Aspire Ministries FREE Concert and Worship Service Fund Raiser!

Aspire Ministires is holding a FREE concert and worship service on June 9th at Crosswood UMC in Marion. Julia Jones and Jenni Hypes joined the show to talk about the event.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Joining me this morning. We've gotJenny Hips and Julia Jones in from Aspire
Ministries. I've got a benefit concertcoming up on June ninth. The ladies,
good morning, Thanks for coming in. Good morning morning. I appreciate
you guys stopping by. Julia sentssome information about the concert coming up on
June ninth, and I'm like,let's talk about it. So do mean
a favor. Tell me a littlebit about what you've got coming up on

(00:22):
June ninth. Well, we've gota benefit concert and worship experience. It's
open to all ages. It's basicallyto raise money. One hundred percent of
the proceeds of any offering that wetake up we'll go to benefit Aspire Ministries.
Okay, So there will be alot of different churches involved. There's

(00:45):
about eight or nine churches Center Pointat Worth, First Presbyterian, Lee Street,
excuse me, Lee Street, Maryand Christian Center, Peace Community,
U Sec. Saint Paul's Lutheran inProspect and Shepherd's Fellowship and of course Crosswood.
I'm the contemporary worship music leader andso I'll be involved in in singing

(01:11):
as well as getting all of thisgoing and up and running. Okay,
and it all starts at nine o'clockon Friday, June the ninth, at
say again, seven o'clock? DidI say nine o'clock? Yeah, that's
a late night. You know why, because I looked and saw seven to
nine. I'm too old to beso let's try that again. It all

(01:33):
starts at seven o'clock on Friday,June ninth, all ages for an evening
of worship and celebration and music fromall of the churches that you just mentioned.
Correct, that's correct. Yeah,absolutely, that's at fifteen fifty one
Richland Road here in Marion, andyou get details on our website right now.
And as a matter of fact,if if you've got some issues with
mobility, you can even be ableto sit in the parking lot and listen

(01:57):
to it. From what I understand, correct, that's correct. When COVID
came around, we have a gentlemanin our congregation who's an amateur radio fan
and also used to be in broadcasting, and so he got a FM transmitter
very low power. I don't askme details because I don't know. That's

(02:19):
not my bag, and we startedbroadcasting to the parking lot so we could
continue to meet as a congregation andhave worship, and so we'd never shut
it off. So because we stillhave sure members who are disabled to the
point where they can't really come inside, or they've they're going through chemo and

(02:42):
so they can't be exposed to alot of other people and have other immune
disorders, but they can still takepart, right, So anybody that wants
to come that that just can't bearound a lot of other folks. Even
though the building is completely handicapped accessible, including the bathrooms, they could still
come and enjoy it. And ifit's a nice evening, they can bring

(03:06):
chairs and sit out on the lawnif they want to. Sure, as
long as they bring in fmery,theyre it's a beautiful lawn too. It's
such a it'll be a nice spreadfor the evening, whether you're inside outside,
it is. That's a great property. I ride my bike there by
there and it's it really is abeautiful property. But it is to benefit
Aspire Ministries. And Jenny Hypes ishere. Jenny talk a little bit about

(03:30):
Aspire Ministries because there might be somepeople that are like, wait, man,
I'm not sure what this is,but I'm pretty sure they know what
it used to be about it theydo. This past year we were Love
Inc. Or Love in the Nameof Christ UM. And this past year
our board made a decision that wewould withdraw from the national Love Inc.
Movement and really put a lot morefocus on Marion County, have a lot

(03:53):
more autonomy on what we want todo ministry wise in Marion County UM.
And so at the start of thisyear we transitioned from Love Inc. To
Aspire Ministries. We still do theexact same stuff, the same heart is
there as far as helping people inneed in our community. I love the
ministry in that it really brings churchestogether helping people in need. Every church

(04:17):
that I have visited, they allhave their own personality, they all have
their own interests, just like youand I do. And so what our
Aspire Ministries lets us do is reallyfocus on that church and what its interests
are and help them really serve inthe community with those gifts and talents that
they bring to the table. Andso when people come, you know,

(04:40):
asking a church for help, whetherit's financial or I need food or clothing,
couches, whatever it is, theycan refer people to Aspire Ministries.
We stay on top of the resourcesin the community. Where there are gaps
in the community, we can reachout to our churches and ask them to
start various ministries. I'm not goingto give too much away, but we

(05:00):
do have about two new ministries inthe queue that we're working on developing right
now that we'll roll out later thisyear. But so that's who we are.
Aspire Ministries was loving. We wentthrough a name change. You'll see
new logos out and about, andit's really been cool since the start of
this year. It's almost like rekindledand built a lot more momentum. We

(05:21):
have new new churches reaching out tous regularly asking how to get involved in
what we're doing. Very well explained. I love it. And obviously people
might be asking that question, whydo you guys need to raise money,
and that's to help people that cometo Aspire Ministries for assistance. I assume
right it is, but it's alsoit's really to help us pay the bills

(05:42):
we get our funding. We don'tget any government funding. Actually, we
do write grants, but there's alot of grants we don't qualify for because
we're a religious organization and so ourfunding comes from churches that are memberships that
are partners. There's no membership fee, so they give as they feel led
to give. We have individuals thatdonate to us. We have organizations and

(06:04):
businesses that partner with us to helpfinancially. But we were not able to
do any fundraising last year, andbecause we had to move, we had
to rebrand everything. We actually closeddown our furniture ministry had to move it
again. So there's a lot ofchange last year. But this funding that
comes in will help us kind ofestablish our foundation again. And we also

(06:28):
made the change. In previous yearswe've been part time ministry, and the
need is very great and Marion andthe need for our churches to be able
to have someone they can rely on, so our board decided, also amidst
everything else, let's go full timethis year. So there are increased expenses,
so a lot of it covers thatoverhead. We have a pretty low
budget overall, but we do anytimewe can, we try to refer our

(06:53):
community back to our churches for help. So for financial assistance, we do
limited financial assistance. We're still tryingto build the procedures and the policies around
that, and we do try torefer people the best place in the community
possible. But in the meantime,if someone's looking for money, if we
can help them with food or diapersor things that kind of take that burden

(07:15):
off, they're able to use theirmoney towards their bills and things like that.
That's an amazing community resource, andI'm glad that this and other things
are helping to continue to fund it. It is coming up on Friday,
June ninth at seven o'clock. It'sa free benefit concert all ages and evening
of worship and celebration at Crosswood UnitedMethodist Church, fifteen fifty one Richland Road

(07:40):
in Marianne, So you can comeand enjoy. Now they will be in
the sanctuary, but you can bringyour lawn chairs, you can tune in
on the radio, and just alot of really really cool stuff happening,
some wonderful music, and it justsounds like a wonderful evening to help aspire
ministries and also Juliet to get peopletogether just have a really good time.

(08:01):
Don't you think that's exactly kind ofhow it came about. Last year.
My minister approached our congregation and said, okay, let's do a different kind
of fundraiser really biblically based, andshe based it on the parable of the
ten talents. So she said,okay, everyone, I want you to

(08:22):
take ten dollars, think about whatGod has gifted you with, what kind
of talents do you have a knowledgeand what can you do to take that
ten dollars and grow it? Andthen on a certain Sunday we all came
back together and we put our moneyin the plate. Well, I'm also
the church treasurer, so you know, I tell this to Jenny all the

(08:45):
time when she's with me. Islike, I can do spreadsheets, but
you can't really make money doing that, right, It's like, Oh,
come to me, I'll design youa beautiful spreadsheet. It'll be lovely.
So I thought, well, theonly other thing that I can do is
sing and play guitar. So Iapproached our minister at the time and said,

(09:07):
okay, let's let's get together withour partner church, which is Epworth,
and let's just have a concert.You know, it's an hour.
We'll invite them, we'll invite youknow, our members, we'll get together,
we'll raise a little bit of moneyand split it. And that was
like it went nowhere. It wasdead in the water before it ever got
out of my battle. And soa few months later, the United Methodist

(09:31):
Church in our conference went with anew kind of grouping called um no,
what's the name whatever the technical termthey've applied to it. But it's small,
um it's small geographic, it's reallyteeny tiny. It's much smaller than
a district or the conference in itself. They're about eight churches, most of

(09:54):
them right here in Marion County.I thought, oh, okay, well
that's eight churches. Maybe we could, you know, generate enough interest between
eight churches. That also fell completelyflat. So I'm thinking, well,
okay, god, what are youtrying to tell me? Trying to tell

(10:15):
me, you know, don't singto people anymore? What's going on?
So then we were talking about itagain, the minister and myself, and
she said, um she said,well, if we get some churches together
to do this, how would weall decide who would profit by this?

(10:39):
She said, you know, insteadof doing something to raise money for us,
what do you think about aspire ministries? And my first reaction was I
don't know who that is? Andshe's like, oh, yeah, you
do, you know who that is? She said, it's love Inc.
They just changed their name. Iwas like, oh yeah. The light

(11:00):
went off and everything. So Iwas like, yeah, yeah, I
know who that is. I waslike, that's great. She said yeah,
they've got like twenty some churches.You know, if we can't pull
this together out of that, thenwe might as well all close our doors
and go home. Absolutely, SoI started running with it, and I
didn't really want to put a lotof burden on my minister. She's going

(11:24):
through ordination, which is an amazing, overwhelming, gut wrenching I'm glad I'm
not doing it oral. Anybody thinksbeing a minister is an easy job getting
ordained, you know, it's likebecoming a doctor or something. It's just
really too hard anyway. So soI've been running with it, and but

(11:48):
she said to me, well,you know, I'm going to see them
this weekend. Why don't I justpitch the idea and see what they think
about it? And so she wentto me. They had some kids in
painting their offices and she talked toKatie I think it was Katie, who
works at a Spire, and shesaid, you know, Katie, we're

(12:09):
thinking about maybe hosting a benefit concertfor you guys, what do you think
about that? And I guess Katie'smouth just kind of dropped open because wasn't
it the same week? Yeah,just same ways earlier. Yeah, Jenny
had said to her staff, youknow, we might want to start praying
about somebody doing a benefit for us. There you go, so you know

(12:30):
that just it kind of it waslike instead of gob smacked, I was
god smacked. I was God smackedat that point. I was like,
Okay, I hear you, Ihear you now confirmation, Okay, we
have a go. That puzzle piecefit right, Thunderbirds are go. So
I love it. Wonderful stuff.Friday, June ninth, seven o'clock is

(12:54):
when it gets started, a freebenefit concert for all ages at Crossword United
Methodist fifteen fifty one Richland Road inMaryon get details on our website. You
can check out all the different churchesthat are going to be involved. Some
wonderful music and just a wonderful nightto raise money for Aspire Ministries right here
in Mary. And Jenny Julia thankyou guys so much for joining the show

(13:16):
and appreciate you guys coming in.Thank you, appreciate cha