Heather M. Day is an author, speaker, and communication expert with more than 25 years of experience in the fields of marketing, communications, and nonprofit ministry.

In addition to writing corporate, marketing, and fundraising content for more than 200 nonprofit organizations, her writing has been featured in Christian Leadership Alliance’s Outcomes magazine, Generosity Today, and Olivet the Magazine. She is the author of Money and Spirit: Surrendering Our Finances to the Work of the Holy Spirit. She blogs regularly about life, motherhood, marriage, and leadership at http://HeatherDay.net .

Heather has spent the bulk of her career in the nonprofit arena, including in her current role as Director of Marketing for Barnabas Foundation. She has also served as Director of Marketing Communications for Olivet Nazarene University and Lead Like Jesus. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and an Executive MBA from Olivet Nazarene University.

Heather and her husband, Robert, reside in Bourbonnais, Illinois, with their two children, Emma and Jackson. She is an active member, board member, and volunteer leader in her local church.

Website: https://heatherday.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HeatherDayCommunication

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherdaymba/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heather.m.day/

Welcome to 12-minute convos with Jesus Believers.

God chose first to have a conversation with us, his creation.

His truth spoken in one moment became an evergreen seed for our generation today.

The power of a conversation is eternal.

Our prayer is that this listening space brings growth and transforms your life forever.

Good day, Heather.

How are you doing today?

Good.

How are you?

I'm as excellent as can be.

It's a great pleasure to connect with you.

What parts of the world are you in today?

I am just south of Chicago, Illinois.

I'm about 20 minutes south of the city.

All right.

All right.

Sounds good.

Sounds good.

How's the weather?

I know it's been like a ton of snow going on.

It is so cold.

I am very ready to be done with the cold weather.

Do you want to come to the Caribbean?

I'm here right now.

I would love nothing more than to be in the Caribbean right now.

If that's an invitation, I'm going to hop on a plane right now.

Go for it.

Get that plane booked.

I mean, just from the onset of our conversation, I'm getting that it doesn't take long for you to fit into a room and in tutus, get to meet someone and you're off in conversations.

Is that accurate?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

I'm a pastor's kid.

So from a very early age, I was around a lot of people in different homes every week.

So it's really natural for me to just get to know people and strike up a conversation.

On your blog, you're sharing things that some people would think is very out there in terms of the vulnerability.

Yeah.

Did that stem from being a pastor's kid as well?

I think partially that came from that.

But also I have just found over the years that the more authentic I am, when people have been real with me, it's ministered to me.

And I found that when I am honest about my journey and the things that God is teaching me, it's amazing how I've had people come to me and talk about how it spoke to them because they could relate with who I am and what I was going through.

You're also an amazing storyteller.

What I was reading, you shared one thing, and my bank account is in low cash mode.

Did anyone ever tell you about that as well?

Am I the first person that's speaking about that?

That's something that I've been affirmed at.

And then that's part of why I continue to do it is that people have said that they can see themselves in the stories I tell.

Because honestly, I don't feel like I have that exciting of a life or that exciting of experiences, but I just share from the everyday and what God is teaching me in the middle of the ups and downs.

I'm intrigued by the fact that you then had to do a gastric bypass, right?

What was it like at the crossroads?

I'm a firstborn daughter.

Achievement is big to me.

I want to meet goals and constantly.

And I'm also like, again, like coming from a pastoral family, I have wonderful parents that were always serving others.

And so that's very natural for me to take care of others.

And sometimes what's got lost in the sauce, as my kids have said lately, is taking time to take care of myself.

I don't have the greatest genetics.

My family has struggled with weight over the years.

And in spite of my best efforts, I just felt like I kept hitting a wall and not reaching the health that I wanted to have.

I'm not feeling good about myself.

With my doctor's recommendation, I decided that I need to do something that I tell other people to do.

And that's to ask for help and accept help.

Given your ups and downs, given your past and present and future, being branded as a pastor's daughter, you said that a few times, right?

Like what's the evolution been for you today?

I'm the oldest of four.

So the pastor's kids is like we all have had our different experiences.

For me, it was a very positive experience.

But also I have seen I have been blessed by the church.

I've been taking care of the church.

But I've also had an inside look at some of the ugliness.

Sometimes that can happen behind the scenes and people that have let me down or let my family down.

And yet I found that as imperfect as the church can be at times, there's no place where I've found greater community.

It is the bride of Christ.

And I have found that even though the church is made up of imperfect people that can not always live up to what we're supposed to be, God has been faithful.

And he has never once let me down.

So I've had to navigate those ups and downs of just what that looks like to be in an imperfect community and yet know that even when the hard times come, that God is good and that he is faithful and he's walking right there beside me.

Is there any question you want to ask?

I'm curious, what is your main goal in doing this broadcast?

And what do you hope that would come out of it?

Oh, that's good.

I've given everything to God in terms of how I live my life.

And I wait for these messages, yeah, that align with parts of me that I know is uniquely built in terms of goal setting.

And the most recent message is to have 5,000 conversations with Jesus believers.

What I have been doing, which is a lot different from what I was doing, is having guests lead with prayer and let's see what happens, yeah, and not attempt to do things that I would usually do to power the thing, yeah, to make it happen.

So that's where I am and hoping that it really helps others pursue excellence because your voice, your story has already impacted my life.

So if we put that out there, yeah, let's see what it does then.

I love that.

I love that.

Yeah, somebody's just said this to me recently, and it's not a new thought, but I've just refocused on it.

I've tried to make it part of my daily morning routine now to ask God, what do you want me to do today?

Who do you want me to speak to?

What are the things you want me to say?

Who do I need to listen?

Help me have my eyes open and my ears tuned to what you want to do with me today.

And it's important because like you said, we can get so focused on all the things we need to accomplish that we can go through a whole day and miss the bigger picture, which is just to be obedient to God and how he wants to use us to do his great work.

Yeah, let's do it.

I mean, there are tons of things that we don't need to do the way we needed to do it.

I don't have to plant food the way we had to, right, long ago.

I get running water.

The least I could do is give him a bit more, yeah, is my thinking.

Absolutely.

You talked about listening to audio.

Is your book in audio?

And did you read it, Money and Spirit Surrounding Our Finances?

It is not in audio yet, but I would love to do that because I know that that's a big portion of how I consume media.

So I would love to put that in audio form.

Yeah, and I would like to listen to it as well.

And I think your voice sits really, really nice, yeah, in terms of listening.

Yeah, so you should definitely go for that.

How's that been the response to the book, Money and Spirit?

It's been good.

I've had conversations with people that have just surprised me.

I didn't know that they had read it or and they picked it up somewhere and they just told me about how God opened their eyes to how he wanted to work in their finances.

I had one friend of ours that was particularly surprising because he doesn't talk a lot about spiritual things or anything like that.

And he told me how he had seen money as this thing that was out of bounds for what he could pray about.

And he said, through my book, he realized that it's something that he could bring his concerns to God in prayer.

And that was freeing for him because all of a sudden something that he thought he just had to worry and carry on his own that God wanted to be involved in it and help him find peace and find joy, even in his finances.

Very cool.

Future you's listening to this conversation five years from today, what's the message you'd leave for that version of Heather?

I would just, future me, I would love to remind myself that even in the uncertainty of today, that I know that God is faithful.

And I would hope future me would be able to look back and say, you know, I would be able to see all the many ways that God has worked in this time of transition and uncertainty.

Love that.

Well, amazing audience, if you're listening and Heather's voice has captured you, you want to learn more.

Of course, 12 minutes can never do justice to everything that she's been doing and has done.

You can definitely check out our website.

There are tons of links there, LinkedIn, Instagram.

Heather, thank you for being here.

A pleasure I treasure.

Thank you for being what is inspired by 12 Minute Chronicles.