Dr. Emerson Eggerichs and special guest host Mike Sharrow join the show to take a candid look at how entrepreneurs can overcome the challenges they face in their personal and professional relationships.

Dr. Eggerichs is a renowned counselor and author, as well as the founder of Love and Respect, a ministry that grew from the success of his best-selling marriage book of the same name and has expanded to include teachings and resources on business, leadership, and communication in addition to marriage and family concerns.

In this conversation, he breaks down practical insights for bringing love and respect to all relationships.

• We can motivate and influence others by meeting their deepest core needs with love and respect.

• It is important to apologize and seek forgiveness when we come across as unloving or disrespectful.

• Trust and obedience are key in applying these principles over time.

• In marriage, it is important to communicate in a way that resonates with your spouse’s natural language.

Find more about Dr. Eggerichs’ ministry at https://www.loveandrespect.com/ 

Get the book https://www.loveandrespect.com/product/love-respect-book

Episode Transcript

Joseph Honescko: You walk into the office feeling uneasy. There’s been a bit of tension between you and your employees, but you can’t quite place what it is you feel. You’ve been clear with your expectations. You pay them well. You’re not mean or difficult, but something still feels off. Maybe turnover is high or morale is low. The culture just doesn’t feel right and it’s affecting you too. So you find yourself being more passive aggressive or caring less for the people around you. You build up this wall and unsurprisingly, it doesn’t help. If this has ever happened to you, you might have entered what today’s guest, Doctor Emerson Eggerichs, calls the crazy cycle. And in this episode, he’s going to tell you how to get out of it. Doctor Eggerichs is a counselor, author, and leader of a ministry called Love and Respect, which he grew from the success of his bestselling marriage book of the same name. Today, the ministry has expanded to include teachings and resources on business leadership, communication and marriage, and family concerns. He joins us on the show to talk about the unique challenges entrepreneurs face to offer love and respect, both in their marriages and in their businesses. I’m Joey Honescko, and you’re listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let’s get into it.

Joseph Honescko: Welcome back, everyone to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. My name is Joey Honescko and I’m excited for the conversation today with Doctor Emerson Eggerichs. And I’m also excited because we’ve been doing this thing where we rotate co-host to show various voices from around the faith driven movement. And today I’ll be joined by Mike Sharrow of an awesome ministry called C12, and we love the work they’re doing to bring together and coach Christian business leaders and group settings. He’s a longtime friend and partner in this movement, and it’s great to have Mike on the show, particularly because of his unique connection to the work of doctor Eggerichs. So, Mike, maybe just introduce yourself for a second talk about C12, and then I’d love for you to hit on just how love and respect has impacted you as a leader and your organization.

Mike Sharrow: Absolutely, Joey. This is gonna be so much fun. This is like the collision of major parts of my world in one conversation. So my day job, I get to be the CEO of this amazing platform called C12 Business Forums, where we run these groups all around the world for about 4000 business leaders and CEOs on like four continents. We get 200 full time chairs. They’re out running those forums for us. And Robert’s idea of great business, great a purpose business as a ministry, but also whole life stewardship. And so marriage comes up a ton into the human side. Like my wife and I are about to have our 22nd marriage anniversary in a few weeks, in probably the single greatest book in content that is impact of that is love and respect to that we have. I think we’ve read it, taught it, led groups on it maybe 20 times. We taught it in different countries. I’ve watched you grow me as a husband, as a father, vitality, my marriage. But even I have, I could tell you, I could drive down the road to two engineers at a company who tore up their divorce papers at work because their boss played a love and respect DVD at lunch. Wow. And I could tell you, we probably purchased like, 500 copies of books. I think we show them to get a commission on book sales. And all I to say, love business, ministry, life integration. And I think some stuff that gods use you, Emerson, to unpack for people is just so powerful for business. I can’t wait for us to talk about it. Powerful, powerful.

Emerson Eggerichs: Thank you.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, that’s very powerful. And marriage is such a key part for entrepreneurs because there’s all these extra financial pressures. It’s hard for everyone, right? Just like as a floor. But I think with entrepreneurs, we’ve done episodes where we talk about the mental health challenges, the financial challenges, all these different pressures and it all that can add up and interfere with our marriages, our families. We’re going to get into that. And so let’s introduce our guest, Doctor Emerson Eggerichs. Emerson. Welcome to the show. Thank you for joining us.

Emerson Eggerichs: Oh thank you Joey and Mike. Thank you. Yes.

Mike Sharrow: So part of I want to dive in is this is such a big issue. In fact, a few years ago we partnered with a national research group to study marriages of our leaders, our chairs. And so our members just try to figure out where we can help encourage them. And the researchers came back and said, oh, wow, you didn’t think of this high net worth. Christians, particularly entrepreneurs, are tied with pastors for having some of the worst marriage profiles. And, it blew me away. But they it made so much sense. They said there’s this high financial stability. They’re not fighting about money or how to survive. So there’s comfort. And there was a high spirituality, like a moral condition. We got to do the right thing. And those were so extraordinarily high it actually masked, tolerated and created what they call artificial buoyancy for all other areas of marital vitality, and that they are actually often miserable in areas of communication and intimacy and all these other factors. But with the mask of […], they got a big house. They’re doing good things and they’re getting big money away. So life’s all good. And we just found out it’s this illusion of flourishing. And I was curious. Emerson, you’ve been walking in couples for so long. Are you surprised by that? And why do you think we end up in the spot of being great Christians, doing great things and having miserable marriages?

Emerson Eggerichs: No, I think that was profound research and very intriguing to hear your comments. I think, again, as you even referenced earlier, the two gentlemen, I think it was it tore up their divorce papers upon hearing, I think, a little of this information. I think oftentimes it’s an honest misunderstanding in between the husband and the wife. I mean, you can have great skill as a brain surgeon, so to speak, but you don’t have the emotional wisdom to know how to engage your wife, who may be criticizing or complaining because it sounds like contempt when really it’s driven by her desire to, you know, make the relationship better because she cares. So she is caring as she confronts, but she comes across as contemptuous because no one talks to the brain surgeon this way. So be easy for him to, you know, just kind of put up the shield here and get frustrated with this. And then she gets hurt because she’s moving toward him to resolve some of these concerns. And so it comes back to honest misunderstandings. And that’s been part of my campaign that we can have great, abilities on so many fronts. But when it comes to this husband wife relationship, it oftentimes is an honest misunderstanding. And we would think that we understand because we feel that we’re normal and we feel that we’re right. And so we try to communicate to them that they’re wrong, not because we’re mean spirited, but we just think they are wrong. And actually they may be a little abnormal. And once we posture that way, we’re, entering what I call the crazy cycle, and it gets insane and people are frustrated and feel very impotent, and then they just end up living as roommates, and they she doesn’t divorce him because she can’t remarry somebody else with that kind of money. And he didn’t want to divorce her because he didn’t want to split his assets. I mean, I overstated that, but yeah.

Mike Sharrow: No. Yeah. No, I love it that what I find on the, you know, practical side. And you walk through and you address a well, maybe this is like a quick thumbnail sketch of this. Crazy cycles is like, no one’s happy. So the frustrating things you get two people who are both like, I’m working really hard. In fact, I’m exhausted trying to do the right best thing and I’m a brain surgeon, or I’m out for another and I’m successful everywhere else and not here. So it’s not like lack of effort typically. And at the end of your why? Like, why do we end up here?

Emerson Eggerichs: Well, because, we have all heard the definition of craziness. And as we keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same ill effects, and the crazy cycle is based on Ephesians 5:33, where the apostle Paul instructs husbands to love their wives with agape love. The Greek word there’s agape, and no wife is commanded to agape love her husband. It’s not there because he’s put it within her nature to nurture women, love to love it. The love of intimacy. You really have to close her up before she’ll say, I don’t love you. She wants to love. And she’s moving toward that to express her love and to receive that love. So it’s very telling that Paul then tells her to put on respect toward her husband. So the husband is to love, the wife is to respect. And I always point out that she needs respect. Peter tells her husband to honor his wife, and in Titus two, the older woman and encourage young women to love their husbands. But that’s phileo. Be more friendly in though she becomes unfriendly, so the end result is that both need love and respect equally. But we’ve asked 7000 people this question. When you’re in conflict with your spouse, do you feel unloved at that moment or disrespected? And Joey, in my 83% of the men said they feel disrespected and 72% of the women say they feel unloved. So again, there’s exception to everything, but this is statistically significant. This is off the charts. This is as different as night is from day is pink is from blue. And people don’t understand this, for any number of reasons. But then I saw this correlation or connection. I thought when Sarah, my wife and we’ve been married 50 years, when Sarah feels unloved, how does she react? I’ll bet she reacts in disrespectful way. She doesn’t intend to be disrespectful. But that’s how she appears to me that because there’s a negativity there, women there default when they’re feeling insecure and upset, and I know they will react negatively and move aggressively toward the man, you know, to try to resolve this. But she does it in a way that no one else does toward her husband, usually. So he just feels like, well, I know you love me, but better if you like me right now and I don’t deserve this disrespect. And she said, well, you haven’t earned the respect. And so now that becomes a real misunderstanding on the other side, when he feels disrespected, he’ll do what every man does. If you and I, Mike, we’re the best of buddies. And we got into heated argument, a certain point, it’s a drop. But forget it. Because today research has revealed our heartbeats get to 99 beats per minute during this provocation. So we have to withdraw and calm down physiologically. So the man just says, drop it. Forget it’s not that big of an issue. He tries to de-escalate it, but let’s just kind of move on. Well, that threatens her to no end because that feels hugely unloving. So here he feels disrespectful. He’s trying to do the honorable thing only to be labeled as unloving. And then she then reacts in a more disrespectful way, and then he pulls back even more. And this thing gets crazy without love. She reacts without respect. Without respect. He reacts without love, without love. She reacts with our respect, with our respect. And I always say when the issue isn’t the issue, this is the issue. And when you see the spirit of your spouse to play or get provoked, you’ve entered the crazy cycle. And Mike, it is at this point that many people, as competent as they are and is skilled as they are and as knowledgeable they are on so many fronts. If they don’t have a little knowledge on this and a little skill on this to know how to jump off that crazy cycle, it moves into insanity. They keep doing the same thing over and over again with the same ill effects. He’s feeling disrespected. He’s defensively reacting without respect. Defensively he reacts offensively without love, without love. Defensively she reacts offensively without respect. And they don’t see that their defensive reactions continue to step on. The air hose of the other person. And so it gets ugly. And the only thing they know to do is to pull away from each other until the next fight.

Joseph Honescko: So I’m thinking about me on my worst days, right? And I think our listeners might resonate with some of this, because I can think that, like, I’m working hard for my family. I’m out here doing good things for God, paying our bills. My wife should respect me, or even entrepreneur. My team should respect me. I’m owed that respect. And I could almost see someone being like, yeah, that’s right. You know, if my wife gave me more respect then I would love her. Well, so how might we redirect that thinking even now for our listeners who might be feeling this, like, yeah, I haven’t gotten enough respect, and that’s the problem.

Emerson Eggerichs: Well, I think we begin with this self-awareness, particularly men, because we’ve been told as men you shouldn’t feel disrespected. You’re narcissistic, and so many men end up, you know, sidestepping what’s really going on because they don’t know how to put a voice vocabulary this. And then she will also say we haven’t earned it. And so this becomes problematic. But I begin first with the awareness of the crazy cycle. We need to have a vocabulary that allows us to identify. I mean, to your point earlier, Mike, I’ve said what I just said in five minutes to I don’t know how many men. And they said, you just put a voice and vocabulary to everything I’ve been experiencing for 30 years, but I didn’t have a way of even understanding it. So we want to first of all, start with the understanding. Now, given that everybody kind of oh, I get it. That’s crazy. Now you’re bringing up Joey. The question well, am I going to be justified to assign blame? Hey, I wouldn’t be unloving if my wife was respectful. That’s exactly the problem, Emerson. She’s triggering the crazy cycle. And if a woman’s out there. Well, that’s exactly right. I’m disrespectful because he’s so unloving. So now we’re in a stalemate logjam as to what we do. But that’s another topic. And that is a very important topic. How do we jump off the crazy cycle without saying that the other person is always causing us to get on the crazy cycle? One way is for me as a husband. When Sarah is reacting to me negatively, I say, honey, and I wrote the book, but you’re coming across in a way that feels disrespectful. Did I say or do something earlier that felt unloving to you? Or your husband is reacting unloving shuts down. Honey, this feels very unloving. I’m threatened by this, but did I say or do something earlier that sounded disrespectful to you? That was my intent, but that would help me coach me. Now this becomes a delicate issue because the other person might be dismissive. You’re always doing that. That’s exactly right. So we’re so afraid of that criticism, which is odd, maybe because most of these people would die for Jesus Christ, but they can’t handle a little social ostracism, you know what I mean? But we’re all in it. But we are very vulnerable this. But the solution is to give your spouse the benefit of the doubt by using that script and that kind of language. And if you stay on message over a period of time, it’s very disarming. And usually the other person will soften. Why? Because we’re getting in tune of their core need. And most people who have goodwill are going to appreciate that. Now, if they’re having an affair, all bets are off because you’re going to be the enemy. But if there’s basic goodwill there, they will eventually soften. They react a little bit initially because this is too good to be true. But you stay on message and watch what happens.

Mike Sharrow: Okay. So our audience are often doers. These are CEOs, people building stuff. And we like to win. We like to build stuff we’re good at and we do hard things. But you are things with a payback, whether it’s financial or applause and marriage […] For you to maybe get the wins as easy in that you feel like you’re just stuck in that crazy cycle. So I would love that. Let’s see the conversation a little different. A few years ago, speaking at Texas A&M University to a bunch of aspiring leaders, and this young lady walked up to me and she said, my dad is one of those people that your organization’s impacted. I grew up, he was immensely successful, gave away tons of money, did lots of things, and she said, I always the other one said, you must be so proud your dad is changing the world. But at home, my mom and I used to wonder. I wish we were in the frame of the world he was trying to change. It feels like all of his success is outside the home, and we were never part of the world. He was trying to change. And then that change when people started hold him accountable to the idea of like marriage matters and how your love, your wife matters, and that created generational change refer, which is cruel. But part of what the data we see is a lot of entrepreneurs just kind of settle and accepts, okay, that’s where it’s at. I’m not being horrible, not beating my wife or she’s not abusive. Her husband. And I’m doing all this for the kingdom. I’m making money. I’m solving problems. How would you challenge leaders to not settle for just a not dead marriage?

Emerson Eggerichs: Well, the larger issue, and I just spoke to 2300 entrepreneurs, husbands and wives on this idea that almost every crisis following couple believes what Jesus said that God joined us together. I mean, in Matthew 19, Jesus is very clear that our Heavenly Father joined us together. And this sense of being joined together for a bigger purpose, a kingdom purpose, is in the hearts of almost every husband and wife who love the Lord. And they get married. They sense there’s going to be this satisfaction in the relationship, but they sense a bigger call. And I’m writing a book called The Win Win Marriage, based on first Corinthians seven, where Paul addresses mutuality, goes back and forth in a barley, back and forth, back and forth between two believers who are married with each other. He interweaves celibacy, singleness, married to an unbeliever. But when you pull the verses out that deal with husband and wife, who are both Christ’s followers, it’s just powerful. But in that text he says nine times that were called. It’s not just to the believing spouses, but also the unbeliever, the believer, married unbeliever, also the widowed singles, etc. but it applies very clearly to the husband and wife who love the Lord and marry together. So we believed early on that we were joined together. We believe that God called us, but we get derailed and I believe it’s because of the crazy cycle. And now we’re looking in that rearview mirror at that calling. It’s a light that’s in the past. Individually, we are seeking Christ. And this is what’s always interesting. We’re being use of the Lord individually, but we’re not being used as a team. And we are to represent Christ in the church. And there should be a melody coming out of our lives that those who look at us say, give me the lyrics, give me the words to the melody, I want to know more. And there was that sense of vision and purpose early on. But now there’s this undercurrent of resentment. And this is the challenge, then, that we extend to, let’s say, the CEO, if it’s a man in this case, what does he do in this situation? Do you just kind of settle now and kind of do this dance as best you know how until death? Or is there a skill and knowledge you can have to kind of make this a little bit better. One thing is that the reason that you’ve shut down is you feel that you’re getting disrespect you don’t deserve. So the question is, how do you give voice to your deeper need without her dismissing that as narcissistic and egotistical, that there is a way that you can have this conversation, but there’s also a set of landmines that you’ve got to avoid. You can’t just say that, you know, you’re so unlovable. It’s hard for me to love you and I pull away from you. You’re so disrespectful and I’m sick and tired. You go, you start using that kind of language and you’re sabotaging the whole process. So I wrote the book to give you the skill and to the love and respect. Well, to be able to enter into that in a way that your needs as a man for this need to be honored for who you are, apart from your performance that your wife would feel about you the way Jesus feels about you. I mean, the Lord knows you’re not always honorable or respectable, but he who called you, you know, he who began that good work in you, perfected until the day of Christ Jesus. And you have the sense that the Lord favors you more than your wife does. And so you given up on this, or is there a way that you can maybe present this and she will be all in? It’s not that she’s unwilling. She just doesn’t understand.

Mike Sharrow: Part of what you’ve been tapping into here isn’t just me as a CEO of a wife, Jackie, or a female entrepreneur to her husband, this is male female stuff. So could you maybe begin a bridge into. If I had this issue at home with my spouse, where might I be getting into crazy cycles at work that are also full of male female dynamics? What does that look like for me at work?

Emerson Eggerichs: All right. And right now, media had me make a presentation on the crazy cycle in the workplace because it’s true. I mean, Jesus said in Matthew 19, have you not read? He made them from the beginning, made them male and female? He didn’t say, Sarah says at a conference in Magus husband and wife. You made us male and female. And that distinction is a difference. And there is an important point here, then, that there’s going to be a pink and blue perspective in the work arena. Now we become a culture that says because we’re equal, therefore we’re the same. We become a culture that’s very apprehensive about stereotypic thinking. And I get all that. So my point, though, is you can have a woman got great leadership gifts and so on, so forth. But if you don’t understand how she has a sensitivity, a caring instinct, how she’s going to read in to uncaring remarks, and if we don’t, then maybe pull back and say, wait a minute, that came across way too harsh. Can I have a redo on that? If we aren’t doing that, we’re just barging forward and they should just get the content and do well. You can be right, but wrong at the top of your voice. That I had a fellow come to me and said, you know, I can’t believe it. We’re in this big organization, in my department. I’ve got 100 women. There’s another department, a guy overseas, he’s got 100 women. Those women over there never quit. I’ve got women quitting on me, but I provide better medical coverage. I do better this, I do better that. And he says, I am completely baffled why these women are quitting on me. But they’re staying over. Are there when he doesn’t even offer some of the bonuses that I do. I said just one question. Does he ask Sally about how her 16 year old boy is doing in school? Yeah, he’s doing that all the time. I said, let’s just think about that for a moment. Now you have to make sure you don’t cross lines that are inappropriate. But the fact is, when you care for those things, she’s working there, perhaps in this as a blue collar person, and she’s got pictures of her family there. She’s doing this to bring in the extra money so that they can do x, Y, z for the family. And when that employer understands that and is in tune with that, there is something that women just feel. They just appreciate that so deeply. Now you can manipulate. There’s a fine line between motivation and manipulation. If you use this information to gain for yourself, they’ll sense that soon enough. You got to be genuine in that. But when you are, this is where that dynamic plays out so powerfully in the work arena.

Joseph Honescko: One thing that you’re hitting on here is that there are habits and kind of long term effects of this stuff. What would be a way to identify if you’re in the midst of the crazy cycle, or if you’re just having a bad week at work, like where, where are these things kind of becoming permanent problems versus natural up and down relational dynamics at work?

Emerson Eggerichs: Yeah, if I’m taking up a fence because I feel that my boss is uncaring, and then I’m coming across in a way that appears disrespectful and negative and contemptuous, you’re doing yourself no long term favor there. You can’t use unholy means to achieve a worthy end. He’s not going to awaken to that. So that’s why there needs to be a different approach. It may be saying, sir, you know, how can I honor you better? Sometimes I feel like, you know, I don’t have value in the organization because the way you react, I’m probably misreading that. So I probably have contributed to that. Can you help me better understand that and better honor you and your request to me? I have found that when we begin to introduce that kind of language, so the bosses are still the same as everybody else, but not toward her anymore. It’s an amazing thing. And so to the man you know is in the board meeting and she’s having a bad hair day, I had a woman come to me. She was on the upper team. She was up to the top, and there were all men on this thing. She was the only female. And she claimed that they ousted her because of the glass ceiling. When she heard me talking. And she said, one day I just had a bad moment, and I just ripped into the CEO with I just went after him like I did my husband, because I felt we were all friends, and I could almost see some of the guys around that table white knuckling it. And soon enough, I was out. And the problem I realized, I thought it’s because I was female, but I undermined it. Trust. Based on what you’re saying. He felt like he could no longer trust me. And I said, that’s exactly right. So you need to go back to him on a private thing and say, look, I need to seek your forgiveness. I dishonored you that day. I was not having a good day. I see how that’s undermined the trust. I hope you will forgive me. I’m not bringing this up to be reposition, but I realize I was wrong on that front. And I’ve also apologized to the other men around that table. I was just out of line. I wanted you just to know that and then turn around and exit. Those situations get redeemed quite quickly, because one of the strengths that men have is if you honor them on the heels of dishonoring them, particularly if you say, I didn’t intend to do that, men are very forgiving. This is the thing that’s so powerful about men on this front. And this is why many ladies need, though, to understand that there’s a language you need to use. Now, having said that same thing, if you’re a man dishonoring a man, you got a problem. If you’re a female who’s coming across in a very ugly, uncaring way toward the female, you’re going to have a problem. And then you add to that if you’re being uncaring disrespect, I mean, it’s just you can see these are core virtues in core concepts. We’re not talking about a thousand different things here. We’re talking about asking this question is that which I’m about to say, going to sound caring and loving to my team and respectful to my team, or are they going to feel that I’m really not respecting them and I really don’t care about it? If your team senses that you don’t respect them and that you don’t care about them, you have put yourself behind significantly. And the only reason they’re staying there is because of the incentives, or they don’t have other options. But given there’s a better opportunity, they are not loyal to you and they will exit quickly. And that’s my challenge. You cannot violate these core qualities and expect to be a success long term. Or put it this way, if they stay with you for 30 years, they’re not coming to your funeral. They don’t care you. You shut them off.

Mike Sharrow: So I love the fact that you can build a crazy cycle for days, months, weeks, years and it doesn’t mean you’re stuck there. So I’d love to hear your encouragement around some of those. Like minute I hear all this, but I’ve been doing this for 20 years a different way. Hello. I suddenly you leave because I’m stuck.

Emerson Eggerichs: Well, why should you? Well, yeah, you could say you’re stuck, but sometimes the responses. Why should I change? It’s working for me. I mean, I’m a success. Yeah. We’re not divorcing. We’re living our independent life, you know? I mean, I’m 80% of the way there. I don’t really have an interest in doing the 20%, particularly if, you know, I guess this whole idea of, you know, I, I’m more familiar with the chaos and I’m more comfortable with that than risking the possibility of peace in this uncertainty blowing up in my face. And so people will come to a point where I don’t want to risk changing. And furthermore, if I’m a successful person, I’m not convinced that I’m all that wrong. And furthermore, I’m not convinced that the people out there aren’t really the culprits here. And there could be. True that you referenced earlier about the mother and the daughter in the home, and he was very successful outside the home, and she came up to you, and it could very well be that they were tender, loving people. But if they negatively reacted on an ongoing basis and contemptuous and disrespectful ways and had emotional meltdowns with the hope that he would rescue them, he’s a deer in the headlights. He does not know what to do in that. So there’s a contributing factor over there that I understand. But that’s where you regardless, if the man is the victim here or he is the victimizer, he can diffuse that if he wants to with just a little knowledge, little skill, and it’s actually going to bring a lot more meaning into his life. It’s well worth it. It is not a situation where you have to say, well, I guess, you know, I have to say I’m wrong and everything. I know you done very well. We’re just talking about and proving. I mean, even Pat Riley talked about just improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the basketball game. Just a little percent. And he had that mathematical formula where we’re not talking about major changes, we’re talking about just incremental changes at a very fractional kind of length here. And over time it’ll improve. And so my appeal to that CEO, you know, and here’s the deal. If you’re a male, you’re going to fear being dishonored in this. And so again it that just reinforces what I’m saying. But you’ve got to be willing to move forward on this if you want more. And if you do then that’s why I wrote the book Love and Respect. It’ll give you the script honestly stated to soften the heart of your wife and your adult daughter. If she’s still in the home, it’s just worth it. And you don’t lose space in the process because I will help you then be able to communicate to them how it will be helpful to you for them to word themselves a bit differently. And can we create a win win here? Can we create reciprocity here and explore and experiment with this over the next several weeks, and the joy that comes to people because they think, I never thought this was even possible. So it’s well worth the effort. Yes.

Mike Sharrow: One last thing. You addressed an interesting dilemma in your boast, and I want to enter it here for whether I’m a spouse. I’m not very good man. I’ve been stuck for years with my partner. We’re just coping. We’re surviving or at work. I’m in this feel disrespected, dishonored by my staff. And it’s their fault, right? Well, if I’m the one feeling like I’m the victim here, I’m owed. So what would be your advice in the dilemma of who should act first?

Emerson Eggerichs: Right. And that’s one of the most common questions that are conference who moves first. They get us off the crazy cycle, for instance. And my response is the one who sees himself or herself as the most mature, most first. And we do see ourselves as the most mature because we see the people around us. It’s childish. It’s about it’s really a statement to corner us, but it also is a statement that you have the power to make a change if you want to. You can’t control the outcomes in another person. You can only control your actions and reactions to that person. But the Lord has allowed us to motivate people, to influence people, to energize people. And he does so by saying, look, they’re going to probably respond to you if you meet their deepest core need. It’s really got to be a bad dude or bad. Do this for them not to respond to you. When you attempt to be loving or respectful toward their core need. And you can begin by saying, did I come across as unloving or disrespectful? You don’t even have to be proactive in this. You can just be apologetic for perhaps stepping on their arrows, and that’s using their mother tongue. Speaking to my tongue. That in of itself, if you say to your wife, you know, I think I came across and loving you here again, watch something just release from her body almost instantaneously. And if you say to your husband, I think I really dishonored you here, you die for me if I don’t kill you first. But I think I dishonored you here, and I need to really seek your forgiveness. Watch what happens, watch what happens. But see, you can’t do this with the idea that the marriage is going to become perfect because everybody’s going to have a bad day. But it’s a process. And these are principles, Sarah and I. I mean, Sarah chased me around the house with my love and respect book one day saying, what would you say to a husband who has been treating his wife the way you’re treating me right now? And I said, I’m not going to answer that. I just wrote the book. I don’t do this stuff. So, I mean, we all have our moments, and so no one’s going to be perfect on this. But the challenge for us is to believe that if we stay on message, it’s just going to work. And why should we do it? Well, what man wants to continue to be disrespected and dishonored and in you’re not going to be motivating her to show you respect by treating her and lovingly. That’s that unholy means to achieve a worthy end. You can’t say I want to teach her. No you won’t. You’re just going to close her off. So in order for you to achieve, ultimately your deepest need, you’re going to have to put a voice and vocabulary to what you’re feeling. So she understands it. But you’ve got to do it in a way that doesn’t appear unloving to her. And so to a wife out there saying, I really do want him to love me more, but you can’t communicate to him that he’s inadequate and you don’t respect him as a way to awaken him. He’s not a woman. He hasn’t got to say, oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. Please forgive me. What can I do to change? Every girlfriend you have is going to do that. Men don’t operate that way. So you cannot be negative to motivate him to be positive. So you have to use his mother tongue to get through to him. And it’s not a vocabulary that you naturally speak, which is why you’re under divine command to respect. And it’s not natural for a man to be loving. That’s why we’re under divine command to act. It’s not within our nature to do this, particularly when we feel unloved or disrespected. So it becomes an issue of trust and obedience and believing. As we apply this over a period of time, the Lord’s not mocking us. He’s simply not mocking us. Instead, he’s saying, why don’t you trust me here and just keep on message and watch what happens?

Joseph Honescko: I love these practical steps, both in marriage and in the teams. I love that idea of experimenting, like just giving it a shot and committing to it. As we come to a close here, we always love to end every episode asking our guests what the Lord is teaching you through His Word recently, and it could be something that happened today, could be this week, or just a passing thought that’s been on your heart. So what have you heard from the Lord recently through His word?

Emerson Eggerichs: Well, in fact, that was interviewed on a radio program yesterday and the same question was asked and I went to James one five, which, you know, I’ve known through the years of any of you lacks wisdom. Let him ask of God who gives to him and generously and without reproach. And I think it’s so important as I communicate with people even in this situation. And this is so rich to me, when I landed on that without reproach, I mean, there are many times I acted foolishly, particularly during trials, and didn’t really listen to the way the Lord wanted me to move. I didn’t even pray you had not because you asked not. James later says, I didn’t think about the Lord, didn’t even ask him for wisdom. Now I made a mess of things, and then you kind of come back sheepishly and you think he’s going to slap you from heaven. Early in my Christian life, that was the feeling, you know? And God, he’s a cosmic killjoy who’s going to whack me because my dad had rage issues. And so there was a projection there a little bit. But then that passage, generously and without reproach, I’m thinking, wow, without reproach. It’s not like, well, fine, how do you do? You turn to me now when you made a mess of things? Do you want my wisdom to get you out of the mess? And so he reproaches us. That’s the way we think he’s going to do it. But he won’t reproaches. And not only does he not reproaches, he says, not only am I going to give you what you need, I’m going to give you a little bit more. So I think the message to the man or woman out there listening who said, you know, I think I’ve really made a mess of this. I’ve been on the crazy cycle unnecessarily for 20 years. I don’t even know if I have the wisdom or the strength to be able to move forward. And let’s just begin by saying, Lord, give me wisdom and how I need to take the next natural step. I’m going to believe you want to give this to me generously, and I’m going to believe that you’re not going to reproach me because of the mistakes I’ve made in the past.

Joseph Honescko: What a beautiful way. Then you mentioned God doesn’t make you. God isn’t trying to slap you down. God is loving us generously and lavishly. Thank you so much, both of you, for joining us today. We’ll leave all the resources, the books, things like that, that we mentioned. We’ll leave those in the show notes so listeners can check those out. And then be sure to follow review, share the show if you found it helpful, and we’ll chat more next week. Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at FaithDrivenEntrepreneur.org.

Recent Episodes

Do you ever feel like you’re so fixated on what you’re building next that you forget to look at the opportunities right in front of you?

Right now people around the world are looking for meaning, purpose, and value.

And many of them are searching for those things through their jobs.

So that means you, as a founder, have a chance to provide these people with the very thing they long for most.

In this episode, we talk to Stephen Phelan, the Chief Pastoral Officer of Movement Mortgage about the radical programs they have implemented to care for their employees.

Stephen has helped businesses all around the U.S. care meet the needs of their employees, and the best part is that these programs aren’t out of reach or super expensive. In fact, throughout the conversation, Stephen shows just how realistic these are for any company, no matter how big or small your team is.

5 Key Takeaways:

• Implementing programs like Love Works can have a significant impact on company culture and create a community where teammates feel loved and valued.

• The Love Works program helps teammates in crisis and demonstrates the love and care of the company.

• Mentoring processes can be implemented to further support and develop teammates.

• Funding for programs like Love Works can be achieved through the support of teammates.

• Overcoming barriers such as uncertainty and busyness is essential to implementing programs that care for and support teammates.

You can contact Stephen directly at Stephen.Phelan@movement.com.

You can also hear more about the work of Movement Mortgage in the first edition of a new podcast segment called “Stories of the Movement.” Listen to the episode here: https://www.faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/podcast-inventory/episode-283-stories-of-the-movement-the-2008-turnaround

If you enjoyed the show, please rate, follow, and share the episode.

Episode Transcript

Joseph Honescko: Do you ever feel like you’re so fixated on what you’re building next that you forget to look at the opportunities right in front of you? Right now, people around the world are looking for meaning and purpose and value, and many of them are searching for those things through their jobs. So that means you, as a founder, have a chance to provide these people with the very thing they long form most. And look, maybe you’ve felt this call before you’ve come out of a church service or a conference and you were so excited to make a difference for your team. But then reality hit and you started thinking, where’s the money going to come from? How are we going to actually implement this new initiative? Quickly, you move past the opportunity and decide that it’s just too complicated to get into right now. But what if it actually wasn’t that complicated? Today we’re talking to Stephen Phelan, the chief pastoral officer of Movement Mortgage. Their team has implemented some radical programs for their employees, and Stephen has helped businesses all around the US do the same. The best part is that these programs aren’t out of reach or super expensive. In fact, in this episode, Stephen is going to show us how realistic these are for any company, no matter how big or small your team is. I’m Joey Honescko, and you’re listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let’s get into it. Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I’m here with my co-host Justin Forman, and we’re recording this just days after the Super Bowl. And Justin, we’ve had some side conversation, and you seemed much more excited about that Dunkin Donuts commercial than you were about the game.

Justin Forman: How can you not be as a Lions fan that is heartbroken watching a terrible game happen in the first half, thinking we missed our moment. This was our once in a generational opportunity to win the Super Bowl. So no, I was not excited about the football game. I was excited about the ads wars and Dunkin Donuts. Hands down the subtleties. The Easter eggs. Come on Joey, you have to appreciate that.

Joseph Honescko: Oh man, I loved it. I love the commercials. Second place only too. Well, I guess it’d be kind of third place. Second place would be the usher halftime show. And for me, it was just a great win to have Taylor Swift there, because I’m a far bigger Swift fan than I am a football fan. And, I have a feeling I’m the minority. Not just in our listenership, but probably in this recording room with our guest, Stephen, today. Stephen, you a big swiftie.

Stephen Phelan: Well, my daughter is, I’ve become one through my eighth grade daughter who has all the albums. There’s all the songs is playing Swift relentlessly in our house. Everyone else analysis going no more Swift and she’s on it. So I’ve become a fan through her.

Joseph Honescko: But you’ve also got a football background too, right? So it’s a little bit of a two for one special for you.

Stephen Phelan: No doubt. Yeah. Played in college at UVA, so love the game. And actually I thought the first half was brilliant because it was a defensive game. So I love the first half. I’m a defensive guy.

Joseph Honescko: That’s awesome. I definitely have enough knowledge to know the difference between defense and offense, but that’s about where my knowledge stops. But we are excited you’re here and excited to talk about caring for your team, all those kinds of things, because you really have a unique role at Movement Mortgage. We’ve had movement mortgage videos, we’ve had stories, they’ve been on the podcast. We’ve talked about it in different ways, but we haven’t had a chance to have you talking about this role as chief pastoral officer. So that’s a really unique title. Can you start us off with just a bit of an overview about what that means and how you, as a pastor, came into the private sector? What does all that look like?

Stephen Phelan: Well, honestly, Joey, I had two phone calls that changed my life, and both of those phone calls were from a faith driven entrepreneur. And the first phone call that changed my life was from a guy named Casey Crawford, faith driven entrepreneur who call me this back in 2008, early 2008, and he said, hey, man, I think God is calling me to start a mortgage company. Would you fast and pray with me on that? I was like, no, I won’t it’s a bad idea. You need to turn the TV on, man. You got to get out. The world is blowing up because of that industry. And he goes, I know, I know, but it’s that’s all driven by greed. Like subprime loans has collapsed. The world’s driven by greed. And but what if we started a company that was all about loving our neighbor rather than preying on our neighbor for personal financial gain? And so I said, oh, man, I could get behind that. And so we began fasting and praying about that. And he had a day away with God, him call me on the way back. Hey, man, like God spoke to me. It was awesome. I said, yeah, that’s awesome what he said. He said, well, he told me to cap my income, live moderately and give it all away. If this company really goes, if God really blesses it, man, I think I’m called to build God’s kingdom with this, not my own personal kingdom. And man, that was so inspiring to me as a man. Listen, I love that you’ve heard from God on this. And I said, it’ll be my pleasure to hold you to that for the rest of your life, because you’ve heard from God to start a company that’s all about the kingdom of God and not the kingdom of Casey. And at the time, it didn’t matter, right? Because it was like me and him, and there was no money, there was no nothing. And so he has his Jerry Maguire moment and like, bangs out this manifesto and sends it over to me. And, and then we started dreaming about what would a company look like. It was really about seeking first the kingdom of God, loving your neighbor. Really, the great commandment, how do you live out loving God and loving people? And so that conversation changed for me, and that didn’t set the trajectory of a company that’s built around loving teammates, doing everything we can to love teammates with eternity in mind, their long term best interests in mind. So I tell you what, that one phone call changed my life and changed the way I think about the Great Commandment. And later in the call, we can get to the second phone call from a faith driven entrepreneur that also changed my journey. But that one really took me on a journey. With the faith driven entrepreneur to think about how can we reimagine faith in the marketplace, integrating faith and work at every level, built around fundamentally loving your neighbor and loving your teammate?

Justin Forman: Man, there’s so much in that, Stephen, when you’re talking about the idea of like, man, there’s a decision. That’s being made early, and it’s before the success of before the growth. It’s so important and so critical that God gets a hold of our heart when there is nothing. So that when those big things come, when the growth comes, that we have the ability to handle it. When I look at being around the movement for the past 20 years, and I think of leaders of the green family at Hobby Lobby, I think of Casey, I think of the Barnhart story, and I think of that. There’s a consistency there of people that have made a decision before. They made a decision early. And I think about just kind of the joy that you see in those stories of how it’s unlocked this opportunity so that whether times are good or bad, there’s more freedom to say, this is not about me, but this is really about something more. And I was thrilled to be with you guys last week, because I think that there’s this question that entrepreneurs are asking, and they’re saying this question. I mean, I know I’m supposed to do more. I know I want to do more. I might even go in church on Sunday morning. I feel convicted, I need to do more. I mean, I just looked at that budget and I look to things and it’s tight and I don’t know how to get there. And when you talk about finish lines and you talk about creativity of things, you guys have found a way to innovate, to find a way to do some things. But that came from some inspiration, some ideas, some immediate needs. And you kind of started doing some things and you didn’t know what to call it. And then you found, you know, a fellow traveler kind of heading in the same direction. What was the story and how does all those dots connect?

Stephen Phelan: Yeah. So it’s started member back with we’re going to build a company around loving God and loving people just fundamentally. And so our mission statements, we just love and value people in everything we do. We exist to love and value people. So when we’re small and we were just a few people, we’re trying to say, how can we really fundamentally start with our teammates first, we’re going to love them so well. And then if we love our teammates, well, then we’ll have some customers and we want to love them well. And if we love our customers will have some profit to love marginalized communities. So back to how we love our teammates. Well, what we knew was that all of us land in crisis, and one time or another, it just happens. Like it doesn’t matter whether you’re poor, rich, middle class in the middle. All of us are either in a crisis coming out of one or we’re heading into one. And so we said, when crisis strikes, we are going to show up because we found there’s three fundamental needs of human heart. When you’re in crisis, you want help. When you show up to work, you want a friend. And everyone wants to build a life of purpose. And so the first one, when you’re in crisis, you want help. You want to be loved by people who show up and help you. And so we know theologically this is the story of the Good Samaritan. Like, don’t walk by on the other side of the road. Stop. Bend down and deal with the issues that are facing your team mate who’s in crisis. And so what happened for us? You know, Justin is we had a teammate who came to her boss and said, hey, listen, would it be okay if I worked remotely on Thursday and Friday and this is way before working remote was a thing. This is when we just had a few people. And, you know, we’re trying to. Why would you want to work remote? She said well, paydays Monday and I can’t put gas in my car. So if I could just stay home Thursday, Friday, she said, I think I can make it once payday hits Monday. So she took that to Casey, and Casey said, well, if she can’t put gas in her car, then I bet she can’t put groceries in her fridge either. So let’s do both. And so. We gassed up her car, put groceries in her fridge, and it didn’t have a name, but it would later become Love Works. That’s what we fundamentally, theologically believe is that love takes action. Love does. And so we just started loving our teammates when we were small. And then we said, gosh, this is beautiful. This is right. And we commissioned everyone. Just keep loving, keep loving. And so we built scale to love as we grew. And we call it love works. And now. We have been able to love over 2500 teammates in crisis for over $5 million of very tangible ways. But it started when we were five people and Justin this is important. The way we fund it. It started off with Casey and Toby seeding it with a gift. But then you know what we did? We just invited our teammates. And so we created a way for them to give out of a payroll deduction. And so now this is funded entirely by our teammates.

Justin Forman: You know there’s so much there I want to come back to you. But a couple of things I want to say like that. What I just heard that I hope our listeners are hearing one is as great as the growth has been with movement. And it’s exciting is that has been the ability to impact others. You acted, you were talking about its action and you acted early. And it wasn’t like this program. It’s just sometimes we make love so complex, so inaccessible, so programmatized that we miss the simple obedience that’s wrapped up in this. And I love the fact, when confronted with that, that you stepped in, you did something. And when, as our listeners hearing this. I think that’s a key thing. And so whether a team is big or small, we need to be thinking about ways to do this. You know, one of the things I want to take us into is, and I think you’ve got a really unique perspective on this, Stephen, as is coming from the pastorate, coming from the church. You know, Joey and I have been thinking about kind of some research as we’re partnering with our friends David Kinman and the group at Barna, just to try to better understand the relationship between church and entrepreneurs kind of has its kind of thinking about man, what is the state of the state? And we came across a Gallup poll that talked about just the trust factor, and it talked about this idea of like the typical heroes that we’ve turned to in the past, politicians, movie stars, whatever it might be. You know, our trust factor, especially when in government, it’s low. I mean, it’s like in the single digit when you talk about the church, it’s more trusted. It’s probably 2 or 3 times that. But the fascinating thing for us was that small business owners are six times as likely to be trusted than government. And so there is a moment here that I think what you guys are talking about and you’re talking about this program, there is a chance here for us to lean into that, not to take away from what happens in the church, but for us to have eyes to see there is a trusted relationship that is standing right in front of us. How do we lean into that? So as a pastor, when you hear that and you hear that statistic, what do you think’s going on there? What are you seeing when you wrestle with that?

Stephen Phelan: Well, yeah. So I was a pastor of a local church and planning churches for 13 years, and now I’m a pastor in the marketplace. And so what I saw pretty clearly was that people were leaving the local church and not going back. The nuns and the others in our country were growing. America is becoming more secular by the day. But where are they going? They’re going to work. And so to your point, the good news is they have a higher level of trust in small business owners in their community that they’re finding at work. And so we can leverage that and actually multiply their trust. When you show up and you say, hey, we’re going to pay your utility bill that you were going to have cut off. Like what that does is that builds up so much trust. You like, why? Well, because we love you. Like, we’re so glad you’re here at work and because we love you, we’re going to build a community of love and value. And that just escalates trust. That was already greater anyway. Okay, now you have a community that is high and trust. And when you’re high in trust, you can do so many things. So let’s go back to the second phone call from a faith driven entrepreneur that changed my life. Remember, you’ve got this community at work, it’s high and trust. And we fast forward in the development of movement a few years and I’m pastoring and planting churches, and I get a phone call from this faith driven entrepreneur named Casey Crawford. And so he said, let’s leverage what we already have by relational connectedness, a high level of trust. Let’s leverage that to live out the great Commission at work. And so on top of love works, what we did is we built a mentoring process to love people. And our definition of love is to act with their long term best interest in mind. So mentoring is just acting with their long term best interest in mind. And we built an explicitly faith driven track called the Faith and Life Track. And we have seen so much fruit. So many lives transform, marriages get better. They become better parents. They become better humans pouring into them in every way. And then we develop other tracks for the mentoring process a leadership development track, a life planning track, and I grab the key track. But all of that was built around how do we love people? How do we love them with eternity in mind? And when you pair? Love works with a mentoring process. It is so powerful because you are living out the Great Commandment and the Great Commission at work, and the impact is extraordinary.

Justin Forman: It is extraordinary. And the thing that I love is, is when you talk about the Love Works program, if resetting for our listeners here, that’s a program to step into those times of crisis, those times of struggle. But then there’s a part of it that you want to go on the offense and you want to get ahead, and you want to help people to make sure that like, whether it’s life goals, life planning. You guys have talked about the power of just what home ownership, things like financial decisions, major financial decisions, what that does for generational opportunity, and wealth preservation, wealth creation, what that does. And I think the way that you guys are framed, those plans and those goals and those steps, it’s an offense and a defense. If we started off with the football kind of talking to the game. That’s really what this is. But here’s where I want to get specific. So like for one, I can hear the joy in your heart and your words and I love it. I love seeing a pastor that is talking about man these are the opportunities we have dreamed of in the church. They are right in front of us and they’re all the time right here in the marketplace. So I want to get specific. When you talk about like programs like Love Works and maybe with them will work to mentoring, but some people listening to this are going to be saying, well, how how does this program work? How does love works? What does that look like? So you’re talking about a program here that has a payroll deduction system. Everybody is able to contribute into that’s got to do big things I’d imagine for the culture. I mean, what percentage ballpark are people are participating in a program like this?

Stephen Phelan: Yeah. Justin great question. So currently over 50% of our teammates are contributing through payroll deduction. We’ve had as high as up to 71%. And let me tell you you want a massive culture when start love works like there’s not a single person who’s gonna be like, you know, we really shouldn’t when people are in crisis, I don’t think we should help. Like, it’s just kind of. We’re all like, we all want that, right? And so I think this is one of the easiest culture wins that every business can establish. There’s absolutely no downside. And there’s an enormous upside. And it’s just a commitment for love sake, for the sake of love. And yeah, literally like we can help you set it up in a way that people will actually get, you know, a tax deduction as they’re giving. You can handle it either internally like we’re doing, or we can help you set it up externally through some partners with helping hand some different ways. So if anybody’s interested in that we’d love to help you talk through the specifics of that. But yeah, if you cast a vision for it, this is the kind of community that we’re going to build that we all want to be a part of, and then we just kind of go all in of loving on our teammates when they’re in crisis, and you start to share those stories and the culture starts to, elevate. Yeah, everyone says, I’m so glad I work here. I never would have thought that I would have been love like I have when I showed up to work. This is what I’ve always dreamed of.

Justin Forman: Yeah. It’s a team that everybody wanted to be a part of. It’s the thing that they’ve wanted to feel seen. And I think this is an important distinction that I want to make. Is, love unconditional? It struck me that love for love sake like that, that is our call. That is our commitment. That is what we’re called to step into. And we could end the podcast right there. And yet there’s something of what you’re alluding to that we also need to talk about, because I think often times we think about trade and we think we’re sacrificing, we’re trading down, but we’re really trading up because you’re talking about we’re trading up for a culture that everybody wants to be a part of, that you’re going to have buy and that you’re going to support that you’re going to feel joy going to work. There’s different ways that it kind of comes full circle in this perpetual flywheel of good happens. Can you talk about some of the ways you’ve seen that culture change? Or, you know, how has that affected recruiting or turnover, some of those other things that are part of that equation.

Stephen Phelan: When you show up to work, you don’t want to be treated like a commodity, but it’s traded that you feel transactional, not relational. Love works helps you show up and feel like a human being who is loved in tangible ways. And so that creates such a culture shift, because if you’re a part of a company where you feel like you’re a cog in the wheel, it’s just churn and burn, then the retention rate becomes a challenge, and it really just becomes all about the numbers of a salary. But if you know you’re building a special community, you’re building, and for a follower of Jesus, you would say, you’re bringing a little bit of heaven down to earth. You’re giving people a taste of heaven as it is on earth. And so we get to step into that together. That is a game changer.

Joseph Honescko: Stephen, I’m hearing this and it sounds like there’s such great wins here. They sound like very winnable wins, for that matter. And yet something about it still feels rare, unfortunately, in the business world. So what are some of the barriers that stop people from entering into this? Is it a matter of just uncertainty, like not knowing the next steps? Is it a fear of the unknown? What has been some of the things that you guys have consulted with, others that has stopped people from entering into something like Love Works?

Stephen Phelan: Well, I think one of the things is maybe a misunderstanding of how to fund it. And you’re just thinking, man, like, I gotta make payroll and things are tight. I’m strapped already. I don’t know if I can, you know, put a bunch of money up front and to create this. And the idea there is like, yeah, maybe as the owner, leader, entrepreneur, you go in, but you’re just you’re casting a vision for others to help build this community with you. And so you don’t have to be the funder of this in perpetuity. All you have to do is cast a vision and allow your teammates to say, we’re going to build a special community, come be a part of this. So one, I think the funding structure and a misunderstanding of how that would have to be funded keeps people from doing it. Now, we also know this Joey, the battle we fight is actually not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities. Satan doesn’t want a community like this at work, and so he’s going to be fundamentally opposed to this kind of community. And one of the things he’ll do is, you know, Kevin Young’s book Crazy Busy, he’ll just keep us crazy busy and you just feel like I don’t I don’t have the bandwidth all the time to think about, you know, that’s sort of working on the business and the business, and there’s so much working in the business that it’s hard to kind of take time to pull back and go, man, like, here’s some easy things we could put in place. And this one’s easy. And so I think that crazy busy mentality and the funding are two of the things that we see as obstacles to overcome. But they’re easily overcomable.

Justin Forman: Yeah. Yeah. Well one thing that we are deeply passionate about here is making sure that, maybe it’s a Texan phrase, but this idea that there’s no pep rallies without a football game, that there is no hype without something to go do and to get after it. And we’ve mentioned this on the podcast a couple of times, but that is why it was so great to be with Stephen, the team last week, to capture some of the heartbeat of this story. And so one of the things that you might notice on the faith driven entrepreneur app is a growing list of courses that will continue to highlight specific issues, places where we get hung up as entrepreneurs and we get stuck and we want to break free from that. And so whether it’s a course on what does it look like to find, right fundraising and partners to financially support on that journey? We’ve got a course that we’ve done with friends like Jessica Kim and that. And so this is another one, specifically about caring for your team. We’ve got a three part session here. Story of Love Works, where we go deeper into the. Program here to see how it’s run and talk to other team members, and just kind of the different roles that come together to form that program. So we don’t have a specific date of when that’s coming out. But in the coming months, stay tuned for that, that we are thrilled to be able to put that in the hands of faith driven entrepreneurs to say, hey, how do we get in the game? How do we take that first step? How do we make sure that we get past the fear and the hurdles there? So very, very much looking forward to that. Stephen, so grateful for your team being a part of that last week and just the whole movement team come together to pull together that series.

Stephen Phelan: Yeah. Thanks, Justin. It’s an incredible joy. I think that the movement that is developing among faith driven entrepreneurs is inspiring. The church is awakening in the marketplace, and the church is winning in the marketplace. The church is on the move. The church is God’s instrument to shatter the gates of hell. And when we build communities, he has shown you, oh man, what is good, but to do justly and love mercy and to walk humbly? Love works. Is Micah six eight lived out? It’s the Good Samaritan lived out. And so we can demonstrate the gospel, and it may never have the name of Jesus attached to it, but it’s just an expression of love. It is a demonstration he has shown you, oh man, what is good to love mercy, walk humbly, do justly. And so let’s extend those kind of communities. Let’s proliferate. Let’s make them ubiquitous, in the marketplace. And the prophets spoke of the mercy of God rolling down, you know, Amos speaks of this great day. What if we get to step into that and help create that? It’d be our joy at movement. I mean, if you would contact me, you don’t know how much joy I get and come alongside other entrepreneurs who are like, yes, I’m in. We’re going to do that. We’re going to do that. And some and I learned from the entrepreneurs, Justin, who innovate, who take this and go places we haven’t even thought about. That’s what’s such a joy, is to see the innovation of the church capital C in the marketplace funneling, you know, this movement of God’s Spirit and love into people. It’s a beautiful thing.

Joseph Honescko: Man. I love that, Stephen. We always end every episode trying to center on God’s Word. And you just brought us there without even the question. So, just so grateful for what you are doing at movement and through the Love Works program in your company and in the companies that you guys have worked with outside of that. So thanks again for joining us. It’s great to have you on, and I know our audience will be blessed by the insight you offered. So thanks again, Stephen. Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

Recent Episodes

Why would an entrepreneur start a Mortgage company in the midst of the housing crisis?

In this new segment called “Stories of the Movement,” we take a narratively compelling, high-production look at the work of Faith Driven Entrepreneurs living out their call to create.

The goal is to unite the movement through stories because every Faith Driven Entrepreneur, no matter what industry or what community, focuses their attention on solving problems in the world.

The details may differ, but the plot stays the same. We’re all part of God’s story.

He’s using each of us to bring hope, redemption, and light to a dark world for the glory of God and the good of others.

This episode highlights what God is doing through Casey Crawford and the team at Movement Mortgage.

But you’ll be able to see yourself in their story, too. It might inspire, equip, and challenge you as you pursue your call to create.

If you like this episode, be sure to follow, rate, and share the show.

For more on Casey Crawford and Movement Mortgage check out these links:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnyrnjZm0Ww

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhgy5nLdmqI&t=2s

Episode Transcript

Joseph Honescko: Picture yourself on a hiking trip. You turn a corner and all of a sudden you’re standing before a large, plummeting hill. It’s not a cliff or even a massive drop, just a steep decline. And you know, it’s your only way down. So you start to cautiously make your way through it. With every step, you can feel the dirt under you start to slip. You lose balance a little bit, but catch yourself on a branch. You keep moving, sidestepping little by little. And then it happens. You slip. Start sliding. Excepting that the only way down is through. Now imagine in the midst of that downward slide in a plummeting environment, you decide to open a mortgage business. The 2008 housing crisis was a lot like that plummeting hill. Prices dropped aggressively for an extended period of time known as the Great Recession.

Casey Crawford: And that Great Recession echoed around the world. But it centered around the US banking system and more particularly, the U.S. mortgage market.

Joseph Honescko: That’s Casey Crawford, co-founder and CEO of Movement Mortgage, a company he founded in the midst of the plummet.

Casey Crawford: Yeah, at that time, incredible amounts of greed and deceit took place where mortgages were created that had very little chance of ever being paid consistently over time.

Joseph Honescko: As many of us know, this led to a time of chaos, confusion and economic instability.

Casey Crawford: It almost shattered and broke the entire world banking system.

Joseph Honescko: While the economic effects rippled throughout the whole world. The housing crisis also brought new social challenges. It didn’t just break the economy, it broke people. Families lost homes. They lost jobs. And they lost a great deal of trust in an institution that was supposed to help them.

Casey Crawford: We began to mistrust the very banks that held our money.

Joseph Honescko: That’s the opportunity Casey saw.

Casey Crawford: To step back into banking and tell a new and better story, where banks became known for how we love and serve communities, not for breaking trust and robbing that fundamental relationship between borrowers and their banks.

Joseph Honescko: For Casey, this was a chance for a business to empower a community and make a difference in the world. The story of Movement Mortgage is the story of the entire faith driven movement. The story of every faith driven entrepreneur who responds to their call to create. You may be meeting different needs, but all of us are united in our pursuit to make the world better for the glory of God. We all want to see heaven meet earth. You’re listening to faith driven entrepreneur stories of the movement. Let’s dive in.

Speaker 3: So, Casey hired me in oh seven. I really sort of figured he was going to be a once in a blue moon client. I was wrong.

Joseph Honescko: This is Aimee Dodson.

Aimee Dodson: A I M E E with […].

Joseph Honescko: Aimee is the national director of affiliate Relationships, a title she says her husband thinks she made up. But she has been with the team since the beginning, originally taking them on as a client for what she calls her CFO to go business in Charlotte, North Carolina, where movement is based and her early impressions of Casey didn’t go as you might expect.

Aimee Dodson: I really sort of thought he was crazy because at that time, the other mortgage clients that I had were in panic mode, starting to dismantle the business. The writing was on the wall for the industry. So the idea of starting a mortgage company at that moment in time felt insane.

Joseph Honescko: The thing is, Casey and his co-founder Toby understood the harsh reality of the industry. They also thought it was insane. They knew the risks going into it.

Toby Harris: What if you woke up tomorrow and there was no internet?

Joseph Honescko: That’s Toby.

Toby Harris: Or what if it was a week and you could have lost it at any time? Our financial system was so stressed. That. The very core of how people operated was being questioned.

Joseph Honescko: Business owners were scrambling, wondering, where do I put my money? I’m only insured for X amount or this amount or whatever it was. And so they started putting their money in different banks, hoping that they could do something to get some of it back.

Toby Harris: There was so much fear because nobody had lived through a financial crisis like that.

Joseph Honescko: And let’s not forget that this crisis affected real human beings. This wasn’t something that was far removed from regular people. This was something that touched everyone.

Toby Harris: There was so many people losing their homes, they would come knock on your door and say, you know, you [….] and so long and we told you were foreclosed. If you will be out by this weekend, we’ll give you $1000 or $2000. And I went in many of the homes after people had moved out and the child’s toys were there. A lot of their clothes were there, their lives, what’s left in there? Maybe photos and stuff. They literally got in their car and drove away. It was that bad.

Joseph Honescko: So Casey and Toby saw the effects of greed, of unchecked ambition and arrogance. They saw how people’s lives were changed forever. And like all faith driven entrepreneurs, they wanted to use their giftings to do something good. All they needed was a gap in the market they could fill. So they found one.

Toby Harris: Some of the biggest players in the mortgage business were banks.

Casey Crawford: Banks at that time. We’re having a really hard time giving even the most qualified Americans a home mortgage.

Toby Harris: They were the 800 pound. They had the financing. They had all the stuff. They had owned the mortgage business for so long, and they had this system of processing once that was just so low. And, the banks were taking 60 to 90 days to do the simplest. Long.

Joseph Honescko: This is where Toby and Casey saw that they could make a difference for the economy and for the people affected by the downturn.

Casey Crawford: Homeownership has always been really central to, the American dream. And so we saw an opportunity to step in and help Americans access the federal credit subsidies that are offered in the U.S. mortgage market and do it more efficiently than the big banks were doing, because they were still reeling from this incredible meltdown that had happened a couple years earlier.

Joseph Honescko: Even Aimee, despite her early skepticism, was struck by Cassie’s leadership and passion to see this dream realized.

Aimee Dodson: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, he was pretty transparent that this was a new endeavor for him. But, you know, he had cast such a beautiful vision about what he wanted to create, that I was curious and excited to see what was going to happen.

Joseph Honescko: Casey’s vision was clear from the very first meeting she had with him.

Aimee Dodson: I remember he said three things. He said he wanted to, create a financial services company that treated every borrower like his little sister. And then the second thing he said, as he wanted to build a company with people that he loved doing life with and that he felt a strong bond and connection with. And I think that resonates to anyone. Right. You want to do life with people you care about? And then the third thing he said was he wanted to give his profit away. And I, I might have laughed out loud at him, to be honest, because it’s really easy to talk about how generous you’re going to be with money you don’t have yet. Right? But he was so honest about it. And man, I love what I heard. I thought he was probably crazy. I thought he probably was out over his skis, but I wanted to see what was going to happen.

Joseph Honescko: So she jumped in with Toby and Casey, and they rounded up the team with few others around. This very clear mission to love and value people. That clarity on mission and vision empowered them all to take a leap, and they were amazed at the unique ways God moved almost immediately.

Aimee Dodson: That very first year, we did a whopping $36 million worth of loans, which, you know, we were really proud of ourselves. Every single bit of that business was hard earned, right? Like nothing came easy, but it had a huge sense of satisfaction each step of the way.

Joseph Honescko: For Toby, the huge sense of satisfaction came not just in the good work they were doing, but in the way that God miraculously showed himself through the business every day.

Toby Harris: Everybody knows the story of Noah and the Ark, and he gave you 100 years. That’s not what he gave us. He let us start building the ark. After it started raining, we had every day. Every day was a miracle.

Aimee Dodson: You know, I look back now considering we did 33 billion last year. To think that we were so excited about our first 36 million. Yeah, it’s wild, but it was really fun. It was a challenge and we were doing exactly what he said.

Joseph Honescko: So you might be wondering what exactly did they do? What was their secret that allowed them to innovate in a time when everybody else in the industry was in this massive downturn? Well, like we said, the banks were taking a long time to process loans and then some new legislation came out that made it even more complicated for these large institutions to meet the needs of the people they were supposed to serve.

Casey Crawford: Yeah. So this is a little bit of inside baseball in the mortgage business, but a statute called Dodd-Frank came out. And what that did, it really tried to prevent a relapse of what happened during the 07-08 mortgage collapse.

Joseph Honescko: The good news is that these rules and regulations did help protect consumers from predatory lending practices. But those same rules and regulations made it really difficult for the big banks to navigate. And that’s where movement saw the opportunity.

Casey Crawford: We stepped in and said, we are going to process every single loan that comes in in seven business days and give consumers many weeks and months of peace of mind, knowing that their loan is fully approved and fully processed before they have to go buy a house.

Joseph Honescko: The fact that they were new, the fact that they were a small company, actually gave them an advantage.

Casey Crawford: Banks were just having a really hard time reorganizing themselves with all these new processes and changes, and we were small and nimble enough to make those changes without too much trouble.

Joseph Honescko: Customers appreciated how quickly the team worked, and slowly but surely Movement Mortgage was creating trust. It was healing, a fractured relationship between the borrower and the bank and people were starting to notice.

Aimee Dodson: You know, we were treating every borrower and transaction as the most important transaction of the day, and it was a lot of fun.

Joseph Honescko: So they had the strong processes, the strong business. They had the big vision to care for their people and their communities and all that ultimately led to a very successful business.

Casey Crawford: That process and that commitment to excellence actually led to an exponential market share gain and growth over the next ten years, where we grew from about five employees to 5000.

Joseph Honescko: Growth brought new opportunities with it, but it also brought new challenges. As any entrepreneur of scale knows, it’s one thing to build a company culture around a tight knit group of leaders. It’s another thing to sustain it across tens or hundreds or thousands of employees. And as Movement Mortgage continued to grow, they weren’t immune to these challenges. They had to figure them out, too.

Aimee Dodson: Our biggest organizational hurdle was going to be finding a way to maintain our culture as we made the leap. I think that struck Casey pretty hard because we were so proud of the culture we had created, you know, in the markets we were in. Everybody was bought into this notion of loving and valuing one another and doing life together and making a positive impact. But the bigger we grew, it was much more dependent on the local hires that we made in different markets. And sometimes we got it right and sometimes we didn’t.

Joseph Honescko: Even in the moments that they didn’t get it right, they were always evaluating. They were always thinking about the best way to continue building that culture. And a lot of that is because Toby viewed business as a pyramid. And the base of that pyramid is culture.

Toby Harris: The first thing you’ve got to have at top of the pyramid is vision, who you are going to be. And we had decided we’re going to own the mortgage business. That was our vision. We are going to be the best. If you work for us, you’re going to do the best job on the planet. And if you borrow money from us as a mortgage company, you’re going to be so happy. We’re going to serve you. What is all about service? The second level of that pyramid is a process. We were fortunate to understand the complete process. What you really needed to do and how long each step should really take. And then the bottom of that pyramid is culture. None of it’s going to work if you have massive turnover. You need to have great culture. People need to want to come to work.

Joseph Honescko: That core conviction to make people want to come to work meant instilling some programs to help people enjoy what they were doing and who they were doing it with. That included hiring Steven Fallon, a guy who had been pastoring local churches for over ten years. But 2017, he joined movement full time to be their chief pastoral officer. And here’s what he has to say about the culture of the company.

Speaker 4: People ask us to have movement all the time. Hey, what’s the secret sauce? I think it’s pretty simple. We’ve made a fundamental commitment to doing what God has asked us to do, he said. The summary of the whole Bible is love God and love people. We’re just trying to do that.

Joseph Honescko: These can feel like nice ideals and good values. But what does it actually look like to love others? Can you scale that and make it a process? Well movement has. They’ve developed a clear plan and programs that help them care for their teammates and maintain that strong culture, even as they’ve grown to thousands of employees.

Speaker 4: For us, to love means to act in their long term best interest. So we want to act in their long term best interests of our teammates first, our customers second, and marginalized communities third.

Joseph Honescko: You might have noticed that this too is a bit of a pyramid. The foundation is caring for teammates first. It’s that message we’ve heard other leaders like In and Outs Lynsi Snyder. Share on the podcast. Care for your people and they’ll care for your customers and for movement. This centers around three major fundamental needs.

Speaker 4: When we’re thinking about loving our teammates. That means when our teammates are in crisis, we’re going to stop. We’re not going to walk by on the other side of the road. We’re going to get down in the ditch with our teammates when we’re in crisis together, and show up in love. The second way we’re going to love our teammates is to meet a fundamental human need that we all have to be mentor. The third way that we all want to be loved is we want a purpose. We want something bigger than ourselves. A vision to expand our vision for a big God, doing big work in an amazing world.

Joseph Honescko: These commitments have led them to create clear programs like one they call Love Works.

Aimee Dodson: Love works is the cornerstone of how we as an organization say that we’re going to love and value one another. When an employee is going through some sort of a crisis, we want them to understand that they’ve got a safety net, that they’ve got a community of people that have set aside resources from the beginning to meet their needs when they’re in crisis. They should never, ever feel alone because they’ve got a community of people that loves them and wants to help them navigate through that situation.

Joseph Honescko: We’ll spend some time next week in an interview with Stephen, really unpacking this idea of caring for your teams. But right now we just want to highlight one particular story of what can happen when a company steps in. Like this.

Aimee Dodson: The dollar value of the grants. You’d be surprised. It’s actually lower than I think most people would think. Because often the stories that we do share are the bigger ones, right? But sometimes it’s not a big dollar figure, right? It’s like, gosh, we could get them right with like 600 bucks and get them financial coach and help them work out a budget. That means that the 600 bucks is the last help that they’re going to need, because they’re going to be on a path to sustainable, you know, healthy economic picture. But then there’s plenty of scenarios where it is the big the big uglies. You know, we have a loan officer who she’s got five kids and her husband was injured in a workplace accident, a chemical fire, a chemical fire. He was burned over 50% of his body, and he had to be in a burn unit for something like 21 weeks. And she’s a loan officer. And if you’re a loan officer, you only get a paycheck if you close loans. And if you can’t be there to close loans, you’re going to have a cashflow crunch. And, you know, love work stepped in and made it so that she didn’t have to choose between paying her bills and being with her husband as he was going through his treatment. And that’s what Love Works is.

Joseph Honescko: Love works exist to serve the employees of a movement, and movement loves customers by doing excellent work. But if you go back to Steven’s framework, you might remember a third leg of the stool. Loving marginalized communities. And that happens through the Movement Foundation.

Casey Crawford: So really early on, movement had pretty significant success. And the Lord really convicted me that we weren’t just going to take 10% of our profit and put it in a foundation. You know, we wanted to take a substantial portion of our earnings and give it to our foundation. But more than having that capital sit in the foundation, we want that money to hit the streets where it was actually doing what the Lord intended for it to do, loving and serving the marginalized. And that took a huge leap of faith. I can tell you, we always could have used a little more capital in the business or a little more capital in the foundation, but we just kind of pressed into what we felt the Lord was leading us to do, and he was always so faithful to provide that next project to love and serve folks and the Lord seems to meet us with just the right projects. And then, you know, he does what he says he does where, man, you just can’t out give him. And he seems to kind of refill the coffers to continue to pour out, you know, capital to do his work. And it’s been an incredible, faith stretching, faith growing experience to give and to see God meet that commitment to giving with just these perfect projects that we feel like he’s held back just for us.

Joseph Honescko: We’ve got a whole video that summarizes the work of the Movement Foundation, but one particular initiative that we want to hit on here is this vision they’ve had for schools in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Casey Crawford: We saw the schools actually as a sustainable platform we could invest in that would create a profit, and it would create generational impact in the lives of children that we serve. And not only that, it would create a model for others to go follow. One of the things I love about the free market is that we attract capital to solve problems if it creates a profit, and so what we wanted to do was create a profitable business that solved one of the most profound problems in America of our urban poor, never changing that in their lifetime. In Charlotte, North Carolina, if you’re born into poverty, 97% chance you will die in poverty. So only 3% of kids that are born to poverty are able to escape that in their lifetime. That is a statistic that we knew we have to address. And the best way to address that persistent problem in our community was through the institution of education.

Joseph Honescko: So here you have a company that is profitable, that is caring radically for their team members, and it’s generously pouring into their communities. On paper, it might sound too good to be true, or it might even feel like it’s just one big positive journey for them. But these decisions have come with sacrifice, particularly at the top. The level of radical commitment to the vision really started with Casey. He models it by implementing what’s been called a financial finish line. You might have heard others talk about this concept, like Randy Alcorn or the recent episode we published about resisting the love of money. But Casey also experienced the blessing of this model firsthand, and it shaped the way that he ran his company.

Casey Crawford: So my first year in the NFL, I was really lucky to have a mentor named John Casey. John was a kicker, multiple time All-Pro, and he’s just one of the most respected guys in the locker room. So I asked John to mentor me. And, the first lesson John sat down and gave to me was about setting a financial finish line. And I thought, that’s kind of an odd lesson. But, John, you asked me if I was happy with how much I was making a league minimum as a rookie. I said, yeah, John, like more than happy man. And John asked me, you know, can I give generously with that? I said, John, I can give you know, I’ve given more than I’ve given, like probably in my whole life. And so do you, Michelle. Like, you know, get to go out on dates with that amount of money, say oh gosh, John. Yeah. Like it’s fantastic. How do you like your house? Oh my gosh John, we have a two bedroom condo and we we don’t even use one of the bedrooms. It’s amazing. And John asked you to write that down and write down just how incredibly content I was. And then he said, Casey, you know, as your career in the NFL progresses or maybe your career business progresses, you’re probably going to make more and more and more. And what I want you to remember is just how content and happy you are at this level.

Joseph Honescko: Again, here’s the part that maybe just feels like sacrifice feels like trading down, oh, we as Christians have to live below our means and miss out on all these big things that we would rather have. But that’s not the case for Casey. He doesn’t see it as a sacrifice. In fact, he sees the financial finish line as a gift.

Casey Crawford: There’s been absolutely no sacrifice in setting a financial limit for myself and my family. In fact, I think the Lord has saved us from so much heartache, so much suffering, so much angst and concern over trying to manage and maybe in some ways, my own heart hoard wealth. That end zone, that in line has been an incredible place of contentment and peace. And then the indescribable joy we’ve gotten from getting to pour into ministries and our schools and building hope centers around the world, and the new friendships that the Lord’s brought into our life through giving. it frees you up to experience so much more life that God has for you. Conversely, in my own life, in the lives of so many of my friends. And that I’ve talked and walked with. Man, when you don’t set those limits and creep sets and creep sets and creep sets in, there’s always one more thing, one more thing you can buy one more investment. You can make one more year to wait until you start giving. And I think Satan uses that to rob you of so much joy and partnership and work. The Lord’s called you to right now.

Joseph Honescko: Look, you might hear this story about movement in picture. It is some perfectly operating, well-oiled machine with no challenges. Some of you might be listening and thinking, yeah, I would love to do some of those things, but God hasn’t given us that special favor that Casey seems to have. But it’s worth pointing out that Casey would be the first to remind you that it hasn’t always been easy with movement. In fact, entrepreneurship, no matter what it looks like on the surface, never is just up and to the right. But it’s still worth doing.

Casey Crawford: The mortgage industry in the United States is famous for its peaks and its troughs. I mean, if you’re going to be in this business, you are signing up for bumps and not just bumps, but, you’re just signing up for dramatic ascents and then dramatic descent. So, I mean, we there’s almost not a year that goes by that we don’t experience some of that. And, you know, it’s just, I think a long term mindset that you have to have in in any business that you’re in, man, there are going to be moments of success. And then there’s going to be those moments where you question yourself and question your ability to even navigate. And I think was certainly has kept me walking forward in and through those low times and low moments is my relationship with Christ and a commitment to say, Father, you know, if you give me the strength, I’m going to keep stepping on the field and I’m going to trust in you that whether the business has massive success or or goes away, or that you’re weaving and working all things together for good to accomplish your purposes, Lord, and you can even take my failures and setbacks to accomplish your good purposes. As long as I’m faithful to serve you and use all that you’ve entrusted to me for your glory.

Joseph Honescko: You don’t have to have it all together to follow what God is asking you to do with your business. The team at movement laid the groundwork for these programs and initiatives, even when the business was far from a sure thing. But they just kept taking the next fateful step.

Casey Crawford: The truth is, we weren’t investable early on like we were fledgling. We would have been a bad investment. I actually wouldn’t have taken money, I don’t think, because I would have been scared. I couldn’t repay it. It was a real honest fact. And then as the company progressed and began to have some more success, we did have opportunities. We had people that came in and said, hey, I’d like to invest or whatnot, and I’d really pray about it and think about it. And ultimately, I never felt any peace about taking outside capital, because what I always felt the Lord had called us to do was to give all of our profits. And so I was kind of saying, we’re going to be a really bad investment because we’re called to give all of our profits. And I didn’t know how that would ever align with somebody who’s making an investment to get a return on their capital. And that today has been a transformational attribute that we’re enjoying being totally privately held. And in fact, we’ve been able to gift about 49% of the company in the NCF. And what that’s done is reduced our taxes to almost nothing. And because our taxes are so low, it’s just increased our ability to push dollars out the door. And, you know, I know that’s a really tough thing for a lot of growing businesses, a lot of entrepreneurs to do is to create that free cash flow. Because, man, our business is really capital intensive like so many. And, you know, we’ve gone from five employees to 5000. And that takes increasing your balance sheet in dramatic ways. But I think because of our commitment to give. And then that led us to partnering with the National Christian Foundation. And then by giving away stock, we reduced our taxes. And that’s allowed us to push out almost $500 million now in cash, you know, out the door to ministries that I think are going to be generationally impactful.

Joseph Honescko: So what do we actually learn from the movement story? We see an example of steady faithfulness, consistent excellence, and a determination to love God and love people above all else. And we also see that you can do all those things and make great returns. Now, you might not start the same kind of programs that Casey and Toby did. Your situation might look different in a bunch of ways, but every entrepreneur with a team has been entrusted with people to care for. You can have an incredible influence on the people who work with you and for you. And that influence can ripple out to families, communities, cities and cultures. But it starts with listening to God’s call in your life today, thinking strategically about how you can live out your faith in your context. It requires prayer and community coming around one another asking God what he would have you do with your business. Thanks for listening to stories of the movement. Tune in next week for another episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. And in the meantime, visit our website to learn more about the groups we offer to watch videos or read the blogs. And don’t forget to follow and read the podcast. That kind of stuff really helps us out. Thanks for joining us today. We’ll see you next week.

Recent Episodes

The middle of February is often filled with commercialized images of love. Flowers, chocolates, those little chalky tasting heart candies with sweet messages.

It all revolves around Valentine’s Day.

And in between booking restaurant reservations or talking about how you reject the hallmark holiday, we might stop to ask ourselves, what do we really love?

Most of us know the right answers here: family, friends, God. As entrepreneurs, we love our work and what it affords us.

And, let’s face it, a lot of us love money.

But can we dig a little deeper here? Money isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be a catalyst for great good in the world. As long as we learn to think about it rightly.

And that’s what we’re going to do in today’s episode. We’ll hear from author Andy Crouch, theologian Randy Alcorn, and entrepreneur Tom Hsieh talk about how we can develop a biblically informed relationship with money that leads to generosity and joy.

Full Episodes Listed:

God and Mammon with Andy Crouch

Investing in Eternity with Randy Alcorn (with Guest Host Daryl Heald)

Choosing Vulnerability When You Don’t Have To with Tom Hsieh

Episode Transcript

Joey Honescko: Let’s face it, a lot of us love money. But can we dig a little deeper here? Because money isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be a catalyst for great good in the world. As long as we learn to think about it rightly. And that’s what we’re going to do in today’s episode. We’ll hear from author Andy Crouch, theologian Randy Alcorn, and entrepreneur Tom Shea talk about how we can develop a biblically informed relationship with money that leads to generosity and, surprisingly, joy. I’m Johanna Esco, and you’re listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let’s get into it.

Andy Crouch: I want to talk about two mysteries, relating to Jesus most famous words about money. And of course, you know what they are. You cannot serve God. And most modern translations will say money. So the first mystery is why not? Why couldn’t you serve God and money, each in their appropriate way, the way Jesus said you could? God and Caesar. So Caesar’s, the pagan emperor of the Roman Empire. People pressed Jesus on the question of, whether they should even pay taxes to see is there any says, well, render to Caesar what Caesar’s and rendered God wants God. So serve Caesar and appropriate ways don’t see services are the way you serve God. Don’t treat Caesar like a god, but you can serve Caesar in his appropriate way and serve God. Why does Jesus never say you cannot serve God and Caesar? But he does say you cannot serve God in money. And then what exactly does Jesus say? Because older translations have Jesus saying, you cannot serve God and mammon. What does that word doing there? And, what would it mean that Jesus said, you cannot serve God not just and money, but God and mammon? So, first question first, why? Why is money more powerful than Caesar? I want to suggest it’s because money, especially in large quantities, gives you a power that Caesar does not have. What is money? You learned it in economics. It’s a medium exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. And this means that money is fungible, countable. Storable. Power, power, the ability to get things done in the world, the ability to get what you want in the world, the ability to get that and get things done, perhaps even without other people wanting that to get done. That’s power. And money gives you a form of power that’s fungible, countable, and storable. So fungible it can be exchanged for other things. So this this obviously is one of the key things about money. It’s actually a very little use all by itself, but you can turn it into whatever you want. Not true of most forms of power, including Caesars. Caesar has a great deal of power as the lord of the Roman Empire, but he can only exercises power in that office. In that land, his power has to be used in a particular context, has most power is contextual, but money allows you to use power wherever you want. Anywhere that legal tender is accepted, you can exchange it into anything. That’s power that Caesar doesn’t know. Then it’s accountable. You know how much you have of it. And this is definitely not true of most kinds of power. How much power exactly does the CEO of a company have? Well, certainly some, but if you’ve ever been in that role, you know, it’s hard to know exactly how much you have. There’s certainly no way to count it. But you can measure money. You can count money. You can know how much is on your balance sheet, how much is available to spend, and you can’t really do that with power. There’s an uncertainty to other kinds of power, but not with the kind of power that we call money. And maybe most powerfully, you can store it. It’s storable, a store of value. You can save it for later. And most kinds of power have to be exercised now. At the moment that you have it, because you may not have it later or it may not be given except in a given moment. I’m. I’ve got this moment. I’ve got the power to speak to you right now, but I can’t save it for next month or next year. I’ve got to use it now. But if I have money at a time of my choosing, I imagine at least I can use it. And all of these kinds of power are kind of Caesar doesn’t have, and all of them add up to a power that is not dependent. There is no dependance in the power of money in the way there is in most other forms of power, even political and military power. Caesar only had his role because he was the adopted or sometimes biological son of a powerful man. It was a relationship that gave him power. Even in our modern democracies, people get power through the consent of the governed. But if you have enough money. The honest truth is you can get whatever done you want without anyone really having to know or care or even validate who you.

Andy Crouch: Are.

Andy Crouch: Because money talks without you having to be a person. It’s impersonal power. This is a power greater than any other in the world. And if you have it or had it, or can imagine having it. Why would you need God? Who needs God? When you can get what you want, whatever you want, when you want it, when you know how much you have, you can store it. And you don’t have to be any particular kind of person to get what you want. Honey. God, when you had money. So this is the first reason you can’t serve it, because this is a the most direct rival to God in human affairs. And the reason people come to you, and the reason you and I live with anxieties about money, with hopes for money, is because of the kind of power we imagine it will give us. But there’s also a deeper thing going on, and it gets to the word that Jesus used. Jesus was speaking Aramaic, and every once in a while the Gospels will leave an Arabic word untranslated, and they do so in this case, they write down in Greek, you cannot serve God and they just leave it untranslated, ma’am. And it’s a Semitic word that roughly means money or assets held in trust or the create trust. Why do they not translate this word? Well, the most common kind of word. We don’t translate our names. You don’t translate a name from one language. Translate. You just transliterated that name. And that’s what the gospel writers do here. And the early church concluded that the reason they did this is they understood something that Jesus was saying, which is that we’re not talking about an ordinary noun here. We’re not talking about even just a principle or an idea. We’re talking about a quasi personal, unnamable power in human affairs that intends something that has a will in the world that is opposed to the will of God. And the ordinary way we talk about this ordinary, extraordinary way is we are talking about a demonic power. The early church concluded that Mammon was not just an idea or principle, but the name of a being in service of the enemy of all that is good. The opponent of all of God’s works in the world that we sometimes call Satan or the devil. That Mammon is this demonic force at work in history, with a kind of quasi personal ability to whisper and speak to human beings and to arrange and distort human affairs in a particular direction. And what is it that Mammon wants to get done in the world? Well, it wants the opposite of what God wants. God has made this good, beautiful, abundant, material world. He fills it with persons. He says this world is already very good. But now I want you to fill the earth, multiply, and bring forth all the possibility and all the value out of the world. As the world is filled with persons, it will become full of the knowledge and love of God and the knowledge of love of one another, and in some ways the knowledge and love of the world itself. While Mammon being aligned with the demonic being part of the demonic forces at work in history, hates all of these things, and Mammon hates persons. It wants you to operate impersonally it actually wants to turn persons into things. In fact, when Mammon really gets its grip into a human society as it had gotten its grip into the Roman Empire, as it got its grip into the capitalism that built our Western world, the result is treating persons like things, treating persons impersonally. And while God wants the world to be filled with persons so that the whole world will be known and loved, and God will be known and loved in everything. Mammon wants to empty the world of persons. Mammon wants everything to be impersonal so that there’s no one left, only things, and ultimately not even material things. Just an immaterial world that is devoted to pure power without dependance. You cannot serve a demon that wants to destroy persons, relationships, creation itself. And also serve the true God who wants to reunite persons, restore relationships, and liberate creation from its bondage to decay. You cannot serve God and Mammon and this demonic power called mammon. Besides our world, our modern world, in an absolutely unique way in history, how can you doubt? This is the principle that is driving human events in a way that wasn’t even sure in Jesus day wasn’t even true a thousand years ago, but is incredibly true today. You cannot serve God and mammon. And so the basic way to dethrone money and mammon is generosity. It’s giving because most ways we use money give us control and safety. But giving release is control by definition. When you give, you no longer have control. Giving is risky by definition. When you give, you’re giving up some store of value. You could have held on for some other use and you’re just saying I release it. It is the basic detox activity, the second detox mode. So generosity is the first. The second would be transparency. If we were together in person and I do this with many, many groups and I do it with many individuals, rather than just talking about our family’s generosity in percentage terms, I would put up graphs and tables that have numbers on them. They show you how much we make in a given year, our family, our household, how much we have been entrusted with our net worth, how that’s changed over time, how we’ve given, how we’ve spent, how we’ve saved. All with real numbers. And when I do that consistently, people say, I have never, ever heard a fellow Christian outside of some kind of confidential fiduciary relationship, tell me how much they have and how much they make. Brothers, sisters, this should not be so. This secrecy that we have around these numbers that are the most. Immaterial thing about our lives. Is a sign that Mammon has its grip on us. And a very powerful way to detox is to open up your books. Not in a willy nilly way. And I don’t do it when it’s virtual and online, because it’s severed from a relationship right now. But in any kind of relationship, I’m happy to share the complexities of what God has entrusted to our family and how we’re trying to be faithful with it. Why is this not normal in the Christian community? Because we are trying to serve God and money. We’re trying to serve God and mammon at the same time.

Joey Honescko: And it gives us a great understanding of why we can’t serve God and mammon. And in this next section of the show, author and theologian Randy Alcorn talks with William Norville and Darrell Heald about how we can set up more practices and habits that help orient our hearts toward God and away from the powers of Mammon.

Randy Alcorn: I think what Jesus was saying when he said, don’t store fruit shelves. Treasures on earth where moth and dust corrupt thieves wreck and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. What he was saying is, when it comes to treasures, they’re not bad. In fact, they’re good. And it’s okay to store up treasures for yourself. In fact, I’m commending you to store up treasures for yourself. That even sounds selfish, but obviously Jesus isn’t calling us to be selfish, but it is in our own self-interest. But the bottom line of what he’s saying is you can’t take it with you. And that’s why it’s foolish to store up your treasures on earth, because either they’re going to leave you or you’re going to leave them. It’s not a permanent relationship, right? With our treasures on earth. You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And that’s what he’s saying by giving it away now, investing it in God’s kingdom. And it’s not just our material treasures and our money, but it’s true of our time. It’s true of our gifting. You know, our talents that God has given us. We can invest those in eternity and make a permanent and lasting difference in people’s lives. That’s what’s so transformative about the message.

William Norvell: Well that’s good. Hey, I just keep wrestling. I’ve read the book and my wrestle is this. Sometimes, Randy, when I go, okay, I get it. You know, there’s other things in the Bible where you go, okay, okay. Like, I’m not going to debate the theological points with you, right? Like this is clear, right? This is not debatable from that perspective. But how do our listeners get our head around treasure in heaven?

Randy Alcorn: Well, I think one way to think about it is a lot of people think wrongly about giving where they think, okay, all right, I know it’s a good thing because I know people are needy and I know a lot of things need to be accomplished for God’s kingdom in the world. So I’ll make the sacrifice and do the giving. And I realize God has given me a lot. And so, yeah, I can give some of away, but it’s like a begrudging even people who talk about tithing as if tithing were the ultimate. Like tithing is the training wheels of giving. It’s like the wading pool. Or, you know, it’s the end of the swimming pool where you get in. But then when you learn how to really swim, you go into the deeper water. Well, that’s how it is with tithing. So to me, the people are held back and they think that tithing is the most radical kind of giving that a person could do. Well, of course, that’s just that’s just 10%. And what God has provided for us is just way, way beyond that. But I think the mistake that people sometimes make is thinking of their giving as give vesting. Just I’m giving it away and I’ll never see anything from it. But really it’s investing. And especially when you make wise giving choices and truly making a difference in people’s lives for eternity. And so when Jesus said, you’re storing up treasures for yourself in heaven, in Luke 12, there’s a parallel passage where he says that you sell your possessions, give to the poor, and then God will give you money bags in heaven. Or sometimes it’s translated money belts in heaven. So in other words, it’s the transfer of wealth to another location. You could say it’s a different kind of wealth, but it’s using actual material wealth as the basis for creating wealth in heaven. Now, we don’t know exactly what that wealth will look like. We know that often it has to do with eternal rewards of ruling in God’s kingdom of leadership. In God’s kingdom. A lot of people are thinking, well, I don’t want to rule. I just want to go around and have fun or whatever. Well, it’s not ruling like in this era of under the fall of corrupt government or whatever. It’s going to be magnificent hearts filled with, well, servant hearts of people serving the Lord in his kingdom. You’ve been faithful a little. I will put you over much. I’ll put you over five cities. I’ll put you over ten cities. The biblical view of heaven is life forever on a resurrected earth, living in resurrected bodies with resurrected fellow believers, with the resurrected Jesus in a new earth, of resurrected culture and resurrected nature and resurrected animals and, you know, don’t have time to develop all that and give this scriptural basis. But I’ve written a whole books about it. And I’m telling you, once you see heaven in that light, then when you think about investing and eternal rewards and investing in eternity and experiencing forever the result of your giving away of your life and your time and your resources in this life. You think of that being something that you will enjoy and others will enjoy for ever? No matter what form that takes. That is an amazing, paradigm shifting thing. And ironically, it isn’t just that we. Okay. Yeah, we have to make all these sacrifices in this life. And you know, that’s the pits, you know? But at least it’ll pay off in eternity. No, it pays off in this life also.

William Norvell: So could you explain the concept of a financial finish line and how you’ve developed that, and how our audience could think about that specific concept?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah, some people become highly specific with the financial finish line idea, and others take it more as, not a clear line, but something that they generally strive for. There’s obviously advantages to clarity where you say, all right, this is all I need, all I could use. Everything beyond that goes to God when I reach a certain amount. And obviously, I’m not going to say an amount is going to differ with what people believe about it. But when I reach a certain amount that’s like in my investment portfolio, do I need to keep pouring money into it so that there will just be way more than I could ever possibly use? Or do I need to give it away now and not leave it to my children after I die and hope they give it away because they may make more income than I do? I hope they do. But give it away now, because God didn’t entrust it to my children, he entrusted it to me. So the finish line is, don’t feel like you’re supposed to keep most of what comes in. If God has given you a lot of money, why has he entrusted it and given us the wrong word? Entrusted it to your care? Well, it’s so you can make a difference for eternity. God will make us. He says in second Corinthians nine. He’ll make us rich in every way so that, okay, what is he going to say now so that we can live in the nicest house and we can have multiple houses on the beach, in the mountains and and everywhere, and so that we can go on the most exorbitant vacations and, and have the most, the greatest cars and multiple cars and all of that. Okay. It doesn’t say that you will be made rich in every way, so that you may be generous on every occasion. And second Corinthians eight and nine, I would just say, read and reread those two chapters and ask God to change your heart. And you see how grace, it’s all about the grace of God manifested in people’s lives and shown through giving, so that grace is the lightning. Grace is the lightning that comes from heaven, that comes from God. Giving is the thunder. That is our response to the lightning. You gotta have the lightning for the thunder to be there. And if you are not generously thunderously giving, it’s probably a sign that you’re not experiencing the lightning of God’s grace in your life the way you should and could. But the solution? Give more and ask God to give you a cheerful heart as you give and help answer that prayer. And when you see what’s being done with the giving that God has privileged you to do, you will get more pleasure and more excitement from that than you could get from any material possession ever.

Joey Honescko: If you’re not sure you buy what Randy is saying about the joy that comes from generous living, you’ll want to tune into the final act of our show here. It comes from a conversation Henry and William had with Tom Shea, a successful entrepreneur who owns an airline but has chosen to live a life of radical generosity. Tom story doesn’t need to be prescriptive, but it does act as an inspiring testimony of what God can do when we break free from the shackles of mammon.

Henry Kaestner: Hold on. I’m saying this. Make sure I’m catching up. Yeah, yeah. You’re running an airline. Yeah. And you have elected to live to keep your family budget at the median family income and then give away all the rest. And with that household budget, you’re still paying full price for airline tickets, as we’ve already established. That’s correct. Wow. That’s amazing. That’s unbelievable. So you’re looking at this. You’ve had great business success. Just walk us through that a little bit about what does that really mean. And did you feel it’s been a sacrifice. Just you know, is that been a burden that you’ve carried on and find yourself like, oh, I guess we can’t do more than 80,000 because we made this commitment. I guess we got to do it. How is that lived out?

Tom Hsieh: Yeah. No, that’s a great question. I mean, well, there have been some sacrifices, so. And so I’ll just go back to our very first year of marriage, share some testimonies along the way to really encouragement, you know, very first year, you know, as we were getting married, we made this decision. As we were getting married, we realized that our budget wouldn’t afford us, you know, an overseas honeymoon trip. Right. And so but we did something nearby, and it’s really nice. We celebrate our honeymoon in San Diego just a couple hours away. But here’s the amazing part of the story. So a year later, we get a call from target. All right, so target gets a call, my wife gets this call and she almost hangs up on them. And they say, congratulations, you’ve won the target Calphalon giveaway C6. My wife and I was like, wait, wait wait wait, you registered, you did your wedding registry at target and you registered for a telephone pan. That home actually entered you into the target telephone. You know, honey of a C6 and this is real. You don’t have to pay taxes on this, but you win a seven day, all expense paid trip to Tuskegee, Italy. And that was amazing confirmation, right? And encouraged by then, my wife turned to me at home and said, This is God’s confirmation to us. This this is his intrusion and saying, you know, I will provide for you. I will bless you with good things. And I think that’s been true. And I can tell a story story. But that’s just even from the start. That’s been true, but practically what that meant. So I was at a dinner party just a couple weeks ago, and people were surprised to hear that we’ve never bought a new car in our marriage, we’ve never bought the new. And people are like, what? How can you do that? In fact, actually, currently I’m driving a 2006 Camry, but I just got a return because we lent it to a friend. You had a friend in the neighborhood, got in the car accident. Car was banged up. They’re fine, I left them. The car actually turned out to be for several months. And so we were down to a one car family, which can be a little stressful in LA, but someone in our church said, hey, we hear you down to one car, we have an extra car. You know, why don’t you just use it? And so we’ve been using this other family’s car, you know, for a couple of months. And so the dependency we have in our wider community really has also been part of the blessing. Right? So our interdependency right in our community has been a great blessing for us. So I don’t know, I don’t think I think in terms of sacrifices, I think in terms of, you know, for the amazing things that we’ve been experiencing.

William Norvell: Wow. Amen. Now I’m William Hare. Good to see you again. We’re going to do a quick plug. Tom is in one of my faith driven.

William Norvell: Entrepreneur groups.

William Norvell: Right now. That’s right. So gotten to know him over the last seven weeks. It’s been really fun. If you don’t know about those yet, three weeks series. And they’re just really fun to get to know people and hear people’s stories in a deeper way. So wherever you are, however you think about life, we like to think that there’s a group for you. So go to our website and check it out. If there’s not one for you, start one with your affinity group and who you want to be and we’ll help you start it. It’s been really fun to have a bunch of like minded people coming around again. It’s been really fun to get to know Tom and his story, and I did not know, however, that you drive an A6 camera because I driving a seven camera. So now we’re even closer than we were before. And that’s why we come on the long form podcast. That’s right. So take us back to the decision to live in Pomona, and how you have decided to make that a place that you have dedicated so much time and your family have dedicated so much time in. What was that decision like? Sure. And how has that played out over the decades? Roots yourself in a specific place.

Tom Hsieh: Yeah, yeah. So for me, it started in college when I was in college at Harvey Mudd. I got involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and really delved into the scriptures in a way, and I opened up the scriptures to me in a way, and they kind of brought me into an adult faith. Right. And then some of the things that I had opened my eyes to in Scripture and really wrestled with or saw before, but by the time I graduated, it guided me of two things. First thing that he convicted me of is that God really has a love for the poor, and it’s all throughout scripture. It’s just there. But I’ve never really kind of, you know, wrestled with it or acknowledged it before, but I was just really convicted by the, you know, God’s love for the poor throughout Scripture. The second thing that God convicted me of is that I don’t have a love for the poor. And I really felt like I challenged me at that time at the point when I graduated, like, you know, here’s where my heart is. This is where I’m focus. This is where I’m working. Where are you going? What are you doing? And so I ended up turning down a couple of job offers, some aerospace, end up choosing a two year internship with a Christian missions organization called Servant Partners. Seven partners works in urban slums around the world. And they had a two year internship where they were training. Folks. We’re going overseas. I just happened to be placed on the team that was located in Pomona, California. And so at the end of the two year internship, most of my teammates end up going overseas, which is what the training’s for. But in my heart, at the end of two years was someone had to stay and work for the transformation of the city of Pomona. The all the reasons why I decided Pomona was a good place for this internship, right? For preparing people for overseas slums was one of the reasons why it also needed, you know, God’s light and shalom. And, you know, his people continued being committed and working for its betterment. And so that’s how I chose to live in Pomona. I felt like there was a calling for me to be invested for the long term in this city. My wife, my wife was involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as well, in Iowa. So, you know, college in Iowa. She graduated in there, moved to South Central, LA, be part of a team there, you know, with several partners. And so we met in LA. And so, you know, I like to joke that, you know, when she married me and moved to Pomona, you know, she actually kind of moved up. It was actually kind of a step up in terms of neighborhood communities, but.

Henry Kaestner: You not say anything bad about Grinnell, Iowa to me?

Tom Hsieh: No, no, no, no, I was talking about South Central. He was working in south central Iowa. And, you know, when she married me and moved to Pomona from South Central, you know, and in some ways, I mean, they were similar type communities. But, you know, South Central had a much more notorious stigma or, you know, associations with it, right, than the one that’s probably less known. But anyway, that’s that was the joke I was trying to make now about Grinnell, Iowa, actually, you know, I didn’t mention that I actually lived for a couple of years in Iowa. So, you know, I was born in Taiwan and immigrated to U.S. with my family when I was five. And the first place we lived was either Groves, Iowa. We lived in a small community in either. Groves, had just got their first signal light installed when we moved in. And so actually, you know, a couple of years of my childhood in Iowa before coming to the Valley area. Come I want to hear of 60s or less. Just gives a quick view of what the transformation has been like in Pomona since you’ve been involved. It looked like this. And now it looks like this. Yeah. So, one of the reasons why we feel called to be involved in the political transformation is after working in the city for 20 years with health, started a number of different non-profits, educational non-profits, afterschool programs, Bible clubs, environmental justice, nonprofit, workforce development, etc. we realized it was like pouring a water into a leaky bucket, right? And we realized that there was a layer of political corruption that was really sabotaging the future of the families in our city. So when my friend Ted Sandoval, who was a community servant leader, stepped up and said, I’m going to run, we felt like, okay, we need to get behind him. You know, the city at that point had pretty significant kind of homeless dwellings, tent cities, if you will, in, you know, major blocks, including the Civic Center. So I’m trying to see how I’m trying to the library. This is a huge encampment, but throughout the city there was just numbers and numbers of encampments. You know, since then we’ve been able to build shelters, whatever, build, you know, programs where we have people graduating from those programs into, you know, more long term housing, sustainable jobs, etc. that’s some big deal for transformation. But also an I just kind of I like, you know, just the fiscal health of the city. You know, five years ago, you know, the city was projected to be insolvent. We’re running a $10 million deficit and was heading towards insolvency within two years. Just this year, the city is projected to have a $8.5 million surplus. Wow. And so, you know, praise the Lord for that. So that’s a bit of a very high level, right. Some indicators of some of that transformation in the. Well, I mean, talking about just a change in the attitude, the spirit of the people, which is the most important, I think is a sense of hope. Right. I think the most difficult thing to combat in a troubled community is a sense of hopelessness, a sense that, you know, the best thing you can do is get to get out versus, you know, how do we actually change this community and, and have it be a place that’s worthwhile to invest in and be part of for long term? And that change has been significant. I mean, it won’t fit in the 62nd. So, the lots of stories about what that transformation and that hopefulness looks like.

Joey Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

Recent Episodes

Can we just be honest with ourselves and admit that, for most of us, our prayer lives stink?

We all know we’re supposed to pray.

We’ve read where Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. Maybe we’ve even tried instilling new habits, only to have them fall apart shortly after we test them out.

It might even feel defeating at this point–as if prayer is just another task we can’t work into our chaotic schedules and the regular ups and downs of entrepreneurship.

Is it even possible for entrepreneurs to develop a healthy prayer life? And… is it even worth it?

Today on the show, Peter Greer is going to help give us some clear guidance around these questions based on the findings of his new book Lead with Prayer that he co wrote with Cameron Doolittle and Ryan Skoog. 

Peter is a longtime friend of the movement who has been featured on the podcast, the conference, and video series in the past, but over the last three years, he has been researching the spiritual habits of world-changing leaders. And in this episode, he’s going to share some of his findings with us so that we can develop prayer rhythms that fit our lives.

Episode Transcript

Joseph Honescko: All right. Can we just be honest with ourselves and admit that for most of us, our prayer lives stink? We all know we’re supposed to pray. We’ve read where Paul tells us to pray without ceasing. Maybe we’ve even tried instilling new habits, only to have them fall apart shortly after we test them out. It might even feel defeating at this point, as if prayer is just another task we can’t work in to our chaotic schedules or the regular ups and downs of entrepreneurship. We might find ourselves asking, is it even possible for entrepreneurs to develop a healthy prayer life? And is it even worth it? Today on the show, Peter Greer is going to help give us some clear guidance around these questions. Based on his new book, lead With prayer, that he co-wrote with Cameron Doolittle and Ryan Skoog. Peter is a longtime friend of the movement who’s been featured on the podcast, The Conference and video series in the past, but over the last three years, he has been researching the spiritual habits of world changing leaders, and in this episode, he’s going to share some of his findings with us so that we too, can develop prayer rhythms that fit our lives. I’m Joey Honescko, and you’re listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let’s get into it.

Joseph Honescko: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I’m Joey Honescko. I’m here with my co-host Justin Forman. Justin, how are you doing, man?

Justin Forman: Great. So how are you?

Joseph Honescko: I’m good man, it is good week. We did, this will premiere in about two weeks, but we did the faith driven investor conference this week. And yeah, that was a joy.

Justin Forman: Indeed it was a ride. I mean, overall, about 100 locations, so many major cities around the world. I think it was a really defining moment for the conversation to move forward. And man, what an encouragement was for our team to see that impact spreading.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, it’s super cool. And our guest today, Peter Greer, has spoken at the conference before and he’s been on the podcast. So Peter, welcome back.

Peter Greer: Thanks so much, Joey and Justin. Great to be back. And the FDI conference. I was at the local watch party and it just prompted amazing conversation. So so grateful for this community.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah thanks, Peter. That’s awesome. So I do want to dive right in here. Just give us a sense, why do so many people and entrepreneurs specifically struggle to have a strong prayer life? And why is it so important that we don’t just give up and throw in the towel?

Peter Greer: Yeah, and there certainly are a lot of studies that can answer that question of what is the challenge for busy entrepreneurs to really have a vibrant life of prayer, but maybe just speaking more personally? When Ryan Skoog asked me to participate in this project, my initial response was no way, Ryan, no way. I was not someone that I would say had this deep and vibrant prayer life, and I probably was like many, that the challenge every single day is there is more to do than time to do it. And there was a disconnect between what I said I believed about prayer and what I actually did. There was a gap between those two things, but I am enormously grateful for the privilege that it has been to go through this process to look at habits, practices of prayers from global leaders. And I guess your other part of your question on why I focus on this, and I think part of the reason is because it is possible to make progress. And I would say every single one of us that participated in the research of this, our prayer lives have been radically transformed as a result of this process. Together, learning from the global church, learning from a variety of leaders, finding similarity in the practices that we heard. And then this is not a book to be read, but this is something to try and just the exploration of new prayer practices. And I think for all of us to say there is less of a gap today than there was when we started this project, between what we said about prayer and what we actually do. And it has, yeah, had this incredible impact. So, so grateful for Ryan Skoog, Cameron Doolittle, Jill […] and this, opportunity to learn from a remarkable set of global leaders.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, I love this idea of being with one another, learning and going through this process together. You talked about that kind of journey that you went through. And so I would love to just hear you said, people can change. What has helped you in this process develop a stronger prayer life as a leader?

Peter Greer: Yeah. I mean, the statistics are really clear. You look at the life time prayer habits of leaders and most people, as influence goes up, prayer fullness goes down. For most people, there is this growing disconnect between the ability to be in positions of leader and devoted time practices of deep, abiding in Christ. And what does that lead to? What does that lead to? Well, one of the other fascinating studies by Robert Clinton was that of individuals that didn’t finish well. Every single one of them had long ago stopped having any sense of a personal or vibrant prayer life. And so there is something powerful here. There’s something significant here about how prayer grounds us. And if we think that we can do our work in our own strength, in our own ability, we either have an overinflated sense of our own ability and importance, or we have too small of a mission that we’re going after. If we are going after significant kingdom work, if we really believe that what we’re doing is something that without God’s divine intervention, it is not possible, not alone. Yeah, we’re not going to have this vibrant prayer life. So I think for us and my own story is just this recognition. When I would travel around the world and I would see the vibrancy of prayer life, when I would see the time and intention, when I would join in with my global brothers and sisters. There was a different level of prioritization and prayer, and one of the early interviews that we had was a woman who’s been working in a war zone for her career, and she said early on, I didn’t have any money. And so I decided to tithe my time. And so she said I would spend a little over two hours every day in prayer, because that’s what I had at that moment. And she said, that has been the habit that has been consistent in my life, and that is what has fueled my life of service. And again, her and so many others just taught us what it looks like to grow from this sense of, I feel like I should pray, too. I can’t believe we get to have the privilege of prayer. And it really does shape us. And I believe it shapes the cultures of the places where we work as well. There is so much more mystery, so much more depth. And it has again been the joy of the last few years to really dive deep and to put these prayer practices, yeah, into my own life and watch the impact that they’re having.

Justin Forman: I think that’s fascinating. Peter. I think what you talk about the data and then you think about entrepreneurs and you wonder, like, why do entrepreneurs struggle so much with prayer? Maybe it’s just a hunch. Maybe it’s just a feeling. It could be right or wrong. There isn’t maybe data here yet to back this, but it feels like. I mean, entrepreneurs were so much doers we’re builders. We have the drive to do things, some things that people might never say could be done. And we have the ability to break down those barriers. But if we step back for a moment, I think that what’s interesting, what you’re saying is, is that our greatest strength is becoming our greatest weakness. That motor that drives that independent spirit kind of creates this false view that we miss the idea that we’re designed to be dependent, like it feels like that. That’s kind of what you’re hitting on right there, isn’t it? The more that we develop almost as entrepreneurial strength, it actually becomes a real weakness for us.

Peter Greer: Oh, that’s so well said. And I think one of the interesting kind of quotes that we had early on when we were talking about this issue is that, Robert Clinton, he said this is part of another piece that he wrote, but he said in, in our work, the tendency is to rely on competency, one’s ability to do things rather than primarily on God. And so we’re doers. We rely on our strength. We rely on our abilities. And yeah, maybe, maybe it is true what Jesus said. That apart for me, it’s not even you can do very little, it’s not apart for me. You’ll get frustrated in your work. It is apart for me. You can do nothing. So this sense of what would it look like if in our work, we did it from a place of grounding and abiding in Christ? And I just believe that would change everything.

Joseph Honescko: In that same vein, in the book, you say that praying leaders have quit worshiping at the altars of achievement and have shattered the illusion of their self-sufficiency and man, when I hear words like altars of achievement and self-sufficiency, my entrepreneurial bells are just going off here. So how do we get to this place of bringing our achievement, bringing our self-sufficiency to the altar of Jesus instead of worshiping on the altars of our achievement?

Peter Greer: Maybe it’s just being captivated by a little more understanding of who it is that we’re talking to. In light of, what God has done in creating this world, what God has done, do any of our greatest accomplishments, really seem all that significant? And and so maybe we need to have a exploration, maybe a little more understanding of who we are praying to. And I think that changes our prayers. The more we understand the greatness of God, the more that we understand just how far beyond us, beyond our abilities, beyond our even ability to understand. I think that causes us to come with a different spirit of humility, a different spirit of excitement, to see what is it that God might do in our day, in our lives, in our organizations, but recognizing that for any real significant change, it’s just not going to be because we did it in our own strength, in in our own way. So, I don’t know, maybe a little more understanding of a God who created the mountains and the seas and the birds and all of that is the same God that is living and active, and that we have the incredible privilege of being in relationship with. That just is mind blowing, and I think really does change the way that we lead, more humility, more kind of excitement to listen well and to see what is God doing and how can we join in that.

Justin Forman: When we talk about prayer, Peter, how much of this is finding not only the right direction that you’re talking about, making sure we’re praying the right things and seeing prayer as opportunity to commune with God instead of always asking for outcomes. But one of the things that strikes me, so my wife and I, we’ve on fitness concepts over the years, some personal training studios, and people always ask this question, you know, what workout routine works best? And you say, well, it’s got to work with your schedule first. You know, it doesn’t almost matter what happens during the workout if you don’t have it schedule to make sure that the workout happens. How much of this is us being intentional to schedule and develop this rhythm, almost at least to the point where then it becomes so natural.

Peter Greer: Justin that’s one of the other interviews that we had was with the chaplain for the Miami Dolphins, and he talked about that training regiment that these professional athletes go through. I mean, laser focus looking, how can they improve in all of these outputs? And they don’t show up at the gym and be like, hey, I sure would like to, you know, do a couple reps here. No, there is a plan. There is a structure. And Terry’s piece was how can we make sure that we’re applying that to our prayer life, to our spiritual habits? And John Mark Comer said something like, if it doesn’t make it onto your calendar, it’s just not a priority on that. And so we put on our calendar what matters. And this is nothing new. This is what for centuries, for over 1500 years, they would call a rule of life. This is the plan. And there were certain prompts throughout the day that would cause individuals to say, this is a moment to pray. And then in all of the great city centers, what do they have? They have bell towers. And what are bell towers? Initially, they are designed to remind individuals this is a significant moment or throughout the day. This is a moment to pause and to pray. And we have lost that in many ways of that level of structure or intentionality. So in many ways, that’s been the fun of working on this is just to say, what does it look like? How can I have more intentionality around what it looks like to have prayers that I weave throughout the day, to have certain times, to have certain moments, and to create essentially a rule of life, a set of prayer practices that we believe will shape our hearts, will shape our organizations, will shape, the work that we do. So I love that example, Justin. And I think that is the right one of saying, if it matters to us, let’s create the plan. And then I love what Dallas Willard said. But he said that the great way to know if, habit has become an idol is how do we feel when we don’t do it. And so hopefully there’s lots of grace in the midst of that, but still saying, here’s a guide, here’s something that we’re going to do because it matters. And I would say for anyone that has not done this, try it, try it for the next 30 days. Just try it, try some different prayer practices. And if you want a real simple example, we put it on the website for free so you can create your own kind of habits. Rule of life. Get some examples. And I would just say try it for the next 30 days and see what happens in your life and in your heart.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, that’s great Peter. And one thing that’s really cool is we actually have pulled a couple entrepreneurs and had them send us clips of their own prayer life, in their own prayer rhythms. And so we’re going to cut to one of those here in just second, and then we’ll be back to talk with you some more.

John Knicely: I’m John Knicely, an entrepreneur, talking about my prayer life. Today I’m the founder of Story on Purpose, located in Saint Louis, Missouri. And as I think about prayer, I was really influenced by a client that we were doing a project with. It was an 80 year old. We were doing a legacy film to capture and preserve their values and legacy. I knew he was a Christian, so I was not surprised when, before the first interview, he asked if he could open in prayer and I thought it was great. Well, the next day we showed up for our second day of shooting. And my creative director, who at that point wasn’t super vocal about faith related things, said, Hey John, we should start today in prayer, just like Don did. And in fact we should pray before everything we do. And I was like, yes, absolutely. So that was about three years ago, and we have started to do that as a team. And then myself, you know, going into any meeting, I am praying, Lord, let your will be done in this. So this is just a mental prayer that I go through in my head, really out of out of desperation. Right. So as an entrepreneur, the struggle is real and I really need and want to invite God into it.

Joseph Honescko: There’s a handful of entrepeneur specifically in the book. You guys talk about David Green. Terry Looper, what were some of the insights that were useful as entrepreneurs are thinking about how to develop their own prayer lives?

Peter Greer: Actually, some of the interviews we just had more than we could include in the book. There were so many others that didn’t make it in. But I guess the major takeaway for me was there is far more possibility to create cultures of prayer, even in. It’s not just for nonprofit organizations. There is far more ability to create prayer habits practices in a variety of different enterprises. And one of the individuals, Andre Mann, remember his interview, but he was talking about how, you know, very few people, if they’re going through a challenging time and you say, I would love to pray for you. How can I pray for you? There are very few that would not appreciate that gesture. And so some of it is just being on the lookout for those moments, those open doors and saying, how can I pray for you and, and other individuals created these prayer groups on that in, again, some fortune 500 companies to some very different organizations. And what I love too, is that if it matters, there typically is time, money and space that you allocate towards it. And so if we believe that prayer matters, again, I think about some of those examples that you just said. They allocated time, money and space. Some of them had the physical. This is our prayer area that is reserved for this. Some people said we are going to pay you for the amount of hours that you are going to spend in prayer. That is on the clock time and the International Justice Mission. I had the opportunity to participate in some of their prayer practices and and they have quantified it is a multi-million dollar investment in prayer. If you look at how much time they spend, and it’s because they believe that it matters. So, so many great examples, but yet time, money and space where the consistent themes for the facilitation of prayer.

Justin Forman: Peter, one of the thing. And that’s you were reflecting about the book launch and you were talking about things. You talked about the corporate nature of prayer, and you’re alluding to it right here is, is that in the church today, we often see it as a private act. I think you made the point about even just a Google search of images draws up an individual image. When you talk about that, how have we drifted from the corporate act of it from such an individual side?

Peter Greer: There’s a place for that, right? And if we look at the sermon on the Mount, Jesus talks about going in the room and in private. And in some ways there is that sense that perhaps we have gone to only pray in that sort of a context and have missed out that there are a lot of other passages of Scripture that talk about the corporate nature. And isn’t it interesting? Even when the disciples asked Jesus, he didn’t say, teach me to pray. He said, teach us to pray. And throughout history there is this corporate expression of prayer. So, yeah, I mean, I would say my favorite part of writing the book was the interviews, but then also the opportunity to put into practice some of these different habits with Ryan and Cameron and Jill and the experience of going through these prayer practices together. There’s a beautiful sense of, maybe taking our prayer closets and going into the prayer boardrooms, and that’s seeing it as either or, but looking for those ways to still have. Yeah, a deep sense of personal prayer and to also look for those opportunities that we can join in with others.

Justin Forman: So we talked about the schedule. We’ve talked about the idea of making this commonplace. What does that look like? I want you to take us into this idea of like, how do we check our heart as we pray? You know, we’re preparing for a video shoot and project that we’re doing with Dorian Gray. And he had asked this question about prayer, and he said he phrased it this way. He said, If God answered all of our prayers, would our life become more holy? And I kind of use that as a check to say like. If God gave you everything that you would ask for. Would that lead to exactly the outcome you really, really want? How do we check to make sure that we’re not just praying for outcomes or not praying for the wrong things?

Peter Greer: Yeah, we had, conversation with Joni Eareckson Tada, and she became a quadriplegic when she was not even 20 years old. And she has lived with chronic pain every day of her life. And I don’t think I have ever met a more spirit filled individual. It was a moment that I will treasure for decades to come, but one of the things that she said Justin was, she said, when individuals ask me to pray for them, I do pray for what they ask, right? And of course, we are going to present our requests to God. But she says, I’m not going to pray for that more than 20% of the total time. She said the remaining 80%, I’m going to pray that in the midst of the pain, that God does an incredible work, that in the midst of this, they would have a deeper sense and that God would use this situation in their life and in the lives of others. And so she spends 80% of the time not praying for that issue, but that God would be at work in it. And I think that is the way to really shape it, to still to present. Here’s Lord, you know, this is what I should think it would be best. But to have a level of trust and a level of prayer that says and even if you don’t, I know you are still very capable of doing incredible good in the midst of it. And so I think for all of us, maybe our prayers are not just for the issue, but for God to use it to be in the midst of it, including in the valleys, including in the pain. And just one fascinating thing from one of the most famous psalms, Psalm of David, Psalm 23. It starts out saying, the Lord is my shepherd. It starts by saying that this is third person. It starts by talking about the Lord. But, you know, it shifts about halfway through and it shifts from third person to first person. And that happens in the valley of the shadow of the death. And there it goes from the Lord to you are with me. And this like personal and powerful experience of the nearness of Christ. That is not when things are going great, but in the midst of pain. And that’s my experience to it. Change it from the Lord to you when we are really going through it. And again Joni said, Heaven and bliss. It is not found when everything is going well. It is found in the midst of the pain and realizing that Christ is there with you. That is what changes everything.

Justin Forman: Yeah, that’s such a fascinating thought. There is. It’s just not to look to escape the pain, but to almost absorb it all and to take it all in and to not numb it, to not run from that. It feels like when you look at Scripture, you can find stories that even as Christ goes to the cross, there’s absorbing it all. And like it’s not to make such a drastic comparison, but there is an element of this here that we have so westernized our prayer to escape it. But man, how much better would we be if we just paused in that moment and said, God, give me the ability to absorb everything you’re wanting me to absorb? Here, let me take this all in. It’s so contrary to our nature. But man, what an opportunity it might be to learn more.

Peter Greer: Justin this is why it was so helpful to do this project and listening to the global church. This was not just interviewing some North American incredible leaders. And I’m so thankful for those interviews. But several of the real paradigm shifting conversations about prayer happen from the global church. And it was in those conversations that we heard exactly what you were just saying, that it was not just a prayer for. Here’s what I would like in my timeline, because I think I know best what you should do. And that’s even echoed in the prayers of Paul. You know, Paul very rarely, if ever, prayed for a change in circumstance for those that he was praying for. He had different prayers. And it wasn’t for rescue. It wasn’t for that. It was for God to be at work in the midst, to strengthen their faith in the midst of trial, not just to be suddenly parachuted out of it.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah, I love that you mentioned the global nature. One of the great gifts that I’ve been able to partake in a couple times is every Tuesday we do this virtual prayer with entrepreneurs around the world, and it’s at 9:30 a.m. eastern time, and it’s just a zoom room that’s open up and. There’s dozens of these entrepreneurs that are here praying with one another, and it’s an awesome time of devotion and prayer. And I think to your point that that global nature and seeing what the body of believers is going through around the world is such a key thing to shape us, and also how we can minister to each other just as the body. The book is incredible with the amount of resources that you guys have prepared beforehand and all these great tools to get people started. What are those things that someone who’s listening, who’s convinced, man, I’m ready to change my prayer life. What’s something they can do tomorrow to get started here?

Peter Greer: Yeah. I mean, this is in some way just the fun of this is there are more prayer practices that are outlined that any one individual could do. So the goal is to try it, to see what works. For some, it’s going to be finding new life in ancient prayers. And maybe following a liturgy was not something that individuals do, but maybe that is really helpful. And for other individuals, maybe it’s going to be much more listening, or maybe it’s going to be like Brother Lawrence and practicing the presence in the day to day in the mundane. And for some, maybe it’s going to be to create that time and space to pray with others and just put it on the calendar and have that. I don’t think it matters. Joey, what I think does matter is are we putting it into practice? And here’s the great thing. We see this throughout history and we see this throughout Scripture is there are movements that happen, but typically they are downstream from a commitment to prayer. And I just believe if we really want to see, even with the faith driven entrepreneur, if we want to see a movement, if we want to see thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, it is going to be impossible without God’s Spirit at work and without a collective commitment to prayer. So I just think I’m so excited. What would happen if there were a movement of people that said, in our day, in our time, we’re going to prioritize, we’re going to practice prayer. And I just think that we can love throughout history, and we can look throughout Scripture and we can say movements do happen, incredible things do happen. But typically they are downstream from repentance and prayer. And I just I get excited about what might happen in the years to come.

Justin Forman: Well, gosh, after that, Joey, that’s going to sound like a pitch or something like a product placement, but I just want to take a moment to thank and to appreciate the faithfulness of the people that have been gathering for that, time of prayer that happens every week with other faith driven entrepreneurs. And the way that Joey was talking about how it unites people’s hearts from so many different countries around the globe that come together for that is a gift to see. But it has alluded to that behind in front of, around whatever it is. All of the above, is a dose of prayer, just a covering in prayer. And so that, if you haven’t had a chance to experience that, would really encourage you to well, as Joey mentioned, it is just a treat. It’s a gift. It’s not a got to it’s an incredible get to to experience that. And then one of the things that had also come out of that group was this the desire to create a 24 / seven kind of time of prayer, that there’s somebody from the movement and some ministry, some organization, some entrepreneur is always lifting up the movement, the conversation, this idea at any time around the world. And so that is a calendar that I think is in the process of being started and coming together. And so if that’s something that you would want to sign up for a time to commit to praying for God’s will to be done. Not in an organization, not in a ministry, not in a particular business, but really his Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. And it would just be about in this bigger, broader movement in God’s name to be made famous. So those are two things that, gosh, that just sounded like a commercial right after what Peter said. But it’s important and would not want our listeners to miss out on that kind of an opportunity.

Shannon: Hey, I’m Shannon, I’m an American living in Tallinn, Estonia, and I’m an entrepreneur. And to keep me on track with my prayer chats, I have created a prayer calendar to sit above my kitchen sink. So keep me on task with my prayers and neighbor. I’m praying for my big goals. The people in my family keeps my mind focused on something good, even when I’m doing the dishes.

Joseph Honescko: Peter. We’re hearing these different people’s habits in their lives, in the way that they are setting themselves up for success. By planning ahead, by creating these rhythms and habits. We’re going to go to our closing question here in just a few minutes, which is we ask every guest about what they’re learning in Scripture right now. But I’d love if you feel comfortable just sharing what your own prayer habits are, what your own prayer life looks like, how you’ve made those intentional choices in your own life.

Peter Greer: I remember distinctly when we had a day of prayer for Hope international, and we were given a time to spend, and I could not get my head or my heart to slow down. I just had the internal RPMs were going too fast, and I think it was in that moment that I realized for the first time, I have a really hard time in prayer. I have a really hard time slowing down, and one of the habits, one of the practices that has just helped me in that process of slowing down is to change my physical posture. If I’m praying while still running around, it is really hard to get to a place of more peace, more calm, and it is really hard to listen well. So one of the very simple prayer practices that I’ve started to really enjoy is the physical posture of kneeling. That is not something that I grew up doing. That is not something that was part of my upbringing, but it has been incredible to realize that the physical posture shapes the way that we are able to come before the God of the universe, and this incredible gift and this incredible mystery of prayer. So the simple act of kneeling, nothing new, but to rediscover the power of that has really been transformational in my own prayer life.

Joseph Honescko: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. It’s such a joy every time to get to talk to you. And we’re so grateful for all the things you’ve contributed to the movement. We loved to end every show. Asking our guests what they’re learning from Scripture doesn’t have to be today, but something in the recent past that the Lord is stirring on your heart through his scripture.

Peter Greer: Yeah, I have to say quite simply, that question, that request from the disciples said, Lord, teach us to pray. Jesus answered it in that moment, and I believe Jesus continues to answer it today as we continue to say, Lord, teach us to pray.

Joseph Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn’t have to be. We’ve got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There’s no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

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