“We exist to see people far from God become passionate
Christians who make a difference in the world.”
What a year that God allowed us to experience together in 2025!
As you review our 2025 Annual Report I hope you will do so “feeling” two types of gratitude. First, I hope you feel a deep gratitude spiritually to God for all that he is doing in and through our church. Jesus taught his followers to pray that “His Kingdom would come and His will would be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” I believe with all my heart that is happening at Journey, and this Annual Report is small proof of that in tangible ways. So, take time as you review to feel the spiritual gratitude that we should all have that God is still working through our broken lives to bring healing to our broken world.
Second, I hope you will know of our gratitude for you. What you will review in this Annual Report is the result of thousands (not an overstatement!) of families who give generously, thousands of people who serve faithfully, and many thousands who attend faithfully, pray faithfully, and live out the mission that Jesus has given Journey every day in their lives. We couldn’t celebrate what God did in 2025 without celebrating you, so as you review this report feel our smiles and handshakes and hugs and love for you through the words you read, the reports you review, the videos you watch, and the ministry you celebrate.
Thank you for allowing our church to serve our people and our community and our world like we do. And Thank God that He has invited all of us onto the spiritual journey together. I can’t wait to see what God will do in 2026 as we look back in awe at what He did in 2025.
We exist to see people far
from God know Jesus.
We exist to see people far from God know Jesus.
For the second year in a row, we hosted three nights of revival that were unlike any event we’ve had at our church. This year’s event included inspiring messages from guest speakers Clayton King, Vance Pitman, and Daniel Floyd; extended worship time; individual and corporate prayer; and plenty of community time afterwards. Through these three days, we saw the Holy Spirit move in incredible ways in the hearts of every person in attendance.
Each year, we like to get the year started off strong spiritually with 21 days of prayer. This year’s emphasis was Look Up, and throughout the first in-person week of prayer we saw hundreds of people of all ages come through our doors each morning to pray and spend time with Jesus, looking up to Him to provide for the coming year.
Our Fall Week of Prayer, which focused on the Beatitudes, allowed us to welcome hundreds of people each morning to begin their days with reflection, prayer, and quiet time. Through this and our 21 Days of Prayer, we saw more people than ever before develop a habit of regular prayer in their lives that continued well beyond this one week.
For the first time at Journey, our Student Ministry had the opportunity to host two impactful summer events to help middle and high school students grow in their faith. As a kick-off to summer, we hosted Summer Bash, a three-day evangelism event that allowed us to share the gospel with 450 students. To end the summer, we also took over 150 students to Oklahoma for a three-day camp focused on discipleship and helping students deepen their relationship with Christ.
Throughout the years, the heart and vision of our Kids Ministry is to see kids far from God become passionate Cristians who make a difference in the world. Kids Camp is one of our best opportunities to do that. This year, we welcomed 750 kids through our doors, with 138 of those kids having never come to Journey before. Of those kids, 81 made a decision to follow Jesus and 103 expressed interest in baptism. What’s more, the kids raised $3,400 to help build a school with one of our partner villages in Guatemala.
Spending time in God’s Word daily keeps us grounded in truth and connected to His heart. It’s how we grow, stay rooted in Him, and navigate life with clarity, purpose, and peace. That’s why each year, we encourage our entire congregation to engage in a daily Bible reading plan. This year, we had more plans available than ever before, targeting those plans to those looking for beginner, intermediate, and advanced plans. By tailoring our plans based on this criteria, and by offering seasonal plans to engage in throughout the year, we saw hundreds of people engage with God’s Word more than ever before.
One of the biggest ways we reach the world with the gospel message is through our website and live stream every single week.
In 2025, our website was accessed in 145 different countries, accumulating nearly 65,000 new web users. What’s more, almost 2,000 new users downloaded our JCI mobile app.
On our live stream (across app, web, and YouTube), we had over 95,000 views throughout the year, with 92% of those views being unique users. That totaled over 35,000 cumulative hours watched on our live stream, with people tuning in from all over the U.S. and across multiple different countries.
At Journey, one of our core beliefs is in multiplication, reflecting our calling to equip and produce reproducing disciples. Over the years, our internship program has become a vital part of this mission. In 2025, we invested in 34 next-generation ministry leaders through our internship program. We awarded $36,000 in scholarships to support their pursuit of advanced ministry degrees. Additionally, three of our Graduate Interns were offered full-time staff roles, further strengthening our team. Our interns come from a diverse range of backgrounds, representing five states, 11 cities, and 11 colleges and universities. We are grateful for the growth and impact of our internship efforts this year.
Knowing and understanding our faith is critical to building a firm foundation on which to grow spiritually for a lifetime. As we navigate a culture that often has many answers to a single question, we felt it was more critical than ever to have a clear picture of what it means to be a Christian. That’s why our ministry team created the 52 Key Questions of the Christian faith.
Each month, we featured different questions from the “Top 12” in service every Sunday across all ministries, from adults to students to even the youngest of our Journey kiddos. We also hosted a conference to cover topics related to these Key Questions and teach congregants how to defend their faith.
While attending church every Sunday is a vital part of the Christian walk, true discipleship starts at home. Here at Journey, we’ve always had a passion for equipping parents and grandparents to have open, frequent discussions about faith with children.
Throughout the course of 2025, we introduced a number of family discipleship tools and resources to accomplish this, including 52 Key Questions flashcards for kids; the Journey Kids Challenge, which helps families build spiritual disciplines at home; family discipleship questions following each Sunday’s sermon, helping families have discussions at home throughout the week; and more.
We weren’t meant to follow Jesus alone—spiritual community gives us encouragement, accountability, and a place to grow alongside others. When we walk with people who are pursuing Jesus too, our faith is strengthened and our lives are enriched.
In 2025, we were able to expand our discipleship group offerings and saw over over 1,700 people engaged in discipleship groups because of that. From new Care Groups like Found & Woven to our new Every Man men’s group to additional groups for mothers, people at all ages and stages of life were able to engage in spiritual community at Journey.
One of our most exciting group offerings during the fall 2025 groups semester was Every Man, a weekly gathering for men of all ages to help them grow into the man God designed them to be. With a focus on discipleship, and with real-life application, we helped men in every stage of life learn what it means to be a man of God, to follow Jesus, and to be the spiritual leader of the home.
At the end of the groups season, we had over 250 men participate regularly in this gathering, and watched as men in our church formed meaningful and lasting friendships with one another.
Each year, we pack dozens of projects into one week to help show our community Jesus’ love in action. We call it Serve Week. This year, we saw over 1,400 volunteers come together to complete almost 100 community projects, serve 3,368 meals to those in need, donate 1,354 pounds of food, build/deliver 146 beds, and give 52 pints of blood. In total, our congregation served a cumulative total of 2,492 volunteer hours and raised over $2,980 for partner organizations in the span of one week!
One of the ways we consistently give back to our community is through the Journey Impact Center, which exists to meet people’s physical needs through radical generosity. To help us keep the shelves stocked, each February we use football’s biggest game as a way to give back to our community by collecting non-perishable food items for the Journey Impact Center. In 2025, we collected over 2,000 pounds of food to help feed Kansas City!
In an effort to serve our community’s physical needs as well as their spiritual needs, we collect and prep food donations every November for Thanksgiving meal boxes, which we then deliver to people in our community who otherwise may not be able to have Thanksgiving dinner. This year, hundreds of volunteers helped us prep and deliver almost 200 meal boxes to people in our community!
Here at Journey, we’re constantly seeking out ways to be the hands and feet of Jesus to a broken and hurting world. We strive to support positive change throughout our community all year long, and one way we do this is with Serve Saturday. Every first (and second!) Saturday of the month, we partner with local ministries to serve them in whatever capacity they need. This year, we had over 350 volunteers serve during our Saturday serve projects, impacting people through 38 projects, which met a wide variety of needs for people in our community.
The Journey Impact Center is so much more than a food pantry. Through it, we offer a safe place for anyone to get free food and clothing and provide community resources for assistance with housing, mental health, and more. Because of your generosity in both donating food, clothing, and hygiene items, and because of your willingness to serve, we were able to distribute 15,628 items of clothing and nearly 53,014 pounds of food to people in need right here in our community! With these donations, we were able to serve 5,313 people who were in need of food and clothing.
Each year, we dedicate a weekend to reflect on and celebrate the incredible impact of our global partners and the ministry that was accomplished around the world in 2025, while also looking ahead to the opportunities awaiting in 2026. This year, guest Pastor Vance Pitman delivered a powerful message about how God’s plan to accomplish His work has always been to do it through us, His people. After service, hundreds of you engaged with volunteers and missionaries alike to learn more about all the ways we as a church seek to make a difference in the world.
Mission 2540 is a serve group that focuses on helping people in our community (largely widows and single moms) with minor home repairs, yard cleanup, handyman work, etc. In addition to local projects, this group also sends teams all around the country to aid in disaster relief efforts, whether that be from a fire, tornado, flood, or hurricane. This year, the Mission 2540 crew participated in 12 local projects and went on 3 disaster relief trips, providing much-needed help and spiritual care to people who’d just lost everything.
This summer, we had the incredible opportunity to take 11 students on their first-ever mission trip to Denver, where we partnered with the Denver Dream Center. Throughout the week they were there, our students served in a variety of ways—helping serve meals to those experiencing homelessness, participating in Adopt-A-Block outreach events, and joining in on Vibe Night, the Dream Center’s student ministry gathering. We also had the privilege of taking inner-city youth to the lake for a fun and meaningful day together. This trip was a great opportunity to expose our students to missions work and help them grow spiritually while impacting others.
At Journey, one of our core beliefs is the importance of global impact, because we believe we are called to make a difference in the world. (Mt. 28:19-20) Because of this, we also believe everyone should go on at least one mission trip in their lifetime, and one of our long-term goals is to help build and maintain thriving communities in seven to ten global locations spanning every populated continent in the world.
This year at Journey, we coordinated nine global impact trips to eight different countries, including Peru, Uganda, Israel, Argentina, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Poland, and Ireland. In total, we had over 100 participants on these trips.
One of our greatest accomplishments in 2025 was the opening and dedication of a primary school in Zimudi, our partner village in Uganda. Thanks to your generosity, over 200 children got to go to school in their own village in 2025!
Every year, we release the annual report as a celebration of what God has done in the previous year. At Journey, our Ministry Team is deeply committed to financial stewardship, fully embracing our responsibility to apply every dollar in a purposeful manner, with the highest integrity to accomplish the vision (2 Cor. 8:20-21). What an incredible year of ministry it was at Journey in 2025!
Our team begins the process of financial stewardship every year by creating a ministry plan that allows the team fund and execute the most important goals and objectives that align with the overall vision of the church (Matt. 6:33). This ministry plan is then supported by the development of a budget plan that itemizes all the expenses necessary to accomplish those ministry goals and objectives (Luke 14:28). We then execute this plan by utilizing the proper finance systems and processes to track our expenses throughout the ministry year (Luke 16:10, Prov. 22:3). This annual report is a celebration of the measurable things God accomplished through the generosity of Journey!
The financial information in this report represents our operating budget based on the general offering that was received in 2025. We break these into general categories that are necessary to accomplish the vision. Additionally, there is a breakdown of the operations categories that provide a clearer representation of how those funds were used to support “mission critical” ministry.
We operate with margin when it comes to our operating budget—adequate to fund ministry but responsible keeping the future in mind. In addition to operating cash created by this margin, we received what we would call legacy gifts from individuals above and beyond their “general offering.” For the third consecutive year, we were able to pay an additional $1 million in loan principal, as well as fund additional global and multiplying ministry initiatives that are specific to developing and supporting the next generation of ministry leaders.
Thank you so much for your generosity and believing in the mission and vision of our church. We value every dollar that is entrusted to us, and we steward it for maximum impact. If you have any questions regarding finances at Journey, I would be honored to talk to you and answer any question you may have.
Scott Courtney | Executive Pastor of Administration
Since our church began, we have always prioritized giving a percentage of our general offering to global impact, local impact, and multiplying ministry efforts. In 2025, we increased 1% more bringing us to 17% of our general offering. Just by giving 1% more, we were able to invest nearly $70,000 in our Foster & Adopt Ministry as part of our local impact strategy to serve people in our community.
$6,900,000 given
Missions: $1,173,000 | Facility: $1,276,000 | Cash Reserves: $542,000
Operations: $1,115,000 | Labor: $2,794,000
Investing the first 17% (increased by 1% from 2024) of our offering into local impact, global missions, and multiplying ministry initiatives
TOTAL INVESTED: $1,173,000
Volunteers: $118,000 | Weekend Worship Experience: $317,000 | Spiritual Growth/Leadership Development: $163,000 | Communication: $92,000 | Administration: $425,000
Volunteers
Volunteer Headquarters; Inspire & other volunteer appreciation events; Journey swag (t-shirts, hats, etc.)
Weekend Worship Experience
Audio & video technology; special Sundays (Easter, Christmas, Mother’s Day, etc.); guest pastor expenses; digital streaming equipment
Spiritual Growth/Leadership Development
Small group curriculum; leader development coaching, training, and resources; prayer ministry (prayer guides, meals, etc.)
Communication
Printed materials; website & app updates/maintenance; marketing (mail, email, social media, etc.)
Administration
Church database software and management; risk insurance; professional services (lawn care, accounting, consulting, police officers, legal fees, etc.); office supplies