How Should Christians Think about Business and Money? A Conversation with Rylee Meek, Part 2

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. Today, we're going to be continuing the interview with Riley Meek of The King's Council. If you missed the first part, you can check it out. It's just the previous episode, but hopefully you'll enjoy this second half of the conversation between Riley and myself. What I believe is the God-given calling on my life right now is to teach that to this next generation rising up, those that are specifically entrepreneurs or even wantrepreneurs, people that are like, I know God's called me to more. I know that there's something more for me. And how do we really pull that greatness out of each other is really just what the process of this discipleship process through The King's Council is really, truly all about. That's sweet, man. I mean, I think, you know, a lot of things you say there, I resonate with. I mean, I was just reading The Great Commission again, probably over the last six months. I was studying it more in depth and trying to understand it a little bit better. And one of the things that I noticed immediately was that, you know, there's a, therefore, therefore go. And if you look at what that's connected to, it's connected to Christ's authority. He's been given authority over all things, heaven and earth. And so discipleship is about really bringing people under the authority of Christ. It's obviously it involves salvation, but that salvation doesn't mean that you get to exercise and to do life on your own terms, is kind of the way I like to say it, right? You're constantly pulling yourself back underneath that authority of Christ. And I think there's some things on that where we look at it and we go, man, that's going to keep me from doing stuff that I want to do. But if we look at it on the flip side, we say, but it's going to allow me to do so many things that I don't even know I want to do right now. And so discipleship comes with this amazing sort of discovery, I think, of opportunities that we never would have known we'd had if we just rode on our own wit and wisdom, right? Like we just don't know what we're missing. And so, yeah, I really. It's a great perspective, James, on that, because even then, as I was going through this, you know, call out the pride son journey, I'm looking to the Bible as like rules and regulations and what I can do and what I'm not supposed to do versus perspective change, mindset shift of, oh, this is an instructional manual. It's no wonder what I can't do. It's what I get to do. And if I actually the reason God puts these, you know, the law in place is for my benefit. Like that was my. I was looking to God like I really believe that how this even relates to entrepreneurship and even money, our perception of God, our perception of our creator is in direct correlation to how we approach like finances and even business. Right. I think the parable of the talents. Right. It's like we know that the guy got one, the guy got two, the guy got five. They clearly said that the guy who got one and just buried was called wicked and lazy. He says, I knew you to be a hard man. And it's like his perception is what prevented him from actually putting to use the giftings, talents and abilities that he had. And so, yeah, I love that, James. So we're in such alignment there, brother. Yeah, it's a real necessity. I think, you know, our view of God changes everything. And so that's encouraging to hear that you think through that because I do hear a lot of people sort of poo-poo the money, you know. And I can remember being in jobs where we talk about, well, if there's no money, there's no mission. And that really is true to some degree. I mean, you know, one way or another, if the world runs on money, God's going to get you the money. But we just don't often think about how he's going to get us the money. And that's what I kind of hear you honing in on is that we have these people within our community who maybe have been sort of shoved to the side and said, hey, sorry, that whole money thing doesn't work in Christianity. And you're sort of bringing them back into the fold and saying, sure, it does. And here's how it works. And this is what it needs to look like. So, you know, don't end up like the rich man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Like, don't be that sort of rich person. But let's be, you know, maybe the reformed Zacchaeus, right, who made a lot of dishonest gain when he was tax collecting. But when he comes to Jesus, he now redisperses that money and says, it's all yours, Lord. Like, this is for your use. And so I think such an important, like, the way we view money is sort of skewed, it seems to me. It really is. I mean, some crazy statistics, if you don't mind me sharing, man. Like, go for it. If you really think about, gosh, I wrote, these are in a book that I've written. So I'm going to try to remember these off the top of my head. But so many people have, are in credit card debt, right? Specifically Christians, right? And so, and, you know, Dave Ramsey's out here teaching people how to get out of debt, which I think is great for a particular type of person. If you're in debt, Dave's got some great principles, right? But his concept is, it's almost a race to zero. It's like, where, how do we get out of debt, right? Which to me, it's the same type of Christian that says, I'm not greedy. I just need enough for me. I just need enough for me, God. Right? And it's like, hold on, how, how can we love our neighbor? Yes, we can pray for them. Maybe we can go do some chores for them. But if I know the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord, my God, with all my heart, soul, mind and strength. And then to love my neighbor as myself. How do I love them if I can't even pay my own rent? How do I, how do I, if we're stressed. So, but the point of this is that the enemy wants the Christian community to be broke, right? If he can't get us to buy into this, this, this oh, just try to go make tons of money right now. I think the part of the reason, I mean, Jesus talked about money more than faith. He talked about like a quarter of the new Testament. It has to do with money, wealth and possessions. So how do we come alongside the church? I ask pastors and leaders in the church. It's like, if a fourth of his teachings had to do with money, wealth and possessions, because it's the heart disposition, are you talking about that at least once a month? The answer really probably is no, right? Because unfortunately, let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. If they're a seeker-friendly church, okay, I don't want to get into trouble on this, but if they're only looking to get people in, if they're looking to get converts, we'll call them, because they're trying to just build their reputation and build their brand, they're going to just be seeker-friendly. And they don't get into the meat of church, right? What I love about the New Testament is every one of these letters throughout the epistles is like, all of them were written to the church. They weren't written to, like, unbelievers. It was like, this is how we do life. This is how we grind this thing out. Because there's junk going on here. Some of you aren't faithful with your money. Some of you aren't, you know, tithing. You're not doing this. And I think the American church in particular, either they go on the total extreme, like, you know, sew into this, we'll give you this green prayer cloth, and it's completely moronic. Right. Right? But if they just teach these principles that the reason that we have to talk about these and the reason Jesus talked about it so much is because it's a real thing. And of all the things that Jesus mentioned that we cannot serve both, of all the things, right, it says we cannot serve both God and money. When you

to those, even back to the parable of talents, he gave to them according to their ability, ability, right? So when we have that ability to steward it well, I think that's when true advancement, that true provision can come into play to help fund the God-given vision of the church. And that's it. That is the church, man. That's the body of Christ. Like you have incredible giftings and talents that I don't, right? And I have others that you may lack in. If we can collectively come together and be like, hey, we're on team Jesus, baby. Let's get this thing going. And we pool our resources and our skill sets. I don't think there's anything that the enemy could do. He's going to come at us, right? But we got each other's backs to truly take territory, to bring the spoils of the world back into the kingdom and ultimately create that kingdom economy. Yeah, and I really agree with you. I think that as we look at just biblical theology overall, if you look at something like Deuteronomy 8, right? God is already warning the Israelites that these possessions can take hold of them and cause them to forget God. But he's still going to give them those possessions. They still get them. What needs to change is not what they have, it's their orientation to what they have. And so I'm 100% in agreement with you. I think it's fantastic. So you've talked a little... I mean, theology of money, I think, is sort of a fascinating thing to even think through. You're right. It's mentioned so often in scripture and the material world, it's that sort of what we see in front of us that causes us to live life by sight and not by faith, right? And so you sort of have to almost deal with it more often. I guess what I'm wondering is, as you think about entrepreneurship, as you think about partnering up with churches and being a catalyst to churches, how are they responding to this? So the theological aspect aside, I can imagine, and again, I went through seminary and so I'm kind of a theology geek. I would not call myself particularly an entrepreneur. I've had opportunities to do like I was in online education for a long time and sort of built an online department and that kind of fun stuff. So I have some level of business sense, but my orientation is not toward massive risk and building something out of nothing and that co-creation that you talk about. It's just not me. And so I'm guessing a lot of pastors you'd run into, a lot of people at the church don't have that either. How do you help them sort of get over the hump and recognize, no, this is something that is worth a risk. This is something that we can actually help with. What does that dynamic look like for you? Yes. We're navigating that right now, man. And I would love you to give me feedback on this because this is where there's pastors that reach out to us and they're like, I love this. I need this. Our congregation needs this, right? Those are the easy ones. We come in and we do weekend workshops. And by the way, we don't charge for anything. I don't take a dime. Like we're flying into West Virginia in a couple of weeks to serve a community there where we're doing a Friday evening and all day Saturday and then a Sunday message to their local congregation. And we're doing talk about entrepreneurship. We're gonna talk about money. We're gonna talk about finances to help that community to continue to grow. And I think, I never went to Bible school or theology, but the people that I've talked to, I've asked, how do they equip you to church plant, right? How do they equip you? And I'm sure there's some good resources out there, but it's usually like, okay, go now. You've got a great degree. You understand scripture, but now it's like, you have to go act as CEO of a... That's basically like you're running the company as you're leading this church, right? It's like, what? So, I mean, my thought on this, like I would love to maybe put together like a pastor class that is teaching them or maybe they delegate somebody on the ministry team to like understand this. And again, I don't know everything about this. I do know how to run companies. I know how to put systems and processes in place. And I think that the healthiest churches out there are not... A lot of them, I think, are ran as like the senior pastor or whatever we wanna call him, is like CEO. And then whatever his heart is, like that's like what the rest of the church is. Like they're all about missions or they're all about men's ministry or they're all about youth or, you know, where it's like, hold on, there's multiple segments that you need to serve in the community, right? And if we understood that, like this true like fivefold ministry of like, okay, how do we actually do this great? Here's your skillset for teachers. Great. There's those that are evangelists. Like, and I think of entrepreneurship, first off, if we actually, if we get to the root of the word entrepreneur, and I think culture has told us what an entrepreneur is, but the root word is a French word, entreprendre. And all it actually means, James, is to undertake. So I really believe we as human beings, we're born entrepreneurs. Like if we're willing to grab a hold of it, right? Like, but so many of us, culture, I think society has taught us, even indoctrinated us, if I dare say that, to not be undertakers, right? Here's an interesting stat. In 1913, okay, 1913, and this is in America, 97% of the population were considered what culture would call entrepreneurs or business owners, self-employed, right? We're now 110 years later, that number is completely reversed, right? So only 3% of people in that population were considered employees, right? Now that number is completely inversed. And part of it is because the whole industrial revolution, they needed people to work. What's the minimum amount we could pay somebody to do this task over and over and over and over again? And now, and then the school system was put in place then because in 1913, you went to school until about the seventh grade and then you took on your father's business, a blacksmith or a farmer or something like that. And then they started to create employees, right? Now, nothing wrong if you're an employee, but when I look through the Bible, I look at this, look at the scripture again, operating manual, how we do life. Culture, society has a lot of pressures of what we're told, like, go to school, get a college education and then, you know, you go get a job. I don't see that, that philosophy throughout scripture, right? Now I see four types of people in the Bible. I see masters, I see laborers, I see slaves and servants. If we think about the types of people out there and so many of us are a slave to mammon because we... And then again, there's nothing wrong if you went to school to and have school debt or anything like that, right? But we planned for it now in America. It's like, you have to go $200,000 in debt to hopefully get a job that you pay off. It's like, why the enemy is putting us in debt, putting us as slaves to this concept because what if we had the means to go do, go to the mission field, to go do the things, to truly do, to spread the gospel, right? But we can't because we got bills, right? We got family to take care of. We have responsibilities, which is honorable. But could there be a better way? And this is, again, my heart to help people that maybe are in a job and they know that they're called to more, like, but they can't because they're eight hours a day, five days a week in a job only just to get by. But could we help them create a side hustle, right? Could we help them create something that adds value to the marketplace that somebody will provide money back? Even for you. Like you're talking about, how do we create these business endeavors that fund these things? What if we no longer had to, like, beg people as missionaries, but we created... Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. That were self-sustaining so we could go do what God is asking.

called us to do. And again, it's just, it's, it's a mindset shift. Like we're just like, oh, and it takes a little bit of time just to kind of audit our thoughts on, we just, we just usually accept what culture and society tells us, and then we read the Bible, and it's like, well, we try to live this life through that lens, but sometimes the pressures of the world and culture are preventing us from truly living this life out the way the Bible actually tells us how. It's interesting as you're talking, I mean, one of the things I found fascinating is, um, just thinking about Paul and his willingness to be a tent maker. Yeah. You know, I think maybe some people have the impression that he's a tent maker because the churches weren't giving to him. But that isn't exactly what Paul says. Right. He says he's given up that right so that he did not hinder the gospel among them. In other words, he's doing the tent making for the people he's ministering to. Now, at some point he's saying, look, the, you shouldn't muzzle the ox while he's treading grain here. Like there is a, you know, a material reward that those who minister spiritually should get. And so he's not letting the people off the hook, but he's also not allowing it to be a hindrance. He's not forcing the people who are going to be served to pay for the service upfront before they get it, right? Like I have something spiritual edifying to say to you. If only I had just a little something right here, then I could give it to you. That's not what he's doing. You know, he's like, nope, I'll go make tents. I'll make a living and I'll do this. And I think it's just such an interesting paradigm to be thinking through and, um, and an important paradigm. I think, you know, as you work with churches, I can, I'm sure that you'll run into folks who are a little leery of this concept. And, uh, but I, you know, personally, when I've worked with it, um, and again, I was, I, I did online education at a nonprofit institution. And so we were a for-profit entity within a nonprofit institution. And I was always very cognizant that we were helping the nonprofit side. Sure. We knew that some of the profits that we were going to earn were going to go over to the nonprofit side to help subsidize what everybody else was doing. And that was okay. Like we understood that. And I, so I think this model we're running now with the LLCs and the nonprofit makes sense to me in that perspective. And I think it could work for a lot, a lot, a lot of churches. Um, understanding how to structure it, understanding who to run it, understanding how to get it. Like all those things can be just hurdles that your organization probably can help people get through. Yeah. And I think it's fantastic, the work that you're doing brother. So, um, I just, I love thinking about, uh, Paul as a tent maker. Like I bet he was like, he was, I bet he was the best watching him selling a tent to somebody. Right. He's like, look at this tent. It's the lamb skin, double stitch, like hillside. I could just see him convincing somebody to buy his tent versus somebody else's. He's got the gospel written on the inside of it or something. You know, you just can't help himself. So good. Well, man, how, how can people find more about you? Like where would you like to route them? We'll, we'll put it in the show notes, but just, um, what do you got going on that you'd like people to connect with? Yeah. So, uh, joinkingscouncil.com just for the individual listening to this. Um, we've got, we're launching our app this next week and tons of free resources that we provide. We do, you know, weekly Bible studies. We do coaching calls for entrepreneurs. We have courses on, uh, we call it burn your W2. Like I don't even know how to a business. Like never even thought of that because school doesn't train you for that. I know people with MBAs that have no clue how to start a business. Right. And, and it's like just practical real life application that, that we help individuals. And, and, you know, one of the things that we're doing to really serve the church, James, one thing that I found out is a lot of, I talk about the kingdom economy and, uh, the reason I talk about this a lot is because a lot of Christians just are not loyal to each other. You know, scripture tells us that we're, we're, we're, we're supposed to sow on good soil, right? So if we think about that from like, not only, you know, where we're, we're spreading the gospel and, and, you know, we're, we're sowing into people that way, but also just from our dollar bill standpoint, who do we, who do we intentionally choose to Sow into to, uh, to help them, right? Like for a product or service. And so, you know, I think one of the things that a lot of churches I found out don't have like business directories because we could sit here and start to name off like kingdom owned and operated businesses. And we'd probably get to like three or four other than the friends that we know. And it's like, man, yet we, we flippantly will go buy whatever we want at target or at whatever. Cause we're not being intentional with where, who we're sowing into. So imagine if, if we knew that I needed a local painter or I needed a, uh, my lawn mode. Why wouldn't I go to people in my church first? It's so independent because naturally you don't even have to believe in God for this to work. If you just believe in math, if they're actually tithing, the tithe will increase, right? And then hopefully they're sowing above and beyond. And so we've cried as a free resource. It's kingdomdirectory.com, um, where you can find, you know, just think of it like an Angie's list for Christian owned businesses. And so we provide churches, congregations, this. So it'd be like kingdomdirectory.com forward slash a summit church or whatever your church is. And then people, you could actually go in and say, Oh, I can find somebody within my local congregation intentionally sow into them. And hopefully then, I mean, some of our qualifications is that you're committing to tithing. You're committing to generosity. Um, and that's just the thing that we provide again, as a free resource, uh, to individuals, but even to churches. Like we want to come alongside to help them, uh, to increase the tithe and, and then hopefully help them grow in their efforts. Uh, and then the vision of that pastor or that, that leader, uh, within that community. And so, um, yeah, joinkingscouncil.com, kingdomdirectory.com. And, uh, that, that's where we can, you can find more about us and what we got going on. Sweet, man. Well, uh, also check out the King's council podcast. Um, I listened, like I said, I listened to a few episodes. Um, I was telling Riley before the interview, I listened to a few episodes and really enjoyed them. So King's council podcast, great podcast. Check it out too. And, uh, Riley, thanks for being here, man. This was a great conversation. Really appreciate you being on and, uh, yeah, it was awesome to meet you. Great. Thank you, James. It's been a pleasure. Yeah. Hey, thanks everybody for listening. And we'll catch you on the next episode of thinking Christian. I just want to take a second to thank the team at life audio for their partnership with us on the thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. What if your next chapter is your best one yet? Hi, I'm Monica, host of Hope for the Journey, the podcast for women over 40 who are ready to rise, rebuild, and reclaim their story. Each week, you'll hear powerful comeback stories from women who've walked through the fire and come out stronger. If you're navigating change or dreaming about what's next, you're not alone. Follow Hope for the Journey on your favorite podcast app and find the hope that you've been looking for.