Doug has written a good primer to learn more about a biblical worldview of economy and the history of money: I Came to Give (with this link you can sign up and get access to the eBook and Audiobook). Doug has also made available a PDF version of Part 2 of his book. It is called “The Traditions of Men” and is a dive into monetary history from 600 B.C. to present.
Doug is also part of the Storehouse leadership team.
OWNX is based in Lawrence, KS and is a fractional metals platform. This means you can buy and sell precious metals electronically, but you physically own the inventory in a remote depository. You also have the flexibility of taking delivery of your metal to your own physical location, either in the form of bars or coins.
The company was founded in 2008 as Silver Saver, with the recognition that the precious metals market, specifically the silver market lacked transparency, cost efficiency and ease of use, especially for smaller investors/savers. Read more about the history here.
This is a tool you can utilize to build your own regional Storehouse (see Storehouse vision for more on that), either through a non-profit entity, a church or a business entity. You can also use it personally and soon, they are launching a precious metals IRA that is fully integrated into their online platform.
To give you an idea of their value alignment with the Kingdom, when the Dobbs decision was handed down by the SCOTUS last year, they immediately instituted a Child Adoption Policy to show their support for life.
Related Scriptures
And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.
Genesis 2:12
And Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold.
Genesis 13:2
And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
Tomorrow Wednesday we gather at 8-10am EST on Zoom. (Feel free to invite others to join us by forwarding this email.)
We will hear from David Qu who lives with his family in Cincinnati Ohio about his journey as a businessman and Christ follower. Having emigrated from China as a young man, worked at A.T. Kerney (renowned management consulting firm) for blue chip publicly traded clients (Ford, Pratt and Whitney, Johnson Controls, etc.), to later start his own business with his wife, dedicated to the Lord focusing on advising middle market private companies with strategic direction and transitions.
David, Angela and I first met in Sweden at the ICCC conference in Stockholm late last year, through Jimmy Wong and Gary Crawford. David was intrigued by the New Breed of Business and my background which in many ways was similar to his own.
Having been on similar yet different faith journeys, we will focus tomorrow’s discussion on what taking such a path is like – leaving corporate America with its steady pay, but restricted freedoms, then pursuing a God given dream by faith of being in business on our own, having the freedom to follow and honor God.
Bio:
I immigrated to the United States at the age of 14 with my parents and started learning English in 9th grade. The first book I read in high school was Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss.
Over the next eight years, I excelled academically, put myself through schools, and graduated with an engineering degree and Chairperson’s award from the #2 public university in the country.
I spent the next two-plus decades of my career working with and for the biggest Fortune 500 companies globally across all facets of businesses. As an engineer, program manager, management consultant, and corporate strategy and M&A executive of multi-billion companies, I traveled the world in all forms of transportation and moved my family of four, four times across continents. Click here to learn more about my professional experiences: https://www.rimonark.com/about/our-team/
My faith journey also started shortly after my arrival to the U.S. I attended a Mennonite church in Virginia throughout my high school and was baptized in my senior year after confessing Jesus died for my sins. From there, I experienced God’s love in college and was baptized in the Spirit at the age of 25. On that journey, I have sought God in multiple denominations of the Christian faith, as well as witness the role of faith in the global marketplace.
When we arrived in Cincinnati on Christmas of 2019, my five-year-old son had lived in six cities and three continents.
The COVID pandemic shifted my perspective and I left the W-2 world. It was more than a career change, but of a different mindset, priorities, and personal identity. It has been a journey of personal awakening, humility, and faith.
Angela Qu
Given my continuous life and professional transitions, I founded Rimonark Advisors with my wife, Angela, who has been my pillar of support and trusted advisor in the communities that we serve while still connected globally.
Rimonark is our vision for our clients (see below link for detailed explanation) – assisting business owners to achieve fruitful, safe, and confident transitions as they grow and sell their businesses. It is also a vision of our family and God’s calling for us.
Keith and Sheri married at age 19 while students at NMSU in Las Cruces, NM on July 5, 1975. Sheri graduated with my BS-Edu and began teaching while Keith continued his undergraduate degree. He finished with his BSOE from Wayland Baptist University in Plainview, TX, then his MDiv from Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in Mill Valley, CA.
We did youth ministry and pastored in TX, CA, and NM for a total of 42 years. Of those years, we pastored in Reserve, NM from 1986-2021.
The first ten years, Keith served as senior pastor of Reserve Baptist Church, then we served together as the founding pastors of an independent non-denominational church, called Joy Fellowship.
Sheri taught public school in TX and CA, then when we moved to Reserve, Sheri and Keith homeschooled our children through high school. Sheri later worked managing a title insurance company. Keith worked bivocationally in County government, and I eventually got a job in county government as well. They both retired on January 1, 2021.
They have a daughter named Bree (43), who is married to, Jonathan Mooney, the son of our missionaries to Guatemala. (www.bethelministriesinternational.com)
They have Selah (16) and Moses (13) and live in Manchester, CT.
We, also, have a son named Adam (40), married to Danielle (37). They have Ember (15), Jubilee (12) and Ephraim (6). Their family moved from AL to Lubbock, TX last year.
Keith and I moved to Lubbock to caregive my parents who subsequently passed away within 15 months of each other. The LORD has clearly assigned us to a new manifestation of ministry here in TX as intercessors. While we do own our house and property in NM, we now claim Lubbock as home.The Journey
The Riddles share with us their journey out of “Babylon”, and into trusting God as provider. Through radical giving, trusting, faith, perseverance and endurance.
The Journey
We, too, have had cyclical opportunities to experience the release from the Babylonian system. Each time we have grown exponentially in our faith and obedience. I think it truly is a part of GOD’s way of dealing with His children as He liberates and matures us.
When we were led by GOD in 1996 to come out of our denominational system, we chose to leave behind our housing, paycheck, annuities, statewide influence, appointed leadership positions, reputations within our community, etc. We lived as an homeless, unemployed family, with two tween-agers whom I was homeschooling, for three months; but by GOD’s grace we had provision for each day! Keith held a BS-Occupational Educ and MDiv degrees, and I had my BS-Educ with experience in public education, but for reasons only GOD knew, we couldn’t land a local job for those three months.
Why? He was building our trust in Him as our Provider, instead of our denomination. The repeated saying: “Baptist born. Baptist bred. And when I’m gone, I’ll be Baptist dead!” Our denomination had become a type of Babylon for us, although at the time we actually referred to it as Egypt. We had to take every word and thought captive daily so as not to be like the grumbling children of Israel in the desert! We pressed on to be fully free, whatever that looked like for our family, even when other churches in the surrounding states offered Keith positions. As we prayed through each offer, we felt the total shalom of GOD that we were where He wanted us, even if we never enjoyed the prosperity and prestige those positions would have provided.
As our brother Chandrakaut in the video you aired testified, we cannot explain how GOD did it, but we can say we lived in peace, rest and joy…even when it wasn’t overly comfortable in the flesh at times. We had obeyed GOD to remain in our tiny community and start a non-denominational house church called Joy Fellowship. During that time GOD ended our homelessness when Keith was hired to work at several part-time jobs, eventually being hired into an appointed (at-will) position as the Administrator of the Sheriff’s Office.
During that crazy time, GOD miraculously made the way for us to purchase a home on zero dollars down, at a ridiculously low price. If I remember the facts correctly, it was a 1850 sq ft brick house, on six lots, totalling nearly an acre for about $45,000 in 1996. Throughout our married life we had been tithers and generous givers in many ways beyond dollars. It was at that time that the LORD reminded us that He had led us to give away our camping trailer to a homeless family about one year earlier as a seed toward our own need BEFORE we ever knew we had a need!
A few years later, the LORD led us to give away our entire retirement fund to other ministries! Amazingly, it was not a struggle for us because we shared the conviction that it was the voice of the LORD whom we were obeying. We had confidence that where He guided, He provided.
Around a decade later, in the same community (where we still own our house and property) Keith unexpectedly lost that at-will job without notice! By this time our children were away from home, and I had gone to work managing a title company field office. For the following full year we miraculously got by on my tiny $10/hr income, until he was asked to come work in a secure position as the Accounts Payable Clerk for our county. I shake my head in wonder at how many ways GOD blessed us throughout that “skinny cow” year! You have to laugh at the irony that Keith was given a position handling money when we didn’t have any of our own.
Then, several years afterward, I lost MY job when the owner of the title company was arrested in the base city 2.5 hours away from our community for embezzlement!! It came as a complete and total shock since I never knew anything about the day-to-day operations of the company. Again, for over a year, we were hard pressed financially, but experienced miracle after miracle. At the end of that amazing time, GOD opened a job for me in (of all places) the County Treasurer’s Office handling all the money our county received! Again, I find it ironically amusing that we both were in positions of handling money…me incoming funds and Keith outgoing funds.
Long story short…as the years passed, my husband was elected to the position of County Clerk in charge of elections and public records in 2012 and for a second term in 2016 with an increase of salary. At that same time I was promoted to an appointed position as the Chief Deputy Treasurer, with a salary increase as well. We served in those positions until our retirement on January 1, 2020. Still, as public officials our accrued retirement income is very low.
We were brought from our small town in NM to TX due to my aging parents’ medical needs at the end of the first month of our retirement. We are now living in the triple blessing of GOD’s provision! We found ourselves with three of everything from cars to toasters! We’ve given away bedroom sets, tvs, clothes, on and on. As well as, we made a covenant with GOD that we would sow our Lubbock apartment rent into LIFE ministries here in town for the remaining 10 month term of our $1,600/mo lease when we moved into my parents’ home after their deaths. His part was to find us someone to take up the contract, which He did. We completed our part of the covenant this month!
We still have a storehouse of goods, houses, and lands with which we are trusting GOD. It’s all HIS, and we hold very loosely to it. He has taught us that all we have is HIS, not ours. That HE alone is our SOURCE and SUPPLY.
He, also, has taught us that while we were still younger than retirement age we should work with our own hands as a service to Him and a testimony to others. Over the years, He has thrown open doors of opportunity for each of us to speak of the goodness of GOD to others within our community outside Joy Fellowship at our workplaces, at the grocery store, in the bank, at the school…everywhere at any time!
Although we no longer work “with our hands” for a salary, we do serve in many ministry capacities.
One of our retirement passages is Psalm 71:18-19 (NKJV): “O GOD, You have taught me from my youth; and to this day I declare Your wondrous works. Now also when I am old and gray headed, O GOD, do not forsake me, until I declare Your strength to this generation, Your power to everyone who is to come.”
Just this past Passover here in Lubbock, we were invited by the owners to lead a corporate seder for a large properties development company. The opportunity arose as a case of someone, who knew someone, who knew someone, who knew that we have been celebrating Pesach since 1996 told the owners that we might be willing to do it with their employees. I shake my head in amazement at His ways!
“For [we] are unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power GOD unto salvation for all who believe. First to the Jew, then also to the Greek.”
Romans 1:16
By the way, let me add that although we were trusted to rightly handle the county’s money, we have never held onto much personal money, such as putting it into stocks or other savings funds, so we are inexperienced at personally managing money. Now we have inherited my parents portfolio of stocks and an IRA, money we didn’t work for, nor feel “entitled” to. We do want to handle it with the LORD’s wisdom. We understand that it is currently held within the Babylonian system, but we have continued to have it managed by their trusted financial advisor. We have zero experience with any such things!
Because of the current state of economic affairs, we don’t have the slightest expectation of it ever being of benefit to us unless we hear from GOD. We don’t actively watch the accounts, nor even know what these funds are doing. I suppose the way we are viewing the accounts for now is: If they flourish, they flourish. If they fail, they fail.
Our financial advisor has mentioned at the annual review meeting for this year that we need to add to our investments any funds from the sale of our NM properties as soon as possible, but we don’t bear witness that now is the time to sell our NM holdings. Property is selling for far below market value in our NM community and interest rates are so high that there are few buyers wanting to live in such a remote underdeveloped area. Plus, in truth, we wouldn’t want any earnings from a sale to go into our investment account within the current economic instability.
So, unless we hear differently from the LORD, we will keep travelling 12 hours one-way (with stops) from Lubbock to Reserve several times a year for a week or two to do improvements and to stay up with everything without listing our property for sale.
Peter and Family on the road in various RV Communities
Peter is a friend and Kingdom unity catalyst hailing from New Hampshire. We met through a New England Alliance young leaders retreat several years ago. Peter is also an entrepreneur, having created a school textbook business from the ground up listening to the Lord.
Here Peter’s background :
In 2008, Lord gave me a textbook business that as I listened to him and did what he showed me. It rapidly increased as the market decreased. Did this until 2013 when the Lord invited me to “follow Him” and I left the business and followed Him. First destination was NH where I served a youth focused traveling discipleship ministry. After that the Lord sent me to Iris Leaders school in California for 9 months. After school I returned to NH and served in the house of prayer in Manchester while also connecting believers in the region.
Soon after got married to Greta and started a family as well as a residential remodeling business. This business allowed us to buy a rundown house, renovate it and sell it after enjoying it for 2 years.
He then led us as a family to “follow him” and we moved into an RV and followed where He led us! We started with one child and have added two more children since being “on the road”.
We’re being led towards starting more businesses that will fund the Kingdom and the things on His heart for the coming years!
Our family’s favorite song is “into the unknown” because the Father has proven Himself faithful over and over again as we orient our lives to carry out His plans here.
Family retreat center idea NH
Areas of Refuge Vision
God has him and his family on a unique RV journey throughout the country. Here is a vision he had recently which will be the basis of our discussion :
One night, after the kids were asleep, we joined together to praise the Lord and pray. I entered into a vision and appeared before me were communities of refuge all along I-81. This interstate highway runs all the way from Eastern, TN all the way to Canada! I saw them as necessary hubs, holistic communities that provided housing, food, training and care for a later to be known future need. I sensed there would be need for medical care and spiritual care. I sensed there would be need for these communities to be self-sustaining with income/business options, farms and food, an abundance of housing options and meeting spaces. I sensed that there was some type of upcoming event (even nuclear) on the east coast and this was the place where much of the eastern seaboard would run to for refuge.
Laying the Right Foundations
Peter and I have been having great conversations about humility and selflessness. Business opportunities given by God are more open-architecture green houses than “keep-it-secret and corner the market” kind of thing. The former is Kingdom and the latter is the way of worldly business thinking. This is the New Breed of Business.
Likewise, Peter says:
We’ve learned that community for the sake of doing community is also inherently selfish. It has to be laid-down love that looks like surrender and sacrifice. Aka Jesus. Do we want eternal foundations? Or Hype? (social media etc.)
Here is something he also pasted on FB
I see the Lord, raising up a countless number of home and parent type scenarios around the world that are being made ready to welcome the hurting and broken. So many that no one person or group can take credit for this move of God. These ones are being trained to come out of tradition and religion (which has a focus on form and function). They are being drawn to come back to learning Gods ways of love and family. Taking spiritual elitism, tradition and language out and replacing it with Gods original design of conversational talk leading to a (super)natural enjoyable life of surrender. One that starts in the Spirit and flows to the natural. I see these parents and families being ready to welcome a large number of children home and these children carry inside of them the blueprints and plans on the heart of the Father for his thoughts (glory) to cover the earth in the next season. Habakkuk 2:14. These children and plans will come disguised as broken vessels, often offensive to the religious. The parents job is to help them learn how to obey everything The Father has commanded, showing them who they are in Jesus first, then releasing and encouraging them to follow His commands and walk out the vision He has placed in their hearts! Currently we feel led to “relationally connect” these groups to create a larger “net” so nobody gets missed whom God has called home. These separate groups or “networks”, move and live as if they are one as we are One Body, the body of Christ. Nothing is their own, homes, land, wealth, etc.
Peter shares what they have tried to help create with their community there in the Greenville, South Carolina area…
Kingdom Wealth Transfer
The other dimension of our discussion is Kingdom wealth. Here are some thoughts from Peter on that…
The transfer of wealth from the wicked to righteous. I know we have an ever evolving understanding of the ways of the Lord, but I wanted to share an insight The Lord has given me about one way it can work and is playing out currently in our lives.
From 2008 to about 2013 I had a college textbook business. I would buy college textbooks from college professors that publishers had sent them for free as junk mail type marketing material in hopes that the professor will adopt their book and therefore would have X amount of books sales at usually around $200 a book. It’s no secret that the publishing industry is certainly overpriced and arguably greedy. So because of this giant, standing up, if you will, perhaps, could even be referred to as the prostitute of Babylon. She created a shadow market that allowed us to come in and provide a win-win situation for everyone else, but the wicked. We provided a recycling source for these un-asked for books, which put cash in the hands of professors, then we sold them to another Christian owned company who employed many believers, who then sold them back to students at a reduced price. Our market would not have existed if the book was not originally priced at +/- $200. Therefore, it allowed us to accumulate the wealth that the evil created until that market no longer existed or shifted as it has.
In my own personal story, this is what enabled me to be a missionary to New Hampshire for the years, leaving South Carolina, and before I got married. The Lord in His wisdom allowed me the freedom to just serve him from the fruits of serving Him in the business that He had given me.
Fast forward to today, I see the same thing happening in the solar and lithium industry.
Just a few days ago, the Lord connected me with a source with a consistent supply of larger sized lithium batteries that still have about three years left on their service life. My guess (hunch) is they probably have 2 to 3 times what the manufacturer state is left in them. The industry that they came from would take no chances in a battery failing so, they probably de-rated their life from the manufacturer and then the end user also did the same.
My hunch is that the US probably won’t get to the place where we ever get the production up to the current (inflated) demand, because the industry will likely shift with political powers, etc. so it seems like a window of time (~5 years) for this opportunity. Other battery types are more sustainable and less destructive to the earth, but not widely manufactured yet.
The southeast is becoming the auto manufacturing center of the US and with the shift to EV stuff, battery recycling companies are setting up plants near these auto manufacturers.
The other side of this is used solar panels! Many industries have panels piling up and don’t have a way to discard them, there are already some companies selling used panels. I have access to these also.
Looking into it now to ponder which business model best reflects the fathers heart, so that we can make this a community business that can support his kingdom, I am eyeballing a “benefit corporation” but not set on anything.
This week we hear from Joel Frazier about his recent missions trip to Uganda, explore the intersection between the Storehouse and missions work, and pray into the future of this mission.
Discipling missions trip in the New Breed of BusinessCharcoal Kiln ProjectUgandan Macrame EntrepreneursJoel Clownin’ with the Kids
Joel’s debt miracle and refinancing story in the NECAPJinja, Headwaters of the Nile
Gregg’s ministry trip Jan 2007 to Uganda. Had a dream about the inheritance of the Storehouse and the New Breed of Business. Ministered in Jinja, where Joel went 15+ years later, fulfilling the dream…
Romans 911 Study Every 2nd Wednesday for 12 Sessions from 9-11am Eastern
Today’s discussion will focus on the introduction to the purpose and content of this study of the intersection between the “One New Man” and the “New Breed of Business”. The intersection of the “Reconnection” and “Coming out of Babylon”. A syllabus will be handed out for the first 6 sessions.
We have Doug back for part 2, discussing his forthcoming book “My Ways”. Today’s discussion on will spend more time on answering the “how to?” question.
So Doug, today let’s focus on Part 3 of your book, called “The Process”. Walk us through why you broke it up into the following 4 chapters: “Follow the Leader”, “Prepare Yourself”, “Embrace the Great Restoration”, and “Engage Your Community”.
Let’s take a deeper dive on Chapter 12: “Engage Your Community”. What are Community Action Teams? This seems to be language that ties into the Statesman Project. Tell us about that.
In the Storehouse Vision, we speak of the “Storehouse Community”. This is a subset of your local community, and is ultimately when Christian Community expands to include economy, trade, banking, and investment. We speak about it based on what Jesus said: “Where 2 or 3 are gathered… “. This creates a parallel economy rather than a replacement economy. It’s also easy to prototype. Sometimes, I refer to this strategy as “Celtic Evangelism”, which is a “come taste and see the Lord is good” strategy. Could you compare these ideas to what you’ve contemplated in Ch 12? How does the Christian work together with unbelievers, or even those hostile to the gospel?
How do we prevent or guard against old mindsets and worldliness creeping in? For example, how do we address fear and scarcity based mindsets? Mammon (the insatiable desire to earn money from any and all activities)? Especially as we engage and serve unbelievers in our communities. The human tendency to put ourselves and our own first (sometimes even second and third). How does the chapter “Prepare Yourself” relate to this as well as repentance and transformation?
We talked about the potential for a third book focused on implementation and systems. Might we call that “The Prescription”? How do we further implement/prototype these ideas? What systems and technology are needed? Leadership structures? Checks and balances? Procedures? Rules? What have you contemplated in this regard? Esp. the food supply chain and agricultural lines.
We welcome back Doug and speak with him about his forthcoming book “My Ways” a guide to implementing biblical economics and sequel to “I Came To Give”.
We interview Doug this morning and catch up with him:
Doug, so God has taken down another road of your journey with Him. Tell us about this past year.
What prompted you to write the second book? Why was it needed? Why is it called “My Ways”?
How do you see Kingdom economics play out in the lead up to Christ’s return?
You lay the book out in 3 sections: Principles, Foundations and Process. Tell us about that.
Why the focus on local economies? Agriculture? How does this tie into the local currencies idea? What will God’s ways look like in terms of food production, processing and distribution in the days ahead?
Bio
Doug Tjaden serves as co-leader of the Public Policy Focus Group for the Global Council of Nations / Statesmen Project and is founder of Project Thrive 21, a non-profit dedicated to establishing love for neighbors as the economic foundation of local communities. In early 2021 he released his book, I Came to Give (free copy) – Understanding the Great Reset and the Coming Age of Abundance… Doug is working with others to design and develop a new means of value exchange that is based on God’s principles of cooperation, stewardship, and abundance.
As part of the Seeding Storehouses series we interview the “Burton-on-Trent” UK pioneering team this Wednesday. Also heretofore now known as the “A-Team”. Yes, that’s Antoinette, Alexis and Angela.
From the home of Marmite, we explore “how they got here from there”.
Something is brewing in Burton!
Burton-on-Trent home of Marmite
Each of the A-Team’s backgrounds are unique, but they all have experienced the divine hand of Yeshua over their lives.
Knowing there is something better than the current way of economy and banking systems.
Knowing there must be a radical repentance among God’s people.
Knowing that Jesus is returning to Jerusalem to receive a new breed of believer, led by the Spirit, unified together as one new man – a Church without spot or wrinkle.
And as such the whole world will know.
The Middle of the Midlands
We hear from each of them their testimonies and find out how they answer the question “why come out of Babylon?” and get their thoughts on the New Breed of Business and the Storehouse Vision…
Alexis on Assignment Sounding the Shofar in the Shetlands
Jonathan is an evangelist from Faisalabad, Pakistan.
Quick tour around Jonathan’s neighborhood:..
Pakistan is a majority Muslem nation, so much of his activity focuses on sharing the gospel with people from Muslem backgrounds. Muslims also very much control the government, business, schools, etc., so working as a Christian in their culture is working from the position of being “less than” as well as facing persecution.
His father in-law is the Pastor of a local church: Emmaus Evangelical Church. He and his family live on the “other side” of town where many of Christians live.
Jonathan with a local carpenter
Jonathan and his family are engaged as part of his church and ministry activity in helping poor people create businesses to help sustain their families. We have been talking about creating a Storehouse in his city and other entrepreneurial ideas. For example, his brother works for a large clothing manufacturing company, as the city is known for its export of tee-shirts and other clothing.
Jonathan’s family helps a widow and her kids:
Roxanna a believing poor mother and her children
This is all part of the discussion of reform God is looking for, such that ministries in 3rd world countries do not become dependent on US donor dollars, but instead become locally sustained. (Read the Non-Profit Ministry Bulletin white paper for details.) How? Through working toward the Storehouse vision and other New Breed of Business scriptural business practices, Christian groups anywhere can adopt these means of pooling together resources, discipling the poor and the needy into starting businesses, seeing God provide the increase, and many more becoming the lender instead of the borrower.
We can help foster John 17 unity through a New Breed of Community and economic development. Serving others. Loving others like Jesus.
I have come to give life, and life more abundantly
We hear from Chareese, her testimony on God’s goodness, faithfulness and financial provision. Chareese’s pastor growing up always emphasized the importance of not going into debt. Chareese will share her vision for an online House of Prayer and how God is leading her into new rivers of provision/finances for that house of prayer, not being interested in the hamster-wheel of traditional “fund-raising”. This discussion will be great for anyone wanting to learn how to trust God fully for provision, both for themselves/family as well as their ministry and business callings.
Chareese has been living in Connecticut since October 2015. Immediately after arriving, she became actively involved with the prayer movement throughout the state and region. She served Awaken the Dawn as Co-State Coordinator in 2017 by uniting and mobilizing various prayer and worship teams throughout the state, culminating in three days of 24/7 worship and prayer on the National Mall in Washington, DC. She has also served with CT Prays and National Day of Prayer (assistant to the Hartford County Coordinator). Chareese currently and uniquely serves in 10 Days of Prayer, Connecticut Capitol Prayer Network, House of Good Hope (house of prayer), racial reconciliation, and other prayer and church unity movements. She recently became a member and actively serves at LifeWay Church. She is also completing an Associate of Practical Theology at Christ for the Nations (Dallas).
I am proud to call her my spiritual daughter. As my friend Jonathan Friz likes to say: “We love Chareese!”
Let the LORD be magnified, Who has pleasure in the prosperity of His servant
Generational influences and how we think of finances, provision, and trust with Susan Totilo
Finances can have many subtle, subliminal, interesting and sometimes beguiling influences on our behavior and lives, but God! An important aspect to understand all of this, is the generational impact of how we were raised, how our parents handled financial issues and stress, either in extreme poverty, the middle class, or perhaps even great wealth.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil… some have… pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
1 Tim 6:10
We will discuss with Susan her upbringing as she shares the story of being raised in an Italian immigrant household, how the death of her Great Grandfather and the demise of his business, impacted several generations of women in the Totilo household, especially her Mom and Grandmother. That plus the transformation God has taken Susan through in the past few years.
Susan Totilo
Hi! My name is Susan Totilo and I love Jesus!! I also love to talk. As I say all the time, “God gave me a big Italian mouth and a big Italian heart for a reason”.
I was blessed to pursue a teaching career in my home state of Connecticut for over 20 years. In recent years, I started feeling the tug to leave teaching but kept at it, as I had no back-up plan.After experiencing some deep, personal losses in 2019, I left the demands of the public education system soon after, entering into a long season of profound rest and healing. Early on in this season, I asked God, “What do I do now, Lord?” and He said, “Well…what do you want to do?”
I had always dreamed about becoming a radio D.J. or “Podcaster” and heard about the Connecticut School of Broadcasting (CSB). After much prayer, God gave me peace to resign from teaching and I went on to CSB, where I completed their certificate program in Broadcast Media. Following this, a vigorous job search led to ALL doors being closed to mainstream employment.
But God had the “one open door” I prayed for…which ended up being a home audio/visual studio, miraculously paid for through the generosity of dear friends. While I am presently enjoying the process of recording various content, my main focus is listening at the feet of Jesus, to seek what He wants to do through me. As I am learning to trust Him more, my prayer is to bring Him glory and to be an ambassador of His love and Presence to others through the use of media.
We in the Body of Christ have an opportunity to unleash heaven and “set the captives free” (Isaiah 61) with respect to any evil generational influences or curses.
Famous Abolitionists: Harriot Tubman; John Brown; Angelina Grimké; William Lloyd Garrison; Harriet Beecher Stowe; Frederick Douglass; Abraham Lincoln; Ulysses S. Grant
The New England Center for the Abolition of Poverty
Because Jesus has come to “set the captives free” – Isaiah 61
Jesus wants to set people free from :
Debt Slavery
Poverty
Greed
Financial Fears
The voice of money (Mammon)
Career/Corporate Slavery
Identity/Conformity Slavery
Income/Money Slavery
We know that the person we used to be was crucified with Him to put an end to sin in our bodies. Because of this we are no longer slaves to sin.
Romans 6:1-7
The New England Church has such a rich heritage of standing up for the abolition of chattel slavery in the 19th Century of the United States, that God is now calling again the NE Church into a reprisal of its abolitionist roots to help people get out of any kind of slavery in the 21st century, including economic slavery.
So, sometime in early 2021, we started gathering a forerunner team every two weeks to put together the beginnings of the NE Storehouse.
This had been catalyzed a few different ways:
1. Jonathan Friz and I started talking about implementing the Storehouse vision in the New England region potentially as part of the New England Alliance in the beginning of 2020, pre-pandemic. Although we wanted to get things going, I felt in my spirit that the New England leaders were not yet ready to receive the fullness of the Storehouse / coming out of Babylon message.
2. Sometime later, Chris Adams and I were discussing how to come out of Babylon practically – and specifically how to cash out some financial market based assets and reinvest into Kingdom driven investments. I was inspired to share with Chris, this is not a passive type of investment we are talking about, but an active one, where we the people of God have to get involved in people’s lives, to help them, disciple them, and incubate their business ideas. Who do you know in Rhode Island that would be a good ministry/business/situation to “invest” in? Instead of me serving up Chris an investment product on a platter, ready-to-buy, I was challenging Chris to start looking for people / investment opportunities that we could bring a group around to invest together. Like – ‘you are part of the solution!’
3. Also sometime after early 2020, Joel Frazier approached me with the question – hey Gregg, are there any Christian debt consolidation firms that can help me payoff my credit card debt? To which I said, sure, but you don’t want to really work with them because they lend money just as any other debt consolidation or consultation firm – i.e. they will follow the same lousy business practices of charging more fees, hard money lending, payday lending, and recourse lending. (All of which actually profit from the poor, rather than simply help them.) I also said – hey before you use more debt to get out of debt (debt restructuring), have you ever considered that God wants to release miracles of debt forgiveness? Let me tell you my testimony…and then we prayed together for debt forgiveness miracles.
4. One night, after the GameStop discussions we had been having on the New Breed of Business roundtable discussions, I awoke hearing/seeing the following: “NE Center ____ Poverty”. As I awoke from this and prayed, I felt the Lord was giving guidance to the NE Storehouse vision specifically. That a core focus was the elimination of poverty. After experimenting with various names, it was like a game of ‘fill-in the blank’ to make an acronym. ‘NE_CP’… so, what might then ‘NECAP’ stand for? Wait a minute, the Lord has already been speaking about the abolition of economic slavery to the body of Christ, so maybe this should be called… “The New England Center for the Abolition of Poverty”. It’s a bit of a mouthful, but boils down to a catchy ‘NECAP’, which is like CAP for Capital, NE for New England, but the NECAP (say knee-cap) is memorable. In fact, instead of being loan sharks – who if you don’t pay will “knee-cap” you (break your legs), we are like loan doves who will help lift people out of poverty and in order to “be fruitful and multiply” as well as disciple people into becoming “the lender not the borrower”.
I presented the name via the dream to the team at the next meeting and we embraced it.
There is more to the story…but we will discuss it by interviewing the founding team of the “NECAP”.
For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed
Romans 8:19
You’ve heard it said “God helps those who help themselves”, but in effect, Jesus actually says: “I will help those who help others”.
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in…’
Matthew 25:34-35
The generous soul will be made rich, and he who waters will also be watered himself
Proverbs 11:25
Hope you are inspired to imagine what Storehouse the united Church could build in your city or region !
The Joseph Fund is essentially the Florida implementation of the Storehouse vision. It is a resource center for helping people in need, sowing into them, not just in benevolence, but in discipleship, equipping and lending. There are three funds within the Joseph fund – Rescue, Equip and Destiny. Why is lending important? Because if someone is willing to work to repay, which is an honorable goal and part of Christian discipleship into becoming the lender instead of the borrower (Deut 28:12).
Also, Gary will introduce us to a new set of videos called the Contender Series of which here is a draft of the first video. The Contender series was put together to help educate the Body of Christ about the times and seasons we are in, and how we are called to contend for the faith in the gospel of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ.
Finally, Gary will explain the City Matters platform in more detail, which is like Lotus Notes for the church. OK, what the heck is Lotus Notes (early 90s reference)? Basically it’s a collaborative cloud-based platform for the citywide church. A bit social media, a bit bulletin board, a bit of collaborative discussion, a bit writing the vision down and making it clear. It’s a way the citywide church can communicate electronically on an independent platform.
What Inhibits the Church from Moving into These Models?
Career and Calling in the 21st century – a contrast of perspectives. The stronghold of Mammon on traditional church – laity structures vs. the 5-fold (Ephesians 4) and citywide elder leadership structure.
The debt trap of Student Loans the next generation find themselves in (fully recourse; high interest).
Educational inflation has outpaced the Consumer Price Index inflation by 4x!
The potential of various “Storehouse” solutions, including current implementation examples.
For example, Christopher Lucey will be with us to share about thegofund.com which he co-founded with Luke Womack.
The world of student loan debt has been with us and GROWING since the 1990’s.
Today, we are going to highlight an organization that has done something truly inspiring that not only tackles the issue – but is solving the challenge “the storehouse way” – TheGoFund.com. I’m honored to have been a mentor and encourager to Luke Womack – founder. The year before the launch we meet in my office on Saturday’s for 4-6 hours talking, brainstorming, praying, researching how we could tackle this issue and how we could design a way to release the next generation from debt to go to the UUPG’s – when the name Jesus had never been heard.
It is also an inspiration for what I believe other groups could be challenged to do for their own families and communities throughout the nation in the years ahead to free young people from debt and to unleash them to go to the nations and complete the task of the remaining mission.
The GO FUND
GO FUND Story…..from World Magazine
JOEL SUTTON BEGAN WORKING with the International Mission Board’s assessment and deployment team in 1999. Students had debt then too, but the average topped out at $17,000. Now, Sutton regularly talks to prospective missionaries who have between $60,000 and $100,000 in debt. “Those kinds of folks have really disqualified themselves for service,” Sutton said. “They’re living in the moment. They think they need the loan to get their education, but they don’t think about the ramifications down the road.”
Sutton and his Southern Baptist Convention colleagues urge college students to think about what they want to do with their lives before taking out loans. If students can’t avoid loans altogether, missionary recruiters urge them to take on as little debt as possible, get jobs to help pay some of their expenses, and even take a little longer to get their degree, if necessary.
That’s a hard sell, especially for students at Christian colleges, which rely on tuition payments to survive and have little incentive to encourage students to take on less debt. “We’ve found schools are not really talking to students about this,” Sutton said. “It’s a real conflict because schools are a business. Loans mean more payment out of students, so they don’t discourage them from doing the loans.”
Expenses such as healthcare and housing continue to rise, so “simply owing on student loan debt — and, in particular, doing so for an extended period — makes it all the more difficult for borrowers to grapple with these growing costs,” the report says.
While after 20 to 25 years, the balances of these income-driven loans can be forgiven, they typically are not. The report points to a recent analysis by National Consumer Law Center that found only 32 borrowers’ loans have been erased in the time that these plans have existed. Two million federal student loan borrowers have been in repayment for 20 years, though this count includes those outside of income-driven plans.
Interview: Part 2 Doug Tjaden and his book “I Came To Give”
Doug Tjaden serves as co-leader of the Public Policy Focus Group for the Global Council of Nations/Statesmen Project and is founder of Project Thrive 21, a non-profit dedicated to establishing love for neighbors as the economic foundation of local communities. In early 2021 he released his book, “I Came To Give – Understanding the Great Reset and the Coming Age of Abundance.” Doug is working with others to design and develop a new means of value exchange that is based on God’s principles of cooperation, stewardship and abundance.
This week we will continue the discussion with Doug on the subject of currencies. Before we do, here are some prior New Breed discussions regarding alternative currencies, including crypto currencies and specifically Bitcoin.
3. Doug, one of your areas of focus is on currency. The world’s history of it. What the bible has to say about it. And what is God saying about it for believers today? Why does currency matter?
4. Give us an implementation example at work today of a local agricultural backed currency: Community “X” predominantly grows “Y”.
5. Practical example of how a network of local currencies can work (be exchanged for one another). (the Bancor Network system being implemented in Israel as example)
Doug Tjaden serves as co-leader of the Public Policy Focus Group for the Global Council of Nations/Statesmen Project and is founder of Project Thrive 21, a non-profit dedicated to establishing love for neighbors as the economic foundation of local communities. In early 2021 he released his book, “ I Came To Give – Understanding the Great Reset and the Coming Age of Abundance.” Doug is working with others to design and develop a new means of value exchange that is based on God’s principles of cooperation, stewardship and abundance.
Doug has done extensive work in the Kingdom economy and the alternative currency arena.
This discussion will likely go over two Wednesday mornings to get through everything Doug has focused on regarding Kingdom economics and the Ecclesia aka The Church taking back what the enemy has stolen in the economic, currency and financial realm.
Interview Agenda:
1. Intro Doug Tjaden. So Doug, what do you work on, who are you connected with, and what’s your story of how you got here (testimony)?
2. “I Came To Give” book. What prompted you to write it? What’s in it?
3. One of your areas of focus is on currency. The world’s history of it. What the bible has to say about it. And what is God saying about it for believers today? Why does currency matter?
4. Give us an implementation example at work today of a local agricultural backed currency: Community “X” predominantly grows “Y”.
5. Practical example of how a network of local currencies can work (be exchanged for one another). (the Bancor Network system being implemented in Israel as example)
