Hopper — Like, how does it create open doors, questions in the community, where people come in? And we’ve seen it. You know, so like when we’re talking about the sending culture, that pipeline starts when new people get interested in faith, they get interested in church.Andrew Hopper — And, you know, like, for example, we we had a guy, we just did a historic video. Man, he’s saved, baptized, serving now, ah or, you know, family, young family, prototypical Mercy Hill guy, like, man, just you know blue collar heart, white collar job, just that. I mean, just everything we talk about. Right. He’s our he’s kind of our guy. And the way he got connected was his boss had signed up to be a rope holder. And it just blew his mind. Like, why would a guy take limited time and go help these families? I mean, he of course, he thought it was a good thing. But it really intrigued them. Andrew Hopper — And so we’ve tried to we’re trying to leverage more of the communication side. It’s tricky. You don’t want to be like, hey, look at us you know in the community. At the same time, I’m like, man, this year, you know when we’re going to do a pretty significant upgrade to some of the there our foster care system has, there’s a house that has a backyard and the backyard is where families come to play with kids, play with their kids they’re trying to get back from the foster care.Rich Birch — Right. Yep.Andrew Hopper — And we’ve said like, you know what, man, if these parents are putting in, that needs to be like the best, the best backyard, and you know?Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, absolutely. 100%.Andrew Hopper — And so, you know, we’re, we’re going to do a significant investment in some, you know, whatever…Rich Birch — Play structures and yeah. Andrew Hopper — …like a, you know, whatever, like a pergola type thing. They’re going put a shed out there. All going to connect it, pavers, all that stuff is what we want to do. And, you know, we’re, we’re looking at that and I’m going like, yeah, I mean, I get it. Like you don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, but at the same time, that’s not for us. That’s for people that are interested to say like, why would a church do that? You know, like why do they care so much?Andrew Hopper — And it’s because, Hey, sign of the kingdom. We want to build families through adoption. We want to restore families through foster care and families count. This is part of that. So we’ve tried to we’ve tried to use it as a way. And I would really encourage church leaders to think about that. Like, hey, is your community ministry actually an evangelism strategy?Rich Birch — Right. Yeah, that’s good. Love that. And yeah, I would encourage you continue to encourage you to think through those things because I do think that there’s, we’ve seen that there’s huge opportunity for folks who don’t normally attend church. They’re interested the way I’ve said in other contexts is they see it as a good thing. We see it as a God thing. We’re not going to fight them over the semantics of it at the front end. Because like you say it’s it’s the kingdom puncturing through that grabs their attention and you’re like oh what what you know what’s going on there? It’s a first step – how do we encourage those people? Rich Birch — Like on that backyard project, I no doubt if you’re rallying a bunch of guys to go work there, I know that there are guys in your church who have friends who they could invite who don’t attend church who maybe would never walk in your church who’d say, hey, will you come and work for a Saturday for a couple hours and swing a hammer and help us do this thing? Let me explain what this is about.They absolutely would show up, right? 100% they’d show up and and they’ll get intrigued by that. And they’ll be like, oh, what’s going on there? That’s that’s fantastic. Rich Birch — Well, friends, unabashedly, I want you to pick up copies of, not just a copy, copies of this book. So where do we want to send people to pick up copies, that sort of thing?Andrew Hopper — Yeah, man, they can just go to andrewphopper.com/chosen. Rich Birch — Perfect. Yep.Andrew Hopper — The book’s out so they can pick up a copy. I mean, it’s also just like on Amazon or whatever, but that link will take you straight to New Growth Press.Rich Birch — Right.Andrew Hopper — So, yeah, man, would love it. Would love to hear from anybody who’s using it well in a church context um to catalyze Christian adoption.Rich Birch — Love it. Anything else you want to share just as we close and how can people track, go to the website, other places we want to send them as we close up today.Andrew Hopper — Also on Instagram, we have a lot of stuff on Instagram, andrewphopper on Instagram. Yeah, the last thing I would say as a closing thought, Rich, is you know, the Christian adoption boom has sort of happened 20 years ago. People started talking about this a lot more. And now you can feel in some of the podcast world and all that, there’s a bit of a backlash, not not to don’t do it, but also like, hey, no one told us how hard this was going to be. Andrew Hopper — You’re dealing with traumatic situations, kids that have been brought, you know, I mean, it’s, it’s crazy. One thing I try to do in this book is I try to say, Hey, that’s not a good reason to take our ball and go home, you know.Rich Birch — That’s good.Andrew Hopper — Instead we just need to try to shoot as straight as we can. And I do that in this book, man. It is hard. It’s you’re on the front lines of spiritual war. I mean, it’s almost like, dude, the, the, the greatest transfer of faith from one generation to another happens in the home. We love it when adults get saved. I get that. But let’s be honest. Statistically, where does it normally happen? Right. Rich Birch — Yeah. Kids. Andrew Hopper — And so if you got a home that’s broken apart, that Christians are trying to put back together, what did we think Satan was going to do? You know, and so instead of taking our ball and going home, let’s just call it what it is, and then ask the Lord to steel our spine… Rich Birch — That’s good. Andrew Hopper — …and to move forward with the mission. So, yeah, man, I’d love for people to pick it up. And I appreciate the time to talk about it today.Rich Birch — Andrew, thanks so much. Appreciate you. Just want to honor you for the work you do. You’re a great leader. And I love how God’s using you and your church to make a difference. Thanks for being on the show today.Andrew Hopper — Thanks, brother.

Today let's discuss the FBI's latest move: ditching the building they've used as their headquarters for the past 50 years for a new location.

   The Royals suddenly have everyone in Missouri clamoring to keep them from crossing the state line and real estate executive Stan Weber has a perfect location downtown and a suggestion for the Royals on how to make it happen.  This is good stuff.    Then, we talk about Andy Reid's future as the HOF coach says he's coming back.  The question is, has his window closed?    There's some tasty matchups Saturday and Sunday in the NFL that have Super Bowl implications.    Where exactly is Mizzou football after their season fell apart?  We preview the college playoff games and the world's strongest beer is illegal in Missouri and a host of other states.

This week on Marketing O'Clock: Demand Gen adds location targeting options, and Meta expands creator partnership tools for brands. Plus, Google's December 2025 Core Update rolls out with major early impact.Visit us at - https://marketingoclock.com/

Today, we talk to Rick Austin about how the biggest event in prepping just got even bigger!! Join us to get all the info on Prepper Camp 2026www.preppercamp.comwww.tryon.comGet Prepared with Our Incredible Sponsors! Survival Bags, kits, gear www.limatangosurvival.comEMP Proof Shipping Containers www.fardaycontainers.comThe Prepper's Medical Handbook Build Your Medical Cache – Welcome PBN FamilyPack Fresh USA www.packfreshusa.comSupport PBN with a Donation https://bit.ly/3SICxEq

Welcome back to another episode of the unSeminary podcast. We're talking with Aaron Stanski, founder and CEO of Risepointe, a firm that partners with churches across the country to design and build facilities that amplify ministry impact. With more than 15 years of experience in church architecture, project management, and ministry leadership, Aaron and his team help churches navigate complex building challenges while staying focused on mission. Is your church facing growing pains—crowded lobbies, full parking lots, or overwhelmed kids' spaces—but unsure how to move forward? Aaron shares practical insights on how to approach facility planning strategically, align vision with budget, and avoid the costly mistakes that can slow down momentum. Overcoming the overwhelm. // When churches consider expansion or renovation, leaders often feel paralyzed by the process. Questions about cost, zoning, design, and disruption quickly pile up. Too often, churches jump straight to hiring an architect before defining their real needs. Instead, churches should first clarify what's working, what's broken, and what's next before anyone draws plans. Start with scope and budget. // The two guardrails of every successful project are scope (what you're building) and budget (what you can spend). Aaron warns that skipping this step often leads to beautiful drawings that churches can't afford. Risepointe begins with a Needs Analysis, an on-site deep dive into the church's DNA, culture, and challenges. The team listens to staff, studies how people use the building, and identifies bottlenecks—whether it's the children's hallway, lobby congestion, or limited parking. Only then do they define the right-size project and realistic cost range. The power of early engagement. // Most churches wait too long to start planning. Zoning approvals, fundraising, and construction all take longer than expected, especially in urban areas. Waiting too long forces rushed design work, unclear budgets, and lost ministry opportunities. You don't have to build everything at once. Start with a plan that captures the next few wins—like improving your lobby or kids' check-in—while preparing for long-term growth. Knowing when it's time. // Aaron says early warning signs include maxing out your primary service, overflowing kids' spaces, and parking lots at capacity. Many pastors misjudge space needs because they see the auditorium every Sunday but rarely experience the parking or early childhood chaos firsthand. Evaluating your entire Sunday experience—entry to exit—reveals where capacity problems really begin. Aligning buildings with ministry models. // Every church facility reflects a ministry philosophy—but those philosophies evolve. Where there used to be 40-year ministry cycles, now they are closer to 10 to 20. Churches shaped by the seeker-sensitive movement, for example, are now adapting to relational, community-driven models. Spaces that once emphasized rows and stages now need more environments for conversations, mentoring, and connection. A free resource for leaders. // To help churches begin the conversation, Aaron's team created a free guide called “10 Things to Get Right Before You Build.” The resource walks through key questions every church should answer before launching a building project—from clarifying vision and budget to preparing for change. You can download it and schedule a free consultation at risepointe.com/unseminary. To learn more about Risepointe's work helping churches align facilities with mission, visit risepointe.com/unseminary or follow Risepointe on Instagram for inspiration and project stories. Thank You for Tuning In! There are a lot of podcasts you could be tuning into today, but you chose unSeminary, and I'm grateful for that. If you enjoyed today's show, please share it by using the social media buttons you see at the left hand side of this page. Also, kindly consider taking the 60-seconds it takes to leave an honest review and rating for the podcast on iTunes, they're extremely helpful when it comes to the ranking of the show and you can bet that I read every single one of them personally! Lastly, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, to get automatic updates every time a new episode goes live! Thank You to This Episode’s Sponsor: Portable Church Your church is doing really well right now, and your leadership team is looking for solutions to keep momentum going! It could be time to start a new location. Maybe you have hesitated in the past few years, but you know it's time to step out in faith again and launch that next location. Portable Church has assembled a bundle of resources to help you leverage your growing momentum into a new location by sending a part of your congregation back to their neighborhood on Mission. This bundle of resources will give you a step-by-step plan to launch that new or next location, and a 5 minute readiness tool that will help you know your church is ready to do it! Click here to watch the free webinar “Launch a New Location in 150 Days or Less” and grab the bundle of resources for your church! Episode Transcript Rich Birch — Hey friends, welcome to the unSeminary podcast. I am so glad that you have decided to tune in. You know, across the country, we keep hearing about churches that are growing and we’re seeing swelling attendance and that’s good. Some of that is like a platinum problem though. It generates other issues that we have to think about. And so what what I did was pull on a friend of mine, Aaron Stanski, he’s the founder and CEO of Risepointe. He’s got 15 plus years of church design, leadership and project management and experience. Rich Birch — If you don’t know Risepointe, where have you been? You’re living under a rock. They’re church architects and designers. They have years of experience working with churches like yours, schools and nonprofits, and they offer a wide range wide variety of services, including architecture, interior design, graphic design, branding, and so much more. Aaron is, I like Aaron not just because he actually has got incredible skills. His team’s got incredible skills, but he really actually wants to help churches like you. And so Aaron, welcome to the show. So glad you’re here. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I’m glad to be here, Rich. Rich Birch — It’s going to be good. Give give people, you’ve been on a couple of times… Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — …and but give us again, for folks that haven’t heard, the Aaron Stanski, you know, a couple bullet points. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — What did I miss? What do you want to fill in the picture? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, ah you know the quick story is grew up in ministry. My dad was a pastor growing up, planted a we planted a church in Boston when I was a kid. Went to school for engineering, worked for Harley Davidson Motorcycles, did big projects, project management and stuff for them for a while. And then felt called to ministry. Aaron Stanski — So left Harley Davidson, was on staff with Cru for a couple years doing college ministry before I jumped on staff at a fast growing multi-site church here in Chicago. So loved that, loved being part of that ministry team. And then, of course, we went through a big building project. So got to roll up my sleeves on the on the church staff side of things and hire architects and engineers and AV consultants and really kind of combine my my engineering mind and my ministry heart. And so absolutely love that process. And so, yeah, I’ve been helping churches now for the last 15, 16 years. It’s been an absolute blast. Rich Birch — So good. Well, the the kind of person I want to have in mind today, and so friends, if if you’re listening in, if this sounds a little bit like you, you’re going to want to pay close attention. So I’m thinking about that church, you know, the leader that looks around, they maybe have got, maybe they got two services. Rich Birch — They’re looking around and they’re seeing, ooh, they feel like maybe their growth ah is starting to create some pinch points. Maybe it’s in kids. Maybe it’s in adults. Maybe it’s their lobby. It’s they look around and they’re like, man, I just I feel like our facility might be holding us back a little bit. um And because I do bump into this in churches all the time. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — And there’s like, there can be like a certain amount of anxiety and fear around, gosh, when do I, what do I do? So when you talk to pastors, what do you know notice as one of the kind of most common point of confusion when it comes to starting or pulling the trigger, moving on with a building project, expansion project, try to improve things. Where are we getting this wrong? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think ah like one, the whole process itself can just be completely overwhelming. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — Like immediately you’re confronted with, ah oh my goodness, like what’s the right solution? What is the, ah what is the town or the, you know, the jurisdiction going to allow us to do? What is this all going to cost? Where are we going to do church in the meantime if we’re having to fix this building or add on to it? Rich Birch — Yes, yes. Aaron Stanski — I mean, immediately all of these questions start to kind of well up and it can become ah really overwhelming for a lot of churches. Rich Birch — So good. So when when we step back, is there any one of those that you think in particular is like a piece of the puzzle that is the most kind of mysterious or is the most um confusing as as you that you bump into regularly with leaders? Aaron Stanski — I mean, I think the most confusing is probably like, what’s the right solution? Rich Birch — Okay. Yep. Aaron Stanski — A lot of times it’s a combination of like, you know, we feel like we’re out of space, so we have to add on. But if we do that, we’re going to have to modify what we already have. And what we have is old, or there’s some maintenance on it that we haven’t gotten around to. And like, what can we do in this space? And so actually the the right solution is is probably one of the most difficult things to kind of imagine for a lot of pastors. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And, you know, then right behind that is like. What’s it going to cost? Right. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — I mean, you know, for the last four or five years, we’ve seen a lot of inflation. We’ve seen a lot of different things happening, like with pricing and stuff. And so what used to be a pretty easy calculation for us as churches now, it feels like it’s a lot foggier as far as like what what things are just going to cost. Rich Birch — Yeah. So I’ve heard church leaders at this this juncture, they start thinking like, okay, like we got to get an architect. Get me the architect, the the person that designed this building 25 years ago. Where are they? Are they still in business? And, you know, we start going down that road. I’m not even really sure what an architect does. Like, I obviously, you you draw things. But, like, help us understand what what is the piece of the puzzle that, like, an architect brings to the table. Aaron Stanski — Right. Rich Birch — And I know that’s, like, a subset of what you guys do. Pretend that I’m, like, super dumb because it’s probably not actually worry about pretending too much there. Explain what that is. What is that service? And is that actually what we need at this juncture? Is that the first question? Like, get the architect. Come in here. Explain that whole thing. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, well, I think we have to be careful. Sometimes hiring an architect is like picking up a hammer, right? And for a lot of architects who were, you know, traditionally trained and might have like one sort of, you know, viewpoint of the world. Like their job is to come in and draw something new um that’s going to sort of solve your problem. The challenge with that is a lot of times that architect is just looking for ah one type of solution, ah which is build you something new, add something on. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — And they’re looking at it very narrowly through the lens of what the solution is going to be. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Aaron Stanski — And a lot of times they’re not, you know, kind of able to kind of step back and take a look at strategically and say, okay, before we start drawing plans and blueprints and some of those sorts of things, let’s really talk about like what’s going really well at your church and how are we going to amplify what you’re already doing well? How are we going to add some, you know, some pieces around it? And then of course, how are we going to fix some of the big, you know, some of the bigger problems? Aaron Stanski — So an architect technically, right? I mean, it’s a licensed professional. Their job is to lead your organization through the process from the very beginning all the way through the stages of design. Their job is to make sure that the solution is aligned with your with who you are as an organization and your budget. And they’re supposed to help all the way through construction, making sure that it gets built the way that it was designed and and that it gets you know all the questions get answered and that it’s ultimately safe. Aaron Stanski — So that’s what an architect does. I think the I think the thing that we miss a little bit on the front end is in order for the architect to start, we really need kind of need to know what the scope of the work is and the budget first. Rich Birch — So good. Okay. Okay. Good. Aaron Stanski — If we don’t put those two guardrails on the left and the right-hand side, we’re really missing out. The left-hand side should be scope. The right-hand side should be budget. And we should nail those down before we get going into designing. Rich Birch — Okay. I want to unpack that because I know, I actually texted you recently. Friends, getting you behind the scenes a little bit. I had a friend of mine, they had done exactly what we talked about here. They were like, we went and hired an architect to help with this thing. And they came back with a ginormous number um that was like, I would say a factor, you know, three or four times what I thought. And what do I know? I don’t know anything. Rich Birch — And I actually think it was these guardrails where they went off off on it. They didn’t start with scope and budget. They started with, hey, here’s a problem, architect – solve it for us. And they came back with this, you know, very incredible initial drawing and all that. Rich Birch — Talk us through how do we nail down scope and budget from the beginning? Talk us through what does that look like? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, so I would say, ah you know, you want to find a ministry partner who’s going to come in and really kind of help ah flesh out some of those pieces, really understand what’s working well, what’s not working well, what’s missing, where do we have to clarify what it is that we’re doing in order so to sort of establish that. And and there’s ah there’s a lot of great partners out there who can help you do that. But you’re really looking for someone in the building/design/construction space who has experience who has a lot of experience, honestly, with churches and understands what it means to, you know, serve people who’ve been part of your church for 20, 30 years and keep them on mission and disciple them up, as well as welcoming people who are walking into your doors for the very first time. Aaron Stanski — So at Risepointe, we walk through a process called The Needs Analysis, where we get on site with, you know, a church for an entire day and understand their DNA and really understand what’s working and not working and stuff. And we start with that so that we can sketch out some ideas and some concepts and stuff around what is the what is the scope of work that’s going to solve the problem or fix the lid or add the seats that we need? And what’s the budget that we feel like God’s calling us to spend as a church in order to go do that? And we want to start with that before we jump into full architecture. Rich Birch — Okay, so sidebar question. Is it possible for someone to help us at this early kind of scoping phase without doing some sort of on-site? Like, can I just call an architect and say, hey, here’s the problem. I need to add a thousand seats. How much is that going to cost? And then they go away and come back with a number. Or, or you know, are is there, yeah, can they do that? Talk us through that. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can. I mean, you can call up Risepointe and I’ll get on the phone with you. The, and, but there’s going to be a range, right? Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — And I can say like, Hey, here’s the last 10 churches that we’ve done a thousand seat auditoriums at… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — …and here’s kind of the range and stuff. The problem with shortcutting to that is you miss a lot of things, right? Each jurisdiction is different, like how the civil engineering works, the parking requirements and stuff. Rich Birch — Right. Good. Yep. Aaron Stanski — And those really affect the budget. And so we want to understand those first. And the second thing is, I mean, every church that we work with is and incredibly unique in the people that they’re reaching, and the values that those people have and whether they’re de-churched or unchurched and and who they’re running into and and stuff. And so really kind of understanding that context is so important um before we jump into, you know, sort of solution. Aaron Stanski — But yeah, I mean, since we work with churches all over the country, I mean, if someone called me up, I could probably, I could probably put my thumb in the air and give them a ah swag on what that might cost. Rich Birch — Yeah. And I would, you know, it’s funny because I’ve, I’ve recommended people have asked me those kinds of questions and I always actually say exactly what, you know, where you led, which is like, you should call my friend Aaron and, but, but what you should do, get on the, do the like free call or whatever, get on the book a time. But I said, you really should do this Needs Analysis thing. Cause the project that you’re facing is always much larger than you think. Rich Birch — And I would rather people take time, invest the resources upfront and time, frankly, to slow down and say let’s actually understand the question we’re asking before we jump to answers, right? Like what because because we could get this thing wrong and actually that gets to this whole idea of how early is too early. My experience has been people wait too long before they engage with someone like you. They they get into like their third service, fourth service. They’re like, oh gosh, people aren’t going to the fifth service. Maybe we have to figure out how to get more space. Talk us about, you know, what mistakes do we make when we wait too long without engaging with someone like you? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I’d say, you know, the thing to keep in mind is that you’re, if you’re the average church that reaches out to Risepointe, you’re somewhere between two and a half and three years away from having any sort of new space. Rich Birch — Wow. Wow. Okay. Aaron Stanski — And that’s on the short end. We have churches who are bringing new space online five years after they’ve reached out to us because they’re, they live in downtown areas… Rich Birch — Wow. Aaron Stanski — …very challenging jurisdictions and some things like that. Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — And so when we’re thinking about when is the right time, I think, yeah, earlier is definitely better. But we have to be careful ah that we’re strategically spending dollars even on the front end, you know, so that we, you know, we’re getting out of it what we need. Aaron Stanski — As leaders, what questions are we asking that we need answers for in order to determine is it the right time to move forward with a building project? Is it a right time to launch a campus or go multi-site or some things like that? Aaron Stanski — If you wait too long, typically what happens is either we’re we’re rushing through the design process to kind of hit the capital campaign stuff and there’s budget misalignment. All of a sudden we thought it might be this, but now this is the actual budget for what it’s going to work. Aaron Stanski — And I think when that happens, there starts to be some vision confusion. You know, we’re looking at solutions that we kind of rushed through and it doesn’t feel like we really thought all of those things through. And so I think that’s another one. Aaron Stanski — And then I just think, you know, there’s there’s some missed ministry opportunities if if we kind of wait too long. I think a lot of times when we’re planning out, here’s the multiple phases of how we develop this campus and expand it. You know, we miss out on opportunities to go get some smaller things done sooner… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …capture momentum, you you know, fix the welcome center, like invest some dollars in something we know we’re not going to tear down, make it better for guests in a couple months. And we miss out on those things if we don’t have a bigger, more strategic plan. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. Yeah, kind of a step back and say, hey, how does this fit into where everything that’s going on? Rich Birch — What would be kind of double clicking on that? What would be some indicators internally that would say, hey, um you know, these things are happening. I should really reach out to Risepointe. What would be some of the things that you would see as telltale signs that it’s now a time to to kind of take this step? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, I think if we’re, you know, if we’re really pushing towards our, those max numbers at our primary service, I think that’s a, that’s definitely an early indicator. Aaron Stanski — A lot of churches just kind of reach out and say, Hey, okay, here’s, here’s kind of where we’re at. Here’s where the math is at. Like, can you look at this like from a, like how much kids area should we have? How much lobby space should we have? And we can run some quick math for them and say, Hey, you don’t have any other lids. You’re looking good. You, you probably have a few more years of growth in you. Aaron Stanski — So that would be one. You know i think if ah you know we’re starting to talk about ah adding a third or fourth service, it’s probably a little bit too late, but we should probably get on it sooner than later. Aaron Stanski — And then, you know, one of the, one of the other things too, is just kind of paying attention. It’s easy for us on Sundays to stand on the stage and look out and get a pretty good sense of, are there enough seats? Is there space for me here? And like, we look out and we see some empty chairs. Aaron Stanski — Keep in mind that when you’re coming in from the back of the auditorium, it’s a lot harder to see some of those empty chairs. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so what is the percentage? But the other thing is the things that we’re not seeing when more when we’re on stage on Sunday is we’re not seeing the parking lot. We’re not seeing the early childhood wing that’s basically a it’s a it’s a disaster back there. There’s kids running around like crazy. Rich Birch — Yes. Yes. Aaron Stanski — And so even if we’re ah even if we have enough seats, like or we’re not at the 80 or 90 percent capacity to our primary service. We need to be looking out at some of these other areas and making sure that there’s not a lid somewhere else. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. Yeah. In fact, I literally just last weekend said that to a church. I was, you know, I was doing a weekend visit where I was on site and all that stuff. And, and it, to me, it felt like the building, the parking, and the kids, and the main auditorium, they, or the adult auditorium, they just didn’t match. It was like they, the three were out of alignment. And I think they had enough kids, but you know, I don’t know. There was, it’s interesting how that can happen. And you know the lead pastor typically is seeing um only the adult room and not you know not anything else. Rich Birch — Early on, you know there’s my experience has been and projects that have been a part of that I would rather spend money as personally as a leader. I’m not saying, friends, if you’re listening in, that you need to necessarily do this. Rich Birch — I would rather spend money on the front end with a designer like you. Because because the joke I’ve made is it’s a lot cheaper to move walls on drawings than it is in in the real world. And I’ve that comes from pain of building stuff… Aaron Stanski — It’s true. Yeah. Rich Birch — …of building stuff, and then being literally I opened up a new facility and then stood there with a kids ministry person. And the kids ministry person was like, oh, I didn’t think it was going to look like this. I was like, oh my goodness, what what are you talking about? Aaron Stanski — Shoot. Rich Birch — Like, we just opened this new facility. Talk us through, like, what’s an investment on the front end to reach out to someone like you? Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — How do you help churches see that hiring someone like you can actually save us resources in the long haul? Talk us through that. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, starting out at the beginning and getting really clear about where we’re going and how we’re going to get there, it really helps us, you know, cart and like make sure we don’t overbuild or underbuild. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — It makes sure that like compared to all the other churches that we’re working with all over the country, that we’re in alignment with where the square footage is at and it’s aligned with how you do ministry locally, how you use these spaces seven days a week. Aaron Stanski — And so it’s it’s really making sure that we’re not overbuilding or underbuilding anywhere because that’s ah you know that’s a huge that’s a huge miss if we do that. And that’s probably one of the biggest cost savings. Aaron Stanski — The other thing is you know during you know during sort of that season of vision and master planning and when we’re talking to our folks about what God’s doing at the church and we’re telling stories of life change, like we’re really kind of laying out a vision for what God is calling us to do as a ministry. And people just naturally have questions around like, like, how is this going to help? And and how is this actually going to help us reach my lost coworker, my lost neighbor? Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And, and so I think, you know, spending the time to do that, really translating sort of the mission and vision into physical space needs and producing some of those renderings that accompany that story. I mean, that’s just a really critical part. Rich Birch — Okay, so let’s double click on that. That’s that I feel like I have been caught in this situation where I get I get like, it’s the hammer and nail thing you you say. Like, I’m I’m pretty sure I know what the solution is. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — Like, let’s go do this. And I like that what you’re saying is like, hey, we need to take a step back and like actually think through how does this fit in our vision and how’s that all? How do you actually do that? How do you help a leadership team discern what the problem is that they’re really needing to solve, or should be solving, rather than just let’s build a bigger box. Or, I know! We just need 25 new parking spots. Like how do we not jump too quickly to that? What’s that look like? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, it looks like, you know, spending time. Rich Birch — Good. And and, really getting to know them and what makes them unique. Like we have a fantastic set of tools that we use at Risepointe to like really talk about, you know, let’s talk about, uh, outside the walls, right? Like who, who are we called to reach? And, and what does it mean to do ministry in this place that God has uniquely put your church in the geographic area? Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And let’s talk about the tension between this side of town and that side of town. And let’s, you know, let’s wrestle with, you know, some of those issues. And then let’s, and then let’s talk about like, like, man, who are we as a church on our best day? And what does it feel like when we’re like living up to our full potential? Aaron Stanski — And then we even get into some of the things around like, man, what are what are some of the strategic drivers? What’s driving more people hearing about Jesus? What’s working really well? What do you see as opportunities or things that where if you had the right leader or finances that you’d be able to you know, accomplish even more of your mission. Aaron Stanski — And so by starting there and then starting to work down towards, okay, where is your facility aligned with that with that exercise and where is it misaligned? Okay, let’s unpack that a little bit. And then without getting into ah the solution yet, I want to meet like individually with each you know ministry leader… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …talk about what how check-in works and all of those things. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so it’s really sort of this almost like a 360 review of what’s happening between the mission and vision God’s given us, and how are our facilities helping or hindering that mission and vision. Aaron Stanski — And then it just comes down to budget. And so, okay, here are the possible solutions. Here’s what roughly what some of those things are going to cost. And then it’s going to the, going to God in prayer and saying, okay, what are you calling us to do? What are based on these options and trying to figure it out? Rich Birch — I want I want to come back to the budget question in a second. But I’ve I think I probably have stole this off you. I have said to multiple church leaders that like our buildings were built, there was like a philosophical underpinning of the the buildings that we were built with. There was a ministry model that they were built on. Aaron Stanski — Sure. Yeah. Rich Birch — And then there’s been a lag between when we made those decisions, we’ve we built them. Now we’ve been using them for X number of years. And our ministry model may no longer be the same as the building, or probably isn’t actually the same as when the building was built. Rich Birch — What’s your sense on how long that lag time is kind of between the, they they you know, we built something. If we built something more than 10 years ago, you know we probably want to readdress or look at our facilities afresh and say does this actually meet the needs of… Aaron Stanski — Sure. Rich Birch — Because I feel like so many of us are in like the the cramped shoes that just don’t quite fit they work but they don’t quite fitWhat do you think that lag time is? Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, the lag time is getting shorter and shorter. Rich Birch — Okay. Aaron Stanski — It used to be, you know, it probably used to be 40 or 50 years… Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — …you know, without major ministry model shifts and stuff. Obviously, you know, Willow Creek, North Point, you know, coming onto of the scene in the in the late 90s and stuff really shifted. We have churches all the way up into the 2000s, even into the 2010s that sort of copied the model of the Willow Creeks and some of those things. And I think we’re seeing, you know, we’re seeing the model shifting a lot faster now. Rich Birch — Interesting. Aaron Stanski — I’d say, you know, you know, we’re probably in a faster 10 to 20 year cycle, something like that. But I think we’re coming out of the, you know, the, you know, that model of Willow Creek and North Point and stuff. And we’re, we’re moving into a new season. And it’s kind of exciting for us. Rich Birch — Yeah. Aaron Stanski — I mean, we get to, we get to sit on the front edge of all of that. Churches like in fantastic places, being creative, reaching, you know, people for Christ. And so it’s just interesting to kind of observe some of those things and, um and observe what’s working really well and, and where it we can improve, you know? Rich Birch — Yeah. You’re baiting me. What are those things that you’ve seen that have shifted? There’s got to be, or is that the magic? We got to call Aaron to find out. Aaron Stanski — No, you don’t have to call Aaron. No, I mean, the thing, I mean, like, you know, I heard someone share this with me recently, right? I mean, every Netflix account homepage is different for every person, all billion subscribers or whatever that they have. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — They’re individually tailored to to those individuals. And I know that because when I had a bunch of seventh grade boys spend the night at my house, like my algorithm got so messed up on my Netflix account last weekend. Rich Birch — Love it. Love it. Aaron Stanski — But I think there is a shift away from you know some of the bigger, more institutional types of look and feel and trying to get down to, okay, how are we engaging one-on-one with people who are walking in and where they’re at. Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — How do we, you know, instead of preach a sermon at them, how do we hear their story? And what does it look like for us to hear their story in in various places, whether that’s a welcome center, whether that’s, ah you know, side by side in the pew, whether that’s in sort of a first steps class. And so there’s a shift on that side of things… Rich Birch — Yep. Yeah, that’s interesting. Aaron Stanski — …just like as we look at the next generation and how we engage and reach the next generation. Rich Birch — Okay, I want to loop back on the money question. So for folks that don’t know, a part of what I do is actually help churches with that. And don’t really talk about it publicly, but I do. And, you know, there is this interesting tension that churches often come to this. It’s like we think we’re different than our ourselves. Rich Birch — And that if I was going to go build a new house, I would have to start with, well, how much income do I have? And like, what can the, you know, what can the, you know, what what would the what would the bank give me from a mortgage point of view? Like I start with reality around my finances. But so many churches start with, let’s build this giant thing. And it’s totally disconnected from the from what we could actually afford to either raise or carry long-term. Rich Birch — How much variance can a church bring to a design? Like if they upfront are defining, Hey, like we can afford probably 5 million. I know I’ve got $35 million dollars in dreams or maybe not. That’s, that’s too crazy. I got $15 million dollars in dreams. Is it possible for me to, to actually get that into a tighter box? Help us understand how do we do that? How do we on the front end be realistic with our finances as we’re doing this design thing? Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, I think we have to with open hands, we have to hold out the, you know, the dreams, the vision, you know, the stuff that God’s given us. And we have to prayerfully sort of go through that exercise and say, okay, ah but how much risk do I want to introduce into the organization, like via debt? Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — What what is God actually calling us to do with those things? And we have to be creative in how we and and how we get across the finish line. I think when I when I hear sometimes a senior pastor sharing with me his $35 million dollars vision, Rich… Rich Birch — Yes, yes, yes. Aaron Stanski — …what I immediately try to do is say, okay, talk to me about what it is about that $35 million dollar thing that’s resonating with you. Rich Birch — Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Aaron Stanski — And so even though he’s describing something that’s $35 million, dollars and as an architect, I might get really excited about drawing $35 million dollars worth of stuff. Rich Birch — Yes. Aaron Stanski — If he actually can’t afford it and can’t raise it, he’s actually not going to go do it. Rich Birch — Right. Aaron Stanski — So I need to go back to that vision and say, okay, what are the pieces in there that are from God, that are ah that are aligned with the mission that his church has and stuff? And I need to contextualize that. And then as an architect, as a designer, I have to turn around and say, okay, with my guardrails in place of budget and scope, how do I express those things… Rich Birch — That’s good. Aaron Stanski — …in the $5 million dollars that God has entrusted our church with? And so there’s going to be a lot of difficult decisions along the way. We’re going to have to prioritize some things. And some other things might have to go on the back burner. But that’s the process that we want to help churches walk through um to to get them to that point where they’re walking into a space for the first time and going, oh, man, this feels like us. Like this is this is who God wants us to be in our community. And I’m so excited about doing ministry in this new space. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s good. So it’s it’s not, from what I hear you saying, it’s not unreasonable on the front end to be like, hey, we should actually bring, like, be clear on this is this is what we think we can actually raise. This is that what we think we can carry. We think we could do a project of X, whatever. And that needs to be early on in the discussion rather than we’re disappointed on the back end. Oh my goodness, we got this this big number and we don’t know what to do with it. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I like to be doing it simultaneously. I like to be doing the Needs Analysis and working through, okay, here’s the eight different project options. You can relocate and spend $35 million. You can add on. You can you can do this. All right, here’s your here’s your four options, $10, $8, $6, $4 million dollars And at the same time, I like to encourage churches to like, okay, go talk to someone like yourself… Rich Birch — Yep. Aaron Stanski — …and say, okay, what do we think we could raise if we did a capital campaign? How much debt do we currently have? How do our elders feel about us you know borrowing some money if it if it makes a bigger impact on the project? Because if we can bring those two things together and pray through it and get clarity from God about what he’s asking us to do, then I can go ah help draw buildings and blueprints and things like that. Rich, you can help them raise some money and they and we can you know we can go through that process. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s so good. Yeah, it’s great. And you know, my experience has been every one of those steps, friends, is, it’s a lot of work. It’s, it’s like a, it’s a faith ah stretching experience. There are late, late nights staring at the ceiling, but every one of those I’ve been a part of, literally 100% of them have been transformative in the life of the church. You know, when they, when you look back, you’re like, wow, that was an inflection point. I am so glad we went through that. It wasn’t this like we did that and I was like, man, that wasn’t such so good in the end. It was really was amazing. Rich Birch — Well, there’s a resource that you’ve provided. It’s called 10 Things to Get ah Right Before You Build. Talk to us about this resource and then and then where can where can we want to make sure people get this. Tell us tell us a little bit about this. Aaron Stanski — Yeah, I mean, like with, you know, church, hundreds of churches calling us, you know, every year, asking a lot of the questions that we’ve talked about today. Like we tried to distill down what are the most common things the churches are like, okay, pause real quick. I got to go do something real fast before we decide that we can sort of move forward. And so some of these things are what happens like while you’re talking to Risepointe and some of these things might be before. But I think it’s just kind of a helpful reminder and ah a thoughtful list to kind of work through. Aaron Stanski — And so if that’s helpful at all, or if that’s interesting at all, um you can just go to risepointe.com/unseminary. And a little ah little landing page will pop up there. There’s two things you can do on that page. The first one is to just give us your name and your email there and sign up and get that 10 things to download. Aaron Stanski — I also threw another button on there this morning in case you’re like, hey, that sounds great, but I’ve got I’ve got a specific question I have about our building. Or like, I actually really need to talk to you guys about what our options are. And so I put another button down there at the bottom. If you want to schedule a call with myself or one of our architects, we’d love to hop on the phone with you. No charge for that. 30 minutes. Just kind of talk through where you’re at, what some of your questions are and see if we might be able to help. So ah once again, that’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And you can get all that, all that stuff right there. Rich Birch — Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s risepointe.com/unseminary. And friends, I’ve had multiple friends in ministry who have engaged with with Aaron across the entire spectrum. The like free 30 minute thing all the way up through, you know, the kind of full deal, help get a whole project out the door. And and just so happy with the work that Risepointe does. And just has been transformative for their churches. So you get a hearty endorsement from me. You really should do that. Again, that’s just risepointe.com/unseminary. You can pick this up. It is a helpful little PDF, and the schedule call is a great thing. Rich Birch — Well, Aaron, I appreciate you being here today. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. Rich Birch — If people want to track with you guys or if they’re anywhere else online, obviously risepointe.com. We want to send them to anywhere else online. We want to we want to send them to. Aaron Stanski — Yeah. I mean, you can always, uh, you know, follow us on the Insta or whatever you want to do there. Rich Birch — Nice. Love it. Aaron Stanski — If you’re into like, you know, cool pictures of like steel being erected, ah or, uh, kids ministry stuff or pictures and stuff, we’re trying to share a little bit more info there. But yeah, I mean, or just our website and, uh, yeah, stay connected. Rich Birch — That’s so good. Thanks for being here and have a good day, buddy. Aaron Stanski — All right, you too. Bye.

Teton Bagel opens a new location in Hemming Village. Student Reporter Cody Miller interviewed Joe Fuhriman, assistant manager about this development.

X is crawling with "American" accounts that are actually being run from places like India, Bangladesh and Nigeria. The new geographic location feature has dropped, which allows users to see where a user is actually located.It's shocking how many people are lying about where they are, and creating personas to get engagement.So are these people lying for clout, X revenue share, or something more insidious... like stirring up political unrest? Let's talk about it.Watch this podcast episode on YouTube and all major podcast hosts including Spotify.CLOWNFISH TV is an independent, opinionated news and commentary podcast that covers Entertainment and Tech from a consumer's point of view. We talk about Gaming, Comics, Anime, TV, Movies, Animation and more. Hosted by Kneon and Geeky Sparkles.D/REZZED News covers Pixels, Pop Culture, and the Paranormal! We're an independent, opinionated entertainment news blog covering Video Games, Tech, Comics, Movies, Anime, High Strangeness, and more. As part of Clownfish TV, we strive to be balanced, based, and apolitical. Get more news, views and reviews on Clownfish TV News - https://more.clownfishtv.com/On YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/ClownfishTVOn Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4Tu83D1NcCmh7K1zHIedvgOn Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/clownfish-tv-audio-edition/id1726838629

He loves it so much he bought a "Never-Ending Pasta Pass"

"Join Xavier Kelly and Eddie Sauceda as they take you behind the scenes to show how they're preparing for our new location. From setting up the space to getting everything ready for upcoming operations, you'll get an inside look at the process and what's coming next for the team."Download The Ultimate Checklist for Free:

(Lander, WY) – The KOVE 1330 AM / 107.7 FM Today in the 10 interview series Coffee Time continued today with host Vince Tropea, who recently spoke with Pam Wolfe from the Good Samaritan Community Meal. The weekly free meal in Lander recently moved locations from the Methodist Church parking lot to the Meadowlark Market and Kitchen at 228 Main Street. From 5:30 to 6:30 PM, folks can pick up to-go meals in the alley behind the Market (between Main and Lincoln), with signage to help guide the way. Wolfe chats about the move, the history of the meal, who provides the meals, the rotating cast of volunteers/how you can volunteer, and the importance of a reliable free meal, even for folks who just need a break from cooking; there are no questions asked at the Good Smartin Community Meal! Check out the full Coffee Time interview with Wolfe below for all of the details! Be sure to tune in to Today in the 10 and Coffee Time interviews every morning from 7:00 to 9:00 AM on KOVE 1330 AM / 107.7 FM, or stream it live right here.

In one of the most disturbing cases in modern memory, Kimberly Sullivan stands accused of holding her stepson captive for twenty years inside a locked room in their Waterbury, Connecticut home. When firefighters arrived to battle a blaze in February 2025, they didn't just find smoke—they found a man who was 5'9” tall and weighed only 68 pounds, a skeletal figure who told police he had set the fire himself because it was the only way out. Now, in a stunning twist, a Connecticut judge has ruled that Sullivan — currently out on bond with a GPS ankle monitor — has the right to access the victim's new name and secret location so she can “confront her accuser.” Prosecutors fought the motion, warning that the victim is terrified of her and still recovering physically and mentally from years of starvation and isolation. But the judge ruled that her constitutional rights outweigh his safety. Let that sink in: a woman accused of locking a child away for two decades now knows where that same victim lives. In this episode of Hidden Killers, Tony Brueski breaks down how the system failed at every turn — from the school that stopped asking questions, to child services that walked away after one welfare check, to a legal system that calls this “fairness.” How could this happen? How does someone vanish for twenty years while the entire state looks the other way? And how can a courtroom still prioritize an alleged abuser's rights over a survivor's safety? This isn't justice. It's a procedural nightmare — and it's exactly why the system is broken. #KimberlySullivan #WaterburyCase #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #TonyBrueski #SystemicFailure #JusticeSystem #VictimsRights #AbuseSurvivor #CourtroomFailure Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod Listen Ad-Free On Apple Podcasts Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-today-premium-plus-ad-free-advance-episode/id1705422872

In one of the most disturbing cases in modern memory, Kimberly Sullivan stands accused of holding her stepson captive for twenty years inside a locked room in their Waterbury, Connecticut home. When firefighters arrived to battle a blaze in February 2025, they didn't just find smoke—they found a man who was 5'9” tall and weighed only 68 pounds, a skeletal figure who told police he had set the fire himself because it was the only way out. Now, in a stunning twist, a Connecticut judge has ruled that Sullivan — currently out on bond with a GPS ankle monitor — has the right to access the victim's new name and secret location so she can “confront her accuser.” Prosecutors fought the motion, warning that the victim is terrified of her and still recovering physically and mentally from years of starvation and isolation. But the judge ruled that her constitutional rights outweigh his safety. Let that sink in: a woman accused of locking a child away for two decades now knows where that same victim lives. In this episode of Hidden Killers, Tony Brueski breaks down how the system failed at every turn — from the school that stopped asking questions, to child services that walked away after one welfare check, to a legal system that calls this “fairness.” How could this happen? How does someone vanish for twenty years while the entire state looks the other way? And how can a courtroom still prioritize an alleged abuser's rights over a survivor's safety? This isn't justice. It's a procedural nightmare — and it's exactly why the system is broken. #KimberlySullivan #WaterburyCase #HiddenKillers #TrueCrime #TonyBrueski #SystemicFailure #JusticeSystem #VictimsRights #AbuseSurvivor #CourtroomFailure Want to comment and watch this podcast as a video? Check out our YouTube Channel. https://www.youtube.com/@hiddenkillerspod Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hiddenkillerspod/ Tik-Tok https://www.tiktok.com/@hiddenkillerspod X Twitter https://x.com/tonybpod Listen Ad-Free On Apple Podcasts Here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/true-crime-today-premium-plus-ad-free-advance-episode/id1705422872

One of our state's popular and free music festivals is returning to the capital city soon, and this year, it'll be in a brand new location, one that has been under renovation for many years.

Michael Zaleski President & CEO, Riverfront Recapture. Vinnie Carbone (owner of Carbone's, where the 2025 Big Mo is taking place at the new Front Street location). The Big Mo' is Riverfront Recapture's signature annual fundraising event, celebrating the exciting progress and positive changes along the Connecticut River. Each year they gather in a new location, celebrating new and positive changes that connect people with the Connecticut River.

New Winery Silver Creek Winery in Center Point TexasAdega Vinho Winery's New Location in FredericksburgTexas Hill Country Wineries Partners with Vine Sleuth for Wine Style Selector

Doug Buchanan of Columbus Business News gives us all the info on local business news including new Bakeries and Barbeques joints opening

The 17th Annual Apple Days Festival will be at a new location this year. West Coast swing dancers from across the Four Corners are invited to learn from champion-level dancers at Swing Days Ablaze. And the La Plata Electric Association will host a series of free events this October. Watch to learn more! By Rachel Hughes. Watch this story at www.durangolocal.news/newsstories/new-location-for-apple-days-festival  This story is sponsored by Serious Texas Bar-B-Q and Payroll Department.Support the show

To give towards our new campus click here: https://ascendchurchatl.com/expansion/You can also text any dollar amount to “888-547-7520” followed by "New Church Campus"Enjoy this video tour of the new campus we are believing God for together, so many more lives may be impacted for the Kingdom and Glory of God: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YN7QRsxUJzs&t=14sCheck out our YouTube Channel here:https://www.youtube.com/@thebridalgloryFollow us on:https://ascendchurchatl.com/https://www.instagram.com/bridalglory/https://www.instagram.com/ascendchurc...https://www.instagram.com/ascendacademy/https://www.facebook.com/ascendchurchatlhttps://www.facebook.com/ascendacadem...https://www.facebook.com/bridalglory#brianguerin  #ascendchurch  #bridalglory  #podcast #ascendchurchworship #ascendacademy  #preaching #church

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

 Dylan Mosshart, owner of Fridays Vintage, joins Viva Downtown on the Downtown Discussion Podcast to celebrate three years in business and the grand re-opening at their new location at 1401 Market Street on the Market/Tehama Corner. Dylan discusses the growth of his mom-and-pop vintage shop and owning the business alongside his wife, Paige, his passion for timeless clothing, and the journey from pop-up events to a full brick-and-mortar storefront. He also shares advice for entrepreneurs looking to grow their own businesses in downtown communities. Fridays Vintage 1401 Market Street, Redding CA 96001https://www.fridaysvintage.co/

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

Despite the buzz around AI and social media, word of mouth is still the most powerful tool for building a community. In this episode, Suzanne Carver, a massage therapist, yoga teacher, and pelvic health educator, shares her journey of establishing a successful practice through grassroots and word-of-mouth methods. Suzanne discusses her experiences transitioning her practice from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Nashville, Tennessee, and the changing dynamics of client attention spans. Our conversation explores effective offline strategies, the importance of personal connections, and integrating technology like text messaging to stay top of mind with clients. Suzanne also shares insights on maintaining authenticity in client communications and the challenges of building a practice in a new city.   EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS: 04:47 Moving to a New Location as An Established Teacher 07:01 Why Social Media Isn't Always the Answer 14:41 Personal Touch as SuperPower 16:08 Email vs. Text Messaging 24:07 Boundaries and Booking Strategies 28:03 The Power of Genuine Passion and Authentic Care 33:09 Visibility and Professional Photos 37:24 Final Thoughts and Encouragement   EPISODE LINKS & RESOURCES: Suzanne Carver Follow Suzanne on Instagram @suzannecarver Follow Suzanne on Facebook   LINKS AND RESOURCES: Follow YTR on Instagram @yoga.teacher.resource  Join the Yoga Teacher Resource email list Join the Yoga Teacher Resource Facebook Group Learn more about the Impact Club Leave a review on iTunes Ask a question for the podcast on the Yoga Teacher Resource website or on SpeakPipe

On this week's episode of Little Talks, Roop and Claudia are back from HubSpot's INBOUND 25 marketing conference in San Fransisco, and boy oh boy do they have updates! Everything from new HubSpot products to a new marketing playbook for the AI age called Loop Marketing, it's a LOT. Plus their favorite speakers, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and friend of the podcast, Jay Schwedelson (who had a special message for Sam, since he wasn't able to go this year).So where to begin? Well, this week we just try to unpack what they saw and heard from a high level. In the coming weeks you'll get breakdowns on new HubSpot offerings ranging from Breeze Agents (HubSpot's AI platform) to Smart CRM (their data enrichment tool that is truly next level), as well as a deeper dive into The Loop (HubSpot's reimagined playbook for staying in front of customers where they are in the age of AI.Think of this episode as a "preview" of what's to come. Going to catch our breathes, see you again next week!—Roop, Claudia, Sam and ChelseaP.S. Pre-order Jay Scwedleson's new book, Stupider People Have Done It: Marketing Truths, Career Moves, and Life Advice for Doers! All proceeds go to V Foundation for cancer research.Tell us what you think!

Moving your studio to a brand-new city (or even across town) doesn't have to mean starting from scratch. In this episode, the team unpacks how smart photographers turn relocation into a booking-boosting opportunity — instead of a slow, painful restart.In this episode, you'll discover:The 6–8 week marketing window that can have you fully booked before you even unpack.How to use Facebook ads and Google to build demand in your new market before you arrive.Networking hacks to create instant alliances and referral streams.Why being “well-known” might be overrated — and what actually drives bookings.Smart ways to turn your current clients into your biggest cheerleaders (and referrers) in your new location.Crucial zoning, permitting, and “Google listing” tips that can save you costly headaches.If you're a photographer facing a move — or just want a fresh injection of clients — this episode will change the way you think about relocation.Join the Difference Maker Revolution!Take the first step toward creating a photography business that makes a difference. Visit Difference Maker Inner Circle to learn more about transforming your business through proven strategies and mentorship.The Difference Maker Revolution podcast helps you grow your photography business by teaching you how to:Generate highly targeted leads.Increase conversions with ideal clients.Build long-term client relationships.Create consistent, predictable revenue.This show is hosted by industry experts:Steve Saporito: Serial portrait studio owner and photography educator.Jeanine McLeod: Family portrait photographer specializing in joyful, storytelling photography for parents.Jonathan Ryle: Photography marketing funnel specialist.Ronan Ryle: Board of Directors of the PPA, Professional Photographers of America.Tune In for Real-World StrategiesGain insights from professionals who know what it takes to build a successful photography business. Whether you're looking to increase client satisfaction, improve your sales, or align your work with what clients truly value, this episode is packed with actionable advice.Through fun, educational, and inspiring discussions, the Difference Maker Revolution aims to help you create a healthier society through photography.

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

WBZ NewsRadio's Jim MacKay has more.

On today's MadTech Daily: TikTok AI Mandate, Snapchat's New Location Ads and Nielsen Strikes 'Marketing Cloud' Deal With WPP Media's InfoSum Visit: ExchangeWire.com Upcoming event: ATS LONDON, September 9th

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

Send us a textWe explore the innovative world of RD1 Spirits with Barry Brinegar and Dr. Jared Gollihue, discovering how scientific methodology is reshaping bourbon finishing techniques at their new Lexington distillery.• RD1's journey from honoring William Tarr's 1865 legacy to becoming pioneers in wood-finished Kentucky bourbon• Dr. Jared Gollihue's scientific approach to wood finishing, bringing PhD-level expertise to bourbon production• The challenges of wood selection, including regulatory hurdles with the TTB and FDA for exotic wood species• Why whiskey needs time to "settle" after blending or opening, with flavor compounds needing time to recalculate• Beer barrel finishing experiments creating unique flavor profiles through a circular aging process• Sister Cities whiskey, blending bourbon and rye finished with French oak and Japanese Mizunara• Experimental offerings available only at the distillery's tasting room, including smoked oak and maple• RD1's position as an anchor tenant in Lexington's new entertainment district at The CommonsVisit RD1 Spirits at their new distillery location in The Commons in Lexington, Kentucky to experience their unique wood-finished bourbons and experimental offerings firsthand.What happens when scientific methodology meets the artistry of Kentucky bourbon? At RD1 Spirits' gleaming new distillery in Lexington, the answer is nothing short of revolutionary. Barry Brinegar and Dr. Jared Gollihue are writing bourbon's next chapter through methodical wood experimentation that transforms traditional Kentucky whiskey into something extraordinary. Their journey from honoring the William Tarr legacy to pioneering innovative finishing techniques demonstrates the untapped potential still waiting to be discovered in America's native spirit.The scientific precision behind RD1's approach is fascinating. Dr. Gollihue, with his PhD in wood maturation, doesn't just randomly add wood to barrels – he calculates precise ratios, documents every variable, and maintains 50+ test barrels simultaneously. When he explains why whiskey needs time to "recalculate" after blending or why flavor chemistry doesn't scale linearly, you realize this is bourbon-making at its most thoughtful.The tasting room offers an unparalleled experience where visitors can sample experimental barrels that showcase woods from around the world – Mizunara oak, sweet cherry, French oak, and even maple wood smoked on bourbon barrel staves. Their Sister Cities release brilliantly combines bourbon and rye with French and Japanese oak influences, honoring Lexington's international connections while creating a wholly unique whiskey expression.As an anchor tenant in Lexington's emerging entertainment district at The Commons, RD1 is positioned at the center of a bourbon tourism destination that will soon feature pickleball courts, axe throwing, and an amphitheater. This blend of innovation, accessibility, and Kentucky heritage makes RD1 a must-visit for anyone wondering what more Kentucky bourbon can do.Come taste the future of bourbon where science meets art – no lab coat required, but an adventurous palate is highly recommended. Add for SOFL If You Have GohstsSupport the showhttps://www.scotchybourbonboys.com The Scotchy bourbon Boys are #3 in Feedspots Top 60 whiskey podcasts in the world https://podcast.feedspot.com/whiskey_podcasts/

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

Owner of Tin Tea Chau Truong talks about the opening of the store's new location in Downtown Northfield and what the new space will offer: an expanded menu and more. 

...So then Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, Romans 10:17 (KJV)

Today on the podcast Eric is joined by Nilesh Ranchod and Rajen Giga of 2 Phat Bastard Pies. Nilesh and Rajen speak with Eric about how they first became friends, coming to Houston from Zimbabwe, moving from environmental company work to the food industry, their fusion approach with their savory pies, how they're pies are different, flavors that were inspired by Houston, transitioning from catering to an everyday business model, opening inside The Post, the spicy options they offer, dishes they're developing, and more!   Follow Eric on Instagram/Threads @ericsandler. You can also reach Eric by emailing him at eric@culturemap.com. Check out some of his latest articles at Culturemap.com: Houston Trattoria and BBQ Joint Team Up for Hill Country Flood Relief Houston Greek Restaurant Reboots with Fresh Location and Refined Style Favorite Houston Doughnut Shop Swaps One Private Equity Owner for Another Top Houston Barbecue Joint Fires Up a New Location at Hobby Airport Convivial Canadian Sports Bar Sets Opening Date for New Woodlands Pub

The Swanky Maven Felice Sloan makes triumphant return to the podcast! Eric and Felice discuss some of the latest happenings in the Houston restaurant and bar scene including the opening of the new permanent location of the cult-favorite burger concept Boo's Burgers, the debut of a new limited time pop-up cocktail bar Navi's at The Post Oak Hotel, and the reopening of the Colorado Club. In the Restaurants of the Week portion, Latuli is featured.  Follow Eric on Instagram/Threads @ericsandler. You can also reach Eric by emailing him at eric@culturemap.com. Check out some of his latest articles at Culturemap.com: Cult-Favorite Houston Burger Pop-Up Sets Opening Date for Permanent Location Tilman Fertitta's Posh Hotel Crafts a Limited Time Cocktail Speakeasy Premier Houston Nightclub Group Reopening Iconic Strip Club This Month Favorite Houston Doughnut Shop Swaps One Private Equity Owner for Another Top Houston Barbecue Joint Fires Up a New Location at Hobby Airport

Send us a textThis week on Haunt Weekly, we re doing the news! And there is a LOT of news to go over. We have an update on the Field of Screams, big news from Chicago and the loss of an industry legend. It's a busy time for the news so kick back, relax and let us bring to you all the haunted attraction news that's fit for print, or rather, podcast.This Week's Episode Includes:1. Intro2. Question of the Week3. Conference Reminders4. Field of Screams Story 1 - https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/06/field-of-screams-harassment-teenagers-volunteers/5. Field of Screams Story 2 - https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/mountville-borough-objects-to-field-of-screams-application-for-liquor-distillery-license/article_360f7869-5449-46b7-a4f9-21ddfea59678.html?tpcc=facebook_main6. Field of Screams Story 3 - https://www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/07/public-safety-field-of-screams-child-volunteer-permit-labor/7. Universal Bringing Year-Round Haunt to Chicago - https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/universal-is-bringing-a-new-year-round-horror-experience-to-chicago-city-announces/3776999/8. Fear Dome to Open in Fright Dome's Old Location - https://neon.reviewjournal.com/arts-culture/attractions/haunted-attraction-returns-to-circus-circus-this-year-with-fear-dome-3316257/9. Freakling Bros. Pauses Show for 2025 - https://www.fox5vegas.com/2025/07/09/freakling-bros-horror-shows-pauses-2025-halloween-season-work-new-experience/10. Planned Texas Haunt Hits Roadblock - https://www.waxahachiesun.com/business/a-haunting-proposal-hits-a-roadblock-planning-committee-rejects-waxahachie-haunted-house-city-council-keeps/article_7b3fb280-54cd-46c3-ae4c-2ea38a6e483e.html11. Terror Trail in Indiana Cancels 2025 - https://www.14news.com/2025/06/14/terror-trail-cancels-neighbors-relieved-over-year-round-props/12. Maryland Field of Screams (Different Haunt) Faces Permitting Issues - https://bethesdamagazine.com/2025/06/30/field-of-screams-winter-city-lights-danger-of-cancellation/13. Midsummer Scream Announced Bigger Hall of Shadows - https://www.allhallowsgeek.com/midsummer-scream-announces-bigger-more-terrifying-hall-of-shadows-for-2025/14. Terrifier Coming to HHN - https://www.wftv.com/news/local/art-clown-is-heading-halloween-horror-nights/65BKIBKQOFEXJNMAHUGFGVM3FA/15. Hersheypark Halloween and Dark Nights to Return - https://hauntedattractionnetwork.com/hersheypark-halloween-and-dark-nights-return-with-new-haunted-house-for-2025/16. Fear Farm in Arizona Moves to New Location - https://www.abc15.com/entertainment/events/fear-farm-haunted-fairgrounds-to-open-this-fall-in-a-brand-new-venue17. Erebus Co-Founder Passes Away - https://mailchi.mp/hauntedattractionnetwork.com/haunt-industry-mourns-sudden-loss-of-edward-terebus18. ConclusionsAll in all, this is one episode you do NOT want to miss!Get in Touch and Follow Us!Facebook: @HauntWeeklyTwitter: @HauntWeeklyYouTube: @HauntWeeklyEmail: info@hauntweekly.com

In this episode of the Huntavore Podcast, Nick and guest Ricky Folger discuss her transition from the Rocky Mountains to Florida, exploring new hunting and foraging opportunities. They delve into the challenges of hunting invasive species like iguanas and hogs, the importance of processing game, and the culinary adventures that come with utilizing every part of the animal. Ricky shares her excitement for saltwater fishing and the unique experiences that come with bear hunting and cooking. The conversation wraps up with tips for summer cooking and outdoor dining, emphasizing the joy of being in nature and trying new things. Rikky is transitioning from the Rocky Mountains to Florida's swamps, and she's excited to explore foraging and hunting in this new environment. Iguana hunting has proven to be a fun and challenging experience, especially in a state where invasive species like hogs and iguanas are so prevalent. She values the skill of processing game and enjoys teaching new hunters how to break down and cook their harvest. For Rikky, utilizing all parts of the animal is an important aspect of hunting culture. Alongside hunting, she's taking on the new adventure of saltwater fishing. She also appreciates the culinary value of bear fat, which adds great flavor to dishes. As summer rolls in, she emphasizes the importance of fresh ingredients and outdoor grilling in seasonal cooking. Show Partners: Umai Dry Instagram: @umaidry Website: bit.ly/3WhfnnX Sign up for the newsletter for 10% off TieBoss Instagram: @tiebossllc Website: https://tieboss.com/pod?ref=pod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of the Huntavore Podcast, Nick and guest Ricky Folger discuss her transition from the Rocky Mountains to Florida, exploring new hunting and foraging opportunities. They delve into the challenges of hunting invasive species like iguanas and hogs, the importance of processing game, and the culinary adventures that come with utilizing every part of the animal. Ricky shares her excitement for saltwater fishing and the unique experiences that come with bear hunting and cooking. The conversation wraps up with tips for summer cooking and outdoor dining, emphasizing the joy of being in nature and trying new things.Rikky is transitioning from the Rocky Mountains to Florida's swamps, and she's excited to explore foraging and hunting in this new environment. Iguana hunting has proven to be a fun and challenging experience, especially in a state where invasive species like hogs and iguanas are so prevalent. She values the skill of processing game and enjoys teaching new hunters how to break down and cook their harvest. For Rikky, utilizing all parts of the animal is an important aspect of hunting culture. Alongside hunting, she's taking on the new adventure of saltwater fishing. She also appreciates the culinary value of bear fat, which adds great flavor to dishes. As summer rolls in, she emphasizes the importance of fresh ingredients and outdoor grilling in seasonal cooking.Show Partners:Umai DryInstagram: @umaidryWebsite: bit.ly/3WhfnnXSign up for the newsletter for 10% offTieBossInstagram: @tiebossllcWebsite: https://tieboss.com/pod?ref=pod

In this episode of the Huntavore Podcast, Nick and guest Ricky Folger discuss her transition from the Rocky Mountains to Florida, exploring new hunting and foraging opportunities. They delve into the challenges of hunting invasive species like iguanas and hogs, the importance of processing game, and the culinary adventures that come with utilizing every part of the animal. Ricky shares her excitement for saltwater fishing and the unique experiences that come with bear hunting and cooking. The conversation wraps up with tips for summer cooking and outdoor dining, emphasizing the joy of being in nature and trying new things.Rikky is transitioning from the Rocky Mountains to Florida's swamps, and she's excited to explore foraging and hunting in this new environment. Iguana hunting has proven to be a fun and challenging experience, especially in a state where invasive species like hogs and iguanas are so prevalent. She values the skill of processing game and enjoys teaching new hunters how to break down and cook their harvest. For Rikky, utilizing all parts of the animal is an important aspect of hunting culture. Alongside hunting, she's taking on the new adventure of saltwater fishing. She also appreciates the culinary value of bear fat, which adds great flavor to dishes. As summer rolls in, she emphasizes the importance of fresh ingredients and outdoor grilling in seasonal cooking.Show Partners:Umai DryInstagram: @umaidryWebsite: bit.ly/3WhfnnXSign up for the newsletter for 10% offTieBossInstagram: @tiebossllcWebsite: https://tieboss.com/pod?ref=pod

Our monthly Greater Tehachapi Chamber of Commerce TehachaPod episode features Matt Battaglia, owner of the House of Wax on Tehachapi Blvd. Matt talks about his record store he owns with his wife Kim. Matt talks about the resurgance of vinyl records to a new generation and how closely the House of Wax works with other local businesses in Tehachapi.

Send us a textFree Marketing Audit: MavenMarketingAudit.comMaven Method Training: MavenMethodTraining.comOur Website: https://frankandmaven.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frankandmavenmarketing/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@frankandmavenTwitter: https://twitter.com/frankandmavenLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frank-and-maven/Host: Brandon WelchCo-Host: Caleb AgeeExecutive Producer: Carter BreauxAudio/Video Producer: Nate the Camera GuyDo you have a marketing problem you'd like us to help solve? Send it to MavenMonday@FrankandMaven.com!Get a copy of our Best-Selling Book, The Maven Marketer Here: https://a.co/d/1clpm8a

Sofia Stack, Marketing Director for Ronald McDonald House of Tampa Bay, joins Dana and Read to talk about the organization's new location and how the community can support RHMC and families with critically ill children.

In this episode, Vee and Elle dive into their recent experiences in ENM, sharing naughty stories, recent personal growths and lesson learned. Jewelry Mishaps and Lingerie Inconveniences During Sex.  (00:00)Top Floor Play Party Intentions: New Play Partner, New Location, Plus Pushing Exhibitionist Boundaries. (5:48)The Art of the Stacking: Creative Sexual Positions with 4 people (Porn Star Wolf Hudson Inspired). (18:49)Soft Cock: Thank you!  (21:41)Advantages of Smaller Dicks: Listener Question Answered. (23:50)FOMO Trigger: Partner Staying Out Later Than You.  (33:51)Metamour Challenge.  (40:53)Where to find us, and how you can support us:Instagram: @girlsgonedeeppod Merch: girlsgonedeep.com/shop Woo More Play Affiliate Link: Support us while you shop! WHOREible Life: Get 10% off your deck with code GONEDEEP at whoreiblelife.com Instagram: @wlthegameContact: girlsgonedeep@gmail.com © 2025 GGD Alchemy, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Hello Happy Hour! This week, we are at a new location because you can't be without AC and be in Florida so Duce is heading over to casa Davis for some fun-filled episodes! We talk about Duces Lakeland adventures, comics, and we figure out why you do not eat the tail off of a shrimp! Have a great week everyone!

5-27-25 Afternoon Rush -Bachelor In Paradise Reveals New Location & Harry Potter New Cast Revealed & Ms. Rachel Calls For Action On Gaza War Stop putting off those doctors appointments and go to Zocdoc dot com slash RUSHHOUR to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. go to patreon.com/daveneal for more bonus content!

This episode we talk about PSA's first retail location inside of Burbank Sportscards in California, PSA Minimum grade request, NBA Lottery & NBA vs NFL prospects. S6E34

The owners of Finnerty's in New York City, Dieter Seeling & Brian Stapleton, joined Murph & Markus this morning to discuss re-opening at a new location at 18 W 33rd St and the significance of Finnerty's as the largest Bay Area sports bar in NYCSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The owners of Finnerty's in New York City, Dieter Seeling & Brian Stapleton, joined Murph & Markus this morning to discuss re-opening at a new location at 18 W 33rd St and the significance of Finnerty's as the largest Bay Area sports bar in NYCSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Seth and Sean discuss the Texans seeking a new location for the team's headquarters and dive into some quotes from ownership about the challenges presented by their current headquarters as the team has grown.