Classic Episode Welcome

Announcer 0:01

Welcome to the Leading Conversations Classic Podcast. We've searched through our early episodes to find some of the best just for you. If you've been with us from the beginning, you may have heard some of these. If you haven't, enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to the Leading Conversations Podcast, sponsored by the Excel Leadership Network. On each episode, JD Pering will have conversations with church planting pastors and leaders from around the country. You can learn more about how to connect with Excel at the end of this podcast. Let's join JD now and listen in on this leading conversation.

The Day Everything Changed

J.D. Pearring 0:45

It's time for another Excel Leadership Network Leading Conversations podcast. And today we have the amazing, the wonderful, the brilliant David Bennett with us all the way from uh Texas. Are you in Texas today, Dave? I am in Texas. Okay, good, good. Everything's better in Texas. Is that what they say?

Dave Bennett 1:06

Well, that's what they say. I like wherever I happen to be, but Texas today is the best place to be.

J.D. Pearring 1:14

Well, good for you. I I beg to differ, but most of the time I agree with Dave, and Dave has had huge impact on my life, my family, uh, my finances, our life. Um, so thanks for being with us.

Dave Bennett 1:31

Yeah, definitely glad to be here. Hey, tell us your story. Probably the most um life-changing thing that happened, other than salvation, and probably other than getting married to my bride of 35 years, is that um two simple sentences that really changed the course of my life. And you know, I can still remember those two sentences uh like they were yesterday. I mean, even us talking about it, I can still feel the shock that went through my body that day and kind of get some aftermath of that and can kind of feel it today because it was that day in um 1996 that I heard those two life-changing sentences. The first one was, young man, you have malignant melanoma, and the second sentence was you'll be dead in two years, and then he quietly walked out. And of course, being the good Christian that I was, uh, my thoughts immediately went to God. And I thought, God, how in the world could you let this happen to me? I've done more in ministry in the last two years than I have my entire life. We were raising millions of dollars. Um, I have two preschool kids and they're gonna grow up without a dad. That's not right. Where's the justice in that? And the Bible says you'll never leave us or forsake us. But at that very moment, I really did feel abandoned by God and um felt alone, um, and really wondered which way to go. Um, over the next uh probably six months, I began to see God show up. It's amazing how God really is at work all around us. Um six months after I heard those words on August 13, I went out to my mailbox and pulled out a little postcard. And I'll never forget it. Don't remember the exact words, but sure remember the message, that my classmate Rusty had just died of melanoma, my cancer. And I just thought immediately, Lord, why would you take Rusty and leave me? I mean, he had a ministry, people that needed him, a family, people that depended on him. And why did you take him and leave me? I mean, if I were in charge with everything Rusty was doing, I would have taken me and left him if I had a choice. Um, but I'm not in charge of those things. But at that very moment, I thought, well, maybe God's giving me an answer right in my question. You know, why did you leave me here and take Rusty? Well, God was saying, Um I did leave you here for a reason. And I don't always know what that reason is, but every morning when I wake up, I just look up at the ceiling and go, wow, God, thanks for one more day of life. I mean, I shouldn't be here today. Uh, that was in '96. So in 98, I shouldn't have been alive. Um, so every day is just a bonus day. And I think whether we're two or 102, the reason any of us are here is because God wants us to be here. Um uh as uh when our work's done, he's gonna take us home to be with him in heaven. So just say, Lord, you've given me one more day. How do you want me to use it for you? And it's kind of spooky at times, just the people he brings to mind that I just need to reach out to. And, you know, they may need prayer at that point, or they may be going through whatever kind of situation. The second way I saw God show up was um actually uh when another doctor came in.

Surgery And The Power Of Prayer

Dave Bennett 5:26

After the first doctor left pretty abruptly, another guy came in and he said these words in order to save your life, and he had my attention then. My wife says, Nobody has ever got my undivided attention, unless I have a remote control in my hand, then I guess the TV does. But um he had my undivided attention that day. And he said, we need to do a radical neck dissection. Now, if there's anybody listening that happens to be in the medical profession, I am taking what the doctor said and it's sifting through my financial brain, and it just comes out. So it may be grossly inaccurate. But um, I said, What in the world is a radical? Whatever you said, Doc. And he said, Well, we're we need to make sure we have all the infection out, all the cancer. So we're gonna cut you around your neck and up your chin, cut you across your shoulder, lift up the skin, and scoop out everything in the middle. And I said, Could you tell me what everything is? And he said, Well, we're gonna take out the muscle that goes alongside your neck. It's sure nice to have shirts that fit a little bit looser around the collar. Um, we're gonna take out um all your lymph nodes, which are like little baskets or strainers that catch infection, and then we're gonna take out your jugular vein. What? And I said, Doc, I know you're the professional, but uh and and you don't try to give me financial advice, so I won't give you medical advice, but don't I need that thing? And he said, Well, you have another jugular vein that goes down the other side of your neck, two that go down the back of your neck, your head will be full of blood, and eventually, after you can feel it swish around, eventually you'll learn which way to flow out. And I said, Could you define in the number of minutes, hours, hopefully not days, that it's going to take to eventually drain out? And he said, Well, it should be three or four, and it's actually five and a half days. It was a day that I had that surgery that half of my Sunday school class, I know it was old school, um, it's half of my Sunday school class took off work at 10 a.m. And we held hands in a circle and we prayed. And you know, I have never felt God's presence more powerfully before that day. And and even these 20-some years since, I haven't felt God's presence more powerfully. I just I think God gives us the body of Christ, the people of Christ to represent him and to minister his presence when we need him. Um one reason I I love church planting and what you're doing, JD, is that you're equipping church planters to reach the world for Christ. And our church planters get out there and they start small groups to minister God's presence to people when things seem hopeless. My goodness. I know salvation is important, but even after salvation, we still need the body of Christ and we need God's presence in our lives. So thanks for all you do and just keep it up. It anyway, thank thanks for all you do.

J.D. Pearring 8:43

Well, I'm so grateful for you. I'm so grateful that God um has given you many more days than the two that were predicted. I've been hearing your story for almost 20 years, and it's still it affects me emotionally. I can't imagine um it affecting you when you talk about what the doctor said he was gonna do. Oh um, but you you'll you'll look good. So well, thank you.

Faith Under Doubt And Pressure

J.D. Pearring 9:12

Hey, let's back up. Talk about how you uh came to Christ and got involved in ministry.

Dave Bennett 9:18

Sure. Um I came to Christ at um vacation Bible school when I was four years old. At least that's what I was told. Um after that time, I read the book of John. It said, He who believes in the Son of Man has eternal life. And that verb, for whatever it's worth, is a present, ongoing verb. So I think the big question is, do you believe in Jesus Christ as your savior today? Is he your only hope of salvation? And he clearly is. You know, even in college, I had just had doubts that, well, if I'm really not a Christian and if I'm depending on a date more than Jesus and the rapture happens, then I'll know I need to receive. But we're not given another day. I mean, we could, we could, I mean, our time may be up at this point. So I think the point is, do we trust Jesus and his shed blood for us on the cross for salvation? And are we living in that? And I definitely don't want to trust a date over, you know, the decision that I've made, the lifetime decision. So um, so I came to Christ, uh, called to ministry. And I do remember that in fourth grade, where I believed the best thing I could do was pastor a church. So after seminary, I pastored for five years, and during that time, God called me to another ministry um at a place called Merrill

From Pastor To Merrill Lynch

Dave Bennett 10:44

Lynch.

J.D. Pearring 10:44

Hey, talk about that. How do you go from uh pastoring a church to being with Merrill Lynch, Pierce Fenner, Smith, and Bennett? How do you do that?

Dave Bennett 10:57

Yeah, that's that's a great question. Um I had, I remember when I left the church, I had an old retired banker come up to me and said, I can see that you'd leave, but you fitting Merrill Lynch? What are you talking about? Uh kind of skeptical. I was getting a master's in counseling, and one of the last classes I took was in career counseling. And so instead of messing up everybody else's lives, we had to mess our own lives up. And um, I took these three interest skill inventories, two of them said avoid pastoring, one said pursue it. And I have learners one of my strengths. So at that point, I had 11 years of college seminary credit. And um, I said, Well, I have all these all this education and I love what I do. Why would I ever want to leave? Two months later, I had to write a paper on the common denominator on those tests, and it was in banking, brokerage, financial services of some sort. So instead of doing any uh research that might be typical in books or online, we had to interview people that were in the career and ask for referrals for more people to talk to. What do you do day in and day out? What do you like about your job? What do you hate about it? When do you feel like jumping off a bridge? And at the end or near the end of that process, two investment companies, one was Merrill, said, Hey, why don't you um let's interview you this time? I bet you'd be good at this. And I said, No, I'm not leaving. Um, about a month later, I thought, you know, I'm young enough at this point, I can probably always go back and past her. So um, I knew Merrill would only hire one out of 24 people if you could get an interview. Um, so I thought the likelihood of this isn't real great. So I went in for an interview for some reason they hired me.

J.D. Pearring 12:48

And I think it was more than that. You talked to me about how how difficult that is. Uh talk about that a little bit. How difficult to leave the pastorate to go to get to get on with Merrill Lynch.

Dave Bennett 13:03

Oh, oh, oh. Yeah. Um took, got the interview, passed the first interview, had to take a personality test and an economic test. Uh, how much economic knowledge do you have? I failed the economic piece of it. And uh, but for the personality part, they called me in to give me the results and said, Did you cheat on this test? We've never seen anybody score so high. So they said, We'll hire you, banking on the fact that your personality will trump your stupidity. So that's that's kind of how it did. Had to meet with regional vice presidents uh over, you know, eight states and and managers, they who tend to use words that we don't use in Christian circles. Um but uh yeah, going through those interviews, uh well, the first one in fact, the guy looked at me and said, What the heck are you doing in my office? And the first question wasn't hi, how you doing? Um so I explained that I was there, I did my research and found out a good answer for them would be want to make a lot of money. And that's what I told him. And the interview was a lot more peaceful at that point.

J.D. Pearring 14:32

So you were managing lots of money there, right?

Dave Bennett 14:37

Yeah, it was about my partner and I there were doing about 380 million customers' assets, and then back in 1995, that was a lot of money.

J.D. Pearring 14:49

Now it's just pocket change, right?

Dave Bennett 14:51

Not just, yeah. What's 380 million these days? So why are you not still at uh Merrill Lynch? Yeah,

Raising Funds For Church Mission

Dave Bennett 15:02

um, I would say it's uh God's call. Um, two things happened. One was I had cancer and I was wondering where God was leading. I thought it was the Merrill Lynch. The second was I developed a workshop called The Top 10 Ways to Support Your Church without writing a check. And that was through wills and trust and real estate, changing some beneficiaries on IRAs to remember ministry. And I was just doing those free seminars in churches to get out in the community. And I got a call from a foundation that said, Hey, Dave, you're raising more money than our full-time reps. Would you work with us? And there were several of these foundations, and I kept saying no, no, no, no, no, until one day I woke up and thought, you know, I get to work at seven in the morning, I'm home at nine at night, five or six days a week. So my kids who are in preschool are asleep when I'm at home. There's got to be more to life. That this group in California called and they said, Hey, I know you've turned us down twice. You probably still don't want to move 2,500 miles from your friends and family to help raise funds for church planting and to do your top 10 seminars so people can give through wills and estates. And I said, Sure, I'll do that. It just happened to be the right time. So we moved from Columbus, Ohio to uh California, Sacramento area, where we actually met.

J.D. Pearring 16:30

Well, that's a good move. You're going in the right direction at that point. Um, so you got involved in helping churches raise money. How has that been for you?

Dave Bennett 16:42

Yeah, um, we do that course through Wills and Estates. We've done it through some coaching. Uh, it's pretty common for a church if they take our step-by-step plan of action, increase by 20% they're giving. Um, we also do capital campaigns, and even little churches, newer churches can raise anywhere from two to five hundred thousand with a little bit of effort. They do what we suggest. I mean, we've had churches do over 10 million, so it just depends on the situation and and what they need to raise money for. Um, we also do some support raising or help church planters do support raising and even show up and do some solicitation or some ask for the church planter to model it. Um, I had kept track of how much we were raising um until February 2019 when we crossed 100 million. So now my goal is just to um help each church I worked with achieve their full giving potential to maximize their revenue for the sake of accomplishing the vision God gives.

J.D. Pearring 17:52

So when when I met you, you were trying to raise your goal was to raise 100 million for ministry.

Dave Bennett 18:01

Right.

J.D. Pearring 18:02

And you hit that. Yes.

Dave Bennett 18:05

Okay, so you and you don't have a new goal, uh other than I don't have a new goal except for everybody that God brings my way that we can maximize the amount that they receive. So it depends on the church, the situation, who's in there, but we tailor strategies to help the church be the best it can be.

J.D. Pearring 18:30

Wow. Wow. Well, I know that you um, you know, you're on the Excel board, you help out Excel, you you've just been amazing. You talked about some of the things you do. Um, that's not really the purpose of the podcast, but if somebody's looking for help, they want a capital campaign, um, they they want to talk to this guy who's raised a hundred million uh for ministry. How how would somebody go about contacting you or working with you? What would you say?

Dave Bennett 18:59

Yeah, um, simple thing to do, you can email me. Um email address is um dave d A V E at expandfg.com, EXPAND F is in financial, G is in Group.com, Dave at expandfg.com, or you can shoot me a text even. Uh I hesitate giving my phone number out, but these are Excel, these guys are family. So it's 916-521-5451.

J.D. Pearring 19:32

So you you're actually putting your phone number out there. Wow. Putting

Do Something Hard Every Day

J.D. Pearring 19:36

it out there. So talk a little bit about uh your life. Um, you have your life set up pretty well right now. I I know every day you ask God, what do you want me to do? But you've been very intentional about uh making sure you're doing what God's called you to do and you're doing the things you're gifted at.

Dave Bennett 19:57

Yeah, um I I really attempt to do that and evaluate my life even um in the evenings, most evenings where I just track my time. How much am I spending in my financial planning business? How much of my time am I doing ministry? How much time am I with my kids and um Karen and my um parents? And want to and have certain benchmarks for how much time I want to be spending and how I want to invest it. Yeah.

J.D. Pearring 20:31

You are you're so intentional. Um uh hey, let me ask you this. Give us a couple um give us a financial tip and then a leadership tip. You're the financial guy, so what would you just say? Just kind of blanket for everybody, and then a leadership tip.

Dave Bennett 20:50

Well, let me do those in reverse order, at least the leadership tip. I would um is and I know it's not the tip I would always give, but in this case, based on what I've seen with pastors, church planters, and non uh non uh non-planters, so established and non-established, um whether it's um even people in business, I I would um, and I have started in the last two and a half weeks trying to do something hard every day, do something that really pushes you out of your comfort zone, not in an immoral way, but in something that's that's challenging, whether it's physically, mentally, or maybe it's in lifting the lid off of um off of your mind uh to do something even bigger. I talked to uh to pastors and they say, well, I couldn't ever think about making more than X. Why not? I also talk Talk to people who say, well, you need your muscles to recover so many days, so you shouldn't work out too many days. Well, maybe you shouldn't. And I know doctors, I get you have to do what the doctor says, but you know, we are capable of a whole lot more than what we think. So maybe even consider amping up whatever you're doing by 10%. You always do that, JD. You know, it was 10 churches, which seemed to be a miracle goal. And, you know, eventually you kept ratcheting up until 100, doing 100. We thought, ah, that'll take a couple of years. Well, it turned out to be a year. Started 100 churches. What in the world? Anything less, it's just uh it can be a mental barrier. So do something hard. Think about something that may even be impossible to do.

J.D. Pearring 22:48

Do something hard every day.

Dave Bennett 22:50

Yeah.

J.D. Pearring 22:51

Wow. I had just I had just uh was listening this morning about how doing hard things like that keeps you mentally fit as you age. So thinking through hard stuff. So that's that's really good. That's uh I don't know if I want to do it, I want to do stuff that's easy, but um that's great. Uh how about the financial tip?

Dave Bennett 23:13

Yeah, financial tip um the best financial tip it it's gonna be it's intuitive, maybe to most people that listen to this.

Put God First With Money

Dave Bennett 23:28

And um, that is put God first in everything that you do, and um, especially in the area of your finances. So when you get paid, first thing that happens when money comes in, send it to God's work. If he can, it is felt to me like if he can get money through us to bless this world and for his kingdom to come to earth, um, he can also get it to us. And and it just is felt to me that if he knows he can get more money through us, he'll give us more, he'll bless us in that way. Not necessarily a prosperity kind of gospel, but um, if we're about his mission, great things happen. And putting God first and and being very intentional about how that looks in our lives, especially our finances, um, I think is really important. So seek God first, give to him first and see what he does. I mean, we have pastors that have been doing that for years, and we had one fairly recently give um over 200,000 to his church, and it was God kept bringing in other resources and uh blessed in a in a variety of ways that seem to be random, but that's kind of sneaky God things doing random things in our lives.

J.D. Pearring 24:56

Well, that's um I really like the way you put that. If God can um can use us uh to give through us, then he's actually gonna give more to us. So that's really good. Hey,

Looking Ahead With Gratitude

J.D. Pearring 25:10

one last thing. Um what are you looking forward to right now in in life? You've got uh you get this wonderful perspective of every day is new. What what's on the horizon for David Bennett? What what are you really looking forward to?

Dave Bennett 25:27

Yeah, that's great. Um I am uh looking forward to making sure my time is spent so many days per month, uh, whether it's our financial business, whether it's volunteering in ministry or with kids or family, definitely in that regard. But um with our staff that we currently have, we are getting geared up for our business to double in the next five years, not overly aggressive, but it seems like when I've set those goals before, um God just cuts it in half. And and I I don't understand how that is or why, but we really do try to seek God and hear from him. And um yeah, as far as business and leadership and life, listening and obeying the sheep hear his voice and they follow. So I think that's the the best way to best way to live. So we're trying to listen and follow the direction, not necessarily for a bigger kingdom or empire for us at all, as much as Lord, who do you want us to bless today? Who do you want us to make a difference? You've kept us here for a reason, and I guess it's to love you and to love others, but who do you want us to love today and be a blessing for? So that's what we're looking forward to.

J.D. Pearring 26:50

Amazing. Really, really good stuff, Dave. Hey, you've made such an impact uh in my life with Excel, with so many church planners and leaders all over. Um, your wisdom is incredible, your intentionality is uh we consider you a great friend. Thank you for sharing a little bit of your your time with us, and we look forward to hearing how your business is doubling and your impact even more than that. So thanks for being with us today. Well, you're welcome, JD.

Announcer 27:19

Thank you. Thanks for joining the Leading Conversations Podcast. We hope that you found it both helpful and encouraging. At Excel Leadership Network, our focus is on the church planter rather than the church. If you'd like to find out more about us, visit our webpage at Excelnetwork.org. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. See you next time with another leading conversation.