Latest / Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo / Amber Rockey: Christian Ministry, Business, And Networking

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Amber Rockey: Christian Ministry, Business, And Networking · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

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  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events,
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  defending biblical Christianity.
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  No topic, off limits.
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  And now, here's your host, David Firazzo.
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  Hello friends, family and Christ, thank you so much for listening and sharing the podcast
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  and for those of you turning in and watching.
• 0:27
  Hello.
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  I'm in studio guests, so we don't always have someone in studio, but whenever I find
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  about someone that's doing something really interesting for the Lord, doing some great
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  work locally, and that means we're in Wisconsin, right?
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  I like to get them on.
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  And so this is Amber Rocky, we're going to bring her on in a minute.
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  The website is amber rocky rocky.com.
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  And she's a creative entrepreneur and ministry-minded marketer.
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  And she's passionate about helping others live out their calling in the marketplace.
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  Through amberly creative and partnerships like the serve network and business with Christ,
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  she's building spaces where faith and business come together to advance the kingdom of God.
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  Now, I'm going to have her explain a lot of that as we hear her story, so Amber, welcome
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  to World View Matters.
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  Hi.
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  Thank you so much.
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  Thanks for having me.
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  And good to have you in studio.
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  Yeah.
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  We haven't.
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  We've only had a couple since we had a new studio built here.
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  We, I think you're like the third maybe, not how a lot of people, and usually we do it
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  via Zoom, but this is good to actually have a face and someone right here.
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  So let's start with you do a lot.
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  And I want to give the websites because there's so many websites that you're involved
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  with.
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  One of them, we already gave the amber rocky.com, but there's also Kingdom Marketplace.life,
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  Kingdom Marketplace.life.
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  And friends, I'm going to have her explain these.
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  There's ServWisconsin, that's ServWi.com.
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  And then there's modernday.org, modernday.org.
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  So we're going to walk through these one at a time, and we're going to start with Kingdom
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  Marketplace.
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  But before we do that, your story, I didn't know about you.
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  And recently I was in a meeting several months ago, I think, at least now, with a couple
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  pastors and a couple Christian business owners and leaders in the community.
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  And your name came up and you were doing a website for this person and I thought, what
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  is she do?
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  And so you do websites for missionaries or for ministries.
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  Sometimes you get paid, sometimes you do them for free.
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  So before we get to that, because I think that's very interesting for people to know, how
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  did the Lord work in your life to start going down this road and this path and how long
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  have you been doing that?
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  Sure.
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  Well, thank you again for having me.
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  So I guess I would go back to when I was saved, because that's really when it all began.
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  I had grown up in church and I knew about the Lord, but I did not submit to the Lord
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  until about seven years ago.
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  And I had done what most prodigals do, really just got to the end of myself and was in
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  a very dark place and had a friend suggest to me that she thinks it's time for me to
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  go back to church and I was like, yeah, that checks out.
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  And I just went immediately and I had enough experience with church and with the Lord to
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  know that he would speak to me there, but I had no idea that my life was about to change.
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  And so I had gone to just a small local church and there was a guest speaker there that
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  day and he said these words that changed my life and they were, everybody wants Jesus
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  to be their savior, but not everybody wants them to be their Lord.
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  That's so good.
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  That is so good.
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  Think about that for a minute.
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  Everybody wants a savior, but Lord means we submit our lives.
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  To his authority, his Lordship.
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  Go ahead.
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  Yeah, so those words really like broke open my heart and it is really the Lordship of
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  Jesus Christ that saved me and completely changed me.
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  I knew right in that moment that I was never going to be the same.
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  I belong to a church now.
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  I follow the Lord now.
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  And then obviously, you know, it takes a while for everything else in your life to get
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  into order, but it was very much in the beginning there.
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  So I've been a website developer and in the marketing field for almost 20 years now.
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  And so it was, I see how God was like preparing me for the work that He had for me.
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  I didn't initially go to school for a website development, but it was my employer at the
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  time who had encouraged me to start working with websites.
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  So I had these skills and I was like, I want to use them.
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  And I had this vision, this idea that you know what I want to make websites for churches,
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  for missions, for ministries and things like that.
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  And then I just really didn't see like the pathway to that.
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  I'm really sort of first generation Christian and so there's, I have a lot of like examples
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  although I have been surrounded by an amazing body of Christ.
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  But yeah, so I kind of had that in the back of my mind and then still continued in the
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  corporate worlds for several more years.
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  And I was very blessed in that avenue.
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  But the Lord just kept kind of like pulling me towards different things.
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  And so I had briefly mentioned before we started that I make prayer journals.
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  And that was really like one of the first things that was a practical application.
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  So did you do that before you started doing websites for people?
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  Yeah.
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  Well, you know what, let's mention that.
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  That's over on your website amber rocky dot com.
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  And there's a tab my journals, prayer journals.
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  And so if this was one of the first things you did, I want you to just, how can people
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  get those on the website on Amazon?
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  Yep, so they are available on Amazon.
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  But there's links to all of the Amazon items right on my website.
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  And so really when the Lord saved me, he took something that was, I was already doing
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  which was writing and journaling, just writing everything down and he redeemed it.
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  Really like strengthened and grew my relationship with him through journaling.
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  And so it's so important to me and I just know that it can be great for other people
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  as well.
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  Yep.
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  So I, I set out to make a journal that was like, how would I, like, how do I want, like
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  what do I want to write, what do I want to do in a journal?
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  And it's basically, you know, it's start, they always start with reading the scripture,
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  maybe finding some scripture that to meditate on each day.
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  So this is not just journaling.
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  This is kind of like having a little scripture for a devotional thought and then writing
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  out.
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  Is that correct?
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  Yep.
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  Yeah.
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  So read the word, meditate on the word, write, you know, like your thoughts and it might
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  be, it might be about that word or it just might be about, you know, what's going on
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  in life.
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  And then, and then always ending in prayer.
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  And I found that so powerful because I can look back on the prayers that I've written
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  and it's like, wow, like to see how God has like come through and answered so many prayers
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  and to see how my prayers have changed over time.
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  It's really been a blessing.
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  So I want to ask you about, there's a four of them here, the Gospel of Matthew, then
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  there's Mark, Luke and John, there's four separate journals.
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  You've got women's journal, you've got men's journal and one called warrior prayer journal.
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  So just briefly differentiate, tell us about those.
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  Yep.
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  And the men's journals were the first ones and they really follow the format that I
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  just described.
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  And then the Gospel series is a book that's like a daily chapter through each Gospel and
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  it gives space to like make observations and make notes, really digging and study.
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  And then also, these also have some little bit more unique pages in them where it could
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  be like, maybe draw, visually draw your favorite parable that was talked about in this book
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  or something that helps you to like apply this word in a more creative way that helps the
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  word hide in our hearts.
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  Well, I think we need more journals like the warrior journal, that really is appealing
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  to me because we talk on this podcast a lot about spiritual warfare and the role as Christians,
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  not just to be strong in prayer, but to be able to be out in culture and impacting culture
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  as light for Christ.
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  And we need to worry your spirit in this day and age because there's so tell us about
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  that one.
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  Yep.
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  So that one does that all of my journals are really, they're not really like leading because
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  I believe that the Holy Spirit is sufficient to teach us and lead us in all things.
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  And so that one is really about, like I said before, reading your Bible, meditating on
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  the Bible, seeking God, praying and seeking God to, for that direction and to teach us.
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  Okay, awesome.
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  So you can link on your website, amberrocky.com, rocky.com, and you can get the link to Amazon
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  as well.
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  Love the pictures there of the different things.
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  So let's go back now to King the Marketplace.
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  That was one of the first things that I, I thought was someone explained that to me about
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  what you do.
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  Yep.
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  And I'm looking at Christian-owned businesses on this site.
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  Now these are partners or explain to us the marketplace.
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  Now this is locally, this is not nationally, right?
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  Yeah.
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  But there's a lot of Christian businesses that don't know how to get connected with others,
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  don't know who to partner with.
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  And they're not really promoted in a certain place.
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  Tell us about how this came together.
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  Yeah, so thank you for asking about this.
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  This was actually a vision that I had received about how beautiful and blessed it is to support
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  our Christian brothers and sisters.
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  And there's so, there's, there's too much to get into about how this was laid on my
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  heart.
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  But I, I found partnership with Sherry Bible from the Serve Network.
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  And this, so this, I want to say, this project or effort was built up to create an online
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  resource or listing for Christian-owned businesses to, for, and as a free resource for Christians
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  to be able to seek out and support those Christian-owned businesses.
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  In addition to that, we also have a directory listing of local Christian schools.
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  And so.
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  Excellent.
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  Yeah, there was a, there's a bridge there from the Christian Educator's Expo that kind
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  of, yeah, we'll talk about, but so we have the schools on there, we have the businesses.
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  And then the next phase of this, which we'll be rolling out in 2026 is the local Christian
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  ministries.
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  And with, I mean, I have a whole mind map for this thing, but with future, future opportunities
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  to share enrichment activities and outreach opportunities or volunteer opportunities for
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  people just to be engaged and involved in the culture.
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  That's awesome.
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  So, the one, one that jumped out at me is jerky for Jesus.
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  Oh, do you know jerky for Jesus?
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  So, so it's beef jerky and yes, yes, the proceeds to missions or what is how's that
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  work?
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  Yeah, so jerky for Jesus is a new company and it, I'm actually particularly fond of it
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  because I have been working with the owner Brian Walder and helping him launch his business.
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  So I just created a new website for him, a lot of marketing materials.
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  But he's got his own story and anyways, he is selling really great beef jerky and it
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  is like catching on so fast and he has packaging, has the, it's all about Christ and he wants
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  to see the gospel spread through something that he feels called to and so he does fundraising
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  opportunities for schools and he also donates 10% of his profits to feeding the hungry.
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  So is he, does he have a storefront or is this online, a mail order jerky business?
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  Yeah, so he is online right now and then I'm sure I don't want to speak for him but
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  I'm sure he is, he would be eager to have his product in like retail stores.
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  Well, check into that a little bit.
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  Check into jerky for Jesus and right under that lighthouse Christian books.
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  I know the owners there and I know the manager Matt, they've got my books in that store
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  there in Green Bay, Green Bay, Wisconsin on United Street.
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  So the mission of Kingdom Marketplace, did you kind of already define that a little bit
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  you wanted to connect Christian business as business owners in the community and get
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  them promoted and networked?
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  Yes, yeah, yeah, so and then speaking of networks.
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  So the Kingdom Marketplace, I'm in partnership with the Serve Network which is a transition
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  of that.
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  Yep.
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  And then also business with Christ which is a, it is a networking group out of the Depeer
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  Chamber and they are meeting monthly to get together business owners or Christian professionals
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  are getting together and it's so blessed.
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  They're talking about topics like current event type topics and how do we lead as Christian
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  business leaders, business owners.
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  And the current age and this current climate and it's just, it's been wonderful.
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  And so we are partnering with them for the networking arm of this thing.
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  And yeah, if on the Kingdom Marketplace website, on the bottom of the homepage, there's
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  a form to sign up to be informed about upcoming business with Christ meetings.
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  That's awesome.
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  And on the bottom of Serve Wisconsin, that's S-E-R-V-E-W-I, servewi.com, the mission
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  to connect and equip Christian leaders to fulfill the great commandment and great commission.
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  Excellent.
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  That should be all of our, you know, mission personally in our sphere of influence.
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  But this is great.
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  And I live and appear.
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  So anything else about Serve Wisconsin's that do want to get to the Christian educators
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  Expo before we run out of time?
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  Yep.
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  That's a great segue.
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  The Serve Network or, yeah, Serve Wisconsin, the Serve Network, I might have kind of given
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  an overview, but they are bringing together ministry leaders in the Green Bay area.
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  And she brings to, she, by she, I mean, Sherry Byroll is the leader of the Serve Network.
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  And she brings together ministry leaders to really share about their ministries and
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  how they're doing and give praises to like, you know, God for provision and everything
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  else.
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  And those are really cool.
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  An off-shoot of the Serve Network is the serve Christian educators.
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  And it's like a group or a committee where Christian educators can come together and discuss
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  similar topics.
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  And so I got involved with that because I was on the school board for Grace Christian
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  Academy.
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  I am not myself an educator, but I do care a lot about Christian education and our children
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  in this nation.
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  So I do want to mention Jeremy Johnson is a mutual friend.
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  Yeah.
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  He's a friend of mine, friend of yours.
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  And he's with Grace Christian Academy out of Green Bay, Wisconsin for those of you that
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  haven't heard of Grace Christian Academy.
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  Yeah.
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  And they also partner with Freedom Project Academy.
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  Yes, they do.
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  Here in this building.
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  The other side of the building there.
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  Yep.
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  So Grace Christian Academy is 3K through 12, non-denominational Christian school in Green
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  Bay.
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  And they are very discipleship focused.
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  And they care a lot about unity.
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  So you'll see a lot of the people at GCA are involved in things that are bringing the
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  community together, including the Christian Educators Expo, which we started then last
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  year was our first year.
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  We met at the cup of joy in January.
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  And we brought together several Christian schools from the Green Bay area and some other,
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  and also I'm sorry, also home school groups.
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  So it's all education.
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  And then also supplemental education and post-secondary education.
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  And so, and it's all Christian focused.
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  We have keynote speakers and we do have keynote speakers for this year, but I just didn't
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  get that information in time to update it.
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  Yeah, we have to mention this is in January.
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  Yep.
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  So this will be our second year this year.
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  And it's free to the public to just come there and you can walk around booths and they've
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  got like prizes and you can just learn about all the different education options that are
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  available right here in our community.
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  And there are a lot.
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  I think there's a lot that people would be surprised about.
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  People locally maybe that have young children or their school age and they don't know about
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  all these options, right?
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  Yeah.
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  Yep.
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  Yeah.
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  So in partnership with this, we put together on the Kingdom Marketplace a listing of
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  the local Christian schools.
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  I don't think it's exhaustive because I found more, but I also on that website, if you
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  get a chance to look at it, it has a link on there that compares the schools and I was
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  just comparing it by things like what's a nomination they are, what their teaching style
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  is, how many students they have.
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  It's going by fast and there's other information to get out.
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  One day missions, you are a registered 501-C3.
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  So the average person that doesn't know about what you do, you're doing websites, why are
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  you a 501-C3?
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  Can you explain that?
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  Yeah.
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  So back when I started and I was telling you about the mission that the Lord had given
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  me to serve ministries and missions with my talents, I had that passion in my heart
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  and then a friend of mine had suggested that I look up a mutual friend.
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  His name is Dave Weed and he runs Outward Heart, which is an organization that similarly
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  serves ministries and missions and they do a lot of event planning, branding, design
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  work and everything.
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  I went and I looked on his website and I was really surprised to see two things, one
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  that what God had laid on my heart can be done and two, that if I don't do it, he's
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  going to use somebody else to do it and so and then I went to another page on his site
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  and it said he was looking for somebody with my exact skill set.
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  So I just had to reach out and like let's have a conversation.
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  So I immediately started working with Dave while I was still in my corporate job, I started
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  working together with him and started working on projects and now like with Outward Heart
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  I've done projects like the Community Warehouse which is an organization down in Milwaukee
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  area that runs a warehouse, sorry it's a prison rehabilitation ministry and they give jobs
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  to people and then in the warehouse where they sell these supplies that goes to support
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  the ministry or the mission.
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  Also be still retreats which is Central Wisconsin and they do retreats for free for ministry
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  leaders and pastors to help combat burnouts so they give space for them to go and get away
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  for free.
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  It's a beautiful one.
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  That's great.
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  So many needed things that you're describing go ahead.
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  So I've been working with Outward Heart and then about a year and a half ago in one of
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  those projects that I was working on I was listening to a sermon and I just really felt
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  compelled that you know God put this on my heart like five years ago and in another
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  five years I could be sitting here saying the same thing and so I went for it and I put
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  in my notice at my corporate job and I was really going for trying to seek full support
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  to just be able to provide for ministries and not have to charge anything but meanwhile
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  the Lord has really provided for me in my for-profit avenue which is Amber Lee creative
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  like a prayer journals and things like that.
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  Yep and so I do work with some like organizations more corporately with their marketing social
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  media marketing and a lot of their web their web stuff.
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  So yeah so I've been supported that way and so anybody who supports me like if you don't
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  have a ministry and but you're still interested in web support just know that in the end
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  that does still support kingdom work because I'm doing it whether or not I get the you
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  know the nonprofit type support for it.
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  So this kind of explains at the very beginning we mentioned that sometimes you get paid
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  to do these websites for Christian ministries and sometimes you don't you do them for free
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  and I asked well how do how can you afford to do them for free because you get donations
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  yeah.
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  Okay so if people wanted to find out more about that is that amber rocky dot com medium
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  ministry.
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  Yeah you will find out more about that on that page and then also to support that you
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  you can support through modern day which I wanted to explain I did not create the modern
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  day website but I I'm affiliated through modern day so okay so that's where I hold my
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  nonprofit status through that's the modern day dot org okay so gosh there's just so
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  much we've just got three minutes left so what what do you see coming like in the future
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  do you are you branching out any more sounds like you're doing so many different things
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  already yeah what's on the agenda for you like going going into the next year perhaps
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  well I think plans I'm eager to see kingdom marketplace continue to grow and to see
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  you know like what happens with that as I had mentioned before I'm working with Jay Zoller
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  on Ford Wisconsin which his effort to see Christians impact culture and change you know
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  the project through the projectory okay so we need to mention this right now because that's
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  what got me connected to amber yeah because we I met with Jay Zoller and some other a couple
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  handful of pastors and other Christian business owners we talked about this we talked about his
• 24:47
  plans and trying to get Wisconsin Christians engage in this battle salt and light the the
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  basic principles of Christians being salt and light in our communities and I just wanted to
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  to mention that is so important and just the fact that your your name came up and you're helping him
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  in that respect as far as the website so we're really hoping that we get more and more people
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  involved Christian not only the business owners but people who want to get out in the public
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  and engage and get Christians educated and informed I just did a podcast recently on the
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  biblical worldview slide decline that we've been seeing in the last several decades it's really sad
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  people that say their Christians and they don't fully understand the Bible or the application of
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  it that means getting out of church on a Sunday and impacting their communities or their workplace
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  or their culture Monday through Saturday so I was going to read this quote but it's a little too long
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  so I would just want to get the the last minute to wrap it up with you what do you want to encourage
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  people you know we got a bigger nationwide audience than locally I think but we do have more and
• 25:55
  more people from Wisconsin finding out about worldview matters and locally what do you want to say
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  to people locally to encourage them maybe even to get them connected with you and what you're doing
• 26:09
  yeah well I mean I would love for people to connect with me on amber rocky dot com or kingdom
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  marketplace dot life any of those ways honestly would be great to share with me tell me about like
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  what you're doing because I love hearing about how God is moving and and he's doing so many good
• 26:32
  things I think that there's a lot of negativity that goes around or like we think you know that maybe
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  things are a little hopeless they're not yes and I see the kingdom growing and just I would just
• 26:46
  encourage people in that but also you know what follow what God has called you to do because he's
• 26:53
  made us all with the unique purpose and we're all different and our purposes are all different and
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  and yeah he can just be glorified in so many ways amen amen and we you know we've just got to get
• 27:06
  back out there friends if you haven't been out really reaching people the gospel in fact I
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  we have a couple seconds left I really wanted to go over and just remind people of why we're doing
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  this that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him
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  from the dead you will be saved for with the heart a person believes resulting in salvation
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  resulting in righteousness and with the mouth he confesses resulting in salvation and whoever calls
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  upon the name of the Lord will be saved Jesus is Lord that's from Romans chapter 10 amber rocky thank
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  you for coming in today so good to meet you God bless you and all you're doing I'm sure people
• 27:42
  get in touch with your friends thank you for sharing the podcast and for your prayers especially
• 27:46
  God bless you and as always keep speaking the truth about things that matter