EP 102: Grants, Government Partnerships, and Kingdom Impact, Part 1

Narrator: Did you know your business can honor God while transforming lives around the world? Welcome to the IBOM Biblical Entrepreneurship show, the weekly podcast that inspires and equips Christian entrepreneurs to build sustainable businesses that glorify God and uplift impoverished communities. At ibom, our mission is built on the three fish metaphor. Give a fish. We provide startup loans to launch businesses. Teach to fish. We offer entrepreneur training for lasting growth. Equipped for disciples. We empower discipleship to multiply. Impact. Join iBum's founder, Steve Adams, as he shares powerful solo episodes and expert interviews filled with mentorship insights and real life stories of how biblical entrepreneurship is advancing the Great Commission. Subscribe now and get ready to be inspired, equipped and empowered to make an eternal impact.

Steve Adams: Hi, Steve Adams here. Uh, welcome to the IBAM Kingdom Impact Summit where business becomes discipleship. And, uh, in this interview we have Scott, uh, Weed and Dave Pavlin from City Serve, and I just want to welcome you guys.

Dave Pavlin: Oh, uh, thank you so much, Steve, for having us.

Steve Adams: Yeah, thank you, Scott, also for being on.

Scott Weed: Yeah, great to be with you. Thanks, Steve.

Steve Adams: Yeah. So, Dave, can you give us a little bit of background on yourself, tell us your story and then we'll have Scott do the same.

Dave Pavlin: Absolutely. I come out of the business world and, um, in 1997, my wife, my brother and I started a durable medical equipment for hospice patients. Um, and it really grew over 20 years. We became one of the largest ones in the United States. God had such an impact on that because there's, as we all know in businesses, there's those, those points of hitting a wall or hurdles we have to get through and God just guided us. So, um, in 2016, in January, I sold it to a venture company out of New York City. And really, after building a business, there's a sense of emptiness. Um, and so I met Dave Donaldson and Wendell Vincent in 2017 and we started an organization called City Serve and Wendell out of Bakersfield, California. And now Dave Donaldson, who's actually in the White House in the faith based office. Um, we continue to work together. Even though Dave is not directly involved with City Serve, because of his government involvement, we continue to carry on. And, um, so my background is in business. And when it comes to City Serve, my wife and I and others have become more back of the back of the office, setting up the entities, managing money, dealing with hr, you know, kind of the, the grease in the wheels, um, to keep this moving. And even though some other individuals are tip of the spear and continue to develop those relationships, um, I feel our role behind the Scenes is really just as important.

Steve Adams: Yeah.

Dave Pavlin: So I'll let Scott elaborate. I can get into some city service.

Steve Adams: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Scott, tell us your story.

Scott Weed: Yeah, so I've got about 25 years in nonprofit, uh, leadership. And I started on the admin side of a pretty large international faith based, um, outreach, managing offices all over the world. About seven offices and 80 staff. And um, the Lord really put it on my heart to plant a church.

Steve Adams: Okay.

Scott Weed: 2008. And so my wife and I, we, uh, with our, you know, with our youngest newborn daughter, uh, planted a church in Orange County, California where we, we saw God's hand on it, we saw the church grow and, and God provided and, and we spent about 13 years there as senior pastors in Orange County, California. And I had a crazy lunch with Dave, uh, Donaldson, it's at City Serve. And he introduced me to Dave Pavlin and uh, Pastor Wendell. And some of these gu convinced me to come to City Serve. So I passed the church off to a leader. But the thing that attracted me about City Serve was their heart to support local churches. The pastor of a local church that knew what it was to, um, start with nothing and to grow and try to get staffing, um, it was quite an adventure. Um, and I realized after 13 years, seeing an organization like City Serve, whose mission is to help people out here on the front lines, was very refreshing. And so I started working with City Serve, uh, in their church relations initially and really trying to connect churches to this great resource that CityServe was. But along the way I started dabbling in grants and specifically federal, uh, and state grants. And uh, we kind of, as a pilot project wrote six, uh, grants and we won five of them for uh, uh, about $9 million.

Steve Adams: Wow.

Scott Weed: And I was impacted by that because all of these churches that we helped win this money were able to hire all this staff. And going back to my 13 years of pastoring and trying to build, you know, with only tithe dollars.

Steve Adams: Yeah, right.

Scott Weed: We were missing something. And I've gone on to see, you know, now I think we're approaching 400 million in fundraising through the National Grant Center. You know, um, you know, over five years, it's been quite a journey. But, um, you know, I wish I knew, uh, what I know now.

Steve Adams: Yeah, we all could say that.

Scott Weed: Yeah. But, uh, it's great to support pastors and it's great to support ministries and groups that are really doing a great job in the community. Um, but maybe they don't know how to tap into potential partnership with, with the government. So That's. That's been a passion of mine over these past few years.

Steve Adams: So did you ever think, uh, then we'll get Dave. We'll get into what City Serve is. And did you ever think, though, as a pastor that you would be writing grants professionally like this?

Scott Weed: No. Um, you know, I think as a pastor, I, you know, my prayer was our church would grow and our city and, you know, um, and it just goes to show you, sometimes when, you know, when you're in a situation that's tough and, you know, it's like trying to speak to a plant to tell it to grow. Yeah. Slow process. It doesn't happen instantly. And, uh, but sometimes when you're going in the trenches in your work, you don't realize that God's actually preparing you and, uh, your heart for what he wants you to do. Because now I've been able to help, uh, you know, um, you know, dozens and dozens of churches have more impact than I could have as a pastor.

Steve Adams: Right.

Narrator: And.

Scott Weed: And so it's great. Um, you know, I. I got into this world of nonprofit with the heart to serv. As I pastored, I pastored with the heart to serve others. And now I'm still. I have a heart to serve those servants. So it's. It's a great joy.

Steve Adams: So, Dave, as you talk. Well, go ahead, Dave.

Dave Pavlin: I'm gonna say Scott's, um, dad, Doug Weed, um, had a phenomenal history and became very close to the president and actually wrote some of the biographies for Donald Trump.

Steve Adams: Oh, wow.

Dave Pavlin: And so Scott. Scott grew up in D.C. and has a lot of exposure there. It's a fun story. If we ever have time to get into that.

Steve Adams: Yeah, we may. Let's do that. But. But when you talk about City Serve, talk about how. What problem is city serve solving for the local church to help it expand its impact. I think I know what it is, but I want to hear you, as one of the founders, talk about that.

Dave Pavlin: Sure, sure. When we first started, we knew that the local church was, um, in trouble to a certain extent. We know that the small church is 250or less, give or take. Um, and so with that, they have different needs than a super church that has a lot of funding. There's a lot of outreach. And so our intent was. Is to really help support the local church because it know. We know it's a direct impact to the local community, direct relationship. Um, and that most who are engaged in that know. That's pretty obvious. Ah. So when we started it, we came up with 10 initiatives and you can go to city, uh, served us and see these initiatives. But the hungry, the oppressed, the orphan, Orphan, the prisoner, the vulnerable, the widow, uh, the poor and jobless, addicted, the unreached, and then also the nation of Israel, which I can elaborate on that. And so with that, the question is, how do you bring these small churches out of themselves and begin to collaborate not only with the community, but other churches? Um, and that's really key. So one of our first, um, actions was a program called F2F, Farmers to Families. If you remember, during COVID a lot of protein, a lot of fruits and vegetables were dying in the field because the commercial restaurant business collapsed.

Steve Adams: Right.

Dave Pavlin: And so the government, um, actually came to a group of organizations and one of them was led by City Serve. And so the government would give us money, we would buy these boxes of food through large distributor houses, the protein, and then give them out via the church to thousands, thousands of people.

Steve Adams: As your distribution network.

Dave Pavlin: Exactly. And so we could come up with hundreds and hundreds of distribution centers within, within days. Whereas the government struggles with that last mile. Right, right. So we were able to really have a lot of success. It helped the farmers, um, it helped the protein growers, um, and it made the Trump administration really sensitive to how the local church works.

Steve Adams: Uh, and also it's, you know, that's like a fundamental basis of needs based evangelism. The church is showing up in a big way and being relevant.

Dave Pavlin: Absolutely. And it's um, in any. And so one of the aspects is you could get a smaller church to engage with other little churches to uh, get involved with the F2F program. And so some relationships were formed. But as we grew, you know, F2F, um, um, um, finished. And so we've moved on to other projects. And just um, uh, a little one recently is the Trump administration, as we know, is beginning to cut down on some block grants, like aid, et cetera. Um, and um, the thinking was we used to give these big uh, block grants to communities, but there was no outcome. We didn't have any proof that they were working. The new strategy now is, rather than a block grant distribution, is to get more into contract work. So the churches, the local organizations actually have a contract with a bigger organization to perform and then hold them accountable, uh, provide the deliverables, provide feedback.

Steve Adams: Is City serve acting as that bigger organization that the church has partnered with.

Dave Pavlin: That's exactly right. And an example of that is, uh, yesterday Governor Huckleby in Arkansas just spoke to this where um, they are going to reduce some of The Medicaid, shifting some of the Medicaid spending, some other spend to the local churches to have impact within the community. And we're hoping that this is a trend, uh, because it works and um, we're going to be behind and so city serves goal is to be the tip of the spear and can not only begin to scale this.

Steve Adams: Scott, what kind of projects are you seeing done around the country that are really innovative that where the church is solving a problem at society level and it's also putting them in a position to expand the kingdom through the gospel?

Scott Weed: Well, I think um, you know, Jesus said by this the world will know your mind by your love, one for another.

Steve Adams: Yep.

Scott Weed: And you know, John 13:35. And I think that if um, you know, wherever we're showing love, there's opportunity for partnership. Um, I've, I've written grants for transitional housing, for foster care, you know, for kids transitioning out of foster care, where we have a church, run a housing facility. Um, I've written grants where maybe a church, you know, they, they want to do something for the community and they're seeing their schools struggle. And I've seen churches set up STEAM programs where they are, um, you know, working with public schools to provide after school care. And they actually are teaching science and they're teaching math, but they're also teaching the arts. And so they take their worship team and their worship team during the week when they're not leading worship, are out there running a school of rock in a school, teaching kids, building relationships with kids and helping them get, get better at schoolwork. And then on the weekends those same staff are there leading worship on Sunday morning. And uh, that's a real benefit for both the community and the church. The church can pay livable wages to their worship team. The community gets, uh, you know, really quality musicians and educators to support teachers, uh, that are, you know, already working long days and underpaid. So it's a, it's a great strategic partnership. Um, I see a lot in the area of um, you know, there was just a big grant that came out, um, for marriage and family. Uh, you know, the structure for uh, you know, much of our infrastructure for society is based on marriage and family. And you have, uh, many people are on welfare and you can trace the direct roots back to the fact that they didn't have a father, they didn't have a family, they didn't dealing with this. You know, so there's a fatherhood grant that we just recently wrote and won for it for a church. So um, and you know, lots of, lots of programs like that. There's also a lot in the area that I think is real faith friendly is in the area of sexual risk avoidance education, uh, where you know, you have ah, you know, churches are great at doing midweek services. Um, they are really good at um, engaging, you know, their congregation to come in for small groups or to teach a class or to, or to buy an off the shelf curriculum that is, you know, and do a Bible study with it translates pretty well to some of these government programs. You just need to change the language because there are evidence based curriculums that the government, you know, looks uh, and sees that. There's been studies that if someone goes through this class then they're less likely to get pregnant or they're like, make a poor choice. Uh, a lot. In the area of violence prevention, we want a lot of money for people to um, to um, you know, uh, make smarter decisions.

Steve Adams: Right.

Scott Weed: Um, so yeah. And you know that and the church is already doing a lot of this. They're already on the front lines of recovery. They're already in the front. A lot of these areas are just not speaking the right language. So one sense, uh, a lot of I had to learn how to, I already knew how to speak church, how to speak government, and, and figure out how do we translate what it is we're doing into a language that you know, that the people sitting on the money feel safe with.

Steve Adams: Right.

Scott Weed: Um, because they don't speak the same language as us.

Dave Pavlin: Right.

Steve Adams: Dave?

Dave Pavlin: Steve, I just wanted to um. When we started City Serve, we actually um, have a domestic aspect, domestic investment and we have an international investment. We spun off the grant center under neighborhoods to the nations which Scott leads. And so we have the government relationship and then within it we have the grant center that's a separate 501C3. There's a firewall there.

Steve Adams: Right.

Dave Pavlin: Um, um. But Scott has been instrumental in finding grants, uh, for various churches. But the key is to make sure that church is grant ready and can really not only receive the grant, execute the grant reporting. A good example of that, um, which uh, Wendell Vinson was in. They just built a hunt, I think it was 120 room transitional housing right in the parking lot of a, an old Montgomery Ward store.

Steve Adams: Oh wow.

Dave Pavlin: 35 million dollar grant which they built. And it's just amazing. So just a little backstory. This Montgomery uh, Ward's uh, store, which is huge, was donated to Canyon Hills Church. And that's our city serve center there. Okay. And um, we, we provide a variety of services there and uh, but that's, that's our main domestic hub there in Bakersfield. But I wanted to point out the firewall.

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