This article was originally published here.
Check out Bill High’s Website for other quality content!

— by Bill High

You never know who you’ll end up sitting next to when you fly. But whether you think about it or not, your neighbor on the plane has a story—a lifetime of stories that has just intersected with your own.

Even though I was one of the first to board, I sighed as I caught sight of my seat—a middle one between two very large men.

I scrunched as best as I could and even as the plane accelerated to the first announcement the man on my right sunk into a deep sleep—upright at least. But the man to my left sat upright and made my plight easier.

His gaze out the window was consistent, even unfriendly. His weather-stained face and fully thinned gray hair suggested someone with lots of hours in the sun. He crossed his arms, and one trembled steadily. Parkinson’s, I guessed. I leaned towards him and asked simply, “Where are you heading?”

“Home,” he said.

“Where’s home?” And soon, while not a rolling, easy conversation, the story slowly came out. He and his wife spent the winter in McAllen, Texas. They’d been going there for years to get out of the cold Iowa winters. He let it slip that this was likely their last winter in McAllen.

They’d farmed for all his adult life. He and his wife had been married 67 years. They’d wed when he’d just turned 20, and she was 22. Together, they had three kids, and those kids had managed four of their own. One son had stayed to farm. The other two had left to make their life in cities of their own choosing.

A grandson had taken up the farming bug too. He’d gotten hold of his first quarter section. He was the likely succession plan for the family farm. He told me in no uncertain terms, “It was a tough way to make a living.”

I asked him about his best days as a farmer, and he told me of an impromptu trip. He’d bought a new 1967 Ford pick-up truck with a camper for $2700 (not $27,000—he laughed about that), and they’d taken the kids out of school. They drove to Florida and did the Disney World thing. They camped out and did the whole trip for $500. He chuckled as he said, “It’d be hard to do that today.”

But the good days seemed to be in the rearview mirror. They’d put the mobile home in McAllen up for sale, and they were going home to Iowa “to die.” He was too old and unsteady to drive a tractor, and his wife had just had surgery on an ankle.

THE WEALTH OF A LIFETIME OF STORIES

I realized there was a lifetime of stories sitting to my left, and I’d only heard an hour’s worth on a plane ride. I hoped he’d tell his kids and grandkids his stories, especially the one about Disney World and the $2700 Ford pick-up. Those were good days, and they were part of his story.

What are the stories you want the next generations to know?

Share the fun stories along with the lessons learned and mistakes made. Tell about your triumphs and struggles, and of the experiences that shaped your values.

Your stories are treasure to pass on to the next generations.

This article was originally published here.
Check out Ronald Blue Trust for other quality content!

— by Ronald Blue Trust

Every organization has a What, a How, and a Why. Our What is wealth management and trust services. Our How is through experienced financial advisors building relationships and applying tools such as proprietary financial planning software, investment vehicles, and estate planning strategies. But it’s our Why that sets us apart from other wealth management and trust companies. Why is what motivates us to get out of bed in the morning – it’s our reason, cause, and purpose for what we do.

Ronald Blue Trust is not simply a financial planning, investment management, trust services, or estate planning company. We believe we do all of those things with excellence, but essentially seek to help our clients gain clarity and confidence around their finances. And we firmly believe that when our clients live with clarity and confidence about money – without conflict, anxiety, or fear – their lives are richer and more fulfilling. They can envision and act on their Why.

The vision of helping people seek and live their Why was one of the cornerstones on which Ron Blue established Ronald Blue & Co. in 1979. Ron felt challenged and called to help people become better stewards of their wealth and have a better relationship with money by using not just technical expertise, but biblical principles as well. Ronald Blue Trust clients have come to us, and stay with us, because they are attracted to our uncommon approach to wealth management. Read more about how we integrate biblical principles into financial planning and watch our video story by clicking the image below.

Our friend Jerry Bowyer recently interviewed Ron Blue and Karen Guess to discuss the relationship between greed and material wealth. While Western culture tends to view materialism as something that only wealthy people experience, Ron Blue’s trip to Africa pointed to the fact that it is more of a human problem than a social one. See what else they had to say in the full interview below.

read original article at Forbes

Ron Blue and the late Larry Burkett double-handedly created the faith and finance movement among evangelicals in the 1970s. This was a time of rapid acceleration in the number of people (including Jimmy Carter) who publicly declared themselves to be ‘born again’. Chuck Colson wrote a book with that title. The social movement grew rapidly and institutions developed to serve it. Ron and Larry became that movement’s financial counselors.  Without them, there is no Dave Ramsey.

I interviewed Ron recently and he told me that the major turning point in his understanding about faith and finance came when he was visiting a friend in Africa. His friend lived in a mud hut perched atop a small patch of dirt. Pastor Daniel was, by American standards, quite poor materially. Ron asked him what the most important spiritual challenge which his African Christian parishioners faced. When the pastor answered, “Materialism”, Ron was shocked. Ron had somehow imbibed the notion that materialism was a malady of the wealthy Northwest quadrant of humanity, not the poor Southeast. It’s then that he realized that greed was a universal human problem. It afflicts both rich and poor and there is no income level so high that greed cannot sour it with discontent. Any economic class can feel financial fear. Any economic class can feel satisfied. Any class can be generous. Any class can be needy. Any class can worship money imbuing it with attributes that move it from useful tool to pitiless master.

In my experience people tend to think of people who work in finance as particularly susceptible to the vice called greed. Pastors and professors can rail against Wall Street, but are the preaching classes more generous than the financial classes? Do faculty show more generosity in foregoing pay increases in order to lessen the burden on their ‘customers’ than money managers? Ron tells the story of a CPA who had 85 pastors for whom he prepared tax returns and not one of them were tithers. I’ve seen rich people stab one another in the back for monetary advantage, but I also had a homeless friend whom I saw withhold funds that he owed to another man (a homeless vet suffering from PTSD) so he could buy tobacco. Pastor Tim Keller once said that in all his years of serving congregations no one had ever confessed to being guilty of the sin of greed—which is probably an indicator that maybe we all are.

I sat down across a Skype line with Ron and Karen recently and you can listen to the audio of that interview here and read a partial transcript below. Both are edited for clarity.

Note: While I do not have direct business dealings with Ron, I have spoken at events held by institutions with which he has been associated, such as Ronald Blue & Co. (which he founded but is no longer associated with), as well as Kingdom Advisors, and the Ronald Blue Institute at Indiana Wesleyan University. I have not received speaker’s fees from these events, though I did accept travel and lodging reimbursements.

Jerry Bowyer: There are stories of very poor people in “Never Enough?”. And there are stories of very rich people in “Never Enough?”.  And that tells me that these principles apply to the very rich and the very poor and everyone in between; is that right?

Karen Guess: Yes, it is. And I think that was what was partly exciting about writing it; they’re real stories, but getting to kind of express the principles in various ways through people that we knew.

And my second story that I was going to tell you was my favorite, because my dad picked mine, was Pam’s story, because Pam is somebody I know personally.  Hers is in the last chapter.  And I admire her from the bottom of my toes in terms of her professionalism ‑‑ she is just a woman of great class in her industry.

And her story is one of being humble through a season of being a single parent and choosing, even though she was a financial professional who knew all the stuff, she heard a sermon one Sunday at church just about the very basic principles of ordering your priorities and went home and had a conversation with her little girls — they were school-aged at the time – and said girls, this is what we’re going to do, let’s talk about how owe spend our money and they reoriented the way they spent.  And they had monthly meetings going forward.  And so I just appreciated the humility that she had to accept the fact that the principles are true no matter what your life experience is, and she just took a step back in her own life when it was time and reapplied them.

Bowyer: I think my favorite story in the book is a story that I’ve heard you tell before, Ron, which is when you were visiting Pastor Daniel in Kenya. And he’s living there with his wife and several children, and they’re in the mud hut on the edge of the village.  Chickens are pecking around and doing all the stuff that chickens do there in the front yard that isn’t really a yard.  And kids are playing with batteries in the dirt.  And you ask him, what’s the biggest challenge in the African church, and he answers, materialism.  How did that answer shift your view of the world?

Ron Blue: That had dramatic and ‑‑ that happened in 1980 or ’81, so almost forty years ago. But what it revealed in an instant that money was always related to the heart and that the true spiritual challenge was never money issues; it was always heart issues.  So it changed the way I thought about money, and it changed the way that I’ve counseled over the years.  And a line that I used all the time and a belief that I have, is that money issues are always symptomatic of what’s going on spiritually; even if you’re a non-Christian, there still are values and priorities and goals that you have, and you reflect them through your checkbook.  And I think the most objective measurement of spirituality is how you spend your money.  You reveal it through your checkbook and through your credit card statements, and tax returns, and so forth.  A very objective look at our finances, or at our spirituality through our checkbook.

And that instance with that pastor really got me started down that track.  And it also made me realize that the amount of money was not the issue.  I thought — before he said that — that materialism and consumerism was only an American problem.  But when that happened, I said oh, my goodness; it’s universal and it’s a disease of the heart.

So it changed the way I gave advice, it changed the way I wrote, the way I thought.  It really set me on a course.  And I look at it and say God was so involved in that that ‑‑ it was his doing to make sure that I had the right attitude about money.

Bowyer: I think the naïve discussion about money and the heart and greed is that greed is a rich-person problem.

Blue: Yep.

Bowyer: But it’s a person problem.

Blue: Yep.

Bowyer: Rich can be greedy or generous, middle class can be greedy or generous, poor people can be greedy or generous.

Guess: Yeah.

Blue: Yeah.

In part 2 of their defining and measuring series, Impact Foundation sets out to define some of the terms we often use in the conversation around Faith Driven Investing. We believe this article will be particularly helpful in clarifying what a Kingdom-focused company looks like. Keep your eye out for part 3 coming soon!

by Impact Foundation

PART 2 IN OUR “DEFINING AND MEASURING SERIES”

“I own a company and I’m a Christian. Does that mean you can invest in my company?” – We get a version of this question at least once a week at Impact Foundation. Consequently, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it means to say deploy capital for social and spiritual impact alongside financial gain.

It is easy to understand Kingdom impact in a company that provides specifically religious or spiritual products for consumers, like the Abide Prayer App. Or one of the dozens of film and TV producers who create content with redemptive and biblical themes (some of whom make movies people actually watch and who truly create a return for investors–really!).

But is that it? 

Increasingly, Christians have come to hope, and perhaps even expect, there is more to the idea of Kingdom impact through business. The faith at work conversation has made much progress in the past decade to remind us of the theological importance of our day-to-day work. Through the efforts of countless authors, parachurch ministries, and pastors, we understand that our work provides an opportunity for living the gospel and witnessing to our neighbors. In addition, a few great authors have exhorted us to see that our work–whether as accountants, pilots, artists, homemakers, gardeners, or lawyers–has unique and intrinsic value as a means of worshipping our Creator and of partnering with Him in His work of renewing all things.

To extend this idea, the leaders of a company can create positive social impact through leadership that intentionally incorporates their Christian faith into meaningful relationships with employees, vendors, and customers. For example, a new company called Exothermix sells innovative portable heating to consumer product companies. Exothermix has adopted a company covenant to align senior leadership and investors around a few core tenets. While there is nothing particularly spiritual about a self-contained heating unit that can warm prepackaged soup in a few minutes, the covenant is part of a sincere attempt to incorporate biblical values into the company culture. No one is required to profess faith in Jesus to work for the company, but senior leadership works to create a winsome witness to the gospel for employees and customers.

This is not to say that Christian leadership, on its own, is all that is needed for a company to be placed in the Kingdom Impact Investing category. Scripture is clear that personal faith will result in changed behavior, which Paul calls “the fruit of the Spirit.” Certainly a corporate entity cannot have faith or be baptized as a “Christian.” Still, a CEO or group of senior leaders shaping that company with their personal faith can be expected to display evidence from the company that is indicative of spiritual health. As a corollary to the idea that “faith without works is dead,” we can look to the fruit of the company to determine whether this second type of spiritual impact is at work. This saves us the difficult, and strangely invasive, task of trying to assess the spiritual health of a leader to see if their company can be considered worthy of a Kingdom Impact Investment.

What have we missed? What makes a company worthy of investment if we’re seeking social and spiritual transformation along with financial return?

NCF has an innovative solution that allows you to donate a non-voting interest in your business right before the sale, receive a substantial tax deduction, reduce or eliminate capital gains taxes on the gifted interest, and convert those tax dollars into more giving for your favorite ministries.