After having been a church planter and lead pastor in Colorado and Southern California for 21 years, the Lord spoke to Cody Busick on Easter 2018 about moving to Kansas. “It was the first time in decades that I wasn’t preaching on Easter, and I was just like, ‘Lord, I feel like I’m on the bench. What are we doing? We will go where you want us to go, we’ll do what you want us to do, but you need to speak to us.’ And what I felt him speak to my heart was, ‘So you’ll move to Kansas?’” Within a week, Cody saw a job posted on the Vineyard USA website for a church in Kansas City, KS, and started talking with his wife Michelle about it, ultimately deciding to make the move with their three teenage sons a few months later.
The Vineyard KC West church building had been purchased a few years prior from the Baptist church that had been hosting them as a young church plant, as they were closing their doors after 99 years and 9 months due to an aging congregation. Cody remembers that shortly after he began pastoring this young Vineyard, they hosted a funeral for the secretary of the former Baptist church, and while he was giving a tour to some of the previous members who were in their late 60s, they got to the youth room and the folks said, “You know what our problem was? The reason we shut down was that we were the youth.”
Cody said that really struck him, and “I heard the Lord say, ‘The thing that they stopped doing, you can never stop doing.’ Because we’re death and resurrection people, right? That church died because they weren’t reaching the next generation; but many times, God redeems and resurrects through the thing that killed it.”
An unforeseen complication that came with his new role as the pastor of Vineyard KC West was their financial situation. “I knew the church was in a bit of a rebuild mode. There had been some turnover with the senior leadership, and more than half of the church had left during that time. We were short roughly $6,000 a month. There was about $50,000 in reserves, but it was kind of scary.” A short time later, Bubba Justice, CFO and Missions Director for Vineyard USA, took Cody to lunch after sharing about giving and generosity at their church one Sunday. Cody shared about their finances and asked Bubba for best practices and wisdom, and Bubba began talking about pockets of giving, where you ask people to give to specific areas, like kids, youth, or missions.
Cody initially felt uncomfortable approaching it this way since they currently weren’t even able to make their general budget, but Bubba framed it in a way that made sense to him. “People don’t get excited about giving to a general fund. They have passions about youth or outreach, and you need to put a story to their giving.” Bubba explained it’s like a child approaching their parents with a Christmas wishlist, which clicked with Cody.
“We do tons of stuff in the community for youth, so our youth group was really growing. We needed certain tools, like a TV for the youth room so they can watch teaching videos. We also shared the actual cost to provide youth ministry and kids’ ministry for one Sunday. We created a wish list of about 20 things for the church.” Cody felt like this approach activated people in his church who were good, Jesus-loving people, but wanted to see more specifically what their money would be used for. And now, five years later? They see consistent giving towards many different areas of ministry.
“We have money coming into all of these different funds, whether it’s international missions or local missions or youth, and we’ve had a surplus in those funds for a long time, so we’re always trying to send it back out. And also, our general fund rose as well because as we were sharing about those pockets of giving, it equipped us to share a vision for our overall church.”
As part of the financial discipleship at their church, Cody’s congregation sees the stewardship of their property and building in terms of the people who utilize it. “We’re not about a brick-and-mortar building; we’re about people. And God’s brought us more and more people.” Because they are up the street from a high school, Vineyard KC West has begun hosting gatherings after sports games called Fifth Quarter, which draws about 400 students to the church campus for burgers, bonfires, and s’mores. With a wide grin, Cody says, “I mean, it’s a complete mass of teenage humanity. We have about four acres, and they’re just all over the grass; they fill every nook and cranny of the space. But it’s just a safe, encouraging space where they can be with their friends. And the Lord showed us that it’s an all-church thing. We have people in their 70s out here serving cheeseburgers and sitting by the fire, handing out stuff for s’mores to these kids, and talking to them. And people from other churches join, because it’s not about recognition or who does what; it’s God loving a community through his body. It’s really fun to see.”
Vineyard KC West started a building fund to add a larger gathering space on their campus, which will serve as an adult sanctuary, as well as a space with basketball hoops that can be used to host Fifth Quarter in undesirable weather. Since Cody first presented the pockets of giving to his church of about 200 people, they have received about $1.1 million in gifts from their church and surrounding community, specifically to fund the new building, in addition to hundreds of thousands of dollars that have been given towards the other various pockets. Cody said his church has embraced the fact that they’re not building something new for themselves but for the community, and they are excited to fund it because they directly see the impact it will have on the next generation.
As the Busicks’ boys were involved in sports, they also started a monthly Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting at their high school, which began with 70 kids and has grown over the last five years to over 400, which is more than half the high school. “They show up to hear about Jesus, and many of them have gotten plugged into smaller Bible studies and local churches, because other local pastors join us and are there to pray with kids in small groups. We feed them Chick-fil-A and donuts, and every meeting costs $1200-1300, but this is another thing that we started inviting people to give towards. People ask how we do it, but how can we not when the funds never run dry? We have people donating from our church, our community, people in other churches and states; it’s just an open spigot. God provides for the things he calls us to.”
Cody says the lunch conversation with Bubba in 2018 started a snowball effect that allowed them to intentionally invest in and have deeper conversations about the financial health of their church, their congregation, and themselves as pastors. This looked like offering Financial Peace University at their church, participating in Vineyard USA’s Financial Wellbeing of Pastors cohort, and inviting finance-specific coaching for their church board. “It made it so that we were able to better care for people in the church because they were ready to think and talk about finances. It also equipped us to better care for the community around us as needs come up.
“This whole thing is just putting a big hug around our youth and encouraging them. And since we’ve been doing these different things for so long, the kids have noticed that the same people who feed them and love them after the football and basketball games are the same people who do FCA meetings, and the same ones who just love them no matter what. We’ve seen cool stuff in other towns we’ve been in, but I’ve never seen a hunger like this. We can’t keep Bibles stocked. Between FCA and the Fifth Quarter, kids are always asking for Bibles or just grabbing them, and then there’ll be some of them sitting over in the corner of the sanctuary reading the Bible and showing their friends. It’s completely unprogrammed.”
Vineyard KC West understood the assignment when it comes to expanding the table to welcome the next generation, and this table just happens to be covered in chicken sandwiches and s’mores.
If you would like to learn more about the pockets of giving, reach out to . For more information about the Financial Well-Being of Pastors Initiative, click here.