Episode 122 - Blending Investing and Giving for Max Impact with David Wills
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David Wills is revolutionizing charitable giving by leveraging the power of investment and donor advised funds. He has spent his career helping donors navigate the legal world of giving and now serves as President Emeritus of the National Christian Foundation. In this episode of the Faith Driven Investor Podcast, David discusses the changing landscape of charitable giving and what it means to use your capital and influence for God’s Kingdom.
All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific investment advice for any individual or organization.
Episode Transcript
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
John Coleman: Welcome back to Faith Driven Investor podcast. I am here with my partner Luke Roush today and we're very excited to welcome a very special guest. Luke, how are you today?
Luke Roush: I'm doing great. I'm excited to be on with David Wills, who is our guest and long time friend of Henry and myself, and just the broader Faith Driven Entrepreneur and investor movement and just grateful to have him and his wisdom with us today.
John Coleman: Indeed, it is exciting. So, David, for those of you who don't know, is the president emeritus of the National Christian Foundation was a co-founder of Generous Giving, a board member of various organizations involved with the Impact Foundation, author of multiple books. A truly interesting guy and a leader in the faith driven giving and faith driven investing spaces. And we were just really privileged to have him on today to talk about a number of topics which he's uniquely qualified to introduce to this audience and to address. So, David Wills, thank you so much for joining us today.
David Wills: Well, it's a privilege to be with you guys. Looking forward to this.
John Coleman: Well, why don't we just start with the basics? For those who don't know you, David, would you mind just given us a little bit of your background and what led you on this unique journey?
David Wills: Well, certainly just a quick introduction, kind of who I am. I have a dear friend when they're asked this question, has a special way that they answer some of the news. Her method, if you'll allow me. So I am the son of Don in Sioux City and the husband of Chris, the father of Jonathan, Maggie, Chuck, Luke, Josh, Drew and Sam and the father in law of Abby and Courtney. That's right. There's seven. And then now we have plus two and soon to be the grandfather of a bouncing baby boy who is arriving in the next month. I'm also blessed to have some of the best friends in the world, but most importantly, I've been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom I have redemption and the forgiveness of my many sins. So that's kind of who I am. My wife and I both grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, and I've known her since she was five and I was nine. Now, we didn't start dating until we were in her twenties, just to make sure that's clear. We now live outside Waco, Texas, after having spent about 25 years in the great state of Georgia. So let's see. The last question was, how did I get to where I am today? I think, as you might imagine, that's a people centric thing as well. So I'm a lawyer by profession. And in 1991, I, I actually met a stranger who spent some time with me, and neither of us even knew there was such a thing as half time. But he essentially was challenging me to go into half time and leave my litigation practice to move on to a tax practice and help Christians become wise stewards. And his name is Greg Sperry. That's how Greg has been my mentor since the first week of 1992. We talked day before yesterday, so we are constantly engaged to this day. And I sit at his feet both from a professional and a spiritual standpoint. And then a few years after we got together, we met a guy named Terry Parker. And when we crossed paths with Terry, Greg and I both ultimately landed at the National Christian Foundation. That was about 25 years ago. So along with that and my wife, he's been my best friend and counselor through it all. That's kind of the path that the Lord has brought me on.
John Coleman: David That's awesome. And I think you've won the intro sweepstakes. I have to say that's the best one we've had so far. You know tons of topics to dig into there. Maybe just to start and I know Luke wants to get into some questions about donor advised funds. You've been involved with two organizations that have just been central to giving within the Christian movement, to innovating on giving, which is the National Christian Foundation and the Impact Foundation. Could you just tell us a little bit more about those and how you became involved with them?
David Wills: Well, I like the Impact Foundation at first. The Impact Foundation is a relatively new entity, really set up to meet a need that just was constantly increasing inside the NCF world and outside as well. And so Jeff Johns and Aimee Minnich founded the Impact Foundation. I'm honored to serve them as a board member. And really the simple purpose is to use charitable capital to invest in for profit impacting ventures, which of course in the world we live in now, it's like, well, we do that all the time. Well, we didn't used to do that ever. So it's a new thing. And the Impact Foundation is growing like a weed and it's just fantastic. So I commend it to anybody. NCF has been around a little bit longer and it's kind of helped to in partial ways, birth these kinds of generosity entities. But this is our 40th anniversary this year for the National Christian Foundation. And a couple of weeks ago, we granted our $15 billion in grants, which is just crazy. We serve 25,000 plus families. And so at this point, they're granting. About $1,000,000,000 every seven or eight months. So we keep the money moving. As I mentioned, we were founded by Terry Parker, a lawyer from Atlanta, and he had two clients 40 years ago, a guy named Larry Burkett, a guy named Ron Blue, who really nobody even knew who they were except for Terry. And the three of them were the founders. Larry is now in heaven, but Ron and Terry are both in their eighties now, and they are both going as strong as ever. Incredible role models.
Luke Roush: So David, thank you for that overview of where Impact Foundation has been and where NCF has been. Love to go back to the origin story of NCF, which really involves the concept of donor advised funds which are familiar to many of our listeners but not all. Be great to get a definition of what a donor advised fund is. And then maybe also just have you walk us through history of how they have evolved as a structure for givers over time.
David Wills: Sure. So donor advised fund, I'm going to take that kind of in reverse order. They've been around way before. NCF was around. So maybe over 100 years there have been donor advised funds and really kind of donor advised fund started in the community foundation world. And there are well over a thousand community foundations around the country. And it's a tool that sort of is a cross between a charitable checking account and a low cost personal foundation is the way I would describe it. And of course, nowadays they're all driven by technology, so the use of them is turnkey and simple. You can click and contribute into your fund. You can click and grant out of your fund right off your phone. And so it is it's a very simple way, I guess, to describe it also, I could kind of give you my own personal experience. My wife and I have used a donor advised fund since before I worked with NCF. So maybe 30 years we've been using a donor advised fund and the first reason we did it is because we got bombarded with literally maybe a hundred receipts per year for our charitable giving and the donor advised fund just eliminated that issue. So now we get one receipt per year for all of our giving. So that was just, you know, kind of an administrative advantage. We also love to give anonymously. We do have a pretty high percentage of our giving goes out anonymously and a donor advised fund is unique and that can let you do that. And we've also given a piece of real estate, piece of a commercial building that we owned. This was gosh, before I was in NCF, I think, and we gave it to NCF. They sold it and we took three or four years distributing out the proceeds to probably six or seven different organizations. So it's a tool and it just really simplifies the giving process. And as far as where they are today and where they're headed, donor advised funds continue to be used in more and more creative ways to help simplify giving. To help collaborative giving. Lots of giving clubs are coming around because of donor advised funds, and also donor advised funds are under the umbrella of a public charity, not a private charity. And so the flexibility is much greater to do investing inside the donor advised fund we're on. I know we're going to talk about that in a minute.
John Coleman: So why don't we pick up on that last topic. David, you know you mentioned that donor advised funds have obviously revolutionized giving. They truly have. They've made the personal family foundation available to anyone effectively. An NCF was a leader in that, particularly in innovating the way that that could happen. But as you touched on towards the end of your answer there donor advised funds, whether NCF or the Impact Foundation are innovating also the way that people invest. Talk to us a little bit more about those blurred lines now between investing and charitable giving and how that plays out within the context of the donor advised fund marketplace.
David Wills: Hmm. They use a little bit of a pejorative word, blur the line. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by that. But, you know, any time you have a donor advised fund and any time anybody's ever had a donor advised fund and there were excess funds sitting in there, they were invested in some way somehow. It's just that the sophistication is growing in what you can invest inside of a donor advised fund. But really, from my perspective, the divide between giving and investing is diminishing. So let me go back 30 years ago and maybe getting a little bit off on a tangent, but so 30 years ago, you know, you have your non charitable personal capital in one bucket and your charitable personal capital in another bucket. It used to be that your non charitable personal capital was either completely passive in its investment or if you were really sophisticated you screened out bad things and that's just where it was. And then with your charitable capital, you put it in a money market fund until you gave it away, and that was about as sophisticated as it got. Well, those days are over on both sides of the coin. Giving and investing are now a very commingled, holistic endeavor. So actually when I hear you talk about the Faith Driven Investor, my mind goes to two buckets, not one bucket. So I don't just think about the Faith Driven Investor investing their personal non charitable capital. I see it as one big thing. It's just a matter of whether it's this return your tax exempt or whether they're not. And so it's opened up a lot of doors that I think are really, really exciting.
John Coleman: That's awesome, David. And we we obviously agree with this idea that, you know, if you're going to keep a pool of capital for giving, you might as well use that entire pool of capital for impact rather than just waiting for impact until the time you can give it away. You mentioned that people are moving beyond where it started with negative screening into other types of investing. Could you say a little bit more about that and what that looks like within the context of the organizations that you've worked with in the DAF marketplace?
David Wills: Well, I'm going to broaden your questions if you'll let me a little bit here. So let's go back to that left hand bucket. That's your personal non charitable capital that used to be passive that's going away. So both giving and investing. The concept of social change is now melded into all of it. And so no matter where you invest, whichever capital you're talking about, you are affecting social change. And if you're faith driven, you're also the social change has a spiritual aspect to it as well. But I would think if you went to the CEO of Apple and said, okay, if you have to give up one or the other, which one are you going to pick? The valuation of your company and the returns to your shareholders or the social impact that your company is generating. I believe he would say I'm unwilling to give up either one of them and they are both completely interlinked with each other. That's exactly what's happening on the giving side as well. So when we give our charitable capital, we are very intentionally now becoming investors. We used to kind of call it donors, but we don't use that language anymore because donors are they? How do I describe it? They give away their resources and they move on. Requires very little effort. It's actually the most common identity that I even have as a giver, is a donor. But that is diminishing. And so people are becoming what I would describe as Faith Driven Investor. And the reason they turn into investors is because they care, they're accountable for the results of their giving and they're investing. And so that requires a great deal of effort. But people are embracing that. But keep in mind, this isn't new. This is not a new thing. This goes back to the time of Jesus, where in the parables of the Matthew 25, Luke 19, the parable of the talents, the terrible, the mind is, it's exactly the same thing. So I think the day of kind of bifurcating these worlds is starting to go away, which is really exciting. NCF has been kind of processing and dealing with that for over 20 years. And one aspect that we can talk about if you'd like, but hope that answers your question.
Luke Roush: So when you talk about just kind of this shift and you described it well, we often describe one on the spectrum. We find donors trying to become more sustainable in the way they give or the way they invest. To use your language, which I like. And then also on the investing side, people are trying to become more thoughtful about the impact that their capital is having beyond just purely kind of dollars and cents. As you think about the shift in mentality that's going on, on the giving side, becoming more investment, sustainable, focused. What's driving that? Is that an intergenerational thing that sort of as millennials or kind of second gen, third gen folks are starting to act as allocators of capital. Are they driving that? Is it actually an awakening of the original donor advised fund account holders? What are the core drivers of why that shift is occurring?
David Wills: Yeah, I would say it's a spiritual shift and in the past 20 years, at least in the world that we work in, which is not, you know, the massive amount of folks out there is more on the upper end of the scale. Frankly, we're seeing a I don't know if you would call it a revival of generosity or just an outpouring of generosity, but people are dramatically increasing what they give. And because it's becoming a more intertwined part of their life, it's now becoming a more important aspect of their life. And they're not willing to do things the way they used to. This is double down with the younger generation, though it's even more so. But it's not just the younger generation. There are old people like me in their sixties that are caring as much about this. I mean, we now even have terms that we use on the generosity side called giving champions and giving evangelists who are using, you know, their influence, their spiritual giftedness of giving to influence their peers. And that's another factor that's really causing this to change because it makes sense. It's actually biblical generosity is what's happening here. Another factor, I'll give you one more and there's others. But I think that probably the biggest one is the issue of ownership, and it's on both sides. So, you know, ownership that's kind of like control. It's an illusion. We think that we own things and we think we have control of things, but neither are true. And so as people understand more and more that they're an owner that has the steward mindset, several things start to click. Scarcity becomes abundance. Caring about and being accountable for what happens with your giving starts to happen because you're a manager, you're responsible to manage. And so that ownership and manager role clarity is also another big reason that this is happening. So you're kind of get me on a soapbox here, so I'll step off.
Luke Roush: That's great. I like the soapbox. Keep rolling. John, over to you.
John Coleman: Yeah, just a couple of topics I want to dig in before we leave this area of donor advised funds, David. One is, you know, if you look at the average age of a donor for donor adviced funds in the US is 65 years old and this is common across anywhere that you have pools of assets that it's critical to get young people involved in these movements. And you touched on that a bit. How do you think donor advised funds can start to get young people involved? And what's the purpose of a donor advised fund or what's the use of a donor advised fund for a younger person with a lower account balance?
David Wills: Well, I'll start with the second question first. As I mentioned, my wife and I started using donor investments 30 years ago and I was 30 years old. So I think I was a young person at that point and we had a little balance. So all of the reasons that I gave earlier perfectly, in fact, they actually primarily fit with people that are younger. The only exception might be the gift of the real estate, but even that's not an exception anymore, because these younger folks are now either creating wealth much earlier than my generation did and or they're receiving wealth much earlier than my generation did. And so I think that the younger and smaller is really just not as big of a deal as it once was. I think that those folks I also think that they're more conscientious and they're more holistic. The younger people are. So it's the older folks that are more likely to bifurcate their lives. Younger folks are far less likely to do that. Everything. So they may be more interested in the social impact of Apple than they are the returns of Apple. Now, my generation couldn't give a rip about the social impact of Apple. I wanted a higher return on my investment, and thank goodness I invested Apple a long time ago, but it's a very different mindset. On the donor advised fund side. You know, these demographics are real and it's the young people. I think they're going to be giving more. I don't think they're going to be getting less and they're going to be giving more conscientiously. And so these kinds of tools are actually going to become even more valuable for them than they were for my generation.
John Coleman: David Switching topics a bit. One of the one of the things I've noted is just the diversity of things that people give to you through donor advised funds. And I have a question about whether you think a donor buys one platform and the nature of a donor advised fund really matters depending on your values. For example, I noticed that one of the top five donor advised fund out there of their top three charities that they support. One was a major church organization and one was the country's largest abortion charity. How should Christians think about that? And does the nature of the platform actually matter?
David Wills: Well, I'll give you two points on that. The first one is the pressure on the secular donor advised funds, and that's who you're giving an example of, obviously is becoming very significant on their role in supporting religious organizations. And so we're even seeing people move over to NCF from secular donor advised funds because they're getting wind of this pressure, which is totally understandable and I think it makes a really big difference. So in the world of a foundation, I know that it feels like when you have a donor advise fund, that's your fund, but you actually don't own that fund. It is a part of a much bigger body of funds and you are under the auspices, under the fiduciary responsibility of a group of people. But even more so than that, I encourage people to, you know, there are many faith driven options out there for a donor advised funds. They should pick one because inside of the donor advised fund, most people on the outside that use them say that there's fees, but there really aren't fees at a donor advised fund. They're actually grants to the operating fund of the charity. And I don't want one penny of my grant making to go to the operating fund of a charity who's going to make grants to the largest abortion provider in the country, not one penny. And so there are plenty of options now where you don't have to do that. And so I encourage people to pick one of those options and dive all the way in.
Luke Roush: I love that. It's a great remit. And to your point, there's a number of good options that are available to folks. Let's all pick one and I want to come back to something that you and I have talked about before. David.
David Wills: Hey, Luke. Before you. Should we make a disclaimer of your wife's prior employment at the National Christian Foundation? You're starting to talk.
Luke Roush: Yeah her first boss. It's her favorite boss. I think she'd most certainly rather work for you than work for me. That's. That's for sure. But, yes, Brooke, once upon a time was the first marketing employee at National Christian Foundation who worked under the tutelage of David Wills. We would have attribute much of our marital success to David in his bride.
David Wills: Okay. Just wanted to make sure that that disclaimer was out there. So.
Luke Roush: Well, I'll tell you, David Wills and Ted Day are two of her all time favorite people, and I am grateful for them.
David Wills: That's wonderful.
John Coleman: Where do you rank in those all time favorite people Luke among those.
Luke Roush: I'm somewhere way down the list. It depends on the day. Depends on the day.
David Wills: Oh, come on. Top ten for sure.
Luke Roush: Top ten? Yeah, that's good. Okay.
John Coleman: You have thrown off David. We managed to throw Luke off. This is a legendary day in the Faith Driven Investor podcast. We should mark this for posterity.
Luke Roush: Oh, so. Okay, I got it. I want to come back. David, something that you and I have talked about before is this idea of some significant or insignificant stroke of pen risk that exists around Christians ability to donate to Christian charities or to invest into to use your words Christian charities in a tax advantaged manner. And there's been a fair amount of speculation, particularly in the last ten years, that that may or may not continue into perpetuity. Any thoughts from you on where we stand now regarding that issue?
David Wills: The issue of whether or not people that are using daughter bodies, funds are going to be able to invest?
Luke Roush: Going to be able to give to Christian charities. Is a Christian charitable exemption at risk? Oh, you come out of D.C. This is your old world. Your old stop. Yes.
David Wills: Okay. Yeah. That's a very fair question. One of the great things I mean, it's from my perspective, having spent a lot of time doing advocacy work in Washington, which is kind of like beating your head against a wall, but you have to do it. Is that the biggest fans of charity in Washington? Are they very conservative and very liberal members of the House and the Senate? And so, in fact, some of the biggest champions of charitable giving and who would never want anything like that done are on the other side of the political spectrum than you would expect. Now, there are some exceptions to that rule, and I've had the privilege of speaking with many of them. But by and large, the risk to the non religious sector is so great if they were to start carving off and picking winners and losers, I can't really imagine that ever happening. But there are some that would like for it to happen. Of course, there are some conservatives that don't think Greenpeace should be a tax exempt organization or Planned Parenthood. I disagree fully with that, and I believe that churches also churches are even at less risk because they actually are outside the cap. But anyway, I think that answers your question.
Luke Roush: It does. Thank you.
John Coleman: Maybe to pivot a little bit, David, to move to a new topic, obviously, you're very experienced with both investments and giving. Given the nature of your history and experience in investments, we have a ton of metrics around the success of those investments return on investment, etc. Many of our listeners, I think, struggle with how to measure success in the charitable world or how to determine whether their gifts are having an impact. Could you talk to us a little bit just how you think about metrics for giving and how those who give can think about the return on their investments in charities?
David Wills: Sure. Yeah. Some of the metrics that exist in investing in any corporate environment apply to tax exempt corporate environments. So there are definitely some ratios that you can use to help you understand that. And it's just like in the socially responsible investing world, there are social ways to do metrics on social change. It's a little trickier when you get into spiritual change, but even that is something that can be measured to some degree. In some cases, sometimes it can't. But, you know, one of the great things about the metrics from a spiritual standpoint is, is that the metrics on a spiritual side, though often more difficult to distinguish clearly, are so much greater return than any earthly return could possibly be. But there are a couple of things that when I'm talking with somebody and they're asking, is this a good investment? Is this a good charity? There are some things that I would tell them to look for. I would tell them to look for, you know, tested leadership, good tested leadership. I would tell them to look for a crystal clear vision and demonstrated momentum. But that's the same thing you would tell somebody to look for if they were looking at a for profit investment. You get all three of those and you're now you're digging. To the details to make sure that it's a sound investment. And digging into the details is a little bit different. But the starting point, by and large, is very similar.
Luke Roush: So thank you for that. I want to dove into a topic that I've heard you speak before about in terms of asylum being on the move, and that is the concept of God sized projects. So particularly as it relates to the Great Commission, maybe just an example or two of organizations that have successfully embarked on a God sized mission.
David Wills: Okay. So I'm glad that you use that phrase God sized mission projects. So I'm going to rewind just for a second because I want to make sure that when we're talking about metrics on the spiritual side, that most of it's unseen. And so the angels in heaven rejoice when one soul comes to faith. Now, that is a God sized celebration right there, buddy. And so when you think God size, I want you not to just think quantity. I want you to think quality. So that's a little caveat, but some examples. One of the things that's happening in the I would say what it starts to feel more like an investment are extraordinary collective and collaborative efforts that are going on. And I'll mention those the examples that you asked for as opposed to mentioning like specific organizations, though I definitely could get into that. So I'll give you three quick ones. One of them is the Illuminations Foundation. And every tribe, every nation, this is a collective effort. And the goal is that every one, every language, every person will have their native language in at least some meaningful portion of scripture. Their goal is to see that happen by 2033. That's a tough goal and resources are needed to make that happen. The next one is what I call the finishing fund. It's actually a mutual fund that's been started by giver a guy named Doug Cobb and their goal in Fund One. They're actually getting ready to start fund two. And their objective is to see that all unengaged people groups are engaged with the gospel. And that sounds like that's crazy. But to give you an idea of where we are on that, because that's something we've been working on now for over 15 years. Collectively, in 2005, there were 3500 unengaged people groups in the world, 2005. Now there's 12,000 total. Okay. So 3500 of them were unengaged today, less than 250. So if you want to invest and I consider it an eternal investment in this deal, you better get on it because this is about to close. I think it could happen in the next two years that there will be no such thing as an unengaged people group on Earth anymore. And I promise you, if you invest in that, you're going to reap the returns when you get on the other side. Fund two is very interesting because as we have engaged those 3500 groups, there's now a groundswell of what I would call marginally engaged groups, just slightly engaged. And we need to turn those into sustainably engaged groups and then see that they become reached, which is 2% of the population. There are almost 4000 of the 12,000 people groups that I would describe as marginally engaged with the gospel. There's some presence, but we need to go deeper and we need to do it quickly. It's like taking a hill in a battle. We've taken the hill, but our troops are thin, so we need to move in reinforcement so that we can hold the land. The last one that I would mention quickly is the Strategic Resource Group. It's another collective group and its focus is simply in what I would call investment grade options in the Middle East and North Africa for getting the gospel in the Middle East, in North Africa, which is also a very difficult place. So those are some examples that are just there crushing it. All three of those are just crushing it.
John Coleman: David I love that and I love that you guys are taking big swings for the gospel, that you're really trying to do things that have a kingdom impact and that have an extraordinary impact. One more question before we dive into our lightning round, which should be fine. You know, recently Hulu released a documentary about the rise and fall of We Work and We Work is just one example among many of big, big start up projects. You know, these big enterprise that people invested in but went astray with the ego of the people involved with deception, with people misleading one another, etc.. Certainly this has happened in ministries as well or in charitable enterprises as well. Have you ever had experience with that and what advice would you give to people to make sure that their capital isn't flowing into ventures that end up going astray like that?
John Coleman: Unfortunately, I have worked with folks that have dealt with that. I will say that to some degree, some of what we're involved in where I meaning all of the investing, but there are some angel investing opportunities that are out there across the spectrum of charitable and non charitable that are risky and we shouldn't shy away from those. However, what you're talking about is deception. And that's a different animal. So I want to make sure that people aren't hearing your example of we work and saying, Well, I should not be an angel investor. And these startup deals, people go into these crazy places that nobody else has ever been willing to go to. Absolutely not. We should be significantly supporting those kind of angel investment opportunities. But I would tell you have a herd mentality if you want to avoid that kind of stuff. Don't go it alone. Those three examples that I gave you of the illuminations, the other two that I mentioned, it's a way to not go it alone. So invest and give in herds. Don't go it alone. It's one of the powerful things about Sovereign's Capital. You're not going it alone. You can of course, anybody can go invest in we work if they want. But this is the kind of thing that happens when you go it alone. And also, I would encourage people to have very good faith aligned, faith driven. That's probably the catch your term. But advisors have faith aligned advisors. So leverage your peers. Leverage your advisors, be faith aligned. And not only will you improve your game, you will help avoid some of these unfortunate situations. And it's just more fun. And so that's how I answered that question.
Luke Roush: That's great, David. I want to transition as to kind of the last section here, which is affectionately called The Lightning Round. So these are a series of short questions, one at a time that we're going to throw to you. And some of them are fun. Some of them are actually most of them are fun midsummer. Some of them are also serious. So I'm going to kick us off. We're going to go back and forth. And your answers need to be 15 seconds or less or you call those terms.
David Wills: Let's go. I'm ready to play.
Luke Roush: All right, let's roll. So here's the first one. What was the bigger deal for you personally? Baylor winning the Sugar Bowl or dancing it? March Madness.
David Wills: Oh, March Madness. Easy. Next question.
John Coleman: All right. I'm going to ask this is a native of the great state of Georgia. David, when you move back to Texas, is it true that you kissed the ground upon your return?
David Wills: Absolutely. In fact, I kissed the ground, Texas. Every time I came back to Texas, but especially when we moved back here.
John Coleman: Oh, it hurts. It hurts.
Luke Roush: Okay. Okay. So you can start one super niche charity. What is it?
David Wills: Yeah, I would support any of the three that I mentioned, which I believe are super niche charities. But the finishing fund resourcing, the completion of the Great Commission, engaging all the unengaged would be that I would knock out that 200. That's not the right term. I would see that the gospel penetrates those 200 plus remaining unengaged people group and get it done.
Luke Roush: That's great.
John Coleman: That's awesome. So, David, more specific question. Who is the most interesting person with whom you've consumed a pie near Crawford, Texas?
David Wills: Oh, well, what you're actually talking about is Georgian and Laura Bush. And that's actually it's the Coffee Shop Cafe in McGregor, Texas, which is just down the road from Crawford, Texas. And they sell the best pies. I mean, their peach pies are better than the ones in Georgia.
John Coleman: Oh, David. Oh, my gosh. This interview is over. Luke, I have to excuse myself now.
Luke Roush: Okay. Okay, next up, what is your favorite Bible story about giving?
David Wills: Oh, that's easy. The widow in the temple who out gives all of the rich religious people by putting in two small coins. Is that not just fantastic? Everybody in the world knows about her. Everybody. It's incredible.
John Coleman: All right, David, we're going to tee you up for this last question to bring us home. How do you think the world would change if every Christian regularly gave to charity and other purpose first entities?
David Wills: Oh, yeah. Yes, that's easy. You can answer that with a Bible verse, Matthew 24:14 and it says And the gospel will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Luke Roush: Hallelujah.
David Wills: But what happened? That's what would happen.
Luke Roush: Maybe some last thing and then we'll wrap where has gone taking you recently in his word. And how do you find God's word speaking to you?
David Wills: Well, I kind of think I just answered that question, but I'll I'll do a bonus round. So, you know, Luke, we have our daily Bible texting group and today is Psalm 45. So we do a chapter every day. There's a group of us that text each other about one thing we now know, one thing we know ought to be, and one thing we ought to do. In light of that chapter, the heading of this chapter says, What should I fear in times of trouble? What a great title for where we are today. And basically, it asks a rhetorical question. It says, Should I trust in wealth and boast in the abundance of riches? And the answer to that question is no. And the reason the answer to that question is no is because that won't sustain you and it won't last.
John Coleman: Awesome. David Wills I think I speak for both Luke and I. It's always a pleasure to have you on, to listen to you, to learn from you. And we're really grateful to you for sharing with the Faith Driven Investor podcast today and with our audience. Thanks so much for joining us.
David Wills: Honor to be with you. Thank you.