“We have power and we have to discern how we use that power with like-minded Christians.”—Bill Wichterman

Close to half of the people in the world have had little or no exposure to the Gospel. 9.2% of the world's population lives in extreme poverty, defined as surviving on less than $2.15 per day.

More than 150 million children work in dangerous or exploitative conditions, and 40 million people are enslaved, which is more than at any other time in history. 800 million people suffer from hunger. And 1 in 10 people on the planet lack access to clean water. These are just some of the problems plaguing our world today.

What can we as faithful followers of Christ do?

Let’s be clear—without God, we could do nothing. But he continues to reveal a way forward for us. And his Church is winning. Join us for our premiere episode as we introduce you to a growing movement of Christians building, investing, and giving to solve the world’s greatest problems.

For more information on Solving the World’s Greatest Problems go to https://www.solvingtheworldsgreatestproblems.org/.

If you'd like to hear more about the Faith Driven Entrepreneur community groups, go to faithdrivenentrepreneur.org/groups.

Episode Transcript

Joey Honescko Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. I'm Joey Honescko and today on the show, we're doing something just a little bit different. Last week we talked about this new initiative we have called Solving the World's Greatest Problems. And part of that new initiative is a podcast called Solving the World's Greatest Problems. So what we're going to do today is highlight the very first episode of that podcast on this channel. And if you like the episode, you can go follow Solving the World's Greatest Problems on all the major podcast platforms. Thanks for listening. We're going to get right into it. 

Bill Wichterman I'm the villain, right? So I'm afraid of me. 

Joey Honescko That's Bill Wichterman, an inexperienced policy maker on Capitol Hill and the former special assistant to President George W Bush. He and his wife, Dana have been on a journey to faithfully steward their finances since they unexpectedly came into a life changing amount of capital after years of frugal living. 

Bill Wichterman I'm afraid of me because I'm born in sin and steeped in sin. So do I feel wealth coiling around my heart? Yep. That's why I have to have daily times where I say It's not mine, it's yours. 

Dana Wichterman Every day is a wrestling with how does God want me to express what he wants for me that day in my kingdom building? And really, my default is to go back to my agenda. 

Joey Honescko The reality is that any Christian with any sort of wealth wrestles with this tension. 

Bill Wichterman What is it about wealth that makes it deceitful? It's the illusion of control. And so we've always wanted to say, well, we want to make sure that. God's in control of our money. 

Joey Honescko So what does it even mean to let God control your finances? We want this podcast to be a tool that helps you explore questions like that. And we want to introduce you to an entire movement of people who are wrestling through these things in community. I'm Joey Ionesco, an entrepreneur based in McKinney, Texas, and a member of the faith driven entrepreneur and investor team. I'll be one of the many hosts who will narrate through different episodes of solving the world's greatest problems. We'll start here with Episode zero. Let's get into it. All right. So what exactly is in episode zero? It's actually pretty simple. See, the team at solving the world's greatest Problems has this ridiculously audacious thesis. We believe that Christians have the power to influence the entire world in unique ways because of how they build, invest and give their resources. This is sort of our big idea. And we think that if the church is full of faithful stewards, then together we really will be able to solve some of the world's greatest problems. So this episode is going to serve as a kind of testing ground for that idea. We want to explain the concept and also hopefully invite other people to participate in it. We're going to look at the story of Bill and Dana as an example. Because they're a lot like every faith driven entrepreneur and investor listening to this episode. They were living life just fine by many standards. They had an upper middle class lifestyle, frugal spending habits. And in lots of ways, they were just kind of your average Christian Americans. They tied. They donated. But all of those standard Christian practices were challenged when they found themselves encountering significant wealth for the first time through a family inheritance. 

Bill Wichterman I never aimed at wealth and Dana never aimed at it. We've always aimed missionaries. So the fact that we ended up then making just boatloads of money is still crazy to me. 

Joey Honescko There's a keyword there that you might easily miss in what Bill is saying. He says the two of them always lived missional. They developed stewardship habits with a little so that they could continue those same habits when they had a lot. But they also saw the reality of their situation. Wealth changed everything for them and it brought new questions to the table. 

Bill Wichterman How do we live responsibly now with this? Increased wealth is now not just about making sure that we're paying tide first and all our bills and keeping some savings for the future. It was like, okay, this is surplus. And the question then became, how do we use this wealth to honor God? 

Joey Honescko Bills are the first to admit that this is not a simple question. And he also acknowledges that tough questions like how we use our wealth to honor God have a way of bringing us to a crossroads. We can either isolate ourselves and go into hiding. Or we can seek godly wisdom from those who have walked the path before us. 

Bill Wichterman One of the things that was so great was hearing from a good friend of mine who he had just tens of millions of dollars and he told me the story of wrestling with whether or not. He could buy a Porsche. And he went back and forth with this. It wasn't a question of what was financially responsible. It was a question of what was responsible and pleasing to the Lord. The order of the Porsche canceled. The Porsche ordered a Porsche cancel the porch. He finally ordered it and took possession of it. But the point was why that was so encouraging to me was like, good. It's confusing for us also to know how do we use this? It's not like, there's this one road map and you just follow this and boom, boom, boom. You do it in community with other people. 

Joey Honescko This is what solving the world's greatest problems is really all about. It's about helping those entrepreneurs, investors and people who have been entrusted with much. Take the first or next step into what God is calling them. It's about doing these things in partnership and community with others throughout the church. And here's the kicker It doesn't actually matter how much money you have been entrusted with. This is something all Christians can take part in regardless of your net worth. 

Bill Wichterman It doesn't matter how much money you have. If you ever say this money is mine, I think that you're just you're in a bad place. 

Joey Honescko Over the course of this episode, we want to give an overview of this whole solving the world's greatest problems thing. We don't want to be prescriptive or presumptuous here, but we do want to provide a framework for how Christians can steward their resources to solve the world's greatest problems. Through the way they build, invest and give. This is less about three different distinct strategies and more about one clear motive to use all our resources for the good of others and the glory of God. So we're going to dive right into Act one Building for God's Kingdom. Stay with us. 

Henry Kaestner I don't think I'm exactly going out on a limb if I say that the world has some serious problems. 

Joey Honescko That is Henry Kaestner. He's the co-founder of faith driven, entrepreneur, investor. And throughout his career, much of what he's done has felt like a calling to solve problems. He came to faith later in life as an adult, and he's always looked for ways to help others see how they can make a difference. For Henry, this started while being an entrepreneur in North Carolina. While he was building his own business, he also started Ministry Spotlight that looked to highlight a new way each week for people to get involved in what God is doing around the world. Whether it's that experience or the experience he's had building, faith driven entrepreneur and investor, there's always been this calling to say once someone is activated and ready to go all in for God, they need a place to find ways to make a difference. So to meet that need, he and his co-founder Justin Foreman, and the team at solving the world's greatest problems together did extensive research pulling from things like Praxis Labs, Nsitf and the United Nations to identify a small handful of categories that summarized the major challenges facing our world today. 

Henry Kaestner Violence, poverty, sickness, vulnerability, economic exploitation, isolation. Idolatry. These seven categories capture a variety of upstream issues plaguing our world from dirty water to injustice to abuse of labor and everything in between. 

Joey Honescko Now, it can be easy to hear issues like these and jump immediately to a charity mindset. Aren't these the areas that nonprofits help with? What could a handful of entrepreneurs and investors do here? But we don't have to look far to see the influence investors and entrepreneurs are having in the world. Business leaders stand in the gaps to solve problems they can create out of a place of greed and selfishness. Or they can create from a place of helping people. They have incredible influence on the teams they lead, the communities they're in and the people that they serve. Every one of them has the power to build up or to destroy. So it's not really a matter of what kind of influence you have. It's more the question of what are you going to do with the influence that you've been given. 

Henry Kaestner As fate driven investors and entrepreneurs, we can position enterprises to stand in the gaps of brokenness. We can make investments for both financial return and compounding impact. And we can deploy philanthropic capital to accelerate ministries that focus on the ills humanity suffers. 

Joey Honescko This is where that build, given best framework comes into play. And you can think about it as the power of three. 

Henry Kaestner Too often we think of these as three distinct and separate pursuits. As a result, they become siloed obligations rather than wholly integrated endeavors. Actually, we're supposed to pull all of it from one pocket. 

Joey Honescko It's helpful to break this framework down by each section. So we're going to start with building here. The first to Jomo is a scholar, researcher and author of the book The Prosperity Paradox with the late Clayton Christiansen and Karen Dillon, before pursuing his MBA at Harvard, Afonso created a water well nonprofit in his home country of Nigeria. 

Efosa Ojomo Let me tell you, there are few feelings in the world better than seeing fresh water gushing out of a well for the first time. It's hard to describe the joy I felt. And I thought about all the children who no longer had to walk miles just to get water. 

Joey Honescko That joy was life changing for Efosa, but it won't last forever. He soon received a call that one of his wells was broken. And then another. And another. The pattern was becoming hard to ignore and quite concerning. 

Efosa Ojomo It turns out it's one thing to build a well. It's quite another to maintain it. So when I visited the poor communities in Nigeria, I saw the problem as no water. And so to me, and perhaps to many others out there who want to help, the solution was to provide water. And the best way we knew how to do it was building a well. 

Joey Honescko The first to pinpoint the problem that folks like Brian Ficken, who wrote when helping Hertz and others have identified as well. Sometimes the good things we think we're doing aren't creating sustainable solutions. 

Efosa Ojomo Because poverty almost always shows itself as a lack of resources and poor communities, lack of water, lack of food, schools, hospitals, cash, many other things that people need. Many development programs treat poverty as primarily a resource. 

Joey Honescko Problem, so programs get designed to meet these resource problems. They see a need for water and they build wealth. They see children without education, so they build a school. 

Efosa Ojomo They end up treating the symptoms but never actually solving the problem. 

Joey Honescko In the situations of host it talks about, some communities remain poor because the solutions which are in and of themselves good things are only treating the symptoms. 

Efosa Ojomo Now this perpetual practice of trying to fix the visible signs of poverty without actually solving poverty is called the prosperity paradox. 

Joey Honescko To be clear, no one here is saying that charitable acts are bad things. We'll talk about this more when we get into the giving section of the show. But charity does create lasting, positive change that cannot be achieved any other way. It's just that it also has the potential to cause harm. That's the entire premise of Brian Finkel's book, and it's why so many charities are now emphasizing more sustainable ways to help the people they serve. They're focusing on things like training local people and coming up with long term development strategies to recognize the paradox that a foster talks about doesn't mean you should throw out all charitable efforts. It just means you begin to recognize that other things are often needed. It's kind of like that old fishing analogy. If you give a man a fish, he eats for a day. But if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. And that's all fine and good, but it's kind of a tricky and unnecessary dichotomy. Sometimes people do need immediate relief. You can't really teach a man to fish if he's starving to death. Sometimes he just needs a fish right there. And then. But from there, we can build sustainable solutions for lasting impact. And that's actually a big part of the genesis of this whole initiative. On our website and on this podcast, we want to highlight the companies and organizations that are making sustainable differences around the world. Sometimes those are charities like organizations who rescue people from human trafficking. Other times, building takes the form of actual businesses, particularly the ones that focus on what a closer calls. 

Efosa Ojomo Market creating innovations. 

Joey Honescko A market. Creating innovation is something that transforms complicated and expensive products into products that are simple and affordable. 

Efosa Ojomo These innovations target a group of people called non consumers. These are people who are unable to afford existing products on the market, even though they would benefit from having access to them. 

Joey Honescko First, it points out that market creating innovations are typically not just products or services. They are entire systems designed to serve entirely new customers. Here he's going to give us a great example of what this could look like. 

Efosa Ojomo Now, it's no news that access to quality and affordable medicines and by extension health care in many countries in Africa is lacking. More than a decade ago, when Gregory Roxanne encountered this problem, he decided to build a software product that would help pharmacies better manage their stock. But he soon realized that his solution wouldn't solve the real problem of stock outs, affordability and, in effect, access to drugs for patients. So he needed to create an entire system. Although it has taken roughly a decade today, and Pharma not only has software to help pharmacies better manage their supply chain, but it also employs doctors, pharmacists and owns several pharmacies across Africa. The organization has raised tens of millions of dollars from world class investors, has operations in nine African countries, and has served more than 2 million people on the continent. 

Joey Honescko Mpharma has built a system with one singular focus. 

Efosa Ojomo Create an Africa where people have access to affordable health care services. 

Joey Honescko That's what building to solve the world's greatest problems can look like. And if you go to our website, you can see hundreds of examples like that one from faith driven entrepreneurs around the world. There's Dr. Kamu Garchik, who brought in a state of the art prototyping facility to Nairobi so that he could equip and empower local Kenyans to innovate in ways that would solve their local problems. You could look at Anthony Tan and his team at Grab, who changed the way that Southeast Asia saw ride sharing. He's given jobs to hundreds of thousands of micro entrepreneurs in that region, and there are so many other stories like that where the church is winning in its fight against darkness. And it gives you this feeling that you are a part of something awesome, that you are part of the movement that is bigger than yourself, that is changing the world around you and solving some of the world's greatest problems. Some people are participating in this work by building those kinds of businesses, and others are using their capital to invest in give. The point here isn't to put one of these three or the others. The point is to see how each of these can work together. Like three unique legs of the same stool. Each of them are needed in the church's fight against darkness, and they each play a distinct role. So we're going to take another quick break here, and then we're going to hear more about the role investing plays in solving the world's greatest problems. Don't go anywhere. Hey, friends, quick message from the team. We mentioned some of those powerful stories that can stir our hearts and lead us to think differently. And we don't want it to end in this pep rally and inspiration. We want to help you take action. So on the Solving the World's Greatest Problems website, we've curated the best ways to build invest in give. This list is a best of the best of the movement. We want to make it easy to find the innovative and look to places where you can get involved. If you're looking for an easier way to take action. We'll be launching giving collaborations where you can lean into the experience of peers. So check out the websites solving the world's greatest problems.org to find these action steps for each problem we outline. All right. Now back to the episode. Historically, the church hasn't always known what to do around investing. It felt like professional money management that stood siloed in the grand scheme of financial stewardship. But there is a growing movement of Christian fund managers, qualified purchasers, accredited investors, financial advisers and people just looking to invest who have come to the realization that their investments do have an impact one way or another. All investing is impact investing. So these people are seeing how there are ways to use their investments to impact the world for good. In the same way they've always seen charity as a means to a greater end. Here's how Dana and Bill described the moment the light bulb turned on for them. 

Dana Wichterman There's a chart that changed both bills in my life. It's a chart that has all these different squares. And one square represents U.S. charitable giving. Then there's a few squares that represent government spending, and then the rest is all U.S. investable capital. 

Bill Wichterman It's like we're all focused on this one little dot and forgetting about all of this, where that's where the power is. It's not just this little dot. Even if you give more, it's just there's enormous power that we need to unleash and deploy and employ that can change the world. 

Dana Wichterman It's that marketplace that we think is where transformation and gospel action and delivery is going to happen. 

Joey Honescko Again, we really don't want anyone to misunderstand this. The point here isn't to pit these different ideas against each other. It's not building versus giving versus investing. It's more like a mosaic that comes together to solve the world's greatest problems. We need that square. Bill and Dana talk about that represents charitable giving, but we also have an opportunity to unleash good when we align our faith and our investments. For too long, we've kept those two things separated. Here's how Bill identifies that problem. 

Bill Wichterman Christians, on average, give around 3% U.S.. It's around 1% giving. Imagine if Christians alone just gave away 10%. My goodness, would that be a game changer? And now a much bigger potential is what if they actually started thinking about all of their assets? Wow. That would just change the world overnight. 

Joey Honescko And look, maybe you're like me and you've got a little bit of a cynical side. You're a little skeptical when you hear statements like what Bill just said. It can all feel like hype. Solving the world's greatest problems. The world can change overnight. We've all been burned by things that have pumped us full of excitement and zeal, only to realize the reality on the other side doesn't look quite as dreamy. But when you look at the data, that's not what's happening here. There are incredible stories of faith driven investors who are using their capital to pour into faith driven entrepreneurs. And the result is entire communities changing at a rapid pace. Richard Okello is a Ugandan fund manager based in South Africa who has seen the impact that can come when people are willing to invest in emerging markets. 

Efosa Ojomo In 2015, Nigeria was home to 200 million people. Its largest city, Lagos, has about 20 million people. Yet the country had only 15 organized grocery stores. That's it. But in 2015, after looking at the sector in Nigeria for some time, my team at Sango Capital backed an entrepreneur to build out a grocery store chain. Today, Market Square is over 20 stores. It has employed over 1400 people directly and indirectly. It's built, manage and run by Nigerians and it provides fresh food, dry goods to ordinary people reliably and affordably. 

Joey Honescko That's the kind of impact that's possible when Christians use their investment capital for good. Richard and the team at Sango didn't build a food bank. They built an ecosystem of for profit businesses that changed the lives of thousands of Nigerians throughout the country. And all of it started with heart change. He, like Bill and Dana, like Henry, like so many others, was first transformed by the power of the gospel. And then he saw the power of aligning his faith in his capital. 

Efosa Ojomo Just like Jesus, who sought out those whom society had cashed out. The faith of an investor must equally seek to invest in places where there seems to be little to no opportunity. At least on the surface. They must look beyond the obvious challenges to the incredible opportunity being offered. It's not until we change the lens with which we assess these opportunities that we will begin to see and act differently. 

Joey Honescko We have to change our lens. We have to begin to see and act differently. A photo has a great way of putting this challenge because he also wants to see faith driven entrepreneurs and investors step up in places that often get overlooked. And he wants to show how finance can make a difference in those areas. Here's how he puts it. 

Efosa Ojomo Recently, I've been struck by this first Matthew 516. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven. And when you think about that, you realize no one shines a light in a room that's already bright. And if we go in and invest, that would be shining a light in a place where there is quite literally a lot of darkness. Very practical way to think about this is as you assess your portfolio, how much of it is invested. In rooms that are already bright. And how much of it is invested in rooms where they need your light? 

Joey Honescko This is the power every Christian has. We all can participate in one way or another in building, investing or giving. And the more access we have, the capital, the more capacity we have to bring significant change to this world. Because let's face it, capital carries power with it. The problem is that so many of us let that power overtake us. We become controlled by the power of money. But it doesn't have to be that way. And in this next and final act of our show, we'll talk about the last leg of the stool and how generosity can be a doorway to a new heart. We'll talk about giving the last leg of this three legged stool and we'll see how generosity can be the doorway to a new heart and a new way of seeing our money. Stay with us. Give it away. Give it away. Give it away now. Give it away. Give it away. Of the three different legs we're talking about in this episode. Giving is probably the one we're most familiar with in the church. Whether it's tithing or charity or philanthropy, we typically have an idea of what giving means. And just because we're also highlighting investing and building doesn't mean we're anti giving. In fact, the author Andy Crouch, says that giving is usually the best protection against worshiping our money. 

Efosa Ojomo 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 releases 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. 

Joey Honescko This is something Bill and Dana saw in their own lives, too. 

Bill Wichterman Giving up for money is really about giving up any of the thing that the Lord calls us to. It's about trust. It's about relinquishing. It's about surrender. It's about giving up. 

Joey Honescko Giving. Like building and investing can be a way that the church fights back the world's darkness. And for many, it's the entry point to an entirely different view around money. This was how things really started to shift for Bill and Dana when they began giving generously alongside others who would keep them accountable. 

Dana Wichterman We went out and met April and Craig Chapman right away, just formed a fast friendship, and they were further along in their giving and their impact investing journey than we were, and they were willing to open their books. And so we once a month would have a zoom double date and just talk things things through and down to, you know, do you think we should be doing this for our kids or not, or should we be flying first class or not? So really practical questions and we could work it out. And that was such a joy to have that accountability, that encouragement. And hearing stories of people who've done it well, too. 

Joey Honescko You can hear in their voices the kind of heart change that the victims have experienced. They, like so many other Christians around the world, are on this journey of faithfulness. And it started with giving. Admittedly, Dana even said that some of it was rooted in a sense of duty. She knew she was supposed to give, but as she practice it, she began seeing how giving wasn't a burden but a gift. 

Dana Wichterman Yeah, I'm very duty driven, which is fine. It's just how God's wired me. But now it's become more of a joy. And I would describe it as a playground where as a 62 year old, I feel like I'm playing every day where I get to go out and meet really creative innovators and faith driven entrepreneurs that see a problem in the world that I either knew about but didn't understand as well as they did. And they are actually providing a solution and they're putting their livelihood on the line to make a difference, to repair that broken wall that they see in the world, to bring light into the world. 

Joey Honescko We're going to keep our time on giving relatively brief here in this episode, mainly because our next episode of the podcast is going to look at the work of Mark Green, Bobby Grunwald and others who are solving gospel poverty with innovative solutions that anyone can give to. And that episode, we're going to highlight the organization Illuminations. And you'll see how giving does more than change our own hearts when done in partnership with the right organizations and the right people. Charitable giving can create meaningful change and solve problems that can't be solved with typical investment strategies or entrepreneurial zeal. The challenge here is that so often in Christian circles we treat things like building businesses and investing as something separate from giving. But in reality, each of these things work together more often than not when you're doing one of the three. You're likely participating in the others too. Like if you invest in a business building something lasting that gives back to its communities through a charity, that's all three of these things working together. They all overlap and all of them have an impact one way or another. So the task that stands before Christians like Bill and Dana who want to steward their resources, their influence and their power is to figure out how they can use everything they have for the good of others in the glory of God. For Bill, that started with two major steps. 

Bill Wichterman They have to number one, know that we have power. Number two, discern how we use that power with a community of like minded Christians. 

Joey Honescko The more you talk to Bill, the more you talk to Dana, the more you talk to the folks a Richard or Henry or anyone else who has experienced this kind of hard change. You'll notice a scene. We cannot do this alone. And we were never meant to. There is too much to navigate. Too much to wrestle through on our own. We need each other and we need guardrails to sift through the abundance of options to ensure we're picking the right ones. Here's how Justin Forman, co-founder of faith driven entrepreneur and investor, puts it. 

Bill Wichterman Solving the world's greatest problems is our attempt to find accessibility on that other side of complexity. Our hope is to build trusted networks of advisors, to include investors, entrepreneurs, givers, ministry, leaders around the world from all different countries, all different angles, all different perspectives, who can suggest and speak from experience of some of the best places to start and to do so in a way where helping doesn't hurt. 

Joey Honescko So that's the goal with this podcast and with the entire project as a whole. We want to help people like you listener go on the same journey that Bill and Dana and so many others have gone on. We want to see these problems solved and we want to see Christians around the world realize the joy that comes when we work alongside each other and the God who calls us to radical obedience. 

Henry Kaestner Through his infinite grace. God wants us to experience the life transforming joy that comes only from loving Him and loving people. God wants us to accept His invitation every day, not to earn salvation, but to draw closer to him. 

Bill Wichterman So what's your problem? What are the unique ways that God has wired you? What resources has uniquely given to you to steward? The world is too broken to leave them in the storehouses or scatter them on the sidelines. 

Henry Kaestner Solving the world's greatest problems is an audacious goal that can only be done if we build, give, and invest under God's power for God's glory. 

Joey Honescko Thanks for tuning in to this episode Zero of Solving the World's Greatest Problems. We hope it was a good overview of the initiative and the heart behind it. And if you enjoy this one, then here's some good news. We'll be publishing monthly episodes that highlight ways the church is winning in its fight against darkness. And we'll be gathering groups together to identify how they can get in the game and start solving the world's greatest problems together. If you want to learn more about any of the problems we've talked about today or how you can take part in this initiative, visit our website at solving the world's greatest problems, dawg. Thanks for listening. We're going to end every show with a communal liturgy that you can find on the episode page on the website. Father, we praise you for being a god of abundance. So many times have we seen you hold nothing back but generously offer yourself fully through your spirit to all who believe in you. Let us in return, respond by discovering the joy in giving you all that we have. Let all our building, investing and giving be done under your power for your glory. Help us, Lord, to find the communities of people to partner with and do this work faithfully. Let your church be bold as its members go out and participate in the redemptive work you are already doing in the world. Give us eyes to see the victories happening that they may be a source of praise and moments of hope for us. Strengthen us as we enter into the battle ourselves. Guide us all in wisdom and in truth as we seek to use our resources to advance your kingdom. Amen.