Exploring the depths of stewardship and intentional living, this episode features Larry O'Nan, a seasoned expert with over five decades of experience in ministry and consulting. He emphasizes that true generosity transcends mere financial giving; it’s about aligning every aspect of our lives with God's purpose. Larry shares his transformative journey, highlighting the pivotal moment when he learned the invaluable lesson that “you have the freedom to fail,” which opened the door to stepping boldly into faith-driven initiatives. Our conversation dives into the misconceptions surrounding stewardship, revealing how it is often mistakenly equated with money alone, when in fact, it encompasses a broader spectrum of giving that includes time, talents, and love. Join us as we unpack practical tools and insights from Larry’s latest book, "Intentional Living and Giving," and discover how to cultivate a life that reflects faithful stewardship in all its forms.

Building bridges between faith, life, and calling isn't just a lofty ideal—it’s a practical pursuit that can transform our communities. That’s the essence of this enlightening conversation featuring Larry Onan, a seasoned expert in stewardship and ministry. With over five decades of experience, Larry shares his journey from designing fund development initiatives that raised over $150 million to authoring his latest book, *Intentional Living and Giving*. He emphasizes that true stewardship goes beyond mere financial transactions; it's about living intentionally in every aspect of our lives. This episode dives deep into the idea that every vision inspired by faith should feel daunting, as it requires divine assistance to achieve. Larry's advice to embrace the 'freedom to fail' encourages listeners to step out boldly in faith, reminding us that failure is merely a stepping stone on the path to success. He expertly outlines how intentional living can lead to a fulfilling life aligned with God's purpose, offering practical tools and assessments to evaluate our stewardship and calling. This is a must-listen for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of stewardship and live a life of meaningful impact.

Takeaways:

• Larry O'Nan emphasizes the importance of viewing failures as opportunities for growth, stating that freedom to fail encourages us to take bold steps in our calling.
• The podcast discusses how true stewardship transcends financial giving; it encompasses living intentionally and utilizing all resources, skills, and talents for God's kingdom.
• Through personal anecdotes, Larry illustrates that God's visions often exceed our capabilities, encouraging listeners to embrace faith and trust in divine provision during challenging times.
• Intentional living requires proactive decision-making, where individuals commit to aligning their daily actions with spiritual values rather than drifting aimlessly through life.
• Larry shares insights on transforming the concept of stewardship from merely financial contributions to a holistic understanding of life's resources and responsibilities.
• The conversation highlights the significance of assessing one's stewardship practices, urging individuals to self-evaluate and improve their effectiveness in living out God's purpose.

Links referenced in this episode:

• larryonan.com
• amazon.com
• barnesandnoble.com
• booksamillion.com

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to Becoming Bridge Builders, the show where we bring together wisdom stories, practical tools to help build bridges between faith, life and calling and impact generosity.

And today I'm so honored I'm your host Keith Haney to have Larry Onan on who brings five decades of experience in ministry and consulting.

He served on the staff of Crew Campus Crusade for Christ for 18 years, spending 13 of those years designing fund development initiatives which raised over 150 million for global ministry.

As vice president of Stewardship Strategies and Management Development Associates, Larry has counseled Christian ministries, helped raise tens of millions of dollars.

He is the author of a new book, Giving Yourself Away.

I'm Going to Give Yourself Away is one book, An Intentional Living and Giving, his new book and he's helped create practical stewardship assessment tools across ministries.

He also serves as president of Andy Ant Production, Inc.

Bringing biblical values to children through engaging adventure books.

Larry is passion.

Larry's passion is clear to inspire and equip people to live as faithful stewards, experiencing the joy and abundance that come from aligning our lives with God's purpose.

Larry, welcome to the podcast.

Well, it's so good to be with you, Keith.

Thank you for the invitation.

Glad to visit.

This is one of the things I do in my current role, so I'm looking forward to talking about stewardship and helping the next generation to learn the blessings of what God has in store for us as his people.

So thank you for coming on.

Well, I'm glad to be a part of this today.

Thank you.

Someone asked you my favorite question, Larry, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Oh, the best piece of advice, probably when I was into my early days of ministry, I was quite fearful of what I was doing.

I just couldn't see how we were going to accomplish it.

And a friend of mine said, larry, you've always got the freedom to fail.

And I think sometimes we're afraid of failure because we see it as negative.

A failure only means you didn't quite get there the first time.

So reorganize it and do it again.

And to me, freedom to fail gives you freedom to step out and do things.

Freedom to fail.

I love that.

When I was in my last congregation in Milwaukee, I always told my congregation, we're going to fail a lot, but that's okay.

We're not going to stop trying.

And that's like, so I gave people permission to fail because if you're not failing, you're not trying so well, that's.

What happened to me, Keith, because up till that time, I was overwhelmed sometimes with the big visions that our ministry had at the time.

And I thought, how in the world can we ever do this?

I was being successful on things that I could get my hands around.

But when it got to be bigger than I put my hands around it, I commented to my mentor.

I said, I don't know how we're going to pull this off.

This is impossible.

And he looked at me and he said, larry, you've always got the freedom to fail.

We don't know what we're doing either.

But as with God's direction, we're going to see some great things happen.

So you've got the freedom to fail.

I give you permission.

Just go for it.

And that made a world of difference in my last 45 years of life, because I do that over and over and over again.

I help a lot of churches also with their strategy.

And we talk about the bigger vision that God has.

And I always tell congregations, if you have a vision from God, it's always going to be bigger than you are.

And so you have to realize that you should be afraid of the vision if it's from God.

If it's a vision you can accomplish without God's help, it's not from God.

And Keith, I think a lot of times in our culture today, we're afraid to step out and make things happen.

Yeah.

And we're.

We're willing to put it on a projectory of 10% growth, 15% growth.

We can live with that because that's what the business people tell you to do.

But real faith is stepping out onto some unknown things.

Remember, there was an old guy when you.

We called him Moses back in the Old Testament.

And you can imagine what he felt like when he was standing on the edge of the Red Sea and God said, now stretch out your hand.

And the waters parted.

Moses had no clue what was going to happen.

He was visualizing a million or 2 million people drowning in the ocean or in the water.

And I think what happens many times is we've got to say, okay, if God is leading, then God's going to provide.

Now, I don't want us to do stupid things and get ourselves into ridiculous trouble and then blame God for what we end up doing or not doing.

But I think a lot of times we're afraid to step out in faith because we are afraid of what the consequences might be.

And he was faced with really two unpopular choices.

Drown or get crushed by the Egyptians that were behind him.

So it's like neither of these two Options look really good.

Yeah.

I mean, when they were out of water, what did he do?

He was up against it and he tapped the huge rock and water came out.

I mean, the things that you would not think is possible.

And I'm not one that believes that we got to live on the edge of disaster, but I think we've got to be believing God for bigger things.

And in my culture today, as I look back, I see a lot of people not wanting to believe for very much.

They're just wanting to get by, unfortunately.

Maybe we can talk some about that as we're involving ourselves today.

We will.

Let's get into your book title.

I love the title of your book, Intentional Living and Giving.

What compel you to write this book, especially at this season of your life in ministry?

Well, I wasn't planning on doing this one.

I had already spent 45 years.

I'd written a book that was similar in nature back in the 80s.

But I was at a meeting in Belfast, Ireland, and I was with a group of Europeans.

They were.

I was the only American in the mix and there was probably a dozen of us.

And they were contemplating.

That was difficult to find sound, logical, pure biblical content about biblical stewardship because they were looking around for it, trying to find it.

Unfortunately, stewardship has always got its wrinkles where people taking advantage of the idea and have made it for themselves rather than for God's kingdom.

And they were just reminiscing.

And I thought, you know, here's a young generation, the alpha and the Z's.

Probably the oldest one in the room was a guy, 45, maybe 50, and myself and the rest of them were young whippersnappers, go to speak, you know, And I thought, I need to go back and retool and get this for another generation, because there is teeth, there's content here that is very helpful to everyday living, practical living.

The word intentional is very important part of that title.

And I think a lot of times living and giving always think that sounds pretty cool.

But intentionality says, I'm going to get up in the morning and I'm going to accomplish things.

I'm going to do things right.

I'm going to make decisions that will benefit the overall kingdom.

Intentionality is saying, I'm going to do this and I'm going to take the initiative to make something happen.

It's rather than just waking up and thinking, okay, what's God got in store for me today?

I'm just going to float by it and his spirit's going to lead me Here, there and everywhere.

I do believe there is a very great degree where God's spirit's leading you a lot.

But I think intentionality on our part is going to get us much closer to our goals.

So intentional is really there because I want people to think twice and then act with an intentional spirit about how they go about living life.

So the book title, and then the audience of young generation people, and then just the realization that we have got a very skewed and unhealthy view of stewardship in our culture.

I would say if you surveyed most pastors and most Christian leaders, they would equate stewardship with the word money and finance.

And that is so far from biblical truth.

It's on.

That's what I thought it was.

I'm a preacher's kid by my heritage, and dad hated speaking about money, but he would do it one to three times a year because the people needed to give more.

And it was all about, how can I ratchet up the appeal to where we can get them up to tithe and can we ever get them there?

And that was an Old Testament mandate for the children of Israel, but it wasn't a mandate for the New Testament.

In fact, Jesus raised the bar on that when he was asked about that very question.

And he said, to whom much is given, much is also required.

Boy, that takes the lid off of tithing.

Because an effective steward is not going to be thinking about 10.

He's thinking about impact.

How can I make the greatest difference with what I give?

And it may not be money that he's given.

It could be many other things.

There's over 100 things that you and I, Keith, could give today.

And money is one of those things.

Now, there is a reason why money is in that list, but it's the Old Testament reason that God gave to the Israelites.

In Deuteronomy, he said, I don't need your money.

This is Larry's.

Larry's translation.

I don't need your money.

You know, that was really basically God saying, I'm not poor and I don't need what you got, but I need to teach you how to keep me first in all things.

So I'm going to require you to give some resources so you know where they came from.

And so I think really what happens in our life is we don't often realize that money is a teacher, but it's not.

It's not something you're not making God feel good because you just give me money.

In fact, he owns the cattle on a Thousand Hills.

So what's your little bank account going to be to him?

But.

But the point of it is it's one of those many things that we can get.

But that's a story how I got into this subject because, Keith, this was not my plan in life.

I can imagine.

So let's talk about intentional living and how it differs from just being generous or even doing good works as we, like you talk about.

We kind of get into that.

We want to preach generosity, but is it really more about intentional living versus generosity?

I think the word generosity has got a bad rap in here because we think that's a lot of money, that's a lot of something.

When I'm being generous, I'm giving you beyond what you thought I might give.

I may not be giving you what you think I could give, but in your mind, if I'm being generous, it's something that you were not expecting.

So it's actually on the receiver side that you would call me generous.

I worked with a number of very wealthy stewards in my experience in ministry, and I knew guys that were giving significant dollars.

One guy told me one time, he said, I cannot begin to give even 10% to my church.

He says if I did that, I would overwhelm the church with money and they do not know my capacity.

He says, I'm looking for a lot of places to invest in the kingdom, and I'm being what they call generous.

But to me, it's just one of many places I'm giving.

And in his experience, he told me, he says I gave him $100,000 for a building program.

My family had given him money in the past, and they call that generous giving.

He said, but if I was being generous, that would overwhelm him.

And he says, everybody needs to be involved in the church ministry, not just me.

So he said, I will never tell them how much I can give.

But I do know over a five year period, he cash flowed about $48 million into Kingdom work.

And never once did the church realize he had that kind of capacity.

Now, maybe that's where he became generous was in his larger giving to the church.

They were calling the gift that they gave a 5 or 10,000 once in a while generous.

But he says, I cannot go that route because my responsibility as a steward is kingdom work, not just a building work in my hometown.

And so I think we got to look at it perspectively.

To whom much is given, much is required.

In this particular guy's case, he had much given and he was expected to Give much.

And I think we've got to be looking at very carefully that generosity again.

It's.

It's back on what the receiver anticipates.

So if I gave a missionary $500 today, he'd call that a generous gift because he was not expecting me to do that.

To me, I could have given him $10,000 maybe, but he didn't know that.

Right, Exactly.

And so I think it's a perspective, and we call generous something that we think is unprecedented or unexpected or way over the top.

So you could be generous in your time.

You can be generous with your skills.

You could be generous with your counsel and your advice.

There's a lot of ways that you can help people with the resources that God's entrusted to you.

But I think it really comes back to what is meant by the term steward.

I mean, when you realize that the.

In my mind, the steward was just a guy that was working on paper and pushing numbers.

I mean, I. I thought that was a little bit of the picture.

But, Keith, my experience was.

First of all, you got to realize I was a theater arts major in college.

I thought I was going to be in Hollywood or I was going to be in New York City.

I just knew that I wanted to get into directing.

I'd spent five years of my life.

I was a junior at the University of Colorado, and I was sitting in a classroom, and I was realizing the 25 of us that were all theater majors were really acting 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

We had taken the skill to where we were no longer real to ourselves or anybody else.

We knew how to play it.

We knew how to orchestrate the theater to where you would weep.

We knew how to do all those things.

And I sat there one day, and this was a crisis point to me because this is what I thought I was going to do.

And I thought, this is unreal when we're all acting all the time.

There's got to be more to life than being an actor on a stage.

And I started looking for what is life really all about?

Now, I didn't have that question in mind, but I knew there was something missing.

And it was probably a few weeks later that the real change started to occur when I started to realize it was a spiritual issue with me.

Now I'm a preacher's kid.

I was born burped in the church.

I mean, I've been around all of that stuff, but it was performance.

And it was also to a performance to the degree that how you perform made a Great deal of difference on what people thought your spirituality was.

So how I you acted.

And I would even watch my parents argue all the way to the church until they got to the church and opened the car door and, and then they would be smile and gracious and happy and joyful into the Lord.

But in the car, backseat driver here, number four years of age, I thought, this is different than when you open the door and get out in front of the people, right?

How many people are acting that way?

Well, we are all actors.

I got into acting because I could actually take on parts and personalities that my, my, my culture, my parents, my friends really didn't care for.

But on stage, I could be a wicked person for 15 or 20 minutes doing something.

And I got into that and I thought, this is kind of fun to put on another personality and be something I'm not.

But it was really not until I came in touch with genuine Christianity that was personal and transformative in my life as a junior, of all places.

University of Colorado, it's not known as the spiritual haven in the Rocky Mountains.

It's known as the party school.

And I started to realize through that experience there on campus that there was a transformation occurring in me.

And that brought me into a ministry type of focus a few years later.

But even there, I was really winging it most of the time.

I was in my early 20s, I was trying things out, they were working.

I was starting to discover who I really was.

But my gosh, I never anticipated ever getting into the area of stewardship.

I did that really on an assignment basis.

Keith it was a time when I had lost my job in a very unusual way.

I was engineering, doing stage management for a huge event in Dallas, Texas, and there was 80,000 people in the stadium.

It was one of the largest things that had ever been pulled off in a Christian culture thing.

And I heard announcement of a new guy taking over what I'd been doing for five years.

And I thought I just lost my job.

While I'm doing my job, nobody had ever talked to me.

They had never sat down and said, larry, we're making some changes.

You know, it was kind of like an aha moment.

And I never went back to that job when from that day forward I was out of it.

And that was an earth shaking experience because we all go through those times when we think.

I thought life was heading this direction and now I'm being abruptly changed and I'm going left or I'm going right or I'm come to a complete stop and I Was in that mode.

And that's where the vice president of the organization I was with said, I've got a problem, Larry.

This is 90 days after that experience in Dallas.

He said, come to my office.

I want to show you something.

So I went to his office, took another guy that had just met 15 minutes before.

So I had no clue what his abilities were.

He didn't know who I was.

We were just there to do whatever we're asked to do.

And he says, come to my bathroom.

And in this particular environment, his hotel, he had a hotel room for his office, and every hotel room had a bathroom.

And he pulled back the shower curtain in his bathroom, and there were 30 boxes of cards.

He said, this is the pledge cards.

The commitments that were made 90 days ago.

They've never been opened.

I don't know what to do with them.

There's nobody to assign it to.

Could you guys take these 30 boxes and see if we can fulfill the commitments that were made by, of all people, teenagers?

It was worth about $2 million in income if we could get it to work.

And we had no clue what we were doing.

There was no guidebook, There was no counsel.

There was no, don't do this or do this.

And we said, yeah, let's take the boxes and try to figure out what we're going to do here.

Well, what we figured out was a way to exceed the pledge amount within a year.

Now, we did not know what we were doing, but I was following a.

My skill package was say, take.

Take something from nothing and make it into something.

I'm pretty good at that.

And those 30 boxes became, here is our new challenge with no roadmap, no guidance, no direction, nobody checking up on us.

Just see what we can do.

And we, by God's grace, were successful in that.

That started taking me down a road of.

I thought, what is called fundraising in those days, and it's still known in most organizations.

I don't really believe in fundraising.

I believe in fund development.

Fundraising has always got an exchange going on.

You know, you do this for me, and I'll do this for you.

Maybe some of the ads on television, you'll see it tonight, probably around Christmas.

I've seen it a dozen times this year as we get into the Christmas season.

And if you will give a gift to this organization, they will send you a blanket or a T shirt or a mug or something.

The exchange is, you've got something tangible in exchange for your gift.

Now, there's nothing sinful about that, but it's a Very difficult way of raising money because you got to pay for the blanket or the T shirt of the mug.

I mean, you get on a treadmill and you can't get off of this thing because if you don't give them another gift, they won't give you more money.

It just.

It's crazy.

But I was doing that well, I mean, we were making it work.

I went into a meeting and I was the low man on the totem pole and about 10 or 12 people.

But there was talk about raising significant new money for the Great Commission, and the proposal from the consultants resources could actually be done.

But in order to do this, you need to start teaching what lifestyle stewardship is and help stewards become effective in their stewardship.

And nobody wanted to start anything new like that.

They just were trying to raise significant money.

And in the discussion that went on, he was not going very far.

And I was sitting there just listening to these leaders talk about this.

And I know somebody in the room, I don't know even who it was today said, let's assign this task to Larry and figure out what lifestyle stewardship really is and how it might influence our ministry.

Well, I later realized that that was a ploy to get off the topic, and they really were not expecting me to do anything with that assignment.

But I wrote down on the yellow pad of paper, what is lifestyle stewardship and how does it impact what we're doing?

And then I wrote at the bottom of that yellow pad, you got the freedom to fail.

And I. I took that page back, and four or five weeks later, nobody had called me about the question.

Nobody had said, what you're going to be starting to do on it.

And I brought some of my leaders together.

I was building quite a good team.

And I said, we need to figure this out.

What the consultants were saying can make a big difference in how we do our job.

If we learned how to do this and we literally took scripture time to study scripture and say, what is stewardship really mean?

And how does it impact our culture and how would it impact us?

And what we learned in that time of study and putting together a.

The principles that you would find in intentional living and giving.

It transformed everything we did.

We no longer had donors.

That's a term you'll hear in a commonplace.

Even churches talk about the donors to the church.

Donors are always stuck by a needle.

And they give a sugar.

They're given a sugar sugar cookie at the end of their stay.

That's drawing blood from people.

And that hurts a little bit.

But the appeal does it because you want to put the people into a mode of this is the obligation you've got before the Lord.

We got to do this right, that you got to make this pledge.

I mean, there's all kinds of language out there.

And this started to transform us personally as couples.

We were all married and we started applying this and we started saying, this is transforming our way of thinking.

And then we started teaching it to other people.

I remember Keith, there was one guy that had just sold his business and his goal in life, in retirement was to join the ministry that I was with so he could work with executives.

And he came to a weekend conference and he shared that on the first evening I met him and he said, we just retired and we're going to do this for the rest of our life and we're looking forward to learning all we can this weekend.

And he went through a three hour session with me on stewardship that I was teaching.

And at the end of the morning he came up and he said, we changed our mind.

He said, what I know I am doing good at as a steward is I know how to make money.

I've always done well.

I sold my business, I don't need more money, but I know how to make it.

I know how to generate funds from business.

So my wife and I are not going to come on the staff of this organization.

We're going to go back and start another business.

And all of the business proceeds and the profitability of that business will go to the Great Commission.

And so he went back, started a new business, made it extremely successful.

Within two years he was making money again, did that for about a decade, sold that business and in the meantime was given significant dollars every year from the proceeds, sold it again.

And then he told me about a decade later, I still want to try going into full time ministry.

And I've already done this.

So I'm going to come now in retirement and I want to serve and get more executives going.

But you see, the transformation came is I know what I am.

God's created me in a unique way.

I understand the principles behind stewardship and I should be doing what God created me to be.

And that wasn't to do what he wanted to go play with at that time.

And his reinvestment put tens of thousands, if not a couple more million dollars into the kingdom enterprise around the world because he was faithful in doing what the steward was supposed to do.

I love that.

That is the life transformation that happens.

So people says, well, I should be in ministry.

Well, Maybe you shouldn't be.

Maybe you're already in ministry and don't know it.

And it's called your business, right?

But if you think you own it, you're wrong.

You're the steward of what God's entrusted you with.

And I think that's where people get hung up.

They don't realize they don't own anything.

Now, Keith, here in California, I have a house.

The state of California charges me taxes.

They're about due this time of year.

So I'm very familiar with that particular deal.

I've got an suv.

I'm registered in the state of California as the owner, because that's a legal term.

I don't own any clothes in this house.

And that doesn't mean I don't wear them.

It doesn't mean I have.

I have a car in the garage, an suv, and I drive it regularly.

It's an older car, but it's do really good shape.

I've got a house that I'm caring for, but those are not mine.

They all belong to the owner.

I am simply the steward taking care of what's been entrusted to me.

And when I start to realize that, and then I start to realize that not only did that God made me in his image.

It says in scripture, let's make man in our image.

There were probably a number of things that would be in this thing, but one of the things was generosity and givers.

God so loved the world that what did he do?

He gave his only begotten son.

So I want mankind to become givers.

I want them to do it joyfully.

I want them to do it because they.

They want to do it.

It's a.

An outcome of their growth.

So giving is not something that I should be pressured to feel.

It's something that I should be looking for opportunities to do.

He says, I also want mankind to start asking me.

Now.

It's not because God doesn't know anything.

And so when I, when I'm in prayer, it's not because I'm surprising with a prayer request that he didn't already know about.

But he says, I want you to start asking me, and I want you to start asking others.

Because as you ask, you're asking, you shall receive that your joy might be made complete.

And I ask him and I'm asking others.

Ironically, sometimes we don't ask others to help participate in what we're doing.

And then I also know there's a point called the law of the harvest, understanding what happens and how long it takes to grow Something.

Now, the people in the New Testament period, when Jesus was giving parables, he gave talent parables.

He talked about the sower sowing, and he talked about other things like that because they understood that in their culture that was what they did.

But a farmer does not just plant and leave.

A farmer takes care of what he planted.

And it takes him sometimes three to four months before he sees the harvest.

And then he rallies to get the harvest while it's the right time to gather the harvest.

And then he allows the ground to go follow for just a little bit of time, rest, and then he starts plowing it again and preparing the soil for the next harvest.

He was saying.

He was saying, watch the farmer and do what he does.

It takes time for a harvest to come in, and it takes responsibility of the steward to ensure a good harvest.

So when I put these principles together there.

There's five principles that I outline in the book for anybody to pick up on.

The last one is that God's an abundant provider.

But I also believe that God's an abundant provider, but he's not going to waste his stuff on people that are not good stewards.

So a lot of time, the capacity of what God gives you is based on how you're already treating things in the first place.

And he's just not going to be dumping onto you what you're not able to handle.

You know, the friends that these generous people with significant dollars were proven by the Lord to be able to handle their money wisely.

And so he was able to entrust them to continue to cash flow to the needs of many other people through them.

But what ended up happening is I started realizing that I am a steward and I live that life.

It's a lifestyle of realizing who owns what.

It's not a mistake that I'm doing what I'm doing at my age and I'm glad to get up every morning and every day is God, what you've got in store for me as a steward today?

What can I do to advance what you called me to do?

And it's different than what you're called to do.

We are not clones.

We're uniquely and wonderfully made.

But we're two different individuals and people listening to us to talk today.

They're all unique from us, right?

But they are all stewards.

Can I help you be effective in your stewardship so that you're living an abundant life and thriving?

I didn't say a wonderful life with a lot of stuff, but an abundant life is just in a life that says, I'm doing exactly what the steward is supposed to do.

And if you're doing that, you can live a contented life every single day of the year, that's great.

If not, you're always on the edge and you're nervous and you're wondering if you did it right.

And you're always second guessing God and second guessing yourself.

That's a miserable way to live.

You're making big mistakes, you're making impulsive decisions.

How many marriages were made on the impulse of I think I love her or I think I love him and realize that was all just feelings?

And I made a big mistake because I really never dealt with the issue in a serious way.

I was too anxious to get to the end of the experience rather than to know if that's what God wanted me to do.

So that's what I'm excited about.

Keith is helping people get there.

And it happened because I learned it personally.

And the book is just really a expression of what we as a team of people work together 35, 40 years ago.

And we've expressed it in many different ways.

And the book Intentional Living and Giving is just one more source of where you can tap into that information.

It is transformative in your thinking if you're really digging into it correctly.

So you have a bunch of assessment tools you developed.

And I want to know one of the key questions people should be asking themselves to really evaluate their current stewardship.

Well, what I did, a friend of mine and I, in our mid-80s, were working together and we realized that diagnostic tools are really helpful things to get handles on things.

And there's a number of organizations that give you diagnostic type help.

And I'm really big on a few of those.

The Gallup Strength Finders is an example of those.

Because it really helps you have language to help you know who you really are and how you.

How you work in your strengths.

And I believe that a steward needs to specialize in his strengths.

That does not mean the steward can't do something that he's not good at, because some of us are equipped.

And, you know, I'm not good at just finances per se.

You know, I don't like numbers as a person.

You give me numbers, I can do them.

But you know what happens to me in an hour and a half of working on numbers?

I am tired, I bet, because I'm doing something that I have the capacity to do, but not really the skill package to do it well.

So I believe in that.

Well, a stewardship is the same way so you know, when you think, okay, if I'm a steward, what does that involve?

Well, I've got one tool that anybody that's listening to us, Keith, can tap into it.

It's available for free on my website, valerianand.com it's called the Personal Stewardship Inventory, is 15 statements, and you evaluate yourself on where you're at in those 15 statements.

Probably takes 10 minutes to complete this assessment.

So you're not spending an hour or two doing something really difficult.

And then we automatically, through that technology, we can also give you a score grade and tell you where you're strong and where you're weak and say, these are things that you could focus on right now, and these are things you may want to look at later.

And here is helpful resources to help you get where you need to be based on what you've done on the.

The assessment.

So the assessments, asking questions and asking you for your own feedback and how you answer those questions, Keith, in your role and how I answer those could be different because we're not all thinking the same.

But I can also, through that process, give you some tips on how you move ahead personally.

So the Personal Stewardship Inventory, I just made it available to anybody that wants to assess themselves.

And within 10, 15 minutes of taking that little assessment, you will have a very good handle on, okay, I need to work on or I need to do this.

And we're trying to help you start to jumpstart you in the right direction.

Now, we did a church assessment tool for the organization.

We did one for ministries.

There's one that we college students years ago used this from quite a little bit.

It's called the Personal Success Inventory.

How do you know when you're going to be successful in life?

What are the characteristics of being successful?

And one of those dynamics.

And people would never hit the high mark unless they really got their spiritual life in alignment, because success in God's category is also spiritually growing.

But this Personal Stewardship Inventory is what's available there.

And it just really helps you start to say, okay, if I really want to be an effective steward, I need to know where I stand on the grade, so to speak.

And the grade is going to help me say, I need to focus on these two or three things.

Now I can focus on other things later.

But now I've got a little bit of a prescription on what I need to do next or where I need to go get help next.

Because the answer is number.

Number one is the answer is, yes, you are a steward.

Keep believe it or not, everybody listening to us is a steward.

You can't get out of that job.

But either you're going to be an effective steward or you're going to be a disaster.

What do you want to be?

Right.

You're going to be on one spectrum or the other.

And if you're on the disaster side, that doesn't mean you're failing.

It means you've got some work to do.

But you could become really good at being a steward.

We just got to realign some things with you.

You know, students take tests in schools to see how much they've acquired in terms of knowledge.

Now, that doesn't mean they have wisdom.

It means they know how to spell words if that's what you're doing in a spelling test.

Everything that a student is doing is to adjust on how he's intaking information.

The wisdom is going to come on how he applies that information a little bit later.

So assessments help us always know where we're at.

A few times an assessment can give us a grade or an award, and those things are kind of fun to get.

There may be sometimes a carrot to get you to do a good job and something.

Yes, there's places for that.

But the Personal Stewardship Inventory is just one of those tools that I've been able to create.

And it really has helped so many people just pick themselves up and say, okay, this is.

If this is who I am, how well am I doing?

And it's like we've seen the old ad on television these days.

How's your blood pressure?

How is your heart?

Is a question, I guess.

Well, you can't see your heart working.

You don't know how it's working.

But with a little diagnostic, you can say, I'm really doing better than I thought it was, or maybe I should be a little bit more cautious and change some things in my life.

If I have a rhythm problem and other issues, that's all the assessment is going to do for you.

It's not going to change your life, but it's going to help you get onto a track of success and heading in the right direction that you want to go.

So, yeah, it's a.

It's a tool.

That's what it is.

And the other ones are tools as well, but they do different things for different objectives.

That's awesome, Larry.

This has been a phenomenal concept.

I'm going to ask you my other favorite question as we kind of wrap things up.

What do you want your legacy to be?

I want people to say, Larry, helped me become effective in my giving and my receiving and my life.

I want to say Larry's content helped me be successful in these areas and I'm a better steward as a result.

Now with my grandkids, I want them to say, oh, I love grandpa.

But even my grandkids, I'm trying to implement stewardship philosophy into their mindset.

I've got a 23 year old and a 20 year old.

Both of them are college, both of them are heading toward ministry type objectives.

I want them to be totally engaged, the stewards and doing a really good job of that.

So I'm just, I'm just, I'm wanting to help people give themselves away.

Wow, that's great.

Where can people find you your website and connect with you on social media?

Well, if you know they can do that, they can go to LarryOnan.com just l a r y o n a n dot com.

That's where they'll find the personal Stewardship Inventory.

They can take it today.

You could also purchase books there, but for many people the best way to buy the book is go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Books A Million.

Wherever you buy books, you're going to find intentional living and giving and you can pick up copies there.

If you're really into stewardship and you want to help others.

I've done small group study guides that are available at my website.

So you could actually run a 10 week small group study around the subject.

And what that does is it jump starts people thinking as to why they need more help in that area.

This is not the answer to your financial message.

You might created and I, I'm big on teaching people that stuff.

But this is jump starting the, the right mindset to be an effective steward.

Other steps are going to come along where you learn how to manage resources and you learn how to manage time and you become effective in using your, your skills and your abilities.

But we've got to get you aligned to where you can be effective in the first place.

So you know, in giving, intentional living and giving is going to help them that way.

There's other resources.

I do some blogging on my website.

I, I'm on Facebook as well with Intentional living and giving.

So there's other resources out there.

You know, another part of my life is into kids.

I'm really big on helping kids and their values and there's a series of children's books that my brother actually authored and I've been promoting because they're helping kids think through biblical values and outcomes and virtues.

And that's called Andy the Adventures of Andy Ant.

He's a fourth grade aunt that teaches a fourth grade boy how to live life.

And it's they're fun books.

They're, you know, for three to ten year olds.

But, you know, the goal in all of this is can I help people become effective in their lifestyle of stewardship?

Not how much money you give.

That's another issue.

We're gonna, we can talk about that at some other time.

That's a separate topic.

The fact of it is you're a steward.

Can I help you become an effective steward?

Well, Larry, thanks so much for taking the time to share what you do and your passion for this with our audience.

And we thank you, Larry, for sharing your wisdom, your heartfelt biblical stewardship and intentional living.

And your book.

Intentional Living and Giving is a timely guide for anyone seeking to align their will with life with God's purposes.

Experience joy in being a faithful steward.

If this podcast has inspired you, motivated you, subscribe, review, leave a review, share it with one of your friends so they can also be a better steward.

Larry, again, thank you again for your time and for sharing your heart and giving of yourself and being a faithful living steward for us.

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

It's great to be with you today.

Keith.

Blessings, Blessings.

That was.