Stewardship is a lifetime journey.

You don't all of a sudden become a steward.

It's a process.

and as you get older and older, it doesn't necessarily become easier

because you have fears in your life.

And, you know, well, I have enough to live on.

If I give away some stuff, do I have enough at the end?

So it's always a battle.

It's a journey all your life to be a faithful steward,

Um, uh,

you ready to explore how wealth can transcend earthly possessions

and shape God's kingdom?

Welcome to Seek, Go, Create the Leadership Journey, where

today's guest is Raymond Harris.

An architect and a venture capitalist, Raymond has brilliantly fused his

expertise and faith to cultivate wealth.

Economic engines that propel both business and benevolence.

He's the author of Enduring Wealth, Being Rich in This World and the Next.

He illuminates paths for building lasting wealth that benefits communities

and furthers the kingdom of God.

Join us as Raymond unpacks the principles of creating wealth and endure beyond

a lifetime, fostering significant impacts through entrepreneurship

and entertainment, agriculture, technology and other businesses,

all while serving God's kingdom.

Raymond, welcome to SeatGoCreate.

Thanks, Tim.

Great to have you with us.

Where are you?

What part of the world are you coming from?

Well, I live in Dallas, Texas.

my wife and I live, in the summers a little bit up in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

where we have a, 20 years ago and we host, 10 grandchildren up there every summer.

Very nice.

My wife and I, we're currently in the black Hills of South Dakota.

And just two days ago from when we were recording this, we got

back from the, I guess we were in the Cody Yellowstone area.

We spent about 10 or 11 days over there with some friends

and a beautiful time of year.

You know, this is, we're recording this in September to let people know.

We sort of have just met, even though I feel real comfortable with you.

I've just read your book, Enduring Wealth, and we're going to talk

a lot about wealth and kingdom of God, stewardship, things like that.

But before we do that, Raymond, I know you're, um, Had somebody recently

call me a seasoned business guy, which I think is code word for old.

I'm going to call you a seasoned guy.

But, if somebody

you can

call me old.

You can call me old.

I'm fine.

I'm good with that.

I'm wearing pink.

I'm comfortable.

Just as long as

Yes.

And, and, you know, we get to a place where we don't care what people call us.

Right.

call

us.

Raymond, but let's, I mean, I'm sure you get this probably, and that is if

someone, you know, you're on a plane or you're out and about and someone

says, what, oh, what, what do you do when somebody asks you that question?

It's sometimes a cheesy superficial question, but what do you answer

nowadays when someone asks you that?

Well, I like that question because I actually ask that of

almost everyone that I meet.

So, I'm a retired architect.

I had a large architectural firm in Dallas for 37 years.

But now, and Mary Dale, my wife, asked me, Hey, what do you do now?

And I said, well, I go to work every day and I do basically five things.

I try to meet with young men, uh, to, encourage them.

some would say I mentor them.

I just call them my young friends.

I write.

I invest in the kingdom, both in for profit world.

I try to help young men start businesses.

and I invest.

in not for profit work, some, but I also look to invest in for profit

things that build the kingdom.

And then I spend time with my grandkids, I've got ten of

those, and I like most of them.

So, Absolutely.

there are times where I don't know what order you put those in, but there are

times when spending time with my minor four and two years old little girls that

everything else goes to the back burner when it comes time to the grandkids

and, and I, I get so much joy from that.

Hey, you know, I wasn't going to go this route because I know we, like I

said, we've got a lot of discussion about wealth and the kingdom of God and

things like that, but being primarily a leadership journey podcast here,

and I'm a, I'm a leadership coach.

I work with leaders.

What are you finding now with some of the, what you call them, your young friends or

young leaders that you might be mentoring?

What are you seeing?

What are the trends?

What are the concerns?

What are the positives?

What are you seeing with some of the people you're interacting with that

are in the, probably not even the next generation, but a few generations

below where you are and where I'm at.

Well, I've noticed that some of the young men that I spend time

with, are actually seeking wisdom and counsel from older guys.

And that is so refreshing.

I don't think my generation did that much.

I don't think we were looking for older guys to really, coaches.

But I find a lot of younger men are seeking wisdom and they're

seeking help and counsel.

I know that I have men call me all the time and I have a policy of

never turning down a young man if he wants to meet for coffee or lunch.

And then I don't turn them down if they want to continue meeting on a consistent

basis because they're seeking wisdom.

And I think that's one thing that as older guys that we, can do is offer some

of our experiences to help them navigate.

I think that's going to be one of our best stewardship investments

is to invest in the next generation by spending time with them.

And so I don't call on guys and look for guys to have in a Bible

study or try to have a group.

Most of them will seek me and then I don't turn them down typically.

So sounds like you make yourself available and just allow them to make the request.

For the most part, I don't have to coerce them into doing anything.

They want to do it.

I also, spend my time wisely with the guys that will, take

advantage of the time together.

there are certain men though that I call upon and say, Hey, let's get together.

But by and large, I let them make the initiative.

And it seems to work out best.

And they're intent, they're intense and they wanna learn.

I also find the younger generation pretty intense.

the guys I'm with, they're serious guys that are trying to make an impact.

And I meet primarily with, Christian men.

even though I don't turn down any man that would call upon me, I, I,

as a policy don't meet with women, just because of my comfort level.

So I invest in the young man.

I let the, the older women and, invest in the older women, in

the younger women, excuse me.

So

Well, so in the book that I was going to jump to the book later, there was,

something that I read when we were having this conversation about leadership that

came to mind, and I think it was something to the effect of you really would rather

invest in leaders than organizations.

And

yes, well,

me on that.

It sounds like that's part of that working with younger leaders or mentoring people.

Also talk a little bit more about that and why that is organizations

are less appealing to you than the actual leaders themselves.

I noticed in scripture and then also my experience is that God would

raise up an anointed leader and then ministry would form around that person.

So most of the major ministries were started by.

an individual that had an anointing from the Lord, and the Lord would

allow that to grow and blossom.

And I noticed that pattern over and over again.

And then you go back to the Bible and you see how God raised

up men and women to be leaders.

he didn't raise up organizations.

And so I entitled one of the chapters raising up leaders, not organizations.

I also think when men are raised up and they leave, and I say men, I

mean, men and women are raised up.

Then, if they leave that organization, so many organizations try to keep

that organization going, they kind of keep it on life support.

Now, many times they can find another leader that takes the

baton and does a great job.

And we've seen that.

through large organizations like Campus Crusade Crew has had great succession.

But I've also been a part of organizations that did not have good successions because

they were just trying to keep it going or the leader was not anointed or the leader

was not, raised up for such a time is that and, some organizations flounder because

I think their leadership flounders.

because they're not either anointed or they're not good at that, but the board

wants to keep the organization going.

So sometimes they exist just to exist.

I think the thing that i've seen working with the teams that I do I work with

leadership teams is there are many times You know structure or market

conditions or different things can come against situation, but someone who has

We'll call it the mantle of leadership and that includes a lot of stuff Okay,

I mean it it could be an anointing.

It could be some skills.

It could be some charisma There could be a lot of things involved with that

You They can generally move in and out of a lot of different situations.

if, and if organizations are dependent upon that, they're going

to, that individual, they, they could really, really struggle.

So let me, let me do this now.

Let's jump because you've had quite a career yourself.

and I do want to discuss it some before we kind of go really into the wealth.

But let's back up a little bit in our subtitle is the leadership journey.

And we talk about the leadership journeys that people have been on.

if we back up and go back to, Raymond a few years ago, maybe more than a

few years ago, I think I saw that you were at the university of Oklahoma

and architect and things like that.

Let's even go kind of before that, maybe like, you know, the schoolyard or,

you know, pre high school or whatever.

would you have called yourself a leader at that stage of your life?

Did you have some of the characteristics or did you begin developing that later?

I think that I was a leader young in my life, I wouldn't necessarily have

been the gang leader in our Crestmont Raiders, which was our grade school group.

But I did notice that, uh, when I was in junior high, I played football

and I wrestled and then I would notice that I would become a leader

of the team and eventually captains.

I was captain of my, senior high school, football team.

I was one of two captains.

we didn't rotate them.

We just had two captains for the year.

I was a captain of the wrestling team.

And, I noticed that, I had the ability to lead early and that was God given.

It wasn't something that I would have learned.

there wasn't any possible way to learn.

So, I was president of my pledge class in college and in the paternity.

And then, just different organizations.

I would rise up and do leadership and I would volunteer

I didn't really seek it out.

It just seemed to be a little more natural to me as I look back on that.

I started my firm, uh, at a very early age in architecture.

You have to apprentice for a long time because it's a learned profession.

It's not something that you can actually do academically.

You just have to learn it by doing.

I started, my firm at age 27, which was about two years after I became registered

as an architect, and that's pretty young.

in our profession, usually guys don't start their firms until their thirties.

I think that was partly, being a good leader, and, having clients of which to

start a firm with because the clients would like what I did for them and sense

that I could do a good job for them.

It, one of the things is very obvious from reading through your bio that

there has been, like you just mentioned at 27, you started your own firm.

So that was, you were leading at a young age.

there's often these discussions about are people born with leadership traits

or can they learn leadership traits.

So I think the way I'd like to ask this, and I don't know if you've reflected on

this, but what, do you think are some of those traits that you were sort of

born with, they were inherent, and then what are some that you've had to really

work towards developing over the years?

Because I know that you have, you know, Even if we, I believe

there's a combination of those two.

So what, what are some traits leadership wise that you believe

you had from a young age, you can't even remember not having them.

And then what are some that you've had to really work on and develop?

I would say, I do agree with you that leadership cannot necessarily be taught.

It can be developed.

I think leadership is an inherent God given gift.

I ended up hiring over 300 architects during my career.

And our firm was.

At the peak was 80, 80, 80 guys and gals, 80 people.

and of those 80 people, would vary between 65 to 80 people depending on the year.

Uh, during that time of about 20 years, I only really had 5 leaders

that rose up inside the firm.

And you would say, well, you have 300 architects.

You should have had.

And I always look for young leaders when I would recruit out of college.

And leadership is best defined by looking behind you to see who's following you.

Now, as far as characteristics, gosh, I don't know.

I would say that I would have the ability to communicate and to convey what we

want to do and to encourage people.

to want to do that.

So they would want to follow.

it would require enthusiasm and a positive nature.

Uh, I think that good leadership is positively influencing people to want to

achieve a goal and we achieve it together.

Good leaders don't take credit.

They include the whole team.

And so one of the things that I think I developed later in my

career was being a good cheerleader.

I wanted to have a great design firm.

But what God seemed to show me was I want you to be a great employer.

I want you to be great with people.

As a result, we grew from a 10 man firm when we were a great

design firm to a 70 man firm.

Uh, when I decided to be a good employer,

so I don't know what else to say.

I'll say just from reading through the book and interacting with

you, I do notice a high degree of humility is required for leaders.

And I've picked up on that immediately from interacting with you because

it's something I actually felt it as I was reading through the book.

And I guess the next.

curiosity question for me is, know, obviously with a subtitle of, being rich

in this world and the next on your book, there's a faith component that's been part

of your life for seems like a long time.

But my question is how long was that even growing up in grade school and

all was your family, a family of faith, or is that something that you came to.

you know, more when we start becoming, you know, I call it little humans,

teenagers and things like that.

I was raised by, Christian parents, but we were in the Episcopal Church.

there wasn't a lot of discipleship or mentorship for me as a little kid.

I loved going to vacation Bible school, but that really didn't do it.

When I became a Christian was when a neighbor across the street asked me,

To go to church with his family they had a little girl that was my age and I

was nine years old and went to a church and they gave a gospel presentation

and actually asked us to walk down the aisle to the front altar and give

our lives to Christ I did that and I asked Jesus to come in my heart.

I actually felt a cleansing at nine years old.

I was not discipled, though, or really encouraged to grow

my faith during that time.

my grade school years because there was no one around to do that.

Even though I went to Sunday school, it just wasn't something done.

And when I was in high school, I began to seek a little bit, seek the Lord.

And so I began to read the Bible.

I began to read the gospels and I read them through about four or five

times in high school, but I couldn't get much farther than the gospels

because I didn't understand, the epistles and some of the other stuff.

And it wasn't until I went to college that I had to make a decision.

And I remember spring break, my freshman year, I was home, and I

had to sit down and make a decision.

Was I going to follow Christ or was I going to fall into

a slimy pit of the world?

And I did not want to fall into a slimy pit.

So I made an intellectual decision to follow Christ, even though I was a

Christian, I was not yet following him.

And so I.

decided to lay down my nets and follow Christ.

It didn't mean that I was going to go into the ministry.

It just meant that I would seek to follow him and do whatever he, asked me to do.

at the end of my freshman year of college I decided to be a follower of Christ.

And then I began to grow in my faith during college.

I was discipled, by some men, and then I had a choice, my senior

year, are you going to go on staff with a Christian organization or

are you going to go to seminary?

I did not like either of those choices.

So I stayed and went to graduate school to become an architect I thought,

that's what my heart's desire is, but all my friends and people that I

was in ministry with, Felt like that if you were all in at the time, you

should go full time into ministry or go to seminary to become a pastor.

That was not my heart's desire.

And so for 25 years afterwards, I kept looking in my rear view mirror wondering,

did I make the wrong choice or did I not, did I not follow the right road?

And I realized that I was on the correct road, that that's exactly where

God wanted me is to be a businessman.

that followed Christ and that I could build assets for the

kingdom to build the kingdom.

So that's what God called me to do as a full time Christian.

And I realized that during that whole time that I was in full time

ministry, I just didn't recognize it.

So one of the things about that, Raymond, so you said you were given two choices.

It was work for a full time ministry or go to seminary.

So those were literally the two choices that were presented to you.

Yeah, by the Christian leaders of the guys that were discipling me.

So everyone during that time, you got to remember that was in the,

seventies and the big Jesus movement.

And it was the whole theme was go build and send.

And we were gonna save the world and everybody was gonna go into ministry.

In fact, there was a movement that you could actually use

your profession in ministry.

And so I applied to about 10 organizations saying I'm an architect.

How can you use me?

And every organization that I wrote told me, we really don't have a

position for an architect on our staff.

So would you like to teach math or would you like to go to Africa to do something?

And I said, no, I want to be an architect.

And no one could use me.

And so I thought, okay, then I'm going to go into the profession and

be the best architect that I can be.

And that's what we did.

I want to, I'm not going to leave this conversation of the issues

with full time ministry versus working in the marketplace.

And we've done tremendous numbers of interviews with people, Mike Baer,

who's with the Businesses Missions Organization and just marketplace.

people I was saved in a business setting, not in church world.

so it's a little bit of a theme here, but before we go further down that

path, Raymond, because we are talking about wealth here, I would like to

know a little bit more about your concept or your thoughts about money.

At that time or growing up or, you know, were you in a, middle class

family, well to do what, what did you think about money leading up to that

time when you were making a decision, the two choices presented to you, or

no, I'm going to go do something else.

I'm really wanting to

yeah.

your relationship with money as a young person.

Well, I was raised in an upper, upper class family.

My grandparents, were well to do business owners, uh, were in the dairy, commercial

dairy business, milk and ice cream, and had, the largest dairy in Oklahoma, and my

dad was a doctor, was a physician, and so I was raised in a well to do environment.

My grandparents were very godly people, and they used their wealth

to take care of a lot of people.

They employed a lot of people.

They were generous.

They did not, use money excessively for personal pleasure.

they were very, very good stewards.

My dad did not know how to manage money, and so he spent

basically everything that he made.

so when I, uh, was in college, I had to pretty much Pay for my own college.

My dad helped some, but I paid for a lot of my college as well.

And then when I got out of college, I had no help at all.

And as, as I always say, Marydell and I were very poor.

We got married the week we graduated from college, literally the next weekend.

And I had, uh, 600 to my name when I married my wife and I

spent 400 on our honeymoon.

And it wasn't a very elaborate honeymoon, you can imagine.

even back in that day, that would get you by, but, you know, it

would probably be worth 2, 500 today, maybe in today's terms.

So we did not have money.

My dad, did not manage money well, in my opinion, and

didn't teach me how to do that.

So I had to learn on my own, how do you handle money, as a, as not only

a college student, but as a newlywed.

And so Mary Dale and I very intentionally, read, some books by,

Howard Dayton and by Larry Burkett.

And I was later mentored and discipled by Howard Dayton.

how do you handle money and how do you manage money?

And so we were very frugal through the rest of our college career.

I went two years to graduate school.

Without any money, but we saved and we worked hard and left graduate

school debt free and Moved to Dallas to our first job and then I sought

counsel on how do you handle money?

What do you do with it?

And Larry Burkett was very influential through his writings and through his

radio Programs at the time not podcast and so that's where I learned how to

handle money I also realized that You should never possess the money you

have because it would possess you.

And I learned that early.

So we lived on less than we made, and we did not look at money as our own.

We looked at it as money that basically had been lent or entrusted to us by God.

I learned that early, right out of college.

so this is a good time to, and I don't want to leave that decision that you

made because we're going to come back and talk about how you currently view

some things related to ministry and how you invest and things like that.

But maybe we'll pick that up in just a moment.

You obviously went into your, you went into working for a

firm, then you started your own.

very very well What are a few lessons you can share?

We've got a lot of entrepreneurs business people that listen in What are

a few things that you can share and I want to kind of add something to it.

I think I read That y'all at one point were doing a lot of architecture

for small companies like Walmart Corporation and and people like that

if that's correct if there's any other anything else you might want to add

just about the nature of that firm?

Obviously, it was a very large firm and all that but what are some lessons learned

that you can share with the audience?

Well, the first thing that I, I learned is that, God had given

us our ability to create wealth.

I would like to say that, you know, through my hard work and study

and, and all that, that I was, a good architect because of that.

You have to work hard.

That's a principle in Proverbs that we learn.

That's how you make it.

But God gave me the ability to generate income and to accumulate.

you know, I, if, if I wanted to, to accumulate, if I wanted to be the

world's most famous, tech guy, I, I couldn't start my computer company

in a garage and be successful.

I mean, God had had to endow, uh, Steve jobs with money.

It just wasn't all about Steve jobs.

So for me, God gave me the ability to generate income.

So that was the first thing I learned is that it was a gift of God.

What I had to do is realize that it wasn't my genius or, that it was

entrusted to me and as something entrusted, I don't actually own it.

I actually have to manage it.

And so I learned early in my career to be a manager of what God had

given us and not to take possession of it to where it's, Oh, it's mine.

I've got a monkey grip on it.

I'm not going to let go of it.

If I do give it away, I do it out of, trepidation.

I don't enjoy doing that.

But when I realized it was a gift and I don't hold it tightly.

Then if I give, or if I'm generous with someone, then that's not as painful.

So that was kind of something I learned early.

and I also realized that God had given wealth to us for a

greater purpose than for our own pleasure or for our own comfort.

And, that was a, another lesson that I kind of learned early.

So um,

to learn this, was something you just said, which is don't spend all you make.

That was like a, I mean, because it does, that, that'll start messing with you in

more ways than just your bank account.

It'll actually, start creating some issues.

so over time, you know, when you've got a book that you've titled Enduring

Wealth, have you grown to define?

That word wealth and it ties in.

I'm going to ask, as you think about it, I'm going to, I'm going to tie it in.

One of the things that we've done here at Seat Go Create is we talk often about

redefining success because in many ways I feel like that word success, we've kind

of messed it up in our current culture.

So I'm probably going to ask you later about defining success,

but right now let's define, let's just talk about wealth.

What comes to mind and how do you define wealth?

Well, wealth is more than just, financial assets.

Wealth is the ability to create, assets.

Assets are not necessarily money, commodities, real estate.

assets are things that can be used to build something else.

And so I look at assets as what do you, what does it take to build God's kingdom?

one of the great assets of building God's kingdom is wisdom.

I think that, God gives men and women.

a set of characteristics within each of us to generate assets

for God's eternal kingdom.

I think that we could look at wealth as successfully using our giftedness

and our talents that God has given us.

Uh, this could be through leadership, can be through convening people to, there's

just all kinds of ways that we can build God's kingdom other than just with money.

And so to me, it's using your essence, who you are and everything about

you as a tool to be used to build God's kingdom or to build a business.

So I think also that wealth is developing, kingdom currency, which we can talk about.

the kingdom currency is something that can be used not only in

this world, but in the next.

So we have to take earthly assets and convert them into a different currency

to be able to use, when we go to heaven.

So if I throw the word success in the mix, does anything change with

any of the descriptions you just use?

Is there anything added?

if someone were to say, you know, Raymond, how do you define success?

Is there some differences with what we just discussed with wealth?

I mean, is that where we start maybe tying in?

if someone asks you how you define success, how do you usually respond?

that's a hard question.

I think the world would define success as someone that.

Uh, was well known or had, earthly assets such as money or

possessions and things like that.

You always say, Oh, he's a successful guy because look at this house or look at his

car, look at his financial balance sheet.

I think success for me is, when you stand before the Lord and give an

accounting of your life, will you shrink away or will you, stand there?

and receive honor from him and adulation and also a commendation.

If you can stand before the Lord and receive a commendation,

I think that's success.

And I think that for me, as I've gotten to be an old guy, no longer seasoned,

I'm old, I would say I'm really looking forward to receiving a commendation

from the Lord more than anything else.

And what does it take to get that commendation?

Men and women have to be on their own journey to determine

what, what that commendation is.

And we all have all memorized, you know, well done, good and faithful

servant, but what does it mean, to receive that commendation?

And, wealth is going to be part of that, but it's eternal wealth.

it's it's not earthly wealth.

So how does then that tie into, let's go back to that kingdom currency that

you just mentioned because that, that is, it's real interesting at the end

of last year, my wife and I, you know, we're not ones that would typically have

like a word of the year or even a, you know, a verse or anything like that.

One of the things that we do though, is we get themes of things that we

feel the Lord wants us to press in on.

And towards the tail end of last year, the word that kept coming to

us was the word eternal and eternity.

and that involves a lot of stuff.

It's, it's obviously involves some wealth and the topics here, but know,

it involves, you know, what I do with my time today, if I truly understand that.

And I don't think we can grasp it this side of that eternal realm, talk

to me a little bit more about that term you used early, which is Kingdom

currency, which I think does play into that word eternity, possibly

Well, Let me back up and just say that I came up with an idea of kingdom

currency because I was thinking through any economic system, there's assets

of value that have to be converted into a common currency to transfer or

exchange or use them or redeem them.

Now I believe that kingdom currency converts earthly

assets into kingdom assets.

And I think that it's kingdom currency is an attitude and an action It's

the faithful stewardship of assets.

That's been entrusted to us.

And we use our resources, our talent, our giftedness.

I call it our essence or our being.

We use all of that to convert into things that will transfer into heaven.

And I think that the transfer mechanism is the righteous heart.

I don't think that our 20s in our pocket when we get on the plane to heaven

will convert when we get out of the, you know, when we go through the gate,

we have to go to the currency exchange counter before we get on the plane.

And how do we do that?

That's been a journey I've been on.

How do I convert before I get on the plane to heaven?

And this is where I'm at right now, not making a doctrine out of it.

don't think I'm going to write a book on it, but you just brought up the heart.

your background's architecture my background's engineering In

fact, I still remember at georgia tech driving by that architecture

building and seeing those folks.

They're almost 24 7, by the way Yeah, the lights are on 24 7 because

at one point I kind of mused with being an architect I'm going man.

They seem to never sleep.

They must be vampires or something like that but But so i'm i'm a little bit

I lean technical, I lean practical, I lean, you know, natural, but I'm

at the place I'm at now, Raymond, is that I think if it's not the currency

exchange, it's definitely a big piece of it is the condition of our heart.

Yes.

and so it's the thing I keep.

Determining and you know, you and I use terms like ROI and wealth and different

things like that And I think we can factor that in when we talk about our heart but

I do think there's a different mindset when we start talking about what is the

heart and I think the fruit of the spirit and things like that really Play into it,

but there's a word you brought up that I want to Go down and we could kind of back

up to this if we need to but you brought up the word stewardship We've talked

about stewardship a few times in fact i'm gonna read something that you wrote

i'm looking at it on page 98 here of your book And I'm going to read this and then

we're just kind of a discussion about it.

It says it's logical assumption that God will use business people to perform a

unique Stewardship role no one is better qualified in God's kingdom to be stewards

of resources than business people now We're going to discuss that but the first

thing i'd like for you to do is maybe define stewardship a little bit more.

So mention stewardship, and then we're going to talk about this sentence

that I just read here about business people being uniquely qualified

to be stewards in God's kingdom.

Well, a steward, by definition, is not an owner.

It's simply a manager.

It's someone that takes care of the masters or whoever has hired

them take care of their stuff.

And so, uh, a steward does not own.

He manages, and so he has to be accountable.

He also has to be faithful because he's been entrusted with

certain things to take care of.

So a steward is simply just a manager.

In my mind, uh, I think that, faithfulness is the most important thing for a steward

and stewardship has nothing to do with amount of money or our impressment.

It's faithfulness that really has the most important aspect.

I think there's totally misunderstood.

And I think our church has not done a adequate job of really teaching

on the subject of stewardship.

But it's it's simply realizing that we don't have anything.

We don't even own ourselves.

The Lord actually owns us.

And so we are simply to be faithful, obedient to whatever

he has asked us to do.

Now, it takes a long time to journey to realize that because

most of us, it's a journey.

I say that stewardship is a lifetime journey.

You don't all of a sudden become a steward.

It's a process.

and as you get older and older, it doesn't necessarily become easier

because you have fears in your life.

And, you know, well, I have enough to live on.

If I give away some stuff, do I have enough at the end?

So it's always a battle.

It's a journey all your life to be a faithful steward, but the

reward of the faithful steward is more to steward in the future.

And so that's what I'm looking forward to.

Yeah, there's definitely scriptures there that the thing you mentioned that we

haven't done a good job in, in the church.

my observation is then does that the word is often used in church

as a a form of a giving situation.

Yeah, yeah,

is a state of being.

a, maybe a title.

I agree with you.

I use the word just for my sake that a steward is a caretaker and a steward

is someone who takes care of something.

if you do it well, you give it back in a better condition than when you got it.

absolutely.

world system would say that you were the owner, and I might have even said it when

I introduced you, that you were the owner of an architectural firm that had up to 80

people and you did all these great things.

But what I heard you say was, truthfully, you were really

a steward that organization.

Would that be a correct statement?

Yes.

And I would not say that I realized that from day one.

I realized that as time went on that my employees were only

lent to me for a period of time.

I wrote in an essay once that

Our employees are simply loaned to us for a period of time, and that I needed to

take really good care of them, knowing that they would probably leave me.

And, that's painful.

You don't want any employee to leave you, unless you ask them to leave.

But if they're good employees, you don't want them to leave, you want them to stay.

And I realize that they're only loaned to me to take care of them.

for a period of time And so that helped me understand that from a

different standpoint, from a financial stewardship, it's a people stewardship.

And our greatest asset in our firm was the fact that we had great people.

And we worked together as a team.

Quite frankly, when I would recruit at the University of Oklahoma and

in Texas and Texas A& M, all these different schools where I'd go recruit,

nobody really wanted to come work for us because of the work we did.

And we'd say, well, we work for the world's largest client,

which was Walmart at the time.

And we do all this corporate work around the United States.

And, they would kind of look at us and go, but what famous

buildings are you designing?

I'd say, well, I don't want to work for you.

I said, but if you could say as an architect that everyone you've

ever met has been in a building you designed, wouldn't you want to do that?

So we always had trouble, recruiting people because most architects

wanted to work on famous buildings or being a famous firm, I would always

say, well, we're, we're not famous.

We might be infamous, but, We really provide a service that almost everyone

in the United States will benefit from.

And that is working for the world's largest client.

So we became service oriented, not design oriented.

Consequently, we did not always get, the, the shining students that would

come out that were the big designers.

In fact, as a side note, which was really a blessing, which I

didn't realize till later on.

But we, we hired an awful lot of international students because they were

wanting a job and because of maybe a limitation of language or just culture,

they couldn't always get the big jobs in the big firms and the famous firms.

And so we picked up a lot of international students.

In fact, we had 22 nationalities work for us.

So we were 60 percent minority and 22 nationalities.

And we were really, a hodgepodge of people, but, it was a, it

was a really cool place to work.

So that was my most important stewardship professionally was the

people that we, that we had worked

So tell me more about this statement.

No one is better qualified in God's kingdom to be stewards of

resources than business people.

Give me a little bit more on that.

Well, any business can only survive if they're profitable, meaning that they

take in more money than they spend.

And so they understand the value of taking care of resources.

they know how to be efficient.

They know how to be effective.

and, I find that if ministries were run more like businesses, they would

number one have something to sell that someone would want to buy.

And therefore people would buy whatever they're selling and they

would have more money than they spend.

And so many ministries.

and not for profits only exists because they get free unaccountable money.

And so they don't have to work for the money.

It's given to them and they don't have to account for the money.

Now, that sounds like, Oh, yes, we do.

We have a board of directors.

Yes, I know all that.

But in reality, real accountability is when you have an ability to be sustainable

on your own and ministries and not for profits and those types of organizations.

Cannot, sustain themselves.

They have to rely on money given to them and the accountability

really isn't there, even though they say it is, there's, there's not

accountability like there is in business.

If you don't make more than you spend, you will not be in business by definition.

One of the things, Raymond, and this is one of these things that I have

to be careful because my voice will start, this is something that can make

my blood boil at times is the mindset you just brought up about ministry.

I'm going to go ahead and read something again from your book on page 151.

You say that some ministry leaders appear to have an attitude that says,

give us the money and we'll do the work.

Please don't meddle.

You do your job of giving and we'll do the rest.

This is not a very effective invitation to partnership.

and the thing that comes to mind often, because I've been looked at like this

when I've walked into churches that I've attended is like, you obviously

have some ability to generate and create some money and some degree of wealth.

Just write us a check.

I am not excited about that because truthfully, I can sometimes see under

the hood or behind the curtain like you.

I've been on some boards of some smaller ministries and that doesn't excite me.

cite me as much, and it doesn't seem to excite you.

is that kind of what you're doing a little bit with your book here?

Because towards the last third of the book, you spent a lot of

time addressing that, I think.

Yeah, I think, it's not a major problem with all ministries.

It's a problem with some ministries and it can make people, you know,

they say, Hey, we've got something important we're doing and we don't really

have time to develop relationships.

We just need the capital to go do it.

I've always, said that it's easy to chase donors, but it's hard to mine stewards.

Stewards are those that will give and really help a ministry.

they're much like jewels are hard to mine.

But once you find that jewel, it's very valuable.

I think so many ministries chase donors.

They just give us some money.

Well, we'll go do the work.

But when you have a steward and a ministry come together, they become number one.

They become relational.

But number two, they can become partners.

And a partner in business doesn't like to be treated like, hey,

you just go do this and don't.

You know, we don't want to tell you anything.

We just need you to go do this, or we just need your money.

That's not a partnership.

A partnership shares, um, rewards, and they also, take on liabilities,

uh, of the other partners.

And so, what I like to think of, when I work with a ministry or a not for

profit, I want to be a partner with them.

But I want to go beyond that.

I want to feel like I'm really in friendship with them as well.

Because you don't mess with your friends, you really help them.

And when you become friends, you co work, you co labor together.

So many ministries will call you a partner, but you're not a partner.

You're just a donor.

They just use that term.

So you feel good about it and they feel good about it.

But in reality, a true partnership has a burden of, sharing in the

joys, and also, feeling like they share in the burdens as well.

And I personally look for men, that I can enter into what they're doing

as a partner and as a friend to help them, I don't mind giving them

as much as they need as resources, because they are truly partners, and

they're doing something I cannot do.

I can generate capital, provide a partnership of capital, but they

can provide the partnership of the actual work and the expertise.

So I find that, not all ministries are just looking for money saying, go do good

things that don't take that as everybody.

But I've been approached by a lot that they don't have time for relationships.

I just need the money because they have so much to do and

they usually fail in the end.

well, and what they really do, I love, the real word partnership, not the word

as it's used in a lot of these situations.

I really do love arms, being in covenant, whatever words you want to

use with organizations, because I've got a couple of skills that might be

beneficial to them, some faults or opinions, or just if I ask questions,

I mean, you could tell from this interview, I love asking questions

that a lot of people may not ask.

And so I think that's valuable.

One of the things you go through in the book and.

As you walk through some examples.

So in the time we have left, I would love for you to give, because I mean,

I kind of nudged at a few things that might be perceived as negative, but I

would love success stories because some people don't understand how this can work.

They do believe that it's make some money and fund the kingdom

by writing checks to ministries.

They don't understand this aspect of, we'll call it partnership

with stewardship layered in and all that we've talked about here.

And I know, you've helped with movies like I Can Only Imagine

and Jesus Revolution and all that.

And you've done things that I love the stories of the honeys, the

honey farm and things like that.

Let's walk through a story or two, a success story, Raymond.

So people know how this can work.

So whatever comes to mind, please share.

one of my favorite stories was, I, well, let me back up and say, I'm not

smart enough to figure out how to do a strategic plan, how to invest in

the kingdom, how, where to donate.

I just, I'm not smart enough to figure that out.

And I have to rely on the nudging of the Holy Spirit to prompt

me to do certain things, or I have to rely on the Holy Spirit.

help me meet someone that would be a good partner.

I was, in China, in 2011 and I was actually doing a little bit of speaking.

China was open during that time and I was doing a little bit of speaking to

business leaders and using biblical principles and how to run a business.

I had just written a book based on the Proverbs to that effect.

And even though we were very careful how we shared, we were

just sharing about the principles.

And a young lady sat down next to me after I was through talking and

says, Hey, can I tell you about a business that my co worker has started?

And I said, Oh boy, I really don't want to talk to anybody,

but I'm trying to be polite.

And this lady kind of shared that says, Well, My, co worker started

a jewelry company, and she said, it's an unusual business model in

that we use women that come out of the brothels to make the jewelry.

And I went, oh, that's intriguing.

Tell me more.

And so she showed me a brochure, and it was the most fantastic,

artistic, and being an artist myself, looked at this brochure and

said, who created this brochure?

And she says, well, Jenny did.

I said, now, is Jenny your partner?

She goes, well, yeah, Jenny's my co worker.

He says, well, Jenny did.

So, anyway, I, ended up saying, well, now who's Jenny?

And she says, well, she's, a lady that came here from America.

And, the lady that I was actually speaking with was Chinese.

And she said she just had a passion to help these young ladies that are kind

of caught in the sexual trafficking.

So I made an arrangements and two days later, I went over to

meet with Jenny and her coworker.

And, we, met in this home and there were women sitting around table making jewelry

and I said, Oh, this is interesting.

So yeah, We started this company and These women make this jewelry

and it's really high quality.

And I said, yes, it really is in the brochure.

It's fantastic Jenny now has a company that sells jewelry to some of the

finest groups Including Macy's and Kohl's and places like that and even

the Ellen DeGeneres show, which is no longer on TV featured it, and

they sold 50, 000 units of jewelry.

so Jenny went into the brothels and brought these women, out and

asked them if they wanted to leave.

And to be able to leave, these women have to have employment and housing

and care, and Jenny provided all that.

that is one of my favorite, stories.

My wife, Marydell, and I capitalized Jenny to be able to, grow this

thing, and then we recapitalized her.

Again, several other times to allow it to expand, and now we

have over 200 women that have come out of the brothels as employees.

Even some of the madams have come out of the brothels to work for Starfish

Project, which is now, a going concern.

And it's profitable.

It's a for profit.

organization that's administering deeply to the least of these, these

women that are caught into slavery.

So that's obviously a big topic.

A lot of people discuss, the sex trafficking and things like that.

But I heard you correctly, correct me if I'm wrong on this, what you did was you

funded a for profit business with capital.

I'm sure you provided some communication also, you probably

partnered like we discussed earlier.

my guess is you also got some return on that investment because it sounds

like it's a profitable business in multiple ways Would that be correct?

Well, all the profits turned back into the company to build the company,

so I do not receive anything back.

And, when I talked to Jeannie, I said, well, you're, you're, we're

funding, we're funding you to become a for profit Corporation in

China, so it's not a hidden thing.

It's a for profit paying taxes.

Chinese corporation exporting to America.

So it's a fully, it's a full thing.

But, I said, Jenny, I don't feel like I need to have, ownership in, in with the

stock certificate or thing like that.

I said.

How about if we just commit to ourselves that we are business partners, that

we are actually partners in this business, but we don't have any

documentation of this because the goal is for me not to get the money back.

The goal is to have this money churn and become kingdom capital.

she's done a beautiful job growing the company.

I met her in 2011.

And so it's 13 years of churning and an interesting side that I would never have

been able to orchestrate or even envision is that most of the anti trafficking

organizations in China have been kicked out because they're Christian oriented.

Right.

And since they are a for profit Chinese corporation, they

continue to work unabated.

So nobody's messing with them because they're a for profit company.

So it's a beautiful, a beautiful thing that Jenny has invented.

it was

that we talked about earlier, you have to feel very comfortable with the leadership

of Jenny and then also that relationship.

To do that, don't want to call it a handshake deal, but it's

it almost sounds semi handshake.

The way you talked about it.

Is that correct?

a handshake deal.

I just had to entrust her with the money because I just, I feel like

that good stewardship is finding other good stewards to entrust to them.

And so it's a Second Timothy 2.

2 principle that entrust to faithful men or women who can entrust to others.

And so it's really the Holy Spirit that has to bring us together.

the Holy Spirit brought us through a meeting and, she was a faithful person and

I can entrust her with a handshake and not only did she do what she

said she would do, but she exceeded at what she said she would do, which

shows to me that it's a good steward because you get more to steward.

So,

Raymond, one thing that is intriguing to me.

I do not know much about how the movie industry works.

I don't even really go see a lot of them.

I will admit.

However, know if I'm sitting there listening and I know that there's

someone here who's at least had some involvement with movies that are

a popular in our current culture.

I think I'd be remiss if I didn't at least ask one question on what can you

tell me about your involvement with, some of the movies, like I Can Only

Imagine, Jesus Revolution with a group, Irwin's, I think were their names that are

obviously red hot in the movie industry.

Just, you know, a sentence or two or whatever you'd like to share with that.

And I've got one more, one or two more things before we wrap up here.

well, I met John and Andy Irwin, who are brothers, 13 to 15 years ago.

And I'm not in the movie business.

I just invest in two young, talented men that are.

And so, Mary and I were just the capital to launch them, get them started,

walk beside them, mentored them and, loved them and so proud of them.

And God has anointed them and brought us together.

and um, we were just the, ignition to help them get started and

they're knocking it out of the park.

So,

Yeah, that's such an interesting business, entertainment, and a lot

of people think Christians shouldn't be involved, but yet if we're not

involved, what's going to happen?

Well, I I gave a little mini TED talk one time about movie investing because they

thought that, you know, I knew a lot.

I said, well, first thing is, Investing in a movie is a bad investment,

because it may or may not work.

But if you invest in young men or women that make the movies,

then you might have a chance.

And that's what we did.

We invested in them, not in what they did.

So, yeah, investing in media, I think, is good, because it's fighting the culture.

Because our culture has gone awry.

Good media is a fight to give us something to watch.

And, I think it's a wonderful investment if you're investing in

the bigger picture, not just in one particular movie or project.

Yeah, Raymond, we've just scratched the surface of your book, Enduring

Wealth, Being Rich in This World and the Next, but almost my last question.

Tell me who the book's for.

And maybe go ahead and where they could get it or connect with you or things like

that And then i've got one more question for you before we wrap up here, but we've

been talking about this all along the way go ahead and tell us who it's for

and uh, and and where they can find it and all of those and all those things

Most authors write to a specific audience, and I have basically three

audiences, which is kind of weird.

One is to the wealthy, older person.

That might have accumulated wealth and what I want to do is encourage them to

deploy their wealth into the kingdom as soon as They can while they still have

a chance because not only will they get a blessing But it will have time

to grow at a much higher rate in the kingdom than they would ever in their

own investments with a 10 Secondly, it was written to young men and women

because I want to encourage them to build economic engines So that they

can generate capital and wealth so that they can take care of God's kingdom.

And then the third person is the ministry or the not for profit leader

who can become the partner that can actually deploy that capital Better

than what the individual can on his own.

So the book's available anywhere you buy books, amazon christian book distributors

Barnes and noble hopefully it's in the choice kiosk in the airports and

hopefully, Broad Street, which is a great publisher, has put it in a lot of

private bookstores and that kind of thing.

So

it's why we

I enjoy it.

We'll include some links down in the notes raymond.

We are seek go create Those three words.

I'm going to allow you to choose one of those over the other two

that just resonates more with you means more to you currently.

So seek, go or create.

Which one do you choose and why?

Oh absolutely create because as an architect we created a lot

of things and I love creating businesses, to build guys kingdom

So, I highly recommend I've enjoyed this conversation, Raymond.

I knew that we would.

I highly recommend people pick up the book, enduring wealth, being rich in this

world and the next by Raymond find it.

I've enjoyed reading it here over the last few days.

I appreciate Raymond taking the time to talk.

And you know, with this conversation, we could have had it for days, but.

But, go pick up the book and get the rest of the story.

We've got new episodes every Monday.

We're on YouTube.

We're on all the podcast platforms.

Make sure you listen, like, share, comment, all of those things.

It's kind of how people get more of these messages.

until next time.

Continue being all that you were created to be.